You're right, she was never a judge. As far as I can tell, neither were:
William Rehnquist
Lewis Powell
Abe Fortas
Arthur Goldberg
Byron White
Earl Warren
Tom Clark
Harold Burton
Robert Jackson
James Byrnes
Frank Murphy
William Douglas
Felix Frankfurter
Stanley Reed (who also did not have a law degree)
Hugo Black
Owen Roberts
Harlan Stone
Pierce Butler
George Sutherland
Louis Brandeis
James McReynolds
Joseph Lamar
Charles Evans Hughes
William Moody
That's just for those appointed in the 20th century. Note that this is not authoritative, as I couldn't find a solid list of those without prior judicial experience, so I ended up going through two biography sites to determine them. Nevertheless, I think it's at least fairly accurate, and shows that of the 52 justices appointed in those hundred years, nearly half had no prior judicial experience. Many, if not most, of them also never argued in front of the Supreme Court.
Now, whether there are questions to be raised on other points is another issue. Most, if not all, of the above-listed justices had some public record to turn to in order to see where they leaned. Those that did not serve in elected office or in appointed government positions (cabinet secretaries, SEC, etc) had other roles that left significant paper trails. At this point, I'm quite skeptical of the qualifications which Ms. Miers brings to the nomination, and probably would have been more comfortable with a nomination from the courts or Congress, but I'm willing to wait and see.
It was considered, but a combination of compromise on the part of Democrats and a growing unease within the Republican party over the removal of the filibuster for this option made them back down. A number of prominent Republicans were vocally against it, thinking for the long term when the Republicans will be the minority party and need such a device to voice their own opposition.
There's the bigger question of whether it might, just *might* allow them to scale things back a little bit.
I know the knee-jerk reaction is something akin to, "NO! TEH NEOCONZ WOULD NEVER DO THAT!!!!!111" but they did scale back the carry-on list recently. If it allowed better responses, they might be able to do fewer lame things. In addition, gunpowder residues might be able to stop people from bringing guns on planes, either intentionally or inadvertently. This doesn't mean that X-rays should go away, but considering the abysmal rating of the people that watch those screens, it could be considered as an adjunct.
In Vietnam, we weren't defending all of Vietnam. We were defending South Vietnam. Go find a map from the era, or read a history book, and you'll see that they were two countries with two different governments. We were prevented from targeting much of the infrastructure in North Vietnam which might have forced Hanoi to the bargaining table to address peace earnestly. Hanoi is where the Vietcong got their equipment and much of their training. Get Hanoi to agree to stop that, and the Vietcong would have been much less of a threat.
As for Iraq's infrastructure damage, go grab a copy of Google Earth and start looking over the dams, bridges, and various other locations, and tell me just how much of the infrastructure actually was taken out. I spent part of yesterday marveling at the traffic jams that appear to be common at major intersections in Baghdad, and all the parking lots full of cars. You don't have to destroy every bridge or rail station if you can take out a key chokepoint. What was taken out would be almost completely back in place if it wasn't being blown up periodically by the insurgency.
I've talked to people who have done at least one tour over there, and they say that while things were bad in some ways, they never were even close to the descriptions that were used by the anti-war protesters that suggested we'd carpet-bombed entire cities into the ground. The situation is miles ahead of where they were even a year ago. The problem is that no one has reported clearly on what has changed, what has not, and what has yet to be done.
They request records from the ISP for the username to whom that IP was addressed at that time. Most ISPs keep these kinds of records for at least the short term to match for abuse claims, such as hacking or spamming.
It gets harder to match these kinds of things up, though, as wireless networks become more prevalent. One of my colleagues set his laptop on his passenger seat for the ride home (about 15 miles, IIRC) and managed to discover something on the order of 500 wireless APs, more than a quarter of which had no encryption whatsoever, and most of those that did were running WEP. Doesn't take much effort to break through that, and even WPA, when using simple passwords, can be opened up.
I'm not arguing that it isn't done or can't be done. You said that it happens "all the time" when the link indicates that it's uncommon at best, and since a significant fraction of the airliners out there do not have significant auto-landing capabilities, I simply pointed out that the article suggests that it is, overall, a fairly rare procedure.
I would be willing to bet that these unfunded pension liabilities were a result of pension changes made in favor of employees during the Internet bubble. The county in which I live is facing bankruptcy because it made changes based on anticipated growth that expected the bubble to continue forever, and now is $2.3 billion short of what it needs to fill existing pension obligations.
The fact that the company forged his signature on internal certifications should be enough to throw the burden of proof on the company.
It's not a fact. It's a claim made by Mangan that no doubt will come up during trial. If this can be proven, then it's a really bad mark against the the company.
No, it does not have a 100% mortality rate. The Aloha Air accident a number of years ago in which a section of the first class wall and roof ripped away at 24,000 feet was an example of instant decompression, but only the flight attendant that was sucked out of the plane was killed. All passengers and remaining crew survived.
Auto-landing does not seem to be used all the time. In fact, judging from your own link, it's used only on rare occasions, and then in clear weather to maintain familiarity with procedures. Further, there appear to be significant limits to how much automation there is to the landings.
A complete failure would be landing the plane at a speed and location that are not optimal for landing -- such as a mountain or a building. Pilots don't like this option for obvious reasons, and security experts really don't like it.
I find it odd that a pilot would allow a plane to be landed by auto-pilot. I'm not saying it can't be done, but Logan has a full ILS implementation that allows pilots to land safely (arguably more safely than relying on normal visuals), and pilots are usually loathe to give up control on takeoff and landing.
Almost every time I get a point of karma, I get points to use within a day or two. I tend to leave them until I find something where a lot of points are being made (good and bad) and then blast through them all, usually spending them on scores of 1 (occasionally knocking someone out of common view) and 2, but occasionally tapping higher numbers.
I dunno. Not so important to me here. I have my good karma, and I'm happy.
Unless the federal government has some really, truly massive off-books income sources, that's way off the mark. Aside from classified budgets for espionage, the total is more like $20B to $25B per year for DoD R&D and procurement. That's a lot of money, but an order of magnitude lower than your estimates.
why in the world would I offer up for free my bandwidth to help a company have better distribution
Consider that, at least for games, the cost of adding in the bandwidth to handle the rush for new files would be better used for increasing server capacity. For the cost of a month of high-capacity lines, an additional server (sometimes two or three, depending on the link speed required) can be added in. For Linux distributions, it lightens the load on mirrors that have to be used by those behind firewalls, and allows distribution of larger content, such as DVD ISOs, that may not be permitted on mirrors for resource reasons.
For other distribution sources, I agree that it's not so clear-cut. But in general, it's allowing savings by using otherwise unoccupied bandwidth, which for most people is nothing more than some extra packets going out at no expense.
In Vietnam, a common complaint was that the list of prohibited targets outweight allowed targets because of the desire by the White House to avoid civilian casualties and anything that might suggest that the US was trying to harm North Vietnam.
Dams? Prohibited.
Bridges near major cities? Often prohibited.
Ports? Prohibited.
Rail stations and switches? Prohibited.
Power stations? Prohibited.
Sanitation systems? Prohibited.
Government buildings? Prohibited.
SAM sites if they were next to a school or hospital? Prohibited.
Going into Iraq, bridges, ports, rail stations, power stations, warehouses, government buildings, and a wide variety of others were targeted. Granted, the weapons were far more precise and so a single shot kill on a target was more likely, but even after laser-guided bombs became used in Vietnam, targeting strategic resources was often prevented. North Vietnam had far less rebuilding to do than did North Korea, Japan, or Germany after the respective wars with them were through.
We lost because we couldn't hit strategic targets, which hamstrung the effort. Had we been able to do so, supplies from North Vietnam to the Vietcong may well have slowed or ceased, with negotiators operating in good faith at the Paris peace talks to avoid having their society -- which still needed electricity, sanitation, clean water, and usable transportation facilities and lines -- completely crushed into the ground.
Iraq and Vietnam are two completely different kinds of war. They both have urban settings and involve irregulars to a high degree, but equipment sourcing, political support, and rules of engagement have little in common.
For funding, it's a drop in the bucket. There are many other places from which we can divert spending -- most of the agricultural subsidies, for instance -- that would free up far more money.
I'm looking at the far reaches of this. I get an emotional thrill from seeing people launched into space, but that's short term. Within a few days, all that's left is the glow of pride I have in our space program. From a more fundamental structure, I look at things like:
Building observatories on the moon
Conducting research not possible on Earth due to circumstances that block certain phenomena
Establishing refining capabilities
Constructing basic manufacturing facilities
Launch of skeletal components for large components of orbital platforms
I understand that the first two are possible with robotics, but the flexibility of having someone to handle this over a longer run is important to consider. The ability to upgrade in place such equipment without always having to do a special launch for it is something that I also consider to be a positive.
The latter three all go hand-in-hand. It may be more efficient to construct major structural pieces on the moon and send them on some sort of lunar-LEO ferry, and then send equipment from Earth to populate those structures in a technical (and eventually human) sense. The timeline I have pictured for this is over 25-30 years, but I think it's a path worth investigating.
It will very much be a testbed of new technologies, just not so much cutting-edge tech.
The CEV will be new, though using much OTS technology. The lunar lander will bear little resemblance to the original landers, capable of supporting four crew for a week at a time. The service module will be capable of keeping an additional 25 tons of cargo in lunar orbit.
As for possible conclusions, the construction of a base is a real possibility, especially with the heavy lift booster under development for the CEV. Refining in place of raw materials such as titanium is a reasonable possibility for the mid-term outlook. Maybe at some point it can even be sent to Earth, if it can scale up effectively.
No, it's not a major leap like Apollo was. But it's a good step.
Of course, the US, Britain, etc., are still getting their asses kicked daily
I was just wondering what kill ratio qualifies as "getting their asses kicked." Perhaps you can clarify that? Because the news reports I've seen and the couple of Iraq vets I've talked to have indicated that the kill ratio over there is tilted significantly in the direction of the Coalition, and even the Iraqi police and soldiers are keeping their ratio above one.
We're obviously unhappy with the war. Our leaders are being completely unresponsive and unsympathetic.
Thank you for speaking for me, although I'm reasonably happy with things (yes, mistakes were made that have made things much more difficult, but the overall path is right) and our leadersare responsive to my wishes to stay the course and sympathetic to my desire to remain in Iraq until the job is done.:-/
Perhaps you should say that you are unhappy with the war, or even that a large percentage of the US populace is unhappy with the war, but not use an all inclusive "we" over such a widely split issue. Besides, the way I've seen it in polls (I have various news organizations up constantly in our operations center), while people are more likely than not to be unhappy with the progress, they are far less likely to want to withdraw the troops before things are done.
I didn't think that the author was complaining that it was too hard. He was complaining that there's no viable assistance along the way, and he may have a point there. A friend was a chem TA for a few years as he worked his way through a few degrees, and he enjoyed what he did. But he was constantly frustrated by other TAs that barely knew the material and refused to spend time with students. The instructors were off working on research and would only show up a few times each term, and you almost had to schedule time with them in the first week in order to see them before finals.
His complaint was that he was basically being forced to try to teach himself, which works for some people but not most. Most of us need someone whose shoulder we can tap to say, "OK, this isn't making sense to me. Can you please explain how this works?" Those explanations need to be able to come at the discussion from more than one angle, and often those standing in front of the class (TA or even instructor) are incapable of doing this to a great degree.
If I were him, I would consider transferring to another school with a good engineering program and see what the results are, or maybe even investigate the classes without transferring by sitting in on them in another school, if possible. Maybe he really is at what is seen as a good school, but they couldn't teach in a way that benefited him. Or maybe the quality of those at the front of the class is a serious problem that needs to be examined.
Re:I know how it feels...
on
Too Many Passwords
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Imagine if Google implemented GooglePass, though. Everyone would jump on it as the best thing ever!
Of course, it would probably also be done a lot better, but it would still have the issues of a hidden method of implementation and central storage of credentials. The latter part of that sentence would be ignored by a lot of people, though.
Notice that I said, "They're supposed to be" rather than "It is a proven fact that they are" because these are the claims that are brought up when people want to put in monorails. The only actual experience I have around a monorail is the Disneyland monorail, which is quiet, aesthetically pleasing, safe, and inexpensive to operate. But then, the whole track is only a few miles, it runs slowly, and it's not paid for by taxpayers.
However, it's a concept that I would entertain where I live, because land prices and the costs of diverting traffic during construction are so high. A light rail project here is expected to cost $100 million per mile to construct, and even then the study that proponents used to back it admitted that, due to housing and employment patterns, it wouldn't to anything to reduce traffic or pollution. I don't know if a monorail would do any better, but I'd listen to the arguments.
Slashdot Mirror
That's just for those appointed in the 20th century. Note that this is not authoritative, as I couldn't find a solid list of those without prior judicial experience, so I ended up going through two biography sites to determine them. Nevertheless, I think it's at least fairly accurate, and shows that of the 52 justices appointed in those hundred years, nearly half had no prior judicial experience. Many, if not most, of them also never argued in front of the Supreme Court.
Now, whether there are questions to be raised on other points is another issue. Most, if not all, of the above-listed justices had some public record to turn to in order to see where they leaned. Those that did not serve in elected office or in appointed government positions (cabinet secretaries, SEC, etc) had other roles that left significant paper trails. At this point, I'm quite skeptical of the qualifications which Ms. Miers brings to the nomination, and probably would have been more comfortable with a nomination from the courts or Congress, but I'm willing to wait and see.
It was considered, but a combination of compromise on the part of Democrats and a growing unease within the Republican party over the removal of the filibuster for this option made them back down. A number of prominent Republicans were vocally against it, thinking for the long term when the Republicans will be the minority party and need such a device to voice their own opposition.
There's the bigger question of whether it might, just *might* allow them to scale things back a little bit.
I know the knee-jerk reaction is something akin to, "NO! TEH NEOCONZ WOULD NEVER DO THAT!!!!!111" but they did scale back the carry-on list recently. If it allowed better responses, they might be able to do fewer lame things. In addition, gunpowder residues might be able to stop people from bringing guns on planes, either intentionally or inadvertently. This doesn't mean that X-rays should go away, but considering the abysmal rating of the people that watch those screens, it could be considered as an adjunct.
In Vietnam, we weren't defending all of Vietnam. We were defending South Vietnam. Go find a map from the era, or read a history book, and you'll see that they were two countries with two different governments. We were prevented from targeting much of the infrastructure in North Vietnam which might have forced Hanoi to the bargaining table to address peace earnestly. Hanoi is where the Vietcong got their equipment and much of their training. Get Hanoi to agree to stop that, and the Vietcong would have been much less of a threat.
As for Iraq's infrastructure damage, go grab a copy of Google Earth and start looking over the dams, bridges, and various other locations, and tell me just how much of the infrastructure actually was taken out. I spent part of yesterday marveling at the traffic jams that appear to be common at major intersections in Baghdad, and all the parking lots full of cars. You don't have to destroy every bridge or rail station if you can take out a key chokepoint. What was taken out would be almost completely back in place if it wasn't being blown up periodically by the insurgency.
I've talked to people who have done at least one tour over there, and they say that while things were bad in some ways, they never were even close to the descriptions that were used by the anti-war protesters that suggested we'd carpet-bombed entire cities into the ground. The situation is miles ahead of where they were even a year ago. The problem is that no one has reported clearly on what has changed, what has not, and what has yet to be done.
They request records from the ISP for the username to whom that IP was addressed at that time. Most ISPs keep these kinds of records for at least the short term to match for abuse claims, such as hacking or spamming.
It gets harder to match these kinds of things up, though, as wireless networks become more prevalent. One of my colleagues set his laptop on his passenger seat for the ride home (about 15 miles, IIRC) and managed to discover something on the order of 500 wireless APs, more than a quarter of which had no encryption whatsoever, and most of those that did were running WEP. Doesn't take much effort to break through that, and even WPA, when using simple passwords, can be opened up.
I know. I'm at 48 right now, thanks to someone trying to make a point on another post I made. I'll be back up soon enough.
I'm not arguing that it isn't done or can't be done. You said that it happens "all the time" when the link indicates that it's uncommon at best, and since a significant fraction of the airliners out there do not have significant auto-landing capabilities, I simply pointed out that the article suggests that it is, overall, a fairly rare procedure.
I would be willing to bet that these unfunded pension liabilities were a result of pension changes made in favor of employees during the Internet bubble. The county in which I live is facing bankruptcy because it made changes based on anticipated growth that expected the bubble to continue forever, and now is $2.3 billion short of what it needs to fill existing pension obligations.
I'm capped, and have been for a few years. There is an actual score, but it's hidden.
The fact that the company forged his signature on internal certifications should be enough to throw the burden of proof on the company.
It's not a fact. It's a claim made by Mangan that no doubt will come up during trial. If this can be proven, then it's a really bad mark against the the company.
No, it does not have a 100% mortality rate. The Aloha Air accident a number of years ago in which a section of the first class wall and roof ripped away at 24,000 feet was an example of instant decompression, but only the flight attendant that was sucked out of the plane was killed. All passengers and remaining crew survived.
Most depressurizations are survived entirely.
Auto-landing does not seem to be used all the time. In fact, judging from your own link, it's used only on rare occasions, and then in clear weather to maintain familiarity with procedures. Further, there appear to be significant limits to how much automation there is to the landings.
A complete failure would be landing the plane at a speed and location that are not optimal for landing -- such as a mountain or a building. Pilots don't like this option for obvious reasons, and security experts really don't like it.
I find it odd that a pilot would allow a plane to be landed by auto-pilot. I'm not saying it can't be done, but Logan has a full ILS implementation that allows pilots to land safely (arguably more safely than relying on normal visuals), and pilots are usually loathe to give up control on takeoff and landing.
Almost every time I get a point of karma, I get points to use within a day or two. I tend to leave them until I find something where a lot of points are being made (good and bad) and then blast through them all, usually spending them on scores of 1 (occasionally knocking someone out of common view) and 2, but occasionally tapping higher numbers.
I dunno. Not so important to me here. I have my good karma, and I'm happy.
Unless the federal government has some really, truly massive off-books income sources, that's way off the mark. Aside from classified budgets for espionage, the total is more like $20B to $25B per year for DoD R&D and procurement. That's a lot of money, but an order of magnitude lower than your estimates.
why in the world would I offer up for free my bandwidth to help a company have better distribution
Consider that, at least for games, the cost of adding in the bandwidth to handle the rush for new files would be better used for increasing server capacity. For the cost of a month of high-capacity lines, an additional server (sometimes two or three, depending on the link speed required) can be added in. For Linux distributions, it lightens the load on mirrors that have to be used by those behind firewalls, and allows distribution of larger content, such as DVD ISOs, that may not be permitted on mirrors for resource reasons.
For other distribution sources, I agree that it's not so clear-cut. But in general, it's allowing savings by using otherwise unoccupied bandwidth, which for most people is nothing more than some extra packets going out at no expense.
In Vietnam, a common complaint was that the list of prohibited targets outweight allowed targets because of the desire by the White House to avoid civilian casualties and anything that might suggest that the US was trying to harm North Vietnam.
Dams? Prohibited.
Bridges near major cities? Often prohibited.
Ports? Prohibited.
Rail stations and switches? Prohibited.
Power stations? Prohibited.
Sanitation systems? Prohibited.
Government buildings? Prohibited.
SAM sites if they were next to a school or hospital? Prohibited.
Going into Iraq, bridges, ports, rail stations, power stations, warehouses, government buildings, and a wide variety of others were targeted. Granted, the weapons were far more precise and so a single shot kill on a target was more likely, but even after laser-guided bombs became used in Vietnam, targeting strategic resources was often prevented. North Vietnam had far less rebuilding to do than did North Korea, Japan, or Germany after the respective wars with them were through.
We lost because we couldn't hit strategic targets, which hamstrung the effort. Had we been able to do so, supplies from North Vietnam to the Vietcong may well have slowed or ceased, with negotiators operating in good faith at the Paris peace talks to avoid having their society -- which still needed electricity, sanitation, clean water, and usable transportation facilities and lines -- completely crushed into the ground.
Iraq and Vietnam are two completely different kinds of war. They both have urban settings and involve irregulars to a high degree, but equipment sourcing, political support, and rules of engagement have little in common.
I'm looking at the far reaches of this. I get an emotional thrill from seeing people launched into space, but that's short term. Within a few days, all that's left is the glow of pride I have in our space program. From a more fundamental structure, I look at things like:
I understand that the first two are possible with robotics, but the flexibility of having someone to handle this over a longer run is important to consider. The ability to upgrade in place such equipment without always having to do a special launch for it is something that I also consider to be a positive.
The latter three all go hand-in-hand. It may be more efficient to construct major structural pieces on the moon and send them on some sort of lunar-LEO ferry, and then send equipment from Earth to populate those structures in a technical (and eventually human) sense. The timeline I have pictured for this is over 25-30 years, but I think it's a path worth investigating.
It will very much be a testbed of new technologies, just not so much cutting-edge tech.
The CEV will be new, though using much OTS technology. The lunar lander will bear little resemblance to the original landers, capable of supporting four crew for a week at a time. The service module will be capable of keeping an additional 25 tons of cargo in lunar orbit.
As for possible conclusions, the construction of a base is a real possibility, especially with the heavy lift booster under development for the CEV. Refining in place of raw materials such as titanium is a reasonable possibility for the mid-term outlook. Maybe at some point it can even be sent to Earth, if it can scale up effectively.
No, it's not a major leap like Apollo was. But it's a good step.
Of course, the US, Britain, etc., are still getting their asses kicked daily
I was just wondering what kill ratio qualifies as "getting their asses kicked." Perhaps you can clarify that? Because the news reports I've seen and the couple of Iraq vets I've talked to have indicated that the kill ratio over there is tilted significantly in the direction of the Coalition, and even the Iraqi police and soldiers are keeping their ratio above one.
We're obviously unhappy with the war. Our leaders are being completely unresponsive and unsympathetic.
:-/
Thank you for speaking for me, although I'm reasonably happy with things (yes, mistakes were made that have made things much more difficult, but the overall path is right) and our leadersare responsive to my wishes to stay the course and sympathetic to my desire to remain in Iraq until the job is done.
Perhaps you should say that you are unhappy with the war, or even that a large percentage of the US populace is unhappy with the war, but not use an all inclusive "we" over such a widely split issue. Besides, the way I've seen it in polls (I have various news organizations up constantly in our operations center), while people are more likely than not to be unhappy with the progress, they are far less likely to want to withdraw the troops before things are done.
I didn't think that the author was complaining that it was too hard. He was complaining that there's no viable assistance along the way, and he may have a point there. A friend was a chem TA for a few years as he worked his way through a few degrees, and he enjoyed what he did. But he was constantly frustrated by other TAs that barely knew the material and refused to spend time with students. The instructors were off working on research and would only show up a few times each term, and you almost had to schedule time with them in the first week in order to see them before finals.
His complaint was that he was basically being forced to try to teach himself, which works for some people but not most. Most of us need someone whose shoulder we can tap to say, "OK, this isn't making sense to me. Can you please explain how this works?" Those explanations need to be able to come at the discussion from more than one angle, and often those standing in front of the class (TA or even instructor) are incapable of doing this to a great degree.
If I were him, I would consider transferring to another school with a good engineering program and see what the results are, or maybe even investigate the classes without transferring by sitting in on them in another school, if possible. Maybe he really is at what is seen as a good school, but they couldn't teach in a way that benefited him. Or maybe the quality of those at the front of the class is a serious problem that needs to be examined.
Imagine if Google implemented GooglePass, though. Everyone would jump on it as the best thing ever!
Of course, it would probably also be done a lot better, but it would still have the issues of a hidden method of implementation and central storage of credentials. The latter part of that sentence would be ignored by a lot of people, though.
Notice that I said, "They're supposed to be" rather than "It is a proven fact that they are" because these are the claims that are brought up when people want to put in monorails. The only actual experience I have around a monorail is the Disneyland monorail, which is quiet, aesthetically pleasing, safe, and inexpensive to operate. But then, the whole track is only a few miles, it runs slowly, and it's not paid for by taxpayers.
However, it's a concept that I would entertain where I live, because land prices and the costs of diverting traffic during construction are so high. A light rail project here is expected to cost $100 million per mile to construct, and even then the study that proponents used to back it admitted that, due to housing and employment patterns, it wouldn't to anything to reduce traffic or pollution. I don't know if a monorail would do any better, but I'd listen to the arguments.