Speaking of protesters, these people wanted NASA to "stop Cassini" after it developed some reaction wheel glitch at Jupiter by crashing it into the giant planet.
Does anyone have an info as to whether this issue (the reaction wheel, not the asshat suggestion) was resolved?
This is a temporary injunction designed to preserve the status quo so the merits of the issue can be briefed and argued before the court. In order to get the TRO, the moving party had to demonstrate (among other things) that without it, there was a risk of irreparable harm and that money damages would be an inadequate remedy. Hence, the temporary restraint.
I agree completely, and wonder why we are developing and deploying the F/A-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter when there's not an enemy air force on earth the could seriously oppose us today. The same argument can be made about the DD(X) and other major weapons systems. Once again, we are preparing to fight the last war, not the current one.
I thought the same thing, but it turns out the the DD(X) program is a Multi-Mission Surface Combatant. Seems to blur the distinction between destroyers and frigates altogether.
States cannot ignore federal law (or even practices) by instituting (through legislation) more liberal rights to citizens.
In fact, there was a decision today about the right for citizens to sue HMO's based on rights given to them by state laws. The decision was that a Federal statute pertaining to a loosely related situation trumps the state mandated rights that were considerably more specific.
It's not a matter of "ignoring" Federal law by the States, but it's a recognition that the Federal Constitution is a "floor" of rights, and states may set their "ceilings" higher, but not lower, than that standard. For example, the Federal Constitution allows for warrantess searches of trash placed at the curb. However, under the "search and seizure" provision of the New Jersey Constitution, that State's highest court has held that, as a matter of State Constitutional law, a warrant is, in fact, required. State legislatures can also do the same thing, for example, by enacting laws that afford greater rights or privileges than Federal law requires.
As for the HMO decision, I will admit to having only read the NYT summary, but that holding is based upon preemption by ERISA, not any individual rights issue.
This isn't a blanket license for law enforcement to ask for "papers" or whatnot. To put it in context, the holding is that neither the 4th Amendment right to be free of unreasonable searches or seizures or the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination protect a citizen against giving their name in conjunction with an "investigative stop." If there was no investigative stop, and a citizen were mere asked to identify themselves, then the result could (and probably would) be different.
In this case, the police officer came upon a domestic dispute on the side of a roadway when Hiibel refused to identify himself. This is a little different from a cop walking up to you and asking for "papers." Under the circumstances, this request for identification (in the majority's view) is not unreasonably intrusive from a privacy standpoint. At this stage, asking for a name is not like patting him down or searching the car, both of which are more invasive and would require some additional justificaiton.
Also, before everyone stampedes for Canada, let's keep in mind that although there may not be any Federal Constituional prohibition against this, the States are all free to find that citizens in their jurisdiction enjoy greater state constitutional protection than the Federal provisions at issue here. That said, there is nothing preventing any individual state from a contrary holding under the exact same circumstances.
Personally, I disagree with the holding, but I am simply offering the rationale. The 5-4 split demonstrates, if nothing else, that reasonable minds can differ on this issue. (Also, the fact that O'Connor again "swings" the Court is interesting..)
Link to recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions here .
If sacrificing the liberties of our citizens within our own borders is "doing things right," then I invite you to be the first to be anal-probed by the Government.
"Overgrown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican liberty." -- President, and former General, George Washington, in his Farewell Address, Sept. 17, 1796.
Not just VCRs could be banned - think about photocopiers, scanners, anything can does imaging for that matter, anything that does anything associated with the "recording" or "capturing" of audiovisual or other copyrightable works.
More than once in discussions about the latest audio-security idea, people have responded by saying until you lock down the line out port from the sound card, any DRM can be circumvented. Well, this law, if passed, would make owning the sound card, the 3.5mm wire and the tape deck you're recording to all illegal to possess... talk about over-broad.
I could be wrong but the warship's radar view might be limited to the horizon, assuming the sensors are mounted on the ship itself and not some other platform like a helo or UAV and datalinked back.
Making a ship (other than a submarine) "stealthy" these days may not enhance its survivability that much; it would still be vulnerable to subsurface and IR or optical-based sensors. Back in the Good Old Days of the Cold War when NATO thought it would have to fight to resupply Europe with convoys of material crossing the Atlantic, this might have been an interesting idea since the main threat was regiments of Soviet bombers armed with anti-ship missles which used radar guidance and were fired from hundreds of miles away. Assuming the stealth works on this ship, a few of them armed with surface-to-air missles along the main axis of attack would make for a nasty surprise... still neat though.
NASA allowed the shuttle to effectively transition from a research and development system to operational status, despite the fact that prior to the Columbia tragedy there had only been 111 successful shuttle flights. In contrast, the Air Force's F/A-22 is programmed for 2,500 flights, nearly 4,600 test hours, before being deemed operational. Although the space shuttle should be considered experimental because of the nature of its mission profiles, it was, due to its commitments and ISS obligations, processed and operated as an operational vehicle.
Senior leaders must ensure that a vehicle or program still in the R&D stage is not treated as operational and fielded - an experimental vehicle or program must be treated as such. Although the loss of Columbia cannot be directly tied to the confusion between R&D and operational, it did influence certain decisions that may have changed the fate of the crew; a decision not to pursue imagery eliminated the consideration of an on-orbit repair or rescue mission."
You are right, it was the money, not the Air Force (for once) when it came to the boosters:
"The winged S-IC soon would die as well, for it appeared more costly than the pressure-fed reusable booster which, though it might look and fly like an ugly duckling, was a graceful swan in the realm of budgets, and would survive into the next round of designs. This round would resurrect the solid-propellant booster, and would determine the shape of the Shuttle in the form that would actually be built."
And really, a large number of problems with the shuttle were maintenance issues, not design issues.
I have to disagree to an extent, although there were a lot of maintenance issues, like the O-Rings that doomed Challenger it's the only manned launch system in history to use solid-fuel boosters (which were necessary because of the weight/cargo requirements from the USAF); consequently, there's basicailly no survivable abort scenario while the solids are firing if one fails or malfunctions before separation.
Columbia was used for non-space station missions like Hubble servicing and Spacehab because it was heavier than the other orbiters and couldn't haul as much cargo up to the ISS. Consequently, it never received the airlock mods that would have allowed it to dock with the ISS, so forth. Although I think there were plans to give Columbia the airlock to make it ISS--compatible, there was also talk of grounding her permanently since the other ships were better suited to the ISS construction mission. She was also configured for "extended duration" (16+ days) missions with the modifications allowing her to take on extra consumables (fuel, reactants, so forth) for those missions.
As the newer vechicles came online (Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour), new maufacturing techniques (particularly ones that replaced lots of the "tiles" on low temp areas with "thermal blankets") and the fact that the new craft were not instrumented up the wazoo saved on weight. Ironically, it was Columbia's legacy instrumentation that provided much of the data that was used in the accident investigation, with pressure sensors even noting the subtle impact of the foam on its left wing during ascent. Had it been another Orbiter, the conclusions may have been more speculative.
Astronaut Bob Crippin who commanded her maiden flight in 1981 made a remark at a memorial ceremony to the effect that like a lot of old folks, Columbia was a little heavy in the rear end, but got the job done.
Probably not that much since NASA has been working on robotics/telepresence for some time now. Although the NASA's Telerobotics program was shut down in 1997, but the research (at least according to this website) was transferred to other individual programs. I assume one of the flagship programs now is the Robonaut now in development.
So when an Al Qaeda "representative" believed to be in Baghdad before the war removes the head of a US citizen and releases the video on the internet in "protest" of the U.S. occupation.... that isn't proof?
No, it's not if we only "believed" him to be there. Even if he was there, what's more imporant is what he was doing there. Where is the evidence of either his presence and the reasons for him being there?
People said before the war, "oh Osama is religious and Saddam is secular so they wouldn't work with one another" yet why is Al Qaeda currently trying to subvert the peace in Iraq? Why is Al Qaeda representatives beheading american civilians in Iraq?
Have you seen any of the pictures from Abu Ghirab prison? If those were American "detainees" - say the Brits did that to us during the Revolutionary War, do you think it would incite retaliation? Think about it. If a forign military power incites the moderate civillian population against them (which is exactly what those photos do) they are in for a long, bloody time. I doubt we have even have seen the full payback yet.
Finally... Saddam supported many terrorist organizations in the middle east, including Hezbola in Isreal. At one point, Saddam was dishing out large checks to families of suicide bombers in Isreal. With the fact of PROVEN support of many terrorist organizations, do you really believe that Al Qaeda is the only terrorist organization Saddam didn't have ties with? Are you really that ignorant?!
Where is the evidence of this support? I will gladly agree with you if I can see the evidence, the money trails, the checks. Show me the evidence. And, if this is, in fact true, perhaps it suggests that the U.S. and the world would be better served facilitating a solution to the Israeli/Palestinian issues than rolling tanks through Baghdad.
Invading Iraq has been the best recruiting tool Al Qaeda ever could have hoped for. From the word "go," it has smacked of imperialism and anti-Islamic Western hedionism, exectly the propaganda which Al Qaeda uses to leverage public sentiment against the U.S. and fuel recruitment. But, hey, "Mission Accomplished," right?
If W found evidence of WMD of al-Qaeda in Iraq it would be the biggest PR production in history. After the "Mission Accomplished" photo-op, the whole Cabinent would wet themselves at the opportunity for W to hold up some document, container, computer disk or video tape supporting either WMD or al-Qaeda in Iraq. If it exists, where is it?
Last time I checked, the burden of proving an allegation falls squarely on the person or group saying it. Merely saying "we haven't found it yet" or "We don't know it didn't exist" doesn't mean it exists or ever did. After owning the fricking country for the last year and then some, the fact that no evidence has been found for any stated prewar justification is troubling, to say the least.
Yes, Saddam was a bad guy who we didn't like and did awful, awful things to his people, but he was no imminent threat to the United States the way Hitler, fascism, or even the Soviet "Evil Empire" was in the past. If you want a real problem to tackle, how about North Korea? Oh, wait, they don't have oil, do they?
Oops, that's Iapetus that orbits at 60 Saturn radii, Titan is about 20 radii.
I haven't heard or read about any ring-crossing, so I am assuming not b/c it seems like a bad idea to take a multibillion dollar probe through a rock garden where the rocks are flying at a few kilometers a second. If anyone knows different though, I'd be interested though.
This burn was only for 56 seconds, (insert joke here), and changed Cassini's velocity by about 78 mph.
June 30 is the real show when Cassini performs its orbit insertion burn for over 90 minutes, resulting in a delta-v change of in the area of 1,400 mph.
What's remarkable is that because of the distance between Earth and Saturn, there is an hour and 20 minute lag, so Cassini is pretty much on its own for this (and most other) maneuvers.
Although one of the Voyager probes whizzed through Saturn's ring plane (which is only about a km or so thick), no such daring maneuver is planned for Cassini.
There is a preliminary plot of Cassini's possible orbital tour here . According to it, Cassini will make around 69 orbits during its planned mission. Note that one of Cassini's primary targets, Titan, orbits at around 40 Saturn radii, well outside the rings.
Oh, and, look for all the pretty pictures from Cassini to be posted over at CICLOPS (Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations).
Echelon sounds an awful lot like the modern-day Project Shamrock where the NSA "asked for" and received the "cooperation" of ITT, RCA and Western Union in collecting communications.
Attorneys' speech is protected by the "litigation privilege" when advancing a client's interests. Generally, this immunity covers acts and statements made in connection with the pursuit of litigation (in particular, it protects attorneys from suit for things such as liable and defamation). Depending on the particular jurisdiction, as well as on the specific circumstances, the privilege may be qualified or absolute.
The privilege may not exist in the circumstances you describe, hence the disclaimer.
Slashdot Mirror
Does anyone have an info as to whether this issue (the reaction wheel, not the asshat suggestion) was resolved?
This is a temporary injunction designed to preserve the status quo so the merits of the issue can be briefed and argued before the court. In order to get the TRO, the moving party had to demonstrate (among other things) that without it, there was a risk of irreparable harm and that money damages would be an inadequate remedy. Hence, the temporary restraint.
Courtesy of Yahoo here.
Mod parent up, its the most informative post in this entire discussion.
Smells like pork to me.
I thought the same thing, but it turns out the the DD(X) program is a Multi-Mission Surface Combatant. Seems to blur the distinction between destroyers and frigates altogether.
In fact, there was a decision today about the right for citizens to sue HMO's based on rights given to them by state laws. The decision was that a Federal statute pertaining to a loosely related situation trumps the state mandated rights that were considerably more specific.
It's not a matter of "ignoring" Federal law by the States, but it's a recognition that the Federal Constitution is a "floor" of rights, and states may set their "ceilings" higher, but not lower, than that standard. For example, the Federal Constitution allows for warrantess searches of trash placed at the curb. However, under the "search and seizure" provision of the New Jersey Constitution, that State's highest court has held that, as a matter of State Constitutional law, a warrant is, in fact, required. State legislatures can also do the same thing, for example, by enacting laws that afford greater rights or privileges than Federal law requires.
As for the HMO decision, I will admit to having only read the NYT summary, but that holding is based upon preemption by ERISA, not any individual rights issue.
In this case, the police officer came upon a domestic dispute on the side of a roadway when Hiibel refused to identify himself. This is a little different from a cop walking up to you and asking for "papers." Under the circumstances, this request for identification (in the majority's view) is not unreasonably intrusive from a privacy standpoint. At this stage, asking for a name is not like patting him down or searching the car, both of which are more invasive and would require some additional justificaiton.
Also, before everyone stampedes for Canada, let's keep in mind that although there may not be any Federal Constituional prohibition against this, the States are all free to find that citizens in their jurisdiction enjoy greater state constitutional protection than the Federal provisions at issue here. That said, there is nothing preventing any individual state from a contrary holding under the exact same circumstances.
Personally, I disagree with the holding, but I am simply offering the rationale. The 5-4 split demonstrates, if nothing else, that reasonable minds can differ on this issue. (Also, the fact that O'Connor again "swings" the Court is interesting..)
Link to recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions here .
Sorry, I had "literalism" enabled on my end.
"Overgrown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican liberty." -- President, and former General, George Washington, in his Farewell Address, Sept. 17, 1796.
More than once in discussions about the latest audio-security idea, people have responded by saying until you lock down the line out port from the sound card, any DRM can be circumvented. Well, this law, if passed, would make owning the sound card, the 3.5mm wire and the tape deck you're recording to all illegal to possess... talk about over-broad.
Making a ship (other than a submarine) "stealthy" these days may not enhance its survivability that much; it would still be vulnerable to subsurface and IR or optical-based sensors. Back in the Good Old Days of the Cold War when NATO thought it would have to fight to resupply Europe with convoys of material crossing the Atlantic, this might have been an interesting idea since the main threat was regiments of Soviet bombers armed with anti-ship missles which used radar guidance and were fired from hundreds of miles away. Assuming the stealth works on this ship, a few of them armed with surface-to-air missles along the main axis of attack would make for a nasty surprise... still neat though.
Can't wait for the Cassini-like protesters... oh, joy.
In fact, one of the CAIB members wrote a follow up piece called Beyond the Widget: Columbia Accident Lessons Affirmed which, in part, says:
NASA allowed the shuttle to effectively transition from a research and development system to operational status, despite the fact that prior to the Columbia tragedy there had only been 111 successful shuttle flights. In contrast, the Air Force's F/A-22 is programmed for 2,500 flights, nearly 4,600 test hours, before being deemed operational. Although the space shuttle should be considered experimental because of the nature of its mission profiles, it was, due to its commitments and ISS obligations, processed and operated as an operational vehicle. Senior leaders must ensure that a vehicle or program still in the R&D stage is not treated as operational and fielded - an experimental vehicle or program must be treated as such. Although the loss of Columbia cannot be directly tied to the confusion between R&D and operational, it did influence certain decisions that may have changed the fate of the crew; a decision not to pursue imagery eliminated the consideration of an on-orbit repair or rescue mission."
"The winged S-IC soon would die as well, for it appeared more costly than the pressure-fed reusable booster which, though it might look and fly like an ugly duckling, was a graceful swan in the realm of budgets, and would survive into the next round of designs. This round would resurrect the solid-propellant booster, and would determine the shape of the Shuttle in the form that would actually be built."
From The Space Shuttle Decision
Still, the solid rockets give me the willies until they're jettisoned.
I have to disagree to an extent, although there were a lot of maintenance issues, like the O-Rings that doomed Challenger it's the only manned launch system in history to use solid-fuel boosters (which were necessary because of the weight/cargo requirements from the USAF); consequently, there's basicailly no survivable abort scenario while the solids are firing if one fails or malfunctions before separation.
As the newer vechicles came online (Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour), new maufacturing techniques (particularly ones that replaced lots of the "tiles" on low temp areas with "thermal blankets") and the fact that the new craft were not instrumented up the wazoo saved on weight. Ironically, it was Columbia's legacy instrumentation that provided much of the data that was used in the accident investigation, with pressure sensors even noting the subtle impact of the foam on its left wing during ascent. Had it been another Orbiter, the conclusions may have been more speculative.
Astronaut Bob Crippin who commanded her maiden flight in 1981 made a remark at a memorial ceremony to the effect that like a lot of old folks, Columbia was a little heavy in the rear end, but got the job done.
Probably not that much since NASA has been working on robotics/telepresence for some time now. Although the NASA's Telerobotics program was shut down in 1997, but the research (at least according to this website) was transferred to other individual programs. I assume one of the flagship programs now is the Robonaut now in development.
No, it's not if we only "believed" him to be there. Even if he was there, what's more imporant is what he was doing there. Where is the evidence of either his presence and the reasons for him being there?
People said before the war, "oh Osama is religious and Saddam is secular so they wouldn't work with one another" yet why is Al Qaeda currently trying to subvert the peace in Iraq? Why is Al Qaeda representatives beheading american civilians in Iraq?
Have you seen any of the pictures from Abu Ghirab prison? If those were American "detainees" - say the Brits did that to us during the Revolutionary War, do you think it would incite retaliation? Think about it. If a forign military power incites the moderate civillian population against them (which is exactly what those photos do) they are in for a long, bloody time. I doubt we have even have seen the full payback yet.
Finally... Saddam supported many terrorist organizations in the middle east, including Hezbola in Isreal. At one point, Saddam was dishing out large checks to families of suicide bombers in Isreal. With the fact of PROVEN support of many terrorist organizations, do you really believe that Al Qaeda is the only terrorist organization Saddam didn't have ties with? Are you really that ignorant?!
Where is the evidence of this support? I will gladly agree with you if I can see the evidence, the money trails, the checks. Show me the evidence. And, if this is, in fact true, perhaps it suggests that the U.S. and the world would be better served facilitating a solution to the Israeli/Palestinian issues than rolling tanks through Baghdad.
Invading Iraq has been the best recruiting tool Al Qaeda ever could have hoped for. From the word "go," it has smacked of imperialism and anti-Islamic Western hedionism, exectly the propaganda which Al Qaeda uses to leverage public sentiment against the U.S. and fuel recruitment. But, hey, "Mission Accomplished," right?
Last time I checked, the burden of proving an allegation falls squarely on the person or group saying it. Merely saying "we haven't found it yet" or "We don't know it didn't exist" doesn't mean it exists or ever did. After owning the fricking country for the last year and then some, the fact that no evidence has been found for any stated prewar justification is troubling, to say the least.
Yes, Saddam was a bad guy who we didn't like and did awful, awful things to his people, but he was no imminent threat to the United States the way Hitler, fascism, or even the Soviet "Evil Empire" was in the past. If you want a real problem to tackle, how about North Korea? Oh, wait, they don't have oil, do they?
I haven't heard or read about any ring-crossing, so I am assuming not b/c it seems like a bad idea to take a multibillion dollar probe through a rock garden where the rocks are flying at a few kilometers a second. If anyone knows different though, I'd be interested though.
Sorry about the self-reply.
This burn was only for 56 seconds, (insert joke here), and changed Cassini's velocity by about 78 mph.
June 30 is the real show when Cassini performs its orbit insertion burn for over 90 minutes, resulting in a delta-v change of in the area of 1,400 mph.
What's remarkable is that because of the distance between Earth and Saturn, there is an hour and 20 minute lag, so Cassini is pretty much on its own for this (and most other) maneuvers.
There is a preliminary plot of Cassini's possible orbital tour here . According to it, Cassini will make around 69 orbits during its planned mission. Note that one of Cassini's primary targets, Titan, orbits at around 40 Saturn radii, well outside the rings.
Oh, and, look for all the pretty pictures from Cassini to be posted over at CICLOPS (Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations).
Why would email be any different to the NSA?
The privilege may not exist in the circumstances you describe, hence the disclaimer.
(Note - this is not legal advice.)