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The Real Point of the 2016 Election: U.S. Supreme Court

Posted by takyon on Wednesday May 18 2016, @09:19PM (#1893)
3 Comments
News

Donald Trump Releases List of Supreme Court Picks

I thought this quote from Ed Whelan was funny. The part about Erick Erickson was added since I first read the article:

Ed Whelan, a former clerk to Justice Scalia and a prominent conservative legal commentator, praised several of the names on the list but reserved judgment about whether conservatives should trust Mr. Trump to follow through on what he says he will do.

“It’s a good list of some of the outstanding judges who give ample sign of being faithful to the Constitution,” Mr. Whelan said. “Whether a President Trump could actually be counted on to pick folks like this is a different question.”

Some of Mr. Trump’s most vocal conservative critics remained doubtful despite the credentials of the judges on the list. Erick Erickson, the conservative blogger who has been working to derail his campaign, insisted that Mr. Trump still could not be trusted with the court.

“Like every clause of every sentence uttered in every breath Donald Trump takes, this is all subject to change,” Mr. Erickson said. “He will waffle, he will backtrack, and he simply cannot be believed.”

Trump's List Of Possible Supreme Court Nominees Includes A Judge Who Mocked Trump

And it's not just a single incident of Twitter mocking.

DONALD J. TRUMP RELEASES LIST OF POTENTIAL UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT JUSTICES

Steven Colloton

Steven Colloton of Iowa is a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, a position he has held since President George W. Bush appointed him in 2003. Judge Colloton has a résumé that also includes distinguished service as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa, a Special Assistant to the Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, and a lecturer of law at the University of Iowa. He received his law degree from Yale, and he clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Judge Colloton is an Iowa native.

Allison Eid

Allison Eid of Colorado is an associate justice of the Colorado Supreme Court. Colorado Governor Bill Owens appointed her to the seat in 2006; she was later retained for a full term by the voters (with 75% of voters favoring retention). Prior to her judicial service, Justice Eid served as Colorado’s solicitor general and as a law professor at the University of Colorado. Justice Eid attended the University of Chicago Law School, and she clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas.

Raymond Gruender

Raymond Gruender of Missouri has been a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit since his 2004 appointment by President George W. Bush. Judge Gruender, who sits in St. Louis, Missouri, has extensive prosecutorial experience, culminating with his time as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. Judge Gruender received a law degree and an M.B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis.

Thomas Hardiman

Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania has been a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit since 2007. Prior to serving as a circuit judge, he served as a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania since 2003. Before his judicial service, Judge Hardiman worked in private practice in Washington, D.C. and Pittsburgh. Judge Hardiman was the first in his family to attend college, graduating from Notre Dame.

Raymond Kethledge

Raymond Kethledge of Michigan has been a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit since 2008. Before his judicial service, Judge Kethledge served as judiciary counsel to Michigan Senator Spencer Abraham, worked as a partner in two law firms, and worked as an in-house counsel for the Ford Motor Company. Judge Kethledge obtained his law degree from the University of Michigan and clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Joan Larsen

Joan Larsen of Michigan is an Associate Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court. Justice Larsen was a professor at the University of Michigan School of Law from 1998 until her appointment to the bench. In 2002, she temporarily left academia to work as an Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Justice Larsen received her law degree from Northwestern and clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia.

Thomas Lee

Thomas Lee of Utah has been an Associate Justice of the Utah Supreme Court since 2010. Beginning in 1997, he served on the faculty of Brigham Young University Law School, where he still teaches in an adjunct capacity. Justice Lee was Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Civil Division from 2004 to 2005. Justice Lee attended the University of Chicago Law School, and he clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas. Justice Lee is also the son of former U.S. Solicitor General Rex Lee and the brother of current U.S. Senator Mike Lee.

William Pryor

William H. Pryor, Jr. of Alabama is a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He has served on the court since 2004. Judge Pryor became the Alabama Attorney General in 1997 upon Jeff Sessions’s election to the U.S. Senate. Judge Pryor was then elected in his own right in 1998 and reelected in 2002. In 2013, Judge Pryor was confirmed to a term on the United States Sentencing Commission. Judge Pryor received his law degree from Tulane, and he clerked for Judge John Minor Wisdom of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

David Stras

David Stras of Minnesota has been an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court since 2010. After his initial appointment, he was elected to a six-year term in 2012. Prior to his judicial service, Judge Stras worked as a legal academic at the University of Minnesota Law School. In his time there, he wrote extensively about the function and structure of the judiciary. Justice Stras received his law degree and an M.B.A. from the University of Kansas. He clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas.

Diane Sykes

Diane Sykes of Wisconsin has served as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit since 2004. Prior to her federal appointment, Judge Sykes had been a Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court since 1999 and a Wisconsin trial court judge of both civil and criminal matters before that. Judge Sykes received her law degree from Marquette.

Don Willett

Don Willett of Texas has been a Justice of the Texas Supreme Court since 2005. He was initially appointed by Governor Rick Perry and has been reelected by the voters twice. Prior to his judicial service, Judge Willett worked as a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, as an advisor in George W. Bush’s gubernatorial and presidential administrations, as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, and as a Deputy Attorney General under then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. Justice Willett received his law degree and a master’s degree from Duke.

Working on My Website

Posted by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday May 17 2016, @03:06AM (#1889)
11 Comments
Code
Comments Please.

It still has a mostly web-2.0 design as I have some reason to believe that truly technical people keep their own websites like that. It's not like Bjarne Stroustrup couldn't figure out jQuery but he's too busy being a C++ God to deal with that.

However I do agree that my site could be better. There's more work I'm going to do.

The site is more sophisticated than it looks, in that it also has a smartphone-specific stylesheet. Do a "View Page Source" then look in the head element to see how that works. In my recent work I didn't update the smartphone stylesheet but I will start doing that this evening.

Most important was that my technical articles did not have any mention of the fact that they were hosted on a consultant company's site. You would find out if you clicked the bug logo, but not everyone does that.

So far I've received about one potential client inquiry per month. If this, uh... "redesign" helps, then I'll get more than one per month.

I'm going to add a light colored margin around the edges of all the pages but that will take a little more time.

While I'm the only active coder in the company, there are other people. One is a Caltech schoolmate who does Javascript, the other is a very experienced technical salesman who acts has an advisor. I'm going to add a "Meet The Team" page sometime soon.

I'm moving some more of my technical articles over from warplife.com but I won't link them until I've updated their markup to match the rest of the site.

I also fixed lots of broken links and invalid markup.

Show off your machine!

Posted by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 15 2016, @01:41PM (#1888)
25 Comments
OS

http://en.zimagez.com/zimage/screenshot2016-05-1508-21-36.php

This is just a screenshot of my desktop - took it while playing around with different wallpapers. I may add some different screenshots later - or not. Pulled both of these wallpapers from this site: http://racodesign.com/

Feel free to post shots of your desktop! It may give me ideas.

Oh - this is Linux, in case someone failed to notice that. Specs?

guy@sabayon-pc /opt/foldingathome $ inxi -F
System: Host: sabayon-pc Kernel: 4.5.0-sabayon x86_64 (64 bit)
                      Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 Distro: Sabayon Linux amd64 16.04
Machine: Mobo: Supermicro model: H8DM8-2 v: 1234567890
                      Bios: American Megatrends v: 080014 date: 10/22/2009
CPU(s): 2 Hexa core Six-Core AMD Opteron 8439 SEs (-HT-MCP-SMP-) cache: 6144 KB
                      clock speeds: max: 2800 MHz 1: 2800 MHz 2: 2800 MHz 3: 2800 MHz
                      4: 2800 MHz 5: 2800 MHz 6: 2800 MHz 7: 2800 MHz 8: 2800 MHz
                      9: 2800 MHz 10: 2800 MHz 11: 2800 MHz 12: 2800 MHz
Graphics: Card-1: NVIDIA GK208 [GeForce GT 630 Rev. 2]
                      Card-2: NVIDIA GK208 [GeForce GT 730]
                      Display Server: X.Org 1.17.4 driver: nvidia
                      Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz, 1920x1080@60.00hz
                      GLX Renderer: GeForce GT 730/PCIe/SSE2
                      GLX Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 358.09
Audio: Card-1 2x NVIDIA GK208 HDMI/DP Audio Controller
                      driver: snd_hda_intelsnd_hda_intel
                      Card-2 Plantronics driver: USB Audio
                      Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.5.0-sabayon
Network: Card-1: NVIDIA MCP55 Ethernet driver: forcedeth
                      IF: enp0s8 state: down mac: 00:30:48:c8:16:72
                      Card-2: NVIDIA MCP55 Ethernet driver: forcedeth
                      IF: enp0s9 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full
                      mac: 00:30:48:c8:16:73
Drives: HDD Total Size: 8561.7GB (6.6% used)
                      ID-1: /dev/sda model: MKNSSDCR240GB size: 240.1GB
                      ID-2: /dev/sdb model: WDC_WD3200AUDX size: 320.1GB
                      ID-3: /dev/sdc model: HUA722020ALA330 size: 2000.4GB
                      ID-4: /dev/sdd model: HUA722020ALA330 size: 2000.4GB
                      ID-5: /dev/sde model: HUA722020ALA330 size: 2000.4GB
                      ID-6: /dev/sdf model: HUA722020ALA330 size: 2000.4GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 22G used: 15G (69%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
                      ID-2: /home size: 168G used: 3.0G (2%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
                      ID-3: swap-1 size: 33.56GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda3
RAID: Device-1: /dev/md127 - active raid: 5 components: online: 4/4 - sde1 sdc1 sdf1 sdd1
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 65.2C mobo: 52.5C gpu: 50C
                      Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: 0 fan-1: 0 fan-3: 0 fan-4: 0 fan-5: 0 fan-6: 0 fan-7: 3132
                      fan-8: 3375
Info: Processes: 333 Uptime: 1:08 Memory: 2759.9/20078.0MB
                      Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.2.19

NYT: Trump on Women (long read)

Posted by takyon on Saturday May 14 2016, @10:00PM (#1887)
9 Comments
News

Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private

The New York Times interviewed dozens of women who had worked with or for Mr. Trump over the past four decades, in the worlds of real estate, modeling and pageants; women who had dated him or interacted with him socially; and women and men who had closely observed his conduct since his adolescence. In all, more than 50 interviews were conducted over the course of six weeks.

Their accounts — many relayed here in their own words — reveal unwelcome romantic advances, unending commentary on the female form, a shrewd reliance on ambitious women, and unsettling workplace conduct, according to the interviews, as well as court records and written recollections. The interactions occurred in his offices at Trump Tower, at his homes, at construction sites and backstage at beauty pageants. They appeared to be fleeting, unimportant moments to him, but they left lasting impressions on the women who experienced them.

What emerges from the interviews is a complex, at times contradictory portrait of a wealthy, well-known and provocative man and the women around him, one that defies simple categorization. Some women found him gracious and encouraging. He promoted several to the loftiest heights of his company, a daring move for a major real estate developer at the time.

He simultaneously nurtured women’s careers and mocked their physical appearance. “You like your candy,” he told an overweight female executive who oversaw the construction of his headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. He could be lewd one moment and gentlemanly the next.

In an interview, Mr. Trump described himself as a champion of women, someone who took pride in hiring them and was in awe of their work ethic. “It would just seem,” he said, “that there was something that they want to really prove.”

Pressed on the women’s claims, Mr. Trump disputed many of the details, such as asking Ms. Brewer Lane to put on a swimsuit. “A lot of things get made up over the years,” he said. “I have always treated women with great respect. And women will tell you that.”

Chief Pedophile Bill Clinton

Posted by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 14 2016, @03:11PM (#1886)
6 Comments
News

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/05/13/flight-logs-show-bill-clinton-flew-on-sex-offenders-jet-much-more-than-previously-known.html

Flight logs show Bill Clinton flew on sex offender's jet much more than previously known

Former President Bill Clinton was a much more frequent flyer on a registered sex offender’s infamous jet than previously reported, with flight logs showing the former president taking at least 26 trips aboard the “Lolita Express” -- even apparently ditching his Secret Service detail for at least five of the flights, according to records obtained by FoxNews.com.

Clinton’s presence aboard Jeffrey Epstein’s Boeing 727 on 11 occasions has been reported, but flight logs show the number is more than double that, and trips between 2001 and 2003 included extended junkets around the world with Epstein and fellow passengers identified on manifests by their initials or first names, including “Tatiana.” The tricked-out jet earned its Nabakov-inspired nickname because it was reportedly outfitted with a bed where passengers had group sex with young girls.

“Bill Clinton … associated with a man like Jeffrey Epstein, who everyone in New York, certainly within his inner circles, knew was a pedophile,” said Conchita Sarnoff, of the Washington, D.C. based non-profit Alliance to Rescue Victims of Trafficking, and author of a book on the Epstein case called "TrafficKing." “Why would a former president associate with a man like that?”

Epstein, who counts among his pals royal figures, heads of state, celebrities and fellow billionaires, spent 13 months in prison and home detention for solicitation and procurement of minors for prostitution. He allegedly had a team of traffickers who procured girls as young as 12 to service his friends on “Orgy Island,” an estate on Epstein's 72-acre island, called Little St. James, in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Virginia Roberts, 32, who claims she was pimped out by Epstein at age 15, has previously claimed she saw Clinton at Epstein’s getaway in 2002, but logs do not show Clinton aboard any flights to St. Thomas, the nearest airport capable of accommodating Epstein's plane. They do show Clinton flying aboard Epstein’s plane to such destinations as Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, China, Brunei, London, New York, the Azores, Belgium, Norway, Russia and Africa.

Among those regularly traveling with Clinton were Epstein’s associates, New York socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein’s assistant, Sarah Kellen, both of whom were investigated by the FBI and Palm Beach Police for recruiting girls for Epstein and his friends.

Official flight logs filed with the Federal Aviation Administration show Clinton traveled on some of the trips with as many as 10 U.S. Secret Service agents. However, on a five-leg Asia trip between May 22 and May 25, 2002, not a single Secret Service agent is listed. The U.S. Secret Service has declined to answer multiple Freedom of Information Act requests filed by FoxNews.com seeking information on these trips. Clinton would have been required to file a form to dismiss the agent detail, a former Secret Service agent told FoxNews.com.

In response to a separate FOIA request from FoxNews.com, the U.S. Secret Service said it has no records showing agents were ever on the island with Clinton.

A Clinton spokesperson did not return emails requesting comment about the former president’s relationship and travels with Epstein. The Clinton Library said it had no relevant information and does not keep track of Clinton’s travel records.

Martin Weinberg, Epstein’s current attorney, did not respond to multiple inquiries. Epstein said in a court filing said that he and his associates “have been the subject of the most outlandish and offensive attacks, allegations, and plain inventions.”

However, hundreds of pages of court records, including reports from police and FBI agents, reviewed by FoxNews.com, show Epstein was under law enforcement scrutiny for more than a year.

Police in Palm Beach, Fla., launched a year-long investigation in 2005 into Epstein after parents of a 14-year-old girl said their daughter was sexually abused by him. Police interviewed dozens of witnesses, confiscated his trash, performed surveillance and searched his Palm Beach mansion, ultimately identifying 20 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 who they said were sexually abused by Epstein.

In 2006, at the request of Palm Beach Police, the FBI launched a federal probe into allegations that Epstein and his personal assistants had “used facilities of interstate commerce to induce girls between the ages of 14 and 17 to engage in illegal sexual activities.”

According to court documents, police investigators found a “clear indication that Epstein’s staff was frequently working to schedule multiple young girls between the ages of 12 and 16 years old literally every day, often two or three times per day.”

One victim, in sworn deposition testimony, said Epstein began sexually assaulting her when she was 13 years old and molested her on more than 50 occasions over the next three years. The girls testified they were lured to Epstein’s home after being promised hundreds of dollars to be his model or masseuse, but when they arrived, he ordered them to take off their clothes and massage his naked body while he masturbated and used sex toys on them.

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida prepared charging documents that accused Epstein of child sex abuse, witness tampering and money laundering, but Epstein took a plea deal before an indictment could be handed up.

On Sept. 24, 2007, in a deal shrouded in secrecy that left alleged victims shocked at its leniency, Epstein agreed to a 30-month sentence, including 18 months of jail time and 12 months of house arrest and the agreement to pay dozens of young girls under a federal statute providing for compensation to victims of child sexual abuse.

In exchange, the U.S. Attorney’s Office promised not to pursue any federal charges against Epstein or his co-conspirators.

Florida attorney Brad Edwards, who represented some of Epstein’s alleged victims, is suing the federal government over the secret non-prosecution agreement in hopes of having it overturned. Edwards claimed in court records that the government and Epstein concealed the deal from the victims “to prevent them from voicing any objection, and to avoid the firestorm of controversy that would have arisen if it had become known that the Government was immunizing a politically-connected billionaire and all of his co-conspirators from prosecution of hundreds of federal sex crimes against minor girls.”

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida did not respond to a request for comment about the deal.

Other politicians, celebrities and businessmen, including presidential candidate Donald Trump, have been accused of fraternizing with Epstein. Trump lawyer Alan Garten told FoxNews.com in a statement Trump and Epstein are not pals.

“There was no relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump,” he said. “They were not friends and they did not socialize together.”

Closing browser doesn't warn if other windows are open

Posted by martyb on Saturday May 14 2016, @11:13AM (#1885)
15 Comments
Code

It's my own fault, I suppose, but... OUCH! I'm hoping there is a solution in the collective wisdom of my fellow Soylentils.

My primary browser is Pale Moon (PM), a fork of Mozilla's Firefox (FF), which I run on Win 7 Pro x64.

Scenario: I tend to leave my browser open for days/weeks at a time. I regularly have 30+ tabs open with everything from SN's main site and editor-related pages, local weather forecast/history, Folding@Home stats, a few blogs I follow, etc. On occasion, depending on what I've been working on, I find myself with 70 tabs open. That is not a problem.

Once in a great while, I'll find myself switching back and forth between two tabs so often (like when submitting/reviewing a story), I find it easier to move one of the tabs to a separate window, so that I can see both on my screen at the same time. Or, on other occasions, I'll do a 'view page source' on a tab which is then opened in another browser window.

Event: On rare occasions, I need to reboot my system, or reload PM (after an update). I pre-emptively close PM and see a warning dialog displayed which states something like: "You have 37 tabs open; do you really want to close Pale Moon?" This is good! Yep, I know that I have a whole bunch of tabs open, no big deal. I let it shut down. Do whatever I needed to do. I relaunch PM and all my tabs are sitting there waiting to be reloaded. Usually.

NOTE: I suspect this capability may be a result of the Tab Mix Plus (TMP) addon I have installed, but it has become critical to my workflow and I don't want to lose the settings/features I've enabled, so I do not mess around with disabling it.

Problem: The problem arises when I have multiple Pale Moon windows open. I'll have, say, my main PM window open with those 37+ tabs, and another PM window open with a tab or two. I close the main window, get the dialog, confirm, and only then do I discover that I have another PM window open, with its one or two tabs. I complete closing this last instance of PM. Here's the problem... when I restart PM, I now only see the one or tabs from the last window I closed -- the other 37+ tabs are lost. (The workaround is to go through my browser history and try to find and reload all the prior tabs, but that is a major, time-consuming, error-prone pain.)

WIBNI: (Wouldn't it be nice if) What I would like to see is the warning dialog not only caution me that I have 37+ TABS open, but also warn that there are 'N' other WINDOWS open, as well. At that point, I could merge windows into one, or close the tabs in the other, non-main window. Only after closing all the other PM windows, would I then close my main window. Then, when I reloaded PM, I'd find all my tabs in all the same places and ready to reload.

Request: Has anyone else here run into this problem? Is there a setting, whether in TMP or PM, that I am missing? Do you know of a setting or addon that warns me when I am closing one of multiple windows? Any other suggestions on how I can avoid losing my window/tabs context for later restore?

Story Pipeline

Posted by Phoenix666 on Friday May 13 2016, @08:21PM (#1884)
9 Comments
Topics

Thanks for the kind message. I have been looking to submit more through the recent dry spell, but the usual sources did run pretty thin. Perhaps we could put call-outs for Soylentils to submit good primers and how-to's they have found to fill those rough patches?

Support Analyst Programmer DBA doing calls 90% of Day

Posted by GungnirSniper on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:00PM (#1883)
9 Comments
Career & Education

Found another "Support Analyst" role today, with all the usual stuff, except in addition to the "extensive telephone work (90%)" and "24 x 7 on call rotation" it includes these gems:

Required Skills/Experience:
        Must be willing to work flexible hours (8am to 8pm)
        Minimum of 2 years of experience working in a technical support environment preferred
        Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field

Yes, because the first thing a computer science major wants to do is take calls all day long.

Technologies for the Enterprise Products:
        Microsoft Operating Systems
        Microsoft Office Suite
        Internet and networking technologies
        Web Servers (Apache or IIS)
        Databases and database management systems (SQL, MySQL, Oracle)
        Familiarity with a programming language (VB or C++) and ASP, Java Script and PHP-based web programming

When is this person supposed to work with any of these technologies or write code if they're taking calls 90% of the time? Either this company is really small, or they aren't sure what they need and are hedging their bets.

Crazy Ideas thrown into the public domain.

Posted by frojack on Thursday May 12 2016, @05:39PM (#1882)
2 Comments
/dev/random

Takata Airbag recall http://www.safercar.gov/rs/takata/takatalist.html

Why not just provide optimally cut pieces of kevlar that can be placed over the bag, (but under the steering wheel covers or dashboard plastic). The kevlar would not be attached to anything, and would not prevent or delay deployment. It would be sized to simply snag the shrapnel and slow it enough to prevent penetration. It might be easier to retrofit this change than it would be to replace every airbag in every vehicle.

Laid-Off Intel Employees Should Sue the Federal Govt

Posted by takyon on Thursday May 12 2016, @03:45AM (#1881)
1 Comment