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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ian@SI who wrote (38926)	10/28/2000 3:45:38 PM
From: Cary Salsberg	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

OT An accumulation of this kind of news is how I became such a rabid anti-Republican. I am not surprised that Republican appointees and one reputedly slated to be W's next Supreme Court nominee would decide that a sleeping defense lawyer is no grounds for a retrial in a capital offense case. Published Saturday, October 28, 2000, in the San Jose Mercury News No new trial in `sleeping lawyer' case DEATH ROW DEFENSE ADEQUATE, COURT SAYS BY HENRY WEINSTEIN Los Angeles Times A defendant in a capital-murder trial does not have an absolute constitutional right to have an attorney who stays awake for the entire trial, a sharply divided federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled Friday. The ruling came in the case of Calvin J. Burdine, whose death sentence for a 1983 murder in Texas drew considerable -- and unfavorable -- attention to that state's death-penalty system. During Burdine's trial, his court-appointed lawyer, Joe Frank Cannon, frequently fell asleep, according to jurors and the court clerk. Last year, a federal district judge in Houston had ordered a new trial for Burdine, saying that ``a sleeping counsel is equivalent to no counsel at all.'' But by a 2-1 majority, a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. The judges were not ``condoning sleeping by defense counsel during a capital murder trial,'' Judges Rhesa H. Barksdale and Edith H. Jones wrote in their ruling. But from the trial record, ``it is impossible to determine -- instead, only to speculate -- that counsel's sleeping'' actually hurt Burdine's case, the majority said. Jones, who was appointed to the appeals court by President Reagan, has been widely touted as a possible Supreme Court pick if Texas Gov. George W. Bush wins the presidential election. Barksdale was appointed by Bush's father when he was president. But in a stinging dissent, appellate judge Fortunato P. Benavides, an appointee of President Clinton, said ``it shocks the conscience that a defendant could be sentenced to death under the circumstances surrounding counsel's representation of Burdine.'' Even if Friday's ruling stands, Burdine, who already has had four stays of execution, will not immediately be put to death. His lawyers have raised several other issues that await decisions. The Burdine case came to national attention during the presidential primaries this spring when Bush was asked about ``sleeping lawyers'' in Texas death-penalty cases. Bush said the fact that Burdine's guilty verdict and death sentence had been reversed showed that ``the system worked.'' He did not mention that the state already had appealed that reversal. Cannon, who is now dead, also slept through the trial of another defendant who already has been executed, according to appellate court records.

To: Ian@SI who wrote (38926)	10/28/2000 4:09:52 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

Predicting The Unpredictable Semiconductor Cycle "Soft" period predicted for next twelve months. Recent events reinforce quantitative forecasts, issued more than one year ago, that the Semiconductor Industry would enter a "soft" period in the second half of 2000 and beginning of 2001. Since early 1999, and against the industry's sentiment, Advanced Forecasting, Inc. (AFI), a Cupertino, California-based forecasting firm for the semiconductor and related industries, has predicted that demand for semiconductors would encounter a slower growth rate during the second half of 2000. Contrary to most other forecasters who fell into the common trap of extrapolating the strong IC growth (that began in mid 1998) into the future, as far as 2003, AFI has been alerting its readers of such extrapolations and the danger of building excessive capacity to match the inflated demand. Taken directly from AFI's monthly publication dated March 10th '99: "The (IC) Cycle Forecast indicates the early signs of a plateau forming in Q3-2000. Until then, our forecast expects the IC Industry to climb steeply," and from AFI's May 10th '99 publication: "Our long term forecast indicates a change in direction for the second half of 2000, from a strong to a moderate growth rate." Recent industry news and the stock market's backlash indicate that the semiconductor industry is reaching a state of over-capacity due to capacity buildup that was based partially on "wishful thinking". It seems that AFI's quantitative forecasts are being realised, again. Early negative signs clouded the declarations of record revenues for the third quarter, including: an announcement of push-outs from a large supplier of equipment, lower than expected quarterly sales from manufacturers and retailers of consumer electronics, increasing skepticism regarding PC unit growth rates, and weak reports from top telecommunications companies doubting the true demand for communications equipment, which has fuelled the latest IC boom. Though the equivalent of 50 new fabs is expected to go online around the world in 2001, North American suppliers of semiconductor capital equipment just reported a decline in orders for September. "For quite a few months we have warned that semiconductor equipment bookings have over heated during the first half of 2000 and now, as anticipated, the industry is experiencing signs that may indicate a forthcoming change in direction sooner than other sources have expected," states Dr. Moshe Handelsman, President of AFI, adding that "extrapolation now is dangerous because although demand will not disappear, it will slow while supply is geared for larger demand evolving into over-capacity." Being responsible for very early industry warnings of changes in direction is not new to AFI. In July of 1998, Advanced Forecasting, Inc. was the only firm to call the bottom of the 1998 IC Industry recession, about four months before other industry analysts made the same call. According to David Crume, AFI's Sales and Marketing Director, "Advanced Forecasting was the only firm in mid 1995 to go against the prevailing sentiment of `no more silicon cycles' and call the downturn of 1996." Due to its quantitative methodology, AFI's track record has been accomplished without retroactive modifications of its forecasts. By providing early identification of industry turning points and a check and balance system to traditional sources of subjective information for its clients, AFI hopes to reduce the effects of severe overheating and overcorrecting that have plagued the semiconductor industry for years. AFI offers quantitative forecasts of all ICs and discrete devices, semiconductor equipment (Front-End and ATE), disk drives, PCBs, Fab Capacity Utilization, Wafer Shipments and DRAM ASPs. AFI is the only forecast firm that guarantees its forecasting services with a full refund period since its inception (1987). semiconductorfabtech.com