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Arrested IBM Exec Goes MIA On the Web
theodp writes "Among those charged in the largest hedge-fund insider trading case in US history was IBM Sr. VP Robert W. Moffat, the heir apparent to IBM CEO Sam Palmisano and the guy behind Big Blue's 'workforce rebalancing' and the sale of IBM's PC unit to Lenovo. IBM's not talking about the incident, but it's interesting that Moffat's bio is MIA at IBM.com ('Biography you tried to access does not exist.'), and his Smarter Planet video can no longer be found ('This video has been removed by the user.') at IBM's YouTube Channel. Do you need approval from the Feds before tidying up after someone who's under investigation? BTW, if stories and comments appearing in the Times Herald-Record and Poughkeepsie Journal are any indication, Moffat may want to avoid a local jury trial. 'I have talked to a few IBMers today, and there seems to be a lot of cheering in the halls of IBM over his arrest,' said Lee Conrad of Alliance@IBM."
Prison rape isn't funny.
Anytime such grandiose outsourcing and/or workforce cutting schemes are created, you can suspect that a psychopathic suit just got an idea how to look busy and useful.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
A lot of good programs and people were axed during his tenure which added to the short term bottom line but have shown in the last 4 years to hurt their long term objectives.
That's so textbook corporate psychopaty. When will people learn?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
No what's funny is that a nation which is already joking about his prison rape before he's even been found guilty runs around the world trying to impose their view of human rights on everyone else.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
The quality hasn't changed because it's the same machine.
Sorry, but...no, it's not.
My company has been using ThinkPads exclusively for years, and once IBM sold the unit to Lenovo, the quality of the ThinkPad line has gone down, in my opinion.
I think IBM demanded a higher of level quality than Lenovo demands of itself. My experience seems to indicate there is now a higher failure rate, as well as evidence of cutting corners.
R.I.P. ThinkPad
That's so textbook corporate psychopathy. When will people learn?
After they're caught.
At which time they will wax sympathetic, not admit any guilt and promise not to do it again.
All the while crossing their toes.
When a culture celebrates and rewards parasitic behavior, it's no wonder the psycho's are winning.
***How much time will the billionaire serve do you suppose? I predict he "affords" his justice and walks. Worst case, no admission of wrongdoing and 18 months of "hard" club-fed time for perjury or jaywalking.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
Lenovo's quality of the "real" ThinkPads (T-series, X-series, W-series) is still pretty good.
The R-series have always been not-as-good. What Lenovo did was to introduce the SL-series, which are crap.
I've been using a T60, until i needed more power and switched to the W500 in last december. It's a great machine. I'm using it with Windows 7 x64, with WS08R2 on a VHD to run VMs through Hyper-V.
We're coasting on the accomplishments of our ancestors. Unfortunately, their America is not our America.
As a person who still remembers (late stages of) communism, those fat & lazy corporations resemble old (long dead) industry in communist states. So many things look exactly the same. High rank executives chasing phantom "results" just to get their bonuses, causing so much mayhem in the process. Middle rank managers who are interested in just blindly executing orders from their bosses and have to be clueless crooks to succeed, low level worker drones interested in setting up another "Q&A cell" to do some paperwork or being a salesman without any responsibility instead of doing something real.
For me, the main distinction between capitalism and communism (corporatism) is ownership. In capitalism the owner runs the business and risks its own property in the process - thus the owner is interested in well-being in the long run. In communism (or corporatism) the communist comisar (corporate executive) runs business that does not belong to him, does not risk anything and is interested in skimming some of it via bonus (for posting cooked results) or some form of fraud.
Using ownership distinction it is easy to explain why some corporations (Google, even Microsoft) are doing well (and have clean vision) while others (pre-Gerstner IBM, HP after Compaq merge) have no vision except next quarter results. Apple is a blatant example - founded by Jobs & co, then taken over by some classic corporate drones (and nearly killed in the process), then taken back by Jobs and regained all its shine (and some more). This also explains why large corporations like to merge creating larger (more poorly managed) ones - the larger (and less transparent), the more occasions for upper management to steal something.
While those things are deplorable, the trouble isn't that the US is the worst in the world as it is that we can do better.
Saying that "We" are guilty of these thing isn't true - though some few of us are and no doubt we can do better. We should do better. We should encourage each other to improve and not despair.
On the other hand: Slavery is still a common practice in large parts of the world, particularly Asia (and to some degree in the US too). China harvests organs from political prisoners. In Russia the rule of law is still privately funded and enforced. Rape of political prisoners to discourage dissent is reportedly practiced in Iran. Female genital mutilation, "honor" killings and simply setting your wife on fire are practiced in many places. As I write this one billion of my six billion fellow humans is starving. And let's not even talk about the pit of hell that is Africa. And then there's the deplorable incremental loss of human rights caused by busybodies determined to legislate every possible human action from marriage to business to whether you wear seatbelts in your car to whether you have seventeen forms of insurance; from what you read and watch and say to who you associate with to where you travel. To count our ills as Men is perhaps counterproductive. It's probably better to count our blessings and be happy with our lot, and then reach out and do what we can to improve the lot of others - but without risking so much that we become part of the problem.
If you really think our country is that bad, the exit is here. Be careful, though. It's a one-way door. And don't let it hit ya where the good Lord split ya.
Yes, prisoners raping each other is a despicable act and it occurs far more often than it should. It's not as common as people seem to think though and most of the people who joke about it don't do so because they approve of it. Voluntary "situational" homosexuality during incarceraton is far more common, as it is in polygamous cultures and other cases and doesn't get nearly as much discussion. Like most other fonts of humor like death and toilets and sex people joke about it because making light of the human condition is how humans deal with things that make us uncomfortable. It's how we let go of the inevitable sadness so we can cope. It's a joke. Laugh.
Help stamp out iliturcy.