purpose of imprisonment is to protect society from people that may harm it when there is no other option Of the 283 executives named in the original filing against Enron, how are we, the common American investors, being protected from the 278 who never saw the inside of a courtroom? How are we, the common American consumers, being protected from the kinds of stock losses and business fraud that Hurd and Dunn could very well commit again?
There are better uses of taxpayers money If only the power to use it were truly in our hands and not in the hands of people who owe political or financial allegiance to crooks like the ones in this story.
We, the common citizens, do not have any power of the purse--it's all taxed away to be allocated at someone else's discretion.
You'd have to be dumb to not consider that things might go awry They were dumb to expect that the wiretapping they were engaging in wasn't illegal. How much were they being paid to know better? (This reasoning applies to the recent federal government wiretap scandal as well)
what evidence is sufficient to exonerate the person There is no exoneration for people in their position. They simply cannot make a plausible claim of innocence or naivete when their corporate position and yearly income require them to be shrewd and experienced.
I think those repercussions should be shared among a lot more people Very true. This is further evidence of a scam. In the original filing against Enron there were 283 executives named of which only 5 ever saw the inside of a courtroom.
the particularly greedy and corrosive nature of our system of capitalism Our system of capitalism isn't really capitalism. It's a pyramid scheme of debt. Those in priveleged parts of the pyramid are allowed to create debt for others (see HP's stock price), retain profit for themselves (how much were these jokers being paid?), while being shielded from any real-world repercussions (96 hours of suspended community service for four felonies isn't a bad deal at all).
Once in a while, for PR purposes, someone has to take a real fall (eg. Lay, Martha). Usually they get pampered once they're out of the spotlight.
reassured by people who were more expert than they If I wouldn't believe it then why would I believe that someone making exponentially more than I would believe it? They were in positions where they were being paid not to be suckered by-fast talkers--and their defense is that they were suckered by fast-talkers?
A manager who goes and verifies every little decision This isn't about micromanaging. These were executive level decisions.
having gone to some lengths to investigate whether they were actually illegal It's my opinion that they went to lengths to make it look like they went to lengths because they already knew that what they were doing was illegal.
It'd be naive to think that they did something illegal without planning their defense in the event they were caught. 96 hourse of suspended community service for four felonies sounds like a pretty successful contingency plan.
HPs stock has taken it up the ass All the more reason that Hurd and Dunn should be sitting in prison. Their actions have caused thousands of people to lose millions of dollars. How can anyone have pity for them? Don't executives have any responsibility?
Why do you think someone would get jail time for snoopin' around? The snooping was conducted in the course of defrauding investors. There may have been people who lost their homes because of it.
realize she'll be unemployed by the end of the year Every geek's dream is to be unemployed and independently wealthy. Plenty of time to test all of those fledgling OSs that we never had time for. Plenty of time to sync the entire music collection and stream it, independently or together, to any/all speakers in the house. Plenty of time to sync the DVD collection and stream it, independently or together, to any/all screens in the house. Plenty of time to try setting up the home security system with webcams and motion detection. Plenty of time to turn IE bugs into full-fledged root-level trojans with Linux clients.
Don't ask me to feel sorry for an unemployed multi-millionaire.
of people were responsible for the disaster, but none of them actually realized what was going on They should be guilty of perjury as well. There's a difference between "I don't remember what happened" and "I don't know what happened." They darn sure as heck knew what was going on.
every one of them came back with repeated assurances that everything was legal, these were routine operations, and there was no problem There's something wrong if people in Dunn and Hurd's positions aren't able to identify a yes-man or an outright liar. How much were they being paid? The more likely explanation is that they asked only for the purpose of creating an auditable paper trail to try and cover their behinds if the scam was every exposed.
Dunn lost her job and was charged with multiple felonies, while Hurd is now running the company Every scam creates a scapegoat when busted.
She's rich and has powerful friends Lately the administration has been firing federal prosecutors who go after people who are rich and have powerful friends.
So these people are allowed a free pass for insider trading, wire fraud, and probably bilking millions of dollars out of shareholders......and I'm looking at a $380 fine and a court ordered ban from a park for being there after 10 PM one night.
I'd even be okay with two--sales and property tax. Maybe even three: sales, property, and income. But this enormous scheme of having a thousand taxes on everything seems like ashellgame.
The Secret Service has tried to produce aids like their "Best practices for seizing electronic evidence", and the National Institute of Justice has published its guide to "Digital Evidence in the Courtroom", but the need for more advanced training has been obvious in numerous recent cases This will consist mostly of practicing the correct SOP for the using the forklift to cart out every single piece of computer equipment on the site. I sincerely doubt that they'll be teaching any discretionary tactics or give up their current practice of confiscating everything in sight.
Tax dollars subsidized the infrastructure for telephone companies. Tax dollars subsidized the startup and growth of ISPs. Tax dollars subsidized the startup and growth of the.com boom. Tax dollars subsidized the infrastructure for the high speed internet.
Consumer dollars paid for telephone service. Consumer dollars paid for internet service. Consumer dollars bought the home hardware. Consumer dollars fed the websites and paid for the advertising banners on the websites.
The profit went into the pockets of the VPs/CxOs/and execs and, by proxy (insider stock trading tips), the politicians.
Create debt, maintain debt, keep people in debt, work those people until they die from debt. Of course citizens don't have a say in purchasing decisions. That would muck up the entiresystem.
The algorithm to do so will be put in a hardware chip both to preserve the IP (of the algorithm itself) and to mitigate performance loss. That's why integrating the functions of the processor and the video card is such an important business move.
Comcast and their ilk are pretty evil, but they aren't nearly as bad as AT&T. Neither are the other major telecoms, and most certainly the RBOCs...There is no reason to do business with this devil of a company They're all owned by the same groups of top tier investors. They all have onegoal in mind.
While the government empowers them to do evil, the $$ they use for their transactions come from consumers We subsidize them with our tax money, we pay for their products with our paychecks, and the CxOs/execs/VPs walk away with all the profit. It's a blatant pyramid scheme with one method in mind: create debt, maintain debt, keep people in debt, work those people until they die from debt.
Even if you can still report about and protest, what difference does it make it if you can't affect government Exactly correct. The government actually relies on us keeping each other occupied with arguing, reporting, and protesting. As long as we spend energy slinging perpetual mud with each other then we're posing no threat to them. Throw in a few demonstration breakups just to keep the public occupied and interference warfare is one of the most effective means, afterdebt, of neutering the public.
dictators are only kept in power by the will of the people In today's world dictators are kept in power by keeping everyone else deep in debt.
or at least the lack of the will to get rid of them What's the difference between a lack of will and a lack of means? Everything costs money in today's world--deposing a group of organized dictators isn't cheap.
the seventies generation has done sh*t for freedom Those who were in their 20s during the seventies were too busy "getting high" and luring teenage runaways into dirty hippie groups3x communes to do anything but shout and be an ass blister for those trying to do something productive. Judging by thetrolls in my journal they haven't changed much, either. The worst part is that they have infected the later generations with their self-gratification by trying to promote casual promiscuity as a cool thing to do.
It was the WW2 generation that has formed what we like to think of as our free society Theygot suckered.
Other than providing for some really cool posters and providing opportunities to come up with names for quarks and other subatomic particles, why don't we just m0del everything as quanta of energy? All these rules about two of these and one of those make one of these, or sometimes two of those and one anti of the others plus three of these over here makes one or more of them... it's become more convoluted than English grammar, and with just as many exceptions. I see the world as probability fields. Objects with more mass, energy, or both have higher localized probabilities but even the event horizon of a black hole has been accepted as not really existing. Quanta of energy characterized by their localized 90% area of probability seems adequate to explain just about anything I've seen or considered. Black holes? Check. Tunneling electrons (STEM)? Check. Light? Check. Atoms? Check. String theory? Check.
If something can go from the string theory to the atomic level to the black hole level then I'm not really certain what the problem is that has required all of the more complex mumbo-jumbo--unless it has become more of an expression of a social clique (with their own lingo) than it has become a true expression of the science behind it.
Do you feel that the entire world's cosmologists and astrophysicists are getting too excited to stop and look at their methodology? I'm not saying that they are or aren't back checking their methodology. I am saying that I've seen more than my fair share of legitimate questions get hounded out the door with calculations made by "Essjay" (or his comparable situational counterpart) as the rationale.
maybe we'll do our real life-size m0del milky way to test for it I often feel that modern physics, both on the astronomical and the quantum levels, needs a thorough code audit and code-cleaning. We can keep our historical observations but we should dump anything which doesn't fit to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. At some point in time too many researchers in too many big-name physics research groups began taking too much LSD and, at that time, they began to needlessly complicate lots of things.
When we read histories of wars we often read about the actions and affiliations of governments and armies. Very rarely do we read histories of wars which contain detailed breakdowns of the actions and affiliations of business and banks during the same period.
Create debt, maintain debt, keep people in debt, work those people until they die of debt.
99% of everything else, from suicide bombers to international embargoes, is just PR (running interference, Kansas City Shuffle, sh*tter tennies) to keep the citizens from realizing how deep into debt their political representatives are selling them.
What of data retention laws? It's more difficult to audit their paper trails when their HQ is in Dubai than if it were in New York. Minimum wage laws for the average janitor are probably a little more exploitable.
Heck, with all of the crap which has been going on lately, it may even be a security move: in that the execs may actually feel safer in Dubai from the revenge of the people they've ruthlessly swindled in the US.
But he was using it in the opposite direction. The parent asked,"How do we know that dark matter isn't just blah blah blah", and the AC replied,"Because we can calculate blah blah blah", and I pointed out that perhaps the calculations were wrong.
I'm not saying that dark matter is or isn't blah blah blah. I'm just saying that relying on calculations to assert that dark matter is or isn't blah blah blah is the wrong approach.
Nobody is saying you can't own a gun, nobody is saying you can't carry a gun... We're just saying you can't carry a gun in town.
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We, the common citizens, do not have any power of the purse--it's all taxed away to be allocated at someone else's discretion.
Once in a while, for PR purposes, someone has to take a real fall (eg. Lay, Martha). Usually they get pampered once they're out of the spotlight.
It'd be naive to think that they did something illegal without planning their defense in the event they were caught. 96 hourse of suspended community service for four felonies sounds like a pretty successful contingency plan.
Don't ask me to feel sorry for an unemployed multi-millionaire.
I heard that Hurd will never do to Dunn what done did to his hearing. *sigh* Will Hurd ever be done?
So these people are allowed a free pass for insider trading, wire fraud, and probably bilking millions of dollars out of shareholders... ...and I'm looking at a $380 fine and a court ordered ban from a park for being there after 10 PM one night.
Are they going to be banned from the boardroom?
I'd even be okay with two--sales and property tax. Maybe even three: sales, property, and income. But this enormous scheme of having a thousand taxes on everything seems like a shell game.
Tax dollars subsidized the infrastructure for telephone companies. Tax dollars subsidized the startup and growth of ISPs. Tax dollars subsidized the startup and growth of the .com boom. Tax dollars subsidized the infrastructure for the high speed internet.
Consumer dollars paid for telephone service. Consumer dollars paid for internet service. Consumer dollars bought the home hardware. Consumer dollars fed the websites and paid for the advertising banners on the websites.
The profit went into the pockets of the VPs/CxOs/and execs and, by proxy (insider stock trading tips), the politicians.
Create debt, maintain debt, keep people in debt, work those people until they die from debt. Of course citizens don't have a say in purchasing decisions. That would muck up the entire system.
The algorithm to do so will be put in a hardware chip both to preserve the IP (of the algorithm itself) and to mitigate performance loss. That's why integrating the functions of the processor and the video card is such an important business move.
Other than providing for some really cool posters and providing opportunities to come up with names for quarks and other subatomic particles, why don't we just m0del everything as quanta of energy? All these rules about two of these and one of those make one of these, or sometimes two of those and one anti of the others plus three of these over here makes one or more of them... it's become more convoluted than English grammar, and with just as many exceptions. I see the world as probability fields. Objects with more mass, energy, or both have higher localized probabilities but even the event horizon of a black hole has been accepted as not really existing. Quanta of energy characterized by their localized 90% area of probability seems adequate to explain just about anything I've seen or considered. Black holes? Check. Tunneling electrons (STEM)? Check. Light? Check. Atoms? Check. String theory? Check.
If something can go from the string theory to the atomic level to the black hole level then I'm not really certain what the problem is that has required all of the more complex mumbo-jumbo--unless it has become more of an expression of a social clique (with their own lingo) than it has become a true expression of the science behind it.
When we read histories of wars we often read about the actions and affiliations of governments and armies. Very rarely do we read histories of wars which contain detailed breakdowns of the actions and affiliations of business and banks during the same period.
Create debt, maintain debt, keep people in debt, work those people until they die of debt.
99% of everything else, from suicide bombers to international embargoes, is just PR (running interference, Kansas City Shuffle, sh*tter tennies) to keep the citizens from realizing how deep into debt their political representatives are selling them.
They're affiliated with spammers, too? It's all starting to come together...
What of data retention laws? It's more difficult to audit their paper trails when their HQ is in Dubai than if it were in New York. Minimum wage laws for the average janitor are probably a little more exploitable.
Heck, with all of the crap which has been going on lately, it may even be a security move: in that the execs may actually feel safer in Dubai from the revenge of the people they've ruthlessly swindled in the US.
Let's just start over. I'm perfectly happy with plain text.
But he was using it in the opposite direction. The parent asked,"How do we know that dark matter isn't just blah blah blah", and the AC replied,"Because we can calculate blah blah blah", and I pointed out that perhaps the calculations were wrong.
I'm not saying that dark matter is or isn't blah blah blah. I'm just saying that relying on calculations to assert that dark matter is or isn't blah blah blah is the wrong approach.
Nobody is saying you can't own a gun, nobody is saying you can't carry a gun... We're just saying you can't carry a gun in town.