The thing is that our UN membership doesn't really allow us to act unilaterally on behalf of the UN. Now, I'm all for criticising the UN for their ineptitude; but if we're going to be a member, we should do so honestly, paying our dues and playing by the same rules that everybody else does. Rules, by the way, that we were primary authors of.
Personally, I think the UN has outlived its usefulness. Ask any Croatian how they feel about the UN. They'll tell you that the UN did nothing in their region; but that NATO brought peace. The UN is a dog afraid to bite people.
If we had gone in solely under the premise that Saddam was a bad-guy, we'd not only have needed to explain why we waited so long; but we'd have to ask ourselves about the other bad-guys we've left alone, or even supported. And don't feed me the line that "We do what we can." We don't do what we can; we do what we want.
There is no doubt that many good things are coming from this war. Saddam is out, his sons are dead. I'm sure there are still tortures in places; but they're not government sanctioned. Freedom, however fragile, is poking its head in, etc. But I think we gained those things despite our worst intentions.
And regardless of the benefits of the war, is there no price to pay for either lying or ineptitude? Shouldn't he face the consequences of his actions? He should; but he won't. The worst consequence to him might be the next election. Or it might not.
The arrogance of this administration is astounding.
The truth is that many of the kids who flew these in practice (especially the old warbirds like your mustang) had fewer hours than a lot of current pilots.
It's all about the training and discipline. Getting good education and training, and then having the self discipline to follow those things as well as the normal "rules" of aviation. In other words, just because you have a mustang and know how to fly it, that doesn't make it safe to do low-level passes with your attention diverted to things on the ground. That was true when the airplane was flown in combat, too.
The area that most new warbird owners seem to get into trouble on is fuel exhaustion. None of these birds really have large stores of fuel unless they have their external tanks with them. Kind of gets back to the discipline thing. You would want to keep in mind that unless you were an airshow pilot, the airplane just wouldn't be very useful.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The only solution is to be able to take action against the people who advertise their products in this manner.
Make reasonable anti-spam laws (for instance, standardized subject tags for advertisements, valid and truthful headers, etc.) and allow us to go after the companies whose e-mail marketers don't follow the law.
The truth is that above around 26,000 feet there is no amount of acclimatization that will compensate for the diminished oxygen/pressure. That's why they call it the "Dead Zone;" because essentially, you're dying. What happens is your cells start to deteriorate, becoming unable to contain fluids. Your brain starts to swell from the uncontrolled fluid buildup (High Altitude Cerebral Edema). Your lungs begin to do the same (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema). The only fix is oxygen and pressure.
When you get above around 30,000 feet, you start running into funny little things like needing the air/oxygen forced into you with positive pressure, rather than the kind of "on-demand" oxygen setups that are commonly used. If I remember correctly, this is related to pressure; but is not the same issue that you get with pressure higher up, where you're worried about the blood's ability to contain its nitrogen, and thus, about the blood boiling.
We applaud the hackers who so cleverly get around protections on technology. We had our "Free Kevin Mitnick" and "Free Dmitry" campaigns.
Here is a nice hack done for a good reason by the same law enforcement that is supposed to investigate and stop such crimes as extortion. And how do we react? Government spying! Conspiracy!
Really. That's just not very reasonable on our part.
I saw this debate coming 100 miles away
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 1
This particular debate seems to crop up every time censorship hits center stage on slashdot.
The problem with sexuality and children is that sexuality today is mostly portrayed badly. I could talk my head off trying to get my daughter to understand the ins and outs of sexuality and intimacy and love, etc.; but the fact is that the rest of society (media, etc.) portray sex as simply a form of entertainment or diversion.
My beliefs don't see it that way. And again, I can talk my head off; but the visual images that bombard us tell a story that's much easier to grasp: that sex is harmless fun disconnected from any consequence, as long as you use a condom. How do I compete with that? I compete by upping my discussions with her (in other words, talking more) and lowering the amount of sexertainment so that I can at least attempt some parity.
I don't want my daughter to grow up afraid of sex. But I also don't want her to grow up thinking that it's an isolated physical issue.
I will totally agree with you that children from whom sexuality is hidden the longest seem to have the most trouble exercising it responsibly. But that doesn't mean that we go to the opposite extreme. Everything in moderation.
I started thinking about my own experiences. At age 35, I've killed 2 birds in cars (started driving at 15), and I've hit 4 or 5 birds in the airplanes I fly (started flying at 16). Now, I can't confirm that those birds were killed; but I can assure you they had a bad day at least. If we assume I did kill them, then I'm a lot more dangerous than your average wind turbine.
Should I expect wanted posters and wildlife bounty hunters?
We were one of the 1500 companies that received the original letter.
Needless to say, not being an IP company, there was a lot of wrangling over how to proceed. Originally, the decision was made to cool off on Linux deployments until Legal could evaluate things. In an ironic little twist of fate, that meant that for a couple of projects we purchased IBM P-series boxes and AIX rather than deploying on Linux. I guess the thought was that IBM had a legal team and would protect AIX long after it bailed on Linux, or something along those lines.
Lately, however, it's become a non-concern. The case has become so ridiculous that it's not treated seriously anymore.
My suggestion to people who are having trouble in the office is to point the bosses to groklaw.net. Pamela has done such a fantastic job there. Her analyses are useful for lawyers, suits, and geeks all together. That's an amazing feat.
As for ground tracking, I'm not sure how big a deal it has to be. A gps unit inside the craft could do the job for post-flight work, and the FAA's ARTCC radar tapes could show a ground track if there were an in-flight failure.
They must have the airspace thing sorted out, as Class A airspace goes from 18,000ft to 60,000ft, where the airspace reverts to class E. Class A airspace requires an IFR (instrument flight rules) flight plan. I can't imagine them actually giving him an IFR clearance, though. They must have done some kind of waiver for the flight and simply blocked out some space. Class E has no prohibitive requirements. I'm not familiar with the Mojave area; but there may even be some special use airspace already designated. I could imagine "borrowing" it from the government in some manner. In any event, once you got above 60, your airspace concerns wouldn't really change. The sub-orbital altitudes wouldn't be very crowded, with satellites, etc. being much higher.
As for frequency reservation, there really isn't a need. There are a few frequencies in the aviation band that they could use without prior arrangement. Most aircraft have more than one radio, so that they could talk to the ground team and still be able to hear Air Traffic Control.
Telemetry is the thing I'm curious about. You probably wouldn't need it if you put some kind of "black box" on board; but I would imagine Rutan would like to have a downlink.
Use opt-in, and if you get a message from somebody that isn't on the list, it gets quarantined. Once a day (or however often) you get a digest that lists all the quarantined messages, their senders, the subjects. Next to each list item is a link that allows you to release/view the quarantined mail.
I agree that the Sci-Fi miniseries was quite good; about a thousand times better than that horrible David Lynching the earlier try got.
Personally, I think Dune would actually be a harder series of books to interpret for the screen. There is far too much internal dialogue and other non-visual, non-aural information. Having said that, my big complaint about both adaptations of Dune is that they go overboard on costumes, etc. to the point of making the characters into caricatures.
It would be nice to see what could be done with a big budget and a cast/crew that was as passionate as Jackson and bunch are about the LOTR.
That's actually not the complete story, or necessarily accurate.
The pilots were told to override a certain feature in the software so that they could perform the low fly-by without the computer entering "landing" mode. It appears that the override didn't work, and when they throttled up to level the airplane across the airshow grounds, the engines didn't respond. Now, as you mentioned, there is a delay between the application of throttle, and the increase in thrust. This is true of every turbine engine. The crews were VERY accustomed to that and had, in fact, advanced the throttles at the correct time. The truth of the matter is that the computer negated their actions and failed to spool the engines up. Whether the pilots were given correct instructions on how to override the computer may cause us to blame human error; but even in that instance, it only further proves that the added complexity of the systems bred the disaster.
It's fairly well known in aviation circles that the Airbus consortium, who were competing tooth and nail with Boeing, and who were fighting the very specter of excessive complexity with their progressive designs, quickly made the pilots their target for blame.
In this case, the urban legend is actually the urban legend.
I'm a flight instructor, and I'd like to respond to some of your post.
First, the fact that most accidents can be attributed, at least in part, to pilot error is no surprise. The word "most" implies a ratio. As the systems on airplanes become more reliable, and procedures more conservative, that leaves pilots who are getting both better and worse to make up the rest of the percentages.
Pilots are much more educated these days in subjects as diverse as aerodynamics, systems, physiology and crew resource management, etc.
At the same time, some of the skills previously taught are not now mandatory. The spins you mentioned, for instance. It used to be mandatory that you gave students spin training, and that CFIs (Certificated Flight Instructors) had to demonstrate spins to get their licenses. As your buddy's dad noted, however, there were more people being killed by the training than by accidents. I had a student inadvertantly enter a spin during slow flight who froze on the controls for roughly two turns until I was able to get him to let go. So I easily understand the now lesser requirements. Having said that, I and many others still give spin training. Most students stare agog at the rotating earth on their first spin rather than do anything constructive, so I think it's unfair not to get them through that initial "shock and awe" before sending them out into the world where, as shown above, they might enter that situation inadvertantly.
So we're growing them smarter; but at the same time, we may not be arming them with everything we used to. Having said that, spin training isn't necessarily useful to a DC-10 driver.
As for aircraft design... you can build airplanes that are very stable, very smart, very fault tolerant and forgiving, etc.; but every piece of that perfect airplane adds complexity and problems of its own. For instance, the Airbus that crashed at the Paris airshow because the computer entered "land" mode and wouldn't allow the pilot to exceed certain parameters in his go-around attempt. In 1994(?) there was a Fed-Ex DC-10 crew that was attacked by a disgruntled employee who struck all 3 crewmembers with a framing hammer. They disabled him by initially performing a split-S maneuver that no computer would have allowed. The attacker wanted to fly the airplane into the Fed-Ex hub in Memphis and would likely have succeeded if the pilot had been unable to fly the airplane beyond its operational parameters. History has many more such stories of times when doing something the airplane wasn't supposed to do saved the day. You don't want a computer to control everything. There needs to be context for actions; and currently, only humans can really analyze that.
Also plan on getting rid of anything smaller than a passenger jet, if you're going to require the same systems that those high-end airplanes carry. They're simply not feasible in terms of weight and price for smaller airplanes, though that is slowly changing.
In the Sioux City crash, the pilot was using differential thrust from the engines to control the airplane. If you increase thrust on the right wing, it travels a bit faster and produces more lift, which causes it to raise a bit and the airplane to turn. The sweepback angle on the wing enhances this also, as the forward wing (the one on the outside of the turn) is effectively longer than the other wing. (That's a lot easier to illustrate visually.) Anyhow, the Sioux City incident is a perfect example of how necessary the pilots are.
Finally, I know of jobs that pay a lot less and are more demanding on average. For instance, the dishwasher at your local restaurant works a lot harder day in and day out than the airline pilot who flew you to Cleveland last week. The reason we don't pay the dishwasher 100K per year (aside from the now exorbitant $1000 price for chicken-fried steak) is that there won't ever be a dishwashing emergency that will cost the lives of hundreds of people if not dealt with in the next 20 seconds.
I think this really the worst insult Microsoft gives to its admins. The swiss-cheese software is bad enough; but if you could at least patch non-kernel portions of the OS without rebooting, it would be MUCH easier for admins to get servers updated in a timely fashion.
If you can claim over $5k in damages, they'll take a look at it. If you can claim $Millions in damages, they'll actually work on it. The article doesn't say what their actual claim of damages was (the pdf just states that they aggregated more than the $5k trigger). That's why they went after him.
And by the way, prison is for people who break the law. It's part rehab; but mostly it's punishment. I for one, hope it stays that way. This guy especially doesn't need skills to succeed; he's obviously got the skill to pull joe-jobs, which means he's smart enough to earn a living in some fashion (and indeed, I think he probably was earning a living when he committed the crime.) He needs to be punished for breaking the law.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing is that our UN membership doesn't really allow us to act unilaterally on behalf of the UN. Now, I'm all for criticising the UN for their ineptitude; but if we're going to be a member, we should do so honestly, paying our dues and playing by the same rules that everybody else does. Rules, by the way, that we were primary authors of.
Personally, I think the UN has outlived its usefulness. Ask any Croatian how they feel about the UN. They'll tell you that the UN did nothing in their region; but that NATO brought peace. The UN is a dog afraid to bite people.
If we had gone in solely under the premise that Saddam was a bad-guy, we'd not only have needed to explain why we waited so long; but we'd have to ask ourselves about the other bad-guys we've left alone, or even supported. And don't feed me the line that "We do what we can." We don't do what we can; we do what we want.
There is no doubt that many good things are coming from this war. Saddam is out, his sons are dead. I'm sure there are still tortures in places; but they're not government sanctioned. Freedom, however fragile, is poking its head in, etc. But I think we gained those things despite our worst intentions.
And regardless of the benefits of the war, is there no price to pay for either lying or ineptitude? Shouldn't he face the consequences of his actions? He should; but he won't. The worst consequence to him might be the next election. Or it might not.
The arrogance of this administration is astounding.
The truth is that many of the kids who flew these in practice (especially the old warbirds like your mustang) had fewer hours than a lot of current pilots.
It's all about the training and discipline. Getting good education and training, and then having the self discipline to follow those things as well as the normal "rules" of aviation. In other words, just because you have a mustang and know how to fly it, that doesn't make it safe to do low-level passes with your attention diverted to things on the ground. That was true when the airplane was flown in combat, too.
The area that most new warbird owners seem to get into trouble on is fuel exhaustion. None of these birds really have large stores of fuel unless they have their external tanks with them. Kind of gets back to the discipline thing. You would want to keep in mind that unless you were an airshow pilot, the airplane just wouldn't be very useful.
Agreed.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The only solution is to be able to take action against the people who advertise their products in this manner.
Make reasonable anti-spam laws (for instance, standardized subject tags for advertisements, valid and truthful headers, etc.) and allow us to go after the companies whose e-mail marketers don't follow the law.
Today's London Headline:
"Channel Socked In: Continent Isolated."
That post pretty much sums up my exact experience with the product, right down to the Nortel VPN service.
And yet, isn't the code the only proof of breach of contract?
Did I miss something in the implication of that statement?
Sco: "You broke our agreement."
IBM: "How?"
Sco: "You gave away code."
IBM: "Which code?"
Sco: "This isn't a matter of code! The issue is contracts!"
I meant to post that under the "Everest catch-22" post.
The truth is that above around 26,000 feet there is no amount of acclimatization that will compensate for the diminished oxygen/pressure. That's why they call it the "Dead Zone;" because essentially, you're dying. What happens is your cells start to deteriorate, becoming unable to contain fluids. Your brain starts to swell from the uncontrolled fluid buildup (High Altitude Cerebral Edema). Your lungs begin to do the same (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema). The only fix is oxygen and pressure.
When you get above around 30,000 feet, you start running into funny little things like needing the air/oxygen forced into you with positive pressure, rather than the kind of "on-demand" oxygen setups that are commonly used. If I remember correctly, this is related to pressure; but is not the same issue that you get with pressure higher up, where you're worried about the blood's ability to contain its nitrogen, and thus, about the blood boiling.
Scary stuff.
We applaud the hackers who so cleverly get around protections on technology. We had our "Free Kevin Mitnick" and "Free Dmitry" campaigns.
Here is a nice hack done for a good reason by the same law enforcement that is supposed to investigate and stop such crimes as extortion. And how do we react? Government spying! Conspiracy!
Really. That's just not very reasonable on our part.
This particular debate seems to crop up every time censorship hits center stage on slashdot.
The problem with sexuality and children is that sexuality today is mostly portrayed badly. I could talk my head off trying to get my daughter to understand the ins and outs of sexuality and intimacy and love, etc.; but the fact is that the rest of society (media, etc.) portray sex as simply a form of entertainment or diversion.
My beliefs don't see it that way. And again, I can talk my head off; but the visual images that bombard us tell a story that's much easier to grasp: that sex is harmless fun disconnected from any consequence, as long as you use a condom. How do I compete with that? I compete by upping my discussions with her (in other words, talking more) and lowering the amount of sexertainment so that I can at least attempt some parity.
I don't want my daughter to grow up afraid of sex. But I also don't want her to grow up thinking that it's an isolated physical issue.
I will totally agree with you that children from whom sexuality is hidden the longest seem to have the most trouble exercising it responsibly. But that doesn't mean that we go to the opposite extreme. Everything in moderation.
It's funny that you mention that.
I started thinking about my own experiences. At age 35, I've killed 2 birds in cars (started driving at 15), and I've hit 4 or 5 birds in the airplanes I fly (started flying at 16). Now, I can't confirm that those birds were killed; but I can assure you they had a bad day at least. If we assume I did kill them, then I'm a lot more dangerous than your average wind turbine.
Should I expect wanted posters and wildlife bounty hunters?
We were one of the 1500 companies that received the original letter.
Needless to say, not being an IP company, there was a lot of wrangling over how to proceed. Originally, the decision was made to cool off on Linux deployments until Legal could evaluate things. In an ironic little twist of fate, that meant that for a couple of projects we purchased IBM P-series boxes and AIX rather than deploying on Linux. I guess the thought was that IBM had a legal team and would protect AIX long after it bailed on Linux, or something along those lines.
Lately, however, it's become a non-concern. The case has become so ridiculous that it's not treated seriously anymore.
My suggestion to people who are having trouble in the office is to point the bosses to groklaw.net. Pamela has done such a fantastic job there. Her analyses are useful for lawyers, suits, and geeks all together. That's an amazing feat.
Way to go Pamela!
"anti-bubbles in my Guiness?... Brilliant!!!"
the "dead" orcs that flinch when stepped on
I asked Miracle Max about that. He said, "They're not really dead, just mostly-dead."
As for ground tracking, I'm not sure how big a deal it has to be. A gps unit inside the craft could do the job for post-flight work, and the FAA's ARTCC radar tapes could show a ground track if there were an in-flight failure.
They must have the airspace thing sorted out, as Class A airspace goes from 18,000ft to 60,000ft, where the airspace reverts to class E. Class A airspace requires an IFR (instrument flight rules) flight plan. I can't imagine them actually giving him an IFR clearance, though. They must have done some kind of waiver for the flight and simply blocked out some space. Class E has no prohibitive requirements. I'm not familiar with the Mojave area; but there may even be some special use airspace already designated. I could imagine "borrowing" it from the government in some manner. In any event, once you got above 60, your airspace concerns wouldn't really change. The sub-orbital altitudes wouldn't be very crowded, with satellites, etc. being much higher.
As for frequency reservation, there really isn't a need. There are a few frequencies in the aviation band that they could use without prior arrangement. Most aircraft have more than one radio, so that they could talk to the ground team and still be able to hear Air Traffic Control.
Telemetry is the thing I'm curious about. You probably wouldn't need it if you put some kind of "black box" on board; but I would imagine Rutan would like to have a downlink.
Like the anti-spam packages currently use.
Use opt-in, and if you get a message from somebody that isn't on the list, it gets quarantined. Once a day (or however often) you get a digest that lists all the quarantined messages, their senders, the subjects. Next to each list item is a link that allows you to release/view the quarantined mail.
For the moment, at least, we'll have to leave ourselves in IBM's good legal hands. So far they've done a good enough job that I'm not too concerned.
Later on, the code may be revealed in public. There are certainly some arguments that IBM could make to the court along those lines.
In the meantime, have a cup of coffee and try not to get too stressed over the SCO press releases.
I agree that the Sci-Fi miniseries was quite good; about a thousand times better than that horrible David Lynching the earlier try got.
Personally, I think Dune would actually be a harder series of books to interpret for the screen. There is far too much internal dialogue and other non-visual, non-aural information. Having said that, my big complaint about both adaptations of Dune is that they go overboard on costumes, etc. to the point of making the characters into caricatures.
It would be nice to see what could be done with a big budget and a cast/crew that was as passionate as Jackson and bunch are about the LOTR.
That's actually not the complete story, or necessarily accurate.
The pilots were told to override a certain feature in the software so that they could perform the low fly-by without the computer entering "landing" mode. It appears that the override didn't work, and when they throttled up to level the airplane across the airshow grounds, the engines didn't respond. Now, as you mentioned, there is a delay between the application of throttle, and the increase in thrust. This is true of every turbine engine. The crews were VERY accustomed to that and had, in fact, advanced the throttles at the correct time. The truth of the matter is that the computer negated their actions and failed to spool the engines up. Whether the pilots were given correct instructions on how to override the computer may cause us to blame human error; but even in that instance, it only further proves that the added complexity of the systems bred the disaster.
It's fairly well known in aviation circles that the Airbus consortium, who were competing tooth and nail with Boeing, and who were fighting the very specter of excessive complexity with their progressive designs, quickly made the pilots their target for blame.
In this case, the urban legend is actually the urban legend.
I'm a flight instructor, and I'd like to respond to some of your post.
First, the fact that most accidents can be attributed, at least in part, to pilot error is no surprise. The word "most" implies a ratio. As the systems on airplanes become more reliable, and procedures more conservative, that leaves pilots who are getting both better and worse to make up the rest of the percentages.
Pilots are much more educated these days in subjects as diverse as aerodynamics, systems, physiology and crew resource management, etc.
At the same time, some of the skills previously taught are not now mandatory. The spins you mentioned, for instance. It used to be mandatory that you gave students spin training, and that CFIs (Certificated Flight Instructors) had to demonstrate spins to get their licenses. As your buddy's dad noted, however, there were more people being killed by the training than by accidents. I had a student inadvertantly enter a spin during slow flight who froze on the controls for roughly two turns until I was able to get him to let go. So I easily understand the now lesser requirements. Having said that, I and many others still give spin training. Most students stare agog at the rotating earth on their first spin rather than do anything constructive, so I think it's unfair not to get them through that initial "shock and awe" before sending them out into the world where, as shown above, they might enter that situation inadvertantly.
So we're growing them smarter; but at the same time, we may not be arming them with everything we used to. Having said that, spin training isn't necessarily useful to a DC-10 driver.
As for aircraft design... you can build airplanes that are very stable, very smart, very fault tolerant and forgiving, etc.; but every piece of that perfect airplane adds complexity and problems of its own. For instance, the Airbus that crashed at the Paris airshow because the computer entered "land" mode and wouldn't allow the pilot to exceed certain parameters in his go-around attempt. In 1994(?) there was a Fed-Ex DC-10 crew that was attacked by a disgruntled employee who struck all 3 crewmembers with a framing hammer. They disabled him by initially performing a split-S maneuver that no computer would have allowed. The attacker wanted to fly the airplane into the Fed-Ex hub in Memphis and would likely have succeeded if the pilot had been unable to fly the airplane beyond its operational parameters. History has many more such stories of times when doing something the airplane wasn't supposed to do saved the day. You don't want a computer to control everything. There needs to be context for actions; and currently, only humans can really analyze that.
Also plan on getting rid of anything smaller than a passenger jet, if you're going to require the same systems that those high-end airplanes carry. They're simply not feasible in terms of weight and price for smaller airplanes, though that is slowly changing.
In the Sioux City crash, the pilot was using differential thrust from the engines to control the airplane. If you increase thrust on the right wing, it travels a bit faster and produces more lift, which causes it to raise a bit and the airplane to turn. The sweepback angle on the wing enhances this also, as the forward wing (the one on the outside of the turn) is effectively longer than the other wing. (That's a lot easier to illustrate visually.) Anyhow, the Sioux City incident is a perfect example of how necessary the pilots are.
Finally, I know of jobs that pay a lot less and are more demanding on average. For instance, the dishwasher at your local restaurant works a lot harder day in and day out than the airline pilot who flew you to Cleveland last week. The reason we don't pay the dishwasher 100K per year (aside from the now exorbitant $1000 price for chicken-fried steak) is that there won't ever be a dishwashing emergency that will cost the lives of hundreds of people if not dealt with in the next 20 seconds.
Secretly, isn't that part of why you go to an airshow?
That makes me wonder...
Could you send a flat sheet of ice through and get a nice relief sculpture out of it?
Imagine being able to cater ice reliefs of dinner speakers, etc. by simply printing graphics out of photoshop.
I think this really the worst insult Microsoft gives to its admins. The swiss-cheese software is bad enough; but if you could at least patch non-kernel portions of the OS without rebooting, it would be MUCH easier for admins to get servers updated in a timely fashion.
Something nobody seems to have noted is that this article appeared in a publication read by "normal" people.
Sure, sure. We can joke about the NYT, and throw our criticisms about the author; but this is an article in a major newspaper that's critical of SCO.
It's a good thing (tm).
Even if it's light (anorexic) on details, it mentions that SCO is suing IBM, then alludes to stock scams, perpetual legal action, hypocrisy, etc.
I never thought I'd say it; but WAY TO GO NYT!!
If you can claim over $5k in damages, they'll take a look at it. If you can claim $Millions in damages, they'll actually work on it. The article doesn't say what their actual claim of damages was (the pdf just states that they aggregated more than the $5k trigger). That's why they went after him.
And by the way, prison is for people who break the law. It's part rehab; but mostly it's punishment. I for one, hope it stays that way. This guy especially doesn't need skills to succeed; he's obviously got the skill to pull joe-jobs, which means he's smart enough to earn a living in some fashion (and indeed, I think he probably was earning a living when he committed the crime.) He needs to be punished for breaking the law.