Reading the article helps. He was arrested for "downloading excessive material". In other words, he had a legal JSTOR account, he wasn't accessing it illegally, he just downloaded more material than they wanted him to. Really? That's a crime now? Even the civil matter was settled with JSTOR, but prosecutors went ahead and harassed him anyway.

One day in prison means the likely end of a promising technology career, and is one day too much for someone accused of "downloading excessive material".

Just hope that one day you don't get sent to prison for going over your mobile data usage.

It's not very efficient or ergonomic to have HR (or any) staff staring at reports on a 3" screen all day. It's great to check your mail on the run or a quick text message, or using the browser to find a spot to have a few beers. But it's not intended for reading reports, or working on full screen apps that manage portfolios (for instance) or analyze sales leads.

(Replying to Original Commenter's comment): Yeah, HP sucks, but so does Dell and Acer and Gateway and everyone else who makes PCs.

(Replying to both comments, but mostly AC's): I think you over estimate the demise of the PC and also don't understand what they are used for in Enterprise. I agree that, in general, the PC business is declining. I think that will result in a lot of consolidation, likely into segments where the consumer PC business will consist entirely of low end PCs and the enterprise business will consist mostly of high end servers. And HP's bread and butter is in the Enterprise, so I suspect that a company like Acer or Dell will end up "owning" that business and HP will "own" the Enterprise business. Everyone else will go out of business.

Speaking of enterprise, there are a LOT of applications running on PCs in the enterprise. Salespeople run client / contact management software, account managers run portfolio analysis software, HR runs tons of HR-related apps, there's a myriad of software running on desktops in the enterprise and upgrades are required all the time. I don't see PeopleSoft being replaced by an iPhone app anytime soon.

What about replying to the reply of the ... aww, nuts, skip it.

Equally unlikely that Ecuador would try to sneak him out by granting him diplomatic immunity. If they didn't, no Strike Force needed, just pull over the car carrying him (again, legal) pull him out, and tell the remaining diplomats that they're free to go.

Actually not exactly. Police can stop diplomatic vehicles, they just can't detain anyone in the vehicle who has diplomatic immunity. Ecuador would thus have to grant him diplomatic immunity AND drive him to the airport AND put him on a flight with diplomatic status. And of course he'd still have to step onto British soil to get from the car to the plane, and I doubt his diplomatic immunity (if he had it, and that's a big if) would protect him there.

You don't have to buy car insurance, i.e. if you don't own a car.

They already pay a fee per trade at many levels, up to and including their clearing houses which pay a fee to the exchanges. Adding a penny tax on top of the fees isn't going to make much difference, other than slightly reduce revenues down the chain.

Technically, Iranians are Caucasian. So if you must bracket this with race and not nationality as the story describes, then it would be "racist white guy does something stupid to someone just because they're white."

OPEC only has so much control, and they're not united in their controls. They don't control demand, which has fluctuated wildly lately. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has been quite reticent in their controls and have been flooding the market as long as it makes them money. The anti-US contingent in OPEC would love to pull back production but the countries that actually make a profit aren't biting.

Obvious email address harvester...

I had to say the same thing. $500 laptop with a numeric keypad, as an accounting geek I love it. I've also seen the Sony Vaio, but for cheap you want to go Toshiba.

Ah, I see. Thousands of econonomists over time have said you can't cut your way to profits, but if it gets repeated in one article you read, we're all just parrots. Specious logic, much?

I'm sure your bombastic speeches impress everyone lacking the ability to differentiate between capitalism, cronyism, oligarchism, and corporate fascism.

I'm a capitalist, but not a 1 percenter, and I say that you can't cut your way to profitability.

How does that affect your prediction?