Also, welcome back!

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Too often, people think of the utilitarian purpose behind prison and forget the punitive purpose. Both are legitimate and moral.

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True, they are meant to punish...back in the days when we had no other means. Between satellite tracking, microchips, garnishing wages...there are FAR better methods of punishment than spending 35,000 a year for 5 years (in this man's case) to punish someone. Look at it from an efficiency standpoint. We will spend 175,000 in taxpayer dollars to "punish" someone for messing up someone else's credit (which probably cost 5k to repair). Nevermind the fact our prisons are already overcrowded. Do we want to keep some sex offender on the street to make room for a guy sending spam applications in someone else's name?

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Also to boot...by using monitoring software and allowing him to actually work and garnishing wages...(say like 33% of his wages)...the state could actually MAKE money off of him instead of spending 175k to keep him locked up. In economic times like these...those are solutions we should be looking at.

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Moreover, I believe that someone who steals $100 million from a pension fund through fraud deserves as much prison time - if not more - than the thug who steals $100 from a bodega. Michael Millikin stole hundreds of millions of dollars and only paid a small portion of it in fines. The message that sends is "if you're going to steal, steal big".

A guy with a gun might kill a store clerk or even a police officer but a person who embezzles can ruin the lives of thousands.

Do shoplifters and spam emailers deserve prison time? Absolutely. Especially for repeat offenders.

Consider this - a shoplifter steals from a grocer. The grocer's profit margins are already pretty slim (there's only so much you can mark up a 50 cent can of peas). If the grocer wants to prevent shoplifting, s/he needs to hire security personnel. In addition to the salary increase, the grocer needs to take out additional insurance. This can be the difference between a successful business and an unsuccessful one.

In a down economy, the grocer might not be able to afford the extra costs. Moreover, in a bad neighborhood, the places for residents to buy food is already slim. If the grocer goes out of business, the residents are going to have to take even more time out of their free time to go shopping. On top of that, the loss of amenities in the neighborhood will lower property values. The effect ripples through the marketplace - all because of the effect of shoplifting.

NB - I am also a staunch opponent of mandatory sentencing and especially "Three Strikes" laws which, in my opinion, improperly usurp the power of the judiciary and vest it with the executive.

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Until we jail a punishment, people will continue to break the law.

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First of all, prison labor for public works jobs often undercuts jobs in the areas where contracts are being done. When your employees are only getting paid $1 an hour, you can underbid everyone. Prison labor isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.

TV does the same thing to prisoners that it does to small children - it opiates them. Corrections workers have to keep large numbers of violent criminals in line without firearms; they need all the help they can get.

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Maybe Cubicle Computer 2140S had a bad manufacturer. Maybe something in Cubicle Computer 2140S' shipping corrupted its hard drive. Maybe Cubicle Computer's 2140S just had a rotten logic board. Whatever the problem was, it wasn't covered by warranty.

I should have seen the warning signs. I should have defragmented the drive more often and cleaned out redundant code. I should have backed my data up more. But Cubicle Computer 2140S was hooked up to an unstable network.

Cubicle Computer 2140S started hogging resources, wasting bandwidth, and giving out bad memory addresses. It was only a matter of time before Cubicle Computer 2140S had kernel panic and tried to kill init.

I remember talking to Norton. He sent me to Dr. Watson to get some anti-virus. But it went deeper than malware. The processor needed upgrading so I called in Dr. Sbaitso, who put in his 8 bits.

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I should have known from the pinging of the coils as the resolution changed that something was very wrong. The slow flicker of the sub 60 hz refresh scan rate, and the ominous red glow from the obviously out of place laser mouse.

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Lol, how Philip Marlowe of you! Tis needs a little Chris Botti in the background, played on a rainy, Sunday afternoon ...

"She was a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud. I gave her a drink. She was a gal who'd take a drink, if she had to knock you down to get the bottle..."

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I tried to go Home. On the way, I met us with some friends from my Buddy List. Url told me that I needed to lay off - not let myself get overheated. Linux slipped me something he said would refresh me. I had no idea that they were part of the Token Ring.

We had another few packets, transferring data exchanges. It was the same old program. 10111 10011. REPEAT, IF X, GOTO 10. It wasn't too long before I felt W3C compliant.

I have a lot of data loss after that - like someone turned the Brightness down to 0. Before I knew it, I was Not Responding. It was like someone gave a hard boot to my head.

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