The FBI is currently searching Enron’s offices after a former executive reported that documents were still being shredded as of two weeks ago.

How sad it must be to be totally out of touch. Take the reverentially regarded James Gosling, for example. Check out the following quote from a ZDNet interview:

So I went back to the research lab at Sun, and lately I’ve been on a developer-tool project. There aren’t a lot of people building IDEs (integrated development environments). And IDEs are generally targeted at low-end developers — people who are not experts at writing code. And if you look for tools that are oriented toward (those) people, you basically find nothing. The No. 1 tool (in that area) is Emacs, and I was kind of the guy responsible for the original Emacs, 23 years ago. One of the things I find frightening is it’s still around, and in many ways it hasn’t really changed. Is that the best you can do for a (low-end) developer? I don’t think so.

Nothing in that quote is true. Nothing. Nothing at all. (OK, perhaps it’s true that he’s working on a developer tool project.) And the guy is supposedly working on these tools as his job. It’s amazing when you think about it. The fact that he believes that Emacs is the number one IDE is, to be frank, insane. I hope I can become rich and famous so that even if I don’t pay attention to what’s going on in the real world for a decade or two, people will pay attention to me.

Amazon.com posted a legitimate profit for the fourth quarter. Yes, folks, they’re actually making money.

Am I the only one who found the following quote from Donald Rumsfeld a bit unsettling?

Obviously, anyone would be concerned if people were suggesting that treatment were not proper. The fact remains that treatment is proper. There is no doubt in my mind that it is humane and appropriate and consistent with the Geneva Convention for the most part.

What the Hell does “for the most part” mean?

Who Would Buy That? has found the perfect Enron souvenir.

Timothy Noah: Blaming Liberalism for Enron

Anne Applebaum has an article in Slate on the Palestinian media. I can understand why it would be difficult for Israel to trust Yasser Arafat when the children’s programming on a telelvision station that he controls indoctrinates children into the mindset that Israel has no legitimate right to exist.

Arthur Andersen’s CEO said Enron’s business, and not poor accounting were the cause of its failure. No kidding, jerk. The point is that it was bad accounting that enabled the company to get away with hiding its poor performance and keep its stock overvalued for far too long. Markets only work when they have the information they need — Arthur Andersen’s negligence or, perhaps, malice allowed Enron to get away with hiding information that was crucial to investors (and even its own employees) for years, and ultimately to implode in the most absurd fashion possible. The fact of the matter is that if Enron hadn’t written the book on stupid accounting tricks, or if Arthur Andersen hadn’t let them get away with those tricks, the company may not be sporting a worthless stock today.

OK, now “sources” are saying AOL isn’t buying Red Hat.

The Gottesdiener Law Firm, which is bringing a class action suit against Enron on the behalf of employees who lost their retirement funds, has started releasing documents that show Ken Lay urging employees to invest in the stock despite the fact that he already knew that the company’s books were a shambles. (Tara Calishain submitted the link.)