US State Dept. Loses Anti-Terrorist Program Laptops 223
Stony Stevenson writes "It has surfaced that the US State Department can't account for up to about 1,000 laptops, perhaps as many as 400 of which belonged to the department's Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program. Internal auditors found that the department lost track of $30 million worth of computer equipment, 'the vast majority of which... perhaps as much as 99 percent,' were laptops, according to one official. Another official calculated that the average State Department laptop costs US$3,000 and figured that meant as many as 1,000 laptops might be astray — not 10,000 laptops as the US$30 million figure suggests. They're obviously not very good at maths."
$3000 for a laptop?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$3000 for a laptop?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Math issues resolved (Score:3, Insightful)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:eBay? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd try employee house visits.
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
You are correct. In some cases. But only a blind fool would believe that's universally true.
Broken Window Fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
You are saying "it is ok to steal from people if that money is going to be used to buy other things", right?
Re:$3000 for a laptop?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Haven't dealt with Microsoft lately, have we?
Re:$3000 for a laptop?? (Score:3, Insightful)
A state department laptop costs an average of $3000? That's completely insane!
I'm not sure I'd start jumping up and down just yet. You're basing this all one one minor fact that some dumb journalist likely got wrong, or took out of context. And as we all know, journalists never make factual errors except when you have personal knowledge of the story.
Re:Why don't they handcuff the laptops to the user (Score:3, Insightful)
My solution would be to chain the employees to a welded down desktop so the whole building would have to be lost/misplaced/sold in a pawn shop.
After seeing SO many of these articles, I can only surmise that giving them laptops in the first place is a poor choice.
Re:Blame Iran (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:great... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:$3000? (Score:3, Insightful)
"just that she was nothing more than a figurehead for the company so we could get more contracts"
If that meant you actually got more contracts then she was not useless at all.