This is not about IT or IT security, but it is still an interesting perspective.  From Business week…

The Real Question: Should Oil Be Cheap?

…Amite Foundry’s resurgence is just one of countless examples of a deeper truth: Expensive energy, in many ways, is good. Why? When the price of oil goes up, people will use less, find substitutes, and develop new supplies. Those effects are just basic economics. Things are so painful now, many economists say, because of the past two decades of cheap oil. Prices stayed low in part because they didn’t reflect the full cost of extras such as pollution, so there was little incentive to use energy more wisely. If those extras had been counted, the country would be better prepared for both today’s soaring prices and the day that global oil production begins to decline.

That’s why there is growing interest, from both the left and right, in a policy that uses taxes to put a floor under the price of oil. Above a certain level—say $90—there would be no tax. But if the world market price dropped below that, taxes would kick in to make U.S. users pay the target amount.

Everyone Works at Home at software company Chorus

[The] company, Chorus, which provides clinical, practice management and financial software for health care providers, has gone virtual.  Chorus closed its Hasbrouck Heights headquarters in early June and its other office, in Stafford, Texas (outside of Houston), in early July. Now all of the company’s 35 employees and full-time consultants work at home, and for the most part, they love it.

…The company decided to close its offices to save money and spare employees the hassle and rising cost of commuting and because it had the necessary technology to support such a move. President and CEO A.J. Schreiber says Chorus can continue to serve customers while simultaneously saving $400,000 a year simply by closing its 15,000 square feet of office space. Sure, breaking leases and telecom contracts is costing the company money, but the long-term savings far outweigh those short-term costs, says Schreiber. “We wouldn’t have done this if it would have had a negative impact on our ability to serve customers,” he adds.

FOXNews.com - Companies Scramble to Stop Cell Phone Trafficking

For less than $15, you can buy a cell phone loaded with minutes. You can buy more as you go whenever those minutes run out. Best of all, you aren’t locked into a long-term contract.  But in South Florida, New York, California, Georgia, Texas and elsewhere, traffickers have figured out they can make big profits by purchasing thousands of these low-cost phones and tweaking the software so that calls can be made on any cell network. The altered phones are then sold all over the world — costing the phone companies tens of millions of dollars.

 This doesn’t seem appropriate, so I hope it’s not true and is just some hysteria.  I would expect that all published info could to be taken into account in a hiring decision.

Employers who check out job candidates on MySpace could be legally liable | View from the Cubicle | TechRepublic.com
If a potential employer uses a social networking site to check out a job candidate and then rejects that person based on what they see, he or she could be charged with discrimination.