In an email to potential donors (below) first discussed by The Frisky's Jessica Wakeman, Fiorina's campaign manager touts a video (above) of her opponent Sen. Barbara Boxer talking to a general during congressional testimony. The brief conversation seems to have offended no one who was actually involved in it, but Fiorina's campaign calls the video "shocking" and said Boxer "disrespectfully demanded" to be called "senator." Her exact words:

Do me a favor, could you say 'senator' instead of 'm'aam?' It's just a thing. (Laughter.) I worked so hard to get that title. Thank you.

This "shocking" moment of terrible rudeness is obviously the most important issue in California right now. It's a good thing voters have a tough businesswoman like Fiorina to help them identify women who espouse feminist ideals only when it advances their own ego and political interests.

In Fiorina's official candidacy announcement, published in an op-ed in the Orange County Register, the Republican hopeful lays out some of her political positions, which include safeguarding gargantuan CEO paychecks from the government; unshackling agribusiness from environmental protections; and denying national health care to people who get cancer like Fiorina but who, unlike her, aren't rich or well insured (Fiorina does think these people should be able to go to twee "community clinics," though).

Fiorina also boldy writes, "Let's put every government budget and every government bill on the Internet for every citizen to see." Great idea, Carly! If this were 1996. The government already puts federal and proposed budgets online here and here, and the bills can be found here, among many other places. At home in California, the budget is here and the bills are here and here. Maybe you should ask your good friend John McCain to teach you a thing or two about the internet.

Last Monday, Wired laid off at least six staff, including longtime editor Ted Greenwald, New York editor Mark Horowitz and, we heard, West Coast ad director Moira McDonald, whose tenure dated to the days when founders Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe owned the magazine more than ten years ago.

Where was Anderson that day? Delivering a no doubt gainful lecture for Hewlett Packard in Silicon Valley. A spokesperson tells us Anderson was in the office "all morning," when the firings occurred, before heading off to HP. But Anderson's absence for so much of such a sensitive day at Wired is great ammunition for his critics at Condé Nast, who have long said Anderson's too distracted by his approximately 50 annual lecture gigs, some in far-flung locales like Norway.

It's one thing for Anderson to delegate editorial tasks to lieutenants like executive editor Thomas Goetz or his predecessor Bob Cohn, who jumped to The Atlantic, in plusher times. But with advertising down 50 percent through May, Anderson should — arguably! — be a fixture on the front lines at Wired. Instead he's tweeting his two-week book tour schedule, which reads as follows: "SF, Munich, Naples, Capri, NYC, Toronto, Chicago, Copenhagen, Billund, Manchester, Orlando. Sigh..."

"Sigh" indeed, Chris. But at least all that time away from home and office will help bolster your independent revenue stream. Bet your ex editors wish they had created one of those! When they weren't picking up the slack for absent co-workers, that is.

UPDATE: Anderson tweets he left the office on firing day because he was on a "sales call" for Wired at HP. More sales calls are a good thing — on different days. (We had told a Wired spokesperson we'd heard Anderson was at a "speaking gig" that day and were told, "he was in the office all morning until then.")

(Pic: Anderson, by Dan Taylor)

The bare-bones fundraising site has already attracted its own attack video (see below), a rant by the Huffington Post's Jason Linkins ("the most insufferable thing she's ever done in her life"), disbelief from political blogger Atrios, and on and on. At one point in the splash graphic, Fiorina appears to compare herself to a dog: "It's day & night... It's dogs & cats... It's good & bad... It's Carly vs [Democratic rival Barbara] Boxer."

It could be a trick: Get people talking about the terrible website, and you can sweep aside concerns over Fiorina's voting record (or lack thereof), clumsy campaign resumé fudging, Iranian trade connections and track record of offshoring jobs en masse. But recent history would seem to indicate she and her team are not that clever.

As the CEO of a publicly-traded company, tech stalwart Hewlett Packard, Fiorinia had a fiduciary duty to maximize profits for her shareholders. It takes immense hubris to think that can be reconciled with a future in public service. But then Silicon Valley is a famously arrogant place; that's why this election cycle has two political novices, Fiorina and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, trying to leverage corporate experience into elected office.

Fiorina's having a rough time of it. Her latest problem: defending herself against charges that HP made loads of money during her tenure by selling its products in Iran despite a U.S. trade embargo. "To her knowledge, during her tenure, HP never did business in Iran," Fiorina's campaign told the San Jose Mercury News.

Really? Fiorina had no idea? That's odd, since...

• Fiorina in 2003 noted Middle East sales were defying global trends, and, as the Merc notes, HP's partner there issued a press release saying sales topped $100 million and that "the seeds of the Redington-Hewlett-Packard relationship were sowed six years ago for one market - Iran."
  
• Three of the three HP partners in the Middle East contacted by Christopher Stewart for a story in Portfolio magazine's August 2008 issue readily agreed to ship printers to Iran. Portfolio notified HP of the incidents, but the company didn't condemn them, instead refusing comment. Fiorina was gone as CEO at this point, but Portfolio noted that diversion of American products to Iran trough Dubai had been going strong for many years.
• HP had an office in the Dubai free-trade zones notorious for funneling American goods to Iran, Portfolio reported — so it had ample means to be aware of how its products were being shipped.
  
• After the SEC noticed the prevalance of HP products in Iran, it asked the company about the matter, and got back a letter from the company saying its Dutch subsidiary sold $120 million to Iran in 2008.
• Finally, in January 2009, HP severed ties with Redington Gulf, the distributor that had publicly bragged about its Iran trade six years earlier.
  
  
  

If Fiorina appears to have turned a blind eye to shipments of her products into Iran, that's what she was supposed to do, as CEO; as both the Merc and Portfolio note, the company most likely stayed on the legal — and profitable — side of a gray zone, a loophole in U.S. trade sanctions. But it will be tough to look patriotic while explaining that to voters. Fiorina had better hope her fellow Republicans continue to be more interested by the supposed dangers of universal health care and illegal immigration than by the War on Terror launched by their party's last president.

Fiorina is the deposed CEO of Hewlett Packard and has no real political experience; she raised some money for John McCain last year but prior to that rarely managed to even vote.

As a would-be Republican senate nominee, Fiorina needed to polish her resume, and did, via the entities "Fiorina Enterprises," of which she is CEO, and the "Fiorina Foundation," of which she claimed to be chairwoman. Fiorina's campaign website said Fiorina Enterprises was "focused on global economic development" and that Fiorina Foundation "enables corporations, social entrepreneurs and philanthropists alike to address some of the world's most challenging issues."

Except, as the San Francisco Chronicle found out, these large global behemoth world-changing organizations are not registered as corporations or charities. Whoops! Time to admit they don't really exist, except in Fiorina's imagination!

"Global" focused Fiorina Enterprises is actually a "small business" run by a "sole proprietor," according to a Fiorina campaign statement, while Fiorina Foundation is really called the Fiorina Family Foundation, and Fiorina's the only donor (says NBC Bay Area), so apparently this big important charity doesn't quite tie together "corporations" and "philanthropists alike," as implied.

By coming clean, Fiorina refutes charges she dodged tax laws. Explaining why the former sales chief felt the need to puff up her qualifications will be harder, and raise uncomfortable questions about what she's really accomplished since leaving HP. Other amateur politicians, take note.

Fiorina voted in just 5 of the 18 elections since 2000, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. That's even worse than former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, the Republican gubernatorial hopeful who, you'll recall, voted in 6 of 13 elections over five years (46 percent turnout versus 28 percent for Fiorina).

That's the trouble with dallying in politics: Your past apathy comes back to haunt you. Except maybe in open-minded California, where movie star Arnold Shwarzenegger failed to vote in five of 11 elections but still won election as governor a landslide. The question for Fiorina and Whitman is whether Californians have learned their lesson (probably not).

Fiorina's name has come up in politics even before she left HP. She was a fundraiser for McCain in last year's campaign, and a visible spokeswoman until she committed one gaffe too many. Now she seems to be plowing ahead with a campaign, despite a recent brush with breast cancer.

Polls show her faring poorly against incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer. And the newfound populist mood will prove hard for her to exploit, given her own pay record. (Her lukewarm proposal to put executive pay up to an annual shareholder vote seems unlikely to score points.) A Boxer fundraiser is already jumping on the news, sending the following email to supporters:

I just wanted to pass along some late-breaking news: According to a post this afternoon on the San Jose Mercury News website, during a
trip to Washington, DC on Tuesday, former HP CEO Carly Fiorina said she is "seriously considering" challenging Senator Barbara Boxer in 2010.

Fiorina reportedly received more than $150 million during her time at HP — including $21 million in severance pay after she left under fire — while laying off more than 25,000 employees as CEO, none of whom received the kind of golden parachute she did. Now she has millions of her own dollars to pour into a possible campaign against Barbara Boxer.

Another weak point for Fiorina: Her championing of visas for skilled workers at a think tank she just joined. America needs immigrant talent — but that's a tough issue to sell to voters.

Hurd himself is taking a $290,000 pay cut, or 20 percent of his salary, which would look more impressive had his pay not risen 31 percent last year. HP executives are getting their pay cut 10 percent, though they can better afford it than the economically strapped rank and file.

With Congress putting executive pay under the microscope, it's a well-timed publicity stunt. The net effect on HP's financials will be small. But it's more than just a flashy PR move: It is putting a theory touted for decades in academia into practice at an unprecedented scale.

MIT economist Martin Weitzman suggested in the 1980s that instituting pay cuts instead of layoffs could make recessions shorter and less painful. By setting base salaries lower and making pay more variable with a business's financial results, companies could avoid cutting jobs and increase workers' rewards in good times. HP is trying exactly that, with a change to its bonus plans that could make up for the pay cuts if times do well.

HP is not alone. Teamster-represented truckers at YRC recently agreed to a 10 percent paycut. AMD, a Valley-based chipmaker, has instituted "temporary" pay cuts (as opposed to HP's permanent ones).

But HP, the 14th-largest public company by revenues in the U.S., has given license to the rest of the Fortune 500 to consider the idea.

It will hardly mean an end to job losses. HP is still in the middle of a three-year, 25,000-person layoff stemming from its acquisition of EDS, a rival tech-services outfit. But it could spell a future when people are laid off because their jobs truly are redundant, not because times are, as corporate memo-writers love to say, "tough all over."

There's only one problem we see with this idea: Wall Street was famous for its highly variable pay. The bonus plan may have worked for a while, but it did not end well. The high-risk, high-reward system is thoroughly out of favor now. Are we ready to become a nation of workplace gamblers? Or will America's corporate culture face death by a thousand cuts?

Ellison goes through this like a Ron Popeil pitch but with less enthusiasm and a stiffer delivery. The audience responds with silence when Ellison issues his applause lines, and can someone get the man a remote control so he doesn't have to terrorize a minion with requests to change the slides? We know the topic doesn't lend itself to the crazed consumer fervor of something like the iPhone, but seriously, I can see attendees muttering "More like Bore-acle OpenWorld" under their breath as they step into the Market Street Cinema.

• Don't hope for much. Past experience tells us those laid off will not be treated well. EDS has been known to time layoffs to minimize severance paid.
• Leave when you can. Given the prospects of a skimpy severance, you might as well get out sooner rather than later. EDS has a sordid history as a service provider. Although the guys in the trenches are long gone, the management culture that brought you the $8 billion Navy-Marines IT debacle is alive and well and is now moving to a new host environment. Trust me — another six months at the company will not add anything to your resume. Start your job search now.
• Aggressively market yourself. Polish the resume on standards like Monster and CareerBuilder. Make sure to also hit specialty sites like Dice.com, Cybercoders, and Jobfox. Update your professional networking pages. LinkedIn is an obvious one, but have you thought about your college's alumni directory?
• Clean up your online persona. Yes, most employers don't actually waste time checking your social-network profiles. But why take chances? Play it safe and delete anything even vaguely unprofessional from your Facebook and MySpace pages.
• Attend mixers and job fairs. Not because you'll get a job there, but just to get practice interacting with other people. Your next job will require more face time, not less.
• Meet with the headhunters. You may not love them but they can be effective. Visit your friends at Robert Half and the other usual suspects.
• Keep your sense of humor. HP's layoffs are large in scale, but you're not the first person to endure a flurry of pink slips at the workplace. Some of the revenge stories written by other people in the same situation are epic.

(Photoillustration by Jackson West)

Through fast prototyping made possible by HP's Indigo line of industrial printers. Thanks in part to the Indigo 5000, Bridge can print, bind, and shrink-wrap 22,090 copies of Scientology: A New Slant on Life in as little as a week. And as acolytes move up "the bridge to total freedom," they are required to buy further materials for study that, because of the increasingly elite membership, necessitate small runs. Thankfully, print-on-demand technology is here! When some sucker ponies up the five-figure sum necessary to pass through the "Wall of Fire" in order to become a level three "operating thetan," Bridge can whip up a copy of the Xenu myth in no time flat.

And since all of the print production is done in-house, it allows leader David Miscavige and his disciples to keep a tight lock on potential leaks of "secrets" written in the embarrassingly bad prose of Hubbard. At the upcoming discussion, among the topics panelists address will be staffing and employee retention. There aren't a lot of press operators familiar with such cutting-edge technology. Luckily for Bridge, members of the church's paramilitary Sea Org — the true believers who often work as peons — have all signed contracts to serve for eternity. They couldn't jump ship for a rival printer or publisher if they wanted to — that old-time religion matched with the latest in HP's technology combine for a serious business advantage.

There's no surprise that Scientology is run like a business. Making a profit was the reason why Hubbard came up with the religion in the first place. But here's what's really disturbing: Could HP be helping Scientology proselytize? The church has a history of recruiting members in business settings. If Silber talked about more than just print-on-demand technologies at his seminar, is should raise eyebrows among HP's many non-Scientology customers.

This week, the HP vice president indicted for leaking trade secrets from IBM, his former employeer, pleaded guilty. Dude, UR DOIN IT RONG. Atul Malhotra allegedly emailed the goods to a coworker, drawing a big red arrow back to his own forehead. Ready to cash in on your inside info? Follow this six-step plan.

1. Be sure the secret is worth something. You don't want to risk your neck over info the company is already required to file with the SEC.

2. Pick the right potential buyer. Start with senior VPs or members of the executive team -– someone who can and will play ball.

3. Establish an anonymous Internet presence. Only do email from Internet connections that can't be traced back to you. Local Wi-Fi hotspots and unsecured home networks are your friend. Never use the same email address to contact more than one person. Don't just change addresses, hop from Gmail to Hotmail to Yahoo. Skyhook is developing a wonderful hybrid positioning system to pin down your location based on IP address. Keep that in mind.

4. Ditch email for prepaid phones from T-Mobile, available at your local Target, it a mark shows interest. But remember that if a 911 operator can find your location, so can anyone else. Check for security cameras in the area before you dial or take a call.

5. Use an untraceable method to transfer the info. British agents used Bluetooth or IR devices disguised as rocks to pass information. Get creative: A dropped USB stick, a misplaced folder, or a shared Google Doc all can work. The Madrid bombers created email drafts that others could access, so nothing was ever sent through an SMTP server that could be tracked. You needn't be high-tech. Aldrich Ames carried top secret documents out of the CIA in paper bags.

6. Hide the money. Never break omerta, lest you end up like Pink Cadillac Guy in Goodfellas. Living beyond your means always tips people off. It happened to Ames. And keep your mouth shut. James Hall III overshared with a Russian spy who turned out to be FBI. Earl Edwin Pitts' ex-wife and Robert Hannsen's brother-in-law helped turn them in. That's the downside of a successful sale: You sell the company's secret, but saddle yourself with one of your own.

A self-taught hacker, Rigano says he discovered the vulnerabilities and coded the exploits on his own time, which he says is none of HP's business. "I have the right to sell what I want," he says. He told me he attracted mostly Chinese and Russian buyers, but claimed he never found takers for the HP or SAP "vulns" and exploits. He said he stopped selling black-market code in January but didn't explain why.

An HP spokeswoman admitted the company has a rogue employee in France and said it was investigating along with the FBI. When I told Rigano this, he became incensed. "This is real bullshit," he said, and threatened to sue anyone who claimed he was the target of any investigation.

He may be right: It's possible the company has been investigating another Gallic code crasher whose online nickname is t0t0, and who in May 2007 posted offers for SAP 0days that were traceable through HP's network. By connecting his various aliases with email addresses he has used over the years, I was able to track t0t0 to Paris's Institut Supérieur d'Electronique, France's premier high-tech college, where it appears he's an instructor. T0t0 didn't respond to repeated interview requests.