Now that Bernard Ebbers has been convicted of fraud and other accounting shenanigans at WorldCom, the only real mystery is how much time he'll do (most likely around 25 years, according to federal sentencing guidelines) and where he'll do it. Chances are, he'll wind up in a federal prison camp, which is somewhere between The Shawshank Redemption and Club Fed.

I suggest that Ebbers get busy reading "Downtime: A Guide to Federal Incarceration" by David Novak. After spending a year at Eglin Federal Prison Camp in Florida for mail fraud and a related charge, the one-time flight school operator turned his attention to helping his fellow corporate felons, with a book and a consulting business. Ebbers, whose lawyers tried blaming other senior execs at WorldCom, would be wise to follow Novak's counsel: "The No. 1 rule in prison," he told Fast Company, "is you don't rat."