Pre-Halloween Jitters

But I digress.

A few of the other reasons I'm probably thinking ahead to the night when tradition holds that the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest:

- My colleague Thomas Claburn discusses the new concept of "slogging," or slanderous blogging, about someone you know or wish you didn't. In my youth, we used to call this "gossip," and the cardinal rule was never to put anything in writing for fear our ill-tempered musings would be forever etched in stone and, worse, overheard or seen by the person being dissed. But getting "caught" by the subject is apparently the entire point of slogging, as I understand it. I would have thought in our overlitigated society that the voice of reason (if not politeness and/or basic human decency) would trump that of nastiness, but I would have been wrong.

- The notion that cost savings are spurring software outsourcing. I'm planning to say lots more on this subject in a blog later this week, but for now let's just leave it that I believe this to be wrong-headed and sure to blow up within, say, five years, as customers become disenchanted and the expected ROIs don't materialize.

- Not that I can afford the $14,300 this gadget costs, but if the prices ever come down, the thought of being woken up by a child-sized robot scares the bejesus out of me. In case this ever happens, I'm hoping that the robot is dent-proof and that "Ouch! That hurts!" is not part of its 10,000-word vocabulary.

Johanna Ambrosio
[email protected]
www.informationweek.com

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