Dear reader Marc sent in this lovely Halloween poster that his daughter made. It won second place in a competition in Croton-on-Hudson, NY. The first thing I said when Katie brought this to me was, “This is total shit. There’s no symmetry. The chamfer is too wide, and the bezel is uneven. And the colors of the icons are all wrong.” Katie was like, Steve, the kids who made this are only 11 years old! And I was like, Hey, I don’t know about you, but when I was 11 I knew how to use a ruler.

Anyway, it’s not their fault. I just hate Halloween. I hate those freaks who get all carried away and decorate their lawns with loads of lights and ghosts and whatever. Seriously, if you’re one of those people, listen up: You need help.

But my hatred of Halloween goes beyond that. Let me explain.

Thing is, I don’t give out candy. I know that’s what the kids want, but I’m sorry. Candy is poison. Would you hand out little capsules of strychnine? No, you would not. So why give out candy? It’s nothing but chemicals. Anyway, this has become this huge deal in Palo Alto. Big bad Mr. Jobs doesn’t give out candy. He gives out healthy pieces of fruit instead. Like apples. (Get it?) And at some point, many years ago, this became a problem. The spoiled little brats didn’t like getting apples. So they started to complain. Then one kid went a step further. He got his apple and walked down the walk and then turned and whipped it at the front door, splattering apple guts everywhere.

The next year, this became the cool thing to do. Go to the Jobs house, get your apple, walk a few feet, then turn and fire. The front of house looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. We had to hire a bunch of guys to come over with water guns and blast it clean. So the next year we shut down. No treats. No candy. Lights off. Stay away. You know what? The little fuckers went out and bought bags of apples on their own, and they came and fired them at our house anyway. Plus eggs. And bags of shit that I just pray was dog shit and not, well, you know.

So, okay, it’s war. I get it. The next year, I get a bunch of guys from Pixar to come over and we make the most amazing Halloween lawn you’ve ever seen, with shitloads of stupid coffins and ghosts and a skeleton playing the piano. We have music, and lights, the whole works. Meanwhile, Larry comes over and brings a bunch of Navy SEAL type guys that he knows. In addition to all the stupid Halloween decorations, we rig up water cannons on the perimeter of the yard and up in the trees, loaded with a mixture of water, bleach and gasoline. We plant IEDs in the lawn, loaded with rock salt, and at each corner we put a dispenser that blasts pepper gel. We lay exposed wires across the lawn carrying enough current to knock you out, but not kill you. Then we put on our black commando outfits, and blacken our faces, and we wait.

Sure enough, the fuckers show up with their apples, and when they get into the lawn — bam! The SEALs start blasting gasoline cannons at them. Larry flips on the electric grid and the lawn lights up and starts crackling. The kids start shrieking and leaping around, because their costumes have caught fire and they can’t put them out. Then the IEDs go off, shredding the kids with rock salt, and as they flee for the perimeter we hit them with the pepper gel.

That was two years ago. Now, as a condition of my parole, I’m not allowed to be at home for Halloween, and the cops look the other way when the kids go nuts on my house. Bah.

We read the blogs, so you don’t have to.  From the FSJ News Center:
You know those Northwest pilots who forgot where to land?  Turns out they were using their laptops instead of minding the store..uh, plane.  The forecast from Mozilla Labs calls for rain. Microsoft decides they’re not in a “family way” after all.  GeoCities says it’s time to shut ‘er down.  And what’s one thing to really turbocharge Windows Mobile?  Read on.

Mozilla Labs has a little something cooking- does it sound Wave-y to you? (Firefox Facts)

Microsoft drops Fox show sponsorship. (Engadget)

Apple to sponsor the Chicago Transit Authority? (No, not the band.) (Chicago Sun-Times)

GeoCities is now 404. (Macworld)

Say hello to Google Social Search. (Search Engine Land)

CNBC: We won’t apologize. (Silicon Valley Insider)

To make Windows Mobile better, it’s getting Zune integration! (The Microsoft Blog-SeattlePI.com)

NTSB says pilots who missed the airport were using laptops in the cockpit. (MSNBC)

Snow Leopard meets Windows 7.  (The Joy Of Tech)

iPods of the future?  (Huffington Post)

There are no words to describe this. (CNET Reviews)

Author Ken Auletta has a new book on Google, with a terrific title.  (CNN Money)

Each one is more wrong than the others. But hey, it’s a great way for Silicon Alley Insider to gin up page views. To save you the effort of looking at all of them, I’ve picked up a handful that are worth noting.

Seriously, do not bother clicking through that whole slideshow. Most of them are so awful that I don’t think Dell would make them. But here are a few worth checking out, if only for a good laugh:

Number one is the one they think is the best candidate. It’s awful, but whatever. That’s why they’re working as journalists instead of doing something productive with their lives.

Number two has a whale on it, and just one button, so that’s cool. But is it even close? Um, no.

Number seventeen was actually made at Microsoft, I’m pretty sure.

Number six is like, hey, the Nineties called, they want their computer back. Ditto for number nineteen.

Number five is Michael Arrington’s CrunchPad, I think.

The cool thing is, who cares whether they even get close? Just the fact that they’re dreaming up stupid mockups means our mind control programming is working. More on that in a later post.

We read the blogs, so you don’t have to.  From the FSJ News Center:  The official White House website goes open-source. Sergey Brin does the Battelle show.  Apple passes on the low-end market.  Apparently burgers and Win7 go well together.  Tonight, YouTube becomes, uh, U2ube.
The Obama administration goes open-source with their website code.  (Yahoo! News)

Sergey stops by the Web 2.0 Summit, and dig those socks.  Or shoes?
And no, he didn’t try to buy Twitter. (Business Insider)

Apple says $999.00 is as low as we go…for now.  (CNET)

In-N-Out Burger is a west coast tradition.  You can order from their menu, or the secret menu.  You can also go completely off the reservation with your own Win7 party. (SmugBlog)

In more burger news, let’s go to Japan for some truly hard-core Win7 burger action. ワンダー場合、彼らが投げた？(“Wonder if they threw up?”) (YouTube)

Kindle will have company under the tree this Christmas. (MarketWatch)

Let’s say a fond farewell to Web 1.0 stalwart GeoCities, closing shop Monday. (Computerworld)

Tonight at 8:30pm PT, Bono and U2 take over the Interwebs. (YouTube)

I’m like, No really, where on earth did you come up with the look and feel of these stores? I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life.

He’s like, Ha ha. Well, I like to think of it as an homage.

And I’m like, Oh, is that French for stealing?

He goes, Hey, good one. You mean like what you guys did with Xerox Star?

I go, No, I mean what you guys did with Windows.

He goes, Oh, you mean, take what you did and make it better? Or take what you did and make it popular?

I go, Just the take what we did part.

He says, Hey, it’s how we roll. It’s how we do. We watch, we learn, we improve.

I go, Sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

He goes, Bitch, please. You’re the one who said, Good artists borrow, great artists steal, right?

I go, Actually it was Picasso.

He goes, Well, you can’t sue us. We looked into it. We made it just different enough. And anyway you stole the look from the Gap. Or J. Crew. So don’t act like you invented it.

I go, You’re out of your mind, aren’t you?

He goes, Totally. But anyway, you can’t patent the way a store looks. Seriously, we had the lawyers check it out. And our stores have video walls. Totally different from yours.

I go, Yeah, and your retail people are all fat and stupid looking, whereas we hire slender, attractive, artsy people.

He says, Hey, you play to your base.

I’m like, Right on.

He’s like, Are we done?

I go, I think so.

He goes, Okay, so hang up.

I go, No, you hang up.

He goes, No, you.

I just sit there. I say nothing.

He goes, You still there?

I go, Yup.

He goes, Okay, let’s count to three and hang up at the same time.

I go, Fuck that. You hang up.

He goes, Nope. You.

So I did it. God I hate you Fester. I fucking hate hate hate you. And the following video makes me sick.

CNBC tech reporter Jim Goldman went on air today and said Microsoft had lowered its revenue guidance for the full year, which wasn’t true. The stock dropped, and now Wall Street hates him. How could this happen? Answer: He’s stupid. And lazy. And he apparently gets his news from blogs, which everyone knows can’t be trusted.

The one bright spot in all this, of course, is that Borg shares got hammered, because all the dopes on Wall Street apparently believe whatever they see on CNBC. Just one problem with what Goldman reported — Microsoft hadn’t lowered guidance on revenue. They’d lowered guidance on their operating expenses. In other words, they reported good news. Not bad. Nevertheless, the stock went down. Yay Jim Goldman! Your free video Nano is in the mail.

Hilarious thing in the video (below) is that Goldman says Microsoft “lowering — lowering — its full-year revenue guidance to a range of $26.2 to $26.5 billion.” One big problem with that claim (other than the fact that it was not true) is that, um, Microsoft’s full year revenues are nowhere near $26 billion. They’re about $58 billion. You’d think Jim Goldman might have a rough idea of how much Microsoft does a year in revenues. I mean, they’re a pretty well-known tech company. But, um, no. So think about this: the Silicon Valley bureau chief of CNBC, an actual TV network that specializes in business news, does not know, even in ballpark figures, how big Microsoft is.

To be fair, it appears Goldman may have just been reporting something he read on a Wall Street Journal blog, which also misreported this statement. So who can blame him? I mean, he reads a blog, and he goes on air and reports it as fact. Isn’t that what they teach you at journalism school?

Now all the dickhead traders are mad at Goldman, and even though I hate the guys on Wall Street I have to admit that I understand their anger on this one. Hell, if it weren’t for the fact that Little Jim does such a thorough job of polishing my knob every time we release a new product, I’d be calling for his head too.

Pixar logo convicted of murder, gets the chair.  FSJ celebrates making a lot of money.  Apple unveils updates on the iMac and more, and Gruber nailed it. This results in uncustomary groveling from El Jobso.  Now we know the secret behind the Apple marketing mystique: hypnosis.  October 22nd was the day the music died.  Or something.  Mosspuppet gets hammered, then declares he  sabotaged Microsoft.

We read the blogs, so you don’t have to.  From the FSJ News Center:  New Mac/PC ads for Windows 7.  Apple’s huge banner in Boston breaks rules, but that’s OK. CNN.com’s GM pulls an El Jobso. Icahn says adiós to Yahoo! board.

Carl Icahn departs the Yahoo! board. (Business Insider)

Pepsi pulls plug on controversial iPhone app. (ABC News.com)

Not gonna even try to re-write this headline. “Why Steve Jobs Could Be A Savior For Media Companies.” Could be? (All Things D)

Sergey wishes Yahoo! had hung in there with search. (Why? So he could beat them up more?) (WSJ)

Believe it or not..there are a few people that don’t own cell phones.  Must be a cult.  (New York Times)

You think Mac and PC were gonna ignore the Win7 launch?  Think again. This time, it’s gonna be different.  (Apple.com)

Keeping with Win7 for a minute- it’s a big story, admit it- here’s the new OS launched on a..MacBook Pro, on The Today Show.  (CrunchGear)  Plus, here’s a list of what you won’t get in Win7. (BBSpot.com)

More commercial news- this time with Ask.com.  Michael Arrington believes their new spots are endangering baby seals.  Like this?  (TechCrunch)  Meanwhile, Ask tweets denial. (Twitter)

CNN.com gets facelift, looks like “iTunes for news.”  Money quote: “KC Estenson, the CNN.com general manager took the stage. He looked somewhat like Steve Jobs in a dark sweater, jeans and wireless microphone.” (WSJ)  Facebook updates as well. (KCBS.com)

Apple gets to keep it’s massive iPod banner, despite the rules.  (Boston.com)

Some WSJ guy goes after Marissa at the Web 2.0 Summit.  Have the speakers turned up, and listen for The Laugh at about 8 seconds into the clip.  (YouTube)  More here. (Valleywag)

Also at Web 2.0, current AOL CEO Tim Armstrong says they’re working on something “big and secret.”
The world crosses its collective fingers and waits.  (News.com)

We read the blogs, so you don’t have to. Brought to you by Brinke, in the FSJ News Center.

Pogue does Q&A on Win7, while Natali hits the morning show circuit.  Microsoft’s new retail store is now open.  Money quote: “It’s an awful lot like an Apple Store.” (Are these the Technical Advisors?) It’s good to be Bezos.  Nokia accuses Apple of patent infringement. This fellow is glad AOL fired him. Speaking of that, here’s a guy from Fox News who found out he’d been fired by getting a Google Alert. This says Snow Leopard is an “upgrade dog.” Bono continues to distance himself from El Jobso, aligning his band with Google/YouTube.  Finally..Sting had one of these..did you?

Further proof that French Canadians need more to do with their lives. I kid. This is awesome.