Boo! update from October 2005

11) Load all Unix and Linux servers with Windows

10) Replace helpdesk "hold" music with screams and chain saw buzz

9) Play "Daisy, Daisy" from 2001: A Space Odyssey in server room

8) Hire an end user to brandish a screwdriver and threaten to visually inventory all server RAM

7) Bob for Apples--the Macintosh kind6) Cover LEDs on servers, routers and hubs with black tape

5) Record a hardware alarm, then play it on a hidden continuous loop

4) Give Dracula costumes and fangs to overpriced, blood-sucking consultants

3) Threaten to convert all servers to Windows 2003

2) Turn the server rack into a sarcophagus1) Pour fake blood everywhere and scream, "The Microsoft server is alive ... It's alive!"

Special thanks to Maryjane Eldred, Peggy Garberick, Stephen Lee, Gregory Mamayek, Patrick Nugent, Dalton Smith, Cliff Smithson, Dominic Vadakkan and Stefan Wuensch for their ghastly, ghoulish suggestions. We'd have "fleshed" these out, but we're working with a "skeleton" crew--mwaHAHAHA (maniacal laughter).

»We've all seen those "Webcams" that let you observe the activities of a live human being around the clock. Well, apparently, some dead humans are now hungering for equal time. The folks at Ghoststudy.com have created a compendium of 24-hour "ghostcams" that let you monitor the ectoplasmic activities of spooks and spirits at haunted locations all over the world, including the Queen Mary ocean liner and the Paris catacombs. We can't vouch for the site's legitimacy--we watched for a while and didn't spot anything scary, unless you count the editors who yelled at us for wasting company time. But give it a shot--just don't blame us if you end up on the other side of the screen.

Wanna hear something really scary? Seventy-five percent of end users spend more than an hour a week trying to figure out the meanings of computer terms like JPEG, JavaScript and cookies, according to a new poll by Computer People, a British recruiting firm. More than 25 percent of users aren't sure what firewalls do--and so are tempted to turn them off--and about the same percentage need help to download information. Surprisingly, the survey found that younger workers are just as likely to have trouble with computer language as older ones. And these people are logging on to our networks every day (assuming they can remember their passwords). Are you as frightened as we are?