Leaving Las Vegas It’s another tragic day in Cringeville. Last week MediaLive International unplugged the respirator on Comdex, announcing that after 24 years the show must not go on. But like the swallows returning to Capistrano, I’m genetically programmed to return to Las Vegas every November. Now what am I going to do? I may just go there anyway to wander the desert, searching for my lost geek tribe. Then again, the Las Vegas convention center has a stellar lineup of alternatives: There’s a seminar on skin diseases, the International Bartenders’ Association World Cocktail Championships, and the Miss Rodeo America contest. I’d take any of them over another Bill Gates keynote.Eight-legged geeks: Microsoft may have just announced its new Google killer search service last week, but its MSNbot spider has been crawling the Web for months — and Net-heads say this spider packs a nasty bite. One Cringester who runs a dozen small sites says MSNbot swallowed up 60 to 80 percent of his bandwidth. He finally had to edit his robots.txt file to squash the little predator. Some folks might call this overkill; I call it “making friends the Microsoft way.”Prints and the paupers: A few weeks back, I took Hewlett-Packard to task for dubious expiration dates on its ink jet cartridges. Coming to HP’s defense, a ton of Cringe readers contacted me to make a stink about ink. Reader Barry W. says there are solid technological reasons why ink jet cartridges expire after a certain period — and HP is hardly the only manufacturer that does this. But most people say they’re sick of paying too much for ink that expires too fast. Hmm, maybe I should get into the remanufactured cartridge racket. I’m pretty good at giving people bad ink. That’s my bag, man: Sharp-eyed readers will note the new sign-off below. To spread the swag among more of the Cringe faithful, we’ll be sending electric-yellow tote bags to readers whose tips sneak their way into the column. Visible at 500 meters, the bags can be used to signal low-flying aircraft — extremely handy when you’re lost in the desert outside the MGM Grand.Got hot tips or alternative activities for Comdex week? Send them to cringe@infoworld.com; the best will snag a cool bike messenger bag. DatabasesSoftware Development