PeopleSoft still in play, GOP mail goes astray

For a while I thought I’d hooked a live one. She had beauty, brains, and a body built by Ferrari. Things were going great for a while, until I found out she voted for the other guy. It was like somebody poured a dry-ice cocktail down my shorts. Next time, I think I’ll just stick to safe topics like sex and religion.

My name is Larry and I’ll be your server this evening: Oracle has sweetened its fifth and “final” offer for PeopleSoft to $24 a share. That’s kind of like dumping a packet of Equal into a cup of hemlock. We’ll find out just how thirsty P-Soft’s shareholders are on Nov. 19, when the offer is set to expire.

The .com before the storm: It’s moot by now, but hundreds of e-mail missives intended for campaign muckety-mucks at georgewbush.com were mistakenly sent to mailboxes at georgewbush.org, an anti-Bush satire site. Messages included polling data and discussions of campaign tactics. Even cagier: two Excel files bearing the intriguing titles “Caging.xls” and “Caging-1.xls” — a hefty listing of names and addresses of registered voters in a largely Democratic area of Jacksonville, Fla. Hmm … wonder what that was for?

Not so hot: Back in June, Hotmail announced it would start doling out 250MB of free e-mail storage, but some Cringesters complain they’re still stuck with puny 2MB accounts. A Hotmail spokesdroid says they’d hoped to finish rolling out the storage freebies by fall, but now they’re shooting for year’s end. Just think of it as a Christmas gift from Old St. Gates.

Cultural pluralism: Unfortunately, pointing out other people’s gaffes forces me to own up to mine. In discussing the Swedish Girls of Gaming, I described them as “femme fatales.” But the correct plural is “femmes fatales.” (You’d think I’d know that, having dated a fair number of them.) Thanks to reader Ralph W. for watching my esses. Speaking of those seven “Swedish” femmes, weeks of in-depth investigative work have unveiled their dark secret: Two of them are actually Danish. I’m still trying to find out whether they’re cherry or cheese.

Got hot tips or Danish pickup lines? Send ’em to cringe@infoworld.com and you may snag a screaming yellow bike bag.