Once upon a time, back in the days when H.L. Mencken was prowling the metaphorical streets of journalism, drinking bourbon for breakfast and smoking cigars in theaters and making women do laundry for weeks on end, a reporter could dream of nothing better than being assigned to cover the State Capitol. He'd go on up there and sit around drinking bourbon and smoking cigars and subjugating women and occasionally filing stories, after which he would go out and engage in scandalous behavior with the politicians he covered. Life was sweet. But now guess what: penniless newspapers can't even afford the meager salaries of statehouse reporters any more! The number of reporters covering the NY state government in Albany has dropped from 59 to 42 in the last quarter century. And one count says there are just over 400 full time statehouse reporters in the whole country. The glorious days are gone!

Bill Gates has long dreamed of getting his customers to pay by the month, not by the shrinkwrapped box, for his software. As the Microsoft founder gets ready to depart, his company is just barely realizing his vision. But this is Microsoft, so they're doing it in the most asinine manner imaginable. Mary Jo Foley reports that Microsoft is testing a package of software and services, codenamed "Albany," for which consumers will pay a monthly fee. Sounds promising, until you dig into what Microsoft is actually offering.

Today's spoooookiest Halloween story is about how a scary troll named Michael Chertoff called up our governor and made him back down from his plan to give driver's licenses to aliens. Because letting Hondurans drive to work will lead to a hundred more 9/11s! The Homeland Security chief bullied Gov. Spitzer into supporting a weird "tiered" license system in which illegal immigrants will have theirs printed with invisible ink on cocktail napkins with a big stamp that says "DO NOT LET ON AIRPLANES" while us citizens get the totally brand-new and fucking terrifying-sounding "Real IDs" that have microchips and spycams and GPS devices in them probably. So Spitzer kinda caved like three different ways here and now everyone is mad at him again! Except Chertoff, who promised to keep that Homeland Security money flowing into Albany.

The word turning heads and circling corners in the state capital around Washington Avenue, State and Upper Swan Streets is that Donald Trump could be the Republican Party's next candidate for governor of New York. Like a tube of Rogaine, let that revelation sink in a bit.