It has been said that in an infinitely large universe, anything can happen. Well, although Usenet isn't quite infinite, it is pretty damn big. And as if to confirm this "largeness" fact, some pretty strange things have been happening (yes, I know, pretty strange things have been happening for years on Usenet, but this is, well, fairly unexpected).
In a bizarre and hitherto completely unprecedented move, a number of posters to groups such as comp.sys.amiga.advocacy have actually been speaking out in defence of Escom. Imagine my surprise on reading "...anyone who whinges that a company that has only been in existence five months can't produce a Power-PC-beating Amiga needs to be taken out and shot". Rumour Mill reckon that if anyone is going to be taken out and shot, then it should be whoever came up with the new Amiga pricing structure.
Still on the sorry subject of comp.sys.amiga.advocacy, this vitriolic newsgroup has also been the forum for a slightly more light-hearted discussion on what the new Amigas should be called. You could be forgiven here for thinking that the perfect choice would be "Amiga", but it wouldn't be Usenet if it didn't completely miss the point.
Among such butch and manly sounding proposed names such as "Centaur", "Vector" and "Sabre", there were a few proponents of multi-worded hybrid names like "Amiga Vision NG Workstation" (NG stands predictably enough for Next Generation - don't these people watch any other television programs?). But the special Rumour Mill sad Usenet geek award goes to the slightly misled Richard Koerber who suggested the new machines should have girls' names so that "It would give a more real girlfriend". I suggest to Richard that, even if his suggestion was slightly tongue-in-cheek, that he should get out more... a lot more.
In another debate slightly closer to my own heart, the discussion continues concerning whether or not it is "outrageous" to claim that badly designed and bug-ridden software can be the fault of the programmers. Rumour Mill say that this is obviously not the case. This argument is backed up by the fact that Microsoft allegedly have "some very good programmers". Need we say more?
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