/// Another Moronic, Inane and Gratuitous Article
    ---------------------------------------------
    by Chad Freeman
    (cjfst4+@pitt.edu or cjfst4@cislabs.pitt.edu -- Internet)
    (cfreeman -- BIX)


Ah yes, another fine week in that fine country in which that fine computer-
maker Commodore International resides (except legally).  It's now official,
Atari's stock has gone higher than Commodores, and after all, why shouldn't
it?  Atari is introducing a next-generation 64-bit game machine that's
going to be manufactured and distributed by IBM.  Commodore's coming out
with... uh, well, a new program to restructure their debt.  Hopefully.  Or
the government will do it for them (they call it bankruptcy).  On the bright
side of things, though, there is some sort of movement picking up steam with
the shareholders; they actually want to make a _change_ (beginning with
Gouldzilla, I hope), and the US Government now actually gives them a chance.
(Now _this_ is astounding!)  If you're interested, and you have a few hundred
bucks to spare (or you already own Commodore Deflated International stock), be
sure to check it out; you should be able to find the information somewhere on
your favorite service.  Lets hope it works!  The Commodore team (aside from
upper management) is too good to send packing to Microbrain or some other lame
PC plug in card manufacturer.  At least I know I wouldn't want to be sitting
in some sweatshop designing Yet Another Incompatible Soundcard, would you?
Which reminds me, did you hear that some Microbug VP said Windows NT was going
to be the SOLE operating system for ALL computers in about 20 years and that
there would be NO competition?  Kind of scary because it just might end up
being true (only because of Microstooge's virtual monopoly in several areas of
the computer business, though).  But at least _some_ of us will still be
plugging away at the old Amiga, eh?

[Editor's Note:  Hey, if the gov't made Bell break up due to monopolization,
I think they should force Microsoft to break up too!  One company can then
specialize in Title Bars, another in Pull-Down Menus, another in Dialog
Boxes.  Then, if you buy Company X's product, you give them the names and
numbers of all your friends.  They call them up and harrass them.  If your
friends (who by that time may no longer be your friends) buy their software
too, you get a 20% discount next time you buy software from Company X.
Make sense?  I hope not.]

Speaking of plugging away, I have discovered recently a new Murphy's Law
of Computers.  It goes like this: a 20 line program will take just as much
time to complete as a 1000 line program.  I have proven this by actual
clinical trials: namely, I sat down the other day to write a short little
program for my Amiga and its ended up taking me more time than I spend on most
of my programming assignments for school.  That _really_ ticks me off.  There
is also a corollary to this rule, and it says:  Any program you ever write
will cause a new bug in your compiler to be found.  This happens without
exception, even though you may not visibly see its effects.  For every program
you compile without a noticeable bug biting you, you will be stricken by a 10
times larger bug sometime in the future.  Its true, ask any software engineer.
Heck, I've even hit bugs in a VMS compiler, and that system is as old as God;
you think they would have any bugs a student programmer would find worked out,
don't you?  Well, just remember that the next time your Amiga gurus during
your startup-sequence.

And now a note for all of you that wrote in about that wonderful new
terminal program Terminally Ill by the Foo brothers: STOP IT!  Unfortunately
Bill and Jim Foo have been arrested for using an Atari 2600 to influence
William Sessions behavior these past few years, and I have a feeling we won't
be seeing them for a long time to come.  Unfortunately they handed the rights
to Terminally Ill over to Borland, which means we'll never see the Amiga
version.  Fortunately the papers they handed over were slightly modified, in a
somewhat malicious way.  Let's just put it this way; you thought the
Michelangelo virus was going to be bad?  Heh heh heh...

Well folks, I'm going to cut my li'l ol' article a li'l ol' short this
week.  Yes, yes, I know you'll miss my dagger-sharp wit and profound insight
into the state of affairs of life, the universe, and everything; but have no
fear, for I shall return once again next week with another exciting episode of
AMIGA, the only column that dares to swim in the toilet and pee in the pool.

Joke of the week:

Q.     If Irving Gould had half a brain, what would he be?
A.     A bumbling idiot with half a brain!

See you next week!