An unexpected but insightful Googlism :)

At http://maug.org.au/umilator.html, MAUG (the Melbourne Amiga User Group) is running a poll to gauge the level of interest in Umilator.

This poll came about because at the AUG meeting last Sunday, I made a comment along the lines of "underwrite X copies, and I can release the thing, and have the money to deal with anything that will be thrown at me".

It is important to note that this is quite different from "If X people commit to buying a copy, I can release it", for several reasons, the main one being that I won't take anyone's money until I am absolutely sure that I can give them a product in return, can't be sure of that until things have gone through courts, and can't drag things through court until I have money....

Of course, there is also the issue that names on a web form don't actually equate to guaranteed sales... so even if I could somehow work around the first problem, I'd probably still look for at least 2*X, rather than X (and to be honest, I'd be surprised if the count reaches X).

That being said, the poll is genuine. It's not some scam, or an attempt to gather personal info for spamming purposes. And while, for the stated reasons, I can't and won't make any promises one way or the other, I will most certainly watch the results with a lot of interest. One can never have too much information...

One last request --- please be honest about filling in the poll. If you would buy a copy, fill it in --- but if you wouldn't, then please don't! I understand and appreciate some people's desire to "show support" that way.... but the idea is to come up with some number gauging the potential sales. So if you don't want Umilator, and yet want to show support --- just drop a comment here on the Umiblog :)

At amiga.org there is a story (warning: 200kB HTML) about Harald threatening Wayne with initiating legal action over the "illegal misuse" of his trademark.

Funnily enough, the news story he objects to doesn't even contain the word "Amithlon" at all.

Unfortunately, the mail Wayne received is about par for the course for Harald. It certainly wasn't exceptional in any way.

And yet, Haage and Partners does not, apparently, see any need to distance themselves from such behaviour, thus implicitly condoning it.....

Seems nobody else noticed that, as of February 5th, it has now been a year since the "latest" (aka "only") AmigaOS XL update from the good people at H&P.

Update 2003/02/07: Seems like I hid my cynicism too well... So just to clarify --- the message here is "It's been over a year since H&P have released anything, and look at what crap they released back then". Just one more piece in the whole why-I-don't-like-H&P mosaic...

Just in case anybody has missed the news so far --- it has just been confirmed that Space Shuttle Columbia broke up at 200,000 feet while coming in for its landing. *sigh* I guess the one good thing is that this was high enough that apparently nobody suspects terrorism...