At The Register we are of the belief that one chip company is just as mad, bad and ugly as any other. Two of them are paranoid and we are very concerned about that. We can recommend psychotherapists for both AMD and Intel execs. No sooner do we find an Intel document telling the 65,000 staff how to deal with UK journalists and publish it, than AMD tries to kick us too. How disappointing. Do they need Rolfing? Not all chip companies are paranoid. In fact, apart from AMD and Intel, none are. Cyrix-NatSemi is groovy, Rise chips are fabbed by ST Microelectronics, a cool French firm, and IDT/Centaur is almost optimistic. IBM Micro is sane, Samsung is sensible, and the rest, apart from AMD and Intel even have common sense. Because we dared to say the AMD K7 was late (it's true), we felt like a virtual Kosovo, bombarded by emails, one saying we should be sued. We're now thinking we should love Intel after the hate mail (mail rage?) we've had from AMD and its fellow travellers. As Pat "Kicking" Gelsinger said to us in Palm Springs in February, AMD has precious few fabs. We almost love Intel compared to the Great Satan of Taperecorders (AMD) after today... ®