The Microsoft rumour drinking game

[marypcbuk]

There's a new Microsoft rumour. How should you respond? Groan, bury your head in the sand, stay off Twitter for the duration? Wade in with common sense and wear yourself out trying to own the #rumourcontrol hashtag? As either approach can lead to you wanting to drink yourself into oblivion, here's a handy Microsoft rumour drinking game. If you want, you can hum along with my Apple rumour ditty.

Read the rumour. Take a drink if:

1 The rumour originates on a foreign language site in a language you (and most tech journalists) can't read without a translation

2 The rumour is substantiated by
- a marketing person
- an employee of a Microsoft overseas subsidiary who has never been to Redmond
- an ex-Microsoft employee (take another slug if they're from a different division)
- a third-party hardware or software company
- unnamed 'sources close to the project'

Empty your glass if:

3 The rumour has done the rounds before and been given a carefully worded denial or a 'no further comment' in the past

4 It's a new rumour that gets a carefully worded denial or a 'no further comment' as soon as Redmond wakes up, drinks its coffee and stops laughing and weeping at the same time

Finish the bottle if:
5 It's a really, really, terrible, terminally, crippling stupid idea for Microsoft to do this

6 There's a perfectly rational alternative explanation for the information behind the rumour that we already know about, that could easily be misunderstood as justifying the rumour and that isn't nearly as interesting/scandalous/much fun