Slashdot Mirror

Oh man! You beat everyone to it. Well, here is a link anyway.

http://www.iconbar.com/desktop/screenshots.html

I have no answers. I use xterms with vim these days.

but my favourite editors ever were CygnusEd on Amiga, and StrongEd on Acorn RiscOS.

vim works for me, because although it doesn't have the fancy features of an IDE, it does allow me to work on any machine anywhere.

But I do particularly miss StrongEd. That had some great features I've not seen anywhere else. Wonderful for editing lists as it had a feature that allowed you to select a block of text, then move the cursor into the middle of a line. Whatever you inserted or deleted was replicated on every line selected.

Archival. Once it's archived you can forget about it. For example, your local library doesn't convert all that old microfilm just because it can. It would only do it to put it onto a more stable storage medium.

At least until the technology changes so much that you can no longer buy anything that will read it, cf. the BBC's Doomsday project:

http://www.iconbar.com/forums/viewthread.php?newsid=937

The question isn't should it, but why isn't it already?

Castle Technology the owners of RiscOS are the company that were caught violating the GPL by including Linux Kernel source in....wait for it.....RiscOS!

http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/2/7/55
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/07/ 2225224&tid=117&tid=106
http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact556.html
http://www.iconbar.com/Castle_break_GPL/news295.ht ml

How are they still selling this without having released the source?
Is this a case that proves that the GPL really has no teeth?

The articles were light (to the point of vacuum) on details about the approach proposed by the company.

From the article: "The system's architecture makes it flexible enough to accommodate evolving policy change," including the importance of "providing public access while protecting privacy and sensitive information." From the sound of that I'm betting its some wonky and ridiculous XML format infected with a sadly pathetic little DRM imp.
The fact is that I can read anything if I have a copy of the software that originally viewed/created it and the machine (or an emulation of the machine) on which the software ran. Adding one more format to the mix just means we have to emulate one more machine and keep track of one more piece of software and all the doubtlessly expensive effort which will be spent in conversion is wasted.

It's great to see the National Archives working on this but I would rather see the tax money farmed out in challenge grants to organizations like the
Long Now that have a chance in Hell of delivering something useful than pouring money into yet another defense company to ensure that whatever technology we use to store records can be properly sanitized and locked away according to the whims of government and "changing policy."
The biggest issue facing us right now is that most of the music, words and images created by our civilization are illegal to preserve. Ridiculous copyright extensions have ensured that the huge mass of data for which no rights owner can be found will simply rot instead of being digitized and stored.

A software emulator can ensure that historic file formats are readable in the future, but Big Media would rather squeeze our history to death before it letting go of the rights.

This is like 1000 fires at the Library in Alexandria. Future generations will curse us for every scrap of information we allow to rot while we squabble.

This was mentioned at the show, and IIRC it is to provide the user with the choice, afterall, if you are upgrading from an old machine you may only have PS/2 devices. -- http://www.iconbar.com/news/wakefield2005/

I scanned in the brochure that I was given at the show which details specs/prices etc...

http://www.iconbar.com/news/a9home/

There are loads of pictures and videos of the A9home - including comparisons to a 50 pence coin and a Mac Mini - on The Iconbar's show report:

http://www.iconbar.com/news/wakefield2005/report/

The Domesday project didn't use a stock laserdisc player. It used a SCSI laserdisc player hooked up to a modified BBC microcomputer. Once you've built this esoteric bit of of hardware, you'll still have to confront the disturbing possibility of bit rot-- laserdiscs are none too durable.

The only sure way to archive data is to keep it on a network-attached device - and migrate it regularly with changes in technology. No removable media is foolproof as hardware can break down at a time when it can't be repaired or replaced. Ask anyone with a Betamax video collection or, more relevantly, the BBC, who had great trouble reading their not-very-old Domesday archive on laserdisc. BTW, that's not a really small computer in the photo, it's a really big CD!

http://www.microdigital.co.uk/alpha.htm also reviewed here: http://www.iconbar.com/comments/view.php?id=353&ty pe=n

> But can you still buy it?

http://www.riscos.com/index1.htm
http://www.riscos.com/risc_os_4/order.pdf

> Or even get hardware to run it on?

http://www.atomwide.co.uk/products/riscpc.htm
http://www.riscstation.co.uk/html/products.html

... not to mention the recently released Microdigital Omega [picture] (at RISC OS 2000), a truly excellent machine. The death of Acorn was not the death of RISC OS, no sireee.

There's even a Slashdot style site for RISC OS at http://www.iconbar.com/

Stuii!