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Nokia Set-top Boxes to Ship with AmigaDE
AtlasT writes: "Amiga Inc. announced today that Nokia will be shipping their Linux-powered "Mediaterminal" STBs with AmigaDE pre-installed. These news along with the previously announced cooperation with Sharp for their Zaurus PDA make the future of Amiga Inc. look a bit brighter indeed. What we who use computers more often than PDAs and STBs wonder is when we'll see the release of AmigaOS 4 and new machines. If you'd like to have a pre-view of AmigaDE and some applications you can buy the AmigaDE Player for Linux or Windows. I wouldn't mind running games like Payback, a GTA2 clone, on a PDA!" The Nokia Media Terminal was supposed to be launched in the second quarter of 2001, then by the end of 2001, now... who knows. Update: 02/23 21:24 GMT by M : It seems the Mediaterminal is already available but expensive.
With a 566MHz Celeron and that amount of RAM (64Mb), they won't reach the price point which would lead to mass-market uptake. There's also way too many connectors, etc., etc.
Having worked on a set-top box project, the prime goal seems to be cost-reduction on a per-unit basis. Various developments are in the pipeline which will enable PVR/MPEG/DVD/DVB boxes to be made at a cost point where cable and sat providers can afford to subsidise them to a zero cost. This is where the market lies for these things, and the first company to succesfully bring such a box to market will be the one who wins the big share of that market.
We've been hearing about STBs for a long time. Projects like these, with or without Amiga software, are the reason we hear a lot and see nothing.
Amiga have been claiming to have deals with STB manufacturers for a long time now. Aside from press releases and cryptic mails from Fleecy Moss, I've never seen anything solid come from any of these.
PenguiNet: the (shareware) Windows SSH client
Wow... I want one of these!
I'm not sure exactly where its supposed to fit into the market though... it seems to be a jazzed up WebTV, RePlay and Cable TV box, all in one. But if people already own one or two of those allready why would they buy this?
Although saying that I do like the fact that its Linux Based and it does look nicer than your average Set-Top Box (but the fact that you can't put the TV *on* the box may be a minus) I would almost buy one, but I don't want internet on my TV and I've got a Cable box already with Interactive TV.
Very nice... but I don't think its going to sell that well
I believe in the second coming of Amiga! Death to the nonbelievers!
While the Zaurus was originally announced to use AmigaDE, the developer version is using QT/Embedded + the Jeode VM
What do you know I wrote a novel
No.
It is related in name only. the current owners bought the name from Gateway 2 or 3 years ago, promised the Earth to existing Amiga users, and then proceeded to do stuff all except rebadge and try to resell TAO's software.
Oh, and put out lots of announcements of annoncements.
Oh, and tell us how wonderful it is working with Corel (nothing happened), how the Sharp Zaurus (sp?) was shipping with AmigaDE (it doesn't), and how AmigaInc was helping Matroxto design the new Matrox gfx chips (they aren't).
Despite their best efforts to kill off AmigaOS, though, third parties are stilldeveloping it thankfully. However, AmigaInc has nothing to do with thateffort (other than getting huge royalties on the name when AmigaOS4 finally gets released, if ever).
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
A quite correct, however redundant observation since it was pointed out in the story.
AmigaDE runs on Linux.
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
sounds cool ... I used to love my commodore 64 and the tapes to load games .. it seems so long ago .. LOL
Anyone found a price ?
If that's a troll it's a funny troll.
Moderators, look here.
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
The Nokia Media Terminal was supposed to be launched in the second quarter of 2001, then by the end of 2001, now... who knows.
According to Amiga Inc's CEO Bill McEwen, "before summer this year".
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
Simple answer, no. This DEad is more of a .com business trying to sucker developers in so they can sucker OEMs into contract$.
If your more into the Amiga OS, I suggest you take a look at Amithlon, AROS, AmigaXL or MorphOS.
Now if your really into a OS developed by a game porting company (that as the official Amiga badge), your in luck. HyperOS4 should be out this year.
Dammy, awaiting the Faithful Follower's of The Name Cult to come out flaming me. Who needs Scientologist, we have Amiga Inc!
I certainly hope that Amiga can make a comeback in this area. I don't really see them displacing any PC's to be honest. Its been too long, they're way out of the game, and any massive steps forward they have made with the Amiga OS have been dwarfed by the accomplishments of Linux and Mac OS X.
... Amiga really had their sh*t together. I think that a STB from Amiga would be an awesome product if they ever actually produce it, and put in the time/effort to make it as good as the A2000 and A4000 were.
This scenario makes a lot of sense, however. Back in the day when video hobbyists and professionals stood by their Amigas like tenacious terriers, Amigas really WERE on the forefront of things. Massive port expansion, insane A/V capabilities, fully protected memeory
Of course a lot of you will say "where does it fit, why would I want this" well the fact is it's not a majority of people that owns a PVR or a media station box (new buzzword?) should ring a bell.
:) ) that it offered (and we can also add the price/meg of the HDDs that are getting very interresting the more the time go), and HDTV support, I could go on for days. OF COURSE the positive aspect of being an early adopter is that you already have the technology and can actually do something while the others wish.. but if I would have bought it right off I wouldn't have wanted to spend again on another box. The dream machine of course is some kind of tivo, with ethernet access, dual IDE brackets, divx codec in firmware, transcoder from grabbed->divx realtime, DVD+RW, and for most of you "not running windows" :).
I wanted one of these since I saw the replay/tivo hardware, but 2 things stopped me, first generation so probably there would be firmware issues, better revisions not too far ahead, etc.. and the other was the price for the non-upgradability (well without hacking it
This machine is a step in the right direction, and yes I am an avid amiga fan, if you think all the amiga people are lame zealots, you probably never owned or programmed or enjoyed that piece of advanced technology way ahead of it's time. That being said, I don't beleive it would do a comeback on the desktop unless it doesn't repeat all of linux's errors or arguable moves, even then, there would be a great need of marketting power and it doesn't mean it would still take off...(just look at where BE is today...) Nevertheless, amiga was famous for video, for one thing, whether it was for video processing, all it's gazillion video output possibilities, colors or advanced features, when you heard amiga you were thinking "multimedia" before that term became a buzzword on a 486PC that had a cdrom.
I think it's very nice to see amiga striking tangible deals like this and finally see a product, it's not what everybody wanted (i.e. a computer that rights off the bat kills windows mac and linux and is so revolutionnary that it will be the second video toaster), this will probably never happen because of the current infrastructure in companies, and besides, a lot of projects have tried before, and there are already 1000s of people paid just to think of the future and desings, and they aren't all FOC people. The time when one person could really change things in the computer realm is probably over (of course there's always exeptions so I keep an open mind) what you need to target now is "what is going to be the next electronic revolution and how can I bypass all my competitors" Cellular technology is gaining a lot since a few years, so is HDTV or any new video technology... I just hope they do the right moves and not to many errors, I wish them the best.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
http://www.hansa-electronic.com/receiver-ci.htm is selling the Mediterminal 510S for 8295 SEK, this is about 907 EUR, according to oanda.com.
Take a look at the shipping announcement from November 21st last year.
- Paul
They're for sale (sans AmigaDE) in Sweden for ~790 USD. NB, that's the non-subsidized price without a cable TV subsrciption.
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
What malaka modded this down!
I am into the copy and paste.
...this thing is totally Linux/Mozilla based. And the best part -- check out the "developers" pdf, the want people to hack it! I think someone finally figured out what the hacking community is all about :) With a slough of A/V hardware and simple x86 arch this could be fun. A sleek little set-top box that I can hack from the couch :)
Cheers,
Mike
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
Why are we so busy coding a clone of .NET's IL when we could be cloning Intent? Intent truly is language neutral, because its assembler is extremely low-level, and yet nicer than most ASM; indeed, it's almost a mid-level language, if there is such a thing. You have registers, but you have an infinite number of them, and you can give them names instead of referring to r823 and so on. You have looping constructs, but you also can jump around. As on .NET, you can include fully native methods in your code if you wish (and even have the VM automatically pick between a bytecode version and a native version of a function if both exist). Because of the lower-level nature than that of .NET, functional languages can be fully implemented, including tail-calls. Further, while the VM is object-oriented, objects and methods are really little more than mini-programs that run in the current stack space. (It's really tough to explain this; the best I example I can think of is shell scripts, where tasks are done by calling other programs and then parsing their output--only imagine then that this were done lower-level and was the way all programs were built, such that a program's functions were even little programs like this.) And, simlar yet better than .NET, as you run a program, the VM begins writing out a native version for the next run, but continues optomizing it. Think about all of the problems about getting a decent compiler for something like Itanium: now we'd have a VM that could continue to analyze program flow so that a program really could take advantange of an VLIW chip. The compiler doesn't need to do profiling; the JIT does, the upshot being that older programs will run faster and faster as the JIT improves, without a recompile.
.NET->Intent bytecode converter, and you've got yourself a winner, I'd think. However, I vaguely recall that there are patent problems here. Still, at least we could reimplement some of the concepts...
What I'd kind of like to see, to be honest, is for the community to make an Intent VM and then make the C# compiler compile to that instead of IL. Throw in a
Actually, I think this is possible running Linux and an emulator.
I always wondered why the other machines of the Amiga's heyday don't have the same bull-terrier style fan base.
Why am I not hearing rumor after rumor, year after year, about the return of the Atari ST, for example?
I seem to remember some vicious flame wars between these two camps back in the eighties, when Commodore and Atari were not only still in existence but actually relevant to the computer industry. Why are the Amiga folks the only ones still carrying the torch for their long deceased platform?
--saint
You can learn all about the latest Amiga stuff if you're going to be in the Baltimore, MD area at the end of March. On March 29th-31st at the Marriott Hunt Valley Inn there will be the first east coast Amiga show in at least eight years! Go to www.amigaexpo.com and find out about it.
Not in the slightest.
Company after company have bought the "Amiga" trademark and used it as a cheap way to garner publicity for their vapourware products. Perhaps this company actually has some real software behind it but it has absolutely zero to do with the original Amiga.
Oh yeah, they only released AmigaOS 3.9, updates to that, own all Amiga IP and started the development of AmigaOS 4 which will run on current PPC-equipped Amigas. That's what they have to do with the original (i.e. obsolete) Amiga. I suppose you think making a new Amiga OS and letting companies develop new Amigas is a bad thing then. Should they wait for Motorola to release the 68080?
What you said is only true for abnormally high values of "zero".
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
Figures that the x86 wasn't really useable until the 4th revision. I'd say the 3rd revision, but that whole deal with the mathco and what-not, the bugs weren't worked out until 486. Amiga was always before its time. And a little out of my price range, besides who used a computer for video and sound editing? That's what complex dubbing and recording tools were for, not computers. Sheesh, if I only I knew where dreamworks would be 12 years ago, if only ..
It still amazes me that these machines are selling for hundreds of dollars on ebay now, along with the apple II's, and commodores ... but 286's are a dime a dozen. What's this tell me? Absolutely nothing :-) ... just information.
Personally I think the day of MS is over, the day of apple is nearing, and the day of the underdogs is going to rise upon us once again. There will be hundreds on non-standards, software will be written for multiple platforms and operating systems, only to have one more victory to which we will be locked into another companies ideals and software. It's a vicious trend that does not have a foreseeable end to it ... maybe one day ... maybe.
But right now, Go Amiga! :)
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Uh, that's my point. The AC I replied to said that AmigaDE on the Nokia Mediaterminal is "bollocks" because it already runs Linux. I said that AmigaDE runs on Linux. Why are you repeating what I said?
And who are "we"?
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
So I can understand the enthusiasm but let's face it, the Nokia 21xx series phone is dead and we need to get over it. They're not going to make any more, and putting the Nokia logo on every phone out there isn't going to bring back the 21xx series phone we knew and loved. Doubtless assocating with Amiga will bring more brand recognition and let people know that the name of Nokia is still alive, but it just will never be the same phone as we knew and loved. And furthermore... [...continued on page 94]
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
This was first discovered in the comments section of ANN (where this news item is also extensively discussed), after a news item was posted this morning.
NOTHING
Interesting side note: the term "multi-media" is in fact a trade mark, much like "Ping-Pong". It was first used as the name of the presentation program Scala MultiMedia, for the Amiga of course. One of the slickest presentation programs ever designed, in fact it still slaughters Powerpoint even on a 7.14 MHz A500...
They've since migrated to PC, check it out a www.scala.com. Try doing a site search for "Amiga"... They still write about it and somewhat support it (kudos to them!)
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
Hi
;) )</rant>
;) </troll>, ah, and one last thing, the person ;)
;)
michael: FYI the media terminal *was launched by the end of 2001*, I live in Sweden, and they
have been selling for quite a while now.
We also had a demo of the new version, that will be launched in 2 weeks or so, in the FOSDEM, at
the Mozilla developers room, it was really great, it runs Linux(2.4.10+ I think), uses an embedded
version of mozilla as browser(0.9.5+, and will be upgraded automatically to 1.0 when it's released),
have 2 USB, 2 FireWire, 1 PCMCIA, Ethernet, and I don't remember what else, but it was really cool...
(full specs here: http://www.nokia.com/multimedia/tech_specs.html)
I don't have a TV, so I doubt I'll buy one, but you can be sure that it will take very short
time to be hacked, also almost all(if not all) the software it runs it's opensource, and you
can find it at: https://www.ostdev.net/(I think they are
going to release even more software there in the very near future)
A really cool project, that uses opensource software... <rant>ah, sorry, I forgot that this
days slashdot is full of M$ zealots that run WinXP/IE and think that in linux you have to do
"./configure; make; make install" to install anything(have you heard of RedCarpet? that makes
me think.... RedCarpet/Ximian desktop for the MediaTerminal? that could be cool...(not for me,
of course
[End rambling, back on topic ]
I think it's great that somebody is doing something like this, have in mind that this
will compete directly with the next version of the X-Box(HomeStation or whatever it's
going to be called), and I really prefer to see people using a product based on opensource
(so I can hack it if I want) than having to run windows on their TV(<troll>anyone wants to get
a BSOD in the middle of his favorite movie
from nokia(hi Magnus!) that made the presentation, said that they are going to release xDSL modems
for it, that means that this modems will have drivers for Linux, something that in the past was a really
big problem... in resume(I have to go back to work!) this is a "Very good thing(tm)" and
anybody that cares about open source should be happy that it exists..(even if like me, many
of us aren't probably going to ever use it, after all, we don't have a life, right?
\\Uriel
P.S.: I use FreeBSD with Ion instead of any desktop, but it's really funny
to see people complaining that linux is hard to use when even a 3 years
old could install RedHat(in my experience much easier than installing any
WinXX)
P.P.S.: Hmmm. I think in the end it could be useful for me: a Plan9 CPU or file server...
and I could mount the TV screen(if I had one) from my Plan9 termianl
"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
The Nokia Media Terminal was supposed to be launched in the second quarter of 2001, then by the end of 2001, now... who knows.
Actually, it's already available in Sweden, and I guess the rest of Europe, though at a price of 8.495 SEK (~ $1000), I can't imagine they sold many of them...
I too used, and loved, a system now passed away. Zealots still continue to say that it will rise again, but I saw long ago that - "It's dead, Jim."
None of your pathetic hopes are going to bring Windows back, it's dead, dead, do you hear me?
The latest hope (and there's always a new one) is that Microsoft seems to be making a appearance at Amiga's booth at the Embedded Systems Show in San Francisco, CA, March 12 (booth #1602)...
Seriously, the above is true (except in reverse). Amiga will be displaying DE (+ more announcements?) at Microsoft's booth at the above fair, check out Amiga Network News, comment 7 (and horrified replies). MS buying AI? MS embracing (and extending...) Intent/DE? MS actually supporting Amiga? Find out in the next episode of Soap!I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
Hehehehehehe... did anyone read the technical specifications? I wonder how they accomplished to implement IP over MPEG? (heheh) Is this similar to DWDM, but rather splitting a wave length, they use the already split framerate? LOL...just thought i'd toss this out to the void...
I congratulate you on your accurate observation. Furthermore, the Sun does not rotate around the Earth, humans walk upright on their hind legs and you will burn your hand if you pour petrol on it and set it on fire.
However, you were talking about what Amiga Inc. had to do with "the original Amiga".
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
Or are they just itching to get their hands on the AutoConfig(tm) patents that prevented P&P from being efficient? Seems a little late for that, but...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Remember when Sony released a Internet terminal that used BeOS? It certainly cemented BeOS' future.
Jason.
Loki's gone. I wonder where they get games for it now....
Why would Microsoft buy Amiga though, if it's really true (it kind of seems unlikely, given .NET presumably is a head-to-head rival to AmigaDE, they're not going to throw out the CLI now and replace it with DE surely?)
That bit about AutoConfig is interesting too... For those that have never experienced it, Amiga AutoConfig allowed all expansion (Zorro) cards to have drivers in ROMS on the cards. You would just plug in the card, reboot, and the driver would be uploaded and run.
This is all very tied to a single platform (Amiga in this case), but Sun has made a lot of progress in this field with JINI, where the drivers are made in Java, and there's also actual interface programs built in.
The coolest demonstration I ever saw was when some Sun guys hooked up a FireWire HD and a digital camera to the same box. Two little icons appeared in windows (Camera, HD). By double clicking on the Camera icon, a (Java, stored in the camera) interface appears, displaying the pictures in the camera in an explorer like way. Clicking the HD made the contents of it (from the Java program stored in the HD) also appear in a explorer like window.
Then, they just drag a picture from the camera to the HD...
True Plug-and-Play (on any system!) requires an architecture agnostic solution of this kind!
You will need a virtual language, and I guess Tao's version is as good as (or better than!) any...
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
I don't know if it's even still an issue in the way it was. Autoconfig was wonderful, but as you say, the solution was tied to a particular architecture. Worse in my mind, it was tied to a particular platform - you couldn't use it for MINIX or AmigaUnix. To be honest, a Java solution or something similar only hides the fact that the solution is platform specific - a PC could theoretically be designed to work with Amiga autoconfig by, amongst other things, incorporating UAE into whatever OS you want to run, but you wouldn't want to.
In practice, I wonder how possible it is to create a framework for platform independent device drivers? And if the only way is to produce an intermediate platform, as in the Java solution, would it be best to optimise that platform given its role as a go-between rather than an OS in its own right?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
What they mean with "Ip over MPEG" is nothing else than IP over DVB - Digital Video Broadcast. DVB is the digital television standard in Europe, and NOKIA is a major player in it, as is Fujitsu-Siemens and others. There exist three DVB transmission styles:
and a similare audio-standard, named DAB - Digital Audio Boradcasting. DAB will replace the FM tuners over the years, and DVB will replace the conventional TV broadcastings.
Still we do not know what "IP over MPEG" is, right ? Well, DVB transmissions consist of a subset of MPEG2. I think this is what they meant with this. I have such a DVB-Card in one of my PCI slots. Together with my USB Host-To-Host bridge, my D-Link NIC this is the third (never asked for, since I use DVB for Television only) network card I have in my system. The DVB standard not only transmits audio/video but also (since we are talking digital, you guessed it...;-)) generic information, as in this case, TCP/IP packets. With this it is possible to use a sattelite (with the SAT version) as network-downstream. This still would require the upstream to go through a conventional method, however. I guess this will change in the next ten years, and DVB will become a standard way to access the Internet...
What is especially interesting are the things going on "behind the scenes", especially from an Open Source point of view:
MHP is a standard, that will incooperate DVB but make it a real standard. At the moment each broadcaster tries to enforce its own modifications and incompatibilities on the users (Germanies largest broadcaster did so, some French pay-channel did, etc.), just as we know similare practices from M$.
LinuxTV.Org also wrote and/or hosts the important (GPL'ed) software for the DVB cards on Linux, both the v4l compatible TV drivers as well as the IP over MPEG ;-) driver. In addition they host a very cool Linux project, named VDR, which makes a harddisk-video recorder out of any linux compatible PC with one ore more DVB card(s).
BTW: see also DirectFB stuff on Freshmeat and for Gods sake, have a look at this amazing GTK+ desktop with full aplpha blending or the "rootless X Server"(1) (2) or "ten MPEG Videos playing at once, blended, without framedrops". You will find their GTK+ patches here and the DVB stuff here
All in all this is perfect for embedded systems and desktop boxes as well as it will be for full blown deksktops. (Linux desktop without X, digital video and audio broadcast based on free and open standards etc.)
Hello?? Fred?! Is this you?
Well, it is all very similare, these days.
.NET in a small) but will allow to be a real language (ARexx was that also) and molecular glue.
AmigaDE was proposed as a system using the TAO elate/intent technology. This tech is not really a VM but gets more to the core. It is the complete abstraction of a CPU into software. It is a VP (virtual processor).
So you can code ASM for it (and a very nice version of it, with things available, that you couzld not have with real ASM).
Amiga Inc. wanted to enrich and enhance the elate system by creating the "Amiverse", a virtual space (like in Universe) where software modules would fly around like atoms and molecules, creating much larger molecules as soon the system requests a special application.
In fact, one would have an MP3 module, a HTML object etc, which could be reused and creat applications on the fly. At least this is how I understood this.
Knowing the Amige very well I know of one of its (and there were many, believe me, I still use my Amiga daily, Linux can't bring so much joy - and I am a developer) major strengths: IPC scripting. One had a bitmap-paint program. This program exported all of its functionalities (and with major applications these were usually about 100 to 500 commands) to the Amiga IPC scripting language (a rexx derivate) and suddenly you could use all of the bitmap painters functions in your scripting language.
Well, most applications had such an "ARexx port" (our export and address host).
Amiga was/is amazing.
Now the new AmigaDE will have a very new language, called SHEEP and developed by a really cool language designer from the Netherlands "Wouter van Oortmersen"). This language not only will kepp the good old fashion of Application IPC macroing/scripting (Windows has a different technique but with similare efforts, they name it WSH, which is a bit like
This is all my personal interpretation.
For more info, check ouzt the AmigaWorld News (or however they call it) at www.amiga.com.
It is pretty interesting.
Hello?? Fred?! Is this you?
This article is beginning to look like something I'd see on memepool.
Frigidaire doesn't make computers either. That's hardly a flaw in my argument. Besides, if M$ is the role model for Amiga Inc., that's hardly very encouraging. Computer companies that don't make their own computers are vulnerable to all sorts of things, like having M$ keep them off systems, manufacturers making substandard consumer junk, inability to fix critical hardware flaws... etc. Do you really think that if they have a shot, M$ won't actively squash them? Chances are good Be would still be here, but for that. Be had as many as 5 deals going, to be dual loaded on big name systems. If just 1 of those had panned out...
Maybe for you, this vision will be good enough, but for me it's hardly adequate even today. I like to do things that most people would never do, unless it could be bought on a shelf at Walmart, and was promised to configure itself. If it goes your way, I won't be able to have 4 nics in my box, like I do now, there will be no slots at all. No building my own. And with no building my own, there will also be no learning how it all works, short of a masters degree in computer engineering. There are so many good reasons for there to be one more kind of computer, several kinds, and so few reasons to let the industry just explore one approach. Anti-trust issues, lack of creativity, lack of consumer choice, tech security problems on a global scale. Any idea how your general run of the mill script kiddy virus will fare in a world where all systems can run the same code? Now, what if it isn't a script kiddy, but someone with talent? A biosphere where all organisms are genetically identical is a disaster waiting for the right pathogen. Your vision puts us on track for the first part, all we have to do is wait.
This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future. - Adolph Hitler 1935
This quotation, often seen without any date or citation at all, suffers from several credibility problems, the most significant of which is that the date given (*in alternate versions, the words "This year..." are replaced by "1935...") has no correlation with any legislative effort by the Nazis for gun registration, nor would there have been a need for the Nazis to pass such a law, since gun registration laws passed by the Weimar government (in part to address street violence between Nazis and Communists!) were already in effect.
More: hitler gun control
I wonder if a reactionary right-wing puke like yourself will allow the truth to get in the way of your use of this bogus pro-gun quote. I doubt it. With your type, the ends always justify the means.
Sig goes here
"btw. zaurus is not out yet."
Oh really? That'll be why it has been shipping to developers (and anyone can get one - just tell them you are as developer and they'll happily sell you one) for months, right? Of course, despite AmigaInc's big press releases making claims to the contrary, Zaurus, even in developer form, does NOT have any part of AmigaDE. (It would need the DE in order to run the so-called "content" AInc claimed it was developing and supplying to Sharp for shipment with the Zaurus).
similarly, the rest of your "facts" are equally flawed, oh anonymous eejit.
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
You are right. And I did not see the AmigaDE/TAO system running. But the industry did. And many many of them want TAO. TAO is quite a hotty. It seems to be what Java tried and would not do. Java is too much of a bloat.(IMHO)
See, having a VP means that you can dig down to the core. My personal opinion is, that IT tech is years behind, and each year they go ahead (faster CPU, more memory) they step a year back. The art of computing has always been fetching a lot of functionality into small devices. And while this still is valid on the hardware side, it is not anymore on the software side. One of the most incredible things with the original AmigaOS was that you could do incredible stuff with just a 8MHz CPU and 512KB of RAM. I have an Amiga4000 with SCSI, MC68060@50MHz, 83MB RAM, 20GB HDD CPU and a fgx card and an Athlon1.2GHz, SCSI, 512MB RAM, dualboot (Windows,Linux) GeForce2 and whatever....Guess where I do my core development on ? Right, on the Amiga. And why ? Because it saves me from bloat. It forces me to think about optimization at all (not only for speed and response), it tells me how to do things neat and tight. This is what is needed in the computer business: Small, fast and affordable devices. Having a VP means to me "Nothing better than ASM..."
Hello?? Fred?! Is this you?
ASM is fun: You got the machine "at your fingertips".
ASM is fun: It is like trying to get that dirt out of the head of your vacuum-cleaner by poking around with your fingers.
You write:
What about "Modules" written in ASM ? What about ASM Modules in OOP ?....
Well, do not forget, this is a virtual processor. That means, this ASM is as ideal as its inventors could dream it. It gives you much more than convnetional ASM. I did not use it myself. But I am pretty sure it has its reasons of existance. And sooner or later, whatever language you choose, whatever technique you prefer: It gets translated into machine-code. With ASM you're a little closer. In any case, the control is upon you. Completely. And you can optimize yourself.
Anyway, this is about an ideal CPU with an ideal language. If you do not want to use VP ASM you use VP C or whatever. You can still write your critical stuff in ASM, inlined.
It's a matter of taste, of skills, of the CPU you code for and much more. The classic AmigaOS was coded in many parts in ASM. That is where it got (also) its responsieveness from, scientists were actually using it in realtime environments, but it was not an RTOS.
Anyway, this gets off-topic. Amiga kicked (and still does) butt ! Of course, this is something new, we talk about and has nothing to do with the original Amiga anymore. It is completely new and different. And I think they will fail because they did not yet show a real product and have the worst marketing I have ever seen.
Hello?? Fred?! Is this you?
You're missing the entire point of what assembly is used for. Generally speaking, there is nothing inherently faster about using assembly over other higher level languages. In fact, C and C++ compilers will usually beat the pants off of any but the most experienced assembly programmers.
What assembly is good for is using machine-specific primitives that aren't accessible via the high level language you are using. For example, currently, if you want to make use of the SIMD extensions of most processors, you'll have to write assembly, because the compilers just aren't smart enough to figure out how to parallelize your code. (This is changing, though. Intel has already released a C++ compiler which seems to be a good start at this).
Programming platform independent assembly is a waste of time. Any competent VM has an interface that lets you call into native code - thus letting you write any platform specific assembly you might desire.
God bless,
-Toby
Well...I use it myself. So, no, I am not. But I see your point. On the other hand you do not see the point I try to defend. I have basically two issues with your point of view:
1
You "idealize" the available compilers.
"Usually", yes, but noone uses ASM for "usual" tasks.
What about:
2
Fact is, that we have a new, virtual computer, virtual hardware, etc. AmigaDE is not being realized as a V-Machine, but as V-Hardware. That is a big difference ! A VM might emulate the ideal environment for development and runtime. A VH emulates the ideal hardware. Now, within this zone, why do you think Assembly won't be a good thing to have ? I see no difference as how 'inline' assembly, used in higher-level languages to speed up execution is suddenly not a need anymore as soon the CPU is not being realized within hardware but software.
But this is not platform independant assembly. Why would they do it ? This is assembly tied to the TAO platform, which in itself tries to realize a computer done fully in software. Programming for this platform will sometimes be very low level. It is the most mobile computer at all, since you can even share it among mobile computers of different architecture. And we find a very different 'hosting' environment here. AmigaDE is supposed to run on cell-phones (weak CPU, less memory), Handhelds, Desktops, later servers etc. This is the actual goal. They want a computer, that is a full abstract, a computer, that fits onto a Disk you keep in your pocket or whatever. It would be fully scalable and whether you find yourself slipping in your "computer on a disk" into a terminal at the airport or on your desktop at home, it will sense the underlying hardware and scale appropriately. (This has nothing to do with VP ASM but I wanted to mention'what the system actually is we are talking about).
Compilers do create overhead or miss a need here and there, which gets optimized by hand later, if needed. So, why would a C compiler on a virtual CPU not create overhead ?
However, I am not a TAO programmer. I don't know much about it and most of my speculations are just that: speculations. :-) But I insist on the very fact, that the TAO/AmigaDE system is not a VM. It is much more. It is a Virtual Computer. Taking care of this, ASM (and we are talking of an ASM implementation here, developers start praising as soon it is being mentioned) might be looked upon a different light.
Hello?? Fred?! Is this you?