Amiga Demonstration Helps Win Against Patent Troll

Amigan writes "Over on Groklaw, PJ is reporting that an actual demonstration of the Amiga OS (circa 1988) on an Amiga A1000 may have been the turning point in the lawsuit of IP Innovation v. Red Hat/Novell."

Comments

MORE

[Anonymous Coward]

More prior art plskthx.

Software Patents need to be abolished.

Re:MORE

[Fluffeh]

More prior art plskthx.

But that's the problem in itself right there. Yes, chances are that there is little "new" being done in software for the most part, and that someone has done [patent idea] before, but just imagine trying to find just the right bit of software, or just the right platform to show it's been done before.

The patent office couldn't instigate a "Prove no-one has done it before" process as that would be just ludicrous, but at the same time, having the right people on hand to show "just exactly where it HAS been done before" may not be 1) cheap, 2) practical and 3) possible.

There simply isn't an easy solution to this. If you abolish software patents, it makes it very difficult for companies to realistically spend millions on development of new concepts and ideas when someone can then just take the ground breaking UI or process etc. If you don't abolish patents, you still end up with the farcical joke that we have now.

Here, it really is a lose - lose scenario. Except if you are a patent lawyer.

Re:MORE

[RichardDeVries]

Those millions are spent on implementations, not on 'concepts and ideas'.

Re:MORE

[digitalunity]

Best scenario that I can think of is make the USPTO website really a lot easier to use. I think they do a good job considering the volume of crap they have to deal with, but it could be easier.

Second, allow anyone to submit comments regarding any prior art relevant to the claims of any patent application. So if someone posts an application with claims X, Y and Z and it's a rehash of an old idea, someone can just post a comment "Yo examiner, this was done in FVWM in 1995. Reject this shit."

And voila, it is rejected. That would be a perfect world(excluding all other worlds that would be better but are political suicide).

Re:MORE

[Fluffeh]

So if someone posts an application with claims X, Y and Z and it's a rehash of an old idea, someone can just post a comment "Yo examiner, this was done in FVWM in 1995. Reject this shit."

But do you sit there sifting through applications? I don't. I have better things to do with my free time. I think just about everyone else would too. Perhaps a different twist on this is that a patent can be quickly and easily invalidated if someone shows prior art after it has been granted. However, in that case, would it actually then be transferred to the people that whose work was used to throw it out?

Re:MORE

[Kjella]

There simply isn't an easy solution to this. If you abolish software patents, it makes it very difficult for companies to realistically spend millions on development of new concepts and ideas when someone can then just take the ground breaking UI or process etc.

How about the fact that one company will be first to market and develop continously improving iterations staying ahead of the competition? To take for example graphics card as an example, the designs are often started 3-4 years in advance. Let's say they start now with a released card and probably spend the first year reverse engineering it, whatever they learn might be out in 2015. And then they'll be five years behind copying the 2015 models. You have to weigh that against the impact of granting a monopoly for 20 years - why should they continue to invent when they have an essential patent and can basically price gouge the market any way they want? It's really important to understand that software patents will stifle innovation too, and they're only worth it if the good outweigh the bad.

Re:MORE

[Dumnezeu]

It is possible to have the right people looking for prior art. Ask the individuals/companies that request software patents to pay a hefty research tax. They'll either stop requesting stupid patents and they'll pay only for the real deal. Prior art problem solved. Now we need to solve the problem of the concept of software patents.

Re:MORE

[Smauler]

If you abolish software patents, it makes it very difficult for companies to realistically spend millions on development of new concepts and ideas when someone can then just take the ground breaking UI or process etc.

Sorry... which new concepts and ideas companies have spent millions on would you be referring to? Name one useful software patent that is not obvious... Please.....

Re:MORE

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly.
No company spends millions of dollars researching the idea of using multiple fingers on a touchpad. They spend millions implementing the interface to be touch friendly.

I could throw reverse engineer an ipad, throw together a few chips and make one. But you wont get that slick look and feel that Apple has spent so long perfecting.

Not only that but even if my device looked nearly identicle to the ipad i wouldnt be violating a patent. But as soon as i implement, in software the ability to recognise "Gestures" it becomes an infringement. Its stupid. Its stifling innovation. I think their should be an abolishment of software patents. Just get rid of them. Keep copyright.

Re:MORE

[Son of Byrne]

If you abolish software patents, it makes it very difficult for companies to realistically spend millions on development of new concepts and ideas when someone can then just take the ground breaking UI or process etc.

I've a newsflash for you: these aren't inventions and so they don't need patent protection. I don't believe this nonsense about companies spending millions on new concepts and ideas (for UI's or processes). I just don't.

Designing a new UI may be expensive, but it is simply sunk costs. If I develop a groundbreaking process for picking cotton, but I don't actually translate that process into a physical device, then it is simply an idea and nothing more.

I have lots and lots of "ideas". Sometimes, I see those ideas manifested physically by someone who has the wherewithal to make it happen. They get the benefit. Not me. I don't care if I had the idea first.

This notion that we need to protect intellectual property is ridiculous and is doing wonders for stifling innovation. I plan to go right on thinking whatever I want to think and dreaming about new ideas. I don't care if that means I'm infringing on some companies "intellectual property" and I'll be damned if any amount of legislation will ever change my mind.

Re:MORE

[Anonymous Coward]

The only useful technology I can think of are compression algorithms. True, no money is spent researching them, usually some professor/math degree/CSt gets a sparkle while eating Cheetos in his mom's basement and that's it. However, they are about the only thing I think deserves patents in the field of computing. Everything else is just a rehash of ideas first implemented in the 1960s.

The problem is that monopolist companies use the patent to make interoperability impossible. If you use a patented compression algorithm to encode part of the data in your file, no one can make interoperable implementations without paying for the patent.

The patented technology isn't actually necessary, you could use another slightly worse patent-free algorithm as easily, to achieve the same end result, so the monopoly earned is not legitimate. Most people don't want your specific compression, they could do with any of the free ones, they just want to watch Youtube videos.

Re:MORE

[Son of Byrne]

focus less on "who gets the patent". focus more on creating.

Re:MORE

[symbolset]

(Ecclesiastes 1:9-14 NIV) What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. {10} Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. {11} There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.

citation

/I'm not prone to cite bible verse, but there you go. All your software patents are invalid. It sez so in the Good Book. The verse itself is an uncited theft of the work of Sophocles c. 429 BCE - himself a synthesist who didn't cite the vast realms of prior art from which he distilled his digests of the written and performed arts into their purest forms. Sophocles was a hack, but we don't have records of the prior art he stole, or today he'd be a pirate. His synthesis though? Timeless art in and of itself. It's good thing for us ancient Greece didn't have DMCA, DRM, and eternal copyright or he'd be Sophowho? To most he already is.

If only ancient Greece, or modern Phoenix, had a sort of distributed Library of Alexandria where one works could not be forgotten - where the wisdom of our fathers and their fathers (and their foolishness too) might be preserved and so remain available to our children and their children. Something like a Google for books. Alas, copyright prevents it and copyright is now eternal in every practical sense. So it is that each new generation, constrained by previously patented and copyrighted art has diminishing realms of imagination to work with - until the lawyers finally abolish imagination altogether and we reach the asymptote where creation ends. So then we lay upon our children the duty to rethink the thoughts we've had, to re-invent our inventions, and to do so in peril of the trolls who lay claim to a third degree ownership of any potential perceived reference to characters or invented places in a brief manuscript published in 100 copies only, 200 years before - and upon their children we lay a logarithmically greater burden.

As patents are the death of invention, copyrights are the death of art. A pity our children must climb these mountains we've built for them without the benefit of a culture, but culture itself is deprecated in this regime in preference to whatever mindless new drivel can escape lawsuits long enough to become popular - and then is itself extinguished in a flurry of lawyers and cocaine.

We might have stood on the shoulders of giants, but now we huddle in fear of lawyers.

Re:MORE

[Man On Pink Corner]

If you abolish software patents, it makes it very difficult for companies to realistically spend millions on development of new concepts and ideas when someone can then just take the ground breaking UI or process etc

And yet almost all of the software on your PC was written by people who didn't either rely on patent protection for their ideas, or pay others for the use of theirs.

Re:MORE

[Son of Byrne]

Is that you Reverend Bradbury?

Re:MORE

[GigaplexNZ]

But do you sit there sifting through applications? I don't.

And that must mean that no-one does. Companies do look at patent applications of their competitors and should be given the opportunity to say "hey, I've already done that" before the patent is approved, not being forced to fight it during an expensive lawsuit later on.

Re:MORE

[timewasting]

mostly right, except there are design patents which cover the "looked nearly identical"

Re:MORE

[Low Ranked Craig]

I'm not sure about that. The company I used to work for spent about as much money on customer research and contextual design as it did on development.

Re:MORE

[Man On Pink Corner]

However, they are about the only thing I think deserves patents in the field of computing. Everything else is just a rehash of ideas first implemented in the 1960s.

And compression algorithms are different from pure mathematics, how...?

Re:MORE

[babyrat]

"This whole Linux thing won't work because I have better things to do with my free time than program a computer." **

**quote taken from slashdot comment in 1994***

***actually a hypothetical quote taken in 1994 if slashdot had existed in 1994

Re:MORE

[Anonymous Coward]

The person who wrote the linked article on Groklaw should be abolished. I have never seen a more poorly written, inarticulate piece in my entire life and that includes the writings of Jeff K.

Re:MORE

[shaitand]

"But do you sit there sifting through applications? I don't. I have better things to do with my free time. I think just about everyone else would too."

Do you sit there correcting spelling and grammar errors in random wikipedia articles? I don't. I have better things to do with my free time. I think just about every else would too.

Of course I, and likely you, would be wrong. People do exactly this. All you need is some kind of recognition or reward system and people will do it. This carries extra kudos. If you are the highest scoring prior art finder companies can potentially save a lot of money by having you examine claims for prior art BEFORE they submit them.

"However, in that case, would it actually then be transferred to the people that whose work was used to throw it out?"

No unlike copyrights you don't get patent by default upon creation. You only get it in exchange for disclosing the exact details of how your invention works.

"Perhaps a different twist on this is that a patent can be quickly and easily invalidated if someone shows prior art after it has been granted."

I'm with you here. The USPTO should revoke patents. They should have user submitted prior art and a slashdot like moderation system so they can query highly rated prior art in addition to currently examined patents.

Re:MORE

[naasking]

There simply isn't an easy solution to this. If you abolish software patents, it makes it very difficult for companies to realistically spend millions on development of new concepts and ideas when someone can then just take the ground breaking UI or process etc. If you don't abolish patents, you still end up with the farcical joke that we have now.

Without patents on physical goods, innovators stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars, at least. This already accounts for at least 2 orders of magnitude difference between software and physical goods, and that's assuming your figures for software. Now consider the cost of reproduction for software vs physical goods, the former being near zero, and the latter being nowhere near zero given the requirement for raw materials.

I'm sorry, but software and physical goods are not even close to comparable, and thus should not be granted the same protections. First to market and copyright protection are the only advantages you need in the software marketplace.

Re:MORE

[wvmarle]

And on top of that the patent system (used to) allow technical different implementations to the same result.

E.g. fans: the result is blowing air. Still there will be many different ways to (mechanically) blow air, each of which are patentable and rightfully so.

It is not the idea of blowing air that is patentable, how interesting it may be in itself, it is the implementation on how to do it that is patentable.

Re:MORE

[shaitand]

"If you abolish software patents, it makes it very difficult for companies to realistically spend millions on development of new concepts and ideas when someone can then just take the ground breaking UI or process etc."

This is complete FUD. Software patents only keep the little guy out of the game as it is. The big guys all rip one anothers patents off because their competition is violating enough of their own patents that they don't want to face the fallout of a patent war.

Re:MORE

[shaitand]

Which is an illustration of the IP problem. A design is a textbook case of something which clearly belongs to copyright protection, not patent.

Re:MORE

[wvmarle]

For a start there is such thing as "copyright" that covers software nicely.

Secondly there is something called a "design patent" which allows you to protect a specific design, e.g. of a machine, or of a UI. Some years ago here on /. (sorry too lazy to search) there was mentioned that Apple was granted a patent on the waste basket of OS-X. That was a design patent. Other vendors may still implement waste baskets, but they are not allowed to look just like Apple's.

Re:MORE

[symbolset]

No.

Re:MORE

[Mindcontrolled]

Proving prior art by demonstration can indeed be hard and expensive, but it is often used as a powerful tool. I am working as patent engineer in Europe, and I am currently in the process of tracking down a certain model of oldtimer to show a technical feature which is clearly prior art in an ongoing patent case, but which has for some reason never been documented in any written piece I could get my hands on. Not exactly an easy task, indeed, but sometimes it is the best way. It is a purely mechanical feature, though, and I share your sentiment regarding software patents.

Usual disclaimer, IANAL and this is no legal advice.

Re:MORE

[Mindcontrolled]

The comment system is a nice idea, but you have to avoid spam that swamps the examiner completely. If you look at patent discussions on /., you'll find about 50 cries of "prior art! prior art!" in the comments, most of them from people who just read the abstract and not TF claims, and pointing to stuff that mostly is not even remotely prior art to the subject-matter at issue. If you submit that to the PTO, they would probably just lock up due to DDOS... :P

Re:MORE

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to not understand what patents are, since you think they have something to do with ideas; and what sunks costs are, because you seem to think that second paragraph made sense.

Re:MORE

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the US has software patents, here we don't allow the patenting of mathmatics and it works fine.

Re:MORE

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the name, design patents aren't actually patents.

Re:MORE

[kaiser423]

Huh?

The level of innovation in software moves so fast precisely because it doesn't take millions to develop new concepts. Almost any software innovation, you can bang out a basic demo or proof of concept over the weekend and tweak it some for show and comment next week. We're talking investments in the single or double digit thousands to show off a sweet new software innovation. It might cost less than the CEO's desk cost to prove out and "invent" the innovation.

Re:MORE

[AndGodSed]

Idea: Hows about patents have an expiry date of a few years. That way the big guns can make their money from the patent for 5 or so years and then the rest can actually USE the tech to benefit society.

Re:MORE

[mr_matticus]

Your comment is an textbook case of the IP problem--ignorance of the issues that is popularly, and blindly, reinforced as a worthwhile statement.

A copyright cannot be used to protect a useful article. A patent cannot be used to protect nonfunctional aspects of an object. A trademark has limited application and cannot protect objects clearly marked as unrelated. Thus, a design patent (which is usually known as an "industrial design" in most countries and is not a patent in the ordinary sense, having different application procedures, a shorter term, and a narrower scope of protection) bridges any gap that might arise, providing protection for the nonfunctional, distinctive design of a useful object, as well as provides an alternative to seeking independent protection of individual aspects of a creation.

There is certainly some overlap with copyright, but industrial design is not copyrightable unless its form can be separated from its medium--you can't copyright a car. You can copyright photographs, drawings, paintings, sculptures, songs, and stories of the car, but the car itself needs an industrial design registration to protect. In the US, that's called a design patent.

An industrial design registration simultaneously protects creative enterprise, promotes distinctiveness of competing products, and rewards successful integration of art and science. There is little legitimate reason to be upset about having to come up with an original design, given that it is difficult to infringe accidentally.

(And FYI, it's 'something that clearly', not 'something which'.)

Re:MORE

[Dhalka226]

Second, allow anyone to submit comments regarding any prior art relevant to the claims of any patent application. So if someone posts an application with claims X, Y and Z and it's a rehash of an old idea, someone can just post a comment "Yo examiner, this was done in FVWM in 1995. Reject this shit."

I don't know if this would actually be useful. Just reading the comments on Slashdot, for example, in just about any patent case makes you want to jam something sharp into all of the commenter's throats. Half of them don't even read beyond the abstract, which is the only damn part of a patent application that has no meaning whatsoever. Other think that anything that is vaguely similar even through 15 layers of abstraction ("well really all a computer does is manipulate bits and we've done that since computing existed!") is prior art, and have no problems whatsoever posting this opinion as gospel and then remaking on how stupid patent examiners are to have missed it.

If that sort of trend were to continue on the USPTO website--and I have no reason to believe it wouldn't--the examiners would quickly be overwhelmed with ultimately bogus leads that they had to track down. You'd occasionally get some that they actually did use to invalidate a patent, but it would be the vast minority of comments. More information can be good, but only as good as that information is.

All of that, by the way, ignores the possibility of information being simply bogus instead of accurate but not prior art. There will be all sorts of people with agendas -- competitors, the anti-patent crowd, etc.

Re:MORE

[jbengt]

Design patents are not the same as utility patents. You may not want design patents to be covered under copyright law, where they would last for a century or so. Design patents cover things that provide distinctive design but are not necessary to the utility of the device. Such designs might not be copyrightable but can still get design patents. They are shorter in duration, in the US lasting only 14 years compared to 20 years for utility patents, 90 years for corporate copyright, and life plus 70 years for personal copyrights.

Re:MORE

[aix tom]

It could work with a higher "barrier" for "comments".

The "online petition" that can be made to the German Bundestag or the European Parliament might be an example. It takes maybe 15-20 minutes to draft a petition with all the required information. (When it gets accepted it is then only a matter of seconds to co-sign it, though).

Or the update process for the IMdB, to actually add a new movie. That is also possible, but nobody is really swamping them because there is a minimum of required information that has to be submitted with verifiable sources.

I'm pretty sure, once a process is in place to actually submit prior art there will be a lot of community portals sprinning up where people can discuss patents, submit information, verify information, etc... so that when all the required information is collected some admin/moderator/etc... can then submit it.

Re:MORE

[Mindcontrolled]

We have an online petition system in Germany? God, I am behind the times... Gotta check that out. Anyway, you are right, of course - if you put up well-designed minimum requirements, this could work indeed. Such a barrier is crucial, however.

Re:MORE

[Anonymous Coward]

There simply isn't an easy solution to this. If you abolish software patents, it makes it very difficult for companies to realistically spend millions on development of new concepts and ideas when someone can then just take the ground breaking UI or process etc.

But that's not the way it works. In real life, the companies who develop the concepts and ideas rarely see a dime from it. Companies like Apple and Microsoft just come along later with tons of money, an army of lawyers, and lots of bad patents and just wrest control away from the original inventors.

Sorry, but as someone who has created quite a few new algorithms and methods myself, I'd rather have no patents than the current system.

Re:MORE

[Ash-Fox]

Only the US has software patents, here we don't allow the patenting of mathmatics and it works fine.

Out of curiosity, what ground breaking unique UIs and such were invented there and where is 'here'?

Re:MORE

[Lord Kano]

If you abolish software patents, it makes it very difficult for companies to realistically spend millions on development of new concepts and ideas when someone can then just take the ground breaking UI or process etc.

Even without software patents, you'd still have copyright. The company's actual work would still be protected while allowing someone else to be inspired by them to create something else that's new and innovative.

LK

Re:MORE

[man_of_mr_e]

To be fair, all ideas are obvious, once someone has created them.

If something is "obvious" it would have tons of prior art going back years. You can't simply look at something, and with the benefit of having seen it say "Well, that was obvious".

Let's take, as an example, the Office Ribbon. Whether or not you like it, or whether or not you agree with it, the fact is, it was not an "obvious" UI change, and it did in fact radically change the UI to the extent that many people feel it's agregiously difficult to retrain people.

Certainly there are "Ribbonish" kinds of interfaces that existed before, if you only look at the visual style, but what makes the Ribbon unique is not only it's visual style, but its functionality as well. I'm sure you will say it was obvious, but the reality is that your hindsight gives you the benefit of looking at it with what you know now, not what was known then.

Re:MORE

[b4upoo]

The entire patent process needs to be tossed into a volcano. Imagine how products that could save lives or make life better are either not created or are overly expensive because so many tiny items within the product require paying royalties. Need an on switch for a computer? How many patents are involved in a good switch? Before it is over one might be paying hundreds of companies for tiny parts or tiny snips of code.

Re:MORE

[shaitand]

"you can't copyright a car"

Yes. You can. Design is not functional, it is aesthetic and aesthetics belong to copyright. 3D art is copyrightable just like 2D art. A car is copyrightable in the same manner in which a sculpture is.

Re:MORE

[shaitand]

"You may not want design patents to be covered under copyright law, where they would last for a century or so. Design patents [uspto.gov] cover things that provide distinctive design but are not necessary to the utility of the device. Such designs might not be copyrightable but can still get design patents."

If they aren't distinctive enough to qualify for copyright then they aren't distinctive enough to qualify for protection.

Re:MORE

[fr4nko]

There simply isn't an easy solution to this. If you abolish software patents, it makes it very difficult for companies to realistically spend millions on development of new concepts and ideas when someone can then just take the ground breaking UI or process etc. If you don't abolish patents, you still end up with the farcical joke that we have now.

Companies that spends millions in software development very often produce crap. Look at UNIX, one of the most successful operating systems. The original plan of AT&T was to develop an ambitious OS called MULTICS but they failed to produce anything and UNIX it was developed after its failure by Kernighan & Ritchie. So the company, with all its million of dollars, failed to produce anything where an handful of smart people succeeded. Real innovations and breakthrough software are almost always produced by smart/skilful people or by very small company. The reason is that in big companies a handful of incompetent managers that does not understand anything takes the decisions and this lead very often to crap products. Also they tend to hire mediocre programmers and never hires really smart people because these latter have often a non-conventional CV. Google is an exception in this world and the explanation is that the work was started and the company founded by two very smart guys that understands very well maths and programming. Big companies only produce craps and they need software patents to protect their very fragile advantages. Francesco

Re:MORE

[Anonymous Coward]

Not saying otherwise, but they are useful inventions in the same scale as the transistor.
I would prefer actually useful algorithms, even if it goes against some interpretations of legal wording, and real inventions being patentable over one-click and naturally occurring genes.

Re:MORE

[mr_matticus]

A car is copyrightable in the same manner in which a sculpture is.

It isn't. It is prohibited expressly in Section 101 of the Copyright Act. A car is a useful article, which is ineligible from copyright protection except to the extent the form can be separated from its medium. The body of a car has no value as an independent work of art except as a derivative one meant to invoke the car itself. This recursive nature bars copyright protection.

For starters, see:
http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/unprotected.html#useful
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl103.html

Salient quotes:
"Copyright protection is generally not available to articles which have a utilitarian function. Examples of these types of "useful articles" would include lamps, bathroom sinks, clothing, and computer monitors. Under the Copyright Act, the only copyright protection available to these items is for "features that can be identified separately from, and are capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the article.""

"Designs for useful articles such as vehicular bodies, wearing apparel, household appliances, and the like are not protected by copyright."

Design is not functional, it is aesthetic and aesthetics belong to copyright.

Design is often functional. The body panels of a car are industrial design--the integration of aesthetics and engineering. They are protected by industrial design registration and NOT by copyright.

If an artist would not create the work as an independent expression of creativity, but instead is applying his craft to a functional need of a useful article, then it is not a copyrightable work. Specific exceptions have been made by statute, but they are limited to isolated cases and are not generally applicable.

Re:MORE

[shaitand]

"A car is a useful article, which is ineligible from copyright protection except to the extent the form can be separated from its medium"

Your except is the only extent to which the aesthetic design of a car SHOULD be covered. If it is not aesthetically unique enough to be covered under copyright and isn't functional and inventive enough to qualify for a true patent then it shouldn't be protected at all.

The area between copyright and patent you are referring to doesn't need to be fixed with additional IP. That gap is a feature, not a bug. Closing that gap with a 'design patent' only serves to hinder progress.

Re:MORE

[Dragonslicer]

It may make more sense to think of design patents as being closest to trademarks. If you have some visual aspect of your product that is immediately associated with your brand, you don't want competitors to manufacturer a product that looks identical to your product, but with a different brand name on the bottom, where it will never be seen.

Re:MORE

[Dragonslicer]

If something is "obvious" it would have tons of prior art going back years.

Person A comes up with an idea. The idea is obvious. Persons B, C, and D came up with the idea earlier.
Person B came up with the idea before Person A. The idea was obvious. Persons C and D came up with the idea earlier.
Person C came up with the idea before Person B. The idea was obvious. Person D came up with the idea earlier.
Person D came up with the idea before Person C. The idea was obvious. ???

The fundamental principle of recursion dictates that your statement is logically invalid. No matter how many people have come up with an idea, one of them had to be first.

Re:MORE

[man_of_mr_e]

The fallacy of your argument is that you don't take into account known technology and other events that can lead to the obvious idea.

For example, one cannot have the idea of a flash on an iPad before there is an iPad. The genesis of the iPad makes the obvious idea possible.

Let's take another obvious idea. XOR'ing bits to create a cursor or pointer. There's prior art on this (and a patent) going back 30 years. Obviously, this obvious idea could not exist without CRT based graphics and the concept of cursors or pointers, so the idea cannot go back further than that.

If an idea is, in fact, obvious, then shortly after the idea is possible, there will be lots of people implementing it. If the idea was possible 20 years ago, but nobody did until last week, the idea isn't obvious.

Re:MORE

[mr_matticus]

If it is not aesthetically unique enough to be covered under copyright

There you go again. At this point, your ignorance is obviously malicious. It is unique enough for copyright protection. It's not eligible for copyright protection for a completely different reason: because it's a useful article.

and isn't functional and inventive enough to qualify for a true patent then it shouldn't be protected at all.

A nonsensical statement. A design patent isn't a utility patent. It's not patentable for novel utility because it's not a novel function, but an existing function in a novel design. A particular object may simultaneously have patent, copyright, trademark, and industrial design protection, but the rights afforded cover different aspects and apply in different scenarios.

You are quibbling over a name, not its procedure, in a poorly disguised attempt to cover your plain display of ignorance. You can think of it as a copyright for useful articles if you prefer, but it's no more a copyright than a utility patent. Because industrial design has formalities and procedures requiring prosecution (like patents and trademarks and unlike copyrights), it was placed under the charge of the office with the resources and infrastructure to do so, the US Patent and Trademark Office. If you take issue with the name, you should consider that copyright started out as royal letters patent (same as with patents), and that lexical treatment could easily have developed where the modern copyright might be known as a copy patent.

The area between copyright and patent you are referring to doesn't need to be fixed with additional IP. That gap is a feature, not a bug.

Nonsense. Bold though you may be with your ignorance, sheer will won't make it into reasoning.

Industrial design has been protected internationally longer than trademarks have and predates the Berne Convention. In other words, it's been part of the equation from the beginning of the modern age. The constraints in each area are intentionally designed, but not to foreclose protection into your fictionalized binary state. Art is copyrightable to the exclusion of physical utility, machines are patentable to the exclusion of aesthetics. Industrial design protects functional art--a separate discipline altogether.

Closing that gap with a 'design patent' only serves to hinder progress.

All you're doing is bone-headedly arguing that design patents should be converted into copyrights, thus expanding their scope and duration.

You're internally inconsistent and contrarian. Further grasping at straws won't help your position.

It's True.

[dangitman]

There's nothing that Amiga demos cannot accomplish. They are the stuff that drives our society forward.

Re:It's True.

[digitalchinky]

Although I saw my first piece of digital porn on the commodore 64 (Samantha fox if I recall) - it wasn't until the Amiga came along that I ~really~ saw porn, with actual skin tone. (Sheds a tear) It certainly drove my collection forward.

Re:It's True.

[EdIII]

As long as we are reminiscing of ye olden times in porn I remember when it was ground breaking to incrementally display the porn as it was being transferred over the modem. Ahhhh... the memories.

To this day that magical sound of two modems negotiating a connection gets me excited.

Re:It's True.

[falconwolf]

There's nothing that Amiga demos cannot accomplish.

I recall the first tyme I saw an Amiga demo IRL. It was set up to run the Mac OS and not just Workbench. Next to it was a new Mac running the same Mac OS. The Amiga ran the Mac OS faster than the Mac did. Another Amiga was running MS DOS and Windows 3.x.

Falcon

Re:It's True.

[angelwolf71885]

modem noise the geek Viagra i bet your wife or lover gets pissy when you have to hook a 19k modem up just to get in the mood but i bet they are equally as happy that it takes 3 days to finish xD

Re:It's True.

[Anonymous Coward]

First computer porn I saw was a digitized picture that could only be printed on 3 pages of wide line printer/green bar paper using multiple overstrikes to get the shades of grey for each 1 character 'pixel'.

Re:It's True.

[Anonymous Coward]

To this day that magical sound of two modems negotiating a connection gets me excited.

I'm sure John Waters could make a lovely film of your life history...

Well! Aren't you the lucky one.. Dealt five aces..

Re:It's True.

[Master Moose]

If only amiga was able to make their OS more wide-spread and accepted... Sigh.

Re:It's True.

[nickdwaters]

Bah. In the old days we had to look at women in real life! Both ways! Upside down and tits up!

Re:It's True.

[tsm_sf]

You lucky, lucky bastard! What I wouldn't give to be spat at in the f... oh, wrong meme? I'll see myself out.

Re:It's True.

[Anonymous Coward]

In your youth, you read The SEX LIFE of an Electron too, didn't you!

Re:It's True.

[MadCow42]

Ah.... ASCII porn... The good ol days!

Re:It's True.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, this sound? http://www.sonnyradio.com/dialupkid.htm

Re:It's True.

[flyingfsck]

Yah, it was really hard to drool over Sammy on a green Hercules screen...

Re:It's True.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a fully-initiated member of the Church of Amiga, but truth be told... the good old days weren't really as great as we like to remember them. I remember my endless frustration over software (mostly European, but that was because American Amiga games totally sucked and were basically warmed-over ports of their EGA PC versions) that crashed and burned if you had anything besides an Amiga 500 with no fast ram and a floppy drive. 2-8 megs of fast ram? Guru. Hard drive? Guru (but less wait to get to it). 68020/30/40 accelerator card in a 2000? Meltdown. A3000? smoking nuclear crater.

In 1986, the Amiga's graphics were the best, bar none. In 1990, they were looking a little rough. In 1992, they were old news. The only reason PCs weren't blowing away Amigas in 1990 was because PC programmers hadn't adopted the Amiga culture of chucking the OS (what little OS a PC running DOS actually *had*) and hitting the bare metal. You know the neat penguin display Linux shows when it boots? Pretty much every PC with "VGA" graphics back as far as 1988 or so had the raw hardware to do that (switch from graphics mode to text mode mid-display)... it just Wasn't Done, because it wasn't officially supported by the BIOS. It wasn't until the Amiga finally went tits up, and Amiga programmers were forced to write PC programs to make a living, that PC programming jumped ahead by almost 10 years literally overnight, because former Amiga programmers were determined to treat PCs like the 32-bit powerhouses that traditional "PC" programmers were afraid to do themselves.

Remember Comanche: Maximum Overkill? It's not a coincidence that it was a groundbreaking PC game... it was REALLY an Amiga game that happened to be running on PC hardware that the programmers were treating like an alien Amiga instead of a BIOS-shackled realmode antique that happened to be running at 66MHz instead of 4.77MHz. Oldschool "PC" programmers were too afraid of losing buyers with creaky old 286 PCs with CGA cards to deviate from their standard formula. Former Amiga programmers realized that even if you wrote off every PC with less than a 33MHz 486, local-bus video card with VRAM, 4+ megs, and an Ultrasound or SBpro, your potential market was STILL 2-4 times as big as the entire Amiga market was on its greatest day. And so, the PC Hardware Arms Race began, that continues to this day.

It was the Amiga programmers who learned that you really COULD forcibly rewrite VGA registers mid-scanline... well, ok... as long as the videocard had VRAM. But by 1993, everyone who mattered had a videocard with VRAM anyway, so life was good. It was former Amiga programmers who were determined to discover what you really COULD get away with in "Mode X" when you threw away IBM's developer notes and went straight to the chipset datasheet for inspiration. The truth is, every real Amiga programmer had a destroyed, worn-out, dog-eared copy of the Amiga Hardware Reference Manual. And most had a crisp, nearly-untouched virgin copy of the RKM that rarely got looked at except out of an occasional sense of guilt ;-)

The Amiga didn't die, it just became the first platform to switch to Intel-architecture hardware. No, it wasn't official... but it happened, developer by developer, as the Amiga Elite grudgingly sulked over to the PC camp and decided to make the best of an unfortunate situation by treating PC hardware the same way they used to treat Amiga hardware. You can easily recognize the undercover Amiga refugees from the mid-90s... they all had Gravis Ultrasounds (and if they were programmers, their games had native support for it). It wasn't even that hard to do.

But back to the original complaint (wholesale hardware incompatibility if you had anything besides a bottom of the line A500)... if only Commodore could have been persuaded to make the 68010 the base CPU for the A500 instead of the 68000, 99% of our "move SR, EA" grief would have been avoided... because then it would have crashed the A500 too, and nothing after 1989 or so would have ever dared to use it again. Sigh. From what I remember, even in 1989, the UPS shipping on a 68010 was probably more than the cost of the 68010 itself.

Re:It's True.

[wvmarle]

Wait a moment. MacOS and Win 3.1 in their time being able to run on the same hardware?

Win 3.1 has always been restricted to x86 processors.

MacOS in it's time on what was it the Motorola 68something or so. Definitely not Intels. Win 3.1 was from even before the PPC era. Especially if Amigas were still around other than as museum piece.

Now I don't know the hardware of the Amiga but I can not believe it would be able to happily emulate a totally different hardware layout, and still be speedy.

Or am I missing something here?

Re:It's True.

[Mindcontrolled]

Thanks for reminding me of my age... Ohhh, Samantha pics on the C64... Now help me get those damn kids of my lawn, would you, please?

Re:It's True.

[Anonymous Coward]

See above comment, posting ac cause I'm using my fucking phone. Amiga had 286 board that ran msdos, and there was a macos emulator board that you plugged in called magic sack, but you needed a dead mac to take the ROM's out of and plug into a cartridge you installed in your amiga (external expansion bus) because at that time apple abstracted parts of MacOS, specifically QuickDraw to ROM. You had to cannibalize a 5k USD computer to emulate it on a 1k USD computer. Strange industry, those days.

Re:It's True.

[blincoln]

Wait a moment. MacOS and Win 3.1 in their time being able to run on the same hardware?
Win 3.1 has always been restricted to x86 processors.

Back in the olden days, it was possible to buy an expansion card for several types of non-x86 system that had all the x86 hardware necessary to run DOS and Windows.

I had one for my parents' Apple IIe - the Applied Engineering PC Transporter. IIRC, it was similar to the Atari 2600 module for the ColecoVision in that it really just used the Apple for its keyboard and monitor (and for best results a separate monitor was necessary). Separate disk drives were needed, for example.

I believe the Amiga equivalent (which I heard referred to as a "bridge board" at the time) was more integrated into the Amiga hardware/OS and the x86 software could be run inside a window within Workbench.

Re:It's True.

[Naturalis Philosopho]

Not in emulation, in hardware. See other posts for Amiga details. The old Apple Quadra 610 had the option of a NuBus card with a fully functional x86 motherboard-equivalent on it. Ahh, yes, from EveryMac: "The Quadra 610 PC-Compatible shipped with a 25 MHz Intel 486SX processor card that can have a maximum of 32 MB of RAM dedicated to the DOS/Windows operating system." I remember people running Win 3.1 in a window at full speed 'within' Mac OS 7- waaaay faster than the virtualizers of the day... They were strange times, the '90's, and there were really weird expansion cards available. Anyone remember the Apple IIe card for the LCII?

Re:It's True.

[RDW]

>To this day that magical sound of two modems negotiating a connection gets me excited.

Obligatory XKCD:

http://www.xkcd.com/598/

'Can you try to look ... blockier?'

Re:It's True.

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to ruin the punchline for those who haven't seen it.

Re:It's True.

[MrHanky]

Nice comment, but I'm not sure you're speaking the absolute truth. John Carmack pretty much reinvented the side scroller for PC hardware with the Commander Keen series (scrolling is easy on the Amiga, but difficult to do well on a primitive EGA/VGA screen), and he wasn't an Amiga programmer. When he went on to make the more influential Wolfenstein and Doom, he still wasn't an Amiga programmer. On the demo scene, the legendary Future Crew apparently moved from the C64. Wing Commander, the game that finally took the computer gaming crown to the PC, was certainly not done in Amiga style -- it was full of DOS hacks, and the graphics didn't replicate any of the techniques made popular by the Amiga.

Re:It's True.

[Alien Being]

Ahhhh... the mammaries.

There, FTFY.

Re:It's True.

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too, it was the game called Samantha Fox strip poker ;)

Re:It's True.

[kaffiene]

I loved those days. The Amiga community rocked.

Re:It's True.

[Whammy666]

I still have a working Amiga 2000 from the late 80's with a 24bit graphics card. Yes, it has vintage porn on it.

Re:It's True.

[Haxamanish]

If you wanted a PC software emulator in the 80s, you needed an Acorn Archimedes:

Re:It's True.

[commodore64_love]

Hey! Some of us still use 56K modems you insensitive clod! (Hugs laptop affectionately) (It's okay... they didn't mean anything by it.)

I remember downloading VGA porn on my C=64. First it took 10 minutes per picture. Then the processor needed about half an hour to convert the 320x 200x 256 color space downto 160x 200x 16. The image would appear one line every few seconds. And the final result was never satisfactory.

Not until I upgraded to my 640x 480x 4000 color Amiga did I finally discover the TRUE beauty of a naked woman with breast implants. Ahhhh memories.

 

Re:It's True.

[commodore64_love]

Sometimes when I'm viewing domai.com or similar sites, I turn on the image compression just for fun. "Yeah that's it... like my old Commodore."

Re:It's True.

[Rockoon]

In 1986, the Amiga's graphics were the best, bar none.

Amiga's graphics were not better than the AppleIIgs's 3200 color mode.

The rest of this post about graphics is also suspect. The jump in graphics programming on the PC didnt happen because of Amiga programmers. It happened because The Programmers Guide to the EGA and VGA Cards was published.

You saw it through rose colored glasses. The color obscured reality.

Re:It's True.

[commodore64_love]

>>>Euro games that crashed and burned if you had anything besides an Amiga 500 with no fast ram and a floppy drive. 2-8 megs of fast ram?

My Amiga 500 has 1 megabyte of RAM (half chip/half fast) and runs everything just fine. The only time I get a Guru is when I'm doing something stupid, like trying to run two games at once. The MMU in the 68020 eliminates most of those conflicts, by stopping programs from overwriting one another.

Perhaps the problem you had was trying to run those 50 hertz games on a 60 hertz machine? Even today with modern hardware like a PS3 or Wii, that won't work properly. The console will work for awhile, but eventually it will crash.

As for Amiga versus PC versus Mac, it took them about 10 years to match Amiga's hardware and preemptive multitasking ability (Win95 and OS X). I'm glad I owned an Amiga during that period (1985-95) and had a chance to enjoy an awesome computer, rather than be stuck with a PC that went "beep" and only displayed 4 or 16 colors.

IMHO if Commodore had moved-over to a PowerPC + addon cards structure like Apple did, they probably would have survived to the present day.

Re:It's True.

[Rockoon]

As for Amiga versus PC versus Mac, it took them about 10 years to match Amiga's hardware and preemptive multitasking ability (Win95 and OS X).

Ummm... no.

It took 10 years for Windows to do it, but there were more than a couple preemptive multi-taskers even before Windows 3.1 for the PC, such as Double Dos.

You formerly Amiga-only folks dont seem to know what was going on in the PC world back then.

Re:It's True.

[raynet]

Didn't Amiga support 4096 colors in HAM-mode? Wouldn't this be better than Apple's 3200 colors? Though both modes were quite cpu intensive and couldn't really be used for animations or games.

Re:It's True.

[ScrewMaster]

Former Amiga programmers realized

Look I was a game programmer back then, I worked on PC, Apple //, and Commodore 64-series products among others ... and you're just wrong. You don't know what you're talking about. I never did anything for the Amiga, and I find it kinda irritating that you believe programmers like me required Amiga experience in order to be good at our jobs. Geez, you Amiga guys sound like Mac fanboys sometimes. You just make shit up. I spent seven years before that failed attempt at a personal computer ever hit the market, hacking high-speed graphics code on a number of different microprocessors, and neither I nor my employers ever felt that I needed to learn to study the Amiga to write graphics an animation code for other systems.

You're giving all the credit to ex-Amiga coders for driving the game market forward and that's just ridiculous. Most of the guys I knew that bought into the Amiga hype went over to the Mac because they didn't want to be dealing with the bare metal. Most of them hadn't a clue what an I/O port was, much less how to screw around with refresh timing or anything else on a VGA card. They let the custom ASICs do all the work. Arcade game development on the IBM compatibles of the era was a lot like it was on the Apple ][ ... pretty much bare metal and raw assembler all the way through. That's because the CPU had to do everything, except maybe sound if you had an early Soundblaster. No fancy graphics or sound chips, no sirree.

The Amiga had many hardware and other advantages, and the reality is that experience with the Amiga's custom chips didn't count for SQUAT when it came to coding for what passed as video on PCs at the time. Matter of fact, the Amiga's hardware support spoiled the typical Amiga developer and put him at a distinct disadvantage when it came to working on the PC or Apple // lines. That's because many things that were easy on the Amiga took some very sharp, largely ex-Apple ][ programmers to do well on the PC.

That's the real history. You can assign credit any way you like, but those of us who were there will likely go all Guru Meditation on you.

Re:It's True.

[Rockoon]

No, it was not like HAM mode.

The IIgs's 3200 color mode literally had a unique 16 color palette for each and every scanline, hence 16 * 200 = 3200.

HAM had a 16 color (4-bit) palette for the entire screen, and then a pixel (which were 6-bit, not 4-bit) could be flagged to be a modification of the previous (from the scanline above) pixel color. HAM mode was an ugly thing to program for and was certainly not suitable for efficient rendering.

The IIgs thrived on its per-scanline capabilities. Each scanline could literally have a different palette and resolution.

It was lacking a blitter chip so was deficient compared to the amiga in 2D sprite based stuff, but it was much better at vector and 3D rendering (because of its Fill Mode) than the Amiga.

It also had 32 channel mono wavetable synthesis (16 stereo), compared to Amiga's 4 pannable mono channels.

So no, the Amiga was not way ahead of the pack in capabilities. The Amiga was good, but it really wasn't as special as Amiga users made it out to be. The Amiga had a much bigger install base so got a lot more games written for it. Apple was playing two-faced during this period, pushing the Mac instead of the IIgs.

Re:It's True.

[EdIII]

You reminded me of a story... of a long time ago.. in a far away place....

Normally I am very careful about posting real events that occurred in my life since I fanatically guard my privacy and anonymity.. but this needs to be told and it is time to tell it.

Quite a few years back I was attending a university and lived in a quasi-fraternity house off campus. One of my friends was in his room connected up to some chat service over the modem. I came in and sat down in the beginning of what turned out to be a horrifically depraved example of cyber sex.

Towards the end there were at least a dozen guys in the room and every one of us kept trying to one-up each other on what we thought we could get this chick to do. No webcams at this point in history, and I know our collective wisdom today sets off alarms like, "It's really a dude".

This chick was off the hook perverted. Depravity at a level you could only hope to find and marry as quick as possible. I think one dude passed out at some point (kidding). Finally one of us has the bright idea of asking her to do a file transfer over the modem with one of her pictures... naked. She agreed all too quickly.

Now there are about 12 guys pushing each other to get a prime viewing position for the monitor. Line by line the picture starts to form. It starts at the top of her head, we get to see her ears, and then........... the picture just keeps getting WIDER. It never got any thinner and her head was like the tip of an iceburg. Literally. .

Pandemonium ensues. After a minute or two of absolute hysterical laughter everyone but my friend and I are left in the room with the creature from beyond all comprehension staring at us from the monitor with 300 pounds of tits. I tell him not to feel bad and the best advice I could give him was to roll her in flour and find the wet spot. I then beat a hasty retreat.

It gets better.....

Two days later after, what is now simply referred to as "Cybersex with Godzilla", five us were in a fast food restaurant in the middle of the afternoon. My back was turned to the door and I remember that suddenly it seemed as if there was a total eclipse. My friends in front of me look they are in a state of total shock. I look behind me and see the entire frame of the door taken up by none other than Godzilla herself. She was 6'3" and at least 500 pounds. After literally squeezing through the door she made her way to the front to order the restaurant to go.

Guess who was with us? Yes... the man that started it all. What followed was a hushed and tense negotiation of what he was going to provide us over the next 30 days to NOT shout out his name and bail with the car.

To this day the only way I can explain how I felt about the whole thing was saying, "Imagine if you saw a picture of Sasquatch and you met it the very next day?".

Re:It's True.

[HonIsCool]

HAM didn't work quite as you describe. Six bits per pixel were used. The top two bits decided the operation according to: 00: bits 0-3 decides pixel value direct by indexing into the color palette 01: The pixel immediately to the left is copied and the blue component is replaced by bits 0-3 10: The pixel immediately to the left is copied and the red component is replaced by bits 0-3 11: The pixel immediately to the left is copied and the green component is replaced by bits 0-3 The palette also need not be fixed but could be replaced mid screen, as could the resolution. The Amiga had four non-pannable PCM audio channels: two fixed to the left audio output and two to the right. The Amiga blitter could be used for rendering filled vectors, although not in the most efficient manner since it required line-drawing first, followed by a copy and fill.

Re:It's True.

[k8to]

There may have been some nice capabilities of the video hardware of the IIgs, but the thing was dog slow, so for pratical graphics hacking and making .. you know.. graphical programs, it was kind of a joke. The IIgs finder would take many seconds just to animate a window open, let alone trying to find the icons to display.

The sound is another area that's interesting to compare. It had 16 channels of stereo, but you had to cut open the case and do custom sautering to avoid being stuck with mono. It had a lot of channels which was interesting, but the synthesis it offered wasn't very good, so you got kind of a sea of tinny noises.

There were some interesting ideas going on in the IIgs, and with some different engineering choices it could have been a neat computer, but as shipped it was shackled, underperforming, and unable to provide any of its promise.

Re:It's True.

[k8to]

The second answer is that the Amiga had this video mode too, which was called 'dynamic hi-res'. It was how you got 4096 colors on an Amiga at a resolution higher than what HAM supported. Why didn't anyone use it at lower resolutions instead of HAM? Because it was just impractical to calculate a palette-per-line on a frequent basis.

Re:It's True.

[InsertWittyNameHere]

To this day that magical sound of two modems negotiating a connection gets me excited.

BEEEEEEP, CHIRP, CHIRP, KTWANG, shhhhhh, SHHHHHHH!!!

Re:It's True.

[coxymla]

The 68020 doesn't have a MMU. However, it can optionally per paired with an external MMU.

Re:It's True.

[bhtooefr]

Finder wasn't THAT slow on the IIGS, it was slow, but not that slow.

And, you didn't have to do any "sautering" or cut open the case. Push two tabs, lift case off, pop one of the port brackets out, pop a stereo card in one of the slots, and run a cable from the stereo card to a port on the motherboard. If it was a dumb stereo card that didn't also do recording, you could even put it in one of the slots that an on-board peripheral was using, it just needed power. Then, run a second cable from the stereo card to a port insert that screws into the back.

As for the noises... which model did you have? The ROM 00/01 board had crap layout, so sound quality was poor, but the ROM 3 was improved. And, a stereo card fixed that nicely, anyway.

But, yes, Apple did cripple the IIGS. The IIGS was usually used as a faster //e with more RAM, and that didn't have to be filled with cards to perform what was considered basic functionality by 1986. Unfortunately, they didn't want it competing against the Mac. (As for the CPU being so slow... that was partially Western Design Center's fault, 2.8 was as fast as Apple could get that chip without too high of a failure rate. And, it wasn't like they could stick a 68000 in there, it absolutely had to be a 6502-based design, which meant it had to be the WDC 65816.)

(A //e with similar capabilities, not even speed, ignoring graphics and sound, to a IIGS, would have the AUX slot filled with an 80-column card (and to match the IIGS's RAM, a third-party one,) a Super Serial Card (in either slot 1 or 2,) an Apple II Workstation Card (in slot 1, 2, or 7 - it does have two serial ports, but I don't think much software will understand the second serial port if it's not already compatible with AppleTalk, so you still need one Super Serial Card,) an AppleMouse II in slot 4, a 3.5" controller card in slot 5, and 5.25" controller card in slot 7. That leaves slot 7 (or 1, or 2, depending on where the Workstation Card was placed) open, and slot 3 open for things that don't need to be memory mapped - usually things that need to access video signals, or things that only use the slot for power. Then again, the IIGS is just as starved for slots, but by default, slot 7 is open, and slots 1 through 6 can be used for power. On a ROM 3, all slots can be shared with their built-in function, if the card is well-behaved, and GS/OS is running.)

Re:It's True.

[bhtooefr]

And, there was QNX in 1983, too - predating the Amiga by a couple years.

(Fun fact: Even Windows, all the way back to Windows/386 2.1, had a very limited form of preemptive multitasking, for DOS apps, controllable by editing a .PIF file. That was in 1988, though.)

Re:It's True.

[Ecyrd]

Do not forget the EHB - Extra Halfbrite Mode, in which you have 32 colors (5 bitplanes) and then a sixth bit which halves the colour intensity, so that you get 64 colors, though you can only choose freely 32 of them.

I wrote an image processing program which had fairly good RGB -> HAM & HAM8 conversion routines. If someone's curious to see how that is managed in practice, the code is here (GPL):

Histogram conversion:
https://svn.ecyrd.com/repos/PPT/trunk/palette.c

Palette mapping:
https://svn.ecyrd.com/repos/PPT/trunk/colormap.c

Re:It's True.

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't so much about learning Amiga hardware technique as it was about the Amiga's hardware *culture*. PC programmers used realmode, because everyone used realmode, and it was just the way you did it. Amiga programmers looked at realmode, said "fuck this shit", and spent their first month as a PC programmer learning how to use DOS4GW so they could kick the PC into 386Enh or supervisor mode and write games with flat memory maps.

You're totally wrong about Amiga developers embracing Macs. Remember, the only computer Amiga owners held in greater contempt than the Atari ST was (drumroll...) the Macintosh. A.k.a. the Apple Etch-a-Sketch. Amiga owners thought PCs sucked, but recognized in the early 90s that the problem wasn't the underlying hardware, it was the software running on it. If you get down to it, an Amiga 500 was analogous to a PC with a high-end (but DRAM-based) videocard that ran everything, including software, out of that videocard's memory. Programmers who take the ability to hit hardware directly as a fact of life aren't going to take kindly to a platform that prohibits programmers from doing anything not Officially Approved by Apple (hmmm... the more things change...)

Sadly, our prejudice was one of the main reasons we didn't embrace Linux. The only thing Amiga owners were less interested in than Macs was Unix, because back then Unix == boring VT100. If Linus Torvalds had gotten some friends to do a kick-ass megademo for Assembly94 that booted a Linux kernel and took advantage of the S3 chipset's then-nascent blitter and had a 32-track modtune running throughout (showing that Linux could be used for graphics and sound as well as boring corporate-productivity software)... well... things might have turned out a bit differently.

Re:It's True.

[falconwolf]

Wait a moment. MacOS and Win 3.1 in their time being able to run on the same hardware?

Yes.

Win 3.1 has always been restricted to x86 processors.

DOS and Win 3.x ran on an add-on card installed in an Amiga. The Mac OS was run the same way, on an add-on card.

MacOS in it's time on what was it the Motorola 68something or so. Definitely not Intels. Win 3.1 was from even before the PPC era. Especially if Amigas were still around other than as museum piece.

Macs and Amigas used the same CPUs, those Motorola 68x00. However back then the Mac OS was in ROM so a board and the ROM or ROM image from a Mac was needed. Emulation on the Amiga has a little more info. There were other methods to emulate Macs too.

Falcon

Re:It's True.

[Rockoon]

There may have been some nice capabilities of the video hardware of the IIgs, but the thing was dog slow, so for pratical graphics hacking and making .. you know.. graphical programs, it was kind of a joke.

Nintendo didn't agree with you when they settled on the same processor for the the SNES over 4 years after the IIgs was released.

Re:It's True.

[Anonymous Coward]

How did the SNES stack up to the Sega Genesis? Maybe Nintendo should have chosen more wisely. Maybe they could have not spent the next 15 years as an also-ran in the video game business.

Re:It's True.

[Anonymous Coward]

Strictly speaking, the Amiga (at least, AmigaDOS 1.x and 2.x) had cooperative multitasking. Unless your app called the Intuition routine to check for new messages, no other app would normally ever run again. The thing that made AmigaDOS unique was the fact that on most other platforms with cooperative multitasking, if your app never yielded control, you lost the entire UI as well. To a certain extent, the Amiga's UI ran on autopilot, and was mostly indifferent (some might say oblivious) to the state of the applications it was supporting. I'm pretty sure you couldn't react to menus without yielding to Intuition, but I believe the way Screens were implemented allowed you to drag them up & down, and push them behind other screens, even if you never yielded control again after the program launched.

By the same token, classic MacOS *never* had preemptive multitasking. It's 98% of the reason everyone had given up the Mac for dead before OS/X came along to save it. Circa 1997, you had to be a complete glutton for punishment to even *try* using a Mac running MacOS9 with a browser. Whenever it was receiving data over the network, you lost your ability to scroll, move windows, or even type. If hell exists, the poor souls condemned to spend eternity there have to use a mid-90s Mac to access the internet. With the possible exception of PalmOS 4, it's hard to think of a mainstream internet-era operating system that was worse for web surfing than an oldschool Mac.

Windows 3.x cooperatively-multitasked 16-bit apps, but pre-emptively multitasked realmode DOS apps and to some extent I'm not sure about also did preemptive multitasking with 32-bit apps. From what I remember, though, a bad crash in a 16-bit app or driver would effectively hang the rest of the system.

OS/2 Warp was about 5 years ahead of its time with the way it handled multitasking. The problem is, it really WAS about 5 years ahead of its time. To really take advantage of its ability to spawn an entire instance of WinOS2 for each winapp, you didn't just need to have an amount of ram that was sinfully expensive (I think I paid ~$800 for 4 4-mb SIMMs), you really needed to have more ram than most consumer-grade motherboards at the time were even capable of supporting (all but the most high end had exactly 4 simm slots, and all four had to be populated with identical SIMMs). Also, even if you WERE lucky enough to have 8 SIMM slots and were rich enough to afford 8 4mb SIMMs, a lot of the early-90s motherboards only had enough physical traces on the motherboard to address 16mb. Basically, they ran all 32 address lines to 4 of them, but only ran half of the address lines to the other 4 (so they could humor you and let you use eight cheaper 1mb SIMMs as a halfway step between 4x1 and 4x4).

The biggest problem that Windows has always had, and that drives former Amiga owners up the wall to this day, is the fact that it delegates a large amount of responsibility for managing windows to the apps that own those windows. If your app crashed, AmigaDOS didn't care... it would happily redraw the window when you moved it, render menus, xor gadgets when clicked, etc. In stark contrast, Windows would historically just sit there like a rock and not give any hint of life -- not even the caps lock LED on the keyboard -- if one or more programs in the foreground were crashed or badly-behaving. Windows has gotten much, much better about this with Vista and Win7, but I think XP was actually its low point of UI unresponsiveness. It's been a decade, but from what I remember, there were DEFINITELY scenarios where Win2k remained responsive that would just hang XP and leave you hitting the caps log key and madly hitting ctrl-alt-delete, desperately searching for some hint of life.

In due credit, this is one lesson Apple has learned well. OS/X *does* run the UI with an exceptionally high priority to ensure that it *always* remains instantly responsive to user input. Like I said, Windows has gotten a lot better, but there are STILL occasions when even a quadcore i7 wit

Amiga demos rocked!

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

Commodore has sushi and sold it as fish, sadly. The Amiga demos always kicked ass even if you weren't doing X.

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[dangitman]

Commodore has sushi and sold it as fish, sadly.

That's actually an insightful analogy on more levels than was probably intended. There was a time in the Western world, before sushi had ascended to its current status, that it was much easier to sell fish & chips than it was to sell sushi. People were actually grossed out by the idea - "Raw fish? Ewwww. Plus it's ethnic food!"

So, the decision to market it as fried fish or sushi was not so clear-cut in the 1980s. Nobody really knew what to make of the home computer market. It was a quirky world that could have become anything, and monumental marketing/strategy blunders were commonplace. Although there's little that can top the hilarity of an earlier era's bizarre attempt at marketing computers.

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[DNS-and-BIND]

Eating meat raw has always been a sign of unsophistication in Western culture. Sushi became popular exactly because of this - by rejecting our own culture and embracing an alien one, you show how sophisticated and different you are from the masses. In addition, the high cost (in the 80s anyway) kept the morons out. China is doing this right now in a big way. Eating traditional Chinese food? Eww, the commoners do that! Let's go to McDonald's and get that sophisticated international food that costs way too much!

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[sznupi]

Some parts of Western world eat sea fish which are basically raw. It's just that they are not considered to be anything "fancy"... (herring, sardine, sprat, mackerel in salt or vinegar; also in oil or sour cream though those, possibly, somehow less raw)

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[Thomasje]

There was a time in the Western world, before sushi had ascended to its current status, that it was much easier to sell fish & chips than it was to sell sushi. People were actually grossed out by the idea

People in the Netherlands, northern Germany, and Scandinavia eat raw herring and have done so for ages -- it's a delicacy. Also, raw oysters, steak tartare... I'll grant that raw dead animals were never as prominent on the European menu as in Japanese cuisine, but they were certainly there before the current wave of Asian food started. :-)

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[davidgay]

Carpaccio

Steak Tartare

Time for another overrated comment.

David Gay

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[babyrat]

Sushi became popular exactly because of this

really? Here I thought it was because it was yummy...

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[dangitman]

Eating meat raw has always been a sign of unsophistication in Western culture.

As the other reply notes - Steak Tartare and Carpaccio have long been considered at the heights of sophisticated Western dining.

Sushi became popular exactly because of this - by rejecting our own culture and embracing an alien one, you show how sophisticated and different you are from the masses. In addition, the high cost (in the 80s anyway) kept the morons out.

I don't buy this argument. Firstly, it contradicts itself - if you are eating a certain food just to show how different you are, doesn't that make you a moron? So if this were the case, wouldn't it be keeping the morons in?

I think there's a much simpler explanation - Globalization exposed people to different foreign cultures, and sushi is delicious. Over time, foreign foods become normalized. In the 1980s, there just weren't very many sushi restaurants outside of Japan, so few people got exposed to it. I very much doubt that most customers ate it simply to be snobby or different.

So what would be your current day example of such behavior? I mean, you don't see people going to, say, Danish restaurants and acting "oh, look how edgy and different I am eating this food that hardly anybody eats!"

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[dangitman]

People in the Netherlands, northern Germany, and Scandinavia eat raw herring and have done so for ages -- it's a delicacy.

I probably should have narrowed my scope to "the English-speaking Western World" but that doesn't quite work either. Lacking another meaningful category, let's just say Britain, America, Australia, etc. The white trash countries, basically.

Also, I wouldn't quite put things like oily fish, caviar and oysters in the same category as sushi (although they are used as ingredients in sushi). They're a lot more meat-like and strongly-flavored than things like white fish served raw.

Anyway - I was just talking about a general misconception among people who were pretty ignorant about world cuisine to begin with. The finer details don't matter much. I don't think the people saying "ewww, raw fish" were exactly eating steak tartare to begin with. But these days, that same sort of person might be deciding between KFC and sushi at their local mall.

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[pclminion]

Although there's little that can top the hilarity of an earlier era's bizarre attempt at marketing computers.

Now that's really disturbing. Not the sexist tone of an old ad from a bygone day, no... that's expected. What's disturbing is how women are treated like pieces of meat, drooled over, ridiculed, sexually harassed and frightened away from computer science IN THIS DAY AND AGE. I mean for fuck's sake, here's an advertisement talking about a woman's place in the kitchen and then nonchalantly, without even blinking, states "She'll learn to program it," like that's easily within the range of ability of a "mere woman." PROGRAM IT. Not use it, program it. As in by punching buttons, and toggling binary codes.

Any geek who has ever made a woman feel uncomfortable for being interested in technology should be ashamed of themselves. Congratulations, you've taken a step back to the pre-1960s.

(Yes, my wife is a CS graduate, as am I)

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[shaitand]

It's not yummy, its raw fish ffs

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[shaitand]

"I don't buy this argument. Firstly, it contradicts itself - if you are eating a certain food just to show how different you are, doesn't that make you a moron? So if this were the case, wouldn't it be keeping the morons in?"

Indeed but his assumption that keeping the morons out would lead to widespread popularity is false. Keeping the morons in is the road to widespread success.

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[dangitman]

Women were pretty much the first programmers, for example working in cryptography to decode Nazi transmissions in WWII. Then of course, there's Ada Lovelace, considered the world's first programmer, and who had a vision of programming which went beyond others.

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[rasjani]

I'd make a guess that eating "raw" fish atleast has been a long tradition of hunter/gatherer cultures. Atleast nordic/scandinavian societies have recipes which are considered as food that are typically consumed during holidays - they might not be raw in the same sense as sushi but drying and salted fish are still respected delicasies.

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[jgrahn]

by rejecting our own culture and embracing an alien one, you show how sophisticated and different you are from the masses. (...) China is doing this right now in a big way. Eating traditional Chinese food? Eww, the commoners do that! Let's go to McDonald's and get that sophisticated international food that costs way too much!

I spent three weeks in Shanghai in April, and I didn't see what you describe, or hear any local coworkers express such ideas. There were plenty of KFCs, but I can't remember seeing any other US fast-food franchises, except maybe in the tourist-oriented parts of the city.

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[shish]

if you are [buying] a certain [product] just to show how different you are, doesn't that make you a moron?

Welcome to the world outside geekdom?

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[Patch86]

Nah. Eating meat raw has always been a sign of the very most expensive dining. Go into a very posh restaurant and try ordering a steak "well done" and see the looks it'll get you; your choice is "rare" or "blue", if you want to fit in. Fish is often served raw in western culture too; smoked salmon is basically uncooked, oysters are usually served raw, sea bass is best uncooked (in the best restaurants).

Well cooking food is a peasant thing- if the meat is cheap, you need to cook it lots to stop it killing you. If the meat is raw, it has to be high quality and expensive.

Anyway, sushi is yummy. That's all that really matters.

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, you don't see people going to, say, Danish restaurants and acting "oh, look how edgy and different I am eating this food that hardly anybody eats!"

*You* don't see it...

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, *a* woman had a boyfriend who was a genius.

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[commodore64_love]

>>>So, the decision to market the Amiga as fried fish or sushi was not so clear-cut in the 1980s

Also the term "multimedia" had not been invented yet. Amiga was the FIRST multimedia PC, but Commodore kept trying to push the Amiga in the business world. Instead they should have pushed it as an entertainment console where home users could listen to music and watch videos.

There was also a certain stigma attached to home computers as "just toys". Most computer executives wanted the glory that came with being an IBM exec, so they kept trying to shove Commodore 64s, Amigas, Ataris, Apples, and other home gadgets into offices where they didn't really belong. Nobody seemed to understand that the REAL money was in appealing to the masses. Like today.

They made the same mistakes when the automobile was born. Most companies kept trying to build luxury cars for wealthy businesses or businessmen, until a smart man named Ford realized the real money was in selling to the masses.

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[Velex]

What's disturbing is how women are treated like pieces of meat, drooled over, ridiculed, sexually harassed and frightened away from computer science IN THIS DAY AND AGE.

[Citation needed]

Sorry, I know it's a popular meme. I still haven't seen any evidence of it.

If anything women are smarter than men and realize that IT careers are shit and either get into science or management where there's actually some money.

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[Blue Stone]

>"Cooking food is a peasant thing".

Cooking food, makes the energy in that food much more available to your body. It has nothing to do with social class.

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I know it's a popular meme. I still haven't seen any evidence of it.

I've worked in two companies with female tech support personnel and have witnessed the opposite. In both cases, their skills were quite inferior to the guys, but we all helped prop them up. We certainly weren't doing ourselves any favors, and probably weren't doing them any favors either.

We've gotten so worried about driving women out of technology, that we're actually hurting them by covering for them when they can't keep up. (In some cases--I realize that's an unfair blanket statement.)

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[NorthWay]

You are all messing up the original quote. The best I could come up with using Google is "If Commodore had to market sushi, they'd call it cold, raw fish."--Peter J. Kunz

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[ScrewMaster]

if you are eating a certain food just to show how different you are, doesn't that make you a moron?

Wait a minute ... are were talking Sushi or iPods here?

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[dangitman]

Yeah, because owning an iPod is so different and unusual.

Re:Amiga demos rocked!

[Patch86]

Sure it does. Peasants need energy. The aristocracy? Who cares if they're not getting the most energy, as long as it tastes good!

Think about it.

No respect.

[AmigaHeretic]

Circa 1985 people! Come one. ;-)

Re:No respect.

[dangitman]

Maybe it's referring to features added in later versions of Workbench?

The senator from Disney is needed

[AHuxley]

Enjoyed the ""Your honor, we shouldn't be required to look for prior art that precedes our invention, because shurely such prior art would be outdated and irrelevant"" comment.
Wont someone legislate to close this prior art loophole.

Re:The senator from Disney is needed

[__aasqbs9791]

Seriously. What part of prior do they not understand?

Re:The senator from Disney is needed

[WrongSizeGlass]

Seriously. What part of prior do they not understand?

The part about them not inventing or developing it ... or being able to profit from it by suing people.

Re:The senator from Disney is needed

[rts008]

What part of prior do they not understand?

Richard?

Re:The senator from Disney is needed

[__aasqbs9791]

In their defense, his comedy could be pretty cutting edge.

Re:The senator from Disney is needed

[dangitman]

Richard?

You misunderstand Richard Prior at your own peril! That shit has consequences.

Re:The senator from Disney is needed

[calmofthestorm]

"prior"

What's an Amiga?

[Itninja]

Seriously, is that some kind of Mexican Facebook?

Re:What's an Amiga?

[Anonymous Coward]

What, are you someone in the employ of the USPTO?

Ahead of the curve

[hhawk]

I always loved the way the Amiga offered functions other computers of the same era never came close to matching..

I love the quote from the owner who produced the working model.. "My Amiga Killed a Troll!"

Re:Ahead of the curve

[sznupi]

You know, with a little twist (and still discarding NeXT machines - more than "close" to Amiga, but hideously expensive), saying "other computers of the same era never came close to matching" (emphasis mine) is too strong of a statement.

Even contemporary 8-bit computers came somewhat close, after a while; with operating systems like Contiki or SymbOS. And let us not forget what was rather quickly possible with Ata...uhm...ok, I won't go there ;)

Re:Ahead of the curve

[Tumbleweed]

Even contemporary 8-bit computers came somewhat close, after a while; with operating systems like Contiki or SymbOS.

I was an 8-bit computer user. I owned an Amiga. You, sir (?) never used an Amiga, obviously. 8-bit? Contiki? You're out of your mind. But that's okay, because the Amiga is dead, and I'm no longer required to kill infidels like you. :)

Re:Ahead of the curve

[tsm_sf]

Apple IIgs demos had just started to kick amazing ass when Cupertino discontinued it. That machine was the spiritual opposite of the Lisa, but doomed just the same.

((Anyone remember when WUStL was the hub of the warez scene? *sheds a silent tear*))

Re:Ahead of the curve

[sznupi]

I also started on 8-bits. Plus I'm actually from a place where Amiga, for half a decade, was the standard home computer; PCs got its foothold only in the late 90's.

Notice I objected (and not very strongly) only to the word "never"; mentioned not only Contiki, also SymbOS (watch this video; you will really tell me that's not "somewhat close"?)

Re:Ahead of the curve

[amiga3D]

Really the Amiga was the beginning of Multimedia in home computing. It had Multimedia even before the term had been coined. It wasn't until Windows 98 that I really felt that the Amiga was becoming obsolete. After 4 years with no work it started to fall away. I had to move on to linux. More stable than AmigaDos but it took awhile before I felt totally happy with it.

Re:Ahead of the curve

[PhunkySchtuff]

Man, that brings back memories. I remember in the early 90's when I heard that wuarchive was being upgraded to have a... wait for it... a 14GB hard drive (although in retrospect it was probably a RAID array rather than a single spindle) and I was simply dumbfounded by that amount of storage and wondered how on earth they'd ever fill it.

Now, my phone has more storage than that...

Re:Ahead of the curve

[hairyfeet]

Bah! You kids and your fancy pants Amiga. We had to PEEK and POKE everything on our VIC 20s and pray to the primitive electronic gods that our sisters didn't record over our programming cassettes with Culture Club! You kids with your wasteful 256Kb of RAM. Try getting everything done in only 5Kb!

Now get off my lawn, ya spoiled brat! /wanders off muttering about ungrateful kids with their gigawhatsits and megawhosits and lazy gooeys/

Re:Ahead of the curve

[Mindcontrolled]

Oh, a member of the Church of Amiga! This brings up sad memories. Brother, I have sinned. I sold my Amiga 2000 8 years ago. I was young, broke and needed the money. Can I ever be cleansed of that guilt, Brother? What shall I do for penitence, Brother?

Re:Ahead of the curve

[Tumbleweed]

Oh, a member of the Church of Amiga! This brings up sad memories. Brother, I have sinned. I sold my Amiga 2000 8 years ago. I was young, broke and needed the money. Can I ever be cleansed of that guilt, Brother? What shall I do for penitence, Brother?

eBay, you sinner, eBay!

Re:Ahead of the curve

[Anonymous Coward]

RAID array? Isn't that a little redundant?

Re:Ahead of the curve

[commodore64_love]

>>>Even contemporary 8-bit computers came somewhat close, after a while; with operating systems like Contiki

If you think Contiki 64 is impressive, you should see where Amigas are today. They boot in a mere 10 seconds, shutdown in 0.00 seconds, and even though most are only 700 megahertz single-core PowerPCs, they still run faster than a PC on crak..... ooops, I mean Vista.

BUT I don't think that was the original posters point. He was saying *in that era* the other computers couldn't match an Amiga. They didn't have the near-CD-quality sound, or the 4000 color displays, or preemptive multitasking, or the the ability to sync with TV signals to do CGI for shows like seaQuest, Babylon5, and more Disney animations than I can list here.

PCs didn't catch up until Windows 95, and Macs not until OS X.

Re:Ahead of the curve

[commodore64_love]

Apple didn't have much choice. The 6502 and 65816 family had reached a dead end. It made more sense to support the newer 32 bit machine (Mac 68xxx) then to hang-onto the older 16 bit CPUs.

Atari and Commodore followed the identical path, saying goodbye to the 6502 series and going with Motorola.

Jesus christ, they're not that rare.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have five working Amigas sitting next to me. FIVE. All with Commodore branding, and including an A1000. University dumpsters were a gold mine for these things a few (by which I mean five) years ago. Groklaw speaks as if someone restored a System/360 or something!

Re:Jesus christ, they're not that rare.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have five working Amigas sitting next to me. FIVE.

Right. So we're supposed to believe you're this Hugh Hefner type smoking a pipe and saying things like, "aha, estas muy bonita, senorita!"

Re:Jesus christ, they're not that rare.

[lul_wat]

I also have 5 original DeLorean cars next to me. So clearly everyone else must do as well.

Re:Jesus christ, they're not that rare.

[Arcady13]

I wondered the same thing. I have a working Apple //e, an original Mac 128k, and a functional Lisa computer in this building right now. And these aren't even the oldest computers in the house, just some of the ones made by Apple.

Re:Jesus christ, they're not that rare.

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? Tentacle monsters posting on /.?

Re:Jesus christ, they're not that rare.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac 128k, and a functional Lisa

Those are kinda rare, especially the Lisa.

Re:Jesus christ, they're not that rare.

[Anonymous Coward]

2 x A1200, 1 x A500, 1 x CDTV, 1 x CD32.

OK, 5 amigas sounds about correct. Anyone with less does obviously not belong here.

Re:Jesus christ, they're not that rare.

[Hatta]

They're not rare, but they are pretty expensive. Most other common retro computers can be had for $20-40 or so. For an Amiga, you're looking at closer to $100.

Re:Jesus christ, they're not that rare.

[Anonymous Coward]

funny, I learned assembler on a modified 360

Re:Jesus christ, they're not that rare.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep- there is one sitting in its original box in the other room. Its been a while since I booted it, but short of any capacitors bursting, it should still boot just fine.

They made it seem like he restored a Univac. And how do you restore an Amiga 1000???

Say what?

[SEWilco]

The success is all very nice and all, but what was the disputed issue?

Re:Say what?

[LiquidCoooled]

Multiple screens and switching.

this was the original shout out requesting reader prior art:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071011205044141

about 10 comments into the discussion someone mentions this is exactly what the amiga had.

http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20071011205044141&title=M%24+Virtual+Desktop+Manager+licensed+by+IP+Innovation%3F&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=634370#c634821

Re:Say what?

[WrongSizeGlass]

The success is all very nice and all, but what was the disputed issue?

The actual dispute is irrelevant ... Linux won a patent suit and that's all we care about. A patent troll lost and will have to pay court costs. Double bonus points!

Here's the slashdot story about the court victory

Here's a link to the post that details the patents

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The success is all very nice and all, but what was the disputed issue?

If you where to read the post linked to, you would know. Sadly, you're too lazy.

Re:Say what?

[dmomo]

And an article that came out when this began:
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS2013674721.html

Re:Say what?

[drfireman]

Although this is somewhat tangential, I have to mention that what the Amiga had was actually much cooler than the facility to switch between screens with different resolutions. You could slide each screen down by grabbing the bar at the top of the screen with your mouse, to reveal those beneath. So at times, and quite commonly, you would have different visible parts of your monitor displaying parts of screens with different resolutions (and, if I recall correctly, their own color depths as well).

Re:Say what?

[SEWilco]

I read it before it appeared here, and tried several of their links too. Move along, non-IP troll.

Re:Say what?

[dangitman]

You could slide each screen down by grabbing the bar at the top of the screen with your mouse, to reveal those beneath. So at times, and quite commonly, you would have different visible parts of your monitor displaying parts of screens with different resolutions (and, if I recall correctly, their own color depths as well).

That really was super-cool. I believe you are correct about the different color depths, too. There was just something compelling about that mechanism, it was like peeking behind a curtain to see backstage, perhaps? Maybe the youngsters would say it would be like seeing the matrix or something. It just had this incredible fluidity to it. Editing a document or program, and want to take a peek at how your 3D render in the background is going? Oooh... nice, just 8 more hours to go, looking good so far.

Re:Say what?

[Intrinsic]

Yea, I remember that, it was very cool. I dont remember if you could do that with a full screen game running though.. I was using truespace3d in that day to do all my modeling and it was very cool to be able to work on other stuff while that was happening. Except it took alot of processing power and slowed the machine down.

Re:Say what?

[Jeek Elemental]

Yes it was done with a custom chip (the copper), a simple chip with very few commands (4?) that could sit and wait for a specific scanline.
When the compare triggered it could change the registers that controlled screen resolution, depth, data source etc.
So in theory every scanline of the screen could have its own resolution, subtracting the cycles it takes for the copper to work.

So theres no actual moving of screen data when you pull it down, it just starts displaying furher down the screen, which makes for very smooth movement no matter content.

It is not completely seamless, if you look there will be a couple blanked scanlines between screens, which is where the copper does its thing.

Was very nice to use, typically when waiting for something to finish you just pulled the screen down to peek quickly, no messy slow context switching.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Amiga chipset has a dedicated CPU for screen synchronization. It can change not only the color registers at any screen position (Ok, there are some limits in the horizontal resolution.) but it can write to almost any of the custom registers. It is possible to change horizontal resolution, start blitter dma transfer, start audio playback or pretty much anything you can think of at your screen position of choice.
Workbench only used a small subset of what the hardware supported.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot about modes (dual-display, HAM, double-buffered, sprites, etc) that screens also supported. Amiga Screens were extremely useful. This video shows some of the Amiga OS back on a 1987 Amiga 2000 handling screens as the user is demonstrating an animation system:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-19068821337128168#

Re:Say what?

[commodore64_love]

>>>you would have different visible parts of your monitor displaying parts of screens with different resolutions (and, if I recall correctly, their own color depths as well).

Not. Quite. True. I used to run multiple screens... one in 640x240 for a terminal program and the other in 640x480 for a file manager. If I was online, and then pulled down the terminal screen to see the file manager hiding behind it, the *whole screen* automatically switched to 640x480 interlaced. You could tell by the flicker.

So my Amiga 500 was only displaying ONE resolution (480i) overlapped with various screens. This limitation was probably due to the CRT, which couldn't handle more than one video frequency/resolution at a time.

Re:Say what?

[drfireman]

Sorry if I was unclear, but what I said was correct. The CRT of course would not have different resolutions or scan rates for different parts. However, you could have screens (not CRTs, but screens, a software concept) with different resolutions and see parts of different screens at the same time. I'm sure this was done by finding an optimal common video mode, and obviously if one part of the visible display needed to be interlaced, the whole display would be interlaced. When you say that the "whole screen" would switch to 640x480 interlaced, you must mean the monitor -- as I recall, the resolution of each screen (available to software running on the screen) would not change just because you moved your screens around.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Multiple screens and switching.

You could do this on the original IBM PC too. Just use monochrome and EGA adapters. We used to do it all the time in IBM.

Re:Say what?

[SharpFang]

- in software
- arbitrary number of screens

Additionally, Amiga allowed you to drag any screen down - like, half the screen down, revealing the screen below.
The screens could be in different native resolutions (like the below would run in 512x256 HAM interlace, and the top would be 320x256 halfbrite, and they would both display on the same screen at the same time, one overlapping the other.
AFAIK, no PC can do this to this day.

Re:Say what?

[SharpFang]

Amiga (OCS/ECS) had one fixed refresh rate, 60hz in us, 50hz in Europe. If you pushed the signal to a TV screen, there was no problem with scan rates [it was always the TV's native]. So the image pushed could switch resolutions at will - the produced res was a different abstraction layer from the physical display. You could really switch them between screens. The exception was interlace on/off which was global - vertical resolution was pretty much fixed [240 us, 256 europe]and you could only double it by switching interlace on/off, but horizontal was quite flexible and you could freely mix them.

OS-9

[markdavis]

Let us not forget that OS-9 was doing it before Amiga.... and that was also submitted by someone as prior art from 1983:

http://www.post-issue.org/prior_art/83/detail

OS-9 was my first "real" OS, before eventually switching to Unix, then Linux. Back in the day, it was extremely impressive.

Re:OS-9

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL...

He obviously meant this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-9

Re:OS-9

[NetLarry]

I remember my Radio Shack Color Computer 3 (running OS-9), with 128K (!!) of RAM, the expansion interface, HDD controller with 5MB hard drive, Floppy controller, and RS232 pack connected to a DT100 dumb terminal. And it actually would run programs on the TV screen and the terminal simultaneously. Talk about a stroll down memory lane... NetLarry

Re:OS-9

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn,
My first was a Rdaio Shack color computer with 4K of memory. I saved my money from picking potatoes to buy it.
I am envious of your superior machine, I assume your parents brought it.

Re:OS-9

[Rob Riggs]

Mac? Who said anything about Mac? OS-9 was not an Apple OS.

Re:OS-9

[kimvette]

The C=128 could also do this; you could hook up a split composite (now called S-video) and RGBI monitor at the same time and have an app display different outputs on each screen.

Re:OS-9

[babyrat]

Loser...I saw the 4k coco in the 'Shack and chose the 16k model...

Dungeons of Daggorath? Polaris? The mining donkey kong clone (can't believe I can't remember the name)

Re:OS-9

[thogard]

The real hackers piggybacked 16 kbit chips and ran a wire to the memory/video controller.

Re:OS-9

[markdavis]

I didn't say MacOS-9, I said OS-9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS9

Re:OS-9

[markdavis]

That was me :)
My first CoCo was a 4K model. The next was 16K. I think that was the one I piggybacked another 16K to get 32K.

Re:OS-9

[thogard]

The 4k and 16k came out at the same time and the 32k was a piggy back with pairs of the 16k chips. The next hack was using 64k chips and hooking up an extra chip to a gate on the PIO to bank swap out the ROM and swap in the RAM. There were other hacks to other PIO pins that would give OS 9 far more ram in the area of like 256k at the time but no process could deal with more than 64k at one time. There were also divers written for the 6829 which should have given up to 2 meg in theory but I never could find one of those chips even though there were drivers for OS floating around.

Re:OS-9

[commodore64_love]

>>>split composite

???. Never heard that term before. It implies that the video was composite, and then split, which is not true for the 128. S-video == Separated video. The black-and-white and color signals are kept separate from one another, in order to avoid interference. I've got a cable like that for my C=64 so I can play games directly on my TV.

>>>RGBI

"CGA" by any other name, but of course the term was copyrighted by IBM so Commodore had to use a different name. The 128 also had a Z-80 inside to run CP/M business software. I learned to use my first spreadsheet on there.

Re:OS-9

[commodore64_love]

TRIVIA:

The TRS-80 was the most popular (best selling) computer of its day..... Radio Shack sold them like hotcakes. But then the Commodore 64 came along. Now it's dropped to #3 behind the C64 and the Amiga 500.

Re:OS-9

[Ant P.]

The Sega 32X could do that too in theory; it didn't have direct access to the 16-bit VDP so in normal operation it used a loopback RGB cable and chroma-keying to add its own output to the screen, but it'd still operate if both outputs were connected directly to screens (the result wouldn't make much sense though).

Re:OS-9

[markdavis]

The CoCo was nice (and also my first, second, and third computers (coco 1, 2, and 3)). But the Commodore had more games which pushed a bigger following, which created a lot of momentum. However, when OS9 came out for the CoCo, it walked all over the primitive stuff on the Commodore (and made MS-DOS look like crap too). Unfortunately, too few people knew about OS9, and it wasn't exactly pushed by Radio Shack.

It wasn't until the Amiga that Commodore could compare again (on a technical merit basis).

Oh, those were the days :)

Upton Sinclair to the rescue by way of Al Gore

[jeko]

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Does Novell Win Legal Fees?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, maybe I'm not up to speed on patent law, but when you lose a civil case, aren't you liable for the prevailing party's legal fees?

Shanghaiing

[Anonymous Coward]

The patent troll had a patent called "user interface with multiple workspaces for sharing display system objects". Presumably, the prior art is the Amiga Workbench 2.0 and above feature referred to in the developer documentation as "Shanghaiing". This allows one application to open a screen and another application to place a window on the screen and assume responsibility for the screen's allocation after the original application quits. Prior to this, only the four color Workbench screen was public to all applications.

Re:Shanghaiing

[commodore64_love]

So if I was running JRterm (think primitive web browser) and playing Pacmania at the same time, JRterm could put a window on my Pacmania screen to inform me my 2 hour download is finished? Cool. I never moved higher than Workbench 1, and now I wish I had.

It's too bad that the Judge in the Commodore bankruptcy did not let them reorganize and continue selling Amigas. That's what they asked for, but instead the judge overruled the CEO and dissolved the company. I can't help wondering if said judge had been bribed by a certain other competitor (cough microsoft) to kill-off Commodore instead of letting them continue business.

And don't you dare say I'm "trolling". Study history. It's a matter of U.S. Antitrust record that Microsoft used bribes, buyouts, whatever it took to eliminate/marginalize competitors. MS-1990s was like the Goldman Sachs of the computer world.)

The original ALE mailing list post

[jkinney3]

http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/2010-May/119052.html From the Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts mailing list. Way to go Aaron!!

"Fake"

[Tablizer]

What keeps the plaintiff from claiming it's a fake? They have little to lose anyhow such that being caught lying is not a big risk to them.

Re:"Fake"

[babyrat]

If they know it's not a fake, then ultimately they will face the same situation.

They will be spending more of their own time and money, and possibly be liable for the additional court costs of the winning side.

That sounds like a potentially large risk to them.

It really wasn't marketing

[Sycraft-fu]

There were two big things that worked to kill Amiga, other than simply not being DOS (which was the standard even back then):

1) Cost. Amigas cost a whole lot more than other computers. Also let's not forget that in general computers were expensive. So when you were already talking something that was a major purchase and then talking something that was more expensive on top of it, well that gets real hard for people to justify. Sure the higher cost bought you something better, but the money isn't always there. Sometimes "good enough" has to be good enough. I'll bet that is true today of nearly every piece of electronics you own. There probalby is a higher end, better product out there that you decided was too expensive to justify. Nothing wrong with that, but appreciate that is how it works, and that others might disagree.

2) Failure to keep pace. The Amiga just didn't keep up with developments in the rest of the computer industry well. In particular this is because a lot of what made them cool and capable of doing neat things also made them inflexible with regards to being changed. A good example is in graphics. HAM-6 was neat because it got colour detail nothing else could, but the limitations on it were a real pain. So when competing systems started to get higher colour counts with standard indexed or true colour modes, it wasn't nearly so nice. However Commodore was slow respond to those new graphics advances, and got left behind.

Really marketing didn't play in to it. It was too expensive compared to other computers to every become the system most people owned, and it fell behind when it came to pros. I mean it could have enjoyed a solid pro following, as it initially had, but for that it would need to stay on the cutting edge and it didn't do that. Pros migrated off because other systems started doing a better job for less money.

Re:It really wasn't marketing

[babyrat]

It was too expensive compared to other computers to every become the system most people owned, and it fell behind when it came to pros

Sounds like bad marketing to me...

Re:It really wasn't marketing

[Psion]

What?

Amigas were cheaper than the IBM PCs and short list of clones available at the time and much less expensive than the Macs. They weren't cheaper than the 8 bit computers of their day, but then they weren't 8 bit computers. The Amiga had four channel, stereo sound compared to the bleeps and bloops of PCs and Macs, 4096 colors instead of 16 or plain black and white, and a multitasking operating system a decade before Windows. And because of the assistance of parallel processing, the Amiga could execute most software operations much more quickly than any of the competition. The DOS world competed by branding the Amiga a "gaming" computer, despite the fact that at that time superior gaming performance clearly demonstrated superior performance across the board.

Ultimately, the Amiga did fall behind, but only after Commodore itself folded and nearly a decade after its introduction.

Re:It really wasn't marketing

[dangitman]

They weren't cheaper than the 8 bit computers of their day, but then they weren't 8 bit computers.

Actually, if I recall correctly, there was a time when Amigas cost less than the Apple IIe. They certainly weren't expensive compared to Macs and IBM PCs.

The Amiga had four channel, stereo sound compared to the bleeps and bloops of PCs and Macs,

Arrgh, this is the second time in the last 24 hours that somebody has claimed that Macs only made beeping sounds. It's just not true. From the very first Mac they had audio. Not as good as an Amiga's, but certainly not "bleeps and bloops." You could even get sound digitizers for them.

What's more baffling is how people make this claim, when at the very launch of the original, the unveiling on-stage with Steve Jobs, the Mac introduced itself with speech synthesis. This was a very famous event in personal computer history! So, I'm not really sure where this misconception comes from.

Re:It really wasn't marketing

[mattack2]

...and the GS has an Ensoniq chip with 32 channels (though they're paired, and one pair used by the ROM routines.. so essentially 15 channel sound)..

Re:It really wasn't marketing

[jgrahn]

What? Amigas were cheaper than the IBM PCs and short list of clones available at the time and much less expensive than the Macs. They weren't cheaper than the 8 bit computers of their day, but then they weren't 8 bit computers.

True. When I bought an A500 as my first computer in 1990 it was clearly the smart choice for a poor student.

The DOS world competed by branding the Amiga a "gaming" computer, despite the fact that at that time superior gaming performance clearly demonstrated superior performance across the board. Ultimately, the Amiga did fall behind, but only after Commodore itself folded and nearly a decade after its introduction.

It fell behind a few years before that, maybe around the time the A1200 came. PC stuff (Intel CPUs, graphics cards) quickly became cheaper due to the large quantities. The A3000 and A4000 desktop computers were pretty expensive. The OS was still superior to MacOS and Windows though.

Re:It really wasn't marketing

[lena_10326]

Not to mention anyone buying a PC generally bought an ISA sound card with it: adlib or soundblaster. It was unusual to find a home PC without one due to gaming, but common to find an office PC without one.

Re:It really wasn't marketing

[Ash-Fox]

1) Cost. Amigas cost a whole lot more than other computers.

Rubbish.

2) Failure to keep pace. The Amiga just didn't keep up with developments in the rest of the computer industry well.

Amiga was often ahead actually.

What killed Amiga was XOR patent lawyers preventing the sales of the CD32 in the USA because they didn't get paid for XOR licensing, Commodore couldn't afford the storage for the already produced CD32 units and went bankrupt.

Re:It really wasn't marketing

[commodore64_love]

$600 for an Amiga 500 with drive is expensive? Hardly. That's only a little higher than the Commodore 64 + 1541's cost, and that was the lowest-priced computer of its day.
.

>>>From the very first Mac they had audio.

So did the Atari console released in 1977, but I wouldn't brag about it. The first Mac's audio was better than that, but not by much. It was inferior to the C64's SID, and I certainly didn't sit around listening to music on the ancient Mac like I did with my C64. Not until my Quadra Mac would I say the audio matched an Amiga.

Re:It really wasn't marketing

[commodore64_love]

>>>The OS was still superior to MacOS and Windows though.

Still is even today. (See Amiga OS 4)

Re:It really wasn't marketing

[dangitman]

$600 for an Amiga 500 with drive is expensive? Hardly. That's only a little higher than the Commodore 64 + 1541's cost, and that was the lowest-priced computer of its day.

When did I say they were expensive? I was making the opposite argument.

The first Mac's audio was better than that, but not by much. It was inferior to the C64's SID, and I certainly didn't sit around listening to music on the ancient Mac like I did with my C64.

But in your post on another thread, you claimed they only made beeps, which is patently false.

Amiga marketing

[falconwolf]

If only amiga was able to make their OS more wide-spread and accepted... Sigh.

Yeap, the Amiga marketing was shitty. When Gateway bought the Amiga from Escom I was hoping they'd revive the Amiga but it looks like all they did was waste money. There is AROS but I don't know how that's going.

Falcon

Re:Amiga marketing

[LWATCDR]

If Commodore had bought KFC they would have marketed it as warm dead birds in a cardboard bucket.
Yep Commodore had a real winner with the Amiga and frankly it didn't do all that bad for a time but they really blew the marketing.
Not providing an easy way to go past 512 MB on the 1000 or an easy way to add an HD internally was dumb.
Not getting more business software on it was also dumb. I am still ticked off at Borland. When I bought my Amiga 1000 part of the reason was that they advertised TurboPascal for the Amiga.
Do you have any idea how much software was written in Turbo Pascal and Turbo C?
And how much of it might have been ported to the Amiga?
Just to many misses.

So the prior art artists can sue them now instead?

[Shompol]

1. 1995: April - At an auction in New York, ESCOM buys all rights, properties, and technologies of Commodore. http://oldcomputers.net/
2. [ESCOM] declared bankruptcy on 15 July 1996 and was liquidated ... and the Amiga assets [were purchased] by Gateway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escom_(computer_corp)

patent troll

[mathfeel]

Since it's written in the constitution that our government should promote useful art, can we please make doing the exact opposite a federal crime and send some people to a federal pound-you-ass prison??

too funny about a working amiga

[Nyder]

I don't understand the surprise that someone has a working 1986 computer.

Maybe it's because of how cheap computers were made later, but I have quite a few working 8bit systems.

Commodores, Apple II's, TRS-80 Mod 4p, Amiga 1000. Oh, wait, that Amiga is actually a 16bit system. Since I guess I can include those, I can original Macs in that mix also.

In fact, it's harder to find pre pentium system these days (of the x86 line) then I think any of the computers I mentioned.

And it's funny that they had to bring in an amiga 1000 to prove it, when a emulator would of done the job also. Of course, wheeling the Amiga 1000 in, and booting it up would have a better affect.

Re:too funny about a working amiga

[Chris Tucker]

"Of course, wheeling the Amiga 1000 in, and booting it up would have a better affect."

Exactly!

Prior art on a computer over 20 years old, running an equally "ancient" OS.

Doing that in an emulator would have been no where near as impressive and convincing to the jury.

In fact, there could have been a Mac Plus running System 6 and Switcher, along with a C=64 + RAM Expansion Unit running an app (the name of which escapes me) that swapped running C=64 apps into and out of system RAM from the REU, to demonstrate prior art on multiple machines from the era.

<descent into nostalgia> I really need to get one of those computer desks that wedge into a corner and get my C=128 system up and running again. That was the last machine I knew inside and out. I knew EVERYTHING in it and it's multiple Operating Systems.</descent into nostalgia>

Excuse me, I need to either yell at a cloud or kids on the lawn.

Re:too funny about a working amiga

[Hatta]

I don't understand the surprise that someone has a working 1986 computer.

Don't forget, PJ is a girl.

Re:too funny about a working amiga

[ScrewMaster]

I don't understand the surprise that someone has a working 1986 computer.

No kidding. I don't have my original PC anymore, but I do have an original Apple ][ Standard (Integer ROMs, no less) from 1977, with the FP board and a box full of peripherals. Somewhere I have a 10 meg Cider ][ hard drive, and I think a couple of Apple //e's. I don't know about the Cider, but the computers still work fine, even the floppy drives. I still have an Amiga 1000 too: I had a 500 but I sold it a long time ago. They were neat machines, no doubt about it, but Commodore demonstrated very clearly that they had no idea what they had, how to market it, or what people could or should do with it. So they let it fail and shortly after that Commodore computers disappeared.

I was a game developer when the Amiga was announced (actually, about a year before it was announced) as the company I worked for did the graphics demo that shipped with each machine. It was all very hush-hush (bunch of Sun Sparcstations in a special room with an electronic lock on the door where the "special" programers worked) and none of us knew what was going on until the official word came from Commodore.

It turned out they were working on a couple of prototype Amigas, that didn't even have a power-on/RESET circuit (you had to manually start them after applying power) and were shipped in flat black-painted plywood boxes with holes cut in the side for the connectors. Pretty cool. Wish I had one of those: they'd be worth real money nowadays.

3 days?

[TheLink]

> but i bet they are equally as happy that it takes 3 days to finish xD

Boss calling up on Monday morning: "Hey are you coming yet?".

Crowdsourced law

[Arancaytar]

This is pretty cool.

Parallel evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to cite bible verse. Just look up the word "parallel evolution". Faced with similar environmental "problems" life tends to take similar forms. Notice the surprising similarity in the shapes of a whale, a fish and an ichthyosaur despite the difference in propulsion methods (an up-down swimming motion in the whale vs. the side-to-side movement of a fish). What with the Web increasing the speed of collaboration (the hive mind), maybe it's the time to rethink the idea of patents "promoting" progress?

A working Amiga

[Nahooda]

I read the article and I'm a bit stunned about the way she writes about a working Amiga like if it was something really special and really rare. You will get thousands of working Amigas over here in Europe from EBay. I still own one (Amiga 500) and a couple of my friends still own their Amigas, too - working of course.
Was the Amiga really that rare in the United States?

-Nahooda

Re:A working Amiga

[Dunbal]

Was the Amiga really that rare in the United States?

      Yes, however their owners are very vocal. The "Apple" phenomenon was vastly multiplied in the case of the Amiga user, who was convinced it was the "most amazing computer in the world" and never failed to let everyone know about it in online communities (BBS, GEnie, CIS). However the most generous sales estimates have a total number of 3.8-4.8 million Amiga owners worldwide. A drop in the bucket compared to PC's. In fact the best Amiga ever did was garner just over 5% market share one year, in 1991. However it was usually never more than 3% of the market.

      I'm not criticizing the machine (Amiga owners tend to be a bit fanatical and I would hate to receive death threats). It had some extremely innovative features for its time, including a decent sound chip when PC's still went "beep". But the PC's main features as always were expandability and compatibility - both of hardware and software. You were guaranteed that your stuff would work if you had a decent XT/AT clone.

As seen on Oprah

[DingerX]

As a matter of fact, Oprah has Rugbrød flown in straight from Denmark for her breakfast (google Oprah, Rugbrød, and check the Danish-press articles. I couldn't find a decent English one).

The point of such behavior: what we eat is the primary social differentiators. It's more indicative even than what we wear and what we drink. In non-industrialized cultures, wealth is tied to eating lots of meat. In many parts of the world today, a socially important person is also obese. Food is power.

In the West, we're rich enough that everyone can afford meat, and our poor can also be morbidly obese. But, in addition to quantity, quality has always been a determining factor. And one of the easiest ways to indicate quality is by eating really expensive food, hence the taste for the exotic. So, yes, I think sushi is quite tasty. But the ability to serve sushi, and to eat it, indicates belonging to a social group of wealthy, educated elites.

That's also why in the US, they make sickly sweet "blush" wines and overoaked chardonnays: Americans associated drinking wine with bourgeois status, but many don't like the taste.

Re:As seen on Oprah

[dangitman]

As a matter of fact, Oprah has Rugbrød flown in straight from Denmark for her breakfast (google Oprah, Rugbrød, and check the Danish-press articles. I couldn't find a decent English one).

But that doesn't mean she's trying to show how edgy and different she is. Maybe she just really likes it? There's a difference between being a foodie and eating food to make a statement.

The point of such behavior: what we eat is the primary social differentiators.

Why would Oprah need anything to differentiate herself? She has a fuckton of money more than the average person, and is one of the most influential people in America. She doesn't need to prove herself by trying to be different.

But the ability to serve sushi, and to eat it, indicates belonging to a social group of wealthy, educated elites.

Oh bullshit, even middle-class people in the US can afford fine sushi. Hell, I make it from scratch, and it can cost less than what people typically spend on a fast-food meal for the family.

That's also why in the US, they make sickly sweet "blush" wines and overoaked chardonnays: Americans associated drinking wine with bourgeois status, but many don't like the taste.

Again, they buy them because they prefer the taste. It has little to do with social status. Nobody seriously links drinking wine with sophistication anymore.

Can you try to look... blockier?

[sxrysafis]

http://www.xkcd.com/598/

Yes it was

[SmallFurryCreature]

The home-computers in general, as opposed to the PC/Mac, were on the whole a EU thing. Not sure why. Commodore is after all Canadian. Maybe PC/Mac was cheaper in the US. Maybe IBM and Apple found it difficult to sell in Europe. Maybe US business adopted the PC more so that the proffesional choice was more influential then in Europe.

The Amiga was a home computer, while it could of course be used to run a small office it never got the reputation of being for the office in great numbers, never heard of a case of a large office using them in the same way DOS and Apples and later Windows would be used. They were not for word-processing... well they were, but that was not how they were sold.

But such regional differences are hardly surprising. One of the fun things of travelling abroad is to go into a supermarket and just look at the differences. Go into a US store and you won't regonize half the foods, even if it is the same food because of the different ways they are branded.

Most of us buy stuff anyway because our friends recommend it, so the first product to get a foothold often becomes the leading product.

So yes, a european is far more likely to see a working Amiga then an American. So Amiga is a bit like your own toes.

Re:Amiga 1000 is floppy based.

[guidryp]

"I read the article and I'm a bit stunned about the way she writes about a working Amiga like if it was something really special and really rare. "

I have an Amiga 1000, in a box with a bunch of floppies from the day.

I would be surprised if those 20 year old floppies were in good enough condition to boot the Kickstart (ROM emulation disks) and WB desktop.

Actually 4096 colours in high res with a hack

[Ilgaz]

Newtek guys (they are still around, Video Toaster in Pro Video/PC) actually accomplished 4096 colours in high res by abusing the system which that patent troll claimed. I remember they were (rightfully) bragging about it on full page magazine ads but I haven't used it in production or seen it used. ...and people ask why Amiga can't be forgotten :)

I am still ticked off at Borland.

[falconwolf]

When I bought my Amiga 1000 part of the reason was that they advertised TurboPascal for the Amiga.

I bought a used Amiga 500 but I don't know if either Turbo Pascal and Turbo C was available for it. I did buy Borland C++ Powerbuilder for my PCs, one running Win 95 another with a DEC Alpha running NT4. The Win 95 PC is long dead and gone but the NT4 PC is under my desk. What I find ironic is that of all commercial software I bought the only one I was able to install on the Alpha was C++ Powerbuilder.

Do you have any idea how much software was written in Turbo Pascal and Turbo C?
And how much of it might have been ported to the Amiga?

A lot, that's it. I don't know how much commercial software was written with them. When I took Pascal and C/C++ those are what we used in my classes. Now I use, only to relearn and continue Java but I haven't done much lately because it hasn't been running right, is Eclipse. As for how much was written for Amiga OS/Workbench I don't know. I say about programming with the Mac, Macs can be used to write programs that run on Linux, Macs, and Windows. Well Amigas was able to do that and program for Amigas. From a purely development/programming perspective using an Amiga seemed best. Of course the user interface would have to do programmed separately, however that's where modularity and UML comes in.

Just to many misses.

I'm not sure what you mean here, but I'll answer as if you mean not many programs were written for Amigas. If more Amigas were sold more software would have been written for it. Demand stimulates production. When Microsoft started it had software written for a number of microcomputer systems from Altairs with Intel 8080 CPUs to systems with Motorola 6800 CPUs to Tandy (Radio Shack) TRS-80s with a Zilog Z80 CPU. Even today MS programs for Macs. MS never stopped programming for Apple, though Bill Gates threatened to stop.

Falcon