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

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.

[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.

[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.

[Alien Being]

Ahhhh... the mammaries.

There, FTFY.

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?".

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

[rts008]

What part of prior do they not understand?

Richard?

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?

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: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: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