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Amiga Executive Update
Metaphysicist writes "According to a new Executive Update,
Amiga's new Prez says: "The reports of the Amiga's death are greatly exaggerated". While he didn't really say much about what AI will do, he did seem to say that AI won't be building any hardware: "we have decided to work with business partners who will deliver our software technology on their systems, rather than enter the hardware business directly."
" So insert your random amiga theory here.
I have a great idea - how about a ban on Amiga "news" articles until they do something newsworthy? In the past weeks we've seen them tout products that don't exist, cancel programs that were never started, revamp their leadership, and now, they are alerting the world that they aren't doing anything yet.
jesus, when does it end? enough with the Amiga trash already. we don't care, and we won't until they actually do something.
If we look at the events of the past few weeks we'll notice they have:
1. Changed management
2. Changed CPUS
3. Changed OSs
4. Changed their platform (desktop to consumer)
5. Given up on hardware
So, like, why are we even bothering paying attention any more? Yes, I loved my Amiga 500 too, but this has nothing to do with the original.
As much as it pains me, a long time boing-ballin', workbenchin', CLI-hackin', Guru-Meditatin' dude to say, I think we've come to the point where we can call for the replacement of the boing ball graphic in the Slashdot/images directory with the humour foot one.
(deep, heavy sigh, followed by somber trek to cafeteria to wallow in a tall glass of sasparilla and a few Lorna Dunes).
"Stuff that matters" - to Slashdot anyway. It's news for nerds, stuff that matters To SOMEONE. Yes, I agree Slashdot has gone overboard with a Boing ball on the icon bar at least once a week. No worse than some of the other silly off-topic stuff that goes up there, I guess the red and white just flags more attention.
But it DOES matter. Some of us want new computers that are not Windows, are not Mac, and are not UNIX. (Yes, this is an alien concept for some people around here.) Some of us LIKE how the Amiga works and would like to see a memory-protected, multiprocessing-enabled, theme-configurable version of it running on quad 500MHz G4's - or as close to that as we can get within our price range. Some of us were hoping Gateway would actually do something meaningful with the technology - and if anything, the Iwin "Amiga clone" hoax has proven that PEOPLE ARE VERY INTERESTED in buying such boxes if someone bothers to build them. Gateway has the clout, the resources, and the people (or HAD the people before they all resigned in disgust) to make a kick-ass computer for people who WANT kick-ass computers, and instead they have reduced it all to a contradictory-sounding software-only information appliance that will have far less of a market than the Amiga itself. Notice each successive press release has been a diminishment of the strategy.
Now, frankly, I don't want Gateway to manufacture anything with an Amiga nameplate - I just want them to stop being condescending and insulting to the Amiga user base, and continue to piss on us by acting as though WE should still be waiting with baited breath on THEM.
Perhaps most importantly, my A1200 still runs and is still VERY much in active use, for Web surfing, email, word processing, and 3D work. For me the Amiga (the classic Amiga, not the crap Gateway wants to sell me) will continue to be "stuff that matters" until the last Amiga on earth fails to power up. I acknowledge its limitations and I wish for better - but it also continues to be useful, while my Linux box rusts in the closet.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
I was going to rush out and buy a new Amiga when it was released. I liked the sound of Neutrino, and then over to Linux based using Transmeta... i wanted it even more to see just what transmeta can do for myself
:(
Amiga is not JUST about "a better way". It WAS about the OS, the Software, the Hardware - this is what made it "a better way"
I bet I am not alone to feel the most dissapointed I have ever been in Amiga and I think I have finally given up hope... that says a hell of a lot coming from me
I want the hardware, the software, and everything else. Considering Amiga want to take a different path, it makes me wonder if they have heard of the word 'diversification'
Amiga, give people what they want, THEN offer other ways to distribute this technology in what is currently being proposed.
The only faith I have left in Amiga is that (with their never-ending changing of ideas) they will decide to go back to what was a better solution in the first place. If not, I have lost complete faith. Then again maybe Iwin, Phase5 and QNX can do something...
Whatever happens, I suppose i'll be happy if I can still play Blazemonger
heh
Do your best, hope for the best, suspect the worst.
AMIGA Inc. == CLUEBIES !
Tons of companies including Commodore Amiga has gone down that road and failed.
The cool thing about Amiga was that most people had the exact same box (Amiga 500). You could spend a full week fine-tuning 200 lines of assembly to push it to its limits, and it would be worthwhile because you could impress all your friends with it. (same thing is true of sucesses like C64, Nintendo, SEGA and Playstation)
When the boxes are not the same (like the PC) software runs badly on most machines.
-- Tov Are Jacobsen
The Cloanto software "Amiga forever" is awesome!a rious chipsets/Audiocard-VideoHW emulations that allow simulation of unreal machines never befor made. A super way to testSW w/o an arsenel of real HW, or run classic games from the 80's, or Mega-Demos. Diskettes are
The emulator will run directly from the CD, or can be installed. Versions for DOS, Mac, Windows
included. Includes ROMs/OS for 1.3, 2.04, 3.1 versions. Includes Picasso 24bit graphics card
HW emulation that mimics a modern megapixel Amiga
on your FeeCee at work. It includes a ready to run Sys: and Work: partitions. Connects to the net
thru the host computers network! Has a pair of programs to run on a real Amiga to transfer files back-n-forth. The product is very configurable, and you can simulate multitudes of combinations of
CPU/Floppy/HD/ChipRam/16-32bitram/ZorroMemory/V
simulated as 901k files that can be located in the any of the 4 virtual floppy drives.
A Very cool way to make an Amiga Laptop too.
Bring that CD and a good directory utility like Dopus5 to the network, and you are lord!
Joe Torre - X - HardwareEngineer @ Amiga Inc & ZapMedia Amiga, AmigaDE, BeOS, Linuxz, QNX, Rebol, Windoze, ZME: So
Maybe I'm way off here, but the way I see it...
It's not running on Amiga hardware
It's not running AmigaOS
So how is it an Amiga? Just carrying a logo and a name doesn't make it cool. It will have none of the technology of the original Amiga (which has been improved on in other markets anyways).
Ok, enough is enough. Everybody loved his/her Amiga (1000, 500, A2000, B2000, etc.), but now it's over!
/. doesn't propagate all those bogus "news" about something that doesn't even exist anymore. It's like trying to bring a dead back to life, even though the dead was great.
The only reason that could possibly raise any discution is nostalagia. In the days of the Amiga (circa end of the 80's), people were passionate on the war between the Amiga and the Atari ST. Now, we see the same kind of flame wars between Windows and Linux users/advocates (although I haven't seen many ppl claiming to be Win advocates).
Is there anybody here who likes that vaporware never-ending-story with the Amiga? Haven't we evolved? Or is it the new teenager generation busy discovering the joys of partisanship and computers?
Boy, we didn't have the net 10-12 years ago! We were congregating at our local computer dealer, arguing about what one of the *printed* magazines had said! At least, we were getting off the 'puter, just for the pleasure of talking about it... Remember the time when Tramiel (CEO of Atari) was openly flaming the Amiga, and vice-versa...?
But now...wow... I don't think any software community or advocacy group *needs* that kind of childish behaviour. The "my toy is better than yours" is OK when you're 10.
I'm requesting
I liked my Amigas a lot, they were ahead of anything on the market then. But, unfortunately, it's the fate of those who are ahead of their times to die poor.
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
and the custom circuitry it contained that made Amiga what it was. You cannot just take the Amiga and run it on top of any old OS without losing a criticial piece of what the Amiga was.
Video was one of the things the Amiga did best. The reason it did it best was that the video chip had it's own language(the copper list), and could be made to do things when the raster reached specific locations on the screen. This makes for very smooth animation as you can guarantee the image won't be updated while it's in the middle of being drawn. The screen could also concurrently show multiple resolutions and/or color depths at the same time by changing the settings via the copper list.
On PC's there's no way to know where the scan line is, so the image is often changed while it's still being displayed. This is really noticable when an image is moving left/right as the image will appear to have a seam where the motion isn't in sync.
Why does this remind me of nothing quite so much as some sort of bizarre Monty Python or Marx Brothers skit?
Groucho: So, you're going to build the new Amiga hardware?
Chico: A-yes-a, but-a you see, we was going to build the hardware, but now we no building the hardware.
Groucho: So you're building the software, right?
Chico: Oh, no, you-a see, we-a going to build the soft-a-ware, but now we-a no building the soft-a-ware neither.
Groucho: But you're at least designing the chips?
Chico: No, we-a thought we-a design the chips, but we then think, no, we no design-a the chips.
(in rapid fire)
Groucho: OS?
Chico: No
Groucho: Keyboard?
Chico: No
Groucho: Mouse?
Chico: No
Groucho: I've got it! You're going to just build the hardware specifications!
Chico: No, we don' going to have-a nothing to do with-a building the boxes and-a we no going to have-a nothing to do with the software that-a running on-a the boxes.
Groucho: Well, then what in the world is going to make it an Amiga?
Chico: Ah, you-a see, we put-a the Amiga name on it! That-a make it Amiga!
Groucho: (pauses) My friend, that is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. And I've heard some pretty stupid ones from you.
Chico: Thank-a you very much! We think it-a pretty good too.
-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
Leveraging over five years of Amiga's revolutionary Vapor-Tech development, Amiga Inc. announced their first product under the direction of Gateway, Amiga Cloud 1.0. Amiga Inc. will collect large amounts of their previously released VaporWare and place them in the Earth's lower atmosphere, initially over large cities, but later we hope to deploy them nationwide, end even worldwide.
We at Amiga believe that despite the fact, nay, even because of the fact that we haven't released a product since 1995, we are perfectly positioned to become a market leader in the revolutinary new technology.
Our Cloud 1.0 product will be years, millenia, ahead of it's time, providing both advanced irrigation services, and also a totally new graphical paradigm. Our GUI interface is so simple, even a three year old child can master it. The user simply must lie down on their back, and observe any Amiga Cloud 1.0 installation, and Amiga Cloud 1.0 will immediately reconfigure itself into a wide variety of multimedia shapes and presentation styles.
A banana, a horse, a big weasel eating sausage links-- all these and more can be called forth effortlessly by the new Amiga Cloud 1.0. Cloud is fully multiuser and multitasking, features a "form once, rain anywhere" portable architecture, and will soon be available in multiple "flavors" including "original white," "titanium gray," "fishbelly silver," and "tornado plum." And for our customers in Florida, look for "Floyd gray," debuting tonight!
Yes, Amiga's Cloud 1.0 will be so damn revolutionary, worldchanging, and downright original, that I can barely contain myself! I mean, seriously, this will change everything! Those other companies won't know what hit them! Together, we shall rule the world, and crush all the heretic nonbelievers!!!! They will burn and suffer for all time in their eternal Wintel torment!!!!!!
oops. I think I wet 'em.
----
We all take pink lemonade for granted.
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
If you don't like it, ignore it. You can even set a filter for Amiga-related messages.
There is no rule saying that everything covered at Slashdot should be open source. And yes, the Amiga still does a lot of things better that most OS's (including Linux).