As someone who worked alongside the teams on the UK NHS data spine project, I must point out that you're way off-base. To the best of my knowledge, signup data on healthcare.gov was using RDBMS technology - the NoSQL component was likely only used for unstructured data - i.e. documents and communications materiel.
I should make clear that I'm posting on the basis of personal experience. I have no particular ties to MarkLogic (though companies I've worked for do use the technology), or the US government.
Firstly, the NYT article is poorly researched. My sources tell me that MarkLogic Server is far from the only data storage technology and vendor involved, and that while the MarkLogic-powered aspects of the system did require some remedial action, those aspects were not central to the publicised problems. Remember when MS used their press contacts and marketing clout to smear OSS on the server back in 1999? I wouldn't be surprised if that's going on here.
Secondly, I have it on good authority that the primary points of failure upon launch were related to middleware connecting the modules that were in fact using RDBMS technology.
Thirdly, many Slashdotters will be learning of MarkLogic Server for the first time through this article, and I urge them to give the technology a go before making a judgment call. For one thing, while XML is the (apparent) native storage format and XQuery is the native language, the actuality is somewhat different from what might be assumed. For one thing, the native storage format is not raw XML, but a fully-indexed compressed format which provides a decent compromise between storage requirements and rapid query/retrieval. Additionally, while XQuery is still the native language used by the technology, there has been a significant effort to provide a usable interface to the data through REsT, native Java and even basic SQL. Storage is journaled, implemented as an MVCC system and ACID-compliant in a way that no other "NoSQL" platform can offer. As an example of the platform's resilience under load, I am reliably informed that the BBC's real-time online coverage of the 2012 London Olympiad (which left other news and broadcast organisations in the dust) was powered by MarkLogic Server.
Just like Linux and the OSS BSD implementations that were creaming Microsoft's NT server implementations at the turn of the millennium, alternative data storage, query and search technologies are now challenging the old guard, and the old guard are running scared, and I'd bet significant money that the NYT sources are from the established RDMS vendors. I've been contracting with employers who have been using MarkLogic Server for the best part of a decade, and IMO the technology represents the most viable threat to the RDBMS hegemony and the vendors that rely on it that has ever existed. This opinion is not based on hype, it's based on nearly ten years of experience with the technology and fourteen years of experience with RDBMS development strategies.
I'm not preaching, in fact I urge you all to make your own minds up.
From my reading, MarkLogic Server is the only product in the "NoSQL" space that is specifically intended - and designed - for enterprise use. Unlike most of the better-known OSS "NoSQL" offerings, it is 100% ACID-compliant, resilient and has been building up a considerable and high-profile user base for the last decade. I can't help but suspect that MarkLogic's involvement extended mainly to storage of data that does not fit into the relational paradigm, and that the NYT published FUD promulgated by competitors without first contacting MarkLogic themselves.
The companies I've worked for have been using it with very few problems for at least 8 years.
..for the simple reason that 95% of the IT teachers I have come across couldn't tell their arse from their elbow when it comes to any real knowledge. Their primary mission seems to be preventing the kids from getting better at things than them.
Almost all the computing knowledge I amassed in school was outside the bounds of what the teachers wanted us to do (Which, predictably, was to use Office and QuickBasic - Because the teacher refused to learn Pascal, C or even VB to accommodate those of us who wanted more)
Unless they're deliberately pulling down offensive or illegal (in terms of the law) material, and they have finished their class assignments, kids should be allowed to explore with as few limitations as possible.
You argument is sounding dangerously like a modern argument for 'Children should be seen and not heard'. Fence a child's imagination in and the child grows bitter and resentful. Let them learn at their own pace, if they show a desire to, and the difference will show.
OK, first up, it's a UK site, and the UK is a different country. We do things differently here. (With apologies to L.P. Hartley)
Over here, during the late 80s and early 90s the focus was not, as in the US, on consoles and occasionally PC. The main thing over here was 8 and early 16-bit home computers. Jez San is not mainly there for StarWing, he is there for Starglider (I & II), without which there would be no StarWing. Granted Miyamoto added touches to the formula that made it engrossing to the Nintendo crowd, but to call the Argonaut contribution irrelevant is a bit of a slap in the face. Just because it wasn't on the NES doesn't mean it didn't exist. Starglider isn't on the list next to the pic because it was a different time frame, but ignoring it's contribution to StarWing would be nigh-on criminal.
Gamespot could have made it entirely UK-centric by focusing entirely on the bedroom pioneers like Braybrook, Crowther et al. But they're trying to be all-encompassing, and to be fair, aren't doing a bad job (if a little slavishly devoted to the Nintendo/Sony axis).
Yes there are a million names that could be added to the mix, and I expect that later they will be. Gaming is something that has evolved very differently in different places, so it is only to be expected that omissions occur.
And to those that call placing companies in there unfair, and pandering to the marketers, that's a bit unfair as well. Firms like Psygnosis and Core weren't the slick marketing-driven software houses that proliferate today. They were descended directly from the bedroom coders getting together with their mates. Psygnosis themselves were formed from the ashes of Imagine (an even earlier 8-bit publisher), and in the early days had a habit of getting Roger Dean to do their cover artwork and putting game T-shirts in boxes (I still have my Beast II tshirt somewhere).
It's a little hard to explain exactly why, but names like San, Edmondson, Braybrook and Jones always stir up more in me than Miyamoto ever will. Not because Miyamoto isn't worthy (anyone with half a brain can see that his contribution has been incredible), but simply because I wasn't part of that kind of gaming, and thus was inspired by different people.
OK, so maybe I'm reading this wrong, but back in the day, when RIAA and Napster were first duking it out in court, RIAA's whole argument was against the principle of the thing. They said it hurt artists, and that there was no profitability model in this kind of (pseudo)peer to peer system. This destroyed their (RIAA's) business model, so naturally they freaked.
For whatever reason, RIAA won the court case, and Napster's business looked like it was going to be squashed.
Now, all of a sudden, sums of $1bn are being talked about and thrown around, and RIAA are acting like pussycats. Now, the last time I checked, accepting money in return for the protection of a business was called 'protection racketeering'. Granted, RIAA have a group of lawyers who can make this sound like the most legal protection racket you've ever heard of, but surely such a defender of principle as the RIAA shouldn't be adopting methodologies from organised crime?
I ranted on here a long time ago about RIAA being a cartel, moving towards a system of increasing profits by charging high prices for generic, manufactured material (cheaper than real artists, remember), thus trying to charge more money for 'product', which, as far as I'm concerned, is vastly inferior to 'music'. It looks like they've neutered the first wave of resistance to their plans.
Those of us who came to Napster via the cluetrain will move on. OpenNAP is still around, as is Gnutella (which needs a serious re-working, but is still viable). What saddens me is that for once, we had a chance to say to the mainstream that there was a better way than The Man's, that there was an alternative, that occasionally building a better mousetrap does work. I just hope we get another chance to say it soon.
PS. I know that RIAA's principle had to do with giving money to the artists, but I have a feeling that a large chunk of this $1bn will actually go to lawyers.
the PC is not the be all and end all though.....
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Pride Before The Fall
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· Score: 2
....much of today's Linux illuminiti wouldn't have heard of Operating Systems, let alone computers
Ouch.
I'm going to state something first, prattle on like an idiot for a couple of paragraphs, and then try to return to my original point.
I'm sorry, but I have to call you out there. When I was cutting my teeth (Around the same time as MS was gunning for pre-eminence, circa 1990, to paraphrase Andy Grove). MS-DOS hadn't even entered my lexicon. Granted it was easier for me, being European, but I started on the C64, and found my home on the Amiga.
"Ho!", you cry, "An Amiga zealot with revenge on his mind. He shouldn't have bought into inferior technology". Again, although I (and I freely admit this) do have something of an axe to grind with MS over the Amiga issue, it isn't that which makes me hope that their days of pre-eminence are over. It is the simple fact that the One Microsoft Way almost became reality across computing. If they'd been allowed to continue as they were before the proceedings, the nightmare reality of Microsoft products being the only viable solution in the world could have come to pass. Doesn't that scare you in the slightest?
The thing I like most about geek culture is that it makes a virtue of diversity. Not 'fitting in' is the norm. Through our computers we can express ourselves, and I only like working with a computer I can truly express myself with (And no, I don't mean through desktop wallpaper and movable icons). When there's only one candidate for what you can run on your machine, it smacks of a frightening level of digital totalitarianism that flies in the face of everything I love about computing and technology in the first place. Microsoft's eventual goal was (and still is, in many ways) to make sure that it is the only option. If I want to use *NIX instead of Windows, Navigator instead of IE, even DR-DOS instead of MS-DOS , that's my prerogative. MS were all in favour of taking that away, therefore I was, and am, willing to fight them using any and all means at my disposal..NET frightens me, and I hope that if it does succeed, it doesn't stop those that don't like or wish to use its model from enjoying technology to the fullest.
OK, rant over. I'd just like to state that I do have friends who did grow up with MS-DOS, and will defend it and the PC architecture to the hilt. But I find that, thanks largely to MS, I'm shackled to an architecture I hate programming for (Extended AT) and frequently using an OS which I find painfully counter-intuitive and lousy to code for (and it ain't Linux:).
Microsoft helped make computing a far less exciting and enjoyable pastime for me, and I certainly feel that I owe neither them, or Bill Gates anything.
OK, so you've just said everything I was going to post.
Oh well, but unlike you, I do see a point in using Linux (I agree with Squid that the Windows UI feels like the Amiga done wrong, there are some things that are downright un-intuitive about it all, text highlighting being the worst offender as far as I am concerned).
It's quite interesting that the OS used in the Amiga was derived from Amiga's second choice of OS (The first was killed by budget/time restrictions).
The Amiga also had another strength, in that you could throw the OS in the bin if you didn't want to use it, and hit the hardware directly (Not feasible with the diversity of PC architecture these days, but oh well...). But I do really miss the level of integration. My WB *always* had a shell at the bottom (Until DOpus changed my life, but that's another story). The integreation was such that an operation performed in the CLI was *instantly* available in the GUI, and vice versa.
Personally, I think OS development has proceeded so far down the Windows path that a quick volte-face is unlikely. It's one of the things that has seriously dampened my enthusiasm for computers these past 5 years.......
First off, I partially agree with you. However, i can tell you from personal experience that 50 year old 16mm unless stored in rigidly optimal conditions will look awful. (Have a look at the Star Wars special edition if you don't believe me, the stock was f**ked after 20 years, let alone 50). My main beef with digital is the format incompatibility you mention, and the eisk of EM damage......
And, of course, Jay Miner (father of the Amiga) was involved with it too, IIRC. It had some incredibly nifty features for the time (Flip the screen and controls for lefties, proper backlit screen, better sound than the ST:)
Unfortunately, Nintendo was really flying around that time, and the Lynx seriously lacked games, so these days the Lynx is little more than a curio:(
Atari in the mid-late 80's was a very different company than when these documents were written. Ironically, the late-80's Atari was run by Jack Tramiel, former boss of Commodore, and Nolan Bushnell, Atari's founder, went to work for Commodore (in the CDTV days, I think). Tramiel was extremely pissed that he failed to win the Amiga and had his design team rustle up an off-the-shelf 68000 based machine. His main priority was to beat the Amiga to market, not to really beat it (The Amiga had had a few years of R&D before the ST was even conceptualised).
I don't think that they got very far with the DTP, although the ST didn't have bad programs for it. I remember the ST's display being a dog to lay out in ASM tho. What kept the ST in sales was the one thing it had that the Mac, PC and Amiga didn't, and that was the in-built MIDI ports. I think that the ST's designers knew that the YM2149 chip used was sub-standard, and they were hedging on cheap MIDI add-ons later, which didn't materialise. However, most recording studios I've worked in still have, behind their new-fangled Mac and PC systems, their (t)rusty old ST, to whip out when the BSOD strikes.
As a major Radiohead fan I think that Colin (and indeed the whole band) seem to be right on the money when it comes to recent events, not just Napster. In support of Drop The Debt, click the link. It really is a far more important issue than whether or not Napster survives. If you want to try music before you buy, there are many alternatives.
Seriously, when it comes to minor things such as file-sharing shenanigans, we will regroup and fight back. If the music industry thinks that killing Napster will kill online file sharing, they have no idea how wrong they are and this is a Good Thing. The guy on the TV interview next to Colin (some VP of Virgin Records) clearly had no clue exactly what Napster was, over and above the Hetfield viewpoint, and although Colin wasn't overflowing with technical knowledge, he at least recognised the positive side of what it is capable of.
I really think that record companies are fighting a losing battle here, though they do not know it. One day they will be financially exhausted from trying to fight too many battles against the future, and although we are a long way from a Utopian situation here, I think we should realise this and focus on some more important issues for a while.
Sorry for rambling, just a drunk Englishman. I'll be on my way.
It's very hard to ignore someone who brazenly appears on your IRC channels and tells users that their sysadmins are lamers. It's even harder when said person has the system cracked and tells the users as much (See Chapter 6).
Reading earlier chapters tells you that they avoided blowing the whistle for as long as they could, in a bid to secure the system before the cracker realised they were discovered. This cracker was on a power trip long before they started talking to him(her?), and he/she was obviously better at *nix than the average script-kiddie (very few kiddies bother writing their own rootkit). If I was that cracker, I'd have probably played dumb for a bit, rather than laying all the aces down so early.
Yes, malicious cracks are usually the work of sad, bored individuals, but I don't think that boosting their esteem will cause them to commit more damage. Usually, damaging the system is de rigeur after discovery, and most malicious crackers have it as part of their post-busted MO. I suspect that asking for a sanctioned set of platforms to continue spoofing and cracking was a stalling tactic while the rm's were being planted. The cracker knew that the system was being locked down, and that they only had one exploit left (statd). This cracker had a good thing going before they were shut down, and wanted to be remembered after they were.
IIRC it started as a way of getting around swear-filters on chat systems(while 'fuck' would not appear, 'phuX0R' would), and sort of permeated the BBS community, and then IRC. I'm not sure why it still exists. It seems to be used as more of a parody than anything else these days. Even the guy on 'Cracked' only seems to use it once, and he's using it to prove his advanced humour 'look everyone, I can do self-parody!). Most of the coders I know (around London) seem to use it sarcastically these days. 'Man, u r so '1337' tends to mean that what they've done is obvious, or a horrendous kludge.
You shouldn't be using the K7V with a T-Bird. IIRC, The K7V is a KX133 based board. As annoying as it is, The KX-133 does not (officially) support T-Birds (I think it's a custom timing issue, but I'm not sure). You need one with a KT-133 chipset, of which we're still waiting on some. I find it unlikely, though, that Asus will make Slot-A KT-133 versions of the K7V.:-( (Because it's a killer mobo) Not because of any particular malice, but because as far as I know, only OEM's were supposed to be getting Slot-A T-Birds.
Even the benchmark systems had to use a different setup.
Sorry to rain on your parade. Having said this though, Tom's managed to get a T-Bird 750 to go on a K7V with the latest BIOS, however they couldn't overclock it.
It's probably not what you wanted to hear, but t's all I've been able to dig up. (Having said that it made me feel a little less cheated having bought my 'Classic' Athlon 6 weeks before the T-Bird came out).
Swinging back on-topic, it definitely sounds like the fault isn't with the processor. Most likely either Gateway aren't regulating the voltage too well, or their design's a bit squiffy. I remember that my friend's MSI Athlon system seemed to have a voltage issue, which was sorted by switching to the K7V.
Unfortunately, as soon as the 'Boing!' logo appears at the top of a story, the trolls all seem to break out in a flame-fest. I don't know if ESR's inclusion of 'Amiga Persecution Complex' in the Jargon File gives them the idea we're fair game, but it kinda upsets me. I don't flame them for backing Linux or BSD. I even try to be reasonable when dealing with Microdroids, and yet as soon as the word 'Amiga' crops up, they start yelling "it's DEAD! Get OVER IT!!!!!" like a bunch of schoolkids. I have no idea why, but it seems to me they're acting scared of something. It reminds me of Xmas 1993 when most of those I knew hocked their A500s and spent £2000+ on a 486, and I spent £450 on a 1200. They scoffed, but one year down the line I was still more productive on my 1200 than they were.
The Tao strategy seems to be a good one, and it seems to me the only road to take when their (Amiga's) hardware innovations have eight years of catching up to do. That way, if this does take off, we won't be tied to legacy hardware (or any hardware, come to think of it;-), which is a Good Thing.
Although some dissenters won't be happy until computing is 100% true to Jay, Dave, RJ and the others' vision, it can be said that big business and monopoly practice has put paid to that for the forseeable future. If we can make the new Amiga palatable enough that most of the philosophy is intact, then maybe we can finally call it a victory of sorts.
Personally, I'll be glad to finally be able to say I code on Amigas without getting funny looks;-)
Re:A long slippery slope down to Hell
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Frankenstein Time
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How is preventing - say - Down's Syndrome or Spina Bifida worse than penicillin?
There's no guarantee that we can prevent it, at least not on a worldwide basis. AFAIK, once the damage is done to the foetus, it is irreversible. Also, I worry about exactly what would happen if we remove all traces of disease.
Or any of the other medical advances we've encountered in the last few decades?
I'm not saying anything against medical research. I look at this news with wonder and awe. What worries me is who will have access to these advances. As much good as drug companies do, there are always things they don't tell you. Also, if you breed out and exterminate disease, we as a species can no longer deal with it. Microbes mutate naturally, and believe me, if we engineer our susceptibility to them out of ourselves, nuclear holocaust would look like a scuffle in terms of casualties. Right now, I believe that we should approach this very carefully.
It's like saying that unix has been doing COM all along, I mean, what is "|" for?
Do you really see COM as the best possible solution overall? (i.e. not just restricted to Microsoft)
The whole point of Unices + the GNU tools was that, while they were generally by hackers, for hackers, everything was comparitively shareable. There is no better way of making information understandable to the human eye than to transfer it as straight text. Writing a graphical overlay that allows a user to do these things (A GUI for the UNIX pipeline)would take a while, but it's do-able, and before you say 'Well, why don't you code it?', I'd love to, but I'm polishing off a degree at the moment. UN*X operates just as is. It is a tool, and it is not perfect, but at least anyone can have a go at it, and the offer is almost explicit that you can learn more at any given time.
My pet peeve with Microsoft is that everything they have done has been rendered too obscure for the user to see what the computer is doing, effectively to tell the user that they shouldn't look beyond the UI, that it's too much for them (Unless you'd care to pay £2500 for the development tools aand API documentation). Windows is not a major technological advancement over any OS, because you cannot have true flexibility in an OS while lorded over by a restrictive front end. I for one believe that MS software is the primary reason people don't understand the fundamentals of computers, simply because it isn't in their business interests to let users know what their program is doing. COM is nice, I'm not arguing that, but I'd rather write an intuitive interface over a UN*X pipeline than have to use a kludged component system that is kludged to a bloated GUI, that is kludged to one of either two fundamental disk interface formats, or to put it more bluntly, repeatedly polishing a turd.
I accept that the staff of MS are by and large very intelligent people, however, the boardroom philosophy borders on evil, and it is the boardroom philosophy that always wins out with Microsoft. It's bad enough that we'll soon have to pay over the odds for the aforementioned kludged operating system to run on hardware which is price-fixed by Intel and Rambus, all the while buying apps that require yet more resources. Our supply of money is not limitless, and power computing will become a preserve of the very wealthy again. In your heart of hearts, do you really want that? Because I sure as hell don't.
OK, so my memory isn't what it was. The Centris (660AV)that System 7 ran on has long been consigned to silicon heaven, so I can't check for you. They now have 2 iMacs (Rev A and DV) and a PowerMac, running OS 8.6, 9 and 8.1 respectively (IIRC)
Then, the Amiga CLI was nothing more than a DOS prompt, lacking a lot of things that, for instance, Unix shells have With the Amiga, you had to learn ARexx (their adaptation of Rexx, a scripting language), and buy third party stuff.
Not 100% true. AmigaDOS acted not unlike a UN*X/DOS(CP/M) hybrid. You could run programs from the current directory (DOS style), and everything important to the system was arranged properly, like UN*X(c: - commands s: - scripts devs: - devices etc.) You could script AmigaDOS by using a handy little command called execute, and ARexx, though tricky at first, gave a largely unprecedented level of control (More than AppleScript at the time, by all accounts). We also had a port of the GNU C compiler doing the rounds, and IDEs were generally a lot cheaper than their PC/Mac equivalent.
The Amiga CLI was there simply because its GUI was terribly lame, lacking lots of functionality we take for granted today.
Whether it was or it wasn't isn't the issue here. It was perfectly functional for the time (1985-1992). Remember, Windows and MacOS have had an extra 8 years of fully-funded development where the Amiga hasn't. IMO, The Amiga GUI was fine, and I think a lot of people share that view. As another poster says, once we find a platform that beats it in every respect, then we'll let it die. Maybe you're thinking about Workbench 1-1.3, but 2.04 and above were streets ahead, even encapsulating things that certainly Windows and X haven't got to yet.
But that wasn't my point. I didn't want to start a Mac vs. Amiga flame war, remember, Redmond isn't defeated yet. It is just my opinion that whereas AmigaOS made me curious, I feel that were I digging into MacOS instead at the time, I wouldn't be where I am today. Sometimes I may get my facts wrong, and I appreciate correction, but some of your post sounded like a downright flame. You keep your opinion, and I'll keep mine. It's not worth fighting over.
My GF's a Mac fiend, so I've been getting to grips with them for the last 3 years. I know of this ResEdit of which you speak, but I still miss the down-and-dirty feeling of a CLI. Personal preference I know, but it just feels more flexible to me.
As for coding, point me to where it is encouraged out of the box? CodeWarrior's cool, but a bit expensive. Generally the feeling with MacOS is they prefer you to either stay behind the GUI curtain and use something like HyperCard or FileMaker, or get really into the deep end with a development IDE. On the Amiga, the CLI stage (learning how the file system and shell actually worked) really helped me understand how the machine worked, by giving me an intermediate ground in a way I don't think I'd have found so easy on a Mac.
Then again, I'm talking about from MacOS 7.6.2 onwards. I can't say much about the earlier incarnations, I could well be wrong.
Linux PPC : Too hard for a new user to grasp. The Amiga wasn't.
SuSE : Nice distro, but someone thoroughly new to computers would still have trouble getting it to do what they want. Not so on the Amiga (pop in a disk, watch it go!)
MacOS-X : Opposite problem. Nice BSD back-end, but how hard is it to get to? I have never got far enough into the workings of any MacOS to let me do or know what I want. Maybe (just maybe) MacOSX will be different.
You realise all this is before we get on to the subject of draggable multi-resolution screens, uniformity of operation. All three are either too techie or not techie enough to present a rounded UI. The Amiga OS did it all and met in the middle, something which no-one has done before or since.
Please, dear fellows... let the Amiga rest in peace. Soil no further my memories of that great machine, and let her spirit join the pantheon of the great (?) machines of the past: the Sinclars, Apple ][s and the TRS-80s... the TI-99s and the Atari Jaguars...
Right. First of all, lets take a look at your list of machines:
Sinclairs, Apple ][s, TI-99's : Lovely little 8-bit machines. First computers for many a hacker. Fun for cutting your teeth on, and (largely) had BASIC in ROM. Then, when you were done with that, you could strip out the BASIC and start learning about programming the hardware directly. This was cool, but they all performed the same purpose, equally well by and large. You can do that on a Linux box today if you want to, so for hackers, these machines are fondly remembered. But there was no large user base of non tech-savvy people. Most of those who had these machines programmed as much as used commercial software. Very few just used it for games, unlike the Amiga. As for the Atari Jaguar.... Nice idea, crippled by a market that had no space for it.
The Amiga had it's chance to rule the world and due (partly) to Commodore's incompetence missed its opportunity.
Have to agree with you there, however, it still hurts that businesses seemed reluctant to use a machine that wasn't produced by Big Blue. On top of that CBM wasn't known for pushing the envelope on anything other than games machines (C64 etc). At least Apple was fondly remembered by the geeks who'd programmed the Apple ][s in school (I don't think the million-dollar Ridley Scott '1984' commercial harmed them either). The Amiga's only major failure in 1985 was on the marketing front. Of course, later came the interminable management cock-ups, but don't get me started on them.....I personally believe that the Amiga was strangled at birth, and never given a proper chance.
Today, I can do the same things (and much, much more) with Linux, Windows, Mac, Be, etc. Hell, I can even simulate any of those machines with UAE.
Actually, UAE still doesn't emulate quite quickly enough (scrolling and audio sync still not right on my Athlon 700!). Last I heard, no-one had come up with an implementation of the Amiga's multiple screen function, although Be came quite close. Until I can word-process, edit graphics and create music at the same time, switching seamlessly through the tasks, I remain unconvinced that the ol' Miggy can be replaced in my heart.
I owned an Amiga 1000 in 1987. Back then it crushed any other machine like a grape when it came to multimedia and games. I even went on to buy an A500 and an A1200 AGA.
The points you make are valid, but the machines you describe use ancient hardware. They are the legacy that the new Amiga has to live up to. The evolution of the mainstream x86 operating system seems to make every new hardware iteration perform at exactly the same rate as the previous OS on the older hardware. The jump from the A500 to the 1200 felt much more tangible to me than shifting my dual-booter from my (95/RH6.0)P200MMX to my (98/RH6.2)Athlon. I genuinely hope that the new AmigaOS removes this feeling of stagnation that I feel is rife in the computer world right now.
OK, sorry about the rant. The reason I miss the Amiga most is that it allowed you to go as low-level as you needed. If you just wanted to use it for games, you did. If you wanted to be artistically creative, you could. No nasty installs, no registry. However, (and this is my pet peeve with the Mac) if you wanted to dig deeper, you could. It allowed you to learn how a modern computer worked at your own pace. Sick of games? Bored with being creative? Let's go into the CLI and find out how this thing works! And then later, you dig a bit deeper, finding out how to program the thing, first in maybe BASIC, then PASCAL or C, and then, if you were feeling really brave, in 68K assembler. However, if it got really heavy going, you could save your work, reboot the machine and it would be ready for gaming and productivity again. Now, I'm not saying you can't do that in Windows, but everything you install and uninstall leaves a trace, usually in C:\WINDOWS, until your system gets bogged down and doesn't work anymore. Reboot, Reformat, Reinstall. In Linux, you generally need to be quite tech-savvy before you can do the most basic of things. (Although this is changing, there's quite a way to go). The Amiga was the only machine I know of that catered for the whole spectrum of computer users, and coached those at entry level all the way to being coders without making them feel it was all too much for them. None of this had to do with the hardware, it was all how the OS used it. This is why I feel that there is still a great need for an Amiga-style OS, to bring new and experienced users together as a whole.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone who worked alongside the teams on the UK NHS data spine project, I must point out that you're way off-base. To the best of my knowledge, signup data on healthcare.gov was using RDBMS technology - the NoSQL component was likely only used for unstructured data - i.e. documents and communications materiel.
I should make clear that I'm posting on the basis of personal experience. I have no particular ties to MarkLogic (though companies I've worked for do use the technology), or the US government.
Firstly, the NYT article is poorly researched. My sources tell me that MarkLogic Server is far from the only data storage technology and vendor involved, and that while the MarkLogic-powered aspects of the system did require some remedial action, those aspects were not central to the publicised problems. Remember when MS used their press contacts and marketing clout to smear OSS on the server back in 1999? I wouldn't be surprised if that's going on here.
Secondly, I have it on good authority that the primary points of failure upon launch were related to middleware connecting the modules that were in fact using RDBMS technology.
Thirdly, many Slashdotters will be learning of MarkLogic Server for the first time through this article, and I urge them to give the technology a go before making a judgment call. For one thing, while XML is the (apparent) native storage format and XQuery is the native language, the actuality is somewhat different from what might be assumed. For one thing, the native storage format is not raw XML, but a fully-indexed compressed format which provides a decent compromise between storage requirements and rapid query/retrieval. Additionally, while XQuery is still the native language used by the technology, there has been a significant effort to provide a usable interface to the data through REsT, native Java and even basic SQL. Storage is journaled, implemented as an MVCC system and ACID-compliant in a way that no other "NoSQL" platform can offer. As an example of the platform's resilience under load, I am reliably informed that the BBC's real-time online coverage of the 2012 London Olympiad (which left other news and broadcast organisations in the dust) was powered by MarkLogic Server.
Just like Linux and the OSS BSD implementations that were creaming Microsoft's NT server implementations at the turn of the millennium, alternative data storage, query and search technologies are now challenging the old guard, and the old guard are running scared, and I'd bet significant money that the NYT sources are from the established RDMS vendors. I've been contracting with employers who have been using MarkLogic Server for the best part of a decade, and IMO the technology represents the most viable threat to the RDBMS hegemony and the vendors that rely on it that has ever existed. This opinion is not based on hype, it's based on nearly ten years of experience with the technology and fourteen years of experience with RDBMS development strategies.
I'm not preaching, in fact I urge you all to make your own minds up.
From my reading, MarkLogic Server is the only product in the "NoSQL" space that is specifically intended - and designed - for enterprise use. Unlike most of the better-known OSS "NoSQL" offerings, it is 100% ACID-compliant, resilient and has been building up a considerable and high-profile user base for the last decade. I can't help but suspect that MarkLogic's involvement extended mainly to storage of data that does not fit into the relational paradigm, and that the NYT published FUD promulgated by competitors without first contacting MarkLogic themselves.
The companies I've worked for have been using it with very few problems for at least 8 years.
Almost all the computing knowledge I amassed in school was outside the bounds of what the teachers wanted us to do (Which, predictably, was to use Office and QuickBasic - Because the teacher refused to learn Pascal, C or even VB to accommodate those of us who wanted more)
Unless they're deliberately pulling down offensive or illegal (in terms of the law) material, and they have finished their class assignments, kids should be allowed to explore with as few limitations as possible.
You argument is sounding dangerously like a modern argument for 'Children should be seen and not heard'. Fence a child's imagination in and the child grows bitter and resentful. Let them learn at their own pace, if they show a desire to, and the difference will show.
Over here, during the late 80s and early 90s the focus was not, as in the US, on consoles and occasionally PC. The main thing over here was 8 and early 16-bit home computers. Jez San is not mainly there for StarWing, he is there for Starglider (I & II), without which there would be no StarWing. Granted Miyamoto added touches to the formula that made it engrossing to the Nintendo crowd, but to call the Argonaut contribution irrelevant is a bit of a slap in the face. Just because it wasn't on the NES doesn't mean it didn't exist. Starglider isn't on the list next to the pic because it was a different time frame, but ignoring it's contribution to StarWing would be nigh-on criminal.
Gamespot could have made it entirely UK-centric by focusing entirely on the bedroom pioneers like Braybrook, Crowther et al. But they're trying to be all-encompassing, and to be fair, aren't doing a bad job (if a little slavishly devoted to the Nintendo/Sony axis).
Yes there are a million names that could be added to the mix, and I expect that later they will be. Gaming is something that has evolved very differently in different places, so it is only to be expected that omissions occur.
And to those that call placing companies in there unfair, and pandering to the marketers, that's a bit unfair as well. Firms like Psygnosis and Core weren't the slick marketing-driven software houses that proliferate today. They were descended directly from the bedroom coders getting together with their mates. Psygnosis themselves were formed from the ashes of Imagine (an even earlier 8-bit publisher), and in the early days had a habit of getting Roger Dean to do their cover artwork and putting game T-shirts in boxes (I still have my Beast II tshirt somewhere).
It's a little hard to explain exactly why, but names like San, Edmondson, Braybrook and Jones always stir up more in me than Miyamoto ever will. Not because Miyamoto isn't worthy (anyone with half a brain can see that his contribution has been incredible), but simply because I wasn't part of that kind of gaming, and thus was inspired by different people.
For whatever reason, RIAA won the court case, and Napster's business looked like it was going to be squashed.
Now, all of a sudden, sums of $1bn are being talked about and thrown around, and RIAA are acting like pussycats. Now, the last time I checked, accepting money in return for the protection of a business was called 'protection racketeering'. Granted, RIAA have a group of lawyers who can make this sound like the most legal protection racket you've ever heard of, but surely such a defender of principle as the RIAA shouldn't be adopting methodologies from organised crime?
I ranted on here a long time ago about RIAA being a cartel, moving towards a system of increasing profits by charging high prices for generic, manufactured material (cheaper than real artists, remember), thus trying to charge more money for 'product', which, as far as I'm concerned, is vastly inferior to 'music'. It looks like they've neutered the first wave of resistance to their plans.
Those of us who came to Napster via the cluetrain will move on. OpenNAP is still around, as is Gnutella (which needs a serious re-working, but is still viable). What saddens me is that for once, we had a chance to say to the mainstream that there was a better way than The Man's, that there was an alternative, that occasionally building a better mousetrap does work. I just hope we get another chance to say it soon.
PS. I know that RIAA's principle had to do with giving money to the artists, but I have a feeling that a large chunk of this $1bn will actually go to lawyers.
Ouch.
I'm going to state something first, prattle on like an idiot for a couple of paragraphs, and then try to return to my original point.
I'm sorry, but I have to call you out there. When I was cutting my teeth (Around the same time as MS was gunning for pre-eminence, circa 1990, to paraphrase Andy Grove). MS-DOS hadn't even entered my lexicon. Granted it was easier for me, being European, but I started on the C64, and found my home on the Amiga.
"Ho!", you cry, "An Amiga zealot with revenge on his mind. He shouldn't have bought into inferior technology". Again, although I (and I freely admit this) do have something of an axe to grind with MS over the Amiga issue, it isn't that which makes me hope that their days of pre-eminence are over. It is the simple fact that the One Microsoft Way almost became reality across computing. If they'd been allowed to continue as they were before the proceedings, the nightmare reality of Microsoft products being the only viable solution in the world could have come to pass. Doesn't that scare you in the slightest?
The thing I like most about geek culture is that it makes a virtue of diversity. Not 'fitting in' is the norm. Through our computers we can express ourselves, and I only like working with a computer I can truly express myself with (And no, I don't mean through desktop wallpaper and movable icons). When there's only one candidate for what you can run on your machine, it smacks of a frightening level of digital totalitarianism that flies in the face of everything I love about computing and technology in the first place. Microsoft's eventual goal was (and still is, in many ways) to make sure that it is the only option. If I want to use *NIX instead of Windows, Navigator instead of IE, even DR-DOS instead of MS-DOS , that's my prerogative. MS were all in favour of taking that away, therefore I was, and am, willing to fight them using any and all means at my disposal. .NET frightens me, and I hope that if it does succeed, it doesn't stop those that don't like or wish to use its model from enjoying technology to the fullest.
OK, rant over. I'd just like to state that I do have friends who did grow up with MS-DOS, and will defend it and the PC architecture to the hilt. But I find that, thanks largely to MS, I'm shackled to an architecture I hate programming for (Extended AT) and frequently using an OS which I find painfully counter-intuitive and lousy to code for (and it ain't Linux :).
Microsoft helped make computing a far less exciting and enjoyable pastime for me, and I certainly feel that I owe neither them, or Bill Gates anything.
Oh well, but unlike you, I do see a point in using Linux (I agree with Squid that the Windows UI feels like the Amiga done wrong, there are some things that are downright un-intuitive about it all, text highlighting being the worst offender as far as I am concerned).
It's quite interesting that the OS used in the Amiga was derived from Amiga's second choice of OS (The first was killed by budget/time restrictions).
The Amiga also had another strength, in that you could throw the OS in the bin if you didn't want to use it, and hit the hardware directly (Not feasible with the diversity of PC architecture these days, but oh well...). But I do really miss the level of integration. My WB *always* had a shell at the bottom (Until DOpus changed my life, but that's another story). The integreation was such that an operation performed in the CLI was *instantly* available in the GUI, and vice versa.
Personally, I think OS development has proceeded so far down the Windows path that a quick volte-face is unlikely. It's one of the things that has seriously dampened my enthusiasm for computers these past 5 years.......
First off, I partially agree with you. However, i can tell you from personal experience that 50 year old 16mm unless stored in rigidly optimal conditions will look awful. (Have a look at the Star Wars special edition if you don't believe me, the stock was f**ked after 20 years, let alone 50). My main beef with digital is the format incompatibility you mention, and the eisk of EM damage......
maybe, maybe not, but an *awful* lot of studio engineers are/were so used to the ST version, they took a long time to switch.
Unfortunately, Nintendo was really flying around that time, and the Lynx seriously lacked games, so these days the Lynx is little more than a curio :(
I don't think that they got very far with the DTP, although the ST didn't have bad programs for it. I remember the ST's display being a dog to lay out in ASM tho. What kept the ST in sales was the one thing it had that the Mac, PC and Amiga didn't, and that was the in-built MIDI ports. I think that the ST's designers knew that the YM2149 chip used was sub-standard, and they were hedging on cheap MIDI add-ons later, which didn't materialise. However, most recording studios I've worked in still have, behind their new-fangled Mac and PC systems, their (t)rusty old ST, to whip out when the BSOD strikes.
Seriously, when it comes to minor things such as file-sharing shenanigans, we will regroup and fight back. If the music industry thinks that killing Napster will kill online file sharing, they have no idea how wrong they are and this is a Good Thing. The guy on the TV interview next to Colin (some VP of Virgin Records) clearly had no clue exactly what Napster was, over and above the Hetfield viewpoint, and although Colin wasn't overflowing with technical knowledge, he at least recognised the positive side of what it is capable of.
I really think that record companies are fighting a losing battle here, though they do not know it. One day they will be financially exhausted from trying to fight too many battles against the future, and although we are a long way from a Utopian situation here, I think we should realise this and focus on some more important issues for a while.
Sorry for rambling, just a drunk Englishman. I'll be on my way.
(Note:This was a few years back on UK BBS's. The broken shift key-ism just seemed to stick.......
Reading earlier chapters tells you that they avoided blowing the whistle for as long as they could, in a bid to secure the system before the cracker realised they were discovered. This cracker was on a power trip long before they started talking to him(her?), and he/she was obviously better at *nix than the average script-kiddie (very few kiddies bother writing their own rootkit). If I was that cracker, I'd have probably played dumb for a bit, rather than laying all the aces down so early.
Yes, malicious cracks are usually the work of sad, bored individuals, but I don't think that boosting their esteem will cause them to commit more damage. Usually, damaging the system is de rigeur after discovery, and most malicious crackers have it as part of their post-busted MO. I suspect that asking for a sanctioned set of platforms to continue spoofing and cracking was a stalling tactic while the rm's were being planted. The cracker knew that the system was being locked down, and that they only had one exploit left (statd). This cracker had a good thing going before they were shut down, and wanted to be remembered after they were.
Just my 2 pence....
IIRC it started as a way of getting around swear-filters on chat systems(while 'fuck' would not appear, 'phuX0R' would), and sort of permeated the BBS community, and then IRC. I'm not sure why it still exists. It seems to be used as more of a parody than anything else these days. Even the guy on 'Cracked' only seems to use it once, and he's using it to prove his advanced humour 'look everyone, I can do self-parody!). Most of the coders I know (around London) seem to use it sarcastically these days. 'Man, u r so '1337' tends to mean that what they've done is obvious, or a horrendous kludge.
Even the benchmark systems had to use a different setup.
Sorry to rain on your parade. Having said this though, Tom's managed to get a T-Bird 750 to go on a K7V with the latest BIOS, however they couldn't overclock it.
It's probably not what you wanted to hear, but t's all I've been able to dig up. (Having said that it made me feel a little less cheated having bought my 'Classic' Athlon 6 weeks before the T-Bird came out).
Swinging back on-topic, it definitely sounds like the fault isn't with the processor. Most likely either Gateway aren't regulating the voltage too well, or their design's a bit squiffy. I remember that my friend's MSI Athlon system seemed to have a voltage issue, which was sorted by switching to the K7V.
The Tao strategy seems to be a good one, and it seems to me the only road to take when their (Amiga's) hardware innovations have eight years of catching up to do. That way, if this does take off, we won't be tied to legacy hardware (or any hardware, come to think of it ;-), which is a Good Thing.
Although some dissenters won't be happy until computing is 100% true to Jay, Dave, RJ and the others' vision, it can be said that big business and monopoly practice has put paid to that for the forseeable future. If we can make the new Amiga palatable enough that most of the philosophy is intact, then maybe we can finally call it a victory of sorts.
Personally, I'll be glad to finally be able to say I code on Amigas without getting funny looks ;-)
There's no guarantee that we can prevent it, at least not on a worldwide basis. AFAIK, once the damage is done to the foetus, it is irreversible. Also, I worry about exactly what would happen if we remove all traces of disease.
Or any of the other medical advances we've encountered in the last few decades?
I'm not saying anything against medical research. I look at this news with wonder and awe. What worries me is who will have access to these advances. As much good as drug companies do, there are always things they don't tell you. Also, if you breed out and exterminate disease, we as a species can no longer deal with it. Microbes mutate naturally, and believe me, if we engineer our susceptibility to them out of ourselves, nuclear holocaust would look like a scuffle in terms of casualties. Right now, I believe that we should approach this very carefully.
It's like saying that unix has been doing COM all along, I mean, what is "|" for?
Do you really see COM as the best possible solution overall? (i.e. not just restricted to Microsoft)
The whole point of Unices + the GNU tools was that, while they were generally by hackers, for hackers, everything was comparitively shareable. There is no better way of making information understandable to the human eye than to transfer it as straight text. Writing a graphical overlay that allows a user to do these things (A GUI for the UNIX pipeline)would take a while, but it's do-able, and before you say 'Well, why don't you code it?', I'd love to, but I'm polishing off a degree at the moment. UN*X operates just as is. It is a tool, and it is not perfect, but at least anyone can have a go at it, and the offer is almost explicit that you can learn more at any given time.
My pet peeve with Microsoft is that everything they have done has been rendered too obscure for the user to see what the computer is doing, effectively to tell the user that they shouldn't look beyond the UI, that it's too much for them (Unless you'd care to pay £2500 for the development tools aand API documentation). Windows is not a major technological advancement over any OS, because you cannot have true flexibility in an OS while lorded over by a restrictive front end. I for one believe that MS software is the primary reason people don't understand the fundamentals of computers, simply because it isn't in their business interests to let users know what their program is doing. COM is nice, I'm not arguing that, but I'd rather write an intuitive interface over a UN*X pipeline than have to use a kludged component system that is kludged to a bloated GUI, that is kludged to one of either two fundamental disk interface formats, or to put it more bluntly, repeatedly polishing a turd.
I accept that the staff of MS are by and large very intelligent people, however, the boardroom philosophy borders on evil, and it is the boardroom philosophy that always wins out with Microsoft. It's bad enough that we'll soon have to pay over the odds for the aforementioned kludged operating system to run on hardware which is price-fixed by Intel and Rambus, all the while buying apps that require yet more resources. Our supply of money is not limitless, and power computing will become a preserve of the very wealthy again. In your heart of hearts, do you really want that? Because I sure as hell don't.
.....should be called .net Curtains?
OK, so my memory isn't what it was. The Centris (660AV)that System 7 ran on has long been consigned to silicon heaven, so I can't check for you. They now have 2 iMacs (Rev A and DV) and a PowerMac, running OS 8.6, 9 and 8.1 respectively (IIRC)
Then, the Amiga CLI was nothing more than a DOS prompt, lacking a lot of things that, for instance, Unix shells have
With the Amiga, you had to learn ARexx (their adaptation of Rexx, a scripting language), and buy third party stuff.
Not 100% true. AmigaDOS acted not unlike a UN*X/DOS(CP/M) hybrid. You could run programs from the current directory (DOS style), and everything important to the system was arranged properly, like UN*X(c: - commands s: - scripts devs: - devices etc.) You could script AmigaDOS by using a handy little command called execute, and ARexx, though tricky at first, gave a largely unprecedented level of control (More than AppleScript at the time, by all accounts). We also had a port of the GNU C compiler doing the rounds, and IDEs were generally a lot cheaper than their PC/Mac equivalent.
The Amiga CLI was there simply because its GUI was terribly lame, lacking lots of functionality we take for granted today.
Whether it was or it wasn't isn't the issue here. It was perfectly functional for the time (1985-1992). Remember, Windows and MacOS have had an extra 8 years of fully-funded development where the Amiga hasn't. IMO, The Amiga GUI was fine, and I think a lot of people share that view. As another poster says, once we find a platform that beats it in every respect, then we'll let it die. Maybe you're thinking about Workbench 1-1.3, but 2.04 and above were streets ahead, even encapsulating things that certainly Windows and X haven't got to yet.
But that wasn't my point. I didn't want to start a Mac vs. Amiga flame war, remember, Redmond isn't defeated yet. It is just my opinion that whereas AmigaOS made me curious, I feel that were I digging into MacOS instead at the time, I wouldn't be where I am today. Sometimes I may get my facts wrong, and I appreciate correction, but some of your post sounded like a downright flame. You keep your opinion, and I'll keep mine. It's not worth fighting over.
As for coding, point me to where it is encouraged out of the box? CodeWarrior's cool, but a bit expensive. Generally the feeling with MacOS is they prefer you to either stay behind the GUI curtain and use something like HyperCard or FileMaker, or get really into the deep end with a development IDE. On the Amiga, the CLI stage (learning how the file system and shell actually worked) really helped me understand how the machine worked, by giving me an intermediate ground in a way I don't think I'd have found so easy on a Mac.
Then again, I'm talking about from MacOS 7.6.2 onwards. I can't say much about the earlier incarnations, I could well be wrong.
SuSE : Nice distro, but someone thoroughly new to computers would still have trouble getting it to do what they want. Not so on the Amiga (pop in a disk, watch it go!)
MacOS-X : Opposite problem. Nice BSD back-end, but how hard is it to get to? I have never got far enough into the workings of any MacOS to let me do or know what I want. Maybe (just maybe) MacOSX will be different.
You realise all this is before we get on to the subject of draggable multi-resolution screens, uniformity of operation. All three are either too techie or not techie enough to present a rounded UI. The Amiga OS did it all and met in the middle, something which no-one has done before or since.
Please, dear fellows... let the Amiga rest in peace. Soil no further my memories of that great machine, and let her spirit join the pantheon of the great (?) machines of the past: the Sinclars, Apple ][s and the TRS-80s... the TI-99s and the Atari Jaguars...
Right. First of all, lets take a look at your list of machines:
Sinclairs, Apple ][s, TI-99's : Lovely little 8-bit machines. First computers for many a hacker. Fun for cutting your teeth on, and (largely) had BASIC in ROM. Then, when you were done with that, you could strip out the BASIC and start learning about programming the hardware directly. This was cool, but they all performed the same purpose, equally well by and large. You can do that on a Linux box today if you want to, so for hackers, these machines are fondly remembered. But there was no large user base of non tech-savvy people. Most of those who had these machines programmed as much as used commercial software. Very few just used it for games, unlike the Amiga. As for the Atari Jaguar.... Nice idea, crippled by a market that had no space for it.
The Amiga had it's chance to rule the world and due (partly) to Commodore's incompetence missed its opportunity.
Have to agree with you there, however, it still hurts that businesses seemed reluctant to use a machine that wasn't produced by Big Blue. On top of that CBM wasn't known for pushing the envelope on anything other than games machines (C64 etc). At least Apple was fondly remembered by the geeks who'd programmed the Apple ][s in school (I don't think the million-dollar Ridley Scott '1984' commercial harmed them either). The Amiga's only major failure in 1985 was on the marketing front. Of course, later came the interminable management cock-ups, but don't get me started on them.....I personally believe that the Amiga was strangled at birth, and never given a proper chance.
Today, I can do the same things (and much, much more) with Linux, Windows, Mac, Be, etc. Hell, I can even simulate any of those machines with UAE.
Actually, UAE still doesn't emulate quite quickly enough (scrolling and audio sync still not right on my Athlon 700!). Last I heard, no-one had come up with an implementation of the Amiga's multiple screen function, although Be came quite close. Until I can word-process, edit graphics and create music at the same time, switching seamlessly through the tasks, I remain unconvinced that the ol' Miggy can be replaced in my heart.
I owned an Amiga 1000 in 1987. Back then it crushed any other machine like a grape when it came to multimedia and games. I even went on to buy an A500 and an A1200 AGA.
The points you make are valid, but the machines you describe use ancient hardware. They are the legacy that the new Amiga has to live up to. The evolution of the mainstream x86 operating system seems to make every new hardware iteration perform at exactly the same rate as the previous OS on the older hardware. The jump from the A500 to the 1200 felt much more tangible to me than shifting my dual-booter from my (95/RH6.0)P200MMX to my (98/RH6.2)Athlon. I genuinely hope that the new AmigaOS removes this feeling of stagnation that I feel is rife in the computer world right now.
OK, sorry about the rant. The reason I miss the Amiga most is that it allowed you to go as low-level as you needed. If you just wanted to use it for games, you did. If you wanted to be artistically creative, you could. No nasty installs, no registry. However, (and this is my pet peeve with the Mac) if you wanted to dig deeper, you could. It allowed you to learn how a modern computer worked at your own pace. Sick of games? Bored with being creative? Let's go into the CLI and find out how this thing works! And then later, you dig a bit deeper, finding out how to program the thing, first in maybe BASIC, then PASCAL or C, and then, if you were feeling really brave, in 68K assembler. However, if it got really heavy going, you could save your work, reboot the machine and it would be ready for gaming and productivity again.
Now, I'm not saying you can't do that in Windows, but everything you install and uninstall leaves a trace, usually in C:\WINDOWS, until your system gets bogged down and doesn't work anymore. Reboot, Reformat, Reinstall. In Linux, you generally need to be quite tech-savvy before you can do the most basic of things. (Although this is changing, there's quite a way to go).
The Amiga was the only machine I know of that catered for the whole spectrum of computer users, and coached those at entry level all the way to being coders without making them feel it was all too much for them. None of this had to do with the hardware, it was all how the OS used it. This is why I feel that there is still a great need for an Amiga-style OS, to bring new and experienced users together as a whole.