DE is only one "product" in the McEwan's pantheon. The AmigaOS is
still being developed - which was the whole point of the
interview if you care to read it.
In case you misunderstand, AmigaOS is not the same as AmigaDE.
What is the point of posts like that? You're comparing a twacky
old Amiga (it must have been it was 1994) and a bang up to date
G4 with a modern operating system. And your saying the latter is
faster! Well no shit, that's a surprise isn't it.
I'm curious though, did you ever bother to compare a modern Amiga
with the modern computer you're using now? While it certainly
won't be as fast as the Mac, you don't need steroids to account
for the difference in performance - more like a bottle of
multi-vitamins.
I absolutely agree Richard. I'm using an Amiga right now, but my
concious tells me I should be using a free OS (which I do also
incidentally). I use to pride myself on my Amiga usage, not
because of the OSs technical prowess, but because I was
exercising my right to choose - I felt free from the shackles of
corporate OSs.
However, it has become apparent that the AmigaOS is now no
different in this regard considering the recent developments.
Bizarrely, I preferred it when the Amiga had no future.
However, as another poster has said, there is an effort to
reimplement the AmigaOS in order to achieve this freedom. It is
called AROS, and it looks very promising indeed.
The part about "unconnected logic cells" reminds me of the
(probably apocryphal) story about a large computer installed at a
university that had a strange switch with two positions - "magic"
and "more magic". It was always set to "more magic" until
curiosity got the better of one man and it was to the "magic"
setting... at which point the computer stopped working.
What made it stange was the fact that the switch only had one
connecting wire. How did the switch work if there wasn't a
complete circuit?
> An Operating System that runs on top of Linux? That's not an
> operating system is it?
The AmigaDE will be able to run "hosted" on many, many operating
systems, including Linux. Moreover, AmigaDE "applications" can
run without re-compilation on any of these systems (like Java).
The advantages of this should be obvious.
Psion wrote:
> I won't be fooled into thinking that there is a direct lineage
> between it [the new Amiga] and the computer with all those
> signatures inside the case [the old computer].
AmigaDE will also find itself on a dedicated operating system
designed to showcase the AmigaDE's capabilites better than other
OS's. Until 1st April, we didn't know what this OS would be, but
we know now it will be a direct descendent of the current Amiga
OS, which is currently at v3.9.
The lunar conspiricists are not arguing against sending rockets to the
moon, but against the possibility of "sending a man to the moon, and
bringing him back alive".
Note that the presence of reflective material on the moon does not
automatically demand the one-time presence of a living being.
The lunar conspiricy theorists are not saying the entire space program is
hoaxed only the concept of "sending a man to the moon, and bringing him
back alive". Therefore the issue of faking a Saturn V rocket is not
addressed.
You also make mention of the fact that the USSR sent a lunar rover to the
moon. If it's possible to send rockets to the moon (it is, and is not an
issue with the conspiracy theorists) then why did the Soviets not send a
living creature to the moon (man) and bring it back alive as the Americans
did?
I haven't seen this show (I don't live in the US) but the lunar conspiracy
theorists are addressing the concept of the moon landings being hoaxed, not
the entire space program being a hoax.
While I agree that the intention of the Obfuscated C Code is to produce bad
code, I can't help feeling that the best entries are very beautiful. If the
entries were not intended to be "bad" then the beauty would have been lost
but deliberately obfuscating a program (to the point where the viewer
wonders if it is C at all) justifies the "poor" programming choices and
qualifies it as art.
I personally love to see skilled programmers stretch the compiler and the
language to the limits and it is this, I think, that makes the Obfuscated C
Contest so aesthetically pleasing.
One thing that upsets me is the parity people draw between MP3s and
Mod's. I understand why they do it, but to me they are two totally
different beasts.
I like to think of the difference between the two to be the same as taking
a photograph of an event (MP3s) and painting a picture (Mod's). Just
because the camara has been invented it doesn't we should throw out our wax
crayons - the art produced with the "lesser" medium is just as
valuable.
Some may suggest that this is why he's such a good chess player. Fischer
was of a similar character.
Another interesting parallel between Fishcer and Kasparov is that neither
knew their fathers and had very strong mother figures. Some psychologists
say that from one perspective, chess is about killing the male character
(the king/father) and the strongest figure on your team is the Queen (the
mother). ie. an exemplification of the Oedipus(sp?) complex.
Personally I don't believe it, but it's food for thought all the same.
This is perhaps redundant, but I want to put the Deep Blue better than
Kasparov debate into perspective. Deep Blue analyzes millions of moves per
second, Kasparov meanwhile analyzes a very small fraction of that figure.
The fact that a human player can beat Deep Blue even some of the
time tells us more about the human mind than it does about the state of
the art of computer science.
Gumshoe
Free form adventure games are very difficult to execute properly. The naked flame object is the best example I can think of to highlight how even a seemingly trivial item can make things complex - unless you are happy with "I don't understand" type messages, you have to handle how each and every other object in the game will react to the command "ignite *"
Besides, free form games are not even desirable. Free form adventure games would be unplayable (read: boring) as there would be necessity be no plot.
The old Infocom games ran on a virtual machine called the ZMachine. A lot of work (ie. reverse engineering) has been done on this over the last 10 years or so and a plethora of original works are released every year that use this system.
The best interpreter IMO for the ZMachine, is Frotz. It is available for many platforms and source code is available so porting to a mobile phone is always a possibility.
Moreover, a complete programming language explicitely designed for producing ZMachine games is also available. Inform This too is available for many systems along with source code.
Slashdot Mirror
DE is only one "product" in the McEwan's pantheon. The AmigaOS is still being developed - which was the whole point of the interview if you care to read it.
In case you misunderstand, AmigaOS is not the same as AmigaDE.
What is the point of posts like that? You're comparing a twacky old Amiga (it must have been it was 1994) and a bang up to date G4 with a modern operating system. And your saying the latter is faster! Well no shit, that's a surprise isn't it.
I'm curious though, did you ever bother to compare a modern Amiga with the modern computer you're using now? While it certainly won't be as fast as the Mac, you don't need steroids to account for the difference in performance - more like a bottle of multi-vitamins.
I started writing one a couple of years ago, but ran short of time before it was completely done.
Open Source?
I absolutely agree Richard. I'm using an Amiga right now, but my concious tells me I should be using a free OS (which I do also incidentally). I use to pride myself on my Amiga usage, not because of the OSs technical prowess, but because I was exercising my right to choose - I felt free from the shackles of corporate OSs. However, it has become apparent that the AmigaOS is now no different in this regard considering the recent developments. Bizarrely, I preferred it when the Amiga had no future. However, as another poster has said, there is an effort to reimplement the AmigaOS in order to achieve this freedom. It is called AROS, and it looks very promising indeed.
The part about "unconnected logic cells" reminds me of the (probably apocryphal) story about a large computer installed at a university that had a strange switch with two positions - "magic" and "more magic". It was always set to "more magic" until curiosity got the better of one man and it was to the "magic" setting... at which point the computer stopped working.
What made it stange was the fact that the switch only had one connecting wire. How did the switch work if there wasn't a complete circuit?
Unfortunately I can't remember where I read this.
zpengo wrote:
> An Operating System that runs on top of Linux? That's not an
> operating system is it?
The AmigaDE will be able to run "hosted" on many, many operating
systems, including Linux. Moreover, AmigaDE "applications" can
run without re-compilation on any of these systems (like Java).
The advantages of this should be obvious.
Psion wrote:
> I won't be fooled into thinking that there is a direct lineage
> between it [the new Amiga] and the computer with all those
> signatures inside the case [the old computer].
AmigaDE will also find itself on a dedicated operating system
designed to showcase the AmigaDE's capabilites better than other
OS's. Until 1st April, we didn't know what this OS would be, but
we know now it will be a direct descendent of the current Amiga
OS, which is currently at v3.9.
The lunar conspiricists are not arguing against sending rockets to the
moon, but against the possibility of "sending a man to the moon, and
bringing him back alive".
Note that the presence of reflective material on the moon does not
automatically demand the one-time presence of a living being.
What is it you want to believe? That the Apollo lunar landings did take
place, or that they were hoaxed?
It's not a question of belief, it's a question of evidence.
The lunar conspiricy theorists are not saying the entire space program is hoaxed only the concept of "sending a man to the moon, and bringing him back alive". Therefore the issue of faking a Saturn V rocket is not addressed. You also make mention of the fact that the USSR sent a lunar rover to the moon. If it's possible to send rockets to the moon (it is, and is not an issue with the conspiracy theorists) then why did the Soviets not send a living creature to the moon (man) and bring it back alive as the Americans did?
I haven't seen this show (I don't live in the US) but the lunar conspiracy
theorists are addressing the concept of the moon landings being hoaxed, not
the entire space program being a hoax.
While I agree that the intention of the Obfuscated C Code is to produce bad
code, I can't help feeling that the best entries are very beautiful. If the
entries were not intended to be "bad" then the beauty would have been lost
but deliberately obfuscating a program (to the point where the viewer
wonders if it is C at all) justifies the "poor" programming choices and
qualifies it as art.
I personally love to see skilled programmers stretch the compiler and the
language to the limits and it is this, I think, that makes the Obfuscated C
Contest so aesthetically pleasing.
One thing that upsets me is the parity people draw between MP3s and Mod's. I understand why they do it, but to me they are two totally different beasts.
I like to think of the difference between the two to be the same as taking a photograph of an event (MP3s) and painting a picture (Mod's). Just because the camara has been invented it doesn't we should throw out our wax crayons - the art produced with the "lesser" medium is just as valuable.
Regards.
Kasparov was a cold, arrogant bastard.
Some may suggest that this is why he's such a good chess player. Fischer was of a similar character.
Another interesting parallel between Fishcer and Kasparov is that neither knew their fathers and had very strong mother figures. Some psychologists say that from one perspective, chess is about killing the male character (the king/father) and the strongest figure on your team is the Queen (the mother). ie. an exemplification of the Oedipus(sp?) complex.
Personally I don't believe it, but it's food for thought all the same.
This is perhaps redundant, but I want to put the Deep Blue better than Kasparov debate into perspective. Deep Blue analyzes millions of moves per second, Kasparov meanwhile analyzes a very small fraction of that figure. The fact that a human player can beat Deep Blue even some of the time tells us more about the human mind than it does about the state of the art of computer science. Gumshoe
Free form adventure games are very difficult to execute properly. The naked flame object is the best example I can think of to highlight how even a seemingly trivial item can make things complex - unless you are happy with "I don't understand" type messages, you have to handle how each and every other object in the game will react to the command "ignite *" Besides, free form games are not even desirable. Free form adventure games would be unplayable (read: boring) as there would be necessity be no plot.
The old Infocom games ran on a virtual machine called the ZMachine. A lot of work (ie. reverse engineering) has been done on this over the last 10 years or so and a plethora of original works are released every year that use this system.
:-)
The best interpreter IMO for the ZMachine, is Frotz. It is available for many platforms and source code is available so porting to a mobile phone is always a possibility.
Moreover, a complete programming language explicitely designed for producing ZMachine games is also available. Inform This too is available for many systems along with source code.
Finally, an excellent repository for text adventures can be found at ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive
Have fun