It's worse than that - it's as if a free newspaper company sued you, since they're being sued over the radio, which anyone could listen to. If this involved playing CDs, whilst it'd still be mad, at least there would be some plausible logic.
The appropriate licencing fees have already been paid by the radio. If they don't want people listening to it, they shouldn't be broadcasting it on the radio for all to hear.
And if pigs might fly, there wouldn't be any evidence in 2000 years' time either. But we don't believe in every conceivably thing just because we can't be 100% sure it didn't happen.
See, the moderation proves it - any Amiga users still around are realistic about its expectations and happy to make a joke, whilst Linux users are actually being serious, and unable to take any criticism.
True - sorry, I mean more the "free" advertising and hype. The way that the media will cover anything that Apple does (whether it's Slashdot, or mainstream media), whilst ignoring all the bigger players in the mobile market. Or it seems that way to me, maybe I've just been missing coverage of other phones.
It's interesting how some Mac users are keen to claim OS X as a brand new OS when it suits them - whilst at other times, insisting it's a continuation of classic MacOS so they can claim things like "The Mac had the first GUI". Which is it?
The truth of course is neither - as someone else pointed out, it's derived from NeXTSTEP.
#1 Develop X86 versions of it to run on PC systems. Use UAE to run the older 68K Amiga software on it.
I think they could do more simply promoting WinUAE on Windows system - there's Amiga Forever at least, but there's interesting setups like AmiKit which provide a complete setup with lots of applications. Maybe get the rights for a few old games too.
#2 Develop PPC versions of it for the Amiga PPC, PowerMac, and CHRP hardware sets so people with older systems can run it as well.
Well if it was on x86, you could run it on older hardware there (which'd also be cheaper and more commonly available).
#4 Get software developers to write AmigaOS 5 ports of their popular software. Get OpenOffice.Org, StarOffice, Quicken, Turbo Tax, Photoshop, Lotus Smartsuite, etc ported.
#5 Get Blizzard, and other game makers to write AmigaOS 5 versions of their popular games.
Sadly this seems unlikely, unless they have a lot of money to pay them for porting.
#6 Get the F/OSS projects ported to AmigaOS 5, like Firefox, Thunderbird, Eurdora, GNUCash, Apache, CVS, The Gimp, etc ported.
Looking at the other way round, I'd love to see YAM ported to Windows.
The MacOSes offer continuation of functionality (albeit through emulation/compatibility layers in some cases) and interface.
It's an entirely new OS - or if anything, a continuation of NEXT. Yeah, it has emulation, but my Windows PC runs Amiga applications if that's allowed.
No; brand names used to have stronger associations with corporate or product values, and some still do. Can you imagine Mercedes just whoring their brand name out to everyone
I don't see any brandnames related to Commodore or the Amiga being "whored out to everyone".
Some random company getting the rights to slap the Commodore name on some random piece of generic hardware doesn't constitute "Commodore" being back in business.
A little known fact is that the original Commodore made PCs. So I don't see how modern Commodore PCs are any more random or generic than the standard Commodore 286s they produced back then. In fact, there's more of a continuation and similarity than between modern Macs, and the platform which also used the "Macintosh" brandname back in the 80s/90s.
Most people would assume at least some relation to the old company.
Just as they would with every other time a brandname is used, and they'd just as likely be wrong. This is why companies use brandnames, to create a sense of continuity, however true or untrue that might be. People like us know different - that a Commodore PC, Macintosh or random brand of car doesn't necessarily relate to earlier models with the same brand. But I see now reason why people have to blame the companies for doing so - yet only do so for Commodore or Amiga brandnames, and not all the other companies that do the same.
There's this fantastic thing called e-mail that handles messages for anyone! If we really want all our friends to know we're tired, or just took a dump we can CC them all.
The problem with email is it's "push" rather than "pull" - I have to assume who wants to know some details of my life, and then risk annoying people who don't want my spam. These websites became popular because people could choose what you wanted to read.
The only way to do with with email is to set up a mailing list, which takes up more effort.
Also, one thing that Facebook does nicely is the automatic polls to see whether people are attending events - makes the whole RSVP thing a lot more automatic (and also means that other people can see, not just the organiser).
It sold a million units in 75 days. How can I make my next product a "disaster" like that?
By branding it Apple.
Wake me up when it hits 50 million (or 12 million in 90 days). Any product that a big company like Apple put out is going to sell a load, and given how much advertising it gets (I don't see daily RAZR stories here on Slashdot), it's very telling how its average sales are.
(I'm one of those old, boring people who just uses my telephone to talk to people....)
I'm someone who rarely uses my phone for actually talking to people - but I still don't see what the Iphone brings to the table. If you want email, web browsing and mp3s on a phone, any old dirt cheap phone does that at a fraction of the cost. If you want to run native applications and have a general mini-computer, smart phones have been around for years.
Also, here in the UK at least, it's common that you either pay for a phone with no contract tie in, or you pay for a contract and get the phone free (or at greatly reduced price).
Of course, the phone will sell well simply because it's Apple, and also because everywhere will give Apple free publicity (even negative publicity like this story is still free advertising for them).
I loved MUI! It was the first GUI toolkit I used - and everything since then has been downhill, from ones which try well but don't quite make it, to dire pieces of crap like the Microsoft Foundation Classes.
I also can't stand the point-and-click "Visual" GUI editors - handcoding a GUI in MUI was both easier, and more flexible (e.g., works better when you resize the window, easier to swap the order of elements). It's clever use of macros meant that the interface definition could be inlined in the code, rather than being read in from XML files or whatever.
One thing I thought might be nice is a handheld A500/1200. It doesn't have to be custom hardware, or require porting the OS, at all - just use modern hardware and run UAE. Flash memory would be room to store hundreds or thousands of games. Add the option to plug into a TV.
Getting back to desktops, one thing I thought does seem missing, and could be done without having to write a whole new OS, is as follows: a low-end computer, that has a standard, and decent, graphics chipset, and comes in a compact case. Whilst most PC motherboards have graphics chipsets and, perhaps thanks to Vista, they now all at least support DirectX 9, they are still rather basic. On top of that, PCs are more likely to have driver issues due to the many different chipsets that games need to run on. The Mini-Mac is another close example, but it still has rather basic graphics. The only machines which have fitted this since the mid-90s are consoles - which of course don't give you the advantage of computers.
It could be built using standard parts and an existing OS, and would provide much of what people loved of the Amiga. Yeah, it wouldn't be an "Amiga" in that it wouldn't run the classic AmigaOS, but that's missing the point. Mac and Windows have little in common with their namesake platforms in the 80s/90s. And if you wanted compatibility on this hypothetical machine I describe, that could be provided through UAE anyway.
Both of these examples would give us decent modern Amigas, without having to build a whole new niche platform from scratch, or dragging the Amiga brandname through the mud.
Workbench (the Amiga OS) 3 looks about Windows 3.1 level still, maybe a bit better. It's pathetic.
In what way? A default install of OS 3.9 looks the same sort of thing as "classic" Windows (i.e., 9x, 2000 - which many people prefer over the eye candy XP/Vista/OS X, after all). Obviously Amiga OS 3.0 looked hopeless, but it was designed when most people were viewing on low resolution TVs, and most PCs at the time were still on DOS anyway, whilst System 7 looked pretty awful too.
Amiga is laughed at, since the guy shows nothing, says nothing, and still has the chutzpah to claim his OS is better than "OSX".
Yes, as I said in another of my comments, it's important to distinguish between Amiga Inc the company, and the Amiga platform. There's good reason to laugh at Amiga Inc - and most Amiga users have been doing most of the pointing and laughing, in fact. But that shouldn't be taken as any comment about the Amiga platform, which presumably the poster you replied to meant.
But from most people's point of view, there's only one dominant OS out there. No one demands to know what OS X will bring to the table everytime there's an OS X article.
Hell, IBM resurrecting OS/2 would make more sense.
Not really; the old Commodore is as dead as ever. The "Commodore(s)" making new computers are simply unrelated companies who bought the name or acquired the right to use it on their products.
Really, it's just a badge and nothing more. If you know this and still want to buy one of those "Commodore"-badged PCs, fair enough. Though personally I think it's just exploitation of geek nostalgia to pretend that it's anything more than that
Why do people always harp on about this when it comes to Commodore or the Amiga, and nothing else?
Brandnames are just that - whether it's Pentium, MacOS, Atari, Windows or whatever - they all get used repeated for different products, they all get bought and sold. Do you complain that modern Macs shouldn't be called Macs, as they're a completely different hardware platform and OS to the original Macs, and it's just exploitation of geek nostalgia to pretend it's anything more than that? What about ATI, who are now owned by AMD, but graphics cards are still branded "ATI".
_All_ brandnames are about exploiting people's nostalgia, fond memories, good experiences and so on, and it affects everyone, not just geeks.
I was seriously wondering if maybe the Amiga community(or what's left of it plus any fans, etc.) couldn't just buy out what's left of that company and then open source the OS(hardware?) so we could then adapt it to be used on today's commodity hardware.
The AROS project looks promising but doesn't work with my hardware and this would be just the thing to move them forward.
I was just about to mention AROS until I saw you did:)
To be honest, despite AROS's limitations, I'd have thought that it's far along enough that the original source code wouldn't help them much - after all, the original source code only runs on either 68k or PPC.
The whole Amiga bankruptcy scene was a comedy of horrors and the new Amiga, Inc. is the twisted punchline.
I agree, it's sad really, it would have been nice to have more choice in computing today, as opposed to just Windows or still-not-ready-for-the-desktop-Linux, or niche-player Apple (which many of us just don't like). It's especially insulting as the companies that did most damage were PC companies - Escom and Gateway - and the way it seems to damage the image of the Amiga (at least on Slashdot). Imagine if a PC company bought Apple, then raised all the prices, and hardly ever bought out new models? Would that mean Macs are crap after all? Of course not.
Hell, rather than trying to build a new platform from scratch, I think I'd find it more pleasing for someone to just release some decent modern PCs, with WinUAE installed as standard, and branded Amiga (I mean, they'll be just as close to the Amigas of 10-15 years ago, as modern Macs are to Macs of the 90s...) Then people can happily run 4GB quad-core machines and smugly call them Amigas if they so wish:)
Makes Vista seem positively normal, and makes Leopard's delays look like an overnight shipping glitch.
I too am rather saddened by the history of vapourware claims and disappointments from Amiga Inc (it's important to distinguish the Amiga platform from Amiga Inc the company - the former was a great platform that lasted just as long as its contemporaries such as classic MacOS and Windows 9x; the latter is a company doing a rather bad job of bringing out any sort of modern equivalent). But note that, FWIW, finally they did release OS 4, so the vapourware claims many are shouting here are no longer valid.
Also note that Apple went through years of trying to update their aging classic Mac OS (copeland, etc), before finally they had to ditch it and work on something from NEXT.
Slashdot Mirror
Fortunately the boy was charged in the UK. So he can be held for *only* 28 days.
Surely that's how long you can be held without charge? (Which the Labour Government wanted to raise to 90 days.)
Obviously once people have been charged, they can be held for much longer whilst they await trial.
No worries on Linux or Mac OS X.
No worries on Linux or Mac OS X or Commodore 64.
Anyway, my home systems of 3 Windows boxes are sitting fine without worry too. In fact, I've never had a virus on Windows.
It's worse than that - it's as if a free newspaper company sued you, since they're being sued over the radio, which anyone could listen to. If this involved playing CDs, whilst it'd still be mad, at least there would be some plausible logic.
The appropriate licencing fees have already been paid by the radio. If they don't want people listening to it, they shouldn't be broadcasting it on the radio for all to hear.
And if pigs might fly, there wouldn't be any evidence in 2000 years' time either. But we don't believe in every conceivably thing just because we can't be 100% sure it didn't happen.
See, the moderation proves it - any Amiga users still around are realistic about its expectations and happy to make a joke, whilst Linux users are actually being serious, and unable to take any criticism.
Why isn't the grandparent modded troll?
True - sorry, I mean more the "free" advertising and hype. The way that the media will cover anything that Apple does (whether it's Slashdot, or mainstream media), whilst ignoring all the bigger players in the mobile market. Or it seems that way to me, maybe I've just been missing coverage of other phones.
It's interesting how some Mac users are keen to claim OS X as a brand new OS when it suits them - whilst at other times, insisting it's a continuation of classic MacOS so they can claim things like "The Mac had the first GUI". Which is it?
The truth of course is neither - as someone else pointed out, it's derived from NeXTSTEP.
The difference is that Linux users actually seriously seem to think Linux is a major player, rather than just using it because they like it.
Wake me up when it's ready for the desktop - something that every other OS (even the dead ones) achieved decades ago.
#1 Develop X86 versions of it to run on PC systems. Use UAE to run the older 68K Amiga software on it.
I think they could do more simply promoting WinUAE on Windows system - there's Amiga Forever at least, but there's interesting setups like AmiKit which provide a complete setup with lots of applications. Maybe get the rights for a few old games too.
#2 Develop PPC versions of it for the Amiga PPC, PowerMac, and CHRP hardware sets so people with older systems can run it as well.
Well if it was on x86, you could run it on older hardware there (which'd also be cheaper and more commonly available).
#4 Get software developers to write AmigaOS 5 ports of their popular software. Get OpenOffice.Org, StarOffice, Quicken, Turbo Tax, Photoshop, Lotus Smartsuite, etc ported.
#5 Get Blizzard, and other game makers to write AmigaOS 5 versions of their popular games.
Sadly this seems unlikely, unless they have a lot of money to pay them for porting.
#6 Get the F/OSS projects ported to AmigaOS 5, like Firefox, Thunderbird, Eurdora, GNUCash, Apache, CVS, The Gimp, etc ported.
Looking at the other way round, I'd love to see YAM ported to Windows.
The MacOSes offer continuation of functionality (albeit through emulation/compatibility layers in some cases) and interface.
It's an entirely new OS - or if anything, a continuation of NEXT. Yeah, it has emulation, but my Windows PC runs Amiga applications if that's allowed.
No; brand names used to have stronger associations with corporate or product values, and some still do. Can you imagine Mercedes just whoring their brand name out to everyone
I don't see any brandnames related to Commodore or the Amiga being "whored out to everyone".
Some random company getting the rights to slap the Commodore name on some random piece of generic hardware doesn't constitute "Commodore" being back in business.
A little known fact is that the original Commodore made PCs. So I don't see how modern Commodore PCs are any more random or generic than the standard Commodore 286s they produced back then. In fact, there's more of a continuation and similarity than between modern Macs, and the platform which also used the "Macintosh" brandname back in the 80s/90s.
Most people would assume at least some relation to the old company.
Just as they would with every other time a brandname is used, and they'd just as likely be wrong. This is why companies use brandnames, to create a sense of continuity, however true or untrue that might be. People like us know different - that a Commodore PC, Macintosh or random brand of car doesn't necessarily relate to earlier models with the same brand. But I see now reason why people have to blame the companies for doing so - yet only do so for Commodore or Amiga brandnames, and not all the other companies that do the same.
If myspace is the armpit of the internet, Facebook is like the sweaty taint.
And Slashdot is...?
There's this fantastic thing called e-mail that handles messages for anyone! If we really want all our friends to know we're tired, or just took a dump we can CC them all.
The problem with email is it's "push" rather than "pull" - I have to assume who wants to know some details of my life, and then risk annoying people who don't want my spam. These websites became popular because people could choose what you wanted to read.
The only way to do with with email is to set up a mailing list, which takes up more effort.
Also, one thing that Facebook does nicely is the automatic polls to see whether people are attending events - makes the whole RSVP thing a lot more automatic (and also means that other people can see, not just the organiser).
That's the only reason? A web app fills the giant void AOL left behind. *Yawn*
Ok, in what way is Facebook like AOL? I can't see any connection, or reason to suspect people left AOL for Facebook.
It sold a million units in 75 days. How can I make my next product a "disaster" like that?
By branding it Apple.
Wake me up when it hits 50 million (or 12 million in 90 days). Any product that a big company like Apple put out is going to sell a load, and given how much advertising it gets (I don't see daily RAZR stories here on Slashdot), it's very telling how its average sales are.
(I'm one of those old, boring people who just uses my telephone to talk to people....)
I'm someone who rarely uses my phone for actually talking to people - but I still don't see what the Iphone brings to the table. If you want email, web browsing and mp3s on a phone, any old dirt cheap phone does that at a fraction of the cost. If you want to run native applications and have a general mini-computer, smart phones have been around for years.
Also, here in the UK at least, it's common that you either pay for a phone with no contract tie in, or you pay for a contract and get the phone free (or at greatly reduced price).
Of course, the phone will sell well simply because it's Apple, and also because everywhere will give Apple free publicity (even negative publicity like this story is still free advertising for them).
Desperately poring over eBay for a $200+ network or graphics card... using a friend's PC.
1995 called and wants its joke back.
I loved MUI! It was the first GUI toolkit I used - and everything since then has been downhill, from ones which try well but don't quite make it, to dire pieces of crap like the Microsoft Foundation Classes.
I also can't stand the point-and-click "Visual" GUI editors - handcoding a GUI in MUI was both easier, and more flexible (e.g., works better when you resize the window, easier to swap the order of elements). It's clever use of macros meant that the interface definition could be inlined in the code, rather than being read in from XML files or whatever.
One thing I thought might be nice is a handheld A500/1200. It doesn't have to be custom hardware, or require porting the OS, at all - just use modern hardware and run UAE. Flash memory would be room to store hundreds or thousands of games. Add the option to plug into a TV.
Getting back to desktops, one thing I thought does seem missing, and could be done without having to write a whole new OS, is as follows: a low-end computer, that has a standard, and decent, graphics chipset, and comes in a compact case. Whilst most PC motherboards have graphics chipsets and, perhaps thanks to Vista, they now all at least support DirectX 9, they are still rather basic. On top of that, PCs are more likely to have driver issues due to the many different chipsets that games need to run on. The Mini-Mac is another close example, but it still has rather basic graphics. The only machines which have fitted this since the mid-90s are consoles - which of course don't give you the advantage of computers.
It could be built using standard parts and an existing OS, and would provide much of what people loved of the Amiga. Yeah, it wouldn't be an "Amiga" in that it wouldn't run the classic AmigaOS, but that's missing the point. Mac and Windows have little in common with their namesake platforms in the 80s/90s. And if you wanted compatibility on this hypothetical machine I describe, that could be provided through UAE anyway.
Both of these examples would give us decent modern Amigas, without having to build a whole new niche platform from scratch, or dragging the Amiga brandname through the mud.
Workbench (the Amiga OS) 3 looks about Windows 3.1 level still, maybe a bit better. It's pathetic.
In what way? A default install of OS 3.9 looks the same sort of thing as "classic" Windows (i.e., 9x, 2000 - which many people prefer over the eye candy XP/Vista/OS X, after all). Obviously Amiga OS 3.0 looked hopeless, but it was designed when most people were viewing on low resolution TVs, and most PCs at the time were still on DOS anyway, whilst System 7 looked pretty awful too.
Amiga is laughed at, since the guy shows nothing, says nothing, and still has the chutzpah to claim his OS is better than "OSX".
Yes, as I said in another of my comments, it's important to distinguish between Amiga Inc the company, and the Amiga platform. There's good reason to laugh at Amiga Inc - and most Amiga users have been doing most of the pointing and laughing, in fact. But that shouldn't be taken as any comment about the Amiga platform, which presumably the poster you replied to meant.
But from most people's point of view, there's only one dominant OS out there. No one demands to know what OS X will bring to the table everytime there's an OS X article.
Hell, IBM resurrecting OS/2 would make more sense.
Or Apple resurrecting NEXT, you never know.
Not really; the old Commodore is as dead as ever. The "Commodore(s)" making new computers are simply unrelated companies who bought the name or acquired the right to use it on their products.
Really, it's just a badge and nothing more. If you know this and still want to buy one of those "Commodore"-badged PCs, fair enough. Though personally I think it's just exploitation of geek nostalgia to pretend that it's anything more than that
Why do people always harp on about this when it comes to Commodore or the Amiga, and nothing else?
Brandnames are just that - whether it's Pentium, MacOS, Atari, Windows or whatever - they all get used repeated for different products, they all get bought and sold. Do you complain that modern Macs shouldn't be called Macs, as they're a completely different hardware platform and OS to the original Macs, and it's just exploitation of geek nostalgia to pretend it's anything more than that? What about ATI, who are now owned by AMD, but graphics cards are still branded "ATI".
_All_ brandnames are about exploiting people's nostalgia, fond memories, good experiences and so on, and it affects everyone, not just geeks.
I was seriously wondering if maybe the Amiga community(or what's left of it plus any fans, etc.) couldn't just buy out what's left of that company and then open source the OS(hardware?) so we could then adapt it to be used on today's commodity hardware.
:)
:)
The AROS project looks promising but doesn't work with my hardware and this would be just the thing to move them forward.
I was just about to mention AROS until I saw you did
To be honest, despite AROS's limitations, I'd have thought that it's far along enough that the original source code wouldn't help them much - after all, the original source code only runs on either 68k or PPC.
The whole Amiga bankruptcy scene was a comedy of horrors and the new Amiga, Inc. is the twisted punchline.
I agree, it's sad really, it would have been nice to have more choice in computing today, as opposed to just Windows or still-not-ready-for-the-desktop-Linux, or niche-player Apple (which many of us just don't like). It's especially insulting as the companies that did most damage were PC companies - Escom and Gateway - and the way it seems to damage the image of the Amiga (at least on Slashdot). Imagine if a PC company bought Apple, then raised all the prices, and hardly ever bought out new models? Would that mean Macs are crap after all? Of course not.
Hell, rather than trying to build a new platform from scratch, I think I'd find it more pleasing for someone to just release some decent modern PCs, with WinUAE installed as standard, and branded Amiga (I mean, they'll be just as close to the Amigas of 10-15 years ago, as modern Macs are to Macs of the 90s...) Then people can happily run 4GB quad-core machines and smugly call them Amigas if they so wish
Makes Vista seem positively normal, and makes Leopard's delays look like an overnight shipping glitch.
I too am rather saddened by the history of vapourware claims and disappointments from Amiga Inc (it's important to distinguish the Amiga platform from Amiga Inc the company - the former was a great platform that lasted just as long as its contemporaries such as classic MacOS and Windows 9x; the latter is a company doing a rather bad job of bringing out any sort of modern equivalent). But note that, FWIW, finally they did release OS 4, so the vapourware claims many are shouting here are no longer valid.
Also note that Apple went through years of trying to update their aging classic Mac OS (copeland, etc), before finally they had to ditch it and work on something from NEXT.
How does one leech with P2P clients? eMule/eDonkey, BT, etc. all want upload requirements.
Share material that is legal to distribute?