I think it matters mainly for the prospect of having another alternative platform from which to choose...
The Amiga was an elegant platform, for a more civilized age...
The potential of the Amiga is what keeps it alive; the potential of a computer with advanced hardware for multimedia capabilities, standard file formats published for multimedia, a decent and reliable GUI and multitasking operating system (built on top of an architecture that did interrupt-driven I/O, no busy looping bringing the machine to a crawl), a common scripting and interprocess communication language for all applications, a nice (somewhat quirky) command line interface, which you could replace with another shell if you want. That's what the Amiga was at its height.
I may be dating myself;) but I did C programming on the Amiga 3000 for my computer science classes, and it was preferable to the Sun workstations the university had. And the source code was portable as well, so I could recompile on the Suns or the Vax as I remember with no changes to the source.
If the Amiga had lasted until today, I can only imagine how far it would be right now: hardware for doing MPEG-2 video and mp3 audio compression/decompression in real time, 3D acceleration for video, support for multiple monitors, multiple channels for CD quality sound, running on the fastest available processor (PowerPC no doubt), support for multiple processors, DVD support,.... take whatever else that's cool and going to be available Real Soon Now, and the Amiga would probably already have done it.
The Amiga been out of the picture for so long it's doubtful that it could make a meaningful comeback, unless the OS is open-sourced and this allows it to gain enough momentum... There is a movement around to do this... It would also be an interesting idea to see if it's feasible to open source the hardware, and perhaps the ultimate computer architecture for the 00's could come out of this as well...
CCA is trying to prevent making any copies of DVDs, legal or illegal.
I thought it was interesting that on the EFF web site (http://eff.org/effector/HTML/effect12.04.html) they noted that the CSS also prevented making perfectly legal "fair use" copies of DVD's. Could the DVD CCA itself be sued (class action suit?) for infringing on consumers' right to make "fair use" copies?
I should be able to to make copies of DVD's to videotape so that my 4 year old daughter can use the tapes (no way am I going to let her near a DVD disk/player--and we don't call her little brother Bam Bam for nothing;). Besides that, she would be able to take her movies on tape with her anywhere (DVD players aren't ubiquitous yet, VCRs are.) We'd have a perfect digital "source" so that if a tape is broken or wears out (when you have kids this happens all of the time), all we have to do is buy another blank tape and make another copy.
I would even pay a few extra bucks for DVD over VHS for kids movies just to be able to do this. But if the DVD industry decides they want to be hard-assed about it and not allow consumers to make perfectly legal "fair use" copies, I would not feel bad at all using a DeCSS or a similar tool to make legal fair use copies.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it matters mainly for the prospect of having another alternative platform from which to choose...
;) but I did C programming on the Amiga 3000 for my computer science classes, and it was preferable to the Sun workstations the university had. And the source code was portable as well, so I could recompile on the Suns or the Vax as I remember with no changes to the source.
.... take whatever else that's cool and going to be available Real Soon Now, and the Amiga would probably already have done it.
The Amiga was an elegant platform, for a more civilized age...
The potential of the Amiga is what keeps it alive; the potential of a computer with advanced hardware for multimedia capabilities, standard file formats published for multimedia, a decent and reliable GUI and multitasking operating system (built on top of an architecture that did interrupt-driven I/O, no busy looping bringing the machine to a crawl), a common scripting and interprocess communication language for all applications, a nice (somewhat quirky) command line interface, which you could replace with another shell if you want. That's what the Amiga was at its height.
I may be dating myself
If the Amiga had lasted until today, I can only imagine how far it would be right now: hardware for doing MPEG-2 video and mp3 audio compression/decompression in real time, 3D acceleration for video, support for multiple monitors, multiple channels for CD quality sound, running on the fastest available processor (PowerPC no doubt), support for multiple processors, DVD support,
The Amiga been out of the picture for so long it's doubtful that it could make a meaningful comeback, unless the OS is open-sourced and this allows it to gain enough momentum... There is a movement around to do this... It would also be an interesting idea to see if it's feasible to open source the hardware, and perhaps the ultimate computer architecture for the 00's could come out of this as well...
CCA is trying to prevent making any copies of DVDs, legal or illegal.
;). Besides that, she would be able to take her movies on tape with her anywhere (DVD players aren't ubiquitous yet, VCRs are.) We'd have a perfect digital "source" so that if a tape is broken or wears out (when you have kids this happens all of the time), all we have to do is buy another blank tape and make another copy.
I thought it was interesting that on the EFF web site (http://eff.org/effector/HTML/effect12.04.html) they noted that the CSS also prevented making perfectly legal "fair use" copies of DVD's. Could the DVD CCA itself be sued (class action suit?) for infringing on consumers' right to make "fair use" copies?
I should be able to to make copies of DVD's to videotape so that my 4 year old daughter can use the tapes (no way am I going to let her near a DVD disk/player--and we don't call her little brother Bam Bam for nothing
I would even pay a few extra bucks for DVD over VHS for kids movies just to be able to do this. But if the DVD industry decides they want to be hard-assed about it and not allow consumers to make perfectly legal "fair use" copies, I would not feel bad at all using a DeCSS or a similar tool to make legal fair use copies.
Of course you have to count on the odd, perverse psychopath who'll order the kids to swap id cards before he guns them down...