"Screw SCO. If you're really, really, really pissed about it, realize they got their money from M$ and start talking to anyone who will listen about OpenOffice.org - don't abuse the ground troops in a proxy war, get into their homeland and start burning crops and blowing up bridges..."
And then if anyone is still running Windows on their systems, make sure they use Mozilla Firebird for their browser and Mozilla Thunderbird for their email client. If more web sites notice that us users are switching, that will reduce Microsoft's influence and there'll be less chance of them getting a foothold for wireless web access through cheap cell phones built in South Korea and Taiwan...granted, Motorola is making a Microsoft based phone, but I noticed they took a large cash payment from MS and it seems like they are reinvesting that in Linux based solutions...:)
"Perhaps so. Neither claim makes much sense, but there is a kind of logic there. Suppose there was a way that SCO could get the original BSD decision annulled (I cannot see how they could, but IMNAL: something about terms of the agreement not followed?). Then SCO might actually end up with code they own being used illegally."
That won't happen. Apple will "destroy" SCO if there is some challenge to BSD. You know, because Apple is sitting on $5 billion in the bank and has numerous patents and copyrights to operating systems and GUI. Furthermore, if SCO went after the University of California over BSD, you'd have our new Governor banning them from any State contracts whatsoever and taking other actions as well. I sure hope CalPERS doesn't have any money invested in those fools [SCO}...
I find it weird that all the European Union member states are not part of this project considering there are many top-notch universities in these countries. The same goes for the other advanced non-EU European countries (Iceland, Norway, etc.)...
"Legitimate charge? Maybe not. But this way, Apple doesn't have to waste its time and money defending itself against the RIAA, whose members are also their business partners in the ITMS venture. It doesn't hurt its users, since we have other options."
A challenge by the RIAA against the iPod would've never made it to court. The RIAA sued Diamond over the very first portable MP3 player, the Rio. The RIAA lost. That was the case that set the prescident.
"Another reason is to assuade fears that Apple was making a file swapping tool. Apple's software is one way only...copy to the ipod or delete it. You can't copy from it. Therefore, Apple can't be sued for abetting piracy...since all the pirates have to use third party tools, of which there are several good ones for Windows, Linux and OSX."
Abetting piracy? If that was a legitimate charge, we wouldn't have USB JumpDrives on the market. They are nearing the 1gig level now, after all.
"They branched out into a wide array of products, including SCSI controllers, motherboards (after acquiring Micronics), modems (after acquiring Supra), and audio cards."
I'd prefer to see Supra resurface myself. Having come from Atari ST user land, Supra always made spiffy accessories (and for the Amiga market as well). And they didn't just do modems...
"Even game creation has little to do with programming anymore - it is mostly about the artwork and using an off-the-shelf 3D library (of which there are plenty)."
Really? Maybe we can get those 900,000 laid off programmers to devote one work hour to getting Duke Nukem Forever finished then...
"Remember how back in the good old days, Hardware makers (Commodore, Atari, Apple, etc) were free to introduce radical new hardware every 12 months, with no regard to operating software portability - they knew that the software guys were capable of keeping up back then."
Examples??? Not on the Atari end. The Atari 400 and 800 were released in 1979. After that, you had the 1200XL, then the 600XL and 800XL, the "unreleased" 1400XL and 1450XLD, and the 65XE, 130XE, and the XE game system. The newer models retained compatibility.
On the Commodore side, you had the PET, the Commodore 16, the Commodore 64 and 128, and the Plus4. The Commodore 128 was backwards compatible with the wildly successful Commodore 64. We won't talk about the others.
Apple had the I, the II, the II+, the IIe, the IIc, the III, and the IIgs. We won't talk about the Apple I or the Apple III, but the later models of the II line maintained compatibility.
Now Apple, Atari, and Commodore broke from backwards compatibility when they jumped to their 16/32 bit computers (I'm not counting the IIgs in this argument). Apple Macs were compatible with Apple Macs, Commodore Amigas with Amigas, and the ST/TT/Falcon line with Atari.
So where's this myth of breaking with backwards compatibility from the other great computer companies that you named?
Setting the base of GPUs at the Nvidia NV30 level is excluding way too many mainstream videocards that aren't currently being used. If you are a gamer, ask yourself how many videocards you have cluttering your home because you are constantly upgrading to the next best card that hit the market. I myself could spare a couple of Voodoo1 cards, two Voodoo3 cards, a TNT2, and a couple of GeForce2's.
The base of this project should be something like the 3dfx Voodoo1 or Nvidia's Riva128. While you can no longer count on any updated drivers for WindowsXP for these models, they surely have suitable Linux drivers. You could mount multiple PCI versions into a single PC (obviously, it would probably be best if they were all the same cards). Now that's the way to get some extra performance for distributed computing projects...
Disclaimer: Yes, anything below a Voodoo3 (on the 3dfx front) would have issues with OpenGL because 3dfx used a mini-GL driver since at that time they still favored their own GLide format over both OpenGL and DirectX.
"hey, that's right! electricity turns into heat energy at the same rate, no matter what it did in the meantime. so for every watt of power your computer uses, that's one less watt of power your heater needs to crank out. (assuming you have it on a thermostat, and that the computer isn't hot enough to heat the room above its ideal temperature, and that air flow in your home is good enough that the heat from the computer affects the whole house)"
Well, I don't know if it would work for the size of a house, but for my dumpy apartment, SETI and my AthlonXP 1700 keeps it toasty. I think if I were to upgrade my videocard to one of the GeForce models with 256Mb onboard, my apt. would remain a toasty 72 F at all times... Granted, it is a living hell in the summer time...:)
"Some people have expressed interest in getting BOINC to do that. It may happen."
Good, because I'm interested in seeing how many gigaflops my old Pentium 133 would produce with five (5) Voodoo1 cards filling up all the available PCI slots. My friends and I have plenty of spare old videocards to donate to such an endeavour...:)
"You had a Falcon? You're pretty lucky:) I tried to get one once but only ended up getting a TT with the 19" monochrome monitor:) You're pretty much right on the memory addressing on the Amiga; the difference comes in on which model you're using and what sort of accelerator board you have (if you have one). Zorro-II bus in A2000 and A500 (sorta) and the Zorro-I bus (sidecar) in A1000 can only address 8 megs. Meaning if you plug a memory expansion board into a Zorro slot it can only have 8 megs max *and* when equipped that way, any ROMs on other expansion boards often won't have any spare memory to map themselves! So sometimes it's best to only go up to 6 or something."
You are a wealth of information, Sir!:)
Since you have a TT, do you have the Unix Sys V. release for it? That might be another angle of pursuit. Getting a stripped down version of Mozilla to run on the TT via Unix. I don't think they gave their blessing to Unix on a Falcon, and the Falcon would be at a stock disadvantage since it had a 16Mhz 68030 whereas most TT's had 33Mhz.
I think the DSP on the Falcon would do well if some enterprising individual were to port over an Amiga-based MP3 player and had it access the DSP in lieu of the 68030. Of course, the same could be said for the SETI@home client (although I think the lowest Mac version was set up for the 040).
Now I'm going to have to check on some ST stuff online now. There's a really cool site at (http://www.atari.st). The page is formatted like the GEM desktop.
"Episode 1 was slightly worse than Episode II, which was semi-fun to watch, with nostalgia for Episode IV, but not great. Episode III at least promises we get to see that leering Christian What's-'is-name dipped in acid. The sooner the better."
Episode II was more to Episode V than *Star Trek Nemesis* was to *The Wrath of Khan.*:)
The industry really needs to take measures to make sure the intellectual property of SCO isn't bought up in bankruptcy proceedings by Microsoft. SCO, ie., Caldera, owns the intellectual property of the former (Intergalactic) Digital Research. Not only did Digital Research bring the world CP/M (the father of illegitimate MSDOS), but it also marketed the GEM Desktop GUI.
If a company like IBM, Sun, or Novell purchased this IP, they could out of their good hearts (but more so for strategy) license the IP related to GEM to various Linux distributions to protect them from any potential lawsuits originating from Microsoft. As KDE and Gnome continue to improve, it will only be a matter of time before Microsoft launches lawsuits related to the GUI against the various distributions, and you can bet Apple won't speak up on their behalf either. Therefore, it is crucial that the remaining pieces of SCO that haven't been burnt to a crisp wind up in the hands of "friendlies."
The same goes for the Unix IP. It would probably be in the best interest of all ('cept Microsoft) to GPL Unix after SCO is gone and their various licenses have expired...
"Not that they need extra hardware, but imagine the resulting credits list if they had to list everyone whose computer rendered a few frames of (the Hobbit? The tales of Narnia?)..."
I'd rather contribute my cycles to Lucasfilm/ILM in the attempt to use spare CPU cycles to virtually write a better screenplay than Episode I. Yes, I know, its an analogy to 1,000 monkeys at typewriters...:)
Actually, I like that idea. I was thinking about that a couple of weeks ago, something like Weta or ILM creating a distributed processing platform for rendering. There would be some rewards program to ensure that the fans had their computers crunch the workloads in a mission-critical timeframe. That is the #1 problem with such a plan; research is open-ended on results like SETI or Folding; rendering the graphics for the next blockbuster movie has to come in on time (if not early)...
From my understanding, Boinc uses OpenGL to unload the screensaver graphics off the main processor's load and onto the graphics card GPU just like how Mac OS X accelerates its GUI graphics (or how Longhorn will do it with DirectX). Too bad Boinc can't uses the GPU like what was covered here on Slashdot under the BrookGPU project yesterday...
"Well....the processors in my computers are OWNED by me. I pay the electricity bills to operate them, and YOU want to use my processor time for FREE ?? I dont think so, pony up some cash or keep your distributed clients, thank you."
I run SETI on my PC all the time. Its cheaper for me to leave the computer on at all times and use it to maintain a consistent temperature during the winter with it than to crank on than the apartment's electrical heater...:)
I'd think that since the obvious applications that would benefit from such techniques would be in renderfarms. Perhaps it would be in the best interest of Weta Digital, Pixar, and ILM to invest some money into this project. After all, it would be much cheaper to acquire a bunch of used PCI-based Voodoo and GeForce cards and load multiple units into their PCs than to just increase the number of PCs sitting next to each other; they'd save money in terms of electricity consumption as well. There is a prescidence afterall; I'm thinking about the pooling of resources that Paramount, Fox, and Disney did a few months ago in getting Adobe Photoshop and other mission-critical Windows programs to run on Linux...
"Yeah the Falcon would be great, but as you say those are rare too. The Falcon and the TT would be the only stock Atari machines capable of running Mozilla, and even these would be long-shots as the TT can only be upgraded to ~18MB RAM... the Falcon I'm not sure about."
Thanks for all that info; you need to be modded up! I know for a fact that a Falcon can go up to 16 megs because I had mine upgraded to that...the limitation always were the MMU chips on the ST platform...the original ST's were limited to up to 4meg (I think the Amigas addressed 8 but I'm probably wrong)....
In terms of processing for Mozilla on either the ST or the Amiga I wonder if the Motorola 68881 or 68882 coprocessors could come in handy....they shipped standard on the original NeXT cubes.... and Motorola did combine the 68882's with the later 68040 microprocessors since Intel had done so with their coprocessors by that time on their DX designated chips... and then there's that DSP to contend with...:)
"I once had a really bastardized Amiga 2000, with a total of 6 general purpose CPU's in it (of which two were not in use): A 68000 on the motherboard, a 68020 acellerator card, a PC card with an 8086 (let you run DOS apps in a window on your Amiga desktop) upgraded with a 286 accelerator card, the 6502 compatible CPU on the keyboard and a Z80 controlled SCSI controller..."
And I bet you had that "Imperial Walker" (AT-AT) demo with the walker marching down a city street; the demo taking up so much room it had to be stored on a removable 44Mb cartridge, right? That was the true calling card of the Amigas and the STs, European made graphics demos...:)
"Correct me if I'm wrong (I probably am), but wouldn't a port from Amiga to ST be relatively easy? I know that for a while there they had a fair bit of software in common, but I confess that I don't know if it was due to similarities in architecture or similarities in capability."
The two platforms didn't have much in common other than the fact that they both shared Motorola 680x0 microprocessors and the optional Motorola math co-processors (rare in both platforms standard). Both platforms tended to have more custom chipsets and co-processors than say the Mac or x86 platforms of their era. Graphics, sound, MMU, Blitters, (the Ataris even had their own keyboard processor) etc. If you move up to the Atari Falcon, you had the Motorola 68030 and the Motorla DSP processor, but the Falcon is a rare bird of the ST platform, probably rarer than the Amiga 3000.
Then there's the fact that Atari's TOS operating system was essentially CP/M68K (GEMDOS) with a customized Digital Research GEM GUI sitting on top. Granted, early Linux was ported over to the ST/TT/Falcon platform so I guess there's that route...
Are you saying you know a lot about gay porn? So you must be the guy that is relabeling all the gay porn as "Episode III sneak previews" on Kazaa for the unsuspecting lately...
Why stop at just the Amiga? How about the Atari ST platform? After all, STick, Cab, and Mosaic all ran on it... and, the ST had support built in for ISDN way back in 1985 in the OS...
Slashdot Mirror
"Screw SCO. If you're really, really, really pissed about it, realize they got their money from M$ and start talking to anyone who will listen about OpenOffice.org - don't abuse the ground troops in a proxy war, get into their homeland and start burning crops and blowing up bridges ..."
:)
And then if anyone is still running Windows on their systems, make sure they use Mozilla Firebird for their browser and Mozilla Thunderbird for their email client. If more web sites notice that us users are switching, that will reduce Microsoft's influence and there'll be less chance of them getting a foothold for wireless web access through cheap cell phones built in South Korea and Taiwan...granted, Motorola is making a Microsoft based phone, but I noticed they took a large cash payment from MS and it seems like they are reinvesting that in Linux based solutions...
"Perhaps so. Neither claim makes much sense, but there is a kind of logic there. Suppose there was a way that SCO could get the original BSD decision annulled (I cannot see how they could, but IMNAL: something about terms of the agreement not followed?). Then SCO might actually end up with code they own being used illegally."
That won't happen. Apple will "destroy" SCO if there is some challenge to BSD. You know, because Apple is sitting on $5 billion in the bank and has numerous patents and copyrights to operating systems and GUI. Furthermore, if SCO went after the University of California over BSD, you'd have our new Governor banning them from any State contracts whatsoever and taking other actions as well. I sure hope CalPERS doesn't have any money invested in those fools [SCO}...
I find it weird that all the European Union member states are not part of this project considering there are many top-notch universities in these countries. The same goes for the other advanced non-EU European countries (Iceland, Norway, etc.)...
"Legitimate charge? Maybe not. But this way, Apple doesn't have to waste its time and money defending itself against the RIAA, whose members are also their business partners in the ITMS venture. It doesn't hurt its users, since we have other options."
A challenge by the RIAA against the iPod would've never made it to court. The RIAA sued Diamond over the very first portable MP3 player, the Rio. The RIAA lost. That was the case that set the prescident.
"Another reason is to assuade fears that Apple was making a file swapping tool. Apple's software is one way only...copy to the ipod or delete it. You can't copy from it. Therefore, Apple can't be sued for abetting piracy...since all the pirates have to use third party tools, of which there are several good ones for Windows, Linux and OSX."
Abetting piracy? If that was a legitimate charge, we wouldn't have USB JumpDrives on the market. They are nearing the 1gig level now, after all.
"They branched out into a wide array of products, including SCSI controllers, motherboards (after acquiring Micronics), modems (after acquiring Supra), and audio cards."
I'd prefer to see Supra resurface myself. Having come from Atari ST user land, Supra always made spiffy accessories (and for the Amiga market as well). And they didn't just do modems...
"Even game creation has little to do with programming anymore - it is mostly about the artwork and using an off-the-shelf 3D library (of which there are plenty)."
Really? Maybe we can get those 900,000 laid off programmers to devote one work hour to getting Duke Nukem Forever finished then...
"Remember how back in the good old days, Hardware makers (Commodore, Atari, Apple, etc) were free to introduce radical new hardware every 12 months, with no regard to operating software portability - they knew that the software guys were capable of keeping up back then."
Examples??? Not on the Atari end. The Atari 400 and 800 were released in 1979. After that, you had the 1200XL, then the 600XL and 800XL, the "unreleased" 1400XL and 1450XLD, and the 65XE, 130XE, and the XE game system. The newer models retained compatibility.
On the Commodore side, you had the PET, the Commodore 16, the Commodore 64 and 128, and the Plus4. The Commodore 128 was backwards compatible with the wildly successful Commodore 64. We won't talk about the others.
Apple had the I, the II, the II+, the IIe, the IIc, the III, and the IIgs. We won't talk about the Apple I or the Apple III, but the later models of the II line maintained compatibility.
Now Apple, Atari, and Commodore broke from backwards compatibility when they jumped to their 16/32 bit computers (I'm not counting the IIgs in this argument). Apple Macs were compatible with Apple Macs, Commodore Amigas with Amigas, and the ST/TT/Falcon line with Atari.
So where's this myth of breaking with backwards compatibility from the other great computer companies that you named?
Setting the base of GPUs at the Nvidia NV30 level is excluding way too many mainstream videocards that aren't currently being used. If you are a gamer, ask yourself how many videocards you have cluttering your home because you are constantly upgrading to the next best card that hit the market. I myself could spare a couple of Voodoo1 cards, two Voodoo3 cards, a TNT2, and a couple of GeForce2's.
The base of this project should be something like the 3dfx Voodoo1 or Nvidia's Riva128. While you can no longer count on any updated drivers for WindowsXP for these models, they surely have suitable Linux drivers. You could mount multiple PCI versions into a single PC (obviously, it would probably be best if they were all the same cards). Now that's the way to get some extra performance for distributed computing projects...
Disclaimer: Yes, anything below a Voodoo3 (on the 3dfx front) would have issues with OpenGL because 3dfx used a mini-GL driver since at that time they still favored their own GLide format over both OpenGL and DirectX.
"hey, that's right! electricity turns into heat energy at the same rate, no matter what it did in the meantime. so for every watt of power your computer uses, that's one less watt of power your heater needs to crank out. (assuming you have it on a thermostat, and that the computer isn't hot enough to heat the room above its ideal temperature, and that air flow in your home is good enough that the heat from the computer affects the whole house)"
:)
Well, I don't know if it would work for the size of a house, but for my dumpy apartment, SETI and my AthlonXP 1700 keeps it toasty. I think if I were to upgrade my videocard to one of the GeForce models with 256Mb onboard, my apt. would remain a toasty 72 F at all times... Granted, it is a living hell in the summer time...
"Some people have expressed interest in getting BOINC to do that. It may happen."
:)
Good, because I'm interested in seeing how many gigaflops my old Pentium 133 would produce with five (5) Voodoo1 cards filling up all the available PCI slots. My friends and I have plenty of spare old videocards to donate to such an endeavour...
"You had a Falcon? You're pretty lucky :) I tried to get one once but only ended up getting a TT with the 19" monochrome monitor :) You're pretty much right on the memory addressing on the Amiga; the difference comes in on which model you're using and what sort of accelerator board you have (if you have one). Zorro-II bus in A2000 and A500 (sorta) and the Zorro-I bus (sidecar) in A1000 can only address 8 megs. Meaning if you plug a memory expansion board into a Zorro slot it can only have 8 megs max *and* when equipped that way, any ROMs on other expansion boards often won't have any spare memory to map themselves! So sometimes it's best to only go up to 6 or something."
:)
:0
You are a wealth of information, Sir!
Since you have a TT, do you have the Unix Sys V. release for it? That might be another angle of pursuit. Getting a stripped down version of Mozilla to run on the TT via Unix. I don't think they gave their blessing to Unix on a Falcon, and the Falcon would be at a stock disadvantage since it had a 16Mhz 68030 whereas most TT's had 33Mhz.
I think the DSP on the Falcon would do well if some enterprising individual were to port over an Amiga-based MP3 player and had it access the DSP in lieu of the 68030. Of course, the same could be said for the SETI@home client (although I think the lowest Mac version was set up for the 040).
Now I'm going to have to check on some ST stuff online now. There's a really cool site at (http://www.atari.st). The page is formatted like the GEM desktop.
In the meantime, cheers!
"Episode 1 was slightly worse than Episode II, which was semi-fun to watch, with nostalgia for Episode IV, but not great. Episode III at least promises we get to see that leering Christian What's-'is-name dipped in acid. The sooner the better."
:)
Episode II was more to Episode V than *Star Trek Nemesis* was to *The Wrath of Khan.*
The industry really needs to take measures to make sure the intellectual property of SCO isn't bought up in bankruptcy proceedings by Microsoft. SCO, ie., Caldera, owns the intellectual property of the former (Intergalactic) Digital Research. Not only did Digital Research bring the world CP/M (the father of illegitimate MSDOS), but it also marketed the GEM Desktop GUI.
If a company like IBM, Sun, or Novell purchased this IP, they could out of their good hearts (but more so for strategy) license the IP related to GEM to various Linux distributions to protect them from any potential lawsuits originating from Microsoft. As KDE and Gnome continue to improve, it will only be a matter of time before Microsoft launches lawsuits related to the GUI against the various distributions, and you can bet Apple won't speak up on their behalf either. Therefore, it is crucial that the remaining pieces of SCO that haven't been burnt to a crisp wind up in the hands of "friendlies."
The same goes for the Unix IP. It would probably be in the best interest of all ('cept Microsoft) to GPL Unix after SCO is gone and their various licenses have expired...
"Not that they need extra hardware, but imagine the resulting credits list if they had to list everyone whose computer rendered a few frames of (the Hobbit? The tales of Narnia?) ..."
:)
I'd rather contribute my cycles to Lucasfilm/ILM in the attempt to use spare CPU cycles to virtually write a better screenplay than Episode I. Yes, I know, its an analogy to 1,000 monkeys at typewriters...
Actually, I like that idea. I was thinking about that a couple of weeks ago, something like Weta or ILM creating a distributed processing platform for rendering. There would be some rewards program to ensure that the fans had their computers crunch the workloads in a mission-critical timeframe. That is the #1 problem with such a plan; research is open-ended on results like SETI or Folding; rendering the graphics for the next blockbuster movie has to come in on time (if not early)...
From my understanding, Boinc uses OpenGL to unload the screensaver graphics off the main processor's load and onto the graphics card GPU just like how Mac OS X accelerates its GUI graphics (or how Longhorn will do it with DirectX). Too bad Boinc can't uses the GPU like what was covered here on Slashdot under the BrookGPU project yesterday...
"is there anything BOINC-ing can't do?"
:)
Yeah, Boinc can't transform Michael Jackson from a homosexual pedophile (to use Norm MacDonald's term) into a normal upstanding citizen...
"Well....the processors in my computers are OWNED by me. I pay the electricity bills to operate them, and YOU want to use my processor time for FREE ?? I dont think so, pony up some cash or keep your distributed clients, thank you."
:)
I run SETI on my PC all the time. Its cheaper for me to leave the computer on at all times and use it to maintain a consistent temperature during the winter with it than to crank on than the apartment's electrical heater...
I'd think that since the obvious applications that would benefit from such techniques would be in renderfarms. Perhaps it would be in the best interest of Weta Digital, Pixar, and ILM to invest some money into this project. After all, it would be much cheaper to acquire a bunch of used PCI-based Voodoo and GeForce cards and load multiple units into their PCs than to just increase the number of PCs sitting next to each other; they'd save money in terms of electricity consumption as well. There is a prescidence afterall; I'm thinking about the pooling of resources that Paramount, Fox, and Disney did a few months ago in getting Adobe Photoshop and other mission-critical Windows programs to run on Linux...
"Yeah the Falcon would be great, but as you say those are rare too. The Falcon and the TT would be the only stock Atari machines capable of running Mozilla, and even these would be long-shots as the TT can only be upgraded to ~18MB RAM ... the Falcon I'm not sure about."
:)
Thanks for all that info; you need to be modded up! I know for a fact that a Falcon can go up to 16 megs because I had mine upgraded to that...the limitation always were the MMU chips on the ST platform...the original ST's were limited to up to 4meg (I think the Amigas addressed 8 but I'm probably wrong)....
In terms of processing for Mozilla on either the ST or the Amiga I wonder if the Motorola 68881 or 68882 coprocessors could come in handy....they shipped standard on the original NeXT cubes.... and Motorola did combine the 68882's with the later 68040 microprocessors since Intel had done so with their coprocessors by that time on their DX designated chips... and then there's that DSP to contend with...
"I once had a really bastardized Amiga 2000, with a total of 6 general purpose CPU's in it (of which two were not in use): A 68000 on the motherboard, a 68020 acellerator card, a PC card with an 8086 (let you run DOS apps in a window on your Amiga desktop) upgraded with a 286 accelerator card, the 6502 compatible CPU on the keyboard and a Z80 controlled SCSI controller..."
:)
And I bet you had that "Imperial Walker" (AT-AT) demo with the walker marching down a city street; the demo taking up so much room it had to be stored on a removable 44Mb cartridge, right? That was the true calling card of the Amigas and the STs, European made graphics demos...
"Correct me if I'm wrong (I probably am), but wouldn't a port from Amiga to ST be relatively easy? I know that for a while there they had a fair bit of software in common, but I confess that I don't know if it was due to similarities in architecture or similarities in capability."
The two platforms didn't have much in common other than the fact that they both shared Motorola 680x0 microprocessors and the optional Motorola math co-processors (rare in both platforms standard). Both platforms tended to have more custom chipsets and co-processors than say the Mac or x86 platforms of their era. Graphics, sound, MMU, Blitters, (the Ataris even had their own keyboard processor) etc. If you move up to the Atari Falcon, you had the Motorola 68030 and the Motorla DSP processor, but the Falcon is a rare bird of the ST platform, probably rarer than the Amiga 3000.
Then there's the fact that Atari's TOS operating system was essentially CP/M68K (GEMDOS) with a customized Digital Research GEM GUI sitting on top. Granted, early Linux was ported over to the ST/TT/Falcon platform so I guess there's that route...
How much Roman history have you realy learnt
from Starwars and Dune?
Don't forget Asimov's "Foundation" series which obviously was another work influenced by the Roman Empire, and in turn, influenced Mr. Lucas.
"Is it me, or does that sound like gay porn?"
Are you saying you know a lot about gay porn? So you must be the guy that is relabeling all the gay porn as "Episode III sneak previews" on Kazaa for the unsuspecting lately...
Why stop at just the Amiga? How about the Atari ST platform? After all, STick, Cab, and Mosaic all ran on it... and, the ST had support built in for ISDN way back in 1985 in the OS...