Comments on: Amiga Flashback... or maybe not
The AmigaWest show was interesting and fun, but it's getting quite small these days. The show helped clear-out my head and gave me various new ideas. That often happens at shows, doesn't it?
Also, witnessing the market fragmentation problems that Amiga faces (mainly due to lack of new product delivery) really makes you want to find a way to focus all that energy and talent into building something positive.
As a result, I had a chat online with members of the AmigaWorld.net community about the definition of the Amiga. You might be surprised at how I define Amiga. It's not about chips and CPUs.
My interest in this topic comes from the fact that I think a smaller, lightweight OS still has merit, in fact it has several appealing advantages in today's world of computing. Of course, it needs to have a good web browser and a base of key applications to make it of sufficient value. It's an appliance. Maybe a "Google computer". Really... I don't rule it out.
10 Comments Comments:
kindergip
24-Oct-2006 22:51:09 |
Are you writing REBOL OS to handle
quad cores, be insanely small and
almost real time with endless
possibilities for programmers to
make magic? | Keedeep
25-Oct-2006 0:10:37 |
Hi Carl,
It was great to see you at AmiWwest. My hope is that maybe you light a fire for those left with Amiga, whatever that may be.
I agree that having a smaller, lightweight OS still has merit, that is why I have stay with Amiga OS and still hope.....
It is good to hear from you. | Keedeep
25-Oct-2006 0:14:23 |
Hi Carl,
It was great to see you at AmiWest. My hope is that maybe you light a fire for those left with Amiga, whatever that may be.
I agree that having a smaller, lightweight OS still has merit, that is why I have stay with Amiga OS and still hope.....
It is good to hear from you. | Atheist
25-Oct-2006 0:48:14 |
Amiga RULEZ!
No really, it does.
AOS4.x is the continuance of a powerful, flexible, fast, and eloquent "user is the pilot" experience.
NOTHING beats ram: disk, rad: and draggable screens!
On todays new motherboards, one could remove a hotpluggable HD that the computer booted from, and the OS wouldn't care, as long as you had re assign'ed all the system dirs to RAM: or RAD:
It should be possible to boot off of a CF/SD card, USB stick, or a firewire device.
Even the ethernet jack, or crazier, a BlueTooth/WiFi node.
You could be running AOS4.x, and copy 4.x+0.1 to the RAD: and reboot into the next version, alltogether! (No devices attached, nada!!!)
No multiuser. To me, that's a big PLUS!
Don't want the overhead and confusion. bill gates decided people want that, not the regular people, in my opinion. Does wince3.0 have it?
We have a RIGHT to a simpler time, and that's where I'm glued to.
Carl, you and the people you worked with are masters of your field.
And don't let what happened to Commodore make you feel that it is otherwise.
The future BELONGS to the next revisions of AmigaOS!
linux, bloated, without direction. Too many hands. Too much confusion.
Mac OS, closest, but built on another, and still not with the features, and nor a structure that I like, hides itself.
windows. A monolithic hodgepodge of crud, built on crap, intertwined with legacy code, that makes a mouse driver 500,000 Bytes!!!??!?!?!? (Well, who really knows how big it is, I mean, that 250 Megs does SOMETHING or other.) XP, the height of their glory, it never ceases to amaze me how it reacts differently (when things go wrong) when I do the same things. 1 hour re-installs, chasing DLL's, registry chaos, arrrgghhh! The weird screen redraws, the loooonnnnggggg delays for drop down menus to appear, not working at all if I turn off the swap file. If I want it off, I want it, damn it!
The video card has 128 megs of ram, and yet the desktop needs to be regenerated while I watch, on a 2.26 GHz computer. This is absolute junk!
So as they said long, long ago "Only Amiga makes it possible!!!" :-D
(The demos, don't get me started on the demos!!!!! THAT is possible when you have identical HW, another benefit, not a hinderance.) | -pekr-
25-Oct-2006 4:31:42 |
"I could return without distraction to making the REBOL OS... a powerful, lightweight alternative OS for people who do not want to support MS and think Linux is too big and complex. And, ironically enough, it is OS is completely configured and controlled by REBOL scripts... sort of like AREXX and shell scripts..."
Go ahead, Carl, I think that REBOL 3 might get us close :-) Hmm, maybe not, who knows, still missing the diagram showing R3 architecture :-)
Cheers,
Petr | DaveMcK
25-Oct-2006 7:45:22 |
Hi Carl,
First off, my thanks for posting on Amigaworld.net - I agree with you completely, although I would go even further and say that computing with an Amiga can be summed up in just one word...
Freedom.
One question; when (will?) Amiga users see an updated REBOL View?
Hope to see you back sometime but I can't post as my PeeCee hangs after I log in. Typical...
All the Best,
DaveMcK.
| Outcast
26-Oct-2006 7:29:47 |
Hi Carl. Thanks for taking the time to enquire ( and visit an event) how lil ol Amiga is doing.
We'll be seeing you at Big Bash 5 then ?
:-) | eFishAnt
1-Nov-2006 15:06:15 |
Freedom.
Precisely, Dave, something I also said years ago with Dan Stevens, Sterling Newton, and Jeff kreis at a breakfast meeting in Ukiah. Both Amiga and REBOL are platforms designed to enpower users with Freedom.
Other trends in technology have focused on enslaving users to higher costs (telephone bills are now $70/month instead of $7/month, locking users in, and causing a phobia in me that by the time I turn 80, our futures could still be frozen in the slavery of M$.
REBOL is the only technology which can bring Moore's Law to the computing industry. While the mainstrem of software is doing a reverse Moore's law (doubling in size every 18 months, REBOL's base technology keeps getting tinier, and preserves the philosophy of Amiga in its soft-architecure soul. (REBOL doesn't even have a SysBase of 0x00000004 ... ;-)
Freedom. From what? The ultimate freedom is Freedom from Evil. Like the freedom Frodo felt when the Ring was cast into the lava of Mt. Doom (in computing technology, we fear the hills of Redmund as chaining up our Freedom).
Freedom. It is a goal of mankind. We want it. We have to fight for it. We must REBOL! | beef
11-Nov-2006 22:47:17 |
eFishAnt mentioned Moore's law. The biggest problem i see with platforms today is that they are dependent on Moore's law. The platform of tommorrow needs to be dependent on Amdahl's law. Moore's law needs to be given back to hardware folks.
| C Ledger
9-Mar-2007 7:27:59 |
I get what you mean by a 'Google Computer'.
Connected to the internet is a network of staggering computing power and bandwidth, begging to be harnessed, expanding all the time. An infinite parallel computer universe.
Practically each and every one of these computers uses Google as their first point of contact for computer information. It says everything that I found out about Rebol, Seti(at)home and distributed.net via Google searches.
Just think of all those idle CPU cycles waiting to be harnessed!
It is time for peer to peer processing, real Plug and Play. With virtually infinite power to be harnessed, devices could get really funky and small. A computer on your wrist? Why not, the CPU and storage systems are 'outside' the box, in the ether.
All we need are some maverick visionaries. The new Teslas can make this dream a reality.
Please, Carl, make some calls, make it happen :) |
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