Hello and welcome to Amiga Watch. Its pretty active out there in Amigaistan, the Net broiling with traffic, carring a high powered combo of bombshell and vision quest direct from Amiga Inc. Things are moving in Internet Time. It wasn't all that long ago that it started.

Before I comment on the current situation, close your eyes and drift back to....

9 July 99: White Flash in the sky

Jim Collas, Amiga Inc Prez, slipped a modest proposal out on to the Net. Here's part of it.

"Dear Amigans,
After months of research and in-depth discussions with all of our technology partners we have decided to use Linux as the primary OS kernel for the new Amiga Operating Environment (OE). I know this decision is a shock to many of you given the previous announcements and activities relative to QNX. This was a very complicated and difficult decision to make and I assure you that I didn't make this decision without a significant amount of research and deliberation. We have been researching Linux since February but didn't finalized our decision until several weeks ago. We were planning to communicate it to the Amiga community in the technology brief that will be released in the next few days. ..."

A real mindbomb, wouldn't you agree?

Flash Traffic on the Net

Petra Struck and Martin Baute, of Amiga News & Stories, put it best...."Bottom line, as unprepared as we were for it, I can see several advantages in this decision. What has been shown to us in Cologne last year, with QNX, can be done with Linux, too (IMHO). Motto: Don't Panic." Few people heeded their good advise. Pretty soon the Net was humming with pontifications, pronucimentos, flames, and techno-blah.

10 July 99: Fleecy goes to Defcon 4

Amigans everywhere were firing up their modems, trying to gain altitude in cyberspace before the hammer came down again. Launching on warning, Fleecy Moss popped a flame out on to the Net. Here's some exerpts...

"To go from the heights of ecstasy to the pits of despair ... The slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune ... but when they are fired from our own supposed masters, ... it just freaks me out. ...The first good news in years from QNX, ...then Amiga Inc pulls the rug out from under them. ...Linux is a better alternative. Give me a break. The community has spent the last 9 months ... We like QNX. It is very amiga like, very advanced. ...And now Amiga Inc has shafted them...Technically, they are just plain wrong. Morally, I find it repugnant that they would do this, ... Leading us along for 2 years, ..., and then telling us we are going to Linux....What a farce. ... they do not have our hearts ... We have always suspected they wanted to dumbsize the Amiga, ...but this is the final straw for me. I am signing up for the QNX developer program ...We are a community, and as such we have some pride... Amiga Inc had their chance with us and this announcement is the final straw...Sorry Jim, but that was your last shot. Hello Dan, tell us what you've got. "

I guess he didn't like the announcement.

Major Technoblah

Holger Kruse, big kahuna Maimi programmer, weighed in with an email that made the rounds. Here's some exerpts...

..."A big problem is that the TCP/IP code in Linux is not BSD-derived, but adapted from some other experimental third-party implementation. Rumor has it Linus misinterpreted the BSD licensing conditions and decided not to use their code because of that. As a result the TCP/IP code in Linux is by far the worst in the industry, worse even than the severely broken code in Win-NT/98. Its performance does not scale well, in particular under congestion, and bugs in the kernel are holding back the deployment of new Internet protocols because of interoperability problems, and are curbing performance on the Internet. See recent RFCs on "Known TCP implementation problems". They don't mention Linux there explicitly, but many of the problems listed ARE caused by Linux. ... Add to that the various bugs in the Linux TCP/IP code typically caused by race conditions or unhandled errors (things like TCP connections remaining in CLOSE_WAIT indefinitely). Plus with all of the new developments (6Bone, MBone, QBone, Internet-2, NGI etc.) Linux is more or less left out in the dark, because most of the code developed these days is for BSD and cannot be used with Linux. To some extent the Linux community tries to make up for that by reimplementing some stuff from scratch, from the specs, but the results are often too buggy, incomplete, and based on obsolete specs, because Linux people are not involved much in the IETF standards track process, and Linux is not embraced by the academic community in the same way as many of the BSD-derived stacks (e.g. Solaris), so their code is usually not engineered and tested as well. See the problems with the IPv6 code in Linux for instance. Compare that to the stacks based on BSD (these days usually 4.4BSD-Lite2, FreeBSD 2.x/3.x or NetBSD)". ... blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, ... and so on.

Other than that, he liked it ok.

11 July 1999: Enter the Conspiracy Theories

Sometimes the speculation got really out there. Here's one from Graham A MacDonald, that seemed to suffer from too many viewings of Conspiracy Theory, The Parallax View, and The Conversation...

"QNX announce that they have a really cool piece of software for the new Amiga by themselves, and they love us all, and want to help us in every way possible. Amiga suddenly say, well damn, we were about to say that we prefer Linux. QNX say, ohmygoodness! How could they! Big, bad Amiga have screwed us! But, fear not Amigans, we shall stand by you. Come, use the software of which we have produced, and buy it off us. Of course, we /don't/ want to cause a split here, but you might like it....

Anyone else in here a cynic?"

X-Files anyone?

Well by the time the Amiga Product/Technology Brief appeared on 16 July 1999, the ack ack out in cyberspace was as heavy as it was over downtown Belgrade on a big bombing night. And so it goes.

Consider this.

In Defence of Jim Collas

With strains of Here Come The Clowns playing in the background, the Amiga 86 Refusiniks are at it again. Ranting to the tune "Hang the big rat Jim, he sold us out. Anybody got a rope?", has gotten really popular.

What did he say? Well......

"The vision and mission of Amiga is to make computers and the Internet a natural part of everyday life, by creating an industry-standard operating environment for current and future consumer computing devices that enables a wide range of innovative Internet services. We use the term "operating environment" purposely, as this software infrastructure extends the traditional operating system to provide a host environment for a new class of portable applications -applications that exist in a pervasive networked computing environment, and provide transparent access to Internet content and services. In essence, we are defining a new distributed home computing environment that enables a user experience that is much more accessible than today's personal computer experience. This environment will tie together personal computers, information appliances, set-top boxes, next-generation multimedia convergence computers and game machines, and a host of other computing devices to define the next phase in the evolution (revolution!) of computing."

Hello. Earth to Amigoids. This isn't "Ghoul" and "Muddy", the clowns that ran Commodore into the ground in the Great Crash of '94. No this is Jim Collas who has given us a magnificent plan.

Heavans the poor guy just told us the truth. If AI is going to make it as a viable company, it isn't going to happen by reinventing a 12 year old computer for the benifit of few CLI good ole boys cought in a binary timewarp. Duran Duran, anyone? The Amiga was always about the future and the leading edge, not the status quo. Computer brands aren't scocer teams, organized so that a tribe of geeks occupying a techno-niche can bang heads with other techno geeks over mips and their respective cpus. If that's your computer vision, then get a life. Computers are tools to unite us through creative activity.

So what is happening out there?

Well for starters, the Amiga platform of today and tomorrow is utilized within a very complex universe of other computing platforms and standards. Amiga interacts with Java, Linux, http, TCP/IP, NTSC, HDTV, Quicktime, MPEG, Mp3, PC, Mac, PDAs, and Lord knows what else. Well how about screamingly fast cpus, remember Moore's Law? (cpus double in capacity every 18 months). Things move on. The Internet, wasn't even on the radar in 1986. The only reason there was chip ram in 1986 was because nobody had invented serious graphics cards yet. Today is different and now thanks to Jim Collas and his team, we have ATI with us ( serious graphics cards ). No computer platform is utilized in a technical vacume.

Now the Commodore Amiga was great in 1986, but it wasn't so great that it could maintain a pre-eminant position for over a decade by standing still without any technological development. No technology can do that. Of course if Commodore senior management had realized that they were in the high technology business and not the appliance business, the Amiga would have evolved like any other advanced computer. The AI Amiga of 1999 has to do more than excute a straight line extrapolation of what was done nearly a decade and a half ago. How many years is that in Internet dog years, anyway? The Amiga isn't some kind of club, a kind of cyber-American Legion where techno-geezers babble on about the good old days, the Clone Wars, and steam driven 16 bit computing. No the Amiga is a tool for the creative to create with.

Chow Down

The Amiga Operating Environment is a cyber soup with a lot of tasty stuff. Why there's The Net, Linux, Java, Jini, Amiga Classic Emulation, and the ever mysterious Amiga Objects. Do you really think that this going to be shovelware? Really? This is a company that is hiring computer professionals 40 at a pop. Now if you think these people are working for minimum wage because this was a better gig than Burger King, get real. Actually I think we will get Real, Audio and Video that is. Rob Glazier will do a Linux port but never an Amiga Classic port. So it would be fair to say that Amiga Inc is a company with deep pockets; deeper than mine anyway. If that is so, why on earth would anyone think that they would be doing a shovelware release, some grab bag of apps on a CD-R? That's crazy. They will spend the money to fix Linux's problems with TCP/IP. How hard can that be, Holgar? Besides making all these standards knit together into a seamless Workbench environment is an accomplishment and a big one in and of itself. It may not boot off a floopy, but it sure is elegant. Besides how much longer are floppies going to be around anyway?

All Amiga all the time

That's the Pervasive Computing bit highlighted in the Amiga Product/Technology Brief. Sun said that the Network is the computer. Well that's what Amiga is going to implement. Here's a good example of this, Bryce 4, the geography simulator (remember them on the Amiga?) from Metacreations, has the ability to connect on-line from within the app. The user communicates anywhere on the Internet with other Bryce 4 users as they work on their various projects. Talk about community. Pervasive Computing can make this happen on the Amiga.

When you combine the Operating Environment with Pervasive Computing, what do you get? The ultimate in multitasking. Isn't that a Classic Amiga value?

The Amiga Operating Environment concept gurantees that on Day One of the Amiga MCC rollout, it shows up with an awful lot of software. There will be more software available than I can master in a year. Java is running. That means we get Javu, on-line network non-linear video editing app. On Day One. We get Wav, a fantastic hyper-word processor. On Day One. We get Linux. That means we get Corel's WordPerfect for Linux. BTW there's a free download of this. On Day One. All my existing Amiga software, and yours too, apps that we know and love (and use well) can continue to be used. On Day One. Amiga Inc. is persuing a survival through connection strategy, one that aligns the company with many of the progressive forces in computerdom. This is the embodiment of Network Thinking, the kind of stuff we do here at McLellan Wyatt Digital.

Then there is the hardware side of things. For starters we get USB, MPEG in hardware, Ethernet, IR, DVD, Accelerated 3D,OpenGL, and maybe the Transmeta cpu. Cool. Remember, a hardware jolt for the Amiga Classic emulator, the Linux kernel, and the Java VM, will make this stuff rock. We are in a time where half a gigihertz clock rates are becoming average. By the way, does anyone actually think that the boys over at Moto(rola) are going to roll out a 070 or PPC2 chip any time soon? I don't think so. So the 0*0 series is at a dead end. The Amiga is not an exclusive preserve of accellerator card manufacturing interests or other special interests. Hello QNX.

Jim Collas is just echoing the computer paradigm that Donald Norman articulates in his latest book, The Invisible Computer, about Information Appliances. As I said in an earlier Amiga Watch, an Amiga portable should be a PDA, not a laptop. I can't wait for this. Already the CE branch of the Redmond Borg is stealing a march on the Amiga. Palmtop video is here. Now that is an obvious Amiga niche. But no, its filled, for the time being by Sharp's Mobilon 4600. This baby rocks. Pop in the PC card digital camera and you're shooting MPEG clips. Convert that mpeg to whatever it is that the Casio Cassiopeia E-105 is running and you've got streaming video playback in the palm (pc) of your hand. Yikes! But I know that Amiga can do better. Just wait.

Marshall McLuhan observed that, "when information brushes against information, the results are startling and effective." That is what the Amiga Operating Environment is all about. Think of the possibilities of linking any Amiga Classsic app through its Arexx port maybe through a Rebol script to a Java app that connects to another program or service on a server somewhere on the Internet. A webcentric distributed computing system with Java trans-platform apps is a very powerful vision. I would love to let my 3D animation project render on somebody's server where it would be done in 5 minutes and I pay a dollar a minute rather than tie up my machine for a day and a half. Say what's that brushing sound?

Marshall McLuhan is the most important media theorist of the Twentieth Century. So let's not leave him just yet. He has more insights on the Amiga for us. McLuhan also has his Four Laws of Media. Let's see what happens when we analyze the Amiga MCC through them.

1. What does the new media Enhance? The new Amiga enhances the ability for dispersed projects and services to occur on-line across networks.

2. What does the new media Obsolese? The new Amiga obsoleses the CLI and all other vestages of 1970's command line interfaces as well as making obsolete high priced limited power periferals.

3. What does the new media Retrieve? The new Amiga retrieves Amiga technological dominance.

4. What does the new media Flip in to when pushed to an Extreme? The new Amiga flips back into Jay Miner's vision of a multi-tasking, multimedia machine that is powerful and fun to use.

Not bad. You can find out more on Marshall Mcluhan by clicking on his name.

A Glass Jaw Community?

Yet the propaganda emitting from the Amiga usenet gasbags is that if its computer video then Amiga rules. Yeah, in a 1986 video world where it is always NTSC @ 640 x 480, 72 dpi. Well what about 1080i or mpeg 4?

Hey Dad, are we in Pleasantville yet?

The Cool Guys over at Clonato have noticed this as well. Check this out.

"Another factor we have noticed is a generic resistance to change, an attachment to the (Amiga) things we possess and paid for. This is of course part of our human nature, but it somehow applies to the Amiga more than to other platforms, because theAmiga, with its lack of new developments, gave us a gift that other users could only dream of: stability. For at least five years, Amiga users did not have to bother with upgrading or replacing their systems as new operating systems, bus architectures and CPUs emerged. For those who appreciate this, emulation does not break with this stability, but rather it offers the only chancefor continuity in spite of a possible change of hardware. We would however also like to encourage young Amiga users, and especially developers, to keep their eyes and minds open and trained for change, because our world is a changing, rather than a static one. This is the approach which gave birth to the Amiga, and which can give birth to new dreams for future generations." Goto Cloanto for more.

If you don't like that one there are others. For instance this one from Fleecy Moss of just a few months ago. "The problem is that many in the existing community are only looking at their existing 1980's definition of computing, and of how the Amiga fits into that, so because we are not building PPC A5000s with PPCOS4, they feel betrayed. It requires a whole new mindset-computers are no longer just geek toys - they are the conduits for digital information."

Thus sprak Fleecy.

Cloanto's view about dynamic, never static always changing nature of things is just as true of human reality as it is regarding technical reality. Clearly the leadershi;p at Amiga Inc see that as well.

The afore mentioned Amiga Community resident gasbags have been showing a bit of hardening of the conceptual arteries of late. Too bad for them, because the Amiga is the home of the technologically imaginative.

Getting back to digital video, graphics card makers ATI and Happauge have already announced $400 USD HDTV cards 480p and 480i with 1080i coming real soon. That's Happauge, the ATI card has 1080i now. I've seen these cards at Comdex in November 98. In a word they are fantastic. Remember the entire NTSC (and for that matter PAL) world is coming to an end in just a few years. Its about that 800 pound gorilla, HDTV. The current Amiga rules in steam driven video. Where's an Amiga streaming video solution? CDXL? Excuse me while I LOL. As ATI is named as being on board with the Amiga MCC, we could have drivers for the new HDTV graphics cards first instead of last. Think about it.

Now don't get me wrong compadres, the Amiga and much of its software is a triumph of technological imagination. I speak from the perspective of over a decade's use of the machine. I used my array of Amigas (I have four of them operational) to create a desktop digital feature. Its called The Songs of Steel. Already at 2 hrs and 15 min in length, I'm still working on it. I will always use my extensive suite of Amiga software because I get a unique look out of them that no other image making system can duplicate. Yet at the same time I will move into the new Amiga Operating Environment because I have confidence that a dazzling array of new apps to do a new set of amazing things will emerge.

The Operating Environment creates a graphic and video playground where the truely imaginative Amiga programmers can do amazing things that will really rock. If the existing visually oriented Amiga developer community, I'm thinking of the guys at Nova Design, Michael B. and the krewe at Colanto, the Wildfire guys, the XDVE guys, Felix Schwarz, with his fxPAINT, and let's not forget the Visual Engineer guy , (yeah I know his name is Marko Seppänen); if just that group came up with one new app each for the Amiga Next Generation, one new app that does something amazing and unique, it would be extraordinary. That would be enough new apps to keep me very occupied for a very long time. I wouldn't mind, would you?

This brings up a point. I have by no means brought up a comprehensive list of current Amiga graphics and animation developers. There are many more that are active. All of them have been very loyal to the platform. Are you loyal to them? Are you buying and upgrading their apps? These guys, not listserv gasbags are important pillars of the Amiga community. They continue to need your support. Don't forget them.

The Amiga isn't a closed tribe undertaking a cyber-trek to some promised land niche. No, the Amiga is a hot cyber-car tearing up the Infobahn. Life becomes an Information Highway with an Amiga as the steering wheel. Baby, I want to drive your car.

Beep Beep. Beep Beep, Yeah.

The only way Amiga wins is by not playing Wintel's game. Amiga Inc has steaked out a new direction and is clearly driving forward to make it a reality. I can't wait to see what Amiga Inc, the Cyber Riders of the Purple Sage, those transplanted boys from South Dakota come up with.

Think Forward. That's how we get back for the future.

End Transmition.

Remember when you need analysis and insight.... Check the Tek.