Do you hide your Amiga computer addiction?

[DiskDoctor]

I am proud of my Amiga hobby and I mention it by any plausible occasion.

I am happy that after Atari 65XE, I fell into the hands of Amiga 500.  Which was totally playable games with descent music, nearly 3D graphics, plus some smart software solutions (DO, protracker and more).  And it was some 20 years ago, the time when PCs were pooping all over, especially at their then-masochistic owners.

I consider this an honour to have such a hobby, my all friends roughly at my age are too busy in their workaholism to have a hobby.  Well maybe other than skiing and surfing.  Or they're through it already but take most of their spare time for going to the therapy.  

Also as I am an informatician, knowing and having all three systems home (fed up enough), I need something fresh, I need AmigaOS or MorphOS.  This is indeed geeky since Linux itself is considered a geek system, so Amiga-like system is beyond that.

Mobile phone gaming shows reinventing the wheel, when I see all those titles, I'm glad I was born in the right time to have enjoyed it as a kid.  Originally.

One more - my several friends when noted about Atari2600, Amiga etc. concluded that "concerning such a tremendous level of abstraction, complexion etc. they're dealing with at work, they simply cannot deal with those things".  This is embarrassing and shows their low self esteem by saying that.  To me? Dunno... Quantum computing, BCI, bio-computing, NASA - now that's futuristic!  Not some bullshit Data Warehousing done in HP.  Bollocks!  I'm happy I can appreciate stuff like Atari or Amiga, instead of putting yet another pound of RAM into my home computer, only to see how yummy this is to the yet another MS Word instance (beta of course).

So this whole Amiga thing connects my childhood, hobby and work (I plan to code as well).  It fits my computing philosophy also, that is why i consider it so precious.

[DiskDoctor]

I think especially data warehousing is futuristic. Why? Because, as Edgar Dijkstra said, computer science is about computers as much as astronomy is about telescopes. Sure, the more we can 'see' (more powerful and versatile hardware), the more we can do. But understanding what we can do, makes it actually useful.

There's still a hell of a lot of revolutions needed in our heads to use even an Atari 2600 to it's full potential.

It is not futuristic, it's just yet another fancy business tool, just like the ERP systems were. Data Warehousing is mainly to learn (or check instantly) why people buy goods.  Not much.  Or to have a company's all data (not only operational) in one place, for further analysis and statistics.  All you do is employ AI algorithms, mostly dated in 70s and present the results before a VP - THAT's the value added.

If I was asked about futuristic IT I'd gladly mention bioinformatics.  Predicting proteins, designing drugs - that's a challenge, unlike another oracle 10i DM installation!!!  What else - multiagent systems, not just their military applications.  M2m mobile communications and so on.  Please do not flatten advanced IT topics to some issues taught in schools twenty years ago, having ZERO value in general technology advancement!