This was formally posted on Amigaworld, but as no bugger goes there I thought i'd re-post to AO.... as i said tongue in cheek.... enjoy ..
I thought i'd speculate a bit on how our current
situation came to be, and knocked up a purely
fictitious conversation between 2 Ainc Employees.
My point is we've had a year or two of being drowned
in an avalanche of not very much at all.
Firstly distinct lack of product (unless you count the
SDK... and personally I don't), numerous changes of
direction, including one or two quite remarkable
u-turns...
... monthly executive updates, telling us just how busy
they are, making deals, negotiating with imgaginary (at
least to us it seems) people, trying to figure out
exactly what this Amiga thing is all about and just what
are they going to do with it.......
Bill Mc after he realises just what he's spent a million
bucks on:
" Dayum, they never told us this stupid rotten
trademark we've gone and bought came with it's own
freakin community . . . they seem kinda restless . . . . .
. . . aaaw shucks Fleecy, I knew I should have bought
them there magic beans instead "
True quote, he really said that.
So have the trademark owners actually been doing
since their last Executive Update? They won't tell us
anything, not a peep from any of them.... The last exec
update was months ago.... so all I have to go on is what
I see them doing, which at the moment is not very much.....
The silence is astonishingly stupid or brilliantly clever,
I've a feeling it's the first one and theyre being mind
bogglingly rude to their user base. People are getting
fed up waiting for their shiny new, albeit rather antique
Amigaones to arrive and and are looking for
something from Amiga Inc, seeing nothing but a wall of
silence they're quite correctly coming to the
conclusion that they must be a bunch of arrogant,
extremely rude and astoundingly foolish organisation.
There is no evidence to indicate otherwise, a simple
executive update is not a great deal to ask, months
have passed..... I can be bothered to write this, Bill
Mcewen, are you so lazy that you can not find an hour
of your secretive (but assuredly busy) time?
Are they dead? just a thought.. maybe someone should
go and pop their head around the door.
There's a familiar pattern to non announcements, i'm
sure they will announce with much fanfare along with
sickly layers of self congratulation, that will border on
corperate narscism, when in actual fact they won't
have made anything.... sure , they delegated the
difficult part of the operation (actually creating the
product) to two sub-contracters.......
Mostly silence from the monkey house, peppered by
increasingly vague announcements mostly discussing
future announcements and how they're going to be
much better than this announcement.
-----------------------------------------------
Below is a purely invented conversation, which is
primarily a simple piss take........ I hope no-one is
offended by anything contained herin, any relation to
persons living or dead, locations and old jokes is
entirely correct and unavoidable, however no offense
is intended.
-------------------------------------------
BM: " Right, sorted, SDK, new era announced etc...
should keep em nice n quiet until we get this
thingymajig finished "
GP "Yeah, but Bill... what we going to do when they
work out that this Intent #### is never going to
work properly as an OS...."
BM "Aaah #### em, we've got a couple of months
before they start whining again, I'll tell em we'll do
OS4, promise them ppc or something."
"Just make it up as we go along, maybe we could tell
them OS4 is like stage 1 right.... then give it all
loads of Stage 2 OS4.2, 4.4 jackanory.. and 'f*** me
backwards!..... brilliant! "
GP:" What's that boss, you had an idea ?"
BM:" Gary me old mate, i'm a genius...!!"
"Listen to this for some diamond storytelling, lets
promise them by say AOS5.0 we'll integrate this Intent
crap we're working on..... it's only good for handhelds, but they don't know that,....believe anything that lot will, just need to dangle a carrot..
.. blind leading the blind"
G P: "Yeah but we're working on this DE thing 24/7
righ now, poor old Gordon is going at it like a gypos
dog on a chair leg.... we haven't got time to do OS4 as
well, and it's not exactly a priority boss, we would have buried the project and got away with it if it wasn't for those pesky kids."
"You know what this 'community' is like thesedays, if we anno unce a shiny new os4, and then we don't
deliver the goods in 6 months they'll be on the dog and bone every 5 bloody minutes wanting to know when
it's going to be ready,
"We can't afford that kind of distraction messing things up, having that lot slagging us off online is going to make us look like a right pair of amateur boneheads to our new friends, we can't take the risk of a bunch of hopeless romantics losing us all those lovely millions of crispy, juicy, sensual dollar bills"
BM:
You've been cashing your pay check for
single bills and rolling around in your undies again ?
GP: I saw this bird do it on TV once, I just wanted to try it, you know, see how it felt and stuff... I can't wait until we get our millions Boss, i'm going to change
all of mine into dollar bills and sleep in a money
bed.
BM: You're not joking either... thats whats scary....
Anyway...
"What we need mate, is someone to take all the crap
and abuse on our behalf, find someone who'll cock it
up for us and struggle to complete the project, The
rotweilers will be busy fighting each other in their forums and blaming our poor overwhelmed 'partners', while we can get on with the important business of convincing our paranoid friends they need this DE #### for their new fangled walkie talkies and the like."
GP: "You mean cell phones right boss?"
BM: "Really? ..those tiny things are phones?
Incredible, why I remember how 20 years ago we
made do with ordi...."
GP: "Boss, stop going on about the 1980's, you're
becoming obsessed, you've gotta embrace the future
and stop living in the past.......
Look, me and the lads were talking about this the other day,.... and quite frankly we don't think
you should have this big hair and highlight #### going
on at your age...
"I mean... *no-one* wears white socks with black
slip on shoes anymore... and I'm pretty sure no-one *ever* wore a tank top in that colour.... honestly, where on earth did you find it?.... I swear you can only buy #### in those colours at a charity shop."
BM: "My Mum likes it....."
G P: "Bill, she's 86..... and she calls you Kevin."
She can't see anything more than a foot away, she's buggered up that cat that lives with her.....
It does human farts all the time!.It even maintains eye contact, while it's squeezing one out, you can't tell me that normal behaviour... makes me feel guilty.
Poor sod has a spicier diet than an indian sewer rat.
She can't read whats written on the bloody food tins.....
Last time I came round to see you, I watched the sinister little bastard get through a tin of Sharwoods Hot Vindaloo curry sauce, a tin of chip shop mushy peas, and 3 pickled eggs....
GP: We were talking about DE weren't we ?
BM: She doesn't even have a cat.
......... Anyway DE, thats a #### name..how about Amiga Everywhere ?, we did pay a shockingly small
amount forthe name but we may as well use it... I
mean DE? pick any two letters VX ?
BM: Thats a nerve gas....
GP : Be kinda funny to supply microsoft though eh
boss ?
BM: Yeah, even less funny than your cat
story..... how about Amiga Anywhere ?
G P:Thats brilliant boss!! It says it all, you can use it anywhere, on any machine!!!!!
BM: Well, except on an actual Amiga
GP : What about this OS4 ? Who could we get to
work on a project of that size ? , Hey!, how about we
use that new morphos thing, would save loads of
time... it's half way there already......
Bill Mc It would be easy mate... problem is... if we
let those take over the project, it will be done in no
time... we can't have that, we NEED os4 to be delayed,
we dont want to be responsible for a finished product
and support etc etc while were doing a hit and run
job on Bill Gates....
Thing is mate, if OS4 goes tits up, we had nothing to do with it, however when it finally ships ...late, we had EVERYTHING to do with it..... see we're the good guys.
GP: How about those Hyperion guys ? there's only
about 4 of them, should take them a few years at
least.... sorted! We'll be on a beach in acapulco by then
spending our richly deserved winnings.... heheh
BM: Gary, have a word with yourself, we're not doing
a bank job here, what were doing is perfectly legal...
we're the middle men, borrowing clever ideas,
thinking about them for a little while and selling them
to howhever thinks they need it.
G P: Christ on a Bike boss, you mean this ####'s legal?
BM: Everyone's paranoid mate, we're just here to
make them feel a little better..... Amazing what a bit of
polish can do to something ordinary.
G P: You bet boss, hey! Why don't we look at that
Pegasos thingy, someone must need one ?
B M. We can do many things my friend, but alas you
can'tpolish a turd.
/sarcasm mode/
..... however to A.Inc's, credit they did delegate those
roles in a particuarly impressive and awe-inspiring
display of recourse management. I doubt it's like will
be seen again in my lifetime.... some of the telephone
work was apparently a delight to behold.
Congratulations on showing us all, how when this
product eventually reaches the retail market it is
because of the hard work, daily graft, innovative
design skills and ingenious problem solving, and the
communicative way in which you answered all of our
questions, while undergoing abuse from the other
side....
Yes Amiga Inc, you really pushed the envelope for us,
selflesly going out of your way to participate in what
according to Bill Mcewen is it's most precious asset,
....the community itself....... thanks Bill, you showed us
just what we, the community mean to you. What a superstar!
/\sarcasm\
_________________
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1997 GTO Mk III TT
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eimaste e ippotes pou leme 'ne'
