@Hammer
Changing the “real world” is a lot harder than changing the “reality distortion field”.
We seem to be at almighty cross purposes - I am saying that MS is in a blind ally because of its size and domination. That like the last remaining super-power they have nothing to transform themselves into, that despite their strength they have no future.
I am not saying that Amiga is going to be the wave of the future, but that wave is certainly already on its way and Amiga happens to be in a good position.
China has not only rejected MS, but gone for a form of Linux and the PPC, Russia and Eastern Europe are almost Linux by default (server wise anyhow).
Far from missing the information revolution, they are in a position to reap much of the benefit without being caught up in the expensive MS merry-go-round (and it is very expensive, suit-driven and unproductive).
You have to see this as an unfolding thing not a given. Where China goes, the rest of Asia will follow, so to I think the whole of Eastern Europe. They are set to gain the benefits of the new wave of technology precisely because they lagged behind on the first (a far from unusual circumstance in history I may add).
As for the Taos solution, the plan, I believe is to develop AmigaOS up until not only is it all written in vanilla C but that it has precsiely the development tools, drivers etc that allow it to be verstile in the context of this next wave of technologicasl innovation ---- then I believe, the plan is to recompile the whole thing within Taos a processor agnostic system which has the virtue, because of level of abstraction, of keeping software permanently available regardless of processor technology or indeed OS development.
Please get the big picture. For the next big move is not away from X86, but away from processor dependence. PPC offers a stepping stone no-more, and I would say the same for Linux.
The first step is to break away from the money pit that is MS development and maintenence. In short, business that is doing well with this setup will be the last to change, it is the businesses that cannot afford, or find MS a woeful drain on resources, that will be sniffing out alternatives when they become viable, technically, financially and have created a level of expertise (ie amongst kids, hobbyists and the like).
The meaning of revolution being to overturn, not the result of winning in head to head competition.
I was there for the first computer revolution to PCs, I know that business went with IBM/MS/Intel out of fear, and false economies. Ironically the hopelessness of the OS, the incrediable bad design of the PC and the make it faster attitude of Intel all combined to create an explosion in demand for better hardware - just to make the OS and its programs appear half-useful.
The level of hardware development is completely out of wack with the OS and program environment. Hardware is flying to the moon while the OS/program environment glides along in wooden sailing ships. As I said history has the habit of catching up with itself.
Put all this together, the China move, the inroads Linux is making at the perifery, the growing prominance of PPC architecture (especially when linked to China), the be-suited expensive and haphazard MS world in general, the squeezing out of small developers the lack of software innovation as a whole. Then you don't have to be Nostrodamus to read the future (whatever you control in the present).
A revolution in technology is not just a revolution in technology but also a change in who is doing what and how they are doing it. Tens of thousands of talented programmers either cannot get a job, or have a job where they do nothing but hack work, 100s of thousands of would be no-professional programmers are shut out of doing anything substantial on MS (because of the way MS has structured the "market"). Meanwhile 100s thousands of businesses are dependant on computers which are costly to maintain and unreliable. Likewise a sizable part of planet is ready for the information revelution but has been effectively locked out by MS.
Just how do you read this as putting MS in a good long term position - I don't, hence I am happy to announce it a zombie (the walking dead). There is nothing it can do, no rabbits it can pull out of the hat, no matter how fast and small, that are not immediately bogged-down in the quagmire that is MS - it is a economic question, MS will hold on tightly to anything which is good until it has strangled it - it cannot do anything else - it is simply to big and rapacious to do anything else (a bit like the Bushite US really).
Greg Schofield, Canberra Australia
