Alternate Timeline

[matthey]

Originally Posted by Gorf

All in all:
Do not try to emulate other systems! Never!)

The others need to emulate YOUR system:

We could come up with a pretty good list of advise from the demise of C= and current AmigaOS development mistakes.

Emulation and alternative OS support are good but they should not be used to replace native OS and software deficiencies.

An OS from a software only company has practically no chance of success.

There will not be enough users, developers or software without mass produced hardware.

Develop a vision and set goals but be flexible and open minded as technology can change quickly.

Find and talk to potential customers, developers and partners.

Support and have a good relationship with customers, developers and partners.

Use existing standards where advantageous and create good standards.

Creating bad standards will sabotage development efforts but a knowledgeable and diverse development team working together should be able to avoid most problems.

Proliferate standards, APIs, ISAs, and ABIs instead of hiding them from competitors.

A more open source code encourages adoption, adaption and development while becoming expected in some markets.

Do not under estimate the importance of compatibility and developer tools.

The simplest solution that works well is generally the best choice.

[babsimov]

Originally Posted by matthey

I had heard the 68000 was not chosen because of cost and availability concerns. This is the first I have heard that development tools played a role in the choice. If we could send Frank Wille's assemblers back in time then we might change history. Surprisingly, there were not good 68k assemblers even during the early C= days but the Amiga gave us some excellent ones.

If the 68000 had been chosen by IBM, it would certainly have changed the whole PC landscape. All the 68k computers would have had much improved survival chances and the 68k would have likely become the standard instead of the x86 today. Emulation would have kept up where bridgeboards became less practical. It doesn't mean the preemptive multitasking AmigaOS would have won out though. IBM's OS/2 was superior in many ways to the competition windowed file browser over DOS software but even IBM's reputation could not make it a success.

About OS/2, remember it's release in 1987 (maybe a little later, i'm not sure).

But, IBM ask Commodore to look on the AmigaOS source code, and in exchange Commodore can port Rexx to Amiga. I have read it at the time in an Amiga magazine.

In my timeline, AmigaOS is not our AmigaOS. It's CAOS (the original OS), with ressource tracking, optionnal memory protection (only available for 68020 and after, desactivated for 68000).

And from the start Amiga had office sofware. Commodore create it's own, and contracts well knows compagnies to port their to Amiga. Commodore exclusivly do his internal office work on Amiga (they don't use any other PC).
Short time after release, a ram and hard drive expansion exist. A network card also. Commodore want the Amiga to be a serious computer. The game market will be a bonus later (but no advertising about Amiga game capabilities at start, only later when Amiga 500 appear, but the ratio is one game advertisement, two to three office/video/graphical advertisement counterpart). Amiga is not a game machine, it's a multimedia computer.

Originally Posted by Gorf

All in all:
Do not try to emulate other systems! Never!)

The others need to emulate YOUR system:

Wine does not help Linux, it helps MS. Nobody will port a pogramm/game to linux, if it runs just fine in Wine.

The Sidecar did not help the Amiga! Is helped the PC.
The other way around would have been better...

Yes sidecar and other PC bridgeboard help PC.

But in my timeline PC is 68000. And no other platform can emulate an Amiga, while Amiga can emulate all available platform (PC/MAC/ST) and make them multitask without effort. No one can compete with the Amiga at the time, Commodore do nothing to put this forward.

But with a better strategy, i think Amiga can be the main platform shortly or the leading technological platform at minimum.

[Gorf]

babsimov:

But in my timeline PC is 68000. And no other platform can emulate an Amiga, while Amiga can emulate all available platform (PC/MAC/ST) and make them multitask without effort. No one can compete with the Amiga at the time, Commodore do nothing to put this forward.

But with a better strategy, i think Amiga can be the main platform shortly or the leading technological platform at minimum.

My fear is, that might have turned CBM into the evil empire.
Power corrupts.

But I would very much like to read this story - does auto translate work?

matthey:

We could come up with a pretty good list of advise from the demise of C= and current AmigaOS development mistakes.

I can completely subscribe to all your points.
We should start a mega-corps.

[babsimov]

Originally Posted by Gorf

babsimov:


My fear is, that might have turned CBM into the evil empire.
Power corrupts.

Yes, at the end of this timeline, i wrote that at some point Commodore is like the bad guy of the story (but it's for the best of all of us )

But I would very much like to read this story - does auto translate work?

I don't really know. I guess that you can understand more or less the timeline without some details.

Try on the first version here :

http://www.gamopat-forum.com/t42279-un-monde-sans-pc

But the second version is much longer and detailled, especialy from 1980 to 2000.

Here the file :

http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=...53764351241799


I don't translate it at the time, not needed, and a lot of work for me, as english is not my native language. Very sorry.

[Gorf]

Thank you very much!
I will read it this weekend.

[babsimov]

I hope you can read it with auto translate. Have a nice reading.

[matthey]

I recently read an investment article which mentioned the following.

Originally Posted by Mark Lipacis of Jefferies and Co.

There Have Been 3 Tectonic Shifts in Computing. Every 15 years, an accumulation of technical innovations translates to tectonic shifts in the computing model. In the 60s the industry shifted from Mainframes to Mini-Computers, in the early 80s it shifted to PCs, and in the late 90s it shifted to a cell phone / datacenter model. Each computing model shift brought a shift in the beneficiaries: IBM in Mainframes to DEC in MiniComputers, to INTC/ MSFT in PCs, to AAPL/Samsung/INTC/MSFT in the cell phone / datacenter model. We Believe We are at the Start of the 4th Tectonic Shift Now, to a parallel processing / IoT model, driven by lower memory costs, free data storage, improvements in parallel processing hardware and software, and improvements in AI technologies like neural networking, that make it easy to monetize all the data that is being stored.

http://www.barrons.com/articles/inte...ies-1499692798

C= didn't even make it to the the 3rd "tectonic shift". APPL was nearly eliminated but found their way and played a huge role in the shift.

Parallel processing and IoT are obviously large growth areas but there is no mention of the end of Moore's law and the return to efficient (performance/Watt) processing which I see as the main driver to the "tectonic shift" currently occurring. Intel is seen as the big loser of market share with businesses employing ARM and FPGA technologies as the winners. This presents opportunities for new players and technologies where even small advantages are multiplied with parallel processing. I'm not so sure ARM has an advantage over x86_64 as AArch64 needs more cores and caches and Thumb 2 has poor performance. RISC-V 64 bit compressed probably has an advantage in caches over AArch64 and should be descent performance (RISC-V compressed finally challenges x86_64 in code density which isn't that great). An enhanced 68k could have a large advantage in caches, likely stronger cores than all of the RISC offerings, likely good performance/Watt and likely good performance/core but CISC is unpopular other than x86_64 which is the industry leader .

[eXeler0]

@matthey Maybe you'll find this article interesting.

https://phys.org/news/2017-07-greatl...lgorithms.html

When AI starts scheduling code execution, things get interesting in super-parallel computing... (and probably ends up with SkyNet ;-) )

[matthey]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

When AI starts scheduling code execution, things get interesting in super-parallel computing... (and probably ends up with SkyNet ;-) )

I am not worried about AI developing cognitive intelligence. Even if they did, computers would still only have control over what we hook them to. Humans are the masters but the problem is we can be immoral and evil. Worse even is that the majority of people in a society can select and support such evil leadership as has been seen by too many genocidal governments. The start is usually utilitarian ethics which allows evil for the "greater good" (most evil acts are justified by individual humans). Personal liberties and constitutions are sacrificed for this "greater good" which leads into a grey area where morality is difficult to discern. These kinds of attacks are happening in governments all over the world today (including the U.S. under the recent Presidents). There is already an undeclared proxy world war happening (illegal by the U.S. Constitution) with nuclear powers capable of wiping out humanity involved. We are in much more danger of wiping ourselves out than any cognitive or malfunctioning AI. I suppose my opinion is similar to Jay Miner's in this regard.

[ Show youtube player ]

This does not mean that I am overly pessimistic. Computers can do great good. They are a valuable tool. I would like to make them affordable, easy to use and educational for the masses to avoid the classism. I do worry about power, technology and money being concentrated too much while everyone else falls behind and is ignored. I disagree with many of the alternatives to capitalism and democracy which are often worse though.

[kovacm]

Originally Posted by matthey

. Worse even is that the majority of people in a society can select and support such evil leadership as has been seen by too many genocidal governments. The start is usually utilitarian ethics which allows evil for the "greater good" (most evil acts are justified by individual humans). Personal liberties and constitutions are sacrificed for this "greater good" which leads into a grey area where morality is difficult to discern.

Said that, you should watch this: [ Show youtube player ]

I am sure that you will agree!

[kovacm]

Regarding Jay Miner thoughts on computer: "they made more evil than good right now. IRS using them..."

Do you know what was one of first use of mechanical computers that almost no one mention?
Nazi german use mechanical computers to store, count and calculate how much people they need as slaves in factory and how much they need to kill!

Look at this: http://jackandthemachine.com

Sorry for offtopic but this topic is by my opinion far more important.

Btw
Great, great talk by Miner! Thanks for sharing!

[Gorf]

Nazi german use mechanical computers to store, count and calculate how much people they need as slaves in factory and how much they need to kill!

Yes the so called "Hollerith-Machine" named after its inventor Herman Hollerith who sold his company to IBM. IBM worked happily together with the Nazis - as many US companies did.

Ferengi Rules of Acquisition No. 32: War is good for business

[kovacm]

THANKS Gorf for replay.
It is always nice to see that you are not a "crazy one" and alone.

[matthey]

Originally Posted by kovacm

Said that, you should watch this: [ Show youtube player ]

I am sure that you will agree!

I was well aware of the psychopath/sociopath tendencies of political and business (so called) leaders. Positions of power attract psychopaths/sociopaths. How many individual leaders have the power to start a war by themselves, or worse, a nuclear war? Many people are eager to hand them more power too. The U.S. had a chance to lead the world in limiting this power by following the U.S. Constitution which specifically gives Congress the power "to declare war" (original meaning as agreed upon meaning any offensive military action). There have been many violations with no punishment. IMO, it is just a matter of time until we get the wrong combination of psychopaths/sociopaths again as the world has not learned history lessons well .

Originally Posted by kovacm

Do you know what was one of first use of mechanical computers that almost no one mention?
Nazi german use mechanical computers to store, count and calculate how much people they need as slaves in factory and how much they need to kill!

The Nazis were educated, good organizers and good record keepers. It only makes it scarier how systematically efficient their brutality and murder was. Worse was that it came from a nation of practically all Christians (50-60 million). This did not stop Polish citizens from being strafed and bombed, Polish priests from being executed or Christian Gypsies, Serbs, Jews (by race) and other primarily (mostly Eastern Orthodox Slavic) Christians from being exterminated. So much for the commandment of love thy neighbor when the anti-christ is handing down the orders. It is more sad that Stalin and Mao killed more people. The number of democide and war deaths by psychopaths/sociopaths in power since 1900 alone is likely around 250,000,000 people killed and we have done little to prevent it from happening again but technology now allows it to happen on an even larger scale.

Originally Posted by Gorf

Yes the so called "Hollerith-Machine" named after its inventor Herman Hollerith who sold his company to IBM. IBM worked happily together with the Nazis - as many US companies did.

Hollerith was a German immigrant to the U.S. (German is the most common ancestry in the U.S.). There were 4 companies which were integrated into CTR in 1911 and later renamed IBM. The punch card mechanical machines were used in World War I for grim statistical record keeping by the allies which greatly expanded the use of the machines during and after the war. They became popular with businesses too and the Nazis made their business killing. IBM employed mostly native citizens which allowed them to penetrate many tough foreign markets. I expect they were not happy about the Nazi takeover (included government control and nationalization in some cases) like many businesses in Germany. Before the start of World War II, The U.S. was helping German business with financing which helped them pay the Treaty of Versailles WWI war reparations which the allies in turn used to pay U.S. war debts (a big triangle). The combination of the oppressive Treaty of Versailles reparations and the Great Depression had the German people wanting a change in government which allowed the previously unpopular charismatic populist Hitler to slither into power without even majority support from the German people.

I have just recently been reading a book called "Creating Modern Capitalism" which just so happens to have sections on the rise of IBM as an U.S. industrial revolution and capitalism example, the rise of Thyssen as an example of German industrial revolution and capitalism and Rolls-Royce as an example of GB industrial revolution and capitalism (which probably saved them defeat in WWII). I didn't even have to look up most of the information .

[kovacm]

Originally Posted by babsimov

But in my timeline PC is 68000. And no other platform can emulate an Amiga, while Amiga can emulate all available platform (PC/MAC/ST) and make them multitask without effort. No one can compete with the Amiga at the time, Commodore do nothing to put this forward.

Just a side note regarding emulation:
when Apple jump to PowerPC, Apple and IBM had idea about one OS run everything, with different "personalities".

Read more here: "The Secrets of Pink, Taligent and Copland"
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Q4....DD59CEF48.html

btw www.roughlydrafted.com is GREAT source of Apple/Microsoft history.

btw2 maybe we should split this thread? Remove all talk about psyhopacts and society evolution to another, chat thread?

[matthey]

Originally Posted by kovacm

Just a side note regarding emulation:
when Apple jump to PowerPC, Apple and IBM had idea about one OS run everything, with different "personalities".

The importance of compatibility and bundling an OS with mass produced hardware were more important than the liabilities of old and outdated hardware standards. Not even the combined forces of giants Apple, IBM and Motorola could change this. IBM should have known better after OS/2 mistakes.

Originally Posted by kovacm

btw2 maybe we should split this thread? Remove all talk about psychopaths and society evolution to another, chat thread?

It is important to examine the political and economic environment from a historical perspective. What looked like relatively minor choices at the time had big repercussions later. What if "T.J." Watson had not benefited so much from wars and did not listen to his son about getting into electronic counting machines of which he was reluctant? Would IBM have made the PC so open without the U.S. Justice Department breathing down their necks? What would have happened to the Amiga if Jack Tramiel had gotten sick or in the wrong line in his WWII concentration camp? What would have happened if Jay Miner had lost hope in humanity, government and technology and decided it was better not to make computers? How did the U.S. change of policy to rebuild and re-industrialize West Germany so soon after WWII affect the Amiga with sales in Germany of 1,680,480 and Escom winning the bid to buy the Amiga after the C= bankruptcy?

[kovacm]

@matthey
Regarding Taligent, I am not sure that you understand/know what it is. Back in 90s they had idea to make one operating system that will be able to run Windows, OS/2, Mac... software! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent

[matthey]

Originally Posted by kovacm

@matthey
Regarding Taligent, I am not sure that you understand/know what it is. Back in 90s they had idea to make one operating system that will be able to run Windows, OS/2, Mac... software! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent

Originally, it was supposed to be a multi-platform object oriented OS which Apple, IBM and later HP were interested in. The concept changed over time.

TalOS
WorkplaceOS->TalOS
WorkplaceOS->anyOS->CommonPoint

It had poor performance from all the object oriented programming and abstraction layers. Apple bought Next and created OS X instead. Taligent (the business) and IBM tried to market it but there was no software base (compatibility) or distribution with mass produced hardware (reasons for failure as I stated in my previous post). Computer users already had their OS which came with their computer and didn't want to pay for slow add-ons with poor software support. The WorkplaceOS idea was eventually successfully marketed differently as hardware virtualization where it became a hardware value added feature. The CommonPoint user interface (UI) idea has largely been a failure just like Amiga Nowhere. OpenStep was partially successful only because many OSs of the time did not have an advanced UI of their own. It is difficult to make a foreign UI efficient on many different foreign environments. Java has similarities and has struggled with efficiency and gaining market share even as it is free (the Java programming language has found more success though).

[Gorf]

I mentioned Taligent/CommonPoint in this thread already a few pages back.

I think there is mostly IBM to blame, but it might have been already to late for that since MS had all PC manufacturers on board already.
IBM paid/evaluated it's programmers by "lines of code" instead of implemented features. So bloat was rewarded! This made every approach memory and CPU hungry and all IBM software and operating systems suffered from this.

[matthey]

Originally Posted by Gorf

I mentioned Taligent/CommonPoint in this thread already a few pages back.

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=...&postcount=120

Originally Posted by Gorf

I think there is mostly IBM to blame, but it might have been already to late for that since MS had all PC manufacturers on board already.
IBM paid/evaluated it's programmers by "lines of code" instead of implemented features. So bloat was rewarded! This made every approach memory and CPU hungry and all IBM software and operating systems suffered from this.

Right. I just added what I thought were a few major reasons for the failure. I see you agree with lack of bundling for mass produced hardware as a problem.

IBM/Taligent may not have been that far away from success. If the group could have gained the rights to OpenStep (Taligent could have bought NeXT instead of Apple giving WorkplaceOS->anyOS->OpenStep) which was already supported by developers and some manufacturers (should have improved compatibility and bundling) then it would have been more accepted, at least for higher end computers (much as virtualization is primarily used on higher end computers today). Windows probably would have continued to offer better value for the low end market where an OS with good performance was more important (not that Windows is good performance). It still would have been difficult for the bundlers to provide a choice of bundles while the U.S. Justice Department allowed white crime to pay for M$ (perhaps the reason why Gateway changed their minds about creating an Amiga bundle later).