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-
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- {subhead} World of Amiga99 report from CAUG{def}{p}
- Article by CAUG
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-
- A report from the WOA, courtesy the CAUG Web Site...
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- Welcome To The Offical CAUG Web Site{p}
- WOA 1999 Report
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- Hoping that we hadn't left anything behind, we left Cardiff about
- 5am, and trundled up the M4, until we had to get some coffee. We
- stopped somewhere around Reading, and the substance we had definitely
- wasn't coffee and it cost £2.70!
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- After arriving in London, we couldn't find the place, so stopped and
- asked for directions, and finally arrived. The shock of the day had
- to be that the cost of parking was £27! aghghgh!!
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- We lugged all of our stuff into the building and began setting up. Of
- course the first thing was to place the Welsh flag, we then started
- with the computers.
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- On opening, we had decided to stand out and wear costumes, the loopy
- leek was there, Mark was dressed in rugby gear, Dylan was the TKN
- kernel and I was the reaper.
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- We gave out CAUG flyers on the door and in the process met Petro.
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- We managed to grab a representative of Amiga Design Workshop
- International who recorded the presentation on video. We should get a
- copy of this soon.
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- The music and some pics & animations from the presentation are
- available from the CAUG project section of the web site.
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- We held two seperate competitions. The first was a caption
- competition and the second was a raffle. The prizes were kindly
- donated to CAUG by MSS (Europe) Ltd. The winners of the competition
- are shown below.
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- There were three floors to the exhibition, the basement consisted
- mainly of the user groups, the Click Boom games area (showing off
- T-Zero) and refreshments. The main floor held the Amiga stand and the
- main exhibitors. The top floor consisted of the bar and some more
- user groups.
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- The Amiga stand was the focal point of the show, the a mock-up of the
- NG was being displayed and numerous Amiga Warez were for sale.
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- After the show closed at 5pm, the Amiga reception took place. It was
- held in two ajoining rooms at the top of the building.
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- There was free beer and food courtesy of Amiga, which was flowing
- freely amongst all those attending.
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- I'm not sure how many people were there, but the rooms were brimming
- with people twitching to hear the seminar.
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- We seemed to be in the reception area for an age, but it was a good
- oportunity to chat to some of the community, and try and drum up a
- few more members for the user group.
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- The seminar took place in the council chambers and somehow everybody
- managed to squeeze in.
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- The presentation started with Petro saying 'back for the future'
- rather a lot and introducing the video.
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- The video started off with the boing ball bouncing around the screen
- and the old Amiga logo. Then pictures from the Amiga's past were
- scrolled across the screen.
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- The boing ball appeared on the screen again in a green field with the
- Commodore logo. The field then disentegrated and the boing ball was
- left alone and grey in a barren landscape.
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- The Escom logo appeared, together with a boo from the audience,
- trying to put life back into the boing ball with no avail. Next the
- Gateway logo appeared and tried to do the same with the same outcome.
- {p} {p}
- The Gateway logo moved back and with a massive input resserected the
- boing ball and the new Amiga logo appeared in front of the ball.
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- The next part of the video showed the new Amiga staff in meetings,
- choosing a building for the company, and screen shots from OS3.5
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- The Amiga partners were revealed next, first Sun, then Corel,
- Transmeta together with massive applause (yes I did say Transmeta
- then) :)) and finally Pentagram.
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- The video ended with the words 'Amiga Back For The Future'.
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- The entire video was accompanied by the Amiga soundtrack from Annex,
- and was available for sale on Sunday.
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- A snipit of Jim's speech....
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- ' The PC revolution is over, there is no longer any innovation.
- Despite all the activity, the PC industry is stagnant and there
- hasn't been any significant innovation for the platform for over 10
- years'
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- Jim then shows us the various platforms release in the 80's, compared
- with the current situation where innovation has been killed and been
- dominated by a few prominent standards.
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- 'There is no revolution. Faster CPU's and graphic cards are not
- evolutionary. You can pretty much do the same thing today that you
- could do with a PC five to seven years ago. This is why the Amiga
- community has held on because there is nothing better out there,
- nothing exciting. You're here because you believe in true
- innovation.'
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- 'The PC architecture will not penetrate any more than it has already,
- it is not going to change peoples lives any more significantly than
- it already has. They have failed on the promise to truly and fully
- enable the information revolution, the information era. There is a
- computer revolution on the horizon, there's momentum for the next
- generation of computing devices. These are devices that will
- significantly change the world. They will change the way we act every
- single day and that revolution is out there, about to happen'
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- 'We are here to lead this new revolution, that is what we are here to
- do. The whole industry has lost its way, we need to help lead the
- industry out of this dark period. I view Amiga as a shining light
- leading the industry from constrained evolution back to truly
- innovative revolution. That's what excites me, that's what we're here
- to do. I'm talking about truly changing the world. I'm talking about
- changing the life and the way people live, every person that you
- know. I'm talking about being able to say to people in one to three
- years from now, you know what?'
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- The phone that was connected to the microphone now falls off.
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- Jim humorously adds 'I'm talking about not having to tape phones to
- microphones'
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- 'You'll look back and say to people- "you know what, I was part of
- this, I didn't give up, I was part of the team, the root, the
- community that grew to change the world"
- That's what I'm talking about. It's significant and if you don't
- believe we can do this then you probably shouldn't be in this room,
- because I believe that we can do this, we can change the world, we
- can rise again as an amazing force in this industry. The question is
- do you believe it ?'
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- Shouts arise from the people watching.
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- 'Do you believe it or am I wasting my time?'
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- Mass shouting of belief from the room.
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- Jim replies with 'Will the believers calm down a little bit now'
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- 'But what is this next revolution going to be ? '
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- 'It's going to make the internet and computers a natural part of
- everyday life as people have envisioned it for so long but have not
- been able to execute on it. It's going to combine mind-boggling
- power, performance with the simplicity and ease of use of computing
- devices throughout the house and office, but its going to be driven
- by a new architecture, a new environment, something completely
- different, we will leave the values of the PC finally behind us'
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- Rick and Alan presented a question and answer session of the most
- asked topics sent via email, and explained quite a lot about why they
- chose Linux over QNX.
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- The Linux TCP/IP stack is about as ten times as fast as the Windoze
- NT equivilent, Linus is making some changes for the kernel, and I
- think we're gonna have an awesome machine on the horizon.
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- Overall it was an excellent day topped off by a very good seminar.
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- I went to WOA slightly anxious about the Linux decision, but left
- with a glowing feeling about what Amiga has to offer for the future!
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- AMIGA ..... It's still a religion