Commodore will continue to shoot themselves in the foot.
It's not that they don't know how to make what more and more folks in the industry are recognizing as the penultimate go-get'em do-it-all machine for a pittance it's just they go brain dead when attempting to market it.
Here at Hall Consulting we had occasion to submit a proposal that would include 80 plus systems. Tell GVP you want 80 boards and they get really friendly, and helpful. You talk to Supra, Supra talks back.
Call Commodore? Suddenly you're ET ... trying to contact the mother ship ... Husband left a message, Husband called back, and back, and on the ninth long-distance phone call was told the area sales rep had picked up his messages that morning. Have we heard from him? Do MS-DOS machines truly multi-task? No way !
So the Amiga continues by the grace of word of mouth and secondary support and has lately taken some big strides. Some Aunt Amiga wowies and zowies:
Virginia Polytech and VU now require Amigas for computer science students, Dr. James Arthur says the Amiga beat out Sun, Digital, NeXT, and Apple. Other departments are "starting to ask questions".
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia the Dar al Fikr (house of thought) school has been one of the first schools in the world to offer desktop and video - on Amigas since 1987.
Atlanta won the Olympics sweepstakes with two Amiga 500's and some vcrs that ran a fully interactional display that brought all the committee back to the Atlanta display after the exhibits closed. The local college professor told CNN his graphic arts students put the whole thing together.
Disneyland will tell you about their exclusive contract with Unix but will also admit that Unix keeps the books and Amiga puts the fun in the magic kingdom.
So lovies until next month keep your own Amiga watch - they're turning up in the darndest places.
Aunt Amiga is Dorothy Hall and can be reached on FoxFire BBS 1-501-536-3406 in Pine Bluff, AR.
THE PHILOSOPHERS STONE
by Roger Bacon
 
"The Time Has Come..."
...the Walrus said, to speak of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings - and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings.
My boat is nearly done, its reputation has spread wide, even tho' I have gone to great lengths to stress that it is my very first essay into boatbuilding and therefore, quite frankly, lacking in interest except as a three dimensional joke. Nevertheless ladies and gents whom I have not been introduced to, have asked how its going and appear to be well informed which just goes to show that John Donne was right...
One of these enquirers, a splendid gentleman of robust appearance completely belying his age, showed me his own collection of boats better shaped then mine but otherwise similar in construction and left me considerably cheered on a number of different subjects of which boatbuilding was but a part.
I do not like, want, approve of or believe in the superiority of manmade substitutes for milk, cream, butter and sugar. I always ask for the latter and disdain the little plastic pots and packages on restaurant tables. A good friend of mine has a father who has just celebrated his 100th birthday and this gentleman is still mentally and physically functional despite a lifetime of racing cars and boats and motorcycles, three marriages, numerous affairs, and a complete disdain for the cholesterol set. He also smokes, though never more than a pipe and an occasional cigarette and swears his health is due to "beer, cabbage and..." you'll have to guess the third component!
Anyone who believes that a synthetic food product is superior to the natural one, is in my opinion, flying in the face of commonsense not to say ignoring the obvious. Food manufacturers are not to be trusted, their products are made to benefit them not you and since its obviously and there is also so much that is completely alien to those latter qualities. You are paying for a product that has had most of its cream removed and they sell it back to you in the form of other products, all of which are highly profitable and most of which are taxable.
I love this country, there is so much about it that is good and noble, worthwhile, generous, admirable and there is also so much that is completely alien to those latter qualities. There is much that is mean spirited, pinch penny, adherent to the letter but not the spirit of the law. Most of these are related to legal or financial institutions whose misuse of their capacity leads to "knock-on" injustices which can be justified by referring to their progenitors in an endless Catch-22 of complaint and referral in which the public gets screwed and the guilty hidden in a smoke screen of prevarication and usurious practices. Next time you bring your car in to be fixed you will get the bill and another bill from the man who steam cleaned it. Unfair? Anaestheologists do it...
Part 2
"....Time, he flexes like a whore, falls wanking to the floor, his trick is you and me, boy..." so sang Bowie, I cant remember the album, probably Ziggy Stardust but to my mind his best ever was Diamond Dogs. Actually, that was a red herring, can't think how it got there, no, Time refers to the Lewis Carroll nonsense I quoted in Part 1 of which this is Part 2 and, if my memory serves me well (unlikely) I used the same gambit this time last year.
There! So now you are fully au fait with the state of affairs, completely in synch as it were and we can continue n'est ce pas?
In the unlikely event of reader correspondence, the only comment we usually receive is the "who the hell is this jerk Bacon and whats he got to do with computers anyway?" variety. Hi, folks, its me said jerk and I'm glad you asked that penetrating question because the answer is, as you guessed, absolutely nothing and the only reason I'm here is because it annoys you.
Did I tell you about my stop action animation discovery? I have a Tandy 8mm video camcorder (actually made by Sanyo) and it doesnt make glitches when you restart a recording from Pause. No mean feat if you've seen what some Pause restarts do on other camcorders. If you hit the Pause/Run button about as fast as you can (on/off) you will get quite decent stop action animation, even though the camera is not capable of single frame editing. Leave it on Pause too long and it automatically shuts down to Stop but that still gives you a good minute or so to reposition the model for the next shot. Do your filming in 8mm and then transfer to a VHS deck, you wont lose any quality thats noticeable and audio dub after timing the video part to make sure you get audio/video timing right for duration.
Cant synch? Either, keep doing the voice parts live or replaying the recorded music and redubbing until its as near as dammit or if you can wield a soldering iron, make a light operated switch and put in a bright spot in the leader so you can use it to start the tape recorder. If you can afford all the right stuff you're probably rolling around in stitches right now at these antics but hey we're not all millionaires and thats why you guys have to put up with me instead of some latter day Mark Twain!
