@Atheist
The second half of the movie looks VERY nice - lots of big shadowy craters . Hopefully Infinity will have moons similar looking to this...

@Snuffy
Oh my! That brings back memories of lurid Workbench backgrounds using the infamous copper.

@Swisso
I guess this is a case where full memory protection would be a good thing, because the problem isn't strictly speaking SimpleMail's fault. Although it should really do better input validation...

Perhaps something to add SimpleMail's bug tracker?

@Mikey_C
Amigans.net is *not* a reported phishing site, according to Internet Explorer 7 (under XP).

I'd suggest that TrevorDick had gone to (or been redirected to) a fake site masquarading as Amigans.net . If redirected, it could have been by something nasty changing the DNS server he uses, or else some other DNS problem on the internet.

A bit wierd anyway.

@Rudei
I think a December Big Bash would be a *very* bad idea, because there is no way to know whether the release of OS4 Classic will happen on 30th November as planned, or if legal shenanigans will delay it a bit.

Given the problem with previous Amiga shows (inc BB) being a let-down because of failure of anything to show, I really would recommend playing it cautious - such as not committing any money to a new BB until OS4 Classic is actually definitely available to buy.

@Rogue who said Quote:
I take offence at your false accusation: I stated my honest opinion that I was surprised (indeed shocked) at what I saw as a sudden & unexpected change of direction for OS4 (and I have previously tried to explain why). I also quoted most of what you said, and provided a link for people to check.

Now, I may have chosen a title designed to attract attention, but I honestly don't see how it was designed to attract trolls, unless you think the population of AW.net is mostly composed of trolls...

Conclusion of my Amigans.net "see if I like it" experiment:

Since nearly every attempt I make at a polite post gets misinterpreted by the moderator(s) as some weird way of trolling, not to mention that I feel like I have been treated as a troll until proven innocent, I don't expect to visit Amigans.net much more. I simply don't seem to be compatible with Amigans.net .

(Please note that I'm not saying who is at fault - maybe it's my fault, but if so I tried my best & it apparently was not good enough.)

I still wish to keep my account, and might make posts in the future, but I won't be treating it as a place for general chat.



Please do NOT publically reply to this post, as I don't expect anything good would come from it.

edit: It was entirely coincidental that I made this post after origin's. Please do NOT construe any causal relationship, it was just accidental.

@jahc
It isn't my board (I don't usually refer to myself in 3rd person!). I simply feel that ACK has broken too many promises, and he has only gotten away with it because people could imagine possible excuses. Well, this time there ARE no excuses, he has painted himself into corner.

If you still wish to defend ACK, I would ask yourself whether it is because of the facts, or just because you want to defend someone who is getting 'attacked'? (Never mind that he brought those attacks on himself)

How do you excuse holding people's Amiga Ones & their cash for up to 3 years??? And promising to return them multiple times, but failing to do so? If he can't even do that NOW, how do you expect him to produce Amiga Inc's new OS4 mobos by the end of summer (as was promised?)? Please try (re)reading my AW.net post carefully & without emotion.


@ssolie
I haven't read your latest PM reply yet (will do soon), but it was not my intention to somehow "troll". Surely it is well known that Amigans.net (1) has a strong moderation policy, and (2) a tough line on people who break that policy ?

I honestly cannot fathom how my trying to stick to that policy (by politely asking if stuff is allowed) can be breaking that very same policy? You seem to prefer me to make POTENTIALLY bad posts, and then POTENTIALLY get banned because of that???


@poweramiga
I don't know the rules - THATS WHY I AM ASKING. I tried reading the TOS (and the empty SOI that it refers to), and I found it very vague on matters of policy. Which is fine if you only want to post about the latest piece of OS4 software, but not so good if you are interested in the bigger picture (which is almost universally bad at the moment).

I believe we can now say that ACK is proven to be untrustworthy. If you want to know more, then please visit this thread:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/v ... hp?topic_id=23914&forum=2

I am not making the same post on this site, because I am not sure if such a potentially volatile topic would be allowed here . If the moderators say this is OK, then I will make the full post here, rather than link to Amiga World.

[edit: Topic edited a bit ;) ]

@ssolie
Sent you a PM to explain.

edit: P.S. As I understood it, not everything is allowed EVEN in the "Too Hot To Handle" forum.

@Rudei
To be honest, I was slightly surprised this thread didn't get deleted outright.

But then again, I still don't understand the moderation policy here (e.g. I made a comment on something Hyperion said, in light of the legal situation, and that seemingly vanished in a puff of smoke. And no, that isn't a moan about moderation per-se, just my lack of understanding about the policy used. Perhaps this comment will get deleted too, even though I think it should be allowed by the T&C... I'm probably not going to last long here at this rate, as I usually only like to comment on "interesting" i.e. controversial topics, and those are the ones which seem to get randomly disallowed.)

@Mikey_C who said Quote:
I was very much expecting it, but hoping to be wrong, because it seems to signal that Amiga Inc may be loosing interest in OS4. That's good if Hyperion win, but bad if Amiga Inc win (but then fold & sell on the OS4 IP for someone to sit on).

edit: Plus, some people still seem to favour Amiga Inc over Hyperion, and I don't want to rub it in.

Read it and weep
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html ... 3813881_kentarena31m.html

@svenof9
You could always start coving M*rphOS... Assuming that you don't already (I don't get MicroMart, sorry).

(And yeah, I know that M*rphOS is a swear word here, but it would be better than closing down the Amiga Mart section entirely.)

I haven't got my copy either. And yes, I live in the UK

@Chris
It's probably about as compatible as it's going to get, although I will try to make further improvements if anyone has any requests. But it will never be 100% compatible with the 10 year old AmigaE compiler, because I am more interested in moving the language forwards than backwards!

If you are looking to compile old programs, the main problem with this first Beta is likely to be the lack of support for many of the main OS modules (libraries). But the good news is that I have written a tool to semi-automatically convert C header files into the format needed by PortablE. So if I know which OS modules/libraries you need, then I might have a go at adding support for them.

If you sent me a copy of your program, then I could see what problems there are likely to be, and how easily I could solve them.

@Snuffy
Yes, still 68k , but it is MUCH faster than older 68k releases. I decided to release this first Beta as-is, rather than delay it until I managed to make it PPC native. Rest assured that going PPC native is a top priority now!

@AJS
Aaargh, not THAT question . Everyone you ask will probably have different opinions about every language! So on the understanding that this is just my opinion:

The difficulty of a language is strongly related to whether or not it uses pointers. Pointers give great power & efficiency, but they also make a language harder to learn, and easier to crash. But if you learn to use pointers, you probably won't want to stop using them.

The most well-known language to use pointers is C or C++. It is probably also the worst language to try to start learning to program on! PortablE is probably the simplest language available that uses pointers. Even simpler languages, like BASIC, REBOL & ARexx, do not use pointers. Java is a half-way house, in that it uses a simplified (but safer & easier) form of pointers.

But Java is not available for the Amiga. Neither is a recent version of REBOL. ARexx is a bad language to learn to program, because it does not force structure - which makes it as bad as BASIC.

So in my opinion, once PortablE is developed a bit further, it will be the best compromise between overly complex languages like C/C++, and overly slow/simplified languages like BASIC, especially for the Amiga. And you can bet that several people will disagree with me!

IF ANYONE WANTS TO DEBATE THIS FURTHER, PLEASE START A NEW THREAD, OR SEND ME A PRIVATE MESSAGE INSTEAD!

You can find some old discussions of PortablE here:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/v ... c&topic_id=18639&forum=15
http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/ar ... toryid=3202&order=0#41488

And I have made the manual available in several other formats:
PortablE.pdf (PDF format)
PortablE.odt (Open Office format)
PortablE.doc (MS Word format)

I thought I should make a small mention that my PortablE programming language has finally gone into Beta testing

What is PortablE?
It is a complete rewrite of the (once very popular) AmigaE programming language. Unlike traditional compilers it outputs code in C++ or other languages, with all your comments & formatting intact! It adds many modern new features, such as type checking, while trying to stay fairly backwards compatible.

As the name implies, the aim is to make it portable across many OSes, languages & CPUs, although currently it is limited to OS3 & OS4. This portability aim means that compatibility with the old AmigaE is not as high as it could be.

You can read the manual here.

What do you mean by Beta?
It has most bugs fixed, certainly all the ones that I could find. And it is close to being "feature complete", although it still has a few things missing (which I hope will be added sooner rather than later).

Where can I get it?
Please join the AmigaE mailing list, and ask for me for it there:
http://www.freelists.org/list/positron

What are the highlights of PortablE?
Compared to AmigaE, too many to list here! Even the pretty large manual struggles to cover everything. But here are a few examples:

* A fully automatic module compiling system, so you don't need any Make files or IDEs!

* Can generate code for both OS3 & OS4. Support for more OSes to be added later.

* Completely type checked, which makes it much easier for beginners to learn, and also much better for large object orientated projects. And type checking was really needed for the various kinds of lists, immediate lists, typed lists, copies of lists, strings, e-strings, etc, because before it was very easy to make mistakes.

* The type checking is better than you get in Java or C++, so it should get in your way less. One reason people liked AmigaE was that it didn't have a type system to annoy you. I hope to strike a balance between those two extremes!

* Rather better & more accurate error reporting, although I'm sure this can be improved even more.

* Much better support for modern Object Orientation (OOP), if you like that sort of thing (I do!). And OOP is far easier to learn & use, because of the type checking.

* Fixes lots of silly limitations of AmigaE, e.g. Globals can be declared anywhere, as can objects. e.g. RAISE works with user procedures *and* methods. e.g. You can type NEW 'string' to create an e-string copy.

How do you pronounce PortablE ?!?
You do ask difficult questions! While you could say "portable E", I tend to just say "portable".

It's name was really a play on words, but one I didn't think too hard about how you should pronounce. We already had "AmigaE" & "CreativE", so "PortablE" was about as far as my dim imagination went!