KOSH [Kommunity Orientated Software Hardware] Weekly Summary Week Commencing: 11th September 1999 Number: 026 Mailing List: kosh-general@icon2.iconimaging.net In the mailing list this week, the following items were discussed. I'm happy to receive comments on this summary (and corrections if I have made mistakes). Email me (Bridge) at kosh-scribe@mythicz.u-net.com Well it has been a while - the last summary was in June when kosh.net vanished. We now have access to the same kosh-general mailing list but it is located at kosh-general@icon2.iconimaging.net which in fact is the same as "kosh.net". On that note it is important to a) send messages to the icon2 address and b) when replying to messages check your "Send to:" field to make sure it says icon2 as it has a habit of filling in "kosh.net" which doesn't work (this has been demonstrated on a number of email packages). kosh-general@iconimaging.net also works now but the above is still relevant for people replying to older messages. Anyway, on with the show! a) Subject: KOSH is back! Summary of debate: It never really went away, it just went a bit quiet for a while. Please note the following items for KOSH: 1) Email address is kosh-general@icon2.iconimaging.net (read the introduction above for more information) BUT kosh-general@iconimaging.net works without all the problems described above so try this instead if you are creating new mail (thanks to Jason Radford for fixing this). 2) The KOSH website is located on a mirror at http://www.gpwebb.freeserve.co.uk/kosh/index.html 3) The KOSH booklist remains at http://www.snowcrash.u-net.com/kosh/booklist.html and is well worth a look through. 4) If you have a query such as "where did that bit of KOSH info go?" then please email me (Bridge) at kosh.scribe@mythicz.u-net.com and I'll either have it to hand or know someone that does. b) Subject: New method for summaries Summary of debate: An alternative interactive internet based way of producing summaries is being looked at. The beginnings of this can be seen at http://www.tele2.co.uk/~flump/kosh/ and mention on the ML of things like Perl and Mason has occurred. c) Subject: Second user survey draft Summary of debate: This is where we left off back in June discussing the User Summary that Greg and co were working on. I'm leaving summarising it off of this summary as it sort of took over back in June and I'm going to keep this summary general:P Suffice to say all is progressing well. Thank to Greg for getting this one started again. d) Subject: 3D+ data manipulation Summary of subject: A bit back I was discussing with Greg Webb and John Chandler my ideas for 3D data manipulation. At the moment we all have cosy spreadsheets that let you enter data on the x and y planes (columns and rows). However in every day usage I find this constricting as I need a visual (and not just mathematical) way to place data on x,y and z planes. While this can be done with conventional spreadsheets just about if you have to y-axis on the resulting graphs it hardly makes for perfection. The idea is that perhaps apps in KOSH can be written to take 3D (or more - although changes over time normally gets stuck on the x-axis in conventional spreadsheets) data sets and be able to view them on screen, rotating through them, using pan, scan and zoom to be able to view the whole thing in any way you want. Now this may only be possible in a "3d" or holographic monitor - but maybe not as the eye can easily be tricked. It was suggested that there may be people out there that actually need nD data manipulation tools - and this could well be a killer app for KOSH. e) Subject: RF bugs KOSH? Summary of debate: A way to make computers transmit RF information by executing code to put data on a bus in a certain pattern has been figured out. The potential for using this to bug people's machines with nothing more complicated than a small software agent and a cheap radio could well be a real problem for KOSH if we decide to implement this type of technology (and why not - after all KOSH is inclusive). What sort of steps could we take to plug this potential problem but still allow this technology to be used in KOSH? It was suggested that a system of public and private keys could be used to plug this hole as a transmitting system would have to send an underlying carrier wave containing a valid key for the recipient machine to "listen" and act on the main message. f) Subject: EROS Summary of debate: An interesting URL of http://www.eros-os.org was mentioned which people may want to take a look at. g) Subject: IMPORTANT! All KOSH Working group progress managers and maintaners please read. Summary of debate: A direct cross-list post from Greg that is important for the above to read: We seem to be having difficulties contacting our working group progress manager and maintainer of our supporters list, so we haven't been able to get up-to-date information on either for some time. If you're involved with a working group or have registered your interest as a supporter and are not shown here then please get in touch so we can update the necessary details. The relevant page to check whether you're registered is http://www.gpwebb.freeserve.co.uk/kosh/kommunity/index.html and I'd appreciate any resulting information coming in to me. Thanks, Greg h) Subject: Open KOSH Summary of debate: Following an idea myself and others had on the nature of KOSH towards other competing systems, Greg Webb (yep it's that man again!) has compiled an article on this. The general jist is that if KOSH is open about its weaknesses as well as its strengths particularly when at computer shows then we will generate a more honest atmosphere with users whom KOSH is designed to serve (and not control unlike certain other systems out there). To demonstrate openness, an example given is that at a computer show we could line up several computers running (for example) AmigaOS, KOSH, Linux, Windows and MacOS and then demonstrate each to its full potential. The conclusion hopefully will be that KOSH is better than the rest for the user to get the "thing" to do what they want. However if KOSH fouls up and another system turns out better at performing a particular function we admit this openly and go away and fix the problem on KOSH. See the KOSH URL for the full interesting text (and it does make a good read - some very thought provoking things in there). i) Subject: KOSH and Convergence International Summary of debate: John Chandler has given a short KOSH update to James Sears for inclusion in the next Convergence international newsletter. James has offered assistance to KOSH to get around the kosh.net DNS problem (thanks James). j) Subject: Re-announcing KOSH Summary of debate: If anyone has -any- computer contacts that they can email to say "KOSH is back at and " then please do so. Only thing is that we may want to coordinate this as we could end up bombarding some unsuspecting person. I've emailed Amiga Format (Ben Vost) and am contacting Petra Struck of http://www.amiga-news.de . John has contacted Convergence International (see above). Can anyone else offer up other contacts? k) Subject: Fleecy's Lentil Summary of debate: Fleecy Moss and John Karcher are working on Lentil which (I think from my limited understanding) is a logical and formal language being developed due to reservations about IDL. They are currently designing a Java tool that allows entities to be designed and maintained. More details to follow in the fullness of time. l) Subject: Dave Haynie and the Object Sea Summary of debate: Someone emailed me and told me Dave is still working on the above which is a jolly good thing. (For those doubters out there - see KOSH is coming back to life after... well not really dying in the first place). m) Subject: KOSH Owls Summary of debate: Gary Peake of http://www.OwlNet.net offered the email address kosh-list@owlnet.net (thanks Gary). I don't know if this is up and running or if we are sticking with icon2. Watch this space for more info next week hopefully. n) Subject: KOSH FAQs Summary of debate: Greg Webb has written some but more are needed on anything related (or vaguely related) to KOSH. Offers of assistance to greg@gpwebb.freeserve.co.uk please. o) Subject: Multiprocessing KOSH Summary of debate: A direct quote from Greg here which is interesting: Amiga.org are reporting that there's a patent application from Amiga Development on IBM's patents server covering multiprocessor bits: At least two clusters of CPUs are present in a multiprocessor computer system. Each CPU cluster has a given number of CPUs, each CPU having an associated ID such as an ID number. An additional ID number, not associated with a CPU in the same cluster, is associated with the opposite CPU cluster that appears to the original cluster as a "phantom" processor. A round-robin bus arbitration scheme allows ordered ownership of a common bus within a first cluster until the ID reaches the "phantom" processor, at which time bus ownership passes to a CPU in the second cluster. This arrangement is preferably symmetric, so that when a CPU from the first cluster requests ownership of the bus, it is granted bus ownership by virtue of the first cluster's appearance to the second cluster as a "phantom" CPU. Does this sound useful to our hardware people? See: http://amiga.org/articles/1999/0901-aipatents.shtml p) Subject: New KOSH mirror site Summary of debate: A new mirror site for KOSH can be found at http://kosh.convergence.org/ and you'll find some space kindly donated by http://www.convergence.org/ This should be quicker than the current location (again thanks to Convergence International for their kind help with this). q) Subject: Amiga, KOSH and QNX Summary of debate: With Amiga declaring that they are not going to make hardware but concentrate on software perhaps should switch the idea of one of the hosts for KOSH being AmigaOS to QNX. If we stay with Amiga which from recent announcements seems to be going to be hosted over other things then we end up with the silly situation of base OS with 2 levels of hosting on top. Please note that this is only in reference to AmigaNG and not "Classic" which a number of people have said we should port to. Also note there is no change with the idea of hosting on Linux and Windows. r) Subject: AmiJoe and KOSH Summary of debate: With Met@Box producing the AmiJoe accelerator for the A4000 perhaps KOSH should consider porting a hosted version specifically to take advantage of this and other PPC Amigas? s) Subject: Transmeta and KOSH Summary of debate: Simple question - Is Transmeta of any use to KOSH? t) Subject: Team Amiga, Phoenix Platform Consortium and KOSH Summary of debate: A cross-ML posting with two things of interest: To join Team Amiga ML send an email to Gary Peak TA coordinator at gpeake@texas.net with the subject of "join TA request" and your personal details. All info provided by you on joining will be for internal TA/TAC use only. Secondly here is a snippet from the rest of the email which is very interesting for KOSH although please note that there were mixed feelings about what Phoenix is trying to do: The Phoenix Platform Consortium will assume responsibility for aid and recommendation for reference platforms for the Amiga users who wish to upgrade their present Amigas, as we establish an open migration path to a new platform. That platform will in spirit and in feel be a new Amiga experience while incorporating and surpassing the features found on the desktop elsewhere today. As information becomes available it will be posted on mailing lists, newsgroups, and at the following website: http://owlnet.net/phoenix/ which will be up shortly. This announcement is freely repostable. u) Subject: KOSH Subscribers Summary of debate: There is a problem at the moment that some KOSHans are not receiving emails via the icon2 email address we are using. Obviously this creates a problem. Please can you therefore email Greg Webb at greg@gpwebb.freeserve.co.uk and let him know that you are getting the emails. We can then coordinate a "rescue package" to contact other KOSHans who have been dropped off of the list (by comparing the respondents to Greg with the kosh-general@kosh.net ML subscribee list that we have). v) Subject: Why KOSH? Summary of debate: I seem to be quoting a lot in full this week but why not - its not as though there have been many summaries to read since June. Here is a quote from Greg Webb (does this guy do anything but KOSH? - all credit due to him!) which I particularly like: KOSH isn't just a software engineering project. The thing that really sets us apart and makes me particularly fond of this project - for those who hadn't noticed ;) - is the ideology behind it. We're not in this just to produce something fantastic, we're in it to produce something for the community. So, rather than a more traditional corporate structure, we're set up so that KOSH is owned (when these considerations actually mean anything) by a combination of those who've developed it (as in us guys), those who own KOSH boxes and those who sell KOSH boxes. No corporate investors running this for financial gain, just a community of people who want to avoid the horrific problems that the Amiga platform has suffered. So, we're set up to do everything we can to make that impossible. Greg w) Subject: New hardware from IBM Summary of debate: IBM recently announced availability of PPC motherboard designs. This should help start up Mac clones again (with MacOS X on UNIX/NeXT). Motorola have announced PPC G5 (64 and 32 bit products, new pipeline, new bus topology, 2GHz+) and G6. This hardware could be used for KOSH systems. x) Subject: TransAM/One Summary of debate: Interest was expressed on the list for Met@Box to start up the TransAM/One project again as this would present a very interesting hardware opportunity for KOSH (noting it would not be the only hardware solution - inclusive but not exclusive...)