The country was definitely NOT doing everything right, the government allowed a massive property bubble to develop, and most of Irelands crash was caused by the popping of said bubble. Putting the brakes on such a bubble should have been an easy thing for the government to do, they just didn't have the guts/brains/(insert other body parts here) to do it.

Most poster here seem to agree that Javascript is a very useful and versatile language to know. It runs on more devices than any other language, and as others have mentioned it can be considered the assembly language of the web. The major downside is that it's not a great language, too many quirks, odd syntax, no real API, and other problems. One way to get around the language issues is to compile another language into javascript. GWT allow you to write programs in Java and compile them into robust Javascript that will work exactly the same across all browsers. So you get the advantages of Java, with it's more mature language with it's robust development and debug tools, with the run's in browser advantages of Javascript. I find it very useful for my own web-based personal projects.

My grandad hated power lines and pylons cluttering up the landacape, now everybody has gotten used to them and only a tiny minority complain about them any more. Turbines are in the same position and some people will complain about them until they go to their grave, but everybody else will get used to them becaue we need them for power.

Obsolete ram is actually quite cheap if you check ebay. And if you're so worried about price you probably missed this story: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/10/23/2312219/hyperion-promises-an-amigaos-netbook where Hyoperion is working on a low-cost PPC Amiga Netbook to run AmigaOS 4.x on

You're kinda missing the point,just because OS9 is so slow doesn't mean that AmigaOS will be. I've used PPC Amiga machines (expanded old 68k machines not the newer pure PPC machines) to load slashdot, and they did it way faster than 45 seconds.

I'll fill in the parts you are missing, with GWT, you can use plain old Java to program WebGL using gwtgl, check out: http://code.google.com/p/gwtgl/

No, The Amiga came out over a year before the Archimedes

You are very sadly deluded if you think that a 16Mhz 68000 could run circles around a 100Mhz ARM. Saying something that stupid means your whole argument collapses. I was a big Amiga fan back in the day, but I would never dream of saying that an Amiga with its 7Mhz 68000 could perform faster than a basic Acorn Archimedes with its 8Mhz Arm 2. Load up any 3d game that was common to both platforms (Zarch/Virus) and watch them side by side. The Amiga loses (The Amiga wins in 2d games though because of its powerful blitter :-) ). Also the Atom is a CISC chip and saying that one CISC chip (Pentium-M) can beat another (Atom) to a bloody pulp has other implications. Surely then, one RISC chip can beat another to a bloody pulp and they do. The rest of your so-called argument is also flawed. You think that CISC is good because the instructions are complicated and they can do more. Unfortunately it's these complications that make it harder to do what chip designers have been resorting to these past few years, that is coaxing CPU's to run more than one instruction at a time. Even you should be able to understand that this is easier to do if the instructions are simpler.

The standard of writing at "Ars Technica" have declined far more than AMD's relative performance to Intel.

You're not going to use it regardless I suspect. I on the other hand will use it because it will run the majority of my non-game applications without platform emulation. Applications that will fly on a 800Mhz PPC. Using an emulated amiga is missing the whole point, with just the AmigaOS between you and the hardware you retain the Amiga's legendary responsiveness. And the Amiga was not "dead" when PPC was added and moving to the PPC itself was hardly done without support. It was well know that Commodore was planning to move the Amiga platform to HP's PA-RISC chips, but with the demise of commodore (and PA_RISC), the owners of the Amiga added official PPC support to AmigaOS 3.5 and 3.9, then the OS was fully ported in versions 4.0 and 4.1. Just because you think that a change of hands should kill a platform does not mean that I should think the same thing. And yes, it is a hobby system, what is wrong with that. Just because a number of people enjoy using an updated version of a 1986-era operating system does not make them freaks, or retarded. They enjoy using a system that is light weight, yet easy enough for regular people to understand, and one that is different from the orthodox Windows/Mac/Linux triumvirate. I suspect you would be seriously shocked if you ever left your narrow web-surfing confines and visited a site like osnews, where many people engage in the heretical acts of discussing, using and building alternatives to mainstream operating systems. Regardless of what you think about the Amiga, AmigaOS has survived the demise of many owners and it continues to improve, just deal with it.

It'll run demos very smoothly with "RunInUAE", compatability is not an issue. And the OS is the direct decendent of the original Commodore port of TripOS. And a pile of money for a niche computer it is not, and besides the Amiga has historically positioned it's low end machines in exactly the same $300 to $500 bracket. If that's not enough for you, then I'll leave you to you own definition of what "The One True Amiga" is. For the rest of us, the definition of an Amiga has moved on, if the mac could move from 68k to PPC, then why can't the amiga, and a "junky linux desktop from 1997" it isn't. AmigaOS has kept is light weight and responsiveness along with it's other nifty features like the system-wide scripting language and datatypes etc.

Again, You are completely wrong, where are you getting this mis-information? AmigaOS has always had forward compatability. Not Commodores policy, can you point me to a link that says that Commodore wanted to ditch compatability with each OS release. Yes, AmigaOS2.x did indeed support the vast majority of 1.3 software. And there were very few instances of software working on 2.0 but not on 3.x. And now with AmigaOS 4.x it will run most of the 3.x stuff. Sure there were a few examples of software that would not work on new versions of the OS, but that's the case with all operating systems. And the Amiga did not fail, Commodore did :-)

If you had read any of the article you would have found out that the machine is going to cost in the $300 to $500 range, so not a "pile of money". And if you knew anything about AmigaOS 4.x it's actually very compatible with software from previous versions of AmigaOS.

Where are you getting your information, you could not be more wrong. I can run a lot of my original AmigaOS 1.3 software on my new install of the recently released AmigaOS 4.1.

Wrong! My 19 year old Amiga 4000 runs both the original AmigaOs 3.0 (as well as 3.1, 3.5 and 3.9) and it also runs the very latest AmigaOS 4.1.

Huh, Just because it doesn't have a better UI than MacOS we should close it down. So we should shut down Linux and Windows as well then? Also, did you RTFA? Why blame the OS for being on expensive hardware (made by a seperate company) when the original article was about new hardware for the OS that is fixing the very problem you are complaining about? The new AmigaOS Netbook is going to be in the $300 to $500 range apparently.