In celebration of the release of AotC, here are a bunch of random SW stories that have fluttered through our bin: Tim Drage has made a Lego Star Wars movie, POds sent us a fan film Fan Film (quicktime. Bah). Here is a comic to share and enjoy. iamchaos noted that the next Matrix Trailer will be showing with Clones. nellardo sent in a fine tribute to darth maul. Anyone want a Star Wars Axe? Zack sent us a great collection of SW Characters you won't see as much as you might want to. wiredog sent us some spoilers, the Skywalker family tree and how Anakin becomes Vader. peter_gzowski sent in an essay by Ebert where he gives it 2 of 4 stars, and discusses the digital filming. Finally ant sent us a bizarre tale of some guys who got the brilliant idea to build a life-size Millenium Falcon. So there it is folks. I have tickets for a 12:01 showing in Ann Arbor and I'll be getting in line in just a few short hours.

YttriumOx writes: "Eyetech Ltd, a UK based company now has the AmigaOneG3SE for prerelease to developers. Anyone who's been craving a PPC motherboard for either Linux or the New AmigaOS can put their orders in now. The developers prerelease board comes with a TurboLinux PPC CD. While this system is targetted at Amiga owners wanting new hardware, there's no reason for anyone needing a good PPC solution for Linux can't get their hands on one. You've got until the 24th of March if you want a prerelease board (note that the only difference between it and the final board is that the ROM chip in the final board will be an AmigaOS4 ROM where as it's an OpenPPC BIOS in the developers board. Exact specifications of the board can be found here." This is also a good solution for people who want to use Linux on a PowerPC but do not want to buy an Apple machine. Price for the "beta" board is $450 and final will be $500.

Mike Bouma writes: "A special release of the intent Application Development Kit for Windows and Linux is included on the cover CD of the current issue of digital magazine. Intent is the core technology used in the AmigaDE and is also the standard programming and the platform independent content environment chosen by the Open Contents Platform Association (OCPA) for digital consumer devices. Consumer Electronic Giants including Hitachi, Sony, Kyocera, PSION, Nokia, NEC, Motorola, Grundig, JVC, Fujitsu, Sharp, Epson, Intel, Pioneer, Metrowerks, Sega, Bandai and Capcom are supporting the platform. A full new release of the AmigaDE Software Development Kit will become available for general developers later this year. Software developed for intent works with the AmigaDE platform as well. Recently a partnership between Amiga and Nokia was revealed and finally here are some links to recent interviews with AmigaDE software developers."

AtlasT writes: "Amiga Inc. announced today that Nokia will be shipping their Linux-powered "Mediaterminal" STBs with AmigaDE pre-installed. These news along with the previously announced cooperation with Sharp for their Zaurus PDA make the future of Amiga Inc. look a bit brighter indeed. What we who use computers more often than PDAs and STBs wonder is when we'll see the release of AmigaOS 4 and new machines. If you'd like to have a pre-view of AmigaDE and some applications you can buy the AmigaDE Player for Linux or Windows. I wouldn't mind running games like Payback, a GTA2 clone, on a PDA!" The Nokia Media Terminal was supposed to be launched in the second quarter of 2001, then by the end of 2001, now... who knows. Update: 02/23 21:24 GMT by M : It seems the Mediaterminal is already available but expensive.

AmiLover writes: "OSNews is running a review of AmigaXL, a system that allows you to boot AmigaOS on your PC in a way that resembles a regular-booting x86 operating system. Screenshots accompany the article show the latest version of AmigaOS 3.9 running on a Compaq laptop. With AmigaOS 4.0 coming out in March with lots of new features (antialias fonts, better memory protection etc) is AmigaXL the one true future of Amiga, a future that AmigaDE, QNX and Gateway failed to materialize through their involvement with AmigaOS?"

Jeremy writes: "KernelTrap has interviewed Matthew Dillon, a well-known FreeBSD kernel hacker. He has recently been in the spotlight due to many impressive NFS related bug fixes, as well as fixes to the TCP stack. In this interview he talks about these bug fixes as well as his history with computers, programming and FreeBSD. He also discusses Linux, open source, embedded systems, the Amiga (and his DICE C compiler), and much more."

apanishev asks: "Hi to all /.'ters! I'm a beginner computer journalist in a Russian on- and offline magazine "PL-komp'yutery". One of the recent topics of my interest is: whether the computer journalism itself has a history? Sure it does, but my first investigations revealed nothing. I know there were some Amiga paper magazines and some BBS electronic bulletines before the Internet age, but what was the very first paper (and/or online) magazine about personal computers? About web design and professional computing? About PC games? I would be very grateful for any thoughts about the subject."

kilaasi writes "Some hard-core game-developers from Finland is making super-optimized games for the iPaq and similar devices, tweaking and tuning every bit of piece there is. These are old Commodore and Amiga-programmers that know the virtues of small-is-beautifull."

Here we go, answer to Your Questions from Wil Wheaton. Share and Enjoy! A big thanks to Wil for taking the time to answer so many of our questions.

t-bob asks: "For those of you that remember the glory days of the BBS, ANSI and ASCII art probably bring back some nostalgic memories. It may surprise you, however, that low-resolution art of various kinds is still being drawn (although the low-res scenes are in their last dying convulsions). I have been contemplating, for a while, a means of introducing these art forms (ANSI and ASCII as well as XBIN, ADF, RIP, etc) to a wider audience, and have decided that a conventional art exhibition is, if not the best, the most interesting way to go about this. As some of you may have already guessed, this could prove quite problematic: all low-res art pieces must be viewed in their original font at the original resolution, which makes pieces more than, say, 25 lines long--when they were meant to be viewed at 80x25--impossible to display on a conventional monitor." Could a program be written so that it can take ANSI, XBIN, RIP and other formats, open an xterm window of the proper size, set the right font and then display them in the way they were intended to be seen?

Chromatic slipped this review under our door. You need a few laughs at this point in the summer (ok, Northern hemisphere residents at least) to distract you from the heat of summer and the cost of air conditioning, and Joy of Linux has some esoteric geek humor in store, even if it's intended mostly as a mostly serious field guide to Linux nerddom for amateur anthropologists, like parents, girlfriends and bosses.

Mike Bouma writes "Amiga`s CEO Bill McEwen announced in a keynote speech held prior to the AmiWest 2001 show that new consumer PPC motherboards, AmigaOS 4.0 PPC and also AmigaOS for x86 will ship by November 1. Furthermore the Amiga Digital Environment which offers full binary compatibility across CPU architectures and operating systems was being demonstrated at the show running on various handheld devices. In addition, Bill stated that Merlancia Industries has acquired the rights for the Amiga Multimedia Convergence Computer which was being worked on by the Amiga team under Gateway but was cancelled. Merlancia will release new PPC hardware soon after the AmigaOne launch. Their CTO is the infamous Amiga system designer Dave Haynie who designed many critical parts of the classic Amiga 2000, 3000 and 4000 desktop computers. "

Peterpan writes: "ZDNet reports that Infogrames is going to port their classic Atari games to J2ME-enabled mobile devices. The Japanese still are far beyond the rest of the world regarding such devices. BTW Infogrames also wants to become Atari! I have heard that the company has established ties with Amiga Inc, so we may see Atari games for Amiga powered devices!? I would love to see Turrican on a Zaurus PDA, Rainbow Arts where are you?! :)" There's also a BBC story.

Mike Bouma writes: "Check out this posting by Amiga`s CTO on the AmigaOne Mailing list. It includes some concept pictures of a GUI for the Amiga Digital Environment, which is being targetted at AmigaDE enabled handheld devices like Sharp`s upcoming Zaurus PDA. Some of the younger Slashdot readers may not be familiar with the classic AmigaOS, however interested people can (re)discover the AmigaOS through emulation, I suggest to check out this easy to setup "Amiga in a box" package."

Thorgal writes: "NASA does it again! Thanks to fine people at Malin Space Science Systems we have best yet image of Cydonia Face, with pixel resolution of 1.56m per pixel and excellent angle, again leaving no doubt about what the "face" really is (hint: a mesa). There is also a perspective image generated from laser altimetry data and even a hiking trail designed for future Mars explorers. Definitely a must see!"

Mike Bouma writes: "diff.org has done an interview with some important developers involved in the development of AmigaOS 4.0 PPC. These developers also helped to realize AmigaOS 3.9 which was released at the World of Amiga show last december. AmigaOS 4.0 will be available later this summer together with the release of new PPC based AmigaOne mainboards." I'd like to see a robust OS marketplace -- the more the merrier -- but I wonder if Amiga can ever really succeed, what with the continued promises, delays, rearrangements, direction changes ...

2001 does not look like a good year for computer and Internet businesses, but I expect 2002 to be decent, if not spectacular, for a number of reasons including IRS policies. I also predict that Microsoft's software leasing concept will be more acceptable to businesses than you might expect, as will Red Hat Network and other subscription-based software support schemes. But before we go on, let's accept the fact that 1998 and 1999 were unusually good, and that we're unlikely to see anything like those years again in our lifetimes. We not only had Internet companies popping up all over the place -- much faster than they should have, in my opinion -- but we also had a major pre-Y2K hardware and software buying frenzy.

Kozmik writes: "As somebody who once owned a fair number of Amigas, I still hold hope that one day they will make a comeback. This deal with Sharp will hopefully give the new AmigaOS some credibility. Since the new OS runs on top of many operating systems, including linux, includes one of the fastest Java virtual machines (provided by the TAO group), and has a shipping SDK, Sharp decided to partner with Amiga and its developer community rather then try to reproduce all of that. The end result is that the new Zaurus will become another AmigaOS platform." (Q: If a new Amiga falls out of a tree, is anyone harmed? A: It depends what year the tree is in.)

Mike Bouma writes: "The Phoenix Developer Consortium is an developer organisation which is unhappy with the currently available computing solutions. John Chandler has written an article about a small start-up company which has been one of many developers to tap into the organisation for resource contacts and advice. "It allowed them to extend their resources and survive the perils of being a small company in a large world." If you are a similar minded developer and want to join and help others or yourself to take your Ideas2Reality contact Greenboy and include the following information (signing a NDA will be required). Among the members are important figures involved in the development of OSes like the Amiga DE, MorphOS and QNX RtP."

A developer writes: "Sony and DoCoMo announced they will jointly develop on-line games worldwide. Sony, Motorola and JVC have greatly invested in a new Sun Authorized Java Virtual Machine which is also being used in the new Amiga computer. Founder of the UK based Tao Group and ex-Amiga developer Mr. Charig just returned from Japan for the launch of DoCoMo`s new Java technology based i appli service. Interestingly Tao demonstrated its technology running on the Dreamcast a year ago as well and recently it was announced that Sega is going to make games for new set-top boxes and mobile phones. BTW every C, C++, Java or Vitual Assembler written Amiga/Tao application can be executed code identical on top of other operation systems as well including Linux. :)" edhak also points to this BBC article on the possibility of worldwide handheld wirelessly distributed games, and gloats "Wipeout on a mobile!"