They claim that the Amiga is from 1987, the same year that my family bought a Commodore Amiga.  The machine that they show is obviously a Commodore Amiga 1200 (A1200) which was made from late 1992 through 1996.  Almost a full decade more modern than what they are stating.  (To put this in perspective, they say that they are showing a computer used for little more than video games that was made when I was in mid-elementary school but show a high-powered 32bit graphics workstation that was still on the market in my third year of college!!)  But this is just the beginning.

The Amiga machine that they show, the black A1200, is sitting, unplugged, atop an ancient IBM XT that is an entire generation older than the Amiga.  Both machines are so famous and amazingly recognizable at once that it is extremely confusing to watch because it looks like exactly what it is, a mid-90s Amiga 1200 unplugged and used as a dust cover for a worthless, early 80s IBM XT (I learned to program on an IBM XT when they were no longer current in 1985.)

Then, the actors, who apparently aren’t familiar with how computers work and that they need to be plugged in, talk about the specs of the Amiga (an incredibly powerful 32bit workstation worth many thousands of dollars in the mid-90s) but instead quoted the machine has being powered by the pathetic Motorola 6800 processor which was never used in any computer to my knowledge but the series included the 6809 which was used to power the Vectrex home video game system (that Dominica’s family has) and the Radio Shack sold TRS-80 computers of the late 1970s.

They, to add insult to injury, the product a floppy disk that supposedly was used on the Commodore Amiga.  Now the original Amiga came out in 1985 and one of its major selling points was that they had left the legacy world of 5.25″ floppies behind and moved ahead, along with Apple’s Mac and the Atari ST, into the world of 3.5″ floppies which were more stable and had higher storage denisty and better overall performance and capacity.  This was extremely well known at the time.  It was the first fact that anyone would know about any of these machines.  The 5.25″ world included the old IBM compatibles, when they were still called that, the Apple //e and other ancient 8bit machines.  The original Mac, Atari ST and Amiga were 16 bit (but remember that they actually showed a 32bit Amiga that was about seven generations into the series and actually had a hard drive installed.)

Since the Amiga didn’t have a 5.25″ floppy drive, they stuck the floppy into the IBM XT!  Watching the show without sound you can’t even tell that the Amiga is supposed to be being used.  It is only mentioned in the dialogue and the show actually uses the IBM.  Visually the show is completely about the IBM XT but audibly the show is a mismash of dialogue that sounds like a five year old attempting to sound like they know something by spewing gibberish with authority.

Then, they show this IBM XT (a device which normally came with a monochrome green screen) that displayed 80 character columns of text playing a modern, late 90s, 3D rendered video that had more colors in it than the IBM could display (which was like 16), higher resolution than the IBM could produce (by orders of magnitude) and all of that before having it do graphical rendering that was still out of reach of most home video game enthusiasts by 2000.  They made the implication that there has been no hardware advancements since 1984 (when the XT was popular) and that the only differences between then and now is that programmers are smarter now and know how to write 3D games!

What really amazes me is that all of the people involved in producing an expensive show like Bones from writers to producers to actors to stagehands, prop people, etc.  Not one single person figured out that the scene was so wrong as to be confusing to the most casual observer.  How can so little thought be put into a show so expensive to make?  How can so much work be involved in making a scene so inaccurate?  Just having the Amiga in front of them for ten seconds, even if they had never seen a computer before, would have filled them in on what cables to plug in and what type of floppy the would need for the scene.  And the year or manufacture is probably printed on the back.

An eight year old with Google who had never heard of Commodore, Amiga, IBM, floppies, etc. could have researched all of this for them in minutes.  Most of the people working on these shows are older than eight, I would venture to guess, and probably many of them older than me which means that they should be exceedingly aware of all this already without any need for any research at all.  They lived through these eras.  They watched the 5.25″ floppy fade away in 1984.  They should remember computers that only had green screens.  They should know that sitting one computer on top of another looks weird and that everyone would see two computers sitting there and notice that the one they mention isn’t even plugged in and that the floppy was placed into the wrong one.

Seriously people.  Hollywood is so sloppy, why do we watch this stuff?  Why not film Kindergarteners putting on shows at school?  At least then we have some guarantee that those kids at least attended half a year of Kindergarten.  I can’t be so sure about the people making these shows.

Dominica woke me up at ten because Oreo was laying in the middle of the upstairs hallway and was not willing to move.  He had not eaten his dinner and was very obviously extremely ill.  I tried taking him for a walk and he tried but was having a really hard time getting around.  So we decided that he needed to go to the emergency room at the hospital in Bedford Hills.

We were out the door before ten thirty having already called and prepped the hospital that we were coming.  It takes roughly half an hour to get out to Bedford Hills from Peekskill.  We arrived just before eleven.  Only Oreo and I went to the hospital as Dominica needed to stay home and take care of Liesl as well as to cook Oreo’s stew so that he would have good food again as soon as we needed it.

Oreo’s stay at the hospital ended up taking a pretty long time.  We didn’t get to leave the hospital until one thirty in the morning and boy were we tired.  Only a little less than three hours of sleep for me in two days and he has not had much sleep either.

The final verdict, after more blood work, was that Oreo is dehydrated now and has developed pancreatitis which is causing additional problems.  They have him a fluid treatment to help “jump start” his system but he is off food until tomorrow and then only light and bland food for several days.  He is not going to like this.  But, most importantly, they think that he is going to be okay.  He needs time to rest and to work the food out of his system.

So we got home around two in the morning.  Oreo seemed a little better even by the time that we got home.  The extra fluids must be helping already.

Oreo and I went straight to bed.  Dominica was up for a while longer taking care of Liesl and cooking for Oreo.  I have to be up before eight tomorrow morning which is going to be exceptionally painful.

I got up at a quarter till eight this morning.  I felt awful.  I didn’t fall asleep for a long time last night and my night was very restless.  I figure that I got a total of less than five hours if even more than four plus the slightly less than three that I got earlier.  So in two night’s I have gotten about seven to seven and a half hours of sleep.  Enough to function but not enough to feel good at all.

I got right to work by eight.  I ended up not getting the files from the team that I was supporting and was unable to do any work for a while.  Oreo got up just minutes after me and followed me down to the basement so that he could sleep on his Star Wars pillow by my side.  That is a good sign.  Previously he felt that he was unable to go up and down the stairs on his own.  A partial night’s sleep and the fluids must be helping.  I brought down a water dish for him so that he would have one down stairs too.  He has one on the main floor and in our bedroom but I wanted to make sure that he was encouraged to drink as much water as possible.

My morning work ended up being a much larger project than I had anticipated. I was working for about fifty minutes when my virtual desktop as well as my primary desktop got cut off from me due to a massive network outage on Wall Street.  So very quickly my morning turned from a small installation process and some routine patching into a pretty major endeavor just to be able to work let alone to do the scheduled work let alone to deal with the major outage.  Not that I deal directly with network outages but they do impact me and I need to be available when they happen.

I ended up working an entire day today making it a full six day week.  I can’t complain as we really need the money with Oreo’s surprise six hundred dollar day at the vet’s yesterday.  We really appreciate that I am able to get overtime.  It really makes a difference for us.

The new television set arrived mid-afternoon.  It was delivered via a minivan and it took two movers to bring it in to the house.  This thing is huge.  I didn’t get a chance to hook it up until pretty late in the evening.

The first thing that we popped in to test on the new 52″ Samsung LCD was Fable II on the XBOX 360.  We set the 360 to 1080p and were completely wowed by Fable II.  Having completed the game already going back and seeing it on this monitor at full resolution was really something.  It looked like a completely different game!  There is so much detail that we hadn’t seen before.  Very impressive both for the TV and for the game.  Now I am sorry that I played it before getting the new set.  The game is so much more gorgeous than I had realized.  At least when the Knothole Island downloadable content arrives in a week or two I will have this to play it on.

For the time being we have moved the Samsung on the floor in front of the fireplace below the Westinghouse 32″ that is mounted on the wall.  The Samsung is going to take its place at some point but I am not able to wall mount it by myself so we just have to wait until someone is here who can help me.  The TV is just too large for me to be able to lift like that all alone.

Oreo improved throughout the day.  He is definitely feeling much better today.  He is not happy at all about his bland food diet.  He can’t wait to be back on real food again later in the week.

I have a bunch of work that needed my attention today so I spent a lot of time in the basement catching up on Active Directory management issues and other problems.  My plan had been to go to bed quite early, maybe as early as seven, but that didn’t happen at all and I did not even quite make it by eleven.

Katie is coming up to Peekskill sometime tomorrow morning.  She has not had a chance to meet Liesl yet.  Katie has seen the new house but not since we moved any of our furniture in.  She came up to see the house during the time when we had first gotten it but had not moved in yet.

I have written these things and have been disputed again and again that television is so dominant and that the idea of getting videos on physical media is so core to our culture that it would be many years if not many decades before these things will change. But I believe that the end is already here. Driven, in part, by the industry division caused by the competing media formats which are too complex for the average consumer to differentiate between, partially because of the poor standards of HDTV and its inability to handle the de facto high definition standard of 1080p, partially because of intentionally misleading marketing and specifications on high definition display products but mostly because the time and technology are right.

There are several technology players who have stepped up to the plate recently to tackle the world of physical and traditional media. I have opined in the past that non-commercial services like YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo and RSS feed based downloadable content from shows like Rocketboom, Wandering West Michigan and others through software like FireANT or Democracy would be the disruptive factors deciding the fate of media. I still believe that they will remain major plays and, over time, will come to dominate the marketplace as people turn away from commercial production finding more niche content delivered in a more personal way to be more valuable. But before that can happen there is an intermediate phase, I believe, in which commercial content will be delivered through next-generation methods and this will remove the underpinnings of traditional media.

Enter Netflix and AppleTV. There are others, of course. And some that came earlier. Amazon Unbox covers much of the same ground. But Netflix and AppleTV look to be the most disruptive and visible of the players in this new content delivery space.

The first serious, large scale implementation of a network delivery system for digital video content came from Apple’s iTunes. iTunes and AppleTV together form a cache and store content delivery network with complex Digital Rights Management (DRM) allowing for a simply and traditionally styled interface to television like content delivered over the Internet. Because of its cache and store architecture iTunes is able to function with very high definition video even over slower and less reliable network connections. The iTunes licensing team has secured a large volume of current television shows and movies that can be purchased through iTunes and watched on a computer, on a media center or on the AppleTV. The system is straightforward for most consumers and works very well. And the quality of the content generally meets or exceeds the alternatives of broadcast HDTV or DVD. Additionally the iTunes system blends alternative content from RSS/Atom feeds seamlessly into the picture allowing The Jet Set Show or Channel Frederator programs to appear as any other “television” content. Even YouTube can be viewed through the system. For consumers used to the high costs of cable and the unavailability of broadcast signals iTunes and AppleTV is a high quality, low cost competitor to traditional television with the advantage of having no commercials and all content being available on demand.

Netflix has recently entered the arena with their own disruptive service. Netflix’s primary business is as a movie rental alternative whereby movie renters can sign up for a monthly rental service and have DVDs or, more recently, HD-DVD and BlueRay Discs, delivered to them by post. The cost is extremely low and the ease of use and vast selection makes it very easy to choose over traditional rental services. Over the past few years Netflix has become very popular especially with the serious cinema market.  The new service from Netflix is the ability to view movies over the Internet via a streaming video service.  This service is included with all of the normal movie rental pricing plans making it “free” for their current user base to test and try.  This service, for people with moderate quality Internet connections, provides instant access to a massive, and constantly growing, library of “on demand” movies, documentaries and television programs.  For only a tiny fraction of the normal cost of cable service one can subscribe to Netflix’s unlimited download service and get unlimited, commercial free on-demand content.  The system is new but massively disruptive.

What is truly amazing about these two systems and their competitive counterparts like Amazon Unboxed is that they are not competing with the content of current media but only competing with the content delivery system.  By switching from traditional television and movie rentals to these services one will, under the vast majority of circumstances, save money,  increase easy of use after initial learning curve, remove commercials, remove reliance on “schedules” or “hours of business”, reduce necessary planning, increase selection, increase quality and remove expensive and incompatible devices which are currently popular to “mimick” these types of services such as DVRs.

What we are seeing now is an adaptation allowing people to continue to use the content that they are used to while receiving it through modern methods.  These new distribution systems will, in all likelihood,  prove to be ideal conduits for new types of content that can be delivered just as easily as traditional content.  The end of traditional television is here.  No longer is television just a legacy technology delivering a unique form of commercial entertainment and content that was not yet available through modern means – now it is simply legacy.