TIB Podcast #5

🎵

Ho, ho, Merry Christmas!

Rich, we're writing this script in October.

Do we really need to start with the Merry Christmas stuff now?

Oh, bloody sports ball.

Merry Christmas!

Rich, we're rehearsing this in November.

Do we really need to start with the Merry Christmas stuff now?

Sagging, fratting, wrassing, son of a bitch.

Merry...

Rich!

What? What? What? What now? What?

We're recording this Christmas Eve.

Merry Christmas!

But, but, that was my line!

I've been waiting all year to say that.

Over now to the news desk.

Okay, whatever.

I am getting in the party spirit.

Party!

Uh, Rich?

No, no, no, mate, it's good, you carry on.

Go, go.

Both of you, I only...

Oh?

...you me...

Oh, chat!

Oh, Naturally, I'm getting興.

Please give me a call.

Okay.

transformation and I would like everyone at home to be at home.

The medics and the A9 have got fancy graphics acceleration now.

Geminus from spelling software speeds up the desktop using Sprite caching and window caching,

while the A9 home has been seen at the recent Riskos Roadshows with virtual desktops and screen rotation.

Oh, ooh!

cool half million. That's what I call Christmas cheer. Starfighter 3000 has been upgraded

with a few more bugs fixed. You can get that from starfighter.acornarcade.com. Oh yeah,

and haven't APDL released some more old Fourth Dimension games? What have we got this time?

Cataclysm, Spobloid and Boogie Boogie, now out on CD. And David Bradforth tells us that

his new magazine called Retro Fusion is now on sale, featuring an interview with John

Hare. That's John Hare of Sensible Software, not John Hoare, Icon Bar's resident perv.

Are those chestnuts ready yet, Moss? Oh mate, don't feed him nut lines. However, carrying

on where Trevor McDonald has left off, and finally, the very same John Moss Hoare is

something of a star in his own right, along with the rest of the Observation Dome team.

ObservationDome.org, as I'm sure you're all aware,

is a Red Dwarf fansite, and their comedy short, Lampooning the Difficulties of Financing

a Red Dwarf Movie, was included on the Red Dwarf Series 7 DVD. So don't forget to rib

him endlessly on the forums about that.

So, Phil, we're going to do a debate then.

Yeah, OK. So what shall we discuss? Sap the Stronghead?

Yeah, might as well.

Right, well, glad we got that one sorted out once and for all.

Shall we just go straight into the interview then?

OK.

This time out, Phil speaks to Paul Middleton.

Hi, Paul. So, to start off,

how did you get involved in the Riscos scene, or, I suppose, Acorn, as it was then?

Ah, how far do you want to go back?

My first brushes with computers started back in 1980.

Local schools here in Cardiff had been using handy computers.

Some of them had started looking at the BBC Model 8.

I just fancied the handy CRS-80 Model 1.

It seemed to have more things on offer for it, and a local dealer with everybody's,

just congregating there to try out the latest things you could do on the computers.

I remember the arrival of a new editor-assembler package by a little company called Microsoft.

Don't know what happened to them.

I remember at that stage, there was an article that, I think they had something like six or ten employees at that stage.

But anyway, from then on, I progressed up through various models of candies,

from what I'm up to, the laptop portable.

It had 180K floppies, I seem to remember.

So at that stage, I was working in TV.

I was a videotape editor, I got an MSX computer,

85, I think it was, somewhere around about then.

And I started using that for producing burnt-in subtitles and time code for partying programs.

Various times throughout the 80s, I worked my way up the ladder and eventually set up a television facilities company in 1988.

That was the biggest cheque I've ever written out, applying a complete company outright.

From then on, subtitles became something that was so much a political issue,

I was worried about it. I was worried about it. I was worried about it. I was worried about it. I was worried about it. I was worried about it. I was worried about it. I was worried about it. I was worried about it.

I was worried about it.

The other day I was looking for an S-force for the TV channel

At that stage, they used subtitles to one or two programs a week

and their new chief executive quite rashly had said,

ìWe will be subtitling up to half of our programs in English, within the next three to five years.î

The system cost about £25,000 to £30,000 per system

and the accountant said, ìAnd yet that was even to a nice publicity bundling, that to happen.î

going to afford that. So when we heard about that, we thought, well, yeah, that's probably

a cheaper way of doing that.

My brother had just finished Cambridge University at that stage and was working for Armadillo

Systems, looking at what they thought was going to be the successor to Arthur, not knowing

that at that stage Acorn were themselves already producing their own successor to Arthur, which

was going to be Viscos. Armadillo, I think, had about 10 or 15 people working on the new

operating system, and Acorn dropped the bombshell that they had already done it. My brother

along with a lot of other people, some of whose names are quite famous nowadays, were

left without jobs within the company, and they weren't able to really carry on doing

much. To cut a long story short, after going around the houses with a lot of different

companies, we eventually worked with Merlin Instruments to produce the necessary video

card to produce the system, which then retailed for about £6,000, and that was how I first

got into working with Acorn Computers.

Lots of people started out with the BBC Micro, but for you it was the Archimedes.

Yeah.

I said, certainly down around in South Wales here, the BBC didn't get a penetration into

schools. Certainly well into the late 80s, Tandy was very much the flavour for the local

schools around the area. It varies around the country. So Scotland, well into the 90s,

it was quite much an Apple area.

Once we'd started doing the subtitling side of things, Acorn were interested, do you want

to become dealers for South Wales? We haven't got much support in South Wales at the moment.

From then on.

The background that I had in TV and working with Acorn, lots of film companies merged together

and we started supplying Acorn computers for TV companies. On and off is still something

that we get involved with as often. Acorn were quite happy to supply computers for the

benefit of their publicity. BBC obviously were quite fussy at that time of product placement.

Something had been going on right back to the 60s. The first Doctor Who film was sponsored

by Sugarpuffs.

Any TV shows in particular?

Most of the first whole 5 or 6 series have been Mindkill. Originally on S4C and Channel

4 and then Channel 5 and on Sky. That was based in a mobile sort of police incident

room. We used to do all the graphics for the crime scenes and do DNA analysis and everything

else that was part of the feature of the film.

And you were also involved in producing clips for Acorn Replay.

Sophie was quite amazed.

It was a knock-off assembler off the top of her head. It was processing software and really

knew exactly what the ARM chip was capable of, which wasn't surprising because it helped

design it in the first place. I think if we'd have had a serious market for that at the

time, Acorn computers could probably have competed well with the likes of Avid.

Acorn at that stage was a £200 million a year turnover company, which in the scale

of things at the time was quite big within the education sector.

It was running pretty much neck and neck with research machines. In the scale of things

it was the sort of money that IBM spent on advertising a year. At that stage there were

lots of people making a lot of money out of Acorn. There were people that were quite clear

here at that stage making £80,000-£100,000 a year.

So what happened when Acorn closed down its workstations division?

That was an interesting time really because when Acorn announced that they were pulling

out of doing the Acorn World Show and that Phoebe had been cancelled, there was a lot

of hype around it. Ourselves as Acorn dealers along with lots of the other Acorn dealers

at that time thought we'd been doing reasonably well out of selling this PC and everybody

was really pinning their hopes on Phoebe coming out because at that stage sales of just about

everything else had really dried up.

The focus for most people was how on earth were we going to rescue Phoebe? The focus

wasn't really on what can we do to keep the whole Acorn business and the supporting companies alive.

It was quite coincidentally at that time it was actually Cyrillica who had organised a

PR day to launch Vantage and I looked back in my diary last night and it was 24th November

1998. We were just sitting there thinking well Acorn's not really about the new computer,

it's about the fact that there's all these other companies around that are interested

in selling their software and it doesn't really matter what computer it actually runs on.

It's the rest of the companies that actually constitute what makes up Acorn really.

We were due to have a meeting with Acorn, Trillie and I, and they said, you know, we're

going to have a meeting with Miss BC all night, typing up the idea of, like, we don't want

to buy Phoebe, we don't want to get into manufacturing, we want to buy the Scars.

One by one the various other people that had come along as either dealers or had been interested

in the original steering committee idea got their proposals to Acorn and got sort of nods

of yeah, sure that's interesting, but the fact that we're actually going to finance

that idea.

We just don't think we're going to be able to do that.

You know, the fact that you can really try and take over a £200 million company and carry

on running it with a different management.

And then there was a sort of lunch break and my brother, who was working at Acorn at the

time, came in and said, you know, have you spread anything to Acorn about what your ideas

were?

And I said, no, yeah, but you know, I'll probably mention it in the next session.

So then we reconvened back in again and, you know, has anybody else got any ideas?

And I said, well, yes I have.

I handed out to everybody the proposals that I'd had

for simply taking over Acorn from the software side of things.

Obviously, the first sort of figures they came up with,

based on their value of RISCOS being 200 million years' worth of development,

wasn't quite within the areas that we were thinking of paying out.

Instead of buying RISCOS, we came down to the idea of,

well, we don't really want to own it in this entirety.

We just really want to make sure that all of the Acorn companies

that were involved at that stage,

of which I think we had a list of about 120 companies

making their livelihood from RISCOS,

that there would be a market carrying on for them.

I think what they were really concerned about ultimately

was that the people that were left within Acorn at that stage

had seen Arm being spun off in 1990.

But we don't want, potentially, to sell off RISCOS on the cheap

and then find that we've magically got some other manufacturer

that's just going to send us all into the millionaires

overnight without Acorn getting a chunk of it.

Yeah, we could have tried to have done a deal with Acorn

that would have seen us taking over the manufacturer of Phoebe

and bringing it to market.

There's no way we would have done that in the sort of three months

that we did the deal with Acorn in the first place.

If we'd have known what was going to happen with Acorn,

with Morgan Stanley being with us coming along,

I think if we had been embarked on trying to take over Acorn

in its entirety, it would never have happened.

It would have been usurped and left by the wayside.

One of the first things I do,

is to meet up with their publicity people and their chairman

and sit down and explain why we were using RISCOS

and why we'd bought just that bit of Acorn

and left the rest of it for them to purchase.

It followed on, a year or so later, that Acorn engineers

that were left in Cambridge, that Pace had taken over,

and they then started redoing Acorn in a big way

throughout most of the summer of 1999.

There'd been all the engineers in Cambridge

officially sitting around,

with their thumbs waiting for Pace to decide what to do with them.

In practice, they'd all been carrying on doing what they'd always done,

which was develop RISCOS and make it do things they wanted to do,

rather than the things that their management were telling them

they wanted to make it do.

And ultimately, that was how the 30-bit RISCOS came about,

because the engineers there were doing it because they wanted to do it.

It wasn't because they'd ever been in a fishbowl project

to produce the 30-bit version of RISCOS.

I think at various times, Pace had tried to stop their engineers

from doing it because they were supposed to be doing other things,

but they didn't.

Is that how the IONIX came about?

All of the hardware manufacturers went to Pace in the summer of 2000

to have a conference to discuss where we were all going

in terms of hardware manufacturers

and where RISCOS LinkedIn was going in its software development,

and where Pace were going with its versions of RISCOS development.

Things like USB were discussed in great detail at that stage.

Pace showed everybody where they were up to with their 32-bit developments

on R9 computers.

We made an offer to Pace to license the whole 32-bit

to make it equally available to all the manufacturers.

But at that stage, it was just the beginning of Pace themselves

beginning to run into difficulties.

I think at that stage, their shares were trading at around

sort of £6 or £7 a share, and within a matter of months,

they'd dropped down to, I think, a bottom end of about £0.17 a share.

And consequently, Pace were not really interested

in much other than trying to keep their own business afloat.

And we got pretty much the same response from Pace

as we did from Acorn originally, that RISCOS was hundreds of million years

worth of development, and if you want to buy it outright,

show us something that's got a million at the end of the figure

that you're talking about.

What happened from then on is very much...

You can get lots of different stories depending on who you listen to

as to what happened when.

The practicalities of the castle then came out with the Ionix.

A year later, they announced that they'd bought RISCOS from Pace.

Right.

So what about Select?

We knew when we started that the availability of the ROMs

in the RISPCs and others was fairly limited.

Acorn used to do all right because they would order 10,000 PCs at a time.

It was down to, I think, just two companies at that stage in the entire world

who were able to do production of super-sized ROMs.

It was about a six-month plea time at that stage,

which means you've got to fully test, debug, and then wait six months

before your product actually gets to market.

So in practice, we would be looking at somehow or other

producing a fully tested and debugged version of RISCOS

and getting it to market sometime probably in 2002,

which we didn't think was a viable option, really.

We knew that if there was going to be confidence in RISCOS carrying on,

it had to be done as fast as possible.

So that's when we then came up with the idea of doing a soft-load version of RISCOS.

We'd always expected that we'd have to do something like that.

That's one of the reasons why we only...

We didn't allow for flash-run soft-loading of RISCOS on top of RISCOS 4,

because RISCOS 4 has some of the support that's needed in it to support that flash-loading.

When we first started the select scheme up, working with Paste,

the idea was very much that we would release a new component

that people could test out, and we would get the feedback on them

as the scheme progressed and released fixed versions.

Unfortunately, way too many people did not seem to realize that that was the aim of the scheme.

They thought that what they got the first time out was perfectly up and running and tested

and was all going to be hunky-dory.

Consequently, we had to subtly change the way that the select scheme worked

from being a beta release scheme, and we were spending on the phones

courting people until 9, 10 o'clock at night.

That's why we got it, for you to tell us what doesn't work,

and help bug-fix it for the next version.

But there's been some delay for select 4.

Yeah. Unfortunately, that's just purely been...

the time scale that it's taken to actually do the work.

Far from what some people seem to be spreading the story of,

that we have not done any work on anything at all for the last two years.

The fact is that a considerable amount of work has been done in the last two years.

It's just unfortunate that we haven't got to a point where we can honestly say,

here is a version of Miscos that's 32-bit that you can use on your machine on a day-to-day basis.

It would have been great if we had been able to totally make Miscos

for 32-bit in the future.

It would have been a few weeks' work last year.

In practice, we knew it was never going to be a quick job.

Some people said, well, if you'd been a year and a day over,

then we would have trained that you hadn't supplied anything.

The fact is, unfortunately, yes, we could have supplied something,

but it's absolutely no use having half of Miscos 32-bitted and the rest of it not.

We've proved now that we can take our version and make it 32-bit

and support the new Advantage 6 hardware.

And from then on, we would be able to add on support for other new processes.

What's the timetable for that, then?

My hope is that we will get to a point where we've got the entire Select 4 for the rest of the PCs,

hopefully by about Wakefield Showtime this year.

Following that, there will be the A9 in its final version.

The A9 won't have all of the features that will be part of the future Select 4 scheme.

That's something we want to encourage people to also join into the scheme.

And what about Ionix users?

Historically, there's always been lots of different versions around.

People moan that there's two diverging schools of development on Miscos.

That's nothing compared to the number of different versions of Miscos that used to be around.

And in practice, the problem is that Miscos has never really ever started from a completely clean base.

Over the years, when a new product came out with Acorn,

they'd usually just do quick hacks in particular parts of it

rather than going back to scratch and putting in specific support for new features.

We got a version of Miscos that was designed for Phoebe

and had a bugs database with it of several thousand known bugs.

Because we had to make it work on a RISC-PC as opposed to a Phoebe,

there was quite a lot of changes that had to be undone to make it work on a RISC-PC.

And Miscos 5?

To be honest, merging those back into one version of Miscos

is something that may be a wonderfully laudable commercial idea,

but on a pure programming level,

is a hell of a lot of perfect that I don't think anybody really wants to try and embark on.

So the way that Miscos has to be developed at the moment

is we have to work from the ground upwards

on producing a new 32-bit neutral version of Miscos,

which in a lot of areas is meant to complete rewrites of particular chunks of Miscos.

You had some Ionix components running at the Roadshow last week, though.

Yeah, I mean, the point is that out of standard Miscos build,

I think there's 120 modules on Miscos 5 on the Ionix.

We've got around about 160 to 180 different modules

on different versions of the select and adjust build that we have at the moment.

You can't simply take one or two modules and make them work on the Ionix

because often they will rely on other parts of Miscos, especially the kernel.

Clearly from a financial point of view at the moment,

certain parts of Ionix version that are self-contained and don't rely on anything else,

obviously we can look at releasing those on their own.

Ultimately, we need to do that.

We need to make an entire 32-bit Miscos 4 kernel that supports the Ionix

in order to have everything running on an Ionix.

And what's the future for Select?

We would encourage people to carry on subscribing to the Select scheme

for the sake of it being the Select scheme.

The Select scheme is not just about developing Miscos for this PC.

It is now developing Miscos for all the machines that we want to put it onto.

If you think that an engineer, say, is going to cost £40,000 a year in salary,

I don't think we're going to pay £40,000 a month.

Some of the discussions on droid seem to be evolving around recently.

If we have 100 people subscribing to pay for the cost of a £40,000 a year engineer,

then obviously the cost that you can work out yourself needs to be in an annual subscription.

So if nobody contributes to that basic pot in the first place, then development won't happen.

So we need a core level of people who are prepared to contribute on an ongoing basis.

They will get recompensed by having suitable discounts on what comes out at the end of the line.

The same thing is likely to happen on a longer basis for the Ionix.

We will at some stage, it may be a year or two years down the line yet,

get to a point where we have got an entire Miscos 4 version which is entirely compatible with the Ionix.

And obviously by that time, people that have continued to contribute to the Select scheme

will get that at a much greatly reduced price compared to somebody

who is sat on the sidelines saying nothing is going to ever happen,

I'm not going to have to buy anything until it's a complete product.

So it's all down to the subscribers.

We don't have a subsidy from selling computers or selling one or two other very expensive products

that subsidise the development of Miscos.

Because as Vardy6 said, yes, we want to use a 32-bit only processor.

If we do the work that's necessary, that's specifically what we need for our hardware,

and you do the rest of it.

Which is generic for everybody.

It's carrying on the cooperation which hopefully has always existed

between the Miscos companies in the past.

So, you know, ultimately any manufacturer, whether it's Castle or anybody else,

if they feel that their sales would be increased by having Select features,

then the simple answer is that Castle should be the ones that are coming to us and saying,

yes, okay, we'll work with you to do the necessary bit that I need you to make Select features run on the Ionix.

Cooperation, then.

Everything being done is now coming from a common basis.

You know, it's a new housing estate that's being laid out.

Everybody's got a foundation for their houses.

It doesn't matter what the house is going to look like at the end of it.

You've all got to pay for the same foundations that are on your house to start with.

So everybody, hopefully, should contribute equally to what goes into Miscos and what comes out of it.

Miscos users have got to accept that it is a niche product that has got lots of advantages.

And with the right people and the right amount of money behind it,

it could be pushed out into larger areas.

But that's not what we were set out to do in the first place.

Therefore, that's why we haven't really pushed into those sort of markets.

If you want the core operating system and all editing that goes with it to continue to be developed,

then people have got to treat it at the same level as what they do any other premium product.

We shouldn't be treated as being the lowest common denominator in the Miscos world.

Okay, well, thanks for taking part, Paul.

Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

And to you and all our listeners.

And now for something completely different.

A little section I like to call...

Mainly I like to call it that because it means I can use that free sample I downloaded off the Beastie Boys website.

And in the roundabout way, that's what I'm going to talk about. Free downloads.

No Christmas party would be complete without a little music.

And if you can get it gratis, so much the better, right?

Some organisations would have you believe that downloading music from the internet is killing music.

Of course, they said the same thing about home taping back when I was an hip-hop, but it's Christmas,

so I won't get into that argument right now.

Instead, I thought I'd take a quick look at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Groups who offer their own music for free, using the power of the internet to get their music out so as wide an audience as possible.

To keep it at least vaguely relevant to our Miscos audience, I've decided to stick to one particular genre, Nerdcore.

For those of you who haven't heard it before, it's hip-hop as sung by geeks.

And as such, it focuses on geeky subjects, coding, encryption, Star Wars, for instance.

Anyway, enough talk. I'm going to play you a few clips, let you know some URLs, and you can check it out for yourself.

Initiated startup sequence.

A check of your salary, but with no crypto, it'll be changed by Mallory.

You think no one will see what it is you believe, but you should never forget there's always an Eve.

Cause I'm encrypting shit like every single day, sending data across the network in a safe way.

Protecting messages to make my pay, if you hack me you're guilty under DMCA.

Letter with the Star Wars.

The convention, did I mention she was looking for love?

Had to call the bluff.

Lady, you don't mean how that sounded.

That thousand-pound dude in her no-fat-chick shirt's astounded.

Thought she'd take it back.

Riffle, risen, rewind, retract.

You heard me, she said, I want any man here.

Sent to the cave where you conquer the fear.

I'll steer you to the side to force your truth.

Nobody's man enough here, now who?

This girl, you gotta understand, would not look out of place on the arm of an attractive man.

So the geeks in attendance got jaws on the floor.

One extends his saber, but he tripped on his cloak.

I stepped to the front and I spoke.

I ain't spitting game, look, I got a Wookiee hat on.

But these guys here are used to getting spat on by girls.

See, you put them in shock.

And this ain't the right con to quote Mr. Spock, but it's highly illogical to me.

Girl, look, me in the eyes, said, is your mind free?

Cause I got something for you.

It is shiny, it is clean.

Come on up and I'll adore you with my yellow laser beam.

Cause I got something for you.

It is shiny, it is clean.

Come on up and I'll adore you with my yellow laser beam.

Alright, time for a crime spree.

M.C. front a lot.

The arch criminal for some reason.

I'm socked by a foreign taste.

Though I've been running wild for days, days.

Surely gonna track me down.

I'm the number one menace for miles around.

With the litter and the loiter and the mattress tags.

All the pirated MP3s I grab.

And I'm the cable I stole.

Circus bathroom wall I wrote on.

I'm so cruel and cold, just put a coat on.

Even cheat on my tax.

All this life of crime, like a three-note turnip pack.

Riding all around on my bike with no helmet.

Committing mail fraud whenever I see a mailman.

Got a day-marking ticket, I crumpled it up.

Still bugged up in there cause I'm naked.

Time spree, and I'm on.

Breaking the law, until the break of the door.

Then I break it in here, and I break it some more.

M.C. front a lot, you're so hardcore.

Time spree, and I'm on.

Breaking the law, until the break of the door.

M.C. front a lot, you're so hardcore.

I'm a question wrapped inside an enigma.

Get inside a slave bar and find your home and signal.

From Endor to Hoth, Ripley to Spock.

I'll find what you want, but there's gonna be a cost.

Say my name is Boba Fett, I know my shit is tight.

Start actin' right, yo, fuckin' a carbonite.

Got telescopic sight, flamethrowers on my wrist.

You still don't get the jet spike, boots that made the kick.

Todd gets to make the hit, you think I give a shit?

Your mama is a bitch, I see you in a sarlacc pit.

You just flipped my switch, integrity's been tipped.

You scratchin' on my itch, you know I shoot to get.

I got the bean in second Tina's way that licked my lefty lip.

So I'll let you get back inside your little spaceship.

Give you a head start, cause I'm a sportin' con.

Consider the startin' line a sticky smile, hot inside.

Hope you have hyperdrive, pray to stay alive.

Don't try to slip me five, cause I never take a bribe.

Do the beat of a different drummer, baddest bunny hunter.

Let no man put us under, or else we be put under.

As in six feet, got an imperial fleet.

Backin' me up, gonna blow up any attempt to defeat.

They got a Death Star, got four payments on my car.

Hand it over to Hammerhead, at most I see bar.

Used to carjack, and he's a bar pack.

Just go to show how you can get back on the right track.

Guess for me that's not an option, can't say that with more clarity.

Me goin' legit would be like Jar Jar with speech therapy.

My backpack's got chintz.

Well, I'm Vola, the vet.

Well, I bounty hunt for a job or hunt to finance my vet.

Well, I chill in deep space.

A mask is over my face.

Well, I deliver the prize, but I still narrow my eyes.

Cause my time out of like two ways.

Get down!

Then silence hits the street like a bomb.

And eerie calm like the eye of a storm.

Beneath the glow of the storm,

I see the light.

The glow of an old street light.

Deb MIT punks be the only sight.

Six motherfuckers no longer alive.

Pookie's in a bench, one for one plus five.

And we'll be long gone before the cops arrive.

Cause all my shootings be drive-bys.

Hiya!

I'm busting more shit than an incontinent man at a chili cook-off.

The moral of the story is,

don't fuck with the Hawkman.

Cause the Hawkman ain't done with an eye for an eye for a shit.

Fuck that.

You take an eye, and I'll take your mother.

And I'll take your mother flipping head.

So that was a grab bag of some of my favorite Nerdcore.

Should be immediately obvious that I'm no remix DJ,

but hopefully there's something there to whet your appetite.

But hopefully there's something there to whet your appetite.

All we had there was Mc++ with Alice and Bob,

Mcfrontalot with both Yellow Lasers and Crime Spree,

McChris with Fets Effect,

and McHawking all my shootings be drive-bys.

their websites by typing www. their name and a .com on the end. So www.mc++.com, same with

MC Frontalot, MC Chris, MC Hawking. Or I'll include the URLs in the podcast article on

the Icon Bar front page.

Check, check, check, check it out!

So that's about it for this Christmas edition of the Icon Bar podcast.

But before you all scamper off and fill your faces with mince pies, let's end with some

awards.

The Best Computer Hardware goes to the A9 Home, obviously, because it's so fantastic.

And the Best Non-Computer Hardware award goes to... the Omega!

And the Most Anticipated Software Release of 2006, well, Andrew Duffel thinks it's Firefox,

but my vote goes for Oregano 3.

And finally, who does the award for the Best Lawyers go to, Phil?

To Linotype. No, wait, Riskos Limited. No, hang on, Castle. One of them anyway. They

can fight amongst themselves for it.

Right, that's your lot, and Merry Christmas!

The script just stops here. There's just a note saying,

Here Phil performs a funny yet informative skit between the interviewer and interviewee.

It is made all the more hilarious by the fact that Phil improvises both parts.

Hmm. How about I just interview Paul Middleton instead?

Hmm, hmm, hmm.

The best computer of all time.

I mean, I mean, I'm not gonna lie.

I mean, it is not scary to do, and I'm not gonna lie.

It is just a story, though, and I don't know what to say about it.

Like, you know, I'm sorry I don't even want to do it.

But, well, I love to do it.

I mean, I think there's just a lot more to the world, and the students really love it.

And, you know, I don't think it's a joke to be a student.

You know, today, I think I like it, but I don't think I should say it.

Yeah.

But you know, I think that it's a good idea to go with a computer.

Yeah.

I think that's the point.