It’s Sunday! Sunday! What does this mean! Yes! Another week has passed us by! We’re all one week closer to inevitable death! This also means it’s time for another week in review. This past week we saw a lot of Windows and Apple news, we had some items on various truly alternative operating systems, and Linux reached a milestone. I don’t know what this week’s My Take will be about. Maybe, once I’m done with the Week in Review, I’ll have thought of something.
Week in Review
We’ve had quite some news items on truly alternative operating systems this week. We’d like to fill the entire site with news about those, but the sad truth is that there simply isn’t enough news coming out of that small group of small projects to fill this site.
The week started off with a new release from the ReactOS team, ReactOS 0.3.9. It comes with a hole slew of improvements, mostly quite low-level. Later that day we also saw a new release of BeRTOS, an embedded real-time operating system.
Later this week, RISC OS 5 was spotted running on a BeagleBoard, a machine built around an ARM Cortex-A8 chip. The port was made possible thanks to RISC OS 5 now being “shared source”, and will hopefully allow RISC OS on for instance the upcoming flood of ARM-based netbooks. Right now, RISC OS is tied to fairly expensive hardware, and having the possibility to run RISC OS on cheap hardware will really help the platform.
To complete the truly alternative operating system streak, let’s move on to AROS. The AROS team finally put out another status update, after a long period of communication silence. Massive progress was still being made, but they just didn’t talk about it. The AROS distribution Icaros Desktop released an update which fixes several bugs.
There were also various other new operating system releases. Mandriva 2009 Spring has been released, the NetBSD guys released version 5.0 with massive SMP improvements, and OpenBSD 4.5 was released. Solaris 10 also got updated.
Moving on to the super evil proprietary segment of the market, there was lots of news on Windows 7. For instance, we re-evaluated the goal of Windows XP Mode, coming to the conclusion that it is designed for businesses, and has little to do – seemingly – with moving backwards compatibility into a VM. Microsoft also made the system requirements for Windows 7 known, and released the Windows 7 RC to TechNet and MSDN subscribers.
Apple was also in the news this week. Early in the week, I decided to flog the iPhone-is-not-a-netbook horse again. David wrote a story about the troubles that come with installing and running Mac OS X on a netbook, there were rumours about Apple possibly competing on price, and the company accuses Psystar of withholding information.
The big piece of feel-good news this week was that Linux finally broke the 1% market share barrier on the figures provided by Net Applications. As we all know, those figures are not to be used in an absolute way, but they do indicate trends.
My Take: Koninginnedag
We Dutch people had a bit of a weird week. Thursday was supposed to be a joyous day, as it was Queen’s Day. On this day, the entire country is celebrating, going to parties, having fun, going to the “free markets”, or whatever other activity thousands of volunteers have been planning all year long.
Sadly, the day was brutally cut short by a crazy maniac who purposefully drove his car straight through a group of people, while trying to hit the bus carrying the Royal Family. While he failed to hit the bus, he did injure 17, and kill 7 – including himself. The entire attack, as well as the events that followed, were broadcast live on national television, as the Queen’s visits on Queen’s Day always are.
The man was going to be charged with attempted assassination of the Royal Family, as well as the premeditated murder of 6 people. Sadly, he died in the hospital that night, eluding the courts. This also means his true motives remain unknown – he did state to the police, before he died, that it was an intentional attempt to kill the Queen. As it turns out, he recently got fired, and we think something simply snapped.
If you’re not Dutch, then it’s really had to understand just how much impact something like this has on our country. On Queen’s Day, there are no boundaries. Rich, poor, Christian, Muslim, fat, slim, tall, short, white, black, Royal, not-royal – everyone is partying among one another (even the Royals). Mushily, it’s called a day of unity. Having something like this happen on a day like this is just devastating. The entire country was in shock. All festivities and activities for the rest of the day were cancelled.
The image that will haunt me forever is of a little 4 year old girl. She had two ponytails with orange decorations and the flag on them. I can see how all excited she must’ve been for days on end, as her mother had promised she’d see real princesses! Would there be horses? Will they be wearing princess dresses?
Instead, her day ended gruesomely. She was looking around in despair, with her rosy cheeks, tears rolling down her face. My heart just tore itself apart.
I had planned a nice day in Amsterdam, scouring the city with my friends. Right after I saw the events live on television – I’m a die-hard Royalist – I called my friends and said it wouldn’t be right to go out partying knowing what had happened.
Wrong link for “Linux finally broke the 1% market share barrier”.
Copy-paste ruins the IT industry in general?
No, I’m just an idiot.
my heart goes out to the Dutch people, it was very brutal. :\
It was a surreal and painful day in many ways. Even when I switched on the television, it was hard to believe this actually happened. It is just outright cruel, to the people who injured and died, their families, and to the people who worked for months preparing this day. My thoughts go out to everyone affected.
In Australia (maybe it’s because we’re all drunks), we have a different response to things like this. Usually, we just keep on celebrating, except the celebrations take on a commiserative edge. Maybe it’s because we have the same response to the good and the bad: Australia Day, we commemorate the day Australia became a nation – usually ends in drunkenness. ANZAC Day, we remember fallen soldiers, primarily from the 1st World War since it’s the date of the Gallipoli landing, but also from other wars we’ve fought in – usually ends in drunkenness.
Condolences to the families, it’s just wrong for innocent people to get caught in ideological conflicts.
However, I find it amusing to see how brainwashed a segment of the population is when it comes to supporting a Monarchy. The whole concept of Monarchy (ruler for life, including offspring, and their offspring etc) is wrong on so many levels. Congratulations to the French for showing the world how to solve that problem. But that conversation doesn’t belong on this website.
Cheers.
Edited 2009-05-03 23:27 UTC
Simple answer as to why 80-90% of the Dutch support our Monarchy:
The Monarchy costs us 114 million EUR in tax money every year. The Monarchy earns us about 4-5 *billion* every year.
Do the math.
Both what the monarchy costs us (what to include etc.) and what it earns us are very vague figures. The 4-5 billion I have seen cited before, but not outside royalist circles. Besides that, succesion through blood line is just plain silly and way too old fashioned to be taken seriously.
JAL
Maybe it’s silly, maybe it’s outdated, but it is a part of Dutch cultural history, and for that reason, symbolical or not, I’m in favour of keeping that tradition alive.
In addition to that, I just like Beatrix, and I’m starting to like Wimlex. They definitely make for a more pleasant ‘face’ of the country than most prime ministers we’ve had. If Balkenende was the only ‘face’ of the Netherlands we could offer, well… *shudder*
You have a good point there. For the royal family we can always excuse ourselves, since well, we cannot elect them in office. Imagine we had a presidancy, and we would elect someone like JP… *shudder*
JAL
Think of what the alternative would be – a Dutch equivalent of GWB might end up becoming head of state *shudder* or some other uneducated troglodyte who panders to what ever simplistic jingoism guarantee’s the individual the baubles of office.
I’m down here in New Zealand I’m more than happy to have the kindly old lady, Queen Elizabeth II, as head of state. When ever I hear a republican voice their opinion – I tell them to go down the road, sit in a mall and watch the unwashed masses shuffle by. They soon realise the folly of their ways.
I wasn’t opting for a US-style president, of course. I was thinking along the lines of the German Bundespräzident (sp?), who has even less political power and influence than our Queen (who has way too much, imho).
JAL
True – I guess I am unfamiliar as to the nature of her powers given that I think the governor general in NZ does have the ability to dismiss parliament, block laws and so forth – but hasn’t yet done so. With that being said, having a check and balance that is removed from the squalid voting buying – be it directly or indirectly (MP’s vote for president, people vote for MP’s, ergo a defacto vote by president by citizens) is a desirable attribute of a political system.
Reminds me of the argument over retaining the privy council instead of the setting up of a supreme court in New Zealand – I only need to look to Australia where rampant government pressure on supreme court judges over the refugee appeals or the slandering a judge of claims being ‘soft on criminals’ because he happens to be gay.
The US supreme court has become a joke in that it no longer stands up for the rights of the individual and has become little more than an outlet to legitimise what ever populist and anti-freedom policies politicians seem to promote – ignoring the reason why the supreme court exists in the check and balance between laws and the constitution.
Edited 2009-05-05 00:55 UTC
The moment you declare anyone who doesn’t support your point of view as “brainwashed” is the moment your argument becomes invalid. It’s the intellectual equivalent of stamping your feet and pouting.
Find a country which has abolished Monarchy ages ago, and ask their citizens if they’d like to re-establish a Monarchy. Other than a few romantic nutcases, a majority of the population will not support the notion of bloodline rulers. These citizens have been free from demagogic teachings.
However, where demagogic teachings are widespread, you have support for all sorts of crazy things. Including Monarchy. It is called brainwashing, plain and simple.
I currently reside in a nation which has a monarchy. It’s an idiotic concept, and when the Queen dies and is replaced by a King, watch Australia become a Republic overnight.
I’m Dutch, and I live in the Netherlands. I just want to say that, although Thom is perfectly entitled to his own feelings, his emotional over-exaggeration – both on his corny description of unity and on his reaction on the whole proceedings – is not representative for the average Dutchmen, at least not among the people I live and work.
Yes, Queen’s day is a day to go out and do silly things like walk on a ‘kleedjesmarkt’, or (if you are younger and do not have kids) party with friends, but to say that we are all ‘united’ that day in some way, or that all majority and minority groups are somehow bonding, that’s nonsense.
And yes, though noone I know thinks it’s a good idea to go killing people with your car, then kill yourself in the process, on a daily basis drunk drivers (or drivers that otherwise shouldn’t be driving) kill people, and though we don’t like that either, the outrage is far less. Karst T. spoiled our Queen’s day, and it’s a shame he cannot be held responsible, but that’s the average extent of how people were responding (and I’m saying were, since around here, noone talks about it anymore).
As for the crying girl on tv: I wouldn’t be surprised if that scene was totally unrelated to the whole incident. I’ve seen many crying children on Queen’s day (mostly because their ice cream dropped, or they were not allowed to do another round on the merry-go-round, or whatever), and each of these shots could’ve been used for the type of tear-jerking television we have been exposed to. No better way to outrage people by showing a shot of a crying girl after an incident, no matter whether it’s real and/or connected or not. It’s nice to see Thom has so much fantasy that he makes up an entire history for the girl, but the truth is we saw just that: a girl crying, reason unknown.
JAL
I get what you’re saying, and I’m getting what Thom is saying. I know people who were shook up enough to not feel like partying anymore, and I know people who went about their day as they normally would have.
I was home when I heard the news and felt the need to party stronger than I’ve felt it the years before. I felt that especially *because* of the incident, we should all celebrate Queen’s Day that bit more. So we did. We ended the day, at 5am, toasting to the victims, but the day was still a party.
So while I agree that one shouldn’t let an incident like this ruin an entire festivity, I don’t agree with putting down Thom’s response as overreacting and being overemotional.
And yeah, it does piss me off that he can’t be held responsible, but I’m mostly glad the royal family’s said that this isn’t going to change anything about how Queen’s Day will be celebrated in the future. Which is good.