Aid for tsunami victims
Monday, January 10, 2005, 00:08 - The News
Partly thanks to a large TV and radio action on Thursday, here in the Netherlands the amount of money donated by the public and raised through private initiatives has reached over 112 million euro (145 million dollar) which is about 9 dollar per capita.
The Dutch government had already donated 30 million euro (39 million dollar) for immediate aid and has reserved a couple of hundred million euro for rebuilding the areas in Asia and Africa that have suffered from the tsunami.

Nations all over the world have so far provided over 3 billion US dollars according to Wikipedia.
The European Commission will see to it that the EU countries will actually pay up the amounts of money that they have promised.

Why is so much money collected? Of course the enormous scope of the disaster and the sudden and direct cause play a role. But here in the Netherlands we've also had a rough time that started with the assassinations of Pim Fortuyn and recently Theo van Gogh. Those events have led to a hardening society and separation between natives and immigrants. Also the threats of terrorism fed the desire to do something positive together and it seems that raising funds has created some unity.
Hard as it may seem to those directly hurt this news is a diversion of all the negative news close at home. But money can't fix everything. A lot of labor is needed to rebuild completely destroyed villages. And a lot of time is needed to make the pain bearable of losing so many loved ones at once.
Long before that other news will have taken over the headlines in the West and this disaster will be almost forgotten.

And there are still other emergency situations elsewhere in the world, such as Congo and Sudan. The United Nations warns us that we should not forget that estimatedly 1000 people die per day in Congo. That's 365,000 deads per year.
Fighting in Darfur is escalating and the Sudanese region could face a new upsurge in violence despite efforts by the UN.

There is a lot of shit going on in this world!


150,000 dead and counting...
Tuesday, January 4, 2005, 05:29 - The News
Wikipedia has an excellent page about the 2004 Tsunami caused by a magnitude 9.0 undersea earthquake.
It explains the cause and effects in great detail.

These QuickBird satellite images at DigitalGlobe just don't do justice to the devastating effect of the tsunami. Footage shot on the ground and shown on TV, together with interviews with victims have much more impact.

There are many websites related to donations and relief initiatives for the millions of victims of this natural disaster.

No software patents in Europe yet!
Wednesday, December 22, 2004, 17:29 - The News
Thanks to a firm position of Poland, the European Union has not yet taken a decision on a software patent directive at their Agriculture and Fisheries council meetings. The Dutch Presidency has been using diplomatic pressure to bully Poland. It tried to push the much debated proposition really hard and tried to get it approved without discussion, against the will of a majority of Dutch Parliament.

Poland has many software developers and they want to have as much work as possible without worrying about patents or paying high licenses. Therefore neither the Polish government nor the Polish industry supports the directive text.

European Parliament earlier also expressed its doubts about the patents. It fears they will endanger the open operating systems like Linux and R&D in the computer branch.


Dutch government: Linspire or MS Windows?
Thursday, December 16, 2004, 03:05 - The News
Recently the Dutch government announced that it is about to close a deal with Microsoft for a 5 year software contract for 260.000 computers. As an amount of about 150 million euro is involved, some parties are protesting that there should have been an open-bid process, which is required by European guidelines.

Yesterday Michael Robertson, CEO of Linspire, published an open letter to the Dutch prime minister, offering software and support for a total price of about 6 million euro.

Of course quite an amount of effort would be needed to migrate away from MS Windows, the costs of which should be added to the 6 million, but the open letter is fun reading, especially about pretending that there was an open request for quotes that Robertson is reacting to.

And as someone responded in Dutch: it's nice of the open source community to publish open letters :)


Prince Bernhard buried in Delft
Saturday, December 11, 2004, 19:30 - The News
Today Prince Bernhard, the father of the Dutch queen was buried in the Royal Tomb Cellar in the New Church here in Delft. He died on December 1, 2004, age 93.



Even though this is the third royal burial in just over two years (Prince Claus, the husband of the queen died in October 2002 and her mother, Queen Juliana died in March of this year), it still is a very impressive ceremony, which we are not very used to here in The Netherlands. Especially now there were extra military honors as Prince Bernhard played an important role for Dutch resistance in World War II and attended the capitulation of the Germans on May 5, 1945.
The Royal Netherlands Air Force performed a fly-past in a Missing Man Formation, where a Spitfire broke out of the formation with three F16 fighter aircraft as they flew over the coffin on the Markt in Delft.
Prince Bernhard also helped to establish the World Wildlife Fund in 1961.

I work in The Hague, adjacent to the route the horses take, in this case with the coffin on an undercarriage of a canon used in WWII, from The Hague to Delft. So last two times we stepped out of the office to watch the cortege pass by. Very impressive.
Today I stayed at home, because it is very crowded in the city of Delft, and it is very hard to see anything. I watched it all on TV.

After a remembrance service in the New Church, the coffin was brought into the cellars, to find its final resting place next to his former wife, the previous Queen Juliana. Afterwards the cellars will be closed again. The only thing the public can see there is the mausoleum of William of Orange, the "Father of the Fatherland".

I wish Queen Beatrix and the Royal family much strength in handling these losses in such short time.




Exit VCR - enter DVD and harddisk
Tuesday, November 23, 2004, 23:46 - The News
Due to lack of demand, the Dixons chain has decided to stop selling VCRs. Here is a nice story about the history of the VCR.

While the film industry in the sixties feared the recorder (like they now fear the internet...) it turned out that in the end they made more money out of selling tapes then the made in movie theaters.
The recorder also improved the quality of late night programs, as there now was a larger potential audience.

Nowadays, DVD and harddisk recorders are extremely popular. I myself am still undecided on what exact solution I want for harddisk recording. I'm not really keen on introducing a PC in the living room, as I am afraid the noise will annoy me, even with the silent solutions that are available nowadays.



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