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How Arthur OS will save us all By Chris Williams. Published: 23rd Jun 2004, 22:30:21 | Permalink | PrintableEspecially RISC OS Editorial After six months of inactivity, Drobe Launchpad is excited to announce that it has acquired the rights to Arthur OS, the operating system developed by Acorn in 1987, prior to the development of RISC OS. It is our intention to bring the OS up to date and market it as RISC OS 6.
The venerable OS was bought for an undisclosed sum from the merchant bank who oversaw the break up of Acorn, which kept hold of everything that wasn't sold off to other companies - for example, Arthur.
 Five million pounds
However, Arthur OS has its limitations, such as a GUI written in BASIC and a mountain of bad, bad bugs, but what do you expect for a hasty ARM port of Acorn MOS 1.2? We estimate that our design arm will need around 5 million quid to add modern features, such as stability, PMT, full multitasking, networking support, fading menus, virtual memory, buzzwords and easter eggs that involve 3D racing games. Don't knock Stunt Racer 2004. It's too cool for words, which is why it's confidential.
Recently Drobe was forced to pursue legal action against King Arthur, also known as the Knight of the Round Table (clearly an authorised title), for very little reason other than just the very existence of his name is too much competition for us to handle without crying a river. Plus, he helped keep the kingdom going for years while we cooked up this scheme and no one likes a hero. King Arthur also markets a news reporting system, called News Surprise!, the surprise being that you don't know what articles have been published until you've bought it.
Last year, Drobe's legal team dispatched cease and desist letters to King Arthur and his loyal knights, instructing them to give up and go away, but Arthur reckons we're wrong. Bzzt, wrong answer Arthur - we're right, and if you disagree with us, you're wrong. Also, one of King Arthur's knights reckons he's found stolen Microsoft WindowsNT source code in Arthur, but that's also incorrect. The crap program code he found was based on stolen source code, which you can download from any file sharing network. Fool.
The big plan
Having stuffed Arthur OS with an abundance of features, like a fat Christmas turkey, we intend to relaunch it as RISC OS 6, ready to run on the latest ARM devices (you know, those latest ones, the ones that have crap MHz speeds but like, they're new), inside cool gadgets like pocket sized PDAs to provide breaking news reports 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - and not just RISC OS news. We believe RISC OS 6 is ready for the big time, as we'll cover all news. Which is why we need these new features. Obviously. But please, we really won't forget about RISC OS news, we just feel that by covering all worldwide news, RISC OS desktop users will benefit immensely.
Our first PDA will be called the ARM Reporter - its features will be added over time, in the form of irregular updates, but we can't decide on the exact features now. If you email us with ideas, we'll pretend to consider them, though.
"It's an amazing breakthrough for RISC OS," chimed Drobe publisher Berg Blunderberg. "We're delirious with happiness because we're damn good and everything else smells and is useless. We want no part of anyone else, yet everything belongs to us. You. Your thoughts. Your mother. Ours. And yeah, we're good at news reporting too, which is what counts at the end of the day.
"Don't bother asking any further questions, our PR spinster says silence is the best publicity idiocy can buy. And believe me, we have a lot of idiocy."
In response to our plans, bitter rivals MySarcasm launched a PDA powered by Linux but it fact runs Acorn MOS 1.2 in userspace to provide breaking news. We'd quote head editor and 1980s pop legend Paul Hardcastle, but he was kidnapped in broad daylight, bundled into the back of a clearly marked van and driven to a disused warehouse unavailable for comment. Plus he's a mate of King Arthur, which just isn't cool. The editor of Betla Magazine said she'd get back to us, once she'd thrown an exclusive after-Wakefield-show party for her informed anonymous sources: wine plus rumors equals fact.
And as for the future, well, this is where everything gets interesting. For instance...
Article terminated by Lawyer Ant 417 due to confidentiality reasons
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