Linked by Debjit on Mon 1st Nov 2010 21:46 UTC
"We all knew that it would come to this and it has finally happened - 33 developers have left OpenOffice.org to join The Documents Foundation, with more expected to leave in the next few days. After Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, OpenOffice.org fell into the hands of Oracle, as did a lot of other products. So, last month a few very prominent members of the OpenOffice.org community decided to form The Documents Foundation and fork OpenOffice.org as LibreOffice, possibly fearing that it could go the OpenSolaris way."
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/13/13 14:35 UTC
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/11/13 17:07 UTC
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/10/13 23:13 UTC
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/08/13 14:57 UTC
And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/07/13 11:40 UTC
This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/04/13 12:45 UTC
Ah, patents - the never-ending scourge of the technology industry. Whether wielded by companies who don't actually make any products, or large corporations who abuse them because they can't compete in the market place or because they're simply jerks, they do the industry a huge disservice and are simply plain dangerous. According to The Wall Street Journal (circumvention link), president Obama is about to take several executive actions to address patent trolls - which may seem like a good idea, but I am very worried that all this will do is strengthen the positions of notorious patent system abusers such as Apple and Microsoft.
Linked by nfeske on 05/31/13 10:12 UTC
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/29/13 16:59 UTC
At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 17:26 UTC
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!More Features »
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I think you're not being fare. Comparing OpenOffice to GNumeric is not valid as GNumeric "is less than" OpenOffice (a spreadsheed application vs. a full-featured office suite). GNumeric, just like Abiword, is a "more stand-alone" program, allthough to be seen as part of Gnome's office suite (but quite independent of Gnome).
Still, I can partly agree with your statement. Modern software tends to get slower and slower, that's true. If you would compare today's OpenOffice (version 3) to an older version (version 1), you would see that the older versions often load faster even on older systems. If you then maybe compare more backwards to StarOffice... well, seems to be a lot faster.
The reason? Because there's much more functionality inside, like script processing engines, extensive input and output filters, and all the other litlle things - MANY little things - users are interested in. With the implementation based upon newer sets of libraries that need certain dependencies that need certain dependencies that rely on other dependencies... cont. ad. n... it's obvious that such a program CAN'T be fast unless you upgrade your hardware and software along with that program.
Another point I'd like to mention in this regards is the trend of modularization. For example, OpenOffice version 1 and 2 contained a german dictionary in the default localized install. Today, those doesn't seem to be part of the localized builds anymore. I think that's sad - spending hours on compliling and then still missing essential parts that have been present in the past.
I'm not sure Oracle is to be blamed here, as the trend I pointed out is visible across many (most?) software products. With today's more-than-enough resources on hardware, there seems to be no need for efficient programming. "Go buy a new PC!" seems to solve everything.
For example, if I compare the startup times of OpenOffice 2 on FreeBSD 5 on a 300 MHz P2 vs. OpenOffice 3 on FreeBSD 7 on a 2 GHz P4, I can see that the older system loads faster. On the other hand, it's not so important how fast a program loads - this is O(1) - but how well it performs when in use - that would be some kind of O(n), "scientifically" spoken. :-)
Coming back to your initial statement, I found myself more and more often using Abiword and GNumeric instead of OpenOffice because of speed issues. The only times I fire up OpenOffice if I reach the limits of the other programs (mostly related to importing nonstandard file formats).