newspeak

OpenOffice in Italian Emilia-Romagna to save 2 million | Joinup.

This datum follows on the heels of a second day of record downloads of Apache OpenOffice. On 9 October, we recorded 241,987 downloads; on Monday, 233,070. These are, as I and others noted, impressive numbers.

But how impressive? We used to claim, in the days of OOo, that there were roughly 100M users of OOo and many times that of downloads. (This is not counting those who obtain their OOo from installed Linux distributions or who get one CDROM and then install it in an enterprise.)

Well, Rob Weir, of IBM, and with the AOO project (as am I), gave an insightful response to a query of mine posted to the public dev@openoffice.apache.org list:

Do we have any ideas how the other openoffice versions are doing in terms of download ? if they publish their numbers we could think about a blog post telling about the total number, that must be impressive. 

Some of them did publish download numbers, but stopped doing so after AOO 3.4.0 was released and we started publishing our numbers.

But it is hard to come up with apples-to-apples comparisons.  For example, Linux users get LO with their distro.  They don’t download.

LO has been available for 3 years, but AOO for only 18 months.  We’re counting only full installs, LO is counting — well, we really don’t know.   The products have different update cycles, so it is hard to convert downloads into users. (If you have many small releases then each user will generate several downloads).  Differences like this make it hard to compare the two.

But one approach is to look at Windows downloads from 3rd party websites, like download.com.  This avoids all of the above problems. If you look there you see that in the last week AOO has been downloaded 21,850 times, and LibreOffice 2,664 times.

But from the perspective of ODF editors, Microsoft has pretty good ODF support now as well, so the true number of ODF editor installs is probably near 1 billion now.

The U.S. Cities With the Most Leftover to Spend … After Paying for Housing – Richard Florida – The Atlantic Cities.

Thai kids find free tablets hard to swallow as govt scheme hits trouble • The Register.

“Thailand’s ambitious One Tablet Per Child project appears to have gone slightly off the rails after reports emerged that 30 per cent of devices have broken down barely a year after the initiative was begun.”

The point is that quality counts. Cost is also something that ought to be measured along an axis of time that is seemingly being ignored here.

Wal-Mart’s Asia chief executive, Scott Price, said this week that the new law’s regulations requiring foreign retailers to buy 30 percent of products from local small and medium-size businesses are the “critical stumbling block” to opening its trademark consumer stores.

via Wal-Mart Puts India Plan on Hold – NYTimes.com.

Pandoc – About pandoc.

Mobile Reporting: Which Tools Work Best? › Communication Breakdown.

Cookisto lets you buy your neighbours’ leftovers – Your Community.

Note:

1. “But if you’re looking to join the site right away, take note: the service is only available for now in Athens, Greece, and will be available in London, England, next month.”

#ACCELERATE MANIFESTO for an Accelerationist Politics.

Interesting; just started reading it. The term, “Accelerationism,” is not new and has been featured in a few novels that I know of. But I’m interested in the idea now, as I’ve grown impatient with the seeming artificial blockages on social and technological movements imposed by monopolies, oligopolies, and persistences of the 20th (and even 19th) century.

Sabotaging Obamacare Is a Lucrative Endeavor for Some | The Nation.

The theatrics of Obamacare are a nothing new– Thus:

“While brokers claim they seek only to ensure patients are not scammed by “unlicensed” navigators, in reality, blocking competition seems to be the primary motivation. Last month, the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America released a statement endorsing an effort by Congresswoman Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA) to repeal all of the funding for the navigators programs. Notes from a lobbying association for insurance agents in California warned brokers before a visit to Sacramento: “If we don’t [lobby lawmakers] they will not think it will matter that much when they allow the unlicensed “navigators” to solicit your book of business!!”’

That there is this sabotage is a nothing new: it’s the expected politics. I’m rather more interested in evaluating the ways in which “truth” is appreciated, weighed, acted upon.

Technology in the America’s Cup: Against all odds | The Economist.

“That” refers to Oracle’s core products, the software it sells to an enormous pool of enterprise customers. And my query is this: Much of what it sells lacks the ruthless creativity and ingenuity beautifully demonstrated in the America’s Cup. It’s not that Ellison deprecates the race; hardly. In fact, he seems to value the achievement of the race more than his company’s technology. The result? One is exciting and flies into headwinds to win, using genius and teamwork; the other?