3 ms·

> I LAUGH at silly FUD like "you can't run a business without MSOffice", "You can't read documents ", "format compatibility problems!!", because that all is jus

> I LAUGH at silly FUD like "you can't run a business without MSOffice", "You can't read documents ", "format compatibility problems!!", because that all is just FUD. Not really a FUD if you're dealing with Excel spreadsheets from other companies, especially those that uses integrations with Excel. However PowerPoint/Present compat is a hit-or-miss bother but not world-shuttering like with Excel though, and Word compatibility is actually okay except when dealing with weirder documents that is also fragile with different Word versions.

pizzachan 4y ago
When I used to work on publishing government reports we used to run into strange formatting issues if we didn’t stick with the Windows version of Office 365. Could we have worked around them with multiple versions or LibreOffice etc? Sure, but it would take time and at at $150-$350 and hour per contractor its not worth it. Just provision the licenses and be done with it.
- throwawaymanbot 4y ago
iostream24 4y ago
If there are excel integrations with third party SW you arguably have additional issues, even with M$ Excel
gtf21 4y ago
I find that some of the models I get sent by the team won't open properly in LibreOffice Calc, so definitely agree with this. I very rarely get Writer / Impress compatibility issues, however.
Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
If you are disproving wide claims like "you can't run a business without MSOffice", even one contrary example is enough to make the claim invalid. Of course, I can imagine some scenarios where compatibility with a proprietary format world impede business processes, but I think that for a vast majority of businessess it is a non-issue. Regarding the presentation format, the One True Format is PDF.
- GauntletWizard 4y ago
  > If you are disproving wide claims like "you can't run a business without MSOffice", even one contrary example is enough to make the claim invalid. That's not how rhetoric works. That is how logic works, but this is not a logical argument. One counterexample does not disprove the rhetorical claim that businesses do not run without Microsoft Office, because rhetorical claims are not hard logical claims. They are exemplar claims. They are to be backed up for most cases, and caveats will exist. Rhetorically, most businesses do processing through Excell files. You will receive them from B2B partners. You will be required to send them to businesses and governments. They will have weird advanced features and logic embedded, and if you do not make use of all of the features and send something back to the other side that works perfectly, partners will drop you like a hot potato. Logically, it is possible to run a business that has no interaction with B2B partners, one that chooses partners carefully to never interact with Microsoft customers, etc. Rhetorically, this limits the possibilities for your business vastly. Rhetorically, the solution space you limit yourself to with that one constraint is infinitesimal compared to the standard problem space with standard constraints. All arguments are rhetorical. Some arguments are logical in form but without an absolute truth evaluation engine (which is logically but not rhetorically impossible) you cannot hope to evaluate them, since you'll be starting from some axioms. We cannot prove axioms, even within the pure spaces of logic and mathematics there are still axioms; you cannot prove a system using itself. This is the oft-cited and almost as oft misused (Rhetorically: always misused) incompleteness theorem: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompletenes...
  - number6 4y ago
    Unrelated to the argument, but related to your arguing: you might enjoy "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance"
    - Brian_K_White 4y ago
      I found their comment more interesting and valuable than yours. Just a data point.

pizzachan 4y ago

When I used to work on publishing government reports we used to run into strange formatting issues if we didn’t stick with the Windows version of Office 365. Could we have worked around them with multiple versions or LibreOffice etc? Sure, but it would take time and at at $150-$350 and hour per contractor its not worth it. Just provision the licenses and be done with it.

throwawaymanbot 4y ago

iostream24 4y ago

If there are excel integrations with third party SW you arguably have additional issues, even with M$ Excel

gtf21 4y ago

I find that some of the models I get sent by the team won't open properly in LibreOffice Calc, so definitely agree with this. I very rarely get Writer / Impress compatibility issues, however.

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago

If you are disproving wide claims like "you can't run a business without MSOffice", even one contrary example is enough to make the claim invalid. Of course, I can imagine some scenarios where compatibility with a proprietary format world impede business processes, but I think that for a vast majority of businessess it is a non-issue. Regarding the presentation format, the One True Format is PDF.

GauntletWizard 4y ago
> If you are disproving wide claims like "you can't run a business without MSOffice", even one contrary example is enough to make the claim invalid. That's not how rhetoric works. That is how logic works, but this is not a logical argument. One counterexample does not disprove the rhetorical claim that businesses do not run without Microsoft Office, because rhetorical claims are not hard logical claims. They are exemplar claims. They are to be backed up for most cases, and caveats will exist. Rhetorically, most businesses do processing through Excell files. You will receive them from B2B partners. You will be required to send them to businesses and governments. They will have weird advanced features and logic embedded, and if you do not make use of all of the features and send something back to the other side that works perfectly, partners will drop you like a hot potato. Logically, it is possible to run a business that has no interaction with B2B partners, one that chooses partners carefully to never interact with Microsoft customers, etc. Rhetorically, this limits the possibilities for your business vastly. Rhetorically, the solution space you limit yourself to with that one constraint is infinitesimal compared to the standard problem space with standard constraints. All arguments are rhetorical. Some arguments are logical in form but without an absolute truth evaluation engine (which is logically but not rhetorically impossible) you cannot hope to evaluate them, since you'll be starting from some axioms. We cannot prove axioms, even within the pure spaces of logic and mathematics there are still axioms; you cannot prove a system using itself. This is the oft-cited and almost as oft misused (Rhetorically: always misused) incompleteness theorem: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompletenes...
- number6 4y ago
  Unrelated to the argument, but related to your arguing: you might enjoy "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance"
  - Brian_K_White 4y ago
    I found their comment more interesting and valuable than yours. Just a data point.