5 ms·
Trillions of dollars are managed in Microsoft Excel which is probably the most end user empowering software ever released in the history of computing. Calling
by RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
Trillions of dollars are managed in Microsoft Excel which is probably the most end user empowering software ever released in the history of computing.
Calling Microsoft software malware is so over the top that it turns off normal users and is only appreciated by people who are already committed to free software.
- synack 4y agoUseful and harmful are not mutually exclusive.
- crownosey 4y agoMorally they are, not a popular point in the desert of instrumental rationality
- groestl 4y agoMalware is, by definition, computing that is done without its user's informed consent. There are many examples of malware that a laymen wouldn't readily classify as such. This page has a long list of examples where Microsoft's software or behavior is unethical. However, Excel is not in this list, as far as I can see. So you're right on that account.
- IAmGraydon 4y agoNo. Malware is, by definition, software that performs actions which have a malicious intent. Hence, the name.
- groestl 4y agoA software's author can have the best of intents, it would still be malware if it's perceived to be malicious by it's users (see: state trojans, opt-out telemetry)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- SketchySeaBeast 4y agoRequiring "user's informed consent" would make 99% of software malware for 99% of users. The majority of what software does is magic with hidden layers and data polling in the background from various sources, but that doesn't make it malware just because the user doesn't understand.
- groestl 4y ago> would make 99% of software malware for 99% of users Well... Joke aside, its not like I came up with this definition.
- sa46 4y agoYou omitted a piece of the definition: > Malware is software that is installed on a computer without the user's consent and that performs malicious actions. https://www.mcafee.com/en-us/antivirus/malware.html#:~:text=Malware%20is%20software%20that%20is,for%20malicious%20files%20or%20programs https://www.mcafee.com/en-us/antivirus/malware.html#:~:text=....
- groestl 4y agoI did not. "Malicious action" is the result of violating informed consent, and as such redundant. I'm not surprised that McAfee left out "informed", btw.
- chclt 4y ago99% of software IS malware for 99% of users
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago>Malware is, by definition, computing that is done without its user's informed consent. Do you manually inspect every CPU clock cycle spent, or every data connection or packet sent by every piece of SW running on your system, to make sure it was all done with your consent?
- groestl 4y agoTrust is a different topic entirely.
- lanstin 4y agoI do like to run tcpdump regularly. For a while I ran my home laptop thru an allow-listed proxy, and I was quite surprised at the results, and how little I had to allow to get what I needed done. A lot of software is phoning home. I would have thought that open source folks didn't do that, but standards or expectations have shifted. A browser that took over your DNS would have been anathema in the 90s, but now we trust the local networks even less.
- crownosey 4y ago[flagged]
- goosedragons 4y agoAnd it only took abusing their position to get it there! We had spreadsheets before Excel, we would have had spreadsheets without Excel. We might have had the dominant spreadsheet software on Linux and FreeBSD if not for Excel. Maybe we would have had a couple more years of Lotus 1-2-3 being clunky on Windows but frankly that seems like a fair trade.
- burnte 4y agoNah, Excel was a huge product long before Microsoft was The Dominator.
- taylodl 4y agoWhat? Excel, like the entirety of the titles in the Office Suite, was originally developed on the Mac - where it was hardly used since the Mac wasn't targeted to business at the time. Excel was ported to Windows 2.0, but like the Mac, hardly any business was using that. In the 1980's business ran on Lotus 123, not Excel. All that changed after the release of Windows 3.0, but by that time Microsoft was already "The Dominator" as you put it. Excel 3.0 was released for Windows, Lotus took way too long to come up with a Windows release and Excel, with its GUI, had come to dominate the market. The rest is history, as they say.
- jtotheh 4y agoI believe there was some skullduggery where M$ encouraged Wordperfect and Lotus, who dominated their markets, to focus on OS/2 as the future, while preparing to release or further promote Excel and Word for Windows with the release of Windows 3.0. (and possibly sabotaging the OS/2 effort). They also started the practice of bundling them up as "Office" which made Powerpoint a freebie, thus killing the market for presentation programs that had had competition at the time. I worked in an Egghead Software store while all this was going on.
- taylodl 4y agoI do know Microsoft lied and led everybody to believe they were completely on-board with OS/2 and were touting their codeveloping relationship with IBM. It was totally believable since Microsoft and IBM were joined at the hip with the PC and DOS. Later we found out that while Microsoft was saying one thing in industry press releases and conferences, they were preparing Windows 3.0. I've never trusted that company since, and they've never failed to meet my low expectations of them. Thing is, I remember a very different Microsoft. They used to be a great company. Then they made a deal with the devil in the 1987 timeframe and they've been evil ever since.
- encryptluks2 4y ago[dead]
- myhf 4y agoReligious groups like GNU use outrageous evangelism like this to build their faith. Spreading absurd messages causes outsiders to shun members of the group, so that they can only find social/emotional support within the group.
- agiacalone 4y agoShouldn't the credit go to VisiCalc instead of Excel? Excel rode on the popularity of VisiCalc and Lotus 123 for years. https://thehistoryofcomputing.net/visicalc-excel-and-the-rise-of-the-spreadsheet https://thehistoryofcomputing.net/visicalc-excel-and-the-ris...
- alexvoda 4y agoAnd while Lotus may have declined in part due to poor strategic decisions, Microsoft is known to have engaged in anti-competitive practices against WordPerfect in the same period.
- ThrowawayB7 4y agoKind of tangential but the article talks about VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, and Excel but somehow fails to mention Microsoft's Multiplan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplan) which was released the year before Lotus 1-2-3 came out. Granted, it wasn't that popular or successful, but it shows that, contrary to what some seem to think, Microsoft was contending in the spreadsheet arena long, long before Excel was even a glimmer on the horizon.
- agiacalone 4y agoFrom the article: “They released an early spreadsheet tool called Multiple [sic] in 1982. But Lotus 1-2-3 was the first killer application for the PC.”
- Aleklart 4y agoTrillions minus one I guess. 200 billion SVB and 500 CS.m, 100 for SB, oh so many numbers I better open Excel to SUM them as all real executives do!
- panarky 4y ago"Your Honor, on the way to murder the victims, my client passed by several people who he allowed to live, therefore my client is not guilty of murder."
- anthk 4y agoTell that to scientists and pharma losing billions because of Excel bugs on parsing cell items and renaming genomics.
- ubermonkey 4y agoIt's kind of the point of a position like this. To the author, the blowback proves the correctness of their point.