[Bradford] Excel: Why using Microsoft's tool caused Covid-19 results to be lost

[Moanin]

John, whatever the official position, the Civil Service, at least at its 
higher levels, unofficially insists upon proprietary software.

An instance is when HMRC tried to make it possible, even easy, for small 
businesses to submit various returns online a senior Civil Servant 
insisted upon a proprietary version of pdf. So, of course, open source 
users had their returns rejected.

Many small businesses were fined (later reversed but it took a bloody 
long time) for late or none submission. Employees were robbed of their 
pension entitlements because they were included in the rejected submissions.

I was one of the victims of that imbecile's action. It was not until 
much later I discovered I was only one of, no exaggeration, many thousands.

On the specifics of the spreadsheet as a web app, invented especially 
for Bozo & The Cabinet Clowns, the number of columns, from what I have 
been reading, was not the only cockup in its inception.

Cheers,

Mike

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Moanin" is a track wrtitten by Charles Mingus, first public recording 
was on his album "Blues and Roots", 1959.

On 06/10/2020 10:49, John Robert Hudson via Bradford wrote:
> HI Brian
> 
> And if they had used Gnumeric, they could have had 16,777,216 rows - but
> Gnumeric isn’t available on Windows because of lack of gtk support.
> 
> I don’t think the decision is anything to do with the Government which in
> theory supports open data standards but with the practices of the private
> companies working for the Government.
> 
> John
> 
> On Tuesday, 6 October 2020 09:42:57 BST you wrote:
>>   I sent this to someone yesterday:The Test & Trace debacle was due to old
>> version of Microsoft software only supported 65,000 rows. Had they been
>> using Libre Office it would have been  1,048,576. so why are the Government
>> still insisting on using Microsoft?! I think that sums up my thoughts on
>> the matter. It would have been difficult to ignore calls by the update
>> system on Linux not to update software whereas, with Microsoft, it is a
>> case of buy an update to Office. Brian
>>
>>      On Monday, 5 October 2020, 23:18:03 CEST, John Robert Hudson via
>> Bradford <bradford at mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>>   Interesting that someone has just been saying the the US Food and Drug
>> Agency requires anyone using Excel to carry out specific tests to ensure
>> that it can handle the task it is being expected to handle.
>>
>> John
>>
>> On Monday, 5 October 2020 21:14:12 BST Darren Drapkin via Bradford wrote:
>>> Something that bbci's front page turned up, this evening. It is
>>> about how crap excel is, especially how crap it is when you give it
>>> files in the wrong format.
>>>
>>> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54423988[1]
>>>
>>> --
>>> Yours &c.
>>> Darren Drapkin
>>>
>>> --------
>>> [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54423988
>>
>> --
>> Bradford mailing list
>> Bradford at mailman.lug.org.uk
>> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/bradford
> 
> 
> 
> 
>