July 18, 2004

Interesting article about spyware in MS Office

A quick look-see at some of the inner workings of MS Office.

And more on MS Office causing problems. Although, in this case, I'm very surprised that genetic researchers aren't keeping a backup of their data.

Posted by Casper at July 18, 2004 09:51 PM
Comments

If the spreadsheet is running while the data is being collected (not a wise practice, but I imagine a common one), and we've got Markov chain kind of thing where the measuring/analyzing machine goes into a new state when it finds/doesn't find a particular marker, it could very well have spoiled the run, and it may be very difficult to put it right.

If no record was kept of when the machine changes state or if the state causes the "machine" to start looking for some things and discarding other things, it may be impossible to put right.

In my racket (rocket engine control), data is so fiendishly expensive to gather that we generally don't mix up measurement and analysis, but not everybody is forced by circumstances to be that careful.

Posted by: Rev. Bob at July 18, 2004 10:50 PM

My day gig is that of a database administrator (DBA). It's that part of me that is completely scratching my head that there is no backup of the raw data. If if you were running a spreadsheet while the data was being collected, it would be a fairly simple process to tee off the data stream so that one copy goes to the spreadsheet and the other to another medium (flat file, even) for backup.

Posted by: Casper at July 19, 2004 09:58 AM