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Filed under: IT

Microsoft Excel Limitation

This morning, I have to do something (simple calculations) in excel  *sigh* documents. I have to append data, and make adjustment to some formulas I have created before. The formula contains a series of nested IFs. It was made by me as a quick and dirty solution, without really thinking about future usage of the document or formula.

Apparently, as more data being inserted and I add more columns to check with the IF, excel keeps telling me that my formula is wrong. I tried to change it several times, triple check the parentheses, and retype the formula from scratch. I was frustrated, am I that stupid and can't get a stupid IF formula to work. In frustration, I search for enlightenment to Google. As I typed "nested if excel formula", the first hit excerpt shows that there are limitations.

A well known limitation to Excel is that you cannot "nest more than 7 functions 

What? Excel only support SEVEN nested IF functions? What kind of limitation is that? Is it that difficult to make it support 8, or 10, or 100, or unlimited?

I don't want to know why they choose 7. I don't care. I'll live with 7 nested IF, just like everyone else. Thanks to excel, now I have to rewrite all my formulas in this file. Not that it's difficult to do. It's just a waste of time. Good stuff excel.

*I wonder whether OpenOffice and iWork Numbers have this limitation too*

The Term "Leader"

In many news, I've read a lot about the term "leader". For example: <A Company> is the leader in <a field/software/something>. After you read enough news, you'll realize that every other company is a leader. For me, it is quite confusing, because in my (simple) perception, there should be only one leader.

Apparently, there's this thing called "leader" in "magic quadrant" (from Gartner, a company who compares companies' products in may areas). Every company who falls in that quadrant is a leader. Moreover, the so called "quadrant" is not a finite space, and I think it could contains as many "dots" (i.e companies) as possible.

As for the leader quadrant itself, imagine its rectangular shape, with "higher leader" positioned more to the top-right, and "lesser leader" positioned in bottom-left area. This morning I saw a chart showing Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, Sun Microsystem as "the leader". That's basically almost everyone in the industry. And maybe they'll post their own news somewhere, stating that they are the chosen leader.

So, my point is, the term "leader" sometimes used loosely. I think I will be skeptical the next time I read about some people claims that their pencil product is the leader (in writing-with-pencil-and-paper industry), or insurance product, or programming language, or anything.

Acquisition

A company buys another company:
  1. To acquire the technologies owned by the other company.
  2. To acquire the talents (human resource), or assets owned by other company.
  3. To add its product/solution offerings. More product = more money.
  4. To increase its market share, acquire another company means acquire its clients, and prospects (and maybe competitors).
  5. To upsell products to acquired and old clients.
  6. To kill a competitor. Buy your competitor and neglect its products, and your product will be #1 eventually. This is not recommended by the way.
  7. Too much money in pocket, need to spend somewhere. :|
*pointless post actually...*

Beta softwares

Why people love to release beta softwares or web apps. Why don't they just name it as version 1, it's better than 0.0.1build2937 or 0.2.138.40 or other zero point zero point some cryptic numbers. Even Oracle DB starts at version 2 (because they thought people will think version 1 softwares are buggy), and Flickr was a Gamma software once (whatever that means). Just a thought.