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I'm in Waterloo at the moment, and next available to work in September 2008.

Office on the Web

June 22nd, 2005

It amazes me that folks still publish documents in native Microsoft Office formats.

Of course, there’s been several high-profile embarassments resulting from unknown ‘previous drafts’ and other hidden information sailing out the door with the latest press release.

But we just had a similar case at the school.

The midterm marks for 120 students went online in an XLS file. Two columns, student number and grade.

But a quick ‘Unhide All’ reveals three other columns: Name, Email, and Program Year. With just a birthday, this is enough information to buy someone a mealplan!

After a thoughtful student alerted the TAs, the file was promptly removed, but who knows who’s got a copy of it?

Microsoft has acknowledged this problem, and provides a tool for scrubbing its files. But forget that. Just remember, kids: HTML if you can, PDF if you must. Never DOC or XLS. Ever.

Mike

← Earlier Later → Posted at 9:21 pm to Uncategorized.

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Yeah, that was a fiasco today. It not only allowed security breaches, but also it was an invasion of privacy. I witnessed a few students approaching students who didn’t do as well and talking to the point of mocking them. That is why marks need to be confidential.

When at my last job, I produced alot of documents that were to be sent out to people across the continent. It just came naturally for me to produce PDFs, because the hastle of incompatible formats drove me crazy. I also did my work report in it, as it can guarentee Kinko’s prints it exactly how I like it. Office is good for producing it, but distribution cannot occur in that format.

Posted at 1:04 am on June 23rd by Jeffrey Aho.
That’s true. Although that sort of occured to me, I didn’t actually see it. Grade envy/mockery is a passing thing, but it’s always the fraud potential that worries me more…

I never actually got more than a glance at the spreadsheet, but I’m sure more than one person did a sort-by on the grade column and had a peek up and down the list.

Posted at 4:26 pm on June 23rd by Mike Purvis.
I think that in general fraud would be a more worrisome issue, I think that in this case the fact that marks are supposed to be confidential (i.e. no one knows until someone looks over your shoulder and proceeds to tell everyone else) is the bigger worry.
Especialy considering how mark-obsessed our class is (Jeff in particular).

Posted at 11:09 pm on June 23rd by Christine.
Hey, I know this is OT, but I just noticed your picture in the new BrickJournal magazine [http://www.legofan.org/brickjournal/, page 58] Congrats!

Posted at 10:25 pm on June 24th by Another UW Mike.
Wow, that’s awesome, nice find. Yeah, rtlToronto is a terrific group of guys. I wish I could get back to T.O. for more of their events.

And btw, the rice game was extremely difficult, but both Wayne’s bot and the one Rob and I worked on, were brilliant.

(funny, I have the goofiest expression on my face in that picture, but you can hardly tell at that resolution…)

Posted at 11:32 pm on June 24th by Mike Purvis.

You can use Markdown for style. I love hearing from readers, but please don’t hijack the discussion, use offensive language, or try to sell anything.

Office on the Web

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