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High School Students Compete In 'Microsoft Office Championship' (latimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
This week the L.A. Times described a 17-year-old from Virginia who'd spent several hours a day perfecting his technique in Microsoft Excel, "one of 150 students from 50 countries competing in the Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship" at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim. "At stake: cash, prizes and the clout that comes with being the best in the world at Excel, PowerPoint or Word. 'I'm going to do my best to bring it home for the United States,' John said as he prepared for the competition."
Microsoft's VP of Worldwide Education said the event helps students "to become more employable to companies that build their businesses around the Microsoft suite." For example, the article points out, "Past winners have gone on to attend Ivy League colleges and even work at, yes, Microsoft... Delaware resident Anirudh Narayanan, 17, prepared all summer to compete in the Excel 2013 category, 'looking up obscure facts just in case I might need to know it during the test.' He's hoping the skills he honed will help him at Carnegie Mellon University, where he will begin studying economics in the fall. 'I make sure I do a minimum of five hours a week in Excel,' Anirudh said. 'Then for a while I'll be on YouTube watching videos about Excel.'"
John eventually won the first-place prize in the Excel category -- which was $7,000 and an Xbox.
Microsoft's VP of Worldwide Education said the event helps students "to become more employable to companies that build their businesses around the Microsoft suite." For example, the article points out, "Past winners have gone on to attend Ivy League colleges and even work at, yes, Microsoft... Delaware resident Anirudh Narayanan, 17, prepared all summer to compete in the Excel 2013 category, 'looking up obscure facts just in case I might need to know it during the test.' He's hoping the skills he honed will help him at Carnegie Mellon University, where he will begin studying economics in the fall. 'I make sure I do a minimum of five hours a week in Excel,' Anirudh said. 'Then for a while I'll be on YouTube watching videos about Excel.'"
John eventually won the first-place prize in the Excel category -- which was $7,000 and an Xbox.
Wait... today is not April 1st.
W.T.F.???
they got paid
Should my kids ever get to this, I'll disown them.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Let's have a LibreOffice championship.
LibreOffice needs improvements in its user interface. Those who compete could suggest improvements.
Just, why?!
Paging r/LateStageCapitalism
Fuck Ajit Pai
This program is, what, a quarter million a year and they get a ton of users and press out of it? Smart move.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
... Ritalin and antidepressants, and a $200 Deluxe Cubicle Decoration package.
and a shill for MS.
He's hoping the skills he honed will help him at Carnegie Mellon University, where he will begin studying economics in the fall
He'll be in for a big surprise. But maybe he'll find a special friend from the student population he will be consulting with his skills.
Goatsex
Students should be learning about standard concepts like @ functions in spreadsheets instead of proprietary crap. Ditto with Word versus learning TeX that teaches type-setting rather than Word that teaches you only how to use Word.
He'd disOWN you pardenor! He got himself a XBOX!
The Microsoft Special Olympics.
This article kills my soul.
I have a masters in Excel only 150K in loans and I need help to pay them off my part time job at starbucks does not pay for that.
Why the 2017 MS Office Championships Rock
Dead tech company walking , still. but not for long idiot heads. The chineese are about to destroy all american tech companies except google. The indians have already destroyed all tech jobs, now most are outsourced. The English are about to destroy all western credibility. The Australians are about to introduce massive spying collaborators. The Syrians are about to introduce all out war against the west.
Result = No Hope for western american companies ever for ever at all ever again ever.
if (american == !wanted)
{
printf("Make them redundant.");
}
else:
{
puts("Give them the bullet in the heads. and also make them poofs.")
}
"Past winners have gone on to attend Ivy League colleges..."
You took on volunteer work. You enrolled in AP courses. You maintained a perfect 4.4 GPA, and never missed a day of school. All in hopes of having that Ivy League college accept you, only to find your bitch ass got passed up by the kid who won a fucking Excel contest.
Ahh, no one says you're doing it wrong quite like Microsoft.
Being good at spreadsheets is not exactly something to aspire to.
It's your own fault, you should have gone for a PhD in Excel!
> Microsoft's VP of Worldwide Education said the event helps students "to become more employable to companies that build their businesses around the Microsoft suite."
Yeah. Gotta keep the line of cheap $10/hr data-entry type shit jobs filled with a steady supply of slaves.
This reminds me of the old joke about MCSE. Back in the day, MCSE was supposed to mean "Microsoft Certified Software Engineer", but people read it as "Minesweeper Certified Solitaire Expert."
wiki the Easter Egg in Excel 1995
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Would it count as child abuse? I mean it is already iffy what the Indian parents do putting their children through for the spelling bee championships. Honey Boo Boo also would make one wonder when the line gets crossed. But this is definitely over the top. Friends don't led their friends put their children through MS-Office championships....
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Congratulations to John Dumoulin, for winning in the Excel category. :-)
I'd suggest that Microsoft add another prize - the chance to talk with the person in charge of MS Office, and tell them how to improve it.
It's good to get the perspective of a user. When we write code, we know how it works, so we're not as aware that labels or error messages are unclear. And if we figured out a clever way to solve a problem regarding feature X, it's easy to let pride convince us to include feature X. We might need to hear a user tell us that feature X should be removed, because it's not useful.
Some while ago the Onion had an article about office workers who wanted to do that to a colleague who tells them they are using MS-Office "wrong" because they are not availing themselves of the latest shortcuts.
m$ office championship for specials... lol...
Do not follow that link. You will regret it..............
Augmenting any office product with VBA (hello, VB6, my old and dear fiend :D) can lead to some pretty interesting stuff.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
This is only slightly more weird than spelling bees.
..there exist people in this word that understand why the autocomplete does the things it does?
$7000 is good but an xbox seems like a bit of a consolation prize - why not a ps4?
.. Delaware resident Anirudh Narayanan, 17, prepared all summer to compete in the Excel 2013 category,
What happened to summer? when i was 17 it was: hanging out with friends in your favourite spot in the evening, playing mutiplayer games on warm evenings, going biking, swimming, and just learn whatever 1-5 evening programming project fit in into this schedule.
Let's see:
- Running a marathon is difficult and unpleasant
- There are championships in the discipline of running marathons
Ergo: Microsoft Office is difficult and unpleasant
Ergo: Microsoft Office is not user-friendly
(Disclaimer: yeah yeah, I know this is a textbook example of the fallacy of the converse. It's an attempt at humor.)
no comment
He'd disOWN you pardenor! He got himself a XBOX!
And then he would spend the reward money on XBox games and such... MS is smart!
the article points out, "Past winners have gone on to attend Ivy League colleges and even work at, yes, Microsoft...
You know who else has gone on to all of those things? People who invest their time more wisely:
"The kid put in 3500 hours of studying so that works out to $2.00/hour." -
I haven't used this garbage software in years; what are they preparing these kids for again?
Frankly, I was not aware of this contest. This article puts me in a direction that I may research more to make the apps class more interesting.
Yes, I find systems dynamics software more interesting than excel; but Excel is what I am required to teach.
Good job to the article submitter.
Disneyland and M$ Office competition in one sentence goes really well together.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti