PC Magazine notes that 2009 marks the 30th anniversary of the spreadsheet. It certainly empowered a lot of financial and accounting types, giving them unprecedented calculating power and thus enabling a whole lot of financial wrong-doing, the article notes.

"This class of people, once known for their meekness and wonkery, has become so powerful that they have managed to protect their common incompetence (see Enron, MCI, and Madoff, among other screw-up examples) by instituting Sarbanes-Oxley..." We should, of course, take this with a grain of salt. But it is interesting that much of the Sarbox industry regularly rails against companies "that still rely on spreadsheets" when it comes to compliance. Of course we all do.

For more:
- here's the commentary

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