Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> ____/ [H]omer on Sunday 30 September 2007 20:59 : \____
>
>> Verily I say unto thee, that nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx spake thusly:
>>
>>> I recall some time back that Microsoft had defined pi to be 3.14
>>> exactly, or something like that. Do you remember the details?
>>
>> Actually they just rounded it up to 100,000, like they do with
>> everything else.
>
> Well, the worst type of errors are those which are hard to spot (the same goes
> for viruses), so making pi 100,000 would at least raise suspicion and have the
> problem corrected. I've read feedback from someone who is nervous now. S/he
> backed up all the spreadsheets, but mistakes that were already done could cost
> a lot of money (in some cases -- life). Confidence in Excel was lost because
> when one bug is identified, there are likely to be more which are yet to be
> found.
>
There're bound to be more - proprietary software just hides them very
very well indeed. Open-source is far safer, particularly where mission
or life-critical systems are concerned.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
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