____/ High Plains Thumper on Tuesday 25 September 2007 11:57 : \____
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>> ____/ [H]omer on Tuesday 25 September 2007 11:18 : \____
>>
>>> Verily I say unto thee, that Peter Köhlmann spake thusly:
>>>
>>> http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.excel/
>>> browse_thread/thread/2bcad1a1a4861879/2f8806d5400dfe22?
>>> hl=en#2f8806d5400dfe22>
>
> or http://tinyurl.com/2lgg7w
>
>>>> Now we need the special rule in OOXML to account for this
>>>> Excel behaviour
>>>
>>> "STATUS Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the
>>> Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.
>>> We are researching this problem ... "
>>>
>>> http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q161234
>>>
>>> Goes back as far as Excel 5.0.
>>>
>>> Maybe they could enlist the help of some 1st grade maths
>>> students.
>>>
>>> ROTFLMAO!!!
>>
>> It's one among the many bugs, some of them are _by design_,
>> e.g. getting the function floor() wrong. As Rob Weir said,
>> this can cost /lives/.
>
> Not just lives, but budgets.
>
> Interesting, I'll have to check it out. I am sure any decent
> level management will not be happy if they hear such.
>
> After all, there are people who maintain multimillion quid
> budgets using it. I guess an error as large as the EU fines owed
> by Microsoft are no big deal. Bill must be laughing all the way
> with money falling out of his pockets.
>
> Has any one published the same equations entered into OpenOffice?
> I'd like to see the results. :-)
Lives are more important than money, but I fail to grasp how a coding mistake
can corrupt maths. A processor does computation. It handles maths. How a
program subvert maths on a CPU is beyond me...
I guess it's a {binary condition}^TM when you have 5 coders working in cubicle
on a bunch of crucial code _in isolation_.
If I were an accountant, I'd ditch MSO and definitely avoid MSO07. Such bugs
are unacceptable. Maths of the bread and butter of spreadsheets.
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | Wintendo O/S: which virus do fancy today?
http://Schestowitz.com | Free as in Free Beer | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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