Calc.exe is apparently cutting edge technology



  • I like reading Action Line in the Merc but:

    http://www.mercurynews.com/actionline/ci_7959846

    San Jose has an annual operating budget of nearly $1 billion.

    That's about $1,000 for every man, woman and child residing in the city.

    ([b]This is no small amount. The calculators on my iMac and Blackberry could not calculate this. I had to use pen and paper. You may remember those.[/b])

    I don't have either an iMac or a Blackberry but with ten seconds to get the population of San Jose, CA from wikipedia (929,936) I get $1075.34 from calc.exe

    Who knew it was so superior?

     

     


     



  • Should have used SwampSearch for a random result.



  • So I figured I'd run the calculation on my blackberry, and then laugh at the fool. But, I'll be damned, it only let me type in 10 million.

    Of course, he's still a fool for not just running the calculation with that and multiplying by 100... 



  • Or he could just type "1000000000 / 929936" into a google search box...or ""1000000000000000 / 929936" for that matter (it still works!)



  • @medialint said:

    San Jose has an annual operating budget of nearly $1 billion.

    That's about $1,000 for every man, woman and child residing in the city.

    ([b]This is no small amount. The calculators on my iMac and Blackberrycould not calculate this. I had to use pen and paper. You may rememberthose.[/b])

    I don't have either an iMac or a Blackberry but with ten seconds to get the population of San Jose, CA from wikipedia (929,936) I get $1075.34 from calc.exe

    Who knew it was so superior?

    Works great on my iMac calculator! 1 billion really isn't that big of a number. :)



  • Or you could ask someone over at DevShed ;)



  • @imikedaman said:

    Works great on my iMac calculator! 1 billion really isn't that big of a number. :)

    There are two calculators on Mac OS X. The actual Calculator.app can do this easily. (And it has a ridiculous number of features, too, if you bother to investigate.) But the calculator in Dashboard, which is often easier to get to, is very basic, and only goes up to 9 digits.

    The real hidden mathematical gem in Mac OS X, though, is Grapher.app, which is hidden in /Applications/Utilities for some reason. It's a descendant -- at least in spirit -- of the "Graphing Calculator" program that used to ship with Power Macs before Mac OS X, but with more features and styles and things.



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    Should have used SwampSearch for a random result.

    So is SwampSearch the new Paula here, or is this going to pass with time.... ?



  • @kaamoss said:

    @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    Should have used SwampSearch for a random result.

    So is SwampSearch the new Paula here, or is this going to pass with time.... ?

    I don't think I will ever get that burning image of failure out of my mind.



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    Should have used SwampSearch for a random result.

    Point.  Winner.



  • @kaamoss said:

    So is SwampSearch the new Paula here, or is this going to pass with time.... ?


    I already wrote <a href="http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/permalink/141396/142566/ShowThread.aspx#142566">The Bean</a> :)



  • @Benn said:

    @kaamoss said:
    So is SwampSearch the new Paula here, or is this going to pass with time.... ?


    I already wrote <a href="http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/permalink/141396/142566/ShowThread.aspx#142566">The Bean</a> :)

     



  • This entire scenario assumes that 1 Billion = 1 000 000 000, as it does in the US, but in many other countries, 1 Billion = 1 000 000 000 000.  This would change your result by precisely...<looks up engineering standards>...3 orders of magnitude.



  • @CRNewsom said:

    This entire scenario assumes that 1 Billion = 1 000 000 000, as it does in the US, but in many other countries, 1 Billion = 1 000 000 000 000.  This would change your result by precisely...<looks up engineering standards>...3 orders of magnitude.

    TRWTF



  • @CRNewsom said:

    This entire scenario assumes that 1 Billion = 1 000 000 000, as it does in the US, but in many other countries, 1 Billion = 1 000 000 000 000.  This would change your result by precisely...<looks up engineering standards>...3 orders of magnitude.

    Considering that the quote was in a US paper, referring to US (probably) dollars and regarding a US city, using a US standard (and ISO, I believe) billion is a pretty safe assumption.



  • @ChZEROHag said:

    @CRNewsom said:

    This entire scenario assumes that 1 Billion = 1 000 000 000, as it does in the US, but in many other countries, 1 Billion = 1 000 000 000 000.  This would change your result by precisely...<looks up engineering standards>...3 orders of magnitude.

    Considering that the quote was in a US paper, referring to US (probably) dollars and regarding a US city, using a US standard (and ISO, I believe) billion is a pretty safe assumption.

     I find both of them a strange way of naming numbers.  Billion being followed by trillian, quadrillion...I guess the next is pentillion?  Anyhow, the "bi" prefix should stand for two.  What are there two of in that number?  Nothing.  Let's take an illion to be three orders of magnitude....

    1 000 should be a singillion (or maybe a monillion or just an illion), 1 000 000 should be a billion, 1 000 000 000 should be a trillian, etc.  Forget thousands.



  • @vt_mruhlin said:

    @ChZEROHag said:

    @CRNewsom said:

    This entire scenario assumes that 1 Billion = 1 000 000 000, as it does in the US, but in many other countries, 1 Billion = 1 000 000 000 000.  This would change your result by precisely...<looks up engineering standards>...3 orders of magnitude.

    Considering that the quote was in a US paper, referring to US (probably) dollars and regarding a US city, using a US standard (and ISO, I believe) billion is a pretty safe assumption.

     I find both of them a strange way of naming numbers.  Billion being followed by trillian, quadrillion...I guess the next is pentillion?  Anyhow, the "bi" prefix should stand for two.  What are there two of in that number?  Nothing.  Let's take an illion to be three orders of magnitude....

    1 000 should be a singillion (or maybe a monillion or just an illion), 1 000 000 should be a billion, 1 000 000 000 should be a trillian, etc.  Forget thousands.

    There you go getting all technical.

    Feel better?



  • @vt_mruhlin said:

    1 000 should be a singillion (or maybe a monillion or just an illion), 1 000 000 should be a billion, 1 000 000 000 should be a trillian, etc.  Forget thousands.

    This is why we don't let Texans do math. 



  • @jcoehoorn said:

    Or you could ask someone over at DevShed ;)

     

    Oops my secret is out of the closet (sans-Victoria, unfortunately). Dang Big Brother Internet. ;-) 



  • @The Vicar said:

    The real hidden mathematical gem in Mac OS X, though, is Grapher.app, which is hidden in /Applications/Utilities for some reason. It's a descendant -- at least in spirit -- of the "Graphing Calculator" program that used to ship with Power Macs before Mac OS X, but with more features and styles and things.

    I hope you've all seen The Graphing Calculator Story, about the guys who originally wrote it. The video link is a Google TechTalk from 2006, and it's a great story.

    Blurb:

    It's midnight. I've been working sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. I'm not being paid. In fact, my project was canceled six months ago, so I'm evading security, sneaking into Apple Computer's main offices in the heart of Silicon Valley, doing clandestine volunteer work for an eight-billion-dollar corporation.


  • @magetoo said:

    I hope you've all seen The Graphing Calculator Story

    Are the subtitles for that video supposed to be laughably inaccurate and completely change the entire meaning of the words?



  • Hmm, I just realized there was a button to toggle them -- not sure why they were on by default. Does Google Video generate them automatically?



  • @vt_mruhlin said:

    1 000 000 should be a billion, 1 000 000 000 should be a trillian, etc.

    Leave fictional characters out of this!



  • @vt_mruhlin said:

    I find both of them a strange way of naming numbers.  Billion being followed by trillian, quadrillion...I guess the next is pentillion?  Anyhow, the "bi" prefix should stand for two.  What are there two of in that number?  Nothing.  Let's take an illion to be three orders of magnitude....

    Um, weren't you paying attention? The continental/British system of names which you quoted in your reply [i]does[/i] make sense, with a billion being a million squared (i.e. two sets of six zeros), a trillion being a million cubed (three sets of six zeros), etc.



  • @The Vicar said:

    The continental/British system of names which you quoted in your reply [i]does[/i] make sense, with a billion being a million squared (i.e. two sets of six zeros), a trillion being a million cubed (three sets of six zeros), etc.

    Last time I checked, the British system consisted of the simple linear series of million, billion, trillion, quadrillion etc. AFAIK there's no equivalent in the English language for a Dutch term like "miljard" (1000 * 1 million; 10^9).

    Sometimes provides chuckle material when, in a movie or show, the word "billion" is subtitled with "biljoen" -- which is 1000 times as much as a billion. But they often get it right. :)



  • @dhromed said:

    @The Vicar said:

    The continental/British system of names which you quoted in your reply [i]does[/i] make sense, with a billion being a million squared (i.e. two sets of six zeros), a trillion being a million cubed (three sets of six zeros), etc.

    Last time I checked, the British system consisted of the simple linear series of million, billion, trillion, quadrillion etc. AFAIK there's no equivalent in the English language for a Dutch term like "miljard" (1000 * 1 million; 10^9).

    Sometimes provides chuckle material when, in a movie or show, the word "billion" is subtitled with "biljoen" -- which is 1000 times as much as a billion. But they often get it right. :)

    Britain used to use the long scale (where milliards exist and billiards isn't just a cue sport), but officially switched to the short scale a little over 30 years ago. While "milliard" is still used in certain contexts to prevent ambiguety (after all, English is one of the few languages to use short scale, and confusion between the two scales may be harmful), its usage is rare.



  • @aythun said:

    Are the subtitles for that video supposed to be laughably inaccurate and completely change the entire meaning of the words?

    Aren't all subtitles supposed to be like that?

    Wait... There are subtitles for the talk? I saw it ages ago, and by downloading. Nothing then, as far as I remember. Strange.



  • @medialint said:


    San Jose has an annual operating budget of nearly $1 billion.


    That's about $1,000 for every man, woman and child residing in the city.

    I
    don't have either an iMac or a Blackberry but with ten seconds to get
    the population of San Jose, CA from wikipedia (929,936) I get $1075.34
    from calc.exe

    Who knew it was so superior?

    Dude, seriously.  You had to use a calculator in order to work out that a billion divided by a million is a thousand (or vice versa)?

    I didn't even have to think about it, let alone use a machine to help me.  I just looked at the numbers and it was obvious.  It's about as trivial as mental arithmetic gets.

    <shakes head sadly, walks away muttering about how they don't teach the kids anything in school these days...> 



  • Whoever wrote that does realize that given that he is running a program unable to handle large numbers, he can still use google or whatnot.

     

    Next Mac VS PC commercial:

    Mac: Hi I'm a Mac
    PC: And I'm a PC
    Mac: What are you doing there PC?
    PC: My Taxes, why?
    Mac: Oh? But that requires million-dollar calculator technology does it not?
    PC: No, just a program thats left over from the days of Windows 95: Calc...
    Mac: Oh... Um...Doh, I'll go sit in my corner.
     



  • @The Vicar said:

    @imikedaman said:

    Works great on my iMac calculator! 1 billion really isn't that big of a number. :)

    There are two calculators on Mac OS X. The actual Calculator.app can do this easily. (And it has a ridiculous number of features, too, if you bother to investigate.) But the calculator in Dashboard, which is often easier to get to, is very basic, and only goes up to 9 digits.

     

    So 999,999,999 wasn't a close enough approximation to 1 billion?



  • @dhromed said:

    Last time I checked, the British system consisted of the simple linear series of million, billion, trillion, quadrillion etc. AFAIK there's no equivalent in the English language for a Dutch term like "miljard" (1000 * 1 million; 10^9).

    There is such a term, as you would know if you had ever read much British text having to do with numbers. It's "thousand million", so that the names repeat each time: ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand, million, ten million, hundred million, thousand million, ten thousand million, hundred thousand million, billion, etc.

    In the American system, those extra names are simply unnecessary: a continental/British thousand million is an American billion.



  • @dlikhten said:

    Whoever wrote that does realize that given that he is running a program unable to handle large numbers, he can still use google or whatnot.

     

    Next Mac VS PC commercial:

    Mac: Hi I'm a Mac
    PC: And I'm a PC
    Mac: What are you doing there PC?
    PC: My Taxes, why?
    Mac: Oh? But that requires million-dollar calculator technology does it not?
    PC: No, just a program thats left over from the days of Windows 95: Calc...
    Mac: Oh... Um...Doh, I'll go sit in my corner.

    Every time I see a PC user mock those commercials on this board, my opinion of both PCs and Windows users drops another notch. It's like watching Republicans discuss Iraq.



  • @The Vicar said:

    Every time I see a PC user mock those commercials on this board, my opinion of both PCs and Windows users drops another notch. It's like watching Republicans discuss Iraq.

    Spoken like a true elitist. 



  • @The Vicar said:

    @dlikhten said:

    Whoever wrote that does realize that given that he is running a program unable to handle large numbers, he can still use google or whatnot.

     

    Next Mac VS PC commercial:

    Mac: Hi I'm a Mac
    PC: And I'm a PC
    Mac: What are you doing there PC?
    PC: My Taxes, why?
    Mac: Oh? But that requires million-dollar calculator technology does it not?
    PC: No, just a program thats left over from the days of Windows 95: Calc...
    Mac: Oh... Um...Doh, I'll go sit in my corner.

    Every time I see a PC user mock those commercials on this board, my opinion of both PCs and Windows users drops another notch. It's like watching Republicans discuss Iraq.

    That's funny, every time I see one of those Apple ads, my opinion of Apple and it's users drops another notch.



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    That's funny, every time I see one of those Apple ads, my opinion of Apple and it's users drops another notch.

    And every time I see MS- and Apple-fanboys fight like that I think "WTF? Why would anyone choose Win over Mac or the other way round when Linux is way better?"

    (I admit, I'm using Win at the moment, but... you know...) 



  • @derula said:

    @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    That's funny, every time I see one of those Apple ads, my opinion of Apple and it's users drops another notch.

    And every time I see MS- and Apple-fanboys fight like that I think "WTF? Why would anyone choose Win over Mac or the other way round when Linux is way better?"

    (I admit, I'm using Win at the moment, but... you know...) 

    Linux is great.... but you should consider yourself lucky if you could go the rest of your life only losing Linux. Windows is a part of many peoples personal and corporate lives. 

    Argue all you want, but it is here to stay. Sure it has many things we all don't like. But it is what it is. No reason to spread FUD like the Apple commercials do. 

    No OS is perfect, not Windows, not Apple, not Linux. But they all serve different roles, for different people, so the comparison is not 100% fair either. It is a personal choice.

     



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    Argue all you want, but it is here to stay.

    People said that about win3.1, win98, win2k and winxp, and now some of them are even insane enough to say it about vista. Only the ones talking about win98 were correct and probably only by chance.

    Windows does not last. Microsoft's business model is incompatible with making products that last, because they need to sell you a new one every three to five years (while preaching each time about how it is "here to stay", to con you into rebuying it).



  • @asuffield said:

    they need to sell you a new one every three to five years.

    Be fair.  How many OSes has Apple released since XP came out? 

    Fedora has come out with even more, but alas, they don't charge for theirs. 
     



  • @asuffield said:

    @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    Argue all you want, but it is here to stay.

    People said that about win3.1, win98, win2k and winxp, and now some of them are even insane enough to say it about vista. Only the ones talking about win98 were correct and probably only by chance.

    Windows does not last. Microsoft's business model is incompatible with making products that last, because they need to sell you a new one every three to five years (while preaching each time about how it is "here to stay", to con you into rebuying it).

    Yes, that would be the way to make money.. and they are a business...

    Just because they came out with new version of a product does not mean the product has disappeared. What OS has stuck around and made no advances and is still viable?



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    What OS has stuck around and made no advances and is still viable?

    I'm temped to say Unix, but that's just non-sysadminy me.



  • Actually, Windows Calc was significantly improved in Windows 2000 to handle any number accurately, instead of using IEEE floating point approximation like its predecesors:
    http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/05/25/141253.aspx



  • @dhromed said:

    @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    What OS has stuck around and made no advances and is still viable?

    I'm temped to say Unix, but that's just non-sysadminy me.

    Indeed, I probably should have specified Desktop OS, but whatever. I am sure there will be discrepancy about the definition of 'viable' as well.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    Be fair.  How many OSes has Apple released since XP came out? 

    It is no secret that Apple's business strategy is to convince you that having a milking machine attached to your wallet is cool. 



  • @asuffield said:

    @belgariontheking said:

    Be fair.  How many OSes has Apple released since XP came out? 

    It is no secret that Apple's business strategy is to convince you that having a milking machine attached to your wallet is cool. 

    Again, I wonder if that is why they are a successful business? I don't really understand what you are suggesting Apple or MS's business model should look like instead...



  • @asuffield said:

    @belgariontheking said:

    Be fair.  How many OSes has Apple released since XP came out? 

    It is no secret that Apple's business strategy is to convince you that having a milking machine attached to your wallet is cool. 

    Don't they release a new model of iPod more frequently than ubuntu releases a new version?



  • @Zylon said:

    @vt_mruhlin said:

    1 000 should be a singillion (or maybe a monillion or just an illion), 1 000 000 should be a billion, 1 000 000 000 should be a trillian, etc.  Forget thousands.

    This is why we don't let Texans do math. 

    Alabama Pi = 3 



  • @vt_mruhlin said:

     I find both of them a strange way of naming numbers.  Billion being followed by trillian, quadrillion...I guess the next is pentillion?  Anyhow, the "bi" prefix should stand for two.  What are there two of in that number?  Nothing.  Let's take an illion to be three orders of magnitude....

    1 000 should be a singillion (or maybe a monillion or just an illion), 1 000 000 should be a billion, 1 000 000 000 should be a trillian, etc.  Forget thousands.

    You can pretty easily work backwards using some very basic math.

    1 million = 1000 * 10^3
    1 billion = 1000 * 10^(2*3)
    1 trillion = 1000 * 10^(3*3)
    1 quadrillion = 1000 * 10^(4*3)

    So yes, there is "two of" something and "three of" something if you represent the series correctly.  It makes perfect sense - just start with 1000 as the base, and use multiples of 3 as the exponent.



  • @asuffield said:

    @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    Argue all you want, but it is here to stay.

    People said that about win3.1, win98, win2k and winxp, and now some of them are even insane enough to say it about vista. Only the ones talking about win98 were correct and probably only by chance.

    Windows does not last. Microsoft's business model is incompatible with making products that last, because they need to sell you a new one every three to five years (while preaching each time about how it is "here to stay", to con you into rebuying it).

    So whenever a company releases a new version of a product, and manages to get widespread adoption of the new version, it means that the previous version simply died?

    If so, haven't Linux, X-Windows, and all of the popular window managers died thousands of times over?  And OS X can't seem to "last" for more than, what, 6 months?

    Considering that [B]win[/B]3.1, [B]win[/B]98, [B]win[/B]NT, [B]win[/B]2k, [B]win[/B]xp, and [B]windows[/B] Vista all carry the brand name [B]Windows[/B], and that each new version can and usually does use the same applications and document formats, I think that's plenty of proof that Windows [B]is[/B] here to stay.  Your logic makes about as much sense as saying that the telephone won't last because the 5.8 GHz cordless phones today aren't quite the same as the rotary-dial phones we had 70 years ago.  Or that Intel x86 won't survive because the 8088, 286, 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium IV, and Core Duo all have slightly different architecture and instruction sets.  Would you have said a few years ago, based on the continuous stream of new MP3 encoding methods at the time, that MP3 wasn't here to stay?

    Technology improves.  Of course there are differences between versions, but I don't seem to recall any major upgrades to Betamax or cassette tapes  Nobody still buys Microsoft Bob or OS/2, and they don't have any successors that are similar enough in design to be considered the same product.  Those products bit the dust.  They disappeared from the market.  Windows didn't, and it's very unlikely that it will any time soon, now matter how much you'd like that to be the case.  If a product never improves, that's usually a strong indicator that it [B]isn't[/B] going to survive very long.

    I'm curious - what exactly is Microsoft's "business model"?  Are there any software companies that have different business models?  Are there any businesses at all, period, that have different models?  Or do you just believe that they should work for free?

    <hints id="hah_hints"></hints>



  • @Aaron said:

    @asuffield said:
    @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    Argue all you want, but it is here to stay.

    People said that about win3.1, win98, win2k and winxp, and now some of them are even insane enough to say it about vista. Only the ones talking about win98 were correct and probably only by chance.

    Windows does not last. Microsoft's business model is incompatible with making products that last, because they need to sell you a new one every three to five years (while preaching each time about how it is "here to stay", to con you into rebuying it).

    So whenever a company releases a new version of a product, and manages to get widespread adoption of the new version, it means that the previous version simply died?

    If so, haven't Linux, X-Windows, and all of the popular window managers died thousands of times over?  And OS X can't seem to "last" for more than, what, 6 months?

    Considering that [B]win[/B]3.1, [B]win[/B]98, [B]win[/B]NT, [B]win[/B]2k, [B]win[/B]xp, and [B]windows[/B] Vista all carry the brand name [B]Windows[/B], and that each new version can and usually does use the same applications and document formats, I think that's plenty of proof that Windows [B]is[/B] here to stay.  Your logic makes about as much sense as saying that the telephone won't last because the 5.8 GHz cordless phones today aren't quite the same as the rotary-dial phones we had 70 years ago.  Or that Intel x86 won't survive because the 8088, 286, 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium IV, and Core Duo all have slightly different architecture and instruction sets.  Would you have said a few years ago, based on the continuous stream of new MP3 encoding methods at the time, that MP3 wasn't here to stay?

    Technology improves.  Of course there are differences between versions, but I don't seem to recall any major upgrades to Betamax or cassette tapes  Nobody still buys Microsoft Bob or OS/2, and they don't have any successors that are similar enough in design to be considered the same product.  Those products bit the dust.  They disappeared from the market.  Windows didn't, and it's very unlikely that it will any time soon, now matter how much you'd like that to be the case.  If a product never improves, that's usually a strong indicator that it [B]isn't[/B] going to survive very long.

    I'm curious - what exactly is Microsoft's "business model"?  Are there any software companies that have different business models?  Are there any businesses at all, period, that have different models?  Or do you just believe that they should work for free?

    <hints id="hah_hints"></hints>

    Good reply. I wasn't going to waste my time. I have asked asuffield several times to elaborate and back up similar rhetoric he spews. He ignores it, and calls me a shill/Microsoft employee.

    Sounds to me that he seems to think that Microsoft would be a better company if they simply gave away their product, or just stayed on Windows 3.x. 



  • @Aaron said:

    Considering that [B]win[/B]3.1, [B]win[/B]98, [B]win[/B]NT, [B]win[/B]2k, [B]win[/B]xp, and [B]windows[/B] Vista all carry the brand name [B]Windows[/B]

    Well that was a pretty dumb thing to say.

    I carefully picked out versions which were more or less complete rewrite of most or all of the code.

    Or that Intel x86 won't survive

    It's dead. AMD64 killed it.

     


    Oh, and we all know whose sock puppet you are.


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