Not only was there discrepancies with the 'signed' zero, but IBM used to do a core dump and bring production to a screeching halt because of a 'divide by zero' error.....
> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Wolfgang Bornath > Sent: Friday, September 06, 2002 6:00 AM > To: Expert List > Subject: Re: [expert] a stooooooooopid question > > > On Fri, Sep 06, 2002 at 00:43 -0700, James Sparenberg wrote: > > yes I remember.... running a cobol program that proved taht 2+2=4 and > > listening to some guy begging people for 30 seconds of computer time so > > he could finish his current class project (seems his last one had an > > endless loop and he ate up 2 minutes of time before someone caught > > it..) The large (I think it was 16 inch X 30 inch) green and white > > striped (so you could read across lines) paper and a red pen... This is > > called debugging. Then after 2 days of hair pulling and no sleep finding > > out that on the Honeywell -1 + 1 = -0 and 1 - 1 =0 Now the computer > > knows that -0 = 0 but if your test reads > > > > if x=0 > > do > > a > > else > > b > > > > and you have a -0 result... it will do b from now until forever. Even > > if you know it should be a. I decided at that point to go > > systems....However the Amiga brought me back to really having fun with > > computers..... That and BBSs. > > That time produced more stories of this kind than you can tell in a > lifetime > > wobo > -- > "... and anyway, an html can't carry a virus." (Aug 2001, Usenet) > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] ICQ: #128612867 GPG-ID: A69882EE > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > ISDN4LINUX-FAQ -- Deutsch: http://www.wolf-b.de/i4l/i4lfaq-de.html > >
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