From: WatsonR@IntelligenCIA.com   
      
   "J French"  wrote in message   
   news:4270a3a2.265496530@news.btclick.com...   
      
   > I am afraid I don't fully agree with that   
   > - the problem is down to the Institute of Electrical & Electronic   
   > Engineers   
   >   
   > The problem is that IEEE is simply 'faulty'   
   > - some numbers can only be stored as approximations   
   >   
      
   Agree with you a 100% on that buddy. MS implemention is my issue..   
      
   Ever since Kahan brought his graduate students, the 754 floating point   
   standard became a faulty committee . Only one representative from the   
   computing field was there. When the standard was ratified, exactly two   
   companies produced floating point arithmetic chips that attached to   
   microprocessor CPU chips. Intel sold the 8087 and National Semiconductor   
   sold a chip for the NS32 processors.   
      
   The supposedly target audience had ignored it for over 20 years. It has   
   never been used by Cray, makers of the premier scientific computers. It has   
   never been used by IBM mainframes, which at the time did a great deal of   
   scientific computing. It was never used by CDC. It was never used by DEC. No   
   RISC microprocessor has ever implemented IEEE 754 floating point. Since the   
   RISC processors were always by far the leaders in floating point   
   performance, the fact that they for twenty years never implemented the   
   standard is telling. (They generally use the IEEE format, and there is   
   usually a software-fixup technique that allows them to claim complete   
   conformance!) No one uses them in that mode, however. It's way too slow.   
      
   In the early 80's, when Apple developped SANE (Standard Apple Numeric   
   Environment) it supports all the requirements of the IEEE standard and yet   
   went beyond it to "shield" the users from the deficiencies by developing   
   libraries for high quality engineering, scientific, financial and accounting   
   applications.   
      
   MS could have done the same thing or stick to the BCD and improve on it.   
      
   To have a sleuth of non-working functions and come back to the end user by   
   explaining that's because of the IEEE standard and how numbers are   
   manipukated internally is a pisspoor excuse.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)