XPost: rec.arts.comics.strips   
   From: psperson@old.netcom.invalid   
      
   On Tue, 17 Feb 2026 09:31:33 -0500 (EST), kludge@panix.com (Scott   
   Dorsey) wrote:   
      
   >Thomas Koenig   wrote:   
   >>Scott Dorsey  schrieb:   
   >>> Cryptoengineer   wrote:   
   >>>>DEC used to make a popular line of minicomputers under the name 'VAX'.   
   >>>>That name is  also used by a brand of vacuum cleaners in the UK, but   
   >>>>it did not lead to any legal issues when DEC started to sell Vaxen in   
   >>>>Britain.   
   >>>   
   >>> They are extremely similar.  They both have pipes and filters.  And    
   >>> the DEC floating point really sucks.   
   >>   
   >>It was _far_ better than IBM's hex format.  I think DEC pioneered   
   >>the hidden bit.   
   >   
   >HFP was even more terrible, it's true.  The Honeywell scheme with    
   >36 bits of mantissa, 8 bits of exponent, and 28 bits of useless waste    
   >was even worse than that.  But ignoring underflow should be a big red flag.   
      
   All of which, I suspect, led to the eventual standardization of how   
   "floating point" is implemented.   
      
   Of course, if you need /accuracy/, floating point is not acceptable.   
   For using really large numbers that fixed point can't handle, it will   
   do until something better comes along   
      
   Imagine if your checking account were maintained using floating point   
   ...   
      
   Not that integer/fixed point doesn't have a few problems of its own.   
   But they are problems with how to write the code, not the accuracy of   
   the results.   
   --    
   "Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,   
   Who evil spoke of everyone but God,   
   Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)