posted 09-02-2001 08:02            

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With nothing but a plan and moon, a simple math change to make the moon smaller caused it to flip upside down. I've seen this error since the 80s in Windows and it only seems to be getting more frequent and worse. In 1991 I explained in e-mail to Bill Gates how my fonts were flipping upside down in Excel on my 386 which didn't have a math co-processor... When you see numbers going negative in a spread sheet it's very scary. In fact, I had a math error occur in FrontPage when I was adding these graphics. :-)

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posted 09-02-2001 17:14            

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How many Tobacco executives got cancer? How many computer programmers have carpool tunnel syndrome? I rest my point!

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heh i'm sure glad that I don't have carpool tunnel syndrome.

posted 09-05-2001 04:43         

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Originally posted by LonMabonJovi:
http://www.grade-a.com/donalbert/quotes.html

[b]The New Number:
There's a new number. I actually discovered this new number back in 1960 and this is how I was able to detect what has since been called the "Quasars" or" Quasi-Stellar Sources". Basically, if you take a blank sheet of paper and put a zero on it, you at least have nothing. But before you put the zero on that blank sheet of paper, not only is the blank sheet of paper before the zero, it is less than the zero. And this is what I was able to prove... The blank sheet of paper is not only before the zero, but less than zero; it's before you put positive, negative, zero, one, or anything on that paper --that blank sheet of paper is not only before them, it is less than them. So I called the new number "blank".[/B]

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I discovered this concept in the mid 80's after accidentally ingesting the WHOLE piece
of 4-way blotter. Years later I discovered the term was already in use as "NULL". Go figure.

posted 09-05-2001 06:05            

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Originally posted by marcel:
Years later I discovered the term was already in use as "NULL". Go figure.

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Dammit Marcel, you beat me to the punch.

From what I understand, the Japanese have been using the concept of "null" for several hundred years - the word for it being "mu."

posted 09-05-2001 22:37            

This comes from an old zen koan, or story, where one of the masters, when faced with a cryptic question like "Does a dog have the buddha nature" would try (like so many other zen masters) to jerk the questioner out of his path of thought. This guy did it by shouting "MU"!

The problem is, as far as I remember from a book somewhere, people aren't quite sure what he meant. There is a character which is pronounced "mu" (like a shortened "moo", not like "mew"), meaning "not", or "un-"... as in "mu" un- + "shoku" work = "mushoku" jobless. Or "mu" not + "jin" person + "to-" island = "mujinto-" uninhabited island.

But it doesn't exist as a lone word, just as you wouldn't answer a question by saying "Un!" So, as far as I remember, people are divided as to whether the zen master was referring to the character, or simply shouting.

Personally, I think the correct answer to such questions is like the old joke:

Q: How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Fish!

-fen

edit- misleading typo