Moving Decimal Bug Loses Money

mario.m7 writes "Poste Italiane, the Italian postal service, suffered yesterday from an abnormal computation in ATM and credit card operations, since the decimal comma was not taken into account. The whole sum was therefore multiplied by 100, resulting in a 115,00 Euro transaction being debited as 11.500 Euro! Thousands of accounts are deep in the red and locked (link pumped through translator), so that no more operations are possible. Poste Italiane is gradually recovering the problem, fixing the error and re-crediting the sum debited in excess. Consumer associations have offered support to clients in case this lasts longer and causes damage."

Comments

This just in

[Anonymous Coward]

Small errors, such as TYPOS can cause big problems.

You mean 11,500 Euro

[Chrisq]

You mean 11,500 Euro as 11.500 Euro.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[MadMatr07]

You know, I really never understood the decimal point being a comma. But then again, I'm an American.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Razalhague]

No, I think he means 115 Euro as 11500 Euro (thousands separators are more trouble than they're worth).

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[ls671]

I am not American, but I find the comma used as decimal point stupid and silly although I should be using it in my native locale.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[camcorder]

Nobody makes decimal point a comma. Decimal point is always a point. It's just that there's not term like decimal point in places where comma is used as "decimal separator".

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Kartoffel]

It's still a decimal point. Europeans just put a little tail on it to be fancy.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[auric_dude]

Could be worse, could have still been using Italian Lira then the numbers would be really big http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_lira#Banknotes

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[jhol13]

Thankfully many applications, especially web based, allow both comma and period. Not all - and then there is CSV ...

Situation was worse some time ago in Firefox/Linux, it made some weird character from the numerical keyboard comma (Finnish keyboard). That made banking annoying.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[dzfoo]

Perhaps if it were called a "decimal comma" it'll make more sense.

        -dZ.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they do mean 115,00 as 11.500[,00] ...

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not American, and I don't understand the comma as decimal separator on computers at all. 80-90% of the software assumes points, and changing your localization to using comma screws up a lot. (Some version of excel manages to export a CSV with "1.24,2.13" as "1,24,2,13")

However, I think the origin is in writing. If you write numbers then the point is hard to write, bullpens don't leave any ink unless moved, so a quick dash downwards leaves a mark. Pencils work a bit better, but also don't leave an easy point. Also, in math the point can mean multiply, so using commas then makes it easier to see the difference.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

That does not make sense.
Presuming the amount was 115,00 and somebody (stupidly) padded the number with zeroes it would result in 115,000 -> 115 000 Euro if we interpret the comma as a kilo seperator.
But there is not really a way that you can convert 115,00 to 11 500; not without _moving_ the seperator (or omitting it completely) and that is beyond stupidity.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Sloppy]

You know, I really never understood the decimal point being a comma.

Perhaps you're biased by the very phrase "decimal point." If they were called "decimal commas" then using a comma might seem less stupid to you.

Some Martian is still trying to figure out the weird punctuation that Earthlings use to represent a trinary expoinfergraph; why not the usual squarglex sign? Stupid earthlings.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[haruharaharu]

You know, I really never understood the decimal point being a comma. But then again, I'm an American.

Yeah, why can't everyone do it like I do it?

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[plopez]

It's arbitrary. One is neither better or worse than the other. When I was an undergrad I read a number of text books and papers in some Math journals. It got to the point where I thought I could tell the difference between those published on the east coast of the US, The west coast of the US and Europe just by the symbols they used to express the same concepts. E.g. Berkley vs. Princeton vs. Cambridge.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[mea37]

You're letting the punctuation confuse you. The computer doesn't use punctuation to represent the number.

The error was essentially that a number of Euro cents was interpreted as a number of Euro.

So if someone entered 11500 euro cents (115.00 Euro using American punctuation, 115,00 using European punctuation - which seems fair since we're counting Euros), and the display showed them that this is what they had entered, but the computer interpreted it as 11500 euros (11,500 using American punctuation, 11.500 using European). Just as TFS says.

"without _moving_ the seperator (or omitting it completely)" ... which is exactly what the summary says happened. Hell, did you even read the headline?

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh for real. Was over there from 94 to 02 and 1,000,000 Lira was like $600.00 (US) at one point. At least I can say I was a millionaire at one point in my life. Now I would be luck to see $600.00 again. LOL!

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope.

The whole sum was therefore multiplied by 100, resulting in a 115,00 Euro transaction being debited as 11.500 Euro!

115,00 is 115 euros. 11.500 is 11500 euros.

115 * 100 = 11500

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see comma is the separator for main clause and subordinate clause; main and non-main part a whole part and a fractional part. It looks illogical to use dot as a separator for that purpose, especially knowing it comes from typographical reasons. Then again, English is full of inconsitencies and stones and miles are as good as grams and meters.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Slayer]

+1 on that! I've spent countless hours fixing scripts which mistreated decimal numbers created in different locale settings. And I've spent way too much time vainly trying to convince open office to treat 3.1415927 as a number and not as text without having to change the . to a ,

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like the "é" people add at the end of the name of an item so as to charge an extra 5%

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[this great guy]

You are wrong (1000x difference between your numbers -- the summary said 100x).

Also many other posters are wrong when saying that European use dots to separate thousands. Some countries may do it, but precisely because of these different and confusing conventions, French schools teach students to use spaces to separate thousands, eg. 11 500 Euro, 115 000 Euro, 1 150 000 Euros.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you should read "resulting in a 115.00 Euro transaction being debited as 11,500 Euro!".
Many European countries use the point and comma in the opposite way.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[FrigBot]

French schools teach students to use spaces to separate thousands, eg. 11 500 Euro, 115 000 Euro, 1 150 000 Euros.

Yes and so do Canadian schools. I had a math teacher in grade 8 who taught us that if you put commas in your numbers to separate thousands it will confuse computers and people from other locales who are interpreting your documents. Since then I've always used spaces. The "metric" way is to use spaces. Unfortunately, most people don't care about this little detail and it can be confusing for people from other countries when they try to interpret documents with numbers written incorrectly.

The problem is still with the lack of a worldwide standard. This business of using commas to denote decimals is seriously misguided, IMHO, but maybe that's just a bit of North-Americo-centricity I'm expressing. I think one group needs to change to adopt the other's convention. And I think it should be the Europeans who change, because using points to denote decimals fits better with the use of points in written language. This is hard to explain, but you know what I'm getting at.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

115,00 Euro, Parsed as 11500 (comma was not recognised as a decimal point), treated as 11 500 Euro. Pain.

See, I used SI "thousands separator should be a space" there ;-)

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[sbeckstead]

Also, in math the point can mean multiply
Yes it means that everything left of the "point" is multiplied by factors of ten increasing as you move left. What's different about that?

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Lord Ender]

Yeah, why can't everyone do it like I do it?

That's a bit naive of you. A better question is: why can't everyone do it the same way? Having a universal standard like this would have many advantages, while having multiple differing formats has only disadvantages.

So a reasonable person is left with the conclusion: doing it the same way everywhere is better. The question naturally follows: which would make a better standard?

The answer to this is: the English way. Why? Because when writing in any language, multiple commas may be used indicating the continuation of the sentence, just as they may be used indicating the continuation of an integer in English number notation. Furthermore, in any language, a period is used to indicate the end of a sentence, similarly to how they are used in English number notation to indicate the end of the integer.

The English way of writing numbers is simply superior, as it is consistent with the way punctuation is used in all languages.

To illustrate my point. I leave you with this bizzare. confusing continental-style punctuation use,

Silly. n'est-ce pas?

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[digitig]

Yes and so do Canadian schools.

Anybody working in an international environment learns to do it PDQ. Here in the UK we use commas as thousands separators, but I can't remember when I last did that: I do enough business with continental Europe that I use spaces instinctively.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[digitig]

(115.00 Euro using American punctuation, 115,00 using continental European punctuation - which seems fair since we're counting Euros)

Fixed that for ya! (UK is in Europe, but we use commas as thousands separators, full stops -- what you might call periods -- as radix points).

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that would make it better. 22330,000 should be understood as a decimal separator, while 22,330,000 should be easily recognized as thousands separators. It's only ambiguous between 1,000 and 999,999.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Vortran]

If someone is using a comma as a decimal point, what is used for a comma? Does such a person simply eschew the use of commas to separate thousands?

I'm not nearly as concerned WHAT the standard is, just that there would be a single standard and everyone would follow it for stuff like this, and for the exact reason we see here. Sometimes a single standard is a good idea. In this case, I believe it would be an especially good idea.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[tool462]

Yeah. IP addresses are wrong too. So are revision numbers. And URLs. There is NO precedent for multiple dots in a single item, and a sentence is the most natural analogy for a number.

If you insist on equating numbers with language, then a single number most closely matches a single word. In this case, you have exactly one choice for in-word punctuation: '

I propose:
PI ~= 3'14
1/4 = 0'25

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Lord Ender]

Here's where you're confused: I did not say the English way is the "perfect" way. I said it is superior to the only competing standard. And I gave support for that statement.

You offer no refutation to that in your post.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[haruharaharu]

ink dots on fountain written text. It's far easier to be sure about a comma rather than some stupid splatter. Regardless, people will disagree with you, so we still have the same problem.

Part of the reason is there isn't a compelling argument either way - yours is ok, but not really gripping. But what did you expect? It's commas.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Undead NDR]

Could be worse, could have still been using Italian Lira then the numbers would be really big

OTOH, back then we had no need for cents and decimal separators.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[tool462]

No, you offered a mnemonic device as a proof of superiority.

There are plenty of other competing standards.

123 456.00 (space as thousands, dot or comma as decimal)
123456.00 (no thousands marker, dot or comma as decimal)

If you only have one marker, there's no ambiguity.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Neil Hodges]

If it's as GP said, then it's everything to the left multiplied by everything to the right, thus anything "1.000" and greater is equivalent to zero.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

You are partly right. A standard is better. Using SI (metric) yet?

Then again I disagree about commas and periods. In Finland we use empty spaces between words and commas to separate parts of independent clauses from dependent clause. As you can see that makes sense.

BTW. from wikipedias SI article:
Spaces may be used as a thousands separator (1 000 000) in contrast to commas or periods (1,000,000 or 1.000.000)

and

The 10th resolution of CGPM in 2003 declared that "the symbol for the decimal marker shall be either the point on the line or the comma on the line."

Therefore I declare anyone to need to start using empty space as thousand separator and comma as decimal marker.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[paulatz]

Change the locale setting of OpenOffice; if you are Italian you can change it to Swiss Italian.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Lord Ender]

Hi! Thanks for the input; I was not aware of the Finnish system. However, it seems this system is ambiguous. If several numbers are used in a row, how could you distinguish where one number starts and the other stops? And using "point or comma" sort of defeats the purpose of having a standard in the first place...

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Lord Ender]

The best standard need not be "compelling," it need only be best.

I'm not sure whether one mark would have been less accidental than another when using quill pens, but I don't think the answer is even relevant in the digital age, anyway.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, not a lot of sarcasm where you are from, eh?

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[jonbryce]

In Europe, the , is used as the decimal point and . as the thousands separator. In English speaking countries including Britain and Ireland , is used as the thousands separator and . as the decimal point.

I think it actually makes sense to use the larger more noticeable symbol for something that is important and means something and the smaller less visible one for presentational purposes.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[haruharaharu]

if you want to supercede other standards, you have to be compelling. As for this, who the hell cares?

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[jonbryce]

The Irish would write it as €115.00 and they use the Euro as their currency.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[ivucica]

I've located a bug in Opera involving decimal comma/point handling; partially they took native locale into account, partially they don't. I reported the bug, and on the newsgroup got an astonished response from a dev. I've just checked, and they've fixed it. A pretty funny bug.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[ivucica]

It's also like the people that spell "voilá" as "viola". Despite not knowing another word of French, it annoys me horribly.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

Cus they're hippies.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[ivucica]

In Croatia, we literally inverse the use of decimal points and thousand's commas. Our expression is decimalni zarez.. In writing, I find neither strange, but in computing, I'd love if there were just one way of writing things. I prefer the point system.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer to this is: the English way. Why? Because when writing in any language, multiple commas may be used indicating the continuation of the sentence, just as they may be used indicating the continuation of an integer in English number notation. Furthermore, in any language, a period is used to indicate the end of a sentence, similarly to how they are used in English number notation to indicate the end of the integer.

The English way of writing numbers is simply superior, as it is consistent with the way punctuation is used in all languages.

To illustrate my point. I leave you with this bizzare. confusing continental-style punctuation use,

Silly. n'est-ce pas?

Sounds more like anglo-saxon chauvinism to me.

The most important sign in a number is the separator between integer and fraction parts.

The separator creating groups of 3 digits each is meant to make the number more readable, but does not affect the number itself.

A comma is more visible than a period, thus is better to be used to separate the integer part from the fraction part.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I really never understood the decimal point being a comma. But then again, I'm an American.

I never understood why you keep counting in feet and gallons. But then again, I'm neither American nor Babylonian.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Wilbur1602]

Yeah, why can't everyone do it like I do it?

That's a bit naive of you. A better question is: why can't everyone do it the same way?

Ok, now that that the Americans have Obama in charge, I'm sure they'll be happy to convert to whatever you want in the name of kissing international ass. What the heck, they'll probably even pay for it. Maybe Obama can get another Nobel prize.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[julien dot]

I hope you realize you still got the spelling wrong... it is "voilà" not "voilá".

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[ivucica]

Whoops. Wrong key pressed. Thanks.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, a decimal point-cedilla, as we call it when we're with intelligent people, such as ourselves.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[AK Marc]

So a reasonable person is left with the conclusion: doing it the same way everywhere is better. The question naturally follows: which would make a better standard?

I was under the impression there is an international standard (ISO maybe?), but that it is seldom used. You use spaces for legibility and either a comma or period for the decimal mark. One million = 1 000 000.00 or 1 000 000,00. When done like that, it's obvious what the numbers are. However, when the agreement isn't made beforehand, then you will run into the problem like here where 15.000 or 15,000 could be confusing.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Aloisius]

Spaces are awful for one simple reason - they allow numbers to break at the end of of the screen and wrap onto the next line. In fact, on my screen, your one million example looked like 1000 until I realized there were some more 0's on the next line.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[MichaelSmith]

So this bit of code
proc_call(1.2,3.4,5.6)
Should be
proc_call(1,2.3,4.5,6) ...on the continent, right? Or in Java:
System,println(1,2);

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[selven]

That's all good, until the thousand separator comes into the picture. Its purpose is to split up a large number into small bites, just like a comma does with a sentence. So it would be much more logical to use a comma as a thousand separator. As for the period at the end of the sentence, I find it fades in comparison to the much more prominent indicator, which is the big letter that comes at the start of the next one. So the period isn't that significant, and I don't see much of a problem with using it to separate decimals.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[caluml]

A better question is: why can't everyone do it the same way?

When America starts using sane date formats, then we'll talk.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the best suggestion I've seen in discussion (with embellishment) has been to scrap everyone's current method and start using the ' symbol for a thousands place separator, the colon for separator between whole numbers and fractions, and semicolon for different sets of numbers. No ambiguity, particularly as virtually no one uses them correctly currently.

1'345:50; 1'234'234:099483; 1:0;

YAH!

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Lunzo]

Use a non-breaking space character then, instead of a regular space.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Golddess]

Except that across the pond they don't use a comma as a kilo separator, but instead use it as a decimal separator.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Golddess]

Erm, no? Whether you're using a comma or a period as the decimal, one of your values has a three-digit cents place (and to the best of my knowledge the Euro does not have a hundredths piece), so I've no clue what exactly you are saying.

To Americanize the results, it would be debiting a 115.00 transaction as 11500.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[kingturkey]

How can this be modded as informative? It's nonsensical and informs nothing without the context. I guess you could assume that the poster is in an English speaking country and thus uses decimal points and commas to separate unit groupings, but there are plenty of Europeans here posting in English, especially given that this article is about an Italian incident. How about:

You mean 11 500 Euro as 11.500 Euro.

I think that's what you mean, but I can't be sure. Using anything other than a space (or half space) to separate groups of (three) digits — that's a comma or a period — is stupid and is the reason this bug occurred.
Why can't everybody just follow the SI standard and use a comma or a period for the decimal point and no mark for unit grouping?

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[badpazzword]

If we want to use proper grammar, it'd be proc_call(1,2;3,4;5,6).

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[John Da' Baddest]

In Switzerland numbers are often written like this: 115'000 and phone numbers like this: +41 44 123 45 67. The apostrophe and spaces are a great visual separator, better than ,/. in my experience.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Razalhague]

Or we could come up with completely new punctuation to do the job!

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[codeButcher]

the only competing standard

Ahem, you might want to inform yourself about that misconception.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Hurricane78]

The error was essentially that a number of Euro cents was interpreted as a number of Euro.

So you’re saying that they went Verizon?

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[hfranz]

In financial software one often uses fixed point decimal numbers or rather an integer representation of monetary amounts in terms of the smallest unit of the currency, like euro cents. For securities usually tenths of cents are used.

This is due to the numerical instability of floating point numbers for certain values like 1.01 which can only be approximated in base 2 mantissa and exponent notation. Thus floating point is ruled out and fixed point decimal numbers are used. Lazyness and/or the unavailability of a native fixed point decimal type on some legacy platforms leads to the use of simple integer numbers.

To an inexperienced programmer, such currency values just look like integer amounts and the unit of the amounts is ignored, so the mistake mentioned in TFA actually happens a lot during development, but is usually found by unit and QA tests.

So the lesson to be learned from this is to thoroughly test your financial software. But we all do that, do we?

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, now do we group 3 numbers or 4?

11,500 vs 1,1500 ?

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[CyberSaint]

I think he means dot product. In scalar numbers the dot product and cross product are the same thing so in some cases it is conventional to write 2 X 2 = 4 or 2 . 2 = 4 interchangeably (note the 'dot' should be at center (around the same height as - ) however there is no such keyboard character) and the difference is only relevant in vector algebra.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[OrangeCatholic]

Haha! Fucking eUrOfAgS. And they harass us about metric?

Quick, does 4/12/2009 translate to April 12th or December 4th? You don't know, do you? So much fun!!

But hey, the european datestamp is ANSI in reverse, that's close enough, right? Lol.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[OrangeCatholic]

In the English language, commas are completely optional. That's right. Optional.

Commas are speech inflections. The purpose of a comma is to inject the sound of speech into the written word. Or, more to the point, they are to inject, ahem, the flow of, er, speech, you know, into the written word.

Commas in numbers over 1000 likewise are optional for Americans whose comma usage is consistent across both text and numbers.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[OrangeCatholic]

>Yeah. IP addresses are wrong too. So are revision numbers. And URLs. There is NO precedent for multiple dots in a single item

Actually, you've disproven yourself. Those aren't multiple dots per single number. Those are different numbers grouped together! With periods!

I guess you can say that IP addresses go into the billions, but that's not really how people think of them.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[sbeckstead]

Oh you mean 2*2=4 Got it.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[petermgreen]

It's a very easy thing to screw up, especially with development tool vendors doing stupid things. For example in delphi floattostr is locale dependent but this is far from made clear in the docs....

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[petermgreen]

spaces have the issue that they may cause misintepretation as two seperate numbers, especially if full sized spaces are used. And i'm not convinced fonts are widespread enough for using special thin spaces for it to be a good idea to do so on the web.

Another approach is never to use three digits after the decimal seperator, that way it is obvious that it is not a thousand seperator.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's also like the people that spell "voilá" as "viola". Despite not knowing another word of French, it annoys me horribly.

Are you trying to say "wallah"?? Get it right!!!

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[ivucica]

sscanf() ditto. I never considered that one vendor/locale specific, but meh.

Re:You mean 11,500 Euro

[Bigjeff5]

Commas are required when paired with a conjunction to create a compound sentance. It's always ,and.

Otherwise commas are always optional and used to break up the flow of a sentance.

Obligatory Office Space

[dkleinsc]

I always do that, I mess up some mundane detail!

Re:Obligatory Office Space

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not some mundane detail Michael!!

Re:Obligatory Office Space

[bytethese]

It's not some mundane detail Michael!

Apparently I got logged off with my last comment, also not a mundane detail!

Re:Obligatory Office Space

[amicusNYCL]

Yeah, even the algorithm saw that reply coming and wanted to avoid it.

God Bless the USA!

[jellomizer]

Our Comma to separate numbers and periods to indicate decimal are far superior to your backward period to separate numbers and comma to indicate a decimal number!

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Europeans didn't know that Intel/AMD design their ALU's to be error proof if you use periods to indicate decimals.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

As with most things, the USA is still using the same system as the UK, and it's only mainland Europe that has them reversed. I'm not sure 'God' has anything to do with it.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[benwiggy]

I think you mean "God Save the Queen". We (the British) gave you the correct method for decimals before we decided to let you have the place. You've managed to pick up a few bad habits from the French, such as driving on the right.

But apart from that, you're doing quite well.

(For the benefit of Australians, this is humour, not flamebait.)

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean "God Save the Queen". We (the British) gave you the correct method for decimals before we decided to let you have the place. You've managed to pick up a few bad habits from the French, such as driving on the right.

But apart from that, you're doing quite well.

(For the benefit of Australians, this is humour, not flamebait.)

Oh be quiet, you whinging pommy bastard.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Yvanhoe]

Do you know the nightmarish hell that is an Excel localized in French while being part of an international team ? Copy-paste of the same data using Excel EN or Excel FR will result in either 115.5 or 115,5 leading to interesting bugs to track...

Re:God Bless the USA!

[AP31R0N]

Our method makes more sense. A sentence can have more commas than periods. Generally sentences have just one period (i'm distinguishing between dots and periods here). A period is a more solid division than a comma. It makes more sense to use the stronger punctuation as the mark between whole and fraction.

i'll grant that metric is better than imperial, but i think this is one thing where we have the better idea.

It's my opinion and it's worth every penny you paid for it.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[domulys]

It is obvious to the most simple minded that Loki is of an inferior breed.

I am black on the right side. Loki is WHITE on the right side, all of his people are white on the right side!

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anon has no country, so Anon doesn't care what county is insulted.
Anon laughs at all countries, as they are all dumb pieces of shit that just try to make trouble for Anon.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Kartoffel]

Australians seem to be doing even better than Americans, then. They still drive on the proper side of the road, although they measure distances in kilometers rather than miles as god and the queen intended.

Well at least Australia is doing better than Canada. Those poor sods drive on the wrong side *and* use the metric system on their roads.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[teg]

Not only that, the function names are localized too IIRC - meaning that a simple sum() doesn't work, as you should be using summ(). Copy, paste, and just plain sharing internationally doesn't work too well.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post makes no sense. The only thing that makes sense is using spaces for thousands separator. That's also the international standard.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know the nightmarish hell that is an Excel localized in French while being part of an international team ? Copy-paste of the same data using Excel EN or Excel FR will result in either 115.5 or 115,5 leading to interesting bugs to track...

Did you know that .csv files are different too? Excel in French expects .csv files to have fields separated by semicolons.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Tim C]

i'll grant that metric is better than imperial, but i think this is one thing where we have the better idea.

Using a comma or a period for the decimal separator is not a metric vs imperial issue, neither system mandates the character used for that.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

URLs have more periods than commas and it seems to work fine. Yet URLs are in words and you are trying to apply this logic to numbers.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Firehed]

Did you just inadvertently congratulate America for not using the Metric system? Shame on you! It makes 10 weather so uncomfortable!

Re:God Bless the USA!

[L3370]

don't forget japan. :)

Re:God Bless the USA!

[saforrest]

Well at least Australia is doing better than Canada. Those poor sods drive on the wrong side *and* use the metric system on their roads.

And on top of that we have French as one of our official languages.

Nous sommes vraiment des moutons perdus!

Re:God Bless the USA!

[camperdave]

Hey! We have to distinguish ourselves from Americans somehow. Using Canadian Tire money just wasn't cutting it.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[dkf]

As with most things, the USA is still using the same system as the UK, and it's only mainland Europe that has them reversed. I'm not sure 'God' has anything to do with it.

Of course He has something to do with it. As everyone of note knows, God is an Englishman. (There's even some evidence.)

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Sky Cry]

It makes more sense to use the stronger punctuation as the mark between whole and fraction.

Why does stronger punctuation make more sense to you? Weaker punctuation makes more sense to me, because it simply separates parts of one number.

Whichever symbol you use, there'll be confusion with its other uses. So you have to watch for the space after the comma or period either way. It takes as much effort.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that and the fact that in math you use a period to separate the whole from the fraction. Even European math uses the same system.

So basically the comma fraction separator is an anomaly. It makes no sense because it's not how anyone does math.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[sopssa]

And Imperial system doesn't even make any sense:

thou
inch = 1000 thou
foot = 12 inches
yard = 3 feet
furlong = 220 yards
mile = 8 furlongs
league = 3 miles 15,840

yeah that makes complete sense!

And USA is the only country that still keeps using it.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[jimicus]

Sounds like absolutely typical Microsoft localisation - rumour has it that their first attempts involved putting everything through an automated translator then cleaning up the result.

I'm given to understand that this caused quite a bit of trouble with a postscript printer driver....

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Mister Whirly]

So, do you ever get an American quarter in your change and think "Sweet, an American quarter". Until you try to use it in a vending machine.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[ShatteredArm]

We can't afford to change all the signs. We spent all our wealth fighting marijuana, keeping out Mexicans, and building public basketball arenas.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[dtmos]

Would that make them .ssv files? .scsv files? Or something else?

Re:God Bless the USA!

[pleappleappleap]

How about Japan? South Africa? Indonesia? Aren't these three countries larger in population that Australia? Don't Japan and Indonesia have a larger population than even the UK?

Re:God Bless the USA!

[pleappleappleap]

I just checked. Thailand has a bigger population than the UK and drives on the left too.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

A period is a more solid division than a comma.

Experiment:
10 000,00
10 000.00

Hmm... hypothesis refuted. Try again?

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

UK, Australia and India are the only big counties driving on wrong side

Ireland and most of Southern Africa.

heh. Guess it depends on your definition of "big". ;-)

Re:God Bless the USA!

[haruharaharu]

India drives on the left? I thought they just drove down the middle.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[PhilHibbs]

I might be in danger of setting off the QI siren here, but in the northern hemisphere the left side should be the correct side to drive, and in the southern hemisphere the right side should be correct. This is to avoid creating a cyclone when vehicles pass. At least, that's what my dad told me but he could be a bit of a joker sometimes.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ive asked myself recently how translation programms differentiate between a period as an end to a sentence or an number.

Let me think of a sentence, ehm: While Germanys National debt rose about 18 % in the last year, Japans debt rose about 100. 10000s of jobs are on the edge.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Corporate Troll]

That would be SOMME(). It's annoying, and it isn't limited to French version. That said, they now save it as a formula, so open a file made with a French Excel in a German Excel, it will work. Copy/Paste probably not so well.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[plague3106]

Well that, in language commas are used in lists to group things, or parts of a sentence... so it makes more sense to use a comma to group otherwise insignificant digits.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[DomNF15]

We (Americans) also picked up the disease known as the Imperial measurement system :-) It's simply spectacular than 12 inches = 1 foot, 5280 feet = 1 mile, and 1 acre = 43560 square feet. This, clearly, is much more logical and obvious than that pesky metric system with it's 100 centimeters = 1 meter, 1000 meters = 1 km, and 1 square km = you guessed it, 1000000 square meters. I also love having to buy 2 sets of tools to work on my house/car, thanks again, UK.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[orzetto]

On the other hand, the comma is graphically stronger and more visible. The period is so graphically weak that we have the rule to use an upper-case letter after it to make sure people do not miss it.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[IrquiM]

I think I read somewhere that the Australians would change from left to right in 2012. They would start with all the bigger vehicles like buses and lorries and if that turns out OK, it'll be mandatory for all motorized vehicles from 2015

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Hatta]

White space is used to separate words. It should similarly be used to separate two numbers. 11 500 is two numbers. Using white space inside a number makes as much sense as putting white space inside a word. That is, none whatsoever.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[fireylord]

more like wherever they can fit the damn thing on the road :)

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Corporate Troll]

I hate to defend Microsoft in this, but most likely this is what the end-users wanted. Well, not the multi-lingual ones (and current localization is fucked up beyond repair regarding this). Consider that a French user will not think of the word "Sum" when he wants to make a sum. He'll think of "Somme".

It is really very disheartening, but software always seems to assume you only speak one language and that it's the language of your country and that's the one you want. If I want my Locale (number and dates formatted like I'm used to), I'm limited to German and French. No English for me. Of course, I know how to work around it in both Windows and Linux, but most do not. You also get weird things like installers deriving your language form the locale will pop up dialogs in (for example) French, while your operating system is English, etc, etc, etc....

It's all painful. What needs to be done is to separate Language and Formatting (dates, times, how to represent currency, numbers, etc) completely. Will never happen, but I can still wish.

For those who want to know: Under Linux you simply generate your own Locale. It's not hard. In Windows, you take the country where the language you want is spoken and adapt the formatting settings to what you want.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[MartinSchou]

Whether you use a comma or a period is very unlikely to have anything to do with "logic", and more to do with language.

Two and a half in English: "Two point five"/2.5
Two and a half in Danish: "To komma fem"/2,5
Two and a half in Swedish: "Två komma fem"/2,5
Two and a half in German: "Zwei komma fünf"/2,5

My German is rather rusty, but I think it's correct.

My point is, that when the language uses comma, it makes no sense not using it for maths. People just need to know how to translate from different language. This last bit is an issue though. Especially when you're dealing with incredibly lazy journalists who don't know how to read numbers and just copy paste stuff.

It's always fun to see Danish newspapers report on the US federal budget.

Total: 2.979 trillion dollars (2,979 billion or 2,979,000,000,000). In Danish, however, that number (2.979 trillion) is a LOT bigger. In part because we use the . as a thousands separator, and in part because we use long numbers. In other words 2.979 trillion dollars in Danish is 2 979 000 000 000 000 000.

When you have these lazy reporters, things get interesting. They MIGHT stop and wonder a bit about that number, as it is huge. But a number like 2.979 million might just go through without being translated. Same with 2.979 billion.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[jimicus]

I hate to defend Microsoft in this, but most likely this is what the end-users wanted. Well, not the multi-lingual ones (and current localization is fucked up beyond repair regarding this). Consider that a French user will not think of the word "Sum" when he wants to make a sum. He'll think of "Somme".

Quite correct. Which is why the function should have an internal name (which is used in saved files, by OLE when copying/pasting etc) and a separate i18n layer which deals with presenting it to the end user in the language they expect.

Or you just rename everything for every different version and experience the problems the GP described.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Duradin]

Look at what those numbers are divisible by:
12 can be divided evenly by 2,3,4 or 6.
36 can be divided evenly by 2,3,4,6,9,12,18.
5280 can be divided evenly by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 20, 22, 24, 30, 32, 33, 40, 44, 48, 55, 60, 66, 80, 88, 96, 110, 120, 132, 160, 165, 176, 220, 240, 264, 330, 352, 440, 480, 528, 660, 880, 1056, 1320, 1760, 2640. The important ones being 2,3,4,5,6,8,10.

Plus metric measurements are generally too small (cm) or too big (m) to be practical for day to day uses.

So if you look at it from a pencil and paper math era perspective having the nice fractions was a plus. (
It's why we (thankfully) don't have metric time. 60 is divisible by 2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20, and 30. 100 is only divisible by 2,5,10,20,25, and 50. The Babylonians were onto something.)

Re:God Bless the USA!

[arkham6]

thank you for your ,02 cents.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

The sense of our measurement system comes in the ease with which you can break down larger measures into smaller. Yards have 36 inches: that's divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 12, and 18; you can do a lot of measuring and cutting easily in your head, without having to fuss with fractions. Volume measures are the best example:

Gallon: 128 fluid ounces, 16 cups, 8 pints, or 4 quarts
Quart: 32 fluid ounces, 64 Tablespoons, 4 cups, or 2 pints
Pint: 16 fluid ounces, 96 teaspoons, 32 Tablespoons, or 2 cups
Cup: 8 fluid ounces, 48 teaspoons, 16 Tablespoons
Tablespoon: 1/2 fluid ounce, 3 teaspoons
Teaspoon: 1/6 fluid ounce

There's lots of powers of two and multiples of 2, 3, and 4 in there, which make it easy to measure and adjust. The sizes also scale up elegantly, unlike the 1000x or 100x jump in scale between milliliters and liters or centimeters, meters, and kilometers. Or grams and kilograms; a gram is way too small to be a useful daily measurement, and a kilogram is way too big. Ounces come 16 to the pound; again, a power of two, and an ounce of water is around 2 Tablespoons, which means an ounce of most stuff will also be a useful volume.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ignorance of the reasoning behind the anthropic units of the SAE system is not equivalent to "the Imperial system making no sense".

Or, to put it another way and fix your prose, it makes no sense to you.

Furlongs and leagues are units which evolved for optimum utility in their appropriate spheres of use. You just don't know anything about those spheres of use, and egotistically assume that your own favored system (metric is highly appropriate for chemistry and laboratory physics, and also for people who need to count on their fingers due to poor math skills) is appropriate to tasks you are not competent to perform or assess.

People hate to be reminded that the metric system pre-dates the establishment of the United States, and that the USA chose to use base 60 for time because it was the best practical choice despite being non-metric and chose to use the English system for agriculture and construction because it was the best practical choice even though we chose to use the decimal system for many other things, such as financial calculations.

The fact remains that anthropic measurements are well suited to physical human labor in many cases. For example, the inch/foot system uses twelves because twelve has more whole divisors than ten (1,2,3,4,6 .vs. 1,2,5) and unit conversion almost invariably involves division in real-world tasks such as carpentry. The size of common fractions in the SAE system are also anthropic; without special training, anyone can tell the difference between a quarter inch and an eighth.

Purely mental endeavors, such as computing and lab work, are better performed under the metric system, not least because calculations will be written down and preserved and unit conversion by decimal shifting is extremely trivial.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Stuart Gibson]

Am I the only one that sees an issue where cars drive on the left and trucks and buses drive on the right?

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Corporate Troll]

Since I know 100% sure that these days the save files are interchangeable, at least that's accounted for. It's meager, but it's at least that. I remember the days where that wasn't even possible (in the WfW 3.11 days)

Oh, and cool to know: back then they even translated Visual Basic for Applications and you can image how much of a mess that was. Luckily now it's English in all versions (not that I checked recently, but I seem to remember...)

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lettuce generalize: Any version of any software, ever, localized = an infinity of shit. I speak as a programmer.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Abstrackt]

more like wherever they can fit the damn thing on the road :)

Why limit yourself? If the car's small enough to fit on the sidewalk they'll drive there too! ;)

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Shakrai]

I thought he was a black American? Now I'm all confused.....

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Whooooosh!

(Compare with:
My daughter wants breast enhancement, so I told her she can have one done this Xmas and the other on her birthday in four months)

Re:God Bless the USA!

[TheRaven64]

Not sure why copy and paste wouldn't work. Clipboards support multiple data types; you put both the formula and the text representation on it with different types. If you paste into Excel or something that understands formulae, you get the formula, otherwise you get the text representation. The same should happen for numbers; they could be stored both as integers and the text representations, so there should be no localisation problems. If MS still haven't worked out how to do this after almost three decades they must be hiring the least competent programmers that they can find.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[daem0n1x]

Oh my, the rationalisation to justify your obsolete and absurd measurement system climbed to unprecedented heights...

I hope you're trying to be funny.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[daem0n1x]

Your system is different from the old English system. As if it's not absurd enough, we even have to go even further to tell US units from the old English ones.

Yeah, your system was great for manual workers 100 years ago, so you should keep it forever.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, and have another reason as well. The comma is directional since it has length, so it encourages movement in the direction we're reading (aesthetics 101), whereas a period is static in shape with no direction, thus stopping the eye.

From an aesthetics perspective, the Euro standard is ridiculous as it's counter to the natural reaction to shapes. Of course, culture can overcome this, but why?

Re:God Bless the USA!

[sbeckstead]

offtopic and a sig problem but it's got to be pointed out. It's either a typo or really bad grammar.
What does this function do? DoIFaster(Function)
and is vaguely obscene if bad grammar.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[VJ42]

A period is a more solid division than a comma.

Experiment: 10 000,00 10 000.00

Hmm... hypothesis refuted. Try again?

You've got the seperators in the wrong place (at least for standard UK usage), that should be:
1,000,000 or using dots:
1.000.000

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Daimanta]

"Plus metric measurements are generally too small (cm) or too big (m) to be practical for day to day uses."

Furthermore imperial measurements are generally too large (inch) or too small (yard) to be practical for day to day users. The fact that the mile exists also creates confusion because every old nations used to have it's own "mile" which either a lot bigger or a lot smaller than the English "mile".

Also multiplication by a number that is not equal to the numberbase(10) is annoying to use.

Out of the top of my head

1000mm=100cm=100dm=1m=0,1Dm=0,01hm=0,001km=0,000001Mm

Try to do that with the imperial system which randomly swaps between 6,2,12 and whatever they feel like.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. But you Americans also write the date wrong. Day-month-year, please!

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

you forgot decimeters (1/10 of a meter)

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Toze]

Do you know the nightmarish hell that is an Excel

Yes.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize there is also the decimeter, right?

Re:God Bless the USA!

[norpan]

11 500 is two numbers

Well, if space is a thousands separator it's not.
And eleven thousand five hundred is four words. Still means only one number.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Kr3m3Puff]

Well, we should really thank the Hindu-Arabs for coming up with our modern digits to make a decimal system easier, otherwise we would have been going around using something like MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMM in our ATM.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[oldhack]

Dude, what's "bullshit" in English unit?

Re:God Bless the USA!

[jonbryce]

And some other country who's name I can't remember.

In Britain, we use the metric system up to and including meters, then switch over to miles, with some yards thrown in sometimes just to confuse everyone.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[jonbryce]

It could be worse. You could receive Hebrew localised Excel files with the columns going from Z - A in the wrong direction.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[zach_d]

Most vending machines will take an American quarter, and really, the exchange rate now doesn't make it worth getting excited, or even noticing when we get one.

What does suck is going to the States, and getting a handfull of one dollar bills in your change.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

JAPAN!!

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Kartoffel]

Well I'm sure the robots that built your house could handle either measuring system with ease.

Oh wait... your house wasn't built by robots, was it?

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Duradin]

Do I need to break out a .5dm x 1dm and beat some sense into people?

See, just doesn't roll off the tongue. 5cm x 10cm doesn't either.

Now 2x4, that's nice, simple, sounds good and gets the point across.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[SleazyRidr]

Which is why we should be counting to the base 8 rather than the base 10, and use the metric system.

Best of both worlds.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Inda]

Tradesmen, craftsmen and the like use millimeters for everything. 10m would be written as 10,000 on drawings. I used to work all the way down to hundredths of a mill too.

Very old jobs sometimes came with imperial measurements. Funny how it was all measured in thousandths of inches too. Four-thou was 0.1mm - a normal tolerance.

Give it up because your inches were decimalised decades ago.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[wastedlife]

Plus metric measurements are generally too small (cm) or too big (m) to be practical for day to day uses.

Excellent point. It is too bad that there is no measurement between the two. Hmm, maybe we should email the SI about this? It could be 1/10th of a meter, and how about "deci" (to indicate 10) as the prefix? I think it might solve the problem!

Re:God Bless the USA!

[AK Marc]

It's a joke, but one based in reality. Many places that switch, do so in stages. However, what they do is, say, shut down the roads at 6 p.m. on Friday. All government vehicles are running, and on the "new" side. So busses and emergency vehicles do switch before everyone else. Then, say 6 a.m. Monday, the roads are re-opened for everyone with everyone now driving on the new side of the road.

Someone said "how do they switch" and someone answered "the busses switch first, then the cars three days later" not realizing how that could sound to someone not familiar with the situation, and thus, a joke is born...

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Stuart Gibson]

Hmm, interesting. I would love to see the outrage if the UK tried to close all the roads for a weekend :)

It would also be interesting to see the increase in number of accidents, particularly with everyone having the steering wheel on the wrong side, not to mention the issue with all the headlights shining in oncoming drivers eyes.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Ciggy]

Gallon: 128 fluid ounces, 16 cups, 8 pints, or 4 quarts
Quart: 32 fluid ounces, 64 Tablespoons, 4 cups, or 2 pints
Pint: 16 fluid ounces, 96 teaspoons, 32 Tablespoons, or 2 cups

Only on your side of the pond....on this side:

Gallon: 160 fluid ounces
Quart: 40 fluid ounces
Pint: 20 fluid ounces

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Myrddin Wyllt]

Do I need to break out a .5dm x 1dm and beat some sense into people?

See, just doesn't roll off the tongue. 5cm x 10cm doesn't either.

Now 2x4, that's nice, simple, sounds good and gets the point across.

Even there, we suffer from a lack of standardi[sz]ation; in the UK, this has always been called 4x2*(pronounced 'four-be-two'), which to my ears is even more tongue-rolly than 2x4. One of us needs to give that sucker a quarter-turn.

* Even though it has actually been 100mm x 50mm for decades

Re:God Bless the USA!

[zmaragdus]

The best system I've run across (and the one I've personally adopted) is, when representing numbers as strings (e.g. when simply typing something up or writing them out by hand), put a space between each group of three digits to the left of the decimal separator and use either a comma or a period as the "decimal point" (being from the US, I tend to use the period). Thus the number 456786557 and 67484/100000 would be represented as either "456 786 557.67484" or "456 786 557,67484"

Re:God Bless the USA!

[AK Marc]

I don't remember wich island country did it recently, I'm thinking one of the Samoas, but maybe not. Their big problem was that the bus doors were on the wrong side, so people had to walk infront of the bus and essentially into traffic to board the bus. They replaced what they could, but ran out of funds so there are wrong-sided busses running around.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Ciggy]

Whether you use a comma or a period is very unlikely to have anything to do with "logic", and more to do with language.

It's more likely to be the other way round: if a comma is used to separate the whole from the decimal, it is read as a comma, similarly if a point is used it is read as a point.

Danish is using the system we used to use in the UK (when I was a school) - long numbers: Thousand = 10^3, Million = 10^6, Thousand Million = 10^9 (= Milliard), Billion = 10^12, ... unlike the American short numbers: Thousand = 10^3, Million = 10^6, Billion = 10^9, ... (very metric!)

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Stuart Gibson]

I think the UK is pretty well sorted since we have no "influencing" borders to persuade us to change. Any idea why an island would have decided it would be worth the effort to make the transition?

Re:God Bless the USA!

[darien]

Cheaper cars and buses in the long run.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[delphi125]

There is an urban legend that unified Cameroon (French/British) did trucks one month, and cars the next.

I'm pretty sure it was a joke, but my grandfather (who died in '76) did work there at the time it would have happened.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[selven]

So trucks and cars will drive in opposite directions, causing a whole bunch of crashes? So that's the disaster that's supposed to happen in 2012!

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Hucko]

Yet 5x10 rolls just fine. I have trouble with the obtuseness of 2in* x 4 in

*Change to whatever ridiculous imperial measurement you wish and it's the same problem. The system sucks hard.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Lunzo]

Plus metric measurements are generally too small (cm) or too big (m) to be practical for day to day uses.

You do know that you can use more than one of a unit don't you? For example if 1cm isn't big enough you could use 2cm or even 3cm.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

same way as , are more visible than . wich also makes sense "1.000,00"

Re:God Bless the USA!

[kingturkey]

They probably treat it how it's supposed to be treated, because periods and commas in numbers aren't followed by spaces. I guess there could be a problem translating text where there's a typo omitting the space after the full stop.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[IrquiM]

They could import cheap, broken down vehicles from Australia.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[pv2b]

Look at what those numbers are divisible by ...

The fact that you can divide 1 foot easilly by 2, 3, 6 and 12 is immaterial really.

The exact same convenience can be acheived in metric if the dimensions you're working with are a multiple of... say... 30 centimeters. (Very close to 1 foot.)

You might buy a length of 95x45 mm board (roughly equivalent to a 2-by-4), which is sold in a length like 120 cm, 180 cm, 240 cm, etc and beyond. Note how those lengths, too, are easilly divisible.

So, you don't need to use a system that makes unit conversion harder just so make dividing lengths easier. All you need to do is to work with lengths that are easilly divisible. And specifying material lengths even multiples of 30 centimeters is no harder than specifying them in lengths of 1 foot.

Plus metric measurements are generally too small (cm) or too big (m) to be practical for day to day uses.

And I don't know about you, I'm not a pigeon. I'm capable with working with double-digit and even *gasp* triple-digit numbers. I don't think it's impractical to measure my length in a 3-digit number of centimeters.

In the end, though, I really think this whole feet/meters debate could have been neatly sidestepped if, at one time, 1 foot was declared to be equal to 30 centimeters (and 1 inch to be 25 millimeters), rather than 30.48 as is today.

Hell, if I had to do it all over again, I'd unify meters and inches into one single system, where 1 new inch = 25 new millimeters, and the length of the meter was defined as the length travelled in 1/300000000 seconds, conveniently making the speed of light 1000000000 new feet per second for those of you preferring to use the feet/inches system.

But that will probably never happen. There's just not enough value in introducing a *third* incompatible standard of measurement into the world.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[pv2b]

To clarify my own post,

It's useful to note, that changing the length of the meter would introduce all kinds of annoying changes into other kinds of units, such as the volt, the pascal, the lumen and the joule - and units further derived from those, such as the ohm, the lux, the watt and stuff like the sievert.

So not only is changing the length of the meter impractical, but now you also know why. :-)

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Hurricane78]

I was there. New Dehli (back then). 2 directions a 3 lanes. One brown stripe that looked like it once was green between them. But not like here with the cars going in one direction. No, the “cars” (if you can call the mopeds with 3 wheels and a yellow plastic roof that they call “rikshas” cars) stand in all directions. Like a not magnetized piece of iron. With a cow right on the street. A police riksha — with a green roof honking at it. And a dozen normal rikshas behind the police one, honking at it too.

All that under the beautiful sky made of the smog of a million two-stroke engines.

Oh yeah, those were the days! I miss traveling to foreign countries! :(

Re:God Bless the USA!

[daem0n1x]

No, it was built by immigrants. None of them knows any system besides the metric. They don't need it either, because the blueprints are all in metric. And the house didn't fall yet.

Re:God Bless the USA!

[Hurricane78]

Do you know the nightmarish hell that is an Excel...

You could have stopped right there. ^^

Re:God Bless the USA!

[saforrest]

So, do you ever get an American quarter in your change and think "Sweet, an American quarter". Until you try to use it in a vending machine.

Well, the Canadian dollar is now trading at 94.109 cents US, according to xe.com. So an American quarter would get me... an extra 1.5 cents. And unless you're going to the States, you won't have anyplace to use it except as a substitute for a Canadian quarter, so meh...

In the brief bit back in 2007 when our dollar was trading above yours, it was hilarious to suddenly see people demanding to pay the American price at bookstores. They had never realized that they were getting screwed before then, even though you always could have taken the U.S. price and multiplied it by whatever the conversion ratio was at the moment and ALWAYS end up with something lower than the Canadian price. It was a pretty savage indictment of Canadian numeracy.

1,00st post!

[Anonymous Coward]

1,00st post!

Re:1,00st post!

[sopssa]

Dear Mr. Anonymous Coward,

Your thousand separator is one off. Seeing your post is not the first post, I must assume you meant 100st post, because it will be dropped around there soon enough. In either case, you failed.

Best regards,
Your loving wife

Re:1,00st post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh.

Re:1,00st post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh!

Re:1,00st post!

[cheftw]

I must assume you meant 100st post

That's about 630kg.

Pretty heavy for a post.

Re:1,00st post!

[v1]

Whoosh 3,0

Re:1,00st post!

[selven]

Don't you mean "Whoosh Reloaded" and then "Whoosh Revolutions"?

Re:1,00st post!

[v1]

whooshed the whoosh

Re:1,00st post!

[rdnetto]

Well since he likes outdated units, it's probably engraved in stone

Not helping!

[Sockatume]

Given the subject, surely the submitter can see why it's worth clarifying whether they're using the decimal or comma convention in the summary itself!

Re:Not helping!

[emm-tee]

...it's worth clarifying whether they're using the decimal or comma convention in the summary itself!

Yep the submitter got it wrong. Given that he is posting in English, to an American website, it makes no sense to use the comma as the decimal separator and the period as the thousands separator (unless the idea was to intentionally cause confusion to prove the point).

With a few exceptions (e.g. South Africa), the rule of thumb seems to be that if you're using English, you use "." as the decimal separator.

Wikipedia has a very long article on these things http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator, but most interesting is the diagram showing which countries use which. I found it surprising how many use "," as the decimal point. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DecimalSeparator.png

For the most part.

[jellomizer]

Most programs I have seen they don't allow you to type in thousands separator. If they are fancy they will display it to you for in the program when you type in the number. Otherwise it will not show... And for God sake why would you want to store the number as a string any ways?

Re:For the most part.

[imgod2u]

It's like the little penny tray. The pennies are for everyone. And we're just taking fractions of a penny here.

Re:For the most part.

[zwei2stein]

Int-like dataypes have hard limit of 2^32 or 64 or even more.

Eventually you simply want something bigger. And you also want to use somethign that can work well with XML schemans and several other systems. You simply have to use string as your other option is 32 bit int.

Also, String unlike Float does not loose precission. A lot slower, but precise.

Re:For the most part.

[sopssa]

This is the same in my bank, if you type in . it gives an error. In addition it requires you to type in the ,00 too, and next to the sum text box is an example like "150,00".

Having comma/decimal as a separator is stupid anyway, space does just fine - 150 000.35

Re:For the most part.

[Anonymous Coward]

You need a number over 2^32 FOR AN ATM?!
Is this related to the need in Zimbabwe for ATMs to distribute $1,000,000,000,000 bills?

Re:For the most part.

[sopssa]

int64 Unsigned: 0 to +18,446,744,073,709,551,615

You mean I cannot transfer my 18 quintillion, 446 quadrillion, 744 trillion, 73 billion, 709 million, 551 thousand and 615 dollars (or in easier words 18 billion billion dollars) as a single transfer from my banking account? I need to do two of them? This is outrageous!

Re:For the most part.

[Anonymous Coward]

Until you need to list many numbers in sequence. Is 153 987 182 991 equal to 153,987,182,991 or is it 153, 987, 182, & 991 or maybe 153,987 & 182,991?

Re:For the most part.

[qwijibo]

They got it backwards. They're supposed to take fractions of a penny from many thousands of people, not many thousands of pennies from each person.

Re:For the most part.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same in my bank, if you type in . it gives an error. In addition it requires you to type in the ,00 too, and next to the sum text box is an example like "150,00".

Having comma/decimal as a separator is stupid anyway, space does just fine - 150 000.35

Space can be just as confusing as comma or period. I'm going to revolutionize banking and suggest we move in a new direction. I'm going to take the offensive on confusion and suggest we use 0 to deliminate/separate groupings of numbers.

Re:For the most part.

[radish]

Using strings to store numbers internally is wrong, it just is. It's slow, wasteful, and unnessecary. I don't think I've ever (in 20 years of coding) needed to store something bigger than 2^64, but if I did, there are plenty of options (e.g. BigDecimal in Java, bigint in Perl, etc) which are essentially unlimited in size. Doing math with strings is just such a horrible concept :) As for precision floats (i.e. fixed point) there are real solutions for that issue in most languages too. String isn't one of them.

Exchanging your data with other systems (e.g. generating a web page, or XML, or whatever) is of course an entirely different story, you do what makes sense for the requirements. XML Schema, for example, mandates that a parser has to accept up to an 18-digit value for the digit type, but doesn't set an upper bound. So you need knowledge of the parser to know how to transfer very large values.

Re:For the most part.

[dontclapthrowmoney]

Not a horrible suggestion for some situations, but the space just doesn't work for me... it looks like two different numbers, especially if you're writing a list of numbers next each other - do you use comma then?

50 006.49, 14 032.45, 200 154 209.45,

Did I miss a comma and one of the numbers is also missing the .00, did I miss a decimal point somewhere and the decimal is more precise, or is the last number just really large?

Not in favor of the comma separators in large numbers, it is not universally understood, so don't do it.

50006.49 14032.45 200154209.45

I think this number sequence would be interpreted correctly in most places, most people (even people who normally use decimal commas) would understand what the decimal point represents here.

Re:For the most part.

[ls671]

Huh, haven't you heard of BigInteger like data types ?

They are pretty common in accounting in various languages...

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/math/BigInteger.html

Re:For the most part.

[Nadaka]

a 64 bit long has more than enough space to handle every currency in the world (except possibly hyper-inflationary Zimbabwe) to a tiny fraction of a penny. Even then, there are data structures that offer arbitrary precision and arbitrary ranges of values that are far more efficient than any string manipulation. In most cases, you are going to be converting the string back to a number for real math anyway. Hell even cobol handles numbers better than strings.

I won't even go into the rediculousness of using xml for data storage and retrieval for high throughput systems.

Re:For the most part.

[Zantac69]

I don't know what happened, I must have missed a decimal point or something...

Re:For the most part.

[Duhavid]

BCD is an option.

Re:For the most part.

[Megane]

...unless you're using 10^12 = one billion and 10^9 = one milliard

In any case, it should be an integer number of pennies (or whatever they call the euro-cents), so you're going to have to keep your account under 184 quadrillion, or is that 184 billiard? (balls!)

Re:For the most part.

[Lumpy]

How about using a standard like IEEE floating point Hex? I can store Gigantorus numbers in tiny spaces with that.

42F9F8BC71118F14 = 456,897,665,767,665.25
IEEE Floating point in Hexadecimal is a standard that anyone that has a clue about computers or data storage should already know about. The fact they were storing numbers as strings means their programmers are complete uneducated noobs.

That's what you get when you outsource your software to the cheapest contractor.

Re:For the most part.

[The MAZZTer]

Doing math with strings will guarantee your code a place on the front page of thedailywtf.com

Re:For the most part.

[dapaua]

I (and many friends) use apostrophe as decimal separator in handwriiteing, so it is:
50006'49 , 14032'45 , 200154209'45 .

Re:For the most part.

[zwei2stein]

actually, 2^32 might have range of 2,147,483,648, but in reality, last 3 digits need to be abused for currency fraction. And 2 million is not a lot money in some currencies. In Italian Lira, that is about ~ 2k dollars. Amount that is very reasonable to withdraw from ATM.

Re:For the most part.

[Razalhague]

Then you use a list separator, dumbass. Preferably a semicolon so there's no confusion.

Re:For the most part.

[31415926535897]

This could be true in Zimbabwe.

Re:For the most part.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about using a standard like IEEE floating point Hex? I can store Gigantorus numbers in tiny spaces with that.

42F9F8BC71118F14 = 456,897,665,767,665.25
IEEE Floating point in Hexadecimal is a standard that anyone that has a clue about computers or data storage should already know about. The fact they were storing numbers as strings means their programmers are complete uneducated noobs.

That's what you get when you outsource your software to the cheapest contractor.

But for money you just want fixed point. No sense in wasting all that precision past two decimal places!

Re:For the most part.

[John Hasler]

> That's what you get when you outsource your software to the cheapest
> contractor.

Because the most expensive one obviously would have done it right.

Sure.

Re:For the most part.

[gyrogeerloose]

In Italian Lira, that is about ~ 2k dollars.

Of course, Italy no longer uses the Lira; they've switched to the Euro.

Amount that is very reasonable to withdraw from ATM.

Man, you must have a lot more money in your account than I do! ;-) Besides, here in the US at least, most ATMs will not allow you to withdraw that much cash. Things may be different in Europe, I've never used an ATM there.

Re:For the most part.

[v1]

And for God sake why would you want to store the number as a string any ways?

It's not so much the storage as it is the transport. Sometimes you need to send things as a flat text file with one record per line, for data exchange. Then you start running into all sorts of problems like tabs vs spaces, field widths, line delimiters, right vs left justification, and other oddness like these separators. Really if they wanted to do that more smartly, they'd omit all separators in a numeric field and simply state number of pennies. Problem solved. Every time I've had to put a dollar amount in a text field it's been in pennies for this exact reason.

Re:For the most part.

[v1]

I (and many friends) use apostrophe as decimal separator in handwriiteing

can't say as I've ever seen this done before. Did you make it up or is it in use somewhere else?

(perhaps you should work on your spelling before trying to reinvent numeric notation)

Re:For the most part.

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer plus as a decimal separator and a minus as a list separator.
49000+50-20000+95-2095+99

Re:For the most part.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not. But the cheapest definitely did it wrong :D

Re:For the most part.

[Anonymous Coward]

precision floats (i.e. fixed point)

Shouldn't those be called "fixeds"?

Re:For the most part.

[Anonymous Coward]

It blows me away that some people really think string is the answer. Seriously, I think you're sincere and not trolling. And that makes me sad.

There have been many excellent approaches to storing higher precision, avoid float roundoff, etc around for decades, and none of those answers are "use a string" and they all work far far better than "use a string." And yet, all the answers are in vain, because people just can't learn from the past.

Re:For the most part.

[pleappleappleap]

IBM mainframes have packed decimal math, which is basically the same thing.

Re:For the most part.

[Anonymous Coward]

So you've obviously never coded an intrabank transfer system then. Packed decimal (using COBOL or PL/1) is the way to go...

Re:For the most part.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! well, at least I didn't sleep with Lumbergh!!!

Re:For the most part.

[Wonko the Sane]

In reality an ATM doesn't need any decimal point. Unless there's some ATM out there that dispenses anything coins.

I've never understood why every ATM that I've ever used that dispensed $20 bills made me type in the 00 cents each and every time.

Re:For the most part.

[Nadaka]

I have had exactly one occasion where I needed more than 64 bits, and we did use strings (technically a small array of bytes). It was a programming contest. We had 8 hours to solve as many problems as possible. One of them was to display pi to at least a 500 digits with the ability to display arbitrarily more precise values.

Re:For the most part.

[megamerican]

You need a number over 2^32 FOR AN ATM?!
Is this related to the need in Zimbabwe for ATMs to distribute $1,000,000,000,000 bills?

Apparently, they have a problem of people using their money as toilet paper.

Re:For the most part.

[Dishevel]

I don't know. It seems it would make them much more money this way.

Re:For the most part.

[plague3106]

Its a standard prompt, and thus supports it for entering deposits (checks can contain cents) and transfers (think of using the atm to transfer money from your checking to your mortgage account, where its not likely to be flat dollars).

ATMs do more than just give out money.

Re:For the most part.

[mea37]

Unless I'm missing something... and I'll grant I'm being to lazy to RTFA this time...

What makes you think they stored any number as a string? It looks to me like they made a programming error, where a number was treated as "number of Euro" in one routine and as "number of Euro cents" in another. If a person made this error, you would say they misplaced the decimal point (er, comma I suppose); and since we like to personify computers and pretend they made a mistake when a buggy program executes, by analogy we say the ATM misplaced the decimal.

Re:For the most part.

[imakemusic]

Greaaaat.

Re:For the most part.

[putaro]

ATM's in Japan will accept and dispense coins. However, currency in Japan doesn't use decimal points (smallest coin == 1 yen).

Re:For the most part.

[Corporate Troll]

I've seen it as a thousand separator, but not yet as a decimal separtor.

Re:For the most part.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a typical Cobol bug. It's not actually a String, but a "Picture" -- it's ultimately rooted in the strange hardware design of the Univac II.

Re:For the most part.

[corbettw]

Sure, you laugh now. But just wait until Obama and Bernanke are done destroying our currency and that number will be the going rate for a contract programmer!

Re:For the most part.

[TheRaven64]

Note that the range isn't quite that great. First, most banking systems need to be able to handle negative values, which loses you one bit. Then you need to store cents as well as dollars, which loses you another 6. For interest calculations, you need at least to store tenths of a cent and possibly hundredths; these are never shown, but they are stored (although you might just store cents + remainder or fraction). Even taking that into account, a 64-bit integer is still likely to have more digits than you need.

Re:For the most part.

[TheRaven64]

No it isn't. Binary Coded Decimal is very different from arithmetic using strings. With BCD, each byte stores two decimal digits. The BCD supported on most mainframes requires fixed-width numbers (although older systems like the IBM 1620 used variable-length decimal words; the adder on that machine was insane). BCD is used to provide a fixed number of decimal digits of accuracy, just as binary floating point provides a fixed number of binary digits of accuracy.

Interestingly, the x87 FPU has instructions for loading and storing BCD values, but internally computes everything using binary arithmetic. That lets you combine the accuracy of binary floats with the storage efficiency of BCD. To my knowledge, no one has ever wanted to do that.

Re:For the most part.

[Anonymous Coward]

The semicolon can't be used in running text lists as it already has another semantic.

Re:For the most part.

[icebraining]

Here in Portugal we can only withdraw 200 at once, and can only withdraw twice per day in any ATM. For more than that, we need to go to a balcony and show our ID.

Re:For the most part.

[Regolith]

My guess would be that they are using a single routine to display values for several different operations and then passing the values to the correct processing routines based on transaction type (note, I am not a programmer). Since it is possible to make a deposit or transfer containing a given number of cents, the routine would need to be able to handle decimal values; and given that deposits, transfers, balance inquiries, AND withdrawals would all use the same display code, you have to type in " and .00 cents" even though your withdrawal is delimited in $20 increments.

Re:For the most part.

[PachmanP]

Here in Portugal we can only withdraw 200 at once, and can only withdraw twice per day in any ATM. For more than that, we need to go to a balcony and show our ID.

That doesn't even make sense! How would going out on a random deck (Balcony)and flash my ID around get me more money? Crazy Portugese...

Re:For the most part.

[Anonymous Coward]

You just wait until Bernanke is done.

Re:For the most part.

[Cederic]

I suspect the issue is that the ATM dispensed 115 Euro but charged the account 11500 Euro.

I'd read the article to find out but it's more fun to speculate.

Re:For the most part.

[Cederic]

I think it was standard practice pre-decimalisation in the UK.

5'6 is five shillings and sixpence.

Of course, these days 5'6 is five foot 6 inches tall - ideal for a slim attractive lady in her stockings (make it 5'9 to 5'10 in heels).

Re:For the most part.

[zwei2stein]

Check out how they are implemented inside. Pretty much all of them are byte arrays (no other way), which is, you know, fancy word for strings.

You still want actual decimal string in communication in any case.

Re:For the most part.

[Anonymous Coward]

hey, don't get russia involved here.

Re:For the most part.

[selven]

With that accuracy not even a supercomputer could increment fast enough to keep up with inflation.

Re:For the most part.

[selven]

Use arrays!

int[] multiply(int[] a, int[] b) {
    k = new int(a.length + b.length)
    for (int i = 0; i < a.length; i++) {
        for (int j = 0; j < b.length; j++) {
            k[i+j] = a[i] * b[j];
            if (k[i+j] > 65535) {
                k[i+j+1] = int(k[i+j]/65536);
                k[i+j] = k[i+j] % 65536;
            }
        }
    }
}

Re:For the most part.

[delphi125]

Interestingly, the x87 FPU has instructions for loading and storing BCD values, but internally computes everything using binary arithmetic. That lets you combine the accuracy of binary floats with the storage efficiency of BCD. To my knowledge, no one has ever wanted to do that.

That isn't very interesting, since it is the x86 (not the maths coprocessor) which has opcodes such as AAA and (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_BCD_opcodes). The accuracy is the same, the performance of arithmetic operations is worse, but the important advantage of BCD on old architectures - including even the 4.77 MHz 8088 - is that they only had at best 16-bit registers, so the most you could represent unsigned was $655.35 (more than enough for anybody). Allowing a packed byte for the cents, and another for ones and tens, etc, may not have been the computationally most efficient, but without an '87, it was better than strings!

Re:For the most part.

[ls671]

Yep, of course they are byte arrays ! What else could they be ??? Not cow arrays for sure... ;-)

But they are a lot more convenient than strings when you need to perform operations (like, add, multiply, square, etc. ) on the numbers ;-))

Also, nowadays, some languages use 2 bytes for each char in a string in order to support unicode and still perform quick operations on strings. You would then waste some memory when you store a lot of very large numbers.

Finally, BigIntegers in the link I sent are actually bit arrays with a size rounded to the nearest multiple of 8. You must know that computers are much faster performing operations on binary representation of a number than on a string representation of the same number ! ;-)

Re:For the most part.

[icebraining]

Right, I was obviously confused. I meant the counter, which is called "balcão" in Portuguese.

Re:For the most part.

[Lunzo]

Some ATMs near my work have removed the cents when you type in the amount you want. You just type in '1' '0' '0' (or however much you want). It makes sense to me, why force people to press two extra 0s when they want money?

Re:For the most part.

[Anonymous Coward]

Using strings to store numbers internally is wrong, it just is.

tell that to the COBOLers who write this kind of software...

Re:For the most part.

[Hurricane78]

I don’t get who came up with the idea, that using “billion billion” was somehow easier than “quintillion” alone.

If you go by that standard, you should follow it to the end, and say “eight ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten moneys”.

“billion billion”. The “Clippy” way of assistance to the understanding of big numbers. ^^

Re:For the most part.

[petermgreen]

I'd think it would be far more efficiant to use arrays of the largest (or possiblly the second biggest if your language or runtime environment doesn't let you get at the carry flag and/or lacks unsigned integer support) of your available integer types.

Re:For the most part.

[Eravau]

There's not much reason to need decimals for withdrawals, which are in x dollar bills... but deposits, on the other hand, often need to be made in amounts that are not round dollars. Most paychecks, for example, are never an even dollar amount. So the ATM does need to know what a decimal is... even if it doesn't need to use it for every transaction.

Re:For the most part.

[Qu4Z]

My suggestion: Binary-Coded Decimal!

Re:For the most part.

[Qu4Z]

Actually, I believe they call the euro-cents, er... cents (or sometimes euro cents, says Wikipedia helpfully).

Sounds like a hacker got a decimal in the wrong pl

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a hacker got a decimal in the wrong place and now they need to unload the money some where fast they have try talking to drug dealers about money laundering.

Good to be a programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing the programmers will be shielded from any consequences from this little 'bug'.

It doesn't matter that it caused potential harm to clients, corporations in the form of losses, lost time, expenses, etc.

The simple programmers just need to release a hot-fix or service pack.

Now if these were engineers, and I mean real engineers not "software engineers", there would be consequences.

Their licenses could be revoked, they could be investigated for incompetence, and held professionally and personally liable for any bugs.

But please, keep on purchasing software with NO WARRANTY, or NO FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, and that contains KNOWN DEFECTS.

Gotta keep the programming industry alive, and don't wanna stress theses "engineers" too much.

Re:Good to be a programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

While there's no license to be revoked, I think you're being naive if you really believe nobody will get fired for this.

Re:Good to be a programmer

[wisty]

"Real engineers" have all sorts of cock-ups. Look at cost-overruns in the overage one-off construction project - they are similar to overruns in software projects.

Safety-critical hardware has all sorts of redundancy. I daresay that software could have a safety factor built in - you could duplicate the code 5 times using separate software teams and different methodologies, then weed out the incorrect results, but who would pay for all that waste? Even aircraft engineers have about 1% safety margins. Software engineers usually have 0%. Do you wonder why it breaks occasionally?

Re:Good to be a programmer

[samael]

Not the programmer's fault.

If it wasn't properly specified and it wasn't properly tested then it's the fault of management for not making sure that processes were followed.

Mistakes happen - if they aren't picked up then it's the fault of the process.

Re:Good to be a programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need something to be as reliable as a bridge, or a system to deliver fresh water to taps in homes, or launching a space shuttle without it blowing up; then hire an engineer.

If you want software to do some business task and the risks aren't life threatening; then hire a programmer.

Just because YOU need a big rig truck to haul your load, doesn't mean I need to be a commercial driver just to get two bags of groceries.

Re:Good to be a programmer

[mr exploiter]

Shut the hell up. Thanks.

Re:Good to be a programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Software engineering is a much harder problem than most traditional engineering. A lot more of the design has to be reinvented each time.

If you want to compare, it would be more appropriate to liken software development to designing a first of its kind mechanical system, such as the V-2 rocket.

Re:Good to be a programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Valid point, but you forget that, in software, you also have to engineer around stupid people. The engineer who designs a wood-chipper doesn't need to worry about someone putting a 4" thick steel rod in there, because it would void the goddamn warranty, just like putting the decimal in the wrong place for an ATM withdrawl should void the goddamn warranty.

Re:Good to be a programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL?

Seriously, it is like you have never written a single line of code in your life. For ANY warranty to be meaningful, first and foremost the OS must have some sort of a warranty and all the API the application uses must also have some sort of a warranty. If they do not, how can the you write a program that then has LIABILITY for defects?? It's utterly retarded.

So FU. Write some software that is used by anyone first then start bitching. Maybe after the 10th OS bug that is then listed as a "feature" you'll have a clue WTF you are talking about.

Re:Good to be a programmer

[scamper_22]

well I'm a 'formal' engineer... but let's be frank here.

The world has not come to an end.
The accounts will be fixed.
The clients will not lose any money.

Yeah, nothing would make me happy than requiring every line of software to be written by a real engineer with responsibilities, but it's more for my benefit than society's (job security, competent colleagues.. you know how doctors and lawyers do it).

In the end, society is making the trade offs.
Society is choosing to have features developed faster than a proper 'engineer' would implement them.
Society is choosing to lower the cost of programs at the expense of quality.
Society is choosing to deal with the results of bad quality instead of paying up front for quality engineers.

There is no 'right' and 'wrong' with these choices for society. It's easy to see the loss of quality. It's harder to see the loss of opportunity.

For example, you can say that only doctors should be able to prescribe medications for 'quality' reasons. Sure, it is easy to find an example where someone took a medicine they were not supposed to and it cost them their health. No doubt such a thing would make the news. Yet what about the missed opportunity? The person who doesn't see a doctor at all due to cost? Or the doctor who is too busy to properly diagnose and care for patients? Would society actually end up better off if less qualified people like nurses could prescribe medications? I'll leave that an open question.

I'll trivialize the issue even further. I've started seeing self-checkouts at many places.
Now you can most certainly pay for quality of process and make sure no body steals.
But that's not what the store/people care about. The store only cares about the following:

if( savings_from_no_cashiers > additional_money_lost_to_theft )
{
        cout "we made a good decision" endl;
}

And so it is with this bank. If they can deliver cheap systems with unregulated programmers that work without anything systemically catastrophic happening, why would they not? They will pay the cost to fix their mistake and maybe even lose business as customers loss faith in that bank.

Re:Good to be a programmer

[dkleinsc]

Real engineers have the power to say no. Their legal culpability makes it harder to cut corners, and since an engineer needs to sign off on a real-life project in order to make it happen, they essentially have veto power in their organization over what they're responsible for.

Software engineers, on the other hand, generally are required by management to cut corners wherever possible. Time-to-market nearly always trumps all other factors. They have no authority whatsoever organizationally, and have no laws to back them up.

Basically, think of an engineer who is told to build a bridge capable of handling the load of 50 laden semis using string and duct tape within 6 months, or lose his job. Can you really fault him for trying his best to meet that demand (he has a family to feed), or making a mistake and only handling the load of 45 semis?

Re:Good to be a programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not insightful. That's regurgitating the same old line that's been circulating for over 30 years. Insightful would be seeing something new in the situation or, god forbid, making a useful suggestion towards solving it.

Re:Good to be a programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post wants to be sarcastic, but it shouldn't. Software engineering is NOT engineering, and it shouldn't be.
Build a bridge, use engineering standards. If you don't, people die.
Build software, don't use engineering standards. If you do, it will take 1000x more time.

It's preposterous to want to apply engineering principles to code all the time. It's like requiring formal proofs for your code. It can't be done. It shouldn't be done. It's useless in 100-1e-15 percent of the cases.

Your post should be modded Troll, not insightful...

Re:Good to be a programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Infact my account is actually -2600 € and I have to pay the university fee before the 30th of this month... That's how things work in Italy, you have to think about everything. I'm lucky I have some cash in my house now, or I couldn't eat tomorrow... x_x

Re:Good to be a programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because regulation always works. Just look at banking, the most regulated industry known. Perfect...

Re:Good to be a programmer

[Stevecrox]

The problem comparing "real engineers" against software engineering that Software is completely different from Electronics/Mechanics/Civil/etc....

The first issue is implementation, my final year project with a mass storage Bluetooth device, designing and building the 8052 micro-controller board took weeks and it took days to fabricate. Minor changes delayed me by weeks. Taking the time to design and test the system before implementation was a must because early mistakes cost a lot.
In comparison I recently added functionality to an application, I set a series of requirements from our system level ones and built the feature up. By the time I had finished adding the feature our customers and management saw the potential of it and rapidly expanded the requirements. It took 1 day to make the modification required for the change in requirements. Software is seen as inherently flexible and it is. The problem is because of its flexibility it's hard to maintain proper design methodology. Why do you need to spend hours making a UML design for something that will take you a quarter the time to code and will most likely change before your finished?

Safety critical near perfect code can be produced but it costs an insane amount of money and isn't necessarily appropriate for every task (e.g. Windows Calculator does not need to be anywhere near to that level). But what level and standard does the code need to be at? Pick any of the two: Fast, Good and Cheap.

Software Engineering also has 1 other major difference to traditional engineering in that the majority of the cost is linked to people and not materials. Using a bridge as an example if the bridge is overrunning cheaper materials can be found, but cheaper people in Software are often less productive. In traditional engineering if a project is late you can throw more money and people and construction etc.. will increase. Software projects don't work that way, increasing staff will cause a temporary decrease in productivity while new staff learn the system and not all problems can be shared.

It's easy to mock software engineering (I know I felt that way when I finished by EEE based course), but Software Engineering a quite a different beast to traditional engineering. I'd also like to see groups like the IET or BCS qualify people to be Software Engineers but I doubt that will happen I did a IET approved degree course but as far as I can tell I might as well completed one of the easier non approved courses (One uni was proud it had no exams for instance)and it would mean exactly the same to the IET and when I was a member the only difference I noticed was a monthly magazine. As long as that sort of attitude/response exists I can't see professional membership really being taken up.

As for the engineers responsible seeing no consequence for this failure? That seems unlikely to me, I wouldn't be surprised if someone lost their job as a result of this.

That's why it is called a floating point.

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh.

Mundane detail

[nitsew]

Ok! Ok! I must have, I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. Shit. I always do that. I always mess up some mundane detail.

Back to Roman numerals

[ewg]

I bet you LXXVII bucks this would not have happened with Roman numerals. That's what they get for upgrading a perfectly good numeration system.

Re:Back to Roman numerals

[pleappleappleap]

Let's see you write zero, smart guy.

Re:Back to Roman numerals

[TheRaven64]

And, best of all, you can take out as much money as you want and never be overdrawn!

Re:Back to Roman numerals

[aztracker1]

update mytable set roman_numeral_balance = null where account=yours;

Periods and commas.

[MaWeiTao]

I never understood why the hell Europeans swap periods and commas. Grammatically it doesn't even make sense.

A period ends a sentence or statement, which to me should imply a whole number. A comma is simply a separator, used within sentences. So why would it be used to separate decimals?

It would be like writing a sentence this way:
I went to the supermarket to buy some cola. cabbages. and condoms,

Maybe there's a very good reason for it, but I don't see it.

Regarding the story on hand, that really sucks. I wonder if they will pull the same garbage as American banks where customers only have 60 days to report a problem otherwise nothing will be done. Whereas, if the bank screws up in your favor, they could go into your account 20 years from now and withdraw whatever extra money they gave you.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gramatically, I think it makes more sense the European way:

Fifteen dollars, eleven cents.

OR:

Fifteen dollars. Eleven cents,

Re:Periods and commas.

[mccalli]

I never understood why the hell Europeans swap periods and commas. Grammatically it doesn't even make sense...A period ends a sentence or statement, which to me should imply a whole number. A comma is simply a separator, used within sentences. So why would it be used to separate decimals?

See, that argument doesn't make 'sense' either. If a comma is a separator, why not use it to separate decimals? Answer: no reason, it is completely and utterly arbitrary. You're arguing that the point of view you're used to is somehow intrinsicly 'right' - it isn't, it's just usage and custom.

It would be like writing a sentence this way:

Somehow, I suspect mainland Europe knows what it's like to write a sentence including thousands sperators and decimal separators...

I'm British - I use "," to separate thousands and "." to separate decimals, but that doesn't make me 'right' - it really is just usage and custom, there isn't anything to really recommend one way over the other.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but what makes more sense here?

One thousand, one hundred dollars

OR

One thousand. One hundred dollars

Re:Periods and commas.

[EvilIdler]

I don't think this has anything to do with us using commas for decimal space at all. It is perfectly clear to us, despite it not being clear to your untrained mind ;)

My bank uses spaces to separate thousands and a comma for the decimal spot. If a sentence ends with a sum of money, we won't have two full stops in a row, which I'd find harder to read than "1 324 299,53" at the end of a sentence.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Europeans don't "swap periods and commas". They all use the comma as decimal separator, and some of them use periods as thousands separator against standards. Thousands should always be separated with a space. Either periods or commas make no sense for separating thousands, as this separation does not *mean* anything, it is only here to make big numbers easier to read.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, guess what? We usually do not use the point at all. In common usage, 1000's are seperated by spaces : 10 000,00 Euro, to give an example.
Now why the comma? Because the number does not end at the "decimal seperator", and the comma is much easier to actually read.

10 000,00
10 000.00

Pretty obvious, yes?

Re:Periods and commas.

[Sergey23]

The latter is the European way. Hence, you're agreeing with the parent post.

Re:Periods and commas.

[L4t3r4lu5]

No no, I'm English too. You're definitely right on this one.

Spiffing!

Re:Periods and commas.

[Monkeedude1212]

You fail to Recognise that seperators in numbers are completely irrelevant to English Grammar.

Similarily, if I say

"I would like to buy that item for $2.50 please."

That there is a period in the middle of the sentence. It's one thing that has bugged me for a long time. But the point is that Period and comma's are interchangable in math. After all, they are just symbols applied to a concept. I think the best way to describe it would be like saying the same rules for syntax that apply to English do not apply to Spanish or French. Similarily, you can't apply those same rules to Mathematics. They are their own language.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Grygus]

In matters of custom, the more universally recognized method is the right one. Everyone knows what 1,054.65 means. Some people do not know what the hell 12,56 is supposed to be. Since confusion in financial transactions is good for nobody at all, the correct custom is in fact the former. If you want to implement a new worldwide custom then that's fine but I suspect you will need a very good justification and not simply the desire to do something new.

Re:Periods and commas.

[fractic]

I'm British - I use "," to separate thousands and "." to separate decimals, but that doesn't make me 'right' - it really is just usage and custom, there isn't anything to really recommend one way over the other.
 

Actually there is. The reason why a comma is used as a decimal separator in some places is the following. The decimal separator is more important
that the thousands separator, a misplaced thousands separator doesn't matter since it has no effect on the value. Now a speck of ink is more easily mistaken for a dot than a comma. It would be bad to mistake a speck of ink for a decimal separator.

Some people have argued that because the dot is more important for sentence structure it should also be used for the more important decimal separator. However this isn't a very strong argument since there is no reason to use grammar rules for the notation of numbers.

That said, personally I use a dot since I need the comma to separate lists of numbers (e.g. 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 ) and the comma notation for lists is almost
universal.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Europeans did not make the swap, americans did...

Or are you not aware that Europe used decimals way before the US existed ?

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

The latter actually is neither way, the european way is the first way.

The American way would be Fifteen dollars. Eleven cents.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to the supermarket to buy some cola. cabbages. and condoms,

Your alliterative sex life intrigues me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Thus I can learn what to do with a letter-opener, a lime, and lube.

Re:Periods and commas.

[ath1901]

Your logic is kind of flawed. Since "," is a separator in sentences, why sholdn't it be a separator for numbers?
Keeping to the logic of language, is a week separator (separates between words), semi-week and strong.

The most reasonable would thus be 1000000.00 = 1 000 000,00 (which happens to be the standard in some nordic countries).

Using commas and dots would be like writing:
I,went,to,the,supermarket,to,buy,some,cola.cabbages.and.condoms!

Even if we can't agree on the right way to write numbers, could we at least agree localization of Excel and other programs is the SOURCE OF ALL EVIL EVER!!!
Whoever thought it was a good idea to change the formatting of dates, numbers etc based on your computer settings should spend an eternity in hell "converting" fucked up csv's, dump files etc.

Re:Periods and commas.

[mccalli]

In matters of custom, the more universally recognized method is the right one.

OK then - here you go. I await the US and Britain's change to the 'universal' standard with interest.

If you want to implement a new worldwide custom then that's fine but I suspect you will need a very good justification and not simply the desire to do something new.

New? Err...no, no this isn't new. It's centuries old. What's happened here is some US-centric programmer has forgotten to do a locale conversion. Happened to me too about ten years back when I unwisely sent .csv to Switzerland.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Periods and commas.

[rossdee]

I come form New Zealand - a country that has British conventions. We used the decimal point to separate the integer and the fraction part long before we had a decimal currency. So its not that the aremicans invented the 'period' (full stop in english) as decimal point.
Do Europeans have commas in therr IP addresses too?

Re:Periods and commas.

[thickdiick]

In most european languages, it's easier to say "x decimal places after the comma" than "x decimal places after the period." I'm reasonably certain that's part of the reason. And i recognize that Americans wanted to distance themselves from the British after their revolt, resulting in somewhat different grammar conventions and spellings, so perhaps the Americans wanted to change this as well?
I greatly prefer the decimal point as a decimal point, as opposed to the comma.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I,went,to,the,supermarket,to,buy,some,cola.cabbages.and.condoms!"

I dont think I want to know.

Re:Periods and commas.

[BoppreH]

It's easier to see the comma, and if you don't notice the period it's not a big deal.

Re:Periods and commas.

[mano.m]

No, no, wait, we can still milk some literary merit out of this.

I went to the supermarket to buy some cola.

That's fine.

cabbages.

And, while at the cash, the item I'd been trying to remember all this while came back to me.

and condoms

A small moment of hope and optimism followed.

,

Until I paused to reflect and concluded that it would be not much use at all. There, fixed that for you.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

And as a European, I never understood why Americans (and others) use the visually smaller separator at the more important place, and vice versa.

Also, what does grammar have to do with it?

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see comma is the separator for main clause and subordinate clause; main and non-main pat;r a whole part and a fractional part. It looks illogical to use dot as a separator for that purpose, especially knowing it comes from typographical reasons. Then again, English is full of inconsitencies and stones and miles are as good as grams and meters.

Re:Periods and commas.

[onosson]

Ummmm... shouldn't you include the rest of the world in this comparison? Africa alone has more than Europe and the U.S. put together... not to even mention Asia. Are there major countries outside of Europe that use the European system? I'm not advocating for one over the other here, just trying to follow your argument.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Hatta]

If a comma is a separator, why not use it to separate decimals?

A number can only have one decimal separator. A sentence can have only one period.

A number can have many thousands separators. A sentence can have many commas.

This isn't a strong argument, but in the absence of any reason to do it otherwise it's better to do it in the marginally more consistent way.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Fzz]

I await the US and Britain's change to the 'universal' standard with interest.

Um, maybe look again. Most of Asia including India, China and Japan uses a decimal point rather than a decimal comma. If you want a popularity contest, dot wins.

But it's not really about popularity is it? If the accompanying text is English, it should be a dot. If the accompanying text is French it should be a comma. Unless you're Canadian, in which case you're probably just confused.

Re:Periods and commas.

[mccalli]

Are there major countries outside of Europe that use the European system? I'm not advocating for one over the other here, just trying to follow your argument.

Interesting one - I would guess, though I don't know and am happy to be shown evidence either way, that former French and Spanish (and Dutch?) colonies might show mainland European ways and former British ones might show US/British ways. Those geographically close to the States might have moved across too.

Totally unproven hypothesis though so if someone has the time to look it up and I'd be interested.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Periods and commas.

[Bazman]

We don't use periods (full stops) to separate decimals - we use a decimal point, which is a small dot half-way up the base-height of a piece of text. I'd love to type one for you but there isn't one in ASCII. I'm sure it's there in the Unicode tables somewhere.

This wasn't a problem on typewriters, when you would just shift the roller half a line space and hit the full stop. Technology eh? We need a 0.5LF character. Or Unicode everywhere. Or \LaTeX everywhere.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

In matters of custom, the more universally recognized method is the right one.

OK then - here you go. I await the US and Britain's change to the 'universal' standard with interest.

It looks like you missed a few, e.g. India and China. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator

Re:Periods and commas.

[MartinSchou]

Like I said elsewhere, I suspect this is more a matter of spoken language using comma rather than point. Especially because no-one says "two period five" in English. They say "two POINT five". The period just looks like a point.

Re:Periods and commas.

[onosson]

Here we go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DecimalSeparator.png

Assuming this is accurate, the inclusion of India and China in the "dot" group would, by themselves, seem to settle the question. :)

I'm actually quite surprised how many countries fall into the "unknown" category!

Re:Periods and commas.

[imakemusic]

Fifteen. Thousand. Dollars, eleven cents

Re:Periods and commas.

[Dr_Barnowl]

There is only One True CSV (character separated value) format.

One separator. One escape char. One record end char. None of the ridiculous rules about quoting.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to the supermarket to buy some cola. cabbages. and condoms,.

What I can't understand is why you would need cabbage and condoms... After eating the cabbage there is no way you'll be needing the condoms!

Re:Periods and commas.

[corbettw]

Happened to me too about ten years back when I unwisely sent .csv to Switzerland.

You mean when all those Swiss banks collapsed? Now it all makes sense!

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually using a demimal comma makes more sence than the decimal point. Here's why:

The comma is bigger, easier to notice, and in general stands out much more than the point. That's why it makes sence to seperate the decimals with the comma, and the thousands with small, unobtrusive points to make the number more readable while they could also be left out.

Re:Periods and commas.

[JSBiff]

Wait, so your 'decimal point' looks almost exactly like a commonly used notation for multiplication? When I was in elementary school, they used something which resembles a lowercase x for the multiplication operator, but it was adjusted 1/2 way up the letter-height. Then, when I was in junior high/high school, I was taught to use a small dot, 1/2 way up the height of the letters/numbers, to represent the multiplication operator. I believe the reason for using the dot was that when doing algebra/trig/calculus, where the letter x is often used as a variable, people might confuse the multiplication operator for the variable x (or vice versa).

So, what you're describing as a 'decimal point', I would most likely confuse for multiplication of two numbers. Great.

Why can't we come up with a standard, universal notation for mathematics which is understood exactly the same by everyone on the planet? This isn't normal spoken language, this is mathematics, and it needs to be universal. *sigh*. I don't really care what symbol/notation we use (so this isn't a "everyone should do it my way" rant; this is a "I don't care what it is, but lets figure out ONE way to do it, and everyone do it - I'm willing to change, JUST PICK SOMETHING".

Re:Periods and commas.

[TheRaven64]

Someone posted a helpful map earlier. Although the large amount of green (comma-users) makes it look like they're the majority, the fact that both India and China are in the blue (dot-user) region makes it a bit closer. In terms of population, I suspect the dot is more common, but only just.

Now that's over, can we get onto the next pressing issue of why Americans call a full stop a period?

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

> A period ends a sentence or statement

The Americans get this wrong too.

A period of history is from the first day until the last.
A musical period is from its first note until the silence (or stop) that follows its last.
A school period is from the bell that indicates its start until the bell that indicates the next.

The period of a sentence (spoken) is from the start of its first sound, with brief silences (or stops) if required, until the full silence (or stop) indicates that it has ended.

In written form the brief silences (or stops) are indicated by ',' and the full stop is indicated by '.'.

Re:Periods and commas.

[TheRaven64]

And it was nonsense the last time you said it too. Do you really think people were talking about decimals before they had a notation to write them? The form of speech follows the written form, not the other way around.

Re:Periods and commas.

[TimTucker]

Or to take things a step further:

Mr. and Mrs. Smith rushed to the grocery to buy ingredients for making a cake (eggs for $1.20, milk for $2.50, etc.) but were not able to leave the store for 4.5 hours... long lines prevented their departure.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

The comma is visually much more of a separator though, as it has a greater "blackness" than the single dot. If one puts more importance into separating powers of ten above zero and below zero then it's a much striking character to use.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Numbers should be separated by decimal points, not full stops.
Look at a decent maths book from the 1960s and you will see divide signs ÷ instead of slash /
And 11500 is prettier and less ambiguous than 115.00
Sadly slashdot does not display it correctly and strips out the "middle dot".

 

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

New? Err...no, no this isn't new. It's centuries old. What's happened here is some US-centric programmer has forgotten to do a locale conversion. Happened to me too about ten years back when I unwisely sent .csv to Switzerland.

Well, duh. Everyone knows they use ,csv.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

A comma is simply a separator, used within sentences. So why would it be used to separate decimals?

Because that is the purpose of a "decimal separator", as it is also called in general? To separate the the integer and the fractional part of a number?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator

A period ends a sentence or statement, which to me should imply a whole number.

According to your argument, if you want to write "three and a half" it sounds to me to be a bit illogical to but something that "ends a statement after 3", because the statement does not really end there.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Carewolf]

It's not a arguement at all, but I've seen it repeated here a lot of times. I am assuming it is a memory tool, used to teach small children, not something anyone actually believes.

Comma has always been the decimal separator, was it before computer was it before typesetting, it even was the decimal separator in America. A vertical comma for decimal a smaller tilted one to separate thousands. Americans choose a standard for thousand separators first and chose comma, leaving them with no other option than dot for the decimal, even though it neither made any sense nor matched common practise. The English copied that error much later.

Re:Periods and commas.

[DjDanny]

I never understood why the hell Europeans swap periods and commas. Grammatically it doesn't even make sense.

Maybe it's for the same reason that Americans write dates in the wrong order?

DD/MM/YY makes perfect sense - you're going from the smallest unit to the largest as you go from left to right.

MM/DD/YY is just a bodge job which causes the rest of us hours of lost time when debugging code!

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

We, in France, don't use neither commas nor periods as thousands separators. We just add a space. We use a comma for decimals.

10 000,00€. See? No problems.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dot wins! Dot wins!

Re:Periods and commas.

[delphi125]

British mathematicians (from primary school to professor) place the decimal point not at the base, but half way up, at the same level as the minus sign, the space between the lines of an equal sign, or the intersection of the small "x" used as a multiplication sign.

This seriously confused an Italian boy who joined my school at age 14 and eventually was the other person from my year to go to Cambridge.

Unfortunately, despite his intelligence when he was first tested to see what group he should be in, he mistook the dot for a multiplication symbol. He'd been to American schools a lot, since his father was a diplomat. So he answered such simple questions as what is 1.2 + 3.4 (which should be 4.6) as 14 (1x2 + 3x4).

At least the GP understands that confusion is the issue. He is not 100% correct, but it isn't nonsense either.

Don't forget that not only written and spoken are important, but that the limitations of the ASCII/ANSI character set(s) mean that we use "full stops" rather than "points", and similarly combine multiplication into the asterisk.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Kittenman]

Some of us call "periods" full stops, of course.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Hucko]

Huh?

A 'period' is the original English term. 'Full stop', I imagine, comes from the explanation to young children that is what your flow of ideas do at the end of a sentence. Some people have never grown out of it and into vernacular that is more mature and encompassing in its outlook and usage.

I have no idea where you would get that its use divides along national lines. Are you French?

Re:Periods and commas.

[Hucko]

size comparisons: .,'`":;^_-=+!/\{[...GB&#

So no one can mix up ink splashes on their display medium I reckon that the decimal separator should probably be the #.

Seriously, though, what about the acute or grave accents and/or colons? http://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1457018&cid=30231988 had a good idea, 'cept it could be confused again with time and degrees. (Possibly others, I'm not a mathemagician.)

1'345:50; 1'234'234:099483; 1:0;

Time could be distinguished with tau:
t14:30
A space after a ' would be for coordinates and its ilk.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Hurricane78]

Exactly. The thing here is. I use the way I learned in school. You use what you learned. Since it’s arbitraty (and backwards reasoning will not change that), it really does not matter.

I will let you do your way and be happy, and you let me do my way and be happy too. If I go to a country that has other rules, just like I then talk the language of that country (or at least try), I change the way I write decimal separators, dates, etc. It’s a matter of politeness and respect. And I won’t break a leg over something that unimportant anyway.

Now the typical American on the other hand is very proud of his country (for no reason, from our p.o.v., but hey, why not), so he gets a little arrogant, by coming to your country, and expecting you to speak his language and use his dates and decimal systems when communicating with you. Even on price signs and hotel calendars.
He assumes to be better at everything. He also assumes that Americans invented everything (just like the Greeks ^^). Light bulbs, electricity, the telephone, the car, whatever... :D (Yes, partially they have, but you get my point.)

That’s the difference. We don’t go to an US forum and say that our system is better than yours in the first place if the difference is irrelevant because it’s arbitrary. :)

But I must say, it works. It works especially well in Germany, where people live in constant fear of being called Nazis for even thinking about it being thinkable to be proud of their country or something related to it.
In Germany, if you have a room of 1000 people, and one person of a foreign country comes in, they instantly all start to speak English. Yeah, even if that person is from Mongolia and knows enough German to understand what they are saying. It’s ridiculous. ^^

Just so you know how we feel about it: You say that the French are arrogant? Well they can’t hold a candle to you. The funny thing is that you don’t need it. I mean who flew on the freakin moon for god’s sake? ^^ It’s not as if we would not know that without you acting all “wow, we’re so cool”. In fact a proper understatement is way cooler. So do you really want to act more “French” than the French themselves? ^^

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

>I never understood why the hell Europeans swap periods and commas.

Europeans were using the periods and commas and Grammar way before Americans exist.
Better studying some history here...

Re:Periods and commas.

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't say he was English, he said he was British. And we're surprised when Americans get this wrong?

Re:Periods and commas.

[TheRaven64]

No, I'm not French. I've never come across 'period' being used by any British people. Wikipedia confirms what I said:

Period is the preferred term in North America. The term full stop is rarely used by speakers in Canada, and virtually never in the United States, but it is the only term in British English.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Hucko]

I apologise.

Re:Periods and commas.

[shutdown -p now]

In matters of custom, the more universally recognized method is the right one. Everyone knows what 1,054.65 means.

I can assure you that it's not the case. Most people in Russia, for example, would recognize decimal point for what it is, but they would be utterly confused if they saw a comma as a group separator.

Re:Periods and commas.

[Thundersnatch]

You're getting the Brits mixed in with the rest of Europe, and forgetting another Billion plus people.

Here is a better comparison.

1939M >> 591M, so stuff it you continental pansy.

At least they roll back without a law suit

[Anonymous Coward]

At least they roll this back immediately. Here in the US of A they would wait for a class action law suit to develop and then offer a settlement that leaves their customers with pennies on the dollar.

Re:At least they roll back without a law suit

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA. A consumer advocacy group has stated that they'd pursue legal action unless the mistake was repaired within 24 hours. Here in the USA, they would have filed a class action lawsuit within five seconds, give or take.

This is stupid.

[BlueKitties]

There's a reason we separate the data model from the external view and internal controller mechanisms. A moving decimal shouldn't affect the internal math, it should be nothing more than a harmless display error. The fact a moving decimal actually affected the internal management is sad. Well, maybe I'm being an elitist boob, but this seems more like negligent high level design that compounded a low level bug into being much worse than it should have been.

Re:This is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of it as the decimal analog to the filepath directory separator, for platform-interoperable code - Windows uses a character which is used as the single-character escape in Unix-based string processing and C runtime functions. It's not that it's difficult to figure out how to workaround, it's just ensuring that you have these damn workarounds and conditional blocks in all the right places. Typically, you'll get most of them right for you ship, but a few will be reported as bugs from the field, and you're never quite certain you've got them all.

Re:This is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

A moving decimal shouldn't affect the internal math, it should be nothing more than a harmless display error

This wasn't a "moving decimal" problem, it was a fundamental error in data parsing, on the level of mixing metric and English units in a Mars lander. No amount of modeling and controllerizificationing (yay for buzzwords) would have fixed the fact that the programmer who wrote the routine did not realize that "," meant "." in Italian.

Re:This is stupid.

[BlueKitties]

If I type "100,000.00" into an English ATM, and it sees I'm trying to withdraw a hundred thousand dollars, I'm going to get some kind of error. Again, if the thousands place token merely "meant something else in the UI", the internal mechanisms should have caught the ridiculously large transaction because the user would have used the UI to enter a hundred thousand dollars -- which is nuts and should have just thrown an error at the ATM saying "you can't withdraw that much dang money."

Which, of course, leads me to believe either they honestly let people try to withdraw insane amounts of money or that the thousands place token was used somewhere it shouldn't have been. One mistake may have been caching the entered amount of as string for future parsing, instead of analyzing the data and formatting it in the form of an abstract datatype ~and then~ operating on the ADT. It really looks like these people withdrew one amount of money, and then a parsing error elsewhere caused the problem. The UI entry should have been parsed by the UI manager and then sent to the internal managers, which would have then sent money to the person standing at the ATM. It looks like they didn't do that though, which means improperly sterilized data (data which was part of the UI) was likely to blame.

This sort of difference between languages and whatnot is ~why~ the UI should deliver data to the internal mechanisms in a separate format than what the user entered -- that way terrible mistakes like this are isolated to the UI, and never propagate elsewhere (and when they do, huge values like this are caught by the first mechanism that gets handed the value.)

Re:This is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Moreover, they should have used a strongly typed scaled integer class instead of whatever it was they were using. When using scaled integers, ALWAYS make sure that you use the type system of the language effectively to prevent integers with one scale from being assigned to fields with a different scale. "But I checked the math myself!" Yah, yah, yah... you WILL get it wrong someday.

Bizzarro Superman

[Kartoffel]

It's just like in Superman III, but backwards!

Decimal and Thousands separators

[Razalhague]

I really wish it could be standardized with the decimal separator being either a comma or a period and the thousands separator being neither.

Re:Decimal and Thousands separators

[SeeSchloss]

Well, it has been standardised for a long time. Decimal separator is either a comma or a period (with a comma being recommended) and the thousands separator is either nothing or a space.

Re:Decimal and Thousands separators

[welshie]

and don't get be started on the correct formatting of telephone numbers, and how Excel (and Excel-compatible) spreadsheets tend to wreck telephone numbers by attempting to parse them as floating point numbers.

Re:Decimal and Thousands separators

[Anonymous Coward]

I would pay 100000000000 dollars for this to be the case.

Oh, you meant something like:
1¦000¦000¦000¦000 dollars

Re:Decimal and Thousands separators

[Razalhague]

OK then, I wish the standard would actually be adopted.

Powers-of-ten Information Biases

[Anonymous Coward]

This is called a "power-of-ten information bias." The problem was described almost 20 years ago in the Management Information Systems Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1, March 1990, pp. 63-77.

Happened to me recently

[Acer500]

I made a similar mistake recently... I made a (.NET) data entry software that received monetary quantities as user input, and I converted them without taking into account the Windows settings for decimals and thousands separators.

It worked fine until somebody used a different language OS... and some strange quantities were recorded, one slipped all the way through the process and a confused customer received a bill for 17.000.000 local currency (about U$ 1.000.000) . I fixed it by using the CultureInfo, etc.. .when converting, but it wasn't nice, messed with all of the higher ups' reports and everything ("Hey, hadn't we sold about U$ 1.000.000 more?" "No, it was an error from G in Development")

I'm sure there are better ways and good practices, but keep in mind that where I work we don't even have testing, so I guess I'm getting sloppy. If someone wants to give advice, go ahead, I'll appreciate it (or at least should :) ).

Re:Happened to me recently

[dzfoo]

>> If someone wants to give advice, go ahead, I'll appreciate it (or at least should :) ).

OK, here it goes: Don't make stupid mistakes like that.

        -dZ.

Re:Happened to me recently

[eallanjr]

I made a similar mistake recently... I made a (.NET) data entry software

Don't you mean ,Net?

Re:Happened to me recently

[Nadaka]

Use this experience as evidence that you need to implement a robust software testing regiment.

Re:Happened to me recently

[Monkeedude1212]

I used my last mod point this morning, now I wish I had saved it. =(

Funny though.

Re:Happened to me recently

[Monkeedude1212]

You've got to handle that problem at the application layer, preferably as soon as possible.

Before converting it to a double or float point or whatever you are using, you have to do some data verification. Similarily, you wouldn't want someone putting in "ABC.75" dollars, because that can't be parsed, you have to handle all those scenarios. A try-catch will work for the obvious ones (like I stated) but there are some simple tips to help with the , and . translation done by the OS's.

All of it is done by handling it while its a string, before it goes to a numeric data class. You check if there are any Comma's. If so, how many characters follow the comma. 2 would be like 1,00 (one dollar) , and 3 would be like 1,000 (one thousand dollars). In no case in English formatting should a comma be followed by any less than 3 characters, and assuming they are inputing their information properly, French users won't have any more than 2.

Similarily, you apply the exact same logic for periods, just vice versa. This will allow your program to determine which standard is being used independant of operating system OS. Once you've nailed that, you can change comma's to decimals or what not depending on which case you are in, and then converting it to your double from there.

You should be able to test it on your own at least a few times, to make sure it works, then it SHOULD work across all OS languages.

The beautiful part about it is that this only needs to be done for Data Input, not Data output, since the OS (should) handles the display of Ints and other numeric Datatypes, when your users go to pull up a workorder - it should display in whatever standard they are using on their computer.

Re:Happened to me recently

[Anonymous Coward]

Advice?

Give an input example to the user, generated using the CultureInfo, because the user will probably forget what is set for them (or they're using a different computer to their normal one).

E.g., Enter Amount: #[_________] (e.g., #400,75)

Re:Happened to me recently

[Acer500]

OK, here it goes: Don't make stupid mistakes like that.

Hmm... I guess that's good advice :)

Re:Happened to me recently

[Acer500]

Thanks a lot for your time

You've got to handle that problem at the application layer, preferably as soon as possible.

Before converting it to a double or float point or whatever you are using, you have to do some data verification. Similarily, you wouldn't want someone putting in "ABC.75" dollars, because that can't be parsed, you have to handle all those scenarios.

Actually, I had already implemented that they couldn't type anything but numbers, commas and periods in the relevant text box.

You check if there are any Comma's. If so, how many characters follow the comma. 2 would be like 1,00 (one dollar) , and 3 would be like 1,000 (one thousand dollars). In no case in English formatting should a comma be followed by any less than 3 characters, and assuming they are inputing their information properly, French users won't have any more than 2.

Similarily, you apply the exact same logic for periods, just vice versa. This will allow your program to determine which standard is being used independant of operating system OS.

I probably should do that.

Once you've nailed that, you can change comma's to decimals or what not depending on which case you are in, and then converting it to your double from there.

You should be able to test it on your own at least a few times, to make sure it works, then it SHOULD work across all OS languages.

It should. Thanks.

Re:Happened to me recently

[Acer500]

Use this experience as evidence that you need to implement a robust software testing regiment.

You're preaching to the choir :) . At my last position (with Equifax), they had a VERY stringent testing process... it was a bottleneck, but it worked, and we never had downtime or production errors like this one. Sadly it's been an uphill battle over here, and we've been through one IT boss change already in the last year and a half I've been here (an insurance company).

Re:Happened to me recently

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got to handle that problem at the application layer, preferably as soon as possible.

as soon as possible = at the design phase. The simple solution: separate fields for the whole units and the fractions and only allow numeric input. That is what banks usually do in there online payment systems.
Maybe not very convenient but it rules out all possibilities for mistakes that the bank could possibly be held accountable for. (like assuming that 1,000 or 1.000 means "one thousand" while the customer just entered a "0" to much by accident and actually meant "one")

Re:Happened to me recently

[coolsnowmen]

That works until someone actually cares about fractions of a cent (financial market,stock price). Then your 1.055 (1 dollar 5 and a half cents) became 1,055 (one thousand fifty five dollars).

If you are worried about it, I think telling the user is the best way to prevent a mistake. A simple example below the input shows how the number should be input. Then anyone can figure it out. If you want both possibilities, then add the option. If you want to pull it from the locale information, then you can still display below the input:

Example:$ 1,234,567.89
(If your detection thinks they user is European, or they select so)
Example:EURO 1.234.567,89

Re:Happened to me recently

[Monkeedude1212]

Yes, the system I described only works for specific scenarios where you never end up with fractions of a cent, specifically if he is using a "Currency" Datatype. His example mentioned "Sales" so I naturally assumed that was the case, since no business owner I ever heard of has sold something with a fraction of a penny in the price.

It is however, a cheap hack/workaround that will take you maybe 20 minutes to implement, which is easier then trying to define the fool-proof solution.

If you try to cast bad input into whatever currency you are using it will generally throw an error. Even if the Allow Thousands is enabled when trying to parse your numeric string, it still needs to be formed correctly, meaning a comma MUST be followed by 3 characters. In example, 100,00 is not one hundred thousand, it would throw an error.

Generally, this is only ever a problem when you are dealing with different operating systems - because when you grab data from the backend and put it into the Application Layer, it'll put it in whatever form the Operating system sees fit to display it. So while I may have perfectly structured and accurate data entering my program, ($2,000.00) it will be converted before displaying ($2.000,00) to the new format, which if you plan on doing any handling of this data, you have to be careful.

Re:Happened to me recently

[Anonymous Coward]

Try using RegExp. It's a life saver.

^\$?(\d{1,3},?(\d{3},?)*\d{3}(\.\d{0,2})?|\d{1,3}(\.\d{0,2})?|\.\d{1,2}?)$

If it doesn't match that, then throw an error.

Re:Happened to me recently

[Anonymous Coward]

Before converting it to a double or float point or whatever you are using ...

Based on that statement do you actually believe that it's even a remotely good idea to store monetary values in an inexact form subject to errors like rounding? Anyone silly enough to do monetary calculations using floating point numbers without considering (and minimising) errors that can creep into those calculations deserves to cause errors that will see them handling class action law suits related to incorrect calculations.

BCD rules!

Re:Happened to me recently

[RogerWilco]

Always keep localisation in mind for every piece of software you write. Always.

I live in a small European country, the chances my software get used abroad are always significant, but even in the USA there are large numbers of non-English speakers, and Canada and Mexico are near too.

Sometimes I just write ""This code was developed only to work in XXXX locale/country" as a comment in the code. Usually my code will use defines/enumerations like DECIMALSEPARATOR and FILETOBIGWARNING instead of hardcoded values/strings, even if only one locale is used. Retroactively internationalising a piece of code not written that way is a huge pain. Just assume every piece of software you write will be a huge success and end up being used all over the world in a decade. ;-)

Windows XP

[Krneki]

The whole system is probably running on Windows XP Home and someone must have changed the regional settings to Italy so he can install some Italian crap on it.

P.S: Just trolling. :)

Re:Windows XP

[ForMeToPoopOn]

I think you're right!!! Poste Italiane, the State-owned postal service, has become a bigger mess than before. They used to just (try to) deliver mail. Now they want to be a bank, mail order business, they sell high-risk investment funds to steal money from senior people like any other bank. And finally, they outsourced most of the mail delivery services to DHL and others. Finally they can focus on try to steal money with the excuse of "software bugs"...What a misery!

Oblig. Office Space

[Powys]

“I always do that. I always mess up some mundane detail.”

In Socialist Italy......

[benwiggy]

In Socialist Italy, the period separates you into groups of thousands!

testing is the issue

[maxwells daemon]

This is not a representation issue. It is a project management and testing issue.

This Could Never Happen In The U.S.

[Petersko]

People in the U.S. with that kind of cash are considered so rich that they don't go down to the post office themselves.

Re:This Could Never Happen In The U.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

Love the 'Merican arrogance!

Bad news... it has happened

Several years ago, I got back to Canada from a trip to San Antonio only to find that my bill had been mangled by the bank that processed credit card payments for the hotel. They too dropped the decimal... meaning that my hotel bill of $360USD was changed to $36000USD and, given the exchange rate at the time, showed up on my credit card statement as more than $57000CDN. Of course I found out about it long before the statement arrived - my wife called me at work demanding to know what the hell I'd done in San Antonio to max out the credit card. I told the bank that I was surprised that our credit limit wouldn't cover it (ha ha).

Apparently more than 20,000 customers were affected across the US

On the plus side, we got a nice (free) trip to NYC out of that mess.

That's what LC_NUMERIC is for

[gzipped_tar]

Use it or lose it. Duh.

Italian Office Space ?

[Beretta Vexe]

Alright so when the sub routine compounds the interest is uses all these extra decimal places that just get rounded off. So we simplified the whole thing, we rounded them all down, drop the remainder into an account we opened.

Logical separators [Re:Periods and commas.]

[Geoffrey.landis]

I never understood why the hell Europeans swap periods and commas. Grammatically it doesn't even make sense. A period ends a sentence or statement, which to me should imply a whole number. A comma is simply a separator, used within sentences. So why would it be used to separate decimals?

By your logic, both commas and periods as the decimal "point" separator are wrong, since the decimal is not the end of the number.

Logically, then, the decimal locator should be a semicolon: more of a stop than a comma, but not the end of the number. Like so:

12,345;67

That would avoid ambiguity in sentences like
"He said I owed 120. 20 for the part and the rest for labor."

Re:God Bless Canadian Tire!

[MatthewCCNA]

I love my $1 coin and my $.05 bill

Rookie mistake

[plopez]

And if the people weren't rookies, shame on them. It's obvious they had no knowledge of the culture and conventions of their target user. This is what happens when the program team, including the management and QA team (assuming there was one), is offshored.

I am currently working on a distributed international project. Not only things like decimal points, measurement systems, and spelling are taken into account but also the tone of the error messages and documentation. What is acceptable in one culture may be insulting in an other.

Also latency is taken into account. A person in another culture and/or with low speed connections to the internet may have different latency expectations than those in other cultures and/or high speed connections.

KNOW YOUR END USER!

Code Review

[zoomshorts]

The software should have gone through several
INDEPENDENT code reviews. The bank simply has
not done a proper job. The losses should come
directly from this bank's bottom line. The one
who pinched pennies to get this software rolled
out, needs to be terminated.

Re:Code Review

[dave87656]

If only life were so simple. The code that the bank wrote may very well have gone through independent code reviewed in house, but the error might have been in a library, it might have been in an odd combination of events that noone could have foreseen. It's easy to be a Monday Night quarterback on these things but a large software system has an almost infinite number of possibilities that a programmer or a group of programmers will never be able to see.

Translated article

[Anonymous Coward]

BancoPosta: depositors debited with thousands of euros, but it's a mistake

Thousands of customers of PosteItaliane, and in particular BancoPosta were stunned this morning. Thousands of euros vanished, overdrafts for many and unability to pay with a debit card or withdraw money from an ATM. "It was an accounting error, which caused a higher debit than was factual," people explain from Poste Italiane.

In practice, the last performed operation's decimal point has shifted, adding two more zeros. For instance, for a 115 euro bill, the charge was 11,500. "A mistake which did not occur for all depositors - they add - but only for those who had made recent transactions. "

No way to contact the call center (803,160): the line drops after a few minutes wait.

The problem has not been solved yet but the press office of Poste Italiane has assured us that in a few hours--tomorrow morning at worst--, the drawback would be overcome and - of course - without interest charges for those who had found their account in overdraft.

Dozens of reports came to ADOC from alarmed depositors. President Carlo Pileri promises: "If account avaabiity is not restored within 24 hours, ADOC will make their attorneys available in order to pursue a possible lawsuit, including compensation for such damages as may have been incurred."

The post is using the wrong format

[Anonymous Coward]

I am pretty sure the slashdot post, rather than TFA is using the european format for decimals/thousand seperaters. From what i can gather from TFA what happened was 115 euro transactions were processed as 11500 euro transactions.

Apostrophes!

[munch117]

Here's a practical option, you can start using right away without waiting for the whole world to agree on anything: Use apostrophes for the thousands separator. It's just better: It looks good, everyone trivially understands it, and it's unambiguous.

If you configure that in the regional settings of a Microsoft OS, and the decimal separator is set to a comma, then Excel becomes capable of reading CSV files with either decimal separator.

Re:Apostrophes!

[Razalhague]

Being Finnish, I already use a comma as a decimal separator and a space as a thousands separator, but the whole point of making it standard is to make sure that I can say 1,234 without other people confusing it with 1 234 (or 1'234 as you seem to prefer).

Lets all use the decimal point

[hippo]

When I was a kid I was taught to write decimal points in the middle of the line, not on the bottom like a full-stop. Can we invent a new character for the decimal point. I have two keys on my keyboard with dots on them though I've never pressed the one on the numeric keypad. I propose we get rid of some useless ASCII character and use that for decimal point. How about 0x7f (DEL)? Have you ever wanted to print out DEL?

Re:Lets all use the decimal point

[ais523]

That character's there so you can delete a character in punched tape by punching out all the holes. (Likewise, you can put blocks of NULs in so that you can add new characters in them by punching holes in them.) When you can't easily add or remove characters in your data format, nor unset bits, that sort of precaution makes quite a bit of sense.

Re:Lets all use the decimal point

[Cassini2]

I propose we get rid of some useless ASCII character and use that for decimal point. How about 0x7f (DEL)

0x7F corresponds to the delete key and/or the backspace key in many different computer systems. See ASCII Character Chart. As the wikipedia page points out, there is a degree of ambiguity between delete and backspace, and that causes enough chaos when dealing with different pieces of software.

I am absolutely certain making the delete key a decimal point would cause complete accounting chaos. I typed "100.00" but the computer says "10000". We're broke!!!

It's a Royale with Cheese

[Kartoffel]

If it was really French, you wouldn't have such bastardizations as "sous-marin de 12 pouces", cinq six boîtes de tomates vertes!

Lira? Luxury!

[Arthur Grumbine]

Back in my day (early 2009), we had only had Zimbabwe dollars. And we were thankful!!

Good thing it's only one bug

[vinn01]

I used to work at a place that was nuts about bug counts. Nevermind the severity.

This decimal comma bug would be *one* bug. A typo on an informational page would count as one bug too.

The developers were always questioned "How many bugs did you fix on this release?" And QA would have to answer "How many bugs did you verify on this release?". Guess which bugs would get fixed and verified for the current release and which bugs would get deferred to later releases.

Drove me crazy.

History do not care for sense

[aepervius]

from wiki ond ecimal separator : "In the Middle Ages, before printing, a bar ( ) over the units digit was used to separate the integral part of a number from its fractional part, a tradition derived from the decimal system used in Indian mathematics.[1] Its regular usage and classification can be attributed to the Iranian mathematician Al-Khwarizmi. Later, a separator () (a short, roughly vertical, ink stroke) between the units and tenths position became the norm. When this character was typeset, it was convenient to use the existing comma (,) or period (.) instead."

If you look at the countries using the comma, it is actually historically that they used something similar as shown above. Mostly latin countries and europe use comma, north america and asia use period.

In France, the period was already in use in printing to make Roman numerals more readable, so the comma was chosen. Many other countries also chose to use the comma to mark the decimal units position.[2] It has been made standard by the ISO for international blueprints. However, English-speaking countries took the comma to separate sequences of three digits.

See : comma is an ISO standard. So using periosd made no sense :). Tit for tat, pot, kettle, your psot not being so insgihtful etc...

Arguably so

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep the submitter got it wrong. Given that he is posting in English, to an American website

Based on Alexa, USA is indeed biggest single country from which people visit Slashdot but USA+Canada together make up for 50.3% of the Slashdotters. Even with other english speaking countries, it won't get to 60%.

While I agree that with those statistics it is slightly more logical to use USA method of markup in this specific issue (though disagree about that in metric/imperial debate), it certainly isn't that clear cut and Americans aren't anything near an overwhelming majority of the people on Slashdot - that wasn't teh case when FAQ was last updated about the subject, 6 years or so ago. I think that with the recent progression it is safe to say that half a year from now, USA+Canada make up for less than half of the visitors. The news aren't that US centric either. Most of the news are about international issues, technology, EU... In fact, this very story isn't USA centric at all.

Does your software work in Turkey?

[Nyrath the nearly wi]

This is just one of the many pitfalls when trying to localize your software.

Does Your Code Pass The Turkey Test?

I'm not 'Merican

[Petersko]

"Love the 'Merican arrogance!"

I'm actually Canadian as well. I implied it doesn't happen in America because few people have that kind of cash in their accounts to begin with. It was an easy potshot at the saving habits of Americans, not a claim of technical superiority.

Perhaps I was too subtle.

Re:parent is a racist troll

[Shakrai]

I'm a racist for pointing out that Morgan Freeman is a black American? That's rich.

Radix Point notation conventions

[Anonymous Coward]

In Engineering ( I am an EE ):
The 'thing' / location / construct described by the period (or comma) 10.00 (or 10,00) is called the Radix point.
this is base 10 for decimal, base 2 for binary etc.
the point indicates the positional significance of each number written.
in decimal 10s, 100s, 1000s to the left (increasing 10-fold, errr... as in Base10 duh!), etc, or 1/10th, 1/100th etc to right of the radix point for decreasing fractional values
It all depends on your number system: so while we accept generally that something costs $10.95 id US dollars, or 10,95 in Euros for example is normally understood by most people, the fact that you can have something in base 2 (binary) such as 1101.011101 is a real actual possible fractional number in Base 2, binary.
although computers/electronics are 0 or 1 i.e. sort of single 'bitwise' at a time, (actually an analogue voltage that is characterized as a 1 or 0 depending on the design criteria)

obviously we have 64, 32, 128, etc bit 'things' memory, cpu, registers, flip-flips, etc in parallel, but each bit is only a integer 0 or 1.

---
the math behind Base 2 allows for a number like 1101.101
to figure out this number equivalent in decimal:
(1)x2^3+(1)x2^2+(0)x2^1+(1)x2^0 (radix point) + (1)x2^-1+(0)x2^-2+(1)x2^-3 so that is 8+4+0+1=13.00 is the whole part and the fraction is (0.5+0+0.125)=0.625 so 13.625 in decimal or 13,625 in (sorry) 'euro-decimal'

my point is all it is -- it's just a convention for the radix point notation:
  US uses .
FR uses ,

so what? somebody made the convention 6'4" for 6 foot 4 inches which is not 6.4 feet it's 6.3333( repeating) feet .... the places that use metric use scientific notation: 1.9304 meters.
sometime people also swap usage of , and . for thousands in compared in various countries: 15,000.00 US is 15.000,00 elsewhere.... just notation convention

Just one of quirk of puny humans and their unorganized societies,

(and of course...)
I for one, hail our new Math Overlords....

FxCop

[Carra]

Our build system now checks the code with M$ FxCop. Any problems with the cultural settings and the build stops.

We hit a brick the day our program was started in Turkey. Having that problem once is more than enough.

How is parent not flamebait?

[raddan]

An engineer can slap a piece of paper on a building that says "if it falls, it ain't our fault" just as a programmer can claim no liability for software. In both cases, saying such a thing does not make it so. The big difference is that most bugs in most software doesn't have the potential to kill people.

If you're a programmer and you work on a critical system, you bet your ass you can be held liable! Where in the article does it say that the programmers will be shielded from consequences?

I'll take my half of the road out of the middle

[NotQuiteReal]

That way me and my Humvee are never wrong.

J. Wassil

[Anonymous Coward]

So did the decimal bug ever get back his money??

International Bureau of Weights and Measures

[DavMz]

I am French, and I have never heard of using the point to separate thousands of hundreds, but a space is fine (11 500 and not 11.500), as you can see if you compare the "million" article from wikipedia in french and english.

Anyway, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, in their22nd General Conference, decided that:

"the dot (point on the line) [is used] as the decimal marker in all the English language versions of its publications, including the English text of the SI Brochure (the definitive international reference on the SI), with the comma (on the line) remaining the decimal marker in all of its French language publications"

And from the 7th General Conference which was held in 1948:

"Numbers may be divided in groups of three in order to facilitate reading; neither dots nor commas are ever inserted in the spaces between groups."

Those familiar with scientific publications will also not that those recommandations are enforced by editors, even american ones, because those aim an international audience. Now, you do what you want inside your country.

Re:International Bureau of Weights and Measures

[elronxenu]

And from the 7th General Conference [bipm.org] which was held in 1 948:

There, fixed that for you.

Re:International Bureau of Weights and Measures

[DavMz]

There is no need to fix what is not broken. The text says "may", not "have to".

Time for another marvelous solution from ISO

[hicksw]

In the spirit of ISO 2014, which settled the argument of whether dates should be written

      "day/month/year" or "month/day/year" by specifying "year-month-day",

I propose this simple solution which should satisfy both comma/period user factions:

Use either comma or period as a thousands separator.
Use semi-colon to separate the integer part from the fractional part.

A few programmers (c, java, Pascal) may be temporarily inconvenienced, but this is a small price to pay for sorting out this perplexing problem in monetary representation.
--
Often wrong but never in doubt.