As another responder notes, this is not an Excel problem, but a floating/double issue inherent in computing. No, it's inherent in floating-point math. So what do you do?
1. Don't use floating point math for financial applications, or 2. Resign yourself to rounding errors
Manager decides to create a new policy. The owners don't like it and discipline him. Totally within their rights. If the manager owned the store, he could do this. Since he doesn't, his boss makes the rules. Assuming your question ("where's the story here?") is an honest one, the answer is that many people view this as a clash between morals and business.
The guy is a journalism student. He knew that his actions were going to get publicity. He knew what was going to happen if he acted out. Really, what was his motive???
Attention Whore? Uh, yes.
Sorry, what was your point? That this means he deserved to be tasered?
It doesn't remove bits stuck to your teeth particularly well anyway. Actually, I'm not sure where you heard that, but it does. I use it for that all the time. It's not like it's hard to tell whether the gum gets bits of stuff stuck in it: it definitely does.
Ok, that makes sense. Since you're using the GFDL, why not start your pages by grabbing a copy of the corresponding pages on Wikipedia? The Hash Table article particularly would be improved a lot.
I pay the membership cost. If his three friends paid as well, I would be able to pay less than I do. The end result is that his buddies are stealing from me and every other subscriber. By that logic, I'm also a thief because I don't use the service at all. No, you're not. You're not part of the equation, since you choose not to use the service. How so? Your statement I quoted applies to me. I'm not being obtuse or rhetorical here; I really believe I am a counterexample that proves your statement to be false.
Can you be specific about why they are thieves and I am not? I contend that you can't.
By that logic, all slander and libel are also stealing. Depending on your definition of stealing, perhaps. I don't really care what you want to call it- I just argued that it's socially wrong. Then I suppose our discussion is over, because my entire point is that I do care what we call it.
In my mind, if you're not stealing a thing, then the "theft" is metaphorical, not actual. The notion of theft is a useful one, and watering it down with abstract metaphors involving indirect deprivation of intangibles makes it less useful.
Before we get yet another "I always knew I didn't look at one letter at a time! I read whole words at a time! hyuk hyuk", please go read the first two paragraphs of the damn article. Or, for that matter, the summary right here on Slashdot. I don't think I have yet seen even one response I didn't write that understood they were talking about the reader's eyes looking at two different things at the same time.
It's always seemed pretty apparent to me that we don't reach letters in "correct order" by focusing only on a single one at a time. If that were the case things like speed-reading and scanning for content would be nearly impossible. Outside confirmation of this is nice however. Well then, despite your remarkable intelligence, you missed the point of the article, which was contained in its first two paragraphs.
It's not about where you "focus". It's about the fact that your two eyes look at different letters simultaneously while you read.
Score 4, Interesting without even reading or understanding the article. The Mersenne twister is a pseudorandom number generator, which is totally unrelated.
I pay the membership cost. If his three friends paid as well, I would be able to pay less than I do. The end result is that his buddies are stealing from me and every other subscriber. By that logic, I'm also a thief because I don't use the service at all.
He's also stealing from us if you consider that he's creating goodwill or "street cred" by distributing the data illegally (he signed the contract I did). There's no free lunch here. By that logic, all slander and libel are also stealing.
The nature of theft is that it is counter-productive. The reason thieves are shunned by society, is that they consume without producing. No. You're thinking too hard. The nature of theft is that thieves take something away from someone else. Victim had a thing; thief takes that thing; victim no longer has that thing. Anything beyond that is using the word "theft" as a metaphor, and should be recognized as such.
The classic, observable case that really kills me is traffic. Every morning I run into traffic caused in no small part by a few selfish lane-shifting drivers, who in their efforts to get three cars ahead of others make merges turn into huge jams. I'm not sure if it's because they either don't care or don't understand what their actions are doing, but the sad truth is that they'll get stuck in the traffic the next day with me. Agreed. But that's not theft.
Companies really need to, IMO, stop putting the interests of their shareholders so far above the interests of their customers, which sadly seems to be the case for so many. Alternately, they could recognize that it is not in the interest of their shareholders to maximize profit at the expense of ethics. I own shares in a number of companies, and I don't consider it in my interest for them to be ruthless on by behalf.
Splitting a cable is different. Connecting to a company's server without authorization is different. What we're talking about here is making copies of information. There's no way the act of copying information can deprive anyone of that information, so it's not theft.
Also, please note that you're the one who brought up the fact that the victim is a company. Everything I said applies equally to individuals.
I understand you believe the GP's suggestion to be unethical, but there's no need to misuse the word "theft" for this. What the GP is talking about may be freeloading, or copyright violation, or breach of contract, but to call this "theft" belittles the victims of actual theft.
Send a few radio telescopes in different directions in Voyager-like trajectories. Every year you'd get higher and higher resolution. All the signals would reach Earth at approximately the same time, so the interferometry would need to cope with just a 15-minute difference between the signals, even though the telescopes would be multiple light-hours apart.
As a bonus, these telescopes would also increase, year by year, the range of the parallax technique, the most accurate technique for finding stellar distances.
Slashdot Mirror
You can read more about it here.
I must be stupid or something, but I can't find the video. Maybe I have too many flash blockers and script blockers installed...
Must be Canadian dollars. USD$2000 isn't very much.
1. Don't use floating point math for financial applications, or
2. Resign yourself to rounding errors
I leave this as an exercise for the reader.
Motherlovers.
Why would the number of cores need to be a power of two?
Attention Whore? Uh, yes.
Sorry, what was your point? That this means he deserved to be tasered?
Ok, that makes sense. Since you're using the GFDL, why not start your pages by grabbing a copy of the corresponding pages on Wikipedia? The Hash Table article particularly would be improved a lot.
Why not just add your info to Wikipedia?
Actually, I just looked randomly at docforge's article on hash tables, and I can tell you the Wikipedia one is far more accurate and complete already.
Can you be specific about why they are thieves and I am not? I contend that you can't. By that logic, all slander and libel are also stealing. Depending on your definition of stealing, perhaps. I don't really care what you want to call it- I just argued that it's socially wrong. Then I suppose our discussion is over, because my entire point is that I do care what we call it.
In my mind, if you're not stealing a thing, then the "theft" is metaphorical, not actual. The notion of theft is a useful one, and watering it down with abstract metaphors involving indirect deprivation of intangibles makes it less useful.
We might need to agree to disagree on this.
Before we get yet another "I always knew I didn't look at one letter at a time! I read whole words at a time! hyuk hyuk", please go read the first two paragraphs of the damn article. Or, for that matter, the summary right here on Slashdot. I don't think I have yet seen even one response I didn't write that understood they were talking about the reader's eyes looking at two different things at the same time.
Why can't one of you people read even just the first two paragraphs of the article? Sheesh. This is not about chunking.
It's not about where you "focus". It's about the fact that your two eyes look at different letters simultaneously while you read.
RTFA.
Score 4, Interesting without even reading or understanding the article. The Mersenne twister is a pseudorandom number generator, which is totally unrelated.
Copyright violation is not theft, no matter how much anyone likes that metaphor.
Splitting a cable is different. Connecting to a company's server without authorization is different. What we're talking about here is making copies of information. There's no way the act of copying information can deprive anyone of that information, so it's not theft.
Also, please note that you're the one who brought up the fact that the victim is a company. Everything I said applies equally to individuals.
I understand you believe the GP's suggestion to be unethical, but there's no need to misuse the word "theft" for this. What the GP is talking about may be freeloading, or copyright violation, or breach of contract, but to call this "theft" belittles the victims of actual theft.
Send a few radio telescopes in different directions in Voyager-like trajectories. Every year you'd get higher and higher resolution. All the signals would reach Earth at approximately the same time, so the interferometry would need to cope with just a 15-minute difference between the signals, even though the telescopes would be multiple light-hours apart.
As a bonus, these telescopes would also increase, year by year, the range of the parallax technique, the most accurate technique for finding stellar distances.
Hint: look at the other man mentioned in the article title.