20 Oct
2011
20 Oct
'11
5:02 p.m.
> Mostly unrelated Q: In Windoze 3.11, if you used
the calculator to subract
> 3.10 from 3.11 , it gave a result of 0 ! ?What was the cause of THAT
> error?
On Thu, 20 Oct 2011, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
An overly truthful upgrade policy?
Windoze 3.11 was "WFW". MS said that that was "Windows For
Workgroups",
but some people claimed that the second 'W' was for a word that is
offensively obscene to Brits.
On Fri, 21 Oct 2011, Liam Proven wrote:
:?D
I'd forgotten that!
IIRC, the rumour was that it was written by a student on a summer
work-experience posting. It was considered good enough and included.
Also, they lost the source code, so it couldn't be readily fixed, and
in the end had to be completely rewritten by someone costing much more
money.
It is handy, and it is nice that the newer one has some minimal
"scientific" and BASE CONVERSION functions. It doesn't compare with an
HP REAL calculator, but I can always find it.
Also see Windows Write - again, went pretty much
unchanged through
about 5 or 6 releases of Windows because they'd lost the source. It
was rewritten and replaced by Wordpad.
Pointless rambling Windows Write anecdote: I was the first person in the
UC Berkeley School of Library and Information Studies to use a word
processor for PhD written exams. Mostly because I publicly demanded that
they publicly state their REASONS for requiring hand written, and I
assured them that I would still be able to make enough spelling erors.
They were panic-stricken over how to "sanitize" a computer so that answers
couldn't be smuggled in! But, then they asked ME to pick a
word-processor! Since all that I wanted was a TEXT EDITOR and a printer,
I responded, "ANY word processor. ANY. Just tell me which one a week
ahead, so that I can learn enough of its quirks to use it." We settled on
Windows Write, which protected me from even more insane choices or botched
installation, and protected them from the possibility that I might
recompile from source [on PC-Write or the like] or object code edit in
paragraphs of pre-written text. But mostly it let them choose which PC to
use at the last minute. After all of that, they ended up just handing me
a few blank disks and key to an office with a PC in it, and never even
checked up on me. And then THEY printed out my files. I passed. Which
shows how sloppy their standards are!
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com