Calculators on desktops (was Re: Octal)

[Fred Cisin]

On Fri, 1 Sep 2006 aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> > Go to Start/Run and type Calc.
> Didn't know you could do that.

Yep.
If they won't let you play solitaire at work, goto Start/Run and type SOL
(IT admin often removes the games from the Start menu, but fails to remove
the program from the machine.)  Did they leave Pinball on the machines?
(space,Z, and ?)

> Not sure we have permission [1] to go into the
> CLI mode, and perhaps we might get suspicious
> looks if we did.

If they've tried to hide it, goto Star/Run and type CMD

> > > The "scientific" mode includes binary, octal,
> > > hex and decimal, aswell as proper maths
> > > functions.
> > Yes, but it refuses to do anything but integers in
> > anything other than decimal!
> No offense intended, but are you sure it's not
> set up for no decimal places, or perhaps
> it's just MS's programmers being lazy? :)

LAZY.
It has non-integer math support for decimal,
but they left it off of the other bases.

> I have never seen a hex number with a
> decimal point anyway... do they exist and/or
> serve a purpose, or was it just a demonstrate
> your point?

The fanatical purists will insist that it is NOT a "decimal point",
it is a "Hexadecimal point" ("sexadecimal" if not yielding to IBM's
blue-nosed attitudes), "octal point", or "binary point".

Vitally important when using floating point,
or any other "rational" or "real" numbers.

For example, in hex, the first digit to the right of the "PERIOD"
is 1/16 (.0625), etc.
In binary, the digits to the right of the period are .5, .25, .125, .0625,
etc.

As quick exercises, 1) what is the binary fraction for PI?
2) what is the IEEE 32 bit floating point bit pattern for PI?

Although, it IS true that you will, and should, use integers whenever
feasable!

3) Who is attributed with "God created the integers, all else is the work
of man"?


> [1] We don't have permission to alter the
> computers time, as it's part of a very large
> network.
> Certain drives (eg. drive M: ) are also locked
> away (not even displayed on "My Computer").

There are ways around those limitations,
if you have a good reason to do them.

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred     		cisin at xenosoft.com