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Lionel Issen writes:
> I am also puzzled by this. Some time ago, someone from Equis
> mentioned on this listserver that Metastock was written in C++ or C.
> While I do not program in C++ or C, any manual on these languages
> shows that numbers can be declared as double precision and long
> precision. It follows that Metastock can also have this capability.
> Perhaps the default precision in Metastock should be double
> precision instead of single precision.
If MS is written in C or C++ (which would be the most logical choice),
it would be trivial to use doubles or long doubles instead of floats
for data. I'm actually a little surprised they don't.
To Ken's point, however, regardless of precision, even "simple"
numbers like 0.1 can't be represented *exactly* in a base 2 machine in
a native format using 2's complement storage, which our machines use.
There is something called BCD (Binary coded decimal) which can be used
to store numbers in any arbitrary precision, but the storage
requirements are large; at least 3 times what double precision would
be. And you have to roll your own mathematics when using BCD, since
the native math that the CPU uses doesn't recognize BCD.
To Guy's counterpoint however, *other* apps read the same data and
perform the calculations correctly. There's no reason MS shouldn't be
able to.
> I thought that Chicago was called Murder City. Has the title passed to
> Detroit?
Chicago's the Windy City. =)
As long as I can remember, Detroit has been called Murder City by
virtue of it being the murder capital of the US. (Though I think DC
and Detroit have battled for that dubious honor in the past. Possibly
Miami and Atlanta throwing their hats into the ring at times too.)
Looking at my 2000 Almanac however, shows Detroit coming up tied for
7'th in murder in 1997. (In order, New Orleans LA, Richmond VA,
Birmingham AL, Memphis TN, Miami FL, Baltimore MD, Detroit MI/LA-Long
Beach CA). DC comes up 12'th, and Chicago isn't listed for some
reason, but I'd suspect it's in the top 10.
--
Mike Campbell
Have I mentioned how much nicer this list is after I kill-filed a
certain churlish Dutch child?
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