From 7331157191123576319 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 10f5bc,6f6e97a6fdbbf44c X-Google-Attributes: gid10f5bc,public X-Google-Thread: 102b75,6f6e97a6fdbbf44c X-Google-Attributes: gid102b75,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,6f6e97a6fdbbf44c X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6f6e97a6fdbbf44c X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 1149ec,6f6e97a6fdbbf44c X-Google-Attributes: gid1149ec,public X-Google-Thread: 110292,6f6e97a6fdbbf44c X-Google-Attributes: gid110292,public X-Google-Thread: f78e5,6f6e97a6fdbbf44c X-Google-Attributes: gidf78e5,public From: amos% (null) (Amos Shapir) Subject: Re: And you thought that the Pentium bug was bad! (Get a load of this!) Date: 1995/06/19 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 104726343 sender: news@wang.com references: <3s2las$1br@hustle.rahul.net> organization: nSOF Parallel Software reply-to: amos@nsof.co.il newsgroups: comp.std.c,comp.std.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.sys.intel,comp.arch,comp.software.testing "Ronald F. Guilmette" writes: >... Obviously this divergence is orders of >magnitude more serious than the inaccuracy with the Pentium ever was. >I thus anticipate the outcry over this problem to be orders of magnitude >more shrill than was the outcry over the Pentium flaw (and I will of >course be deeply disappointed if such an outrcy doesn't materalize :-). There's a subtle difference here (even ignoring the fact that by definition, free software gives users their full money's worth every time) -- software can be changed much easier than hardware, and can even be replaced completely. If people could replace the CPU in their computer as easily as they can replace a compiler by one from another vendor, I'm sure there wouldn't have been such an outcry over the Pentium too. Besides, unlike the Pentium bug, this compiler bug is very hard to bump into, and very easy to avoid. -- Amos Shapir Net: amos@nsof.co.il Paper: nSOF Parallel Software, Ltd. Givat-Hashlosha 48800, Israel Tel: +972 3 9388551 Fax: +972 3 9388552 GEO: 34 55 15 E / 32 05 52 N