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Admin
Anyone know how to actually trigger that Chrome pop-up? Just tried visiting nbc.com using Chrome on Ubuntu and got nothing.
Admin
(So much for workarounds.)
Admin
So NBC's site supports Safari and Chrome but only on a Mac, even though both are available on Windows.
And yet again a group of web developers who've never heard of the other browser in the top 5 of the world: Opera. Even though it's (one of) the most compliant one there is.
Admin
First post!
(Post rounding)
Admin
Aand what do you do with wayword fractions of cents after calculations?
Admin
Disallowing h (character 104) is standard in ASCII in embedded systems, where there only 7 and 7/8ths bits per byte.
Admin
There are no wayward fractions of cents: consider an item priced at 1.99: apply a 50% discount. If your law says round half down, by law, this now costs 99 cents. (Of course, in pretty much every sane country (obviously, this excludes the US) if you paid with cash this would actually be 1.00)
With regard to the OP, I imagine that this is to do with the GST: to get an even 40 dollar price, you have to charge 36.363636... If they are actually charging 36.37(or some such), then there will be an extra cent charge required every so often. You are not being charged to round this bill, but because the amount of rounding down in previous bills has now reached an amount that you can pay back.
This being Telstra of course, I may be giving them too much credit. Telstra have a service charge when you pay your bill by credit card, but it is applied to your next month's bill. I paid my final bill by credit card (since I was cancelling by phone), and a month later received a bill from them for 60 cents with an annotation saying "This amount is too little, don't pay us now, pay us on your next bill". I dutifully didn't pay it, and never heard from them again.
Admin
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Sounds great for verizon customers, 0.002 rounds to 0.00 :-)
Admin
The optimizing picture based on lighting conditions in the room is not new. That feature existed on very old TV sets that didn't even use infrared remote controls. Those old TV sets even had a zoom feature. The zoom feature is not new either.
Admin
Why would you use it for web development, then? My web development experience is that I spend 50% of the time designing the page, then the other 50% getting it to work right in IE.
Admin
@Singapore Rapid Transit "I can't help but wonder what device was actually under the threat of being rebooted."
Duuh, the device that updates all the signs every three seconds.
-Harrow.
Admin
The code in the approved browsers list is almost certainly caused by a Javascript for-in loop when the Prototype library is present. Funny stuff.
Admin
No, disallowing the 'h' is part of migrating the website to lojban.
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#3 Re: Chrome: TRWTF is that Chrome for Mac is supported but not Chrome for Windows and he is clearly using Windows.
Admin
Seems like crock of sit to me.
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We might have legislation like that. However, in the U.S. the smallest legal monetary unit is the mil ($0.001), not the cent. We've never issued a one-mil coin, only going as far as a 5-mil, known as the half-cent. The most common place for everyday people to see mils in action is in gasoline prices, such as $2.979 per gallon. Another one is local property taxes. For example, voters might be asked to approve a 1-mil tax increase to fund a new high school.
Admin
Yep. I'd guess they just decided to round everyone's bill up by 1c. Just like when they randomly decide they need to increase Line Rental because profits are down.
Admin
Oi! Wot's 'appenin 'ere, den, guvna?
Admin
Mupry's law
Admin
Of course I knew it was a Telstra bill just reading the summary (before even seeing the photo/screenshot/wooden table). Optus is a little different: I'm on a $49.99 plan but the actual amount charged alternates between $50.00 and $49.98 every month for some reason, though they don't call it "rounding".
Admin
I thought they just changed $0.0002 (as in 0.02c) to $0.02 (as in 2c)? I still reckon that guy should have said "it's zero-point-zero-two cents right, which is zero-point-zero-zero-zero-two dollars..."
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Actually, I'm the new guy at Ben's carrier. We charge this fee to 500,000 subscribers each month to come up with my paycheque. Thanks Ben!
William (Bill) Rounding
Admin
What's with the trackback url? Is that a new form of spam?
Admin
I know someone who got a bill for $0.00. Naturally, he ignored it. Some time later, he got a 'reminder notice' for $0.00, so he rang the company, who basically couldn't explain it, but said it wouldn't happen again. More time passed, and a red 'final notice' appeared in the mail for $0.00. I can't remember quite hoe long it continued, but it only stopped after he sent them a cheque for $0.00...
Can't rememebr why I felt that story was important, but I like stories....
Admin
Bob's company hasn't contacted me in weeks. Should I be concerned?
Admin
Get rid of them. Those who think that 0.9** of a cent is significant in large organistations, read way too mauch 'Arry 'Arrison.
Sure, over 1 billion (American Billion) accounts, this 0.9 of a cent equates to $9 million, but I would suggest that if you have 9 billion clients, then $9 million is a bit like winning $8 on a $5 scratchie....mildly exciting at best, and barely significant in the grand scheme of things.
**in fact, we are talking of rounding only values below 0.5 away entirely, the rest is allowed to round up before calculation - this means everything should roughly balance in all probability, and we can deliberately design billing structures that have more probability of rounding up than down if that sub-cent value is so important. This is why even in places where there no longer are 1c & 2c (or equivalent currency) pieces, shops still have values like $1.98 - because they are trying to maximise the chances of gaining an extra couple of cents in each transaction. Of course, these days cards are probably more common than cash, so generally it's not an issue (although I have seen some retailers {illegally, I believe} still round off card transactions).
Admin
Did it crash the computers? http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/zero.asp
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My name is Rounding. Bill Rounding.
I want my Martini rounded, not stirred.
Admin
Bill Rounding you say? Never heard of him. Does he work in Accounting?
Admin
Interesting that ASCII 104 is in fact the h character..
Admin
It's a shame the Royal House of the UK doesn't use that "third-party software".
Prince Charles would've been right out. Unfortunately, so would be Queen Elizabeth.
Goshdarn!
Captcha: validus. Nomen tuum (in)validus est!!
Admin
I thought the U.S. was over-regulated. In Canada you have laws dictating how arithmetic must be performed?! My calculator does not automatically round all numbers to two decimal places. Will I be arrested if I try to transport it across the border? This adds new meaning to the phrase "Illegal arithmetic operation."
On the serious side, I recently modified a program that calculates discounts on sales to do some tricky rounding. We give the customer a percent discount on the entire sale, and then we pro-rate this amount across all the individual items. So say the customer buys items priced at $10, $20, and $30 and he gets 10% off. No problem: $1 off on the first, $2 on the second, $3 on the third. But what if the items cost $9.93, $19.93, and $29.94, total $59.80, 10% off the total is $5.98. But if we then try to give 10% on each item, normal rounding would give $.99, $1.99, and $2.99, total $5.97. Of course it could go the other way, that the total of the rounded number is too large. With many items we don't necessarily want to dump the entire excess on the last item -- that might be the cheapest item on the sale and we could end up giving a discount of more than the price. Or if too many items round up, subtracting it all from the last item could mean a negative "discount". So we made a more complex rounding rule so we'd just add or subtract a penny here and there. That seems like a very logical and reasonable thing to do to me.
Admin
Chrome is just so much awesomer on a Mac.
Admin
Correct. Sometimes.
Got worse on some bills with a certain type of phone call having a charge of 17.5 cents
I was a poor sucker working in a Telstra call center trying to explain this to some real idiots who were going to go to the papers over the two cents it had cost them in the last year (and conveniently ignoring the rounding that went the other way)