• Prof. Foop (unregistered)

    I checked Wolfram Alpha. They say that gbp 10,000,014.65 is equal to $15.23 million (US dollars). They do not say how many pennies are needed.

  • jay (unregistered)

    Wait, Wolfram isn't a bank -- it's a law firm.

    http://buffy.wikia.com/wiki/Wolfram_%26_Hart

    This screen is no doubt part of their efforts to steal pennies from small children just for fun.

  • mughi (unregistered)

    Personal Computer was the alternative to Mainframe computer, something that no single PERSON would generally own by themselves.

  • mughi (unregistered) in reply to mughi

    bleah, i should read more carefully... indignant sheep and several others already said this..

  • somebody (unregistered) in reply to nobody

    It seems common for Alpha to do this with currency. I just tried it with the same input; current 10 euros is $13.05 and Alpha suggests that this be represented as a ten, three ones, a nickel, and a penny. Weird. Furthermore, if one clicks on the "show physical characteristics" button, the details of a penny are not included in the summary.

  • Joe (unregistered) in reply to mophobiac
    mophobiac:
    I know it's an acronym. I know Apple wasn't first. Maybe I should have said Apple did the most for the PC snowball way back when windows was just a noun. It doesn't matter. Everyone play musical terms. When the music stops, somebody is wrong. Come back for same deal tomorrow. I really enjoyed the Hungarian Notation tsunami yesterday.

    I believe the reason the term "PC" became associated almost exclusively with IBM-compatible products is that IBM actually named their product PC. (Followed, of course, by PC/XT and PC/AT.)

    Other companies also had products with PC in the name, such as the NEC PC-98 and the TI PC, neither of which was exactly compatible with IBM's offering. But, IBM PCs are what won in the market. And people, being lazy, eventually shortened the phrase "IBM PC compatible" to "PC compatible" to just "PC." So here we are.

  • TortoiseWrath (unregistered) in reply to Paul Chen

    [quote user="Paul Chen"][quote user="mophobiac"]WHY THE HELL WOULD A BUSINESS BUY AND EXPECT TO GET ANY VALUE OUT OF A PERSONAL COMPUTER????????????[/quote]

    The original meaning of the adjective "personal" in the phrase "personal computer" was "able to be used by only one person," as the minicomputers (or PCs) of the 1960s replaced the vacuum tube mainframe monsters of the '50s that required a team of 10 or more people to operate.

  • (cs) in reply to AnonymouseUser
    AnonymouseUser:
    PC is an abbreviation, not an acronym.

    Initialism, actually.

  • (cs) in reply to Slapout
    Slapout:
    Wolfram|Alpha is obliviously running on the computer from Superman 3.
    [image] [image]
  • (cs) in reply to Yuugian
    Yuugian:
    I do prefer my currency as "Non Metric"

    You mean like Pounds, Shillings, Pence??

    Or Pieces of eight?

  • (cs)

    TRWTF is Norton "Anti"-Virus

  • Steve (unregistered)

    For the Wolfram Alpha example, what happens if you click on the "More Accuracy" button to the right of the converted currency? The dollar value is almost certainly greater than $13.02 but not by enough to round up to $13.03. Wolfram Alpha displayed the rounded value but used the unrounded value to determine what coins to use.

  • Keith Thompson (unregistered) in reply to nobody

    "10 EUR in USD" currently gives me $13.05, followed by $13.06 worth of bills and coins.

    "1000 EUR in USD" shows $1305.25, so yes, it looks like a rounding issue.

    But "10000 EUR in USD" shows $13050.

    The results are repeatable, so I don't think it's a matter of the exchange rate fluctuating that quickly.

    Looks like it's making some odd decisions about when and how to round.

  • (cs) in reply to herby
    herby:
    Yuugian:
    I do prefer my currency as "Non Metric"

    You mean like Pounds, Shillings, Pence??

    Or Pieces of eight?

    I'm holding out for those big Yapese stone coins.

  • An innocent abroad (unregistered) in reply to Adam
    Adam:
    Is there a WolframAlpha bank or credit union? I'd like to do all my currency exchanges there.
    No, you want to do half your currency exchanges there, those in the direction where you gain instead of lose.
  • (cs)

    Even more WTF: The "Minimal currency form" as displayed is wrong, but the total coin weight (5 grams) is accurate for 2 pennies.

  • (cs) in reply to dookdook
    dookdook:
    Even more WTF: The "Minimal currency form" as displayed is wrong, but the total coin weight (5 grams) is accurate for 2 pennies.
    But TRWTF is definitely measuring the weight of US coins in units that are only very rarely used in conjunction with them.
  • TK (unregistered) in reply to mophobiac
    mophobiac:
    TORWTF is that the first PC was made by the founders of Apple and now it colloquially means "Windows machine" while Mac lovers say "pee cee" derisively.
    The founders of Apple made the Commodore PET?

    IIRC, the PET was the first non-kit personal computer. As other have pointed out, there were other kit computers before the Apple I.

  • (cs) in reply to Steve

    More accuracy shows the same result, so it was probably rounded earlier. Hope not a lib!

  • atk (unregistered) in reply to Adam

    So an off-by-one error is now considered a WTF?

    Seriously?!?!? WTF?!?

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to atk
    atk:
    So an off-by-one error is now considered a WTF?

    Seriously?!?!? WTF?!?

    Considering how many viruses take advantage of off-by-one errors, they're a rather big WTF -- though not as big as arrogant refusals to fix them.

  • Brendan (unregistered)

    Um,

    Surely the "minimum currency form" for $13.02 is a single $20 note with zero coins. Even 2 notes ($10 + $5) would weigh far less than Wolfram's solution...

  • tinaun (unregistered)

    This may not be the best place to put it, but i was wondering.

    When i first started reading this site, i remember this story where a newly hired woman was working on some java app. In meetings, she always says development was going great, but when someone looked at her code, it turned out she had only wrote one class (her name) with one method that returned something like "[name] is great!!"

    I can't find it for the life of me.

  • basket (unregistered) in reply to tinaun

    Probably Paula Bean and her sequels

    Captcha: capio... Leonardo DiCapio?!?

  • Frogs Legs (unregistered)

    The WolframAlpha one isn't really a WTF. It's not a bank or money changer, it's a calculator site. It quite clearly specifies that it displays the minimal currency required to cover the amount. The displayed value is rounded into an aesthetically pleasing financial format.

    However if this amount is $13.020000000000000001 (for example) then $13 and 2 cents doesn't quite cover it, so we need another penny, so the minimal currency that can be used to cover the amount is atcually $13 and 3c, that is, the pictures are not used to express $13.02 (the displayed value) but rather to represent the fewest number of notes and coins that can be used to fully cover that sum.

  • (cs) in reply to Paul Chen

    Because Companies employ people. It's the same reason that companies have issued various other pieces of office equipment such as pens, notepads, Organizers, and even extra people in the form of Personal Assistants. In many ways the 5150 was marketed as being able to replace a Personal Assistant for management positions. the main advantage being that PCs did not draw a salary. With the proliferation of the IBM PC and, perhaps equally as importantly, the proliferation of the MS-DOS operating system on a variety of platforms, eventually the industry "got sick of" all the competing platforms, and started to focus on a subset. In this case the clear winner was the IBM PC and it's architecture. That architecture has been extended since. Fundamentally, it makes a good amount of sense that server machines don't require some special Operating System or hardware to setup and use. There isn't a good reason not to be able to run a piece of software simply because it's designed for a server machine rather than a desktop machine or vice-versa.

  • Aaron (unregistered) in reply to Adam
    Adam:
    Is there a WolframAlpha bank or credit union? I'd like to do all my currency exchanges there.

    Hmmm, I think I'd like to do half of my currency exchanges with them ...

  • wernsey (unregistered) in reply to ZPedro
    ZPedro:
    I object. When I was doing interstellar parcel runs in a space trade game such runs typically paid 20,000 credits. Even United Galactic Express runs with emergency deadlines from the opposite side of the galaxy were paid 300,000 credits at best. Either Sandra got swindled, or this could be intergalactic shipping; I've never done those so I wouldn't know.

    Good news everybody!

    I use Planet Express for these types of deliveries. They're much cheaper than other galactic expresses (but not quite as reliable, unfortunately).

  • Mythran (unregistered) in reply to nobody

    Interesting, I tried "10 EUR IN USD" and get out $13.05 USD. Minimal currency form: $10 $1 $1 $1 5¢ 1¢. Which is 13.06. Then in the description of each "Note" or "Coin" used, it only shows "US 10 dollar banknote", "US 1 dollar banknote", and "US 1 nickel"...the penny is missing again...who needs pennies anyway?

  • 💩 (unregistered) in reply to Adam
    Adam:
    I just tried "10 EUR IN USD" in WolframAlpha again. The result now is $13.07. The minimal currency form is still wrong. It has 7 cents as a nickel and 3 pennies. Nice.

    Is there a WolframAlpha bank or credit union? I'd like to do all my currency exchanges there.

    nobody:
    The $13.02 one is interesting: I would assume that the conversion resulted in a value in the range ($13.02, $13.025). They decided to round off the "result", presumably something which happens for all values, but show $13.03 for the coins to indicate that if you were to *pay* someone this amount (in the limited precision of the currency), you would round up.

    The tip off is the button that says "more accuracy". The real question is why they don't display the "more accurate value" to begin with, because they have obviously already done the calculation and rounded off. If they have to calculate the second value when you click the "more accuracy button", then they are wasting cycles. Maybe this whole thing is an homage to Superman 3.

  • JJ (unregistered)

    Done anyone else remember that before the IBM PC came out, we tended to refer to TRS-80s, Apples, and Commodores as home computers and not personal computers? I'm not trying to imply that the term "PC" didn't exist at all, but it was not widespread between 1977 and 1982. At least in my experience.

  • Richard (unregistered)

    The Windows 8 message sounds like one of those crap poem clues they used to have on 3-2-1.

    "Keep your PC plugged in until this is done, Installing update, two of one."

    Now we just need Ted Rogers to give a long and convoluted explanation as to why that clue means you've just won Dusty Bin.

  • charles (unregistered) in reply to Adam

    It is actually slightly more than $13.07, thus you need a penny extra. This is not a wtf.

  • Ol' Bob (unregistered)

    Re: Wolfram Alpha 13.02 with three coins - damn you, Pentium rounding bug!

  • Cheong (unregistered) in reply to nobody
    nobody:
    The $13.02 one is interesting: I would assume that the conversion resulted in a value in the range ($13.02, $13.025). They decided to round off the "result", presumably something which happens for all values, but show $13.03 for the coins to indicate that if you were to *pay* someone this amount (in the limited precision of the currency), you would round up.
    Or accountant's rounding said it should round down to 13.02, but common half-up rounding say it should round up instead.
  • Grammar, Nazi (unregistered)

    I tried 10 AUD to USD, and the result is $10.23... with 4 pennies.

  • urza9814 (unregistered) in reply to Alex
    Alex:
    More likely the conversion-to-coins function just continues until the result is larger-or-equal to the value supplied.

    That would be an extremely crappy way of implementing this function since it's not guaranteed to give you the minimum number of coins.

    Uh, how the hell would YOU implement it then? This is pretty much the simplest possible way I can think of to implement this...and it's guaranteed to give the minimum number of coins while reaching the closest possible value (rounding up) but continues until the result is larger or equal.

    while(currency.totalValue() <= value) { if(value > 100) { currency.add( $100 bill ) value -= 100 } else if( value > 50) { currency.add( $50 bill ) value -= 50 } etc.... }

  • huahuehuahue (unregistered)

    Seriously, who uses Norton?!

  • cousteau (unregistered)

    Seems that Wolfram Alpha rounds up the money when displaying the minimum amount of couns, but rounds normally otherwise, so e.g. $13.024 is displayed as $13.02 but coined as $13.03. Anyway it's weird.

  • distracted (unregistered)

    It appears that wolfram alpha is smarter than that, since if you put in 13.07 AUD (without doing any conversions), it gives the minimal currency form as (correctly) a $10, a $2 a $1 and a 5c. So it correctly applies Swedish rounding, and doesn't just take coins until it is over the amount.

  • Neil (unregistered)

    Seems that they've fixed their code, all of the examples provided in the comments now give the "expected" answer.

  • Chris (unregistered) in reply to nobody

    The very clearly use the half-random method of rounding.

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