Re: Digital vs. Binary Computers

From: Beth (BethStone21_at_hotmail.NOSPICEDHAM.com)
Date: 04/25/04 

Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 08:20:40 +0100

Frankie say:
> There was a proposal long ago in one of these groups - or maybe
fidonet
> - to write a graphical slide rule as a "desktop accessory". I guess
they
> figured it would be more accurate than the original Windows
calculator,
> as well as more fun. :)

Heck, rolling dice or spinning a roulette wheel to get your answers is
more accurate than the original Windows calculator!! Boot up Win3.x
and type it along with me: "2.01 - 2.00 ="...yes, that's right, Sir
Bill, the answer is "0.00"...and those two zeroes after the decimal
point are totally significant because "0" would not be the same
answer, right?

Do you know what was really bad about this? Well, other than having a
supplied calculator utility that couldn't add up even the simplest
"sums" packaged along with your OS...the "bug" was not actually unique
to just "Windows Calculator" because it actually stemmed from a
serious bug in Microsoft's "C maths library", which was used to create
the original "calculator" program..."Windows Calculator" simply made
the bug _obvious_ and _visible_...it was actually happening "behind
the scenes" all the time in Microsoft applications using the older C
libraries...

And what gets to me is that Intel made a comparatively minor "bug" in
the FDIV instruction for the original Pentium and it's all over the
newspapers - "Intel computers can't count!" - but where did anyone
mention that Microsoft couldn't count, _even_ when writing a
"calculator" application? And it poses the same old questions about
Microsoft: "How the hell - if we're supposed to believe their 'we test
our software very rigorously' claims - did this pass them by without
anyone noticing?"...nah, that's why they "beta" their software..._WE_
are Microsoft's "testing" and "quality assurance" labs...Bill Gates is
on record: "Third time's the charm" (implying that no Microsoft
software is any good - even by Sir Bill's opinions - until its third
version at least...yeah, even to the point of implying that it _won't
even work properly_ until the third incarnation...a deadly accurate
prediction, in fact, looking at most Microsoft software...certainly
applies to "calculator", for sure ;)...it's a simple idea...rather
than pay to have people test the software, release it to the public,
then sit back and collect the reports of everything blowing up and
crashing everywhere...yeah, rather than get paid for testing the
software, you're actually _paying Microsoft_ for the "honour"...

Imagine this same strategy with airplanes...

They build the plane but haven't ever tested if it can fly...as we're
doing it the "Microsoft way", there hasn't even been any "planning" or
"wind tunnel tests" or anything...they just handed some spanners and
wrenches to a graduate just out of university - nice and cheap labour,
there - and provided a "pool" of scrap metal...then, like that "Scrap
Heap Challenge" programme on the TV, they just have to use whatever
crap they can find to build some kind of "plane" by the completely
imaginary "deadline" Sir Bill has invented (it's decided according to
their "obselete! obselete! obselete!" policies - the next versions
must come out fast enough to "obselete" everything beforehand
sufficiently quickly to "turn buying a house into buying your weekly
groceries" - not according the actual time it would take to do the job
or anything...mind you, that's probably why they _never_ meet a
"deadline" or "release date" ever...what's quoted has absolutely
nothing to do with how long it will take - nor, perhaps more
importantly, how long it _SHOULD_ take in order to do the job
_properly_ - but is all to do with "version obseletion policy"
only...they probably don't even consult the programming team in any
way to find out how long it _needs_...Sir Bill just randomly picks out
a date from thin air, based on their "policy" that every OS must be
"obselete" within five years (yes, that is a _real policy_ they have
and even happily post up as "how it works" on their support sites to
explain why Win98 gets no more support because it's "obselete",
however many _millions_ of users are still using it)...

"Hmmm, the wings aren't the same size...oh, nevermind, the pilot can
just fly the entire journey at an angle to 'compensate' or
something"..."oops, didn't notice that hole before...ummm, quick! Just
stuff your chewing gum into the hole to plug it up before anyone
notices!"..."What? Oh...'planes are supposed to fly', you say? Okay,
give me a few minutes here to 'tweak' things, as I kind of didn't work
that 'aspect' of plane design into my original plan at
all"..."Aerodynamics? No...no, sorry...don't know what you're talking
about...is that some German words for 'pretty paint job' or something?
I mean, look, we've painted it all really pretty colours...that's the
most important thing about a plane's design, right? What colours you
paint it...I spent ten hours painting that Microsoft logo on the side,
you know...what? Oh, yeah...did the rest of it in about ten
minutes...but, look, the logo...ten hours that took...it's bound to
fly just beautifully when it's got such a professional logo painted
onto the side, right?"...

Then Sir Bill sells off tickets for the "test flight"...yup, people
line up and _PAY_ for the "honour" of placing their lives on the line,
with the only airline that has a track record of more crashes and
deaths than passengers who've made it safely to their
destination...your only chance of survival here is kind of similar to
putting all your money onto one number at the roulette table...you
never know, the gods may look down with "mercy" seeing you suffering
under "Microsoft policy" and just use some "magic" to keep the bucket
of bolts in the air...on the other hand, maybe they'll think "serves
'em right for trusting Sir Bill...they obviously didn't quite the
message that we _designed_ Sir Bill as a 'role model' of what NOT to
be"...

As you nervously board the plane, you ask Sir Bill: "Are you sure this
is safe?" / "No, probably not...it usually takes us three attempts to
even get the most basic stuff right...but, ummm, don't worry...it's
'32-bit multi-tasking', you see" / "What's that mean? Sounds very
technical" / "Yes, it's all very technical that I cannot explain to a
'layperson' like yourself how random jargon words have any bearing on
your current situation...to be honest, I'm not completely sure I
understand it myself...oh, before you board, you have written your
last will and testament, right?" / "Yes" / "And you've signed the
'disclaimer' form and the 'stupidity tax' form, right? As well as set
up a direct transfer from your bank account directly into mine?" /
"Yes, it said to do so on the 'EULA' information sheets you provided"
/ "Good...alles in ordnung...just jump aboard and enjoy the very best
technology that Microsoft can provide...remember, '32-bit
multi-tasking'..._WITH_ pretty colours...don't forget the pretty
colours...there's no way anything can go wrong with such pretty
colours on the side of the plane...it's, ummm, Newton's 'ninth law of
flight', you know: 'equal and opposite pretty colours make planes
fly'...yup, that's what he said...exactly those words...it's all very
'safe' (in a 'relative' kind of way to something far more
dangerous)...so, enjoy your flight...see you in ten minutes!" / "Ten
minutes? Isn't this supposed to be a 7 hour flight?" / "Aaah,
yes...but, well, they never last that long in practice, I
find...anyway, enjoy your flight! Thank you for flying Microsoft
Airways!" / "Yes, thanks...you're so very polite, Sir Bill...I think
I'll always fly Microsoft Airways" / "I doubt you'll be given the
chance, to be honest...but, well, it's the thought that counts,
right?"...

> > Well, it functions like an analog machine, but there are _decimal
digits_
> > printed on the slide rule. Users convert their numbers to
scientific
> > notation before using it -- this involves a _decimal point_ and
_digits_.
> > So, I guess it would be a hybrid analog/digital device.
>
> Okay, yeah. Definitely decimal. And "digital" in the sense of "uses
> digits". I meant "digital" as in "uses discrete states", which as
Beth
> points out, is a somewhat distorted meaning of the word.

Randy pointed it out, actually...I merely introduced the wording
"discrete states" because I suddenly remembered the terminology from
my statistics lessons at college...and then re-phrased what Randy had
basically said in a round-about way using all the "posh" terms I just
remembered from maths lessons..."digital" really means "uses ten
discrete states" being based on the "digits" on your hands and
feet...but, well, meanings "blended", as they do (a bit like "hacker"
and "cracker" is indistinguishable to the Great Unwashed ;)...and
"digital" actually just means "uses discrete states" now...in fact,
more precisely, it tends to be used only in a "NOT analogue"
sense...that, yeah, we've now got a new set of "opposites" out of
it..."analogue vs. digital", as if this was like "light versus dark"
or "good versus evil" or something...

The funny thing is also the point I was trying to mention to
Wannabe...that, in fact, "digital is good" NOT because it's "higher
quality"...quite the reverse, you're throwing away all your analogue
quality and snapping it down to a finite set of "discrete
states"...everything is "going digital" because this "simplified,
lower quality" stuff is so much easier to deal with...indeed, these
days, design often turns into "ummm, just stick a chip inside it...and
then we can just program some software for it" rather than any clever
purpose-built circuits...basically, analogue is great but it's, like,
a total pain in the arse to do anything with it other than pipe it
down cables "as is"...and you get all that "static" (never understood
why "static" is called "static" because it moves and changes all over
the place totally randomly...surely, that's more like "dynamic" than
"static"? ;) _because_ the darn thing has such highly sensitive
"quality" to it...you put the needle on the record and it's _so_
sensitive to the slightest thing that your drowned in crackling noises
and those are only the smallest, smallest specks of dust...you
probably can't even see that speck of dust that just made a massive
"click" noise at all but the needle's sensitive enough to have picked
it up and then it gets amplified (actually, a large part of the
problem there...the needle running over the record makes an actually
really quiet sound...so then it needs to be amplified a long way to be
loud...unfortunately, all that crackling is equally amplified to be
REALLY LOUD too...oops! ;)...

Indeed, "everything you know is wrong" very often tends to be the
case..."'digital' - which actually really means 'decimal' but don't
tell anyone we've completely changed the meaning of the word - is
great because it's much _worse_ quality than analogue and, oh yeah, we
pipe it through using _lossy_ MP2 to your home on top of it all as
well because we've not really got the bandwidth"...Now, that's not
something you'll hear on the "digital TV" adverts, is it? But guess
which is closer to the truth of the matter? ;)

> So if a
> "digital" computer uses discrete states, would dividing by zero be
an
> indiscretion? :)

"Boom-boom!", as a famous puppet fox over here likes to say (a UK
thing; A kid's fox puppet called "Basil Brush"...his trademark is
making really, really _bad_ puns - like the one you've just done - and
then punctuating them with "boom-boom!"...it's actually rather funny
(a bit like "the Muppets"...actually supposed to be "for kids" but
even adults can't help giggling away at Animal's "muhna-muhna" song or
the Swedish chef ;) and has actually entered the vocabulary over
here...everyone knows the "boom-boom" thing for bad puns, even if they
have no idea that it comes from a puppet fox on kids' TV...in fact, he
was such a "national institution" that he got thrown off kids TV but
then they brought him back..."by popular demand"...he's actually been
around for decades and, a bit like "Sooty", many parents probably
watch along with the kids remembering when they used to watch the
puppet fox with the bad puns too..."boom-boom!" :)...

> In an analogue device, I guess dividing by zero wouldn't be an error
> unless they could prove it was *exactly* zero...

Aah, in analogue, nothing is _ever_ a "point"...

One of the things we did in those statistics lessons...what's the
probably of a wave at sea being exactly a metre high? The statistical
answer is actually _zero_...yeah, not "very small" but actually a
result of "completely impossible"...so you always have to take
"ranges" to do any calculations or the answers all come out as "zero"
/ "impossible", which isn't a particularly helpful answer...I remember
this point because it had to be _stressed_ that you must always take a
"range" or, yes, it's quite natural to look for "exactly one metre"
and not realise that your answer of "zero" is a _flawed_ answer...so
they drum it into you: "Take a range! Take a range! No such thing as a
'point' for analogue!"...that the statistician must remember that
people naturally say "one metre high" but you have to interpret that
in your calculations as "between just under one metre and just over
one metre" (by how much? Ah, well, no simple answers to that
question..."statistics" _IS_ an imprecise science...which is, as I've
said many times before, the really funny thing that people take
"statistics" so deadly serious as if "the direct word of God" or
something...but, in fact, statistics is an _imprecise science_...it's
where mathematics _stops_ being trustworthy...where "interpretation"
and "opinion" starts entering the picture...proof of the pudding is
asking two statisticians to come up with conclusions _given the same
set of figures_...yeah, it's actually _grossly unlikely_ that they'll
have the exact same results...the "conclusion" might end up being the
same, like "don't smoke, it's bad for you"...but they'll probably plot
different graphs, exclude different "outliers" (what's the criteria
for excluding "outliers"? None whatsoever...it's all done to a
statistician's "intuition" about these kinds of thing!! ;)...if a
statistician is biased - their paycheck is coming from the drugs or
tobacco companies - the, oh boy, totally untrustworthy...even when
"honest", you can't take the conclusion that seriously...but when
dishonest...well, ask the tobacco companies' statisticians about
"passive smoking"...conclusion: "no evidence"...ask every other
statistician to look at the problem...conclusion: "Terrible! Evil! Ban
smoking immediately!"...and the big point to realise is that you don't
actually have to skew your results or "cheat" too much...you just
choose that your "outliers" will be all the people with lung cancer
and then, well, just "exclude" them from your figures because they are
"exceptional" in your "humble opinion"...then what "critical value"
are you going to use to decide if there is or isn't a "correlation" in
the figures? Well, most statisticians would use this value...but,
hmmm, in your "humble opinion" and using your "statistician's
intuition", you think that this is an "inappropriate" measure so
you're going to take the value which requires at least 99% of passive
smokers to be dead as the "level" at which you're going to accept a
"correlation"...then, your figures - after all this cynical
manipulation - suggest "there is no correlation but, you know, it's
pretty damn close to being a correlation, even with all your
cheating"...but, in their "conclusion", they'll just "conveniently"
neglect to mention how damn close to getting a correlation you
actually were...you just report: "no correlation"...the results are
always a fraction of "probability" between zero and one...so, if it's
0.89 and you need 0.9, by your subjective reckoning, to get a
"correlation" then you "snap" your conclusion _downwards_ to "nope,
doesn't exceed 0.9 so let's treat that as 0.0 probability"...yes,
statistics is _that much_ of an imprecise science that does depend far
too much for a mathematical discipline on "intuition" and
"interpretation" that when all these statisticians come up with
completely different conclusions about "passive smoking" then they
aren't necessarily "lying" in any way...just a case of severely
"bending" your figures and your "interpretation" of it all...

Yeah, the title of the opening chapter of my statistics textbook, not
wanting to start by giving any kind of false impression of the
"trustworthiness" of statistics?

"Lies, damn lies and statistics"

And that's before we even get to the common practice of just inventing
figures...you know, "90% of time is spent in 10% of code"...yeah, nice
mathematical figures there...sounds very "technical"...but _exactly_
90%? _Exactly_ 10%? Nah, totally made up figures...it's just someone
trying to say "most time is spent in a small section of code" but just
trying to make it _sound_ more "technical" and "trustworthy"...you
know, "hey, look, numbers! Numbers are mathematical! Maths is entirely
trustworthy! Numbers are always entirely trustworthy! This, therefore,
must be a 'concrete fact' because there's numbers in it!"...

Nope, sorry, "85.648% of all statistics are made up on the spot and
are entirely fictious"...

The _only_ trustworthy "statistic" is something really simple like
"raw count of people would answered 'yes'"...that is, basically, when
all the statistician does is _count_ a bunch of stuff and report
exactly the number they counted up to...

But, even then, it is "acceptable practice" to "exclude outliers"
which may be believed to be "skewing the figures"...e.g. ask 100
people some question and note their ages...most people asked were aged
18-25...one person was 83 years old...he answered completely
differently to everyone else...as including such an age would drag the
"average" off towards an age that no-one asked actually was (a bit
like the infamous "2.4" children...how can you have ".4" of a child?
Well, in statistics you can, because it's just a "mean average" of all
the results ;)...it _is_ "acceptable practice" in statistics to,
therefore, "exclude the outlier" and simply _IGNORE_ the 83 year old's
opinion completely...you can exercise your "intuition" and declare
this result as "unrepresentative"...also, less common but also
"acceptable practice" is excluding someone because you simply think
they were lying...pure and simple, eh? Well, not everyone gives a
straight and honest answer to someone taking a survey...excluding
fictious answers like "I've had 7 million girlfriends / boyfriends
because I'm so damned attractive!!!" does actually make plenty of
sense (put 7 million into your statistics and the "average" is going
to be silly...yes, everyone has 6.3 million partners each, don't they?
That's totally "representative" of the truth...yeah, _one_ person
lying - if they really exagerrate things to absurd levels - can render
all your conclusions complete and utter nonsense ;)...BUT, though the
reasons why such exclusions happen are actually entirely sensible and
"acceptable practice", there's absolutely NO OTHER WAY to do it beyond
100% "judgement call"...well, you could try hooking up all the people
you're surveying to a "lie detector" but then you might suddenly find
you're short of "volunteers" (and time in which to go through all that
complicated procedure ;)...plus, then again, lie detectors aren't
entirely trustworthy...there's a "probability" involved that it might
have got it wrong (so much so, some American institutions that once
totally relied on lie detector technology have now thrown it away
because further research has shown that they aren't really as good as
first believed)...a probability of a probability of a lie of a
judgement call? And most people automatically _trust_ statistics just
because it's "got numbers in it"? Really, take the reverse "default"
here, people...don't believe a number of it _unless_ they start
actually telling you the methods, assumptions, figures and so forth...

Beth ;)