From: bryce@digicash.com
Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 04:05:39 +0800
To: Matts Kallioniemi <matts@pi.se>
Subject: Re: The Crisis with Remailers
In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960522141400.00340478@mail.pi.se>
Message-ID: <199605221451.QAA27787@digicash.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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Hi again Matts,


This conversation has been thorough enough already that perhaps
it is time to take it off-lists.  I think that you are unaware
of the difference between floating point numbers (e.g. the 'IEEE
754' 32 bit floating point number spec) and fixed-point
numbers which are used to represent amounts other than "units"
of a thing.  (E.g., use a 32-bit integer and say that it
represents millionths of an apple.  You can now represent
anything from 0.000001 apples to 4294.967295 apples with no loss
of precision.)


There are also many other ways to represent different kinds of 
numbers, including multi-precision integers and rationals, 
imaginary and complex numbers, etc.  I reiterate that floating 
point numbers are for convenience when dealing with values whose 
precision is unimportant.  Anyone who encodes real money into
a float is dumb.


> What do you think will happen if you have a one italian lira coin and
> you try to deposit it with Mark Twain's USD account? With integer
> math it won't be pretty.


It will be _very_ pretty.  Stay tuned.  :-)


Regards,

Bryce




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