From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,18f7f6e041b3e0bf X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-08-15 11:40:50 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed-east.nntpserver.com!nntpserver.com!news-out.visi.com!hermes.visi.com!uunet!ash.uu.net!spool0900.news.uu.net!reader0902.news.uu.net!not-for-mail Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 14:41:35 -0400 From: Hyman Rosen User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.1b) Gecko/20020804 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Information Systems Annex was RE: Dispatching and generics - References: <5ee5b646.0208150126.ac9f65e@posting.google.com> <3D5BD43F.D85D3CF3@san.rr.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: KBC Financial Products Message-ID: <1029436847.954341@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> Cache-Post-Path: master.nyc.kbcfp.com!unknown@mosquito.nyc.kbcfp.com X-Cache: nntpcache 3.0.1 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.253.250.10 X-Trace: 1029436849 reader2.ash.ops.us.uu.net 22122 204.253.250.10 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:28069 Date: 2002-08-15T14:41:35-04:00 List-Id: Larry Kilgallen wrote: > They make the government change it to a decimal-based system to suit > the computers. Another example besides the British one is the US > Stock exchanges which formerly quoted prices in eighth of a dollar > and similar fractions. US decimalization wasn't for the convenience of computers! There was a pretty huge programming effort involved to effect the change. Decimalization was done to allow quoted prices to change in smaller increments, to make markets more efficient. Of course, with price changes coming in pennies instead of in eighths, some systems couldn't handle the resultant increase in reporting volume :-)