[574] in Humor
HUMOR: Pentium the source of all problems...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Wed Nov 30 11:02:46 1994
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 10:59:14 EST
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Subject: [HUMOR] November Election results may be due to Intel Pentium bug
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 1994 23:48:48 -0500
From: Erik Nygren <nygren@MIT.EDU>
Some background:
A design flaw was recently discovered in the FDIV (floating point
division) operation of the Intel Pentium (really!) that caused about
one out of about every 2^18 operations to give an incorrect result.
The problem, which is caused by specific bit patterns, will result in
an answer correct to 8 rather then 16 places precision. See
comp.intel.misc for more info. All chips produced until sometime in
the summer have this problem.
------- Forwarded Message
From: David Krikorian <dkk@MIT.EDU>
From: Regis@eworld.com
....
Date: 22 Nov 1994 16:18:09 -0500
November Election results may be due to Intel Pentium bug :-)
An anonymous source in the Democratic Party has revealed that the sweeping
landslide victory of the Republicans in November may have been due to an
obscure bug in the Intel Pentium computer chip.
Upgrading the nationwide vote counting system to the latest technology was
one of Vice-President Al Gore's "Reinventing Government" initiatives. This
change was meant to reduce costs and streamline operations, however, the
computer glitch may have cost the Whitehouse dearly.
A spokesman for the Democratic Party denied the rumor that several thousand
Power-PC's had been purchased as part of a vote recount effort.
When questioned about the news Senator Bob Dole (r) commented that he
believed the Intel Pentium chip was far better than anyone had thought. A
short statement released by Newt Gingrich's office indicated that "the
Democratic party has always sought to divide America and that this discovery
of an FDIV bug in the Intel Chip was clear evidence of the moral decay of our
society."
At a Motorola Plant in Austin, Texas Ross Perot told an angry crowd that
according to his new calculations the deficit is actually 14 times larger
than the government has been telling us. He praised his staff for staying
up all night and performing the calculations by hand.
In late breaking news today legal briefs were filed in Chicago by former
senator Dan Rostenkowski's attorneys which claimed that the irregularities at
the House Bank and the House Post Office were actually due to Pentium chip
calculation errors. Sources in Attorney General Janet Reno's office reveal
a furious behind the scenes effort to reload the whitewater investigation
spreadsheets in order to double check the results.
PS: it's a joke
------- End of Forwarded Message
