Calculator XP
Daniel
popular Calculator application will ship with Windows XP, their next
generation operating system.
Called Calculator XP, the new version will "significantly enhance the
user's experience of adding, subtracting and so forth," according to
Microsoft's VP Arithmetic, Brad Maddenbald.
One of the more important new features is a new kind of subtraction,
known as Subtraction.NET. "We believe this is a major step forward
from the traditional type of subtraction," says Maddenbald. "With
Subtraction.NET, numbers get bigger, instead of smaller." Through
extensive user testing over the last two years, Microsoft has found
that Subtraction.NET leads to a more positive experience. "The best
way I can think of describing it is to imagine every number in your
life getting bigger and bigger," said Maddenbald. "It's really that
straightforward."
Maddenbald also claims that Calculator XP is fully integrated into
Microsoft's wider .NET strategy. Its capabilities are exposed through
a totally open interface based on XML and SOAP, so now, as Maddenbald
puts it, "any application can do addition and subtraction - not just
Calculator." System administrators can use industry standard scripting
languages to incorporate arithmetic functions into their logon
scripts. When asked if this meant that two users could be added
together, or a printer could be subtracted from a RAID array,
Maddenbald seemed thrown: "I never looked at it like that, but I guess
so."
Competitors such as Sun Microsystems (SUNW) have already reacted
harshly to the new announcement. "This Subtraction.NET sounds an awful
lot like addition to me," said Scott McNeedy. "Customers would be best
advised to stick with tried and tested technologies." McNeedy painted
a terrifying picture of financial organisations applying the new
Microsoft technology and then discovering, two years down the line,
that all their numbers had been destroyed in a fire. "We all know how
hard numbers are to come by these days," he says. "The risk is just
going to be too great."
McNeedy may have a point. Latest figures show a 57% decrease in
numbers since Q1 1999, corresponding to a fall of 237,644 numbers in
real terms. "What scares me is that's just the integers," says
McNeedy. "Nobody is even counting the reals. And what about the
irrationals? Nobody has a complete list of them. If Microsoft get
their way, a whole lot of digits could fall off the end of pi and we
wouldn't even know about it. What would happen to all our circles?"
Maddenbald dismisses this as scaremongering. He responds with figures
showing that a typical Banking application built using Calculator XP's
Subtraction.NET feature for all arithmetic operations need only
consist of only a third as much code as one built with traditional
addition, and runs up to five times faster. "We say, let the customer
choose. We're confident they will go with innovation."
But that's not all. Oracle's Larry Edison, famed for his lightbulb
invention, detects a more sinister motive behind Microsoft's latest
move. "Microsoft will not be happy until they have gotten every school
child in this country using their Subtraction.NET technology. They
want to move all your children over to their proprietary arithmetic
platform. You'll have to pay Microsoft just to add two numbers
together. And what about your accountant? He's got to work out how
much you owe Microsoft, and that's going to mean more arithmetic. And
what about calculating his percentage? Where does it all end? We've
got to stop them." At this point, water started to squirt out of his
eyes and he was dragged away by an orderly.
Jedi X Angel
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Ian Cowley
I have a pet frog called Jim.
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Ian Cowley
Christ's College, Cambridge University, UK
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Bryan Kennedy
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Isxios
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"Jedi X Angel" <jedixa...@msn.com> wrote in message
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> I have Power Calc, included with PowerToys