briefs: Your number's up
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Your number's up
Dave Fitch from the department of geography at the University of Edinburgh e-mails us urgently: last week's information about a bug in Microsoft Excel is only partly correct, he says. "If you type the number [1.40737488355328] into Excel on a PC, you do indeed get 0.64. But if you type the same number into an Excel spreadsheet on a Macintosh, you get 1.28 instead. Impressive eh?"
We were certainly impressed. Microsoft says there are three such sequences of 15 digits that produce erroneous answers, and that this has been the case since Excel Version 3. There is a free software patch available from Microsoft's various electronic sites on Compuserve (GO MICROSOFT) and the World Wide Web (http://www. microsoft.com/).
There has been no official reason for the fault. Perhaps it is a means of copyrighting the program, just like putting intentional spelling errors in dictionaries.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments