🚀 go-pugleaf

(Posted now because I'm fed up reading about cheating students and the
Flame Wars in a.f.c - the theme has drifted somewhat.  This is my
attempt to try to get us chatting about  computers).

In February 1971 the UK converted its currency from Sterling to Decimal.
This created a **BOOM** in the software industry.  At the time I was
working  for a software house and we had the job of decimalising the
programs for a stockbroking firm in the city.

One of their MAJOR pieces of management information which allowed them
to trade (very) successfuly (by their standards) was a daily 3/4 page
summary print of the previous days transactions that looked (sort of)
like this.

        Col   Col   Col   Col   Col   Col
Info    nnn   nnn   nnn   nnn   nnn   nnn
Info    nnn   nnn   nnn   nnn   nnn   nnn  
Info    nnn   nnn   nnn   nnn   nnn   nnn
Info    nnn   nnn   nnn   nnn   nnn   nnn
Info    nnn   nnn   nnn   nnn   nnn   nnn
 
(nnn is a  number)

... you get the idea..

And the numbers gave these super businessmen (100% male, and
pre-yuppie days) the information they needed to trade.

So, we duly decimalised the program and ran it and the output promptly
changed to..

         Col   Col   Col   Col   Col
Info    nnnn 
Info    nnnn
Info    nnnn
  .. etc..

On detailed debugging (feature searching) it transpired that the
(original) program had been running for several years with a bug that
caused the principal factor in this analysis to be something like the 
binary value of the second character in the address of the client!

(Follow up the computing. Follow ups to the ethics of stockbroking and
its real contribution to the real wealth of the planet should be to
alt.flame or to misc.invest)

ALT.FOLKLORE.COMPUTERS.

Stephen Carter, Systems Manager, The Administration,
The University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RH, UK
Tel: +44 273 678203  Fax: +44 273 678335     JANET: stevedc@uk.ac.sussex.syma
EARN/BITNET  : ste...@syma.sussex.ac.uk      UUCP: stevedc@syma.uucp
ARPA/INTERNET: stevedc%syma...@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk