Collage 006               H u m o u r N e t                    1994

Hello, again, Internet Surfers!

For those of you who have been following Intel's Pentium debacle, the
following Pentium-related bits (so to speak) should be approximately
entertaining. For those of you who are not aware of the situation, but
think that you might care or be affected: Intel recently admitted to
the fact that there is a relatively serious flaw in the floating-point
divide (FDIV) instruction on the Pentium chip; the divide operation
yields "close" results, but certainly not "precise" results (in fixed-
length arithmetic terms, of course). IBM has announced that they will
replace all affected Pentium chips in their machines; other manufacturers
are saying it's all Intel's problem.

For those of you who do not care, your best bet is to trash this
message and wait for the next one.

- Vince Sabio
  HumourNet Moderator
  HumourNet@telephonet.com
____________________________________________________________________
          Opener (above) Copyright 1994 by Vincent Sabio
  Permission is hereby granted to forward or post this "Collage";
  please observe the guidelines stated at the end of the message.
____________________________________________________________________

Newsgroups: comp.sys.intel
Subject: Pentium Bug Humor :-)
Date: 29 Nov 1994 09:15:27 -0500

Q&A:  THE PENTIUM FDIV BUG

Q:   How many Pentium designers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:   1.99904274017, but that's close enough for non-technical people.

Q:  What do you get when you cross a Pentium PC with a  research grant?
A:   A mad scientist.

Q:  What's another name for the "Intel Inside" sticker they put on
Pentiums?
A:  Warning label.

Q:  What do you call a series of FDIV instructions on a Pentium?
A:  Successive approximations.

Q:  Complete the following word analogy:  Add is to Subtract as Multiply
is to
        1)  Divide
        2)  ROUND
        3)  RANDOM
        4)  On a Pentium, all of the above
A:  Number 4.

Q:  What algorithm did Intel use in the Pentium's floating point divider?
A:  "Life is like a box of chocolates." (Source: F. Gump of Intel)

Q:  Why didn't Intel call the Pentium the 586?
A:  Because they added 486 and 100 on the first Pentium and got
585.999983605.

Q:  According to Intel, the Pentium conforms to the IEEE standards
754 and 854 for floating point arithmetic.  If you fly in aircraft
designed using a Pentium, what is the correct pronunciation of
"IEEE"?
A:   Aaaaaaaiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee!

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

TOP TEN NEW INTEL SLOGANS FOR THE PENTIUM

  9.9999973251   It's a FLAW, Dammit, not a Bug
  8.9999163362   It's Close Enough, We Say So
  7.9999414610   Nearly 300 Correct Opcodes
  6.9999831538   You Don't Need to Know What's Inside
  5.9999835137   Redefining the PC--and Mathematics As Well
  4.9999999021   We Fixed It, Really
  3.9998245917   Division Considered Harmful
  2.9991523619   Why Do You Think They Call It *Floating* Point?
  1.9999103517   We're Looking for a Few Good Flaws
  0.9999999998   The Errata Inside

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

Newsgroups: comp.sys.intel
Subject: THE TOP TEN REASONS TO BUY A PENTIUM MACHINE  :-)
Date: 29 Nov 1994 05:25:54 GMT

THE TOP TEN REASONS TO BUY A PENTIUM MACHINE

10. YOUR CURRENT COMPUTER IS TOO ACCURATE

9.  YOU WANT TO GET INTO THE GUINNESS BOOK AS
    "OWNER OF MOST EXPENSIVE PAPERWEIGHT"

8.  MATH ERRORS ADD ZEST TO LIFE

7.  YOU NEED AN ALIBI FOR THE I.R.S.

6.  YOU WANT TO SEE WHAT ALL THE FUSS IS ABOUT

5.  YOU'VE ALWAYS WONDERED WHAT IT WOULD BE
    LIKE TO BE A PLAINTIFF

4.  THE "INTEL INSIDE" LOGO MATCHES YOUR DECOR PERFECTLY

3.  YOU NO LONGER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT CPU OVERHEATING

2.  YOU GOT A GREAT DEAL FROM JPL

And the #1 reason to buy a Pentium machine:

1.  IT'LL PROBABLY WORK

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

Newsgroups: comp.sys.intel,comp.arch,comp.arch.arithmetic,rec.humor
Subject: A joke....
Date: 28 Nov 1994 02:35:08 GMT

Did you hear about the new "morning after" pill being developed
as a replacement for RU-486???

Its called RU-Pentium.  It causes the embryo to not divide correctly.

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

Newsgroups: comp.sys.intel,rec.humor
Subject: November Election Results may be due to Computer Glitch :-)
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.

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

Newsgroups: comp.sys.intel
Subject: What 'PENTIUM' stands for ...
Date: 28 Nov 1994 21:52:58 GMT

P - Produces
E - Erroneous
N - Numbers
T - Through
I - Incorrect
U - Understanding of
M - Mathematics

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

Q: How can you tell Intel engineers are all circumcised?
A: None of them seem to mind a little bit missing off the end.

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