The Crisis with Remailers

Perry E. Metzger perry at piermont.com
Wed May 22 16:18:03 PDT 1996



bryce at digicash.com writes:
> > It is true enough that *rates* can be stored as floats if you want,
> > but never actual sums.
> 
> That's interesting.  Because rates never approach 2^23, and 
> because you never need that much precision with rates?  It seems
> like a bad idea to me anyway.  Why not just use an Int32 if you 
> don't need that much precision?

I only report the news. I have occassionally seen floats in rates, I
have never seen them used in accounting.

I will also note that rates do indeed get astonishingly precise --
five significant figures.

In any case, however, I have never seen accounts done as floats --
never.

.pm






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