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I work on stuff where 15 digits is marginally OK, using plenty of trickery.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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I'll have my math float away, thank you! 
It's an OO world.
public class SanderRossel : Lazy<Person>
{
public void DoWork()
{
throw new NotSupportedException();
}
}
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Is that anything like a root beer float?
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Depends what I need to do - for some things I don't need either, others will need precision and also accuracy in which case there's no point getting the wrong answer instantly, others I just need an estimate but I need it quickly
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Most of my work, 4 byte floats are too inaccurate. Some of my work, doubles barely suffice. All of my work, speed matters. Conclusion: I need both, and I need it yesterday! 
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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Sometimes you can solve/reduce floating point problems by scaling up - always recording your prices in pennies not dollars for example and your hurricane strength in metric butterflies.
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4 base 10 digits would generally be OK if the internal representation was base 10 also. Even with all the digits an IEEE754 64bit float provides, weirdness from the inability to represent 0.1 precisely in binary has an obnoxious habit of leaking into userspace.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Both. In my experience, when I've needed more than just a few digits of precision, its because I'm doing a complex calculation, and that's usually when I've needed both precision and speed.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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I would rather use strings, and convert to accurate precision using Unidex.
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A modern 64-bit CPU should be able to do double precision in the exact same time it takes to do single. The only difference is how many bytes (8- 4) are needed to store the answer. Personally, I'd use double precision to the bitter end and then format to any desired width. BTW, my Garmin GPS uses single, but military GPS systems use double for coffee mug precision (a thimble if the antenna would fit) and quad to position (station) satellites.
If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck. - John Steinbeck
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True, in most cases such accuracy is unnecessary and thus just CPU cycles wasted. But there are situations where the accuracy could make for easier accomplishments later.
Around 2000 the AutoCAD product changed the way it stored polylines (non regular polygons) - the old way was to save each line/arc segment in series as doubles for XYZ values. This had the detriment that the further you move away from 0,0,0 the worse accuracy became, to the point where such polygon was displayed as dis-joint vectors. The "new" method used a start point, then a length, angle and "bulge" for each vector - made computation a lot faster and the polygon itself didn't loose accuracy because of distance from origin. BUT it has a secondary inaccuracy in that its interaction with other objects became prone to errors - which in turn made things like hatching (fill the space between vectors) very problematic.
Anyhow, there are quite a few ways people have tried to get both accuracy as well as speed from these figures. As an example: http://keithbriggs.info/mpfs.html[^]
So it seems it's something which just always needs to be chosen on a per-problem basis. Similar to the speed-vs-memory trade-off of using BST / HashTable.
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That's not good - it's going to by very difficult to get an investigation team in there to find out what happened.
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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Not sure how wise it was to fly over a conflict zone.
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I was asking the same question.
I remember that at the beginning of the Kosovo war, I was flying from Montreal to Mumbai via Amsterdam; while waiting for the plane in Amsterdam, there was an announcement telling us that NATO started bombing Serbia, they had to recompute all air routes that passed in that area and get different national authorizations because they had to fly over different countries.
I'd rather be phishing!
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not sure 'lost' is the right word for it. and i'm not sure Malaysian Airlines had much to do with it.
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It was at the time.
Quite interesting listening to the radio as the story developed from knowing nothing and where their information came from.
First mention of it being shot down was on Ukrain government fella's Facebook, then the rebels said it wasn't them on their twitter account. First film was uploaded on YouTube.
BBC have teams sifting through the internet, looking for related information, trying to verify it, translating it.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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I'm not sure I would have gotten on that one! 
Once you lose your pride the rest is easy.
I would agree with you but then we both would be wrong.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am.
JimmyRopes
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I recognize some of those pictures from larger ones I saw before. They carefully cropped out the parts with the mangled dead bodies.
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They didn't "lose" the plane - it was shot out of the sky. The fun part is going to be watching the two most likely suspects pointing fingers at each other, heavily infused with righteous outrage from people of all nationalities who don't really give a shit.
The plane was at 33k feet - and was evidently squawking it's IFF signal, because it was being tracked by your everyday internet flight trackers when it dropped off.
That means that it wasn't accidental.
Does Russia have technology to shoot down at plane at that altitude? Yes.
Does Ukrain have the capability? Yes.
Does the CIA have the technology? Yes.
Who actually did it? We'll probably never know.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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I'm not sure I would be flying over Ukraine at the moment (or, probably about 50% of the world for that matter.)
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: or, probably about 50% of the world for that matter
I would have mentioned that if you had not.
There are very few flight path that do not take you over a conflict.
Fortunately there are only a few conflict zones that have the capability of shooting down a airplane flying at a little over 10Km.
Obviously, the Ukraine is one of them and should be avoided by commercial flights.
Once you lose your pride the rest is easy.
I would agree with you but then we both would be wrong.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am.
JimmyRopes
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The actual route is decided by the pilot taking into account guidance from their airline so as a passenger you don't get any say on that unless the airline publishes that guidance in which case you can decide whether to use them or not.
In this case airspace was closed to commercial flights below 32000 foot and this was flying at 33000 which was believed to safe from the use of portable anti airraft weapons. Long range SAMs were not considered likely probably naively.
I suspect following this airlines will avoid the area totally.
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The anti-Kiev fighters had just bragged about capturing some Buk systems. And as far as I know they have no airforce so the govt forces don't need to use SAMs. They also bragged about downing a plane other than the Su-25 and hastily deleted the brag once news of civilian aircraft vanishing appeared 
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The Buk system seems to a Soviet / Russian equivalent to the US Patriot...
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