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Posts Tagged ‘ error ’

Dell’s misleading graphics card buying advice

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

Dell should be commended for going out of its way to help novice PC buyers, but its entry for choosing a graphics card — accessible by clicking the “Help me choose” link when customising various Optiplex models — contains a glaring and potentially expensive error, as spotted by Reddit users.

While the text is basic, it’s accurate enough for beginners. Instead, it’s the image that contains a dangerous chunk of misinformation.

The monitor on the left, labelled as a PC that uses a “standard graphics card”, is displaying a Windows desktop that’s washed out and blurry. The seemingly identical Dell TFT on the right, powered by a “high-end graphics card”, is showing the same desktop – but this time it’s much sharper and more vivid. They’re both outputting at the same resolution. (more…)

Tags: business, Dell, error

Posted in: Rant

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Knuth launches The Bank of San Serriffe

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Donald Knuth, creator of TeX and author of The Art of Computer Programming, used to post checks to anyone who spotted an error in one of his books – one hexadecimal dollar, or $2.56. It was a clever way to ensure that his work was as accurate as possible.

Nobody used to take the money, though. Instead the cheques are pinned up on notice boards in computer science departments all over the world as mementos. I’m lucky enough to have two, which I’ve stashed away at home.

“It turns out that only 9 of the first 275 checks that I’ve sent out since the beginning of 2006 have actually been cashed. The others have apparently been cached,” says Knuth on his website. (more…)

Tags: cheque, error, fraud, knuth

Posted in: Random

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