polyglot idiot, or why blackbox testing isn't a cure-all

[trochee]

A coworker points out this dialogue on a Chinese help site.

In rough translation (thanks Babel Fish!):

Microsoft's bug!
This bug is in the Microsoft Windows calculator accessory (start > accessories > calculator). When you try 9216 divided by 96 and press the = button, the calculator doesn't respond! ! ! But 9,216 by 97, 98 all are actually normal.

Please explain this!

Dear reader, I encourage you to try it out for yourself! Join the QA revolution: you will see the same thing.

Amazingly, and unexpectedly*, I myself -- lowly dev that I am -- am able to reproduce this bug with the Linux utility xcalc and with Google.

*actually not unexpected at all. If you have a calculator that does not exhibit this bug, please let me know. Reverse Polish calculators need not apply. [Edit: or non-decimal calculators.]

[edit: Google is pretty smart, actually: here's light speed in furlongs per fortnight.]

Comments

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

Or non-decimal calculators.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

d'oh!

didn't consider that. Perhaps the OP was posting in hexadecimal.

haha.

[lx.livejournal.com]

Yes. 9216 / 96 = F9!

Re: haha.

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

F9! !!

That's an obvious bug.. what a large, large number.

[rowdielou.livejournal.com]

You could start mass hysteria with this one! ~hehehe...evil grin~ I can see the FW:'s now!!! :D

[marlo.livejournal.com]

What a silly nerdy joke. Awesome. The same thing happens if you try to divide 25 by 5, incidentally! ;)

[boobirdsfly.livejournal.com]

Oh trochee, je ne parle pas le computer !

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

Gaack.

I cannot believe you got me to try it on my calculator. The shame!

I recall telling an old GF in college that if she picked any three digit number, multiplied it by 7, then by 11, then by 13, you would see the number twice on your calculator: so 123 would become 123123. She was convinced this was some amazing magic I had discovered.

I tried several times to explain the "trick", but she would have none of it: it was clearly magic. Sigh.

And yes, google is insanely cool. It's not only a calculator, you can put in UPS/FedEx tracking numbers, and it knows what they look like (and links you to the tracking info). And the calculator knows higher trig: ask it what e^(i*pi) (http://www.google.com/search?q=e^(i*pi)) is. Even my coworkers didn't believe it. (or the answer, but that's another story).

Google calculator doesn't do hex, or octal, though. More's the shame. And it maxes out at (2^1024)-1 (about 4x10^308). And it does not know "02+03" (which is how I know it doesn't do octal).

Ah, the joys of a background in mathematics...