HP Forum Archive 15

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42s - It doesn't need the optional sugar-coating..(A rant) Message #1 Posted by ECL on 2 Dec 2005, 12:46 a.m. I know that we pick at the ebay peddlers quite often, but I usually refrain. I'm venting over the snow-job wording in this B.S. ad for a 42s: Quote: Fully Tested - Guaranteed to Work Correctly ! It will never work INCORRECTLY! This is important, as computers are notorious for working incorrectly. Quote: The English manual as a bit of use in the outside and inside it's perfect. Its never been used on the INSIDE! Only the outside has been used. Quote: The unit passes perfectly the self-test. While most calcs receive only mediocre scores on their self-tests, this one passed PERFECTLY! What has led to the proliferation of adjectives and adverbs nowadays? And why do the online STORES keep selling the same calculator "which I bought during my last year of college and never used."?? I am becoming increasingly weary of marketing. PBS, and listener-supported Jazz stations are havens... Liberal Arts students should be required to take some engineering courses as their 'breadth' requirements. Any takers on this one? Then again..that would mean we'd get more exposure to them... ECL

Re: 42s - It doesn't need the optional sugar-coating..(A rant) Message #2 Posted by bill platt on 2 Dec 2005, 9:15 a.m., in response to message #1 by ECL Hey--I was a lit major! :-)

Re: 42s - It doesn't need the optional sugar-coating..(A rant) Message #3 Posted by A regular contributor on 2 Dec 2005, 11:36 a.m., in response to message #1 by ECL Beware of the dogs... There's at least one guy that doesn't care telling he dislikes us, engineers. And he'd actually said that out loud in this forum many times! A clue: if he had a sales representative net, it should be called... COBweb ?!?!? Take care.

(A Rant) is a good description Message #4 Posted by db (martinez, ca.) on 2 Dec 2005, 12:22 p.m., in response to message #1 by ECL I bothered to look at the auction. It is from Portugal and probably by someone who does 99.9% of his thinking in Portuguese. I caught three common Latin to English errors. They were small ones. Can you do better in his language? You were complaining mostly about his adverb usage and to native English speakers that is a matter of style. I agree that to us; his did border on gushing. To him, in his language; it is probably expected. I don't speak Portuguese but I've tried to decipher Brazilian "tele-novellas". While they may not be representative of the language, they are also over descriptive to my ears. Someone thought it works perfectly and correctly enough to lay down 250 bones for it. This is American website and unless you identify yourself otherwise you are perceived to be the same. Running down foreigners for how they talk American helps brand us as more arrogant than the stereotype already says we are. If you want to complain about how someone speaks English; take on the Brits. They deserve it.

Re: (A Rant) is a good description Message #5 Posted by I, Claudius on 3 Dec 2005, 6:58 a.m., in response to message #4 by db (martinez, ca.) Estoy de acuerdo. Este chico siempre habla demasiado sobre nada.

Re: (A Rant) is a good description Message #6 Posted by ECL on 3 Dec 2005, 7:52 p.m., in response to message #5 by I, Claudius Claudius, DB, and rest, English is a second language for me as well. Yet, I seem to have mastered it well enough. Don't put me on trial. Quote: Estoy de acuerdo. Este chico siempre habla demasiado sobre nada. Why do you sneak around and say it in Spanish? Porque no hablas en Ingles? Eres timido, Claudius? Don't be arrogant. What is the significance of YOUR postings? Recall that to the mainstream, we here ALL discuss useless things (HP calculators). But WE cherish them. Please refrain from lashing out at our own here. My post was written with an element of HUMOR. This is the one social skill that we engineers DO posess. DO NOT twist my posting into an ESL attack. Observe that I am picking on the GENERAL embelished sentence structure used nowadays, and my disenchantment with marketing. Furthermore, consider this statement by DB: Quote: If you want to complain about how someone speaks English; take on the Brits. They deserve it. And exactly WHY do the Brits deserve it? Does their accent trouble you? DB, you are selective in your criticisms. Let's acknowledge that YOU introduced the element of ethnicity to this situation. Is it ok to pick on someone's grammar as long as they are not the terribly innocent Spanish speakers? THAT IS B.S. Don't be a FILTERED SHELTER, DB. You are tempting me to PURGE this forum from my MEM. ECL

Re: (A Rant) is a good description Message #7 Posted by db (martinez, ca.) on 3 Dec 2005, 11:11 p.m., in response to message #6 by ECL ECL; You were running someone down for the way he wrote in english. I called you on it, not Claudius or "the rest". If you badmouth someone in a small community you ought to expect a response. If you can work on not ridiculing other RPN users, I'll read whatever pop psychology book that "FILTERED SHELTER" crawled out of. BTW: We and the Brits have been snipping at each other about English for probably 200 years. It's a hoot. It gives us something to talk about over beers (they have their's warm). "Two great peoples separated by a common language" and all that.

Re: (A Rant) was a good description >> Switch to HP 33s Message #8 Posted by ECL on 4 Dec 2005, 7:38 p.m., in response to message #7 by db (martinez, ca.) Yes, let's end it, but please note- Main point: The post was NOT targeted at foreigner's misuse of English. I am simply fed up with embellished advertising. All you need to show is the screen with pass/fail. If asks for US$300, he has a target for the sale(us), and thus no extensive verbage (nor complete copy/pasted feature listing) is necessary. I exit the issue here. Back to HP. To that end, I have been working fitting some root finding algorithms on the 33s, and some non-linear interpolation tools (Lagrange Polynomials). Also, I'm using the Gauss-Seidel method for simultaneous equations, despite its conditional convergence. Anyone else have thoughts to contribute? ECL

Re: (A Rant) was a good description >> Switch to HP 33s Message #9 Posted by Ed Look on 5 Dec 2005, 12:38 a.m., in response to message #8 by ECL I am not nearly at all the mathematical expert that any of you are, but I did try first on a HP 32SII, as a test, Newton's method to find the square root of a number. If the the algorithm did not converge, i.e., the results come back farther and farther away instead of closer, then, after x iterations, it was terminated. It took at least overnight for the 32SII. I tried a similar algorithm to find the convergence of a simple series, also on that calculator and it also took about as long. I tried these on the HP 33S and each only took from a little over one to a few hours. So, I warn you, even with the improved speed of the 33S, it's kind of slow. I haven't tried it on the HP 48G, G+, nor HP 49G+, but I suppose it should be a bit faster on those... maybe. Thank God that the short, amateurish programs I write and run on either the 48G/49G+ series or 32SII/33S don't normally require too many real calculational steps or iterations!

Re: (A Rant) is a good description Message #10 Posted by Mel K. (MN) on 4 Dec 2005, 10:35 p.m., in response to message #7 by db (martinez, ca.) The post left by ECL was humorous, in the context of modern advertisments. - and that is what he seems to have meant. I think some of you took unintended offense. I don't speak spanish, but apparently ECL does, and he seems to have been put on the defensive by I,Claudius' comment. ECL clearly stated in both his original post and responses that it was not intended as a jab at the individual's grammar as a foreign citizen, but rather at the general methods advertisers use in their hooks. Besides, does this Ebay merchant count as an RPN user? Particularly when letting go of such a nice machine? :P You'll never pry my 42s' from me! Mel

Re: (A Rant) is a good description Message #11 Posted by Howard Owen on 4 Dec 2005, 10:44 p.m., in response to message #10 by Mel K. (MN) I took the original statement as humorous too. Edited: 4 Dec 2005, 10:45 p.m.

Re: (A Rant) is a good description Message #12 Posted by Ed Look on 4 Dec 2005, 12:13 a.m., in response to message #6 by ECL Um... gentlemen, perhaps it's best to let this rest now that we've aired it all out. I don't think there's any more need to attack/defend, nor need to leave. Even on a faceless electronic medium this stuff pops up from time to time. I recommend that this get DROPped and we R/S on.

Re: (A Rant) is a good description Message #13 Posted by ECL on 3 Dec 2005, 8:01 p.m., in response to message #5 by I, Claudius Claudius pratar altigt om hans underbara 49. Men varfer kan han inte prata in Engiska nar han vil prata illa om nogon? Yes, Claudius, I can speak four languages, and Spanish is one of them. Now that you know I speak Spanish, what will you resort to the next time you wish to commit slander? ECL

Re: (A Rant) is a good description Message #14 Posted by I, Claudius on 4 Dec 2005, 5:51 a.m., in response to message #13 by ECL !*PLONK*!

Re: (A Rant) is a good description Message #15 Posted by Les Bell on 3 Dec 2005, 9:08 p.m., in response to message #4 by db (martinez, ca.) Quote: If you want to complain about how someone speaks English; take on the Brits. They deserve it. db, please don't lump us Scots in with those English; they carry on as though they own the language. Best, --- Les [http://www.lesbell.com.au]

Re: 42s - It doesn't need the optional sugar-coating..(A rant) Message #16 Posted by Howard Owen on 2 Dec 2005, 3:07 p.m., in response to message #1 by ECL Well, the target may not have been exactly spot on, but the idea of "sugar coated calculators" got me thinking. "Kalc Krispies: they go 'SWAP crackle DROP!'" Was the best I could come up with. I wanted to go somewhere with "Honeynut 41Cs," but I just couldn't find a gag involving a bee and a BCD based processor. Go figure. Regards, Howard

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