[SIGCIS-Members] Is it a myth that David Letterman had a Top Ten List about the Pentium bug?

[Brian Berg]

OK, folks, I checked the index of a book on my library shelf - *Inside
Intel* - for "Letterman" and bingo.  See the attached for the excerpt from
this 1997 book, with this being the most important part from the last page
of the attached file:

[image: Monolog.jpg]

So, indeed, apparently monolog and not Top Ten.

Brian Berg

On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 8:49 PM Win Treese <treese at acm.org> wrote:

>
> Hi, Ellen.
>
> I had a vague idea of Pentium top ten lists from back when it happened,
> but not from Letterman. You may have seen this: the web page
> https://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=PentiumJokes has a couple of
> lists, ,which are excerpted below for general amusement. It was certainly
> common at the time for people to make up their own Top Ten lists.
>
> Best,
>
> Win
>
> TOP TEN NEW INTEL SLOGANS FOR THE PENTIUM
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>   9.9999973251   It's a FLAW, Dammit, not a Bug
>   8.9999163362   It's Close Enough, We Say So
>   7.9999414610   Nearly 300 Correct Opcodes
>   6.9999831538   You Don't Need to Know What's Inside
>   5.9999835137   Redefining the PC -- and Mathematics As Well
>   4.9999999021   We Fixed It, Really
>   3.9998245917   Division Considered Harmful
>   2.9991523619   Why Do You Think They Call It *Floating* Point?
>   1.9999103517   We're Looking for a Few Good Flaws
>   0.9999999998   The Errata Inside
>
>
> THE TOP TEN REASONS TO BUY A PENTIUM MACHINE
> ============================================
>
> 10. YOUR CURRENT COMPUTER IS TOO ACCURATE
> 9.  YOU WANT TO GET INTO THE GUINNESS BOOK AS "OWNER OF MOST
>     EXPENSIVE PAPERWEIGHT"
> 8.  MATH ERRORS ADD ZEST TO LIFE
> 7.  YOU NEED AN ALIBI FOR THE I.R.S.
> 6.  YOU WANT TO SEE WHAT ALL THE FUSS IS ABOUT
> 5.  YOU'VE ALWAYS WONDERED WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE TO BE A
>     PLAINTIFF
> 4.  THE "INTEL INSIDE" LOGO MATCHES YOUR DECOR PERFECTLY
> 3.  YOU NO LONGER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT CPU OVERHEATING
> 2.  YOU GOT A GREAT DEAL FROM JPL
> 1.  IT'LL PROBABLY WORK
>
> > On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:42 PM, Ellen Spertus <spertus at mills.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Thank you, Paul!
> >
> > As nice of a story as it would have been to have floating point
> > humour in the late night show cannon,  it seems that this one
> > isn't true.
> >
> > Per my original email, there was a 1996 thesis referencing a 1994
> internal Intel document that Letterman did make a joke during his
> monologue, which may have been:
> >
> > You know what goes great with those defective Pentium chips?
> > Defective Pentium salsa!
> >
> > Do any of you know someone with enough clout at Intel to find out what
> their archivists say?
> >
> > This may be an instance of the Mandela Effect.
> >
> > Here's another story involving floating point: I used to spend time at
> the University of Washington CSE Department and Microsoft. To drive from
> one to the other, you would drive over the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge.
> I always referred to it as the "floating point" bridge, and nobody ever
> raised an eyebrow. I see a nonironic reference to the Evergreen Floating
> Point Bridge in a Los Angeles Times article about a traffic accident.
> >
> > Ellen
> > _______________________________________________
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