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@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@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 _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
