OT, but why in God's name do some people/countries feel it appropriate to use periods rather than commas as a thousands separator?
Do these people just want to cause industrial disasters, medical errors, zombie uprisings, and lost planetary probes?
Do these people just want to cause industrial disasters, medical errors, zombie uprisings, and lost planetary probes?
I wanted an HP15. When I went to buy one, the store was out of stock, but offered to let me have the display unit for something like 10% off. While examining it to make sure it was in good shape, I noticed commas and periods were swapped, and pointed this out.
I had no idea this was normal in some countries, and so assumed it was a defect. So did the sales person, and offered me another 10% off because of that. I decided I could live with that "defect" and bought it.
I was delighted when I got home and read the manual to find that this was simply a setting for internationalization, and and I could easily set it to US mode.
Overloading the dot/point symbol as a place-value separator was just insanely goofy. This isn't like the Imperial versus metric system. There are reasons to scrap the Imperial system, but there was no reason to introduce a second notational convention for decimals, especially in a way that seems engineered to mislead and confuse people.