Investigators have attributed the failed 1999 Climate Orbiter mission to human error: The flight software used metric units while the ground system that wrote the code used Imperial measures.

MSN: History littered with failed Mars probes

In what is the most closely watched metric for SAP, software and software-related services revenue was 3.21 billion Euros, up 19% from a year ago, or 13% in constant currency, and ahead of the Street at 3.13 billion.

FORBES: SAP On A Roll: Q3 Revs Beat Ests; Ups Full Year Guidance

Bob Brodersen of the University of California, in Berkeley, has calculated that moving an application from a general-purpose software implementation to a specialised chip can improve efficiency by a factor of 10, 000 (the efficiency metric being millions of calculations per milliwatt of power consumed).

ECONOMIST: MONITOR