BigDecimal: mostly acceptable alternative to Float

I forgot to mention in yesterday's extended whine about Ruby floating point that there is a package in the standard library called BigDecimal that is a mostly good alternative to the normal Float class.  Here is the simplest way to use it:

require "bigdecimal"
require "bigdecimal/util"

The second line adds a new method, to_d, to String, Float, and Rational.  Back to my annoying example of broken floating point math:

>> require "bigdecimal"
=> true
>> require "bigdecimal/util"
=> true
>> (9.54 / 0.001)
=> 9540.0
>> (9.54 / 0.001).to_i
=> 9539
>> (9.54 / 0.001).to_d.to_i
=> 9540

Well, almost.  BigDecimal slows things down a bit compared to Float and the extra work (the remembering part, not the typing part) of adding to_d is effort that shouldn't be required.  I should be clear here that I have no problem with BigDecimal itself.  BigDecimal is extremely useful, as are the extended precision libraries for other languages.  No, the problem remains that, even though the Ruby Core team could implement a reasonable compromise in Float so it behaves consistently, they refuse to.