What The Puck
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Someone's bound to post this and make the same pun I did, so I might just as well do it:
[url]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31920273/ns/us_news-weird_news/[/url]
tl;dr : A few people got charged $23,148,855,308,184,500. plus overdraft fees because
"A temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts," Visa spokeswoman Elvira Swanson said in a written statement.
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@FTA: said:
In New Hampshire, Josh Muszynski said he swiped his debit card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and when he later checked his account online found that he had been charged the 17-digit number — a stunning $23,148,855,308,184,500.
That's one hell of a cigarette tax.
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I've seen this bouncing around the net, and some people did some detective work and found that the amount, multiplied by 100, corresponds to:
0x2020202020201250
(Significance unknown, but my guess is that someone wasn't trimming strings properly, since 0x20 is " " (Space).)
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@bstorer said:
@FTA: said:
In New Hampshire, Josh Muszynski said he swiped his debit card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and when he later checked his account online found that he had been charged the 17-digit number — a stunning $23,148,855,308,184,500.
That's one hell of a cigarette tax.
$23,148,855,308,184,500? Is that the Obama budget for 2010?
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@TwelveBaud said:
I've seen this bouncing around the net, and some people did some detective work and found that the amount, multiplied by 100, corresponds to:
0x2020202020201250
(Significance unknown, but my guess is that someone wasn't trimming strings properly, since 0x20 is " " (Space).)
$46.88 for a pack of cigs? That would be just about right for a carton in NH, so maybe the story goofed on that point.
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@morbiuswilters said:
No, it had to be something even stupider than that, because others got the same exact amount charged to their amount.@TwelveBaud said:
I've seen this bouncing around the net, and some people did some detective work and found that the amount, multiplied by 100, corresponds to:
0x2020202020201250
(Significance unknown, but my guess is that someone wasn't trimming strings properly, since 0x20 is " " (Space).)
$46.88 for a pack of cigs? That would be just about right for a carton in NH, so maybe the story goofed on that point.
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@bstorer said:
No, it had to be something even stupider than that, because others got the same exact amount charged to their amount.
It's currently year 4688, according to the Jew calendar. Probably some kind of conspiracy...
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@morbiuswilters said:
That's probably it. Or it has to do with the secret cabal that took down the WTC to cover up the fact that income taxes are illegal.@bstorer said:
No, it had to be something even stupider than that, because others got the same exact amount charged to their amount.
It's currently year 4688, according to the Jew calendar. Probably some kind of conspiracy...
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I'm so glad I don't write software that handles such things. Someone's getting a pink slip for this.
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@Master Chief said:
I'm so glad I don't write software that handles such things. Someone's getting a pink slip for this.
Having worked in that industry before, I can reasonably assure you that the guy getting fired probably didn't have anything to do with the problem.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@bstorer said:
No, it had to be something even stupider than that, because others got the same exact amount charged to their amount.
It's currently year 4688, according to the Jew calendar. Probably some kind of conspiracy...
Actually, I think you'll find it is hebrew year 5769, hebrew year 4688 would have been 928 CE.
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@lochii said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@bstorer said:
No, it had to be something even stupider than that, because others got the same exact amount charged to their amount.
It's currently year 4688, according to the Jew calendar. Probably some kind of conspiracy...
Actually, I think you'll find it is hebrew year 5769, hebrew year 4688 would have been 928 CE.
Huzzah! My clever ploy to unmask the Jew traitor in our midst worked!
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I bet he's telling himself that the second cigarettes go over $23,148,855,308,185,000 a pack, he'll quit, no doubt about it.
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@morbiuswilters said:
$23,148,855,308,184,500? Is that the Obama budget for 2010?
Per month. But it's more expensive then it looks, immediately after it passes, he's gonna say "Oh, yeah, we need an few extra quadrillion for... look, I'm tired of making stuff up and you're gonna give it to me anyway."
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@morbiuswilters said:
$23,148,855,308,184,500? Is that the Obama budget for 2010?
They said last night on the news that the gross planetary product (that's like GDP but for the entire planet) is only in the single or double digit trillions. But you know what they say... a quadrillion here, a quadrillion there – pretty soon we're talking about real money!
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@lochii said:
@morbiuswilters said:
Actually, I think you'll find it is hebrew year 5769, hebrew year 4688 would have been 928 CE.@bstorer said:
No, it had to be something even stupider than that, because others got the same exact amount charged to their amount.
It's currently year 4688, according to the Jew calendar. Probably some kind of conspiracy...
When is this "CE" of which you speak? The calendar unit is AD.
Actually the 0x20s and the multiplication by 100 probably give it away: numbers are most likely being stored in fixed-point BCD, making the amount $12.50, which is probably what cigs cost in New York city these days.
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@FrostCat said:
fixed-point BCD
I woud call this packed-decimal. Good old COBOL.
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@dcardani said:
@morbiuswilters said:
$23,148,855,308,184,500? Is that the Obama budget for 2010?
They said last night on the news that the gross planetary product (that's like GDP but for the entire planet) is only in the single or double digit trillions. But you know what they say... a quadrillion here, a quadrillion there – pretty soon we're talking about real money!
It's gotta be double digit trillions since the US is $14 trillion all on its own.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@dcardani said:
They said last night on the news that the gross planetary product (that's like GDP but for the entire planet) is only in the single or double digit trillions. But you know what they say... a quadrillion here, a quadrillion there – pretty soon we're talking about real money!
It's gotta be double digit trillions since the US is $14 trillion all on its own.
But you're forgetting that France is -$8 trillion. So the net result could still be single-digit.
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@FrostCat said:
@lochii said:
@morbiuswilters said:
Actually, I think you'll find it is hebrew year 5769, hebrew year 4688 would have been 928 CE.@bstorer said:
No, it had to be something even stupider than that, because others got the same exact amount charged to their amount.
It's currently year 4688, according to the Jew calendar. Probably some kind of conspiracy...
When is this "CE" of which you speak? The calendar unit is AD.
Actually the 0x20s and the multiplication by 100 probably give it away: numbers are most likely being stored in fixed-point BCD, making the amount $12.50, which is probably what cigs cost in New York city these days.
So it looks like somebody initalised a field with spaces insted of \0's?
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@mallard said:
So it looks like somebody initalised a field with spaces insted of \0's?
My bet is someone edited theOUTPUT-FILEdefinition and accidentally duplicated the "06 MERCHANT PIC X(12)" line or some nonsense like that.
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"Hi, I'm Josh Muszynski from New Hampshire, and my credit card number is now on the internet... Not only do I owe 23 quadrillion dollars to the gas station, but now 75,000 Korean hackers have each bought themselves and all their buddies 'Starcraft 2', and on top of that Barack Obama is sending the FBI after me to seize my bank account in order to pay for his health care reform package. I guess the moral of the story is, don't let this happen to you!"
