On 25 Nov 98, Michael A. Stone wrote:
> based on your figures, a system that's 99.99999% accurate would still make
> more than a quarter million mistakes each day (1 per 100,000
> transactions). increasing the reliability exponentially increases the
> costs exponentially as well.
And they do make mistakes.
A few years ago I arrived in Atlanta for Spring Comdex, and stopped at an
ATM in the airport to get some American cash. (I should note that ATM's
were newer then, and being able to use them internationally was
especially new.)
Anyway, I withdrew $300 and got my print-out -- this obliging machine
advised me that I now had $99,999.99 in my account! (And this in Yanqui
pesos, woowoo! :)
The Corel co-workers with me were all jumping around saying, "Wow, go
for it man, spend it!"... and hey, these were all programmers, they should
have known better. Even *I* could tell that this was just some glitch,
that the system printed out 9999999 when it couldn't calculate a proper
balance (what with foreign exchange on the funds and all.)
There was a sequel to this. I got my bank statement the next month, and
the $300 withdrawal was listed. But instead of *debiting* my account for
a further amount corresponding to the $US exchange, the system had
*credited* me with it -- about $150 or so, I think.
So I told my bank manager about this, assuming that First National down
in Georgia would catch on to their error soon enough... but they never did.
Eventually my manager, after some correspondence with his counterparts
down south, just said, "Hell, it's yours. Spend it if you want. We'll never
get this straightened out." So I did :)
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Brent Eades, Almonte, Ontario
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Town of Almonte site: http://www.almonte.com/
Business site: http://www.federalweb.com
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