At 08:59 AM 11/26/98 -0500, Brent Eades so eloquently stated:
>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 :)
>
>
And if you listened to your Corel friends you would now be
$99,999.99 richer. Sometimes knowing too much is a disadvantage eh? ;-)
G
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