Slashdot Mirror
Moving Decimal Bug Loses Money
mario.m7 writes "Poste Italiane, the Italian postal service, suffered yesterday from an abnormal computation in ATM and credit card operations, since the decimal comma was not taken into account. The whole sum was therefore multiplied by 100, resulting in a 115,00 Euro transaction being debited as 11.500 Euro! Thousands of accounts are deep in the red and locked (link pumped through translator), so that no more operations are possible. Poste Italiane is gradually recovering the problem, fixing the error and re-crediting the sum debited in excess. Consumer associations have offered support to clients in case this lasts longer and causes damage."
Oh my, the rationalisation to justify your obsolete and absurd measurement system climbed to unprecedented heights...
I hope you're trying to be funny.
Here's where you're confused: I did not say the English way is the "perfect" way. I said it is superior to the only competing standard. And I gave support for that statement.
You offer no refutation to that in your post.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
The best standard need not be "compelling," it need only be best.
I'm not sure whether one mark would have been less accidental than another when using quill pens, but I don't think the answer is even relevant in the digital age, anyway.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Haha! Fucking eUrOfAgS. And they harass us about metric?
Quick, does 4/12/2009 translate to April 12th or December 4th? You don't know, do you? So much fun!!
But hey, the european datestamp is ANSI in reverse, that's close enough, right? Lol.