Snip!t from collection of Alan Dix

<td class="votecell"><div class="vote"><a class="vote-up-off" title="This question is useful and clear (click again to undo)"></a> <span class="vote-count-post" style="font-size: 200%;">394</span> <a class="vote-down-off" title="This question is unclear or not useful (click again to undo)">down vote</a> <a class="star-off" href="#" title="This is a favorite question (click again to undo)">favorite</a> <div class="favoritecount"><b>173</b></div> </div> </td> <td class="postcell"> <div> <div class="post-text"> <p>News reports such as <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8152278.stm" rel="nofollow">this one</a> indicate that the above number may have arisen as a programming bug. </p> <blockquote> <p>A man in the United States popped out to his local petrol station to buy a pack of cigarettes - only to find his card charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.</p> <p>That is $23 quadrillion (&#xa3;14 quadrillion) - many times the US national debt.*</p> </blockquote> <p>In hex it's $523DC2E199EBB4 which doesn't appear terribly interesting at first sight. </p> <p>Anyone have any thoughts about what programming error would have caused this?</p></div></div></td>