IT Week’s own Les Hatton recently contributed to the Risks list, which dissects computerised mayhem, on the case of an unfortunate Malaysian man who was sent a phone bill for 806 trillion ringgits - and given 10 days to cough up. Interestingly the Malaysian ringgit is not a suitcase currency - there are only six ringgits to the pound, meaning the bill amounted to £132 trillion.

“[The phone company] must have gone to 64-bit arithmetic,” Hatton observes, “[which] would allow them to issue a bill up to 72 quadrillion ringgits [about £11 million billion].” So the Malaysian man should count himself lucky.

“At least it’s obviously stupid,” Hatton adds. “It could have equally well been an erroneous number which was vaguely reasonable but expensive. And because the computer says it, it must, as we all know, be right.”

18 Apr 2006