Commenters make post

July 17, 2009 12:29 AM

I like to call out the commenters in this post on credit card billing for being awesome.

The folks here expanded on a story that was otherwise a quirky human interest incident. Their fascinating discussion on the possible reasons why this happened were much more informative than the news articles. These comments reflect the bright and inquisitive community that's here, and how it can teach a person who knows nothing about credit card processing or databases a thing or two. Thanks metafilter!

posted by phyrewerx to etiquette/policy at 12:29 AM (10 comments total)

Seconded. Motion carried. Medals and promotions all round!
posted by Jofus at 1:37 AM on July 17

Thirded. THreads a fun read and informative. I'm making popcorn for everyone. Get your hot popcorn right here folks.
posted by dabitch at 2:50 AM on July 17

As long as nobody tries to buy something costing '\'0); DROP DATABASE;', they'll be alright.
posted by Electric Dragon at 3:08 AM on July 17 [1 favorite]

$23 quadrillion would buy a plate of beans for every man, woman, child, trannie, trannie child, dog, cat, robot, and robot monster in the universe...

...and you'd still have enough money left over to pay Ticketmaster convenience charges!

BELIEVE IT OR NOT!!!
posted by Item at 4:56 AM on July 17 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the pointer - when that was first posted I thought it might get interesting in just that way, but I'd forgotten to check back in.
posted by yarrow at 5:37 AM on July 17

Agreed. Sidebar material. That sort of thing is exactly why I like MetaFilter/Slashdot/etc. Very neat. Thanks for the pointer.
posted by cribcage at 6:57 AM on July 17

As long as we can finally move our currency to the Wolfgang Puck standard, I'm a happy man.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:01 AM on July 17

Damn, I left that thread way too early. It did get good. And you're right. This is precisely the type of discussion that has kept me coming back to MeFi for the past 8 years.
posted by JeffK at 7:58 AM on July 17

In fairness it seems like the people on Stack Overflow and Slashdot reached more-or-less the same conclusion though I can't say that someone didn't steal the idea from somewhere else.
posted by GuyZero at 10:09 AM on July 17

I'm sad there will probably never be a definite public answer to this (like there was with the spectacular Zune leap year bug, since it happened to be in a semi-public code library.)
posted by blenderfish at 1:40 AM on July 18