NH Man Charged 23 Quadrillion Dollars for Smokes

Article: NH Man Charged 23 Quadrillion Dollars for Smokes
Source: caledonianrecord.com; July 16, 2009

Comments:
BoA and Visa didn't offer an explanation, so we'll offer an explanation. This could be due to a padding programming bug. Josh Muszynski, from Manchester, was incorrectly charged $23,148,855,308,184,500. If you multiply 23,148,855,308,184,500 x 100, and then convert it to hex, then you get the value 2020202020201250. "20" is the hex value for a space in ASCII. So, the bug was probably that they had padded Mr. Muszynski's charge with spaces rather than zeros. If you replace the space hex values for zeros, and then convert it back to decimal and divide by 100, then you get the value 46.88. If anyone knows Mr. Muszynski, then you could ask him if the correct charge should have been $46.88. If so, then mystery solved.