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bobbert's avatar

Hm. The raw probability is pretty high.

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bobbert's avatar

Back in the late 70's - early '80s I was the product manager for, among other things, an 8-bit microcontroller that was fairly widely used in new-fangled gasoline pumps. We got to do an awful lot of tech support as the manufacturers tried to figure out how to rewrite or patch the ROMcode for their programs, because of course some of them had not thought to allow for a per gallon price greater than 0.999.

As the price crept higher, the fun escalated, as the station-owners, who had already bought and installed uC-controlled pumps became vociferous.

In the long run, of course, it worked out to benefit the pump manufacturers, because (once they had patched the code) it increased the attractiveness of a replacement pump.

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