Timeline for Isn’t everything absurdly improbable?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 31, 2023 at 15:58 | comment | added | gnasher729 | Now for a real one, some time in the late 70s a programmer in Germany changed the payroll software in his company so that he got paid more. And this being the 70s, the laws against fraud required that you lied to a real person or made a real person believe something that isn't true. Police looked really hard until they found a secretary who signed all the paychecks on behalf of the company, and she was made to believe that his paycheck had the right numbers on it when it was much too high. Without her, there would have been no fraud case. | |
| Jul 31, 2023 at 2:37 | comment | added | Simon Crase | In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,the two characters are betting on coin flips. Rosencrantz, who bets heads each time, wins 92 flips in a row.. Since it happens in movies more often than in real life, if this happens to you, one possible hypothesis is that you are a character in a movie... | |
| Jul 31, 2023 at 0:00 | comment | added | Mark Ransom | @ScottRowe I heard the same story, but they were caught quickly because the account grew too fast and attracted attention. It was also a plot device in the movie "Superman III" with a similar outcome. | |
| Jul 30, 2023 at 13:49 | comment | added | Scott Rowe | The lesson is, if you're going to cheat, try not to do it in a noticable way. I heard about a programmer or accountant at a bank who adjusted the programming such that the partial cents which came out of some transactions all went in to one bank account, that he then took for himself. Eventually the discrepancy was noticed, but not for a long time. | |
| Jul 30, 2023 at 0:52 | history | edited | causative♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 655 characters in body
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| Jul 30, 2023 at 0:35 | comment | added | user66760 | well, they're not exactly wrong. but then you do have to ask what's relevant. | |
| Jul 30, 2023 at 0:33 | history | answered | causative♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |