Submitted by: Anonymous – Mon, 07/28/2008 – 12:18

Working on something this morning, I needed to know what the largest number is that can be stored in a 32-bit signed integer. A 10-digit number starting with "214". In other words, a Dallas phone number.

So, out of curiosity I Googled "214-748-3647" to see who has the number. After a handful of blogs noting the coincidence (and that it's a prime number), there are 1500+ websites with that phone number showing up. Why? Because some programmer somewhere didn't learn his lesson from Y2K, and decided to store phone numbers as a single integer instead of a string of characters, but only used 32 bits and didn't check for overflow. So any time someone enters a phone number that's larger than 2147483647, the system stores it as that Dallas number.

Somewhere in Dallas, some poor bastard is wondering why his phone rings off the hook with calls for the Nevada Division of Mental Health & Developmental Services, the Jackson County Florida Chamber of Commerce, a yacht club in New York.....

CAPTCHA: "surper" -- when a shark has a surfer for supper.