[racket] tennis and programming, not completely off-topic

Quote FAZ: 
	
> Vier Matchbälle hatte Isner in der Partie vergeben, einen bei 10:9, zwei bei 33:32 und einen bei 59:58, Mahut wehrte alle ab. Bei 47:47 fiel die elektronische Anzeigetafel aus, weil so ein Spielstand nicht vorgesehen ist, im Internet war der Score auch nicht mehr zu verfolgen.

I don't really care about tennis but this headline caught my attention because it is connected to CS, just like my rare post-Christmas shopping experiences in 2000. 

Two guys played some long tennis match. 3 days to be precise. The score in the fifth set got to 47:47. At that point the electronic board quit because ... you guessed it ... it wasn't prepared to display such scores. A bit later the sites internet ticker also quit. Same reason. I have no clue what the number 48 does to computer scientists. I would have understood 64 perhaps, but the game went even beyond that. 

In 2000 I went shopping with my wife (extremely rare at that point in my life) in the Houston Galleria. At the check out I watched a MX family buy two carts full of tree ornaments. After getting about halfway thru the first one, the checkout girl asked the family to pay the intermediate bill -- because the register wasn't program to keep track of more than 50 items per bill. 

Only partly amusing -- Matthias