Windows 7 Professional w Service Pack 1
ASUS nVidia GeForce GTX 760 2GB GDDR5 DirectCU Mini

Broken: Blender 2.69 r60995 as well as all current builds
There is a fault in the behaviour of the 'Rotate Around Selection' feature found in user preferences.

Normally, when an item is selected and then the view is localized on that object, by using either 'view selected' ( . ) or 'local view' ( / ) from the keyboard, the selected object is brought into the center of the viewport and the rotation point for view control (MMB) is set to the center of the bounding box of the currently selected object.

However, when the 'Rotate Around Selection' feature is toggled it always causes the center of viewport rotation (MMB) to coincide not with the center of the bounding box of the mesh data but rather with the center of the origin point of the currently selected object. This is incorrect and can cause viewing problems in those cases where the origin point of the mesh is located outside of the actual mesh bounding box. This will often cause the selected object to be rotated right out of the viewport.

Do note that when toggled 'on' the 'Rotate Around Selection' feature also overrides the otherwise correct behaviour of 'view select' and 'local view'.

Please examine the attached .blend file.

Toggle 'Rotate Around Selection' in users preferences, select the green object and then use MMB to rotate the view.