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Names That Break Computers (bbc.com)
Reader Thelasko writes: The BBC has a story about people with names that break computer databases. "When Jennifer Null tries to buy a plane ticket, she gets an error message on most websites. The site will say she has left the surname field blank and ask her to try again."
Thelasko compares it to the XKCD comic about Bobby Tables, though it's a real problem that's also been experienced by a Hawaiian woman named Janice Keihanaikukauakahihulihe'ekahaunaele, whose last name exceeds the 36-character limit on state ID cards. And in 2010, programmer John Graham-Cumming complained about web sites (including Yahoo) which refused to accept hyphenated last names.
Programmer Patrick McKenzie pointed the BBC to a 2011 W3C post highlighting the key issues with names, along with his own list of common mistaken assumptions. "They don't necessarily test for the edge cases," McKenzie says, noting that even when filing his own income taxes in Japan, his last name exceeds the number of characters allowed.
Users with unacceptably deviant names will be assigned GUIDs for standardized interaction with all systems. Thank you for your compliance with this exciting and mandatory efficiency initiative.
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/...
Nothing to say, read it.
There is similar stuff about Dates, Time, Time Zones etc. on the internet. I should make a collection of it.
But I can't figure how to write into my /. journal nor how to use the old /. bookmark feature.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Just pick one already.
Just move to Scunthorpe.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Her name in a (web) form would be put into a database field as a string ... the word NULL is a keyword, not a string "NULL". I am not saying that this did not happen, I just find it hard to see how a string and a database keyword could possibly be confused ?
It would be: INSERT INTO Customer (Surname) VALUES ("NULL")
not:: INSERT INTO Customer (Surname) VALUES (NULL)
An asian co-worker of mine who's family name is Teh has found that his name is almost impossible to type in tools like microsoft word, which auto correct Teh to The.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Mr. Brass and Mrs. Lassiter, we never got to serve them.
I had a Chinese-American teacher called Mr. Fuch. The other teachers had a hard time trying not to mispronounce his last name. They all fucked it up.
My uncle experienced this problem with our last name: Blank. When filling out a form it returned with an error: Last name cannot be left blank. This is still a running joke in our family. Never experienced it myself.
Was more likely a Thai lady than an Indian.
"Pon" or "Porn" is a common last syllable in Thai, for given names as well as family names.
Perhaps she was Indian by birth but Thai by ancestry?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I've had issues a few times with filters on names rejecting mine for supposedly referring to a body part...
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
I don't think a byte has always been 8 bits, so there's definitely some wiggle room there as long as the bits are contiguous.
Nullius in verba
Data cannot break computers. Data whose contents differ from the possible preconception of application programmers can cause errors in poorly designed, written, or tested applications.
Most programmers can not even figure out how to validate a f--ing email address, let alone a persons name.
How about they fix the email problem first and stop rejecting my email address ^_^@mydomain
Yes, you can put that on my domain listed below and email me, and yes it is a valid email address as per the RFC.
The article neglects to mention perhaps the most famous case of all, Hubert Blaine Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff, Senior. And that's just an abbreviation -- his actual surname (or so he claimed) was 666 letters long.
Byte size have varied a lot in the past and could conceivably vary in the future too (but it's unlikely). Even the definition of byte as a concept have varied, most have byte as the smallest addressable element while some systems had it as the character size etc. Word addressed machines very seldom used byte to describe the addressable element size but some had word-sized characters... It's a mess.
A more correct name is octet which by definition consists of 8 binary digits.
As long as your last name isn't a single letter. That catches my psuedonym fairly regularly.
Back when I worked in medical data, I encountered real people with single-character names. It happens for real names, too. For programmers, the rule is simple: Don't use names for anything except your application's convenience, and don't have any restrictions on them. Don't even require their existence.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I run two e-commerce stores based on osCommerce and had this exact issue with a customer whose last name was Null. There is a common function in osCommerce (tep_not_null) trying to see if the argument is empty. One of the things it looks for is the string "null". When I discovered this, I removed that part of the test (which never made sense to me.)
That's the anglicised version.
The gaelic original uses Ã".
Says the person named "Anonymous Coward".
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Lucas used a modified Winchester 44-40 1892 model rifle.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Says the person named "Anonymous Coward".
Noel's son, presumably. Posting incognito.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Yes, I learned machine language on computers that literally only had 256 bytes.
I wrote a new course to teach students on a machine with only 64 bytes of RAM (1k word ROM and 128 bytes EEPROM) . In 2008 or so. Such machines still exist in staggeringly huge numbers. See, for example the PIC12F675. Their bottom end model (the 10F200) has a staggering 16 bytes of RAM and 256 words of flash.
So I'm guessing you're either an ancient greybeard or did a machine language course on a very small microcontroller.
I did like the super low-end microcontrollers for teaching. One thing I found appealing was it was the first bit of the engineering course (and it happened early) when the students can step outside of the slightly artificial uni environment and into the real world. I mean sure there are all sorts of strange restrictions on a PIC, but importantly, they're all there for a reason and that reason is never to make it simpler for teaching. And most of the answers to "why does it do this weird thing" were "well, that saves a couple of transistors which lowers the cost", but it was nice to work with a solid product which was engineered to some very strict criteria.
And the devices are simple enough that you can give the students the 400 page databook and the answers will be in there somewhere.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
B.S. It's not names that break computers, it's idiot coders who couldn't care less. I mean seriously, a "Null" as a name to break a name input? Maybe they should write an article about the most idiotic programmers who somehow got to work on real life systems for real money and got away with it.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.