I wonder if he's friends with Bobby Tables?
December 11, 2015 8:20 AM Subscribe
Hello, I'm Mr. Null. My name makes me invisible to computers.
XKCD: Little Bobby Tables
Previously on issues with names, assumptions about them, and programming, and User imput that might wreck havoc with programs
XKCD: Little Bobby Tables
Previously on issues with names, assumptions about them, and programming, and User imput that might wreck havoc with programs
It is like having Record as a last name and trying to research genealogy. Birth and Death Records, I have become legions.
posted by Oyéah at 8:43 AM on December 11, 2015 [9 favorites]
posted by Oyéah at 8:43 AM on December 11, 2015 [9 favorites]
Ha-ha. There was the guy whose personalized license plate, after a bureaucratic snafu, was "NO PLATE," so of course all the tickets written up for derelict or abandoned or wrongly parked cars with "no plate" wound up in his mailbox.
posted by notyou at 8:44 AM on December 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by notyou at 8:44 AM on December 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
what happens next will depend a lot on the quality of programming underlying the website or app that’s doing the work
*points at php*
*laughs heartily*
posted by 7segment at 8:47 AM on December 11, 2015 [17 favorites]
*points at php*
*laughs heartily*
posted by 7segment at 8:47 AM on December 11, 2015 [17 favorites]
I have the surname of "Blank". It's a riot. Yes, I did fill out your paperwork completely. No I'm not trying to hide my last name from you a la paranoid tin foil hat. No, it's not pronounced Blanc. My go to explainer is that "it's spelled like Fill In The".
posted by msbutah at 8:59 AM on December 11, 2015 [9 favorites]
posted by msbutah at 8:59 AM on December 11, 2015 [9 favorites]
If no one in his family has the first name Dev (or Devin, Devlin...), I will be sad.
posted by Octaviuz at 9:05 AM on December 11, 2015 [12 favorites]
posted by Octaviuz at 9:05 AM on December 11, 2015 [12 favorites]
No, it's not pronounced Blanc.
Neither was Mel Blanc.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:05 AM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
Neither was Mel Blanc.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:05 AM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
A few years ago, I was trying to order something from an online store and the form kept getting rejected again and again. I sent a frustrated email to customer support. They replied a few days later: "It seems like you're trying to order from Union City, New Jersey. This is causing problems with our backend systems. Please call us to place your order."
posted by monospace at 9:09 AM on December 11, 2015 [13 favorites]
posted by monospace at 9:09 AM on December 11, 2015 [13 favorites]
Down-the-rabbit-hole geeks prefer the classic “dev/null.”
Not if they're anywhere but the root directory.
posted by invitapriore at 9:15 AM on December 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
Not if they're anywhere but the root directory.
posted by invitapriore at 9:15 AM on December 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
I have a college friend with a one-letter last name, which broke some of the college IT systems. They wanted him to invent a made-up middle initial to make their job easier, but he apparently put his foot down pretty hard. (In retrospect I am surprised this worked.)
Anyway, I love this kind of thing.
I've had the thought that, if we are being simulated in a giant computer, then, based on all of our experience with computers, the code must be riddled with holes. People who think there is a real chance we are being simulated should spend their time looking for memory leaks so they can inject code into the underlying machine.
posted by grobstein at 9:23 AM on December 11, 2015 [8 favorites]
Anyway, I love this kind of thing.
I've had the thought that, if we are being simulated in a giant computer, then, based on all of our experience with computers, the code must be riddled with holes. People who think there is a real chance we are being simulated should spend their time looking for memory leaks so they can inject code into the underlying machine.
posted by grobstein at 9:23 AM on December 11, 2015 [8 favorites]
This wouldn't be a problem if various programming languages didn't try to be so damned cute. I'm looking at you, Java, who autoboxes null strings into the actual text "null" if you mistakenly append one to another string. Then along comes an intern with a bug report, and decides to fix it with a regex (now he has two problems) without knowing about ^ and $, and bam, Christopher Null is SOL.
posted by Mayor West at 9:27 AM on December 11, 2015 [8 favorites]
posted by Mayor West at 9:27 AM on December 11, 2015 [8 favorites]
yeah these are the kinds of things that are hilarious to me but I'm pretty sure that's only because I never have to deal with them
we had a guy from Pakistan move over to work in our department a few years ago and because having a last name isn't really in their naming conventions and apparently they were given a real hard time of it. he went with either 'none' or 'blank' (I can't quite remember) and it caused him all sorts of additional problems down the road because of things like this (computer error) or general human stubbornness and ignorance
I feel like that's all kind of intertwined with a heavy bit of racism too, though
posted by suddenly, and without warning, at 9:28 AM on December 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
we had a guy from Pakistan move over to work in our department a few years ago and because having a last name isn't really in their naming conventions and apparently they were given a real hard time of it. he went with either 'none' or 'blank' (I can't quite remember) and it caused him all sorts of additional problems down the road because of things like this (computer error) or general human stubbornness and ignorance
I feel like that's all kind of intertwined with a heavy bit of racism too, though
posted by suddenly, and without warning, at 9:28 AM on December 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
As a python programmer for the past 7 years, I haven't had these problems in forever, since a string is never the actual Null value that you can assign to anything (more importantly, python uses None as the Null value).
* joins 7segment in pointing and laughing at php *
posted by numaner at 9:31 AM on December 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
* joins 7segment in pointing and laughing at php *
posted by numaner at 9:31 AM on December 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
I've all but given up on the apostrophe in my last name because it's a reserved character in MS-SQL, and if not escaped properly on input (which it often isn't) will cause web form submissions to fail.
posted by COD at 9:32 AM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by COD at 9:32 AM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
previously: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names
posted by 7segment at 9:35 AM on December 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by 7segment at 9:35 AM on December 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
I have a long last name -- so long that it's actually (slightly) cut off on my driver's license.
I'd never thought much of it until I went to apply for something a few days ago which requires a government-issued photo ID containing my full name and a secondary form of identification.
I've yet to hear back about the status of my application, but I've been told there's a chance it'll bounce because the name on my government-issued ID has to be identical to the one on my birth certificate. (Will they accept documentation from the DMV which both states my full last name and says that licenses only list the first x characters of any last name? No, of course not.)
People who think there is a real chance we are being simulated should spend their time looking for memory leaks so they can inject code into the underlying machine.
The only way I can think of for the simulation hypothesis to be tested is that computer programs can be hacked.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 9:37 AM on December 11, 2015
I'd never thought much of it until I went to apply for something a few days ago which requires a government-issued photo ID containing my full name and a secondary form of identification.
I've yet to hear back about the status of my application, but I've been told there's a chance it'll bounce because the name on my government-issued ID has to be identical to the one on my birth certificate. (Will they accept documentation from the DMV which both states my full last name and says that licenses only list the first x characters of any last name? No, of course not.)
People who think there is a real chance we are being simulated should spend their time looking for memory leaks so they can inject code into the underlying machine.
The only way I can think of for the simulation hypothesis to be tested is that computer programs can be hacked.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 9:37 AM on December 11, 2015
People who think there is a real chance we are being simulated should spend their time looking for memory leaks so they can inject code into the underlying machine.
The only way I can think of for the simulation hypothesis to be tested is that computer programs can be hacked.
This is, of course, the central conceit of The Matrix.
posted by Brainy at 9:42 AM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
The only way I can think of for the simulation hypothesis to be tested is that computer programs can be hacked.
This is, of course, the central conceit of The Matrix.
posted by Brainy at 9:42 AM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
As a python programmer for the past 7 years, I haven't had these problems in forever, since a string is never the actual Null value that you can assign to anything (more importantly, python uses None as the Null value).
Yeah, but nothing's stopping you from using
posted by Mayor West at 9:42 AM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
Yeah, but nothing's stopping you from using
== rather than is in your conditionals, at which point you're the same precarious well-meaning-intern away from clobbering one of the great house names of Norfolk.posted by Mayor West at 9:42 AM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
Well, that Pakistani naming scheme thing just blew my mind. I did not know this.
posted by Windopaene at 9:42 AM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Windopaene at 9:42 AM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
The only way I can think of for the simulation hypothesis to be tested is that computer programs can be hacked.
There are other ways
posted by thelonius at 9:48 AM on December 11, 2015
There are other ways
posted by thelonius at 9:48 AM on December 11, 2015
Yeah, but nothing's stopping you from using == rather than is in your conditionals
But None != "None" no matter where you're using conditionals
posted by numaner at 9:49 AM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
But None != "None" no matter where you're using conditionals
posted by numaner at 9:49 AM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
I had a girlfriend whose first name was the same as my last name. Same spelling. (This is my father's dream, by the way. My sister, my sister-in law, and my brother's fiancee all also share the same first initial).Then we got married. Now when someone looks her up in a computer (reservations and membership are the two most common), the reaction is either "that's neat" or "is it really the same? I thought it was someone making a mistake entering things into the computer."
There are problems. Our state's department of revenue apparently has a block on the idea that someone's first and last name could be the same. This causes us no end of fun every year in mid-April. More interesting (to me) is that she's not the only person in our county with this name combination. Many clerks search for things just by name, never bothering to validate the rest of the information because "what are the odds of two people having this situation?" We've had several reservations and services cancelled because the other person called up to make a similar appointment and the person says "oh, i see you already have a reservation on this other day, I'll just cancel it for you and make this new one."
posted by neilbert at 9:58 AM on December 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
There are problems. Our state's department of revenue apparently has a block on the idea that someone's first and last name could be the same. This causes us no end of fun every year in mid-April. More interesting (to me) is that she's not the only person in our county with this name combination. Many clerks search for things just by name, never bothering to validate the rest of the information because "what are the odds of two people having this situation?" We've had several reservations and services cancelled because the other person called up to make a similar appointment and the person says "oh, i see you already have a reservation on this other day, I'll just cancel it for you and make this new one."
posted by neilbert at 9:58 AM on December 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
we had a guy from Pakistan move over to work in our department a few years ago and because having a last name isn't really in their naming conventions and apparently they were given a real hard time of it.
Yep. My friend is from Indonesia and his lone name is (let's say) Bapak. He is often known as Dr. Bapak, because he holds a health-related doctoral degree, which is a little easier to deal with, but isn't always perfect.
To complicate matters: on Facebook he goes by Mien Bapak, and his husband John (American, two names) actually refers to Bapak on occasion by an American name that Bapak chose for himself. (John once posted, "I'm so glad that [Scott] is coming home to me and the dog after his trip!" on Facebook, and I had no idea who Scott was and was terribly worried that John and Bapak had broken up.)
One of the most common things is seeing a weird acronym such as "FNU" ("first name unknown"). So he'll get mail addressed to Fnu Bapak which includes letters that begin, "Dear Fnu..."
[Incidentally, my brother's last name is the plural of his girlfriend's first name. But she is not a name changin' kind of gal in any case, so poo.]
posted by St. Hubbins at 10:03 AM on December 11, 2015 [5 favorites]
Yep. My friend is from Indonesia and his lone name is (let's say) Bapak. He is often known as Dr. Bapak, because he holds a health-related doctoral degree, which is a little easier to deal with, but isn't always perfect.
To complicate matters: on Facebook he goes by Mien Bapak, and his husband John (American, two names) actually refers to Bapak on occasion by an American name that Bapak chose for himself. (John once posted, "I'm so glad that [Scott] is coming home to me and the dog after his trip!" on Facebook, and I had no idea who Scott was and was terribly worried that John and Bapak had broken up.)
One of the most common things is seeing a weird acronym such as "FNU" ("first name unknown"). So he'll get mail addressed to Fnu Bapak which includes letters that begin, "Dear Fnu..."
[Incidentally, my brother's last name is the plural of his girlfriend's first name. But she is not a name changin' kind of gal in any case, so poo.]
posted by St. Hubbins at 10:03 AM on December 11, 2015 [5 favorites]
numaner: if it's only been seven years, you don't remember back when we could assign to None ;)
posted by 7segment at 10:05 AM on December 11, 2015
posted by 7segment at 10:05 AM on December 11, 2015
haha thank god. I'll take any language now over the best 8 years ago.
posted by numaner at 10:09 AM on December 11, 2015
posted by numaner at 10:09 AM on December 11, 2015
We run into this from time to time with our customer data -- last names like Null, Or, and And don't bother our system directly, but these names have definitely tripped up a few downstream systems. Fun times (not). That XKCD cartoon is still very relevant.
posted by mosk at 10:16 AM on December 11, 2015
posted by mosk at 10:16 AM on December 11, 2015
The name problem is a symptom of a larger problem - we test the happy path, not the edges and corners. Fuzz testing is an interesting approach here, but not many people use it - I suspect because they're scared of what it might find.
> People who think there is a real chance we are being simulated should spend their time looking for memory leaks so they can inject code into the underlying machine.
There's a throwaway line in Accelerando about "running a timing channel attack on the computational ultrastructure of space-time itself, trying to break through to whatever's underneath". I love the first two thirds of that novel for the sheer density of ideas - enough for a lesser author's entire career, just thrown around like confetti.
posted by Leon at 10:44 AM on December 11, 2015 [5 favorites]
> People who think there is a real chance we are being simulated should spend their time looking for memory leaks so they can inject code into the underlying machine.
There's a throwaway line in Accelerando about "running a timing channel attack on the computational ultrastructure of space-time itself, trying to break through to whatever's underneath". I love the first two thirds of that novel for the sheer density of ideas - enough for a lesser author's entire career, just thrown around like confetti.
posted by Leon at 10:44 AM on December 11, 2015 [5 favorites]
I've had the thought that, if we are being simulated in a giant computer, then, based on all of our experience with computers, the code must be riddled with holes. People who think there is a real chance we are being simulated should spend their time looking for memory leaks so they can inject code into the underlying machine.
I hope to fucking god the celestial developers of our Universe took the time to formally verify their implementation in whatever the physio-transcendental version of TLA+ is, but that's probably hoping for too much. I like to think that such bugs are actually the underlying cause behind everything that ever happens in horror movies. A few days after the depicted events you see a new patch version in the changelogs:
numaner: if it's only been seven years, you don't remember back when we could assign to None ;)
You can still do this with
posted by invitapriore at 11:42 AM on December 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
I hope to fucking god the celestial developers of our Universe took the time to formally verify their implementation in whatever the physio-transcendental version of TLA+ is, but that's probably hoping for too much. I like to think that such bugs are actually the underlying cause behind everything that ever happens in horror movies. A few days after the depicted events you see a new patch version in the changelogs:
197008727.236.5
---------------
- Disable ancient burial grounds from resurrecting those interred there as demonic husks of their former selves due to swallowed exception in reapSoul()
numaner: if it's only been seven years, you don't remember back when we could assign to None ;)
You can still do this with
True and False in Python 2.x. :Dposted by invitapriore at 11:42 AM on December 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
Wow, there are a lot of commenters in that "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names" link 7segment posted throwing a total shitfit over the idea that they might have to accommodate unusual/non-Western names. God help Christopher Null if this is the kind of thing he has to deal with regularly.
posted by ostro at 11:47 AM on December 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by ostro at 11:47 AM on December 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
From that link:
People’s names do not contain numbers.
it's like they never even read Neuromancer
posted by invitapriore at 11:49 AM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
People’s names do not contain numbers.
it's like they never even read Neuromancer
posted by invitapriore at 11:49 AM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
Duffy Wyg&.
posted by Leon at 11:56 AM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Leon at 11:56 AM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
When I went through gender transition, I gave serious thought to the first name "Oph3lia". I suspect a million web forms would have made me regret that if I had.
posted by egypturnash at 12:28 PM on December 11, 2015
posted by egypturnash at 12:28 PM on December 11, 2015
Man, I think this to myself every time someone links that "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names" article, but this line:
People whose names break my system are weird outliers. They should have had solid, acceptable names, like 田中太郎.
cracks me up every time. It's written perfectly so that most English-speaking readers will think "WTF?" but anyone who has ever been to Japan for longer than a short vacation is like "OMG YES STORY OF MY LIFE."
My name is super common, even boring, in English. One time in Japan I got pulled over for speeding and the police officer was kind of being a douche (I wanted him to just ticket me so I could go home but he kept grilling me on why I was speeding and wouldn't accept my answer when I was clearly too flustered and non-fluent to be coherent). So then he goes to fill out the form. Japanese names are four characters long, MAYBE three or five if you get really crazy, and the size of the box on the form reflects this; my katakana name on my driver's license was ten. He looked at the form, then at my driver's license, then at the form, then at my driver's license again, then at the form again, and let out a deep, heavy, put-upon sigh. I just looked at him like, "Serves you right for never learning to deal with anyone who isn't Japanese." And that is the one and only story this Smith has to contribute to a thread about name glitches.
posted by sunset in snow country at 12:32 PM on December 11, 2015 [18 favorites]
People whose names break my system are weird outliers. They should have had solid, acceptable names, like 田中太郎.
cracks me up every time. It's written perfectly so that most English-speaking readers will think "WTF?" but anyone who has ever been to Japan for longer than a short vacation is like "OMG YES STORY OF MY LIFE."
My name is super common, even boring, in English. One time in Japan I got pulled over for speeding and the police officer was kind of being a douche (I wanted him to just ticket me so I could go home but he kept grilling me on why I was speeding and wouldn't accept my answer when I was clearly too flustered and non-fluent to be coherent). So then he goes to fill out the form. Japanese names are four characters long, MAYBE three or five if you get really crazy, and the size of the box on the form reflects this; my katakana name on my driver's license was ten. He looked at the form, then at my driver's license, then at the form, then at my driver's license again, then at the form again, and let out a deep, heavy, put-upon sigh. I just looked at him like, "Serves you right for never learning to deal with anyone who isn't Japanese." And that is the one and only story this Smith has to contribute to a thread about name glitches.
posted by sunset in snow country at 12:32 PM on December 11, 2015 [18 favorites]
The only way I can think of for the simulation hypothesis to be tested is that computer programs can be hacked.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 9:37 AM on December 11 [+] [!]
Well alternately we could arrange situations that might be especially expensive to simulate to see if we can cause a crash. Use particle accelerators and the like to engineer events that would take a lot of processor cycles to get exactly right.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:34 PM on December 11, 2015
posted by steady-state strawberry at 9:37 AM on December 11 [+] [!]
Well alternately we could arrange situations that might be especially expensive to simulate to see if we can cause a crash. Use particle accelerators and the like to engineer events that would take a lot of processor cycles to get exactly right.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:34 PM on December 11, 2015
Use particle accelerators and the like to engineer events that would take a lot of processor cycles to get exactly right.
Considering the giant crush of particles moving near the speed of light at the center of many galaxies, I think we'd have a hard time making a difference. Unless you're assuming that it's all being simulated for our benefit, and all of the distant stuff is just approximated? In which case you just bottom out the approximation in a consistent way and leave your subjects to figure out the rules; incidentally, that's sort of what quantum mechanics does, and string theory doubles-down on that approach.
posted by WCWedin at 12:56 PM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
Considering the giant crush of particles moving near the speed of light at the center of many galaxies, I think we'd have a hard time making a difference. Unless you're assuming that it's all being simulated for our benefit, and all of the distant stuff is just approximated? In which case you just bottom out the approximation in a consistent way and leave your subjects to figure out the rules; incidentally, that's sort of what quantum mechanics does, and string theory doubles-down on that approach.
posted by WCWedin at 12:56 PM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
Also, names! I have opinions on names! UTF-8 across your whole stack; max 100 chars, enforced at the storage point (but make it easy to change); don't use any language that performs implicit coercion to or from strings for comparisons; never export to Excel for anything but human consumption. That ought to get you 99% of the way there, but I'd be happy to hear how I'm actually super wrong.
posted by WCWedin at 1:02 PM on December 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by WCWedin at 1:02 PM on December 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
197008727.236.5
---------------
- Disable ancient burial grounds from resurrecting those interred there as demonic husks of their former selves due to swallowed exception in reapSoul()
You do realize this means we're living in a future version of Dwarf Fortress, right?
posted by mikurski at 1:11 PM on December 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
---------------
- Disable ancient burial grounds from resurrecting those interred there as demonic husks of their former selves due to swallowed exception in reapSoul()
You do realize this means we're living in a future version of Dwarf Fortress, right?
posted by mikurski at 1:11 PM on December 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
My stage name/ musician name is Devon Null. I thought it was kewl back in 1996 when I was in my first punk band....nowadays it makes me cringe, since it's so 90s, but what can you do? I'm resigned to the constancy of my absurdity.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 1:33 PM on December 11, 2015
posted by LeRoienJaune at 1:33 PM on December 11, 2015
I'd be happy to hear how I'm actually super wrong.
How many fields for the name?
posted by aureliobuendia at 1:36 PM on December 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
How many fields for the name?
posted by aureliobuendia at 1:36 PM on December 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
> Use particle accelerators and the like to engineer events that would take a lot of processor cycles to get exactly right.
You just need three bodies orbiting.
I recall some stuff in Blood Music about observing the universe really intently, and why it's a bad idea. Maybe we just need to look closer.
posted by Leon at 1:44 PM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
You just need three bodies orbiting.
I recall some stuff in Blood Music about observing the universe really intently, and why it's a bad idea. Maybe we just need to look closer.
posted by Leon at 1:44 PM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
How many fields for the name?
Oh, good question! I would say probably two core ones: Family and Given. Force users to enter both to prevent mistakes, but provide an override. You'll probably need a constraint that they have to provide at least one of the two. Maybe also add a field for how those names ought to be rendered to form the full name, with perhaps a handful of options; you could tie the override for leaving one of the name fields blank to a particular way of writing names. If you want to track middle names or suffixes or titles or anything, make them optional. That should cover the vast majority of cases, I think.
posted by WCWedin at 1:48 PM on December 11, 2015
Oh, good question! I would say probably two core ones: Family and Given. Force users to enter both to prevent mistakes, but provide an override. You'll probably need a constraint that they have to provide at least one of the two. Maybe also add a field for how those names ought to be rendered to form the full name, with perhaps a handful of options; you could tie the override for leaving one of the name fields blank to a particular way of writing names. If you want to track middle names or suffixes or titles or anything, make them optional. That should cover the vast majority of cases, I think.
posted by WCWedin at 1:48 PM on December 11, 2015
I wonder if anyone's added Prince's symbol to unicode yet.... (lazyweb, avaunt!)
posted by Leon at 1:50 PM on December 11, 2015
posted by Leon at 1:50 PM on December 11, 2015
Nope: "The Unicode Standard does not encode idiosyncratic, personal, novel, or private-use characters, nor does it encode logos or graphics."
posted by WCWedin at 1:53 PM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by WCWedin at 1:53 PM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
I know someone who worked in a call center capacity for a theater venue, and one of her callers buying tickets was Teller. The Teller. Her system balked at someone having just a single name, but he told her that he gets that all the time. "Try Teller Teller," he said. That apparently did the job.
posted by Sunburnt at 2:22 PM on December 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Sunburnt at 2:22 PM on December 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
@Leon The unicode encoding for the Apple Logo is in private use area; it's not part of the standard.
posted by willF at 2:25 PM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by willF at 2:25 PM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
willF: You mean you're not seeing a Windows logo? Huh.
posted by Leon at 2:28 PM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Leon at 2:28 PM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
How are you going to handle the case when Family and Given are (inevitably) reversed? Givenname Familyname is a western-centric ordering; a good portion of the world goes Familyname Givenname and even ignoring that, operator error can easily get that backwards.
The Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names link should really be required reading since it goes into why Givenname Familyname is insufficient (though marginally better than first_name and last_name).
(The companion piece about Falsehoods programmers believe about time should also be required reading, for that matter.)
I visited Vegas with some friends, but because they were coming from elsewhere, I had to meet them there. They arrived earlier and were off gambling, but I spent the better part of an hour just trying to check in. This was to the Aria when it was brand new (so probably early 2010), and the room was comp'd, but not to me, so someone gave my name verbally to someone at the hotel. When I got there, my reservation was non-existent until the clerk tried searching for my Familyname as a Givenname and realized it had gotten reversed. The inconvenience itself isn't worth mentioning except to point out that whichever order you think is natural (since my name was given verbally over the phone), it's going to 'feel' backwards to someone, who is then going to screw it up, causing problems. In this particular case it barely rates 'annoying', but there are actual life-and-death situations that computer databases are involved in these days.
posted by fragmede at 2:31 PM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
The Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names link should really be required reading since it goes into why Givenname Familyname is insufficient (though marginally better than first_name and last_name).
(The companion piece about Falsehoods programmers believe about time should also be required reading, for that matter.)
I visited Vegas with some friends, but because they were coming from elsewhere, I had to meet them there. They arrived earlier and were off gambling, but I spent the better part of an hour just trying to check in. This was to the Aria when it was brand new (so probably early 2010), and the room was comp'd, but not to me, so someone gave my name verbally to someone at the hotel. When I got there, my reservation was non-existent until the clerk tried searching for my Familyname as a Givenname and realized it had gotten reversed. The inconvenience itself isn't worth mentioning except to point out that whichever order you think is natural (since my name was given verbally over the phone), it's going to 'feel' backwards to someone, who is then going to screw it up, causing problems. In this particular case it barely rates 'annoying', but there are actual life-and-death situations that computer databases are involved in these days.
posted by fragmede at 2:31 PM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
Accept that the map is never the territory, and focus on how the data's going to be processed.
So a system that prints envelopes and letters and generates reports might need Name (John Smith), Informal Name (John), and Sort-by Name (Smith John).
In other words: It's hard, make it a data entry clerk's problem.
posted by Leon at 2:36 PM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
So a system that prints envelopes and letters and generates reports might need Name (John Smith), Informal Name (John), and Sort-by Name (Smith John).
In other words: It's hard, make it a data entry clerk's problem.
posted by Leon at 2:36 PM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
If the Federation can't get this right then what hope do the rest of us have?
posted by ckape at 3:37 PM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by ckape at 3:37 PM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
The name problem is a symptom of a larger problem - we test the happy path, not the edges and corners. Fuzz testing is an interesting approach here, but not many people use it - I suspect because they're scared of what it might find.
Well yeah, if you find something you need to fix it or at least give convincing reasons why it isn't worthwhile, which can always come back to haunt you later when it inevitably goes pearshaped. Better not test in places where you suspect mine fields if you don't want to risk explosions. As long as it works in 95 percent or 90 or even 80 percent of the cases, it's good enough, right?
posted by MartinWisse at 3:54 PM on December 11, 2015
Well yeah, if you find something you need to fix it or at least give convincing reasons why it isn't worthwhile, which can always come back to haunt you later when it inevitably goes pearshaped. Better not test in places where you suspect mine fields if you don't want to risk explosions. As long as it works in 95 percent or 90 or even 80 percent of the cases, it's good enough, right?
posted by MartinWisse at 3:54 PM on December 11, 2015
Lol names. My husband and I have hyphenated names. (I always have; I just swapped one.) Anyways, the social security office in SF claimed hyphens were IMPOSSIBLE so his card has four names. NYC? Gave me a hyphen like evs. Passports / state department? Both hyphens! Whee!
posted by dame at 4:55 PM on December 11, 2015
posted by dame at 4:55 PM on December 11, 2015
Incidentally, is there a nice big list somewhere of various difficult names (or just names that represent a good range of variation) and how they should be treated in various situations, e.g. personal name, full name, legal name, with & without titles, suffixes, and honorifics, formal vs informal, etc.?
posted by hyperbolic at 5:32 PM on December 11, 2015
posted by hyperbolic at 5:32 PM on December 11, 2015
So in Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, is it really a going thing that some people in the world today have no names?
posted by vibratory manner of working at 5:48 PM on December 11, 2015
posted by vibratory manner of working at 5:48 PM on December 11, 2015
On a not-quite-programming tip, you get annoying situations where a system is nicely designed to accept your name, but specifies an exact format it needs to entered in. And then it requires that the credit card information you enter match...except that the credit card company specifies an exact format as well, and it doesn't match the format of the first system.
So, for example, at some ecommerce site neither the last or first name fields accept spaces. Okay, sure, no problem. First name: "Bug" Last name: "Bread"
And then I can't buy the stuff in the shopping cart because my name doesn't match my credit card name, which is "Bug J. Bread", because the credit card company requires the name as listed on my passport.
Between including or not including middle names, writing family name or first name first, writing in katakana or English characters, and the exceptionally rare writing in two-byte English characters, there are 18 different ways a company could require me to write my name.
If I ever forget my password on a site and click that "Forgot your password?" link, and the following form asks me to simply enter my name and email address to reset my password, I close the tab and call the company on the phone, because I could be there for hours trying every combination of name format and potential email address.
vibratory manner of working: "So in Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, is it really a going thing that some people in the world today have no names?"
In the comments, the author mentions the following cases: "Someone born into slavery in the Sudan, a woman born in rural China, an American baby recovered after being born into a toilet, a feral child, an amnesiac, etc, etc."
posted by Bugbread at 6:23 PM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
So, for example, at some ecommerce site neither the last or first name fields accept spaces. Okay, sure, no problem. First name: "Bug" Last name: "Bread"
And then I can't buy the stuff in the shopping cart because my name doesn't match my credit card name, which is "Bug J. Bread", because the credit card company requires the name as listed on my passport.
Between including or not including middle names, writing family name or first name first, writing in katakana or English characters, and the exceptionally rare writing in two-byte English characters, there are 18 different ways a company could require me to write my name.
If I ever forget my password on a site and click that "Forgot your password?" link, and the following form asks me to simply enter my name and email address to reset my password, I close the tab and call the company on the phone, because I could be there for hours trying every combination of name format and potential email address.
vibratory manner of working: "So in Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, is it really a going thing that some people in the world today have no names?"
In the comments, the author mentions the following cases: "Someone born into slavery in the Sudan, a woman born in rural China, an American baby recovered after being born into a toilet, a feral child, an amnesiac, etc, etc."
posted by Bugbread at 6:23 PM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
"I had a girlfriend whose first name was the same as my last name."
Is it Kelly Kelly? I used to read a girl's wedding blog where she had the same issue and her in-laws were insisting on her taking his name.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:49 PM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
Is it Kelly Kelly? I used to read a girl's wedding blog where she had the same issue and her in-laws were insisting on her taking his name.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:49 PM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
They call me Dr. Null
Good morning, how are you I'm Dr. Null
I'm interested in things
I'm not a real doctor but I am a real null
I am an actual null
I live like a null
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:04 PM on December 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
Good morning, how are you I'm Dr. Null
I'm interested in things
I'm not a real doctor but I am a real null
I am an actual null
I live like a null
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:04 PM on December 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
My stage name/ musician name is Devon Null. I thought it was kewl back in 1996 when I was in my first punk band....nowadays it makes me cringe, since it's so 90s, but what can you do? I'm resigned to the constancy of my absurdity.
I’m not sure I’ve ever met a musician that didn’t have some variation of this story. Goes with the territory. Your favorite band hates their name.
posted by bongo_x at 9:47 PM on December 11, 2015
I’m not sure I’ve ever met a musician that didn’t have some variation of this story. Goes with the territory. Your favorite band hates their name.
posted by bongo_x at 9:47 PM on December 11, 2015
Okay, so ckape highlighted this thread to me because I have an anecdote that is relevant, but I'm still not actually sure how true it is.
There was a guy in the late Seattle BBS scene for a couple years who was named 0. Not Zero, not O, but 0. He was kind of your classic death-metal-goth type loon, but at meetups he'd sometimes tell the story of how he changed his name to a single digit.
He was working in a not-too-big company doing systems and general programming on their VAX clusters, which they mainly used for money number-crunching. He'd mostly worked on generating reports for the payroll and HR folks, as the finance folks had their own developer. Well at one point the finance folks claimed the company couldn't afford to keep running this guy's team as it was, and staged a coup in which they ultimately had to absorb him into Finance (because he was the only one who understood most of the infrastructure) and started treating him like dirt.
So there he was, in a classic no-win situation against an entrenched power. But then in the shower one morning he had one of those "OH NO I LET THAT BUG IN!" moments. He'd made that test in the HR report really nicely, but the filter in the Payroll report was only alphabetic rather than alphanumeric. Just bad form, and inconsistent, and he kind of kicked himself for it.
But wait, who the hell has numeric names? This could only let through stale garbage records to payroll, right? That's sill–
So he changed his name to 0, making some drama about how if the finance guys were going to treat him like a zero, he was going to officially change his name to represent that. It was all part of a calculated flame-out "YOU CAN'T FIRE ME! I QUIT!" moment, and he grabbed his things and went home.
...and collected paycheques by direct deposit for two years until they switched to a third-party payroll fulfilment company.
Now, this is an anecdote told over coffee by an egotistical computer dude in the early 90s. I'm still not sure how much I actually believe it, and I tend toward "very little". Still, it's a cracking good yarn.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:40 AM on December 12, 2015 [7 favorites]
There was a guy in the late Seattle BBS scene for a couple years who was named 0. Not Zero, not O, but 0. He was kind of your classic death-metal-goth type loon, but at meetups he'd sometimes tell the story of how he changed his name to a single digit.
He was working in a not-too-big company doing systems and general programming on their VAX clusters, which they mainly used for money number-crunching. He'd mostly worked on generating reports for the payroll and HR folks, as the finance folks had their own developer. Well at one point the finance folks claimed the company couldn't afford to keep running this guy's team as it was, and staged a coup in which they ultimately had to absorb him into Finance (because he was the only one who understood most of the infrastructure) and started treating him like dirt.
So there he was, in a classic no-win situation against an entrenched power. But then in the shower one morning he had one of those "OH NO I LET THAT BUG IN!" moments. He'd made that test in the HR report really nicely, but the filter in the Payroll report was only alphabetic rather than alphanumeric. Just bad form, and inconsistent, and he kind of kicked himself for it.
But wait, who the hell has numeric names? This could only let through stale garbage records to payroll, right? That's sill–
So he changed his name to 0, making some drama about how if the finance guys were going to treat him like a zero, he was going to officially change his name to represent that. It was all part of a calculated flame-out "YOU CAN'T FIRE ME! I QUIT!" moment, and he grabbed his things and went home.
...and collected paycheques by direct deposit for two years until they switched to a third-party payroll fulfilment company.
Now, this is an anecdote told over coffee by an egotistical computer dude in the early 90s. I'm still not sure how much I actually believe it, and I tend toward "very little". Still, it's a cracking good yarn.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:40 AM on December 12, 2015 [7 favorites]
Also, names! I have opinions on names! UTF-8 across your whole stack;
Good, good...
max 100 chars, enforced at the storage point
KLAXON AHOOOGAH
posted by flabdablet at 3:40 AM on December 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
Good, good...
max 100 chars, enforced at the storage point
KLAXON AHOOOGAH
posted by flabdablet at 3:40 AM on December 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
How are you going to handle the case when Family and Given are (inevitably) reversed?
That's exactly what the enumeration of transforms to full name is intended to address. (I've read that article once a year or so for the past several years, and well as the time one, which makes me weep with frustration, so I read it less often.)
In other words: It's hard, make it a data entry clerk's problem.
That's an interesting idea, but even then, eventually you're going to want the system to generate some reasonable defaults, so it's worth hashing out how it might work. Besides, I'm a programmer, and thinking up solutions is what I do for fun, even if in the end they turn out to be impractical.
Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff
That probably breaks a lot of systems, but it's still only 35 characters, and even if someone does bump up against the upper limit, they'll hopefully contact you, and which point you change the limit to the length of their name, plus 50% or whatever. If you can't afford or enable that interaction, then you're going to have a hard time defining your problem space in the first place, and you sort of have to just cross your fingers I guess?
posted by WCWedin at 5:53 AM on December 12, 2015
That's exactly what the enumeration of transforms to full name is intended to address. (I've read that article once a year or so for the past several years, and well as the time one, which makes me weep with frustration, so I read it less often.)
In other words: It's hard, make it a data entry clerk's problem.
That's an interesting idea, but even then, eventually you're going to want the system to generate some reasonable defaults, so it's worth hashing out how it might work. Besides, I'm a programmer, and thinking up solutions is what I do for fun, even if in the end they turn out to be impractical.
Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff
That probably breaks a lot of systems, but it's still only 35 characters, and even if someone does bump up against the upper limit, they'll hopefully contact you, and which point you change the limit to the length of their name, plus 50% or whatever. If you can't afford or enable that interaction, then you're going to have a hard time defining your problem space in the first place, and you sort of have to just cross your fingers I guess?
posted by WCWedin at 5:53 AM on December 12, 2015
monospace: first time I've heard that one, kudos :o)
posted by iffthen at 6:04 AM on December 12, 2015
posted by iffthen at 6:04 AM on December 12, 2015
WCWedin: yes but his actual surname is 666 characters. That's just the short version. I think the point is that it's hard to even come up with a default maximum length.
posted by iffthen at 6:17 AM on December 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by iffthen at 6:17 AM on December 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
My technician's surname is Null and, surprisingly, USDA's computer systems deal with it okay. SAS's online registration system, not so much. That was fun to debug.
posted by wintermind at 6:24 AM on December 12, 2015
posted by wintermind at 6:24 AM on December 12, 2015
Yeah, I should have read the actual article, huh? It sounds to me like my new default maximum length is 700 characters. Seriously though, rather than try to work out every possibility before hand, I prefer to just leave room for my assumptions to fail. I think this guy makes a strong case for something like an "Address As" field, since you're not comfortably fitting even 50 characters on the front of an envelope or in the head of a letter, but I'm still not sure I would recommend that for most systems out the gate, you know?
posted by WCWedin at 6:58 AM on December 12, 2015
posted by WCWedin at 6:58 AM on December 12, 2015
WCWedin: “It sounds to me like my new default maximum length is 700 characters. ”At least in Postgres, I'd just use a
TEXT column.posted by ob1quixote at 2:21 PM on December 12, 2015
If my last name as Null, I would be seriously tempted to give an offspring the name "Not".
posted by fings at 7:42 AM on December 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by fings at 7:42 AM on December 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
numaner: if it's only been seven years, you don't remember back when we could assign to None ;)
Well, you could stomp all over the namespace, but not modify the actual None object. Unlike constants in truly powerful languages.
posted by effbot at 3:06 PM on January 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
Well, you could stomp all over the namespace, but not modify the actual None object. Unlike constants in truly powerful languages.
posted by effbot at 3:06 PM on January 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by Faint of Butt at 8:34 AM on December 11, 2015 [3 favorites]