I have an ø in my name. It is especially annoying when entering payment details and I have to input my name as it appears on my credit card. It is surprisingly often that only ascii is accepted. I would guess the anglo-internet is hell if you're from Asia.
Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
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Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#42It's only going to get worse - more and more systems are replaced with "AI" which in return produces the worst case of "computer says no" - with the older systems, customer service could at least override the system, with the newer ones it becomes increasingly difficult to do so. Even simpler technologies like voice recognition are incredibly shit if you have an accent or a surname that's not recognised by English "speaking" voice recogniser(support lines where you have to say your surname to get connected to someone are the worst).
Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#43I worked at an ISP in the '90s, and our first paid customer was John Blank. On several occasions, a well-meaning biller would delete his account because it was "obvious a test".
Seems ‘Schmoe’ is a real, or at least adopted, last name. Linked in lists a few Schmoes, including Joe and John. Must be hillarious.
The only safe thing to assume about the validity of family names is that people may or may not have one, and that if they do, it is probably (but not guaranteed to be) composed of a series of Unicode-space characters.
Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#44> Take the case of Jennifer Null, for instance, whose name was frequently rejected in input fields because the program treated her last name as a form of code, rather than text For all those who say javascript the language is fine: ^^
This was probably SQL. As for JavaScript, I recall how I registered an account with user name "undefined" for TheDailyWTF article comments. Later they moved their comment system and forums to Discourse and due to some bug my account was linked under every item in the list of likes under every post.
Another common source of grief for people with the name Null is SOAP web services:
Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#45I had John Fread write in last year. His whole family had learned to be careful picking usernames, and more careful as WAFs and such grew popular.
Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#46When I was in elementary school, the Vice Principal's name was Mr. Butts. That was uproariously funny to my young self. Now I kind of feel bad for the guy, being the brunt of an endless stream potty humor from "clever" pre-teens..
If your surname is Butts and you chose a career path in elementary education, you know what you're signing up for.
Agreed.
Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#47Wonder if there is John Doe around facing these problems.
Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#48> Take the case of Jennifer Null, for instance, whose name was frequently rejected in input fields because the program treated her last name as a form of code, rather than text For all those who say javascript the language is fine: ^^
Can‘t find the JavaScript connection. Guess you‘re simply trying a little too hard trolling around. Edit: To all the Nulls, thanks for the downvotes.
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Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#49Probably not as bad as if your last name is Null. https://www.wired.com/2015/11/null/ In the early 80s I worked with a guy who wanted an unlisted phone number (back in the days of paper telephone directories). He was really miffed at the idea that the phone company would charge him an extra $10 (or similar) per year for this "service". ("Ten dollars to NOT do something?!? That's extortion!") He couldn't believe this…
Was it Leonard Nimoy?
Wow that was downvoted. I guess these people aren't aware of Nimoys extensive practical jokes with Shatner.
But even so, why would anyone downvote this?
Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#50I've known families with surnames like Weiner and Skanky (who had a bunch of girls, I always felt sorry for them with a last name of Skanky). I imagine they must have this same issue.