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We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

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Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#171

Post by Steko »

dublinben wrote: post #165
njharman wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I'm stating that Jr. is an official part of Norman John Harman Jr., my name. It is on my birth certificate, filled out on my tax return, etc. In any case were I'm required to use my real name if I used Norman John Harman Sr. I would be committing fraud. Likewise fraud if I left off the Jr. in an attempt to confuse with or impersonate my father.

When your father dies, and you've named your son Norman John Harman as well, don't you become senior? It's can't be an immutable part of your name if your junior/senior status changes.

He'd become NJH II.

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#172

Post by seanmcdirmid »

kevin_p wrote: post #170
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many systems in China depend on your Chinese name and identification number. Suffice it to say, foreigners who work in China don't have either of these: a made up Chinese name is not meaningful or legal (China also lacks any kind of kana), a passport number is not a "valid" ID number and changes every 10 years anyways. I don't get to use many online services accordingly, and every year there is some problem with how…

It's meaningful in some contexts. I had a different Chinese name on my work permit and marriage certificate (in both cases transliterated without my input), and it caused me no end of hassle when I was applying for a mortgage - we got refused the first time and had to get the work permit changed to make them the same.

Yes, we (my wife and I) were careful about that when we got married last year. But to be honest, I think that's the only case (and the name on my work permit is not even my own chosen Chinese name!)

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#173

Post by SiVal »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #160
patio11 wrote: post #53

A Japanese company once made the decision that they needed "virtual" employees in a particular system, for example to support e.g. adding a job to the org chart before that position had been filled (and another dozen use cases), so they had the clever idea "Hey, if we need to do this, we'll just input their 'name in Japanese' as one of a dozen status flags, like XX_JOB_REQUEST or XX_INCOMING_TRANSFER." One developer…

Many systems in China depend on your Chinese name and identification number. Suffice it to say, foreigners who work in China don't have either of these: a made up Chinese name is not meaningful or legal (China also lacks any kind of kana), a passport number is not a "valid" ID number and changes every 10 years anyways. I don't get to use many online services accordingly, and every year there is some problem with how…

Yes, and imagine the impact this has on "foreigners who work in China" such as Tibetans in Lhasa.

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#174

Post by foobarian »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #160
patio11 wrote: post #53

A Japanese company once made the decision that they needed "virtual" employees in a particular system, for example to support e.g. adding a job to the org chart before that position had been filled (and another dozen use cases), so they had the clever idea "Hey, if we need to do this, we'll just input their 'name in Japanese' as one of a dozen status flags, like XX_JOB_REQUEST or XX_INCOMING_TRANSFER." One developer…

Many systems in China depend on your Chinese name and identification number. Suffice it to say, foreigners who work in China don't have either of these: a made up Chinese name is not meaningful or legal (China also lacks any kind of kana), a passport number is not a "valid" ID number and changes every 10 years anyways. I don't get to use many online services accordingly, and every year there is some problem with how…

When I worked in Taiwan they came up with a Chinese name for me and gave me a little official wooden stamp I could use to "sign" official documentation. The name was indeed useful to fill in all sorts of forms that expected the Chinese format. That was a neat time.

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#175

Post by mindslight »

anotherevan wrote: post #147
speeder wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My name fail to register surprisingly often, even here in Brazil. It is Hélder Maurício Gomes Ferreira Filho Common reasons for failure is being too long and having non ASCII characters, but sometimes it fails for other reasons, for example do not allow me to register without a middle name ( I don't haven't one actually... ), me confused and not knowing how to register Filho ( it is not a family name, neither a surna…

It get's worse. A friend of mine has a hyphenated name, "Kerry-Jean". The hyphen alone often breaks things.

Hyphenated last names seem to break many customer service people - they'll do things like insist one is the "real" name, assume you are married and ask when, etc. I think it's that hyphen is such a simple thing, it screams "understand me!" instead of simply being entered verbatim.

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#176

Post by neilk »

jerf wrote: post #169
neilk wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to accept all characters by default, be prepared to sanitize the outputs for every use, not just your website. Maybe you will output a data dump for someone else to print mailouts. Or you'll share the user database with a vendor's web forum. Or payment processing. Or any SaaS.

No. That completely doesn't work. This is really important: You CAN'T "sanitize" for every possible use. You can not correctly figure out in advance how to represent an input, because the different possibilities are numerous and actively self-contradictory. To "sanitize" for "every possible use" is pretty much to remove everything that isn't an ASCII letter. Even unexpected spaces can cause crazy behavior. Commas can…

Perhaps I was unclear, but I did not claim that there could be one single sanitized version of the data, safe for all use cases. I was saying that you have to do different sanitization for every output.

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#177

Post by superflit »

Well Imagine a person has two 'first names' plus his surname of his mother and by last the surname of his father. Something as

XXXX XXXX YYYY ZZZZ

The Visa papers does not support 'large' names.. So he has to abbreviate..

Imagine this guy has the same last name and first name of FBI wanted list.

Now, after sep - 11 everytime he has to go to the 'vip' room at border and there is large confusion as visa papers do not 'support' longer names...

This is US...

Not complaining but can the Prism people flag work it out ;)

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#178

Post by neilk »

jarek wrote: post #168
neilk wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to accept all characters by default, be prepared to sanitize the outputs for every use, not just your website. Maybe you will output a data dump for someone else to print mailouts. Or you'll share the user database with a vendor's web forum. Or payment processing. Or any SaaS.

Somewhat related example anecdote: For several years, Vimeo was sending me newsletter emails addressed to "Dear Jarek_Piórkowski" (previously "Hi Jarek Pi??rkowski"). The ó that should be there shows up fine on the Vimeo website and I even cleared and re-input the name into my profile to give them a chance to re-encode it. Still continued. I unsubscribed from the newsletter eventually. And ó isn't even a difficult c…

Perfect example. That indicates that at some point, your data passed through a system using Windows-1252 encoding.

http://www.i18nqa.com/debug/utf8-debug.html

I expect Vimeo used a Linux system to collect your data, and I bet the thing that blasts emails out is ultimately Linux as well. So the Windows-1252 bungle probably happened in a third system in between, maybe a Windows system chosen for its ease of administration by the community managers.

Not that this is relevant to data sanitization (they're just being fuckups here) but it shows how complex this can get.

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#179

Post by SiVal »

kbenson wrote: post #139
R_Edward wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growing up, my parents called me by my middle name, as I share a first name with my dad. (I'd rather be an Edward than a Ralph anyway.) When giving my name to someone, I tell them I'm Edward , as telling them I'm R. Edward just sounds pretentious. But if I'm beginning a relationship with a doctor's office or lawyer, or filling in a tax form, it's Ralph E. Lastname, because that's what's on my birth certificate and SS…

as telling them I'm R. Edward just sounds pretentious Not to mention it casts serious doubt as to your organic nature.

Many years ago Safeway, a commonly seen grocery store in the US, started using a Safeway Card to gather data on its customers. Shoppers get lower prices if they use it, so I filled out my paper form. Some non-English speaking data entry clerk in Mexico somehow mistook my middle initial for an "Os" and prepended it to my last name, creating quite a tongue twister.

Safeway checkout clerks are apparently required to thank me by name, using the name that pops up on their screens when I swipe my card. For nearly twenty years now, all over the country, every harried Safeway checker has sent me on my way with, "Thank you Mr., uh, Asperger", or "Thanks, um, Mr. Ostrich", or whatever that bizarre cluster of letters randomly turned into on the way out of their mouths.

At first, I thought I should fix it, but I quickly grew to enjoy the show. I also enjoy the thought of them trying to cross-match Mr. Asperger with other consumer databases.

Re: We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

#180

Post by eshvk »

My last name has a space in it. The three years that I have filed paper taxes, IRS has split up my last name into two words and put one of them as my middle name. This despite the fact that I clearly label the middle name box as "n/a". I was told by the IRS representative that I should change my name.
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