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

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

#181

Post by nandemo » Fri, Aug 02, 2013, 3:10 AM UTC

autoreverse wrote: post #158

patio11 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was imprecision because I was trying to avoid the quick discussion of Japanese orthography. Like most systems in Japan dealing with names, there are separate fields for 漢字名 and カナ名. (Some systems also have ローマ字名.) Japanese systems have wide, wide variability in what they do for 漢字名 for people who, ahem, don't have one. Some repeat the カナ名. Some do so but use half-width kana (半角 vs. 全角). Some managers who believe…

Could this have been solved by using "外人第一" as a suffix or instead of the romaji/katakana name? I once tried to apply for a Japanese credit card online about 10 years ago (certainly things have changed with some banks sine then). IIRC the form would not accept romaji and my kana name was too long for the kanji input field. This was painfully frustrating at the time but helped frame my approach to forms and DB specifi…

I think the problem you ran into wasn't so much a user interface problem, but a "gaijin aren't our target clientele" thing. 10 years ago a lot of Japanese banks regarded "gaijin without permanent residence" as riskier than a 20-year-old Japanese student; this included gaijin with good credit records and income above average. Things have been changing, though.

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

#182

Post by seanmcdirmid » Fri, Aug 02, 2013, 3:22 AM UTC

SiVal wrote: post #173

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…

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

Tibetans (with Hukou anyways) have Chinese names though. Usually they are phonetically chosen. Its something that must be done when you are born in China I guess, even if your native language isn't Chinese. This applies to all minorities who use different writing systems (Uigher, Manchu, Mongolian, etc...).

Japanese of Korean descent can also choose Kanji names I think, to use as legal aliases.

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

#183

Post by jacques_chester » Fri, Aug 02, 2013, 3:31 AM UTC

SiVal wrote: post #179

kbenson wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

Some of us get to enjoy name-mangling theatre on all social occasions.

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

#184

Post by mtVessel » Fri, Aug 02, 2013, 3:52 AM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #157

mcguire wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

J Strother Moore[1,2]. Ok, it's his first name. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Strother_Moore [2] http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~moore/

That example came along fast. I didn't expect an Anglo-American example (assumption based on links) and I wonder about the origin? The lack of a period makes it somewhat simpler for system handling, but I wouldn't bet on it sailing through without issue.

My father's middle "name" was a single letter. My grandparents didn't give him a middle name (at least not in English), but the nurse took it upon herself to record what sounded like a middle initial to her, and that's what ended up on his birth certificate. It stood for nothing but the letter itself.

I love it when I get asked that as a security question, only to be told it's invalid (too short). Tell that to Harry S Truman!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman#Boyhood_and_fa...

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

#185

Post by nitrogen » Fri, Aug 02, 2013, 4:03 AM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #153

caf wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think it's impossible that someone's middle name is only one letter long?

Ok, more accurately, people enter names into our database as an initial., as in they stick in a period. Such as John Andrew Doe becomes Doe^John^A., the period is not part of their name. I agree that its possible that is someone's name, but I am 100% certain that every instance I have encountered is incorrect. The various manufactures software we deal with either get confused by middle names or drop them. They also c…

Some people might find their middle name embarrassing, thus choosing to use an initial to keep it secret where it isn't required for anything but disambiguation.

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

#186

Post by macspoofing » Fri, Aug 02, 2013, 4:13 AM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #116

This problem isn't about funny employee names. It's about thick, untransparent software stacks that make simple problems difficult. SOAP is maybe the most popular example and this is really why it's lost popularity against REST. However, similar "It works with values W, X, Y, but not Z" situations are found in any stack or standard that has too much magic going on. Rails certainly comes to mind. This is the biggest a…

>It's about thick, untransparent software stacks that make simple problems difficult.

In this case, the flex framework is handling the marshaling/unmarshaling process incorrectly, but these are not simple problems. Handling things like names, or dates is deceptively difficult.

>There's a big bucketload of tiny components there...

Are you sure that's a good thing? First, anything works when you have a small code-base, and a significant portion of JavaScript ecosystem involves building fairly small self-contained applications. I have a strong feeling micro-frameworks fail hard when the line count gets over a certain threshold.

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

#187

Post by L_Rahman » Fri, Aug 02, 2013, 5:43 AM UTC

R_Edward wrote: post #107

mjn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that's annoying to me is that governments and employers increasingly believe many of these things, partly because they want to cross-reference names and match canonical forms. My given names in English are Mark Jason, and that's on my birth certificate. In Greek, they're Μάρκος Ιάσονας, which are the equivalents, and that's on my municipal birth records there (registered as a foreign birth at the time of ba…

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…

It's an annoying thing to have to deal with on a regular basis. I'm in the same boat, in that my father and I both have the same first and last names, so I've always gone by my middle name.

Except now when I go to networking events or interviews, I tell people my middle name L* and then they point that out that my name tag or application says my first name is M* and I have to go through the whole song and dance of explaining the situation.

I'm frustrated enough to be looking into getting it legally changed. You might want to consider that as well if only to not have to deal with those phone calls any more.

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

#188

Post by lostlogin » Fri, Aug 02, 2013, 6:00 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #185

lostlogin wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, more accurately, people enter names into our database as an initial., as in they stick in a period. Such as John Andrew Doe becomes Doe^John^A., the period is not part of their name. I agree that its possible that is someone's name, but I am 100% certain that every instance I have encountered is incorrect. The various manufactures software we deal with either get confused by middle names or drop them. They also c…

Some people might find their middle name embarrassing, thus choosing to use an initial to keep it secret where it isn't required for anything but disambiguation.

When the middle name avoids confusion with another person and the situation is medical files its about as important as it gets. There is also a legal obligation for it to be accurate with some if our government contract work. That said, they don't seem to monitor accuracy. I spent a lot of time monitoring it though (checking, correcting, hounding data entry inaccuracy serial offenders), and it still causes me cold sweats every now and again.

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

#189

Post by jamesofur » Fri, Aug 02, 2013, 6:11 AM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #174

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…

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.

I'm picturing this as a character saying 'silly blond english man' or along those lines.

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

#190

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 02, 2013, 6:38 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]