Randall Munroe numbers his jokes, and so many threads end up with multiple links to the same strip. It will end up like the old joke: https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2uuii3/a_man_goes_to...
327!
People with names that break computers
21–30 of 288 posts
Re: People with names that break computers
#22Re: People with names that break computers
#23I had a strange experience where my cable company's mobile app, which streams most channels, was missing audio on a few channels. After escalating the issue to an engineer, he finally got back to us and told us that if a username contained "ts" like mine did this issue would happen. After making a second username without that combination, all worked fine. I'd still like to know what logic in their application would g…
In the context of acoustics, "ts" almost always means time-step (inverse of frequency). But I don't have the faintest idea of how it would collide with the username string :|
Guessing they're scanning for parameters in a JSON object by doing something like
ts = parseInt(jsonstr.indexOf("ts")+2);
T_T
Re: People with names that break computers
#24Breaking computers can be useful.
Isaac Asimov had a series of short stories written in the form of conversations between the writer and a friend named George. George claims to have discovered how to summon a demon, and the conversations are about that demon. The demon is not allowed to directly help George, but he will do favors for George's friends.
These favors invariably do not turn out good for the friend. Each story is basically George telling the author the tale of one of these favors, and the writer trying to make sure George does not ask the demon to do any favors for the writer.
Anyway, in one of the stories George had a friend who wants to be able to do something to have a big positive impact on the world. George told the demon about this, and the demon said he'd help.
The next time George encountered that friend, the friend told George that he had been having all kinds of problems with computers. He'd go into his bank to cash a check, and when he'd get to the teller their computer would stop working. And it wasn't just the bank...anyone he encountered who was using a computer would find that their computer crashed when the friend came near. His mere presence seemed to be enough to crash computers.
This was, of course, making the friend's life miserable, and this was in the 1980s. If it kept happening it would get even worse, as computers were clearly going to become more and more common in everyday life.
George found out from the demon what had happened. The demon had indeed (irreversibly) made it so that computers could not work when the friend was near, in order to grant the wish to make a big positive impact. The demon says that when the friend is an old man humanity will be enslaved by an uprising of intelligent computers, and the friend will be the weapon that humanity will use to defeat the computers and regain freedom.
Re: People with names that break computers
#25I realize that the issue of names is complicated when you consider different practices the world over, but is there not some kind of RFC or other specification that people are supposed to follow? How can that be in 2016? The first job I took in IT, after graduating with a liberal arts degree, was in software testing for a company that made point-of-sale systems. Only a month or two out of training I was given the tas…
My cousins have given up and changed their name from O'Keefe to OKeefe to avoid the single quote headache that seems to plague a lot of systems.
Re: People with names that break computers
#26My favourite "real world fails to fit the model we've come up with" is Carmel-by-the-Sea, which has many streets that have no addresses:
"To this day, there are still no addresses, parking meters or street lights, and no sidewalks outside of Carmel's downtown commercial area. Those seeking directions receive hints such as “fifth house on the east side of Torres Street, green trim, driftwood fence” or by the legendary names adorning most houses, such as “Hansel” or “Sea Urchin.”"
Re: People with names that break computers
#27I had a strange experience where my cable company's mobile app, which streams most channels, was missing audio on a few channels. After escalating the issue to an engineer, he finally got back to us and told us that if a username contained "ts" like mine did this issue would happen. After making a second username without that combination, all worked fine. I'd still like to know what logic in their application would g…
In the context of acoustics, "ts" almost always means time-step (inverse of frequency). But I don't have the faintest idea of how it would collide with the username string :|
In the context of video streaming, ts probably stands for "Transport Stream" [1] and nothrabannosir's idea of the bug is probably very close to correct. What's both hilarious and sad is that someone on HN without access to the source code, debugging environment and internal QA tools probably root caused the bug, whereas the cable company's developers let it get all the way into production.
Re: People with names that break computers
#28I have a first name composed of two names, and one of them with an acute accent. This is enough to cause some of my credit cards to be printed with a repeated name because they assume my "second first name" to be a middle name too. The acute accent results in encoding problems once in a while.
But nothing compares the problems that people with names longer than 30 characters have to face. Creating a SSN card, or driver license, or pretty much any official document can be very painful. The name does fit in their systems and the attendants just don't know what to do and most of them are very reluctant in using abbreviations.
Every programmer should at least read Patrick's article that is cited in the story: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...
And if you are naming kids and want to save them a lot of bureaucracy in their lives, give them short names.
Re: People with names that break computers
#29People do no have names that break computers. Programmers believe they have certain structures when they don't then his or her code fails. http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...
For what it's worth, programmers do not have the tools to perfectly handle the complexity of human language. It's a hard problem.
Re: People with names that break computers
#30I have a first name composed of two names, and one of them with an acute accent. This is enough to cause some of my credit cards to be printed with a repeated name because they assume my "second first name" to be a middle name too. The acute accent results in encoding problems once in a while. But nothing compares the problems that people with names longer than 30 characters have to face. Creating a SSN card, or driv…
And if you are naming kids and want to save them a lot of bureaucracy in their lives, give them short names.
I think it depends. Sometimes it's helpful to give them names that are just long enough to make their identities unique, so when they apply for police clearances, for example, they are not mistaken for similarly-named people with criminal records, or even nasty reputations.