201–210 of 288 posts
Breaking 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…
I 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…
That list makes me very sad. Not because it's not interesting, which it is, but because it'd be so much more interesting if it discussed each item as it went. This one, for example: People’s names are assigned at birth. OK, maybe not at birth, but at least pretty close to birth. Alright, alright, within a year or so of birth. Five years? You’re kidding me, right? Don't leave me there! Tell me which culture assigns na…
In the United States of America it is common for females to change their name at marriage, substituting their birth surname for that of their husband.
Also, in many tribal cultures the definitive name is not assigned until an adulthood rite of passage has been passed.
Adult names also change to reflect upgrades in social status such as the completion of a PhD, admittance into a society, acquisition of nobility titles, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I checked out a bibliography. Seems like lots of derivative stuff playing on the same old memes you see everywhere.
Most of those memes are memes because Asimov invented them. You sound like I guy I once heard complain that The Lord of the Rings was just a collection of D&D cliches.
"I don't like the Beatles, I've heard that pop style a million times before"
A few years ago I ordered a custom license plate 'NULL'. What should have been a 2-3 week process lasted 8 months, with the order being canceled multiple times, and at one point a blank plate being shipped to the county clerk's office. More recently I've gotten out of a parking ticket in a certain municipality when a frustrated meter maid told me they saw my plates were valid, but the handheld device used to issue ti…
When it backfires: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/02/16/10425167-mans-van...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Websites that insist on forcing me to enter a first and last name always get abuse in the latter. What I call myself on websites is my business, not yours.
If at any point in the process they need to bill you for something, they have to ask for your first and last name because that's exactly what the credit card companies require. So there are use cases. Personally, I don't see why any company is asking for a name if they aren't billing you for something or they aren't a social network.
Breaking 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…
This story is great, I want to checkout the author now! The demon seems less of an actual evil being and more as a person who gets excited about awesome stories, uses ying yang guide the vine of destiny. Maybe half expecting a smile only to see horror. I know this is now the best place for poetry, but this story was very fun to read
Trivia time: Issac Asimov published books in 9 of the 10 major categories of the dewy decimal system.
Personal note: I grew up reading his non fiction articles in the Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine back in the 80's.
It doesn't even have to be an "edge case", as stated in the article. My first name has a single accented vowel and breaks tons of online forms. What annoys me is not so much having to re-enter my name with the unaccented version of the vowel, it's when the form throws up an error message saying "Enter a Valid Name" [or suchlike]. I find that insulting. At least make your error text put the blame where it belongs: "So…
> Sorry. This form can only handle ASCII Text Do you honestly think that's a good idea? IMHO, 95% (yes, this a guess, but I think a conservative one) of people will have no idea what that means. It will only confuse them and leave them feeling stupid - don't make users feel stupid. This is not to say you don't have a valid point, but end-users need error messages that tell them how to fix the problem, not a diagnosis…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That list makes me very sad. Not because it's not interesting, which it is, but because it'd be so much more interesting if it discussed each item as it went. This one, for example: People’s names are assigned at birth. OK, maybe not at birth, but at least pretty close to birth. Alright, alright, within a year or so of birth. Five years? You’re kidding me, right? Don't leave me there! Tell me which culture assigns na…
>Tell me which culture assigns names more than five years after birth! In the United States of America it is common for females to change their name at marriage, substituting their birth surname for that of their husband. Also, in many tribal cultures the definitive name is not assigned until an adulthood rite of passage has been passed. Adult names also change to reflect upgrades in social status such as the complet…
...or maybe it's not; without expanding on the items in the list, it's kinda hard to tell.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the database at least, I don't see why you need unit tests or any testing at all. Assuming that you're going to require at least two names (no single-name names allowed), then a string for First Name and a string for Last Name should be sufficient. If this is a decent database, where the string can have any Unicode character, including a space, and you don't set a limit on the string length (modern databases don'…
Your comment is a perfect example of the kind of incomplete and normative reasoning about names that causes systems to fail. The problem isn't that you're not careful, the problem is that your fundamental assumptions are based on incomplete knowledge. For instance, you mentioned accommodating Cyrillic letters, but you didn't know you'd need to include a field for patronym, which is not the same thing as a middle name…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mononymous_person#Modern_times
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_names#Mononymic_nam...