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People with names that break computers

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Re: People with names that break computers

#241

Post by kpil »

chiph wrote: post #103
kstrauser wrote: post #92

I wasn't able to buy tickets once because "your name cannot include numbers, special characters, or the words 'select', 'drop', or 'user'". I (don't really) apologize for having a name containing one of the magic words your programmers aren't competent enough not to care about. -- In the 90s, I worked for an ISP. Our very first customer was "Joe Test". We had well-meaning customer service people delete his account a…

> insist on calling me by my first name, which is not who I am. As someone who goes by a nickname, I find this to be a feature. If I get a phone call or email addressing me by my legal first name, it's almost certainly a sales call, and I can take appropriate action.

I'm sometimes called my middle name, which I am not using.

In Swedish, it seems that the rhythm or composition of the full name is rather important, so a lot of people are goes by their middle name. I guess my second name seems more probable as a name.

Example: "Erik Lars Svensson" is not ok, but "Lars Erik Svensson" is. "Anna Sofia" is ok, but "Sofia Anna" is not.

Sometimes the proper name is capitalized like this: Lars ERIK Svensson...

Re: People with names that break computers

#242

Post by aroberge »

joshstrange wrote: post #110
kstrauser wrote: post #92

I wasn't able to buy tickets once because "your name cannot include numbers, special characters, or the words 'select', 'drop', or 'user'". I (don't really) apologize for having a name containing one of the magic words your programmers aren't competent enough not to care about. -- In the 90s, I worked for an ISP. Our very first customer was "Joe Test". We had well-meaning customer service people delete his account a…

So.... Change your first name. It's called your legal name for a reason. Can you get away with your nickname in a number of systems? Sure, but when you run into issues you really don't have anyone to blame but yourself. Your complaint boils down to "I want to abuse the legal name system and everything should just work for me" > And yet, so many institutions are incapable of handling the situation and insist on callin…

You keep writing words to the effect that "your first name is your legal name" with full cultural blinders on. I was born in Quebec (Canada) and, for many generations, almost all boys from French speaking families were named Joseph second_name third_name Surname, and all girls were named Marie second_name third_name Surname. Most people use their third_name where you would use your first_name. Every legal document that I have (including my passport) is based on my "legal" third_name Surname.

Re: People with names that break computers

#243

Post by intopieces »

A company I used to work for ran into some trouble when a customer attempted to change their payment information on the company's website. All attempts resulted in a rather frightening (to the user) "Access Denied" screen. The customer's last name was "Curl."

Re: People with names that break computers

#244

Post by kpil »

maccard wrote: post #35
klue07 wrote: post #33

How is Null as a name a problem? Null value and null string are different.

Did you look at the stack overflow link? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4456438/how-do-i-correctl...

Oh snap. I just felt the urge to break some web services...

Re: People with names that break computers

#245

Post by artpepper »

dirkdk wrote: post #66

I have had a decent number of forms that would not allow me to enter my last name because it contains a space: De Kok. Apparently over the centuries americans coming from Europe would drop spaces. For instance Vanderbilt is a Dutch name, that stems from the original Van der Bilt (means from the Bilt, which is a Dutch city) So now American programmers assume a space in a last name (or a dash for that matter) never hap…

My wife has to deal with this. Then it causes problems because your airline ticket (or whatever) is supposed to exactly match a valid government ID, but one allows the space and the other doesn't.

Re: People with names that break computers

#246

Post by cehrnrooth »

gricardo99 wrote: post #109
subway wrote: post #64

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…

I just checked, NULL is not available in California, but this one is ("INVALID"): http://imgur.com/1KhRws2 But, I wonder how much more frequently you'd get pulled over with a plate like that. the CA DMV lets you check for custom plates online: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/ipp2/initPers.do

'NO PLATE' and 'NO TAGS' are taken but 'NO TAG5' is available if anyone wants to take their chances.

-edit 'MI55ING' is available too.

Re: People with names that break computers

#247

Post by waterhouse »

tzs wrote: post #24

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…

  A two-centimeter demon named Azazel
  Has magical powers that dazzle.
  But those who would strive
  To get them derive
  Nothing much and are beat to a frazzle.

Re: People with names that break computers

#248

Post by theoh »

imron wrote: post #151
formula1 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You want to check out the author? .... Isaac Asimov ... Yeah, you should probably do that.

Though it looks like the cool kids these days are reading Samuel L. Delany.

Edit: chirality error, Samuel R. Delany

Re: People with names that break computers

#249

Post by userbinator »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #23
JorgeGT wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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); I wish I didn't come to this guess by seeing it in real code so many times… T_T

If only they had just looked for the whole key:

    ts = parseInt(jsonstr.indexOf("\"ts\":")+5);

Re: People with names that break computers

#250

Post by userbinator »

dirkdk wrote: post #66

I have had a decent number of forms that would not allow me to enter my last name because it contains a space: De Kok. Apparently over the centuries americans coming from Europe would drop spaces. For instance Vanderbilt is a Dutch name, that stems from the original Van der Bilt (means from the Bilt, which is a Dutch city) So now American programmers assume a space in a last name (or a dash for that matter) never hap…

I think the situation is like spaces in filenames - difficult to handle in parsing and displaying and even things like equality comparison (are multiple spaces considered the same as one? what about trailing or leading spaces?) turn into a bit of a mess.

Unfortunately, the classic solution of escaping spaces would be unlikely to be easily comprehended by most users.

Dashes seem like accepting them would be easier than spaces, but again you have problems with multiple, leading, and trailing...

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