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People with names that break computers

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Re: People with names that break computers

#91

Post by Grishnakh »

phillc73 wrote: post #79

I have a close friend who lives in rural Ireland. That's not in a town, but on a small farm in a general area of about 15-20 other small farms. His address is just the name of the general area and the county. The Irish postal system is clever enough to know that the person with this name, in that general area lives in that house. In fact, he probably still isn't even really classified by his name, rather as the husba…

Ireland is like that throughout the whole country, except maybe Dublin. It's worked for them for ages; there's been articles written about wackily-addressed mail being sent to people in Ireland and arriving to the correct destination. (I remember one that was just a long description going something like "the lad who...").

The problem is if someone in Ireland tries to order something from a company in another country, where the computer system isn't set up to handle totally arbitrary addresses.

Even UK addresses look pretty anarchic to someone in America, where every address has a street name, a house number, a city, a state, and a zip code. UK addresses will have a postal code, and a city name, but after that there's no telling; it'll frequently list smaller and smaller towns and then some hamlet, and not have any kind of street or house number.

If you design your address-storage system to just handle two arbitrarily-long "street" lines, plus a city and postal code, that should handle everything in the UK. For Ireland, just don't require a postal code. The problem is when programmers try to place restrictions on the address to ensure it has "correct formatting". Don't do that; if you need to verify the address, there's APIs you can subscribe to in different countries to check address correctness. Doing it yourself is how these problems happen.

Re: People with names that break computers

#92

Post by kstrauser »

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 few times because our billing system didn't have fancy features like a notes section.

--

I've been bitten many times by "People have, at this point in time, one full name which they go by." I have the same first name as my son, my dad, my grandpa, and back 6 further generations. We've all gone by nicknames or middle names. My middle name is my legal name, in the sense that it's what I do all business as (and have for my entire life).

My signature is my middle name. My credit cards have my middle name. My family, friends, teachers, students, and employers know me by my middle name. And yet, so many institutions are incapable of handling the situation and insist on calling me by my first name, which is not who I am. If my doctor, lawyer, and banker call all use my middle name, your system can deal with it or I'll find an alternative.

Re: People with names that break computers

#93

Post by talmand »

uremog wrote: post #77
Klathmon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't there a thing that happened a while back where a fitness tracker was found to not work with darker skinned individuals?

I recall Kinect had the same problems.

And now I feel compelled to mention Better Off Ted, Season 1 Episode 4.

Re: People with names that break computers

#94

Post by Lawtonfogle »

apozem wrote: post #67
HoopleHead wrote: post #62

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…

These kinds of limitations are fascinating because they reveal the cultural biases (and I don't mean bias in the negative sense) of their creators. A Western, American system might not be designed to accept names with accents and vowels because who has those in the States? Anecdotally, I also heard of a female games journalist who had trouble using a VR headset because she wore mascara. It threw off the eye tracking…

It could also be a cost benefit analysis. How much business lost vs. the cost of supporting. Especially when many such users have encountered the problem often enough to already have a work around.

There are definitely some cases where it is a testing issue, but especially with accepting all possible valid names, sometimes the cost is too high to convince the one in control of funding.

Re: People with names that break computers

#95

Post by alkonaut »

I can see how having a non-representable name can lead to problems (e.g a non-unicode character), but I fail to see how a system can end up with a bug that converts the string "null" into a null or blank string? Even throughform posts and sql there is a difference between "null" the string and null the literal?

Edit: ah saw the SO link now. Shoddy roundtrips to xml/soap/json can do it.

Re: People with names that break computers

#96

Post by Lawtonfogle »

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…

And then there are people who have two last names separated by a space, but which cannot be considered a single last name. Their last name goes . Those who keep this naming standard for their children will pass on only their paternal figure's paternal name, which they consider their last name.

A few I know had such issues they had to drop their maternal figure's paternal last name so that they would be called by their paternal figure's paternal last name, which was their preferred name when using only one last name (using both was similar to when someone uses a full middle name calling on a person).

Re: People with names that break computers

#97

Post by yoo1I »

Klathmon wrote: post #73
apozem wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These kinds of limitations are fascinating because they reveal the cultural biases (and I don't mean bias in the negative sense) of their creators. A Western, American system might not be designed to accept names with accents and vowels because who has those in the States? Anecdotally, I also heard of a female games journalist who had trouble using a VR headset because she wore mascara. It threw off the eye tracking…

Wasn't there a thing that happened a while back where a fitness tracker was found to not work with darker skinned individuals?

It was the apple watch. It also had problems with wrist tattoos.

Re: People with names that break computers

#98

Post by kbenson »

Grishnakh wrote: post #89
ryandrake wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be an entire college course dedicated to all the various "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Xxxx" lists. I've seen so much horribly bad code that's supposed do handle times, dates, names, addresses, etc. The spec says "Store the user's name in the database" and the programmer simply allocates a string for First Name and a string for Last Name and calls it a day. What's needed is good unit tests and a…

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'…

Perhaps you should read, or if you have read, really internalize the "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names" link referenced above. Here's some choice excerpts:

5. People have exactly N names, for any value of N.

11. People’s names are all mapped in Unicode code points.

18. People’s names have an order to them. Picking any ordering scheme will automatically result in consistent ordering among all systems, as long as both use the same ordering scheme for the same name.

20. People have last names, family names, or anything else which is shared by folks recognized as their relatives.

32. People’s names are assigned at birth.

33. OK, maybe not at birth, but at least pretty close to birth.

34. Alright, alright, within a year or so of birth.

35. Five years?

36. You’re kidding me, right?

40. People have names.

What this really means is, depending on the application and how important the name is to you, you will have different requirements. You need to fit your schema to your needs. For some applications, the name may be important, and extra care might need be taken to reflect the user's entry as accurately as possible. For others, it may simply be a string you expect your payment processor to accept, and that's all you care about.

Re: People with names that break computers

#99

Post by yoo1I »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #94
apozem wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These kinds of limitations are fascinating because they reveal the cultural biases (and I don't mean bias in the negative sense) of their creators. A Western, American system might not be designed to accept names with accents and vowels because who has those in the States? Anecdotally, I also heard of a female games journalist who had trouble using a VR headset because she wore mascara. It threw off the eye tracking…

It could also be a cost benefit analysis. How much business lost vs. the cost of supporting. Especially when many such users have encountered the problem often enough to already have a work around. There are definitely some cases where it is a testing issue, but especially with accepting all possible valid names, sometimes the cost is too high to convince the one in control of funding.

It's just really annoying when it's a government system and it's use is required.

This is slightly off topic, but I recently came across a lawsuit involving German passport and their having a person's name printed IN ALL CAPS. The plaintiff was suing for his right to use lower case characters as that was how his name was spelled correctly vis-a-vis how other families who use the same letters in the same order but with different casing spelt it.

falsehoods government bureaucrats believe about names...

Re: People with names that break computers

#100

Post by talmand »

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…

The troubles I have caused my poor kid Se7en.
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