Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Monday January 02 2017, @07:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the Robert');-DROP-TABLE-students; dept.

Jennifer Null's husband had warned her before they got married that taking his name could lead to occasional frustrations in everyday life. She knew the sort of thing to expect – his family joked about it now and again, after all. And sure enough, right after the wedding, problems began.

"We moved almost immediately after we got married so it came up practically as soon as I changed my name, buying plane tickets," she says. When Jennifer Null tries to buy a plane ticket, she gets an error message on most websites. The site will say she has left the surname field blank and ask her to try again.

Instead, she has to call the airline company by phone to book a ticket – but that's not the end of the process.

"I've been asked why I'm calling and when I try to explain the situation, I've been told, 'there's no way that's true'," she says.

But to any programmer, it's painfully easy to see why "Null" could cause problems for software interacting with a database. This is because the word 'null' can be produced by a system to indicate an empty name field. Now and again, system administrators have to try and fix the problem for people who are actually named "Null" – but the issue is rare and sometimes surprisingly difficult to solve.

[...] "Null" isn't the only example of a name that is troublesome for computers to process. There are many others. In a world that relies increasingly on databases to function, the issues for people with problematic names only get more severe.

Some individuals only have a single name, not a forename and surname. Others have surnames that are just one letter. Problems with such names have been reported before. Consider also the experiences of Janice Keihanaikukauakahihulihe'ekahaunaele, a Hawaiian woman who complained that state ID cards should allow citizens to display surnames even as long as hers – which is 36 characters in total. In the end, government computer systems were updated to have greater flexibility in this area.

Source: BBC.

What other names have you run into that have been problematic for computers?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @07:56AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @07:56AM (#448427)

    Some condescending cunt drew a stick-figure comic about SQL injection and everyone posts obligatory links to his fucking shit.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +2  
       Offtopic=1, Flamebait=2, Troll=2, Insightful=5, Informative=1, Funny=1, Disagree=1, Total=13
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @07:59AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @07:59AM (#448429)

    atory

    Fuck you with a rake

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @08:07AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @08:07AM (#448433)

      Lick my clitmouse, fuckface.

      https://xkcd.com/243/ [xkcd.com]

  • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by sjames on Monday January 02 2017, @08:03AM

    by sjames (2882) on Monday January 02 2017, @08:03AM (#448431) Journal

    Someone needs a nap.

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @08:05AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @08:05AM (#448432)

      Someone needs a pacifier but the erect penis is missing!

      https://xkcd.com/631/ [xkcd.com]

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday January 02 2017, @03:33PM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Monday January 02 2017, @03:33PM (#448518) Homepage

    I modded you up, because you're right about him. And now he's not only condescending and preachy, he's jumped on the "social justice" bandwagon as a lame attempt to try to get pussy -- but I doubt its working.

    Having the balls to openly disagree with women, when done playfully, is what gets the ladies' stinkboxes wet.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @12:00AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @12:00AM (#448703)

      The other problem with his comic is that it's not funny. That's not to say there isn't the occasional strip that gets a chuckle, but you can say the same thing about Garfield.

      It says a lot that goatkcd [goatkcd.com] (warning: goatse) manages to improve over XKCD in every way.

    • (Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday January 03 2017, @09:00AM

      by mojo chan (266) on Tuesday January 03 2017, @09:00AM (#448826)

      A bit touchy, aren't we? Did he hurt your feelings, you poor snowflake?

      Seriously, the amount of stuff in his work that could be considered related to social justice is tiny. If it's enough to make you this upset, there is something wrong with you.

      Let me guess, it was the free speech PSA that tipped you over the edge, wasn't it? Free Speech Warriors have been pissing themselves over that one since it was published.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by ShadowSystems on Monday January 02 2017, @07:50PM

    by ShadowSystems (6185) <ShadowSystemsNO@SPAMGmail.com> on Monday January 02 2017, @07:50PM (#448621)

    I upvoted you on the general feeling of disgust I have over that damned comic.
    As a totally blind person that uses a Screen Reader Environment (SRE) to interact with websites, having a comic that doesn't include any sufficient alt text or a transcription of the image means my SRE can't find anything to interact with on that point.
    This means I have to visit the ExplainXKCD site to get a transcription.
    What's the title of the Explain site? "Because you're stupid".
    No I am not, I'm Blind & you didn't bother to transcribe your fucking comic.
    I take great umbrage at the insult since it's not MY fault YOU can't be fucking bothered to do a tiny little bit of descriptive text on your own damned site.
    So the comic and the explain site are now in my HOSTS file, blocked for being utter douchebags.
    I upvoted you because that man, his site, & the explain site are all pustules on the ass of life.
    I'd offer to lance him but I don't want to get that shit on my hands.
    Enjoy your upvote & may Randal get a surprise colonoscopy with a spinning metal hedgehog.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by jimshatt on Tuesday January 03 2017, @12:00AM

      by jimshatt (978) on Tuesday January 03 2017, @12:00AM (#448702) Journal
      Not to invalidate your point, but none of the webcomics I frequent have transcripts. Often this is impossible because of the visual nature of the comic, but xkcd is often transcribable. That the transcription is even available on another site is rather rare, and just because the title is a bit offensive (to you) doesn't mean it's actually a useful and nice service.

      After some research I discovered that a lot of xkcd comics actually have a transcript. Just put /info.0.json after the comic number and you'll get a JSON file with a transcript. Not recent comics, unfortunately. ExplainXKCD is an option if you decide not to mind the title. OR you can use my handy one-liner on Linux (provided you have tidy, xmlstarlet and tesseract-ocr installed):

      wget https://www.xkcd.com/1780/ -O - 2>/dev/null | tidy -q -numeric -asxhtml 2>/dev/null | xmlstarlet sel -t -v "//*[local-name() = 'img']/@srcset" test.xml | cut -d" " -f 1 | xargs -I {} wget https:{} -O - 2>/dev/null | tesseract stdin stdout -l eng

      Replace 1780 with the number of the comic you want to read. YMMV.

      • (Score: 2) by jimshatt on Tuesday January 03 2017, @12:12AM

        by jimshatt (978) on Tuesday January 03 2017, @12:12AM (#448708) Journal
        Dammit, I left test.xml in there. Just remove test.xml from the xmlstarlet command so it'll read from stdin. And just for fun, pipe it to some text-to-speech engine. Hilarity ensues.
    • (Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Tuesday January 03 2017, @09:24AM

      by pTamok (3042) on Tuesday January 03 2017, @09:24AM (#448834)

      If you send a message to Randall Munroe describing your experience of his comic, he might be motivated to make changes to accommodate your needs - it might appeal to his geeky, problem-solving side.

      On the other hand, if you haven't let him know, and simply fulminate on the Internet, then that might not be the most effective way to encourage change.

      On the gripping hand, if you have sent a message, and he hasn't replied or done anything, then feel free to fulminate.

      (I support people using screen readers, so I understand the problem. )