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posted by mrpg on Saturday May 12 2018, @01:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the sorry-surnames-must-have-between-8-and-10-letters dept.

"A Thai Airways passenger said he was charged a $94 fee at the airport for a name change because the online booking system would not let him type his full name.

The passenger, whose name was not shared, said when he went to purchase his ticket on the Thai Airways website, his full last name would not fit in the name field. The name field only allows 25 characters for surname. The passenger tried shortening his name on the website and was finally able to buy tickets for himself and his family, the Bangkok Post reported."

Traveler charged extra booking fee for having a long last name

I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @04:50AM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @04:50AM (#678706)

    ...and his name belongs on a "don't do this" list. Do not impose a monstrous name on your child.

    Never mind the computer. Suppose computers didn't exist. Would you want a name that takes forever to write?

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Saturday May 12 2018, @07:50AM (6 children)

    by edIII (791) on Saturday May 12 2018, @07:50AM (#678743)

    Ohh, fuck you. That's just a bigoted response. There are plenty of cultures in the world that have very long names, at least when spelled. There is nothing monstrous about that.

    What it demonstrates is that the programmers don't give a fuck about names they don't commonly deal with. If you took a list of English names, grabbed the longest one, yeah, it's going to sure as fuck shorter than most Thai names.

    Also, It's fucking 2018. We're not starved for data capacity, and you can easily grant 256 characters of space (varchar(255)). Limiting names to 20 characters makes no fucking sense, not at least from a database perspective.

    Which means you're just an ignorant bigot who doesn't want to deal with the unknown, like a culture that would come up with a 30+ character last name.

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @07:54AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @07:54AM (#678744)

      VarChar an indeded field? You must be a VB ... coder..

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @02:07PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @02:07PM (#679184)

        in 2018 it changes almost nothing do some benchmarks before blabbering nonsense, choosing the right index collation does for query speed than switching a varchar(255) to a char(255).

    • (Score: 1, Troll) by unauthorized on Saturday May 12 2018, @10:56AM (2 children)

      by unauthorized (3776) on Saturday May 12 2018, @10:56AM (#678772)

      There is nothing monstrous about that.

      It's monstrous to saddle the kid with such an annoying-to-use name.

      What it demonstrates is that the programmers don't give a fuck about names they don't commonly deal with.

      And they shouldn't. Just because some hipster decides to name their kids with a unique combination of smells, programmers across the world are in no way obliged to add olfactic input fields to every form they create.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Saturday May 12 2018, @01:43PM (1 child)

        by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 12 2018, @01:43PM (#678814) Journal

        There is nothing monstrous about that.

        It's monstrous to saddle the kid with such an annoying-to-use name.

        Perhaps, but the kid's name is likely normal-sounding and completely non-annoying.

        The intersection of the culture in which that's true, and the up-and-coming global information systems culture, means that a pretty normal, unexceptional (if uncommon) name gives IT a challenge in the case of short-to-medium length data fields.

        Making it worse was their reaction. "We suck, so that's going to cost you $94."

        • (Score: 2) by unauthorized on Saturday May 12 2018, @11:31PM

          by unauthorized (3776) on Saturday May 12 2018, @11:31PM (#678973)

          Perhaps, but the kid's name is likely normal-sounding and completely non-annoying.

          Until it comes time to write it down.

    • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:06PM

      by acid andy (1683) on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:06PM (#678795) Homepage Journal

      You're right. February 29th birthdays are another example of lazy coders not giving a crap about the edge cases. Two digit years as well. There must be centenarians out there unable to pay their bills.

      --
      If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @11:08AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @11:08AM (#679157)

    Do not impose a monstrous name on your child.

    From the summary, emphasis by me:

    his full last name would not fit

    The last name is not something you impose on the kid, it is something the kid inherits from you.