Names that break databases

boing
64

Have I criticised anyone for having to deal with a system like that?

65

THANK YOU!!!

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66

Older Excel could only use 2gb memory but 64 bit Excel in theory does not have a hard limit on formula memory usage. That said, you may still be dealing with 32bit installs of Excel…

Still doesn’t begin to approach the pain of dealing with date formats in spreadsheets though

3 Likes
67

That can’t happen. You probably mean a different Unicode version or full vs. broken Unicode implementation.

68

I find it ironic that Boing Boing features this article, when its own BBS can’t handle apostrophes. That’s why my name here is OapostropheBrien. :angry:

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69

That one’s fun, but try looking up !!!
(usually pronounced chk-chk-chk)

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70

HOW (DO I) {GET TICKETS} TO {(HIS: CAGE MATCH) WITH @WITTGENSTEIN}?

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71

Not too long ago Pandora popped up with a song from Caravan Palace’s album <|°_°|>. My sweetie who’s a librarian, in collections management, said that she really liked the song, but is glad that she doesn’t have to try to process the collection record for that one!

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72

The surly teenagers at the video store never knew how to shelve this, back in the heyday of video stores.

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73

You haven’t worked on legacy software or taken things over from contractors/vendors. It’s a a few badly engineered cases put in by lazy/unqualified programmers on a frequent basis and then reused without review until something breaks.

Same with not breaking for apostrophes, missing the curly quotes from Word, etc.

74

Not sure that actually came out during the “heyday” of video stores. We’ve still got a local one where young hipsters will sneer at you if you mispronounce anything while asking for “Synecdoche New York”, so I still have some hope.

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75

I have it great. I go by my middle name and have my entire life but bank records use all three of my names (to avoid confusion) as does my passport. Many foreign databases seem to not even understand the concept of a middle name so the mismatch between my middle name last name and my passport being first name middle name last name causes problems at times. My first and middle names are often concatenated together without a space in some systems as a result, meaning automated systems won’t match my passport when I scan it.

For additional fun, when I was 17 or so and going to college, for many years I used the first initial with a period for my first name and then my middle and last name. That still persists in some old records for transcripts, making my doctoral application years ago a little bit of a trial by university records departments.

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76

Have you ever come across this Aphex Twin song?

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77

This isn’t some “The artist formerly known as…” thing. The original Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names article gives a few examples down in the comments:

Someone born into slavery in the Sudan, a woman born in rural China, an American baby recovered after being born into a toilet, a feral child, an amnesiac, etc, etc.

A couple of those are going to be very important when the person must be entered into hospital and police databases. As 33-35 note, newborns often don’t have a name for some time. There’s also the case of someone refusing to give their names to police, reporters etc.

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78

In my music library there is an album titled █ ▄ █ █ ▄ ██ ▄ ██ ▄█, by the artist known as ░▒▓.

Using weird Unicode is a bit of a thing amongst a certain clique of vaporwave / witch house / dark ambient. I’ve also got §, I††, and \^◊^///. Fortunately they’re on a compilation.

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79

No, I can’t say I have. I’ll have to show that one to her as an interesting example.

I’d look it up and give it a listen, but I can’t find the delta key on this keyboard for some reason.

(OK, actually I looked it up by artist. I’ll give it a listen later - I do like experimental and electronic.)

80

There are other new computer-era problems with some names:

“My name is Fin, which means it’s very hard for me to end emails without sounding pretentious.”

  • Fin Taylor
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81

but the examples are imo suitable for generic plaeholders like John Doe/Erika Mustermann/Matti Meikäläinen/Ana Horvat …

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82

It doesn’t have to be that weird. I have a lot of non-English tracks where the track title, album, etc. display just fine with Amarok, but the player in my car just gives up and displays an approximation or “___”. It gets close enough for æ, but for some reason cyrillic letters gives it trouble.

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83

Exactly. “Fuck you, your name is John Doe.” But I wonder if “John Doe” has ever been used as a real given name, and not as a placeholder.