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"In my home county of Wake County, North Carolina", Scott "Malone" wrote in, "when you request library books from another branch, an automated telephone system will call you back when the books arrive at your local branch. However, whenever my wife reserves books, the telephone system calls up and lets 'Suzanne the 1000th Malone' know her books are ready."
The messages sounded just like this: suzanne1000.mp3. Or, if you can't listen to that message:
This is the Wake County Public Library. Suzanne, the 1000th, Malone, you have materials waiting for you at the Cameron Village branch. They will remain on hold for three days before returning to circulation. Thank you, and have a good day.
Scott continued, "This has been going on for years and it had simply been an inside joke for us. Who knows, there must have been 999 other Suzanne Malones in Wake County."
"However, after a nine year hiatus, I actually stepped foot in the library. Suzanne the 1000th Malone had forgotten to return some books and the automated system was calling daily, counting down the days until it was going to send out the automated goons to collect."
"While returning the late books and paying my $8 fine, I asked the librarian why the automated telephone system referred to my wife as Suzanne The 1000th Malone. She looks at the entry in her database and everything looks fine:
Name: Suzanne M. Malone
"Now if you look at that for a minute, you will see the reason for one of the most absurd software bugs I have ever encountered. Yes, 'M' (her middle name is Marie) is 1000 in Roman numerals. I guess if my name were 'Pope John Paul IV', then I would want the system to interpret Roman numerals. Of course interpreting Roman numerals in the person's middle name or something on the order of 'M', is just plain stupid.
"I guess all those poor saps out there whose middle initial are I, V, L, X, C, D or M have their own inside jokes too.
Note: Scott & Suzanne's last name was changed (and the message re-recorded via AT&T TTS) to protect the innocent.
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Okay, let's think through this for a moment:
We'll assume a distance of 20 years between generations, i.e. every Suzanne Malone begat a small Suzanne Malone at the age of 20. We'll also assume that the Malones are capable of counting and that the sequence of Suzanne Malones is uninterrupted, incrementing by 1 each generation. Thus, in order for this particular Suzanne Malone to be Suzanne M Malone, her family must not only be at least 20.000 years old but also have used the name "Suzanne Malone" for as long. Thus I posit that "Suzanne Malone" is the oldest currently used name in existence. Edit: Damn, #171162 beat me to it. |
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A great example of an rare requirement overwriting a more common requirement because of bad coding.
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Hey, if you start down the path of applying artificial maximums (e.g., interpreting Roman numerals only up to "IV"), pretty soon you've got a Y2K-like problem on your hands.
Gotta think of the future. Otherwise you're just like those programmers in the '70's thinking two digits are enough for a year. |
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But "fixing" this will cause problems for Pope Benedict XVI. So now I'm just lost.
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My first thought on hearing a message like that would be whether I was experiencing a glitch in the Matrix, it just happening to be the 1000th iteration of the 'rycamor' simulation.
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Re: Suzanne the 1000th Malone
2008-01-15 14:15
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by
John the 4294967295th Smith
(unregistered)
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So what does it say for "Suzanne M. Malone III"?
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The voicemail system at my work does the same thing. My boss's middle intial is L. And so, periodically I get a message from "Edward the 50th". He's actually in his 50's, so I don't think he likes this joke, given that it's coming from a young whipper-snapper.
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