• (cs) in reply to Carrie
    Carrie:
    We do it especially for your benefit. American- (or to coin a more accurate adjective, USAlien-) baiting is one of our national sports.
    But I'm not American. I actually live in one of your former colonies, with the effect that I drive on the left, and use BS 1363 ("type G") electric plus. Which is a bit of a bugger when most of your electrical equipment comes from continental Europe.
  • Carrie (unregistered) in reply to Severity One
    Severity One:
    Carrie:
    We do it especially for your benefit. American- (or to coin a more accurate adjective, USAlien-) baiting is one of our national sports.
    But I'm not American. I actually live in one of your former colonies, with the effect that I drive on the left, and use BS 1363 ("type G") electric plus. Which is a bit of a bugger when most of your electrical equipment comes from continental Europe.

    I do apologise. One falls into the habit of making assumptions when someone's complaining about Brits on the internet.

    (Not that a former colony rules out the USA, but that's beside the point.)

  • (cs) in reply to Zemm
    Norman Diamond:
    ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
    So you can't even be sure that a building across the street has a related address.
    No kidding. The building across the street might be in a different country.
    Rooms in the same house might be in a different country.

    One of the strangest arrangements is in the Netherlands, in the town of Baarle. There's Baarle-Nassau, which is Dutch, and Baarle-Hertog, which is Belgian.

    This situation has existed since the end of the 12th century, and in all that time, they haven't managed to draw the borders straight. Even the German occupiers during WW2 tried and failed.

    So now there are 22 Belgian enclaves in the Netherlands. Within two 22 enclaves, there are 7 Dutch enclaves. And to top it off, there's one Dutch enclave in Belgium.

    Houses have a little flag next to their number, to indicate what country they're in. Rubbish is collected twice a week (once by the Belgian and once by the Dutch authorities), instead of the customary once a week. I'll spare you the details of how electricity, gas (not petrol, but the stuff used for cooking and heating), water and telephone are provided.

    Zemm:
    Here in Australia it is common outside the cities to use "rural numbering" which is simply 10s of metres from the "main road" to the driveway. These numberings still respect odd/even: each property is going to have more than 20 metres of road frontage, so there's no real chance of overlap. My brother-in-law lives at 198 "Example" Road, so you know it is exactly 1.98km until you reach his letterbox!
    Oh good, so you're checking the dashboard of your car to see that you've driven exactly 1.98 km, and next thing you know you run over a kangaroo. So that's why Australians have those big bull bars: because of the unclear addresses.
  • (cs) in reply to Carrie
    Carrie:
    I do apologise. One falls into the habit of making assumptions when someone's complaining about Brits on the internet.
    That's because, in the British psyche, the USA are practically next door, whilst "Europe" is half a world away, never mind the fact that there's a tunnel linking the two, and that you can cross from "Europe" to England with a pedal-powered aeroplane.

    Trust me, in "Europe" we've got plenty to complain about the Brits, too. :)

  • Carrie (unregistered) in reply to Severity One
    Severity One:
    That's because, in the British psyche, the USA are practically next door, whilst "Europe" is half a world away, never mind the fact that there's a tunnel linking the two, and that you can cross from "Europe" to England with a pedal-powered aeroplane.

    Trust me, in "Europe" we've got plenty to complain about the Brits, too. :)

    Not really. It's only really on the internet. Offline, we're well aware of Europe and we give as good as we get, don't you worry. We complain about Brussels telling us what to do, Spain getting upset over Gibraltar, Romanians being allowed to work over here now, Germans hogging deckchairs on holiday, Italians being hopelessly disorganised, wherever it was that was selling us horsemeat as beef, every country in the Eurozone that got bailed out, nobody voting for us in Eurovision, and pretty much everyone's driving. And of course the French.

  • Valued Service (unregistered) in reply to Quango
    Quango:
    ThaMe90:
    The last one obviously is alphabetical when looking at the UK as Great Brittain. Maybe an alias is used for display?

    Great Britain != UK

    See CGP Grey's excellent explanation

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10

    Yes yes. The "Territories by label" hypersphere Venn diagram. Better get it right (I suggest turning your head to the left, using your right eye half squinted).

  • Valued Service (unregistered) in reply to Carrie
    Carrie:
    We complain about Brussels telling us what to do, Spain getting upset over Gibraltar, Romanians being allowed to work over here now, Germans hogging deckchairs on holiday, Italians being hopelessly disorganised, wherever it was that was selling us horsemeat as beef, every country in the Eurozone that got bailed out, nobody voting for us in Eurovision, and pretty much everyone's driving. And of course the French.

    Hetalia!

  • Ashley Sheridan (unregistered) in reply to ThaMe90

    Well, GB and UK are very different things, so this is still a WTF

  • (cs) in reply to The Balance
    The Balance:
    QJo:
    The real WTF is nations which keep changing their names every few hundred years whenever they (euphemism alert) undergo a merger.

    Having been alive during all those centuries of name changes, you must now be thoroughly confused.

    Matt Westwood:
    Nobody has a problem with the Isle of Wight or Isle of Thanet, do they?

    But both the Isle of Wight and Isle of Thanet are considered to be part of Great Britain... The Isle of Thanet isn't even an island.

    ...

    I'm going to just talk about North Americans from now on, because they're all on the same landmass, and therefore they all conform to every stereotype and have no individual traits that might separate one from the other.

    Hawaii is part of the United States of America. Are you now going to exclude them and refer only to the other 49 states? And as someone who regularly visits Canada (annual fishing trip) and Mexico (my sister retired there) I can assure you we North Americans do not all conform to every stereotype. For example, while the French speaking North Americans won't admit to knowing English (although most of them do) and probably don't know Spanish, and the English speaking North Americans certainly don't know French or Spanish, I can assure you most Spanish speaking North Americans know English and a good many more of them know French than the English speaking ones. They also know more German, Italian - well, other languages in general - than the English speaking North Americans. But that's not saying much, and I think you knew that.

  • (cs)

    No mention of Rhode Island?

  • Scourge of Programmers (unregistered)

    TRWTF is eBay. I can't believe they didn't hire me on the get-go.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to da Doctah
    da Doctah:
    ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
    In Japan, with its already different from most of the world block system, addresses within a block are not necessarily in any particular order.
    Actually, addresses within a block are in chronological order of when the building permit was issued.
    I've still never seen that.

    Lots are numbered in sequence one direction or the other going around the block. Each lot is numbered regardless of whether it has no buildings, one building, or multiple buildings. Even if a lot has no buildings, the owner has to pay property tax, and the lot has a number.

    If the lot has multiple buildings then when you send a letter you'd better put the building name after the lot number, before the room number or floor number or addressee's name.

    If a building occupies several lots then the owner can pretty much choose which lot number to use for mail to be addressed. If redevelopment puts a large building on land that used to be several blocks, one of the block numbers survives. The building where I work and the adjacent building still have their original block number and lot number (same for both buildings), but the rest of the block was merged into a large building that went up next door so most of the lot numbers in this block disappeared, and there's no longer a street separating this block number from the block number of the large building.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to Severity One
    True Hood:
    Obligatory: http://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-addresses/
    He doesn't fix errors either.

    Here's one of the falsehoods some idiot programmers believe: Bugs should get fixed.

  • (cs) in reply to Some Damn Yank
    Some Damn Yank:
    For example, while the French speaking North Americans won't admit to knowing English (although most of them do) [..]
    Arguably, the Quebecois don't know French either; at least, not the kind of French that the rest of the world speaks.
  • Blergh. (unregistered) in reply to ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL

    [quote user="¯(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL"][quote user="True Hood"]He also didn't mention the very common practice in the US of using the relative position in a block to determine an address, particularly in residential areas, which often go x00 x01 x04 x05 x08 x09..., skipping every other pair of numbers.

    And the counting of a block of addresses may not end at a street intersection. My own house is at x77, next door to y01, with the nearest intersection a few houses in either direction.[/quote]

    Far more common in my area (suburban midwestern US metro area) is a non-standard increment size. Some blocks go +4 every door (00, 04, 08, 12, 16, 20...), but stranger still are the ones that go +4+6 (00, 04, 10, 14, 20...) or +6+8 (00, 06, 14, 20, 28, 34, 42, 48, 56, 60...). Also, "blocks" don't really exist in stupid suburban layouts where streets never run straight.

    Subdivision developers want wedge-shaped lots to build on so they can keep a uniform distance between houses with drastically different footprints and elevations. They do this by moving the house closer to or farther away from the street frontage. It's a bit like how a "shiftless" transmission works.

  • Mike (unregistered)

    About that "alphabetic sorting". My bet is that entry -was- "Great Britain" until someone renamed it.

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to Zemm
    Zemm:
    Hah, and I had to look up "General Tso's" as I hadn't heard of that before. I thought it was a case of an extraneous apostrophe, or some other thing related to food poisoning, but Google has told me it is common in North American "Chinese" Restaurants.

    I love General Tso's chicken. But any time I order it, I wonder: Who was General Tso? I can't help but wonder if he didn't say to himself, "Yes, future generations will remember me for my brilliant campaign against the Mongols. Or perhaps for my innovations in the use of heavy cavalry." But in fact, he is remembered ... because one day his wife was out with the girls and so he threw some chicken and spices in a pot and made himself supper, and it came out pretty good.

  • Jay (unregistered)

    Just a stray thought ... I notice the entry above "United Kingdom" is "Gibralter". Maybe the original source file had "Gibralter, United Kingdom", and they broke it into lines on commas, and this ended up as two entries.

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    Element14 (aka Farnell) Oz-edition is very enterprisey indeed, if enterprisey means "complete morons". ...

    I thought the official definition of "enterprisey" WAS "developed by pretentious morons".

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to Zathras
    Zathras:
    It's not "close enough" when you're shipping goods, given that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom but is on a different island.

    If someone addressed a package to "such and such Grosvenor Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland, England", and the post office couldn't figure out where to deliver it, I'd think we have a problem. Maybe when it got to Northern Ireland the post office people there would declare it undeliverable as a matter of principle, but they'd surely know what was intended.

    BTW I was born on Long Island, New York, which is not on the same landmass as the bulk of the United States, but this did not seem to cause undue problems in delivering mail.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to Norman Diamond
    Norman Diamond:
    True Hood:
    Obligatory: http://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-addresses/
    He doesn't fix errors either.

    Here's one of the falsehoods some idiot programmers believe: Bugs should get fixed.

    OK, good news, he did mostly fix the bugs. I feel obligated to apologize[*] publicly.

    [* This is a genuine apology not a Japanese apology. This can't be explained in some circles.]

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to Severity One
    Severity One:
    Some Damn Yank:
    For example, while the French speaking North Americans won't admit to knowing English (although most of them do) [..]
    Arguably, the Quebecois don't know French either; at least, not the kind of French that the rest of the world speaks.
    That's OK, the Rest Of Canada, along with its southern neighbour, don't know English either. (I'm surprised none of our English regulars pointed this out.)
  • Carrie (unregistered) in reply to Norman Diamond
    Norman Diamond:
    Severity One:
    Some Damn Yank:
    For example, while the French speaking North Americans won't admit to knowing English (although most of them do) [..]
    Arguably, the Quebecois don't know French either; at least, not the kind of French that the rest of the world speaks.
    That's OK, the Rest Of Canada, along with its southern neighbour, don't know English either. (I'm surprised none of our English regulars pointed this out.)

    I have actually officially gotten fed up with pointing that out. They've broken me. I still maintain they speak a different language to us (I have it on good authority that Danish and Norwegian, for instance, are basically the same apart from spelling and pronunciation of some words, and a few different words ... sound familiar?) but I've been reduced to referring to the rightpondian tongue as British.

  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    Just a stray thought ... I notice the entry above "United Kingdom" is "Gibralter". Maybe the original source file had "Gibralter, United Kingdom", and they broke it into lines on commas, and this ended up as two entries.
    But Gibraltar is not a part of the United Kingdom.
  • Carrie (unregistered) in reply to Severity One
    Severity One:
    Jay:
    Just a stray thought ... I notice the entry above "United Kingdom" is "Gibralter". Maybe the original source file had "Gibralter, United Kingdom", and they broke it into lines on commas, and this ended up as two entries.
    But Gibraltar is not a part of the United Kingdom.

    Gib is a UK overseas territory, but I've never heard such places described as part of the UK by anyone. I suppose it's not beyond belief but there's a simpler and less improbable explanation - which has been said a number of times already but heaven forbid anyone have to look through the previous comments.

    It's in exactly the right place to be in alphabetical order if it was listed as 'Great Britain' Items in drop-down fields in forms - in any implementation I've seen - are specified by two attributes: a 'value' which is what is passed back when the form is submitted, and a 'label' which is displayed. Commonly they're the same, but it's perfectly conceivable that the back-end needed Great Britain but United kingdom was preferred for display (e.g. for the sake of Northern Irish customers).

    Yes, the two are not the same, but they are frequently used interchangeably, and not exclusively in error since, as has been pointed out, the ISO country code for the UK is GB and it's used by convention in all kinds of places.

  • BravoKilo (unregistered) in reply to A Non. E. Mouse

    [quote user="A Non. E. Mouse"][quote user="¯(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL"]He missed mentioning the falsehood of "all addresses will be in strictly increasing or decreasing order along a geographic direction".[/quote] I've seen this occur even here in 'Murica!!!! (Worcester, MA to be specific.) "Murica", if you're wondering, was popularized by Chris Matthews on the opinion TV show 'Hard Balling' and is now widely used by disdainful pseudo-intellectuals and snotty commenters everywhere. Ya'll'er welcome.

  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    Zathras:
    It's not "close enough" when you're shipping goods, given that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom but is on a different island.

    If someone addressed a package to "such and such Grosvenor Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland, England", and the post office couldn't figure out where to deliver it, I'd think we have a problem. Maybe when it got to Northern Ireland the post office people there would declare it undeliverable as a matter of principle, but they'd surely know what was intended.

    BTW I was born on Long Island, New York, which is not on the same landmass as the bulk of the United States, but this did not seem to cause undue problems in delivering mail.

    The East River isn't exactly that wide. Now, if you were a man from Nantucket...

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