• (cs)

    At least you can just turn javascript off, because you KNOW they aren't doing any server side verification.

  • (cs)

    If you think Sandy has it rough, imagine Chewbacca's predicament. He doesn't have a last name, so he fails the two-character minimum. Then he think to himself, "Well, maybe I can put in 'Chewbacca of Kashyyyk' instead." Oops...

    And what if your last name is Masdford?

  • Mark (unregistered)

    What the heck?

    Some developers confuse me.

    What were they thinking?

  • Velko (unregistered) in reply to Someone You Know

    At least there's no problem if your last name is Qwerty.

  • asdf (unregistered)

    Opposite to my case

  • (cs)

    The real wtf is gravity...

    but who are they to say what is a valid first name? If I want to call my child OoooooLaaaaa, that's my choice.

  • Troy McClure (unregistered)

    These stupid validations are always pet peeves of mine. The worst is the security question validation (yes I know we have talked about them to death).

    I got one the other day that asked the number of my street where I grew up. When I responded with 54 it told me it wasnt enough characters - there is a difference between trying to handle bogus data and just making it plain annoying.

    Now if this were a password field, I could understand this validation logic a little more.

  • Colin (unregistered) in reply to Claxon

    If that is your choice then social services should probably choose to take away your child :)

  • s. (unregistered)

    Your Last Name Is Too Short() ()Last Name has to be at least 4 characters long.

  • (cs)

    Apparently Cookson is also invalid

  • (cs)

    I recently had to enter a password of at least 8 alphabetic characters, no numbers allowed. Aaargh.

  • (cs)

    "He tried again... Sandy took a quick peek at her passport ..."

  • (cs)

    I once had a password that specified "The first digit of your password must be a number." - How much do you think that helped security.

  • (cs)

    That user asdf? I wouldn't let him use my software either.

  • (cs)

    Ugh... it's a long time since I've seen JavaScript written as unutterably badly as that.

    Apparently they didn't get the memo that "eval() is evil"...

  • Cookson (unregistered) in reply to GettinSadda
    GettinSadda:
    "He tried again... Sandy took a quick peek at her passport ..."

    anonymization.. ur doin it wrong.

  • Steve (unregistered)

    I'm not saying the three-or-more letter restriction is legitimate, but if anyone ever needs it, here it is:

    !firstname.match(/(.)\1{2,}/);

    I wish I could get paid for removing useless code. I'd be rich.

  • Ola (unregistered)

    Sandy should choose a valid gender.

  • (cs)

    I am enlightened: asdf

  • (cs) in reply to Raedwald

    My favorite part is:

    Reject first or last names that contain more than two consecutive entries of the same character, e.g. ooo, lll, eee, etc.
  • Michael (unregistered) in reply to Claxon
    Claxon:
    The real wtf is gravity...

    but who are they to say what is a valid first name? If I want to call my child OoooooLaaaaa, that's my choice.

    Still not as good as little Bobby Tables. http://xkcd.com/327/

  • mauhiz (unregistered)

    Actually on azerty keyboards (like french ones) asdf becomes qsdf. So my usual dummy name is not checked by this awesome script!

    Side note : My browser had auto-completion for captcha field. Can it read? So smart...

  • Vollhorst (unregistered)
    1. Sandy is also a male name.
    2. I bet they tried to block all names which had the same letter thrice consecutively but never tested their software.

    Reminds me off some server side stuff I have seen: if (form.title.equals("Mister")) customer.setIsMale(true);

    Worked "fine". Until internationalization came and the database was full of female foreigners...

  • paratus (unregistered) in reply to Zecc
    Zecc:
    My favorite part is:
    Reject first or last names that contain more than two consecutive entries of the same character, e.g. ooo, lll, eee, etc.
    Well, it says "more than two" which is equivalent to "three or more"
  • (cs) in reply to Ola
    Ola:
    Sandy should choose a valid gender.
    Done:

    enum Gender { MALE, FEMALE, GENDER_NOT_FOUND };

  • AT (unregistered)

    If you want to see a stupid Javascript validation/restriction check out this site: http://www.ci.org (Compassion International)

    If you right click anywhere on the site (not just images) a pop-up appears reading:

    "Compassion has disabled the right click feature on photographs of children on our site. The additional effort has been implemented to protect the security, dignity and privacy of children in our program."

    That's right, this site completely disables your context menu in the bizarre belief they can prevent you from "stealing" their photos.

    I guess Compassion believes only they should be able to "exploit" children by posting their photos on the Web?

  • Rob (unregistered) in reply to GettinSadda
    GettinSadda:
    "He tried again... Sandy took a quick peek at her passport ..."
    don't you mean her pbuttport?
  • (cs) in reply to AT
    AT:
    If you want to see a stupid Javascript validation/restriction check out this site: http://www.ci.org (Compassion International)

    If you right click anywhere on the site (not just images) a pop-up appears reading:

    "Compassion has disabled the right click feature on photographs of children on our site. The additional effort has been implemented to protect the security, dignity and privacy of children in our program."

    That's right, this site completely disables your context menu in the bizarre belief they can prevent you from "stealing" their photos.

    Lots and lots of sites try that stupid stunt, though most of them don't give such a nice pseudo-moral explanation.
  • (cs)

    When will people realize that receiving "invalid" data isn't as bad as losing a potential customer?

    Invalid data can be detected and cleaned up later. Getting a customer back is nearly impossible.

  • Troy McClure (unregistered) in reply to Rob
    Rob:
    GettinSadda:
    "He tried again... Sandy took a quick peek at her passport ..."
    don't you mean her pbuttport?

    Well done sir. You win this round.

  • (cs)

    Alex, are you aware that your fisrt version is the one that is sent in RSS?...

  • (cs) in reply to Vollhorst
    Vollhorst:
    1. Sandy is also a male name.

    True. However, "Sandy" in this story seems a bit gender-confused.

  • Redeemer (unregistered) in reply to nickfitz

    What happens if my first name is "return true" ?

    or "return true;" not really sure which is the correct one and the second name contains what

  • (cs)

    This story would have been much better if the protagonist were named Pat.

  • (cs)

    It's a little odd that he'd single out only asdf as invalid. Perhaps he was coming back later to add hjkl, fdsa, qwerty, etc? Or did he really think this would happen every time:

    lastname: a ("wow, ok must be too short.) lastname: asdf ("nope. hmmm" lastname: aaaaaa ("aww shucks. Well I guess I had better type a real name now")

  • wing commander (unregistered)

    I once dealt with a (Spanish) website that would not sell to anyone without a middle name. If you didn't have one you had to invent one.

  • (cs)

    It explains also why my last name is so often misspelt.

  • Alex (unregistered) in reply to AT

    That's right, this site completely disables your context menu in the bizarre belief they can prevent you from "stealing" their photos.

    What is most frustrating about such sites is if you are like me and tend to use the context menu back item to navigate.

    I want to go back, so right click to do so and instead a @%$@#$@# popup appears accusing me of trying to steal photos, it rapidly makes me turn off javascript, disable context menu manipulation or just not visit that site.

    captcha: transverbero

  • Spoe (unregistered)

    And if your last name is O (an actual surname in France)?

  • (cs) in reply to Alex
    Alex:
    I want to go back, so right click to do so and instead a @%$@#$@# popup appears accusing me of trying to steal photos, it rapidly makes me turn off javascript, disable context menu manipulation or just not visit that site.

    Then while you're at it, download all of the pictures of their children that they're supposedly trying to "protect", and email them back to their webmaster. For bonus points, include a ransom note.

  • (cs)

    Does Sandy go by the pseudonym Mystique?

  • David (unregistered)

    The funny thing about all those context menu disabling scripts is that they don't work in Firefox; it displays the context menu anyway, giving it focus, with a silly alert box saying you can't use the context menu. Usually sites do this to try to keep you from taking their pictures, so I make it a point to download something out of spite.

  • (cs) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    Ola:
    Sandy should choose a valid gender.
    Done:

    enum Gender { MALE, FEMALE, GENDER_NOT_FOUND };

    Nah, it's still incomplete. Here: enum Gender { MALE, FEMALE, NONE, SHEMALE, OTHER, GENDER_NOT_FOUND };

  • Dazed (unregistered) in reply to AT
    AT:
    If you right click anywhere on the site (not just images) a pop-up appears reading: ...

    Only in some browsers. (Only in one browser, I suspect). Hence or otherwise deduce ...

  • Jindra (unregistered) in reply to wing commander

    I had to deal with almost every website once I lived in Ireland, where there are no ZIP codes (only Dublin has 1-9 as ZIP code)

  • Rich Wilson (unregistered) in reply to AT

    I ran accross that one, and seem to recall that the 'entire site' part was browser specific. It works in IE and Opera- it only disables for the entire page in Firefox and Safari.

    They actually responded when I complained, so I offered to fix it, and they never replied. That was at least three years ago.

    http://naartjie.homestead.com/ disables right click entirely for all browsers. Good time for noscript!

  • Phil (unregistered) in reply to David
    David:
    The funny thing about all those context menu disabling scripts is that they don't work in Firefox; it displays the context menu anyway, giving it focus, with a silly alert box saying you can't use the context menu. Usually sites do this to try to keep you from taking their pictures, so I make it a point to download something out of spite.

    but make sure to hide it once you've downloaded it, don't want them downloading it back again.

  • (cs)

    So I guess if my name actually is John Jacob Jingleheimer-Smith, I'm completely out of luck?

  • Hungarian Notation (unregistered) in reply to Rob
    Rob:
    GettinSadda:
    "He tried again... Sandy took a quick peek at her passport ..."
    don't you mean her pbuttport?

    She doesn't really like pointers to ports in ... well, never mind.

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to Phil
    David:
    The funny thing about all those context menu disabling scripts is that they don't work in Firefox; it displays the context menu anyway, giving it focus, with a silly alert box saying you can't use the context menu. Usually sites do this to try to keep you from taking their pictures, so I make it a point to download something out of spite.

    Opera handles matters rather more elgantly, by completely disregarding their little right-click scripting adventures.

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