From: Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@...>
Date: 2007-06-28T03:34:36+09:00
Subject: Re: Regexp to split name?

On 6/25/07, Alex LeDonne <aledonne.listmail@gmail.com> wrote:

> I worked at an institution that was forced to rewrite a bunch of
> name-related code for a legacy system because of a "sanity" check that
> was just plain wrong... and nobody realized it until Dr. O came to
> work. Now they had to allow one-letter surnames, too (they'd already
> allowed one-letter given or middle names, thanks to President Truman's
> middle name, S).

Reminds me of an old SF story "The Man Whose Name Wouldn't Fit."  IIRC
it started with a guy getting fired because his company put in a new
computer personnel data system which had one too many characters in
the field for last name to accomodate him (and it was too expensive to
fix).

I think it ended with a neo-luddite movement with a secret weapon
which dissolved the bond between the the magnetic material and the
substrate on magnetic tapes and disks.

Don't know how many here are old enough to remember when most
computers used magnetic tape. <G>

-- 
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/