3 ms·

Similarly, the famous list of falsehoods about names: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2

Similarly, the famous list of falsehoods about names: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b... Even aside from the politicized content, I found it jarring that this bounced between clear and 'demonstrable' statements and entries like "you do not need a postal address", which was just a Twitter link to some letter delivered without one. It's not how I'd prefer to see this stuff curated, either.

nostrebored 10y ago
Postal addressing is actually a very interesting topic; that statement is demonstrable. Many smaller towns internationally do not require an address line; all letters to the city are delivered to a central hub and distributed based on name/other information.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  My complaint was with the wording and generalization. "Not everyone has/needs a postal address" is true, "you do not need a postal address" is not - living in a big city, I don't get mail that's even slightly mislabeled. And yes, that's a nitpick, but I was mostly objecting to a sweeping statement with a Twitter link that doesn't clarify much. (As for the specific question, postal addressing is fascinating. Someone in my family has an unusable address with an alphanumeric house number, and Amazon won't ship to it. And in the last one of these threads, someone mentioned living in a country which uses standardized directions-from-landmark as a formal address!)
- spc476 10y ago
  There's an apocryphal story of someone writing a letter and placing it in an envelope with a picture of Alfred E. Neuman on it and mailing it (with appropriate postage). It was delivered to Mad Magazine, the intended recipient.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    Similarly, a letter supposedly addressed: Hill John Mass Which was delivered to John Underhill, Andover, Mass. Unlikely to be true, but a great story.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  >Many smaller towns internationally do not require an address line Citation needed. I've sent mail all over the world, and the only place I've seen where you can get away with that is Ireland. It's actually famous for this. Unless you're talking about some really backwater developing nations, every nation I've sent mail to does require an address line of some kind. However, in the UK, there are a lot of funny-looking addresses in the more rural areas. They have an address line, but it's really just the name of some hamlet or house or something, then they give the name of some farther-away but larger town, and finally the name of some main town/city where the mail is first routed. But they also have a detailed postal code that can route things by itself. Out of reasonably-developed nations, Ireland is the one that really stands out for having an antiquated postal system, but it does seem to work fine for them. It's also different and more modern for addresses within Dublin, where they do have a (very short) postal code. The only other place where I've seen a place where you don't need a street or house number is for addresses at Kibbutzes in Israel.
chris_7 10y ago
> There exists an algorithm which transforms names and can be reversed losslessly. (Yes, yes, you can do it if your algorithm returns the input. You get a gold star.) What am I missing here? Any lossless compression algorithm works, even "string.reverse" would apply.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I think the implication is that a transformation won't be reversible if you don't know exactly what was applied? Like, I've had the situation of seeing a poorly-marked name string and going "I think that's 'Last, First' formatting, but I'm really not certain..." Or if you do any formatting change you'll get bizarre problems like apostrophes becoming directional quotes. But yes, the rule-as-written isn't right, and I'm not sure what was meant.
- LolWolf 10y ago
  I'm not sure I understand either. Any one-to-one function where the name falls under the inverse image of the range works (notably, stupid things like the identity mapping along with, you know, binary representations, etc).
- knz42 10y ago
  I think the challenge is to find a way to tranform the name so that it's still legible by a human. Like transform "Mister" to "Mr"
- gweinberg 10y ago
  I think what is meant is, if you combine a first name and a last name, you can't break the full name back into first and last name. Because people have names with spaces in them, among other problems.
- flukus 10y ago
  What if the name has spaces in it? How do you differentiate reliably between a middle name and a name with spaces? It gets even worst when there may have been previous transforms, like forcing family name to be the last name.

nostrebored 10y ago

Postal addressing is actually a very interesting topic; that statement is demonstrable. Many smaller towns internationally do not require an address line; all letters to the city are delivered to a central hub and distributed based on name/other information.

Bartweiss 10y ago
My complaint was with the wording and generalization. "Not everyone has/needs a postal address" is true, "you do not need a postal address" is not - living in a big city, I don't get mail that's even slightly mislabeled. And yes, that's a nitpick, but I was mostly objecting to a sweeping statement with a Twitter link that doesn't clarify much. (As for the specific question, postal addressing is fascinating. Someone in my family has an unusable address with an alphanumeric house number, and Amazon won't ship to it. And in the last one of these threads, someone mentioned living in a country which uses standardized directions-from-landmark as a formal address!)
spc476 10y ago
There's an apocryphal story of someone writing a letter and placing it in an envelope with a picture of Alfred E. Neuman on it and mailing it (with appropriate postage). It was delivered to Mad Magazine, the intended recipient.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  Similarly, a letter supposedly addressed: Hill John Mass Which was delivered to John Underhill, Andover, Mass. Unlikely to be true, but a great story.
Arizhel 10y ago
>Many smaller towns internationally do not require an address line Citation needed. I've sent mail all over the world, and the only place I've seen where you can get away with that is Ireland. It's actually famous for this. Unless you're talking about some really backwater developing nations, every nation I've sent mail to does require an address line of some kind. However, in the UK, there are a lot of funny-looking addresses in the more rural areas. They have an address line, but it's really just the name of some hamlet or house or something, then they give the name of some farther-away but larger town, and finally the name of some main town/city where the mail is first routed. But they also have a detailed postal code that can route things by itself. Out of reasonably-developed nations, Ireland is the one that really stands out for having an antiquated postal system, but it does seem to work fine for them. It's also different and more modern for addresses within Dublin, where they do have a (very short) postal code. The only other place where I've seen a place where you don't need a street or house number is for addresses at Kibbutzes in Israel.

chris_7 10y ago

> There exists an algorithm which transforms names and can be reversed losslessly. (Yes, yes, you can do it if your algorithm returns the input. You get a gold star.) What am I missing here? Any lossless compression algorithm works, even "string.reverse" would apply.

Bartweiss 10y ago
I think the implication is that a transformation won't be reversible if you don't know exactly what was applied? Like, I've had the situation of seeing a poorly-marked name string and going "I think that's 'Last, First' formatting, but I'm really not certain..." Or if you do any formatting change you'll get bizarre problems like apostrophes becoming directional quotes. But yes, the rule-as-written isn't right, and I'm not sure what was meant.
LolWolf 10y ago
I'm not sure I understand either. Any one-to-one function where the name falls under the inverse image of the range works (notably, stupid things like the identity mapping along with, you know, binary representations, etc).
knz42 10y ago
I think the challenge is to find a way to tranform the name so that it's still legible by a human. Like transform "Mister" to "Mr"
gweinberg 10y ago
I think what is meant is, if you combine a first name and a last name, you can't break the full name back into first and last name. Because people have names with spaces in them, among other problems.
flukus 10y ago
What if the name has spaces in it? How do you differentiate reliably between a middle name and a name with spaces? It gets even worst when there may have been previous transforms, like forcing family name to be the last name.