
What a Dead Man Named FM-2030 can tell us about the future of user names - MrMcDowall
http://mcdowall.info//posts/what-a-dead-man-named-fm-2030-can-tell-us-about-the-future-of-user-names
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BerislavLopac
Of course, the obligatory article about programmers and names must be linked
to here: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-names/)

~~~
WayneDB
That article seems like a bunch of useless pedantry to me.

"...refer people to this post the next time they suggest a genius idea like a
database table with a first_name and last_name column."

So what's his suggestion then? Take this list of "bad" assumptions and try to
build around them? Hogwash. Questioning whether you should design around
someone not having a name is like asking if you exist.

I know companies that have been making millions for 15-20 years with this
genius idea. You know what's so genius about it? It's simple, the developers
understand it and it works for a great, great majority of cases.

~~~
dwb
It's not pedantry when a significant proportion of people on Earth are
affected by at least one of these falsehoods.

Obviously it's very difficult to design a system that doesn't fall foul of any
of these, but we could at least strive for better. Just having "first name"
and "last name" fields is really quite culturally insensitive. It pretty much
worked when only Americans and Western Europeans were using computers, but the
online world is a lot bigger now.

A comment by the author gives examples of humans who don't have names, but
certainly exist: "Someone born into slavery in the Sudan, a woman born in
rural China, an American baby recovered after being born into a toilet, a
feral child, an amnesiac, etc, etc."

It's not quite so important for a social network to deal with this, but a
government system, for example, should be more rigorous. Whatever the system,
if we can be more global in our attitude, so much the better.

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Cushman
> A comment by the author gives examples of humans who don't have names, but
> certainly exist: "Someone born into slavery in the Sudan, a woman born in
> rural China, an American baby recovered after being born into a toilet, a
> feral child, an amnesiac, etc, etc."

I don't know if this is a peculiar idea, but in those circumstances perhaps a
"Generate Name" button is the useful feature.

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BerislavLopac
Only if that name is intended to become official. If not, rather make sure
that the field accepts a null value. ;-)

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Dylan16807
I'm not going to communicate with you by pointing. Stop being a special
snowflake and come up with a name, even if it's local to the service. No null
values. Your name can be 'null value' though if you like, win yourself some
geek points.

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roc
> _"Future generations are going to find it impossible to register themselves
> on social networks with their actual birth names, because older generations
> have used them all."_

Only if we presume:

1\. Registering people with the same name is difficult-to-impossible. \--
And/Or -- 2\. Systems that future generations care about will have been
invented at some problematic chunk of time before they attempt to register for
them.

As to 1) I believe even Facebook can handle the multitude of "John Smith"s
fairly painlessly. And 2) is borderline laughable.

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MrMcDowall
In regard to your first point, yes of course they can handle multiple
equivalent names for display, but if you want to use Facebook as your
Identity, then there can be only one.

The person at <http://www.facebook.com/john.mcdowall> is not me, nor is
john.mcdowall1 and so on.

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BerislavLopac
So? Why don't you simply use your phone number, nobody else has the same one
as you. Why would identity be restricted to names?

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pdonis
_Why don't you simply use your phone number, nobody else has the same one as
you._

You do know that multiple people can share a phone number, right?

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BerislavLopac
Yes, and one person can have multiple phone numbers. That was just an example
of another data which can be used for identity which is far less ambiguous
than the proper name. The point with identities is that, if you need to be
able to identify someone with a single piece of information, it can't be
defined by the person being identified; instead it has to be appointed by a
globally central authority, since it's the only way to ensure uniqueness. So
in any case, names are completely irrelevant when it comes to identity.

~~~
pdonis
_if you need to be able to identify someone with a single piece of
information, it can't be defined by the person being identified; instead it
has to be appointed by a globally central authority_

Not necessarily; for example, people could generate their own UUIDs as
identity tokens.

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BerislavLopac
That's a fair point. However, identification is not only about uniqueness,
it's also about proving that you are who you say you are, which still requires
a central authority -- or maybe another un-fakeable certificate, although I'm
not sure how it would be implemented without depending on another type of
identity (such as email).

~~~
pdonis
_it's also about proving that you are who you say you are, which still
requires a central authority_

I disagree with this too, because "who you say you are" is not a single thing;
it depends on the context, and you ought to be able to control what
connections people can make between different contexts.

For example: I might want to give one ID to my doctor, to connect it with my
medical records, and another to the DMV to identify me for a driver's license.
There is no reason why these two IDs need to be the same: in other words,
there is no reason why the DMV needs to verify that "who I say I am" to them
is the _same_ as "who I say I am" to my doctor. Or again, if I have to prove
"who I say I am" to Social Security in order to receive benefits, that doesn't
necessarily mean I have to use the same ID as I use for other purposes.

Of course, some of the reasons I would need an ID are to prove that I have a
certain set of rights, as in the Social Security and DMV examples, so whoever
I give the ID to has to be able to connect that ID with the appropriate
evidence that I have those rights. So my "Social Security ID" would have to be
connected to my employment history, or at least to my history of paying into
the system, and my "DMV ID" would have to be connected to my passing of a
driver's test. But that still doesn't require any single central authority to
dispense or verify IDs; I could still generate my own UUIDs for each of these
entities and then allow them to link those IDs to the appropriate information.
The fact that we _allow_ the government to create one central "ID" for us does
not mean that's the only way to meet those needs.

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cookingrobot
> "How would you process a credit card payment for someone who has only one
> name?" The Sripe API doesn't require a name at all, so they're clearly ahead
> of the curve here!

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MrMcDowall
Yeah, Stripe doing it like a Boss :)

That said, you know there's programmers out there not using the Stripe Button
and coding forms by hand that will have validations on them for the First and
Last name because they think it's the right thing to do. I've seen it.

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nzealand
I worked with a guy called "Comet." That was his full legal name. He logged a
bug against the HR system, because it insisted on both a first name and a last
name.

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Tichy
I actually find that interesting. Why can't we change our names at will? Is it
because government needs them as a unique ID (combined with birth date and
what not)? If governments had other IDs (and they do have social security
numbers), why bother keeping track of names?

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pavel_lishin
IANAL, but I believe that in the United States you're free to use whatever
name you like so long as it's not done for fraudulent purposes.

~~~
antidoh
Essentially true.

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mephi5t0
How's that new? What about Seal, Madonna and Louis C.K.? Programmers should
already handle that. Handling 1 name instead of 2 is a lot easier than let say
change your system because instead 2 now you need 5 because people decided to
have 3 middle names. Running out of IPs and upgrading Internet to 2.0 version
sounds more complex than shrinking names from 2 to 1 IMHO. is it enough for a
specific situation (security, verification, banking, etc.)? Probably not. But
I am sure there will be plenty fo ways to do so. Every other man in China is
Li or Lee and they somehow managed to deal with it :)

~~~
antidoh
"Programmers should already handle that."

Except they don't. I have a one-word legal name and I have _rarely_ found any
online from that allowed me to have less than two names. I realize I'm an edge
case, so I just make up something for the other field.

Ironically, I practically _begged_ Google+ to allow me to use my _real_ name,
which they require for their "fine dining experience"
(<cough>advertisers<cough>), but they refused because it was less than two
names and looked fake. They may have finally worked that out by now, I left
the building long ago.

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coditor
I bet you have fun with the TSA.

~~~
antidoh
I don't fly much. When I have, it's a brief conversation with the TSA
supervisor, followed by the miracle of flight.

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dickfickling
Just a note for the author of this piece - FM-2030 played in the Olympics in
1948, not 1984.

~~~
MrMcDowall
Whoops! Thanks :) That really would have been Transhuman...

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pixl97
My name is "Robert'); DROP TABLE Students;--"

<https://xkcd.com/327/>

