chewearn's blog

Circuitous rambling of background situation

Recently, I got a new mobile phone. I was a long time fan of Palm-based phones, especially the Treo series. Unfortunately, the Palm smartphones were getting more and more behind the times with each generation. New phones from Nokia, Samsung, etc always have more cool features; everything from email to a kitchen sink. Palm-based phones, on the other hand, were so last century.

So, when I finally outgrew my current Treo650, I reluctantly moved to a Nokia N95. The data migrating process from one phone to the other was nothing short of epic. It took an entire day, plus a fistful of gray hair. If I wasn’t so fed up, I would write a post about it. Maybe another time.

The point

The point I am trying to make is this. The data migration, especially the Contacts database, would have gone smoothly except for one problem. There are still idiots in this day and age who don’t realize people’s names come in many varieties or combinations.

Every once in a while, I was rudely reminded that these idiots have failed to die in the new century. Before this most recent fiasco, the last idiot was the multinational company who was my employer.

Note the liberal use of “idiots”. Anyone from business owner to software programmers to database creators who failed to account for the different the variety of names, in this age of the internet are surely idiots.

The gist

1. Many people in this world are not named as “given name, surname”.
2. Some are not “first name, middle name, last name”.
3. Last name is not equal to surname.
4. Last name is not equal to family name.
5. First name is not equal to given name.
6. A name is not always one word.

In fact, assume nothing. Anybody name could be in any possible combinations. With the explosion of data storage and computing capabilities, databases are no longer restricted by size. The only restrictions are imposed by lack of capabilities and imaginations of idiots. Don’t be such an idiot.