Do not outsmart the system: why in the USA are forbidden autonomous with an innocuous word

In the United States, it is not permitted to have a car number that can be interpreted as a threat, the name of the reproductive body, an indication of police affiliation, a reference to religion, a mat, a call for genocide, a hint that the driver is drunk. Also, after the precedent that took place in 2016, the word “null” is forbidden, the author of the channel writes. poznavaemoe.ru on Yandex.Zen.

Photo: Shutterstock

This word from English translates as “zero” or “nothing”. Naturally, to see in it an insult or a hint of a reproductive organ is difficult with all the desire. The ban is associated with some features of the operation of computer databases, including police officers. The problem came up as a result of a self-destructive mistake made by someone Joseph Tartaro, a network security specialist. In the same 2016, he decided to change his number to "NULL", and the one that was showing off on his wife's car, to "VOID". The idea, by the way, was very original, since the phrase “null and void” in jurisprudence means nothing more than “null and void”.

This indeed looks very romantic, but the American Romeo had another, rather insidious motive. It seemed to him, as a specialist in the relevant field, that these numbers would allow both him and his lifelong friend to evade responsibility for minor administrative offenses committed on the road. The fact is that “null” is a universal marker used in a variety of computer databases to indicate missing or unusable information. Unfortunately for Tartaro, he was 100% right. With one very significant caveat - it was not he who deceived the system, but it began to terrorize him.

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Instead of becoming invisible to police radars, driving calmly at the Stop sign and crushing pedestrians with impunity, Tartaro began to receive fines for violations of which he was not involved. This happened every time when some inexperienced, lazy or unskilled California cop forgot to indicate in the protocol the number of the car that committed the violation. When such information was entered into the database, the program put in the corresponding column the value “null”, which the excessively cunning American took on his own free will. Before he finally could put an end to this bureaucratic nightmare, a total of $ 12 was sent to him.

Joseph Tartaro, of course, is to blame for the troubles that have befallen him, but what about other people suffering from the imperfection of the structured query language? In particular, those who received the surname "Null" even before the existence of any databases. In the world, tens of thousands of people wear it, and they risk losing their mind any computer system with which they come in contact. They are denied registration sites of banks, online stores, streaming and gaming services.

The program evaluates the name of the applicant, concludes that there is an attempt to cheat, and then prohibits a living person, for example, from playing poker with the owners of all other generic identifiers, including the strangest ones. Put yourself in the shoes of these people. They are constantly denied not only services, but also the very right to exist. For the Internet, these are real ghosts, and the consequences of ignoring can be very unpleasant.

There is no simple and cheap solution to eliminate the problem of database stupor in the face of imaginary negation. Programmers, with an enviable ingenuity, have been trying for many years to find workarounds. In particular, today they use the concept of “zero island”. This is the point whose geographic coordinates look like “0,0”, that is, the intersection of the equator with the zero meridian.

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An "island" is added to maps to help detect geocoding errors. If a computer or smartphone cannot determine the coordinates—for example, when you take a photo with geotagging turned off—they set the value to “0,0.” Outdated mapping programs may interpret these as real geographic coordinates and direct you to a buoy dangling at that point in the middle of the Gulf of Guinea. If you encounter this error, don't worry. Remember the sad story of Joseph Tartaro, who suffered incomparably more from the “zero” problem.

Original column published on the blog. poznavaemoe.ru on Yandex.Zen

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