Post office scandal about the inability to add numbers, a tiny line f uk the whole system, and we want to give your life into the hands of AI systems. What can go wrong?
(If all you have is a phone, everything can be solved with an app.)
But unrecoverably modifying the data to fit within constraints on input, storage or output seems a rather poor "solution".
... but in reality, no human was messing with those; system bugs were dropping or duplicating data. The government should not have trusted claims of a third-party without independent auditing they controlled (and, ultimately, I think that's the takeaway that all governments should be taking from this disaster).
Around here (Melbourne, Australia) I don't think they are ever used. "Princes St" etc. It's fine.
Searching if users omit the apostrophes, etc.
try to sql
(`type`:'express post',`from`:'st mary's street',`value`:'50')
and it will drop the value field, throw an error, and quite possibly duplicate several type and half filled froms depending on how the error handling is done.
This article is basically admitting its cheaper to change the street names than unfux their buggy software, so something is up. what are the other options that meet that criteria?
By this point, the flaws are pretty well-documented. If you find anything in the reports about handling of apostrophes, feel free to cite it.
The underlying communication protocol from node to node wasn't even SQL; it was an XML format called "Riposte." There was, perhaps, SQL involved in eventual account database updating, but issues had occurred in message transit even before that phase, and it's those issues that led to account reconciliation errors and (incorrect) charges of fraud on the part of the subpostmasters.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/09/how-the-post... says As early as 2001, McDonnell’s team had found “hundreds” of bugs. A full list has never been produced,
seems almost guaranteed to me it had apostrophy bugs.
As far as I can see, there is no evidence that it was.
The question is what software is so hard to fix its easier to change the physical street names than fix the data entry for those street names.
Horizon seems the likely candidate, and the fix is equally stupid.
https://www.agi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/BS7666Guid...
# Standard data types used in BS 7666
CharacterString: a sequence of alphanumeric characters
...
The sign printer probably expects this format when printing signs for the government, or worse, has a contract that says the government must provide this standard format for the sign information.
So it's just a government mandated database schema... I don't think that's any better of a reasoning though lol
> How to use these standards > > The UPRN and USRN standards form a machine-readable addition to an address or street record held in a system. When using UPRNs and USRNs you can continue to use existing formats but add a field for these identifiers. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-fo...
Similarly Grangemouth apparently has a Bo'ness Road...
A related issue would be places in England named 'by-the-Sea', e.g. Newbiggin-by-the-Sea.
So the signs shall simply have to match reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westward_Ho%21
Edit: ironically HN formatting couldn’t handle the exclamation mark either.
> Abbreviations and punctuation shall not be used unless they appear in the designated name, e.g. “Dr Newton’s Way”, and only single spaces shall be used.
Given that "alphanumeric" is vague, not defined, and prominently contradicted, I'd say it's quite clear that they can't really blame it on BS 7666.
The council probably have some horrible CSV-infested GIS workflow, and have decided to change reality to avoid the bugs.
So, even worse than imagined... it's an ambiguous standard blamed for a bad implementation of that standard.
If the standard restricts street names to those certain characters, may be it really is BS.
We love apostrophes so much we have them on our supermarkets. If they're not there we add them.
e.g. I'm going to Sainbury's
e.g. I'm going to Tesco's
...despite the fact that it's real name is plain old Tesco.
Why those dare to implement - and explain - standards who cannot comprehend their purpose?....
As a thought experiment, how far beyond the 'maximum' is acceptable? Latin letters with diacritics? Cyrillic letters? Arabic letters? Chinese logographs? Emojis? Would you expect all systems which are standard-compliant to be able to handle all of the above?
All the technical issues here have already been solved a hundred times, there's plenty of other options. It's a little worrying that we're eliminating punctuation in real life because of issues with integrating with geographical databases.
When I moved I tried to fill in the form on their website to indicate that I wouldn't be paying the council tax on the house I used to live in anymore. Weirdly I couldn't make the form work, it broke with weird errors about timing out. After some headscratching I decided (on a whim) to change my computer's timezone back to GMT and hilariously the form started working perfectly.
Sadly I couldn't finish filling in the form, because it required a postcode for my new address, and would ONLY accept postcodes which matched the UK format (which my new address, in a different country obviously didn't match).
You shouldn't be surprised about any IT insanity from North Yorkshire Council, they are impressively incompetent.
It's led to some interesting outcomes - for example, I've seen people write "Princess Highway" a fair few times, presumably on account of the official spelling ("Princes") falling confusingly somewhere half-way between the more usual "Prince's" and "Princess".
In day to day use, I don't think most people actually use the apostrophe-free official spellings, at least for names comprised of ordinary English words (Prince's Hwy, Surfer's Paradise), but it might be more of a free-for-all with proper names (Wiseman's Ferry or Wisemans Ferry).
The "Princess Hwy" thing is also common I think because the pronunciation most often used sounds a lot like "Princess", particularly when it's run right into "Highway" without a gap.
St. James means something else.
So unless they go for St. Jamess it's have to be St. Jameses.
However, it does seem like it could be helpful when it comes to satnav applications to remove ambiguity. Google's going to autocorrect most of the time anyway, but this way, you're less likely to run into an issue where it takes you to Kings Landing in the wrong town because you didn't type King's Landing in the town you meant.
Sure, they tell you what town you're looking at, but I can't be the only one who's quickly typed in a destination and didn't take the time to double check and ended up driving to the wrong location for something. For some reason all of the hockey rinks near me have almost identical names...
That's pretty uncompelling. Should we also get rid of the letter s to avoid mix-ups between Kings Landing and King Landing?
Thomas’ and Thomas’s are the same thing.
> Some writers and editors add ’s to every proper noun, be it Hastings’s or Jones’s. There also are a few who add only an apostrophe to all nouns ending in s.
> ..One method, common in newspapers and magazines, is to add an apostrophe plus s (’s) to common nouns ending in s, but only a stand-alone apostrophe to proper nouns ending in s.
> Examples: the class’s hours; Mr. Jones’ golf clubs; The canvas’s size; Texas’ weather
That should break untold numbers of systems.
> [H2] provides a way to enforce usage of parameters when passing user input to the database. This is done by disabling embedded literals in SQL statements. To do this, execute the statement:
> SET ALLOW_LITERALS NONE;
> Literals can only be enabled or disabled by an administrator
I guess there are lots more in other languages...
Ruby Wang... did not mind the changes. "To be honest with you, because I'm not from this country it doesn't matter because it's the same pronunciation," she added.
They "solved" this problem by just having you enter the street name with no punctuation or suffix (ave, st, etc), and if there is a collision the form pops out a drop-down selector to have you disambiguate.
It's not the cleanest solution but it works. I agree that bending the humans to serve the needs of the machine feels... Sub-optimal.
I wonder what address verification services expect for the “numbers in the address” when the address is 123 1/2 4th Ave #5”.
Apostrophes seem like the least of anyone’s concerns.
USPS APIs in general:
https://www.usps.com/business/web-tools-apis/#dev
https://www.usps.com/business/web-tools-apis/documentation-u...
The specific API:
https://www.usps.com/business/web-tools-apis/address-informa...
BS 7666: 2006 is based upon an International Standard ISO 19112 Spatial referencing by geographic identifiers.
This isn't a new issue. Around 1990 one of the computer labs at my school was run by someone with an Irish surname starting "O'", and I remember him complaining about software which couldn't handle his name.
It's been 30 years, and there are still problems?!?
(To say nothing of "Madeleine L'Engle" or any of many others with an apostrophe in their name.)
https://members.parliament.uk/members/commons?SearchText=%27...
I am all for keeping in the apostrophes as they are mini 'flashcards' to help the youngsters learn the value of punctuation. I also think that it is out of respect for residents, if I was on 'St. Mary's Road' and I had to write 'st marys rd' then I would worry that people outside Yorkshire might think I was illiterate.
One day a UK county will do an excellent job of signs, so people always know where they are without SatNav. Remember that many signs were removed just in case the Germans arrived, and we couldn't have them finding their way around, could we?
North Yorkshire council could trial some best practice signage that involves having actual signs instead of making the punctuation vanish. They could get an unexpected tourism boost from doing so with mildly fewer cars on the roads.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40265929
> As far as I can tell, this isn't an issue with the specific database itself, but the standard they are required to record geographic data in, which the end of the article mentions as "BS 7666".
On the other hand, you’re naïve if you think English hasn’t already been simplified to fit on machinery such as typewriters and cheap printing presses. This process began long before computers.
It is named primarily for Peter Stuyvesant and Peter Cooper (NYC historical notables), secondarily for Peter Piper, Peter Parker, Peter Pan, Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, Peter Rabbit, and Peter from "Peter and the Wolf".
Seems they use Peters Field and Peter's Field but not Peters' Field.
We all know that older systems had problems with encoding and escaping special characters, but wouldn't they have encountered and dealt with all the possible problems by now?
So first question in my mind is what/why is this software that they are attempting to accommodate??? Or is this all just based on misinterpretation of the mentioned BS7666 and nobody thought to check it??
Our tools should adapt to the needs of humans, not the other way around!
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Spanish_alphabet
https://web.archive.org/web/20150426001803/https://www.nytim...
So I thought, how can this problem be solved? IMHO by doing a hex representation 0x00-0xFF per char. That would also increase entropy.
MySQL and other databases would need to support hex input of passwords, also setting of hex passwords via SQL.
I know a business which has to pay a nominal $1 license fee for the names of its own stores to a map maker, simply because the business has lost any evidence that it had the names before the map maker put them in the map.
And people believe anything that comes out of a computer regardless of thousands of signs that something is really not right.
They rather prosecute others without doubt on mass scale rather than look into themselves.
(see the Post Office scandal)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40265929
> As far as I can tell, this isn't an issue with the specific database itself, but the standard they are required to record geographic data in, which the end of the article mentions as "BS 7666".
On the other hand, you’re naïve if you think English hasn’t already been simplified to fit on machinery such as typewriters and cheap printing presses. This process began long before computers.
Even cheap printing presses could handle more than you think. Here's a type case layout from 1846, again with æ, œ, fl, ff, and ffi, fi and ffl. https://archive.org/details/printingapparatu00holtrich/page/... .
That book is for the "Parlour printing press [which] was invented by Mr. Cowper for the amusement and education of youth, by enabling them to print any little subject they had previously written, provided the printing did not exceed in size the dimensions of an ordinary duodecimo page, which measures about 5 inches by 3 inches."
On one hand we have systems supporting Unicode and just about every character imaginable, it's an example of using technology to go beyond the limitations of the past. You could have a system that supports emojis on street signs, but instead we're going the opposite direction and introducing artificial limitations that are even more restrictive than 500 year-old technology.
If a standard isn’t publicly available under a free license it should not be called a standard.
https://www.agi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/BS7666Guid...
4.4.1 Street names The designated street name is usually to be found on the name plate on the street. However, these may not always be correct, and may differ between the ends of the street. Unofficial street names are ones that have not been adopted by the appropriate Highways Authority but may be in common usage, e.g. "The Great North Road". Street names, whether designated or unofficial, should be recorded in full. Abbreviations and punctuation should not be used unless they appear in the designated name, e.g. "Dr Newton's Way". Only single spaces should be used.
So I think all its saying gazetteer editors should not add punctuation if its “missing” from the designated place name.
Punctuation is fine if it already part of the place name.
I think the intention is to preserve the original place name.
So the council is wrong to blame the specification.
>GeoPlace does not advise that councils include or remove punctuation in official naming or on the street name plate. Street naming and numbering is a council policy decision.
>However, the Data Entry Conventions documentation does state that GeoPlace would prefer not receive data (including street names) with punctuation.
>This is for two main reasons:
> machine readability – punctuation can be misinterpreted by computers
> usability – for example, if loaded into say an emergency service command and control system and a caller provides a street name, the search will be faster if the search is entered and returned without punctuation.
https://www.geoplace.co.uk/street-naming-and-numbering/guida...
This particularly irked me as unicode was a few years old at this point, and while not really adopted yet, was clearly the future.
I don't know what to tell you; I've seen it often. I'm talking day to day here, text messages and handwritten directions. If you're thinking of things like road signs, those will obviously follow official usage.
> The "Princess Hwy" thing is also common I think because the pronunciation most often used sounds a lot like "Princess", particularly when it's run right into "Highway" without a gap.
Obviously that is so, but I would suggest that the reason 'Princess Hwy' is comparatively so much more common than other similar mistakes (e.g. 'sea' for 'see' etc.) is because the official name (Princes Highway) feels so unnatural in English that it fails to act as a meaningful standard for usage.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/111148/do-any-uk...
For Wales for sure, often there are two versions of the place name, the Welsh, and an English butchering of it (see for example Pont-y-pŵl, which is spelt Pontypool in English), so I suppose it would be the English thing to do to simply pretend the Welsh/Irish spelling doesn't matter, and only use the English spelling (a little tongue-in-cheek from my side, but sadly likely the reality).
However, I suspect that whoever authored the standard was just sloppy and wrote 'alphanumeric' without giving it any careful thought.
Either way, apostrophes in names is quite uncommon in many parts of the world, and they are very likely to be ignored even on paper forms in those areas, if they are even allowed.
In general, each area has certain limits on what kinds of names if allows/understands, and it is up to the minority to adapt one way or another. It's very reasonable to want an Irish or maybe even British system to recognize a name like O'Reilly, but it's not really something you can expect of a Japanese system. Just as much as you shouldn't expect a name like 田中 to be recognized in France.
That's the UK Government's discussion space for adopting open standards.
(I used to work there.)
I'm a big fan of the UK government's commitments to open standards and their whole IT philosophy in general.
That said local councils usually give me quite the opposite feeling. I will definitely look into your suggestion in the hope of seeing some trickle-down!
Centuries old Irish language place names get replaced with bastard gaelicised versions of their English names, and now you’ve a mishmash of signage all over the place. Often the new names are just an invention of the council that sort of sounds right.
It is always better to consult extensive OSM wiki to figure out how something should be tagged rather than try to figure out based on existing examples.
In case of names here is relevant guide: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Names
That's untrue; facts can't be copyrighted. Whether there's a road sign or not, the name of the road is not subject to copyright, but if there is a road sign, then it's really easy to prove that your claim about the road is an uncopyrightable fact.
From your link, which is quite short:
> such copyright may exist when the materials in the compilation (or "collective work") are selected, coordinated, or arranged creatively such that a new work is produced. Copyright does not exist when content is compiled without creativity, such as in the production of a telephone directory.
So you'd have to ask yourself, "was any creativity, of any kind at all, required in order to call this street by its own name?" And the answer is even more obviously "no" than in the paradigm case in which the telephone directory can't be copyrighted because it consists of facts (involving no creativity) in an externally specified order (alphabetical) in a collection specified by an external rule ("everything is included").
facts are not copyrightable
https://annas-archive.org/md5/6b38669dbfb1042a40be0f804258fd...
And upload anything you think is important enough to Library Genesis
[1] https://www.vde-verlag.de/iec-normen/suchen/?publikationsnum...
https://annas-archive.org/md5/7957d8af6f296b3adaafd5c21d4aa3...
I also wouldn't call those typewriters or cheap printing presses.
https://grammar.collinsdictionary.com/easy-learning/what-are... https://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/punctuation/apostrophe/...
However, it's English: there isn't just one rule, another rule can also be valid and might be the one you're familiar with on a day to day basis. That doesn't mean any other way to say or write the same thing is wrong, it's just a pattern you never saw. Like someone going "lol snuck isn't a real word, it's sneaked!" and then you hand them a dictionary and they learn something new about their own language.
[1] https://www.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxford/media_wysiwyg/Univer...
Um... what? Pronouncing a possessive suffix with /səs/ isn't valid anywhere. The only possibility is /səz/. Same goes for the plural suffix.
Some writers write things like Four Fat Harvard Girls Lose Book Bag too. They use sentence fragments. They try to save ink by doing weird shit. Professional Buzzfeed writers write AF (yes, in caps) to mean as fuck. The Atlantic used the words electroöptical and rôles in 1940. Just because some minimum-wage burnout or penny-pinching editor breaks a rule doesn't mean that the rule doesn't exist.
If you go around the office saying that someone drank out of the boss' mug, they'll think you're fresh off the boat. Not only is it wrong in written English, it's not even accepted colloquially in spoken English, anywhere. And so it makes perfect sense that the written form would reflect the pronunciation.
Saying Texas' weather out loud just confuses people into thinking you're using it as an adjective when what you're really doing is trying to sound smart when you're actually sounding dumb. If you point at a book and say, that's Chris', you sound like you have brain damage. How is the book Chris'? Chris is a person, not a book! The only reason that people don't correct you is that they're being polite. And people misspell words all the time and the world doesn't cave in. That doesn't imply any particular thing about English grammar.
Another commenter found that you can say Jeff Bridges' because this is an irregular case to avoid saying the same sound twice—an exception which proves the rule (and also, I don't think it's irrelevant at all to point out the fact that Bridges is literally a plural noun made into a name). But Thomas is decidedly not in this narrow category. His source even uses Thomas' as an example of what not to do, lol. Normally I wouldn't dumpster someone this hard but hn rate limits so I may as well lengthen my response. Nothing personal.
Try not to lean too hard on how other people use the language just because it ain't how you use it. Makes you look outta touch with the way folks are playin' around with one of our shared human comms protocols, neh?
> but hn rate limits
Not in general. Only if you've proven yourself to be a poster for whom the mods think that rate-limiting you improves the health of the discourse 'round these parts.
Being someone who is also rate-limited. ;)
How the hell would you hear the apostrophe in "spoken English"?
That's purely an unforced error on the part of OpenStreetMap. They are incorporated in England, which recognizes a database right. But there is no reason for that. In general, there is no such thing as a database right.
And this isn't even relevant to londons_explore's point; he is stupidly arguing that even if the information is available on a road sign, the public cannot use it because it might be included in a protected work somewhere. That is obviously untrue; the availability on the road sign does in fact automatically mean that inclusion in a protected work is irrelevant.
If you see a sign giving you the name of a road, and then publish information to the effect that the road's name is what is printed on that sign, no database was involved at any point, and a database right cannot apply. All you have is a bare fact.
There's nothing to analyze: "Tesco's" is just wrong. It's not the name of the business.
Oh yes they do!
There's nothing to analyze: "Tesco's" is just wrong.
It’s kind of funny that there are prescriptivists on both sides here, all convinced that they’re right.
Or it might be about imaginary hierarchy. There could only be one actual duly-anointed king of burgers, but if one were to use the definite article to mark this, saying "I am going to the Burger King's", it would imply firstly that the king of burgers does actually exist, and possibly also secondly that he has but one solitary burger outlet.
A grammatical construction not quite so jarring when used with (say) "Tesco".
I agree it's not consistent, but who ever accused English of being that?! My point isn't that all business names are treated that way, just that the ones that are the reason is grammatical tradition not (for the most part) people who incorrectly think the shop is called "Tesco's" or whatever.
(But as others have replied to you, it's also more common than just Tesco, definitely including "Costa's" for lots of people.)
My point isn't that all business names are treated that way, just that the ones that are the reason is grammatical tradition not (for the most part) people who incorrectly think the shop is called "Tesco's" or whatever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldor
My mom used to buy small appliances and Christmas gifts there -- and she always called it Caldor's.
Clothes, she usually bought at Marshalls -- which hasn't had an apostrophe since 1974.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Lotus%27...
(My personal prediction: give it 100 to 200 years and we're going to drop the trailing 's' in all these cases. "Cat'" will just be pronounced "cats" and understood to mean "an adjective indicating the noun is owned by the cat").
"Thomas's" means "belongs to Thomas". Pronounced the same, but spelled differently, because it is a different word.
þ's disappearance from English is not due to either, though the lack of þ in available type faces was certainly an issue.
Press quality issues are things like "are the surfaces flat" / "how much pressure can the press apply" / "how many pages can we press before running into a mechanical issue".
I do get your point, but I think it's still wrong to use "cheap" to refer to the typefaces available for the Caxton and KJV Bibles. I suspect they were quite expensive.
The physical press is only part of the printing cost. The Linotype typesetting machine made it possible to set an entire line of type, drawing from a 90 or so characters. While the press itself didn't care, adding new symbols required manual effort, making it more expensive.
There's been an historical transition from small chains owned by individuals (e.g. the Victorian Mr John Sainsbury) to big brands (e.g. Superdrug), hasn't there.
The possessive apostrophe was appropriate for the former but surely less so nowadays. I would guess "Sainsbury's" was a rebrand intended to reflect tradition.
I don't think this argument quite works; something can be stunningly expensive, in an absolute sense, at the same time that it's the shoddy low-price option people choose for budget reasons.
Sure, it can be, but was it?
The KJV was very expensive as it was. ("Robert Barker invested very large sums in printing the new edition, and consequently ran into serious debt" says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Version .) That doesn't mean they used a shoddy low-price option.
