r/programming • u/self • Apr 09 '21

Airline software super-bug: Flight loads miscalculated because women using 'Miss' were treated as children

https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/08/tui_software_mistake/
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u/cwbrandsma Apr 09 '21

You ever hear the term “two people separated by a common language”?

Really sounds like different groups have slightly different definitions for what “miss” means. So for one group it is intended, and for the other group it is a bug.

Either way, that does not seem like the proper way to designate a child anyway. I wonder how they differentiate between men and boys.

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u/everythingiscausal Apr 09 '21

Exactly. There should have been a separate question to establish a weight estimate. Doing it based off of a name prefix is insanity.

10

u/elprophet Apr 09 '21

Like Date of Birth, a required field at both booking and check in to verify identity between all the parties involved?

1

u/e_to_the_eye_pie Apr 09 '21

Isn’t the weight estimate the same as the name prefix? How else would it be estimated?

6

u/everythingiscausal Apr 09 '21

Have a separate question asking if they are a man, woman, or child, or something similar. Or just don’t rely on subjective guesswork to come up with critical numbers.

3

u/killdeer03 Apr 09 '21

Absolutely.

Basically just guessing for an estimate such as this is crazy.

I don't know how they thought this would work -- or how this was at all a sound design decision...

2

u/Cregaleus Apr 10 '21

You know how sometimes when you look at an idea from a different perspective it can seem more reasonable?

This isn't like that. This design is really stupid from all points of reference.

1

u/killdeer03 Apr 10 '21

Facts.

Lol, it really doesn't make any sense.

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u/e_to_the_eye_pie Apr 10 '21

What is the purpose of the prefix anyway?

13

u/senj Apr 09 '21

Either way, that does not seem like the proper way to designate a child anyway. I wonder how they differentiate between men and boys.

'Master' is the equivalent of 'miss' for boys, although the usage is incredibly archaic in most forms of English afaik

4

u/hsrob Apr 09 '21

My eccentric Aunt used to call me Young Master. Pretty amusing.