How old am I, according to Amazon?
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I have just received a new craft knife from Amazon. As expected, they needed to verify my age as it is an age-restricted item in the UK. My wife got to the delivery driver first - he asked her what her birth year was and then asked her to confirm her age was
x- it isn't, it isx-1. Then he tried me - he asked me what my birth year was and then asked me to confirm my age wasy- it isn't, it isy-1. I guess that their hand-held devices calculateage = this_year - birth_year. Surely, every student learning computing is told that this only works correctly on 31st December and for the rest of the year it is just luck if it guesses correctly. At this time of year, it is wrong for 96.2% of the population. A company the size of Amazon that owns its own cloud platforms should have sufficient skilled staff not to allow such a simple Computing 101 error through their vigorous testing procedures. I might mention this if I get a 'Rate the quality of your experience with the delivery of this item' request. -
I have just received a new craft knife from Amazon. As expected, they needed to verify my age as it is an age-restricted item in the UK. My wife got to the delivery driver first - he asked her what her birth year was and then asked her to confirm her age was
x- it isn't, it isx-1. Then he tried me - he asked me what my birth year was and then asked me to confirm my age wasy- it isn't, it isy-1. I guess that their hand-held devices calculateage = this_year - birth_year. Surely, every student learning computing is told that this only works correctly on 31st December and for the rest of the year it is just luck if it guesses correctly. At this time of year, it is wrong for 96.2% of the population. A company the size of Amazon that owns its own cloud platforms should have sufficient skilled staff not to allow such a simple Computing 101 error through their vigorous testing procedures. I might mention this if I get a 'Rate the quality of your experience with the delivery of this item' request.Don't blame the driver - he's just following the on-screen instructions. Blame the idiot who wrote the app he's forced to use. :) (Of course, if he couldn't see the problem with the question and just tick "yes", that's another story...)
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
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Don't blame the driver - he's just following the on-screen instructions. Blame the idiot who wrote the app he's forced to use. :) (Of course, if he couldn't see the problem with the question and just tick "yes", that's another story...)
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
Richard Deeming wrote:
Don't blame the driver
I didn't! He accepted that we were both over 18 (min age required for buying a knife) as the calculated (albeit wrong) ages were much greater than 18 and than was the only verification that he needed. The problem would have been if we were 17 year olds as the calculation would have erroneously said we could legally accept the knife as it said we were 18.
Richard Deeming wrote:
(Of course, if he couldn't see the problem with the question and just tick "yes", that's another story...)
I didn't even attempt to try to explain why the answer was wrong - delivery drivers have very tight schedules that do not include timeouts for lessons in basic algorithms. However, if Amazon send me a request to write a review, I will include this flaw and that there is the potential for a legal transgression in the review.
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I have just received a new craft knife from Amazon. As expected, they needed to verify my age as it is an age-restricted item in the UK. My wife got to the delivery driver first - he asked her what her birth year was and then asked her to confirm her age was
x- it isn't, it isx-1. Then he tried me - he asked me what my birth year was and then asked me to confirm my age wasy- it isn't, it isy-1. I guess that their hand-held devices calculateage = this_year - birth_year. Surely, every student learning computing is told that this only works correctly on 31st December and for the rest of the year it is just luck if it guesses correctly. At this time of year, it is wrong for 96.2% of the population. A company the size of Amazon that owns its own cloud platforms should have sufficient skilled staff not to allow such a simple Computing 101 error through their vigorous testing procedures. I might mention this if I get a 'Rate the quality of your experience with the delivery of this item' request.And this is why we write unit tests...
Jeremy Falcon
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I have just received a new craft knife from Amazon. As expected, they needed to verify my age as it is an age-restricted item in the UK. My wife got to the delivery driver first - he asked her what her birth year was and then asked her to confirm her age was
x- it isn't, it isx-1. Then he tried me - he asked me what my birth year was and then asked me to confirm my age wasy- it isn't, it isy-1. I guess that their hand-held devices calculateage = this_year - birth_year. Surely, every student learning computing is told that this only works correctly on 31st December and for the rest of the year it is just luck if it guesses correctly. At this time of year, it is wrong for 96.2% of the population. A company the size of Amazon that owns its own cloud platforms should have sufficient skilled staff not to allow such a simple Computing 101 error through their vigorous testing procedures. I might mention this if I get a 'Rate the quality of your experience with the delivery of this item' request.yes, I've heard the UK has a knife control problem ;) But, just how big was the knife? You can die from injuries from a sharp pen knife. Just curious.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
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yes, I've heard the UK has a knife control problem ;) But, just how big was the knife? You can die from injuries from a sharp pen knife. Just curious.
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
