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TANGENT:Re: Bad words intentionally left in the text
Subject:TANGENT:Re: Bad words intentionally left in the text From:"Matthew B. Hicks" <matt -at- UNIDATA -dot- UCAR -dot- EDU> Date:Wed, 22 Mar 1995 09:08:16 -0700
This strays slightly from tech writing but it still serves to illustrate
the point. I saw an article in either _Science_ or _Scientific American_
(anyway, I believe it was one of those) about a bank in England (I don't
think it was Barclays, but it could have been) that was doing a mailing
to its largest depositors. A programmer at the bank worked up a script to
extract names and place them on a form letter, and he apparently should
have tested it a bit more before doing the final run. As I recall the
problem they ran into was that the client names never actually replaced
the variable name they were supposed to be assigned to. The result?
Before the error was realized, many of the banks biggest customers
received letters that began "Dear Rich Bastard..."
Another result was, as you might suspect, an unemployed programmer.
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Matt Hicks, Tech. Writer, Unidata * I may not agree with what you
Boulder, CO, (303)497-8676, ******* say, but I'll defend to the
matt -at- unidata -dot- ucar -dot- edu ************* death my right to mock you.
