He Got a Joke Vanity Plate. The Joke Was on (Null and Void) Him

Newser ^ | 08/19/2019 | By Kate Seamons, Newser Staff

[I want the USA back]

Amazing how they design computer systems. Imagine if he had chosen “BLANK” or “INVALID”.

[Deaf Smith]

The only time I applied for vanity plates was High School in the 70's.

I applied for EXEMPT.

It was already taken.

*All the cop cars had exempt on their plates at the top.

[Oatka]

Hasn’t this happened before?

Yup. Some years back a guy thought it would be neat to have a plate with "NONE" on it. Same results. Police would find an abandoned car with no tags and enter "NONE" in the "licence plate" box.

[Paradox]

Nulls will get you every time. True story, I once worked for the federal government, did some programming. One program involved a financial system. While trying to interface with that program, I discovered a bug, in which a NULL was used instead of a ZERO. Big mistake. It had been costing the government millions per year, about 30 million dollars the year I discovered it. I was a young, new programmer at the time working for a small think tank sort of group that had nothing to do with the main Keepers of the financial system, so when I informed them, I was in for something of a surprise. I had expected much thanks and even acolades for the discovery. My message indicated exactly where the bug was and how to fix it.

The message I received back was short and to the point, something to the effect of "The bug has been fixed, stop looking at our code". And that was that. The bug was fixed, Fed Gov saving millions per year, and all I got was a slap down. Needless to say, that and another incident informed the rest of my career working for the feds...

[PLMerite]

Maybe should have tried “MOF” (”Member Of Force).

[Darksheare]

Not mein faulten!