CFOG's PIP, October 1987, Volume 5 No. 12, Whole No. 60, page 2

Computers Generate Nonsense

by Benjamin H. Cohen

Copyright 1987 by Benjamin H. Cohen. All rights reserved.

"To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer." I don't know where I first heard that, but it's true. Here are a few examples.

I got a letter from Hewlett Packard about my firm's account. "Below is a statement of the PAST DUE INVOICES and/or UNPROCESSED CREDIT BALANCES on your account." There followed a detail: we had ordered an item and returned it and our balance was $.00. The letter continued: "Since our terms are Net 30, your immediate remittance would be appreciated. If you have sent your check within the past few working days, please disregard this notice. If your account shows a credit balance or there ary any problems concerning your account, please contact me at the number below."

I sent HP a check for $.00 along with a letter apologizing for the delay in attending to the matter and asking them to forgive me: and expressed a hope that they might just reprogram their computers to send one form letter to those with balances due, another to those with credit balances, and none to accounts with zero balances.

More recently I received a notice from FOG to renew my membership. As most of you know, while I have several CP/M computers but no MS-DOS systems. I still have a passing interest in MS-DOS since I edit this newsletter and do have access to some MS-DOS systems, notably at the library of the Chicago Bar Association. The Dest Scanner available to me at the library eliminates the need to bring in house the one current seriously desired item that I can't add to my CP/M system. So I decided that while I still wanted to receive Foghorn by first class mail it really wasn't necessary to spend the extra ten bucks a year to get Foglight by first class mail. I made out a renewal check, filled in the form and sent it off, evoking this response:

"You may be unaware of how the FOG data base system is set up. Each member is assigned one field for mailing status. Thus FOG members who wish to receive both publications must have them sent by the same class of mail."

If you want to get both FOG publications but only one by first class mail you have to have two separate memberships: that, of course defeats the whole purpose of getting only one publication by first class mail since the separate membership costs you an extra five bucks!

FOG's inability to send the two publications by different classes of mail has nothing to do with the stated reason. First, it's nonsense to say that you cannot achieve policy ends because of the limitations of the data base. The data base can be changed. In fact, FOG is changing from dBase II to dBase III+ for its data base now.

Second, the fact that there's only one field with only one byte of information does not prevent you from encoding the data in the field to allow the sending of the two publications by separate classes of mail. The following simple mnemonic system took about 3 seconds to generate:

1	all by first class mail
2	all by second class mail
H	'horn by first class
L	'light by first class mail

This assumes that there's some other byte somewhere that tells whether the member gets one or both publications, but that's a fair assumption given what the letter from FOG says: "Each member is assigned one field for mailing status."

I'm renewing me membership in FOG now, about two months later. I'm dropping Foglight altogether. I can live without it. I have to express my irritation at nonsense somehow, but on the other hand Foghorn does have material in it that I value. FOG will get a copy of this article with my renewal, and I hope there will be a change in the procedure, since there is no policy reason for it.