Dennis Ritchie (co-inventor of the C programming language) had a page on his personal web site called “My other lives” with a list of other Dennis Ritchies.
“Outside of my main professional career, I have accumulated other WWW-recorded accomplishments and have other interests. Generally I pursue these interests using separate mail addresses, SS#, and DNA.”
Interesting look into what Zuck and other mega celebrities experience day to day. I'm sure Zuck and others of a certain stature have many protection layers, but surely some things slip through and it's interesting to consider those just a tier lower that can't afford all of the security, etc.
Reminds me of the Bill Murray quote: "I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it."
Yes. Outside of the sheer security, people telling rich people they're fake will just warrant a cute condescending laugh and they go on with their life, while the guy here is basically denied his identity.
The website security model breaks down when people constantly try to enter your password.
The currently model assumes good behavior by most people most of the time in order for basic web services to function. Seems like an obvious vulnerability to malicious activity.
What is more likely to happen is a global namespace of unique names. Famous and powerful people get to pick first, because they are more important. Names can be inherited and become signs of your class and wealth.
You get to be Bob192382, because you got in early and only had to add 6 numeric digits. In the year 2100, we're at 15 digits.
that is silly. Obviously it should be the hash of someone’s genetic code plus the hash of the mind state vector at last checkpoint (to account for twins and clones)
Why, we got something similar in other countries. Here in NL it is called BSN; Burger Service Number (burger means civilian).
I believe the civilian should be able to create identities based on their private key (which only the government knows) and these should have different details. Like for example, a nickname, a realname, a telephone number, and address, or multiple of these. But then, also the civilian should be able to revoke the licenses. Or, rather: they should be valid for a short amount of time.
It's good that he has his own website! I can relate (for non famous reasons) about the Facebook issues. I can't even sign up any more, using my real name anyway.
It can be a pain as so many local organisations use Facebook as a free way to share information. Unfortunately if you're not logged in pages can be rate limited, get spammed with modals to sign up, can't scroll very far into any feed and probably in his case a nuisance as a platform for his business.
One time in around 2008 when I was in undergrad, I got facebook requested by a guy named David Liu (same name as me) who was going to a school many thousands of miles away, and I noticed that he had facebooked about 20-30 other David Liu's.
About 3-4 years later, I was in grad school, I meet this guy in person (he happened to be going to the same grad school), I recognize his name and face, and let him know that he facebooked me back then, and he got a chuckle out of it.
The most recent episode of the BBC Satire Radio show "The Naked Week" reached out to hundreds of name-alikes to get them to comment on a recent UK news story.
They ended up interviewing Taylor Swift, an MMA instructor from Cheltenham, UK.
Good for you, Mark! I had a nice chuckle.
On a more serious note, I really feel for the people that cannot get any kind of support and try to get some help by messaging "the owner" of the social network they are in. With big companies, you used to be able to get someone to talk to you when you had a problem. Not anymore. The best you can get is a well trained LLM
I mean another theory is that those people are misguided and vexatious, and that this correlates with them not actually checking which Mark Zuckerberg they are sending their urgent complaint email to.
I once received a number of hateful mentions and DMs on Twitter because I share my name with a 60 Minutes Australia journalist who was the producer on a story about Conrad Murray (Michael Jackson's personal doctor). People really are that stupid.
I worked with a guy that shares the name with the Norwegian mass murderer who targeted children at a youth camp. I think had some pretty though years, but never changed his name.
If I wanna check the internet for someone, I find it impossible because for a lot of names there's at least thousands of people with the same exact full name. It must give both a feeling of safety but also frustration if you may want to stand out.
From what I can tell, official documents rely on ID numbers, and for the social side, people can just come up with informal more unique names. But I'm not an expert.
Yeah, but in this case MikeRoweSoft.com redirects to microsoft.com after the settlement. Uzi Nissan was able to keep his domain to this day, even after his death in 2020.
In the south of Italy where families were very close to each others, children abundant, and passing the name of grandparents to first and second borns was expected people ended up with tons of namesakes. I have 6 people in my direct family who all share same name and last name.
Even with people that are not famous it can be difficult. My wife knows three people with the same name. So when I ask with whom are you going out she needs to add the city to make me understand.
Mark Zuckerberg may soon sue Mark Zuckerberg about name issues.
I most assuredly would not want to be Mark Zuckerberg. That name is not inspiring to most people. (Also, by the way, because Zuckerberg is perfectly fine german: Zucker = Sugar, Berg = Mountain, so a mountain of sugar. That's not good for your health either, in particular your teeth.)
I share the same name with a local TV star in my country. Even that is a PITA. Can’t imagine being named Mark Zuckerberg or Michael Jackson or anything like that.
At some point there were teenager girls calling me (no idea how they got the phone number). I started acting like they called the right person and there would be happy screams on the other hand. I guess the high point was that. I decided that might not be a good idea though. Would definitely continue if my “fans” were middle aged men.
He should at the very least ensure that there was some kind of liaison person at Meta for these not quite as rich (and certainly less obnoxious) Mark Zuckerbergs to reach in case of trouble with his service. This lawyer Mark should just have his account flagged with a huge 'Vetted, this guy is called that; leave it.' notice for any Meta algorithm or employee looking into it.
Answer the question: What would an asshole do? They would buy up their neighbors' houses to make an unapproved mega compound, buy up ancestral Hawaiian land to block communal land access, and do unlicensed shit without permits making their remaining neighbors miserable. So what is right by virtue is unlikely to happen because almost all billionaires are legitimized criminal aristocrats subject to a different set of rules than average or poor people who are killed in the street for selling loose cigarettes like Eric Garner.
I felt guilty reading it, as in many past companies "Mark Zuckerberg" (and Bill Gates, and Tim Apple, Elon Musk etc) was indeed often used as a placeholder for test accounts and test data, and it never crossed my mind that we were basically training ourself to also treat a "Mark Zuckerberg" on our service as an account that escaped the sandbox or some other attack on the service.
It was tricky to use too literal names, as they're basically the placeholders in the input forms for instance, or the translations keys.
To defend a bit the choice for somewhat realistic names, there is a gestalt decomposition where you're looking through "First name" first names for hundreds of lines. Same for Lorum ipsums, designers' reaction are completely different when the page looks somewhat realistic and isn't just a blatant test.
Lol, this reminds me of a funny story. I had a lawyer whose name was Jim Halpert. Turns out he was the very Jim who was inspired his namesake on the office. Asked him about it once. His reply? "Hey, it's been great for getting clients." =)
He was also very much like Jim on the show. Fun times.
>Like I said, I don't wish Mark E. Zuckerberg any ill will at all. I hope the best for him, but let me tell you this: I will rule the search for "Mark Zuckerberg bankruptcy". And if he does fall upon difficult financial times, and happens to be in Indiana, I will gladly handle his case in honor of our eponymy.
According to the Algorithm Lords of my particular filter bubble, he does indeed rule the search results for "Mark Zuckerberg bankruptcy".
Sure, but if tomorrow some dude with the same name as me decides to go on a killing spree, or sexually assault a toddler, I'd change my name. Just or unjust.
I'd have to change my email domain too though, so that would suck, but at least I could put up a website there explaining my new name and that I am not the now world famous terrorist who shot up a kindergarden/fondled the pope/ate a baby.
Having the same name as a famous person seems like a decent marketing benefit. And funnily enough, that’s achievable with some paperwork in many areas of the world! I wonder how/if this interacts with trademark (or other?) law. Can I change my name to Sundar Pichai? If so, then why haven’t a bunch of techbro founders done that already?
any sanctioned individual. Some of their names are super common. Sorry Ivan Ivanov, you are on the list, no bank account for you. based by a true story.
(meanwhile the sanctioned Ivan is chilling on his yacht with 3 passports and 5 golden visas)
Dennis Ritchie (co-inventor of the C programming language) had a page on his personal web site called “My other lives” with a list of other Dennis Ritchies.
“Outside of my main professional career, I have accumulated other WWW-recorded accomplishments and have other interests. Generally I pursue these interests using separate mail addresses, SS#, and DNA.”
It's preserved here:
https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/other...
> It's preserved here: > https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/other...
Which is preserved here [1]
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250919063134/https://www.nokia...
This made me feel the world is huge and I know nothing about the lived lives of others.
Interesting look into what Zuck and other mega celebrities experience day to day. I'm sure Zuck and others of a certain stature have many protection layers, but surely some things slip through and it's interesting to consider those just a tier lower that can't afford all of the security, etc.
Reminds me of the Bill Murray quote: "I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it."
With the Internet, you can now be famous, without being rich.
Many of the really rich people are quite anonymous. The billionaires you read about are really just the tip of the iceberg.
Yes. Outside of the sheer security, people telling rich people they're fake will just warrant a cute condescending laugh and they go on with their life, while the guy here is basically denied his identity.
The website security model breaks down when people constantly try to enter your password.
The currently model assumes good behavior by most people most of the time in order for basic web services to function. Seems like an obvious vulnerability to malicious activity.
This is why we should replace names with uuids.
We do have personal numbers used for identification purposees, in my country we have the OIB
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identification_number...
which superseded the JMBG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_Master_Citizen_Number
Countries don’t really want unique IDs per person, even though it would extremely simplify all administrative work, because:
- How can spies have false identities, if you can account for every individual?
- The only scalable way to get voters is not to make people switch to the opposite party, but to flood a country with people who will vote for you.
What is more likely to happen is a global namespace of unique names. Famous and powerful people get to pick first, because they are more important. Names can be inherited and become signs of your class and wealth.
You get to be Bob192382, because you got in early and only had to add 6 numeric digits. In the year 2100, we're at 15 digits.
I propose we use UUIDv4 to interfere with any attempts to build demographic databases.
At the very least names should be unique strings, preferably pronouncable
Correct horse battery staple
“That’s amazing! I’ve got the same combination on my luggage!”
Right after we upload minds into machines.
An IPv6 would also. Then this chap could have his website hosted on it.
"Ohhh, if it isn't 99adbad3-f3c8-4c52-99d8-be692c62b9db again! Man, what a blast last Friday at e128001f-9737-4245-b08b-73bc50db0204's party, right?"
That's impractical. Someone made a base8192 Hangul UUID conversion, only ten characters long.
Well obviously in your personal circles you'd still use nicknames.
99ad and e128 in this case.
I just go by Ad Bad. Yeah I know about the other guy. E7 123 and the other college friends call me Ad Bad 3 and him Ad 88
Sorry but I am voting for the opposite solution, meaning:
A quick tattoo on the arm and your set for life.
And forehead. Maybe four letters, on a scarlet base.
okay, mr... nullptr
that is silly. Obviously it should be the hash of someone’s genetic code plus the hash of the mind state vector at last checkpoint (to account for twins and clones)
See, someone told me few days ago that sarcasm doesn't work via text. Lol
Even better: social security numbers
lol, if it's downvoted that's how you know americans did it, because people from other countries have no idea why SS number is important or what it is
Why, we got something similar in other countries. Here in NL it is called BSN; Burger Service Number (burger means civilian).
I believe the civilian should be able to create identities based on their private key (which only the government knows) and these should have different details. Like for example, a nickname, a realname, a telephone number, and address, or multiple of these. But then, also the civilian should be able to revoke the licenses. Or, rather: they should be valid for a short amount of time.
Oh, we know what it is and we also know that it is terrible for identification.
Just hand out IDs with an actual unique id number with a check digit to _all_ citizens.
A social security number is unique. I do agree it's better to use a different unique number.
There's a lawyer in Philadelphia named Justin Bieber.
I'm not sure which would be worse.
The data is pretty clear, Justin Bieber, specially in February 2011 (but improving since) https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0...
haha, you are in trouble, i am calling justin bieber!
It's good that he has his own website! I can relate (for non famous reasons) about the Facebook issues. I can't even sign up any more, using my real name anyway.
It can be a pain as so many local organisations use Facebook as a free way to share information. Unfortunately if you're not logged in pages can be rate limited, get spammed with modals to sign up, can't scroll very far into any feed and probably in his case a nuisance as a platform for his business.
One time in around 2008 when I was in undergrad, I got facebook requested by a guy named David Liu (same name as me) who was going to a school many thousands of miles away, and I noticed that he had facebooked about 20-30 other David Liu's.
About 3-4 years later, I was in grad school, I meet this guy in person (he happened to be going to the same grad school), I recognize his name and face, and let him know that he facebooked me back then, and he got a chuckle out of it.
The most recent episode of the BBC Satire Radio show "The Naked Week" reached out to hundreds of name-alikes to get them to comment on a recent UK news story.
They ended up interviewing Taylor Swift, an MMA instructor from Cheltenham, UK.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002lppb
Good for you, Mark! I had a nice chuckle. On a more serious note, I really feel for the people that cannot get any kind of support and try to get some help by messaging "the owner" of the social network they are in. With big companies, you used to be able to get someone to talk to you when you had a problem. Not anymore. The best you can get is a well trained LLM
> Good for you, Mark! I had a nice chuckle.
Me too! Mark S. Zuckerberg seems to be a relaxed guy with a good sense of humor. Very likeable presentation!
I mean another theory is that those people are misguided and vexatious, and that this correlates with them not actually checking which Mark Zuckerberg they are sending their urgent complaint email to.
I once received a number of hateful mentions and DMs on Twitter because I share my name with a 60 Minutes Australia journalist who was the producer on a story about Conrad Murray (Michael Jackson's personal doctor). People really are that stupid.
I worked with a guy that shares the name with the Norwegian mass murderer who targeted children at a youth camp. I think had some pretty though years, but never changed his name.
How do Chinese people deal with name conflicts?
If I wanna check the internet for someone, I find it impossible because for a lot of names there's at least thousands of people with the same exact full name. It must give both a feeling of safety but also frustration if you may want to stand out.
> How do Chinese people deal with name conflicts?
In a big company, there are often many people with the same name. some companies may add a numeric suffix to their name like abc1, abc2, abc3.
We usually don't use our real names for social media accounts
From what I can tell, official documents rely on ID numbers, and for the social side, people can just come up with informal more unique names. But I'm not an expert.
India is an interesting subject with so many Kumars and Prasads. They probably don't try to stand out with their name brand.
In Korea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_(Korean_surname)#Clans
This is pure awesomeness. It made my day.
He should be glad to be a lawyer, otherwise he might have spent so much money dealing with the name lol
This website looks a lot like the one of Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad.
Similar case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motors_v._Nissan_Comput...
Close approximation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_v._MikeRoweSoft (this was not Mike from "Dirty Jobs" but a different person)
Yeah, but in this case MikeRoweSoft.com redirects to microsoft.com after the settlement. Uzi Nissan was able to keep his domain to this day, even after his death in 2020.
Man, litigating versus a 12 year old boy has got to be the easiest job in the business - "Will you settle for an Xbox and a bundle of games?"
Huh, having checked the wikipedia link (the kid was 17 not 12), that's exactly what happened!
12th grade, not 12 years old.
A more hilarious example: https://korrespondent.net/strange/522473-belorus-soobshchivs... ( translated: https://korrespondent-net.translate.goog/strange/522473-belo... ).
In the south of Italy where families were very close to each others, children abundant, and passing the name of grandparents to first and second borns was expected people ended up with tons of namesakes. I have 6 people in my direct family who all share same name and last name.
Some names are problematic, like this one. Some others are lucky [1] (I know it's a joke)
[1] https://ifunny.co/picture/go-gle-most-popular-actor-in-video...
Even with people that are not famous it can be difficult. My wife knows three people with the same name. So when I ask with whom are you going out she needs to add the city to make me understand.
Part of why in many times, ‘of x’ was a common ‘surname’. Also, profession - basically ‘Bob the Smith’, ‘John the Baker’, etc.
A lot of places (India, Brazil) still use one of your parents on official documents to disambiguate (Bob Smith, son of John Smith from Smithville).
Mark Zuckerberg may soon sue Mark Zuckerberg about name issues.
I most assuredly would not want to be Mark Zuckerberg. That name is not inspiring to most people. (Also, by the way, because Zuckerberg is perfectly fine german: Zucker = Sugar, Berg = Mountain, so a mountain of sugar. That's not good for your health either, in particular your teeth.)
The Facebook founder's father was a dentist, which is pretty funny given the name.
already did https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yk810pgkko
I wonder if he’s ever had anything positive happen because of it. That list looks like a PITA :)
I share the same name with a local TV star in my country. Even that is a PITA. Can’t imagine being named Mark Zuckerberg or Michael Jackson or anything like that.
At some point there were teenager girls calling me (no idea how they got the phone number). I started acting like they called the right person and there would be happy screams on the other hand. I guess the high point was that. I decided that might not be a good idea though. Would definitely continue if my “fans” were middle aged men.
Michael Jackson is a fairly common name though, I went to school with one. Also with a George Washington, he had a harder time...
Michael (A.) Jackson is the inventor of representing programs in this diagram format: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_structured_programming
It used to be that whenever I told people about his work, they'd ask if that was the beer guy.
The "rich" Mark Zuckerburg should give him some compensation for the hassle.
That would be right thing to do.
He should at the very least ensure that there was some kind of liaison person at Meta for these not quite as rich (and certainly less obnoxious) Mark Zuckerbergs to reach in case of trouble with his service. This lawyer Mark should just have his account flagged with a huge 'Vetted, this guy is called that; leave it.' notice for any Meta algorithm or employee looking into it.
No. The individuals genuinely at fault here are
1) those who inflict harm on others, considering that being wealthy or disliked does not justify actions such as death threats
2) those who target the wrong person simply due to a shared name.
Any discussion of compensation should be directed at them.
> 2) those who target the wrong person simply due to a shared name.
In this case that includes the other Zuck's company. He should at least do something about that.
Answer the question: What would an asshole do? They would buy up their neighbors' houses to make an unapproved mega compound, buy up ancestral Hawaiian land to block communal land access, and do unlicensed shit without permits making their remaining neighbors miserable. So what is right by virtue is unlikely to happen because almost all billionaires are legitimized criminal aristocrats subject to a different set of rules than average or poor people who are killed in the street for selling loose cigarettes like Eric Garner.
Okay
On the "fake name" thing:
I felt guilty reading it, as in many past companies "Mark Zuckerberg" (and Bill Gates, and Tim Apple, Elon Musk etc) was indeed often used as a placeholder for test accounts and test data, and it never crossed my mind that we were basically training ourself to also treat a "Mark Zuckerberg" on our service as an account that escaped the sandbox or some other attack on the service.
Hopefully there aren't too many people with the name "First Last" running around.
It was tricky to use too literal names, as they're basically the placeholders in the input forms for instance, or the translations keys.
To defend a bit the choice for somewhat realistic names, there is a gestalt decomposition where you're looking through "First name" first names for hundreds of lines. Same for Lorum ipsums, designers' reaction are completely different when the page looks somewhat realistic and isn't just a blatant test.
Lol, it's Tim Cook, Mr. President.
Tim Apple is an awesome mnemonic
It was kinda funny from across the pond, the first time around. Putin horse riding topless was also a funny meme.
Looking back at that period is depressing af.
Lol, this reminds me of a funny story. I had a lawyer whose name was Jim Halpert. Turns out he was the very Jim who was inspired his namesake on the office. Asked him about it once. His reply? "Hey, it's been great for getting clients." =)
He was also very much like Jim on the show. Fun times.
i went to his professional website https://zucklaw.com/ and ironically the accessibility features there are largely inaccessible
The best bit:
>Like I said, I don't wish Mark E. Zuckerberg any ill will at all. I hope the best for him, but let me tell you this: I will rule the search for "Mark Zuckerberg bankruptcy". And if he does fall upon difficult financial times, and happens to be in Indiana, I will gladly handle his case in honor of our eponymy.
According to the Algorithm Lords of my particular filter bubble, he does indeed rule the search results for "Mark Zuckerberg bankruptcy".
ctrl+u this ... there's some nice parts commented out
That lost bit of sample HTML below the body is cute too:
It gives the site an artisanal feel.Sometimes your life would be easier if you just changed your name.
"Why should I? He's the one who sucks"
It's unjust.
Sure, but if tomorrow some dude with the same name as me decides to go on a killing spree, or sexually assault a toddler, I'd change my name. Just or unjust.
I'd have to change my email domain too though, so that would suck, but at least I could put up a website there explaining my new name and that I am not the now world famous terrorist who shot up a kindergarden/fondled the pope/ate a baby.
Having the same name as a famous person seems like a decent marketing benefit. And funnily enough, that’s achievable with some paperwork in many areas of the world! I wonder how/if this interacts with trademark (or other?) law. Can I change my name to Sundar Pichai? If so, then why haven’t a bunch of techbro founders done that already?
Easy living. Go try to register company, open a bank and then send few payments if your name is "Vladimir Putin".
any sanctioned individual. Some of their names are super common. Sorry Ivan Ivanov, you are on the list, no bank account for you. based by a true story.
(meanwhile the sanctioned Ivan is chilling on his yacht with 3 passports and 5 golden visas)
poor bastard he cops all the flack
Michael Bolton: https://youtu.be/WjZKVKxZcAo
He could easily use his middle name or go by Marcus. Just saying...sounds terrible having to deal with all the insanity.
I wouldn't want to humiliate myself by letting The Zuck prevent me from using my own name
Why should I change my name? He's the one that sucks.
it is pretty funny
Mostly
"I routinely receive death threats and harassment on the Messenger app directed to the "other" Mark Zuckerberg"