Generating random text can generate all sorts of strings...

[pne]

Risks of /pseudo-?/random alphanumeric generation (from Volume 23, Issue 6 of The RISKS Digest)

<Joe Thompson <kensey@gmail.com>>
Thu, 6 Jan 2005 13:50:16 -0500

The Cabbage Patch doll, known to legions of kids from the 80s on, comes with "adoption paperwork" including a unique, randomly-generated serial number. However, apparently the company's random number generator was, from a certain point of view, a little too random:

Girl Gets Cabbage Patch Doll With Obscene Message
http://www.10news.com/news/4050756/detail.html

Apparently, purely by chance -- or so the company insists, at any rate -- one serial number included a six-letter string commonly considered obscene, especially so in the context of children's toys. The slide show on the linked new story page has a shot of the string in question (with the first letter helpfully covered up to avoid further offense). That it was given as a Christmas gift seems particularly unfortunate.

Many are the tales of large computer systems where user account names are fully or partially randomized to avoid embarrassing formations from pieces of names or other data. Even in such cases, some basic filtering is needed; in fact given the audience for the product I'm surprised no one at Play-Along has realized this in twenty years. People easily forget that 0000, 1111, 2222, etc. are as random as any other four-digit string in certain contexts.

...and yes, that six-letter string is extremely unfortunate for a child's toy.

Comments

[marikochan.livejournal.com]

I must be really slow -- I can't figure out what the string is. (Unless it's a repetition of a shorter string or it spells out a word -- but even there I'm not positive!)

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

Look closely: http://images.ibsys.com/2005/0105/4050743.jpg

They've covered up the First letter in the string: _UCKME.

[marikochan.livejournal.com]

Aha! Thank you. For some reason I was thinking it was a string of six numbers.

[lexabear.livejournal.com]

Hello!

After seeing you on about half the communities I follow, I finally got around to reading your journal and am friending you! (Really, I saw your comments everywhere! It was getting ridiculous how many times I went, "Oh, that guy!")

[pne.livejournal.com]

Hi there, and welcome to my journal! So I'm everywhere, eh? :)

[lexabear.livejournal.com]

Everywhere! The last straw was seeing your comment on today's Dilbert. I figured that now I just had to read your journal.

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

Bets on how long it takes them to sue for "mental distress" or somesuch nonsense?