Comments on: Don’t ever…

By: David Singer

David Singer — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:02:56 +0000

I’m pretty sure that street addresses don’t collide between Monte Sereno and Los Gatos — since the two are served by the same police department, I’d think any collisions would have been sorted out in the interest of public safety.

By: jtam

jtam — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:12:56 +0000

same with credit cards. there is no reason to choose mastercard or visa since their numbers map uniquely.

@darren: 90210 – ROTFLMAO

By: Diego

Diego — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:04:43 +0000

Actually, even the 9 digit info is not precise (at least in Brazil). Sometimes it points to an “aggregation” point (a city in which all mail gets sorted before reaching its final destination), even if the number is unique for a specific city. Those aggregations are used for optimizing delivery.

I would recomend though that the page automatically _suggest_ your location based on your postal code.

By: fjania

fjania — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:15:55 +0000

Interesting point David. According to usps.gov, 95030 maps to Los Gatos as the “actual name”, and they list Monte Sereno as an “acceptable alternative”. So I wonder if there are any any colliding addresses in 95030. I would assume not and that city name wouldn’t further disambiguate.

By: David Singer

David Singer — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 04:27:54 +0000

Actually, 5-digit-ZIP-to-city is NOT a unique mapping. 95030 maps to both Los Gatos and Monte Sereno (in California).

Nine-digit ZIPs do uniquely map to cities, but most people don’t know their 9-digit ZIP.

By: Darren

Darren — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:29:13 +0000

Do you know what’s worse? Those credit card petrol pumps that make you put your zip code in. Fine if your credit card belongs to a US address, not so fine if your post code doesn’t and worse has letters in it. Having said that, if you put 90210 in (the only valid zip code I know), it still works 50% of the time.