[ale] programming question

[kilpatms at gmail.com (Sean Kilpatrick)]

I know nothing of modern languages; I stopped learning  how to program
at Cobol, Algol, and Fortran.
But I have a question spinning off this serial number: F9IANU000217.

Given that only a few lines of code should be necessary to create serial
numbers, how much more code would be needed to exclude upper case "I"
and "O"?

This is the first time I have ever seen an upper case "I" used in a
serial number.  The type face used for this serial number made it
difficult to see that the third character was an "I" and not a "1".
I have seen an upper case "O" used however, and that is even more
stupid.

For the record, the serial number above identifies an electronic device
manufactured by a well-known company.  It didn't work out of the box,
and after an hour with tech support I was told to return it as
defective.

Which I will do.

Sean