On 11/10/19 1:21 AM, Gary R. Schmidt wrote: > On 10/11/2019 13:44, Doug wrote: >> Au Contraire, Jens! In many local contexts you can normalize people's >> names. I was born in Kansas, USA. My parents filled out a birth >> certificate for me. It had a place on the form for first name, middle >> name, last name, and a suffix like II or III. >> >> That birth certificate form determined that everyone born in Kansas >> (at that time), had a first, middle, and last name. There was no >> discussion of the matter. That's the way it was. The form led the >> way; people never thought about whether it was effective or not. Each >> newly-born child was given a first, middle, and last name. >> >> Effective was irrelevant for that system. There was no option, no >> alternative. It simply was. >> >> All systems are like that at each moment in time. They are what they >> are at any moment in time, and they force the users to behave the way >> the system wants them to behave. If you want to change the system and >> momentum is on your side, then immediately you have a new system - at >> that moment in time. It is composed of the old system and the momentum. >> >> Back to names: just like the birth certificate, a system which >> assigns a name to you, actually coerces you to have that name, >> because within that system, you exist as that name. The "names" >> article is totally wrong when it says that each assumption is wrong. >> Each of those assumptions is correct, and I can find at least one >> system which makes each one correct. Within each system, the >> assumption works, and is valid. >> >> My two cents... > Is not worth the paper it is written on! > > So what happens when someone from a family who only uses first- and > last-names moves to Kansas? > > Do they have to make up a middle-name so that he idiots can fill out > the forms? > > Well, in the case of the US Navy back in the late 1980's, when a > friend of mine from here in Australia, who only has a first and > last-name married a USN pilot and moved to the USA, she was told that, > "Yes, you have a middle name." No amount of arguing, or producing of > official documents, (well, it's the USA, most people there don't know > what a passport is), could prevail. In the end she conceded defeat > and became <Jane> Doe <Smith>, for the duration. > > Names are impossible, unless you use a free-form, infinite-length > field, you won't be safe, and even then, someone with turn up whose > name is 'n' recurring to an infinite number of characters or something! > > Cheers, > Gary B-) Actually, 'The Artist whose name formerly was Prince' (which wasn't his name, his legal name was an unpronounceable pictograph), breaks every computer system I know.
-- Richard Damon _______________________________________________ sqlite-users mailing list sqlite-users@mailinglists.sqlite.org http://mailinglists.sqlite.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sqlite-users
