RE: [huml-comment] PC-33 -Section 4.4.6-race: valid HUMAN

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

At 2:54 PM -0800 11/29/02, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
>Notes below.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Rex Brooks [mailto:rexb@starbourne.com]
>Sent: Friday, November 29, 2002 09:46
>To: dennis.hamilton@acm.org; humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
>Cc: Rex Brooks
>Subject: RE: [huml-comment] PC-33 -Section 4.4.6-race
>
>
>At 8:46 AM -0800 11/29/02, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
>
>[ ... ]
>
>><ORCNOTE OK, but it bothers me that there is even the notion of "valid
>>HUMAN" here.  What can that possibly mean? The very phrase suggests some
>>position (e.g., criteria, expressed or not).  More to the point, collapsing
>>characteristics of a person or HUMAN with human-authorized and with
>>non-human "characters" that somehow present human attributes strikes me as
>a
>>universalization that is not likely to enhance fidelity in communication.
>>/>

I probably shouldn't try to answer this after an unpleasant afternoon 
of wrestling with plumbing problems, but I think the biggest problem 
here is that we(I) haven't adequaately explained what the primary 
base schema is intended to be. It is the base on which more fully 
detailed descriptions of individuals, instances of the element 
"Human," can be built. You seem to think of our terms as end-points 
rather than start-points, so it appears that we have collapsed the 
broad array of various human characteristics when in fact we have not 
even begun to build that collection of characteristics. So, of 
course, we can not enhance the fidelity of communication very much 
with this initial vocabulary. As you have pointed out, the scope is 
very large, so we have to start with the most manageable portions we 
can separate out.

>For us it just means self-assertion, or
>authentication/authorization/certification if the entity asserting
>its identity as human in an application that uses HumanML chooses to
>cite that identity.
>
><ORCNOTE> Say what? </ORCNOTE>

I'm too tired and cranky to do this adequately right now. I will try 
to get back to it.



>In the context of my statement above, it means commonsensically valid
>in the sense of an actual living human computer user who chooses not
>to use any identity verification and may also choose not to offer any
>information other than asserting that the person is human, but is
>demonstrably human, or a software agent authorized by such an person
>to act as an agent of that person. It was not meant to be formally
>testable qualification, but it could be. We are actually trying to
>avoid that whole issue.
>
><ORCNOTE hml:gesture="shrug" hml:expression="bafflement"
>hml:emoticon="(?;<)"> That reminds me, the last time I followed the use-case
>link, it failed to find any document.  Help me out here.  I have no idea
>what the context is here or what this means and why it requires Human
>Markup. </ORCNOTE>


I will have to fix the use-case link--I didn't do this one, and I 
also did not delete it when I deleted a bunch of unused files. Right 
now I can 't find the file it refers to. I will let you know when it 
is available. there is more material on the old Yahoo site, the link 
for which does work.

>[ ... ]
>
>>Ciao,
>>Rex
>>
>>
>>--
>I look forward to hearing more from you. I will respond as I can.
<snip>
Sorry I'm just not up to searching for stuff nor attempting to make 
sense right now. I'm a morning person and I have a pile of things 
that didn't get done today because I was playing plumber.

Ciao,
Rex
-- 
Rex Brooks
Starbourne Communications Design
1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA 94702 *510-849-2309
http://www.starbourne.com * rexb@starbourne.com