Anyone who says "people have names" is a wrong assumption can be safely dismissed as a crank.
A newborn baby needs to be entered into a hospital information system, obviously they are assigned a name at birth, right?
There are further examples of why you shouldn't require people to have names, for instance a police information system should take into account the possibility that the person entered into it is unable or unwilling to give a name (note: entering "John Doe" is a *very* poor workaround). I work with Personal Identifiable Information from all over the world and not only do I agree with th
I am not sure what hospitals near you do, but the ones around here usually put "Baby Boy ", or something similar, for newborns.
It's one thing to note that there are edge cases, like the kind of people who aren't going to use a computer system, or when they are newborn. But the overwhelming majority of people have names -- most of them include spaces, even -- and prefer to be addressed by name rather than by some arbitrarily assigned number. "I am not a number, I am a person!"
I am not sure what hospitals near you do, but the ones around here usually put "Baby Boy ", or something similar, for newborns.
And yet "Baby Boy something-or-other" is not usually considered a name (neither de facto nor de jure), it is a placeholder. That is one of the things missing from the list, "names are always names".
the overwhelming majority of people have names -- most of them include spaces, even
And that is exactly the point of the list, while any of those assumptions are true for some subset of people, you shouldn't assume they hold for all people (not to mention the fact that a space in a name can mean several things, e.g. a name field separator (between, say, first name and last name), a name part sep
My personal recommendation is that in information systems you avoid dealing with names where possible, always use IDs except for informational purposes, such as display names.
I believe that this is the conclusion that Microsoft came to (eventually), leading to the widespread use of Security Identifiers instead of names. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Identifier [wikipedia.org]. It makes imminent sense. If nothing else, some people change names when they get married. Others do it for a variety of other reasons. Separating the messiness of human naming from the technical aspects of identity seems to be a good thing to do for a lot of reasons. Different cultural naming convention
If nothing else, some people change names when they get married.
Do people change their names if their parents get married where you live? Or, if children are responsible for looking after their parents in their old age, do the parents have to change their names when their children get married?
I am not sure what hospitals near you do, but the ones around here usually put "Baby Boy ", or something similar, for newborns.
So, they have 4 or 5 classifications - anatomical male, anatomical female, anatomically indeterminate (which would normally be about 1% of births), parental non-specified (a significant number of parents want the child themselves to find out what their gender is - say, another percent or so) and "other" (which would probably need to be free-form).
Your assumptions about what is "rig
We were so poor we couldn't afford a watchdog. If we heard a noise at night,
we'd bark ourselves.
-- Crazy Jimmy
This has never been more obligatory (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone who says "people have names" is a wrong assumption can be safely dismissed as a crank.
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone who says "people have names" is a wrong assumption can be safely dismissed as a crank.
A newborn baby needs to be entered into a hospital information system, obviously they are assigned a name at birth, right? There are further examples of why you shouldn't require people to have names, for instance a police information system should take into account the possibility that the person entered into it is unable or unwilling to give a name (note: entering "John Doe" is a *very* poor workaround). I work with Personal Identifiable Information from all over the world and not only do I agree with th
Re:This has never been more obligatory (Score:2)
I am not sure what hospitals near you do, but the ones around here usually put "Baby Boy ", or something similar, for newborns.
It's one thing to note that there are edge cases, like the kind of people who aren't going to use a computer system, or when they are newborn. But the overwhelming majority of people have names -- most of them include spaces, even -- and prefer to be addressed by name rather than by some arbitrarily assigned number. "I am not a number, I am a person!"
Re: (Score:1)
I am not sure what hospitals near you do, but the ones around here usually put "Baby Boy ", or something similar, for newborns.
And yet "Baby Boy something-or-other" is not usually considered a name (neither de facto nor de jure), it is a placeholder. That is one of the things missing from the list, "names are always names".
the overwhelming majority of people have names -- most of them include spaces, even
And that is exactly the point of the list, while any of those assumptions are true for some subset of people, you shouldn't assume they hold for all people (not to mention the fact that a space in a name can mean several things, e.g. a name field separator (between, say, first name and last name), a name part sep
Re: (Score:2)
My personal recommendation is that in information systems you avoid dealing with names where possible, always use IDs except for informational purposes, such as display names.
I believe that this is the conclusion that Microsoft came to (eventually), leading to the widespread use of Security Identifiers instead of names. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Identifier [wikipedia.org]. It makes imminent sense. If nothing else, some people change names when they get married. Others do it for a variety of other reasons. Separating the messiness of human naming from the technical aspects of identity seems to be a good thing to do for a lot of reasons. Different cultural naming convention
Re: (Score:2)
Do people change their names if their parents get married where you live? Or, if children are responsible for looking after their parents in their old age, do the parents have to change their names when their children get married?
Re: (Score:2)
So, they have 4 or 5 classifications - anatomical male, anatomical female, anatomically indeterminate (which would normally be about 1% of births), parental non-specified (a significant number of parents want the child themselves to find out what their gender is - say, another percent or so) and "other" (which would probably need to be free-form).
Your assumptions about what is "rig