2 ms·

How does "model, make and serial number" translate to humans? (No racist intentions here, but you bring up both points and I thought that to be interesting)

• godelski 1y ago
  Johnson Smith The son of John who is a smith I'm only joking a little. Funny thing, surnames aren't actually that old for Europeans. Most of history there'd be maybe two people with the same name. They solved it back then very much the same way we solve it now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Occupational_surnames https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Occupational_surnames https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronymic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronymic
  • pjc50 1y ago
    Even worse in other languages. The three surnames Kim, Lee, and Park cover about 50% of Koreans.
    • godelski 1y ago
      You should see Vietnamese! It's decreasing, but it used to be ~40%! Now it's closer to 30[0]. And don't forget that there's Lee[1], Lee[2], Lee[3], Lee[4], and Lee[5]! Which are all different [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_name [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_(English_surname) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_(English_surname) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BD_(Vietnamese_surname) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BD_(Vietnamese_surname) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_(Korean_surname) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_(Korean_surname) [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_(surname_%E6%9D%8E) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_(surname_%E6%9D%8E) [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_(surname_%E5%88%A9) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_(surname_%E5%88%A9)
      • sandbach 1y ago
        Besides the two you mention, there are ten other Chinese surnames that could be anglicized as Lee, namely 力, 勵, 厲, 栗, 澧, 禮, 立, 酈, 離, and 黎.
  • fho 1y ago
    To be fair, that's probably still "good enough" these days. "Abel Davidson Carpenter of Helsinki born in the year 2020" is probably good enough an identifier. Obviously has some issues, but it's interesting to see that this "ancient" scheme would still hold up these days.
    • lesostep 1y ago
      Funnily enough, my "full id" (full name, city, profession plus year) isn't unique to me unless you add a date of birth. Maybe it's not unique with a date of birth either, but statistically it should be. It's a regional thing, but roughly translates to "John Smith, programmer from NY, born 1995"
• sixdimensional 1y ago
  Make = who made the thing Model = what is the type of the thing Serial Number = was supposed to be what order the things were made in (e.g. the number of the serial order), but this is often obfuscated or often repeats [1]. In cars, make would be like Ford. Model would be like Focus, serial number would be VIN (vehicle identification number - in cars, those are generally unique!). Ford Focus + VIN, basically. There is a theoretical concept of a unique identifier for everything... including people from ISO under ISO 8000.. combining a natural location identifier (eNLI)[2] and an ISO8601 timestamp - to represent "where and when a thing is considered to be born" - a point in time and space the thing is considered to come into existence. I think the idea is called "natural person identifier" for humans. This ID has to be assigned but I think you can see the idea at least. I suppose this doesn't include make/manufacturer but realistically that isn't needed for uniqueness in this scheme, only as descriptive metadata for things that have one. [1] This is related to the fact that if serial numbers were truly serial, one could estimate the rate and quantity of production which is considered sensitive information by most manufacturers. This relates to "the German tank problem" - during WWII the allies were able to accurately estimate the production of German tanks by analyzing the serial numbers off captured tanks. [2] https://eccma.org/enli-eccma-natural-location-identifier/ https://eccma.org/enli-eccma-natural-location-identifier/
  • pyuser583 1y ago
    What does the standard say for folks whose date of birth is unknown? I’ve heard of immigrant heavy areas that have lots of people born on January 1.
• whs 1y ago
  Gender, Father and order of birth Like Mary, first daughter of Henry VIII