Any minute now, a Martian rover's camera will come across a curious shell shape, and we're going to be in a complete naming crisis.
Stop the Latin/Greek insanity while there's still time with ETML, the new internationally recognized XML standard for naming extraterrestrial biologicals. The standard must be sufficiently robust to support terrestrial species in the event that the panspermia theory is proven by DNA comparisons-- theircompetitor, Feb 04 2004 Taxonomy UML http://wwbota.free.fr/UML_diagrams.htmAt least half baked, at least for our planet. (near the bottom are examples of the XML incarnation of this) [Worldgineer, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] To quote Luke Skywalker, "almost there" http://www.usatoday...-mars-mission_x.htm [theircompetitor, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] o/t? I think the US thingy on Mars has beaten the crap out of the British thingy cos ours was better!-- po, Feb 04 2004 Yeah, I agree with [po]. Just what did you do to our lander? No wonder you sent _two_ of your own up at the same time...tsk.-- silverstormer, Feb 04 2004 ok silver, mail me - we'll plot our revenge!
we have the technology...-- po, Feb 04 2004 (psst, [po], I think you lost your technology somewhere on the red planet)-- Worldgineer, Feb 04 2004 don't give me that crap! you messed with our equipment, own up!-- po, Feb 04 2004 Yeah, it was me. Sorry about that, I just needed parts for the prototype for my Exploding Infant Seat idea.-- Worldgineer, Feb 04 2004 How naive. The Martians obviously destroyed the other probes. We must end the expansionist oppression of the Martian people!-- monkeywidget, Feb 04 2004 jutta: thanks for addressing the original post, which is obviously meant to be cute, and you are of course correct in that XML in it of itself does not address the problem.
I do think that classifying into a hierarchical structure (cows are mammals, etc) as Wordnet does is more useful at this point then the scientifically popular naming convention, which often obscures this hierarchy and is pointless outside scientific circles as it is unknown to most people.-- theircompetitor, Feb 04 2004 I did a quick search and didn't see anything -- has anyone attempted to name the "martian microbes" that may or may not have been located in that meteorite?
jutta: don't object to the category. As far as humans, I believe that we conciously categorize all the time, but subconciously we just count similar attributes and associations (i.e. not hierarchicaaly).
I'm working on proving it.-- theircompetitor, Feb 04 2004 Forget about naming lifeforms - at the rate JPL names rocks on Mars, we'll need some sort of robust categorization system. Barnacle Bill, Yogi, the Dice... now with such classics as Adirondack and Cake added to the list.-- waugsqueke, Feb 04 2004 random, halfbakery