Re: ISO 3166 (country codes) Maintenance Agency Web pages move

From: John Cowan (jcowan@reutershealth.com)
Date: Wed Feb 27 2002 - 14:42:55 EST


Peter_Constable@sil.org wrote:

> There is a point of view that says that *all* such identifiers (for
> countries, languages, etc.) should just be randomly generated strings for
> the kind of reasons mentioned. (Not that I'm arguing for that.)

It is often suggested that meaningless identifiers are more stable
than Real World names. I would point out that while no meaningless
identifier has been in use for as much as two centuries, the
name "Roma" (of the city, not the people) has had a stable
referent for the last 2755 years.

-- 
John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_



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