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Human Markup Language
emc3 writes: "This article at InternetNews says that OASIS, the XML interoperability consortium, has announced the formation of a committee to develop Human Markup Language, 'to promote a specification for conveying human characteristics through XML.' The idea is to codify psychological, emotive, cultural, and physical characteristics in a standardized way. They say that the most obvious application would be for describing phsyical characteristics and actions in virtual reality environments. Other real-world uses could include describing a patient's psychological state for medical records. The OASIS press release is here. No more :-/ for me. From now on, it's <smirk>!"
Great, now we can all be cataloged with a unique ID and all of those wonderful spy cams can have an even easier time keeping track of us. Why does it suck so much to be alive?
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 -- Mathematics is the Language of Nature.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This seems like a whole lot of fluff, a romantic idea that will just end up being emotes in tags, and pretty lame.
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
Shouldn't that be ?
We will have a tag for :)
Maybe now we'll finally get that long sought after tag...
.sdrawkcab si gis siht
The idea is to codify psychological, emotive, cultural, and physical characteristics in a standardized way. They say that the most obvious application would be for describing phsyical characteristics and actions in virtual reality environments.
So, since describing physical characteristics is the most obvious application (not to mention probably the easiest), we say "physical" last and throw in "psychological, emotive, cultural" in front of it, just so everybody wonders what this is all about.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Although perhaps that should now be <grin />...
--
We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
<name = "Anonymous Coward">
<weight = 1e30>
<height = 1e30>
</hml>
The codification of laws was a great advance for humankind.
The codification of of humankind offers no such benefit.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
wookin' pa nub in all the wrong pwaces
I can see it now. They will come out with a few feel good gestures and then the offensive gestures will contaminate the net. Can you imagine chat programs with these things?
human markup language will be used in the implanted biochip , mark my words
Quake/UT/HL bots work fine all by themselves without markups...and some of them are reasonably intelligent (for game bots that is). How is some kind of markup language going to describe the complex interactions or persona that actually makes up an individual??
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
You mean that I may get the tag ? And if so, what's the emoticon for it? ;-)
Karma whorin' since 1999
Check out that hot babe
Fabulous, now all those internet pedophiles can lie about themselves easier! "Sure baby, gigantic....
-enigmabomb-
Some people tell me I am sleeping my life away, I simply tell them I am living my dreams.
It is important to understand that OASIS is more of a standards body framework than an ordinary standards body. In other words, any OASIS member can decide to start an OASIS group on any idea, no matter how strange it may seem and no other OASIS member may prevent that. Few OASIS resources are used per group so the only real cost is in keeping tabs on all of the groups that are created.
Other real-world uses could include describing a patient's psychological state for medical records.
uhmmm..
<phobias>cats; 2010 a.d.</phobias>
It's called a .jpg. Maybe you've heard of them?
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
It would be interesting to do this 'moderation' thing some time. I had hoped that the new SlashCode would accidentally give me moderation points every now and then, but gee, even though my 'karma' now is at 35, I've yet to see any moderation points. I'd email CmdrTaco... oh wait, I *have* emailed CmdrTaco, but he never replied, silly me.
In a sense this is like the problem of medical informatics and the electronic patient record... how do you organize data about a person so that is private and accessible, and captures all of the important facts about a person.... I can see where this project would have a lot to learn from the effort to create an electronic medical record, and vice versa.
for stuff about that....
http://www.healthcare-informatics.com/index.htm
I can think of no better use for such a technology than immortalizing the honorable visage of Mr. Gary Oatse in a universal data format. I weep when I think that even after I am long departed, my people will be able to gaze upon Gary's tribute to eternal horror, squeal "Ewww!" and close their HML browsers before their coworkers notice.
--
I like to watch.
a link from /. to submit me to a big ugly Microsoft XP ad. For shame...
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
<EMOTIONAL>
<A LITTLE DRUNK>
<PRETTY STONED>
<DANGEROUSLYCRANKY>
<SARCASM>
<SNEER>
This isajoke,isn'tit?
</SNEER>
</SARCASM>
</DANGEROUSLYCRANKY>
<SUDDENLYCURIOUS>
Whydon'tLiam & Noel Gallagherlookaftertheirown emotionsbeforeworryingabout anyoneelse?
</SUDDENLYCURIOUS>
</PRETTYSTONED>
</A LITTLEDRUNK>
</EMOTIONAL>
<TIRED>
Get the Hell off my planet, you slimy mobster Bush!
My point is, aren't projects like these the sort of thing XML was made for?
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Sorry, have to read more closely next time.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
This sounds just a little bit like the geekcode, although more buzzword compliant.
And yes, I really wanted to post a link, but it seems that the geekcode site is missing.
me and my friend were actually just having a conversation over icq in psuedo-xml. we need to make sure that the tags are quite flexible (ie or )
:-] vers :-) crap hehe.
Oh well. now people will be able to display their emotion icons how ever they want, no more of this silly
--onyx--
They can start by putting everything under [gay]
Great, I can just imagine the guys now:
"Cor, 'ave a look at the HumanML on that one! I bet she validates as well-formed, eh? Eh? *nudgenudge* I wouldn't mind parsing 'er markup, nah wot I mean?"
Think of Shakespeare! He had way less words to work with than we do now, yet no amount of human markup language can hold a candle to the richness of content presented in his tragedies.
I shudder to think of how the graduating class of every subsequent year is more illiterate than the one before it.
this sounds like it's going to run into some problems. as far as politically correct langauage is concerned, it's going to be hard to come up with a DTD that doesn't offend a particular minority... are we going to have short or fat tags? do we skirt the issue by leaving those out (and making the standard less descriptive)?
Just raise the taxes on crack.
slashdot favorite animal
where's the research into really necessary new XML markup languages:
SBML (standards body markup language)
FDBML (front door bell markup language)
MSML (markup submission markup language)
PML (penis markup language)? (oh, wait, that's slashdot)
WOTPDML (waste of tax-payers dollars markup language)
I was hoping the one upside to a crappy economy would be the death of all this useless academic research into (ab)uses of XML.
What an utterly naïve proposal. These people must surely have spent a little too much time between tags.
The act of expression is *designed* to be primed with meaning and inference. If you want to distinctly express a feeling, emotion or cultural concern, how you go about it is just as important as the idea itself as far as communication is concerned.
If you choose to mark up your meaning using this non-sensical and fundamentally worthless tag system, you are declaring nothing save that you have a mark-up hammer and your ignorance of the world is your nail.
'He speaks four languages and has nothing of value to say in any of them.'
a Human Markup Language would be able to describe are the retards that think XML is an amazing technology.
<physical>
<head>
<face>
<eyes color="hazel"
<nose nostrels="huge"
<skin freckles="few" type="greasy"
<chin type="protruding"
</face>
<hair color="brown"
<hairline position="receding"
</head>
<torso length="175cm">
<clothes cost="minimal>
<pants type="jeans"
<shirt type="button-down" color="white" sleeves="short"
<belt color="brown"
</clothes>
<bellybutton type="innie"
</torso>
</physical>
<emotional>
<intelligence>152</intelligence>
<religion>emacs</religion>
</emotional>
</human>
'He speaks four languages and has nothing of value to say in any of them.'
YOU WANT TO BE FAMOUS AND RICH AND HAPPY
BUT YOU'RE TERRIFIED YOU HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER THIS WORLD
NOTHING TO SAY AND NO WAY TO SAY IT
BUT YOU CAN SAY IT IN THREE LANGUAGES
--kmfdm, Dogma (Nicole Blackman)
You might consider reading the moderator guidelines, which explain in detail how moderators are selected.
LOL!!!1!1!!
You're going to Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison!@@!!1
What do you expect? Slashdot "editors" don't know anything, but they claim to know everything. Remember timothy's commentary on the XP book review? What an incompetent idiot..
-
Level: 57
-
Race: Erudite
-
Reputation: Great. No enemies, and he has not been played in over 4 months.
-
Guild: Disbanded so you can build your own alliances.
-
Gear: Manna Robe (Same effect as mana stone 60 hp for 20 mana 3 sec cast time) Great for a wizard,
Venril Sathir Staff, Eye of Innurrok, Solist Icy Wand, J-boots, Staff of Temperate Flux, Sorcerer's Head, sleeves, pants, and bracer -- and all the extras including resist gear, fishbone earring, and a 10 slot 0% eight bag -- 200 int + 300+ mana gear.
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Skills: Defense is maxed, Swimming is high, Spell skills are all very high except divination which is almost 200
Hurry, only one at this price.When I load up my HML prog, all i get is "ERROR: TAGS ON LINES 2 AND 3 DO NOT MATCH"
Here is my code:
<HML>
<GEEK/>
<GOODLOOKING/>
<SMART/>
</HML>
Can anyone help me???
i think the idea of generalizing human speech sucks. why should we make a standard how people have to speak and so on?
".Sig Stealer" was here
Think of it as stage directions. I can image a number of quite legitimate uses for such a tool.
human-male.dtd
and
human-female.dtd
while the range of emotions is close, the causes of different emotions are - ehm - quite different. i assume they'll be marking up emotions stemming from a previous state of mind..
Stop the brainwash
x:-|
*giggle*
Please use this thread only to respond to my origonal message. I am worried that there may be people attempting to contact me through this bulliten board system that may be getting blocked by some sort of a busy signal.
Thank you.
I think what is more relevant right now than a "human markup language" is a "speech markup language." Just recently we read about at&t's supposed breakthrough (hype) that will lead to artificially generated speech.
Think about that though. How are we going to effectively communicate to the program exactly how we want the voice to sound? What needs to be developed is a speech markup language which takes any and every aspect of speech into account, like tone, volume, inflection. Even if a computer voice sounds perfectly pleasant, it won't sound natural if it doesn't stress the proper words. And sometimes stressing another word isn't necessarily wrong, it just means something else.
funny text
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
XML is, but some will disagree, a static representation format unfit to represent dynamic human motions.
psychological traits vary so much that psychologists can't agree on which is what. a standard representation won't solve this at a blink and be widely accepted.
the actual specs has too much covered under them. characterizing every human trait under one specs is ambitious, but also unrealistic. physical, psychological, motion are very different traits, each should be taken on individually.
< :) > funny text </ :) >
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
<name="Anonymous Coward"
<weight="1e30"
<height="1e30"
</hml>
that's better. aaaaaaaaaaah.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
and funny too
hmm, I'm not too sure about this. what about my beloved smilies? ⌢
<resigned>oh well</resigned>
<face action="puzzled" method="human://savrinor:1337/face.cgi">
<expression type="eyebrow" left="normal" right="raise">
</face>
The second I read this, I had "Geek Code" blinking in big, red, flashy letters in my head.
This thing will be to the Geek Code what XML is to DB file format !
Thomas Miconi
This is absurd. In about 6 months all the XML hype will be proven to be as worthless as the dotcom hype.
...but do the standards boards seem to be kinda out of hand nowdays? I mean, sure. I can see the reason for standards. And, yeah. XML is just the neatest, niftiest, coolest thing to hit the planet since Apple ][e BASIC... But, really, is stuff like this really needed?
;-)
/. <smirk />) Just think, you could categorize your life into tags! Yay!
I'm sure if someone actually had a use for this, they wouldn't want to wade through some standard to implement it. Standards take forever to hash out. VR programmers are likely to want to extend things beyond what the standards are... And you know where that got Microsoft.
Really, what's next? An XML-based markup language that defines life? (And, no, that's not an XML version of
<life>
<years value='2001'>
<months value='8'>
<days value='23'>
<hours value='0'>
<minutes value='48'>
<seconds value='22'>
I thought LML (Life Markup Language)!
</seconds>
<seconds value='25'>
Maybe this is a waste of time...
</seconds>
</minutes>
</hours>
</days>
</months>
</years>
</life>
Sorry to sound cynical or anything... But converting the world into XML is only going to waste everyone's time in the long-run. It's great for what needs it... But, as the saying goes, just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD.
What's a sig?
It constantly surprises me the kind of things people get money to develop, like this piece of shit. The people working on this CAN'T be happy... look at yourselves losers!
Personally, I think this raises severe moral and ethical considerations... for example, is it morally acceptable to write an XSLT sheet to transform one human into a completely different human?
I am on the OASIS Human Markup Language committee, and I find a lot of the comments here quite fascinating. I would very much be interested in hearing what people have to say concerning their concerns about misuse of the standard as well as where people see potential applications that should be considered by the committee. I'll try to pass on as many of these concerns as possible. Kurt Cagle, Co-Author, Professional XSL, Wrox
How can you standardize the conveyance of culture? Huh? For that matter, what's wrong with using regular language to describe someone? I don't see how a computer could usefully apply this info, except for... mmm... blood type and height and stuff.
--hongpong.com
Not to be pedantic, but its actually not just :)
"So there he is, risen from the dead. Like that fella, E. T." - Father Ted Crilly
"...specification for conveying human characteristics through XML" eh? I think they should incorporate this into future transporter technology (a la Star Trek) to cut down on all those crazy transporters "accidents" of the week.
:-\
First "convert" all your crews into well formed HML, then armed with a fully validating HML parser/transporter there is no chance of beaming up those all those shapeshifters, evil twins, etc by mistake all the time
Codeala - Just another mindless drone
Your torso is 172cm? Are you 350cm tall?
Hm, I don't know ... i think almost everybody understands :-) but <smile/>? What about <grins/> (the German word for smile). Isn't this overcomplicating something that works quite well already?
MadEagle
Why the hell is the entirely non-sensical parent modded up? Please don't waste our time by recommending comments that don't make sense b/c the author didn't care enough to get it right the first time (Never mind the extra karma). And by the way, comment 2206763 suffers the same idiotic moderation.
Great, a method for low-bandwidth computer-generated porn -- the .pml file.
shouldn't that be:
(XML requires all tags to be paired correctly)
I guess it is pretty obvious I didn't read the actual story...
<hang_head_in_shame>
Codeala - Just another mindless drone
this is just fuckin intellectual masturbation
One possible application of an HML specification not mentioned is to provide a basis in which to solve the aggregation/disaggregation problem in distributed interactive battlefield training simulations used by the DoD. The problem involves attempting to correlate human group (brigade/batallion) behaviors represented in high-level constructive simulations used to train officers, such as WarSim , with lower-level computer generated forces ( CGF ) applications that represent human behaviors at the level of the individual battlefield entity (infantrymen, tank, aircraft, etc.), such as OneSAF
Of particular interest to many
Have we all lost our creativity. Do we really need to encode everything in XML just for the sake of using a buzzword. This may be useful in text-to-speech translators for the blind, but is anybody going to fill their webpage with this stuff. Is anybody going to type in Ha ha ha into an IM program. No.
:)
XML is a great FILE FORMAT that can be used to exchange hierchical information. Yes, I'm sorry to all the disallusioned out there, XML is ONLY A FILE FORMAT. It's not a programming language. And don't give me the argument that it's "eXtensible Markup LANGUAGE". There's still no "PROGRAMMING" keyword in there.
So unless you're a congressman gunning for re-election and the major issue is accessibility for the disabled, the standard acronyms and emoticons that have been used for about a decade are fine. Hell, even my parents use LOL and
What's this? XML meets the geek code? (real site down)
The concerns I have with this are that most of the tags are either nominalisations, or passive.
A nominalisation is a verb that has been turned into a noun - an example being "I am in a relationship". This is also passive, and as such has cognitively mixed inaccuracies loaded into it.
You can check a nominalisation very simply - is the noun in question something you could carry in a wheelbarrow? If so, no nominalisation. If you can add the descriptor "ongoing" to the noun, as in "an ongoing relationship". Non-nominalisations fail a sense test when this is applied "I am in an ongoing pencil"
When statements such as "Dr Zhivago is a butcher" are made, they represent an opinion of the speaker, with the originating reference deleted. Listener A may take the above statement to mean that Zhivago is a mass murderer, Listener B may believe that Zhivago is a poor medical practioner, and the original meaning of the content may have been that Zhivago owns a butcher's shop.
Labels such as Tired, Lazy, Angry, Fearful, Happy, are all at least level removed from the exact physiological experience. In order to communicate effectively and to eliminate misunderstanding we need to communicate at a level which elicitates exactly the things that we see, hear and feel in the person we are communicating with.
In order to communicate really well, it is essential that we meet the other person in their model of the world - to do that, we can check the response we are getting to our communication - this gives us the received meaning of our communication. If the response you are getting isn't working, do *anything* else. Doing the same thing but louder/sadder/angrier/brighter will give you more of what you've already got.
If we are talking about the vision of a Human Markup Language, how will we know that the labels that we have chosen out of the rich variety of human experience will effectively match in our target communicatee the thoughts, feelings and expressions we wished to elicit?
Thinking alters Thinking.
I thought tattoos were human markup language.
This link provides the draft version and an actual Human-XML word processor for Windows machines:
http://www.humanmarkup.org/work/index_work.asp
ripping off memepool. Oh well, at least I felt a little guilty even if I didn't credit my source either.
DataSquid.net, a little about me.
The MPEG4 design includes the ability to convey facial descriptors (FAPs) that can be used to render facial experessions.
m l
/. text entry box...There shouldn't be a space between the 'm' and 'l'.)
You can see an abstract at: http://www.mpeg4.engr.scu.edu/abstracts/ab1301.ht
(The URL seems to be broken because it extends beyond the column width of the
Your monitor is staring at you.
What if porn sites were moving to this ?
<sylvia>
<brain></brain>
<hole>*</hole>
<hole>*</hole>
<hole>*</hole>
</sylvia>
It'd be so boring !
{{.sig}}
This sounds too much like a mechanism that could effectively be used to filter content along racial lines. Hell, anonymity is the great thing about the internet (check my nick). Imagine the sad state of affairs if we could filter the slashdot comments to include only those with the "" tag. Well... that may not change to much right now.
Anonymous
I'm starting to dislike the tech sector more and more because of all the flawed or useless technologies floating around. Not least because clueless leaders buy into them, forcing me to use them.
Sigh.. I'm as much a geek as the next guy, but I feel more and more like just moving out into the wilderness and get away from all the hype and stupidity.
Its like some bizarre movie plot where you'll all die if you stop passing standards and specs.
Look at almost every TR on the W3 site other than XML that starts with X, and you'll find technologies that no one asked for and no one cares about, including your own favorite XSL, which maybe takes the cake as most retarded technology ever devised.
Congrats! you committee-crazy folks are killing XML that same way you killed SGML, with ridiculous over-specification and needless standards. You should all work for the government.
Please respond to this here, I would like to know if you understand how ridiculous people think the XML standards groupies have become.
There's a simple editor on the humanmarkup.org site called HumanML Write. The output is kind of bizarrely interesting, e.g. When I see things like I wonder what the debates about enumeration values will be like.
I've been fascinated for quite awhile now with the concept of putting a person into ROM. How much info do you really need? How unique are we? It's obvious you don't really need a holographic image of a person's entire brain to capture that person's individuality. Most of us are pretty much alike, driven by biological and psychological needs. The difference is mostly in degree. I get hungry, you get real hungry. I like sex, you really, really like sex. Etc. Then there's the case of generic knowledge, which could be pretty much simulated by indexing into a universal database. I know a lot about airships, you know next to nothing about them, but know a lot about TV shows of the sixties. Etc. It's possible that this markup language would allow the average person to be adequately simulated with a couple of hundred pages of markup. At least to a reasonable degree of accuracy. I'm reminded of the mice in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, who wanted to mince up the guy's brain and leave him with a control unit that would shuffle his body from place to place and ask for tea at 4PM daily. In truth, is there much more to most of us than that? :)
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Funny, this type of system was big 100 years ago, came before fingerprints to identify people.
The problem is, we're going to see listings like this:
Hair: Brown
Face: Normal
Ears: Adverage
Eyes: Blue
Marks: Scar on forhead.
That describes me, and about 500000 other people, and that's the why this type of information get's filled out. Vague and useless to provide any kind of ID for a person.
The last thing we need is some technology body reifying poor descriptive models of psychological state and trait.
One of the biggest problems right now in psychology is determining how to accurately describe psychological variation. There really currently isn't any system for describing human psychological variation that is consensually accepted by psychologists. The only exception to this is affective description, where most seem content to admit there are two orthogonal dimensions people can be described by, positivity and negativity, but even that isn't accepted by everyone (some prefer to prefer to describe affect by arousal and valence).
Any attempt to codify anything will probably have to be changed eventually if it's to be used by behavioral professionals. My guess is that the best thing for them to do is to over describe, provide more descriptors than is necessary.
I hope they really talk to experts on behavioral classification before they go forward with this. And I don't mean neuroscientists--I mean clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, personality psychologists, etc., those who specialize in phenotypic description. This could be really useful for a number of groups, but only if they do it right.
Of course, at this point, they can't, cause even the psychologists don't know what's going on. Anything that would be settled on right now would be rejected by huge segments. So maybe the best thing for them to do is to make their own markup language for virtual reality modeling or whatever, and leave the professionals to their own markup language when they're ready.
So what's my point? They're walking into a psychological quagmire. I hope they don't have too many ambitions for it.
This ought to be tied in with H-Anim and X3d.
Otherwise, the will be re-inventing the wheel and conflicting with existing standards.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I initially thought that this was a tremendous waste of time. But I remembered all the misunderstandings which have arisen in email or IM because the words on the screen didn't convey an emotional context. Sarcasm in particular is very tricky. A tag would be a tremendous help.
I'm not sure that anyone would use such a tool for informal communication. It seems like a lot of overhead. But perhaps those developing natural language interfaces could use this to understand the emotional state of the user, and to respond appropriately.
I'm not an actor, but I play one on tv.
Seems to me they just say that it would be nice to have some standard emotional tags, but nothing about how to implement them?
My point is... Ok, fine they want them, but how will they show them in a way that is better than smileys or acronyms? How will they visualize <smile>???
That would be interresting reading.
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
Try
Also, consult with professionals in psychological description (clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, personality psychologists, affective psychologists) on this topic.
I am a graduate student who specializes in psychological description and classification (or tries to at least!), and I can say that at least with regard to certain things, this markup language could be heading into dangerously foggy territory.
As I tried to note in a another post, if you're interested in the ML for virtual reality, whatever, fine. Figure out what those people need, and implement it. I know nothing about such things, but it would probably be useful and feasible.
However, if you're interested in this being something more broadly useful, say for psychological classification of actual human beings, realize that no one really agrees on any system of classification yet. The DSM, one of the most widely used systems for classifying psychopathology, has certain problems that I suspect will lead to changes in the next decade or so; it's a moving target not good for a standard markup language. Affective psychologists have more consensus, but not complete consensus. Personality psychologists don't have much of a consensus, except with regard to a few (but important) things.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that whatever you came up with probably would probably be rejected by much of the psychological community, unless you had them _heavily_ involved. Even if that were the case, however, it would probably still be rejected my large segments because the psychometric community doesn't currently agree on a lot of things--at least not enough to adopt a standard markup language.
Psychologists largely think in terms of specific measures or tests, and while you could develop XML for each test, I think you'd have a more difficult time talking about fundamental psychological characteristics.
In any case, if all you want to do is develop a good system of describing people for virtual reality, or games, or whatever, I still recommend consulting psychologists. It might be interesting and useful (e.g., I certainly wish the designers of the Sims had consulted a psychologist or read reviews before coming up with traits to use in the game! I would have really appreciated it, and it might have made for a more complex gaming experience.)
I'll stop ranting now and get back to work.
this
<blows>this</blows>
Web browsers nonsensically treat
/> works right, but Slashdot won't let you use it, it removes the whole thing. So much for XHTML compliant comments.
;)
exactly like a
. So
gives one 2 newlines.
Perhaps I should post a rant to Source Forge?
P.S. Why doesn't Slashdot do HTML unescaping on the Subject when you select Extrans mode? < and > get eaten up, and so do their contents.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Why does this make me think of Professor Frink?
Frink: Uh, bleah, guh, everyone says that scientists are not good with emotion, bluh huh. My new invention will prove them wrong! It is a computer language for classifying human interaction, with the smiling and the laughing and the turning me down for a date, bluh AAGH!
Premature optimization is the root of all evil
<SPOILER>
The point was that under normal circumstances the ships' computers would use avatars instead of a full video feed to reduce the bandwidth required for communications. The captain realized that if his sister ship had been compromised, then the bad guys could use the system to make it appear that he was having a face-to-face with the other captain.
</SPOILER>
A great scene, and one that Human Markup Languare would facilitate.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
I think the most interesting use of this would be in research psychology. There's been a movement to come up with a good descriptive model for personality for some time now. There's some giant obstacles to overcome, though.
First of all, the study of personality and human behavior is incredibly young. Freud got the ball rolling little more than a century ago, and he set us off on the wrong foot. Like any new science, we're still at the "darts at a dartboard" exploratory stage. It's really hard to come up with a universal descriptive model when we're still drowning in the data.
Secondly, what (human) language are they going to base this on? Language is culture, and different languages describe the world (and people) in very different ways. We might come up with a descriptive markup that works very well when applied to Americans in American society but totally breaks down in Japan. How are they going to make sure that it's broad enough to be global without being so vague that it's useless?
I wish them well, though. Psychology has been badly in need of something like this for a long time, and even if version 1.0 sucks it gives us something to build off of.
This
After all, there's a difference between...
...that no text-to-speech program would be able to figure out without some hints.
<sincere>That's a great idea</sincere>
...and...
<sarcastic>That's a great idea</sarcastic>
Not to mention all the different ways to say "Dude".
"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!"
or remark
Jesus, I wish people who find something on the internet research it before submitting these posts. you make us all look dumb.
My best friend and I talk in e-mail (and sometimes IRL) with tags like , , , , , etc. without using smileys. It's about time they've standardized these stuff!
... <sob> ... at least we still have the jargon file.
But now that this is going to be standard fare, we lose our unique vocabulary to the rest of the world. What will become of us geeks?
Oh well
Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.
If you create a standard before it's needed it is forgotten. If you create it after systems are in place it is too late. So the trick is creating it at the right time.
My company is working on human interaction over the Internet using highly customizable avatars. Some of the types of data that you describe could be useful right now (race, height, clothing, accessories, emotional responses, actions). We considered using XML, but the lack of a known open source C++ engine, and the size of the messages (bandwidth is money) lead us to use our own proprietary format.
Bob Flesch
www.prototerra.com
The home of the 3D Socialization and Interaction Engine
smurfcode, bearcode and twinkcode ;-) which are much more practically useful
hates blacks =
hates whites = <leader>
advocates violence against whites = <leader>
dislikes racism = <depends>
against racist affirmative action quotas = <racist>
then by itself is valid. It is RECOMMENDED that you use a unencapsulating tag with a trailing '/'
You said stoned... and DRUNK! You sir are my hero!
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
I must say that I'm little impressed with these XML folks. Markup -- bid deal. It's been around for decades in various forms. The question is: Which tags, exactly? HumanML? Give me a friggin' break. The AI guys have been making such ontologies for decades. It works, but only to a degree. You can't pre-tag everything because the tags you have now aren't quite right and the tags you don't have...well, you don't have them yet! That's why this article deserves a big YAWN.
And if this is just a bunch of programmers with no input from psychologists, anthropologists, etc., it's simply doomed to be obvious, groundless, and thus useless.
I've been bugging(or maybe that should be "buggering") Yahoo for chat sex icons for years!
Big Brother has been out and about for a very long time now. Only an utter fool doesn't realize this. What did you think Carnivore was about? Maybe you thought it was about looking at "bad people's" email? What if you are considered to be one of the "bad people"?
Corporate Entities are wanting to own you. Our court system has already decided that whoever collects information about you owns the information. They own information about your drivers license, your address, your criminal history, and a thousand other things you wouldn't necessarily want your boss looking at. For the whopping fee of $25.00 per year, I can look up all kinds of things about you at www.publicdata.com.
My current campaing is against Motorola. They have ordered their resellers to provide them with all the information they have on people who purchase specific Motorola products. Motorola then sells the data to Dun & Bradstreet. You get issued a DUNS number and then other companies start to accumulate information about you. Information to which you have no access and no recourse to correct. I suggest that you boycott any Motorola product or any item made with a Motorola chip. Vote with your dollars. Corporations understand the bottom line
HDGary secures my bank
Looks like a major
No in sight.
Emerging tag-economy: youll be busy buying, selling, consuming and producing predicates. It is your citizenship.
Will they ever really compete with old-fashioned green tags ($$)?
Truth will meet ownership, finally.
Repetitive tag injury?
<anus diameter=40cm> http://www.goatse.cx/
I submitted the story yesterday but obviously I was beaten to it, sigh, so people might also be interested in the HumanMarkup.org website dedicated to the language also.
we finally get that long sought after/>
tag.
Moron.