Subject: Do the Borg own assimilated cultures, or did they inherit them?

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 10:04:43 +0300 (EET DST)

Among two objects A,B of classes Ca,Cb (respectively), there can be three
relationships:
A uses-a B - one of the members of A points at an instance of B, but A is
             not responsible for destroying B when A goes out of
             existence.  There needs to be no special relationship between
             Ca and Cb.
A owns-a B - same as the above except that A is responsible for destroying
             B when it goes out of existence.
A is-a Cb  - A is inherits from Cb, or equivalently, Ca uses-a Cb.
             Since Ca has no meaning when Cb goes out of scope, Cb can be
             consider to own-a all its subclasses.
(What about interfaces?  Can one class actually inherit from another class
rather than have an uses-a relationship?)

Now, after the Borg assimilated Geinan's race, they (as a class) use the
class whose members are the people of Geinan's race.  The information
about Geinan's race also would get lost when the Borg go out of existence,
except for any information remembered by Geinan herself.

However, since the Borg can exist independently of Geinan's race, they
don't inherit from each other.  Their relationship is formally of uses-a
type - as they are not always successful in converting all members of
assimilated races.
                                             --- Omer
There is no IGLU Cabal.  Marc the Terrible has assimilated all of the
former IGLU Cabal members, under the threat of his formidable Differential
SCSI Cable.
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