[cap-talk] "Composite", was "Same" key

[Charles Landau]

At 3:44 PM -0800 2/16/07, Mark S. Miller wrote:
>I'd represent my position as
>
>                   1                        >=0
>      (MarkM)   Object                   Composite
>
>This is consistent with my
>
># For compactness of description, we often aggregate a set of objects into
># a composite.
>
>which is not meant to exclude the null set. This is important when using
>aggregation to reason about a multiplicity of concrete situations.

Why can't you just say "a set of objects" instead of "a composite" 
when you mean to include the null set? To rephrase your example:

      Say Alice is one of Bob's clients. Let's call the set of all of Bob's
      other clients "Rest". If Alice uses Bob correctly and Bob
      is defensively consistent, then, no matter what action is taken by Rest,
      Bob will never give bad service to Alice.