xml-dev - Re: local, global (was various ontology, RDF, topic maps)

[Paul Tchistopolskii <paul@qub.com>]

From: Bullard, Claude L (Len) <clbullar@ingr.com>

> Take a look at the dot.com fallout.  People
> will believe and invest and will lose their
> shirts and others will take their shirts and
> build big pink houses on the hillsides outside
> San Jose with them.

I think dotcom game is irrelevant to technology
and the game itself is not worth disussion.

> When HTML said SGML
> was evil, some took that to heart.  When
> others said HyTime was evil, some took that
> to heart.  Both times, the sayers were wrong.

Do you really think that propaganda is really
*that* powerfull ?

Mass-developers were ignoring SGML and related tools
for 15 (?) years. I think people are not that stupid
to ignore really good things for *that* long.

I have the impression that SGML elitists really
think that for years people were using 'other tools'
( like perl and TeX and , yes -  MS Word ) instead
of using SGML-based tools because people are stupid.

I don't buy it. 15 years in computing  is incredibly
long time. Perl is less than 15 years old, Python is
less than 15 years old. Linux is about 15 years old -
not talking about MS Word.

When some tools are ignored for 15 years, I think
this means that those tools are not providing a
simple answers to simple questions.

"result tree fragment..." damn it .... ( nevermind, please ).

> It took experience and a lot of hard work
> for people to find the baby in the bathwater,

Pardon? Where is the baby?

> but they have and there are remarkably good
> systems coming out as a result that have little
> in common with the original HTMLOverAll systems.
> They look like... SGML + hypermedia circa 1989
> with better graphics.  So far so good.

... You mean that with those systems I can safely
modify the schema of my document without changing
too much of my processing code, and also I can
safely change the schema provided by some *other*
vendor, easily extending the processing tool provided
by the same vendor without too much hacking ?

Great!

Where are those SGML-based systems hiding ?

( I think you should agree that the questions I'm asking
are really simple and basic. Right ? )

> That is what we are doing here with the semantic
> web.  I started out with the "the semantic web
> is a crock" position knowing full well that the underlying
> tech and concepts do work in a limited fashion
> because, being an old guy now, I was a young
> turk when case grammars, AI, expert systems
> and all that were discussed last time.  They
> do work, in a limited fashion.  But I took
> the very pessimistic approach precisely because
> of the "idealistic" view you talk about.

Here I agree with you. I don't think that AI zombie
will dance. Do people really  found some
new-really-universal-and-scalable 'frames'
since last failure of AI ?

> As others have mentioned, some of the search
> engines are a LOT better these days.  When
> I sit with my son to do a book report on the
> Enola Gay and type that in, I don't see nearly
> as many superstitious unwanted hits as we once
> did.  That's progress.

If you are talking about google, there should be no surprise.

<google>
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link
structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a
link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more
than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that
casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and
help to make other pages "important."
</google>

So what google did it just started ranking of page
using the *very*well*known* practice, used in the
scientific publishing for ages.

I don't know how it is called in the US, but long
before the Internet, in Russia, for example,
each scientific publication had a property
"index of citation" - the number of publications,
referring to this publication.

So what google did - they just implemented some
*well*known*  *old* and *simple*  idea which is natural and
could be explained in one paragraph.

Could somebody please explain me The Semantic Web in
one paragraph ? Or maybe I have to read huge
books and to learn many new (buzz)words to understand
the design of  The Semantic Web ?

Sorry - this will not gonna fly then. If it could not be
explained in a simple way - it just not gonna fly, like
it always was, I think.

Rgds.Paul.