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On Sat, 2002-02-16 at 21:50, Mike Champion wrote:
> As a less contrived example, consider
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764547771/qid=1013913357/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_5/002-8423033-3456844
> Is that a physical location on Amazon.com's server?
No, it's not a _physical_ location. It's not difficult, however, to
describe as a location within the space defined by www.amazon.com as
seen through the perspective of HTTP. What we find at that location
varies over time. (Based on the ranking, I don't think anyone's going
there, alas.) Physical and network locations may be different, but the
same metaphors apply nicely, and have for years.
Does that URL actually identify something? Got me.
If I wanted to identify the something described by that pile of bytes,
I'd probably use:
urn:isbn:0764547771
Why? Because I know that ISBN is one of the few identifiers that is
actually resolvable to some kind of resource. ISBNs are designed to be
identifiers - heck, even unique and comparable identifiers. I don't
believe URLs were, whatever REST/URI revisionists may claim.
--
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com
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