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   RE: [xml-dev] URIs harmful (was RE: [xml-dev] Article: Keeping pa ce wit

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If it only returns your explanation, that is enough. 
If it just returns "Don't Look In Here Until the 
Cat finishes choosing" that is enough.

Remember, it only matters if you ask the cat. 
Otherwise, the cat will stay in the black box.
But the syntactical equivalence makes it always 
possible to ask.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Brown [mailto:mike@skew.org]

Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> It's not that "access is at true test of identity": it is 
> that without a test, identity is a worthless value.  

What you observe is the URI. The only test you subject it to is "what
characters are in this string". 

> There is no identity apart from observation.  

Until your resource is abstract.

> Identity is assigned.

Yes. By assigning a URI to something, you are giving that something the only
identity that matters. Period. Why is that not good enough for you? 

The whole point of assigning the URI is to make it so you don't need to be
accessing the resource itself; its so that this handy identifier will suffice, 
allowing you to talk about the resource without accessing it.

Besides, maybe access is impossible because the resource is not in the least
bit tangible. Given that RFC 2396 says a resource is anything that can have
identity, I can assign a URI to the idea of World Peace And Honest
Politicians and fill up an RDF database with statements about that concept,
without ever having to test it. And if I want that URI to take the form of a 
URL, so what. If I want it to be a URN, it's no different; URNs are no less 
unresolvable than URIs, by your own admission.




 

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