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Uche Ogbuji scripsit:
> None of this convinces me. It never has. I'm sorry, but I don't believe in
> unoversal identifiers. I do believe in identifiers by explicit contract, or
> That means that if you decide that you mean
>
> http://www.heritage.org/images/shakespeare.jpg
>
> to stand for Sir W Shakespeare himself, then fine. Just make sure those you
> work with agree and go along with it.
Implicit assumptions like that don't scale.
> But even if someone doesn't agree and
> thinks you mean the picture retrieved, there is still a good chance they can
How? Muddling up Shakespeare with a picture of Shakespeare can't possibly
make any sense.
> You claim that with subject-matter identifiers, there is no possibility of
> confusion. This is pure strong AI phooey. For one thing, even people do not
> necessarily share the same definition of shakespeare.
Whoa. I know there are problems with extensional vs. intensional definitions;
I am *not* saying that subject indicators solve every problem! I merely
say that they solve the map-territory confusion by clearly labeling each
assertion as being about the map of Shakespeare or the territory Shakespeare,
that's all.
BTW, did you dereference the URL yet?
> I still think RDF gets it right. You treat URIs like exportable identifiers.
> Treat them as consistently and unambiguously as works for you. If you expose
> them to others, know that all your dreams about how those URIs correspond to
> real world concepts are but a vanity and a striving after nothing.
But that *is* the ideology of RDF, that URIs refer to Real World
(non-addressable) things. It's that ideology I object to, not the RDF
mechanisms at all.
> As you say, one can somewhat simulate subject matter indicators (or
> identifiers or whatever they really are) by using blank nodes with
> owl:unambiguousProperty, but I have no time for that trick, because I think
> it's as vain as PSIs.
Well, one is no vainer than the other, at least.
> Bottom line: I cannot compute the real William Shakespeare. I cannot compute
> the real W3C.
I don't know what you mean by "compute" here. I can't *compute* a letter
to my doctor either, saying I will not pay his outrageous bill, but I
can and do use a computer to produce it and file it. When I file it,
I want to classify it as being *about* my doctor, so I must have a way
to represent him within the computer.
--
Not to perambulate || John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
the corridors || http://www.reutershealth.com
during the hours of repose || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
in the boots of ascension. \\ Sign in Austrian ski-resort hotel
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