Re: Requirements for reliable message delivery

On Fri, Dec 14, 2001 at 06:48:16PM -0000, Miles Sabin wrote:
> Michael Mealling wrote,
> > Miles Sabin wrote,
> > Accept whatever you want. But the Apps area, the industry and most 
> > other standards bodies accept that definition. The web is much more 
> > than your browser....
> 
> I don't disagree, but there's a world of difference (literally) 
> between "not just a browser" and "everything that could conceivably be 
> addressed via some URI scheme or other".
> 
> Given the RFC 2396 definition,
> 
>   A resource can be anything that has identity.  Familiar examples 
>   include an electronic document, an image, a service (e.g., "today's 
>   weather report for Los Angeles"), and a collection of other 
>   resources.  Not all resources are network "retrievable"; e.g., human 
>   beings, corporations, and bound books in a library can also be 
>   considered resources.
> 
> that's potentially everything, period, at which point the term
> becomes useless.

Actually no it isn't. RDF uses that basic notion plus an assertion
framework together to build a very robust knowlege description framework.
URIs are to the Web what IP is to the Internet. You could just as
easily say that since everything on the Internet runs over IP that
the point that it does is useless...

> Since when did the definition of the web stretch so wide that things 
> which aren't even network retrievable are considered to be part of it?

Since 1991 when Tim brought the entire lot to the IETF. At the time
there wasn't an HTTP protocol and the major consumer of URIs was gopher...

-MM

-- 
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Michael Mealling	|      Vote Libertarian!       | urn:pin:1
michael@neonym.net      |                              | http://www.neonym.net

Received on Friday, 14 December 2001 14:15:40 UTC