RE: resources, stuffs and individuation

On Wed, 2003-04-23 at 14:05, Joshua Allen wrote:
> > something manageable. What I'm after is one term that applies to
> things
> > that a URI is bound to (what I call a Resource with the capital R
> being
> > intentional) and another, wholly seperate term for things that might
> > exist but which don't have a URI bound to them.
> 
> OK, that is reasonable.  Aren't you just saying that at any particular
> point in time, some resources will have one or more URIs bound to them,
> and others will not have any URIs bound?  

Yep.

> You want a way to distinguish
> between those two classes of resources.  That is very practical demand
> and no point arguing about it.

You'd think that was the case. Sometimes I wonder.....

> > It is very intentional on my part to design things such that, if it
> > doesn't have a URI, then it simply does not exist.
> 
> You can easily make the case that "resources that do not have a URI are
> completely invisible and unusable to me until they are assigned a URI".
> 
> 
> But that is not exactly the same as saying "resources which do not have
> a URI do not exist in reality".  The former statement seems completely
> adequate, and the latter seems to be unnecessarily provocative and is
> just begging for a fruitless argument.  Why the heck would anyone care?
> What is wrong with the former?

It could be exactly what I was saying iff you used the definition of
Resource I'm using in the earlier paragraphs. At least for me, the term
'resource' means only what RFC 2396 says it means. It has no english
meaning outside that document. That might not jive with 'reality' but it
works better than attempting to get everyone to agree on what the
english definition of 'resource' is.

For me I divide the world up like this:

There are things. Everthing is a 'thing'. There are no exceptions. Even
'nothing' is a thing.

There are 'Resources'. 'Resources' are 'things' that have had a URI
bound to them.

Use of the term 'resource' any where else is either deprecated or
meaningless. If it is used then, unless stated explicitly, you are _not_
using the definition found in the previous two sentences and as far as
I'm concerned you're talking gibberish. If that's provocative then maybe
we should pick a different word?

-MM

Received on Wednesday, 23 April 2003 14:34:57 UTC