RE: Name namespace, namespaces and names in general

On 14 Feb 2000 rev-bob@gotc.com wrote:

> Take, for example, the original concept of the Web.  It was designed
> as a way for scholars to exchange academic information.  However,
> those same tools were put to unintended uses, leading to the vast
> explosion of Web pages on all kinds of subjects that we see today.

This is a poor anology.  The web wasn't created with the instructions: Use
Only For Exchange of Academic Information.  No processor uses that
assumption.  But SGML was created with the instruction: Decalere an ID
only once per document, and processors probably depend on that assumption.
 
> Advocating that a tool be used correctly (hold the saw's handle, not
> the blade) is different from mandating that a tool only be used for a
> certain set of purposes (use the saw on pine, not oak).  

Or as a friend of mine once said, ``Why use a hammer to pound a nail when
you can use your head.''  ;-)

-- 
Russell O'Connor                           roconnor@uwaterloo.ca
       <http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~roconnor/>
``Paradoxically, a refusal to `put a monetary value on life' means that
life is often undervalued.'' -- Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach