Re: a URI is a name (tel uri scheme and VCARD RDF)

Very true.
This is the same as the DNS concept, viz.:

    name  has  physical address  =  value
============ 
Dick McCullough 
knowledge := man do identify od existent done
knowledge haspart list of proposition

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Alexander Jerusalem 
  To: Paul Prescod ; Richard H. McCullough 
  Cc: Doug Ransom ; www-rdf-interest@w3.org 
  Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2002 3:55 PM
  Subject: Re: a URI is a name (tel uri scheme and VCARD RDF)


  I'm not sure if the following is of any relevance for this thread but your 
  discussion reminds me of a question I have always had regarding RDF:

  URIs, it seems to me, are used in two completely different ways: On the one 
  hand they are just unique names for something. On the other hand they are 
  used to point to something and provide a kind of processing instruction 
  that allows us to physically retrieve the thing it points to. Now when we 
  talk about someone's homepage for example, I don't think it is appropriate 
  to use the URL that allows us to physically retrieve the homepage as the 
  unique name of the homepage. The two roles should be strictly separated. 
  The reason is that I could have made a lot of statements about the homepage 
  that use this URI as a unique name, that is as their subject. The physical 
  address, however, can change.

  So even for internet resources, I think we should have one URI to name it 
  and another one to point at it, even if the two happen to have the same 
  sequence of characters at any one point in time.



  At 14:48 24.11.2002 -0800, Paul Prescod wrote:

  >Richard H. McCullough wrote:
  >
  >>I followed the link at the bottom of this email, and read Sean B. 
  >>Palmer's interesting essay on URIs.
  >
  >I'm not clear on your opinion of Doug's proposal. ;) But you did change 
  >the subject line so I guess we'll treat this as a new thread.
  >
  >>For example, if we want to talk about Linus Torvalds in the context of 
  >>URIs & RDFS, we might have three different somethings that we need three 
  >>different names for:
  >>
  >>     Linus Torvalds the person
  >>     a document that contains RDFS statements that describe facts about 
  >> Linus Torvalds
  >>     a graph that contains nodes and links that describe facts about 
  >> Linus Torvalds
  >>
  >>My impression, based on a few RDF-interest emails, is that much confusion 
  >>has been generated by trying to use one URI when three URIs are required.
  >
  >I think that you misunderstand the debate. It is easy to make up three 
  >URIs for Linus Torvalds or ten (let's not forget his home page and email 
  >address and ...). The question is whether the syntactic form of the URI 
  >restricts whether it refers to him, or his home page or the graph or ...
  >
  >Seth says:
  >
  > >  Linus Torvalda the person
  > >    http://foo/#LinusTorvalds
  > >  a documdent that contains RDFS statements that describe facts about
  > > Linus Torvalds
  > >    http://foo/
  > >  a graph that contains nodes and links that describe facts about 
  > Linus > Torvalds
  > >    http://foo/#ThisGraph
  >
  >But an equally consistent position is:
  >
  >Linus Torvalds the person
  >
  >     http://foo/LinusTorvalds
  >
  >   a docudent that contains RDFS statements that describe facts about 
  > Linus Torvalds
  >
  >     http://foo/LinusTorvaldsInRDF
  >
  >   a graph that contains nodes and links that describe facts about Linus 
  > Torvalds
  >
  >     http://foo/LinusTorvaldsGraph
  >
  >Insofar as RDF care NEITHER about the syntax of the URI _nor_ the data 
  >referred to by the URI, why should WE care? Why impose a syntactic 
  >convention at all? RDF offers me ways of saying that InRDF is the RDF 
  >representation and Graph is the graph representation of the LinusTorvalds 
  >concept. If Seth wants to use his convention then he can, but he should 
  >also use RDF statements to make explicit the relationship.
  >
  >  Paul Prescod