RE: More on distinguishing information resources from other resou rces

"Saddam Hussein is a clear and present danger because he possesses 
and has demonstrated his willingness to use weapons of mass destruction."

It is easy to assert things that you don't know.  That isn't the issue. 
The issue is what resources are you willing to commit and what actions 
will you undertake based on things you don't know or haven't verified.

This problem is a classic Schrodinger's Cat.  You have to open the 
box and inspect the cat.  Collapse the probabilities.  It is your right 
to choose.

In the case of URIs, they are intended to be opaque.  How should one
interpret that?

a)  They are not information bearing with respect to the resource 
they name.  Therefore, they are not themselves, information resources.

b)  They are only information bearing in certain contexts but to know 
what that context is, you must first open the box, meaning, you must 
dereference another URI.  They are information resources be it a name 
or an address (An identifier is a bogie.  It is a value output from 
the process of identification.  Down that road lies the bogs of type 
and class.  Don't go there armed only with a URI.).

Yet B is the best answer.  Discovery/learning is a process we understand 
and which the architecture supports easily and naturally.  So a sensible 
interpretation is that one uses the web just as one uses natural language, 
continuously (proceeding with a little information to get more information),

cautiously (when in doubt, check and compare among resources), and 
responsibly (when using a URI, it is a best practice to put a resource 
at the location that URI can find that documents it).

In other words, ask the cat and check its pulse.

len


From: www-tag-request@w3.org [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of
wangxiao

> if I start making assertions about resource 
> "http://www.bbc.co.uk <http://www.bbc.co.uk> ", am I making 
> blind, potentially misleading or useless, assertions?

I am curious, how can you assert something that you don't know.  Also, I
think the motto of SW is "everyone can say anything about everything".  Your
assertions are always going to be your viewpoint on that URI and won't
reflect the viewpoint URI's owner anyway.  Once again, "it doesn't matter".

But I am just an observer, not a member, of the TAG.  So, take my opinion
with a grain of salt. :-)

Xiaoshu

Received on Thursday, 30 June 2005 15:34:27 UTC