Re: article on URIs, is this material that can be used by the

Dan Brickley wrote:
>> Hmm?  What _does_ a thumbnail of an JPEG (of a) photograph of the
>> Eiffel tower depict, if not the Eiffel tower?  If you show it to 1000
>> people, and as them what it is, I'll bet you all but the most
>> obstreperous geeks (and Fair Witnesses :-) will say "(a picture of)
>> the Eiffel Tower".  Are they all wrong?
> 
> Many automatic thumbnail algorithms (eg. flickr's) cut out a square from 
> the original rectangle, and so may omit content from the original. So 
> they don't necessarily depict everything that the original depicted.

Further, anyone with the vaguest of understanding of the concept of 
"thumbnail" will understand thumbnail -> image -> Eiffel Tower.

One of the reasons thumbnails are used at all is that when even 
extremely untechnical users see them in a context where it's clear that 
they are indeed thumbnails they grok immediately that a larger image is 
available through it. If anything their mental model is closer to 
thumbnail-> image than that of techies (who might be thinking much more 
along the lines of the image->thumbnail, link->image, 
link_contents->thumbnail mappings of the implementation).