Re: New Editors Draft of the httpRange-14 Finding

Alan Ruttenberg scripsit:

> But the problem with "representation" is that lacking any definition  
> that isn't circular.

I didn't think there was any trouble with "representation"; it's just
a pile of bits with some metadata, most importantly a media-type.

> A person can't even figure out whether its  
> correct or not, never mind a machine. So really, this isn't an issue  
> of RDF or OWL or machine understanding and verification. I can't even  
> get started on the machine stuff because I myself can't figure out  
> whether someone has done this representation thing correctly or not.

Whether a representation properly represents its resource is basically
a matter of fiat; it represents if (a) the owner says it does, or (b)
the owner's other claims about the resource are consistent with the
representation.

> In RDF it is impossible to look for   
> errors except by staring, because it's impossible to have a machine  
> detect an inconsistency. 

Well, no worse than prose or mathematics, then.

-- 
Real FORTRAN programmers can program FORTRAN    John Cowan
in any language.  --Allen Brown                 cowan@ccil.org