Re: Roy's definition of a REST resource as a "Curried" form of ftrr:IR

On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 4:09 PM, David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-03-04 at 13:40 -0500, Jonathan Rees wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 1:18 PM, David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote:
>> > Nathan,
>> >
>> > Have you looked at the definition of IR that I proposed a while back?
>> > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-awwsw/2008Apr/0046.html
>> > It is logically equivalent to Roy's definition of a REST resource, ...
>>
>> I would not call either of these definitions. They are models, or
>> theories, or formalisms - they predict certain properties of IRs. But
>> they are not a good match to any plausible ontology of IRs since they
>> entail ridiculous conclusions such as "Moby Dick is a function" and
>> "the domain of the Declaration of Independence is time".
>
> I do not consider those to be ridiculous entailments at all.  Those
> entailments may be perfectly fine in an application that has no need to
> distinguish between Moby Dick and a function.
>
>>
>> I'm not saying it's a useless idea, or not predictive, or that we
>> shouldn't talk about it. I'm just asking everyone to stop calling
>> these things definitions and start calling them what they are. As
>> Nathan has pointed out, Roy's paper has three mutually inconsistent
>> "definitions" of "resource". The paper makes much more sense if you
>> just treat the function "definition" as a mistake: He should have said
>> something like "We can model resources as functions ..." and you
>> (David) should do something similar.
>
> It sounds like you're using the word "definition" in a highly
> specialized way.  I was using it in the generic English sense.  I think
> you may need to cut me (and others) some slack here if we're not using
> the term in the specialized sense that you want.  Or at least tell us
> exactly how you want the term used.

I'm not being the least bit technical. Take the following two
statements to the common man in the street, T. C. Mits:

  An information resource is a kind of function.
  The novel _Moby Dick_ is an information resource.

If they know what a function is, they will think you're talking
nonsense. I'd be happy to perform the experiment if you like. I'm at
MIT and many people here know what a function is and have at least
some idea of what _Moby Dick_ is.

Jonathan

Received on Friday, 4 March 2011 21:20:15 UTC