Re: URIs in RDF (Was: New Intro to RDF)

Charles, 

I agree that, technically, you can choose to use http://w3.org/ to mean
whatever, but along the same lines you can choose to say 'bread' to mean
'harley-davidson-like'. What I say means only what I want it to mean,
right?

My point was, and you seem to agree with it, that there is no incentive
to do so, and every incentive to avoid doing so. 

Unless the official meaning is overruled by the public's perception,
like when many people used Yahoo for direct keyword search, not for
browsing the hierarchical directory. This is akin to language evolution
and dictionary updates, but on the Web it's easier and cheaper to create
new words so changing the meaning of old words is not so necessary.

As for assurances - there's no assurance about anything, but the Web
knows that and can deal with it, and the SemWeb aims not to forget it.

Best regards,

Jacek


On Sun, 2005-10-09 at 19:38 +0200, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
> On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 15:20:52 +0200, Jacek Kopecky <jacek.kopecky@deri.org>  
> wrote:
> 
> > So I cannot choose to use http://w3.org/ to mean my car, and I don't
> > think anything on the web gives anybody the opposite idea.
> 
> Nonsense. Of course you can. There is a social convention that you don't,  
> and nothing more.
> 
> I recently heard someone suggest that having 2 namespaces made RDF too  
> difficult (there are things that make it hard, but I can't see that as  
> one). I pointed out that at the risk of causing major unhappiness, he  
> could simply describe new terms in the original RDF namespace.
> 
> There is no reason it wouldn't work, the first time. But my answer is that  
> making a system work requires a bit of cooperation, and a bit of learning,  
> in general.
> 
> So there is absolutely no assurance that someone won't try to overload  
> your URI to mean something completely different. But there is a social  
> convention that people don't do it, which is generally respected.
> 
> cheers
> 
> Chaals
>

Received on Monday, 10 October 2005 07:41:38 UTC