RE: resources, stuffs and individuation

What is wrong with saying:

   A resource can be anything that can be named.

It appears that is what you mean to say



> -----Original Message-----
> From: uri-request@w3.org [mailto:uri-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Roy
T.
> Fielding
> Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 4:53 PM
> To: pat hayes
> Cc: uri@w3c.org
> Subject: Re: resources, stuffs and individuation
> 
> 
> >> If you have suggested wording to change, then please suggest it.
> >
> > I believe I have already pointed out wording which I feel needs
> > changing. I cannot suggest a correction because I do not know what
the
> > words are intended to convey; that is precisely my point.
> 
> Here is my problem: 100 philosophers are in a room talking about the
> nature of resources.  Some subset of them disagree on the definition
> of "identity", which causes some commotion even though the technology
> doesn't change regardless of which definition is used to replace the
> word in the sentence defining Resource.  Nevertheless, because this
> bone of contention is the current focus of debate, that subset of
> philosophers desires that the word "identity" be removed from the
> definition so that they can stop arguing about it.
> 
> That would be a fine solution, if it weren't for the fact that those
> people are only a subset of the philosophers in the room.  There are,
> in fact, larger subsets that are busy arguing about "anything", and
> others who will only surface once "identity" is removed (because any
> other word used in its place will topple their favorite apple cart).
> 
> I have already gone through this process twice -- once in 1997 and
> again on the TAG list last year.  I am not going to go through it
> again until all of the philosophers reach consensus on new wording
> for the definition that takes into account the entire scope of 2396
> in its role of defining URIs for all Internet protocols.
> 
> The existing definition is the only one that reached rough consensus
> before, and I don't think it can be improved without artificially
> constraining the technology.
> 
>    A resource can be anything that has identity.
> 
> It means exactly what it says in English.  If you can come up with
> a better definition and can get rough consensus that it doesn't
exclude
> things that others consider to be resources, then I'll put that in the
> specification.
> 
> >> If you don't, then this is a redundant discussion
> >
> > It is not redundant. You may feel it is unimportant, but neither you
> > nor anyone else, as far as I know, has answered the questions.
> 
> Of course I consider it to be important.  I don't argue about
> unimportant changes to the specification.  However, I am not going
> to spend time word-crafting definitions for others when I think
> their opinion is in the minority.  This task is hard enough already.
> 
> And yes, I have already answered this question many times -- here is
> a link to the most recent:
> 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2002Jul/0128.html
> 
> ....Roy
>

Received on Tuesday, 22 April 2003 20:11:52 UTC