Re: Proposal: new top level domain '.urn' alleviates all need for urn: URIs

On Wed, 2003-07-09 at 13:02, Sandro Hawke wrote:
> > Where are you drawing your definitions of 'resource' and 'same'?
> 
> I'm using "resource" in the sense of RFC 2396 bis, which I believe to
> be the same sense as used by RFC 2396, RDF, and OWL.  In philosophical
> or mathematical logic, I think one might use the term "object in the
> domain of discourse", or just "object" or "entity".

But you are decorating that definition with concepts from RDF and OWL
that don't exist in 2396. The main one being that you can make
statements within OWL about a resource that also hold true for
generalized URIs, and that's not the case.

> I'm using the word "same" in the normal dictionary sense of being
> truly and completely indistinguishable.  If I tell you <Jim>
> owl:sameAs <James>, then you know I'm using the terms "<Jim>" and
> "<James>" as synonyms, as two names for the same thing.

Absolutely correct! _You_ have told me that "Jim" and "James" are
synonymous. But RFC 2396 provides no method for making such statements.
It has no concept of 'you' or 'tell' or 'me' or 'same' or any other word
you just used. The reason is that someone _else_ may come up with a
vocabulary for making similar but different statements and still use
URIs without conflicting with your definitions....

> > I probably am in a small community since I'm attempting to make sure
> > that people are speaking only about their own particular applications
> > and not the universality of all systems and objects that could ever be
> > identified by a URI. Most here seem to be speaking as thought their
> > system of choice is _the_ system that everyone else uses.
> 
> Isn't that what URI theory is about, generalization about URIs?  If
> we're not trying to be general, what's the point of using URIs?

I was hoping you'd say the same. By trying to be general we have to make
sure that URIs work for all possible applications. Without that they
loose their general applicability.

> > > Perhaps you meant to say: "There is nothing in the HTTP and HTTPS
> > > specifications which mandate that the resources identified when you
> > > change from one scheme to the other (keeping the rest of the URI the
> > > same) are the same thing.  Since that's not in the spec, why are you
> > > claiming it's true?"
> > 
> > Again, where are are you getting your definitions of 'same' and
> > 'resource' from?
> 
> Clarified now?

Yes. But to be clear, you're using definitions not found anywhere in RFC
2396 and not found in large numbers of application that use URIs and
make statements about 'sameness'. You might be using 'sameness' in its
'normal dictionary sense' but you have to realize that you're using an
English dictionary....

-MM

Received on Wednesday, 9 July 2003 13:19:01 UTC