Re: Comments on Section 3

   Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 15:22:00 -0700
   From: Kevin Smathers <ks@micky.hpl.hp.com>
   Cc: www-rdf-dspace@w3.org
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   On Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 02:00:08PM -0400, Nick Matsakis wrote:
   > 
   > On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Kevin Smathers wrote:
   > 
   > > I think you are actually describing a search problem, not a naming
   > > problem.
   > 
   > I specifically wanted to focus on the distributed naming problem, not the
   > naming authority search problem;  If it requires a search, then it isn't a
   > distributed naming scheme.
   > 
   > On this list, David suggested one way that two parties can independently
   > come up with names for a given resource even though they don't have a
   > network connection or search capability, and that is the MD5 hash of a
   > collection of bits.  This only applies to static resources that are, in
   > some sense, entirely bits.  Still, there are a lot of interesting
   > resources that could be viewed this way, including audio CDs, DVDs,
   > PDF-published works and less formally email messages and digital
   > photographs. Dynamic content and non-digital resources, like the The
   > Effiel Tower, cannot be named in this way.

   The main problem that I have with this approach is that I don't consider
   two files to be the same just because they happen to have the same 
   content.  Likewise two facts.

If by file you mean a specific arrangement of magnetic particles on a
specific disk drive, I agree with you.  But I also think it valuable
to envision a unique, platonic ideal of a certain bit sequence (and it
is that I want to associate with an MD5).  A lot of the assertions
that people make about a file are, I think, actually about those
platonic bits.  "These bits were written by David" (and ditto for much
else of the dublin core), "These bits are 100 bytes long" and "these
bits are currently stored at http://foo".

I feel the same way about statements (I'm not going to try to define
facts).  An "a R b" statement is unique.  If two people make the same
"a R b" statement then that is exactly what happened: they asserted
the SAME statement.

Received on Monday, 14 April 2003 18:19:57 UTC