Strings and things

> 5) People SHOULD NOT use http: URIs to refer to things like cars
> 6) If they do, there is no guarantee that their metadata will be able to participate in the semantic web.

Does anybody here really believe that there are things that a string
cannot identify?  URIs are no special in this respect.  Saying that some
URI can identify cars, while others cannot, is like saying that words
beginning with "h" cannot be used to identify a car.

What makes one URI scheme more or less suitable for identifying
different types of things is the ability of its application semantics to
help establish the publisher's identity assertion in common use.

For example, I could assert that ftp://www.markbaker.ca/index.html
identifies me, but because FTP's application semantics don't allow the
difference between the index.html file and the resource identified by
the file to be communicated, people and machines will have problems
distinguishing between the two.

Why the HTTP URI scheme is special is because the application semantics
of HTTP were designed to be able to be used with *all* URI, not one
particular scheme.

MB
-- 
Mark Baker, Chief Science Officer, Planetfred, Inc.
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.      mbaker@planetfred.com
http://www.markbaker.ca   http://www.planetfred.com

Received on Monday, 29 April 2002 07:59:42 UTC