- From: Norman Walsh <Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM>
- Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:02:27 -0400
- To: www-rdf-interest@w3.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 / Benja Fallenstein <b.fallenstein@gmx.de> was heard to say: | Are you saying that "denote a resource" is the *only* thing that a URI | does? Yes, I think that's right. | Then how can it be that two URIs that denote the *same* resource can | give me *different* representations when I put them into my browser? I think that's just a generalization of the rule that the representations associated with a URI vary over time (and according to other criteria as well). I can easily setup my web server so that for a particular URI you *always* get a different representation. That doesn't change the resource that the URI identifies (in this case, perhaps it's "random number generator" or "milliseconds since epoc"). | I.e., every time I go to <http://example.org/1434> I see one | particular page, and every time I go to <http://example.net/~foo/bar> | I see another particular page, yet the two URIs identify the same | resource. | | How do you explain this? I don't feel any compelling need to, any more than I feel a need to explain why a given URI might return HTML, XHTML, PDF, RDF, plain ASCII, GIF, PNG, Microsoft Word, or other representations depending on header settings independent of the URI. I do observe, however, that the assertion that <http://example.org/1434> and <http://example.net/~foo/bar> identify the same resource is not one that I would accept without proof. You can claim that <http://example.org/1434> and <http://norman.walsh.name/knows/who#norman-walsh> identify the same resource. And you can claim that <http://example.org/1434> :hasArms "3" . <http://example.org/1434> :hasHeads "2" . but that doesn't make it true that I have three arms and two heads. :-) In short: it appears that you want to associate a URI with a particular, closed set of representations *independent of* the act of retrieving them. You can't. Representations are ephemeral, they change without warning and without changing the resource that the URI identifies. Be seeing you, norm - -- Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM | Never contend with a man who has nothing to XML Standards Architect | lose.--Gracián Web Tech. and Standards | Sun Microsystems, Inc. | -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.7 <http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/> iD8DBQE/JTsDOyltUcwYWjsRAoCmAJ4tZtkdu4ZyrsqAFhbCjKlxH+Ms+ACggS2N kffqjCyYGSuA7C8aOCVd86M= =Rl8J -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Received on Monday, 28 July 2003 11:02:47 UTC