Re: Do resources have representations?

Jon Hanna wrote:
> Who do you know? Who do you trust? Who said what?
> 
> uri1Owner says uri1 is the same as w3.org. Do I trust uri1Owner?
> Even if I do, do I trust what uri1Owner has to say about w3.org (I may
> consider him honest but misinformed).

If uri1Owner owns uri1, is trust really required for a statement from 
uri1Owner about *what uri1 denotes*? I think that this is for uri1Owner 
to *specify*, don't you agree?

What does http://example.org/foo/bar/baz (or #baz) denote? I think the 
denotation is what the owner of the URI *says* it is-- whether you trust 
them or not.

So, if uri1Owner *says* that   uri1 owl:sameAs uri2, then uri1 is 
*defined* (IMHO) to denote the same as uri2. uri1Owner *cannot* be wrong 
about this.   (Of course, when uri1Owner goes on and says, uri1 rdf:type 
foo:Lamp, then *this* assertion may be wrong.)

> Let's say dereferencing uri1 gives us the document:
> 
> <html>W3.org is full of rubbish</html>
> 
> It isn't valid HTML, but then is the author of the above going to care about
> valid HTML :)
> 
> Well, say I don't agree with uri1Owner. I can put something on the web
> (semantic or otherwise) that says so:

Sure. You can disagree with uri1Owner's opinion about W3C. But is it 
useful to disagree with uri1Owner about the denotation of uri1?

> For security reasons software dealing with this stuff should generally
> assume that most people are malicious and the rest are idiots as far as
> possible. To accept the identification of uri1 and http://www.w3.org/ I'm
> going to want either to be told this by somebody I trust, or at the very
> least be told this by both uri1Owner and the W3C (I would take the W3Cs word
> for it that what I can retrieve from uri1 is a valid representation of
> http://www.w3.org/, but not the inverse). 

Hm. So you are saying that there are 'invalid representations' of a 
resource? I.e., it can be that

- uri1 denotes X
- Through HTTP, uri1 resolves to R
- R is not a representation of X

This is interesting, but I'm not sure whether it flies. Doesn't this 
mean that a browser shouldn't show you R when you enter uri1 only when 
it is sure that R is a representation of X?

Do you need to trust example.org in order to be able to view 
http://example.org/blah in your browser, then?

- Benja

Received on Monday, 28 July 2003 15:53:27 UTC