Re: peer-to-peer was Re: Distributed querying on the semantic web

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Jeremy Carroll wrote:

>
> > Anyway, my apologies if this seems off-topic,
>
>It seemed highly on-topic to me
>
>We can have a vision of tightly controlled meanings with authorities
>(based on DNS) having final say; or we can imagine every user having
>their view and the final authoritative definition being the social
>process with all the messiness that that involves.
>
>Personally I just don't think the former works - it tries to freeze the
>ever-changing world. Maybe it's just that I prefer a messy, incoherent
>world to any one individual or group's clear vision of an ideal.

agreed
>
>> Some bright sparks would like a centralised server using rdf that has a
>> concept and image database.
>> then we can have local use for personal images, but more general images
>> can be 'translated' from one language to another, whether the languages
>> are spoken, text, symbolic, or sign...
>>
>I think whether to have a centralised server or a peer-to-peer system
>can be simply a question of distributed system architecture; but what
>seems on-topic is whether we have a *semantic architecture* that is
>centralized or peer-to-peer.

agreed elsewhere

>> However I'd prefer a peer to peer system (BitTorrent?), because in this
>> way the users can have greater control over the meaning, interpretation
>> and relation of concepts.
>> It also may mean that language can develop faster and more naturally...
>> This does mean, much better authoring tools.
>>
>> Anyway, my apologies if this seems off-topic, but if anyone knows of a
>> simple explanation that refers to something similar, together with a
>> working example, that would be sweet.

An example: W3C collects information in RDF about existing translations of
its documents, and uses that to generate a list of translations.

In Sidar, we collect information about translations of other documents as
well. We can merge the two sets of information, using the same tools, to
produce a more complete list. Or we can tell it that we prefer a particular
version of a translation where there are two. (In theory - I need to find
time to install the nice tools that Ivan Herman developed to work with this
info. But that, as they say, is just a matter of doing work :-)

In a similar way, you can use the information provided by the CCF service in
conjunction with local information. You can even publish your local
information (just by making it available on the Web) to allow other people to
merge both sources and perhaps their own as well...

cheers

Chaals

Received on Friday, 23 April 2004 16:07:11 UTC