- From: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com>
- Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 10:40:00 -0600
- To: Phil Dawes <pdawes@users.sourceforge.net>
- Cc: Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org>, Jon Hanna <jon@hackcraft.net>, www-rdf-interest@w3.org
On Tue, 2004-09-21 at 03:20, Phil Dawes wrote: > Harry Halpin writes: > > > <http://www.hackcraft.net/foaf/> > > > <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> > > > <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Document> . > > > <http://www.hackcraft.net/foaf/> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/maker> > > > <http://www.hackcraft.net/jon/> . > > > <http://www.hackcraft.net/jon/> > > > <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> > > > <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person> . > > > > Now make the concept of "www.hackcraft.net/jon/" interoperable with > > someone, say a me, who is using "www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin/jon" to refer to > > you. And pretend we don't know each other :) How is a machine going to > > discover that sameAs unless someone tells it that? > > > > Using an IFP - e.g. foaf:mbox. Hmm. My problem is that in the real, muddy world, I think machine-automated merging is going to run into many more ontological problems than you can throw a few OWL gimmicks at. Just ditch the idea: it's not in the least bit practical. *People* will always be needed to sort out context, Semantic Web or no. I think that once one accepts that, all these semiotic contrivances become easily seen for the nonsense they are. I've never been able to figure out the first thing about Topic maps, because they insist on trying to solve millenia-old symbolic perception issues with a few layers of indirection. RDF doesn't need to go there. > To be honest I'm a bit lost as to why this thread is generating so > many posts - these are non-problems as far as I can see. They are > solved in the same way as they are solved in real life - using > context. > > e.g. > > <http://example.com/pd> foaf:surname "Dawes" > > clearly indicates to anyone (man or machine) that understands the > foaf:surname predicate that http://example.com/pd identifies a > foaf:Person. Not a web page, audio file or anything else not > compatible with foaf:Person (although a representation may be > retrieved by HTTP GETting the URI, but that's a seperate matter). Exactly right. Leave that symbol grounding stuff to people: the real symbol grinders. Meaning should be the substance of flamewars, not flaccid logic. -- Uche Ogbuji Fourthought, Inc. http://uche.ogbuji.net http://4Suite.org http://fourthought.com A hands-on introduction to ISO Schematron - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/x-dw-xschematron-i.html Wrestling HTML (using Python) - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/09/08/pyxml.html XML circles the globe - http://www.javareport.com/article.asp?id=9797 Principles of XML design: Considering container elements - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-contain.html Hacking XML Hacks - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think26.html A survey of XML standards - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-stand4/
Received on Tuesday, 28 September 2004 16:40:34 UTC