- From: Aaron Swartz <me@aaronsw.com>
- Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2002 09:52:40 -0500
- To: Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org>
- Cc: <www-tag@w3.org>, "Tim Berners-Lee" <timbl@w3.org>
>>>> Again, you are confusing the ability for a web page to identify a >>>> donkey with the requirement that it does. I would argue that the web >>>> page only identifies the donkey if one was careful to state that it >>>> did. An example of such a page is: >>>> http://logicerror.com/myWeavingTheWeb >>> So what, sir, is the algorithm for determining that no one had >>> carefully stated tha a web page was a donkey? >> Visiting the page and reading through it. As I said, as we move into >> the Semantic Web we'll need RDF properties and HTTP headers to provide >> this information in a machine-processable way, but that's true about >> many things. I don't see how that's a deal-breaker. > Maybe that's the killer here? If you can only determine the meaning of > some RDF when online and able to visit the page, that greatly reduces > the utility of RDF, IMO. Well, you can obviously determine the meaning by reading trusted RDF files. If it says it's a foaf:Person it's a good bet the URL doesn't identify a document. If you had asked me what the method is for finding out if a URL is a web page about a baseball team, I would have suggested something similar (visit the page and see) but this does not preclude RDF descriptions of such things! (nor does it mean we must assume all HTTP URLs identify web pages about baseball teams, just to be safe) > <http://example.org/myCar> ex:colour ex:Red . > Suppose that I already know that ex:colour and ex:Red are to be > interpreted as describing the colour of the subject resource in the way > that we (as English speaking people) might expect. Am I to conclude > that: the web page at <http://example.org/myCar> is substantially red? Well, you probably know that the domain of ex:coulour is abstractThings so myCar must be an abstract thing and you wouldn't need to dereference the page. If someone else says something which leads you to believe it's a webPage then you have a contradiction and you resolve it the way you normally do: see who you trust more, check the page, etc. -- Aaron [http://www.aaronsw.com] 4FAC4838B7D8D13FA6D92EDB4145521E79F0DF4B
Received on Thursday, 1 August 2002 10:52:43 UTC