RE: URIs: resources and contradictions was: Re: httpRange proposed text

> > When two people use the same http URL, they have a reasonable degree
> > of confidence that they will be connecting to the same "thing", and
> > they don't even have to dereference the site to have that
confidence.
> 
> This is a straightforward empirical question. To find out if you're
> right all you have to do is go out with a clipboard and ask people.

Well, it's pretty self-evident.  Here is a survey:

Q1.  If Karath Mok at a cybercafe in Singapore types http://www.w3.org
into her web browser on a Sunday, will she be going to the same web page
to which Victor Santorini went when he typed http://www.w3.org into his
web browser from home in Milan the day before?

The only people who won't answer "yes" are those people dazzled by their
own sophistry, who thankfully make up a tiny minority of web users.  If
people had no such confidence, the web would be broken.

You seem to be confused over the scope of the axiom, which says
*nothing* about the actual identification of the thing.  It actually
doesn't matter *what* the individuals verbalize when attempting to
describe the "thing", so long as they are all identifying the *same*
"thing".   Here is a more detailed example:

Q1.  Karath, when you just typed http://www.w3.org into your browser,
what "thing" did you connect to?
A1.  An HTML document written by W3C
Q2.  Karath, do you think that Victor connected to the same "thing" when
he typed the same URL into his browser yesterday?
A2.  Of course!  Is this a trick question?

Q1.  Victor, when you typed http://www.w3.org into your browser
yesterday, what "thing" did you connect to?
A1.  A web server maintained by W3C, maybe in Massachusetts
Q2.  Victor, do you think that Karath connected to the same "thing" when
she browsed to the same URL today?
A2.  Huh?  I hope so!  Is this a trick question?


I think some people on this list are getting mystified by the fact that
people might give different answers to Q1 above.  But the axiom doesn't
really care how people individually *describe* the "thing" that they are
identifying, so long as they all can be confident that they are
identifying the *same* thing.  The WWW would not be working today if
people did not have this guarantee.  In fact, with the WWW, the
guarantee is fairly direct, because the identifiers are based on DNS.
The WWW is in many ways the *simplest* example of a system that adheres
to this axiom.

P.S.  This is why I invoked Goebbels.  It could be puzzling that some
intelligent people could be duped into believing something so false as
"in practice, people do not follow this axiom".  But Goebbels pointed
out that in fact, "big lies" are more likely to believed simply because
they are so big.

Received on Sunday, 4 August 2002 14:17:34 UTC