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

Exactly, you just proved my point.  
 
People IN PRACTICE do not use http://www.w3.org to identify something which is ambiguous, because they would encounter the issues you describe below.  If Karath and Victor want to talk about "the amount of memory on the machine", or "the number of bytes in the page", they do not use the URI to directly identify the "thing".
 
Your example shows exactly what one would expect -- two people will use the URI by itself to identify the "thing" about which there is no ambiguity, but they will begin to provide other disambiguating information (and even abandon the original URI altogether) when they need to identify something for which the URI is not suitable.  
 
You demonstrate that Karath and Victor are both smart -- they both realize that http://www.w3.org is insufficient to identify the "thing" as soon as they start talking about a "thing" that has a quantity of bytes.  They are smart enough to realize that they need a better way to identify that "thing".  In Victor's case, he might abandon the URI altogether and refer to the serial number of the machine (if he really wants to be precise).  In Karath's case, she may use an etag header.  But they both are clearly aware that the URI itself is not identifying the "thing" that you are asking them about, while they are quite comfortable to use it to identify the thing that I was asking about.
 
In other words, you demonstrated that normal people will NOT use an http: URL to identify a car, while you have said nothing at all about my proof that normal people WILL use an http: URL to identify something that they interact with through a web browser.
 

 -----Original Message----- 
 From: Miles Sabin [mailto:miles@milessabin.com] 
 Sent: Sun 8/4/2002 11:58 AM 
 To: www-tag@w3.org 
 Cc: 
 Subject: Re: URIs: resources and contradictions was: Re: httpRange proposed text
 
 


 Joshua Allen wrote,
 <snip/>
 > 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?
 
 Q3.  Karath, how many characters do you think http://www.w3.org/ has?
 A3.  Hmm ... oh, several thousand I should think.
 Q4.  Karath, how much memory do you think http://www.w3.org/ has?
 A4.  Huh?
 
 Q3.  Victor, how much memory do you think http://www.w3.org/ has?
 A3.  Hmm ... oh, half a gig or at a guess.
 Q4.  Victor, how many characters do you think http://www.w3.org/ has?
 A4.  Huh?
 
 Q5.  Karath, when I asked Victor how many characters http://www.w3.org/
      has he didn't understand the question, but he thought that it had
      about half a gig of memory. Do you still think you're both talking
      about the same thing?
 A5.  Err ... guess not, he must have been talking about the web server.
 
 Q5.  Victor, when I asked Karath how much memory http://www.w3.org/
      has she didn't understand the question, but she thought that it had
      several thousand characters. Do you still think you're both
      talking about the same thing?
 A5.  Err ... guess not, she must have been talking about the HTML
      document.
 
 Cheers,
 
 
 Miles

Received on Sunday, 4 August 2002 16:55:22 UTC