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

Joshua Allen wrote,
> Exactly, you just proved my point.

Umm ... OK. In which case I've clearly misunderstood your position and 
we're much closer than I thought: my apologies.

> 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.

I think that this is where our residual differences lie. I don't believe 
that people will always realign their naming practices so smoothly. 

There could be any number of reasons why they don't or can't,

* They might be in less direct contact than in your example. This might
  still have an effect on third parties who are directly or indirectly
  linked to both, but who might have no or limited influence on either.

* They might be unable to come to any agreement on the cannonical
  referent. The more parties involved, the harder this is likely to be.

* There might be considerable investement in their current naming
  practices (eg. changing URIs might entail modifying large numbers of
  documents and web systems).

* There might be entrenched social or political reasons which prevent
  either party from changing their usage.

* The parties might consider each others naming practices idiosyncratic
  and hence be reluctant to coordinate.

And, I guess, many many more ...

Cheers,


Miles

Received on Monday, 5 August 2002 04:42:12 UTC