Re: [Fwd: RE: "information resource"]

Perhaps it's worth noting that our current editors draft says [1]

TRUE per Basel Definition:  "The distinguishing characteristic of these [information] resources is that 
all of their essential characteristics can be conveyed in a message."

but it does NOT say the converse:

FALSE per Basel Definition: "A non-information resource is distinguished 
by the fact that none of its state can be conveyed in a message."

We shouldn't be surprised that there is some machine-representable state 
for a real live shaggy dog.  We might choose to expose its temperature or 
its weight, for example.  The distinction drawn in Basel is that dogs are 
interestingly different from information resources because there exist 
essential aspects of the dog that are not conveyable in a machine-readable 
way. 

Noah

[1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/webarch/#id-resources (I don't think I have 
a stable link in date space for this, unfortunately)

--------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn 
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
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Received on Thursday, 14 October 2004 19:54:34 UTC