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

The dog is continuous (potentially infinite set of 
states) and a representation is discrete 
so even if you can name the dog with a resource name, you can't 
retrieve all possible states of the dog with it.  You can 
only name the dog.

Does HTTP range map to infinities?

len


From: www-tag-request@w3.org [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of
noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com

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.

Received on Thursday, 14 October 2004 20:11:57 UTC