- From: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2006 19:09:05 -0600
- To: Ed Davies <edavies@nildram.co.uk>
- Cc: "Henry S. Thompson" <ht@inf.ed.ac.uk>, www-tag@w3.org
>Henry Story wrote: >>To me, unauthorised resources should be protected by Access control >>mechanism, not by the shape of the url. > >To me too, but apparently not to the lawyers in this case. > >The key question is, in my view, what the meaning of a GET request >is. Is it "give me a representation of this resource which I assert >I am authorized to access" or is it "please give me a representation >of this resource if you think that the user name, password, referer, >or whatever, of this request entitles me to it"? I suggest that it is not, and cannot possibly be, either of these. Or indeed any other English paraphrase of some communication act between human beings. GET is not a conversation, it is a mechanical transfer protocol. We can of course speak metaphorically using this language, just as we speak of machine "instructions" and software "agents" and so on: our technical vocabulary is riddled with these suggestive usages. But sometimes it is vitally important to remind ourselves that these really are only suggestive metaphors. Computer hardware does not obey as humans obey orders; software does not act as humans act; and GET does not request, assert, claim or suggest in any human senses of these words. It simply initiates a process which results in bytes being transferred from one place to another on a network. Pat Hayes -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax FL 32502 (850)291 0667 cell phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes
Received on Sunday, 12 November 2006 01:09:13 UTC