RE: A little courtesy, please

John Cowan wrote
> Miles Sabin wrote:
> > That just doesn't wash because resources are made of bits,
> > which live in filesystems or memory, or get generated by
> > processes running on distinctly non-abstract boxes full 
> > chips and stuff; and they're retrievable because bunches of 
> > bits can be transferred over wires.
>
> Nope, it's *entity bodies* that are made of bits (actually, a 
> pile of octets plus a MIME media type).

I disagree.

You're missing a (subtle I grant you) contrast. A resource is
_made_of_bits_, an entity body _is_ bits.

> A resource *is* abstract; the same resource can get a 
> different entity body every time you access it, e.g. 
> gopher://www.ccil.org:13/0.

I'm afraid I think this is just wrong. Dereferencing that URL
gets me a different entity body every time, but it's far from
clear that it gets me a different resource. From one point of
view it's a different resource (a constantly changing time-
stamped page), but from another it's the same resource with
constantly changing content. The only thing which is abstract 
is what the resource(s) represent ... the time.

Cheers,


Miles

ps. apologies for the earlier HTML mail. Not my fault someone
fiddled with our mail-server and persuaded it to slap a
text/html content type on all outgoing mail.

-- 
Miles Sabin                       Cromwell Media
Internet Systems Architect        5/6 Glenthorne Mews
+44 (0)20 8817 4030               London, W6 0LJ, England
msabin@cromwellmedia.com          http://www.cromwellmedia.com/

Received on Tuesday, 23 May 2000 12:29:45 UTC