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RE: Resistance is not Futile because Change is Inevitable and

• To: 'Joshua Allen' <joshuaa@m...>
• Subject: RE: Resistance is not Futile because Change is Inevitable and You Might As Well Get Paid for Implementing It
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 14:49:42 -0500
• Cc: xml-dev@l...

Right.  The problems won't go away.  That doesn't mean a repository 
isn't worthwhile.  Libraries are worthwhile.  It just isn't 
going to work as a way to eliminate the tower of babel any 
more than a library gets rid of slang or argot and for similar 
reasons:  humans are relentlessly creative; situations are 
notoriously local.  

All the time spent on SGML (and no doubt most standardization efforts 
before it) taught us the value of transform languages and 
the locality of definitions.  CALS taught us that not even 
the most stringent Secretaries of Poo could make it happen 
by fiat.  On the other hand, when humans want to cooperate,
libraries are a good place to start and XML provides for 
tools to do it at the level of standardization that makes 
the most of low hanging fruit:  the lexical.  

Just don't bet the farm on it.  Semantic Webbers be wise 
about this.  It is rather easy to write N/A and NONE as 
the values of URI'd thingies.  Pointers to NULL won't 
tell the machine much.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua Allen [mailto:joshuaa@m...]

That quote was from the article -- I was simply quoting it because it
summed up the hopelessly idealistic attitude that such problems could
ever be eliminated (and that by having a "repository").

So we agree

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