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Re: URIs harmful

• To: uche.ogbuji@f... (Uche Ogbuji)
• Subject: Re: URIs harmful
• From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
• Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 17:28:16 -0400 (EDT)
• Cc: joshuaa@m... (Joshua Allen), bill.dehora@p..., tbray@t... (Tim Bray), xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <E17Xq57-0000Sn-00@m...> from "Uche Ogbuji" at Jul 25, 2002 03:23:13 PM

Uche Ogbuji scripsit:

> Sorry, Joshua, but you don't get to arbitrate this.  Each person is free to 
> decide that those things *are* the beach, if he chooses.  After all, "the 
> beach" is an abstraction of numerous things that people conceive.

Beaches aren't a good example, because their boundaries are vague.  I like
to use bricks, because they have a bright-line definition.  The URI
brick://ci.nyc.ny.us/13+East+3rd+St?course=1&brick=20 refers to a brick.  If
you do a GET on this, and have an appropriate proxy in place, you might
get a picture of the brick, or a description of the brick, or a bare
list of facts about the brick (perhaps including "laid 1872").  But none
of these representations *is* the brick.  And bricks are as concrete as
you can get: if a brick is abstract, *everything* is abstract.

-- 
John Cowan    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan   <jcowan@r...>
    "Any legal document draws most of its meaning from context. A telegram
    that says 'SELL HUNDRED THOUSAND SHARES IBM SHORT' (only 190 bits in
    5-bit Baudot code plus appropriate headers) is as good a legal document
    as any, even sans digital signature." --me

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