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RE: RE: RE: MS thinks HTTP Needs Replacing???

• To: 'Bill de hOra' <dehora@e...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: RE: RE: MS thinks HTTP Needs Replacing???
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 11:04:12 -0600

We'll go down a rabbit trail if we go too far here.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill de hOra [mailto:dehora@e...]

>One of the things that helped kill the expert system industry was
>the (multi-dimensional) cost of extracting knowledge from experts.

Yes, because it was point of view oriented.  On the other hand, pick 
a specific domain in a specific locale (making Soup at Campbells) 
and it works ok.  That is why the expert systems builders drifted 
into "capturing corporate expertise".

>Another thing was that an expert group is not usually an internally
>consistent body of knowledge. If part of the work building reusable
>XML vocabularies for commerce is extracting domain specific
>knowledge, then it's going to be tough to realise a return. 

Scope the domain, then pick the partners for the transactions that 
use that vocabulary.  Again, ontological commitment is not based 
on each member community doing the same thing. It is based on 
returning the expected gesture and having a remediation clause 
if that doesn't happen.

>I observe that ease of use is ultimately cultural or tribal. Think
>about learning languages. Is it easier to learn a language that
>uses ideograms or an alphabetic as primitives? 

That is not cultural or tribal: it is representational.  Behaviors 
and representations should not be conflated.  Language is typically 
acquired behaviorally (spoken and heard).  Then that knowledge is 
mapped to the representation.   Phonetics aren't hard to master 
but correct spelling is.   The size of a mastered vocabulary 
varies greatly by individual and sometimes a group.  It is difficult 
to master a ideogram system in total, but not hard to acquire a 
a subset.   It is hard to learn to spell all of the words in a subset 
but not as hard as the general vocabulary.

What is hard is to write ideograms well.  An alphabet is easier. 
Then medium becomes the issue.  Carving curves in stone limited 
alphabetic styles for some long time.  Carving straight lines 
limited the acquisition of abstract math.

Stopping here before we really drop off the edge.... ;-)

len

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