[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

RE: URIs harmful

• To: "Mark Baker" <distobj@a...>,"Tim Bray" <tbray@t...>
• Subject: RE: URIs harmful
• From: "Joshua Allen" <joshuaa@m...>
• Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2002 09:30:39 -0700
• Cc: <xml-dev@l...>
• Thread-index: AcI0m6U1T4Xlmp80QtimEYWxZ6nZqAAJI2ow
• Thread-topic: URIs harmful

> Sure there is, concensus.  RDF helps machines process assertions, but
> humans have been making and processing assertions with HTML since day
> one.  You just need a way of finding out what assertions have been
made
> using the URI, http://www.w3.org.  Google to the rescue;
> 
>
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=link:http%3A%2F%2Fwww%
2E
> w3%2Eorg%2F
> 
> Tim told me that he thought that http://www.w3.org/Consortium/
> identified the W3C.  Google suggests that most people who use that
> URI, do use it this way, so there's an issue there.  But *many* more
> (roughly, 64000 to 1250) use http://www.w3.org as the W3C's URI.
> 
> As Roy said, URIs, like words, mean what people use them to mean.

This is utterly and completely wrong.  The ratio is more like 0 to
65000.  In every single one of those cites, the URI is used to direct
people to a hypermedia representation dispenser.  You can argue until
you are blue in the face that someone meant something *other* than the
hypermedia dispenser, but it is completely a red herring because the
only *practical* effect pf that link is to locate a hypermedia
dispenser.  Google also shows that there are 2.3 million documents which
use "W3C" when they wish to identify the consortium.  I think people are
not nearly so capricious and confused as you imply.

Words mean what people use them to mean, and unfortunately that means
that you will never succeed in declaring by fiat that your web page is a
car.  People use http: identifiers to identify hypermedia servers.

• Prev by Date: Partitioning?
• Next by Date: RE: URIs harmful
• Previous by thread: RE: URIs harmful
• Next by thread: RE: URIs harmful
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread