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Re: URIs harmful

• To: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
• Subject: Re: URIs harmful
• From: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@f...>
• Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 15:41:23 -0600
• Cc: joshuaa@m... (Joshua Allen), bill.dehora@p..., tbray@t... (Tim Bray), xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: Message from John Cowan <jcowan@r...> of "Thu, 25 Jul 2002 17:28:16 EDT." <200207252140.RAA19495@m...>
• Sender: uche.ogbuji@f...

> 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.

Sez you.  I don't agree or disagree.  I simply say you don't get to be arbiter 
of this for everyone.  There are slippery slopes everwhere when you try to 
place such stakes in the ground (lightly mixed metaphor), which is why I 
prefer to keep my stakes to myself.


> And bricks are as concrete as
> you can get: if a brick is abstract, *everything* is abstract.

Oh dear.  You've never had an argument with a good Solipsist, have you?  Not 
to worry.  I'm excusing myself from this conversation where people think they 
can sort out for technology what philosophers have not been able to sort out 
for "ordinary" human thought.

I hope we can agree to neither agree nor disagree.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                                    Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net    http://4Suite.org    http://fourthought.com
Track chair, XML/Web Services One Boston: http://www.xmlconference.com/
Basic XML and RDF techniques for knowledge management, Part 7 - 
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think12.html
Keeping pace with James Clark - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/libra
ry/x-jclark.html
Python and XML development using 4Suite, Part 3: 4RDF - 
http://www-105.ibm.com/developerworks/education.nsf/xml-onlinecourse-bytitle/8A
1EA5A2CF4621C386256BBB006F4CEC

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