subject:"Squaring the HTTP\-range\-14 circle"

Point taken Pat but I have been in the same ring as you for many
years, but to progress the Web can't we just take our hands off
the wheel, let it go where it wants. (Not that I have any influence,
and realistically you neither Pat). I'm now just back from a
sabbatical, but right now would probably be a good time to take one.
If these big companies do engage on the microdata front, it's great.
I'm sure it's been said before, why don't we get pornographers working
hard on their metadata on visuals, because they work for Google/Bing
whatever. The motivation right now might not be towards Tim's day one
goals of sharing some stuff between departments at CERN, but that's
irrelevant in the longer term. Getting the the Web as an
infrastructure for data seems like a significant step in human
evolution. And it's a no-brainer. But getting from where we are to
there is tricky. Honestly, I don't care. It'll happen, my remaining
lifespan or about 50 on top, there will be another, big, revolution.

Society is already so different, just with little mobile phones.

/gak I'm no going to speculate, we're heading for a major change.

Cheers,
Danny.

On 19 June 2011 06:05, Pat Hayes pha...@ihmc.us wrote:
Really (sorry to keep raining on the parade, but) it is not as simple as
this. Look, it is indeed easy to not bother distinguishing male from female
dogs. One simply talks of dogs without mentioning gender, and there is a lot
that can be said about dogs without getting into that second topic. But
confusing web pages, or documents more generally, with the things the
documents are about, now that does matter a lot more, simply because it is
virtually impossible to say *anything* about documents-or-things without
immediately being clear which of them - documents or things - one is talking
about. And there is a good reason why this particular confusion is so
destructive. Unlike the dogs-vs-bitches case, the difference between the
document and its topic, the thing, is that one is ABOUT the other. This is
not simply a matter of ignoring some potentially relevant information (the
gender of the dog) because one is temporarily not concerned with it: it is
two different ways of using the very names that are the fabric of the
descriptive representations themselves. It confuses language with language
use, confuses language with meta-language. It is like saying giraffe has
seven letters rather than giraffe has seven letters. Maybe this does not
break Web architecture, but it certainly breaks **semantic** architecture. It
completely destroys any semantic coherence we might, in some perhaps
impossibly optimistic vision of the future, manage to create within the
semantic web. So yes indeed, the Web will go on happily confusing things with
documents, partly because the Web really has no actual contact with things at
all: it is entirely constructed from documents (in a wide sense). But the
SEMANTIC Web will wither and die, or perhaps be still-born, if it cannot find
some way to keep use and mention separate and coherent. So far, http-range-14
is the only viable suggestion I have seen for how to do this. If anyone has a
better one, let us discuss it. But just blandly assuming that it will all
come out in the wash is a bad idea. It won't.

Pat

On Jun 18, 2011, at 1:51 PM, Danny Ayers wrote:

On 17 June 2011 02:46, David Booth da...@dbooth.org wrote:

I agree with TimBL that it is *good* to distinguish between web pages
and dogs -- and we should encourage folks to do so -- because doing so
*does* help applications that need this distinction. But the failure to
make this distinction does *not* break the web architecture any more
than a failure to distinguish between male dogs and female dogs.

Thanks David, a nice summary of the most important point IMHO.

Ok, I've been trying to rationalize the case where there is a failure
to make the distinction, but that's very much secondary to the fact
that nothing really gets broken.

Cheers,
Danny.

http://danny.ayers.name

IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973
40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office
Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax
FL 32502 (850)291 0667 mobile
phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes

--
http://danny.ayers.name

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]


On 19 Jun 2011, at 06:05, Pat Hayes wrote:

 Really (sorry to keep raining on the parade, but) it is not as simple as 
 this. Look, it is indeed easy to not bother distinguishing male from female 
 dogs. One simply talks of dogs without mentioning gender, and there is a lot 
 that can be said about dogs without getting into that second topic. But 
 confusing web pages, or documents more generally, with the things the 
 documents are about, now that does matter a lot more, simply because it is 
 virtually impossible to say *anything* about documents-or-things without 
 immediately being clear which of them - documents or things - one is talking 
 about. And there is a good reason why this particular confusion is so 
 destructive. Unlike the dogs-vs-bitches case, the difference between the 
 document and its topic, the thing, is that one is ABOUT the other. This is 
 not simply a matter of ignoring some potentially relevant information (the 
 gender of the dog) because one is temporarily not concerned with it: it is 
 two different ways of using the very names that are the fabric of the 
 descriptive representations themselves. It confuses language with language 
 use, confuses language with meta-language. It is like saying giraffe has 
 seven letters rather than giraffe has seven letters. Maybe this does not 
 break Web architecture, but it certainly breaks **semantic** architecture. It 
 completely destroys any semantic coherence we might, in some perhaps 
 impossibly optimistic vision of the future, manage to create within the 
 semantic web. So yes indeed, the Web will go on happily confusing things with 
 documents, partly because the Web really has no actual contact with things at 
 all: it is entirely constructed from documents (in a wide sense). But the 
 SEMANTIC Web will wither and die, or perhaps be still-born, if it cannot find 
 some way to keep use and mention separate and coherent.

The way to do this is to build applications where this thing matters. So for 
example in the social web we could build
a slightly more evolved like protocol/ontology, which would be decentralised 
for one, but would also allow one to distinguish documents, from other parts of 
documents and things. So one could then say that one wishes to bring people's 
attention to a well written article on a rape, rather than having to like the 
rape. Or that one wishes to bring people's attention to the content of an 
article without having to like the style the article is written in.

If such applications take hold, and there is a way the logic of using these 
applications is made to work where these distinctions become useful and visible 
to the end user, then there will be millions of vocal supporters of this 
distinction - which we know exists, which programmers know exists, which pretty 
much everyone knows exists, but which people new to the semweb web, like the 
early questioners of the viability of the mouse and the endless debates about 
that animal, will question because they can't feel in their bones the reality 
of this thing.

 So far, http-range-14 is the only viable suggestion I have seen for how to do 
 this.

Well hash uris are of course a lot easier to understand. http-range-14 is 
clearly a solution which is good to know about but that will have an adoption 
problem.


 If anyone has a better one, let us discuss it.

I am of the view that this has been discussed to death, and that any mailing 
list that discusses this is short of real things to do.

One could argue much more fruitfully on DocumentObject ontologies, and it would 
be interesting to see where that leads one.

 But just blandly assuming that it will all come out in the wash is a bad 
 idea. It won't. 

Well these are logical necessities you are speaking of. So it will come out in 
the wash. Just like 2+2=4, those who wish to ignore it will loose out in a 
number of transactions. 

So the fun thing is that we can find completely coherent ontologies that don't 
brake the semweb and that would allow Richard Cyganiak to write

 http://richard.cyganiak.de/ a foaf:Document;
   dofoaf:name Richard Cyganiak;
   dc:title: Richard Cyganiak's homepage;
   dofoaf:knows http://bblfish.net/ .

It looks like here that the document has been confused with the object, but in 
fact the relations are designed so that they indirectly refer to something 
else. Now it is not clear that this is easier or less confusing to write than 
pure foaf. But it does make it look like what Danny wants to have is happening, 
namely that the document refers to the thing too - assuming a document only 
refers to one thing. But that is already the main problem. Even an image never 
refers to one thing only. Take a simple image of the eiffel tower: there can be 
cars in it, there can be birds, mice, rats (ratatouille), and many other 
creatures jumping around on people's heads. The higher the resolution the more 
things that picture can be said to refer to. So to know which is the

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]


On 6/19/11 7:43 AM, Danny Ayers wrote:

Point taken Pat but I have been in the same ring as you for many
years, but to progress the Web  can't we just take our hands off
the wheel, let it go where it wants. (Not that I have any influence,
and realistically you neither Pat). I'm now just back from a
sabbatical, but right now would probably be a good time to take one.
If these big companies do engage on the microdata front, it's great.
I'm sure it's been said before, why don't we get pornographers working
hard on their metadata on visuals, because they work for Google/Bing
whatever. The motivation right now might not be towards Tim's day one
goals of sharing some stuff between departments at CERN, but that's
irrelevant in the longer term. Getting the the Web as an
infrastructure for data seems like a significant step in human
evolution. And it's a no-brainer. But getting from where we are to
there is tricky. Honestly, I don't care. It'll happen, my remaining
lifespan or about 50 on top, there will be another, big, revolution.

Society is already so different, just with little mobile phones.

/gak I'm no going to speculate, we're heading for a major change.


Danny,

Do you agree with HTTP-range-14 finding or not?

My gripe with HTTP-range-14 is all about aesthetic matters re. language 
and anecdote choices, not the core concept it attempts to articulate. If 
you clearly state your gripe in similar terms there could be a chance of 
yourself and Pat actually realizing that you are in agreement. 
Personally, I've always assumed you clearly groked why Name and Address 
disambiguation is vital re. Web's data space dimension. I am suspecting 
that you are saying: we should find ways to co-exist with initiatives 
(e.g. schema.org) that haven't addressed these matters, just yet etc..


Note: many are grappling with how to construct viable business models 
from Linked Data, thus in some cases you will have services that look 
like they don't care about Name and Address disambiguation on the 
outside, courtesy of their publicly accessible resources, while in 
reality they understand these matters very well and have put them you 
use for a while. Remember, a URI doesn't have to be public :-)  I think 
the debate will ultimately be more about getting these big players to 
share their more powerful URIs with the public via services and apps 
from communities like this that make the opportunity costs of these big 
players palpable :-)



Kingsley

Cheers,
Danny.

On 19 June 2011 06:05, Pat Hayespha...@ihmc.us  wrote:

Really (sorry to keep raining on the parade, but) it is not as simple as this. Look, it 
is indeed easy to not bother distinguishing male from female dogs. One simply talks of 
dogs without mentioning gender, and there is a lot that can be said about dogs without 
getting into that second topic. But confusing web pages, or documents more generally, 
with the things the documents are about, now that does matter a lot more, simply because 
it is virtually impossible to say *anything* about documents-or-things without 
immediately being clear which of them - documents or things - one is talking about. And 
there is a good reason why this particular confusion is so destructive. Unlike the 
dogs-vs-bitches case, the difference between the document and its topic, the thing, is 
that one is ABOUT the other. This is not simply a matter of ignoring some potentially 
relevant information (the gender of the dog) because one is temporarily not concerned 
with it: it is two different ways of using the very names that are the fabric of the 
descriptive representations themselves. It confuses language with language use, confuses 
language with meta-language. It is like saying giraffe has seven letters rather than 
giraffe has seven letters. Maybe this does not break Web architecture, but it 
certainly breaks **semantic** architecture. It completely destroys any semantic coherence 
we might, in some perhaps impossibly optimistic vision of the future, manage to create 
within the semantic web. So yes indeed, the Web will go on happily confusing things with 
documents, partly because the Web really has no actual contact with things at all: it is 
entirely constructed from documents (in a wide sense). But the SEMANTIC Web will wither 
and die, or perhaps be still-born, if it cannot find some way to keep use and mention 
separate and coherent. So far, http-range-14 is the only viable suggestion I have seen 
for how to do this. If anyone has a better one, let us discuss it. But just blandly 
assuming that it will all come out in the wash is a bad idea. It won't.

Pat

On Jun 18, 2011, at 1:51 PM, Danny Ayers wrote:


On 17 June 2011 02:46, David Boothda...@dbooth.org  wrote:


I agree with TimBL that it is *good* to distinguish between web pages
and dogs -- and we should encourage folks to do so -- because doing so
*does* help applications that need this distinction.  But the failure to
make this distinction does *not*

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]

2011-06-19 Thread Dave Reynolds

Hi Hugh,

 By the way, as is well-known I think, a lot of people use and therefore must 
 be happy with URIs that are not Range-14 compliant, such as 
 http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema .

Your general point that there is non-compliant data out there that
people are still able to make use of is probably right, but that
specific example is compliant - those are all (even the ontology URI)
hash-URIs.

Dave

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]


On 19 Jun 2011, at 13:05, Hugh Glaser wrote:

 A step too far?
 
 Hi.
 I've sort of been waiting for someone to say:
 I have a system that consumes RDF from the world out there (eg dbpedia), and 
 it would break and be unfixable if the sources didn't do 303 or #.
 Plenty of people saying they can't express what they want without it.
 And plenty of people saying they can't write some code that they might not be 
 able to understand some RDF they receive properly.
 But no actual examples in the wild (at least as far as I can tell in a lot of 
 messages).
 
 This might be for quite a few reasons, such as:
 1) There are no such consuming systems;
 2) The existing consuming systems would not break.
 
 Number (1) would be too embarrassing, and is wrong because I have some, so 
 I'll think about number (2).

As you point out there are some consuming systems but they are not very 
distributed: you know ahead of time what you will find there, and so you can 
adapt your parsing for the few special cases. At that level the XML crowd/JSON 
crowd are right - rdf does not give you much. In fact it makes it easier to do 
things wrong. So we should be supporting more RESTful XML that can be GRDDLed 
with X-SPARQL.

The semweb gives you a lot more when things get even more distributed, such as 
when everyone starts having foaf files on billions of computers. At that point 
nobody will want to tweak their app for the specific data at one site. Also one 
will want to be careful of the difference between documents and things, for the 
same reason I pointed out with the like button in Facebook. So for the moment 
the errors don't appear, because we are few consumers and few producers, and we 
can work around mistakes manually on a case by case basis.

To get a real linked data application you need:
 1- data that is produced in a completely decentralised way
 2- data that is linked between those decentralised nodes
 3- data that is consumed, and where the consumption has real world effects
  
 
Number 3 is the recursive feedback piece that will make 1 and 2 come to a point 
of stability, or meta-stability, as we are dealing with self organising systems 
here.
 
This can be done with the social web. We need systems where you publishing data 
means that I can do something, learn something about you, and so on... but 
without you ever knowing ahead of time what software or services we are using. 
(( The Twitters and other Web2.0 folks have made their life easy by 
centralising data publishing and consumption as much as possible. For systems 
like there is no real communication problem: there is a central dictator and he 
says what the meaning of the terms go. As things evolve that part even escapes 
him - the way office document formats escaped M$ - because of the huge number 
of people and software dependent on the initial meaning produced.))

If I write things out wrong, your software should be able to let me know about 
it. Just as if we organise to meet but we
give each other the wrong address, we will end up missing the meeting. If this 
were not so then giving out addresses and organising meetings would be a very 
different exercise.



 There seem to be some axes in the discussion:
 publish / consume
 long/medium term / shorter term
 ideal / pragmatic
 Interestingly, we don't seem to have a strong theory / practice axis, which 
 is great.

yes, my point has been we need to work on small vocabularies, widely 
distributed, widely used, to kick start the rest of the system

 
 As a publisher, I/we have had to work pretty hard to conform to really quite 
 complex requirements for publishing RDF as Linked Data; not just Range-14, 
 but voiD, sitemaps and various bits and pieces that Kingsley always tells me 
 to do in the RDF.
 As a consumer, it has been pretty simple: Well guv, thanks for the URI, 
 here's some RDF.
 It has always been something of a source of angst (if not actual pain) to me 
 that none of the extra work I put into publishing RDF is ever used by me or 
 anyone else, as far as I know.
 In fact, some of the sites I consume actually don't do things properly - I 
 might have had to change my consuming systems to cope with this, but I don't, 
 because they already cope fine.
 Why is it not a problem? One obvious reason is that the consuming application 
 is actually looking for specific knowledge about things.

And as pointed out above they are not that distributed, and the consequences of 
things going wrong on a lot of the open data stack is not that big yet.

 I don't have a consuming system that is considering both lexical and animal 
 subjects, and so confusion does not arise.

Also you are probably not putting up reasoners yet. 

 In fact, it is the predicates that tend to distinguish satisfactorily for me 
 (as has been pointed out by some people).
 Thus, if I get a triple that says the URI that would resolve to my Facebook 
 page foaf:knows the URI that would resolve to your Facebook page, I (my 
 system)

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]


On 6/19/11 12:05 PM, Hugh Glaser wrote:

A step too far?

Hi.
I've sort of been waiting for someone to say:
I have a system that consumes RDF from the world out there (eg dbpedia), and it 
would break and be unfixable if the sources didn't do 303 or #.
Plenty of people saying they can't express what they want without it.
And plenty of people saying they can't write some code that they might not be 
able to understand some RDF they receive properly.
But no actual examples in the wild (at least as far as I can tell in a lot of 
messages).

This might be for quite a few reasons, such as:
1) There are no such consuming systems;
2) The existing consuming systems would not break.

Number (1) would be too embarrassing, and is wrong because I have some, so I'll 
think about number (2).

There seem to be some axes in the discussion:
publish / consume
long/medium term / shorter term
ideal / pragmatic
Interestingly, we don't seem to have a strong theory / practice axis, which is 
great.

As a publisher, I/we have had to work pretty hard to conform to really quite 
complex requirements for publishing RDF as Linked Data; not just Range-14, but 
voiD, sitemaps and various bits and pieces that Kingsley always tells me to do 
in the RDF.
As a consumer, it has been pretty simple: Well guv, thanks for the URI, here's some 
RDF.
It has always been something of a source of angst (if not actual pain) to me 
that none of the extra work I put into publishing RDF is ever used by me or 
anyone else, as far as I know.


Er. we use it :-)

The problem with this whole Linked Data thing is that its truly Ninja tech.

The killer conductor of value is the LINK. This lethal weapon applies to 
all dimensions of the Web:


1. Information Space
2. Data Space
3. Knowledge Space.

Trouble is, where do we find strong anecdotes for a cross dimensional 
lethal weapon? I try to use Stars Wars and the FORCE at times, but even 
that doesn't quite nail what we are dealing with here. Thus, we could 
take another approach i.e., embrace and extend what we know is anomalous 
since the AWWW architecture (FORCE) actually lets us do this anyway.




In fact, some of the sites I consume actually don't do things properly - I 
might have had to change my consuming systems to cope with this, but I don't, because 
they already cope fine.


Exactly! You are using the FORCE :-)


Why is it not a problem? One obvious reason is that the consuming application 
is actually looking for specific knowledge about things.
I don't have a consuming system that is considering both lexical and animal 
subjects, and so confusion does not arise.


You have a Data Space dimension app. The Information Space dimension 
doesn't interfere with your world view. This is key in many ways. For 
instance, imagine if your app was of the Information Space dimension 
instead, the effect would be very close to what we see today re. those 
that see Name and Address disambiguation as impractical overkill since 
nothing breaks in the world they experience.



In fact, it is the predicates that tend to distinguish satisfactorily for me 
(as has been pointed out by some people).


Yep! The Data Space realm lets you Describe anything with clarity, and 
even when unclear, agents can ultimately agree to disagree without 
obliteration.



Thus, if I get a triple that says the URI that would resolve to my Facebook 
page foaf:knows the URI that would resolve to your Facebook page, I (my system) 
will happily interpret that as one person (or whatever) foaf:knows the other. I 
certainly don't want to go and resolve these to find out to what the URIs 
actually resolve. And if I did, what would I do about it? Ignore it?


As you would in code generally, encounter an exception, and decide if 
you avoid making it a critical fault :-)



In fact, as has also been mentioned, you can define domains, ranges and 
restrictions for as long as you like, but it is quite possible and likely that 
the users of URIs will continue blissfully unaware of any of this, in exactly 
the same way that they continue unaware that there might be something ambiguous 
about the URIs they are using.



Yes, when they operate in the Information Space dimension.


By the way, as is well-known I think, a lot of people use and therefore must be 
happy with URIs that are not Range-14 compliant, such as 
http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema .


In the Information Space dimension, yes. In that dimension it doesn't 
matter.



When we help people publish, it really is tough to engage them long enough to 
care about the complex issues, and they often get it wrong - I am engaged with 
quite a few people who are now publishing serious amounts of interesting RDF 
where I have contacted them to try to help. The status of the conversations is 
that they have fixed what they can, and are now thinking (for a long time) 
about how they might configure their systems to do it properly - but they may 
never get there. I will still want to use their

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]


On 19 Jun 2011, at 14:04, Kingsley Idehen wrote:

 
 Er. we use it :-)
 
 The problem with this whole Linked Data thing is that its truly Ninja tech.
 
 The killer conductor of value is the LINK. This lethal weapon applies to all 
 dimensions of the Web:
 
 1. Information Space
 2. Data Space
 3. Knowledge Space.
 
 Trouble is, where do we find strong anecdotes for a cross dimensional lethal 
 weapon? I try to use Stars Wars and the FORCE at times, but even that doesn't 
 quite nail what we are dealing with here. Thus, we could take another 
 approach i.e., embrace and extend what we know is anomalous since the AWWW 
 architecture (FORCE) actually lets us do this anyway.

That's a fun way of describing things. But we have to be careful not to hype 
things too much, or we risk being tied into the 1980 AI hype space, and then 
nobody will listen anymore. 

Perhaps a more scientific way to express this is within the language of 
self-organising systems. There is a lot of research there which is relevant to 
us.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_organising_systems

I am a bit new to this area. Any books I must read?

Henry


Social Web Architect
http://bblfish.net/

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]

2011-06-19 Thread Hugh Glaser

Thanks Henry.
Just to be clear on one point:

On 19 Jun 2011, at 12:44, Henry Story wrote:
snip /
 
 When we help people publish, it really is tough to engage them long enough 
 to care about the complex issues, and they often get it wrong - I am engaged 
 with quite a few people who are now publishing serious amounts of 
 interesting RDF where I have contacted them to try to help. The status of 
 the conversations is that they have fixed what they can, and are now 
 thinking (for a long time) about how they might configure their systems to 
 do it properly - but they may never get there. I will still want to use 
 their RDF.
 
 yes, in these case by case scenarios it is easy for you to write special case 
 filters. And we could do the
 same thing with HTML whenever we browse the web too. But the web had an 
 application: the browser that lead to 
 feedback effects that increased the coherence of the system.
 
snip /
But I don't write special case filters - if I did it would not consider it 
Semantic Web.
I simply follow my nose to use the URI (or in fact usually via an owl:sameas in 
a sameas store), and they work.
It all works because my code that consumes the retrieved RDF to build the data 
enrichment by inference (things like the communities of practice), and things 
like my fresnel lenses, restrict any ambiguity by looking for the predicates, 
etc. they care about.
RDF can be a long way short of what we want it to be without having to treat it 
as special cases.

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]


On 12 Jun 2011, at 14:40, Danny Ayers wrote:

 [snip]
 Aside from containing a different bunch of bits because of the
 encoding, sasha-photo.jpg could be a lossy-compressed version of
 sasha-photo.gif, containing less pixel information yet sharing many
 characteristics.
 
 All ok so far..?
 
 If so, from this we can determine that a representation of a resource
 need not be complete in terms of the information it contains to
 fulfill the RDF statement and the HTTP contract.

A photo and a graph work in essentially the same way. They both set 
restrictions on possible worlds of which they are true. A photo restricts the 
number of possible worlds to those that are visually equivalent to the picture 
taken. A graph is true of all the possible worlds where those relations holds - 
which is usually infinitely large.

In either case the meaning of a graph or document is a set of possible worlds. 
A set is an object - one can speak of it - but a very different kind of object 
from what you may think of as what appears in the picture. As such there is 
indeed a fundamental logical difference between a document and objects in the 
world. And that also explains why a photo is not clearly about one thing or 
another - though of course given that it is a restriction on the way things can 
be, it limits the things the document could be about. 

As stated in a previous mail, the same photo can be about the eiffel tower, a 
sunset, a beautiful view of Paris, a vacation experience, a friend that appears 
in the picture, a murder that was commited at that moment,... The photo remains 
the same in all those descriptions, and it can be tagged in all those ways, 
which is why it is good to have names for each of those things that are 
different from the photo. Each of those should have definite descriptions to 
help identify the referents from the description.

Henry

Social Web Architect
http://bblfish.net/

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]

2011-06-19 Thread Hugh Glaser


On 19 Jun 2011, at 13:04, Kingsley Idehen wrote:

 On 6/19/11 12:05 PM, Hugh Glaser wrote:
 A step too far?
 
 Hi.
 I've sort of been waiting for someone to say:
 I have a system that consumes RDF from the world out there (eg dbpedia), 
 and it would break and be unfixable if the sources didn't do 303 or #.
 Plenty of people saying they can't express what they want without it.
 And plenty of people saying they can't write some code that they might not 
 be able to understand some RDF they receive properly.
 But no actual examples in the wild (at least as far as I can tell in a lot 
 of messages).
 
 This might be for quite a few reasons, such as:
 1) There are no such consuming systems;
 2) The existing consuming systems would not break.
 
 Number (1) would be too embarrassing, and is wrong because I have some, so 
 I'll think about number (2).
 
 There seem to be some axes in the discussion:
 publish / consume
 long/medium term / shorter term
 ideal / pragmatic
 Interestingly, we don't seem to have a strong theory / practice axis, which 
 is great.
 
 As a publisher, I/we have had to work pretty hard to conform to really quite 
 complex requirements for publishing RDF as Linked Data; not just Range-14, 
 but voiD, sitemaps and various bits and pieces that Kingsley always tells me 
 to do in the RDF.
 As a consumer, it has been pretty simple: Well guv, thanks for the URI, 
 here's some RDF.
 It has always been something of a source of angst (if not actual pain) to me 
 that none of the extra work I put into publishing RDF is ever used by me or 
 anyone else, as far as I know.
 
 Er. we use it :-)
Er, I'm not sure you do :-)
You certainly consume it, and a very nice job you do to.
But the use is more than generic browsers - it suggest to me that something 
useful might happen as a result of the consumption (perhaps I learn that I can 
ask Jim to introduce me to Mary, as he knows her better than anyone else I 
know).
These things are usually called applications, or possibly services.
They tend to be reasonably domain-specific, as generic things tend not to be 
easy to sue, or even fit for purpose for end users.
Sorry if I have missed stuff.

 The problem with this whole Linked Data thing is that its truly Ninja tech.
 
 The killer conductor of value is the LINK. This lethal weapon applies to all 
 dimensions of the Web:
 
 1. Information Space
 2. Data Space
 3. Knowledge Space.
 
 Trouble is, where do we find strong anecdotes for a cross dimensional lethal 
 weapon? I try to use Stars Wars and the FORCE at times, but even that doesn't 
 quite nail what we are dealing with here. Thus, we could take another 
 approach i.e., embrace and extend what we know is anomalous since the AWWW 
 architecture (FORCE) actually lets us do this anyway.
 
 
 In fact, some of the sites I consume actually don't do things properly - I 
 might have had to change my consuming systems to cope with this, but I 
 don't, because they already cope fine.
 
 Exactly! You are using the FORCE :-)
 
 Why is it not a problem? One obvious reason is that the consuming 
 application is actually looking for specific knowledge about things.
 I don't have a consuming system that is considering both lexical and animal 
 subjects, and so confusion does not arise.
 
 You have a Data Space dimension app. The Information Space dimension doesn't 
 interfere with your world view. This is key in many ways. For instance, 
 imagine if your app was of the Information Space dimension instead, the 
 effect would be very close to what we see today re. those that see Name and 
 Address disambiguation as impractical overkill since nothing breaks in the 
 world they experience.
 
 In fact, it is the predicates that tend to distinguish satisfactorily for me 
 (as has been pointed out by some people).
 
 Yep! The Data Space realm lets you Describe anything with clarity, and even 
 when unclear, agents can ultimately agree to disagree without obliteration.
 
 Thus, if I get a triple that says the URI that would resolve to my Facebook 
 page foaf:knows the URI that would resolve to your Facebook page, I (my 
 system) will happily interpret that as one person (or whatever) foaf:knows 
 the other. I certainly don't want to go and resolve these to find out to 
 what the URIs actually resolve. And if I did, what would I do about it? 
 Ignore it?
 
 As you would in code generally, encounter an exception, and decide if you 
 avoid making it a critical fault :-)
 
 In fact, as has also been mentioned, you can define domains, ranges and 
 restrictions for as long as you like, but it is quite possible and likely 
 that the users of URIs will continue blissfully unaware of any of this, in 
 exactly the same way that they continue unaware that there might be 
 something ambiguous about the URIs they are using.
 
 
 Yes, when they operate in the Information Space dimension.
 
 By the way, as is well-known I think, a lot of people use and therefore must 
 be happy with URIs

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]

2011-06-19 Thread Giovanni Tummarello


 particular confusion is so destructive. Unlike the dogs-vs-bitches case,
 the difference between the document and its topic, the thing, is that one is
 ABOUT the other. This is not simply a matter of ignoring some


Could it be exactly the other way around? that documents and things
described in it are easy to distinguis EXACTLY becouse one is about the
other, no one can possibly mess them up/except for idiotic computer
algorithms from the 70s that limits themselves to simbolic AI techniques.

Otherwise you seem to say that  its more difficult to distinguish between a
dog and a bitch than it is to distinguish between a dog and a stream of
bytes in return to an HTTP request, and that seems a bit funny?

look if someone points me at a facebook URL i know its about a person and
not about the damn page (which has 2000 ways to change every time that url
is resolved anyway.


 certainly breaks **semantic** architecture. It completely destroys any
 semantic coherence we might, in some perhaps impossibly optimistic vision of
 the future, manage to create within the semantic web. So yes indeed, the Web
 will go on happily confusing things with documents, partly because the Web
 really has no actual contact with things at all: it is entirely constructed
 from documents (in a wide sense). But the SEMANTIC Web will wither and die,
 or perhaps be still-born, if it cannot find some way to keep use and mention
 separate and coherent.



i mean we can go on and tell oursellf we cant possibly write applications
that know or understand what  facebook URL is about.

but dont be surprised as  less and less people will be willing to listen as
more and more applications (Eg.. all the stuff based  on schema.org) pop up
never knowing there was this problem... (not in general. of course there is
in general, but for their specific use cases)

Gio

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]

2011-06-19 Thread Nathan


Nathan wrote:

Henry Story wrote:

On 19 Jun 2011, at 18:27, Giovanni Tummarello wrote:

but dont be surprised as  less and less people will be willing to 
listen as more and more applications (Eg.. all the stuff based  on 
schema.org) pop up never knowing there was this problem... (not in 
general. of course there is in general, but for their specific use 
cases)


The question is if schema.org makes the confusion, or if the schemas 
published there use a DocumentObject ontology where the distinctions 
are clear but the rule is that object relationships are in fact going 
via the primary topic of the document. I have not looked at the 
schema, but it seems that before arguing that they are inconsistent 
one should see if there is not a consistent interpretation of what 
they are doing.


Sorry, I'm missing something - from what I can see, each document has a 
number of items, potentially in a hierarchy, and each item is either 
anonymous, or has an @itemid.


Where's the confusion between Document and Primary Subject?


Or do you mean from the Schema.org side, where each Type and Property 
has a dereferencable URI, which currently happens to also eb used for 
the document describing the Type/Property?

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]

2011-06-19 Thread Tim Berners-Lee

Absolutely, Pat. Well said.
This is really important.

Can we please stop the madness of confusing things with documents about them
and do what we want to do cleanly and in an efficient way.

Tim

On 2011-06 -19, at 00:05, Pat Hayes wrote:

 Really (sorry to keep raining on the parade, but) it is not as simple as 
 this. Look, it is indeed easy to not bother distinguishing male from female 
 dogs. One simply talks of dogs without mentioning gender, and there is a lot 
 that can be said about dogs without getting into that second topic. But 
 confusing web pages, or documents more generally, with the things the 
 documents are about, now that does matter a lot more, simply because it is 
 virtually impossible to say *anything* about documents-or-things without 
 immediately being clear which of them - documents or things - one is talking 
 about. And there is a good reason why this particular confusion is so 
 destructive. Unlike the dogs-vs-bitches case, the difference between the 
 document and its topic, the thing, is that one is ABOUT the other. This is 
 not simply a matter of ignoring some potentially relevant information (the 
 gender of the dog) because one is temporarily not concerned with it: it is 
 two different ways of using the very names that are the fabric of the 
 descriptive representations themselves. It confuses language with language 
 use, confuses language with meta-language. It is like saying giraffe has 
 seven letters rather than giraffe has seven letters. Maybe this does not 
 break Web architecture, but it certainly breaks **semantic** architecture. It 
 completely destroys any semantic coherence we might, in some perhaps 
 impossibly optimistic vision of the future, manage to create within the 
 semantic web. So yes indeed, the Web will go on happily confusing things with 
 documents, partly because the Web really has no actual contact with things at 
 all: it is entirely constructed from documents (in a wide sense). But the 
 SEMANTIC Web will wither and die, or perhaps be still-born, if it cannot find 
 some way to keep use and mention separate and coherent. So far, http-range-14 
 is the only viable suggestion I have seen for how to do this. If anyone has a 
 better one, let us discuss it. But just blandly assuming that it will all 
 come out in the wash is a bad idea. It won't. 
 
 Pat

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]


On 19 Jun 2011, at 18:27, Giovanni Tummarello wrote:

 
 but dont be surprised as  less and less people will be willing to listen as 
 more and more applications (Eg.. all the stuff based  on schema.org) pop up 
 never knowing there was this problem... (not in general. of course there is 
 in general, but for their specific use cases)

The question is if schema.org makes the confusion, or if the schemas published 
there use a DocumentObject ontology where the distinctions are clear but the 
rule is that object relationships are in fact going via the primary topic of 
the document. I have not looked at the schema, but it seems that before arguing 
that they are inconsistent one should see if there is not a consistent 
interpretation of what they are doing.


Henry


 
 Gio
 

Social Web Architect
http://bblfish.net/

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]


On 19 Jun 2011, at 18:58, Nathan wrote:

 Nathan wrote:
 Henry Story wrote:
 On 19 Jun 2011, at 18:27, Giovanni Tummarello wrote:
 
 but dont be surprised as  less and less people will be willing to listen 
 as more and more applications (Eg.. all the stuff based  on schema.org) 
 pop up never knowing there was this problem... (not in general. of course 
 there is in general, but for their specific use cases)
 
 The question is if schema.org makes the confusion, or if the schemas 
 published there use a DocumentObject ontology where the distinctions are 
 clear but the rule is that object relationships are in fact going via the 
 primary topic of the document. I have not looked at the schema, but it 
 seems that before arguing that they are inconsistent one should see if 
 there is not a consistent interpretation of what they are doing.
 Sorry, I'm missing something - from what I can see, each document has a 
 number of items, potentially in a hierarchy, and each item is either 
 anonymous, or has an @itemid.
 Where's the confusion between Document and Primary Subject?
 
 Or do you mean from the Schema.org side, where each Type and Property has a 
 dereferencable URI, which currently happens to also eb used for the document 
 describing the Type/Property?

Well I can't really tell because I don't know what the semantics of those 
annotations are, or how they function. Without those it is difficult to tell if 
they have made a mistake. If there is no way of translating what they are doing 
into a system that does not make the confusion, then one could explore what the 
cost of that will be to them. If the confusion is strong then there will be 
limitations in what they can express that way. It will then be a matter of 
working out what those limitations are and then offering services that allow 
one to go further than what they are proposing. At the very least the good 
thing is that they are not bringing the confusion into the RDF space, since 
they are using their own syntax and ontologies. 

There may also be an higher way to fix this so that they could return a 20x 
(x-some new number) which points to the document URL (but returns the 
representation immediately, a kind of efficient HTTP-range-14 version) So there 
are a lot of options. Currently their objects are tied to an html document. 
What are the json crowd going to think? 

In any case there is a problem of translation that has to be dealt with first. 

Henry

Social Web Architect
http://bblfish.net/

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]

On 19 June 2011 12:37, Henry Story henry.st...@bblfish.net wrote:

[snip pat]

 The way to do this is to build applications where this thing matters. So for 
 example in the social web we could build
 a slightly more evolved like protocol/ontology, which would be 
 decentralised for one, but would also allow one to distinguish documents, 
 from other parts of documents and things. So one could then say that one 
 wishes to bring people's attention to a well written article on a rape, 
 rather than having to like the rape. Or that one wishes to bring people's 
 attention to the content of an article without having to like the style the 
 article is written in.

I would have come down on you like a ton of bricks for that Henry, if
it wasn't for seeing to-and-fro on Facebook about some Nazi-inspired
club (Slimelight, for the record). On FB there is no way to express
your sentiments. Like/blow to smithereens.

 If such applications take hold, and there is a way the logic of using these 
 applications is made to work where these distinctions become useful and 
 visible to the end user, then there will be millions of vocal supporters of 
 this distinction - which we know exists, which programmers know exists, which 
 pretty much everyone knows exists, but which people new to the semweb web, 
 like the early questioners of the viability of the mouse and the endless 
 debates about that animal, will question because they can't feel in their 
 bones the reality of this thing.


 So far, http-range-14 is the only viable suggestion I have seen for how to 
 do this.

 Well hash uris are of course a lot easier to understand. http-range-14 is 
 clearly a solution which is good to know about but that will have an adoption 
 problem.

 I am of the view that this has been discussed to death, and that any mailing 
 list that discusses this is short of real things to do.

I confess to talking bollocks when I should be coding.

Cheers,
Danny.

-- 
http://danny.ayers.name

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]


On 19 Jun 2011, at 19:44, Danny Ayers wrote:

 
 I am of the view that this has been discussed to death, and that any mailing 
 list that discusses this is short of real things to do.
 
 I confess to talking bollocks when I should be coding.

yeah, me too. Though now you folks managed to get me interested in this 
problem! (sigh)

Henry

Social Web Architect
http://bblfish.net/

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]

I thought forever that if we see iniquities we are duty-bound to stand
in the way.

But that don't seem to change anything.

Let the crap rain forth, if you really need to make sense of it the
blokes on this list will do it.

Activity is GOOD, no matter how idiotic.

Decisions made on very different premises than anyone around here would promote.

Sorry, I'm of the opinion that the Web approach is the winner. Alas it
also seems lowest common denominator.

Cheers,
Danny.

On 19 June 2011 19:36, Henry Story henry.st...@bblfish.net wrote:

 On 19 Jun 2011, at 18:58, Nathan wrote:

 Nathan wrote:
 Henry Story wrote:
 On 19 Jun 2011, at 18:27, Giovanni Tummarello wrote:

 but dont be surprised as  less and less people will be willing to listen 
 as more and more applications (Eg.. all the stuff based  on schema.org) 
 pop up never knowing there was this problem... (not in general. of course 
 there is in general, but for their specific use cases)

 The question is if schema.org makes the confusion, or if the schemas 
 published there use a DocumentObject ontology where the distinctions are 
 clear but the rule is that object relationships are in fact going via the 
 primary topic of the document. I have not looked at the schema, but it 
 seems that before arguing that they are inconsistent one should see if 
 there is not a consistent interpretation of what they are doing.
 Sorry, I'm missing something - from what I can see, each document has a 
 number of items, potentially in a hierarchy, and each item is either 
 anonymous, or has an @itemid.
 Where's the confusion between Document and Primary Subject?

 Or do you mean from the Schema.org side, where each Type and Property has a 
 dereferencable URI, which currently happens to also eb used for the document 
 describing the Type/Property?

 Well I can't really tell because I don't know what the semantics of those 
 annotations are, or how they function. Without those it is difficult to tell 
 if they have made a mistake. If there is no way of translating what they are 
 doing into a system that does not make the confusion, then one could explore 
 what the cost of that will be to them. If the confusion is strong then there 
 will be limitations in what they can express that way. It will then be a 
 matter of working out what those limitations are and then offering services 
 that allow one to go further than what they are proposing. At the very least 
 the good thing is that they are not bringing the confusion into the RDF 
 space, since they are using their own syntax and ontologies.

 There may also be an higher way to fix this so that they could return a 20x 
 (x-some new number) which points to the document URL (but returns the 
 representation immediately, a kind of efficient HTTP-range-14 version) So 
 there are a lot of options. Currently their objects are tied to an html 
 document. What are the json crowd going to think?

 In any case there is a problem of translation that has to be dealt with first.

 Henry

 Social Web Architect
 http://bblfish.net/





-- 
http://danny.ayers.name

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]

Only personal Henry, but have you tried the Myers-Briggs thing - I
think you used to be classic INTP/INTF - but once you got WebID in
your sails it's very different. These things don't really allow for
change.

Only slightly off-topic, very relevant here, need to pin down WebID in
a sense my dogs can understand.

The Myers-Briggs thing is intuitively rubbish. But with only one or
two posts in the ground, it does seem you can extrapolate.

On 19 June 2011 19:52, Henry Story henry.st...@bblfish.net wrote:

 On 19 Jun 2011, at 19:44, Danny Ayers wrote:


 I am of the view that this has been discussed to death, and that any 
 mailing list that discusses this is short of real things to do.

 I confess to talking bollocks when I should be coding.

 yeah, me too. Though now you folks managed to get me interested in this 
 problem! (sigh)

 Henry

 Social Web Architect
 http://bblfish.net/





-- 
http://danny.ayers.name

Re: Fwd: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]

2011-06-19 Thread Nathan


Danny Ayers wrote:

I feel very guilty being in threads like this. Shit fuck smarter people than
me.


Just minor, and I can hardly talk as I swear most often in different 
settings, but I am a little surprised to see this language around here. 
I quite like having an arena where these words don't arise in the 
general conversation.


Ack you know what I'm saying - nothing personal, but I'd personally 
appreciate not seeing them too frequently around here :)


Best!

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]


On 6/19/11 1:39 PM, Henry Story wrote:

On 19 Jun 2011, at 14:04, Kingsley Idehen wrote:


Er. we use it :-)

The problem with this whole Linked Data thing is that its truly Ninja tech.

The killer conductor of value is the LINK. This lethal weapon applies to all 
dimensions of the Web:

1. Information Space
2. Data Space
3. Knowledge Space.

Trouble is, where do we find strong anecdotes for a cross dimensional lethal 
weapon? I try to use Stars Wars and the FORCE at times, but even that doesn't 
quite nail what we are dealing with here. Thus, we could take another approach 
i.e., embrace and extend what we know is anomalous since the AWWW architecture 
(FORCE) actually lets us do this anyway.

That's a fun way of describing things.


Fun is one mechanism for stimulating attention an route to unveiling new 
insights and innovations :-)



But we have to be careful not to hype things too much, or we risk being tied 
into the 1980 AI hype space, and then nobody will listen anymore.


I certainly don't have that in mind.

The only tweak I would make is: s/Ninja/Jedi, since Star Wars and its 
underlying mythology remains a great source of anecdotal material to me 
when I try to explain what's happening across the WWW's many dimensions.



Perhaps a more scientific way to express this is within the language of 
self-organising systems.


Every audience might not be scientifically inclined, at least not in an 
obvious way. Thus, as you can see, there isn't one way. We have to find 
and accommodate a plethora of narratives and associated anecdotes.



There is a lot of research there which is relevant to us.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_organising_systems


Nice find, that is certainly representative of what's happening.


Kingsley


I am a bit new to this area. Any books I must read?



Henry


Social Web Architect
http://bblfish.net/






--

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen 
President  CEO
OpenLink Software
Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca: kidehen

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]


On 6/19/11 2:26 PM, Hugh Glaser wrote:

On 19 Jun 2011, at 13:04, Kingsley Idehen wrote:


On 6/19/11 12:05 PM, Hugh Glaser wrote:

A step too far?

Hi.
I've sort of been waiting for someone to say:
I have a system that consumes RDF from the world out there (eg dbpedia), and it 
would break and be unfixable if the sources didn't do 303 or #.
Plenty of people saying they can't express what they want without it.
And plenty of people saying they can't write some code that they might not be 
able to understand some RDF they receive properly.
But no actual examples in the wild (at least as far as I can tell in a lot of 
messages).

This might be for quite a few reasons, such as:
1) There are no such consuming systems;
2) The existing consuming systems would not break.

Number (1) would be too embarrassing, and is wrong because I have some, so I'll 
think about number (2).

There seem to be some axes in the discussion:
publish / consume
long/medium term / shorter term
ideal / pragmatic
Interestingly, we don't seem to have a strong theory / practice axis, which is 
great.

As a publisher, I/we have had to work pretty hard to conform to really quite 
complex requirements for publishing RDF as Linked Data; not just Range-14, but 
voiD, sitemaps and various bits and pieces that Kingsley always tells me to do 
in the RDF.
As a consumer, it has been pretty simple: Well guv, thanks for the URI, here's some 
RDF.
It has always been something of a source of angst (if not actual pain) to me 
that none of the extra work I put into publishing RDF is ever used by me or 
anyone else, as far as I know.

Er. we use it :-)

Er, I'm not sure you do :-)
You certainly consume it, and a very nice job you do to.
But the use is more than generic browsers - it suggest to me that something 
useful might happen as a result of the consumption (perhaps I learn that I can ask Jim to 
introduce me to Mary, as he knows her better than anyone else I know).


Yes, and this is coming. Basically, as part of the WebID (powerful 
Linked Data and FOAF exploitation) Henry, I, and others are working on 
use of our respective efforts for semantically enhanced friending. We 
not only handle friending we also handle notifications such that from a 
single blog post, address book entry, calendar item creation of change 
etc., notices get progagated, but all of this is driven by a WebID (a 
personal URI). In addition to all of this, we have WebID based ACLs for 
powerful resource sharing etc.. We (at OpenLink) have even extended 
S/MIME with WebID which makes a world of difference re. helping folks 
regain control of their in-boxes and basically fixing email.



These things are usually called applications, or possibly services.


Yes, that's the key to the matter. Make apps that make a difference via 
the standards we promote. Put differently, promote our beliefs via apps 
that illuminate standards that be believe in and promote.



They tend to be reasonably domain-specific, as generic things tend not to be 
easy to sue, or even fit for purpose for end users.
Sorry if I have missed stuff.


Address Books, Calendars, Blogs, Discussion Forums, Comments, Pingbacks, 
In-boxes  Drop-boxes, Photo Albums, and Galleries etc.. all benefit 
immensely from Linked Data, we just need more applications as a few have 
existed in isolation for a while :-)


Re. apps., one of the real problems with Linked Data is that the LINK is 
the key too everything. That said, when dealing with Apps., most think 
about UI first, and that's where matters can get confusing real fast 
i.e., some attempts at visualization utterly compromise Linked Data's 
essence. Likewise, slapping UI on to Linked Data with illuminating its 
essence in mind also introduces its own set of problems.


[SNIP]

--

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen 
President  CEO
OpenLink Software
Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca: kidehen

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]


On 6/19/11 5:56 PM, Nathan wrote:

Henry Story wrote:

On 19 Jun 2011, at 18:27, Giovanni Tummarello wrote:

but dont be surprised as  less and less people will be willing to 
listen as more and more applications (Eg.. all the stuff based  on 
schema.org) pop up never knowing there was this problem... (not in 
general. of course there is in general, but for their specific use 
cases)


The question is if schema.org makes the confusion, or if the schemas 
published there use a DocumentObject ontology where the distinctions 
are clear but the rule is that object relationships are in fact going 
via the primary topic of the document. I have not looked at the 
schema, but it seems that before arguing that they are inconsistent 
one should see if there is not a consistent interpretation of what 
they are doing.


Sorry, I'm missing something - from what I can see, each document has 
a number of items, potentially in a hierarchy, and each item is either 
anonymous, or has an @itemid.


Where's the confusion between Document and Primary Subject?




Put differently, are they conflating things i.e., leaving the beholder 
to make the distinction outside AWWW. Yes, they are, but purely because 
this effort is Information Space dimension based :-)


Time for a video [1].

Links:

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkxieS-6WuA -- imaging the 10th dimension


--

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen 
President  CEO
OpenLink Software
Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca: kidehen

Re: Squaring the HTTP-range-14 circle [was Re: Schema.org in RDF ...]