Re: ::scr semantic

[Struan Donald <scr@xxxxxxxxxx>]

* at 05/08 06:47 +0100 Simon Wistow said:
> 
> Yet another post. You lucky people.
> 
> So, this Semantic Web thing. Some people
> (http://www.blackbeltjones.com/work/mt/archives/000326.html#000326) seem
> to be very excited about it. As far I can see it's just a mechanism so
> that I dont have to do all that tedious screen scraping myself but then,
> up until now, I haven't cared enough to dig deeper.

Heck neither have i really but... All this RSS stuff seems not at all
like what I take the semantic web thing to be. It all just seems like
another delivery mechanism for the sam content. It's a delivery
mechanism that goes and gets the content for you rather than you
having to check for it but that's all really.

If it was the semantic web then it'd not only get the content for you
but understand something about the relationship between the content
it's getting and other content out there. There'd be some mechanism
(wave hands in air) that allowed the software to grasp that if you
were looking at information on RSS then information on XML might be
useful and information on RSS clients too and know where to look for that
information. Much like a librarian will know that if you are looking
in the neurochemistry section then there may also be relevant
information in the biology, psychology and chemistry sections. Or at
least they would in a perfect world :)

RSS is, as you say, just posh screen scraping largely. Or at least it
as as used at the moment. 

struan