Re: ::scr semantic

[jo walsh <jo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > rdf != xml 
> > xml looks useful. techwars don't.

> I'd like to know why you think XML is a better representation format for
> these type of relations, rather than, say, S-expressions.

did i say that? :)

> Particularly since the trust metric part of Rivest's SDSI (which appears to
> me to be a much sounder basis for a semantic architecture than either anything
> derived from an SGML source, which would also need a separate tamper-proofing
> and trust architecture anyway) is already based on a cut-down form of 
> S-expressions. [0]

it looks fascinating, i hadnt run across S-expressions before. i look at
them and with some help, see them looking like n-ary tuplespace, fsdo
tuplespace which is the idea and not the specific contruct. i would spend
more time grokking SDSI but i dont really do the crypto scene, and it's
also a smallish part of the big picture for me: but that's perhaps just
the angle i look at the big picture from. 

> Techwars are, IMHO, very useful if they prevent good people from wasting vast amounts
> of time on what are the wrong technologies. (X509 global certificate hierarchies
> and global namespaces anyone?)

i don't feel in a position to make declarations about 'right' and 'wrong'
technologies, and i wonder how any individual or even large consensus
group can feel that way. so i operate on the principle of 'werks-fer-me'
to quite an extent, and when the usefulness there supersedes the wars,
that's all i consider. 

you could argue that we've already wasted vast amounts of time on the old
web ;) which is why i look at the RDF etc solution with such enthusiam,
because it is bootstrapping effect. as alaric i think mentioned, it's
embeddable in what's there, it's implementable across tech like SOAP and
REST which already exists and is already supported. it will be the case
for a while longer that the easiest way to get stuff around is on port
80, and the xml implmemntation of rdf just feels like a good fit short
term. 

in terms of the socialisation of tools, i can rattle around telling people
'we're building this thing which you can plug into / use to enhance /
reify and interconnect restructure your existing tools and data' or i can
rattle around telling people 'we're building a new kind of internetwork
human-machine consciousness with deep lisp magic'. i know which i'd rather
find myself saying in public :)     

zx
--
"Common sense won't tell you. We have to tell each other." -DNA