Month: November 2002

Categories
RDF

The saga of RDF continues

Recovered from the Wayback machine.

The posting I wrote on Friday about RDF has triggered much debate (in posting and at xml-dev), which is a goodness. I think it’s also triggered much misinterpretation and misunderstanding, which is what happens when a debate occurs across threads of mailing lists and weblog comments.

There has been summary attempts of the debate, such as at O’Reilly Network and at Joe Gregorio’s, but I’m not going to attempt to summarize it myself. Why? I have a viewpoint in this, and this would slant my summary. I’d rather just provide the links and let you form your own summation.

However, I do want to clarify something with my own position.

First, I’m not speaking for the RDF Working Group, in any way. I am giving my own viewpoints and opinions, which the WG may not agree with. No one can speak for the WG members, but they, themselves.

Additionally, I do not discount the complexity and difficulty inherent with RDF. I am aware, all too aware, of how complex the RDF Model documents can be. I know that there is much of the lab and not enough of the real world associated with the effort. And I’m not trying to dismiss people’s concerns with the model or the RDF/XML serialization when I say that we need to release the RDF specification rather than start over.

When I say that I don’t have problems with the RDF/XML, people should be aware that this is because I spent an enormous amount of time with the RDF specifications learning the core of the RDF model. I then spent a considerable amount of time learning how RDF is serialized with RDF/XML. I will now spend a significant amount of time reading through the newly released specifications to see where my understanding differs from the newest releases.

All of this has taken time and effort. I do not deny this.

I also don’t deny the importance of people being able to read and write RDF/XML. However, my interpretation of XML has been, and continues to be, that it’s a mechanical language rather than a biological one, and that it must be accurate, consistent, and reliable in a mechanical sense first, and foremost. Within these constraints, though, we should work to make the syntax as biologically understandable as possible.

Ultimately, I’m not trying to defend RDF/XML as much as I’m trying to generate understand that the problems people are having with RDF/XML aren’t consistent, and may not necessarily be problems with RDF/XML, at all.

Tim Bray creates RPV, which makes the RDF triples easier to read, but Simon St. Laurent says he doesn’t think in triples. Simon, on the other hand, is more concerned that RDF is having a deleterious effect on XML directly, as witness discussions about Qnames and URIs. These are two separate interpretations of “what’s wrong”, and lumping them all together into vague generalizations such as “RDF is ugly” or “RDF/XML is ugly” won’t help anyone.

Because of the discussions in the last week, I am re-visiting the chapters I wrote on the RDF specification for the Practical RDF book, coming in with a fresh perspective, and a better understanding of what the heck I need to write about. Unfortunately, I know enough after this weekend to be aware that this is going to be the most difficult technical writing task I have ever had. Can I clarify RDF and RDF/XML to the point that everyone understands both equally?

Exactly how does one achieve the impossible in 10,000 words, or less?


Posted by Bb at November 18, 2002 10:32 AM

Categories
Critters Weblogging

The white mouse

Coming back from dinner tonight, in the grass next to one of the dumpsters was a white mouse. Not a small white mouse, a larger one, almost as big as a small rat. And its fur was luminescent and shiny— softly glowing against the dark wet of the ground.

This is something you don’t see everyday, a white mouse. It’s not a rat because I know rats; I had to work with rats when I was getting my Psychology degree. In fact, I became fairly adept working with rats. For instance, I found that the trick to getting a rat that’ll make you look good in your research is to use a fat rat. Fat rats are fat because they learn quickly in order to get the most food.

This rat selection strategy backfired on me one day, though. I was working with a nicely plump rat, conditioning him to wait for a signal to press a lever; if he did, he would get some food. However, if he pressed the lever before or a second or two after the signal — no food.

He sat there passively until I pressed the signal for the first time, then jumped to his feet and raced to the lever: pushing on it with all of his might. My teacher saw this and insisted I use a new rat because I was the one who was supposed to be learning how to work with rats, and a too-smart rat was a bit of a cheat. Unfortunately, all that was left by this time were skinny creatures with vacant eyes who couldn’t find food if you shoved their noses into it.

Anyway, back to the white mouse. As far as I know, white mice aren’t naturally occurring, so I have no idea where this one came from. I imagine someone could have dumped a pet, but white mice are not supposed to be good pets. In fact, white mice are almost always bred for testing within chemical or biological research facilities.

I know that Monsanto is only a few miles away. Makes me wonder about that luminescent quality of the mouse.

As I was researching the white mouse, I stumbled on to an interestingly different, somewhat macabre story, White mice and Dead Cats. Written by a weblogger.

Mice and webloggers do proliferate, don’t they?

Categories
People Political

Is this what we’ve become?

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Imagine my delight when I woke up this morning and found the following comment attached to one of my old postings, Blast them all and let God sort them out.:

I don’t expect Arabs to be humiliated. . .I expect them to be dead, deader than dead. God doesn’t need to sort them out, he already has. He had the evils all in one place at one point. Now he’s got them spread out all over the world. But I’m not going to sit around and wait for them to do something. . .if I see evils happening in my own backyard, the perps are going to die. If I’m marching into Hebron, and see a sand nigger with a gun, I’m going to kill them. Plain and simple, I’m not going to “bomb them and let God sort them out.” I’m going to shoot them and give God something to do.

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust. The order has been given. Arabs are the 21st century’s Nazi’s. And they are going to die a painful death.

Staff Sgt Thomas Nichols
USMC

(Note that the IP address attached to comment belongs to the Marriott hotel chain, and the comment was most likely written by someone staying at a Marriott — not necessarily by a person with this name. The writer found my weblog posting by doing a Yahoo search with the words “ARABS MUST DIE”.)

Is this what we’ve become? Three thousand people were killed September 11th, so let’s kill millions of Arabs. Can someone please explain the humanity, the justice, and the morality of this?

The last time this world saw a determination to eliminate all people of a specific religion was in the middle of the last century, and was conducted by a man named Adolph Hitler. I found it somewhat ironic then that the use of ‘nazi’ is given the victims in this instance.

I will say this, though: at least this person was honest in their belief and in their expression of that belief. Too many people in my country, and in other countries, hide this same belief behind polite phrases such as “liberation of the native people” and “war on terror”.

And, at the least, this person wanted to kill all Arabs because he’s afraid, and because he’s pissed that someone would actually dare hurt Americans. Too many people in my country, and in other countries, want to kill Arabs because of oil. However, one difference between them and the writer, Staff Sargeant Nichols, is that these people don’t want to kill all the Arabs.

After all, we have to leave enough Arabs to run the pumps, staff the hotels, and clean the streets.

That I would live long enough to see this become the new “moral way”, the latest Christian Crusade, saddens me, and sickens me.

Categories
RDF

Selective Hearing

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Debate is not a game one plays when one is bored or has little else to do. Debate is a way of people trying to understand each other’s point of view. At the least, it is a way of discussing points of view for an audience in order to convince members of that audience to follow one course or another. Debate, when practiced at its best, is a celebration of differences.

In this previous post I responded, many times, to questions and concerns about RDF and RDF/XML raised by people such as Mark Pilgrim and Joe Gregorio. Was I patient? I hope I was. I tried to be. Was I accurate? As accurate as I could be. Did I convince anyone? Unknown. At the very least, though, I had hoped that I had argued well and that my rather extensive efforts were met with respect.

Imagine how disappointing then when I visit Joe’s weblog and find that he’s posted a new note about this discussion and quotes everyone in the debate but myself, though most of the quotes he uses were a result of my own discussion.

By ignoring me I have effectively been removed from the debate, my efforts dismissed. I have been reduced.

It is too easy in weblogging to reduce each other. Too easy to dismiss each other. To easy to ignore that which we just don’t want to hear, and manipulate that which we don’t want to ignore.

Categories
Writing

Article at Onlamp.com

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I wrote a little quip for O’Reilly Network’s ONLamp.com titled Today’s Unix: New all over again.

The article is related to the release of my newest effort for O’Reilly, Unix Power Tools, 3rd edition.