Dave McComb on Business Semantics (a new IT Conversation).
Grok Headline matches for Dave McComb on Business Semantics (a new IT Conversation).
New X12 reference model specifies
structure for semantics in XML business
messages (WebServices.org)
New X12 reference model specifies
structure for semantics in XML business
messages (WebServices.org)
11/04/2002 11:43 AMThe Semantics of Empire
The Semantics of Empire
12/24/2003 08:16 PMRarely do his accusers charge that Saddam "tortured people," "gassed
people," "gassed Iraqis," or "killed Iraqis." A google search for
"gassed his own people ...
Semantics of Empire
Semantics of Empire
12/24/2003 08:16 PMRarely do his accusers charge that Saddam “tortured people,” “gassed
people,” “gassed Iraqis,” or “killed Iraqis.” A google search for ...
Who Cares about Semantics Anyway?
Who Cares about Semantics Anyway?
06/05/2005 10:46 PM
On semantic markup, conveying its usage to those who generally
don't need to care, and a reusable markup guide for your enjoyment.
IBM Semantics Toolkit 1.0.0
IBM Semantics Toolkit 1.0.0
08/03/2004 08:14 PMA toolkit for storage, manipulation, query, and inference of
ontologies, etc.
lower case semantics
lower case semantics
03/14/2005 05:08 PM
Eric Meyer is giving
a session at SXSW called 'Emergent Semantics' - which (as opposed ot
Emergent Democracy) appears to be the religion of the day.
A RESTful approach - which ignores APIs, meta-data and many other
efforts and standards being established on the web today. There seems
to be a pre-occupatoopn with 'simple' is better, to the detriment of
working together with others.
Eric calls it a Ground up - grass roots effort - yet there are some
fairly formal things going on. Eric claims it's an evolutionary
approach and it's based upon established standards like XHTML. Yet
isn't XHTML fairly new itself?
Semantics get added in an ad hoc way. I certainly groove on that
idea.
But to refute server based technology, XML and APIs - seems a bit
extreme to me.
I've often wondered why some people differentiate between UPPER
case and lower case semantics. But from what I see - these lower case
folks seem to have their OWN dogma.
Issues:
hcal instead of iCal
(the rdf iCal.)
microformat instead of micro-content
(perhaps their defintion of microformat is at the single
verb/noun level - while I define micro-content tobe fairly richly
structured chnucks of content - specifcially content.)
XFN instead of FOAF
why only REST? Whatever happened to
XML-RPC and SOAP?
embedded in a page versus in a
file
XML vs RDF
XFN Me links and the MeNow
namespace
One thing that Eric and I agree upon - is the metaphor of
archipelagos.
I also like his notion of crossed links with XFN - ways to cross
breed and mutate these microformat ntions. Eric claims the pieces are
there now - maybe - maybe not.
But one thing I totally disagree with is - where's the meta-data?
Eric said "it's all meta-data" - then why avoid using the term?
No I don't wanna come off as some sort of RDF zealot - but I also
don't like to see one-sided thinking. In some cases - these standards
are just arbitray spin-offs - not necessarily grounded in any stable
principle other than "NOT rdf" or "NOT semantic web".
Why can't we work together?
What's wrong with a 'pseudo-schema' we all can agree upon BEFORE
it's 'rendered' into a specific distribution method? i.e.
pre-RSS ificiation. Or Atomization for that matter.
I really think 2005 can be the year that various viewpoints on how
to build standards - can come together - for the benefit of all.
"Don't pave the cow paths" seems like a really reasonable approach.
I just gotta wonder what's wrong with FOAFnet, meta-data and calling
it micro-content - beside sthet fact that someone else has defined it
and that they're associated with rdf.
Or maybe it's about an aritrary demand that nothing can be too
complex and that it MUST be really really really really simple. Maybe
they'll create their OWN subscription format called RRRRS.
Real world semantics
Real world semantics
02/18/2004 09:32 AM
At ETech (which I unfortunately could not attend) there was a
presentation entitled
real world semantics that is close in spirit to my own
recent experimentation. The presenters were Technorati's
Kevin Marks and
Tantek Celik, who fought
the good fight to bring quality CSS support to Microsoft's
now-abandoned MSIE/Mac. Phrases they use to define real world
semantics: "emerging semantic (x)html", "adoption by 'real people'",
"beyond academics and theoretical discussions." Exactly.
...Technorati, Tags, Semantics
Technorati, Tags, Semantics
06/17/2005 04:38 PMHey, the Technorati beta
is up. Looks much nicer, though I wish they’d lose the dude with
the megaphone; goatees are so 1993. (Hey look, Technorati
and Newsweek, sitting
in a tree.) Among other things, the technorationals are making a
concerted effort to prove that my doubts about
tagging are misplaced—so are Shirky et al at You’re It!. It’s become obvious
that tags are useful enough as a place to park search words for
pictures & music & other stuff that doesn’t have words to
search. Furthermore, I’ve heard a dozen compelling stories from
people who are using tags to organize their own information and track
trends; so it’s looking like the answers are: Yes, tagging is
useful; No, it’s not a replacement for full-text search, even
partially. On the subject of search, Sun’s Search Guy Steve Green is
trying to push over the boundary
between search and semantics.
ongoing · Metadata, Semantics and
All That
ongoing · Metadata, Semantics and
All That
11/10/2003 11:37 PMMetadata, Semantics, and All That .. Bray on the Semantic Web .. set
of thoughts .. talks
about
tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/11/09/SemWebFirstStep
track this
site | 5 links
The Hills Are Alive With The Semantics
of Music
The Hills Are Alive With The Semantics
of Music
06/22/2004 04:11 AM
Tunes
create context like language : "musical notes are strung
together in the same patterns as words in a piece of literature".
Full
paper. On a
related note, hone your musical comprehension by playing with
Impromptu. Better
yet, co-ordinate it with this MIT OpenCourse -
Developing Musical
Structures.
WiFi hotspots should have semantics and
geotags
WiFi hotspots should have semantics and
geotags
03/22/2005 05:00 PMCory Doctorow:
Brad Templeton's got a neat idea -- add geotagging and semantics to
WiFi hotspots:
It would contain a mixed XML/HTML packet with a variety of useful
fields and general text. These could range from simple descriptions
("This access point belongs to Joe Smith, I'm a programmer") to
information ("On this site, Paul Revere stopped on his ride to consult
with local minutemen") to street directions ("Turn right to get to
highway 101, left for downtown") to, of course, advertising ("We sell
fresh fruit and have a special on plums today.")
In other words, a replacement for signs and billboards and markers.
And perhaps much more. Access points would also talk about themselves,
declaring, for example, if the owner is offering open internet access
for free or for fee, or has a local database of information, and what
class of information is in the main text. The local lattitude and
longitude for those without a GPS could be useful, along with local
maps data in a compact form.
Link
(
Thanks, Brad!)
Update: Felix sez, "plazes is collaborative geo-tagging of
networks, not just WiFi but any LAN. Unique identifier is the
router´s MAC ID. In addition to structured data like address and type
of network, people can upload pics and comments for that
plaze/network. Every network gets a linkable URL and right now, we are
working on a RDF representation of the geodata."
Selling Text Ads/PageRank - Just
Semantics?
Selling Text Ads/PageRank - Just
Semantics?
07/27/2004 06:09 AM"What exactly determines who can sell PR and who gets nailed for
selling it? Does it really just come down to the sales presentation?"
Microsoft's Solution To XP WiFi
Problems: Semantics
Microsoft's Solution To XP WiFi
Problems: Semantics
06/04/2004 11:05 AM
Going one step further than the "it's not a bug, it's a feature" type
of response, Microsoft has just gone a little nutty in trying to
defend themselves against
claims
that XP's Wireless Zero Configuration sometimes just drops the
connection without telling the user. First, they claim they've
never really heard of the problem, despite the fact that many have
experienced it (though, as the article points out, many blame the WiFi
hardware, rather than the software). However, one of the major
complaints is that the little connection icon in the task bar still
shows a connection, though no data is coming back from the access
point. When asked why the icon doesn't show the loss of connectivity,
Microsoft responds with this: "It indicates that you've associated
with an access point. It is possible for you to be associated without
having connectivity." Now, if you're techie enough (and many of you
are) it's not too hard to figure out what this means, but there's no
way the average user wants to care about the difference between
"associated with an access point" and "having connectivity." While it
may be useful to pinpoint that the problem does not have to do a
problem between associating the machine and the access point, why not
just have a separate way of indicating if there's no connectivity as
well?
W3C Holds Workshop on Frameworks for
Semantics in Web Services
W3C Holds Workshop on Frameworks for
Semantics in Web Services
06/17/2005 04:25 PM2005-06-09: The W3C Workshop on Frameworks for Semantics in Web
Services is 9-10 June in Innsbruck, Austria, hosted by DERI and
supported by EC's IST programme WS2 project. Over sixty organizations
are presenting papers identifying areas of shared interest between Web
services and Semantic Web communities. Topics include background
technologies, registries, taxonomies, search mechanisms, ontologies
for Web services, Web services choreography, and business process.
Read the press release, the program and about W3C Workshops. (News
archive)
The Semantics of Free Software vs. Open
Source
The Semantics of Free Software vs. Open
Source
12/28/2004 04:54 PMLast Call: XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0
Formal Semantics
Last Call: XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0
Formal Semantics
06/05/2005 10:45 PM2005-06-05: Addressing comments from the previous Last Call, the XML
Query Working Group and the XSL Working Group released three updated
requirements documents and a Last Call Working Draft for the XQuery
and XPath languages. Important for databases, search engines and
object repositories, XML Query can perform searches, queries and joins
over collections of documents. XPath is used to select parts of XML
documents. Visit the XML home page. News archive)
Questions about Longhorn, part 2: WinFS
and semantics
Questions about Longhorn, part 2: WinFS
and semantics
06/07/2004 03:51 PM
In the
first
installment of this series of questions about Longhorn, I
concluded that the compelling benefit of WinFS must lie in the realm
of "organizing stuff" rather than just "finding stuff" -- else why not
just leverage existing and well-understood relational, free-text, and
XML search methods? And I posited that the signature feature of WinFS
-- "relationships" -- must be powerful enough to justify the creation
of a proprietary new storage model that will enable (but also require)
new applications and developer skills. Admittedly my "finding versus
organizing" distinction was a bit of a cheat, since finding depends
sensitively on prior organization. Except when it doesn't: brute-force
free-text search routinely trumps navigation and structured search.
But OK, we've all got to hope that better organization, someday, will
level the playing field.
...Reiser4 file semantics: An opportunity
for open source
Reiser4 file semantics: An opportunity
for open source
09/09/2004 05:28 AMSome people feel that the Reiser4 file semantics will present problems
for the Linux community. In a nutshell, every file now looks like a
directory and can be opened as a directory. The names in that
directory are not new files but metadata associated with the file, as
documented by Hans Reiser on the Namesys site. The immediate response
in the community has been that this is too big a change and should be
withdrawn. I humbly propose that this is a challenge we should face
head on now or we may not have an opportunity to do so in the future.
J2EE 1.4 release supports new XML and
Web services semantics (JavaWorld.com)
J2EE 1.4 release supports new XML and
Web services semantics (JavaWorld.com)
11/18/2002 10:56 AMRed Hat Desktop strategy: Semantics have
been part of the messaging problem
Red Hat Desktop strategy: Semantics have
been part of the messaging problem
05/06/2004 11:28 AMEditor's note: This commentary from Red Hat's community relations
manager is a response to NewsForge's Joe Barr, who asserted earlier
this week that the company had given numerous confusing messages about
its intent to enter the desktop market. Much has been made in the
press and on community sites about Red Hat's ambivalence in the
"desktop" space. If you're reading this, you may have written an
article or two on it yourself. Or at least flamed us in your blog.
OWL Abstract Syntax and Semantics
Working Draft Published
OWL Abstract Syntax and Semantics
Working Draft Published
11/11/2002 03:18 PM31 July 2002: The Web Ontology Working Group has released an updated
Working Draft of OWL Abstract Syntax and Semantics. The draft is a
high-level description of the OWL Web Ontology Language 1.0 and its
subset OWL Lite. Automated tools can use common sets of terms called
ontologies to power services such as more accurate Web search,
intelligent software agents, and knowledge management. OWL is used to
publish and share ontologies on the Web. Read about the W3C Semantic
Web Activity. (News archive)
RDF Primer, Test Cases, and Semantics
Working Drafts Published
RDF Primer, Test Cases, and Semantics
Working Drafts Published
11/13/2002 05:07 PM13 November 2002: The RDF Core Working Group has released updated
Working Drafts of the RDF Primer, RDF Test Cases, and RDF Semantics
(formerly named RDF Model Theory). The Resource Description Framework
(RDF) is a general-purpose language for representing information in
the Web. The primer is an introduction for all readers. The test cases
correspond to technical issues the Working Group is addressing.
Semantics specifies precise semantics for RDF and RDFS, with some
entailment results. Read about the Semantic Web Activity. (News
archive)
End the Conversation
End the Conversation
03/13/2003 10:26 AMAllen (12:06:43 AM): damn one day, i'll teach you to throw axes Allen
signed off at 12:06:48 AM. That's certainly...
How not to end an IM conversation
How not to end an IM conversation
10/29/2003 01:17 AMWhy is it that in IM conversations some people stick to you like flies
to the proverbial crap? New to...
Conversation with GoDaddy
Conversation with GoDaddy
04/12/2005 01:20 PMI spent some time on the phone with the folks at GoDaddy today and
they have a few ideas on what is going on with the server and are
going to try a few things on the box we will keep our fingers
crossed.
We will see what happens over the next few days.
The ever evolving conversation
The ever evolving conversation
03/26/2005 04:33 PMFor about three years now - I'm been hemming and hawing and giving
people a hard time and (apparently) acting belligerent - about Open
Identities.
About the notion of open DNS-like indices of people. And what we
could do with them. You see I spent much of teh 90's desinging
systems that relied uypon a theoretical notion - that noadasys is
called social software and social networking. And at the core of that
- is digital identity.
So as the world has caught up with my ideas, it's becoming more and
more important that we DO IT RIGHT!
Now Tribe is calling that the
PeopleWeb, Microsoft has a [can't talk about it but will soon]
platform and Dick Hardt and his Sxip
Networks is rolling out.
Along the way the Identity Commons has
launched their i-Names effort
and PingID continues
to lead in the open source Liberty Alliance (and other enterprise
protocols) space.
So Doc
cautions us and says "we're barely srarted."
No shit - Sherlock.
But like I said - it's all happening. I just wish Dave Winer were
part of the conversation - too.
Continuing the MT conversation
Continuing the MT conversation
05/16/2004 07:12 PMContinuing the discussion about MT licenses, Movable Type clarified
and changed some of their terms. Having looked at some of...
Democracy is a conversation
Democracy is a conversation
03/19/2003 10:24 PM From William Du Bois, from a mailing list I'm on: Bush's Utopian Plan
for Peace and mine differ at the core. Hal Pepinsky, one of the
founders of peacemaking criminology, talks about the dynamics of
democracy and violence. He defines democracy as responsiveness —
we take each other into account. We may not change our agenda but we
take what the Other has to say into account. Violence is the opposite
of democracy. It is asserting your own will and refusing to take the
other into account......
The long conversation
The long conversation
05/27/2004 06:26 PMGuardian,UK-16 hours ago ... Google is perhaps the most obvious
clue-holder, with its corporate maxim "Don't be evil", its brand
new corporate weblog and its all-round fluffy, friendly ...
a surrealistic conversation
a surrealistic conversation
11/16/2003 05:58 AMJon Udell:
weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2003/06/13.html#a721
track this
site | 3 links
Best IM Conversation of Today
Best IM Conversation of Today
03/11/2003 09:43 AMBest IM Conversation of Today
The worst part is he's close to right*...
kjartanmannes: so whats next for Mr Johnson?
fuzzygroup: in what
context ?
kjartanmannes: well, you've been slashdotted so what is
your new goal in life?
My sincere thanks to all the messages of encouragement, nice
feedback and other comments.
Conversation with Joe Trippi
Conversation with Joe Trippi
09/20/2004 07:26 PMPlease join me in a conversation with Joe Trippi about his book, "The
Revolution Will not be Televised." We will stream it live at Of, By,
and For, this Friday the 24th at 2:00pm Pacific time. As you might
know, Trippi built the Dean for America campaign and started
rewriting...
A statement is not a conversation
(XML.org)
A statement is not a conversation
(XML.org)
08/05/2002 10:43 PMPolite Conversation
Polite Conversation
06/24/2005 08:38 PM
I've been at a conference for
the last couple of days, and have spent a significant portion of that
time eavesdropping on conversations. Aside from the obvious
observations (that most people don't listen, and that men do most of
the talking and interrupting in mixed company conversations) what most astonished me
was the unintended lack of politeness and courtesy that seems to
characterize most conversations.
It's not that the participants are rude -- it's just that they seem to
lack mutually-understood and mutually-respected protocols to govern
conversation in a civilized manner. This, in a world in which we are
beleaguered by rules in almost everything else we do, seems remarkable
to me.
So I did a bit of research to see whether I could find some protocols,
some rules of behaviour, that work effectively regardless of the
number, gender or conversational style of the participants. The
longest-established protocol is also, it seems, the most
misunderstood.
This is the protocol of the Talking
Stick,
which has its roots in aboriginal American culture and in that of some
third-world cultures as well. The basic rules of the Talking Stick
protocol, from what I can ascertain, are as follows:
- The person holding the Talking Stick is the only one who
can speak.Others must listen and not interrupt, even to ask clarifying
questions. The onus is on the speaker to be clear, brief, and
respectful.
- Generally the person most respected by the group
(the
tribal elder, or the person selected by the elder to present the issue
to the group) talks first.
- The Talking Stick is then passed
clockwise as each person
finishes, and makes one complete circle of the participants.
Participants with nothing to add simply pass the Stick along.
- The person who spoke first asks then whether
additional
discussion is warranted, and if anyone thinks so, the Stick is again
passed around the circle.
There have been a number of 'improvements' suggested to this process,
such as allowing clarifying questions, allowing people to reach for
the
stick in any order, first-come, first-served, and summarization or
'voting' processes, but none of these enhancements has a distinguished
history and none in my opinion represents a significant improvement to
the basic protocol. Allowing the group to engage in two-person
iterative Q&A, or sidebar conversations, would seem to me to
abrogate the three duties of clarity, brevity and respectfulness, or
at
least render them less necessary. In some Talking Stick circles, if
you
take the stick you must begin your speech by briefly reiterating what
the previous speaker said, and only when that synopsis receives a nod
from the previous speaker can you begin saying your piece. In some
cases this might work brilliantly, but in others it could make the
conversation interminably long and repetitive.
It is not clear to what extent the Law of Two
Feet
applies in Talking Stick circles -- where if you find the discussion
valueless or frustrating you have the option to leave, without
repercussions, and perhaps start another conversation on the same or
another subject with those similarly inclined. The alternative would
be
to assume that if you chose to accept the invitation to join the
conversation in the first place, you owe the rest of the group the
courtesy of giving them your attention until it is finished. My
personal view is that this judgement (whether leaving a conversation
you find tedious is discourteous or not) is best left up to the
individual.
I have witnessed many 'moderated' conversations, where one person
decides who will speak next, or where people raise their hands to be
next to speak and a first-come, first-served honour system applies,
and
found them mostly frustrating. But anarchy, where the loudest voice
always prevails, seems to me even more so, and also unfair. Where the
participants are part of a hierarchy, and rank clearly determines
speaking priority, the result is too often not really conversation at
all, but rather an information reporting and instruction exercise.
I have witnessed, too, meetings that allow the listeners to use tacit
signals to prompt the speaker without interrupting them: Holding up a
green card means "I like what you're saying", a red card the opposite,
and a yellow card signals "I don't understand what you're saying".
They
tend not to work, I think, because the green encourages unnecessary
loquaciousness, the red is rarely used because it would be perceived
as
rude, and the yellow is rarely used because it might make the listener
appear stupid. Electronic equivalents (IMs that the speaker can read
on-screen while talking) present the same discouragements, and also
are
more of a distractions than most speakers can handle on the fly.
One of my favourite conversational formats is the interview/Q&A,
where one (or more) persons pose questions and the other(s) restrict
themselves to answering them. There is a certain inherent democracy in
such conversations -- each side gives up certain speaking rights in
return for receiving others. Unrehearsed, they require considerable
skill and agility to pull off eloquently. Rehearsed, they can be
extremely effective at transferring knowledge but they become less
conversations than performances.
So my sense, based more on observations of what doesn't work than what
does, would be that the use of a Talking Stick or similar icon might
be
very helpful, even in two-person conversations (to reduce propensity
to
interrupt). I'm ambivalent about whether passing the Stick clockwise
or
allowing anyone to grab it next providing they satisfactorily
summarize
the last speaker's message first, would work better -- and I suspect
it
would depend on the subject and the conversational style of the
participants. I do like the idea of using a subtle timer
to reinforce the importance of clarity and brevity, which seem so
absent in most modern conversations that the resulting incoherence is
often unintentionally hilarious to the eavesdropper. Beyond that, I'm
not partial to any 'improvements' to the basic four-rule Talking Stick
process described above.
What's worked for you? Have you tried using such techniques, and when
are they effective (and not)? Are there other techniques, newer or
older, that work better, and when are they appropriate? And what of
telephone and Skype conversations, or those anarchic multi-party IM
sessions? Could a 'virtual Talking Stick' be introduced to organize
such conversations? It should be easy enough for the technology to
handle, but has anyone actually tried imposing this kind of discipline
on non-face-to-face conversations? And perhaps most important, does
practice using these techniques tend to make more polite, respectful
and articulate conversations second nature? Or is there some reason
I'm
missing why interruption and 'louder voices prevail' protocols are so
prevalent in our conversations, seemingly by default?
|
"An Actual Conversation"
"An Actual Conversation"
09/27/2004 11:18 AM"BlogPulse?s Conversation Tracker"
"BlogPulse?s Conversation Tracker"
03/29/2005 11:21 AMFrank conversation about torture
Frank conversation about torture
05/10/2004 08:54 AMOver at Frank Paynter's there's been an interesting and useful
discussion of my attempt to find a way for the left and the right to
agree on a policy condemning torture. (As I've noted several times
now, I should have talked not about the right wing but about the Rush
wing.) Frank's first blog entry about it is here and his reply to my
reply is here. Be sure to read the comments where I am taken to task
rather severely by some exceptionally thoughtful people. (I reply
there also.)...
Meta conversation on metadata
Meta conversation on metadata
11/01/2003 08:35 AMJay "Misspells His Own Last Name" Fienberg has trenchant comments on
my article about metadata. A big part of our difference may have to do
with the loose (= wrong) way I define metadata. Part of it may have to
do with where we're looking at metadata issues. E.g., Jay thinks
there's no essential difference between arguments over FOAF and over
the format by which we express date data; I'm instead thinking about
the argument over what categories of info we need to exchange
information about our friends. The argument over how to express that
info is, I agree, important...
A Conversation With Master Replicas
A Conversation With Master Replicas
04/13/2004 03:36 PMI recently visited Master Replicas headquarters in California, during
which I was able to sit down with Scott Vogel, President and CEO, and
ask him some questions that are on the minds of Master Replicas
collectors.
Grok Description matches for Dave McComb on Business Semantics (a new IT Conversation).
GrokA matches for Dave McComb on Business Semantics (a new IT Conversation).
Dave McComb on Business Semantics (a new IT Conversation).
