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01:03:05 <deltab> http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/06/24/432386.aspx has an insider's story on \ and SWITCHAR in DOS
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02:37:29 <KragenSitaker> i've always thought IBM's "Think" signs and notebooks and so forth were awfully condescending
02:37:47 <KragenSitaker> they're addressed from the corporation --- or maybe from Mr. Watson --- to the employees
02:38:07 <KragenSitaker> what kind of employees will forget to think if they aren't daily reminded to do so?
02:39:36 <zool> tired, demoralized ones agonising between saving for either their own pensions, which may turn out to be worthless, or their kids' college funds, which may also turn out to be worthless? :/
02:41:10 <zool> * zool handwaves about selforganising educational institutes, runs away
02:41:29 <crschmidt> heh
02:42:02 <KragenSitaker> oh hi jo
02:42:30 <KragenSitaker> what is a self-organizing educational institute?
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02:53:52 <crschmidt> KragenSitaker: like BarCamp, only with more academia
02:54:23 <crschmidt> That's the image I have in mind, anyway
02:54:37 <crschmidt> A bunch of people, smart enough to help each other learn, getting together, and learning and teaching
02:55:22 <Arnia> Sounds like any conference :p
02:55:30 <Arnia> (academic conference at least)
02:55:50 <Arnia> Usually followed by everyone getting hammered and then going out clubbing
02:56:10 <crschmidt> Right. So, long-term academic conference
02:56:31 <Arnia> That would be cool
02:59:28 <KragenSitaker> yeah
02:59:39 <KragenSitaker> i wonder if that's what she means though
03:00:05 <Arnia> * Arnia auto-organises KragenSitaker's brain
03:02:23 <KragenSitaker> bar camp was clearly educational.
03:03:02 <KragenSitaker> but i am not sure what processes caused that. it seems that there were no formal processes that prevented it from just becoming a kegger
03:03:20 <KragenSitaker> i wonder how you'd keep your self-organizing educational institute educational
03:03:27 <KragenSitaker> maybe i should ask the peninsula free university
03:05:22 <zool> KragenSitaker: i belonged to a nice one in london - http://uo.theps.net/
03:05:31 <zool> what it did was hugely random and variable
03:05:53 <zool> we had a pretty cool series of community currency software discussion and workshop meetings last year
03:06:23 <zool> but it wasnt really very focused on being educational generally - or bringing many people in from the outside who werent somehow already in the know
03:06:50 <zool> someone ran free unix classes every monday for 3 years, that was cool, but is stopped now
03:07:04 <zool> it's all about havign a physical space core that doesn't go away, though
03:07:12 <Arnia> * Arnia wonders what would happen if he gave the OU administrators LSD
03:07:59 <zool> i think they they would enjoy living in milton keynes a bit more
03:08:37 <Arnia> Milton Keynes -- NOT the worst place in Bucks to live
03:08:41 <zool> * zool actually quite liked milton keynes and wouldnt mind living there :)
03:08:52 <crschmidt> it has an openguide
03:08:56 <Arnia> * Arnia thinks zool has a mind filled with squares
03:08:58 <zool> a flourishing one!
03:09:02 <sbp> not the worst?
03:09:02 <zool> * zool smiles
03:09:04 <sbp> what is the worst?
03:09:05 <jessica> Sort of like Boston.
03:09:10 <jessica> Boston is filled with squares as well.
03:09:19 <zool> it is like a mad interconnection of leylines there, allegedly
03:09:19 <Arnia> Aylesbury, Wycombe and Slough are all worse
03:09:35 <zool> "come friendly bombs, and fall on slough / it isn't fit for humans now"
03:09:38 <KragenSitaker> zool: interesting
03:09:39 <Arnia> For slightly different reasons
03:09:46 <Arnia> Slough is probably the nicest of the three
03:09:47 <sbp> oh, Slough
03:09:57 <sbp> huh, haven't been to the other two
03:10:02 <sbp> but if Slough is the nicest of the three...
03:10:06 <Arnia> Wycombe and Aylesbury are just horrible
03:10:34 <zool> i would like to see an open guide to slough
03:11:01 <Arnia> "Like the name"
03:11:18 <Arnia> It used to be quite a nice town until the mid-seventies
03:12:24 <Arnia> Slough Trading Estate, whilst quite horrific to Betjemann (who was a South Bucks boy through and through and thus decidedly rural), is nowhere near as horrible as what Wycombe became
03:12:55 <crschmidt> zool: I can make an open guide to anywhere... i just don't add the content to them ;)
03:13:16 <zool> i dont think i know anyone who knows anyone who lives in slough :)
03:13:29 <Arnia> I come from 5 miles from Slough
03:13:30 <KragenSitaker> zool: does that make you upper-class?
03:13:38 <Arnia> I still have quite a bit of family there
03:13:41 <KragenSitaker> when i read The Concrete Jungle, it took me a whhile to realize that Milton Keynes wasn't a person's name
03:13:41 <zool> rotfl
03:13:55 <Arnia> KragenSitaker: Hardly, Windsor and Eton borders Slough :)
03:14:19 <zool> KragenSitaker: no, i am an ill wrought mongrel from a long line of shopkeepers and navvies ;P
03:14:24 <KragenSitaker> mmm
03:14:33 <KragenSitaker> what's a navvy?
03:14:41 <sbp> a drunken navy
03:14:42 <zool> * zool hurriedly checks
03:14:47 <crschmidt> .w navvy
03:14:51 <phenny> navvy 1. a laborer who is obliged to do menial work
03:14:53 <KragenSitaker> my grandmother's family were all shopkeepers
03:14:54 <Arnia> A worker on engineering projects
03:15:08 <zool> 1. drudge, peon, navvy, galley slave -- (a laborer who is obliged to do menial work)
03:15:12 <zool> doh
03:15:13 <zool> lol
03:15:47 <zool> i find i often use words that i know are in the right context slot but that when called on them i cannot certainly define :/
03:15:52 <KragenSitaker> heh
03:17:06 <zool> * zool pseudophotographic text memory which was a lot of use to me as a kid, saved me a lot of 'effort'
03:17:17 <zool> not like i have total recall or anything
03:17:24 <KragenSitaker> are there spelling bees in the uk?
03:17:38 <KragenSitaker> that attribute always caused me to win the school's spelling bee
03:17:44 <zool> but i can always remember where relatively on a page within a book i read a passage
03:17:51 <zool> heh, no nothing like that sadly
03:18:11 <KragenSitaker> this is the town my grandmother's family founded by establishing a store: http://www.amazon.com/gp/yp/geo/NM/Pep/002-9018403-1665655
03:18:20 <zool> being a smart arsed kid is more or less just a source of shame there
03:18:24 <KragenSitaker> i don't know if the wilson gray country store is the same one or not
03:19:00 <zool> neat!
03:24:18 <deltab> a little-known (to most people) dialect of English: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/01/11/511559.aspx
03:28:36 <deltab> KragenSitaker: there has been some recent interest in spelling bees in the UK (and, if Neighbours is representative, Australia too)
03:29:48 <deltab> zool: I have that, and I think my mother does too
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03:31:01 <zool> my granny has it... she has a much better brain than me... and never got the social / cultural chance to make her brain do interesting things... it is terrible
03:31:17 <sbp> deltab: dialect of English? did you paste a different link than you intended?
03:31:26 <sbp> (it's about the Decoy visual style)
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03:31:34 <crschmidt> heh: http://boston.openguides.org/?SHIELD_OF_FAITH_HEALING_TEMPLE_CHURCH_FELLOWSHIP
03:31:43 <crschmidt> Will be deleted in 5 minutes
03:31:46 <deltab> sbp: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/01/11/511559.aspx#511571
03:33:14 <sbp> awesome
03:33:59 <deltab> "Besides, many users love spyware, porn, and email stationery with unicorns, but please don't put any of that in the OS. Especially the unicorn stationery."
03:34:16 <sbp> crschmidt: I wonder why America has so much of that stuff? I mean, I wonder what it is about the culture? it's so rare in Europe in general, as far as I know
03:34:29 <sbp> have you checked your water supply?
03:35:01 <jessica> Sean -- actually, evangelical Protestantism is pretty common in the world outside of Europe.
03:35:13 <jessica> It's just a bit more . . . interesting here.
03:35:27 <jessica> You live in the country with the Church of England in it.
03:35:46 <jessica> To Anglicans, drunkenness is a sacrament and eating local cuisine a penance.
03:35:57 <sbp> true, both the Anglican and Catholic churches have been bonkers over the years
03:36:14 <jessica> Right, whereas Protestants have this different mentality about things.
03:36:20 <jessica> What that mentality is is hard to describe.
03:36:42 <sbp> we also had the Puritans for a bit
03:36:49 <sbp> probably still have some closet Puritans
03:36:56 <jessica> But it has a lot to do with the ideals of liberation theology and theocracy, depending on which side of the spectrum you're on, as opposed to making sure the King of England Got His Son.
03:36:59 <sbp> ah!
03:37:02 <sbp> that explains it
03:37:12 <sbp> all that kind of crap started to disappear in the 18th century
03:37:16 <sbp> they all just went to America
03:38:31 <jessica> Fair enough, though I imagine there's also simply the fact that our heritage originates in being religious fanatics with guns.
03:39:11 <sbp> we need to have words with historyh
03:39:16 <jessica> America was founded by well-armed evangelicals, and we Atlantic liberals are too wimpy to tell them to go fuck themselves, instead, saying things about inclusiveness and diversity.
03:39:20 <sbp> sans the superfluous trailing h
03:39:52 <jessica> (Pacific Coast liberals are generally too lazy to do even that. It's the Red State / Blue State divide, with West Coast apathy thrown in.)
03:40:12 <sbp> the West Coast also has the sunshine
03:40:16 <sbp> (but the girls all get so tense)
03:40:47 <jessica> Eh. My baby sister deeply enjoyed living in San Diego. Shamu and girls in bikinis -- really, what more can one ask from life?
03:41:13 <sbp> I like seaweed
03:41:27 <jessica> I suggested decent concerts, high culture, local public transport, decent wages, public services and inclusiveness of the Hispanic population, etc.
03:41:35 <sbp> and seaweed
03:41:59 <jessica> But hey, hot chicks wearing bikinis and a giant whale, plus Tijuana conveniently located nearby for debauchery and marijuana. The apathy set into her after a mere six months.
03:44:15 <sbp> o/` south of the border, down mexico way, they don't sell potato chips, they ain't heard of frito lay, all they got is a thing called mary, a thing called mary jane, you smoke it you eat it they stick you in jail, and there you go insane
03:44:24 <sbp> south of the border, down mexico way! o/`
03:44:55 <sbp> I want to hear Paul Anka singing that now
03:45:00 <jessica> It's so romantic when you serenade all of #swhack, Sean.
03:45:12 <sbp> don't thank me, thank Mr. Paul Anka
03:45:43 <zool> oh
03:45:51 <zool> i sort of want to talk about this rdfweb cookbook idea
03:46:04 <zool> but i should probably just write it down all at once on the rdfweb-dev list
03:46:10 <d8uv> o/` Beans beans the musical fruit... o/`
03:46:16 <sbp> nooooOoOo!
03:46:19 <crschmidt> pfft, rdfweb-dev
03:46:22 <sbp> zool: do it on Swhack, do it on Swhack!
03:46:25 <zool> :P
03:46:26 <sbp> we're better than them
03:46:30 <zool> lol
03:46:38 <zool> well the idea is a simple one really
03:46:54 <d8uv> Yeah. No to mention RDF is dead anyway so it doesn't matter where it goes
03:47:11 <zool> i dont know if http://www.zacker.org/the-battle-for-the-semantic-web-rdf-vs-xml put the wind up anyone as badly as it did me
03:47:33 <sbp> oh good grief, what are people writing now...
03:47:37 <zool> i put a lot of time and code energy into socialising rdf as a model i really believed in
03:47:39 <sbp> * sbp reads, gets out the old red pen
03:47:44 <zool> and there is a lot of it in the world
03:47:45 <crschmidt> oh, fucking zack
03:48:03 <zool> i reflected after blowing up at zack a bit in private mail and he was terrible contrite
03:48:20 <Arnia> * Arnia kills RDF
03:48:29 <Arnia> * Arnia just feels that way nowadays
03:48:38 <Arnia> Much to my supervisor's amusement :p
03:48:45 <zool> that what is needed in a rescue effort, isn't more code, but less, and documentation that's not scattered around a bazillion little projects, but gathered into one place
03:48:49 <zool> aww
03:48:57 <KragenSitaker> rdf is as dead as mozilla was in 2001
03:49:07 <zool> KragenSitaker++
03:49:10 <zool> so
03:49:40 <zool> an RDF cookbook would be pretty easy to knock together... confluence is nice but is nonfree... it would make sense to use an rdf based toolkit to do it...
03:49:43 <zool> like uche's thing
03:49:49 <Arnia> RDF is inadequate and wrong-headed [but I no longer believe first-order logic is the correct approach to modelling web semantics]
03:49:56 <zool> whose name and url i totally forget
03:50:02 <Arnia> 4Suite
03:50:03 <d8uv> It would be better if it wasn't the W3C running the RDF show. They seem to have this magical ability to make anything awesome degenerate into suck
03:50:09 <zool> well, i don;t want to get into religious wars
03:50:12 <KragenSitaker> it has some really good ideas but there are a bunch of gross crap on top of it, and also a bunch of missing things to make it useful
03:50:12 <Arnia> With the language Versa for querying
03:50:27 <zool> uche has a kind of wiki syntax post 4suite thing built on redfoot i think
03:50:28 <Arnia> zool: This isn't a religious thing. I have a number of technical points
03:50:38 <zool> * zool smiles
03:50:39 <Arnia> I'll send you papers as I'm allowed to
03:50:44 <zool> thx
03:50:51 <sbp> "it will really emerge in mid 2007" - who said that?
03:50:54 <sbp> .g "it will really emerge in mid 2007"
03:50:55 <zool> so i'm not talking about the layers o cruft
03:50:57 <phenny> "it will really emerge in mid 2007": http://www.zacker.org/the-battle-for-the-semantic-web-rdf-vs-xml
03:51:08 <zool> but about the core that is good and is in the world
03:51:12 <Arnia> KragenSitaker: It has a model-theoretic semantics. This dooms it
03:51:13 <zool> smart bot you have there ;P
03:51:25 <KragenSitaker> Arnia: i don't know what you mean; can you elaborate?
03:51:30 <sbp> doesn't look like a direct quote from any public source
03:51:42 <zool> unarchived lists, eh
03:52:30 <zool> well. i have Copious Free Time and would do some open editing work and contrib 4 recipes based on simple perl and python rdf tools i have made over the years
03:52:40 <zool> and i bet others might be interested in doing sme
03:52:54 <zool> but perhaps this isn't the place i should be going to gauge interest ;)
03:52:54 <Arnia> KragenSitaker: The semantics of RDF's data-model is defined as a model-theoretic semantics. MT semantics is incapable of expressing the forms of information people desire without elaborate machinery that plunges between layers and makes it hard (if not practically impossible) to actually use
03:53:22 <zool> * zool drifts off to think in the bath
03:53:38 <Arnia> KragenSitaker: The main reason for this is that MT semantics assumes an accessible objective world. Unfortunately, this isn't the case
03:53:40 <crschmidt> zool: I have some stuff towards that end
03:53:44 <crschmidt> that i wrote about 3 months ago
03:53:49 <crschmidt> lost interest too early on
03:53:53 <sbp> * sbp googles for RDF cookbook, finds two results
03:53:56 <sbp> one by Karl, one by me
03:54:47 <zool> right, a lot of it would really just be rediscovery and rescue and tightening prose on stuff that is in the world
03:54:49 <sbp> I thought that the Semantic Web Education and Outreach thing would be a good forum for a cookbook
03:54:49 <crschmidt> http://crschmidt.net/semweb/articles/intro/
03:54:57 <eikeon> * eikeon still happily hacking with rdf
03:55:20 <zool> .g Semantic Web Education and Outreach
03:55:22 <phenny> Semantic Web Education and Outreach: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/EO/
03:55:30 <sbp> I stopped hacking on it happily years ago, and stopped hacking on it at all in late 2004 really, but I could see myself getting into it again if the opportunity arose
03:55:32 <Arnia> * Arnia is still thinking about providing an alternative semantics for RDF based upon NAL
03:55:32 <zool> but i dont think w3 is the place for it
03:55:33 <crschmidt> I work with something that's close enough to RDF to make me happy, with workable code that makes it run. It's called Ning
03:55:44 <zool> * zool really bathing now
03:55:46 <sbp> which is to say that all the stupid stuff would basically need to be killed in the face
03:55:52 <crschmidt> zool: agreed
03:56:04 <sbp> yeah, I agree that W3C isn't the place now
03:56:07 <crschmidt> sbp: all the stupid stuff about RDF, or all the stupid stuff in the community?
03:56:12 <sbp> both
03:56:20 <zool> rdfweb.org still has potential good energy and is a nice namespace
03:56:21 <sbp> the W3C is a huge factor in both
03:56:28 <zool> * zool really ACTUALLY bathing
03:56:31 <Arnia> I need to get that written up
03:56:46 <Arnia> sbp: Any particular complaints you want me to ask William about?
03:57:01 <KragenSitaker> arnia: can you point me at a concrete illustration of this problem?
03:57:03 <sbp> not to disparage the W3C because they do awesome work and blah blah, but as fafr as the Semantic Web has gone they've not reached the full potential
03:57:07 <crschmidt> I think it's time to move on from the W3C as any kind of semweb help if you want to get more people involved and not work forever on perfecting the language.
03:57:08 <KragenSitaker> it's a little vague for my poor old mind
03:57:25 <Arnia> (he's annoyed with RDF himself atm... which may be why he is trying to get me to tear everything apart)
03:57:34 <sbp> Arnia: oh man, too many to list. the thing that springs to mind first is the fact that we're going so slowly through the layer diagram
03:57:55 <sbp> people like Libby and me and eikeon, IIRC, were working on query stuff way back in 2001 or so
03:58:14 <sbp> and now they're still crystalising SPARQL, only SPARQL has major group think problems
03:58:56 <Arnia> KragenSitaker: Think about representation of change of knowledge
03:59:29 <sbp> even though the layer diagram is only a guide, my point is that people are doing decent concrete things in small factions, then it gets into "standardisation" mode, and everything goes ass end up for years due to angels on pinhead discussions
03:59:48 <sbp> then at the end we get a product which is quite inferior to the things that people were hacking on to begin with!
03:59:53 <Arnia> KragenSitaker: If Lois Lane knows Superman can fly, knows humans can't fly and believes that Clark Kent is a human; how can you cope with her finding out that Clark Kent is Superman
03:59:54 <sbp> this is why we have Bags and Lists in RDF
04:00:10 <sbp> this is why we don't yet have contexts (even is SPARQL is trying to cram them in sideways)
04:00:26 <sbp> all that stuff should've been done and dusted early in the decade, but it's still retarded
04:01:14 <sbp> what's the point in hacking on this stuff anymore? for every ounce of decent grassroots effort that's put into a technology like Squish, it gets converted into a tonne of bullcrap five years down the line
04:01:44 <sbp> eikeon's had a decent RDF API working since *2000* for goodness' sake, but nobody is really using it for any decent applications because nobody's able to make applications because RDF sucks ass
04:02:32 <sbp> and nobody has ever been committed to fixing it, because there is no one person that can just look W3C in the face and say "actually, perhaps if you did it this way instead and stopped worrying about this other thing..."
04:02:49 <Arnia> RDF is a typical 'FOPL can say everything' misconstrual of completeness
04:03:09 <sbp> the sad thing is that TimBL to a great extent seems to be one of the people that could actually do that, and has been working on awesome hackish things, and he's the *director* of the W3C but even he hasn't been able to knock some sense into the proceedings
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04:03:32 <sbp> the whole thing just drives me up the wall. it's amazing
04:03:54 <sbp> sure, RDF is just a crappy little data format that is overly verbose and blah blah
04:04:20 <Arnia> sbp: RDF is crappy not for its syntax but rather for its data-model in my eyes
04:04:25 <sbp> but it can do bits and bobs. you can make stuff like menow and FOAF and perhaps a handful of other things along those lines
04:04:31 <sbp> its syntax is crappy *too*
04:04:39 <Arnia> And it is the data-model I want to replace
04:04:46 <sbp> what'd you replace it with?
04:04:47 <Arnia> sbp: Dunno, I like N3 still
04:05:00 <sbp> N3 is fine, sure
04:05:03 <Arnia> sbp: Something based upon NAL
04:05:11 <sbp> note that I invested a great deal of my RDF time into Notation3
04:05:25 <Arnia> I have in my notes somewhere an RDF data-model using NAL constructs
04:05:48 <Arnia> I need to write it up into a paper though (oh for time)
04:05:53 <sbp> NAL... this is the thing that you've been talking to jcowan about, right? can you provide a really easy summary of NAL for RDFers, perhaps?
04:06:51 <sbp> Non-Axiomatic Logic, I recall. and some stuff about probabilities etc.
04:07:39 <jetscreamer> !
04:08:42 <Arnia> Yes, this is the same NAL
04:09:09 <sbp> (rant ahead, I need to get food. back shortly)
04:09:34 <Arnia> It has a higher-order uncertainty semantics (judgements have a frequency and confidence) so that you may merge disparate information sources together
04:10:11 <Arnia> It is a Term Logic family logic supporting all four basic syllogisms (deduction, induction, abduction and exemplification)
04:10:34 <Arnia> All beliefs may be revised at any time as new information becomes available
04:11:03 <Arnia> It has a temporal component which allows reasoning about change and process
04:13:01 <Arnia> Unlike FOPL (and other MT logics) it is built with the Assumption of Incompleteness of Knowledge and Insufficiency of Resources and so doesn't presume a reasoning process nor representation which is omniscient (as FOPL's quantifiers are), and a computational capacity which is infinite
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04:17:56 <Monty> howdy, CaptSolo
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04:18:04 <eikeon> A temporal component would be very nice to have... without trying to layer something on top afterwards.
04:18:51 <Arnia> eikeon: You can't layer. Again, because time is part of meaning. It isn't something that can be glued on top, because all systems acquire their beliefs through time
04:19:01 <Arnia> * Arnia is writing a monograph on these topics atm
04:19:13 <eikeon> Arnia: Yeah... I was agreeing
04:19:44 <eikeon> Probably my biggest issue with RDF
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04:20:26 <Arnia> There are significant issues with regards identity as well
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04:21:00 <Arnia> Tom and I tried to figure out how to do it with RDF, but concluded that it was properly impossible to do. You could do a hacky job but it was a mess to engineer
04:23:29 <uche> * uche saw the blue tab, wandered over
04:23:51 <uche> zool, I think you're referring to my brother's (chimezie's) work with eikeon
04:24:02 <uche> WHich is very interesting stuff that I want to also be involved in
04:24:03 <sbp> back. the confidence is presumably localised, based on how much you trust the source and how much your source trusts its own knowledge? (and how much you trust how much your source trusts its own knowledge...)
04:24:20 <uche> but I'm committed to finally getting the XML half of 4Suite to 1.0 first
04:24:26 <uche> <sbp> even though the layer diagram is only a guide, my point is that people are doing decent concrete things in small factions, then it gets into "standardisation" mode, and everything goes ass end up for years due to angels on pinhead discussions
04:24:31 <uche> sbp, BINGO!
04:24:38 <uche> Amazingly well said, and should be blogged
04:25:05 <uche> RDF is triumphant in the hacking and betrayed in the standardization
04:25:27 <uche> ALmost everything I have said in abuse of RDF recently, if you parse it closely enough, is just a variation on that theme
04:25:34 <sbp> Arnia: identity: you refer to the old idea of an UnambiguousConstellation (which I guess in today's parlance would be a set of properties that together were taken as inverse function)\
04:25:45 <sbp> uche: thanks... I was just thinking about it when I went to get some food
04:26:26 <sbp> it seems so lucid, so obvious, but I'm not sure what to do about it; or if I even want to do something about it. what would you suggest, since you've been thinking about it too?
04:26:26 <Arnia> sbp: Confidence is, intuitively, how far the frequency can move in the 'near' future (where 'near' means within the next k time steps) and so represents your certainty that this particular judgement is correct
04:26:38 <uche> It's not just a vain observation (because I prefer my XML->RDF hacks to GRDDL and Versa to SPARQL)
04:26:50 <uche> I've seen the phenomenon in much stuff developed by others
04:27:20 <uche> Not least eikeon
04:27:24 <sbp> yes. it's sad that it's almost universally better to roll your own solution when it comes to RDF
04:27:31 <sbp> I mean, *still*
04:27:32 <Arnia> sbp: This may be altered due to trust, or due to lack of information (if I've only seen one swan I'm going to have lower confidence in judgements about swans)
04:27:41 <uche> And I will forever claim that Pat Hayes killed RDF's chance of ever becoming a mainstream technology
04:27:50 <uche> WHich I hate to say, because I'm in awe of his intelligence
04:28:04 <sbp> Arnia: ah, so it's actually a property of the data that you have and not of the provenance?
04:28:25 <uche> RDF never eeded to be that precise
04:28:40 <sbp> uche: oh, that's interesting! why do you say that? I've always been uncertain about Pat's role in things... even though he made the model theory, there were times when he actively lamented that
04:29:01 <sbp> it's almost as though he stepped in to make RDF extremely rigorous and then took a step back and said "but you shouldn't do that"
04:29:21 <uche> <sbp> the sad thing is that TimBL to a great extent seems to be one of the people that could actually do that, and has been working on awesome hackish things, and he's the *director* of the W3C but even he hasn't been able to knock some sense into the proceedings
04:29:24 <uche> very good point
04:29:25 <Arnia> sbp: Yes, but the difference is minor. In the end, the important property of this truth value is that it can cope with integrating incomplete and fallible information without requiring human intervention or engineering
04:29:28 <sbp> I'm still not sure to this day whether that was post facto and he just realised it later on, or whether he couldn't help but see RDF as a logical mess and dive in and fix it
04:29:38 <uche> cwm was about 100 times more practically useful than any modern OWL reasoner
04:30:06 <Arnia> DLs are too complex
04:30:15 <sbp> yeah. and CWM was and is a pile of crap, really, compared to what should be achievable, but it really was and is amazing compared to anything else.
04:30:20 <Arnia> Too many awkward, unknown properties
04:30:23 <sbp> it's led the way. CWM leading the way... bizarre
04:30:32 <uche> re: pat hayes, he basically came along and made everyone who counts in RDF believe that there is no room for imprecision and ambiguity
04:30:54 <Arnia> uche: FOPL syndrome :p
04:31:00 <uche> And so the people who had been successfully writing great RDF hacks were sucked into impossible epistemological/ontological/semiotic digressions
04:31:13 <Arnia> Because in MT semantics, there IS no room for ambiguity or imprecision
04:31:14 <uche> Which have no place in a worse-is-better Web
04:31:34 <sbp> I suppose TimBL's at the mercy of the companies that are paying tens of thousands of pounds to be W3C members, but the part that I don't get is that no one company really seems to have had an *agenda* as such that has stilted the Semantic Web
04:32:03 <sbp> it all seems to have been bogged down in process and Battles of Minds, which is something you would've thought would be overcomable
04:32:11 <uche> is anyone really paying for lemma after inscrutable lemma in the RDF MT?
04:32:19 <Arnia> sbp: There is one historical property though -- Tarskian semantics and predicate logics
04:32:45 <sbp> historical property? with regards to what, sorry?
04:32:55 <sbp> * sbp is juggling many threads of thought all of a sudden
04:32:57 <Arnia> sbp: I view RDF's failure as being because it leaves no wiggle room and people are almost *scared* to formalise in case they *do it wrong*
04:33:08 <uche> Arnia, that used *not* to be the case
04:33:11 <crschmidt> Agreed, on that, at least.
04:33:39 <crschmidt> Arnia: as usual, I have no clue what you're talking about, but that's the bit that makes things suck so much, and sucks so much great life out of the community
04:33:40 <uche> I think I can trace my dissafection with RDF to when worse-is-better went out the windoe
04:33:46 <Arnia> uche: But it was inevitable once people wanted to use big, impressive terms like 'schema' and 'ontology'
04:33:47 <uche> and the wiggle room vanished
04:33:55 <uche> Arnia, agree as well
04:34:10 <uche> From day one of my RDFhood, I said that the Semantic Web visio scares me
04:34:11 <Arnia> uche: And treat RDF as if it were a large, controlled database with a fixed, precise semantics
04:34:31 <uche> I'd prefer a scruffy Web, and if a big, Google-like company can successfully semanticize it, GREAT!
04:34:53 <sbp> how absurd. the Web is chaos! it only works because we allow 404s and broken servers and GIF animations and Flash up the wazoo..
04:34:56 <sbp> heh, yeah
04:35:01 <Arnia> But the opposite 'worse-is-better' view is just as flawed. It presumes that worse really is better
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04:35:06 <Monty> hi CaptSolo_
04:35:10 <uche> Arnia, yep, I also said that RDF must always either be a matter of full local control or of accepted semantic islands (with the occasional bridge)
04:35:21 <uche> Arnia, maybe
04:35:24 <uche> I used to hate the term
04:35:27 <sbp> if the original Web'd been made as a huge formalised database where nothing could break, it wouldn't've grown
04:35:33 <uche> Until I realized that you can't parse it literally
04:35:41 <Arnia> Personally I think RDF's flaw is the model-theory upon which it is based.
04:35:46 <uche> Worse-is-better does *not* mean "worse is better"
04:35:53 <uche> Took me a while to learn that quiddity :-/
04:35:57 <crschmidt> sbp: and RDF proves that
04:35:58 <Arnia> But that model theory is indicative of history
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04:36:28 <Arnia> We all communicate quite freely here
04:36:30 <crschmidt> sbp: because RDF is shooting itself in the foot, again and again, by attempting to be exactly that, a huge formalized database. and it aint growin
04:36:41 <uche> "worse is better" basically means that every successful large solution starts as a successful small one
04:36:51 <Arnia> You're getting subtleties of meaning which I could never express in RDF.
04:37:03 <Arnia> All expression in the semantic web should be that natural
04:37:08 <uche> and that a solution that is "better" for a well-boiunded problem, even if it seems "worse" in the large perspective, is always the way to go
04:37:09 <sbp> right, and we're all of us here saying exactly that again and again, I think, but I'm still not exactly sure what, if anything, could be done about it
04:37:15 <uche> Arnia, :-P
04:37:21 <zool> until i see something better than RDF, in terms of both model and toolkit support and expressive scope, that is *really in the world*, i would be unable to give up on it.
04:37:24 <sbp> nice to know, at the very least, that I'm not alone in thinking all of this
04:37:26 <uche> sbp, I've concluded nothing can--
04:37:29 <uche> within RDF, that is
04:37:57 <sbp> hmm
04:37:58 <uche> I'm sorry, but about 2 years ago I decided that sloppy semantics within XML modeling is the way I'm planning to go
04:37:59 <Arnia> sbp: I'm going to reject RDF and try building my stuff. Then I'll try and trick BT into releasing it open-source somehow so everyone can play
04:38:14 <uche> I did it quietly, not with crschmidt's flourish :-)
04:38:21 <sbp> heh, heh
04:38:27 <uche> which might be why, when I started to blog that discontent, I got a lot of hazing
04:38:43 <Arnia> sbp: But that's the best I can do. I'm getting more and more sure I'm on the right track here as well
04:38:59 <crschmidt> uche: what, you're saying I'm not a quiet person, as far as discontent with RDF goes? ;)
04:38:59 <kpreid> hm
04:39:05 <zool> uche, leaving the power of semanticising to the googles scares me a LOT more than the semweb vision ever did
04:39:10 <uche> just ribbing, really
04:39:10 <sbp> I'm still too busy thinking about how ass the past went
04:39:19 <kpreid> if I were actually doing something I think I'd just go for sloppy RDF and ignore the specs :)
04:39:32 <sbp> I'll bet nobody remembers DanC's proposal for datatypes in RDF? the one that was based around Perl scalars?
04:39:32 <Arnia> sbp: When my old identity theory became an 'obvious' consequence of adopting this semantics I decided it was worth investing a large amount of time in
04:39:37 <uche> I think you were more clear in your schism
04:39:41 <zool> 'sloppy rdf' sounds like fun
04:39:46 <uche> I came about mine gradually, and thus quietly
04:39:52 <eikeon> I think RDF can be used in a worse-is-better way without getting sucked all the way to the bottom of the DL pit
04:40:00 <uche> zool, I agree that is scary
04:40:07 <uche> but I honestly don't see how else it can be done
04:40:10 <Arnia> I came about mine whilst working on DL reasoning
04:40:10 <sbp> essentially, the idea was: what ever datatype some literal has is whatever you make of it
04:40:19 <sbp> which was how everyone was doing it at the time
04:40:40 <Arnia> And then working back, eventually concluding that even the core data-model was unusable
04:40:40 <uche> I tend to think it's rather anti-humanist to believe that distributed agreements can ever result in global consistency
04:40:41 <crschmidt> uche: yeah, stress and pressure kind of shoved me against the wall: either RDF or my sanity had to go
04:40:48 <crschmidt> (What little I might have had left)
04:40:48 <kpreid> RDF data types as they are now are rather ... impractical, it seems
04:40:55 <kpreid> because they have to be specified on every value
04:41:04 <kpreid> "have to"
04:41:07 <sbp> I like the fact that datatype and lang are mutually exclusive!
04:41:19 <uche> kpreid, I actually do go with sloppy RDF sometimes
04:41:20 <sbp> I've still never actually looked up the reasoning on that
04:41:27 <uche> i.e. any time I *do* decide to use RDF :-)
04:41:27 <Arnia> uche: Who cares about global consistency? I don't think that is necessary nor desirable
04:41:28 <sbp> I am frightened of looking up the reasoning on that
04:41:34 <deltab> sbp: wow, I thought you were Monty there for a moment
04:41:35 <Monty> holy crap.
04:41:39 <sbp> yikes
04:41:48 <uche> Arnia, the semantic Web does
04:41:49 <uche> I don
04:41:49 <uche> t
04:42:01 <uche> .me quotes Ted Hughes
04:42:21 <uche> "I do not look at the rocks and trees. I am frightened by what they see"
04:42:29 <Arnia> uche: That is because the semantic web has taken the pill labelled 'model theoretics'
04:42:44 <uche> Actually, Gog makes excellent companion poetry to this discussion :-)
04:43:00 <uche> Arnia, you're way beyond me on that
04:43:05 <Arnia> uche: They actually believe in a single, universal, transcendent truth
04:43:08 <uche> But we definitely agree something is wrong
04:43:23 <Arnia> uche: Accessible, shared and available to all who look
04:43:25 <sbp> yeah, I think we just keep saying "dude, X" at one another
04:43:26 <uche> Arnia, hmm. Ironical. So do classical humanists
04:43:44 <uche> But not modern humanist theory, which is what I had in mind earlier
04:44:00 <Arnia> Putnam's theorem destroys the possibility of such a thing in any infinite model
04:44:12 <Arnia> Unfortunately, RDF has an infinite model
04:44:26 <Arnia> (bit of a sod, but hey)
04:46:00 <uche> anyway, I'd be happy to have no Google for The Semantic Web
04:46:11 <uche> but I also believe that, that means no Semantic Web
04:46:15 <zool> sbp: nod, perhaps one could just sort this all out with a huge epistemological botwar and grow vegetables instead
04:46:18 <uche> I don't think Semantic Web is possible without one
04:46:50 <Arnia> uche: I disagree, but I don't agree with the idea of the semantic web as being synonymous with One True Interpretation
04:47:03 <uche> "I awoke to the song jarring my mouth. WHere the skull-rooted teeth are in possession."
04:47:06 <eikeon> botwar... now we're talking :)
04:47:09 <sbp> zool: they eventually charted the Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group as you presumably know, by the way
04:47:11 <uche> Describes my coming over here tonight :-)
04:47:25 <uche> Arnia, I don't think anyone says that
04:47:38 <sbp> sbp has changed the topic to: Epistemological Botwar Zone
04:47:43 <uche> but I do believe that SemWeb requires at least a universal means of reconciling interpretaions
04:47:47 <Arnia> uche: I don't think you need one central body deciding truth; society decides truth. Once you can merge information taking into account social relationships, you can just merge
04:48:00 <uche> Arnia, who said anything about truth?
04:48:07 <uche> Mind that switch, mate :-)
04:48:11 <zool> sbp: no, i didnt know, i have been unplugged from this scene for a long time really... just working on my little prototypes... doing geostuff mainly
04:48:23 <sbp> * sbp nods
04:48:26 <Arnia> Truth in a meta-mathematics sense is an interpretation
04:48:28 <zool> the open geospatial consortium could prolly leanr a lot from those best practises
04:48:42 <Arnia> So I tend to use them fairly similarly when talking about FOPL
04:48:46 <uche> Arnia, I can't compute truth, so it doesn't iterest me in regard to compuers
04:49:01 <uche> And so I come in a leap to my whole problem with TOpic Maps :-)
04:49:05 <zool> ted hughes got all his best ideas from sylvia plath's brainwaves anyway ;P
04:49:06 <Arnia> Can you produce an interpretation? Yes, so you can compute truth
04:49:07 <zool> * zool runs away
04:49:21 <uche> Arnia, I don't believe that
04:49:28 <Arnia> (which is why I dislike the MT characterisation of truth disconnected from reality)
04:49:38 <uche> zool, well, no doubt at all Plath was the better poet
04:49:41 <Arnia> sorry, s/reality/experience
04:49:52 <Arnia> uche: Herbrand's Theorem
04:49:53 <uche> but I don't know that Hughes really was all that terribly influenced
04:50:13 <uche> Crow, for example, points towards Ariel far more than anything in the other direction
04:50:37 <uche> Arnia, I don't know Hebrand, nor do I care what he has to say
04:50:47 <uche> SOrry, but I think modern philosophy is a ruddy mess
04:50:51 <Arnia> uche: Which states any theory in FOPL which has an interpretation has an interpretation on the naturals
04:51:00 <uche> And I pretty much tend to reject eberything from about 1900 on
04:51:41 <Arnia> Of course it is a mess... Frege and Tarski and Russel and Goedel and their ilk screwed it up
04:51:55 <sbp> even Wittgenstein?
04:51:59 <bjoern_> bjoern_ has quit ("Quit")
04:52:22 <Arnia> Wittgenstein inspired Roach so I'm happy to leave him out of the brigade
04:52:32 <uche> a nutty idea such as "producing an interpretation allows 'computing' truth" is a good example
04:52:34 <Arnia> It is possible his inspiration will save the mess semantics is in now
04:52:36 <uche> someone was off their meds
04:52:55 <Arnia> Do you believe in transcendent truth?
04:52:55 <Arnia> I don't
04:53:08 <uche> Arnia, that is a religious question
04:53:15 <uche> for the record, I don't
04:53:25 <Arnia> Or I do, but not in quite the same way as many would so it is easier to say I don't
04:53:35 <uche> Arnia, well, I'm happy not to use the term "semantics' as long as someone can provide me a better one
04:54:11 <Arnia> I believe in an inaccessible transcendent realm which is completely unconnected to any semantics we deal with
04:54:31 <Arnia> But I also view the external world as a short certificate that gives semantics a fixed-point
04:54:32 <uche> My head just went pear shaped!
04:55:04 <uche> (Trying to comprehend that)
04:55:17 <uche> ABout 5 seconds of trying is enough, thanks :-P
04:55:19 <kpreid> "My pear just went head-shaped!"
04:55:20 <Arnia> But that's more to do with my formalisation of observation and reflection between disparate logics
04:57:16 <sbp> I found out recently that there's a train scheduling site in the UK that tells you when a train has reached each of the stations on its route in real time, whether it's delayed, what time it's expected, and so on
04:57:26 <Arnia> (essentially, you can speak meaningfully of things to me because the external world acts as a unifier. You learnt what 'dog' means by the use of it in the context of a dog -- precise details unimportant -- and so did I. Therefore, no matter how our precise internal semantics differ, we can still share meaning)
04:57:39 <sbp> and I thought hey, this is an awesome site, but the design kind of sucks. I wonder if I could ask them to export it as...
04:57:48 <sbp> and then I stopped and thought, what format would I have them export it as?
04:57:55 <sbp> RDF? some XML soup? HTML soup?
04:58:17 <sbp> as long as it's in some format that is *parsable*, as long as it's well formed in whatever language it's served, that's okay
04:58:18 <Arnia> (of course, the best mapping would be obtained if we both learnt the term 'dog' in reference to the exact same dog... but a 'good-enough' reference may be established without that)
04:58:26 <uche> RSS 1.0 + SkiCal!!!!!!!
04:58:27 <uche> :-P
04:58:30 <sbp> it also needs enough local datastructure for me to cope with
04:58:37 <sbp> *thwap*
04:59:25 <eikeon> * eikeon wonders if uche is near some mountains ;)
04:59:36 <sbp> which reminded me of the old Atom contest, those who believed that Atom should be an application of RDF, serialised in RDF rather, and those who believed that RDF should go and fuck itself now please and don't ever mention the word again or it is hissy fit time
04:59:49 <uche> eikeon, I was all day
04:59:51 <Arnia> sbp: Just call National Rail Enquiries and ask very nicely
04:59:58 <uche> skiing with my oldest son at Vail
05:00:12 <uche> maybe my thinking has become mountainous?
05:00:32 <sbp> both camps seemed pretty insane to me. I used the opportunity to work on an alternate serialisation of RDF, stripeless, but overall that didn't really have anything constructive to add, sadly. just wanted to see if a kind of better RDF would help people think about it in nicer terms, especially if the fact that it's RDF at all was covered up
05:00:35 <eikeon> uche: Very nice... I've been once... really want to get back sometime soon.
05:00:45 <Arnia> uche: Craggy, weathered and liable to avalanche? :)
05:00:46 <sbp> well, that's just the thing: it actually is the National Rail Enquiries site
05:00:49 <sbp> so I was thinking
05:01:05 <uche> Arnia, yep
05:01:09 <sbp> remember the BBC recently said they'd release programme information for people to do what they want with?
05:01:20 <BeHappy_> i think that for now rdf is a machine language used by humans...
05:01:22 <Arnia> sbp: Yes, digiguide remix thing
05:01:24 <sbp> wouldn't it be great if more sites did that? it'd be great if National Rail Enquiries did that
05:01:34 <sbp> that's the name of it? rings a bell. thanks
05:01:48 <BeHappy_> and my english knowledge cannot argument this further :) here i'm playing the listner role
05:01:52 <Arnia> sbp: Could be a nice project... have to build up steam though
05:02:08 <sbp> it'd be great if National Rail Enquiries did that because then I could hook up a system that lets me see what the last train home from somewhere I could get is in order that I'm home to watch the Simpsons
05:02:20 <Arnia> sbp: But under a CC or the BBC's stricter CC-like licence should be persuadabe
05:02:26 <sbp> that is the goal of the Semantic Web as far as I'm concerned. it enables me to not miss an episode of the Simpsons
05:03:04 <sbp> but then I thought, hey, wait a minute. part of the goal of the Semantic Web should be to get more sites like these exporting their data as RDF or something machine readable at least (and with, as I said, enough data structure to *do* something with)
05:03:08 <Arnia> Whereas the goal of the semantic web for me is to be my PA so I don't have to manually manage a Total Informatic Immersion system
05:03:44 <sbp> but also... I can do this already. I can look up the time of the train home and I can look up the time of the Simpsons, and I can put 2+2 together and I may get it wrong and the train may be late and so on, but I can already do that
05:03:50 <sbp> so I realised a few things:
05:04:17 <sbp> 1) the Semantic Web should've been about making a format that could enable people to publish cool stuff like this, in a format that would be accessible to *hackers* to do something with, and it hasn't
05:04:58 <sbp> 2) some of the things that the Semantic Web should enable us to do are already possible. the goal of the Semantic Web is to enable some things that weren't automatable to be automatable, and some things that would've involved human error to involve computer error instead
05:05:28 <Arnia> * Arnia prods sbp regarding workflow
05:05:40 <Arnia> OWL-S etc
05:05:53 <Arnia> * Arnia wishes a particularly painful torture on OWL-S
05:06:02 <sbp> 3) the Semantic Web should be enabling people to represent, that is, to re-present, other people's data in ways which are much more awesome. I don't see very much of that happening, possibly because of copyright woes and stuff like that
05:06:24 <sbp> yeah, stab at OWL-S &c.
05:06:53 <sbp> anyway, not one of those three things is really thought about or spoken of anymore, so perhaps one of the things that could be done would be to address each of those three issues
05:07:04 <Arnia> Not as inscrutable as SOAP, but still horrible
05:07:50 <sbp> a problem introduced here is that it's often very difficult to predict which applications are worth investing an enormous amount of time in for probably less benefit than said effort, just so that those benefits can be redeployed elsewhere (the whole point of the Semantic Web)
05:08:22 <sbp> another problem is that generally, the most useful sites are the ones which are big, corporate, difficult to manage, and hence really terribly designed and stuck behind an assload of red tape
05:09:09 <sbp> but the biggest problem is that I wouldn't even bother emailing National Rail Enquiries asking them to export their data as RDF not just because they'd laugh at me (see point above), but because I'd laugh at me too. RDF is bollocks
05:09:20 <crschmidt> I think that many of the Google Maps Mashup type thingies (even though I hate the word "mashup") are what RDF should have been for
05:09:27 <sbp> and you need to fix them in the reverse order of what I just listed
05:09:34 <sbp> yeah!
05:09:41 <crschmidt> "Just spit your ddata out in Mashup format, and we can do cool stuff with it"
05:10:06 <sbp> thanks for reminding me, I meant to rant about that next. the kind of things that you've been doing with that are awesome. and it's happened, rarely, in the RDF world too. basically FOAF and its spinoffs
05:10:34 <sbp> I'm just reading an interview of TimBL conducted last year, 2005
05:10:36 <crschmidt> I think that one way to do that would be to ignore pointy brackets entirely, come up with some pointers on how to spit data out in, say, turtle or n3 or whatever, so it's actually RDF, but come up with a lot of really cool demos
05:11:05 <sbp> and he's saying all the same things that he's been saying for years now: the data is already out there, we just need to share it better. this is not AI, it's just simple technical gains
05:11:36 <sbp> but I've not really thought of what that implies, before. what he's really saying: the Semantic Web enables HAXXORZ!
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05:12:17 <sbp> crschmidt: I'm guiltily thinking a lot, throughout this discussion, about my mishmash of N-Triples and XML
05:12:25 <sbp> actually, of N3 and XML
05:12:47 <sbp> I'm not entirely sure what I'd do about the syntax and model, if I Ruled The RDF World
05:13:12 <sbp> but, thinking back to what I said earlier, I'm not even sure it matters too much
05:13:23 <sbp> the requirements are: structure, and a decent enough model
05:13:34 <crschmidt> sbp: why do xml at all?
05:13:40 <sbp> you need to be able to parse it, easily, and you need to be able to get a model from it
05:13:54 <sbp> half political, half technical
05:13:58 <crschmidt> sbp: I know that I'm being a heritic here, but isn't it just as easy to write a complete ... yeah
05:14:01 <crschmidt> figured as much
05:14:05 <sbp> the political reason is that people want data to be in XML!
05:14:06 <crschmidt> probably more than half political
05:14:08 <crschmidt> yeah
05:14:11 <sbp> the technical reason is more interesting
05:14:16 <crschmidt> the technical reason being that turtle parsers aren't everywhere?
05:15:18 <sbp> kinda. it's twofold: a) that turtle parsers aren't everywhere because turtle is a pain in the ass to parse. I have written numerous *N3* parsers. N3 is as hard to parse as vanilla XML. b) XML has many parsers. XML is good for some things. I reasoned that I'd use XML only for the things that it's good at, and not for others
05:15:55 <sbp> so I used XML structure where XML structure would seemingly help, and then I used non-XML structure where XML would've been a pain in the ass--where a regexp would be much quicker, cleaner, and smoother, for example
05:16:18 <sbp> so instead of doing <rdf:bNode localID="somename"/>, I did "$somename"
05:16:23 <crschmidt> hm, I was under the impression that a turtle parser wouldn't be that hard
05:16:29 <crschmidt> dunno why
05:17:00 <sbp> admittedly an N3 parser is a lot harder because of the various problems that N3 provides for the budding programmer
05:17:16 <sbp> but turtle is far from trivial, compared to XML. it's not a signficant gain, put it that way
05:17:25 <sbp> the gain is mainly in the resulting syntax, not in the parsing
05:17:34 <sbp> in other words, it's not easier to parse, but it is easier to write
05:17:42 <crschmidt> * crschmidt nods
05:17:52 <crschmidt> And it's write-once, read many
05:18:06 <sbp> with my N-Triples/XML mashup, I redressed the balance a little bit, and hopefully *overall* improved things. but I don't know really
05:18:10 <sbp> yeah
05:18:22 <sbp> of course, if you're worried about size, you just gzip it over the network anyway
05:18:22 <crschmidt> I don't know. I just know that RDF/XML really does feel ugly
05:18:41 <sbp> RDF/XML is bollocks. terrible design. one of the worst possible. no good at all
05:19:08 <crschmidt> so somehow you've got to create a new XML format, for RDF. And completely remove any associations between it and RDF/XML.
05:19:21 <crschmidt> that's a non-trivial task. a bunch of people have tried, seems like, and none of them got too far
05:19:29 <sbp> yes... and since RDF/XML is standardised and deployed and so on, that sucks ass
05:19:38 <sbp> and another problem is that you can only really go through this once
05:19:47 <sbp> this next time, RDF/XML's replacement, has to be perfect essentially
05:19:56 <sbp> and nobody seems to have struck that motherlode of perfect yet
05:20:40 <deltab> I still think it'd be a good idea to find ways to process existing XML and other formats, instead of creating yet another specialized format that people won't convert their data into
05:20:45 <sbp> often it's hard to evaluate these things until well after the fact. in the XML world, things become very, very clear, but usually years after a technology has been relesed
05:20:57 <sbp> hehe
05:21:00 <sbp> well put...
05:21:36 <sbp> it's just that the dream of there being some elixir format that makes people say "okay, that's actually not too bad" is hard to let go of sometimes
05:21:46 <sbp> it's the whole thing about finding where is the best place to invest your time
05:22:11 <sbp> but you're right. structure and a reasonable model...
05:22:45 <sbp> one of my worries is that without a specialised data format you leave yourself more open to breakage
05:22:50 <sbp> so, for example...
05:23:23 <sbp> it's possible to mark up HTML now in ways which would mean you could export your data in it. I could ask National Rail Enquiries to export all of the train times in HTML that I can actually *parse*
05:23:42 <sbp> rather than the tagsoup that they're undoubtedly using at the moment, and which could change from day to day
05:24:03 <Arnia> I think a specialised model expression format (a way to make statements) is what is necessary; but this only needs to be dealt with by the data-format-specific tools
05:24:04 <sbp> with an XML format, you're making more of a conscious investment in a particular format, and you know that you've got to keep it valid
05:24:34 <Arnia> Essentially it is the 'query' layer... a communications language
05:24:51 <sbp> with RDF schema and OWL you could actually check what you have for a model too. not very well, and Arnia could think of several hundred ways of doing it, but it shows that even RDF Schema and OWL are possibly better than nothing (this may be debatable)
05:25:21 <Arnia> But it is only necessary to understand it if you're building format-parsers (a relatively uncommon task), not to produce information
05:25:25 <sbp> with XML, of course, you have quite a few tools that can at least check for well-formedness, which is the structure requirement dispensed with
05:25:55 <shawnb> I'm curious about what you guys think of SPARQL
05:26:08 <sbp> Arnia: well, interestingly, I think that part of the problem is that format-parsing is actually going to be quite common at first and it's going to be people like us that would have to do it
05:26:31 <crschmidt> SPARQL is 5 years overdue, being done like it's still 5 years ago, and permeated by a strong sense of groupthink that it can't seem to shake
05:26:53 <sbp> this seems to be one of the fallacies of having a model-theoretic semantics in the first place, thinking that making new languages in RDF is going to be very rare and that consuming is going to be much more common
05:27:07 <sbp> the latter is not the case because making RDF languages is *so* hard that there is no data
05:27:17 <sbp> shawnb: why's that? what do *you* think about SPARQL?
05:27:36 <sbp> (I've said some things about SPARQL already tonight, by the way. you might want to grep your backscroll)
05:27:51 <sbp> or check out http://swhack.com/logs/latest and search for "SPARQL"
05:28:04 <shawnb> well earlier, someone (can remember) wrote about the issue of where to invest your time
05:28:05 <sbp> oh, and yeah, what crschmidt said
05:28:10 <Arnia> sbp: Well, in either case I don't believe you can separate querying, proposing and commanding from each other. They're all parries and thrusts used in a discourse to achieve an end
05:28:14 <deltab> heh, question about wypy in #python
05:28:16 <crschmidt> sbp: i was really just expressing your opinions
05:28:18 <shawnb> which has been a bit of an issue for me recently
05:28:33 <crschmidt> i don't care about SPARQL
05:28:43 <crschmidt> I use RDQL in everything i write, really
05:28:45 <sbp> deltab: thanks. who was it?
05:28:58 <sbp> aha
05:28:59 <crschmidt> because i got used to it before SPARQL, and I don't need the features of SPARQL for anything I do
05:29:07 <sbp> deltab: thanks
05:29:24 <sbp> crschmidt: heh, and I still think that RDQL is an abomination compared to Squish. pretty funny
05:29:30 <madewokherd> * madewokherd stares at Arnia's last sentence
05:29:31 <sbp> (it really is. the grammar is terrible)
05:29:43 <shawnb> I run a congressional lookup directory and I'm working on exposing the data in some semantic web-friendly way
05:29:49 <madewokherd> * madewokherd reads it again
05:29:50 <Arnia> sbp: Of my last sentence?
05:29:53 <shawnb> ...thinking SPARQL interface
05:30:06 <crschmidt> Arnia: no, RDQL's grammar
05:30:18 <madewokherd> the grammar is fine, I'm just confused
05:30:20 <sbp> yeah, of RDQL
05:30:23 <Arnia> Ah... my grammar was relatively ok I thought :)
05:30:25 <crschmidt> shawnb: I have a number of datasets which I expose as raw RDF
05:30:27 <sbp> yes indeed
05:30:31 <crschmidt> shawnb: but also provide a sparql interface
05:30:41 <Arnia> madewokherd: How come?
05:30:42 <crschmidt> it's a quick way to allow people to query the data rather than loading all the files into a storel ocally
05:30:47 <madewokherd> it's grammatical, I just don't feel like something has been conveyed to me after I read it
05:30:50 <crschmidt> shawnb: I do this for my photo album ata, for example
05:30:51 <madewokherd> so I keep reading it again
05:31:03 <shawnb> I'm looking at shying away from exposing the whole rdf ... for efficiency
05:31:13 <madewokherd> and I still keep not having a meaning in my head afterwards
05:31:29 <crschmidt> shawnb: depending on the size of your dataset, you might find that exposing a SPARQL interface is getting into more than you bargainedd for
05:31:48 <crschmidt> shawnb: The redland implementation of sparql is extremely easy to send into an almost-infinite loop
05:31:53 <crschmidt> for example
05:31:58 <madewokherd> maybe I have some sort of mental block on whatever it is
05:32:19 <shawnb> ack! had big issues with setting up redland
05:32:20 <deltab> shawnb: do you provide it in other formats?
05:32:22 <madewokherd> but then I wouldn't see the sentence at all, right?
05:32:24 <Arnia> I'm saying that you cannot separate the three primary discourse functions -- propositional, interrogative and imperative -- sanely. In order to communicate, you need to use all three all the time during a discourse between two information systems
05:32:47 <shawnb> deltab: I've got it as rdf now but it's 2.5mb
05:32:52 <madewokherd> wait, that's a (human) language thing, isn't it?
05:33:01 <shawnb> deltab: and it'll grow from there
05:33:12 <crschmidt> deltab: do you provide it in other formats, though?
05:33:14 <crschmidt> er
05:33:14 <madewokherd> and you seem to be talking about a computer language..
05:33:15 <crschmidt> shawnb:
05:33:20 <deltab> shawnb: do you provide it in formats other than RDF?
05:33:29 <shawnb> not yet
05:33:37 <Arnia> madewokherd: It is a feature of all languages. It is just that for many languages, discourses are assumed to be one (async) or two (sync) message affairs
05:33:46 <crschmidt> shawnb: so, no HTML pages with the content on it?
05:33:53 <shawnb> oh yeah...
05:34:08 <madewokherd> ok, I see now
05:34:11 <shawnb> sorry, was thinking of semantic web formats (n3 etc)
05:34:26 <shawnb> I also have a cross domain "ajax" app that consumes it as JSON
05:34:34 <madewokherd> I should just look up RDF somewhere
05:34:36 <Arnia> madewokherd: The interesting thing is that when semantics becomes embodied rather than having an attempt at a universal semantics then discourses may be of an arbitrary length and contain any mixture of those three functions
05:34:41 <crschmidt> shawnb: if the data is available as HTML, there's no reason to assume that someone would be less likely to just parse out your HTML than grab your RDF file
05:34:50 <shawnb> but I'm looking at doing a SPARQL interface
05:34:54 <madewokherd> this looks boring
05:35:13 <crschmidt> madewokherd: yeah, that's part of why this whole conversation is happening
05:35:19 <crschmidt> madewokherd: "How can RDF not be boring anymore"
05:35:27 <shawnb> crschmidt: I
05:35:29 <madewokherd> "anymore"?
05:35:29 <shawnb> OI
05:35:35 <madewokherd> oh wait
05:35:37 <madewokherd> never mind
05:35:40 <crschmidt> madewokherd: yes. It's boring now. we want to make it less boring an more fun
05:35:49 <madewokherd> for some reason when I read that I thought that meant it wasn't boring at one time
05:35:53 <madewokherd> but I see that it doesn't
05:36:05 <crschmidt> madewokherd: well, it wasn't boring at one point, i'm told
05:36:08 <crschmidt> but that was before my time
05:36:13 <Arnia> madewokherd: The reason being that information may be inconsistent, incomplete, insufficient, untrustworthy etc. Inter-agent dialogues are how you deal with this
05:36:28 <madewokherd> ack
05:36:29 <madewokherd> agents
05:36:31 <madewokherd> * madewokherd runs
05:36:43 <sbp> it's always been, and is always going to be, a bit boring; but only inasmuch as some people find cricket boring, others gardening, others knitting, etc.
05:36:47 <Arnia> FOPL is boring *ducks the onslaught of copies of Russel and Whitehead*
05:36:59 <shawnb> crschmidt: I'm looking at a setup that will allow for simple cross referencing with Josh Tauberer's govtrack database
05:37:13 <crschmidt> i loaded all that ata into redland at one point
05:37:17 <madewokherd> maybe it wouldn't be so bad if they didn't use terms like "agent" and "discourse" to describe them
05:37:19 <crschmidt> 3.5 million statements at the time
05:37:28 <Arnia> madewokherd: Agent in the sense of an independent system; since you presumably don't have a single huge computer system running the world
05:37:38 <shawnb> crschmidt: at http://govtrack.us
05:37:46 <crschmidt> shawnb: yeah, i know
05:37:59 <Arnia> If you find agent and discourse boring, what do you find interesting?
05:38:03 <madewokherd> there's got to be a better term than agent
05:38:05 <crschmidt> shawnb: http://crschmidt.net/semweb/govtrack/sparql
05:38:08 <crschmidt> looks like it's broken
05:38:10 <crschmidt> but it was there
05:38:16 <shawnb> cool
05:38:19 <crschmidt> tables probably need repairing. php redland sucks balls
05:38:21 <Arnia> * Arnia thinks that question is only askable here
05:38:26 <madewokherd> why can't you just say "system"?
05:38:34 <deltab> 'bot'?
05:38:39 <madewokherd> when you say "agent" I have to go somewhere and look it up
05:39:04 <Arnia> madewokherd: system doesn't denote the level of separation adequately to me
05:39:06 <madewokherd> and my expectations of understanding the remainder of what you're saying go down
05:39:15 <madewokherd> even though "agent" is not a difficult concept
05:39:19 <shawnb> crschmidt: I've been trading emails with Joshua for a couple of weeks
05:39:23 <Arnia> madewokherd: Agent and discourse are perfectly normal English words used in their normal way
05:39:35 <crschmidt> shawnb: he commented on what i wrote months ago
05:39:40 <shawnb> crschmidt: tried to setup redland but it didn't play well with my hosting service
05:39:46 <madewokherd> they're perfectly normal english words that I have to look up even though they're not difficult concepts
05:39:54 <crschmidt> shawnb: let me know if you want someplace that redland does work with
05:39:58 <shawnb> crschmidt: so now I'm looking a RDFLib
05:39:59 <sbp> madewokherd: is English a second language for you?
05:40:02 <crschmidt> shawnb: I'm switching hosts this week
05:40:02 <madewokherd> no
05:40:04 <madewokherd> it's not
05:40:15 <crschmidt> shawnb: But I've been running cheap hosting for semweb people for the past 8 months
05:40:17 <Arnia> madewokherd: so why do you have to look up?
05:40:30 <shawnb> crschmidt: hmm... that's very tempting
05:40:32 <jessica> I'm betting that he's the victim of an American council school education, Arnia.
05:40:33 <Arnia> I haven't used agent nor discourse in anything but their normal, everyday meaning
05:40:39 <madewokherd> because the definitions are so boring I can never remember them
05:40:51 <Arnia> * Arnia looks puzzled by that
05:40:53 <jessica> . . .
05:40:54 <crschmidt> Monty: remind me in 7 days talk to shawnb about moving onto bia
05:40:54 <Monty> crschmidt: Okay, I'll remind you about that on Sun Jan 29 05:40:54 GMT 2006
05:40:56 <jessica> Voila.
05:41:00 <madewokherd> sometimes I can't remember them for the 3 seconds it takes me to go from the dictionary back to the thing I'm reading
05:41:06 <shawnb> crschmidt: I've been setting my self up with a learning curve that's a little too steep this past month
05:41:13 <Arnia> What's boring about the definitions?
05:41:25 <madewokherd> * madewokherd looks up agent
05:41:25 <crschmidt> shawnb: you plan to continue being in #swhack that long?
05:41:29 <Arnia> How on earth can that stop you acquiring them (acquisition being automatic)
05:41:37 <shawnb> crschmidt: yep
05:41:38 <Arnia> (for the most part)
05:41:54 <crschmidt> shawnb: okay. When monty reminds me, poke me :)
05:41:55 <Monty> hows it matters too complex
05:42:06 <jessica> Dear Arnia, you are talking to a moron. Dear madewokherd, you are talking to a nerd. Please go your separate ways.
05:42:19 <shawnb> crschmidt: wait how long again?
05:42:21 <jessica> Thank you, and please keep all arms and legs inside of the car at all times. Have a lovely trip.
05:42:25 <Arnia> jessica: Hey?! I'm not a nerd... a geek, not a nerd :)
05:42:27 <crschmidt> shawnb: 00:40:58 < crschmidt> Monty: remind me in 7 days talk to shawnb about moving onto bia
05:42:29 <Monty> stripping shaver gropes ironic Luigi >:)
05:42:30 <madewokherd> I'm a nerd
05:42:42 <shawnb> crschmidt: k
05:42:53 <madewokherd> I'm just a nerd who doesn't like those kinds of terms
05:42:54 <Arnia> jessica: I actually go out and spend the majority of my day around real people in the pub :)
05:43:21 <jessica> Yes. And? Maybe the British connotation of the words is different. :shrug:
05:43:21 <Arnia> madewokherd: But WHY don't you? They're no different to any other term
05:43:25 <shawnb> crschmidt: here's my current interface to the data -- http://independenceave.org/
05:43:27 <madewokherd> I don't know
05:43:38 <sbp> madewokherd: personally I reserve my ire and scorn for words like "methodologies"
05:43:43 <sbp> you know, for serious evil
05:43:44 <madewokherd> they just seem pointless to me :/
05:43:49 <deltab> I suspect they're boring by association; they're words that are mainly used in boring contexts, and aren't distinctive enough to be latched onto
05:43:58 <jetscreamer> methodologies just rolls off the tongue
05:44:15 <madewokherd> "methodologies" isn't bad because I can unconsciously simplify it to "methods" and go on my way
05:44:34 <Arnia> sbp: I've used methodology when I cannot for the life of me think of another term to describe something which is rather vague and hard to pin down
05:44:47 <madewokherd> what deltab said sounds right..
05:44:48 <shawnb> crschmidt: I'm looking at using RDFLib now and when it's setup, I wan't to start consuming SPARQL queries (or something) as JSON
05:45:14 <deltab> Arnia: there you are, then — no wonder others also find it rather vague and hard to pin down
05:45:29 <Arnia> deltab: Agent and discourse have a lot of interesting connotations and contexts. Multi-agent systems for a start. Discourse Representation Theory for another
05:45:29 <crschmidt> shawnb: as far as doing something with it, you're talking to the wrong guy. I wrote http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/85/exhaustion-with-rdf/
05:45:35 <crschmidt> * crschmidt wonders if he typed that correctly from memory
05:45:37 <jessica> Arnia, dearest, YOU are hard to pin down.
05:46:01 <Arnia> jessica: I'm perfectly easy to pin down.
05:46:05 <crschmidt> jessica: For you maybe. I'd probably have more luck with that.
05:46:07 <shawnb> crschmidt: yep
05:46:15 <sbp> .head http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/85/exhaustion-with-rdf/
05:46:19 <phenny> Status: 200 (for more, try ".head uri header")
05:46:25 <sbp> looks good
05:46:26 <jessica> Forgive me, Mr. Ahhhnia. I just won't worry my pretty little head about it.
05:46:36 <Arnia> * Arnia is tired and wonders if that counts as a very bad joke from crschmidt
05:46:41 <crschmidt> Arnia: yep
05:47:00 <crschmidt> man, swhacklog is busy today. only 6 hours in, and we're already 1.5 times yesterdya's log
05:47:07 <crschmidt> * crschmidt blames zool
05:47:11 <madewokherd> and I don't scorn or hate those words
05:47:12 <sbp> we rock, bad jokes notwithstanding
05:47:17 <sbp> go zool!
05:47:19 <madewokherd> they just make me not want to read things
05:47:27 <sbp> funnily enough, she seems to have bowed out ages ago
05:47:29 <tonybaloney> tonybaloney has quit (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))
05:47:30 <Arnia> jessica: To pin me down, you just need to give me a mug of warm milk and ask me some fun, slightly abstract question which I can bend myself to for the next few hours
05:47:53 <sbp> Arnia: what colour hat do you prefer?
05:47:57 <jessica> Right, Arnia, the problem is, you'd natter on about it long after your entire audience had died of inertia.
05:47:57 <Arnia> jessica: I won't move until I've gotten bored... that can take some time
05:48:04 <jessica> Indeed, I'd noticed.
05:48:18 <jessica> I imagine you'd be fun to tip a pint with, don't get me wrong, but both you and I are monologuers.
05:48:24 <jessica> Monologuers can smell their own. :P
05:48:24 <madewokherd> how do you die of inertia?
05:48:30 <shawnb> crschmidt: my hope is to get a SPARQL interface setup, and then start playing with queries against govtrack's database
05:48:34 <jessica> It's not meant literally, madewokherd.
05:48:49 <madewokherd> still
05:48:57 <crschmidt> shawnb: does govtrack do a public sparql interface now?
05:49:05 <shawnb> crschmidt: but I'm having to learn Python, RDF/XML, and SPARQL all at once
05:49:06 <crschmidt> joshua was mentioning it when I talked to him last, so i assume so
05:49:13 <Arnia> sbp: Deep blue, the sort of blue that can look purply or greeny depending on how you squint at it
05:49:19 <crschmidt> Python is something you need to learn anyway ;)
05:49:20 <shawnb> crschmidt: Joshua's playing with one but I think it's offline at the moment
05:49:34 <crschmidt> shawnb: I wrote julie as my first every python code
05:49:40 <crschmidt> and it was my first coding with RDF as well
05:49:51 <crschmidt> All I really knew was a little bit of squish
05:49:57 <Arnia> jessica: Nothing wrong with a good monologue. Vital skill for writing journal papers and giving lectures
05:50:15 <shawnb> crschmidt: about Python: agreed, I couldn't stand the thought of doing another large project in PHP so I migrated to a Python capable cheap web host about a month and a half ago
05:50:31 <madewokherd> I suspect I could never do either of those things (the journal papers or the lectures)
05:50:37 <Arnia> jessica: And I just want to try and get everyone to see how cool everything is (it really is, all of it)
05:50:38 <shawnb> crschmidt: what's julie
05:50:42 <shawnb> crschmidt: ?
05:50:44 <crschmidt> http://crschmidt.net/julie/
05:50:45 <sbp> that blue is great
05:51:00 <jessica> Julie is our daughter.
05:51:02 <jessica> And incidentally a bot.
05:51:11 <shawnb> that's cool
05:51:17 <julie> julie (n=nobody@athena.crschmidt.net) has joined #swhack
05:51:23 <crschmidt> Julie is our daughter. julie is a bot.
05:51:30 <crschmidt> ^q select ?p where (?p foaf:name "Julie")
05:51:31 <julie> http://crschmidt.net/~julie/me.rdf#julie
05:51:38 <crschmidt> ^q select ?p where (?p foaf:nick "julie")
05:51:38 <julie> (r1114530965r71083)
05:51:38 <jessica> Arnia: I sympathise, though as a writer I find it easier to turn out a ten page essay, rather than monologue on a topic for 40 minutes.
05:51:49 <jessica> I always have a horror of monologuing verbally -- I fear turning into Ben Stein.
05:51:52 <crschmidt> ^q select ?t where (?p foaf:nick "julie") (?p rdf:type ?t)
05:51:52 <julie> foaf:Agent
05:51:59 <uche> Killin' me softly with backscroll...
05:51:59 <crschmidt> ^q select ?t where (?p foaf:name "Julie") (?p rdf:type ?t)
05:51:59 <julie> foaf:Person
05:52:07 <crschmidt> see? One's an agent, one is a Person
05:52:12 <shawnb> crschmidt: so far my first python app was a converter to port my XML database into RDF/XML that uses the same representative id keys as govtrack
05:52:23 <Arnia> jessica: I want to give the R.I. Christmas Lectures one year
05:52:28 <kpreid> but every Person is an Agent; julie just doesn't know that
05:52:29 <jessica> . . . I think I know now where the kids' fascination with pedantry comes from.
05:52:39 <jessica> Yes. Haven't you ever read Immanuel Kant, Chris?
05:52:41 <shawnb> crschmidt: I like that
05:52:42 <crschmidt> kpreid: but every Agent is not a Person.
05:53:01 <crschmidt> So Julie is both, but julie is only one.
05:53:02 <kpreid> crschmidt: that negation, correct though it may be, makes me wince
05:53:04 <Arnia> I'll find some way to show 9 year olds the wonderful splendour of semantics
05:53:28 <jessica> Come visit us in Boston, Arnia, you'll get a lovely argument over semantics immediately from our 8 year old and 5 year old.
05:53:32 <jessica> Blame Mr. Schmidt.
05:53:35 <jessica> I'm going to bed, it's nearly one in the morning.
05:53:46 <jessica> Good night, gentlemen.
05:53:49 <crschmidt> ^addturtle [<http://crschmidt.net/~julie/me.rdf#julie> rdf:type foaf:Agent].
05:53:50 <julie> Adding Turtle failed (syntax error).
05:53:53 <crschmidt> Night jessie.
05:53:55 <Arnia> jessica: I may be passing through Boston next year
05:53:55 <Arnia> Night night
05:53:57 <crschmidt> I'll be up later.
05:53:58 <madewokherd> night, person I don't recall seeing before
05:54:01 <sbp> 'night jessica
05:54:07 <crschmidt> ^addturtle <http://crschmidt.net/~julie/me.rdf#julie> rdf:type foaf:Agent.
05:54:07 <julie> Model size increased by 1 to 2126499 via turtle statements.
05:54:11 <crschmidt> there we go.
05:54:21 <crschmidt> now julie knows that Julie, as well as julie, is an Agent.
05:54:24 <Arnia> sbp: What do you think of me presenting the Royal Institute Christmas Lectures one day
05:54:46 <sbp> Arnia: presenting them?
05:54:58 <Arnia> Arnia: Delivering
05:55:05 <Arnia> sbp: Delivering
05:55:11 <Arnia> * Arnia wonders why he typed his own name
05:55:14 <Arnia> * Arnia shrugs
05:55:40 <kpreid> Arnia: people do that. I suspect it's mistaking the name for a thread ID.
05:55:44 <deltab> maybe you were sloganizing
05:55:56 <sbp> seems unlikely, but it'd certainly be a sight to behind I would guess. on the other hand, I've never seen you present something except electronically so I couldn't tell
05:56:06 <jetscreamer> nn
05:56:09 <sbp> er, sight to behold
05:56:14 <sbp> 'night jetscreamer
05:56:20 <kpreid> .gc "sight to behind"
05:56:23 <phenny> "sight to behind": 65
05:56:38 <sbp> no idea
05:56:46 <sbp> GPE probably
05:56:52 <Arnia> sbp: My style of spoken English is pretty much the same as the style I use here
05:56:52 <jetscreamer> oh not me, i lag in replying
05:57:12 <sbp> ah
05:57:12 <jetscreamer> i've been reading it all
05:57:20 <Arnia> sbp: So imagine that and ask jilldaw for details of my inflection :)
05:58:28 <sbp> heh. I remember after she'd met you I asked what you were like, and I think the first thing that she said was "very English!" which I thought was utterly awesome
05:58:48 <Arnia> Very English?! Wow... interesting description
06:01:17 <sbp> isn't it?
06:01:30 <madewokherd> * madewokherd looks up RDF on uncyclopedia, in the hopes that it will have something he can read
06:01:44 <madewokherd> * madewokherd doesn't find it
06:02:54 <sbp> madewokherd: you want the non-boring RDF explanation? hang on a moment then...
06:04:58 <sbp> RDF! FUCK YOU MAN! RDF is a language for PICKING UP COOL CHICKS OR WHATEVER YOUR PREFERRED GENDER(S) IS by allowing data to be served WITH A FUCKING VENGEANCE YOU BITCH over the web, data such as RESTUARANT REVIEWS FROM HELL that'll enable you to pick an awesome place to take your date AND HOPEFULLY GET LAID AFTERWARDS and mix that data with, for example, times in your diary when you've scheduled to BANG OTHER CHICKS INSTEAD so obviously you don't want to
06:05:15 <sbp> okay?
06:05:28 <d8uv> I think I wrote that
06:05:36 <Arnia> sbp: what precisely did she mean by that description?
06:05:41 <sbp> it does sound very you, doesn't it? interesting
06:05:57 <sbp> Arnia: dunno, I didn't press her. you could ask, or I could ask for you and deliver the results
06:05:57 <madewokherd> "restaurant reviews from hell"?
06:05:58 <Arnia> d8uv: It didn't go boom though
06:06:13 <sbp> madewokherd: the seventh circle has some good eats? I dunno
06:06:16 <sbp> blame d8uv
06:06:20 <madewokherd> I think now I'm more confused
06:06:39 <madewokherd> * madewokherd looks it up on google
06:06:42 <Arnia> phenny, ask jilldaw what she meant by calling me 'very English' to sbp after meeting me. I'm curious :)
06:06:43 <sbp> perhaps you shouldn't've made that wok herd after all
06:06:45 <phenny> Arnia: I'll pass that on when jilldaw is around.
06:06:52 <sbp> it seems to have somewhat melted your brane
06:06:54 <jetscreamer> lol
06:07:26 <jetscreamer> i know what she meant, btw, but i couldn't explain it to you
06:07:29 <Arnia> sbp: How many branes could a membrane brane if a membrane could brane branes
06:07:48 <Arnia> jetscreamer: Have I met you IRL?
06:08:30 <Arnia> btw, any cute guys who I could PICK UP with my WICKED KNOWLEDGE of RDF and the SEMANTIC web?
06:08:30 <jetscreamer> ah no way
06:08:42 <jetscreamer> i just know what she means
06:08:57 <Arnia> I come across as very English online too then?
06:10:05 <jetscreamer> no, that 'very english' is a knowable thing that defies explanation by me
06:10:38 <jetscreamer> but now that you make me think about it... i could see that
06:10:44 <Arnia> * Arnia thinks everyone has been smoking something very dutch :)
06:10:49 <deltab> madewokherd: RDF lets you make very simple statements about pretty much anything, and then those statements can be mixed with others to draw conclusions and answer questions
06:11:21 <Arnia> * Arnia gives that summary a gold star and a jelly baby
06:11:31 <madewokherd> now I'm less confused
06:13:01 <deltab> so you could get RDF statements about restaurants from an online review site, and statements about time slots in your schedule from your diary, and combine them to work out when you can go
06:14:54 <madewokherd> that sounds ambitious
06:15:06 <deltab> and combine that with notes about what sort of food your cool chick prefer to choose where to go
06:15:16 <deltab> it is
06:15:18 <sbp> it is, but it has Big Business and Big Names backing it
06:15:34 <Arnia> madewokherd: Did you see the common-sense calendar powered by ThoughtTreasure?
06:15:43 <Arnia> That can already answer questions like that
06:15:43 <sbp> a few years ago I was told that just a few companies had plouged $60M into Semantic Web research
06:15:49 <madewokherd> no, I didn't
06:16:00 <sbp> dunno what the figure would be at now
06:16:01 <madewokherd> I'm satisfied with the date/time applet thing in gnome-panel
06:16:14 <madewokherd> which tells me which dates correspond to which days of the week