Challenging the Ideas Behind the Semantic Web 144
mytrip writes to tell us that after a recent presentation to the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Tim Berners-Lee was challenged by fellow Google exec Peter Norvig citing some of the many problems behind the Semantic Web. From the article: "'What I get a lot is: "Why are you against the Semantic Web?" I am not against the Semantic Web. But from Google's point of view, there are a few things you need to overcome, incompetence being the first,' Norvig said. Norvig clarified that it was not Berners-Lee or his group that he was referring to as incompetent, but the general user."
Problems w/ the Semantic Web (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the ones searching but the ones creating the content.
They'll be some idiot out there (like there is now) that will code his data in a way that guarantees that he gets the most page views etc. So often searched terms will turn up on search indexes and other ilk.
It's a loosing proposition unless you come up with filters but then they have their own set of problems.
Are you just another Anti-Semanticist? (Score:2, Interesting)
Demands of inequality such as this should be allowed!
(btw, the spelling doctor has "loosing" as in "loosing the hownds for the huhnt")
Re:Are you just another Anti-Semanticist? (Score:3, Insightful)
Think of all the things that were fouled by abuse. Email was a very sweet thing until it got perverted by spam. Newsgroups too. If the possibility for abuse exists, it will happen.
Re:Problems w/ the Semantic Web (Score:2, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Problems w/ the Semantic Web (Score:3, Interesting)
Authoring of RDF data is not so different from a
Tutorial on the Semantic Web (Score:2, Informative)
Pay attention to the slide #22 which shows how data from different sources can be merged together. This is one of key differences between XML and RDF - to merge XML data from a number of different schemas one would need to create an application that processes data in these schemas and generate merged data (possibly inventing a new schema to represent the merged information).
In RDF that happens "magically" - in order to merge heterogenous data you don't need to do *anyt
Re:Precisely Where TBL Stumbles, SW Falls (Score:2, Interesting)
A regular user won't be inventing his own ontologies the same way as he is not inventing a new RSS format. There is a set of well-define ontologies that you can use to describe your data. And a regular user won't be hand-crafting RDF data either. Instead RDF data will be exported from his applications the same way as RSS and Atom are exported from his weblog software or as Word saves users files.
RDF data will still merge together, provided there are "crysta
Re:Problems w/ the Semantic Web (Score:3, Interesting)
This is like saying "Don't use Open Source software because people will do bad things with it". People will do bad things with or without Open Source software, and with or without the Semantic Web.
Anyway the article isn't very clear... By "Semantic Web", are we talking about using <div>s and <p>s instead of <table>s and <br>s? Or are we t
Re:A bad example: FreeDB (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two user types of Semantic Web materia: the individual user and the group.
The individual user only cares about context. It's like a Proustian adventure for him. If he tags Slashdot as "blatherscyte" because that's how he views it, then that's valid. If he tags it as "cmdrTaco" because he is stalking Rob, then that's valid, too. And if he tags it as "monkey" because one time he was petting a monkey while he viewed the site, then that's valid, too. It's like the old saying, "Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right." There are no wrong semantics for the individual user, because it is his context alone which defines the usefulness of a tag.
For this reason, the individual user should be allowed to tag freely and without limits, and also be able to edit or remove tags later.
----
Now for the group, they have a different goal. Context does them no good, because they don't have the same context. Their goal then is consensus. Take your problem at FreeDB. The simple solution is to let people vote on the accuracy of disputed tags. Or flag ones they view as incorrect, and then review those that meet a certain threshold for flagging. Basically, you want the group to filter out things that don't apply to the group, WHILE maintaining individual context. You don't delete the tags that the group has rejected - you just hide them from the person who has come to view the group tags.
I think this dichotomy of group vs. individual is what has gotten us into trouble with the Semantic Web. To use one example, I think delicious' big mistake was to show you "popular" tags for a given link. What that does is encourages you not to create your own tags, but instead just piggyback on popularity. Over time, this creates homogeny, which is great for the group, but not for the individual user. Sure, they can probably find that link again in a minimal amount of time, but if an individual tag might help them find it faster, but they shunned individual tags for groupthink, so much the worse for them.
And on the flipside if you don't provide proper weighting and trust metrics into your tagging system, you are opening yourself up to not only abuse and inappropriate behavior, but also to the "incompetence" mentioned in the article, which is not so much incompetence as a zero-filter. It's like reading Slashdot at -1. It's kind of a touchy-feely way to look at it, but in Web 2.0 thinking, it's bad to delete content; just filter it out instead. It's bad to censor opinions from the software side; let each user do their own stifling. Give the users complete control over the content, and they will find models that work. It's that simple.
The main problem with the Google guy's point is that philosophically, Google is more groupthink than individual user, because they're a search engine. They value consensus over context. In the future, perhaps they will value context a little bit more than they do. Until then, they have to stand where they stand, because they can't let context into their system. They've tried some clunky mechanisms to do so (Personal Search, anyone?) but until they get it right, the Semantic Web won't have any value to them.
Re:A bad example: FreeDB (Score:2)
Re:A bad example: FreeDB (Score:2)
I have written up my own theory of the ideal Semantic Web search engine at everything2.com [everything2.com], (another link) [everything2.com], (and another) [everything2.com] (which of course I encourage everyone to read), but here are some ideas a good Semantic Web search engine would obey:
1) If I search for "bank", it sh
Re:A bad example: FreeDB (Score:4, Insightful)
Delicious is very smart in that it left the *option* for customised tags, but they are clearly saying by implication that the best tags are the ones everyone else is using. My point being that the idea of a "standardized vocabulary" is antithetical to the ideals of the Semantic Web. We don't want a democracy of ideas; we want a free market of ideas!
Think of the concept "funny." Let's say I asked you to go to 100 different random sites and tag them as funny or not funny. Let's say that of the sites you listed as funny, it was clear you enjoyed witty, New Yorker-style humor, and not fart jokes. But let's say 99 other people did the same thing, and they did the opposite: they clearly enjoyed the fart jokes, and hated the New Yorker wit.
Now if you asked this seeded engine for a recommendation of a new, 101st site that was funny, should it give you fart jokes, or New Yorker style? This is the power of the Semantic Web. What's funny to you, isn't funny to everyone else. Why should you be punished for that? And if a total n00b comes to our engine for a recommendation, they get the fart jokes page, because it assumes they're like everyone else. But if they start marking those sites as not funny, eventually it'll figure out they're more like you, and start giving them sites that you like.
Now, will delicious ever do that? Of course not, because it doesn't offer any discrimination to you on the word funny. You get the democratic version of funny. Fart Jokes for all. And that's what "standardization" has to offer. So, no, you can keep that; I want the Internet to understand who I am, and what I like, not what everyone else likes. And if they HAPPEN to coincide, that's fine, so much the better - things are popular because of the people, after all - but they shouldn't have to.
Semantics... (Score:5, Funny)
Here I was, thinking we were arguing over Semantics...
Damn (Score:5, Funny)
Place your bets (Score:2)
Re:Place your bets (Score:3, Interesting)
As a side note, I heard from a friend who was attending that Norvig's opening comment about people always asking him "Why are you against the Semantic Web?" was a response to Berners-Lee's opening, 'Poeple always a
Re:Place your bets (Score:2)
Re:Damn (Score:2, Informative)
Norvig vs. Berners-Lee (Score:2)
Semantic web is currently fragile technology (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Semantic web is currently fragile technology (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we'll eventually realize most of the benefits of the semantic web, but it won't be a result of a grand vision imposed from the top down and implemented all at once. It'll probably be though increasing adoption of microformats [microformats.org], which don't try to classify and specify everything, and are implemented entirely using existing web standards.
Re:Semantic web is currently fragile technology (Score:2)
Re:Semantic web is currently fragile technology (Score:3, Insightful)
But may I point out, in addition to your comment, that such technologies have fared well as long as the human element is closely involved with them. RSS, social bookmarks, tags, microformats.
On the other hand, Tim Berners-Lee seems to stress the fact that the semantic Web is all about AI doing content classification for us. So I think it's time we remember the old joke, "artificial inteligence is no match for natural st
Re:Semantic web is currently fragile technology (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think I've seen him stress that in the sense that the users are dissassociated from the process. The Semantic Web is all about representing things like tags, microformats, etc, in a generic way.
For example, if comment moderation was defined in terms of a relationship between a person, a comment, and an opinion, that doesn't mean a computer would be moderating comments, it just means that the same mechanism could be applied across multiple websites, without having to build moderation into the websites themselves. You could mod Dvorak -1, Troll, and everybody who lists you in their FOAF file using a browser that supports it, would see that moderation.
Just because the focus is on making the software smarter, it doesn't mean that it's about replacing user opinions with computer opinions. In fact, the majority of Semantic Web stuff I've seen have been all about codifying user opinions to make them more accessible to computers, and thus, more easily exposable to the end-user in a useful way.
Hear, hear! (Score:2)
Someone with points please mod it up!
Complex? Opportunities for spammer? Don't think so (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, figuring out for the first time how to represent your data in RDF (or XML for that matter) can be difficult. Imagine if everyone was trying to come up with an RSS standard on his own instead of using RSS export functionality of his content management tool. That's why we need good guidelines how to publish information on the semantic web. And RDF export functionality (plugins) simil
Googlebombing (Score:5, Insightful)
Me, I estimate we're 5-10 years away from doing anything terribly useful with all of this stuff, but I can definitely envision the day when an internet without semantics seems as distant as an internet without Google.
Re:Googlebombing (Score:5, Insightful)
The "Semantic Web" is not about search engines, as you and many other posters seem to believe. It is about representing Web content in a structured, formal way that is more easily accessed by machines, going beyond simple presentation. This can be used for searching, but also for many other applications, e.g. integration, exchange, personalisation, ... .
Spam content on the Semantic Web is in no way different to spam content on the normal Web (well, except that it is formal). This also means that a search engine that is capable of working with Semantic Web data has exactly the same issues with trust as traditional search engines. Except that on the Semantic Web, trust can be expressed formally as well. Similar to the authorities in Google, whose outgoing links make a statement about the trustworthiness of other sites, an "authority" on the Semantic Web can make statements about the trustworthiness of other sites. However, these statements are explicit, and they could also be used to state that another site is *not* trustworthy.
Google has the right idea, automatic extraction of semantics from content.
Google does not extract any semantics from content. It merely analyses the linking between websites and connects that with keywords. No semantics here.
Sebastian
Re:Googlebombing (Score:5, Informative)
I believe you are referring to PageRank, which is one of many algorithms used by google to determine search relevance. This article [seobook.com] discusses their use of Latent Semantic Indexing [wikipedia.org], which is a somewhat crude but effective form of sematic inference which is widely used in the field of NLP.
Re:Googlebombing (Score:2)
Re:Googlebombing (Score:2)
XML has no semantics whatsoever. None. It's a way of serialising and unserialising a tree of elements and attributes. It's markup languages that are built on top of XML that contain the semantics. Part of the Semantic Web is finding a good representation for the deeper semantics that are pervasive on the web. Think less about "This bit of text is a paragraph" and more about "Thi
Re:Googlebombing (Score:2)
There's a extension to disable this, something like rel="nofollow" that says, essentially, the link should not be considered an endorsement.
But even more useful would be the possibility to explicitly say what relation you have to some site.
Re:Googlebombing (Score:2, Informative)
>
> Google does not extract any semantics from content. It merely analyses the linking between
> websites and connects that with keywords. No semantics here.
Google does extract semantics from content in a few particular domains: addresses and bussines info for Google maps, show times and additional information on movie searches, dates and appointments from Gmail to Google Calendar,
The semantic web has already
Re:Googlebombing (Score:2)
Want to manage a $10 billion company in ten years ? Here is your plan...
Just my two cents, soon to be gazillions...
Re:Googlebombing (Score:2)
As an example some people don't accept constructed proofs as valid. This makes a lot of physics and maths ina
Semantic Web is just backwards (Score:3, Insightful)
Semantics is a human discipline--it is focused inward, not outward. Likewise the proper place for semantic technology is in the client, not the content. Building "semantic web sites" makes no sense. Google is absolutely right on this one--Web sites should simply be what they are, an
Re:Googlebombing (Score:2)
yes, in theory, nobody needs google in a semantic web populated by lawful good users. But the power of google is in its verification, which will translate to the semantic world. u
Re:Googlebombing (Score:3, Interesting)
But content has no semantics.
Meaning is a verb, and "to mean" is an action of a knowing subject. Communication is an attempt to stimulate the same meanings in multiple subjects--kind of a psychological choreography.
As such, meaning is not extracted from content, ever. Rather, probable meaning is inferred from content, and the basis of inference is fundamentally psychological. What a given word, symbol, sentence, paragraph or page m
Incompetence of users such as Slashdot editors... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Incompetence of users such as Slashdot editors. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with the semantic web movement is this: You have the web guys from the W3C who got famous by building kinda crappy, but effective technology (HTTP, HTML, etc...) going goo goo gah gah over PhD Ontologists from the AI community. They team up and build these great things that the average person (including the people who think they are really really smart, like the Slashdot editors), has no chance in hell of using effectively. What'll happen, is that eventually there will be useful Semantic content and Intelligent Agents doing great things, but that work will be done by a select few. The unwashed masses will still be the domain of Google.
Re:Incompetence of users such as Slashdot editors. (Score:2)
Filtered semantic webs might work (Score:2, Insightful)
Always bet on the million monkeys (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, it's really easy to release a million monkeys and let the create what they will. It's not so easy to sort through what they end up producing, but Google does a surprisingly good job of this.
It reminds me of the early days of the Web, when companies like CompuServe and AOL wanted to design and own all content. On the other hand, an internet server with httpd let anybody make a ~/public_html directory and put up whatever they wanted to. The million monkeys won that battle. I think they'll win this one, too.
Re:Always bet on the million monkeys (Score:3, Informative)
It's really, really difficult... (Score:3, Interesting)
Especially if the rules appear to be an incomprehensible ad-hoc mix of principles taken from a dozen not-quite-fully-baked AI dissertations.
I still don't think I truly understand how RDF is supposed to work...
I don't think anyone does.
I'm not saying that the semantic web is bullshit, but it does trigger my bullshit detector. At least one of them must be broken.
Re:It's really, really difficult... (Score:3, Informative)
RDF's core idea is simple. Give everything a URI. Express relationships as a set of three URIs, (subject, property, value). So you might have (#me, #friend, #bob) expressing the idea that Bob is a friend of mine. Or you might have (#photo, #contains, #me), expressing the idea that I'm in a photo.
RDF is little more than a mechanism for expressing relationships. It doesn't give software the abilit
Re:It's really, really difficult... (Score:3, Interesting)
The representation isn't the problem. The problem is agreeing what the the relationships mean. What does "#friend" mean? Does it mean the same thing to program X as it does to program Y? How can you tell? What do you do when there's a conflict -- who gets to decide what #friend means, and whether this is a global or local definition? These are questions that I've never heard answered in any believable manne
Re:It's really, really difficult... (Score:3, Insightful)
That problem is not the problem that RDF addresses. It just gives you the tools so that you can concentrate on solving that problem instead of worrying about all the crap underneath. It's like XML doesn't address semantics, it just gives you tools so you can focus on semantics without worrying about parsing.
Re:It's really, really difficult... (Score:2)
Like XML, the notation is just a beginning. It's nice if everyone agrees to use the same syntax to express information (even if it's somewhat gnarly, like XML) but that just saves everyone the effort of writing a bunch of boilerplate code. As someone who has been using IDLs and markup languages for decades, XML and/or RDF doesn't excite me much. It's those other problems -- the ones beyond their scope -- that remain unaddressed.
Writing the URIs is where all the
Re:It's really, really difficult... (Score:2)
The difference as I see it is simply that the protocol is being specified at a higher level, which means that if you have the right libraries, it's just less work to implement.
My perspective is that you don't stand a chance of solving the larger problems in a generic way until you solve the s
Re:Always bet on the million monkeys (Score:2)
It's not about following rules. It's about offering some kind of incentive. The major disincentives are that RDF is a confusing, poorly engineered spec and that it probably won't provide them any benefit. You can't call someone lazy or evil for having common se
Re:Always bet on the million monkeys (Score:2)
The SemaWeb is all about human-provided content represented in a common format, just like Web 1.0 was! HTML was the format for hyperlinked generic information chunks ("pages"), RDF is the format for hyperlinked metadata-anotated chunks.
The main difference is that HTML was, at the beginning, a very simple common format (that's not true nowadays, though). Machi
Blaming the user is never right (Score:4, Insightful)
From http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/archive/2004/03/do nt-blame-the-users [7nights.com]
Maybe the Semantic Web should aim to be useful to people rather than require people to be useful to it. There has to be a better way than trying to educate droves of people to a problematic and vulnerable design.
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:2, Insightful)
Bollocks! The fact that flying an F22 is probably fatal for untrained grandmothers does not mean it has "usibility problems" - not every task in life is meant to be done by idiots, and the more effort is put into idiot proofing software, the less is put into reliability, functionality, and extensibility for the rest of us. Some things are too hard for a segment of the population to do, and ontologically
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:2)
By definition blaming the user is wrong. If your grandmother is a user of a F22, then the machine should not stop her rom trying to fly it. A computer user should be able to use a computer, without getting an infected machine by checking their email, or going to a webpage. And this is what has happened. When you buy a computer today, it will come with a virus checked and spyware checked, and a better browser (hopefully) - why, what would you do. Just
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:2)
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:2)
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:2)
As long as you stay in an ivory tower and target the semantic web only to you and your peers, you don't grasp what it is really all about. And it will just stay on the ground.
Who are your users matey? (Score:2)
If an important group of users is grandmothers, trained or otherwise, and they can't use your product or service (call it F22 or a kettle) then you have got usability problems and you have got to address them.
Insulting the intelligence of your intended audience is a typical no-no for somebody knowledgeable with the rudiments of usability theory and practice.
Re:Who are your users matey? (Score:2)
This is not a hypothetical situation: people on my forum complain all the time about idiotic posts on the forum, despite all the hundreds of man hours I spent into organizing the information in easy to find ways and redesigning the website.
(FYI, I'm not talking about the Autopackage website)
Re:Who are your users matey? (Score:2)
Then some of your users are making the same mistake that you are. Please look past their opinions and think about whether you want more people to download your software. If you get enjoyment out of making fun of some people and calling them incompetent, then you're set. Otherwise, try to be humble and put yourself in these other people's shoes. How would you like it if t
Re:Who are your users matey? (Score:2)
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:2)
Far too many geeks have far too many ideas about 'socialising' (as in human relationships, not political agendas) the Internet, and their method of doing so is so far from related to normality it's not funny. People don't care about XML DTDs, FOAF, it just needs to work, or else we're just building a big database with odious standards for data normalisation and invasions of privacy that it's no longer a tool for us, but one against us (and I mean th
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:3, Interesting)
- Download
- Forums
The Download and Forums links are next to each other, and highly visible (48x48 icons with labels). But people go to the forum to ask where they can download my program! When I ask them why they didn't click on the Download link, they don't give an answer.
If that isn't user incompetence, then what is it? And yes, this happened for real. In fact, it happens all the time, so it's not just 1 or 2 people.
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:2)
It's evidence that you should consider changing your layout.
You know that they have trouble finding your download link, yet you're stubborn enough not to try to improve your site? That's pretty closed-minded.
I know that it's hard to think that other people could see things differently than you do. Maybe if you want people to download your software more tha
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:2)
Why do you think I don't try to improve my site? I do it all the time.
A few points:
1. I've already redesigned the website twice, and people still ask at the forum where they can download it.
2. When I ask those people why they can't find it, they never give an answer! How am I supposed to know what they think when they don't even reply?
3. I asked a lot of other p
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:2)
First off sorry if my tone has been a bit combative. I'm very passionate about this issue and I'll try to tone it down a bit. My observations come from experience in user interaction design involving actual user interviews and watching people interact with sites. You'd be surprised what happens. Really. People aren't logical. There's a lot of good literature on it too if you're interested.
I underst
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:2, Insightful)
The poster said that the links are next to each other. Unless you have seen the site in question, I don't think you are in any position to bash its layout.
There are people I seriously think shouldn't be on the Internet. Heck, there are people I think shouldn't even own a computer. Besides IT-related issues, there are also people I don't think should be allowed to drive a car, use a credit card, raise children, have dogs, etc.
An interesting aspect is that many
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:2)
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:2)
If you're referring to the autopackage [autopackage.org] website I think I know why you're getting those questions.
There's more than a dozen hyperlinks on the main page. None of them say "Download".
Okay. I'll go to the "Help & Support" section. None of the links there say "Download" either.
What's left on the main page that seems vaguely relevant? "Packages; various packages"? I don't want various alternative packages, I want autopackage.
Okay, I'll check the FAQ link on the main page. Do a search for the word "Down
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:2)
No, I'm not referring to the Autopackage website. In fact, Autopackage is not supposed to be downloaded by end users.
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:2)
Again, I don't know if that's the site you're referring to.
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:2)
Re:Blaming the user is never right (Score:2)
Web of Trust (Score:5, Interesting)
By the way, Norvig is not only a Google exec, but also a well known AI researcher, author of one of most important books [berkeley.edu] on that subject.
Re:Web of Trust (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Web of Trust (Score:2)
Norvig's personal project (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the students asked him what he did for his 20% project. He said that he was usually too busy keeping tabs on what the other employees were doing with their 20% time, so he didn't quite get around to working on his. He told us what he wanted to do, as motivation for himself.
The basic idea is that when he used to work for NASA, it'd always make him upset when people saw faces in random spots on the moon's terrain, and claimed it was aliens that NASA was covering up, or similar. So, he was planning on taking facial recognition software and running it on all of google earth. I think it'd be pretty awesome..
Any progress yet, Mr. Norvig? I'd love to see the results..
That:s it gentlemen (Score:2, Funny)
not jsut the general users (Score:3, Interesting)
In regards to the google issue I think the idea that you should crawl everything is faulty cause you need to be able to trust the source. Most ontologies will simply be restricted to a certain domain and corresponding user group, often in a b2b context. Integrating every man and his dog, the lawnmower and the kitchen sink with some kind of top level ontology is merely a nice-to-have philosophical issue that I dont expect to be solved in the near future, if only cause we havent seen much advances since Aristole started toying around with the idea. In other words, at google they are worried about an issue that's atleast a decade away from now, probably even more.
Hmph... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmph... (Score:2)
Sem Web, meet Chicken & Egg (Score:4, Informative)
True, the web had a similar problem, however creating a webpage is a lot more interesting (you see the results directly, how terrible they might be you do see a result) than structuring data. The latter takes a lot more work, and the direct benefit just isn't there.
Sem-Web-like standards like RSS, XML and SOAP have become mainstream, but primarily because they fill a gap. The adoption of RDF or OWL simply doesn't solve anything. Yet. It would be cool to let agents loose onto the semantic web and retrieve them together with a summary on a certain subject using a multitude of sources, but as long as it's easier to Google I don't think it would generate any interest outside academia.
Feel free to prove me wrong though.
I See Value in the Semantic Web (Score:2, Insightful)
RDF Ability vs. RDF Techincal Complexity (Score:3, Insightful)
Current technical obstacles to creating any RDF applcation: The matter of complexity of its integration into DB backed systems (popular methods), and instatiated class marshaling within not-so-object oriented languages. The technical design and implementation of a standards compliant RDF system has been extremely difficult for me. I don't think it would ever be possible to get RDF data represented nearly as minimally as you could with simple relational tables (although formally no more bloated than bloaty XML). RDF also creates many long linked relationships; this tends to create some serious performance issues in querying the data. Lastly, I hate XML, and you can't always correctly export from RDF to XML (capable type to incapable type) in a correct manner.
Semantic knigth (Score:4, Funny)
Threat to google's business model? (Score:2, Interesting)
Blame the user (Score:2)
And it *certainly* couldn't be that HTML is a piece of fucking garbage and that trying to kludge semantics into the spec is an effort doomed from the beginning.
As the tale goes, "The emperor is naked!" (Score:2)
News at 11...
It's the page content, stupid (Score:2)
IMHO, the Semantic Web is solving one problem (the lack of structure and descriptive context in textual HTML content) in a very hard way (asking the entire web to implement this
pardon my ignorance (Score:3, Interesting)
I am confused, I really do not see too many differences in the web in the last few years. Nothing 'Earth Shattering' anyway.
Re:pardon my ignorance (Score:2)
RDF and the layers on top of it (OWL, DAML...) try to achieve the same for other tasks. Instead of having to build separate applications to achieve the same task again and again for every website, you can reuse a generic code by having all the meaning
Old AI vs New AI (Score:2)
The real core problems of the Semantic Web ... (Score:2)
Need to make semweb toys (Score:2)
- create editors that automate the syntactical complexities of RDF/OWL, like what blogs have done for HTML.
- make entering metadata entertaining somehow.
- make some killer apps that show to regular users the usefulness of the semantic web.
Then we'll have a semantic web. Problems like spam can just be addressed as we come to them, but Web of Trust is probably a good start.
Suggestion: Semantic Web needs a proving grounds (Score:2)
Re:nifty! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Too complicated (Score:2)
Re:Too complicated (Score:2)
The semantic layer could be used to automatically generate goal-oriented workflows, instead of relying on the predefined ones, without making the user think.