Identity

[Hunter, David]

David Megginson [mailto:david at megginson.com] writes:
> Actually, it was intended to be strictly relevant, although the Hulk,
> or Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde would have been better examples.  The
> question was how we determine serial identity -- if person P is
> Dr. Jekyl, Mr. Hyde, then Dr. Jekyl again, are Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde
> identical?  If so, then if IP address 111.222.333.444 is 
> foo.com, then 
> bar.com, then foo.com again, are foo.com and bar.com identical?

But my questions remain:  Is there ever a time when we need/want an
application to know or think that foo.com is the same as bar.com?  My
understanding is that the DNS name is what we're after; the IP address is
just how we get there.  If we want our application to use foo.com then we
will; if bar.com happens to be "the same" as foo.com, however you define
"the same", does that matter to us at all?  We can still go on happily using
foo.com in our application, and bar.com can be the same, and then change,
and we won't care.

But I have another question, to add to the previous one:  in the case of
namespaces (is that where this thread started?), in the example you cite, is
the second foo.com the same as the first foo.com?  Wait, don't answer that,
I want to go over the implications in my head for a bit first...  I have a
feeling it's going to be application-specific, and also have some legal
ramifications.  (I define foo.com.  I go out of business, but someone else
buys the foo.com name.  e.g. ad infinitum)

David Hunter
david.hunter at mediaserv.com
MediaServ Information Architects
http://www.MediaServ.com

xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa at ic.ac.uk)