Slashdot Mirror
RDF For Desktop Metadata?
claes writes "There is an article "Metadata for the desktop" that suggests that RDF should be used to describe data in desktop environments. This is an interesting idea. RDF is already used by Creative Commons to attach license metadata to its works. Mozilla also supports it.
RDF was designed for the web, but can it also find its way to the desktop? And what metadata is most important to describe?"
is porn!
Suppose today I want to see shaved asian hardcore action. Now provided that metadata searches are integrated into the OS(like they will be in Tiger), all I need to do is a quick metadata search on my hard drive and boom, there is what I am looking for.
I mean provided there was a decent standard(a porn standards body would rule!) and good regex capabilities built into the OS, I would be willing to pay for porn. I know that there are comments built into the jpeg standard, but there are all sorts of porn file formats, it would be helpful to have a universal standard across them. It saves time, beats trying to search on google and going through a lot of crap just to get to something good. I am a man on the run, I have places to go, I can't be bogged down by my porn. Plus, think of the people that get to catagorize this stuff(well, the fun stuff anyway, not goatse), what an awesome job that would be!
I should probably post AC, but I figure this post is bound to earn me at least one fan and/or freak.
Why don't slashdoters define what meta-data is in the first place? Google's define: metadata lists not less than 20 definitions. Are we talking about "data about data"?
Are there any filesystems left that use forked files? Resource, Data and Metadata forks? Any at all?
While MacOS was at a disadvantage being one of the only ones to use it, wouldn't it have been an excellent advantage for ALL filesystems to be forked?
(I don't know the answer to this - anyone who knows more about filesystems, give your thoughts)
Why does the document complain about the lack of integration, then mention that Microsoft, Apple, the ReiserFS people, etc. are coming up with solutions, and then adds a completely new one? Shouldn't they just be supporting one Apple's or ReiserFS's efforts?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Since most of us are advanced computer users or even computer experts, I think we largely know how to search for content.
For one thing, I always give my filenames relevant titles, not things like document06.doc.
Also, I already know how to search through files for content using basic grep or advanced Windows searching.
I mean, sure, meta data like ID3 tags for MP3s that I steal offline are important because my Nomad mp3 player indexes based on that info, but in general I'd say meta data is not quite as important as some may suspect.
If you liked my post,
I've heard the NTFS file system is designed to allow the system to add any number of properties (besides the obvious filename, last access time and permissions) to any stored file. This is likely to be exploited by Longhorn, which is planned to be capable of appending metadata to newly created files (for example, if you download a file from the Internet, the system would likely append a Originated-From-URL property to it).
What I wonder is, is there any filesystem in the FOSS world that supports something like this, or are there plans to make it supported before 20??, when Longhorn hits the stores? I see this as a critical feature that must be made available by non-Windows OSes.
Score: i, Imaginary
A group at MIT is using RDF for an integrated data management system. It's sorta like Outlook (or Kontact, if you prefer ;-) on steroids. It's called Haystack.
I have to say, their ideas are intriguing, but after using it... I think the big shortcoming is that it's tough to come up with a generalized user interface for manipulating any data thrown at it. Haystack tries at this, and I think, fails at providing any kind of cues or context that tells you what your are dealing with. In Haystack, every task and piece of information you deal with looks very much like every other piece of data, because, as a design choice, Haystack every piece of data has the same rank as every other piece of data.
Having different applications for different types of data usually make sense, if only to limit the amount of options presented to the user so they can make an intelligent decision about what action they want to perform. See this article on Slashdot about how users need limited since it makes decision-making too difficult psychologically.
Inevitably, discussions around RDF and metadata always devolve into hand-wavy discussions on how the computer will be able to "magically" do smart things based on the metadata. But it really isn't magic and it isn't automatic at all. Equivalencies and mappings have to be created by humans along with the rules about what to do.
RDF uses many concepts from AI research. Anybody who has read about this branch of computer science knows that the discipline has pretty much given up on creating AI in the 'sci-fi' sense as an impractical dream. That's what makes the Loebner prize so controversial. I don't expect that computers will be intelligent enough able to relieve users of too much of the burden in assigning metadata.
RDF is a promising approach, but if you read the article, it makes a lot of assumptions about what needs to happen to make the benefits real. Among them are establishing standards for what metadata fields apply to different types of objects: photos, people, music, etc. That kind of standardization won't happen overnight, if at all.
The computer also needs to know what to do when it encounters that kind of data. The article mentions MIME and browsers and, in effect, says the browser can make a rational decision even if it hasn't seen a particular MIME type before. That isn't really true.. you have to install a plugin that tells the browser what to do, or have a registry that someone has put together where the browser can install the right plugin at the right time.
That said, KDE's unification of contact information and passwords does show some of the promise of metadata efforts. And Apple's Spotlight looks like a good solution as far as it goes. I guess I'm just trying to make the point that the magic of metadata needs to be taken with a fairly large hunk of salt.
======
In X-Windows the client serves YOU!