I'm going to try to add some personal perspective in addition to the worthy Wikipedia article linked in the parent, because I see a lot of criticism in these threads and not for the traditionally criticism-worthy issues. In case you're wondering, I was involved in a non-trivial Semantic Web related project in 2005: a learning experience, I won't mention it further. That said, I could be _totally_ wrong; but this is how I see things.
The first question: Why do we want the Semantic Web? Sure, it sounds fancy, but why should _you_ (the average Slashdot reader) be excited about it? Well, let me explain why _I'm_ excited and maybe you'll agree... I tend to move data around, through systems and people, changing formats as necessary, making logical decisions based on the data as appropriate. Often there's a convenient library or tool or API for assisting me in doing this, making my life easier by abstracting the process of getting at that data and mashing it around into something more immediately useful. From my perspective, the Semantic Web will give me that power at a new level of convenience. Semantic markup, formats, ontologies, etc, allow data-centric code to be written more quickly and with less reinventing of wheels. Ever written a screen scraper? A perl script to pull data out of a proprietary log format? The Semantic Web will not be a panacea for these kinds of problems, but if we can convince people to mark up more data in reasonably common/standard ways then hopefully things like software mashups should become easier than ever! When software is better able to understand what data _is_, without huge amounts of domain-specific programmer effort, making decisions based on that data should be easier. Take a look at Firefox, microformats, and SPARQL, for example. Do users care about the Semantic Web? I don't think so, because all they should see is basically the same old browser-rendered Web. However, our ability (as software developers and general geeks) to produce useful tools and websites using Semantic Web data may result in even better websites and dynamic services.
Second question: What does the Semantic Web look like? Not like Gravity, in my opinion. Dynamic graphs are handy visualization tools for some kinds of data, but definitely not all! In fact, they're pretty brittle and they don't scale at all. There are a lot of interesting proposed solutions to the visualization problem (see SIMILE and MIT's Haystack), but I don't think it really matters. Within a specific domain, there will always be better visualization tools than a generalized visualization method (written by those familiar with the domain). So, the Semantic Web will look basically the same as the current web. In fact, if you start looking carefully, I think you'll see it all around you...
Third question: Why is "open data" exciting and what's the difference between just opening a MySQL database to the public and the Semantic Web vision? Well, if a site is exposing its "database" in RDF using a common ontology, then you can make use of their data just as you'd use their services via an API. A data provider may not foresee all the potentially useful ways to use their data just as they may not foresee ways to make use of their API, but a clever programmer can take from their surroundings what is needed and make of it something more. If you think this is random, note that/. and k5 have been serving up RDF of their frontpages for years and that today we regularly use RSS feeds and some black magic to do similar things.
As I said, I could be way off the mark here. This is just the simplified perspective I've adopted after thinking about it for a while and reading the common sources. Please don't take this as gospel or thorough, comments or corrections are very welcome.
It was a great show, managing to address some pretty serious issues while providing lots of "badass" moments. It was a sad day when CBS ended it after only 22 episodes.
It's nice to see SW tech getting more mainstream exposure... Unfortunately, there's still some big issues in user interface design when it comes to working with SW data. If you seriously attempt navigating using a dynamic and unpredictable graph, it quickly becomes a UI nightmare for anything beyond superficial applications.
I'm part of a team working towards making the 'solution in search of a problem' useful for average users. We have a proof-of-concept available at our site: http://www.semantikos.org/
Comments and flames welcome...:-D
Oh, and be sure and check out the big kids: Haystack, SIMILE's Piggybank, etc.
Sure, it can play catch... But can it form an heart-warming relationship with a sassy Kourier, defend Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, and take down a low-flying jet by jumping into its engine? No? PRIORITIES, PEOPLE!
Maybe the DGA shouldn't kick out cutting-edge digital film makers like Rodriguez for silly reasons... That would be a good first step in their journey towards these modern formats and techniques.
... I strongly identify with the attitude and goals of the people of Los Alamos during the Project. The interviewed scientist has my sympathy for having to endure a lifetime of harassment from those who condemn the creation of technology and progress.
Many of the comments here demonstrate a disturbing lack of forethought... The Bomb would have been built eventually, by somebody, no matter what. Scientific progress is, in itself, not a moral matter. The bureaucrats and politicians that made the decision to use the weapon upon two intentionally preserved non-military cities are the ones you should be pointing fingers at... The physicists were left out of the decision making process; even Oppie was quickly hustled out of the government when he was no longer necessary to them.
Scientific progress brings no evil. Evil uses scientific progress for its means, as it always has. This is not a logically valid reason to suppress innovation... (.i.e. think of all the incredible research that cascaded out of the Project that contributed to our greater understanding of the Universe.)
Ranting aside, I'd highly recommend the movie "The Day After Trinity" (title based on an Oppie quote). It's easy to find and provides a lot of insight into the people and politics associated with Los Alamos.
Additionally, I'd recommend that you make an effort to visit Trinity Site in NM/USA. I visited last year and it was an awe-inspiring experience.
I learned qwerty as a small child, under orders from my parents. *chuckle* It took me a while to become proficient, but it was good experience in retrospect.
When I was about 16, I taught myself Dvorak in two days. Since then, I've used Dvorak about 80% of the time.
I don't even think about switching back and forth, in fact it's not even as complicated as a mental toggle. I can just type in both layouts, as long as I know which layout I'm using.
I've followed the debates about whether the effectiveness of Dvorak is hype or urban legend and I think both sides have good points. However, in my experience, my fingers and wrists are much less sore after a night coding on Dvorak than with Qwerty. And that's all that matters to me...
I applied to Google's summer internship program last year, along with 2000+ other people (for 70 positions). I imagine the competition for this program will be pretty stiff!
However, a word of advice to Google (if you're out there): All the stupendous badasses I know already had summer internships confirmed by mid March of this year. In the future, it would be wise to have this program widely advertised much sooner.:-)
Unix applications have taught me: "Do one thing, but do it well." Therefore, I consider application suites to be flawed by nature.
Consider: Do I really need an IRC client packaged with my web browser? Why is the Moz dev team developing an IRC client when many quality alternatives already exist...? HTML Composer? I use vim. Mail Client? I use mutt 80% of the time.
There's no reason to assume that a development team that creates a quality web browser could also write a quality e-mail client. Why can't we just accept application-specific forks (FF/TB) and move on?
There appear to be two main reasons: "Mozilla Suite is better because of [feature or lack of problem]" and "A suite increases inter-app compatibility."
For the first, allow me to state the obvious: It's OSS. If Mozilla has a feature or quality that you feel is superior, why don't you file a suggestion or submit code? (Yes, this is a standard OSS shoot-footing attitude, but damnit I believe in it. TANSTAAFL.)
For the second, compatibility should depend upon open standards and protocols, not the fact that the same dev team wrote most of both.
My simplistic suggestion? Let MoFo focus on Gecko and on pushing forward web technologies and standards, but let the FF and TB teams focus on the applications themselves. Maybe we could fork the IRC client too?;-)
Disclaimer: I'm a coder and power user. I've used Netscape since 1.1N and Moz for so long that I can't remember when I started.
"The World Year of Physics 2005 plans to bring the excitement of physics to the public and inspire a new generation of scientists. Timed to coincide with the centennial celebration of Albert Einstein's "miraculous year," the World Year of Physics will be coming to YOU before you know it. "
Acgh, my mistake! You're absolutely right, I was misremembering... Doom 1 shareware was released on 12/10/93 and Marathon wasn't announced until 7/25/04, with a demo and release in Nov/Dec '94 (ten years ago, obviously). So, Doom predates Marathon by six months to a year.
Basically, I didn't double check my memories and I blame Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field for this oversight. However, since both games were in development for several years I still assert that it is hasty to claim one is a derivative of the other.
I think you're forgetting that Marathon 1 and Doom 1 were released within three months of eachother after both being in development for several years. I hardly think that makes it a 'derivative'...
Funny you should mention that... Marathon generated a decent but level amount of load during LAN games. While some were playing, others were watching network traffic and would use the excuse to test latency in new wiring. Therefore, all LAN gaming in our group of friends is referred to as Network Testing.;-) This also makes it easier to discuss around the water cooler without getting anyone's attention. *grin* But you didn't hear that from me...
I don't really have anything interesting to say, but here's some random thoughts:
Marathon (Evil/Infinity) was my first LAN party, and got me hooked into hosting years and years of LAN parties. (Continued now with Aleph One.)
The smiley face at the end of the SPNKR rockets can now be seen on the front of the flak shells in the UT* games. An homage, I assume?
I'm glad this made/., as the Aleph One project could really use the traffic and attention. Those guys are great...
Not to restate what's already been said a few times, but Doom's story consisted of "kill stuff, find blue key, kill stuff, find red key, kill bigger stuff, next level". Marathon's back story is some great SciFi and still makes for entertaining reading. (Link in the article.)
Few things annoy me more than Halo/Xbox kiddies posting in forums without showing respect for Halo's roots in Marathon. Of course, that may be too much to expect from people who play an FPS with a joypad.;-)
I heard CSI was a good show, so I honestly tried to give it a chance... But, in the first few minutes of an episode centering around a body falling from a building, the male lead made a statement similar to: "his terminal velocity was 9.8 meters per second squared."
For those that aren't snobby elitist physicists like me, that's total bullshit. The show is a drama, and the science they use is only there to fuel the plot. Anyone who thinks that CSI is inspired by real life probably thinks that stealing cars is just like in "Gone in 60 Seconds" or that compromising systems is just like in "Hackers".
The scary thing (for me) is all the people that didn't notice how wrong that line is...:-P
Slashdot Mirror
What does the Semantic Web offer, why do we care?
/. and k5 have been serving up RDF of their frontpages for years and that today we regularly use RSS feeds and some black magic to do similar things.
I'm going to try to add some personal perspective in addition to the worthy Wikipedia article linked in the parent, because I see a lot of criticism in these threads and not for the traditionally criticism-worthy issues. In case you're wondering, I was involved in a non-trivial Semantic Web related project in 2005: a learning experience, I won't mention it further. That said, I could be _totally_ wrong; but this is how I see things.
The first question: Why do we want the Semantic Web? Sure, it sounds fancy, but why should _you_ (the average Slashdot reader) be excited about it? Well, let me explain why _I'm_ excited and maybe you'll agree... I tend to move data around, through systems and people, changing formats as necessary, making logical decisions based on the data as appropriate. Often there's a convenient library or tool or API for assisting me in doing this, making my life easier by abstracting the process of getting at that data and mashing it around into something more immediately useful. From my perspective, the Semantic Web will give me that power at a new level of convenience. Semantic markup, formats, ontologies, etc, allow data-centric code to be written more quickly and with less reinventing of wheels. Ever written a screen scraper? A perl script to pull data out of a proprietary log format? The Semantic Web will not be a panacea for these kinds of problems, but if we can convince people to mark up more data in reasonably common/standard ways then hopefully things like software mashups should become easier than ever! When software is better able to understand what data _is_, without huge amounts of domain-specific programmer effort, making decisions based on that data should be easier. Take a look at Firefox, microformats, and SPARQL, for example. Do users care about the Semantic Web? I don't think so, because all they should see is basically the same old browser-rendered Web. However, our ability (as software developers and general geeks) to produce useful tools and websites using Semantic Web data may result in even better websites and dynamic services.
Second question: What does the Semantic Web look like? Not like Gravity, in my opinion. Dynamic graphs are handy visualization tools for some kinds of data, but definitely not all! In fact, they're pretty brittle and they don't scale at all. There are a lot of interesting proposed solutions to the visualization problem (see SIMILE and MIT's Haystack), but I don't think it really matters. Within a specific domain, there will always be better visualization tools than a generalized visualization method (written by those familiar with the domain). So, the Semantic Web will look basically the same as the current web. In fact, if you start looking carefully, I think you'll see it all around you...
Third question: Why is "open data" exciting and what's the difference between just opening a MySQL database to the public and the Semantic Web vision? Well, if a site is exposing its "database" in RDF using a common ontology, then you can make use of their data just as you'd use their services via an API. A data provider may not foresee all the potentially useful ways to use their data just as they may not foresee ways to make use of their API, but a clever programmer can take from their surroundings what is needed and make of it something more. If you think this is random, note that
As I said, I could be way off the mark here. This is just the simplified perspective I've adopted after thinking about it for a while and reading the common sources. Please don't take this as gospel or thorough, comments or corrections are very welcome.
The canonical version is thus:
#!/bin/ssh
#The Unix Guru's View of Sex
unzip ; strip ; touch ; grep ; finger ; mount ; fsck ; more ; yes ; umount ; sleep
http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/hack/ugvs.html
Actually, the 6e6$ Man remake has already been redone (well):
"Now and Again" (1999)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212395/
It was a great show, managing to address some pretty serious issues while providing lots of "badass" moments. It was a sad day when CBS ended it after only 22 episodes.
It's nice to see SW tech getting more mainstream exposure... Unfortunately, there's still some big issues in user interface design when it comes to working with SW data. If you seriously attempt navigating using a dynamic and unpredictable graph, it quickly becomes a UI nightmare for anything beyond superficial applications.
:-D
I'm part of a team working towards making the 'solution in search of a problem' useful for average users. We have a proof-of-concept available at our site: http://www.semantikos.org/
Comments and flames welcome...
Oh, and be sure and check out the big kids: Haystack, SIMILE's Piggybank, etc.
Sure, it can play catch... But can it form an heart-warming relationship with a sassy Kourier, defend Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, and take down a low-flying jet by jumping into its engine? No? PRIORITIES, PEOPLE!
Maybe the DGA shouldn't kick out cutting-edge digital film makers like Rodriguez for silly reasons... That would be a good first step in their journey towards these modern formats and techniques.
Leela: What's the matter Amy? Did you swallow your MP3 player again?
... I strongly identify with the attitude and goals of the people of Los Alamos during the Project. The interviewed scientist has my sympathy for having to endure a lifetime of harassment from those who condemn the creation of technology and progress.
Many of the comments here demonstrate a disturbing lack of forethought... The Bomb would have been built eventually, by somebody, no matter what. Scientific progress is, in itself, not a moral matter. The bureaucrats and politicians that made the decision to use the weapon upon two intentionally preserved non-military cities are the ones you should be pointing fingers at... The physicists were left out of the decision making process; even Oppie was quickly hustled out of the government when he was no longer necessary to them.
Scientific progress brings no evil. Evil uses scientific progress for its means, as it always has. This is not a logically valid reason to suppress innovation... (.i.e. think of all the incredible research that cascaded out of the Project that contributed to our greater understanding of the Universe.)
Ranting aside, I'd highly recommend the movie "The Day After Trinity" (title based on an Oppie quote). It's easy to find and provides a lot of insight into the people and politics associated with Los Alamos.
Additionally, I'd recommend that you make an effort to visit Trinity Site in NM/USA. I visited last year and it was an awe-inspiring experience.
I learned qwerty as a small child, under orders from my parents. *chuckle* It took me a while to become proficient, but it was good experience in retrospect.
When I was about 16, I taught myself Dvorak in two days. Since then, I've used Dvorak about 80% of the time.
I don't even think about switching back and forth, in fact it's not even as complicated as a mental toggle. I can just type in both layouts, as long as I know which layout I'm using.
I've followed the debates about whether the effectiveness of Dvorak is hype or urban legend and I think both sides have good points. However, in my experience, my fingers and wrists are much less sore after a night coding on Dvorak than with Qwerty. And that's all that matters to me...
I applied to Google's summer internship program last year, along with 2000+ other people (for 70 positions). I imagine the competition for this program will be pretty stiff!
:-)
However, a word of advice to Google (if you're out there): All the stupendous badasses I know already had summer internships confirmed by mid March of this year. In the future, it would be wise to have this program widely advertised much sooner.
The white hats, the black hats, and the 1337...?
Unix applications have taught me: "Do one thing, but do it well." Therefore, I consider application suites to be flawed by nature.
;-)
Consider: Do I really need an IRC client packaged with my web browser? Why is the Moz dev team developing an IRC client when many quality alternatives already exist...? HTML Composer? I use vim. Mail Client? I use mutt 80% of the time.
There's no reason to assume that a development team that creates a quality web browser could also write a quality e-mail client. Why can't we just accept application-specific forks (FF/TB) and move on?
There appear to be two main reasons: "Mozilla Suite is better because of [feature or lack of problem]" and "A suite increases inter-app compatibility."
For the first, allow me to state the obvious: It's OSS. If Mozilla has a feature or quality that you feel is superior, why don't you file a suggestion or submit code? (Yes, this is a standard OSS shoot-footing attitude, but damnit I believe in it. TANSTAAFL.)
For the second, compatibility should depend upon open standards and protocols, not the fact that the same dev team wrote most of both.
My simplistic suggestion? Let MoFo focus on Gecko and on pushing forward web technologies and standards, but let the FF and TB teams focus on the applications themselves. Maybe we could fork the IRC client too?
Disclaimer: I'm a coder and power user. I've used Netscape since 1.1N and Moz for so long that I can't remember when I started.
FYI:
"The World Year of Physics 2005 plans to bring the excitement of physics to the public and inspire a new generation of scientists. Timed to coincide with the centennial celebration of Albert Einstein's "miraculous year," the World Year of Physics will be coming to YOU before you know it. "
From http://www.physics2005.org/
I, for one, welcome our new Physics overlords.
Acgh, my mistake! You're absolutely right, I was misremembering... Doom 1 shareware was released on 12/10/93 and Marathon wasn't announced until 7/25/04, with a demo and release in Nov/Dec '94 (ten years ago, obviously). So, Doom predates Marathon by six months to a year.
Basically, I didn't double check my memories and I blame Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field for this oversight. However, since both games were in development for several years I still assert that it is hasty to claim one is a derivative of the other.
My googlin':
Bungie's history page
Marathon Story: M1 demo overview
Marathon Story: M1 demo readme
Wikipedia: Doom 1
I think you're forgetting that Marathon 1 and Doom 1 were released within three months of eachother after both being in development for several years. I hardly think that makes it a 'derivative'...
Sadly, Bungie sold the very last Mac Action Pack from its store a few months ago. I know because I missed it by a few days... *chuckle* Good luck!
Funny you should mention that... Marathon generated a decent but level amount of load during LAN games. While some were playing, others were watching network traffic and would use the excuse to test latency in new wiring. Therefore, all LAN gaming in our group of friends is referred to as Network Testing. ;-) This also makes it easier to discuss around the water cooler without getting anyone's attention. *grin* But you didn't hear that from me...
I don't really have anything interesting to say, but here's some random thoughts:
/., as the Aleph One project could really use the traffic and attention. Those guys are great...
;-)
Marathon (Evil/Infinity) was my first LAN party, and got me hooked into hosting years and years of LAN parties. (Continued now with Aleph One.)
The smiley face at the end of the SPNKR rockets can now be seen on the front of the flak shells in the UT* games. An homage, I assume?
I'm glad this made
Not to restate what's already been said a few times, but Doom's story consisted of "kill stuff, find blue key, kill stuff, find red key, kill bigger stuff, next level". Marathon's back story is some great SciFi and still makes for entertaining reading. (Link in the article.)
Few things annoy me more than Halo/Xbox kiddies posting in forums without showing respect for Halo's roots in Marathon. Of course, that may be too much to expect from people who play an FPS with a joypad.
That's all I can think of right now, so:
FROGBLAST THE VENTCORE
The coldest place on earth (actually, the known universe) is Wieman's lab at Colorado. They measure temperatures in nanokelvin. :-P
I heard CSI was a good show, so I honestly tried to give it a chance... But, in the first few minutes of an episode centering around a body falling from a building, the male lead made a statement similar to: "his terminal velocity was 9.8 meters per second squared."
:-P
For those that aren't snobby elitist physicists like me, that's total bullshit. The show is a drama, and the science they use is only there to fuel the plot. Anyone who thinks that CSI is inspired by real life probably thinks that stealing cars is just like in "Gone in 60 Seconds" or that compromising systems is just like in "Hackers".
The scary thing (for me) is all the people that didn't notice how wrong that line is...