Subject: Re: becoming a better programmer From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 22 Sep 2002 11:50:30 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3241684230332774@naggum.no> * synthespian <synthespian@debian-rs.org> | To be more specific, I was concerned with how ontologies keep track of the | changes in the word's meaning. Is there, for instance, a way to track a | date a definition was set? Is there an etymology or a framework that | enables one? Ontologies are intended to capture concepts and their relationships. Words are merely names for concepts, so this is a little beside the point, but I think I understand what you might be getting at. I have no idea, however. | And I wasn't *judging*, I worked with the information I had, which was | perhaps, very little, but was from Tim Berners-Lee and the article he wrote | about it recently. I am not an expert on ontologies, it's not my focus... Well, I have been massively unimpressed with TBL's work and papers. Having just reviewed a book on the Semantic Web that I asked the publisher not to publish, and having read several other books on the Semantic Web in that process, I can safely say that the Semantic Web is not rocket science. It is, however, massively overcomplex, the typical result of insufficiently intelligent people in action. One of the reasons I have returned to study Dewey and work with the Online Computer Library Center, our National Library and the Deichmanske Library in Oslo to see if it is possible to automate or at least let the machine assist classification of Internet resources like Usenet news articles is precisely that I think reinventing the wheel in this area is nuts. If nothing else, letting these experienced people think about the problem should save me a lot of time and should help them think about future directions for their systems. So far, the response has been amazingly positive. -- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.