Comments for Topic Maps and All That

Comment on The Norway Vote – What really happened by Got to love corporate influenced politics… | Jason (Izzy) Sherry's Blog

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:16:40 +0000

[...] ask Steve Ballmer about this last week at the MVP Summit. Anyways this post "The Norway Vote – What really happened" goes over how the VP of Standard Norway removed everyone from a voting process until the vote [...]

Comment on Topic Maps and the Semantic Web by Topic Maps Versus The Semantic Web – Don’t the differences between them suggest how they should be used together? « TopicLogic

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:38:45 +0000

[...] http://topicmaps.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/topic-maps-and-the-semantic-web [...]

Comment on I Write What I Like by Joel Savage

Joel Savage — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 17:17:03 +0000

I see the late Steve Biko, equally great man like Nelson Mandela. Even though he didn’t live to see the fall of Apartheid in South Africa, after all those efforts that cost him his life, his soul is happily rejoycing in his grave.

Comment on The Norway Vote – What really happened by sustainabilityblogger

sustainabilityblogger — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:15:31 +0000

The Norway Vote – What really happened « Topic Maps and All That: “So this one bureaucrat, a man who by his own admission had no understanding of the technical issues, had chosen to ignore the advice of his Chairman, of 80% of his technical experts, and of 100% of the K185 old-timers. For the Chairman, only one course of action was possible Comment by A d m i n February 23, 2010 @ 6 :5 0 pm

Comment on Topic Maps and the Semantic Web by danbri

danbri — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:17:30 +0000

Hi there

As you’re writing in 2008 (although reporting a 2005 discussion, fair enough), I’m suprised you don’t mention W3C SKOS. It’s an RDF-based vocabulary for (roughly) thesaurus-like content. If you’re doing subject-based classification, SKOS deserves some serious attention. We have a lot of thesauri exposed in it now, as well as the Library of Congress subject headings (http://id.loc.gov/authorities/), and experiments from the Dewey and UDC classifications. I suspect mapping between SKOS/RDF and TopicMaps might go more smoothly than from general unconstrained RDF; I’m not sure about vice-versa, ie. that many TopicMaps might be expressable in terms of SKOS structures…

Comment on Topic Maps and the Semantic Web by Steve Pepper

Steve Pepper — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:17:20 +0000

Michael, I’m sorry I haven’t risen to your challenge yet. I fully intend to (and in the not-too-distant future).

In the meantime I’m a bit intrigued by your use of the word “colloquial”. Can you explain what it means as applied to XML? Google gives me 352 hits, so the phrase clearly has some currency, but “colloquial” as used here surely doesn’t have quite its normal dictionary sense (as applied to a word or phrase) of “used in ordinary or familiar conversation; not formal or literary”.

Comment on Topic Maps and the Semantic Web by Steve Pepper

Steve Pepper — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:04:29 +0000

(To Michael, trackback 2, below) Yes, exactly, it was the later Wittgenstein I had in mind — in particular the discussion (in Untersuchungen) of the category “game” and the notion of family resemblances.

The contrast between the Aristotelian view of categories (defined in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions) and the view that category membership is based on resemblance to prototypical members seems somehow to be reflected in the contrast between RDF/OWL and Topic Maps (as also between generative and cognitive linguistics).

It’s just a thought, though. I haven’t really thought it through and I’m not yet sure it will lead to any useful insights, but I hope to return to the topic one day.

Comment on Topic Maps and the Semantic Web by Heimo Hänninen

Heimo Hänninen — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:34:46 +0000

Very clearly put, Steve. My experiences with both RDF and Topic Maps fully support your analysis. Not going to details, but when hand crafting an RDF schema for the Finnish Museum of Photography (at that time there were no robust RDF modeling tools) I learnt that creating an ontology for human users was very laborious. RDF is like a box of small Lego blogs to build a house (say, a place where you can store your toy solders ) compared to Topic Maps which is like a well thought set of wall pieces, doors, windows and the roof components.
(http://www.fortex.fi/references.html – check the RDF schema story, a link to Schema ref doc is there as well…)

I have tested TMs in ontology modeling few times. A larger project in which we successfully implemented TMs for a telecom information portal system convinced me that it is a better choice if your task is to codify knowledge structures that need to be communicated to human users. It was so much simpler to design and to explain to biz people. For larger information ecosystems the subject identity management concept is somewhat imperative. And it is all built-in in Topic Maps.
(http://www.topicmaps.com/tm2008/hanninen.pdf )

The number of TMs engines and the relatively narrow base of TMs developers is the only downside, but I believe the situation will improve when the OKS goes Open Source.

Comment on The Norway Vote – What really happened by Office Open XML controversy in Norway continues… | codespiracy()

Office Open XML controversy in Norway continues… | codespiracy() — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 12:36:38 +0000

[...] For those unfamiliar with the OOXML thing, you can catch up here: http://topicmaps.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/the-norway-vote-what-really-happened/ [...]

Comment on The Norway Vote – What really happened by Monmonja Music Blog » Blog Archive » ISO Rejects OOXML Protest Appeals

Monmonja Music Blog » Blog Archive » ISO Rejects OOXML Protest Appeals — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 04:08:16 +0000

[...] No to Yes I’m not shock on the Philippine’s vote coz its so corrupt back home http://topicmaps.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/the-norway-vote-what-really-happened/ http://www.universal-interop-council.org/node/25 [...]