On Tuesday, November 16, 2004, at 11:58 AM, Henry Story wrote:
Ok. So if I tell you to read the book with ISBN URI say urn:ISBN:0-198-24686-2If you don't tell me where I can find a copy of the book, and I can't find it myself, then knowing it's ISBN number doesn't help me get information out of the book.
which is a really good book by Gareth Evans called "The Varieties of Reference"
you are going to tell me that I did not pass you the book by reference?
And unless an atom:feed's ID changes whenever the contents of its atom:head changes (as I believe a books ISBN would change if a new edition were released, right?), then the ID, or even the URL of the feed, would not provide a reliable pointer to the context of the entry. (To which you might well reply that the entry might still appear in the feed after atom:head changed, so it's context SHOULD change, to which I might well reply that the entry MIGHT get deleted in connection with the change to atom:head, just like some text might get deleted from a new edition of a book...so who knows).
