ontolog-forum
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [ontolog-forum] Webby objects

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Ed Barkmeyer <edbark@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:55:06 -0500
Message-id: <50A6D25A.6080601@xxxxxxxx>


John wrote:
>>     stated the obvious:  "Users always ask for more expressive
>>     power, and they never ask for decidability."
>>     
>
>       (01)

Pat replied:
> I wish this were true. Unfortunately, there are many users who either ask 
>for, or worse simply *presume* decideability.     (02)

Certainly our experience in the manufacturing industry and in the 
cybersecurity business has been that decidability has been a sine qua 
non for commercial use of the technology.  I think Mike Bennett will 
confirm that the same is true of the finance industry.  I think John's 
experience with "users" is a more sophisticated group who realize that 
they are working at the state of the art.  Commercial interests are not 
willing to take the risks that go with that.    (03)

> So that if you give them a system which sometimes says "no answer", they will 
>simply take this as the answer, "no". Which is one of Ian's arguments: 
>whatever you give users, they will treat it as an oracle. So it had better 
>*be* an oracle, to avoid trouble.
>       (04)

And as regards most industrial users, this is bang on.  A missing 
database record can be treated as "no existing contract" through several 
levels of management before someone actually calls the account manager.    (05)

-Ed    (06)

-- 
Edward J. Barkmeyer                        Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Systems Integration Division, Engineering Laboratory
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263                Tel: +1 301-975-3528
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263                Cel: +1 240-672-5800    (07)

"The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, 
 and have not been reviewed by any Government authority."    (08)



_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/  
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/  
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/ 
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J    (09)

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>