Book Subject

Agile software development: Agile Methodology

2008-07-08T07:20:24.0005Z

A useful whitepaper about agile methodology, download it for free,

http://www.aztecsoft.com/advantage_aztecsoft/thought_leadership/whitepapers/agile_methodology.php

Java: Paradigms

2008-05-13T10:49:10.0005Z

I think that "Strongly-typed programming language", "Virtual Machine" and "Write once, run anywhere" are not Paradigms. The first is a Java feature (of course) but it is also a feature of other programming languages, not necessarily object oriented. The second is an execution model. The third is a consequence of the second one. What do you think about? (sorry for my English!).

Ludwig van Beethoven: Composer vs. Musical Artist for classical composers

2008-04-26T01:20:38.0007Z

Welcome to my nightmare.

Every music database in the world indexes classical recordings by composer, basically because the physical record had to go in one place in the store. There is no reason for us to follow this model—except that our main data source, MusicBrainz, still uses it.

We will be changing this at some point, but I couldn’t tell you when. Do you have a specific use case or application that this is blocking? That would affect our priority.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Composer vs. Musical Artist for classical composers

2008-04-25T23:21:38.0012Z

It seems odd to have entries for albums and tracks recorded for a classical composer. Shouldn't the musical artist in this case be the conductor, symphony or other performers (analogous to songs and albums recorded by someone like the Rolling Stones)?

Ovenbird: Merge with the other Ovenbird

2008-04-22T01:23:41.0007Z

The permission for ITIS is currently set to "Global Write Permission" -- which is probably not ideal. It should be set to the same one NCBI has:

http://www.freebase.com/tools/explore/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000003cc0361

Sadly I don't think changing this will fix what's going on here though...

Ovenbird: Merge with the other Ovenbird

2008-04-21T23:16:44.0007Z

OK, the "enumeration" type is correct, but the inability to edit the property is definitely not. I've reported the problem to the ones one reports such problems to.

Ovenbird: Merge with the other Ovenbird

2008-04-21T22:15:31.0029Z

Bizarre. The properties for ITIS and NCBI have an expected type of the system type "enumeration" instead of "machine readable string" or something more normal for foreign keys. This is almost certainly an error -- I'll try to find out what's going on here.

Ovenbird: Merge with the other Ovenbird

2008-04-21T21:47:56.0000Z

Oops.

Shouldn't there be an ITIS and NCBI for the species? I tried adding the ITIS TSN for this species (726205) and Freebase would not store it.

Ovenbird: Merge with the other Ovenbird

2008-04-21T21:12:51.0007Z

Don't merge -- one is for the family of ovenbirds, and one is for a species with the common name "ovenbird".

San Francisco: Merge

2008-04-18T21:01:04.0005Z

This topic has links associated with it, so it should be merged with the "official" San Francisco topic.

Ovenbird: Merge with the other Ovenbird

2008-04-13T17:52:11.0012Z

There are two topic pages for the organism classification of Ovenbird.

San Francisco: Uhm, just one San Francisco is enough

2008-03-20T01:17:14.0000Z

Definitely a duplicate, Faye. My last edit was a gardening operation that ran with my username. I've marked this for merge.

San Francisco: Uhm, just one San Francisco is enough

2008-03-19T23:29:38.0005Z

Bryan, isn't this a duplicate? I only hestiate to request a merge/delete because the history shows that you last edited this topic.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: A musical group?

2008-02-26T20:42:54.0007Z

No, a correct MusicBrainz import; the link at the bottom shows that MusicBrainz considers LDS an artist. The albums weren’t showing up because LDS had been de-typed as a Musical Artist, and so the “Albums” property wasn’t displaying; this is now fixed.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: A musical group?

2008-02-23T14:45:35.0012Z

Bad musicbrainz import? Also supposed to be the artist of Hymns (disc 9), but the link is non-existent (deletion doesn't show up in history either).

Motorcycle: Motorcycle MPG?

2008-02-05T21:03:22.0007Z

I definitely agree with the K.I.S.S. approach - the easier the better. The current automotive concepts are at a higher level, such as 2007 Honda Accord, with the variances inside the concept (body styles, engines, transmissions, etc.). If the automotive concepts were more disambiguated in the display name like the motorcycyle domain (ex. 2007 Honda Accord 4-Door EX V6), then we could simplify the US Fuel Economy property and remove redundancies. We tried to account for most of the variances in US fuel economy without breaking the model (too much). Eventually, model year might grow out of its britches and require a refactoring.

Motorcycle: Motorcycle MPG?

2008-02-05T20:40:08.0000Z

Thanks Bryan. Your unit type of Unit of Fuel Economy will be very useful for simplifying my Fuel consumption type. Currently I just use an undefined float for two properties: Miles per gallon and Liters per 100 km.

My approach has been to keep this type as simple as possible so that it can be added as a property anywhere in the motorcycle grouping hierarchy. In other words, I do not include engine, transmission, model, etc. because it would overlap with existing attributes. For example, the motorcycle's fuel consumption type can be included as a property for models, body styles, and privately owned examples without worry of redundant attribution. It is also relevant everywhere in the world. Your US Fuel Economy type contains more detailed attributes that could cause problems with redundancies down the road (no pun intended).

Motorcycle: Motorcycle MPG?

2008-02-05T19:30:55.0012Z

Hi Ed,

This might be of interest to you for the motorcycle domain. We created a new type US Fuel Economy for the automotive domain, which uses the measurement unit type Unit of Fuel Economy. There are more factors that can affect fuel economy (different seating configurations and such) but we started simple with taking into account body style, engine, and transmission.

Semantic Web: File format

2008-02-03T12:19:19.0000Z

No, RDF/XML is just one possible serialization format of RDF. Other formats include Ntriples, Notation3, Turtle, and RDFa

Motorcycle: Motorcycle domain is coming together!

2008-01-27T04:04:09.0012Z

I've done some major refactoring over the past couple weeks in order to reciprocate just about anything that can be reciprocated. I'll keep adding types and properties as they are identified but right now I'd like to get some feedback on the exisiting schema. Come on in, check the place out, and let me know what you think!

Semantic Web: File format

2007-08-27T15:15:41.0005Z

The RDF file format is really XML

Book Subject: Book genre links in under "Books About This Topic"

2007-06-04T04:29:37.0006Z

Got it. Thanks.

Book Subject: Book genre links in under "Books About This Topic"

2007-05-31T18:11:06.0006Z

The subject/genre confusion happened in part because "genre" was added as a property of "book" some time after "subject", so subject was doing double-duty for awhile. Note, however, that "science fiction" is a perfectly legitimate book subject (although not for "Snow Crash"), since there have been any number of books written about the genre itself.

Book Subject: Book genre links in under "Books About This Topic"

2007-05-31T04:44:01.0006Z

Actually, this happened because Science Fiction was already assigned by somebody else as a Subject of Snowcrash, which it shouldn't have been.

Book Subject: Book genre links in under "Books About This Topic"

2007-05-31T03:35:44.0011Z

Adding "Science Fiction" as the genre for the book links the book in the "Science Fiction" topic both under "Books In This Genre" (which sounds right) and "Books About This Topic", which sounds wrong. Have a look at the "Snow Crash" entry.

http://www.freebase.com/view?id=%239202a8c04000641f8000000000035120