RE: Documents, Cars, Hills, and Valleys

> Here's another analogy. If I show you a photograph of the Eiffel
> Tower and ask you "What's that?", then I think that either of these
> two answers would be acceptable,
> * It's the Eiffel Tower.
> * It's a photograph of the Eiffel Tower.

This example doesn't apply.  A URI is an *identifier*, a much more
appropriate comparison would be with "a word".  More like, if you showed
me a picture and asked "What's a 'tower'?".  A URI's entire purpose in
life is to identify something.  I'll admit that ambiguity exists even in
real-world *identifiers* -- for example, when I say "bad", I might mean
"good".  But considering that words are supposed to mean things, most
people just use a default meaning, and crafty word usage requires
disambiguation.