Re: httpRange proposed text

Joshua Allen wrote:

> "If two people independently use the same URI as an identifier, they
> should be able to have a reasonable degree of confidence that they are
> identifying the same resource.  
> 
> People should not be required to parse, dereference, or otherwise
> acquire any *additional* disambiguating information to provide this
> basic guarantee.  
> 
> Resource naming practices should be considered carefully, and people are
> strongly discouraged from naming resources in a manner that
> unnecessarily weakens this guarantee."

The intent seems good, but how on earth do you build this confidence? 
By relying on the human-language semantics of the opaque part of the 
URI?  Does this scale to very large datasets?  Are you asking people to 
believe that a URI represents what a reasonable person would parse out 
by reading it?

Hmm... I'd be way more comfortable with a trusted provider of RDF 
assertions giving me lengthy-as-necessary descriptions of what any URI 
points to, even if it is 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679734570/qid=1027980804/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_3/104-5660234-7322307 
or the like.  -Tim

Received on Monday, 29 July 2002 18:17:16 UTC