The right question (HTTPRange-14)

Jonathan Borden wrote:

> So where does that leave us with respect to "document about weather in
> Oaxala" vs "concept weather in Oaxala" -- it seems to depend on how we
> define it. What prevents someone from saying:
> 
> <http://weather.example.com/oaxaca> rdf:type web:document .
> or *instead* saying:
> <http://weather.example.com/oaxaca> rdf:type ex:weatherLocation .
> 
> The SW treats URIs as opaque. The current Web doesn't care about what the
> range of HTTP URIs is. What is the actual physical purpose of making this
> distinction?
> 
> Pat suggests that SW agents need to know. If so we can use assertions to
> tell them.

Yes.  This is *exactly* the question I've been trying to ask, but 
haven't put it as clearly as Jonathan did.  I just think that 
inferencing the range of a URI based on its scheme feels fragile and 
inflexible.  Especially since the taxonomic division between what 
Jonathan calls a web:document and other kind of things feels like just 
one of a hundred interesting assertions one might want to make about 
whatever a URI names, and for damn sure we can't infer all of them from 
the syntax. -Tim