Re: Dereferencing Namespace URIs considered harmful

[Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com>]

> I feel that dereferencing part of a two-part name because of
> its accidental resemblance to something that exists outside of the
> context of that name is tantamount to the old mistake of "overloading"
> part of a database key to mean something else. As an example, I am
> reminded of a telephone company that assigned special meaning to
> the high-order digits of a subscriber's account number, on the assumption
> that there would never be that many subscribers. Of course, the fateful
> day
> arrived where the number of subscribers reached critical mass, and
> suddenly people found themselves getting huge discounts on their phone
> bills, simply because their account numbers had fallen into the previously
> reserved range. Fixing the problem proved very troublesome.

Paul T and I already argued pretty much the same viewpoint, and I even
used the exact same argument of

-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com               +1 303 583 9900 x 101
Fourthought, Inc.                         http://Fourthought.com
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