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NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 31 May 2004 08:58:55 -0500
Reply-To: "Laconic2" <laconic2@comcast.net>
From: "Laconic2" <laconic2@comcast.net>
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory
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Subject: Re: database systems and organizational intelligence
Date: Mon, 31 May 2004 10:00:14 -0400
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"mAsterdam" <mAsterdam@vrijdag.org> wrote in message
news:40bb3703$0$34762$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...

> The physical representation, real,
> only contains shapes and media, not meaning.

Agreed.

> Data IMO encompasses meaning.

I'm not so sure.  Let's take the SETI project.  (Search for Extra
Terrestrial Intelligence).  They've collected lots of data, gathered by
radio receptors.  But there may or may not be any meaning behind the data
they have gathered.

That's an unusual case.  In most commercial applications there is a common
understanding between the writer and the reader of the data about what the
data means.  So,  in most cases,  I would agree with you.


> So, in order to retrieve data from the rosetta stone, we need to
> interpret the carvings (being shapes on media a.k.a. signs).

Well, the rosetta stone may have been a poor example.  It contained the same
message in Greek, and in Hieroglyphics and some other language.  The people
who decoded the Rosetta stone knew one of the languages,  and used that one
to decode the others.