Hi,

On Fri, Apr 09, 2004 at 12:08:16PM -0400, Orion Adrian wrote:

> >The problem is actually that there is no strict definition what
> >constitutes meta data and what is "real" data. You could construe
> >about everthing to be meta data, and you could construe about
> >everything to be real data. The border depends solely on the
> >viewpoint; and this viewpoint can be set arbitrarily.
> 
> While I agree that this is traditionally a hard line to see, I do
> believe a concrete line is there. More importantly I can write rules
> to determine what is metadata and what isn't. What's amazing is that
> most data is metadata because we're using it to describe objects that
> exist in the real world. Name, eye color, hair color, height, weight,
> sex.. these are all metadata about a person. E-mail address and phone
> numbers are two. What's intriguing that a huge amount of time is spent
> collecting and going through metadata.

That's exactly what I mean saying that anything can be construed as
being metadata. Taking such a viewpoint, you'll have a hard time finding
anything that is actual data... Sorry, too much abstraction leads to
nowhere.

-Olaf-