Alain LaBonté wrote:
> [Alain] What about phone numbers, postal codes, street numbers, to > quote but the most obvious meaningful identifiers? I'm confused. Do you mean "meaningless identifiers"? They look meaningless to me. House numbers in North America (and in France also, it seems) have a few bits of meaning: the least-significant (numeric) bit tells you which side of the street the house is on, and it's often the case that you can deduce the cross street from the house number. Similarly with the others. Just how old are house numbers, anyway? Not the *concept* of numbering houses (which seems to be 18th century), but actual unaltered house numbers? Anyone know? ObFact: the "4711" on bottles of cologne (the real stuff) is a house number in Koeln, as established by the Napoleonic occupiers. -- John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.reutershealth.com I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith. --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_