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Three items in the SF Chronicle caught my attention. - "Supreme Court strikes down ban on virtual child pornography". Interesting because this appears to be the first time in his career on the high court that Judge Clarence Thomas has disagreed with Antonin Scalia. (Note: an earlier version of this post labelled Thomas and Scalia with uncalled-for epithets. But, well, I just can't stand those two. They've done everything they can to eviscerate sensible readings of the constitution. Anyway.) - "Welfare reforms not ending poverty". Headline says it all. Stuff like this that makes me think Bill Clinton did sell the Democratic party up a river. Maybe I will continue to vote Green. - "Tech visionaries push the Semantic Web: Concept is increased automation capacity". I love proclamations like "As a result, programs could automatically do many tasks people now handle. For example, with a few simple commands, someone interested in attending an out-of-town business convention could direct his or her computer to schedule the trip, book plane tickets, generate a map from the airport to the convention center and reserve a hotel room within a set price range." Yes, and any day now, computers will be speaking to us in natural language. They've been telling me so for 40 years!
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COMMENT #1
here's the deal: white people don't get to call black people they don't respect "uncle". it's hurtful and extremely disrespectful, if not downright racist. we don't get to use the n-word, either, that's just the way it is. unfair? cry me a river. call judge thomas a toady, an underling, a minion, an automaton, or a tool of the man. call him lily-livered, weak, simple-minded, or even a puppet. whatever. but leave historically demeaning terms out of it. it's not clever, peter. it's offensive.
Posted by rebecca blood @ 04/16/2002 10:57 AM PST [link to this comment]
COMMENT #2
i know, and i've edited it out. i wrote this this morning quickly, and in a fit of unthinking. i simply can't stand that man, though. nor scalia.
Posted by peterme @ 04/16/2002 12:18 PM PST [link to this comment]
COMMENT #3
Attended the semantic web thing here at Stanford after sitting through 2 days of search engine meetings. Fairly basic stuff if you already are familiar with protocols/standards that W3C is involved with...and watching MS or IBM shove web services down all companies' throats. The presentation and discussion were lively, but nothing new came out of it. The venue was definitely sharing "not so new ideas" to VCs to start thinking of new concepts to invest in. Bottomline for the VCs was "how can I make money off this?" That's a challenging question and one answer from Ramana Rao(Inxight) is what are the business processes that can benefit from having something like the semantic web in place...and then work from there... MIT/Stanford Vlab presents next month...blue tooth and similar technologies...now that's going to be interesting...
Posted by Madonnalisa @ 04/17/2002 09:34 AM PST [link to this comment]
COMMENT #4
I missed you original posting, Pal, so I don't know what the brouhaha is all about, but I do know that rebecca blood's comment is repressive, reactionary, disregarding and disrepectful of the legitimate range of human expression and in total contradiction of our First Amendment. The proof of my condemation is in her qualification that "white people" are not allowed to say something that persons of other color are, according to her, free to express. Give me a fucking break and deliver me from all cunts--of either or any sex--who try to impose their pernicious repression on any human emotion that does not conform to their own mealy-mouthed pseudo humanism.
Posted by BJMe @ 04/20/2002 10:23 PM PST [link to this comment]
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