At 18:31 -0400 5/7/1999, Byron C. Mayes wrote:
>At 7:24 PM +1000 7/4/99, Alex Satrapa wrote:
>>Words can't express my shock. Some guy is suing Microsoft because a search
>>on the keyword "monkey" in Microsoft Publisher 98 returns a photo of a man
>>and a woman sitting on monkey bars in a playground. The keywords associated
>>with the photo apparently included "monkey bars, playground equipment".
>>
>>http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/20536.html
>
>You left out one important factoid: the man and woman in the photo
>were Black, and apparently they, and not the monkey bars, are the
>focus of the picture in question ...
So I guess the lesson from this is to make sure your keyword search
mechanism uses only entire phrases between commas. In this example,
keywords included
"... monkey bars, playground equipment..."
So we should only allow a match with complete phrases... such as "monkey
bars" or "playground equipment", rather than "monkey" or "equipment".
Then if you use a pluraliser/stemmer/thesaurus, you'll have to worry about
whether your keywords get equated to something you didn't want them to be.
And you'd better not allow wildcard searches.
Of course, it'd be too perfect to assume that since the list of keywords is
displayed along with the picture, that a person could understand the intent
of the phrase "monkey bars". After all, that would imply that people of the
20th century could think for themselves.
"You really licked his ass!" -- Lenina Huxley, "Demolition Man"
"I have twenty seven cheesecakes in the kitchen cupboard" is apparently a
cute sounding phrase when expressed in one particular dialect of German.
How is an English speaking person supposed to know that such a phrase might
offend someone whose native language is that dialect of German, and has
suffered great emotional trauma from people continually asking her to be
cute in public?
But I digress...
Alex
Alex Satrapa Phone: +61 2 6257 7111
Senior Internet Engineer Fax: +61 2 6257 7311
tSA Consulting Group Pty Limited
1 Hall Street Lyneham ACT 2602 http://www.topic.com.au
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