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An additional problem here is differing languages. For example, "Cazzo" can be a person's name, or a word for a certain part of the male anatomy in Italian. Who knows if it means anything in an Asian or African language? I guess it could be possible to solve this with the LANG attribute, although this would mean the language of the metadata. For catalogers, the lessen is: It's a new world. People actually care about the records we make. In fact, they care so much, they'll even go to the time and expense of suing us. This allows for previously unheard-of complications and pitfalls, but there are just as many opportunities. Jim Weinheimer Princeton University [log in to unmask] Alex Satrapa wrote: > > 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 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%