[thelist] More Smart Tags

[Joe Crawford]

Martin wrote:
> Joe Crawford wrote on 25/6/01 8:54 pm
> 
> >aardvark wrote:
> >> i'm just surprised more people don't talk about pornolizer or even
> >> some channel features from NN...
> >
> >amen aardvark. so much MS bashing, but no mentions of the
> >elmer-fuddalizer, or of babelfish's ability to translate a site, or
> >indeed, pornalizer, or even most browsers ability to specify a
> >stylesheet that overrides the design as specified by the server.
> 
> None of those apply to sites at their normal URLs - all are
> reasonably obvious as interpolations. Now if you spent your
> entire time viewing through the Google xx-bork option,
> or a *****third party***** (how often do I need to emphasise
> that before people take note of it?) imposed their stylesheet
> on your viewing of a site, and all this happened so that you
> couldn't tell whether it was part of the site owner's expression,
> then this would be a valid argument.

Well, it's browser bundling of those kind of features, but what the
heck? I think it would be quite useful, for example, to have a British
usage / usage glossary while browsing on UK news sites, for example.

I hear you Martin, and clearly, if MS defines the entire universe of
smart tagging it's a bad thing. But I can easily see benign and even
useful uses for smart tags. :-\

Check this out: http://www.w3.org/2001/Annotea/

The smart tag controversy has been *raging* for weeks now, and I still
cannot see the big deal - and keep in mind I *do* believe that given the
chance Microsoft would enslave us all and connect us to those pods from
the Matrix, they have a great deal of control over computing, are
monopolstic fucks, and I despise them for locking millions into their
(mostly) mediocre products. But I don't see why smart tags as an issue
is the battle everyone is raging over.

I'm not even disagreeing that much (that I can tell) - but I think the
ire is out of balance with the problem. There may be things I'm missing
though. :-\

	- Joe <http://artlung.com/>