Build Date: Fri Dec 27 00:40:06 2024 UTC
The first mistake of Art is to assume that it's serious.
-- Lester Bangs
I Never Metadata I Didn't Like
1999-06-17 19:38:19
The Dublin Core sounds like a really cool Irish drum-and-bass group or something. But it's not! It's a crazy ass metadata specification for EVERYTHING on the Web. Crazy!
I dunno what it is, but for some reason everybody's crazy about METADATA this season. It's the crazy buzzword of the year. And the darlings of metadata are the folks who are doing the Dublin Core.
Metadata is, like, data about data. Example: if the data is a photographic JPEG of my ass, the metadata would be who the photographer was, the date the picture was taken, who owns the picture, and maybe some explanation ("Mr. Bad's fine bootie."). You could conceivably use that metadata for searching for pictures of my ass -- and they wouldn't have to be named "Mr_Bads_Ass.jpg" or anything.
How you define metadata is a sticky business. The W3 has this RDF thingy that Netscape thought up, and of course you can add some of this stuff to HTML pages, too. The Dublin Core is pretty agnostic about the medium used to specify the metadata -- they're more interested in defining WHAT you say, not in how you say it.
OK, so, go see the Dublin Core RIGHT NOW. Check it out! And then go add tons of metadata to your Web site! It's like updating your stuff without really HAVING TO! Isn't that cool?
T O P S T O R I E S
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
'Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch'
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
SF Hippies Can't Get Their Act Together
The annual 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park, where large crowds of hippies, wannabe hippies, and hippie poseurs drape themselves in tie dye t-shirts and gather on a hill on 4/20 to smoke weed, was cancelled this year because the organizers couldn't get their act together. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
During a magnificent sunny day in a fast receding autumn, the Spock Science Monitor reporters once again blew the playa dust off of their computers and covered the 2002 Burning Man Decompression – held every year just east of Portola Hill in beautiful San Francisco. Both an afternoon and evening issues were released to the unsuspecting crowd of freaks attempting to in some small way experience the euphoria of the playa – if but for a brief afternoon far from the desolation of Northern Nevada. (More...)
Ratsnatcher gets HOT HOT HOT in this classic road tale that looks at the steamy underworld of Bay Area Linux advocacy. Loosen your collar for this one! (More...)
Canadians Not So Different After All
Nobody wants to be prejudiced. But sometimes you can be biased and not even realize it. I think many Americans are biased in this way against Canadians. I never really stopped to think about it, but I myself used to be this way. I guess I thought that Canadians were "stuck-up" — you know, smarter and better cultured than us. But then I got educated about Canadia. (More...)
Brother Wayne Lays Down the Truth
Flesh interviews Wayne Kramer of MC5. (More...)
Poor Metallica. All they want is to continue to put out the same weak "Heavy Metal" they've been churning out since the "And Justice For All" days? and make gooey wads of cash in the process. The problem is, people aren't buying their bound for the heavy metal scrap heap, over-produced, uninspired, tired crap. And let's face it, their various commercial endorsements won't pay for the lifestyle they've become comfortably accustomed to. Resorting to lawsuits makes perfect sense, when you need spending money. But just one lawsuit isn't going to pay their bills. So, to aid Metallica, I've composed an open letter to the boys in the band, with suggestions as to whom else they might sic their lapdog lawyers on... (More...)
Still Up For the Party? America's Dance Floors Are Graying
Raving over 30 doesn't have to be embarassing anymore. (More...)
