Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chair Specification 1
:
Designed specifically to be sat upon,
Stands on its own
Has four legs
Has a back
Sitter's Feet touches floor
Chair Specification 2
:
Designed specifically to be sat upon
Stands on its own
Has four legs
Has a back
Chair Specification 3
:
Designed specifically to be sat upon
Stands on its own
Chair Specification 4
:
Designed specifically to be sat upon
Chair Specification 5
:
Designed to be sat upon
Chair Specification 6
:
A Chai r
Jean-Francois Dupris
Fig. 9.3
An attempt at identifying a chair
9.3
Examples of Irrational Sets
We are thus in a position where most things are not potentially unambiguously
describable. The following examples are drawn from the press where the limitations
of rules and the indeterminacy of irrational sets have some devastating effects.
9.3.1
The Problem of Rules
9.3.1.1
Offensive Words
From a report by David Hewson, Sunday Times, April 4 2004.
Can't an intelligent filter analyse a page beforehand and make a machine judgement on its
suitability? There are stacks of those around, too, and pretty worthless they are. Peacefire
(www.peacefire.org), a web group opposed to online censorship, carried out an interesting
experiment recently. It created dummy pages supposedly run by small sites; each carry-
ing examples of anti-gay hate speech. Posing as individuals, the organisation complained
about these pages to the big content-filtering programs, including SurfWatch, NetNanny and
CyberPatrol.
