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The J.R.R. Tolkien of the Web

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the shelob-is-jealous dept.

rhwalker22 writes "In a column titled "Lord of the Webs," The Washington Post's Leslie Walker looks at Tim Berners-Lee ("the J.R.R. Tolkien of the computer world") and the Semantic Web project. Berners-Lee was in Washington recently to tout the project: 'In his futuristic scenario, the Semantic Web offers controlled access to American health care data, plus databases charting the location and status of rivers, underground water, forests and local vegetation, along with economic data on local industries and what they produce -- all marked up in special vocabularies. Those allow scientists to run global queries across the Web, fishing randomly for correlations that might exist between where the sick people lived, worked and played -- such as a polluted stream or industrial dump.'" See an older article on the Semantic Web.

6 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Uh...And this has to do with Tolkien how? by Bowie+J.+Poag · · Score: 5, Funny



    Semantic Web = Bored Of The Rings.

    --
    Bowie J. Poag

  2. Total Information Awareness for tree-huggers by use_compress · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...fishing randomly for correlations that might exist between where the sick people lived, worked and played -- such as a polluted stream or industrial dump

    Total Information Awareness for tree-huggers.

  3. My quest is over by mao+che+minh · · Score: 1, Funny
    After years of searching the globe and my soul, I have finally found the one thing that I give the least of a shit about.

    Thank you interweb founder, and whatever this Semantic thing is.

  4. Re:The article submitter and article author... by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... both have "walker" as a last name. I suspect someone's shilling for their
    wife/husband/brother/sister

    Let's listen in on a phonecall, occuring between two points in the Beltway area, right about now...

    RH Walker: "Hi, honey! I submitted an article to SlashDot about your Berners-Lee Tolkien thingy, and that sweet michael was nice enough to post it. You'll be real famous now!"
    Leslie Walker: "You... what?"
    RH Walker: "SlashDot, you know that 'News for Nerds, Stuff that...'"
    Leslie Walker: "I KNOW WHAT SLASHDOT IS, YOU CLOD!"
    RH Walker: "But, darling, why are you so upset?"
    Leslie Walker: "Because now the newspaper's webserver is jammed by a bunch of smelly Hobbit fanatics who are probably ripping me a new one about my rather sketchy Tolkien analogies, and anyone who might actually buy into my trendy metaphors unquestioningly CAN'T READ THE ARTICLE!!"
    RH Walker:"...oops..."

  5. Louis Lamour by BryanL · · Score: 2, Funny

    Slashdot must be the Louis Lamour of the web because some of the stories sound vaguely like other stories posted.

  6. Re:The article submitter and article author... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Shouldn't she have said, "I KNOW WHAT SLASHDOT IS, YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!"

    the lameness filter sucks.