Following is a copy of my followup comment to Mark.  It has a strain of thought that matters to blogging.

"First of all, I like Mark. Much of what he does and how he does it is agreeable to me. He has a streak of commonsense that cuts through many complex problems. This is why I got upset. I wouldn’t blink an eye if some stranger I don’t care about behaved badly.

Second, we all have our dark thoughts at times, particularly when someone cuts you off on a freeway. But making these dark thoughts public carelessly is irresponsible. If weblogs give voice to the people, that voice comes with some responsibilities. Dark thoughts should stay in the dark and not be flaunted openedly. Otherwise, we’ll soon have rednecks talking openly in a bar about 101 ways to kill chinks, spicks, and niggers.

Mark aired his dark thoughts and no one complained. Read the comments and you’ll see snickers in agreement with Mark. This is what pushed my button. We are responsible for what we say and what we say affects those who hear us.

Lastly, I want to say this to Mark. Think of this incident like a little swirve while driving. Straighten out the wheel and look forward to where you are going. Cheer up, Mark."

Sorry about my negative comments on Social Software and Emergent Democracy and four-letter words.  When blood boils in my vein, I tend to go over the line.   Also, feel free to blast me if I mess up and say the wrong things.  If I can give it, I can take it.  Not only can I take it, I'll thank you for it.

I visit Elliotte Rusty Harold's excellent Cafe con Leche Java and XML pages every other day to find the latest news on Java and XML.  From his XML page, I found svgl, a library that displays SVG pictures using OpenGL, taking advantage of the GPU.  At svgl site, I also found Smoke, a similar library that uses OpenGL to render SVG.  Both uses FreeType 2 for text rendering.  Frankly, I feel that SVG lost much of its initial momentum, thanks to lack of leadership from companies like Adobe, Macromedia, and Microsoft.

If you find Bayesian filters useful, here are two interesting open source packages I found, thanks to Stuart Langridge.

Reverend is a general Bayesian classifier written in Python.  If you are tired of hacking SpamBayes, you might want to give Reverend a try.

Orange is a component-based data mining software with a nice bayesian library inside it.  It is implemented in C++, but comes with Python binding and something called Orange Widgets.