Re: Beyond The Beyond
James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Wed, 11 Dec 1996 18:32:07 -0800
At 04:41 PM 12/11/96 -0800, you wrote:
>>1) Without any type of server-side software, there will be strict limits on
>>the range and complexity of dynamic content. About the most you could do
>>with the Java applets would amount to eye candy. For the really ambitious,
>>it would be possible to get around this via cleverly designed CGIs and Java,
>>but the performance would be poor and significantly limited in scope.
>
>Have each room be a server where any person who enters the room will
>communicate with a java applet exactly the same as java chat applets work
>today. Besides you only need to know data specific to what avatars are in
>your field of vision. We could use IRC as well but then we'd have to deal
>with the problem of netsplits. Any way you put it, we want as much
>unlimited uninhibited creation by anyone. This has the potential to bring
>about a new phase of the internet's growth. The net went through a
>militarized age, a scientific age, and now possibly a transhumanist age
>which will spread memes even further and incorporate the ideas into all
>aspects of life as the internet grows to be the unified universal medium as
>important as electricity, air and water.
As I have stated repeatedly, the underlying architecture won't place any
real limits on the worlds people design. But networks and computers are
finite devices with precise organizations. There is nothing "unlimited" or
"uninhibited" about them. This cannot be ignored. The more robust the
underlying architecture, the greater the level of freedom and options you'll
actually have as a world designer.
You have been giving me vague rhetorics which don't really deal with the
actual issues and it is fairly apparent from your posts that you don't
really understand the technology in the detail required to design a
large-scale system of this type.
>>As mentioned above, inter-client communication *requires* server-side
>software.
>
>Great, so let everyone be a server.
Ummm... Few ISPs will let their users run server processes on their servers.
So unless you plan to be online all day...
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com