> Okay, problem one: the word "register". The minute you introduce a
> concept of needing to "register" your stuff somewhere, you instantly
> introduce bureaucracy and hassles. I mean, think about the existing
> technologies on the Net. Do you want your model to be Usenet, or the
> Web? A large part of how the Web has grown so explosively is that you
I think a better analogy is to compare it to InterNIC registration. It's a pain
to register a domain name these days (I'm involved in doing it right now, it
takes 2-6 weeks currently and I'm sure it'll get worse the way the 'Net is
groing).
> don't have to register a damned thing, beyond getting onto the Net --
> just put the stuff up, and it's there. I am absotively, posilutely
> certain that *any* kind of registration will slow the growth of
> Cyberspace by an order of magnitude, because the vast majority of
> people just won't bother.
Maybe it will, but maybe that's for the best in the long run. I love the web
but I have to admit it's just a wee bit tangled. :) If you want to keep a
shared 3D universe orderly enough to make it useful, you really need some type
of control. It doesn't have to be central; it could be regionalized to make the
governing bodies smaller and (hopefully) more efficient.
> (This is a point of concern I have over the Cyberspace Protocol; I
> don't understand how it can work without a central authority. But
CP doesn't arbitrate who gets a chunk of cyberspace; it just makes sure that no
two objects occupy the same space at once and that everybody agrees on who is
in a particular place at a particular time.
What many people don't realize is that with the HUGE virtual volume CP provides
there really won't be a need to fight over who gets to be where. All points are
accessible as quickly as any other in cyberspace...there's no benefits to being
conventiently next to the freeway or anything like that. :) This is especiallly
true if we allow spaces to be bigger on the inside than on the outside (which I
think we should) becaue you could pack a dozen Wal-Mart size virtual stores
into the space of a virtual street corner. Only the door need be visible from
the street, the rest can be a seperate space with its own (very large) system
of local coordinates.
> Hmm. Do people think that this is an interesting topic? If so, where
> do you think it belongs? I think it's premature, but only a tiny bit
> so -- I *do* plan on trying to get this technology (or something else
> capable of making Cyberspace properly contiguous and flexible) in VRML
> 2.0...
I think it's completely independant of VRML; you just need something like CP
to make it work. The world descriptiosn carried by CP could be VRML or something
else entirely.
At this point I'd like to invite anyone else interested in this facet of
cyberspace (CP and other such issues) to drop me a line at [email protected]. I'd
like to start a small private group to study this and maybe even try a few
ideas out to see what happens.
--
[email protected] But master...does not the fire need water too?
http://www.msen.com/~invid ...does not the mountain need the storm?
...does not your scrotum need kicking?
- Beavis