Re: Caching and Common Objects

Mark Waks ([email protected])
Tue, 30 May 95 14:02:34 EDT


Pete makes a proposal for extending the object-orientedness of VRML a
bit; it's a nice, fairly elegant proposal. One comment, though:
>3) A centralized library of common base classes could be maintained
> as a cache in RAM, CD ROM, or third party network site. Definitions
> for classes could be specified in terms of more complex scene graphs,
> which might be supplied by the same or a different server; or as
> platform-dependent rendering code, if the source is trusted.

Call me a cynic, but I think that anything that depends on a
centralized library is just *begging* for trouble. The Net is
inherently a dynamic, almost organic entity, and it's enormously
fluid. The minute you introduce centralization to it, you create
massive counter-pressures. Sometimes it's needed (eg, domain names),
but note that there are all kinds of problems with every attempt to
introduce it (eg, the problems of domain-name-space, which are
worsening every month, and will probably turn into a legal fracas ere
long).

One of the key elements of the keyword proposal is that it
*specifically* does not depend on any sort of centralized entities;
it's designed to work within the functional anarchy of the Net. I'd
like the above proposal a lot more if we could come up with a variant
that isn't dependent on some sort of central authority. (And I suspect
we could do so if we tried...)

-- Justin

Random Quote du Jour:

On New Agers:
"They lack bad attitude, and can be easily herded (quick, tell your
friends that drinking monks' urine is an old Tibetan miracle cure
rejected by the A.M.A.)."
-- Michael Turyn