On Mon, 27 Nov 1995, Sandy Ressler wrote:
> Gee..I guess the Republicans are succeding in the demonization of all
> aspects of the government. You might want to remember that it was
> government funding (via an NSF grant) to NCSA that made Mosaic and
> Silicon Graphics (via an ARPA grant) possible. I am the last one to
> defend the nonsense that goes on so I won't but I have to say don't
> assume that the government is one big monolithic incompetent entity.
> There are good and bad people just like any large organization....back
> to the topic at hand...
The fact is that the government has proven that it is unable to
efficiently do anything. Grants are useful, because then someone else is
doing the action, with the money from the government, but if you look at
everything the government runs (controls) inefficiency is the main rule
(not the exception).
VRML is new, and will take time to iron out, but part of the difficulty
is trying to push the technology envelope at the same time, as it would
be nice if the machines could quickly render the worlds, so a fine line
must be walked as to what must be incorporated now, and the best people
that can do this is the developers (programmers) and the designers, and
the users should be in there to let us know what they want, mainly.
This way may be slow, but by having so many people involved and
testing, we find out problems (on different platforms) then argue
(discuss?) the difficulty to resolve it. It may be somewhat slow, but it
should work, as everyone can express their opinion if they choose, and we
don't have a small group making the decisions, though the actual
specification is done that way, and that is fine, but they still learn
what we want (I think).
I am new here, and am preparing to start on a VRML browser that I can
modify (to reflect new ideas) so I am on the outside right now, but these
are my observations.
If NIST wanted to make some suggestions, as an equal then that would be
fine, as everyone can suggest, but we are all equal here; we make
suggestions not orders.
This is long enough so take care and have fun.
==========================================================================
James Black (Comp Sci/Comp Eng sophomore)
e-mail: black@eng.usf.edu
http://www.eng.usf.edu/~black/index.html
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