Re: Whoah Len, hold on there (Re: Kate Pages or...

[Len Bullard <cbullard@HiWAAY.net>]

As much fun as a flame war can be,
this one will get out of hand, so,
I want to clarify my own thoughts here.

Vickie writes:

>You've associated Stev0 and Chris with
>Gaffaweb (why, I don't know, since you
>have absolutely no idea who's actually
>working on it) and made their opinions
>Gaffaweb's opinions. 

The association is an error and I have
apologized for that.  It is doubly egregious 
because I actually do have a list of 
who is working on Gaffaweb.  It was posted 
to me some time back.  I didn't look at it
as I was writing in the AM after my gig,
so I screwed up.  My assumption of an 
association between you and Chris seems 
a natural one but it has nothing to do 
with Gaffaweb.  It was just to say that 
there are alternatives to bashing one 
of which is to ask for a change in 
exchange for a link.

>Continue on with your religious web war,
>but kindly leave Gaffaweb *out of it*.

Yes, I will, but this war was started 
with the bashing of Burkhard's page when 
I seconded the original poster's comment 
that it was a nice page.  It is.  The same
occurred when Jon's page was bashed in this
forum.  I react forcefully against this, and 
I always will.  It is bullying.

The rest of this is not a response to Vickie.
The "you" is plural, not aimed at individuals 
unless cited.

Now how would Gaffaweb get the same reaction 
from me.  I'm not claiming you are doing
any of this, because, I haven't seen the
site yet.  This is conjecture:

1.  Segregation of web pages for utility.
That's not good netiquette.  All pages were created 
by their authors for different purposes and 
with different skills.  You don't know what 
these are in all cases.  Classify but look 
at the classification and ask yourself if it 
is accurate or reflects only some feeling 
of your self-importance with regards to the 
subject matter, i.e, Kate Bush and her fans 
or the future of HTML.

Some pages serve multiple purposes.  There 
are compromises as a result.  I use mine
to honor Kate and entertain surfers, but 
also to demonstrate to new authors in the 
VRML community how to use our tools to achieve 
certain tasks.  These are also related to 
other professional work I do for my customers.

2.  Inclusion in Gaffaweb of a rating system 
similar to those posted by Steve Berlin.  Stev0
has his own tastes and he is welcome to them.
He is also welcome to post them.  I will argue
with some of them, and agree with others.
I don't believe our opinions should be reflected in 
sites dedicated to Kate Bush or the faq, but 
the authors of those sites must decide that.

3.  Actively working to stop the development 
of the Internet tools and content without adequate 
background in these issues.  This is an area where 
some of you are not qualified to judge, and in fact,
are doing harm to your own cause.  

An example, Chris says he is working for open information 
and he cites conformance to HTML and states that
VRML is a solution looking for a problem:

a.  The format-driven design of HTML makes
it good for packaging structureless data among 
heterogeneous machines.  It is the worst possible
design for indexing and intelligent reuse because 
structure is used in SGML to denote relationships 
among other things.  Those who wish to make their 
information more useful have to consider that 
domain-specificity increases reuse by enabling 
validatible relationships to be created, discovered, 
and also distributed.  To concurrently 
support wide distribution of complex content, SGML 
on the Web is vital effort.  For simpler information 
types without lifecycle issues, HTML is an excellent
tool.  Downtranslation to HTML destroys information.
You can read Tim Berners-Lee's and Dan Connoly's
comments on this at the W3C site.

b.  VRML was created in part to provide an intuitive 
navigation interface and to enable synthesis of 
complex information into a digestible visualization.
Those of us who are working very hard to openly 
demonstrate it and teach it believe it to be 
a powerful mode for this.  IOW, it is designed 
to enhance access to information.  That I use it 
for Kate Bush visualization reflects only my 
own tastes, volitions and skills.

Chris's positions place him squarely against those
who are trying to achieve what he states is his
goal.  Furthermore, all information is not open,
never has been and will never be.  Access to information 
is not guaranteed and it is preposterous to 
think it will be.  It can be made more widely 
available and that is a worthy goal.  But 
information is a commodity and those who wish to 
have it will pay a price.  DARPA paid for Mosaic 
and the Internet.

If you want to have impact on these issues, subscribe 
to comp-text-sgml or the www-vrml@wired.com.  
Understand that all the members of the
SGML and HTML community gather on CTS, and this 
list, while helpful, is also quite technical.
The same is true of www-vrml.

4.  Bashing a newbie for honest effort because
your own tastes or resources aren't satisfied.

IMO, this thread is relevant to fans of Kate Bush,
particularly those of us in America where one 
reason cited for her lack of popularity is her 
obsessive experimentation and use of non-commercial 
genres and textures.  The web is built on 
experimentation as well.  Those who do this cannot 
dedicate all their efforts to maintaining backward
compatibility at this time.  Just as Kate has to 
ignore mainstream commercialism to continue her 
exploration and expression in music and video, so 
web authors who wish to master the new and 
increasingly complex but powerful web technologies
must ignore the low-end systems which are not
capable of implementing these.

Yes, we are subject to relentless criticism for
this.  It is ignored not as an act 
of snobbery, but to continue to develop our crafts 
which cannot be anchored to the wishes of the 
minority of WWW users just as Kate does not
anchor her music to the majority of the tastes 
of the listening public, or even her fans.

Len Bullard