Re: C 3-D

[P3D John W Roberts <roberts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Date: Sun, 28 Sep 1997 12:30:31 -0500
>From: P3D Bob Aldridge <bob.aldridge@xxxxxx>
>Subject: C 3-D

>->...considerably from viewing the images. If this disc is just a mirror
>->site for (for example) 20 web sites, and the reader has to go down
>->into the heirarchical structure of each one, and each one is
>->different, that takes away most of the benefit of having all the
>->images in one place. For the stated predicted price, I'd much rather
>->have 25-100 nice images, well organized in multiple formats, than
>->100-400 "straight run" in a chaotic jumble. 

>But surely you're missing the point? 

>The CD is designed to preserve a "snapshot" of the wisdom on the
>Internet at a particular time. 

I can see some benefit to that. Perhaps what I see as the breakthrough
brilliantly conceived disc is something to come *after* Dan's disc.

>Only a small part of that wisdom will be
>in the form of images.

So the actual images are just sort of an afterthought? :-)
Is it going to include all the P3D archives?

>I see the biggest values in this CD as twofold:

>1. I can get a preview of what people are doing, discover what has been 
>  achieved e.g. with joining mono cameras. If someone has successfully  
> joined two cameras in the past, then I can probably do it in the   
>future.

But you can learn most of that by subscribing to P3D for a month or two.

>   I will also, hopefully, have an e-mail route to contact the author   
>directly. (I say "hopefully" because these addresses will inevitably   
>go out of date in time.)

But that also means those web site owners will be contacted for years
about out-of date stuff, without a chance to correct it. If this is
one of the main goals of the disc, won't they think twice before signing up?

>2. People who don't have web browsing capabilities would be able to view
>   the CD and get sight of all the information. In the UK Internet   
>connections are much less common than in the USA. As an example, only   
>three of the eleven members of the Stereoscopic Society Committee   
>have internet connections.

So those of us who are interested in 3D, and don't have web access,
but *do* just happen to have web browsers installed on our machines
even though we don't have web access, could benefit from these sites?
But if they're organized by image content, you can access them using a
simple image viewer program, which I would consider much more likely to
be present than a web browser program on a computer that doesn't have 
web access.

>If you want a compilation of images, then that is a totally different
>animal. If you want that, then get the CD, contact the site owners
>directly and request the images that you like in a form that you like.
>When you've amassed a suitable collection of your favourite images, just
>archive them onto your own CD. By the time you've collected them CD
>writers will be standard issue in all new PCs...

Why would it take so much longer to get permission to use (for instance)
2-10 images from a person's Web site (with proper credit), than to get
permission to use their entire web site, complete with possible errors
that will then be cast in stone?

John R


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