Capn asks Oak...
Did anyone reply to your question?
Oak replies...
OK, yes. Help replied and said "Cool, let me know." I have yet to determine if that means yes I can use CGI and he wanted to see something or if he just skipped over that part and was speaking about the VRML towards the end.
The point is this. What if we created a search engine for movie related sites. How about cool graphics stuff like random background generators, on line games, and graphics that wipe on and of, zoom in and out, and fade in and out. What if I could create a ping program that could give an estimated time for a file to download determined by file size divided by ping time to a modem. (Yes it can be done, a friend of mine and I figured it all out.) How about counters to tell how many people hit the site. Counters that will take the request meta info and tell us what kinds of browsers are the most popular hits on the site so we can write the pages better.
Editor's Note: Define better please?
I spent the last two weeks in intensive study. I learned what the actual HTML standards are,(the commands and how to write with them, there is now an OAK browser that I wrote and will never have the balls to sell), Java (full, you know, as in C programming for the internet), CGI (in other words I learned C, Perl, and Fortran), and am working on Net theory right now. (Yes, it does exist.) It is cool, and you can do a lot of really cool stuff, but there are a few problems.
For instance I looked into the Java problem. (you know, the security problems that you talked about.) As it turns out, it is no more dangerous than CGI is. Actually, it is far less. The second biggest problem with Java at the moment is that it appears in the HTML code which you can change with the Post command (HTTP) unless you leave it disabled (the default).
CGI is just as bad (it has a directory in the tree like everything else), and it widely accepted and used on the net. The third biggest problem with Java is that it can write things to your hard drive automatically. On most browsers this is accomplished by placing said files in the clients cache directory, which is automatically deleted every so often automatically anyway. Java is very widely used on the internet, and since browsers that support Java contain a "turn off Java" option, anyone who doesn't want to see it won't unless they are idiots.
The point to all this involves the biggest problem with Java. Somebody tried to say that it was "safe." Nothing on the internet is safe. Java is "safe" as long as it is used correctly. It is intended as is everything else on the net, for intelligent programmers to do new, good, and interesting things. It is simple and easy to use, and the benefits are worth the efforts. Either way, as I said, anyone who doesn't want to see it, in their browser, has the option to turn it off. (What about people who don't know how to do that? They should read the owners manual.) At any rate, The problems are this, CGI will cause the exact "same" problems, (and most of the same effects) as Java. However, I think it would be better to be educated and benefit from these things rather than to fear them. If we want to be on the cutting edge, we need to start to do it soon. Adding in the new technologies (CGI, JAVA, Inline video and sound, VRML) will make us look impressive, the goal as a "multimedia group". (By the way, everything I write as of the fall will be in HTML 2.0 or 3.0 standard.)
Let me know what you think. It the mean time, I am trying to save Villanova's web site.
Capn, Hope you had a good time in Florida. The .avi files, labclip.avi & fire.avi don't seem to work. The machine tells me I do not have the required compressor? Maybe they're VRML or something. If you all are just going to support PC's and forget the rest of the world then I guess I'm on the out.
Capn makes an attempt at comforting...
We'll get some .mov, .mpg, and .flc files up in the near future.
Willie continues...
I've contacted Wally about the home page and sent him a page I had started on America Online, but have not yet seen anything on membrane.
Capn makes another attempt at comforting...
I know he was looking and working on moving it to the membrane.
Willie continues...
People would like access to some of my clips, but they can't seem to be able to ftp them out of my directory membrane/home/willie/movies, This may be a password problem which would be fixed with the home page.
Willie continues...
Did you ever get the brain clip?
Capn says...
I never got the brain, did you mail it or ftp it??