In article <[log in to unmask]>
Eric Siegel <[log in to unmask]> writes:
>          I am curious about how many people participating here have
>          actually used the Mosaic/Web combo. ...
>
>          That sucker is slllooowwww ...
 
I have a colour SPARCstation 10 workstation with reasonable
connectivity to the Internet.  With hardware of this speed, the
problems you mention are less of a headache. For example, real-time
MPEG moving images (for a portion of the screen anyway) are possible
with such a set-up. I know this is an expensive option at the moment (I
working in computer science research and thus I can raise the cash for
an expensive word processor to write papers :-) but given a few years
everyone will be able to afford hardware of this speed. Ditto for
network connections once the slow and expensive telephone network is
bypassed using high-speed cable TV type connections (watch out telecomm
companies!).  This has already happened for those luckly enough to have
direct Internet connections and will be within the grasp of everybody
(say everybody who can afford a phone connection now) within a decade
or so.
 
So musuems should sit up and take note now, while there is still some
time to plan how to use Internet type facilities to serve the general
public, with the assumption that connection and speed will *not* be a
problem at some point in the medium term future.
 
In the meantime, musuem-l readers may be interested in a list of
on-line musuem information and exhibits already accessible that I have
compiled as part of the World Wide Virtual Library under the following
"URL":
 
  http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/archive/other/museums.html
 
This page already gets several hundred accesses per day and is easily
the most popular WWW page at our site! Comments and pointers to further
URLs on museums are welcome.
 
--
Jonathan Bowen <[log in to unmask]>
Oxford University Computing Laboratory
URL: http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/oucl/people/jonathan.bowen.html