DOWNLOAD
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4.
Possible applications
Possible
applications: multi-user games, on-line education, simulations,
virtual communities, teledirection of robots over the internet...
just about everything from industry to entertainment depending
on your imagination, skills and interests. In example: a software
agent will read your e-mail, newsgroups, favourite web sites,
recognize which messages/articles you are interested in, and discards
those that you do not want to read. Such agents can buy data,
products, and services on your behalf, even anonymously.
5.
Conclusion
VRSpace
is not the one and only asynchronous event distribution &
3d streaming system, AliceBot is the not one and only chatbot,
JBoss is not the one and only application server, NeuroGrid is
not the one and only distributed search engine, JXTA is not the
one and only p2p.
All
software that you need for the cyberspace of your dreams lies
around you, you just have to "pick" it up and make it to work
together. We have chosen open standards and open source, because
we think that real success of cyberspace will depend mainly on
number of users and developers. Open standard is the only guarantee
to user and system integrator that they can choose best implementation,
and open source is the only guarantee that another developer can
take over development.
Number of open-source developers on SourceForge at this moment
reach number of 500.000, and everything they develop, you can
install on many computers as you wish, make as many copies as
you wish and give them to your friends or distribute it with some
computer magazine - freely (not only that it is free, but you
also have the right to distribute it to anyone you want until
you give it for free):
Society
needs information that is truly available to its citizens---for
example, programs that people can read, fix, adapt, and improve,
not just operate. But what software owners typically deliver is
a black box that we can't study or change. Society also needs
freedom. When a program has an owner, the users lose freedom to
control part of their own lives.
And above all society needs to encourage the spirit of voluntary
cooperation in its citizens. When software owners tell us that
helping our neighbours in a natural way is "piracy'', they pollute
our society's civic spirit. This is why we say that free software
is a matter of freedom, not price.
(Why Software Should Not Have Owners by Richard Stallman, Free
Software Foundation, http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/why-free.html)
But
regardless of our estimation, users will make a choice,
and the
main purpose of this paper is to give notice to users and developers
that all the necessary technology already exists.
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