Hi Kim, 

Last Friday I finally tested Croquet on my notebook. 
Such fun! Even my kids (5 yrs. & 3 yrs. old) kept asking me, "Go in another 
door, please!” 

However, I've been ruminating on this Alan Kay statement in the Croquet site & 
documentation: 

“The existing operating systems are like the castles that were owned by their 
respective Lords in the Middle Ages. They were the centers of power, a way to 
control the population and threaten the competition. Sometimes, a particular 
Lord would become overpowering, and he would get to declare himself as King. 
This was great for the King. And not to bad for the rest of the nobles, but in 
the end - technology progressed and people started blowing holes in the sides 
of the castles. The castles were abandoned. Technology does this.” 

I like the analogy, however, on further thought, let’s extend the analogy to be 
a bit more similar to Open Source technology. What would have happened if a 
cannon that could blow wholes in castles could be had by anyone for the price 
of a loaf of bread? Would the villagers blow their own villages apart over 
petty disputes? 

Likewise, in an online, collaborative environment, hostel minds (idle teens?) 
can cause much damage. In Croquet, parent a black sphere over the head of all 
the avatars. Too easy to diagnose from a 3rd person camera? Parent a very small 
black sphere over just the avatar camera. Too easy to find the sphere in the 
code? How about changing the world’s fog to black with a far distance value of 
0 and transparency value of 0. (I tried that last one.) Now make it like a 
virus by changing all avatars’ code in your current world so that when they go 
in a 
new world, they change all the fog values and that world's avatars there too. 

This parallels the current geopolitical trouble that the real world faces with 
terrorists having weapons of mass destruction. 

How does Viewpoint Research plan to address security for the Croquet villages 
once they start attacking castles? :) 

Cheers, 
Darius