Computer book lifetimes
Back when I worked at SGI, I co-wrote a book call The VRML 2.0 Handbook with Josie Wernecke. I'm guessing it's one of the few computer books ever to show a river of blood on the front cover, but that's not really relevant to the thought at hand.
The book was published by Addison-Wesley in late 1996, almost eight years ago now. SGI more or less stopped being involved in VRML in 1998. Computer Associates bought most of SGI's VRML-related assets, but it was never clear to me who owned the rights to the book and the associated website. (We wrote the book as work-for-hire, and before anyone gets distressed at that, we made way more money as full-time employees of SGI for the year it took to write the book than we would have if we'd been independent authors getting royalties.) And then CA decided to get out of the VRML business in 1999, and they pulled the plug on the website in 1999 or 2000. Nobody at CA ever replied to any of my queries about the book-related content.
So it's been nearly eight years since the book was published, and about five since the book-related content was taken offline. And I still get queries every month or two from people who are irate that vrml.sgi.com isn't online. (Also, I should note, from people who ask very nicely where to find the examples from the book.)
Computer technology ages fast; cutting-edge stuff from eight years ago is practically prehistorical now. So I'm kinda surprised that people are still buying this book. Not unhappy, mind you, just surprised.
And VRML has since become X3D; people who read the book to get up to speed on 3D on the web will be a little behind the curve.
Nonetheless, I feel I should mention that if anyone is looking for the examples from the book, they can find them in my VRML pages. Just don't tell Computer Associates.
