At 2:18 AM 10/22/95, Todd Glassey wrote:

...

As an aside - What blows my mind is the number of cycles people spend bitching and moaning about Java itself rather than working to create a better solution.

My apologies, I should have taken this off-line with Dr. Fred. I did in my response to him as I had some personal commentary to add which would have beebn inappropriate to the list in general. But you are right. These lists are meant for us to exchange important information and technologies, not necessarily commentary as to what a piece of merde" something is. I respect Dr' Fred's commentary and others where there is a "prize" for all of us, but so much of the postings now happening seem to be of little technical value. Again I aploogize to all and to you Dr. Fred for posting my response to your statement to the world...

The recent flames and attacks are pretty typical of mailing lists, especially mailing lists having 1200 highly-opinionated subscribers (gulp!). Not that I like the flames, but they're not the problem I want to really talk about.

A trend that bothers me--and others too, from comments here--is the intense "feeding frenzy" that is going on with each and every new product, from Netscape, to Microsoft Network, to Java, to Digicash.

Don't get me wrong--finding flaws is a useful thing to do. But this list is becoming _consumed_ by the _process_ of attacking products. Worse, many of the attacks are by innuendo, by rumors and speculations about what features a product has.

My comments will likely vanish without a trace, but I urge folks to hold back a bit on jumping in with attacks and reports of problems. Be sure something is _really_ a flaw before sounding the alarms.

--Tim May

Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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