Hi guys.

Bert, it didn't sound to me like Justin was attacking John, just
ranting. Which, as you say, is very close to the "noise" side of the
scale, but not really malevolent.

Justin, if your ISP doesn't give you service, switch. Even if you don't,
stop using their email address - get a forwarding account elsewhere.
That way you're not advertising them, and you're not tying yourself to
them by giving people your address there. This way you can switch later
on.

Refering back to the ([OT]) topic, by way of conjecture -
I don't think MS views Smalltalk anything like the way they view Java.
Java is a large competitor platform, that's pretty consolidated around
industry standards they're excluded from controlling. Smalltalk is a
bunch of small, independent players of different kinds, none religiously
adherent to any specific competing strategy. Smalltalk has always
adapted - by encapsulating (Squeak, VW) or by tying in (Digitalk,
Smallscript). MS loves (to have - no sentiments implied) adapters.
Smallscript is a showcase for how a Smalltalk adaptation helps MS - by
using the .Net class library, Smallscript is yet another way to for
people to tie themselves into MS control.

What Sarkela refers to is something that is pretty control-neutral, and
otherwise positive - MS is making it's VMs pretty language agnostic.
Yes, Smalltalk will feel at home on that VM, and so does Mercury, a
Logic/Functional language, and quite a bunch of other research platforms
that MS has paid to port to it, and which appear to have affected the VM
spec.

This might make it more likely people will be using applications written
in something other than a syntactic variant of Java/C#, which is good.

I say control neutral becuase that ties in only whoever does the
adaptations over their VM, not the users of the language.  Maybe
weak-control would be better. 

Daniel
P.S. - not that I would ever bring such a trojan horse into my home, of
course, but it's good to be aware how exactly they're tightening their
vice on most of the industry.

Bert Freudenberg <bert at isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> wrote:
> On Wed, 31 Oct 2001, Justin Walsh wrote:
> 
> > Hi Sarkela,
> > No offence but, [...]
> 
> Justin,
> 
> that was pretty rude. You're on this list for a very short time, you don't
> know who John Sarkela is, so why do you attack him in such a way?
> 
> I don't think this list is the place for such unfounded rants (which have
> even less to do with Squeak or Smalltalk than the philosophical quarreling
> flooding in here lately).
> 
> -- Bert
> 
> PS: No, I'm no MS advocate, I think they're evil, too. But it's way better
>     to do something about it: I for my part try to help Squeak run on a
>     Free OS. There's a lot to do, still - you just might want to join us.