And don't forget SPAM, the #1 reason I abandoned USENET.  Even with the
webcrawling spammers I get no where near as much SPAM as I did when I was
a USENET regular.

(Plus there are the various USENET vandals continually messing up newsgroups..
but that's a subject for the net-abuse newsgroup. :)

On Thu, Jul 04, 2002 at 11:32:10AM -0700, Jim Benson wrote:
[snip]
> 
> I am strongly against this, because of what I've seen on the
> comp.lang.smalltalk newsgroup. The main volume of discussion is not about
> Smalltalk (which one would think is the natural venue), but rather fighting
> against various Java list trolls. While fighting trolls is all good fun in
> the Lord of the Rings, I don't want to waste my Squeak time doing this. I'm
> always amazed at the quality of people and discussions on this list. I'll
> admit it, I'm a little piggy who likes that the bar is pretty high for the
> discussions that go on around here.
> 
> Jim
> 
> PS: This inflamatory remark started this thread on the newsgroup:
> 
> [The new Strongtalk binary looks promising.
> 
> With Squeak and Smallscript now moribund, perhaps this will be the new
> front for action !]
> 
> If you're a member of this list, you know about Squeak. Smallscript hasn't
> even been released yet !
> 
> For those of you who haven't seen the newsgroup, I'll save you the trouble.
> Basically, about 20% of the postings ask interesting questions, things like
> "how do I get around this particular problem in [some dialect of]
> Smalltalk". Also, the Smalltalk vendors tell you what they're up to.
> 
> The vast majority of postings are troll fighting. The wars usually start
> with:
> 
> Is Smalltalk dead?
> 
> Some question about a Smalltalk language element such as blocks or { .. }
> 
> which degrades into a fight with trolls and clubs:
> 
> Java is better than Smalltalk.
> Smalltalk vs. C vs. Java benchmarks for numerics
> Java is a better object oriented language than Smalltalk
> 
> [The numerics benchmarks are hilarious, the Java trolls and Smalltalk elves
> argue who has a better implementation with all sorts of tables and charts.
> The obvious answer is that C is the best, if speed is the criteria of the
> benchmark].
> 
> People who know better argue these things for days. Makes me wonder when
> they actually have time to write code.
> 
> 
> 
>