Reducing the Flames, Attacks, and Nit-Pickings

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

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.


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.
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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