There's a 3-way dialogue going on between Rickard, Ted Neward, and now Bob Lee (Mr. jAdvise). One of the great things about blogs is the chance to do this kind of intellectual refinement out in the open. In the early Usenet days, this actually used to happen in newsgroups, and still happens in select mailing lists. The problem with mailing lists nowadays is that there are still too many people piling on, and you have to know about the list, subscribe, etc. The thing that I like about blogspace is that slowly, overtime, the really good blogs start to reference each other. This particular dialogue reminds me of my days as a CS DBPL grad student.