by Leonard Richardson, roving reporter

BE DOPE NEWS (BDN) Tim Self, Be's vice-president of product marketing, ceased to exist today in a freak accident involving the BeOS port of Squeak, a popular Smalltalk variant.

Be programmer Dave Bort was experimenting with Squeak destructors. In an attempt to trigger the Squeak system's garbage collection, he wrote a class which included in the destructor the assignment "self := nil". When execution reached this point, Tim Self suddenly vanished from this plane of existance. This caused quite a stir, as he had been attending a meeting at the time.

"There were a few moments after Tim had been deallocated, during which he was still resident in memory, but it wasn't long before the process exited and the memory he once inhabited was reclaimed by the system," said Bort, brushing a tear from his eye.

No charges have been pressed against Bort, who joins the rest of Be in extending condolances to Self's family and friends.

"Tim will be missed, for he was one of us," said Be Inc. CEO Jean-Louis Gassée in a prepared statement. "In fact, he was each one of us, depending on context and scope."

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