This is a little offtopic, but
>Java normally is restricted to a language
>which is compiled to an interpretted virtual
>machine, with JIT compilers available, where
>the tao product is language independant, using
>regular compilers like GNU C, whos virtual
>machine code is translated at program load
>time (similar to a JIT compiler)
I don't think that's a valid criticism of java? A JVM executes byte code, which is translated from java either on the fly by a JIT, or once by a compiler.
You can compile other languages into JVM bytecode if you write the compiler... eg rexx