Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals
Subject: Re: DR bad, VAX PRO good
From: jms@mrsvax.mis.arizona.edu (Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem)
Date: 1 Sep 1992 10:17 MST  
Reply-To: jms@arizona.edu
Distribution: world,local
Organization: University of Arizona MIS Department
Summary: DR not bad, VAX PRO still good
X-Lunar-Date: 2 days, 14 hours, 56 minutes since the new moon
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

Well, as self-interested as I may be on the subject of Digital Review and
Digital News, I think I'll respond to SCHENKENBERG@Monmouth-ETDL1.Army.MIL,
murphy@npri6.npri.com, and others. 

Suggesting that one should refuse to read anything in the same format as
the National Enquirer betrays an astonishing parochialism.  Eliminating
fee-free publications from your reading list will cause you to be
ignorant of the nature of the industry you work in, probably more so than
if you believed every word that Bill Hancock wrote.  You should be able to
distinguish between fact and fantasy, between press release and media hype,
and between correct and incorrect technical information. 

It's obvious that the technical nature of articles in VAX Professional is
wildly different from Digital Review/News.  Nevertheless, the two types of
publications don't pretend to serve the same marketplace and provide the
same information.  VAX Professional is a technical journal, paying
contributors to write technically correct and interesting articles. 
Digital Review (let's just drop News, I suppose) has a completely
non-intersecting set of interests: news of product introductions, Digital
Equipment Corp. news, overview articles, and both software and hardware
reviews.  

Yes, get technical articles from VAX Professional.  You won't find them in
Digital Review.  But Digital Review doesn't claim to replace VAX
Professional.  

As an example, if you were to wait until VAX Professional publishes an
evaluation of the VAXstation 4000 model 90, you might get an
evaluation---maybe---at the beginning of next year.  Otherwise, you're
restricted to whatever Digital told you about the product.  For those of us
who have to know more than what happens after $CMKRNL, getting an
independent evaluation of the performance of the system was valuable
information.  

My conclusion: you must constantly be on the lookout for good information:
this forum, products like DECUServe and CompuServe, VAXcluster Quorum (free
= bad?), Digital Technical Journal, the late DECUS Newsletter, and
whatever you can get your hands on.  If you make no attempt to discriminate
in what you read, but simply latch onto the most reliable source to the
exclusion of all others, your knowledge will be woefully inadequate and
incomplete.

jms

/* Now for the flame part. */

I found it particularly amusing that those who would claim that my own work
is fact-free, useless, and not worth reading, are themselves incapable of
preparing good postings.  Certainly my trust in the abilities of writers
who refuse to capitalize the word "I," cannot spell the word "faineant," do
not know the title of the "National Enquirer," do not have good
adjective/noun number agreement (e.g., "a few reservation about"), fail to 
capitalize proper nouns, misuse commas and conjunctions (e.g., "Albeit, a 
good series") and question marks, and pepper their prose with redundancies
(e.g., "biased or prejudiced toward") to evaluate the merit---technical or
otherwise---of a publication is severely shaken.  

Put simply, gentlemen: if you knew what you were talking about, then you'd
know how wrong you are. 

/* Ahhh, that felt good, even if it was a waste of bandwidth.  But look,
if you insult me in public, you have to expect a public response. */

Joel M Snyder, 1103 E Spring Street, Tucson, AZ, 85719 
Phone: 602.882.4094 (voice) .4095 (FAX) .4093 (data)
BITNET: jms@Arizona  Internet: jms@arizona.edu  SPAN: 47541::telcom::jms
Leona, I want to CONFESS things to you..
 I want to WRAP you in a SCARLET ROBE trimmed with POLYVINYL CHLORIDE..
 I want to EMPTY your ASHTRAYS...
Newsgroups: vmsnet.internals