Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!cme!libes
From: libes@cme.nbs.gov (Don Libes)
Newsgroups: comp.org.usenix
Subject: Re: Re^2: First impressions
Message-ID: <1368@muffin.cme.nbs.gov>
Date: 15 Jul 89 19:51:51 GMT
References: <444@warlock.UUCP> <11753@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> <33151@apple.Apple.COM> <2165@itivax.iti.org>
Reply-To: libes@cme.nbs.gov (Don Libes)
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology
Lines: 37

In article <2165@itivax.iti.org> scs@itivax.iti.org (Steve C. Simmons) writes:
>chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
>>So I'm
>>sure some folks are doing lots of interesting things they'd love to talk
>>about but the lawyers won't let them -- or by the time they do get approval,
>>it isn't interesting any more. 

>Ugh!  You hit that nail on the head.  

>Any senior management types that are reading this newgroup:
>you *can* write papers without giving away the store.  And the favorable
>publicity you get at USENIX is worth its weight in gold.  Look at Marc
>Rochkind and his stuff.

I appreciate your feelings about how difficult it is to get technical
papers out about commercial products.  However, it should be noted
that this year's program committee had a heated discussion about
rejecting Marc's paper because it was "too commercial" and parts of it
sounded like an advertisement.  Fortunately, its technical merits
exceeded its problems and the committee accepted it.

Had there been more outstanding papers, the committee might have
stopped searching for its technical merits sooner.

One more thing for potential authors to remember.

Incidentally, this illustrates another problem that can show up when
full papers are not required by the Call For Papers.

I hope I didn't offend anyone by giving away committee secrets or
getting personal - in fact, I thought Marc's paper was excellent.

I think it would be illustrative to reproduce some of the committee
decisions for future authors.  Evidentally many authors had a very
different view of what the committee was looking for.

Don Libes          libes@cme.nist.gov      ...!uunet!cme-durer!libes