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From: ed@titipu.meta.com (Edward Reid)
Newsgroups: comp.org.acm
Subject: Re: Proposals for CACM format
Message-ID: <1CE00001.fvknuj@titipu.meta.com>
Date: 18 May 91 13:51:48 GMT
Reply-To: ed@titipu.meta.com (Edward Reid)
Organization: Metalogic
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In article <1991May13.163652.20481@mp.cs.niu.edu>, rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
> 
>  Firstly, what do I get out of Scientific American?
> 
> 	When I pick up SA, after scanning the table of contents, I usually
> 	turn first to "Science and the Citizen".  This gives a relatively
> 	thorough review of important recent developments in science.....
>
>  Coming back to CACM, ..........
>
>  More importantly, something akin to "Science and the Citizen", but more
> specific to computers, would be highly welcome.  But it should be at a level
> more comparable to the "Science and the Citizen" than to the recent
> developments columns in Byte, PC-Magazine, etc.
> 

Come on!  "Science and the Citizen" presents a few entertaining highlights from
recent developments in science.  But if you think it is a thorough review, you
are sadly misinformed about the state of science.  Read the news sections of
Nature and Science -- which will bring you about 30 news articles a week
instead of the 5 or 6 a month you get in Scientific American -- and you will
get a strong sense that even then you are only getting a quick flashover.  I
fear your perspective needs broadening.

But there is indeed value in entertaining highlights, and I support your
suggestions for adding this to CACM.  In theory this is already in place in the
NEWSTRACK column, which at present is disgustingly low-level (e.g. the phrase
from the May column "the proposed code would represent letters and symbols by a
sequence of 16 zeroes and ones instead of eight..."), appallingly brief (11
items in 2 pages), and contains no references, which is absolutely unacceptable
in a publication intended for a scientifically literate audience.

Edward Reid  (8-}>
  eel:   ed@titipu.meta.com
  snail: PO Box 378/Greensboro FL 32330