
ACM considered harmful - pietrofmaggi
http://se9book.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/acm-considered-harmful/
======
zdw
(disclosure, I'm an ACM member, and a IEEE/Usenix/SAGE/LOPSA member as well)

Professional organizations have trouble with their revenue models.

The journal publishing business that the ACM and IEEE are in isn't sustainable
long term, and drives people away or causes perverse benefit schemes, similar
to how newspaper's business models fell apart in the last 10 years.

A better method would be to focus on conferences and community, which is more
of the way that Usenix and LOPSA work.

That said, there's some solid stuff in the ACM journals, and their membership
fees aren't all that crazy.

I can't wait until the dead tree editions of their publications go away.

~~~
mdwrigh2
I'm going to disagree - I love having the dead tree edition. I'm also a member
(granted, at a student rate), but love having a physical copy of something to
read when I don't feel like pulling out my laptop just to read some articles.
Plus typically, if I pull out my laptop, I have work that needs to be done.

Students are given the option of buying the print magazine though - I think
they just need to extend this policy to everyone, rather than making it a
print or nothing affair.

~~~
cyrus_
Print out the articles you want to read. I don't know anyone who reads ACM
proceedings and journals cover to cover, and it wastes a lot of resources.

~~~
mdwrigh2
And now you know someone who does read his monthly copy of CACM from cover to
cover. And I pay extra for it (again, student pricing doesn't include physical
copies -- something I think they should extend to professional members).

So are you suggesting that I should have to print it out because people
shouldn't be forced to pay for it? Or because I'm using some dead trees?
Because if it's the second, there about a million more useful places you could
recommend people cut down consumption, than on my monthly magazine with about
100 pages, that, again, I pay for.

~~~
dill_day
I think you're talking about different things-- there's the monthly CACM
magazine, and then there are the huge books of conference proceedings and
journals.

~~~
mdwrigh2
Perhaps. I'll agree that the huge conference books are pretty useless (though
I can see why university libraries want them), and not something I'd ever
purchase. Those papers I _do_ print out. But I did specify monthly magazine in
my original comment.

------
bcantrill
So, some disclaimers: I sit on the ACM's Professions Board, and am a member of
the CACM Editorial Board, where I sit on the board for the Practice section of
CACM, also known as ACM Queue. That said, I speak only for myself here, not
for ACM or the Professions Board or Queue Board.

Disclaimers dispensed with, let me say that I personally sympathize with the
complaints, especially with respect to the practitioner. The Digital Library
(DL) is, in a word, overpriced with respect to the practitioner, and I believe
that the ACM can both increase its membership base and better (and more
broadly) monetize the DL by using it as more of a loss-leader with the
practitioner. The good news is that the ACM is quite receptive to this at its
highest levels, and I believe that the chances for reform (at least with
respect to the practitioner) are very good.

And indeed, this is the good news about ACM more broadly: the organization
wants to change, especially with respect to the practitioner. One would be
right to question this, but trust that I came to this conclusion only
reluctantly and in the presence of overwhelming evidence -- a path that I
outlined here:

[http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2009/05/15/queue-cacm-and-the-
re...](http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2009/05/15/queue-cacm-and-the-rebirth-of-
the-acm/)

I would repeat here my plea from that blog entry: the ACM has given
practitioners a new voice, but we must engage with the ACM to use it. We must
move beyond merely "considering the ACM harmful" and point to new models that
work for our profession and its society. In short, the ACM is willing to
follow, but we practitioners must light the way!

~~~
heresy
Where "engaging with the ACM" means entering my credit card number into their
website to access any content?

~~~
bcantrill
Were it only that simple! No, "engaging with the ACM" means becoming involved
via either local chapters or with the national organization -- and it starts
with becoming a member. If you're curious about other ways to get involved,
I'm happy to offer ideas -- I can be reached at my HN user name at (naturally)
acm.org.

------
jwr
Oh, the number of times I've bouced off ACM's paywall. It's maddening to see
an article that you think will let you make progress in a problem you're
working on, but unable to access it because of the $15 fee.

And paying the membership fees is not a solution, either — if you are an ACM
member, you probably still need access to IEEE body of publications, and then
there is Elsevier/Springer/others…

~~~
cscotta
"It's maddening to see an article that you think will let you make progress in
a problem you're working on, but unable to access it because of the $15
fee..."

Enough progress to justify spending $15 (less than the price of dinner
downtown)? I agree, many find the revenue models / cost structures of
professional organizations outmoded. However, I find this rather harsh
aversion to paying a few bucks for peer-reviewed, scientific content curious.

If it's of any help to you, many public universities, schools, and local
libraries provide full access to ACM content, often both on-site and off. The
most common method of providing access to this is via EBSCO's "Business Source
Premier" database. I frequently read ACM articles from my desk via the web; a
quick title search in EBSCO will pull up the title in about 20 seconds, and I
can download a PDF of about any article published since 1965 to send to
coworkers.

That said, if price is an issue, please check with your local library. Odds
are good that your tax dollars are already paying the cost for you to read
these articles from the comfort of your home or office. This isn't just true
for the ACM -- even in the age of paywalls, your library's probably been
quietly working to provide digital access to all of this for the past decade.

~~~
jwr
You mean, check with my local library here in Poland, right?

Don't place me in the "doesn't want to pay for content" box. I am OK with
paying for content and I do pay for many things online. But there are two
issues with ACM:

1\. The research has been paid for with taxpayers' dollars (I wasn't the
taxpayer, but still).

2\. $15 is really expensive.

And of course, if it were just one article that would advance my work a lot,
I'd gladly pay. But you don't know that ahead of time. And if you're building
startups, you usually do a lot of wide-area research, so it isn't that one
article, it's hundreds of articles that you need to skim through.

I also don't buy the argument that we need to pay so much just so that we get
peer-reviewed content. JMLR (Journal of Machine-Learning Research) is a prime
example that this need not be the case.

~~~
Zak
You can put me in the "doesn't want to pay for content" box when it comes to
science. Science, including computer science works best when new discoveries
are spread far and wide free of charge. Journals make their money by securing
publication rights in exchange for deciding that something is important
enough. Once, it was difficult to publish information to a wide audience, but
in the web age, journals seem like a bit of a scam to me.

~~~
regularfry
The curation job still needs paying for, but I think it's pretty clear that
the ACM and others have strayed from that to trying to squeeze the long tail
for as much money as they can can get.

------
rlpb
The ACM won't stop spamming me. "Your invitation to become a member", they
say. Following the unsubscribe instructions doesn't work. Blocking the sending
address doesn't work (they keep changing it). I've resorted to blacklisting
*@acm.org.

I'm not the only one, either: <http://gmplib.org/~tege/acmspam.html>
<http://fries.net/~david/thoughts/ACM_membership_spam.php>

</rant>

~~~
visural
I let my membership lapse a several years ago, and they're still sending me
_snail mail spam_ to sign up again.

------
PaulHoule
Personally, I'm bothered that the ACM is an organization for academic
researchers and doesn't seem to give a damn about practitioners in the field.

I quit my ACM membership when I got sick of continuous hand-wringing
editorials asking "Why don't women want to study CS?" and "Why don't
undergraduates want to study CS?"

The ACM never seriously considers that undergrads who might study CS might
know people who've chosen computing in a career and discovered that they hit a
big glass ceiling in their 30's.

If the ACM started to ask the question of "What happens to CS graduates?" and
thinking about career paths in the profession, they might find that the
answers for the problems that keep them up at night might come naturally.

------
mahmud
Computing progresses _despite_ the ACM.

Kent Pitman has a similar stance:

<http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PFAQ/acm.html>

~~~
erikpukinskis
Wow, the last one on that page is actually a recognized "Dark Pattern"¹:

    
    
        ACM used to routinely request certain kinds of "volunteered" contributions 
        and/or subscriptions on my annual invoicing. They would do this by adding 
        the things they wanted me to do (without my requesting it) and make me 
        have to line out the items I didn't want.
    

This is known as "Sneak Into Basket":
<http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Sneak_into_basket>

If anyone has a copy of such an invoice (I've always thought "societies" were
silly, never joined ACM when I was in grad school, and refused to join NHS on
principle) they should throw a copy up on the Dark Patterns wiki.

¹ _Racist nomenclature thumbs down_

~~~
daeken
Do you really think that the term "dark pattern" has anything at all to do
with race? Protip: associating everything with races is how racism continues;
stop thinking about things in terms of races in general, and the world will be
a far better place.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Something to do with it, yes. Everything to do with it, no.

------
RKlophaus
Grrrr... I can relate. Here's my ACM story:

I presented at CUFP '10 a while back, which is associated with the ACM. Even
though I was a speaker, they charged me full ticket price to get _into_ the
conference.

When I balked at paying to speak, the representative replied:

"Well, it's either buy a ticket or wait outside until right before your
presentation, and then leave the room immediately after it."

To cap it all off, the video of my presentation is now behind the members-only
paywall. (<http://bit.ly/fGjAaJ>)

~~~
kenjackson
At most CS conferences (save some of the biggies like SigGraph,
SuperComputing), at least half of the attendees are the presenters or co-
authors. Those ticket prices are intended for you. It's not an accidental
oversight. Their funding for the conference takes into account the speakers
paying.

~~~
RKlophaus
Out of the 10 conferences I spoke at in 2010, they were the only conference
who made speakers pay. Also, many of the conferences I attended covered the
ticket price _and_ subsidized part of the lodging and transportation for
speakers.

That said, all of the conferences I attended were very similar in size,
sponsorship, subject matter, audience, and price, so this may just be a result
of which conferences I attend. (In which case, I count myself as fortunate to
find generous organizers.)

------
jeffreymcmanus
The author's problem is with the academic publishing industry (which all
pretty much operates in the same manner), not the ACM.

Because academic publishing is deeply intertwined with the process whereby
professors are awarded promotions and tenure, there is very little impetus for
reform here. It will take a generation or more for this problem to go away.

~~~
rflrob
Fortunately (at least for me), biomedical research these days is largely an
exception to this. Thanks to a Bush-era appropriations bill, anyone who takes
NIH funding must ensure that their articles are published open-access on
PubMedCentral within 12 months of the initial publication. It's not perfect,
but it does at least solve the problem with old publications getting locked
behind paywalls unreasonable to the value. We also have the PLoS series of
journals, which are completely open access and Creative Commons "attribution"
licensed.

~~~
blahblahblah
Agreed. This problem isn't ACM's fault. Professional societies are too
dependent upon journal publishers to force significant change. It is Congress
that needs to step in and demand that all journal articles produced as a
result of any federally-funded research project (not just NIH-funded ones) be
subject to the 1 year post-publication open access rule. If Congress does
that, then the journals have no choice but to comply or else the authors who
supply the content will publish elsewhere.

------
gritzko
From what I can say regarding CS conferences, ACM just rubberstamps and
pockets the money. At one recent conference, the organizer addressed the
concerns about high fees saying something like "well, most of it went to ACM,
so we may hypothetically save on that, but we understand that the bulk of
participants come from academia and they need the proceedings". Meanwhile, the
"proceedings" are purely virtual, the same PDFs we submitted put online at ACM
Digital Library. Bloodsuckers.

------
T_S_
Journals are priced for institutional libraries. They still don't know how to
address the non-affiliated scholar market.

While the industry evolves its business model we need to get stuff done.
Here's a workaround: use Google Scholar.

Look for the link that says "All X versions". Find the free pdf pre-print,
usually from on the author's home page. Works at least 80% of the time for me.
The OP is right though, this doesn't work so well for older pre-interwebs
articles.

~~~
sid0
It also doesn't work well for articles outside CS.

Stab stab stab -- the journal model is hopelessly outdated in the digital age,
and the sooner it disappears, the better.

~~~
T_S_
I agree. I hope that more journals adopt the JMLR model. The university system
is already paying for all the editors we need. No need to pay twice now that
distribution costs are near zero.

------
ahi
For what it's worth, the executive director made 480k plus ~27k in benefits
for FY ending 6/30/2009.

Revenue breakdown:

Conferences & Seminars: 23.25m

Publications: 14.8m

Membership Dues: 9.2m

Advertising: 1m

~~~
andrewcooke
480k? That seems a little excessive. Where are these numbers from?

~~~
ahi
Their 990, a form nonprofits have to file with the IRS. You can find them at
guidestar.org. You can also walk into any nonprofit and request a copy of
their most recent 990 no questions asked (well, no questions answered anyway).

~~~
andrewcooke
Thanks.

------
rst
The most important reason why the ACM's publishing model (and academic
publishing generally) doesn't just dry up and blow away is that people on
academic career tracks are judged by their publication record --- meaning
publication in prestigious journals; putting the same text on a web site
someplace doesn't count. So, if an academic doesn't let the ACM (or Elsevier,
or someone else equally grabby) take control of their writing about their
work, they effectively sacrifice a valuable career chit.

Unfortunately, less expensive alternatives are going to be hard to bootstrap:
a new, no-name journal almost by definition hasn't had the chance to establish
prestige by publishing papers which go on to get widely cited. And if the idea
is to do the same job while sucking less money out of people, that leaves very
little cash for promotion, or to compensate "big names" that might lend
credibility to the project...

~~~
quanticle
_Unfortunately, less expensive alternatives are going to be hard to bootstrap:
a new, no-name journal almost by definition hasn't had the chance to establish
prestige by publishing papers which go on to get widely cited._

Well, it depends. If (and I admit that this is a huge if) you can get a couple
of really big names to start publishing stuff in your new journal, you can
bootstrap a journal pretty quickly. However, for this to happen, the big names
that you're dealing have to be really, really disgusted with their current
journal.

~~~
rst
Not just with their current journal (the big shots usually have a choice of
venues), but with academic publishing in general. But of course, what makes
someone a "big name" in academia is that they've succeeded well in the system
as it is, and aren't likely to be deeply aggrieved with it.

------
teraflop
_"The ACM, in common with other organizers, requires those who have papers
published in its journals and conferences to sign over the copyright to them.
This means that you can’t republish a paper elsewhere and that the ACM can
charge for your writing without paying you any fee."_

Really? So every CS researcher who posts their publications on their personal
site is flagrantly violating ACM's copyright with no consequences? I don't see
how this can be accurate.

~~~
sparky
There's an exception to that ( from
[http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/RightsResponsibilit...](http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/RightsResponsibilities#dissemination)
):

    
    
      Publication is only a part of the broader goal of disseminating ideas and results. Authors can expect ACM to contribute to this wider goal, and in particular to encourage dissemination in multiple forums. ACM expects authors to acknowledge ACM's contribution and not to publish the same material in other venues, except as permitted by ACM copyright policy.
      Thus authors can expect ACM to:
      * Allow a submission to be posted on home pages and public repositories before and after review
      * Allow an authors' version of their own ACM-copyrighted work on their personal server or on servers belonging to their employers
      * Allow metadata information, e.g., bibliographic, abstract, and keywords, for their individual work to be openly available
      * Allow authors the right to reuse their figures in their own subsequent publications for which they have granted ACM copyright
      * Provide statistics for each journal, transaction, and newsletter on its average turn-around time and its current backlog of articles.
      
      And ACM expects authors to
      
      
      * Appropriately acknowledge the publisher's effort
      * Ensure that whenever the authors or their employers provide a link to a personal copy that there is a link to the ACM definitive version
      * Ensure that all versions copyrighted by ACM bear the ACM copyright.

~~~
RK
This would qualify as "green" open access ("gold" open access being provided
directly by the journal). So you can blame authors for not posting their
papers online if you feel so inclined.

------
moomba
Whenever I see the paywall come up when browsing the internet, I get the sick
feeling I've been redirected to some Ponzi Scheme. Charging $15 for a 10 year
old paper can be thought of nothing other than ridiculous.

~~~
jacquesm
It's the long tail of publishing. What is more interesting is what all the
money they make like that ends up doing, where do the proceeds end up?

------
igrekel
The 15$ per paper is expensive but the membership gives you access to all
papers and is relatively inexpensive. If you need to access research material
frequently, you are probably better off having a membership and an ieee
membership as well. You employer may pay it for you or you may get tax
deductions for these fees as well.

~~~
jacques_chester
Membership does _not_ give you access. You need to pay _another_ fee on top of
membership.

------
jasonwatkinspdx
Particularly now that much innovation in computing is happening in the
developing world, the ACM's toll booth on reading the literature is especially
repugnant.

Digital distribution is not costly. The definitive online library for CS
should be free to read. If wikipedia et all can support themselves then it
would be trivial for the equivalent of the ACM library to do likewise.

I do think it's reasonable for the ACM to charge for their other activities.

------
dkarl
_But to access it, you need to login i.e. its not a resource for the
profession but for members only._

Old-style professional societies aspire to be synonymous with the profession,
and they work toward that by adding value that everyone in the profession will
want.

Paying professional society dues is a normal thing in most professions. It
isn't weird for the ACM to act this way; it's weird (or at least _new_ ) for
people to want to work in a high-paying, technically specialized profession,
not pay professional society dues, and still get all the benefits of a
professional society. Hey, if you bring us that utopia, more power to you, but
I don't see anything broken about the current model from an adult's point of
view. Students and faculty get access through their university, and everyone
else makes good enough money to pay ACM dues. The weak point is kids, who are
excluded by the current system (which was never meant to work for kids) unless
they live near a university.

~~~
xiongchiamiov
It's also weird in most professions to work long and hard on something, only
to give it away for free.

I find that open-source advocates tend to be open-information advocates as
well.

------
tomasr
Maybe missing it, but strictly speaking as someone interested in reading (not
publishing), I don't really see what the fuzz is. Been an ACM member for
almost 10 years (started as a student member) and every single year I've been
more than happy to renew my membership.

Sure, would be nice if everything was free, but all the stuff ACM does cost
money, and honestly, the fees aren't all that outrageous, and the digital
library access itself is very much worth it.

Rather like receiving Communications of the ACM every month (or close to it,
anyway); I enjoy reading it and would totally forget about looking the
articles online every month otherwise, so it's actually fairly convenient for
me. Would much prefer that Queue had been kept around as a printed mag,
though.

------
wildmXranat
After being a member as a student, I signed-up for the regular account. Couple
years of using it proved that it wasn't worth it.

~~~
mdwrigh2
I'm currently a student member, and the only reason I'm still subscribed is
the print magazine copies. I could probably get them from the library, but
having it show up on my doorstep every month is convenient.

Plus, I believe I need to be a member for the ACM ICPC anyways.

~~~
oostevo
That wasn't true when I competed. I actually picked up a complimentary
membership because I competed, if I remember correctly.

My institution was ACM-affiliated, but I'm not sure that matters either.

~~~
mdwrigh2
Then it was the IEEExtreme competition that required IEEE membership.

And my institution is ACM affiliated as well, and also paid for my entrance
fee to the ACM. But now that I think about it, I believe you're right, I don't
think the ICPC required it.

~~~
mzl
Actually, participants in a regional competition get a free ACM Student Lite
membership.

------
javert
IEEE is, unfortunately, the exact same way.

~~~
snth
At least they have standards bodies

------
rmobin
I work at a company called DeepDyve; we work with publishers to provide
alternative (cheaper) access models to their content. We have an online-only
viewer and let you view articles for a limited amount of time (we call it a
rental). If you are interested, please give it a shot and let me know how
sufficient of an alternative it is. We currently allow 1 free rental (which
will work for our ACM content), but we'll be adding free trials for our
subscription plans instead very soon. <http://www.deepdyve.com>
[http://www.deepdyve.com/browse/publishers/association-for-
co...](http://www.deepdyve.com/browse/publishers/association-for-computing-
machinery)

------
jacoblyles
Unfortunately the situation is far worse in other fields of knowledge.
_Nature_ magazine got in a big fight with the University of California last
year when they tried to charge more than $1 million for the institution's
subscription[1] (this for a journal written and refereed by volunteer labor),
and the individual subscriptions are also outrageous.

It costs a lot of money to be able to stay on the forefront of human
knowledge, even though the producers of that knowledge don't see a red cent.

[1][http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/06/university...](http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/06/university-
of-california-conside.html)

------
perlgeek
FWIW this problem exists in many other branches of science too. I'm glad that
APS now has an option that the author of a paper can pay a fee for the peer
review, and in turn obtains the right to make a copy of the paper publicly
available ("open access").

It sounds a bit backwards, but in practice it works out (at least if your
employer pays the open access fees, as mine does).

There are also peer reviewed Open Access journals, but mostly they don't have
the same reputation and impact factors as the established
ACM/APS/IEEE/whatever journals. Still <http://www.doaj.org/> is quite
interesting.

------
sedachv
I had a similar thought this morning when I found out some academic journals
charge their _authors_ to publish articles:

<http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2135236>

------
br1
You can now also rent ACM papers via DeepDyve. The first one is free, so if
you want to stick it to the man, register yourname+a@gmail.com,
yourname+b@gmail.com, yourname+c@gmail.com ...

------
ffffruit
Not entirely sure if this also applies to the CS domain (been quite a few
years since I published a CS paper) but in the medical domain researchers are
also presented with the option of publishing in an open access journal. For
example, PLoS <http://www.plos.org/>

------
__bjoernd
The article is not completely correct about the copyright thing. As an ACM
author you at least retain the right to publish the paper on your web site.
This is much better than say for instance IEEE paper copyright regulations.

------
duncanj
For those who want to know, ACM membership with access to all their journals
(digital library) is $198/year. From developing countries, it is less.
Choosing Poland as a random example, digital library access is $100/year.

------
GrooveStomp
Wow, this is a fairly condemning portrayal of the ACM. Thankfully, I've only
once or twice bounced off of their paywall, and otherwise have been happily
ignorant of their existence.

[EDIT] Removed reference to article being anecdotal.

------
lanstein
I love the link at the bottom to 'Goto Considered Harmful':
<http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/>

------
ylem
I think the author of this piece misses a point. Let me take the example of
the American Physical Society (APS). They have membership fees (required to go
to their conferences) and journals which charge money for access. As with all
academic publishing, you sign a copyright waiver (but you are allowed to post
your article on your own homepage--also, for many of us, we initially publish
things on arxiv.org in preliminary form (before peer review). So, you have two
sources--the author if they choose to distribute it, and the arxiv for many
papers (excepting breaking high profile papers that might appear in Science or
Nature). Overall, the APS is relatively good--they provide much cheaper access
rates to poorer institutions domestically (USA) and internationally.

Now, you might wonder--what is the value added that publishers provide?
Governments pay for the research, government sponsored researchers do most of
the initial typesetting/editing, and government sponsored researchers do the
peer review. The answer is that publishers: 1) Screen the papers to send out
for peer review \--there is a lot of noise in submissions. Is this paper
interesting or not? Does it pass the "sniff" test on technical correctness? To
do this first pass requires editors with domain level knowledge of the field--
they can skim the article if they are not experts and guess about
impact/sniff/etc. They are familiar with the reputations of researchers.
Essentially these are people with at least a PhD in the field and this is not
cheap. 2) Again, the editors are acquainted with potential reviewers in the
field. They have amassed a database of people who are good reviewers. For
example, referee A always critical? Is referee B always a softee? Does referee
C respond in a timely fashion? Does referee D always have his reviews
overturned on appeal to an additional referee? Etc.

So, essentially, what you are paying for is screening out signal to noise. The
first thing you might think of is, well, let the government step in. I think
this would be very bad. Why? Because it would then be easy for the government
to determine what gets published and what doesn't. Think climate change....

Next, you might think--ok, well what about open access? Again, the problem is
that many open access journals (where the authors pay and the public reads for
free) is that the prices to authors steadily increases and unless it is
mandated, authors may seek other journals. Especially if the most prestigious
journals are not open access.... Finally, you might ask, well, what about a
technical solution? Hacker News for academic publishing, complete with
automated tracking of referees, calculations of reputations based on
citations, commenting, etc. But, then you'll bump into problems of avoiding
winner take all and that for academic publishing, you want the comments and
referee process to be deliberate and considered.

What I would suggest is that for the computer science community to work harder
on posting things to the arxiv before submitting to ACM journals and if that's
not possible, then lobbying for journals to accept this. Then, for people who
are ok with the rough version, they can access it and for people with
need/resources, they can access the final, polished, piece.

In the meantime, try writing the author if you need a paper. In the physics
community, many authors are happy to send you a pdf file. One time there was a
paper from an expensive publication that we didn't have access to that I wrote
the author to request a copy from. He actually sent a reprint--from Japan!

------
edw519
annoying != harmful

pet peeve != constructive criticism

sensational title != worthy content

~~~
mahmud
I accidentally upvoted this trite comment, but Ian Sommerville has earned the
right to pen an "X Considered Harmful" article:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Sommerville_(academic)>

Ok, sure, we have all avoided his works because they're a pain to read, but he
is someone you would _expect_ to get along with the ACM as they needlessly
peddled his and his peers' "methodologies".

[Edit: Seriously, in the last few days I had to step in an introduce no less
than Matt Welsh and Rob Pike to HN, now Sommerville. HN's aversion to book-
learnin' is surely paying off.]

~~~
BrandonM
HN's ^recent aversion to book-learnin'

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tmachinecharmer
I love ArXiV :D

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dzorz
IEEE is much more expensive.

