Re: LSM Summer BOF's

From: Crispin Cowan (crispinat_private)
Date: Wed Mar 20 2002 - 12:01:15 PST

  • Next message: Stephen Smalley: "Re: LSM Summer BOF's"

    Russell Coker wrote:
    
    >OLS is a very technical conference.  But it's still a conference of users and 
    >administrators not primarily programmers.
    >
    Yes, so I gathered: technical detail is relatively more important than 
    normal, while having an abstract "thesis" is relatively less important. 
    Of course, this is relative, as always. Here's a visual of the continuoum:
    
    more techie - OLS - USENIX - Oakland - Franconia - more abstract/academic
    
    "Franconia" is the shorthand for the IEEE Computer Security Foundations 
    Workshop http://www.csl.sri.com/programs/security/csfw/index.html which 
    is just a little too abstract for me.
    
    >>reviews papers is certainly "divergent" :-)  Feel free to correct me.
    >>
    >How is it divergent?
    >
        * The normal way:
              * people submit full papers, in draft form, i.e. you can leave
                one or two details incomplete, but the paper shoudl be
                pretty much done and just need some tweeks.
              * the program committee reviews all the papers, and picks the
                ones to accept
              * authors revise accepted papers according to feedback from
                the program committee
              * authors submit final form of the paper for printing
              * this is the common way, and the USENIX way
        * A variation: papers are anonymized when submitted for review
              * strip names and affiliations from the title page
              * remove gratuitous self-citation that would identify the authors
              * this is done so that papers are accepted on their merrits,
                instead of the reputation of the author
              * this is also a very common procedure, and is the Oakland way
        * the OLS way:
              * Authors submit 1 or 2 paragraph proposals.
              * No such thing as multiple authors.
              * The OLS committee (or person?) decides which proposals to
                accept.
              * Since there is
                    * no multiple authorship
                    * the papers are light compared to the talk
                    * there is almost no content available at selection time
              * I presume that proposals are valued at least as much on the
                basis of the proposer as on the proposed content.
    
    The OLS way closely approximates the way that other conferences select 
    Keynote or Invited Speaker talks: pick out some folks that you can trust 
    to give good talk, and give them a podium and some latitude. It's not 
    bad, but it is different, and has different effects, especially in the 
    long term. If OLS continues on in this way, then 20 years from now only 
    the well-established olde boys of the Linux Oligarchy will be able to 
    speak at OLS, and newbies will get to shut up and listen to their elders :-)
    
    Crispin
    
    -- 
    Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
    Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc. http://wirex.com
    Security Hardened Linux Distribution:       http://immunix.org
    Available for purchase: http://wirex.com/Products/Immunix/purchase.html
    
    
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