Re: Two coins in the HICSS fountain

Jim Whitehead (ejw@ics.uci.edu)
Tue, 18 Mar 1997 12:06:20 -0800


Beware! HICSS has a very spotty research track record. Some papers are
good, others not -- it varies tremendously from track to track. Typically
you don't want more than 1 paper on your CV from HICSS (most people will
understand the desire for a Hawaiian vacation, and will overlook it once).
The conventional wisdom is that if the research is any good, you'll be able
to get it accepted in the primary research conference for the particular
field. The other rationale is that by submitting the paper to the primary
research conference for the field, you get much better feedback in the
reviews, and acceptance also carries some acceptance into the research
community (which HICSS does not do nearly as much).

I think submitting the *TP paper to HICSS is a tactical mistake -- this is
a very good idea, and could be accepted in a far better conference than
HICSS.

>Our survey compares the distribution algorithms, naming models,
>reliability, performance and extensibility of two decades' worth of TP
>development.

You're going to do a thorough job of this in 12 pages? Ha!

You're thinking way too small for this idea. I'd go straight for ACM
Computing Surveys. Getting a pub in this journal is very prestigious (in
general, journal pubs are valued far, far more than conference pubs -- at
some institutions conference pubs don't count at all towards tenure).
Sure, you may not see this in print until 1999, but the time will have been
far better spent, and the final product will be a seminal work.

>Telnet, FTP, SMTP, NNTP, HTTP

I think a thorough survey of transport protocols should include the
point-to-point protocols of Xmodem, Ymodem, Zmodem, Kermit etc. By
examining these protocols, you'll be able to clearly identify the advantage
the other protocols had by building on top of TCP/IP (i.e., a clearer
separation of concerns between low-level and high-level transport). Also,
I think you'll find that the point-to-point protocols are more efficient.
So, there's a tradeoff between efficiency and abstraction (separation of
concerns).

- Jim