G L O B A L A C C E S S Volume 1, No. 3 November, 1987 MUMPS means your never have to say you're sorting. $VIEW(Editor) The most pervasive hassle at a DECUS Symposium is schedule conflicts. The knottiest conflict confronts everybody first thing Monday morning. That's right, the Roadmap sessions. You always want to get to at least four of them, and they're ALL at 9:00 AM. On top of this, you want to get there early enough to collect the Roadmap handout, which is a necessary adjunct to the Sessions-at-a-Glance because it is organized by subject rather than by time. Thus, you spend the first hour rushing around from Roadmap to Roadmap. I believe that it would take only a few minor tweaks to eliminate most of this problem. Accordingly, I submit to the Symposium Committee the following suggestions: o Stagger scheduling of Roadmap sessions. As of Nash- ville, the MUMPS Roadmap is not at 9:00 AM; some other SIGs are even starting their streams on Tuesday. o Combine Roadmap sessions. I seem to remember hearing that two SIGs will have a combined Roadmap in Anaheim, but I can't verify this. I am sure that many of the smaller SIGs (including MUMPS) could share Roadmaps just as we share Campgrounds. o Print more handouts, and leave copies of all of them out in a central location (the Registration area?) where attendees can get them if they miss the session. Long range, perhaps the format could be standardized, and the handouts consolidated into a pamphlet to be given to attendees (but let's NOT let it turn into a megillah like Session Notes, with its own committee and raft of political/money grief!). In my opinion, these constitute minor changes that would give a major return on investment. $DATA As promised last month, here goes with "Sessions You Won't Want to Miss in Anaheim:" General Interest MUMPS Roadmap M001 Mo 10:30AM Early History of MUMPS M018 Mo 10:00PM A Voice Response Inquiry System Using DECtalk M020 Tu 4:00PM MUMPS Dump Busters M015 Th 7:00PM MUMPS System Management Panel M016 Fr 9:00AM MUMPS Development Committee Report M005 Fr 3:00PM MUMPS Future Planning Session M007 Fr 4:00PM Tutorials Nearly Everything You Didn't Know Enough To Ask About MUMPS M011 Mo 9:00PM MUMPS Functions and String Handling M002 Tu 10:00AM How to Tame a Wild Programming Staff M004 Tu 5:00PM Relational Vectors Proposal for MUMPS M013 We 10:00AM Public Domain Software Public Domain Trauma Registry M022 Tu 12:00PM Overview of Public Domain VA Software M008 We 12:00PM Using VA File Manager as a Relational DBMS M019 We 4:00PM Changes to VA Kernel for VAX DSM M021 We 5:00PM DSM Specific DSM Product Panel M017 Mo 12:00PM DSM and Networking M027 Tu 11:00AM MUMPS Utilities and Their Usage M014 Fr 10:00AM DSM-11 Performance and Tuning Workshop M026 Th 9:00PM Setting up a DSM-11 $ZCALL M009 Th 12:00PM VAX DSM System Overview M024 Mo 1:00PM DASL--DSM Application Software Library, A VAX-Based Application Generator M023 We 11:00AM Calling Other Languages from VAX DSM Using the $ZCALL Function M028 Th 11:00AM VAX DSM Performance and Tuning M025 Th 8:00PM $HOROLOG November 20 Submission deadline for Jan. newsletter Dec. 7-11 Fall '87 Symposium; Anaheim, CA Feb. 8-12, 1988 Canadian '88 Symposium; Toronto May 16-20, 1988 Spring '88 Symposium; Cincinnati, OH June 13-17, 1988 MUG '88 Conference; New Orleans $ORDER("Author") I have observed (very painfully, as each instance screeches across my ears like fingernails down a blackboard) that the word author is coming into increasing use as a verb. This is typified by constructs such as "Representative Gramm and Senators Rudman and Hollings authored the Deficit Reduction Act." In fact, sev- eral years ago, even DEC released a package called the "Course- ware [hmm, but that's another whole article...--Ed.] Authoring System." This trend ignores the fact that, in light of the rich history of English, it is very common for a "perpetrator" noun and its corresponding verb to have sprung from different roots. For example, you don't take a car to the garage to have it me- chanicked; you have it repaired. Similarly, you certainly do not go to the hospital to be doctored; I am sure you would much ra- ther be cured. Furthermore, while my dictionaries are inconclu- sive on the point, my "internal compass" is not: author is not a verb. English is replete with verbs which express the creation of manuscripts: to compose, to draft, to formulate, and even the humble to write. A visit to the local thesaurus will elicit many more. It thus seems to me unnecessary to force author into such a graceless, unnatural role. $NEXT Did you know that the MUMPS SIG is currently under serious SIG Council scrutiny concerning its continued existence? Stay tuned in January for developments in this heart-rending story. $NEXT($ORDER)="Ship" $RANDOM Oscar Kelly Allen, the Louisiana governor who succeeded (and was owned by) Huey "The Kingfish" Long, was described thusly: "He was so agreeable that if a leaf blew in the window across his desk, he would sign it."