Re: News400 RPG Source newsletter

Dan,
     I agree with you wholeheartedly about "The RPG Source", and I
also feel that theres much of the same thing in other areas of
these magazines...

In order to get useful information from a magazine, I should NOT
have to buy more magazines.  Heck, half of News/400 is editorials
about what people think IBM should do, or what we should be doing
with our AS/400's, or how we should be approaching the IT world.

Usually, these are written by people who are largely clueless.
I probably should not name names, however, since it wouldn't be
too hard for these comments to get back to these people :)  There
are several people on the staff of both News/400 and MC that really
don't live in the real world.  Yet they state things that are just
their opinions as if they are truths being passed on by sages.

I say, get rid of this CRAP, and put useful programming examples and
techniques in the damned magazines!  I guess the worst thing is that
all these little newsletters actually sell.   And the magazines still
sell.  If it makes money, its not going to change...

I did, for a time, subscribe to The RPG Source.   I think it was for
a year, or 6-months, or whatever time period you get that newsletter
for with a standard subscription.

There were a number of examples of using APIs, but it seemed that I
already knew how to use the ones they did examples of, so they werent
useful to me.  I thought that there should've been more different
things in each issue for the price I paid.

All-in-all, I get far more useful information from this mailing list
and comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc newsgroup than I do from all of the
combined magazines.   And, of course, the mailing list and newsgroup
are free.

So, I cancelled "The RPG Source".


"Dan Bale" <dbale@genfast.com> wrote:
>
> Some of the recent talk here on the list about brought to mind again
> lingering, simmering pet peeve of mine.
>
> For the 15 years I've been in the IBM midrange, I have relied on the
>  excellent
> News400 magazine and Midrange Computing magazine (and their
>  predecessors) to
> educate me on the how-to's of AS/400 programming.  Then, a few years
>  back,
> News400 created "The RPG Source" newsletter, providing "practical ti
>  and
> techniques for more powerful programs" for $89 per year (10 issues).
>
> How did this material become separated from the News400 magazine?  W
>  this
> supposed to be another cash cow for Duke Publications?  I can
>  understand the
> "AS/400 e-Developer" and the "AS/400 Network Solutions" newsletters
>  because they
> appeal to a much smaller portion of the News400 audience.  But RPG?
>  pure
> guess here, but would it be overexagerrating to suggest that 90% of
>  the News400
> audience works with RPG?
>
> So now I'm looking at $129 (out of my own pocket) per year for News4
>  plus $89
> per year for "The RPG Source".  Am I the only one that blinked?  How
>  many of you
> out here on the list subscribe to "The RPG Source"?
>
> And, no, $89 per year isn't going to break me.  But I get tired of
>  getting
> hammered with the "only pennies a day" crap.  (If I took advantage o
>  all the
> "only pennies a day" ads I see and hear, I'd be broke in a day!)  If
>  the huge
> majority of the News400 audience works with RPG, then why have a
>  separate
> newsletter?
>
> BTW, I thought I remembered that Midrange Computing had a similar RP
> newsletter, but I could find no reference to it in a recent issue or
>  on their
> website.  Did they publish one before?  If they did, why did they
>  stop?
>
> * Rant mode: OFF   Soapbox mode: OFF *
>
> Thanks, I feel better now.  But just a little bit.
>
> - Dan Bale
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