Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!esosun!ucsdhub!jack!crash!jeh
From: jeh@crash.cts.com (Jamie Hanrahan)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: DEC Training Non-Disclosure Information
Summary: It's the source they're worried about
Message-ID: <3201@crash.cts.com>
Date: 13 Jul 88 22:50:29 GMT
References: <8807130948.AA13217@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: jeh@crash.CTS.COM (Jamie Hanrahan)
Organization: Crash TS, El Cajon, CA
Lines: 33

In article <8807130948.AA13217@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> "OCU::LPZ"  writes:
>
>	[paraphrased] DEC is requiring non-disclosure agreements because of
>	export restrictions.

Actually it's because the handouts for these courses include quite a bit 
of VMS source code, which DEC is now regarding as "confidential and
proprietary".  (This notation appears on source fiche, and, yes, you have
to sign a non-disclosure agreement to order source fiche, or source tapes
for that matter.)

>         It is true that you won't learn about anything
>	  [in the internals or driver classes]
>         that isn't covered in the Internals and Data Structures manual.

I beg to differ.  Of course it depends on your instructor, but when I was
teaching these classes (for the DEC Ed. Svcs. office in Los Angeles, if
anyone cares) I covered one helluva lot of material that wasn't in the
IDSM, or in the driver book in the VMS doc set, or anywhere else but the
class handouts.  This material amounted to maybe 25% of the course.  
Another 5% was unique to my presentations (I had my own supplements to
the standard handouts).  Every other instructor who I ever saw give these
courses did the same.  As for the other 70% that's "in the books", I would
point out that the IDSM and the driver manual are not, as we say, tutorial
in nature... I never had anyone go away complaining that "This was a waste
of time, I could have gotten everything I needed by reading the books".
Well, on second thought, I did have *one* such complaint from a driver
student, out of a total of several hundred.  

Digital Educational Services certainly offers some VMS courses that are
nothing but spoon-fed versions of the material in the grey (formerly
orange, formerly blue) binders, but the internals and driver courses are
most emphatically NOT among them!