Hi all,

Its that time of the year when I again have to justify to myself
my continued membership of the IEEE. What I get from my membership
and associated Signal Processing Society membership is:

  - The IEEE magazine.
  - The Signal Processing Magazine.
  - The ability to buy IEEE transactions articles for $13 (otherwise
   $35 for non-members).
  - I can claim the membership on my tax return.

The IEEE magazine is reasonably interesting, but its not material
that I couldn't find elsewhere in say New Scientist (I'm a subscriber),
on on the net at sites like Slashdot and Reddit.

The Signal Processing Magazine is mostly  filled with academic 
irrelevancies with little interest for a working engineer like myself
with a strong interest in DSP but whose day-to-day engineering
rarely touches on DSP. The obvious exception is the DSP Tricks and
Tips column which is usually the first thing I read.

The discount on IEEE papers is something I uses less than once 
a year. If I find an interesting thats hidden behind the IEEE 
knowledge firewall I usually attempt to find it somewhere else 
for free download. If that fails, I search for other papers that
cover the same area. Its only if all other avenues fail *and*
I really want the paper that I actually stump up the cash.

Obviously, if the papers were say $2.50 to download I wouldn't
think twice about paying, but $13 is way too much.

Given the above, can someone remind me why I should renew my
IEEE membership?

Erik
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Even Napoleon had his Watergate" -- Michael Spautz

On 10 Nov, 09:30, Erik de Castro Lopo <er...@mega-nerd.com> wrote:

> Given the above, can someone remind me why I should renew my
> IEEE membership?

For what its worth -- the fact that you even ask the question
might hint to the "obvious" answer...

Rune

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:30:32 +1100, Erik de Castro Lopo
<e...@mega-nerd.com> wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>Its that time of the year when I again have to justify to myself
>my continued membership of the IEEE. What I get from my membership
>and associated Signal Processing Society membership is:
>
>  - The IEEE magazine.
>  - The Signal Processing Magazine.
>  - The ability to buy IEEE transactions articles for $13 (otherwise
>   $35 for non-members).
>  - I can claim the membership on my tax return.
>
>The IEEE magazine is reasonably interesting, but its not material
>that I couldn't find elsewhere in say New Scientist (I'm a subscriber),
>on on the net at sites like Slashdot and Reddit.
>
>The Signal Processing Magazine is mostly  filled with academic 
>irrelevancies with little interest for a working engineer like myself
>with a strong interest in DSP but whose day-to-day engineering
>rarely touches on DSP. The obvious exception is the DSP Tricks and
>Tips column which is usually the first thing I read.
>
>The discount on IEEE papers is something I uses less than once 
>a year. If I find an interesting thats hidden behind the IEEE 
>knowledge firewall I usually attempt to find it somewhere else 
>for free download. If that fails, I search for other papers that
>cover the same area. Its only if all other avenues fail *and*
>I really want the paper that I actually stump up the cash.
>
>Obviously, if the papers were say $2.50 to download I wouldn't
>think twice about paying, but $13 is way too much.
>
>Given the above, can someone remind me why I should renew my
>IEEE membership?
>
>Erik

Hi Erik,
 
  I've been a member of the SPS for many years 
now, and am an associate editor for the 
Sig. Proc. Magazine.
  
Erik, you have managed to clearly and concisely 
describe my primary complaints against the 
IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS). Good job!

Erik, may I forward your post to the President 
of the SPS, the Editor-n-Chief of the Sig. 
Proc. Magazine, and whoever else I think might 
read your words?

Regards,
[-Rick-]
 

On 10 Nov, 13:40, R...@_BOGUS_ieee.org (Rick Lyons) wrote:

> Erik, may I forward your post to the President
> of the SPS, the Editor-n-Chief of the Sig.
> Proc. Magazine, and whoever else I think might
> read your words?

Rick,

If you do that sort of thing, I would support Erik
in that articles in non-subscriber transactions
are *way* too expensive. I joined the IEEE some
ten years ago because I used the varous transactions
in my research, and because of the student discounts.
While still in university i developed the very awkward
habit of doing literature searches before attempting
anything on my own.

These days I don't do as much research as I used to,
and my ineterests have become more eclectic.
My awkward habit of doing literature searches still
remains, so when I do my IEEExplore searches, the vast
majority of hits are from transactions I don't subscribe to.

Pushing the prices for non-subscribed transaction articles
down to, say, $1 - $2 per article (and maybe simplify the
purchase process by paying in advance, say, for 10
or 20 articles) would be a great motivation for
remaining a member.

Rune

Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:

   ...

> Given the above, can someone remind me why I should renew my
> IEEE membership?

Insurance?

Jerry
-- 
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 10:39:59 -0500, Jerry Avins <j...@ieee.org> wrote:

>Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
>
>   ...
>
>> Given the above, can someone remind me why I should renew my
>> IEEE membership?
>
>Insurance?
>
>Jerry

And the email forwarding service, which obviously many of us here use.

The insurance thing has gotten less interesting since the health
insurance program imploded, but the IEEE Life insurance program is
still pretty good.

I like the email forwarding thing, I participate in and use the salary
survey stuff as well.    It is, however, pretty hard to justify
membership for just those things.

One would think that a reason to stay would be access to Institute
resources like papers, but as has been pointed out that's really not a
reason, either, the way the system is currently set up.   The last few
times I did searches in the IEEE library for papers, only a few of the
relevant papers were available to me as a member of a limited number
of societies without ponying up more cash.   I can make a trip to the
university library and print it out there, though.

I'll continue my membership this year but I'm cutting back my society
memberships again just as I did last year.   It's just harder and
harder to justify any transactions subscriptions, as much as I'd like
to keep them.   I ditched Trans. on Sig. Proc a few years ago and
haven't missed it at all.   And I agree with Erik's observations on
the Signal Processing magazine. 

I hope the trend toward irrelevancy gets reversed at some point.   It
does appear that a substantial reform is needed.


Eric Jacobsen
Minister of Algorithms
Abineau Communications
http://www.ericjacobsen.org

Jerry Avins <j...@ieee.org> writes:

> Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
> 
>    ...
> 
> > Given the above, can someone remind me why I should renew my
> > IEEE membership?
> 
> Insurance?
> 

Probably not relevant in Australia, which is where I thought Erik was?

Ciao,

Peter K.

-- 
"And he sees the vision splendid 
of the sunlit plains extended
And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars."

 

This gives the opportunity to open a subject that occurs to me every few 
years - similar to the question of the prices attached to papers:

When one is working in a technical field such as ours, there are multiple 
standards established by IEEE and other organizations that dictate how 
certain things are supposed to be done.  IEEE 1014-1987 for the VMEbus at 
$88/$110 might be an example. 488 would be an example.  IEEE Floating Point 
754 is $61.  The PCI 2.0 spec sells for $475 it appears.  etc. etc.
Now, one might argue that some of the details are already available online 
but if one is going to contract to meet such a standard then one wants to 
have THE standard for reference.

When one needs to understand the standard it's pretty much impossible to get 
a copy without paying.  Now, for companies, that's oerhaps no big deal. 
But, for individual workers it's a lot.  In view of the educational value of 
the standards, why aren't they free?

Well, of course, if I were the IEEE I'd be thinking about lost revenue. 
I've not looked but I'll bet the lost revenue that would be associated with 
standards sales would be so small as to be a no-brainer for some educational 
program - government or society - to sponsor making them free AND on the 
web.  There is surely no important cost of distribution by putting them on 
the web.

The benefit of doing this would be to have a better-educated work force. 
That helps the industry.  etc. etc.

As a fallback, maybe this is one of those things that membership in IEEE 
would make available - to a much greater extent than today.

Fred 

Rick Lyons wrote:

> Hi Erik,
>  
>   I've been a member of the SPS for many years
> now, and am an associate editor for the
> Sig. Proc. Magazine.
>   
> Erik, you have managed to clearly and concisely
> describe my primary complaints against the
> IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS). Good job!
> 
> Erik, may I forward your post to the President
> of the SPS, the Editor-n-Chief of the Sig.
> Proc. Magazine, and whoever else I think might
> read your words?

Please do. I posted this in a public forum so that someone
with real contacts within the IEEE might push it in the
direction of someone who might actually be able to do 
something.

Cheers,
Erik
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"These are the finest moments in (post)modern life, when satire is completly
indistinguishable from reality... I usually have to rely on the presidential
elections for such dada." -- frenomulax on Jesux a christian Linux distro.

Rune Allnor wrote:

> If you do that sort of thing, I would support Erik
> in that articles in non-subscriber transactions
> are *way* too expensive. I joined the IEEE some
> ten years ago because I used the varous transactions
> in my research, and because of the student discounts.
> While still in university i developed the very awkward
> habit of doing literature searches before attempting
> anything on my own.

Yep, my experience is similar.
 
> These days I don't do as much research as I used to,
> and my ineterests have become more eclectic.
> My awkward habit of doing literature searches still
> remains, so when I do my IEEExplore searches, the vast
> majority of hits are from transactions I don't subscribe to.

Yep. I too find this extremely frustrating. My interests
are also very broad. Yes I DSP, but I'm also interesting
in things like Computer Algebra Systems, compiler technolgy,
functional programming languages, operating systems and more.

> Pushing the prices for non-subscribed transaction articles
> down to, say, $1 - $2 per article (and maybe simplify the
> purchase process by paying in advance, say, for 10
> or 20 articles) would be a great motivation for
> remaining a member.

This is a great idea. 

Erik
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Seen on usenet (possibly a quote from an IBM exec):
"Each large company needs its Vietnam, and Microsoft will
 experience it with NT..."