To renew my IEEE membership or not?

Erik de Castro Lopo <erikd@mega-nerd.com> writes:

> Peter K. wrote:
> 
> > As far as I am aware, it's US-centric... and so not really
> > applicable for Oz.
> 
> It is US-centric, but from my point of view that is a good
> thing.
> 
> Since US salaries in my field are somewhat higher than here 
> in Oz (even after the recent increase of the value of the AU 
> dollar in comparison to the US one) I am more than happy to 
> compare myself against US salary levels.

:-)

Good to hear, Erik.

Ciao,

Peter K.

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

 

Jerry Avins wrote:
> John E. Hadstate wrote:
>>
>> "Fred Marshall" <fmarshallx@remove_the_x.acm.org> wrote in message 
>> news:w9udnTDQzZ53t6ranZ2dnUVZ_tajnZ2d@centurytel.net...
>>>
>>> It seems silly to not have standards freely and quickly available on 
>>> the web - once and for all.
>>>
>>
>> Not to mention the fact that virtually all of the technical papers 
>> that these organizations are charging for have already been bought and 
>> paid for by U. S. taxpayers.  It seems like a trivial additional cost 
>> to the taxpayers for the Library of Congress to gather them up and 
>> make them available online for free.
> 
> What is European practice?
> 
> Jerry

I don't think there is a standard European practice. It seems far more 
European than American standards and other specs can be downloaded for 
free. Its not universal, though.

ETSI, for example, has made everything freely downloadable for years. 
That's a pretty big body of specs in itself. Other bodies, like CENELEC, 
seem less enlightened.

Steve

John E. Hadstate wrote:
> 
> "Fred Marshall" <fmarshallx@remove_the_x.acm.org> wrote in message 
> news:w9udnTDQzZ53t6ranZ2dnUVZ_tajnZ2d@centurytel.net...
>>
>> It seems silly to not have standards freely and quickly available on 
>> the web - once and for all.
>>
> 
> Not to mention the fact that virtually all of the technical papers that 
> these organizations are charging for have already been bought and paid 
> for by U. S. taxpayers.  It seems like a trivial additional cost to the 
> taxpayers for the Library of Congress to gather them up and make them 
> available online for free.

What do you base that on? University produced papers have usually been 
at least partly paid for by the public. Most standards, however, are 
financed by the companies putting people into their development. In 
fact, I'd say the main purpose of the standards bodies is to get 
companies to play nicely together and reach a compatible common ground. 
There might be come public oversight, to assist fair play, but the bulk 
of the activities and costs are within the participating companies.

I do think anything published as a standard should be freely available 
for anyone to download, but its not because the public paid.

Regards,
Steve

On Nov 10, 2:00 pm, "Fred Marshall" <fmarshallx@remove_the_x.acm.org>
wrote:
> 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

Hello Fred,

I always hated the fact that standards have to be purchased. Check out
the HDMI standard. It costs $10000. They do have a set aside for test
equipment, but it also cost $10000. The big players want to keep the
small players out.

I've often thought that the IEEE does not work to support the
engineer. In fact I believe they work to keep engineer's salaries
down. Unlike the American Medical Association or the American Bar
Association, the IEEE does nothing towards credentialling or requiring
credentialling to be an engineer. I always rememeber the IEEE seemed
to support the exportation of jobs and increasing the number of H1-B
visas. These activities are not in the best interests of working
engineers.

Besides engineers, the IEEE is supported by a lot of academics. Here
the situation is quite different. Academia does use and require
credentialling.  Plus school libraries have free access (for those in
school) to IExplore. Plus the majority of publications are of a
academic nature (Rick's wonderful column being an outstanding
exception).

So the face presented by the IEEE is quite different to the academic
than to the practicing engineer.

Clay

"Steve Underwood" <steveu@dis.org> wrote in message 
news:fh86i6$7ao$1@nnews.pacific.net.hk...
> John E. Hadstate wrote:
>>
>> "Fred Marshall" <fmarshallx@remove_the_x.acm.org> wrote 
>> in message 
>> news:w9udnTDQzZ53t6ranZ2dnUVZ_tajnZ2d@centurytel.net...
>>>
>>> It seems silly to not have standards freely and quickly 
>>> available on the web - once and for all.
>>>
>>
>> Not to mention the fact that virtually all of the 
>> technical papers that these organizations are charging 
>> for have already been bought and paid for by U. S. 
>> taxpayers.  It seems like a trivial additional cost to 
>> the taxpayers for the Library of Congress to gather them 
>> up and make them available online for free.
>
> What do you base that on? University produced papers have 
> usually been at least partly paid for by the public. Most 
> standards, however, are financed by the companies putting 
> people into their development.

I say you're mostly right.  I was talking about getting 
access to the mountains of documents and technical papers 
produced in academia that were fully or partly paid for by 
government grants.

I don't agree that free access to standards is a universal 
good thing.  The more people adhere to the standards crutch, 
the less they take the time to think things through and 
innovate.  The bean counters win, but everyone else suffers 
terminal atrophy of the brain.  Worse, free access to 
standards allows those with too much time on their hands to 
find loopholes to corrupt the standard or weaknesses to 
exploit, which in turn may expose every adherent to the 
standard to the same exploitation.

I am mulling over the same question for the same reasons.  I've been an 
IEEE member for more than 25 years,
the last 10 of which I had health insurance through IEEE that required 
membership. That health coverage
got to be outrageously expensive, so I've gone to another source.  Now 
without that to force my membership, I am asking what I get for the 
money.  Access to the library is expensive as a member, and something I 
generally avoid unless I am desperate for that paper.  I buy no more 
than 2 or 3 papers a year, but would buy far more if the price were 
affordable.  Also, more often than not, the articles were published 
under different societies than the ones I belong to.

Rick, please add my comments to Erik's when you elevate this.

On Nov 10, 3:30 am, Erik de Castro Lopo <er...@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.

and $35 even more so.  which is why i usually beg a pdf offa someone,
often the author, if i am really interested.

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

in the mid 70's, maybe as late as '77, i was a student member of IEEE
for a year and got the ASSP Transaction (that happened to have the
original Winograd FFT article, so that could establish precisely which
year).  i thought it was a waste of money then and haven't had a solid
reason to change my mind since (even though i would like to get back
into the WASPAA conference again which is under the IEEE auspices, but
when i do, it'll be cheaper to pay the non-IEEE registration).  once
in a while a really good article (like "Splitting the Unit Delay")
comes about in the SP Mag.

i think the DSP Tricks would be useful, but we get them here, no?

> "Even Napoleon had his Watergate" -- Michael Spautz

it almost sounds like a malopropism that W would say.

r b-j

"John E. Hadstate" <jh113355@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
news:13jgau98knm663c@news.supernews.com...
.
>
> I don't agree that free access to standards is a universal good thing. 
> The more people adhere to the standards crutch, the less they take the 
> time to think things through and innovate.  The bean counters win, but 
> everyone else suffers terminal atrophy of the brain.  Worse, free access 
> to standards allows those with too much time on their hands to find 
> loopholes to corrupt the standard or weaknesses to exploit, which in turn 
> may expose every adherent to the standard to the same exploitation.
>

John,

Is your concern accessiblilty and education or potential use?  The "crutch" 
comment is particularly interesting.  How does understanding of "A" 
necessarily equate to lack of inventiveness?  I suppose one is always free 
to reinvent the wheel, eh?

The more common complaint is that the standards don't tell one *how* to meet 
its requirements.  We encounter quite a few questions on comp.dsp that are 
along those lines.

The rest seems pretty much an elitist anti-intellectual argument.  It's OK 
for "us" to know but not "those other guys"?  Who would be the arbiter? 
Right now it's an affordability screen.  How effective is that?  Maybe we 
should call in the CIA or your favorite national equivalent thereof ...

As far as bean counters ... nobody forces one to follow the standards except 
the marketplace.  I once designed a stack of VME boards using a very 
nonstandard approach to get there.  Knowing the standard was absolutely key 
in our ability to get more boards in a backplane box than the number of 
slots available.  One had to know the constraints one was working around.

Fred

Steve Underwood wrote:

(snip)

> I don't think there is a standard European practice. It seems far more 
> European than American standards and other specs can be downloaded for 
> free. Its not universal, though.

> ETSI, for example, has made everything freely downloadable for years. 
> That's a pretty big body of specs in itself. Other bodies, like CENELEC, 
> seem less enlightened.

Also, ECMA has free copies of many standards that others
are charging for.

-- glen

"Fred Marshall" <fmarshallx@remove_the_x.acm.org> wrote in 
message 
news:XvqdnbVQapIy3KTanZ2dnUVZ_o6knZ2d@centurytel.net...
>
> "John E. Hadstate" <jh113355@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:13jgau98knm663c@news.supernews.com...
> .
>>
>> I don't agree that free access to standards is a 
>> universal good thing. The more people adhere to the 
>> standards crutch, the less they take the time to think 
>> things through and innovate.  The bean counters win, but 
>> everyone else suffers terminal atrophy of the brain. 
>> Worse, free access to standards allows those with too 
>> much time on their hands to find loopholes to corrupt the 
>> standard or weaknesses to exploit, which in turn may 
>> expose every adherent to the standard to the same 
>> exploitation.
>>
>
> John,
>
> Is your concern accessiblilty and education
> or potential use?

"Abuse" in all its variants.

> The "crutch" comment is particularly interesting.

Thank you.  If you understood that, your previous question 
answers itself.

> How does understanding of "A" necessarily equate
> to lack of inventiveness?

It doesn't, but few standards concern themselves with 
understanding anything.

> I suppose one is always free to reinvent the wheel, eh?

Not if one is required to adhere to "standards."

> The more common complaint is that the standards
> don't tell one *how* to meet its requirements.
> We encounter quite a few questions on comp.dsp that are 
> along those lines.

Then it's inconsistent to claim didactic value as a reason 
for making the standards available for free.  But, more 
realisticly, standards often define an interface that 
presupposes an underlying infrastructure, and an 
infrastructure loosely equates to implementation.

>
> The rest seems pretty much an elitist
> anti-intellectual argument.

Thank you.  I've worked hard and long against the forces of 
phony egalitarianism cloistered in the ivory towers of the 
pseudo-intellectual establishment.  I'm glad to see that my 
efforts occasionally bear fruit.

> It's OK for "us" to know but not "those other guys"?
> Who would be the arbiter? Right now it's an affordability 
> screen.

Yes, in plutocratic America, that seems to be the way the 
game is played.

> How effective is that?

It is obviously highly effective or else you wouldn't be 
calling for the free distribution of said standards.


> Maybe we should call in the CIA or your favorite
> national equivalent thereof ...

Excuse me?  Is the CIA to which you are referring suddenly 
not a national organization?  Or is this just the bleating 
of an ignorant old hippie?

The United States does, in fact, have a public organization 
who's ostensible function is to promulgate and distribute 
technical standards the adherance to which is supposed to 
serve the public interest.  They haven't been able to do 
their job in years (except in a very few niche areas).

>
> As far as bean counters ... nobody forces one to
> follow the standards except the marketplace.

Obviously you have never held a real job, or, if you did, 
there is a clear reason why you no longer have it.

> I once designed a stack of VME boards using a very 
> nonstandard approach to get there.  Knowing the standard 
> was absolutely key in our ability to get more boards in a 
> backplane
> box than the number of slots available.  One had to know 
> the constraints one was working around.

So in spite of having the standard available, you cooked up 
some half-assed scheme to get around it because it wasn't 
convenient to follow the standard.  How would making said 
standard freely available have changed anything?  Sounds to 
me like you're an idiot, in addition to being an ignorant 
old hippie.