To renew my IEEE membership or not?

John E. Hadstate wrote:
..
>>> 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.
>>>
...
> 
> 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.
> 
> 


What's all this? All these pointless ad hominems are obscuring the point 
  - what ~is~ the point you are trying to make? As I see things (mainly 
as a user of off-the-shelf stuff), a standard is there to promote and 
maybe even enforce interoperability between systems by different 
manufacturers. It has nothing to do with either promoting or suppressing 
"innovation" , much less about "abuse" (uness you are a shareholder in 
Microsoft and subscribe to their innovative "embrace and extend" 
philosophy). Something is either compliant or it is not.

Take MIDI. It is a "standard"  that is effectively a monopoly - there 
~is~ no competing hardware control interconnection for synthesisers. 
It's a pity one has to buy the official spec from the MMA, but in 
practice virtually all the info is on the net (and in some books) with a 
little efffort. It is easy enough that anyone with a little hobby 
electronics knowledge and ability to program a PIC module or other 
standalone hardware can build a MIDI device. The hobby magazines are 
full of MIDI design projects. MIDI is showing its age now, and new 
systems such as OpenSoundControl are starting to "compete" with it;  but 
the practical and brilliant consequence of this single ubiquitous 
standard is that I can take some new MIDI device designed last year, 
connect it to a synth or keyboard that is 20 years old, switch on, and 
they will just ~work~.

The AES defines all manner of standards from XLR connectors to signal 
levels to file and project interchange and a gallimaufry of other stuff. 
Nobody is obliged to use any of it; but having the standards of 
connectors and signal formats defined rigourously means, again, you can 
buy stuff from anyone, connect it all up and again it will just work.

Now take HD v Blu-Ray - two competing "standards". Each supporter will 
sing and dance about technical superiority and "innovation". Each of 
course wants their design to become ~the~ standard. Still hasn't happened.

The user on the other hand has a palpable sense of deja-vu - all that 
Betamax v VHS chaos of years ago. Who ~cares~ that Betamax was 
technically superior?  All the user wants is ONE system, so they can go 
out and buy a player confident that all the films they want to watch 
will play on it, and their expensive machine will not become obsolete in 
a year. So the user, inlcuding me,  will shout "stuff innovation - just 
AGREE!".


Richard Dobson

John E. Hadstate wrote:

[...]
> 
>> 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.

Standards are typically a common ground for interoperability, and 
nothing more. Working with them is not an option. If you've ever worked 
in the development of a standard you should know that the goal is to 
tell as little as possible beyond what is needed for interoperability. 
For example, modem standards typically tell you *only* what goes down 
the wire or through the air, and try hard to give no clue how the heck 
you recover the data from that. Codec standards usually come with 
reference code that is desperately slow, as the developers want to give 
nothing away about the algorithmic shortcuts they know to make 
implementation economic.

Steve

>> So the user, inlcuding me, will shout "stuff innovation - just 
AGREE!

I think it's unavoidable that there are competing standards for a while. 
The dominant standard becomes dominant for a reason, although sometimes
it's politics - tough luck.
Take for example MP3. It's just is great, because the source code for
encoder and decoder are out there. It's not going to go away.

If the industry would "just agree" right now, we'd get 90% functionality
that doesn't benefit the end user, DRM, encryption, watermarking, you name
it.
IMO it's just an evolutionary process, selection by money spent by
customers. Sometimes it goes horribly wrong, but usually it's a good
thing. 

BTW, I love MIDI (and still own my DX7II). 
MIDI is a genuine dinosaur. It will still walk the earth when last week's
"high-tech innovation" has turned to dust :)

Still, technology progresses every day, and that's good.

-mn

Ray Andraka wrote:
> 
> 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.

Just to put my $.02 in here, for a few months now I have been 
considering whether it would be worth it to join IEEE.  I was thinking 
that as a member, I would get access to the articles which I am 
unwilling to pay for.  It seems that my thinking was wrong about this 
and consequently, I doubt I see any compelling reason to become a member.