[time-nuts] IEEE papers

[Neon John]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:14:34 -0700 (PDT), Colin Bradley <colinbradley10 at yahoo.com>
wrote:

>I have also experienced the frustration of trying to download IEEE papers.  I am a member of IEEE along with two of their affiliated societies and still get the same run-around. There are two techniques that I have found helpful. 1) Try searching for the paper, by name, and you can frequently find it on another site. 2) Develop a relationship with a librarian at a local College or University. I frequently find that they have access to these databases and can download and forward them to me by email.

That's a useful technique.  I use that and some faculty friends and friends in large
companies.

If you want to REALLY experience a professional "society", try the Society of
Automotive Engineers.  Membership gets one a couple of bux off publication prices.
That's bad.  Horrible is their latest stunt of shacking their PDF downloads with copy
protection that allows ONE (1) printing!  If you're a Ford or GM, this doesn't apply,
of course.  This is designed to keep out the riff-raff (non formerly-big-three
employees).

I've found myself having to buy only a couple of papers since they started this crap.
I used my one (1) print event to print postscript to a serial port to which was
attached another computer to capture said postscript.  A little voodoo with Acrobat
and I have the pdf back sans copy protection.

The lunacy of this escapes me.

One thing it is emphasizing, I think, is how anachronistic bricks and mortar
professional societies are.  Pretty much everything positive that societies do
including organizing conferences is easily done via the net with little of the
overhead of maintaining offices or in the case of IEEE and SAE, empires.

Perhaps universities could fully take over the other role - providing parking places
for old, semi-inert but highly credentialed people.  I know that they need places to
be but I sure hate paying their salaries as part of each paper I want to see.

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Cleveland, Occupied TN
Daddy, why doesn't this magnet pick up this floppy?