Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!uunet!stanford.edu!msi.umn.edu!sctc.com!miller From: miller@sctc.com (Steven M. Miller) Newsgroups: comp.org.acm Subject: Re: Dying ACM... Message-ID: <1991May2.040855.16423@sctc.com> Date: 2 May 91 04:08:55 GMT References: <1991May1.181719.11263@uvm.edu> Organization: SCTC Lines: 34 If it wasn't for the SIG's I wouldn't be an ACM member at all. However, even with them the quality seems to vary significantly. I'll put in my plug here for SIGCOMM and SIGOPS. I'm consistently reading their quarterly publications more thoroughly than just about anything else. I've never found CACM to be very interesting, though some of its new departments are starting to catch my interest. However, the new style is distracting and not appropriate for the CACM. The other ACM journals that I've tried seem to be aimed more at the acedemic set than the practioner set. As a result, the ones I've tried have only been single year experiments. Another problem is price/value. I'm seriously considering paying non-member rates to join SIGCOMM and SIGOPS because I don't think that I'm getting what I'm paying for with a full ACM membership. I believe that I get a lot more value out of my IEEE/CS membership. The IEEE seems to support the practioner and the community better by sponsoring standards projects such as POSIX and 802, and their comprehensive tutorials and even videos. Plus their CS journals and other publications are more readable and for me generally more informative and applicable to my work. Additionally, the ACM seems to always be playing catchup to the IEEE. They've recently added their ACM Frontier series of books, and are now starting to sponsor some of the group orientated benefits such as insurance and so on that the IEEE has had for years. And since I'm already getting them from the IEEE I'm not going to take advantage of them. Maybe the ACM can turn it around, but this is likely my last year as an ACM member. -Steve