One great thing about a $99/year ACM membership is that it includes full access to the O’Reilly service formerly known as Safari Books, normally $499/year. I have no idea what the volume pricing on Safari subscriptions is, so can only say there’s a possibility that ACM article sales subsidize Safari books; I do know that, as an individual who has to learn new things and look old things up constantly, the inclusion of O’Reilly/Safari makes an individual ACM subscription a fantastic deal.

Additionally, having seen someone organize an academic conference once, I do know that IEEE provides a conference with things like bank accounts, insurance, and purchasing departments that can meet the creditworthiness requirements of major hotels. It also ends up covering the shortfall if the conference winds up losing money.

I’m all for improving efficiencies where possible, and there are definitely some problems with these organizations, don’t get me wrong; but I did want to emphasize that both organizations are definitely providing real value to parts of the computing community.

Disclaimer: I haven’t read the link as twitter is (intentionally) inaccessible from my machine.