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RE: breaking up?



Title:
Anyone who went through the standards wars that preceded the web wars and had
SGML browsers before web browsers knows this is the same cycle being repeated.
 
What did you learn?
 
Blood on the water is what wars always produce.   All I am saying is standards are
what you make of them.  The trend to privatize is almost irresistable.   There is no
protection.  
 
Understand that the web designers were victims of their own making.
Once they screamed for things to be fixed, kill all the lawyers, down with ISO,
up with the W3C, we be fast you be slow, and so forth, they simply set the
whole cycle back in motion.  The strongest competitor dominated the outcome.  IE
won because the web designers made it happen.  The NS designers lost in a 
competition in which they set the expectations. Why did NS change their name 
from Mosaic Communications and pay $2.3 million to the University of Illinois? 
What did they expect from their competitors?
 
Spy Vs Spy.  Be smart, fast and execute brutally.  That is how evolution usually
works sans a catastrophe.   Dinosaurs beat the mammals every time until the
big rocks fell from the sky and a lack of food and breathable air gave the
advantage to small, furry, egg-eaters.
 
"No good guys, no bad guys, just you and me and we both disagree."
 
Again, what do you require of the organizations you empower?
 
Do you want standards police, slow processes for consensus, running code,
what sort of rule?  Choose who chooses your choices.  There ain't no justice beyond that. 
Nature doesn't create law.  The mammals do. 
 
If you want a cheerier outlook, see Gandhi.   In the long run, the tyrants
always fall.  Always.   But it doesn't happen of necessity.

Len

http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h

-----Original Message-----
From: Guy Murphy [mailto:guy-murphy@easynet.co.uk]

Anybody who went through the debacle of doing web design (as opposed to web development) for v4 of IE/NS wouldn't simply dismiss the desire for agreed upon standards as a need to belong, or a need to dominate... a lot of Web designers would emphasise a need to go home and spend time out of the workplace.
 
There was blood all over the place during that bowser war... one of the reasons why standards suddenly became so popular among a section of the audience.
 
Its easy to forget, and when we do there'll be blood all over the place again.