RE: [xml-dev] You call that a standard?

["Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com>]

The word "standard' when it comes to software and computer technology is usually meaningless. Is something standard if it produced by a standards body but has no conformance tests (e.g. SQL)? What if it has conformance testing requirements but is owned by a single entity (e.g. Java)? What if it is just widely supported with no formal body behind it (e.g. RSS)? 
 
Whenever I hear someone say standard it's as meaningless to me as when I hear the acronym 'SOA', it means whatever the speaker wants it to mean. 
 
-- 
PITHY WORDS OF WISDOM
There are always two solutions to the problem: yours and the boss's. 

________________________________

From: Bullard, Claude L (Len) [mailto:clbullar@ingr.com]
Sent: Wed 4/28/2004 7:24 AM
To: xml-dev
Subject: [xml-dev] You call that a standard?



Bob Glushko notices that all is not well in the world
when the term 'standard' is corrupted.  I don't
see any solutions here, and I note that this is the
price to be paid by many in our community who chose
to gut ISO and really did not understand what they
were doing.  Their tears now do not move me.

Jon, Tim, Jean, Eve, James, Michael, put this one on
your tombstones:

"As the twig is bent, so grows the tree."

http://news.com.com/2008-1013-5200672.html?tag=nefd.acpro

And those wild and wacky browser folks are waking up
to the fact that the web is just data plumbing and
that load balancing a system means using something
other than thin-clients.  So those who 'voted with
their feet' have found they now have holes in their 
soles. 

http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5201325.html?tag=nefd.lede

An HTML browser IS a cul de sac.  Dagnabbit.

len

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