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The idea that we can create a universal language that everybody will understand by abandoning language and simply making a recognizable symbol for every single concept that anybody might ever want to communicate is stupid.

IKEA already did that. Creating 80+ local language instructions were a pain and an expense, so now all of them, or almost all of them, are completely comic-strip-like without a single line of text.

That said, the goal isn't to create a symbol for every single concept. We've been successful in creating icons for many things that save real money in not having local words when a symbol will do.

Examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

http://athome.kimvallee.com/20...

http://webstore.ansi.org/safet...

"But I don't want to have to learn all of these things!"

You don't need to. Simply print off the local-language version of the ones you need and place it in the area it is needed. For example, laundry care instructions on the wall in your laundry room, or tableware symbols in the kitchen.

Looks like ANSI and others are working on it.

And what do you mean by "at your own expense"? Can't these kinds of skills be learned for free from any computer with an Internet connection?

That depends largely on what it is you need to learn. Most (all?) programming languages are free to learn, but many technical standards (e.g., ANSI, IEEE) are not.

Looks like it's down to $ 30.
http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=INCITS/ISO/IEC%2014882-2012

You have about the right height for keyboard, give or take. That is the most important thing. 30" is for a business desk that was designed for writing. If you are mainly doing computer work, the desk height itself is not important at all... the FIRST thing to consider is keyboard (+ mouse ) height, which should be considerably lower than a "standard" desk. Trying to type for long periods of time on a "standard" desk (too high) is one of the most common causes of Repetitive Motion disorders of the arm, hand, and wrist. And I can add personal experience to that one.

(Before I go further, here are actual ANSI standards for office ergonomics, if you want the official recommended heights.)

But for a typical office, let's assume you either have a standard desk with a keyboard tray, or a desk at keyboard height. Then what?

The NEXT thing is the height of your chair. Keyboard may be at standard height, but you may not be. The chair should be adjusted so the KEYBOARD is at the right height for you. Forget everything else for the moment and make that adjustment next. (Do not adjust the chair so your feet are flat on the ground! Forget your feet for the moment. Adjust it to the KEYBOARD.)

Your arms should rest naturally at your sides (if you have adjustable arm rests set them so your bent elbows are just touching the arm rests). The surface the keyboard is resting on should actually be slightly BELOW the height of your elbows. Your forearms should actually point DOWN just a little. (Yes, that is correct.)

Once the keyboard and chair height are in alignment FOR YOU, the next thing (aside from other adjustments to your chair... those are up to you) is the height of your monitors. The tops of the VISIBLE part of your monitor should be level with your eyes or slightly below. It can even be slightly above that, but should be no lower. Having a monitor that is too low causes neck and back problems. If you are using a laptop in the office, put it on a stand to bring its monitor up to that level, and use external keyboard and mouse! It's great that laptops are portable, but actually using a laptop in your lap while sitting in a chair is about the worst ergonomic situation you could create.

Now you should have keyboard, chair, armrest and monitor height all set. The next thing is your feet. Your legs should not dangle from the chair. That puts pressure on muscles and nerves in the back of your legs, and causes awkward sitting positions. You should have an adequate footrest. Footrests that are adjustable in height and angle are available from most major office supply stores. But the important thing is to get everything else set up at the right height FIRST, then adjust your foot rest to match, not the other way around. Yes, it's important, but it's the LAST thing you should do.

And I will throw in one more thing: if you are expected to sit in an office all day, and the company expects you to sit in a cheap BS chair, turn them in to the authorities. Retailers like Office Depot have their chairs rated for how many hours they can be sat it (with appropriate breaks, of course). You might be appalled at the prices of chairs that are actually rated for 8 hours (of course they use this as a selling point). But you can often find the same higher-end chairs at places like Costco or Sam's, or at auction, for a better price.

(I am typing this from my home office, at a TYPING desk [the entire thing is 26" high], with laptop on a stand so that it and external monitor are at proper height, using external keyboard and mouse, a damned good chair, and a footrest.)

First off, there are no new chips required... this standard is designed to operate off existing 3gpp type interfaces over gsm/cdma/etc.. The standard is pretty open ended on the handset as far as protocols, only specifying that the message be presented in a an attention getting way.

The interesting thing I think is how to secure the federal gateway... I'm guessing they'll use a dedicated frame relay from the federal CMAS system to the commercial gateways.

These standards are being published by ANSI, they are J-STD-100, J-STD-101, J-STD-102. You may be able to find some of the documents on the 3gpp2.org web site.

If you've got $850 bucks laying around, you can read all three interface specifications yourself below:
Device presentation specs:
http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=J-STD-100

Federal CMAS gateway specification (http specs):
http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=J-STD-101

Federal CMAS gateway specification (testing specs):
http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=J-STD-102

First off, there are no new chips required... this standard is designed to operate off existing 3gpp type interfaces over gsm/cdma/etc.. The standard is pretty open ended on the handset as far as protocols, only specifying that the message be presented in a an attention getting way.

The interesting thing I think is how to secure the federal gateway... I'm guessing they'll use a dedicated frame relay from the federal CMAS system to the commercial gateways.

These standards are being published by ANSI, they are J-STD-100, J-STD-101, J-STD-102. You may be able to find some of the documents on the 3gpp2.org web site.

If you've got $850 bucks laying around, you can read all three interface specifications yourself below:
Device presentation specs:
http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=J-STD-100

Federal CMAS gateway specification (http specs):
http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=J-STD-101

Federal CMAS gateway specification (testing specs):
http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=J-STD-102

First off, there are no new chips required... this standard is designed to operate off existing 3gpp type interfaces over gsm/cdma/etc.. The standard is pretty open ended on the handset as far as protocols, only specifying that the message be presented in a an attention getting way.

The interesting thing I think is how to secure the federal gateway... I'm guessing they'll use a dedicated frame relay from the federal CMAS system to the commercial gateways.

These standards are being published by ANSI, they are J-STD-100, J-STD-101, J-STD-102. You may be able to find some of the documents on the 3gpp2.org web site.

If you've got $850 bucks laying around, you can read all three interface specifications yourself below:
Device presentation specs:
http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=J-STD-100

Federal CMAS gateway specification (http specs):
http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=J-STD-101

Federal CMAS gateway specification (testing specs):
http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=J-STD-102

• Phi Schiller, SVP Marketing, Apple
• Ron Johnson, SVP Retail, Apple
• John Connolly, Technology Director, Chicago Public Schools
• John Halamka, MD, Beth Israel
• Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO, Salesforce.com
• Howard Shane, PhD, Children's Hospital
• Shannon Des Roches Rosa

ANSI used to have a policy that they would not accept standards which contained patented components. That changed in the 1980s, I think. (The link to ANSI's patent policy is currently returning the message "Cannot connect to the configuration database. For tips on troubleshooting this error, search for article 823287 in the Microsoft Knowledge Base at http://support.microsoft.com./")

The legal way to address this is to require that standards bodies, from IEEE to ANSI to MPEG-LA, lose their exemption to antitrust law if they promulgate standards which contain patented components. Without that exemption, when companies get together to agree on a standard, it's conspiracy in restraint of trade.

In general, most of the more annoying patent problems are really antitrust problems. Anyone can get a very narrow patent on a very specific way of doing something. Such a patent is not useful unless the very specific way is a de-facto standard enforced by market dominance. That's an antitrust issue.

The reason MPEG-LA gets away with this is that the Justice Department signed off on it in 1997. That's consistent with the FTC-DOJ 1995 guidelines in this area. Anyone can buy an MPEG-LA license under stated terms. So they meet the guidelines. The guidelines don't address the issue of the interaction of de-facto standards and market power. They should. That's what needs to be revised.

For background, here's a speech by an FTC commissioner of the Clinton era on this issue. He makes the point that antitrust lawyers and patent lawyers don't talk to each other much and don't understand each other's fields. Also see this Justice Department Antitrust Division talk from 2007. If you want to talk intelligently about this issue, you need to read these materials.

http://www.ansi.org/

They already standardized the electronic file for just about everything else involving the medical industry. And did a good job of it, IMO.

You forgot to mention that it did not cost billions of dollars. Only the Government possesses the special skill of spending a trillion dollars on something that's worth about 50 cents.

http://www.ansi.org/

They already standardized the electronic file for just about everything else involving the medical industry. And did a good job of it, IMO.

Short version: local guy wins.
http://www.ansi.org/news_publications/news_story.aspx?menuid=7&articleid=446

Longer version: Local guy loses, loses again, appeals to U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and wins.

"It is also possible that ANSI and others may seek a legislative solution to clarify that a government entity at any level cannot in effect turn a privately copyrighted work into a public good solely by referencing it into law."

Good luck with that. What the government giveth, the government can taketh away.

ANSI
IEEE
Wifi Alliance

They appear to function based on the belief that their members have solely benevolent motives behind their participation. What are they smoking and can I have some? Anyway, I'm not entirely sure if that would be considered a committee, subcomittee, etc. and therefore cannot speak authoritatively regarding what the next course of action is. However, these are smart people and anyone who's done those maze puzzles knows that after 1st grade you can tell where there's a dead end without having to draw a line all the way to it. My point is that this does not grind to a halt but it does suck to see these continuous roadblocks. Read up on the fun here http://publicaa.ansi.org/sites/apdl/Documents/Standards%20Activities/International%20Standardization/ISO/ISOIECDirectivesPart1.PDFformat.pdf and note page 11 section 1.7.4.

Now onto the two most important matters IMHO

1. Making an educated decision in the best interest of everyone on this planet for this and all standards
2. Ensuring a full investigation is made into whether M$ did have something to do with the dramatic and last minute influx of P class members.

Generally the U.N. is pretty good with standards (english for pilots) and lists (like ISO country codes)

I've been around them for 15 years.... TWO PAIRS How your cheap, lame telco carries it through their network is immaterial; a T1 is a TX pair and an RX pair. T1's are NOT DSL; the technology predates DSL by several decades. Go buy the spec and read it for your self... a T1 network interface is two f'ing pairs.

Whether or not this results in the answer to your question (how long notification should be given), at least this is a step in the right direction for some centralized thinking instead of everyone doing it on their own.

Actually, there's plenty of standards for 9 track. It was an open format. Everything from the modulation (NRZI, PE, GCR), the block gaps, the tape track widths, reel diameters, etc..

Here's some of them
and another here...

I worked in seismic oil services for a few years, I would assume that NASA used pretty standard stuff as far as physical formats are concerned. The data itself is probably something different.

It's interesting to compare the ANSI of yesteryear to the IETF today. I get the feeling humanity is fighting the same battles over and over again.

Pan

You'll see that in all cases, the "S" stands for Symmetric.

There are several jurisdictions in the United States where their building codes are ... protected under copyright, requiring a builder or homeowner to pay a large amount to have a copy of the current codes for reference and to pay an additional amount to include excerpts from the code in zoning and building permit applications....

Actually, since last year's en banc 5th Circuit appelate decision with was recently denied review by the Supreme Court, this is no longer the case.

I don't even think any C++ compiler has achieved ISO C++ compliance yet

The EDG C++ front end is fully ISO/IEC 14882:1998 compliant, including export support. Look at their resellers for a list of compilers based on it.

I know I don't - simply because they charge several hundred bucks a copy.

Not true. You can get the C++ spec here for USD$18. No C++ programmer should be without this.

You have to buy it from the ISO, AFAIK [though it's pretty cheap, 44 Swiss Francs]. Assuming that you're in America (which I have no reason to do whatsoever, but at least it's a start ;-) you can purchase it through The American National Standards Institute, you're looking for standard ISO 9899:1999, "Programming Languages -- C".

It's pretty much a necessity to have a reference copy of this if you intend to be writing any cross-platform C code. While Kernighan+Ritchie only deals with platform-agnostic C code, they don't always tell you where the mistakes that they are avoiding lie.

The way these standards work (or are supposed to) is that everybody who owns IP related to them agrees to license without-fee for implementers of the "baseline". They (usually) also agree to licence on RAND (reasonable and non-descriminatory) terms any nifty extras (optional features not included in baseline).

The one catch is that it's only free if you follow the standard. Using JPEG2000 technology in something that isn't JPEG2000 can get you in trouble, because the free license is only for ppl. who follow the standard.

You can purchase a copy of the standard directly from ISO, or from various local standards bodies. In the US, that would be ANSI. You can buy from ANSI here. They recently dropped their price (it used to run ~$140), probably because of price competition from ISO and Standards Australia (note that prices from ISO and SA are *not* listed in USD, an that the Australian price includes a 10% tax that will be waved for foreigners). And electronic copy of a standards document is about as fungable as you can get.

Other than the requirement that you stick to the standard, it's totally free (barring submarine patents). You don't even have to notify anyone that you're implementing it. And the JPEG people have worked really hard (even harder than with the original) to ensure that J2K is unencumbered, so even the threat of submarine patents is small.

The way these standards work (or are supposed to) is that everybody who owns IP related to them agrees to license without-fee for implementers of the "baseline". They (usually) also agree to licence on RAND (reasonable and non-descriminatory) terms any nifty extras (optional features not included in baseline).

The one catch is that it's only free if you follow the standard. Using JPEG2000 technology in something that isn't JPEG2000 can get you in trouble, because the free license is only for ppl. who follow the standard.

You can purchase a copy of the standard directly from ISO, or from various local standards bodies. In the US, that would be ANSI. You can buy from ANSI here. They recently dropped their price (it used to run ~$140), probably because of price competition from ISO and Standards Australia (note that prices from ISO and SA are *not* listed in USD, an that the Australian price includes a 10% tax that will be waved for foreigners). And electronic copy of a standards document is about as fungable as you can get.

Other than the requirement that you stick to the standard, it's totally free (barring submarine patents). You don't even have to notify anyone that you're implementing it. And the JPEG people have worked really hard (even harder than with the original) to ensure that J2K is unencumbered, so even the threat of submarine patents is small.

> Any body making public standards should require all participants to provide a license to anybody using that patent for the purpose of implementing that standard free of charge to all.
Standards bodies such as the ISO, BSI and (for Europhobes) ANSI actually do this (That's why nuts from manufacturer A fit bolts from manufacturer B). I have personal experience of this, having been involved with the development of ISO/IEC 14882:1992(E) ("Programming Languages - C++"). You don't even need to buy the standards document to implement it (although it certainly helps)

You'll probally want to get a book or other such better documentation.

If you want to do serious work with the STL, it might be a good idea to take the original ISO 14882-1998 standard for C++ which is available for US$ 18. Many of the fine points are unfortunately missing or simply plain wrong in the manual pages of various C++ STL vendors and/or in various STL books.

I remember at the last company I worked for, we had one battered copy of the SQL92 standard (which is basically just an annotated BNF grammar) that we shared among the whole office.

In order to fully analyze the ASN.1 standard, you have to have a copy of the standards documents and read them. Unfortunately, to do that, I have to pay ANSI/ISO several hundred US dollars. OK, the C and C++ standards are available from ANSI for only 18 USD, but the other standards are much more ... in fact, go to the search page and search for ASN.1 ... see for yourself.

W3C and Internet STDs and RFCs are freely (as in beer and as in speech) available. This is partly why many of them are so widely adopted.

If the ASN.1 folks want their standards widely adopted, they first have to make it easy and cheap to get copies of the standards.

In order to fully analyze the ASN.1 standard, you have to have a copy of the standards documents and read them. Unfortunately, to do that, I have to pay ANSI/ISO several hundred US dollars. OK, the C and C++ standards are available from ANSI for only 18 USD, but the other standards are much more ... in fact, go to the search page and search for ASN.1 ... see for yourself.

W3C and Internet STDs and RFCs are freely (as in beer and as in speech) available. This is partly why many of them are so widely adopted.

If the ASN.1 folks want their standards widely adopted, they first have to make it easy and cheap to get copies of the standards.

I click on the hotlink, and find that their mission statement is served up as a PowerPoint file.

I guess PowerPoint is an ANSI standard, then.