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World Standards Day 2005
ewg writes "Today, 2005-10-14, is World Standards Day as celebrated by the IEC, ISO, and ITU. The press release emphasizes the benefits of safety standards, but the interoperability is the true prize for information systems. How many sets of country codes and date formats do we need?" From the release: "International Standards accommodate people's desire to live in a safer, more secure world by providing a valuable safety net. 'Standards for a safer world' is the theme of the message signed by the leaders of the three principal international standardization organizations to mark World Standards Day 2005. Standards developed at the international level through IEC, ISO and ITU are available for use at the national and regional levels to meet the needs of society at large, the market and government regulators," the three leaders point out. They see standards as vital in disseminating best practices and new technologies, while avoiding new barriers to trade that national security and safety regulations may create."
One of my biggest beefs in non-standard behavior (since this article talks about the safety benefits of standards) is highway construction and layout. I could go on about bizarre practices for signage, etc., but I'll just take a couple:
Another example was in Bellevue, WA, and I'm not making this up. There was a line of cones angling out from the curb, closing off a lane around construction of a new high-rise. Nestled behind those cones in the "dead zone" of the closed off lane was one of those generator run highway signs that said, "Right Lane Closed Ahead"! Wow! I wished for my digital camera.
On the other hand, there is the state of Illinois where I also lived for a long time. Their warning practices are amazing. I one time was way north of Peoria driving south on the interstate, and I saw signs warning of "Construction Ahead, 40 miles"! It may seem ludicrous, but I at least had it in my consciousness I would expect delays and construction, obviously with plenty of time. I wouldn't say THAT would have to be the standard, but in WA there seem to be none.
I could go on, but I wonder how many accidents and deaths could be prevented on our highway systems if there were more sane and consistently applied standards. (And don't even get me started about Europe where they've got ALL of their cars on the wrong side of the road going the wrong way! (kidding))
World standards day is today, the 14th. Posted on..
...the 15th.
Maybe we need some new standards?
coding is life
Depends on your time zone...ah the irony.
... all replies in this thread should be in Esperanto!
.. er, one for each country.
The date formats annoy me quite often e.g. 13/4/2005 compared to 4/13/2005. Please use 2005-4-13 as it is less confusing.
Well apparently the IEEE (International Electronic and Electrical Engineers) dont support it, and yet dont they carry all the standards for data transfer? (802, 1394, etc. Dont forget, 802.1 is for the internet ;P)
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
This is just more bureaucracy. Why not do your best, instead of keeping to minimum standards? We need a society that tries to exceed, not just get by.
HD Video release of the proceedings will be made available on both HD-DVD and Blue-ray format discs.
How many sets of country codes and date formats do we need?
Speaking as someone who has worked on a few large scale, interdepartment information systems, I think a good first step would be to get it down to one per application.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
It's worth pointing out that the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is an agency of the United Nations. All the bluster about the EU "taking over" the Internet is actually a move to have the Internet administered in much the same way as the international telephone service.
Bear that in mind before celebrating World Standards Day today and accusing the EU of being petulant children tomorrow.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Thousands and thousands of programmers are employed trying to display the right time and date in internationally used programs. Make it too easy and those programmers will have to get real jobs.
Oh wait, no-one actually implements the full standard because it is completely disconnected from reality and outside the scope of the committee that drafted it.
Let's all hear it for the C89 standard!
That's better.
How we know is more important than what we know.
... but when are they going to standardize on a standards organization?
You're still using only two?
Does the Day start when it's 12:00 AM GMT, or 00:00 Local Standard Time? Or Daylight Time I guess that would be right now? Does everyone celebrate it within the same 24 hour period, or do some countries get to enjoy the day before others?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
True story.
I had a customer that was very intent on becoming certified to the ISO-14000 standard, the "environmental" standard. Part of this includes writing 3 page procedures on how people should throw their aluminum cans in the recycle bin. Of course, one must track the 7 revisions to the document to comply with the standards.
Anyway, they had a big push for this. They implemented training for everyone, wrote policies and procedures for just about every action (such as recycling cans), and so on and so forth. To motivate the troops and show off their pride, they had dozens and dozens of signs made up that they placed all around the plant, talking about ISO 140001.
Yes, you read it correctly.
A few weeks after they put the signs up, I pointed out the error. I wondered if ISO-140001 was an order of magnitude better than ISO-14001.
On my next visit, they had painted over one of the zeros so that they were now promoting ISO-1400 1. I guess that's revision one of the 1400 standard.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
In my country, International Standards Day occurs next week.
...is the day when ISO 8879 can be downloaded for free. Granted, OpenSP kicks ass at much of it, but I'd still like to read the standard without paying ~$224, and if Goldfarb is the one in the way of that, he's gonna get smacked soon.
(Or did I miss a PDF somewhere this side of eMule? I've seen none there of 8879 yet...)
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
While IEC, ISO, and ITU celebrate today, ANSI, IEEE, and ETSI - among others - are ramping up preparations for what they contend to be the correct day for the festivities, a yet-to-be-determined date in December.
Is that there's so many to choose from.
Posted on Fri Oct 14, '05 11:20 PM, quickly we have 40 minutes to celebrate.
Let's just use metric (SI) units from today on!
Time to include a standard rant about the Metric System. 10 is an ugly base for measurements. 12 or 60 would make a better base because they are nicely divisable by more simple integers. However, we would probably need to use a base 12 or base 60 counting system to take advantage of it. The Intelligent Designer should have given us 6 fingers on each hand.
Table-ized A.I.
Please remit CHF 93,00 to ISO for each person that will be celebrating World Standards Day.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
....is sub-standard.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
I understand folks in Redmond celebrate this on the 17th instead...
Oct. 14 is World Standards Day except in the United States, where it is observed on October 17
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Don't get me wrong, I am fully aware of the importance of standards, but by their nature they are extremely boring things.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Now I have actually figured out that in the country where there are a multitude of responsibility write-offs (read USA) the electrical plugs are still "unsafe at any handling" (compare with Unsafe at any speed) I have since figured out that the Underwriters Laboratories isn't doing a good enough job when they are checking the safety of our household utilities. A most notably thing is the electrical plug for 220V 30/50A applinces where you actually can grab around the plug and come in contact with both the live pins at the same time when inserting/removing the plug. This can be prevented by a design that protects the user from coming into contact with the pins while inserting the plug. This picture shows the outlet in a well that actually serves two purposes - protecting the userd during insert/removal and also catching any mechanical sideway stresses that can break the pins inside the connector.
I have also noted that NEMA is not doing a very good job either since the amount of different electrical plug pinnings that are present is more confusing than helping. Too many pin configurations for the same electrical rating is not very good.
The issue that I would like to point out is that even if there is an international standard that standard isn't followed and adopted as superseding the national standards.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Do the mods recognize when someone is complaining about a lack of standards?
"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
In an act of defiance, the US is holding their standards day in 3mths, 8 days, 4 hours and 22 minutes. Also they are referring to it as Standards for Freedom day. There will be no mention of the metric system, and people will come from _miles_ around to visit events that are dozens of feet across in size.
I've only read the word metric four times in this thread! (as of 03:45 EST)
It's surprising that the US has not chosen to celebrate World Standards Day on the 12th or something instead.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
thwarted by alta vista.
grabbing "booty," not asses.
/. is what happens when geeks talk. get used to it.
A few years ago, Friday, October 14 was World Standards Day. Or, at least, it was World Standards Day in *some* countries. However, in America, the celebrations were held on October 11th. In Finland, World Standards Day was marked on October 13th. Italy planned a separate conference on standards for October 18th.
- Shakib Otaqui
use 2005-04-13, and NOT 2005-4-13. That placeholder zero is useful so that files sort chronologically.
thank you.
Is that 2005-10-14... or 10-14-2005? or 14-10-2005? or 14OCT2005?
However, we would probably need to use a base 12 or base 60 counting system to take advantage of it. The Intelligent Designer should have given us 6 fingers on each hand
Well actually, I read about this in the Universal History of Numbers. Counting in 12 and 60 is quite easy for people if you use your thumb to count each of the 3 segments of the other 4 fingers. If you use the 5 fingers of your other hand to keep track of each group of 12 - tada, you have 60. They theorize this is why the Babylonians used base 60, and we have 360 degrees in a circle, etc.
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Microsoft?
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
Well, in one system for coordinating traffic I made up, the slow lanes would be in the middle to reduce the speed between cars in opposing lanes. I guess that system would only work in highways through the desert.
Now back to the question on which side of the car to sit, for the British custom of steering on the right side, it is often said this is so that drivers of carriages could attack each other better with the sword.
I suppose steering on the left then must be better for knightly jousting with the lance
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Isn't it amazing that these three organizations were able to agree on today as the day to celebrate International Standards Day?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
...I'm going to celebrate World Standards Day today (15 October) instead.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
While we're on the subject of time, how about this 60 minutes per hour, 24 hours per day garbage? Lot of people love to bash the US for not switching to metric, especially after some, such as Britain, went thru the pain of switching from shillings and farthings and such to a decimal coinage system, but everyone is still using this obsolete Babylonian time system. What's with that? 100 seconds per minute, 100 minutes per hour, 10 hours per day!
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Failed validation, 40 errors So here's a standards site, that doesn't follow standards. If I were blind, I'm sure I would be unable to read the page, or color-blind, or any other disability would make it difficult to read.
Make your computer faster: rm -rf
Ha. I guess Microsoft wasn't invited. ;)
Was it my standard or theirs?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's ISO 8601:
ISO 8601 specifies calendar dates like this: YYYY-MM-DD.
The great thing about ISO date is that folders with names like this get correctly sorted alphabetically. Useful for archiving digital camera photos, etc.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Standards for a safer world? I like standards for making life easier. Good standards promote understanding, communication, and efficiency through simplicity. Safety is merely a secondary benefit, though danger seems to be the driving force behind the creation of many standards. Can't people see the world any other way except through the prism of what is safe and what isn't? What is it, 9/11? Is it that the people promoting this standards day think that stressing safety is the best way to get attention and govt funding? When it's not a joke, it's distortion to refer to any old problem as a "danger". I'm glad that, for instance, milk bottles and cartons are a few standard sizes so that they're easier to store, but if they weren't, it'd hardly be dangerous. Could do with even fewer sizes, as in (in the US) change quarts to liters and perhaps make them the same shapes as soda bottles, but the present situation isn't too bad.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Unfortunately, "standards" can be as much of a problem as a benefit. Many companies will view an industry standard as a method to obstruct competitors. If Company A can get their document format adopted as the "standard," they've got a built-in head start on everyone else who has to rework any existing products they have in the pipe to be "standards compliant."
My former employer designated me a their rep to the ANSI T1 standards body back in the mid-90's when SONET was the hot thing. I entered with youthful ignorance and enthusiasm, but exited as a complete cynic. I've never seen so much posturing and pandering with respect to corporate positions. Some folks had strong corporate agendas (i.e. MCI,) while others (HP) tended to have a more open viewpoint.
Regardless of the politics involved, there always seem to be corporate positions that hide just beneath the surface of industry standards. Instead of being the wild west frontier, introducing a standard says you must "be at least this tall to play in this market." Oh, and you have to pay the extortion fee to the standards body in order to get the specs. The PICMG is a good example. A so-called "open" body, you're welcome to participate. Oh, but you need to pay the annual fee to join the group first. Oh, and expect to shell out a couple hundred bucks for copies of the documents.
The PICMG is only one example. They're open enough to let non-members purchase the standards. The ITU has similar non-member document purchase options, but participation in the committees is substantially more restricted. The SD-Card cartel is much more closed. So don't think that standards creation benefits you first. That's just a convenient symptom. Companies establish standards as defensive barriers. If Company X thinks it's too expensive to enter Market A because the standards compliance is so draconian, then the standards have done their job for the membership. The fact that consumers get $10 ethernet cards out of the deal is completely coincidental.
the 19th for ms windows, world standards hour 3:27 in cleveland, etc.
it's 5-o'clock somewhere, and they have a different standard there for happy hour than we do.
this message is patented in the US and the Azores, copyrighted in Italy, open-source in Belgium and Norway, and pirated everywhere else.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The united states should be on the metric system by 1985 a the latest!m etric.htm
http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/misc/usmetric/
-- Real Stupidity is the Artificial Intelligence of the 21st century
> "Today, 2005-10-14, is World Standards Day as celebrated by the IEC, ISO, and ITU."
...There are some many to choose from!
That's what I like about standards
Could anyone imagine a more boring and tedious event such as this?
They see standards as vital in disseminating [...] new technologies"
You've lost me. How does having standards improve the dissemination of new technology? Can't we just look at the internet, or look at the world around us with our eyes open.
I get the impression that these guys seem to think that the world would run more efficiently if only we had a lot more paperwork.