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."

Comments

Okay, here's a standard I'd like to see:

[yagu]

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:

1. Warning signage: I currently live in Washington state and they have the MOST bizarre ways for warning of construction and other hazards on their highways. I literally have come around a blind curve where a sign says "Flagger Ahead" and I almost hit some construction worker with his "SLOW" sign. Literally not enough warning to slow down without almost slamming on one's brakes.

   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.

2. Freeways: notably, the decision to put merging ramps from the left hand side. Again, I'll cite Bellevue WA. They recently redid their I405 and N.E. 4th street interchange and, yep, the northbound merge onto an HOV lane no less now comes in from the left! (It used to come in from the right, go figure.) Until then I'd sort of figured left side ramps were artifacts and had been deemed dangerous and obsolete.

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))

Riiiiiighht

[Qubit]

World standards day is today, the 14th. Posted on..

...the 15th.

Maybe we need some new standards?

Remember...

[FatRatBastard]

... all replies in this thread should be in Esperanto!

Baby Steps

[Bob9113]

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.

Let's not be too hasty here.

[elgee]

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.

Ah, those good old ISO standards

[zymurgy_cat]

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.