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The Pitfalls and Perks of Adopting a New Standard
Monta writes to tell us that IBM DeveloperWorks has an interesting article about the pros and cons of 'adopting a standard before it becomes one'. From the article: "Whether a standard will succeed and be widely adopted is ambiguous at first, regardless of who endorses it -- a major player or a fringe element. So if most people don't like to welcome the new guy, why would they put all their eggs in a standards basket when that basket might not exist tomorrow?"
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I, for one, welcome the new guy!
Getting a product to market with a new technology can advance the adoption of a standard.
Chicken, meet egg.
Of course it's a gamble...
but that's one way to make the big money.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
For one example of pitfalls and perks, consider stylesheets. Netscape threw their weight behind JSSS, Internet Explorer threw their weight behind CSS. CSS got taken up by the W3C, JSSS got chucked. Internet Explorer 3 was first with CSS support, Netscape 3 had none, and Netscape 4's CSS support was an abysmal wrapper around JSSS.
Another example is XSLT; Microsoft implemented a draft version, and ended up with support that was incompatible with the final specification and later versions of their own browser.
Of course, who was first doesn't matter in the long run. What matters is an ongoing commitment to conformance - being first with partial support means nothing if you do as Microsoft did with CSS and forget to implement the rest for years.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Stolen quote: The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
lets see if we can /. IBM...
"Great minds think alike; hurried developers make similar mistakes."
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Wrong standard.
That's like comparing being a karma whore to to posting in English. Yes there's some grey area with technology standards since we do choose among new ones but it's still not the same.
.... To make sure that Zonk doesn't post dupes.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Is that like going to McDonald's, ordering a Chicken Sandwich, and getting an Egg McMuffin?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Assuming a normal distribution on the bell curve, aiming for "standard" is to aim right for the big, juicy middle of the curve. Doesn't that mean you're aiming for average overall?
No. Did you read the article, and understand any of it? If you did, maybe you'd understand what is meant by "standard."
A standard, in this context, is not a statistical point or distribution of points that falls on a bell curve. It is not the "average" level of quality, it's not even a measurement of quality. It is, instead, a set of criteria that is generally accepted by consensus of the community. Typically, this is to allow interoperability and product substitution capacity, and is necessary for consumer adoption of new technology.
Look at Betamax vs. VHS, for example. Would it do you any good, as a movie distributor, to create a new standard for videocassette content delivery that is better than Betamax or VHS? Because VHS is only "average"?
To take that a step further, say you are developing what you hope to be the next "standard" for in-home movie content delivery, the Laserdisc. Would it make sense for you to develop an entirely new interface between the TV and your device, when most of your potential customers already have televisions that have coaxial cable connectors?
Standard != average. Standard = used by the majority.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
...everyone has their own
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
Adoption that makes things become standard. Not the other way around. At most, all you do is create a "recommended standard", which is interestingly what the RS stood for in that famous 25-pin bus.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
One well-adopted "standard" (which isn't a standard at all) is ID3 (and its successor, ID3V2), the standard for tagging files with metadata.
The interesting thing here is that it is as standard proposed and written in the spirit of Open Source -- its development is moderated by a core group of loosely-knit volunteers, and anyone can contribute to the discussion.
It has been adopted by practically every developer -- commercial, open source, Joe-in-Basement, etc. -- of multimedia software, even Microsoft.
No standards body (IEEE, IETF, ISO, NIST, W3C, IANA, etc.) has accepted it as a standard; to my knowledge it has never been submitted to any organization as a proposed standard.
By community involvement and acceptance, it has become a de facto standard, and for the most part everyone plays by the rules.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
"IBM DeveloperWorks articles requiring registration"
Huh?
The article was not a reg req offering.
Whatever you're smokin', pass it 'round.
Microsoft integrated XML pretty deep into .NET, so naturally they are trumpeting the usefulness of the XML standard and SOA
Oooh... Microsoft! Funny thing about Microsoft, but they suffered a major setback recently. Seems that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts opted for an independantly defined open standard that everyone can use freely, rather than the Microsoft offering which was loaded up with licences and patents and which they could change at will and without consultation. I gather Microsoft were not happy about that. Chairs were thrown, I have no doubt.
Oddly enough, that was about SOAs (Service Oriented Architectures) as well. I know this is a crazy idea, but I expect Microsoft would be purely delighted if everyone ignored the Open Document standard and went on to express their individuality by buying whatever de-facto standard Microsoft might subsequently announce. But then you used lots of dollar signs when talking about VB.NET so I guess you can't really be a Redmond shill. And to think, you nearly had me fooled.
Again, I could be entirely wrong. Your mileage may vary.
Yes, I think it probably will, and I think you probably are. I think people understand perfectly well that open standards means increased competition, and that competition means better products and better value for money.
Certainly, there's only one way to find out. Personally, I'm rather looking forward to it.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
It sounds like you are really looking for a relational DB format of ID tagging.
...
A song can have many authors.
An author can have many names
An author can have many songs
A name can have many authors
You need a many-many for song/artist, for artist/name, for name/artist ("Monkeys", for example, may not mean the same people today as it used to), etc.
In fact, you'll have many/many tables EVERYWHERE in a really complete system, and you're going to want some way to transfer information from one DB to another DB maintaining the same many/many intermediate information as you transfer across DB's
> Secondly, it's a waste to have an extra entry just for that one song.
You will wind up having to use a lot of UUID's in pairs for each table entry, and you'll have a lot of those entries. Last time I checked, generating a UUID took 16 bytes, so each line of each many/many table is a 32 byte entry, and each song will trigger many many/many entries.
Were you trying to save space somehow?