Is it acceptable to have one standard for most items in the household or society? Do you at one time or another ind it quite a problem when using electrical items and the power cable can't fit into the electrical outlet on the wall socket because of a different standard. A common three pin plug for example can't fit into the air conditioning wall socket outlet and vice versa. Maybe that is because of the function of the plug. Different countries in the world too have different sockets for their power supply.
Today most people have and use handphones. Did you ever wonder why there are different types of chargers? A Nokia charger can't be used on a Sony Ericcson. Motorola, Samsung etc. In the market too there are different flash card format. Sony has its own memory stick and can't be used on other brand. Would it be easier if there is only one standard and one type of memory card can fit into all different equipment brands. BTW with all these different formats, a third party was set to gain by producing adapters.
I still remember during the early days of video machine entering our local market. There were two formats that was Betamax and VHS. I made a mistake of buying a Betamax machine after reading about the pros of the format and it is the preferred choice of the broadcasting industry. However shops that rent movies on video are stacking their racks with VHS format and that leaves me less choice of movies. As time goes on, the Beta format has become obsolete and VHS took over the market.
In Tech, Tuesday 15 April 2008 published an article tittled OOXML Sparks Protest. It was reported that roughly 60 data experts staged a demonstration protesting the adpotion of Microsoft Corp's document format as an international standard. It was in response to Iinternational Standards Organisation(ISO) voted in favour of the Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format as the world standard format. Their claim is that it will lock out competitors and force people to keep buying US software giant's programs.
Steve Pepper, former Chairman of the Standards Norway Committee called the protest and argued that' "People shouldn't have to pay money to Microsoft to be able to read my documents."
"There was already a good ISO standard, called OpenDocument Format (ODF) that allows documents to be opened from different software companies." He said.
Well, as an end user, I somewhat agree with him as long as I can open and read my documents on any other computers irrespective of what format it is using.
Today most people have and use handphones. Did you ever wonder why there are different types of chargers? A Nokia charger can't be used on a Sony Ericcson. Motorola, Samsung etc. In the market too there are different flash card format. Sony has its own memory stick and can't be used on other brand. Would it be easier if there is only one standard and one type of memory card can fit into all different equipment brands. BTW with all these different formats, a third party was set to gain by producing adapters.
I still remember during the early days of video machine entering our local market. There were two formats that was Betamax and VHS. I made a mistake of buying a Betamax machine after reading about the pros of the format and it is the preferred choice of the broadcasting industry. However shops that rent movies on video are stacking their racks with VHS format and that leaves me less choice of movies. As time goes on, the Beta format has become obsolete and VHS took over the market.
In Tech, Tuesday 15 April 2008 published an article tittled OOXML Sparks Protest. It was reported that roughly 60 data experts staged a demonstration protesting the adpotion of Microsoft Corp's document format as an international standard. It was in response to Iinternational Standards Organisation(ISO) voted in favour of the Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format as the world standard format. Their claim is that it will lock out competitors and force people to keep buying US software giant's programs.
Steve Pepper, former Chairman of the Standards Norway Committee called the protest and argued that' "People shouldn't have to pay money to Microsoft to be able to read my documents."
"There was already a good ISO standard, called OpenDocument Format (ODF) that allows documents to be opened from different software companies." He said.
Well, as an end user, I somewhat agree with him as long as I can open and read my documents on any other computers irrespective of what format it is using.
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