[Sigia-l] AIfIA Goals 2004 Survey Results

[Listera]

"david_fiorito at vanguard.com" wrote:

> A lack of standards has some very real effects that cause costs to rise.

So do blind gravitation towards standards. Here's an OS "standard":

Bill Gates says that "5 percent of Windows machines crash, on average, twice
daily. Put another way, this means that 10 percent of Windows machines crash
every day, or any given machine will crash about three times a month."

<http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1210067,00.asp>

Here's another look at standards, security:

Intel last year applied 2.4 million patches to its own network.

One analyst scanned 550 machines with patch management software, which told
him to apply 10,000 patches.

Researching each of the 4200 vulnerabilities published by CERT last year for
10 minutes would have required one staffer to research for 17.5 full
workweeks, or 700 hours.

<http://www.cio.com.au/index.php?id=1968699240&fp=2&fpid=2>

These are the real cost of the idiotic notion of standards for standards
sake, and not thinking through before you standardize.

> Idiosyncratic deliverables may not scale as projects change over time,
> interpretation of said deliverables will vary causing errors that will
> require rework, duplication of effort creeps in, territorialism, etc.

Let's take another non-theoretical "standard" adopted by the IT bureaucracy,
COM. Do you really want to talk about scalability of DOM? It has been a
standard. Even Microsoft now admits it's crap and is in the process of
replacing it within in the .NET framework.
 
> Standards provide structure.  Rigid adherence to standards is problematic
> but not nearly as problematic as anarchy.

So your definition of "thinking through problems" is anarchy? Just how far
are you willing to go in this path of bureaucratization? You'd rather try to
emulate what some other guy says is "best practice" than actually take the
trouble of applying your knowledge, experience, expertise and wisdom? You
trust yourself so little?

> If a corporation has a sprawling complex of sites where navigation, text
> treatment, basic architecture, and other design features are not standardized
> then branding, user experience, and over-all user satisfaction levels can
> suffer.  

That's your straw man argument. Taken to its logical conclusion, why don't
we just concoct an app that spews off "standardized" treatments of corporate
sites at the click of a button. Then *all* such sites will look and behave
the same, offering no differentiation, no competitive advantage, no
usability improvements/innovations, but plenty of comfort for IT
bureaucrats. Nirvana!

>> Finally the last refuge: here come the licensors!
> 
> ... and thank God for them.  When is the last time you complained about
> Doctors being board certified or lawyers having to pass the bar.

OK, now you're talking, lest anybody had doubted where this argument for
"standardization" almost always leads to: compulsory licensing.

You really need to understand the crucial difference between standards for
format, common carrier, exchange, etc., and tools/processes using them. The
law may be the same everywhere, but put five different lawyers in a room and
you'll get five different strategies to win a given case. And that's the
beauty of it.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba