Standards on the Internet …
… together with nic.at (Austria’s Internet Registry), we organised the so-called 4th “IT-Businesstalk“. Alex Mayerhofer (nic.at) gave an excellent presentation on how standards on the Internet emerge. I would like to share slide No. 2 of his presentation (the presentation can be found at http://www.it-businesstalk.at/fileadmin/www.it-businesstalk.at/praesentationen/event4/Alex-MayrhoferIETF_Nicat.pdf).
Here is slide No. 2:
Would you guess what this map represents?
- Broadband availability?
- Percentage of the population connected to the Internet?
- Standards for plugs?
It is amazing, the correct answer is (3): it is standards for plugs!
The image and further information is available at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Länderübersicht_Steckertypen,_Netzspannungen_und_-frequenzen.
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Here, there is map on voltage: it is already amazingly coloured, i.e. “non-interoperable”. |
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And one on plugs: and that one is pretty coloured (15 different plugs sizes/formats)! |
And in Software Engineering we often argue that hardware “is easy” and it is the software that’s the source for heterogeneity …
Add comment March 6th, 2010
