Siegfried Reich

Standards on the Internet …

March 6th, 2010

… 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?

1. Broadband availability?
2. Percentage of the population connected to the Internet?
3. 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.

	Here, there is map on voltage: it is already amazingly coloured, i.e. “non-interoperable”.
	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 …

Entry Filed under: Event,Fun,Sigi's Blogworld