OT: Standards was Re: Does everything depend on everything?

[Johannes Wiedersich <johannes@physik.blm.tu-muenchen.de>]

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Dennis Wicks wrote:
> Sadly, only three nations have the good sense not to spend 10's of
> millions of their GNP converting to Yet Another Arbitrary System Of
> Measurement. Burma, Liberia, and the United States.

FWIW, I don't think that it makes sense that different countries, etc.
use different sets of standards. The standards [1] of the ISO [2] are
not 'Yet Another Arbitrary System Of Measurement'. They are *the* common
standard that exists. All other systems are arbitrary (ie. different for
different countries, different purposes, etc.).

Note that this very mailing list would not exist in its present form, if
instead of a common standard there were different implementations for
email for the different applications and/or countries. There are many
more examples, why common standards are important.

Johannes

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si_units

[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standards_organizations#International_Standards_Organizations
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