There were two articles in the news recently that illustrate the value of standards. Being standards people and consumers we understand the issue of compatability when our wall chargers are for 110 volt outlets and we are traveling outside the US or when we have a closet full of phone chargers and power supplies with different output voltages and a bewildering assortment of plugs and connectors.
One article shows how important standards are in assuring consumer satisfaction and the other shows that a proprietary standard led to a costly retrofit and a cybersecurity breach. One other point raised by the first article is that without standards, and voluntary compliance, the government can and does step in and occasionally makes laws when an industry doesn’t govern its own behavior.
So for your reading enjoyment: US Moves to Ban Excessively Noisy TV Advertisements; and a matter of far more than inconvenience, Insurgents Hack US Drones pointing out that encrypting the video feeds was more difficult because [the drones’] “communications technology is proprietary, so widely used encryption systems aren’t readily compatible, said people familiar with the matter.”
