927: Standards

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 08:47, 6 August 2014 by Hppavilion1 (talk | contribs) (Explanation: Improved [citation needed] explanation)
Jump to: navigation, search
Standards
Fortunately, the charging one has been solved now that we've all standardized on mini-USB. Or is it micro-USB? Shit.
Title text: Fortunately, the charging one has been solved now that we've all standardized on mini-USB. Or is it micro-USB? Shit.

Explanation

In the world, there are a ridiculous number of different charging ports and other types of connectors, all competing to be the universal standard for all devices. For example, USB, mini-USB, micro-USB, subatomic-USB, the now-defunct Apple charger, and a few dozen more. This results in people having way too many cords for all their different devices, instead of just a few universal cords, and also makes producing improved cords extremely difficult. Cueball and Ponytail recognize the problem, and decide to design a new, standard cord to attempt to unify the world of chargers; however, because the competitors are, of course, competitive and will naturally resist suddenly submitting to the new standard, their attempted standard simply becomes another competing device for the universal standard, thus increasing the problem. This sort of situation occurs often in the development of standards in technology.

A few years ago, it looked like everyone was going to standardize on mini-USB, but then smartphones decided on micro-USB and now it seems that most devices are using micro-USB.

Transcript

How Standards Proliferate
(See: A/C chargers, character encodings, instant messaging, etc.)
Situation:
There are 14 competing standards.
Cueball: 14?! Ridiculous! We need to develop one universal standard that covers everyone's use cases.
Ponytail: Yeah!
Soon:
Situation: There are 15 competing standards.
comment.png add a comment! ⋅ comment.png add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ Icons-mini-action refresh blue.gif refresh comments!

Discussion

But this new video codec might just be the one that solves all our problems! You never know until you try it! Davidy²²[talk] 09:19, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

There are sixteen competing standards StillNotOriginal 02:13, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Is the mini-USB vs micro-USB standards rift a good representative example of what this comic is hinting at? Dexterous (talk) 10:19, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, it is. Though, basically, there were even more variants than that around. Before each maker basically had their own socket, most kept it through their phone models, mostly. But everyone basically just uses Micro-USB nowadays... Some still use Mini-USB, but those numbers are dwindling. What really fits to this comic is something that was just recently announced: USB 3.1. If you Google for the new USB 3.1 plugs, you see they're completely different but "cover all use cases"... Let's see how that goes. Sinni800 (talk) 13:43, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
3.1 type-c was meant to be fairly quickly adopted and designed to meet all use-cases for the foreseeable future. when the foreseeable future presents currently unforseeable use-cases a new standard will likely be rapidly developed and deployed. this is a functional model, different than the one that leads to competition amoungst hardware/software developers. Also, MKV is another example of a sustainable standard (container for media files). Googles VP9, and the coming VPx 18 month update cycle, seem to be the best current option for an open video codec standard.

This particular comic is widely cited in about four different SDO's that I participate in 108.162.216.9 08:10, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Politics

This is more applicable to politics. It's so prevalent in the left and I frequently reference it on /r/socialism and stuff. Once in a while there will be a person posting saying that we need to form one major socialist party that appeals to als many tendencies as possible like Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, Trotskyism, with the parties like SAlt, SPUSA, etc. It's like. NO. YOU'LL JUST FURTHER SHATTER THE LEFT. Forget parties. We all have the common goal of class consciousness and worker ownership of the means of production. Let's first work on that and *later* argue about the specifics. Like seriously. For the organizing the left is known for, there seems to be less organizing and more arguing going on... International Space Station (talk) 02:10, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Hah, with that kind of talk, it's no wonder your Popular Front for Galilee only has one member, bleedin' splitter! The goal of the People's Popular Liberation Front for East Judea (Bethlehem) is to free our country from the Judean People's Front (and the Romans after that) but there is no way allying with Samarian splitters like you is going to bring us closer to that goal! We will defeat the People's Popular Liberation Front for East Judea (Bethlehem) and free our country! Bloody SPLITTERS! Long live the People's Popular Liberation Front for East Judea (Bethlehem-North)!
Sorry, but after seeing that comment I couldn't resist :P --172.68.50.106 01:55, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
Truth. Marking this topic for anchor linking. -- Frankie (talk) 19:33, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

UTF-8 and UTF-16 can both encode the entire Unicode character set, so I edited the page to say this. (In actual fact, UTF-16 is more commonly thought of as the more limited version, by people who confuse it with UCS-2.) --Sophira (talk) 00:07, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Mobile phone chargers have mostly converged on a common USB-based solution...

Regarding Mobile phone chargers have mostly converged on a common USB-based solution, it may be worth mentioning the reason they converged was China. China passed legislation standardizing the charging interface because competing designs proliferated and were not interoperating. It was causing excessive waste as millions of good chargers were discarded every year. Europe is cosidering similar legislation. Also see China’s Big Government Hand Works Just Fine and Apple will be forced to use micro USB chargers by 2017.

Except they didn't, because USB-C happened before micro-USB convergence actually occured in the West, and iPhones *still* aren't conforming to any sort of charger standard in 2019. And now we have 9 different standards running over a USB-C connector...
Relevant news on this aspect: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51137069 162.158.158.93 17:19, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
(Was that me, that posted that? Possibly, it's written how I might have written it, from the same source that inspired me to bring the following here...)
Latest: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58665809
Also I'm noting in passing that I've got several devices still only MicroB-charging (one older thing is still mini-USB, I think, but only for data and not used for charging which is so much more easily accomplished by just swapping in new/recharged AA cells), the newest slightly over a year since bought first-hand, and not yet had a fabled USB-C one yet. Maybe I just don't pursue the bleeding edge, like most people (nor Apple stuff). ;) 173.245.54.246 17:05, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Solutions

What are the solutions to this "competing standards" problem? 172.70.189.10 17:06, 11 September 2022 (UTC) Ignis

Well, there's always the technodespot who prescribes the sole standard that is to be used... Even if it isn't one that is the best/sufficient/workable, but... people can always adjust. ;) 141.101.99.32 20:31, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
True! For example, this just happened: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33078596 (EU Passes Law to Switch iPhone to USB-C by End of 2024) 172.70.147.47 17:40, 4 October 2022 (UTC) Ignis