[lug] Why is it SO easy to destroy cloud environments?

[Jeffrey S. Haemer]

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 10:19 AM, Paul E Condon
<pecondon at mesanetworks.net>wrote:

> For the tapered screw threads, there was not a government mandate,
> there was a consensus standard of the industry, and NBS was the
> maintainer of the physical reference objects. NBS and, I think, also
> NIST never has regulatory authority. They also provide calibration
> standards for all sorts of specialized test equipment, thermometers,
> voltmeters, etc.
>

More detail, for the unusually interested or unusually bored:

The Constitution gives regulatory authority over "weights and measures" to
Congress, the exercise of which Congress delegates to
NIST<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_of_Standards_and_Technology#Initial_mandate>(formerly
NBS).

What's unusual about the US, in this regard, is that we leave almost all
standards work to industry groups. "Inch" is defined by the government, but
IEEE 802.11 or ANSI C aren't.

The IEEE and ANSI are industry-created standards bodies. Adoption of these
standards is voluntary. Standard creation and adoption are driven by
consensus and collaboration of folks like us.

In other countries, standards are centrally defined, top-down, by
government bureaucrats. They're the law.

This is a lot like dictionaries.

In English, dictionaries are compiled by private individuals and groups,
published, and sold to the market. We buy the ones we like best. Me, I own
a couple: an OED and a Webster's 2.

Spanish? A central body, the Real Academia Espanola (Spanish Royal
Academy), defines the language. Real dictionaries come from them. They
define spelling and letters, too. (Other languages have the same thing. I'm
not picking on Spanish, just using it as an example.)

"Mexico"? Used to be spelled that way in Spanish, too. Now it's "Mejico"
because a committee decided, one day, that 'x' would be pronounced "ks"
instead of like a sort of heavy 'h'.

Amusingly, the IEEE spent time defining sort (and other things that sort,
like "ls") to handle the fact that the Real Academia declared "CH" and "LL"
were letters of the alphabet: "A B C CH D ...."

In Spanish dictionaries, "culo" came before "chupa."

As that effort was wrapping up, the Real Academia announced that they were
dropping those letters. "Chingar," from that day on, would have 7 letters
instead of the old 6.

They changed *the alphabet*.  Fijate.

Why? "Computers," they explained. :-)

So, anyway, yes, the Constitution says NIST can decide "weights and
measures" for all of us -- like how many ounces are in a pound -- but no,
historically it's left most standards to the citizenry and the free market.

To us.

-- 
Jeffrey Haemer <jeffrey.haemer at gmail.com>
720-837-8908 [cell], http://seejeffrun.blogspot.com [blog],
http://www.youtube.com/user/goyishekop [vlog]
*פרייהייט? דאס איז יאַנג דינען וואָרט.*
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