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From: Alastair Milne <milne@uci-icse>
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Standard, What standard???
Message-ID: <7936@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 1-Feb-85 11:19:51 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.7936
Posted: Fri Feb  1 11:19:51 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 6-Feb-85 01:58:04 EST
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab
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   You appear to be using the word "standard" in a somewhat ambiguous way.  I
   see these two meanings coming up:
     1 - the level of quality to which others aspire
     2 - a generally accepted convention (for a language, or a set of
         controls, or a format, or many other things).

   The first is something I think IBM *could* set, if they cared to.
   They've introduced a number of things that are now so general we
   take them for granted.  Floppy discs, for example, were originally
   devised by IBM for loading microcode (into 360/370 control store, I
   believe, though I don't remember clearly).  But their corporate
   policy seems to be always to keep their quality just a bit ahead of
   whatever competitor they're against (eg.  an 8088 with 64K [or less]
   against Apple II's 6502 with 48K, when the PC first came out).  I
   guess they want to make sure they always have a comfortable margin
   in which to move ahead.  Which means that we seldom or never benefit
   from their true ability.

   IBM certainly does not set the second in any official manner, though
   I'm sure they'd like to (some people feel that, in a practical
   manner, they do), just as much as any other company would.  The
   popularity of some of their products has caused great followings of
   them (eg. PC's and PC lookalikes); but that is different from
   defining standards, which is the proper business of bodies like
   ANSI, ISO, and BSI.  In fact, IBM rather likes to buck those
   standards.  If they had had their way, we'd all be using EBCDIC now
   (not to mention PL/I).

   I'm afraid your argument is never likely to be resolved, though.  In my
   experience, lots of people have strong and opposing opinions about IBM.  A
   long debate over them may be interesting; it will certainly be fiery.

				A. Milne		UC Irvine