Inline below.... On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 6:15 PM, Pranesh Prakash <[email protected]>wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 20:26, H.S.Rai <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 10:57 AM, vinay ವಿನಯ್<[email protected]> > wrote: > >> government through the industry body > > > > I guess MAIT nad NASSCOM. > > > >> to “create awareness” on the advantages > >> of multiple standards. > > > > Let us try to convince Govt. to experiment with following to taste > > advantage of multiple standards: > > > > 1) 220V in offices and 110V electricity in houses > > Well, we have multiple gauges in the Indian Railways. Is the gov't > willing to accept that that is a problem? > 1. Indian railways is quite aware that some amount of nonstandard track still remains to be changed, but it is a. an expensive proposition and b. the running stock is still working, some of which will have to be written off when the last non-standard track goes. 2. There will always be some situations where a so-called standard track width does not suit the need - mountain areas, for instance. This does not defeat the proposition, it merely emphasises the fact that one needs to ensure that standards suit the needs. If you take track width as the defining standard, yes mountain tracks will be non-standard, but if you agree that areas where incline from the horizontal is consistently above a certain degree need to have a different track width, then I don't think this is 'multiple standards'. And .txt will not be usable for the domain of "text documents" since > it will be a second standard (in addition to .odt). Even if the > software they use (whether it be OpenOffice.org or Microsoft Word) is > capable of opening both. Is that something we want to argue for? > 3. I haven't looked up the history of .txt and .odt, to answer your question. I would not be surprised if there might not be a parallel to the mountain track situation. 4. Having said which, there are plenty of areas where it may seem very logical and attractive to use a proprietary format, because it works so well, with the dominant software application for some very niche uses. This is exactly the situation where a proper consultative multi-stakeholder process will determine whether a non-proprietary standard is needed, or whether the proprietary vendor should release the specs in order to allow the life of the archived data to become sustainable. > > > 2) Left hand drive on National Highways and right hand drive on rest > > of roads, or still better, males should drive left and female should > > drive right. > > > > -- > > H.S.Rai > > _______________________________________________ > > network mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in > > > > > > -- > Pranesh Prakash > Programme Manager > Centre for Internet and Society > W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283 > _______________________________________________ > network mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in > -- Vickram http://communicall.wordpress.com
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