Naturally Occurring Standards 295
An anonymous reader writes "The phrase 'de facto standard' can denote anything from proprietary tyranny to a healthy, vibrant, market. What makes a standard viable without the formal blessing of a standards organization? Should you use such informal standards, or ignore them?"
Tests (Score:5, Insightful)
The tests would be: "Does that standard meet the needs of disparate groups of people who may be using a tool for different purposes within an organized framework? Is the standard accessible? Also critically important: "does that standard lock one into a narrowly defined structure that is difficult to extend or modify as needs change? Is the standard backwards/forwards compatible? To answer your final question, standards become formalized when they begin to meet these tests and are adopted by appropriate shareholders. This of course is aside from issues of criteria definition, or guidelines which often begin to take on lives of their own and bastardize "standards".
Re:Tests (Score:2, Insightful)
Hm, this reminds me of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. That's not changing any time soon, is it?
Re:Tests (Score:3, Interesting)
Great Britain and Australia have seen their violent crime rates soar [tripod.com] since revoking the right of ordinary citizens to own guns.
Over 50 million people were murdered by their own governments during the 20th century, and the first thing these governments did to start their cleansing programs was outlaw guns for ordinary citizens [jpfo.org].
So tell me exactly why the Second Amendment makes no sense?
Re:Tests (Score:3, Insightful)
In most totalitarian regimes, before they took away the rights, first they took away the guns. The purpose of the second amendment is to keep someone from doing that.
Re:Tests (Score:2)
Re:Tests (Score:2)
I am so happy now that the dollar is falling, the surplus is gone, gas is at $2.50, the deficit is larger then ever, govt spending up, the govt has grown both in size and scope, there is less freedom and there is a world war going on.
Re:Tests (Score:2)
If the second amendment is to have any effectiveness it has to allow bomb making equipment and materials, biological weapons, and chemical weapons. To think that you are going to hold off combined might of the the US military, FBI, the CIA and others with an m16 is delusion of the highest order.
Re:Tests (Score:2)
Re:Tests (Score:2)
Re:Tests (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, that's what the word "standard" meant of old. A standard is a pole, a stick -- such as a flagpole, hence the term "standard-bearer". However, more usefully, a standard is also a measuring-stick. (Another word for a well-sized stick is canon, which gives us the word canonical, meaning correct or orthodox, as well as cane, a walking-stick.) The purpose of a measuring-stick is to see if someone or something measures up -- if it is standards-compliant. Standards equals testing.
A real IT standard spells out required behaviors of the implementation. In a standards-compliant C compiler, the function printf accepts certain formatting codes, and generates specified formatting therefrom. A C compiler which (say) inserts extra decimal places when formatting a floating-point number is not just wrong, but provably wrong. You can write a test suite based on the C99 standard that enumerates every possible printf formatting code, and tests that the implementation does the right thing.
A standard can also spell out what is at fault in a failure. The DNS standards spell out the consequences of lame delegation. The SMTP email standards spell out responsibility for message delivery -- if your mail server accepts a message from a sending system, it is required to deliver it or transmit a bounce message. If you reject the message, it is up to the sending system to transmit the bounce. If the sender complains that their mail was not received and they got no bounce message, an inspection of the server logs can show which system is at fault by being out of compliance with the standard. Again, testing is of the essence here: one system is measuring up; the other is not.
An informal "standard" is an invitation to arguments over what is "acceptable" behavior. A formal standard that spells out exactly what is to be sent over the wire (or recorded in the file, or accepted in source code) can still be a source of debate, but at least the participants can accept that there can be right and wrong answers.
Re:Tests (Score:3, Interesting)
A flag, banner, or ensign, especially:
The ensign of a chief of state, nation, or city.
A long, tapering flag bearing heraldic devices distinctive of a person or corporation.
An emblem or flag of an army, raised on a pole to indicate the rallying point in battle.
The colors of a mounted or motorized military unit.
vs.
Indeed, that's what the word "standard" meant of old. A standard is a pole, a stick -- such as a flagpole, hence the term "standard-bearer".
So you're saying a flagpole is call
Formally informal (Score:5, Interesting)
Just remember: Microsoft Office is an informal standard, as is Microsoft Windows. Of course, if you ask Microsoft, it's all "the industry standard".
(Which reminds me of an amusing story. My company had a third party do a web video for us at one point. The third party then asked us what format we wanted it in. I replied "MPEG2" because it's the most portable and is a cross-platform standard. We then got back a WMV file with a note about Windows Media being "the industry standard". Apparently the only reason they asked was that they wanted to know if we wanted the file coded as VBR or not.)
re: formally informal (Score:3, Insightful)
similarly: a lot of employers maintain codes of conduct, most of which include an "acceptable usage policy" (AUP). how useful and fun a site would slashdot be if everyone abided by the actual terms of the AUP?
ed
Re:Formally informal (Score:2, Insightful)
I realize that it isn't core to your point, but...MPEG2 is the most portable and cross-platform for a web video? Maybe in DVD players, however it's one of the most license/patent encumbered standards out there, which is why you generally can't play MPEG2 on the desktop unless it's in DVD form and you have the appropriate software/hardware.
Re:Formally informal (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Formally informal (Score:2)
Encoding as MPEG2 would also have been very unprofessional, as it doesn't qualify as a "quality source". At the very least, the color resolution has been halved from the original source material.
Re:Formally informal (Score:3, Interesting)
Which it is - it's a standard that's used in the industry. That's de facto standard rather than official standard, of course, but standard nonetheless.
Re:Formally informal (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Formally informal (Score:3, Informative)
SVG is the closest thing. Unfortunately, your customers will need a plugin. Sadly, Flash is the "de-facto" standard in this case. If you really don't want to use flash, just use animated GIFs.
Re:Formally informal (Score:3, Informative)
I mean SMIL
http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/
Re:Formally informal (Score:3, Informative)
SVG might be your best bet, though.
Re:Formally informal (Score:2)
Pity it won't play on most systems because you need a licensed decoder to be able to play MPEG2.
Well, do you want to be rich or right? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're very, very lucky, right & rich converge, but if its either/or I think my 1st 2 sentences sum it up.
Remember ... (Score:5, Insightful)
CC.
P.S.: An excellent article!
Re:Remember ... (Score:2)
Re:Remember ... (Score:2, Funny)
Look. You've got it all wrong. You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves. You're all individuals!
FOLLOWERS:
Yes, we're all individuals!
BRIAN:
You're all different!
FOLLOWERS:
Yes, we are all different!
DENNIS:
I'm not.
Re:Remember ... (Score:2)
CC.
Standard... (Score:3, Interesting)
What makes [or should make] something standard is the wide acceptance from the population. And after all, that is a standard. As an example (trying not to flamebait) Microsoft could try to standaraize his
True standards qualify both ways (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft Word *.doc is not open. -> not standard
HTTP is open and common. -> true standard
Re:True standards qualify both ways (Score:3, Funny)
Re:True standards qualify both ways (Score:5, Insightful)
MS Word *.doc is a standard because 80% of the desktop market runs MS Word.
Just becuase it's closed doesn't mean it's not a standard
Re:True standards qualify both ways (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:True standards qualify both ways (Score:2)
Nope, most mainstream titles are encrypted but the format does not require that content be encrypted and there are discs sold without encryption.
Re:True standards qualify both ways (Score:3, Insightful)
It WON'T exist on my machine. This is intentional. So if you intend to sell to me, you don't use it.
A standard is the right way to do things, commonly accepted. It a proposed approach shuts out a large (not majority, but large...for some meaning of large) then that approach is not standard.
So far two criteria: I won't consider anything as a standard if I can't or won't use it. (And I use pdf's, despite despising Adobe.)
OK, pdfs are a standa
Re:True standards qualify both ways (Score:2, Insightful)
It is not, however, a de jure standard, in that it has not been approved by one of the commonly accepted standards bodies (eg., ISO).
When you get down to it, the only standards that matter are the ones that that the targeted body accepts, either through formal or traditional m
Re:True standards qualify both ways (Score:2)
That statement is categorically false. A DVD you create with dvdauthor is not encrypted. There are also studios that push out DVDs without CSS encryption.
Do you perhaps mean:
After all EVERY commercial DVD player can understand CSS.
Even then there are several non-commercial DVD players (software-based ones of course) that come to mind; mplayer, xine, ogle. All of which can be compiled without libdvdcss and can play non-encrypted DVDs fine. So it is po
Re:True standards qualify both ways (Score:2)
Ah, but Word is a de facto standard since that's what most people use for such docs and hold up as the standard.
Industry standard techniques (Score:3, Insightful)
Also keep in mind that "Industry Standards" in the sense that I'm talking about has absolutely nothing to do with real ISO or QS standards. Those are actual organizations that create a set of standard rules for companies to follow, usually for the safety of workers and quality assurance of products. No, I'm just talking BS manager-speak...
Re:Industry standard techniques (Score:3, Insightful)
It makes sense, really -- different people in the industry use different things. Quark, PageMaker, InDesign, LaTeX -- they're all industry standards because there are groups of people out in the industry using them. For all the complaints about Word being standard, well, RTF is an industry standard as well and is used by a great m
good standards are not easy (Score:2, Insightful)
Without the above the best of breed will prevail and become "de facto standard".
Just a pity that when a company has the monopolicy on their market they only risk market share when using "good" standards, capitalism is good for starting up an economy however sometimes it is better to do some thing "socially" it's for the common good.
Analogy: urban architects, folksonomy (Score:5, Interesting)
Folksonomies[1] are hot these days, and they go against the rigid a priory classification that has been standard so far. That's another example of a shortcut. Because it's better (easier, faster, more natural, etc.) people are adopting it, and it's becoming a de facto standard. That's the new shortcut, and pavents are being built to facilitate this new route.
[1] simpy [simpy.com] (use demo/demo for a demo)
Re:Analogy: urban architects, folksonomy (Score:2)
They let people walk freely and observe the walking routes and patterns. Then they put down the walk-way, and that becomes the standard place to walk. You follow it until you find something better, a shortcut. Then you build a new pavement there.
I like to walk on the grass.
Re:Analogy: urban architects, folksonomy (Score:2)
De Facto Whipping Boys (Score:4, Insightful)
IBM
1970
IBM
1980
IBM
1990
Microsoft
2000
Microsoft
2003
SCO
It's de facto when it requires no further explination.
Acceptance (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess it depends on what you mean... (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps it's useful to discuss what the difference is between a de facto standard and a convention. If there is none, then I'd say conventions evolve through traditions established by whomever pioneered a given technology/idea, and those conventions can and do change over time (Liebniz notation in calculus comes to mind as a mediocre example) as better ideas come up. But usually over a long period of time.
I mean, we had damn near purged the world of programmers who put their opening brace for a new code block on the same line as the conditional statement, and then that Gosling dude from Java went and set us back 20 years.
Re:I guess it depends on what you mean... (Score:5, Insightful)
for(int i=0;i<10;i++);
{
[loop body]
}
Re:I guess it depends on what you mean... (Score:2)
Or you could just use Python, which enforces readability and avoids the entire concept of silly bugs like that in the process.
Re:I guess it depends on what you mean... (Score:2, Informative)
Until someone types a tab [google.com] instead of spaces, and the application goes AWOL.
Re:I guess it depends on what you mean... (Score:2)
Ironically, I just stumbled upon that one.
Twice.
Anyway C++ should issue warnings about semicolons following forloops. Now _THAT_ would be a very good standard!
Re:I guess it depends on what you mean... (Score:2)
They also warn about if(foo=bar) goofs in your code.
Or maybe I just got a really good IDE/compiler back in '98 that did that (Symantec C++ for MacOS).
Re:I guess it depends on what you mean... (Score:4, Interesting)
To answer your question, nothing is strictly wrong with it, it's a matter of preference. I can give you my reasons for disliking it but it's just garbage to justify an opinion I can't otherwise explain.
- The bracers are not vertically aligned in the same column, thus breaking my the ability to quickly, visually align blocks of related code on-screen. Note that plenty of people find your method more readable. I don't.
- Few people who code that way will put the start brace to a function in the same place; they tend to start a newline and put the brace on it. Usage tends to be inconsistant, making other people's code more difficult to read.
- When you start a new block of code without a conditional, where do you put the brace?
- If you want to test a block of code, you can easily comment-out the conditional if the brace has its own line. If you put it after the conditional, you have to comment that line out and add another brace, then delete it when you're done.
But mostly I like it because that's how I learned to program and I find the shortcomings of the same-column brace style more tolerable than the shortcomings of the old style. I find on-screen space to be a negligable concern, I haven't coded on an 80x25 terminal since 1993, I personally find it less readable, and I've not committed or experienced that particular bug since my first semester of C. Moreover, that bug becomes easily self-apparant with any modern editor that supports good syntax highlighting.Those are my reasons, but I suspect that, as with most programmers, the real reason I dislike that style is that I didn't learn to code using it, and so it looks "funny" to me. Being a rational person, I've tried to justify my preference with logic, and I think I do a good job of it, but I'm willing to accept that it's just stubborn adherence to how I learned it.
I also find the BSD style ("my way") to be far more common than the K&R-style, which means I more easily read more code that I run into "in the wild". K&R didn't even use their own style consistantly. As I mentioned, they failed to use that style on function definitions.
I like the orthogonality of the braces lining up, it just looks clean and organized to me. However, in Perl, where I cannot omit braces for single-line code blocks after a conditional, I use K&R style for brevity, so I'm guilty of the very inconsistance that I claim to dislike!
Re:I guess it depends on what you mean... (Score:2)
Re:I guess it depends on what you mean... (Score:3, Funny)
> amount of visual space that is most pleasing to us.
Oh, the horror! Thou shalt not mess with the holy 8-space tabs! It's heresy!
Re:I guess it depends on what you mean... (Score:2, Interesting)
Whitespace if your friend. If your code is too dense it actually becomes harder for the next guy to figure out. If you find yourself with massive code files that require you to make the code denser so that you don't get lost, then you need to check your design. Java encourages the use of large numbers of classes and packages for a reason.
increasing readability
When the braces line up, readability increases as the eye will naturally follow the brace down to its partner. Moving the brace on
Re: I guess it depends on what you mean... (Score:2)
Seriously, putting the brace on the same line may (or may not) save a line of space, but you can't visually check the braces. With the brace on a new line, the opening and closing brace match up neatly, and make the structure much, much clearer. And it removes a whole bunch of bugs when code isn't in the block you thought it was.
And anyway, you don't need to waste a whole line. I'd wri
Re: I guess it depends on what you mean... (Score:2)
Re:I guess it depends on what you mean... (Score:2)
I think that the first uses are 'conventions'. There may be several conventions in use at one time by different groups, some more popular than others, but none of them are really 'standards' even if
Re:I guess it depends on what you mean... (Score:2)
Why the hell shouldn't that be done? (Unless you're referring to using Python [python.org]. :-) )
Everybody uses defacto standards (Score:2)
Like using a '?' to end a sentence?
Sort of like Art, or Porn (Score:2)
That said, my sense is: it's a standard when its wide acceptance makes things easier/cheaper/more-reliable. Of course, standards have a bad habit, over time, of turning into Orthodoxy or other dogmatic-thinking-type problems. For example, people constantly give me trouble for using Furlongs Per Fortnight when expressing velocity.
Re:Sort of like Art, or Porn (Score:2)
Ob Simpsons:
Or rods per hogshead
I'm beginning to wonder if... (Score:3, Funny)
Meanwhile, my story submission about monkeys that play cards on the Internet gets rejected. F*ckers.
IronChefMorimoto
Re:I'm beginning to wonder if... (Score:2, Informative)
Only design them when you really need them (Score:3, Interesting)
However, you should still do so openly - build interfaces that people can use, and document them so people can figure out how to use them, and if you're lucky, people will use them for things you've never thought of, so try not to prevent that.
Standards Orgs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Like, say, HL7 for medical information exchange. The format sucks (we constantly find ways in which it can't handle the true cardinality of relations, because people assumed way too much)
Sure. It's standard. And approved (ANSI.) And widely used. And it sucks. (And no, moving it to XML in v3 doesn't make it any better.)
Re:Standards Orgs? (Score:2, Informative)
You can do XML with v2.x now, anyway.
Analysis of the TFA (Score:3, Insightful)
In practice, a word processor that can't read Microsoft® Word documents is an economic dead end. The formats used by the Microsoft Office applications have become a de facto standard, giving Microsoft a substantial competitive edge because each new release of its software can deliver for it a window of opportunity during which only its software is fully compatible; this is mitigated a bit, though, because incompatibility in a new version makes customers slow to upgrade to that newest version.
Not true. Even Microsoft [mithuro.com] makes its products backward compatible. (One might say they make their products backwards, but that is another story).
In some cases, a standard comes with some kind of licensing restrictions, or involves something that someone has a patent on. For instance, Unisys had a patent governing a bit of the algorithm used for GIF images. In general, patents are a huge weakness for a standard. The MP3 standard is used very widely by people who simply don't know -- or don't care -- that someone theoretically has a patent on part of it, and only some code using the patented algorithm actually has a license from the patent holder. Developers and users can be bitten by this many years after they make the design decision to use a patented algorithm, due to the nature of patents. De jure standards often require contributors to clearly disclose any known patents; de facto standards generally have no way to do this.
Software patents [mithuro.com] are evil. Full stop. It has nothing to do with standards.
Ironically, this article, published by IBM, fails to mention how once IBM itself used to be a de facto standard for PCs.
Re:Analysis of the TFA (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought that was the author's point. It was saying that MS word is a standard, and if you write a word-type program that isn't compatable, you're screwed. When MS releases a new MS word, there is a short time when ONLY other MS products are compatable with it. So every time MS updates word everyone else has to go back and change stuff, giving MS an advant
Re:Analysis of the TFA (Score:2)
Why shouldn't he? If he wants to profit from his discovery, he can always make, market and sell software that takes advantage of it. There is no need to publish or otherwise disclose the algorithm itself. And then one day when sombody else who is just as smart comes along as makes the same discovery, they will also be free to make use of it (or not).
Patents are an archaic throwb
Time! (Score:4, Interesting)
Then look at gun manufacture that introduced 'standards' to make parts that all fit no matter where that part was made.
Now look at the software state. Companies deliberately adopting the 'standard' that every agree on to make it all work, then once in common usage, change it slightly (privately) to break the standard and have their own monopoly.
open interfaces (Score:3, Insightful)
Standards -- "Best Practices" (Score:2, Interesting)
In sciences like chemistry or physics, or other disciplines, knowledgeable people peer-review ideas before they get published, or widely at least. Those ideas are more measurable or provable, and seem to amount to more than a heap of wor
Re:Standards -- "Best Practices" (Score:2)
Wha? I don't think computer science journals are any less stringent in their peer review than those of any other discipline. I mean, unless you're talking about Wired magazine or something. But
De Facto Standards (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:De Facto Standards (Score:2)
I'm almost sure that if it were not for the clones, the PC would not be where it is today.
Re:De Facto Standards (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:De Facto Standards (Score:2)
VHS became the standard because you could record a full movie onto it. You could only record an hour on Beta. (yes, there are full movies on Beta but how long was it before the "six hour" VHS record mode was available?)
Guess what people wanted?
Same reason cel phones have all but completely replaced pagers overnight.
Re:De Facto Standards (Score:2)
There may be some exceptions to this rule (e.g., SGI's short-lived "Visual Workstation") but in general if you buy an x86 box, it follows the same procedure to boot Linux or Windows XP as the original PC did to boot DOS. What the operating system does from there is up to that OS.
better question... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's a better question. What makes a blessed standard viable? A standard is only as good as it's market penetration, and defacto is the only standard that makes a lick of difference. Don't buy it? Go ahead, write your site in SVG, your competitors will use flash and make money while people scratch their heads when they read "plugin needed" on your page.
You're using one right now (Score:4, Interesting)
think about it... (Score:3, Funny)
Driving on the Right Side (Score:5, Insightful)
But then again, there was no private organization that benefitted from which side of the road people used. If Ford made money from the left side, and GM from the the right, then we can well imagine there would be a battle for which side of the road we drove on, and which side would probably vary from location to location. ("Hey New York, I'll give you a million bucks if you require people to drive on the left!")
Take away the private interests, and people will naturally organize themselves to one format or another. And, in most cases, consumers will be better off for it. The only reason they may be worse off is if people rally around an inferior standard, but that's probably more likely to happen with private interests.
Moving on to my opinion....the answer isn't to have the government force one standard or another on us. The answer is to have the government force the private interests to allow us to choose a standard with a minimum of baggage that comes with it. e.g., Don't force everyone to use .DOC, simply make it so that if you choose to use .DOC, you can use it with Word, OpenOffice, or whatever.
Re:Driving on the Right Side (Score:2, Informative)
This is a very big assertion; you might want to back it up. As for your statement about Ford and GM not being able to change people's mind, keep in mind that the US "drove on the right" long before cars were even invented. These conventions occured during colonial times with horses as well, long before the automobile was invented.
On a side note, there are two people that we have to thank for the fact
Re:Driving on the Right Side (Score:2)
Standard == Flag To Rally 'Round (Score:3, Interesting)
Literally or figuratively, a "standard" is a flag that the troops rally around as we head into battle.
If we're lucky, we rally 'round because the standard inspires us and represents something we love.
If we're unlucky, we rally 'round because the Commissars are standing behind us with sidearms ... literally or figuratively.
Most important article for /. in days (Score:4, Insightful)
This really is something that everyone in this community should be taking to heart. This is why Linux has had difficulty breaking into heavy usage, why hundreds of projects (including open source software projects) have failed, and why we haven't moved to better architectures in the computing world.
In practice, a word processor that can't read Microsoft® Word documents is an economic dead end.
I think that's probably one of the most important statements in the article. If every reader who plans on writing any code, coming up with a piece of hardware, or decides to rethink Support conventions were to take the heart of that message and put it into their plans, we'd really start making headway in the real world with real innovation.
In summary: Your idea may be good, but that doesn't mean squat in the market. What DOES matter is: How much of a headache is your solution to X going to give me versus what I already have? Yet I STILL get asked by my co-worker why we aren't using Linux for our desktop PCs...
Good and Bad Standards (Score:2)
A bad standard is one that most software is less than 80 percent compliant with, has a significant number of exceptions that you can misinterpret many different ways, and/or is heavily weighted towards one or more specific vendors.
If the standards committee spends more than 80 percent of their time arguing over minutiae that 99 percent of the software us
de-facto (Score:2)
So, a de facto standard is one everyone is already using.
I have no idea how you set out to become the de facto standard other than getting everyone to use it.
It's all in the timing (Score:2)
I read this post earlier (Score:4, Informative)
Copied verbatim. Nice. What do we call dupes from other sites without credit? Oh, yeah, plagiarism [plagiarism.org]
Aye fink day FACTO standadz R stoopit (Score:3, Funny)
Standard Gauge (Score:4, Funny)
The railcars which carry the SRB segments are all on carriages which have trucks with the wheels exactly 55 inches apart, which is known as Standard Gauge in railroad lingo.
Why was this figure chosen?
Early railcars derived their design from mining cars which rode on rails inside mines before the locomotive was invented. For convenience, the railroads adopted their standard gauge very close to this common pre-railroad standard.
Why were the carts made with this width between the wheels?
The early mining carts were adapted from cargo wagons which travelled on the old Roman roads in Europe, which had developed deep ruts over the centuries. The distance between the wheels was selected so the wheels rode in the center of these ruts to avoid breaking an axle frequently?
Why did the Roman roads have their ruts at this distance from each other?
The distance between the center of the ruts on the old Roman roads was a function of the distance between the wheels of the old Roman Charriots.
Why did the Romans select the wheel spacing they did?
The old Roman charriots were designed so that a pair of horses could pull them. The track had to be wide enough to accomodate the hind quarters of two horses.
So there you have it, the design of the Space Shuttle is constrained by a couple of horses' asses!
Re:Standard Gauge (Score:2, Informative)
Quality and safety Standards (Score:2)
Standards are about interoperability (Score:2, Interesting)
de facto standard != natural standard (Score:3, Informative)
A natural standard, in practice, is no different than an "open standard": they both serve the same purpose and have the same end result. Take the SMB protocol for instance (at least for the most part).
Abe Lincoln and the 4'8" gauge railroads (Score:4, Interesting)
The history is interesting, and demonstrates the power of an established de facto standard. (I don't recall the source for this, but I think it was a PBS TV show.) When the very first railroad cars were built, they were built by wagon makers, who used the same jigs and fixtures they used for wagons. Wagons had a de facto standard track width of four feet eight inches.
This track width dates back to Roman times. Roman chariots had this track width, because it worked correctly for the horses that they used. So for roughly 2000 years, wagons were generally made that size.
As railroads began to expand, they used a variety of gauges up to seven or eight feet. (The famed Orient Express had a seven foot gauge, IIRC.) Some early railroads used different gauges as a competitive measure, to prevent competitors from running trains on their track and requiring customers to change trains, often several times within a short trip.
Abraham Lincoln was President when the first transcontinental railroad was to be built, which would require that the different companies involved would have to use the same gauge. He actively questioned the "odd" 4'8" gauge, and after some discussion, signed a Presidential edict that all railroads henceforth must have a gauge of five feet. The railroads proceeded to totally ignore this law, and built everything in 4'8" gauge, thus demonstrating the power of de facto standards. So today, we (mostly don't) ride in railroad cars whose dimensions are descended directly from the width of a Roman horse's behind.
Re:Natural? (Score:4, Insightful)
I sincerely hope you mean c, not the language C.
Re:Natural? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, the speed of light varies. But c is specifically the speed of light in vacuum. Only in vacuum the speed is equal for all observers, thus it is the vacuum speed upon which relativity is built.
On the other hand, the speed of light in vacuum may not be a constant after all. In some theories c is the expansion velocity of the universe in the fourth spatial dimension, therefore it is slowing down all the time. The slowing down has been reported in some recent experiments.