11 March 2009 - standardization 2

The most expensive mistake in the history of computing was the standardization of the tab character, which today makes millions of ordinary documents virtually illegible. The second-most was the standardization of both carriage return and linefeed. You might say that the lesson is that standards need to keep up with the times:

Standardization is like voting—to win, do it early and often. But it’s not true. An important standard, however tragic, is a memory that can’t be forgotten, no matter how expensive your therapist.