| From: | shadowrn@*********.com (Gurth) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | A new kind of meet |
| Date: | Thu Sep 27 05:45:04 2001 |
> Think of it as if each bank produced its credit cards with different
> dimensions - an ATM would have to have a couple of dozen different sized
> slots (and internal mechanisms) to be able to read the majority of
> popular cards out there. There's vast market pressure to adopt standards,
> and if there's no commercial value in deviating from those standards,
> companies don't do it.
In many cases, they do if the technology is new -- then everyone wants to see
their own version of the tech adopted as the standard that everyone else
should conform to. A good example is the chip cards we've got here in the
Netherlands, which you can use to pay with without having to punch in a PIN
number (I can't remember what they're called in English): we ended up with
two different systems because one of the largest banks, which has the
advantage of being part of the postal services, decided on one system, and
all the other banks chose another one. It's all built into the same credit
card-sized cards, but because the protocols and whatnot are different,
they're not interchangeable. Only now, something like five years after these
were first introduced, has the first bank decided to switch to the system
used by the others.
You can see this in a lot of tech fields, so I could certainly see this
happening with credsticks: many countries develop the same kind of thing
around the same time, but all use a different system. (Or even have different
systems in the same country.) Only after some time will the impopular ones
disappear, or some countries decide that compatibility with foreign systems
is important. After that you get a standard written up, which will usually be
the one that's the de facto standard already -- anyone remember the
Betamax/VHS/V2000 war? It was won by VHS not because that was so good (in
fact it was the worst of the three), but because it was popular (and _that_
was largely due to the availability of porn movies on VHS).
--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
If only it were almost easy.
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