July 20, 2011

• Cueball
• Ponytail

#927: Standards explain

[Caption above the panels:]

How Standards Proliferate

(See: A/C chargers, character encodings, instant messaging, etc.)

[A text-only panel.]

Situation:

There are 14 competing standards.

[Cueball and Ponytail stand facing each other.]

Cueball: 14?! Ridiculous! We need to develop one universal standard that covers everyone’s use cases.

Ponytail: Yeah!

[Another text-only panel. The word “Soon:” appears in its own box at the upper left of the panel.]

Soon:

Situation:

There are 15 competing standards.