The need for standards

Back to a favorite soapbox of mine, an article by wired.com quotes Tim Berners-Lee as saying a major hurdle to the collaborative internet he always envisioned is standards. To quote the article,

"The inventor of the World Wide Web told a technology conference on Wednesday that making the web more useful hinges on a familiar challenge: Getting the players behind the technology to agree on standards governing how computers communicate with one another."

Standards are not always what everyone wants, but if we all kept them, what an easier time we would have collaborating if our technologies all spoke the same language!