Standards are good, obviously. Without them, a lot of current technologies wouldn't have survived. Take Bluetooth for example. The Bluetooth specifications were created a few years ago, large companies adapted them and built it into their products so that a Nokia telephones can communicate with a Sony Ericsson telephone and exchange data. So why doesn't it work with web standards?
Because it's not a few big companies that are running the internet; you are!! The large companies obviously have a larger impact on the web than I have, but it's the web developers that are in charge. The problem with that is that there are too many of them. And too many of them that don't have any idea what they're doing. That's why web standards are weak compared to standards like Bluetooth. But that of course doesn't mean that I am against web standards. Without it, the web would either be dead, or still only used by scientist to exchange data over a 12K connection.
My point is that having web devolopers following the web standards is so much harder than people think. To be honest I don't think we'll see a semantic web before the end of this decade. The web is already severly damaged and is in need for some serious help. Hopefully more and more people will realise that web standards really matter, but as long as I am still forced to make a website with Microsoft Frontpage in school, I think there's still a long way to go…
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