Dare considers a few buzzwords tossed around the industry, and takes on "standards" for some further chewing. He quoted a post of his own from a year or so ago for emphasis:

The word "standard' when it comes to software and computer technology is usually meaningless. Is something standard if it produced by a standards body but has no conformance tests (e.g. SQL )? What if it has conformance testing requirements but is owned by a single entity (e.g. Java )? What if it is just widely supported with no formal body behind it (e.g. RSS)?

He gives these notions a pretty good shaking out - and makes the important point that a lot of us end up talking right past each other with supposedly "well understood" terms.