standard

standard

A specification for hardware or software that is either widely used and accepted (de facto) or is sanctioned by a standards organization (de jure). See standards.

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standard

1. the commodity or commodities in which is stated the value of a basic monetary unit

2. an authorized model of a unit of measure or weight

3. a unit of board measure equal to 1980 board feet

4. 

a. a plant, esp a fruit tree, that is trained so that it has an upright stem free of branches

b. (as modifier): a standard cherry

5. a song or piece of music that has remained popular for many years

6. the largest petal of a leguminous flower, such as a sweetpea

7. (in New Zealand and, formerly, in England and Wales) a class or level of attainment in an elementary school

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standard [′stan·dərd]

(physics)

An accepted reference sample used for establishing a unit for the measurement of a physical quantity.

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Standard

An accepted reference sample which is used for establishing a unit for the measurement of physical quantities. A physical quantity is specified by a numerical factor and a unit; for example, a mass might be expressed as 8 g, a length as 6 cm, and a time interval as 2 min. Here the gram is a mass unit defined in terms of the international kilogram, which serves as the primary standard of mass. The centimeter is defined in terms of the international meter, which is the primary standard of length and is defined as the length of path traveled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. In similar fashion, the minute is a time interval defined as 60 s, where the second is the international standard of time and is defined as the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine energy levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States and comparable laboratories in other countries are responsible for maintaining accurate secondary standards for various physical quantities. See Electrical units and standards, Light, Metric system, Physical measurement, Time

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(standard)

standard - Standards are necessary for interworking, portability, and reusability. They may be de facto standards for various communities, or officially recognised national or international standards. Andrew Tanenbaum, in his Computer Networks book, once said, "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from", a reference to the fact that competing standards become a source of confusion, division, obsolescence, and duplication of effort instead of an enhancement to the usefulness of products. Some bodies concerned in one way or another with computing standards are IAB (RFC and STD), ISO, ANSI, DoD, ECMA, IEEE, IETF, OSF, W3C.