On a shelf in the garage that adjoins my home office there is a set of shelves with a number of boxes of cables. There are cables of various sorts; BNC type video, RCA audio leads, XLR audio cables, IEC…
As described previously, about a month ago I bought a Blackberry 9700 cell phone to replace my vintage Blackberry Pearl. The Pearl and the Motorola Razr that preceded it both used mini-USB type connector for DC power. I had thought that this was something of a standard, but if it was I guess it was short-lived. Early in 2009 the major cell phone manufacturers all agreed to settle upon “micro-USB” as the one standard connector type for DC power in new models.
Someone once said, “the great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.” I suspect that it might have been Dilbert.