On Thu, 11 Aug 2005 08:58:11 +0100, Mr Fizzion
wrote:

On Wed, 10 Aug 2005 17:14:54 +0100, Ed Sirett
wrote:

Surely. The copies at gas training schools and assessment centres are
virtually chained to the desk.

There is a great deal of stuff in there which is outside the ordinary and
every day scope of domestic gas fitting. Much of the really important
stuff has been transcribed into various gas fitting books which are
available for a modest cost.

The stuff that isn't important might still be interesting. I find
myself reading computer and interenet standards all the time as you
can't totally trust the books.

I agree that making the BSI documents unaffordable is very counter
productive when things like the electric and building regs are available
at reasonable cost of for free.

What's really annoying is that if you buy something from screwfix for
example and it says "to BS xxxx" in the description, then you have no
idea what it means, and no cheap way to find out.

Mr F.


Even if you had the document, you may have no inexpensive way to find
out whether the product meets the standard.

There are often weasel words like "designed to meet" which doesn't
mean a thing.

In any case, British Standards are becoming less and less significant
as they are either adopted or adapted in/from EuroNorme standards.
Those aren't free either, although you can sometimes purchase
individual ones.

Even the CE mark doesn't help that much. For most classes of product,
it is the manufacturer's self declaration that the product meets the
relevant standards for the product class. There should be a
Declaration of Conformity certificate listing the standards used, but
except in a limited set of cases like machinery there is not a
requirement that a test should have been done by an independent body.

Having said all of that, there is a huge cost in the preparation of
and testing to standards. It is reasonable for much of that cost to
be borne by those wishing to access and use that information in the
same way that we pay for other intellectual property like books and
music.



--

..andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl