The meaning of everything else changes. That’s what I’m telling you. If you have a 2Mpbs T1-ISDN B8ZS phoneline and you plug it into a 2Mpbs T1-ISDN JBZS modem your throughput will be zero Mpbs, so if you just paid attention to the Mpbs you just spent probably 12 grand to get nothing. And on a practical level yeah 2 Mpbs in robbed-bit and ISDN are actually slightly different in throughput speed (you lose 1 bit of every byte in robbed bit for time slicing, and you lose one channel of 24 in ISDN for the same, so you’ll either get 7/8 of the speed on 24 channels or all the speed on 23).
And there’s plenty of other things that are complicated too. Bought a TV lately, did you you figure out the difference between 720p, 1080p and 1080i and how they’re all HD but not all are HD as each other and if your signal is coming in through something other than an HDMI jack the first part pretty much doesn’t matter? Ever help the wife shop for bras and found out how different brands and different styles cause her to be a different size? Heck, have you taken a good look at the toothpaste aisle lately?
We live in a world of options, which makes things complicated.
I don't care about that. I'm paying for some guy to put all the right pieces together to get me the 2 Mbps I'm paying for. And if I order 4 Mbps, I know it'll give me twice as much throughput as ordering 2 Mbps. I don't find out that the 4 Mpbs I ordered uses a different scale so is actually equivalent to 2 Mbps.
Bought a TV lately, did you you figure out the difference between 720p, 1080p and 1080i and how they’re all HD but not all are HD as each other and if your signal is coming in through something other than an HDMI jack the first part pretty much doesn’t matter?
I've found that fairly simple. The number is the vertical resolution, and a higher number means a higher resolution than a lower number. You also have the refresh rate, and a higher number means a higher refresh rate than a lower number. Other aspects add complexity, but at least bigger numbers mean bigger things.
Heck, have you taken a good look at the toothpaste aisle lately?
Last time I checked, the higher the number of ounces on the label, the more toothpaste in the tube. There are not seven different ounce standards used in the measuring of toothpaste. "Is this 5 oz 'bond' or 5 oz 'cover'? Which one's more? Where's my conversion chart?"
We live in a world of options, which makes things complicated.
It's an issue of making it more complicated than it needs to be. Standardization along the lines of a sane, simple standard can be a very good thing. It was hell to learn to drive a car way back when, before Cadillac set the standard for today's modern layout. At one point I had actually been taught how to drive a Model T. I can't remember exactly how anymore, but I do remember it was absolutely insane.