In addition to security and speed, SWIFT offers a standard interface to reach pretty much any bank in the world with a standard message format to provide completely automated processing of payments, straight-through processing (STP) in industry terminology.

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Take a few million dollars out of the budget reserved for establishing plasma size bragging rights or DVD format wars and hire a few programmers that know how to create an interface.

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There are standards wars here, too, with some TV makers opting for the HDMI 1.3 multimedia cable interface supported by companies like Dolby and others looking ahead to the still nascent DisplayPort format from Analogix Semiconductor.

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