The USB paradox is one of the most familiar experiences of the digital age. Every time you try to plug in a USB cord, it seems like you always get it wrong on the first try. It doesn't matter how much attention you pay to the plug or the cord or the icons on the cord. It's always wrong.
And there's a good reason for that! In an interview published Thursday by DesignNews, Intel's Ajay Bhatt spoke at length about why the ubiquitous technology has been so infuriating for so long. Bhatt was a member of the team that developed USB technology. Even at the start of development, they knew that making the connector flippable would be a better user experience in the long run. But doing so would require twice the wiring and more circuitry, which would increase costs.
"If you have a lot of cost up front for an unproven technology it might not take off. So that was our fear. You have to be really cost conscious when you start out," Bhatt said.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @08:17AM (7 children)
"We were cheap." sums it up? :)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @09:16AM (1 child)
No, that doesn't explain it. D-shaped connectors are cheap.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @09:18PM
D-shaped connectors
Yeah. It's not like this stuff wasn't figured out long ago.
Standard practice in systems that contain multiple PCBs is to cut out one of the fingers (traces + board material) and put a plastic stop in the corresponding spot in the edge connector into which that plugs.
Every board has a different pattern; you can't put a board in the wrong slot.
It also keeps you from plugging a board in upside-down.
The stupidest fucking thing I ever saw was a temperature controller plugin which had 2 boards and the thing was completely symmetrical such that you could plug in the device upside-down (which was destructive to the device).
The "designer" didn't know|think to use the industry-standard method previously mentioned nor to offset the connectors so that no contact would be made if you did things wrong.
Obviously, the person given the task of "designing" the USB connector had zero experience in hardware design and there wasn't a design review process that included anyone else who did.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday December 03 2017, @06:15PM (4 children)
No, "too clueless to mandate a label on one side of the connector and one side of the plug" sums it up.
Connectors don't have to be invertible; they just have to be comprehensible.
If the A side of the connector had a solid, obvious bar, and the A side of the plug had a solid, obvious bar, you'd be able to plug these in correctly every time, as long as you could see (blind people, oh well. They'd still have to fumble.) The extra cost? Negligible.
Invertible is nice. But it isn't necessary.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by toddestan on Sunday December 03 2017, @06:29PM (3 children)
We have that already. The USB logo is supposed to be on the top of the plug. So long as the USB port isn't upside down (not always a given), you should in theory know how to plug the cable in by looking at. If it's embossed you could also do it by feel.
The problem is that a lot of cables don't include the logo. Either because they are too cheap, would rather their logo be there, or because they they prefer form over function and don't care about standards (hello Apple). And there's things like USB memory sticks that almost never have the USB logo on them.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday December 03 2017, @09:27PM
It has to be a functional part of the interface. In other words, the shape of the connector.
Have you ever heard of someone trying to connect an RS232 connector [wikipedia.org] upside down? Or a parallel port connector? [wikipedia.org] A VGA connector? [wikipedia.org] A Firewire connector? [wikipedia.org] An HDMI connector? [wikipedia.org]
Now look in comparison at the standard size USB connector. [wikipedia.org] Do you notice a difference?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by rleigh on Sunday December 03 2017, @10:45PM (1 child)
How many end users know about the USB logo on the plug telling them about the orientation? I only know because I read about it, and I'm a nerd.
Even with this logo, it doesn't help when the socket is in a vertical orientation. Is it left or right? All the connectors on my current systems are vertical, and it's a lottery trying to plug things in.
Even when you know the orientation, USB is still a terrible design. Who recognises this: try to plug in USB cable and fail, turn 180 degrees and fail again, turn back to the original orientation and finally succeed. Or a fourth time if you were wrong originally! USB sockets and plugs are a terrible design. Compare this with the original FireWire 400 design, which works every time because it's intuitively clear and you don't have to try three times to make it work. Or FireWire 800, DisplayPort, mini-DisplayPort or HDMI. All are newer connectors, and they are all better designed. Most marks to full-sized DisplayPort for a nice retaining clip which HDMI lacks, and fewest to mini-DisplayPort for lacking one and falling out if you so much as sneeze.
It's a shame IEEE1394 didn't take off since it was vastly better than USB in pretty much every aspect. Shame on Apple for killing it with licensing fees.
(Score: 4, Funny) by FatPhil on Monday December 04 2017, @01:48PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday December 03 2017, @09:39AM (13 children)
What I don't understand about USB is why did it start out so slow.
At the time it was developed we already had megabit nics and gigabit nics were starting to hit the market.
Why did it have to start with 1.0 started out at 1.5 Mbit, and less than two years later 1.1 jumps to 12 Mbits. Nearly 10x as fast.
Two years later 2.0 offers 480 Mbits a 40x improvement.
Now, with different cables and connectors 5, 10, and 20 gigabit.
Once they got the wires figured out vor USB3x, why even bother with 3.0? Just go straight to 3.2 (20 gig).
Its not like there was any actual reason for the delay, The chips were always within technical grasp.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Informative) by shrewdsheep on Sunday December 03 2017, @11:21AM (8 children)
USB started out replacing RS-232 and parallel interfaces compared to which USB 1.0 was > 10x faster. The speed bumps came as a result of competition with Apple upping the ante with firewire/thunderbolt.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @01:56PM (6 children)
USB is useless compared to RS-232. Ever tried screwing-in your USB connector? You can do that with RS-232 and parallel port. Now things can just fall out when they are needed plugged-in.
Also, RS-232 cannot harm your computer because of how it works. USB is a virus-carrier which should be considered hostile hardware.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @05:04PM (2 children)
Serial port malware now:
I'm going to plug in this USB drive I found. What's this 'composite device' mean? Hey, it is controlling my keyboard. Hey, it just opend its own drive and ran software. WTF IS GOING ON? Better disconnect this before something bad happens.... OH NOES! Where did my files go?
Serial port malware then:
I'm going to plug in this serial drive I found. Hmm, gotta find a free IRQ. Wait, why does this thing want so much memory and two DMA channels? Wait according to this, it needs IRQ 1 and 15? WTF is going on? Better disconnect this before something bad happens.... PHEW, All my files safe and sound.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @09:00AM (1 child)
You don't think people would start noticing something fishy when their RS-232 hardware comes not with an RS-232 connector, but with an ISA connector?
RS-232 doesn't need - or even know about - IRQs and DMA channels, that's only the serial port card.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @05:11AM
WHOOSH!
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Sunday December 03 2017, @05:45PM (2 children)
USB is also based on a polling based model instead of an interrupt based model. The fallout from that decision is a bit of increased latency which makes some usage of a parallel port attached to a USB bus impossible. The latency can cause issues with the RS232 connection too depending on what is being carried over it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @09:02AM (1 child)
Yup, I tried replaced an ISA serial card with a USB to RS-232 converter, and found out it was useless. The time for the flow control signals to propagate via the USB hardware to the OS is longer than it takes to overflow the buffers in the hardware, and of course the converter contains a bog standard serial chip that doesn't handle flow control internally.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @03:55PM
There's a lot of really shitty USB<->UART adapters on the market.
The good ones are made by FTDI.
But then there's a lot of really shitty counterfeit FTDI parts on the market, so make sure you buy from a legit distributor.
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Sunday December 03 2017, @08:34PM
And also use cases. Mice, keyboards, printers, they developed USB to the specifications best suited to its use cases.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @12:55PM
In addition to the points made by another commentator, USB utilizes host processing. Are you sure you'd be processing 20gbps on your Win 95 100MHz Pentium?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @01:49PM
The reason is that USB was always a scam. No one will update their hardware if they can get the maximum speed with the very first hardware. So versions are introduced which are deliberately crippled. Selecting the USB speed in BIOS would have been good, but they chose not to. More money can be made selling the newest chip instead of the best chip only once.
(Score: 4, Informative) by TheGratefulNet on Sunday December 03 2017, @11:40PM
it was never meant for high speed, not in the early days. mouse, keyboard, modem, printer. all relatively slow things.
NEVER meant for disk or fast i/o. not in the early days.
I remember just buying motherboards when usb came out. the first chipset (triton?) on tyan and asus and supermicro all had the chips but either no usb headers soldered in, or they were there, but just would not work. first boards were junk, for usb. plus, there was almost nothing in the market to try out; all too soon. ('pipeline burst cache' was a DIMM looking thing and you bought that separately for your motherboard; that's how long ago this was!)
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 4, Informative) by Rich on Monday December 04 2017, @12:46AM
The article distorts history. USB only gets compared to Firewire. Which was only specified in 1995 and did not hit a wide audience until 2000 when the "PowerBook G3 (Firewire)", aka "Pismo" was introduced. By 1995 USB 1 was already widespread in hardware, as can be seen on the legendary Asus XP55T2P4 boards. No one bothered to connect the headers to the outside, though, and it was only W95OSR2 that delivered the first support, iirc. I had one of these Asus boards and only bought and connected a slot panel with two USB plugs when I saw them on fire sale.
USB initially had to compete with ADB, an almost-good solution designed by none other than Woz himself. Thats probably where the "Low Speed" specs come from. Coincidentally about the maximum speed that you'll get over a short run single ended cable connection with TTL level drivers. Later on, someone at Intel probably put up a requirement that they had to do stereo CD audio, and for good measure hit 1 MB/s net. Coincidentally about the maximum speed that one will reliably get over a PCB trace at TTL levels. I would assume that the differential signaling, the point-to-point layout, and isochronous endpoints slipped into the feature set by that time.
I also assume that USB was always meant to be dirt cheap. That is, they a.) had to interface with endpoints running on very primitive microcontrollers inside mice and their ilk and b.) absolutely wanted to get away without requiring a PHY chip like Ethernet needed (mind you, this was when AUI/AAUI was on the computer, requiring an external PHY, because no one knew whether Thickwire, Thinwire or Twisted Pair was to be used). If you look at the USB connectors compared to other connectors from back then, you'll find it a bit weird, and that probably is because you could build the A plugs with PCB technology, right angle sheet folding and injection moulding, whereas other connectors needed milled pins, plastic carriers and stamp formed shells.
So, the hardware makes a lot of sense for those times. The protocol and software however has a few strange and complicated idiosyncrasies, which I can only explain by Intel trying to get some patentable weirdness into the standard. It also seems that Intel tried to play foul after getting adopters on board, which led to the development of OHCI vs Intel's own UHCI controller by some adopters.
The high speed variants only came later, as an afterthought, to counter (and probably with the intent to destroy) FireWire, and later with the intent to leverage the installed base instead of doing a clean slate high speed interconnect. Those are all pretty badly kludged on (eg. you need EHCI and either UHCI or OHCI for high speed). In 1995 a lot of people was probably assuming that serious transfer rates to local I/O devices were a firm domain of SCSI and its descendents).
And then, not going for the technical limit is of course natural, if you own a monopoly, because you can cash in twice or three times instead with smaller steps. (The SD card limits, and I suspect photo sensors, too, exhibit that pretty well).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @10:42AM (4 children)
I find looking at what you are doing to help quite a lot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @03:55PM
Indeed, the only thing that I don't get here is why the cables and ports aren't better labeled. The USB icon is usually on the same side of the jack, but since it's molded into the plastic in the same color, it can be hard to see. On the jack side, the icon should be on the same side as the icon on the cable.
Unfortunately, some cables don't have the icon and even when they do they tend to be molded on in the same color which makes it hard to see. Being able to feel it and have it more visually obvious would make this much less of an issue.
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Sunday December 03 2017, @11:47PM (2 children)
putting cables in 'by feel' is very valid. sometimes, unavoidable.
a good design can tolerate all kinds of user 'error'. that's what makes a good design from, well, everything that happened over the last 20 or so years, maybe even 30, connector and cable-wise. (mostly connectors).
anything from the 60's and 70's seems to be strong, robust, easy to solder to or fix, can also carry current if need be (remap of pin functions).
hdmi connector is a laughing stock. dvi is at least tolerable (and its secure-able, with its screw points).
firewire wasn't too bad, but of course, it didn't last all that long. I did like that one and I often reuse its ports for carrying i2c and power across DIY boxes. but for consumers, firewire is 100% dead.
e-sata was another friggin joke. and i-sata connectors are crap, as well. power for sata drives, also crap. now, I have no love for the older molex power connectors, but they were still better than what we ended up with, in the sata power connector.
ethernet is still fine, pretty much - except that usb plugs can also fit -just- inside an rj45 female and if you are not looking or if its dark, you can plug usb into ethernet and not get anywhere ;) that is a design bug, for realworld design. they should have made that usb connector just 1mm wider; so it could not, at all, fit inside an rj45. pity they didn't think about that.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @02:27PM
> dvi is at least tolerable
Do you mean dvi a? or dvi b? or dvi I? Or perhaps you mean the dual linked DVI-D? I have cables for all of them. Problem is my PC socket needs DVI-D single linked. I might have an adapter somewhere...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @06:12PM
>I have no love for the older molex power connectors, but they were still better than what we ended up with, in the sata power connector.
One time, I managed to plug in a Molex connector the wrong way, and a hard drive went up in smoke because the 12-volt and 5-volt power connections were reversed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @11:25AM (6 children)
Looking isn't always an option, if the socket is at the back of a computer you can't easily reach to look.
The piece of PCB used in the connector was probably going to be double-sided anyway, and via's aren't exactly expensive either. PCB manufacturers generally don't charge you extra for via's, unless you use truly ridiculous numbers or tiny ones. They didn't even need to make both the socket and the plug double-sided, if you just make the sockets single-sided, with little spring contacts (that's the expensive part), and the plug as a double-sided PCB, it would always work. I find it hard to believe it would have actually been more expensive, but that is of course in the luxury of hindsight.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Sunday December 03 2017, @12:44PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by dak664 on Sunday December 03 2017, @01:53PM (4 children)
And laptop designers trying to hide the sockets as much as possible, ideally black slots in the darkest part of a black case. To make the early ones look thinner?
The blue insert of USB-3 is an improvement, but USB-C finally gets it right (at least on one end).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:50PM (3 children)
Ug, black slots on a black case with black text and black buttons that light up black when you press them, black, black, black, black, any color as long as it is black. What planet are case designers from? Would it kill them to make a case that actually REFLECTS light so people can SEE it? I'd pay good money for that, but that's not being a good little consumeroid buying what I am told to buy. Their solution? Gay backlighting that makes it look like something out of the 1980's "Tron" movie. Didn't realize that many people liked that movie. Lights up the entire room blue, but still cant see squat.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Farmer Tim on Sunday December 03 2017, @03:11PM (1 child)
Apple. Black print on aluminium. And yes, you will pay good money for that.
Came for the news, stayed for the soap opera.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @06:36PM
Also solves that annoying problem of the one-sided USB ports by simply eliminating them. Still have the gay light-up Apple logo gimmick though.
(Score: 3, Touché) by leftover on Sunday December 03 2017, @04:41PM
Really! It must be to look good with the fog on light gray text colors they like.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday December 03 2017, @11:38AM (15 children)
There would have been a simple solution tho, some form of marking on one side of the connector for this side is "up", would probably work better at laptops since the connectors are usually positioned sideways compared to most, or a lot of, modern towers where they are positioned in a rotated position but still having a mark on one side of the contact really helps. If there isn't something on the side of the USB memory/contact or whatever I'll just draw one on. Saves me from the usual trying to stick things in the wrong way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @11:44AM
Or color or shape... they were just incompetent and lazy. Business as usual.
(Score: 5, Informative) by TheRaven on Sunday December 03 2017, @12:42PM (12 children)
They have this. Any certified USB cable has the USB logo on the side that is up. Which doesn't help much when plugging it into a port on the back of a vertical computer and having to figure out which way is up from the perspective of the socket.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday December 03 2017, @12:54PM (1 child)
Some of them have that. Some have a beveled logo or symbol, that really helps. Some have painted something on which doesn't help as much, certainly not very much in the situation you describe. A lot of cables and devices (sticks and such) do not have anything. So it's one of those things that they should have but quite often does not have. Sadly.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday December 04 2017, @02:21AM
Fine for the plug. Doesn't help if you can't see the port and are groping around by feel. And why are ports on the front of the case invariably upsidedown, so if the USB device has its own LED, it points at the floor??
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday December 03 2017, @04:07PM (7 children)
The port on the computer isn't always the same way up.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Whoever on Sunday December 03 2017, @04:14PM (6 children)
Actually, it is.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @05:11PM
Nope, the back of my machine has ports in three different directions 4 vertical, and two horizontal off the motherboard, and two more horizontal, but upside down ports off an LP-PCIe card, which also connects to the front panel ports.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday December 03 2017, @05:50PM (2 children)
The ports built in to the front of my case are upside down.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @04:16AM (1 child)
"You're holding it wrong."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @06:43AM
Front plugs are normally a cable run to a patch plug. The patch plug's normally symmetrically mounted. Whoever assembled had probably 0 restriction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @09:30PM (1 child)
Looks like you haven't used much USB hardware in your life. I've seen ports in all 4 orientations. It all depends on the orientation of the underlying circuit board and the connector used.
I remember when PCI first came out, I wondered why all the connectors were upside down. The reason is, that PCI cards should have the components mounted on the underside of the card in a tower case, so the industry standard connectors are upside down compared to ISA cards.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday December 04 2017, @01:54PM
Additionally, this meant that a PCI and ISA slot could share the same back panel position, so that you had some flexibility in how many ISA/PCI cards you used in a motherboard.
(Score: 1) by Gertlex on Sunday December 03 2017, @04:12PM
But really, for any desktop of reasonable size, based on every motherboard's connector panel I've seen, the "bottom" of the usb connector is almost certainly closer to the edge of the case.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday December 03 2017, @10:20PM
You are holding your computer wrong
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday December 03 2017, @05:08PM
The split in the shield is always on the bottom, as far as I can tell. And the logo should always be on top.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Funny) by Unixnut on Sunday December 03 2017, @11:43AM (5 children)
> Even at the start of development, they knew that making the connector flippable would be a better user experience in the long run. But doing so would require twice the wiring and more circuitry, which would increase costs.
Or you know, don't make the damn connector rectangular (or any other symmetric shape). What a stupid answer to a problem that should not have existed in the first place.
If it goes in only one way, you don't have to think about making the connections "flippable" and the costs involved. It isn't like this wasn't a solved problem. D-sub connectors has been around for ages before USB, as had all kind of notched and otherwise "single direction" type connectors.
Firewire, when it came out (which was shortly before USB if I remember correctly) just had a notch on one side, meaning that it could only go in one way, and a cursory glance (or feel) of the plug/socket would tell you which way round it goes. I hardly ever got those wrong, and even if I did (usually when I am in a real rush), just flipped them round and in they went.
None of this USB type "flip", not right, "flip again", nope must be the other way, "flip", no? Ok WTF, "flip again" and in it goes. Waste of my life.
The amount of man hours lost world wide, since its inception, to flipping USB connectors multiple times over, across the entire world, must be phenomenal.
At least USB3 seems to have cottoned on, and now the shape of the type B (and micro B) connector is such that you can easily plug it in correctly. Unfortunately the Type A is still a PITA due to backwards compatability.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:44PM (1 child)
It would be trivial to produce a modified tip-and-ring connector that had sufficient ways to accommodate USB wiring. You have to be pretty creative to insert it into a socket in the wrong orientation.
Note that it would be like a tip-ring-sleeve connector used for stereo phono plugs [wikipedia.org], but just have more rings. Such things do exist - such as the TRRS (tip-ring-ring-sleeve) connector used on some mobile phones, where one of the rings us used as a control line.
http://blog.mklec.com/trrs-and-trs-plugs-and-sockets-explained/ [mklec.com]
http://www.cablechick.com.au/blog/understanding-trrs-and-audio-jacks/ [cablechick.com.au]
Sony even use a tip-ring-ring-ring-sleeve connector [eachdiy.com]. That's five conductors - same as classic USB (4 conductors and a shell). Ensuring some connectors are made before others, and that momentary unwanted connections are not made during insertion and removal is mechanically trivial to accomplish.
It would, however, cost more to manufacture.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday December 04 2017, @02:23AM
Problem I can see is that sometimes you've got a live, shockable device on the other end of that cable... what happens if you accidentally shock that plug?
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by toddestan on Sunday December 03 2017, @06:45PM
One easy thing they could have done is swapped the A and B connectors. The B connector is not symmetrical, and harder to mess up plugging in if you're fumbling around. You would move the problem on the device end which would now have the A connector. But since you usually can see what you're doing on the device side, it wouldn't be as big of a deal to have the A connector on the device side.
(Score: 2) by ese002 on Monday December 04 2017, @07:13AM
IMHO, Micro B is much worse than type A. You might fumble a bit with type A but it can be reliably inserted by feel. The wide and thin type B is damn near impossible to insert without visual guidance. I always feel like I'm going to dent or otherwise break the connector.
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Monday December 04 2017, @03:42PM
DIN plugs for audio are round - and keyed, so you don't have 359 degrees of error.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @12:27PM (2 children)
I'd have been happy if they hadn't made the plug fit so nicely into Ethernet jacks. Many a user problem fixed by plugging the USB cable into the actual USB port.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @03:58PM (1 child)
That's for Facebook over USB. I find that Facebook over USB gives the best possible experience of Facebook.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday December 03 2017, @10:24PM
IF you use the Monster cables, that is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by noneof_theabove on Sunday December 03 2017, @01:21PM
PATENTS !
Yep those pesky piles of word salad with a drizzle of legalese.
Having a flippable plug/socket would have cost too much.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Sunday December 03 2017, @06:00PM
But I don't notice which way I plugged them, whenever I get it right!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @07:31PM
Yeah yeah so you all want to blame the engineers who designed the cable but I know the truth! Its patently obvious that the true culprit here is that all non-reversible USB connectors are actually in a superposition of both states, up and down. Its only until the end user tries both up and down that the quantum wave function collapses to one definite state, up or down. At this point it finally becomes possible to plug in your USB device.
INTERDASTING NO?
(Score: 3, Informative) by bart9h on Sunday December 03 2017, @09:18PM (1 child)
The problem is that the USB connector is an object from the fourth dimension.
Proof:
http://c0.thejournal.ie/media/2014/04/1z3yc.jpg [thejournal.ie]
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Sunday December 03 2017, @09:35PM
No, it just proves the cable has spin 1/2: [wikipedia.org]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rich on Sunday December 03 2017, @11:58PM (2 children)
Ever actually looked at the USB logo? What might it stand for? Of course, it clearly symbolizes the three attempts it will take to plug in an A plug.
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Monday December 04 2017, @10:26AM (1 child)
It actually represents the Devil's Pitchfork [theguardian.com].
(Score: 2) by Rich on Monday December 04 2017, @02:17PM
Indeed. But where do you think did the devil get the idea for the pitchfork from, huh? Ever heard "IT hell"? Rings a bell?
(Score: 2) by cellocgw on Monday December 04 2017, @12:10AM
It would be trivial to have live contacts on both sides of the connector, hard-wired appropriately to the wiring in the cable itself. The sockets would be fully insulating on one side, so no matter which way you plugged it in you'd get it right. Oh, wait, that's USB-C . pffffft.
Physicist, cellist, former OTTer (1190) resume: https://app.box.com/witthoftresume
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jimtheowl on Monday December 04 2017, @05:42AM