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Everything You Need To Know About USB 3.0

Esther Schindler writes "After a lengthy gestation period, the third generation of the Universal Serial Bus is making its way to the market. USB 3.0, also known as SuperSpeed USB, has throughput of up to 5 gigabits per second. That's even faster than the 3Gb/sec of SATA hard drives and 1Gb/sec of high-end networking in the home. USB 3.0: Everything You Need to Know goes into plenty of the techie details. But is it already obsolete — will LightPeak make USB 3.0 irrelevant?"

322 comments

  1. SuperSpeed USB... by GuerillaRadio · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...seriously? Will USB 6.0 be super-hyper-megaspeed USB?

    --
    If a man empties his purse into his head no man can take it from him. An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
    1. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by Zerak-Tul · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ludicrous Speed USB...

    2. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by metalmaster · · Score: 1

      yes, and it will be standard issue on Intel centicore i^n based PC running Windows Puerta

    3. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by RevRagnarok · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The problem is the original nomenclature from USB 1.0 - "full speed" is a whopping 12Mbit/s (vs. "low speed" at 1.5Mb/s). Of course, compared to serial ports that were starting to push 300kbit/s, it was nice. So then USB 2.0 was "high speed" and for 3.0 they needed something "higher" than "high." Pretty stupid, especially when somebody says a USB 2.0 device runs at "full speed" it could simply be MarketSpeak(TM) saying that it won't slow the bus down below 2.0 but the device itself only communicates at 1.1 speeds.

      ( Oh, BTW, I vote for PlaidSpeed(TM)! )

      --
      I should put something clever here. Maybe someday.
    4. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by sznupi · · Score: 1

      Seing how we have now Schutzstaffel USB - what was above the SS?

      (seriously, it will get funny when buying USB gear in Germany - I might do it specifically for this effect after one too many beers in Berlin, some day ;) )

      And as for Lightpeak - imagine a Beowulf cluster using those!

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    5. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by cmdrpaddy · · Score: 1

      Inconceivable Speed USB

    6. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You really don't want to try that joke in Germany. You could get arrested and face a fine or jail time.

    7. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by sznupi · · Score: 1

      So you imply using the proper name of the technology, "SS USB", will be so funny?

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    8. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      M-M-M-M-Monster USB

    9. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by speaker4thedead · · Score: 1

      ...seriously? Will USB 6.0 be super-hyper-meta-speed USB?

      There... fixed that for ya.

      --
      "My religion is to live --and die-- without regret." -- Milarepa
    10. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by blahplusplus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is why they should just use bandwidth numbers. I never understood why they started language unrelated to the specifications.

    11. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by Jason+Kimball · · Score: 1

      K-K-K-K-King Combo!

    12. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by derGoldstein · · Score: 1

      Because having one port support multiple speeds wasn't enough to properly confuse non-nerds. Ever see a normal person get the message "you've plugged a high speed USB device to a low-speed port" (I'm paraphrasing...)?
      "But I don't get it... They both look the same... So I should use this one for the keyboard, and the other one for the webcam? What about a thumbdrive? Which one would that plug into?"

      These are the same minds that brought you "SoundBlaster 32 Pro Extreme Gamer - External".

      --
      Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
    13. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by akirapill · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Reminds me of SCSI, Fast SCSI, Fast-Wide SCSI, Ultra SCSI, Ultra-Wide-Fast SCSI, etc

    14. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by Krau+Ming · · Score: 1

      I can't see why we need any upgrade to USB speed. USB 2.0 has perfectly cromulent speed.

    15. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by Rogerborg · · Score: 1

      So then USB 2.0 was "high speed"

      To be technically correct - the best kind of correct - USB-IF's preferred name for USB 2.0 is "Hi-speed", not "high". Presumably they came up with the name at a Drive-Thru.

      --
      If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
    16. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because then marketers won't understand how fast anything is.

    17. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      it started when Intel tried to trademark the 486 so AMD couldn't use it. The judge said that it was a part number, not a name, and could not be trademarked, so the 586 became the Pentium. Now everything has some stupid trademarkable term for it.

    18. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by RevRagnarok · · Score: 1

      To be technically correct - the best kind of correct - USB-IF's preferred name for USB 2.0 is "Hi-speed", not "high".

      LOL yeah. And then I see they've now added two arrows to "SuperSpeed" to show it's full duplex.

      I can't wait until they then add 8-bit lanes and still keep the "serial" nomenclature.

      --
      I should put something clever here. Maybe someday.
    19. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by ekgringo · · Score: 1

      You forgot "ultra"

    20. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by jandrese · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because the marketing people say that numbers are scary.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
    21. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by Yvan256 · · Score: 1

      Holy Shit USB!

    22. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by rwa2 · · Score: 1

      ...seriously? Will USB 6.0 be super-hyper-megaspeed USB?

      Nah, that makes too much sense...

      I always get thrown off by BIOS screens letting you choose between "FullSpeed" meaning USB 1.1 and "HiSpeed" meaning USB 2.0. Yes, Full < High

      So I predict USB 4.0 will go be referred to as "ThisOneGoesToElevenSpeed" and USB 5.0 will be referred to as "GoodEnoughSpeed"

    23. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      G-G-G-G-Giga Drill Breaker!

    24. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by jandrese · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is also why monitors come in nice and easily memorable names like WSXGA+ and WQXGA (not to be confused with QWXGA) instead of something scary or potentially useful like 1680x1050.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
    25. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Isn't that called Firewire?

    26. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by RaymondKurzweil · · Score: 1

      Fucking where are my mod points fucking shit.

    27. Re:SuperSpeed USB... by IrquiM · · Score: 1

      and 3.0 is not a number?

      --
      This is blinging
  2. Quantum leaps in speed? by lightspeedius · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So, each USB iteration offers the smallest possible increments in speed?

    1. Re:Quantum leaps in speed? by Sockatume · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That term's annoying because it's trivially true and means nothing. All technological changes are quantised. You don't get a continuous change from the iPod Classic to the iPod Touch, outside of a Cronenberg-and-cheese-sandwich-induced nightmare.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    2. Re:Quantum leaps in speed? by bdwlangm · · Score: 1, Funny

      I do not think the word quantum means what you think it does.

    3. Re:Quantum leaps in speed? by oneiros27 · · Score: 2, Funny

      No, no.

      It means that it has to take over for some other interface protocol, and then, once it's finished that, it can take over some other interface. The only problem is the random messages send to some device named 'Al' that's not actually on the network.

      --
      Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
    4. Re:Quantum leaps in speed? by somersault · · Score: 1

      Don't forget the "Ziggy" CPU needed to handle all the processing!

      --
      which is totally what she said
    5. Re:Quantum leaps in speed? by eldavojohn · · Score: 1

      So, each USB iteration offers the smallest possible increments in speed?

      No fair! You changed the definition of the word by looking it up!

      --
      My work here is dung.
    6. Re:Quantum leaps in speed? by chichilalescu · · Score: 1

      Whenever I hear "quantum leap" I think about the quantum tunneling effect. I always thought that was the entire point of using the expression "quantum leap".

      --
      new sig
    7. Re:Quantum leaps in speed? by derGoldstein · · Score: 1

      Scott Bakula didn't have a problem with it. If it was good enough for Bacula, it's good enough for me.

      --
      Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
    8. Re:Quantum leaps in speed? by Sockatume · · Score: 2, Informative

      One must always make an exception for Scott Bakula.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    9. Re:Quantum leaps in speed? by asdf7890 · · Score: 1

      If you call the apparent transfer of state information between entangled partials (so one if affected by interactions with the other) the information leaping between the two, then a quantum leap could be quite some distance.

    10. Re:Quantum leaps in speed? by XanC · · Score: 1

      Nope. It's an electron moving into a different orbit around a nucleus.

    11. Re:Quantum leaps in speed? by Abcd1234 · · Score: 1

      So, each USB iteration offers the smallest possible increments in speed?

      No, it's a jump from one level to the next. You know, kinda like a real quantum leap.

      Ruh roh. Has your pedantic little brain exploded yet?

    12. Re:Quantum leaps in speed? by srvivn21 · · Score: 1

      So, each USB iteration offers the smallest possible increments in speed?

      So small, in fact, you can't tell the difference.

    13. Re:Quantum leaps in speed? by butlerm · · Score: 1

      So, each USB iteration offers the smallest possible increments in speed?

      In some cases, the "smallest possible" increment is more than a doubling. Check this or this out for example.

      Not that it justifies the use of the term out of context of course.

    14. Re:Quantum leaps in speed? by RaymondKurzweil · · Score: 1

      Wow, you should read the last sentence of the second paragraph of the link you posted you fuckwit douchebag.

  3. Proprietary by Digital+Vomit · · Score: 1, Troll

    The Universal Serial Bus (USB) has done wonders for creating a standard interface on PCs. Prior to the USB port, PCs were a mishmash of various proprietary ports, often single-vendor efforts. There was no effective means for transferring files between two PCs. ... USB freed us from proprietary solutions, proprietary software, and perhaps best of all, bent pins.

    It really should be illegal to create proprietary connectors for anything. What a waste of time, resources, and technology.

    --
    Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
    1. Re:Proprietary by bogaboga · · Score: 2, Funny

      It really should be illegal to create proprietary connectors for anything.

      I must say that I support your point of view but your suggestion would go against the "American free spirit" and stifle innovation at the same time. We should look for a better solution.

    2. Re:Proprietary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem isn't proprietary interfaces - they can be reverse engineered.

      The problem is overreaching patent and copyright law that prevents said reverse engineering.

    3. Re:Proprietary by PNutts · · Score: 1

      The Universal Serial Bus (USB) has done wonders for creating a standard interface on PCs. Prior to the USB port, PCs were a mishmash of various proprietary ports, often single-vendor efforts. There was no effective means for transferring files between two PCs. ... USB freed us from proprietary solutions, proprietary software, and perhaps best of all, bent pins.

      It really should be illegal to create proprietary connectors for anything. What a waste of time, resources, and technology.

      Agreed. But back to the original quote, I've used PC's since the PCjr (actually before if you include a TRS-80 CoCo) and I remember serial, parallel, and SCSI. I was able to transfer files with no issues using flopppies (or the CoCo's cassette player). They were quite effective at transfering files, including, say installing programs. Perhaps I was just a mainstream user, but methinks someone is rewriting history.

    4. Re:Proprietary by kanto · · Score: 1

      I must say that I support your point of view but your suggestion would go against the "American free spirit" and stifle innovation at the same time. We should look for a better solution.

      Ah, so a United Nations Bus would be out of the question... dang.

    5. Re:Proprietary by maxume · · Score: 1

      All you have to do is have mandatory licensing of the technology. Fair pricing is a little bit of a pickle but should be solvable.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    6. Re:Proprietary by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 1

      Yes, but the reason people design proprietary interfaces is because patent and copyright law lets them control which devices implement them.

      Hence reducing protection of proprietary interfaces would lead to people saying "screw it, let's use the standard interface".

      But really, why would you want 6 kinds of socket in your PC, or have to buy adapters that go in standard sockets so you can use their non-standard IO port? I remember the days of having to buy ISA cards to plug in your scanner, for heavens sake.

    7. Re:Proprietary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Reverse engineering is Legal in other parts of the world. in the EU and NZ for example.

      IT is illegal in the EU to prevent interoperabiliy and goes against a fair competitive market if you block access hence RE is permitted if the company refuse to open up (even for a fee) a non standard.

    8. Re:Proprietary by somersault · · Score: 1

      There was also ethernet. When I think of USB, I don't think "great way to transfer files", I think "generic I/O connector". Though of course any input/output stream can be treated as a file, but I don't think that's what they meant..

      --
      which is totally what she said
    9. Re:Proprietary by NJRoadfan · · Score: 1

      The real issues were the configuration hassles lack of hot plugging of devices.

      RS-232/422 serial: always had the hassle of setting baud rate, stop bits, etc.

      Centronics/EPP/ECP Parallel port: Were an ugly hack job for true two way data (and devices other then printers) until ECP standards came into place. You also really couldn't reliably daisy chain more then one device+printer.

      SCSI (the parallel variety, not SAS): Was straight forward for the most part (just set a unique ID for each device). Termination of the bus caused the most hassles, plus it wasn't hot pluggable.


      One place USB did come in handy was human interface devices. It consolidated the following standards into one interface.
      PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse: Not hot pluggable, limited to those two classes of input. These stuck around for awhile due to poor support in Windows 9x and early BIOS emulation for USB HID devices (most here likely have encountered at least one machine that you couldn't get into the BIOS setup with a USB keyboard). Things got better with Win2000/XP's superior USB support and DOS finally going away.

      Joystick Port: Limited to game controllers for the most part. Until digital joysticks came out it was very limited in how many buttons it could support. USB wiped this one out pretty quickly

      ADB: An Apple only bus for the most part. Far more elegant then what the PC had at the time (supported mouse, keyboard, joysticks on one bus) but slow, limited, and not hot pluggable. USB killed it overnight.

    10. Re:Proprietary by JasterBobaMereel · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Before USB

            RS232 - Open standard
            SCSI - Standard - No Pins
            PCI - Standard
            IEEE 1284/Parallel - Standard
            FireWire - When available - Standard - No Pins

      Where were all these non-standard proprietary connectors ...?

            And is it just me or are many of these still around because USB2 does not replace them ...and USB 3 won't either ?

             

      --
      Puteulanus fenestra mortis
    11. Re:Proprietary by chichilalescu · · Score: 1

      yeah? talk to apple. some of their USB stuff doesn't really work with other USB stuff.

      --
      new sig
    12. Re:Proprietary by VGPowerlord · · Score: 1

      Before USB

                  RS232 - Open standard
                  SCSI - Standard - No Pins
                  PCI - Standard
                  IEEE 1284/Parallel - Standard
                  FireWire - When available - Standard - No Pins

      Where were all these non-standard proprietary connectors ...?

                  And is it just me or are many of these still around because USB2 does not replace them ...and USB 3 won't either ?

      By and large, only one of those (FireWire) is still in use on a modern computer. USB replaced both RS232 and IEEE1284. PCIe replaced PCI. SATA/eSATA replaced SCSI for internal and external drives, USB replaced it for everything else.

      --
      GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
    13. Re:Proprietary by JasterBobaMereel · · Score: 1

      So USB has reduced the connection types from 5 to 4 ....

            USB2
            PCIe
            SATA
            FireWire

      USB3 is only likely to replace FireWire .... maybe ?

      So 4 to 3 ....

      --
      Puteulanus fenestra mortis
    14. Re:Proprietary by Pentium100 · · Score: 1

      SCSI (the parallel variety, not SAS): Was straight forward for the most part (just set a unique ID for each device). Termination of the bus caused the most hassles, plus it wasn't hot pluggable.

      I use SCSI in a few of my PCs, but never had problems with termination. New internal cables come with a terminator already attached on one end and the host adapter terminated the other end. External cables are different, but I just attach a terminator at the end of the bus and that's all. Though I really do not like the VHDCI connector - it breaks connection too easily.

      PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse:

      Also, KVM switches. I am using PS/2 for keyboard/mouse because USB KVM switches are much more expensive than PS/2 ones. Even if I have to use a PS/2->USB adapter for my laptop and a USB->PS/2 adapter for my keyboard (other computers have PS/2 ports).

    15. Re:Proprietary by bsdaemonaut · · Score: 1

      I dislike when people talk about SCSI in past tense, its still a quite relevant and competitive standard offering speeds that match and exceed those of SATA I/II. Seriously, every SCSI drive/device I've ever dealt with has outperformed its IDE equivalent, not to mention the controllers support 15 times more devices per channel -- its only real problem is the increased cost.

    16. Re:Proprietary by hedwards · · Score: 1

      Most of them went out of fashion in the mid 90s. I remember having a lot of trouble with my first computer because very little of it was actually standardized. In those days you really had to be mindful that you got something that was 100% IBM compatible rather than just IBM compatible which probably meant that the interior workings required proprietary boards to work. But even then the exterior things like serial port, parallel port and such were standard as far as I can recall.

    17. Re:Proprietary by NJRoadfan · · Score: 1

      Most of my woes involved an onboard Adapter AIC-7880 (chip used on the popular AHA-2940UW) I had on an old motherboard. Similar problems happened with the AHA-2940UW PCI card version as well. The card treated the 68-pin Ultrawide SCSI and 50-pin SCSI as separate buses with sometimes confusing termination settings depending on what combination of connectors you used (internal 68-pin, internal 50-pin and external plug). There was also the issue of using 68-pin Ultrawide SCSI devices on "narrow" 50-pin buses. That setup required special "upper byte" terminators.

      More on this mess here: http://www.scsita.org/aboutscsi/SCSI_Termination_Tutorial.html

      SAS (along with SATA, USB 2.0, and Firewire in consumer level devices) has thankfully killed this mess off for the most part.

    18. Re:Proprietary by tomhudson · · Score: 1

      PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse: Not hot pluggable,

      Really? Could have fooled me ... You never saw that "No Keyboard. Press F1 to resume" message?

      As an example, I have a second box running right now doing some work - I unplugged they keyboard, plugged it into the PS2 mouse port, then back into the PS2 keyboard port. Continues to work. BTW - There's nothing to stop you from plugging in a second mouse or keyboard, even if your first one is USB. PS2 ports are normally interrupt-driven - you don't have to ask the system to poll the devices.

    19. Re:Proprietary by VGPowerlord · · Score: 1

      Of course not, except for IEEE1394 (AKA FireWire) and USB, these connections were made for different purposes.

      1. PCIe is meant to communicate directly from the CPU to the other processors and cards inside a computer, including the USB, SATA, and FireWire controllers, thus by definition must be faster than any of them.
      2. SATA was made for high speed data transfer to/from magnetic storage, although optical devices also moved to SATA as PATA (EIDE) ports were phased out. It's newer than USB, and has its own revisions (we're up to SATA3 now?). Some computers also have eSATA connectors, although usually just one.

      USB was designed to be able to connect up to 128 external devices to a computer using a single controller*. This is why you can buy USB hubs (as PCs typically have between 2 and 8 USB ports) to plug in more devices.

      FireWire, as far as I can tell, forces you to daisy chain devices. While this has one major advantage of allowing devices to talk to each other peer-to-peer, it has a major disadvantage in that some devices, such as mice, are not conducive to daisy chaining without being at the very end of the chain.

      *Some (most?) computers have multiple USB controllers so that you can connect multiple high-speed devices and get reasonable throughput from them at the same time.

      --
      GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
    20. Re:Proprietary by NJRoadfan · · Score: 1

      To clarify, the past tense was referring to parallel SCSI, I am well aware that SCSI is alive and well with SAS.

    21. Re:Proprietary by swb · · Score: 1

      SCSI is a standard, but there were a lot of connectors and getting the "right" cabling for your chain was often difficult. Apple abused the standard for a long time with their non-standard 25 pin connector that tied all the grounds together.

    22. Re:Proprietary by NJRoadfan · · Score: 1

      The keyboard usually isn't a problem. Boot up the machine without a PS/2 mouse connected. After Windows is done loading, plug the mouse it. It usually doesn't work until you reboot. This can vary from machine to machine, some work, some don't.

    23. Re:Proprietary by bsdaemonaut · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I'm referring to parallel SCSI also. Check out the Ultra-320 and Ultra-640 standards.

    24. Re:Proprietary by Pentium100 · · Score: 1

      I am using a couple of narrow devices on a wide bus, but just with a 50F-68F adapter (one for each device), I do not know if it has a terminator or not, but from what I know about cables and termination, probably not.

      You only need a high byte terminator if you want to have half of the bus with a wide cable and the other half with narrow cable, if you use 68-50 pin adapter for each narrow device then no additional termination is needed.

      I still use SCSI because I have a couple of tape drives and SCSI 15kRPM hard drives are cheaper than SAS 15kRPM drives, also, a SAS HBA is very expensive.

    25. Re:Proprietary by bsdaemonaut · · Score: 1

      Ultra-640 seems to be parallel SCSI's limit and it has a few disadvantages, so it's not nearly as popular as SAS. Ultra-320 on the other hand is still gloriously parallel and has all of SCSI's standard advantages.

    26. Re:Proprietary by NJRoadfan · · Score: 1

      In my case I was hooking up a 68-pin SCSI HD to a 50-pin narrow bus (with other narrow devices). Why didn't I buy a narrow SCSI HD? Well they are hard to find with higher capacity drives... plus the 68 pin ones are cheaper on ebay.

    27. Re:Proprietary by jelle · · Score: 1

      While it usually seems to work, it's not designed to do so, so Murphy will make sure that on the moment you most depend on it to work, it won't work and eat all your data, get you fired, steal your girlfriend/wife, break into your house, drink all your beer and steal your hdtv. Well, maybe not that dramatic, but wikipedia has the details.

      Details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS/2_connector#Hotplugging

      --
      --- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
    28. Re:Proprietary by Antisyzygy · · Score: 1

      "American Free Spirit" is propaganda. Really it means exploiting people and the environment to the advantage of a handful of people.

      --
      That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
    29. Re:Proprietary by Pentium100 · · Score: 1

      That may or may not need a high byte terminator. I have a 50pin cable connected to a 68pin HBA with an adapter and it works just fine (I am using a 50pin MO drive, and the motherboard has two 68pin connectors - one I am using for (LVD) hard drives and a CDRW drive (with an IDE-DCSI adapter), the other for the 50pin SE MO drive).

      If you are connecting a 68pin drive to a 50pin bus then you should not need the terminator - the wires on the hard drive are too short to cause reflections (the wavelength of a 160MHz signal is ~1.8m so the short traces from the chip on the hard drive to the connector should not be a problem, also, you are not using the high byte for data, the drive operates in narrow mode.

      All in all, I like SCSI, I can connect a very old device to a relatively new bus or a new device to an old bus, also, I can use one cable (and one port on the adapter) to connect many devices, unlike SATA.

    30. Re:Proprietary by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 1

      Where were all these non-standard proprietary connectors ...?

      Same place they are now: on Apple hardware.

      Seriously, WTF is this thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_DisplayPort ? Have you *ever* seen a video device that plugs directly into this without an adapter?

      Hey Apple: if you have to buy a $30 adapter to use the fucking port with every device ever, maybe just use the standard one in the first place, eh?

    31. Re:Proprietary by tomhudson · · Score: 1

      The keyboard usually isn't a problem. Boot up the machine without a PS/2 mouse connected. After Windows is done loading, plug the mouse it. It usually doesn't work until you reboot

      No, you're right - it's not the keyboard, it's the PEBKAC- the person who decides to run an OS that can't handle something as simple as a keyboard being unplugged :-)

    32. Re:Proprietary by PipsqueakOnAP133 · · Score: 1

      So far, I've seen more devices using Mini-DisplayPort than "full-sized" DisplayPort.

      So... I mean, we could fail to support HDCP content playback and use DVI and have incompatibility issues with knowing if it's dual-link or not....
      Or we can pay extra per device to use HDMI and have all sorts of incompatibility issues and less bandwidth.....

      Or we can use Mini-DisplayPort.

      Just because Toshiba, HP, and Apple all decided on using a new standard you wern't aware of doesn't mean it's proprietary.

    33. Re:Proprietary by sjames · · Score: 1

      OK, anyone is free to create a gratuitously proprietary connector and anyone else is free to beat them to death with a rubber hose for doing so.

  4. Bits vs bytes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ermm...How many bits do your bytes have

    1. Re:Bits vs bytes by leuk_he · · Score: 1

      Hmm, that might seem silly, but the question is right. USB promised 480 mbit/seconds, but on very fast hardware i can only transfer data at 28Mbyte/second. that is less than 50% of the promised speed or 17 bits per byte. (at least i would not be suprised if the 480Mbit contains a stop bit and a start bit for each byte . USB3.0 in ealry test reaches Speeds 2 to 3 times as fast as usb 2.0 Not bad, but not exceeding Gbit lan or SATA.

      An other advantage, greater power control, and allow more poer for devices is entirely missed in the article.

    2. Re:Bits vs bytes by runningman24 · · Score: 1

      An other advantage, greater power control, and allow more poer for devices is entirely missed in the article.

      I actually read the article, and no it isn't.

    3. Re:Bits vs bytes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      FTA: "As a more direct comparison, it would take 14 minutes to transfer 25GB of data over USB 2.0, but just four minutes with USB SuperSpeed."

      WHAT?! It would take me hours to transfer that much even over USB 2.0, what kind of hardware are they using?

    4. Re:Bits vs bytes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      USB3.0 in ealry test reaches Speeds 2 to 3 times as fast as usb 2.0 Not bad, but not exceeding Gbit lan or SATA.

      Misleading. USB3.0 HARD DISKS in early test reach speeds 2 to 3 times as fast as usb 2.0 disks. I doubt the bus is the bottleneck there.

    5. Re:Bits vs bytes by flargleblarg · · Score: 1

      That sounds about right to me. I calculate 13.88 minutes. I get 30 MBytes/sec over USB2 to a Western Digital pocket drive from the new 2010 Mac Mini.

    6. Re:Bits vs bytes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The article makes a little bit optimistic estimate with 30MB/s, but if you can't get even 10MB/s, something's wrong.
      I suggest not using the filesystem as a database, emulating NTFS behind virtualization and using the shittiest possible flash drives.

    7. Re:Bits vs bytes by tomhudson · · Score: 1

      Stop using those crappy external drives as a benchmark - a lot of them are made from RMA'd hard disks, disks that failed QC at their rated spec, etc.

    8. Re:Bits vs bytes by butlerm · · Score: 1

      If you actually want to test the limits of the bus, a test with SSDs would be far more realistic. Standards like this are designed to support what people will be doing a decade from now, not so much what they are doing today.

  5. USB-IF Says ... by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... fuck everything, we're going to plaid.

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:USB-IF Says ... by suomynonAyletamitlU · · Score: 1

      Better not use it for monitor cables, then.

  6. hard disk speed by goombah99 · · Score: 1

    I never see my hard disk data rate maxing out my connection speed, so I con't understand why all this emphasis on faster connections.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re:hard disk speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I never see my hard disk data rate maxing out my connection speed, so I con't understand why all this emphasis on faster connections.

      Have you ever heard of SSDs?

    2. Re:hard disk speed by Tynin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The only reason I can see would be if you had an external USB enclosure that housed multiple drives that you plan on RAIDing. With the speeds of SSD drives still ramping up, it is possible you could saturate even USB 3 with just 2 drives.

    3. Re:hard disk speed by Pojut · · Score: 1

      USB 2.0-based hard drives are a bit slow, as are USB 2.0-based flash drives. With the bandwith of USB 3.0 far exceeding the max throughput of today's (and tomorrow's) storage, it ensures that the standard has a longer life.

    4. Re:hard disk speed by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      And the WHY use USB? eStata is great and perfect for external drive use and is far more common than USB3.0 AND has a higher sustained transfer rate.

      USB3.0 is interesting, but useless for external drives. eStata is the right direction for that.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    5. Re:hard disk speed by rufty_tufty · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What if you have 2 hard drives connected to a hub?
      Backing up from a pen drive to an external drive would I thought be a common use case of bulk data transfer.Or from video camera to my mass storage device.
      As soon as you allow hubs and caches and protocol overhead and software inefficiencies then a connection significantly faster than the media makes a lot of sense

      --
      "The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
    6. Re:hard disk speed by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Useless? Most disks out there can't saturate the 3.0Gbps SATA yet. eSATA requires a separate power connector. USB3 devices are supposed to fall back to USB2. USB3 is going to be a great solution for external disks that are carted from place to place. Meanwhile most people who have any number of external disks would be better served by a bigger case with sleds in it, because they're not moving those disks around anyway, and it would be more efficient, catch less dust, make less noise, etc etc.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:hard disk speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Its called future proofing. The sewers in London were built to cope with a population of 8 million when in fact the population at the time was 1 million.
      USB3.0 will speed just as filth onto your screen in future years, as it does now.

    8. Re:hard disk speed by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The one major eSATA issue(I don't know why they overlooked this the first time) is power. For 3.5inch drives, or multi drive external towers/shelves, this doesn't matter at all. An external PSU is a given. For the "single 2.5 inch or smaller in portable case" case, the fact that USB3 delivers the bandwidth(and is backwards compatible right back to the two-1.1-ports stuff that they were shipping in the mid 90s) and the power, while eSATA delivers only the bandwidth, requiring a seperate connector for power, pretty much ruins things. If eSATA had included power from the start, it might have been a much better contender.

      As a replacement for SCSI type use cases, of course, USB is a toy and eSATA or SAS is the natural replacement; but for the vast market for flash drives, 2.5 inch externals, and mass-market, works-with-anything 3.5 inch externals, eSATA is doomed compared to USB(especially since a USB port can be used for non storage purposes, while an eSATA port is pretty much storage only. In principle, a high speed serial interconnect like SATA could be used for other stuff; but I've never seen it actually done in practice.

    9. Re:hard disk speed by Jason+Kimball · · Score: 1

      This is going to be necessary for more than just hard drives. Lots of multimedia devices are going to start needing significantly higher bandwidth. 4K video (2x2 times higher resolution than HD 1080P), faster removable flash memory for downloading your 150 megapixel images (from the prototype sensor Canon just announced), etc etc. Granted, most of this will be transferring to/from hard drives, but as several people mention blow, SSD HD speed is increasing. There's already a company that sells a PCI-E card with 16 flash chips RAIDed that can saturate a 10 gbit ethernet pipe.

    10. Re:hard disk speed by derGoldstein · · Score: 2, Informative

      eSata doesn't hubs or daisy-chains, making it much more rigid. If you want that port to be "universal", then the space is better occupied by a USB3. (yes, I know that the eSata/USB "solves" that, but I'd still rather have 1 format (to which I might be able to connect an HD video stream *or* an HD) than the hybrid port)

      --
      Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
    11. Re:hard disk speed by S.O.B. · · Score: 1

      I agree. Different external devices have different requirements and trying to come up with a single spec to satisfy them all is going to result in a spec that is either too bloated it will be a monster to evolve or too full of compromises to be useful or possibly both.

      I'd rather see one spec for high throughput devices like hard drives and raid arrays and a second spec for lower throughput devices like mice, keyboards and flash/portable drives.

      This is not Lord of the Rings. We don't need the one cable "to rule them all".

      --
      Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
    12. Re:hard disk speed by derGoldstein · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They're more than just a "bit" slow, IMO. An external HD connected by USB 2 can only really be used for backup, and even then it lags. Firewire is better, but driver problems will occur more often than with USB. Then there's eSata, of which you need 1 per drive. I really hope USB 3 becomes the standard for external storage, possibly even more common than eSata (even though, technically, eSata is cheaper when looking at the overall system).

      --
      Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
    13. Re:hard disk speed by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      I never see my hard disk data rate maxing out my connection speed, so I con't understand why all this emphasis on faster connections.

      How about professional audio and video interfaces?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    14. Re:hard disk speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Watch your CPU when comparing USB and eSATA/Firewire.

    15. Re:hard disk speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because there's nothing else left to do? You gotta create jobs, so people will buy stuff and consume oil to build suburbs to have kids who will buy more stuff. To do that, you need to continuously create needs. I have no needs anymore in the computer/electronics department of life, I am typing this on a 10 year old PIII-866.

      I just look at this stuff and shrug. Who cares?

    16. Re:hard disk speed by bsdaemonaut · · Score: 1

      Yes.. and even considering SSDs there is yet to be a drive that maxes out SATA II at 3.0Gb/s. Not a reason necessarily to stop from creating higher bandwidth buses, but USB 3.0 is hardly "irrelevant."

    17. Re:hard disk speed by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Watch your CPU when comparing USB and eSATA/Firewire.

      Yes, I've been there, that's why when I buy disk enclosures I buy them with USB2, eSATA, and FireWire. Before SATA, I just got the other two. I have a disk hooked up to my PC via firewire right now because I know that USB2 will kill your CPU. USB3 is interrupt-driven rather than polled, though, so there is hope that it will not do this... when connecting a USB3 device to a USB3 host. It's not going to help with any of the existing USB2 crap.

      On the other hand, I now have three cores at 3.2GHz and expect my next machine to have six or eight at about the same clock. I can afford to eat some USB2 overhead.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    18. Re:hard disk speed by bsdaemonaut · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but we've always been able to build hi-speed ram drives, the interesting developments have been in flash-based (hence non-volatile) SSD drives.

    19. Re:hard disk speed by wolrahnaes · · Score: 2, Informative

      eSATA does not always require separate power. Most eSATA-equipped laptops on the market right now use a port known as eSATAp which adds in both power and USB 2.0 compatibility. It's less common on desktops, but is gaining in popularity. Since an eSATA + USB enclosure is generally within a few dollars of a straight eSATA or USB model it's the best of both worlds. With the right hardware at both ends you get full SATA speeds on a one-cable power+data solution, but either end can fail back to USB 2 as necessary for compatibility with the world.

      --
      I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
    20. Re:hard disk speed by Surt · · Score: 1

      There are lots of SSDs that are maxing out sata II/3gbps. That's 375 MB/sec of maximum physical bandwidth, so all the SSDs in the 350+MB/sec class are being limited by the connector.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    21. Re:hard disk speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not about your [Internet] connection speed. I move hard drive images and large virtual machines around all the time and with USB 2 I get 20MB/sec sustained which *sucks* and is already the bottleneck. eSATA is much better but soon the bottleneck becomes the drive. SSD's price point along with USB3 coming out mainstream will save me time in the day!

    22. Re:hard disk speed by drsmithy · · Score: 1

      I never see my hard disk data rate maxing out my connection speed, so I con't understand why all this emphasis on faster connections.

      External drives - even 2.5" models - have been maxing out USB2 for years.

    23. Re:hard disk speed by mlts · · Score: 1

      eSATA also offers better RAID support, especially advanced items like hardware RAID 5 or even 6. I have yet to see a hardware RAID solution for USB drives [1].

      [1]: This is different from a hardware RAID device having a USB interface.

    24. Re:hard disk speed by Yoozer · · Score: 1

      so I con't understand why all this emphasis on faster connections.

      Well, it enables studio personnel to record say, 48 streams of audio at 24/192 simultaneously, directly via USB 3.0 instead of having to buy a separate MADI interface. Right now most prosumer Firewire interfaces top out at 8 in/8 out, and you can fill that up easily with just drums already. ADAT is not an option if you want to go above and beyond 48/16.

      You simply directly record to RAM which flushes it all to disk at its leisure.

    25. Re:hard disk speed by Abcd1234 · · Score: 1

      Watch your CPU when comparing USB and eSATA/Firewire.

      I can only assume neither you nor the idiot mod who gave you a +1 Interesting actually RTFA. USB 3.0 does away with polling, which means CPU usage should be substantially lower.

    26. Re:hard disk speed by LBArrettAnderson · · Score: 1

      Indeed. With overhead it's actually more like 300MB/sec. My SSD does 285MB/sec. There are some that will do more than 300, and it's incredibly easy to get over 300MB/sec of potential speed (ignoring the SATA II bottleneck) with certain RAID configurations (where the drives are bottlenecked by a single SATA cable, such as those 2x2.5" to 1x3.5" converter things that you can get).

    27. Re:hard disk speed by bsdaemonaut · · Score: 1

      I'm well aware of raid, but if you start considering multiple drive or ram-backed setups the bottleneck is almost always going to be the bus. I've yet to see a single SSD drive, like I stated that saturates SATA II, so wouldn't mind seeing a link if y'all have one.

    28. Re:hard disk speed by LBArrettAnderson · · Score: 1

      First thing I found on newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148348

      The speed that a drive needs to be to saturate SATA II is 300MB/sec (2 bits of overhead per byte, if I'm not mistaken).

    29. Re:hard disk speed by ncc74656 · · Score: 1

      eSata doesn't hubs or daisy-chains, making it much more rigid.

      USB doesn't do daisy-chaining, either. Some devices (Apple keyboards and the Xbox 360 HDDVD drive are a couple I know about) contain hubs through which other devices can be connected, which gives the appearance of daisy-chaining. SATA, meanwhile, has port multipliers available for it that behave in a manner similar to a USB hub.

      --
      20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
    30. Re:hard disk speed by wbo · · Score: 1

      eSata doesn't hubs or daisy-chains

      eSATA and SATA do support Port Multipliers which are very similar to USB hubs in many ways. Indeed, many SATA disk enclosures have port multipliers built in so they only need 1 eSATA connection to a PC/Laptop/Server/other device.

    31. Re:hard disk speed by Animaether · · Score: 1

      Then there's eSata, of which you need 1 per drive.

      Keep in mind that you do not -need- 1 per drive, per se. They can be hooked up internally much like a USB hub. However, your eSATA interface card must have a Port Multiplier.

      This does divide the bandwidth across the attached devices if more than one is addressed at a time.. but this is no different than a USB hub, of course.
      I did some research into dual-slot SATA drive docking stations 2 days ago and almost all (~30) of them require a PM interface. There were only two models that had separate eSATA connectors.

      ( fwiw, USB 3.0 support is on the rise but still not present on most models, and where it is, it has to go through sub-par eSATA-to-USB3 interface chips. Overall, you'd be much better off just getting the eSATA model if you have a choice (often a USB 3 model won't have an eSATA connector, while the eSATA models -will- at least have a USB 2.0 port ) )

    32. Re:hard disk speed by cynyr · · Score: 1

      You could always get a port multiplier for your esata port. Of course it limits total multiplied drive speed to sata3.0 speeds. but hey, you can stick 15 drives on that one port.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#Comparisons_with_other_interfaces

      --
      All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
    33. Re:hard disk speed by bsdaemonaut · · Score: 1

      It advertises 265 MB/s when using SATA II mode, but close enough to the 286MB/s max, so I stand corrected.

    34. Re:hard disk speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The fact that it does well over 300MB/s in SATA 3 mode doesn't also prove this fact?

    35. Re:hard disk speed by TheRedDuke · · Score: 1

      And the WHY use USB? eStata is great and perfect for external drive use and is far more common than USB3.0 AND has a higher sustained transfer rate

      USB3 may not be very common yet, but USB2 is a helluva lot more common than eSATA, and in many cases, more convenient (think drives that need external power on eSATA). My organization travels to remote locations to collect data and requires convenient, fast, redundant storage. Our current solution is a 4-bay RAID/5/0+1 array that has USB 2.0 and eSATA interface. eSATA is great for some applications, but USB2 will literally work in any computer they come across, especially older machines. The same will be true for USB3 devices, which we plan to adopt in our next technology refresh. When in doubt, 8000 miles from home and using some random dude's computer, there will be a USB2 port to plug into. Bottom line - USB3 gives better flexibility and similar performance to eSATA.

    36. Re:hard disk speed by adisakp · · Score: 1, Informative

      The one major eSATA issue is power.

      Yes, power and hot swapping because windoze doesn't recognize the drive as removeable.

      D'oh!! The two major eSATA issues are power and hot swapping and overly short cables that are very expensive.

      D'oh!! The three major eSATA issues are power and hot swapping and short expensive cables and connectors that tend to break off easily.

      D'oh!! The four major eSATA issues are power and hot swapping and short expensive cables and fragile connectors.

      What about the fact that you only get one eSATA port if you're lucky and that's on the back of your computer sandwiched between other ports and nearly impossible to get to without pulling out your entire computer box?

      Fuck it! Let's got to USB 3.0.

    37. Re:hard disk speed by adisakp · · Score: 1

      USB 2.0-based hard drives are a bit slow, as are USB 2.0-based flash drives. With the bandwith of USB 3.0 far exceeding the max throughput of today's (and tomorrow's) storage, it ensures that the standard has a longer life.

      Yup, I have a Intel SSD in a USB2.0 / eSATA case. Reads max at about 30MB/s on USB 2.0 and are about 6X faster on eSATA. Writes are a lot faster on eSATA too not to mention that there seems to be less system overhead for eSATA than USB.

    38. Re:hard disk speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      eSata doesn't hubs or daisy-chains

      It also doesn't verbs.

    39. Re:hard disk speed by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      How about professional audio and video interfaces?

      Oh, they'll be RCA connectors for the next 200 years. Count on it.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    40. Re:hard disk speed by srvivn21 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The one major eSATA issue is power.

      Yes, power and hot swapping because windoze doesn't recognize the drive as removeable.

      While I understand you were going for humor, Windows (at least back to Win2k) will allow hot-swapping an eSATA drive, as long as the controller is using AHCI.

    41. Re:hard disk speed by greed · · Score: 1

      eSATA does do something akin to hubs; they're called "port multipliers". I've got a dual-disk eSATA box that has one integrated; you pop in two disks, plug in one eSATA cable, and the host sees two SATA endpoints on the far side of the multiplier. (This isn't the same as a true hardware RAID box; in that case, the RAID controller presents a single endpoint to the host and manages the disk array itself.)

      They're readily available in a x5 configuration; I don't know why "5" seems to be such a magic number. You can get them standalone or in a multi-disk tower or ....

      They're fairly expensive compared to a USB hub or gigabit Ethernet switch.

    42. Re:hard disk speed by adisakp · · Score: 1

      Well, none of the Windows PC's I've used with eSATA (about 6 of them) have ever supported hot-swapping on the eSATA. Perhaps AHCI is not enabled by default or turned off in many BIOSes. Also, just some controllers/drivers just don't work with eSATA swapping. On USB, hot-swapping just generally works without any issues and for eSATA, it generally doesn't work most of the time in my experience.

    43. Re:hard disk speed by pjrc · · Score: 1

      Much of the reason for USB's slow disk performance is the simplistic bulk-only transport protocol used by virtually all USB mass storage class devices on the market today. The problem is bulk-only transport is a synchronous protocol, where every transaction must be fully completed before the next is begun. Even though it's transporting SCSI commands, you don't get important performance enhancing features, like command queuing. It's impossible to make best use of USB scheduling by sending the next command before the previous fully replies with the status code.

      There is a new protocol called UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol) which aims to fix all this. But who knows when or if Microsoft will ever support it?

    44. Re:hard disk speed by Pax681 · · Score: 1

      well..... with my coolermaster CM690 II advanced case

      i get a nice little tray on top in which you slot in a SATA drive .... it's got the eSATA built into it... very very handy indeed and my mobo has the eSATA port at the back as well...

      linky

      all in all it's the best case i have ever had in my life tbh

    45. Re:hard disk speed by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      My MOTU adapter uses USB2 or Firewire. Although, to support your point, it does indeed have some RCA connectors on the back.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    46. Re:hard disk speed by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      And if you are building eSATA+USB2 into a single port, why not just build USB 3.0 into that one port and call it "good enough"?

    47. Re:hard disk speed by adisakp · · Score: 1

      FWIW, searching "esata hot swap windows problems" on google.com yields about 70,000 hits of people having problems with eSATA and hot swapping.

    48. Re:hard disk speed by rjstanford · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but I've been tested.

      --
      You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
    49. Re:hard disk speed by aquila.solo · · Score: 1

      Maybe he accidentally the verb.

    50. Re:hard disk speed by Stupendoussteve · · Score: 1

      USB does daisy chaining up to five levels deep. You can plug a hub into a hub into a hub and it will function, as will the devices connected to it (obviously these should be powered hubs).

    51. Re:hard disk speed by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      SATA, meanwhile, has port multipliers available for it that behave in a manner similar to a USB hub.
      But with a few differences

      1: Not all controllers support them
      2: You can only have one in the path to a drive (so you couldn't for example have a multiplier in a standalone box feeding one in a multi drive enclosure
      3: I've never seen one for sale in a seperate box, they all seem designed for mounting inside drive enclosures.

      Another thing is that many machines are running thier SATA ports (and while on some motherboards there is a dedicated controller for the ESATA ports it's often just a spare port on the chipset SATA controller) in IDE mode to make setting up windows easier but afaict this disables any hotplugging and port multiplier support.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    52. Re:hard disk speed by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      Laptops (especially the smaller ones) often have very limited locations that are suitable for placing ports so there is motivation to make the connectors flexible. Witness the USB2+eSATA ports that are now common on laptops, would companies have been so willing to add eSATA if it meant sacrificing a USB port to make space? I doubt it.

      USB 1 and 2 worked on the principle of having the host adjust to the devices needs. This has worked out well since on a large fast chip (like a southbridge) it's not really going to make much difference to cost whether all the USB ports can run at high speed or only a subset of them.

      USB3 is essentially two interfaces down the same port, the old USB interface is still there for slower devices and the new superspeed interface is there for faster stuff. Superspeed perhipherals will need to be able to fall back to high speed but I doubt the extra couple of pins to do that will add any significant cost to the chip designs.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    53. Re:hard disk speed by haruchai · · Score: 1

      Wherefore art my mod points, Romeo?

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    54. Re:hard disk speed by haruchai · · Score: 1

      Port multipliers don't cover all bases - I have an eSATA dual-bay dock connected to an PCI-E port multiplier. Works fine when in Windows but I can only boot from the drive in slot HDD1. I'm not sure if
      the problem is the PC BIOS, the add-in card BIOS or the dock itself but I haven't found a solution besides
      swapping drives each time.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    55. Re:hard disk speed by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      The real question is will Intel put USB 3 in thier chipsets and if so when. Most PC processors are made by intel and current generation intel processors have to be paired with an intel chipset.

      Afaict most chipsets have at least four SATA ports but most laptops only have two SATA devices so the only costs to replacing one of the USB ports with a USB+eSATA are a slightly more expensive connector and a few more tracks to route.

      Contrast that to USB3 which currently needs a dedicated controller chip fed off a dedicated PCIe lane.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    56. Re:hard disk speed by ufoolme · · Score: 1

      SSD's Sata 3 are coming soon, that will saturate USB 3.

    57. Re:hard disk speed by BrokenHalo · · Score: 1

      I don't know about you guys, but on my desktop systems I don't have an unmanagable bottleneck with my external devices, since they are mostly for backups; my main issue seems to be at the interface between the motherboard and internal drives. This is where LightPeak is starting to look attractive (provided that the cables aren't too expensive) - especially since it is (supposed to be) a replacement for PCIE as well. However, I guess I'll have to wait a while for it to become available for Linux... :-|

    58. Re:hard disk speed by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      It was a joke, son. Nothing says 'pro' better than a needlessly large bank of color coded outputs with vaguely menacing icons or abbreviations crammed onto the backplate.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    59. Re:hard disk speed by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      I suspect that the hot swap issues are (indirectly) an artefact of the fact that eSATA has basically zero traction as anything other than a low-cost replacement for SCSI for the "External disks as fast as internal ones" market.

      Back in the bad old days, just about any use of USB beyond the very simplest was liable to be fraught with issues in some setups, including some quite common, at the time, ones. BIOSes you couldn't configure with a USB keyboard, seriously broken USB peripherals and chipsets, utterly crap drivers, etc.

      However, because USB was pretty clearly on the right trajectory, most of that got ironed out over time. Shipping stuff where the USB didn't Just Work went from being acceptable to being a customer support money sink.

      Since eSATA shows much weaker signs of ever getting to that point(and, also since some of the people want their eSATA device not marked as removable, so they can install an OS on it, and some want it marked as removable so they can eject it, further complicating things) the odds of it being ironed out to the point where you can basically trust any set of components, from any collection of manufacturers, to actually work, will be rather a while in coming.

    60. Re:hard disk speed by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      Overly short and expensive? My last esata cable purchase was $4.95 each for 3 meter long ones. I guess you like the 45 meter $0.01 Usb cables.

      Hotswapping... Windows 7 has not problems. my laptop and Desktop both handle it gracefully.

      Power : this one is moot as every single USB hard drive I have owned either needed to be hooked up to TWO usb ports to run or needed an external power supply. I see this as a non issue. I have a 2.5" External eSata drive case that has a USB for power... Just like what ALL the usb drives have to use...

      Finally.. 1 esata port? My laptop has 1, but my desktop has 2 and I can add another 4 for $19.95 with a pcie card.

      My laptop in contrast has only 1 USB 2.0 ports, the rest are usless USB Low speed ports. as far as I am concerned, they dont need to be on the laptop. (Thanks DELL!) but it's on the side and easy to access.. I haven't seen ports on the back of a laptop for years... I wish they would come back though, the octopus of cables out the sides is sucky.

      Finally 90% of all external hard drives are added to a PC for storage expansion and left connected to the PC all the time. WTF do you need all those "features that already exist in eSaTa" if they will not be used.

      got any real drawbacks to eSata?

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  7. Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by antifoidulus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    One detail missing from the article was the relative costs of the two technologies, with the popularity of net books and the like the cheaper technology will probably come out ahead in the long run.

    1. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      More like: "with the popularity of money the cheaper technology will probably come out ahead in the long run." The success of netbooks is a symptom of a deeper economic relationship.

    2. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by EraserMouseMan · · Score: 2

      LightPeak is a buzz word. That's it. It's light years away from actually showing up on devices in your local Best Buy. Far from making USB 3.0 obsolete.

    3. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by Anpheus · · Score: 2

      Light Peak should be available by the second half of 2011 in higher end desktops from OEMs that have opted into it.

    4. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by jimicus · · Score: 0

      LightPeak is a buzz word. That's it. It's light years away from actually showing up on devices in your local Best Buy. Far from making USB 3.0 obsolete.

      Pet peeve: A light year is not a unit of time, it's a unit of distance. You'd be more likely to describe LightPeak as being years away than being miles away, no?

    5. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by somersault · · Score: 0

      Psst.. light years are a measure of distance, not time.. I'd hide if I were you.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    6. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by sgraar · · Score: 1

      If it is light years away, when should we expect it to arrive? Is it coming at a speed close to that of light in a vacuum?

    7. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by Dancindan84 · · Score: 1

      Backwards compatibility is the other big factor after cost. If USB3.0 is backwards compatible (which I assume it is) that's going to be a huge advantage. Why get something better but more expensive when I still have a camera, printer, external HDD etc. etc. that can't use it when I can get something almost as good that will work for all those (and my new USB3.0 versions of them as I replace them).

      --
      "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
    8. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by rufty_tufty · · Score: 1

      You bring up cost:
      Light peak requires a fibre optic connection - so you need multiple chips to do an interface, whereas with usb3 the same chip that is your usb logic can also be your usb phy, so it will be the technologically cheaper solution.
      So for use in mobile devices it will be cheaper to use usb3 because of the lower part count and smaller space requirements.
      This is ignoring licensing issues of course.

      --
      "The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
    9. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The reason LightPeak will fail and USB 3.0 will survive is backwards compatibility. Nobody is going to want to have yet another type of port on their PC and hardware manufacturers aren't going to want to have to integrate yet another type of connector on drives and peripherals. USB 3.0 is backwards compatible, which means all of your current USB devices can plug right into it and your PC gets to maintain uniform interfaces.

    10. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Whoooosh, you missed it... by almost as many light-years as intel will miss the market by with LightPeak.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    11. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by somersault · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I still don't see it. If it was meant to be a pun, it was a bad one, and not in the bad-funny kind of way.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    12. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I still don't see it. If it was meant to be a pun, it was a bad one, and not in the bad-funny kind of way.

      The commenter wasn't saying that LightPeak was years away, they were saying it was miles away, but miles are too small a unit so they used Light-years. When someone misses a target, even a temporal one, we don't say "missed it by a minute!" we say missed it by a mile. The author intended to use the term to describe distance, and you derided them for using the term to describe time. There was no pun, really, just your knee jerking. You should have that checked.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    13. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by xtracto · · Score: 1

      bah...
      The main factor of USB 3.0 vs LightPeak is that USB 3.0 is already being sold (devices, cables, computers with the interface) while LightPeak is at the same stage as "holographic storage" or lots of other technologies:

      Although Light Peak is early in its development, Intel demonstrated a fully functional system at the 2009 Intel Developer Forum (IDF).

      --
      Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
    14. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by Idiomatick · · Score: 1

      Why can't you let it sit as a metaphor for time? Certainly no stranger than lots of metaphors that are out there. Saying its 'miles off still' wouldnt have been too offensive...

      We all forgive/rationalize Star Wars for running races in parsecs too remember.

    15. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by somersault · · Score: 1

      Well my original comment was more of a joke, but he wasn't actually talking about hitting a target, he was talking about the time until this stuff will hit shelves - not whether it would actually hit shelves or not. I have heard miles away being used in terms of time and have probably even used it myself, though right now I'd consider "ages away" more appropriate and suitably exaggerated.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    16. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      Actually light years can work for this metaphor. IE Light peak is a great distance away from shipping.. Not really any different than you missed your performance make by a mile or your not even in the same neighborhood with that bid. Now if he said it will will be light years before light peak ships that would be a bad metaphor.
      But in this case I think it was a fine use.
      Don't be so literal. After all LightPeak is still not shipping at all. It has a ways to go before we see it in real products at BestBuyMart.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    17. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by Tacvek · · Score: 1

      For now that is the case. But Lightpeak by design is a bus that can carry multiple protocols and expose them to the end system. So It can carry USB data for example, but at higher bandwidth than even USB3. That will likely be one of the more common uses of the technology, since the USB HID and mass storage specs already have driver support in just about everything.

      So I would expect that chips with USB Logic and LightPeak PHY will be common. You connect it to the port with wires, just like USB, and the port will house the LED and photo-transistor (or whatever optical sensor they are using). If they have the version where the optical fiber is bundled with wires for providing power ready at the time of release, that would be very useful.

      Lightpeak's main advantage should be its multiple protocols. AIUI It is basically intended to be a near universal Layer 1 replacement, usable with existing layer 2 protocols, but at higher bandwidth. So it could carry USB packets, ethernet frames, SATA frames, HDMI packets, etc.

      Since it supports multiple protocols an the same fiber simultaneously, it will have two layers. One is layer 1. The other is a layer 1.5 protocol. It would probably have a few different types of frames.

      One that has merely added a header to the frames/packets of the layer 2 protocol. The header would indicate which device is to receive the packets. There would also be a frame that gets sent when a device is connected that indicates the address of the device, and the protocol it speaks. At that point the host knows how to talk to the device, and can use that protocol to finish the discovery process, and begin regular communication.

      Such a system if designed in that fashion would be extremely generic. All that would be needed to support another protocol is the assignment of a protocol number for the frame that is sent when the device is connected. All other data would be defined by the packet/frame format of the underlying protocol.

      --
      Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
    18. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by sonicmerlin · · Score: 1

      Don't worry. That's just me checking his reflexes. Whoop whoop whoop! -Dr. Zoidberg

    19. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by paintballer1087 · · Score: 1

      LightPeak is a buzz word. That's it. It's parsecs away from actually showing up on devices in your local Best Buy. Far from making USB 3.0 obsolete.

      There, fixed that for you.

      E.G.

      It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.

      Everything important in life I've learned from Han Solo.

    20. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by jburroug · · Score: 1

      LightPeak is a buzz word. That's it. It's light years away from actually showing up on devices in your local Best Buy. Far from making USB 3.0 obsolete.

      Pet peeve: A light year is not a unit of time, it's a unit of distance. You'd be more likely to describe LightPeak as being years away than being miles away, no?

      I thought he hinting that LightPeak was an alien technology and that it was on it's way to Earth but was several light years away and that it would take a little while for IPS (interstellar parcel service) to actually deliver to OEMs on Earth.

      --
      "Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
    21. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by darrylo · · Score: 1

      Bingo, spot on.

      Even if lightpeak is better technologically (and I don't know), the cheaper one is likelier to win. In today's world of razor-thin margins, the commodity PC market is likely to go with whichever one is cheaper, considering how similar the end-user benefits are. USB 3.0 has the advantage of using a (similar) connector that must already exist anyway; lightpeak has the disadvantage of requiring an additional connector, along with more circuit board realestate, and adding connectors is relatively expensive (eats into the thin profit margins). And we haven't even started talking about the cost of interface circuitry/chips ...

    22. Re:Cost of USB 3.0 vs lightpeak by haruchai · · Score: 1

      If he hitches a ride on the Millennium Falcon, he could be hiding out in the Kessel system in about 12 parsecs.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  8. theOnion by bmajik · · Score: 3, Funny
    --
    My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
    1. Re:theOnion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you even seen the five-bladed razor? Don't diss it before you try it. You aren't a man if you don't own a five-bladed battery powered razor in racing colors with an ergonomic grip and a special side razor that you can use to trim your sideburns. You are still technically a man if you own all of that but don't have a flashing low battery power indicator--just a sad a pathetic one.

    2. Re:theOnion by somersault · · Score: 1

      Sadly that parody ended up being right on the money, down to the two moisture strips: http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/14/news/fortune500/gillette/

      --
      which is totally what she said
    3. Re:theOnion by countertrolling · · Score: 1

      Not exactly original..

      --
      For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
    4. Re:theOnion by Idiomatick · · Score: 1

      That one isn't so sad.... http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-pros,464/ being perfectly accurate was pretty depressing though.

    5. Re:theOnion by JohnBailey · · Score: 1

      Have you even seen the five-bladed razor? Don't diss it before you try it. You aren't a man if you don't own a five-bladed battery powered razor in racing colors with an ergonomic grip and a special side razor that you can use to trim your sideburns. You are still technically a man if you own all of that but don't have a flashing low battery power indicator--just a sad a pathetic one.

      I have a beard.

      --
      It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
    6. Re:theOnion by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 1

      The best part about that article is that it came true.

    7. Re:theOnion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The best part is, it actually happened.

    8. Re:theOnion by Quirkz · · Score: 1
      Yeah, I know. It was a common joke back when they'd invented two and three blades, but here it is.

      Perhaps even better is the fact that one of those blades is currently being marketed to imply using their razor is like being punched in the face with water. (I swear I see that commercial at least once every half hour, for the past month.) I'm always thinking, "Really? You think I want 'a blast of hydration to the face?'" What's wrong with these people?

    9. Re:theOnion by srvivn21 · · Score: 1

      Which always reminds me of this.

    10. Re:theOnion by sjames · · Score: 1

      I suppose someone will try 6 blades, but after a few well publicized decapitations, someone will come out with a ONE blade "safety razor" and proclaim that if your blade is half decent you only need one. Then after everyone has gone to single blades (perhaps in a reversible metal holder with a spare single blade on the other side) and everyone has forgotten the old slogan, someone will come up with a stunningly innovative double edge razor with moisture strips.

      Somewhere in there someone will offer the gasoline powered "beard whacker" but sales will remain low.

  9. Sure, it's fast compared to outdated stuff... by Timothy+Brownawell · · Score: 4, Insightful

    SATA is up to 6.0 Gb/s now, and networking is starting to hit 10Gb/s.

    1. Re:Sure, it's fast compared to outdated stuff... by Lussarn · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      USB is a universal interface, of course it comes with some limitations. What if you needed a special port for your memory stick, a different for hard drive, another one for your mp3 player and yet another one for your GPS, mouse, keyboard, external soundcard, or the gadget Rocket launcher. You would end up with 50 different ports and a bunch of Add-in cards.

      USB solves all this, with some limitations (SATA is faster for drives, ethernet has faster networking). USB3 looks to me like it's going to rock, and it will problably not saturate harddrive speeds for a few years to come. It is much needed though since USB2 is just to slow for todays harddrives.

    2. Re:Sure, it's fast compared to outdated stuff... by Jesus_666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Does USB 3 finally have a controller? I mean a real one, not the "let's just offload half our work to the CPU" nonsense USB 1, 1.1 and 2 have. Yes, it's cheap but it's also a recipe for horrible throughput (see FireWire S400 being faster then USB 2.0) and puts an unneccessary burden on the CPU.

      I'd like USB better if it wasn't implemented in such a half-assed way. The connectors are horrible (whoever thought that a symmetric-looking but really asymmetric connector was a good idea?), it's incapable of daisy-chaining without hubs, it's strictly host-peripheral and its reliance on the CPU degrades its own performance.


      USB is a nice idea but sometimes I wish FireWire had made the cut instead. Apart from the fact that it can DMA wherever it wants it's essentially USB done right. Likewise, I hope that Light Peak makes its way to the market soon as it doesn't seem to share many of USB's shortcomings.

      USB is great for HID. Everything else not so much.

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    3. Re:Sure, it's fast compared to outdated stuff... by JonJ · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If I had moderator points, I would mod you up. USB for anything else than simple peripherals is a joke.

      --
      -- Linux user #369862
    4. Re:Sure, it's fast compared to outdated stuff... by symbolset · · Score: 1

      Starting? HP Blades have had dual 10Gbps Ethernet ports on the motherboard for over a year. They're starting to have dual FCoE ports now. AFAIK, when the ports come integrated on the motherboard we can consider them mainstream.

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    5. Re:Sure, it's fast compared to outdated stuff... by butlerm · · Score: 1

      networking is starting to hit 10Gb/s.

      Ethernet now has 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s standards as well. Rather expensive and used only for special purpose applications at this point of course. Data centers, cluster interconnect, and WAN links mostly.

    6. Re:Sure, it's fast compared to outdated stuff... by Bottomless · · Score: 1

      Doing a little math you find those asymmetric connectors costs more than 4 Million man-hours per year.
      That's as much as Pac-Man on Google.

      source: http://blog.bottomlessinc.com/2010/08/usb-connectors-wasting-4-million-man-hours-per-year/

  10. USB will be the next RS232 serial port by adosch · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Contrary to the lame doomsday message IFTA, USB isn't going away, people. I see all the millions of devices that use USB for data transfer, power charging, ect. not to mention cellular phone market is finally starting to standardize to micro-USB. On top of that, there's too many TTL 5v devices out there built and designed around USB that it would cause some serious chaos if it did go away. There's no way that something like LightPeak is going to come in and whisk it off of computer hardware manufacturer's list of "things to provide". It may be a high-speed fad like Firewire or something of the recent past, but USB is here to stay.

    1. Re:USB will be the next RS232 serial port by paradxum · · Score: 1

      I have to agree. USB, although shorter, provides power. This is huge.

      From my understanding Light Peak Does not. This excludes a whole range of items from using it: thumb drives, keyboards, mice....

      Power on the cable is important. We even add it to networking (POE). We already have the same speed in networking, and USB 3.0 speed is nothing to sneeze at.

      Unless Light Peak provides/adds power in the spec, I think it's doomed to fail (or just become the next firewire as parent said.)
      Although I could see a composite cable, fiber for signaling, copper for power. Maybe USB 4.0 or Light Peak 2.0? ;)

    2. Re:USB will be the next RS232 serial port by DrXym · · Score: 1
      Light Peak is not just being touted for external devices but also to allow computers to replace their various internal databuses with a single bus. Everything from eSATA to PCI-Express could all be replaced by optical cables. I can't even imagine what such a motherboard would look like, but I assume it would have some multiple of Light Peak connectors running between HDD, USB, graphics module, video output etc. with optical modules on the endpoints. If that's the case, then there is no reason such a computer wouldn't expose USB 3.0 and an external Light Peak connector side by side since USB is running over Light Peak any way.

      IMO USB 3.0 seems a bit of a lame duck for high speed storage - better than nothing but not anywhere as good as it should be. But I wonder if Light Peak is so ambitious that it might be years off from realising itself and people have no other choice but to go with USB 3.0.

    3. Re:USB will be the next RS232 serial port by mozumder · · Score: 1

      Light Peak will also include copper wiring for power.

      All it'll take for USB to go away is for Apple to remove it from their computers, and everyone else will follow.

    4. Re:USB will be the next RS232 serial port by pizzach · · Score: 1

      USB is also a show of how devices that offload their work onto the CPU are here to stay. Integrated graphics is just going to become more and more common slashdotters. :-O

      --
      Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
    5. Re:USB will be the next RS232 serial port by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      Yep and lots of server mother boards still have RS-232 ports and PS/2 ports. Old ports never die completely they just get embedded.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    6. Re:USB will be the next RS232 serial port by LBArrettAnderson · · Score: 1

      http://www.zdnet.com/news/intels-light-peak-to-cut-the-cables/346181

      "In addition, Intel said it's working on bundling the optical fiber with copper wire so Light Peak can be used to power devices plugged into the PC, he said."

      Not definitive, but it sounds like they very well might do power as well.

    7. Re:USB will be the next RS232 serial port by LordKronos · · Score: 1

      A while back there was an article posted here on slashdot about LightPeak which mentioned that the LightPeak connector jack would also be compatible with USB, so you could have a single jack that would accept both USB and LightPeak devices. So in that sense, it seems intel currently has no expectation for USB to disappear. Also, it mentioned that the electrical cabling could run along with the optical portion, so a single cable would support both lightpeak AND USB. Thus you'd be able to charge with it. And I think the suggestion made in one of the Intel demo videos was that it would be able to run LightPeak and USB simultaneously, which means you could have a single hub to plug all of your USB and LightPeak devices into, with only a single wire going back to your computer.

      http://slashdot.org/story/10/05/04/1539206/Intel-Shows-Off-First-Light-Peak-Laptop

    8. Re:USB will be the next RS232 serial port by Painted · · Score: 1

      In fact, LightPeak does provide power; data goes over the fiber, and there is copper run alongside for powering external devices. It's right in the spec.

      --
      http://marsandmore.com - Posters of space, spacecraft, and astronomy.
    9. Re:USB will be the next RS232 serial port by rjstanford · · Score: 1

      USB is also a show of how devices that offload their work onto the CPU are here to stay. Integrated graphics is just going to become more and more common slashdotters. :-O

      And its cheap, ubiquitous, and a damn sight better in many cases than the expensive wowOhMyGodThisIsAmazing state of the art was a couple of years ago.

      Your point?

      --
      You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
  11. Dang... by PmanAce · · Score: 0

    And here I was super excited in buying my next USBling-bling key. Guess I will have to wait. :(

    --
    Tired of my customary (Score:1)
  12. Backward compatibility... by codewarren · · Score: 1, Insightful

    But with USB 3.0, even though the plug looks the same, the cable has extra wires. Because of this, it will not work in a 2.0 port. The edge of a USB 3.0 plug is colored blue so you know it’s a 3.0.

    Fuck the blind!

    1. Re:Backward compatibility... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      But with USB 3.0, even though the plug looks the same, the cable has extra wires. Because of this, it will not work in a 2.0 port. The edge of a USB 3.0 plug is colored blue so you know it's a 3.0.

      Fuck the blind!

      they're only fucking the one-armed blind, because the other end of the cable has a different plug, at least in scenarios where a USB A-to-B cable is currently used. Also later in the article it says you can plug a USB3 cable into a USB2 port and it will fall back to USB2, so I declare this article to be a greasy, floating piece of shit. It's nice that it's written at a junior high level though, because you can use it to confuse near-illiterates as well as the computer savvy.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Backward compatibility... by jimicus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm not sure I'd trust that article entirely. From TFA:

      But with USB 3.0, even though the plug looks the same, the cable has extra wires. Because of this, it will not work in a 2.0 port..............
      On the plus side, you will be able to plug USB 3.0 devices and cables into the USB 2.0 ports on your current computer, but you won’t get the speed advantage.

      (my emphasis)

      Anyone care to explain this apparent contradiction?

    3. Re:Backward compatibility... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      wtf? The whole point of usb is that it works. I can stick a 2.0 device in a 1.0/1.1 port. It will be slow. I can stick a 1.0/1.1 device in a 2.0 port, again slow. Now they are saying I can't stick a 3.0 in a 2.0? WTF? If they are breaking compatibility, they need a new connector (a non-symmetrical connector please)

    4. Re:Backward compatibility... by codewarren · · Score: 1

      Fuck the blind!

      I think there's some confusion here. I was merely making a plea that the blind need love too.

    5. Re:Backward compatibility... by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      Not just the blind. Have these people ever worked with average consumers? Even though the edge is blue, that's really not enough of a difference for most users. I can see tons of support calls because the "thing doesn't work when I plug it in." when the cable used was wrong. Also if there was so much break in compatibility, why not just change the plugs? It's not like having the same plug was going to help other than initial manufacturing costs.

      But with USB 3.0, even though the plug looks the same, the cable has extra wires. Because of this, it will not work in a 2.0 port. The edge of a USB 3.0 plug is colored blue so you know it's a 3.0. The USB 3.0 cable has nine wires, compared with the five in a USB 2.0 cable, even though it's the same thickness.

      Likewise, the end of the cable that connects to a USB device, such as a printer or external drive, is also different from the old USB 2.0 connector. Because of this, you can't use USB 3.0 cables to connect USB 2.0 devices. Also, if your drive, scanner, printer, camera, or whatever is a USB 3.0 device, then you must use a 3.0 cable.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    6. Re:Backward compatibility... by dave420 · · Score: 2, Informative

      You can plug a USB 3 device into a USB 1/2 port without issue. The USB 3 Type-A plug (the flat rectangular one) retains the same pins in the same locations, but has a recessed group of 5 pins that only come into contact with the host when placed in a USB 3 SuperSpeed socket. You will not be able to, however, plug a USB 3 Type-B plug (the square ones) into a USB 1/2 Type-B socket. They are not breaking compatibility.

    7. Re:Backward compatibility... by Animaether · · Score: 1

      It's already explained in the replies to this post...
      http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1768072&cid=33391128 ...so no need to rehash here.. but in summary: there's two ends to a USB cable. In the first line you quoted he's talking about the device end, and in the second line you quoted he's talking about the computer end.

    8. Re:Backward compatibility... by Confusador · · Score: 1

      The USB 3.0 CABLE will not work in a 2.0 port. The 3.0 PORT will accept a 2.0 cable, but be limited to 2.0 speeds. It thereby maintains backward compatibility (everything you have still works, at the speeds they work now), while adding what they need to extend the spec.

    9. Re:Backward compatibility... by rjstanford · · Score: 1

      If they are breaking compatibility, they need a new connector (a non-symmetrical connector please)

      Or how about a really symmetrical one? Its not hard... USB looks symmetrical but isn't. That's just stupid.

      --
      You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
    10. Re:Backward compatibility... by Bryansix · · Score: 1

      Actually the semantics is completely wrong. It should read "On the plus side, you will be able to plug USB 2.0 devices into the USB 3.0 ports on your new computer, but you won' get the speed advantage."

  13. Useless article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So is this 5Gbps data rate constant or burstable like USB 2.0? USB may be great for keyboards, printers and pendrives but professional users need constant throughput, hence firewire.

    Yes, I know that your h264 consumer camcorder uses USB. High end multichannel audio or HD video aquisition devices do not.

  14. Network? Home network, listen to me! by Suki+I · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Home network, let me introduce you to your new friend USB 3.0. He is really fast, so I expect the rest of you to keep up! Don't be the bottleneck and you get to stay right where you are instead of being tossed in the bin.

    1. Re:Network? Home network, listen to me! by Jeslijar · · Score: 1

      So what hard drive are you using that can store all this data at 5gbps?

      Is it made with pixie dust? or does it just cost an arm a leg and half of the oil in the middle east? Oh wait, its just four hundred thousand 5.25" floppy drives in a custom raid solution. Thats nerdcore.

    2. Re:Network? Home network, listen to me! by kyrio · · Score: 1

      There's this newfangled thing I picked up a while ago called SSD...

    3. Re:Network? Home network, listen to me! by Suki+I · · Score: 2, Funny

      So what hard drive are you using that can store all this data at 5gbps?

      Is it made with pixie dust? or does it just cost an arm a leg and half of the oil in the middle east? Oh wait, its just four hundred thousand 5.25" floppy drives in a custom raid solution. Thats nerdcore.

      You must not have grasped the implications of the announcement I made. To the bin with you!

  15. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by ooji · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Oh do fuck off.

  16. Design by Spad · · Score: 5, Funny

    But with USB 3.0, even though the plug looks the same, the cable has extra wires. Because of this, it will not work in a 2.0 port. The edge of a USB 3.0 plug is colored blue so you know it’s a 3.0.

    But it'll still take you 3 tries to get it plugged in the right way around.

    1. Re:Design by Jeslijar · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If you think plain USB is bad, try an eSATAp port. I feel like i'm going to break mine every single time I try to use it :\

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESATAp

    2. Re:Design by dandart · · Score: 1

      But they can never fix the design. Damn symmetrical-looking connectors.

    3. Re:Design by wmorrow · · Score: 1

      My external USB drive with USB 3 cable plugged in to a USB 2 port works fine.

    4. Re:Design by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe it shoulda been a trapezoid profile

  17. eghads! by onyxruby · · Score: 1

    Look, this is the way technology works. A standard is invented, it is faster than the old, peripherals are manufactured and sold to the standard. The standard becomes prevalent and widely used and after a while the standard becomes saturated or limitations that were previously viewed as acceptable become more and more unacceptable. During this entire time the standards committee works on replacing the very standard they themselves setup with a new and better one. The new and better one will make the old standard obsolete, this is the normal course of action in technology.

    Now why on earth would you ask if something else will make the new standard obsolete? Does the submitter have any experience with IT at all? I'll tell you what, you know what they're doing right now? They're working on USB 4!

    1. Re:eghads! by amcdiarmid · · Score: 1

      I beleive you mean: "Right now they are working on USB4-ever."

      Thanks

  18. Micro-USB by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 2, Informative

    .. not to mention cellular phone market is finally starting to standardize to micro-USB.

    Finally? I hope all the companies that implemented that horrible plug will go back to mini-usb. It is as big, by far more robust, you can get cables for it and you are not afraid to plug it in. And plugging in is easier, as the plug will "find" its way in.

    There has never been a worse plug than micro-usb.

    --
    Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
    1. Re:Micro-USB by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Finally? I hope all the companies that implemented that horrible plug will go back to mini-usb. It is as big, by far more robust, you can get cables for it and you are not afraid to plug it in. And plugging in is easier, as the plug will "find" its way in.

      You can get a micro-USB cable at any halfway decent camera store. It is not that much more fragile than Mini-USB. They both "find" their way in; I find that most micro-USB connectors are more recessed into the plastic (possibly by specification?) and thus cheap connector edges are less likely to hang up, which IS a real problem (if an exceedingly minor one) with Mini-USB that you don't tend to see with any other variant.

      There has never been a worse plug than micro-usb.

      Clearly you don't remember PS/2 ports, even though you probably have some in your house. Actually any Mini-DIN is shit. I also have a certain hatred in my heart for RJs, I think they are shit. They are cheap though, so at least THEY have a purpose. The Mini-DIN is just a gigantic failure of imagination.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Micro-USB by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 1

      My main complaint about DIN is that it's a bitch to solder, especially the smaller types. I suppose it also works itself loose rather easily because of the circular form factor.

      That said, I have a lot of affection for my IBM Model M, so I shall be sad when PS/2 ports are gone completely and I have to chance it with some inferior USB -> PS/2 converter that might not provide enough current, or doesn't have proper key rollover.

    3. Re:Micro-USB by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      My main complaint about DIN is that it's a bitch to solder, especially the smaller types. I suppose it also works itself loose rather easily because of the circular form factor.

      The inherent problem with Mini-DIN (and to a lesser but similar extent, DIN) is that it's not self-guiding enough. You have to be within just a few degrees or the connector won't self-align. All the other common round connectors are non-aligned, so it breaks the paradigm in a way that is confusing to the typical user. And you can't tell with your hands (unless you are a master of negative braille, and the connectors are not particularly recessed) which way the connector goes, so you have to look at what you're doing. PS/2 compounded this problem by putting two devices with different signalling on the same connector. This is especially egregious because AFAIK only intel chipsets would ever autosense and autoswap the ports, but the port was "invented" by IBM. I haven't had to solder a DIN connector in aeons because keyboards are free... and they have molded cables which can be repurposed. And frankly, I don't expect to ever have to solder another one. I have zero PCs without USB now, so the only thing I expect to ever have to plug in again with DIN is MIDI, unless I get another TG16.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Micro-USB by dave420 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Micro-USB connectors are actually less fragile than Mini-USB. They are rated for far more connect/disconnect cycles (10,000) than Mini-USB.

    5. Re:Micro-USB by crunzh · · Score: 1

      I guess that you have never used a nokia datacable prior to the usb based ones? They were incredibly bad and had to keep attached.

      --
      Visit http://www.crunzh.com/ for free software. Mac/Lin/Win
    6. Re:Micro-USB by kchayer · · Score: 1
      I wonder if the GP meant mini-USB; I mix that up in conversation sometimes.

      It is as big, by far more robust, you can get cables for it and you are not afraid to plug it in. And plugging in is easier, as the plug will "find" its way in.

      I would take issue with the "robust" part of that. Granted, mini might be moreso than micro, but I've been sorely disappointed with mini itself lately on my cell phone. After a year-and-a-half of plugging in my phone nightly to charge it (and occasionally in my vehicle, but not nearly as often), I've had two cables fail to the point where they don't make reliable enough contact to charge the phone anymore. I thought it was the phone until I swapped the charger and had another cable failure.

      Nothing appears to be wrong with the cables; no corrosion, tarnished contacts, bent pins, or whatever. I have various other cables that I plug into my laptop daily that have held up well. Maybe it's just the small form factor.

      --

      "I say consider this day seized!" -Hobbes
      "Tomorrow we'll seize the day and throttle it!" -Calvin
    7. Re:Micro-USB by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 1

      There has never been a worse plug than micro-usb.

      sata cables. even sata power cables; they both suck. they added a lock mechanism later on (duh! idiots didn't even realize they needed one at first; that's how bad the standard is).

      I remember the good old days of parallel connectors where pins STAYED connected. hell, even a drive by its own weight, dangling on the pair of cables in ide or scsi land would still keep running; the tension in the plug was so good that it would not come out by accident.

      compare to sata where if you look at it on a rainy day, it will fall out or have electrical 'bounce'. horrible design! does not tolerate flex or hold onto the device well enough.

      db9, db15, those were also GREAT connectors.

      the lastest set of connectors (last 10 yrs or so) have all been failures. they 'work' but they are all mechanically a step backwards. cheap to MAKE but that should not be the point!

      look at hdmi; also a horrible horrible standard. they didn't even keep audio and video separate; they muxed them to make it harder to break the signal out again. and hdmi still has not learned; they are not locking and they also fall out under weight and stress.

      not sure why is wrong with the cable industry but it seems you have to be a moran to be a member and have no experience in past connectors in order to be a 'designer' for a new cable connection standard.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    8. Re:Micro-USB by danomac · · Score: 1

      That's it? I plug in USB components (not micro or mini) at least a dozen times a day, sometimes more. Troubleshooting etc. That's only two years of use or so. I still use components from four years ago mixed with newer components. Connectors should be designed to be stronger than that. If the act of plugging them in breaks them, it's a shitty design and needs to be rethought. I never knew that from the start.

    9. Re:Micro-USB by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      And plugging in is easier, as the plug will "find" its way in.

      Definitely. I got a pair of these video players for the kids and was relieved to see they came with Mini-USB. I have Micro- on my cell phone, and it's a total pain in the ass to plug in to charge. My wife's too, it's not just my phone.

      They're so hard to put in I regularly found myself thinking I had it in backwards, and trying the other way (but 50/50 that was a wrong assumption). I just put silver marker on one side of the USB cable so I'd know to keep trying until it goes in right.

      I heard something about the EU dictating Micro-USB as a standard, so we're probably screwed on this one.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    10. Re:Micro-USB by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      If the act of plugging them in breaks them, it's a shitty design and needs to be rethought. I never knew that from the start.

      Every connector has a rated number of connection cycles. Some of them are even tested. Any connector should, with any care at all, survive more connections than their rating. Most connectors are treated without any care at all. Most connectors are fairly simple to replace, except on small devices where they are typically surface mounted. Then they are still not that hard to replace... just much harder than through-hole components. But then, that's a matter of opinion. I don't have the world's steadiest hands.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    11. Re:Micro-USB by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      And you can't tell with your hands (unless you are a master of negative braille, and the connectors are not particularly recessed) which way the connector goes, so you have to look at what you're doing
      my general technique with dins and mini dins is to rotate them while gently trying to insert them until they line up and go in.

      Also a lot of mini din connectors have a large flat on them which makes getting them in the right way round easier.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    12. Re:Micro-USB by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Also a lot of mini din connectors have a large flat on them which makes getting them in the right way round easier.

      That's not a Mini-DIN. I have the same technique, I've been plugging in Mini-DIN connectors about as long as they've been around :p

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    13. Re:Micro-USB by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      I don't mean a flat on the mating part of the connector, I mean a flat on the plastic body.

      http://media.digikey.com/photos/Assmann%20Photos/AK%20678-2.jpg

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    14. Re:Micro-USB by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Ah yes, they do often do that... but unfortunately, there is no standard. About a third of the time the flat is opposite the key, so you still have to look at the end of the connector every time... just like USB-A, which also sucks but for mostly different reasons, except that one.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  19. But later in the same article by petes_PoV · · Score: 2, Interesting

    On the plus side, you will be able to plug USB 3.0 devices and cables into the USB 2.0 ports on your current computer, but you won’t get the speed advantage.

    So one place says it won't work in a 2.0 port, then it says it will .... gah! . . . . . I know they mean (at least, I hope they mean) that you won't get USB3 speeds, but contradictions like this doesn't help the article's credibility

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
    1. Re:But later in the same article by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      No it's worse than that. A USB 3.0 device cannot use a USB 2.0 cable or port, and USB 2.0 devices cannot use USB 3.0 cables. Basically almost no backwards compatibility but they are keeping the plugs the same. The only difference is USB 3.0 plugs will have a blue edge. I think that's rather stupid not to differentiate further.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    2. Re:But later in the same article by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 3, Informative

      They are referring to the "B" type connectors which per the standard are only used at the device end. The 3.0 B plugs are not compatible with the 2.0 B receptacle by dint of having an "extra bit" bolted on, whereas the 3.0 A plugs are compatible with the 2.0 A receptacle, which is typically used on the host PC.

      So essentially
          - you can connect any two devices with an old A-B cable and it will still work
          - you can't use the new cable with old devices

      Which seems very sensible - you won't have new cables unless you get new devices, and you can't waste your new cables connecting up old devices that can't use their extra wires, whereas in a pinch you can still use an old cable with a new device albeit at lower speed.

    3. Re:But later in the same article by dave420 · · Score: 2, Informative

      There are two main types of USB connector - Type A (the rectangular one, like on a mouse or thumb drive) and the Type B (like the socket on the back of a printer). Male USB 3 Type A connectors will happily fit in female USB 1/2/3 Type A sockets (but will work at USB 1/2 speeds, depending on the host), and vice versa. You won't be able to plug a USB 3 Type B connector into a USB 1/2 device, however. You'd need to use the cable that came with that device. So you won't be able to take your new shiny blue USB 3 cable, plug it in your USB 3 port on the back of your PC, and then plug it into your USB 1/2 printer. It won't fit.

    4. Re:But later in the same article by Sockatume · · Score: 1

      It's nuts. They've set it up so that the "B" plug is mechanically incompatible with the older system, but the "A" plug works fine. They should've made the "A" plug incompatible too. Then if you could connect two devices with a USB 3.0 cable, they would have to be USB 3.0 capable devices, which would be quite a good way of letting the user know whether they'll get the faster speeds.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    5. Re:But later in the same article by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      That's even more of nightmare. Seriously have these people not worked with consumers before? Yes, it's a hassle to release yet another plug but with this many incompatibilities, what is the reason they are keeping it? A blue edge is not going to be enough of difference for most consumers.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    6. Re:But later in the same article by LordKronos · · Score: 1

      That seems a bit backward to me. If a 2.0 device will work just fine connected to a 3.0 controller, then it shouldn't matter if the cable between is 2.0 or 3.0. As you have explained it, I will now need to keep 2 separate sets of spare USB cables. One set for 2.0 devices and one for 3.0 devices. I'd prefer if I could just keep one set for all devices.

  20. Lots of problems with that article by xarium · · Score: 1

    Claims of 5GB/s aren't even backed by the USB working group which says 3.2GB/s will realistically be the upper limit.

    All existing cable and plug combinations remain backwards compatible, but the article claims otherwise, there are only some introduced permutations that won't work.

    And when did USB 2.0 become 5 wires?

    The author attacks Intel about foot-dragging on the USB 3.0 spec rather disingenously since it was Intel that lead the charge on USB 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0. It was their technology originally.

    But what can one expect from a technology website that censors the word 'assuming' (comes out as ***uming, I shit you not!).

  21. Cost isn't the only factor. by bareman · · Score: 1

    Marketing and Political connections also have to be superior in order to win the survival of the fittest contest between technologies. One only need to reflect on the price/performance of Superdisk vs. ZIPdisk, or BETA vs. VHS to see that the more technologically and economically fit can lose to a product with superior marketing and politics.

  22. Lots of problems with your Codec by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Claims of 5GB/s aren't even backed by the USB working group which says 3.2GB/s will realistically be the upper limit.

    Clearly you fail to understand the difference between GB and Gb. Reread the article, and then don't come back to comment until you're a nerd.

    All existing cable and plug combinations remain backwards compatible, but the article claims otherwise, there are only some introduced permutations that won't work.

    The author first claims it won't work, then claims that they will. It seems like the first time he meant to say that you won't get the speed advantage of USB3 if you plug into USB2. You are both wrong.

    And when did USB 2.0 become 5 wires?

    Mini-USB, please try to keep up, if you can. And I know you can't.

    The author attacks Intel about foot-dragging on the USB 3.0 spec rather disingenously since it was Intel that lead the charge on USB 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0. It was their technology originally.

    There's nothing disingenuous about it, and you don't understand the situation if you try to apply that word. Or perhaps you don't understand the word? The foot-dragging is only made more apparent due to intel's backing of LightPeak. Are you paying attention to the same world as the rest of us?

    But what can one expect from a technology website that censors the word 'assuming' (comes out as ***uming, I shit you not!).

    The article is crap. Unfortunately, you did not pick on its weak points except relating compatibility, and then you failed. Try harder.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  23. And real world speed vs SATA? by AC-x · · Score: 2, Interesting

    USB 2.0 was such a bottleneck that a stopgap was introduced called eSATA, which allowed for external drives that used a SATA hard drive interface. Well, USB 3.0 pretty much that out to pasture

    Sure USB 3 might be rated up to 5Gbits/sec, but in a real world test will it actually be faster than SATA? In file copy tets Firewire at 400mbits/sec is 15-50% faster than USB2 at 480mbits/sec

    1. Re:And real world speed vs SATA? by ERJ · · Score: 1

      It will probably depend on implementation...certain chipsets may be faster then others.

      However, anandtech recently reviewed a WD hard drive with a USB 3.0 connector and it was actualy ~20% faster then the eSATA port.

      WD 3TB External HD Review

    2. Re:And real world speed vs SATA? by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 1

      my tests show that I was not even able to get to sata1 (150) speed with a usb3 controller and docked hard drive. system was i5-750 (more than enough cpu) and yet my very very old pci (!) based sil image sata150 4 port card was beating the usb3 based drive system.

      skip this iteration. its 'only' 2x faster than regular usb2.0 (usb2.0 is about 30mb/sec and usb3.0 seems to be, in actual tests, about double that at best).

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    3. Re:And real world speed vs SATA? by wbo · · Score: 1

      my tests show that I was not even able to get to sata1 (150) speed with a usb3 controller and docked hard drive. system was i5-750 (more than enough cpu) and yet my very very old pci (!) based sil image sata150 4 port card was beating the usb3 based drive system.

      Assuming you were using the same drive for both tests something must be wrong with your USB3 controller or how its connected to your motherboard. Make sure your USB3 controller is not sharing PCI Express lanes with other devices on your system and not going through a PCI Express switch which will increase latency and lower overall available bandwidth.

    4. Re:And real world speed vs SATA? by greed · · Score: 1

      It's very likely his disk couldn't max out a SATA 150 connection. I don't think any 7200 RPM drives have a sustained transfer rate better than 145 MB/s; though I would be surprised if PCI could keep up--the three PCI + SATA configs I've used have choked the drives at about 50 MB/s. On an allegedly 32-bit 66 MHz PCI card. (The integrated SATA controller or a PCIe SAS controller can run them up to their 115 MB/s documented maximum at outer rim.)

      So if your disk is slow enough that SATA 150 will do, the protocol overhead of running SCSI commands in a USB wrapper and the USB protocol overhead will kill the advantages. Fortunately, USB 3.0 finally gets full duplex transmission like FireWire and switched Ethernet.

      However, if you have a whole bunch of those drives in a striping configuration, then you should see some benefit. Like I can get 680 MB/s from several my 115 MB/s drives with the SAS controller.

    5. Re:And real world speed vs SATA? by butlerm · · Score: 1

      There are other more important improvements in USB 3.0 than raw bandwidth, mostly the transition from a polling based to a DMA/interrupt driven interface. This will help things immensely, even when only a fraction of the rated bandwidth is being used, due to less CPU overhead and power usage mostly. USB 3.0 is more like "USB grows up" than "USB 2.0 this time with feeling".

  24. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by Jason+Kimball · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Jerry?

  25. Imagine the possibilities! by bynary · · Score: 2, Funny

    People have a hard enough time saying USB (I often hear UBS). I can imagine this conversation taking place:

    Computer sales guy: Hi! Welcome to (insert name of favorite electronics store). What brings you in?
    Customer: I need one of those "Leet Speak" things.
    CSG: You mean a gaming headset?
    Cust.: No...wait, maybe. No.
    CSG: What are you trying to do with your computer?
    Cust.: Oh! I remember...it's a Light Speed Drive!
    CSG: You're looking for a DVD-burner with LiteScribe?
    Cust.: I already have a DVD. What's LiteScribe?
    CSG: Nevermind.

    --
    http://www.bynarystudio.com
    1. Re:Imagine the possibilities! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dude, what the customer really wanted was Light Speed Briefs. He dreamed about it.

  26. Will LightPeak make USB 3.0 irrelevant? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Yes, of course: It will be as irrelevant as USB2.0 was as soon as FireWire was introduced...

    Ohwait...

  27. not just hard drives by nten · · Score: 1

    smoother webcams, better usb videocards, and I want a faster picoscope. Also you can run more things through it, as its got more power too. So several hard drives, and a couple sound cards along with your webcam.

    --
    refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
  28. LightPeak? by DarthVain · · Score: 1

    Two words: Fire. Wire.

    Hows that working out for you?

    1. Re:LightPeak? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      40% faster than USB2. Less CPU overhead. Cheap, standard on most desktops.

      Pretty good, all told.

  29. Oh sure by street+struttin' · · Score: 1

    Tell us the USB 3.0 definition (super speed usb, duh), but nothing on LightPeak? WTF?

    1. Re:Oh sure by ferd_farkle · · Score: 1

      The first mention of Light Peak in the article is a link to an overview at Intel:
      http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/None/1813.htm

  30. That article needed an editor by hessian · · Score: 1

    One problem with our post-internet world is that people think writing like this, which spoon-feeds you tiny bits of information, is superior to condensed but slightly more complex writing:

    But with USB 3.0, even though the plug looks the same, the cable has extra wires. Because of this, it will not work in a 2.0 port. The edge of a USB 3.0 plug is colored blue so you know it's a 3.0. The USB 3.0 cable has nine wires, compared with the five in a USB 2.0 cable, even though it's the same thickness.

    Likewise, the end of the cable that connects to a USB device, such as a printer or external drive, is also different from the old USB 2.0 connector. Because of this, you can't use USB 3.0 cables to connect USB 2.0 devices. Also, if your drive, scanner, printer, camera, or whatever is a USB 3.0 device, then you must use a 3.0 cable.

    On the plus side, you will be able to plug USB 3.0 devices and cables into the USB 2.0 ports on your current computer, but you won't get the speed advantage.

    We're not kindergartners. Try:

    With USB 3.0, even though the plug looks the same, the cable has nine wires instead of five. Because of this, it will not work in a 2.0 port, and you can't use USB 3.0 cables to connect USB 2.0 devices. You can use USB 3.0 cables to connect to USB 2.0 ports, but you will get no speed advantage.

    If your device is USB 3.0, however, you must use a USB 3.0 cable. The edge of a USB 3.0 plug is colored blue so you know it's a 3.0.

  31. Will LightPeak replace USB? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In a word: "no."

    More words:
    1. When speaking about hardware designed for corporate use rather than personal, it's only been a year or two since the RS232 port disappeared from laptops, and it still isn't gone from desktops. Backwards compatibility is HUGE, and USB3 has it.

    2. I've got a USB port in my freaking dashboard. USB has become so prolific as to replace the cigarette lighter as the way for cars to power portable electronics.

    3. The wall wort for my three most recent cell phones hasn't actually had a power connector attached to the wall wort. It's been an AC to USB adapter, and another plug that goes from USB to whatever the phone uses.

    4. USB cables are sufficiently thick as to be pretty durable. Suggesting that USB is "too thick" just because you make a thinner cable is just being damned contrary. Fiber breaks VERY easily. I work in a position to select policy for all the workstation users in the office I support, and I would NEVER allow any fiber at the desktop level. I'm not trying to be condescending to the end user here, but it is worth considering that a fair number of them still don't completely grasp things like "If it doesn't work try rebooting", or "I must have Internet access to use the company VPN". I would sooner exit the industry than provide support for problems along the line of "I felt like moving my laptop to the other side of the desk, and now my keyboard, mouse, and printer all don't work", especially considering that the "fix" would likely include purchasing new expensive cables.

  32. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by Sarten-X · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    If you want anonymity, go back to 4chan. Here, anonymity is considered cowardice. That's why you're an Anonymous Coward.

    --
    You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
  33. LightPeak is over kill for just about all HID devi by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 1

    LightPeak is over kill for just about all hid devices and LightPeak will need be low cost and not be $20 cables + $30-$100 convert plugs / boxes.

  34. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by VShael · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Fuck it, I'll bite.

    If you are, as you say, really curious, and not just some trolling piece of trash, then google can be your friend here.

    You can claim there are many studies demonstrating IQ differences between different races, but equally, there have been many studies which detail where standard IQ tests are guilty of cultural bias. That is, if you have a certain type of background, you will find certain types of question easier. And these have nothing to do with how intelligent (or not) you may be as a person.

    As for the other racist comments :

    "They stink."
    Incorrect. Their body odours may be different that you're used to, but again, that's cultural. Did you know that we in the west "stink" of sour milk? Apparently it has to do with the amount of dairy products in our diets. I heard about it the first time I was in India.

    "They can't speak proper English despite over 200 years of being born in this country."
    Again, that's just not supported by the evidence. Mangling the English language is not a feature unique to any particular race. For every Colin Powell, Tiger Woods, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, whoever, there are thousands of white skinned trailer trash who would be incomprehensible to anyone except their parole officer and immediate family/tribe.

    "Their cultural contributions include gangsta rap, glorification of thugs and criminals, the welfare state, bastard children, poverty, low test scores and political correctness."

    Factually wrong in every case, except gangsta rap. I'd give you that.

    "Oh yeah and something about peanuts."
    Hmm. George Washington Carver and the peanut butter "invention".
    If you were even remotely interested in learning (something which you think certain people shun, so I imagine you must value in some way) I'd direct you to read : http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/08/george-washington-carver-did-not-invent-peanut-butter/

    But I wouldn't want to draw you away from Mein Kampf, now would I?

    "Years of real racism didn't prevent the Jews from prospering"
    Were the Jews slaves in America? Did rich white men have them killed if someone taught a Jewish person to read? Vast misunderstanding of the nature of the problem there.

    "every problem the nigger has is blamed on racism."
    Gee, with such tolerant folks as yourself in society, I wonder why.

  35. USB will likey be dominant, however... by kandresen · · Score: 1

    ... Lightpeek will probably be an important technology for those seeking the best performance for a long time.
    The reason USB 3.0 will be dominant is that it will for certain be much cheaper than an advanced fiber-optical cable which is bendable. I for one am concerned still how bendable it is - my guess is that it will be nowhere as safe as USB, and it will likely be substantially more expensive. Lightpeek might replace all other cables, and Intel might push it in their devices, but will others who now will have to pay Intel royalties every time? USB 3.0 is free to use and a much safer bet, however we will likely see both in premium machines. USB 3.0 will be fast enough for most people for now. We can also assume there will be an USB 4.0 coming when the demand actually gets there as they will accept paying Intel the royalties for the premium machines where they can recover the cost and at the same time earn money, but cannot recover the cost when we want that speed in a budget machine... My guess is that USB will remain relevant until we remove the cables permanently, maybe something like lightfleet (http://lightfleet.com/) but a version which would not get interrupted by someone walking in between or something.

  36. Hooray, nit-picking! by xarium · · Score: 1

    ...difference between GB and Gb.

    Let's pretend for a moment that the suffix was correctly capitalised. Was that so hard? But you feel it necessary to write personal insults because of a misused "shift"? Wow. Definitely appropriate reaction.

    [RE: 5 wires]... Mini-USB

    Yes, that would be a plug, note I said "wires". That 5th pin (if it's present at all) is always connected to ground in reality and never appears as a wire. It's the one whose role is being replaced by a protocol change in USB 3.0 because nobody ever implemented it. The cable itself always has 4 wires.

    [RE: disingenuous]... perhaps you don't understand the word?

    The author knows a reasonable amount about Intel involvement, including their presence in the USB working group. Despite knowing this, you are of the opinion that the author genuinely avoided learning that Intel were the originators?
    Disingenuous: Adjective: Not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.
    Still seems applicable.

    I am quite confident you'll reply again and am looking forward to reading it. I promise I'll make an effort to check back too, though I have a tendency to lose interest with those who can't tell the difference between wit and Tourette's Syndrome.

    1. Re:Hooray, nit-picking! by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Let's pretend for a moment that the suffix was correctly capitalised. Was that so hard?

      Yes. When you say one thing and mean something else you have fucked up. Slashdot is news for nerds. If you can't bother to get within 2^8 of what you mean, you can DIAF.

      But you feel it necessary to write personal insults because of a misused "shift"? Wow. Definitely appropriate reaction.

      That misused shift is the difference between being right (you aren't) and being wrong (you are) yet your comment hinged on it. Again, if you can't bother to use the correct units, perhaps you shouldn't try to use the abbreviations. You only came off as an idiot.

      The author knows a reasonable amount about Intel involvement, including their presence in the USB working group. Despite knowing this, you are of the opinion that the author genuinely avoided learning that Intel were the originators?

      Please explain how you concluded that they did so from the statement that intel dragged their heels on actually implementing USB3, and everyone else becoming impatient while waiting for them. If anything it suggests the opposite.

      I am quite confident you'll reply again and am looking forward to reading it. I promise I'll make an effort to check back too, though I have a tendency to lose interest with those who can't tell the difference between wit and Tourette's Syndrome.

      Oh no, I permitted my amygdala to insert the word "crap" into my comment, I have Tourette's! The article is crap, so is your half-assed analysis of it, and you should be ashamed for trying to defend it when what you should say is "oh yes, I said something totally retarded, and next time I will try to get my units right so that I am not more of an idiot than the engineer at NASA who failed to convert his units"

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  37. Slashdot reports by operagost · · Score: 1

    No wireless. Less speed than LightPeak. Lame.

    --

    Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
  38. How does Light Peak link to the video card anyways by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 1

    How does Light Peak link to the video card anyways?
    I think that Light Peak is trying to put to much in to one system.

    Ethernet links to other stuff out side of the local system and putting that will just lead to a Light peak to E-net box needing to be at the end of a cable.

    Video and Sound? the AV world is just about ALL HDMI and HDMI is DVI + sound and many sound systems have TOSLINK / S/PDIF Optical or BNC. Display port is in some dispays. But as long as HDMI is on all the cable, dvd, bluray, game systems and sat boxes it will not go away.

    Maybe stuff like External HDD's but E-sata does not need bridge chips.

    Maybe can make for External PCI-e boxes but the bridge chip lag may slow it down.

  39. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by vandit2k6 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Jews were slaves in Egypt.

    --
    Its nice to be important but its more important to be nice
  40. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by VShael · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Even assuming that that particular myth is true (and let's be clear, the evidence is shaky at BEST) it should be blatantly clear that the Jews were hardly prospering in Egypt, or just after it.

  41. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by vandit2k6 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Can you please elaborate? I didn't get how you say Jews were hardly prospering in Egypt. Yes when they were slaves they didn't prosper. Is that the point?

    --
    Its nice to be important but its more important to be nice
  42. You keep using that word... by BergZ · · Score: 1

    It does not mean what you think it means.

    --
    Warning: This sig is not thread safe. For more information see Slashdot's sig policy.
  43. This is an absolutely awful article by sribe · · Score: 1

    First the good, his example time for a file copy with USB 2.0 is realistic, taking into account all the USB overhead that makes 480mbps USB slower than 400mbps Firewire... But then his example time for a file copy with USB 3.0 is only 3.5 times faster, or an actual throughput of about 895mbps. Now I seriously doubt that USB 3.0 is going have 82% overhead and only offer 18% data transfer out of that 5gbps. I suspect that he's quoting from tests where current devices limited the throughput, not USB 3.0.

    Then there's his explanation that you can't plug a USB 3.0 cable into a USB 2.0 port, and you can't use a 2.0 cable with a 3.0 device, but you can plug 3.0 devices and cables into your 2.0 ports. Uhm, excuse me, but which is it???

    1. Re:This is an absolutely awful article by RudeIota · · Score: 1

      hen there's his explanation that you can't plug a USB 3.0 cable into a USB 2.0 port, and you can't use a 2.0 cable with a 3.0 device, but you can plug 3.0 devices and cables into your 2.0 ports. Uhm, excuse me, but which is it???

      3.0 is backwards compatible with 2.0 as long as you use a USB 2.0 cable. USB 3.0 cables have longer connectors.

      --
      Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
    2. Re:This is an absolutely awful article by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      My understanding was the superspeed A plug was designed such that if you plugged it into a normal A socket the superspeed pins would not connect to anything and the low/full/high pins would connect as normal.

      This isn't true of the B plug though.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  44. Doesnt sell well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As an employee for a small online mom-n-pop shop (two bothers actually, but I digress) who sells quite a few USB 3.0 products, they don't sell very well. We get the occasional order for a cable or card from a geek or wannabe-geek who read an article in a magazine about it.
    We sell more USB 2.0 cards per day than ALL of our USB 3.0 products put together. Cables, cards, and enclosures, no one is buying them.

  45. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by jrade · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Well put. It doesn't have to do with what country someone is from or the color of their skin. Everything is about culture and our environment. We are all humans and we are shaped by our environment. Genetics might play a small role in the beginning and throughout someones life, but environment is the big picture.

    --

    Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException at Sig.setCleverSig(Sig.java:42)
  46. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by VShael · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Very well, elaboration ... Here's the back and forth, as perceived by me:

    OP : Real racism didn't stop the Jews from prospering.
    VShael : "real racism" is not equivalent to slavery. It was slavery that had the adverse affect on the prosperity of african-americans, not racism. By analogy, the Jews were not slaves in America, so racism was not an impediment to Prosperity.
    You : Jews were slaves in Egypt.
    VShael : Even IF Jews were slaves in Egypt, that would make their situation more analogous to the African Americans, ie. slavery acted as an impediment to their prosperity. Which supported my point. In any case, the situation of the Jews in Egypt is probably fictitious and has no real bearing on the discussion.

  47. Fuck Everything, We're Going to USB3 by Tejin · · Score: 5, Funny
    Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of data transfer in this country. The USB 1.1 was the cable to own. Then the other guy came out with Firewire. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the USB 2.0. That's 480Mbps and a compatible connector. For backwards compatibility. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened—the bastards went to optical connections. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling 480Mbps and back compat. Compatibility or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to USB3.

    Sure, we could go to optical connections next, like the competition. That seems like the logical thing to do. After all, electrons worked out pretty well, and photons are the next particles after electrons. So let's play it safe. Let's make an optical cable and call it the USBOpticon. Why innovate when we can follow? Oh, I know why: Because we're a business, that's why!

    You think it's crazy? It is crazy. But I don't give a shit. From now on, we're the ones who have the edge in the data speed game. Are they the best a man can get? Fuck, no. USB is the best a man can get.

    What part of this don't you understand? If 12Mbps is good, and 480Mbps is better, obviously 4.8Gbps would make us the best fucking cable that ever existed. Comprende? We didn't claw our way to the top of the cable game by clinging to the parallel industry standard. We got here by taking chances. Well, USB3 is the biggest chance of all.

    Here's the report from Engineering. Someone put it in the bathroom: I want to wipe my ass with it. They don't tell me what to invent—I tell them. And I'm telling them to stick four more gigabits in there. I don't care how. Make the wires so thin they're invisible. Put some on the outside. I don't care if they have to cram the extra electrons in perpendicular to the other ones, just do it!

    You're taking the "Universal" part of "universal Serial Bus" too literally, grandma. Cut the strings and soar. Let's hit it. Let's roll. This is our chance to make computer history. Let's dream big. All you have to do is say that 4.8Gbps can happen, and it will happen. If you aren't on board, then fuck you. And if you're on the board, then fuck you and your father. Hey, if I'm the only one who'll take risks, I'm sure as hell happy to hog all the glory when USB3 becomes the computer cable for the U.S. of "this is how we connect now" A.

    People said we couldn't go to 480Mbps. It'll cost a fortune to manufacture, they said. Well, we did it. Now some egghead in a lab is screaming "4.8Gbps crazy?" Well, perhaps he'd be more comfortable in the labs at Sony, working on fucking discs. Rotary storage, my white ass!

    Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we should just ride in Intel's wake and make chipsets. Ha! Not on your fucking life! The day I shadow a penny-ante outfit like Intel is the day I leave the computing game for good, and that won't happen until the day I die!

    The market? Listen, we make the market. All we have to do is put her out there with a little jingle. It's as easy as, "Hey, connecting with anything less than 4.8Gbps is like carrying your data in a rusty bucket." Or "Your connection will be so smooth, I could snort lines off of your transfer rate graph." Try "Your computer's gonna be so friggin' fast, you'll get a speeding ticket."

    I know what you're thinking now: What'll people say? Mew mew mew. Oh, no, what will people say?! Grow the fuck up. When you're on top, people talk. That's the price you pay for being on top. Which USB is, always has been, and forever shall be, Amen, 4.8Gbps, sweet Jesus in heaven.

    Stop. I just had a stroke of genius. Are you ready? Open your mouth, baby birds, cause Mama's about to drop you one sweet, fat nightcrawler. Here she comes: Make that fucker backwards compatible, too. That's right. 4.8Gbps, fully backwards compatible cables, and make the connectors out of gold. You heard me—gold connectors. It's a whole new way to think about downloading. Don't question it. Don't say a word. Just key the music, and call the chorus girls, because we're on the edge—the razor's edge—and I feel like dancing.

    --
    The seekers do no need truth, the seekers do find truth and the finding do be painful
    1. Re:Fuck Everything, We're Going to USB3 by Antisyzygy · · Score: 1

      You are insane.

      --
      That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
    2. Re:Fuck Everything, We're Going to USB3 by Stupid+McStupidson · · Score: 1

      Bravo. Well done, you have entirely too much free time.

    3. Re:Fuck Everything, We're Going to USB3 by Sexy+Commando · · Score: 5, Informative
    4. Re:Fuck Everything, We're Going to USB3 by Gazzonyx · · Score: 1

      *Starts the 'slow clap'*

      That was... awesome!

      --

      If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.

    5. Re:Fuck Everything, We're Going to USB3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really nice re-work of The Onion piece.

    6. Re:Fuck Everything, We're Going to USB3 by smartalix · · Score: 1

      You make some very good points about the issue, but there is another reason beyond stubborness that USB 3 sticks with copper - power. The USB connection is a powered device cable. This is a very important function. An optical cable would have to be a hybrid if we wanted it to be able to power and charge the devices linked to it, or worse, we'd need a separate charging cable. It's bad enough that the new EU cell phone standard connector is based on USB 2.0 tech and is therefore incompatible with the USB 3 mini connector.

      --
      Read a preview of my novel CYBERCHILD at www.smartalix.com/cyberchild
    7. Re:Fuck Everything, We're Going to USB3 by JThundley · · Score: 1

      Friendlisted.

  48. As someone who has kept a fairly close eye,.. by AbRASiON · · Score: 1

    It's dead Jim, right out the gate. (Yes, I own a USB 3 drive)
    It might start to take off but Intel couldn't care less about it, they are banking on lightpeak and frankly, I don't blame them in the slightest - it might be one of those promises which actually sticks with IT for a while - it really does look like it could last decades.

  49. remember the Hype by bussdriver · · Score: 1

    USB 2 wasn't as fast as claimed. firewire consistently beat it everytime despite the theoretically higher bandwidth promoted by USB 2. In addition, its design made it poor for some situations. While USB cost less due to its primitive nature, high speed USB 2 devices ended up with just as much overhead but the mass production kept them cheaper (and that firewire was seen as a premium feature.)

    Instead of hacking old methods to create complex and STILL lacking new versions can't we finally start to produce some new standards that are good at what they do and won't need to be hacked further? USB3's hack to stick TWO different kinds of connections into 1 expensive cable is ridiculous!

    I'd like something that took the best of USB and firewire and had the bandwidth to kill off Display Port.... LightPeak looks like it could be the solution! But they'll probably come up with something wrong in the protocol because some nerd doesn't want to waste a few bytes so it can be flexible enough to address some future issue which will end up in a version 2.... Add a few extra unused fibers to the cable; create a means for speed control so we don't have version 1,2,3 cables as well... and USE ONLY ONE KIND OF PLUG!

    PLEASE make LightPeak have a little overhead; it has the bandwidth! If the hardware costs more for a while, it'll come back down eventually.

    We don't need something to replace SATA; because SATA is specialized and speed/cost needy it will always win over a generic solution. Consumer level devices could skip it but the pros will want the benefits of a niche standard and cost will likely end up with internal drives using the same thing.

  50. Analogy fail by noidentity · · Score: 1

    Also, USB 3.0 supports asynchronous transfers between devices. In USB 2.0, the host controller had to ask for data and then the device sent it. Imagine you want a book from someone. The USB 2.0 way would require you to ask for the book's contents one page at a time, and would request each page one after the other. The USB 3.0 way simply hands you the book.

    So it's not just a truck you can dump things on?

  51. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by rickb928 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Even accepting your assertion that slavery of the Jews in Egypt was fictitional, after that they had some great prosperity. It took a while, and divine intervention.

    Hey, I understand, but if you reject the slavery story, you should reject the rest of them from that book.

    --
    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  52. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by dave420 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    IQ tests are more a test of "modernity" than intelligence. If you asked a child 100 years ago what's the connection between cats & dogs, most would have said "dogs chase cats". Today, most kids would say "they're both mammals". Those 100-year-ago kids would have faired terribly in an IQ test, but they were just as intelligent as kids now. Kids these days have been exposed to plenty of information which makes them appear more intelligent. As you said, it's not the person's race, but when & where they were raised, and their stimuli during said raising, that affects their modernity. We're all, everywhere across the globe, roughly as intelligent as each other.

  53. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by rickb928 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    "For every Colin Powell, Tiger Woods, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, whoever, there are thousands of white skinned trailer trash who would be incomprehensible to anyone except their parole officer and immediate family/tribe."

    Yep. Take a tour of Down East Maine. If you can get through and understand the dialect, the similies, metaphors, and other devices will leave you shaking your head. It's almost as bad as Scotland, or Nova Scotia.

    I'll take my chances with interior Mississippi dialects. And I was born in Maine. Those old wormers are just too far gone to understand once you stop talking about fish and bear, and get into politics.

    --
    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  54. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by alanebro · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Hey now, circular reasoning is sweet. It allows for all sorts of awesomeness. Without circular reasoning, we wouldn't have circular reasoning!

  55. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by Antisyzygy · · Score: 1

    The IQ test is a pile of shit. You cannot test for intelligence short of examining the works of an individual. The whole IQ test has been debunked for decades.

    --
    That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
  56. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by Antisyzygy · · Score: 1

    Genetics play a bigger role than you think. I am not racist in the slightest, and as a matter of fact my wife is black. However, if you examine the performance of various races in various situations you will see there is some correlation with certain races being better at certain things. Its not a bad thing, its simply evolution. For example, it has been suggested the development of white skin in humans was due to an advantage lighter skinned people have in latitudes closer to the poles. Basically white skin enables increased vitamin D production from UV light in those latitudes. Its absurd to think there are absolutely no differences in people whose ancestry stretches back thousands of years with an isolated group of people. If human beings never invented ships and airplanes, the whole human race would be well on its way to being separate species. As far as the argument that American black people are a certain way.. if you think of culture as an evolving thing, their culture evolved to survive in the environment of the US, so you only have our forefathers to blame for it.

    --
    That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
  57. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by vandit2k6 · · Score: 1

    My point is that and what I strongly believe is Jews were in fact slaves in Egypt. Even with that 'assumption' - right now and back then most Jews were/are very educated people. Now it could be because as you believe Jews were not slaves in Egypt - I am not saying you're wrong. I am just saying what I strongly believe and that Jews were slaves in Egypt and look at them now. Now your argument could be; well it was really long time when Jews were slaves Egypt, at least much longer before Africans were slaves in US and therefore the affects haven't passed yet - and that one I strongly believe is true as well.

    --
    Its nice to be important but its more important to be nice
  58. Problem with USB 3.0 by mysidia · · Score: 1

    You can't get a 10-Gibabit USB 3.0 Ethernet adapter and download files at 1.2 gigabytes / second.

    By the time we have devices and computers actually shipping using the USB 3.0 standard, 1 Gigabit Ethernet will be what 10 Megabit Ethernet is today... obsoleted, and slow as hell... long since replaced by 100 Gbit.

    1. Re:Problem with USB 3.0 by gujo-odori · · Score: 1

      In some places, but not in home networks, where even 100baseT is still generally fast enough. Keep in mind that many (most?) home networks are purely wireless and that even 802.11N doesn't provide as much throughput as a switched FE network. For most people, 802.11G is still quite sufficient; I'm still on it, with no plans to upgrade anytime soon. My uplink, which is 15 mbps down and some number less than 1 mbps up is still the bottleneck.

      Even at work - and I work at a Really Big Networking Company Whose Name You All Recognize - the desktop wired networks are all GigE (who knows, might even be FE in some places) and I haven't heard of any plans to go to 10 GigE for the desktops; for now and the foreseeable future, 10 GigE will remain a core switching speed, not a desktop speed.

      100 GigE take over in all the places where 1 GigE is in use today? Maybe not in my lifetime.

  59. No, Light Peak will not replace USB by David_Hart · · Score: 1

    Light Peak sounds promising but I can just imagine how many new cables I will need to buy each year. With a USB cable, you can twist it, bend it, roll over it with a chair, etc. and it will still function. A Light Peak cable is a fiber optics cable. Technology has come a long way with fiber optics, but the one area that has yet to be overcome is durability...

    David

  60. the maths seems wrong by Zwaxy · · Score: 1

    From TFA:

    > [...] SuperSpeed USB, has throughput of up to 5 gigabits per second.

    > it would take 14 minutes to transfer 25GB of data over USB 2.0,
    > but just four minutes with USB SuperSpeed.

    5 gigabits per second
    25 gigabits per 5 seconds
    25 gigabytes per 5*8 = 40 seconds

    no?

  61. Three letters in response by rsborg · · Score: 1

    I never see my hard disk data rate maxing out my connection speed, so I con't understand why all this emphasis on faster connections.

    S S D

    SSDs like RealSSD can already saturate SATA2 at 300MB/s => 2.4Gb/s... that's one that comes close to 75% of the practical bandwidth of "SuperSpeed" at 3.2 Gb/s.

    --
    Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
  62. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by jrade · · Score: 0

    its simply evolution

    Yes, I agree with that, but only in terms of evolutionary biology.
    But if I had to choose between great genetics or great culture I would choose culture.

    --

    Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException at Sig.setCleverSig(Sig.java:42)
  63. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe you should ask your question in a story about IQ scores. Or you could get yourself a basic education so you'd know that the IQ tests have been shown to be quite severely culturally biased. Saying one group has a lower score than another group is roughly equivalent to suggesting they are different groups. Entirely circular reasoning, whee!

    Ok, please give me a good answer to this. Every time this debate about IQ bias comes up no one ever addresses this point and it's both important and relevant. The issues about IQ are all about cultural bias. Ok. So, when you compare a White American and a Black American you are comparing two people who both come from American culture. Where is the cultural bias?

    I could understand it if you compared a White American with an Asian Japanese person using the exact same test. Those are two different cultures. If you want to claim that American Blacks are an entirely different culture from American Whites, I would say that slavery ended longer ago than it lasted. The American Blacks have had ample opportunity, ample time of many generations, and a great deal of extra assistance in the form of affirmative action and scholarships that preferentially aid Blacks. If they are not yet up to speed on American culture, maybe just maybe it's because they lack the ability. Or maybe it's because they insist on refusing to integrate into mainstream culture, but that would be a voluntary choice and they should not make that choice without being prepared to accept the consequences.

  64. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by Surt · · Score: 1

    If you think there is only one 'American culture' you need to travel outside of your suburb.

    --
    "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
  65. LightPeak FTW when Apple adopts it by gig · · Score: 1

    Apple will put LightPeak in all their products and leave everything else out, setting off a wave of LightPeak accessories. Nobody else has PC customers who are willing to pay for something new, or the ability to release hardware and software support simultaneously, or a line of 100 million consumer products with just one wired port. Apple is already using 10v (like LightPeak) in their USB, and iPad requires it.

  66. also, the legal people say by DrYak · · Score: 1

    the other problem, is that this is a theoretical maximum, which isn't guaranteed. (Remembre the comparison between FireWire 400 and USB 2 480).

    the legal people might be afraid of some class action suit if consumer realises the most of the timem their gizmo only communicate at a fraction of that speed.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  67. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you think there is only one 'American culture' you need to travel outside of your suburb.

    There are different flavors of it to be sure. What of it? Are they really so drastically incompatible that one culture can perform mathematical and logical operations far better than another?

    The whole "culture" thing is not a satisfying explanation. It sure is inconvenient for this explanation that the biggest aggregate differences in IQ test scores are among people of different races. I suppose the implied conclusion is that every person who has white skin is a uniform clone of a single culture, that no subcultures of any kind exist among white people. That's why they consistently outperform blacks in IQ tests. Right?

    Now, drop that "you're a provincial twit" tone. You have no reason to be condescending when you completely fail to answer my question. It just makes you look like a jackass who uses condescension as a substitute for his inability to articulate a real counterpoint.

    Or hey, here's a crazy idea. Maybe the consistently lower socioeconomic status of black people goes along with whatever culture it is they have that makes them do poorly on IQ tests. Maybe unlike race, that culture is something they can change. Maybe it follows that they are responsible for their own situation and that blaming Whitey's actions 200 years ago for all of their failings today is a sorry excuse for their lack of self-determination.

  68. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by Surt · · Score: 1

    I'll just give you this, as a gift.
    Go read more. Read the research on IQ for yourself. Understand what the scientists have found as evidence for causes of differences.

    Seriously, educate yourself so you don't have to live in ignorance all your life, the way out of misery is open to you.

    Or, go on as you are, believe that the earth is flat, that evolution is a lie, etc. Your choice, but it's really your misery.

    --
    "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
  69. Not obsolete by GWRedDragon · · Score: 1

    But is it already obsolete -- will LightPeak make USB 3.0 irrelevant?

    No. Presumably USB 3.0 will be backwards compatible with USB 2 and 1. Therefore, it will continue to be the standard. Backwards compatibility is king in desktop computing.

    Or is the author writing this from an Itanium-CPU machine?

  70. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'll just give you this, as a gift. Go read more. Read the research on IQ for yourself. Understand what the scientists have found as evidence for causes of differences.

    Seriously, educate yourself so you don't have to live in ignorance all your life, the way out of misery is open to you.

    Or, go on as you are, believe that the earth is flat, that evolution is a lie, etc. Your choice, but it's really your misery.

    The only thing worse than ignorance is denial. Here's what you are in denial of. Blacks commit a disproportionately higher amount of violent crimes than any other group. Blacks do lower on all kinds of test scores, be it IQ or SAT and have proportionally less college graduates than any other group. Blacks disproportionately make up more of the poor than any other group. Blacks have proportionally more bastard children than any other group. Blacks have disproportionately high numbers of welfare recipients both for food stamps and for subsidized housing.

    Those are facts. They didn't ask whether you like them before they became facts. Go ahead and cite a reliable source proving any of those wrong. You can't.

    I'll give you another fact, as a gift. The few black children in places like inner cities who do want to achieve, do want to study hard, do want to go to college and better themselves, guess what they get? They get made fun of, tormented, and bullied by other black children for "acting white". THAT IS CULTURE. That can also be changed.

    As a group American blacks have an anti-achievement culture. Being a thug is cool. Committing crimes is cool. Dropping out of school is cool. Doing drugs is cool. That's their culture. They are so busy being anti-white that they have no time left to be pro-black. Then they resent white people for not having these problems, for having higher socioeconomic status.

    They are self-destructive. That isn't anyone else's fault but their own. I'd love to hear your counter-argument. My bet is you haven't got one and will pretend like you didn't see this post. Prove me wrong on that. I'd like it.

  71. Re:Everything You Need to Know About Niggers by Surt · · Score: 1

    Education is a wonder, really. Go learn. You don't have to be laughed at behind your back all your life. You don't have to live with people wondering if the problem is inbreeding forever. But again, most importantly, you don't have to suffer with this, the tools to end your misery are at your disposal. Many people aren't anywhere near so lucky, don't spit in the face of opportunity.

    --
    "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking