First of all, there are active non-Thunderbolt USB-C cables?
I haven't seen any. I think active cables are in the specifications for HDMI, DisplayPort, and maybe USB to give greater cable lengths.
Second, at least everything would still work because the protocol is forward- and backward-compatible with other versions. Some things might run slower, but they're work.
For a port on a host device to be called USB-C it MUST support USB 2.0 at a minimum. Or, at least that is how I read the specification. Regardless of the alternate mode the USB-C port has negotiated the USB 2.0 and the 5V/3A power pins always remain. This is because the USB pins are used for things like power delivery negotiation and informing the host of the cable or peripheral capabilities. You complain about not knowing what a USB-C port is capable of doing? Well, it's going to support USB 2.0 and 15 watts of power. The slave/peripheral/sink/guest/"B" device is not required to make use of the USB 2.0 pins. A display with DisplayPort or MHL protocol on a USB-C port doesn't have to use USB but it most likely will to do things like support a USB hub for keyboard/mouse, a camera, or whatever. The USB spec requires indication on the device port by text or symbol of the protocol used.
When it comes to cables the USB spec requires the protocol symbols on each end of the cable. I have a cable here that has no symbols on either end but yet plugs into my USB-C port. Close inspection of the packaging reveals no USB logo. Reading the description it's called a "power cable" and that it's for "charging devices with a USB-C port" or something similar. It makes no claim to be a USB compliant cable.
Just for grins I took a look at a few of the cables I have in reach and there were many that lacked the proper logo, a few USB and many others too. If there is still confusion on what a cable can do then it's because the cable was not certified to comply with any specification. A cable that passes USB signals will have a logo and most likely some indication of the speed it supports.
Of the four high speed lines on a USB-C cable they can carry USB 3, Thunderbolt, MHL, Displayport, or some combination of them. If in HDMI mode then it's just HDMI, but the spec allows for the option of Ethernet, an audio return channel, and the USB 2.0 pins to pass through. USB 3.2 at full speed will take all 4 high speed lanes just like HDMI. If anyone actually sees an HDMI cable with USB-C connectors then send me a picture, I'll hang it here on my cork board next to my pictures of the Loch Ness monster, Big Foot, and unicorn.
I'm less concerned with the cables and more thinking about people buying Thunderbolt peripherals because they plug into a USB-C port and, hey, their laptop has a slew of those, so it should work, right?
If they do that then they ignored the signs of it not working, like I did, where the symbols on the cables/devices/whatever didn't match or were missing.
By the time Firewire was 8 years old (Thunderbolt turned 8 this year), it was everywhere!
I recall differently. Firewire devices were always hard to find. When Firewire disappeared I didn't feel this great disturbance of millions of voices crying out in terror. It was more of a thunderous, "meh". I thought that when Firewire 800 came about that it might get a second wind and regain its lost glory and more. The barrage of competing specs like USB, SATA, 1GbT, and of course Thunderbolt, killed it.
If Apple drops Thunderbolt, Thunderbolt is dead in the water. If Thunderbolt becomes confusing for Apple's users, Apple will drop it.
I don't expect Apple to drop it unless something better comes along to replace it. The thing about Apple using Thunderbolt is that the confusion would be nearly nonexistent. If there's a USB-C port on an Apple computer then you know it supports USB 2 & 3, Displa
Take another look, Scotland is approaching 100% electricity from renewables.
Sure, that's easy to do when you have the geography for hydro, access to lots of open sea for wind, and favorable weather/latitude for solar (which might not exactly apply for Scotland). Hydro applies double on this because it's useful as storage for unreliable wind and solar. Here in the pancake flat Midwest USA we don't have a whole lot for hydro. Sure, we got some dammed up rivers that give us some electricity but that's no Hoover Dam.
Wind and solar are getting very competitive, you haven't been paying attention.
It's only cheap if you have pumped hydro for storage or access to lots of cheap natural gas for backup turbines.
And the costs are set to half again for wind and solar, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Ah, I see, wind and solar can get cheaper but nuclear power never will. Whenever I bring up nuclear power the immediate reply is that it is expensive. Well, it's going to stay expensive until people start to build reactors and learn how to make it cheap. Build lots of them and economies of scale make it cheaper yet. Nuclear power as it is right now is as cheap as any wind or solar and it can get cheaper if we start building them again. You want cheap, safe, reliable, and "green" energy? Then build some nuclear power reactors. Out here in the Midwest that's what we need. We don't have geothermal, tidal, hydro, or solar. Well, we can do solar but we need that sun to grow food. Wind works, let's do some more of that, the cows in the pasture underneath don't seem to mind the spinning blades overhead.
Educate yourself, your ignorance and bias is showing.
Of course not, but until you and others like you admit there is a problem, it'll never be fixed.
I admitted three or four times now that there are problems with the current justice system. I also spelled out a dozen of reforms in laws coming to address the problem. WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Perhaps it would help if you could be more specific on the problem. The imprisonment rate is just a symptom, that's not the problem. Unless you can point to some of the problems then I find it hard to see that there's anything to fix. Again, maybe those people belong there. Not all of them belong there, I'm quite sure of that. Maybe 10% of them don't belong. Maybe it's 90%. Unless you can spell out the problem, not the symptom, then it's hard to fix. I gave about a dozen fixes and you dismissed all but one. Are you saying all we need to do is fix our drug laws and we'd be done?
You think I can snap my fingers and fix the problem? That's assuming that this is s problem. Maybe those people belong there.
It's not like we aren't trying. We got the federal government interested in enforcing immigration law again, and we're building that wall on the Mexican border, that's got to help. I expect drug law reform to help too. We're seeing stupid laws against firearm report suppressors go away, that means we won't be putting people in prison for protecting their hearing. We're seeing concealed weapons and "stand your ground" law reform too, that means fewer people in prison for defending themselves. We're seeing more jobs, as in digging for coal, building oil pipelines, and building nuclear power plants. Working people are less likely to resort to crime. It looks like we're going to see an income tax cut, that will help too with reducing poverty and the crime it produces.
That's the problem, you're so obsessed with what everyone else is doing wrong that you can't see the wood from the trees.
I think you are so obsessed with comparing the incarceration rate with that of tyrannies that you can't fathom that perhaps we enjoy such prosperity and freedom in the USA because we have such a well functioning justice system. Did I say the USA was perfect? No, I did not. I am simply questioning the claims of a conspiracy to arbitrarily jail so many people. I'm sure a lot of people in prison right now don't belong there. I'm sure we could do better. I just find it hard to believe that private prisons have much of anything to do with the high rate of imprisonment.
Predicting things is hard, especially things in the future.
I have to ask, what if the EIA was wrong in the other direction? What if instead of actual capacity being 4000% of the prediction we had a prediction that was 4000% of the actual? Would there still be outrage over this to the point that we'd be reading about it now?
This can't be just a failure of a government agency having difficulty predicting the growth of a new industry, it has to be some sort of conspiracy from "big oil". I'm pretty sure that "big solar" is a thing, as is "big wind". Wind and solar might be a small industry but there are some large companies supporting them, and they have deep pockets. Deep enough to fund a growth of an industry at 4000% of a rate that people thought it might be after ten years.
I also love the part of the conspiracy where EIA and "big oil" had similar numbers predicting growth over the next decade. Well, no shit. Oil is a big industry, and well established. It's going to be much easier to predict. Same thing with most any other commodity. I'd like to see similar predictions on housing, coffee, bananas, cars, bicycles, TV sets, refrigerators, or whatever else you might find about your house. I'll exempt things like smart phones which had similar surprising growth due to being so new to the market.
I also want to ask, how well did EIA predict nuclear power growth? If we are going to take the national carbon footprint seriously then nuclear power will have to be a part of that. Anyone that thinks we can run a modern economy without oil, coal, AND nuclear is ignorant or stupid, possibly both.
Here's an interesting presentation on how to use nuclear power to make fuels that can replace what we get from petroleum now. It's less than 15 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
About 3 minutes in the presenter goes over how solar power makes the problems of keeping energy cost down worse. Any claims of solar being cheap is bullshit.
You are about 7 times as likely to be thrown in gaol in the land of the free than in China.
China is a prison. Their prison population is over one billion.
I'm not going to say that the USA is perfect, it's obviously not. Comparing the USA to China just does not follow. The Chinese government is not above killing political dissenters. They'll shoot people that speak out against the government. The government has developed a habit recently of destroying houses of worship. There are suspicions that they've done this with people still inside. There's no bill of rights there. There's no trial by jury. There's no elections, except those where the Communist candidate always wins.
I'll take my "wonderful things" about America over the "justice system" that China offers.
The whole idea of government police is the problem. Private security actually cares about serving customers because they are responsive to the profit motive.
What if "maximizing profit" means taking bribes? That's not solved by a private police force. This is a complex problem and there is no simple solution.
In some states in the USA there is an official recognition of private police. They are often required to meet the standards of a publicly employed police officer but they are employed by some private entity. I like the idea of having a mix of private and public police forces. That's not all that different than having professional and volunteer firefighters, no?
Privatize all police, and watch security go through the roof and abuse plummet.
But who watches the watchmen? What keeps the private police from becoming as corrupt or abusive as a publicly employed police? Once you figure that out then do the same thing for the public police officers. I have a suspicion on what keeps the private officers in line, the idea that they can get fired on the spot if they screw up. Do that for publicly employed officers and I think a lot of misconduct goes away.
I have to wonder about anything from a government agency looking after another government agency. I do believe that we need government agencies keeping an eye on other government agencies, but I won't place too much trust in such reports without something backing it up. What we have is an agency created by the mayor to do what they claim to be independent and scientific observations on other city agencies. Just how much corruption, abuse, fraud, and so forth is such an agency willing to find? If they find something wrong then the mayor looks bad, and I'm pretty sure these people have an innate tendency to not bite the hand that feeds them.
So they claim to do a scientific and statistical analysis of the data they collect. Well, statistics can tell you anything if tortured enough. So they discovered no decrease in complaints of misconduct against the police after body cameras were deployed. There's so many things that can be veiled in this conclusion. Perhaps a lot of police misconduct simply went unreported. Were the cameras always on when they should have been? Was there any punishment of officers based on the footage from these cameras?
If the city of DC wants to keep crime down then I'd like to see them do a study on their weapons laws. They had what was an effective ban on the ownership of firearms struck down a decade ago, and the ban on issuing concealed carry licenses struck down in the courts fairly recently. The DC government seems to think that keeping firearms from the city was an effective crime control method. Did they do a study on that? I suspect that they did but they didn't like the results so they kept it to themselves.
I'll have some faith in this government department actually doing their job of keeping the government in check when they release a report that is critical of how the government is performing.
Because we already have private police we know how it's done. We've long had the concept of "citizen arrest" so a private police officer is just someone hired to enforce the law, including arresting those that violate the law.
Who would make sure to privatize the police fairly? You or some politician?
The courts. While citizen arrest allows for short term detainment the restricting of a person's freedom is itself a serious offense, so people typically don't arrest another for minor matters.
What about the people who can't pay for police? Like the homeless and the poor? Those non-customers would be harassed like crazy. I don't see how this would be an improvement over what we have today.
Why would the poor be harassed like crazy? Presumably they'd have some ability to defend themselves. You think the Second Amendment was to protect the right to hunt? No, it's to make sure even the common person is empowered to defend themselves. Also, I presume even private police would not stand by as criminals harass the poor. Arresting them means the wealthy employers can see the officer keeping crime around them in check.
Another thing is that even if we have private police that does not mean a lack of a sheriff or other kind of law enforcement to keep things in order. The word "sheriff" has been synonymous with "jailer" in many cases. A police officer, privately or publicly employed, would be required to present the accused to the sheriff. The sheriff might let the accused go right there if he/she thought the charge was bullshit. The sheriff would be required to present the accused to a judge, and if the crime was serious enough a jury would be involved. The police, or even the sheriff, could not impose any punishment without a trial.
That's what I don't get about this conspiracy theory of a private police and prison industry putting people in prison to make money. Everyone in prison must have a trial, often before a jury. If people want to see this system short circuited then demand everyone be put before a jury. Even if there is a claim of a judge being paid off then the jury should stop this short.
The conclusion was that it did not reduce complaints. That's different than reducing unreported abuse. It's possible that these cameras did in fact reduce real and actual police abuse when the victims did not report the crime.
I'll hear stories of police beating people after they've been cuffed. It will go something like an accused child abuser will be cuffed and then "trip" down the stairs on the way to the police cruiser. How do you catch that? Even if on camera it can be difficult to tell if it's really a misstep on the staircase, police pushing the accused, or the accused trying to get the police in trouble by intentionally falling down the stairs.
Even though the study concluded no change in officer behavior the DC police intend to keep the cameras. It must be that they see value in the cameras outside of the potential to reduce police abuse.
Since USB-C itself provides only 4 DisplayPort lanes, HDMI uses them all, and the port cannot be in both USB and Thunderbolt mode simultaneously, I would posit that this is not possible. It may be possible to slip some USB data in with the HDMI stream if the resolution or framerate is reduced sufficiently; I honestly don't know enough about HDMI to know if it frees up some of those lanes when it doesn't need the bandwidth. That said, as Thunderbolt 3 provides 8 DisplayPort lanes, a USB-C port operating in Thunderbolt mode can provide display and data transfer simultaneously, even at 4K@60Hz. If you have Thunderbolt available, that's what you'd want to use.
It would take me typing out a page to correct all the errors just in this paragraph, and another page to correct the errors in the rest of your post. I'll take some of the blame here since I see that in some cases I chose my words poorly, made some errors myself (such as when HDMI adopted the USB-C connector), and typed out some incomplete thoughts when I should have completed them first before typing.
You seem very intent on placing all the problems with USB-C at the fault of Intel adopting the USB-C connector for Thunderbolt 3. Imagine what USB-C would be without Thunderbolt muddying the waters. There would still be something like 15 different power ratings on cables and connectors, with 5 different voltages and at least 3 amp capacities. There would still be at least three different data rates, with cables not supporting them all based on pin outs, wire quality, length, and if they are active or passive. There would be three different video modes (HDMI, MHL, and DisplayPort) and again the cables may support only one or two based on pin out, length, wire quality, and being passive or active.
USB-C is a mess. The whole pile of specifications that make up USB is a mess. It was a mess going all the way back to 1998 when it came out. What I do see though is that USB is cleaning up its act a bit. We are pretty much down to two USB ports/connectors now, we have USB-C and USB-A. USB-A will quite likely hang on for a long time because it's cheap and things like keyboards and mice don't need the higher data rates and power from USB-C, and the cord is permanently attached. Most everything else will use USB-C because it's small, carries up to 100 watts, supports high speed data, and all the other goodies it offers.
I don't see the average user getting bit all that often with the confusion that surrounds USB-C. I say that because there's been enough experience with people buying cheap cables and having them not work that most anyone is now wise to choosing their cables carefully. Either they will learn by buying the wrong cable two times in a row, or they will never experience the problem because their exposure to USB-C will be limited to plugging in their cell phone or electronic tablet into a charger.
I don't see Thunderbolt dying off anytime soon. Apple has built their computers around that specification for years now and I don't see that ending before something better comes along. What I could see happen though is Thunderbolt 4 coming out with a port other than USB-C. USB 3.2 will come out in the next year or two and close the performance gap with Thunderbolt and the USB-C connector doesn't have any more bandwidth left in it. For Thunderbolt to get faster it will need a new connector. That could mean a split from whatever the USB group comes up with next. Will a third Thunderbolt port/connector add to the confusion? Most likely. So will having a USB-D connector, assuming USB survives long enough.
Nothing you wrote contradicted anything I wrote. Sure, we might see some more investment in wind and smart grids but that cannot make wind become anything more than a small percentage of our energy supply.
As for China "jumping in with both feet" into wind and solar that's not quite true. Sure, they'll probably install 2 GW of solar this year but they'll also install 5 GW of nuclear this year. China has 80 GW of nuclear power capacity right now and 8 GW of solar. For every GW of solar they are building 10 GW of nuclear.
You want to see oil subsidies go away? Fine, so do I. I also want to see more nuclear power capacity get built. I will maintain that unless these "environmentalists" support nuclear power, so long as they fear nuclear more than CAGW, then I can't take them seriously.
According to the alternate mode specification the 3 modes for USB-C include USB, DP, and power delivery; there is no HDMI support in the USB-C spec.
Look again at the PDF you linked to, HDMI is listed on the second page, left hand column, first paragraph.
since the HDMI mode is part of the TB3 spec
HDMI is not part of the Thunderbolt spec. I found this presentation on the HDMI alternate mode for USB-C and there is no mention of Thunderbolt that I could see. http://www.usb.org/developers/...
The way HDMI works, using all four data lanes in the spec, makes me wonder if a USB-C port could support both Thnuderbolt and HDMI at the same time like Thunderbolt and DisplayPort can share data lines. I assume switching between HDMI and Thunderbolt on the same USB-C port is possible with the right cable for each, the right alternate mode being selected by the device or cable connected. It was my understanding that Apple supported HDMI on USB-C and the adapters they offer for HDMI are passive, but I may be mistaken. Apple does not go into such detail on their product descriptions and they bury the technical specifications well on their website.
As long as you choose Intel (as they won't license Thunderbolt to other x86 chipmakers), that is.
Intel does license Thunderbolt to others, AMD included. Why AMD does not take advantage of this is anyone's guess. https://www.engadget.com/2017/...
But that's not a problem, according to you.
I'm not saying it's not a problem, only that it's not something I'm going to be terribly concerned about now that I know some more about the issues.
I agree that it sucks that there will be continued confusion on what any given USB-C port or cable is capable of doing for the user. That's been a problem with USB almost from the beginning with three different speeds and not every cable supporting them all. The USB group made it worse with the 15 different power levels, 5 different data rates (or is it 7?), and it's 4 (or 3 or 5) alternate modes. What they did do though is retire the mini and micro ports and leave us (effectively at least) with just 3, the micro ports might live on for a bit longer but few new products will have them. There's no more On-The-Go connectors and cables. What still remains is the silliness on figuring out what speed any given cable or device supports, which is not unique to USB either. The other problems are pretty minor considering that a "fully functional" USB-C cable would likely cost $100 but a "crippled" cable costs only $30. I'll put up with the minor inconvenience of having to sort through those cables since it means I can hook up three things at the same time for the price of one. This is from someone that bought one of those $30 cables to find out it didn't do what I wanted. I tossed it in a box, as I'm sure I'll need it later, and ordered a different $30 cable.
The lack of widely supported host-to-host connectivity still bothers me a bit. That seems like something that would be easy to do if only someone cared enough to implement it. I might play with the Linux USB slave device software I discovered to see if I can't make that work on one of my computers.
If someone gets bit by buying the wrong cable or device (like I did) then that's just someone not doing their homework. It sucks and I do think that Intel, Apple, and others, could fix a lot of this by being more open on what protocols their USB-C ports and cables support. Most devices that I've seen make it pretty clear on what protocols are supported, so no real complaints from me on that.
Maybe I'll change my mind on this again as I accumulate more USB-C stuff.
So in short, fuck you if you're poor, you don't deserve proper care.
Can you explain to me how this was not the case in any time in history, or any place on Earth?
Being poor sucks and socialized medicine doesn't change that. What socialized medicine does do is reduce freedom, raise costs, and generally assure more people suffer in poverty than without socialized medicine.
For an artist, band, or studio manager supplying all of their own equipment, as is typically the case in a recording or rehearsal environment, you are correct and we can expect them to know what they're doing. This does not hold true in a live performance environment where they are not supplying all of the equipment themselves and often are stuck using mixers and interfaces supplied by the venue.
There will always be situations like this, we'll always need adapters. Requiring Thunderbolt 3 devices to fall back to USB 3 won't fix this. Thunderbolt 3 is new enough yet that Thunderbolt 1 & 2 still dominate. Firewire is still common in recording studios. Who knows what the next big thing will be. Maybe Firewire will find new life with a speed boost, a new connector, and the blessings from big names like Apple and Intel.
You just described MTP.
Perhaps.
Which Apple doesn't support.
Irrelevant. I pose the problem of USB-C not supporting host-to-host connections. This can be solved solely in software (assuming I'm correct about Apple laptops having support for USB On-The-Go or some other slave device mode). This problem could be solved by adding MTP support in a future OS version, or by adding some other virtual device or protocol or whatever. I understand that sharing the internal drives on a computer is not the same as target disk mode, which is why I mentioned the need to have some layer to prevent damage to the file system.
HDMI and DisplayPort joined the USB-C "club" as part of the Thunderbolt 3 spec, not as part of the USB-C spec itself. Before Thunderbolt 3 (and friends) joined the party, USB-C was USB 2.0 or higher and nothing more. It was just USB, the cables were just USB (and had to pass at least USB 2.0 to negotiate voltage and current), and any combination of compliant devices and compliant cable guaranteed you at least some functionality. The confusion literally all comes from Thunderbolt 3's use of the port.
HDMI and DisplayPort were USB-C alternate modes before Thunderbolt 3 came along. That's why the 2015 MacBook had only USB and DisplayPort supported on it's single USB-C port, the ThunderBolt 3 specification didn't exist until months later. Alternate modes for USB-C was part of the spec from the start, with HDMI and DisplayPort being early adopters. Thunderbolt, MHL, and this new funky audio device mode coming later. This long time marriage of DisplayPort and Thunderbolt on the same cable came before USB-C which is why any (or at least most) Thunderbolt cables will carry DisplayPort video.
If Thunderbolt had stayed on the Mini-DisplayPort, you'd know.
Thunderbolt couldn't have stayed with the mini-DisplayPort connector since the data rate limits of the connector had been reached. For Thunderbolt to get faster it needed a new connector and USB-C happened to be at the right place at the right time, I guess. I'm not sure if even DisplayPort is going to keep the mini-DisplayPort connector much longer.
There was even a labeling requirement for those cables, so you knew a DP cable wouldn't work for TB, and a passthru requirement so you know a TB cable would still work for DP. We didn't have a situation where the more expensive cable couldn't perform some functions, like we have with USB-C/TB3 today, and the fault falls squarely on the shoulders of Thunderbolt 3 and it's misappropriation of the USB-C port.
I don't see it as that simple. It sucks but it could be worse. Think of it this way, at least passive USB-C cables will provide some connectivity with Thunderbolt. Had Thunderbolt stayed with mini-DisplayPort, or used something besides USB-C, then you'd still have to keep a dedicated Thunderbolt cable around. With Thunderbolt using USB-C then those expensive Thunderbolt 3 active cables can still offer USB 2 data and/or charging for laptops/phones/tablets/wha
It's also becoming increasingly obvious that solar, wind and probably also geothermal and tidal generation is going to be a bigger and bigger part of the mix, along with decentralized generation.
No, it's not obvious. We've been dumping money into "bootstrapping" the wind and solar energy industries for a very long time now through subsidies and other laws that make them profitable by fiat. Whenever there is a threat to end, or even reduce, the subsidies my mailbox fills with fliers to call my congresscritters. If wind and solar cannot stand on their own then they cannot grow beyond what the government spends on propping them up.
People all over the world are getting tired of increasing energy prices, reduced availability/reliability, and no real CO2 reductions to show for it. Germany found out that for every 4MW of installed wind capacity that there must be 3MW of natural gas as backup. That puts a hard limit on how much wind can contribute to the grid at less than 25%. Solar has similar problems. Storage technologies won't help because if there is a big battery to supply the peak demands then a utility will use whatever is cheapest, not necessarily "greenest", to charge that up. That means coal, natural gas, or nuclear.
For wind and solar to compete with coal and nuclear they must be not only as cheap, or only cheaper by a small margin, but must be a fraction of the cost. I say that because of what people in the industry already know, and Germany has made clear to anyone that has a mild interest in this, is that wind and solar are far too unreliable to provide any significant portion of our electricity needs. The utilities can tolerate 30% capacity factors from wind and solar because the government pays them to use it, and it buys them some good PR. To make that work beyond this limit of 15%, 20%, or perhaps 30%, that engineers and economists estimate the costs have to be so ridiculously low that they can over build their production capacity, build and maintain energy storage, pay for a "smart grid", and buy expensive natural gas turbine peak generation capacity, with enough left over to make a profit.
Amazon and Google are examples of this buying expensive wind and solar to get some good PR. This is advertising for them. It's "greenwashing" their image. Their electricity supply still relies on coal, nuclear, and natural gas, as much as any one else. Unless we see some leap in technology, which is unlikely, then wind and solar will remain a small fraction of our energy supply.
I find the corn ethanol mandates exceedingly frustrating. That's food we are burning while people need to eat. Not only that I'll read about farmers buying this "brewer's grain" (the stuff left over from turning corn into ethanol) and feeding it to cattle. The problem is that while this grain has protein and minerals it doesn't have enough calories. What do the farmers do then? They buy up discarded corn syrup laden candy and mix it with the grain. Here's an idea, how about we give the corn to the cattle and send the candy to the ethanol producers? We can't do that though because using discarded candy to make ethanol isn't "green" enough, or some shit.
I know people complain that feeding corn to cattle is "unnatural" or something. Well, is feeding cattle brewer's grain mixed with expired Hershey bars somehow "better"? It must be because the laws that the "environmentalists" got passed made this happen.
To those that think we should not eat meat I'll say this, fuck you. If you want to talk about eating "naturally" then what's more natural than going out hunting for wild deer? People have been eating meat for a very long time. Domesticating animals might be recent on the grand scheme of things be we need meat in our diet to be healthy and to hunt for population control. What's wrong with going out to hunt a deer? Or a wild pig? Or hunt a bear? Speaking of which, hunting bans on polar bears has created a polar bear over population problem. http://dailycaller.com/2017/10...
Latency, actually. There are a number of Thunderbolt audio interfaces intended for professional use, where being able to shave even 1ms of latency is a huge deal, especially in a live setting. The same applies to network interfaces, actually; even at the sub-10gbps level, you can shave a few ms off your latency by going Thunderbolt.
That explains the desire to use Thunderbolt, even in cases where the data rate is not needed, but does not explain the need for USB 3 fall back. Sure, the person using this equipment will see the bandwidth and latency get reported if fall back occurs but if such things are important then they will know what they are doing and make sure every piece in the device chain supports Thunderbolt. In fact I can see a case where fallback would be undesirable. I've seen cases where devices negotiate a speed, protocol, or whatever but keep falling back to something I don't want. I'd rather it just gave up and stopped working than keep falling back.
Interesting. I wonder how common OTG or slave chipsets are in computers
Unless you have a server that uses USB for management USB slave chips are essentially non-existent on non-portable hosts. I do wonder if this use of USB as a server management interface will drift over to desktops and laptops as more people replace USB-B ports with USB-C on servers. Maybe I'll get my wish of host-to-host connectivity on common USB-C soon enough to matter.
At the OS level, though, it would require unmounting the disk before assigning it to "disk mode"
I'm not so sure. It could still show as a drive with the slave device managing reads and writes so that the host device doesn't mangle the file system. Assuming this USB virtual device software stack supports more than just drives then a lot of other options open up. Make the slave computer look like a network interface, and any drive would appear like a file share. Make the slave device appear as a serial port, like on those servers with USB management ports, and then put any of a number of protocols you like over that for networking or whatever. Make the slave device look like a keyboard, mouse, display adapter, sound card, and whatever else you like and it's a console or dock.
And I'm sure it will flourish in that arena, but the Thunderbolt-vs-USB issue will hold it back for other uses.
I doubt it. People have dealt with adapters, funky cables, and "dongles" long before USB-C came along. The problem that USB-C gives is the much larger array of options that adds to the frustration. Take HDMI for example, this might be MHL compatible, or not. If your display had an HDMI port then you might need an adapter or cable for DVI, or micro-USB/MHL, or DisplayPort (mini and not-so-mini). In those cases the opposite end of the cable will tell you what the cable will do for you. USB-C adds to this confusion since a glance at the cable ends doesn't necessarily tell you what the cable can do. I had to deal with this at home and work and I've learned to color code my RJ-45 cables, Ethernet crossover are one color, Ethernet straight are another, serial rollover are another color.
Actually the more I think about this the less angered I get on this situation. I'm still frustrated on some level since I can't be assured that if I pick up a cable with USB-C on each end I'll know what it can do. I can still mitigate this at home and work the same way I've managed things like my RJ-45 cables. I can work out a color code, hang tags on cables, do my best to keep the right cable with the device, and so on. I don't have a lot of USB-C devices now so I can work out a plan before it gets out of control. I'm thinking that USB-only cables I buy will be white and Thunderbolt cables will be black. If things like DisplayPort and MHL become common enough on USB-C to be a problem then I'll have to be more creative on my cable management.
Everything you list is something that can be fixed through proper management. Perhaps we could, I'm just tossing this out there, have a competition on the best designs based on safety and cost. That would require that we actually build nuclear reactors. Those that come in on budget and on time get to build another. It's almost like capitalism works to our benefit or something.
The alternatives to fixing the broken laws we live under that manage nuclear power and fission products is CAGW or the lights going out. Maybe some day we'll find something else but right now we have three choices, nuclear power, CAGW, or energy poverty.
If people fear nuclear power more than CAGW then CAGW is nothing to fear. I'm not taking any "environmentalist" seriously if they do not support the building of more nuclear power.
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I'm quite certain the Tennessee Valley Authority would disagree with you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That's just one of at least a dozen operating in the USA right now. I mention that one only because I took a tour of it years ago.
First of all, there are active non-Thunderbolt USB-C cables?
I haven't seen any. I think active cables are in the specifications for HDMI, DisplayPort, and maybe USB to give greater cable lengths.
Second, at least everything would still work because the protocol is forward- and backward-compatible with other versions. Some things might run slower, but they're work.
For a port on a host device to be called USB-C it MUST support USB 2.0 at a minimum. Or, at least that is how I read the specification. Regardless of the alternate mode the USB-C port has negotiated the USB 2.0 and the 5V/3A power pins always remain. This is because the USB pins are used for things like power delivery negotiation and informing the host of the cable or peripheral capabilities. You complain about not knowing what a USB-C port is capable of doing? Well, it's going to support USB 2.0 and 15 watts of power. The slave/peripheral/sink/guest/"B" device is not required to make use of the USB 2.0 pins. A display with DisplayPort or MHL protocol on a USB-C port doesn't have to use USB but it most likely will to do things like support a USB hub for keyboard/mouse, a camera, or whatever. The USB spec requires indication on the device port by text or symbol of the protocol used.
When it comes to cables the USB spec requires the protocol symbols on each end of the cable. I have a cable here that has no symbols on either end but yet plugs into my USB-C port. Close inspection of the packaging reveals no USB logo. Reading the description it's called a "power cable" and that it's for "charging devices with a USB-C port" or something similar. It makes no claim to be a USB compliant cable.
Just for grins I took a look at a few of the cables I have in reach and there were many that lacked the proper logo, a few USB and many others too. If there is still confusion on what a cable can do then it's because the cable was not certified to comply with any specification. A cable that passes USB signals will have a logo and most likely some indication of the speed it supports.
Of the four high speed lines on a USB-C cable they can carry USB 3, Thunderbolt, MHL, Displayport, or some combination of them. If in HDMI mode then it's just HDMI, but the spec allows for the option of Ethernet, an audio return channel, and the USB 2.0 pins to pass through. USB 3.2 at full speed will take all 4 high speed lanes just like HDMI. If anyone actually sees an HDMI cable with USB-C connectors then send me a picture, I'll hang it here on my cork board next to my pictures of the Loch Ness monster, Big Foot, and unicorn.
I'm less concerned with the cables and more thinking about people buying Thunderbolt peripherals because they plug into a USB-C port and, hey, their laptop has a slew of those, so it should work, right?
If they do that then they ignored the signs of it not working, like I did, where the symbols on the cables/devices/whatever didn't match or were missing.
By the time Firewire was 8 years old (Thunderbolt turned 8 this year), it was everywhere!
I recall differently. Firewire devices were always hard to find. When Firewire disappeared I didn't feel this great disturbance of millions of voices crying out in terror. It was more of a thunderous, "meh". I thought that when Firewire 800 came about that it might get a second wind and regain its lost glory and more. The barrage of competing specs like USB, SATA, 1GbT, and of course Thunderbolt, killed it.
If Apple drops Thunderbolt, Thunderbolt is dead in the water. If Thunderbolt becomes confusing for Apple's users, Apple will drop it.
I don't expect Apple to drop it unless something better comes along to replace it. The thing about Apple using Thunderbolt is that the confusion would be nearly nonexistent. If there's a USB-C port on an Apple computer then you know it supports USB 2 & 3, Displa
Take another look, Scotland is approaching 100% electricity from renewables.
Sure, that's easy to do when you have the geography for hydro, access to lots of open sea for wind, and favorable weather/latitude for solar (which might not exactly apply for Scotland). Hydro applies double on this because it's useful as storage for unreliable wind and solar. Here in the pancake flat Midwest USA we don't have a whole lot for hydro. Sure, we got some dammed up rivers that give us some electricity but that's no Hoover Dam.
Wind and solar are getting very competitive, you haven't been paying attention.
It's only cheap if you have pumped hydro for storage or access to lots of cheap natural gas for backup turbines.
And the costs are set to half again for wind and solar, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Ah, I see, wind and solar can get cheaper but nuclear power never will. Whenever I bring up nuclear power the immediate reply is that it is expensive. Well, it's going to stay expensive until people start to build reactors and learn how to make it cheap. Build lots of them and economies of scale make it cheaper yet. Nuclear power as it is right now is as cheap as any wind or solar and it can get cheaper if we start building them again. You want cheap, safe, reliable, and "green" energy? Then build some nuclear power reactors. Out here in the Midwest that's what we need. We don't have geothermal, tidal, hydro, or solar. Well, we can do solar but we need that sun to grow food. Wind works, let's do some more of that, the cows in the pasture underneath don't seem to mind the spinning blades overhead.
Educate yourself, your ignorance and bias is showing.
You first.
Of course not, but until you and others like you admit there is a problem, it'll never be fixed.
I admitted three or four times now that there are problems with the current justice system. I also spelled out a dozen of reforms in laws coming to address the problem. WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Perhaps it would help if you could be more specific on the problem. The imprisonment rate is just a symptom, that's not the problem. Unless you can point to some of the problems then I find it hard to see that there's anything to fix. Again, maybe those people belong there. Not all of them belong there, I'm quite sure of that. Maybe 10% of them don't belong. Maybe it's 90%. Unless you can spell out the problem, not the symptom, then it's hard to fix. I gave about a dozen fixes and you dismissed all but one. Are you saying all we need to do is fix our drug laws and we'd be done?
Stop obsessing over china and fix your shit.
I didn't bring up China, you did.
You think I can snap my fingers and fix the problem? That's assuming that this is s problem. Maybe those people belong there.
It's not like we aren't trying. We got the federal government interested in enforcing immigration law again, and we're building that wall on the Mexican border, that's got to help. I expect drug law reform to help too. We're seeing stupid laws against firearm report suppressors go away, that means we won't be putting people in prison for protecting their hearing. We're seeing concealed weapons and "stand your ground" law reform too, that means fewer people in prison for defending themselves. We're seeing more jobs, as in digging for coal, building oil pipelines, and building nuclear power plants. Working people are less likely to resort to crime. It looks like we're going to see an income tax cut, that will help too with reducing poverty and the crime it produces.
What else would you like to see done?
That's the problem, you're so obsessed with what everyone else is doing wrong that you can't see the wood from the trees.
I think you are so obsessed with comparing the incarceration rate with that of tyrannies that you can't fathom that perhaps we enjoy such prosperity and freedom in the USA because we have such a well functioning justice system. Did I say the USA was perfect? No, I did not. I am simply questioning the claims of a conspiracy to arbitrarily jail so many people. I'm sure a lot of people in prison right now don't belong there. I'm sure we could do better. I just find it hard to believe that private prisons have much of anything to do with the high rate of imprisonment.
Predicting things is hard, especially things in the future.
I have to ask, what if the EIA was wrong in the other direction? What if instead of actual capacity being 4000% of the prediction we had a prediction that was 4000% of the actual? Would there still be outrage over this to the point that we'd be reading about it now?
This can't be just a failure of a government agency having difficulty predicting the growth of a new industry, it has to be some sort of conspiracy from "big oil". I'm pretty sure that "big solar" is a thing, as is "big wind". Wind and solar might be a small industry but there are some large companies supporting them, and they have deep pockets. Deep enough to fund a growth of an industry at 4000% of a rate that people thought it might be after ten years.
I also love the part of the conspiracy where EIA and "big oil" had similar numbers predicting growth over the next decade. Well, no shit. Oil is a big industry, and well established. It's going to be much easier to predict. Same thing with most any other commodity. I'd like to see similar predictions on housing, coffee, bananas, cars, bicycles, TV sets, refrigerators, or whatever else you might find about your house. I'll exempt things like smart phones which had similar surprising growth due to being so new to the market.
I also want to ask, how well did EIA predict nuclear power growth? If we are going to take the national carbon footprint seriously then nuclear power will have to be a part of that. Anyone that thinks we can run a modern economy without oil, coal, AND nuclear is ignorant or stupid, possibly both.
Here's an interesting presentation on how to use nuclear power to make fuels that can replace what we get from petroleum now. It's less than 15 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
About 3 minutes in the presenter goes over how solar power makes the problems of keeping energy cost down worse. Any claims of solar being cheap is bullshit.
You are about 7 times as likely to be thrown in gaol in the land of the free than in China.
China is a prison. Their prison population is over one billion.
I'm not going to say that the USA is perfect, it's obviously not. Comparing the USA to China just does not follow. The Chinese government is not above killing political dissenters. They'll shoot people that speak out against the government. The government has developed a habit recently of destroying houses of worship. There are suspicions that they've done this with people still inside. There's no bill of rights there. There's no trial by jury. There's no elections, except those where the Communist candidate always wins.
I'll take my "wonderful things" about America over the "justice system" that China offers.
The whole idea of government police is the problem. Private security actually cares about serving customers because they are responsive to the profit motive.
What if "maximizing profit" means taking bribes? That's not solved by a private police force. This is a complex problem and there is no simple solution.
In some states in the USA there is an official recognition of private police. They are often required to meet the standards of a publicly employed police officer but they are employed by some private entity. I like the idea of having a mix of private and public police forces. That's not all that different than having professional and volunteer firefighters, no?
Privatize all police, and watch security go through the roof and abuse plummet.
But who watches the watchmen? What keeps the private police from becoming as corrupt or abusive as a publicly employed police? Once you figure that out then do the same thing for the public police officers. I have a suspicion on what keeps the private officers in line, the idea that they can get fired on the spot if they screw up. Do that for publicly employed officers and I think a lot of misconduct goes away.
I have to wonder about anything from a government agency looking after another government agency. I do believe that we need government agencies keeping an eye on other government agencies, but I won't place too much trust in such reports without something backing it up. What we have is an agency created by the mayor to do what they claim to be independent and scientific observations on other city agencies. Just how much corruption, abuse, fraud, and so forth is such an agency willing to find? If they find something wrong then the mayor looks bad, and I'm pretty sure these people have an innate tendency to not bite the hand that feeds them.
So they claim to do a scientific and statistical analysis of the data they collect. Well, statistics can tell you anything if tortured enough. So they discovered no decrease in complaints of misconduct against the police after body cameras were deployed. There's so many things that can be veiled in this conclusion. Perhaps a lot of police misconduct simply went unreported. Were the cameras always on when they should have been? Was there any punishment of officers based on the footage from these cameras?
If the city of DC wants to keep crime down then I'd like to see them do a study on their weapons laws. They had what was an effective ban on the ownership of firearms struck down a decade ago, and the ban on issuing concealed carry licenses struck down in the courts fairly recently. The DC government seems to think that keeping firearms from the city was an effective crime control method. Did they do a study on that? I suspect that they did but they didn't like the results so they kept it to themselves.
I'll have some faith in this government department actually doing their job of keeping the government in check when they release a report that is critical of how the government is performing.
How would you privatize police?
Because we already have private police we know how it's done. We've long had the concept of "citizen arrest" so a private police officer is just someone hired to enforce the law, including arresting those that violate the law.
Who would make sure to privatize the police fairly? You or some politician?
The courts. While citizen arrest allows for short term detainment the restricting of a person's freedom is itself a serious offense, so people typically don't arrest another for minor matters.
What about the people who can't pay for police? Like the homeless and the poor? Those non-customers would be harassed like crazy. I don't see how this would be an improvement over what we have today.
Why would the poor be harassed like crazy? Presumably they'd have some ability to defend themselves. You think the Second Amendment was to protect the right to hunt? No, it's to make sure even the common person is empowered to defend themselves. Also, I presume even private police would not stand by as criminals harass the poor. Arresting them means the wealthy employers can see the officer keeping crime around them in check.
Another thing is that even if we have private police that does not mean a lack of a sheriff or other kind of law enforcement to keep things in order. The word "sheriff" has been synonymous with "jailer" in many cases. A police officer, privately or publicly employed, would be required to present the accused to the sheriff. The sheriff might let the accused go right there if he/she thought the charge was bullshit. The sheriff would be required to present the accused to a judge, and if the crime was serious enough a jury would be involved. The police, or even the sheriff, could not impose any punishment without a trial.
That's what I don't get about this conspiracy theory of a private police and prison industry putting people in prison to make money. Everyone in prison must have a trial, often before a jury. If people want to see this system short circuited then demand everyone be put before a jury. Even if there is a claim of a judge being paid off then the jury should stop this short.
Maybe we have so many Slashdotters having run-ins with police from buying all that crack they smoke before posting here.
The conclusion was that it did not reduce complaints. That's different than reducing unreported abuse. It's possible that these cameras did in fact reduce real and actual police abuse when the victims did not report the crime.
I'll hear stories of police beating people after they've been cuffed. It will go something like an accused child abuser will be cuffed and then "trip" down the stairs on the way to the police cruiser. How do you catch that? Even if on camera it can be difficult to tell if it's really a misstep on the staircase, police pushing the accused, or the accused trying to get the police in trouble by intentionally falling down the stairs.
Even though the study concluded no change in officer behavior the DC police intend to keep the cameras. It must be that they see value in the cameras outside of the potential to reduce police abuse.
Well there's your problem: huge cameras!
Did you expect anything else in Trump's America?
I have to ask, wouldn't these "huge" cameras make his hands look even smaller?
Since USB-C itself provides only 4 DisplayPort lanes, HDMI uses them all, and the port cannot be in both USB and Thunderbolt mode simultaneously, I would posit that this is not possible. It may be possible to slip some USB data in with the HDMI stream if the resolution or framerate is reduced sufficiently; I honestly don't know enough about HDMI to know if it frees up some of those lanes when it doesn't need the bandwidth. That said, as Thunderbolt 3 provides 8 DisplayPort lanes, a USB-C port operating in Thunderbolt mode can provide display and data transfer simultaneously, even at 4K@60Hz. If you have Thunderbolt available, that's what you'd want to use.
It would take me typing out a page to correct all the errors just in this paragraph, and another page to correct the errors in the rest of your post. I'll take some of the blame here since I see that in some cases I chose my words poorly, made some errors myself (such as when HDMI adopted the USB-C connector), and typed out some incomplete thoughts when I should have completed them first before typing.
You seem very intent on placing all the problems with USB-C at the fault of Intel adopting the USB-C connector for Thunderbolt 3. Imagine what USB-C would be without Thunderbolt muddying the waters. There would still be something like 15 different power ratings on cables and connectors, with 5 different voltages and at least 3 amp capacities. There would still be at least three different data rates, with cables not supporting them all based on pin outs, wire quality, length, and if they are active or passive. There would be three different video modes (HDMI, MHL, and DisplayPort) and again the cables may support only one or two based on pin out, length, wire quality, and being passive or active.
USB-C is a mess. The whole pile of specifications that make up USB is a mess. It was a mess going all the way back to 1998 when it came out. What I do see though is that USB is cleaning up its act a bit. We are pretty much down to two USB ports/connectors now, we have USB-C and USB-A. USB-A will quite likely hang on for a long time because it's cheap and things like keyboards and mice don't need the higher data rates and power from USB-C, and the cord is permanently attached. Most everything else will use USB-C because it's small, carries up to 100 watts, supports high speed data, and all the other goodies it offers.
I don't see the average user getting bit all that often with the confusion that surrounds USB-C. I say that because there's been enough experience with people buying cheap cables and having them not work that most anyone is now wise to choosing their cables carefully. Either they will learn by buying the wrong cable two times in a row, or they will never experience the problem because their exposure to USB-C will be limited to plugging in their cell phone or electronic tablet into a charger.
I don't see Thunderbolt dying off anytime soon. Apple has built their computers around that specification for years now and I don't see that ending before something better comes along. What I could see happen though is Thunderbolt 4 coming out with a port other than USB-C. USB 3.2 will come out in the next year or two and close the performance gap with Thunderbolt and the USB-C connector doesn't have any more bandwidth left in it. For Thunderbolt to get faster it will need a new connector. That could mean a split from whatever the USB group comes up with next. Will a third Thunderbolt port/connector add to the confusion? Most likely. So will having a USB-D connector, assuming USB survives long enough.
Hilary Clinton? Is that you?
Nothing you wrote contradicted anything I wrote. Sure, we might see some more investment in wind and smart grids but that cannot make wind become anything more than a small percentage of our energy supply.
As for China "jumping in with both feet" into wind and solar that's not quite true. Sure, they'll probably install 2 GW of solar this year but they'll also install 5 GW of nuclear this year. China has 80 GW of nuclear power capacity right now and 8 GW of solar. For every GW of solar they are building 10 GW of nuclear.
You want to see oil subsidies go away? Fine, so do I. I also want to see more nuclear power capacity get built. I will maintain that unless these "environmentalists" support nuclear power, so long as they fear nuclear more than CAGW, then I can't take them seriously.
The BE-4 engine, which uses liquefied natural gas as fuel
Yeah! Fuck my carbon footprint, I'm going to the MOON!
According to the alternate mode specification the 3 modes for USB-C include USB, DP, and power delivery; there is no HDMI support in the USB-C spec.
Look again at the PDF you linked to, HDMI is listed on the second page, left hand column, first paragraph.
since the HDMI mode is part of the TB3 spec
HDMI is not part of the Thunderbolt spec. I found this presentation on the HDMI alternate mode for USB-C and there is no mention of Thunderbolt that I could see.
http://www.usb.org/developers/...
The way HDMI works, using all four data lanes in the spec, makes me wonder if a USB-C port could support both Thnuderbolt and HDMI at the same time like Thunderbolt and DisplayPort can share data lines. I assume switching between HDMI and Thunderbolt on the same USB-C port is possible with the right cable for each, the right alternate mode being selected by the device or cable connected. It was my understanding that Apple supported HDMI on USB-C and the adapters they offer for HDMI are passive, but I may be mistaken. Apple does not go into such detail on their product descriptions and they bury the technical specifications well on their website.
As long as you choose Intel (as they won't license Thunderbolt to other x86 chipmakers), that is.
Intel does license Thunderbolt to others, AMD included. Why AMD does not take advantage of this is anyone's guess.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/...
But that's not a problem, according to you.
I'm not saying it's not a problem, only that it's not something I'm going to be terribly concerned about now that I know some more about the issues.
I agree that it sucks that there will be continued confusion on what any given USB-C port or cable is capable of doing for the user. That's been a problem with USB almost from the beginning with three different speeds and not every cable supporting them all. The USB group made it worse with the 15 different power levels, 5 different data rates (or is it 7?), and it's 4 (or 3 or 5) alternate modes. What they did do though is retire the mini and micro ports and leave us (effectively at least) with just 3, the micro ports might live on for a bit longer but few new products will have them. There's no more On-The-Go connectors and cables. What still remains is the silliness on figuring out what speed any given cable or device supports, which is not unique to USB either. The other problems are pretty minor considering that a "fully functional" USB-C cable would likely cost $100 but a "crippled" cable costs only $30. I'll put up with the minor inconvenience of having to sort through those cables since it means I can hook up three things at the same time for the price of one. This is from someone that bought one of those $30 cables to find out it didn't do what I wanted. I tossed it in a box, as I'm sure I'll need it later, and ordered a different $30 cable.
The lack of widely supported host-to-host connectivity still bothers me a bit. That seems like something that would be easy to do if only someone cared enough to implement it. I might play with the Linux USB slave device software I discovered to see if I can't make that work on one of my computers.
If someone gets bit by buying the wrong cable or device (like I did) then that's just someone not doing their homework. It sucks and I do think that Intel, Apple, and others, could fix a lot of this by being more open on what protocols their USB-C ports and cables support. Most devices that I've seen make it pretty clear on what protocols are supported, so no real complaints from me on that.
Maybe I'll change my mind on this again as I accumulate more USB-C stuff.
So in short, fuck you if you're poor, you don't deserve proper care.
Can you explain to me how this was not the case in any time in history, or any place on Earth?
Being poor sucks and socialized medicine doesn't change that. What socialized medicine does do is reduce freedom, raise costs, and generally assure more people suffer in poverty than without socialized medicine.
For an artist, band, or studio manager supplying all of their own equipment, as is typically the case in a recording or rehearsal environment, you are correct and we can expect them to know what they're doing. This does not hold true in a live performance environment where they are not supplying all of the equipment themselves and often are stuck using mixers and interfaces supplied by the venue.
There will always be situations like this, we'll always need adapters. Requiring Thunderbolt 3 devices to fall back to USB 3 won't fix this. Thunderbolt 3 is new enough yet that Thunderbolt 1 & 2 still dominate. Firewire is still common in recording studios. Who knows what the next big thing will be. Maybe Firewire will find new life with a speed boost, a new connector, and the blessings from big names like Apple and Intel.
You just described MTP.
Perhaps.
Which Apple doesn't support.
Irrelevant. I pose the problem of USB-C not supporting host-to-host connections. This can be solved solely in software (assuming I'm correct about Apple laptops having support for USB On-The-Go or some other slave device mode). This problem could be solved by adding MTP support in a future OS version, or by adding some other virtual device or protocol or whatever. I understand that sharing the internal drives on a computer is not the same as target disk mode, which is why I mentioned the need to have some layer to prevent damage to the file system.
HDMI and DisplayPort joined the USB-C "club" as part of the Thunderbolt 3 spec, not as part of the USB-C spec itself. Before Thunderbolt 3 (and friends) joined the party, USB-C was USB 2.0 or higher and nothing more. It was just USB, the cables were just USB (and had to pass at least USB 2.0 to negotiate voltage and current), and any combination of compliant devices and compliant cable guaranteed you at least some functionality. The confusion literally all comes from Thunderbolt 3's use of the port.
HDMI and DisplayPort were USB-C alternate modes before Thunderbolt 3 came along. That's why the 2015 MacBook had only USB and DisplayPort supported on it's single USB-C port, the ThunderBolt 3 specification didn't exist until months later. Alternate modes for USB-C was part of the spec from the start, with HDMI and DisplayPort being early adopters. Thunderbolt, MHL, and this new funky audio device mode coming later. This long time marriage of DisplayPort and Thunderbolt on the same cable came before USB-C which is why any (or at least most) Thunderbolt cables will carry DisplayPort video.
If Thunderbolt had stayed on the Mini-DisplayPort, you'd know.
Thunderbolt couldn't have stayed with the mini-DisplayPort connector since the data rate limits of the connector had been reached. For Thunderbolt to get faster it needed a new connector and USB-C happened to be at the right place at the right time, I guess. I'm not sure if even DisplayPort is going to keep the mini-DisplayPort connector much longer.
There was even a labeling requirement for those cables, so you knew a DP cable wouldn't work for TB, and a passthru requirement so you know a TB cable would still work for DP. We didn't have a situation where the more expensive cable couldn't perform some functions, like we have with USB-C/TB3 today, and the fault falls squarely on the shoulders of Thunderbolt 3 and it's misappropriation of the USB-C port.
I don't see it as that simple. It sucks but it could be worse. Think of it this way, at least passive USB-C cables will provide some connectivity with Thunderbolt. Had Thunderbolt stayed with mini-DisplayPort, or used something besides USB-C, then you'd still have to keep a dedicated Thunderbolt cable around. With Thunderbolt using USB-C then those expensive Thunderbolt 3 active cables can still offer USB 2 data and/or charging for laptops/phones/tablets/wha
It's also becoming increasingly obvious that solar, wind and probably also geothermal and tidal generation is going to be a bigger and bigger part of the mix, along with decentralized generation.
No, it's not obvious. We've been dumping money into "bootstrapping" the wind and solar energy industries for a very long time now through subsidies and other laws that make them profitable by fiat. Whenever there is a threat to end, or even reduce, the subsidies my mailbox fills with fliers to call my congresscritters. If wind and solar cannot stand on their own then they cannot grow beyond what the government spends on propping them up.
People all over the world are getting tired of increasing energy prices, reduced availability/reliability, and no real CO2 reductions to show for it. Germany found out that for every 4MW of installed wind capacity that there must be 3MW of natural gas as backup. That puts a hard limit on how much wind can contribute to the grid at less than 25%. Solar has similar problems. Storage technologies won't help because if there is a big battery to supply the peak demands then a utility will use whatever is cheapest, not necessarily "greenest", to charge that up. That means coal, natural gas, or nuclear.
For wind and solar to compete with coal and nuclear they must be not only as cheap, or only cheaper by a small margin, but must be a fraction of the cost. I say that because of what people in the industry already know, and Germany has made clear to anyone that has a mild interest in this, is that wind and solar are far too unreliable to provide any significant portion of our electricity needs. The utilities can tolerate 30% capacity factors from wind and solar because the government pays them to use it, and it buys them some good PR. To make that work beyond this limit of 15%, 20%, or perhaps 30%, that engineers and economists estimate the costs have to be so ridiculously low that they can over build their production capacity, build and maintain energy storage, pay for a "smart grid", and buy expensive natural gas turbine peak generation capacity, with enough left over to make a profit.
Amazon and Google are examples of this buying expensive wind and solar to get some good PR. This is advertising for them. It's "greenwashing" their image. Their electricity supply still relies on coal, nuclear, and natural gas, as much as any one else. Unless we see some leap in technology, which is unlikely, then wind and solar will remain a small fraction of our energy supply.
Germany is a good example. I have more.
African nations kept in poverty over UN "green energy" mandates.
https://www.thegwpf.com/james-...
Australia is feeling the pain too.
https://www.thegwpf.com/global...
I happened across something on Germany.
http://notrickszone.com/2017/1...
An article on the general threats posed to real people today by "green energy" mandates.
http://www.cfact.org/2017/10/0...
I find the corn ethanol mandates exceedingly frustrating. That's food we are burning while people need to eat. Not only that I'll read about farmers buying this "brewer's grain" (the stuff left over from turning corn into ethanol) and feeding it to cattle. The problem is that while this grain has protein and minerals it doesn't have enough calories. What do the farmers do then? They buy up discarded corn syrup laden candy and mix it with the grain. Here's an idea, how about we give the corn to the cattle and send the candy to the ethanol producers? We can't do that though because using discarded candy to make ethanol isn't "green" enough, or some shit.
I know people complain that feeding corn to cattle is "unnatural" or something. Well, is feeding cattle brewer's grain mixed with expired Hershey bars somehow "better"? It must be because the laws that the "environmentalists" got passed made this happen.
To those that think we should not eat meat I'll say this, fuck you. If you want to talk about eating "naturally" then what's more natural than going out hunting for wild deer? People have been eating meat for a very long time. Domesticating animals might be recent on the grand scheme of things be we need meat in our diet to be healthy and to hunt for population control. What's wrong with going out to hunt a deer? Or a wild pig? Or hunt a bear? Speaking of which, hunting bans on polar bears has created a polar bear over population problem.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/10...
Latency, actually. There are a number of Thunderbolt audio interfaces intended for professional use, where being able to shave even 1ms of latency is a huge deal, especially in a live setting. The same applies to network interfaces, actually; even at the sub-10gbps level, you can shave a few ms off your latency by going Thunderbolt.
That explains the desire to use Thunderbolt, even in cases where the data rate is not needed, but does not explain the need for USB 3 fall back. Sure, the person using this equipment will see the bandwidth and latency get reported if fall back occurs but if such things are important then they will know what they are doing and make sure every piece in the device chain supports Thunderbolt. In fact I can see a case where fallback would be undesirable. I've seen cases where devices negotiate a speed, protocol, or whatever but keep falling back to something I don't want. I'd rather it just gave up and stopped working than keep falling back.
Interesting. I wonder how common OTG or slave chipsets are in computers
Unless you have a server that uses USB for management USB slave chips are essentially non-existent on non-portable hosts. I do wonder if this use of USB as a server management interface will drift over to desktops and laptops as more people replace USB-B ports with USB-C on servers. Maybe I'll get my wish of host-to-host connectivity on common USB-C soon enough to matter.
At the OS level, though, it would require unmounting the disk before assigning it to "disk mode"
I'm not so sure. It could still show as a drive with the slave device managing reads and writes so that the host device doesn't mangle the file system. Assuming this USB virtual device software stack supports more than just drives then a lot of other options open up. Make the slave computer look like a network interface, and any drive would appear like a file share. Make the slave device appear as a serial port, like on those servers with USB management ports, and then put any of a number of protocols you like over that for networking or whatever. Make the slave device look like a keyboard, mouse, display adapter, sound card, and whatever else you like and it's a console or dock.
And I'm sure it will flourish in that arena, but the Thunderbolt-vs-USB issue will hold it back for other uses.
I doubt it. People have dealt with adapters, funky cables, and "dongles" long before USB-C came along. The problem that USB-C gives is the much larger array of options that adds to the frustration. Take HDMI for example, this might be MHL compatible, or not. If your display had an HDMI port then you might need an adapter or cable for DVI, or micro-USB/MHL, or DisplayPort (mini and not-so-mini). In those cases the opposite end of the cable will tell you what the cable will do for you. USB-C adds to this confusion since a glance at the cable ends doesn't necessarily tell you what the cable can do. I had to deal with this at home and work and I've learned to color code my RJ-45 cables, Ethernet crossover are one color, Ethernet straight are another, serial rollover are another color.
Actually the more I think about this the less angered I get on this situation. I'm still frustrated on some level since I can't be assured that if I pick up a cable with USB-C on each end I'll know what it can do. I can still mitigate this at home and work the same way I've managed things like my RJ-45 cables. I can work out a color code, hang tags on cables, do my best to keep the right cable with the device, and so on. I don't have a lot of USB-C devices now so I can work out a plan before it gets out of control. I'm thinking that USB-only cables I buy will be white and Thunderbolt cables will be black. If things like DisplayPort and MHL become common enough on USB-C to be a problem then I'll have to be more creative on my cable management.
Everything you list is something that can be fixed through proper management. Perhaps we could, I'm just tossing this out there, have a competition on the best designs based on safety and cost. That would require that we actually build nuclear reactors. Those that come in on budget and on time get to build another. It's almost like capitalism works to our benefit or something.
The alternatives to fixing the broken laws we live under that manage nuclear power and fission products is CAGW or the lights going out. Maybe some day we'll find something else but right now we have three choices, nuclear power, CAGW, or energy poverty.
If people fear nuclear power more than CAGW then CAGW is nothing to fear. I'm not taking any "environmentalist" seriously if they do not support the building of more nuclear power.