I find it notable that this article entirely ignores the EU's Common Electrical Power Supply law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_External_Power_Supply), which effectively mandated that all smart phones sold in the EU use micro USB for power. This had a swift and noticeable effect in the diversity of connectors in phones (basically Apple is the only maker that doesn't use micro USB and this change happened at the exact time of the law). The emergence of USB as The Way Phones are Charged didn't happen as a magic emergent property, but via considered government regulation. Government: it can actually work.
USB was defacto standard for data transfer, especially on PCs, but the /connector/ on the phone side was not at all standards compliant or uniform across makes and models, and up until the passage of that law, it wasn't uncommon for the power port to be separate. Now that is basically unheard of. I'm not saying the law is the only reason for this change, but it is clearly a big factor, yet it is omitted from this article.
Indeed, it was common for a USB-to-proprietary cable to be sold separately for at an additional charge. Now phone manufacturers are forced to resort to software to make it difficult to move data between phones and desktops. ;-)
I think it's still a design that is far larger than it needs to be. You could reconfigure the plug to use blades like the US and be in parallel like the italian plug. Then you can add shutters, shrouded pins, polarized pins and fuses and still be incredibly more compact. On top of it, the design will work well with folding plugs like many camera battery chargers yet still be grounded. That combination seems like the best.
Most of that is good except for the fuse. The only reason for the fuse is because of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_circuit which was only used during copper shortages.
The fuse makes the plug much much larger than it needs to be.
The American size, with some shrouding, would be better. Newer American plugs already have shutters and everything else you mentioned.
From the link:
Europlugs are only designed for low-power (less than 2.5 A) Class II (double-insulated) devices that operate at normal room temperature and do not require a protective-earth connection.
Compliance is voluntary with the underlying threat that 1. the commission would define and impose a standard if manufacturers didn't voluntarily do so, and 2. the EC could use stronger coercion if the MoU was not respected/complied with.
If it had been such a good and manufacturer-supported idea, they wouldn't have waited the EC's intervention to suddenly and massively abandon proprietary charging ports.
> The emergence of USB as The Way Phones are Charged didn't happen as a magic emergent property, but via considered government regulation. Government: it can actually work.
This is such nonsense, I don't even know where to begin. This was already the case in the US and there is no government mandate for it to be that way.
Are you going to give credit to the EU for that too?
They simply passed that regulation after it was already clear that things were going to end up there. It was a recognition of the status quo, it had zero effect.
> This is such nonsense, I don't even know where to begin. This was already the case in the US and there is no government mandate for it to be that way.
History please.
The USB-socket-in-the-phone standard for recharging phones started once China demanded _de jure_ in 2006 that all data-enabled phones could be recharged using mini/micro-USB. That request had a huge impact: at that time Nokia produced phones with data-only USB ports that could not be used to charge the phone. Suddenly "+1" and "C" models of Nokia's phone started appearing, all with the ability to charge using the USB port. Initially these models where sold only in Asia, then the producers started selling them everywhere, just to streamline the production.
Then, in 2008, the EU Commission asked the producers of mobile handsets to agree on a standard, whatever standard. If they could not came up with a single solution the Commission threatened that they would _impose_ a solution.
In 2010 all the big producers agreed to use micro USB. That was an easy choice, as they were already forced to use it for all the phones sold in China.
In 2010/2011 the CEN and ETSI standardization bodies sat down and produced a spec that mirrors the micro-USB spec.
Now, in 2013, the EU is about to set the CEN spec in stone.
Governments played a big role here. China's regulations first and EU "pressure" later is what lead us to the current status.
It sounds about right to me. For example, I have a Samsung phone that predates the EU agreement by a couple of years and even though it charges off 5V at USB current levels and uses USB for data syncing, the charging/data connector is some proprietary Samsung one and it can't charge from a USB port with the official cable. There's a couple of Samsung connectors, Sony Ericsson had one, Nokia favoured barrel jacks with various oddball voltage and current requirements, and Motorola Razr phones used the mini USB port for charging in a way that was incompatible with everything else.
> This was already the case in the US and there is no government mandate for it to be that way.
Hah, in 2009? It really, really wasn't. I bought an off-the-shelf flip phone in 2010 that still used some godawful proprietary connector.
One of my roommates had a phone that used mini-USB, but it was the wrong end (mini-A instead of mini-B), which is a lot like buying an MP3 player and finding a 3.5mm prong sticking out of it instead of a socket. I absolutely do credit government intervention in China and the EU with forcing manufacturers to clean up their act.
No, the EU mandate certainly had a large effect in the US. Why would manufacturers bother using two different charging port standards per model when they're only being compelled to use one? You must have a short memory if you've already forgotten just how recently the market was still riddled with Mini-USB and a hodgepodge of other connection formats.
I cannot get passed the title. Unless the only cold emails the author sent were the ones that got the meetings, s/which/that.
(Actually I did read the article, and in it she says "cold emails produced 7 meetings at Twitter, Klout, LinkedIn", so either she sent 7 cold emails or the title should use 'that' not 'which')
I think, and please correct me if I'm wrong, this should be "I cannot get past the title". :)
A bit of lenience might be in order since the author is from Israel and English may not be her first language (then again, native speakers might not necessarily do better).
The site you linked to explains why "past" is correct IMO:
"To pass often means to move past, and this is where confusion can arise. Of note, to pass can also mean to sail past, to fly past, to run past, to hop past, etc. - the method of moving is irrelevant. This is worth bearing in mind, because if you have used a verb indicating motion already, then it will be partnered with past and not passed."
The verb here would be "get". See the examples at the bottom for use as a preposition.
possible, I'm much less sure about my use of passed versus past here then the use of which instead of that in the title. That said, I had thought 'get' did not indicate motion across the sentence here 'passed' did, so passed is correct. But I could totally believe I'm doing it wrong.
That's an interesting take about past/passed. Granted, I'm not really in a position to make good judgement calls about the English language either, but in my opinion it goes like this:
"passed" is something that happens or happened to you, like on the freeway you can say you have been passed by another vehicle.
"past", on the other hand, in this context is a state that refers to your location. Like in, "I'm past the red line". When you have to get past something, your position in relation to that something is expressed by that word.
Intuitively, I'd say that if it's the answer to an imaginary question of "where", it needs to be "past". If it's the answer to another question, like "what happened", it's "passed".
> I appreciate that the which/that distinction is tricky, but one is a restrictive clause and the other is not, changing the meaning of the sentence.
You're right, but I think we have to take non-native speakers into account. Also, the implication that those were the exact same emails doesn't really change with that, it only gets weaker. In my experience, people use that in the same way express a definitive relation. As in "those are the cats that ate the cheeseburgers" I get the impression that a specific set of cats are involved in a specific cheeseburger incident. That doesn't really change if you say "those are the cats who ate the cheeseburgers".
"Cannot get passed the title" would mean that you are unable to have the title passed to you. Which, I suppose, you can't. But that's nonsense and surely not what you meant.
Past \Past\, prep.
1. Beyond, in position, or degree; further than; beyond the
reach or influence of. "Who being past feeling." --Eph.
iv. 19. "Galled past endurance." --Macaulay.
[1913 Webster]
Until we be past thy borders. --Num. xxi.
22.
[1913 Webster]
Love, when once past government, is consequently
past shame. --L'Estrange.
[1913 Webster]
“The raw height data is stored in metres and must be scaled down to fit within the 256 block height limit in Minecraft. A maximum height of 2 500 metres was chosen, which means Ben Nevis, appears just over 128 blocks high.
“Although this exaggerates the real-world height, it preserves low-lying coastal features such as Bournemouth's cliffs, adding interest to the landscape.”
It's perhaps worth mentioning that there's a pro-cyclist campaign around this issue that's been going for a few years (full disclosure, I have one of their jerseys)
http://ipayroadtax.com/
I believe this headline is a very clear example of Betteridge's law of headlines[1], since the answer is 'No'.
I'll also just add that road surface wear and tear is to a significant extent and function of vehicle weight. If car driver want to yell at people for using more than their fair share of the road, yell at HGVs.
