h a l f b a k e r yCrust or bust.
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I'll never understand why they made those silly things rectangular to begin with. |
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Yeah, an obvious right-way orientation would be true engineering instead of just making stuff. |
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Probably designed by some Ivy Tech CAD flunkie and not focused on by the rest of the team. |
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//an obvious right-way orientation// |
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Nah, just make them round, like guitar plugs. |
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There should be no guessing. They are always the same way up - the slot in the cable's connector is towards the top. Making some ports the other way would just confuse things. |
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True, but is there a rule for the upright ones? |
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How about an auto-rotate USB plug/socket - on registering a certain level of pressure, it spins 180° ready for another insertion. |
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The spring-loaded either-way-up USB plug is a good idea, but
it would be better as a socket. |
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I would settle for a little dot on the upside I could feel with my thumb. PS2 used to have these and I never had a problem. In fact, most holes I try to find in the dark have been known to come equipped with such subtle labelling. |
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Yeah, but then you had a starting clue by the legs. |
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//is there a rule for the upright ones?// It seems that there is. The side that would be up in the horizontal ones faces the left side of the case in the upright ones. This puzzled me for a moment, but makes perfect sense when you consider that the left side of a tower case corresponds to the upper surface of a horizontal case. |
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// Nah, just make them round, like guitar plugs. // |
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Absolutely. USB has only 4 pins and 4 ring TRS connectors already exist. I would suggest using a different diameter and length than 3.5mm though, to avoid people exploding their headphones. |
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Additionally, the casing should slope downwards into the socket like a black-hole in a spacetime graph to maximise insertion speed. |
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//make them round// The electrical contacts need not be
round (like phono plugs) ony the mechanical connection.
You could seat the thing in its socket in in any orientation,
then, once you had a positive "snap," twist it until you felt
the "click" of a detent, indicating it was oriented properly
and that electrical contact was now made. |
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