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> Locking onto USB-C now could be a very "640k ought to be enough for everybody" moment. I agree in general; but at some point don't we hit diminishing returns

> Locking onto USB-C now could be a very "640k ought to be enough for everybody" moment. I agree in general; but at some point don't we hit diminishing returns? If I were to say, "18.4 exabytes of RAM ought to be enough for everybody", that'd be basically correct, even future-proofing for the craziest sci-fi holodeck use cases we can imagine, right?

mritun 7y ago
How do you know? Have you seen the future? As much as I am for interoperability, a legislation directing a specific technology is one way how we end up with ridiculous standards. Remember, we still have laws on where we can or cannot tie a horse in town on the books a century after they were irrelevant. Laws move in centuries, while technology moves in years. They are not compliant with each other.
- lukifer 7y ago
  I agree; if this law were put to a vote, I would vote against it. I just think it's conceivable that we hit a point where there's very little end-user benefit to additional improvements, and we achieve an equilibrium that essentially solves the given problem[0]. The catch is: we don't necessarily know in advance at what point that will actually be the case (hence the irony of the 640k line, which I'm sure sounded very sensible at the time, just as the 18.4 EB thing sounds very sensible to me now). [0] One of the reasons that the loss of the headphone jack is so exasperating, is that's an example of an ideal universal connector; it solved the problem so well, there was little reason to improve on it, either in quality or function.
reaperducer 7y ago
I agree in general; but at some point don't we hit diminishing returns? If I were to say, "18.4 exabytes of RAM ought to be enough for everybody", that'd be basically correct, even future-proofing for the craziest sci-fi holodeck use cases we can imagine, right? But the legislation doesn't lock into something that might happen in the future. It locks the future to what we have today.
- Drakim 7y ago
  Does it actually do that? Have you read the legislation, or are you just saying what you assume it says?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
smm2000 7y ago
I want to fully charge my phone in 1 minute. Is it possible with USB-C?
ddebernardy 7y ago
I dunno. Having lived through the days where having 128kB of RAM was an eye popping upgrade, you could easily have made the argument back then that 2GB of RAM was future proof for as long as the eye can see. And in fact, they did. By the time I was reaching adulthood, that was that hard limit built into Win95, give or take boot errors if you had a quarter of that (which was gigantic at the time; 64MB was more than enough to boot it). Fast forward another 25 years to today, and laptops routinely have 16GB of RAM, and higher end Mac Pros can apparently get a whopping 1.5TB of RAM. Put another way, the high-end went from .1MB to 1TB in 40 years or so. I get that we're reaching the physical limits of miniaturization, but I'd still be surprised if my grand kids don't have exabytes of RAM or equivalent on whatever the hell their main devices will be by the time they reach adulthood.
martin8412 7y ago
Just like 32 bits for IP addresses should be sufficient for all use cases?
- lukifer 7y ago
  Well, there's the rub: 32 bits for IPv4 was clearly inadequate. IPv6, on the other hand, gives us with 128 bits = 3.4 x 10^38 addresses, which seems from our vantage point like it should cover us until the end of time, even if we colonized the whole galaxy. Is that actually the case? Time will tell. ;)
  - martin8412 7y ago
    But that's just the point. When they decided on 32 bits, then it was more than sufficient for the intended use case. If we had stuck to universities and government uses, then we probably still wouldn't have run out. Things change or evolve, and often in ways not foreseen.

mritun 7y ago

How do you know? Have you seen the future? As much as I am for interoperability, a legislation directing a specific technology is one way how we end up with ridiculous standards. Remember, we still have laws on where we can or cannot tie a horse in town on the books a century after they were irrelevant. Laws move in centuries, while technology moves in years. They are not compliant with each other.

lukifer 7y ago
I agree; if this law were put to a vote, I would vote against it. I just think it's conceivable that we hit a point where there's very little end-user benefit to additional improvements, and we achieve an equilibrium that essentially solves the given problem[0]. The catch is: we don't necessarily know in advance at what point that will actually be the case (hence the irony of the 640k line, which I'm sure sounded very sensible at the time, just as the 18.4 EB thing sounds very sensible to me now). [0] One of the reasons that the loss of the headphone jack is so exasperating, is that's an example of an ideal universal connector; it solved the problem so well, there was little reason to improve on it, either in quality or function.

reaperducer 7y ago

I agree in general; but at some point don't we hit diminishing returns? If I were to say, "18.4 exabytes of RAM ought to be enough for everybody", that'd be basically correct, even future-proofing for the craziest sci-fi holodeck use cases we can imagine, right? But the legislation doesn't lock into something that might happen in the future. It locks the future to what we have today.

Drakim 7y ago
Does it actually do that? Have you read the legislation, or are you just saying what you assume it says?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

smm2000 7y ago

I want to fully charge my phone in 1 minute. Is it possible with USB-C?

ddebernardy 7y ago

I dunno. Having lived through the days where having 128kB of RAM was an eye popping upgrade, you could easily have made the argument back then that 2GB of RAM was future proof for as long as the eye can see. And in fact, they did. By the time I was reaching adulthood, that was that hard limit built into Win95, give or take boot errors if you had a quarter of that (which was gigantic at the time; 64MB was more than enough to boot it). Fast forward another 25 years to today, and laptops routinely have 16GB of RAM, and higher end Mac Pros can apparently get a whopping 1.5TB of RAM. Put another way, the high-end went from .1MB to 1TB in 40 years or so. I get that we're reaching the physical limits of miniaturization, but I'd still be surprised if my grand kids don't have exabytes of RAM or equivalent on whatever the hell their main devices will be by the time they reach adulthood.

martin8412 7y ago

Just like 32 bits for IP addresses should be sufficient for all use cases?

lukifer 7y ago
Well, there's the rub: 32 bits for IPv4 was clearly inadequate. IPv6, on the other hand, gives us with 128 bits = 3.4 x 10^38 addresses, which seems from our vantage point like it should cover us until the end of time, even if we colonized the whole galaxy. Is that actually the case? Time will tell. ;)
- martin8412 7y ago
  But that's just the point. When they decided on 32 bits, then it was more than sufficient for the intended use case. If we had stuck to universities and government uses, then we probably still wouldn't have run out. Things change or evolve, and often in ways not foreseen.