Legacy (Score: 2, Interesting) by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2015-03-10 07:09 (#4M8C) Anybody remember computers in the late 90's? 2 9-pin RS-232 serial ports (older mice, modems, etc)2 PS/2 ports (keyboard/mouse)1 25-pin IEEE 1284 Parallel port (printers, storage devices, even ethernet adapters)Often a SCSI-1 port (scanners, external drives)Game ports (controllers)Sometimes even MIDI portsOften firewire ports.etc. And then a couple USB (v1.1) ports, which was the most useless of all... Nothing made for it, except maybe your new mouse using an adapter. Slower than parallel ports, lots of CPU-saping overhead. Couldn't boot off of it (for many years). etc. Re: Legacy (Score: 2, Informative) by bryan@pipedot.org on 2015-03-10 07:29 (#4M8Z) Better yet, anyone remember early notebook docking ports? Nearly always expensive and vendor-specific. Many required you to turn off the computer before connecting or disconnecting the dock. Current notebooks, instead of a dock, you just plug in the power cord + a monitor cord + a USB keyboard/mouse cord + maybe a network cord. I can see the allure of using just one cable to do it all.What is more worrying is that USB is so powerful, that it can do potentially damaging things to you unknowingly. Is that free thumb drive really just a thumb drive? Or does it have some nefarious keyboard controller on it as well, ready to spawn an xterm and wget a binary from the net as soon as you plug it in.
Re: Legacy (Score: 2, Informative) by bryan@pipedot.org on 2015-03-10 07:29 (#4M8Z) Better yet, anyone remember early notebook docking ports? Nearly always expensive and vendor-specific. Many required you to turn off the computer before connecting or disconnecting the dock. Current notebooks, instead of a dock, you just plug in the power cord + a monitor cord + a USB keyboard/mouse cord + maybe a network cord. I can see the allure of using just one cable to do it all.What is more worrying is that USB is so powerful, that it can do potentially damaging things to you unknowingly. Is that free thumb drive really just a thumb drive? Or does it have some nefarious keyboard controller on it as well, ready to spawn an xterm and wget a binary from the net as soon as you plug it in.