"We have some geeks in a blue-sky meeting in 1994 to blame." ~ Matt Rudd

Do you wonder about things?

Useless, unimportant details when you look at the big picture, but things that you just can't let pass without asking...

why? or whaaaat?

I have mentioned before how much Ren Man and I enjoy lingering over the Sunday Times...

he reads the newspaper and I read the magazines cover to cover.

One of my favorite columnists, 

Matt Rudd,

lays the big questions out there.

Questions I may have asked myself...

but never voiced out loud 

so that someone could actually answer. 

Well...

Mr. Rudd gets to the bottom of the matter.

A few weeks ago his question was...

"Why do USB plugs only fit the one way round?"

 He goes further with his second question...

"How many billions of minutes of potential human progress 

have been set back by the non-universally-fitting 

Universal Serial Bus?"

How many of you have wondered the same thing?

He supports this perplexing question with further data...

"The chance of getting it the wrong way round is 90%.  It should be 50-50 but it just isn't.  Two seconds are wasted each time, one for turning it around, one for swearing."

He finds someone, real or imaginary I do not know,

the "USB Implementers Forum President..." 

who responded...

"The key reason USB was designed with an orientation requirement is that it was designed to be a very low-cost solution.  To support plugging in either way would require the host connector or cable to have twice the number of pins."

So there you have it...

Matt Rudd gets the story.

He makes me laugh and I would share his wisdom with you more often by providing a link to his column...

in The Sunday Times

but alas...

it would cost me £2 a week to do so!

We already buy the old school newspaper every Sunday...

but in order to refer to the articles online...

I would need to register and pay.

His two books...
William Walker's First Year of Marriage
and
William's Progress...
are about family life...
and he wrote this hysterical guest post on
Diary of a First Child about traveling with children.

So...

Matt Rudd I have a question for you...

where are your columns archived and accessible 

for those of us who read your column the old fashioned way...

but want to hook up the world...

 with your enlightenment?

Secret link on your website maybe?

Happy Tuesday!