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lhsi writes "Members of the European Parliament have backed a regulation for all smartphone devices to use a standardized charger, a Micro USB connector being the favored type (and one that is in use already).
The regulation is still only a draft law and must be approved by Europe's council of ministers. However, that body has already given its informal backing to the law, suggesting it will win final approval.
European member states will have until 2016 to translate the regulation into national laws and manufacturers will then have 12 months to switch to the new design
The reason for this regulation is both to help consumers and to cut down on electronic waste (51,000 tonnes annually)."
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European MEPs Back Single Charger Standard
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I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having disks crammed into me... unless they're Oreos, and then only in the mouth.
-- Fry
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by lhsi on Saturday March 15 2014, @08:46AM
Both the original submission and the linked BBC article have "favoured" spelt correctly, but for some reason it was changed to the wrong spelling here. If the story was about the USA I'd understand localising it, but this one is about the EU, with one of the sources being a UK site. Has Soylent News stopped being an international site without me noticing?
For a vague link to the story, does anyone know if these kind of regulations will affect all consumers, not just EU ones? Would companies have different connectors for non-EU markets and only use the regulated ones for EU customers? Or would they just standardise worldwide so they don't have to manufacture two variations of the same phone?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday March 15 2014, @09:09AM
in the throat-cut mobile phone market competition, would it make much sense for a manufacturer to support the cost of double standards? After all, it is not the charger that makes a differentiator factor from the competition, is it?
If the Texas Board of Education manages to push creationism US wide only by ordering the manuals it approves in bulk (so that the picked publishers can sell them at lower prices nation wide due higher quantity production), I imagine an entire Europe may cause the phone makers to finally drop their "specially designed plugholes" for the whole world.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Monday March 17 2014, @10:18AM
Don't hold your breath. They make a lot of money on proprietary cables and chargers, so it would be worth it to them to screw Americans if they can. Both the very high end (e.g. Apple) and very low end (e.g. Nokia) do it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 5, Funny) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 15 2014, @09:25AM
Maybe it's an attempt at saving bandwidth on SoylentNews by omitting all letters which are not strictly needed. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 15 2014, @10:23AM
What the hell is a "tonne" ? I'm also pretty sure "spelt" isn't a word.
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Saturday March 15 2014, @12:00PM
As an editor, I suppose the easy answer is - it depends on how the editor's computer is configured. Mine is UK English and I would have passed the original article without any spelling changes. Also, I choose not to change US spelling to meet UK requirements in articles originating elsewhere. If the spelling is consistent and understandable in TFA then it is good to go in that respect. But if an editor has a US-configured computer where a word would show as a spelling mistake during the editing process, he or she might choose to change the spelling to avoid genuine mistakes slipping through. If you ignore one red-lined word intentionally you might ignore another by accident. There is no intention to Americanize the articles, as far as I am aware.
I believe that your question was only partly serious, but it is a valid question nevertheless, and I decided to reply to let you and others know what (probably) happened. ;)
It's always my fault...
(Score: 1) by lhsi on Sunday March 16 2014, @04:55AM
Thanks for taking the time to answer :-) I suspected that was what had happened. I was interested in getting an answer but was mostly being sarcastic asking. Maybe I should have used tried to see if this site supports this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by captain normal on Saturday March 15 2014, @01:49PM
Well the spell checker in my browser says favoured is not correct. Also same in FF and IE. Even though most folks would agree that either use is correct. This is probably a battle you should take up with MS, Mozilla or Google.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 15 2014, @03:04PM
Well, if you installed a dictionary for British English, you'll be told it is OK. If you installed a dictionary for American English, you'll be told it's wrong. If you installed both, it depends which one is currently active.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Funny) by bd on Saturday March 15 2014, @02:57PM
This is something I always considered confusing. Why are the British so offended when someone misspells the misspelled French words in their language? Is this some kind of secret love?
(Score: 1) by Hairyfeet on Sunday March 16 2014, @03:59AM
They would probably standardize which honestly? Sucks. The reason why is obvious if you think about it, no new designs will be coming for quite awhile for fear of falling afoul and not being able to be sold in the EU.
BTW those that don't like rants please move along, old Hairy is gonna vent...here is what REALLY pisses me off about crap like this, it all ends up going after the wrong target and making a WORSE mess than we had before!!! Take the banning of lead solder, what a giant fuck up that was! Things that would last a decade now last maybe 3 thanks to tin whiskers so you end up with MORE eWaste when the obvious and logical solution would have been to simply make the OEMs support local recycling and free drop off centers!
Then we have THIS clusterfuck where 1.- They picked what has to be the wimpiest most easily busted connector design I've ever seen, don't know how many devices I've had to shitcan because of bad miniUSB meaning you can't charge the fucker, when your standard RTS jacks just go and go and if you want to cut down on the waste it ain't the jack that needs fixing its all the fucking devices with non replaceable batteries! Its sad when a $40 eCig from China (love those 510 eCigs BTW, 4 months cig free) has a simple, logical, trivially easy to replace battery that is completely standardized while a $250 tablet is a paperweight when the battery dies!
While I'm all for cutting down waste if its one thing the solder fuckup should have taught us its these politicians couldn't find their ass with a GPS unit!