(I'm blocking on his name now, but a great comedian in his own right.)
Barney Fife, played by Don Knotts. There are more than a couple of cops that would do well to be made to carry a single bullet in their shirt pocket, per Andy's policy regarding Barney and firearms.
It's even more likely they'll just ignore you. If it's an overseas vendor that used the parts on their design, there's little to no benefit for them to even acknowledge you.
The unclean hands happen several transactions back in the chain and belong to someone who doesn't suffer in the slightest for this.
This. The overseas chip manufacturer sells their current stock, then perhaps makes whatever changes are needed to make the chips work with the drivers, or providing altered drivers, with practically no financial burden placed on them for their actions. There's really not much in the way of legal pressure that can be exerted on them, and the end customer has no leverage to force them to make things right. In the meantime, the customer is out the $30 or so to buy a device that hopefully uses legitimate parts.
At the same time, just modifying the PID is far from "destroying" the device. If FTDI's driver did something that actually did damage to the hardware, I might be more sympathetic.
Let's say you take your car into a dealership and they flash the ECU so that the car won't start. No physical damage was done, so it's all good.
It's a mistake in my opinion to dump this problem onto the consumer; it's not realistic for them to police all the parts of gizmos they buy.
Not only that, but the odds are better than even that there's not any recourse through the manufacturer/vendor - they can't seriously think that a Chinese vendor is going to do anything at all to rectify the problem for the customer beyond possibly sending a replacement device that will have exactly the same issue. FTDI, with all their money, can't stop the bogus chips from being sold in the U.S. They know for a fact the consumer is screwed, and will end up having to buy another device, *hopefully* with a real FTDI part in it. They're laying the entire cost of this little exercise squarely on the consumer.
Probably a closer analogy would be if you brought your car in to be serviced, but had flashed the ECU with any one of the number of available devices to do that. The dealership sees it's non-standard firmware, and clears the flash, rendering the car inoperable and forcing you to either buy a new ECU or pay the dealership to reflash it with the stock firmware.
The only good news is that they *finally* updated the mini... which means we'll finally be getting new hardware to replace our xserves.
Unfortunately, they also determined that unless you have a SMT rework kit, you're not installing more RAM in it. You're also not going to be able to put a bigger disk in it without voiding the warranty.
They're making guesses about the future just like everyone else.
While throwing millions of dollars of marketing horsepower at it to make it as likely as possible that people will clamor what they sell, regardless of the engineering and other deficits present in the product. If Microsoft's marketing people were half as good as Apple's, there might not be an Apple anymore.
it has various problems with similar-looking glyphs that are easily mistaken for one another
Boy, isn't that the truth. Helvetica looks pretty good to me, but it's annoying (especially in technical documentation) when you can't distinguish a lower case 'L' from an upper case "I".
"If you give us the password and let us prove you're innocent we'll let you go. If there's anything in there that would prove you guilty we'll reduce the sentence. If you don't give us the password and we have to crack the encryption ourselves and we find out you're guilty, you're going away for a very long time."
"Additionally, if you don't give us the password, you're going to sit in jail for contempt of court until you change your mind."
Recent versions of popular packages won't run without it? Recent versions don't get included in Debian. Suddenly, recent versions get tweaked by their maintainers so that they'll get included in Debian/Ubuntu.
In an ideal world, yes. I think what's more likely is that people will move to a distro that *does* include the packages they need, and it seems the distro maintainers believe this as well. Otherwise there would be a lot more pushback regarding systemd dependencies.
While I generally agree with your assessment of the BBB, lots of other people don't understand that it's just a scheme to make money, and take what it says as gospel. Given that, lots of companies will still work to keep their BBB rating positive, and thus it can still be a (foam rubber) hammer to use against a company that's not living up to its word.
Except for perhaps going bankrupt defending yourself.
What's even more fun is if you do win, and then *they* BK on you. Then you're on the hook for more time and money trying to collect on a judgment that you quite possibly won't see a penny of.
Slashdot Mirror
(I'm blocking on his name now, but a great comedian in his own right.)
Barney Fife, played by Don Knotts. There are more than a couple of cops that would do well to be made to carry a single bullet in their shirt pocket, per Andy's policy regarding Barney and firearms.
Aww, afraid to post as anything other than AC?
Here's the link I think you're referring to: Verizon doesn't know dollars from cents
Randall Munroe (of XKCD fame) wrote a legendary check to Verizon afterwards in response to this incident. "What now, bitches?"
It's even more likely they'll just ignore you. If it's an overseas vendor that used the parts on their design, there's little to no benefit for them to even acknowledge you.
The unclean hands happen several transactions back in the chain and belong to someone who doesn't suffer in the slightest for this.
This. The overseas chip manufacturer sells their current stock, then perhaps makes whatever changes are needed to make the chips work with the drivers, or providing altered drivers, with practically no financial burden placed on them for their actions. There's really not much in the way of legal pressure that can be exerted on them, and the end customer has no leverage to force them to make things right. In the meantime, the customer is out the $30 or so to buy a device that hopefully uses legitimate parts.
At the same time, just modifying the PID is far from "destroying" the device. If FTDI's driver did something that actually did damage to the hardware, I might be more sympathetic.
Let's say you take your car into a dealership and they flash the ECU so that the car won't start. No physical damage was done, so it's all good.
It's a mistake in my opinion to dump this problem onto the consumer; it's not realistic for them to police all the parts of gizmos they buy.
Not only that, but the odds are better than even that there's not any recourse through the manufacturer/vendor - they can't seriously think that a Chinese vendor is going to do anything at all to rectify the problem for the customer beyond possibly sending a replacement device that will have exactly the same issue. FTDI, with all their money, can't stop the bogus chips from being sold in the U.S. They know for a fact the consumer is screwed, and will end up having to buy another device, *hopefully* with a real FTDI part in it. They're laying the entire cost of this little exercise squarely on the consumer.
Probably a closer analogy would be if you brought your car in to be serviced, but had flashed the ECU with any one of the number of available devices to do that. The dealership sees it's non-standard firmware, and clears the flash, rendering the car inoperable and forcing you to either buy a new ECU or pay the dealership to reflash it with the stock firmware.
Since the manufacturer should be doing quality assurance testing. That should include plugging devices in and checking that they work.
Up to this point, they *did* work. What about the thousands of devices already sold?
The goal of any security measure is to make it easier for someone to break into someone else's property; thus securing yours.
It's like an implementation of the punchline, "I don't have to run faster than the bear. I just have to run faster than you."
And many fruit juices are quite acidic as well.
The only good news is that they *finally* updated the mini ... which means we'll finally be getting new hardware to replace our xserves.
Unfortunately, they also determined that unless you have a SMT rework kit, you're not installing more RAM in it. You're also not going to be able to put a bigger disk in it without voiding the warranty.
They're making guesses about the future just like everyone else.
While throwing millions of dollars of marketing horsepower at it to make it as likely as possible that people will clamor what they sell, regardless of the engineering and other deficits present in the product. If Microsoft's marketing people were half as good as Apple's, there might not be an Apple anymore.
At least you had grass. Do you know how hard it is to get anything done when all you have to work with is a primordial subatomic particle soup?
it has various problems with similar-looking glyphs that are easily mistaken for one another
Boy, isn't that the truth. Helvetica looks pretty good to me, but it's annoying (especially in technical documentation) when you can't distinguish a lower case 'L' from an upper case "I".
Still not fixed, four and a half hours later...
Sure - they could be used in the implementation of RFC 1149.
I think he means be a reporter for the article, THEN be a pundit in the replies. B-)
If they enforced that, we'd never see any Bennett Haselton's Walls O' Text (tm).
"If you give us the password and let us prove you're innocent we'll let you go. If there's anything in there that would prove you guilty we'll reduce the sentence. If you don't give us the password and we have to crack the encryption ourselves and we find out you're guilty, you're going away for a very long time."
"Additionally, if you don't give us the password, you're going to sit in jail for contempt of court until you change your mind."
Recent versions of popular packages won't run without it? Recent versions don't get included in Debian. Suddenly, recent versions get tweaked by their maintainers so that they'll get included in Debian/Ubuntu.
In an ideal world, yes. I think what's more likely is that people will move to a distro that *does* include the packages they need, and it seems the distro maintainers believe this as well. Otherwise there would be a lot more pushback regarding systemd dependencies.
They have been proven to snoop, the cat is out of the bag, end of story.
And they've been proven to have no problem lying to Congress as well. "You didn't see it, so I didn't do it."
The relevant Dilbert.
While I generally agree with your assessment of the BBB, lots of other people don't understand that it's just a scheme to make money, and take what it says as gospel. Given that, lots of companies will still work to keep their BBB rating positive, and thus it can still be a (foam rubber) hammer to use against a company that's not living up to its word.
You should be buying a vm image, not a piece of hardware.
Unless you're trying to do something like put an IPMI port behind a firewall. A VM running on the machine to be protected won't be of much use there.
Except for perhaps going bankrupt defending yourself.
What's even more fun is if you do win, and then *they* BK on you. Then you're on the hook for more time and money trying to collect on a judgment that you quite possibly won't see a penny of.