So you're saying they made a new network for blackjack and hookers? You know what, forget the network. And the hookers.

Does anyone know if FIOS internet uses the same system? I don't have a Verizon Wireless account.

Regardless of the fact that it may be legal for others to do so, it's unethical and clearly misrepresentation.

Not true. Lots of small homebrew hardware uses off-the-shelf chips like the ones FTDI builds without applying for their own VID/PID combo. This causes minor headaches because software can't tell them apart from one another, but as long as the final product doesn't have a USB logo on it, it is perfectly acceptable to sell it, even if your homebrew flash programmer looks like a USB to serial adapter to any software that asks.

If you want to use the USB logo, you have to apply for your own VID/PID combo and reprogram the chip to identify itself as being your product, and ship a custom driver that talks to it (which could be a modified version of the official FTDI driver, or the open source driver, or whatever).

"and kept politics contained in the opinion pages" - To play devil's advocate - this particular article IS in the Opinion section.

From looking at how their stuff works, no. The driver tries to change the PID on all devices, but genuine hardware doesn't actually write out the EEPROM until further action is taken, while clones immediately write out the EEPROM.

Although it isn't really a "brick" - it sets the PID to 0. Which is invalid, but happens often enough these days that you can still force the hardware to be used. Someone wrote a Linux patch that would register the correct driver for FTDI's VID and a PID of 0.

Another option FTDI could have done is: Change the PID to one reserved for clones, then spit out warnings when that PID is seen.

"are not sold as made by the company" - They use FTDI's USB VID/PID - this is representing yourself as an FTDI chip.

The tough thing is HOW to do it on first plug-in. The only method I can see that would work is to perform the same alteration the driver is doing, but instead of changing the PID to 0, change it to one reserved for fake chips. Then have the driver spit out lots of warnings if the "fake chip" PID is seen.

(As to how their driver is doing its thing - from what I've read of decompiled code, it attempts to change the PID to 0 on all chips. However, genuine hardware needs additional steps to actually start the EEPROM write, while clone hardware immediately writes out the EEPROM.)

"The issue is that the FTDI driver is deliberately reprogramming a chip that is not theirs"

Except they're only doing this to their USB VID/PID - which IS THEIRS.

If you use FTDI's VID/PID, you're trying to pass yourself off as an FTDI chip, and it is YOUR FAULT ALONE if an operation that does not cause issues on genuine FTDI hardware does bad things to your own.

(If you look at the decompiled code, the driver attempts to write the EEPROM on all hardware. However, genuine FTDI hardware won't actually START the write operation until the driver does "additional stuff" - but clones will immediately write the new EEPROM value.)

Research in this area is probably a good thing if done right. Mace, tear gas, and stun guns are not
very effective in a large crowd or hostage situation. I agree with the article that current methods
rely on exact dosage to prevent fatality but it's highly probable that we can find better chemicals that don't.
Marijuana is one of many known substances where the effective dose and the lethal dose are orders of
magnitude apart. Research into incapacitating substances with very low effective doses but very high
lethal doses would be where I would want to focus. Something like this would be very useful. You could
make everyone pass out and then isolate the bad guys before they wake up saving both civilian and
criminal lives.

old school apprentices were rarely a "guaranteed job at the end" but more like "a shot at taking over the business at the end" if
you paid your dues, learned well, and did a good job. IT has actually moved that direction a little bit. When I interned for HP
while in college, they made it very clear that interns that they liked moved immediately to the top of the stack of resumes when
applying for a full time position practically guaranteeing you a job if they liked you and your performance. It's alot less risk for
them. Places like microsoft have also started using contractors and temp agencies for that purpose. They try you out for a
while, if you do a good job then they bring you on, if you don't, they don't have to worry about all the steps to fire you. It also
helps with company morale as then very few "official" employees ever need to be fired.

Hey, if it keeps them out of 8chan and harrassing women on the internet, I'm all for it.

Maybe this is the ideal job for #GamerGaters. They'd get to kill people by remote control.

What percentage of people working at (or close to) minimum wage receive government assistance?
I read somewhere that the vast majority of people close to the minimum wage have moved up after a short time.
Noone I personally know who works for minimum wage receives government assistance. Most people
I personally know who work for minimum wage are single kids usually still living at home and getting
their first job. The problem I see with a high minimum wage is that it kills alot of entry level job so you
end up with a bunch of people who have no way of getting job experience. And you can't solve this
by making teenagers exempt from minimum wage as then companies have an incentive to only
hire inexperienced people and the few people who really do need minimum wage jobs are passed over
because they have a higher minimum wage.

Why would they charge more? Because it is technology? My guess is that when/if they start doing this
it will be so that they can see more patients in a given period of time and/or cut down on buildings,
staffing, etc... i.e. They will be doing it to save money. You might not see the saving but it doesn't
make sense that they would charge more for this service.

If you ignore the ability to restrict personal data to particular people, news feed with intelligent ranking that tries to guess who your real friends are so you don't have to upset people who post a lot by defriending them, the ability to tag people in photos, the lack of any need for meaningless URLs and a seamless way of organising events ...... then sure. Facebook is just like the web.

Connected to an email service.

With some automated responses (like) and mass mailing features.

Connected to some games

All held together by exclusivity That is, they won't let you someone's blog, email them, or get emails, unless you join them.

Well, I did leave some extra stuff out - but basically the other stuff is all the privacy killing back office things that no users wants - i.e. the ability to tag other people's photos, the ability to track people viewing, etc. etc.

If you make a distributed version of it, it's called THE INTERNET.

P.S. It already exists. Frankly, the entire thing is just a simplified way for non technical people to get involved on the internet. Not everyone realizes how useful a blog, mass mailings, etc. are so they packaged them up as a "Social Network" and suddenly people that never heard of a blog are blogging.

As other people have pointed out, not all of the fake chips have those markings—or any markings, for that matter. This tells me that some company special-ordered batches of chips that were silk screened with those markings, but that the part normally comes blank.