consumer devices that do not have the USB logo can use whatever VID/PIDs they like. there's no law governing this except the trademark of USB's logo.

do you have a link for that? curious.

or a leak?

would you risk a subpoena?

because the operating system automatically detects the VID, downloads and installs the driver, which bricks the hardware.

I'm pretty sure that's why Microsoft put a stop to it, since they realized they would probably also be named in any class action.

palm was slapped down by the USB IF. the USB IF can't stop anyone from making USB-compatible products, or using specific VIDs. all they can do is refuse to give them the right to use their logos if they break their rules. the ftdi-cloners don't care about the UBS IF since they're not looking for their approval, so they're free to use whatever VIDs they want.

it's not that they're not supporting the work-alike chips, they're actively damaging them. they specifically detect non-ftdi chips and overwrite the IDs.

of course, anyone who ever said anything nice about a Microsoft product is a shill...

scroll, scroll, "lisp", back.

who's to say the supposed built-in would perform any better?

I use GNU/Windows ;-)

there was a time when vacuum cleaners were sold by door-to-door salesmen. imagine if we had corrupt politicians still propping up that ridiculous practice today and the only way to buy a vacuum cleaner was to wait for some schmuck to turn up at your doorstep and throw a bunch of dirt at your feet when you opened the door.

heh, i started writing a WebGL version of descent a while back. never finished it, but you can play with it here: WebDescent (only tested on Chrome).

Not if netflix made it clear that the additional charge was due to comcast's extortion. Do you blame the store for the additional sales tax? No. So you shouldn't blame netflix for the comcast tax.

It's trivial. You just ask do a lookup on the source IP address on stream start. If that steam is initiated by a machine on comcast's network then you add the amount of streamed data to a running count for that user. At the end of the month divvy up the comcast extortion charge between all users that have streamed over comcast's network. If users start complaining just forward them to Comcast support.