Releasing hacked drivers won't be easy. On all versions of Windows you get scary warnings if the drivers are not signed, and since Vista you can't install non-signed drivers on a 64 bit system at all without hacks. As of Windows 8 even the hack only lasts until you reboot.

These days ripping off drivers is not really an option, unless you have your own certificate to sign them with. Certs are not hard to get, but they also tend to get cancelled once FTDI fine out about them.

There is a standard, and FTDI devices support it. It's called CDC, or Communication Device Class. It's been part of the USB spec since the early days. It supports RS232 serial and parallel printer ports.

Most operating systems include a generic driver for USB serial converters that uses the CDC standard, including Windows. The reason FTDI provide a driver is that their chips have more features than the basic spec allows. They have some GPIOs, better support for surprise disconnects, better interrupt emulation and a firmware update mechanism that allows them to be reprogrammed or customized after manufacture.

The cloners like the benefits of the FTDI driver, but they also just want to sell their crap as a well respected brand. Most USB to serial converters are fairly crap, but FTDI ones have a reputation for being robust and reliable.

The more I think about it the less likely I think it is that this is just a bug.

The bricking mechanism is to change the device's PID to zero. On Windows 7 and 8 the USB stack won't accept devices with a PID of zero, which is enforcing the spec. The ability to change the PID is provided so that OEMs can reprogram FTDI chips to use their own VID/PID pair.

I can't think of any reason why it would ever need to be set to zero, or could accidentally get changed. The change mechanism is likely protected in some way to prevent accidentally bricking the device, e.g. with a specific series of commands being required.

It's really, really simple.

Some women want to go into tech jobs, some even get into them and then leave. They say it is because of the environment they are faced with. The goal is to remove the barriers so that women who want to go into tech can. The problem will be addressed when those barriers are gone.

The straw man argument is to set goals based on numbers, but the absolute numbers and male/female ratio don't matter. The only way numbers are useful is in demonstrating that there used to be more women in tech and for some reason the numbers have declined, and we know what the reason is because you can simply ask those affected.

The fakes do use the FTDI logo and part numbers. They also use FTDI's VID/PID pair and usually ship with the FTDI driver. That doesn't excuse FTDI's actions of course, but these are proper fakes and not just compatible/second source parts.

The standard Windows CDC serial driver (usbser.sys) leaves a few things to be desired. It works, but can have issues with unexpected device disconnects and stuff that serial ports were never designed to do. It doesn't support GPIOs either, a common feature of FTDI chips. That's why other manufacturers rip off FTDI's driver and hardware.

The other major manufacturer of USB to serial converter ICs is Prolific, and they have also been widely cloned with inferior copies.

They will claim it was a bug. "Oops, your driver set the PID to zero, but our firmware rejects zero so we didn't notice. Shame those counterfeit firmwares accept it and brick themselves".

Actually, it's not really bricked. If you have an XP or Linux box you can reprogram it to something sensible.

Note I'm not defending them, it's still a dick move.

Nobody does, it's a straw man argument.

Maybe you are right, but it's irrelevant. Men want to be teachers, but men are put off being teachers by social factors. Therefore we should try to remove those social barriers, even if it's only for a small number of men.

Avoid Sandforce controllers. They rely on being able to compress data for spare capacity and don't cope well with full drives.

Mods, how can this unsubstantiated and extraordinary claim be "insightful"? It doesn't even mention what women are doing to cause this, let along provide any evidence or data to support it.

If that's true then yeah, it's a problem. Even bigger is the lack of male teachers in schools, particularly primary level. Young children need male role models, but very few men want to each the 4-7 year old range. Many more used to, but over the last couple of decades endless paedophile witch hunts have put them off.

There's probably some gender stereotyping going on too. Men really need to get liberated like women did in the 60s.

The majority of programming jobs in the UK still are. Very few require people to opt out of the Working Time Directive, and I'd certainly never accept a job that did.

While what you say is mostly true, it misses the point. Women want to go into tech. Some do, and then leave, some don't make it that far. They want to though, and in the past they used to much more often than they do now. When they do become programmers or admins they seem to do as good a job as men, and rationally there isn't really any reason why that wouldn't be the case since the jobs are mostly a question of learning and knowledge rather than say physical size or innate ability to visualize objects in space

So the only issue here is that women are put off entering tech jobs, and they tell us it is because of environmental/social factors. We can fix those things and get more tech workers, which apparently we need.