"Prepare for the steering wheel in new cars to work in exactly the opposite way, and for the brake pedal and accelerator to be active when released rather than pressed. Surely you won't get into much trouble on the road now that I've told you about that in advance."

nono its no use using a facetious quip. the gas can will now be on the passenger side, not the drivers side, but company b is putting them behing the rear driver plate. or wait the turn signal needs to be on the left side with the lights, no thats where we'll put the cruise control and the wiper blade activations. no wait lets move the lights to their own switch on the dash, no wait we need to put the wiper blades and the lights together...

had you used a real driver issue like the ones all real from above you would have gone further with the software/car analogy.

Actually, it covers LESS. It's just a "notification of recruitment" provision.

Executive Recruiting: Inform EMG of any Director level or above candidate who we have engaged and who is starting the interview process at Google Executive Recruiting: If we go to offer with a Director or above candidate, Staffing should inform EMG and EMG will designate a senior exec to place a courtesy call into the Sensitive company to let them know we have made an offer ...

General Recruiting: For any non-exec position, we should be aware the company is on the Sensitive Company list but there are no restrictions to our recruiting from these companies at junior levels.

Let's play a game, you name a 80s geek hero movie for every 80s action hero movie I name, ok?

Do we have to start or do you agree that I win?

Yes, there were a few "geeky" movies. But claiming that they have anything to do with women avoiding computer science is ridiculous. If anything, the 80s movies were misogynic in general. Women were stereotypically abused as either the love interest for the hero, the dumb idiot that gets the hero in trouble or needs to be rescued by him or the inefficient example of how women just can't do what the hero later has to fix.

Women in anything but romance/love stories were basically the same as geeks in 80s movies: The bumbling idiot that makes the hero look so much better.

Nobody could complain if they simply went and made their driver incompatible with the forged chips. If there is no working driver, then the customer would have to complain with the original maker of the hardware and demand a working driver. That's quite within FTDI's rights.

The point is that they attack the firmware of the device involved, which is by no accounts ok anymore. This isn't locking out a competitor, it's destruction of a competitor's hardware. Yes, that competitor didn't act correctly by trying to get a free ride. No doubt about that. By that logic, though, it's just a-ok for any printer maker to trash the printer (e.g. by hosing it with printer ink) should they detect that you use anything but their overpriced original stuff.

From the article:

The new driver for the FT232 exploits these differences, reprogramming it so it won’t work with existing drivers.
(emphasis mine)

So, yes, something is destroyed. Sure, you can undo the damage by writing new firmware to the chip... if you can somehow access it, that is. Have fun looking for the JTAG pins on it and I hope you enjoy soldering under a microscope.

Great idea. Will do. Just ... umm... how do I find out just WHICH controller chip is used in the USB stick I plan to buy?

I may not be the best example, considering that I have rather intimate knowledge of USB controller chips due to the nature of my work. I may actually be able to find out what controller chip is used in USB sticks. But because of this I can inform you that it is anything but trivial to find out just what controller is being used in a stick. Let's put it that way: Quite often finding it out involves ordering one and a good magnifying glass...

Even assuming that an average consumer knows what a controller chip is (quite unlikely), that one is used in an USB stick (it gets more unlikely) and he knows where to look for it and what to look for on it (now we're getting into the land of fairy tales), it's nearly impossible for him to even know whether he buys something with a "good" or forged chip. And the only way to find out involves disassembling the USB stick in a way that voids the warranty.

The real kicker is that I, someone who could actually find out whether he buys good or forged sticks, i.e. someone who might be at least somehow blamed for using forged goods, could actually maybe even recover the stick from its "bricked" status. Whereas someone who buys a stick in good faith because he has no other option would really now lose his data.

That's fair, eh?

With the PHB somehow becoming a judge?

Western media lost no time to put the blame on burying it squarely on Russia, with RT wasting no time declaring how the temple was originally built by Russian forces and how they will gladly provide archaeological aid to examine it. A convoy is already en route, of course it consists mostly of military material to ensure that any kind of necessary heavy duty equipment will be available. The west immediately complained and sent a contingent of a few thousand observers and advisers, just in case anything needs to be observed or anyone needs any kind of advice. After a few days of heated threats and accusations the only agreement is that nobody gets closer than 2 miles to the ruins until some sort of agreement can be achieved.

Ruins? Oh, right, a stray artillery strike hit the temple. In a rare case of unity both sides immediately agreed on who is to blame: THE OTHER SIDE!

Because they destroy a device of someone who doesn't even know about the bickering behind the scenes. If I have a restaurant and the customers of my competitor park on my parking lot I can tell them to get lost because it's my parking lot and I can decide who may and who may not use it. I may NOT, though, simply go there and trash their cars because, hey, they were parked on my ground.

Intentional and willful destruction of another person's property for the base reason that he didn't buy with you but with your competitor? I don't know about your country, but over here in socialist Europe we have consumer protection laws that deserve that name.

Agreed. As usual, the people don't matter in Washington. They ask for universal health care, they get Obamacare. They ask to hold the banks accountable, and the banks get a bailout. They ask for safety from terrorists, and they get the PATRIOT act and ubiquitous surveillance of their lives.

And that's my point.

No, there is no guarantee that the user will not use a mobile phone to access his online banking (and the idiocy of some banks pushing out mobile apps for online banking doesn't actually improve security in that area either).

You can't make the user secure. You can only offer it to him and hope that he's intelligent enough to accept it.

Yes, it's verbatim, but it's not the rule. You quoted an introduction to the rule. Here is the entire thing:

Based on the record,227 we propose a general rule prohibiting a broadband Internet access service provider from discriminating against, or in favor of, any content, application, or service, subject to reasonable network management. More specifically we propose the following new rule:

5. Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service must treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner.