Safety? I mean, duh, we're talking about a potentially lethal disease and bedsheets worth a few cents.

Come back when they start burning the mattresses.

...provided you're in the presence of something or someone that can transmit it. Before you go full bore on panic mode, realize that we are talking about a low single digit cases in the US and that Ebola is, at least to our current knowledge, only contagious when symptoms are displayed.

In other words, as long as you're not an idiot you should be fine. As for the rest, well, Darwin should be allowed to be right from time to time.

Becaues the average I-beam is more easy to spot than the average virus. It's trivial to know whether you're protected from an I-Beam (is that hard hat on? Yes? You are), but not whether you're protected against viral matter (is your hazmat suit tight? You sure? Are you?)

It's not easy to catch for the average person. Hmm... how to draw a parallel that the average /. reader can understand...

If your job is to solder tiny parts into electronics, getting burned by a soldering iron is quite easy if you're not careful. It's rather unlikely to impossible for the average person on the street to get a soldering burn.

Likewise, if you're working with people who are infectious on a daily base and have to handle their highly contagious blood, urine, feces, saliva and other stuff the average person not only finds yucky but wouldn't want to get near if paid to do so, you can get infected easily if you're not careful, while for the average person who has zero if not less contact to either contagious people or their bodily substances the risk is far lower, if not nonexistent.

And every time he farts we get to hear it as news?

Hey! No "your mom" jokes here!

But ... who should back it, and why? Who has a financial interest in you actually retaining a figment of privacy?

What you just said is for the average computer user about on par with using a JTAG interface. If you can't walk it's moot whether you should climb 2 or 20 stairs.

Umm... how do these forged drivers get the blessing from MS to be considered drivers that you can install without clicking through half a dozen "this is not the driver you're looking for" screens?

Instead of ending a politician's career, end his life. The penalty is the same, so why bother with the lesser crime?

Wait! What? There's a country where it's legal to hunt politicians for sport? Where? And more important, how can we introduce that concept here?

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?