Why keep it civil? Seems only fair for whoever came up with this plan to spend some time stamping out license plates for Uncle Sam.

You know, most of the time, the truth lies right in the middle of the fighting sides. Having seen two kids fighting over a toy a time or two, it is the toy that ends up suffering (broken, destroyed, damaged etc). Slapping the kids across the back of the head, and taking away the toy is often the only "real solution". Being a parent isn't easy, but the grownups sometimes need to simply smack the back of heads and issue a timeout.

And when it is the grownups are acting like children, the parent role becomes the easy target. "Don't tell me how to think or what to do". Please don't make excuses.

Note: I'm not taking sides in the GG debate. I have no idea what it actually is. Except that it involves Gamers who often act like little children.

Somalia!

Generally speaking, hurt feelings strike a nerve. Barking dogs don't strike a nerve, therefore don't hurt feelings. However trolls telling tramps that they are sluts hits a nerve. Hell, even my using those terms will get me in trouble because they elicit a certain negative connotation on the female gender (and done to illustrate a point). If a girl is secure in their sexuality, then no hurt feelings, but if a girl is not comfortable with their sexuality hurt feelings ensue.

Just to make it clear, I don't care about who people sleep with, that is their own fucking (pun intended) business.

The real defense to "hurt feelings" is thicker skin. Which can be learned. But instead, we've become a society of victims of "hurt feelings" and the outrage that is a result.

What is real, is that troll exist. Have existed for ever, and will exist into the foreseeable future. It would be much better use of time and energy helping people ignore trolls, than letting them get the best of us with their trolling.

Unless you are the sort of disconcertingly disciplined and organized person who sets up a monitoring and alerting system for their dinky little desktop, you probably aren't talking about 'the hard drive'. At a minimum, you are probably dealing with some flavor of RAID, or ZFS, or an iSCSI LUN farmed out by some SAN that does its own mysterious thing behind the expensive logo, or some other additional complexity. Flash SSDs are also increasingly likely to be involved, quite possibly along with some RAM caches in various places.

Why do we allow that, though? It's ok for companies to lie to you, as long as someone smart enough (i.e., someone who's learned through experience that advertising claims are unreliable) knows that they're lying. Sure, it makes the people who say such things feel better/superior for being "smarter than a gnat," but, at the heart of it, we're still saying it's ok for companies to mislead in order to take money, as long as they're cagey enough about it. Boo.

Queue up the "Somalia" thread here ...

Direct sales, when no franchise has been offered, is no business of the state to regulate. Great Job everyone on voting for idiots who like to control everything.

Vote Libertarian in two weeks.

So, you're okay with ID theft then as well. After all, opening up credit in your name didn't spend any of your money.

If you buy a Frod, thinking it is a Ford, you do. That is what happened here. Renault isn't counterfeiting Ford Cars or trucks.

Car analogy: If you bought a Frod, and took it to Ford Dealer and they put in a Motorcraft Oil Filer that damages your FROD because it isn't a Ford, is Ford Responsible because all you cared about was the Frod Car was cheaper on eBay?

It really doesn't matter. People lie.

Any sufficient level of incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

So, you're complaining because you got exactly what you paid for, why? I realize that you don't care about the chips inside, which is why you went cheap, because Rodex Watch keeps time just like a Rolex, looks like a Rolex even. You can't get mad at Rolex when your cheap watch doesn't work when you upgrade it using Rolex technology.

And you got that. You got exactly what you paid for. A cheap counterfeit.

According to the eevblog report, the newest driver behavior involves reprogramming the USB PID of the target to 0, not merely refusing to do useful work with it.

Quite likely recoverable with some knowledge, unless it managed to close the door behind it on any future PID modifications; but munging a USB device's PID is definitely a step above simply refusing to talk to it.

It is quite likely that the counterfeiters(at least the ones that actually stamp 'FTDI' on their products, or represent them as FTDI parts, I'm unconvinced that a VID:PID pair is a trademarkable thing) are committing 36 flavors of trademark infringement; but that still doesn't make it obvious that FTDI can just go all vigilante justice on them(much less on random people who may or may not know they were even using counterfeit chips).

Even when something is clearly recognized as a crime, the courts tend to take a somewhat dim view of those who go and dish out some extrajudicial punishment for it (typically with exceptions for things like self defense). Even when the law specifically defines transgressions that create a private right of action, the 'action' usually involves getting to sue the target, not take matters into your own hands.

A certain amount may end up riding on the meaning of 'component' and 'that component', as well. Sure, for a basic USB -> serial dongle the FTDI chip is practically the only component, with just a couple of cheap connectors and a passive or two; but there are some fairly expensive devices that are 'USB' because the manufacturer shoved a converter IC onto the previous generation serial design.

Even if FTDI finds a court that buys their right to destroy cloned chips by vigilante action(rather than by a copyright, patent, or trademark judgement in the appropriate venue), will they find one that is sympathetic when the device ruined is some fairly expensive bit of gear sold by a third party to a customer who didn't even know a USB bridge chip was involved?