Chip manufacturer FTDI accused of bricking counterfeits -- my call to their engineer
https://plus.google.com/+LaurenWeinstein/posts/JuWxAEk7xDR (This post on Google+) I just spoke by phone to a senior engineer ("Bob") at FTDI U.S.A. regarding reports of counterfeit FT232 chips being bricked by a new version of a driver recently released by FTDI (See: Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8493849). I am sorry to report that he became extremely defensive and refused to speak further when I asked if this was a purposeful act on the company's part. He told me to read their license agreement and that he couldn't say more. I noted to him that this left the definite impression that we were talking about a purposeful act -- after all, most users of hardware never see the license agreements for embedded chips and don't know if they are counterfeit or not. At that point he became flustered, said he would not speak further, and said all queries had to go to their UK headquarters. Draw your own conclusions, folks. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy I am a consultant to Google -- I speak only for myself, not for them. Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com _______________________________________________ pfir mailing list http://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir
