Root Access - 2014-10-23 (page 2 of 2)

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5:24 PM

Looking back at the FTDI driver controversy

> The license only allows use of the Software with, and the Software will only work with Genuine FTDI Components. Use of the Software as a driver for a component that is not a Genuine FTDI Component may irretrievably damage that component. It is your responsibility to make sure that all chips you use the Software as a driver for are Genuine FTDI Components.

It's unlikely the last sentence would hold up in court.

It is often infeasible for the user to determine whether their assembled device contains a genuine or fake FTDI part.

This would be an undue burden on the end user and chances are good that it'll get thrown out as unconscionable in court.

Note: I am not a lawyer

@allquixotic it's rarely port 22 they try to target

Shifting the responsibility to the end user makes no sense and will cause users and device manufacturers to stop using FTDI parts altogether.

@DragonLord Their reputation is already plummeting.

That assumes the license was presented prior to installation. Given that the driver was pushed through Windows Update without an opportunity to review the license, users are likely to claim that they never agreed to the license at all.

@DragonLord What? What has that got to do with their reputation?

5:30 PM

@Bob It's just a further extension of the legal thinking here

Licence agreement or not, the action they took is causing massive damage to their reputation in the public (and industry) eye.

@DragonLord Yes, well, you replied to my comment, so...

5:45 PM

ltns

mail-archive.com/linux-usb@vger.kernel.org/msg50762.html

@Bob I hope Linus and Perry Hung (submitter of the patch) don't get sued by FTDI for this...

Hi guys

Finally working on overclocking my gaming desktop, btw. Put it off long enough.

Mainly because it's such a long, tedious process, and I never feel like spending so much time.

Got a friend to help and give tips though :P Got it as high as I can without bumping voltages. That's next.

3dmark.com/fs/3046232

6:02 PM

CPU score went up but GPU score went down. I wonder if it's a driver thing. Overclocking the CPU couldn't affect GPU performance, could it?
http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/3046232/fs/2600324

6:19 PM

@Bob: For some reason, I have an unshakable legal concern that the patch Perry Hung submitted could result in a lawsuit from FTDI

I've already sent a message through LKML regarding this possibility, advising that they should consult legal counsel before accepting it into mainline

I guess CPU overclocking wouldn't affect GPU.

Ok then.

@DragonLord On what grounds?

What licence is this driver provided under? Is it one of the public OSS licences?

Please don't take this as legal advice as I am not a lawyer, but the issue is that it could enable use of counterfeit equipment

GPLv2, apparently.

@DragonLord It could also be used for legitimate devices.

Yes, the code is open-source and meets legal requirements for inclusion into Linux,

@Bob I'm just concerned that they could end up getting sued, even if the lawsuit is baseless.

6:28 PM

Also, what makes a device counterfeit?

I am also not a lawyer, but it looks like counterfeit goods fall under trademark infringement.

Therefore, wouldn't it be perfectly valid to label a device as a clone as long as it's not claimed to be the device itself?

i.e. don't use the trademarks?

Or even a completely unlabeled device.

Then the other side of IP would be patents. But don't patents cover implementation?

As long as the device is a clean-room implementation, it would pass that, too.

There is also the misuse of FTDI's USB VID. That's not directly covered under any laws, AFAICT - it's an id governed by a private entity.

...well, FTDI could make a contributory liability trademark claim for enabling the use of counterfeit products, even if it allows the use of legally cloned products.

Really, the only "wrong" thing done by the "counterfeit" devices, as long as they don't use the trademark (many do), is using the VID.

That's primarily what I'm worried about.

Not that I support FTDI's actions, but this is a plausible legal action on their part and it should be brought up.

> The Supreme Court of the United States held that, even though material contributions and knowledge of the infringement are generally sufficient to establish secondary liability, in the case of infringing technology, contributory liability cannot be imposed unless the technology lacks substantial non-infringing uses.

Clones are common and not a problem. They are not marketed as the original device.

Counterfeits are marketed and marked as being the counterfeited device.

Clones have their own VIDs

6:34 PM

@BenRichards Unfortunately, this isn't always true

@BenRichards VIDs are not directly covered by law.

Trademarks are.

Think a USB charger that works with iPhones vs a USB charger that's labelled as being by Apple but isn't.

Of course, but I would expect a clone probably would have its own VID unless it's a "generic" with a "generic" driver.

I'm not 100% knowledgeable of course.

Even if FTDI has no basis for legal action, it's still possible that they would file a lawsuit anyway

Is there news that they will be?

Or want to?

I'm just worried for the Linux kernel developers.

6:36 PM

Why?

You've seen the crazy RIAA lawsuits...

What would they file a lawsuit against?

Specifically, against the developers who submitted and accepted the patch.

Oh read up. THe patch does what?

Reverses the behavior?

@BenRichards Enables the open-source driver to work with a different VID and PID pair.

6:38 PM

Gotcha. I dunno.

The patch enables the use of FTDI clone devices whose PID have been reset to 0000 by the official Windows driver.

That's why I have this legal concern.

@DragonLord There are also legitimate uses.

To me it doesn't sound like something you can do a lawsuit for. DMCA I think is for anti-circumvention schemes but I don't think it applies here, per se. They're bricking someone else's products, not their own.

I'm sure there exist a number of clones that don't fall under trademark infringement.

Clones are usually licensed, aren't they?

6:39 PM

7 mins ago, by DragonLord

...well, FTDI could make a contributory liability trademark claim for enabling the use of counterfeit products, even if it allows the use of legally cloned products.

@BenRichards Licensed in what way?

5 mins ago, by Bob

> The Supreme Court of the United States held that, even though material contributions and knowledge of the infringement are generally sufficient to establish secondary liability, in the case of infringing technology, contributory liability cannot be imposed unless the technology lacks substantial non-infringing uses.

The parts are reverse-engineered.

They license whatever protocol they're doing.

@DragonLord How can you say for sure?

I guess that covers proprietary protocols, really.

6:40 PM

My concern is that they could file a lawsuit anyway and try to lawyer their way through it.

@Bob zeptobars.ru/en/read/FTDI-FT232RL-real-vs-fake-supereal

More specifically, how can you be certain that the implementation is reverse-engineered (which could potentially infringe on patents)?

@DragonLord Reverse engineering has existed for a long time. AMD started by selling clones of Intel's processors by clean room reverse engineering Intel's chips. :P

@DragonLord That does not show that the implementation was reverse-engineered.

It is perfectly valid to reverse-engineer the USB protocol (which is really the only thing special about these chips) and create a clean-room implementation.

Am9080 is a CPU manufactured by AMD. It was originally produced without license as a clone of the Intel 8080, reverse-engineered by Shawn Hailey, Kim Hailey and Jay Kumar by photographing an early Intel chip and developing a schematic and logic diagrams from the images. In initial production, the chips cost about 50 cents to make, yielding 100 chips per wafer, and were sold into the military market for $700 each. The first versions of the Am9080 became available in April 1974. This CPU operated at a speed of 2 MHz. Later, an agreement was made with Intel to become a licensed second source for the...

@DragonLord In fact, these images appear to show a considerably different implementation.

6:43 PM

As I said, the concern is a potentially costly bogus lawsuit

@DragonLord Which will further alienate FTDI from their customers. And there's a pretty high probability the EFF or similar will help defend.

@Bob I guess we'll see what happens. I'll be watching the relevant LKML thread...

7:18 PM

Hi all. Just reached 2k rep on SU and started reviewing first questions. I ran into a question with three downvotes. I'd like to see who downvoted it - to see if the downvoters left some message in the comments or if it was just some other user commenting. I can't find this feature. It is there? (and: can I ask such questions here?)

7:31 PM

@agtoever Voting is intentionally anonymous.

Unless a commenter explicitly says something about their vote, you should not make assumptions.

For example, I often comment on downvoted posts. Many of those occasions, I do not downvote the post myself.

You can search on Meta Super User and Meta Stack Exchange for previous discussions on anonymous voting.

13

A: Can I see who voted on my posts? Can anyone?

This has been discussed before on Meta Stack Overflow. Essentially, no. You cannot see who voted for you or anybody else, and nor can the moderators. Only Stack Exchange employees with direct database access can see individual votes. Voting is specifically designed to be anonymous.

6

A: Downvoting a question should require a comment/upvote of a comment

This has been requested hundreds of times in the history of Stack Exchange. The Stack Exchange founders and team are adamant that voting shall always be anonymous. Requiring a comment to downvote would remove that anonymity. Changes were made to remind people to leave a comment when downvoting, ...

103

A: See Who is Upvoting/ Downvoting My Question/Answer

No Voting is anonymous and not even the moderators have access to this information. The only people I suspect that can see is Jeff and the team. From the comments: Voting data is made anonymous before the data dump is done so this information is not available in the data dump. Clarification T...

53

A: Is there a way to see who voted on your posts?

No, voting is anonymous. The only way you will find out who voted for you is if someone decides to leave a comment saying so and maybe their reason. This doesn't mean they couldn't be lying also. (To tell if, and how, you voted on a specific post, your votes are stored in a database. And of cou...

I think you made your point :P

@MichaelFrank No! Must. Link. MORE!

7:54 PM

Thanks Bob.

@Bob Don't you ever run out of links?

(referring to this)

correct reply: Non. I work at ze link factory!

@allquixotic s/I/Because I/

Also, s/Don't you ever/You ever going to/

/pedant

:P

Urk. Attempting to do... things... with OpenGL.

8:13 PM

@allquixotic It's interesting how the long form of "don't" doesn't work in that sentence at all.

8:39 PM

Where does XP keep codec files?

Is it even accessible?

@MichaelFrank msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/…

Looks like there's a listing at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectShow\Preferred

Yay GUIDs

The value data GUID is a CLSID, and you can find the library path by searching for it. Should come up in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\

The value name GUID... no idea.

(BTW, these values appear in other places, so it's probably not a good idea to change them)

nirsoft.net/utils/installed_codec.html

^ probably safer

> InstalledCodec extract the information from 2 places in the Registry:

The Codec drivers list is loaded from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32
The DirectShow filters list is loaded from HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{083863F1-70DE-11d0-BD40-00A0C911CE86}\Instance

@Bob Yea.. that's not allowed. :P

9:04 PM

I ended up checking installed codecs in device manager and they were identical on the working and non-working machines. I think it's due to the video using some silly GoToMeeting codec...

9:48 PM

Low-hanging fruit for smart people in Windows 7: superuser.com/q/830842/24010

9:59 PM

Skipped. The low hanging fruit is out of my reach.

@CanadianLuke I didn't have to add any extra print servers to see all the printers on my network when I tried this.

It's to manage local printers, although currently connected via a TCP/IP port on the computers

USB local?

No, TCP/IP printers

Ahh I see. So Teacher X says "My printer isn't working properly!" and you remotely connect to her machine with Print Management and take a look?

10:09 PM

That's what I'd like...

Currently, I can push out new printers, but I want to also remove old printers too

10:26 PM

Can you see the printers you've pushed out if you reconnect to that machine?

10:38 PM

I push them out via a script. I can see the list of many printers if I use the .VBS scripts Microsoft include, but they give way too much information. I'd much rather use the MMC

Yea... I can't even see my own local printers when the MMC lol

Oh, I can

10:54 PM

→ 16 messages moved to Ask a Super User Moderator

Thanks @DragonLord

Dropping out of this chatroom to continue the discussion on chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/114/ask-a-super-user-moderator

move me back :<

Did DragonLord just serial downvote this guy?

superuser.com/users/134397/jponce?tab=reputation

@MichaelFrank Side-effect of spam flags.

Quite a serious side-effect, too.

In this case, @DragonLord, you really should be flagging for mod-attention, not as spam.

@MichaelFrank Because I'm not a mod on SU, I can't answer that. Because you're asking about voting patterns of users, I can't answer that

@CanadianLuke Understood.

10:58 PM

Flag-as-spam works better when posts are considered in isolation.

Either way, they get dealt with. If it's seen as just serial voting, it'll be reversed soon anyways

@CanadianLuke I'm not sure spam-flag downvotes are reversed at all.

Spam auto-downvotes technically come from the Community account

(And therefore frivolous spam flags are abuse of the system - not saying if that's the case here or not, but just generally)

@Bob they aren't; that's why I said if it's serial downvoting :)

10:59 PM

superuser.com/users/-1/community

Forgive me if this was erroneous

I've never encountered this situation before

Also, network-wide consensus seems to lean more on the side of considering each answer separately.

I'm not sure why SU/MSU is so different.

Sorry for the repeated flags if it was inappropriate

Yeah, probably should have used a mod attention flag

The SU mods aren't around at this time

My two cents: if an answer is a valid answer to the question, and disclosure is provided, it really shouldn't matter if that's all the user does - provided they aren't absolutely flooding answers.

Does it really matter if they choose not to provide other answers, as long as their presence is beneficial?

Has he committed any actions that could be harmful to SU?

It's a slippery slope.

It is.

11:05 PM

If we condone this conduct, others could jump on board and flood the site with promotional answers, even if they are relevant.

This is why I'm leaning towards a "no" for this user's actions and would recommend a suspension.

Hm.

When compared against the more unscrupulous variety who full-on spam, usually with unregistered accounts, I'd have to say I'd rather encourage this type of promotional behaviour.

Spam is spam, and the Stack Exchange team has worked so hard to prevent gaming the system.

I really have to say this posting pattern should result in a 14-day suspension.

@DragonLord We don't ban self-promotion entirely either, though. Where would you draw the line?

@Bob If a majority (>50%) of answers are promotional, and the user has posted at least six answers, a warning or suspension is warranted.

@DragonLord Considering he's posted about three times in the last year, that's rather ineffectual. Most of his answers are in one short period early on.

Actually, he might've already been warned at that point.

11:09 PM

In this case, all 18 answers are promotional and a suspension should be strongly considered.

A 30-day or longer suspension may be appropriate in this case.

@DragonLord What about this one, for example? The majority of that answer is unrelated to his product, and could stand alone. He's still providing useful information independent of his product. Is that really bad?

This is all a rather massive grey area, of course.

@DragonLord the only slippery is the answers, it does look more like spam first, and answer squeezed in the side. there have been very vested interest users existing on sites, and they are very helpful then might indicate to check their profile, where their product is listed. but generally they were interested in help first.

(The rest of his answers are rather more promotional, yes. I'm just questioning if this type of answer, ignoring the others, is bad if there's a large number of them.)

The issue is that it would have unexpected effects not anticipated by the Stack Exchange platform or its communities.

I'd rather not go down that path.

FYI, I will be AFK for a bit

11:42 PM

wtf

PlanetSide 2 was trying to download a 10 GB update through Steam...

I was wondering why everything was so slow

I don't even play that game!

Journeyman Geek

11:53 PM

@DragonLord: eh, on the balance of things a gentle warning would do IMO

So, I'm going to reject those flags, just to avoid what I'd consider an unintended concequence

@Bob at least they care enough to keep it going :-)

Pinging 8.8.8.8 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=154ms TTL=44

Pinging 8.8.4.4 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 8.8.4.4: bytes=32 time=155ms TTL=44

Pinging tpg.com.au [203.26.27.38] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 203.26.27.38: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=121

@Bob 10GB? wow...

Something's stuffed with the routing to Google public DNS :P

Halo 5 has something like a 25GB day one patch.

11:59 PM

@MichaelFrank Ya. I just deleted the game. Stupid auto-updates. I think I installed it a couple years ago, launched it once, and abandoned it.

  6    17 ms    16 ms    15 ms  66.249.95.226
  7   113 ms   113 ms   112 ms  209.85.249.52
  8   119 ms   126 ms   119 ms  209.85.243.164
  9   150 ms   149 ms   150 ms  209.85.242.56
 10   162 ms   154 ms   155 ms  209.85.243.21
 11     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 12   153 ms   155 ms   154 ms  google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]

welp.

@JourneymanGeek ahh kick his a$$ the user/spammer knows what he is doing he could very well be a valuable asset and edit his stuff to be cleaner and less spam like and still helpful, but he isn't going to revert it without some stern warning. Note that some questioners did not even find his answer to be on topic for the problem they had.

That... that's within Google's network

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