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Ars Technica reports
A second-tier German professional basketball team has been relegated to an even lower tier as a result of being penalized for starting a recent game late—because the Windows laptop that powered the scoreboard required 17 minutes to perform system updates.
The March 13 match between the Chemnitz Niners and the Paderborn Baskets was set to begin normally, when Paderborn (the host) connected its laptop to the scoreboard in the 90 minutes leading up to the game.
In an interview with the German newspaper, Die Zeit (Google Translate), Patrick Seidel, the general manager of Paderborn Baskets said that at 6:00pm, an hour and a half before the scheduled start time, the laptop was connected "as usual."
"But as both teams warmed up, the computer crashed," he said. "When we booted it again at 7:20pm, it started automatically downloading updates. But we did not initiate anything."
After all the updates were installed, Paderborn was ready to start the game at 7:55pm.
By the end of the match, Paderborn won 69-62. But then Chemnitz formally protested, saying that because Paderborn had delayed the start time of the match by 25 minutes (instead of the 15-minute maximum as allowed under the German basketball rules), they should be penalized. As a result, Paderborn lost another point in the standings (Google Translate), according to a Basketball Budesliga press release, which meant that it would certainly be relegated to the "ProB" league of German pro basketball.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday April 08 2015, @03:01PM
Only counterfeit FTDI chips are "bricked". Also that update has been rolled-back and no more chips (counterfeit or not) will be bricked.
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(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday April 09 2015, @12:43AM
But trust in Microsoft, FTDI and automatic updates were bricked permanently.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday April 09 2015, @01:27AM
True.. maybe Microsoft and FTDI wised up and decided nuking their customer's stuff isn't really the brightest way to enforce digital "rights".
But someone *did* go through all the effort to make chip-nuking software and release it.
By now, every script kiddie and hacker has a copy of it, disassembled, and knows how to use it.
The stuff I build is industrialized Arduino-compatibles. I take the issue of resilience *very* seriously. Because *I* am the one my customers are going to be mad at if it stops working, and I am not "businesslike" enough to hide behind hold harmless clauses. If MY stuff does not work, I fix it. Pure and simple.
Since that debacle, I no longer solder USB to serial interface chips on a board. I simply no longer trust them. I will use a tossable download cable instead.
I know I can reload an Arduino-compatible bootloader anytime I want ( Thank you, Bill Westfield, for designing and sharing your OptiLoader! ) via the SPI/ISP port I design on all my stuff, and still trust my I2C and SPI chips.
I work with smaller companies who do not yet have the resources, patience, or legal framework to play or design with the big boys. Mostly, I work with machines that need a very simple digital supervisor to execute a procedure 24/7/365. Sensing something, controlling something. And it has to be extremely reliable. No-one I deal with wants to flip the power switch on and the thing doesn't go.
I found the Arduino framework ideal for implementing such low-level stuff as it used a lot of the same things I had for years done under DOS. I used to write all my stuff in Borland C++ for DOS. The Arduino framework uses the same language. Since the advent of things line X-port TCP/IP and ALFAT USB interfaces, I can talk to the big boys but do not have to have the overhead of being a big boy. I can still sit in the micropower range and do my simple thing, collecting results, and chucking them back to the big boys for analysis and report generation. I just mind the machine. And if the big boy is not around, I can still run the machine, storing anything the big boy might want on USB sticks or flash until the big boy is available.
One of my favorite things about the Arduino is a lot of kids know it, and its easy to show them how to use my thing. My thing is designing the hardware. I will show my customer how the thing works, what chips I used, and sample drivers, but when it comes to implementing exactly what the customer wants it to do, often he is in a far better position to write his own code. Its quite easy. Documentation of Arduino programming is very available. High school kids do it all the time. I will teach them, and let them take it from there. They can make the machine I build for them do exactly what they want it to do. I will write code that does what they want, but its my belief they should be able to season it to taste. Criminey - they bought the machine - it should do whatever they program it to do.
About the last thing either me or my customers want is some script loose that wipes out the interface chips. FTDI wrote one. If I dealt in finicky machines subject to a variety of viruses and backdoors, I would not be dealing with things as simple as Arduinos.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday April 09 2015, @01:44PM
Yes, but how many companies are buying their chips direct from FTDI? Quite easy to buy a part through Mouser or whatever thinking it's genuine, and it turns out it isn't and your product gets bricked.
And the update was rolled-back by Microsoft, but you have no idea whether every one of your customers has removed it. There's certainly the possibility that it's still out there and active somewhere.