this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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Why is the name of the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 hard-coded into the Bluetooth drivers? (devblogs.microsoft.com)
submitted 1 day ago by Pro@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
13 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/37592724

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[–] NotKyloRen@lemmy.zip 21 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (2 children)

The answer:

The device local name string is specified to be encoded in UTF-8. However, the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 reports its name as Microsoft⟪AE⟫ Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000, encoding the registered trademark symbol ® not as UTF-8 as required by the specification but in code page 1252. What’s even worse is that a bare ⟪AE⟫ is not a legal UTF-8 sequence, so the string wouldn’t even show up as corrupted; it would get rejected as invalid.

Thanks, Legal Department, for sticking a ® in the descriptor and messing up the whole thing.

There is a special table inside the Bluetooth drivers of “Devices that report their names wrong (and the correct name to use)”. If the Bluetooth stack sees one of these devices, and it presents the wrong name, then the correct name is substituted.

That table currently has only one entry.

I mean, I don't get how it's legal's fault when they're not the one's creating the firmware/programming, but sure let's blame them. It's the dev who verbatim copied and pasted the name from legal for whatever reason (even though a normal person wasn't going to check the firmware to see it).

[–] ratten@lemmings.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Thanks, Legal Department

Another reason why I have 0 respect for anyone working in legal departments for businesses. They are unnecessary and make things worse to justify their existence.

[–] vinnymac@lemmy.world 8 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

While I don’t know this is the case, I can say from experience that in large enterprise organizations compliance departments will and do actively prevent the release of features and even commits if they don’t comply.

While that’s not an excuse for challenging them, I could definitely see a stressed out mid level just trying to make there manager happy and move on with life.

[–] NotKyloRen@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 hour ago

Good explanation. Thank you.