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On Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:53:10 +0100,
Sandman <mr@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> In article <1618460.YlFgd8tChT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> __/ [ Sandman ] on Monday 15 January 2007 10:58 \__
>>
>> > In article <1278663.qzH5zGyIZt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
>> > Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Apple/NVidia Driver Bug -- Question Deleted
>> >>
>> >> ,----[ Quote ]
>> >> | When playing 3D games (World of Warcraft mainly), the game would
>> >> | Kernel Panic the machine if I had played it for a few hours, or if
>> >> | I swapped in and out of the game a few times, etc. I eventually
>> >> | found out (from an official Blizzard poster) that NVidia has a bug
>> >> | in their drivers that kernel panics a Mac Pro if any memory past the
>> >> | 2GB boundary is addressed in the driver.
>> >> `----
>> >>
>> >> http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/14/211242&from=rss
>> >>
>> >> In the past, NVidia even had a critical vulnerability in their binary
>> >> drivers, which exposed the kernel to attacks.
>> >
>> > And had it not been a binary driver, this gamer would just rewrite the
>> > source and recompile the driver and then continue his game?
>>
>> No, the criticism one has in these circumstances (this relates to the NSA's
>> 'gift' to Vista) is that intent is unknown and a small room of developers
>> can keep secrets. When you have pairs of eyes in multiple companies and
>> cities (think Linux kernel, for instance), then the secret is harder to keep
>> and the knowledge is more diverse, which leads to identification of bugs and
>> avoidance of interests of a single company being served (exclusively).
>>
>> Let me illustrate this. This morning, for example, on the WordPress hackers
>> mailing list, one guy spotted a glitch in a new patch. Many of us receive a
>> list of patches by E-mail and sometimes we dicuss them, having glanced at
>> the diff (there's wp-hackers and wp-testers, among other lists). Okay, I'm
>> drifing off topic here, but the point to make is that NVidia keeps its
>> secret sauce (or source) in house and doesn't enable an army of volunteers
>> to help, even is only by proposal. Many of these volunteers are concerned
>> users who put the programs on their mission-critical servers. It's only
>> natural to be curious, skeptic, concerned, and involved. Transparency gives
>> peace of mind, _as well as_ better quality. Want no contributions? Then
>> fine. Ignore the patches and bug reports. Lose cusotmers at will..
>
> That's all fine and nice, but Nvidia isn't loosing customers to
> open-source alternatives, are they?
Last I heard, the largest manufacturer of video chipsets was Intel with
their low-midrange embedded stuff that most mobos seem to come with, and
yes, intel has opensource drivers for most of that line.
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--
Jim Richardson http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
Those who live by the sword are shot by those who don't.
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