__/ [ Sandman ] on Monday 15 January 2007 11:53 \__
> 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?
They are not gaining any, either. When the above hits the front page of
Slashdot, many people will have a reason to turn over to the ATi shelf. An
Open Source community could not only help Nvidia's image, but also the
quality of its product/s.
--
~~ Best regards
Roy S. Schestowitz | "The speed of time is one second per second"
http://Schestowitz.com | Open Prospects ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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