On Aug 9, 2006, at 3:16 PM, Jane Blake Acree asked: > Have to wonder about this third-party wireless card they used. > > What do you think, Lee?
A lot of third-party drivers are buggy. It's unfortunate in this case that the headlines made it sound like an Apple problem. Apple is asking for such coverage with the hubris shown in its Mac dude versus Windows dork ad campaign. Here's the way a lot of the third-party drivers for devices get written: Company A makes a new whatzit gadget based on a new whatzit chip from Company B. Company C knows there will be many companies making whatzits based on the chips from Company B, so they write a generic driver program for the chip and sell customized versions of it to Compaany A and Company A's competitors. This could mean almost every whatzit out there is using the code from Company C. Now, suppose there's a bug in the whatzit code from Company C, or the chip from Company B has a weakness. An exploit may work on most whatzits. This exact thing happened last year to companies using BroadComm Ethernet controller chips and some years before that to Intel on its original EEPRo100 Ethernet cards. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 2398 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.math.louisville.edu/pipermail/macgroup/attachments/20060809/770c688c/attachment.bin
