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Benevolent Hacker

Submitted by Jim Brown on September 19, 2007 - 7:50am.

David Maynor figured out a way to hijack Macs via a flaw in the Wireless driver. He's released his hack "for public scrutiny" and "hopes to help other Apple researchers with new documentation on things like Wi-Fi debugging and the Mac OS X kernel core dumping facility."

This is, of course, nothing new. Hackers are often motivated by better design (rather than nefarious activities.) Such stories get a lot of play on Slashdot, but it seems that a similar story in the New York Times or the Washington Post would be covered much differently.

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"The atoms, as their own weight bears them down plumb through the void, at scarce determined times, in scarce determined places, from their course decline a little- call it, so to speak, mere changed trend. For were it not their wont thuswise to swerve, down would they fall, each one, like drops of rain, through the unbottomed void; and then collisions ne'er could be nor blows among the primal elements; and thus nature would never have created aught."

-Lucretius, Of The Nature of Things

About Me

My name is Jim Brown and I'm a Ph.D. Candidate in Rhetoric at the University of Texas. I teach courses in Rhetoric, Literature, and New Media. This blog mostly focuses on my academic work, but you'll also find occasional posts about music or baseball. I also maintain two other blogs, and you can see all of my blog writings by viewing this RSS feed. I'm a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. This lets you know that I'm kind of a masochist and explains the name of my dog.

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