Driverless Devices

The term 'driverless' is partially inaccurate, but this is at least what ZyXEL brand it as.
Some ZD1211 devices come with the driver included on some kind of flash memory. When you plug these devices into a system for the first time, the device appears as a CDROM drive.
There is a virtual CD inside this virtual CDROM drive, which contains the windows driver. Upon insertion to a windows PC, this CDROM autoplays, and the windows driver is automatically installed. Soon after, the CDROM drive mysteriously disappears, and a networking device pops up in its place. On all future plugins, the WLAN device appears right away.

Quoted from http://zd1211.ath.cx/wiki/DriverlessDevice
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Years and years and YEARS ago, I had this idea; that drivers should be stored on flash memory INSIDE the device. Admittedly, I didn't think of the "virtual CD-ROM autoplay" bit - I just thought that the operating system itself would have to have some way of detecting the driver in the Flash memory, and transparently install it.

I should have patented this idea. As it is, let's hope that more hardware manufacturers build in this kind of feature, and make sure it's compatible with Linux without the cludgy solution detailed on that page.