Comparing closed firmware with general purpose OS is bogus [LWN.net]

Comparing closed firmware with general purpose OS is bogus

Posted Jan 19, 2007 13:49 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307)
In reply to: Comparing closed firmware with general purpose OS is bogus by pascal.martin
Parent article: LCA: Andrew Tanenbaum on creating reliable systems

Only for your information, there are plenty of DVD players out there that
are firmware-upgradable. I happen to have one of those (Philips model 5100
IIRC -- I am at the office right now), and its firmware has its bugs (*),
but you can write a firmware image unto a CD-R, boot it, and it will
reflash the player.

(*) mostly, rendering problems (pixelations on some type of DivX movies)
and caption positioning problems...

Those that read Spanish, can take a look at http://dvp5100.blogspot.com/

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Comparing closed firmware with general purpose OS is bogus--not!

Posted Jan 24, 2007 2:26 UTC (Wed) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link]

Only for your information, there are plenty of DVD players out there that are firmware-upgradable.

Sure there are. And there are plenty of operating systems and other such pieces of software that offer upgrades to new versions, too, where you can trade in your old bugs for new ones.

Which reinforces the point, that Tanenbaum's analogy that a common household appliance like a TV is somehow inherently more reliable than a computer or a piece of software, is false. As such appliances incorporate full working computers into them, running complex pieces of software, they inevitably become just as unreliable as our PCs. Nobody is immune to writing buggy code.

Comparing closed firmware with general purpose OS is bogus

Posted Jan 27, 2007 22:54 UTC (Sat) by pascal.martin (guest, #2995) [Link]

Thanks. My mother is 80 years old, and never used a computer.

I am not sure I want to tell her to upgrade the DVD firmware. I found that not using any menu worked. So my DVDs now behaves like old VHS tapes :-)

The point is: DVD firmware hell makes the original claim ("DVD just work") look silly.