Bwahahah

Posted Oct 31, 2011 21:11 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

These devices certainly do allow updates to be reverted.

Technically - yes, they can. But then they next picture you'll see on TV when you'll connect them to network is "please wait while system update is installed". IOW: revert capability is only there to assist in upgrade process, it's not designed to be used by end-user (except when directed by tech support to "properly" upgrade device).

Further more cable boxes are often owned by the cable company, not the subscriber, and they certainly do test and read changelogs before updating their own hardware.

Does not make any difference in all cases I've encountered: yes, you can buy the box - but this only affects you monthly payments, if you buy it you can do whatever you want with it till you connect it to cable network. But if you do want to connect it to cable network - you automatically agree to install network's firmware.

Who owns the system, who is responsible for doing the maintenance?

These are two different question - and they naturally have different answers. That's true for plumbing, electric wiring, cars and so on... so why should it be the same for computers and gadgets?

That's the person who wants access to manage revisions and read changelogs although certainly they decide to just apply changes as they become available. Having a robust mechanism makes that easier.

Right, but how to help the guy who actually does maintenance is separate issue from how to push updates to end-user. Even there changelogs are not all that helpful: someone who's responsible for pushing updates to end-user does not need to know what changes are there, s/he only needs to know what can go wrong and how to fix the problems.