Ivan's XO Field Upgrade Proposal

[Mike C. Fletcher]

John (J5) Palmieri wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-06-26 at 12:32 -0400, Dan Williams wrote:
>   
...
> We Also have to remember the countries want control over when the boxes
> update.  At least that was the impression I got at the country meetings.
>   
This is a concern, no?  In cases of regime change and the like, can a 
particular user opt out of the upgrades somehow?  Although it's a good 
idea to have the laptops automatically update themselves by default I'm 
somewhat concerned if a new regime coming in can disable all of the 
laptops in the country, or force them to install something that the 
users themselves don't want.

This concern is one of the reasons I want to allow for overlay file 
systems for the Core Operating System images, the install may be 
downloaded and automatically installed, but if it does something nasty 
the child can disable that overlay and potentially decide to move to a 
different update source (e.g. change countries) using the security 
configuration UI mechanism (or whatever).

On a less tin-foil-hat note, I would be most comfortable if all system 
updates were notifying the user and allowing them (again, likely part of 
the security UI) to temporarily delay an update.  30 kids in the middle 
of a video-capture-and-editing activity for the school play that's 
taxing their systems and their network to the limit are going to be a 
little upset if the board of education decides that's the moment to 
start a whole-system update.

Just a thought,
Mike

-- 
________________________________________________
  Mike C. Fletcher
  Designer, VR Plumber, Coder
  http://www.vrplumber.com
  http://blog.vrplumber.com