Cannonballs and fence posts

Imagine a world that has unstoppable cannon balls. Once launched, the cannonball is not stopped, or even slowed, by anything it encounters. It continues on, even impervious to friction. Also imagine that this world has immovable fence posts. Once placed, and immovable fence post cannot be moved by any means. What happens when an unstoppable cannonball collides with an immovable fence post?

The riddle is not unrelated to the announcement of Google's Chromebook and its automatic updates.

Unlike Windows and Mac OSX, the Chromebook applies updates without asking for permission -- it finds them and loads them as a matter of its general operation. Windows and OSX (and even Linux) follow a different model, and inform the user of an update but allow the user to decline the update (or at least defer it).

System administrators for large corporations (and even medium-size ones) want the latter model. They want to ensure that their operations continue, and they want control over updates. A good systems administrator will test updates on a few systems before releasing it to the entire corporation.

But individuals (and possibly small companies) want automatic updates. For them, the workload of monitoring, testing, and releasing updates is a burden. They choose to trust the supplier, and gain the time and effort that would go into verifying updates.

So here we have the two opposing forces: automatic updates (the unstoppable cannonball) and controlled updates (the immovable fencepost).

The answer to the riddle is a bit of a let-down: It is not that one overpowers the other, but that the question is not valid. If such a thing as an unstoppable cannonball exists, then by definition there can be no such thing as an immovable fence post. (And vice-versa.)

The answer to the current debate about Chromebook and automatic updates is less clear. I expect that individuals will look favorably on automatic updates and large enterprises will continue to use the "test and then apply" method. I think the two can both exist in our world.

Look for consumer devices to adopt automatic updates. Look for commercial software to stay with manual updates. Software that bridges the two worlds (Linux) will allow users to set the update method.