Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
Uh, most people don't have router firewalls... and how is Kobo supposed to know when you do?
That being said, Amazon has wisely avoided the issue by not demanding frivolous checks for Kindle firmware updates. When an update is available it will try to auto-update, but that is entirely independent of the other firmware components. Logging in on old firmware works just fine -- as it should.  |
yes, I am surprised that KOBO doesn't allow mildly older firmware to 'sync'.
It's just a small oversight.
But, not everyone owns their own internet connection, either; so I don't know if "most" people is a reality.
You may be right, or at least I'd bet that the kobo developers aren't behind firewalls...
But, I know lots of Kids are at their parents mercy with "parental" controls in place as many DSL's have those now if the parents care to set them up ... and sometimes people live in a large apartment high-rise / commercial building where the connection is supplied by the owner of the building; (Hotels very commonly do this, too); and if the building has its own PBX, as is common at college campuses, dorms, etc. the only other option may require a cell phone which is both expensive, and not always compatible as an AP.
So those of us being forced to deal with firewalls, at least for most of the day, is a significant number of people.
As for Detecting a firewall ; that's simple:
Most firewalls actually send a web page saying "forbidden" when you try to download a file that's not allowed. That's generally true of windows servers, and linux servers alike.
What is certain is that it WONT allow the firmware to download, but will allow webpages to load. So, that alone -- is a sufficient test to warn the user that there is potential firewall interference.
If I had known what was wrong, I would have tried other places wifi connections until I found one that wasn't blocked; quite possibly the local library which is anti-censorship, would have been a good bet ; but not the local grocery store or coffee shop, both of which it turns out are firewalled against most internet services, except basic http.
I can think of a really simple solution, too-- if I were running a firmware upgrade site; eg: firewalls don't block epub books, or other text files (html) from downloading, so if KOBO just used unix's uuencode program to turn their firmware into text, and then published their firmware as an epub book; the Kobo could download it without incident.