In the future, everything is a computer. This has consequences.

[brooksmoses]

Yesterday, when I was at a model car show, I discovered one of the annoyances that happens when one is living in The Future, as we currently seem to be doing. I turned on my camera, and it didn't seem to be working quite right, and fairly quickly got itself into a state where it wouldn't retract the lens and just kept going through the boot process repeatedly.

So, after poking at it a bit and discovering that resetting it didn't fix the problem, I reinstalled the firmware, and that seems to have fixed it.

But it's a camera. Since when do cameras have software crashes that need to be fixed by reinstalling the operating system?

Comments

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

Since the fundamental perversity of the universe was installed.

Er, wait. Maybe later than that.

[bethzebra.livejournal.com]

I realized we'd reached this point a few years ago, when I went into a bookstore which had a small coffee shop (not a Barnes and Noble, a much smaller operation) and decided I wanted a cappuccino. When I asked for one, I was told I'd have to wait for a minute or two, as the coffee maker was rebooting. And sure enough, it was - it was a single machine which made many different kinds of coffee automatically with a computer onboard to control it and they'd needed to do a hard reboot to fix a problem.

If coffee makers can reboot, I can't see why cameras can't have operating systems. I'm kind of surprised toothbrushes don't need regular security-related updates.

Re: In the future, everything is a computer. This has consequences.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

now i want to know whether anyone is running linux on their digicam. :)

[mayaknife.livejournal.com]

Isn't this more or less a summation of the main critique of the Strategic Defense Initiative?