Seems like a feature to me.<p>Worried about the NSA or other nefarious forces tapping your mic or webcam? Worry not! This mainstream, off-the-shelf laptop will terminate its internet connection the moment someone tries to access its webcam! If that hasn't stopped it, the laptop will dutifully reset itself. Purism ain't got nothin' on this.
> my mental model of causality was limited to the design of the machine - software interfaces and physical connections - and was completely missing the possibility of non-intentional interactions via the physical world.<p>I love hearing of stories like this. Similar line of thought to my personal favorite interview question: ""What happens when you type google.com into your browser and press enter?" (Answer in as much depth as you like.)"<p><a href="https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when</a>
When you write software at any level on top of the OS the number of possible causes for bugs starts out at unmanageable. If you allow for unreliable hardware, the possible cause count rises to unthinkable. As a result, I prefer to pretend that hardware doesn't exist when at all possible.<p>I used to work in firmware, and spending hours chasing down a software bug only to find that it was a hardware issue, and vice versa is a maddening process.
Reminds me of <a href="http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles" rel="nofollow">http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles</a><p>> "We can't send mail more than 500 miles," the chairman explained.
I was wondering if this would be about how having your laptop open in a meeting is bad form on a few different levels (distracting, signaling, body language)