Originally Posted by
unixrevolution
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I know that a camera on a shelf not taking pictures is still a camera, but a camera that never gets used might as well not be one. A car that can't start and never moves isn't an automobile, it's car-shaped iron furniture. Cameras that can't take pictures aren't cameras because they don't do what cameras do. Cameras that don't ever take pictures will soon become cameras that can't take pictures.
My dad and I both collect firearms. One of his guns is a never-fired, Nazi-marked Walther P38. It is a gun. It is a perfectly functional, working gun. But since its condition means I can never fire it without destroying what makes it special, it isn't a gun because I can't actually put ammunition through it. It is, functionally, not a gun.
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