Darn shoddy development procedures if you ask me.

But it's such a fun name, don't NOT use it because of me. :)

It was actually a dual purpose name. He was a little mischievous as a kitty, so Loki fit, but he also had a very very quiet meow, so he was also "low-key" har har.

His name suits him, he's still as mischievous as ever.

Incidentally, I was going to name my next cat Loki...now I'll have to think of something else!

So they put them in kids cameras? "Hold on honey, let me just hook up your camera to this vital military computer."

Thanks, I thought it was a pretty neat idea, but of course I would. :-)

I have said for many years I don't want my money going to China so they can use it to build up their military. Another angle I never thought about until I read someone mention it is the factories that are closing. China now produces 1/2 of the world's products. If we have to go to war again, we won't have the manufacturing capacity we did in WW I and WW II. One big reason we won those wars was we quickly CONVERTED EXISTING FACTORIES into war products factories. Without those factories, we will be dependent on other countries for war supplies. Other countries will have the same problem. If we are at War with China, where will we get the supplies?

She doesn't totally get looking at the LCD to aim the shot. She knows how to look at pictures she's already taken on it, but as for centering the shot she sort of just eyeballs it. A lot of her pictures are pretty off center, but sometimes I put them up anyway because that adds to the intrigue.

As for the captions... that's where we get to take a little creative liberty as the parents. She needs to get a better vocabulary first. :-)

@aliasmisskat: Lots of 'amateur' cameras with internal flash memory come pre-loaded with picture viewing/editing software. One extremely popular example is the Flip! Video camera.

@Robert McGregor:

My son has it as well. No virus.

@RvLeshrac: It sounds like the virus that is notoriously infecting flash drives, and successfully banned flash drives from the pentagon. I had the same virus and yes, it is executed by the autorun.inf. If you don't think you have the virus just wait a few days and when you try clicking on your hard drives it will say something like, resycled\boot.com is not a valid win 32 application. then the only way to view the files in your hd are to right click the drive and go to the explore option (which most people access their files this way anyway). Your pc may not show symptoms right away. a first sign you are infected would be if you try to update you spyware removal program and it won't let you. There are ways to remove it but really not for newbs

@bnelson333: That Flickr photostream is so cool! Hee, she takes as many pictures of cats as I do -- and I center the pictures just about as well as she does.

Does she tell you what to put in the titles/descriptions?

After doing a quick google search, this is what I found: The RavMon.exe file can be a trojan or a legit file depending on where it`s running from and whether you`re running the Rav antivirus program.

RavMon.exe belongs to both the Rav antivirus program and the W32/VB-CYK worm. If it`s running from C:\WINDOWS\system32\RavMon.exe, then it`s more than likely a trojan infection.

It`s important to know where the file is running from in order to determine whether it`s nasty or not.

It sounds to me like it is a virus that's on the camera.

The link to the Minneapolis news station is here: [wcco.com]

Thanks Chris. It is interesting, we rarely tell her what to take pictures of (unless of course it's something like the Christmas tree that only comes around so often). Her subjects are mostly what's important to her... a true photographer in the making.

@Jeff the Riffer:

I was *just* about to post a long bit about not being able to find the exact definition which caught the supposed virus.

Then I looked through the bottom half of the comments, and saw someone else had more luck.

But, WRT the autorun, there's a reason Vista was retooled to always ask what you want to do on inserting removable media, rather than simply executing the app(s) listed in the autorun.inf

autorun.inf doesn't actually consist of any executable code, so not sure why it gets caught up in the definition... it simply points somewhere else and says "Hay, run that!"

@Jeff the Riffer:

I have this camera for my own kids - i've checked and checked again. Factory reset and everything. There is nothing on the camera when you get it. You sure this wasn't pre-owned and repackaged by some snotty kid who had a virus infeced PC?

Yes, but this was a Fisher Price camera. It has built-in memory. And I don't think it came with a virus. It's probably some auto-launch program that helps transfer the images to the computer without having to install any software on the computer.

A similar story was on Slashdot recently regarding a "virus" that came with a Walmart digital picture frame. Same story.. no virus. It was an auto-launch program.

Instead, I bought her a used 3.2 MP camera off craigslist for $20, stuck in an old 1 GB SD card I had laying around the house, and she's set. It's been dropped dozens of times and still works fine.

Shameless plug -- she has her own Flickr photostream. If you want to see life through the eyes, and camera, of a 2 (going on 3) year old, check it out here: [www.flickr.com]

Please, remember to check out the comments code!

I agree with PDA... It's more or less the virus software. Happened to me with my HP printer once.

I had the same problem with a SimpleTech external hard drive that I purchased last year. I wiped the drive and called the company to alert them of the issue, and was hung up on when I asked naively "Don't you want to take down my information in case other customers have this problem?"

Let me fix that for you,
God forbid that you DONT turn off autorun.

Doesn't Microsoft even recommend turning it off on everything now?

[consumerist.com]

Haven't hooked it up to the computer yet to check for the virus, but commenter above is correct on the crappy pictures.

While I wouldn't be surprised if it's an actual virus, I really doubt that Fisher-Price was paid to put it there. Electronics like this are contract-manufactured in China, the manufacturer probably put it on, possibly accidentally - but I doubt FP knew it was there.

There have already been a few cases - Best Buy Insignia and Samsung digital picture frames among them - of things having viruses preloaded. In neither case did the company know or do it intentionally.

@KhaiJB: Or, alternatively, hold down the shift key when you plug something in.

If by virus, you mean it takes lousy pictures, then yes, the camera has a virus. We've had one for two years now. Don't remember it flagging a virus. My guess is that it is either a false positive, or perhaps a spyware alert. My Kodak camera gets flagged as spyware.

ROFLMFAO..

sure we ship them manufacturing jobs thay ship us computer viruses win/win

@aliasmisskat:
i've seen/used memory storage devices before that came preloaded... some with "interface enhancements" since drag and drop is obviously too cumbersome, some just with promotional type media

Oh Chris, it's lines like this that make my dreary afternoon.

I'm just going to rephrase it:

Is anyone who bought the camera going to do an EECB?

Also, does Consumer Reports want to test if the viruses are legitimate concerns?

I just bought a new SD card for our digital picture frame and it had some sort of picture viewing software on it. I didn't even bother to figure out what it was, just formatted the card and went on my way.

it really does have a virus built into it - it's designed that when you plug the drive into a USB port, the drive then uploads (without asking. naughty!)

it's software for converting non-mp3's to Mp3's. problem is, that software really is infected. the fix was simple - turn off autoplay.