Circumstantial Bugs VS. Overlooking of Bugs

I'm not sure who to side with: the consumer or the company.

See, here is the dilemma:

Consumers always complain about problems they have with software and hardware. Companies have issues finding them answers and effectively solving the problems.

The scenario that made me think of this is a video game. Let's create a story. Let's say there is a guy named Andy. Andy Is not particularly gifted with computers and electronics, but he isn't dumb. He has an xBox. He plays a video game on this xBox, for example "Fallout: New Vegas." He comes home from work every day and plays New Vegas. One day he comes home and finds a bug in the game. I'm not going to think up an example bug, but let's say it severely messes up his saved games, or something like that. Now Andy can complain to Microsoft, who makes the xBox, or more likely to the company which made the game, in this case Bethesda Softworks, I believe.

But here's where I can't decide. Do I blame Bethesda for not finding the bug, or do I say it wasn't Bethesda's fault because the bug was circumstantial? In other words, the bug could have been the result of Bethesda's overlooking and lack of testing in that area. Or it could have been a bug created simply by that exact circumstance or action in the game, a bug created by a large combination of different things. I'm not sure if i'm explaining this very well, but some bugs are created not by a problem in the code, but by a combination of actions performed using the software that somehow caught each other the wrong way and caused it to crash or do something else unwanted.

I guess my point is that no software is bug-free. Ever. And consumers can't expect to have ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEMS with the software they use. After all, I'd like to see them write software on their own with less bugs. Yeah, right. Don't take software for granted. Don't expect a ton from it. Software is going to have bugs. It is going to crash. Don't get angry at Microsoft, Bethesda, Adobe, or anyone else just because you had a problem with their software. They put lots of work into it and they're not trying to ruin your experience. Just try to find a solution. Getting angry doesn't solve problems, and smacking your computer sure doesn't either.

That reminds me...The tuners in the band room at school....sometimes they turn off when I try to press the tone button. If I drop them on the ground, the tone button suddenly works. Great engineering, Korg.

Spell Check

Spell check has helped completely change the way we compose documents and write things. Before computers, we had typewriters and just plain old writing. When computers came along with word processing, there was a need for a system that would automatically check spelling and find errors in the text. It's closely related to grammar check, but that's a whole different story...

The first time I learned about spell check was maybe 6 to 8 years ago, when I first really started using a computer. I was typing (or rather hunt-and-pecking) a Word document for school and noticed a red squiggly line under a word. I went and asked my parents about it. They told me that thw word was spelled wrong and that I needed to right-click it to select the correct spelling. I eventually found it to be a very useful feature in computers and a valuable alternative to writing.

Spell check is integrated into the specific operating system, rather than a single program. For example, you can spell a word wrong in Microsoft Word or Firefox, and it will catch you the exact same way, because the dictionary it is going by is a part of Windows. All modern operating systems have this, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, and the Blackberry OS. The catch is that not all operating systems have the same dictionary. I can type iPod in here on Windows, and a red squiggly line appears. Type it in on iOS (an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad) and it will say it is correct. Infact, if I were to type in into iOS as ipod, it would change it to iPod. In the way that Apple incorperates their own devices and products into their customized dictionaries, Microsoft, for some reaon, does not. I can type Zune (Microsoft's mp3 player) in here, and even though I am running Windows, it is apparently misspelled. It claims it is Zuni. What is that?

I was thinking about writing this blog post and thought about the person or team that was responsible for typing in, or somehow compiling a list of all the words in the English language to be used in computer spell check. There had to be some point at which it had to be entered digitally. I am sure it was broken up between a large number of people to enter everything in, but still, someone had to sit there for hours typing in words, definitions, parts of speech, and correct usages of a large inventory of words.

I also feel bad for the person or group that had to come up with the way in which computers determine whether a sentence is grammatically correct. The English language is so confusing and logically makes so little sense that it is almost impossible to create a set way for the computer to determine if something is grammatically correct. It's almost as if that had to just create a list of correct sentences and incorrect sentences. I could never sream of overcoming this problem, and I am not surprised that occasionally I type a sentence that my grammar check thinks is incorrect, when in fact there is nothing wrong with it.


I think there is a negative (yet perhaps minor) effect of spell check on people in general. It is slowly degrading people's ability to spell correctly, and one day we will have no idea how to spell correctly. I think eventually the need to spell will become useless, as we will have voice recognition and text-to-speech at our fingertips. That day will be sad.

Magical Trevor

I have been racking my brain for something to be for Halloween for the last month, to no avail. Last night, I was watching a video called Magical Trevor that is an old favorite of mine. I suddenly decided that I would be Magical Trevor. It isn't too complicated of a costume: a white cloak, a white wizard hat, and an orange beard. The problem is, I have only a week to make the costume, and as it turns out, it is hard to find white cloaks and orange beards. Oh well. Maybe I can find something.

Here are a couple links to Magical Trevor:
Magical Trevor 1: http://dft.ba/-2ay
Magical Trevor 2: http://dft.ba/-2aA

There is also a Magical Trevor 3 and a Magical Trevor 4, but I find them to be boring and unentertaining (if that's a word(spell check says it isn't(spell check says it should be enterprising(when's the last time I used enterprising(never))))). I love inserting parenthetical statements inside other parenthetical statements, because it makes it more confusing, and I like confusing things.

Also, the original URLs of the videos were very long, so I used a URL shortener (which spell check says isn't a word). The thing is, most URL shorteners are boring. This one actually has an added purpose, which is that it actually reminds you to not forget to be awesome. DFTBA means "Don't Forget to be Awesome," so this URL shortening service's domain name is DFT.BA.

DFTBA is also a record label, owned by the same guy that helped create the URL shortening service. It primarily signs YouTube musicians.

Next article: Spell check. If I remember. I can write a lot about spell check.