Glitch
A glitch is a short-lived
A glitch, which is slight and often temporary, differs from a more serious bug which is a genuine functionality-breaking problem. Alex Pieschel, writing for Arcade Review, said: "'bug' is often cast as the weightier and more blameworthy pejorative, while 'glitch' suggests something more mysterious and unknowable inflicted by surprise inputs or stuff outside the realm of code".[1] The word itself is sometimes humorously described as being short for "gremlins lurking in the computer hardware".[2]
Etymology
Some reference books, including Random House's American Slang, claim that the term comes from the German word glitschen 'to slip' and the Yiddish word glitshn 'to slide, to skid'. Either way, it is a relatively new term. It was first widely defined for the American people by Bennett Cerf on the June 20, 1965, episode of What's My Line as "a kink ... when anything goes wrong down there [Cape Kennedy], they say there's been a slight glitch". The astronaut John Glenn explained the term in his section of the book Into Orbit, writing that
Another term we adopted to describe some of our problems was "glitch". Literally, a glitch is a spike or change in voltage in an electrical circuit which takes place when the circuit suddenly has a new load put on it. You have probably noticed a dimming of lights in your home when you turn a switch or start the dryer or the television set. Normally, these changes in voltage are protected by fuses. A glitch, however, is such a minute change in voltage that no fuse could protect against it.[3]
John Daily further defined the word on the July 4, 1965, episode of What's My Line, saying that it's a term used by the Air Force at Cape Kennedy, in the process of launching rockets, "it means something's gone wrong and you can't figure out what it is so you call it a 'glitch'". Later, on July 23, 1965, Time magazine felt it necessary to define it in an article: "Glitches—a spaceman's word for irritating disturbances". In relation to the reference by Time, the term has been believed to enter common usage during the American Space Race of the 1950s, where it was used to describe minor faults in the rocket hardware that were difficult to pinpoint.[4][5]
According to a Wall Street Journal article written by Ben Zimmer, When the radio talkers make a little mistake in diction they call it a "fluff," and when they make a bad one they call it a "glitch," and I love it. Other examples from the world of radio can be found in the 1940s. The April 11, 1943, issue of The Washington Post carried a review of Helen Sioussat
Further digging reveals that in the 1950s, glitch made the transition from radio to television. In a 1953 ad in Broadcasting magazine, RCA boasted that their TV camera has "no more a-c power line 'glitches' (horizontal-bar interference)". And Bell Telephone ran an ad in a 1955 issue of Billboard showing two technicians monitoring the TV signals that were broadcast on Bell System lines: "When he talks of 'glitch' with a fellow technician, he means a low frequency interference which appears as a narrow horizontal bar moving vertically through the picture".
A 1959 article in Sponsor, a trade magazine for television and radio advertisers, gave another technical usage in an article about editing TV commercials by splicing tape. "'Glitch' is slang for the 'momentary jiggle' that occurs at the editing point if the sync pulses don't match exactly in the splice". It also provided one of the earliest etymologies of the word, noting that, "'Glitch' probably comes from a German or Yiddish word meaning a slide, a glide or a slip".[citation needed]
Electronics glitch
An
Computer glitch
A computer glitch is the failure of a system, usually containing a computing device, to complete its functions or to perform them properly. It frequently refers to an error which is not detected at the time it occurs but shows up later in data errors or incorrect human decisions. Situations which are frequently called computer glitches are incorrectly written software (
Such glitches could produce problems such as keyboard malfunction, number key failures, screen abnormalities (turned left, right or upside-down), random program malfunctions, and abnormal program registering.
Examples of computer glitches causing disruption include an unexpected shutdown of a
Video game glitches
Glitches in video games can affect different aspects of a game:
- Texture or model glitches are a kind of bug or other error that causes any specific model or texture to either become distorted or otherwise to not look as intended by the developers. Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is notorious for texture glitches, as well as other errors that affect many of the company's popular titles.[11] Many games that use ragdoll physics for their character models can have such glitches happen to them.[citation needed]
- Physics glitches are errors in a game's physics engine that causes a specific entity, be it a physics object or a non-player character, to be unintentionally moved to some degree. These kinds of errors can be exploited, unlike many. The chance of a physics error happening can either be entirely random or accidentally caused, such as a bug in the notoriously developed 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog reboot that can launch the player character a significant distance when coming into contact with a particular crate in a particular way.
- Sound glitches prevent sounds from playing properly in some way. These can range from sounds playing when not intended to play or even not playing at all. Occasionally, a certain sound will loop or otherwise the player will be given the option to continuously play the sound when not intended. Often, games will play sounds incorrectly due to corrupt data altering the values predefined in the code. Examples include, but are not limited to, extremely high or low pitched sounds, volume being mute or too high to understand, and also rarely even playing in reverse order/playing reversed.[citation needed]
Glitches may include incorrectly displayed graphics, collision detection errors, game freezes/crashes, sound errors, and other issues. Graphical glitches are especially notorious in platforming games, where malformed textures can directly affect gameplay (for example, by displaying a ground texture where the code calls for an area that should damage the character, or by not displaying a wall texture where there should be one, resulting in an invisible wall). Some glitches are potentially dangerous to the game's stored data, such as MissingNo. from the Pokémon games.[12]
"Glitching" is the practice of players exploiting faults in a video game's programming to achieve tasks that give them an unfair advantage in the game, over NPC's or other players, such as running through walls or defying the game's physics. Glitches can be deliberately induced in certain home video game consoles by manipulating the game medium, such as tilting a ROM cartridge to disconnect one or more connections along the edge connector and interrupt part of the flow of data between the cartridge and the console.[13] This can result in graphic, music, or gameplay errors. Doing this, however, carries the risk of crashing the game or even causing permanent damage to the game medium.[14]
Heavy use of glitches are often used in performing a
Part of the
Some games purposely include effects that look like glitches as a means to
Glitches can also be found in electronic toys. For example, in 2013, Hasbro released a game called Bop It Beats.[19] It was discovered by several players that the DJ Expert and Lights Only modes have a bug that will give players a fail sound upon reaching a pattern with six actions and completing them successfully. The more difficult DJ modes can be completed in the Party mode as long as there is a "Pass It" on the last few patterns. Hasbro was informed about this glitch but as it was discovered after manufacture, they can no longer update or upgrade existing units. Foreign versions of the game, however, were shipped with this glitch already patched.
Glitches in games should not be confused with
Television glitch
In broadcasting, a corrupted signal may glitch in the form of jagged lines on the screen, misplaced squares, static looking effects, freezing problems, or inverted colors. The glitches may affect the video and/or audio (usually audio dropout) or the transmission. These glitches may be caused by a variety of issues, interference from portable electronics or microwaves, damaged cables at the broadcasting center, or weather.[20]
In popular culture
Multiple works of popular culture deal with glitches; those with the word "glitch" or derivations thereof are detailed in Glitch (disambiguation).
- The nonfiction book CB Bible (1976) includes glitch in its glossary of citizens band radio slang, defining it as "an indefinable technical defect in CB equipment", indicating the term was already then in use on citizens band.[21]
- The short film The Glitch (2008), opening film and best science fiction finalist at Dragon Con Independent Film Festival 2008, deals with the disorientation of late-night TV viewer Harry Owen (Scott Charles Blamphin), who experiences "heavy brain-splitting digital breakdowns".[22]
See also
References
- ^ Pieschel, Alex (December 8, 2014). "Glitches: A Kind of History". Arcade Review. Archived from the original on August 12, 2016. Retrieved September 19, 2016.
- ^ [1], acronymsandslang
- ^ quoted in Ben Zimmer, "The Hidden History of Glitch", visualthesarus.com "The Hidden History of "Glitch"". Retrieved June 30, 2017.
- ^ "Dictionary.com". Retrieved October 15, 2012.
- ^ "Online Etymology Dictionary". Retrieved October 15, 2012.
- ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved November 11, 2020.
- ^ "Water filtration plant temporarily shut down due to computer glitch". watertechonline.com. December 6, 2010. Archived from the original on August 9, 2011. Retrieved December 11, 2010.
- ^ "911 computer glitch led to police delay". Austin News kxan.com. November 15, 2010. Archived from the original on January 28, 2013. Retrieved December 11, 2010.
- ^ "NASA revives Saturn probe, three weeks after glitch". NBC News. November 24, 2010. Retrieved December 11, 2010.
- ^ "Interest rate computer glitch costs Westpac over $1m a day". www.afr.com. July 29, 2015. Retrieved July 29, 2015.
- ^ "Bethesda Criticised over buggy releases". November 9, 2010.[full citation needed]
- ^ a b Ofoe, Emmanuel-Yvan; William Pare (March 6–12, 2008). "Testing, testing, testing". Montreal Mirror. Retrieved June 17, 2008.
- ^ "It's Not A Glitch. It's A Feature. It's Art. It's Beautiful". August 10, 2012.
- ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: "Killing a Sega Genesis Cartridge (YouTube Video of a cartridge becoming permanently broken during the process of cartridge tilting)". YouTube.
- ^ "Why Speedrunners Use Glitches". Retrieved March 17, 2015.
- ^ "Games Done Quick Makes 'Pokemon' Play Twitch". January 5, 2015. Retrieved March 17, 2015.
- ^ a b Evans-Thirlwell, Edwin (March 24, 2021). "Meet the developers making bugs and glitches on purpose". PC Gamer. Retrieved March 24, 2021.
- Gamasutra. Retrieved January 23, 2017.
- ^ Cox, Clarie Justine, Bop it Bests Review, Claire Justine
- ^ "Signal Strength Variables". Retrieved March 17, 2015.
- ^ Bibb, Porter (1976). CB Bible. New York: Doubleday and Company. p. 94.
- ^ Doto, Bob (November 7, 2008). "NY Horror Film Fest Night 4: The Shorts". Archived from the original on January 21, 2010. Retrieved March 3, 2011.