Glitch

A glitch is a short-lived fault in a system, such as a transient fault that corrects itself, making it difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, in circuit bending, as well as among players of video games. More generally, all types of systems including human organizations and nature experience glitches.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. A glitch is a short-lived fault in a system, such as a transient fault that corrects itself, making it difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, in circuit bending, as well as among players of video games. More generally, all types of systems including human organizations and nature experience glitches. A glitch, which is slight and often temporary, differs from a more serious software 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.' 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 gletshn ('to slide or 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 , they say there's been a slight glitch.' Astronaut John Glenn explained the term in his section of the book Into Orbit, writing that John Daily further defined the word on the July 4, 1965, episode of the same show, 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 Magazine, 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. An electronics glitch or logic hazard is a transition that occurs on a signal before the signal settles to its intended value, particularly in a digital circuit. Generally, this implies an electrical pulse of short duration, often due to a race condition between two signals derived from a common source but with different delays. In some cases, such as a well-timed synchronous circuit, this could be a harmless and well-tolerated effect that occurs normally in a design. In other contexts, a glitch can represent an undesirable result of a fault or design error that can produce a malfunction. Some electronic components, such as flip-flops, are triggered by a pulse that must not be shorter than a specified minimum duration in order to function correctly; a pulse shorter than the specified minimum may be called a glitch. A related concept is the runt pulse, a pulse whose amplitude is smaller than the minimum level specified for correct operation, and a spike, a short pulse similar to a glitch but often caused by ringing or crosstalk. A computer glitch is the failure of a system, usually containing a computing device, to complete its functions or to perform them properly. In public declarations, glitch is used to suggest a minor fault which will soon be rectified and is therefore used as a euphemism for a bug, which is a factual statement that a programming fault is to blame for a system failure. 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 (software bugs), incorrect instructions given by the operator (operator errors, and a failure to account for this possibility might also be considered a software bug), undetected invalid input data (this might also be considered a software bug), undetected communications errors, computer viruses, Trojan attacks and computer exploiting (sometimes called 'hacking').