Auto-correct cock-up sends schools into lockdown
Auto-correct is known to be the cause of many a hilarious text misunderstanding, but when one student sent a message to say they were "gunna be" at school and the word became "gunman", you can imagine the chaos it would cause. Particularly in America. That is exactly what happened to one student at Lanier Technical College in …
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I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks
From before the Forever War:
http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/col38.html
Re: I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks
Excuse me if I've missed something, but that's a quote from Johnny Mnemonic. Where does the Forever War come into this?
And what happened to the sender
I imagine 50-100 heavily armed idiots shouting "hut... hut... " surrounded and tazed him if he was lucky.
Re: And what happened to the sender
You forgot the tanks and the AC-130 gunship
God bless the future
I don't know what I'd do without stories like this one.
well.
surely, if you are so lazy as to not write 'going to' the correct (well, kind of) abbreviation is 'gonna'.
thicko can't even do 'txt spk' right!
remind me again, what do they teach kids at school? surely in the days of smart phones it takes 0.0001 of a second to write real words now.
even my barely literate boss (no joke) can write on an iphone.
Re: well.
"remind me again, what do they teach kids at school?"
Evidently not capitalisation.
So you've never used an abbreviation or colloquialism when talking with or writing to friends? You've never hit send on an old T9 phone only to realise you've asked a friend if he fancied a 'riot in the sub'?
Everyone makes a mistake from time to time. Give the kid a break.
Re: Re: well.
You could forgive the auto correct mistake or sending it to the wrong number. But both at the same time?
Auto correct and twitchy touch screens is why I like hardware keyboards...
Re: Re: well.
I turned off the autocorrect on my 'droid within a week of getting it. I still fail to understand why anyone would think defaulting to the 'phone's suggestion is sensible. The default should be /what I typed/ not what the phone thinks I meant.
Re: Re: well.
i also cant be arsed to capitalise when im on forums. i guess people are smart enough to understand a word if it doesnt have a capital. you also notice that i dont bother with apostrophes either.
i was mainly joking when i said about the teaching in schools, as in they dont teach abbreviations properly any more.
Re: Re: well.
Not sure about the phone in question, but my Samsung makes it harder to misspell than to do it right. Misspellings bring up correction options which take longer to get rid of than swiping the proper word. I imagined that this was the case on most phones these days. I seem to think even my nokia 6310i balked at mispelt words.
Anyway, it makes the autocorrect website seem so much more believable now, which is comforting. :)
Yes, but...
...did they [shoot|taze|guantanamise] the sender?
Btw, maybe it's just me and iPhone, but why is it that I cannot activate spell checker without auto-correct?
Autocorrect is a dick.
My housemate accidentally described me as his 'playmate' thanks to autocorrect. This doesn't help matters since we're described as being like a married couple for:
Bickering in the pub about housework, laziness, each others stupidity.
Never, ever, having sex.
Re: Autocorrect is a dick.
Sound like a Marriage to me!
(Someone had too)
My commiseration to you and your placemat.
The selection of "related stories" is interesting - "how to slay a cellphone", "killer SMS". Like so many computer systems, if it was actually intelligent it'd be -really- frightening. Or if we can thank a human sub-editor, then the same applies.
Re: Re: Autocorrect is a dick.
Yes. Yes, that was the joke. Congratulations on getting it, and thanks for letting the rest of us know you did.
Eh?
Why should the yoof of today even bother with txt lnguage? Back in the day of 3310s and such like, pay as you go customers wanted to get the most out of a £10 top-up. Solution? Txt spk tht only needed 2 fit in 160 chars. It's an excuse for quick discussion, but serious? No need with iMessage, BBM and unlimited texts.
Again, quack!
That's what ! thought!
I've a feeling we might see a sudden upsurge of kids texting "gunna be" the morning of a test they haven't prepared for!
"We want to emphasise that the recipient did the right thing in reporting the message."
Not if they didn't first question the message and asked the sender to confirm.
lol
Sender: "gunman at West Hall"
Receiver: "lol are you kidding?"
Sender: "no im gunman at West Hall"
Receiver: "WTF? Why?!?"
Sender: "board, i wanna do something"
Receiver: "im calling the cops..."
I think the situation would be even worse
Presumably the law is different in the US.
In the UK doing that would (technically) be a breach of WCA.
(and yes, I know nobody would ever push for charges and EU law has a counter argument... sheesh)
WTF
Why is the word "gunm4n" even in the auto-correct dictionary to start with? It isn't a word any sane person would include in a text message.
Does it insert obscenities too?
Surely it wouldn't be too difficult to come up with a list of sensitive words where the damage caused by inserting it accidentally far outweighs the benefit of not having to type it in full?
Re: WTF
"It says in this article that the gunman had an Indian passport when..."
"Hey, you wanna go see 'The Second Gunman' at Uppity Theater?"
"The Register ran a story about some kid's autocorrect turning 'gunman' into 'gunman', and his school gets locked down!"
...And did you just self-censor 'gunman'?
Also, I've wondered what happens when it's a female. 'Gunwoman' is awkward. Gunlady? Too prissy. Gungirl? Too comic. Gundame? Too manga. Seriously, what's the standard?
Re: Re: Re: WTF
Gunmoll.. Yeah, I could get behind that. But while we're in that era, how about 'gunbroad'? I rather like the sound of it. Naturally, males have other options as well - gundude? Gunbloke? And, of course, el Reg's undoubted choice: Guntard.
Re: Re: Re: Re: WTF
guntard? yeah, thats one for auto-correct,
"guntard at West Hall" is much better
Re: Re: Re: WTF
Or for the misogynisticly inclined "Gun Ho!"
I'm blowing the balloon sky high!!
So autocorrect is accepted, but not bad jokes, hyperbole, colloquialisms or mixed metaphors?!
I wonder how solid this is as a defense?
Not just in America
The sad reality is senseless shootings are happening at schools and elsewhere around the globe, not just in the U.S.
Re: Not just in America
Don't worry - programs are being put in place to help ensure that shootings will be more sensible in the future.
Anybody for "Brazil"?
Reminds me quite a lot of the premise behind Brazil -- still one of the darkest bits of film I've ever seen. The main difference is that THIS involves user stupidity, not just than the insanity of a whole society.
Good job he didn't use Twitter
He'd have been charged under the terrorism laws.
Well, if he'd been in the UK anyway.
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