Even more irritating since this is the second time I've typed this. Giantbombs software got stuck loading while i was trying to expand the text entry window to show everything I had written... and now that's gone.  On to version 2.0
 
As someone who has used computers for at least twenty of the twenty seven years of my existence, I am well aware of the existence of bugs in software. With growing complexity of hardware, software and the connections and possible connections between different hardware, bugs will always get past even the most diligent QA team.  Bungies Myth 2 had perhaps one of the worst bugs appear just before distribution, and it wasn't even found by the QA team. Some bug are small and are inconsequential while others can be catastrophic. The Myth 2 bug had the possibility of erasing the users entire hard drive. However myself, and absolutely a growing number of customers out there, have been growing ever more frustrated by the quantity of major bugs finding their way into shipped software.  
 
Allow my a segway, well not really a segway since those have wheels but i don't really care.
 
The Electronic Arts game, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, is essentially a multiplayer game. True there does exist a single-player experience, but tallying in at around 5 hours it's barely  worth mentioning. The Multiplayer experience exists now in three primary modes, all of which require an internet connection to the EA servers. Local Multiplayer would allow games to be played on machines connected to the same local network and outside of a users internet connection. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 does not support this.  Now this is where I associate this style of experience to Cloud Computing. Cloud Computing essentially stores a users relevant data on an external server ran by the company (often). Software then establishes a connection to this server where it's then manipulated. Cloud Computing has some pretty impressive benefits because of this user to server relation. Data can be accessed from any connectible device, updates to the data can be pushed to all connected devices, software updates can be applied immediately, and if there's no local data then there's nothing to be lost if a device is lost or stolen, just cut the connection to that device. 
 
However, most of these benefits can also be faults for Cloud Computing. With no local storage, if the connection to the Cloud is ever stopped, your data is inaccessible to you. For software like Google Docs, without an internet connection your word documents stored on their cloud are locked away. In the case for Battlefield: Bad Company 2, it means that you can't play the game.  Or worse yet, if the company goes out of business and the servers shut down,with no local network support, that $60 piece of software will never work again.  Obviously companies like EA and google aren't going anywhere but that doesn't mean there won't still be problems. 
 
For the last twenty four hours, and from June 29th to July 2nd, my copy of Bad Company 2 will not connect to the EA servers. Google the issue and you will find sporadic reports going back to March and just about all reporting the same. Their internet connections are functioning perfectly, other multiplayer games and software connect just fine, they've rebooted and cycled their modems, routers, switches, turned off firewalls for PCs and installed the game to their game consoles hard drives. All failed to resolve the problem. The only sure fire method thus far, has been to wait. Waiting for hours or even days. 
 
Waiting for the problem to go away. Waiting to play the game, waiting to use the software they paid for. Waiting to use their product in the manner for which it was intended. 
 
I, for one, am tired of bugs that break the game