When generalizations go wrong

I’ve been running this neat piece of software which, when you right-click an image file, displays a tiny thumbnail of the image right there in the context menu. Really cool.

Except in the latest version they figured “Hey! Why no generalize the preview feature to any multimedia file?”.

Yeah, great idea. Now, whenever I right-click an mp3 file, the music immediately starts coming out of my speakers, embarrassing me and annoying my coworkers. Especially since I usually have my PC’s volume cranked up pretty high, so that I can adjust the volumne meaningfully using WinAmp.

Today’s lesson: Just because to an object-oriented programmer “image” and “music file” are just two different instances of the general class “multimedia file” doesn’t mean it feels that way to the rest of the human population.