Technical terms that irritate you when misused on the internet

[Varitel]

This isn't always seen on the internet and is technically an accurate use of the word, but I hate it when people say "amperage" when referring to electric current. Though this is correct, as current is measured in Amperes(C/s), I feel like people use "amperage" just to sound smart.

 

[Valiance]

I gotta put "download" at number 1 here, "system" "server" and "down" as close runner ups.

"I gotta download this onta tha computah"
"can you download these pictures onto my laptop for me"
"well i have the disc but i cant download the game onto there from it."

etc, etc.

I work at an IT helpdesk so...I get a lot of this kind of stuff.

I'm really not a fan of computer manufacturers. Especially after they killed an entire OS, in my books that is.

If you're referring to OS/2, I feel ya.

 

[Swifty1992]

I gotta put "download" at number 1 here, "system" "server" and "down" as close runner ups.

"I gotta download this onta tha computah"
"can you download these pictures onto my laptop for me"
"well i have the disc but i cant download the game onto there from it."

This. Very much this. Also, people who type Facebook statuses on logged in accounts and call it "hacking".

"Your Facebook Account has been HACKED by Bob Smithington"

 

[Archedgar]

This isn't always seen on the internet and is technically an accurate use of the word, but I hate it when people say "amperage" when referring to electric current. Though this is correct, as current is measured in Amperes(C/s), I feel like people use "amperage" just to sound smart.

I don't understand, it annoys you that they use the right word?

 

[Chemical Alia]

"Cel shading"

It doesn't look like cel shading, works technically very different from cel shading. It's just a very complex shader and stylized painted textures.

I work on Borderlands, lol.

Not really technical, but I hate seeing British/American/Southern English accents referred to as different dialects. If they were different dialects, you'd probably find them mutually unintelligible.

THe one that gets me is when people misuse the words 'regimen' (as in a diet) and 'regiment' (as in a body of soldiers).

Oh, that reminds me of when people interchange "squad" and "squadron". Uh, also not technical.

 

[McMullen]

Theory - the scientific explanation of how a phenomena works or how we understand it (this obviously isn't a text book definition, I'm just shortening it). E.g. the theory of gravity explains the laws of gravity and how it works, it doesn't mean you can choose to believe it or not.
You cant say things are "ONLY A THEORY", any scientific field has theories, and the majority of them are accepted as facts.

I don't think you do understand the term theory. It means that a Hypothesis was posited, tested in controlled conditions, the information catalogued and a paper produced detailng the entire process and performed by several other scientists several times and accepted. Once all that data is processed it can then classified as a Theory.

Dingdingdingdingding! We have a winner!

And it only took three tries... The problem is bigger than I thought.


Let's see, aside from the "only a theory" thing, I'd say that the next biggest pet peeve for me would be the way people use "energy" or "quantum x" when they mean "magic". Energy is the capacity to do work. Energy itself doesn't vibrate, synergize, harmonize, or crystallize. It can cause other things to do that, but don't get your hopes up because it doesn't work the way you think. And yes, quantum mechanics is bizarre as hell, but it doesn't mean you can just use the word to spin gold out of bullshit.

Oh wait, people make money by misusing those words around gullible people, so I guess you can actually use it to spin gold out of bullshit. Fair enough. But you can't do so without being a fraud, asshole, and (in a just world) a criminal.

 

[Brandon237]

Theory - the scientific explanation of how a phenomena works or how we understand it (this obviously isn't a text book definition, I'm just shortening it). E.g. the theory of gravity explains the laws of gravity and how it works, it doesn't mean you can choose to believe it or not.
You cant say things are "ONLY A THEORY", any scientific field has theories, and the majority of them are accepted as facts.

And with that out of the way, I declare this thread won!
Debates for evolution against people who do not accept it are... painful to say the least. The lack of education really shows... or lack of acceptance of what has been taught. Either way.

 

[woodwalker]

Technically, a theory isn't a fact. It's an explanation for a phenomena that is supported by evidence, but cannot be proven to be true. Essentially, it's something that's most likely true, but we lack the capacity or knowledge to prove it is true in all cases.

A better way to say this is not that it cannot be proven true, but that it has not been shown to be false.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

Theory - the scientific explanation of how a phenomena works or how we understand it (this obviously isn't a text book definition, I'm just shortening it). E.g. the theory of gravity explains the laws of gravity and how it works, it doesn't mean you can choose to believe it or not.
You cant say things are "ONLY A THEORY", any scientific field has theories, and the majority of them are accepted as facts.

Communism and Socialism are misused a lot. Soviet Russia was neither of these (it called itself these but was pulled off so poorly it was pretty much right wing) yet people seem to want to think it is.

European as a blanket term for non american too, France is as different from Britain as the USA is, just because we're in the same continent/group doesn't mean we have more in common.

I think in the US, Europe is just thought of as a monolithic land of White people, fyi

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The use of memory to talk about hard drive space has always irked me. It's storage, you store things, not remember them. It's even worse when people think 8GB of memory is bad.

This coming from younger or older folks? I would expect older, because as I remember learning it growing up, the term "memory" is equally applicable to both RAM (primary memory) and storage capacity (secondary memory). This usage was fairly common, way back when.

I would agree though that it can be confusing, which is probably why that usage has been deprecated.

Anyway, on a related note, you know what annoys me? The way hard drive manufacturers get to abuse Mega/Gigabytes.

When you buy a 4 Gigabyte stick of RAM, you're getting 4 Gigabytes. 4,294,967,296 bytes.

Go buy a hard drive, however, and you're not getting (for example) 500 Gigabytes. You're getting 500,000,000,000 bytes. That's roughly 465.7 Gigabytes.

Know the part I love? They say your getting 500GB, and then hide the lovely fact you pointed out behind fine print, possibly for the sole reason of mixing everyone's terms up when it comes to Gb and GB.

I'm really not a fan of computer manufacturers. Especially after they killed an entire OS, in my books that is.

I actually came in here planning on posting about this; I really despise the way Wikipedia has tried to legitimize that mess by coining the term "kibibyte," which is a load of BS that plays right into the manufacturer's hands.

I gotta put "download" at number 1 here, "system" "server" and "down" as close runner ups.

"I gotta download this onta tha computah"
"can you download these pictures onto my laptop for me"
"well i have the disc but i cant download the game onto there from it."

etc, etc.

I work at an IT helpdesk so...I get a lot of this kind of stuff.

I'm really not a fan of computer manufacturers. Especially after they killed an entire OS, in my books that is.

If you're referring to OS/2, I feel ya.

Arg, the download thing annoys the crap out of me. Also, Amiga OS is gone now, too. I understand it was pretty much always 5-10 years ahead of the competition on features, without being that far ahead on price.

There's one more that hasn't been brought up yet: "Entitled" is not an insult, although a false sense of entitlement can be a bad thing. What really bugs me, though, is that people all over the internet use it as an insult when people really do have a legal right, i.e., are entitled, to whatever they're being accused of being "entitled" to.

 

[cameron112497]

opinion, no it is not your opinion that "insert form of media here" is bad. Your opinion is that you dislike said form of media. Saying it is bad is trying to state a fact. For instance, My opinion is that I think the Call of Duty games are bland, because bland is a subjective term. While the graphics of Modern Warfare 3 are the same as Modern Warfare 2. That is not an opinion. "same" is objective here.

 

[hermes]

Hacking in general. Movies with magic hackers fall on the wrong side of my suspension of disbelief. Related to that, I get irritated when people equate defenses against virus and hacking as "firewall".