Technical terms that irritate you when misused on the internet

[I.N.producer]

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.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Terrorism.

Hacking is not terrorism, it's not even a little scary. Our governments and media have started using terrorism to describe any activity which they don't like and want to be able to ignore civil rights laws in order to prosecute.

You are right, hacking is not terrorism in and of itself. However considering that the root word in 'terrorism' is 'terror' and when groups like lulzsec go around stealing people's personal information and shit, that's pretty damn terrifying and I wouldn't stop short of calling them terrorists.

I dunno, I'm terrified of nuclear war and spiders, not having to cancel my credit cards and make insurance claims. Just can't work up any fear of hackers. Especially ones like lulzsec who just want to have a laugh at everyone's expense, yeah it's malicious, but it's not dangerous.

Look all I'm saying is that while I agree with you that hacking in and of itself is not terrorism, when it's used for malicious purposes such as those carried out by lulzsec and others, it can be.

 

[evilneko]

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.

 

[TheRocketeer]

I'm always aggravated by people using the phrase 'just desserts,' rather than 'just deserts,' as is correct. Admittedly, it's an easy mistake to make. But what puts it over the line for me is that the correct word has fallen so far out of use that on the rare occasion I hear that phrase spoken aloud, I can be certain they're using the wrong homophone; I can hear their spelling errors. That's not just 'irritating,' that's being driven crazy.

[sub] Although that's technically not a spelling error, but a diction error. Hearing errors in diction is common, though; just not usually diction errors for homophones, which shouldn't be possible.[/sub]

 

[Lord Mountbatten Reborn]

People who get grumpy over trivialities. Especially grumpiness that stems from a specialised education/interest in a certain subject. How on earth you can expect some people to simply know certain meanings in the realms of generally esoteric matters, is anyone's guess, more so when in the grand scheme of things it simply does not matter.

That being said, I'm also not going to pretend I'm a robot. Things do irritate me, for instance those who can't differentiate between "lose" and "loose". I don't see why it's so difficult, and you don't even need a specialised education for an example like this.

Edit: And of course, I managed not to cite something technical, at least in the way I assume the OP means. Er, ah well?

 

[Stall]

Everything relating to the internet trying to discuss Statistics. I can't even begin. Every time someone quotes a statistic or discusses an article about a study, they misuse and abuse the terminology and core concepts at hand. It's so damn irksome, because they normally try to cast the entire field in a really bitter light by just not understanding what is going on. I wish you needed a license to talk and cite statistics.

Come to think of it... how many people actually know Statistics is a legitimate field of study and even further, can describe what it is that you study in the field? Everyone knows just a little bit about Physics and Biology, but does your common person know ANYTHING about Statistics?

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.

Oh, and this too. /thumbsup

 

[Actual]

Terrorism.

Hacking is not terrorism, it's not even a little scary. Our governments and media have started using terrorism to describe any activity which they don't like and want to be able to ignore civil rights laws in order to prosecute.

You are right, hacking is not terrorism in and of itself. However considering that the root word in 'terrorism' is 'terror' and when groups like lulzsec go around stealing people's personal information and shit, that's pretty damn terrifying and I wouldn't stop short of calling them terrorists.

I dunno, I'm terrified of nuclear war and spiders, not having to cancel my credit cards and make insurance claims. Just can't work up any fear of hackers. Especially ones like lulzsec who just want to have a laugh at everyone's expense, yeah it's malicious, but it's not dangerous.

Look all I'm saying is that while I agree with you that hacking in and of itself is not terrorism, when it's used for malicious purposes such as those carried out by lulzsec and others, it can be.

Armed robbery of a corner store is a lot more terrifying than lulzsec stealing personal details and crashing networks. We don't accuse the burglars of terrorism and use that to get easier and more severe convictions.

No reflection against you dude, it's just my personal bugbear that the media has convinced so many of us the government can change the meaning of terrorism to suit themselves.

 

[DarkishFriend]

There, they're, their. For the love of God, get these straight.

 

[Archedgar]

The word "Troll".


Used commonly on the internet as a catch-all by people who don't know even remotely know what the word means. I'll never understand why such retards enjoy misusing internet terminology...

 

[Da Orky Man]

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.

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.

First point, yes, that infuriates me no end. A theory is the highest level of certainty we have. It's recognising that we have been wrong about similar things before, showing a willingness to change if necessary.

Second point, as long as they ARE actually talking about people from a country in Europe, I'm fine with it. The European countries do share many facets of civilisation, we have a common history of both fighting each other and teaming up to go capture Jerusalem again, and we're more-or-less defined by each other. The European countries do have more in common with each other than we do with America, or Asia, or Africa. And his is coming from a Brit.

 

[dillinger88]

There are plenty of non-technical ones I can think of. The most common technical one is probably what the OP said.

I usually get annoyed by people who say that Kinect sucks because you need buttons for "tactical" feedback. The correct term is either tactile or haptic feedback.

People who think that a 720p video/game/image when viewed at 1080p looks better (like all games on 360 and most on ps3). "Up-scaling" isn't improving the resolution of the image, it's just affecting the output signal. This is especially annoying when it's used in advertisements (like the back of an Xbox game) or in CSI to view faces in blurry camera shots. YOU CAN'T ADD IN LOST INFORMATION!

People who believe correlation = causation infuriate me too.

I'm sure there are others, I'll update when I think of more.

 

[Fbuh]

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

 

[Rawne1980]

The word "Troll".


Used commonly on the internet as a catch-all by people who don't know even remotely know what the word means. I'll never understand why such retards enjoy misusing internet terminology...

This, 100% this.

An internet troll. In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response.

Various peoples view of a troll. Someone who disagrees with their opinion.

If someone disagrees with an opinion people yell "TROLLLLLL". No, no it isn't.

 

[Fleshy]

Snip

This is so very, very true. I got out of school with my CS degree 2 years ago and got a job writing apps for Android phones. That's all well and good, but part of my job is to train other people in how to do the same.

There are some people who just astound me that they've been able to keep their job. One of my earliest students was a guy who claimed to be a 30 year programmer but couldn't understand how/why to declare a variable or the basic concept of a class. It astounds me how many completely incompetent idiots are out there.

To be fair getting proper information on the concept of classes is trickier than you'd think (not that a programmer isn't supposed to know it anyways), especially if all you've been exposed to is some random self-taught C++ veteran's tutorial where classes are just used as fancy looking structs and the main purpose of inheritance is to be able to be lazy without copy/pasting. And even in C++ books where the author do get the Aristotelian approach somewhat right it's riddled with poor examples and justification for using classes, especially with regards to inheritance (like the dot extends circle example). This one the reasons I get a little annoyed when I see people recommending people to start learning to program by starting with C++. Not so much because of the language itself, but because the literature on it handles more "modern" concepts badly.

I just don't see how you'd not have had to set up variable at some point in half a life of programming, though? Exclusively by working javascript or the like? Could kind of explain the not understanding classes thing too, though..

 

[Fallingwater]

More than misused terms, I am deeply annoyed at mispronounciation of terms, whether correct or not. Like when someone pronounces "router" like it was a french word. *cringe*

 

[Agayek]

To be fair getting proper information on the concept of classes is trickier than you'd think (not that a programmer isn't supposed to know it anyways), especially if all you've been exposed to is some random self-taught C++ veteran's tutorial where classes are just used as fancy looking structs and the main purpose of inheritance is to be able to be lazy without copy/pasting. And even in C++ books where the author do get the Aristotelian approach somewhat right it's riddled with poor examples and justification for using classes, especially with regards to inheritance (like the dot extends circle example). This one the reasons I get a little annoyed when I see people recommending people to start learning to program by starting with C++. Not so much because of the language itself, but because the literature on it handles more "modern" concepts badly.

I just don't see how you'd not have had to set up variable at some point in half a life of programming, though? Exclusively by working javascript or the like? Could kind of explain the not understanding classes thing too, though..

Yea, it didn't make any sense to me either.

Also, you're correct there with the terrible C++ stuff, so I'm able to overlook it... until I get asked the same question 6 times over the course of 3 hours. Then I just can't.

 

[Mrglass08]

Many theology terms are misused constantly. It bothers me a little because it dilutes the discussion to have an incorrect definition attached to a very specific term.

 

[BeerTent]

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.