Your subscription dollars at work

[unixronin]

A discussion elsewhere just reminded me of the copy of PC Magazine I picked up and glanced through in the waiting room yesterday evening.  It had a number of articles on broadband connectivity, including one talking about "DSL's high-speed future".  I never actually managed to find that one, but while looking for it, I stumbled across one in which the following caught my eye in the first or second paragraph:

"That's GIGA bit.  A hundred times faster than megabit; a thousand times faster than kilobit."

Hello?  Anyone flunk remedial math lately?  I've come to expect this kind of ignorant error from the mainstream media, but the writers and editorial staff of PC Magazine are at least purported to be at least somewhat computer-literate.  From a magazine that touts itself as an authority on computers and computer-related subjects, a gaffe as basic as this is simply inexcusable.

Comments

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

I am usually agog at what reporters just don't care to know.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Here's another great example. (http://hotair.com/archives/2007/08/15/credulous-photojournalism-of-the-day/)

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

That seems to be deliberate. No one that has ever been around a gun being fired could ever make that mistake.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Half the anti-gun journalists out there don't know which end the bullet comes out of, don't know a revolver from a semi-automatic pistol, don't know a semi-automatic rifle from a "machinegun", scarcely know a rifle from a shotgun, can't tell the difference between live ammunition and empty cases ... and are proud of it.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

"That's over a dozen times faster than a bit!" Never mind the fact that we have a perfectly good unit which actually measures bandwidth and it isn't "bits".

I blame his editor. After all, someone had to buy that article for the magazine.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Both should have known better.

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

Hasn't PC Magazine run John Dvorak's column for years?

'Nuff said.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Point.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

In the late seventies and early eighties, Dvorak was sometimes on point and clever.