In which your shut-in author writes to the BBC when his pedant juices come to boiling point:
Hi,
I was reading your piece on the latest supercomputer, and was a little disappointed to read the following:
“The latest number cruncher is capable of operating at so called “petaflop” speeds – the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.”
There are two problems with this one sentence. The first is that the OED defines ‘so called’ as “commonly called or designated by the name or term specified, often incorrectly” An excellent use is to describe the so called War on Terror, because that is how our current situation is called, whether it is a justified title or not.
By contrast the speed of supercomputers is actually measured in flops, and at the moment the fastest use the larger unit of petaflops. They aren’t ‘so called’ petaflops any more than my house is 13 so called miles from Southampton; Southampton actually is that far from my home, and Blue Gene/P actually does operate at petaflop speed.
A second, lesser point: A petaflop isn’t the “equivalent” of 1,000 trillion calculations per second, it actually is 1,000 trillion calculations per second. A mile isn’t the equivalent of 1,760 yards; that’s what it actually is.
I understand that you have to skim some details to maintain user interest (not mentioning the type of calculation that gives a flop its name, for example), but if there’s one thing the BBC should always be able to do, it’s to use words and sentences at least as well as I do.
2 Comments
You tell ‘em, those so-called ‘journalists’ and their equivalents.
It’s actually really funny how reading magazine and newspaper stories about politics, business, etc, etc. I don’t really find issue with much until they start to write about computer technology. It’s then that I realize, often, the person doing the writing should probably not be allowed to write about anything that has electricity running through it.
And then the next thought goes something like “What if I were a politician and I read that other story? What would I think?”