BBC attempts tech subterfuge, fails completely

FORGET DODGY DOSSIERS and WMDs that can be deployed in 45 minutes. The BBC reacted swiftly to our criticism yesterday and quietly sexed-up its story about the future of storage in a sneaky attempt to make it more accurate.

We use the word 'sneaky' as the changes to the body of the text were not reflected in the 'last modified' timestamp at the top of the story, which still reads 'Last Updated: Friday, 13 July 2007, 16:12 GMT 17:12 UK' - two days before our story pointed out the gross inaccuracies in Chris Long's piece. But thanks to Google's - ahem - Not At All Evil attitude to privacy, cached versions of the story can still be read, proving the BBC's duplicity.

Here's an example. The story originally said "Now, to make your computer to run faster, a new system called dual channel memory has been developed that, as its name implies, splits the RAM memory into two channels." This was mysteriously changed to "To make your computer run faster, dual channel memory was developed and launched in 2003, and it, as the name implies, splits the RAM memory into two channels."

The tragic thing about the Beeb's attempt at fixing its hopeless story is that the correction is itself wrong - dual channel memory first became available three years earlier with the arrival of Intel's i850 Tehama chipset in 2000.We wait with bated browsers to see if a further rewrite of history occurs and whether the 'last updated' time remains unchanged.

In related news, a number of readers inform us that they have filed complaints about the dreadful piece on the BBC's 'Have Your Say' pages, but that these have somehow not been deemed suitable for publication alongside the gushing praise for the Corporation's flagship technology programme, Click. µ

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