The BBC is where old IT hacks go to die

REGULAR READERS will be well-aware of the height of the esteem in which I hold the BBC's news coverage in general and its science and technology coverage in particular.

For the sake of brevity, we'll gloss over the Corporation's shining track record in completely cocking up the UK's move to digital radio and TV broadcasting and we'll also ignore the organisation's cavalier disregard for English grammar - Note to BBC subs: people do not "meet with" other people, they simply "meet" them.

The BBC's motto is "And Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation" - it's written on the wall of Broadcasting House. But when it comes to science and technology reporting, it's tempting to replace the fifth word of that maxim with another, similar-sounding, but more yellow and pungent one. We might also add the word "poor" to it.

Far from educating its audience as Lord Reith intended, today's BBC tech reporting is dumbed-down to the point of stupidity. It's as if the Science and Technology desk had actually given up any pretence of educating and informing. What's the point of a story describing a lunar eclipse that uses the phrase ‘the Sun goes behind the Earth'? How is anyone's understanding of IT helped by telling them that "the processor is the brain of the computer" or that chips made of copper are faster than ones made of aluminium?

Most of the BBC's IT coverage is comprised of shock, horror pieces on security which are thinly-disguised puff pieces for security companies, or yet another gush-a-thon for iPods and iPhones.

Forty years ago, the BBC's coverage of the Apollo program was second to none - it had presenters who knew what they were talking about - Raymond Baxter and James Burke - and proper scientists like Eric Braithwaite and Gene Shoemaker explaining the complicated bits.

It is a piece today that brings this tirade down on the BBC's collective head. In a story of staggering awfulness, the BBC reveals a new technology, set to revolutionise computing - dual channel memory. Would this perhaps be in some way similar to the dual channel memory I have in an old Rambus machine in the attic that must be at least seven years old?

Over to the BBC: "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. With single channel memory the data in RAM only has one route to take to the chip. With dual channels it has two."

And the writer gets paid for this stuff? Next he calls in an expert to back him up. Step forward someone who should know better, Marc Bernier of Kingston Technology: "Two memory [modules] work in tandem and they both send information to the processor at the same time," he said. "This means that the overall bandwidth is increased."

One can but imagine the scenes of mirth at Kingston this morning as Marc's co-workers applaud him for his prescience in describing a new technology from the last century. But wait - here's yet more staggering news, this time from another memory maker:

"If someone bought a PC 12 months ago it probably came with DDR, so if you're looking to upgrade your PC you want to be looking at DDR memory," said Chris Gibson of Corsair Memory. "Anything less than 12 months ago will have DDR2 in the system, which is effectively a faster module. In the future - probably six to 12 months away - there'll be DDR3," he said.

No attempt is made to explain why DDR2 is faster, or indeed how much faster it is - presumably it's one faster than plain old DDR. The BBC then explains about how wonderful solid state disks are - and naturally provides a plug for a company that makes the stuff - and that USB sticks can be used to provide extra memory for PCs, while failing to note that spending the same amount of money on a couple of DIMMS would provide a far more significant performance hike.

And here's what you've been waiting for, today's 'Brain of the computer' moment:

"RAM (Random Access Memory) is the place where your computer stores all the data it needs right now to help you do what you want - be it play a game or write a letter. It is different to data stored on your hard disk because it goes away when you switch the power off, disks are called storage because the data stays on them when you power them down."

This is utter, utter rubbish that would be out of place in a ten year old's homework. If this is the best the BBC can do, might I suggest that it should give up technology reporting and concentrate its efforts on pro-celebrity Come Dancing Eastenders? µ

L'INQ
The offending article