Technical misnomers, ambiguous or plain incorrect terms in general usage.

[Tepe]

But computer systems and unicode are now so screwed up that the Ω symbol is increasingly unreliable.  It used to work great back when code page 437 was ubiquitous.

Firefox does not even allow me to enter it directly without issuing a page back command.

Get a real operating system 

[Circlotron]

From Wikipedia:
“an engine burning nitromethane can produce up to 2.3 times more power than an engine burning gasoline”

So when they say “2.3 times more power” do they mean (as I suspect) 2.3 times as much, or the grammatically correct 3.3 times as much?
—————-
Could be worse though.
‘Up to 2.3 times or more’
 

[Bassman59]

For awhile after portable digital music players were gaining market traction, you would see "digital" headphones offered for sale. Never mind that they had the same ⅛" or ¼" TRS jack that plugged into an amplifier that was analog.

There are truly digital headphones that use USB or Bluetooth. As well as analog headphones that have buttons to control a digital device it's plugged into.

Re-read what I wrote. This is very early on that standard analog headphones were marketed as "digital," well before anyone even thought about Bluetooth, and USB headphones did not exist. Now that I think about it, I remember they were being sold when portable CD players were still a thing.

[NiHaoMike]

Re-read what I wrote. This is very early on that standard analog headphones were marketed as "digital," well before anyone even thought about Bluetooth, and USB headphones did not exist. Now that I think about it, I remember they were being sold when portable CD players were still a thing.

I have seen portable CD players that had remote control on the headphones themselves. Pretty sure most of those worked by having the buttons connect a line to ground through specific resistances, so not even the buttons are technically digital.

Headphones also come in different impedances, as high as 600 ohms for use on studio or other stationary equipment that uses +-15V opamps to as low as 16 ohms or less for modern portable electronics that use as little as 1V to run the headphone outputs. The description "designed for portable digital devices" would be technically accurate to describe low impedance headphones, but just calling them "digital" isn't.

[David Hess]

Re-read what I wrote. This is very early on that standard analog headphones were marketed as "digital," well before anyone even thought about Bluetooth, and USB headphones did not exist. Now that I think about it, I remember they were being sold when portable CD players were still a thing.

I can confirm that this happened as I am old enough to have watched it first hand.  I started with the availability of portable CD players.  Be sure to upgrade your headphones to digital for best performance! (1)

Something similar happened with antennas when terrestrial digital TV started in the US.

A more subtle recent example is how rectangular eyeglass styles became more popular with the advent of 9:16 consumer formats.

(1) There actually might be something to this given how many early CDs were mastered improperly making them sound harsh.  Contrast "east coast" versus "west coast" sound for speakers.

[rrinker]

I hate hearing the phrases......   "AC Current", or "DC Current"..... 
'AC' means 'Alternating Current', so 'AC Current' means "Alternating Current Current"  Aarrgh....

That's like PAT testing - Portable Appliance Testing testing

 I'll be right back, I need to get some money from the ATM machine.....

[Nominal Animal]

kernal.

[JohnnyMalaria]

DOS prompt

[Mr. Scram]

DOS prompt

As opposed to a command prompt?

[helius]

DOS prompt

As opposed to a command prompt?

In the days of PC-DOS or MS-DOS, the command line was the application COMMAND.COM, not the Disk Operating System itself; although in a world without process isolation such distinctions can appear blurred.
In more recent times, the command line is not even a part of DOS, but a client of the NT kernel like everything else. Despite this, the icon for the command prompt on various versions of Windows has the letters "D O S" in it.

[JohnnyMalaria]

DOS prompt

As opposed to a command prompt?

Yup.

[bob225]

I hate hearing the phrases......   "AC Current", or "DC Current"..... 
'AC' means 'Alternating Current', so 'AC Current' means "Alternating Current Current"  Aarrgh....

That's like PAT testing - Portable Appliance Testing testing

 I'll be right back, I need to get some money from the ATM machine.....

Ah you mean a Automated Teller Machine, Machine

[glarsson]

Calling anything in an EPROM, or Flash memory, a BIOS.

[Mr. Scram]

In the days of PC-DOS or MS-DOS, the command line was the application COMMAND.COM, not the Disk Operating System itself; although in a world without process isolation such distinctions can appear blurred.
In more recent times, the command line is not even a part of DOS, but a client of the NT kernel like everything else. Despite this, the icon for the command prompt on various versions of Windows has the letters "D O S" in it.

The latter makes the term "DOS prompt" quite reasonable, even if it's more of a descriptive convention than an official name.

[JohnnyMalaria]

True, but it is still a technical misnomer and plain incorrect

[Mr. Scram]

True, but it is still a technical misnomer and plain incorrect

Well, I would call it technically a misnomer but arguably correct. "Plain incorrect" suggests there's no conceivable way it could be correct, and having a logo with "DOS" in it eliminates that quite effectively.

[JohnnyMalaria]

[pedant_hat]
Aerosol

It isn't the metal thingy you shake up and down before pressing the plastic thing (actuator).

It's not even the stuff inside.

It's the stuff after it has come out and atomized. An aerosol is a dispersion of solid particles or liquid droplets in a continuous vapor or gas phase.

[/pedant_hat]

[JohnnyMalaria]

True, but it is still a technical misnomer and plain incorrect

Well, I would call it technically a misnomer but arguably correct. "Plain incorrect" suggests there's no conceivable way it could be correct, and having a logo with "DOS" in it eliminates that quite effectively.

I don't see that logo. My command prompt logo is C:\_ and, since the command line utility is a user-mode application, it has nothing to do with the operating system itself.

I'll modify my claim of "plain incorrect" to "incorrect with a cherry on top".

EDIT: And...the D in DOS stands for disk. Well, my laptop doesn't even have a disk. ergo, misnomer and incorrect with chocolate syrup all over.

[helius]

Up through NT 4, CMD.EXE was given a "MS-DOS" icon:

Which was the same icon used for the COMMAND.COM prompt in Windows 3.1 and 95. In the latter case it made more sense since the same application as in DOS was being used.

[JohnnyMalaria]

But that was 23 years ago.

[Mr. Scram]

I don't see that logo. My command prompt logo is C:\_ and, since the command line utility is a user-mode application, it has nothing to do with the operating system itself.

I'll modify my claim of "plain incorrect" to "incorrect with a cherry on top".

EDIT: And...the D in DOS stands for disk. Well, my laptop doesn't even have a disk. ergo, misnomer and incorrect with chocolate syrup all over.

We did the disk thing a while back. Languages change, which means words can come to mean something they originally didn't while still being correct. "Disk" has become a concept, being a thing that semi-permanently stores data, normally within a computer system. You have solid state drives and even have virtual disks or hard drives. That's not wrong, it's just a continuation, expansion and abstraction of the original term.

[Mr. Scram]

But that was 23 years ago.

Words existed 23 years ago.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Yea, wordeth doth existe. Ain't right, though, innit? I mean, my god, even MS saw the error of its ways.

[vk6zgo]

In the days of PC-DOS or MS-DOS, the command line was the application COMMAND.COM, not the Disk Operating System itself; although in a world without process isolation such distinctions can appear blurred.
In more recent times, the command line is not even a part of DOS, but a client of the NT kernel like everything else. Despite this, the icon for the command prompt on various versions of Windows has the letters "D O S" in it.

The latter makes the term "DOS prompt" quite reasonable, even if it's more of a descriptive convention than an official name.

A bit like the way Engineers persist in calling a tuned LC circuit a "tank circuit", although that meaning has just about died out in the rest of the Technical community.

[vk6zgo]

Yea, wordeth doth existe. Ain't right, though, innit? I mean, my god, even MS saw the error of its ways.

Aye, & some wordeth doth be parfait, gentil knight!