QI annoyance

Burnsy2023 · 5 Oct 2009 at 13:22

Ok, so I was watching Season 6 Episode 12 of QI and there's a bit at the end that makes me cringe.

Stephen asks "What makes up 70% of the Internet?"

This is a flawed question to start as you haven't specified the metric by which you are measuring the traffic. Are we talking about specific requests or total bandwidth?

He then proceeds to say that less than 1% of all email traffic is porn. Which could very well be true, but SMTP traffic is not the biggest bandwidth user by far and so doesn't really relate to the question.

He concludes by saying "A recent study has established that the world wide web is less than one percent is pornography and on the other hand 89% of all emails are spam."

Now this further annoys me as email traffic is nothing to do with the WWW at all. He is using WWW and Internet interchangeably which is incorrect. By doing so, he neglects all WWW traffic, a lot of which will be porn as will P2P traffic.

Now if I am to come out with witty anecdotes about how someone's commonly held fallacy is indeed false, I need correct information and QI is one of my most useful sources. Now I don't know who to believe. I'm so annoyed I might have to write a letter

DampCat · 5 Oct 2009 at 13:31

Write a letter. I want to see it!

Stretch · 5 Oct 2009 at 13:32

I think you can get him on twitter

AtreuS · 5 Oct 2009 at 13:33

And sign it.

"outraged of southamption"

TheMagicPirate · 5 Oct 2009 at 13:34

Stretch said:
I think you can get him on twitter

I think Stephen Fry would genuinely appreciate being corrected.

J.B · 5 Oct 2009 at 13:35

Wooo step away from the keyboard and take a deep breath

I vote Burnsy to appear on QI!

You could write a letter, there was that one from the grandson of the creator of Bill and Ben (I am talking about the flower pot men) about their language and how QI got it wrong.

Basher · 5 Oct 2009 at 13:35

You are forgetting that most of the 'facts' on QI aren't quite 'factual'

neil3k · 5 Oct 2009 at 13:36

Stephen Fry is hawt!

manic_man · 5 Oct 2009 at 13:37

Computer technologies unfortunately breed this kind of mis-information.

Put simply, everybody has an interest (in some way or another), many like to think they are experts, when in fact they are no such thing. These people are the most vocal and the uninformed masses take their word as gospel.

This doesn't tend to happen as much in other areas as the majority of people dont, for example, have laboratory style geological experimentation equipment in the corner of their lounge, nor do they have any real interest in how rocks fault. They do however have a computer, which they actually form quite a close attachment too.

I imagine very competent car mechanics feel the same sort of frustration. Most people think they know lots about how a car works and will wax lyrical about their knowledge, those that know nothing lap it up and so the mis-information cycle continues.

Write a letter, can't hurt. It wont do any good either other than to make you feel slightly better about it, but hey its only a few words and an hour or so of your time, so why not!

JIM_BOB7813 · 5 Oct 2009 at 13:38

Burnsy2023 said:
Stephen asks "What makes up 70% of the Internet?"

Like you say, it depends on specifically what he is asking/measuring.

LeJosh · 5 Oct 2009 at 13:43

If it makes you feel better he probably should have said what makes up 70% of the internet' traffic?

Burnsy2023 · 5 Oct 2009 at 13:52

LeJosh said:
If it makes you feel better he probably should have said what makes up 70% of the internet' traffic?

And that would still be wrong. Email as a whole doesn't account for that much internet traffic. If he said "What makes up 70% of email traffic" I would be happy.

LeJosh · 5 Oct 2009 at 13:56

Burnsy2023 said:
And that would still be wrong. Email as a whole doesn't account for that much internet traffic.

No I've just not read it properly. As you were.

Hatter The Mad · 5 Oct 2009 at 13:58

There there, pet.

gillywibble · 5 Oct 2009 at 14:00

It's a good point.

Sankari · 5 Oct 2009 at 14:00

Burnsy2023 said:
Stephen asks "What makes up 70% of the Internet?"

I would have said "Tefal's posts on OcUK."

meghatronic · 5 Oct 2009 at 14:00

Just post on his twitter - he'll reply I'm 90% sure.

Abraham · 5 Oct 2009 at 14:01

while he would I'm sure respond to a correction if you sent it via twitter or similar, I find it a touch odd that people actually think it's his own knowledge that he spiels off. His researchers and more likely script writers got it wrong, maybe they just give him notes to talk around and he improvised/omitted incorrectly

Rroff · 5 Oct 2009 at 14:01

Personally I lost interest in QI a long time ago... its got a bit too stale and predictable and takes itself a bit too seriously.

Burnsy2023 · 5 Oct 2009 at 14:04

Abraham said:
while he would I'm sure respond to a correction if you sent it via twitter or similar, I find it a touch odd that people actually think it's his own knowledge that he spiels off. His researchers and more likely script writers got it wrong, maybe they just give him notes to talk around and he improvised/omitted incorrectly

Of course.

However, this episode was shown a good few months ago, so I'm sure someone else has made this point already.