On Sun, Mar 02, 2008 at 11:20:13AM -0800, Lan Barnes wrote:

BTW, I fully expect and will not respond to the usual avalanche of "but
it's all right (or "alright") because language changes and that's what _I_
say." Sure sure. Tell me about it the next time you correct some Joe
Sixpack who calls his hard drive capacity "memory."

I had a friend who referred to what we would think of as the computer as
his "hard drive".  To him, the monitor was the computer, I guess since that
is what he saw and interacted with.

Referring to hard drive capacity as memory is quite correct, at least
historically.  "Storage" seems to be a better modern term to generically
refer to components that retain digital data.  Memory is mostly reserved to
those kinds of storage where the bits are directly stored in transistors.
Flash technology is blurring even that line a bit, though.

Here's a question about language evolution (don't look it up first).  Which
is "correct":

   "Tow the line."
   "Toe the line."

David


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