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The Hard Drive Is Inside the Computer
davidmwilliams writes "Those of us who work in technology have a jargon all of our very own. We know the difference between CPUs and GPUs, between SSD and HD, let alone HD and SDTV! Yet, our users are flat out calling everything 'the hard drive.' Why is it so?" As much as I hate to admit it, this particular thing drives me nuts. You don't call the auto shop and tell them that your engine is broken when your radio breaks!
That will never be as aggravating as memory vs. storage. "I need more memory for my program" is more likely to mean "I'm out of disk space" than "I need more RAM". And the error messages specifically say they need more disk space, but they heard once that a computer stores things in its "memory" and they stopped learning right then and there. Just turned off their fucking brains, and went to sleep.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, no it's not solely digital. It's modulated on much higher frequency analog than voice (hence the microfilter can split them), but it is most certainly not a digital technology.
Be informed before ranting.
Not to mention ADSL modem, there's no such fucking thing. Modem = Modulator/Demodulator, a simple AD-converter. There's no AD-converting in ADSL. ADSL is solely digital.
Um, almost, but not quite correct. Actually, not even close, but it's a nice day out today. ADSL (asynchronous digital subscriber line) modems do, in fact, exist. Lots of them. Every single ADSL drop is going to have a modem. Now a modem is indeed a modulator / demodulator, but that's a general-purpose term. And, in DSL signalling, there is, in fact, an analog carrier. The digital signals are being modulated into carrier tones. DSL does not create a baseband digital line sending low and high digital voltages between your computer and the remote processing (DSLAM) -- it sends a modulated signal pushed up out of baseband. It is most definitely analog, and there is most definitely mod/demod activity. So despite modem being something you might think of as being only an old-school term, it really still applies. (Even to cable TV/internet interfaces; those are also very highly analog devices at the front end.)
See, eg, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_Digital_Subscriber_Line for a decent overview.
But, more to the point here, a mod/demod pair is not a simple A-to-D converter. And there most certainly is a ton of analog-to-digital conversion going on in ADSL, in both directions.
When it comes down to it, the only place there are strictly digital signals are in strictly local communications (with some exceptions like RS-232 and related and derived standards like RS-242, USB, SATA, that can run over longer distances) that exist primarily as point-to-point connections between individual ICs. And even then, when you actually look at what's being signalled on the line, the distinction between digital and analog gets harder and harder to make over the years.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
What are friends for?
Seriously, if I tell my friend to buy a new hard drive, I expect him to buy a hard drive. If he needs my help connecting it or installing the OS, sure, I can do that, but I like to avoid buying things for other people (because if I take exactly the amount of money I paid for the drive, I will lose some money that I paid for the gas (but I don't know the exact amount), if I take more money then I should better know exactly how much I paid for the gas, so that I don't take too much). Luckily all my friends know how a hard drive looks like. On the other hand, if he didn't know how a particular component looks like, but I have the old one, I can always give it to him and say "go to the store and buy one of this".
At least that is the name that rhetoricians use for it: referring to a thing by something associated with it.
When we call soldiers "boots on the ground" that is metonymy. A special case is synecdoche, using the part for the whole ("blade" for "sword").
In any case, its wired into human language and thought. If you look in a dictionary, you'll find words with three or more definitions. Usually there is a process of metonymy going on. "Justice" entered the English language meaning something to mete punishment or reward according to the right of the recipient. It has come to mean a lot of other things: fairness, righteousness, the law, a judge or other legal official, etc.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Nice. I usually use the "computer as office" analogy.
Hard drive = filing cabinet, where you store your files.
System memory = Desktop; where you take out files and work (you only have so much desk space before things back up).
CPU = you/others in the office
Programs = tasks you're doing
Its usually simple enough that people can grasp it, and you can usually expand things pretty easily.
"you want to add more RAM? that's like getting a bigger desktop so you can have more projects open on it at once"
"you want a faster CPU? that's like you being able to work faster"
"multiple cores? Okay, imagine it wasn't just you sitting in the office, but there were four people"
Other hardware becomes office equipment (depending on what it is and how its used), but that starts to push the analogy a bit. :)
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