Confusing terms FYI Thread

[BlackListedB]

Here's something I'd thought to cobble together out of sheer boredom, as in still no new GTA news...what's up wit dat?!?

Anyway, looking at a PDF manual I notice a company that SHOULD know better has used the term DISK in place of DISC

I put this forth as a chance to debunk some ideas or get opinions on something you might not be sure of... Correct word use/ terminology

As I use it, DISK refers more to non-DIGITAL mediums, as it did in the earliest days of floppy disks for computer, read content stored in a different manner then an optical laserbeam reading pits on a CD, where CD was Compact Disc. Where DVD stands for Digital Video Disc

Disk is probably a correct word choice for LPs of old, or 45 single records as well, if one were to chose that word to describe them.

Another term under contention in the past is DVD as mentioned. It really was Digital Video Disc initially, but due to it's nature as a data disc under computers DVD ROM, it came to encompass Digital Versatile Disc as well... Remember, that term doesn't really apply to movies (pre-recorded) on DVD from major film studios and associated companies, but falls under PC burning in particular and covering all media one can now store on DVD optical disc

If you can think of other examples, or perhaps verify and correct, offer a reply, I won't mind

[BlackListedB]

I'm adding another term that people might see and or read and not know it since it's meant for IT tech, that is FRU, or FIELD REPLACEABLE UNIT, that means parts in general, you will see special order numbers listed as FRU and FRU used by IBM to detail parts that are replaceable on a laptop or desktop computer

Edited November 4, 2012 by BlackListedB

[Spaz The Great]

Disc/disk to me really doesn't matter. I mean..... It's not all that big of a deal. DVD, however, is just an expansion of intended use for something that physically didn't change, just practically changed.

[Gerard]

These are things there aren't strictly right/wrong answers to - they vary over time or location - we just judge them against current conventions.

Optical storage is not the only type of digital storage - you're completely missing out all the magnetic and semiconductor media.

For me, disk is a general term of storage media (hard disk, vinyl disk, USB disk, please insert a disk), whilst disc is a name used in the names of optical media (CD/DVD). A Disc is a type of disk.

For DVD, versatile has always been its real name, never video. It was a compromise between the SD and MMCD formats, always designed to have different formats and types (just like CD). Saying "Digital Video Disc" is just wrong.

I often wonder what a PC would be like to use for someone who had never used it before, and didn't know our conventions and the things we take for granted.

Would they have any clue what Excel and PowerPoint were for? Would they figure out the start menu? Would they prefer Windows or Mac? Could they use a mouse? Would they figure out keyboard shortcuts? Could they find their way around the internet without knowing where to start or what a search engine did?

If anyone has a spare English-speaking feral person who's never interacted with a computer, send them to TGTAP HQ so we can test this theory.