-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Friday 2005-07-22 at 04:15 +0200, Anders Johansson wrote:
And no, I do not accept naming HD memory as RAM memory,
By the way, if you're going to reply to something I wrote, reply to me when I write it.
Sorry, it wasn't meant as an answer to you in particular, that's why that paragraph was indented; it was a "side thought" after reading the whole thread. I'll reformat the email to recover what I said exactly.
And no, I do not accept naming HD memory as RAM memory, for one thing: it is not directly addressable by the processor, thus it is not even "memory". Reading from HD requires a program, as it resides in a peripheral device. I call it "long term external storage space" ;-)
Notice the smiley, please. You quoted thus:
for one thing: it is not directly addressable by the processor,
The definition of 'random access' does not include 'direct addressability without the use of a driver'
thus it is not even "memory".
That's just silly
No, it is not. By "memory" we commonly understand "primary memory". When one goes to the computer shop and ask for more memory, nobody thinks you want to buy a bigger HD. The common usage of the unqualified term "memory" refers to main memory or primary storage, which has to be directly addressable, its one of its properties. Other uses of the word that are not so common need to be qualified or differentiated. Therefore, when we talk about "RAM" we are thinking of the memory chips used in computers - even if HD can be considered memory of some kind, it is not what we refer to as RAM. It's the same convention as when we talk of ROM, forgetting that ROM chips are also RAM. A misname, but generally accepted, and we all know what its being referred to. But this argument is completely byzantine and pointless. - -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFC4tQstTMYHG2NR9URAhDrAJ90+pYhEWL3LiYcUD5cwheHmyF50wCgiyI8 9SID5FNh20N5k2qeYlphuHg= =KTOv -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----