Amazon Drive is ending on 31 Dec 2023

[DNSB]

Odd. When I access Amazon Drive through a web browser, I see 3 folders (Documents, Pictures and Videos). All of which have been empty since 2017. There is link to Amazon Photos which is a separate item and which had 4 photos in it.

AFAIR, the email I received said the same thing as the one quoted by @tubemonkey in the first post in this thread. Amazon Drive is being dumped but Amazon Photos will give unlimited photo storage and 5GB of video storage for Prime members. Without the Prime membership, it's 5GB for whatever combo of photos and videos you want to save.

For now, I'm sticking with local backup media and the 1TB Microsoft gives me on OneDrive.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

A cloud is a hydrometeor consisting of minute particles of liquid water or ice, or of both, suspended in the atmosphere and usually not touching the ground. It may also include larger particles of liquid water or ice, as well as non-aqueous liquid or solid particles such as those present in fumes, smoke or dust.

So really a cloud server is just a server. We really need to change the name as it's not a cloud.

A cloud server (server in the cloud) is accessible anyplace.
Servers can (and are) on private networks, behind fire walls.
I would guess better than 75% of MR users do not run a local (private) NAS or stand alone file Server (Excluding Calibre Content or similar). They rely on one of the many internet storage services, if they bother to backup/share that way.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

A cloud is .

Polysemy John, YCLIU.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by theducks

A cloud server (server in the cloud) is accessible anyplace …

… that you have internet and is often useless without high speed broadband.

"Cloud" is just marketing speak for someone else's remote server on the Internet that you rent space/connectivity/ performance on instead of a direct line like in the 1960s. Often you have no idea of privacy (if the server owner scans the files) or of security (if 3rd parties can read or damage the files) or reliability (disaster planning, backups) or even where it is. It's just a hyped version of Internet based Hosting, which is a 30 year old thing.

It can mean what ever the seller wants and allows them to be vague.

[DiapDealer]

Everything technology-based is marketing speak. Why pick on this one?
(I'm thinking of Jon's overly pedantic post more than anything)

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Everything technology-based is marketing speak. Why pick on this one?
(I'm thinking of Jon's overly pedantic post more than anything)

A lifetime ago on another web forum, one devoted to words and their usage, one EXTREMELY erudite member described himself as a "precisian". When I asked him why he used that word rather than "pedant", he said that it was because the word "pedant" carried connotations of one who thought themselves right but who were very often wrong in that assumption.

I am reminded of that useful distinction pretty much every day here at MR.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

A lifetime ago on another web forum, one devoted to words and their usage, one EXTREMELY erudite member described himself as a "precisian". When I asked him why he used that word rather than "pedant", he said that it was because the word "pedant" carried connotations of one who thought themselves right but who were very often wrong in that assumption.

I am reminded of that useful distinction pretty much every day here at MR.

Hmmm. Right or wrong has never been a part of my interpretation of the definition of pedantic. In fact, I assume most pedants ARE technically correct. I'm shocked that a self-styled "precisian" would get that so wrong.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Hmmm. Right or wrong has never been a part of my interpretation of the definition of pedantic. In fact, I assume most pedants ARE technically correct. I'm shocked that a self-styled "precisian" would get that so wrong.

From what I read into the original post, it was not with the definition of pedant but rather with the belief that many people tend to assume that a pedant will think that they are correct even when they are not which the person in question wanted to avoid.

May I ask how you differentiate between "technically correct" and "correct"? The popularity of the correctness?

Ah, the joy of discussing precision in verbiage!

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Hmmm. Right or wrong has never been a part of my interpretation of the definition of pedantic. In fact, I assume most pedants ARE technically correct. I'm shocked that a self-styled "precisian" would get that so wrong.

The precisian was correct. Pedants THINK they're correct, but are often wrong. For example, anyone who insists on the "split infinitive rule" is both pedantic and wrong. There are countless other examples proving his point - the etymological fallacy, the refusal to accept polysemy (seen above), railing against the epicene "they", etc., etc.. Pedants do specialise in believing themselves to be right, without bothering to actually be so.

[DNSB]

Can we get any further from the original topic than arguing about the meaning of words?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Pedants do specialise in believing themselves to be right, without bothering to actually be so.

Perhaps that's true. But I've never seen a definition of pedantic or pedant that included the words "right" or "wrong". Only something along the lines of being "excessively concerned with minor details or rules." *shrug*

Originally Posted by DNSB

May I ask how you differentiate between "technically correct" and "correct"? The popularity of the correctness?

That was my mistake. I didn't mean to suggest that there's a difference between correct and "technically correct". Correct is correct. I should have instead said "correct, but only the pedant stating the correction really cares."

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Can we get any further from the original topic than arguing about the meaning of words?

Probably, it is after all a discussion hosted in the Cloud.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

A cloud server (server in the cloud) is accessible anyplace.

Let's see you put a server in the cloud and expect it to stay there as it's too heavy and would fall and break on impact.

Actually, it's a server farm. That's the term used before someone decided to try and hijack the word cloud.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Let's see you put a server in the cloud and expect it to stay there as it's too heavy and would fall and break on impact.

Actually, it's a server farm. That's the term used before someone decided to try and hijack the word cloud.

As an avid reader (assumed by your participation here) you must know that language is not static; it evolves. Most modern dictionaries already carry special sense to cover Internet storage.

It is curious to note the OED carries the obsolete sense: "A mass of rock; a hill".

And there is a still current sense: "Anything that obscures or conceals", and also: "Anything that darkens or overshadows with gloom".

So I'm starting to think the use of Cloud for Internet storage could be apt indeed.

[binaryhermit]

Originally Posted by DNSB

May I ask how you differentiate between "technically correct" and "correct"? The popularity of the correctness?

I'd guess technically correct is "Correct, but implies things that aren't accurate" like when I say that I missed the rest of the school year when I got chicken pox.

It's true, but only because I got chicken pox about a week before the end of the school year, it was a routine case of chicken pox insomuch as such a thing exists.