wald-david@CS.YALE.EDU (david wald) (11/09/88)
Sorry I took so long to post this. A bit back I posted a request for
casual names for the NeXT machine's magneto-optical drive. As Gordon
Keener said in a reply, "the poor things *need* a short standard
name." My suggestions at the time were:
1) magneto-optical drive, and other official or semi-official terms.
2) optifloppy,
3) floptical drive.
The following replies have been folded, bent, spindled, mutilated,
sliced, diced and made into jullienne fries in order to fit into a few
categories and into a reasonable amount of space. First of all, I
apologize to the authors whose golden prose has gotten trashed in the
process. And secondly, the authors disclaimers were often eliminated,
so please refrain from flaming people based on the portions of their
suggestions which appear here.
And now, the candidates are:
CD:
From ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap):
>
>I suspect a lot of people are going to call it CD. So bend with the
>trend and say that C stands for Computer. :-)
From bbc@titan.rice.edu (Benjamin Chase):
>
>Let's hurry up and find a good name for this thing before someone
>gives it name like "Compact Disc", which gets shortened to something
>like CD, which sounds a lot like something you might get at a bank if
>the interest rates were good.
FLOPTICAL and FLOPTY:
From shap@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro):
>
>I can't resist.
>
>I propose, on the logic of progressive technologies having logically
>sequential names, that we should use:
>
> mopties
>
>as in
> Flopties, Mopties, Peepers, and Floptentails.
>
>It's been a long night.
However, several people also pointed out that the term "Floptical" was
already being used by Insite Peripherals for a magnetic media using a
laser for servo control. Therefore, despite the humorous replies, we
probably want to let this one go.
OPTIFLOPPY, OPTIHARD, OPTIDISK, OPTICART:
From jspear@BLACKBIRD.AFIT.AF.MIL (Jon L. Spear):
>
>To avoid confusion, maybe the magneto-optical drive (too hard to
>pronounce quickly) could become the "OptiFloppy" to differentiate it
>from the earlier Floptical drive.
From: mtune!poseidon!psrc@att.att.com
>
>I like "optifloppy".
From Lou@cup.portal.com (William Joseph Marriott):
>
>My vote goes for optidisk...
>
>Optidisk and Optidrive. For a better America.
From sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey):
>
>For that matter don't call it anything "floppy". An optical disk isn't
>floppy. If you follow these lines, call it an "optihard".
From pardo@june.cs.washington.edu (David Keppel):
>
>* Opticart (Optical-cartridge)
From bbc@titan.rice.edu (Benjamin Chase):
>
>Also consider:
>
> 4) optidisc
> 5) opti
> 6) opticard (the motivation being the rectangular shape of the cartridge).
OPTI and OPPY:
From crum%panarea.usc.edu@oberon.usc.edu (Gary L. Crum):
>
>I suggest "opti" and "oppy".
From james@astro.as.utexas.edu (James McCartney),
gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore),
wm@ogccse.ogc.edu (Wm Leler), and
roger@XN.LL.MIT.EDU (Roger Hale), and
mcnc.mcnc.org!rti!sas!flash@harvard.UUCP (Gordon Keener):
>
>"oppy disk".
From zimerman@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Jacob Ben-david Zimmerman):
>
>"Oppy" disk? sounds like a type of bagel...
MAGNETO-OPTICAL DRIVE, (MOD) or MOPTICAL:
From bbc@titan.rice.edu (Benjamin Chase):
>
>I think "1)" above is a fine choice if you're into acronyms, since
>then the name becomes "MOD". Of course, going with the acronym
>reintroduces the confusion between MODisc and MODrive, with which we
>seem to have problems :-).
From nsw@cord.UUCP (Neil Weinstock):
>
>How about "optigrab"? ;-) ;-)
>
>To be truly rational about it, MOD (magnetico-optical disk), as proposed
>earlier, is probably the best name. "MOD drive" has a nice ring to it.
From pardo@june.cs.washington.edu (David Keppel):
>
>* Mocart ("mho-cart": Magnetic-Optical cartridge)
>* Modisk, Modrive
From werner@astro.as.utexas.edu (Werner Uhrig):
>
>personally, I like MOPTICAL ... and have been using it widely on
>people I can infect with this term ...
From cjp@vax135.UUCP (Charles Poirier):
>
>I vote for "moptical drive", or "moppy disk". Short, distinct, and
>not really more ugly a term than "scuzzy" for instance.
From werner@utastro.UUCP (Werner Uhrig):
>
>magneto-optical floppy
>
>..moptical
>
>....myoptical
>
>.......my optical
>
>..........where the hell is MY moptical floppy on which sits all the
> the software I shelled out money to get the password for
> so that I can work on that machine over at that
> workstation with the sign: "IN THE SHOP" !!!
ON THE ISSUE OF "DISC" vs. "DISK"
From ns@cat.cmu.edu (Nicholas Spies):
>
>(I say "disc" because I read some time ago that "disc" was proper for optical
>media, such as videodisc, whereas "disk" applied to magetic media. Obviously
>this can not apply for optical-magnetic media without a new ligature...:-)
From zimerman@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Jacob Ben-david Zimmerman):
>
>Well, if we can't call them disks or discs, we could always call them
>discks...:-)
OTHER REPLIES:
From steele@cs.unc.edu (Oliver Steele):
>
>Disco-tech.
From mikem@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Mike Morton):
>
>As long as we're naming things, how about if we emphasize the laser in
>the optical floppy and call it a "lazy"?
From uwvax!ucbvax!pixar!aaa@harvard.UUCP (Tony Apodaca):
>
>Personally, I like "ody" (oh-dee). It has the familiar ring of
>"floppy" and "winny", but doesn't confuse issues the way "flopty"
>does.
From rwhite@nusdhub.UUCP (Robert C. White Jr.):
>
>W.A.L.D.O. ==> Write-After-Landing-Delay Optics or
> Write-After-Long-Delay-Only (;-) for the sarcastic.
>
> Warm Areas Loose Data Often, (I'll bet that Direct
> sunlight will heat the media as well as
> the laser ever could) and the phrase "data
> disruption due to overheating" will have a
> totally new scope.
>
>How do I keep my data safe? I use ice. ;-)
From swilson%thetone@Sun.COM (Scott Wilson):
>
>Since the drive seems (at least to the uninitiated) to derive aspects
>from both magnetic and optical technology I suggest we call it the
>"Hybrid Of Magnetics and Optics" or HOMO for short. Wouldn't you just
>love to walk into the campus bookstore and say "I'll take the NeXT
>cube and a spare homo drive to go please." Ah, fun for all ages.
>(Liberally apply :-) to all the above, I don't need the grief.)
From zimerman@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Jacob Ben-david Zimmerman):
>
>...What with all these names for the NeXT machine's marvelous
>advertising focus/storage medium, and considering the fact that there
>is a chance that Jobs might lose his shirt if he don't watch it...I
>think we should call it by its major characteristic and call it the
>"Optimistical Disc!"
Also from zimerman@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Jacob Ben-david Zimmerman):
>
>How about calling it an optimag disk? or even lasermag...or
>opnetic...or magtical...or even such things as WMRM!(write many..) or
>CMCD! (Computer Media Compact Disk) or CD-MMS (CD Mass media storage!)
>or any number of other things... :-)! How about WARM? Write And Read
>Many? or COLD? Computer Optical Laser Disk? or NODS? Next Optical Data
>Storage? Or NUTS, for NeXT's Unusual Type of Storage! or JOKE-Jobs'
>Optical Kilobyte Engine, or more...
IN SUMMATION:
On sheer number of repies I suppose we could declare "oppy" the winner,
though I still think it's a shame about flopty, and his fellow rabbits.
============================================================================
David Wald wald-david@yale.UUCP
waldave@yalevm.bitnet
============================================================================ns@cat.cmu.edu (Nicholas Spies) (11/09/88)
In article <42497@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> wald-david@CS.YALE.EDU (david wald) writes: > >On sheer number of repies I suppose we could declare "oppy" the winner, >though I still think it's a shame about flopty, and his fellow rabbits. "Oppy" is inappropriate in that it is the well-known nickname of Robert J. Oppenheimer; an "oppy" would play better as some obscure unit of measure named in his memory than as a cute name for Euro-Japanese fad technology. :-) -- Nicholas Spies ns@cat.cmu.edu.arpa Center for Design of Educational Computing Carnegie Mellon University --
spasss@tekigm2.TEK.COM (Spudboy) (11/11/88)
...oppy... ...Ack!.. I read this and retched...Ack! ...there, I did it again... Listen, this isn't the andy griffith show... I personally like the 'warmdisc" (write and read many) 'cause that's what happens... or o-disc or "o.d." (oh dee) so you can say things like "I o.d.'d my software this morning", and the drive can be described as an optical disc drive-- ODD. spass -- spass stoiantschewsky (206)695-4691 after 9pm | "Are you drunk, or what?" (206)253-5632 after 9am |