6 ms·

Sorry buddy, that ship has already sailed. Terms become popular because they are useful. We all know cloud means "a remote computer accessed over the internet",

by nicky0 10y ago

Sorry buddy, that ship has already sailed. Terms become popular because they are useful. We all know cloud means "a remote computer accessed over the internet", but that is rather cumbersome phrase. "Cloud" says it in 5 characters. Can you suggest a better term?

ghkbrew 10y ago
As a fan of both linguistic games and playing devil's advocate, how about: "server"
- gyros 10y ago
  6 characters, sorry ;-)
  - Vendan 10y ago
    "host"... 4 characters, beats cloud...?
    - losteric 10y ago
      "Cloud" refers to a commoditized service, generally highly available / performant. "Host" is generally less ambiguous, referring to a specific thing given the context of the discussion. It's a pronoun for machines (kinda).
dTal 10y ago
Terms become popular because they're useful, but useful to whom? The purpose of the original coinage of the word "cloud" was to obfuscate that you really meant "someone else's computer". It gives a nice warm, fuzzy decentralised impression - clouds are natural and ubiquitous! No one owns them! If it's in "the cloud" (note the definite article) then it's safe in the very fabric of the network, right? Nope. It's in Larry and Sergey's basement. Not decentralised at all. Just somewhere else. The proper term is "server", "datacenter", or "network", depending on what you're actually trying not to say.