To add to the confusion, if you purchase and download a DRM-protected music file to your phone, and then want to transfer it to your computer and authorise its use there, that's called sideloading in music biz marketing speak.
Even though I run a web server on my laptop and some of the pictures go onto that, and I'd generally refer to putting something onto a server as "uploading", I chose "downloading" because when I transfer pictures from a digital camera to a computer, I'm using the computer as a sort of client. Though having said that, if I was actually logged on to the web server at work and transferring stuff from another computer, I'd still refer to that as "uploading".
I voted for uploading, but sometimes think of it as downloading instead. It's quite comfy here on this fence honest. offloading has too negative connotations to be a good alternative.
I've always considered downloading to moving data from a remote device to the device you are using.
So you download from the internet (a remote machine compared to your PC) and download from a camera (remote device connected to your PC). If you are using a camera to connect to your machine, then that would be uploading off the camera.
So, it's all down to your point of view and the machine you are using connected to another. Alternatively, you can just used "transfer" as a data movement term which gets over the whole confusion as you'd never load pictures onto a camera..
Depends which end initiates it. With my camera, I push a button on it, my computer does stuff in response; so uploading. Web-browser though, I tell it to get stuff, it gets stuff; downloading.
Aha. I have the same thought process as you, it seems - but my camera doesn't have a button to push, it's the computer that does all the work, so I call it downloading.
Personally I do none of those. I transfer pictures from my phone or camera to my computer. Or possibly copy. Upload and download always feel much more internetty to me.
I upload from the less powerful device to the more powerful device (for some nebulous definition of power), and I download from the more powerful device to the less powerful device. Hence I upload pictures to my PC from my camera, and then I upload them from my PC to Picasa Web Albums.
I think I'm with the sentiment that I'd express as "download is when you pull, upload is when you push". So download from camera, upload to flickr. That said, I get the pictures off the camera by use of a card reader, which is simply copying.
I don't really thing you are doing either. Your camera is uploading them, your computer is downloading them. Usually you have a device with which you're identified, eg I am more my desktop machine than I am google, so the subject of the operation is clear. Once I've identified the subject downloading means transfering things to the subject, and uploading transfering copies from the subject. When there are two devices without a readily identifiable subject, I dunno, transloading? I would have divided this reply into paragraphs, but my browser has stopped recognising the return key and I have lots of tabs open.
With a little more thought, the correct term is 'upload'; the terminology grew up in an hierarchical relationship between 'dumb terminal' devices and the godlike mainframe, and persists in the notion that the PC (or web terminal) sends stuff 'up' to servers and the all-knowing internet.
Logically, humble image-capture devices should upload to their betters, in the form of the PC... And download to lowly data-storage devices (like a portable disc-caddy).
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...but I'm now seized with doubt.
I've noticed 'download' used to refer to any kind of transfer, even if it's in a direction I'd normally think of as 'uploading'.
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I'd say the camera is uploading, the computer is downloading, the software is loading, and the user is, erm, confused.
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(Anonymous) 2007-08-23 09:05 pm (UTC)(link)So you download from the internet (a remote machine compared to your PC) and download from a camera (remote device connected to your PC). If you are using a camera to connect to your machine, then that would be uploading off the camera.
So, it's all down to your point of view and the machine you are using connected to another. Alternatively, you can just used "transfer" as a data movement term which gets over the whole confusion as you'd never load pictures onto a camera..
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But generally, I'm pulling or dumping the RAWs from the CF card.
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Makes sense to me, anyway!
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The ups and downs
With a little more thought, the correct term is 'upload'; the terminology grew up in an hierarchical relationship between 'dumb terminal' devices and the godlike mainframe, and persists in the notion that the PC (or web terminal) sends stuff 'up' to servers and the all-knowing internet.
Logically, humble image-capture devices should upload to their betters, in the form of the PC... And download to lowly data-storage devices (like a portable disc-caddy).