Would someone please clarify for me the difference between direct and random access?
Specifically, why does this Wikipedia article on Direct Access Storage Devices distinguish between the two:
The direct access capability, occasionally and incorrectly called random access (although that term survives when referring to memory or RAM),
whereas this article on random access doesn't:
In computer science, random access (sometimes called direct access) is the ability to access an element at an arbitrary position in a sequence in equal time, independent of sequence size.