Learn English – What’s so floppy about floppy disks

Yes, according to Wikipedia the dis-k version of the word has been used to refer to magnetic storage media since the 1950s when IBM (a US company) pioneered the first hard drive. Subsequently the advent of optical media from companies such as Philips (Who are Dutch and therefore used the European spelling) and Sony meant that the form dis-c was chosen.

Etymologically speaking both words are synonyms, with the only difference being that disc is more common in British English, whilst disk is more popular in American English.

Rhodri (see below) also notes that the persistence of the word disk (even in European usage) for a magnetic storage medium is in deference to its American roots at IBM.

The accusative is a noun case in various languages including German and Latin and Greek; as applied to English the term denotes the objective case, shown in personal pronouns me, him, her, us, and them (in contradistinction to the subjective case, sometimes termed nominative, of I, he, she, we, and they).

An absolute construction is a way of tying an extra statement to a sentence while remaining rather vague about its relation with the statement made by the main clause. The grammatical transformation involves substituting a participle (in English characteristically the present participle, the -ing form) for the main verb of the extra statement:

Helen assigned the task to Rosa. [this will be the main clause]

John was away from the office. [this is the extra statement]

John being away from the office, Helen assigned the task to Rosa.

Helen assigned the task to Rosa, John being away from the office.

We don’t know if Helen is filling in for the absent John as boss, or if she is always boss but would have assigned this task to John had he been around, or just what if anything would have happened differently had he been around.

Another example is the much-disputed Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (here with slightly modernized punctuation):

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Here it is a matter of long dispute whether the absolute, here the italicized portion, merely justifies what the main clause decrees [because a well regulated militia is necessary] or limits its application [insofar as a well regulated militia is necessary].

Sometimes the actual present participle can be omitted as understood:

My wife came out to me in the garden, her face [being] a mask of grief.

In none of these examples can we see the case of the absolute’s grammatical subject, whether it be subjective or objective. For in English, case becomes manifest only with personal pronouns. So now let us revisit the first example, supposing a context that is largely about John, so that instead of using his name we now use he or him.

He being out of the office, Helen assigned the task to Rosa.

Him being out of the office, Helen assigned the task to Rosa.

The first version, using the subjective pronoun He, exemplifies what is sometimes termed a nominative absolute. The second version, using the objective pronoun Him, exemplifies what is sometimes termed an accusative absolute.

Although the accusative absolute construction is eminently grammatical in classical Greek, the second version above is not really suitable for formal register in English, as your own source has noted. If it appears in a context where formal register is expected and demanded, it will strike a lot of editors and professors as semi-literate, in the same way as “between he and I” or “Me and my friends want . . .”—violating normative expectations of which pronoun case is appropriate to the positions object of preposition or subject of clause. The position of subject of absolute construction is likewise associated specifically with the subjective case, if it is to be filled by a personal pronoun in formal register.

The distinction between “nominative absolute” and “accusative absolute” in English, such as it is, completely disappears when that subject position is not occupied by any of the personal pronouns that show case (as “you” does not). Since in the video linked by OP Mr. Justice Scalia is talking about the second amendment, which as seen above contains no personal pronoun anywhere, it makes no real sense for him to characterize the absolute construction there as a specifically “accusative” one. But he ventures it only as a casual opinion. He is perhaps hoping to intimidate people with less grammatical knowledge, while being sufficiently noncommittal to stay out of trouble in case someone questions him who has more grammatical knowledge.