On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 10:49:00PM -0500, Kris Coward wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 10:35:37PM -0500, Ben Okopnik wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 10:18:24PM -0500, Kris Coward wrote:
> > >
> > > P.S. Yes, a large part of the motivation for writing this was so that I
> > > could use 2 different definitions of "noise" to refer to noise as noise.
> >
> > So... given that your post is mostly _not_ signal... does that make it
> > mostly noise? Statistically speaking, of course. :)
>
> Statistically? But we already have statistical noise, and I'm pretty
> sure that this is a third sort of noise :)
[grin] As an old electrical engineer, I see all communication as a mix
of signal (information) and noise (other STUFF.) Sometimes, fishing the
signal out of the noise can be quite a challenge.
At one point, when I was working at Hughes Aircraft, I signed up to be
the senior technician on the Earth-based Maser project, where we used a
the oscillating frequency of hydrogen to create a reference time base
(this was a project for MIT, where they were investigating gravity
waves.) The signal that we got - essentially, we stuck a wire into a
glass bottle full of hydrogen ions - was about -172dBm, or just a few
*zeptowatts* (10^-21W.) I'd never even heard of that unit before then...
> > As a chemist friend of mine used to say, "Remember - if you're not part
> > of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
>
> See, that's why I'm not a chemist. My reminder draws on my background in
> mathematics, particularly its logical foundations, and seeks to ensure
> that the earnest are familiar with their modus tollens by reminding them
> "If you're not part of the problem (or precipitate, as the case may be),
> you're part of the solution".
Oh, dear. If we're going to start on math jokes... wait, didn't Gödel
*prove* that there's no logical basis to mathematics? :)))
(Sorry, you have to be a math geek to get this one.)
--
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