29 Mar
2009
29 Mar
'09
3:32 a.m.
I refuse to voluntarily contribute to any further bastardization of the
technical language. Just because the great un-washed call it a laser or
radar doesn't mean it is technically correct. Why not just abolish
capitalizing acronyms all together ? I cringe when I hear idiots on
commercials talking about RPMs or MPGs as if you can pluralize them. What is
next, pressure in Inches Per Seconds ? Society as a whole is ignorant enough
without furthering the cause. And yes a car has an internal combustion
engine, not a motor. As a technical group we should help preserve technical
correctness ( not political correctness ). We the folks that have been
around ( some of us almost from the beginning ) have an obligation to not
only preserve vintage hardware and software for the next generations but
also to preserve the correct verbiage that describes it. Baud should mean
baud and nothing else. I understand that language can change over time ( I
can't say I'm having a gay time anymore ) but I won't let the language get
trashed by people that don't know any better. And why is it that I can have
a mailbox with one letter or a whole bunch and it is still called mail, but
if it is in my Inbox it is called Emails ? I'm starting to sound like Andy
Rooney, must be time to get if the soap box....
Best regards, Steven ( the hacker )
Scanning wrote:
> As stated below, a Solid State LASER ( yes it's all CAPS because it is
an
> acronym ) has tons of bandwidth. New standards
are coming out for 100
> Gigabit Ethernet. For the younger folks here are some fun facts you need
to
know.
Steve,
To be pedantic back, "solid state" doesn't need to be capitalized. :-)
The word is in such common use that "laser" is correct. I dated a woman
for few years that worked at Lightwave Electronics and Spectraphysics.
She developed ring lasers using crystals with faces cut just so such
that internal reflection off of these faces through this gain medium was
stable. Anyway, the key conference each year was and I'm sure still is,
CLEO. Even their website (http://www.cleoconference.org/) spells it
"laser".
I was the one who originally complained about bandwidth. I'm not
talking about the bandwidth of modulating the beam. I'm talking about
the bandwidth of deflecting the beam. As far as I know, my original
statement was right: unless you go exotic, most homebrew systems could
deflect only at audio rates or a small multiple of that.