Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on November 05, 2006 05:05 AM
I agree almost completely with the above post. I just want to point out the story associated with the briefly mentioned word broadband (for those who might not know it).
The term broadband, as you probably know, is used as a buzzword, yet it has no definite meaning. This was not always the case. Once upon a time, electrical engineers and people studying signal processing used a term called bandwidth to measure the dispersion rate of a signal over a range of frequencies (more commonly, just the “width” of a peak in the power spectrum of an analog signal). The term baseband was used to denote the highest frequency limit of a signal, and information transmitted using baseband modulation is usually encoded in a very simple way. The term broadband described a digital signal whose rate was above the baseband.
So any transmission rate resulting from the simultaneous transmission of information along the same signal would be called broadband. Now, for a telephone line, the baseband rate is 600 baud. DSL lines most certainly exceed this by using multiple signals. But a 56K modem also transmits at 9 times the baseband, and therefore might be considered broadband. As most people know, however, broadband is currently used to indicated a “fast” connection. It has lost its originally meaning to a new meaning that is somewhat related to the old one.
If we let people use the term opensource willy nilly, I am afraid that it too will become a marketing term, and the orignal opensource community will be saddened.
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Re:Dont be daft
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on November 05, 2006 05:05 AMThe term broadband, as you probably know, is used as a buzzword, yet it has no definite meaning. This was not always the case. Once upon a time, electrical engineers and people studying signal processing used a term called bandwidth to measure the dispersion rate of a signal over a range of frequencies (more commonly, just the “width” of a peak in the power spectrum of an analog signal). The term baseband was used to denote the highest frequency limit of a signal, and information transmitted using baseband modulation is usually encoded in a very simple way. The term broadband described a digital signal whose rate was above the baseband.
So any transmission rate resulting from the simultaneous transmission of information along the same signal would be called broadband. Now, for a telephone line, the baseband rate is 600 baud. DSL lines most certainly exceed this by using multiple signals. But a 56K modem also transmits at 9 times the baseband, and therefore might be considered broadband. As most people know, however, broadband is currently used to indicated a “fast” connection. It has lost its originally meaning to a new meaning that is somewhat related to the old one.
If we let people use the term opensource willy nilly, I am afraid that it too will become a marketing term, and the orignal opensource community will be saddened.
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