[Sigia-l] Serious Discussion of IA Research?

[Andrew Boyd]

Hi Boniface,

I used to be married to a comms engineer, and in my 
professional-by-rather-vague-association opinion, it is more that the 
data is packaged in such a way that it has an acceptable level of 
distortion, rather than no distortion at all. Voice carried on an 
eight-bit channel is sometimes woefully distorted, but we get by on it, 
rather than it being of 32 bit 'stereo quality', by use of the adaptive 
code in the phones and the adaptive pattern-matching inside our heads. A 
real comms engineer may wish to validate and/or dispute this 
information, as I am going on spotty memories of a time long ago in a 
place far, far away :)

As a general rule, we don't get the best, but an acceptable level of 
service/bandwidth/quality, because it is not profitable to do the best. 
I think that it is important to recognise the difference between 'the 
best we can provide with what we have' and 'the best possible service 
available'. This applies to the whole field of human endevour.

Cheers, Andrew

Boniface Lau wrote:

>Hogwash!
>
>Entropy applied to information is about guarding against communication
>channel noise during transmission. By knowing the information you want
>to transmit and the channel characteristics, you can package the
>information in such a way that it is transmitted without distortion.
>
>
>Boniface
>
>-
>


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Andrew Boyd 
Business Development Manager
Daily Basis P/L
Phone 02 6282 9797 or 02 4885 1357
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Email andrew at dailybasis.com.au
or andrew_db at bigpond.com
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