[e2e] evolution of bandwidth as a term

[Sam Manthorpe]

On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, John Day wrote:
> >Regardless, I suggest that being judgemental and critical of the
> >individuals on this list is counter-productive to the purpose of its
> >existence.  Joining it should indicate subscription to its objectives, I
> >would think.
> >
> >Agreed?
>
> NO!
>
> The Internet nor much else of the modern world could not have been
> built without carefully defining and adhering to the definitions of
> such things as:  bandwidth, mass, joule, kilogram, power, charge,
> bit, watt, etc.  Getting terms right and sticking to them is crucial
> for all scientific pursuits, if not intellectual pursuits.  Although,
> I am aware that certain "disciplines" have made much in the last few
> years about ignoring such things.  But as far as I am concerned they
> can all go Fish!

Maybe we should adopt a standards-body approach to this and
compromise after much discussion: how about Hz/second?

But really, how many competent enginners/scientists/academics
that are concerned with e-m spectrums *and* networking
are confused by the dual use of the word bandwidth?  Can
anyone on this list give us a significant example where
this "sloppy" use of terminology is derailing "all scientific
pursiuts, if not intellectual pursuits"?  If you know of someone,
my advice is to explain to them that one word can have two different
meanings in the English (and all) languages and try to help
them out with their learning difficulties.

Cheers,
-- Sam

p.s. Here's my own contribution to the list of multiple-meaning
words that scientists (not just computer scientists) from different
fields happily use without confusing each other: tension,
spectrum, latency, set, race, context, footprint, layer,
bound, function, range, scope, core, scalability, level,
shell, feed, potential, plug-in, connector, stream, loss,
weight, atomic, cell, dependent, etc, etc.