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Posted by Polly Esther on October 10, 2007, 10:59 pm
Last year I learned bling and blog with your help. This week I've
discovered skew. For reasons totally obscure to my old brain, 'skew' is
what you want when you're trying to figure out how to reduce or make
smaller. At least that's how Windows, in its infinite wisdom, uses the
word.
Now. In little words and short sentences, could you please explain the
word 'digital' with today's meaning? I think it all started when clock
faces began showing funny looking numbers. Lately it seems that everything
is digital and I have no clue what they're meaning. I don't need to take
anything apart and examine how it works, I just need a very simple
understanding of the word. Anyone? Polly [ p.s. I'm pleased to note
that SpellCheck denies the existence of bling and blog; at least I'm ahead
of it.]
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Posted by Kate G. on October 10, 2007, 11:11 pm
basically -- it goes back to the binary code (digits) used way back when for
programming computers.
Today -- digital means "electronic" (which has nothing to do with an outlet
or a plug) or "computer-related". Digital camera -- computerized camera
that records images in computer code for viewing and printing via a computer
(not traditional dark room techniques). Digital Music -- no more
Walkmans... everybody is moving to MP3 players. (MP3 is a file type -- the
player has a computer hard drive that stores the files so you can play them
back.)
Digital Music -- MP3 files or other computer files that enable you to
transfer music from audio cassettes or CD's to your computer or your cell
phone or MP3 player.
Basically -- it is sounds or images or documents that are created, viewed or
stored on a computer (or computer devices like CD's or other Flash Drives or
Smart Drives or .....Compact Flash Cards or SD Cards....)
Does that help?
--
Kate in MI
http://community.webshots.com/user/K_Groves
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
> Last year I learned bling and blog with your help. This week I've
> discovered skew. For reasons totally obscure to my old brain, 'skew' is
> what you want when you're trying to figure out how to reduce or make
> smaller. At least that's how Windows, in its infinite wisdom, uses the
> word.
> Now. In little words and short sentences, could you please explain the
> word 'digital' with today's meaning? I think it all started when clock
> faces began showing funny looking numbers. Lately it seems that
> everything is digital and I have no clue what they're meaning. I don't
> need to take anything apart and examine how it works, I just need a very
> simple understanding of the word. Anyone? Polly [ p.s. I'm pleased
> to note that SpellCheck denies the existence of bling and blog; at least
> I'm ahead of it.]
>
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Posted by Anne Rogers on October 10, 2007, 11:37 pm
digital means you use a fixed set of numbers or symbols, rather than
anywhere in a range, so a digital clock displays 1.35 for a minute,
until it switches to 1.36, whereas an analog clock slowly moves between
the two points and can represent any value in between.
Anything related to a computer is digital because at the base level,
everything is zero or one.
With things like radio, the "old" system is analog as the transmission
is via radiowaves which are a like a wiggly line and a point on it can
have any value. By switching to digital the wave looks like the ramparts
of a castle, either zero or one, but it gets messed around as it's
transmitted, but because the receiver knows it's zero or one it can be
reconstructed with a high degree of accuracy, which wasn't the case when
the value could be anything in a range, if it got distorted then it got
distorted and there was no way to reconstruct it.
Cheers
Anne
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Posted by Polly Esther on October 10, 2007, 11:56 pm
I don't think I'm there yet. Anyone here explain things to 3 year-olds?
We just had an exhausting visit with a 3 year-old and were dazzled by her
questions and comprehension. Maybe I should have just asked her what
digital means. Polly
> digital means you use a fixed set of numbers or symbols, rather than
> anywhere in a range, so a digital clock displays 1.35 for a minute, until
> it switches to 1.36, whereas an analog clock slowly moves between the two
> points and can represent any value in between.
>
> Anything related to a computer is digital because at the base level,
> everything is zero or one.
>
> With things like radio, the "old" system is analog as the transmission is
> via radiowaves which are a like a wiggly line and a point on it can have
> any value. By switching to digital the wave looks like the ramparts of a
> castle, either zero or one, but it gets messed around as it's transmitted,
> but because the receiver knows it's zero or one it can be reconstructed
> with a high degree of accuracy, which wasn't the case when the value could
> be anything in a range, if it got distorted then it got distorted and
> there was no way to reconstruct it.
>
> Cheers
> Anne
>
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Posted by Anne Rogers on October 11, 2007, 1:38 am
Polly Esther wrote:
> I don't think I'm there yet. Anyone here explain things to 3 year-olds?
> We just had an exhausting visit with a 3 year-old and were dazzled by her
> questions and comprehension. Maybe I should have just asked her what
> digital means. Polly
lets try it this way, if you count on your fingers, what numbers can you
represent, probably 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and maybe some
halves if you can bend fingers individually - so how do you represent
3.75, you can't. If you draw a line 10 inches long and label it every
inch you can represent any number between 0 and 10. The first example is
analog, the 2nd digital.
Applying that to music storage, if the storage method can store any
value within a range, then it's not digital, examples would be cassette
tapes and records, whereas a file you'd put on a modern player like an
ipod is just a series of 0s and 1s, the clever bit is firstly converting
the sounds from the instruments or voices to this without losing
anything, then from that turning it back into sounds that our ears can't
distinguish from the original.
--
Cheers
Anne
http://baltimorealbum.blogspot.com/
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