[vcf-midatlantic] Greenbar printout DONE!
Dave McGuire
mcguire at neurotica.com
Sun Feb 28 18:50:35 UTC 2021
On 2/28/21 1:45 PM, Jeffrey Brace wrote:
> Kinda like architects using big floor-standing HP ink-jet printers,
> calling them "plotters", to the point where HP themselves calls them
> "plotters". They are not plotters; they are ink-jet printers. But
> they
> replaced pen/vector plotters, so they kept calling their output devices
> "plotters".
>
> Thanks for sharing Dave. I love hearing about specific history like
> this. Especially where terminology gets distorted, muddled and people
> keep going with incorrect terminology, yet it becomes commonplace enough
> that every starts to accept it even though incorrect and/or inaccurate.
Yup. The one that gets me is "broadband". That's a completely
inaccurate term. It does not mean, and has never meant "fast
connection", but that's what people take it to mean now, all over the
industry. Broadband is a technical term that has to do with the style
of modulation which is applied to a carrier signal in order to transmit
information. It has nothing to do with "bandwidth". Most fast
connections are in fact "baseband", which is effectively the opposite of
"broadband".
It is the nature of language to evolve, but when it evolves sloppily
by clueless people ("broadband") without intervention from people who
know, it turns into a vomitous mess.
Big ink-jet printers being called "plotters" never irked me quite as
much as "broadband", but it's still wrong, and my
terminologically-obsessive brain just goes into involuntary "NO THAT'S
WRONG YOU MORON!" seizures when I hear it.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
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