...or in the immortal words of the foremost theologian on the subject of :rofl:

OMFG~~~~~> rofpmpl


(((((((BIGbad))))))))

:yikes:

PalaceGuard,

Are you familiar with the work of Claude Shannon? :)

BIGbad :thumb:

:grin::rofl:
:rofl::grin:

All:

That "big dummy" was directed at myself for pointing out what was so obviously pointed out by the gentlemen above. If my message was misconstrued by anyone I apologize. Again I am a "big dummy". I never should have weighed in on this one with the big dogs.

BB

jseal - You wouldn't, by any chance, be referring to Claude Shannon's "A mathematical theory of communication", would you?

Nothing miscionstrued and you can't be an indian giver! ;) If we get a tool, we get to ise it where ever it fits. :D

PalaceGuard,

Yes sir, I believe that is the one. Do you think it may be applicable in this instance? :)

jseal – Well, a portion of it. I do think that the Signal/Noise ratio is relevant in this instance.

In information theory, the Shannon-Hartley theorem computes the maximum amount of information (error-free digital data) that can be transmitted over a communication link with some bandwidth in the presence of noise interference.

We’re facing a similar situation here, where packets of data are being passed through a particular messaging system with a seemingly unavoidable amount of noise. The amount of information which may be carried here is more or less limited by the number and size of the packets of useless data.

PalaceGuard,

How significant is this situation?

jseal - It depends on the communication channel. In this instance there are many concurrent channels. Assume for the sake of simplicity that all the active channels have the same bandwidth. Some have much higher information content than others. Those channels with high information content are more sensitive to noise degradation than those which don't.

Actually, the usefulness of the messaging system as a whole becomes inversely proportional to the total system noise at high noise levels.

Can't stay tonight - gotta go.

PalaceGuard,

What kind of noise causes the degradation?

Jseal – It may better to think of noise as “interference” rather than something related to sound. On an analogue line, this interference with the data (signal) does sound like noise. On a digital line, a bit is a bit, so thinking of noise as interference is more useful. The root problem remains unchanged, which is first how to discriminate between the signal (data) and the noise (interference) and also, when approaching the bandwidth limits of the channel, that the noise can elbow the signal aside.

It doesn’t matter what your messaging system is – they all have these problems.

PalaceGuard,

The messaging system must be open enough to enable a complete range of messages, but this openness admits the interference. So noise/interference is an intractable engineering issue. A messaging system must admit noise to admit data, so some portion of the data must be used to identify it as data rather than noise.