[sdiy] Is everything digital?

[Glen]

At 11:44 AM 5/14/2005 , Scott Gravenhorst wrote:

>The digital world works by reacting to two well defined states 
>which can be measured with certainty.

Scott, you are confusing digital with binary. It's entirely possible to
have digital electronics which operate with more than two states. This is
somewhat equivalent to counting in different number bases. Of course,
binary is by far the most common form of digital electronics, but I have
seen trinary circuitry. (No, I'm not referring to the "high impedance"
state of certain logic chips.) What makes circuitry digital is the presence
of discrete states (no matter how many states there are). What makes
circuitry binary is the presence of only 2 discrete states.


>So then how can we ever eliminate the electron quanta zipper noise in a
>sawtooth waveform???

Oh my god, we can't!  <runs out of the house, shrieking in pure terror!>


:)
Glen