Doesn't a laser, by definition, produce one, and only one, frequency? Why yes!
If it's a very high-quality and expensive laser. The cheap lasers that you'll find in most labs will be putting out a beam of light which comprises maybe 4 or 5 frequencies. A single frequency coherent beam of light requires rather a lot of money.
You may also want to re-read your textbooks on the Nyquist theorem. Basically the story goes that good sampling wants to be done at twice the maximum frequency that is being sampled. Your explanation as to why is fairly on topic. The reason why CDs are 44.1 kHz is because the upper limit of what the human ear is reckoned capable of detecting is around 18 to 20 kHz. (Naturally there's some really interesting stuff behind this as to why they bumped it up to 44.1 -- fairly odd number, wouldn't you say? Plus a true, or even a mildly legitimate, audiophile will tell you that not being able to hear the higher/lower frequencies doesn't mean the sound isn't different if they're not there.) However, if you start thinking about the sampling/oversampling thing, it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and sure doesn't support that whole 356 kHz stuff.
Does anyone else find it interesting that, in the midst of all the usual IBMs and SGIs, three entries on last year's list are described as "self-made"? Numbers 215, 396, and 413 -- the last of which is termed an "NT super-cluster"; if you check out the link, it's a group of 38 dual-processor HP Pentium III Xeon 550 Kayaks running NT clustered together.
Another shameless plug -- as an ex-pat kiwi, I was pleased to see that number 191 is at NIWA (National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research) in Wellington.
Very true. He also wondered why a sentence should have to read "the great grey horse grimly neighed" rather than "the grey great horse grimly neighed".
Tolkien was a most remarkable man. By the time he was in his late teens, he could already speak something like six or eight different languages (including Old Norse, Old English, etc., etc.). He used to talk about the beauty of words. Welsh was, to him, a gorgeous language. He used to say that the word "beautiful" is, if one ignores the actual definition of the word, actually rather an ugly word, whereas the phrase "cellar door" was far more attractive. And, if you try muttering them to yourself a few times for comparison, ignoring the meanings, forgetting about context, you'll see he was correct.
One of the comments that was published on the back of an edition stated that the sheer breadth of vision and imagination was astounding, and beggared parallel. Not only does he cover a vast and rich world, but he hints at moments in the past to tantalise the reader. What do we know about Tom Bomabadil? Why is he immune to the ring's influence? And from where does Goldberry come? What of events that marked the culmination of the First Age, and the Second Age? What about Sauron -- who is he? Where did Orcs come from?
Tolkien wrote that there were many people who, reading of glimpses into the past of Middle Earth, would not wish to go further; that they would choose to ignore such writings as the Silmarillion. To him, this was perfectly acceptable. But for those who wished greater insight, he wrote about Ea, about the Valar, the Silmarils, and much, much more. Tolkien saw his work as that of an historian, one who was detailing events rather than inventing them.
But, more than that, he also detailed philology, geography, geology, astronomy, and more, all with astonishing coherency, detail, and consistency. As one might expect, his languages are not merely invented words: he designed syntactically correct grammars.
That is why it is consistently voted the greatest book of all time: because of the rich tapestry of a land described, and the luxurious imaginings allowed by glimpses into the world behind.
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Doesn't a laser, by definition, produce one, and only one, frequency? Why yes!
If it's a very high-quality and expensive laser. The cheap lasers that you'll find in most labs will be putting out a beam of light which comprises maybe 4 or 5 frequencies. A single frequency coherent beam of light requires rather a lot of money.
You may also want to re-read your textbooks on the Nyquist theorem. Basically the story goes that good sampling wants to be done at twice the maximum frequency that is being sampled. Your explanation as to why is fairly on topic. The reason why CDs are 44.1 kHz is because the upper limit of what the human ear is reckoned capable of detecting is around 18 to 20 kHz. (Naturally there's some really interesting stuff behind this as to why they bumped it up to 44.1 -- fairly odd number, wouldn't you say? Plus a true, or even a mildly legitimate, audiophile will tell you that not being able to hear the higher/lower frequencies doesn't mean the sound isn't different if they're not there.) However, if you start thinking about the sampling/oversampling thing, it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and sure doesn't support that whole 356 kHz stuff.
Does anyone else find it interesting that, in the midst of all the usual IBMs and SGIs, three entries on last year's list are described as "self-made"? Numbers 215, 396, and 413 -- the last of which is termed an "NT super-cluster"; if you check out the link, it's a group of 38 dual-processor HP Pentium III Xeon 550 Kayaks running NT clustered together.
Another shameless plug -- as an ex-pat kiwi, I was pleased to see that number 191 is at NIWA (National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research) in Wellington.
Very true. He also wondered why a sentence should have to read "the great grey horse grimly neighed" rather than "the grey great horse grimly neighed".
Tolkien was a most remarkable man. By the time he was in his late teens, he could already speak something like six or eight different languages (including Old Norse, Old English, etc., etc.). He used to talk about the beauty of words. Welsh was, to him, a gorgeous language. He used to say that the word "beautiful" is, if one ignores the actual definition of the word, actually rather an ugly word, whereas the phrase "cellar door" was far more attractive. And, if you try muttering them to yourself a few times for comparison, ignoring the meanings, forgetting about context, you'll see he was correct.
One of the comments that was published on the back of an edition stated that the sheer breadth of vision and imagination was astounding, and beggared parallel. Not only does he cover a vast and rich world, but he hints at moments in the past to tantalise the reader. What do we know about Tom Bomabadil? Why is he immune to the ring's influence? And from where does Goldberry come? What of events that marked the culmination of the First Age, and the Second Age? What about Sauron -- who is he? Where did Orcs come from?
Tolkien wrote that there were many people who, reading of glimpses into the past of Middle Earth, would not wish to go further; that they would choose to ignore such writings as the Silmarillion. To him, this was perfectly acceptable. But for those who wished greater insight, he wrote about Ea, about the Valar, the Silmarils, and much, much more. Tolkien saw his work as that of an historian, one who was detailing events rather than inventing them.
But, more than that, he also detailed philology, geography, geology, astronomy, and more, all with astonishing coherency, detail, and consistency. As one might expect, his languages are not merely invented words: he designed syntactically correct grammars.
That is why it is consistently voted the greatest book of all time: because of the rich tapestry of a land described, and the luxurious imaginings allowed by glimpses into the world behind.