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How would you answer this question

By Nick Hodge | September 15, 2008

How would you answer this question?

Which of these terms is not used to describe the speed of data trans­mis­sion between computers?

  1. Baud rate
  2. Cycles per second
  3. Bits per second
  4. Bytes per second

Topics: technology | 9 Comments »

9 Responses to “How would you answer this question”

  1. Andrew Smith Says:
    September 15th, 2008 at 7:17 pm

    B. And some of the oth­ers are arguable.

    So do tell … where did this ques­tion come from?

    Andrew

  2. Lee Says:
    September 15th, 2008 at 7:40 pm

    Are you bored Nick ?

  3. Lee Says:
    September 15th, 2008 at 7:44 pm

    I guess you *could* argue that because “cycles per second” was a once-common unit of fre­quency, meas­ur­ing trans­fer rates over wire­less con­nec­tions *could* be a valid mesaurement.

  4. Jaycob C. Says:
    September 15th, 2008 at 10:06 pm

    Why, it’d be cycles per second. It’s impossible to throw bits and bytes off a build­ing, but not so much for bicycles.

  5. tim Says:
    September 15th, 2008 at 10:35 pm

    while b is the obvi­ous answer, thec­nic­ally it could be cor­rect, as the cpu cycles that are needed to push data into the pipe could the­or­et­ic­ally be meas­ured and though in most cases the pipe is slower than the cpu so it doesnt mat­ter with a real old pc on a fast con­nec­tion it could be a meas­ure­ment — or i dont know what im talk­ing about
    – prob­ably the last answer :)

  6. Nick Hodge Says:
    September 16th, 2008 at 12:58 pm

    OK, this ques­tion was on a sample exam Liam com­pleted last week

    Suf­fice to say I answered “B”, as did Liam — and evid­ently we are all wrong.

    Baud is not a meas­ure of speed??

    I am gobsmacked, too!

  7. Glenn Says:
    September 17th, 2008 at 9:43 am

    In ret­ro­spect I guess that makes sense… from the per­spect­ive that it’s about the size of the pipe.

    (But I ini­tially chose B also :)

  8. Thomas Suters Says:
    September 18th, 2008 at 6:45 pm

    Look­ing up Baud in Wiki­pe­dia explains the answer succintly, though you need to be stu­dent of Phys­ics to under­stand it.

  9. Scott Barnes Says:
    October 13th, 2008 at 12:39 pm

    Baud? wtf.. BBS’s use to use this meas­ure­ment all the time..

    It’s a bloody outrage!…

    -
    Scott Barnes
    Rich Plat­forms Product Man­ager
    Microsoft.

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