Erik Naggum  <erik@naggum.net> wrote:
+---------------
| Well, what can I say?  Character sets and encoding is one of my
| specialties, and I distrust the programming population's ability to
| think clearly about the meaning of "character" as opposed to "byte",
| with good reason, I might add: Few fundamental areas of computer
| science have been screwed worse than the most basic: The meaning of
| our information.
+---------------

The you'll probably want to stay away from "sci.crypt" for a while
if you value your blood pressure. There've been a bunch of idiots
over there saying things like, "The term `octet' is silly -- a byte
is *8* bits, period!", and completely denying any relevance of the
long tradition of machines with other than 8-bit bytes. [As an quondam
PDP-8 & PDP-10 hacker myself, I found this *particularly* galling...]


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock, 31-2-510		rpw3@sgi.com
Network Engineering		http://reality.sgi.com/rpw3/
Silicon Graphics, Inc.		Phone: 650-933-1673
1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy.		PP-ASEL-IA
Mountain View, CA  94043