Cryptography-Digest Digest #878, Volume #9 Wed, 14 Jul 99 02:13:04 EDT
Contents:
Re: How Big is a Byte? (was: New Encryption Product!) ("Bart Cotton")
Re: Fractal encryption ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: randomness of powerball, was something about one time pads ("Daniel Urquhart")
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From: "Bart Cotton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: How Big is a Byte? (was: New Encryption Product!)
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 03:34:41 GMT
As an old 1401 CE, I never heard of a byte until 1964 when IBM system 360
was announced. It was the workhorse of the time and used a 6 bit character
plus a check bit (parity). You old timers will remember BA8421 (BCD -
Binary Coded Decimal). In the years since, I have concluded that "byte" was
an IBM term that proliferated to CDC, SDC, DEC, etc. and other pcm's (plug
compatible mainframes) and clones.
Bart Cotton
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
We keep your batteries healthy!
Dennis Ritchie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> David Eppstein wrote (after quoting and referencing):
> >
> > Anyway, this pretty conclusively demolishes the original poster's
> > contention that Knuth is the only source to refer to something other
> > than an octet as a "byte".
>
> The earliest reference to the term I have in hand is "Planning a
> Computer System", ed. Werner Buchholz, McGraw-Hill, 1962.
> It is about the IBM Stretch project, which culminated in the
> IBM 7030 machine. The first reference in the book to the word
> is in a chapter parts of which were taken from a paper
> by Blaaw, Brooks, Buchholz in IRE Transactions on Electronic
> Computers, v. EC-8#2, June 1959. The chapter is entitled
> "Natural Data Units", but the word "byte" first occurs on p. 39
> in a table just after the sections adapted from the 1959 paper;
> it is then explained:
>
> "Byte" denotes a group of bits used to encode a character, or
> the number of bits transmitted in parallel to and from input-
> output units. A term other than 'character' is used here
> because a given character may be represented in different
> applications by more than one code, and different codes
> may use different numbers of bits (i.e. different byte sizes.)
> ..... (The term is coined from 'bite', but respelled to avoid
> accidental mutation to 'bit.')"
>
> Later, on p. 65, the authors (here Bemer and Buchholz) explain
> that the 8-bit byte was chosen for the Stretch for a list
> of five reasons which I won't retype, but are summarized
> by the first: "its full capacity of 256 characters was considered
> to be sufficient for the great majority of applications."
> They also liked the power-of-two length, and the fact that
> two BCD digits would fit conveniently within.
>
> Dennis
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Fractal encryption
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 04:39:45 GMT
In article <7mgph1$4cj$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> If you can find the paper you were describing I would be willing
> to 'trade' in private email...
No need for trade. A small net search revealed the following paper on
the subject:
"VLSI IMPLEMENTATION OF A CHAOTIC ENCRYPTION ALGORITHM
WITH APPLICATIONS TO SECURE COMMUNICATIONS"
the URL is:
http://amesp02.tamu.edu/thesis/octavio2.pdf
It seems that the state variable used for synchronization is not z, but
y. Anyway, it describes the technique. I am sure you can find a lot of
material on the subject if you are interested.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
------------------------------
From: "Daniel Urquhart" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: randomness of powerball, was something about one time pads
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 21:38:09 -0700
> 3. In one of the combined state lotteries with carry-forward
> of unwon prizes (not Powerball, but the same idea), an
> Australian-led syndicate figured that the prize was big enough
> to "play the whole field" and hired people essentially to
> buy all the numbers. They did in fact win a piece, but the
> various authorities argued "this is not fair" and tried to
> prevent the award, citing various small print. I forget the
> resolution of this, but best memory is that the award was
> made but the small print was tightened up. Contemporary
> news reports often focussed on small stores with customers
> coming in and saying "I'd like to buy 1,000 lottery tickets
> with the following numbers...."
Yes, I saw that too. The same Australian group did the same thing is
several states. Appreantly they made sure that it was tecnically legal
first. But as you said, they changed that.
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