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Postings from February 2000
On Wed, Feb 09, 2000 at 03:43:18PM -0500, dan@sidhe.org wrote:
> At 03:33 PM 2/9/00 -0500, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:
> >My sense is that, "octet" is a snobbish jargonesque word for "byte."
> >With respect to "ascii," does everyone know that ascii characters are
> >always bytes? Certainly "bytes" are always bytes, so "bytes" would seem
> >hard to misinterpret.
>
> When the RFCs first started coming out, bytes weren't always 8 bits,
> though, hence octet. Not that perl runs on any TOPS-20 machines (does it?),
> but byte has historically ranged between 6 and 9 bits depending on the
> machine you were on.
Oops! My shallow experience shows. *blush*
--
"Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity."
via, but not speaking for Deutsche Bank