On Sat, Oct 25, 1997 at 04:28:52PM -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
Forwarded message:
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 13:52:05 -0700 From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net> Subject: Orthogonality and Disaster Recovery
One of the themes of modern computing I strongly support is that of "orthogonality," or clean functionality.
Any idea how a term meaning 'at right angles' came to hold all the various interpretations it now does?...
I see this word in a lot of my reading and it almost never implies any sort of 'indipendent multi-variant reference system'.
I can't believe that you haven't studied vector spaces, Jim. In that particular niche of mathematics, the meaning you quote is precisely the meaning of 'orthogonal'. Vector algebra underlies a very large part of mathematics, and modern physics would not exist without it. -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html