questions about bits and bytes [NOISE]

[Jon Leonard]

Jonathan Wienke wrote to Cypherpunks:
> In a message dated 96-04-11 20:26:44 EDT, jeffb at sware.com writes:
> 
> >[I told myself I was going to stay out of this, but Jim Bell's dogmatic
> >stance irks me... ]  Here's a citation from "Portability of C Programs
> >and the Unix System" by S.C. Johnson and D.M. Ritchie (yes, that Richie)
> >in the Bell System Technical Journal volume 57, Number 6, July-August 1978.
> 
> Citing sources from 1978 in the computing field is a little like using
> dictionaries from the 1800's to dictate modern English usage.  My desktop
> machine has as much computing power as some colleges had during that era.
>  We've come a long way, baby!  Yes, in the past, the term "byte" applied to
> entities other than 8 bits, but "8 bits" IS the commonly accepted, standard
> meaning of "byte" now, in the present.  The fact that the meaning and usage
> of words can change over time is not relevant to current meaning and usage.
>  Anyone who wishes to dispute this should study the etymology of the word
> "gay."

The most recent use of a non-8-bit byte I can find is from 1994 (no typo,
2 years ago).  It's a spec for a RAM cell in ASIC design, and the usage is 
more or less "smallest individually writable memory unit".  By design,
bits must be written in chunks (bytes!), which in this case are 22 bits.

As much as I'd like byte to be a standard, unambiguous 8-bits, there's
still other uses out ther, which is why even recent RFCs specify
octets instead of bytes.

That said, I agree that older CS references aren't a reliable indicator
of modern usage.

> Jonathan Wienke

Jon Leonard