Message-Id: <199308141251.AA01610@eli.CS.YALE.EDU>
Date:         Sat, 14 Aug 1993 19:46:23 +1000
Reply-To: Nick Nicholas <nsn@MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU>
From: Nick Nicholas <nsn@MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU>
Subject:      Re: TECH: Bytes and bits
To: Erik Rauch <rauch>
Status: O

Another issue on which I've been having a think.

I agree with F. Baube[tm] that computer implementation shouldn't be part
of the definition of a bit; it is, after all, a binary digit (etymologically
too!), and was first used in communication theory. I propose we call it a
truth-quantum: jetka'u.

Now back to bytes. I do still think they are selci, because (prototypically)
they are the smallest units of memory distinctly identifiable as such, and
because they are the building blocks of memory architecture. A selci, I
take it, is indivisible *on a given level of analysis*; thus a xuksle is
a molecule, even though it is divisible into atoms, because molecules, not
atoms, are the smallest instances of the given chemical as such.

What I've just described, though, isn't really a byte; more like a word.
What of a byte? Well the Esperantists have accepted 'bajto', but alongside
it, as a kind of protest, they also have 'bitoko': eight-bit. Given my
distaste for PA-lujvo misused, could we admit bivjetka'u as a properly
used lujvo (or at least, an obvious abbreviation of jetka'ubivmoi)?

*******************************************************************************
 A freshman once observed to me:         Nick Nicholas am I, of Melbourne, Oz.
 On the edge of the Rubicon,             nsn@munagin.ee.mu.oz.au (IRC: nicxjo)
 men don't go fishing.                   CogSci and CompSci & wannabe Linguist.
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