From: Kent Crispin <kent@bywater.songbird.com>
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 1997 15:41:01 +0800
To: Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer <cypherpunks@ssz.com>
Subject: Re: Orthogonality and Disaster Recovery (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199710252128.QAA30492@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <19971026003520.35384@bywater.songbird.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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