On Tue, 23 Jul 2019 at 15:23, Mark E. Shoulson <mark@kli.org> wrote:

I noticed the {Hut} there too.  But that doesn't necessarily mean nine
bits.  Maybe the name was derived from some one-indexed counting of the
bits, and named something relating to its ending at (i.e. before) the
ninth bit. Or whatever twisted logic gave the French "huit jours" (lit.
eight days) for "a week" and "quinze jours" (lit. fifteen days) for "a
fortnight" (which at least comes from "fourteen nights", so the math
works out for the English at any rate).  Me, I'm going to choose to
believe that it's eight bits (an "octet" to be hyper-technical) and
named off-by-one because of some... reason.

In case you missed it earlier in the thread, the real reason for the {Hut} is because the pun is based on the name of the actor John Hutton.

--

De'vID

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