Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

Erik Mouw
2001-06-25T19:59:57Z

On Mon, Jun 25, 2001 at 10:17:09AM -0400, Rob Landley wrote:
> On Monday 25 June 2001 11:13, you wrote:
> > 1937 claude shannon A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits,"
> >
> > 1948 claude shannon A mathematical theory of information.
> >
> > without those you're kind in trouble on the computing front...

[snip]

> This was the dude who decided to apply a binary and boolean approach to
> electronic computation, right? I KNOW I've read some stuff about him... late
> last year?

Yes, but the latter paper was the real milestone. This was the guy who
actually defined what information *is*, and found out the upper limits
of communication rates on a given channel. This was the guy who laid
the fundaments of the information theory. Without information theory no
compression, reliable transmission, reliable storage, crypthography,
etc.

Erik
[who works in an information theory group]

--
J.A.K. (Erik) Mouw, Information and Communication Theory Group, Department
of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Information Technology and Systems,
Delft University of Technology, PO BOX 5031, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands
Phone: +31-15-2783635 Fax: +31-15-2781843 Email: J.A.K.Mouw@its.tudelft.nl
WWW: http://www-ict.its.tudelft.nl/~erik/