Re: Cohen's paper on byte order

From: Bryan Olson (fakeaddress@nowhere.org)
Date: 04/12/03 

From: Bryan Olson <fakeaddress@nowhere.org>
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 01:12:33 GMT

Brian Gladman wrote:

> [...] I do feel a bit peeved to find that
> those who actually made an effort to contribute are now being
criticised for
> omissions that nobody (as far as I know) picked up in the many months
that
> the FIPS spent as a draft.

Well, uh, don't be. No question, the issue is coming up a
little late here on sci.crypt. These technical points are in no
way a criticism of the independent contributors. I'm sure most
the rest of us would love to be cited in such an important
standard.

[...]
> But as a known contributor, remarks along the lines of 'those who
> contributed to the FIPS did us no favours' don't seem very
> constructive from where I am sitting!

Now hold on there -- you make it sound like people are putting
down your work. Doug had: "Whoever changed the process from the
original notion [...] did us no favor." That's clearly saying
that this one particular change was for the worse. There's
nothing in that quote meant to denigrate contributors in general
based on this one issue. It was you who then stated, "Those of
us who made the effort to make an input to the FIPS may have
done you no favours. [...]"

> However, putting this aside, I am still not completely certain that
we agree
> on what the problem is because two different (albeit related) issues have
> been discussed. The first being the lack of an external octet array
> interface and the second being the internal semantics of bytes as finite
> field elements. The reason I ask is that while I am willing to help in
> seeking a solution for the octet array interface issue, I don't support
> changes to the internal semantics.

I don't think I've read any serious participant in this thread
advocating changing the internal semantics. 

-- 
--Bryan

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Cohens paper on byte order
    ... >> the FIPS spent as a draft. ... > way a criticism of the independent contributors. ... >> changes to the internal semantics. ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • Re: Cohens paper on byte order
    ... >> the FIPS spent as a draft. ... > way a criticism of the independent contributors. ... words and, if correct, this seemed to me to be a pretty serious criticism. ... >> changes to the internal semantics. ...
    (sci.crypt)