OT (resend)

[Robert J. Hansen]

Graham Todd wrote:
> John, I respect your point of view and I shall defend to the death your
> ability to say it.  However, whether the US Navy uses slang of this
> kind doesn't make it part of the English language, nor whether these
> things can be found in the histories of the CIA and NSA is irrelevant
> to me as a Brit (except as an academic exercise).

Thus, Americans should simply dismiss all the words in cryptography
which come to us courtesy of Bletchley Park or GCHQ simply because
they're utterly irrelevant to us except as an academic exercise?

> I think this is what Vedaal meant in his OP.  Its not a matter of
> "political correctness", but of using the English language in a way
> that's not misunderstood or which causes offence.

"Cryppie" is in the Jargon File [1], in the Free Online Dictionary of
Computing [2], in USN slang, USAF slang, and even GCHQ slang.  I've
never met a cryptographer or cryptographic engineer, regardless of where
they're from, who does not understand the term "cryppie".

At some point, people have to take the responsibility for looking up a
word they do not know.  If a good definition cannot be found in under
thirty seconds of searching, then I think a strong complaint can be
made.  That is not the case here.


[1] http://catb.org/jargon/html/C/cryppie.html
[2] http://foldoc.org/?cryppie