For an excellent description of the war between the byte orders, see Danny Cohen's paper, cited below. A good description of the original of the "endian" terms may be found in Eric Raymond's monumental work, also cited below. Both publications are also widely available via the Internet.
Cohen, Danny, "On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace," IEEE Computer Magazine, Volume 14, October 1981, pp. 48-54.
Raymond, Eric, The New Hacker's Dictionary, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991.
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