Author´s Reply2

Without proof Paaske³states that "... En¹cannot be true." Paaske\´s statement is based on his qualitative assumption that channel error is "much more likely" to occur than a hardware error in the decoder. The author will show that En\´s statements are still true under Paaske\´s assumption. Previous correspondence was cited by Paaske and claimed to be "the best way..." to judge a code based "on the particular channel" and 40 000 test pattern bits. Hence, he claims that the system II and the Massey code outperform the En code. However, the En code can outperform both system II and the Massey code under other channel characteristics and other sets of test bits. Therefore, the method quoted by Paaske is inconclusive at best. Massey\´s Threshold Decoding is a significant contribution. Regardless of his original assumption, his particular decoder does propagate infinite errors However, this should not be considered as criticizing Massey\´s work. The En code has been proved empiricafly to be free from catastrophic errors under any error sources. Since Paaske did not prove anything to the contrary, all of En\´s original claims stand as before.