To add some education, the word algorithm (as I always spell it) comes from the cover of the latin translation of a (lost) book of Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi called "Algoritmi de numero Indorum", at least according to this random page of internet knowledge. It dosen't seem to have much to do with the greek word rhytmos.

More on the man can be found on the internet - I'll dig up some book references real soon now ...

Update:

• A german link(pg. 13) which cites a book by B.L. v.d. Waerden, "A History of Algebra (from Al-Khrwarzimi to Emmy Noether)"
• A review of said book

perl -MHTTP::Daemon -MHTTP::Response -MLWP::Simple -e ' ;    # The  
$d = new HTTP::Daemon and fork and getprint $d->url and exit;#spider
($c = $d->accept())->get_request(); $c->send_response( new   #in the
HTTP::Response(200,$_,$_,qq(Just another Perl hacker\n))); ' #  web
[download]