this is all new to me and i'm struggling to find a friendly, simple introduction to the field. does anyone have a good link to, say, an introductory article on fountain codes? i'm starting to get a feel for the idea from reading various wikipedia pages, paper abstracts, powerpoints, etc, but a good "layman's" article would be great...

[update] huh. just after posting i started searching for "fountain codes" and found this - http://blog.notdot.net/2012/01/Damn-Cool-Algorithms-Fountain... (previously had been searching for luby, raptor, etc).