Originally posted by st2000
PARAMETER VALUE
NLS_LANGUAGE AMERICAN
NLS_TERRITORY AMERICA
NLS_CURRENCY $
NLS_ISO_CURRENCY AMERICA
NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS .,
NLS_CHARACTERSET UTF8
NLS_CALENDAR GREGORIAN
NLS_DATE_FORMAT DD-MON-RR
NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE AMERICAN
NLS_SORT BINARY
NLS_TIME_FORMAT HH.MI.SSXFF AM
NLS_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM
NLS_TIME_TZ_FORMAT HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZH:TZM
NLS_TIMESTAMP_TZ_FORMAT DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZH:TZM
NLS_DUAL_CURRENCY $
NLS_COMP BINARY
NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET UTF8
NLS_RDBMS_VERSION 8.1.7.1.0

I have done all that.. please verify and comment...
This is the output of the query from NLS_DATABASE_PARAMETERS, I belive. This tels us nothing about the NLS settings of your client. Connect from your client and perform the same select as above, but this time from NLS_SESSION_PARAMETERS. What NLS_LANGUAGE and NLS_TERRITORY do you get?