Re: [gentoo-user] What is a "packet"? Was: Checksum error

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On Sunday 11 October 2009 17:50:37 Mick wrote:
> On Sunday 11 October 2009, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > On Sunday 11 October 2009 13:22:48 Albert Hopkins wrote:
> > > On Sun, 2009-10-11 at 13:18 +0200, Justin wrote:
> > > > I would say it is about just to many germans who are translating
> > > > german
> > > > words literally into english and as the the german word for package
> > > > is "Paket" they come up with packet.
> > >
> > > Oh wow I did not know that.  See I knew it had to have some reasonable
> > > explanation.  Thanks for the education.
> >
> > Well, at least now we know that English contains at least one word that
> > is less ambiguous than the German equivalent.
> >
> > I would not have thought it could be done.
> 
> Packet in English is almost always correctly used to denote a format of
> network transmitted data (in the context of a conversation about IT and
> computers) which is routable:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_(information_technology)
> 
> The word packet also has other meanings like: a 'small amount of', a
>  'package of' and can be used in the context of money (one's salary or
>  earnings), crisps, condoms, chewing-gums, etc.
> 
> Therefore the word packet can be ambiguous in English too, if the context
>  in which it is mentioned is not known.

Yes, I know all that. You missed the in-joke :-)

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com