X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f996b,ef84650dd3e606e5 X-Google-Attributes: gidf996b,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-10-19 20:08:15 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!paloalto-snf1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!enews.sgi.com!newshub2.rdc1.sfba.home.com!news.home.com!news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3BD0EABE.9010005@usa.net> From: Peter Henderson User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:0.9.3) Gecko/20010801 X-Accept-Language: en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art Subject: Re: what is it? References: <3BC7137B.20402@usa.net> <9qclsj$moe3s$3@ID-39741.news.dfncis.de> <3BCE4670.9080009@usa.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 67 Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 03:08:14 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.0.34.122 X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com 1003547294 24.0.34.122 (Fri, 19 Oct 2001 20:08:14 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 20:08:14 PDT Organization: Excite@Home - The Leader in Broadband http://home.com/faster Xref: archiver1.google.com alt.ascii-art:8693 Peter Punk wrote: > Gee, had i known that you'd think that i think that etcetera is an acronym (it > is not, it is a contraction as you demonstrated), i would have used "and so > forth" instead. Hehe I guess I wasn't thinking too well :o) But still, it's not a contraction either. Et cetera is two words taken from another language (Latin). Etcetera is one word in English that has a different meaning than the one people usually use. But "etc." which is how "et cetera" is usually written in English, is a contraction. I just wanted to point out that you meant to have a space between "et" and "cetera" because without a space it's a different meaning. Or use "etc" instead. > But you could have known that that's not why "etcetera" was in the list, because > aconyms, contrary to abbreviations, are usually written in all caps. "Etcetera" > wasn't. Still wasn't thinking straight since I missed this clue too... > Pardon my French, I'm Dutch :-)) Sorry I thought you said Danish... > So you have taken an interest in the boring and hard-to-pronounce language > called Dutch have you? :-) Well I've taken an interest in any language. That doesn't really mean that I know anything about any other language besides English, Spanish, and Latin...But I'm interested in knowing whatever I can learn. > I take part in the Search For Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) at home > through the SETI@Home project. > I have installed a program (as have over 3 million others all over the world) > that downloads a piece of data, collected by the Arecibo radio telescope in > Puerto Rico, filters it and when the program is finished filtering the data > package (or work unit as it's called) it sends back the result and downloads > another work unit. > > Through the years (2 of them) that this distributed computing project has been > running, a lot of add-ons were build for SETI@Home clients (a client is the > program that does the numbercrunching). Most keep track of your statistics, some > cache a number of workunits in case the server to which to return the results > becomes unreachable, and i have found one that puts some of my current > statistics in a sigfile. > > Anyway, the text "1822wu/2.588yrs" means that i have sent back 1822 results and > that it has taken me 2.288 years in computer time to get that far. > That does not mean that i have been participating for 2.588 years, it just means > that the 3 computers i have to my disposal have been running for a comined total > of 2.588 years now. Cool. I'd heard of SETI@home a little. Thanks for the explanation. I'd never seen the statistics before. It souonds like an interesting project. >>BTW again, nice name *wink* >> > > Thanks, but i am thinking about changing that name soon. It doesn't fit me > anymore (i have never thought i'd say that after proting a mohawk for over 13 > years...) I was referring to "Peter" of course. :o) Sincerely, Peter Henderson peterhenderson@usa.net