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Title: The Jargon File, Version 4.2.2, 20 Aug 2000
Author: Various editors, - To be updated
Language: English
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#======= THIS IS THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 4.2.2, 20 AUG 2000 =======#
This is the Jargon File, a comprehensive compendium of hacker
slang illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore,
and humor.
This document (the Jargon File) is in the public domain, to be
freely used, shared, and modified. There are (by intention) no
legal restraints on what you can do with it, but there are
traditions about its proper use to which many hackers are quite
strongly attached. Please extend the courtesy of proper citation
when you quote the File, ideally with a version number, as it
will change and grow over time. (Examples of appropriate citation
form: "Jargon File 4.2.2" or "The on-line hacker Jargon File,
version 4.2.2, 20 AUG 2000".)
The Jargon File is a common heritage of the hacker culture.
Over the years a number of individuals have volunteered
considerable time to maintaining the File and been recognized by
the net at large as editors of it. Editorial responsibilities
include: to collate contributions and suggestions from others; to
seek out corroborating information; to cross-reference related
entries; to keep the file in a consistent format; and to announce
and distribute updated versions periodically. Current volunteer
editors include:
Eric Raymond esr@snark.thyrsus.com
Although there is no requirement that you do so, it is
considered good form to check with an editor before quoting the
File in a published work or commercial product. We may have
additional information that would be helpful to you and can
assist you in framing your quote to reflect not only the letter
of the File but its spirit as well.
All contributions and suggestions about this file sent to a
volunteer editor are gratefully received and will be regarded,
unless otherwise labelled, as freely given donations for possible
use as part of this public-domain file.
From time to time a snapshot of this file has been polished,
edited, and formatted for commercial publication with the
cooperation of the volunteer editors and the hacker community at
large. If you wish to have a bound paper copy of this file, you
may find it convenient to purchase one of these. They often
contain additional material not found in on-line versions. The
two `authorized' editions so far are described in the Revision
History section; there may be more in the future.
Introduction: The purpose and
scope of this File
A Few Terms: Of Slang, Jargon
and Techspeak
Revision History: How the
File came to be
Jargon Construction: How
hackers invent jargon
Hacker Writing Style:
How they write
Email Quotes: And the Inclusion
Problem
Hacker Speech Style:
How hackers talk
International Style:
Some notes on usage outside the U.S.
Lamer-speak: Crackers, Phreaks,
and Lamers
Pronunciation Guide: How
to read the pronunciation keys
Other Lexicon
Conventions: How to read lexicon entries
Format for New
Entries: How to submit new entries for the File
The Jargon Lexicon: The
lexicon itself
Appendix A: Hacker Folklore
Appendix B: A Portrait of J.
Random Hacker
Appendix C: Helping Hacker
Culture Grow
Bibliography: For your further
enjoyment
Node:Introduction, Next:A Few Terms, Previous:Top, Up:Top
Introduction
This document is a collection of slang terms used by various
subcultures of computer hackers. Though some technical material
is included for background and flavor, it is not a technical
dictionary; what we describe here is the language hackers use
among themselves for fun, social communication, and technical
debate.
The `hacker culture' is actually a loosely networked
collection of subcultures that is nevertheless conscious of some
important shared experiences, shared roots, and shared values. It
has its own myths, heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes,
taboos, and dreams. Because hackers as a group are particularly
creative people who define themselves partly by rejection of
`normal' values and working habits, it has unusually rich and
conscious traditions for an intentional culture less than 40
years old.
As usual with slang, the special vocabulary of hackers helps
hold their culture together -- it helps hackers recognize each
other's places in the community and expresses shared values and
experiences. Also as usual, not knowing the slang (or
using it inappropriately) defines one as an outsider, a mundane,
or (worst of all in hackish vocabulary) possibly even a suit. All human cultures use slang in this
threefold way -- as a tool of communication, and of inclusion,
and of exclusion.
Among hackers, though, slang has a subtler aspect, paralleled
perhaps in the slang of jazz musicians and some kinds of fine
artists but hard to detect in most technical or scientific
cultures; parts of it are code for shared states of
consciousness. There is a whole range of altered states
and problem-solving mental stances basic to high-level hacking
which don't fit into conventional linguistic reality any better
than a Coltrane solo or one of Maurits Escher's `trompe l'oeil'
compositions (Escher is a favorite of hackers), and hacker slang
encodes these subtleties in many unobvious ways. As a simple
example, take the distinction between a kluge and an elegant solution, and the differing
connotations attached to each. The distinction is not only of
engineering significance; it reaches right back into the nature
of the generative processes in program design and asserts
something important about two different kinds of relationship
between the hacker and the hack. Hacker slang is unusually rich
in implications of this kind, of overtones and undertones that
illuminate the hackish psyche.
But there is more. Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are
very conscious and inventive in their use of language. These
traits seem to be common in young children, but the
conformity-enforcing machine we are pleased to call an
educational system bludgeons them out of most of us before
adolescence. Thus, linguistic invention in most subcultures of
the modern West is a halting and largely unconscious process.
Hackers, by contrast, regard slang formation and use as a game to
be played for conscious pleasure. Their inventions thus display
an almost unique combination of the neotenous enjoyment of
language-play with the discrimination of educated and powerful
intelligence. Further, the electronic media which knit them
together are fluid, `hot' connections, well adapted to both the
dissemination of new slang and the ruthless culling of weak and
superannuated specimens. The results of this process give us
perhaps a uniquely intense and accelerated view of linguistic
evolution in action.
Hacker slang also challenges some common linguistic and
anthropological assumptions. For example, it has recently become
fashionable to speak of `low-context' versus `high-context'
communication, and to classify cultures by the preferred context
level of their languages and art forms. It is usually claimed
that low-context communication (characterized by precision,
clarity, and completeness of self-contained utterances) is
typical in cultures which value logic, objectivity,
individualism, and competition; by contrast, high-context
communication (elliptical, emotive, nuance-filled, multi-modal,
heavily coded) is associated with cultures which value
subjectivity, consensus, cooperation, and tradition. What then
are we to make of hackerdom, which is themed around extremely
low-context interaction with computers and exhibits primarily
"low-context" values, but cultivates an almost absurdly
high-context slang style?
The intensity and consciousness of hackish invention make a
compilation of hacker slang a particularly effective window into
the surrounding culture -- and, in fact, this one is the latest
version of an evolving compilation called the `Jargon File',
maintained by hackers themselves for over 15 years. This one
(like its ancestors) is primarily a lexicon, but also includes
topic entries which collect background or sidelight information
on hacker culture that would be awkward to try to subsume under
individual slang definitions.
Though the format is that of a reference volume, it is
intended that the material be enjoyable to browse. Even a
complete outsider should find at least a chuckle on nearly every
page, and much that is amusingly thought-provoking. But it is
also true that hackers use humorous wordplay to make strong,
sometimes combative statements about what they feel. Some of
these entries reflect the views of opposing sides in disputes
that have been genuinely passionate; this is deliberate. We have
not tried to moderate or pretty up these disputes; rather we have
attempted to ensure that everyone's sacred cows get
gored, impartially. Compromise is not particularly a hackish
virtue, but the honest presentation of divergent viewpoints
is.
The reader with minimal computer background who finds some
references incomprehensibly technical can safely ignore them. We
have not felt it either necessary or desirable to eliminate all
such; they, too, contribute flavor, and one of this document's
major intended audiences -- fledgling hackers already partway
inside the culture -- will benefit from them.
A selection of longer items of hacker folklore and humor is
included in Appendix A. The
`outside' reader's attention is particularly directed to the
Portrait of J. Random Hacker in Appendix B. Appendix C, the Bibliography, lists some non-technical
works which have either influenced or described the hacker
culture.
Because hackerdom is an intentional culture (one each
individual must choose by action to join), one should not be
surprised that the line between description and influence can
become more than a little blurred. Earlier versions of the Jargon
File have played a central role in spreading hacker language and
the culture that goes with it to successively larger populations,
and we hope and expect that this one will do likewise.
Node:A Few Terms, Next:Revision History,
Previous:Introduction,
Up:Top
Of Slang, Jargon, and Techspeak
Linguists usually refer to informal language as `slang' and
reserve the term `jargon' for the technical vocabularies of
various occupations. However, the ancestor of this collection was
called the `Jargon File', and hacker slang is traditionally `the
jargon'. When talking about the jargon there is therefore no
convenient way to distinguish it from what a linguist
would call hackers' jargon -- the formal vocabulary they learn
from textbooks, technical papers, and manuals.
To make a confused situation worse, the line between hacker
slang and the vocabulary of technical programming and computer
science is fuzzy, and shifts over time. Further, this vocabulary
is shared with a wider technical culture of programmers, many of
whom are not hackers and do not speak or recognize hackish
slang.
Accordingly, this lexicon will try to be as precise as the
facts of usage permit about the distinctions among three
categories:
`slang': informal language from mainstream English or
non-technical subcultures (bikers, rock fans, surfers, etc).
`jargon': without qualifier, denotes informal `slangy'
language peculiar to or predominantly found among hackers -- the
subject of this lexicon.
`techspeak': the formal technical vocabulary of programming,
computer science, electronics, and other fields connected to
hacking.
This terminology will be consistently used throughout the
remainder of this lexicon.
The jargon/techspeak distinction is the delicate one. A lot of
techspeak originated as jargon, and there is a steady continuing
uptake of jargon into techspeak. On the other hand, a lot of
jargon arises from overgeneralization of techspeak terms (there
is more about this in the Jargon Construction section
below).
In general, we have considered techspeak any term that
communicates primarily by a denotation well established in
textbooks, technical dictionaries, or standards documents.
A few obviously techspeak terms (names of operating systems,
languages, or documents) are listed when they are tied to hacker
folklore that isn't covered in formal sources, or sometimes to
convey critical historical background necessary to understand
other entries to which they are cross-referenced. Some other
techspeak senses of jargon words are listed in order to make the
jargon senses clear; where the text does not specify that a
straight technical sense is under discussion, these are marked
with `[techspeak]' as an etymology. Some entries have a primary
sense marked this way, with subsequent jargon meanings explained
in terms of it.
We have also tried to indicate (where known) the apparent
origins of terms. The results are probably the least reliable
information in the lexicon, for several reasons. For one thing,
it is well known that many hackish usages have been independently
reinvented multiple times, even among the more obscure and
intricate neologisms. It often seems that the generative
processes underlying hackish jargon formation have an internal
logic so powerful as to create substantial parallelism across
separate cultures and even in different languages! For another,
the networks tend to propagate innovations so quickly that `first
use' is often impossible to pin down. And, finally, compendia
like this one alter what they observe by implicitly stamping
cultural approval on terms and widening their use.
Despite these problems, the organized collection of
jargon-related oral history for the new compilations has enabled
us to put to rest quite a number of folk etymologies, place
credit where credit is due, and illuminate the early history of
many important hackerisms such as kluge, cruft, and
foo. We believe specialist
lexicographers will find many of the historical notes more than
casually instructive.
Node:Revision History, Next:Jargon Construction,
Previous:A Few
Terms, Up:Top
Revision History
The original Jargon File was a collection of hacker jargon
from technical cultures including the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI
lab (SAIL), and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10
communities including Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN),
Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU), and Worcester Polytechnic
Institute (WPI).
The Jargon File (hereafter referred to as `jargon-1' or `the
File') was begun by Raphael Finkel at Stanford in 1975. From this
time until the plug was finally pulled on the SAIL computer in
1991, the File was named AIWORD.RF[UP,DOC] there. Some terms in
it date back considerably earlier (frob and some senses of moby, for instance, go back to the Tech Model
Railroad Club at MIT and are believed to date at least back to
the early 1960s). The revisions of jargon-1 were all unnumbered
and may be collectively considered `Version 1'.
In 1976, Mark Crispin, having seen an announcement about the
File on the SAIL computer, FTPed a copy
of the File to MIT. He noticed that it was hardly restricted to
`AI words' and so stored the file on his directory as AI:MRC;SAIL
JARGON.
The file was quickly renamed JARGON > (the `>' caused
versioning under ITS) as a flurry of enhancements were made by
Mark Crispin and Guy L. Steele Jr. Unfortunately, amidst all this
activity, nobody thought of correcting the term `jargon' to
`slang' until the compendium had already become widely known as
the Jargon File.
Raphael Finkel dropped out of active participation shortly
thereafter and Don Woods became the SAIL contact for the File
(which was subsequently kept in duplicate at SAIL and MIT, with
periodic resynchronizations).
The File expanded by fits and starts until about 1983; Richard
Stallman was prominent among the contributors, adding many MIT
and ITS-related coinages.
In Spring 1981, a hacker named Charles Spurgeon got a large
chunk of the File published in Stewart Brand's "CoEvolution
Quarterly" (issue 29, pages 26-35) with illustrations by Phil
Wadler and Guy Steele (including a couple of the Crunchly
cartoons). This appears to have been the File's first paper
publication.
A late version of jargon-1, expanded with commentary for the
mass market, was edited by Guy Steele into a book published in
1983 as "The Hacker's Dictionary" (Harper & Row CN 1082, ISBN
0-06-091082-8). The other jargon-1 editors (Raphael Finkel, Don
Woods, and Mark Crispin) contributed to this revision, as did
Richard M. Stallman and Geoff Goodfellow. This book (now out of
print) is hereafter referred to as `Steele-1983' and those six as
the Steele-1983 coauthors.
Shortly after the publication of Steele-1983, the File
effectively stopped growing and changing. Originally, this was
due to a desire to freeze the file temporarily to facilitate the
production of Steele-1983, but external conditions caused the
`temporary' freeze to become permanent.
The AI Lab culture had been hit hard in the late 1970s by
funding cuts and the resulting administrative decision to use
vendor-supported hardware and software instead of homebrew
whenever possible. At MIT, most AI work had turned to dedicated
LISP Machines. At the same time, the commercialization of AI
technology lured some of the AI Lab's best and brightest away to
startups along the Route 128 strip in Massachusetts and out West
in Silicon Valley. The startups built LISP machines for MIT; the
central MIT-AI computer became a TWENEX system rather than a host for the AI
hackers' beloved ITS.
The Stanford AI Lab had effectively ceased to exist by 1980,
although the SAIL computer continued as a Computer Science
Department resource until 1991. Stanford became a major TWENEX site, at one point operating more
than a dozen TOPS-20 systems; but by the mid-1980s most of the
interesting software work was being done on the emerging BSD Unix
standard.
In April 1983, the PDP-10-centered cultures that had nourished
the File were dealt a death-blow by the cancellation of the
Jupiter project at Digital Equipment Corporation. The File's
compilers, already dispersed, moved on to other things.
Steele-1983 was partly a monument to what its authors thought was
a dying tradition; no one involved realized at the time just how
wide its influence was to be.
By the mid-1980s the File's content was dated, but the legend
that had grown up around it never quite died out. The book, and
softcopies obtained off the ARPANET, circulated even in cultures
far removed from MIT and Stanford; the content exerted a strong
and continuing influence on hacker language and humor. Even as
the advent of the microcomputer and other trends fueled a
tremendous expansion of hackerdom, the File (and related
materials such as the Some AI
Koans in Appendix A) came to be seen as a sort of sacred
epic, a hacker-culture Matter of Britain chronicling the heroic
exploits of the Knights of the Lab. The pace of change in
hackerdom at large accelerated tremendously -- but the Jargon
File, having passed from living document to icon, remained
essentially untouched for seven years.
This revision contains nearly the entire text of a late
version of jargon-1 (a few obsolete PDP-10-related entries were
dropped after careful consultation with the editors of
Steele-1983). It merges in about 80% of the Steele-1983 text,
omitting some framing material and a very few entries introduced
in Steele-1983 that are now also obsolete.
This new version casts a wider net than the old Jargon File;
its aim is to cover not just AI or PDP-10 hacker culture but all
the technical computing cultures wherein the true hacker-nature
is manifested. More than half of the entries now derive from
Usenet and represent jargon now
current in the C and Unix communities, but special efforts have
been made to collect jargon from other cultures including IBM PC
programmers, Amiga fans, Mac enthusiasts, and even the IBM
mainframe world.
Eric S. Raymond
maintains the new File with assistance from Guy L. Steele Jr. ;
these are the persons primarily reflected in the File's editorial
`we', though we take pleasure in acknowledging the special
contribution of the other coauthors of Steele-1983. Please email
all additions, corrections, and correspondence relating to the
Jargon File to jargon@thyrsus.com.
(Warning: other email addresses appear in this file but
are not guaranteed to be correct later than the revision
date on the first line. Don't email us if an attempt to
reach your idol bounces -- we have no magic way of checking
addresses or looking up people.)
The 2.9.6 version became the main text of "The New Hacker's
Dictionary", by Eric Raymond (ed.), MIT Press 1991, ISBN
0-262-68069-6.
The 3.0.0 version was published in September 1993 as the
second edition of "The New Hacker's Dictionary", again from MIT
Press (ISBN 0-262-18154-1).
If you want the book, you should be able to find it at any of
the major bookstore chains. Failing that, you can order by mail
from
The MIT Press 55 Hayward Street Cambridge, MA 02142
or order by phone at (800)-356-0343 or (617)-625-8481.
The maintainers are committed to updating the on-line version
of the Jargon File through and beyond paper publication, and will
continue to make it available to archives and public-access sites
as a trust of the hacker community.
Here is a chronology of the high points in the recent on-line
revisions:
Version 2.1.1, Jun 12 1990: the Jargon File comes alive again
after a seven-year hiatus. Reorganization and massive additions
were by Eric S. Raymond, approved by Guy Steele. Many items of
UNIX, C, USENET, and microcomputer-based jargon were added at
that time.
Version 2.9.6, Aug 16 1991: corresponds to reproduction copy
for book. This version had 18952 lines, 148629 words, 975551
characters, and 1702 entries.
Version 2.9.7, Oct 28 1991: first markup for hypertext
browser. This version had 19432 lines, 152132 words, 999595
characters, and 1750 entries.
Version 2.9.8, Jan 01 1992: first public release since the
book, including over fifty new entries and numerous
corrections/additions to old ones. Packaged with version 1.1 of
vh(1) hypertext reader. This version had 19509 lines, 153108
words, 1006023 characters, and 1760 entries.
Version 2.9.9, Apr 01 1992: folded in XEROX PARC lexicon. This
version had 20298 lines, 159651 words, 1048909 characters, and
1821 entries.
Version 2.9.10, Jul 01 1992: lots of new historical material.
This version had 21349 lines, 168330 words, 1106991 characters,
and 1891 entries.
Version 2.9.11, Jan 01 1993: lots of new historical material.
This version had 21725 lines, 171169 words, 1125880 characters,
and 1922 entries.
Version 2.9.12, May 10 1993: a few new entries & changes,
marginal MUD/IRC slang and some borderline techspeak removed, all
in preparation for 2nd Edition of TNHD. This version had 22238
lines, 175114 words, 1152467 characters, and 1946 entries.
Version 3.0.0, Jul 27 1993: manuscript freeze for 2nd edition
of TNHD. This version had 22548 lines, 177520 words, 1169372
characters, and 1961 entries.
Version 3.1.0, Oct 15 1994: interim release to test WWW
conversion. This version had 23197 lines, 181001 words, 1193818
characters, and 1990 entries.
Version 3.2.0, Mar 15 1995: Spring 1995 update. This version
had 23822 lines, 185961 words, 1226358 characters, and 2031
entries.
Version 3.3.0, Jan 20 1996: Winter 1996 update. This version
had 24055 lines, 187957 words, 1239604 characters, and 2045
entries.
Version 3.3.1, Jan 25 1996: Copy-corrected improvement on
3.3.0 shipped to MIT Press as a step towards TNHD III. This
version had 24147 lines, 188728 words, 1244554 characters, and
2050 entries.
Version 3.3.2, Mar 20 1996: A number of new entries pursuant
on 3.3.2. This version had 24442 lines, 190867 words, 1262468
characters, and 2061 entries.
Version 3.3.3, Mar 25 1996: Cleanup before TNHD III manuscript
freeze. This version had 24584 lines, 191932 words, 1269996
characters, and 2064 entries.
Version 4.0.0, Jul 25 1996: The actual TNHD III version after
copy-edit. This version had 24801 lines, 193697 words, 1281402
characters, and 2067 entries.
Version 4.1.0, 8 Apr 1999: The Jargon File rides again after
three years. This version had 25777 lines, 206825 words, 1359992
characters, and 2217 entries.
Version 4.1.1, 18 Apr 1999: Corrections for minor errors in
4.1.0, and some new entries. This version had 25921 lines, 208483
words, 1371279 characters, and 2225 entries.
Version 4.1.2, 28 Apr 1999: Moving texi2html out of the
production path. This version had 26006 lines, 209479 words,
1377687 characters, and 2225 entries.
Version 4.1.3, 14 Jun 1999: Minor updates and markup fixes.
This version had 26108 lines, 210480 words, 1384546 characters,
and 2234 entries.
Version 4.1.4, 17 Jun 1999: Markup fixes for framed HTML. This
version had 26117 lines, 210527 words, 1384902 characters, and
2234 entries.
Version 4.2.0, 31 Jan 2000: Fix processing of URLs. This
version had 26598 lines, 214639 words, 1412243 characters, and
2267 entries.
Version 4.2.1, 5 Mar 2000: Point release to test new
production machinery. This version had 26647 lines, 215040 words,
1414942 characters, and 2269 entries.
Version 4.2.2, 12 Aug 2000: This version had 27171 lines,
219630 words, 1444887 characters, and 2302 entries.
Version numbering: Version numbers should be read as
_major_._minor_._revision_. Major version 1 is
reserved for the `old' (ITS) Jargon File, jargon-1. Major version
2 encompasses revisions by ESR (Eric S. Raymond) with assistance
from GLS (Guy L. Steele, Jr.) leading up to and including the
second paper edition. From now on, major version number N.00 will
probably correspond to the Nth paper edition. Usually later
versions will either completely supersede or incorporate earlier
versions, so there is generally no point in keeping old versions
around.
Our thanks to the coauthors of Steele-1983 for oversight and
assistance, and to the hundreds of Usenetters (too many to name
here) who contributed entries and encouragement. More thanks go
to several of the old-timers on the Usenet group
_alt.folklore.computers_, who contributed much useful
commentary and many corrections and valuable historical
perspective: Joseph M. Newcomer ,
Bernie Cosell , Earl
Boebert ,
and Joe Morris .
We were fortunate enough to have the aid of some accomplished
linguists. David Stampe
and Charles Hoequist
contributed valuable criticism; Joe Keane
helped us improve the pronunciation guides.
A few bits of this text quote previous works. We are indebted
to Brian A. LaMacchia
for obtaining permission for us to use material from the "TMRC
Dictionary"; also, Don Libes
contributed some appropriate material from his excellent book
"Life With UNIX". We thank Per Lindberg , author of
the remarkable Swedish-language 'zine "Hackerbladet", for
bringing "FOO!" comics to our attention and smuggling one of the
IBM hacker underground's own baby jargon files out to us. Thanks
also to Maarten Litmaath for generously allowing the inclusion of
the ASCII pronunciation guide he formerly maintained. And our
gratitude to Marc Weiser of XEROX PARC
for securing us permission to quote from PARC's own jargon
lexicon and shipping us a copy.
It is a particular pleasure to acknowledge the major
contributions of Mark Brader and Steve
Summit to the
File and Dictionary; they have read and reread many drafts,
checked facts, caught typos, submitted an amazing number of
thoughtful comments, and done yeoman service in catching typos
and minor usage bobbles. Their rare combination of enthusiasm,
persistence, wide-ranging technical knowledge, and precisionism
in matters of language has been of invaluable help. Indeed, the
sustained volume and quality of Mr. Brader's input over several
years and several different editions has only allowed him to
escape co-editor credit by the slimmest of margins.
Finally, George V. Reilly
helped with TeX arcana and painstakingly proofread some 2.7 and
2.8 versions, and Eric Tiedemann
contributed sage advice throughout on rhetoric, amphigory, and
philosophunculism.
Node:Jargon Construction,
Next:Hacker
Writing Style, Previous:Revision History, Up:Top
How Jargon Works
Jargon Construction
There are some standard methods of jargonification that became
established quite early (i.e., before 1970), spreading from such
sources as the Tech Model Railroad Club, the PDP-1 SPACEWAR
hackers, and John McCarthy's original crew of LISPers. These
include verb doubling, soundalike slang, the `-P' convention,
overgeneralization, spoken inarticulations, and
anthropomorphization. Each is discussed below. We also cover the
standard comparatives for design quality.
Of these six, verb doubling, overgeneralization,
anthropomorphization, and (especially) spoken inarticulations
have become quite general; but soundalike slang is still largely
confined to MIT and other large universities, and the `-P'
convention is found only where LISPers flourish.
Verb Doubling: Doubling a verb
may change its semantics
Soundalike Slang: Punning
jargon
The -P convention: A
LISPy way to form questions
Overgeneralization:
Standard abuses of grammar
Spoken
Inarticulations: Sighing and <*sigh*>ing
Anthropomorphization:
Homunculi, daemons, and confused programs
Comparatives: Standard
comparatives for design quality
Node:Verb Doubling, Next:Soundalike Slang, Up:Jargon Construction
Verb Doubling
A standard construction in English is to double a verb and use
it as an exclamation, such as "Bang, bang!" or "Quack, quack!".
Most of these are names for noises. Hackers also double verbs as
a concise, sometimes sarcastic comment on what the implied
subject does. Also, a doubled verb is often used to terminate a
conversation, in the process remarking on the current state of
affairs or what the speaker intends to do next. Typical examples
involve win, lose, hack, flame, barf,
chomp:
"The disk heads just crashed." "Lose, lose."
"Mostly he talked about his latest crock. Flame, flame."
"Boy, what a bagbiter! Chomp, chomp!"
Some verb-doubled constructions have special meanings not
immediately obvious from the verb. These have their own listings
in the lexicon.
The Usenet culture has one
tripling convention unrelated to this; the names of
`joke' topic groups often have a tripled last element. The first
and paradigmatic example was
_alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork_ (a "Muppet Show"
reference); other infamous examples have included:
_alt.french.captain.borg.borg.borg_
_alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die_
_comp.unix.internals.system.calls.brk.brk.brk_
_sci.physics.edward.teller.boom.boom.boom_
_alt.sadistic.dentists.drill.drill.drill_
Node:Soundalike Slang, Next:The -P convention,
Previous:Verb
Doubling, Up:Jargon
Construction
Soundalike slang
Hackers will often make rhymes or puns in order to convert an
ordinary word or phrase into something more interesting. It is
considered particularly flavorful
if the phrase is bent so as to include some other jargon word;
thus the computer hobbyist magazine "Dr. Dobb's Journal" is
almost always referred to among hackers as `Dr. Frob's Journal'
or simply `Dr. Frob's'. Terms of this kind that have been in
fairly wide use include names for newspapers:
Boston Herald => Horrid (or Harried)
Boston Globe => Boston Glob
Houston (or San Francisco) Chronicle
=> the Crocknicle (or the Comical)
New York Times => New York Slime
Wall Street Journal => Wall Street Urinal
However, terms like these are often made up on the spur of the
moment. Standard examples include:
Data General => Dirty Genitals
IBM 360 => IBM Three-Sickly
Government Property --- Do Not Duplicate (on keys)
=> Government Duplicity --- Do Not Propagate
for historical reasons => for hysterical raisins
Margaret Jacks Hall (the CS building at Stanford)
=> Marginal Hacks Hall
Microsoft => Microsloth
Internet Explorer => Internet Exploiter
This is not really similar to the Cockney rhyming slang it has
been compared to in the past, because Cockney substitutions are
opaque whereas hacker punning jargon is intentionally
transparent.
Node:The -P convention,
Next:Overgeneralization, Previous:Soundalike Slang, Up:Jargon Construction
The `-P' convention
Turning a word into a question by appending the syllable `P';
from the LISP convention of appending the letter `P' to denote a
predicate (a boolean-valued function). The question should expect
a yes/no answer, though it needn't. (See T and NIL.)
At dinnertime:
Q: ``Foodp?''
A: ``Yeah, I'm pretty hungry.'' or ``T!''
At any time:
Q: ``State-of-the-world-P?''
A: (Straight) ``I'm about to go home.''
A: (Humorous) ``Yes, the world has a state.''
On the phone to Florida:
Q: ``State-p Florida?''
A: ``Been reading JARGON.TXT again, eh?''
[One of the best of these is a Gosperism. Once, when we were at a Chinese
restaurant, Bill Gosper wanted to know whether someone would like
to share with him a two-person-sized bowl of soup. His inquiry
was: "Split-p soup?" -- GLS]
Node:Overgeneralization, Next:Spoken
Inarticulations, Previous:The -P convention, Up:Jargon Construction
Overgeneralization
A very conspicuous feature of jargon is the frequency with
which techspeak items such as names of program tools, command
language primitives, and even assembler opcodes are applied to
contexts outside of computing wherever hackers find amusing
analogies to them. Thus (to cite one of the best-known examples)
Unix hackers often grep for things
rather than searching for them. Many of the lexicon entries are
generalizations of exactly this kind.
Hackers enjoy overgeneralization on the grammatical level as
well. Many hackers love to take various words and add the wrong
endings to them to make nouns and verbs, often by extending a
standard rule to nonuniform cases (or vice versa). For example,
because
porous => porosity
generous => generosity
hackers happily generalize:
mysterious => mysteriosity
ferrous => ferrosity
obvious => obviosity
dubious => dubiosity
Another class of common construction uses the suffix `-itude'
to abstract a quality from just about any adjective or noun. This
usage arises especially in cases where mainstream English would
perform the same abstraction through `-iness' or `-ingness'.
Thus:
win => winnitude (a common exclamation)
loss => lossitude
cruft => cruftitude
lame => lameitude
Some hackers cheerfully reverse this transformation; they
argue, for example, that the horizontal degree lines on a globe
ought to be called `lats' -- after all, they're measuring
latitude!
Also, note that all nouns can be verbed. E.g.: "All nouns can
be verbed", "I'll mouse it up", "Hang on while I clipboard it
over", "I'm grepping the files". English as a whole is already
heading in this direction (towards pure-positional grammar like
Chinese); hackers are simply a bit ahead of the curve.
The suffix "-full" can also be applied in generalized and
fanciful ways, as in "As soon as you have more than one cachefull
of data, the system starts thrashing," or "As soon as I have more
than one headfull of ideas, I start writing it all down." A
common use is "screenfull", meaning the amount of text that will
fit on one screen, usually in text mode where you have no choice
as to character size. Another common form is "bufferfull".
However, hackers avoid the unimaginative verb-making
techniques characteristic of marketroids, bean-counters, and the
Pentagon; a hacker would never, for example, `productize',
`prioritize', or `securitize' things. Hackers have a strong
aversion to bureaucratic bafflegab and regard those who use it
with contempt.
Similarly, all verbs can be nouned. This is only a slight
overgeneralization in modern English; in hackish, however, it is
good form to mark them in some standard nonstandard way.
Thus:
win => winnitude, winnage
disgust => disgustitude
hack => hackification
Further, note the prevalence of certain kinds of nonstandard
plural forms. Some of these go back quite a ways; the TMRC
Dictionary includes an entry which implies that the plural of
`mouse' is meeces, and notes that
the defined plural of `caboose' is `cabeese'. This latter has
apparently been standard (or at least a standard joke) among
railfans (railroad enthusiasts) for many years.
On a similarly Anglo-Saxon note, almost anything ending in `x'
may form plurals in `-xen' (see VAXen
and boxen in the main text). Even
words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated this
way; e.g., `soxen' for a bunch of socks. Other funny plurals are
`frobbotzim' for the plural of `frobbozz' (see frobnitz) and `Unices' and `Twenices' (rather
than `Unixes' and `Twenexes'; see Unix, TWENEX in main
text). But note that `Twenexen' was never used, and `Unixen' was
not sighted in the wild until the year 2000, thirty years after
it might logically have come into use; it has been suggested that
this is because `-ix' and `-ex' are Latin singular endings that
attract a Latinate plural. Finally, it has been suggested to
general approval that the plural of `mongoose' ought to be
`polygoose'.
The pattern here, as with other hackish grammatical quirks, is
generalization of an inflectional rule that in English is either
an import or a fossil (such as the Hebrew plural ending `-im', or
the Anglo-Saxon plural suffix `-en') to cases where it isn't
normally considered to apply.
This is not `poor grammar', as hackers are generally quite
well aware of what they are doing when they distort the language.
It is grammatical creativity, a form of playfulness. It is done
not to impress but to amuse, and never at the expense of
clarity.
Node:Spoken
Inarticulations, Next:Anthropomorphization, Previous:Overgeneralization,
Up:Jargon
Construction
Spoken inarticulations
Words such as `mumble', `sigh', and `groan' are spoken in
places where their referent might more naturally be used. It has
been suggested that this usage derives from the impossibility of
representing such noises on a comm link or in electronic mail,
MUDs, and IRC channels (interestingly, the same sorts of
constructions have been showing up with increasing frequency in
comic strips). Another expression sometimes heard is "Complain!",
meaning "I have a complaint!"
Node:Anthropomorphization,
Next:Comparatives,
Previous:Spoken Inarticulations, Up:Jargon Construction
Anthropomorphization
Semantically, one rich source of jargon constructions is the
hackish tendency to anthropomorphize hardware and software.
English purists and academic computer scientists frequently look
down on others for anthropomorphizing hardware and software,
considering this sort of behavior to be characteristic of naive
misunderstanding. But most hackers anthropomorphize freely,
frequently describing program behavior in terms of wants and
desires.
Thus it is common to hear hardware or software talked about as
though it has homunculi talking to each other inside it, with
intentions and desires. Thus, one hears "The protocol handler got
confused", or that programs "are trying" to do things, or one may
say of a routine that "its goal in life is to X". One even hears
explanations like "... and its poor little brain
couldn't understand X, and it died." Sometimes modelling things
this way actually seems to make them easier to understand,
perhaps because it's instinctively natural to think of anything
with a really complex behavioral repertoire as `like a person'
rather than `like a thing'.
At first glance, to anyone who understands how these programs
actually work, this seems like an absurdity. As hackers are among
the people who know best how these phenomena work, it seems odd
that they would use language that seemds to ascribe conciousness
to them. The mind-set behind this tendency thus demands
examination.
The key to understanding this kind of usage is that it isn't
done in a naive way; hackers don't personalize their stuff in the
sense of feeling empathy with it, nor do they mystically believe
that the things they work on every day are `alive'. To the
contrary: hackers who anthropomorphize are expressing not a
vitalistic view of program behavior but a mechanistic view of
human behavior.
Almost all hackers subscribe to the mechanistic, materialistic
ontology of science (this is in practice true even of most of the
minority with contrary religious theories). In this view, people
are biological machines - consciousness is an interesting and
valuable epiphenomenon, but mind is implemented in machinery
which is not fundamentally different in information-processing
capacity from computers.
Hackers tend to take this a step further and argue that the
difference between a substrate of CHON atoms and water and a
substrate of silicon and metal is a relatively unimportant one;
what matters, what makes a thing `alive', is information and
richness of pattern. This is animism from the flip side; it
implies that humans and computers and dolphins and rocks are all
machines exhibiting a continuum of modes of `consciousness'
according to their information-processing capacity.
Because hackers accept a that a human machine can have
intentions, it is therefore easy for them to ascribe
consciousness and intention to complex patterned systems such as
computers. If consciousness is mechanical, it is neither more or
less absurd to say that "The program wants to go into an infinite
loop" than it is to say that "I want to go eat some chocolate" -
and even defensible to say that "The stone, once dropped, wants
to move towards the center of the earth".
This viewpoint has respectable company in academic philosophy.
Daniel Dennett organizes explanations of behavior using three
stances: the "physical stance" (thing-to-be-explained as a
physical object), the "design stance" (thing-to-be-explained as
an artifact), and the "intentional stance" (thing-to-be-explained
as an agent with desires and intentions). Which stances are
appropriate is a matter not of truth but of utility. Hackers
typically view simple programs from the design stance, but more
complex ones are modelled using the intentional stance.
Node:Comparatives, Previous:Anthropomorphization,
Up:Jargon
Construction
Comparatives
Finally, note that many words in hacker jargon have to be
understood as members of sets of comparatives. This is especially
true of the adjectives and nouns used to describe the beauty and
functional quality of code. Here is an approximately correct
spectrum:
monstrosity brain-damage screw bug lose
misfeature
crock kluge hack win feature elegance perfection
The last is spoken of as a mythical absolute, approximated but
never actually attained. Another similar scale is used for
describing the reliability of software:
broken flaky dodgy fragile brittle
solid robust bulletproof armor-plated
Note, however, that `dodgy' is primarily Commonwealth Hackish
(it is rare in the U.S.) and may change places with `flaky' for
some speakers.
Coinages for describing lossage
seem to call forth the very finest in hackish linguistic
inventiveness; it has been truly said that hackers have even more
words for equipment failures than Yiddish has for obnoxious
people.
Node:Hacker Writing Style,
Next:Email Quotes,
Previous:Jargon
Construction, Up:Top
Hacker Writing Style
We've already seen that hackers often coin jargon by
overgeneralizing grammatical rules. This is one aspect of a more
general fondness for form-versus-content language jokes that
shows up particularly in hackish writing. One correspondent
reports that he consistently misspells `wrong' as `worng'. Others
have been known to criticize glitches in Jargon File drafts by
observing (in the mode of Douglas Hofstadter) "This sentence no
verb", or "Too repetetetive", or "Bad speling", or "Incorrectspa
cing." Similarly, intentional spoonerisms are often made of
phrases relating to confusion or things that are confusing; `dain
bramage' for `brain damage' is perhaps the most common
(similarly, a hacker would be likely to write "Excuse me, I'm
cixelsyd today", rather than "I'm dyslexic today"). This sort of
thing is quite common and is enjoyed by all concerned.
Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like
parentheses, much to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if
"Jim is going" is a phrase, and so are "Bill runs" and "Spock
groks", then hackers generally prefer to write: "Jim is going",
"Bill runs", and "Spock groks". This is incorrect according to
standard American usage (which would put the continuation commas
and the final period inside the string quotes); however, it is
counter-intuitive to hackers to mutilate literal strings with
characters that don't belong in them. Given the sorts of examples
that can come up in discussions of programming, American-style
quoting can even be grossly misleading. When communicating
command lines or small pieces of code, extra characters can be a
real pain in the neck.
Consider, for example, a sentence in a vi tutorial that looks like this:
Then delete a line from the file by typing
"dd".
Standard usage would make this
Then delete a line from the file by typing
"dd."
but that would be very bad -- because the reader would be
prone to type the string d-d-dot, and it happens that in
vi(1) dot repeats the last command accepted. The net
result would be to delete two lines!
The Jargon File follows hackish usage throughout.
Interestingly, a similar style is now preferred practice in
Great Britain, though the older style (which became established
for typographical reasons having to do with the aesthetics of
comma and quotes in typeset text) is still accepted there.
"Hart's Rules" and the "Oxford Dictionary for Writers and
Editors" call the hacker-like style `new' or `logical' quoting.
This returns British English to the style Latin languages
(including Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan) have been using all
along.
Another hacker habit is a tendency to distinguish between
`scare' quotes and `speech' quotes; that is, to use British-style
single quotes for marking and reserve American-style double
quotes for actual reports of speech or text included from
elsewhere. Interestingly, some authorities describe this as
correct general usage, but mainstream American English has gone
to using double-quotes indiscriminately enough that hacker usage
appears marked [and, in fact, I thought this was a personal quirk
of mine until I checked with Usenet --ESR]. One further
permutation that is definitely not standard is a hackish
tendency to do marking quotes by using apostrophes (single
quotes) in pairs; that is, 'like this'. This is modelled on
string and character literal syntax in some programming languages
(reinforced by the fact that many character-only terminals
display the apostrophe in typewriter style, as a vertical single
quote).
One quirk that shows up frequently in the email style of Unix hackers in particular is a
tendency for some things that are normally all-lowercase
(including usernames and the names of commands and C routines) to
remain uncapitalized even when they occur at the beginning of
sentences. It is clear that, for many hackers, the case of such
identifiers becomes a part of their internal representation (the
`spelling') and cannot be overridden without mental effort (an
appropriate reflex because Unix and C both distinguish cases and
confusing them can lead to lossage). A way of escaping this dilemma is
simply to avoid using these constructions at the beginning of
sentences.
There seems to be a meta-rule behind these nonstandard
hackerisms to the effect that precision of expression is more
important than conformance to traditional rules; where the latter
create ambiguity or lose information they can be discarded
without a second thought. It is notable in this respect that
other hackish inventions (for example, in vocabulary) also tend
to carry very precise shades of meaning even when constructed to
appear slangy and loose. In fact, to a hacker, the contrast
between `loose' form and `tight' content in jargon is a
substantial part of its humor!
Hackers have also developed a number of punctuation and
emphasis conventions adapted to single-font all-ASCII
communications links, and these are occasionally carried over
into written documents even when normal means of font changes,
underlining, and the like are available.
One of these is that TEXT IN ALL CAPS IS INTERPRETED AS
`LOUD', and this becomes such an ingrained synesthetic reflex
that a person who goes to caps-lock while in talk mode may be asked to "stop shouting,
please, you're hurting my ears!".
Also, it is common to use bracketing with unusual characters
to signify emphasis. The asterisk is most common, as in "What the
*hell*?" even though this interferes with the common use of the
asterisk suffix as a footnote mark. The underscore is also
common, suggesting underlining (this is particularly common with
book titles; for example, "It is often alleged that Joe Haldeman
wrote _The_Forever_War_ as a rebuttal to Robert Heinlein's
earlier novel of the future military, _Starship_Troopers_.").
Other forms exemplified by "=hell=", "\hell/", or "/hell/" are
occasionally seen (it's claimed that in the last example the
first slash pushes the letters over to the right to make them
italic, and the second keeps them from falling over). On FidoNet,
you might see #bright# and ^dark^ text, which was actually
interpreted by some reader software. Finally, words may also be
emphasized L I K E T H I S, or by a series of carets (^) under
them on the next line of the text.
There is a semantic difference between *emphasis like this*
(which emphasizes the phrase as a whole), and *emphasis* *like*
*this* (which suggests the writer speaking very slowly and
distinctly, as if to a very young child or a mentally impaired
person). Bracketing a word with the `*' character may also
indicate that the writer wishes readers to consider that an
action is taking place or that a sound is being made. Examples:
*bang*, *hic*, *ring*, *grin*, *kick*, *stomp*, *mumble*.
One might also see the above sound effects as ,
, , , ,
, . This use of angle brackets to mark
their contents originally derives from conventions used in BNF, but since about 1993 it has been
reinforced by the HTML markup used on the World Wide Web.
Angle-bracket enclosure is also used to indicate that a term
stands for some random member of a
larger class (this is straight from BNF). Examples like the following are common:
So this walks into a bar one day...
There is also an accepted convention for `writing under
erasure'; the text
Be nice to this fool^H^H^H^Hgentleman,
he's visiting from corporate HQ.
reads roughly as "Be nice to this fool, er,
gentleman...", with irony emphasized. The digraph
^H is often used as a print representation for a backspace, and
was actually very visible on old-style printing terminals. As the
text was being composed the characters would be echoed and
printed immediately, and when a correction was made the backspace
keystrokes would be echoed with the string '^H'. Of course, the
final composed text would have no trace of the backspace
characters (or the original erroneous text).
This convention parallels (and may have been influenced by)
the ironic use of `slashouts' in science-fiction fanzines.
A related habit uses editor commands to signify corrections to
previous text. This custom faded in email as more mailers got
good editing capabilities, only to tale on new life on IRCs and
other line-based chat systems.
I've seen that term used on alt.foobar often.
Send it to Erik for the File.
Oops...s/Erik/Eric/.
The s/Erik/Eric/ says "change Erik to Eric in the preceding".
This syntax is borrowed from the Unix editing tools
ed and sed, but is widely recognized by
non-Unix hackers as well.
In a formula, * signifies multiplication but two
asterisks in a row are a shorthand for exponentiation (this
derives from FORTRAN). Thus, one might write 2 ** 8 = 256.
Another notation for exponentiation one sees more frequently
uses the caret (^, ASCII 1011110); one might write instead
2^8 = 256. This goes all the way back to Algol-60,
which used the archaic ASCII `up-arrow' that later became the
caret; this was picked up by Kemeny and Kurtz's original BASIC,
which in turn influenced the design of the bc(1) and
dc(1) Unix tools, which have probably done most to
reinforce the convention on Usenet. (TeX math mode also uses ^
for exponention.) The notation is mildly confusing to C
programmers, because ^ means bitwise exclusive-or in
C. Despite this, it was favored 3:1 over ** in a late-1990
snapshot of Usenet. It is used consistently in this lexicon.
In on-line exchanges, hackers tend to use decimal forms or
improper fractions (`3.5' or `7/2') rather than `typewriter
style' mixed fractions (`3-1/2'). The major motive here is
probably that the former are more readable in a monospaced font,
together with a desire to avoid the risk that the latter might be
read as `three minus one-half'. The decimal form is definitely
preferred for fractions with a terminating decimal
representation; there may be some cultural influence here from
the high status of scientific notation.
Another on-line convention, used especially for very large or
very small numbers, is taken from C (which derived it from
FORTRAN). This is a form of `scientific notation' using `e' to
replace `*10^'; for example, one year is about 3e7 seconds
long.
The tilde (~) is commonly used in a quantifying sense of
`approximately'; that is, ~50 means `about
fifty'.
On Usenet and in the MUD world,
common C boolean, logical, and relational operators such as
|, &, ||,
&&, !, ==,
!=, >, <,
>=, and =< are often combined
with English. The Pascal not-equals, <>, is
also recognized, and occasionally one sees /= for
not-equals (from Ada, Common Lisp, and Fortran 90). The use of
prefix `!' as a loose synonym for `not-' or `no-' is particularly
common; thus, `!clue' is read `no-clue' or `clueless'.
A related practice borrows syntax from preferred programming
languages to express ideas in a natural-language text. For
example, one might see the following:
In J. R. Hacker wrote:
>I recently had occasion to field-test the Snafu
>Systems 2300E adaptive gonkulator. The price was
>right, and the racing stripe on the case looked
>kind of neat, but its performance left something
>to be desired.
Yeah, I tried one out too.
#ifdef FLAME
Hasn't anyone told those idiots that you can't get
decent bogon suppression with AFJ filters at today's
net volumes?
#endif /* FLAME */
I guess they figured the price premium for true
frame-based semantic analysis was too high.
Unfortunately, it's also the only workable approach.
I wouldn't recommend purchase of this product unless
you're on a *very* tight budget.
#include
--
== Frank Foonly (Fubarco Systems)
In the above, the #ifdef/#endif pair
is a conditional compilation syntax from C; here, it implies that
the text between (which is a flame)
should be evaluated only if you have turned on (or defined on)
the switch FLAME. The #include at the end is C for
"include standard disclaimer here"; the `standard disclaimer' is
understood to read, roughly, "These are my personal opinions and
not to be construed as the official position of my employer."
The top section in the example, with > at the left margin,
is an example of an inclusion convention we'll discuss below.
More recently, following on the huge popularity of the World
Wide Web, pseudo-HTML markup has become popular for similar
purposes:
Your father was a hamster and your mother smelt of elderberries!
You'll even see this with an HTML-style modifier:
You seem well-suited for a career in government.
Another recent (late 1990s) construction now common on USENET
seems to be borrowed from Perl. It consists of using a dollar
sign before an uppercased form of a word or acronym to suggest
any random member of the class
indicated by the word. Thus: `$PHB' means "any random member of
the class `Pointy-Haired Boss'".
Hackers also mix letters and numbers more freely than in
mainstream usage. In particular, it is good hackish style to
write a digit sequence where you intend the reader to understand
the text string that names that number in English. So, hackers
prefer to write `1970s' rather than `nineteen-seventies' or
`1970's' (the latter looks like a possessive).
It should also be noted that hackers exhibit much less
reluctance to use multiply-nested parentheses than is normal in
English. Part of this is almost certainly due to influence from
LISP (which uses deeply nested parentheses (like this (see?)) in
its syntax a lot), but it has also been suggested that a more
basic hacker trait of enjoying playing with complexity and
pushing systems to their limits is in operation.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that many studies of on-line
communication have shown that electronic links have a
de-inhibiting effect on people. Deprived of the body-language
cues through which emotional state is expressed, people tend to
forget everything about other parties except what is presented
over that ASCII link. This has both good and bad effects. A good
one is that it encourages honesty and tends to break down
hierarchical authority relationships; a bad one is that it may
encourage depersonalization and gratuitous rudeness. Perhaps in
response to this, experienced netters often display a sort of
conscious formal _politesse_ in their writing that has
passed out of fashion in other spoken and written media (for
example, the phrase "Well said, sir!" is not uncommon).
Many introverted hackers who are next to inarticulate in
person communicate with considerable fluency over the net,
perhaps precisely because they can forget on an unconscious level
that they are dealing with people and thus don't feel stressed
and anxious as they would face to face.
Though it is considered gauche to publicly criticize posters
for poor spelling or grammar, the network places a premium on
literacy and clarity of expression. It may well be that future
historians of literature will see in it a revival of the great
tradition of personal letters as art.
Node:Email Quotes, Next:Hacker Speech Style,
Previous:Hacker Writing Style, Up:Top
Email Quotes and Inclusion Conventions
One area where conventions for on-line writing are still in
some flux is the marking of included material from earlier
messages -- what would be called `block quotations' in ordinary
English. From the usual typographic convention employed for these
(smaller font at an extra indent), there derived a practice of
included text being indented by one ASCII TAB (0001001)
character, which under Unix and many other environments gives the
appearance of an 8-space indent.
Early mail and netnews readers had no facility for including
messages this way, so people had to paste in copy manually. BSD
Mail(1) was the first message agent to support
inclusion, and early Usenetters emulated its style. But the TAB
character tended to push included text too far to the right
(especially in multiply nested inclusions), leading to ugly
wraparounds. After a brief period of confusion (during which an
inclusion leader consisting of three or four spaces became
established in EMACS and a few mailers), the use of leading
> or > became standard, perhaps
owing to its use in ed(1) to display tabs
(alternatively, it may derive from the > that
some early Unix mailers used to quote lines starting with "From"
in text, so they wouldn't look like the beginnings of new message
headers). Inclusions within inclusions keep their
> leaders, so the `nesting level' of a quotation
is visually apparent.
The practice of including text from the parent article when
posting a followup helped solve what had been a major nuisance on
Usenet: the fact that articles do not arrive at different sites
in the same order. Careless posters used to post articles that
would begin with, or even consist entirely of, "No, that's wrong"
or "I agree" or the like. It was hard to see who was responding
to what. Consequently, around 1984, new news-posting software
evolved a facility to automatically include the text of a
previous article, marked with "> " or whatever the poster
chose. The poster was expected to delete all but the relevant
lines. The result has been that, now, careless posters post
articles containing the entire text of a preceding
article, followed only by "No, that's wrong" or "I
agree".
Many people feel that this cure is worse than the original
disease, and there soon appeared newsreader software designed to
let the reader skip over included text if desired. Today, some
posting software rejects articles containing too high a
proportion of lines beginning with `>' -- but this too has led
to undesirable workarounds, such as the deliberate inclusion of
zero-content filler lines which aren't quoted and thus pull the
message below the rejection threshold.
Because the default mailers supplied with Unix and other
operating systems haven't evolved as quickly as human usage, the
older conventions using a leading TAB or three or four spaces are
still alive; however, >-inclusion is now clearly the prevalent
form in both netnews and mail.
Inclusion practice is still evolving, and disputes over the
`correct' inclusion style occasionally lead to holy wars.
Most netters view an inclusion as a promise that comment on it
will immediately follow. The preferred, conversational style
looks like this,
> relevant excerpt 1
response to excerpt
> relevant excerpt 2
response to excerpt
> relevant excerpt 3
response to excerpt
or for short messages like this:
> entire message
response to message
Thanks to poor design of some PC-based mail agents, one will
occasionally see the entire quoted message after the
response, like this
response to message
> entire message
but this practice is strongly deprecated.
Though > remains the standard inclusion
leader, | is occasionally used for extended
quotations where original variations in indentation are being
retained (one mailer even combines these and uses
|>). One also sees different styles of quoting a
number of authors in the same message: one (deprecated because it
loses information) uses a leader of > for
everyone, another (the most common) is
> > > > , > > >
, etc. (or >>>> ,
>>>, etc., depending on line length and
nesting depth) reflecting the original order of messages, and yet
another is to use a different citation leader for each author,
say > , : , | ,
} (preserving nesting so that the inclusion order
of messages is still apparent, or tagging the inclusions with
authors' names). Yet another style is to use each
poster's initials (or login name) as a citation leader for that
poster.
Occasionally one sees a # leader used for
quotations from authoritative sources such as standards
documents; the intended allusion is to the root prompt (the
special Unix command prompt issued when one is running as the
privileged super-user).
Node:Hacker Speech Style,
Next:International
Style, Previous:Email Quotes, Up:Top
Hacker Speech Style
Hackish speech generally features extremely precise diction,
careful word choice, a relatively large working vocabulary, and
relatively little use of contractions or street slang. Dry humor,
irony, puns, and a mildly flippant attitude are highly valued --
but an underlying seriousness and intelligence are essential. One
should use just enough jargon to communicate precisely and
identify oneself as a member of the culture; overuse of jargon or
a breathless, excessively gung-ho attitude is considered tacky
and the mark of a loser.
This speech style is a variety of the precisionist English
normally spoken by scientists, design engineers, and academics in
technical fields. In contrast with the methods of jargon
construction, it is fairly constant throughout hackerdom.
It has been observed that many hackers are confused by
negative questions -- or, at least, that the people to whom they
are talking are often confused by the sense of their answers. The
problem is that they have done so much programming that
distinguishes between
if (going) ...
and
if (!going) ...
that when they parse the question "Aren't you going?" it may
seem to be asking the opposite question from "Are you going?",
and so to merit an answer in the opposite sense. This confuses
English-speaking non-hackers because they were taught to answer
as though the negative part weren't there. In some other
languages (including Russian, Chinese, and Japanese) the hackish
interpretation is standard and the problem wouldn't arise.
Hackers often find themselves wishing for a word like French
`si', German `doch', or Dutch `jawel' - a word with which one
could unambiguously answer `yes' to a negative question. (See
also mu)
For similar reasons, English-speaking hackers almost never use
double negatives, even if they live in a region where colloquial
usage allows them. The thought of uttering something that
logically ought to be an affirmative knowing it will be misparsed
as a negative tends to disturb them.
In a related vein, hackers sometimes make a game of answering
questions containing logical connectives with a strictly literal
rather than colloquial interpretation. A non-hacker who is
indelicate enough to ask a question like "So, are you working on
finding that bug now or leaving it until later?" is
likely to get the perfectly correct answer "Yes!" (that is, "Yes,
I'm doing it either now or later, and you didn't ask
which!").
Node:International Style,
Next:Lamer-speak,
Previous:Hacker
Speech Style, Up:Top
International Style
Although the Jargon File remains primarily a lexicon of hacker
usage in American English, we have made some effort to get input
from abroad. Though the hacker-speak of other languages often
uses translations of jargon from English (often as transmitted to
them by earlier Jargon File versions!), the local variations are
interesting, and knowledge of them may be of some use to
travelling hackers.
There are some references herein to `Commonwealth hackish'.
These are intended to describe some variations in hacker usage as
reported in the English spoken in Great Britain and the
Commonwealth (Canada, Australia, India, etc. -- though Canada is
heavily influenced by American usage). There is also an entry on
Commonwealth Hackish
reporting some general phonetic and vocabulary differences from
U.S. hackish.
Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia report
that they often use a mixture of English and their native
languages for technical conversation. Occasionally they develop
idioms in their English usage that are influenced by their
native-language styles. Some of these are reported here.
On the other hand, English often gives rise to grammatical and
vocabulary mutations in the native language. For example, Italian
hackers often use the nonexistent verbs `scrollare' (to scroll)
and `deletare' (to delete) rather than native Italian `scorrere'
and `cancellare'. Similarly, the English verb `to hack' has been
seen conjugated in Swedish. In German, many Unix terms in English
are casually declined as if they were German verbs - thus:
mount/mounten/gemountet; grep/grepen/gegrept;
fork/forken/geforkt; core dump/core-dumpen, core-gedumpt. And
Spanish-speaking hackers use `linkar' (to link), `debugear' (to
debug), and `lockear' (to lock).
European hackers report that this happens partly because the
English terms make finer distinctions than are available in their
native vocabularies, and partly because deliberate
language-crossing makes for amusing wordplay.
A few notes on hackish usages in Russian have been added where
they are parallel with English idioms and thus comprehensible to
English-speakers.
Node:Lamer-speak, Next:Pronunciation Guide,
Previous:International Style, Up:Top
Crackers, Phreaks, and Lamers
From the early 1980s onward, a flourishing culture of local,
MS-DOS-based bulletin boards developed separately from Internet
hackerdom. The BBS culture has, as its seamy underside, a stratum
of `pirate boards' inhabited by crackers, phone phreaks, and warez d00dz. These people (mostly
teenagers running IBM-PC clones from their bedrooms) have
developed their own characteristic jargon, heavily influenced by
skateboard lingo and underground-rock slang.
Though crackers often call themselves `hackers', they aren't
(they typically have neither significant programming ability, nor
Internet expertise, nor experience with UNIX or other true
multi-user systems). Their vocabulary has little overlap with
hackerdom's. Nevertheless, this lexicon covers much of it so the
reader will be able to understand what goes by on bulletin-board
systems.
Here is a brief guide to cracker and warez d00dz usage:
Misspell frequently. The substitutions
phone => fone
freak => phreak
are obligatory.
Always substitute `z's for `s's. (i.e. "codes" ->
"codez"). The substitution of 'z' for 's' has evolved so that a
'z' is bow systematically put at the end of words to denote an
illegal or cracking connection. Examples : Appz, passwordz,
passez, utilz, MP3z, distroz, pornz, sitez, gamez, crackz,
serialz, downloadz, FTPz, etc.
Type random emphasis characters after a post line (i.e. "Hey
Dudes!#!$#$!#!$").
Use the emphatic `k' prefix ("k-kool", "k-rad", "k-awesome")
frequently.
Abbreviate compulsively ("I got lotsa warez w/ docs").
Substitute `0' for `o' ("r0dent", "l0zer").
TYPE ALL IN CAPS LOCK, SO IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE YELLING ALL
THE TIME.
These traits are similar to those of B1FF, who originated as a parody of naive BBS users; also of his latter-day equivalent
Jeff K.. Occasionally, this sort
of distortion may be used as heavy sarcasm by a real hacker, as
in:
> I got X Windows running under Linux!
d00d! u R an 31337 hax0r
The only practice resembling this in actual hacker usage is
the substitution of a dollar sign of `s' in names of products or
service felt to be excessively expensive, e.g. Compu$erve,
Micro$oft.
For further discussion of the pirate-board subculture, see
lamer, elite, leech, poser, cracker, and especially warez d00dz, banner site, ratio site, leech mode.
Node:Pronunciation Guide,
Next:Other
Lexicon Conventions, Previous:Lamer-speak, Up:Top
How to Use the Lexicon
Pronunciation Guide
Pronunciation keys are provided in the jargon listings for all
entries that are neither dictionary words pronounced as in
standard English nor obvious compounds thereof. Slashes bracket
phonetic pronunciations, which are to be interpreted using the
following conventions:
Syllables are hyphen-separated, except that an accent or
back-accent follows each accented syllable (the back-accent marks
a secondary accent in some words of four or more syllables). If
no accent is given, the word is pronounced with equal
accentuation on all syllables (this is common for
abbreviations).
Consonants are pronounced as in American English. The letter
`g' is always hard (as in "got" rather than "giant"); `ch' is
soft ("church" rather than "chemist"). The letter `j' is the
sound that occurs twice in "judge". The letter `s' is always as
in "pass", never a z sound. The digraph `kh' is the guttural of
"loch" or "l'chaim". The digraph 'gh' is the aspirated g+h of
"bughouse" or "ragheap" (rare in English).
Uppercase letters are pronounced as their English letter
names; thus (for example) /H-L-L/ is equivalent to /aych el el/.
/Z/ may be pronounced /zee/ or /zed/ depending on your local
dialect.
Vowels are represented as follows:
/a/
back, that
/ah/
father, palm (see note)
/ar/
far, mark
/aw/
flaw, caught
/ay/
bake, rain
/e/
less, men
/ee/
easy, ski
/eir/
their, software
/i/
trip, hit
/i:/
life, sky
/o/
block, stock (see note)
/oh/
flow, sew
/oo/
loot, through
/or/
more, door
/ow/
out, how
/oy/
boy, coin
/uh/
but, some
/u/
put, foot
/y/
yet, young
/yoo/
few, chew
/[y]oo/
/oo/ with optional fronting as in `news' (/nooz/ or
/nyooz/)
The glyph /*/ is used for the `schwa' sound of unstressed or
occluded vowels (the one that is often written with an
upside-down `e'). The schwa vowel is omitted in syllables
containing vocalic r, l, m or n; that is, `kitten' and `color'
would be rendered /kit'n/ and /kuhl'r/, not /kit'*n/ and
/kuhl'*r/.
Note that the above table reflects mainly distinctions found
in standard American English (that is, the neutral dialect spoken
by TV network announcers and typical of educated speech in the
Upper Midwest, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Philadelphia).
However, we separate /o/ from /ah/, which tend to merge in
standard American. This may help readers accustomed to accents
resembling British Received Pronunciation.
The intent of this scheme is to permit as many readers as
possible to map the pronunciations into their local dialect by
ignoring some subset of the distinctions we make. Speakers of
British RP, for example, can smash terminal /r/ and all
unstressed vowels. Speakers of many varieties of southern
American will automatically map /o/ to /aw/; and so forth.
(Standard American makes a good reference dialect for this
purpose because it has crisp consonants and more vowel
distinctions than other major dialects, and tends to retain
distinctions between unstressed vowels. It also happens to be
what your editor speaks.)
Entries with a pronunciation of `//' are written-only usages.
(No, Unix weenies, this does not mean `pronounce like
previous pronunciation'!)
Node:Other Lexicon
Conventions, Next:Format for New Entries,
Previous:Pronunciation Guide, Up:Top
Other Lexicon Conventions
Entries are sorted in case-blind ASCII collation order (rather
than the letter-by-letter order ignoring interword spacing common
in mainstream dictionaries), except that all entries beginning
with nonalphabetic characters are sorted after Z. The
case-blindness is a feature, not a bug.
The beginning of each entry is marked by a colon
(:) at the left margin. This convention helps out
tools like hypertext browsers that benefit from knowing where
entry boundaries are, but aren't as context-sensitive as
humans.
In pure ASCII renderings of the Jargon File, you will see {}
used to bracket words which themselves have entries in the File.
This isn't done all the time for every such word, but it is done
everywhere that a reminder seems useful that the term has a
jargon meaning and one might wish to refer to its entry.
In this all-ASCII version, headwords for topic entries are
distinguished from those for ordinary entries by being followed
by "::" rather than ":"; similarly, references are surrounded by
"{{" and "}}" rather than "{" and "}".
Defining instances of terms and phrases appear in `slanted
type'. A defining instance is one which occurs near to or as part
of an explanation of it.
Prefixed ** is used as linguists do; to mark examples of
incorrect usage.
We follow the `logical' quoting convention described in the
Writing Style section above. In addition, we reserve double
quotes for actual excerpts of text or (sometimes invented)
speech. Scare quotes (which mark a word being used in a
nonstandard way), and philosopher's quotes (which turn an
utterance into the string of letters or words that name it) are
both rendered with single quotes.
References such as malloc(3) and
patch(1) are to Unix facilities (some of which, such
as patch(1), are actually freeware distributed over
Usenet). The Unix manuals use foo(n) to refer to
item foo in section (n) of the manual, where n=1 is utilities,
n=2 is system calls, n=3 is C library routines, n=6 is games, and
n=8 (where present) is system administration utilities. Sections
4, 5, and 7 of the manuals have changed roles frequently and in
any case are not referred to in any of the entries.
Various abbreviations used frequently in the lexicon are
summarized here:
_abbrev._
abbreviation
_adj._
adjective
_adv._
adverb
_alt._
alternate
_cav._
caveat
_conj._
conjunction
_esp._
especially
_excl._
exclamation
_imp._
imperative
_interj._
interjection
_n._
noun
_obs._
obsolete
_pl._
plural
_poss._
possibly
_pref._
prefix
_prob._
probably
_prov._
proverbial
_quant._
quantifier
_suff._
suffix
_syn._
synonym (or synonymous with)
_v._
verb (may be transitive or intransitive)
_var._
variant
_vi._
intransitive verb
_vt._
transitive verb
Where alternate spellings or pronunciations are given,
_alt._ separates two possibilities with nearly equal
distribution, while _var._ prefixes one that is markedly
less common than the primary.
Where a term can be attributed to a particular subculture or
is known to have originated there, we have tried to so indicate.
Here is a list of abbreviations used in etymologies:
Amateur Packet Radio
A technical culture of ham-radio sites using AX.25 and TCP/IP
for wide-area networking and BBS systems.
Berkeley
University of California at Berkeley
BBN
Bolt, Beranek & Newman
Cambridge
the university in England (not the city in
Massachusetts where MIT happens to be located!)
CMU
Carnegie-Mellon University
Commodore
Commodore Business Machines
DEC
The Digital Equipment Corporation (now Compaq).
Fairchild
The Fairchild Instruments Palo Alto development group
FidoNet
See the FidoNet entry
IBM
International Business Machines
MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology; esp. the legendary MIT
AI Lab culture of roughly 1971 to 1983 and its feeder groups,
including the Tech Model Railroad Club
NRL
Naval Research Laboratories
NYU
New York University
OED
The Oxford English Dictionary
Purdue
Purdue University
SAIL
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (at Stanford
University)
SI
From _Système International_, the name for the
standard conventions of metric nomenclature used in the
sciences
Stanford
Stanford University
Sun
Sun Microsystems
TMRC
Some MITisms go back as far as the Tech Model Railroad Club
(TMRC) at MIT c. 1960. Material marked TMRC is from "An Abridged
Dictionary of the TMRC Language", originally compiled by Pete
Samson in 1959
UCLA
University of California at Los Angeles
UK
the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern
Ireland)
Usenet
See the Usenet entry
WPI
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, site of a very active
community of PDP-10 hackers during the 1970s
WWW
The World-Wide-Web.
XEROX PARC
XEROX's Palo Alto Research Center, site of much pioneering
research in user interface design and networking
Yale
Yale University
Some other etymology abbreviations such as Unix and PDP-10
refer to technical cultures surrounding specific operating
systems, processors, or other environments. The fact that a term
is labelled with any one of these abbreviations does not
necessarily mean its use is confined to that culture. In
particular, many terms labelled `MIT' and `Stanford' are in quite
general use. We have tried to give some indication of the
distribution of speakers in the usage notes; however, a number of
factors mentioned in the introduction conspire to make these
indications less definite than might be desirable.
A few new definitions attached to entries are marked
[proposed]. These are usually generalizations suggested by
editors or Usenet respondents in the process of commenting on
previous definitions of those entries. These are not
represented as established jargon.
Node:Format for New
Entries, Next:The Jargon Lexicon, Previous:Other
Lexicon Conventions, Up:Top
Format For New Entries
You can mail submissions for the Jargon File to jargon@snark.thyrsus.com.
We welcome new jargon, and corrections to or amplifications of
existing entries. You can improve your submission's chances of
being included by adding background information on user
population and years of currency. References to actual usage via
URLs and/or DejaNews pointers are particularly welcomed.
All contributions and suggestions about the Jargon File will
be considered donations to be placed in the public domain as part
of this File, and may be used in subsequent paper editions.
Submissions may be edited for accuracy, clarity and
concision.
We are looking to expand the File's range of technical
specialties covered. There are doubtless rich veins of jargon yet
untapped in the scientific computing, graphics, and networking
hacker communities; also in numerical analysis, computer
architectures and VLSI design, language design, and many other
related fields. Send us your jargon!
We are not interested in straight technical terms
explained by textbooks or technical dictionaries unless an entry
illuminates `underground' meanings or aspects not covered by
official histories. We are also not interested in `joke' entries
-- there is a lot of humor in the file but it must flow naturally
out of the explanations of what hackers do and how they
think.
It is OK to submit items of jargon you have originated if they
have spread to the point of being used by people who are not
personally acquainted with you. We prefer items to be attested by
independent submission from two different sites.
An HTML version of the File is available at
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon. Please send us URLs for materials
related to the entries, so we can enrich the File's link
structure.
The Jargon File will be regularly maintained and made
available for browsing on the World Wide Web, and will include a
version number. Read it, pass it around, contribute -- this is
your monument!
Node:The Jargon Lexicon,
Next:Appendix A,
Previous:Format for New Entries, Up:Top
The Jargon Lexicon
= 0 =:
= A =:
= B =:
= C =:
= D =:
= E =:
= F =:
= G =:
= H =:
= I =:
= J =:
= K =:
= L =:
= M =:
= N =:
= O =:
= P =:
= Q =:
= R =:
= S =:
= T =:
= U =:
= V =:
= W =:
= X =:
= Y =:
= Z =:
Node:= 0 =, Next:= A =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= 0 =
0:
1TBS:
120 reset:
2:
404:
404 compliant:
4.2:
@-party:
Node:0, Next:1TBS,
Up:= 0 =
0
Numeric zero, as opposed to the letter `O' (the 15th letter of
the English alphabet). In their unmodified forms they look a lot
alike, and various kluges invented to make them visually distinct
have compounded the confusion. If your zero is center-dotted and
letter-O is not, or if letter-O looks almost rectangular but zero
looks more like an American football stood on end (or the
reverse), you're probably looking at a modern character display
(though the dotted zero seems to have originated as an option on
IBM 3270 controllers). If your zero is slashed but letter-O is
not, you're probably looking at an old-style ASCII graphic set
descended from the default typewheel on the venerable ASR-33
Teletype (Scandinavians, for whom Ø is a letter, curse
this arrangement). (Interestingly, the slashed zero long predates
computers; Florian Cajori's monumental "A History of Mathematical
Notations" notes that it was used in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries.) If letter-O has a slash across it and the zero does
not, your display is tuned for a very old convention used at IBM
and a few other early mainframe makers (Scandinavians curse
this arrangement even more, because it means two of
their letters collide). Some Burroughs/Unisys equipment displays
a zero with a reversed slash. Old CDC computers rendered
letter O as an unbroken oval and 0 as an oval broken at upper
right and lower left. And yet another convention common on early
line printers left zero unornamented but added a tail or hook to
the letter-O so that it resembled an inverted Q or cursive
capital letter-O (this was endorsed by a draft ANSI standard for
how to draw ASCII characters, but the final standard changed the
distinguisher to a tick-mark in the upper-left corner). Are we
sufficiently confused yet?
Node:1TBS, Next:120 reset, Previous:0, Up:= 0 =
1TBS // n.
The "One True Brace Style"; see indent style.
Node:120 reset, Next:2, Previous:1TBS, Up:= 0 =
120 reset /wuhn-twen'tee ree'set/ n.
[from 120 volts, U.S. wall voltage] To cycle power on a
machine in order to reset or unjam it. Compare Big Red Switch, power cycle.
Node:2, Next:404,
Previous:120 reset,
Up:= 0 =
2 infix.
In translation software written by hackers, infix 2 often
represents the syllable to with the connotation
`translate to': as in dvi2ps (DVI to PostScript), int2string
(integer to string), and texi2roff (Texinfo to [nt]roff). Several
versions of a joke have floated around the internet in which some
idiot programmer fixes the Y2K bug by changing all the Y's in
something to K's, as in Januark, Februark, etc.
Node:404, Next:404 compliant, Previous:2, Up:= 0 =
404 // n.
[from the HTTP error "file not found on server"] Extended to
humans to convey that the subject has no idea or no clue -
sapience not found. May be used reflexively; "Uh, I'm 404ing"
means "I'm drawing a blank".
Node:404 compliant, Next:4.2, Previous:404, Up:= 0 =
404 compliant adj.
The status of a website which has been completely removed,
usually by the administrators of the hosting site as a result of
net abuse by the website operators. The term is a tongue-in-cheek
reference to the standard "301 compliant" Murkowski Bill
disclaimer used by spammers. See also: spam, spamvertize.
Node:4.2, Next:@-party, Previous:404 compliant, Up:= 0 =
4.2 /for' poynt too'/ n.
Without a prefix, this almost invariably refers to BSD Unix release 4.2. Note that it is an
indication of cluelessness to say "version 4.2", and "release
4.2" is rare; the number stands on its own, or is used in the
more explicit forms 4.2BSD or (less commonly) BSD 4.2. Similar
remarks apply to "4.3", "4.4" and to earlier, less-widespread
releases 4.1 and 2.9.
Node:@-party, Next:abbrev, Previous:4.2, Up:= 0 =
@-party /at'par`tee/ n.
[from the @-sign in an Internet address] (alt. `@-sign party'
/at'si:n par`tee/) A semi-closed party thrown for hackers at a
science-fiction convention (esp. the annual World Science Fiction
Convention or "Worldcon"); one must have a network address to get in, or at
least be in company with someone who does. One of the most
reliable opportunities for hackers to meet face to face with
people who might otherwise be represented by mere phosphor dots
on their screens. Compare boink.
The first recorded @-party was held at the Westercon (a U.S.
western regional SF convention) over the July 4th weekend in
1980. It is not clear exactly when the canonical @-party venue
shifted to the Worldcon but it had certainly become established
by Constellation in 1983. Sadly, the @-party tradition has been
in decline since about 1996, mainly because having an @-address
no longer functions as an effective lodge pin.
Node:= A =, Next:= B =, Previous:= 0 =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= A =
abbrev:
ABEND:
accumulator:
ACK:
Acme:
acolyte:
ad-hockery:
Ada:
address harvester:
adger:
admin:
ADVENT:
AFAIK:
AFJ:
AFK:
AI:
AI-complete:
AI koans:
AIDS:
AIDX:
airplane rule:
Alderson loop:
aliasing bug:
Alice and Bob:
all-elbows:
alpha geek:
alpha particles:
alt:
alt bit:
Aluminum Book:
ambimouseterous:
Amiga:
Amiga Persecution
Complex:
amoeba:
amp off:
amper:
Angband:
angle brackets:
angry fruit salad:
annoybot:
annoyware:
ANSI:
ANSI standard:
ANSI standard
pizza:
AOL!:
app:
arena:
arg:
ARMM:
armor-plated:
asbestos:
asbestos cork
award:
asbestos longjohns:
ASCII:
ASCII art:
ASCIIbetical order:
astroturfing:
atomic:
attoparsec:
AUP:
autobogotiphobia:
automagically:
avatar:
awk:
Node:abbrev, Next:ABEND, Previous:@-party, Up:=
A =
abbrev /*-breev'/, /*-brev'/ n.
Common abbreviation for `abbreviation'.
Node:ABEND, Next:accumulator, Previous:abbrev, Up:= A
=
ABEND /a'bend/, /*-bend'/ n.
[ABnormal END] 1. Abnormal termination (of software); crash; lossage. Derives from an error message on the
IBM 360; used jokingly by hackers but seriously mainly by code grinders. Usually
capitalized, but may appear as `abend'. Hackers will try to
persuade you that ABEND is called `abend' because it is what
system operators do to the machine late on Friday when they want
to call it a day, and hence is from the German `Abend' =
`Evening'. 2. [_alt.callahans_] Absent By Enforced Net
Deprivation - used in the subject lines of postings warning
friends of an imminent loss of Internet access. (This can be
because of computer downtime, loss of provider, moving or
illness.) Variants of this also appear: ABVND = `Absent By
Voluntary Net Deprivation' and ABSEND = `Absent By Self-Enforced
Net Deprivation' have been sighted.
Node:accumulator, Next:ACK, Previous:ABEND, Up:= A
=
accumulator n. obs.
1. Archaic term for a register. On-line use of it as a synonym
for `register' is a fairly reliable indication that the user has
been around for quite a while and/or that the architecture under
discussion is quite old. The term in full is almost never used of
microprocessor registers, for example, though symbolic names for
arithmetic registers beginning in `A' derive from historical use
of the term `accumulator' (and not, actually, from `arithmetic').
Confusingly, though, an `A' register name prefix may also stand
for `address', as for example on the Motorola 680x0 family. 2. A
register being used for arithmetic or logic (as opposed to
addressing or a loop index), especially one being used to
accumulate a sum or count of many items. This use is in context
of a particular routine or stretch of code. "The FOOBAZ routine
uses A3 as an accumulator." 3. One's in-basket (esp. among
old-timers who might use sense 1). "You want this reviewed? Sure,
just put it in the accumulator." (See stack.)
Node:ACK, Next:Acme, Previous:accumulator, Up:= A =
ACK /ak/ interj.
1. [common; from the ASCII mnemonic for 0000110] Acknowledge.
Used to register one's presence (compare mainstream
Yo!). An appropriate response to ping or ENQ. 2. [from
the comic strip "Bloom County"] An exclamation of surprised
disgust, esp. in "Ack pffft!" Semi-humorous. Generally this sense
is not spelled in caps (ACK) and is distinguished by a following
exclamation point. 3. Used to politely interrupt someone to tell
them you understand their point (see NAK). Thus, for example, you might cut off an
overly long explanation with "Ack. Ack. Ack. I get it now". 4. An
affirmative. "Think we ought to ditch that damn NT server for a
Linux box?" "ACK!"
There is also a usage "ACK?" (from sense 1) meaning "Are you
there?", often used in email when earlier mail has produced no
reply, or during a lull in talk
mode to see if the person has gone away (the standard
humorous response is of course NAK
(sense 1), i.e., "I'm not here").
Node:Acme, Next:acolyte, Previous:ACK, Up:= A =
Acme n.
The canonical supplier of bizarre, elaborate, and
non-functional gadgetry - where Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson
(two cartoonists who specialized in elaborate contraptions) shop.
The name has been humorously expanded as A (or American) Company
Making Everything. (In fact, Acme was a real brand sold from
Sears Roebuck catalogs in the early 1900s.) Describing some X as
an "Acme X" either means "This is insanely great", or, more likely,
"This looks insanely great
on paper, but in practice it's really easy to shoot yourself in
the foot with it." Compare pistol.
This term, specially cherished by American hackers and
explained here for the benefit of our overseas brethren, comes
from the Warner Brothers' series of "Roadrunner" cartoons. In
these cartoons, the famished Wile E. Coyote was forever
attempting to catch up with, trap, and eat the Roadrunner. His
attempts usually involved one or more high-technology Rube
Goldberg devices - rocket jetpacks, catapults, magnetic traps,
high-powered slingshots, etc. These were usually delivered in
large cardboard boxes, labeled prominently with the Acme name.
These devices invariably malfunctioned in improbable and violent
ways.
Node:acolyte, Next:ad-hockery, Previous:Acme, Up:= A =
acolyte n. obs.
[TMRC] An OSU privileged enough to
submit data and programs to a member of the priesthood.
Node:ad-hockery, Next:Ada, Previous:acolyte, Up:= A
=
ad-hockery /ad-hok'*r-ee/ n.
[Purdue] 1. Gratuitous assumptions made inside certain
programs, esp. expert systems, which lead to the appearance of
semi-intelligent behavior but are in fact entirely arbitrary. For
example, fuzzy-matching of input tokens that might be typing
errors against a symbol table can make it look as though a
program knows how to spell. 2. Special-case code to cope with
some awkward input that would otherwise cause a program to choke, presuming normal inputs are dealt
with in some cleaner and more regular way. Also called
`ad-hackery', `ad-hocity' (/ad-hos'*-tee/), `ad-crockery'. See
also ELIZA effect.
Node:Ada, Next:address harvester, Previous:ad-hockery, Up:= A =
Ada n.
A Pascal-descended language that
was at one time made mandatory for Department of Defense software
projects by the Pentagon. Hackers are nearly unanimous in
observing that, technically, it is precisely what one might
expect given that kind of endorsement by fiat; designed by
committee, crockish, difficult to use, and overall a disastrous,
multi-billion-dollar boondoggle (one common description wss "The
PL/I of the 1980s"). Hackers find Ada's exception-handling and
inter-process communication features particularly hilarious. Ada
Lovelace (the daughter of Lord Byron who became the world's first
programmer while cooperating with Charles Babbage on the design
of his mechanical computing engines in the mid-1800s) would
almost certainly blanch at the use to which her name has latterly
been put; the kindest thing that has been said about it is that
there is probably a good small language screaming to get out from
inside its vast, elephantine
bulk.
Node:address harvester, Next:adger, Previous:Ada, Up:= A
=
address harvester n.
A robot that searches web pages and/or filters netnews traffic
looking for valid email addresses. Some address harvesters are
benign, used only for compiling address directories. Most,
unfortunately, are run by miscreants compiling address lists to
spam. Address harvesters can be foiled
by a teergrube.
Node:adger, Next:admin, Previous:address harvester, Up:= A =
adger /aj'r/ vt.
[UCLA mutant of nadger, poss.
also from the middle name of an infamous tenured graduate student]
To make a bonehead move with consequences that could have been
foreseen with even slight mental effort. E.g., "He started
removing files and promptly adgered the whole project". Compare
dumbass attack.
Node:admin, Next:ADVENT, Previous:adger, Up:= A
=
admin /ad-min'/ n.
Short for `administrator'; very commonly used in speech or
on-line to refer to the systems person in charge on a computer.
Common constructions on this include `sysadmin' and `site admin'
(emphasizing the administrator's role as a site contact for email
and news) or `newsadmin' (focusing specifically on news). Compare
postmaster, sysop, system
mangler.
Node:ADVENT, Next:AFAIK, Previous:admin, Up:= A
=
ADVENT /ad'vent/ n.
The prototypical computer adventure game, first designed by
Will Crowther on the PDP-10 in the
mid-1970s as an attempt at computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and
expanded into a puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods at Stanford in
1976. (Woods had been one of the authors of INTERCAL.) Now better known as Adventure or
Colossal Cave Adventure, but the TOPS-10 operating system permitted only
six-letter filenames. See also vadding, Zork, and
Infocom.
This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style since
expected in text adventure games, and popularized several tag
lines that have become fixtures of hacker-speak: "A huge green
fierce snake bars the way!" "I see no X here" (for some noun X).
"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike." "You
are in a little maze of twisty passages, all different." The
`magic words' xyzzy and plugh also derive from this game.
Crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the
Mammoth & Flint Ridge cave system; it actually has a
`Colossal Cave' and a `Bedquilt' as in the game, and the `Y2'
that also turns up is cavers' jargon for a map reference to a
secondary entrance.
ADVENT sources are available for FTP at
ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/doc/misc/if-archive/games/source/advent.tar.Z.
Node:AFAIK, Next:AFJ, Previous:ADVENT, Up:= A
=
AFAIK // n.
[Usenet] Abbrev. for "As Far As I Know".
Node:AFJ, Next:AFK, Previous:AFAIK, Up:= A
=
AFJ // n.
Written-only abbreviation for "April Fool's Joke". Elaborate
April Fool's hoaxes are a long-established tradition on Usenet
and Internet; see kremvax for an
example. In fact, April Fool's Day is the only seasonal
holiday consistently marked by customary observances on Internet
and other hacker networks.
Node:AFK, Next:AI,
Previous:AFJ, Up:= A =
AFK
[MUD] Abbrev. for "Away From Keyboard". Used to notify others
that you will be momentarily unavailable online. eg. "Let's not
go kill that frost giant yet, I need to go AFK to make a phone
call". Often MUDs will have a command to politely inform others
of your absence when they try to talk with you. The term is not
restricted to MUDs, however, and has become common in many chat
situations, from IRC to Unix talk.
Node:AI, Next:AI-complete, Previous:AFK, Up:= A =
AI /A-I/ n.
Abbreviation for `Artificial Intelligence', so common that the
full form is almost never written or spoken among hackers.
Node:AI-complete, Next:AI koans, Previous:AI, Up:= A =
AI-complete /A-I k*m-pleet'/ adj.
[MIT, Stanford: by analogy with `NP-complete' (see NP-)] Used to describe problems or subproblems in
AI, to indicate that the solution presupposes a solution to the
`strong AI problem' (that is, the synthesis of a human-level
intelligence). A problem that is AI-complete is, in other words,
just too hard.
Examples of AI-complete problems are `The Vision Problem'
(building a system that can see as well as a human) and `The
Natural Language Problem' (building a system that can understand
and speak a natural language as well as a human). These may
appear to be modular, but all attempts so far (1999) to solve
them have foundered on the amount of context information and
`intelligence' they seem to require. See also gedanken.
Node:AI koans, Next:AIDS, Previous:AI-complete, Up:= A =
AI koans /A-I koh'anz/ pl.n.
A series of pastiches of Zen teaching riddles created by Danny
Hillis at the MIT AI Lab around various major figures of the
Lab's culture (several are included under Some AI Koans in Appendix A). See
also ha ha only
serious, mu, and hacker humor.
Node:AIDS, Next:AIDX, Previous:AI koans, Up:= A =
AIDS /aydz/ n.
Short for A* Infected Disk Syndrome (`A*' is a glob pattern that matches, but is not limited to,
Apple or Amiga), this condition is quite often the result of
practicing unsafe SEX. See virus, worm, Trojan horse, virgin.
Node:AIDX, Next:airplane rule, Previous:AIDS, Up:= A
=
AIDX /ayd'k*z/ n.
Derogatory term for IBM's perverted version of Unix, AIX,
especially for the AIX 3.? used in the IBM RS/6000 series (some
hackers think it is funnier just to pronounce "AIX" as "aches").
A victim of the dreaded "hybridism" disease, this attempt to
combine the two main currents of the Unix stream (BSD and USG Unix)
became a monstrosity to haunt
system administrators' dreams. For example, if new accounts are
created while many users are logged on, the load average jumps
quickly over 20 due to silly implementation of the user
databases. For a quite similar disease, compare HP-SUX. Also, compare Macintrash, Nominal Semidestructor, ScumOS, sun-stools.
Node:airplane rule, Next:Alderson loop, Previous:AIDX, Up:= A =
airplane rule n.
"Complexity increases the possibility of failure; a
twin-engine airplane has twice as many engine problems as a
single-engine airplane." By analogy, in both software and
electronics, the rule that simplicity increases robustness. It is
correspondingly argued that the right way to build reliable
systems is to put all your eggs in one basket, after making sure
that you've built a really good basket. See also KISS Principle, elegant.
Node:Alderson loop, Next:aliasing bug, Previous:airplane rule, Up:= A =
Alderson loop n.
[Intel] A special version of an infinite loop where there is an exit
condition available, but inaccessible in the current
implementation of the code. Typically this is created while
debugging user interface code. An example would be when there is
a menu stating, "Select 1-3 or 9 to quit" and 9 is not allowed by
the function that takes the selection from the user.
This term received its name from a programmer who had coded a
modal message box in MSAccess with no Ok or Cancel buttons,
thereby disabling the entire program whenever the box came up.
The message box had the proper code for dismissal and even was
set up so that when the non-existent Ok button was pressed the
proper code would be called.
Node:aliasing bug, Next:Alice and Bob, Previous:Alderson loop, Up:= A =
aliasing bug n.
A class of subtle programming errors that can arise in code
that does dynamic allocation, esp. via malloc(3) or
equivalent. If several pointers address (`aliases for') a given
hunk of storage, it may happen that the storage is freed or
reallocated (and thus moved) through one alias and then
referenced through another, which may lead to subtle (and
possibly intermittent) lossage depending on the state and the
allocation history of the malloc arena. Avoidable by use of allocation strategies
that never alias allocated core, or by use of higher-level
languages, such as LISP, which employ
a garbage collector (see GC). Also
called a stale pointer
bug. See also precedence lossage, smash the stack, fandango on core, memory leak, memory smash, overrun screw, spam.
Historical note: Though this term is nowadays associated with
C programming, it was already in use in a very similar sense in
the Algol-60 and FORTRAN communities in the 1960s.
Node:Alice and Bob, Next:all-elbows, Previous:aliasing bug, Up:= A =
Alice and Bob n.
The archetypal individuals used as examples in discussions of
cryptographic protocols. Originally, theorists would say
something like: "A communicates with someone who claims to be B,
So to be sure, A tests that B knows a secret number K. So A sends
to B a random number X. B then forms Y by encrypting X under key
K and sends Y back to A" Because this sort of thing is is quite
hard to follow, theorists stopped using the unadorned letters A
and B to represent the main players and started calling them
Alice and Bob. So now we say "Alice communicates with someone
claiming to be Bob, and to be sure, So Alice tests that Bob knows
a secret number K. Alice sends to Bob a random number X. Bob then
forms Y by encrypting X under key K and sends Y back to Alice". A
whole mythology rapidly grew up around the metasyntactic names;
see http://www.conceptlabs.co.uk/alicebob.html.
In Bruce Schneier's definitive introductory text "Applied
Cryptography" (2nd ed., 1996, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN
0-471-11709-9) he introduces a table of dramatis personae headed
by Alice and Bob. Others include Carol (a participant in three-
and four-party protocols), Dave (a participant in four-party
protocols), Eve (an eavesdropper), Mallory (a malicious active
attacker), Trent (a trusted arbitrator), Walter (a warden), Peggy
(a prover) and Victor (a verifier). These names for roles are
either already standard or, given the wide popularity of the
book, may be expected to quickly become so.
Node:all-elbows, Next:alpha geek, Previous:Alice and Bob, Up:= A =
all-elbows adj.
[MS-DOS] Of a TSR (terminate-and-stay-resident) IBM PC
program, such as the N pop-up calendar and calculator utilities
that circulate on BBS systems:
unsociable. Used to describe a program that rudely steals the
resources that it needs without considering that other TSRs may
also be resident. One particularly common form of rudeness is
lock-up due to programs fighting over the keyboard interrupt. See
rude, also mess-dos.
Node:alpha geek, Next:alpha particles, Previous:all-elbows, Up:= A =
alpha geek n.
[from animal ethologists' `alpha male'] The most technically
accomplished or skillful person in some implied context. "Ask
Larry, he's the alpha geek here."
Node:alpha particles, Next:alt, Previous:alpha geek, Up:= A =
alpha particles n.
See bit rot.
Node:alt, Next:alt bit, Previous:alpha particles, Up:= A =
alt /awlt/
1. n. The alt shift key on an IBM PC or clone keyboard; see bucky bits, sense 2 (though typical PC
usage does not simply set the 0200 bit). 2. n. The `option' key
on a Macintosh; use of this term usually reveals that the speaker
hacked PCs before coming to the Mac (see also feature key, which is sometimes
incorrectly called `alt'). 3. n.,obs. [PDP-10; often
capitalized to ALT] Alternate name for the ASCII ESC character
(ASCII 0011011), after the keycap labeling on some older
terminals; also `altmode' (/awlt'mohd/). This character was
almost never pronounced `escape' on an ITS system, in TECO, or under TOPS-10 -- always alt, as in "Type
alt alt to end a TECO command" or "alt-U onto the system" (for
"log onto the [ITS] system"). This usage probably arose because
alt is more convenient to say than `escape', especially when
followed by another alt or a character (or another alt
and a character, for that matter). 4. The _alt_
hierarchy on Usenet, the tree of newsgroups created by users
without a formal vote and approval procedure. There is a myth,
not entirely implausible, that _alt_ is acronymic for
"anarchists, lunatics, and terrorists"; but in fact it is simply
short for "alternative".
Node:alt bit, Next:Aluminum Book, Previous:alt, Up:= A
=
alt bit /awlt bit/ [from alternate] adj.
See meta bit.
Node:Aluminum Book, Next:ambimouseterous, Previous:alt bit, Up:= A =
Aluminum Book n.
[MIT] "Common LISP: The Language", by Guy L. Steele Jr.
(Digital Press, first edition 1984, second edition 1990). Note
that due to a technical screwup some printings of the second
edition are actually of a color the author describes succinctly
as "yucky green". See also book
titles.
Node:ambimouseterous, Next:Amiga, Previous:Aluminum Book, Up:= A =
ambimouseterous /am-b*-mows'ter-us/ or
/am-b*-mows'trus/ adj.
[modeled on _ambidextrous_] Able to use a mouse with
either hand.
Node:Amiga, Next:Amiga Persecution Complex,
Previous:ambimouseterous, Up:= A =
Amiga n
A series of personal computer models originally sold by
Commodore, based on 680x0 processors, custom support chips and an
operating system that combined some of the best features of
Macintosh and Unix with compatibility with neither.
The Amiga was released just as the personal computing world
standardized on IBM-PC clones. This prevented it from gaining
serious market share, despite the fact that the first Amigas had
a substantial technological lead on the IBM XTs of the time.
Instead, it acquired a small but zealous population of
enthusiastic hackers who dreamt of one day unseating the clones
(see Amiga
Persecution Complex). The traits of this culture are both
spoofed and illuminated in
The BLAZE Humor Viewer. The strength of the Amiga platform
seeded a small industry of companies building software and
hardware for the platform, especially in graphics and video
applications (see video
toaster).
Due to spectacular mismanagement, Commodore did hardly any
R&D, allowing the competition to close Amiga's technological
lead. After Commodore went bankrupt in 1994 the technology passed
through several hands, none of whom did much with it. However,
the Amiga is still being produced in Europe under license and has
a substantial number of fans, which will probably extend the
platform's life considerably.
Node:Amiga Persecution
Complex, Next:amoeba,
Previous:Amiga, Up:= A =
Amiga Persecution Complex n.
The disorder suffered by a particularly egregious variety of
bigot, those who believe that the
marginality of their preferred machine is the result of some kind
of industry-wide conspiracy (for without a conspiracy of some
kind, the eminent superiority of their beloved shining jewel of a
platform would obviously win over all, market pressures be
damned!) Those afflicted are prone to engaging in flame wars and calling for boycotts and
mailbombings. Amiga Persecution Complex is by no means limited to
Amiga users; NeXT, NeWS, OS/2, Macintosh, LISP, and GNU users are
also common victims. Linux users used
to display symptoms very frequently before Linux started winning;
some still do. See also newbie,
troll, holy
wars, weenie, Get a life!.
Node:amoeba, Next:amp off, Previous:Amiga Persecution Complex,
Up:= A =
amoeba n.
Humorous term for the Commodore Amiga personal computer.
Node:amp off, Next:amper, Previous:amoeba, Up:= A
=
amp off vt.
[Purdue] To run in background. From the Unix shell `&'
operator.
Node:amper, Next:Angband, Previous:amp off, Up:=
A =
amper n.
Common abbreviation for the name of the ampersand (`&',
ASCII 0100110) character. See ASCII
for other synonyms.
Node:Angband, Next:angle brackets, Previous:amper, Up:= A =
Angband n. /ang'band/
Like nethack, moria, and rogue,
one of the large freely distributed Dungeons-and-Dragons-like
simulation games, available for a wide range of machines and
operating systems. The name is from Tolkien's Pits of Angband
(compare elder days, elvish). Has been described as "Moria on
steroids"; but, unlike Moria, many aspects of the game are
customizable. This leads many hackers and would-be hackers into
fooling with these instead of doing productive work. There are
many Angband variants, of which the most notorious is probably
the rather whimsical Zangband. In this game, when a key that does
not correspond to a command is pressed, the game will display
"Type ? for help" 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time,
random error messages including "An error has occurred because an
error of type 42 has occurred" and "Windows 95 uninstalled
successfully" will be displayed. Zangband also allows the player
to kill Santa Claus (who has some really good stuff, but also has
a lot of friends), "Bull Gates", and Barney the Dinosaur (but be
watchful; Barney has a nasty case of halitosis). There is an
official angband home page at http://www.phial.com/angband
and a zangband one at http://thangorodrim.angband.org.
See also Random Number
God.
Node:angle brackets, Next:angry fruit salad,
Previous:Angband, Up:= A =
angle brackets n.
Either of the characters < (ASCII 0111100) and
> (ASCII 0111110) (ASCII less-than or
greater-than signs). Typographers in the Real World use angle brackets which are
either taller and slimmer (the ISO `Bra' and `Ket' characters),
or significantly smaller (single or double guillemets) than the
less-than and greater-than signs. See broket, ASCII.
Node:angry fruit salad,
Next:annoybot, Previous:angle brackets, Up:= A =
angry fruit salad n.
A bad visual-interface design that uses too many colors. (This
term derives, of course, from the bizarre day-glo colors found in
canned fruit salad.) Too often one sees similar effects from
interface designers using color window systems such as X; there is a tendency to create displays that
are flashy and attention-getting but uncomfortable for long-term
use.
Node:annoybot, Next:annoyware, Previous:angry fruit salad, Up:= A =
annoybot /*-noy-bot/ n.
[IRC] See bot.
Node:annoyware, Next:ANSI, Previous:annoybot, Up:=
A =
annoyware n.
A type of shareware that
frequently disrupts normal program operation to display requests
for payment to the author in return for the ability to disable
the request messages. (Also called `nagware') The requests
generally require user action to acknowledge the message before
normal operation is resumed and are often tied to the most
frequently used features of the software. See also careware, charityware, crippleware, freeware, FRS,
guiltware, postcardware, and -ware; compare payware.
Node:ANSI, Next:ANSI standard, Previous:annoyware, Up:= A =
ANSI /an'see/
1. n. [techspeak] The American National Standards Institute.
ANSI, along with the International Organization for Standards
(ISO), standardized the C programming language (see K&R, Classic
C), and promulgates many other important software
standards. 2. n. [techspeak] A terminal may be said to be `ANSI'
if it meets the ANSI X.364 standard for terminal control.
Unfortunately, this standard was both over-complicated and too
permissive. It has been retired and replaced by the ECMA-48
standard, which shares both flaws. 3. n. [BBS jargon] The set of
screen-painting codes that most MS-DOS and Amiga computers
accept. This comes from the ANSI.SYS device driver that must be
loaded on an MS-DOS computer to view such codes. Unfortunately,
neither DOS ANSI nor the BBS ANSIs derived from it exactly match
the ANSI X.364 terminal standard. For example, the ESC-[1m code
turns on the bold highlight on large machines, but in IBM
PC/MS-DOS ANSI, it turns on `intense' (bright) colors. Also, in
BBS-land, the term `ANSI' is often used to imply that a
particular computer uses or can emulate the IBM high-half
character set from MS-DOS. Particular use depends on context.
Occasionally, the vanilla ASCII character set is used with the
color codes, but on BBSs, ANSI and `IBM characters' tend to go
together.
Node:ANSI standard, Next:ANSI standard pizza,
Previous:ANSI, Up:= A =
ANSI standard /an'see stan'd*rd/
The ANSI standard usage of `ANSI standard' refers to any
practice which is typical or broadly done. It's most
appropriately applied to things that everyone does that are not
quite regulation. For example: ANSI standard shaking of a laser
printer cartridge to get extra life from it, or the ANSI standard
word tripling in names of usenet alt groups.
Node:ANSI standard pizza,
Next:AOL!, Previous:ANSI standard, Up:= A =
ANSI standard pizza /an'see stan'd*rd peet'z*/
[CMU] Pepperoni and mushroom pizza. Coined allegedly because
most pizzas ordered by CMU hackers during some period leading up
to mid-1990 were of that flavor. See also rotary debugger; compare ISO standard cup of
tea.
Node:AOL!, Next:app, Previous:ANSI standard pizza, Up:= A =
AOL! n.
[Usenet] Common synonym for "Me, too!" alluding to the
legendary propensity of America Online users to utter contentless
"Me, too!" postings. The number of exclamation points following
varies from zero to five or so. The pseudo-HTML
Me, too!
is also frequently seen. See also September that never
ended.
Node:app, Next:arena, Previous:AOL!, Up:= A =
app /ap/ n.
Short for `application program', as opposed to a systems
program. Apps are what systems vendors are forever chasing
developers to create for their environments so they can sell more
boxes. Hackers tend not to think of the things they themselves
run as apps; thus, in hacker parlance the term excludes
compilers, program editors, games, and messaging systems, though
a user would consider all those to be apps. (Broadly, an app is
often a self-contained environment for performing some
well-defined task such as `word processing'; hackers tend to
prefer more general-purpose tools.) See killer app; oppose tool, operating
system.
Node:arena, Next:arg, Previous:app,
Up:= A =
arena n.
[common; Unix] The area of memory attached to a process by
brk(2) and sbrk(2) and used by
malloc(3) as dynamic storage. So named from a
malloc: corrupt arena message emitted when some
early versions detected an impossible value in the free block
list. See overrun screw,
aliasing bug, memory leak, memory smash, smash the stack.
Node:arg, Next:ARMM, Previous:arena, Up:= A
=
arg /arg/ n.
Abbreviation for `argument' (to a function), used so often as
to have become a new word (like `piano' from `pianoforte'). "The
sine function takes 1 arg, but the arc-tangent function can take
either 1 or 2 args." Compare param,
parm, var.
Node:ARMM, Next:armor-plated, Previous:arg, Up:= A
=
ARMM n.
[acronym, `Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation'] A Usenet
cancelbot created by Dick Depew
of Munroe Falls, Ohio. ARMM was intended to automatically cancel
posts from anonymous-posting sites. Unfortunately, the robot's
recognizer for anonymous postings triggered on its own
automatically-generated control messages! Transformed by this
stroke of programming ineptitude into a monster of
Frankensteinian proportions, it broke loose on the night of March
31, 1993 and proceeded to spam
_news.admin.policy_ with a recursive explosion of over 200
messages.
ARMM's bug produced a recursive cascade of messages each of which mechanically
added text to the ID and Subject and some other headers of its
parent. This produced a flood of messages in which each header
took up several screens and each message ID and subject line got
longer and longer and longer.
Reactions varied from amusement to outrage. The pathological
messages crashed at least one mail system, and upset people
paying line charges for their Usenet feeds. One poster described
the ARMM debacle as "instant Usenet history" (also establishing
the term despew), and it has since
been widely cited as a cautionary example of the havoc the
combination of good intentions and incompetence can wreak on a
network. Compare Great Worm;
sorcerer's
apprentice mode. See also software laser, network meltdown.
Node:armor-plated, Next:asbestos, Previous:ARMM, Up:= A =
armor-plated n.
Syn. for bulletproof.
Node:asbestos, Next:asbestos cork award, Previous:armor-plated, Up:= A =
asbestos adj.
[common] Used as a modifier to anything intended to protect
one from flames; also in other highly
flame-suggestive usages. See, for
example, asbestos
longjohns and asbestos cork award.
Node:asbestos cork award,
Next:asbestos
longjohns, Previous:asbestos, Up:=
A =
asbestos cork award n.
Once, long ago at MIT, there was a flamer so consistently obnoxious that another
hacker designed, had made, and distributed posters announcing
that said flamer had been nominated for the `asbestos cork
award'. (Any reader in doubt as to the intended application of
the cork should consult the etymology under flame.) Since then, it is agreed that only a
select few have risen to the heights of bombast required to earn
this dubious dignity -- but there is no agreement on
which few.
Node:asbestos longjohns,
Next:ASCII, Previous:asbestos cork
award, Up:= A =
asbestos longjohns n.
Notional garments donned by Usenet posters just before emitting a remark
they expect will elicit flamage.
This is the most common of the asbestos coinages. Also `asbestos underwear',
`asbestos overcoat', etc.
Node:ASCII, Next:ASCII art, Previous:asbestos longjohns, Up:= A =
ASCII /as'kee/ n.
[originally an acronym (American Standard Code for Information
Interchange) but now merely conventional] The predominant
character set encoding of present-day computers. The standard
version uses 7 bits for each character, whereas most earlier
codes (including early drafts of of ASCII prior to June 1961)
used fewer. This change allowed the inclusion of lowercase
letters -- a major win -- but it did
not provide for accented letters or any other letterforms not
used in English (such as the German sharp-S or the ae-ligature
which is a letter in, for example, Norwegian). It could be worse,
though. It could be much worse. See EBCDIC to understand how. A history of ASCII
and its ancestors is at http://www.wps.com/texts/codes/index.html.
Computers are much pickier and less flexible about spelling
than humans; thus, hackers need to be very precise when talking
about characters, and have developed a considerable amount of
verbal shorthand for them. Every character has one or more names
-- some formal, some concise, some silly. Common jargon names for
ASCII characters are collected here. See also individual entries
for bang, excl, open, ques, semi, shriek, splat,
twiddle, and Yu-Shiang Whole Fish.
This list derives from revision 2.3 of the Usenet ASCII
pronunciation guide. Single characters are listed in ASCII order;
character pairs are sorted in by first member. For each
character, common names are given in rough order of popularity,
followed by names that are reported but rarely seen; official
ANSI/CCITT names are surrounded by brokets: <>. Square
brackets mark the particularly silly names introduced by INTERCAL. The abbreviations "l/r" and
"o/c" stand for left/right and "open/close" respectively.
Ordinary parentheticals provide some usage information.
!
Common: bang; pling; excl; shriek;
ball-bat; . Rare: factorial; exclam;
smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey; wham; eureka; [spark-spot];
soldier, control.
"
Common: double quote; quote. Rare: literal mark;
double-glitch; ; ; dirk;
[rabbit-ears]; double prime.
#
Common: number sign; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp; crunch; hex; [mesh]. Rare: grid;
crosshatch; octothorpe; flash; , pig-pen;
tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; splat.
$
Common: dollar; . Rare: currency symbol;
buck; cash; string (from BASIC); escape (when used as the echo of
ASCII ESC); ding; cache; [big money].
%
Common: percent; ; mod; grapes. Rare:
[double-oh-seven].
&
Common: ; amper; and, and sign. Rare:
address (from C); reference (from C++); andpersand; bitand;
background (from sh(1)); pretzel; amp. [INTERCAL
called this `ampersand'; what could be sillier?]
'
Common: single quote; quote; . Rare: prime;
glitch; tick; irk; pop; [spark]; ; .
( )
Common: l/r paren; l/r parenthesis; left/right; open/close;
paren/thesis; o/c paren; o/c parenthesis; l/r parenthesis; l/r
banana. Rare: so/already; lparen/rparen; ; o/c round bracket, l/r round bracket,
[wax/wane]; parenthisey/unparenthisey; l/r ear.
*
Common: star; [splat];
. Rare: wildcard; gear; dingle; mult; spider;
aster; times; twinkle; glob (see glob); Nathan
Hale.
+
Common: ; add. Rare: cross; [intersection].
,
Common: . Rare: ; [tail].
-
Common: dash; ; . Rare: [worm];
option; dak; bithorpe.
.
Common: dot; point; ; .
Rare: radix point; full stop; [spot].
/
Common: slash; stroke; ; forward slash. Rare:
diagonal; solidus; over; slak; virgule; [slat].
:
Common: . Rare: dots; [two-spot].
;
Common: ; semi. Rare: weenie; [hybrid],
pit-thwong.
< >
Common: ; bra/ket; l/r angle; l/r
angle bracket; l/r broket. Rare: from/{into, towards}; read
from/write to; suck/blow; comes-from/gozinta; in/out; crunch/zap
(all from UNIX); tic/tac; [angle/right angle].
=
Common: ; gets; takes. Rare: quadrathorpe;
[half-mesh].
?
Common: query; ; ques. Rare: whatmark; [what]; wildchar; huh;
hook; buttonhook; hunchback.
@
Common: at sign; at; strudel. Rare: each; vortex; whorl;
[whirlpool]; cyclone; snail; ape; cat; rose; cabbage;
.
V
Rare: [book].
[ ]
Common: l/r square bracket; l/r bracket; ; bracket/unbracket. Rare: square/unsquare; [U turn/U
turn back].
\
Common: backslash, hack, whack; escape (from C/UNIX); reverse
slash; slosh; backslant; backwhack. Rare: bash; ; reversed virgule; [backslat].
^
Common: hat; control; uparrow; caret; .
Rare: xor sign, chevron; [shark (or shark-fin)]; to the (`to the
power of'); fang; pointer (in Pascal).
_
Common: ; underscore; underbar; under. Rare:
score; backarrow; skid; [flatworm].
`
Common: backquote; left quote; left single quote; open quote;
; grave. Rare: backprime; [backspark];
unapostrophe; birk; blugle; back tick; back glitch; push;
; quasiquote.
{ }
Common: o/c brace; l/r brace; l/r squiggly; l/r squiggly
bracket/brace; l/r curly bracket/brace; . Rare: brace/unbrace; curly/uncurly; leftit/rytit; l/r
squirrelly; [embrace/bracelet].
|
Common: bar; or; or-bar; v-bar; pipe; vertical bar. Rare:
; gozinta; thru; pipesinta (last three from
UNIX); [spike].
~
Common: ; squiggle; twiddle; not. Rare: approx; wiggle; swung
dash; enyay; [sqiggle (sic)].
The pronunciation of # as `pound' is common in
the U.S. but a bad idea; Commonwealth Hackish has its
own, rather more apposite use of `pound sign' (confusingly, on
British keyboards the pound graphic happens to replace
#; thus Britishers sometimes call # on
a U.S.-ASCII keyboard `pound', compounding the American error).
The U.S. usage derives from an old-fashioned commercial practice
of using a # suffix to tag pound weights on bills of
lading. The character is usually pronounced `hash' outside the
U.S. There are more culture wars over the correct pronunciation
of this character than any other, which has led to the ha ha only serious
suggestion that it be pronounced `shibboleth' (see Judges 12:6 in
an Old Testament or Tanakh).
The `uparrow' name for circumflex and `leftarrow' name for
underline are historical relics from archaic ASCII (the 1963
version), which had these graphics in those character positions
rather than the modern punctuation characters.
The `swung dash' or `approximation' sign is not quite the same
as tilde in typeset material but the ASCII tilde serves for both
(compare angle
brackets).
Some other common usages cause odd overlaps. The
#, $, >, and
& characters, for example, are all pronounced
"hex" in different communities because various assemblers use
them as a prefix tag for hexadecimal constants (in particular,
# in many assembler-programming cultures,
$ in the 6502 world, > at Texas
Instruments, and & on the BBC Micro, Sinclair,
and some Z80 machines). See also splat.
The inability of ASCII text to correctly represent any of the
world's other major languages makes the designers' choice of 7
bits look more and more like a serious misfeature as the use of international
networks continues to increase (see software rot). Hardware and software
from the U.S. still tends to embody the assumption that ASCII is
the universal character set and that characters have 7 bits; this
is a major irritant to people who want to use a character set
suited to their own languages. Perversely, though, efforts to
solve this problem by proliferating `national' character sets
produce an evolutionary pressure to use a smaller subset
common to all those in use.
Node:ASCII art, Next:ASCIIbetical order, Previous:ASCII, Up:= A =
ASCII art n.
The fine art of drawing diagrams using the ASCII character set
(mainly |, -, /,
\, and +). Also known as `character
graphics' or `ASCII graphics'; see also boxology. Here is a serious example:
o----)||(--+--|<----+ +---------o + D O
L )||( | | | C U
A I )||( +-->|-+ | +-\/\/-+--o - T
C N )||( | | | | P
E )||( +-->|-+--)---+--|(--+-o U
)||( | | | GND T
o----)||(--+--|<----+----------+
A power supply consisting of a full wave rectifier circuit
feeding a capacitor input filter circuit
And here are some very silly examples:
|\/\/\/| ____/| ___ |\_/| ___
| | \ o.O| ACK! / \_ |` '| _/ \
| | =(_)= THPHTH! / \/ \/ \
| (o)(o) U / \
C _) (__) \/\/\/\ _____ /\/\/\/
| ,___| (oo) \/ \/
| / \/-------\ U (__)
/____\ || | \ /---V `v'- oo )
/ \ ||---W|| * * |--| || |`. |_/\
//-o-\\
____---=======---____
====___\ /.. ..\ /___==== Klingons rule OK!
// ---\__O__/--- \\
\_\ /_/
There is an important subgenre of ASCII art that puns on the
standard character names in the fashion of a rebus.
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
| ^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ |
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
| ^^^^^^^ B ^^^^^^^^^ |
| ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
" A Bee in the Carrot Patch "
Within humorous ASCII art, there is for some reason an entire
flourishing subgenre of pictures of silly cows. Four of these are
reproduced in the examples above, here are three more:
(__) (__) (__)
(\/) ($$) (**)
/-------\/ /-------\/ /-------\/
/ | 666 || / |=====|| / | ||
* ||----|| * ||----|| * ||----||
~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~
Satanic cow This cow is a Yuppie Cow in love
Finally, here's a magnificent example of ASCII art depicting
an Edwardian train station in Dunedin, New Zealand:
.-.
/___\
|___|
|]_[|
/ I \
JL/ | \JL
.-. i () | () i .-.
|_| .^. /_\ LJ=======LJ /_\ .^. |_|
._/___\._./___\_._._._._.L_J_/.-. .-.\_L_J._._._._._/___\._./___\._._._
., |-,-| ., L_J |_| [I] |_| L_J ., |-,-| ., .,
JL |-O-| JL L_J%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%L_J JL |-O-| JL JL
IIIIII_HH_'-'-'_HH_IIIIII|_|=======H=======|_|IIIIII_HH_'-'-'_HH_IIIIII_HH_
-------[]-------[]-------[_]----\.=I=./----[_]-------[]-------[]--------[]-
_/\_ ||\\_I_//|| _/\_ [_] []_/_L_J_\_[] [_] _/\_ ||\\_I_//|| _/\_ ||\
|__| ||=/_|_\=|| |__|_|_| _L_L_J_J_ |_|_|__| ||=/_|_\=|| |__| ||-
|__| |||__|__||| |__[___]__--__===__--__[___]__| |||__|__||| |__| |||
IIIIIII[_]IIIII[_]IIIIIL___J__II__|_|__II__L___JIIIII[_]IIIII[_]IIIIIIII[_]
\_I_/ [_]\_I_/[_] \_I_[_]\II/[]\_\I/_/[]\II/[_]\_I_/ [_]\_I_/[_] \_I_/ [_]
./ \.L_J/ \L_J./ L_JI I[]/ \[]I IL_J \.L_J/ \L_J./ \.L_J
| |L_J| |L_J| L_J| |[]| |[]| |L_J |L_J| |L_J| |L_J
|_____JL_JL___JL_JL____|-|| |[]| |[]| ||-|_____JL_JL___JL_JL_____JL_J
There is a newsgroup, _alt.ascii-art_, devoted to this
genre; however, see also warlording.
Node:ASCIIbetical order,
Next:astroturfing,
Previous:ASCII art,
Up:= A =
ASCIIbetical order /as'kee-be'-t*-kl or'dr/ adj.,n.
Used to indicate that data is sorted in ASCII collated order
rather than alphabetical order. This lexicon is sorted in
something close to ASCIIbetical order, but with case ignored and
entries beginning with non-alphabetic characters moved to the
end. "At my video store, they used their computer to sort the
videos into ASCIIbetical order, so I couldn't find `"Crocodile"
Dundee' until I thought to look before `2001' and `48 HRS.'!"
Node:astroturfing, Next:atomic, Previous:ASCIIbetical order, Up:= A =
astroturfing n.
The use of paid shills to create the impression of a popular
movement, through means like letters to newspapers from
soi-disant `concerned citizens', paid opinion pieces, and the
formation of grass-roots lobbying groups that are actually funded
by a PR group (astroturf is fake grass; hence the term). This
term became common among hackers after it came to light in early
1998 that Microsoft had attempted to use such tactics to
forestall the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust action
against the company.
This backfired horribly, angering a number of state
attorneys-general enough to induce them to go public with plans
to join the Federal suit. It also set anybody defending Microsoft
on the net for the accusation "You're just astroturfing!".
Node:atomic, Next:attoparsec, Previous:astroturfing, Up:= A =
atomic adj.
[from Gk. `atomos', indivisible] 1. Indivisible; cannot be
split up. For example, an instruction may be said to do several
things `atomically', i.e., all the things are done immediately,
and there is no chance of the instruction being half-completed or
of another being interspersed. Used esp. to convey that an
operation cannot be screwed up by interrupts. "This routine locks
the file and increments the file's semaphore atomically." 2.
[primarily techspeak] Guaranteed to complete successfully or not
at all, usu. refers to database transactions. If an error
prevents a partially-performed transaction from proceeding to
completion, it must be "backed out," as the database must not be
left in an inconsistent state.
Computer usage, in either of the above senses, has none of the
connotations that `atomic' has in mainstream English (i.e. of
particles of matter, nuclear explosions etc.).
Node:attoparsec, Next:AUP, Previous:atomic, Up:= A
=
attoparsec n.
About an inch. `atto-' is the standard SI prefix for
multiplication by 10^(-18). A parsec (parallax-second) is 3.26
light-years; an attoparsec is thus 3.26 * 10^(-18) light years,
or about 3.1 cm (thus, 1 attoparsec/microfortnight equals about 1
inch/sec). This unit is reported to be in use (though probably
not very seriously) among hackers in the U.K. See micro-.
Node:AUP, Next:autobogotiphobia, Previous:attoparsec, Up:= A =
AUP /A-U-P/
Abbreviation, "Acceptable Use Policy". The policy of a given
ISP which sets out what the ISP considers to be (un)acceptable
uses of its Internet resources.
Node:autobogotiphobia, Next:automagically, Previous:AUP, Up:= A =
autobogotiphobia /aw'toh-boh-got`*-foh'bee-*/
n. See bogotify.
Node:automagically, Next:avatar, Previous:autobogotiphobia, Up:= A =
automagically /aw-toh-maj'i-klee/ adv.
Automatically, but in a way that, for some reason (typically
because it is too complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too
trivial), the speaker doesn't feel like explaining to you. See
magic. "The C-INTERCAL compiler
generates C, then automagically invokes cc(1) to
produce an executable."
This term is quite old, going back at least to the mid-70s in
jargon and probably much earlier. The word `automagic' occurred
in advertising (for a shirt-ironing gadget) as far back as the
late 1940s.
Node:avatar, Next:awk, Previous:automagically, Up:= A =
avatar n. Syn.
[in Hindu mythology, the incarnation of a god] 1. Among people
working on virtual reality and cyberspace interfaces, an avatar
is an icon or representation of a user in a shared virtual
reality. The term is sometimes used on MUDs. 2. [CMU, Tektronix] root, superuser.
There are quite a few Unix machines on which the name of the
superuser account is `avatar' rather than `root'. This quirk was
originated by a CMU hacker who found the terms `root' and
`superuser' unimaginative, and thought `avatar' might better
impress people with the responsibility they were accepting.
Node:awk, Next:B5,
Previous:avatar, Up:= A =
awk /awk/
1. n. [Unix techspeak] An interpreted language for massaging
text data developed by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian
Kernighan (the name derives from their initials). It is
characterized by C-like syntax, a declaration-free approach to
variable typing and declarations, associative arrays, and
field-oriented text processing. See also Perl. 2. n. Editing term for an expression
awkward to manipulate through normal regexp facilities (for example, one containing
a newline). 3. vt. To process data
using awk(1).
Node:= B =, Next:= C =, Previous:= A =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= B =
B5:
back door:
backbone cabal:
backbone site:
backgammon:
background:
backreference:
backronym:
backspace and
overstrike:
backward
combatability:
BAD:
Bad and Wrong:
Bad Thing:
bag on the side:
bagbiter:
bagbiting:
baggy pantsing:
balloonian
variable:
bamf:
banana label:
banana problem:
banner ad:
banner site:
barn:
batbelt:
Befunge:
BI:
binary four:
bandwidth:
bang:
bang on:
bang path:
banner:
bar:
bare metal:
barf:
barfmail:
barfulation:
barfulous:
barney:
baroque:
BASIC:
batch:
bathtub curve:
baud:
baud barf:
baz:
bazaar:
bboard:
BBS:
BCPL:
beam:
beanie key:
beep:
beige toaster:
bells and
whistles:
bells whistles and
gongs:
benchmark:
Berkeley Quality
Software:
berklix:
Berzerkeley:
beta:
BFI:
bible:
BiCapitalization:
B1FF:
biff:
Big Gray Wall:
big iron:
Big Red Switch:
Big Room:
big win:
big-endian:
bignum:
bigot:
bit:
bit bang:
bit bashing:
bit bucket:
bit decay:
bit rot:
bit twiddling:
bit-paired
keyboard:
bitblt:
BITNET:
bits:
bitty box:
bixen:
bixie:
black art:
black hole:
black magic:
Black Screen of
Death:
Black Thursday:
blammo:
blargh:
blast:
blat:
bletch:
bletcherous:
blink:
blinkenlights:
blit:
blitter:
blivet:
bloatware:
BLOB:
block:
block transfer
computations:
Bloggs Family:
blow an EPROM:
blow away:
blow out:
blow past:
blow up:
BLT:
Blue Book:
blue box:
Blue Glue:
blue goo:
Blue Screen of
Death:
blue wire:
blurgle:
BNF:
boa:
board:
boat anchor:
bob:
bodysurf code:
BOF:
BOFH:
bogo-sort:
bogometer:
BogoMIPS:
bogon:
bogon filter:
bogon flux:
bogosity:
bogotify:
bogue out:
bogus:
Bohr bug:
boink:
bomb:
bondage-and-discipline
language:
bonk/oif:
book titles:
boot:
Borg:
borken:
bot:
bot spot:
bottom feeder:
bottom-up
implementation:
bounce:
bounce message:
boustrophedon:
box:
boxed comments:
boxen:
boxology:
bozotic:
BQS:
brain dump:
brain fart:
brain-damaged:
brain-dead:
braino:
branch to
Fishkill:
bread crumbs:
break:
break-even point:
breath-of-life
packet:
breedle:
Breidbart Index:
bring X to its
knees:
brittle:
broadcast storm:
brochureware:
broken:
broken arrow:
BrokenWindows:
broket:
Brooks's Law:
brown-paper-bag
bug:
browser:
BRS:
brute force:
brute force and
ignorance:
BSD:
BSOD:
BUAF:
BUAG:
bubble sort:
bucky bits:
buffer chuck:
buffer overflow:
bug:
bug-compatible:
bug-for-bug
compatible:
bug-of-the-month
club:
buglix:
bulletproof:
bullschildt:
bum:
bump:
burble:
buried treasure:
burn-in period:
burst page:
busy-wait:
buzz:
BWQ:
by hand:
byte:
byte sex:
bytesexual:
Bzzzt! Wrong.:
Node:B5, Next:back door, Previous:awk, Up:= B =
B5 //
[common] Abbreviation for "Babylon 5", a science-fiction TV
series as revered among hackers as was the original Star
Trek.
Node:back door, Next:backbone cabal, Previous:B5, Up:= B =
back door n.
[common] A hole in the security of a system deliberately left
in place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for such
holes is not always sinister; some operating systems, for
example, come out of the box with privileged accounts intended
for use by field service technicians or the vendor's maintenance
programmers. Syn. trap door;
may also be called a `wormhole'. See also iron box, cracker, worm,
logic bomb.
Historically, back doors have often lurked in systems longer
than anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely
known. Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM
admitted the existence of a back door in early Unix versions that
may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of
all time. In this scheme, the C compiler contained code that
would recognize when the `login' command was being recompiled and
insert some code recognizing a password chosen by Thompson,
giving him entry to the system whether or not an account had been
created for him.
Normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from
the source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler.
But to recompile the compiler, you have to use the
compiler -- so Thompson also arranged that the compiler would
recognize when it was compiling a version of itself, and
insert into the recompiled compiler the code to insert into the
recompiled `login' the code to allow Thompson entry -- and, of
course, the code to recognize itself and do the whole thing again
the next time around! And having done this once, he was then able
to recompile the compiler from the original sources; the hack
perpetuated itself invisibly, leaving the back door in place and
active but with no trace in the sources.
The talk that suggested this truly moby hack was published as
"Reflections on Trusting Trust", "Communications of the ACM 27",
8 (August 1984), pp. 761-763 (text available at http://www.acm.org/classics).
Ken Thompson has since confirmed that this hack was implemented
and that the Trojan Horse code did appear in the login binary of
a Unix Support group machine. Ken says the crocked compiler was
never distributed. Your editor has heard two separate reports
that suggest that the crocked login did make it out of Bell Labs,
notably to BBN, and that it enabled at least one late-night login
across the network by someone using the login name `kt'.
Node:backbone cabal, Next:backbone site, Previous:back door, Up:= B =
backbone cabal n.
A group of large-site administrators who pushed through the
Great Renaming and reined
in the chaos of Usenet during most
of the 1980s. During most of its lifetime, the Cabal (as it was
sometimes capitalized) steadfastly denied its own existence; it
was almost obligatory for anyone privy to their secrets to
respond "There is no Cabal" whenever the existence or activities
of the group were speculated on in public.
The result of this policy was an attractive aura of mystery.
Even a decade after the cabal mailing list disbanded in late 1988
following a bitter internal catfight, many people believed (or
claimed to believe) that it had not actually disbanded but only
gone deeper underground with its power intact.
This belief became a model for various paranoid theories about
various Cabals with dark nefarious objectives beginning with
taking over the Usenet or Internet. These paranoias were later
satirized in ways that took on a life of their own. See Eric Conspiracy for one
example.
See NANA for the subsequent history
of "the Cabal".
Node:backbone site, Next:backgammon, Previous:backbone cabal, Up:= B =
backbone site n.,obs.
Formerly, a key Usenet and email site, one that processes a
large amount of third-party traffic, especially if it is the home
site of any of the regional coordinators for the Usenet maps.
Notable backbone sites as of early 1993, when this sense of the
term was beginning to pass out of general use due to wide
availability of cheap Internet connections, included _uunet_
and the mail machines at Rutgers University, UC Berkeley, DEC's Western Research Laboratories, Ohio
State University, and the University of Texas. Compare rib site, leaf site.
[1996 update: This term is seldom heard any more. The UUCP
network world that gave it meaning has nearly disappeared;
everyone is on the Internet now and network traffic is
distributed in very different patterns. Today one might see
references to a `backbone router' instead --ESR]
Node:backgammon, Next:background, Previous:backbone site, Up:= B =
backgammon
See bignum (sense 3), moby (sense 4), and pseudoprime.
Node:background, Next:backreference, Previous:backgammon, Up:= B =
background n.,adj.,vt.
[common] To do a task `in background' is to do it whenever
foreground matters are not
claiming your undivided attention, and `to background' something
means to relegate it to a lower priority. "For now, we'll just
print a list of nodes and links; I'm working on the
graph-printing problem in background." Note that this implies
ongoing activity but at a reduced level or in spare time, in
contrast to mainstream `back burner' (which connotes benign
neglect until some future resumption of activity). Some people
prefer to use the term for processing that they have queued up
for their unconscious minds (a tack that one can often fruitfully
take upon encountering an obstacle in creative work). Compare
amp off, slopsucker.
Technically, a task running in background is detached from the
terminal where it was started (and often running at a lower
priority); oppose foreground.
Nowadays this term is primarily associated with Unix, but it appears to have been first used in
this sense on OS/360.
Node:backreference, Next:backronym, Previous:background, Up:= B =
backreference n.
1. In a regular expression or pattern match, the text which
was matched within grouping parentheses parentheses. 2. The part
of the pattern which refers back to the matched text. 3. By
extension, anything which refers back to something which has been
seen or discussed before. "When you said `she' just now, who were
you backreferencing?"
Node:backronym, Next:backspace and overstrike,
Previous:backreference, Up:= B =
backronym n.
[portmanteau of back + acronym] A word interpreted as an
acronym that was not originally so intended. This is a special
case of what linguists call `back formation'. Examples are given
under BASIC, recursive acronym (Cygnus), Acme, and mung.
Discovering backronyms is a common form of wordplay among
hackers. Compare retcon.
Node:backspace and
overstrike, Next:backward combatability,
Previous:backronym, Up:= B =
backspace and overstrike interj.
[rare] Whoa! Back up. Used to suggest that someone just said
or did something wrong. Once common among APL programmers; may
now be obsolete.
Node:backward
combatability, Next:BAD,
Previous:backspace and overstrike,
Up:= B =
backward combatability /bak'w*rd k*m-bat'*-bil'*-tee/
n.
[CMU, Tektronix: from `backward compatibility'] A property of
hardware or software revisions in which previous protocols,
formats, layouts, etc. are irrevocably discarded in favor of `new
and improved' protocols, formats, and layouts, leaving the
previous ones not merely deprecated but actively defeated. (Too
often, the old and new versions cannot definitively be
distinguished, such that lingering instances of the previous ones
yield crashes or other infelicitous effects, as opposed to a
simple "version mismatch" message.) A backwards compatible
change, on the other hand, allows old versions to coexist without
crashes or error messages, but too many major changes
incorporating elaborate backwards compatibility processing can
lead to extreme software
bloat. See also flag
day.
Node:BAD, Next:Bad and Wrong, Previous:backward
combatability, Up:= B =
BAD /B-A-D/ adj.
[IBM: acronym, `Broken As Designed'] Said of a program that is
bogus because of bad design and
misfeatures rather than because of bugginess. See working as designed.
Node:Bad and Wrong, Next:Bad Thing, Previous:BAD, Up:= B =
Bad and Wrong adj.
[Durham, UK] Said of something that is both badly designed and
wrongly executed. This common term is the prototype of, and is
used by contrast with, three less common terms - Bad and Right (a
kludge, something ugly but functional); Good and Wrong (an
overblown GUI or other attractive nuisance); and (rare praise)
Good and Right. These terms entered common use at Durham c.1994
and may have been imported from elsewhere; they are also in use
at Oxford, and the emphatic form "Evil, Bad and Wrong"
(abbreviated EBW) is reported fromm there. There are standard
abbreviations: they start with B&R, a typo for "Bad and
Wrong". Consequently, B&W is actually "Bad and Right",
G&R = "Good and Wrong", and G&W = "Good and Right".
Compare evil and rude,
Good Thing, Bad Thing.
Node:Bad Thing, Next:bag on the side, Previous:Bad and Wrong, Up:= B =
Bad Thing n.
[very common; from the 1930 Sellar & Yeatman parody "1066
And All That"] Something that can't possibly result in
improvement of the subject. This term is always capitalized, as
in "Replacing all of the 9600-baud modems with bicycle couriers
would be a Bad Thing". Oppose Good
Thing. British correspondents confirm that Bad Thing and Good Thing (and prob. therefore Right Thing and Wrong Thing) come from the book
referenced in the etymology, which discusses rulers who were Good
Kings but Bad Things. This has apparently created a mainstream
idiom on the British side of the pond. It is very common among
American hackers, but not in mainstream usage here. Compare Bad and Wrong.
Node:bag on the side, Next:bagbiter, Previous:Bad Thing, Up:= B =
bag on the side n.
[prob. originally related to a colostomy bag] An extension to
an established hack that is supposed to add some functionality to
the original. Usually derogatory, implying that the original was
being overextended and should have been thrown away, and the new
product is ugly, inelegant, or bloated. Also v. phrase, `to hang
a bag on the side [of]'. "C++? That's just a bag on the side of C
...." "They want me to hang a bag on the side of
the accounting system."
Node:bagbiter, Next:bagbiting, Previous:bag on the side, Up:= B =
bagbiter /bag'bi:t-*r/ n.
1. Something, such as a program or a computer, that fails to
work, or works in a remarkably clumsy manner. "This text editor
won't let me make a file with a line longer than 80 characters!
What a bagbiter!" 2. A person who has caused you some trouble,
inadvertently or otherwise, typically by failing to program the
computer properly. Synonyms: loser,
cretin, chomper. 3. `bite the bag' vi. To fail in some
manner. "The computer keeps crashing every five minutes." "Yes,
the disk controller is really biting the bag."
The original loading of these terms was almost undoubtedly
obscene, possibly referring to a douche bag or the scrotum (we
have reports of "Bite the douche bag!" being used as a taunt at
MIT 1970-1976, and we have another report that "Bite the bag!"
was in common use at least as early as 1965), but in their
current usage they have become almost completely sanitized.
ITS's lexiphage program was
the first and to date only known example of a program
intended to be a bagbiter.
Node:bagbiting, Next:baggy pantsing, Previous:bagbiter, Up:= B =
bagbiting adj.
Having the quality of a bagbiter. "This bagbiting system won't let me
compute the factorial of a negative number." Compare losing, cretinous, bletcherous, `barfucious' (under barfulous) and `chomping' (under chomp).
Node:baggy pantsing, Next:balloonian variable,
Previous:bagbiting, Up:= B =
baggy pantsing v.
[Georgia Tech] A "baggy pantsing" is used to reprimand hackers
who incautiously leave their terminals unlocked. The affected
user will come back to find a post from them on internal
newsgroups discussing exactly how baggy their pants are, an
accepted stand-in for "unattentive user who left their work
unprotected in the clusters". A properly-done baggy pantsing is
highly mocking and humorous (see examples below). It is
considered bad form to post a baggy pantsing to off-campus
newsgroups or the more technical, serious groups. A particularly
nice baggy pantsing may be "claimed" by immediately quoting the
message in full, followed by your sig; this has the added benefit
of keeping the embarassed victim from being able to delete the
post. Interesting baggy-pantsings have been done involving adding
commands to login scripts to repost the message every time the
unlucky user logs in; Unix boxes on the residential network, when
cracked, oftentimes have their homepages replaced (after being
politely backedup to another file) with a baggy-pants message;
.plan files are also occasionally targeted. Usage: "Prof.
Greenlee fell asleep in the Solaris cluster again; we
baggy-pantsed him to git.cc.class.2430.flame."
Node:balloonian variable,
Next:bamf, Previous:baggy pantsing, Up:= B =
balloonian variable n.
[Commodore users; perh. a deliberate phonetic mangling of
`boolean variable'?] Any variable that doesn't actually hold or
control state, but must nevertheless be declared, checked, or
set. A typical balloonian variable started out as a flag attached
to some environment feature that either became obsolete or was
planned but never implemented. Compatibility concerns (or
politics attached to same) may require that such a flag be
treated as though it were live.
Node:bamf, Next:banana label, Previous:balloonian variable, Up:= B =
bamf /bamf/
1. [from X-Men comics; originally "bampf"] interj. Notional
sound made by a person or object teleporting in or out of the
hearer's vicinity. Often used in virtual reality (esp. MUD) electronic fora
when a character wishes to make a dramatic entrance or exit. 2.
The sound of magical transformation, used in virtual reality
fora like MUDs. 3. In MUD circles,
"bamf" is also used to refer to the act by which a MUD server
sends a special notification to the MUD client to switch its
connection to another server ("I'll set up the old site to just
bamf people over to our new location."). 4. Used by MUDders on
occasion in a more general sense related to sense 3, to refer to
directing someone to another location or resource ("A user was
asking about some technobabble so I bamfed them to http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon/".)
Node:banana label, Next:banana problem, Previous:bamf, Up:= B =
banana label n.
The labels often used on the sides of macrotape reels, so called because they are
shaped roughly like blunt-ended bananas. This term, like
macrotapes themselves, is still current but visibly headed for
obsolescence.
Node:banana problem, Next:binary four, Previous:banana label, Up:= B =
banana problem n.
[from the story of the little girl who said "I know how to
spell `banana', but I don't know when to stop"]. Not knowing
where or when to bring a production to a close (compare fencepost error). One may say
`there is a banana problem' of an algorithm with poorly defined
or incorrect termination conditions, or in discussing the
evolution of a design that may be succumbing to featuritis (see
also creeping elegance,
creeping featuritis).
See item 176 under HAKMEM, which
describes a banana problem in a Dissociated Press implementation.
Also, see one-banana
problem for a superficially similar but unrelated
usage.
Node:binary four, Next:bandwidth, Previous:banana problem, Up:= B =
binary four n.
[Usenet] The finger, in the sense of `digitus impudicus'. This
comes from an analogy between binary and the hand, i.e.
1=00001=thumb, 2=00010=index finger, 3=00011=index and thumb,
4=00100. Considered silly. Prob. from humorous derivative of
finger, sense 4.
Node:bandwidth, Next:bang, Previous:binary four, Up:= B =
bandwidth n.
1. [common] Used by hackers (in a generalization of its
technical meaning) as the volume of information per unit time
that a computer, person, or transmission medium can handle.
"Those are amazing graphics, but I missed some of the detail --
not enough bandwidth, I guess." Compare low-bandwidth. This generalized usage
began to go mainstream after the Internet population explosion of
1993-1994. 2. Attention span. 3. On Usenet, a measure of network capacity that is
often wasted by people complaining about how items posted by
others are a waste of bandwidth.
Node:bang, Next:bang on, Previous:bandwidth, Up:= B =
bang
1. n. Common spoken name for ! (ASCII 0100001),
especially when used in pronouncing a bang path in spoken hackish. In elder days this was considered a
CMUish usage, with MIT and Stanford hackers preferring excl or shriek;
but the spread of Unix has carried `bang' with it (esp. via the
term bang path) and it is now
certainly the most common spoken name for !. Note
that it is used exclusively for non-emphatic written
!; one would not say "Congratulations bang" (except
possibly for humorous purposes), but if one wanted to specify the
exact characters `foo!' one would speak "Eff oh oh bang". See
shriek, ASCII. 2. interj. An exclamation signifying
roughly "I have achieved enlightenment!", or "The dynamite has
cleared out my brain!" Often used to acknowledge that one has
perpetrated a thinko immediately
after one has been called on it.
Node:bang on, Next:bang path, Previous:bang, Up:= B =
bang on vt.
To stress-test a piece of hardware or software: "I banged on
the new version of the simulator all day yesterday and it didn't
crash once. I guess it is ready for release." The term pound on is synonymous.
Node:bang path, Next:banner, Previous:bang on, Up:=
B =
bang path n.
[now historical] An old-style UUCP electronic-mail address
specifying hops to get from some assumed-reachable location to
the addressee, so called because each hop is signified by a bang sign. Thus, for example, the path
_...!bigsite!foovax!barbox!me_ directs people to route their
mail to machine _bigsite_ (presumably a well-known location
accessible to everybody) and from there through the machine
_foovax_ to the account of user _me_ on
_barbox_.
In the bad old days of not so long ago, before autorouting
mailers became commonplace, people often published compound bang
addresses using the { } convention (see glob) to give paths from several big
machines, in the hopes that one's correspondent might be able to
get mail to one of them reliably (example: _...!{seismo,
ut-sally, ihnp4}!rice!beta!gamma!me_). Bang paths of 8 to 10
hops were not uncommon in 1981. Late-night dial-up UUCP links
would cause week-long transmission times. Bang paths were often
selected by both transmission time and reliability, as messages
would often get lost. See Internet address, the network, and sitename.
Node:banner, Next:banner ad, Previous:bang path, Up:= B =
banner n.
1. The title page added to printouts by most print spoolers
(see spool). Typically includes user
or account ID information in very large character-graphics
capitals. Also called a `burst page', because it indicates where
to burst (tear apart) fanfold paper to separate one user's
printout from the next. 2. A similar printout generated
(typically on multiple pages of fan-fold paper) from
user-specified text, e.g., by a program such as Unix's
banner({1,6}). 3. On interactive software, a first
screen containing a logo and/or author credits and/or a copyright
notice. This is probably now the commonest sense.
Node:banner ad, Next:banner site, Previous:banner, Up:=
B =
banner ad n.
Any of the annoying graphical advertisements that span the
tops of way too many Web pages.
Node:banner site, Next:bar, Previous:banner ad, Up:= B =
banner site n.
[warez d00dz] A FTP site storing pirated files where one must
first click on several banners and/or subscribe to various `free'
services, usually generating some form of revenues for the site
owner, to be able to access the site. More often than not, the
username/password painfully obtained by clicking on banners and
subscribing to bogus services or mailing lists turns out to be
non-working or gives access to a site that always responds busy.
See ratio site, leech mode.
Node:bar, Next:bare metal, Previous:banner site, Up:= B =
bar /bar/ n.
1. [very common] The second metasyntactic variable, after
foo and before baz. "Suppose we have two functions: FOO and BAR.
FOO calls BAR...." 2. Often appended to foo to produce foobar.
Node:bare metal, Next:barf, Previous:bar, Up:= B =
bare metal n.
1. [common] New computer hardware, unadorned with such snares
and delusions as an operating
system, an HLL, or even
assembler. Commonly used in the phrase `programming on the bare
metal', which refers to the arduous work of bit bashing needed to create these basic
tools for a new machine. Real bare-metal programming involves
things like building boot proms and BIOS chips, implementing
basic monitors used to test device drivers, and writing the
assemblers that will be used to write the compiler back ends that
will give the new machine a real development environment. 2.
`Programming on the bare metal' is also used to describe a style
of hand-hacking that relies on
bit-level peculiarities of a particular hardware design, esp.
tricks for speed and space optimization that rely on crocks such
as overlapping instructions (or, as in the famous case described
in The Story of Mel
(in Appendix A), interleaving of opcodes on a magnetic drum to
minimize fetch delays due to the device's rotational latency).
This sort of thing has become less common as the relative costs
of programming time and machine resources have changed, but is
still found in heavily constrained environments such as
industrial embedded systems, and in the code of hackers who just
can't let go of that low-level control. See Real Programmer.
In the world of personal computing, bare metal programming
(especially in sense 1 but sometimes also in sense 2) is often
considered a Good Thing, or at
least a necessary evil (because these machines have often been
sufficiently slow and poorly designed to make it necessary; see
ill-behaved). There, the term
usually refers to bypassing the BIOS or OS interface and writing
the application to directly access device registers and machine
addresses. "To get 19.2 kilobaud on the serial port, you need to
get down to the bare metal." People who can do this sort of thing
well are held in high regard.
Node:barf, Next:barfmail, Previous:bare metal, Up:= B =
barf /barf/ n.,v.
[common; from mainstream slang meaning `vomit'] 1. interj.
Term of disgust. This is the closest hackish equivalent of the
Valspeak "gag me with a spoon". (Like, euwww!) See bletch. 2. vi. To say "Barf!" or emit some
similar expression of disgust. "I showed him my latest hack and
he barfed" means only that he complained about it, not that he
literally vomited. 3. vi. To fail to work because of unacceptable
input, perhaps with a suitable error message, perhaps not.
Examples: "The division operation barfs if you try to divide by
0." (That is, the division operation checks for an attempt to
divide by zero, and if one is encountered it causes the operation
to fail in some unspecified, but generally obvious, manner.) "The
text editor barfs if you try to read in a new file before writing
out the old one." See choke, gag. In Commonwealth Hackish, `barf' is
generally replaced by `puke' or `vom'. barf is sometimes also used as a metasyntactic variable, like
foo or bar.
Node:barfmail, Next:barfulation, Previous:barf, Up:= B =
barfmail n.
Multiple bounce
messages accumulating to the level of serious annoyance,
or worse. The sort of thing that happens when an inter-network
mail gateway goes down or wonky.
Node:barfulation, Next:barfulous, Previous:barfmail, Up:=
B =
barfulation /bar`fyoo-lay'sh*n/ interj.
Variation of barf used around the
Stanford area. An exclamation, expressing disgust. On seeing some
particularly bad code one might exclaim, "Barfulation! Who wrote
this, Quux?"
Node:barfulous, Next:barn, Previous:barfulation, Up:= B =
barfulous /bar'fyoo-l*s/ adj.
(alt. `barfucious', /bar-fyoo-sh*s/) Said of something that
would make anyone barf, if only for esthetic reasons.
Node:barn, Next:barney, Previous:barfulous, Up:= B =
barn n.
[uncommon; prob. from the nuclear military] An unexpectedly
large quantity of something: a unit of measurement. "Why is
/var/adm taking up so much space?" "The logs have grown to
several barns." The source of this is clear: when physicists were
first studying nuclear interactions, the probability was thought
to be proportional to the cross-sectional area of the nucleus
(this probability is still called the cross-section). Upon
experimenting, they discovered the interactions were far more
probable than expected; the nuclei were `as big as a barn'. The
units for cross-sections were christened Barns, (10^-24 cm^2) and
the book containing cross-sections has a picture of a barn on the
cover.
Node:barney, Next:baroque, Previous:barn, Up:= B =
barney n.
In Commonwealth hackish, `barney' is to fred (sense #1) as bar
is to foo. That is, people who commonly
use `fred' as their first metasyntactic variable will often use
`barney' second. The reference is, of course, to Fred Flintstone
and Barney Rubble in the Flintstones cartoons.
Node:baroque, Next:BASIC, Previous:barney, Up:= B
=
baroque adj.
[common] Feature-encrusted; complex; gaudy; verging on
excessive. Said of hardware or (esp.) software designs, this has
many of the connotations of elephantine or monstrosity but is less extreme and not
pejorative in itself. "Metafont even has features to introduce
random variations to its letterform output. Now that is
baroque!" See also rococo.
Node:BASIC, Next:batbelt, Previous:baroque, Up:= B
=
BASIC /bay'-sic/ n.
A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's
experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which for
many years was the leading cause of brain damage in
proto-hackers. Edsger W. Dijkstra observed in "Selected Writings
on Computing: A Personal Perspective" that "It is practically
impossible to teach good programming style to students that have
had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are
mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." This is another
case (like Pascal) of the cascading
lossage that happens when a
language deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken
too seriously. A novice can write short BASIC programs (on the
order of 10-20 lines) very easily; writing anything longer (a) is
very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits that will make it
harder to use more powerful languages well. This wouldn't be so
bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on
low-end micros in the 1980s. As it is, it probably ruined tens of
thousands of potential wizards.
[1995: Some languages called `BASIC' aren't quite this nasty
any more, having acquired Pascal- and C-like procedures and
control structures and shed their line numbers. --ESR]
Note: the name is commonly parsed as Beginner's All-purpose
Symbolic Instruction Code, but this is a backronym. BASIC was originally named Basic,
simply because it was a simple and basic programming language.
Because most programming language names were in fact acronyms,
BASIC was often capitalized just out of habit or to be silly. No
acronym for BASIC originally existed or was intended (as one can
verify by reading texts through the early 1970s). Later, around
the mid-1970s, people began to make up backronyms for BASIC
because they weren't sure. Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic
Instruction Code is the one that caught on.
Node:batbelt, Next:batch, Previous:BASIC, Up:= B
=
batbelt n.
Many hackers routinely hang numerous devices such as pagers,
cell-phones, personal organizers, leatherman multitools, pocket
knives, flashlights, walkie-talkies, even miniature computers
from their belts. When many of these devices are worn at once,
the hacker's belt somewhat resembles Batman's utility belt; hence
it is referred to as a batbelt.
Node:batch, Next:bathtub curve, Previous:batbelt, Up:= B =
batch adj.
1. Non-interactive. Hackers use this somewhat more loosely
than the traditional technical definitions justify; in
particular, switches on a normally interactive program that
prepare it to receive non-interactive command input are often
referred to as `batch mode' switches. A `batch file' is a series
of instructions written to be handed to an interactive program
running in batch mode. 2. Performance of dreary tasks all at one
sitting. "I finally sat down in batch mode and wrote out checks
for all those bills; I guess they'll turn the electricity back on
next week..." 3. `batching up': Accumulation of a
number of small tasks that can be lumped together for greater
efficiency. "I'm batching up those letters to send sometime" "I'm
batching up bottles to take to the recycling center."
Node:bathtub curve, Next:baud, Previous:batch, Up:= B
=
bathtub curve n.
Common term for the curve (resembling an end-to-end section of
one of those claw-footed antique bathtubs) that describes the
expected failure rate of electronics with time: initially high,
dropping to near 0 for most of the system's lifetime, then rising
again as it `tires out'. See also burn-in period, infant mortality.
Node:baud, Next:baud barf, Previous:bathtub curve, Up:= B =
baud /bawd/ n.
[simplified from its technical meaning] n. Bits per second.
Hence kilobaud or Kbaud, thousands of bits per second. The
technical meaning is `level transitions per second'; this
coincides with bps only for two-level modulation with no framing
or stop bits. Most hackers are aware of these nuances but
blithely ignore them.
Historical note: `baud' was originally a unit of telegraph
signalling speed, set at one pulse per second. It was proposed at
the November, 1926 conference of the Comité Consultatif
International Des Communications Télégraphiques as
an improvement on the then standard practice of referring to line
speeds in terms of words per minute, and named for Jean Maurice
Emile Baudot (1845-1903), a French engineer who did a lot of
pioneering work in early teleprinters.
Node:baud barf, Next:baz, Previous:baud, Up:= B =
baud barf /bawd barf/ n.
The garbage one gets a terminal (or terminal emulator) when
using a modem connection with some protocol setting (esp. line
speed) incorrect, or when someone picks up a voice extension on
the same line, or when really bad line noise disrupts the
connection. Baud barf is not completely random, by the way; hackers with a lot of
serial-line experience can usually tell whether the device at the
other end is expecting a higher or lower speed than the terminal
is set to. Really experienced ones can identify
particular speeds.
Node:baz, Next:bazaar, Previous:baud barf, Up:= B =
baz /baz/ n.
1. [common] The third metasyntactic variable
"Suppose we have three functions: FOO, BAR, and BAZ. FOO calls
BAR, which calls BAZ...." (See also fum) 2. interj. A term of mild annoyance. In this
usage the term is often drawn out for 2 or 3 seconds, producing
an effect not unlike the bleating of a sheep; /baaaaaaz/. 3.
Occasionally appended to foo to produce
`foobaz'.
Earlier versions of this lexicon derived `baz' as a Stanford
corruption of bar. However, Pete Samson
(compiler of the TMRC lexicon) reports
it was already current when he joined TMRC in 1958. He says "It
came from "Pogo". Albert the Alligator, when vexed or outraged,
would shout `Bazz Fazz!' or `Rowrbazzle!' The club layout was
said to model the (mythical) New England counties of Rowrfolk and
Bassex (Rowrbazzle mingled with
(Norfolk/Suffolk/Middlesex/Essex)."
Node:bazaar, Next:bboard, Previous:baz, Up:= B =
bazaar n.,adj.
In 1997, after meditatating on the success of Linux for three years, the Jargon File's own
editor ESR wrote an analytical paper on hacker culture and
development models titled The
Cathedral and the Bazaar. The main argument of the paper was
that Brooks's Law is not the
whole story; given the right social machinery, debugging can be
efficiently parallelized across large numbers of programmers. The
title metaphor caught on (see also cathedral), and the style of development
typical in the Linux community is now often referred to as the
bazaar mode. Its characteristics include releasing code early and
often, and actively seeking the largest possible pool of peer
reviewers.
Node:bboard, Next:BBS, Previous:bazaar, Up:= B
=
bboard /bee'bord/ n.
[contraction of `bulletin board'] 1. Any electronic bulletin
board; esp. used of BBS systems running
on personal micros, less frequently of a Usenet newsgroup (in fact, use of this term for a
newsgroup generally marks one either as a newbie fresh in from the BBS world or as a real
old-timer predating Usenet). 2. At CMU and other colleges with
similar facilities, refers to campus-wide electronic bulletin
boards. 3. The term `physical bboard' is sometimes used to refer
to an old-fashioned, non-electronic cork-and-thumbtack memo
board. At CMU, it refers to a particular one outside the CS
Lounge.
In either of senses 1 or 2, the term is usually prefixed by
the name of the intended board (`the Moonlight Casino bboard' or
`market bboard'); however, if the context is clear, the
better-read bboards may be referred to by name alone, as in (at
CMU) "Don't post for-sale ads on general".
Node:BBS, Next:BCPL, Previous:bboard, Up:= B
=
BBS /B-B-S/ n.
[common; abbreviation, `Bulletin Board System'] An electronic
bulletin board system; that is, a message database where people
can log in and leave broadcast messages for others grouped
(typically) into topic
groups. The term was especially applied to the thousands
of local BBS systems that operated during the pre-Internet
microcomputer era of roughly 1980 to 1995, typically run by
amateurs for fun out of their homes on MS-DOS boxes with a single
modem line each. Fans of Usenet and Internet or the big
commercial timesharing bboards such as CompuServe and GEnie
tended to consider local BBSes the low-rent district of the
hacker culture, but they served a valuable function by knitting
together lots of hackers and users in the personal-micro world
who would otherwise have been unable to exchange code at all.
Post-Internet, BBSs are likely to be local newsgroups on an ISP;
efficiency has increased but a certain flavor has been lost. See
also bboard.
Node:BCPL, Next:beam, Previous:BBS,
Up:= B =
BCPL // n.
[abbreviation, `Basic Combined Programming Language') A
programming language developed by Martin Richards in Cambridge in
1967. It is remarkable for its rich syntax, small size of
compiler (it can be run in 16k) and extreme portability. It
reached break-even point at a very early stage, and was the
language in which the original hello
world program was written. It has been ported to so many
different systems that its creator confesses to having lost
count. It has only one data type (a machine word) which can be
used as an integer, a character, a floating point number, a
pointer, or almost anything else, depending on context. BCPL was
a precursor of C, which inherited some of its features.
Node:beam, Next:beanie key, Previous:BCPL, Up:= B =
beam vt.
[from Star Trek Classic's "Beam me up, Scotty!"] 1. To
transfer softcopy of a file
electronically; most often in combining forms such as `beam me a
copy' or `beam that over to his site'. 2. Palm Pilot users very
commonly use this term for the act of exchanging bits via the
infrared links on their machines (this term seems to have
originated with the ill-fated Newton Message Pad). Compare blast, snarf,
BLT.
Node:beanie key, Next:beep, Previous:beam, Up:= B =
beanie key n.
[Mac users] See command
key.
Node:beep, Next:Befunge, Previous:beanie key, Up:= B =
beep n.,v.
Syn. feep. This term is techspeak
under MS-DOS and OS/2, and seems to be generally preferred among
micro hobbyists.
Node:Befunge, Next:beige toaster, Previous:beep, Up:= B
=
Befunge n.
A worthy companion to INTERCAL;
a computer language family which escapes the quotidian limitation
of linear control flow and embraces program counters flying
through multiple dimensions with exotic topologies. Sadly, the
Befunge home page has vanished, but a Befunge version of the
hello world program is at http://www.catseye.mb.ca/esoteric/befunge.html.
Node:beige toaster, Next:bells and whistles,
Previous:Befunge, Up:= B =
beige toaster n.
A Macintosh. See toaster;
compare Macintrash, maggotbox.
Node:bells and whistles,
Next:bells
whistles and gongs, Previous:beige toaster, Up:= B =
bells and whistles n.
[common] Features added to a program or system to make it more
flavorful from a hacker's point
of view, without necessarily adding to its utility for its
primary function. Distinguished from chrome, which is intended to attract users.
"Now that we've got the basic program working, let's go back and
add some bells and whistles." No one seems to know what
distinguishes a bell from a whistle. The recognized emphatic form
is "bells, whistles, and gongs".
It used to be thought that this term derived from the toyboxes
on theater organs. However, the "and gongs" strongly suggests a
different origin, at sea. Before powered horns, ships routinely
used bells, whistles, and gongs to signal each other over longer
distances than voice can carry.
Node:bells whistles and
gongs, Next:benchmark,
Previous:bells
and whistles, Up:= B =
bells whistles and gongs n.
A standard elaborated form of bells and whistles; typically
said with a pronounced and ironic accent on the `gongs'.
Node:benchmark, Next:Berkeley Quality Software,
Previous:bells whistles and gongs,
Up:= B =
benchmark n.
[techspeak] An inaccurate measure of computer performance. "In
the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn
lies, and benchmarks." Well-known ones include Whetstone,
Dhrystone, Rhealstone (see h), the
Gabriel LISP benchmarks (see gabriel), the SPECmark suite, and LINPACK. See
also machoflops, MIPS, smoke
and mirrors.
Node:Berkeley Quality
Software, Next:berklix,
Previous:benchmark, Up:= B =
Berkeley Quality Software adj.
(often abbreviated `BQS') Term used in a pejorative sense to
refer to software that was apparently created by rather
spaced-out hackers late at night to solve some unique problem. It
usually has nonexistent, incomplete, or incorrect documentation,
has been tested on at least two examples, and core dumps when
anyone else attempts to use it. This term was frequently applied
to early versions of the dbx(1) debugger. See also
Berzerkeley.
Note to British and Commonwealth readers: that's /berk'lee/,
not /bark'lee/ as in British Received Pronunciation.
Node:berklix, Next:Berzerkeley, Previous:Berkeley Quality Software,
Up:= B =
berklix /berk'liks/ n.,adj.
[contraction of `Berkeley Unix'] See BSD. Not used at Berkeley itself. May be more
common among suits attempting to sound
like cognoscenti than among hackers, who usually just say
`BSD'.
Node:Berzerkeley, Next:beta, Previous:berklix, Up:= B
=
Berzerkeley /b*r-zer'klee/ n.
[from `berserk', via the name of a now-deceased record label;
poss. originated by famed columnist Herb Caen] Humorous
distortion of `Berkeley' used esp. to refer to the practices or
products of the BSD Unix hackers. See
software bloat, Missed'em-five, Berkeley Quality
Software.
Mainstream use of this term in reference to the cultural and
political peculiarities of UC Berkeley as a whole has been
reported from as far back as the 1960s.
Node:beta, Next:BFI, Previous:Berzerkeley, Up:= B =
beta /bay't*/, /be't*/ or (Commonwealth) /bee't*/
n.
1. Mostly working, but still under test; usu. used with `in':
`in beta'. In the Real World,
systems (hardware or software) software often go through two
stages of release testing: Alpha (in-house) and Beta
(out-house?). Beta releases are generally made to a group of
lucky (or unlucky) trusted customers. 2. Anything that is new and
experimental. "His girlfriend is in beta" means that he is still
testing for compatibility and reserving judgment. 3. Flaky;
dubious; suspect (since beta software is notoriously buggy).
Historical note: More formally, to beta-test is to test a
pre-release (potentially unreliable) version of a piece of
software by making it available to selected (or self-selected)
customers and users. This term derives from early 1960s
terminology for product cycle checkpoints, first used at IBM but
later standard throughout the industry. `Alpha Test' was the
unit, module, or component test phase; `Beta Test' was initial
system test. These themselves came from earlier A- and B-tests
for hardware. The A-test was a feasibility and manufacturability
evaluation done before any commitment to design and development.
The B-test was a demonstration that the engineering model
functioned as specified. The C-test (corresponding to today's
beta) was the B-test performed on early samples of the production
design, and the D test was the C test repeated after the model
had been in production a while.
Node:BFI, Next:bible, Previous:beta, Up:= B =
BFI /B-F-I/ n.
See brute force
and ignorance. Also encountered in the variants `BFMI',
`brute force and massive ignorance' and `BFBI' `brute
force and bloody ignorance'. In dome parts of the U.S. this
abbreviation was probably reinforced by a company called
Browning-Ferris Industries who used to be in the waste-management
business; a large BFI logo in white-on-blue could be seen on the
sides of garbage trucks.
Node:bible, Next:BiCapitalization, Previous:BFI, Up:= B =
bible n.
1. One of a small number of fundamental source books such as
Knuth, K&R, or the Camel Book. 2. The most detailed and
authoritative reference for a particular language, operating
system, or other complex software system.
Node:BiCapitalization, Next:B1FF, Previous:bible, Up:= B
=
BiCapitalization n.
The act said to have been performed on trademarks (such as
PostScript, NeXT, NeWS, VisiCalc, FrameMaker, TK!solver,
EasyWriter) that have been raised above the ruck of common
coinage by nonstandard capitalization. Too many marketroid types think this sort of thing
is really cute, even the 2,317th time they do it. Compare studlycaps.
Node:B1FF, Next:BI, Previous:BiCapitalization, Up:= B =
B1FF /bif/ [Usenet] (alt. `BIFF') n.
The most famous pseudo, and the
prototypical newbie. Articles from
B1FF feature all uppercase letters sprinkled liberally with
bangs, typos, `cute' misspellings (EVRY BUDY LUVS GOOD OLD BIFF
CUZ HE"S A K00L DOOD AN HE RITES REEL AWESUM THINGZ IN CAPITULL
LETTRS LIKE THIS!!!), use (and often misuse) of fragments of
talk mode abbreviations, a long
sig block (sometimes even a
doubled sig), and unbounded
naivete. B1FF posts articles using his elder brother's VIC-20.
B1FF's location is a mystery, as his articles appear to come from
a variety of sites. However, BITNET
seems to be the most frequent origin. The theory that B1FF is a
denizen of BITNET is supported by B1FF's (unfortunately invalid)
electronic mail address: B1FF@BIT.NET.
[1993: Now It Can Be Told! My spies inform me that B1FF was
originally created by Joe Talmadge , also
the author of the infamous and much-plagiarized "Flamer's Bible".
The BIFF filter he wrote was later passed to Richard Sexton, who
posted BIFFisms much more widely. Versions have since been posted
for the amusement of the net at large. See also Jeff K. --ESR]
Node:BI, Next:biff, Previous:B1FF, Up:= B =
BI //
Common written abbreviation for Breidbart Index.
Node:biff, Next:Big Gray Wall, Previous:BI, Up:= B =
biff /bif/ vt.
To notify someone of incoming mail. From the BSD utility
biff(1), which was in turn named after a friendly
dog who used to chase frisbees in the halls at UCB while 4.2BSD
was in development. There was a legend that it had a habit of
barking whenever the mailman came, but the author of
biff says this is not true. No relation to B1FF.
Node:Big Gray Wall, Next:big iron, Previous:biff, Up:= B =
Big Gray Wall n.
What faces a VMS user searching for
documentation. A full VMS kit comes on a pallet, the
documentation taking up around 15 feet of shelf space before the
addition of layered products such as compilers, databases,
multivendor networking, and programming tools. Recent (since VMS
version 5) documentation comes with gray binders; under VMS
version 4 the binders were orange (`big orange wall'), and under
version 3 they were blue. See VMS.
Often contracted to `Gray Wall'.
Node:big iron, Next:Big Red Switch, Previous:Big Gray Wall, Up:= B =
big iron n.
[common] Large, expensive, ultra-fast computers. Used
generally of number-crunching supercomputers such
as Crays, but can include more conventional big commercial IBMish
mainframes. Term of approval; compare heavy metal, oppose dinosaur.
Node:Big Red Switch, Next:Big Room, Previous:big iron, Up:= B =
Big Red Switch n.
[IBM] The power switch on a computer, esp. the `Emergency
Pull' switch on an IBM mainframe
or the power switch on an IBM PC where it really is large and
red. "This !@%$% bitty box is
hung again; time to hit the Big Red Switch." Sources at IBM
report that, in tune with the company's passion for TLAs, this is often abbreviated as `BRS' (this has
also become established on FidoNet and in the PC clone world). It is alleged that the emergency
pull switch on an IBM 360/91 actually fired a non-conducting bolt
into the main power feed; the BRSes on more recent mainframes
physically drop a block into place so that they can't be pushed
back in. People get fired for pulling them, especially
inappropriately (see also molly-guard). Compare power cycle, three-finger salute, 120 reset; see also scram switch.
Node:Big Room, Next:big win, Previous:Big Red Switch, Up:= B =
Big Room n.
(Also `Big Blue Room') The extremely large room with the blue
ceiling and intensely bright light (during the day) or black
ceiling with lots of tiny night-lights (during the night) found
outside all computer installations. "He can't come to the phone
right now, he's somewhere out in the Big Room."
Node:big win, Next:big-endian, Previous:Big Room, Up:= B =
big win n.
1. [common] Major success. 2. [MIT] Serendipity. "Yes, those
two physicists discovered high-temperature superconductivity in a
batch of ceramic that had been prepared incorrectly according to
their experimental schedule. Small mistake; big win!" See win big.
Node:big-endian, Next:bignum, Previous:big win, Up:=
B =
big-endian adj.
[common; From Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" via the famous
paper "On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace" by Danny Cohen, USC/ISI
IEN 137, dated April 1, 1980] 1. Describes a computer
architecture in which, within a given multi-byte numeric
representation, the most significant byte has the lowest address
(the word is stored `big-end-first'). Most processors, including
the IBM 370 family, the PDP-10, the
Motorola microprocessor families, and most of the various RISC
designs are big-endian. Big-endian byte order is also sometimes
called `network order'. See little-endian, middle-endian, NUXI problem, swab. 2. An Internet address the wrong way
round. Most of the world follows the Internet standard and writes
email addresses starting with the name of the computer and ending
up with the name of the country. In the U.K. the Joint Networking
Team had decided to do it the other way round before the Internet
domain standard was established. Most gateway sites have ad-hockery in their mailers to handle
this, but can still be confused. In particular, the address
_me@uk.ac.bris.pys.as_ could be interpreted in JANET's
big-endian way as one in the U.K. (domain _uk_) or in the
standard little-endian way as one in the domain _as_
(American Samoa) on the opposite side of the world.
Node:bignum, Next:bigot, Previous:big-endian, Up:= B =
bignum /big'nuhm/ n.
[common; orig. from MIT MacLISP] 1. [techspeak] A
multiple-precision computer representation for very large
integers. 2. More generally, any very large number. "Have you
ever looked at the United States Budget? There's bignums for
you!" 3. [Stanford] In backgammon, large numbers on the dice
especially a roll of double fives or double sixes (compare moby, sense 4). See also El Camino Bignum.
Sense 1 may require some explanation. Most computer languages
provide a kind of data called `integer', but such computer
integers are usually very limited in size; usually they must be
smaller than 2^(31) (2,147,483,648) or (on a bitty box) 2^(15) (32,768). If you want to
work with numbers larger than that, you have to use
floating-point numbers, which are usually accurate to only six or
seven decimal places. Computer languages that provide bignums can
perform exact calculations on very large numbers, such as 1000!
(the factorial of 1000, which is 1000 times 999 times 998 times
... times 2 times 1). For example, this value for
1000! was computed by the MacLISP system using bignums:
40238726007709377354370243392300398571937486421071
46325437999104299385123986290205920442084869694048
00479988610197196058631666872994808558901323829669
94459099742450408707375991882362772718873251977950
59509952761208749754624970436014182780946464962910
56393887437886487337119181045825783647849977012476
63288983595573543251318532395846307555740911426241
74743493475534286465766116677973966688202912073791
43853719588249808126867838374559731746136085379534
52422158659320192809087829730843139284440328123155
86110369768013573042161687476096758713483120254785
89320767169132448426236131412508780208000261683151
02734182797770478463586817016436502415369139828126
48102130927612448963599287051149649754199093422215
66832572080821333186116811553615836546984046708975
60290095053761647584772842188967964624494516076535
34081989013854424879849599533191017233555566021394
50399736280750137837615307127761926849034352625200
01588853514733161170210396817592151090778801939317
81141945452572238655414610628921879602238389714760
88506276862967146674697562911234082439208160153780
88989396451826324367161676217916890977991190375403
12746222899880051954444142820121873617459926429565
81746628302955570299024324153181617210465832036786
90611726015878352075151628422554026517048330422614
39742869330616908979684825901254583271682264580665
26769958652682272807075781391858178889652208164348
34482599326604336766017699961283186078838615027946
59551311565520360939881806121385586003014356945272
24206344631797460594682573103790084024432438465657
24501440282188525247093519062092902313649327349756
55139587205596542287497740114133469627154228458623
77387538230483865688976461927383814900140767310446
64025989949022222176590433990188601856652648506179
97023561938970178600408118897299183110211712298459
01641921068884387121855646124960798722908519296819
37238864261483965738229112312502418664935314397013
74285319266498753372189406942814341185201580141233
44828015051399694290153483077644569099073152433278
28826986460278986432113908350621709500259738986355
42771967428222487575867657523442202075736305694988
25087968928162753848863396909959826280956121450994
87170124451646126037902930912088908694202851064018
21543994571568059418727489980942547421735824010636
77404595741785160829230135358081840096996372524230
56085590370062427124341690900415369010593398383577
79394109700277534720000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000.
Node:bigot, Next:bit, Previous:bignum, Up:= B
=
bigot n.
[common] A person who is religiously attached to a particular
computer, language, operating system, editor, or other tool (see
religious issues).
Usually found with a specifier; thus, `cray bigot', `ITS bigot',
`APL bigot', `VMS bigot', `Berkeley bigot'. Real bigots can be
distinguished from mere partisans or zealots by the fact that
they refuse to learn alternatives even when the march of time
and/or technology is threatening to obsolete the favored tool. It
is truly said "You can tell a bigot, but you can't tell him
much." Compare weenie, Amiga Persecution
Complex.
Node:bit, Next:bit bang, Previous:bigot, Up:= B
=
bit n.
[from the mainstream meaning and `Binary digIT'] 1.
[techspeak] The unit of information; the amount of information
obtained by asking a yes-or-no question for which the two
outcomes are equally probable. 2. [techspeak] A computational
quantity that can take on one of two values, such as true and
false or 0 and 1. 3. A mental flag: a reminder that something
should be done eventually. "I have a bit set for you." (I haven't
seen you for a while, and I'm supposed to tell or ask you
something.) 4. More generally, a (possibly incorrect) mental
state of belief. "I have a bit set that says that you were the
last guy to hack on EMACS." (Meaning "I think you were the last
guy to hack on EMACS, and what I am about to say is predicated on
this, so please stop me if this isn't true.")
"I just need one bit from you" is a polite way of indicating
that you intend only a short interruption for a question that can
presumably be answered yes or no.
A bit is said to be `set' if its value is true or 1, and
`reset' or `clear' if its value is false or 0. One speaks of
setting and clearing bits. To toggle
or `invert' a bit is to change it, either from 0 to 1 or from 1
to 0. See also flag, trit, mode
bit.
The term `bit' first appeared in print in the computer-science
sense in a 1948 paper by information theorist Claude Shannon, and
was there credited to the early computer scientist John Tukey
(who also seems to have coined the term `software'). Tukey
records that `bit' evolved over a lunch table as a handier
alternative to `bigit' or `binit', at a conference in the winter
of 1943-44.
Node:bit bang, Next:bit bashing, Previous:bit, Up:= B
=
bit bang n.
Transmission of data on a serial line, when accomplished by
rapidly tweaking a single output bit, in software, at the
appropriate times. The technique is a simple loop with eight OUT
and SHIFT instruction pairs for each byte. Input is more
interesting. And full duplex (doing input and output at the same
time) is one way to separate the real hackers from the wannabees.
Bit bang was used on certain early models of Prime computers,
presumably when UARTs were too expensive, and on archaic Z80
micros with a Zilog PIO but no SIO. In an interesting instance of
the cycle of
reincarnation, this technique returned to use in the
early 1990s on some RISC architectures because it consumes such
an infinitesimal part of the processor that it actually makes
sense not to have a UART. Compare cycle of reincarnation.
Node:bit bashing, Next:bit bucket, Previous:bit bang, Up:= B =
bit bashing n.
(alt. `bit diddling' or bit
twiddling) Term used to describe any of several kinds of
low-level programming characterized by manipulation of bit, flag, nybble, and other
smaller-than-character-sized pieces of data; these include
low-level device control, encryption algorithms, checksum and
error-correcting codes, hash functions, some flavors of graphics
programming (see bitblt), and
assembler/compiler code generation. May connote either tedium or
a real technical challenge (more usually the former). "The
command decoding for the new tape driver looks pretty solid but
the bit-bashing for the control registers still has bugs." See
also bit bang, mode bit.
Node:bit bucket, Next:bit decay, Previous:bit bashing, Up:= B =
bit bucket n.
[very common] 1. The universal data sink (originally, the
mythical receptacle used to catch bits when they fall off the end
of a register during a shift instruction). Discarded, lost, or
destroyed data is said to have `gone to the bit bucket'. On Unix, often used for /dev/null. Sometimes amplified as `the
Great Bit Bucket in the Sky'. 2. The place where all lost mail
and news messages eventually go. The selection is performed
according to Finagle's Law;
important mail is much more likely to end up in the bit bucket
than junk mail, which has an almost 100% probability of getting
delivered. Routing to the bit bucket is automatically performed
by mail-transfer agents, news systems, and the lower layers of
the network. 3. The ideal location for all unwanted mail
responses: "Flames about this article to the bit bucket." Such a
request is guaranteed to overflow one's mailbox with flames. 4.
Excuse for all mail that has not been sent. "I mailed you those
figures last week; they must have landed in the bit bucket."
Compare black hole.
This term is used purely in jest. It is based on the fanciful
notion that bits are objects that are not destroyed but only
misplaced. This appears to have been a mutation of an earlier
term `bit box', about which the same legend was current; old-time
hackers also report that trainees used to be told that when the
CPU stored bits into memory it was actually pulling them `out of
the bit box'. See also chad
box.
Another variant of this legend has it that, as a consequence
of the `parity preservation law', the number of 1 bits that go to
the bit bucket must equal the number of 0 bits. Any imbalance
results in bits filling up the bit bucket. A qualified computer
technician can empty a full bit bucket as part of scheduled
maintenance.
Node:bit decay, Next:bit rot, Previous:bit bucket, Up:= B =
bit decay n.
See bit rot. People with a
physics background tend to prefer this variant for the analogy
with particle decay. See also computron, quantum bogodynamics.
Node:bit rot, Next:bit twiddling, Previous:bit decay, Up:= B =
bit rot n.
[common] Also bit decay.
Hypothetical disease the existence of which has been deduced from
the observation that unused programs or features will often stop
working after sufficient time has passed, even if `nothing has
changed'. The theory explains that bits decay as if they were
radioactive. As time passes, the contents of a file or the code
in a program will become increasingly garbled.
There actually are physical processes that produce such
effects (alpha particles generated by trace radionuclides in
ceramic chip packages, for example, can change the contents of a
computer memory unpredictably, and various kinds of subtle media
failures can corrupt files in mass storage), but they are quite
rare (and computers are built with error-detecting circuitry to
compensate for them). The notion long favored among hackers that
cosmic rays are among the causes of such events turns out to be a
myth; see the cosmic rays
entry for details.
The term software rot is
almost synonymous. Software rot is the effect, bit rot the
notional cause.
Node:bit twiddling, Next:bit-paired keyboard,
Previous:bit rot, Up:= B =
bit twiddling n.
[very common] 1. (pejorative) An exercise in tuning (see tune) in which incredible amounts of time
and effort go to produce little noticeable improvement, often
with the result that the code becomes incomprehensible. 2.
Aimless small modification to a program, esp. for some pointless
goal. 3. Approx. syn. for bit
bashing; esp. used for the act of frobbing the device
control register of a peripheral in an attempt to get it back to
a known state.
Node:bit-paired keyboard,
Next:bitblt, Previous:bit twiddling, Up:= B =
bit-paired keyboard n.,obs.
(alt. `bit-shift keyboard') A non-standard keyboard layout
that seems to have originated with the Teletype ASR-33 and
remained common for several years on early computer equipment.
The ASR-33 was a mechanical device (see EOU), so the only way to generate the character
codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage. The design of
the ASR-33 assigned each character key a basic pattern that could
be modified by flipping bits if the SHIFT or the CTRL key was
pressed. In order to avoid making the thing even more of a kluge
than it already was, the design had to group characters that
shared the same basic bit pattern on one key.
Looking at the ASCII chart, we find:
high low bits
bits 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001
010 ! " # $ % & ' ( )
011 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
This is why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do
on a Teletype (thankfully, they didn't use shift-0 for space).
The Teletype Model 33 was actually designed before ASCII existed,
and was originally intended to use a code that contained these
two rows:
low bits
high 0000 0010 0100 0110 1000 1010 1100 1110
bits 0001 0011 0101 0111 1001 1011 1101 1111
10 ) ! bel # $ % wru & * ( " : ? _ , .
11 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ' ; / - esc del
The result would have been something closer to a normal
keyboard. But as it happened, Teletype had to use a lot of
persuasion just to keep ASCII, and the Model 33 keyboard, from
looking like this instead:
! " ? $ ' & - ( ) ; : * / , .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 + ~ < > × |
Teletype's was not the weirdest variant of the QWERTY layout widely seen, by the way;
that prize should probably go to one of several (differing)
arrangements on IBM's even clunkier 026 and 029 card punches.
When electronic terminals became popular, in the early 1970s,
there was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards
should be laid out. Some vendors opted to emulate the Teletype
keyboard, while others used the flexibility of electronic
circuitry to make their product look like an office typewriter.
Either choice was supported by the ANSI computer keyboard
standard, X4.14-1971, which referred to the alternatives as
`logical bit pairing' and `typewriter pairing'. These
alternatives became known as `bit-paired' and `typewriter-paired'
keyboards. To a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more
logical -- and because most hackers in those days had never
learned to touch-type, there was little pressure from the
pioneering users to adapt keyboards to the typewriter
standard.
The doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale
introduction of the computer terminal into the normal office
environment, where out-and-out technophobes were expected to use
the equipment. The `typewriter-paired' standard became universal,
X4.14 was superseded by X4.23-1982, `bit-paired' hardware was
quickly junked or relegated to dusty corners, and both terms
passed into disuse.
However, in countries without a long history of touch typing,
the argument against the bit-paired keyboard layout was weak or
nonexistent. As a result, the standard Japanese keyboard, used on
PCs, Unix boxen etc. still has all of the !"#$%&'()
characters above the numbers in the ASR-33 layout.
Node:bitblt, Next:BITNET, Previous:bit-paired keyboard, Up:= B =
bitblt /bit'blit/ n.
[from BLT, q.v.] 1. [common] Any of
a family of closely related algorithms for moving and copying
rectangles of bits between main and display memory on a
bit-mapped device, or between two areas of either main or display
memory (the requirement to do the Right Thing in the case of overlapping
source and destination rectangles is what makes BitBlt tricky).
2. Synonym for blit or BLT. Both uses are borderline techspeak.
Node:BITNET, Next:bits, Previous:bitblt, Up:= B
=
BITNET /bit'net/ n., obs.
[acronym: Because It's Time NETwork] Everybody's least
favorite piece of the network (see the network) - until AOL happened. The
BITNET hosts were a collection of IBM dinosaurs and VAXen (the
latter with lobotomized comm hardware) that communicate using
80-character EBCDIC card images (see
eighty-column mind);
thus, they tend to mangle the headers and text of third-party
traffic from the rest of the ASCII/RFC-822 world with annoying regularity. BITNET was
also notorious as the apparent home of B1FF. By 1995 it had, much to everyone's relief,
been obsolesced and absorbed into the Internet. Unfortunately,
around this time we also got AOL.
Node:bits, Next:bitty box, Previous:BITNET, Up:= B
=
bits pl.n.
1. Information. Examples: "I need some bits about file
formats." ("I need to know about file formats.") Compare core dump, sense 4. 2.
Machine-readable representation of a document, specifically as
contrasted with paper: "I have only a photocopy of the Jargon
File; does anyone know where I can get the bits?". See softcopy, source of all good
bits See also bit.
Node:bitty box, Next:bixen, Previous:bits, Up:= B =
bitty box /bit'ee boks/ n.
1. A computer sufficiently small, primitive, or incapable as
to cause a hacker acute claustrophobia at the thought of
developing software on or for it. Especially used of small,
obsolescent, single-tasking-only personal machines such as the
Atari 800, Osborne, Sinclair, VIC-20, TRS-80, or IBM PC. 2.
[Pejorative] More generally, the opposite of `real computer' (see
Get a real
computer!). See also mess-dos, toaster, and toy.
Node:bixen, Next:bixie, Previous:bitty box, Up:= B =
bixen pl.n.
Users of BIX (the BIX Information eXchange, formerly the Byte
Information eXchange). Parallels other plurals like boxen, VAXen, oxen.
Node:bixie, Next:black art, Previous:bixen, Up:= B
=
bixie /bik'see/ n.
Variant emoticons used on BIX
(the BIX Information eXchange). The most common (smiley) bixie is <@_@>, representing two
cartoon eyes and a mouth. These were originally invented in an SF
fanzine called APA-L and imported to BIX by one of the earliest
users.
Node:black art, Next:black hole, Previous:bixie, Up:= B
=
black art n.
[common] A collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by
implication) mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular
application or systems area (compare black magic). VLSI design and compiler
code optimization were (in their beginnings) considered classic
examples of black art; as theory developed they became deep magic, and once standard
textbooks had been written, became merely heavy wizardry. The huge
proliferation of formal and informal channels for spreading
around new computer-related technologies during the last twenty
years has made both the term `black art' and what it describes
less common than formerly. See also voodoo programming.
Node:black hole, Next:black magic, Previous:black art, Up:= B =
black hole n.,vt.
[common] What data (a piece of email or netnews, or a stream
of TCP/IP packets) has fallen into if it disappears mysteriously
between its origin and destination sites (that is, without
returning a bounce
message). "I think there's a black hole at
_foovax_!" conveys suspicion that site _foovax_ has
been dropping a lot of stuff on the floor lately (see drop on the floor). The
implied metaphor of email as interstellar travel is interesting
in itself. Readily verbed as `blackhole': "That router is
blackholing IDP packets." Compare bit
bucket and see RBL.
Node:black magic, Next:Black Screen of Death,
Previous:black hole,
Up:= B =
black magic n.
[common] A technique that works, though nobody really
understands why. More obscure than voodoo programming, which may be
done by cookbook. Compare also black
art, deep magic, and
magic number (sense 2).
Node:Black Screen of
Death, Next:Black
Thursday, Previous:black magic, Up:= B =
Black Screen of Death n.
[prob. related to the Floating Head of Death in a famous "Far
Side" cartoon.] A failure mode of Microsloth Windows. On an attempt
to launch a DOS box, a networked Windows system not uncommonly
blanks the screen and locks up the PC so hard that it requires a
cold boot to recover. This unhappy
phenomenon is known as The Black Screen of Death. See also Blue Screen of Death,
which has become rather more common.
Node:Black Thursday, Next:blammo, Previous:Black Screen of Death,
Up:= B =
Black Thursday n.
February 8th, 1996 - the day of the signing into law of the
CDA, so called by analogy with the
catastrophic "Black Friday" in 1929 that began the Great
Depression.
Node:blammo, Next:blargh, Previous:Black Thursday, Up:= B =
blammo v.
[Oxford Brookes University and alumni, UK] To forcibly remove
someone from any interactive system, especially talker systems.
The operators, who may remain hidden, may `blammo' a user who is
misbehaving. Very similar to MIT gun;
in fact, the `blammo-gun' is a notional device used to `blammo'
someone. While in actual fact the only incarnation of the
blammo-gun is the command used to forcibly eject a user,
operators speak of different levels of blammo-gun fire; e.g., a
blammo-gun to `stun' will temporarily remove someone, but a
blammo-gun set to `maim' will stop someone coming back on for a
while.
Node:blargh, Next:blast, Previous:blammo, Up:= B
=
blargh /blarg/ n.
[MIT; now common] The opposite of ping, sense 5; an exclamation indicating that one
has absorbed or is emitting a quantum of unhappiness. Less common
than ping.
Node:blast, Next:blat, Previous:blargh, Up:= B
=
blast 1. v.,n.
Synonym for BLT, used esp. for large
data sends over a network or comm line. Opposite of snarf. Usage: uncommon. The variant `blat' has
been reported. 2. vt. [HP/Apollo] Synonymous with nuke (sense 3). Sometimes the message
Unable to kill all processes. Blast them (y/n)?
would appear in the command window upon logout.
Node:blat, Next:bletch, Previous:blast, Up:= B
=
blat n.
1. Syn. blast, sense 1. 2. See
thud.
Node:bletch, Next:bletcherous, Previous:blat, Up:= B =
bletch /blech/ interj.
[very common; from Yiddish/German `brechen', to vomit, poss.
via comic-strip exclamation `blech'] Term of disgust. Often used
in "Ugh, bletch". Compare barf.
Node:bletcherous, Next:blink, Previous:bletch, Up:= B
=
bletcherous /blech'*-r*s/ adj.
Disgusting in design or function; esthetically unappealing.
This word is seldom used of people. "This keyboard is
bletcherous!" (Perhaps the keys don't work very well, or are
misplaced.) See losing, cretinous, bagbiting, bogus, and random.
The term bletcherous applies to
the esthetics of the thing so described; similarly for cretinous. By contrast, something that
is `losing' or `bagbiting' may be failing to meet objective
criteria. See also bogus and random, which have richer and wider shades
of meaning than any of the above.
Node:blink, Next:blinkenlights, Previous:bletcherous, Up:= B =
blink vi.,n.
To use a navigator or off-line message reader to minimize time
spent on-line to a commercial network service (a necessity in
many places outside the U.S. where the telecoms monopolies charge
per-minute for local calls). This term attained wide use in the
UK, but is rare or unknown in the US.
Node:blinkenlights, Next:blit, Previous:blink, Up:= B
=
blinkenlights /blink'*n-li:tz/ n.
[common] Front-panel diagnostic lights on a computer, esp. a
dinosaur. Now that dinosaurs are
rare, this term usually refers to status lights on a modem,
network hub, or the like.
This term derives from the last word of the famous
blackletter-Gothic sign in mangled pseudo-German that once graced
about half the computer rooms in the English-speaking world. One
version ran in its entirety as follows:
ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!
Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und
mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen
und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei
das dumpkopfen. Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das
cotten-pickenen hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das
blinkenlichten.
This silliness dates back at least as far as 1959 at Stanford
University and had already gone international by the early 1960s,
when it was reported at London University's ATLAS computing site.
There are several variants of it in circulation, some of which
actually do end with the word `blinkenlights'.
In an amusing example of turnabout-is-fair-play, German
hackers have developed their own versions of the blinkenlights
poster in fractured English, one of which is reproduced here:
ATTENTION
This room is fullfilled mit special electronische
equippment. Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the
computers is allowed for die experts only! So all the
"lefthanders" stay away and do not disturben the brainstorming
von here working intelligencies. Otherwise you will be out thrown
and kicked anderswhere! Also: please keep still and only watchen
astaunished the blinkenlights.
See also geef.
Old-time hackers sometimes get nostalgic for blinkenlights
because they were so much more fun to look at than a blank panel.
Sadly, very few computers still have them (the three LEDs on a PC
keyboard certainly don't count). The obvious reasons (cost of
wiring, cost of front-panel cutouts, almost nobody needs or wants
to interpret machine-register states on the fly anymore) are only
part of the story. Another part of it is that radio-frequency
leakage from the lamp wiring was beginning to be a problem as far
back as transistor machines. But the most fundamental fact is
that there are very few signals slow enough to blink an LED these
days! With slow CPUs, you could watch the bus register or
instruction counter tick, but at 33/66/150MHz it's all a
blur.
Finally, a version updated for the Internet has been seen on
_news.admin.net-abuse.email_:
ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!
Das Internet is nicht fuer gefingerclicken und
giffengrabben. Ist easy droppenpacket der routers und overloaden
der backbone mit der spammen und der me-tooen. Ist nicht fuer
gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das mausklicken sichtseeren keepen
das bandwit-spewin hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen
das cursorblinken.
This newest version partly reflects reports that the word
`blinkenlights' is (in 1999) undergoing something of a revival in
usage, but applied to networking equipment. The transmit and
receive lights on routers, activity lights on switches and hubs,
and other network equipment often blink in visually pleasing and
seemingly coordinated ways. Although this is different in some
ways from register readings, a tall stack of Cisco equipment or a
19-inch rack of ISDN terminals can provoke a similar feeling of
hypnotic awe, especially in a darkened network operations center
or server room.
Node:blit, Next:blitter, Previous:blinkenlights, Up:= B =
blit /blit/ vt.
1. [common] To copy a large array of bits from one part of a
computer's memory to another part, particularly when the memory
is being used to determine what is shown on a display screen.
"The storage allocator picks through the table and copies the
good parts up into high memory, and then blits it all back down
again." See bitblt, BLT, dd, cat, blast, snarf. More generally, to perform some
operation (such as toggling) on a large array of bits while
moving them. 2. [historical, rare] Sometimes all-capitalized as
`BLIT': an early experimental bit-mapped terminal designed by Rob
Pike at Bell Labs, later commercialized as the AT&T 5620.
(The folk etymology from `Bell Labs Intelligent Terminal' is
incorrect. Its creators liked to claim that "Blit" stood for the
Bacon, Lettuce, and Interactive Tomato.)
Node:blitter, Next:blivet, Previous:blit, Up:= B =
blitter /blit'r/ n.
[common] A special-purpose chip or hardware system built to
perform blit operations, esp. used for
fast implementation of bit-mapped graphics. The Commodore Amiga
and a few other micros have these, but since 1990 the trend has
been away from them (however, see cycle of reincarnation).
Syn. raster blaster.
Node:blivet, Next:bloatware, Previous:blitter, Up:= B
=
blivet /bliv'*t/ n.
[allegedly from a World War II military term meaning "ten
pounds of manure in a five-pound bag"] 1. An intractable problem.
2. A crucial piece of hardware that can't be fixed or replaced if
it breaks. 3. A tool that has been hacked over by so many
incompetent programmers that it has become an unmaintainable
tissue of hacks. 4. An out-of-control but unkillable development
effort. 5. An embarrassing bug that pops up during a customer
demo. 6. In the subjargon of computer security specialists, a
denial-of-service attack performed by hogging limited resources
that have no access controls (for example, shared spool space on
a multi-user system).
This term has other meanings in other technical cultures;
among experimental physicists and hardware engineers of various
kinds it seems to mean any random object of unknown purpose
(similar to hackish use of frob). It
has also been used to describe an amusing trick-the-eye drawing
resembling a three-pronged fork that appears to depict a
three-dimensional object until one realizes that the parts fit
together in an impossible way.
Node:bloatware, Next:BLOB, Previous:blivet, Up:= B
=
bloatware n.
[common] Software that provides minimal functionality while
requiring a disproportionate amount of diskspace and memory.
Especially used for application and OS upgrades. This term is
very common in the Windows/NT world. So is its cause.
Node:BLOB, Next:block, Previous:bloatware, Up:= B =
BLOB
1. n. [acronym: Binary Large OBject] Used by database people
to refer to any random large block of bits that needs to be
stored in a database, such as a picture or sound file. The
essential point about a BLOB is that it's an object that cannot
be interpreted within the database itself. 2. v. To mailbomb someone by sending a BLOB to
him/her; esp. used as a mild threat. "If that program crashes
again, I'm going to BLOB the core dump to you."
Node:block, Next:block transfer
computations, Previous:BLOB, Up:= B =
block v.
[common; from process scheduling terminology in OS theory] 1.
vi. To delay or sit idle while waiting for something. "We're
blocking until everyone gets here." Compare busy-wait. 2. `block on' vt. To block,
waiting for (something). "Lunch is blocked on Phil's
arrival."
Node:block transfer
computations, Next:Bloggs Family, Previous:block, Up:= B
=
block transfer computations n.
[from the television series "Dr. Who"] Computations so
fiendishly subtle and complex that they could not be performed by
machines. Used to refer to any task that should be expressible as
an algorithm in theory, but isn't. (The Z80's LDIR instruction,
"Computed Block Transfer with increment", may also be
relevant.)
Node:Bloggs Family, Next:blow an EPROM, Previous:block
transfer computations, Up:=
B =
Bloggs Family n.
An imaginary family consisting of Fred and Mary Bloggs and
their children. Used as a standard example in knowledge
representation to show the difference between extensional and
intensional objects. For example, every occurrence of "Fred
Bloggs" is the same unique person, whereas occurrences of
"person" may refer to different people. Members of the Bloggs
family have been known to pop up in bizarre places such as the
old DEC Telephone Directory. Compare
Dr. Fred Mbogo; J. Random Hacker; Fred Foobar.
Node:blow an EPROM, Next:blow away, Previous:Bloggs Family, Up:= B =
blow an EPROM /bloh *n ee'prom/ v.
(alt. `blast an EPROM', `burn an EPROM') To program a
read-only memory, e.g. for use with an embedded system. This term
arose because the programming process for the Programmable
Read-Only Memories (PROMs) that preceded present-day Erasable
Programmable Read-Only Memories (EPROMs) involved intentionally
blowing tiny electrical fuses on the chip. The usage lives on
(it's too vivid and expressive to discard) even though the write
process on EPROMs is nondestructive.
Node:blow away, Next:blow out, Previous:blow an EPROM, Up:= B =
blow away vt.
To remove (files and directories) from permanent storage,
generally by accident. "He reformatted the wrong partition and
blew away last night's netnews." Oppose nuke.
Node:blow out, Next:blow past, Previous:blow away, Up:= B =
blow out vi.
[prob. from mining and tunneling jargon] Of software, to fail
spectacularly; almost as serious as crash and burn. See blow past, blow
up, die
horribly.
Node:blow past, Next:blow up, Previous:blow out, Up:= B =
blow past vt.
To blow out despite a
safeguard. "The server blew past the 5K reserve buffer."
Node:blow up, Next:BLT, Previous:blow past, Up:= B =
blow up vi.
1. [scientific computation] To become unstable. Suggests that
the computation is diverging so rapidly that it will soon
overflow or at least go nonlinear. 2. Syn. blow out.
Node:BLT, Next:Blue Book, Previous:blow up, Up:=
B =
BLT /B-L-T/, /bl*t/ or (rarely) /belt/ n.,vt.
Synonym for blit. This is the
original form of blit and the ancestor
of bitblt. It referred to any large
bit-field copy or move operation (one resource-intensive
memory-shuffling operation done on pre-paged versions of ITS,
WAITS, and TOPS-10 was sardonically referred to as `The Big
BLT'). The jargon usage has outlasted the PDP-10 BLock Transfer instruction from which
BLT derives; nowadays, the assembler
mnemonic BLT almost always means
`Branch if Less Than zero'.
Node:Blue Book, Next:blue box, Previous:BLT, Up:= B =
Blue Book n.
1. Informal name for one of the four standard references on
the page-layout and graphics-control language PostScript ("PostScript Language Tutorial
and Cookbook", Adobe Systems, Addison-Wesley 1985,
QA76.73.P67P68, ISBN 0-201-10179-3); the other three official
guides are known as the Green
Book, the Red Book, and
the White Book (sense 2). 2.
Informal name for one of the three standard references on
Smalltalk: "Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation",
David Robson, Addison-Wesley 1983, QA76.8.S635G64, ISBN
0-201-11371-63 (this book also has green and red siblings). 3.
Any of the 1988 standards issued by the CCITT's ninth plenary
assembly. These include, among other things, the X.400 email spec
and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also book titles.
Node:blue box, Next:Blue Glue, Previous:Blue Book, Up:= B =
blue box
n. 1. obs. Once upon a time, before all-digital switches made
it possible for the phone companies to move them out of band, one
could actually hear the switching tones used to route
long-distance calls. Early phreakers built devices called `blue boxes'
that could reproduce these tones, which could be used to
commandeer portions of the phone network. (This was not as hard
as it may sound; one early phreak acquired the sobriquet `Captain
Crunch' after he proved that he could generate switching tones
with a plastic whistle pulled out of a box of Captain Crunch
cereal!) There were other colors of box with more specialized
phreaking uses; red boxes, black boxes, silver boxes, etc. 2. n.
An IBM machine, especially a large
(non-PC) one.
Node:Blue Glue, Next:blue goo, Previous:blue box, Up:= B =
Blue Glue n.
[IBM] IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture), an incredibly
losing and bletcherous communications protocol widely
favored at commercial shops that don't know any better. The
official IBM definition is "that which binds blue boxes
together." See fear and
loathing. It may not be irrelevant that Blue Glue is the
trade name of a 3M product that is commonly used to hold down the
carpet squares to the removable panel floors common in dinosaur pens. A correspondent at
U. Minn. reports that the CS department there has about 80
bottles of the stuff hanging about, so they often refer to any
messy work to be done as `using the blue glue'.
Node:blue goo, Next:Blue Screen of Death,
Previous:Blue Glue,
Up:= B =
blue goo n.
Term for `police' nanobots
intended to prevent gray goo,
denature hazardous waste, destroy pollution, put ozone back into
the stratosphere, prevent halitosis, and promote truth, justice,
and the American way, etc. The term `Blue Goo' can be found in
Dr. Seuss's "Fox In Socks" to refer to a substance much like
bubblegum. `Would you like to chew blue goo, sir?'. See nanotechnology.
Node:Blue Screen of
Death, Next:blue wire,
Previous:blue goo, Up:= B =
Blue Screen of Death n.
[common] This term is closely related to the older Black Screen of Death but
much more common (many non-hackers have picked it up). Due to the
extreme fragility and bugginess of Microsoft Windows misbehaving
applications can readily crash the OS (and the OS sometimes
crashes itself spontaneously). The Blue Screen of Death,
sometimes decorated with hex error codes, is what you get when
this happens. (Commonly abbreviated BSOD.)
The following entry from the Salon
Haiku Contest, seems to have predated popular use of the
term:
Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death
No one hears your screams.
Node:blue wire, Next:blurgle, Previous:Blue Screen of Death, Up:= B =
blue wire n.
[IBM] Patch wires (esp. 30 AWG gauge) added to circuit boards
at the factory to correct design or fabrication problems. Blue
wire is not necessarily blue, the term describes function rather
than color. These may be necessary if there hasn't been time to
design and qualify another board version. In Great Britain this
can be `bodge wire', after mainstreanm slang `bodge' for a clumsy
improvisation or sloppy job of work. Compare purple wire, red wire, yellow wire, pink wire.
Node:blurgle, Next:BNF, Previous:blue wire, Up:= B =
blurgle /bler'gl/ n.
[UK] Spoken metasyntactic variable, to
indicate some text that is obvious from context, or which is
already known. If several words are to be replaced, blurgle may
well be doubled or tripled. "To look for something in several
files use `grep string blurgle blurgle'." In each case, "blurgle
blurgle" would be understood to be replaced by the file you
wished to search. Compare mumble,
sense 7.
Node:BNF, Next:boa, Previous:blurgle, Up:= B
=
BNF /B-N-F/ n.
1. [techspeak] Acronym for `Backus Normal Form' (later
retronymed to `Backus-Naur Form' because BNF was not in fact a
normal form), a metasyntactic notation used to specify the syntax
of programming languages, command sets, and the like. Widely used
for language descriptions but seldom documented anywhere, so that
it must usually be learned by osmosis from other hackers.
Consider this BNF for a U.S. postal address:
::=
::= | "."
::= []
|
::= []
::= ","
This translates into English as: "A postal-address consists of
a name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a
zip-code part. A personal-part consists of either a first name or
an initial followed by a dot. A name-part consists of either: a
personal-part followed by a last name followed by an optional
`jr-part' (Jr., Sr., or dynastic number) and end-of-line, or a
personal part followed by a name part (this rule illustrates the
use of recursion in BNFs, covering the case of people who use
multiple first and middle names and/or initials). A street
address consists of an optional apartment specifier, followed by
a street number, followed by a street name. A zip-part consists
of a town-name, followed by a comma, followed by a state code,
followed by a ZIP-code followed by an end-of-line." Note that
many things (such as the format of a personal-part, apartment
specifier, or ZIP-code) are left unspecified. These are presumed
to be obvious from context or detailed somewhere nearby. See also
parse. 2. Any of a number of variants
and extensions of BNF proper, possibly containing some or all of
the regexp wildcards such as
* or +. In fact the example above isn't
the pure form invented for the Algol-60 report; it uses
[], which was introduced a few years later in IBM's
PL/I definition but is now universally recognized. 3. In science-fiction fandom,
a `Big-Name Fan' (someone famous or notorious). Years ago a fan
started handing out black-on-green BNF buttons at SF conventions;
this confused the hacker contingent terribly.
Node:boa, Next:board, Previous:BNF, Up:= B =
boa [IBM] n.
Any one of the fat cables that lurk under the floor in a dinosaur pen. Possibly so called
because they display a ferocious life of their own when you try
to lay them straight and flat after they have been coiled for
some time. It is rumored within IBM that channel cables for the
370 are limited to 200 feet because beyond that length the boas
get dangerous -- and it is worth noting that one of the major
cable makers uses the trademark `Anaconda'.
Node:board, Next:boat anchor, Previous:boa, Up:= B
=
board n.
1. In-context synonym for bboard;
sometimes used even for Usenet newsgroups (but see usage note
under bboard, sense 1). 2. An
electronic circuit board.
Node:boat anchor, Next:bob, Previous:board, Up:= B
=
boat anchor n.
[common; from ham radio] 1. Like doorstop but more severe; implies that the
offending hardware is irreversibly dead or useless. "That was a
working motherboard once. One lightning strike later, instant
boat anchor!" 2. A person who just takes up space. 3. Obsolete
but still working hardware, especially when used of an old
S100-bus hobbyist system; originally a term of annoyance, but
became more and more affectionate as the hardware became more and
more obsolete.
Node:bob, Next:bodysurf code, Previous:boat anchor, Up:= B =
bob n.
At Demon Internet, all
tech support personnel are called "Bob". (Female support
personnel have an option on "Bobette"). This has nothing to do
with Bob the divine drilling-equipment salesman of the Church of the
SubGenius. Nor is it acronymized from "Brother Of BOFH", though all parties agree it could
have been. Rather, it was triggered by an unusually large draft
of new tech-support people in 1995. It was observed that there
would be much duplication of names. To ease the confusion, it was
decided that all support techs would henceforth be known as
"Bob", and identity badges were created labelled "Bob 1" and "Bob
2". ("No, we never got any further" reports a witness).
The reason for "Bob" rather than anything else is due to a
luser calling and asking to speak to
"Bob", despite the fact that no "Bob" was currently working for
Tech Support. Since we all know "the customer is always right",
it was decided that there had to be at least one "Bob" on duty at
all times, just in case.
This sillyness inexorably snowballed. Shift leaders and
managers began to refer to their groups of "bobs". Whole ranks of
support machines were set up (and still exist in the DNS as of
1999) as bob1 through bobN. Then came
_alt.tech-support.recovery_, and it was filled with Demon
support personnel. They all referred to themselves, and to
others, as `bob', and after a while it caught on. There is now a
Bob
Code describing the Bob nature.
Node:bodysurf code, Next:BOF, Previous:bob, Up:= B =
bodysurf code n.
A program or segment of code written quickly in the heat of
inspiration without the benefit of formal design or deep thought.
Like its namesake sport, the result is too often a wipeout that
leaves the programmer eating sand.
Node:BOF, Next:BOFH, Previous:bodysurf code, Up:= B =
BOF /B-O-F/ or /bof/ n.
1. [common] Abbreviation for the phrase "Birds Of a Feather"
(flocking together), an informal discussion group and/or bull
session scheduled on a conference program. It is not clear where
or when this term originated, but it is now associated with the
USENIX conferences for Unix techies and was already established
there by 1984. It was used earlier than that at DECUS conferences
and is reported to have been common at SHARE meetings as far back
as the early 1960s. 2. Acronym, `Beginning of File'.
Node:BOFH, Next:bogo-sort, Previous:BOF, Up:= B =
BOFH // n.
[common] Acronym, Bastard Operator From Hell. A system
administrator with absolutely no tolerance for lusers. "You say you need more filespace?
Seems to me you have plenty
left..." Many BOFHs (and others who would be BOFHs if they could
get away with it) hang out in the newsgroup
_alt.sysadmin.recovery_, although there has also been
created a top-level newsgroup hierarchy (_bofh.*_) of their
own.
Several people have written stories about BOFHs. The set
usually considered canonical is by Simon Travaglia and may be
found at the Bastard
Home Page. BOFHs and BOFH wannabes hang out on scary devil monastery and
wield LARTs.
Node:bogo-sort, Next:bogometer, Previous:BOFH, Up:= B =
bogo-sort /boh`goh-sort'/ n.
(var. `stupid-sort') The archetypical perversely awful
algorithm (as opposed to bubble
sort, which is merely the generic bad
algorithm). Bogo-sort is equivalent to repeatedly throwing a deck
of cards in the air, picking them up at random, and then testing
whether they are in order. It serves as a sort of canonical
example of awfulness. Looking at a program and seeing a dumb
algorithm, one might say "Oh, I see, this program uses
bogo-sort." Esp. appropriate for algorithms with factorial or
super-exponential running time in the average case and
probabilistically infinite worst-case running time. Compare bogus, brute
force, lasherism.
A spectacular variant of bogo-sort has been proposed which has
the interesting property that, if the Many Worlds interpretation
of quantum mechanics is true, it can sort an arbitrarily large
array in constant time. (In the Many-Worlds model, the result of
any quantum action is to split the universe-before into a sheaf
of universes-after, one for each possible way the state vector
can collapse; in any one of the universes-after the result
appears random.) The steps are: 1. Permute the array randomly
using a quantum process, 2. If the array is not sorted, destroy
the universe. Implementation of step 2 is left as an exercise for
the reader.
Node:bogometer, Next:BogoMIPS, Previous:bogo-sort, Up:= B =
bogometer /boh-gom'-*t-er/ n.
A notional instrument for measuring bogosity. Compare the Troll-O-Meter and the `wankometer'
described in the wank entry; see also
bogus.
Node:BogoMIPS, Next:bogon, Previous:bogometer, Up:= B =
BogoMIPS /bo'go-mips/ n.
The number of million times a second a processor can do
absolutely nothing. The Linux OS
measures BogoMIPS at startup in order to calibrate some soft
timing loops that will be used later on; details at the BogoMIPS mini-HOWTO. The
name Linus chose, of course, is an ironic comment on the
uselessness of all other MIPS
figures.
Node:bogon, Next:bogon filter, Previous:BogoMIPS, Up:= B =
bogon /boh'gon/ n.
[very common; by analogy with proton/electron/neutron, but
doubtless reinforced after 1980 by the similarity to Douglas
Adams's `Vogons'; see the Bibliography in Appendix C and note that
Arthur Dent actually mispronounces `Vogons' as `Bogons' at one
point] 1. The elementary particle of bogosity (see quantum bogodynamics). For
instance, "the Ethernet is emitting bogons again" means that it
is broken or acting in an erratic or bogus fashion. 2. A query
packet sent from a TCP/IP domain resolver to a root server,
having the reply bit set instead of the query bit. 3. Any bogus
or incorrectly formed packet sent on a network. 4. By synecdoche,
used to refer to any bogus thing, as in "I'd like to go to lunch
with you but I've got to go to the weekly staff bogon". 5. A
person who is bogus or who says bogus things. This was
historically the original usage, but has been overtaken by its
derivative senses 1-4. See also bogosity, bogus;
compare psyton, fat electrons, magic smoke.
The bogon has become the type case for a whole bestiary of
nonce particle names, including the `clutron' or `cluon'
(indivisible particle of cluefulness, obviously the antiparticle
of the bogon) and the futon (elementary particle of randomness, or sometimes of lameness).
These are not so much live usages in themselves as examples of a
live meta-usage: that is, it has become a standard joke or
linguistic maneuver to "explain" otherwise mysterious
circumstances by inventing nonce particle names. And these imply
nonce particle theories, with all their dignity or lack thereof
(we might note parenthetically that this is a generalization from
"(bogus particle) theories" to "bogus (particle theories)"!).
Perhaps such particles are the modern-day equivalents of trolls
and wood-nymphs as standard starting-points around which to
construct explanatory myths. Of course, playing on an existing
word (as in the `futon') yields additional flavor. Compare magic smoke.
Node:bogon filter, Next:bogon flux, Previous:bogon, Up:= B =
bogon filter /boh'gon fil'tr/ n.
Any device, software or hardware, that limits or suppresses
the flow and/or emission of bogons. "Engineering hacked a bogon
filter between the Cray and the VAXen, and now we're getting
fewer dropped packets." See also bogosity, bogus.
Node:bogon flux, Next:bogosity, Previous:bogon filter, Up:= B =
bogon flux /boh'gon fluhks/ n.
A measure of a supposed field of bogosity emitted by a speaker, measured by a
bogometer; as a speaker starts to
wander into increasing bogosity a listener might say "Warning,
warning, bogon flux is rising". See quantum bogodynamics.
Node:bogosity, Next:bogotify, Previous:bogon flux, Up:= B =
bogosity /boh-go's*-tee/ n.
1. [orig. CMU, now very common] The degree to which something
is bogus. Bogosity is measured with a
bogometer; in a seminar, when a
speaker says something bogus, a listener might raise his hand and
say "My bogometer just triggered". More extremely, "You just
pinned my bogometer" means you just said or did something so
outrageously bogus that it is off the scale, pinning the
bogometer needle at the highest possible reading (one might also
say "You just redlined my bogometer"). The agreed-upon unit of
bogosity is the microLenat. 2.
The potential field generated by a bogon flux; see quantum bogodynamics. See also
bogon flux, bogon filter, bogus.
Node:bogotify, Next:bogue out, Previous:bogosity, Up:=
B =
bogotify /boh-go't*-fi:/ vt.
To make or become bogus. A program that has been changed so
many times as to become completely disorganized has become
bogotified. If you tighten a nut too hard and strip the threads
on the bolt, the bolt has become bogotified and you had better
not use it any more. This coinage led to the notional
`autobogotiphobia' defined as `the fear of becoming bogotified';
but is not clear that the latter has ever been `live' jargon
rather than a self-conscious joke in jargon about jargon. See
also bogosity, bogus.
Node:bogue out, Next:bogus, Previous:bogotify, Up:=
B =
bogue out /bohg owt/ vi.
To become bogus, suddenly and unexpectedly. "His talk was
relatively sane until somebody asked him a trick question; then
he bogued out and did nothing but flame afterwards." See also bogosity, bogus.
Node:bogus, Next:Bohr bug, Previous:bogue out, Up:= B =
bogus adj.
1. Non-functional. "Your patches are bogus." 2. Useless.
"OPCON is a bogus program." 3. False. "Your arguments are bogus."
4. Incorrect. "That algorithm is bogus." 5. Unbelievable. "You
claim to have solved the halting problem for Turing Machines?
That's totally bogus." 6. Silly. "Stop writing those bogus
sagas."
Astrology is bogus. So is a bolt that is obviously about to
break. So is someone who makes blatantly false claims to have
solved a scientific problem. (This word seems to have some, but
not all, of the connotations of random -- mostly the negative ones.)
It is claimed that `bogus' was originally used in the hackish
sense at Princeton in the late 1960s. It was spread to CMU and
Yale by Michael Shamos, a migratory Princeton alumnus. A glossary
of bogus words was compiled at Yale when the word was first
popularized there about 1975-76. These coinages spread into
hackerdom from CMU and MIT. Most of them remained wordplay
objects rather than actual vocabulary items or live metaphors.
Examples: `amboguous' (having multiple bogus interpretations);
`bogotissimo' (in a gloriously bogus manner); `bogotophile' (one
who is pathologically fascinated by the bogus); `paleobogology'
(the study of primeval bogosity).
Some bogowords, however, obtained sufficient live currency to
be listed elsewhere in this lexicon; see bogometer, bogon, bogotify,
and quantum
bogodynamics and the related but unlisted Dr. Fred Mbogo.
By the early 1980s `bogus' was also current in something like
hacker usage sense in West Coast teen slang, and it had gone
mainstream by 1985. A correspondent from Cambridge reports, by
contrast, that these uses of `bogus' grate on British nerves; in
Britain the word means, rather specifically, `counterfeit', as in
"a bogus 10-pound note".
Node:Bohr bug, Next:boink, Previous:bogus, Up:= B
=
Bohr bug /bohr buhg/ n.
[from quantum physics] A repeatable bug; one that manifests reliably under a possibly
unknown but well-defined set of conditions. Antonym of heisenbug; see also mandelbug, schroedinbug.
Node:boink, Next:bomb, Previous:Bohr bug, Up:= B =
boink /boynk/
[Usenet: variously ascribed to the TV series "Cheers"
"Moonlighting", and "Soap"] 1. v. To have sex with; compare bounce, sense 3. (This is mainstream
slang.) In Commonwealth hackish the variant `bonk' is more
common. 2. n. After the original Peter Korn `Boinkon' Usenet parties, used for almost any net social
gathering, e.g., Miniboink, a small boink held by Nancy Gillett
in 1988; Minniboink, a Boinkcon in Minnesota in 1989;
Humpdayboinks, Wednesday get-togethers held in the San Francisco
Bay Area. Compare @-party. 3. Var
of `bonk'; see bonk/oif.
Node:bomb, Next:bondage-and-discipline
language, Previous:boink,
Up:= B =
bomb
1. v. General synonym for crash
(sense 1) except that it is not used as a noun; esp. used of
software or OS failures. "Don't run Empire with less than 32K
stack, it'll bomb." 2. n.,v. Atari ST and Macintosh equivalents
of a Unix `panic' or Amiga guru
meditation, in which icons of little black-powder bombs
or mushroom clouds are displayed, indicating that the system has
died. On the Mac, this may be accompanied by a decimal (or
occasionally hexadecimal) number indicating what went wrong,
similar to the Amiga guru
meditation number. MS-DOS
machines tend to get locked up
in this situation.
Node:bondage-and-discipline
language, Next:bonk/oif,
Previous:bomb, Up:= B =
bondage-and-discipline language n.
A language (such as Pascal, Ada, APL, or Prolog) that, though ostensibly
general-purpose, is designed so as to enforce an author's theory
of `right programming' even though said theory is demonstrably
inadequate for systems hacking or even vanilla general-purpose
programming. Often abbreviated `B&D'; thus, one may speak of
things "having the B&D nature". See Pascal; oppose languages of choice.
Node:bonk/oif, Next:book titles, Previous:bondage-and-discipline
language, Up:= B =
bonk/oif /bonk/, /oyf/ interj.
In the U.S. MUD community, it has
become traditional to express pique or censure by `bonking' the
offending person. Convention holds that one should acknowledge a
bonk by saying `oif!' and there is a myth to the effect that
failing to do so upsets the cosmic bonk/oif balance, causing much
trouble in the universe. Some MUDs have implemented special
commands for bonking and oifing. Note: in parts of the U.K.
`bonk' is a sexually loaded slang term; care is advised in
transatlantic conversations (see boink). Commonwealth hackers report a similar
convention involving the `fish/bang' balance. See also talk mode.
Node:book titles, Next:boot, Previous:bonk/oif, Up:= B =
book titles
There is a tradition in hackerdom of informally tagging
important textbooks and standards documents with the dominant
color of their covers or with some other conspicuous feature of
the cover. Many of these are described in this lexicon under
their own entries. See Aluminum
Book, Blue Book, Camel Book, Cinderella Book, Devil Book, Dragon Book, Green Book, Orange Book, Purple Book, Red Book, Silver Book, White Book, Wizard Book, Yellow Book, and bible; see also rainbow series. Since about 1983 this
tradition has gotten a boost from the popular O'Reilly and
Associates line of technical books, which usually feature some
kind of exotic animal on the cover.
Node:boot, Next:Borg, Previous:book titles, Up:= B =
boot v.,n.
[techspeak; from `by one's bootstraps'] To load and initialize
the operating system on a machine. This usage is no longer jargon
(having passed into techspeak) but has given rise to some
derivatives that are still jargon.
The derivative `reboot' implies that the machine hasn't been
down for long, or that the boot is a bounce (sense 4) intended to clear some state
of wedgitude. This is sometimes
used of human thought processes, as in the following exchange:
"You've lost me." "OK, reboot. Here's the
theory...."
This term is also found in the variants `cold boot' (from
power-off condition) and `warm boot' (with the CPU and all
devices already powered up, as after a hardware reset or software
crash).
Another variant: `soft boot', reinitialization of only part of
a system, under control of other software still running: "If
you're running the mess-dos
emulator, control-alt-insert will cause a soft-boot of the
emulator, while leaving the rest of the system running."
Opposed to this there is `hard boot', which connotes hostility
towards or frustration with the machine being booted: "I'll have
to hard-boot this losing Sun." "I recommend booting it hard." One
often hard-boots by performing a power cycle.
Historical note: this term derives from `bootstrap loader', a
short program that was read in from cards or paper tape, or
toggled in from the front panel switches. This program was always
very short (great efforts were expended on making it short in
order to minimize the labor and chance of error involved in
toggling it in), but was just smart enough to read in a slightly
more complex program (usually from a card or paper tape reader),
to which it handed control; this program in turn was smart enough
to read the application or operating system from a magnetic tape
drive or disk drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer
`pulled itself up by its bootstraps' to a useful operating state.
Nowadays the bootstrap is usually found in ROM or EPROM, and
reads the first stage in from a fixed location on the disk,
called the `boot block'. When this program gains control, it is
powerful enough to load the actual OS and hand control over to
it.
Node:Borg, Next:borken, Previous:boot, Up:= B =
Borg n.
In "Star Trek: The Next Generation" the Borg is a species of
cyborg that ruthlessly seeks to incorporate all sentient life
into itself; their slogan is "You will be assimilated. Resistance
is futile." In hacker parlance, the Borg is usually Microsoft, which is thought to be trying
just as ruthlessly to assimilate all computers and the entire
Internet to itself (there is a widely circulated image of Bill
Gates as a Borg). Being forced to use Windows or NT is often
referred to as being "Borged". Interestingly, the Halloween Documents reveal that
this jargon is live within Microsoft itself. (Other companies,
notably Intel and UUNet, have also occasionally been equated to
the Borg.) See also Evil
Empire, Internet
Exploiter.
In IETF circles, where direct pressure from Microsoft is not a
daily reality, the Borg is sometimes Cisco. This usage
commemmorates their tendency to pay any price to hire talent away
from their competitors. In fact, at the Spring 1997 IETF, a large
number of ex-Cisco employees, all former members of Routing
Geeks, showed up with t-shirts printed with "Recovering
Borg".
Node:borken, Next:bot, Previous:Borg,
Up:= B =
borken adj.
(also `borked') Common deliberate typo for `broken'.
Node:bot, Next:bot spot, Previous:borken, Up:= B
=
bot n
[common on IRC, MUD and among gamers; from `robot'] 1. An
IRC or MUD
user who is actually a program. On IRC, typically the robot
provides some useful service. Examples are NickServ, which tries
to prevent random users from adopting nicks already claimed by others, and MsgServ,
which allows one to send asynchronous messages to be delivered
when the recipient signs on. Also common are `annoybots', such as
KissServ, which perform no useful function except to send cute
messages to other people. Service bots are less common on MUDs;
but some others, such as the `Julia' bot active in 1990-91, have
been remarkably impressive Turing-test experiments, able to pass
as human for as long as ten or fifteen minutes of conversation.
2. An AI-controlled player in a computer game (especially a
first-person shooter such as Quake) which, unlike ordinary
monsters, operates like a human-controlled player, with access to
a player's weapons and abilities. An example can be found at http://www.telefragged.com/thefatal/.
3. Term used, though less commonly, for a web spider. The file for controlling spider
behavior on your site is officially the "Robots Exclusion File"
and its URL is "http:///robots.txt")
Note that bots in all senses were `robots' when the terms
first appeared in the early 1990s, but the shortened form is now
habitual.
Node:bot spot, Next:bottom feeder, Previous:bot, Up:= B
=
bot spot n.
[MUD] The user on a MUD with the longest connect time. Derives
from the fact that bots on MUDS often
stay constantly connected and appear at the bottom of the
list.
Node:bottom feeder, Next:bottom-up
implementation, Previous:bot spot, Up:= B =
bottom feeder n.
1. An Internet user that leeches off ISPs - the sort you can
never provide good enough services for, always complains about
the price, no matter how low it may be, and will bolt off to
another service the moment there is even the slimmest price
difference. While most bottom feeders infest free or almost free
services such as AOL, MSN, and Hotmail, too many flock to
whomever happens to be the cheapest regional ISP at the time.
Bottom feeders are often the classic problem user, known for
unleashing spam, flamage, and other breaches of netiquette. 2. Syn. for slopsucker, derived from the fishermen's
and naturalists' term for finny creatures who subsist on the
primordial ooze. (This sense is older.)
Node:bottom-up
implementation, Next:bounce,
Previous:bottom
feeder, Up:= B =
bottom-up implementation n.
Hackish opposite of the techspeak term `top-down design'. It
has been received wisdom in most programming cultures that it is
best to design from higher levels of abstraction down to lower,
specifying sequences of action in increasing detail until you get
to actual code. Hackers often find (especially in exploratory
designs that cannot be closely specified in advance) that it
works best to build things in the opposite order, by
writing and testing a clean set of primitive operations and then
knitting them together. Naively applied, this leads to
hacked-together bottom-up implementations; a more sophisticated
response is `middle-out implementation', in which scratch code
within primitives at the mid-level of the system is gradually
replaced with a more polished version of the lowest level at the
same time the structure above the midlevel is being built.
Node:bounce, Next:bounce message, Previous:bottom-up
implementation, Up:= B
=
bounce v.
1. [common; perhaps by analogy to a bouncing check] An
electronic mail message that is undeliverable and returns an
error notification to the sender is said to `bounce'. See also
bounce message. 2.
[Stanford] To play volleyball. The now-demolished D. C. Power Lab building used by
the Stanford AI Lab in the 1970s had a volleyball court on the
front lawn. From 5 P.M. to 7 P.M. was the scheduled maintenance
time for the computer, so every afternoon at 5 would come over
the intercom the cry: "Now hear this: bounce, bounce!", followed
by Brian McCune loudly bouncing a volleyball on the floor outside
the offices of known volleyballers. 3. To engage in sexual
intercourse; prob. from the expression `bouncing the mattress',
but influenced by Roo's psychosexually loaded "Try bouncing me,
Tigger!" from the "Winnie-the-Pooh" books. Compare boink. 4. To casually reboot a system in order
to clear up a transient problem. Reported primarily among VMS and Unix
users. 5. [VM/CMS programmers] Automatic warm-start of a
machine after an error. "I logged on this morning and found it
had bounced 7 times during the night" 6. [IBM] To power cycle a peripheral in order to
reset it.
Node:bounce message, Next:boustrophedon, Previous:bounce, Up:= B =
bounce message n.
[common] Notification message returned to sender by a site
unable to relay email to the intended
Internet address
recipient or the next link in a bang
path (see bounce, sense 1).
Reasons might include a nonexistent or misspelled username or a
down relay site. Bounce messages can
themselves fail, with occasionally ugly results; see sorcerer's apprentice
mode and software
laser. The terms `bounce mail' and `barfmail' are also
common.
Node:boustrophedon, Next:box, Previous:bounce message, Up:= B =
boustrophedon n.
[from a Greek word for turning like an ox while plowing] An
ancient method of writing using alternate left-to-right and
right-to-left lines. This term is actually philologists'
techspeak and typesetters' jargon. Erudite hackers use it for an
optimization performed by some computer typesetting software and
moving-head printers. The adverbial form `boustrophedonically' is
also found (hackers purely love constructions like this).
Node:box, Next:boxed comments, Previous:boustrophedon, Up:= B =
box n.
1. A computer; esp. in the construction `foo box' where
_foo_ is some functional qualifier, like `graphics', or the
name of an OS (thus, `Unix box', `MS-DOS box', etc.) "We
preprocess the data on Unix boxes before handing it up to the
mainframe." 2. [IBM] Without qualification but within an
SNA-using site, this refers specifically to an IBM front-end
processor or FEP /F-E-P/. An FEP is a small computer necessary to
enable an IBM mainframe to
communicate beyond the limits of the dinosaur pen. Typically used in
expressions like the cry that goes up when an SNA network goes
down: "Looks like the box has fallen
over." (See fall over.) See
also IBM, fear and loathing, Blue Glue.
Node:boxed comments, Next:boxen, Previous:box, Up:= B =
boxed comments n.
Comments (explanatory notes attached to program instructions)
that occupy several lines by themselves; so called because in
assembler and C code they are often surrounded by a box in a
style something like this:
/*************************************************
*
* This is a boxed comment in C style
*
*************************************************/
Common variants of this style omit the asterisks in column 2
or add a matching row of asterisks closing the right side of the
box. The sparest variant omits all but the comment delimiters
themselves; the `box' is implied. Oppose winged comments.
Node:boxen, Next:boxology, Previous:boxed comments, Up:= B =
boxen /bok'sn/ pl.n.
[very common; by analogy with VAXen] Fanciful plural of box often encountered in the phrase `Unix boxen',
used to describe commodity Unix
hardware. The connotation is that any two Unix boxen are
interchangeable.
Node:boxology, Next:bozotic, Previous:boxen, Up:= B
=
boxology /bok-sol'*-jee/ n.
Syn. ASCII art. This term
implies a more restricted domain, that of box-and-arrow drawings.
"His report has a lot of boxology in it." Compare macrology.
Node:bozotic, Next:BQS, Previous:boxology, Up:=
B =
bozotic /boh-zoh'tik/ or /boh-zo'tik/ adj.
[from the name of a TV clown even more losing than Ronald
McDonald] Resembling or having the quality of a bozo; that is,
clownish, ludicrously wrong, unintentionally humorous. Compare
wonky, demented. Note that the noun `bozo' occurs in
slang, but the mainstream adjectival form would be `bozo-like' or
(in New England) `bozoish'.
Node:BQS, Next:brain dump, Previous:bozotic, Up:= B
=
BQS /B-Q-S/ adj.
Syn. Berkeley
Quality Software.
Node:brain dump, Next:brain fart, Previous:BQS, Up:= B
=
brain dump n.
[common] The act of telling someone everything one knows about
a particular topic or project. Typically used when someone is
going to let a new party maintain a piece of code. Conceptually
analogous to an operating system core
dump in that it saves a lot of useful state before an exit. "You'll have to give me a
brain dump on FOOBAR before you start your new job at
HackerCorp." See core dump
(sense 4). At Sun, this is also known as `TOI' (transfer of
information).
Node:brain fart, Next:brain-damaged, Previous:brain dump, Up:= B =
brain fart n.
The actual result of a braino, as
opposed to the mental glitch that is the braino itself. E.g.,
typing dir on a Unix box after a session with
DOS.
Node:brain-damaged, Next:brain-dead, Previous:brain fart, Up:= B =
brain-damaged adj.
1. [common; generalization of `Honeywell Brain Damage' (HBD),
a theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter
cretinisms in Honeywell Multics]
adj. Obviously wrong; cretinous;
demented. There is an implication
that the person responsible must have suffered brain damage,
because he should have known better. Calling something
brain-damaged is really bad; it also implies it is unusable, and
that its failure to work is due to poor design rather than some
accident. "Only six monocase characters per file name? Now
that's brain-damaged!" 2. [esp. in the Mac world] May
refer to free demonstration software that has been deliberately
crippled in some way so as not to compete with the product it is
intended to sell. Syn. crippleware.
Node:brain-dead, Next:braino, Previous:brain-damaged, Up:= B =
brain-dead adj.
[common] Brain-damaged in the extreme. It tends to imply
terminal design failure rather than malfunction or simple
stupidity. "This comm program doesn't know how to send a break --
how brain-dead!"
Node:braino, Next:branch to Fishkill, Previous:brain-dead, Up:= B =
braino /bray'no/ n.
Syn. for thinko. See also brain fart.
Node:branch to Fishkill,
Next:bread crumbs,
Previous:braino, Up:= B =
branch to Fishkill n.
[IBM: from the location of one of the corporation's
facilities] Any unexpected jump in a program that produces
catastrophic or just plain weird results. See jump off into
never-never land, hyperspace.
Node:bread crumbs, Next:break, Previous:branch to Fishkill, Up:= B =
bread crumbs n.
1. Debugging statements inserted into a program that emit
output or log indicators of the program's state to a file so you can see where it dies or
pin down the cause of surprising behavior. The term is probably a
reference to the Hansel and Gretel story from the Brothers Grimm
or the older French folktale of Thumbelina; in several variants
of these, a character leaves a trail of bread crumbs so as not to
get lost in the woods. 2. In user-interface design, any feature
that allows some tracking of where you've been, like coloring
visited links purple rather than blue in Netscape (also called
`footrinting').
Node:break, Next:break-even point, Previous:bread crumbs, Up:= B =
break
1. vt. To cause to be broken (in
any sense). "Your latest patch to the editor broke the paragraph
commands." 2. v. (of a program) To stop temporarily, so that it
may debugged. The place where it stops is a `breakpoint'. 3.
[techspeak] vi. To send an RS-232 break (two character widths of
line high) over a serial comm line. 4. [Unix] vi. To strike
whatever key currently causes the tty driver to send SIGINT to
the current process. Normally, break (sense 3), delete or control-C does this. 5. `break break'
may be said to interrupt a conversation (this is an example of
verb doubling). This usage comes from radio communications, which
in turn probably came from landline telegraph/teleprinter usage,
as badly abused in the Citizen's Band craze a few years ago.
Node:break-even point, Next:breath-of-life
packet, Previous:break,
Up:= B =
break-even point n.
In the process of implementing a new computer language, the
point at which the language is sufficiently effective that one
can implement the language in itself. That is, for a new language
called, hypothetically, FOOGOL, one has reached break-even when
one can write a demonstration compiler for FOOGOL in FOOGOL,
discard the original implementation language, and thereafter use
working versions of FOOGOL to develop newer ones. This is an
important milestone; see MFTL.
Since this entry was first written, several correspondents
have reported that there actually was a compiler for a tiny
Algol-like language called Foogol floating around on various
VAXen in the early and mid-1980s. A
FOOGOL implementation is available at the Retrocomputing Museum
http://www.ccil.org/retro.
Node:breath-of-life packet,
Next:breedle, Previous:break-even point, Up:= B =
breath-of-life packet n.
[XEROX PARC] An Ethernet packet that contains bootstrap (see
boot) code, periodically sent out from
a working computer to infuse the `breath of life' into any
computer on the network that has happened to crash. Machines
depending on such packets have sufficient hardware or firmware
code to wait for (or request) such a packet during the reboot
process. See also dickless
workstation.
The notional `kiss-of-death packet', with a function
complementary to that of a breath-of-life packet, is recommended
for dealing with hosts that consume too many network resources.
Though `kiss-of-death packet' is usually used in jest, there is
at least one documented instance of an Internet subnet with
limited address-table slots in a gateway machine in which such
packets were routinely used to compete for slots, rather like
Christmas shoppers competing for scarce parking spaces.
Node:breedle, Next:Breidbart Index, Previous:breath-of-life
packet, Up:= B =
breedle n.
See feep.
Node:Breidbart Index, Next:bring X to its
knees, Previous:breedle, Up:= B
=
Breidbart Index /bri:d'bart ind*ks/
A measurement of the severity of spam invented by long-time
hacker Seth Breidbart, used for programming cancelbots. The
Breidbart Index takes into account the fact that excessive
multi-posting EMP is worse than
excessive cross-posting ECP. The
Breidbart Index is computed as follows: For each article in a
spam, take the square-root of the number of newsgroups to which
the article is posted. The Breidbart Index is the sum of the
square roots of all of the posts in the spam. For example, one
article posted to nine newsgroups and again to sixteen would have
BI = sqrt(9) + sqrt(16) = 7. It is generally agreed that a spam
is cancelable if the Breidbart Index exceeds 20.
The Breidbart Index accumulates over a 45-day window. Ten
articles yesterday and ten articles today and ten articles
tomorrow add up to a 30-article spam. Spam fighters will often
reset the count if you can convince them that the spam was
accidental and/or you have seen the error of your ways and won't
repeat it. Breidbart Index can accumulate over multiple authors.
For example, the "Make Money Fast" pyramid scheme exceeded a BI
of 20 a long time ago, and is now considered "cancel on
sight".
Node:bring X to its
knees, Next:brittle,
Previous:Breidbart
Index, Up:= B =
bring X to its knees v.
[common] To present a machine, operating system, piece of
software, or algorithm with a load so extreme or pathological that it grinds to a halt.
"To bring a MicroVAX to its knees, try twenty users running vi -- or four running EMACS." Compare hog.
Node:brittle, Next:broadcast storm, Previous:bring X to its
knees, Up:= B =
brittle adj.
Said of software that is functional but easily broken by
changes in operating environment or configuration, or by any
minor tweak to the software itself. Also, any system that
responds inappropriately and disastrously to abnormal but
expected external stimuli; e.g., a file system that is usually
totally scrambled by a power failure is said to be brittle. This
term is often used to describe the results of a research effort
that were never intended to be robust, but it can be applied to
commercial software, which (due to closed-source development)
displays the quality far more often than it ought to. Oppose
robust.
Node:broadcast storm, Next:brochureware, Previous:brittle, Up:= B =
broadcast storm n.
[common] An incorrect packet broadcast on a network that
causes most hosts to respond all at once, typically with wrong
answers that start the process over again. See network meltdown; compare mail storm.
Node:brochureware, Next:broken, Previous:broadcast storm, Up:= B =
brochureware n.
Planned but non-existent product like vaporware, but with the added implication
that marketing is actively selling and promoting it (they've
printed brochures). Brochureware is often deployed as a strategic
weapon; the idea is to con customers into not committing to an
existing product of the competition's. It is a safe bet that when
a brochureware product finally becomes real, it will be more
expensive than and inferior to the alternatives that had been
available for years.
Node:broken, Next:broken arrow, Previous:brochureware, Up:= B =
broken adj.
1. Not working properly (of programs). 2. Behaving strangely;
especially (when used of people) exhibiting extreme
depression.
Node:broken arrow, Next:BrokenWindows, Previous:broken, Up:= B =
broken arrow n.
[IBM] The error code displayed on line 25 of a 3270 terminal
(or a PC emulating a 3270) for various kinds of protocol
violations and "unexpected" error conditions (including
connection to a down computer). On a
PC, simulated with `->/_', with the two center characters
overstruck.
Note: to appreciate this term fully, it helps to know that
`broken arrow' is also military jargon for an accident involving
nuclear weapons....
Node:BrokenWindows, Next:broket, Previous:broken arrow, Up:= B =
BrokenWindows n.
Abusive hackerism for the crufty
and elephantine X environment on Sun machines; properly called
`OpenWindows'.
Node:broket, Next:Brooks's Law, Previous:BrokenWindows, Up:= B =
broket /broh'k*t/ or /broh'ket`/ n.
[rare; by analogy with `bracket': a `broken bracket'] Either
of the characters < and >, when
used as paired enclosing delimiters. This word originated as a
contraction of the phrase `broken bracket', that is, a bracket
that is bent in the middle. (At MIT, and apparently in the Real World as well, these are
usually called angle
brackets.)
Node:Brooks's Law, Next:brown-paper-bag bug,
Previous:broket, Up:= B =
Brooks's Law prov.
"Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" --
a result of the fact that the expected advantage from splitting
development work among N programmers is O(N) (that is,
proportional to N), but the complexity and communications cost
associated with coordinating and then merging their work is
O(N^2) (that is, proportional to the square of N). The quote is
from Fred Brooks, a manager of IBM's OS/360 project and author of
"The Mythical Man-Month" (Addison-Wesley, 1975, ISBN
0-201-00650-2), an excellent early book on software engineering.
The myth in question has been most tersely expressed as
"Programmer time is fungible" and Brooks established conclusively
that it is not. Hackers have never forgotten his advice (though
it's not the whole story; see bazaar); too often, management still does. See also creationism, second-system effect, optimism.
Node:brown-paper-bag bug,
Next:browser, Previous:Brooks's Law, Up:= B =
brown-paper-bag bug n.
A bug in a public software release that is so embarrassing
that the author notionally wears a brown paper bag over his head
for a while so he won't be recognized on the net. Entered popular
usage after the early-1999 release of the first Linux 2.2, which
had one. The phrase was used in Linus Torvalds's apology
posting.
Node:browser, Next:BRS, Previous:brown-paper-bag bug, Up:= B =
browser n.
A program specifically designed to help users view and
navigate hypertext, on-line documentation, or a database. While
this general sense has been present in jargon for a long time,
the proliferation of browsers for the World Wide Web after 1992
has made it much more popular and provided a central or default
techspeak meaning of the word previously lacking in hacker usage.
Nowadays, if someone mentions using a `browser' without
qualification, one may assume it is a Web browser.
Node:BRS, Next:brute force, Previous:browser, Up:= B =
BRS /B-R-S/ n.
Syn. Big Red Switch.
This abbreviation is fairly common on-line.
Node:brute force, Next:brute force and
ignorance, Previous:BRS,
Up:= B =
brute force adj.
Describes a primitive programming style, one in which the
programmer relies on the computer's processing power instead of
using his or her own intelligence to simplify the problem, often
ignoring problems of scale and applying naive methods suited to
small problems directly to large ones. The term can also be used
in reference to programming style: brute-force programs are
written in a heavyhanded, tedious way, full of repetition and
devoid of any elegance or useful abstraction (see also brute force and
ignorance).
The canonical example of a
brute-force algorithm is associated with the `traveling salesman
problem' (TSP), a classical NP-hard
problem: Suppose a person is in, say, Boston, and wishes to drive
to N other cities. In what order should the cities be visited in
order to minimize the distance travelled? The brute-force method
is to simply generate all possible routes and compare the
distances; while guaranteed to work and simple to implement, this
algorithm is clearly very stupid in that it considers even
obviously absurd routes (like going from Boston to Houston via
San Francisco and New York, in that order). For very small N it
works well, but it rapidly becomes absurdly inefficient when N
increases (for N = 15, there are already 1,307,674,368,000
possible routes to consider, and for N = 1000 -- well, see bignum). Sometimes, unfortunately, there
is no better general solution than brute force. See also NP-.
A more simple-minded example of brute-force programming is
finding the smallest number in a large list by first using an
existing program to sort the list in ascending order, and then
picking the first number off the front.
Whether brute-force programming should actually be considered
stupid or not depends on the context; if the problem is not
terribly big, the extra CPU time spent on a brute-force solution
may cost less than the programmer time it would take to develop a
more `intelligent' algorithm. Additionally, a more intelligent
algorithm may imply more long-term complexity cost and
bug-chasing than are justified by the speed improvement.
Ken Thompson, co-inventor of Unix, is reported to have uttered
the epigram "When in doubt, use brute force". He probably
intended this as a ha ha
only serious, but the original Unix kernel's preference
for simple, robust, and portable algorithms over brittle `smart' ones does seem to have been a
significant factor in the success of that OS. Like so many other
tradeoffs in software design, the choice between brute force and
complex, finely-tuned cleverness is often a difficult one that
requires both engineering savvy and delicate esthetic
judgment.
Node:brute force and
ignorance, Next:BSD,
Previous:brute force,
Up:= B =
brute force and ignorance n.
A popular design technique at many software houses -- brute force coding unrelieved by
any knowledge of how problems have been previously solved in
elegant ways. Dogmatic adherence to design methodologies tends to
encourage this sort of thing. Characteristic of early larval stage programming;
unfortunately, many never outgrow it. Often abbreviated BFI:
"Gak, they used a bubble
sort! That's strictly from BFI." Compare bogosity.
Node:BSD, Next:BSOD, Previous:brute force and ignorance,
Up:= B =
BSD /B-S-D/ n.
[abbreviation for `Berkeley Software Distribution'] a family
of Unix versions for the DEC VAX and PDP-11
developed by Bill Joy and others at Berzerkeley starting around 1977,
incorporating paged virtual memory, TCP/IP networking
enhancements, and many other features. The BSD versions (4.1,
4.2, and 4.3) and the commercial versions derived from them
(SunOS, ULTRIX, and Mt. Xinu) held the technical lead in the Unix
world until AT&T's successful standardization efforts after
about 1986; descendants including Free/Open/NetBSD, BSD/OS and
MacOS X are still widely popular. Note that BSD versions going
back to 2.9 are often referred to by their version numbers alone,
without the BSD prefix. See 4.2, Unix, USG
Unix.
Node:BSOD, Next:BUAF, Previous:BSD,
Up:= B =
BSOD /B-S-O-D/
Very commmon abbreviation for Blue Screen of Death. Both
spoken and written.
Node:BUAF, Next:BUAG, Previous:BSOD, Up:= B =
BUAF // n.
[abbreviation, from _alt.fan.warlord_] Big Ugly ASCII
Font -- a special form of ASCII
art. Various programs exist for rendering text strings
into block, bloob, and pseudo-script fonts in cells between four
and six character cells on a side; this is smaller than the
letters generated by older banner
(sense 2) programs. These are sometimes used to render one's name
in a sig block, and are
critically referred to as `BUAF's. See warlording.
Node:BUAG, Next:bubble sort, Previous:BUAF, Up:= B
=
BUAG // n.
[abbreviation, from _alt.fan.warlord_] Big Ugly ASCII
Graphic. Pejorative term for ugly ASCII
art, especially as found in sig
blocks. For some reason, mutations of the head of Bart
Simpson are particularly common in the least imaginative sig blocks. See warlording.
Node:bubble sort, Next:bucky bits, Previous:BUAG, Up:= B
=
bubble sort n.
Techspeak for a particular sorting technique in which pairs of
adjacent values in the list to be sorted are compared and
interchanged if they are out of order; thus, list entries `bubble
upward' in the list until they bump into one with a lower sort
value. Because it is not very good relative to other methods and
is the one typically stumbled on by naive and untutored programmers, hackers
consider it the canonical example
of a naive algorithm. (However, it's been shown by repeated
experiment that below about 5000 records bubble-sort is OK
anyway.) The canonical example of a really bad algorithm
is bogo-sort. A bubble sort might
be used out of ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could issue
only from brain damage or willful perversity.
Node:bucky bits, Next:buffer chuck, Previous:bubble sort, Up:= B =
bucky bits /buh'kee bits/ n.
1. obs. The bits produced by the CONTROL and META shift keys
on a SAIL keyboard (octal 200 and 400 respectively), resulting in
a 9-bit keyboard character set. The MIT AI TV (Knight) keyboards
extended this with TOP and separate left and right CONTROL and
META keys, resulting in a 12-bit character set; later, LISP
Machines added such keys as SUPER, HYPER, and GREEK (see space-cadet keyboard). 2.
By extension, bits associated with `extra' shift keys on any
keyboard, e.g., the ALT on an IBM PC or command and option keys
on a Macintosh.
It has long been rumored that `bucky bits' were named for
Buckminster Fuller during a period when he was consulting at
Stanford. Actually, bucky bits were invented by Niklaus Wirth
when he was at Stanford in 1964-65; he first suggested
the idea of an EDIT key to set the 8th bit of an otherwise 7-bit
ASCII character). It seems that, unknown to Wirth, certain
Stanford hackers had privately nicknamed him `Bucky' after a
prominent portion of his dental anatomy, and this nickname
transferred to the bit. Bucky-bit commands were used in a number
of editors written at Stanford, including most notably TV-EDIT
and NLS.
The term spread to MIT and CMU early and is now in general
use. Ironically, Wirth himself remained unaware of its derivation
for nearly 30 years, until GLS dug up this history in early 1993!
See double bucky, quadruple bucky.
Node:buffer chuck, Next:buffer overflow, Previous:bucky bits, Up:= B =
buffer chuck n.
Shorter and ruder syn. for buffer overflow.
Node:buffer overflow, Next:bug, Previous:buffer chuck, Up:= B =
buffer overflow n.
What happens when you try to stuff more data into a buffer
(holding area) than it can handle. This problem is commonly
exploited by crackers to get
arbitrary commands executed by a program running with root
permissions. This may be due to a mismatch in the processing
rates of the producing and consuming processes (see overrun and firehose syndrome), or because the
buffer is simply too small to hold all the data that must
accumulate before a piece of it can be processed. For example, in
a text-processing tool that crunches
a line at a time, a short line buffer can result in lossage as input from a long line overflows
the buffer and trashes data beyond it. Good defensive programming
would check for overflow on each character and stop accepting
data when the buffer is full up. The term is used of and by
humans in a metaphorical sense. "What time did I agree to meet
you? My buffer must have overflowed." Or "If I answer that phone
my buffer is going to overflow." See also spam, overrun
screw.
Node:bug, Next:bug-compatible, Previous:buffer overflow, Up:= B =
bug n.
An unwanted and unintended property of a program or piece of
hardware, esp. one that causes it to malfunction. Antonym of
feature. Examples: "There's a bug
in the editor: it writes things out backwards." "The system
crashed because of a hardware bug." "Fred is a winner, but he has
a few bugs" (i.e., Fred is a good guy, but he has a few
personality problems).
Historical note: Admiral Grace Hopper (an early computing
pioneer better known for inventing COBOL) liked to tell a story in which a
technician solved a glitch in the
Harvard Mark II machine by pulling an actual insect out from
between the contacts of one of its relays, and she subsequently
promulgated bug in its hackish sense as
a joke about the incident (though, as she was careful to admit,
she was not there when it happened). For many years the logbook
associated with the incident and the actual bug in question (a
moth) sat in a display case at the Naval Surface Warfare Center
(NSWC). The entire story, with a picture of the logbook and the
moth taped into it, is recorded in the "Annals of the History of
Computing", Vol. 3, No. 3 (July 1981), pp. 285-286.
The text of the log entry (from September 9, 1947), reads
"1545 Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of bug
being found". This wording establishes that the term was already
in use at the time in its current specific sense -- and Hopper
herself reports that the term `bug' was regularly applied to
problems in radar electronics during WWII.
Indeed, the use of `bug' to mean an industrial defect was
already established in Thomas Edison's time, and a more specific
and rather modern use can be found in an electrical handbook from
1896 ("Hawkin's New Catechism of Electricity", Theo. Audel &
Co.) which says: "The term `bug' is used to a limited extent to
designate any fault or trouble in the connections or working of
electric apparatus." It further notes that the term is "said to
have originated in quadruplex telegraphy and have been
transferred to all electric apparatus."
The latter observation may explain a common folk etymology of
the term; that it came from telephone company usage, in which
"bugs in a telephone cable" were blamed for noisy lines. Though
this derivation seems to be mistaken, it may well be a distorted
memory of a joke first current among telegraph operators
more than a century ago!
Or perhaps not a joke. Historians of the field inform us that
the term "bug" was regularly used in the early days of telegraphy
to refer to a variety of semi-automatic telegraphy keyers that
would send a string of dots if you held them down. In fact, the
Vibroplex keyers (which were among the most common of this type)
even had a graphic of a beetle on them (and still do)! While the
ability to send repeated dots automatically was very useful for
professional morse code operators, these were also significantly
trickier to use than the older manual keyers, and it could take
some practice to ensure one didn't introduce extraneous dots into
the code by holding the key down a fraction too long. In the
hands of an inexperienced operator, a Vibroplex "bug" on the line
could mean that a lot of garbled Morse would soon be coming your
way.
Further, the term "bug" has long been used among radio
technicians to describe a device that converts electromagnetic
field variations into acoustic signals. It is used to trace radio
interference and look for dangerous radio emissions. Radio
community usage derives from the roach-like shape of the first
versions used by 19th century physicists. The first versions
consisted of a coil of wire (roach body), with the two wire ends
sticking out and bent back to nearly touch forming a spark gap
(roach antennae). The bug is to the radio technician what the
stethoscope is to the stereotype medical doctor. This sense is
almost certainly ancestral to modern use of "bug" for a covert
monitoring device, but may also have contributed to the use of
"bug" for the effects of radio interference itself.
Actually, use of `bug' in the general sense of a disruptive
event goes back to Shakespeare! (Henry VI, part III - Act V,
Scene II: King Edward: "So, lie thou there. Die thou; and die our
fear; For Warwick was a bug that fear'd us all.") In the first
edition of Samuel Johnson's dictionary one meaning of `bug' is "A
frightful object; a walking spectre"; this is traced to
`bugbear', a Welsh term for a variety of mythological monster
which (to complete the circle) has recently been reintroduced
into the popular lexicon through fantasy role-playing games.
In any case, in jargon the word almost never refers to
insects. Here is a plausible conversation that never actually
happened:
"There is a bug in this ant farm!"
"What do you mean? I don't see any ants in it."
"That's the bug."
A careful discussion of the etymological issues can be found
in a paper by Fred R. Shapiro, 1987, "Entomology of the Computer
Bug: History and Folklore", American Speech 62(4):376-378.
[There has been a widespread myth that the original bug was
moved to the Smithsonian, and an earlier version of this entry so
asserted. A correspondent who thought to check discovered that
the bug was not there. While investigating this in late 1990,
your editor discovered that the NSWC still had the bug, but had
unsuccessfully tried to get the Smithsonian to accept it -- and
that the present curator of their History of American Technology
Museum didn't know this and agreed that it would make a
worthwhile exhibit. It was moved to the Smithsonian in mid-1991,
but due to space and money constraints was not actually exhibited
years afterwards. Thus, the process of investigating the
original-computer-bug bug fixed it in an entirely unexpected way,
by making the myth true! --ESR]
Node:bug-compatible, Next:bug-for-bug
compatible, Previous:bug,
Up:= B =
bug-compatible adj.
[common] Said of a design or revision that has been badly
compromised by a requirement to be compatible with fossils or misfeatures in other programs or (esp.)
previous releases of itself. "MS-DOS 2.0 used \ as a path
separator to be bug-compatible with some cretin's choice of / as
an option character in 1.0."
Node:bug-for-bug
compatible, Next:bug-of-the-month club, Previous:bug-compatible, Up:= B =
bug-for-bug compatible n.
Same as bug-compatible,
with the additional implication that much tedious effort went
into ensuring that each (known) bug was replicated.
Node:bug-of-the-month club,
Next:buglix, Previous:bug-for-bug
compatible, Up:= B =
bug-of-the-month club n.
[from "book-of-the-month club", a time-honored
mail-order-marketing technique in the U.S.] A mythical club which
users of `sendmail(8)' (the UNIX mail daemon) belong to; this was
coined on the Usenet newsgroup comp.security.unix at a time when
sendmail security holes, which allowed outside crackers access to the system, were being
uncovered at an alarming rate, forcing sysadmins to update very
often. Also, more completely, `fatal security bug-of-the-month
club'. See also kernel-of-the-week club.
Node:buglix, Next:bulletproof, Previous:bug-of-the-month club, Up:= B =
buglix /buhg'liks/ n.
[uncommon] Pejorative term referring to DEC's ULTRIX operating system in its earlier
severely buggy versions. Still used to describe ULTRIX,
but without nearly so much venom. Compare AIDX, HP-SUX, Nominal Semidestructor,
Telerat, sun-stools.
Node:bulletproof, Next:bullschildt, Previous:buglix, Up:=
B =
bulletproof adj.
Used of an algorithm or implementation considered extremely
robust; lossage-resistant; capable
of correctly recovering from any imaginable exception condition
-- a rare and valued quality. Implies that the programmer has
thought of all possible errors, and added code to protect against each one. Thus, in some
cases, this can imply code that is too heavyweight, due to
excessive paranoia on the part of the programmer. Syn. armor-plated.
Node:bullschildt, Next:bum, Previous:bulletproof, Up:= B =
bullschildt /bul'shilt/ n.
[comp.lang.c on USENET] A confident, but incorrect, statement
about a programming language. This immortalizes a very bad book
about C, Herbert Schildt's "C - The
Complete Reference". One reviewer commented "The naive errors in
this book would be embarassing even in a programming assignment
turned in by a computer science college sophomore."
Node:bum, Next:bump, Previous:bullschildt, Up:= B =
bum
1. vt. To make highly efficient, either in time or space,
often at the expense of clarity. "I managed to bum three more
instructions out of that code." "I spent half the night bumming
the interrupt code." In 1996, this term and the practice it
describes are semi-obsolete. In elder
days, John McCarthy (inventor of LISP) used to compare some efficiency-obsessed
hackers among his students to "ski bums"; thus, optimization
became "program bumming", and eventually just "bumming". 2. To
squeeze out excess; to remove something in order to improve
whatever it was removed from (without changing function; this
distinguishes the process from a featurectomy). 3. n. A small change to an
algorithm, program, or hardware device to make it more efficient.
"This hardware bum makes the jump instruction faster." Usage: now
uncommon, largely superseded by v. tune (and n. tweak,
hack), though none of these exactly
capture sense 2. All these uses are rare in Commonwealth hackish,
because in the parent dialects of English the noun `bum' is a
rude synonym for `buttocks' and the verb `bum' for buggery.
Node:bump, Next:burble, Previous:bum, Up:= B =
bump vt.
Synonym for increment. Has the same meaning as C's ++
operator. Used esp. of counter variables, pointers, and index
dummies in for, while, and
do-while loops.
Node:burble, Next:buried treasure, Previous:bump, Up:= B =
burble v.
[from Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky"] Like flame, but connotes that the source is truly
clueless and ineffectual (mere flamers can be competent). A term
of deep contempt. "There's some guy on the phone burbling about
how he got a DISK FULL error and it's all our comm software's
fault." This is mainstream slang in some parts of England.
Node:buried treasure, Next:burn-in period,
Previous:burble, Up:= B =
buried treasure n.
A surprising piece of code found in some program. While
usually not wrong, it tends to vary from crufty to bletcherous, and has lain undiscovered
only because it was functionally correct, however horrible it is.
Used sarcastically, because what is found is anything
but treasure. Buried treasure almost always needs to be
dug up and removed. "I just found that the scheduler sorts its
queue using bubble sort!
Buried treasure!"
Node:burn-in period, Next:burst page, Previous:buried treasure, Up:= B =
burn-in period n.
1. A factory test designed to catch systems with marginal components before they get out the
door; the theory is that burn-in will protect customers by
outwaiting the steepest part of the bathtub curve (see infant mortality). 2. A period of
indeterminate length in which a person using a computer is so
intensely involved in his project that he forgets basic needs
such as food, drink, sleep, etc. Warning: Excessive burn-in can
lead to burn-out. See hack
mode, larval
stage.
Historical note: the origin of "burn-in" (sense 1) is
apparently the practice of setting a new-model airplane's brakes
on fire, then extinguishing the fire, in order to make them hold
better. This was done on the first version of the U.S. spy-plane,
the U-2.
Node:burst page, Next:busy-wait, Previous:burn-in period, Up:= B =
burst page n.
Syn. banner, sense 1.
Node:busy-wait, Next:buzz, Previous:burst page, Up:= B =
busy-wait vi.
Used of human behavior, conveys that the subject is busy
waiting for someone or something, intends to move instantly as
soon as it shows up, and thus cannot do anything else at the
moment. "Can't talk now, I'm busy-waiting till Bill gets off the
phone."
Technically, `busy-wait' means to wait on an event by spinning through a tight or timed-delay loop
that polls for the event on each pass, as opposed to setting up
an interrupt handler and continuing execution on another part of
the task. In applications this is a wasteful technique, and best
avoided on time-sharing systems where a busy-waiting program may
hog the processor. However, it is often
unavoidable in kernel programming. In the Linux world, kernel
busy-waits are usually referred to as `spinlocks'.
Node:buzz, Next:BWQ, Previous:busy-wait, Up:= B =
buzz vi.
1. Of a program, to run with no indication of progress and
perhaps without guarantee of ever finishing; esp. said of
programs thought to be executing tight loops of code. A program
that is buzzing appears to be catatonic, but never gets out of catatonia,
while a buzzing loop may eventually end of its own accord. "The
program buzzes for about 10 seconds trying to sort all the names
into order." See spin; see also grovel. 2. [ETA Systems] To test a wire or
printed circuit trace for continuity, esp. by applying an AC
rather than DC signal. Some wire faults will pass DC tests but
fail an AC buzz test. 3. To process an array or list in sequence,
doing the same thing to each element. "This loop buzzes through
the tz array looking for a terminator type."
Node:BWQ, Next:by hand, Previous:buzz, Up:= B =
BWQ /B-W-Q/ n.
[IBM: abbreviation, `Buzz Word Quotient'] The percentage of
buzzwords in a speech or documents. Usually roughly proportional
to bogosity. See TLA.
Node:by hand, Next:byte, Previous:BWQ,
Up:= B =
by hand adv.
[common] 1. Said of an operation (especially a repetitive,
trivial, and/or tedious one) that ought to be performed
automatically by the computer, but which a hacker instead has to
step tediously through. "My mailer doesn't have a command to
include the text of the message I'm replying to, so I have to do
it by hand." This does not necessarily mean the speaker has to
retype a copy of the message; it might refer to, say, dropping
into a subshell from the mailer, making a copy of one's mailbox
file, reading that into an editor, locating the top and bottom of
the message in question, deleting the rest of the file, inserting
`>' characters on each line, writing the file, leaving the
editor, returning to the mailer, reading the file in, and later
remembering to delete the file. Compare eyeball search. 2. By extension,
writing code which does something in an explicit or low-level way
for which a presupplied library routine ought to have been
available. "This cretinous B-tree library doesn't supply a decent
iterator, so I'm having to walk the trees by hand."
Node:byte, Next:byte sex, Previous:by hand, Up:=
B =
byte /bi:t/ n.
[techspeak] A unit of memory or data equal to the amount used
to represent one character; on modern architectures this is
usually 8 bits, but may be 9 on 36-bit machines. Some older
architectures used `byte' for quantities of 6 or 7 bits, and the
PDP-10 supported `bytes' that were actually bitfields of 1 to 36
bits! These usages are now obsolete, and even 9-bit bytes have
become rare in the general trend toward power-of-2 word
sizes.
Historical note: The term was coined by Werner Buchholz in
1956 during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer;
originally it was described as 1 to 6 bits (typical I/O equipment
of the period used 6-bit chunks of information). The move to an
8-bit byte happened in late 1956, and this size was later adopted
and promulgated as a standard by the System/360. The word was
coined by mutating the word `bite' so it would not be
accidentally misspelled as bit. See
also nybble.
Node:byte sex, Next:bytesexual, Previous:byte, Up:= B =
byte sex n.
[common] The byte sex of hardware is big-endian or little-endian; see those entries.
Node:bytesexual, Next:Bzzzt! Wrong., Previous:byte sex, Up:= B =
bytesexual /bi:t`sek'shu-*l/ adj.
[rare] Said of hardware, denotes willingness to compute or
pass data in either big-endian
or little-endian format
(depending, presumably, on a mode
bit somewhere). See also NUXI problem.
Node:Bzzzt! Wrong., Next:C, Previous:bytesexual, Up:= B =
Bzzzt! Wrong. /bzt rong/ excl.
[common; Usenet/Internet; punctuation varies] From a Robin
Williams routine in the movie "Dead Poets Society" spoofing radio
or TV quiz programs, such as Truth or Consequences,
where an incorrect answer earns one a blast from the buzzer and
condolences from the interlocutor. A way of expressing mock-rude
disagreement, usually immediately following an included quote
from another poster. The less abbreviated "*Bzzzzt*, wrong, but
thank you for playing" is also common; capitalization and
emphasis of the buzzer sound varies.
Node:= C =, Next:= D =, Previous:= B =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= C =
C:
C Programmer's
Disease:
C&C:
C++:
calculator:
Camel Book:
can:
can't happen:
cancelbot:
Cancelmoose[tm]:
candygrammar:
canonical:
card walloper:
careware:
cargo cult
programming:
cascade:
case and paste:
casters-up mode:
casting the runes:
cat:
catatonic:
cathedral:
cd tilde:
CDA:
cdr:
chad:
chad box:
chain:
channel:
channel hopping:
channel op:
chanop:
char:
charityware:
chase pointers:
chawmp:
check:
cheerfully:
chemist:
Chernobyl chicken:
Chernobyl packet:
chicken head:
chiclet keyboard:
Chinese Army
technique:
choad:
choke:
chomp:
chomper:
CHOP:
Christmas tree:
Christmas tree
packet:
chrome:
chug:
Church of the
SubGenius:
Cinderella Book:
CI$:
Classic C:
clean:
CLM:
clobber:
clock:
clocks:
clone:
clone-and-hack
coding:
clover key:
clue-by-four:
clustergeeking:
co-lo:
code:
coaster:
COBOL:
COBOL fingers:
cobweb site:
code grinder:
code monkey:
Code of the
Geeks:
code police:
codes:
codewalker:
coefficient of X:
cokebottle:
cold boot:
COME FROM:
comm mode:
command key:
comment out:
Commonwealth
Hackish:
compact:
compiler jock:
compo:
compress:
Compu$erve:
computer confetti:
computer geek:
computron:
con:
condition out:
condom:
confuser:
connector
conspiracy:
cons:
considered harmful:
console:
console jockey:
content-free:
control-C:
control-O:
control-Q:
control-S:
Conway's Law:
cookbook:
cooked mode:
cookie:
cookie bear:
cookie file:
cookie jar:
cookie monster:
copious free time:
copper:
copy protection:
copybroke:
copycenter:
copyleft:
copyparty:
copywronged:
core:
core cancer:
core dump:
core leak:
Core Wars:
corge:
cosmic rays:
cough and die:
courier:
cow orker:
cowboy:
CP/M:
CPU Wars:
crack:
crack root:
cracker:
cracking:
crank:
crapplet:
CrApTeX:
crash:
crash and burn:
crawling horror:
cray:
cray instability:
crayola:
crayola books:
crayon:
creationism:
creep:
creeping elegance:
creeping featurism:
creeping
featuritis:
cretin:
cretinous:
crippleware:
critical mass:
crlf:
crock:
cross-post:
crossload:
crudware:
cruft:
cruft together:
cruftsmanship:
crufty:
crumb:
crunch:
cryppie:
CTSS:
cube:
cubing:
cup holder:
cursor dipped in
X:
cuspy:
cut a tape:
cybercrud:
cyberpunk:
cyberspace:
cycle:
cycle crunch:
cycle drought:
cycle of
reincarnation:
cycle server:
cypherpunk:
C|N>K:
Node:C, Next:C Programmer's Disease,
Previous:Bzzzt!
Wrong., Up:= C =
C n.
1. The third letter of the English alphabet. 2. ASCII 1000011.
3. The name of a programming language designed by Dennis Ritchie
during the early 1970s and immediately used to reimplement Unix; so called because many features
derived from an earlier compiler named `B' in commemoration of
its parent, BCPL. (BCPL was in turn descended from an
earlier Algol-derived language, CPL.) Before Bjarne Stroustrup
settled the question by designing C++,
there was a humorous debate over whether C's successor should be
named `D' or `P'. C became immensely popular outside Bell Labs
after about 1980 and is now the dominant language in systems and
microcomputer applications programming. See also languages of choice, indent style.
C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain
varying according to the speaker, as "a language that combines
all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the
readability and maintainability of assembly language".
Node:C Programmer's
Disease, Next:C&C,
Previous:C, Up:= C =
C Programmer's Disease n.
The tendency of the undisciplined C programmer to set
arbitrary but supposedly generous static limits on table sizes
(defined, if you're lucky, by constants in header files) rather
than taking the trouble to do proper dynamic storage allocation.
If an application user later needs to put 68 elements into a
table of size 50, the afflicted programmer reasons that he or she
can easily reset the table size to 68 (or even as much as 70, to
allow for future expansion) and recompile. This gives the
programmer the comfortable feeling of having made the effort to
satisfy the user's (unreasonable) demands, and often affords the
user multiple opportunities to explore the marvelous consequences
of fandango on core.
In severe cases of the disease, the programmer cannot comprehend
why each fix of this kind seems only to further disgruntle the
user.
Node:C&C, Next:C++, Previous:C Programmer's Disease, Up:= C =
C&C //
[common, esp. on _news.admin.net-abuse.email_]
Contraction of "Coffee & Cats". This frequently occurs as a
warning label on USENET posts that are likely to cause you to
snarf coffee onto your keyboard and
startle the cat off your lap.
Node:C++, Next:calculator, Previous:C&C, Up:= C
=
C++ /C'-pluhs-pluhs/ n.
Designed by Bjarne Stroustrup of AT&T Bell Labs as a
successor to C. Now one of the languages of choice,
although many hackers still grumble that it is the successor to
either Algol 68 or Ada (depending on
generation), and a prime example of second-system effect. Almost
anything that can be done in any language can be done in C++, but
it requires a language
lawyer to know what is and what is not legal-- the design
is almost too large to hold in even hackers' heads. Much
of the cruft results from C++'s
attempt to be backward compatible with C. Stroustrup himself has
said in his retrospective book "The Design and Evolution of C++"
(p. 207), "Within C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner
language struggling to get out." [Many hackers would now add
"Yes, and it's called Java" --ESR]
Node:calculator, Next:Camel Book, Previous:C++, Up:= C
=
calculator [Cambridge] n.
Syn. for bitty box.
Node:Camel Book, Next:can, Previous:calculator, Up:= C =
Camel Book n.
Universally recognized nickname for the book "Programming
Perl", by Larry Wall and Randal L. Schwartz, O'Reilly and
Associates 1991, ISBN 0-937175-64-1 (second edition 1996, ISBN
1-56592-149-6). The definitive reference on Perl.
Node:can, Next:can't happen, Previous:Camel Book, Up:= C =
can vt.
To abort a job on a time-sharing system. Used esp. when the
person doing the deed is an operator, as in "canned from the
console". Frequently used in an
imperative sense, as in "Can that print job, the LPT just popped
a sprocket!" Synonymous with gun. It is
said that the ASCII character with mnemonic CAN (0011000) was
used as a kill-job character on some early OSes. Alternatively,
this term may derive from mainstream slang `canned' for being
laid off or fired.
Node:can't happen, Next:cancelbot, Previous:can, Up:= C =
can't happen
The traditional program comment for code executed under a
condition that should never be true, for example a file size
computed as negative. Often, such a condition being true
indicates data corruption or a faulty algorithm; it is almost
always handled by emitting a fatal error message and terminating
or crashing, since there is little else that can be done. Some
case variant of "can't happen" is also often the text emitted if
the `impossible' error actually happens! Although "can't happen"
events are genuinely infrequent in production code, programmers
wise enough to check for them habitually are often surprised at
how frequently they are triggered during development and how many
headaches checking for them turns out to head off. See also firewall code (sense 2).
Node:cancelbot, Next:Cancelmoose[tm], Previous:can't happen, Up:= C =
cancelbot /kan'sel-bot/
[Usenet: compound, cancel + robot] 1. Mythically, a robocanceller 2. In reality, most
cancelbots are manually operated by being fed lists of spam
message IDs.
Node:Cancelmoose[tm], Next:candygrammar, Previous:cancelbot, Up:= C =
Cancelmoose[tm] /kan'sel-moos/
[Usenet] The archetype and model of all good spam-fighters. Once upon a time, the 'Moose would
send out spam-cancels and then post notice anonymously to
_news.admin.policy_, _news.admin.misc_, and
_alt.current-events.net-abuse_. The 'Moose stepped to the
fore on its own initiative, at a time (mid-1994) when
spam-cancels were irregular and disorganized, and behaved
altogether admirably - fair, even-handed, and quick to respond to
comments and criticism, all without self-aggrandizement or
martyrdom. Cancelmoose[tm] quickly gained near-unanimous support
from the readership of all three above-mentioned groups.
Nobody knows who Cancelmoose[tm] really is, and there aren't
even any good rumors. However, the 'Moose now has an e-mail
address (moose@cm.org) and a
web site (http://www.cm.org.)
By early 1995, others had stepped into the spam-cancel
business, and appeared to be comporting themselves well, after
the 'Moose's manner. The 'Moose has now gotten out of the
business, and is more interested in ending spam (and cancels)
entirely.
Node:candygrammar, Next:canonical, Previous:Cancelmoose[tm], Up:= C =
candygrammar n.
A programming-language grammar that is mostly syntactic sugar; the term is also a
play on `candygram'. COBOL, Apple's
Hypertalk language, and a lot of the so-called `4GL' database
languages share this property. The usual intent of such designs
is that they be as English-like as possible, on the theory that
they will then be easier for unskilled people to program. This
intention comes to grief on the reality that syntax isn't what
makes programming hard; it's the mental effort and organization
required to specify an algorithm precisely that costs. Thus the
invariable result is that `candygrammar' languages are just as
difficult to program in as terser ones, and far more painful for
the experienced hacker.
[The overtones from the old Chevy Chase skit on Saturday Night
Live should not be overlooked. This was a "Jaws" parody. Someone
lurking outside an apartment door tries all kinds of bogus ways
to get the occupant to open up, while ominous music plays in the
background. The last attempt is a half-hearted "Candygram!" When
the door is opened, a shark bursts in and chomps the poor
occupant. [There is a similar gag in "Blazing Saddles" --ESR]
There is a moral here for those attracted to candygrammars. Note
that, in many circles, pretty much the same ones who remember
Monty Python sketches, all it takes is the word "Candygram!",
suitably timed, to get people rolling on the floor. -- GLS]
Node:canonical, Next:card walloper, Previous:candygrammar, Up:= C =
canonical adj.
[very common; historically, `according to religious law'] The
usual or standard state or manner of something. This word has a
somewhat more technical meaning in mathematics. Two formulas such
as 9 + x and x + 9 are said to be equivalent because they mean
the same thing, but the second one is in `canonical form' because
it is written in the usual way, with the highest power of x
first. Usually there are fixed rules you can use to decide
whether something is in canonical form. The jargon meaning, a
relaxation of the technical meaning, acquired its present loading
in computer-science culture largely through its prominence in
Alonzo Church's work in computation theory and mathematical logic
(see Knights
of the Lambda Calculus). Compare vanilla.
Non-technical academics do not use the adjective `canonical'
in any of the senses defined above with any regularity; they do
however use the nouns `canon' and `canonicity' (not
**canonicalness or **canonicality). The `canon' of a given author
is the complete body of authentic works by that author (this
usage is familiar to Sherlock Holmes fans as well as to literary
scholars). `The canon' is the body of works in a given
field (e.g., works of literature, or of art, or of music) deemed
worthwhile for students to study and for scholars to
investigate.
The word `canon' has an interesting history. It derives
ultimately from the Greek `kanon' (akin to the English `cane')
referring to a reed. Reeds were used for measurement, and in
Latin and later Greek the word `canon' meant a rule or a
standard. The establishment of a canon of scriptures within
Christianity was meant to define a standard or a rule for the
religion. The above non-techspeak academic usages stem from this
instance of a defined and accepted body of work. Alongside this
usage was the promulgation of `canons' (`rules') for the
government of the Catholic Church. The techspeak usages
("according to religious law") derive from this use of the Latin
`canon'.
Hackers invest this term with a playfulness that makes an
ironic contrast with its historical meaning. A true story: One
Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some annoyance at
the incessant use of jargon. Over his loud objections, GLS and
RMS made a point of using as much of it as possible in his
presence, and eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one
conversation, he used the word `canonical' in jargon-like fashion
without thinking. Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking
jargon too!" Stallman: "What did he say?" Steele: "Bob just used
`canonical' in the canonical way."
Of course, canonicality depends on context, but it is
implicitly defined as the way hackers normally expect
things to be. Thus, a hacker may claim with a straight face that
`according to religious law' is not the canonical
meaning of `canonical'.
Node:card walloper, Next:careware, Previous:canonical, Up:= C =
card walloper n.
An EDP programmer who grinds out batch programs that do stupid
things like print people's paychecks. Compare code grinder. See also punched card, eighty-column mind.
Node:careware, Next:cargo cult programming,
Previous:card
walloper, Up:= C =
careware /keir'weir/ n.
A variety of shareware for
which either the author suggests that some payment be made to a
nominated charity or a levy directed to charity is included on
top of the distribution charge. Syn. charityware; compare crippleware, sense 2.
Node:cargo cult
programming, Next:cascade,
Previous:careware, Up:= C =
cargo cult programming n.
A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual
inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real
purpose. A cargo cult programmer will usually explain the extra
code as a way of working around some bug encountered in the past,
but usually neither the bug nor the reason the code apparently
avoided the bug was ever fully understood (compare shotgun debugging, voodoo programming).
The term `cargo cult' is a reference to aboriginal religions
that grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The
practices of these cults center on building elaborate mockups of
airplanes and military style landing strips in the hope of
bringing the return of the god-like airplanes that brought such
marvelous cargo during the war. Hackish usage probably derives
from Richard Feynman's characterization of certain practices as
"cargo cult science" in his book "Surely You're Joking, Mr.
Feynman!" (W. W. Norton & Co, New York 1985, ISBN
0-393-01921-7).
Node:cascade, Next:case and paste, Previous:cargo cult
programming, Up:= C =
cascade n.
1. A huge volume of spurious error-message output produced by
a compiler with poor error recovery. Too frequently, one trivial
syntax error (such as a missing `)' or `}') throws the parser out
of synch so that much of the remaining program text is
interpreted as garbaged or ill-formed. 2. A chain of Usenet
followups, each adding some trivial variation or riposte to the
text of the previous one, all of which is reproduced in the new
message; an include war in
which the object is to create a sort of communal graffito.
Node:case and paste, Next:casters-up mode,
Previous:cascade, Up:= C =
case and paste n.
[from `cut and paste'] 1. The addition of a new feature to an existing system by selecting the
code from an existing feature and pasting it in with minor
changes. Common in telephony circles because most operations in a
telephone switch are selected using case statements.
Leads to software
bloat.
In some circles of EMACS users this is called `programming by
Meta-W', because Meta-W is the EMACS command for copying a block
of text to a kill buffer in preparation to pasting it in
elsewhere. The term is condescending, implying that the
programmer is acting mindlessly rather than thinking carefully
about what is required to integrate the code for two similar
cases.
At DEC (now Compaq), this is
sometimes called `clone-and-hack' coding.
Node:casters-up mode, Next:casting the runes,
Previous:case and
paste, Up:= C =
casters-up mode n.
[IBM, prob. fr. slang _belly up_] Yet another synonym for
`broken' or `down'. Usually connotes a major failure. A system
(hardware or software) which is `down' may be already being
restarted before the failure is noticed, whereas one which is
`casters up' is usually a good excuse to take the rest of the day
off (as long as you're not responsible for fixing it).
Node:casting the runes,
Next:cat, Previous:casters-up mode, Up:= C =
casting the runes n.
What a guru does when you ask him
or her to run a particular program and type at it because it
never works for anyone else; esp. used when nobody can ever see
what the guru is doing different from what J. Random Luser does.
Compare incantation, runes, examining the entrails;
also see the AI koan about Tom Knight in "Some AI Koans" (Appendix A).
A correspondent from England tells us that one of ICL's most
talented systems designers used to be called out occasionally to
service machines which the field
circus had given up on. Since he knew the design inside
out, he could often find faults simply by listening to a quick
outline of the symptoms. He used to play on this by going to some
site where the field circus had just spent the last two weeks
solid trying to find a fault, and spreading a diagram of the
system out on a table top. He'd then shake some chicken bones and
cast them over the diagram, peer at the bones intently for a
minute, and then tell them that a certain module needed
replacing. The system would start working again immediately upon
the replacement.
Node:cat, Next:catatonic, Previous:casting the runes, Up:= C =
cat [from `catenate' via Unix cat(1)] vt.
1. [techspeak] To spew an entire file to the screen or some
other output sink without pause (syn. blast). 2. By extension, to dump large amounts
of data at an unprepared target or with no intention of browsing
it carefully. Usage: considered silly. Rare outside Unix sites.
See also dd, BLT.
Among Unix fans, cat(1) is considered an
excellent example of user-interface design, because it delivers
the file contents without such verbosity as spacing or headers
between the files, and because it does not require the files to
consist of lines of text, but works with any sort of data.
Among Unix haters, cat(1) is considered the canonical example of bad
user-interface design, because of its woefully unobvious name. It
is far more often used to blast a
file to standard output than to concatenate two files. The name
cat for the former operation is just as unintuitive
as, say, LISP's cdr.
Of such oppositions are holy
wars made....
Node:catatonic, Next:cathedral, Previous:cat, Up:= C =
catatonic adj.
Describes a condition of suspended animation in which
something is so wedged or hung that it makes no response. If you are
typing on a terminal and suddenly the computer doesn't even echo
the letters back to the screen as you type, let alone do what
you're asking it to do, then the computer is suffering from
catatonia (possibly because it has crashed). "There I was in the
middle of a winning game of nethack
and it went catatonic on me! Aaargh!" Compare buzz.
Node:cathedral, Next:cd tilde, Previous:catatonic, Up:= C =
cathedral n.,adj.
[see bazaar for derivation] The
`classical' mode of software engineering long thought to be
necessarily implied by Brooks's
Law. Features small teams, tight project control, and
long release intervals. This term came into use after analysis of
the Linux experience suggested there might be something wrong (or
at least incomplete) in the classical assumptions.
Node:cd tilde, Next:CDA, Previous:cathedral, Up:= C =
cd tilde /C-D til-d*/ vi.
To go home. From the Unix C-shell and Korn-shell command
cd ~, which takes one to one's $HOME
(cd with no arguments happens to do the same thing).
By extension, may be used with other arguments; thus, over an
electronic chat link, cd ~coffee would mean "I'm
going to the coffee machine."
Node:CDA, Next:cdr, Previous:cd
tilde, Up:= C =
CDA /C-D-A/
The "Communications Decency Act" of 1996, passed on Black Thursday as section 502 of
a major telecommunications reform bill. The CDA made it a federal
crime in the USA to send a communication which is "obscene, lewd,
lascivious, filthy, or indecent, with intent to annoy, abuse,
threaten, or harass another person." It also threatened with
imprisonment anyone who "knowingly" makes accessible to minors
any message that "describes, in terms patently offensive as
measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory
activities or organs".
While the CDA was sold as a measure to protect minors from the
putative evils of pornography, the repressive political aims of
the bill were laid bare by the Hyde amendment, which intended to
outlaw discussion of abortion on the Internet.
To say that this direct attack on First Amendment free-speech
rights was not well received on the Internet would be putting it
mildly. A firestorm of protest followed, including a February
29th mass demonstration by thousands of netters who turned their
home pages black for 48 hours.
Several civil-rights groups and computing/telecommunications
companies mounted a constitutional challenge. The CDA was
demolished by a strongly-worded decision handed down on in
8th-circuit Federal court and subsequently affirmed by the U.S.
Supreme Court on 26 June 1997 (`White Thursday'). See also Exon.
Node:cdr, Next:chad, Previous:CDA,
Up:= C =
cdr /ku'dr/ or /kuh'dr/ vt.
[from LISP] To skip past the first item from a list of things
(generalized from the LISP operation on binary tree structures,
which returns a list consisting of all but the first element of
its argument). In the form `cdr down', to trace down a list of
elements: "Shall we cdr down the agenda?" Usage: silly. See also
loop through.
Historical note: The instruction format of the IBM 704 that
hosted the original LISP implementation featured two 15-bit
fields called the `address' and `decrement' parts. The term `cdr'
was originally `Contents of Decrement part of Register'.
Similarly, `car' stood for `Contents of Address part of
Register'.
The cdr and car operations have since become bases for
formation of compound metaphors in non-LISP contexts. GLS
recalls, for example, a programming project in which strings were
represented as linked lists; the get-character and skip-character
operations were of course called CHAR and CHDR.
Node:chad, Next:chad box, Previous:cdr, Up:= C =
chad /chad/ n.
1. [common] The perforated edge strips on printer paper, after
they have been separated from the printed portion. Also called
selvage, perf, and ripoff. 2.
obs. The confetti-like paper bits punched out of cards or paper
tape; this has also been called `chaff', `computer confetti', and
`keypunch droppings'. It's reported that this was very old Army
slang, and it may now be mainstream; it has been reported seen
(1993) in directions for a card-based voting machine in
California.
Historical note: One correspondent believes `chad' (sense 2)
derives from the Chadless keypunch (named for its inventor),
which cut little u-shaped tabs in the card to make a hole when
the tab folded back, rather than punching out a circle/rectangle;
it was clear that if the Chadless keypunch didn't make them, then
the stuff that other keypunches made had to be `chad'. There is a
legend that the word was originally acronymic, standing for "Card
Hole Aggregate Debris", but this has all the earmarks of a backronym.
Node:chad box, Next:chain, Previous:chad, Up:= C =
chad box n.
A metal box about the size of a lunchbox (or in some models a
large wastebasket), for collecting the chad (sense 2) that accumulated in Iron Age card punches. You had to open the
covers of the card punch periodically and empty the chad box. The
bit bucket was notionally the
equivalent device in the CPU enclosure, which was typically
across the room in another great gray-and-blue box.
Node:chain, Next:channel, Previous:chad box, Up:= C =
chain
1. vi. [orig. from BASIC's CHAIN statement] To
hand off execution to a child or successor without going through
the OS command interpreter that invoked
it. The state of the parent program is lost and there is no
returning to it. Though this facility used to be common on
memory-limited micros and is still widely supported for backward
compatibility, the jargon usage is semi-obsolescent; in
particular, most Unix programmers will think of this as an exec. Oppose the more modern `subshell'. 2.
n. A series of linked data areas within an operating system or
application. `Chain rattling' is the process of repeatedly
running through the linked data areas searching for one which is
of interest to the executing program. The implication is that
there is a very large number of links on the chain.
Node:channel, Next:channel hopping, Previous:chain, Up:= C =
channel n.
[IRC] The basic unit of discussion on IRC. Once one joins a channel, everything one
types is read by others on that channel. Channels are named with
strings that begin with a `#' sign and can have topic
descriptions (which are generally irrelevant to the actual
subject of discussion). Some notable channels are
#initgame, #hottub,
callahans, and #report. At times of
international crisis, #report has hundreds of
members, some of whom take turns listening to various news
services and typing in summaries of the news, or in some cases,
giving first-hand accounts of the action (e.g., Scud missile
attacks in Tel Aviv during the Gulf War in 1991).
Node:channel hopping, Next:channel op, Previous:channel, Up:= C =
channel hopping n.
[common; IRC, GEnie] To rapidly switch channels on IRC, or a GEnie chat board, just as a social
butterfly might hop from one group to another at a party. This
term may derive from the TV watcher's idiom, `channel
surfing'.
Node:channel op, Next:chanop, Previous:channel hopping, Up:= C =
channel op /chan'l op/ n.
[IRC] Someone who is endowed with privileges on a particular
IRC channel; commonly abbreviated
`chanop' or `CHOP' or just `op' (as of 2000 these short forms
have almost crowded out the parent usage). These privileges
include the right to kick users, to
change various status bits, and to make others into CHOPs.
Node:chanop, Next:char, Previous:channel op, Up:= C =
chanop /chan'-op/ n.
[IRC] See channel op.
Node:char, Next:charityware, Previous:chanop, Up:= C
=
char /keir/ or /char/; rarely, /kar/ n.
Shorthand for `character'. Esp. used by C programmers, as
`char' is C's typename for character data.
Node:charityware, Next:chase pointers, Previous:char, Up:= C =
charityware /cha'rit-ee-weir`/ n.
Syn. careware.
Node:chase pointers, Next:chawmp, Previous:charityware, Up:= C =
chase pointers
1. vi. To go through multiple levels of indirection, as in
traversing a linked list or graph structure. Used esp. by
programmers in C, where explicit pointers are a very common data
type. This is techspeak, but it remains jargon when used of human
networks. "I'm chasing pointers. Bob said you could tell me who
to talk to about...." See dangling pointer and snap. 2. [Cambridge] `pointer chase' or `pointer
hunt': The process of going through a core dump (sense 1), interactively or on a
large piece of paper printed with hex runes, following dynamic data-structures. Used
only in a debugging context.
Node:chawmp, Next:check, Previous:chase pointers, Up:= C =
chawmp n.
[University of Florida] 16 or 18 bits (half of a machine
word). This term was used by FORTH hackers during the late
1970s/early 1980s; it is said to have been archaic then, and may
now be obsolete. It was coined in revolt against the promiscuous
use of `word' for anything between 16 and 32 bits; `word' has an
additional special meaning for FORTH hacks that made the
overloading intolerable. For similar reasons, /gaw'bl/ (spelled
`gawble' or possibly `gawbul') was in use as a term for 32 or 48
bits (presumably a full machine word, but our sources are unclear
on this). These terms are more easily understood if one thinks of
them as faithful phonetic spellings of `chomp' and `gobble'
pronounced in a Florida or other Southern U.S. dialect. For
general discussion of similar terms, see nybble.
Node:check, Next:cheerfully, Previous:chawmp, Up:= C
=
check n.
A hardware-detected error condition, most commonly used to
refer to actual hardware failures rather than software-induced
traps. E.g., a `parity check' is the result of a
hardware-detected parity error. Recorded here because the word
often humorously extended to non-technical problems. For example,
the term `child check' has been used to refer to the problems
caused by a small child who is curious to know what happens when
s/he presses all the cute buttons on a computer's console (of
course, this particular problem could have been prevented with
molly-guards).
Node:cheerfully, Next:chemist, Previous:check, Up:= C
=
cheerfully adv.
See happily.
Node:chemist, Next:Chernobyl chicken, Previous:cheerfully, Up:= C =
chemist n.
[Cambridge] Someone who wastes computer time on number-crunching when you'd far
rather the machine were doing something more productive, such as
working out anagrams of your name or printing Snoopy calendars or
running life patterns. May or may not
refer to someone who actually studies chemistry.
Node:Chernobyl chicken, Next:Chernobyl packet,
Previous:chemist, Up:= C =
Chernobyl chicken n.
See laser chicken.
Node:Chernobyl packet, Next:chicken head, Previous:Chernobyl chicken,
Up:= C =
Chernobyl packet /cher-noh'b*l pak'*t/ n.
A network packet that induces a broadcast storm and/or network meltdown, in memory of the
April 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine. The typical
scenario involves an IP Ethernet datagram that passes through a
gateway with both source and destination Ether and IP address set
as the respective broadcast addresses for the subnetworks being
gated between. Compare Christmas tree packet.
Node:chicken head, Next:chiclet keyboard,
Previous:Chernobyl
packet, Up:= C =
chicken head n.
[Commodore] The Commodore Business Machines logo, which
strongly resembles a poultry part (within Commodore itself the
logo was always called `chicken lips'). Rendered in ASCII as
`C='. With the arguable exception of the Amiga (see amoeba), Commodore's machines were notoriously
crocky little bitty boxes (see
also PETSCII), albeit people have
written multitasking Unix-like operating systems with TCP/IP
networking for them. Thus, this usage may owe something to Philip
K. Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (the basis
for the movie "Blade Runner"; the novel is now sold under that
title), in which a `chickenhead' is a mutant with below-average
intelligence.
Node:chiclet keyboard, Next:Chinese Army
technique, Previous:chicken head, Up:= C =
chiclet keyboard n.
A keyboard with a small, flat rectangular or lozenge-shaped
rubber or plastic keys that look like pieces of chewing gum.
(Chiclets is the brand name of a variety of chewing gum that does
in fact resemble the keys of chiclet keyboards.) Used esp. to
describe the original IBM PCjr keyboard. Vendors unanimously
liked these because they were cheap, and a lot of early portable
and laptop products got launched using them. Customers rejected
the idea with almost equal unanimity, and chiclets are not often
seen on anything larger than a digital watch any more.
Node:Chinese Army
technique, Next:choad,
Previous:chiclet
keyboard, Up:= C =
Chinese Army technique n.
Syn. Mongolian
Hordes technique.
Node:choad, Next:choke, Previous:Chinese Army technique, Up:= C =
choad /chohd/ n.
Synonym for `penis' used in _alt.tasteless_ and
popularized by the denizens thereof. They say: "We think maybe
it's from Middle English but we're all too damned lazy to check
the OED." [I'm not. It isn't. --ESR] This term is alleged to have
been inherited through 1960s underground comics, and to have been
recently sighted in the Beavis and Butthead cartoons. Speakers of
the Hindi, Bengali and Gujarati languages have confirmed that
`choad' is in fact an Indian vernacular word equivalent to
`fuck'; it is therefore likely to have entered English slang via
the British Raj.
Node:choke, Next:chomp, Previous:choad, Up:= C
=
choke v.
1. [common] To reject input, often ungracefully. "NULs make
System V's lpr(1) choke." "I tried building an EMACS binary to use X, but cpp(1) choked on all those
#defines." See barf,
gag, vi. 2.
[MIT] More generally, to fail at any endeavor, but with some
flair or bravado; the popular definition is "to snatch defeat
from the jaws of victory."
Node:chomp, Next:chomper, Previous:choke, Up:= C
=
chomp vi.
1. To lose; specifically, to chew
on something of which more was bitten off than one can. Probably
related to gnashing of teeth. 2. To bite the bag; See bagbiter.
A hand gesture commonly accompanies this. To perform it, hold
the four fingers together and place the thumb against their tips.
Now open and close your hand rapidly to suggest a biting action
(much like what Pac-Man does in the classic video game, though
this pantomime seems to predate that). The gesture alone means
`chomp chomp' (see "Verb
Doubling" in the "Jargon Construction" section of
the Prependices). The hand may be pointed at the object of
complaint, and for real emphasis you can use both hands at once.
Doing this to a person is equivalent to saying "You chomper!" If
you point the gesture at yourself, it is a humble but humorous
admission of some failure. You might do this if someone told you
that a program you had written had failed in some surprising way
and you felt dumb for not having anticipated it.
Node:chomper, Next:CHOP, Previous:chomp, Up:= C
=
chomper n.
Someone or something that is chomping; a loser. See loser, bagbiter, chomp.
Node:CHOP, Next:Christmas tree, Previous:chomper, Up:= C =
CHOP /chop/ n.
[IRC] See channel op.
Node:Christmas tree, Next:Christmas tree
packet, Previous:CHOP,
Up:= C =
Christmas tree n.
A kind of RS-232 line tester or breakout box featuring rows of
blinking red and green LEDs suggestive of Christmas lights.
Node:Christmas tree
packet, Next:chrome,
Previous:Christmas
tree, Up:= C =
Christmas tree packet n.
A packet with every single option set for whatever protocol is
in use. See kamikaze
packet, Chernobyl
packet. (The term doubtless derives from a fanciful image
of each little option bit being represented by a
different-colored light bulb, all turned on.) Compare Godzillagram.
Node:chrome, Next:chug, Previous:Christmas tree packet, Up:= C =
chrome n.
[from automotive slang via wargaming] Showy features added to
attract users but contributing little or nothing to the power of
a system. "The 3D icons in Motif are just chrome, but they
certainly are pretty chrome!" Distinguished from bells and whistles by the
fact that the latter are usually added to gratify developers' own
desires for featurefulness. Often used as a term of contempt.
Node:chug, Next:Church of the SubGenius,
Previous:chrome, Up:= C =
chug vi.
To run slowly; to grind or grovel. "The disk is chugging like
crazy."
Node:Church of the
SubGenius, Next:Cinderella Book, Previous:chug, Up:= C =
Church of the SubGenius n.
A mutant offshoot of Discordianism launched in 1981 as a
spoof of fundamentalist Christianity by the `Reverend' Ivan
Stang, a brilliant satirist with a gift for promotion. Popular
among hackers as a rich source of bizarre imagery and references
such as "Bob" the divine drilling-equipment salesman, the
Benevolent Space Xists, and the Stark Fist of Removal. Much
SubGenius theory is concerned with the acquisition of the
mystical substance or quality of slack. There is a home page at http://www.subgenius.com/.
Node:Cinderella Book, Next:CI$, Previous:Church of the SubGenius,
Up:= C =
Cinderella Book [CMU] n.
"Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation",
by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman, (Addison-Wesley, 1979). So
called because the cover depicts a girl (putatively Cinderella)
sitting in front of a Rube Goldberg device and holding a rope
coming out of it. On the back cover, the device is in shambles
after she has (inevitably) pulled on the rope. See also book titles.
Node:CI$, Next:Classic C, Previous:Cinderella Book, Up:= C =
CI$ // n.
Hackerism for `CIS', CompuServe Information Service. The
dollar sign refers to CompuServe's rather steep line charges.
Often used in sig blocks just
before a CompuServe address. Syn. Compu$erve.
Node:Classic C, Next:clean, Previous:CI$, Up:= C =
Classic C /klas'ik C/ n.
[a play on `Coke Classic'] The C programming language as
defined in the first edition of K&R, with some small additions. It is also
known as `K&R C'. The name came into use while C was being
standardized by the ANSI X3J11 committee. Also `C Classic'.
An analogous construction is sometimes applied elsewhere:
thus, `X Classic', where X = Star Trek (referring to the original
TV series) or X = PC (referring to IBM's ISA-bus machines as
opposed to the PS/2 series). This construction is especially used
of product series in which the newer versions are considered
serious losers relative to the older ones.
Node:clean, Next:CLM, Previous:Classic C, Up:= C =
clean 1. adj.
Used of hardware or software designs, implies `elegance in the
small', that is, a design or implementation that may not hold any
surprises but does things in a way that is reasonably intuitive
and relatively easy to comprehend from the outside. The antonym
is `grungy' or crufty. 2. v. To
remove unneeded or undesired files in a effort to reduce clutter:
"I'm cleaning up my account." "I cleaned up the garbage and now
have 100 Meg free on that partition."
Node:CLM, Next:clobber, Previous:clean, Up:= C
=
CLM /C-L-M/
[Sun: `Career Limiting Move'] 1. n. An action endangering
one's future prospects of getting plum projects and raises, and
possibly one's job: "His Halloween costume was a parody of his
manager. He won the prize for `best CLM'." 2. adj. Denotes
extreme severity of a bug, discovered by a customer and obviously
missed earlier because of poor testing: "That's a CLM bug!"
Node:clobber, Next:clock, Previous:CLM, Up:= C =
clobber vt.
To overwrite, usually unintentionally: "I walked off the end
of the array and clobbered the stack." Compare mung, scribble,
trash, and smash the stack.
Node:clock, Next:clocks, Previous:clobber, Up:= C
=
clock
1. n 1. [techspeak] The master oscillator that steps a CPU or
other digital circuit through its paces. This has nothing to do
with the time of day, although the software counter that keeps
track of the latter may be derived from the former. 2. vt. To run
a CPU or other digital circuit at a particular rate. "If you
clock it at 100MHz, it gets warm.". See overclock. 3. vt. To force a digital circuit
from one state to the next by applying a single clock pulse. "The
data must be stable 10ns before you clock the latch."
Node:clocks, Next:clone, Previous:clock, Up:= C
=
clocks n.
Processor logic cycles, so called because each generally
corresponds to one clock pulse in the processor's timing. The
relative execution times of instructions on a machine are usually
discussed in clocks rather than absolute fractions of a second;
one good reason for this is that clock speeds for various models
of the machine may increase as technology improves, and it is
usually the relative times one is interested in when discussing
the instruction set. Compare cycle,
jiffy.
Node:clone, Next:clone-and-hack coding, Previous:clocks, Up:= C =
clone n.
1. An exact duplicate: "Our product is a clone of their
product." Implies a legal reimplementation from documentation or
by reverse-engineering. Also connotes lower price. 2. A shoddy,
spurious copy: "Their product is a clone of our product." 3. A
blatant ripoff, most likely violating copyright, patent, or trade
secret protections: "Your product is a clone of my product." This
use implies legal action is pending. 4. `PC clone:' a PC-BUS/ISA
or EISA-compatible 80x86-based microcomputer (this use is
sometimes spelled `klone' or `PClone'). These invariably have
much more bang for the buck than the IBM archetypes they
resemble. 5. In the construction `Unix clone': An OS designed to
deliver a Unix-lookalike environment without Unix license fees,
or with additional `mission-critical' features such as support
for real-time programming. 6. v. To make an exact copy of
something. "Let me clone that" might mean "I want to borrow that
paper so I can make a photocopy" or "Let me get a copy of that
file before you mung it".
Node:clone-and-hack coding,
Next:clover key,
Previous:clone, Up:= C =
clone-and-hack coding n.
[DEC] Syn. case and
paste.
Node:clover key, Next:clue-by-four, Previous:clone-and-hack coding, Up:= C =
clover key n.
[Mac users] See feature
key.
Node:clue-by-four, Next:clustergeeking, Previous:clover key, Up:= C =
clue-by-four
[Usenet: portmanteau, clue + two-by-four] The notional stick
with which one whacks an aggressively clueless person. This term
derives from a western American folk saying about training a mule
"First, you got to hit him with a two-by-four. That's to get his
attention." The clue-by-four is a close relative of the LART. Syn. `clue stick'. This metaphor is
commonly elaborated; your editor once heard a hacker say "I
strike you with the great sword Clue-Bringer!"
Node:clustergeeking, Next:co-lo, Previous:clue-by-four, Up:= C =
clustergeeking /kluh'st*r-gee`king/ n.
[CMU] Spending more time at a computer cluster doing CS
homework than most people spend breathing.
Node:co-lo, Next:coaster, Previous:clustergeeking, Up:= C =
co-lo /koh'loh`/ n.
[very common; first heard c.1995] Short for `co-location',
used of a machine you own that is physically sited on the
premises of an ISP in order to take advantage of the ISP's direct
access to lots of network bandwidthm. Often in the phrases `co-lo
box' or `co-lo machines'. Co-lo boxes are typically web and FTP
servers remote-administered by their owners, who may seldom or
never visit the actual site.
Node:coaster, Next:COBOL, Previous:co-lo, Up:= C
=
coaster n.
1. Unuseable CD produced during failed attempt at writing to
writeable or re-writeable CD media. Certainly related to the
coaster-like shape of a CD, and the relative value of these
failures. "I made a lot of coasters before I got a good CD." 2.
Useless CDs received in the mail from the likes of AOL, MSN, CI$,
Prodigy, ad nauseam.
In the U.K., `beermat' is often used in these senses.
Node:COBOL, Next:COBOL fingers, Previous:coaster, Up:= C =
COBOL /koh'bol/ n.
[COmmon Business-Oriented Language] (Synonymous with evil.) A weak, verbose, and flabby language
used by card wallopers to
do boring mindless things on dinosaur mainframes. Hackers believe that all
COBOL programmers are suits or code grinders, and no
self-respecting hacker will ever admit to having learned the
language. Its very name is seldom uttered without ritual
expressions of disgust or horror. One popular one is Edsger W.
Dijkstra's famous observation that "The use of COBOL cripples the
mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal
offense." (from "Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal
Perspective") See also fear
and loathing, software
rot.
Node:COBOL fingers, Next:cobweb site, Previous:COBOL, Up:= C =
COBOL fingers /koh'bol fing'grz/ n.
Reported from Sweden, a (hypothetical) disease one might get
from coding in COBOL. The language requires code verbose beyond
all reason (see candygrammar);
thus it is alleged that programming too much in COBOL causes
one's fingers to wear down to stubs by the endless typing. "I
refuse to type in all that source code again; it would give me
COBOL fingers!"
Node:cobweb site, Next:code, Previous:COBOL fingers, Up:= C =
cobweb site n.
A World Wide Web Site that hasn't been updated so long it has
figuratively grown cobwebs.
Node:code, Next:code grinder, Previous:cobweb site, Up:= C =
code n.
The stuff that software writers write, either in source form
or after translation by a compiler or assembler. Often used in
opposition to "data", which is the stuff that code operates on.
This is a mass noun, as in "How much code does it take to do a
bubble sort?", or "The code
is loaded at the high end of RAM." Anyone referring to software
as "the software codes" is probably a newbie or a suit.
Node:code grinder, Next:code monkey, Previous:code, Up:= C =
code grinder n.
1. A suit-wearing minion of the
sort hired in legion strength by banks and insurance companies to
implement payroll packages in RPG and other such unspeakable
horrors. In its native habitat, the code grinder often removes
the suit jacket to reveal an underplumage consisting of
button-down shirt (starch optional) and a tie. In times of dire
stress, the sleeves (if long) may be rolled up and the tie
loosened about half an inch. It seldom helps. The code grinder's milieu is about as far
from hackerdom as one can get and still touch a computer; the
term connotes pity. See Real
World, suit. 2. Used of or to
a hacker, a really serious slur on the person's creative ability;
connotes a design style characterized by primitive technique,
rule-boundedness, brute
force, and utter lack of imagination. Compare card walloper; contrast hacker, Real
Programmer.
Node:code monkey, Next:Code of the Geeks,
Previous:code
grinder, Up:= C =
code monkey n
1. A person only capable of grinding out code, but unable to
perform the higher-primate tasks of software architecture,
analysis, and design. Mildly insulting. Often applied to the most
junior people on a programming team. 2. Anyone who writes code
for a living; a programmer. 3. A self-deprecating way of denying
responsibility for a management
decision, or of complaining about having to live with such
decisions. As in "Don't ask me why we need to write a compiler
in+COBOL, I'm just a code monkey."
Node:Code of the Geeks,
Next:code police,
Previous:code monkey,
Up:= C =
Code of the Geeks n.
see geek code.
Node:code police, Next:codes, Previous:Code of the Geeks, Up:= C =
code police n.
[by analogy with George Orwell's `thought police'] A mythical
team of Gestapo-like storm troopers that might burst into one's
office and arrest one for violating programming style rules. May
be used either seriously, to underline a claim that a particular
style violation is dangerous, or ironically, to suggest that the
practice under discussion is condemned mainly by anal-retentive
weenies. "Dike out that goto or the
code police will get you!" The ironic usage is perhaps more
common.
Node:codes, Next:codewalker, Previous:code police, Up:= C =
codes n.
[scientific computing] Programs. This usage is common in
people who hack supercomputers and heavy-duty number-crunching, rare to unknown
elsewhere (if you say "codes" to hackers outside scientific
computing, their first association is likely to be "and
cyphers").
Node:codewalker, Next:coefficient of X, Previous:codes, Up:= C =
codewalker n.
A program component that traverses other programs for a
living. Compilers have codewalkers in their front ends; so do
cross-reference generators and some database front ends. Other
utility programs that try to do too much with source code may
turn into codewalkers. As in "This new vgrind
feature would require a codewalker to implement."
Node:coefficient of X, Next:cokebottle, Previous:codewalker, Up:= C =
coefficient of X n.
Hackish speech makes heavy use of pseudo-mathematical
metaphors. Four particularly important ones involve the terms
`coefficient', `factor', `index of X', and `quotient'. They are
often loosely applied to things you cannot really be quantitative
about, but there are subtle distinctions among them that convey
information about the way the speaker mentally models whatever he
or she is describing.
`Foo factor' and `foo quotient' tend to describe something for
which the issue is one of presence or absence. The canonical
example is fudge factor.
It's not important how much you're fudging; the term simply
acknowledges that some fudging is needed. You might talk of
liking a movie for its silliness factor. Quotient tends to imply
that the property is a ratio of two opposing factors: "I would
have won except for my luck quotient." This could also be "I
would have won except for the luck factor", but using
quotient emphasizes that it was bad luck overpowering
good luck (or someone else's good luck overpowering your
own).
`Foo index' and `coefficient of foo' both tend to imply that
foo is, if not strictly measurable, at least something that can
be larger or smaller. Thus, you might refer to a paper or person
as having a `high bogosity index', whereas you would be less
likely to speak of a `high bogosity factor'. `Foo index' suggests
that foo is a condensation of many quantities, as in the mundane
cost-of-living index; `coefficient of foo' suggests that foo is a
fundamental quantity, as in a coefficient of friction. The choice
between these terms is often one of personal preference; e.g.,
some people might feel that bogosity is a fundamental attribute
and thus say `coefficient of bogosity', whereas others might feel
it is a combination of factors and thus say `bogosity index'.
Node:cokebottle, Next:cold boot, Previous:coefficient of X, Up:= C =
cokebottle /kohk'bot-l/ n.
Any very unusual character, particularly one you can't type
because it isn't on your keyboard. MIT people used to complain
about the `control-meta-cokebottle' commands at SAIL, and SAIL
people complained right back about the `escape-escape-cokebottle'
commands at MIT. After the demise of the space-cadet keyboard,
`cokebottle' faded away as serious usage, but was often invoked
humorously to describe an (unspecified) weird or non-intuitive
keystroke command. It may be due for a second inning, however.
The OSF/Motif window manager, mwm(1), has a reserved
keystroke for switching to the default set of keybindings and
behavior. This keystroke is (believe it or not)
`control-meta-bang' (see bang). Since
the exclamation point looks a lot like an upside down Coke
bottle, Motif hackers have begun referring to this keystroke as
`cokebottle'. See also quadruple
bucky.
Node:cold boot, Next:COME FROM, Previous:cokebottle, Up:= C =
cold boot n.
See boot.
Node:COME FROM, Next:comm mode, Previous:cold boot, Up:= C =
COME FROM n.
A semi-mythical language construct dual to the `go to';
COME FROM would cause the referenced
label to act as a sort of trapdoor, so that if the program ever
reached it control would quietly and automagically be transferred to the
statement following the COME FROM. COME
FROM was first proposed in R. Lawrence Clark's "A
Linguistic Contribution to GOTO-less programming", which appeared
in a 1973 Datamation issue (and
was reprinted in the April 1984 issue of "Communications of the
ACM"). This parodied the then-raging `structured programming'
holy wars (see considered harmful). Mythically,
some variants are the `assigned COME FROM' and the `computed COME
FROM' (parodying some nasty control constructs in FORTRAN and
some extended BASICs). Of course, multi-tasking (or
non-determinism) could be implemented by having more than one
COME FROM statement coming from the same label.
In some ways the FORTRAN DO looks like a
COME FROM statement. After the terminating statement
number/CONTINUE is reached, control continues at the
statement following the DO. Some generous FORTRANs would allow
arbitrary statements (other than CONTINUE) for the
statement, leading to examples like:
DO 10 I=1,LIMIT
C imagine many lines of code here, leaving the
C original DO statement lost in the spaghetti...
WRITE(6,10) I,FROB(I)
10 FORMAT(1X,I5,G10.4)
in which the trapdoor is just after the statement labeled 10.
(This is particularly surprising because the label doesn't appear
to have anything to do with the flow of control at all!)
While sufficiently astonishing to the unsuspecting reader,
this form of COME FROM statement isn't completely
general. After all, control will eventually pass to the following
statement. The implementation of the general form was left to
Univac FORTRAN, ca. 1975 (though a roughly similar feature
existed on the IBM 7040 ten years earlier). The statement
AT 100 would perform a COME FROM 100.
It was intended strictly as a debugging aid, with dire
consequences promised to anyone so deranged as to use it in
production code. More horrible things had already been
perpetrated in production languages, however; doubters need only
contemplate the ALTER verb in COBOL.
COME FROM was supported under its own name for
the first time 15 years later, in C-INTERCAL (see INTERCAL, retrocomputing); knowledgeable
observers are still reeling from the shock.
Node:comm mode, Next:command key, Previous:COME FROM, Up:= C =
comm mode /kom mohd/ n.
[ITS: from the feature supporting on-line chat; the term may
spelled with one or two m's] Syn. for talk mode.
Node:command key, Next:comment out, Previous:comm mode, Up:= C =
command key n.
[Mac users] Syn. feature
key.
Node:comment out, Next:Commonwealth Hackish,
Previous:command key,
Up:= C =
comment out vt.
To surround a section of code with comment delimiters or to
prefix every line in the section with a comment marker; this
prevents it from being compiled or interpreted. Often done when
the code is redundant or obsolete, but is being left in the
source to make the intent of the active code clearer; also when
the code in that section is broken and you want to bypass it in
order to debug some other part of the code. Compare condition out, usually the preferred
technique in languages (such as C) that
make it possible.
Node:Commonwealth Hackish,
Next:compact, Previous:comment out, Up:= C =
Commonwealth Hackish n.
Hacker jargon as spoken in English outside the U.S., esp. in
the British Commonwealth. It is reported that Commonwealth
speakers are more likely to pronounce truncations like `char' and
`soc', etc., as spelled (/char/, /sok/), as opposed to American
/keir/ and /sohsh/. Dots in newsgroup names (especially two-component
names) tend to be pronounced more often (so soc.wibble is /sok
dot wib'l/ rather than /sohsh wib'l/).
Preferred metasyntactic
variables include blurgle,
eek, ook, frodo, and
bilbo; wibble,
wobble, and in emergencies wubble;
flob, banana, tom,
dick, harry, wombat,
frog, fish, womble and so on and on (see foo, sense 4). Alternatives to verb doubling
include suffixes `-o-rama', `frenzy' (as in feeding frenzy), and
`city' (examples: "barf city!" "hack-o-rama!" "core dump
frenzy!").
All the generic differences within the anglophone world
inevitably show themselves in the associated hackish dialects.
The Greek letters beta and zeta are usually pronounced /bee't*/
and /zee't*/; meta may also be pronounced /mee't*/. Various
punctuators (and even letters - Z is called `zed', not `zee') are
named differently: most crucially, for hackish, where Americans
use `parens', `brackets' and `braces' for (), [] and {},
Commonwealth English uses `brackets', `square brackets' and
`curly brackets', though `parentheses' may be used for the first;
the exclamation mark, `!', is called pling rather than bang and
the pound sign, `#', is called hash; furthermore, the term `the
pound sign' is understood to mean the pound currency symbol (of
course).
See also attoparsec, calculator, chemist, console jockey, fish, go-faster
stripes, grunge, hakspek, heavy
metal, leaky heap,
lord high fixer, loose bytes, muddie, nadger,
noddy, psychedelicware, plingnet, raster blaster, RTBM, seggie, spod, sun
lounge, terminal
junkie, tick-list
features, weeble, weasel, YABA,
and notes or definitions under Bad
Thing, barf, bogus, bum, chase pointers, cosmic rays, crippleware, crunch, dodgy,
gonk, hamster, hardwarily, mess-dos, nybble, proglet,
root, SEX,
tweak, womble, and xyzzy.
Node:compact, Next:compiler jock, Previous:Commonwealth Hackish, Up:= C =
compact adj.
Of a design, describes the valuable property that it can all
be apprehended at once in one's head. This generally means the
thing created from the design can be used with greater facility
and fewer errors than an equivalent tool that is not compact.
Compactness does not imply triviality or lack of power; for
example, C is compact and FORTRAN is not, but C is more powerful
than FORTRAN. Designs become non-compact through accreting features and cruft that don't merge cleanly into the overall
design scheme (thus, some fans of Classic C maintain that ANSI C is no
longer compact).
Node:compiler jock, Next:compo, Previous:compact, Up:= C
=
compiler jock n.
See jock (sense 2).
Node:compo, Next:compress, Previous:compiler jock, Up:= C =
compo n.
[demoscene] Finnish-originated
slang for `competition'. Demo compos are held at a demoparty. The usual protocol is that
several groups make demos for a compo, they are shown on a big
screen, and then the party participants vote for the best one.
Prizes (from sponsors and party entrance fees) are given.
Standard compo formats include intro
compos (4k or 64k demos), music compos, graphics compos, quick
demo compos (build a demo within 4
hours for example), etc.
Node:compress, Next:Compu$erve, Previous:compo, Up:= C
=
compress [Unix] vt.
When used without a qualifier, generally refers to crunching of a file using a particular C
implementation of compression by Joseph M. Orost et al. and
widely circulated via Usenet; use of
crunch itself in this sense is rare
among Unix hackers. Specifically, compress is built around the
Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm as described in "A Technique for High
Performance Data Compression", Terry A. Welch, "IEEE Computer",
vol. 17, no. 6 (June 1984), pp. 8-19.
Node:Compu$erve, Next:computer confetti, Previous:compress, Up:= C =
Compu$erve n.
See CI$. Synonyms CompuSpend and
Compu$pend are also reported.
Node:computer confetti, Next:computer geek, Previous:Compu$erve, Up:= C =
computer confetti n.
Syn. chad. Though this term is
common, this use of punched-card chad is not a good idea, as the
pieces are stiff and have sharp corners that could injure the
eyes. GLS reports that he once attended a wedding at MIT during
which he and a few other guests enthusiastically threw chad
instead of rice. The groom later grumbled that he and his bride
had spent most of the evening trying to get the stuff out of
their hair.
Node:computer geek, Next:computron, Previous:computer confetti,
Up:= C =
computer geek n.
1. One who eats (computer) bugs for a living. One who fulfills
all the dreariest negative stereotypes about hackers: an asocial,
malodorous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the personality of a
cheese grater. Cannot be used by outsiders without implied insult
to all hackers; compare black-on-black vs. white-on-black usage
of `nigger'. A computer geek may be either a fundamentally
clueless individual or a proto-hacker in larval stage. Also called `turbo nerd',
`turbo geek'. See also propeller
head, clustergeeking, geek out, wannabee, terminal junkie, spod, weenie. 2.
Some self-described computer geeks use this term in a positive
sense and protest sense 1 (this seems to have been a post-1990
development). For one such argument, see http://www.darkwater.com/omni/geek.html.
See also geek code.
Node:computron, Next:con, Previous:computer geek, Up:= C =
computron /kom'pyoo-tron`/
n. 1. [common] A notional unit of computing power combining
instruction speed and storage capacity, dimensioned roughly in
instructions-per-second times megabytes-of-main-store times
megabytes-of-mass-storage. "That machine can't run GNU Emacs, it
doesn't have enough computrons!" This usage is usually found in
metaphors that treat computing power as a fungible commodity
good, like a crop yield or diesel horsepower. See bitty box, Get a real computer!, toy, crank. 2. A
mythical subatomic particle that bears the unit quantity of
computation or information, in much the same way that an electron
bears one unit of electric charge (see also bogon). An elaborate pseudo-scientific theory of
computrons has been developed based on the physical fact that the
molecules in a solid object move more rapidly as it is heated. It
is argued that an object melts because the molecules have lost
their information about where they are supposed to be (that is,
they have emitted computrons). This explains why computers get so
hot and require air conditioning; they use up computrons.
Conversely, it should be possible to cool down an object by
placing it in the path of a computron beam. It is believed that
this may also explain why machines that work at the factory fail
in the computer room: the computrons there have been all used up
by the other hardware. (The popularity of this theory probably
owes something to the "Warlock" stories by Larry Niven, the best
known being "What Good is a Glass Dagger?", in which magic is
fueled by an exhaustible natural resource called `mana'.)
Node:con, Next:condition out, Previous:computron, Up:= C =
con n.
[from SF fandom] A science-fiction convention. Not used of
other sorts of conventions, such as professional meetings. This
term, unlike many others imported from SF-fan slang, is widely
recognized even by hackers who aren't fans. "We'd been corresponding on the net for
months, then we met face-to-face at a con."
Node:condition out, Next:condom, Previous:con, Up:= C
=
condition out vt.
To prevent a section of code from being compiled by
surrounding it with a conditional-compilation directive whose
condition is always false. The canonical examples of these directives are
#if 0 (or #ifdef notdef, though some
find the latter bletcherous)
and #endif in C. Compare comment out.
Node:condom, Next:confuser, Previous:condition out, Up:= C =
condom n.
1. The protective plastic bag that accompanies 3.5-inch
microfloppy diskettes. Rarely, also used of (paper) disk
envelopes. Unlike the write protect tab, the condom (when left
on) not only impedes the practice of SEX but has also been shown to have a high failure
rate as drive mechanisms attempt to access the disk -- and can
even fatally frustrate insertion. 2. The protective cladding on a
light pipe. 3. `keyboard
condom': A flexible, transparent plastic cover for a keyboard,
designed to provide some protection against dust and programming fluid without impeding
typing. 4. `elephant condom': the plastic shipping bags used
inside cardboard boxes to protect hardware in transit. 5. n. obs.
A dummy directory /usr/tmp/sh, created to foil the
Great Worm by exploiting a
portability bug in one of its parts. So named in the title of a
_comp.risks_ article by Gene Spafford during the Worm
crisis, and again in the text of "The Internet Worm Program: An
Analysis", Purdue Technical Report CSD-TR-823.
Node:confuser, Next:connector conspiracy, Previous:condom, Up:= C =
confuser n.
Common soundalike slang for `computer'. Usually encountered in
compounds such as `confuser room', `personal confuser', `confuser
guru'. Usage: silly.
Node:connector conspiracy,
Next:cons, Previous:confuser, Up:= C =
connector conspiracy n.
[probably came into prominence with the appearance of the
KL-10 (one model of the PDP-10),
none of whose connectors matched anything else] The tendency of
manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of
anything) to come up with new products that don't fit together
with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff
or expensive interface devices. The KL-10 Massbus connector was
actually patented by DEC,
which reputedly refused to license the design and thus
effectively locked third parties out of competition for the
lucrative Massbus peripherals market. This policy is a source of
never-ending frustration for the diehards who maintain older
PDP-10 or VAX systems. Their CPUs work fine, but they are stuck
with dying, obsolescent disk and tape drives with low capacity
and high power requirements.
(A closely related phenomenon, with a slightly different
intent, is the habit manufacturers have of inventing new screw
heads so that only Designated Persons, possessing the magic
screwdrivers, can remove covers and make repairs or install
options. A good 1990s example is the use of Torx screws for
cable-TV set-top boxes. Older Apple Macintoshes took this one
step further, requiring not only a long Torx screwdriver but a
specialized case-cracking tool to open the box.)
In these latter days of open-systems computing this term has
fallen somewhat into disuse, to be replaced by the observation
that "Standards are great! There are so many of them to choose
from!" Compare backward
combatability.
Node:cons, Next:considered harmful, Previous:connector
conspiracy, Up:= C =
cons /konz/ or /kons/
[from LISP] 1. vt. To add a new element to a specified list,
esp. at the top. "OK, cons picking a replacement for the console
TTY onto the agenda." 2. `cons up': vt. To synthesize from
smaller pieces: "to cons up an example".
In LISP itself, cons is the most fundamental
operation for building structures. It takes any two objects and
returns a `dot-pair' or two-branched tree with one object hanging
from each branch. Because the result of a cons is an object, it
can be used to build binary trees of any shape and complexity.
Hackers think of it as a sort of universal constructor, and that
is where the jargon meanings spring from.
Node:considered harmful,
Next:console, Previous:cons, Up:= C =
considered harmful adj.
[very common] Edsger W. Dijkstra's note in the March 1968
"Communications of the ACM", "Goto Statement Considered Harmful",
fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars (text at
http://www.acm.org/classics).
Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently
harmful that it will (by policy) no longer print an article
taking so assertive a position against a coding practice. (Years
afterwards, a contrary view was uttered in a CACM letter called,
inevitably, "`Goto considered harmful' considered harmful'"'. In
the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and
parodies have borne titles of the form "X considered Y". The
structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the
realization that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles
has remained as a persistent minor in-joke (the `considered
silly' found at various places in this lexicon is related).
Node:console, Next:console jockey, Previous:considered harmful,
Up:= C =
console n.
1. The operator's station of a mainframe. In times past, this was a
privileged location that conveyed godlike powers to anyone with
fingers on its keys. Under Unix and other modern timesharing
OSes, such privileges are guarded by passwords instead, and the
console is just the tty the system was
booted from. Some of the mystique remains, however, and it is
traditional for sysadmins to post urgent messages to all users
from the console (on Unix, /dev/console). 2. On microcomputer
Unix boxes, the main screen and keyboard (as opposed to
character-only terminals talking to a serial port). Typically
only the console can do real graphics or run X.
Node:console jockey, Next:content-free, Previous:console, Up:= C =
console jockey n.
See terminal
junkie.
Node:content-free, Next:control-C, Previous:console jockey, Up:= C =
content-free adj.
[by analogy with techspeak `context-free'] Used of a message
that adds nothing to the recipient's knowledge. Though this
adjective is sometimes applied to flamage, it more usually connotes derision for
communication styles that exalt form over substance or are
centered on concerns irrelevant to the subject ostensibly at
hand. Perhaps most used with reference to speeches by company
presidents and other professional manipulators. "Content-free?
Uh... that's anything printed on glossy paper."
(See also four-color
glossies.) "He gave a talk on the implications of
electronic networks for postmodernism and the fin-de-siecle
aesthetic. It was content-free."
Node:control-C, Next:control-O, Previous:content-free, Up:= C =
control-C vi.
1. "Stop whatever you are doing." From the interrupt character
used on many operating systems to abort a running program.
Considered silly. 2. interj. Among BSD Unix hackers, the
canonical humorous response to "Give me a break!"
Node:control-O, Next:control-Q, Previous:control-C, Up:= C =
control-O vi.
"Stop talking." From the character used on some operating
systems to abort output but allow the program to keep on running.
Generally means that you are not interested in hearing anything
more from that person, at least on that topic; a standard
response to someone who is flaming. Considered silly. Compare
control-S.
Node:control-Q, Next:control-S, Previous:control-O, Up:= C =
control-Q vi.
"Resume." From the ASCII DC1 or XON
character (the pronunciation /X-on/ is therefore also used), used
to undo a previous control-S.
Node:control-S, Next:Conway's Law, Previous:control-Q, Up:= C =
control-S vi.
"Stop talking for a second." From the ASCII DC3 or XOFF
character (the pronunciation /X-of/ is therefore also used).
Control-S differs from control-O
in that the person is asked to stop talking (perhaps because you
are on the phone) but will be allowed to continue when you're
ready to listen to him -- as opposed to control-O, which has more
of the meaning of "Shut up." Considered silly.
Node:Conway's Law, Next:cookbook, Previous:control-S, Up:= C =
Conway's Law prov.
The rule that the organization of the software and the
organization of the software team will be congruent; commonly
stated as "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll
get a 4-pass compiler". The original statement was more general,
"Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce
designs which are copies of the communication structures of these
organizations." This first appeared in the April 1968 issue of
Datamation. Compare SNAFU principle.
The law was named after Melvin Conway, an early proto-hacker
who wrote an assembler for the Burroughs 220 called SAVE. (The
name `SAVE' didn't stand for anything; it was just that you lost
fewer card decks and listings because they all had SAVE written
on them.)
There is also Tom Cheatham's amendment of Conway's Law: "If a
group of N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be N-1
passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager."
Node:cookbook, Next:cooked mode, Previous:Conway's Law, Up:= C =
cookbook n.
[from amateur electronics and radio] A book of small code
segments that the reader can use to do various magic things in programs. One current example is
the "PostScript Language
Tutorial and Cookbook" by Adobe Systems, Inc (Addison-Wesley,
ISBN 0-201-10179-3), also known as the Blue Book which has recipes for things
like wrapping text around arbitrary curves and making 3D fonts.
Cookbooks, slavishly followed, can lead one into voodoo programming, but are
useful for hackers trying to monkey
up small programs in unknown languages. This function is
analogous to the role of phrasebooks in human languages.
Node:cooked mode, Next:cookie, Previous:cookbook, Up:=
C =
cooked mode n.
[Unix, by opposition from raw
mode] The normal character-input mode, with interrupts
enabled and with erase, kill and other special-character
interpretations performed directly by the tty driver. Oppose
raw mode, rare mode. This term is techspeak under
Unix but jargon elsewhere; other operating systems often have
similar mode distinctions, and the raw/rare/cooked way of
describing them has spread widely along with the C language and
other Unix exports. Most generally, `cooked mode' may refer to
any mode of a system that does extensive preprocessing before
presenting data to a program.
Node:cookie, Next:cookie bear, Previous:cooked mode, Up:= C =
cookie n.
A handle, transaction ID, or other token of agreement between
cooperating programs. "I give him a packet, he gives me back a
cookie." The claim check you get from a dry-cleaning shop is a
perfect mundane example of a cookie; the only thing it's useful
for is to relate a later transaction to this one (so you get the
same clothes back). Compare magic
cookie; see also fortune
cookie. Now mainstream in the specific sense of
web-browser cookies.
Node:cookie bear, Next:cookie file, Previous:cookie, Up:=
C =
cookie bear n. obs.
Original term, pre-Sesame-Street, for what is now universally
called a cookie monster. A
correspondent observes "In those days, hackers were actually
getting their yucks from...sit down
now...Andy Williams. Yes, that Andy
Williams. Seems he had a rather hip (by the standards of the day)
TV variety show. One of the best parts of the show was the
recurring `cookie bear' sketch. In these sketches, a guy in a
bear suit tried all sorts of tricks to get a cookie out of
Williams. The sketches would always end with Williams shrieking
(and I don't mean figuratively), `No cookies! Not now, not
ever...NEVER!!!' And the bear would fall down.
Great stuff."
Node:cookie file, Next:cookie jar, Previous:cookie bear, Up:= C =
cookie file n.
A collection of fortune
cookies in a format that facilitates retrieval by a
fortune program. There are several different cookie files in
public distribution, and site admins often assemble their own
from various sources including this lexicon.
Node:cookie jar, Next:cookie monster, Previous:cookie file, Up:= C =
cookie jar n.
An area of memory set aside for storing cookies. Most commonly heard in the Atari ST
community; many useful ST programs record their presence by
storing a distinctive magic
number in the jar. Programs can inquire after the
presence or otherwise of other programs by searching the contents
of the jar.
Node:cookie monster, Next:copious free time,
Previous:cookie jar,
Up:= C =
cookie monster n.
[from the children's TV program "Sesame Street"] Any of a
family of early (1970s) hacks reported on TOPS-10, ITS, Multics, and elsewhere that would lock up
either the victim's terminal (on a time-sharing machine) or the
console (on a batch mainframe), repeatedly demanding "I WANT A
COOKIE". The required responses ranged in complexity from
"COOKIE" through "HAVE A COOKIE" and upward. Folklorist Jan
Brunvand (see FOAF) has described
these programs as urban legends (implying they probably never
existed) but they existed, all right, in several different
versions. See also wabbit.
Interestingly, the term `cookie monster' appears to be a retcon; the original term was cookie bear.
Node:copious free time,
Next:copper, Previous:cookie monster, Up:= C =
copious free time n.
[Apple; orig. fr. the intro to Tom Lehrer's song "It Makes A
Fellow Proud To Be A Soldier"] 1. [used ironically to indicate
the speaker's lack of the quantity in question] A mythical
schedule slot for accomplishing tasks held to be unlikely or
impossible. Sometimes used to indicate that the speaker is
interested in accomplishing the task, but believes that the
opportunity will not arise. "I'll implement the automatic layout
stuff in my copious free time." 2. [Archly] Time reserved for
bogus or otherwise idiotic tasks, such as implementation of chrome, or the stroking of suits. "I'll get back to him on that feature in
my copious free time."
Node:copper, Next:copy protection, Previous:copious free time,
Up:= C =
copper n.
Conventional electron-carrying network cable with a core
conductor of copper -- or aluminum! Opposed to light pipe or, say, a short-range
microwave link.
Node:copy protection, Next:copybroke, Previous:copper, Up:= C =
copy protection n.
A class of methods for preventing incompetent pirates from
stealing software and legitimate customers from using it.
Considered silly.
Node:copybroke, Next:copycenter, Previous:copy protection, Up:= C =
copybroke /kop'ee-brohk/ adj.
1. [play on `copyright'] Used to describe an instance of a
copy-protected program that has been `broken'; that is, a copy
with the copy-protection scheme disabled. Syn. copywronged. 2. Copy-protected software
which is unusable because of some bit-rot or bug that has
confused the anti-piracy check. See also copy protection.
Node:copycenter, Next:copyleft, Previous:copybroke, Up:= C =
copycenter n.
[play on `copyright' and `copyleft'] 1. The copyright notice
carried by the various flavors of freeware BSD. According to Kirk
McKusick at BSDCon 1999: "The way it was characterized
politically, you had copyright, which is what the big companies
use to lock everything up; you had copyleft, which is free
software's way of making sure they can't lock it up; and then
Berkeley had what we called "copycenter", which is "take it down
to the copy center and make as many copies as you want".
Node:copyleft, Next:copyparty, Previous:copycenter, Up:= C =
copyleft /kop'ee-left/ n.
[play on `copyright'] 1. The copyright notice (`General Public
License') carried by GNU EMACS and other Free Software Foundation
software, granting reuse and reproduction rights to all comers
(but see also General
Public Virus). 2. By extension, any copyright notice
intended to achieve similar aims.
Node:copyparty, Next:copywronged, Previous:copyleft, Up:=
C =
copyparty n.
[C64/amiga demoscene ]A
computer party organized so demosceners can meet other in real
life, and to facilitate software copying (mostly pirated
software). The copyparty has become less common as the Internet
makes communication easier. The demoscene has gradually evolved
the demoparty to replace it.
Node:copywronged, Next:core, Previous:copyparty, Up:= C =
copywronged /kop'ee-rongd/ adj.
[play on `copyright'] Syn. for copybroke.
Node:core, Next:core cancer, Previous:copywronged, Up:= C =
core n.
Main storage or RAM. Dates from the days of ferrite-core
memory; now archaic as techspeak most places outside IBM, but
also still used in the Unix community and by old-time hackers or
those who would sound like them. Some derived idioms are quite
current; `in core', for example, means `in memory' (as opposed to
`on disk'), and both core dump
and the `core image' or `core file' produced by one are terms in
favor. Some varieties of Commonwealth hackish prefer store.
Node:core cancer, Next:core dump, Previous:core, Up:= C
=
core cancer n.
[rare] A process that exhibits a slow but inexorable resource
leak -- like a cancer, it kills by
crowding out productive `tissue'.
Node:core dump, Next:core leak, Previous:core cancer, Up:= C =
core dump n.
[common Iron Age jargon,
preserved by Unix] 1. [techspeak] A copy of the contents of core, produced when a process is aborted by
certain kinds of internal error. 2. By extension, used for humans
passing out, vomiting, or registering extreme shock. "He dumped
core. All over the floor. What a mess." "He heard about X and
dumped core." 3. Occasionally used for a human rambling on
pointlessly at great length; esp. in apology: "Sorry, I dumped
core on you". 4. A recapitulation of knowledge (compare bits, sense 1). Hence, spewing all one knows
about a topic (syn. brain
dump), esp. in a lecture or answer to an exam question.
"Short, concise answers are better than core dumps" (from the
instructions to an exam at Columbia). See core.
Node:core leak, Next:Core Wars, Previous:core dump, Up:= C =
core leak n.
Syn. memory leak.
Node:Core Wars, Next:corge, Previous:core leak, Up:= C =
Core Wars n.
A game between `assembler' programs in a machine or machine
simulator, where the objective is to kill your opponent's program
by overwriting it. Popularized in the 1980s by A. K. Dewdney's
column in "Scientific American" magazine, but described in
"Software Practice And Experience" a decade earlier. The game was
actually devised and played by Victor Vyssotsky, Robert Morris
Sr., and Doug McIlroy in the early 1960s (Dennis Ritchie is
sometimes incorrectly cited as a co-author, but was not
involved). Their original game was called `Darwin' and ran on a
IBM 7090 at Bell Labs. See core. For
information on the modern game, do a web search for the
`rec.games.corewar FAQ' or surf to the King Of The Hill site.
Node:corge, Next:cosmic rays, Previous:Core Wars, Up:= C =
corge /korj/ n.
[originally, the name of a cat] Yet another metasyntactic variable,
invented by Mike Gallaher and propagated by the GOSMACS documentation. See grault.
Node:cosmic rays, Next:cough and die, Previous:corge, Up:= C =
cosmic rays n.
Notionally, the cause of bit
rot. However, this is a semi-independent usage that may
be invoked as a humorous way to handwave away any minor randomness that doesn't seem worth the
bother of investigating. "Hey, Eric -- I just got a burst of
garbage on my tube, where did that
come from?" "Cosmic rays, I guess." Compare sunspots, phase of the moon. The British
seem to prefer the usage `cosmic showers'; `alpha particles' is
also heard, because stray alpha particles passing through a
memory chip can cause single-bit errors (this becomes
increasingly more likely as memory sizes and densities
increase).
Factual note: Alpha particles cause bit rot, cosmic rays do
not (except occasionally in spaceborne computers). Intel could
not explain random bit drops in their early chips, and one
hypothesis was cosmic rays. So they created the World's Largest
Lead Safe, using 25 tons of the stuff, and used two identical
boards for testing. One was placed in the safe, one outside. The
hypothesis was that if cosmic rays were causing the bit drops,
they should see a statistically significant difference between
the error rates on the two boards. They did not observe such a
difference. Further investigation demonstrated conclusively that
the bit drops were due to alpha particle emissions from thorium
(and to a much lesser degree uranium) in the encapsulation
material. Since it is impossible to eliminate these radioactives
(they are uniformly distributed through the earth's crust, with
the statistically insignificant exception of uranium lodes) it
became obvious that one has to design memories to withstand these
hits.
Node:cough and die, Next:courier, Previous:cosmic rays, Up:= C =
cough and die v.
Syn. barf. Connotes that the
program is throwing its hands up by design rather than because of
a bug or oversight. "The parser saw a control-A in its input
where it was looking for a printable, so it coughed and died."
Compare die, die horribly, scream and die.
Node:courier, Next:cow orker, Previous:cough and die, Up:= C =
courier
[BBS & cracker cultures] A person who distributes newly
cracked warez, as opposed to a server who makes them available for
download or a leech who merely
downloads them. Hackers recognize this term but don't use it
themselves, as the act is not part of their culture. See also
warez d00dz, cracker, elite.
Node:cow orker, Next:cowboy, Previous:courier, Up:= C
=
cow orker n.
[Usenet] n. fortuitous typo for co-worker, widely used in
Usenet, with perhaps a hint that orking cows is illegal. This
term was popularized by Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) but already appears in the January
1996 version of the scary
devil monastery FAQ. There are plausible reports that it
was in use on _talk.bizarre_ as early as 1992. Compare hing, grilf,
filk, newsfroup.
Node:cowboy, Next:CP/M, Previous:cow orker, Up:= C =
cowboy n.
[Sun, from William Gibson's cyberpunk SF] Synonym for hacker. It is reported that at Sun this word is
often said with reverence.
Node:CP/M, Next:CPU Wars, Previous:cowboy, Up:= C
=
CP/M /C-P-M/ n.
[Control Program/Monitor; later retconned to Control Program for
Microcomputers] An early microcomputer OS written by hacker Gary Kildall for 8080- and
Z80-based machines, very popular in the late 1970s but virtually
wiped out by MS-DOS after the release of the IBM PC in 1981.
Legend has it that Kildall's company blew its chance to write the
OS for the IBM PC because Kildall decided to spend a day IBM's
reps wanted to meet with him enjoying the perfect flying weather
in his private plane. Many of CP/M's features and conventions
strongly resemble those of early DEC
operating systems such as TOPS-10,
OS/8, RSTS, and RSX-11. See MS-DOS,
operating system.
Node:CPU Wars, Next:crack, Previous:CP/M, Up:= C
=
CPU Wars /C-P-U worz/ n.
A 1979 large-format comic by Chas Andres chronicling the
attempts of the brainwashed androids of IPM (Impossible to
Program Machines) to conquer and destroy the peaceful denizens of
HEC (Human Engineered Computers). This rather transparent
allegory featured many references to ADVENT and the immortal line "Eat flaming
death, minicomputer mongrels!" (uttered, of course, by an IPM
stormtrooper). The whole shebang is now available on the
Web.
It is alleged that the author subsequently received a letter
of appreciation on IBM company stationery from the head of IBM's
Thomas J. Watson Research Laboratories (then, as now, one of the
few islands of true hackerdom in the IBM archipelago). The lower
loop of the B in the IBM logo, it is said, had been carefully
whited out. See eat flaming
death.
Node:crack, Next:crack root, Previous:CPU Wars, Up:= C =
crack
[warez d00dz] 1. v. To break into a system (compare cracker). 2. v. Action of removing the
copy protection from a commercial program. People who write
cracks consider themselves challenged by the copy protection
measures. They will often do it as much to show that they are
smarter than the developper who designed the copy protection
scheme than to actually copy the program. 3. n. A program,
instructions or patch used to remove the copy protection of a
program or to uncripple features from a demo/time limited
program. 4. An exploit.
Node:crack root, Next:cracker, Previous:crack, Up:= C
=
crack root v.
[very common] To defeat the security system of a Unix machine
and gain root privileges thereby; see
cracking.
Node:cracker, Next:cracking, Previous:crack root, Up:= C =
cracker n.
One who breaks security on a system. Coined ca. 1985 by
hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of hacker (q.v., sense 8). An earlier attempt to
establish `worm' in this sense around 1981-82 on Usenet was
largely a failure.
Use of both these neologisms reflects a strong revulsion
against the theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings.
While it is expected that any real hacker will have done some
playful cracking and knows many of the basic techniques, anyone
past larval stage is
expected to have outgrown the desire to do so except for
immediate, benign, practical reasons (for example, if it's
necessary to get around some security in order to get some work
done).
Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and
crackerdom than the mundane reader
misled by sensationalistic journalism might expect. Crackers tend
to gather in small, tight-knit, very secretive groups that have
little overlap with the huge, open poly-culture this lexicon
describes; though crackers often like to describe
themselves as hackers, most true hackers consider them a
separate and lower form of life.
Ethical considerations aside, hackers figure that anyone who
can't imagine a more interesting way to play with their computers
than breaking into someone else's has to be pretty losing. Some other reasons crackers are looked
down on are discussed in the entries on cracking and phreaking. See also samurai, dark-side hacker, and hacker ethic. For a portrait of the
typical teenage cracker, see warez
d00dz.
Node:cracking, Next:crank, Previous:cracker, Up:= C
=
cracking n.
[very common] The act of breaking into a computer system; what
a cracker does. Contrary to
widespread myth, this does not usually involve some mysterious
leap of hackerly brilliance, but rather persistence and the
dogged repetition of a handful of fairly well-known tricks that
exploit common weaknesses in the security of target systems.
Accordingly, most crackers are only mediocre hackers.
Node:crank, Next:crapplet, Previous:cracking, Up:=
C =
crank vt.
[from automotive slang] Verb used to describe the performance
of a machine, especially sustained performance. "This box cranks
(or, cranks at) about 6 megaflops, with a burst mode of twice
that on vectorized operations."
Node:crapplet, Next:CrApTeX, Previous:crank, Up:= C
=
crapplet n.
[portmanteau, crap + applet] A worthless applet, esp. a Java
widget attached to a web page that doesn't work or even crashes
your browser. Also spelled `craplet'.
Node:CrApTeX, Next:crash, Previous:crapplet, Up:=
C =
CrApTeX /krap'tekh/ n.
[University of York, England] Term of abuse used to describe
TeX and LaTeX when they don't work (when used by TeXhackers), or
all the time (by everyone else). The non-TeX-enthusiasts
generally dislike it because it is more verbose than other
formatters (e.g. troff) and because
(particularly if the standard Computer Modern fonts are used) it
generates vast output files. See religious issues, TeX.
Node:crash, Next:crash and burn, Previous:CrApTeX, Up:= C =
crash
1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often said of
the system (q.v., sense 1), esp. of
magnetic disk drives (the term originally described what happens
when the air gap of a hard disk collapses). "Three lusers lost their files in last night's disk
crash." A disk crash that involves the read/write heads dropping
onto the surface of the disks and scraping off the oxide may also
be referred to as a `head crash', whereas the term `system crash'
usually, though not always, implies that the operating system or
other software was at fault. 2. v. To fail suddenly. "Has the
system just crashed?" "Something crashed the OS!" See down. Also used transitively to indicate the
cause of the crash (usually a person or a program, or both).
"Those idiots playing SPACEWAR
crashed the system." 3. vi. Sometimes said of people hitting the
sack after a long hacking
run; see gronk out.
Node:crash and burn, Next:crawling horror,
Previous:crash, Up:= C =
crash and burn vi.,n.
A spectacular crash, in the mode of the conclusion of the
car-chase scene in the movie "Bullitt" and many subsequent
imitators (compare die
horribly). Sun-3 monitors losing the flyback transformer
and lightning strikes on VAX-11/780 backplanes are notable crash
and burn generators. The construction `crash-and-burn machine' is
reported for a computer used exclusively for alpha or beta testing, or reproducing bugs (i.e., not for
development). The implication is that it wouldn't be such a
disaster if that machine crashed, since only the testers would be
inconvenienced.
Node:crawling horror, Next:cray, Previous:crash and burn, Up:= C =
crawling horror n.
Ancient crufty hardware or software that is kept obstinately
alive by forces beyond the control of the hackers at a site. Like
dusty deck or gonkulator, but connotes that the thing
described is not just an irritation but an active menace to
health and sanity. "Mostly we code new stuff in C, but they pay
us to maintain one big FORTRAN II application from
nineteen-sixty-X that's a real crawling
horror...." Compare WOMBAT.
Node:cray, Next:cray instability, Previous:crawling horror, Up:= C =
cray /kray/ n.
1. (properly, capitalized) One of the line of supercomputers
designed by Cray Research. 2. Any supercomputer at all. 3. The
canonical number-crunching machine.
The term is actually the lowercased last name of Seymour Cray,
a noted computer architect and co-founder of the company.
Numerous vivid legends surround him, some true and some
admittedly invented by Cray Research brass to shape their
corporate culture and image.
Node:cray instability, Next:crayola, Previous:cray, Up:= C =
cray instability n.
1. A shortcoming of a program or algorithm that manifests
itself only when a large problem is being run on a powerful
machine (see cray). Generally more
subtle than bugs that can be detected in smaller problems running
on a workstation or mini. 2. More specifically, a shortcoming of
algorithms which are well behaved when run on gentle floating
point hardware (such as IEEE-standard or PDP-series machines) but
which break down badly when exposed to a Cray's unique `rounding'
rules.
Node:crayola, Next:crayola books, Previous:cray instability, Up:= C =
crayola /kray-oh'l*/ n.
A super-mini or -micro computer that provides some reasonable
percentage of supercomputer performance for an unreasonably low
price. Might also be a killer
micro.
Node:crayola books, Next:crayon, Previous:crayola, Up:= C =
crayola books n.
The rainbow series of
National Computer Security Center (NCSC) computer security
standards (see Orange Book).
Usage: humorous and/or disparaging.
Node:crayon, Next:creationism, Previous:crayola books, Up:= C =
crayon n.
1. Someone who works on Cray supercomputers. More
specifically, it implies a programmer, probably of the CDC ilk,
probably male, and almost certainly wearing a tie (irrespective
of gender). Systems types who have a Unix background tend not to
be described as crayons. 2. Formerly, anyone who worked for Cray
Research; since the buyout by SGI, anyone they inherited from
Cray. 3. A computron (sense 2)
that participates only in number-crunching. 4. A unit of
computational power equal to that of a single Cray-1. There is a
standard joke about this usage that derives from an old Crayola
crayon promotional gimmick: When you buy 64 crayons you get a
free sharpener.
Node:creationism, Next:creep, Previous:crayon, Up:= C
=
creationism n.
The (false) belief that large, innovative software designs can
be completely specified in advance and then painlessly magicked
out of the void by the normal efforts of a team of normally
talented programmers. In fact, experience has shown repeatedly
that good designs arise only from evolutionary, exploratory
interaction between one (or at most a small handful of)
exceptionally able designer(s) and an active user population --
and that the first try at a big new idea is always wrong.
Unfortunately, because these truths don't fit the planning models
beloved of management, they are
generally ignored.
Node:creep, Next:creeping elegance, Previous:creationism, Up:= C =
creep v.
To advance, grow, or multiply inexorably. In hackish usage
this verb has overtones of menace and silliness, evoking the
creeping horrors of low-budget monster movies.
Node:creeping elegance, Next:creeping featurism,
Previous:creep, Up:= C =
creeping elegance n.
Describes a tendency for parts of a design to become elegant past the point of diminishing
return, something which often happens at the expense of the less
interesting parts of the design, the schedule, and other things
deemed important in the Real
World. See also creeping featurism, second-system effect, tense.
Node:creeping featurism,
Next:creeping
featuritis, Previous:creeping elegance, Up:= C =
creeping featurism /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ n.
[common] 1. Describes a systematic tendency to load more chrome and features onto systems at the expense of
whatever elegance they may have possessed when originally
designed. See also feeping
creaturism. "You know, the main problem with BSD Unix has always been creeping featurism." 2.
More generally, the tendency for anything complicated to become
even more complicated because people keep saying "Gee, it would
be even better if it had this feature too". (See feature.) The result is usually a patchwork
because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being
planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one
extra little feature to help someone ... and then
another ... and another.... When
creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer. Usually
this term is used to describe computer programs, but it could
also be said of the federal government, the IRS 1040 form, and
new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes afflicts conscious
redesigns; see second-system
effect. See also creeping elegance.
Node:creeping featuritis,
Next:cretin, Previous:creeping featurism,
Up:= C =
creeping featuritis /kree'ping fee'-chr-i:`t*s/ n.
Variant of creeping
featurism, with its own spoonerization: `feeping
creaturitis'. Some people like to reserve this form for the
disease as it actually manifests in software or hardware, as
opposed to the lurking general tendency in designers' minds.
(After all, -ism means `condition' or `pursuit of', whereas -itis
usually means `inflammation of'.)
Node:cretin, Next:cretinous, Previous:creeping featuritis, Up:= C =
cretin /kret'in/ or /kree'tn/ n.
Congenital loser; an obnoxious
person; someone who can't do anything right. It has been observed
that many American hackers tend to favor the British
pronunciation /kret'in/ over standard American /kree'tn/; it is
thought this may be due to the insidious phonetic influence of
Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Node:cretinous, Next:crippleware, Previous:cretin, Up:= C
=
cretinous /kret'n-*s/ or /kreet'n-*s/ adj.
Wrong; stupid; non-functional; very poorly designed. Also used
pejoratively of people. See dread high-bit disease for
an example. Approximate synonyms: bletcherous, bagbiting losing, brain-damaged.
Node:crippleware, Next:critical mass, Previous:cretinous, Up:= C =
crippleware n.
1. [common] Software that has some important functionality
deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users to pay for
a working version. 2. [Cambridge] Variety of guiltware that exhorts you to donate to some
charity (compare careware, nagware). 3. Hardware deliberately
crippled, which can be upgraded to a more expensive model by a
trivial change (e.g., cutting a jumper).
An excellent example of crippleware (sense 3) is Intel's 486SX
chip, which is a standard 486DX chip with the co-processor diked
out (in some early versions it was present but disabled). To
upgrade, you buy a complete 486DX chip with working
co-processor (its identity thinly veiled by a different pinout)
and plug it into the board's expansion socket. It then disables
the SX, which becomes a fancy power sink. Don't you love
Intel?
Node:critical mass, Next:crlf, Previous:crippleware, Up:= C =
critical mass n.
In physics, the minimum amount of fissionable material
required to sustain a chain reaction. Of a software product,
describes a condition of the software such that fixing one bug
introduces one plus epsilon bugs.
(This malady has many causes: creeping featurism, ports to too
many disparate environments, poor initial design, etc.) When
software achieves critical mass, it can never be fixed; it can
only be discarded and rewritten.
Node:crlf, Next:crock, Previous:critical mass, Up:= C =
crlf /ker'l*f/, sometimes /kru'l*f/ or /C-R-L-F/ n.
(often capitalized as `CRLF') A carriage return (CR, ASCII
0001101) followed by a line feed (LF, ASCII 0001010). More
loosely, whatever it takes to get you from the end of one line of
text to the beginning of the next line. See newline, terpri.
Under Unix influence this usage has
become less common (Unix uses a bare line feed as its
`CRLF').
Node:crock, Next:cross-post, Previous:crlf, Up:= C =
crock n.
[from the American scatologism `crock of shit'] 1. An awkward
feature or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner.
For example, using small integers to represent error codes
without the program interpreting them to the user (as in, for
example, Unix make(1), which returns code 139 for a
process that dies due to segfault). 2. A technique that works
acceptably, but which is quite prone to failure if disturbed in
the least. For example, a too-clever programmer might write an
assembler which mapped instruction mnemonics to numeric opcodes
algorithmically, a trick which depends far too intimately on the
particular bit patterns of the opcodes. (For another example of
programming with a dependence on actual opcode values, see The Story of Mel in
Appendix A.) Many crocks have a tightly woven, almost completely
unmodifiable structure. See kluge,
brittle. The adjectives `crockish'
and `crocky', and the nouns `crockishness' and `crockitude', are
also used.
Node:cross-post, Next:crossload, Previous:crock, Up:= C
=
cross-post vi.
[Usenet; very common] To post a single article simultaneously
to several newsgroups. Distinguished from posting the article
repeatedly, once to each newsgroup, which causes people to see it
multiple times (which is very bad form). Gratuitous cross-posting
without a Followup-To line directing responses to a single
followup group is frowned upon, as it tends to cause followup articles to go to inappropriate
newsgroups when people respond to only one part of the original
posting.
Node:crossload, Next:crudware, Previous:cross-post, Up:= C =
crossload v.,n.
[proposed, by analogy with upload
and download] To move files
between machines on a peer-to-peer network of nodes that act as
both servers and clients for a distributed file store. Esp.
appropriate for ananonymized networks like Gnutella and
Freenet.
Node:crudware, Next:cruft, Previous:crossload, Up:= C =
crudware /kruhd'weir/ n.
Pejorative term for the hundreds of megabytes of low-quality
freeware circulated by user's
groups and BBS systems in the micro-hobbyist world. "Yet
another set of disk catalog utilities for MS-DOS? What crudware!"
Node:cruft, Next:cruft together, Previous:crudware, Up:= C =
cruft /kruhft/
[very common; back-formation from crufty] 1. n. An unpleasant substance. The dust
that gathers under your bed is cruft; the TMRC Dictionary
correctly noted that attacking it with a broom only produces
more. 2. n. The results of shoddy construction. 3. vt. [from
`hand cruft', pun on `hand craft'] To write assembler code for
something normally (and better) done by a compiler (see hand-hacking). 4. n. Excess;
superfluous junk; used esp. of redundant or superseded code. 5.
[University of Wisconsin] n. Cruft is to hackers as gaggle is to
geese; that is, at UW one properly says "a cruft of hackers".
Node:cruft together, Next:cruftsmanship, Previous:cruft, Up:= C =
cruft together vt.
(also `cruft up') To throw together something ugly but
temporarily workable. Like vt. kluge
up, but more pejorative. "There isn't any program now to
reverse all the lines of a file, but I can probably cruft one
together in about 10 minutes." See hack together, hack up, kluge
up, crufty.
Node:cruftsmanship, Next:crufty, Previous:cruft together, Up:= C =
cruftsmanship /kruhfts'm*n-ship / n.
[from cruft] The antithesis of
craftsmanship.
Node:crufty, Next:crumb, Previous:cruftsmanship, Up:= C =
crufty /kruhf'tee/ adj.
[very common; origin unknown; poss. from `crusty' or `cruddy']
1. Poorly built, possibly over-complex. The canonical example is "This is standard old
crufty DEC software". In fact, one
fanciful theory of the origin of `crufty' holds that was
originally a mutation of `crusty' applied to DEC software so old
that the `s' characters were tall and skinny, looking more like
`f' characters. 2. Unpleasant, especially to the touch, often
with encrusted junk. Like spilled coffee smeared with peanut
butter and catsup. 3. Generally unpleasant. 4. (sometimes spelled
`cruftie') n. A small crufty object (see frob); often one that doesn't fit well into the
scheme of things. "A LISP property list is a good place to store
crufties (or, collectively, random
cruft)."
This term is one of the oldest in the jargon and no one is
sure of its etymology, but it is suggestive that there is a Cruft
Hall at Harvard University which is part of the old physics
building; it's said to have been the physics department's radar
lab during WWII. To this day (early 1993) the windows appear to
be full of random techno-junk. MIT or Lincoln Labs people may
well have coined the term as a knock on the competition.
Node:crumb, Next:crunch, Previous:crufty, Up:= C
=
crumb n.
Two binary digits; a quad. Larger
than a bit, smaller than a nybble. Considered silly. Syn. tayste. General discussion of such terms is
under nybble.
Node:crunch, Next:cryppie, Previous:crumb, Up:= C
=
crunch 1. vi.
To process, usually in a time-consuming or complicated way.
Connotes an essentially trivial operation that is nonetheless
painful to perform. The pain may be due to the triviality's being
embedded in a loop from 1 to 1,000,000,000. "FORTRAN programs do
mostly number-crunching."
2. vt. To reduce the size of a file by a complicated scheme that
produces bit configurations completely unrelated to the original
data, such as by a Huffman code. (The file ends up looking
something like a paper document would if somebody crunched the
paper into a wad.) Since such compression usually takes more
computations than simpler methods such as run-length encoding,
the term is doubly appropriate. (This meaning is usually used in
the construction `file crunch(ing)' to distinguish it from number-crunching.) See compress. 3. n. The character
#. Used at XEROX and CMU, among other places. See
ASCII. 4. vt. To squeeze program
source into a minimum-size representation that will still compile
or execute. The term came into being specifically for a famous
program on the BBC micro that crunched BASIC source in order to
make it run more quickly (it was a wholly interpretive BASIC, so
the number of characters mattered). Obfuscated C Contest entries
are often crunched; see the first example under that entry.
Node:cryppie, Next:CTSS, Previous:crunch, Up:= C
=
cryppie /krip'ee/ n.
A cryptographer. One who hacks or implements cryptographic
software or hardware.
Node:CTSS, Next:cube, Previous:cryppie, Up:= C
=
CTSS /C-T-S-S/ n.
Compatible Time-Sharing System. An early (1963) experiment in
the design of interactive time-sharing operating systems,
ancestral to Multics, Unix, and ITS. The name
ITS (Incompatible Time-sharing System)
was a hack on CTSS, meant both as a joke and to express some
basic differences in philosophy about the way I/O services should
be presented to user programs.
Node:cube, Next:cubing, Previous:CTSS, Up:= C =
cube n.
1. [short for `cubicle'] A module in the open-plan offices
used at many programming shops. "I've got the manuals in my
cube." 2. A NeXT machine (which resembles a matte-black
cube).
Node:cubing, Next:cup holder, Previous:cube, Up:= C =
cubing vi.
[parallel with `tubing'] 1. Hacking on an IPSC (Intel Personal
SuperComputer) hypercube. "Louella's gone cubing
again!!" 2. Hacking Rubik's Cube or related puzzles,
either physically or mathematically. 3. An indescribable form of
self-torture (see sense 1 or 2).
Node:cup holder, Next:cursor dipped in X,
Previous:cubing, Up:= C =
cup holder n.
The tray of a CD-ROM drive, or by extension the CD drive
itself. So called because of a common tech support legend about
the idiot who called to complain that the cup holder on his
computer broke. A joke program was once distributed around the
net called "cupholder.exe", which when run simply extended the CD
drive tray. The humor of this was of course lost on people whose
drive had a slot or a caddy instead.
Node:cursor dipped in X,
Next:cuspy, Previous:cup holder, Up:= C =
cursor dipped in X n.
There are a couple of metaphors in English of the form `pen
dipped in X' (perhaps the most common values of X are `acid',
`bile', and `vitriol'). These map over neatly to this hackish
usage (the cursor being what moves, leaving letters behind, when
one is composing on-line). "Talk about a nastygram! He must've had his cursor dipped
in acid when he wrote that one!"
Node:cuspy, Next:cut a tape, Previous:cursor dipped in X, Up:= C =
cuspy /kuhs'pee/ adj.
[WPI: from the DEC abbreviation
CUSP, for `Commonly Used System Program', i.e., a utility program
used by many people] 1. (of a program) Well-written. 2.
Functionally excellent. A program that performs well and
interfaces well to users is cuspy. See rude. 3. [NYU] Said of an attractive woman,
especially one regarded as available. Implies a certain
curvaceousness.
Node:cut a tape, Next:cybercrud, Previous:cuspy, Up:= C
=
cut a tape vi.
To write a software or document distribution on magnetic tape
for shipment. Has nothing to do with physically cutting the
medium! Early versions of this lexicon claimed that one never
analogously speaks of `cutting a disk', but this has since been
reported as live usage. Related slang usages are mainstream
business's `cut a check', the recording industry's `cut a
record', and the military's `cut an order'.
All of these usages reflect physical processes in obsolete
recording and duplication technologies. The first stage in
manufacturing an old-style vinyl record involved cutting grooves
in a stamping die with a precision lathe. More mundanely, the
dominant technology for mass duplication of paper documents in
pre-photocopying days involved "cutting a stencil", punching away
portions of the wax overlay on a silk screen. More directly,
paper tape with holes punched in it was an important early
storage medium.
Node:cybercrud, Next:cyberpunk, Previous:cut a tape, Up:= C =
cybercrud /si:'ber-kruhd/ n.
1. [coined by Ted Nelson] Obfuscatory tech-talk. Verbiage with
a high MEGO factor. The computer
equivalent of bureaucratese. 2. Incomprehensible stuff embedded
in email. First there were the "Received" headers that show how
mail flows through systems, then MIME (Multi-purpose Internet
Mail Extensions) headers and part boundaries, and now huge blocks
of radix-64 for PEM (Privacy Enhanced Mail) or PGP (Pretty Good
Privacy) digital signatures and certificates of authenticity.
This stuff all services a purpose and good user interfaces should
hide it, but all too often users are forced to wade through
it.
Node:cyberpunk, Next:cyberspace, Previous:cybercrud, Up:= C =
cyberpunk /si:'ber-puhnk/ n.,adj.
[orig. by SF writer Bruce Bethke and/or editor Gardner Dozois]
A subgenre of SF launched in 1982 by William Gibson's
epoch-making novel "Neuromancer" (though its roots go back
through Vernor Vinge's "True Names" (see the Bibliography in Appendix C) to John
Brunner's 1975 novel "The Shockwave Rider"). Gibson's near-total
ignorance of computers and the present-day hacker culture enabled
him to speculate about the role of computers and hackers in the
future in ways hackers have since found both irritatingly
naïve and tremendously stimulating. Gibson's work was widely
imitated, in particular by the short-lived but innovative "Max
Headroom" TV series. See cyberspace, ice,
jack in, go flatline.
Since 1990 or so, popular culture has included a movement or
fashion trend that calls itself `cyberpunk', associated
especially with the rave/techno subculture. Hackers have mixed
feelings about this. On the one hand, self-described cyberpunks
too often seem to be shallow trendoids in black leather who have
substituted enthusiastic blathering about technology for actually
learning and doing it. Attitude is no substitute for
competence. On the other hand, at least cyberpunks are excited
about the right things and properly respectful of hacking talent
in those who have it. The general consensus is to tolerate them
politely in hopes that they'll attract people who grow into being
true hackers.
Node:cyberspace, Next:cycle, Previous:cyberpunk, Up:= C =
cyberspace /si:'br-spays`/ n.
1. Notional `information-space' loaded with visual cues and
navigable with brain-computer interfaces called `cyberspace
decks'; a characteristic prop of cyberpunk SF. Serious efforts to construct
virtual reality
interfaces modeled explicitly on Gibsonian cyberspace are under
way, using more conventional devices such as glove sensors and
binocular TV headsets. Few hackers are prepared to deny outright
the possibility of a cyberspace someday evolving out of the
network (see the network). 2.
The Internet or Matrix (sense #2) as
a whole, considered as a crude cyberspace (sense 1). Although
this usage became widely popular in the mainstream press during
1994 when the Internet exploded into public awareness, it is
strongly deprecated among hackers because the Internet does not
meet the high, SF-inspired standards they have for true
cyberspace technology. Thus, this use of the term usually tags a
wannabee or outsider. Oppose meatspace. 3. Occasionally, the
metaphoric location of the mind of a person in hack mode. Some hackers report
experiencing strong eidetic imagery when in hack mode;
interestingly, independent reports from multiple sources suggest
that there are common features to the experience. In particular,
the dominant colors of this subjective `cyberspace' are often
gray and silver, and the imagery often involves constellations of
marching dots, elaborate shifting patterns of lines and angles,
or moire patterns.
Node:cycle, Next:cycle crunch, Previous:cyberspace, Up:= C =
cycle
1. n. The basic unit of computation. What every hacker wants
more of (noted hacker Bill Gosper described himself as a "cycle
junkie"). One can describe an instruction as taking so many
`clock cycles'. Often the computer can access its memory once on
every clock cycle, and so one speaks also of `memory cycles'.
These are technical meanings of cycle. The jargon meaning comes from the
observation that there are only so many cycles per second, and
when you are sharing a computer the cycles get divided up among
the users. The more cycles the computer spends working on your
program rather than someone else's, the faster your program will
run. That's why every hacker wants more cycles: so he can spend
less time waiting for the computer to respond. 2. By extension, a
notional unit of human thought power, emphasizing that
lots of things compete for the typical hacker's think time. "I
refused to get involved with the Rubik's Cube back when it was
big. Knew I'd burn too many cycles on it if I let myself." 3. vt.
Syn. bounce (sense 4), 120 reset; from the phrase `cycle power'.
"Cycle the machine again, that serial port's still hung."
Node:cycle crunch, Next:cycle drought, Previous:cycle, Up:= C =
cycle crunch n.,obs.
A situation wherein the number of people trying to use a
computer simultaneously has reached the point where no one can
get enough cycles because they are spread too thin and the system
has probably begun to thrash. This
scenario is an inevitable result of Parkinson's Law applied to
timesharing. Usually the only solution is to buy more computer.
Happily, this has rapidly become easier since the mid-1980s, so
much so that the very term `cycle crunch' now has a faintly
archaic flavor; most hackers now use workstations or personal
computers as opposed to traditional timesharing systems, and are
far more likely to complain of `bandwidth crunch' on their shared
networks rather than cycle crunch.
Node:cycle drought, Next:cycle of
reincarnation, Previous:cycle crunch, Up:= C =
cycle drought n.
A scarcity of cycles. It may be due to a cycle crunch, but it could also occur
because part of the computer is temporarily not working, leaving
fewer cycles to go around. "The high
moby is down, so we're running
with only half the usual amount of memory. There will be a cycle
drought until it's fixed."
Node:cycle of
reincarnation, Next:cycle server, Previous:cycle drought, Up:= C =
cycle of reincarnation n.
See wheel of
reincarnation.
Node:cycle server, Next:cypherpunk, Previous:cycle of
reincarnation, Up:= C =
cycle server n.
A powerful machine that exists primarily for running large
compute-, disk-, or memory-intensive jobs (more formally called a
`compute server'). Implies that interactive tasks such as editing
are done on other machines on the network, such as
workstations.
Node:cypherpunk, Next:C|N>K, Previous:cycle server, Up:= C =
cypherpunk n.
[from cyberpunk] Someone
interested in the uses of encryption via electronic ciphers for
enhancing personal privacy and guarding against tyranny by
centralized, authoritarian power structures, especially
government. There is an active cypherpunks mailing list at cypherpunks-request@toad.com
coordinating work on public-key encryption freeware, privacy, and
digital cash. See also tentacle.
Node:C|N>K, Next:D. C. Power Lab, Previous:cypherpunk, Up:= C =
C|N>K n.
[Usenet] Coffee through Nose to Keyboard; that is, "I laughed
so hard I snarfed my coffee onto my
keyboard.". Common on _alt.fan.pratchett_ and scary devil monastery;
recognized elsewhere. The Acronymphomania
FAQ on _alt.fan.pratchett_ recognizes variants such as
T|N>K = `Tea through Nose to Keyboard' and C|N>S = `Coffee
through Nose to Screen'.
Node:= D =, Next:= E =, Previous:= C =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= D =
D. C. Power Lab:
daemon:
daemon book:
dahmum:
dancing frog:
dangling pointer:
dark-side hacker:
Datamation:
DAU:
Dave the
Resurrector:
day mode:
dd:
DDT:
de-rezz:
dead:
dead beef attack:
dead code:
dead link:
DEADBEEF:
deadlock:
deadly embrace:
death code:
Death Square:
Death Star:
DEC:
DEC:
DEC Wars:
decay:
deckle:
DED:
deep hack mode:
deep magic:
deep space:
defenestration:
defined as:
dehose:
deletia:
deliminator:
delint:
delta:
demented:
demigod:
demo:
demo mode:
demoeffect:
demogroup:
demon:
demon dialer:
demoparty:
demoscene:
dentro:
depeditate:
deprecated:
derf:
deserves to lose:
desk check:
despew:
Devil Book:
/dev/null:
dickless
workstation:
dictionary flame:
diddle:
die:
die horribly:
diff:
digit:
dike:
Dilbert:
ding:
dink:
dinosaur:
dinosaur pen:
dinosaurs mating:
dirtball:
dirty power:
disclaimer:
Discordianism:
disk farm:
display hack:
dispress:
Dissociated Press:
distribution:
distro:
disusered:
do protocol:
doc:
documentation:
dodgy:
dogcow:
dogfood:
dogpile:
dogwash:
domainist:
Don't do that
then!:
dongle:
dongle-disk:
donuts:
doorstop:
DoS attack:
dot file:
double bucky:
doubled sig:
down:
download:
DP:
DPB:
DPer:
Dr. Fred Mbogo:
dragon:
Dragon Book:
drain:
dread high-bit
disease:
Dread Questionmark
Disease:
DRECNET:
driver:
droid:
drone:
drool-proof paper:
drop on the
floor:
drop-ins:
drop-outs:
drugged:
drum:
drunk mouse
syndrome:
dub dub dub:
Duff's device:
dumb terminal:
dumbass attack:
dumbed down:
dump:
dumpster diving:
dup killer:
dup loop:
dusty deck:
DWIM:
dynner:
Node:D. C. Power Lab, Next:daemon, Previous:C|N>K, Up:= D =
D. C. Power Lab n.
The former site of SAIL. Hackers
thought this was very funny because the obvious connection to
electrical engineering was nonexistent -- the lab was named for a
Donald C. Power. Compare Marginal
Hacks.
Node:daemon, Next:daemon book, Previous:D. C. Power Lab, Up:= D =
daemon /day'mn/ or /dee'mn/ n.
[from the mythological meaning, later rationalized as the
acronym `Disk And Execution MONitor'] A program that is not
invoked explicitly, but lies dormant waiting for some
condition(s) to occur. The idea is that the perpetrator of the
condition need not be aware that a daemon is lurking (though
often a program will commit an action only because it knows that
it will implicitly invoke a daemon). For example, under ITS writing a file on the LPT spooler's directory would invoke the spooling
daemon, which would then print the file. The advantage is that
programs wanting (in this example) files printed need neither
compete for access to nor understand any idiosyncrasies of the
LPT. They simply enter their implicit
requests and let the daemon decide what to do with them. Daemons
are usually spawned automatically by the system, and may either
live forever or be regenerated at intervals.
Daemon and demon are often used
interchangeably, but seem to have distinct connotations. The term
`daemon' was introduced to computing by CTSS people (who pronounced it /dee'mon/) and
used it to refer to what ITS called a dragon; the prototype was a program called
DAEMON that automatically made tape backups of the file system.
Although the meaning and the pronunciation have drifted, we think
this glossary reflects current (2000) usage.
Node:daemon book, Next:dahmum, Previous:daemon, Up:= D
=
daemon book n.
"The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating
System", by Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael J.
Karels, and John S. Quarterman (Addison-Wesley Publishers, 1989,
ISBN 0-201-06196-1); or "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4
BSD Operating System" by Marshall Kirk McKusick, Keith Bostic,
Michael J. Karels and John S. Quarterman (Addison-Wesley Longman,
1996, SBN 0-201-54979-4) Either of the standard reference books
on the internals of BSD Unix. So called
because the covers have a picture depicting a little devil (a
visual play on daemon) in sneakers,
holding a pitchfork (referring to one of the characteristic
features of Unix, the fork(2) system call). Also
known as the Devil Book.
Node:dahmum, Next:dancing frog, Previous:daemon book, Up:= D =
dahmum /dah'mum/ n.
[Usenet] The material of which protracted flame wars, especially those about
operating systems, is composed. Homeomorphic to spam. The term `dahmum' is derived from the name
of a militant OS/2 advocate, and
originated when an extensively crossposted OS/2-versus-Linux debate was fed through Dissociated Press.
Node:dancing frog, Next:dangling pointer,
Previous:dahmum, Up:= D =
dancing frog n.
[Vancouver area] A problem that occurs on a computer that will
not reappear while anyone else is watching. From the classic
Warner Brothers cartoon "One Froggy Evening", featuring a dancing
and singing Michigan J. Frog that just croaks when anyone else is
around (now the WB network mascot).
Node:dangling pointer, Next:dark-side hacker,
Previous:dancing
frog, Up:= D =
dangling pointer n.
[common] A reference that doesn't actually lead anywhere (in C
and some other languages, a pointer that doesn't actually point
at anything valid). Usually this happens because it formerly
pointed to something that has moved or disappeared. Used as
jargon in a generalization of its techspeak meaning; for example,
a local phone number for a person who has since moved to the
other coast is a dangling pointer. Compare dead link.
Node:dark-side hacker, Next:Datamation, Previous:dangling pointer, Up:= D =
dark-side hacker n.
A criminal or malicious hacker; a cracker. From George Lucas's Darth Vader,
"seduced by the dark side of the Force". The implication that
hackers form a sort of elite of technological Jedi Knights is
intended. Oppose samurai.
Node:Datamation, Next:DAU, Previous:dark-side hacker, Up:= D =
Datamation /day`t*-may'sh*n/ n.
A magazine that many hackers assume all suits read. Used to question an unbelieved quote,
as in "Did you read that in `Datamation?'" (But see below; this
slur may be dated by the time you read this.) It used to publish
something hackishly funny every once in a while, like the
original paper on COME FROM in
1973, and Ed Post's "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal" ten years
later, but for a long time after that it was much more
exclusively suit-oriented and boring.
Following a change of editorship in 1994, Datamation is trying
for more of the technical content and irreverent humor that
marked its early days.
Datamation now has a WWW page at http://www.datamation.com worth
visiting for its selection of computer humor, including "Real
Programmers Don't Use Pascal" and the `Bastard Operator From
Hell' stories by Simon Travaglia (see BOFH).
Node:DAU, Next:Dave the Resurrector, Previous:Datamation, Up:= D =
DAU /dow/ n.
[German FidoNet] German acronym for Dümmster
Anzunehmender User (stupidest imaginable user). From the
engineering-slang GAU for Grösster Anzunehmender Unfall,
worst assumable accident, esp. of a LNG tank farm plant or
something with similarly disastrous consequences. In popular
German, GAU is used only to refer to worst-case nuclear acidents
such as a core meltdown. See cretin,
fool, loser and weasel.
Node:Dave the Resurrector,
Next:day mode, Previous:DAU, Up:= D =
Dave the Resurrector n.
[Usenet; also abbreviated DtR] A cancelbot that cancels cancels. Dave the
Resurrector originated when some spam-spewers decided to try to impede
spam-fighting by wholesale cancellation of anti-spam coordination
messages in the _news.admin.net-abuse.usenet_ newsgroup.
Node:day mode, Next:dd, Previous:Dave the Resurrector, Up:= D =
day mode n.
See phase (sense 1). Used of
people only.
Node:dd, Next:DDT,
Previous:day mode, Up:= D =
dd /dee-dee/ vt.
[Unix: from IBM JCL] Equivalent to
cat or BLT.
Originally the name of a Unix copy command with special options
suitable for block-oriented devices; it was often used in
heavy-handed system maintenance, as in "Let's dd the
root partition onto a tape, then use the boot PROM to load it
back on to a new disk". The Unix dd(1) was designed
with a weird, distinctly non-Unixy keyword option syntax
reminiscent of IBM System/360 JCL (which had an elaborate DD
`Dataset Definition' specification for I/O devices); though the
command filled a need, the interface design was clearly a prank.
The jargon usage is now very rare outside Unix sites and now
nearly obsolete even there, as dd(1) has been deprecated for a long time (though it
has no exact replacement). The term has been displaced by BLT or simple English `copy'.
Node:DDT, Next:de-rezz, Previous:dd, Up:= D =
DDT /D-D-T/ n.
[from the insecticide para-dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethene]
1. Generic term for a program that assists in debugging other
programs by showing individual machine instructions in a readable
symbolic form and letting the user change them. In this sense the
term DDT is now archaic, having been widely displaced by
`debugger' or names of individual programs like adb,
sdb, dbx, or gdb. 2. [ITS]
Under MIT's fabled ITS operating
system, DDT (running under the alias HACTRN, a six-letterism for
`Hack Translator') was also used as the shell or top level command language used to
execute other programs. 3. Any one of several specific DDTs
(sense 1) supported on early DEC
hardware and CP/M. The PDP-10 Reference Handbook (1969) contained
a footnote on the first page of the documentation for DDT that
illuminates the origin of the term:
Historical footnote: DDT was developed at MIT for the
PDP-1 computer in 1961. At that time DDT stood for "DEC Debugging
Tape". Since then, the idea of an on-line debugging program has
propagated throughout the computer industry. DDT programs are now
available for all DEC computers. Since media other than tape are
now frequently used, the more descriptive name "Dynamic Debugging
Technique" has been adopted, retaining the DDT abbreviation.
Confusion between DDT-10 and another well known pesticide,
dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (C14-H9-Cl5) should be minimal
since each attacks a different, and apparently mutually
exclusive, class of bugs.
(The `tape' referred to was, incidentally, not magnetic but
paper.) Sadly, this quotation was removed from later editions of
the handbook after the suits took over
and DEC became much more
`businesslike'.
The history above is known to many old-time hackers. But
there's more: Peter Samson, compiler of the original TMRC lexicon, reports that he named `DDT' after a
similar tool on the TX-0 computer, the direct ancestor of the
PDP-1 built at MIT's Lincoln Lab in 1957. The debugger on that
ground-breaking machine (the first transistorized computer)
rejoiced in the name FLIT (FLexowriter Interrogation Tape).
Node:de-rezz, Next:dead, Previous:DDT,
Up:= D =
de-rezz /dee-rez'/
[from `de-resolve' via the movie "Tron"] (also `derez') 1. vi.
To disappear or dissolve; the image that goes with it is of an
object breaking up into raster lines and static and then
dissolving. Occasionally used of a person who seems to have
suddenly `fuzzed out' mentally rather than physically. Usage:
extremely silly, also rare. This verb was actually invented as
fictional hacker jargon, and adopted in a spirit of
irony by real hackers years after the fact. 2. vt. The Macintosh
resource decompiler. On a Macintosh, many program structures
(including the code itself) are managed in small segments of the
program file known as `resources'; `Rez' and `DeRez' are a pair
of utilities for compiling and decompiling resource files. Thus,
decompiling a resource is `derezzing'. Usage: very common.
Node:dead, Next:dead beef attack, Previous:de-rezz, Up:= D =
dead adj.
1. Non-functional; down; crashed. Especially used of hardware. 2. At
XEROX PARC, software that is working but not undergoing continued
development and support. 3. Useless; inaccessible. Antonym:
`live'. Compare dead code.
Node:dead beef attack, Next:dead code, Previous:dead, Up:= D =
dead beef attack n.
[cypherpunks list, 1996] An attack on a public-key
cryptosystem consisting of publishing a key having the same ID as
another key (thus making it possible to spoof a user's identity
if recipients aren't careful about verifying keys). In PGP and
GPG the key ID is the last eight hex digits of (for RSA keys) the
product of two primes. The attack was demonstrated by creating a
key whose ID was 0xdeadbeef (see DEADBEEF).
Node:dead code, Next:dead link, Previous:dead beef attack, Up:= D =
dead code n.
Routines that can never be accessed because all calls to them
have been removed, or code that cannot be reached because it is
guarded by a control structure that provably must always transfer
control somewhere else. The presence of dead code may reveal
either logical errors due to alterations in the program or
significant changes in the assumptions and environment of the
program (see also software
rot); a good compiler should report dead code so a
maintainer can think about what it means. (Sometimes it simply
means that an extremely defensive programmer has
inserted can't happen tests
which really can't happen -- yet.) Syn. grunge. See also dead, and The Story of Mel.
Node:dead link, Next:DEADBEEF, Previous:dead code, Up:= D =
dead link n.
[very common] A World-Wide-Web URL that no longer points to
the information it was written to reach. Usually this happens
because the document has been moved or deleted. Lots of dead
links make a WWW page frustrating and useless and are the #1 sign
of poor page maintainance. Compare dangling pointer, link rot.
Node:DEADBEEF, Next:deadlock, Previous:dead link, Up:= D =
DEADBEEF /ded-beef/ n.
The hexadecimal word-fill pattern for freshly allocated memory
(decimal -21524111) under a number of IBM environments, including
the RS/6000. Some modern debugging tools deliberately fill freed
memory with this value as a way of converting heisenbugs into Bohr bugs. As in "Your program is DEADBEEF"
(meaning gone, aborted, flushed from memory); if you start from
an odd half-word boundary, of course, you have BEEFDEAD. See also
the anecdote under fool and dead beef attack.
Node:deadlock, Next:deadly embrace, Previous:DEADBEEF, Up:= D =
deadlock n.
1. [techspeak] A situation wherein two or more processes are
unable to proceed because each is waiting for one of the others
to do something. A common example is a program communicating to a
server, which may find itself waiting for output from the server
before sending anything more to it, while the server is similarly
waiting for more input from the controlling program before
outputting anything. (It is reported that this particular flavor
of deadlock is sometimes called a `starvation deadlock', though
the term `starvation' is more properly used for situations where
a program can never run simply because it never gets high enough
priority. Another common flavor is `constipation', in which each
process is trying to send stuff to the other but all buffers are
full because nobody is reading anything.) See deadly embrace. 2. Also used of
deadlock-like interactions between humans, as when two people
meet in a narrow corridor, and each tries to be polite by moving
aside to let the other pass, but they end up swaying from side to
side without making any progress because they always move the
same way at the same time.
Node:deadly embrace, Next:death code, Previous:deadlock, Up:= D =
deadly embrace n.
Same as deadlock, though
usually used only when exactly two processes are involved. This
is the more popular term in Europe, while deadlock predominates in the United
States.
Node:death code, Next:Death Square, Previous:deadly embrace, Up:= D =
death code n.
A routine whose job is to set everything in the computer --
registers, memory, flags, everything -- to zero, including that
portion of memory where it is running; its last act is to stomp
on its own "store zero" instruction. Death code isn't very
useful, but writing it is an interesting hacking challenge on
architectures where the instruction set makes it possible, such
as the PDP-8 (it has also been done on the DG Nova).
Perhaps the ultimate death code is on the TI 990 series, where
all registers are actually in RAM, and the instruction "store
immediate 0" has the opcode "0". The PC will immediately wrap
around core as many times as it can until a user hits HALT. Any
empty memory location is death code. Worse, the manufacturer
recommended use of this instruction in startup code (which would
be in ROM and therefore survive).
Node:Death Square, Next:Death Star, Previous:death code, Up:= D =
Death Square n.
The corporate logo of Novell, the people who acquired USL
after AT&T let go of it (Novell eventually sold the Unix
group to SCO). Coined by analogy with Death Star, because many people believed
Novell was bungling the lead in Unix systems exactly as AT&T
did for many years.
Node:Death Star, Next:DEC, Previous:Death Square, Up:= D =
Death Star n.
[from the movie "Star Wars"] 1. The AT&T corporate logo,
which appears on computers sold by AT&T and bears an uncanny
resemblance to the Death Star in the movie. This usage is
particularly common among partisans of BSD Unix, who tend to regard the AT&T versions
as inferior and AT&T as a bad guy. Copies still circulate of
a poster printed by Mt. Xinu showing a starscape with a space
fighter labeled 4.2 BSD streaking away from a broken AT&T
logo wreathed in flames. 2. AT&T's internal magazine,
"Focus", uses `death star' to describe an incorrectly done
AT&T logo in which the inner circle in the top left is dark
instead of light -- a frequent result of dark-on-light logo
images.
Node:DEC, Next:DEC Wars, Previous:Death Star, Up:= D =
DEC /dek/ n.
1. v. Verbal (and only rarely written) shorthand for
_decrement_, i.e. `decrease by one'. Especially used by
assembly programmers, as many assembly languages have a
dec mnemonic. Antonym: inc. 2. n. Commonly used abbreviation for Digital
Equipment Corporation, later deprecated by DEC itself in favor of
"Digital" and now entirely obsolete following the buyout by
Compaq. Before the killer
micro revolution of the late 1980s, hackerdom was closely
symbiotic with DEC's pioneering timesharing machines. The first
of the group of cultures described by this lexicon nucleated
around the PDP-1 (see TMRC).
Subsequently, the PDP-6, PDP-10,
PDP-20, PDP-11 and VAX were all foci of large and important
hackerdoms, and DEC machines long dominated the ARPANET and
Internet machine population. DEC was the technological leader of
the minicomputer era (roughly 1967 to 1987), but its failure to
embrace microcomputers and Unix early cost it heavily in profits
and prestige after silicon got
cheap. Nevertheless, the microprocessor design tradition owes a
major debt to the PDP-11 instruction set, and every one of the
major general-purpose microcomputer OSs so far (CP/M, MS-DOS,
Unix, OS/2, Windows NT) was either genetically descended from a
DEC OS, or incubated on DEC hardware, or both. Accordingly, DEC
was for many years still regarded with a certain wry affection
even among many hackers too young to have grown up on DEC
machines.
DEC reclaimed some of its old reputation among techies in the
first half of the 1990s. The success of the Alpha, an
innovatively-designed and very high-performance killer micro, helped a lot. So did
DEC's newfound receptiveness to Unix and open systems in general.
When Compaq acquired DEC at the end of 1998 there was some
concern that these gains would be lost along with the DEC
nameplate, but the merged company has so far turned out to be
culturally dominated by the ex-DEC side.
Node:DEC Wars, Next:decay, Previous:DEC, Up:= D =
DEC Wars n.
A 1983 Usenet posting by Alan
Hastings and Steve Tarr spoofing the "Star Wars" movies in
hackish terms. Some years later, ESR (disappointed by Hastings
and Tarr's failure to exploit a great premise more thoroughly)
posted a 3-times-longer complete rewrite called Unix
WARS; the two are often confused.
Node:decay, Next:deckle, Previous:DEC Wars, Up:= D =
decay n.,vi
[from nuclear physics] An automatic conversion which is
applied to most array-valued expressions in C; they `decay into' pointer-valued expressions
pointing to the array's first element. This term is borderline
techspeak, but is not used in the official standard for the
language.
Node:deckle, Next:DED, Previous:decay, Up:= D
=
deckle /dek'l/ n.
[from dec- and nybble; the
original spelling seems to have been `decle'] Two nickles; 10 bits. Reported among developers for
Mattel's GI 1600 (the Intellivision games processor), a chip with
16-bit-wide RAM but 10-bit-wide ROM. See nybble for other such terms.
Node:DED, Next:deep hack mode, Previous:deckle, Up:= D =
DED /D-E-D/ n.
Dark-Emitting Diode (that is, a burned-out LED). Compare SED, LER, write-only memory. In the
early 1970s both Signetics and Texas instruments released DED
spec sheets as AFJs (suggested uses
included "as a power-off indicator").
Node:deep hack mode, Next:deep magic, Previous:DED, Up:= D =
deep hack mode n.
See hack mode.
Node:deep magic, Next:deep space, Previous:deep hack mode, Up:= D =
deep magic n.
[poss. from C. S. Lewis's "Narnia" books] An awesomely arcane
technique central to a program or system, esp. one neither
generally published nor available to hackers at large (compare
black art); one that could only
have been composed by a true wizard.
Compiler optimization techniques and many aspects of OS design used to be deep magic; many techniques in
cryptography, signal processing, graphics, and AI still are.
Compare heavy wizardry.
Esp. found in comments of the form "Deep magic begins
here...". Compare voodoo programming.
Node:deep space, Next:defenestration, Previous:deep magic, Up:= D =
deep space n.
1. Describes the notional location of any program that has
gone off the trolley.
Esp. used of programs that just sit there silently grinding long
after either failure or some output is expected. "Uh oh. I should
have gotten a prompt ten seconds ago. The program's in deep space
somewhere." Compare buzz, catatonic, hyperspace. 2. The metaphorical location of
a human so dazed and/or confused or caught up in some esoteric
form of bogosity that he or she no
longer responds coherently to normal communication. Compare page out.
Node:defenestration, Next:defined as, Previous:deep space, Up:= D =
defenestration n.
[mythically from a traditional Czech assasination method, via
SF fandom] 1. Proper karmic retribution for an incorrigible
punster. "Oh, ghod, that was awful!" "Quick!
Defenestrate him!" 2. The act of exiting a window system in order
to get better response time from a full-screen program. This
comes from the dictionary meaning of `defenestrate', which is to
throw something out a window. 3. The act of discarding something
under the assumption that it will improve matters. "I don't have
any disk space left." "Well, why don't you defenestrate that 100
megs worth of old core dumps?" 4. Under a GUI, the act of
dragging something out of a window (onto the screen). "Next,
defenestrate the MugWump icon." 5. The act of completely removing
Micro$oft Windows from a PC in favor of a better OS (typically
Linux).
Node:defined as, Next:dehose, Previous:defenestration, Up:= D =
defined as adj.
In the role of, usually in an organization-chart sense. "Pete
is currently defined as bug prioritizer." Compare logical.
Node:dehose, Next:deletia, Previous:defined as, Up:= D =
dehose /dee-hohz/ vt.
To clear a hosed condition.
Node:deletia, Next:deliminator, Previous:dehose, Up:= D
=
deletia n. /d*-lee'sha/
[USENET; common] In an email reply, material omitted from the
quote of the original. Usually written rather than spoken; often
appears as a pseudo-tag or ellipsis in the body of the reply, as
"[deletia]" or "".
Node:deliminator, Next:delint, Previous:deletia, Up:= D
=
deliminator /de-lim'-in-ay-t*r/ n.
[portmanteau, delimiter + eliminate] A string or pattern used
to delimit text into fields, but which is itself eliminated from
the resulting list of fields. This jargon seems to have
originated among Perl hackers in connection with the Perl split()
function; however, it has been sighted in live use among Java and
even Visual Basic programmers.
Node:delint, Next:delta, Previous:deliminator, Up:= D =
delint /dee-lint/ v. obs.
To modify code to remove problems detected when linting. Confusingly, this process is also
referred to as `linting' code. This term is no longer in general
use because ANSI C compilers typically issue compile-time
warnings almost as detailed as lint warnings.
Node:delta, Next:demented, Previous:delint, Up:= D
=
delta n.
1. [techspeak] A quantitative change, especially a small or
incremental one (this use is general in physics and engineering).
"I just doubled the speed of my program!" "What was the delta on
program size?" "About 30 percent." (He doubled the speed of his
program, but increased its size by only 30 percent.) 2. [Unix] A
diff, especially a diff stored under the set of version-control
tools called SCCS (Source Code Control System) or RCS (Revision
Control System). 3. n. A small quantity, but not as small as
epsilon. The jargon usage of delta and epsilon stems from the traditional use of
these letters in mathematics for very small numerical quantities,
particularly in `epsilon-delta' proofs in limit theory (as in the
differential calculus). The term delta is often used, once epsilon has been mentioned, to mean a quantity
that is slightly bigger than epsilon but still very small. "The cost isn't
epsilon, but it's delta" means that the cost isn't totally
negligible, but it is nevertheless very small. Common
constructions include `within delta of --', `within epsilon of
--': that is, `close to' and `even closer to'.
Node:demented, Next:demigod, Previous:delta, Up:= D
=
demented adj.
Yet another term of disgust used to describe a malfunctioning
program. The connotation in this case is that the program works
as designed, but the design is bad. Said, for example, of a
program that generates large numbers of meaningless error
messages, implying that it is on the brink of imminent collapse.
Compare wonky, brain-damaged, bozotic.
Node:demigod, Next:demo, Previous:demented, Up:=
D =
demigod n.
A hacker with years of experience, a world-wide reputation,
and a major role in the development of at least one design, tool,
or game used by or known to more than half of the hacker
community. To qualify as a genuine demigod, the person must
recognizably identify with the hacker community and have helped
shape it. Major demigods include Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie
(co-inventors of Unix and C), Richard M. Stallman (inventor of EMACS), Larry Wall (inventor of Perl), Linus Torvalds (inventor of Linux), and most recently James Gosling
(inventor of Java, NeWS, and GOSMACS) and Guido van Rossum (inventor
of Python). In their hearts of
hearts, most hackers dream of someday becoming demigods
themselves, and more than one major software project has been
driven to completion by the author's veiled hopes of apotheosis.
See also net.god, true-hacker.
Node:demo, Next:demo mode, Previous:demigod, Up:= D
=
demo /de'moh/
[short for `demonstration'] 1. v. To demonstrate a product or
prototype. A far more effective way of inducing bugs to manifest
than any number of test runs,
especially when important people are watching. 2. n. The act of
demoing. "I've gotta give a demo of the drool-proof interface;
how does it work again?" 3. n. Esp. as `demo version', can refer
either to an early, barely-functional version of a program which
can be used for demonstration purposes as long as the operator
uses exactly the right commands and skirts its numerous
bugs, deficiencies, and unimplemented portions, or to a special
version of a program (frequently with some features crippled)
which is distributed at little or no cost to the user for
enticement purposes. 4. [demoscene] A sequence of demoeffects (usually) combined with
self-composed music and hand-drawn ("pixelated") graphics. These
days (1997) usually built to attend a compo. Often called `eurodemos' outside Europe,
as most of the demoscene activity
seems to have gathered in northern Europe and especially
Scandinavia. See also intro, dentro.
Node:demo mode, Next:demoeffect, Previous:demo, Up:= D
=
demo mode n.
1. [Sun] The state of being heads
down in order to finish code in time for a demo, usually due yesterday. 2. A mode in which
video games sit by themselves running through a portion of the
game, also known as `attract mode'. Some serious apps have a demo mode they use as a screen saver,
or may go through a demo mode on startup (for example, the
Microsoft Windows opening screen -- which lets you impress your
neighbors without actually having to put up with Microsloth Windows).
Node:demoeffect, Next:demogroup, Previous:demo mode, Up:= D =
demoeffect n.
[demoscene] What among hackers
is called a display hack.
Classical effects include "plasma" (colorful mess), "keftales"
(x*x+y*y and other similar patterns, usually combined with
color-cycling), realtime fractals, realtime 3d graphics, etc.
Historically, demo effects have cheated as much as possible to
gain more speed and more complexity, using low-precision math and
masses of assembler code and building animation realtime are
three common tricks, but use of special hardware to fake effects
is a Good Thing on the
demoscene (though this is becoming less common as platforms like
the Amiga fade away).
Node:demogroup, Next:demon, Previous:demoeffect, Up:= D =
demogroup n.
[demoscene] A group of demo (sense 4) composers. Job titles within
a group include coders (the ones who write programs), graphicians
(the ones who painstakingly pixelate the fine art), musicians
(the music composers), sysops,
traders/swappers (the ones who do the trading and other PR), and
organizers (in larger groups). It is not uncommon for one person
to do multiple jobs, but it has been observed that good coders
are rarely good composers and vice versa. [How odd. Musical
talent seems common among Internet/Unix hackers --ESR]
Node:demon, Next:demon dialer, Previous:demogroup, Up:= D =
demon n.
1. [MIT] A portion of a program that is not invoked
explicitly, but that lies dormant waiting for some condition(s)
to occur. See daemon. The
distinction is that demons are usually processes within a
program, while daemons are usually programs running on an
operating system. 2. [outside MIT] Often used equivalently to
daemon -- especially in the Unix world, where the latter spelling and
pronunciation is considered mildly archaic.
Demons in sense 1 are particularly common in AI programs. For
example, a knowledge-manipulation program might implement
inference rules as demons. Whenever a new piece of knowledge was
added, various demons would activate (which demons depends on the
particular piece of data) and would create additional pieces of
knowledge by applying their respective inference rules to the
original piece. These new pieces could in turn activate more
demons as the inferences filtered down through chains of logic.
Meanwhile, the main program could continue with whatever its
primary task was.
Node:demon dialer, Next:demoparty, Previous:demon, Up:= D =
demon dialer n.
A program which repeatedly calls the same telephone number.
Demon dialing may be benign (as when a number of communications
programs contend for legitimate access to a BBS line) or malign (that is, used as a prank or
denial-of-service attack). This term dates from the blue box days of the 1970s and early 1980s
and is now semi-obsolescent among phreakers; see war
dialer for its contemporary progeny.
Node:demoparty, Next:demoscene, Previous:demon dialer, Up:= D =
demoparty n.
[demoscene] Aboveground
descendant of the copyparty, with
emphasis shifted away from software piracy and towards compos. Smaller demoparties, for 100
persons or less, are held quite often, sometimes even once a
month, and usually last for one to two days. On the other end of
the scale, huge demo parties are held once a year (and four of
these have grown very large and occur annually - Assembly in
Finland, The Party in Denmark, The Gathering in Norway, and NAID
somewhere in north America). These parties usually last for three
to five days, have room for 3000-5000 people, and have a party
network with connection to the internet.
Node:demoscene, Next:dentro, Previous:demoparty, Up:= D =
demoscene /dem'oh-seen/
[also `demo scene'] A culture of multimedia hackers located
primarily in Scandinavia and northern Europe. Demoscene folklore
recounts that when old-time warez
d00dz cracked some piece of software they often added an
advertisement of in the beginning, usually containing colorful
display hacks with greetings
to other cracking groups. The demoscene was born among people who
decided building these display hacks is more interesting than
hacking and began to build self-contained display hacks of
considerable elaboration and beauty (within the culture such a
hack is called a demo). The split
seems to have happened at the end of the 1980s. As more of these
demogroups emerged, they started
to have compos at copying parties
(see copyparty), which later
evolved to standalone events (see demoparty). The demoscene has retained some
traits from the warez d00dz,
including their style of handles and group names and some of
their jargon.
Traditionally demos were written in assembly language, with
lots of smart tricks, self-modifying code, undocumented op-codes
and the like. Some time around 1995, people started coding demos
in C, and a couple of years after that, they also started using
Java.
Ten years on (in 1998-1999), the demoscene is changing as its
original platforms (C64, Amiga, Spectrum, Atari ST, IBM PC under
DOS) die out and activity shifts towards Windows, Linux, and the
Internet. While deeply underground in the past, demoscene is
trying to get into the mainstream as accepted art form, and one
symptom of this is the commercialization of bigger demoparties.
Older demosceneers frown at this, but the majority think it's a
good direction. Many demosceneers end up working in the computer
game industry. Demoscene resource pages are available at http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained/
and http://www.scene.org/.
Node:dentro, Next:depeditate, Previous:demoscene, Up:= D =
dentro /den'troh/
[demoscene] Combination of
demo (sense 4) and intro. Other name mixings include intmo, dentmo
etc. and are used usually when the authors are not quite sure
whether the program is a demo or an
intro. Special-purpose coinages like
wedtro (some member of a group got married), invtro (invitation
intro) etc. have also been sighted.
Node:depeditate, Next:deprecated, Previous:dentro, Up:=
D =
depeditate /dee-ped'*-tayt/ n.
[by (faulty) analogy with `decapitate'] Humorously, to cut off
the feet of. When one is using some computer-aided typesetting
tools, careless placement of text blocks within a page or above a
rule can result in chopped-off letter descenders. Such letters
are said to have been depeditated.
Node:deprecated, Next:derf, Previous:depeditate, Up:= D =
deprecated adj.
Said of a program or feature that is considered obsolescent
and in the process of being phased out, usually in favor of a
specified replacement. Deprecated features can, unfortunately,
linger on for many years. This term appears with distressing
frequency in standards documents when the committees writing the
documents realize that large amounts of extant (and presumably
happily working) code depend on the feature(s) that have passed
out of favor. See also dusty
deck.
[Usage note: don't confuse this word with `depreciate', or the
verb form `deprecate' with `depreciated`. They are different
words; see any dictionary for discussion.]
Node:derf, Next:deserves to lose, Previous:deprecated, Up:= D =
derf /derf/ v.,n.
[PLATO] The act of exploiting a terminal which someone else
has absentmindedly left logged on, to use that person's account,
especially to post articles intended to make an ass of the victim
you're impersonating. It has been alleged that the term
originated as a reversal of the name of the gentleman who most
usually left himself vulnerable to it, who also happened to be
the head of the department that handled PLATO at the University
of Delaware.
Node:deserves to lose, Next:desk check, Previous:derf, Up:= D =
deserves to lose adj.
[common] Said of someone who willfully does the Wrong Thing; humorously, if one uses a
feature known to be marginal. What
is meant is that one deserves the consequences of one's losing actions. "Boy, anyone who tries to
use mess-dos deserves to lose!" (ITS fans
used to say the same thing of Unix;
many still do.) See also screw, chomp, bagbiter.
Node:desk check, Next:despew, Previous:deserves to lose, Up:= D =
desk check n.,v.
To grovel over hardcopy of source
code, mentally simulating the control flow; a method of catching
bugs. No longer common practice in this age of on-screen editing,
fast compiles, and sophisticated debuggers -- though some
maintain stoutly that it ought to be. Compare eyeball search, vdiff, vgrep.
Node:despew, Next:Devil Book, Previous:desk check, Up:= D =
despew /d*-spyoo'/ v.
[Usenet] To automatically generate a large amount of garbage
to the net, esp. from an automated posting program gone wild. See
ARMM.
Node:Devil Book, Next:/dev/null, Previous:despew, Up:=
D =
Devil Book n.
See daemon book, the term
preferred by its authors.
Node:/dev/null, Next:dickless workstation,
Previous:Devil Book,
Up:= D =
/dev/null /dev-nuhl/ n.
[from the Unix null device, used as a data sink] A notional
`black hole' in any information space being discussed, used, or
referred to. A controversial posting, for example, might end
"Kudos to rasputin@kremlin.org, flames to /dev/null". See bit bucket.
Node:dickless workstation,
Next:dictionary
flame, Previous:/dev/null, Up:= D =
dickless workstation n.
Extremely pejorative hackerism for `diskless workstation', a
class of botches including the Sun 3/50 and other machines
designed exclusively to network with an expensive central disk
server. These combine all the disadvantages of time-sharing with
all the disadvantages of distributed personal computers;
typically, they cannot even boot
themselves without help (in the form of some kind of breath-of-life packet) from
the server.
Node:dictionary flame, Next:diddle, Previous:dickless workstation, Up:= D =
dictionary flame n.
[Usenet] An attempt to sidetrack a debate away from issues by
insisting on meanings for key terms that presuppose a desired
conclusion or smuggle in an implicit premise. A common tactic of
people who prefer argument over definitions to disputes about
reality. Compare spelling
flame.
Node:diddle, Next:die, Previous:dictionary flame, Up:= D =
diddle
1. vt. To work with or modify in a not particularly serious
manner. "I diddled a copy of ADVENT
so it didn't double-space all the time." "Let's diddle this piece
of code and see if the problem goes away." See tweak and twiddle.
2. n. The action or result of diddling. See also tweak, twiddle,
frob.
Node:die, Next:die horribly, Previous:diddle, Up:=
D =
die v.
Syn. crash. Unlike crash, which is used primarily of hardware, this
verb is used of both hardware and software. See also go flatline, casters-up mode.
Node:die horribly, Next:diff, Previous:die, Up:= D =
die horribly v.
The software equivalent of crash and burn, and the preferred
emphatic form of die. "The converter
choked on an FF in its input and died horribly".
Node:diff, Next:digit, Previous:die horribly, Up:= D =
diff /dif/ n.
1. A change listing, especially giving differences between
(and additions to) source code or documents (the term is often
used in the plural `diffs'). "Send me your diffs for the Jargon
File!" Compare vdiff. 2.
Specifically, such a listing produced by the diff(1)
command, esp. when used as specification input to the
patch(1) utility (which can actually perform the
modifications; see patch). This is a
common method of distributing patches and source updates in the
Unix/C world. 3. v. To compare (whether or not by use of
automated tools on machine-readable files); see also vdiff, mod.
Node:digit, Next:dike, Previous:diff, Up:= D =
digit n.,obs.
An employee of Digital Equipment Corporation. See also VAX, VMS, PDP-10, TOPS-10, field
circus.
Node:dike, Next:Dilbert, Previous:digit, Up:= D
=
dike vt.
To remove or disable a portion of something, as a wire from a
computer or a subroutine from a program. A standard slogan is
"When in doubt, dike it out". (The implication is that it is
usually more effective to attack software problems by reducing
complexity than by increasing it.) The word `dikes' is widely
used among mechanics and engineers to mean `diagonal cutters',
esp. the heavy-duty metal-cutting version, but may also refer to
a kind of wire-cutters used by electronics techs. To `dike
something out' means to use such cutters to remove something.
Indeed, the TMRC Dictionary defined dike as "to attack with
dikes". Among hackers this term has been metaphorically extended
to informational objects such as sections of code.
Node:Dilbert, Next:ding, Previous:dike, Up:= D =
Dilbert
n. Name and title character of a comic strip nationally
syndicated in the U.S. and enormously popular among hackers.
Dilbert is an archetypical engineer-nerd who works at an
anonymous high-technology company; the strips present a
lacerating satire of insane working conditions and idiotic management practices all too readily
recognized by hackers. Adams, who spent nine years in cube 4S700R at Pacific Bell (not DEC as often reported), often remarks that he has
never been able to come up with a fictional management blunder
that his correspondents didn't quickly either report to have
actually happened or top with a similar but even more bizarre
incident. In 1996 Adams distilled his insights into the
collective psychology of businesses into an even funnier book,
"The Dilbert Principle" (HarperCollins, ISBN 0-887-30787-6). See
also pointy-haired, rat dance.
Node:ding, Next:dink, Previous:Dilbert, Up:= D
=
ding n.,vi.
1. Synonym for feep. Usage: rare
among hackers, but more common in the Real World. 2. `dinged': What happens
when someone in authority gives you a minor bitching about
something, esp. something trivial. "I was dinged for having a
messy desk."
Node:dink, Next:dinosaur, Previous:ding, Up:= D =
dink /dink/ adj.
Said of a machine that has the bitty
box nature; a machine too small to be worth bothering
with -- sometimes the system you're currently forced to work on.
First heard from an MIT hacker working on a CP/M system with 64K,
in reference to any 6502 system, then from fans of 32-bit
architectures about 16-bit machines. "GNUMACS will never work on
that dink machine." Probably derived from mainstream `dinky',
which isn't sufficiently pejorative. See macdink.
Node:dinosaur, Next:dinosaur pen, Previous:dink, Up:= D
=
dinosaur n.
1. Any hardware requiring raised flooring and special power.
Used especially of old minis and mainframes, in contrast with
newer microprocessor-based machines. In a famous quote from the
1988 Unix EXPO, Bill Joy compared the liquid-cooled mainframe in
the massive IBM display with a grazing dinosaur "with a truck
outside pumping its bodily fluids through it". IBM was not
amused. Compare big iron; see
also mainframe. 2. [IBM] A very
conservative user; a zipperhead.
Node:dinosaur pen, Next:dinosaurs mating,
Previous:dinosaur, Up:= D =
dinosaur pen n.
A traditional mainframe
computer room complete with raised flooring, special power, its
own ultra-heavy-duty air conditioning, and a side order of Halon
fire extinguishers. See boa.
Node:dinosaurs mating, Next:dirtball, Previous:dinosaur pen, Up:= D =
dinosaurs mating n.
Said to occur when yet another big
iron merger or buyout occurs; reflects a perception by
hackers that these signal another stage in the long, slow dying
of the mainframe industry. In its
glory days of the 1960s, it was `IBM and the Seven Dwarves':
Burroughs, Control Data, General Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA,
and Univac. RCA and GE sold out early, and it was `IBM and the
Bunch' (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell) for
a while. Honeywell was bought out by Bull; Burroughs merged with
Univac to form Unisys (in 1984 -- this was when the phrase
`dinosaurs mating' was coined); and in 1991 AT&T absorbed NCR
(but spat it back out a few years later). Control Data still
exists but is no longer in the mainframe business. More such
earth-shaking unions of doomed giants seem inevitable.
Node:dirtball, Next:dirty power, Previous:dinosaurs mating, Up:= D =
dirtball n.
[XEROX PARC] A small, perhaps struggling outsider; not in the
major or even the minor leagues. For example, "Xerox is not a
dirtball company".
[Outsiders often observe in the PARC culture an institutional
arrogance which usage of this term exemplifies. The brilliance
and scope of PARC's contributions to computer science have been
such that this superior attitude is not much resented. --ESR]
Node:dirty power, Next:disclaimer, Previous:dirtball, Up:= D =
dirty power n.
Electrical mains voltage that is unfriendly to the delicate
innards of computers. Spikes, drop-outs, average voltage significantly
higher or lower than nominal, or just plain noise can all cause
problems of varying subtlety and severity (these are collectively
known as power hits).
Node:disclaimer, Next:Discordianism, Previous:dirty power, Up:= D =
disclaimer n.
[Usenet] Statement ritually appended to many Usenet postings
(sometimes automatically, by the posting software) reiterating
the fact (which should be obvious, but is easily forgotten) that
the article reflects its author's opinions and not necessarily
those of the organization running the machine through which the
article entered the network.
Node:Discordianism, Next:disk farm, Previous:disclaimer, Up:= D =
Discordianism /dis-kor'di-*n-ism/ n.
The veneration of Eris, a.k.a.
Discordia; widely popular among hackers. Discordianism was
popularized by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's novel
"Illuminatus!" as a sort of self-subverting Dada-Zen for
Westerners -- it should on no account be taken seriously but is
far more serious than most jokes. Consider, for example, the
Fifth Commandment of the Pentabarf, from "Principia Discordia":
"A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing What he Reads."
Discordianism is usually connected with an elaborate conspiracy
theory/joke involving millennia-long warfare between the
anarcho-surrealist partisans of Eris and a malevolent,
authoritarian secret society called the Illuminati. See Religion in Appendix B, Church of the SubGenius,
and ha ha only
serious.
Node:disk farm, Next:display hack, Previous:Discordianism, Up:= D =
disk farm n.
(also laundromat) A large
room or rooms filled with disk drives (esp. washing machines).
Node:display hack, Next:dispress, Previous:disk farm, Up:= D =
display hack n.
A program with the same approximate purpose as a kaleidoscope:
to make pretty pictures. Famous display hacks include munching squares, smoking clover, the BSD Unix
rain(6) program, worms(6) on
miscellaneous Unixes, and the X
kaleid(1) program. Display hacks can also be
implemented by creating text files containing numerous escape
sequences for interpretation by a video terminal; one notable
example displayed, on any VT100, a Christmas tree with twinkling
lights and a toy train circling its base. The hack value of a display hack is
proportional to the esthetic value of the images times the
cleverness of the algorithm divided by the size of the code. Syn.
psychedelicware.
Node:dispress, Next:Dissociated Press, Previous:display hack, Up:= D =
dispress vt.
[contraction of `Dissociated Press' due to eight-character
MS-DOS filenames] To apply the Dissociated Press algorithm to a
block of text. The resultant output is also referred to as a
'dispression'.
Node:Dissociated Press, Next:distribution, Previous:dispress, Up:= D =
Dissociated Press n.
[play on `Associated Press'; perhaps inspired by a reference
in the 1950 Bugs Bunny cartoon "What's Up, Doc?"] An algorithm
for transforming any text into potentially humorous garbage even
more efficiently than by passing it through a marketroid. The algorithm starts by
printing any N consecutive words (or letters) in the text. Then
at every step it searches for any random occurrence in the
original text of the last N words (or letters) already printed
and then prints the next word or letter. EMACS has a handy command for this. Here is a
short example of word-based Dissociated Press applied to an
earlier version of this Jargon File:
wart: n. A small, crocky feature that sticks out of an array (C has no
checks for this). This is relatively benign and easy to spot if
the phrase is bent so as to be not worth paying attention to the
medium in question.
Here is a short example of letter-based Dissociated Press
applied to the same source:
window sysIWYG: n. A bit was named aften /bee't*/
prefer to use the other guy's re, especially in every cast a
chuckle on neithout getting into useful informash speech makes
removing a featuring a move or usage actual abstractionsidered
interj. Indeed spectace logic or problem!
A hackish idle pastime is to apply letter-based Dissociated
Press to a random body of text and vgrep the output in hopes of finding an
interesting new word. (In the preceding example, `window sysIWYG'
and `informash' show some promise.) Iterated applications of
Dissociated Press usually yield better results. Similar
techniques called `travesty generators' have been employed with
considerable satirical effect to the utterances of Usenet
flamers; see pseudo.
Node:distribution, Next:distro, Previous:Dissociated Press, Up:= D =
distribution n.
1. A software source tree packaged for distribution; but see
kit. Since about 1996 unqualified use
of this term often implies `Linux
distribution'. The short for distro
is often used for this sense. 2. A vague term encompassing
mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups (but not BBS fora); any
topic-oriented message channel with multiple recipients. 3. An
information-space domain (usually loosely correlated with
geography) to which propagation of a Usenet message is
restricted; a much-underutilized feature.
Node:distro, Next:disusered, Previous:distribution, Up:= D =
distro n.
Synonym for distribution,
sense 1.
Node:disusered, Next:do protocol, Previous:distro, Up:=
D =
disusered adj.
[Usenet] Said of a person whose account on a computer has been
removed, esp. for cause rather than through normal attrition. "He
got disusered when they found out he'd been cracking through the
school's Internet access." The verbal form `disuser' is live but
less common. Both usages probably derive from the DISUSER account
status flag on VMS; setting it disables the account. Compare
star out.
Node:do protocol, Next:doc, Previous:disusered, Up:= D =
do protocol vi.
[from network protocol programming] To perform an interaction
with somebody or something that follows a clearly defined
procedure. For example, "Let's do protocol with the check" at a
restaurant means to ask for the check, calculate the tip and
everybody's share, collect money from everybody, generate change
as necessary, and pay the bill. See protocol.
Node:doc, Next:documentation, Previous:do protocol, Up:= D =
doc /dok/ n.
Common spoken and written shorthand for `documentation'. Often
used in the plural `docs' and in the construction `doc file'
(i.e., documentation available on-line).
Node:documentation, Next:dodgy, Previous:doc, Up:= D =
documentation n.
The multiple kilograms of macerated, pounded, steamed,
bleached, and pressed trees that accompany most modern software
or hardware products (see also tree-killer). Hackers seldom read paper
documentation and (too) often resist writing it; they prefer
theirs to be terse and on-line. A common comment on this
predilection is "You can't grep dead
trees". See drool-proof
paper, verbiage, treeware.
Node:dodgy, Next:dogcow, Previous:documentation, Up:= D =
dodgy adj.
Syn. with flaky. Preferred outside
the U.S.
Node:dogcow, Next:dogfood, Previous:dodgy, Up:= D
=
dogcow /dog'kow/ n.
See Moof. The dogcow is a
semi-legendary creature that lurks in the depths of the Macintosh
Technical Notes Hypercard stack V3.1. The full story of the
dogcow is told in technical note #31 (the particular dogcow
illustrated is properly named `Clarus'). Option-shift-click will
cause it to emit a characteristic `Moof!' or `!fooM' sound.
Getting to tech note 31 is the hard part; to discover
how to do that, one must needs examine the stack script with a
hackerly eye. Clue: rot13 is
involved. A dogcow also appears if you choose `Page
Setup...' with a LaserWriter selected and click on
the `Options' button. It also lurks in other Mac printer drivers,
notably those for the now-discontinued Style Writers. Sadly,
Apple has removed the pages that used to describe the dogcow.
Node:dogfood, Next:dogpile, Previous:dogcow, Up:= D
=
dogfood n.
[Microsoft, Netscape] Interim software used internally for
testing. "To eat one's own dogfood" (from which the slang noun
derives) means to use the software one is developing, as part of
one's everyday development environment (the phrase is used
outside Microsoft and Netscape). The practice is normal in the
Linux community and elsewhere, but the term `dogfood' is seldom
used as open-source betas tend to be quite tasty and nourishing.
The idea is that developers who are using their own software will
quickly learn what's missing or broken. Dogfood is typically not
even of beta quality.
Node:dogpile, Next:dogwash, Previous:dogfood, Up:= D
=
dogpile v.
[Usenet: prob. fr. mainstream "puppy pile"] When many people
post unfriendly responses in short order to a single posting,
they are sometimes said to "dogpile" or "dogpile on" the person
to whom they're responding. For example, when a religious
missionary posts a simplistic appeal to _alt.atheism_, he
can expect to be dogpiled. It has been suggested that this
derives from U.S, football slang for a tackle involving three or
more people; among hackers, it seems at least as likely do derive
from an `autobiographical' Bugs Bunny cartoon in which a gang of
attacking canines actually yells "Dogpile on the rabbit!".
Node:dogwash, Next:domainist, Previous:dogpile, Up:= D
=
dogwash /dog'wosh/
[From a quip in the `urgency' field of a very optional
software change request, ca. 1982. It was something like
"Urgency: Wash your dog first".] 1. n. A project of minimal
priority, undertaken as an escape from more serious work. 2. v.
To engage in such a project. Many games and much freeware get written this way.
Node:domainist, Next:Don't do that then!, Previous:dogwash, Up:= D =
domainist /doh-mayn'ist/ adj.
1. [Usenet, by pointed analogy with "sexist", "racist", etc.]
Someone who judges people by the domain of their email addresses;
esp. someone who dismisses anyone who posts from a public
internet provider. "What do you expect from an article posted
from _aol.com_?" 2. Said of an Internet address (as opposed to a
bang path) because the part to
the right of the @ specifies a nested series of
`domains'; for example, esr@snark.thyrsus.com
specifies the machine called _snark_ in the subdomain called
_thyrsus_ within the top-level domain called _com_. See
also big-endian, sense 2.
The meaning of this term has drifted. At one time sense 2 was
primary. In elder days it was also used of a site, mailer, or
routing program which knew how to handle domainist addresses; or
of a person (esp. a site admin) who preferred domain addressing,
supported a domainist mailer, or proselytized for domainist
addressing and disdained bang
paths. These senses are now (1996) obsolete, as
effectively all sites have converted.
Node:Don't do that then!,
Next:dongle, Previous:domainist, Up:= D =
Don't do that then! imp.
[from an old doctor's office joke about a patient with a
trivial complaint] Stock response to a user complaint. "When I
type control-S, the whole system comes to a halt for thirty
seconds." "Don't do that, then!" (or "So don't do that!").
Compare RTFM.
Here's a classic example of "Don't do that then!" from Neil
Stephenson's "In The Beginning Was The Command Line". A friend of
his built a network with a load of Macs and a few high-powered
database servers. He found that from time to time the whole
network would lock up for no apparent reason. The problem was
eventually tracked down to MacOS's cooperative multitasking: when
a user held down the mouse button for too long, the network stack
wouldn't get a chance to run...
Node:dongle, Next:dongle-disk, Previous:Don't do that then!, Up:= D =
dongle /dong'gl/ n.
1. [now obs.] A security or copy protection device for
proprietary software consisting of a serialized EPROM and some
drivers in a D-25 connector shell, which must be connected to an
I/O port of the computer while the program is run. Programs that
use a dongle query the port at startup and at programmed
intervals thereafter, and terminate if it does not respond with
the dongle's programmed validation code. Thus, users can make as
many copies of the program as they want but must pay for each
dongle. The idea was clever, but it was initially a failure, as
users disliked tying up a serial port this way. By 1993, dongles
would typically pass data through the port and monitor for magic codes (and combinations of status
lines) with minimal if any interference with devices further down
the line -- this innovation was necessary to allow daisy-chained
dongles for multiple pieces of software. These devices have
become rare as the industry has moved away from copy-protection
schemes in general. 2. By extension, any physical electronic key
or transferable ID required for a program to function. Common
variations on this theme have used parallel or even joystick
ports. See dongle-disk. 3. An
adaptor cable mating a special edge-type connector on a PCMCIA or
on-board Ethernet card to a standard RJ45 Ethernet jack. This
usage seems to have surfaced in 1999 and is now dominant. Laptop
owners curse these things because they're notoriously easy to
lose and the vendors commonly charge extortionate prices for
replacements.
[Note: in early 1992, advertising copy from Rainbow
Technologies (a manufacturer of dongles) included a claim that
the word derived from "Don Gall", allegedly the inventor of the
device. The company's receptionist will cheerfully tell you that
the story is a myth invented for the ad copy. Nevertheless, I
expect it to haunt my life as a lexicographer for at least the
next ten years. :-( --ESR]
Node:dongle-disk, Next:donuts, Previous:dongle, Up:= D
=
dongle-disk /don'gl disk/ n.
A special floppy disk that is required in order to perform
some task. Some contain special coding that allows an application
to identify it uniquely, others are special code that
does something that normally-resident programs don't or can't.
(For example, AT&T's "Unix PC" would only come up in root mode with a special boot disk.)
Also called a `key disk'. See dongle.
Node:donuts, Next:doorstop, Previous:dongle-disk, Up:= D =
donuts n. obs.
A collective noun for any set of memory bits. This usage is
extremely archaic and may no longer be live jargon; it dates from
the days of ferrite-core memories in
which each bit was implemented by a doughnut-shaped magnetic
flip-flop.
Node:doorstop, Next:DoS attack, Previous:donuts, Up:= D
=
doorstop n.
Used to describe equipment that is non-functional and halfway
expected to remain so, especially obsolete equipment kept around
for political reasons or ostensibly as a backup. "When we get
another Wyse-50 in here, that ADM 3 will turn into a doorstop."
Compare boat anchor.
Node:DoS attack, Next:dot file, Previous:doorstop, Up:=
D =
DoS attack //
[Usenet,common; note that it's unrelated to `DOS' as name of
an operating system] Abbreviation for Denial-Of-Service attack.
This abbreviation is most often used of attempts to shut down
newsgroups with floods of spam, or to
flood network links with large amounts of traffic, or to flood
network links with large amounts of traffic, often by abusing
network broadcast addresses Compare slashdot effect.
Node:dot file, Next:double bucky, Previous:DoS attack, Up:= D =
dot file [Unix] n.
A file that is not visible by default to normal
directory-browsing tools (on Unix, files named with a leading dot
are, by convention, not normally presented in directory
listings). Many programs define one or more dot files in which
startup or configuration information may be optionally recorded;
a user can customize the program's behavior by creating the
appropriate file in the current or home directory. (Therefore,
dot files tend to creep -- with every
nontrivial application program defining at least one, a user's
home directory can be filled with scores of dot files, of course
without the user's really being aware of it.) See also profile (sense 1), rc file.
Node:double bucky, Next:doubled sig, Previous:dot file, Up:= D =
double bucky adj.
Using both the CTRL and META keys. "The command to burn all
LEDs is double bucky F."
This term originated on the Stanford extended-ASCII keyboard,
and was later taken up by users of the space-cadet keyboard at MIT. A
typical MIT comment was that the Stanford bucky bits (control and meta shifting
keys) were nice, but there weren't enough of them; you could type
only 512 different characters on a Stanford keyboard. An obvious
way to address this was simply to add more shifting keys, and
this was eventually done; but a keyboard with that many shifting
keys is hard on touch-typists, who don't like to move their hands
away from the home position on the keyboard. It was
half-seriously suggested that the extra shifting keys be
implemented as pedals; typing on such a keyboard would be very
much like playing a full pipe organ. This idea is mentioned in a
parody of a very fine song by Jeffrey Moss called "Rubber
Duckie", which was published in "The Sesame Street Songbook"
(Simon and Schuster 1971, ISBN 0-671-21036-X). These lyrics were
written on May 27, 1978, in celebration of the Stanford
keyboard:
Double Bucky
Double bucky, you're the one!
You make my keyboard lots of fun.
Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
(Vo-vo-de-o!)
Control and meta, side by side,
Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
Double bucky! Half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
Oh,
I sure wish that I
Had a couple of
Bits more!
Perhaps a
Set of pedals to
Make the number of
Bits four:
Double double bucky!
Double bucky, left and right
OR'd together, outta sight!
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!
--- The Great Quux (with apologies to Jeffrey Moss)
[This, by the way, is an excellent example of computer filk --ESR] See also meta bit, cokebottle, and quadruple bucky.
Node:doubled sig, Next:down, Previous:double bucky, Up:= D =
doubled sig [Usenet] n.
A sig block that has been
included twice in a Usenet article
or, less commonly, in an electronic mail message. An article or
message with a doubled sig can be caused by improperly configured
software. More often, however, it reveals the author's lack of
experience in electronic communication. See B1FF, pseudo.
Node:down, Next:download, Previous:doubled sig, Up:= D =
down
1. adj. Not operating. "The up escalator is down" is
considered a humorous thing to say (unless of course you were
expecting to use it), and "The elevator is down" always means
"The elevator isn't working" and never refers to what floor the
elevator is on. With respect to computers, this term has passed
into the mainstream; the extension to other kinds of machine is
still confined to techies (e.g. boiler mechanics may speak of a
boiler being down). 2. `go down' vi. To stop functioning; usually
said of the system. The message from
the console that every hacker hates
to hear from the operator is "System going down in 5 minutes". 3.
`take down', `bring down' vt. To deactivate purposely, usually
for repair work or PM. "I'm taking the
system down to work on that bug in the tape drive." Occasionally
one hears the word `down' by itself used as a verb in this vt.
sense. See crash; oppose up.
Node:download, Next:DP, Previous:down,
Up:= D =
download vt.
To transfer data or (esp.) code from a far-away system
(especially a larger `host' system) over a digital communications
link to a nearby system (especially a smaller `client' system.
Oppose upload.
Historical use of these terms was at one time associated with
transfers from large timesharing machines to PCs or peripherals
(download) and vice-versa (upload). The modern usage relative to
the speaker (rather than as an indicator of the size and role of
the machines) evolved as machine categories lost most of their
former functional importance.
Node:DP, Next:DPB,
Previous:download, Up:= D =
DP /D-P/ n.
1. Data Processing. Listed here because, according to hackers,
use of the term marks one immediately as a suit. See DPer. 2.
Common abbrev for Dissociated
Press.
Node:DPB, Next:DPer, Previous:DP,
Up:= D =
DPB /d*-pib'/ vt.
[from the PDP-10 instruction set] To plop something down in
the middle. Usage: silly. "DPB yourself into that couch there."
The connotation would be that the couch is full except for one
slot just big enough for one last person to sit in. DPB means
`DePosit Byte', and was the name of a PDP-10 instruction that
inserts some bits into the middle of some other bits. Hackish
usage has been kept alive by the Common LISP function of the same
name.
Node:DPer, Next:Dr. Fred Mbogo, Previous:DPB, Up:= D =
DPer /dee-pee-er/ n.
Data Processor. Hackers are absolutely amazed that suits use this term self-referentially.
Computers process data, not people! See DP.
Node:Dr. Fred Mbogo, Next:dragon, Previous:DPer, Up:= D
=
Dr. Fred Mbogo /*m-boh'goh, dok'tr fred/ n.
[Stanford] The archetypal man you don't want to see about a
problem, esp. an incompetent professional; a shyster. "Do you
know a good eye doctor?" "Sure, try Mbogo Eye Care and
Professional Dry Cleaning." The name comes from synergy between
bogus and the original Dr. Mbogo, a
witch doctor who was Gomez Addams' physician on the old "Addams
Family" TV show. Interestingly enough, it turns out that under
the rules for Swahili noun classes, `m-' is the characteristic
prefix of "nouns referring to human beings". As such, "mbogo" is
quite plausible as a Swahili coinage for a person having the
nature of a bogon. Compare Bloggs Family and J. Random Hacker; see also Fred Foobar and fred.
Node:dragon, Next:Dragon Book, Previous:Dr. Fred Mbogo, Up:= D =
dragon n.
[MIT] A program similar to a daemon, except that it is not invoked at all,
but is instead used by the system to perform various secondary
tasks. A typical example would be an accounting program, which
keeps track of who is logged in, accumulates load-average
statistics, etc. Under ITS, many terminals displayed a list of
people logged in, where they were, what they were running, etc.,
along with some random picture (such as a unicorn, Snoopy, or the
Enterprise), which was generated by the `name dragon'. Usage:
rare outside MIT -- under Unix and most other OSes this would be
called a `background demon' or daemon. The best-known Unix example of a dragon
is cron(1). At SAIL, they called this sort of thing
a `phantom'.
Node:Dragon Book, Next:drain, Previous:dragon, Up:= D
=
Dragon Book n.
The classic text "Compilers: Principles, Techniques and
Tools", by Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman
(Addison-Wesley 1986; ISBN 0-201-10088-6), so called because of
the cover design featuring a dragon labeled `complexity of
compiler design' and a knight bearing the lance `LALR parser
generator' among his other trappings. This one is more
specifically known as the `Red Dragon Book' (1986); an earlier
edition, sans Sethi and titled "Principles Of Compiler Design"
(Alfred V. Aho and Jeffrey D. Ullman; Addison-Wesley, 1977; ISBN
0-201-00022-9), was the `Green Dragon Book' (1977). (Also `New
Dragon Book', `Old Dragon Book'.) The horsed knight and the Green
Dragon were warily eying each other at a distance; now the knight
is typing (wearing gauntlets!) at a terminal showing a video-game
representation of the Red Dragon's head while the rest of the
beast extends back in normal space. See also book titles.
Node:drain, Next:dread high-bit disease,
Previous:Dragon Book,
Up:= D =
drain v.
[IBM] Syn. for flush (sense 2).
Has a connotation of finality about it; one speaks of draining a
device before taking it offline.
Node:dread high-bit
disease, Next:Dread Questionmark Disease,
Previous:drain, Up:= D =
dread high-bit disease n.
A condition endemic to some now-obsolete computers and
peripherals (including ASR-33 teletypes and PRIME minicomputers)
that results in all characters having their high (0x80) bit
forced on. This of course makes transporting files to other
systems much more difficult, not to mention the problems these
machines have talking with true 8-bit devices.
This term was originally used specifically of PRIME (a.k.a.
PR1ME) minicomputers. Folklore has it that PRIME adopted the
reversed-8-bit convention in order to save 25 cents per serial
line per machine; PRIME old-timers, on the other hand, claim they
inherited the disease from Honeywell via customer NASA's
compatibility requirements and struggled heroically to cure it.
Whoever was responsible, this probably qualifies as one of the
most cretinous design tradeoffs
ever made. See meta bit.
Node:Dread Questionmark
Disease, Next:DRECNET,
Previous:dread high-bit disease, Up:= D =
Dread Questionmark Disease
n. The result of saving HTML from Microsoft Word or some other
program that uses the nonstandard Microsoft variant of Latin-1;
the symptom is that various of those nonstandard characters in
positions 128-160 show up as questionmarks. The usual culprit is
the misnamed `smart quotes' feature in Microsoft Word. For more
details (and a program called `demoroniser' that cleans up the
mess) see http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/.
Node:DRECNET, Next:driver, Previous:Dread Questionmark Disease,
Up:= D =
DRECNET /drek'net/ n.
[from Yiddish/German `dreck', meaning filth] Deliberate
distortion of DECNET, a networking protocol used in the VMS community. So called because DEC helped write the Ethernet specification and
then (either stupidly or as a malignant customer-control tactic)
violated that spec in the design of DRECNET in a way that made it
incompatible. See also connector conspiracy.
Node:driver, Next:droid, Previous:DRECNET, Up:= D
=
driver n.
1. The main loop of an
event-processing program; the code that gets commands and
dispatches them for execution. 2. [techspeak] In `device driver',
code designed to handle a particular peripheral device such as a
magnetic disk or tape unit. 3. In the TeX world and the
computerized typesetting world in general, a program that
translates some device-independent or other common format to
something a real device can actually understand.
Node:droid, Next:drone, Previous:driver, Up:= D
=
droid n.
[from `android', SF terminology for a humanoid robot of
essentially biological (as opposed to mechanical/electronic)
construction] A person (esp. a low-level bureaucrat or
service-business employee) exhibiting most of the following
characteristics: (a) naive trust in the wisdom of the parent
organization or `the system'; (b) a blind-faith propensity to
believe obvious nonsense emitted by authority figures (or
computers!); (c) a rule-governed mentality, one unwilling or
unable to look beyond the `letter of the law' in exceptional
situations; (d) a paralyzing fear of official reprimand or worse
if Procedures are not followed No Matter What; and (e) no
interest in doing anything above or beyond the call of a very
narrowly-interpreted duty, or in particular in fixing that which
is broken; an "It's not my job, man" attitude.
Typical droid positions include supermarket checkout assistant
and bank clerk; the syndrome is also endemic in low-level
government employees. The implication is that the rules and
official procedures constitute software that the droid is
executing; problems arise when the software has not been properly
debugged. The term `droid mentality' is also used to describe the
mindset behind this behavior. Compare suit, marketroid; see -oid.
In England there is equivalent mainstream slang; a `jobsworth'
is an obstructive, rule-following bureaucrat, often of the
uniformed or suited variety. Named for the habit of denying a
reasonable request by sucking his teeth and saying "Oh no, guv,
sorry I can't help you: that's more than my job's worth".
Node:drone, Next:drool-proof paper, Previous:droid, Up:= D =
drone n.
Ignorant sales or customer service personnel in computer or
electronics superstores. Characterized by a lack of even
superficial knowledge about the products they sell, yet possessed
of the conviction that they are more competent than their hacker
customers. Usage: "That video board probably sucks, it was
recommended by a drone at Fry's" In the year 2000, their natural
habitats include Fry's Electronics, Best Buy, and CompUSA.
Node:drool-proof paper, Next:drop on the floor,
Previous:drone, Up:= D =
drool-proof paper n.
Documentation that has been obsessively dumbed down, to the point where only a
cretin could bear to read it, is
said to have succumbed to the `drool-proof paper syndrome' or to
have been `written on drool-proof paper'. For example, this is an
actual quote from Apple's LaserWriter manual: "Do not expose your
LaserWriter to open fire or flame." The SGI Indy manual is said
to include the line "Do not dangle the mouse by the cord or throw
it at coworkers.", but this sounds like parody.
Node:drop on the floor,
Next:drop-ins, Previous:drool-proof paper,
Up:= D =
drop on the floor vt.
To react to an error condition by silently discarding messages
or other valuable data. "The gateway ran out of memory, so it
just started dropping packets on the floor." Also frequently used
of faulty mail and netnews relay sites that lose messages. See
also black hole, bit bucket.
Node:drop-ins, Next:drop-outs, Previous:drop on the floor, Up:= D =
drop-ins n.
[prob. by analogy with drop-outs] Spurious characters appearing on
a terminal or console as a result of line noise or a system
malfunction of some sort. Esp. used when these are interspersed
with one's own typed input. Compare drop-outs, sense 2.
Node:drop-outs, Next:drugged, Previous:drop-ins, Up:=
D =
drop-outs n.
1. A variety of `power glitch' (see glitch); momentary 0 voltage on the electrical
mains. 2. Missing characters in typed input due to software
malfunction or system saturation (one cause of such behavior
under Unix when a bad connection to a modem swamps the processor
with spurious character interrupts; see screaming tty). 3. Mental glitches;
used as a way of describing those occasions when the mind just
seems to shut down for a couple of beats. See glitch, fried.
Node:drugged, Next:drum, Previous:drop-outs, Up:= D =
drugged adj.
(also `on drugs') 1. Conspicuously stupid, heading toward
brain-damaged. Often
accompanied by a pantomime of toking a joint. 2. Of hardware,
very slow relative to normal performance.
Node:drum, Next:drunk mouse syndrome, Previous:drugged, Up:= D =
drum adj, n.
Ancient techspeak term referring to slow, cylindrical magnetic
media that were once state-of-the-art storage devices. Under BSD
Unix the disk partition used for swapping is still called
/dev/drum; this has led to considerable humor and
not a few straight-faced but utterly bogus `explanations' getting
foisted on newbies. See also "The Story of Mel" in
Appendix A.
Node:drunk mouse syndrome,
Next:dub dub dub,
Previous:drum, Up:= D =
drunk mouse syndrome n.
(also `mouse on drugs') A malady exhibited by the mouse
pointing device of some computers. The typical symptom is for the
mouse cursor on the screen to move in random directions and not
in sync with the motion of the actual mouse. Can usually be
corrected by unplugging the mouse and plugging it back again.
Another recommended fix for optical mice is to rotate your mouse
pad 90 degrees.
At Xerox PARC in the 1970s, most people kept a can of copier
cleaner (isopropyl alcohol) at their desks. When the steel ball
on the mouse had picked up enough cruft to be unreliable, the mouse was doused in
cleaner, which restored it for a while. However, this operation
left a fine residue that accelerated the accumulation of cruft,
so the dousings became more and more frequent. Finally, the mouse
was declared `alcoholic' and sent to the clinic to be dried out
in a CFC ultrasonic bath.
Node:dub dub dub, Next:Duff's device, Previous:drunk mouse
syndrome, Up:= D =
dub dub dub
[common] Spoken-only shorthand for the "www" (double-u
double-u double-u) in many web host names. Nothing to do with the
style of reggae music called `dub'.
Node:Duff's device, Next:dumb terminal, Previous:dub dub dub, Up:= D =
Duff's device n.
The most dramatic use yet seen of fall through in C, invented by Tom Duff
when he was at Lucasfilm. Trying to bum
all the instructions he could out of an inner loop that copied
data serially onto an output port, he decided to unroll it. He
then realized that the unrolled version could be implemented by
interlacing the structures of a switch and a loop:
register n = (count + 7) / 8; /* count > 0 assumed */
switch (count % 8)
{
case 0: do { *to = *from++;
case 7: *to = *from++;
case 6: *to = *from++;
case 5: *to = *from++;
case 4: *to = *from++;
case 3: *to = *from++;
case 2: *to = *from++;
case 1: *to = *from++;
} while (--n > 0);
}
Shocking though it appears to all who encounter it for the
first time, the device is actually perfectly valid, legal C. C's
default fall through in case
statements has long been its most controversial single feature;
Duff observed that "This code forms some sort of argument in that
debate, but I'm not sure whether it's for or against." Duff has
discussed the device in detail at http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/duffs-device.html.
Note that the omission of postfix ++ from
*to was intentional (though confusing). Duff's
device can be used to implement memory copy, but the original aim
was to copy values serially into a magic IO register.
[For maximal obscurity, the outermost pair of braces above
could actually be removed -- GLS]
Node:dumb terminal, Next:dumbass attack, Previous:Duff's device, Up:= D =
dumb terminal n.
A terminal that is one step above a glass tty, having a minimally addressable
cursor but no on-screen editing or other features normally
supported by a smart
terminal. Once upon a time, when glass ttys were common
and addressable cursors were something special, what is now
called a dumb terminal could pass for a smart terminal.
Node:dumbass attack, Next:dumbed down, Previous:dumb terminal, Up:= D =
dumbass attack /duhm'as *-tak'/ n.
[Purdue] Notional cause of a novice's mistake made by the
experienced, especially one made while running as root under Unix, e.g., typing rm -r
* or mkfs on a mounted file system. Compare
adger.
Node:dumbed down, Next:dump, Previous:dumbass attack, Up:= D =
dumbed down adj.
Simplified, with a strong connotation of
oversimplified. Often, a marketroid will insist that the interfaces
and documentation of software be dumbed down after the designer
has burned untold gallons of midnight oil making it smart. This
creates friction. See user-friendly.
Node:dump, Next:dumpster diving, Previous:dumbed down, Up:= D =
dump n.
1. An undigested and voluminous mass of information about a
problem or the state of a system, especially one routed to the
slowest available output device (compare core dump), and most especially one
consisting of hex or octal runes
describing the byte-by-byte state of memory, mass storage, or
some file. In elder days,
debugging was generally done by `groveling over' a dump (see
grovel); increasing use of
high-level languages and interactive debuggers has made such
tedium uncommon, and the term `dump' now has a faintly archaic
flavor. 2. A backup. This usage is typical only at large
timesharing installations.
Node:dumpster diving, Next:dup killer, Previous:dump, Up:= D =
dumpster diving /dump'-ster di:'-ving/ n.
1. The practice of sifting refuse from an office or technical
installation to extract confidential data, especially
security-compromising information (`dumpster' is an Americanism
for what is elsewhere called a `skip'). Back in AT&T's
monopoly days, before paper shredders became common office
equipment, phone phreaks (see phreaking) used to organize regular dumpster
runs against phone company plants and offices. Discarded and
damaged copies of AT&T internal manuals taught them much. The
technique is still rumored to be a favorite of crackers operating
against careless targets. 2. The practice of raiding the
dumpsters behind buildings where producers and/or consumers of
high-tech equipment are located, with the expectation (usually
justified) of finding discarded but still-valuable equipment to
be nursed back to health in some hacker's den. Experienced
dumpster-divers not infrequently accumulate basements full of
moldering (but still potentially useful) cruft.
Node:dup killer, Next:dup loop, Previous:dumpster diving, Up:= D =
dup killer /d[y]oop kill'r/ n.
[FidoNet] Software that is supposed to detect and delete
duplicates of a message that may have reached the FidoNet system
via different routes.
Node:dup loop, Next:dusty deck, Previous:dup killer, Up:= D =
dup loop /d[y]oop loop/ (also `dupe loop') n.
[FidoNet] An infinite stream of duplicated, near-identical
messages on a FidoNet echo, the only
difference being unique or mangled identification information
applied by a faulty or incorrectly configured system or network
gateway, thus rendering dup
killers ineffective. If such a duplicate message
eventually reaches a system through which it has already passed
(with the original identification information), all systems
passed on the way back to that system are said to be involved in
a dup loop.
Node:dusty deck, Next:DWIM, Previous:dup loop, Up:= D =
dusty deck n.
Old software (especially applications) which one is obliged to
remain compatible with, or to maintain (DP types call this `legacy code', a term hackers
consider smarmy and excessively reverent). The term implies that
the software in question is a holdover from card-punch days. Used
esp. when referring to old scientific and number-crunching software, much of
which was written in FORTRAN and very poorly documented but is
believed to be too expensive to replace. See fossil; compare crawling horror.
Node:DWIM, Next:dynner, Previous:dusty deck, Up:= D =
DWIM /dwim/
[acronym, `Do What I Mean'] 1. adj. Able to guess, sometimes
even correctly, the result intended when bogus input was
provided. 2. n. obs. The BBNLISP/INTERLISP function that
attempted to accomplish this feat by correcting many of the more
common errors. See hairy. 3.
Occasionally, an interjection hurled at a balky computer, esp.
when one senses one might be tripping over legalisms (see legalese). 4. Of a person, someone whose
directions are incomprehensible and vague, but who nevertheless
has the expectation that you will solve the problem using the
specific method he/she has in mind.
Warren Teitelman originally wrote DWIM to fix his typos and
spelling errors, so it was somewhat idiosyncratic to his style,
and would often make hash of anyone else's typos if they were
stylistically different. Some victims of DWIM thus claimed that
the acronym stood for `Damn Warren's Infernal Machine!'.
In one notorious incident, Warren added a DWIM feature to the
command interpreter used at Xerox PARC. One day another hacker
there typed delete *$ to free up some disk space.
(The editor there named backup files by appending $
to the original file name, so he was trying to delete any backup
files left over from old editing sessions.) It happened that
there weren't any editor backup files, so DWIM helpfully reported
*$ not found, assuming you meant 'delete *'. It then
started to delete all the files on the disk! The hacker managed
to stop it with a Vulcan
nerve pinch after only a half dozen or so files were
lost.
The disgruntled victim later said he had been sorely tempted
to go to Warren's office, tie Warren down in his chair in front
of his workstation, and then type delete *$
twice.
DWIM is often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a
complex program; it is also occasionally described as the single
instruction the ideal computer would have. Back when proofs of
program correctness were in vogue, there were also jokes about
`DWIMC' (Do What I Mean, Correctly). A related term, more often
seen as a verb, is DTRT (Do The Right Thing); see Right Thing.
Node:dynner, Next:earthquake, Previous:DWIM, Up:= D =
dynner /din'r/ n.
32 bits, by analogy with nybble
and byte. Usage: rare and extremely
silly. See also playte, tayste, crumb.
General discussion of such terms is under nybble.
Node:= E =, Next:= F =, Previous:= D =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= E =
earthquake:
Easter egg:
Easter egging:
eat flaming death:
EBCDIC:
echo:
ECP:
ed:
egosurf:
eighty-column mind:
El Camino Bignum:
elder days:
elegant:
elephantine:
elevator
controller:
elite:
ELIZA effect:
elvish:
EMACS:
email:
emoticon:
EMP:
empire:
engine:
English:
enhancement:
ENQ:
EOF:
EOL:
EOU:
epoch:
epsilon:
epsilon squared:
era the:
Eric Conspiracy:
Eris:
erotics:
error 33:
eurodemo:
evil:
evil and rude:
Evil Empire:
exa-:
examining the
entrails:
EXCH:
excl:
EXE:
exec:
exercise left as
an:
Exon:
Exploder:
exploit:
external memory:
eye candy:
eyeball search:
Node:earthquake, Next:Easter egg, Previous:dynner, Up:=
E =
earthquake n.
[IBM] The ultimate real-world shock test for computer
hardware. Hackish sources at IBM deny the rumor that the Bay Area
quake of 1989 was initiated by the company to test
quality-assurance procedures at its California plants.
Node:Easter egg, Next:Easter egging, Previous:earthquake, Up:= E =
Easter egg n.
[from the custom of the Easter Egg hunt observed in the U.S.
and many parts of Europe] 1. A message hidden in the object code
of a program as a joke, intended to be found by persons
disassembling or browsing the code. 2. A message, graphic, or
sound effect emitted by a program (or, on a PC, the BIOS ROM) in
response to some undocumented set of commands or keystrokes,
intended as a joke or to display program credits. One well-known
early Easter egg found in a couple of OSes caused them to respond
to the command make love with not war?.
Many personal computers have much more elaborate eggs hidden in
ROM, including lists of the developers' names, political
exhortations, snatches of music, and (in one case) graphics
images of the entire development team.
Node:Easter egging, Next:eat flaming death,
Previous:Easter egg,
Up:= E =
Easter egging n.
[IBM] The act of replacing unrelated components more or less
at random in hopes that a malfunction will go away. Hackers
consider this the normal operating mode of field circus techs and do not love them
for it. See also the jokes under field circus. Compare shotgun debugging.
Node:eat flaming death,
Next:EBCDIC, Previous:Easter egging, Up:= E =
eat flaming death imp.
A construction popularized among hackers by the infamous CPU Wars comic; supposedly derive from
a famously turgid line in a WWII-era anti-Nazi propaganda comic
that ran "Eat flaming death, non-Aryan mongrels!" or something of
the sort (however, it is also reported that the Firesign
Theatre's 1975 album "In The Next World, You're On Your Own" a
character won the right to scream "Eat flaming death, fascist
media pigs" in the middle of Oscar night on a game show; this may
have been an influence). Used in humorously overblown expressions
of hostility. "Eat flaming death, EBCDIC users!"
Node:EBCDIC, Next:echo, Previous:eat flaming death, Up:= E =
EBCDIC /eb's*-dik/, /eb'see`dik/, or /eb'k*-dik/ n.
[abbreviation, Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code]
An alleged character set used on IBM dinosaurs. It exists in at least six mutually
incompatible versions, all featuring such delights as
non-contiguous letter sequences and the absence of several ASCII
punctuation characters fairly important for modern computer
languages (exactly which characters are absent varies according
to which version of EBCDIC you're looking at). IBM adapted EBCDIC
from punched card code in
the early 1960s and promulgated it as a customer-control tactic
(see connector
conspiracy), spurning the already established ASCII
standard. Today, IBM claims to be an open-systems company, but
IBM's own description of the EBCDIC variants and how to convert
between them is still internally classified top-secret,
burn-before-reading. Hackers blanch at the very name of
EBCDIC and consider it a manifestation of purest evil. See also fear and loathing.
Node:echo, Next:ECP, Previous:EBCDIC, Up:= E
=
echo [FidoNet] n.
A topic group on FidoNet's echomail system. Compare newsgroup.
Node:ECP, Next:ed,
Previous:echo, Up:= E =
ECP /E-C-P/ n.
See spam and velveeta.
Node:ed, Next:egosurf, Previous:ECP, Up:= E =
ed n.
"ed is the standard text editor." Line taken from original the
Unix manual page on ed, an ancient
line-oriented editor that is by now used only by a few Real Programmers, and even then
only for batch operations. The original line is sometimes uttered
near the beginning of an emacs vs. vi holy war on Usenet, with the (vain) hope to quench the
discussion before it really takes off. Often followed by a
standard text describing the many virtues of ed (such as the
small memory footprint on a Timex
Sinclair, and the consistent (because nearly non-existent) user
interface).
Node:egosurf, Next:eighty-column mind, Previous:ed, Up:= E =
egosurf vi.
To search the net for your name or links to your web pages.
Perhaps connected to long-established SF-fan slang `egoscan', to
search for one's name in a fanzine.
Node:eighty-column mind,
Next:El Camino
Bignum, Previous:egosurf, Up:= E
=
eighty-column mind n.
[IBM] The sort said to be possessed by persons for whom the
transition from punched card
to tape was traumatic (nobody has dared tell them about disks
yet). It is said that these people, including (according to an
old joke) the founder of IBM, will be buried `face down, 9-edge
first' (the 9-edge being the bottom of the card). This directive
is inscribed on IBM's 1402 and 1622 card readers and is
referenced in a famous bit of doggerel called "The Last Bug", the
climactic lines of which are as follows:
He died at the console
Of hunger and thirst.
Next day he was buried,
Face down, 9-edge first.
The eighty-column mind was thought by most hackers to dominate
IBM's customer base and its thinking. This only began to change
in the mid-1990s when IBM began to reinvent itself after the
triumph of the killer micro.
See IBM, fear and loathing, card walloper. A copy of "The Last
Bug" lives on the the GNU site at http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/last.bug.html.
Node:El Camino Bignum, Next:elder days, Previous:eighty-column mind,
Up:= E =
El Camino Bignum /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ n.
The road mundanely called El Camino Real, running along San
Francisco peninsula. It originally extended all the way down to
Mexico City; many portions of the old road are still intact.
Navigation on the San Francisco peninsula is usually done
relative to El Camino Real, which defines logical north and south even though it isn't
really north-south in many places. El Camino Real runs right past
Stanford University and so is familiar to hackers.
The Spanish word `real' (which has two syllables: /ray-ahl'/)
means `royal'; El Camino Real is `the royal road'. In the FORTRAN
language, a `real' quantity is a number typically precise to
seven significant digits, and a `double precision' quantity is a
larger floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen
significant digits (other languages have similar `real'
types).
When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked
what a long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on `real', he
started calling it `El Camino Double Precision' -- but when the
hacker was told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he
renamed it `El Camino Bignum', and that name has stuck. (See
bignum.)
[GLS has since let slip that the unnamed hacker in this story
was in fact himself --ESR]
In recent years, the synonym `El Camino Virtual' has been
reported as an alternate at IBM and Amdahl sites in the Valley.
Mathematically literate hackers in the Valley have also been
heard to refer to some major cross-street intersecting El Camino
Real as "El Camino Imaginary". One popular theory is that the
intersection is located near Moffett Field - where they keep all
those complex planes.
Node:elder days, Next:elegant, Previous:El Camino Bignum, Up:= E =
elder days n.
The heroic age of hackerdom (roughly, pre-1980); the era of
the PDP-10, TECO, ITS, and the
ARPANET. This term has been rather consciously adopted from J. R.
R. Tolkien's fantasy epic "The Lord of the Rings". Compare Iron Age; see also elvish and Great
Worm.
Node:elegant, Next:elephantine, Previous:elder days, Up:= E =
elegant adj.
[common; from mathematical usage] Combining simplicity, power,
and a certain ineffable grace of design. Higher praise than
`clever', `winning', or even cuspy.
The French aviator, adventurer, and author Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry, probably best known for his classic
children's book "The Little Prince", was also an aircraft
designer. He gave us perhaps the best definition of engineering
elegance when he said "A designer knows he has achieved
perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there
is nothing left to take away."
Node:elephantine, Next:elevator controller,
Previous:elegant, Up:= E =
elephantine adj.
Used of programs or systems that are both conspicuous hogs (owing perhaps to poor design founded on
brute force and
ignorance) and exceedingly hairy in source form. An elephantine program may
be functional and even friendly, but (as in the old joke about
being in bed with an elephant) it's tough to have around all the
same (and, like a pachyderm, difficult to maintain). In extreme
cases, hackers have been known to make trumpeting sounds or
perform expressive proboscatory mime at the mention of the
offending program. Usage: semi-humorous. Compare `has the
elephant nature' and the somewhat more pejorative monstrosity. See also second-system effect and baroque.
Node:elevator controller,
Next:elite, Previous:elephantine, Up:= E =
elevator controller n.
An archetypal dumb embedded-systems application, like toaster (which superseded it). During one
period (1983-84) in the deliberations of ANSI X3J11 (the C
standardization committee) this was the canonical example of a
really stupid, memory-limited computation environment. "You can't
require printf(3) to be part of the default runtime
library -- what if you're targeting an elevator controller?"
Elevator controllers became important rhetorical weapons on both
sides of several holy wars.
Node:elite, Next:ELIZA effect, Previous:elevator controller, Up:= E =
elite adj.
Clueful. Plugged-in. One of the cognoscenti. Also used as a
general positive adjective. This term is not actually native
hacker slang; it is used primarily by crackers and warez d00dz, for which reason hackers
use it only with heavy irony. The term used to refer to the folks
allowed in to the "hidden" or "privileged" sections of BBSes in
the early 1980s (which, typically, contained pirated software).
Frequently, early boards would only let you post, or even see, a
certain subset of the sections (or `boards') on a BBS. Those who
got to the frequently legendary `triple super secret' boards were
elite. Misspellings of this term in warez d00dz style abound; the
forms `eleet', and `31337' (among others) have been sighted.
A true hacker would be more likely to use `wizardly'. Oppose
lamer.
Node:ELIZA effect, Next:elvish, Previous:elite, Up:= E
=
ELIZA effect /*-li:'z* *-fekt'/ n.
[AI community] The tendency of humans to attach associations
to terms from prior experience. For example, there is nothing
magic about the symbol + that makes it well-suited
to indicate addition; it's just that people associate it with
addition. Using + or `plus' to mean addition in a
computer language is taking advantage of the ELIZA effect.
This term comes from the famous ELIZA program by Joseph
Weizenbaum, which simulated a Rogerian psychotherapist by
rephrasing many of the patient's statements as questions and
posing them to the patient. It worked by simple pattern
recognition and substitution of key words into canned phrases. It
was so convincing, however, that there are many anecdotes about
people becoming very emotionally caught up in dealing with ELIZA.
All this was due to people's tendency to attach to words meanings
which the computer never put there. The ELIZA effect is a Good Thing when writing a
programming language, but it can blind you to serious
shortcomings when analyzing an Artificial Intelligence system.
Compare ad-hockery; see also
AI-complete. Sources for a
clone of the original Eliza are available at
ftp://ftp.cc.utexas.edu/pub/AI_ATTIC/Programs/Classic/Eliza/Eliza.c.
Node:elvish, Next:EMACS, Previous:ELIZA effect, Up:= E =
elvish n.
1. The Tengwar of Feanor, a table of letterforms resembling
the beautiful Celtic half-uncial hand of the "Book of Kells".
Invented and described by J. R. R. Tolkien in "The Lord of The
Rings" as an orthography for his fictional `elvish' languages,
this system (which is both visually and phonetically elegant) has long fascinated hackers (who tend
to be intrigued by artificial languages in general). It is
traditional for graphics printers, plotters, window systems, and
the like to support a Feanorian typeface as one of their demo
items. See also elder days. 2.
By extension, any odd or unreadable typeface produced by a
graphics device. 3. The typeface mundanely called `Böcklin',
an art-Noveau display font.
Node:EMACS, Next:email, Previous:elvish, Up:= E
=
EMACS /ee'maks/ n.
[from Editing MACroS] The ne plus ultra of hacker editors, a
programmable text editor with an entire LISP system inside it. It
was originally written by Richard Stallman in TECO under ITS at the
MIT AI lab; AI Memo 554 described it as "an advanced,
self-documenting, customizable, extensible real-time display
editor". It has since been reimplemented any number of times, by
various hackers, and versions exist that run under most major
operating systems. Perhaps the most widely used version, also
written by Stallman and now called "GNU
EMACS" or GNUMACS, runs principally
under Unix. (Its close relative XEmacs is the second most popular
version.) It includes facilities to run compilation subprocesses
and send and receive mail or news; many hackers spend up to 80%
of their tube time inside it.
Other variants include GOSMACS, CCA
EMACS, UniPress EMACS, Montgomery EMACS, jove, epsilon, and
MicroEMACS. (Though we use the original all-caps spelling here,
it is nowadays very commonly `Emacs'.)
Some EMACS versions running under window managers iconify as
an overflowing kitchen sink, perhaps to suggest the one feature
the editor does not (yet) include. Indeed, some hackers find
EMACS too heavyweight and baroque for their taste, and expand the
name as `Escape Meta Alt Control Shift' to spoof its heavy
reliance on keystrokes decorated with bucky bits. Other spoof expansions
include `Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping' (from when that
was a lot of core), `Eventually
malloc()s All Computer Storage', and `EMACS Makes A
Computer Slow' (see recursive
acronym). See also vi.
Node:email, Next:emoticon, Previous:EMACS, Up:= E
=
email /ee'mayl/
(also written `e-mail' and `E-mail') 1. n. Electronic mail
automatically passed through computer networks and/or via modems
over common-carrier lines. Contrast snail-mail, paper-net, voice-net. See network address. 2. vt. To send
electronic mail.
Oddly enough, the word `emailed' is actually listed in the
OED; it means "embossed (with a raised pattern) or perh. arranged
in a net or open work". A use from 1480 is given. The word is
probably derived from French `émaillé' (enameled)
and related to Old French `emmailleüre' (network). A French
correspondent tells us that in modern French, `email' is a hard
enamel obtained by heating special paints in a furnace; an
`emailleur' (no final e) is a craftsman who makes email (he
generally paints some objects (like, say, jewelry) and cooks them
in a furnace).
There are numerous spelling variants of this word. In Internet
traffic up to 1995, `email' predominates, `e-mail' runs a
not-too-distant second, and `E-mail' and `Email' are a distant
third and fourth.
Node:emoticon, Next:EMP, Previous:email, Up:= E
=
emoticon /ee-moh'ti-kon/ n.
[common] An ASCII glyph used to indicate an emotional state in
email or news. Although originally intended mostly as jokes,
emoticons (or some other explicit humor indication) are virtually
required under certain circumstances in high-volume text-only
communication forums such as Usenet; the lack of verbal and
visual cues can otherwise cause what were intended to be
humorous, sarcastic, ironic, or otherwise non-100%-serious
comments to be badly misinterpreted (not always even by newbies), resulting in arguments and flame wars.
Hundreds of emoticons have been proposed, but only a few are
in common use. These include:
:-)
`smiley face' (for humor, laughter, friendliness,
occasionally sarcasm)
:-(
`frowney face' (for sadness, anger, or upset)
;-)
`half-smiley' (ha ha
only serious); also known as `semi-smiley' or `winkey
face'.
:-/
`wry face'
(These may become more comprehensible if you tilt your head
sideways, to the left.)
The first two listed are by far the most frequently
encountered. Hyphenless forms of them are common on CompuServe,
GEnie, and BIX; see also bixie. On
Usenet, `smiley' is often used as a
generic term synonymous with emoticon, as well as specifically for the
happy-face emoticon.
It appears that the emoticon was invented by one Scott Fahlman
on the CMU bboard systems sometime
between early 1981 and mid-1982. He later wrote: "I wish I had
saved the original post, or at least recorded the date for
posterity, but I had no idea that I was starting something that
would soon pollute all the world's communication channels." [GLS
confirms that he remembers this original posting].
Note for the newbie: Overuse of
the smiley is a mark of loserhood! More than one per paragraph is
a fairly sure sign that you've gone over the line.
Node:EMP, Next:empire, Previous:emoticon, Up:=
E =
EMP /E-M-P/
See spam.
Node:empire, Next:engine, Previous:EMP, Up:= E =
empire n.
Any of a family of military simulations derived from a game
written by Peter Langston many years ago. A number of
multi-player variants of varying degrees of sophistication exist,
and one single-player version implemented for both Unix and VMS;
the latter is even available as MS-DOS freeware. All are
notoriously addictive. Of various commercial derivatives the best
known is probably "Empire Deluxe" on PCs and Amigas.
Modern empire is a real-time wargame played over the internet
by up to 120 players. Typical games last from 24 hours (blitz) to
a couple of months (long term). The amount of sleep you can get
while playing is a function of the rate at which updates occur
and the number of co-rulers of your country. Empire server
software is available for unix-like machines, and clients for
Unix and other platforms. A comprehensive history of the game is
available at http://www.empire.cx/infopages/History.html.
The Empire resource site is at http://www.empire.cx/.
Node:engine, Next:English, Previous:empire, Up:= E
=
engine n.
1. A piece of hardware that encapsulates some function but
can't be used without some kind of front end. Today we have, especially,
`print engine': the guts of a laser printer. 2. An analogous
piece of software; notionally, one that does a lot of noisy
crunching, such as a `database engine'.
The hacker senses of `engine' are actually close to its
original, pre-Industrial-Revolution sense of a skill, clever
device, or instrument (the word is cognate to `ingenuity'). This
sense had not been completely eclipsed by the modern connotation
of power-transducing machinery in Charles Babbage's time, which
explains why he named the stored-program computer that he
designed in 1844 the `Analytical Engine'.
Node:English, Next:enhancement, Previous:engine, Up:= E
=
English
1. n. obs. The source code for a program, which may be in any
language, as opposed to the linkable or executable binary
produced from it by a compiler. The idea behind the term is that
to a real hacker, a program written in his favorite programming
language is at least as readable as English. Usage: mostly by
old-time hackers, though recognizable in context. Today the
prefereed shorthand is sinply source. 2. The official name of the database
language used by the old Pick Operating System, actually a sort
of crufty, brain-damaged SQL with delusions of grandeur. The name
permitted marketroids to say
"Yes, and you can program our computers in English!" to ignorant
suits without quite running afoul of
the truth-in-advertising laws.
Node:enhancement, Next:ENQ, Previous:English, Up:= E
=
enhancement n.
Common marketroid-speak for a
bug fix. This abuse of language is a
popular and time-tested way to turn incompetence into increased
revenue. A hacker being ironic would instead call the fix a feature -- or perhaps save some effort by
declaring the bug itself to be a feature.
Node:ENQ, Next:EOF, Previous:enhancement, Up:= E =
ENQ /enkw/ or /enk/
[from the ASCII mnemonic ENQuire for 0000101] An on-line
convention for querying someone's availability. After opening a
talk mode connection to someone
apparently in heavy hack mode, one might type SYN SYN
ENQ? (the SYNs representing notional synchronization
bytes), and expect a return of ACK or
NAK depending on whether or not the
person felt interruptible. Compare ping, finger, and
the usage of FOO? listed under talk mode.
Node:EOF, Next:EOL, Previous:ENQ,
Up:= E =
EOF /E-O-F/ n.
[abbreviation, `End Of File'] 1. [techspeak] The out-of-band value returned by C's
sequential character-input functions (and their equivalents in
other environments) when end of file has been reached. This value
is usually -1 under C libraries postdating V6 Unix, but was
originally 0. DOS hackers think EOF is ^Z, and a few Amiga
hackers think it's ^\. 2. [Unix] The keyboard character (usually
control-D, the ASCII EOT (End Of Transmission) character) that is
mapped by the terminal driver into an end-of-file condition. 3.
Used by extension in non-computer contexts when a human is doing
something that can be modeled as a sequential read and can't go
further. "Yeah, I looked for a list of 360 mnemonics to post as a
joke, but I hit EOF pretty fast; all the library had was a JCL manual." See also EOL.
Node:EOL, Next:EOU, Previous:EOF,
Up:= E =
EOL /E-O-L/ n.
[End Of Line] Syn. for newline,
derived perhaps from the original CDC6600 Pascal. Now rare, but
widely recognized and occasionally used for brevity. Used in the
example entry under BNF. See also EOF.
Node:EOU, Next:epoch, Previous:EOL, Up:= E =
EOU /E-O-U/ n.
The mnemonic of a mythical ASCII control character (End Of
User) that would make an ASR-33 Teletype explode on receipt. This
construction parodies the numerous obscure delimiter and control
characters left in ASCII from the days when it was associated
more with wire-service teletypes than computers (e.g., FS, GS,
RS, US, EM, SUB, ETX, and esp. EOT). It is worth remembering that
ASR-33s were big, noisy mechanical beasts with a lot of
clattering parts; the notion that one might explode was nowhere
near as ridiculous as it might seem to someone sitting in front
of a tube or flatscreen today.
Node:epoch, Next:epsilon, Previous:EOU, Up:= E =
epoch n.
[Unix: prob. from astronomical timekeeping] The time and date
corresponding to 0 in an operating system's clock and timestamp
values. Under most Unix versions the epoch is 00:00:00 GMT,
January 1, 1970; under VMS, it's 00:00:00 of November 17, 1858
(base date of the U.S. Naval Observatory's ephemerides); on a
Macintosh, it's the midnight beginning January 1 1904. System
time is measured in seconds or ticks
past the epoch. Weird problems may ensue when the clock wraps
around (see wrap around),
which is not necessarily a rare event; on systems counting 10
ticks per second, a signed 32-bit count of ticks is good only for
6.8 years. The 1-tick-per-second clock of Unix is good only until
January 18, 2038, assuming at least some software continues to
consider it signed and that word lengths don't increase by then.
See also wall time. Microsoft
Windows, on the other hand, has an epoch problem every 49.7 days
- but this is seldom noticed as Windows is almost incapable of
staying up continuously for that long.
Node:epsilon, Next:epsilon squared, Previous:epoch, Up:= E =
epsilon
[see delta] 1. n. A small quantity
of anything. "The cost is epsilon." 2. adj. Very small,
negligible; less than marginal.
"We can get this feature for epsilon cost." 3. `within epsilon
of': close enough to be indistinguishable for all practical
purposes, even closer than being `within delta of'. "That's not
what I asked for, but it's within epsilon of what I wanted."
Alternatively, it may mean not close enough, but very little is
required to get it there: "My program is within epsilon of
working."
Node:epsilon squared, Next:era the, Previous:epsilon, Up:= E =
epsilon squared n.
A quantity even smaller than epsilon, as small in comparison to epsilon as
epsilon is to something normal; completely negligible. If you buy
a supercomputer for a million dollars, the cost of the
thousand-dollar terminal to go with it is epsilon, and the cost of the ten-dollar cable
to connect them is epsilon squared. Compare lost in the underflow,
lost in the
noise.
Node:era the, Next:Eric Conspiracy, Previous:epsilon squared, Up:= E =
era n.
Syn. epoch. Webster's Unabridged
makes these words almost synonymous, but `era' more often
connotes a span of time rather than a point in time, whereas the
reverse is true for epoch. The epoch usage is recommended.
Node:Eric Conspiracy, Next:Eris, Previous:era the, Up:= E =
Eric Conspiracy n.
A shadowy group of mustachioed hackers named Eric first
pinpointed as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous
_talk.bizarre_ posting ca. 1987; this was doubtless
influenced by the numerous `Eric' jokes in the Monty Python
oeuvre. There do indeed seem to be considerably more mustachioed
Erics in hackerdom than the frequency of these three traits can
account for unless they are correlated in some arcane way.
Well-known examples include Eric Allman (he of the `Allman style'
described under indent
style) and Erik Fair (co-author of NNTP); your editor has
heard from more than sixty others by email, and the organization
line `Eric Conspiracy Secret Laboratories' now emanates regularly
from more than one site. See the Eric Conspiracy Web Page at http://www.ccil.org/~esr/ecsl/
for full details.
Node:Eris, Next:erotics, Previous:Eric Conspiracy, Up:= E =
Eris /e'ris/ n.
The Greek goddess of Chaos, Discord, Confusion, and Things You
Know Not Of; her name was latinized to Discordia and she was
worshiped by that name in Rome. Not a very friendly deity in the
Classical original, she was reinvented as a more benign
personification of creative anarchy starting in 1959 by the
adherents of Discordianism
and has since been a semi-serious subject of veneration in
several `fringe' cultures, including hackerdom. See Discordianism, Church of the
SubGenius.
Node:erotics, Next:error 33, Previous:Eris, Up:= E =
erotics /ee-ro'tiks/ n.
[Helsinki University of Technology, Finland] n.
English-language university slang for electronics. Often used by
hackers in Helsinki, maybe because good electronics excites them
and makes them warm.
Node:error 33, Next:eurodemo, Previous:erotics, Up:= E
=
error 33 [XEROX PARC] n.
1. Predicating one research effort upon the success of
another. 2. Allowing your own research effort to be placed on the
critical path of some other project (be it a research effort or
not).
Node:eurodemo, Next:evil, Previous:error 33, Up:= E =
eurodemo /yoor'o-dem`-o/
a demo, sense 4
Node:evil, Next:evil and rude, Previous:eurodemo, Up:= E =
evil adj.
As used by hackers, implies that some system, program, person,
or institution is sufficiently maldesigned as to be not worth the
bother of dealing with. Unlike the adjectives in the cretinous/losing/brain-damaged series, `evil' does not
imply incompetence or bad design, but rather a set of goals or
design criteria fatally incompatible with the speaker's. This
usage is more an esthetic and engineering judgment than a moral
one in the mainstream sense. "We thought about adding a Blue Glue interface but decided it
was too evil to deal with." "TECO is
neat, but it can be pretty evil if you're prone to typos." Often
pronounced with the first syllable lengthened, as /eeee'vil/.
Compare evil and
rude.
Node:evil and rude, Next:Evil Empire, Previous:evil, Up:= E =
evil and rude adj.
Both evil and rude, but with the additional connotation that
the rudeness was due to malice rather than incompetence. Thus,
for example: Microsoft's Windows NT is _evil_ because it's a
competent implementation of a bad design; it's _rude_
because it's gratuitously incompatible with Unix in places where
compatibility would have been as easy and effective to do; but
it's _evil and rude_ because the incompatibilities are
apparently there not to fix design bugs in Unix but rather to
lock hapless customers and developers into the Microsoft way.
Hackish _evil and rude_ is close to the mainstream sense of
`evil'.
Node:Evil Empire, Next:exa-, Previous:evil and rude, Up:= E =
Evil Empire n.
[from Ronald Reagan's famous characterization of the communist
Soviet Union] Formerly IBM, now Microsoft. Functionally, the company
most hackers love to hate at any given time. Hackers like to see
themselves as romantic rebels against the Evil Empire, and
frequently adopt this role to the point of ascribing rather more
power and malice to the Empire than it actually has. See also
Borg and search for Evil Empire
pages on the Web.
Node:exa-, Next:examining the entrails,
Previous:Evil Empire,
Up:= E =
exa- /ek's*/ pref.
[SI] See quantifiers.
Node:examining the
entrails, Next:EXCH,
Previous:exa-, Up:= E =
examining the entrails n.
The process of grovelling through
a core dump or hex image in an
attempt to discover the bug that brought a program or system
down. The reference is to divination from the entrails of a
sacrified animal. Compare runes,
incantation, black art, desk
check.
Node:EXCH, Next:excl, Previous:examining the entrails, Up:= E =
EXCH /eks'ch*/ or /eksch/ vt.
To exchange two things, each for the other; to swap places. If
you point to two people sitting down and say "Exch!", you are
asking them to trade places. EXCH, meaning EXCHange, was
originally the name of a PDP-10 instruction that exchanged the
contents of a register and a memory location. Many newer hackers
are probably thinking instead of the PostScript exchange operator (which is
usually written in lowercase).
Node:excl, Next:EXE, Previous:EXCH,
Up:= E =
excl /eks'kl/ n.
Abbreviation for `exclamation point'. See bang, shriek, ASCII.
Node:EXE, Next:exec, Previous:excl, Up:= E =
EXE /eks'ee/ or /eek'see/ or /E-X-E/ n.
An executable binary file. Some operating systems (notably
MS-DOS, VMS, and TWENEX) use the extension .EXE to mark such
files. This usage is also occasionally found among Unix
programmers even though Unix executables don't have any required
suffix.
Node:exec, Next:exercise left as an, Previous:EXE, Up:= E =
exec /eg-zek'/ or /eks'ek/ vt., n.
1. [Unix: from `execute'] Synonym for chain, derives from the exec(2)
call. 2. [from `executive'] obs. The command interpreter for an
OS (see shell); term esp. used around mainframes, and
prob. derived from UNIVAC's archaic EXEC 2 and EXEC 8 operating
systems. 3. At IBM and VM/CMS shops, the equivalent of a shell
command file (among VM/CMS users).
The mainstream `exec' as an abbreviation for (human) executive
is not used. To a hacker, an `exec' is a always a
program, never a person.
Node:exercise left as an,
Next:Exon, Previous:exec, Up:= E =
exercise, left as an adj.
[from technical books] Used to complete a proof when one
doesn't mind a handwave, or to
avoid one entirely. The complete phrase is: "The proof [or `the
rest'] is left as an exercise for the reader." This comment
has occasionally been attached to unsolved research
problems by authors possessed of either an evil sense of humor or
a vast faith in the capabilities of their audiences.
Node:Exon, Next:Exploder, Previous:exercise left as an, Up:= E =
Exon /eks'on/ excl.
A generic obscenity that quickly entered wide use on the
Internet and Usenet after Black
Thursday. From the last name of Senator James Exon
(Democrat-Nebraska), primary author of the CDA.
Node:Exploder, Next:exploit, Previous:Exon, Up:= E =
Exploder n.
Used within Microsoft to refer to the Windows Explorer, the
interface component of Windows 95 and WinNT 4. Our spies report
that most of the heavy guns at MS came from a Unix background and
use command line utilities; even they are scornful of the
over-gingerbreaded WIMP
environments that they have been called upon to
create.
Node:exploit, Next:external memory, Previous:Exploder, Up:= E =
exploit n.
[originally cracker slang] 1. A vulnerability in software that
can be used for breaking security or otherwise attacking an
Internet host over the network. The Ping O' Death is a famous exploit.
2. More grammatically, a program that exploits an exploit in
sense 1,
Node:external memory, Next:eye candy, Previous:exploit, Up:= E =
external memory n.
A memo pad, palmtop computer, or written notes. "Hold on while
I write that to external memory". The analogy is with store or
DRAM versus nonvolatile disk storage on computers.
Node:eye candy, Next:eyeball search, Previous:external memory, Up:= E =
eye candy /i:' kand`ee/ n.
[from mainstream slang "ear candy"] A display of some sort
that's presented to lusers to keep
them distracted while the program performs necessary background
tasks. "Give 'em some eye candy while the back-end slurps that BLOB into
core." Reported as mainstream usage among players of
graphics-heavy computer games. We're also told this term is
mainstream slang for soft pornography, but that sense does not
appear to be live among hackers.
Node:eyeball search, Next:face time, Previous:eye candy, Up:= E =
eyeball search n.,v.
To look for something in a mass of code or data with one's own
native optical sensors, as opposed to using some sort of pattern
matching software like grep or any
other automated search tool. Also called a vgrep; compare vdiff, desk
check.
Node:= F =, Next:= G =, Previous:= E =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= F =
face time:
factor:
fairings:
fall over:
fall through:
fan:
fandango on core:
FAQ:
FAQ list:
FAQL:
faradize:
farkled:
farming:
fascist:
fat electrons:
fat-finger:
faulty:
fd leak:
fear and loathing:
feature:
feature creature:
feature creep:
feature key:
feature shock:
featurectomy:
feep:
feeper:
feeping creature:
feeping creaturism:
feetch feetch:
fence:
fencepost error:
fiber-seeking
backhoe:
FidoNet:
field circus:
field servoid:
Fight-o-net:
File Attach:
File Request:
file signature:
filk:
film at 11:
filter:
Finagle's Law:
fine:
finger:
finger trouble:
finger-pointing
syndrome:
finn:
firebottle:
firefighting:
firehose syndrome:
firewall code:
firewall machine:
fireworks mode:
firmware:
firmy:
fish:
FISH queue:
FITNR:
fix:
FIXME:
flag:
flag day:
flaky:
flamage:
flame:
flame bait:
flame on:
flame war:
flamer:
flap:
flarp:
flash crowd:
flat:
flat-ASCII:
flat-file:
flatten:
flavor:
flavorful:
flippy:
flood:
flowchart:
flower key:
flush:
flypage:
Flyspeck 3:
flytrap:
FM:
fnord:
FOAF:
FOD:
fold case:
followup:
fontology:
foo:
foobar:
fool:
fool file:
Foonly:
footprint:
for free:
for the rest of
us:
for values of:
fora:
foreground:
fork:
fork bomb:
forked:
Fortrash:
fortune cookie:
forum:
fossil:
four-color
glossies:
frag:
fragile:
fred:
Fred Foobar:
frednet:
free software:
freeware:
freeze:
fried:
frink:
friode:
fritterware:
frob:
frobnicate:
frobnitz:
frog:
frogging:
front end:
frotz:
frotzed:
frowney:
FRS:
fry:
fscking:
FSF:
FTP:
-fu:
FUBAR:
fuck me harder:
FUD:
FUD wars:
fudge:
fudge factor:
fuel up:
Full Monty:
fum:
functino:
funky:
funny money:
furrfu:
fuzzball:
Node:face time, Next:factor, Previous:eyeball search, Up:= F =
face time n.
[common] Time spent interacting with somebody face-to-face (as
opposed to via electronic links). "Oh, yeah, I spent some face
time with him at the last Usenix."
Node:factor, Next:fairings, Previous:face time, Up:= F =
factor n.
See coefficient of
X.
Node:fairings, Next:fall over, Previous:factor, Up:= F
=
fairings n. /fer'ingz/
[FreeBSD; orig. a typo for `fairness'] A term thrown out in
discussion whenever a completely and transparently nonsensical
argument in one's favor(?) seems called for, e,g. at the end of a
really long thread for which the outcome is no longer even cared
about since everyone is now so sick of it; or in rebuttal to
another nonsensical argument ("Change the loader to look for
/kernel.pl? What about fairings?")
Node:fall over, Next:fall through, Previous:fairings, Up:= F =
fall over vi.
[IBM] Yet another synonym for crash or lose. `Fall
over hard' equates to crash and
burn.
Node:fall through, Next:fan, Previous:fall over, Up:= F =
fall through v.
(n. `fallthrough', var. `fall-through') 1. To exit a loop by
exhaustion, i.e., by having fulfilled its exit condition rather
than via a break or exception condition that exits from the
middle of it. This usage appears to be really old,
dating from the 1940s and 1950s. 2. To fail a test that would
have passed control to a subroutine or some other distant portion
of code. 3. In C, `fall-through' occurs when the flow of
execution in a switch statement reaches a case label
other than by jumping there from the switch header, passing a
point where one would normally expect to find a
break. A trivial example:
switch (color)
{
case GREEN:
do_green();
break;
case PINK:
do_pink();
/* FALL THROUGH */
case RED:
do_red();
break;
default:
do_blue();
break;
}
The variant spelling /* FALL THRU */ is also
common.
The effect of the above code is to do_green()
when color is GREEN, do_red() when
color is RED, do_blue() on any other
color other than PINK, and (and this is the
important part) do_pink() and then
do_red() when color is PINK.
Fall-through is considered
harmful by some, though there are contexts (such as the
coding of state machines) in which it is natural; it is generally
considered good practice to include a comment highlighting the
fall-through where one would normally expect a break. See also
Duff's device.
Node:fan, Next:fandango on core, Previous:fall through, Up:= F =
fan n.
Without qualification, indicates a fan of science fiction,
especially one who goes to cons and
tends to hang out with other fans. Many hackers are fans, so this
term has been imported from fannish slang; however, unlike much
fannish slang it is recognized by most non-fannish hackers. Among
SF fans the plural is correctly `fen', but this usage is not
automatic to hackers. "Laura reads the stuff occasionally but
isn't really a fan."
Node:fandango on core, Next:FAQ, Previous:fan, Up:= F =
fandango on core n.
[Unix/C hackers, from the Iberian dance] In C, a wild pointer
that runs out of bounds, causing a core
dump, or corrupts the malloc(3) arena in such a way as to cause mysterious
failures later on, is sometimes said to have `done a fandango on
core'. On low-end personal machines without an MMU (or Windows
boxes, which have an MMU but use it incompetently), this can
corrupt the OS itself, causing massive lossage. Other frenetic
dances such as the cha-cha or the watusi, may be substituted. See
aliasing bug, precedence lossage, smash the stack, memory leak, memory smash, overrun screw, core.
Node:FAQ, Next:FAQ list, Previous:fandango on core, Up:= F =
FAQ /F-A-Q/ or /fak/ n.
[Usenet] 1. A Frequently Asked Question. 2. A compendium of
accumulated lore, posted periodically to high-volume newsgroups
in an attempt to forestall such questions. Some people prefer the
term `FAQ list' or `FAQL' /fa'kl/, reserving `FAQ' for sense
1.
This lexicon itself serves as a good example of a collection
of one kind of lore, although it is far too big for a regular FAQ
posting. Examples: "What is the proper type of NULL?" and "What's
that funny name for the # character?" are both
Frequently Asked Questions. Several FAQs refer readers to this
file.
Node:FAQ list, Next:FAQL, Previous:FAQ,
Up:= F =
FAQ list /F-A-Q list/ or /fak list/ n.
[common; Usenet] Syn FAQ, sense
2.
Node:FAQL, Next:faradize, Previous:FAQ list, Up:= F =
FAQL /fa'kl/ n.
Syn. FAQ list.
Node:faradize, Next:farkled, Previous:FAQL, Up:= F =
faradize /far'*-di:z/ v.
[US Geological Survey] To start any hyper-addictive process or
trend, or to continue adding current to such a trend. Telling one
user about a new octo-tetris game you compiled would be a
faradizing act -- in two weeks you might find your entire
department playing the faradic game.
Node:farkled, Next:farming, Previous:faradize, Up:=
F =
farkled /far'kld/ adj.
[DeVry Institute of Technology, Atlanta] Syn. hosed. Poss. owes something to Yiddish
`farblondjet' and/or the `Farkle Family' skits on "Rowan and
Martin's Laugh-In", a popular comedy show of the late 1960s.
Node:farming, Next:fascist, Previous:farkled, Up:= F
=
farming n.
[Adelaide University, Australia] What the heads of a disk
drive are said to do when they plow little furrows in the
magnetic media. Associated with a crash. Typically used as follows: "Oh no, the
machine has just crashed; I hope the hard drive hasn't gone farming again." No longer common; modern
drives automatically park their heads in a safe zone on
power-down, so it takes a real mechanical problem to induce
this.
Node:fascist, Next:fat electrons, Previous:farming, Up:= F =
fascist adj.
1. [common] Said of a computer system with excessive or
annoying security barriers, usage limits, or access policies. The
implication is that said policies are preventing hackers from
getting interesting work done. The variant `fascistic' seems to
have been preferred at MIT, poss. by analogy with `touristic'
(see tourist or under the influence
of German/Yiddish `faschistisch'). 2. In the design of languages
and other software tools, `the fascist alternative' is the most
restrictive and structured way of capturing a particular
function; the implication is that this may be desirable in order
to simplify the implementation or provide tighter error checking.
Compare bondage-and-discipline
language, although that term is global rather than
local.
Node:fat electrons, Next:fat-finger, Previous:fascist, Up:= F =
fat electrons n.
Old-time hacker David Cargill's theory on the causation of
computer glitches. Your typical electric utility draws its line
current out of the big generators with a pair of coil taps
located near the top of the dynamo. When the normal tap brushes
get dirty, they take them off line to clean them up, and use
special auxiliary taps on the bottom of the coil. Now,
this is a problem, because when they do that they get not
ordinary or `thin' electrons, but the fat'n'sloppy electrons that
are heavier and so settle to the bottom of the generator. These
flow down ordinary wires just fine, but when they have to turn a
sharp corner (as in an integrated-circuit via), they're apt to
get stuck. This is what causes computer glitches. [Fascinating.
Obviously, fat electrons must gain mass by bogon absorption --ESR] Compare bogon, magic
smoke.
Node:fat-finger, Next:faulty, Previous:fat electrons, Up:= F =
fat-finger vt.
1. To introduce a typo while editing in such a way that the
resulting manglification of a configuration file does something
useless, damaging, or wildly unexpected. "NSI fat-fingered their
DNS zone file and took half the net down again." 2. More
generally, any typo that produces dramatically bad results.
Node:faulty, Next:fd leak, Previous:fat-finger, Up:= F =
faulty adj.
Non-functional; buggy. Same denotation as bletcherous, losing, q.v., but the connotation is much
milder.
Node:fd leak, Next:fear and loathing, Previous:faulty, Up:= F =
fd leak /F-D leek/ n.
A kind of programming bug analogous to a core leak, in which a program fails to
close file descriptors (`fd's) after file operations are
completed, and thus eventually runs out of them. See leak.
Node:fear and loathing,
Next:feature, Previous:fd leak, Up:= F =
fear and loathing n.
[from Hunter S. Thompson] A state inspired by the prospect of
dealing with certain real-world systems and standards that are
totally brain-damaged but
ubiquitous -- Intel 8086s, or COBOL,
or EBCDIC, or any IBM machine bigger than a workstation. "Ack! They
want PCs to be able to talk to the AI machine. Fear and loathing
time!"
Node:feature, Next:feature creature, Previous:fear and loathing,
Up:= F =
feature n.
1. [common] A good property or behavior (as of a program).
Whether it was intended or not is immaterial. 2. [common] An
intended property or behavior (as of a program). Whether it is
good or not is immaterial (but if bad, it is also a misfeature). 3. A surprising property or
behavior; in particular, one that is purposely inconsistent
because it works better that way -- such an inconsistency is
therefore a feature and not a bug. This kind of feature is sometimes called
a miswart; see that entry for a
classic example. 4. A property or behavior that is gratuitous or
unnecessary, though perhaps also impressive or cute. For example,
one feature of Common LISP's format function is the
ability to print numbers in two different Roman-numeral formats
(see bells whistles
and gongs). 5. A property or behavior that was put in to
help someone else but that happens to be in your way. 6. [common]
A bug that has been documented. To call something a feature
sometimes means the author of the program did not consider the
particular case, and that the program responded in a way that was
unexpected but not strictly incorrect. A standard joke is that a
bug can be turned into a feature
simply by documenting it (then theoretically no one can complain
about it because it's in the manual), or even by simply declaring
it to be good. "That's not a bug, that's a feature!" is a common
catchphrase. See also feetch
feetch, creeping
featurism, wart, green lightning.
The relationship among bugs, features, misfeatures, warts, and
miswarts might be clarified by the following hypothetical
exchange between two hackers on an airliner:
A: "This seat doesn't recline."
B: "That's not a bug, that's a feature. There is an emergency
exit door built around the window behind you, and the route has
to be kept clear."
A: "Oh. Then it's a misfeature; they should have increased the
spacing between rows here."
B: "Yes. But if they'd increased spacing in only one section
it would have been a wart -- they would've had to make
nonstandard-length ceiling panels to fit over the displaced
seats."
A: "A miswart, actually. If they increased spacing throughout
they'd lose several rows and a chunk out of the profit margin. So
unequal spacing would actually be the Right Thing."
B: "Indeed."
`Undocumented feature' is a common, allegedly humorous
euphemism for a bug. There's a related
joke that is sometimes referred to as the "one-question geek
test". You say to someone "I saw a Volkswagen Beetle today with a
vanity license plate that read FEATURE". If he/she laughs, he/she
is a geek (see computer
geek, sense 2).
Node:feature creature, Next:feature creep, Previous:feature, Up:= F =
feature creature n.
[poss. fr. slang `creature feature' for a horror movie] 1. One
who loves to add features to designs or programs, perhaps at the
expense of coherence, concision, or taste. 2. Alternately, a mythical being that
induces otherwise rational programmers to perpetrate such crocks.
See also feeping
creaturism, creeping
featurism.
Node:feature creep, Next:feature key, Previous:feature creature, Up:= F =
feature creep n.
[common] The result of creeping featurism, as in "Emacs
has a bad case of feature creep".
Node:feature key, Next:feature shock, Previous:feature creep, Up:= F =
feature key n.
[common] The Macintosh key with the cloverleaf graphic on its
keytop; sometimes referred to as `flower', `pretzel', `clover',
`propeller', `beanie' (an apparent reference to the major feature
of a propeller beanie), splat,
`open-apple' or (officially, in Mac documentation) the `command
key'. In French, the term `papillon' (butterfly) has been
reported. The proliferation of terms for this creature may
illustrate one subtle peril of iconic interfaces.
Many people have been mystified by the cloverleaf-like symbol
that appears on the feature key. Its oldest name is `cross of St.
Hannes', but it occurs in pre-Christian Viking art as a
decorative motif. Throughout Scandinavia today the road agencies
use it to mark sites of historical interest. Apple picked up the
symbol from an early Mac developer who happened to be Swedish.
Apple documentation gives the translation "interesting
feature"!
There is some dispute as to the proper (Swedish) name of this
symbol. It technically stands for the word `sevärdhet'
(thing worth seeing); many of these are old churches. Some Swedes
report as an idiom for the sign the word `kyrka', cognate to
English `church' and pronounced (roughly) /chur'ka/ in modern
Swedish. Others say this is nonsense. Other idioms reported for
the sign are `runa' (rune) or `runsten' /roon'stn/ (runestone),
derived from the fact that many of the interesting features are
Viking rune-stones. The term `fornminne' /foorn'min'*/ (relic of
antiquity, ancient monument) is also reported, especially among
those who think that the Mac itself is a relic of antiquity.
Node:feature shock, Next:featurectomy, Previous:feature key, Up:= F =
feature shock n.
[from Alvin Toffler's book title "Future Shock"] A user's (or
programmer's!) confusion when confronted with a package that has
too many features and poor introductory material.
Node:featurectomy, Next:feep, Previous:feature shock, Up:= F =
featurectomy /fee`ch*r-ek't*-mee/ n.
The act of removing a feature from a program. Featurectomies
come in two flavors, the `righteous' and the `reluctant'.
Righteous featurectomies are performed because the remover
believes the program would be more elegant without the feature,
or there is already an equivalent and better way to achieve the
same end. (Doing so is not quite the same thing as removing a
misfeature.) Reluctant
featurectomies are performed to satisfy some external constraint
such as code size or execution speed.
Node:feep, Next:feeper, Previous:featurectomy, Up:= F =
feep /feep/
1. n. The soft electronic `bell' sound of a display terminal
(except for a VT-52); a beep (in fact, the microcomputer world
seems to prefer beep). 2. vi. To cause
the display to make a feep sound. ASR-33s (the original TTYs) do
not feep; they have mechanical bells that ring. Alternate forms:
beep, `bleep', or just about anything
suitably onomatopoeic. (Jeff MacNelly, in his comic strip "Shoe",
uses the word `eep' for sounds made by computer terminals and
video games; this is perhaps the closest written approximation
yet.) The term `breedle' was sometimes heard at SAIL, where the
terminal bleepers are not particularly soft (they sound more like
the musical equivalent of a raspberry or Bronx cheer; for a close
approximation, imagine the sound of a Star Trek communicator's
beep lasting for five seconds). The `feeper' on a VT-52 has been
compared to the sound of a '52 Chevy stripping its gears. See
also ding.
Node:feeper, Next:feeping creature, Previous:feep, Up:= F =
feeper /fee'pr/ n.
The device in a terminal or workstation (usually a loudspeaker
of some kind) that makes the feep
sound.
Node:feeping creature, Next:feeping creaturism,
Previous:feeper, Up:= F =
feeping creature n.
[from feeping
creaturism] An unnecessary feature; a bit of chrome that, in the speaker's judgment, is the
camel's nose for a whole horde of new features.
Node:feeping creaturism,
Next:feetch feetch,
Previous:feeping
creature, Up:= F =
feeping creaturism /fee'ping kree`ch*r-izm/ n.
A deliberate spoonerism for creeping featurism, meant to
imply that the system or program in question has become a
misshapen creature of hacks. This term isn't really well defined,
but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It
is probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in
the dark making their customary noises.
Node:feetch feetch, Next:fence, Previous:feeping creaturism, Up:= F =
feetch feetch /feech feech/ interj.
If someone tells you about some new improvement to a program,
you might respond: "Feetch, feetch!" The meaning of this depends
critically on vocal inflection. With enthusiasm, it means
something like "Boy, that's great! What a great hack!" Grudgingly
or with obvious doubt, it means "I don't know; it sounds like
just one more unnecessary and complicated thing". With a tone of
resignation, it means, "Well, I'd rather keep it simple, but I
suppose it has to be done".
Node:fence, Next:fencepost error, Previous:feetch feetch, Up:= F =
fence n. 1.
A sequence of one or more distinguished (out-of-band) characters (or other data
items), used to delimit a piece of data intended to be treated as
a unit (the computer-science literature calls this a `sentinel').
The NUL (ASCII 0000000) character that terminates strings in C is
a fence. Hex FF is also (though slightly less frequently) used
this way. See zigamorph. 2. An
extra data value inserted in an array or other data structure in
order to allow some normal test on the array's contents also to
function as a termination test. For example, a highly optimized
routine for finding a value in an array might artificially place
a copy of the value to be searched for after the last slot of the
array, thus allowing the main search loop to search for the value
without having to check at each pass whether the end of the array
had been reached. 3. [among users of optimizing compilers] Any
technique, usually exploiting knowledge about the compiler, that
blocks certain optimizations. Used when explicit mechanisms are
not available or are overkill. Typically a hack: "I call a dummy
procedure there to force a flush of the optimizer's
register-coloring info" can be expressed by the shorter "That's a
fence procedure".
Node:fencepost error, Next:fiber-seeking
backhoe, Previous:fence,
Up:= F =
fencepost error n.
1. [common] A problem with the discrete equivalent of a
boundary condition, often exhibited in programs by iterative
loops. From the following problem: "If you build a fence 100 feet
long with posts 10 feet apart, how many posts do you need?"
(Either 9 or 11 is a better answer than the obvious 10.) For
example, suppose you have a long list or array of items, and want
to process items m through n; how many items are there? The
obvious answer is n - m, but that is off by one; the right answer
is n - m + 1. A program that used the `obvious' formula would
have a fencepost error in it. See also zeroth and off-by-one error, and note that not
all off-by-one errors are fencepost errors. The game of Musical
Chairs involves a catastrophic off-by-one error where N people
try to sit in N - 1 chairs, but it's not a fencepost error.
Fencepost errors come from counting things rather than the spaces
between them, or vice versa, or by neglecting to consider whether
one should count one or both ends of a row. 2. [rare] An error
induced by unexpected regularities in input values, which can
(for instance) completely thwart a theoretically efficient binary
tree or hash table implementation. (The error here involves the
difference between expected and worst case behaviors of an
algorithm.)
Node:fiber-seeking backhoe,
Next:FidoNet, Previous:fencepost error, Up:= F =
fiber-seeking backhoe
[common among backbone ISP personnel] Any of a genus of large,
disruptive machines which routinely cut critical backbone links,
creating Internet outages and packet over air problems.
Node:FidoNet, Next:field circus, Previous:fiber-seeking backhoe, Up:= F =
FidoNet n.
A worldwide hobbyist network of personal computers which
exchanges mail, discussion groups, and files. Founded in 1984 and
originally consisting only of IBM PCs and compatibles, FidoNet
now includes such diverse machines as Apple ][s, Ataris, Amigas,
and Unix systems. For years FidoNet actually grew faster than
Usenet, but the advent of cheap Internet access probably means
its days are numbered. In early 1999 Fidonet has approximately
30,000 nodes, down from 38K in 1996.
Node:field circus, Next:field servoid, Previous:FidoNet, Up:= F =
field circus n.
[a derogatory pun on `field service'] The field service
organization of any hardware manufacturer, but originally DEC. There is an entire genre of jokes about
field circus engineers:
Q: How can you recognize a field circus engineer
with a flat tire?
A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.
Q: How can you recognize a field circus engineer
who is out of gas?
A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.
Q: How can you tell it's your field circus engineer?
A: The spare is flat, too.
[See Easter egging for
additional insight on these jokes.]
There is also the `Field Circus Cheer' (from the old plan file for DEC on MIT-AI):
Maynard! Maynard!
Don't mess with us!
We're mean and we're tough!
If you get us confused
We'll screw up your stuff.
(DEC's service HQ, still extant under the Compaq regime, is
located in Maynard, Massachusetts.)
Node:field servoid, Next:Fight-o-net, Previous:field circus, Up:= F =
field servoid [play on `android'] /fee'ld ser'voyd/
n.
Representative of a field service organization (see field circus). This has many of
the implications of droid.
Node:Fight-o-net, Next:File Attach, Previous:field servoid, Up:= F =
Fight-o-net n.
[FidoNet] Deliberate distortion of FidoNet, often applied after a flurry of flamage in a particular echo, especially the SYSOP echo or Fidonews (see
'Snooze).
Node:File Attach, Next:File Request, Previous:Fight-o-net, Up:= F =
File Attach [FidoNet]
1. n. A file sent along with a mail message from one FidoNet
to another. 2. vt. Sending someone a file by using the File
Attach option in a FidoNet mailer.
Node:File Request, Next:file signature, Previous:File Attach, Up:= F =
File Request [FidoNet]
1. n. The FidoNet equivalent of
FTP, in which one FidoNet system
automatically dials another and snarfs one or more files. Often abbreviated
`FReq'; files are often announced as being "available for FReq"
in the same way that files are announced as being "available
for/by anonymous FTP" on the Internet. 2. vt. The act of getting
a copy of a file by using the File Request option of the FidoNet
mailer.
Node:file signature, Next:filk, Previous:File Request, Up:= F =
file signature n.
A magic number, sense
3.
Node:filk, Next:film at 11, Previous:file signature, Up:= F =
filk /filk/ n.,v.
[from SF fandom, where a typo for `folk' was adopted as a new
word] A popular or folk song with lyrics revised or completely
new lyrics and/or music, intended for humorous effect when read,
and/or to be sung late at night at SF conventions. There is a
flourishing subgenre of these called `computer filks', written by
hackers and often containing rather sophisticated technical
humor. See double bucky for
an example. Compare grilf, hing, pr0n, and
newsfroup.
Node:film at 11, Next:filter, Previous:filk, Up:= F =
film at 11
[MIT: in parody of TV newscasters] 1. Used in conversation to
announce ordinary events, with a sarcastic implication that these
events are earth-shattering. "ITS
crashes; film at 11." "Bug found in scheduler; film at 11." 2.
Also widely used outside MIT to indicate that additional
information will be available at some future time,
without the implication of anything particularly
ordinary about the referenced event. For example, "The mail file
server died this morning; we found garbage all over the root
directory. Film at 11." would indicate that a major failure had
occurred but that the people working on it have no additional
information about it as yet; use of the phrase in this way
suggests gently that the problem is liable to be fixed more
quickly if the people doing the fixing can spend time doing the
fixing rather than responding to questions, the answers to which
will appear on the normal "11:00 news", if people will just be
patient.
The variant "MPEGs at 11" has recently been cited (MPEG is a
digital-video format.)
Node:filter, Next:Finagle's Law, Previous:film at 11, Up:= F =
filter n.
[very common; orig. Unix, now also
in MS-DOS] A program that processes
an input data stream into an output data stream in some
well-defined way, and does no I/O to anywhere else except
possibly on error conditions; one designed to be used as a stage
in a `pipeline' (see plumbing).
Compare sponge.
Node:Finagle's Law, Next:fine, Previous:filter, Up:= F
=
Finagle's Law n.
The generalized or `folk' version of Murphy's Law, fully named "Finagle's
Law of Dynamic Negatives" and usually rendered "Anything that can
go wrong, will". One variant favored among hackers is "The
perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum" (but see also
Hanlon's Razor). The label
`Finagle's Law' was popularized by SF author Larry Niven in
several stories depicting a frontier culture of asteroid miners;
this `Belter' culture professed a religion and/or running joke
involving the worship of the dread god Finagle and his mad
prophet Murphy. Some technical and scientific cultures (e.g.,
paleontologists) know it under the name `Sod's Law'; this usage
may be more common in Great Britain.
Node:fine, Next:finger, Previous:Finagle's Law, Up:= F =
fine adj.
[WPI] Good, but not good enough to be cuspy. The word `fine' is used elsewhere, of
course, but without the implicit comparison to the higher level
implied by cuspy.
Node:finger, Next:finger trouble, Previous:fine, Up:= F =
finger
[WAITS, via BSD Unix] 1. n. A program that displays
information about a particular user or all users logged on the
system, or a remote system. Typically shows full name, last login
time, idle time, terminal line, and terminal location (where
applicable). May also display a plan
file left by the user (see also Hacking X for Y). 2. vt. To
apply finger to a username. 3. vt. By extension, to check a
human's current state by any means. "Foodp?" "T!" "OK, finger
Lisa and see if she's idle." 4. Any picture (composed of ASCII
characters) depicting `the finger'. Originally a humorous
component of one's plan file to deter the curious fingerer (sense
2), it has entered the arsenal of some flamers.
Node:finger trouble, Next:finger-pointing
syndrome, Previous:finger, Up:= F
=
finger trouble n.
Mistyping, typos, or generalized keyboard incompetence (this
is surprisingly common among hackers, given the amount of time
they spend at keyboards). "I keep putting colons at the end of
statements instead of semicolons", "Finger trouble again,
eh?".
Node:finger-pointing
syndrome, Next:finn,
Previous:finger
trouble, Up:= F =
finger-pointing syndrome n.
All-too-frequent result of bugs, esp. in new or experimental
configurations. The hardware vendor points a finger at the
software. The software vendor points a finger at the hardware.
All the poor users get is the finger.
Node:finn, Next:firebottle, Previous:finger-pointing syndrome, Up:= F =
finn v.
[IRC] To pull rank on somebody based on the amount of time one
has spent on IRC. The term derives from
the fact that IRC was originally written in Finland in 1987.
There may be some influence from the `Finn' character in William
Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel "Count Zero", who at one point
says to another (much younger) character "I have a pair of shoes
older than you are, so shut up!"
Node:firebottle, Next:firefighting, Previous:finn, Up:= F
=
firebottle n.obs.
A large, primitive, power-hungry active electrical device,
similar in function to a FET but constructed out of glass, metal,
and vacuum. Characterized by high cost, low density, low
reliability, high-temperature operation, and high power
dissipation. Sometimes mistakenly called a `tube' in the U.S. or
a `valve' in England; another hackish term is glassfet.
Node:firefighting, Next:firehose syndrome, Previous:firebottle, Up:= F =
firefighting n.
1. What sysadmins have to do to correct sudden operational
problems. An opposite of hacking. "Been hacking your new
newsreader?" "No, a power glitch hosed the network and I spent
the whole afternoon fighting fires." 2. The act of throwing lots
of manpower and late nights at a project, esp. to get it out
before deadline. See also gang
bang, Mongolian Hordes
technique; however, the term `firefighting' connotes that
the effort is going into chasing bugs rather than adding
features.
Node:firehose syndrome, Next:firewall code, Previous:firefighting, Up:= F =
firehose syndrome n.
In mainstream folklore it is observed that trying to drink
from a firehose can be a good way to rip your lips off. On
computer networks, the absence or failure of flow control
mechanisms can lead to situations in which the sending system
sprays a massive flood of packets at an unfortunate receiving
system, more than it can handle. Compare overrun, buffer overflow.
Node:firewall code, Next:firewall machine,
Previous:firehose
syndrome, Up:= F =
firewall code n.
1. The code you put in a system (say, a telephone switch) to
make sure that the users can't do any damage. Since users always
want to be able to do everything but never want to suffer for any
mistakes, the construction of a firewall is a question not only
of defensive coding but also of interface presentation, so that
users don't even get curious about those corners of a system
where they can burn themselves. 2. Any sanity check inserted to
catch a can't happen error.
Wise programmers often change code to fix a bug twice: once to
fix the bug, and once to insert a firewall which would have
arrested the bug before it did quite as much damage.
Node:firewall machine, Next:fireworks mode,
Previous:firewall
code, Up:= F =
firewall machine n.
A dedicated gateway machine with special security precautions
on it, used to service outside network connections and dial-in
lines. The idea is to protect a cluster of more loosely
administered machines hidden behind it from crackers. The typical firewall is an
inexpensive micro-based Unix box kept clean of critical data,
with a bunch of modems and public network ports on it but just
one carefully watched connection back to the rest of the cluster.
The special precautions may include threat monitoring, callback,
and even a complete iron box
keyable to particular incoming IDs or activity patterns. Syn.
flytrap, Venus flytrap.
[When first coined in the mid-1980s this term was pure jargon.
Now (1999) it is techspeak, and has been retained only as an
example of uptake --ESR]
Node:fireworks mode, Next:firmware, Previous:firewall machine, Up:= F =
fireworks mode n.
1. The mode a machine is sometimes said to be in when it is
performing a crash and
burn operation. 2. There is (or was) a more specific
meaning of this term in the Amiga community. The word fireworks
described the effects of a particularly serious crash which
prevented the video pointer(s) from getting reset at the start of
the vertical blank. This caused the DAC to scroll through the
entire contents of CHIP (video or video+CPU) memory. Since each
bit plane would scroll separately this was quite a spectacular
effect.
Node:firmware, Next:firmy, Previous:fireworks mode, Up:= F =
firmware /ferm'weir/ n.
Embedded software contained in EPROM or flash memory. It isn't
quite hardware, but at least doesn't have to be loaded from a
disk like regular software. Hacker usage differs from straight
techspeak in that hackers don't normally apply it to stuff that
you can't possibly get at, such as the program that runs a pocket
calculator. Instead, it implies that the firmware could be
changed, even if doing so would mean opening a box and plugging
in a new chip. A computer's BIOS is the classic example, although
nowadays there is firmware in disk controllers, modems, video
cards and even CD-ROM drives.
Node:firmy, Next:fish, Previous:firmware, Up:=
F =
firmy /fer'mee/ n.
Syn. stiffy (a 3.5-inch floppy
disk).
Node:fish, Next:FISH queue, Previous:firmy, Up:= F
=
fish n.
[Adelaide University, Australia] 1. Another metasyntactic variable. See
foo. Derived originally from the Monty
Python skit in the middle of "The Meaning of Life" entitled "Find
the Fish". 2. A pun for `microfiche'. A microfiche file cabinet
may be referred to as a `fish tank'.
Node:FISH queue, Next:FITNR, Previous:fish, Up:= F =
FISH queue n.
[acronym, by analogy with FIFO (First In, First Out)] `First
In, Still Here'. A joking way of pointing out that processing of
a particular sequence of events or requests has stopped dead.
Also `FISH mode' and `FISHnet'; the latter may be applied to any
network that is running really slowly or exhibiting extreme
flakiness.
Node:FITNR, Next:fix, Previous:FISH queue, Up:= F =
FITNR // adj.
[Thinking Machines, Inc.] Fixed In The Next Release. A
written-only notation attached to bug reports. Often wishful
thinking.
Node:fix, Next:FIXME, Previous:FITNR, Up:= F
=
fix n.,v.
What one does when a problem has been reported too many times
to be ignored.
Node:FIXME, Next:flag, Previous:fix,
Up:= F =
FIXME imp.
[common] A standard tag often put in C comments near a piece
of code that needs work. The point of doing so is that a
grep or a similar pattern-matching tool can find all
such places quickly.
/* FIXME: note this is common in GNU code. */
Compare XXX.
Node:flag, Next:flag day, Previous:FIXME, Up:= F
=
flag n.
[very common] A variable or quantity that can take on one of
two values; a bit, particularly one that is used to indicate one
of two outcomes or is used to control which of two things is to
be done. "This flag controls whether to clear the screen before
printing the message." "The program status word contains several
flag bits." Used of humans analogously to bit. See also hidden
flag, mode bit.
Node:flag day, Next:flaky, Previous:flag, Up:= F =
flag day n.
A software change that is neither forward- nor
backward-compatible, and which is costly to make and costly to
reverse. "Can we install that without causing a flag day for all
users?" This term has nothing to do with the use of the word
flag to mean a variable that has two
values. It came into use when a massive change was made to the
Multics timesharing system to
convert from the short-lived 1965 version of the ASCII code to
the 1967 version (in draft at the time); this was scheduled for
Flag Day (a U.S. holiday), June 14, 1966. The actual change moved
the code point for the ASCII newline character; this required
that all of the Multics source code, documentation, and device
drivers be changed simultaneously. See also backward combatability.
Node:flaky, Next:flamage, Previous:flag day, Up:= F =
flaky adj.
(var sp. `flakey') Subject to frequent lossage. This use is of course related to the
common slang use of the word to describe a person as eccentric,
crazy, or just unreliable. A system that is flaky is working,
sort of -- enough that you are tempted to try to use it -- but
fails frequently enough that the odds in favor of finishing what
you start are low. Commonwealth hackish prefers dodgy or wonky.
Node:flamage, Next:flame, Previous:flaky, Up:= F
=
flamage /flay'm*j/ n.
[very common] Flaming verbiage, esp. high-noise, low-signal
postings to Usenet or other
electronic fora. Often in the phrase
`the usual flamage'. `Flaming' is the act itself; `flamage' the
content; a `flame' is a single flaming message. See flame, also dahmum.
Node:flame, Next:flame bait, Previous:flamage, Up:= F
=
flame
[at MIT, orig. from the phrase `flaming asshole'] 1. vi. To
post an email message intended to insult and provoke. 2. vi. To
speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting
subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude. 3. vt. Either of
senses 1 or 2, directed with hostility at a particular person or
people. 4. n. An instance of flaming. When a discussion
degenerates into useless controversy, one might tell the
participants "Now you're just flaming" or "Stop all that
flamage!" to try to get them to cool down (so to speak).
The term may have been independently invented at several
different places. It has been reported from MIT, Carleton College
and RPI (among many other places) from as far back as 1969, and
from the University of Virginia in the early 1960s.
It is possible that the hackish sense of `flame' is much older
than that. The poet Chaucer was also what passed for a wizard
hacker in his time; he wrote a treatise on the astrolabe, the
most advanced computing device of the day. In Chaucer's "Troilus
and Cressida", Cressida laments her inability to grasp the proof
of a particular mathematical theorem; her uncle Pandarus then
observes that it's called "the fleminge of wrecches." This phrase
seems to have been intended in context as "that which puts the
wretches to flight" but was probably just as ambiguous in Middle
English as "the flaming of wretches" would be today. One suspects
that Chaucer would feel right at home on Usenet.
Node:flame bait, Next:flame on, Previous:flame, Up:= F
=
flame bait n.
[common] A posting intended to trigger a flame war, or one that invites flames in
reply. See also troll.
Node:flame on, Next:flame war, Previous:flame bait, Up:= F =
flame on vi.,interj.
1. To begin to flame. The punning
reference to Marvel Comics's Human Torch is no longer widely
recognized. 2. To continue to flame. See rave, burble.
Node:flame war, Next:flamer, Previous:flame on, Up:= F =
flame war n.
[common] (var. `flamewar') An acrimonious dispute, especially
when conducted on a public electronic forum such as Usenet.
Node:flamer, Next:flap, Previous:flame war, Up:= F =
flamer n.
[common] One who habitually flames. Said esp. of obnoxious Usenet personalities.
Node:flap, Next:flarp, Previous:flamer, Up:= F
=
flap vt.
1. [obs.] To unload a DECtape (so it goes flap, flap,
flap...). Old-time hackers at MIT tell of the days
when the disk was device 0 and DEC microtapes were 1,
2,... and attempting to flap device 0 would
instead start a motor banging inside a cabinet near the disk. 2.
By extension, to unload any magnetic tape. See also macrotape. Modern cartridge tapes no longer
actually flap, but the usage has remained. (The term could well
be re-applied to DEC's TK50 cartridge tape drive, a spectacularly
misengineered contraption which makes a loud flapping sound,
almost like an old reel-type lawnmower, in one of its many
tape-eating failure modes.)
Node:flarp, Next:flash crowd, Previous:flap, Up:= F
=
flarp /flarp/ n.
[Rutgers University] Yet another metasyntactic variable (see
foo). Among those who use it, it is
associated with a legend that any program not containing the word
`flarp' somewhere will not work. The legend is discreetly silent
on the reliability of programs which do contain the
magic word.
Node:flash crowd, Next:flat, Previous:flarp, Up:= F
=
flash crowd
Larry Niven's 1973 SF short story "Flash Crowd" predicted that
one consequence of cheap teleportation would be huge crowds
materializing almost instantly at the sites of interesting news
stories. Twenty years later the term passed into common use on
the Internet to describe exponential spikes in website or server
usage when one passes a certain threshold of popular interest
(this may also be called slashdot
effect).
Node:flat, Next:flat-ASCII, Previous:flash crowd, Up:= F =
flat adj.
1. [common] Lacking any complex internal structure. "That
bitty box has only a flat
filesystem, not a hierarchical one." The verb form is flatten. 2. Said of a memory architecture
(like that of the VAX or 680x0) that is one big linear address
space (typically with each possible value of a processor register
corresponding to a unique core address), as opposed to a
`segmented' architecture (like that of the 80x86) in which
addresses are composed from a base-register/offset pair
(segmented designs are generally considered cretinous).
Note that sense 1 (at least with respect to filesystems) is
usually used pejoratively, while sense 2 is a Good Thing.
Node:flat-ASCII, Next:flat-file, Previous:flat, Up:= F =
flat-ASCII adj.
[common] Said of a text file that contains only 7-bit ASCII
characters and uses only ASCII-standard control characters (that
is, has no embedded codes specific to a particular text formatter
markup language, or output device, and no meta-characters). Syn. plain-ASCII. Compare flat-file.
Node:flat-file, Next:flatten, Previous:flat-ASCII, Up:= F =
flat-file adj.
A flattened representation of
some database or tree or network structure as a single file from
which the structure could implicitly be rebuilt, esp. one in
flat-ASCII form. See also sharchive.
Node:flatten, Next:flavor, Previous:flat-file, Up:= F =
flatten vt.
[common] To remove structural information, esp. to filter
something with an implicit tree structure into a simple sequence
of leaves; also tends to imply mapping to flat-ASCII. "This code flattens an
expression with parentheses into an equivalent canonical form."
Node:flavor, Next:flavorful, Previous:flatten, Up:= F
=
flavor n.
1. [common] Variety, type, kind. "DDT commands come in two
flavors." "These lights come in two flavors, big red ones and
small green ones." "Linux is a flavor of Unix" See vanilla. 2. The attribute that causes
something to be flavorful.
Usually used in the phrase "yields additional flavor". "This
convention yields additional flavor by allowing one to print text
either right-side-up or upside-down." See vanilla. This usage was certainly reinforced
by the terminology of quantum chromodynamics, in which quarks
(the constituents of, e.g., protons) come in six flavors (up,
down, strange, charm, top, bottom) and three colors (red, blue,
green) -- however, hackish use of `flavor' at MIT predated QCD.
3. The term for `class' (in the object-oriented sense) in the
LISP Machine Flavors system. Though the Flavors design has been
superseded (notably by the Common LISP CLOS facility), the term
`flavor' is still used as a general synonym for `class' by some
LISP hackers.
Node:flavorful, Next:flippy, Previous:flavor, Up:= F
=
flavorful adj.
Full of flavor (sense 2);
esthetically pleasing. See random
and losing for antonyms. See also
the entries for taste and elegant.
Node:flippy, Next:flood, Previous:flavorful, Up:= F =
flippy /flip'ee/ n.
A single-sided floppy disk altered for double-sided use by
addition of a second write-notch, so called because it must be
flipped over for the second side to be accessible. No longer
common.
Node:flood, Next:flowchart, Previous:flippy, Up:= F
=
flood v.
[common] 1. To overwhelm a network channel with
mechanically-generated traffic; especially used of IP, TCP/IP,
UDP, or ICMP denial-of-service attacks. 2. To dump large amounts
of text onto an IRC channel. This is
especially rude when the text is uninteresting and the other
users are trying to carry on a serious conversation. Also used in
a similar sense on Usenet. 3. [Usenet] To post an unusually large
number or volume of files on a related topic.
Node:flowchart, Next:flower key, Previous:flood, Up:= F
=
flowchart n.
[techspeak] An archaic form of visual control-flow
specification employing arrows and `speech balloons' of various
shapes. Hackers never use flowcharts, consider them extremely
silly, and associate them with COBOL
programmers, card
wallopers, and other lower forms of life. This attitude
follows from the observations that flowcharts (at least from a
hacker's point of view) are no easier to read than code, are less
precise, and tend to fall out of sync with the code (so that they
either obfuscate it rather than explaining it, or require extra
maintenance effort that doesn't improve the code). See also PDL, sense 1.
Node:flower key, Next:flush, Previous:flowchart, Up:= F =
flower key n.
[Mac users] See feature
key.
Node:flush, Next:flypage, Previous:flower key, Up:= F =
flush v.
1. [common] To delete something, usually superfluous, or to
abort an operation. "All that nonsense has been flushed." 2.
[Unix/C] To force buffered I/O to disk, as with an
fflush(3) call. This is not an abort or
deletion as in sense 1, but a demand for early completion! 3. To
leave at the end of a day's work (as opposed to leaving for a
meal). "I'm going to flush now." "Time to flush." 4. To exclude
someone from an activity, or to ignore a person.
`Flush' was standard ITS terminology for aborting an output
operation; one spoke of the text that would have been printed,
but was not, as having been flushed. It is speculated that this
term arose from a vivid image of flushing unwanted characters by
hosing down the internal output buffer, washing the characters
away before they could be printed. The Unix/C usage, on the other
hand, was propagated by the fflush(3) call in C's
standard I/O library (though it is reported to have been in use
among BLISS programmers at DEC and on
Honeywell and IBM machines as far back as 1965). Unix/C hackers
found the ITS usage confusing, and vice versa.
Node:flypage, Next:Flyspeck 3, Previous:flush, Up:= F
=
flypage /fli:'payj/ n.
(alt. `fly page') A banner, sense
1.
Node:Flyspeck 3, Next:flytrap, Previous:flypage, Up:= F
=
Flyspeck 3 n.
Standard name for any font that is so tiny as to be unreadable
(by analogy with names like `Helvetica 10' for 10-point
Helvetica). Legal boilerplate is usually printed in Flyspeck
3.
Node:flytrap, Next:FM, Previous:Flyspeck 3, Up:= F =
flytrap n.
[rare] See firewall
machine.
Node:FM, Next:fnord, Previous:flytrap, Up:= F
=
FM /F-M/ n.
1. [common] Not `Frequency Modulation' but rather an
abbreviation for `Fucking Manual', the back-formation from RTFM. Used to refer to the manual itself in
the RTFM. "Have you seen the
Networking FM lately?" 2. Abbreviation for "Fucking Magic", used
in the sense of black
magic.
Node:fnord, Next:FOAF, Previous:FM,
Up:= F =
fnord n.
[from the "Illuminatus Trilogy"] 1. A word used in email and
news postings to tag utterances as surrealist mind-play or humor,
esp. in connection with Discordianism and elaborate conspiracy
theories. "I heard that David Koresh is sharing an apartment in
Argentina with Hitler. (Fnord.)" "Where can I fnord get the
Principia Discordia from?" 2. A metasyntactic variable,
commonly used by hackers with ties to Discordianism or the Church of the
SubGenius.
Node:FOAF, Next:FOD, Previous:fnord, Up:= F
=
FOAF // n.
[Usenet; common] Acronym for `Friend Of A Friend'. The source
of an unverified, possibly untrue story. This term was not
originated by hackers (it is used in Jan Brunvand's books on
urban folklore), but is much better recognized on Usenet and
elsewhere than in mainstream English.
Node:FOD, Next:fold case, Previous:FOAF, Up:= F =
FOD /fod/ v.
[Abbreviation for `Finger of Death', originally a spell-name
from fantasy gaming] To terminate with extreme prejudice and with
no regard for other people. From MUDs
where the wizard command `FOD ' results in the
immediate and total death of , usually as
punishment for obnoxious behavior. This usage migrated to other
circumstances, such as "I'm going to fod the process that is
burning all the cycles." Compare gun.
In aviation, FOD means Foreign Object Damage, e.g., what
happens when a jet engine sucks up a rock on the runway or a bird
in flight. Finger of Death is a distressingly apt description of
what this generally does to the engine.
Node:fold case, Next:followup, Previous:FOD, Up:= F =
fold case v.
See smash case. This term
tends to be used more by people who don't mind that their tools
smash case. It also connotes that case is ignored but case
distinctions in data processed by the tool in question aren't
destroyed.
Node:followup, Next:fontology, Previous:fold case, Up:= F =
followup n.
[common] On Usenet, a posting
generated in response to another posting (as opposed to a reply, which goes by email rather than
being broadcast). Followups include the ID of the parent message in their headers;
smart news-readers can use this information to present Usenet
news in `conversation' sequence rather than order-of-arrival. See
thread.
Node:fontology, Next:foo, Previous:followup, Up:=
F =
fontology n.
[XEROX PARC] The body of knowledge dealing with the
construction and use of new fonts (e.g., for window systems and
typesetting software). It has been said that fontology
recapitulates file-ogeny.
[Unfortunately, this reference to the embryological dictum
that "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is not merely a joke. On
the Macintosh, for example, System 7 has to go through
contortions to compensate for an earlier design error that
created a whole different set of abstractions for fonts parallel
to `files' and `folders' --ESR]
Node:foo, Next:foobar, Previous:fontology, Up:= F =
foo /foo/
1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. [very common] Used very
generally as a sample name for absolutely anything, esp. programs
and files (esp. scratch files). 3. First on the standard list of
metasyntactic
variables used in syntax examples. See also bar, baz, qux, quux, corge, grault,
garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy,
thud.
When `foo' is used in connection with `bar' it has generally
traced to the WWII-era Army slang acronym FUBAR (`Fucked Up Beyond All Repair'), later
modified to foobar. Early versions
of the Jargon File interpreted this change as a post-war
bowdlerization, but it it now seems more likely that FUBAR was
itself a derivative of `foo' perhaps influenced by German
`furchtbar' (terrible) - `foobar' may actually have been the
original form.
For, it seems, the word `foo' itself had an immediate prewar
history in comic strips and cartoons. The earliest documented
uses were in the "Smokey Stover" comic strip popular in the
1930s, which frequently included the word "foo". Bill Holman, the
author of the strip, filled it with odd jokes and personal
contrivances, including other nonsense phrases such as "Notary
Sojac" and "1506 nix nix". According to the Warner Brothers Cartoon
Companion Holman claimed to have found the word "foo" on the
bottom of a Chinese figurine. This is plausible; Chinese
statuettes often have apotropaic inscriptions, and this may have
been the Chinese word `fu' (sometimes transliterated `foo'),
which can mean "happiness" when spoken with the proper tone (the
lion-dog guardians flanking the steps of many Chinese restaurants
are properly called "fu dogs"). English speakers' reception of
Holman's `foo' nonsense word was undoubtedly influenced by
Yiddish `feh' and English `fooey' and `fool'.
Holman's strip featured a firetruck called the Foomobile that
rode on two wheels. The comic strip was tremendously popular in
the late 1930s, and legend has it that a manufacturer in Indiana
even produced an operable version of Holman's Foomobile.
According to the Encyclopedia of American Comics, `Foo' fever
swept the U.S., finding its way into popular songs and generating
over 500 `Foo Clubs.' The fad left `foo' references embedded in
popular culture (including a couple of appearances in Warner
Brothers cartoons of 1938-39) but with their origins rapidly
forgotten.
One place they are known to have remained live is in the U.S.
military during the WWII years. In 1944-45, the term `foo
fighters' was in use by radar operators for the kind of
mysterious or spurious trace that would later be called a UFO
(the older term resurfaced in popular American usage in 1995 via
the name of one of the better grunge-rock bands). Informants
connected the term to the Smokey Stover strip.
The U.S. and British militaries frequently swapped slang terms
during the war (see kluge and kludge for another important example)
Period sources reported that `FOO' became a semi-legendary
subject of WWII British-army graffiti more or less equivalent to
the American Kilroy. Where British troops went, the graffito "FOO
was here" or something similar showed up. Several slang
dictionaries aver that FOO probably came from Forward Observation
Officer, but this (like the contemporaneous "FUBAR") was probably
a backronym . Forty years later,
Paul Dickson's excellent book "Words" (Dell, 1982, ISBN
0-440-52260-7) traced "Foo" to an unspecified British naval
magazine in 1946, quoting as follows: "Mr. Foo is a mysterious
Second World War product, gifted with bitter omniscience and
sarcasm."
Earlier versions of this entry suggested the possibility that
hacker usage actually sprang from "FOO, Lampoons and Parody", the
title of a comic book first issued in September 1958, a joint
project of Charles and Robert Crumb. Though Robert Crumb (then in
his mid-teens) later became one of the most important and
influential artists in underground comics, this venture was
hardly a success; indeed, the brothers later burned most of the
existing copies in disgust. The title FOO was featured in large
letters on the front cover. However, very few copies of this
comic actually circulated, and students of Crumb's `oeuvre' have
established that this title was a reference to the earlier Smokey
Stover comics. The Crumbs may also have been influenced by a
short-lived Canadian parody magazine named `Foo' published in
1951-52.
An old-time member reports that in the 1959 "Dictionary of the
TMRC Language", compiled at TMRC,
there was an entry that went something like this:
FOO: The first syllable of the sacred chant phrase
"FOO MANE PADME HUM." Our first obligation is to keep the foo
counters turning.
(For more about the legendary foo counters, see TMRC.) This definition used Bill Holman's
nonsense word, only then two decades old and demonstrably still
live in popular culture and slang, to a ha ha only serious analogy
with esoteric Tibetan Buddhism. Today's hackers would find it
difficult to resist elaborating a joke like that, and it is not
likely 1959's were any less susceptible. Almost the entire staff
of what later became the MIT AI Lab was involved with TMRC, and
the word spread from there.
Node:foobar, Next:fool, Previous:foo,
Up:= F =
foobar n.
[very common] Another widely used metasyntactic variable; see
foo for etymology. Probably originally
propagated through DECsystem manuals by Digital Equipment
Corporation (DEC) in 1960s and early
1970s; confirmed sightings there go back to 1972. Hackers do
not generally use this to mean FUBAR in either the slang or jargon sense. See
also Fred Foobar. In RFC1639,
"FOOBAR" was made an abbreviation for "FTP Operation Over Big
Address Records", but this was an obvious backronym.
Node:fool, Next:fool file, Previous:foobar, Up:= F
=
fool n.
As used by hackers, specifically describes a person who
habitually reasons from obviously or demonstrably incorrect
premises and cannot be persuaded by evidence to do otherwise; it
is not generally used in its other senses, i.e., to describe a
person with a native incapacity to reason correctly, or a clown.
Indeed, in hackish experience many fools are capable of reasoning
all too effectively in executing their errors. See also cretin, loser,
fool file.
The Algol 68-R compiler used to initialize its storage to the
character string "F00LF00LF00LF00L..." because as a pointer or as
a floating point number it caused a crash, and as an integer or a
character string it was very recognizable in a dump. Sadly, one
day a very senior professor at Nottingham University wrote a
program that called him a fool. He proceeded to demonstrate the
correctness of this assertion by lobbying the university (not
quite successfully) to forbid the use of Algol on its computers.
See also DEADBEEF.
Node:fool file, Next:Foonly, Previous:fool, Up:= F =
fool file n.
[Usenet] A notional repository of all the most dramatically
and abysmally stupid utterances ever. An entire subgenre of sig blocks consists of the header
"From the fool file:" followed by some quote the poster wishes to
represent as an immortal gem of dimwittery; for this usage to be
really effective, the quote has to be so obviously wrong as to be
laughable. More than one Usenetter has achieved an unwanted
notoriety by being quoted in this way.
Node:Foonly, Next:footprint, Previous:fool file, Up:= F =
Foonly n.
1. The PDP-10 successor that was
to have been built by the Super Foonly project at the Stanford
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory along with a new operating
system. (The name itself came from FOO NLI, an error message
emitted by a PDP-10 assembler at SAIL meaning "FOO is Not a Legal
Identifier". The intention was to leapfrog from the old DEC timesharing system SAIL was then running
to a new generation, bypassing TENEX which at that time was the
ARPANET standard. ARPA funding for both the Super Foonly and the
new operating system was cut in 1974. Most of the design team
went to DEC and contributed greatly to the design of the PDP-10
model KL10. 2. The name of the company formed by Dave Poole, one
of the principal Super Foonly designers, and one of hackerdom's
more colorful personalities. Many people remember the parrot
which sat on Poole's shoulder and was a regular companion. 3. Any
of the machines built by Poole's company. The first was the F-1
(a.k.a. Super Foonly), which was the computational engine used to
create the graphics in the movie "TRON". The F-1 was the fastest
PDP-10 ever built, but only one was ever made. The effort drained
Foonly of its financial resources, and the company turned towards
building smaller, slower, and much less expensive machines.
Unfortunately, these ran not the popular TOPS-20 but a TENEX variant called Foonex;
this seriously limited their market. Also, the machines shipped
were actually wire-wrapped engineering prototypes requiring
individual attention from more than usually competent site
personnel, and thus had significant reliability problems. Poole's
legendary temper and unwillingness to suffer fools gladly did not
help matters. By the time of the Jupiter project cancellation in
1983, Foonly's proposal to build another F-1 was eclipsed by the
Mars, and the company never quite
recovered. See the Mars entry for the
continuation and moral of this story.
Node:footprint, Next:for free, Previous:Foonly, Up:= F
=
footprint n.
1. The floor or desk area taken up by a piece of hardware. 2.
[IBM] The audit trail (if any) left by a crashed program (often
in plural, `footprints'). See also toeprint. 3. RAM footprint: The
minimum amount of RAM which an OS or other program takes; this
figure gives one an idea of how much will be left for other
applications. How actively this RAM is used is another matter
entirely. Recent tendencies to featuritis and software bloat can
expand the RAM footprint of an OS to the point of making it
nearly unusable in practice. [This problem is, thankfully,
limited to operating systems so stupid that they don't do virtual
memory - ESR]
Node:for free, Next:for the rest of us, Previous:footprint, Up:= F =
for free adj.
[common] Said of a capability of a programming language or
hardware that is available by its design without needing
cleverness to implement: "In APL, we get the matrix operations
for free." "And owing to the way revisions are stored in this
system, you get revision trees for free." The term usually refers
to a serendipitous feature of doing things a certain way (compare
big win), but it may refer to an
intentional but secondary feature.
Node:for the rest of us,
Next:for values of,
Previous:for free, Up:= F =
for the rest of us adj.
[from the Mac slogan "The computer for the rest of us"] 1.
Used to describe a spiffy product
whose affordability shames other comparable products, or (more
often) used sarcastically to describe spiffy but very overpriced products. 2.
Describes a program with a limited interface, deliberately
limited capabilities, non-orthogonality, inability to compose
primitives, or any other limitation designed to not `confuse' a
naive user. This places an upper bound on how far that user can
go before the program begins to get in the way of the task
instead of helping accomplish it. Used in reference to Macintosh
software which doesn't provide obvious capabilities because it is
thought that the poor lusers might not be able to handle them.
Becomes `the rest of them' when used in third-party
reference; thus, "Yes, it is an attractive program, but it's
designed for The Rest Of Them" means a program that superficially
looks neat but has no depth beyond the surface flash. See also
WIMP environment, Macintrash, point-and-drool interface,
user-friendly.
Node:for values of, Next:fora, Previous:for the rest of us, Up:= F =
for values of
[MIT] A common rhetorical maneuver at MIT is to use any of the
canonical random numbers
as placeholders for variables. "The max function takes 42
arguments, for arbitrary values of 42." "There are 69 ways to
leave your lover, for 69 = 50." This is especially likely when
the speaker has uttered a random number and realizes that it was
not recognized as such, but even `non-random' numbers are
occasionally used in this fashion. A related joke is that pi
equals 3 -- for small values of pi and large values of 3.
Historical note: at MIT this usage has traditionally been
traced to the programming language MAD (Michigan Algorithm
Decoder), an Algol-58-like language that was the most common
choice among mainstream (non-hacker) users at MIT in the mid-60s.
It inherited from Algol-58 a control structure FOR VALUES OF X =
3, 7, 99 DO ... that would repeat the indicated instructions for
each value in the list (unlike the usual FOR that only works for
arithmetic sequences of values). MAD is long extinct, but similar
for-constructs still flourish (e.g., in Unix's shell
languages).
Node:fora, Next:foreground, Previous:for values of, Up:= F =
fora pl.n.
Plural of forum.
Node:foreground, Next:fork, Previous:fora, Up:= F =
foreground vt.
[Unix; common] To bring a task to the top of one's stack for immediate processing, and hackers
often use it in this sense for non-computer tasks. "If your
presentation is due next week, I guess I'd better foreground
writing up the design document."
Technically, on a time-sharing system, a task executing in
foreground is one able to accept input from and return output to
the user; oppose background.
Nowadays this term is primarily associated with Unix, but it appears first to have been used in
this sense on OS/360. Normally, there is only one foreground task
per terminal (or terminal window); having multiple processes
simultaneously reading the keyboard is a good way to lose.
Node:fork, Next:fork bomb, Previous:foreground, Up:= F =
fork
In the open-source community, a fork is what occurs when two
(or more) versions of a software package's source code are being
developed in parallel which once shared a common code base, and
these multiple versions of the source code have irreconcilable
differences between them. This should not be confused with a
development branch, which may later be folded back into the
original source code base. Nor should it be confused with what
happens when a new distribution of Linux or some other
distribution is created, because that largely assembles pieces
than can and will be used in other distributions without
conflict.
Forking is uncommon; in fact, it is so uncommon that individual instances loom
large in hacker folklore. Notable in this class were the GCC/EGCS fork (later
healed by a merger) and the forks among the FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD
operating systems.
Node:fork bomb, Next:forked, Previous:fork, Up:= F =
fork bomb n.
[Unix] A particular species of wabbit that can be written in one line of C
(main() {for(;;)fork();}) or shell ($0 &
$0 &) on any Unix system, or occasionally created by
an egregious coding bug. A fork bomb process `explodes' by
recursively spawning copies of itself (using the Unix system call
fork(2)). Eventually it eats all the process table
entries and effectively wedges the system. Fortunately, fork
bombs are relatively easy to spot and kill, so creating one
deliberately seldom accomplishes more than to bring the just
wrath of the gods down upon the perpetrator. See also logic bomb.
Node:forked, Next:Fortrash, Previous:fork bomb, Up:= F =
forked adj.,vi.
1. [common after 1997, esp. in the Linux community] An
open-source software project is said to have forked or be forked
when the project group fissions into two or more parts pursuing
separate lines of development (or, less commonly, when a third
party unconnected to the project group ). Forking is considered a
Bad Thing - not merely because
it implies a lot of wasted effort in the future, but because
forks tend to be accompanied by a great deal of strife and
acrimony between the successor groups over issues of legitimacy,
succession, and design direction. There is serious social
pressure against forking. As a result, major forks (such as the
Gnu-Emacs/XEmacs split, the fissionings of the 386BSD group into
three daughter project, and the short-lived GCC/EGCS split) are
rare enough that they are remembered individually in hacker
folklore. 2. [Unix; uncommon; prob. influenced by a mainstream
expletive] Terminally slow, or dead. Originated when one system
was slowed to a snail's pace by an inadvertent fork bomb.
Node:Fortrash, Next:fortune cookie, Previous:forked, Up:= F =
Fortrash /for'trash/ n.
Hackerism for the FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator) language,
referring to its primitive design, gross and irregular syntax,
limited control constructs, and slippery, exception-filled
semantics.
Node:fortune cookie, Next:forum, Previous:Fortrash, Up:=
F =
fortune cookie n.
[WAITS, via Unix; common] A random quote, item of trivia,
joke, or maxim printed to the user's tty at login time or (less
commonly) at logout time. Items from this lexicon have often been
used as fortune cookies. See cookie
file.
Node:forum, Next:fossil, Previous:fortune cookie, Up:= F =
forum n.
[Usenet, GEnie, CI$; pl. `fora' or `forums'] Any discussion
group accessible through a dial-in BBS,
a mailing list, or a newsgroup (see the network). A forum functions much
like a bulletin board; users submit postings for all to read and discussion
ensues. Contrast real-time chat via talk mode or point-to-point personal email.
Node:fossil, Next:four-color glossies, Previous:forum, Up:= F =
fossil n.
1. In software, a misfeature that becomes understandable only
in historical context, as a remnant of times past retained so as
not to break compatibility. Example: the retention of octal as
default base for string escapes in C, in
spite of the better match of hexadecimal to ASCII and modern
byte-addressable architectures. See dusty deck. 2. More restrictively, a
feature with past but no present utility. Example: the
force-all-caps (LCASE) bits in the V7 and BSD Unix tty driver, designed for use with
monocase terminals. (In a perversion of the usual
backward-compatibility goal, this functionality has actually been
expanded and renamed in some later USG
Unix releases as the IUCLC and OLCUC bits.) 3. The FOSSIL
(Fido/Opus/Seadog Standard Interface Level) driver specification
for serial-port access to replace the brain-dead routines in the IBM PC ROMs.
Fossils are used by most MS-DOS BBS
software in preference to the `supported' ROM routines, which do
not support interrupt-driven operation or setting speeds above
9600; the use of a semistandard FOSSIL library is preferable to
the bare metal serial port
programming otherwise required. Since the FOSSIL specification
allows additional functionality to be hooked in, drivers that use
the hook but do not provide
serial-port access themselves are named with a modifier, as in
`video fossil'.
Node:four-color glossies,
Next:frag, Previous:fossil, Up:= F =
four-color glossies n.
1. Literature created by marketroids that allegedly contains
technical specs but which is in fact as superficial as possible
without being totally content-free. "Forget the four-color
glossies, give me the tech ref manuals." Often applied as an
indication of superficiality even when the material is printed on
ordinary paper in black and white. Four-color-glossy manuals are
never useful for solving a problem. 2. [rare] Applied by
extension to manual pages that don't contain enough information
to diagnose why the program doesn't produce the expected or
desired output.
Node:frag, Next:fragile, Previous:four-color glossies, Up:= F =
frag n.,v.
[from Vietnam-era U.S. military slang via the games Doom and
Quake] 1. To kill another player's avatar in a multiuser game. "I hold the office
Quake record with 40 frags." 2. To completely ruin something.
"Forget that power supply, the lightning strike fragged it. See
also gib.
Node:fragile, Next:fred, Previous:frag, Up:= F =
fragile adj.
Syn brittle.
Node:fred, Next:Fred Foobar, Previous:fragile, Up:= F =
fred n.
1. The personal name most frequently used as a metasyntactic variable (see
foo). Allegedly popular because it's
easy for a non-touch-typist to type on a standard QWERTY
keyboard. In Great Britain, `fred', `jim' and `sheila' are common
metasyntactic variables because their uppercase versions were
official names given to the 3 memory areas that held I/O
status registers on the lovingly-remembered BBC Microcomputer!
(It is reported that SHEILA was poked the most often.) Unlike
J. Random Hacker or
`J. Random Loser', the name `fred' has no positive or negative
loading (but see Dr. Fred
Mbogo). See also barney. 2.
An acronym for `Flipping Ridiculous Electronic Device'; other
F-verbs may be substituted for `flipping'.
Node:Fred Foobar, Next:frednet, Previous:fred, Up:= F =
Fred Foobar n.
J. Random Hacker's
cousin. Any typical human being, more or less synomous with
`someone' except that Fred Foobar can be backreferenced by name later on. "So
Fred Foobar will enter his phone number into the database, and
it'll be archived with the others. Months later, when Fred
searches..." See also Bloggs
Family and Dr. Fred
Mbogo
Node:frednet, Next:free software, Previous:Fred Foobar, Up:= F =
frednet /fred'net/ n.
Used to refer to some random and
uncommon protocol encountered on a network. "We're implementing
bridging in our router to solve the frednet problem."
Node:free software, Next:freeware, Previous:frednet, Up:= F =
free software n.
As defined by Richard M. Stallman and used by the Free
Software movement, this means software that gives users enough
freedom to be used by the free software community. Specifically,
users must be free to modify the software for their private use,
and free to redistribute it either with or without modifications,
either commercially or noncommercially, either gratis or charging
a distribution fee. Free software has existed since the dawn of
computing; Free Software as a movement began in 1984 with the GNU
Project. See also open
source.
Node:freeware, Next:freeze, Previous:free software, Up:= F =
freeware n.
[common] Free software, often written by enthusiasts and
distributed by users' groups, or via electronic mail, local
bulletin boards, Usenet, or other
electronic media. At one time, `freeware' was a trademark of
Andrew Fluegelman, the author of the well-known MS-DOS comm
program PC-TALK III. It wasn't enforced after his mysterious
disappearance and presumed death in 1984. See shareware, FRS.
Node:freeze, Next:fried, Previous:freeware, Up:=
F =
freeze v.
To lock an evolving software distribution or document against
changes so it can be released with some hope of stability.
Carries the strong implication that the item in question will
`unfreeze' at some future date. "OK, fix that bug and we'll
freeze for release."
There are more specific constructions on this term. A `feature
freeze', for example, locks out modifications intended to
introduce new features but still allows bugfixes and completion
of existing features; a `code freeze' connotes no more changes at
all. At Sun Microsystems and elsewhere, one may also hear
references to `code slush' -- that is, an almost-but-not-quite
frozen state.
Node:fried, Next:frink, Previous:freeze, Up:= F
=
fried adj.
1. [common] Non-working due to hardware failure; burnt out.
Especially used of hardware brought down by a `power glitch' (see
glitch), drop-outs, a short, or some other electrical
event. (Sometimes this literally happens to electronic circuits!
In particular, resistors can burn out and transformers can melt
down, emitting noxious smoke -- see friode, SED and LER. However, this term is also used
metaphorically.) Compare frotzed.
2. [common] Of people, exhausted. Said particularly of those who
continue to work in such a state. Often used as an explanation or
excuse. "Yeah, I know that fix destroyed the file system, but I
was fried when I put it in." Esp. common in conjunction with
`brain': "My brain is fried today, I'm very short on sleep."
Node:frink, Next:friode, Previous:fried, Up:= F
=
frink /frink/ v.
The unknown ur-verb, fill in your own meaning. Found esp. on
the Usenet newsgroup _alt.fan.lemurs_, where it is said that
the lemurs know what `frink' means, but they aren't telling.
Compare gorets.
Node:friode, Next:fritterware, Previous:frink, Up:= F
=
friode /fri:'ohd/ n.
[TMRC] A reversible (that is, fused or blown) diode. Compare
fried; see also SED, LER.
Node:fritterware, Next:frob, Previous:friode, Up:= F
=
fritterware n.
An excess of capability that serves no productive end. The
canonical example is font-diddling software on the Mac (see macdink); the term describes anything
that eats huge amounts of time for quite marginal gains in
function but seduces people into using it anyway. See also window shopping.
Node:frob, Next:frobnicate, Previous:fritterware, Up:= F =
frob /frob/ 1. n.
[MIT; very common] The TMRC
definition was "FROB = a protruding arm or trunnion"; by
metaphoric extension, a `frob' is any random small thing; an
object that you can comfortably hold in one hand; something you
can frob (sense 2). See frobnitz.
2. vt. Abbreviated form of frobnicate. 3. [from the MUD world] A command on some MUDs that changes a
player's experience level (this can be used to make wizards);
also, to request wizard privileges
on the `professional courtesy' grounds that one is a wizard
elsewhere. The command is actually `frobnicate' but is
universally abbreviated to the shorter form.
Node:frobnicate, Next:frobnitz, Previous:frob, Up:= F =
frobnicate /frob'ni-kayt/ vt.
[Poss. derived from frobnitz,
and usually abbreviated to frob, but
`frobnicate' is recognized as the official full form.] To
manipulate or adjust, to tweak. One frequently frobs bits or
other 2-state devices. Thus: "Please frob the light switch" (that
is, flip it), but also "Stop frobbing that clasp; you'll break
it". One also sees the construction `to frob a frob'. See tweak and twiddle.
Usage: frob, twiddle, and tweak sometimes connote points along
a continuum. `Frob' connotes aimless manipulation; `twiddle'
connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse search for a proper
setting; `tweak' connotes fine-tuning. If someone is turning a
knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it, he
is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at
the screen, he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing
it because turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it. The variant
`frobnosticate' has been recently reported.
Node:frobnitz, Next:frog, Previous:frobnicate, Up:= F =
frobnitz /frob'nits/, pl. `frobnitzem' /frob'nit-zm/ or
`frobni' /frob'ni:/ n.
[TMRC] An unspecified physical object, a widget. Also refers
to electronic black boxes. This rare form is usually abbreviated
to `frotz', or more commonly to frob.
Also used are `frobnule' (/frob'n[y]ool/) and `frobule'
(/frob'yool/). Starting perhaps in 1979, `frobozz' /fr*-boz'/
(plural: `frobbotzim' /fr*-bot'zm/) has also become very popular,
largely through its exposure as a name via Zork. These variants can also be applied to
nonphysical objects, such as data structures.
Pete Samson, compiler of the original TMRC lexicon, adds, "Under the TMRC [railroad]
layout were many storage boxes, managed (in 1958) by David R.
Sawyer. Several had fanciful designations written on them, such
as `Frobnitz Coil Oil'. Perhaps DRS intended Frobnitz to be a
proper name, but the name was quickly taken for the thing". This
was almost certainly the origin of the term.
Node:frog, Next:frogging, Previous:frobnitz, Up:=
F =
frog alt. `phrog'
1. interj. Term of disgust (we seem to have a lot of them). 2.
Used as a name for just about anything. See foo. 3. n. Of things, a crock. 4. n. Of people,
somewhere in between a turkey and a toad. 5. `froggy': adj.
Similar to bagbiting, but milder.
"This froggy program is taking forever to run!"
Node:frogging, Next:front end, Previous:frog, Up:= F =
frogging [University of Waterloo] v.
1. Partial corruption of a text file or input stream by some
bug or consistent glitch, as opposed to random events like line
noise or media failures. Might occur, for example, if one bit of
each incoming character on a tty were stuck, so that some
characters were correct and others were not. See terminak for a historical example and compare
dread high-bit
disease. 2. By extension, accidental display of text in a
mode where the output device emits special symbols or mnemonics
rather than conventional ASCII. This often happens, for example,
when using a terminal or comm program on a device like an IBM PC
with a special `high-half' character set and with the bit-parity
assumption wrong. A hacker sufficiently familiar with ASCII bit
patterns might be able to read the display anyway.
Node:front end, Next:frotz, Previous:frogging, Up:=
F =
front end n.
1. An intermediary computer that does set-up and filtering for
another (usually more powerful but less friendly) machine (a
`back end'). 2. What you're talking to when you have a
conversation with someone who is making replies without paying
attention. "Look at the dancing elephants!" "Uh-huh." "Do you
know what I just said?" "Sorry, you were talking to the front
end." 3. Software that provides an interface to another program
`behind' it, which may not be as user-friendly. Probably from
analogy with hardware front-ends (see sense 1) that interfaced
with mainframes.
Node:frotz, Next:frotzed, Previous:front end, Up:= F =
frotz /frots/
1. n. See frobnitz. 2. `mumble
frotz': An interjection of mildest disgust.
Node:frotzed, Next:frowney, Previous:frotz, Up:= F
=
frotzed /frotst/ adj.
down because of hardware problems.
Compare fried. A machine that is
merely frotzed may be fixable without replacing parts, but a
fried machine is more seriously damaged.
Node:frowney, Next:FRS, Previous:frotzed, Up:= F
=
frowney n.
(alt. `frowney face') See emoticon.
Node:FRS, Next:fry, Previous:frowney, Up:= F
=
FRS // n.,obs.
Abbreviation for "Freely Redistributable Software" which
entered general use on the Internet in 1995 after years of
low-level confusion over what exactly to call software written to
be passed around and shared (contending terms including freeware, shareware, and `sourceware' were never
universally felt to be satisfactory for various subtle reasons).
The first formal conference on freely redistributable software
was held in Cambridge, Massachussetts, in February 1996
(sponsored by the Free Software Foundation). The conference
organizers used the FRS abbreviation heavily in its calls for
papers and other literature during 1995. The term was in steady
though not common use until 1998 and the invention of open source.
Node:fry, Next:fscking, Previous:FRS, Up:= F =
fry
1. vi. To fail. Said especially of smoke-producing hardware
failures. More generally, to become non-working. Usage: never
said of software, only of hardware and humans. See fried, magic
smoke. 2. vt. To cause to fail; to roach, toast, or
hose a piece of hardware. Never used
of software or humans, but compare fried.
Node:fscking, Next:FSF, Previous:fry,
Up:= F =
fscking /fus'-king/ or /eff'-seek-ing/ adj.
[Usenet; common] Fucking, in the expletive sense (it refers to
the Unix filesystem-repair command fsck(1), of which it can be
said that if you have to use it at all you are having a bad day).
Originated on scary devil
monastery and the _bofh.net_ newsgroups, but became
much more widespread following the passage of CDA. Also occasionally seen in the variant "What
the fsck?"
Node:FSF, Next:FTP, Previous:fscking, Up:= F
=
FSF /F-S-F/ abbrev.
Common abbreviation (both spoken and written) for the name of
the Free Software Foundation, a nonprofit educational association
formed to support the GNU project.
Node:FTP, Next:-fu, Previous:FSF,
Up:= F =
FTP /F-T-P/, not /fit'ip/
1. [techspeak] n. The File Transfer Protocol for transmitting
files between systems on the Internet. 2. vt. To beam a file using the File Transfer Protocol. 3.
Sometimes used as a generic even for file transfers not using
FTP. "Lemme get a copy of "Wuthering
Heights" ftp'd from uunet."
Node:-fu, Next:FUBAR, Previous:FTP, Up:= F =
-fu
[common; generalized from `kung-fu'] Combining form denoting
expert practice of a skill. "That's going to take some serious
code-fu." First sighted in connection with the GIMP's
remote-scripting facility, script-fu, in 1998.
Node:FUBAR, Next:fuck me harder, Previous:-fu, Up:= F =
FUBAR n.
The Failed UniBus Address Register in a VAX. A good example of
how jargon can occasionally be snuck past the suits; see foobar,
and foo for a fuller etymology.
Node:fuck me harder, Next:FUD, Previous:FUBAR, Up:= F
=
fuck me harder excl.
Sometimes uttered in response to egregious misbehavior, esp.
in software, and esp. of misbehaviors which seem unfairly
persistent (as though designed in by the imp of the perverse).
Often theatrically elaborated: "Aiighhh! Fuck me with a
piledriver and 16 feet of curare-tipped wrought-iron fence
and no lubricants!" The phrase is sometimes heard
abbreviated `FMH' in polite company.
[This entry is an extreme example of the hackish habit of
coining elaborate and evocative terms for lossage. Here we see a
quite self-conscious parody of mainstream expletives that has
become a running gag in part of the hacker culture; it
illustrates the hackish tendency to turn any situation, even one
of extreme frustration, into an intellectual game (the point
being, in this case, to creatively produce a long-winded
description of the most anatomically absurd mental image possible
-- the short forms implicitly allude to all the ridiculous long
forms ever spoken). Scatological language is actually relatively
uncommon among hackers, and there was some controversy over
whether this entry ought to be included at all. As it reflects a
live usage recognizably peculiar to the hacker culture, we feel
it is in the hackish spirit of truthfulness and opposition to all
forms of censorship to record it here. --ESR & GLS]
Node:FUD, Next:FUD wars, Previous:fuck me harder, Up:= F =
FUD /fuhd/ n.
Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own
company: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales
people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be
considering [Amdahl] products." The idea, of course, was to
persuade them to go with safe IBM gear rather than with
competitors' equipment. This implicit coercion was traditionally
accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people
who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of
competitors' equipment or software. See IBM. After 1990 the term FUD was associated
increasingly frequently with Microsoft, and has become generalized to
refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive
weapon.
Node:FUD wars, Next:fudge, Previous:FUD, Up:= F =
FUD wars /fuhd worz/ n.
[from FUD] Political posturing
engaged in by hardware and software vendors ostensibly committed
to standardization but actually willing to fragment the market to
protect their own shares. The Unix International vs. OSF conflict
about Unix standards was one outstanding example; Microsoft vs.
Netscape vs. W3C about HTML standards is another.
Node:fudge, Next:fudge factor, Previous:FUD wars, Up:= F =
fudge
1. vt. To perform in an incomplete but marginally acceptable
way, particularly with respect to the writing of a program. "I
didn't feel like going through that pain and suffering, so I
fudged it -- I'll fix it later." 2. n. The resulting code.
Node:fudge factor, Next:fuel up, Previous:fudge, Up:= F
=
fudge factor n.
[common] A value or parameter that is varied in an ad hoc way
to produce the desired result. The terms `tolerance' and slop are also used, though these usually
indicate a one-sided leeway, such as a buffer that is made larger
than necessary because one isn't sure exactly how large it needs
to be, and it is better to waste a little space than to lose
completely for not having enough. A fudge factor, on the other
hand, can often be tweaked in more than one direction. A good
example is the `fuzz' typically allowed in floating-point
calculations: two numbers being compared for equality must be
allowed to differ by a small amount; if that amount is too small,
a computation may never terminate, while if it is too large,
results will be needlessly inaccurate. Fudge factors are
frequently adjusted incorrectly by programmers who don't fully
understand their import. See also coefficient of X.
Node:fuel up, Next:Full Monty, Previous:fudge factor, Up:= F =
fuel up vi.
To eat or drink hurriedly in order to get back to hacking.
"Food-p?" "Yeah, let's fuel up." "Time for a great-wall!" See also oriental food.
Node:Full Monty, Next:fum, Previous:fuel up, Up:=
F =
Full Monty n.
See monty, sense 2.
Node:fum, Next:functino, Previous:Full Monty, Up:= F =
fum n.
[XEROX PARC] At PARC, often the third of the standard metasyntactic variables
(after foo and bar). Competes with baz,
which is more common outside PARC.
Node:functino, Next:funky, Previous:fum, Up:= F =
functino n.
[uncommon, U.K.; originally a serendipitous typo in 1994] A
pointer to a function in C and C++. By association with
sub-atomic particles such as the neutrino, it accurately conveys
an impression of smallness (one pointer is four bytes on most
systems) and speed (hackers can and do use arrays of functinos to
replace a switch() statement).
Node:funky, Next:funny money, Previous:functino, Up:= F =
funky adj.
Said of something that functions, but in a slightly strange,
klugey way. It does the job and would be difficult to change, so
its obvious non-optimality is left alone. Often used to describe
interfaces. The more bugs something has that nobody has bothered
to fix because workarounds are easier, the funkier it is. TECO and UUCP are funky. The Intel i860's
exception handling is extraordinarily funky. Most standards
acquire funkiness as they age. "The new mailer is installed, but
is still somewhat funky; if it bounces your mail for no reason,
try resubmitting it." "This UART is pretty funky. The data ready
line is active-high in interrupt mode and active-low in DMA
mode."
Node:funny money, Next:furrfu, Previous:funky, Up:= F
=
funny money n.
1. Notional `dollar' units of computing time and/or storage
handed to students at the beginning of a computer course; also
called `play money' or `purple money' (in implicit opposition to
real or `green' money). In New Zealand and Germany the odd usage
`paper money' has been recorded; in Germany, the particularly
amusing synonym `transfer ruble' commemmorates the funny money
used for trade between COMECON countries back when the Soviet
Bloc still existed. When your funny money ran out, your account
froze and you needed to go to a professor to get more.
Fortunately, the plunging cost of timesharing cycles has made
this less common. The amounts allocated were almost invariably
too small, even for the non-hackers who wanted to slide by with
minimum work. In extreme cases, the practice led to small-scale
black markets in bootlegged computer accounts. 2. By extension,
phantom money or quantity tickets of any kind used as a
resource-allocation hack within a system. Antonym: `real
money'.
Node:furrfu, Next:fuzzball, Previous:funny money, Up:= F =
furrfu excl.
[Usenet; written, only rarely spoken] Written-only equivalent
of "Sheesh!"; it is, in fact, "sheesh" modified by rot13. Evolved in mid-1992 as a response to
notably silly postings repeating urban myths on the Usenet
newsgroup _alt.folklore.urban_, after some posters
complained that "Sheesh!" as a response to newbies was being overused. See also FOAF.
Node:fuzzball, Next:G, Previous:furrfu,
Up:= F =
fuzzball n.
[TCP/IP hackers] A DEC LSI-11 running a particular suite of
homebrewed software written by Dave Mills and assorted
co-conspirators, used in the early 1980s for Internet protocol
testbedding and experimentation. These were used as NSFnet
backbone sites in its early 56kb-line days; a few were still
active on the Internet as late as mid-1993, doing odd jobs such
as network time service.
Node:= G =, Next:= H =, Previous:= F =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= G =
G:
g-file:
gabriel:
gag:
gang bang:
garbage collect:
garply:
gas:
gaseous:
Gates's Law:
gawble:
GC:
GCOS:
GECOS:
gedanken:
geef:
geek code:
geek out:
gen:
gender mender:
General Public
Virus:
generate:
Genius From Mars
Technique:
gensym:
Get a life!:
Get a real
computer!:
GFR:
gib:
GIFs at 11:
gig:
giga-:
GIGO:
gilley:
gillion:
ginger:
GIPS:
glark:
glass:
glass tty:
glassfet:
glitch:
glob:
glork:
glue:
gnarly:
GNU:
gnubie:
GNUMACS:
go flatline:
go root:
go-faster stripes:
GoAT:
gobble:
Godwin's Law:
Godzillagram:
golden:
golf-ball printer:
gonk:
gonkulator:
gonzo:
Good Thing:
gopher:
gopher hole:
gorets:
gorilla arm:
gorp:
GOSMACS:
Gosperism:
gotcha:
GPL:
GPV:
grault:
gray goo:
Great Renaming:
Great Runes:
Great Worm:
great-wall:
Green Book:
green bytes:
green card:
green lightning:
green machine:
Green's Theorem:
greenbar:
grep:
gribble:
grilf:
grind:
grind crank:
gripenet:
gritch:
grok:
gronk:
gronk out:
gronked:
grovel:
grue:
grunge:
gubbish:
Guido:
guiltware:
gumby:
gun:
gunch:
gunpowder chicken:
gurfle:
guru:
guru meditation:
gweep:
Node:G, Next:g-file, Previous:fuzzball, Up:=
G =
G pref.,suff.
[SI] See quantifiers.
Node:g-file, Next:gabriel, Previous:G, Up:= G =
g-file n.
[Commodore BBS culture] Any file that is written with the
intention of being read by a human rather than a machine, such as
the Jargon File, documentation, humor files, hacker lore, and
technical materials.
This term survives from the nearly forgotten Commodore 64
underground and BBS community. In the early 80s, C-Net had
emerged as the most popular C64 BBS software for systems which
encouraged messaging (as opposed to file transfer). There were
three main options for files: Program files (p-files), which
served the same function as `doors' in today's systems, UD files
(the user upload/download section), and g-files. Anything that
was meant to be read was included in g-files.
Node:gabriel, Next:gag, Previous:g-file, Up:= G
=
gabriel /gay'bree-*l/ n.
[for Dick Gabriel, SAIL LISP hacker and volleyball fanatic] An
unnecessary (in the opinion of the opponent) stalling tactic,
e.g., tying one's shoelaces or combing one's hair repeatedly,
asking the time, etc. Also used to refer to the perpetrator of
such tactics. Also, `pulling a Gabriel', `Gabriel mode'.
Node:gag, Next:gang bang, Previous:gabriel, Up:= G
=
gag vi.
Equivalent to choke, but connotes
more disgust. "Hey, this is FORTRAN code. No wonder the C
compiler gagged." See also barf.
Node:gang bang, Next:garbage collect, Previous:gag, Up:= G =
gang bang n.
The use of large numbers of loosely coupled programmers in an
attempt to wedge a great many features into a product in a short
time. Though there have been memorable gang bangs (e.g., that
over-the-weekend assembler port mentioned in Steven Levy's
"Hackers"), most are perpetrated by large companies trying to
meet deadlines; the inevitable result is enormous buggy masses of
code entirely lacking in orthogonality. When market-driven managers
make a list of all the features the competition has and assign
one programmer to implement each, the probability of maintaining
a coherent (or even functional) design goes infinitesimal. See
also firefighting, Mongolian Hordes
technique, Conway's
Law.
Node:garbage collect, Next:garply, Previous:gang bang, Up:= G =
garbage collect vi.
(also `garbage collection', n.) See GC.
Node:garply, Next:gas, Previous:garbage collect, Up:= G =
garply /gar'plee/ n.
[Stanford] Another metasyntactic variable (see foo); once popular among SAIL hackers.
Node:gas, Next:gaseous, Previous:garply, Up:= G
=
gas
[as in `gas chamber'] 1. interj. A term of disgust and hatred,
implying that gas should be dispensed in generous quantities,
thereby exterminating the source of irritation. "Some loser just
reloaded the system for no reason! Gas!" 2. interj. A suggestion
that someone or something ought to be flushed out of mercy. "The
system's getting wedged every few
minutes. Gas!" 3. vt. To flush (sense
1). "You should gas that old crufty software." 4. [IBM] n. Dead
space in nonsequentially organized files that was occupied by
data that has since been deleted; the compression operation that
removes it is called `degassing' (by analogy, perhaps, with the
use of the same term in vacuum technology). 5. [IBM] n. Empty
space on a disk that has been clandestinely allocated against
future need.
Node:gaseous, Next:Gates's Law, Previous:gas, Up:= G
=
gaseous adj.
Deserving of being gassed.
Disseminated by Geoff Goodfellow while at SRI; became
particularly popular after the Moscone-Milk killings in San
Francisco, when it was learned that the defendant Dan White (a
politician who had supported Proposition 7) would get the gas
chamber under Proposition 7 if convicted of first-degree murder
(he was eventually convicted of manslaughter).
Node:Gates's Law, Next:gawble, Previous:gaseous, Up:= G
=
Gates's Law
"The speed of software halves every 18 months." This oft-cited
law is an ironic comment on the tendency of software bloat to
outpace the every-18-month doubling in hardware caopacity per
dollar predicted by Moore's
Law. The reference is to Bill Gates; Microsoft is widely
considered among the worst if not the worst of the perpetrators
of bloat.
Node:gawble, Next:GC, Previous:Gates's Law, Up:= G =
gawble /gaw'bl/ n.
See chawmp.
Node:GC, Next:GCOS, Previous:gawble, Up:= G
=
GC /G-C/
[from LISP terminology; `Garbage Collect'] 1. vt. To clean up
and throw away useless things. "I think I'll GC the top of my
desk today." When said of files, this is equivalent to GFR. 2. vt. To recycle, reclaim, or put to
another use. 3. n. An instantiation of the garbage collector
process.
`Garbage collection' is computer-science techspeak for a
particular class of strategies for dynamically but transparently
reallocating computer memory (i.e., without requiring explicit
allocation and deallocation by higher-level software). One such
strategy involves periodically scanning all the data in memory
and determining what is no longer accessible; useless data items
are then discarded so that the memory they occupy can be recycled
and used for another purpose. Implementations of the LISP
language usually use garbage collection.
In jargon, the full phrase is sometimes heard but the abbrev GC is more frequently used because
it is shorter. Note that there is an ambiguity in usage that has
to be resolved by context: "I'm going to garbage-collect my desk"
usually means to clean out the drawers, but it could also mean to
throw away or recycle the desk itself.
Node:GCOS, Next:GECOS, Previous:GC,
Up:= G =
GCOS /jee'kohs/ n.
A quick-and-dirty clone of System/360 DOS that emerged from
GE around 1970; originally called GECOS (the General Electric
Comprehensive Operating System). Later kluged to support
primitive timesharing and transaction processing. After the
buyout of GE's computer division by Honeywell, the name was
changed to General Comprehensive Operating System (GCOS). Other
OS groups at Honeywell began referring to it as `God's Chosen
Operating System', allegedly in reaction to the GCOS crowd's
uninformed and snotty attitude about the superiority of their
product. All this might be of zero interest, except for two
facts: (1) The GCOS people won the political war, and this led in
the orphaning and eventual death of Honeywell Multics, and (2) GECOS/GCOS left one permanent
mark on Unix. Some early Unix systems at Bell Labs used GCOS
machines for print spooling and various other services; the field
added to /etc/passwd to carry GCOS ID information
was called the `GECOS field' and survives today as the
pw_gecos member used for the user's full name and
other human-ID information. GCOS later played a major role in
keeping Honeywell a dismal also-ran in the mainframe market, and
was itself mostly ditched for Unix in the late 1980s when
Honeywell began to retire its aging big
iron designs.
Node:GECOS, Next:gedanken, Previous:GCOS, Up:= G =
GECOS /jee'kohs/ n.
See GCOS.
Node:gedanken, Next:geef, Previous:GECOS, Up:= G
=
gedanken /g*-dahn'kn/ adj.
Ungrounded; impractical; not well-thought-out; untried;
untested.
`Gedanken' is a German word for `thought'. A thought
experiment is one you carry out in your head. In physics, the
term `gedanken experiment' is used to refer to an experiment that
is impractical to carry out, but useful to consider because it
can be reasoned about theoretically. (A classic gedanken
experiment of relativity theory involves thinking about a man in
an elevator accelerating through space.) Gedanken experiments are
very useful in physics, but must be used with care. It's too easy
to idealize away some important aspect of the real world in
constructing the `apparatus'.
Among hackers, accordingly, the word has a pejorative
connotation. It is typically used of a project, especially one in
artificial intelligence research, that is written up in grand
detail (typically as a Ph.D. thesis) without ever being
implemented to any great extent. Such a project is usually
perpetrated by people who aren't very good hackers or find
programming distasteful or are just in a hurry. A `gedanken
thesis' is usually marked by an obvious lack of intuition about
what is programmable and what is not, and about what does and
does not constitute a clear specification of an algorithm. See
also AI-complete, DWIM.
Node:geef, Next:geek code, Previous:gedanken, Up:=
G =
geef v.
[ostensibly from `gefingerpoken'] vt. Syn. mung. See also blinkenlights.
Node:geek code, Next:geek out, Previous:geef, Up:= G =
geek code n.
(also "Code of the Geeks"). A set of codes commonly used in
sig blocks to broadcast the
interests, skills, and aspirations of the poster. Features a G at
the left margin followed by numerous letter codes, often suffixed
with plusses or minuses. Because many net users are involved in
computer science, the most common prefix is `GCS'. To see a copy
of the current code, browse http://www.geekcode.com. Here is a
sample geek code (that of Robert Hayden, the code's inventor)
from that page:
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GED/J d-- s:++>: a- C++(++++)$ ULUO++ P+>+++ L++ !E---- W+(---) N+++
o+ K+++ w+(---) O- M+$>++ V-- PS++(+++)>$ PE++(+)>$ Y++ PGP++ t- 5+++
X++ R+++>$ tv+ b+ DI+++ D+++ G+++++>$ e++$>++++ h r-- y+**
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
The geek code originated in 1993; it was inspired (according
to the inventor) by previous "bear", "smurf" and "twink"
style-and-sexual-preference codes from lesbian and gay newsgroups. It has in turn spawned
imitators; there is now even a "Saturn geek code" for owners of
the Saturn car. See also computer
geek.
Node:geek out, Next:gen, Previous:geek code, Up:= G =
geek out vi.
To temporarily enter techno-nerd mode while in a non-hackish
context, for example at parties held near computer equipment.
Especially used when you need to do or say something highly
technical and don't have time to explain: "Pardon me while I geek
out for a moment." See computer
geek; see also propeller
head.
Node:gen, Next:gender mender, Previous:geek out, Up:= G =
gen /jen/ n.,v.
Short for generate, used
frequently in both spoken and written contexts.
Node:gender mender, Next:General Public Virus,
Previous:gen, Up:= G =
gender mender n.
[common] A cable connector shell with either two male or two
female connectors on it, used to correct the mismatches that
result when some loser didn't
understand the RS232C specification and the distinction between
DTE and DCE. Used esp. for RS-232C parts in either the original
D-25 or the IBM PC's bogus D-9 format. Also called `gender
bender', `gender blender', `sex changer', and even `homosexual
adapter;' however, there appears to be some confusion as to
whether a `male homosexual adapter' has pins on both sides (is
doubly male) or sockets on both sides (connects two males).
Node:General Public Virus,
Next:generate, Previous:gender mender, Up:= G =
General Public Virus n.
Pejorative name for some versions of the GNU project copyleft or General Public License (GPL),
which requires that any tools or apps
incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the
same anti-proprietary terms as GNU stuff. Thus it is alleged that
the copyleft `infects' software generated with GNU tools, which
may in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code.
The Free Software Foundation's official position as of January
1991 is that copyright law limits the scope of the GPL to
"programs textually incorporating significant amounts of GNU
code", and that the `infection' is not passed on to third parties
unless actual GNU source is transmitted. Nevertheless, widespread
suspicion that the copyleft
language is `boobytrapped' has caused many developers to avoid
using GNU tools and the GPL. Changes in the language of the
version 2.0 GPL did not eliminate this problem.
Node:generate, Next:Genius From Mars
Technique, Previous:General Public Virus, Up:= G =
generate vt.
To produce something according to an algorithm or program or
set of rules, or as a (possibly unintended) side effect of the
execution of an algorithm or program. The opposite of parse. This term retains its mechanistic
connotations (though often humorously) when used of human
behavior. "The guy is rational most of the time, but mention
nuclear energy around him and he'll generate infinite flamage."
Node:Genius From Mars
Technique, Next:gensym,
Previous:generate, Up:= G =
Genius From Mars Technique n.
[TMRC] A visionary quality which enables one to ignore the
standard approach and come up with a totally unexpected new
algorithm. An attack on a problem from an offbeat angle that no
one has ever thought of before, but that in retrospect makes
total sense. Compare grok, zen.
Node:gensym, Next:Get a life!, Previous:Genius From Mars
Technique, Up:= G =
gensym /jen'sim/
[from MacLISP for `generated symbol'] 1. v. To invent a new
name for something temporary, in such a way that the name is
almost certainly not in conflict with one already in use. 2. n.
The resulting name. The canonical form of a gensym is `Gnnnn'
where nnnn represents a number; any LISP hacker would recognize
G0093 (for example) as a gensym. 3. A freshly generated data
structure with a gensymmed name. Gensymmed names are useful for
storing or uniquely identifying crufties (see cruft).
Node:Get a life!, Next:Get a real
computer!, Previous:gensym, Up:= G
=
Get a life! imp.
Hacker-standard way of suggesting that the person to whom it
is directed has succumbed to terminal geekdom (see computer geek). Often heard on Usenet, esp. as a way of suggesting that
the target is taking some obscure issue of theology too seriously. This exhortation was
popularized by William Shatner on a 1987 "Saturday Night Live"
episode in a speech that ended "Get a life!", but some
respondents believe it to have been in use before then. It was
certainly in wide use among hackers for years before achieving
mainstream currency via the sitcom "Get A Life" in 1990.
Node:Get a real
computer!, Next:GFR,
Previous:Get a
life!, Up:= G =
Get a real computer! imp.
Typical hacker response to news that somebody is having
trouble getting work done on a system that (a) is single-tasking,
(b) has no hard disk, or (c) has an address space smaller than 16
megabytes. This is as of early 1996; note that the threshold for
`real computer' rises with time. See bitty box and toy.
Node:GFR, Next:gib, Previous:Get a real computer!, Up:= G =
GFR /G-F-R/ vt.
[ITS: from `Grim File Reaper', an ITS and LISP Machine
utility] To remove a file or files according to some
program-automated or semi-automatic manual procedure, especially
one designed to reclaim mass storage space or reduce name-space
clutter (the original GFR actually moved files to tape). Often
generalized to pieces of data below file level. "I used to have
his phone number, but I guess I GFRed
it." See also prowler, reaper. Compare GC,
which discards only provably worthless stuff.
Node:gib, Next:GIFs at 11, Previous:GFR, Up:= G
=
gib /jib/
1. vi. To destroy utterly. Like frag, but much more violent and final. "There's
no trace left. You definitely gibbed that bug". 2. n. Remnants
after total obliteration.
Originated first by id software in the game Quake. It's short
for giblets (thus pronounced "jib"), and referred to the bloody
remains of slain opponents. Eventually the word was verbed, and
leaked into general usage afterward.
Node:GIFs at 11, Next:gig, Previous:gib, Up:= G =
GIFs at 11
[Fidonet] Fidonet alternative to film at 11, especially in echoes
(Fidonet topic areas) where uuencoded GIFs are permitted. Other
formats, especially JPEG and MPEG, may be referenced instead.
Node:gig, Next:giga-, Previous:GIFs at 11, Up:= G =
gig /jig/ or /gig/ n.
[SI] See quantifiers.
Node:giga-, Next:GIGO, Previous:gig,
Up:= G =
giga- /ji'ga/ or /gi'ga/ pref.
[SI] See quantifiers.
Node:GIGO, Next:gilley, Previous:giga-, Up:= G
=
GIGO /gi:'goh/ [acronym]
1. `Garbage In, Garbage Out' -- usually said in response to
lusers who complain that a program
didn't "do the right thing" when given imperfect input or
otherwise mistreated in some way. Also commonly used to describe
failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or
imprecise data. 2. `Garbage In, Gospel Out': this more recent
expansion is a sardonic comment on the tendency human beings have
to put excessive trust in `computerized' data.
Node:gilley, Next:gillion, Previous:GIGO, Up:= G =
gilley n.
[Usenet] The unit of analogical bogosity. According to its originator, the
standard for one gilley was "the act of bogotoficiously comparing
the shutting down of 1000 machines for a day with the killing of
one person". The milligilley has been found to suffice for most
normal conversational exchanges.
Node:gillion, Next:ginger, Previous:gilley, Up:= G
=
gillion /gil'y*n/ or /jil'y*n/ n.
[formed from giga- by analogy with
mega/million and tera/trillion] 10^9. Same as an American billion
or a British `milliard'. How one pronounces this depends on
whether one speaks giga- with a hard
or soft `g'.
Node:ginger, Next:GIPS, Previous:gillion, Up:= G
=
ginger n.
See saga.
Node:GIPS, Next:glark, Previous:ginger, Up:= G
=
GIPS /gips/ or /jips/ n.
[analogy with MIPS]
Giga-Instructions per Second (also possibly `Gillions of
Instructions per Second'; see gillion). In 1991, this is used of only a
handful of highly parallel machines, but this is expected to
change. Compare KIPS.
Node:glark, Next:glass, Previous:GIPS, Up:= G =
glark /glark/ vt.
To figure something out from context. "The System III manuals
are pretty poor, but you can generally glark the meaning from
context." Interestingly, the word was originally `glork'; the
context was "This gubblick contains many nonsklarkish English
flutzpahs, but the overall pluggandisp can be glorked [sic] from
context" (David Moser, quoted by Douglas Hofstadter in his
"Metamagical Themas" column in the January 1981 "Scientific
American"). It is conjectured that hacker usage mutated the verb
to `glark' because glork was already
an established jargon term (some hackers do report using the
original term). Compare grok, zen.
Node:glass, Next:glass tty, Previous:glark, Up:= G
=
glass n.
[IBM] Synonym for silicon.
Node:glass tty, Next:glassfet, Previous:glass, Up:= G
=
glass tty /glas T-T-Y/ or /glas ti'tee/ n.
A terminal that has a display screen but which, because of
hardware or software limitations, behaves like a teletype or some
other printing terminal, thereby combining the disadvantages of
both: like a printing terminal, it can't do fancy display hacks,
and like a display terminal, it doesn't produce hard copy. An
example is the early `dumb' version of Lear-Siegler ADM 3
(without cursor control). See tube,
tty; compare dumb terminal, smart terminal. See "TV Typewriters" (Appendix A) for an
interesting true story about a glass tty.
Node:glassfet, Next:glitch, Previous:glass tty, Up:= G =
glassfet /glas'fet/ n.
[by analogy with MOSFET, the acronym for
`Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor'] Syn. firebottle, a humorous way to refer to
a vacuum tube.
Node:glitch, Next:glob, Previous:glassfet, Up:=
G =
glitch /glich/
[very common; from German `glitschig' to slip, via Yiddish
`glitshen', to slide or skid] 1. n. A sudden interruption in
electric service, sanity, continuity, or program function.
Sometimes recoverable. An interruption in electric service is
specifically called a `power glitch' (also power hit), of grave concern because it
usually crashes all the computers. In jargon, though, a hacker
who got to the middle of a sentence and then forgot how he or she
intended to complete it might say, "Sorry, I just glitched". 2.
vi. To commit a glitch. See gritch.
3. vt. [Stanford] To scroll a display screen, esp. several lines
at a time. WAITS terminals used to do
this in order to avoid continuous scrolling, which is distracting
to the eye. 4. obs. Same as magic
cookie, sense 2.
All these uses of `glitch' derive from the specific technical
meaning the term has in the electronic hardware world, where it
is now techspeak. A glitch can occur when the inputs of a circuit
change, and the outputs change to some random value for some very brief time before
they settle down to the correct value. If another circuit
inspects the output at just the wrong time, reading the random
value, the results can be very wrong and very hard to debug (a
glitch is one of many causes of electronic heisenbugs).
Node:glob, Next:glork, Previous:glitch, Up:= G
=
glob /glob/, not /glohb/ v.,n.
[Unix; common] To expand special characters in a wildcarded
name, or the act of so doing (the action is also called
`globbing'). The Unix conventions for filename wildcarding have
become sufficiently pervasive that many hackers use some of them
in written English, especially in email or news on technical
topics. Those commonly encountered include the following:
*
wildcard for any string (see also UN*X)
?
wildcard for any single character (generally read this way
only at the beginning or in the middle of a word)
[]
delimits a wildcard matching any of the enclosed
characters
{}
alternation of comma-separated alternatives; thus,
`foo{baz,qux}' would be read as `foobaz' or `fooqux'
Some examples: "He said his name was [KC]arl" (expresses
ambiguity). "I don't read talk.politics.*" (any of the
talk.politics subgroups on Usenet).
Other examples are given under the entry for X. Note that glob patterns are similar, but not
identical, to those used in regexps.
Historical note: The jargon usage derives from
glob, the name of a subprogram that expanded
wildcards in archaic pre-Bourne versions of the Unix shell.
Node:glork, Next:glue, Previous:glob, Up:= G =
glork /glork/
1. interj. Term of mild surprise, usually tinged with outrage,
as when one attempts to save the results of two hours of editing
and finds that the system has just crashed. 2. Used as a name for
just about anything. See foo. 3. vt.
Similar to glitch, but usually used
reflexively. "My program just glorked itself." 4. Syn. for glark, which see.
Node:glue, Next:gnarly, Previous:glork, Up:= G
=
glue n.
Generic term for any interface logic or protocol that connects
two component blocks. For example, Blue
Glue is IBM's SNA protocol, and hardware designers call
anything used to connect large VLSI's or circuit blocks `glue
logic'.
Node:gnarly, Next:GNU, Previous:glue,
Up:= G =
gnarly /nar'lee/ adj.
Both obscure and hairy (sense 1). "Yow! -- the tuned assembler implementation of
BitBlt is really gnarly!" From a similar but less specific usage
in surfer slang.
Node:GNU, Next:gnubie, Previous:gnarly, Up:= G
=
GNU /gnoo/, not /noo/
1. [acronym: `GNU's Not Unix!', see recursive acronym] A
Unix-workalike development effort of the Free Software Foundation
headed by Richard Stallman . GNU EMACS
and the GNU C compiler, two tools designed for this project, have
become very popular in hackerdom and elsewhere. The GNU project
was designed partly to proselytize for RMS's position that
information is community property and all software source should
be shared. One of its slogans is "Help stamp out software
hoarding!" Though this remains controversial (because it
implicitly denies any right of designers to own, assign, and sell
the results of their labors), many hackers who disagree with RMS
have nevertheless cooperated to produce large amounts of
high-quality software for free redistribution under the Free
Software Foundation's imprimatur. The GNU project has a web page
at http://www.gnu.org. See EMACS, copyleft, General Public Virus, Linux. 2. Noted Unix hacker John Gilmore ,
founder of Usenet's anarchic alt.* hierarchy.
Node:gnubie, Next:GNUMACS, Previous:GNU, Up:= G =
gnubie /noo'bee/ n.
Written-only variant of newbie in
common use on IRC channels, which implies specifically someone
who is new to the Linux/open source/free software world.
Node:GNUMACS, Next:go flatline, Previous:gnubie, Up:=
G =
GNUMACS /gnoo'maks/ n.
[contraction of `GNU EMACS'] Often-heard abbreviated name for
the GNU project's flagship tool, EMACS. Used esp. in contrast with
GOSMACS.
Node:go flatline, Next:go root, Previous:GNUMACS, Up:= G
=
go flatline v.
[from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG traces upon
brain-death] (also adjectival `flatlined'). 1. To die, terminate, or fail, esp. irreversibly. In
hacker parlance, this is used of machines only, human death being
considered somewhat too serious a matter to employ jargon-jokes
about. 2. To go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing
controlled shutdown. "You can suffer file damage if you shut down
Unix but power off before the system has gone flatline." 3. Of a
video tube, to fail by losing vertical scan, so all one sees is a
bright horizontal line bisecting the screen.
Node:go root, Next:go-faster stripes, Previous:go flatline, Up:= G =
go root vi.
[Unix; common] To temporarily enter root mode in order to perform a privileged
operation. This use is deprecated in Australia, where v. `root'
is a synonym for "fuck".
Node:go-faster stripes, Next:GoAT, Previous:go root, Up:= G =
go-faster stripes n.
[UK] Syn. chrome. Mainstream in
some parts of UK.
Node:GoAT, Next:gobble, Previous:go-faster stripes, Up:= G =
GoAT //
[Usenet] Abbreviation: "Go Away, Troll". See troll.
Node:gobble, Next:Godwin's Law, Previous:GoAT, Up:= G
=
gobble vt.
1. To consume, usu. used with `up'. "The output spy gobbles
characters out of a tty output buffer."
2. To obtain, usu. used with `down'. "I guess I'll gobble down a
copy of the documentation tomorrow." See also snarf.
Node:Godwin's Law, Next:Godzillagram, Previous:gobble, Up:= G =
Godwin's Law prov.
[Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability
of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There
is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread
is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost
whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically
guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in
those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil
that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order
to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.
Node:Godzillagram, Next:golden, Previous:Godwin's Law, Up:= G =
Godzillagram /god-zil'*-gram/ n.
[from Japan's national hero] 1. A network packet that in
theory is a broadcast to every machine in the universe. The
typical case is an IP datagram whose destination IP address is
[255.255.255.255]. Fortunately, few gateways are foolish enough
to attempt to implement this case! 2. A network packet of maximum
size. An IP Godzillagram has 65,536 octets. Compare super source quench, Christmas tree packet,
martian.
Node:golden, Next:golf-ball printer, Previous:Godzillagram, Up:= G =
golden adj.
[prob. from folklore's `golden egg'] When used to describe a
magnetic medium (e.g., `golden disk', `golden tape'), describes
one containing a tested, up-to-spec, ready-to-ship software
version. Compare platinum-iridium.
Node:golf-ball printer, Next:gonk, Previous:golden, Up:=
G =
golf-ball printer n. obs.
The IBM 2741, a slow but letter-quality printing device and
terminal based on the IBM Selectric typewriter. The `golf ball'
was a little spherical frob bearing reversed embossed images of
88 different characters arranged on four parallels of latitude;
one could change the font by swapping in a different golf ball.
The print element spun and jerked alarmingly in action and when
in motion was sometimes described as an `infuriated golf ball'.
This was the technology that enabled APL to use a non-EBCDIC,
non-ASCII, and in fact completely non-standard character set.
This put it 10 years ahead of its time -- where it stayed, firmly
rooted, for the next 20, until character displays gave way to
programmable bit-mapped devices with the flexibility to support
other character sets.
Node:gonk, Next:gonkulator, Previous:golf-ball printer, Up:= G =
gonk /gonk/ vi.,n.
1. To prevaricate or to embellish the truth beyond any
reasonable recognition. In German the term is (mythically)
`gonken'; in Spanish the verb becomes `gonkar'. "You're gonking
me. That story you just told me is a bunch of gonk." In German,
for example, "Du gonkst mich" (You're pulling my leg). See also
gonkulator. 2. [British] To grab
some sleep at an odd time; compare gronk out.
Node:gonkulator, Next:gonzo, Previous:gonk, Up:= G =
gonkulator /gon'kyoo-lay-tr/ n.
[common; from the 1960s "Hogan's Heroes" TV series] A
pretentious piece of equipment that actually serves no useful
purpose. Usually used to describe one's least favorite piece of
computer hardware. See gonk.
Node:gonzo, Next:Good Thing, Previous:gonkulator, Up:= G =
gonzo /gon'zoh/ adj.
[from Hunter S. Thompson] 1. With total commitment, total
concentration, and a mad sort of panache. (Thompson's original
sense.) 2. More loosely: Overwhelming; outrageous; over the top;
very large, esp. used of collections of source code, source
files, or individual functions. Has some of the connotations of
moby and hairy, but without the implication of obscurity
or complexity.
Node:Good Thing, Next:gopher, Previous:gonzo, Up:= G
=
Good Thing n.,adj.
[very common; often capitalized; always pronounced as if
capitalized.] 1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a position
to notice: "A language that manages dynamic memory automatically
for you is a Good Thing." 2. Something that can't possibly have
any ill side-effects and may save considerable grief later:
"Removing the self-modifying code from that shared library would
be a Good Thing." 3. When said of software tools or libraries, as
in "YACC is a Good Thing", specifically connotes that the thing
has drastically reduced a programmer's work load. Oppose Bad Thing.
Node:gopher, Next:gopher hole, Previous:Good Thing, Up:= G =
gopher n.
A type of Internet service first floated around 1991 and
obsolesced around 1995 by the World Wide Web. Gopher presents a
menuing interface to a tree or graph of links; the links can be
to documents, runnable programs, or other gopher menus
arbitrarily far across the net.
Some claim that the gopher software, which was originally
developed at the University of Minnesota, was named after the
Minnesota Gophers (a sports team). Others claim the word derives
from American slang `gofer' (from "go for", dialectal "go fer"),
one whose job is to run and fetch things. Finally, observe that
gophers dig long tunnels, and the idea of tunneling through the
net to find information was a defining metaphor for the
developers. Probably all three things were true, but with the
first two coming first and the gopher-tunnel metaphor
serendipitously adding flavor and impetus to the project as it
developed out of its concept stage.
Node:gopher hole, Next:gorets, Previous:gopher, Up:= G
=
gopher hole n.
1. Any access to a gopher. 2.
[Amateur Packet Radio] The terrestrial analog of a wormhole (sense 2), from which this term was
coined. A gopher hole links two amateur packet relays through
some non-ham radio medium.
Node:gorets, Next:gorilla arm, Previous:gopher hole, Up:= G =
gorets /gor'ets/ n.
The unknown ur-noun, fill in your own meaning. Found esp. on
the Usenet newsgroup _alt.gorets_, which seems to be a
running contest to redefine the word by implication in the
funniest and most peculiar way, with the understanding that no
definition is ever final. [A correspondent from the Former Soviet
Union informs me that `gorets' is Russian for `mountain dweller'.
Another from France informs me that `goret' is archaic French for
a young pig --ESR] Compare frink.
Node:gorilla arm, Next:gorp, Previous:gorets, Up:= G
=
gorilla arm n.
The side-effect that destroyed touch-screens as a mainstream
input technology despite a promising start in the early 1980s. It
seems the designers of all those spiffy touch-menu systems failed to notice that
humans aren't designed to hold their arms in front of their faces
making small motions. After more than a very few selections, the
arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and oversized -- the operator
looks like a gorilla while using the touch screen and feels like
one afterwards. This is now considered a classic cautionary tale
to human-factors designers; "Remember the gorilla arm!" is
shorthand for "How is this going to fly in real
use?".
Node:gorp, Next:GOSMACS, Previous:gorilla arm, Up:= G =
gorp /gorp/ n.
[CMU: perhaps from the canonical hiker's food, Good Old
Raisins and Peanuts] Another metasyntactic variable, like
foo and bar.
Node:GOSMACS, Next:Gosperism, Previous:gorp, Up:= G =
GOSMACS /goz'maks/ n.
[contraction of `Gosling EMACS'] The first EMACS-in-C implementation, predating but now
largely eclipsed by GNUMACS.
Originally freeware; a commercial version was modestly popular as
`UniPress EMACS' during the 1980s. The author, James Gosling,
went on to invent NeWS and the
programming language Java; the latter earned him demigod status.
Node:Gosperism, Next:gotcha, Previous:GOSMACS, Up:= G
=
Gosperism /gos'p*r-izm/ n.
A hack, invention, or saying due to elder days arch-hacker R. William (Bill)
Gosper. This notion merits its own term because there are so many
of them. Many of the entries in HAKMEM are Gosperisms; see also life.
Node:gotcha, Next:GPL, Previous:Gosperism, Up:= G =
gotcha n.
A misfeature of a system,
especially a programming language or environment, that tends to
breed bugs or mistakes because it both enticingly easy to invoke
and completely unexpected and/or unreasonable in its outcome. For
example, a classic gotcha in C is the
fact that if (a=b) {code;} is syntactically valid
and sometimes even correct. It puts the value of b
into a and then executes code if
a is non-zero. What the programmer probably meant
was if (a==b) {code;}, which executes
code if a and b are
equal.
Node:GPL, Next:GPV, Previous:gotcha, Up:= G
=
GPL /G-P-L/ n.
Abbreviation for `General Public License' in widespread use;
see copyleft, General Public Virus. Often
mis-expanded as `GNU Public License'.
Node:GPV, Next:grault, Previous:GPL, Up:= G =
GPV /G-P-V/ n.
Abbrev. for General
Public Virus in widespread use.
Node:grault, Next:gray goo, Previous:GPV, Up:= G =
grault /grawlt/ n.
Yet another metasyntactic variable,
invented by Mike Gallaher and propagated by the GOSMACS documentation. See corge.
Node:gray goo, Next:Great Renaming, Previous:grault, Up:= G =
gray goo n.
A hypothetical substance composed of sagans of sub-micron-sized self-replicating
robots programmed to make copies of themselves out of whatever is
available. The image that goes with the term is one of the entire
biosphere of Earth being eventually converted to robot goo. This
is the simplest of the nanotechnology disaster scenarios,
easily refuted by arguments from energy requirements and
elemental abundances. Compare blue
goo.
Node:Great Renaming, Next:Great Runes, Previous:gray goo, Up:= G =
Great Renaming n.
The flag day in 1987 on which
all of the non-local groups on the Usenet had their names changed from the net.-
format to the current multiple-hierarchies scheme. Used esp. in
discussing the history of newsgroup names. "The oldest sources
group is _comp.sources.misc_; before the Great Renaming, it
was _net.sources_." There is a Great Renaming
FAQ on the Web.
Node:Great Runes, Next:Great Worm, Previous:Great Renaming, Up:= G =
Great Runes n.
Uppercase-only text or display messages. Some archaic
operating systems still emit these. See also runes, smash
case, fold case.
There is a widespread legend (repeated by earlier versions of
this entry, though tagged as folklore) that the uppercase-only
support of various old character codes and I/O equipment was
chosen by a religious person in a position of power at the
Teletype Company because supporting both upper and lower cases
was too expensive and supporting lower case only would have made
it impossible to spell `God' correctly. Not true; the upper-case
interpretation of teleprinter codes was well established by 1870,
long before Teletype was even founded.
Node:Great Worm, Next:great-wall, Previous:Great Runes, Up:= G =
Great Worm n.
The 1988 Internet worm perpetrated
by RTM. This is a play on Tolkien
(compare elvish, elder days). In the fantasy history of
his Middle Earth books, there were dragons powerful enough to lay
waste to entire regions; two of these (Scatha and Glaurung) were
known as "the Great Worms". This usage expresses the connotation
that the RTM crack was a sort of devastating watershed event in
hacker history; certainly it did more to make non-hackers nervous
about the Internet than anything before or since.
Node:great-wall, Next:Green Book, Previous:Great Worm, Up:= G =
great-wall vi.,n.
[from SF fandom] A mass expedition to an oriental restaurant,
esp. one where food is served family-style and shared. There is a
common heuristic about the amount of food to order, expressed as
"Get N - 1 entrees"; the value of N, which is the number of
people in the group, can be inferred from context (see N). See oriental
food, ravs, stir-fried random.
Node:Green Book, Next:green bytes, Previous:great-wall, Up:= G =
Green Book n.
1. One of the three standard PostScript references: "PostScript Language
Program Design", bylined `Adobe Systems' (Addison-Wesley, 1988;
QA76.73.P67P66 ISBN 0-201-14396-8); see also Red Book, Blue
Book, and the White
Book (sense 2). 2. Informal name for one of the three
standard references on SmallTalk: "Smalltalk-80: Bits of History,
Words of Advice", by Glenn Krasner (Addison-Wesley, 1983;
QA76.8.S635S58; ISBN 0-201-11669-3) (this, too, is associated
with blue and red books). 3. The "X/Open Compatibility Guide",
which defines an international standard Unix environment that is a proper superset of
POSIX/SVID; also includes descriptions of a standard utility
toolkit, systems administrations features, and the like. This
grimoire is taken with particular seriousness in Europe. See
Purple Book. 4. The IEEE
1003.1 POSIX Operating Systems Interface standard has been dubbed
"The Ugly Green Book". 5. Any of the 1992 standards issued by the
CCITT's tenth plenary assembly. These include, among other
things, the X.400 email standard and the Group 1 through 4 fax
standards. See also book
titles.
Node:green bytes, Next:green card, Previous:Green Book, Up:= G =
green bytes n.
(also `green words') 1. Meta-information embedded in a file,
such as the length of the file or its name; as opposed to keeping
such information in a separate description file or record. The
term comes from an IBM user's group meeting (ca. 1962) at which
these two approaches were being debated and the diagram of the
file on the blackboard had the `green bytes' drawn in green. 2.
By extension, the non-data bits in any self-describing format. "A
GIF file contains, among other things, green bytes describing the
packing method for the image." Compare out-of-band, zigamorph, fence
(sense 1).
Node:green card, Next:green lightning, Previous:green bytes, Up:= G =
green card n.
[after the "IBM System/360 Reference Data" card] A summary of
an assembly language, even if the color is not green and not a
card. Less frequently used now because of the decrease in the use
of assembly language. "I'll go get my green card so I can check
the addressing mode for that instruction."
The original green card became a yellow card when the
System/370 was introduced, and later a yellow booklet. An
anecdote from IBM refers to a scene that took place in a
programmers' terminal room at Yorktown in 1978. A luser overheard one of the programmers ask
another "Do you have a green card?" The other grunted and passed
the first a thick yellow booklet. At this point the luser turned
a delicate shade of olive and rapidly left the room, never to
return.
In fall 2000 it was reported from Electronic Data Systems that
the green card for 370 machines has been a blue-green booklet
since 1989.
Node:green lightning, Next:green machine, Previous:green card, Up:= G =
green lightning n.
[IBM] 1. Apparently random flashing streaks on the face of
3278-9 terminals while a new symbol set is being downloaded. This
hardware bug was left deliberately unfixed, as some genius within
IBM suggested it would let the user know that `something is
happening'. That, it certainly does. Later microprocessor-driven
IBM color graphics displays were actually programmed to
produce green lightning! 2. [proposed] Any bug perverted into an
alleged feature by adroit rationalization or marketing. "Motorola
calls the CISC cruft in the 88000 architecture `compatibility
logic', but I call it green lightning". See also feature (sense 6).
Node:green machine, Next:Green's Theorem, Previous:green lightning,
Up:= G =
green machine n.
A computer or peripheral device that has been designed and
built to military specifications for field equipment (that is, to
withstand mechanical shock, extremes of temperature and humidity,
and so forth). Comes from the olive-drab `uniform' paint used for
military equipment.
Node:Green's Theorem, Next:greenbar, Previous:green machine, Up:= G =
Green's Theorem prov.
[TMRC] For any story, in any group of people there will be at
least one person who has not heard the story. A refinement of the
theorem states that there will be exactly one person (if
there were more than one, it wouldn't be as bad to re-tell the
story). [The name of this theorem is a play on a fundamental
theorem in calculus. --ESR]
Node:greenbar, Next:grep, Previous:Green's Theorem, Up:= G =
greenbar n.
A style of fanfolded continuous-feed paper with alternating
green and white bars on it, especially used in old-style line
printers. This slang almost certainly dates way back to mainframe
days.
Node:grep, Next:gribble, Previous:greenbar, Up:=
G =
grep /grep/ vi.
[from the qed/ed editor idiom g/_re_/p, where _re_
stands for a regular expression, to Globally search for the
Regular Expression and Print the lines containing matches to it,
via Unix grep(1)] To
rapidly scan a file or set of files looking for a particular
string or pattern (when browsing through a large set of files,
one may speak of `grepping around'). By extension, to look for
something by pattern. "Grep the bulletin board for the system
backup schedule, would you?" See also vgrep.
[It has also been alleged that the source is from the title of
a paper "A General Regular Expression Parser" -ESR]
Node:gribble, Next:grilf, Previous:grep, Up:= G =
gribble n.
Random binary data rendered as unreadable text. Noise
characters in a data stream are displayed as gribble. Modems with
mismatched bitrates usually generate gribble (more specifically,
baud barf). Dumping a binary
file to the screen is an excellent source of gribble, and (if the
bell/speaker is active) headaches.
Node:grilf, Next:grind, Previous:gribble, Up:= G
=
grilf // n.
Girlfriend. Like newsfroup and
filk, a typo reincarnated as a new
word. Seems to have originated sometime in 1992 on Usenet. [A friend tells me there was a Lloyd
Biggle SF novel "Watchers Of The Dark", in which alien species
after species goes insane and begins to chant "Grilf! Grilf!". A
human detective eventually determines that the word means "Liar!"
I hope this has nothing to do with the popularity of the Usenet
term. --ESR]
Node:grind, Next:grind crank, Previous:grilf, Up:= G
=
grind vt.
1. [MIT and Berkeley; now rare] To prettify hardcopy of code,
especially LISP code, by reindenting lines, printing keywords and
comments in distinct fonts (if available), etc. This usage was
associated with the MacLISP community and is now rare;
prettyprint was and is the generic term for such
operations. 2. [Unix] To generate the formatted version of a
document from the nroff, troff, TeX, or Scribe
source. 3. [common] To run seemingly interminably, esp. (but not
necessarily) if performing some tedious and inherently useless
task. Similar to crunch or grovel. Grinding has a connotation of
using a lot of CPU time, but it is possible to grind a disk,
network, etc. See also hog. 4. To make
the whole system slow. "Troff really grinds a PDP-11." 5. `grind
grind' excl. Roughly, "Isn't the machine slow today!"
Node:grind crank, Next:gripenet, Previous:grind, Up:= G
=
grind crank n. //
A mythical accessory to a terminal. A crank on the side of a
monitor, which when operated makes a zizzing noise and causes the
computer to run faster. Usually one does not refer to a grind
crank out loud, but merely makes the appropriate gesture and
noise. See grind.
Historical note: At least one real machine actually had a
grind crank -- the R1, a research machine built toward the end of
the days of the great vacuum tube computers, in 1959. R1 (also
known as `The Rice Institute Computer' (TRIC) and later as `The
Rice University Computer' (TRUC)) had a single-step/free-run
switch for use when debugging programs. Since single-stepping
through a large program was rather tedious, there was also a
crank with a cam and gear arrangement that repeatedly pushed the
single-step button. This allowed one to `crank' through a lot of
code, then slow down to single-step for a bit when you got near
the code of interest, poke at some registers using the console
typewriter, and then keep on cranking.
Node:gripenet, Next:gritch, Previous:grind crank, Up:= G =
gripenet n.
[IBM] A wry (and thoroughly unofficial) name for IBM's
internal VNET system, deriving from its common use by IBMers to
voice pointed criticism of IBM management that would be taboo in
more formal channels.
Node:gritch, Next:grok, Previous:gripenet, Up:=
G =
gritch /grich/
[MIT] 1. n. A complaint (often caused by a glitch). 2. vi. To complain. Often
verb-doubled: "Gritch gritch". 3. A synonym for glitch (as verb or noun).
Interestingly, this word seems to have a separate history from
glitch, with which it is often
confused. Back in the early 1960s, when `glitch' was strictly a
hardware-tech's term of art, the Burton House dorm at M.I.T.
maintained a "Gritch Book", a blank volume, into which the
residents hand-wrote complaints, suggestions, and witticisms.
Previous years' volumes of this tradition were maintained, dating
back to antiquity. The word "gritch" was described as a
portmanteau of "gripe" and "bitch". Thus, sense 3 above is at
least historically incorrect.
Node:grok, Next:gronk, Previous:gritch, Up:= G
=
grok /grok/, var. /grohk/ vt.
[from the novel "Stranger in a Strange Land", by Robert A.
Heinlein, where it is a Martian word meaning literally `to drink'
and metaphorically `to be one with'] The emphatic form is `grok
in fullness'. 1. To understand, usually in a global sense.
Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. Contrast zen, which is similar supernal understanding
experienced as a single brief flash. See also glark. 2. Used of programs, may connote merely
sufficient understanding. "Almost all C compilers grok the
void type these days."
Node:gronk, Next:gronk out, Previous:grok, Up:= G =
gronk /gronk/ vt.
[popularized by Johnny Hart's comic strip "B.C." but the word
apparently predates that] 1. To clear the state of a wedged
device and restart it. More severe than `to frob' (sense 2). 2. [TMRC] To cut, sever, smash,
or similarly disable. 3. The sound made by many 3.5-inch diskette
drives. In particular, the microfloppies on a Commodore Amiga go
"grink, gronk".
Node:gronk out, Next:gronked, Previous:gronk, Up:= G
=
gronk out vi.
To cease functioning. Of people, to go home and go to sleep.
"I guess I'll gronk out now; see you all tomorrow."
Node:gronked, Next:grovel, Previous:gronk out, Up:= G =
gronked adj.
1. Broken. "The teletype scanner was gronked, so we took the
system down." 2. Of people, the condition of feeling very tired
or (less commonly) sick. "I've been chasing that bug for 17 hours
now and I am thoroughly gronked!" Compare broken, which means about the same as gronk used of hardware, but connotes
depression or mental/emotional problems in people.
Node:grovel, Next:grue, Previous:gronked, Up:= G
=
grovel vi.
1. To work interminably and without apparent progress. Often
used transitively with `over' or `through'. "The file scavenger
has been groveling through the /usr directories for 10 minutes
now." Compare grind and crunch. Emphatic form: `grovel obscenely'. 2.
To examine minutely or in complete detail. "The compiler grovels
over the entire source program before beginning to translate it."
"I grovelled through all the documentation, but I still couldn't
find the command I wanted."
Node:grue, Next:grunge, Previous:grovel, Up:= G
=
grue n.
[from archaic English verb for `shudder', as with fear] The
grue was originated in the game Zork
(Dave Lebling took the name from Jack Vance's "Dying Earth"
fantasies) and used in several other Infocom games as a hint that you should
perhaps look for a lamp, torch or some type of light source.
Wandering into a dark area would cause the game to prompt you,
"It is very dark. If you continue you are likely to be eaten by a
grue." If you failed to locate a light source within the next
couple of moves this would indeed be the case.
The grue, according to scholars of the Great Underground
Empire, is a sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the
earth. Its favorite diet is either adventurers or enchanters, but
its insatiable appetite is tempered by its extreme fear of light.
No grues have ever been seen by the light of day, and only a few
have been observed in their underground lairs. Of those who have
seen grues, few have survived their fearsome jaws to tell the
tale. Grues have sharp claws and fangs, and an uncontrollable
tendency to slaver and gurgle. They are certainly the most
evil-tempered of all creatures; to say they are touchy is a
dangerous understatement. "Sour as a grue" is a common
expression, even among themselves.
All this folklore is widely known among hackers.
Node:grunge, Next:gubbish, Previous:grue, Up:= G =
grunge /gruhnj/ n.
1. That which is grungy, or that which makes it so. 2.
[Cambridge] Code which is inaccessible due to changes in other
parts of the program. The preferred term in North America is
dead code.
Node:gubbish, Next:Guido, Previous:grunge, Up:= G
=
gubbish /guhb'*sh/ n.
[a portmanteau of `garbage' and `rubbish'; may have originated
with SF author Philip K. Dick] Garbage; crap; nonsense. "What is
all this gubbish?" The opposite portmanteau `rubbage' is also
reported; in fact, it was British slang during the 19th century
and appears in Dickens.
Node:Guido, Next:guiltware, Previous:gubbish, Up:= G
=
Guido /gwee'do/ or /khwee'do/
Without qualification, Guido van Rossum (author of Python). Note that Guido answers to English
/gwee'do/ but in Dutch it's /khwee'do/.
Node:guiltware, Next:gumby, Previous:Guido, Up:= G
=
guiltware /gilt'weir/ n.
1. A piece of freeware
decorated with a message telling one how long and hard the author
worked on it and intimating that one is a no-good freeloader if
one does not immediately send the poor suffering martyr gobs of
money. 2. A piece of shareware
that works.
Node:gumby, Next:gun, Previous:guiltware, Up:= G =
gumby /guhm'bee/ n.
[from a class of Monty Python characters, poss. with some
influence from the 1960s claymation character] 1. An act of minor
but conspicuous stupidity, often in `gumby maneuver' or `pull a
gumby'. 2. [NRL] n. A bureaucrat, or other technical incompetent
who impedes the progress of real work. 3. adj. Relating to things
typically associated with people in sense 2. (e.g. "Ran would be
writing code, but Richard gave him gumby work that's due on
Friday", or, "Dammit! Travel screwed up my plane tickets. I have
to go out on gumby patrol.")
Node:gun, Next:gunch, Previous:gumby, Up:= G
=
gun vt.
[ITS, now rare: from the :GUN command] To
forcibly terminate a program or job (computer, not career). "Some
idiot left a background process running soaking up half the
cycles, so I gunned it." Usage: now rare. Compare can, blammo.
Node:gunch, Next:gunpowder chicken, Previous:gun, Up:= G =
gunch /guhnch/ vt.
[TMRC] To push, prod, or poke at a device that has almost (but
not quite) produced the desired result. Implies a threat to mung.
Node:gunpowder chicken, Next:gurfle, Previous:gunch, Up:= G
=
gunpowder chicken n.
Same as laser
chicken.
Node:gurfle, Next:guru, Previous:gunpowder chicken, Up:= G =
gurfle /ger'fl/ interj.
An expression of shocked disbelief. "He said we have to recode
this thing in FORTRAN by next week. Gurfle!" Compare weeble.
Node:guru, Next:guru meditation, Previous:gurfle, Up:= G =
guru n.
[Unix] An expert. Implies not only wizard skill but also a history of being a
knowledge resource for others. Less often, used (with a
qualifier) for other experts on other systems, as in `VMS guru'.
See source of all
good bits.
Node:guru meditation, Next:gweep, Previous:guru, Up:= G
=
guru meditation n.
Amiga equivalent of `panic' in Unix (sometimes just called a
`guru' or `guru event'). When the system crashes, a cryptic
message of the form "GURU MEDITATION #XXXXXXXX.YYYYYYYY" may
appear, indicating what the problem was. An Amiga guru can figure
things out from the numbers. Sometimes a guru event must be followed by a Vulcan nerve pinch.
This term is (no surprise) an in-joke from the earliest days
of the Amiga. An earlier product of the Amiga corporation was a
device called a `Joyboard' which was basically a plastic board
built onto a joystick-like device; it was sold with a skiing game
cartridge for the Atari game machine. It is said that whenever
the prototype OS crashed, the system programmer responsible would
calm down by concentrating on a solution while sitting
cross-legged on a Joyboard trying to keep the board in balance.
This position resembled that of a meditating guru. Sadly, the
joke was removed fairly early on (but there's a well-known patch
to restore it in more recent versions).
Node:gweep, Next:h, Previous:guru meditation, Up:= G =
gweep /gweep/
[WPI] 1. v. To hack, usually at
night. At WPI, from 1975 onwards, one who gweeped could often be
found at the College Computing Center punching cards or crashing
the PDP-10 or, later, the DEC-20. A
correspondent who was there at the time opines that the term was
originally onomatopoetic, describing the keyclick sound of the
Datapoint terminals long connected to the PDP-10. The term has
survived the demise of those technologies, however, and was still
alive in early 1999. "I'm going to go gweep for a while. See you
in the morning." "I gweep from 8 PM till 3 AM during the week."
2. n. One who habitually gweeps in sense 1; a hacker. "He's a hard-core gweep, mumbles code
in his sleep."
Node:= H =, Next:= I =, Previous:= G =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= H =
h:
ha ha only
serious:
hack:
hack attack:
hack mode:
hack on:
hack together:
hack up:
hack value:
hacked off:
hacked up:
hacker:
hacker ethic:
hacker humor:
Hackers (the
movie):
hacking run:
Hacking X for Y:
Hackintosh:
hackish:
hackishness:
hackitude:
hair:
hairball:
hairy:
HAKMEM:
hakspek:
Halloween
Documents:
hammer:
hamster:
HAND:
hand cruft:
hand-hacking:
handle:
handle:
hand-roll:
handshaking:
handwave:
hang:
Hanlon's Razor:
happily:
haque:
hard boot:
hardcoded:
hardwarily:
hardwired:
has the X nature:
hash bucket:
hash collision:
hat:
HCF:
heads down:
heartbeat:
heatseeker:
heavy metal:
heavy wizardry:
heavyweight:
heisenbug:
Helen Keller mode:
hello sailor!:
hello wall!:
hello world:
hex:
hexadecimal:
hexit:
HHOK:
HHOS:
hidden flag:
high bit:
high moby:
highly:
hing:
hired gun:
hirsute:
HLL:
hoarding:
hobbit:
hog:
hole:
hollised:
holy wars:
home box:
home machine:
home page:
honey pot:
hook:
hop:
hose:
hosed:
hot chat:
hot spot:
hotlink:
house wizard:
HP-SUX:
HTH:
huff:
humma:
hung:
hungry puppy:
hungus:
hyperspace:
hysterical reasons:
Node:h, Next:ha ha only serious, Previous:gweep, Up:= H =
h
[from SF fandom] A method of `marking' common words, i.e.,
calling attention to the fact that they are being used in a
nonstandard, ironic, or humorous way. Originated in the fannish
catchphrase "Bheer is the One True Ghod!" from decades ago.
H-infix marking of `Ghod' and other words spread into the 1960s
counterculture via underground comix, and into early hackerdom
either from the counterculture or from SF fandom (the three
overlapped heavily at the time). More recently, the h infix has
become an expected feature of benchmark names (Dhrystone,
Rhealstone, etc.); this is probably patterning on the original
Whetstone (the name of a laboratory) but influenced by the
fannish/counterculture h infix.
Node:ha ha only serious,
Next:hack, Previous:h, Up:= H =
ha ha only serious
[from SF fandom, orig. as mutation of HHOK, `Ha Ha Only
Kidding'] A phrase (often seen abbreviated as HHOS) that aptly
captures the flavor of much hacker discourse. Applied especially
to parodies, absurdities, and ironic jokes that are both intended
and perceived to contain a possibly disquieting amount of truth,
or truths that are constructed on in-joke and self-parody. This
lexicon contains many examples of ha-ha-only-serious in both form
and content. Indeed, the entirety of hacker culture is often
perceived as ha-ha-only-serious by hackers themselves; to take it
either too lightly or too seriously marks a person as an
outsider, a wannabee, or in larval stage. For further
enlightenment on this subject, consult any Zen master. See also
hacker humor, and AI koans.
Node:hack, Next:hack attack, Previous:ha ha only serious, Up:= H =
hack
[very common] 1. n. Originally, a quick job that produces what
is needed, but not well. 2. n. An incredibly good, and perhaps
very time-consuming, piece of work that produces exactly what is
needed. 3. vt. To bear emotionally or physically. "I can't hack
this heat!" 4. vt. To work on something (typically a program). In
an immediate sense: "What are you doing?" "I'm hacking TECO." In
a general (time-extended) sense: "What do you do around here?" "I
hack TECO." More generally, "I hack `foo'" is roughly equivalent
to "`foo' is my major interest (or project)". "I hack solid-state
physics." See Hacking X for
Y. 5. vt. To pull a prank on. See sense 2 and hacker (sense 5). 6. vi. To interact with a
computer in a playful and exploratory rather than goal-directed
way. "Whatcha up to?" "Oh, just hacking." 7. n. Short for hacker. 8. See nethack. 9. [MIT] v. To explore the basements,
roof ledges, and steam tunnels of a large, institutional
building, to the dismay of Physical Plant workers and (since this
is usually performed at educational institutions) the Campus
Police. This activity has been found to be eerily similar to
playing adventure games such as Dungeons and Dragons and Zork. See also vadding.
Constructions on this term abound. They include `happy
hacking' (a farewell), `how's hacking?' (a friendly greeting
among hackers) and `hack, hack' (a fairly content-free but
friendly comment, often used as a temporary farewell). For more
on this totipotent term see "The Meaning of Hack". See
also neat hack, real hack.
Node:hack attack, Next:hack mode, Previous:hack, Up:= H
=
hack attack n.
[poss. by analogy with `Big Mac Attack' from ads for the
McDonald's fast-food chain; the variant `big hack attack' is
reported] Nearly synonymous with hacking run, though the latter more
strongly implies an all-nighter.
Node:hack mode, Next:hack on, Previous:hack attack, Up:= H =
hack mode n.
1. What one is in when hacking, of course. 2. More
specifically, a Zen-like state of total focus on The Problem that
may be achieved when one is hacking (this is why every good
hacker is part mystic). Ability to enter such concentration at
will correlates strongly with wizardliness; it is one of the most
important skills learned during larval stage. Sometimes amplified as
`deep hack mode'.
Being yanked out of hack mode (see priority interrupt) may be
experienced as a physical shock, and the sensation of being in
hack mode is more than a little habituating. The intensity of
this experience is probably by itself sufficient explanation for
the existence of hackers, and explains why many resist being
promoted out of positions where they can code. See also cyberspace (sense 2).
Some aspects of hacker etiquette will appear quite odd to an
observer unaware of the high value placed on hack mode. For
example, if someone appears at your door, it is perfectly okay to
hold up a hand (without turning one's eyes away from the screen)
to avoid being interrupted. One may read, type, and interact with
the computer for quite some time before further acknowledging the
other's presence (of course, he or she is reciprocally free to
leave without a word). The understanding is that you might be in
hack mode with a lot of
delicate state (sense 2) in your
head, and you dare not swap that
context out until you have reached a good point to pause. See
also juggling eggs.
Node:hack on, Next:hack together, Previous:hack mode, Up:= H =
hack on vt.
[very common] To hack; implies that
the subject is some pre-existing hunk of code that one is
evolving, as opposed to something one might hack up.
Node:hack together, Next:hack up, Previous:hack on, Up:= H =
hack together vt.
[common] To throw something together so it will work. Unlike
`kluge together' or cruft
together, this does not necessarily have negative
connotations.
Node:hack up, Next:hack value, Previous:hack together, Up:= H =
hack up vt.
To hack, but generally implies that
the result is a hack in sense 1 (a quick hack). Contrast this
with hack on. To `hack up on'
implies a quick-and-dirty
modification to an existing system. Contrast hacked up; compare kluge up, monkey
up, cruft
together.
Node:hack value, Next:hacked off, Previous:hack up, Up:= H =
hack value n.
Often adduced as the reason or motivation for expending effort
toward a seemingly useless goal, the point being that the
accomplished goal is a hack. For example, MacLISP had features
for reading and printing Roman numerals, which were installed
purely for hack value. See display
hack for one method of computing hack value, but this
cannot really be explained, only experienced. As Louis Armstrong
once said when asked to explain jazz: "Man, if you gotta ask
you'll never know." (Feminists please note Fats Waller's
explanation of rhythm: "Lady, if you got to ask, you ain't got
it.")
Node:hacked off, Next:hacked up, Previous:hack value, Up:= H =
hacked off adj.
[analogous to `pissed off'] Said of system administrators who
have become annoyed, upset, or touchy owing to suspicions that
their sites have been or are going to be victimized by crackers,
or used for inappropriate, technically illegal, or even overtly
criminal activities. For example, having unreadable files in your
home directory called `worm', `lockpick', or `goroot' would
probably be an effective (as well as impressively obvious and
stupid) way to get your sysadmin hacked off at you.
It has been pointed out that there is precedent for this usage
in U.S. Navy slang, in which officers under discipline are
sometimes said to be "in hack" and one may speak of "hacking off
the C.O.".
Node:hacked up, Next:hacker, Previous:hacked off, Up:= H =
hacked up adj.
Sufficiently patched, kluged, and tweaked that the surgical
scars are beginning to crowd out normal tissue (compare critical mass). Not all programs
that are hacked become `hacked up'; if modifications are done
with some eye to coherence and continued maintainability, the
software may emerge better for the experience. Contrast hack up.
Node:hacker, Next:hacker ethic, Previous:hacked up, Up:= H =
hacker n.
[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A
person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems
and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users,
who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who
programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys
programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A
person capable of appreciating hack
value. 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. 5.
An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does
work using it or on it; as in `a Unix hacker'. (Definitions 1
through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6.
An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy
hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge
of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8.
[deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive
information by poking around. Hence `password hacker', `network
hacker'. The correct term for this sense is cracker.
The term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the
global community defined by the net (see the network and Internet address). For discussion
of some of the basics of this culture, see the How To Become
A Hacker FAQ. It also implies that the person described is
seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic (see hacker ethic).
It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to
describe oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something
of an elite (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which
new members are gladly welcome. There is thus a certain ego
satisfaction to be had in identifying yourself as a hacker (but
if you claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labeled
bogus). See also wannabee.
This term seems to have been first adopted as a badge in the
1960s by the hacker culture surrounding TMRC and the MIT AI Lab.
We have a report that it was used in a sense close to this
entry's by teenage radio hams and electronics tinkerers in the
mid-1950s.
Node:hacker ethic, Next:hacker humor, Previous:hacker, Up:= H =
hacker ethic n.
1. The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive
good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their
expertise by writing open-source and facilitating access to
information and to computing resources wherever possible. 2. The
belief that system-cracking for fun and exploration is ethically
OK as long as the cracker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach
of confidentiality.
Both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but by
no means universally, accepted among hackers. Most hackers
subscribe to the hacker ethic in sense 1, and many act on it by
writing and giving away open-source software. A few go further
and assert that all information should be free and
any proprietary control of it is bad; this is the
philosophy behind the GNU project.
Sense 2 is more controversial: some people consider the act of
cracking itself to be unethical, like breaking and entering. But
the belief that `ethical' cracking excludes destruction at least
moderates the behavior of people who see themselves as `benign'
crackers (see also samurai). On
this view, it may be one of the highest forms of hackerly
courtesy to (a) break into a system, and then (b) explain to the
sysop, preferably by email from a superuser account, exactly how it was done
and how the hole can be plugged -- acting as an unpaid (and
unsolicited) tiger team.
The most reliable manifestation of either version of the
hacker ethic is that almost all hackers are actively willing to
share technical tricks, software, and (where possible) computing
resources with other hackers. Huge cooperative networks such as
Usenet, FidoNet and Internet (see Internet address) can function
without central control because of this trait; they both rely on
and reinforce a sense of community that may be hackerdom's most
valuable intangible asset.
Node:hacker humor, Next:Hackers (the movie),
Previous:hacker
ethic, Up:= H =
hacker humor
A distinctive style of shared intellectual humor found among
hackers, having the following marked characteristics:
1. Fascination with form-vs.-content jokes, paradoxes, and
humor having to do with confusion of metalevels (see meta). One way to make a hacker laugh: hold a red
index card in front of him/her with "GREEN" written on it, or
vice-versa (note, however, that this is funny only the first
time).
2. Elaborate deadpan parodies of large intellectual
constructs, such as specifications (see write-only memory), standards
documents, language descriptions (see INTERCAL), and even entire scientific
theories (see quantum
bogodynamics, computron).
3. Jokes that involve screwily precise reasoning from bizarre,
ludicrous, or just grossly counter-intuitive premises.
4. Fascination with puns and wordplay.
5. A fondness for apparently mindless humor with subversive
currents of intelligence in it -- for example, old Warner
Brothers and Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, the Marx brothers,
the early B-52s, and Monty Python's Flying Circus. Humor that
combines this trait with elements of high camp and slapstick is
especially favored.
6. References to the symbol-object antinomies and associated
ideas in Zen Buddhism and (less often) Taoism. See has the X nature, Discordianism, zen, ha ha
only serious, koan, AI koans.
See also filk, retrocomputing, and the Portrait of J.
Random Hacker in Appendix B.
If you have an itchy feeling that all six of these traits are
really aspects of one thing that is incredibly difficult to talk
about exactly, you are (a) correct and (b) responding like a
hacker. These traits are also recognizable (though in a less
marked form) throughout science-fiction fandom.
Node:Hackers (the movie),
Next:hacking run,
Previous:hacker
humor, Up:= H =
Hackers (the movie) n.
A notable bomb from 1995. Should have been titled "Crackers",
because cracking is what the movie was about. It's understandable
that they didn't however; titles redolent of snack food are
probably a tough sell in Hollywood.
Node:hacking run, Next:Hacking X for Y, Previous:Hackers (the
movie), Up:= H =
hacking run n.
[analogy with `bombing run' or `speed run'] A hack session
extended long outside normal working times, especially one longer
than 12 hours. May cause you to `change phase the hard way' (see
phase).
Node:Hacking X for Y, Next:Hackintosh, Previous:hacking run, Up:= H =
Hacking X for Y n.
[ITS] Ritual phrasing of part of the information which ITS
made publicly available about each user. This information (the
INQUIR record) was a sort of form in which the user could fill
out various fields. On display, two of these fields were always
combined into a project description of the form "Hacking X for Y"
(e.g., "Hacking perceptrons for Minsky"). This form
of description became traditional and has since been carried over
to other systems with more general facilities for
self-advertisement (such as Unix plan
files).
Node:Hackintosh, Next:hackish, Previous:Hacking X for Y, Up:= H =
Hackintosh n.
1. An Apple Lisa that has been hacked into emulating a
Macintosh (also called a `Mac XL'). 2. A Macintosh assembled from
parts theoretically belonging to different models in the
line.
Node:hackish, Next:hackishness, Previous:Hackintosh, Up:= H =
hackish /hak'ish/ adj.
(also hackishness n.) 1.
Said of something that is or involves a hack. 2. Of or pertaining
to hackers or the hacker subculture. See also true-hacker.
Node:hackishness, Next:hackitude, Previous:hackish, Up:= H
=
hackishness n.
The quality of being or involving a hack. This term is
considered mildly silly. Syn. hackitude.
Node:hackitude, Next:hair, Previous:hackishness, Up:= H =
hackitude n.
Syn. hackishness; this word
is considered sillier.
Node:hair, Next:hairball, Previous:hackitude, Up:= H =
hair n.
[back-formation from hairy] The
complications that make something hairy. "Decoding TECO commands requires a certain amount of hair."
Often seen in the phrase `infinite hair', which connotes extreme
complexity. Also in `hairiferous' (tending to promote hair
growth): "GNUMACS elisp encourages lusers to write complex
editing modes." "Yeah, it's pretty hairiferous all right." (or
just: "Hair squared!")
Node:hairball, Next:hairy, Previous:hair, Up:= H =
hairball n.
1. [Fidonet] A large batch of messages that a
store-and-forward network is failing to forward when it should.
Often used in the phrase "Fido coughed up a hairball today",
meaning that the stuck messages have just come unstuck, producing
a flood of mail where there had previously been drought. 2. An
unmanageably huge mass of source code. "JWZ thought the Mozilla
effort bogged down because the code was a huge hairball." 3. Any
large amount of garbage coming out suddenly. "Sendmail is
coughing up a hairball, so expect some slowness accessing the
Internet."
Node:hairy, Next:HAKMEM, Previous:hairball, Up:=
H =
hairy adj.
1. Annoyingly complicated. "DWIM is
incredibly hairy." 2. Incomprehensible. "DWIM is incredibly hairy." 3. Of people,
high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or
incomprehensible. Hard to explain except in context: "He knows
this hairy lawyer who says there's nothing to worry about." See
also hirsute.
A well-known result in topology called the Brouwer Fixed-Point
Theorem states that any continuous transformation of a 2-sphere
into itself has at least one fixed point. Mathematically literate
hackers tend to associate the term `hairy' with the informal
version of this theorem; "You can't comb a hairy ball
smooth."
The adjective `long-haired' is well-attested to have been in
slang use among scientists and engineers during the early 1950s;
it was equivalent to modern `hairy' senses 1 and 2, and was very
likely ancestral to the hackish use. In fact the noun `long-hair'
was at the time used to describe a person satisfying sense 3.
Both senses probably passed out of use when long hair was adopted
as a signature trait by the 1960s counterculture, leaving hackish
`hairy' as a sort of stunted mutant relic.
In British mainstream use, "hairy" means "dangerous", and
consequently, in British programming terms, "hairy" may be used
to denote complicated and/or incomprehensible code, but only if
that complexity or incomprehesiveness is also considered
dangerous.
Node:HAKMEM, Next:hakspek, Previous:hairy, Up:= H
=
HAKMEM /hak'mem/ n.
MIT AI Memo 239 (February 1972). A legendary collection of
neat mathematical and programming hacks contributed by many
people at MIT and elsewhere. (The title of the memo really is
"HAKMEM", which is a 6-letterism for `hacks memo'.) Some of them
are very useful techniques, powerful theorems, or interesting
unsolved problems, but most fall into the category of
mathematical and computer trivia. Here is a sampling of the
entries (with authors), slightly paraphrased:
Item 41 (Gene Salamin): There are exactly 23,000 prime numbers
less than 2^(18).
Item 46 (Rich Schroeppel): The most probable suit
distribution in bridge hands is 4-4-3-2, as compared to 4-3-3-3,
which is the most evenly distributed. This is because
the world likes to have unequal numbers: a thermodynamic effect
saying things will not be in the state of lowest energy, but in
the state of lowest disordered energy.
Item 81 (Rich Schroeppel): Count the magic squares of order 5
(that is, all the 5-by-5 arrangements of the numbers from 1 to 25
such that all rows, columns, and diagonals add up to the same
number). There are about 320 million, not counting those that
differ only by rotation and reflection.
Item 154 (Bill Gosper): The myth that any given programming
language is machine independent is easily exploded by computing
the sum of powers of 2. If the result loops with period = 1 with
sign +, you are on a sign-magnitude machine. If the result loops
with period = 1 at -1, you are on a twos-complement machine. If
the result loops with period greater than 1, including the
beginning, you are on a ones-complement machine. If the result
loops with period greater than 1, not including the beginning,
your machine isn't binary -- the pattern should tell you the
base. If you run out of memory, you are on a string or bignum
system. If arithmetic overflow is a fatal error, some fascist pig
with a read-only mind is trying to enforce machine independence.
But the very ability to trap overflow is machine dependent. By
this strategy, consider the universe, or, more precisely,
algebra: Let X = the sum of many powers of 2 =
...111111 (base 2). Now add X to itself: X + X =
...111110. Thus, 2X = X - 1, so X = -1. Therefore
algebra is run on a machine (the universe) that is
two's-complement.
Item 174 (Bill Gosper and Stuart Nelson): 21963283741 is the
only number such that if you represent it on the PDP-10 as both an integer and a floating-point
number, the bit patterns of the two representations are
identical.
Item 176 (Gosper): The "banana phenomenon" was encountered
when processing a character string by taking the last 3 letters
typed out, searching for a random occurrence of that sequence in
the text, taking the letter following that occurrence, typing it
out, and iterating. This ensures that every 4-letter string
output occurs in the original. The program typed
BANANANANANANANA.... We note an ambiguity in the
phrase, "the Nth occurrence of." In one sense, there are five
00's in 0000000000; in another, there are nine. The editing
program TECO finds five. Thus it finds only the first ANA in
BANANA, and is thus obligated to type N next. By Murphy's Law,
there is but one NAN, thus forcing A, and thus a loop. An option
to find overlapped instances would be useful, although it would
require backing up N - 1 characters before seeking the next
N-character string.
Note: This last item refers to a Dissociated Press implementation.
See also banana
problem.
HAKMEM also contains some rather more complicated mathematical
and technical items, but these examples show some of its fun
flavor.
An HTML transcription of the entire document is available at
http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/hbaker/hakmem/hakmem.html.
Node:hakspek, Next:Halloween Documents, Previous:HAKMEM, Up:= H =
hakspek /hak'speek/ n.
A shorthand method of spelling found on many British academic
bulletin boards and talker
systems. Syllables and whole words in a sentence are
replaced by single ASCII characters the names of which are
phonetically similar or equivalent, while multiple letters are
usually dropped. Hence, `for' becomes `4'; `two', `too', and `to'
become `2'; `ck' becomes `k'. "Before I see you tomorrow" becomes
"b4 i c u 2moro". First appeared in London about 1986, and was
probably caused by the slowness of available talker systems,
which operated on archaic machines with outdated operating
systems and no standard methods of communication. Has become
rarer since. See also talk
mode.
Node:Halloween Documents,
Next:hammer, Previous:hakspek, Up:= H =
Halloween Documents n.
A pair of Microsoft internal strategy memoranda leaked to ESR
in late 1998 that confirmed everybody's paranoia about the
current Evil Empire. These documents
praised the technical excellence of Linux and outlined a counterstrategy of
attempting to lock in customers by "de-commoditizing" Internet
protocols and services. They were extensively cited on the
Internet and in the press and proved so embarrassing that
Microsoft PR barely said a word in public for six months
afterwards.
Node:hammer, Next:hamster, Previous:Halloween Documents, Up:= H =
hammer vt.
Commonwealth hackish syn. for bang
on.
Node:hamster, Next:HAND, Previous:hammer, Up:= H
=
hamster n.
1. [Fairchild] A particularly slick little piece of code that
does one thing well; a small, self-contained hack. The image is
of a hamster happily spinning its
exercise wheel. 2. A tailless mouse; that is, one with an
infrared link to a receiver on the machine, as opposed to the
conventional cable. 3. [UK] Any item of hardware made by Amstrad,
a company famous for its cheap plastic PC-almost-compatibles.
Node:HAND, Next:hand cruft, Previous:hamster, Up:= H
=
HAND //
[Usenet: very common] Abbreviation: Have A Nice Day. Typically
used to close a Usenet posting, but
also used to informally close emails; often preceded by HTH.
Node:hand cruft, Next:hand-hacking, Previous:HAND, Up:= H
=
hand cruft vt.
[pun on `hand craft'] See cruft,
sense 3.
Node:hand-hacking, Next:hand-roll, Previous:hand cruft, Up:= H =
hand-hacking n.
1. [rare] The practice of translating hot spots from an HLL into hand-tuned assembler, as opposed to
trying to coerce the compiler into generating better code. Both
the term and the practice are becoming uncommon. See tune, bum, by hand; syn. with v. cruft. 2. [common] More generally, manual
construction or patching of data sets that would normally be
generated by a translation utility and interpreted by another
program, and aren't really designed to be read or modified by
humans.
Node:hand-roll, Next:handle, Previous:hand-hacking, Up:= H =
hand-roll v.
[from obs. mainstream slang `hand-rolled' in opposition to
`ready-made', referring to cigarettes] To perform a normally
automated software installation or configuration process by hand; implies that the normal
process failed due to bugs in the configurator or was defeated by
something exceptional in the local environment. "The worst thing
about being a gateway between four different nets is having to
hand-roll a new sendmail configuration every time any of them
upgrades."
Node:handle, Next:handshaking, Previous:hand-roll, Up:= H =
handle n.
1. [from CB slang] An electronic pseudonym; a `nom de guerre'
intended to conceal the user's true identity. Network and BBS
handles function as the same sort of simultaneous concealment and
display one finds on Citizen's Band radio, from which the term
was adopted. Use of grandiose handles is characteristic of warez d00dz, crackers, weenies, spods, and
other lower forms of network life; true hackers travel on their
own reputations rather than invented legendry. Compare nick, screen
name. 2. A magic
cookie, often in the form of a numeric index into some
array somewhere, through which you can manipulate an object like
a file or window. The form `file handle' is especially common. 3.
[Mac] A pointer to a pointer to dynamically-allocated memory; the
extra level of indirection allows on-the-fly memory compaction
(to cut down on fragmentation) or aging out of unused resources,
with minimal impact on the (possibly multiple) parts of the
larger program containing references to the allocated memory.
Compare snap (to snap a handle would
defeat its purpose); see also aliasing bug, dangling pointer.
Node:handshaking, Next:handwave, Previous:handle, Up:= H
=
handshaking n.
[very common] Hardware or software activity designed to start
or keep two machines or programs in synchronization as they do protocol. Often applied to human
activity; thus, a hacker might watch two people in conversation
nodding their heads to indicate that they have heard each others'
points and say "Oh, they're handshaking!". See also protocol.
Node:handwave, Next:hang, Previous:handshaking, Up:= H =
handwave
[poss. from gestures characteristic of stage magicians] 1. v.
To gloss over a complex point; to distract a listener; to support
a (possibly actually valid) point with blatantly faulty logic. 2.
n. The act of handwaving. "Boy, what a handwave!"
If someone starts a sentence with "Clearly..."
or "Obviously..." or "It is self-evident
that...", it is a good bet he is about to handwave
(alternatively, use of these constructions in a sarcastic tone
before a paraphrase of someone else's argument suggests that it
is a handwave). The theory behind this term is that if you wave
your hands at the right moment, the listener may be sufficiently
distracted to not notice that what you have said is bogus. Failing that, if a listener does object,
you might try to dismiss the objection with a wave of your
hand.
The use of this word is often accompanied by gestures: both
hands up, palms forward, swinging the hands in a vertical plane
pivoting at the elbows and/or shoulders (depending on the
magnitude of the handwave); alternatively, holding the forearms
in one position while rotating the hands at the wrist to make
them flutter. In context, the gestures alone can suffice as a
remark; if a speaker makes an outrageously unsupported
assumption, you might simply wave your hands in this way, as an
accusation, far more eloquent than words could express, that his
logic is faulty.
Node:hang, Next:Hanlon's Razor, Previous:handwave, Up:= H =
hang v.
1. [very common] To wait for an event that will never occur.
"The system is hanging because it can't read from the crashed
drive". See wedged, hung. 2. To wait for some event to occur; to hang
around until something happens. "The program displays a menu and
then hangs until you type a character." Compare block. 3. To attach a peripheral device, esp. in
the construction `hang off': "We're going to hang another tape
drive off the file server." Implies a device attached with
cables, rather than something that is strictly inside the
machine's chassis.
Node:Hanlon's Razor, Next:happily, Previous:hang, Up:= H
=
Hanlon's Razor prov.
A corollary of Finagle's
Law, similar to Occam's Razor, that reads "Never
attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
stupidity." The derivation of the Hanlon eponym is not definitely
known, but a very similar remark ("You have attributed conditions
to villainy that simply result from stupidity.") appears in
"Logic of Empire", a classic 1941 SF story by Robert A. Heinlein,
who calls it the `devil theory' of sociology. Heinlein's
popularity in the hacker culture makes plausible the supposition
that `Hanlon' is derived from `Heinlein' by phonetic corruption.
A similar epigram has been attributed to William James, but
Heinlein more probably got the idea from Alfred Korzybski and
other practitioners of General Semantics. Quoted here because it
seems to be a particular favorite of hackers, often showing up in
sig blocks, fortune cookie files and the login
banners of BBS systems and commercial networks. This probably
reflects the hacker's daily experience of environments created by
well-intentioned but short-sighted people. Compare Sturgeon's Law, Ninety-Ninety Rule.
Node:happily, Next:haque, Previous:Hanlon's Razor, Up:= H =
happily adv.
Of software, used to emphasize that a program is unaware of
some important fact about its environment, either because it has
been fooled into believing a lie, or because it doesn't care. The
sense of `happy' here is not that of elation, but rather that of
blissful ignorance. "The program continues to run, happily
unaware that its output is going to /dev/null." Also used to
suggest that a program or device would really rather be doing
something destructive, and is being given an opportunity to do
so. "If you enter an O here instead of a zero, the program will
happily erase all your data." Neverheless, use of this term
implies a basically benign attitude towards the program: It
didn't mean any harm, it was just eager to do its job. We'd like
to be angry at it but we shouldn't, we should try to understand
it instead. The adjective "cheerfully" is often used in exactly
the same way.
Node:haque, Next:hard boot, Previous:happily, Up:= H
=
haque /hak/ n.
[Usenet] Variant spelling of hack,
used only for the noun form and connoting an elegant hack. that is a hack in sense 2.
Node:hard boot, Next:hardcoded, Previous:haque, Up:= H
=
hard boot n.
See boot.
Node:hardcoded, Next:hardwarily, Previous:hard boot, Up:= H =
hardcoded adj.
1. [common] Said of data inserted directly into a program,
where it cannot be easily modified, as opposed to data in some
profile, resource (see de-rezz sense 2), or environment variable that
a user or hacker can easily modify. 2.
In C, this is esp. applied to use of a literal instead of a
#define macro (see magic number).
Node:hardwarily, Next:hardwired, Previous:hardcoded, Up:= H =
hardwarily /hard-weir'*-lee/ adv.
In a way pertaining to hardware. "The system is hardwarily
unreliable." The adjective `hardwary' is not
traditionally used, though it has recently been reported from the
U.K. See softwarily.
Node:hardwired, Next:has the X nature, Previous:hardwarily, Up:= H =
hardwired adj.
1. In software, syn. for hardcoded. 2. By extension, anything that is
not modifiable, especially in the sense of customizable to one's
particular needs or tastes.
Node:has the X nature,
Next:hash bucket,
Previous:hardwired, Up:= H =
has the X nature
[seems to derive from Zen Buddhist koans of the form "Does an
X have the Buddha-nature?"] adj. Common hacker construction for
`is an X', used for humorous emphasis. "Anyone who can't even use
a program with on-screen help embedded in it truly has the loser nature!" See also the
X that can be Y is not the true X. See also mu.
Node:hash bucket, Next:hash collision, Previous:has the X nature,
Up:= H =
hash bucket n.
A notional receptacle, a set of which might be used to
apportion data items for sorting or lookup purposes. When you
look up a name in the phone book (for example), you typically
hash it by extracting its first letter; the hash buckets are the
alphabetically ordered letter sections. This term is used as
techspeak with respect to code that uses actual hash functions;
in jargon, it is used for human associative memory as well. Thus,
two things `in the same hash bucket' are more difficult to
discriminate, and may be confused. "If you hash English words
only by length, you get too many common grammar words in the
first couple of hash buckets." Compare hash collision.
Node:hash collision, Next:hat, Previous:hash bucket, Up:= H =
hash collision n.
[from the techspeak] (var. `hash clash') When used of people,
signifies a confusion in associative memory or imagination,
especially a persistent one (see thinko). True story: One of us [ESR] was once
on the phone with a friend about to move out to Berkeley. When
asked what he expected Berkeley to be like, the friend replied:
"Well, I have this mental picture of naked women throwing Molotov
cocktails, but I think that's just a collision in my hash
tables." Compare hash
bucket.
Node:hat, Next:HCF, Previous:hash collision, Up:= H =
hat n.
Common (spoken) name for the circumflex (`^', ASCII 1011110)
character. See ASCII for other
synonyms.
Node:HCF, Next:heads down, Previous:hat, Up:= H =
HCF /H-C-F/ n.
Mnemonic for `Halt and Catch Fire', any of several
undocumented and semi-mythical machine instructions with
destructive side-effects, supposedly included for test purposes
on several well-known architectures going as far back as the IBM
360. The MC6800 microprocessor was the first for which an HCF
opcode became widely known. This instruction caused the processor
to toggle a subset of the bus lines
as rapidly as it could; in some configurations this could
actually cause lines to burn up. Compare killer poke.
Node:heads down, Next:heartbeat, Previous:HCF, Up:= H =
heads down [Sun] adj.
Concentrating, usually so heavily and for so long that
everything outside the focus area is missed. See also hack mode and larval stage, although this mode is
hardly confined to fledgling hackers.
Node:heartbeat, Next:heatseeker, Previous:heads down, Up:= H =
heartbeat n.
1. The signal emitted by a Level 2 Ethernet transceiver at the
end of every packet to show that the collision-detection circuit
is still connected. 2. A periodic synchronization signal used by
software or hardware, such as a bus clock or a periodic
interrupt. 3. The `natural' oscillation frequency of a computer's
clock crystal, before frequency division down to the machine's
clock rate. 4. A signal emitted at regular intervals by software
to demonstrate that it is still alive. Sometimes hardware is
designed to reboot the machine if it stops hearing a heartbeat.
See also breath-of-life
packet.
Node:heatseeker, Next:heavy metal, Previous:heartbeat, Up:= H =
heatseeker n.
[IBM] A customer who can be relied upon to buy, without fail,
the latest version of an existing product (not quite the same as
a member of the lunatic
fringe). A 1993 example of a heatseeker was someone who,
owning a 286 PC and Windows 3.0, went out and bought Windows 3.1
(which offers no worthwhile benefits unless you have a 386). If
all customers were heatseekers, vast amounts of money could be
made by just fixing some of the bugs in each release (n) and
selling it to them as release (n+1). Microsoft in fact seems to
have mastered this technique.
Node:heavy metal, Next:heavy wizardry, Previous:heatseeker, Up:= H =
heavy metal n.
[Cambridge] Syn. big
iron.
Node:heavy wizardry, Next:heavyweight, Previous:heavy metal, Up:= H =
heavy wizardry n.
Code or designs that trade on a particularly intimate
knowledge or experience of a particular operating system or
language or complex application interface. Distinguished from
deep magic, which trades more
on arcane theoretical knowledge. Writing device drivers
is heavy wizardry; so is interfacing to X
(sense 2) without a toolkit. Esp. found in source-code comments
of the form "Heavy wizardry begins here". Compare voodoo programming.
Node:heavyweight, Next:heisenbug, Previous:heavy wizardry, Up:= H =
heavyweight adj.
[common] High-overhead; baroque;
code-intensive; featureful, but costly. Esp. used of
communication protocols, language designs, and any sort of
implementation in which maximum generality and/or ease of
implementation has been pushed at the expense of mundane
considerations such as speed, memory utilization, and startup
time. EMACS is a heavyweight editor;
X is an extremely heavyweight
window system. This term isn't pejorative, but one hacker's
heavyweight is another's elephantine and a third's monstrosity. Oppose `lightweight'. Usage:
now borders on techspeak, especially in the compound `heavyweight
process'.
Node:heisenbug, Next:Helen Keller mode, Previous:heavyweight, Up:= H =
heisenbug /hi:'zen-buhg/ n.
[from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics] A
bug that disappears or alters its behavior when one attempts to
probe or isolate it. (This usage is not even particularly
fanciful; the use of a debugger sometimes alters a program's
operating environment significantly enough that buggy code, such
as that which relies on the values of uninitialized memory,
behaves quite differently.) Antonym of Bohr bug; see also mandelbug, schroedinbug. In C, nine out of ten
heisenbugs result from uninitialized auto variables, fandango on core phenomena (esp.
lossage related to corruption of the malloc arena) or errors that smash the stack.
Node:Helen Keller mode,
Next:hello sailor!,
Previous:heisenbug, Up:= H =
Helen Keller mode n.
1. State of a hardware or software system that is deaf, dumb,
and blind, i.e., accepting no input and generating no output,
usually due to an infinite loop or some other excursion into
deep space. (Unfair to the
real Helen Keller, whose success at learning speech was
triumphant.) See also go
flatline, catatonic. 2.
On IBM PCs under DOS, refers to a specific failure mode in which
a screen saver has kicked in over an ill-behaved application which bypasses the
very interrupts the screen saver watches for activity. Your
choices are to try to get from the program's current state
through a successful save-and-exit without being able to see what
you're doing, or to re-boot the machine. This isn't (strictly
speaking) a crash.
Node:hello sailor!, Next:hello wall!, Previous:Helen Keller mode,
Up:= H =
hello sailor! interj.
Occasional West Coast equivalent of hello world; seems to have originated at
SAIL, later associated with the game Zork (which also included "hello, aviator" and
"hello, implementor"). Originally from the traditional hooker's
greeting to a swabbie fresh off the boat, of course. The standard
response is "Nothing happens here."; of all the Zork/Dungeon
games, only in Infocom's Zork 3 is "Hello, Sailor" actually
useful (excluding the unique situation where _knowing_ this fact
is important in Dungeon...).
Node:hello wall!, Next:hello world, Previous:hello sailor!, Up:= H =
hello, wall! excl.
See wall.
Node:hello world, Next:hex, Previous:hello wall!, Up:= H =
hello world interj.
1. The canonical minimal test message in the C/Unix universe.
2. Any of the minimal programs that emit this message.
Traditionally, the first program a C coder is supposed to write
in a new environment is one that just prints "hello, world" to
standard output (and indeed it is the first example program in
K&R). Environments that
generate an unreasonably large executable for this trivial test
or which require a hairy
compiler-linker invocation to generate it are considered to lose (see X). 3.
Greeting uttered by a hacker making an entrance or requesting
information from anyone present. "Hello, world! Is the LAN back
up yet?"
Node:hex, Next:hexadecimal, Previous:hello world, Up:= H =
hex n.
1. Short for hexadecimal,
base 16. 2. A 6-pack of anything (compare quad, sense 2). Neither usage has anything to do
with magic or black art, though the pun is appreciated
and occasionally used by hackers. True story: As a joke, some
hackers once offered some surplus ICs for sale to be worn as
protective amulets against hostile magic. The chips were, of
course, hex inverters.
Node:hexadecimal, Next:hexit, Previous:hex, Up:= H =
hexadecimal n.
Base 16. Coined in the early 1960s to replace earlier
`sexadecimal', which was too racy and amusing for stuffy IBM, and
later adopted by the rest of the industry.
Actually, neither term is etymologically pure. If we take
`binary' to be paradigmatic, the most etymologically correct term
for base 10, for example, is `denary', which comes from `deni'
(ten at a time, ten each), a Latin `distributive' number; the
corresponding term for base-16 would be something like
`sendenary'. `Decimal' is from an ordinal number; the
corresponding prefix for 6 would imply something like
`sextidecimal'. The `sexa-' prefix is Latin but incorrect in this
context, and `hexa-' is Greek. The word `octal' is similarly
incorrect; a correct form would be `octaval' (to go with
decimal), or `octonary' (to go with binary). If anyone ever
implements a base-3 computer, computer scientists will be faced
with the unprecedented dilemma of a choice between two
correct forms; both `ternary' and `trinary' have a claim
to this throne.
Node:hexit, Next:HHOK, Previous:hexadecimal, Up:= H =
hexit /hek'sit/ n.
A hexadecimal digit (0-9, and A-F or a-f). Used by people who
claim that there are only ten digits, dammit;
sixteen-fingered human beings are rather rare, despite what some
keyboard designs might seem to imply (see space-cadet keyboard).
Node:HHOK, Next:HHOS, Previous:hexit, Up:= H
=
HHOK
See ha ha only
serious.
Node:HHOS, Next:hidden flag, Previous:HHOK, Up:= H
=
HHOS
See ha ha only
serious.
Node:hidden flag, Next:high bit, Previous:HHOS, Up:= H =
hidden flag n.
[scientific computation] An extra option added to a routine
without changing the calling sequence. For example, instead of
adding an explicit input variable to instruct a routine to give
extra diagnostic output, the programmer might just add a test for
some otherwise meaningless feature of the existing inputs, such
as a negative mass. The use of hidden flags can make a program
very hard to debug and understand, but is all too common wherever
programs are hacked on in a hurry.
Node:high bit, Next:high moby, Previous:hidden flag, Up:= H =
high bit n.
[from `high-order bit'] 1. The most significant bit in a byte.
2. [common] By extension, the most significant part of something
other than a data byte: "Spare me the whole saga, just give me the high bit." See also meta bit, hobbit, dread high-bit disease, and
compare the mainstream slang `bottom line'.
Node:high moby, Next:highly, Previous:high bit, Up:= H =
high moby /hi:' mohb'ee/ n.
The high half of a 512K PDP-10's
physical address space; the other half was of course the low
moby. This usage has been generalized in a way that has outlasted
the PDP-10; for example, at the 1990
Washington D.C. Area Science Fiction Conclave (Disclave), when a
miscommunication resulted in two separate wakes being held in
commemoration of the shutdown of MIT's last ITS machines, the one on the upper floor was
dubbed the `high moby' and the other the `low moby'. All parties
involved grokked this instantly. See
moby.
Node:highly, Next:hing, Previous:high moby, Up:= H =
highly adv.
[scientific computation] The preferred modifier for
overstating an understatement. As in: `highly nonoptimal', the
worst possible way to do something; `highly nontrivial', either
impossible or requiring a major research project; `highly
nonlinear', completely erratic and unpredictable; `highly
nontechnical', drivel written for lusers, oversimplified to the point of being
misleading or incorrect (compare drool-proof paper). In other
computing cultures, postfixing of in the extreme might be
preferred.
Node:hing, Next:hired gun, Previous:highly, Up:= H
=
hing // n.
[IRC] Fortuitous typo for `hint', now in wide intentional use
among players of initgame. Compare
newsfroup, filk.
Node:hired gun, Next:hirsute, Previous:hing, Up:= H =
hired gun n.
A contract programmer, as opposed to a full-time staff member.
All the connotations of this term suggested by innumerable
spaghetti Westerns are intentional.
Node:hirsute, Next:HLL, Previous:hired gun, Up:= H =
hirsute adj.
Occasionally used humorously as a synonym for hairy.
Node:HLL, Next:hoarding, Previous:hirsute, Up:= H
=
HLL /H-L-L/ n.
[High-Level Language (as opposed to assembler)] Found
primarily in email and news rather than speech. Rarely, the
variants `VHLL' and `MLL' are found. VHLL stands for
`Very-High-Level Language' and is used to describe a bondage-and-discipline
language that the speaker happens to like; Prolog and
Backus's FP are often called VHLLs. `MLL' stands for
`Medium-Level Language' and is sometimes used half-jokingly to
describe C, alluding to its
`structured-assembler' image. See also languages of choice.
Node:hoarding, Next:hobbit, Previous:HLL, Up:= H =
hoarding n.
See software
hoarding.
Node:hobbit, Next:hog, Previous:hoarding, Up:=
H =
hobbit n.
1. [rare] The High Order BIT of a byte; same as the meta bit or high bit. 2. The non-ITS name of vad@ai.mit.edu (*Hobbit*), master of
lasers.
Node:hog, Next:hole, Previous:hobbit, Up:= H
=
hog n.,vt.
1. Favored term to describe programs or hardware that seem to
eat far more than their share of a system's resources, esp. those
which noticeably degrade interactive response. Not used
of programs that are simply extremely large or complex or that
are merely painfully slow themselves. More often than not
encountered in qualified forms, e.g., `memory hog', `core hog',
`hog the processor', `hog the disk'. "A controller that never
gives up the I/O bus gets killed after the bus-hog timer
expires." 2. Also said of people who use more than their
fair share of resources (particularly disk, where it seems that
10% of the people use 90% of the disk, no matter how big the disk
is or how many people use it). Of course, once disk hogs fill up
one filesystem, they typically find some other new one to infect,
claiming to the sysadmin that they have an important new project
to complete.
Node:hole, Next:hollised, Previous:hog, Up:= H =
hole n.
A region in an otherwise flat
entity which is not actually present. For example, some Unix
filesystems can store large files with holes so that unused
regions of the file are never actually stored on disk. (In
techspeak, these are referred to as `sparse' files.) As another
example, the region of memory in IBM PCs reserved for
memory-mapped I/O devices which may not actually be present is
called `the I/O hole', since memory-management systems must skip
over this area when filling user requests for memory.
Node:hollised, Next:holy wars, Previous:hole, Up:= H =
hollised /hol'ist/ adj.
[Usenet: _sci.space_] To be hollised is to have been
ordered by one's employer not to post any even remotely
job-related material to Usenet (or, by extension, to other
Internet media). The original and most notorious case of this
involved one Ken Hollis, a Lockheed employee and space-program
enthusiast who posted publicly available material on access to
Space Shuttle launches to _sci.space_. He was gagged under
threat of being fired in 1994 at the behest of NASA
public-relations officers. The result was, of course, a huge
publicity black eye for NASA. Nevertheless several other NASA
contractor employees were subsequently hollised for similar
activities. Use of this term carries the strong connotation that
the persons doing the gagging are bureaucratic idiots blinded to
their own best interests by territorial reflexes.
Node:holy wars, Next:home box, Previous:hollised, Up:=
H =
holy wars n.
[from Usenet, but may predate it;
common] n. flame wars over
religious issues. The
paper by Danny Cohen that popularized the terms big-endian and little-endian in connection with the
LSB-first/MSB-first controversy was entitled "On Holy Wars and a
Plea for Peace".
Great holy wars of the past have included ITS vs. Unix, Unix vs. VMS,
BSD Unix vs. USG Unix, C vs.
Pascal, C
vs. FORTRAN, etc. In the year 2000, popular favorites of the day
are KDE vs, GNOME, vim vs. elvis, Linux vs. [Free|Net|Open]BSD.
Hardy perennials include EMACS vs.
vi, my personal computer vs. everyone
else's personal computer, ad nauseam. The characteristic that
distinguishes holy wars from normal technical disputes is that in
a holy war most of the participants spend their time trying to
pass off personal value choices and cultural attachments as
objective technical evaluations. This happens precisely because
in a true holy war, the actual substantive differences between
the sides are relatively minor. See also theology.
Node:home box, Next:home machine, Previous:holy wars, Up:= H =
home box n.
A hacker's personal machine, especially one he or she owns.
"Yeah? Well, my home box runs a full 4.4 BSD, so
there!"
Node:home machine, Next:home page, Previous:home box, Up:= H =
home machine n.
1. Syn. home box. 2. The
machine that receives your email. These senses might be distinct,
for example, for a hacker who owns one computer at home, but
reads email at work.
Node:home page, Next:honey pot, Previous:home machine, Up:= H =
home page n.
1. One's personal billboard on the World Wide Web. The term
`home page' is perhaps a bit misleading because home directories
and physical homes in RL are private,
but home pages are designed to be very public. 2. By extension, a
WWW repository for information and links related to a project or
organization. Compare home
box.
Node:honey pot, Next:hook, Previous:home page, Up:= H =
honey pot n.
A box designed to attract crackers so that they can be observed in
action. It is usually well isolated from the rest of the network,
but has extensive logging (usually network layer, on a different
machine). Different from an iron
box in that it's purpose is to attract, not merely
observe. Sometimes, it is also a defensive network security
tactic - you set up an easy-to-crack box so that your real
servers don't get messed with. The concept was presented in
Cheswick & Bellovin's book "Firewalls and Internet
Security".
Node:hook, Next:hop, Previous:honey pot, Up:= H =
hook n.
A software or hardware feature included in order to simplify
later additions or changes by a user. For example, a simple
program that prints numbers might always print them in base 10,
but a more flexible version would let a variable determine what
base to use; setting the variable to 5 would make the program
print numbers in base 5. The variable is a simple hook. An even
more flexible program might examine the variable and treat a
value of 16 or less as the base to use, but treat any other
number as the address of a user-supplied routine for printing a
number. This is a hairy but powerful
hook; one can then write a routine to print numbers as Roman
numerals, say, or as Hebrew characters, and plug it into the
program through the hook. Often the difference between a good
program and a superb one is that the latter has useful hooks in
judiciously chosen places. Both may do the original job about
equally well, but the one with the hooks is much more flexible
for future expansion of capabilities (EMACS, for example, is all hooks). The
term `user exit' is synonymous but much more formal and less
hackish.
Node:hop, Next:hose, Previous:hook, Up:= H =
hop
1. n. [common] One file transmission in a series required to
get a file from point A to point B on a store-and-forward
network. On such networks (including UUCPNET and FidoNet), an important inter-machine metric is
the number of hops in the shortest path between them, which can
be more significant than their geographical separation. See bang path. 2. v. [rare] To log in to
a remote machine, esp. via rlogin or telnet. "I'll hop over to
foovax to FTP that."
Node:hose, Next:hosed, Previous:hop, Up:= H =
hose
1. vt. [common] To make non-functional or greatly degraded in
performance. "That big ray-tracing program really hoses the
system." See hosed. 2. n. A narrow
channel through which data flows under pressure. Generally
denotes data paths that represent performance bottlenecks. 3. n.
Cabling, especially thick Ethernet cable. This is sometimes
called `bit hose' or `hosery' (play on `hosiery') or `etherhose'.
See also washing
machine.
Node:hosed, Next:hot chat, Previous:hose, Up:= H =
hosed adj.
Same as down. Used primarily by
Unix hackers. Humorous: also implies a condition thought to be
relatively easy to reverse. Probably derived from the Canadian
slang `hoser' popularized by the Bob and Doug Mackenzie skits on
SCTV, but this usage predated SCTV by years in hackerdom (it was
certainly already live at CMU in the 1970s). See hose. It is also widely used of people in the
mainstream sense of `in an extremely unfortunate situation'.
Once upon a time, a Cray that had been experiencing periodic
difficulties crashed, and it was announced to have been hosed. It
was discovered that the crash was due to the disconnection of
some coolant hoses. The problem was corrected, and users were
then assured that everything was OK because the system had been
rehosed. See also dehose.
Node:hot chat, Next:hot spot, Previous:hosed, Up:= H
=
hot chat n.
Sexually explicit one-on-one chat. See teledildonics.
Node:hot spot, Next:hotlink, Previous:hot chat, Up:= H =
hot spot n.
1. [primarily used by C/Unix programmers, but spreading] It is
received wisdom that in most programs, less than 10% of the code
eats 90% of the execution time; if one were to graph instruction
visits versus code addresses, one would typically see a few huge
spikes amidst a lot of low-level noise. Such spikes are called
`hot spots' and are good candidates for heavy optimization or
hand-hacking. The term is
especially used of tight loops and recursions in the code's
central algorithm, as opposed to (say) initial set-up costs or
large but infrequent I/O operations. See tune, bum, hand-hacking. 2. The active location of a
cursor on a bit-map display. "Put the mouse's hot spot on the
`ON' widget and click the left button." 3. A screen region that
is sensitive to mouse gestures, which trigger some action. World
Wide Web pages now provide the canonical examples; WWW browsers present
hypertext links as hot spots which, when clicked on, point the
browser at another document (these are specifically called hotlinks). 4. In a massively parallel
computer with shared memory, the one location that all 10,000
processors are trying to read or write at once (perhaps because
they are all doing a busy-wait on
the same lock). 5. More generally, any place in a hardware design
that turns into a performance bottleneck due to resource
contention.
Node:hotlink, Next:house wizard, Previous:hot spot, Up:= H =
hotlink /hot'link/ n.
A hot spot on a World Wide
Web page; an area, which, when clicked or selected, chases a URL.
Also spelled `hot link'. Use of this term focuses on the link's
role as an immediate part of your display, as opposed to the
timeless sense of logical connection suggested by web pointer. Your screen shows hotlinks
but your document has web pointers, not (in normal usage) the
other way around.
Node:house wizard, Next:HP-SUX, Previous:hotlink, Up:= H =
house wizard n.
[prob. from ad-agency tradetalk, `house freak'] A hacker
occupying a technical-specialist, R&D, or systems position at
a commercial shop. A really effective house wizard can have
influence out of all proportion to his/her ostensible rank and
still not have to wear a suit. Used esp. of Unix wizards. The
term `house guru' is equivalent.
Node:HP-SUX, Next:HTH, Previous:house wizard, Up:= H =
HP-SUX /H-P suhks/ n.
Unflattering hackerism for HP-UX, Hewlett-Packard's Unix port,
which features some truly unique bogosities in the filesystem
internals and elsewhere (these occasionally create portability
problems). HP-UX is often referred to as `hockey-pux' inside HP,
and one respondent claims that the proper pronunciation is /H-P
ukkkhhhh/ as though one were about to spit. Another such
alternate spelling and pronunciation is "H-PUX" /H-puhks/.
Hackers at HP/Apollo (the former Apollo Computers which was
swallowed by HP in 1989) have been heard to complain that Mr.
Packard should have pushed to have his name first, if for no
other reason than the greater eloquence of the resulting acronym.
Compare AIDX, buglix. See also Nominal Semidestructor, Telerat, ScumOS, sun-stools, Slowlaris.
Node:HTH, Next:huff, Previous:HP-SUX, Up:= H
=
HTH //
[Usenet: very common] Abbreviation: Hope This Helps (e.g.
following a response to a technical question). Often used just
before HAND. See also YHBT.
Node:huff, Next:humma, Previous:HTH, Up:= H =
huff v.
To compress data using a Huffman code. Various programs that
use such methods have been called `HUFF' or some variant thereof.
Oppose puff. Compare crunch, compress.
Node:humma, Next:hung, Previous:huff, Up:= H =
humma // excl.
A filler word used on various `chat' and `talk' programs when
you had nothing to say but felt that it was important to say
something. The word apparently originated (at least with this
definition) on the MECC Timeshare System (MTS, a now-defunct
educational time-sharing system running in Minnesota during the
1970s and the early 1980s) but was later sighted on early Unix
systems. Compare the U.K's wibble.
Node:hung, Next:hungry puppy, Previous:humma, Up:= H
=
hung adj.
[from `hung up'; common] Equivalent to wedged, but more common at Unix/C sites. Not
generally used of people. Syn. with locked up, wedged; compare hosed. See also hang.
A hung state is distinguished from crashed or down,
where the program or system is also unusable but because it is
not running rather than because it is waiting for something.
However, the recovery from both situations is often the same. It
is also distinguished from the similar but more drastic state
wedged - hung software can be woken
up with easy things like interrupt keys, but wedged will need a
kill -9 or even reboot.
Node:hungry puppy, Next:hungus, Previous:hung, Up:= H
=
hungry puppy n.
Syn. slopsucker.
Node:hungus, Next:hyperspace, Previous:hungry puppy, Up:= H =
hungus /huhng'g*s/ adj.
[perhaps related to slang `humongous'] Large, unwieldy,
usually unmanageable. "TCP is a hungus piece of code." "This is a
hungus set of modifications." The Infocom text adventure game "Beyond Zork"
included two monsters called hunguses.
Node:hyperspace, Next:hysterical reasons, Previous:hungus, Up:= H =
hyperspace /hi:'per-spays/ n.
A memory location that is far away from where the
program counter should be pointing, especially a place that is
inaccessible because it is not even mapped in by the
virtual-memory system. "Another core dump -- looks like the
program jumped off to hyperspace somehow." (Compare jump off into
never-never land.) This usage is from the SF notion of a
spaceship jumping `into hyperspace', that is, taking a shortcut
through higher-dimensional space -- in other words, bypassing
this universe. The variant `east hyperspace' is recorded among
CMU and Bliss hackers.
Node:hysterical reasons,
Next:I
didn't change anything!, Previous:hyperspace, Up:= H =
hysterical reasons n.
(also `hysterical raisins') A variant on the stock phrase "for
historical reasons", indicating specifically that something must
be done in some stupid way for backwards compatibility, and
moreover that the feature it must be compatible with was the
result of a bad design in the first place. "All IBM PC video
adapters have to support MDA text mode for hysterical reasons."
Compare bug-for-bug
compatible.
Node:= I =, Next:= J =, Previous:= H =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= I =
I didn't change
anything!:
I see no X
here.:
IANAL:
IBM:
IBM discount:
ICBM address:
ice:
ID10T error:
idempotent:
IDP:
If
you want X you know where to find it.:
ifdef out:
IIRC:
ill-behaved:
IMHO:
Imminent Death
Of The Net Predicted!:
in the extreme:
inc:
incantation:
include:
include war:
indent style:
index of X:
infant mortality:
infinite:
infinite loop:
Infinite-Monkey
Theorem:
infinity:
inflate:
Infocom:
initgame:
insanely great:
installfest:
INTERCAL:
interesting:
Internet:
Internet address:
Internet Death
Penalty:
Internet Exploder:
Internet Exploiter:
interrupt:
interrupt list:
interrupts locked
out:
intro:
IRC:
iron:
Iron Age:
iron box:
ironmonger:
ISO standard cup
of tea:
ISP:
ITS:
IWBNI:
IYFEG:
Node:I didn't change
anything!, Next:I see no X here., Previous:hysterical
reasons, Up:= I =
I didn't change anything! interj.
An aggrieved cry often heard as bugs manifest during a
regression test. The canonical
reply to this assertion is "Then it works just the same as it did
before, doesn't it?" See also one-line fix. This is also heard from
applications programmers trying to blame an obvious applications
problem on an unrelated systems software change, for example a
divide-by-0 fault after terminals were added to a network.
Usually, their statement is found to be false. Upon close
questioning, they will admit some major restructuring of the
program that shouldn't have broken anything, in their opinion,
but which actually hosed the code
completely.
Node:I see no X here.,
Next:IANAL, Previous:I didn't
change anything!, Up:= I
=
I see no X here.
Hackers (and the interactive computer games they write)
traditionally favor this slightly marked usage over other
possible equivalents such as "There's no X here!" or "X is
missing." or "Where's the X?". This goes back to the original
PDP-10 ADVENT, which would respond
in this wise if you asked it to do something involving an object
not present at your location in the game.
Node:IANAL, Next:IBM, Previous:I see no X here., Up:= I =
IANAL //
[Usenet] Abbreviation, "I Am Not A Lawyer". Usually precedes
legal advice.
Node:IBM, Next:IBM discount, Previous:IANAL, Up:= I
=
IBM /I-B-M/
Inferior But Marketable; It's Better Manually; Insidious Black
Magic; It's Been Malfunctioning; Incontinent Bowel Movement; and
a near-infinite number of even
less complimentary expansions, including `International Business
Machines'. See TLA. These abbreviations
illustrate the considerable antipathy most hackers long felt
toward the `industry leader' (see fear and loathing).
What galled hackers about most IBM machines above the PC level
wasn't so much that they were underpowered and overpriced (though
that does count against them), but that the designs are
incredibly archaic, crufty, and
elephantine ...
and you can't fix them -- source code is locked up
tight, and programming tools are expensive, hard to find, and
bletcherous to use once you've found them. For many years, before
Microsoft, IBM was the company hackers loved to hate.
But everything changes. In the 1980s IBM had its own troubles
with Microsoft. In the late 1990s IBM re-invented itself as a
services company, began to release open-source software through
its AlphaWorks group, and began shipping Linux systems and building ties to the Linux
community. To the astonishment of all parties, IBM emerged as a
friend of the hacker community
This lexicon includes a number of entries attributed to `IBM';
these derive from some rampantly unofficial jargon lists
circulated within IBM's own beleaguered hacker underground.
Node:IBM discount, Next:ICBM address, Previous:IBM, Up:= I =
IBM discount n.
A price increase. Outside IBM, this derives from the common
perception that IBM products are generally overpriced (see clone); inside, it is said to spring from a
belief that large numbers of IBM employees living in an area
cause prices to rise.
Node:ICBM address, Next:ice, Previous:IBM discount, Up:= I =
ICBM address n.
(Also `missile address') The form used to register a site with
the Usenet mapping project, back before the day of pervasive
Internet, included a blank for longitude and latitude, preferably
to seconds-of-arc accuracy. This was actually used for generating
geographically-correct maps of Usenet links on a plotter;
however, it became traditional to refer to this as one's `ICBM
address' or `missile address', and some people include it in
their sig block with that name.
(A real missile address would include target elevation.)
Node:ice, Next:ID10T error, Previous:ICBM address, Up:= I =
ice n.
[coined by Usenetter Tom Maddox, popularized by William
Gibson's cyberpunk SF novels: a contrived acronym for `Intrusion
Countermeasure Electronics'] Security software (in Gibson's
novels, software that responds to intrusion by attempting to
immobilize or even literally kill the intruder). Hence,
`icebreaker': a program designed for cracking security on a
system.
Neither term is in serious use yet as of early 1999, but many
hackers find the metaphor attractive, and each may develop a
denotation in the future. In the meantime, the speculative usage
could be confused with `ICE', an acronym for "in-circuit
emulator".
In ironic reference to the speculative usage, however, some
hackers and computer scientists formed ICE (International
Cryptographic Experiment) in 1994. ICE is a consortium to promote
uniform international access to strong cryptography.
Node:ID10T error, Next:idempotent, Previous:ice, Up:= I
=
ID10T error /I-D-ten-T er'*r/
Synonym for PEBKAC, e.g. "The
user is being an idiot". Tech-support people passing a problem
report to someone higher up the food chain (and presumably better
equipped to deal with idiots) may ask the user to convey that
there seems to be an I-D-ten-T error. Users never twig.
Node:idempotent, Next:IDP, Previous:ID10T error, Up:= I =
idempotent adj.
[from mathematical techspeak] Acting as if used only once,
even if used multiple times. This term is often used with respect
to C header files, which contain common
definitions and declarations to be included by several source
files. If a header file is ever included twice during the same
compilation (perhaps due to nested #include files), compilation
errors can result unless the header file has protected itself
against multiple inclusion; a header file so protected is said to
be idempotent. The term can also be used to describe an
initialization subroutine that is arranged to perform some
critical action exactly once, even if the routine is called
several times.
Node:IDP, Next:If
you want X you know where to find it., Previous:idempotent, Up:= I =
IDP /I-D-P/ v.,n.
[Usenet] Abbreviation for Internet Death Penalty.
Common (probably now more so than the full form), and frequently
verbed. Compare UDP.
Node:If
you want X you know where to find it., Next:ifdef out, Previous:IDP, Up:= I
=
If you want X, you know where to find it.
There is a legend that Dennis Ritchie, inventor of C, once responded to demands for features resembling
those of what at the time was a much more popular language by
observing "If you want PL/I, you know where to find it." Ever
since, this has been hackish standard form for fending off
requests to alter a new design to mimic some older (and, by
implication, inferior and baroque)
one. The case X = Pascal manifests
semi-regularly on Usenet's _comp.lang.c_ newsgroup. Indeed,
the case X = X has been reported in discussions of graphics
software (see X).
Node:ifdef out, Next:IIRC, Previous:If
you want X you know where to find it., Up:= I =
ifdef out /if'def owt/ v.
Syn. for condition out,
specific to C.
Node:IIRC, Next:ill-behaved, Previous:ifdef out, Up:= I =
IIRC //
Common abbreviation for "If I Recall Correctly".
Node:ill-behaved, Next:IMHO, Previous:IIRC, Up:= I =
ill-behaved adj.
1. [numerical analysis] Said of an algorithm or computational
method that tends to blow up because of accumulated roundoff
error or poor convergence properties. 2. Software that bypasses
the defined OS interfaces to do things
(like screen, keyboard, and disk I/O) itself, often in a way that
depends on the hardware of the machine it is running on or which
is nonportable or incompatible with other pieces of software. In
the IBM PC/MS-DOS world, there is a folk theorem (nearly true) to
the effect that (owing to gross inadequacies and performance
penalties in the OS interface) all interesting applications are
ill-behaved. See also bare
metal. Oppose well-behaved, compare PC-ism. See mess-dos.
Node:IMHO, Next:Imminent Death
Of The Net Predicted!, Previous:ill-behaved, Up:= I =
IMHO // abbrev.
[from SF fandom via Usenet; abbreviation for `In My Humble
Opinion'] "IMHO, mixed-case C names should be avoided, as
mistyping something in the wrong case can cause hard-to-detect
errors -- and they look too Pascalish anyhow." Also seen in
variant forms such as IMNSHO (In My Not-So-Humble Opinion) and
IMAO (In My Arrogant Opinion).
Node:Imminent Death
Of The Net Predicted!, Next:in the extreme, Previous:IMHO, Up:= I =
Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted! prov.
[Usenet] Since Usenet first got
off the ground in 1980-81, it has grown exponentially,
approximately doubling in size every year. On the other hand,
most people feel the signal-to-noise ratio of
Usenet has dropped steadily. These trends led, as far back as
mid-1983, to predictions of the imminent collapse (or death) of
the net. Ten years and numerous doublings later, enough of these
gloomy prognostications have been confounded that the phrase
"Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!" has become a running joke,
hauled out any time someone grumbles about the S/N ratio or the huge and steadily
increasing volume, or the possible loss of a key node or link, or
the potential for lawsuits when ignoramuses post copyrighted
material, etc., etc., etc.
Node:in the extreme, Next:inc, Previous:Imminent Death
Of The Net Predicted!, Up:=
I =
in the extreme adj.
A preferred superlative suffix for many hackish terms. See,
for example, `obscure in the extreme' under obscure, and compare highly.
Node:inc, Next:incantation, Previous:in the extreme, Up:= I =
inc /ink/ v.
Verbal (and only rarely written) shorthand for
_increment_, i.e. `increase by one'. Especially used by
assembly programmers, as many assembly languages have an
inc mnemonic. Antonym: dec (see DEC).
Node:incantation, Next:include, Previous:inc, Up:= I =
incantation n.
Any particularly arbitrary or obscure command that one must
mutter at a system to attain a desired result. Not used of
passwords or other explicit security features. Especially used of
tricks that are so poorly documented that they must be learned
from a wizard. "This compiler
normally locates initialized data in the data segment, but if you
mutter the right incantation they
will be forced into text space."
Node:include, Next:include war, Previous:incantation, Up:= I =
include vt.
[Usenet] 1. To duplicate a portion (or whole) of another's
message (typically with attribution to the source) in a reply or
followup, for clarifying the context of one's response. See the
discussion of inclusion styles under "Hacker Writing Style". 2.
[from C] #include
has appeared in sig blocks to refer to a notional
`standard disclaimer file'.
Node:include war, Next:indent style, Previous:include, Up:= I =
include war n.
Excessive multi-leveled inclusion within a discussion thread, a practice that tends to annoy
readers. In a forum with high-traffic newsgroups, such as Usenet,
this can lead to flames and the urge
to start a kill file.
Node:indent style, Next:index of X, Previous:include war, Up:= I =
indent style n.
[C, C++, and Java programmers] The rules one uses to indent
code in a readable fashion. There are four major C indent styles,
described below; all have the aim of making it easier for the
reader to visually track the scope of control constructs. They
have been inherited by C++ and Java, which have C-like syntaxes.
The significant variable is the placement of { and
} with respect to the statement(s) they enclose and
to the guard or controlling statement (if,
else, for, while, or
do) on the block, if any.
`K&R style' -- Named after Kernighan & Ritchie,
because the examples in K&R are
formatted this way. Also called `kernel style' because the Unix
kernel is written in it, and the `One True Brace Style' (abbrev.
1TBS) by its partisans. In C code, the body is typically indented
by eight spaces (or one tab) per level, as shown here. Four
spaces are occasionally seen in C, but in C++ and Java four tends
to be the rule rather than the exception.
if () {
}
`Allman style' -- Named for Eric Allman, a Berkeley hacker who
wrote a lot of the BSD utilities in it (it is sometimes called
`BSD style'). Resembles normal indent style in Pascal and Algol.
It is the only style other than K&R in widespread use among
Java programmers. Basic indent per level shown here is eight
spaces, but four (or sometimes three) spaces are generally
preferred by C++ and Java programmers.
if ()
{
}
`Whitesmiths style' -- popularized by the examples that came
with Whitesmiths C, an early commercial C compiler. Basic indent
per level shown here is eight spaces, but four spaces are
occasionally seen.
if ()
{
}
`GNU style' -- Used throughout GNU EMACS and the Free Software
Foundation code, and just about nowhere else. Indents are always
four spaces per level, with { and }
halfway between the outer and inner indent levels.
if ()
{
}
Surveys have shown the Allman and Whitesmiths styles to be the
most common, with about equal mind shares. K&R/1TBS used to
be nearly universal, but is now much less common in C (the
opening brace tends to get lost against the right paren of the
guard part in an if or while, which is
a Bad Thing). Defenders of 1TBS
argue that any putative gain in readability is less important
than their style's relative economy with vertical space, which
enables one to see more code on one's screen at once.
The Java Language Specification legislates not only the
capitalization of identifiers, but where nouns, adjectives, and
verbs should be in method, class, interface, and variable names
(section 6.8). While the specification stops short of also
standardizing on a bracing style, all source code originating
from Sun Laboratories uses the K&R style. This has set a
precedent for Java programmers, which most follow.
Doubtless these issues will continue to be the subject of
holy wars.
Node:index of X, Next:infant mortality, Previous:indent style, Up:= I =
index of X n.
See coefficient of
X.
Node:infant mortality, Next:infinite, Previous:index of X, Up:= I =
infant mortality n.
It is common lore among hackers (and in the electronics
industry at large; this term is possibly techspeak by now) that
the chances of sudden hardware failure drop off exponentially
with a machine's time since first use (that is, until the
relatively distant time at which enough mechanical wear in I/O
devices and thermal-cycling stress in components has accumulated
for the machine to start going senile). Up to half of all chip
and wire failures happen within a new system's first few weeks;
such failures are often referred to as `infant mortality'
problems (or, occasionally, as `sudden infant death syndrome').
See bathtub curve, burn-in period.
Node:infinite, Next:infinite loop, Previous:infant mortality, Up:= I =
infinite adj.
[common] Consisting of a large number of objects; extreme.
Used very loosely as in: "This program produces infinite
garbage." "He is an infinite loser." The word most likely to
follow `infinite', though, is hair.
(It has been pointed out that fractals are an excellent example
of infinite hair.) These uses are abuses of the word's
mathematical meaning. The term `semi-infinite', denoting an
immoderately large amount of some resource, is also heard. "This
compiler is taking a semi-infinite amount of time to optimize my
program." See also semi.
Node:infinite loop, Next:Infinite-Monkey
Theorem, Previous:infinite, Up:=
I =
infinite loop n.
One that never terminates (that is, the machine spins or buzzes
forever and goes catatonic).
There is a standard joke that has been made about each
generation's exemplar of the ultra-fast machine: "The Cray-3 is
so fast it can execute an infinite loop in under 2 seconds!"
Node:Infinite-Monkey
Theorem, Next:infinity,
Previous:infinite
loop, Up:= I =
Infinite-Monkey Theorem n.
"If you put an infinite number
of monkeys at typewriters, eventually one will bash out the
script for Hamlet." (One may also hypothesize a small number of
monkeys and a very long period of time.) This theorem asserts
nothing about the intelligence of the one random monkey that eventually comes up with the
script (and note that the mob will also type out all the possible
incorrect versions of Hamlet). It may be referred to
semi-seriously when justifying a brute force method; the implication is
that, with enough resources thrown at it, any technical challenge
becomes a one-banana
problem. This argument gets more respect since Linux justified the bazaar mode of development.
This theorem was first popularized by the astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington. It
became part of the idiom of techies via the classic SF short story "Inflexible
Logic" by Russell Maloney, and many younger hackers know it through a reference
in Douglas Adams's "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". On 1 April 2000 the
usage acquired its own Internet standard, (Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite).
Node:infinity, Next:inflate, Previous:Infinite-Monkey Theorem, Up:= I =
infinity n.
1. The largest value that can be represented in a particular
type of variable (register, memory location, data type,
whatever). 2. `minus infinity': The smallest such value, not
necessarily or even usually the simple negation of plus infinity.
In N-bit twos-complement arithmetic, infinity is 2^(N-1) - 1 but
minus infinity is - (2^(N-1)), not -(2^(N-1) - 1). Note also that
this is different from time T equals minus infinity,
which is closer to a mathematician's usage of infinity.
Node:inflate, Next:Infocom, Previous:infinity, Up:=
I =
inflate vt.
To decompress or puff a file. Rare
among Internet hackers, used primarily by MS-DOS/Windows
types.
Node:Infocom, Next:initgame, Previous:inflate, Up:= I
=
Infocom n.
A now-legendary games company, active from 1979 to 1989, that
commercialized the MDL parser technology used for Zork to produce a line of text adventure games
that remain favorites among hackers. Infocom's games were
intelligent, funny, witty, erudite, irreverent, challenging,
satirical, and most thoroughly hackish in spirit. The physical
game packages from Infocom are now prized collector's items.
After being acquired by Activision in 1989 they did a few more
"modern" (e.g. graphics-intensive) games which were less
successful than reissues of their classics.
The software, thankfully, is still extant; Infocom games were
written in a kind of P-code and distributed with a P-code
interpreter core, and not only freeware emulators for that
interpreter but an actual compiler as well have been written to
permit the P-code to be run on platforms the games never
originally graced. In fact, new games written in this P-code are
still bering written. (Emulators that can run Infocom game ZIPs,
and new games, are available at ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu:/doc/misc/if-archive/infocom.)
Node:initgame, Next:insanely great, Previous:Infocom, Up:= I =
initgame /in-it'gaym/ n.
[IRC] An IRC version of the trivia
game "Botticelli", in which one user changes his nick to the initials of a famous person or other
named entity, and the others on the channel ask yes or no
questions, with the one to guess the person getting to be "it"
next. As a courtesy, the one picking the initials starts by
providing a 4-letter hint of the form sex, nationality,
life-status, reality-status. For example, MAAR means "Male,
American, Alive, Real" (as opposed to "fictional"). Initgame can
be surprisingly addictive. See also hing.
[1996 update: a recognizable version of the initgame has
become a staple of some radio talk shows in the U.S. We had it
first! - ESR]
Node:insanely great, Next:installfest, Previous:initgame, Up:= I =
insanely great adj.
[Mac community, from Steve Jobs; also BSD Unix people via Bill
Joy] Something so incredibly elegant that it is imaginable only to someone
possessing the most puissant of hacker-natures.
Node:installfest, Next:INTERCAL, Previous:insanely great, Up:= I =
installfest
[Linux community since c.1998] Common portmanteau word for
"installation festival"; Linux user groups frequently run these.
Computer users are invited to bring their machines to have Linux
installed on their machines. The idea is to get them painlessly
over the biggest hump in migrating to Linux, which is initially
installing and configuring it for the user's machine.
Node:INTERCAL, Next:interesting, Previous:installfest, Up:= I =
INTERCAL /in't*r-kal/ n.
[said by the authors to stand for `Compiler Language With No
Pronounceable Acronym'] A computer language designed by Don Woods
and James Lyons in 1972. INTERCAL is purposely different from all
other computer languages in all ways but one; it is purely a
written language, being totally unspeakable. An excerpt from the
INTERCAL Reference Manual will make the style of the language
clear:
It is a well-known and oft-demonstrated fact that a
person whose work is incomprehensible is held in high esteem. For
example, if one were to state that the simplest way to store a
value of 65536 in a 32-bit INTERCAL variable is:
DO :1 <- #0$#256
any sensible programmer would say that that was absurd. Since
this is indeed the simplest method, the programmer would be made
to look foolish in front of his boss, who would of course have
happened to turn up, as bosses are wont to do. The effect would
be no less devastating for the programmer having been
correct.
INTERCAL has many other peculiar features designed to make it
even more unspeakable. The Woods-Lyons implementation was
actually used by many (well, at least several) people at
Princeton. The language has been recently reimplemented as
C-INTERCAL and is consequently enjoying an unprecedented level of
unpopularity; there is even an _alt.lang.intercal_ newsgroup
devoted to the study and ... appreciation of the
language on Usenet.
Inevitably, INTERCAL has a home page on the Web: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/intercal/.
An extended version, implemented in (what else?) Perl and adding object-oriented features, is
available at http://dd-sh.assurdo.com/INTERCAL.
See also Befunge.
Node:interesting, Next:Internet, Previous:INTERCAL, Up:=
I =
interesting adj.
In hacker parlance, this word has strong connotations of
`annoying', or `difficult', or both. Hackers relish a challenge,
and enjoy wringing all the irony possible out of the ancient
Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times". Oppose trivial, uninteresting.
Node:Internet, Next:Internet address, Previous:interesting, Up:= I =
Internet n.
The mother of all networks. First incarnated beginning in 1969
as the ARPANET, a U.S. Department of Defense research testbed.
Though it has been widely believed that the goal was to develop a
network architecture for military command-and-control that could
survive disruptions up to and including nuclear war, this is a
myth; in fact, ARPANET was conceived from the start as a way to
get most economical use out of then-scarce large-computer
resources.
As originally imagined, ARPANET's major use would have been to
support what is now called remote login and more sophisticated
forms of distributed computing, but the infant technology of
electronic mail quickly grew to dominate actual usage.
Universities, research labs and defense contractors early
discovered the Internet's potential as a medium of communication
between humans and linked up in steadily increasing
numbers, connecting together a quirky mix of academics, techies,
hippies, SF fans, hackers, and anarchists. The roots of this
lexicon lie in those early years.
Over the next quarter-century the Internet evolved in many
ways. The typical machine/OS combination moved from DEC PDP-10s and PDP-20s, running TOPS-10 and TOPS-20, to PDP-11s and VAXes and Suns running
Unix, and in the 1990s to Unix on
Intel microcomputers. The Internet's protocols grew more capable,
most notably in the move from NCP/IP to TCP/IP in 1982 and the implementation of
Domain Name Service in 1983. It was around this time that people
began referring to the collection of interconnected networks with
ARPANET at its core as "the Internet".
The ARPANET had a fairly strict set of participation
guidelines - connected institutions had to be involved with a
DOD-related research project. By the mid-80s, many of the
organizations clamoring to join didn't fit this profile. In 1986,
the National Science Foundation built NSFnet to open up access to
its five regional supercomputing centers; NSFnet became the
backbone of the Internet, replacing the original ARPANET pipes
(which were formally shut down in 1990). Between 1990 and late
1994 the pieces of NSFnet were sold to major telecommunications
companies until the Internet backbone had gone completely
commercial.
That year, 1994, was also the year the mainstream culture
discovered the Internet. Once again, the killer app was not the anticipated one -
rather, what caught the public imagination was the hypertext and
multimedia features of the World Wide Web. Subsequently the
Internet has seen off its only serious challenger (the OSI
protocol stack favored by European telecom monopolies) and is in
the process of absorbing into itself many of the proprietary
networks built during the second wave of wide-area networking
after 1980. It is now (1996) a commonplace even in mainstream
media to predict that a globally-extended Internet will become
the key unifying communications technology of the next century.
See also the network and
Internet address.
Node:Internet address, Next:Internet Death
Penalty, Previous:Internet, Up:=
I =
Internet address n.
1. [techspeak] An absolute network address of the form
_foo@bar.baz_, where foo is a user name, bar is a sitename, and baz is a `domain' name,
possibly including periods itself. Contrast with bang path; see also the network and network address. All Internet
machines and most UUCP sites can now resolve these addresses,
thanks to a large amount of behind-the-scenes magic and PD software written since 1980 or so. See also
bang path, domainist. 2. More loosely, any network
address reachable through Internet; this includes bang path addresses and some internal
corporate and government networks.
Reading Internet addresses is something of an art. Here are
the four most important top-level functional Internet domains
followed by a selection of geographical domains:
_com_
commercial organizations
_edu_
educational institutions
_gov_
U.S. government civilian sites
_mil_
U.S. military sites
Note that most of the sites in the _com_ and _edu_
domains are in the U.S. or Canada.
_us_
sites in the U.S. outside the functional domains
_su_
sites in the ex-Soviet Union (see kremvax).
_uk_
sites in the United Kingdom
Within the _us_ domain, there are subdomains for the
fifty states, each generally with a name identical to the state's
postal abbreviation. Within the _uk_ domain, there is an
_ac_ subdomain for academic sites and a _co_ domain for
commercial ones. Other top-level domains may be divided up in
similar ways.
Node:Internet Death
Penalty, Next:Internet Exploder, Previous:Internet address, Up:= I =
Internet Death Penalty
[Usenet] (often abbreviated IDP) The ultimate sanction against
spam-emitting sites - complete
shunning at the router level of all mail and packets, as well as
Usenet messages, from the offending domain(s). Compare Usenet Death Penalty,
with which it is sometimes confused.
Node:Internet Exploder, Next:Internet Exploiter,
Previous:Internet Death Penalty, Up:= I =
Internet Exploder
[very common] Pejorative hackerism for Microsoft's "Internet
Explorer" web browser (also "Internet Exploiter"). Compare HP-SUX, AIDX,
buglix, Macintrash, Telerat, ScumOS,
sun-stools, Slowlaris.
Node:Internet Exploiter,
Next:interrupt, Previous:Internet Exploder,
Up:= I =
Internet Exploiter n.
Another common name-of-insult for Internet Explorer,
Microsoft's overweight Web Browser; more hostile than Internet Exploder. Reflects
widespread hostility to Microsoft and a sense that it is seeking
to hijack, monopolize, and corrupt the Internet. Compare Exploder and the less pejorative Netscrape.
Node:interrupt, Next:interrupt list, Previous:Internet Exploiter,
Up:= I =
interrupt
1. [techspeak] n. On a computer, an event that interrupts
normal processing and temporarily diverts flow-of-control through
an "interrupt handler" routine. See also trap. 2. interj. A request for attention from a
hacker. Often explicitly spoken. "Interrupt -- have you seen Joe
recently?" See priority
interrupt. 3. Under MS-DOS, nearly synonymous with
`system call', because the OS and BIOS routines are both called
using the INT instruction (see interrupt list) and because
programmers so often have to bypass the OS (going directly to a
BIOS interrupt) to get reasonable performance.
Node:interrupt list, Next:interrupts locked
out, Previous:interrupt, Up:= I =
interrupt list n.
[MS-DOS] The list of all known software interrupt calls (both
documented and undocumented) for IBM PCs and compatibles,
maintained and made available for free redistribution by Ralf
Brown . As
of late 1992, it had grown to approximately two megabytes in
length.
Node:interrupts locked
out, Next:intro, Previous:interrupt list, Up:= I =
interrupts locked out adj.
When someone is ignoring you. In a restaurant, after several
fruitless attempts to get the waitress's attention, a hacker
might well observe "She must have interrupts locked out". The
synonym `interrupts disabled' is also common. Variations abound;
"to have one's interrupt mask bit set" and "interrupts masked
out" are also heard. See also spl.
Node:intro, Next:IRC, Previous:interrupts locked out, Up:= I =
intro n.
[demoscene] Introductory screen of some production. 2. A short
demo, usually showing just one or two
screens. 3. Small, usually 64k, 40k
or 4k demo. Sizes are generally
dictated by compo rules. See also
dentro, demo.
Node:IRC, Next:iron, Previous:intro, Up:= I
=
IRC /I-R-C/ n.
[Internet Relay Chat] A worldwide "party line" network that
allows one to converse with others in real time. IRC is
structured as a network of Internet servers, each of which
accepts connections from client programs, one per user. The IRC
community and the Usenet and MUD communities overlap to some extent,
including both hackers and regular folks who have discovered the
wonders of computer networks. Some Usenet jargon has been adopted
on IRC, as have some conventions such as emoticons. There is also a vigorous native
jargon, represented in this lexicon by entries marked `[IRC]'.
See also talk mode.
Node:iron, Next:Iron Age, Previous:IRC, Up:= I =
iron n.
Hardware, especially older and larger hardware of mainframe class with big metal cabinets
housing relatively low-density electronics (but the term is also
used of modern supercomputers). Often in the phrase big iron. Oppose silicon. See also dinosaur.
Node:Iron Age, Next:iron box, Previous:iron, Up:= I =
Iron Age n.
In the history of computing, 1961-1971 -- the formative era of
commercial mainframe technology,
when ferrite-core dinosaurs ruled
the earth. The Iron Age began, ironically enough, with the
delivery of the first minicomputer (the PDP-1) and ended with the
introduction of the first commercial microprocessor (the Intel
4004) in 1971. See also Stone
Age; compare elder
days.
Node:iron box, Next:ironmonger, Previous:Iron Age, Up:= I =
iron box n.
[Unix/Internet] A special environment set up to trap a cracker logging in over remote
connections long enough to be traced. May include a modified
shell restricting the cracker's
movements in unobvious ways, and `bait' files designed to keep
him interested and logged on. See also back door, firewall machine, Venus flytrap, and Clifford Stoll's
account in "The Cuckoo's
Egg" of how he made and used one (see the Bibliography in Appendix C). Compare
padded cell, honey pot.
Node:ironmonger, Next:ISO standard cup of
tea, Previous:iron
box, Up:= I =
ironmonger n.
[IBM] A hardware specialist (derogatory). Compare sandbender, polygon pusher.
Node:ISO standard cup
of tea, Next:ISP, Previous:ironmonger, Up:= I =
ISO standard cup of tea n.
[South Africa] A cup of tea with milk and one teaspoon of
sugar, where the milk is poured into the cup before the tea.
Variations are ISO 0, with no sugar; ISO 2, with two spoons of
sugar; and so on. This may derive from the "NATO standard" cup of
coffee and tea (milk and two sugars), military slang going back
to the late 1950s and parodying NATO's relentless bureacratic
drive to standardize parts across European and U.S.
militaries.
Like many ISO standards, this one has a faintly alien ring in
North America, where hackers generally shun the decadent British
practice of adulterating perfectly good tea with dairy products
and prefer instead to add a wedge of lemon, if anything. If one
were feeling extremely silly, one might hypothesize an analogous
`ANSI standard cup of tea' and wind up with a political situation
distressingly similar to several that arise in much more serious
technical contexts. (Milk and lemon don't mix very well.)
[2000 update: There is now, in fact, a `British Standard
BS6008: How to make a standard cup of tea.' - ESR]
Node:ISP, Next:ITS, Previous:ISO standard cup of tea,
Up:= I =
ISP /I-S-P/
Common abbreviation for Internet Service Provider, a kind of
company that barely existed before 1993. ISPs sell Internet
access to the mass market. While the big nationwide commercial
BBSs with Internet access (like America Online, CompuServe,
GEnie, Netcom, etc.) are technically ISPs, the term is usually
reserved for local or regional small providers (often run by
hackers turned entrepreneurs) who resell Internet access cheaply
without themselves being information providers or selling
advertising. Compare NSP.
Node:ITS, Next:IWBNI, Previous:ISP, Up:= I =
ITS /I-T-S/ n.
1. Incompatible Time-sharing System, an influential though
highly idiosyncratic operating system written for PDP-6s and
PDP-10s at MIT and long used at the MIT AI Lab. Much AI-hacker
jargon derives from ITS folklore, and to have been `an ITS
hacker' qualifies one instantly as an old-timer of the most
venerable sort. ITS pioneered many important innovations,
including transparent file sharing between machines and
terminal-independent I/O. After about 1982, most actual work was
shifted to newer machines, with the remaining ITS boxes run
essentially as a hobby and service to the hacker community. The
shutdown of the lab's last ITS machine in May 1990 marked the end
of an era and sent old-time hackers into mourning nationwide (see
high moby). 2. A mythical image
of operating-system perfection worshiped by a bizarre, fervent
retro-cult of old-time hackers and ex-users (see troglodyte, sense 2). ITS worshipers manage
somehow to continue believing that an OS maintained by
assembly-language hand-hacking that supported only monocase
6-character filenames in one directory per account remains
superior to today's state of commercial art (their venom against
Unix is particularly intense). See
also holy wars, Weenix.
Node:IWBNI, Next:IYFEG, Previous:ITS, Up:= I =
IWBNI //
Abbreviation for `It Would Be Nice If'. Compare WIBNI.
Node:IYFEG, Next:J. Random, Previous:IWBNI, Up:= I
=
IYFEG //
[Usenet] Abbreviation for `Insert Your Favorite Ethnic Group'.
Used as a meta-name when telling ethnic jokes on the net to avoid
offending anyone. See JEDR.
Node:= J =, Next:= K =, Previous:= I =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= J =
J. Random:
J. Random Hacker:
jack in:
jaggies:
Java:
JCL:
JEDR:
Jeff K.:
jello:
jiffy:
job security:
jock:
joe code:
jolix:
juggling eggs:
jump off
into never-never land:
jupiter:
Node:J. Random, Next:J. Random Hacker, Previous:IYFEG, Up:= J =
J. Random /J rand'm/ n.
[common; generalized from J. Random Hacker] Arbitrary;
ordinary; any one; any old. `J. Random' is often prefixed to a
noun to make a name out of it. It means roughly `some particular'
or `any specific one'. "Would you let J. Random Loser marry your
daughter?" The most common uses are `J. Random Hacker', `J.
Random Loser', and `J. Random Nerd' ("Should J. Random Loser be
allowed to gun down other people?"),
but it can be used simply as an elaborate version of random in any sense.
Node:J. Random Hacker, Next:jack in, Previous:J. Random, Up:= J =
J. Random Hacker /J rand'm hak'r/ n.
[very common] A mythical figure like the Unknown Soldier; the
archetypal hacker nerd. This term is one of the oldest in the
jargon, apparently going back to MIT in the 1960s. See random, Suzie
COBOL. This may originally have been inspired by `J. Fred
Muggs', a show-biz chimpanzee whose name was a household word
back in the early days of TMRC, and
was probably influenced by `J. Presper Eckert' (one of the
co-inventors of the electronic computer). See also Fred Foobar.
Node:jack in, Next:jaggies, Previous:J. Random Hacker, Up:= J =
jack in v.
To log on to a machine or connect to a network or BBS, esp. for purposes of entering a virtual reality simulation such as a
MUD or IRC
(leaving is "jacking out"). This term derives from cyberpunk SF, in which it was used for the
act of plugging an electrode set into neural sockets in order to
interface the brain directly to a virtual reality. It is
primarily used by MUD and IRC fans and younger hackers on BBS
systems.
Node:jaggies, Next:Java, Previous:jack in, Up:=
J =
jaggies /jag'eez/ n.
The `stairstep' effect observable when an edge (esp. a linear
edge of very shallow or steep slope) is rendered on a pixel
device (as opposed to a vector display).
Node:Java, Next:JCL, Previous:jaggies, Up:= J
=
Java
An object-oriented language originally developed at Sun by
James Gosling (and known by the name "Oak") with the intention of
being the successor to C++ (the project
was however originally sold to Sun as an embedded language for
use in set-top boxes). After the great Internet explosion of
1993-1994, Java was hacked into a byte-interpreted language and
became the focus of a relentless hype campaign by Sun, which
touted it as the new language of choice for distributed
applications.
Java is indeed a stronger and cleaner design than C++ and has
been embraced by many in the hacker community - but it has been a
considerable source of frustration to many others, for reasons
ranging from uneven support on different Web browser platforms,
performance issues, and some notorious deficiencies of some of
the standard toolkits (AWT in particular). Microsoft's determined attempts to corrupt
the language (which it rightly sees as a threat to its OS
monopoly) have not helped. As of 1999, these issues are still in
the process of being resolved.
Despite many attractive features and a good design, it is
difficult to find people willing to praise Java who have tried to
implement a complex, real-world system with it (but to be fair it
is early days yet, and no other language has ever been forced to
spend its childhood under the limelight the way Java has). On the
other hand, Java has already been a big win in academic circles, where it has taken the
place of Pascal as the preferred
tool for teaching the basics of good programming to the next
generation of hackers.
Node:JCL, Next:JEDR, Previous:Java, Up:= J =
JCL /J-C-L/ n.
1. IBM's supremely rude Job Control
Language. JCL is the script language used to control the
execution of programs in IBM's batch systems. JCL has a very
fascist syntax, and some versions
will, for example, barf if two spaces
appear where it expects one. Most programmers confronted with JCL
simply copy a working file (or card deck), changing the file
names. Someone who actually understands and generates unique JCL
is regarded with the mixed respect one gives to someone who
memorizes the phone book. It is reported that hackers at IBM
itself sometimes sing "Who's the breeder of the crud that mangles
you and me? I-B-M, J-C-L, M-o-u-s-e" to the tune of the "Mickey
Mouse Club" theme to express their opinion of the beast. 2. A
comparative for any very rude software
that a hacker is expected to use. "That's as bad as JCL." As with
COBOL, JCL is often used as an
archetype of ugliness even by those who haven't experienced it.
See also IBM, fear and loathing.
A (poorly documented, naturally) shell simulating JCL syntax
is available at the Retrocomputing Museum http://www.ccil.org/retro.
Node:JEDR, Next:Jeff K., Previous:JCL, Up:= J =
JEDR // n.
Synonymous with IYFEG. At one
time, people in the Usenet newsgroup _rec.humor.funny_
tended to use `JEDR' instead of IYFEG
or `'; this stemmed from a public attempt to
suppress the group once made by a loser with initials JEDR after
he was offended by an ethnic joke posted there. (The practice was
retconned by the expanding these
initials as `Joke Ethnic/Denomination/Race'.) After much sound
and fury JEDR faded away; this term appears to be doing likewise.
JEDR's only permanent effect on the net.culture was to discredit
`sensitivity' arguments for censorship so thoroughly that more
recent attempts to raise them have met with immediate and
near-universal rejection.
Node:Jeff K., Next:jello, Previous:JEDR, Up:= J =
Jeff K.
The spiritual successor to B1FF and
the archetype of script
kiddies. Jeff K. is a sixteen-year-old suburbanite who
fancies himself a "l33t haX0r", although his knowledge of
computers seems to be limited to the procedure for getting Quake
up and running. His Web page http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk
features a number of hopelessly naive articles, essays, and
rants, all filled with the kind of misspellings, studlycaps, and number-for-letter
substitutions endemic to the script kiddie and warez d00dz communities. Jeff's
offerings, among other things, include hardware advice (such as
"AMD VERSIS PENTIUM" and "HOW TO OVARCLOAK YOUR COMPUTAR"), his
own Quake clan (Clan 40 OUNSCE), and his own comic strip (Wacky
Fun Computar Comic Jokes).
Like B1FF, Jeff K. is (fortunately) a hoax. Jeff K. was
created by internet game journalist Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka,
whose web site Something Awful (http://www.somethingawful.com)
highlights unintentionally humorous news items and Web sites, as
a parody of the kind of teenage luser
who infests Quake servers, chat rooms, and other places where
computer enthusiasts congregate. He is well-recognized in the PC
game community and his influence has spread to hacker fora like Slashdot as well.
Node:jello, Next:jiffy, Previous:Jeff K., Up:=
J =
jello n.
[Usenet: by analogy with spam] A
message that is both excessively cross-posted and too frequently
posted, as opposed to spam (which is
merely too frequently posted) or velveeta (which is merely excessively
cross-posted). This term is widely recognized but not commonly
used; most people refer to both kinds of abuse or their
combination as spam.
Node:jiffy, Next:job security, Previous:jello, Up:= J
=
jiffy n.
1. The duration of one tick of the system clock on your
computer (see tick). Often one AC
cycle time (1/60 second in the U.S. and Canada, 1/50 most other
places), but more recently 1/100 sec has become common. "The
swapper runs every 6 jiffies" means that the virtual memory
management routine is executed once for every 6 ticks of the
clock, or about ten times a second. 2. Confusingly, the term is
sometimes also used for a 1-millisecond wall time interval. 3. Even more
confusingly, physicists semi-jokingly use `jiffy' to mean the
time required for light to travel one foot in a vacuum, which
turns out to be close to one nanosecond. 4.
Indeterminate time from a few seconds to forever. "I'll do it in
a jiffy" means certainly not now and possibly never. This is a
bit contrary to the more widespread use of the word. Oppose nano. See also Real Soon Now.
Node:job security, Next:jock, Previous:jiffy, Up:= J
=
job security n.
When some piece of code is written in a particularly obscure fashion, and no good reason (such
as time or space optimization) can be discovered, it is often
said that the programmer was attempting to increase his job
security (i.e., by making himself indispensable for maintenance).
This sour joke seldom has to be said in full; if two hackers are
looking over some code together and one points at a section and
says "job security", the other one may just nod.
Node:jock, Next:joe code, Previous:job security, Up:= J =
jock n.
1. A programmer who is characterized by large and somewhat
brute-force programs. See brute
force. 2. When modified by another noun, describes a
specialist in some particular computing area. The compounds
`compiler jock' and `systems jock' seem to be the
best-established examples.
Node:joe code, Next:jolix, Previous:jock, Up:= J =
joe code /joh' kohd`/ n.
1. Code that is overly tense and
unmaintainable. "Perl may be a handy
program, but if you look at the source, it's complete joe code."
2. Badly written, possibly buggy code.
Correspondents wishing to remain anonymous have fingered a
particular Joe at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and observed
that usage has drifted slightly; the original sobriquet `Joe
code' was intended in sense 1.
1994 update: This term has now generalized to `
code', used to designate code with distinct characteristics
traceable to its author. "This section doesn't check for a NULL
return from malloc()! Oh. No wonder! It's Ed code!". Used most
often with a programmer who has left the shop and thus is a
convenient scapegoat for anything that is wrong with the
project.
Node:jolix, Next:juggling eggs, Previous:joe code, Up:= J =
jolix /joh'liks/ n.,adj.
386BSD, the freeware port of the BSD Net/2 release to the
Intel i386 architecture by Bill Jolitz, Lynne Greer Jolitz, and
friends. Used to differentiate from BSDI's port based on the same
source tape, which used to be called BSD/386 and is now BSD/OS.
See BSD.
Node:juggling eggs, Next:jump off
into never-never land, Previous:jolix, Up:= J
=
juggling eggs vi.
Keeping a lot of state in your
head while modifying a program. "Don't bother me now, I'm
juggling eggs", means that an interrupt is likely to result in
the program's being scrambled. In the classic 1975 first-contact
SF novel "The Mote in God's Eye", by Larry Niven and Jerry
Pournelle, an alien describes a very difficult task by saying "We
juggle priceless eggs in variable gravity." See also hack mode and on the gripping hand.
Node:jump off
into never-never land, Next:jupiter, Previous:juggling eggs, Up:= J =
jump off into never-never land v.
[from J. M. Barrie's "Peter Pan"] Same as branch to Fishkill, but more
common in technical cultures associated with non-IBM computers
that use the term `jump' rather than `branch'. Compare hyperspace.
Node:jupiter, Next:K, Previous:jump off into
never-never land, Up:= J
=
jupiter vt.
[IRC] To kill an IRC bot or user and then take its place by adopting
its nick so that it cannot reconnect.
Named after a particular IRC user who did this to NickServ, the
robot in charge of preventing people from inadvertently using a
nick claimed by another user. Now commonly shortened to
`jupe'.
Node:= K =, Next:= L =, Previous:= J =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= K =
K:
K&R:
k-:
kahuna:
kamikaze packet:
kangaroo code:
ken:
kernel-of-the-week
club:
kgbvax:
KIBO:
kiboze:
kibozo:
kick:
kill file:
killer app:
killer micro:
killer poke:
kilo-:
KIPS:
KISS Principle:
kit:
klone:
kludge:
kluge:
kluge around:
kluge up:
Knights of
the Lambda Calculus:
knobs:
Knuth:
koan:
kremvax:
kyrka:
Node:K, Next:K&R, Previous:jupiter, Up:= K
=
K /K/ n.
[from kilo-] A kilobyte. Used both
as a spoken word and a written suffix (like meg and gig for megabyte
and gigabyte). See quantifiers.
Node:K&R, Next:k-, Previous:K, Up:= K =
K&R [Kernighan and Ritchie] n.
Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie's book "The C Programming
Language", esp. the classic and influential first edition
(Prentice-Hall 1978; ISBN 0-13-110163-3). Syn. White Book, Old Testament. See also New Testament.
Node:k-, Next:kahuna, Previous:K&R, Up:= K
=
k- pref.
[rare; poss fr. `kilo-' prefix] Extremely. Rare among hackers,
but quite common among crackers and warez d00dz in compounds such as
`k-kool' /K'kool'/, `k-rad' /K'rad'/, and `k-awesome' /K'aw`sm/.
Also used to intensify negatives; thus, `k-evil', `k-lame',
`k-screwed', and `k-annoying'. Overuse of this prefix, or use in
more formal or technical contexts, is considered an indicator of
lamer status.
Node:kahuna, Next:kamikaze packet, Previous:k-, Up:= K =
kahuna /k*-hoo'n*/ n.
[IBM: from the Hawaiian title for a shaman] Synonym for wizard, guru.
Node:kamikaze packet, Next:kangaroo code, Previous:kahuna, Up:= K =
kamikaze packet n.
The `official' jargon for what is more commonly called a Christmas tree packet.
RFC-1025, "TCP and IP Bake Off"
says:
10 points for correctly being able to process a
"Kamikaze" packet (AKA nastygram, christmas tree packet, lamp
test segment, et al.). That is, correctly handle a segment with
the maximum combination of features at once (e.g., a SYN URG PUSH
FIN segment with options and data).
See also Chernobyl
packet.
Node:kangaroo code, Next:ken, Previous:kamikaze packet, Up:= K =
kangaroo code n.
Syn. spaghetti
code.
Node:ken, Next:kernel-of-the-week club,
Previous:kangaroo
code, Up:= K =
ken /ken/ n.
1. [Unix] Ken Thompson, principal inventor of Unix. In the
early days he used to hand-cut distribution tapes, often with a
note that read "Love, ken". Old-timers still use his first name
(sometimes uncapitalized, because it's a login name and mail
address) in third-person reference; it is widely understood (on
Usenet, in particular) that without a last name `Ken' refers only
to Ken Thompson. Similarly, Dennis without last name means Dennis
Ritchie (and he is often known as _dmr_). See also demigod, Unix.
2. A flaming user. This was originated by the Software Support
group at Symbolics because the two greatest flamers in the user
community were both named Ken.
Node:kernel-of-the-week
club, Next:kgbvax,
Previous:ken, Up:= K =
kernel-of-the-week club
The fictional society that BSD bigots claim [Linux] users belong to,
alluding to the release-early-release-often style preferred by
the kernel maintainers. See bazaar.
This was almost certainly inspired by the earlier bug-of-the-month club.
Node:kgbvax, Next:KIBO, Previous:kernel-of-the-week club, Up:= K =
kgbvax /K-G-B'vaks/ n.
See kremvax.
Node:KIBO, Next:kiboze, Previous:kgbvax, Up:= K
=
KIBO /ki:'boh/
1. [acronym] Knowledge In, Bullshit Out. A summary of what
happens whenever valid data is passed through an organization (or
person) that deliberately or accidentally disregards or ignores
its significance. Consider, for example, what an advertising
campaign can do with a product's actual specifications. Compare
GIGO; see also SNAFU principle. 2. James Parry
, a Usenetter infamous for various
surrealist net.pranks and an uncanny, machine-assisted knack for
joining any thread in which his nom de guerre is mentioned. He
has a website at http://www.kibo.com/.
Node:kiboze, Next:kibozo, Previous:KIBO, Up:= K =
kiboze v.
[Usenet] To grep the Usenet news
for a string, especially with the intention of posting a
follow-up. This activity was popularised by Kibo (see KIBO, sense 2).
Node:kibozo, Next:kick, Previous:kiboze, Up:= K
=
kibozo /ki:-boh'zoh/ n.
[Usenet] One who kibozes but is
not Kibo (see KIBO, sense 2).
Node:kick, Next:kill file, Previous:kibozo, Up:= K
=
kick v.
1. [IRC] To cause somebody to be removed from a IRC channel, an option only available to channel
ops. This is an extreme measure, often used to combat extreme
flamage or flooding, but sometimes used at the CHOP's whim. Compare gun. 2. To reboot a machine or kill a running
process. "The server's down, let me go kick it."
Node:kill file, Next:killer app, Previous:kick, Up:= K
=
kill file n.
[Usenet; very common] (alt. `KILL file') Per-user file(s) used
by some Usenet reading programs
(originally Larry Wall's rn(1)) to discard summarily
(without presenting for reading) articles matching some
particularly uninteresting (or unwanted) patterns of subject,
author, or other header lines. Thus to add a person (or subject)
to one's kill file is to arrange for that person to be ignored by
one's newsreader in future. By extension, it may be used for a
decision to ignore the person or subject in other media. See also
plonk.
Node:killer app, Next:killer micro, Previous:kill file, Up:= K =
killer app
The application that actually makes a sustaining market for a
promising but under-utilized technology. First used in the
mid-1980s to describe Lotus 1-2-3 once it became evident that
demand for that product had been the major driver of the early
business market for IBM PCs. The term was then restrospectively
applied to VisiCalc, which had played a similar role in the
success of the Apple II. After 1994 it became commonplace to
describe the World Wide Web as the Internet's killer app. One of
the standard questions asked about each new personal-computer
technology as it emerges has become "what's the killer app?"
Node:killer micro, Next:killer poke, Previous:killer app, Up:= K =
killer micro n.
[popularized by Eugene Brooks] A microprocessor-based machine
that infringes on mini, mainframe, or supercomputer performance
turf. Often heard in "No one will survive the attack of the
killer micros!", the battle cry of the downsizers. Used esp. of
RISC architectures.
The popularity of the phrase `attack of the killer micros' is
doubtless reinforced by the title of the movie "Attack Of The
Killer Tomatoes" (one of the canonical examples of so-bad-it's-wonderful
among hackers). This has even more flavor now that killer micros have gone on the
offensive not just individually (in workstations) but in hordes
(within massively parallel computers).
[1996 update: Eugene Brooks was right. Since this term first
entered the Jargon File in 1990, the minicomputer has effectively
vanished, the mainframe sector is
in deep and apparently terminal decline (with IBM but a shadow of
its former self), and even the supercomputer business has
contracted into a smaller niche. It's networked killer micros as
far as the eye can see. --ESR]
Node:killer poke, Next:kilo-, Previous:killer micro, Up:= K =
killer poke n.
A recipe for inducing hardware damage on a machine via
insertion of invalid values (see poke)
into a memory-mapped control register; used esp. of various
fairly well-known tricks on bitty
boxes without hardware memory management (such as the IBM
PC and Commodore PET) that can overload and trash analog
electronics in the monitor. See also HCF.
Node:kilo-, Next:KIPS, Previous:killer poke, Up:= K =
kilo- pref.
[SI] See quantifiers.
Node:KIPS, Next:KISS Principle, Previous:kilo-, Up:= K =
KIPS /kips/ n.
[abbreviation, by analogy with MIPS
using K] Thousands (not 1024s)
of Instructions Per Second. Usage: rare.
Node:KISS Principle, Next:kit, Previous:KIPS, Up:= K =
KISS Principle /kis' prin'si-pl/ n.
"Keep It Simple, Stupid". A maxim often invoked when
discussing design to fend off creeping featurism and control
development complexity. Possibly related to the marketroid maxim on sales presentations,
"Keep It Short and Simple".
Node:kit, Next:klone, Previous:KISS Principle, Up:= K =
kit n.
[Usenet; poss. fr. DEC slang for a
full software distribution, as opposed to a patch or upgrade] A
source software distribution that has been packaged in such a way
that it can (theoretically) be unpacked and installed according
to a series of steps using only standard Unix tools, and entirely
documented by some reasonable chain of references from the
top-level README file. The
more general term distribution
may imply that special tools or more stringent conditions on the
host environment are required.
Node:klone, Next:kludge, Previous:kit, Up:= K =
klone /klohn/ n.
See clone, sense 4.
Node:kludge, Next:kluge, Previous:klone, Up:= K
=
kludge 1. /klooj/ n.
Incorrect (though regrettably common) spelling of kluge (US). These two words have been confused
in American usage since the early 1960s, and widely confounded in
Great Britain since the end of World War II. 2. [TMRC] A crock that works. (A long-ago "Datamation"
article by Jackson Granholme similarly said: "An ill-assorted
collection of poorly matching parts, forming a distressing
whole.") 3. v. To use a kludge to get around a problem. "I've
kludged around it for now, but I'll fix it up properly
later."
This word appears to have derived from Scots `kludge' or
`kludgie' for a common toilet, via British military slang. It
apparently became confused with U.S. kluge during or after World War II; some Britons
from that era use both words in definably different ways, but
kluge is now uncommon in Great
Britain. `Kludge' in Commonwealth hackish differs in meaning from
`kluge' in that it lacks the positive senses; a kludge is
something no Commonwealth hacker wants to be associated too
closely with. Also, `kludge' is more widely known in British
mainstream slang than `kluge' is in the U.S.
Node:kluge, Next:kluge around, Previous:kludge, Up:=
K =
kluge /klooj/
[from the German `klug', clever; poss. related to Polish
`klucz' (a key, a hint, a main point)] 1. n. A Rube Goldberg (or
Heath Robinson) device, whether in hardware or software. 2. n. A
clever programming trick intended to solve a particular nasty
case in an expedient, if not clear, manner. Often used to repair
bugs. Often involves ad-hockery
and verges on being a crock. 3. n.
Something that works for the wrong reason. 4. vt. To insert a
kluge into a program. "I've kluged this routine to get around
that weird bug, but there's probably a better way." 5. [WPI] n. A
feature that is implemented in a rude
manner.
Nowadays this term is often encountered in the variant
spelling `kludge'. Reports from old
farts are consistent that `kluge' was the original
spelling, reported around computers as far back as the mid-1950s
and, at that time, used exclusively of hardware kluges.
In 1947, the "New York Folklore Quarterly" reported a classic
shaggy-dog story `Murgatroyd the Kluge Maker' then current in the
Armed Forces, in which a `kluge' was a complex and puzzling
artifact with a trivial function. Other sources report that
`kluge' was common Navy slang in the WWII era for any piece of
electronics that worked well on shore but consistently failed at
sea.
However, there is reason to believe this slang use may be a
decade older. Several respondents have connected it to the brand
name of a device called a "Kluge paper feeder", an adjunct to
mechanical printing presses. Legend has it that the Kluge feeder
was designed before small, cheap electric motors and control
electronics; it relied on a fiendishly complex assortment of
cams, belts, and linkages to both power and synchronize all its
operations from one motive driveshaft. It was accordingly
temperamental, subject to frequent breakdowns, and devilishly
difficult to repair -- but oh, so clever! People who tell this
story also aver that `Kluge' was the name of a design
engineer.
There is in fact a Brandtjen & Kluge Inc., an old family
business that manufactures printing equipment - interestingly,
their name is pronounced /kloo'gee/! Henry Brandtjen, president
of the firm, told me (ESR, 1994) that his company was co-founded
by his father and an engineer named Kluge /kloo'gee/, who built
and co-designed the original Kluge automatic feeder in 1919. Mr.
Brandtjen claims, however, that this was a simple device
(with only four cams); he says he has no idea how the myth of its
complexity took hold.
TMRC and the MIT hacker culture of
the early '60s seems to have developed in a milieu that
remembered and still used some WWII military slang (see also
foobar). It seems likely that
`kluge' came to MIT via alumni of the many military electronics
projects that had been located in Cambridge (many in MIT's
venerable Building 20, in which TMRC
is also located) during the war.
The variant `kludge' was apparently popularized by the Datamation article mentioned above; it
was titled "How to Design a Kludge" (February 1962, pp. 30, 31).
This spelling was probably imported from Great Britain, where
kludge has an independent history
(though this fact was largely unknown to hackers on either side
of the Atlantic before a mid-1993 debate in the Usenet group
_alt.folklore.computers_ over the First and Second Edition
versions of this entry; everybody used to think kludge was just a mutation of kluge). It now appears that the British, having
forgotten the etymology of their own `kludge' when `kluge'
crossed the Atlantic, repaid the U.S. by lobbing the `kludge'
orthography in the other direction and confusing their American
cousins' spelling!
The result of this history is a tangle. Many younger U.S.
hackers pronounce the word as /klooj/ but spell it, incorrectly
for its meaning and pronunciation, as `kludge'. (Phonetically,
consider huge, refuge, centrifuge, and deluge as opposed to
sludge, judge, budge, and fudge. Whatever its failings in other
areas, English spelling is perfectly consistent about this
distinction.) British hackers mostly learned /kluhj/ orally, use
it in a restricted negative sense and are at least consistent.
European hackers have mostly learned the word from written
American sources and tend to pronounce it /kluhj/ but use the
wider American meaning!
Some observers consider this mess appropriate in view of the
word's meaning.
Node:kluge around, Next:kluge up, Previous:kluge, Up:= K =
kluge around vt.
To avoid a bug or difficult condition by inserting a kluge. Compare workaround.
Node:kluge up, Next:Knights of the Lambda
Calculus, Previous:kluge around, Up:= K =
kluge up vt.
To lash together a quick hack to perform a task; this is
milder than cruft together
and has some of the connotations of hack
up (note, however, that the construction `kluge on'
corresponding to hack on is never
used). "I've kluged up this routine to dump the buffer contents
to a safe place."
Node:Knights of
the Lambda Calculus, Next:knobs, Previous:kluge up, Up:= K =
Knights of the Lambda Calculus n.
A semi-mythical organization of wizardly LISP and Scheme
hackers. The name refers to a mathematical formalism invented by
Alonzo Church, with which LISP is intimately connected. There is
no enrollment list and the criteria for induction are unclear,
but one well-known LISPer has been known to give out buttons and,
in general, the members know who they
are....
Node:knobs, Next:Knuth, Previous:Knights of the Lambda
Calculus, Up:= K =
knobs pl.n.
Configurable options, even in software and even those you
can't adjust in real time. Anything you can twiddle is a knob. "Has this PNG viewer got an
alpha knob?" Software may be described as having "knobs and
switches" or occasionally "knobs and lights".
Node:Knuth, Next:koan, Previous:knobs, Up:= K
=
Knuth /ka-nooth'/ n.
[Donald E. Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming"]
Mythically, the reference that answers all questions about data
structures or algorithms. A safe answer when you do not know: "I
think you can find that in Knuth." Contrast the literature. See also bible. There is a Donald Knuth home page at http://www-cs-faculty.Stanford.EDU/~knuth.
Node:koan, Next:kremvax, Previous:Knuth, Up:= K
=
koan /koh'an/ n.
A Zen teaching riddle. Classically, koans are attractive
paradoxes to be meditated on; their purpose is to help one to
enlightenment by temporarily jamming normal cognitive processing
so that something more interesting can happen (this practice is
associated with Rinzei Zen Buddhism). Hackers are very fond of
the koan form and compose their own koans for humororous and/or
enlightening effect. See Some AI
Koans, has the X
nature, hacker
humor.
Node:kremvax, Next:kyrka, Previous:koan, Up:= K =
kremvax /krem-vaks/ n.
[from the then large number of Usenet VAXen with
names of the form _foovax_] Originally, a fictitious Usenet
site at the Kremlin, announced on April 1, 1984 in a posting
ostensibly originated there by Soviet leader Konstantin
Chernenko. The posting was actually forged by Piet Beertema as an
April Fool's joke. Other fictitious sites mentioned in the hoax
were _moskvax_ and kgbvax. This
was probably the funniest of the many April Fool's forgeries
perpetrated on Usenet (which has negligible security against
them), because the notion that Usenet might ever penetrate the
Iron Curtain seemed so totally absurd at the time.
In fact, it was only six years later that the first genuine
site in Moscow, _demos.su_, joined Usenet. Some readers
needed convincing that the postings from it weren't just another
prank. Vadim Antonov, senior programmer at Demos and the major
poster from there up to mid-1991, was quite aware of all this,
referred to it frequently in his own postings, and at one point
twitted some credulous readers by blandly asserting that he
was a hoax!
Eventually he even arranged to have the domain's gateway site
named _kremvax_, thus neatly turning fiction into fact and
demonstrating that the hackish sense of humor transcends cultural
barriers. [Mr. Antonov also contributed the Russian-language
material for this lexicon. --ESR]
In an even more ironic historical footnote, _kremvax_
became an electronic center of the anti-communist resistance
during the bungled hard-line coup of August 1991. During those
three days the Soviet UUCP network centered on _kremvax_
became the only trustworthy news source for many places within
the USSR. Though the sysops were concentrating on internal
communications, cross-border postings included immediate
transliterations of Boris Yeltsin's decrees condemning the coup
and eyewitness reports of the demonstrations in Moscow's streets.
In those hours, years of speculation that totalitarianism would
prove unable to maintain its grip on politically-loaded
information in the age of computer networking were proved
devastatingly accurate -- and the original _kremvax_ joke
became a reality as Yeltsin and the new Russian revolutionaries
of `glasnost' and `perestroika' made _kremvax_ one of the
timeliest means of their outreach to the West.
Node:kyrka, Next:lace card, Previous:kremvax, Up:= K
=
kyrka /chur'ka/ n.
[Swedish] See feature
key.
Node:= L =, Next:= M =, Previous:= K =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= L =
lace card:
lag:
lamer:
language lawyer:
languages of
choice:
LART:
larval stage:
lase:
laser chicken:
lasherism:
laundromat:
LDB:
leaf site:
leak:
leaky heap:
leapfrog attack:
leech:
leech mode:
legal:
legalese:
LER:
LERP:
let the smoke
out:
letterbomb:
lexer:
lexiphage:
life:
Life is hard:
light pipe:
lightweight:
like
kicking dead whales down the beach:
like
nailing jelly to a tree:
line 666:
line eater the:
line noise:
line starve:
linearithmic:
link farm:
link rot:
link-dead:
lint:
Lintel:
Linus:
Linux:
lion food:
Lions Book:
LISP:
list-bomb:
lithium lick:
little-endian:
live:
live data:
Live Free Or
Die!:
livelock:
liveware:
lobotomy:
locals the:
locked and loaded:
locked up:
logic bomb:
logical:
loop through:
loose bytes:
lord high fixer:
lose:
lose lose:
loser:
losing:
loss:
lossage:
lost in the
noise:
lost in the
underflow:
lots of MIPS
but no I/O:
low-bandwidth:
LPT:
Lubarsky's Law
of Cybernetic Entomology:
Lumber Cartel:
lunatic fringe:
lurker:
luser:
Node:lace card, Next:lag, Previous:kyrka, Up:= L
=
lace card n. obs.
A punched card with all
holes punched (also called a `whoopee card' or `ventilator
card'). Card readers tended to jam when they got to one of these,
as the resulting card had too little structural strength to avoid
buckling inside the mechanism. Card punches could also jam trying
to produce these things owing to power-supply problems. When some
practical joker fed a lace card through the reader, you needed to
clear the jam with a `card knife' -- which you used on the joker
first.
Node:lag, Next:lamer, Previous:lace card, Up:= L =
lag n.
[MUD, IRC; very common] When used without qualification this
is synomous with netlag. Curiously,
people will often complain "I'm really lagged" when in fact it is
their server or network connection that is lagging.
Node:lamer, Next:language lawyer, Previous:lag, Up:= L =
lamer n.
[prob. originated in skateboarder slang] 1. Synonym for luser, not used much by hackers but common
among warez d00dz, crackers,
and phreakers. A person who
downloads much, but who never uploads. (Also known as `leecher').
Oppose elite. Has the same
connotations of self-conscious elitism that use of luser does among hackers. 2. Someone who tries
to crack a BBS. 3. Someone who annoys the sysop or other BBS
users - for instance, by posting lots of silly messages,
uploading virus-ridden software, frequently dropping carrier,
etc.
Crackers also use it to refer to cracker wannabees. In phreak culture, a lamer is one
who scams codes off others rather than doing cracks or really
understanding the fundamental concepts. In warez d00dz culture, where the ability
to wave around cracked commercial software within days of (or
before) release to the commercial market is much esteemed, the
lamer might try to upload garbage or shareware or something
incredibly old (old in this context is read as a few years to
anything older than 3 days).
`Lamer' is also much used in the IRC world in a similar sense
to the above.
Node:language lawyer, Next:languages of
choice, Previous:lamer,
Up:= L =
language lawyer n.
A person, usually an experienced or senior software engineer,
who is intimately familiar with many or most of the numerous
restrictions and features (both useful and esoteric) applicable
to one or more computer programming languages. A language lawyer
is distinguished by the ability to show you the five sentences
scattered through a 200-plus-page manual that together imply the
answer to your question "if only you had thought to look there".
Compare wizard, legal, legalese.
Node:languages of choice,
Next:LART, Previous:language lawyer, Up:= L =
languages of choice n.
C, C++,
LISP, and Perl. Nearly every hacker knows one of C or LISP,
and most good ones are fluent in both. C++, despite some serious
drawbacks, is generally preferred to other object-oriented
languages (though in 1999 it looks as though Java has displaced it in the affections of
hackers, if not everywhere). Since around 1990 Perl has rapidly
been gaining favor, especially as a tool for
systems-administration utilities and rapid prototyping. Python, Smalltalk and Prolog are also
popular in small but influential communities.
There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers
with FORTRAN, or even assembler, as their language of choice.
They often prefer to be known as Real Programmers, and other hackers
consider them a bit odd (see "The Story of Mel" in Appendix
A). Assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or
appropriate for anything but HLL
implementation, glue, and a few
time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs.
FORTRAN occupies a shrinking niche in scientific programming.
Most hackers tend to frown on languages like Pascal and Ada, which
don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for
hacking (see bondage-and-discipline
language), and to regard everything even remotely
connected with COBOL or other
traditional card walloper
languages as a total and unmitigated loss.
Node:LART, Next:larval stage, Previous:languages of choice, Up:= L =
LART //
Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool. 1. n. In the collective
mythos of scary devil
monastery, this is an essential item in the toolkit of
every BOFH. The LART classic is a 2x4
or other large billet of wood usable as a club, to be applied
upside the head of spammers and other people who cause sysadmins
more grief than just naturally goes with the job. Perennial
debates rage on _alt.sysadmin.recovery_ over what
constitutes the truly effective LART; knobkerries, semiautomatic
weapons, flamethrowers, and tactical nukes all have their
partisans. Compare clue-by-four. 2. v. To use a LART. Some
would add "in malice", but some sysadmins do prefer to gently
lart their users as a first (and sometimes final) warning. 3.
interj. Calling for one's LART, much as a surgeon might call
"Scalpel!". 4. interj. [rare] Used in flames as a rebuke. "LART! LART! LART!"
Node:larval stage, Next:lase, Previous:LART, Up:= L =
larval stage n.
Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration on coding
apparently passed through by all fledgling hackers. Common
symptoms include the perpetration of more than one 36-hour hacking run in a given week;
neglect of all other activities including usual basics like food,
sleep, and personal hygiene; and a chronic case of advanced
bleary-eye. Can last from 6 months to 2 years, the apparent
median being around 18 months. A few so afflicted never resume a
more `normal' life, but the ordeal seems to be necessary to
produce really wizardly (as opposed to merely competent)
programmers. See also wannabee. A
less protracted and intense version of larval stage (typically
lasting about a month) may recur when one is learning a new OS or programming language.
Node:lase, Next:laser chicken, Previous:larval stage, Up:= L =
lase /layz/ vt.
To print a given document via a laser printer. "OK, let's lase
that sucker and see if all those graphics-macro calls did the
right things."
Node:laser chicken, Next:lasherism, Previous:lase, Up:= L =
laser chicken n.
Kung Pao Chicken, a standard Chinese dish containing chicken,
peanuts, and hot red peppers in a spicy pepper-oil sauce. Many
hackers call it `laser chicken' for two reasons: It can zap you just like a laser, and the sauce has
a red color reminiscent of some laser beams. The dish has also
been called `gunpowder chicken'.
In a variation on this theme, it is reported that some
Australian hackers have redesignated the common dish `lemon
chicken' as `Chernobyl Chicken'. The name is derived from the
color of the sauce, which is considered bright enough to glow in
the dark (as, mythically, do some of the inhabitants of
Chernobyl).
Node:lasherism, Next:laundromat, Previous:laser chicken, Up:= L =
lasherism n.
[Harvard] A program that solves a standard problem (such as
the Eight Queens puzzle or implementing the life algorithm) in a deliberately nonstandard
way. Distinguished from a crock or
kluge by the fact that the programmer
did it on purpose as a mental exercise. Such constructions are
quite popular in exercises such as the Obfuscated C Contest, and
occasionally in retrocomputing. Lew Lasher was a
student at Harvard around 1980 who became notorious for such
behavior.
Node:laundromat, Next:LDB, Previous:lasherism, Up:= L =
laundromat n.
Syn. disk farm; see washing machine.
Node:LDB, Next:leaf site, Previous:laundromat, Up:= L =
LDB /l*'d*b/ vt.
[from the PDP-10 instruction set] To extract from the middle.
"LDB me a slice of cake, please." This usage has been kept alive
by Common LISP's function of the same name. Considered silly. See
also DPB.
Node:leaf site, Next:leak, Previous:LDB, Up:= L =
leaf site n.,obs.
Before pervasive TCP/IP, this term was used of a machine that
merely originated and read Usenet news or mail, and did not relay
any third-party traffic. It was often uttered in a critical tone;
when the ratio of leaf sites to backbone, rib, and other relay
sites got too high, the network tended to develop bottlenecks.
Compare backbone site,
rib site. Now that traffic
patterns depend more on the distribution of routers than of host
machines this term has largely fallen out of use.
Node:leak, Next:leaky heap, Previous:leaf site, Up:= L =
leak n.
With qualifier, one of a class of resource-management bugs
that occur when resources are not freed properly after operations
on them are finished, so they effectively disappear (leak out).
This leads to eventual exhaustion as new allocation requests come
in. memory leak and fd leak have their own entries; one
might also refer, to, say, a `window handle leak' in a window
system.
Node:leaky heap, Next:leapfrog attack, Previous:leak, Up:= L =
leaky heap n.
[Cambridge] An arena with a memory leak.
Node:leapfrog attack, Next:leech, Previous:leaky heap, Up:= L =
leapfrog attack n.
Use of userid and password information obtained illicitly from
one host (e.g., downloading a file of account IDs and passwords,
tapping TELNET, etc.) to compromise another host. Also, the act
of TELNETting through one or more hosts in order to confuse a
trace (a standard cracker procedure).
Node:leech, Next:leech mode, Previous:leapfrog attack, Up:= L =
leech
1. n. (Also `leecher'.) Among BBS types, crackers and warez d00dz, one who consumes
knowledge without generating new software, cracks, or techniques.
BBS culture specifically defines a leech as someone who downloads
files with few or no uploads in return, and who does not
contribute to the message section. Cracker culture extends this
definition to someone (a lamer,
usually) who constantly presses informed sources for information
and/or assistance, but has nothing to contribute. 2. v. [common,
Toronto area] To instantly fetch a file (other than a mail
attachment) whether by FTP or IRC file req or any other method.
Seems to be a holdover from the early 1990s when Toronto had a
very active BBS and warez scene.
Node:leech mode, Next:legal, Previous:leech, Up:= L
=
leech mode n.
[warez d00dz] "Leech mode" or "leech access" or (simply
"leech" as in "You get leech") is the access mode on a FTP site
where one can download as many files as one wants, without having
to upload. Leech mode is often promised on banner sites, but
rarely obtained. See ratio
site, banner
site.
Node:legal, Next:legalese, Previous:leech mode, Up:= L =
legal adj.
Loosely used to mean `in accordance with all the relevant
rules', esp. in connection with some set of constraints defined
by software. "The older =+ alternate for += is no longer legal
syntax in ANSI C." "This parser processes each line of legal
input the moment it sees the trailing linefeed." Hackers often
model their work as a sort of game played with the environment in
which the objective is to maneuver through the thicket of
`natural laws' to achieve a desired objective. Their use of
`legal' is flavored as much by this game-playing sense as by the
more conventional one having to do with courts and lawyers.
Compare language lawyer,
legalese.
Node:legalese, Next:LER, Previous:legal, Up:= L
=
legalese n.
Dense, pedantic verbiage in a language description, product
specification, or interface standard; text that seems designed to
obfuscate and requires a language
lawyer to parse it. Though
hackers are not afraid of high information density and complexity
in language (indeed, they rather enjoy both), they share a deep
and abiding loathing for legalese; they associate it with
deception, suits, and situations in
which hackers generally get the short end of the stick.
Node:LER, Next:LERP, Previous:legalese, Up:=
L =
LER /L-E-R/
n. 1. [TMRC, from `Light-Emitting Diode'] A light-emitting
resistor (that is, one in the process of burning up). Ohm's law
was broken. See also SED. 2. An
incandescent light bulb (the filament emits light because it's
resistively heated).
Node:LERP, Next:let the smoke out, Previous:LER, Up:= L =
LERP /lerp/ vi.,n.
Quasi-acronym for Linear Interpolation, used as a verb or noun
for the operation. "Bresenham's algorithm lerps incrementally
between the two endpoints of the line."
Node:let the smoke out,
Next:letterbomb, Previous:LERP, Up:= L =
let the smoke out v.
To fry hardware (see fried). See
magic smoke for a discussion
of the underlying mythology.
Node:letterbomb, Next:lexer, Previous:let the smoke out, Up:= L =
letterbomb
1. n. A piece of email containing
live data intended to do
nefarious things to the recipient's machine or terminal. It used
to be possible, for example, to send letterbombs that would lock
up some specific kinds of terminals when they are viewed, so
thoroughly that the user must cycle power (see cycle, sense 3) to unwedge them. Under Unix, a
letterbomb can also try to get part of its contents interpreted
as a shell command to the mailer. The results of this could range
from silly to tragic; fortunately it has been some years since
any of the standard Unix/Internet mail software was vulnerable to
such an attack (though, as the Melissa virus attack demonstrated
in early 1999, Microsoft systems can have serious problems). See
also Trojan horse; compare
nastygram. 2. Loosely, a mailbomb.
Node:lexer, Next:lexiphage, Previous:letterbomb, Up:= L =
lexer /lek'sr/ n.
Common hacker shorthand for `lexical analyzer', the
input-tokenizing stage in the parser for a language (the part
that breaks it into word-like pieces). "Some C lexers get
confused by the old-style compound ops like =-."
Node:lexiphage, Next:life, Previous:lexer, Up:= L
=
lexiphage /lek'si-fayj`/ n.
A notorious word chomper on ITS.
See bagbiter. This program would
draw on a selected victim's bitmapped terminal the words "THE
BAG" in ornate letters, followed a pair of jaws biting pieces of
it off.
Node:life, Next:Life is hard, Previous:lexiphage, Up:= L =
life n.
1. A cellular-automata game invented by John Horton Conway and
first introduced publicly by Martin Gardner ("Scientific
American", October 1970); the game's popularity had to wait a few
years for computers on which it could reasonably be played, as
it's no fun to simulate the cells by hand. Many hackers pass
through a stage of fascination with it, and hackers at various
places contributed heavily to the mathematical analysis of this
game (most notably Bill Gosper at MIT, who even implemented life
in TECO!; see Gosperism). When a hacker mentions `life',
he is much more likely to mean this game than the magazine, the
breakfast cereal, or the human state of existence. 2. The
opposite of Usenet. As in "Get a life!"
Node:Life is hard, Next:light pipe, Previous:life, Up:= L =
Life is hard prov.
[XEROX PARC] This phrase has two possible interpretations: (1)
"While your suggestion may have some merit, I will behave as
though I hadn't heard it." (2) "While your suggestion has obvious
merit, equally obvious circumstances prevent it from being
seriously considered." The charm of the phrase lies precisely in
this subtle but important ambiguity.
Node:light pipe, Next:lightweight, Previous:Life is hard, Up:= L =
light pipe n.
Fiber optic cable. Oppose copper.
Node:lightweight, Next:like
kicking dead whales down the beach, Previous:light pipe, Up:= L =
lightweight adj.
Opposite of heavyweight;
usually found in combining forms such as `lightweight
process'.
Node:like
kicking dead whales down the beach, Next:like nailing jelly to a
tree, Previous:lightweight, Up:= L =
like kicking dead whales down the beach adj.
Describes a slow, difficult, and disgusting process. First
popularized by a famous quote about the difficulty of getting
work done under one of IBM's mainframe OSes. "Well, you
could write a C compiler in COBOL, but it would be like
kicking dead whales down the beach." See also fear and loathing.
Node:like
nailing jelly to a tree, Next:line 666, Previous:like
kicking dead whales down the beach, Up:= L =
like nailing jelly to a tree adj.
Used to describe a task thought to be impossible, esp. one in
which the difficulty arises from poor specification or inherent
slipperiness in the problem domain. "Trying to display the
`prettiest' arrangement of nodes and arcs that diagrams a given
graph is like nailing jelly to a tree, because nobody's sure what
`prettiest' means algorithmically."
Hacker use of this term may recall mainstream slang originated
early in the 20th century by President Theodore Roosevelt. There
is a legend that, weary of inconclusive talks with Colombia over
the right to dig a canal through its then-province Panama, he
remarked, "Negotiating with those pirates is like trying to nail
currant jelly to the wall." Roosevelt's government subsequently
encouraged the anti-Colombian insurgency that created the nation
of Panama.
Node:line 666, Next:line eater the, Previous:like
nailing jelly to a tree, Up:= L =
line 666 [from Christian eschatological myth] n.
The notional line of source at which a program fails for
obscure reasons, implying either that somebody is out to
get it (when you are the programmer), or that it richly deserves
to be so gotten (when you are not). "It works when I trace
through it, but seems to crash on line 666 when I run it." "What
happens is that whenever a large batch comes through, mmdf dies
on the Line of the Beast. Probably some twit hardcoded a buffer
size."
Node:line eater the, Next:line noise, Previous:line 666, Up:= L =
line eater, the n. obs.
[Usenet] 1. A bug in some now-obsolete versions of the netnews
software that used to eat up to BUFSIZ bytes of the article text.
The bug was triggered by having the text of the article start
with a space or tab. This bug was quickly personified as a
mythical creature called the `line eater', and postings often
included a dummy line of `line eater food'. Ironically, line
eater `food' not beginning with a space or tab wasn't actually
eaten, since the bug was avoided; but if there was a
space or tab before it, then the line eater would eat the food
and the beginning of the text it was supposed to be
protecting. The practice of `sacrificing to the line eater'
continued for some time after the bug had been nailed to the wall, and is
still humorously referred to. The bug itself was still
occasionally reported to be lurking in some mail-to-netnews
gateways as late as 1991. 2. See NSA line eater.
Node:line noise, Next:line starve, Previous:line eater the, Up:= L =
line noise n.
1. [techspeak] Spurious characters due to electrical noise in
a communications link, especially an RS-232 serial connection.
Line noise may be induced by poor connections, interference or
crosstalk from other circuits, electrical storms, cosmic rays, or (notionally) birds
crapping on the phone wires. 2. Any chunk of data in a file or
elsewhere that looks like the results of line noise in sense 1.
3. Text that is theoretically a readable text or program source
but employs syntax so bizarre that it looks like line noise in
senses 1 or 2. Yes, there are languages this ugly. The canonical
example is TECO; it is often claimed
that "TECO's input syntax is indistinguishable from line noise."
Other non-WYSIWYG editors, such as
Multics qed and Unix ed, in the hands
of a real hacker, also qualify easily, as do deliberately
obfuscated languages such as INTERCAL.
Node:line starve, Next:linearithmic, Previous:line noise, Up:= L =
line starve
[MIT] 1. vi. To feed paper through a printer the wrong way by
one line (most printers can't do this). On a display terminal, to
move the cursor up to the previous line of the screen. "To print
`X squared', you just output `X', line starve, `2', line feed."
(The line starve causes the `2' to appear on the line above the
`X', and the line feed gets back to the original line.) 2. n. A
character (or character sequence) that causes a terminal to
perform this action. ASCII 0011010, also called SUB or control-Z,
was one common line-starve character in the days before
microcomputers and the X3.64 terminal standard. Today, the term
might be used for the ISO reverse line feed character 0x8D.
Unlike `line feed', `line starve' is not standard ASCII terminology. Even among hackers it is
considered a bit silly. 3. [proposed] A sequence such as \c (used
in System V echo, as well as nroff
and troff) that suppresses a newline or other character(s) that would
normally be emitted.
Node:linearithmic, Next:link farm, Previous:line starve, Up:= L =
linearithmic adj.
Of an algorithm, having running time that is O(N log N).
Coined as a portmanteau of `linear' and `logarithmic' in
"Algorithms In C" by Robert Sedgewick (Addison-Wesley 1990, ISBN
0-201-51425-7).
Node:link farm, Next:link rot, Previous:linearithmic, Up:= L =
link farm n.
[Unix] A directory tree that contains many links to files in a
master directory tree of files. Link farms save space when one is
maintaining several nearly identical copies of the same source
tree -- for example, when the only difference is
architecture-dependent object files. "Let's freeze the source and
then rebuild the FROBOZZ-3 and FROBOZZ-4 link farms." Link farms
may also be used to get around restrictions on the number of
-I (include-file directory) arguments on older C
preprocessors. However, they can also get completely out of hand,
becoming the filesystem equivalent of spaghetti code.
Node:link rot, Next:link-dead, Previous:link farm, Up:= L =
link rot n.
The natural decay of web links as the sites they're connected
to change or die. Compare bit
rot.
Node:link-dead, Next:lint, Previous:link rot, Up:= L =
link-dead adj.
[MUD] The state a player is in when they kill their connection
to a MUD without leaving it properly.
The player is then commonly left as a statue in the game, and is
only removed after a certain period of time (an hour on most
MUDs). Used on IRC as well, although it
is inappropriate in that context. Compare netdead.
Node:lint, Next:Lintel, Previous:link-dead, Up:= L =
lint
[from Unix's lint(1), named for the bits of fluff
it supposedly picks from programs] 1. vt. To examine a program
closely for style, language usage, and portability problems, esp.
if in C, esp. if via use of automated analysis tools, most esp.
if the Unix utility lint(1) is used. This term used
to be restricted to use of lint(1) itself, but
(judging by references on Usenet) it has become a shorthand for
desk check at some non-Unix
shops, even in languages other than C. Also as v. delint. 2. n. Excess verbiage in a document, as
in "This draft has too much lint".
Node:Lintel, Next:Linus, Previous:lint, Up:= L =
Lintel n.
The emerging Linux/Intel alliance.
This term began to be used in early 1999 after it became clear
that the Wintel alliance was under
increasing strain and Intel started taking stakes in Linux
companies.
Node:Linus, Next:Linux, Previous:Lintel, Up:= L
=
Linus /leen'us'/ or /lin'us'/, not /li:'nus/
Linus Torvalds, the author of Linux. Nobody in the hacker culture has been as
readily recognized by first name alone since Ken (Thompson).
Node:Linux, Next:lion food, Previous:Linus, Up:= L
=
Linux /lee'nuhks/ or /li'nuks/, not
/li:'nuhks/ n.
The free Unix workalike created by Linus Torvalds and friends
starting about 1991. The pronunciation /lee'nuhks/ is preferred
because the name `Linus' has an /ee/ sound in Swedish (Linus's
family is part of Finland's 6% ethnic-Swedish minority). This may
be the most remarkable hacker project in history -- an entire
clone of Unix for 386, 486 and Pentium micros, distributed for
free with sources over the net (ports to Alpha and Sparc and many
other machines are also in use).
Linux is what GNU aimed to be, and
it relies on the GNU toolset. But the Free Software Foundation
didn't produce the kernel to go with that toolset until 1999,
which was too late. Other, similar efforts like FreeBSD and
NetBSD have been technically successful but never caught fire the
way Linux has; as this is written in 2000, Linux is seriously
challenging Microsoft's OS dominance. It has already captured 31%
of the Internet-server market and 25% of general business
servers.
An earlier version of this entry opined "The secret of Linux's
success seems to be that Linus worked much harder early on to
keep the development process open and recruit other hackers,
creating a snowball effect." Truer than we knew. See bazaar.
(Some people object that the name `Linux' should be used to
refer only to the kernel, not the entire operating system. This
claim is a proxy for an underlying territorial dispute; people
who insist on the term `GNU/Linux' want the the FSF to get most of the credit for Linux because
RMS and friends wrote many of its user-level tools. Neither this
theory nor the term `GNU/Linux' has gained more than minority
acceptance).
Node:lion food, Next:Lions Book, Previous:Linux, Up:= L
=
lion food n.
[IBM] Middle management or HQ staff (or, by extension,
administrative drones in general). From an old joke about two
lions who, escaping from the zoo, split up to increase their
chances but agree to meet after 2 months. When they finally meet,
one is skinny and the other overweight. The thin one says: "How
did you manage? I ate a human just once and they turned out a
small army to chase me -- guns, nets, it was terrible. Since then
I've been reduced to eating mice, insects, even grass." The fat
one replies: "Well, I hid near an IBM office and ate a
manager a day. And nobody even noticed!"
Node:Lions Book, Next:LISP, Previous:lion food, Up:= L =
Lions Book n.
"Source Code and Commentary on Unix level 6", by John Lions.
The two parts of this book contained (1) the entire source
listing of the Unix Version 6 kernel, and (2) a commentary on the
source discussing the algorithms. These were circulated
internally at the University of New South Wales beginning
1976-77, and were, for years after, the only detailed
kernel documentation available to anyone outside Bell Labs.
Because Western Electric wished to maintain trade secret status
on the kernel, the Lions Book was only supposed to be distributed
to affiliates of source licensees. In spite of this, it soon
spread by samizdat to a good many
of the early Unix hackers.
[1996 update: The Lions book lives again! It was put back in
print as ISBN 1-57398-013-7 from Peer-To-Peer Communications,
with forewords by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson. In a neat bit
of reflexivity, the page before the contents quotes this
entry.]
Node:LISP, Next:list-bomb, Previous:Lions Book, Up:= L =
LISP n.
[from `LISt Processing language', but mythically from `Lots of
Irritating Superfluous Parentheses'] AI's mother tongue, a
language based on the ideas of (a) variable-length lists and
trees as fundamental data types, and (b) the interpretation of
code as data and vice-versa. Invented by John McCarthy at MIT in
the late 1950s, it is actually older than any other HLL still in use except FORTRAN. Accordingly, it
has undergone considerable adaptive radiation over the years;
modern variants are quite different in detail from the original
LISP 1.5. The dominant HLL among hackers until the early 1980s,
LISP now shares the throne with C. Its
partisans claim it is the only language that is truly beautiful.
See languages of
choice.
All LISP functions and programs are expressions that return
values; this, together with the high memory utilization of LISPs,
gave rise to Alan Perlis's famous quip (itself a take on an Oscar
Wilde quote) that "LISP programmers know the value of everything
and the cost of nothing".
One significant application for LISP has been as a proof by
example that most newer languages, such as COBOL and Ada, are
full of unnecessary crocks. When the
Right Thing has already been
done once, there is no justification for bogosity in newer languages.
Node:list-bomb, Next:lithium lick, Previous:LISP, Up:= L
=
list-bomb v.
To mailbomb someone by forging
messages causing the victim to become a subscriber to many
mailing lists. This is a self-defeating tactic; it merely forces
mailing list servers to require confirmation by return message
for every subscription.
Node:lithium lick, Next:little-endian, Previous:list-bomb, Up:= L =
lithium lick n.
[NeXT] Steve Jobs. Employees who have gotten too much
attention from their esteemed founder are said to have `lithium
lick' when they begin to show signs of Jobsian fervor and repeat
the most recent catch phrases in normal conversation -- for
example, "It just works, right out of the box!"
Node:little-endian, Next:live, Previous:lithium lick, Up:= L =
little-endian adj.
Describes a computer architecture in which, within a given 16-
or 32-bit word, bytes at lower addresses have lower significance
(the word is stored `little-end-first'). The PDP-11 and VAX
families of computers and Intel microprocessors and a lot of
communications and networking hardware are little-endian. See
big-endian, middle-endian, NUXI problem. The term is sometimes
used to describe the ordering of units other than bytes; most
often, bits within a byte.
Node:live, Next:live data, Previous:little-endian, Up:= L =
live /li:v/ adj.,adv.
[common] Opposite of `test'. Refers to actual real-world data
or a program working with it. For example, the response to "I
think the record deleter is finished" might be "Is it live yet?"
or "Have you tried it out on live data?" This usage usually
carries the connotation that live data is more fragile and must
not be corrupted, or bad things will happen. So a more
appropriate response might be: "Well, make sure it works
perfectly before we throw live data at it." The implication here
is that record deletion is something pretty significant, and a
haywire record-deleter running amok live would probably cause
great harm.
Node:live data, Next:Live Free Or Die!,
Previous:live, Up:= L =
live data n.
1. Data that is written to be interpreted and takes over
program flow when triggered by some un-obvious operation, such as
viewing it. One use of such hacks is to break security. For
example, some smart terminals have commands that allow one to
download strings to program keys; this can be used to write live
data that, when listed to the terminal, infects it with a
security-breaking virus that is
triggered the next time a hapless user strikes that key. For
another, there are some well-known bugs in vi that allow certain texts to send arbitrary
commands back to the machine when they are simply viewed. 2. In C
code, data that includes pointers to function hooks (executable code). 3. An object, such as a
trampoline, that is constructed
on the fly by a program and intended to be executed as code.
Node:Live Free Or Die!,
Next:livelock, Previous:live data, Up:= L =
Live Free Or Die! imp.
1. The state motto of New Hampshire, which appears on that
state's automobile license plates. 2. A slogan associated with
Unix in the romantic days when Unix aficionados saw themselves as
a tiny, beleaguered underground tilting against the windmills of
industry. The "free" referred specifically to freedom from the
fascist design philosophies and
crufty misfeatures common on competing operating systems. Armando
Stettner, one of the early Unix developers, used to give out fake
license plates bearing this motto under a large Unix, all in New
Hampshire colors of green and white. These are now valued
collector's items. In 1994 DEC put an
inferior imitation of these in circulation with a red corporate
logo added. Compaq (half of which was once DEC) has continued the
practice.
Node:livelock, Next:liveware, Previous:Live Free Or Die!, Up:= L =
livelock /li:v'lok/ n.
A situation in which some critical stage of a task is unable
to finish because its clients perpetually create more work for it
to do after they have been serviced but before it can clear its
queue. Differs from deadlock in
that the process is not blocked or waiting for anything, but has
a virtually infinite amount of work to do and can never catch
up.
Node:liveware, Next:lobotomy, Previous:livelock, Up:=
L =
liveware /li:v'weir/ n.
1. Synonym for wetware. Less
common. 2. [Cambridge] Vermin. "Waiter, there's some liveware in
my salad..."
Node:lobotomy, Next:locals the, Previous:liveware, Up:=
L =
lobotomy n.
1. What a hacker subjected to formal management training is
said to have undergone. At IBM and elsewhere this term is used by
both hackers and low-level management; the latter doubtless
intend it as a joke. 2. The act of removing the processor from a
microcomputer in order to replace or upgrade it. Some very cheap
clone systems are sold in
`lobotomized' form -- everything but the brain.
Node:locals the, Next:locked and loaded, Previous:lobotomy, Up:= L =
locals, the pl.n.
The users on one's local network (as opposed, say, to people
one reaches via public Internet or UUCP connects). The marked
thing about this usage is how little it has to do with real-space
distance. "I have to do some tweaking on this mail utility before
releasing it to the locals."
Node:locked and loaded,
Next:locked up, Previous:locals the, Up:= L =
locked and loaded adj.,obs.
[from military slang for an M-16 rifle with magazine inserted
and prepared for firing] Said of a removable disk volume properly
prepared for use -- that is, locked into the drive and with the
heads loaded. Ironically, because their heads are `loaded'
whenever the power is up, this description is never used of Winchester drives (which are named
after a rifle).
Node:locked up, Next:logic bomb, Previous:locked and loaded, Up:= L =
locked up adj.
Syn. for hung, wedged.
Node:logic bomb, Next:logical, Previous:locked up, Up:= L =
logic bomb n.
Code surreptitiously inserted into an application or OS that
causes it to perform some destructive or security-compromising
activity whenever specified conditions are met. Compare back door.
Node:logical, Next:loop through, Previous:logic bomb, Up:= L =
logical adj.
[from the technical term `logical device', wherein a physical
device is referred to by an arbitrary `logical' name] Having the
role of. If a person (say, Les Earnest at SAIL) who had long held
a certain post left and were replaced, the replacement would for
a while be known as the `logical' Les Earnest. (This does not
imply any judgment on the replacement.) Compare virtual.
At Stanford, `logical' compass directions denote a coordinate
system in which `logical north' is toward San Francisco, `logical
west' is toward the ocean, etc., even though logical north varies
between physical (true) north near San Francisco and physical
west near San Jose. (The best rule of thumb here is that, by
definition, El Camino Real always runs logical north-and-south.)
In giving directions, one might say: "To get to Rincon Tarasco
restaurant, get onto El Camino
Bignum going logical north." Using the word `logical'
helps to prevent the recipient from worrying about that the fact
that the sun is setting almost directly in front of him. The
concept is reinforced by North American highways which are
almost, but not quite, consistently labeled with logical rather
than physical directions. A similar situation exists at MIT:
Route 128 (famous for the electronics industry that has grown up
along it) is a 3-quarters circle surrounding Boston at a radius
of 10 miles, terminating near the coastline at each end. It would
be most precise to describe the two directions along this highway
as `clockwise' and `counterclockwise', but the road signs all say
"north" and "south", respectively. A hacker might describe these
directions as `logical north' and `logical south', to indicate
that they are conventional directions not corresponding to the
usual denotation for those words. (If you went logical south
along the entire length of route 128, you would start out going
northwest, curve around to the south, and finish headed due east,
passing along one infamous stretch of pavement that is
simultaneously route 128 south and Interstate 93 north, and is
signed as such!)
Node:loop through, Next:loose bytes, Previous:logical, Up:= L =
loop through vt.
To process each element of a list of things. "Hold on, I've
got to loop through my paper mail." Derives from the
computer-language notion of an iterative loop; compare `cdr down'
(under cdr), which is less common among
C and Unix programmers. ITS hackers used to say `IRP over' after
an obscure pseudo-op in the MIDAS PDP-10 assembler (the same IRP
op can nowadays be found in Microsoft's assembler).
Node:loose bytes, Next:lord high fixer, Previous:loop through, Up:= L =
loose bytes n.
Commonwealth hackish term for the padding bytes or shims many compilers insert between members of a
record or structure to cope with alignment requirements imposed
by the machine architecture.
Node:lord high fixer, Next:lose, Previous:loose bytes, Up:= L =
lord high fixer n.
[primarily British, from Gilbert & Sullivan's `lord high
executioner'] The person in an organization who knows the most
about some aspect of a system. See wizard.
Node:lose, Next:lose lose, Previous:lord high fixer, Up:= L =
lose vi.
1. [very common] To fail. A program loses when it encounters
an exceptional condition or fails to work in the expected manner.
2. To be exceptionally unesthetic or crocky. 3. Of people, to be
obnoxious or unusually stupid (as opposed to ignorant). See also
deserves to lose. 4.
n. Refers to something that is losing, especially in the phrases "That's a
lose!" and "What a lose!"
Node:lose lose, Next:loser, Previous:lose, Up:= L =
lose lose interj.
A reply to or comment on an undesirable situation. "I
accidentally deleted all my files!" "Lose, lose."
Node:loser, Next:losing, Previous:lose lose, Up:= L =
loser n.
An unexpectedly bad situation, program, programmer, or person.
Someone who habitually loses. (Even winners can lose
occasionally.) Someone who knows not and knows not that he knows
not. Emphatic forms are `real loser', `total loser', and
`complete loser' (but not **`moby loser', which would be a
contradiction in terms). See luser.
Node:losing, Next:loss, Previous:loser, Up:= L
=
losing adj.
Said of anything that is or causes a lose or lossage.
"The compiler is losing badly when I try to use templates."
Node:loss, Next:lossage, Previous:losing, Up:= L
=
loss n.
Something (not a person) that loses; a situation in which
something is losing. Emphatic forms include `moby loss', and
`total loss', `complete loss'. Common interjections are "What a
loss!" and "What a moby loss!" Note that `moby loss' is OK even
though **`moby loser' is not used; applied to an abstract noun,
moby is simply a magnifier, whereas when applied to a person it
implies substance and has positive connotations. Compare lossage.
Node:lossage, Next:lost in the noise, Previous:loss, Up:= L =
lossage /los'*j/ n.
[very common] The result of a bug or malfunction. This is a
mass or collective noun. "What a loss!" and "What lossage!" are
nearly synonymous. The former is slightly more particular to the
speaker's present circumstances; the latter implies a continuing
lose of which the speaker is currently
a victim. Thus (for example) a temporary hardware failure is a
loss, but bugs in an important tool (like a compiler) are serious
lossage.
Node:lost in the noise,
Next:lost in
the underflow, Previous:lossage, Up:= L
=
lost in the noise adj.
Syn. lost in the
underflow. This term is from signal processing, where
signals of very small amplitude cannot be separated from
low-intensity noise in the system. Though popular among hackers,
it is not confined to hackerdom; physicists, engineers,
astronomers, and statisticians all use it.
Node:lost in the
underflow, Next:lots of MIPS but no
I/O, Previous:lost in the noise, Up:= L =
lost in the underflow adj.
Too small to be worth considering; more specifically, small
beyond the limits of accuracy or measurement. This is a reference
to `floating underflow', a condition that can occur when a
floating-point arithmetic processor tries to handle quantities
smaller than its limit of magnitude. It is also a pun on
`undertow' (a kind of fast, cold current that sometimes runs just
offshore and can be dangerous to swimmers). "Well, sure, photon
pressure from the stadium lights alters the path of a thrown
baseball, but that effect gets lost in the underflow." Compare
epsilon, epsilon squared; see also overflow bit.
Node:lots of MIPS
but no I/O, Next:low-bandwidth, Previous:lost in the underflow,
Up:= L =
lots of MIPS but no I/O adj.
Used to describe a person who is technically brilliant but
can't seem to communicate with human beings effectively.
Technically it describes a machine that has lots of processing
power but is bottlenecked on input-output (in 1991, the IBM Rios,
a.k.a. RS/6000, was a notorious example).
Node:low-bandwidth, Next:LPT, Previous:lots of MIPS but no
I/O, Up:= L =
low-bandwidth adj.
[from communication theory] Used to indicate a talk that,
although not content-free, was
not terribly informative. "That was a low-bandwidth talk, but
what can you expect for an audience of suits!" Compare zero-content, bandwidth, math-out.
Node:LPT, Next:Lubarsky's Law
of Cybernetic Entomology, Previous:low-bandwidth, Up:= L =
LPT /L-P-T/ or /lip'it/ or /lip-it'/ n.
1. Line printer (originally Line Printing Terminal). Rare
under Unix, more common among hackers who grew up with ITS,
MS-DOS, CP/M and other operating systems that were strongly
influenced by early DEC conventions. 2.
Local PorT. Used among MS-DOS programmers (and so expanded in the
MS-DOS 5 manual). It seems likely this is a backronym.
Node:Lubarsky's Law
of Cybernetic Entomology, Next:Lumber Cartel, Previous:LPT, Up:= L
=
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology prov.
"There is always one more bug."
Node:Lumber Cartel, Next:lunatic fringe, Previous:Lubarsky's Law
of Cybernetic Entomology, Up:= L =
Lumber Cartel n.
A mythical conspiracy accused by spam-spewers of funding anti-spam activism in
order to force the direct-mail promotions industry back onto
paper. Hackers, predictably, responded by forming a "Lumber
Cartel" spoofing this paranoid theory; the web page is http://come.to/the.lumber.cartel.
Members often include the tag TINLC ("There Is No Lumber Cartel")
in their postings; see TINC, backbone cabal and NANA for explanation.
Node:lunatic fringe, Next:lurker, Previous:Lumber Cartel, Up:= L =
lunatic fringe n.
[IBM] Customers who can be relied upon to accept release 1
versions of software. Compare heatseeker.
Node:lurker, Next:luser, Previous:lunatic fringe, Up:= L =
lurker n.
One of the `silent majority' in a electronic forum; one who
posts occasionally or not at all but is known to read the group's
postings regularly. This term is not pejorative and indeed is
casually used reflexively: "Oh, I'm just lurking." Often used in
`the lurkers', the hypothetical audience for the group's flamage-emitting regulars. When a lurker
speaks up for the first time, this is called `delurking'.
The creator of the popular science-fiction TV series "Babylon
5" has ties to SF fandom and the hacker culture. In that series,
the use of the term `lurker' for a homeless or displaced person
is a conscious reference to the jargon term.
Node:luser, Next:M, Previous:lurker,
Up:= L =
luser /loo'zr/ n.
[common] A user; esp. one who is
also a loser. (luser and loser are
pronounced identically.) This word was coined around 1975 at MIT.
Under ITS, when you first walked up to a terminal at MIT and
typed Control-Z to get the computer's attention, it printed out
some status information, including how many people were already
using the computer; it might print "14 users", for example.
Someone thought it would be a great joke to patch the system to
print "14 losers" instead. There ensued a great controversy, as
some of the users didn't particularly want to be called losers to
their faces every time they used the computer. For a while
several hackers struggled covertly, each changing the message
behind the back of the others; any time you logged into the
computer it was even money whether it would say "users" or
"losers". Finally, someone tried the compromise "lusers", and it
stuck. Later one of the ITS machines supported luser
as a request-for-help command. ITS died the death in mid-1990,
except as a museum piece; the usage lives on, however, and the
term `luser' is often seen in program comments and on Usenet.
Compare mundane, muggle.
Node:= M =, Next:= N =, Previous:= L =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= M =
M:
M$:
macdink:
machinable:
machoflops:
Macintoy:
Macintrash:
macro:
macro-:
macrology:
macrotape:
maggotbox:
magic:
magic cookie:
magic number:
magic smoke:
mail storm:
mailbomb:
mailing list:
main loop:
mainframe:
management:
mandelbug:
manged:
mangle:
mangled name:
mangler:
manularity:
marbles:
marginal:
Marginal Hacks:
marginally:
marketroid:
Mars:
martian:
massage:
math-out:
Matrix:
maximum Maytag
mode:
meatspace:
meatware:
meeces:
meg:
mega-:
megapenny:
MEGO:
meltdown network:
meme:
meme plague:
memetics:
memory farts:
memory leak:
memory smash:
menuitis:
mess-dos:
meta:
meta bit:
metasyntactic
variable:
MFTL:
mickey:
mickey mouse
program:
micro-:
MicroDroid:
microfloppies:
microfortnight:
microLenat:
microReid:
microserf:
Microsloth Windows:
Microsoft:
micros~1:
middle-endian:
middle-out
implementation:
milliLampson:
minifloppies:
MIPS:
misbug:
misfeature:
Missed'em-five:
missile address:
miswart:
MMF:
mobo:
moby:
mockingbird:
mod:
mode:
mode bit:
modulo:
molly-guard:
Mongolian Hordes
technique:
monkey up:
monkey scratch:
monstrosity:
monty:
Moof:
Moore's Law:
moose call:
moria:
MOTAS:
MOTOS:
MOTSS:
mouse ahead:
mouse around:
mouse belt:
mouse droppings:
mouse elbow:
mouso:
MS-DOS:
mu:
MUD:
muddie:
mudhead:
muggle:
multician:
Multics:
multitask:
mumblage:
mumble:
munch:
munching:
munching squares:
munchkin:
mundane:
mung:
munge:
Murphy's Law:
music:
mutter:
Node:M, Next:M$,
Previous:luser, Up:= M =
M pref. (on units) suff. (on numbers)
[SI] See quantifiers.
Node:M$, Next:macdink, Previous:M, Up:= M =
M$
Common net abbreviation for Microsoft, everybody's least
favorite monopoly.
Node:macdink, Next:machinable, Previous:M$, Up:= M =
macdink /mak'dink/ vt.
[from the Apple Macintosh, which is said to encourage such
behavior] To make many incremental and unnecessary cosmetic
changes to a program or file. Often the subject of the macdinking
would be better off without them. "When I left at 11
P.M. last night, he was still macdinking the
slides for his presentation." See also fritterware, window shopping.
Node:machinable, Next:machoflops, Previous:macdink, Up:= M =
machinable adj.
Machine-readable. Having the softcopy nature.
Node:machoflops, Next:Macintoy, Previous:machinable, Up:= M =
machoflops /mach'oh-flops/ n.
[pun on `megaflops', a coinage for `millions of FLoating-point
Operations Per Second'] Refers to artificially inflated
performance figures often quoted by computer manufacturers. Real
applications are lucky to get half the quoted speed. See Your mileage may
vary, benchmark.
Node:Macintoy, Next:Macintrash, Previous:machoflops, Up:= M =
Macintoy /mak'in-toy/ n.
The Apple Macintosh, considered as a toy. Less pejorative than Macintrash.
Node:Macintrash, Next:macro, Previous:Macintoy, Up:=
M =
Macintrash /mak'in-trash`/ n.
The Apple Macintosh, as described by a hacker who doesn't
appreciate being kept away from the real computer by the
interface. The term maggotbox has
been reported in regular use in the Research Triangle area of
North Carolina. Compare Macintoy.
See also beige toaster,
WIMP environment, point-and-drool
interface, drool-proof
paper, user-friendly.
Node:macro, Next:macro-, Previous:Macintrash, Up:= M =
macro /mak'roh/ n.
[techspeak] A name (possibly followed by a formal arg list) that is equated to a text or symbolic
expression to which it is to be expanded (possibly with the
substitution of actual arguments) by a macro expander. This
definition can be found in any technical dictionary; what those
won't tell you is how the hackish connotations of the term have
changed over time.
The term `macro' originated in early assemblers, which
encouraged the use of macros as a structuring and
information-hiding device. During the early 1970s, macro
assemblers became ubiquitous, and sometimes quite as powerful and
expensive as HLLs, only to fall from
favor as improving compiler technology marginalized assembler
programming (see languages
of choice). Nowadays the term is most often used in
connection with the C preprocessor, LISP, or one of several
special-purpose languages built around a macro-expansion facility
(such as TeX or Unix's [nt]roff suite).
Indeed, the meaning has drifted enough that the collective
`macros' is now sometimes used for code in any special-purpose
application control language (whether or not the language is
actually translated by text expansion), and for macro-like
entities such as the `keyboard macros' supported in some text
editors (and PC TSR or Macintosh INIT/CDEV keyboard
enhancers).
Node:macro-, Next:macrology, Previous:macro, Up:= M
=
macro- pref.
Large. Opposite of micro-. In the
mainstream and among other technical cultures (for example,
medical people) this competes with the prefix mega-, but hackers tend to restrict the latter
to quantification.
Node:macrology, Next:macrotape, Previous:macro-, Up:= M
=
macrology /mak-rol'*-jee/ n.
1. Set of usually complex or crufty macros, e.g., as part of a
large system written in LISP, TECO, or (less commonly) assembler. 2. The
art and science involved in comprehending a macrology in sense 1.
Sometimes studying the macrology of a system is not unlike
archeology, ecology, or theology,
hence the sound-alike construction. See also boxology.
Node:macrotape, Next:maggotbox, Previous:macrology, Up:= M =
macrotape /mak'roh-tayp/ n.
An industry-standard reel of tape. Originally, as opposed to a
DEC microtape; nowadays, as opposed to modern QIC and DDS tapes.
Syn. round tape.
Node:maggotbox, Next:magic, Previous:macrotape, Up:= M =
maggotbox /mag'*t-boks/ n.
See Macintrash. This is even
more derogatory.
Node:magic, Next:magic cookie, Previous:maggotbox, Up:= M =
magic
1. adj. As yet unexplained, or too complicated to explain;
compare automagically and
(Arthur C.) Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from magic." "TTY echoing is
controlled by a large number of magic bits." "This routine
magically computes the parity of an 8-bit byte in three
instructions." 2. adj. Characteristic of something that works
although no one really understands why (this is especially called
black magic). 3. n.
[Stanford] A feature not generally publicized that allows
something otherwise impossible, or a feature formerly in that
category but now unveiled. 4. n. The ultimate goal of all
engineering & development, elegance in the extreme; from the
first corollary to Clarke's Third Law: "Any technology
distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced".
Parodies playing on these senses of the term abound; some have
made their way into serious documentation, as when a MAGIC
directive was described in the Control Card Reference for GCOS
c.1978. For more about hackish `magic', see Appendix A. Compare black magic, wizardly, deep
magic, heavy
wizardry.
Node:magic cookie, Next:magic number, Previous:magic, Up:= M =
magic cookie n.
[Unix; common] 1. Something passed between routines or
programs that enables the receiver to perform some operation; a
capability ticket or opaque identifier. Especially used of small
data objects that contain data encoded in a strange or
intrinsically machine-dependent way. E.g., on non-Unix OSes with
a non-byte-stream model of files, the result of
ftell(3) may be a magic cookie rather than a byte
offset; it can be passed to fseek(3), but not
operated on in any meaningful way. The phrase `it hands you a
magic cookie' means it returns a result whose contents are not
defined but which can be passed back to the same or some other
program later. 2. An in-band code for changing graphic rendition
(e.g., inverse video or underlining) or performing other control
functions (see also cookie). Some
older terminals would leave a blank on the screen corresponding
to mode-change magic cookies; this was also called a glitch (or occasionally a `turd'; compare mouse droppings). See also
cookie.
Node:magic number, Next:magic smoke, Previous:magic cookie, Up:= M =
magic number n.
[Unix/C; common] 1. In source code, some non-obvious constant
whose value is significant to the operation of a program and that
is inserted inconspicuously in-line (hardcoded), rather than expanded in by a
symbol set by a commented #define. Magic numbers in
this sense are bad style. 2. A number that encodes critical
information used in an algorithm in some opaque way. The classic
examples of these are the numbers used in hash or CRC functions,
or the coefficients in a linear congruential generator for
pseudo-random numbers. This sense actually predates and was
ancestral to the more commonsense 1. 3. Special data located at
the beginning of a binary data file to indicate its type to a
utility. Under Unix, the system and various applications programs
(especially the linker) distinguish between types of executable
file by looking for a magic number. Once upon a time, these magic
numbers were PDP-11 branch instructions that skipped over header
data to the start of executable code; 0407, for example, was
octal for `branch 16 bytes relative'. Many other kinds of files
now have magic numbers somewhere; some magic numbers are, in
fact, strings, like the ! at the
beginning of a Unix archive file or the %! leading
PostScript files. Nowadays only a wizard knows the spells to create magic
numbers. How do you choose a fresh magic number of your own?
Simple -- you pick one at random. See? It's magic!
The magic number, on the other hand, is 7+/-2. See
"The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our
capacity for processing information" by George Miller, in the
"Psychological Review" 63:81-97 (1956). This classic paper
established the number of distinct items (such as numeric digits)
that humans can hold in short-term memory. Among other things,
this strongly influenced the interface design of the phone
system.
Node:magic smoke, Next:mail storm, Previous:magic number, Up:= M =
magic smoke n.
A substance trapped inside IC packages that enables them to
function (also called `blue smoke'; this is similar to the
archaic `phlogiston' hypothesis about combustion). Its existence
is demonstrated by what happens when a chip burns up -- the magic
smoke gets let out, so it doesn't work any more. See smoke test, let the smoke out.
Usenetter Jay Maynard tells the following story: "Once, while
hacking on a dedicated Z80 system, I was testing code by blowing
EPROMs and plugging them in the system, then seeing what
happened. One time, I plugged one in backwards. I only discovered
that after I realized that Intel didn't put power-on
lights under the quartz windows on the tops of their EPROMs --
the die was glowing white-hot. Amazingly, the EPROM worked fine
after I erased it, filled it full of zeros, then erased it again.
For all I know, it's still in service. Of course, this is because
the magic smoke didn't get let out." Compare the original
phrasing of Murphy's
Law.
Node:mail storm, Next:mailbomb, Previous:magic smoke, Up:= M =
mail storm n.
[from broadcast storm,
influenced by `maelstrom'] What often happens when a machine with
an Internet connection and active users re-connects after
extended downtime -- a flood of incoming mail that brings the
machine to its knees. See also hairball.
Node:mailbomb, Next:mailing list, Previous:mail storm, Up:= M =
mailbomb
(also _mail bomb_) [Usenet] 1. v. To send, or urge others
to send, massive amounts of email to
a single system or person, esp. with intent to crash or spam the recipient's system. Sometimes done
in retaliation for a perceived serious offense. Mailbombing is
itself widely regarded as a serious offense -- it can disrupt
email traffic or other facilities for innocent users on the
victim's system, and in extreme cases, even at upstream sites. 2.
n. An automatic procedure with a similar effect. 3. n. The mail
sent. Compare letterbomb, nastygram, BLOB (sense 2), list-bomb.
Node:mailing list, Next:main loop, Previous:mailbomb, Up:= M =
mailing list n.
(often shortened in context to `list') 1. An email address that is an alias (or macro, though that word is never used in this
connection) for many other email addresses. Some mailing lists
are simple `reflectors', redirecting mail sent to them to the
list of recipients. Others are filtered by humans or programs of
varying degrees of sophistication; lists filtered by humans are
said to be `moderated'. 2. The people who receive your email when
you send it to such an address.
Mailing lists are one of the primary forms of hacker
interaction, along with Usenet. They
predate Usenet, having originated with the first UUCP and ARPANET
connections. They are often used for private information-sharing
on topics that would be too specialized for or inappropriate to
public Usenet groups. Though some of these maintain almost purely
technical content (such as the Internet Engineering Task Force
mailing list), others (like the `sf-lovers' list maintained for
many years by Saul Jaffe) are recreational, and many are purely
social. Perhaps the most infamous of the social lists was the
eccentric _bandykin_ distribution; its latter-day progeny,
_lectroids_ and _tanstaafl_, still include a number of
the oddest and most interesting people in hackerdom.
Mailing lists are easy to create and (unlike Usenet) don't tie
up a significant amount of machine resources (until they get very
large, at which point they can become interesting torture tests
for mail software). Thus, they are often created temporarily by
working groups, the members of which can then collaborate on a
project without ever needing to meet face-to-face. Much of the
material in this lexicon was criticized and polished on just such
a mailing list (called `jargon-friends'), which included all the
co-authors of Steele-1983.
Node:main loop, Next:mainframe, Previous:mailing list, Up:= M =
main loop n.
The top-level control flow construct in an input- or
event-driven program, the one which receives and acts or
dispatches on the program's input. See also driver.
Node:mainframe, Next:management, Previous:main loop, Up:= M =
mainframe n.
Term originally referring to the cabinet containing the
central processor unit or `main frame' of a room-filling Stone Age batch machine. After the
emergence of smaller `minicomputer' designs in the early 1970s,
the traditional big iron
machines were described as `mainframe computers' and eventually
just as mainframes. The term carries the connotation of a machine
designed for batch rather than interactive use, though possibly
with an interactive timesharing operating system retrofitted onto
it; it is especially used of machines built by IBM, Unisys, and
the other great dinosaurs
surviving from computing's Stone
Age.
It has been common wisdom among hackers since the late 1980s
that the mainframe architectural tradition is essentially dead
(outside of the tiny market for number-crunching supercomputers (see
cray)), having been swamped by the
recent huge advances in IC technology and low-cost personal
computing. The wave of failures, takeovers, and mergers among
traditional mainframe makers in the early 1990s bore this out.
The biggest mainframer of all, IBM, was compelled to re-invent
itself as a huge systems-consulting house. (See dinosaurs mating and killer micro).
Node:management, Next:mandelbug, Previous:mainframe, Up:= M =
management n.
1. Corporate power elites distinguished primarily by their
distance from actual productive work and their chronic failure to
manage (see also suit). Spoken
derisively, as in "Management decided that
...". 2. Mythically, a vast bureaucracy
responsible for all the world's minor irritations. Hackers'
satirical public notices are often signed `The Mgt'; this derives
from the "Illuminatus" novels (see the Bibliography in Appendix C).
Node:mandelbug, Next:manged, Previous:management, Up:= M =
mandelbug /man'del-buhg/ n.
[from the Mandelbrot set] A bug whose underlying causes are so
complex and obscure as to make its behavior appear chaotic or
even non-deterministic. This term implies that the speaker thinks
it is a Bohr bug, rather than a
heisenbug. See also schroedinbug.
Node:manged, Next:mangle, Previous:mandelbug, Up:= M =
manged /mahnjd/ n.
[probably from the French `manger' or Italian `mangiare', to
eat; perhaps influenced by English `mange', `mangy'] adj. Refers
to anything that is mangled or damaged, usually beyond repair.
"The disk was manged after the electrical storm." Compare mung.
Node:mangle, Next:mangled name, Previous:manged, Up:=
M =
mangle vt.
1. Used similarly to mung or scribble, but more violent in its
connotations; something that is mangled has been irreversibly and
totally trashed. 2. To produce the mangled name corresponding to a C++
declaration.
Node:mangled name, Next:mangler, Previous:mangle, Up:=
M =
mangled name n.
A name, appearing in a C++ object file, that is a coded
representation of the object declaration as it appears in the
source. Mangled names are used because C++ allows multiple
objects to have the same name, as long as they are
distinguishable in some other way, such as by having different
parameter types. Thus, the internal name must have that
additional information embedded in it, using the limited
character set allowed by most linkers. For instance, one popular
compiler encodes the standard library function declaration
"memchr(const void*,int,unsigned int)" as "@memchr$qpxviui".
Node:mangler, Next:manularity, Previous:mangled name, Up:= M =
mangler n.
[DEC] A manager. Compare management. Note that system mangler is somewhat different
in connotation.
Node:manularity, Next:marbles, Previous:mangler, Up:= M
=
manularity /man`yoo-la'ri-tee/ n.
[prob. fr. techspeak `manual' + `granularity'] A notional
measure of the manual labor required for some task, particularly
one of the sort that automation is supposed to eliminate.
"Composing English on paper has much higher manularity than using
a text editor, especially in the revising stage." Hackers tend to
consider manularity a symptom of primitive methods; in fact, a
true hacker confronted with an apparent requirement to do a
computing task by hand will
inevitably seize the opportunity to build another tool (see toolsmith).
Node:marbles, Next:marginal, Previous:manularity, Up:= M =
marbles pl.n.
[from mainstream "lost all his/her marbles"] The minimum
needed to build your way further up some hierarchy of tools or
abstractions. After a bad system crash, you need to determine if
the machine has enough marbles to come up on its own, or enough
marbles to allow a rebuild from backups, or if you need to
rebuild from scratch. "This compiler doesn't even have enough
marbles to compile hello
world."
Node:marginal, Next:Marginal Hacks, Previous:marbles, Up:= M =
marginal adj.
[common] 1. [techspeak] An extremely small change. "A marginal
increase in core can decrease GC time drastically." In everyday terms, this
means that it is a lot easier to clean off your desk if you have
a spare place to put some of the junk while you sort through it.
2. Of little merit. "This proposed new feature seems rather
marginal to me." 3. Of extremely small probability of winning. "The power supply was rather marginal
anyway; no wonder it fried."
Node:Marginal Hacks, Next:marginally, Previous:marginal, Up:= M =
Marginal Hacks n.
Margaret Jacks Hall, a building into which the Stanford AI Lab
was moved near the beginning of the 1980s (from the D. C. Power Lab).
Node:marginally, Next:marketroid, Previous:Marginal Hacks, Up:= M =
marginally adv.
Slightly. "The ravs here are only marginally better than at
Small Eating Place." See epsilon.
Node:marketroid, Next:Mars, Previous:marginally, Up:= M =
marketroid /mar'k*-troyd/ n.
alt. `marketing slime', `marketeer', `marketing droid',
`marketdroid'. A member of a company's marketing department, esp.
one who promises users that the next version of a product will
have features that are not actually scheduled for inclusion, are
extremely difficult to implement, and/or are in violation of the
laws of physics; and/or one who describes existing features (and
misfeatures) in ebullient, buzzword-laden adspeak. Derogatory.
Compare droid.
Node:Mars, Next:martian, Previous:marketroid, Up:= M =
Mars n.
A legendary tragic failure, the archetypal Hacker Dream Gone
Wrong. Mars was the code name for a family of PDP-10 compatible
computers built by Systems Concepts (now, The SC Group): the
multi-processor SC-30M, the small uniprocessor SC-25M, and the
never-built superprocessor SC-40M. These machines were marvels of
engineering design; although not much slower than the unique
Foonly F-1, they were physically
smaller and consumed less power than the much slower DEC KS10 or Foonly F-2, F-3, or F-4 machines. They
were also completely compatible with the DEC KL10, and ran all
KL10 binaries (including the operating system) with no
modifications at about 2-3 times faster than a KL10.
When DEC cancelled the Jupiter project in 1983, Systems
Concepts should have made a bundle selling their machine into
shops with a lot of software investment in PDP-10s, and in fact
their spring 1984 announcement generated a great deal of
excitement in the PDP-10 world. TOPS-10 was running on the Mars
by the summer of 1984, and TOPS-20 by early fall. Unfortunately,
the hackers running Systems Concepts were much better at
designing machines than at mass producing or selling them; the
company allowed itself to be sidetracked by a bout of
perfectionism into continually improving the design, and lost
credibility as delivery dates continued to slip. They also
overpriced the product ridiculously; they believed they were
competing with the KL10 and VAX 8600 and failed to reckon with
the likes of Sun Microsystems and other hungry startups building
workstations with power comparable to the KL10 at a fraction of
the price. By the time SC shipped the first SC-30M to Stanford in
late 1985, most customers had already made the traumatic decision
to abandon the PDP-10, usually for VMS or Unix boxes. Most of the
Mars computers built ended up being purchased by CompuServe.
This tale and the related saga of Foonly hold a lesson for hackers: if you want
to play in the Real World, you
need to learn Real World moves.
Node:martian, Next:massage, Previous:Mars, Up:= M =
martian n.
A packet sent on a TCP/IP network with a source address of the
test loopback interface [127.0.0.1]. This means that it will come
back labeled with a source address that is clearly not of this
earth. "The domain server is getting lots of packets from Mars.
Does that gateway have a martian filter?" Compare Christmas tree packet, Godzillagram.
Node:massage, Next:math-out, Previous:martian, Up:= M
=
massage vt.
[common] Vague term used to describe `smooth' transformations
of a data set into a different form, esp. transformations that do
not lose information. Connotes less pain than munch or crunch.
"He wrote a program that massages X bitmap files into GIF
format." Compare slurp.
Node:math-out, Next:Matrix, Previous:massage, Up:= M
=
math-out n.
[poss. from `white-out' (the blizzard variety)] A paper or
presentation so encrusted with mathematical or other formal
notation as to be incomprehensible. This may be a device for
concealing the fact that it is actually content-free. See also numbers, social science number.
Node:Matrix, Next:maximum Maytag mode, Previous:math-out, Up:= M =
Matrix n.
[FidoNet] 1. What the Opus BBS software and sysops call FidoNet. 2. Fanciful term for a cyberspace expected to emerge from
current networking experiments (see the network). The name of the rather
good 1999 cypherpunk movie "The
Matrix" played on this sense, which however had been established
for years before. 3. The totality of present-day computer
networks (popularized in this sense by John Quarterman; rare
outside academic literature).
Node:maximum Maytag mode,
Next:meatspace, Previous:Matrix, Up:= M =
maximum Maytag mode n.
What a washing machine
or, by extension, any disk drive is in when it's being used so
heavily that it's shaking like an old Maytag with an unbalanced
load. If prolonged for any length of time, can lead to disks
becoming walking drives.
In 1999 it's been some years since hard disks were large enough
to do this, but the same phenomenon has recently been reported
with 24X CD-ROM drives.
Node:meatspace, Next:meatware, Previous:maximum Maytag mode, Up:= M =
meatspace /meet'spays/ n.
The physical world, where the meat lives - as opposed to cyberspace. Hackers are actually more
willing to use this term than `cyberspace', because it's not
speculative - we already have a running meatspace implementation
(the universe). Compare RL.
Node:meatware, Next:meeces, Previous:meatspace, Up:= M =
meatware n.
Synonym for wetware. Less
common.
Node:meeces, Next:meg, Previous:meatware, Up:=
M =
meeces /mees'*z/ n.
[TMRC] Occasional furry visitors who are not urchins. [That is, mice. This may no longer be
in live use; it clearly derives from the refrain of the
early-1960s cartoon character Mr. Jinx: "I hate meeces to
pieces!" -- ESR]
Node:meg, Next:mega-, Previous:meeces, Up:= M
=
meg /meg/ n.
See quantifiers.
Node:mega-, Next:megapenny, Previous:meg, Up:= M =
mega- /me'g*/ pref.
[SI] See quantifiers.
Node:megapenny, Next:MEGO, Previous:mega-, Up:= M
=
megapenny /meg'*-pen`ee/ n.
$10,000 (1 cent * 10^6). Used semi-humorously as a unit in
comparing computer cost and performance figures.
Node:MEGO, Next:meltdown network, Previous:megapenny, Up:= M =
MEGO /me'goh/ or /mee'goh/
[`My Eyes Glaze Over', often `Mine Eyes Glazeth (sic) Over',
attributed to the futurologist Herman Kahn] Also `MEGO factor'.
1. n. A handwave intended to
confuse the listener and hopefully induce agreement because the
listener does not want to admit to not understanding what is
going on. MEGO is usually directed at senior management by
engineers and contains a high proportion of TLAs. 2. excl. An appropriate response to MEGO
tactics. 3. Among non-hackers, often refers not to behavior that
causes the eyes to glaze, but to the eye-glazing reaction itself,
which may be triggered by the mere threat of technical detail as
effectively as by an actual excess of it.
Node:meltdown network, Next:meme, Previous:MEGO, Up:= M
=
meltdown, network n.
See network
meltdown.
Node:meme, Next:meme plague, Previous:meltdown network, Up:= M =
meme /meem/ n.
[coined by analogy with `gene', by Richard Dawkins] An idea
considered as a replicator, esp.
with the connotation that memes parasitize people into
propagating them much as viruses do. Used esp. in the phrase
`meme complex' denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that
form an organized belief system, such as a religion. This lexicon
is an (epidemiological) vector of the `hacker subculture' meme
complex; each entry might be considered a meme. However, `meme'
is often misused to mean `meme complex'. Use of the term connotes
acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool-
and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of
adaptive ideas has superseded biological evolution by selection
of hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for
tolerably obvious reasons.
Node:meme plague, Next:memetics, Previous:meme, Up:= M =
meme plague n.
The spread of a successful but pernicious meme, esp. one that parasitizes the victims into
giving their all to propagate it. Astrology, BASIC, and the other
guy's religion are often considered to be examples. This usage is
given point by the historical fact that `joiner' ideologies like
Naziism or various forms of millennarian Christianity have
exhibited plague-like cycles of exponential growth followed by
collapses to small reservoir populations.
Node:memetics, Next:memory farts, Previous:meme plague, Up:= M =
memetics /me-met'iks/ n.
[from meme] The study of memes. As
of early 1999, this is still an extremely informal and
speculative endeavor, though the first steps towards at least
statistical rigor have been made by H. Keith Henson and others.
Memetics is a popular topic for speculation among hackers, who
like to see themselves as the architects of the new information
ecologies in which memes live and replicate.
Node:memory farts, Next:memory leak, Previous:memetics, Up:= M =
memory farts n.
The flatulent sounds that some DOS box BIOSes (most notably
AMI's) make when checking memory on bootup.
Node:memory leak, Next:memory smash, Previous:memory farts, Up:= M =
memory leak n.
An error in a program's dynamic-store allocation logic that
causes it to fail to reclaim discarded memory, leading to
eventual collapse due to memory exhaustion. Also (esp. at CMU)
called core leak. These
problems were severe on older machines with small, fixed-size
address spaces, and special "leak detection" tools were commonly
written to root them out. With the advent of virtual memory, it
is unfortunately easier to be sloppy about wasting a bit of
memory (although when you run out of memory on a VM machine, it
means you've got a real leak!). See aliasing bug, fandango on core, smash the stack, precedence lossage, overrun screw, leaky heap, leak.
Node:memory smash, Next:menuitis, Previous:memory leak, Up:= M =
memory smash n.
[XEROX PARC] Writing through a pointer that doesn't point to
what you think it does. This occasionally reduces your machine to
a rubble of bits. Note that this is subtly different from (and
more general than) related terms such as a memory leak or fandango on core because it
doesn't imply an allocation error or overrun condition.
Node:menuitis, Next:mess-dos, Previous:memory smash, Up:= M =
menuitis /men`yoo-i:'tis/ n.
Notional disease suffered by software with an obsessively
simple-minded menu interface and no escape. Hackers find this
intensely irritating and much prefer the flexibility of
command-line or language-style interfaces, especially those
customizable via macros or a special-purpose language in which
one can encode useful hacks. See user-obsequious, drool-proof paper, WIMP environment, for the rest of us.
Node:mess-dos, Next:meta, Previous:menuitis, Up:=
M =
mess-dos /mes-dos/ n.
[semi-obsolescent now that DOS is] Derisory term for MS-DOS.
Often followed by the ritual banishing "Just say No!" See MS-DOS. Most hackers (even many MS-DOS
hackers) loathed MS-DOS for its single-tasking nature, its limits
on application size, its nasty primitive interface, and its ties
to IBMness and Microsoftness (see fear and loathing). Also
`mess-loss', `messy-dos', `mess-dog', `mess-dross', `mush-dos',
and various combinations thereof. In Ireland and the U.K. it is
even sometimes called `Domestos' after a brand of toilet
cleanser.
Node:meta, Next:meta bit, Previous:mess-dos, Up:=
M =
meta /me't*/ or /may't*/ or (Commonwealth) /mee't*/
adj.,pref.
[from analytic philosophy] One level of description up. A
metasyntactic variable is a variable in notation used to describe
syntax, and meta-language is language used to describe language.
This is difficult to explain briefly, but much hacker humor turns
on deliberate confusion between meta-levels. See hacker humor.
Node:meta bit, Next:metasyntactic variable,
Previous:meta, Up:= M =
meta bit n.
The top bit of an 8-bit character, which is on in character
values 128-255. Also called high
bit, alt bit, or (rarely)
hobbit. Some terminals and consoles
(see space-cadet
keyboard) have a META shift key. Others (including,
mirabile dictu, keyboards on IBM PC-class machines) have
an ALT key. See also bucky
bits.
Historical note: although in modern usage shaped by a universe
of 8-bit bytes the meta bit is invariably hex 80 (octal 0200),
things were different on earlier machines with 36-bit words and
9-bit bytes. The MIT and Stanford keyboards (see space-cadet keyboard) generated
hex 100 (octal 400) from their meta keys.
Node:metasyntactic
variable, Next:MFTL,
Previous:meta bit, Up:= M =
metasyntactic variable n.
A name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever
thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of
things under discussion. The word foo
is the canonical example. To
avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use `foo' or
other words like it as permanent names for anything. In
filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning
with a metasyntactic-variable name is a scratch file that may be deleted at any
time.
Metasyntactic variables are so called because (1) they are
variables in the metalanguage used to talk about programs etc;
(2) they are variables whose values are often variables (as in
usages usages like "the value of f(foo,bar) is the sum of foo and
bar"). However, it has been plausibly suggested that the real
reason for the term "metasyntactic variable" is that it sounds
good.
To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic
variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series
(used for related groups of variables or objects) and as
singletons. Here are a few common signatures:
foo, bar,
baz, quux,
quuux, quuuux...:
MIT/Stanford usage, now found everywhere (thanks largely to
early versions of this lexicon!). At MIT (but not at Stanford),
baz dropped out of use for a while in
the 1970s and '80s. A common recent mutation of this sequence
inserts qux before quux.
bazola, ztesch:
Stanford (from mid-'70s on).
foo, bar,
thud, grunt:
This series was popular at CMU. Other CMU-associated
variables include gorp.
foo, bar,
fum:
This series is reported to be common at XEROX PARC.
fred, jim, sheila, barney:
See the entry for fred. These tend
to be Britishisms.
corge, grault, flarp:
Popular at Rutgers University and among GOSMACS hackers.
zxc, spqr, wombat:
Cambridge University (England).
shme
Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short
/e/.
foo, bar, baz, bongo
Yale, late 1970s.
spam
Python programmers.
snork
Brown University, early 1970s.
foo, bar,
zot
Helsinki University of Technology, Finland.
blarg, wibble
New Zealand.
toto, titi, tata, tutu
France.
pippo, pluto, paperino
Italy. Pippo /pee'po/ and Paperino /pa-per-ee'-no/ are the
Italian names for Goofy and Donald Duck.
aap, noot, mies
The Netherlands. These are the first words a child used to
learn to spell on a Dutch spelling board.
oogle, foogle, boogle; zork, gork, bork
These two series (which may be continued with other initial
consonents) are reportedly common in England, and said to go back
to Lewis Carroll.
Of all these, only `foo' and `bar' are universal (and baz nearly so). The compounds foobar and `foobaz' also enjoy very wide
currency.
Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; barf and mumble, for example. See also Commonwealth Hackish for
discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great
Britain and the Commonwealth.
Node:MFTL, Next:mickey, Previous:metasyntactic variable, Up:= M =
MFTL /M-F-T-L/
[abbreviation: `My Favorite Toy Language'] 1. adj. Describes a
talk on a programming language design that is heavy on the syntax
(with lots of BNF), sometimes even talks about semantics (e.g.,
type systems), but rarely, if ever, has any content (see content-free). More broadly applied
to talks -- even when the topic is not a programming language --
in which the subject matter is gone into in unnecessary and
meticulous detail at the sacrifice of any conceptual content.
"Well, it was a typical MFTL talk". 2. n. Describes a language
about which the developers are passionate (often to the point of
proselytic zeal) but no one else cares about. Applied to the
language by those outside the originating group. "He cornered me
about type resolution in his MFTL."
The first great goal in the mind of the designer of an MFTL is
usually to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design
away from contamination by lesser languages by writing a compiler
for it in itself. Thus, the standard put-down question at an MFTL
talk is "Has it been used for anything besides its own compiler?"
On the other hand, a (compiled) language that cannot even be used
to write its own compiler is beneath contempt. (The qualification
has become necessary because of the increasing popularity of
interpreted languages like Perl and
Python. See break-even point.
(On a related note, Doug McIlroy once proposed a test of the
generality and utility of a language and the operating system
under which it is compiled: "Is the output of a FORTRAN program
acceptable as input to the FORTRAN compiler?" In other words, can
you write programs that write programs? (See toolsmith.) Alarming numbers of (language,
OS) pairs fail this test, particularly when the language is
FORTRAN; aficionados are quick to point out that Unix (even using FORTRAN) passes it handily. That
the test could ever be failed is only surprising to those who
have had the good fortune to have worked only under modern
systems which lack OS-supported and -imposed "file types".)
Node:mickey, Next:mickey mouse program, Previous:MFTL, Up:= M =
mickey n.
The resolution unit of mouse movement. It has been suggested
that the `disney' will become a benchmark unit for animation
graphics performance.
Node:mickey mouse program,
Next:micro-, Previous:mickey, Up:= M =
mickey mouse program n.
North American equivalent of a noddy (that is, trivial) program. Doesn't
necessarily have the belittling connotations of mainstream slang
"Oh, that's just mickey mouse stuff!"; sometimes trivial programs
can be very useful.
Node:micro-, Next:MicroDroid, Previous:mickey mouse program, Up:= M =
micro- pref.
1. Very small; this is the root of its use as a quantifier
prefix. 2. A quantifier prefix, calling for multiplication by
10^(-6) (see quantifiers).
Neither of these uses is peculiar to hackers, but hackers tend to
fling them both around rather more freely than is countenanced in
standard English. It is recorded, for example, that one CS
professor used to characterize the standard length of his
lectures as a microcentury -- that is, about 52.6 minutes (see
also attoparsec, nanoacre, and especially microfortnight). 3. Personal or
human-scale -- that is, capable of being maintained or
comprehended or manipulated by one human being. This sense is
generalized from `microcomputer', and is esp. used in contrast
with `macro-' (the corresponding Greek prefix meaning `large').
4. Local as opposed to global (or macro-). Thus a hacker might say that buying a
smaller car to reduce pollution only solves a microproblem; the
macroproblem of getting to work might be better solved by using
mass transit, moving to within walking distance, or (best of all)
telecommuting.
Node:MicroDroid, Next:microfloppies, Previous:micro-, Up:= M =
MicroDroid n.
[Usenet] A Microsoft employee, esp. one who posts to various
operating-system advocacy newsgroups. MicroDroids post follow-ups
to any messages critical of Microsoft's operating systems, and
often end up sounding like visiting fundamentalist missionaries.
See also astroturfing; compare
microserf.
Node:microfloppies, Next:microfortnight, Previous:MicroDroid, Up:= M =
microfloppies n.
3.5-inch floppies, as opposed to 5.25-inch vanilla or mini-floppies and the now-obsolete
8-inch variety. This term may be headed for obsolescence as
5.25-inchers pass out of use, only to be revived if anybody
floats a sub-3-inch floppy standard. See stiffy, minifloppies.
Node:microfortnight, Next:microLenat, Previous:microfloppies, Up:= M =
microfortnight n.
1/1000000 of the fundamental unit of time in the
Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight system of measurement; 1.2096 sec. (A
furlong is 1/8th of a mile; a firkin is 1/4th of a barrel; the
mass unit of the system is taken to be a firkin of water). The
VMS operating system has a lot of tuning parameters that you can
set with the SYSGEN utility, and one of these is TIMEPROMPTWAIT,
the time the system will wait for an operator to set the correct
date and time at boot if it realizes that the current value is
bogus. This time is specified in microfortnights!
Multiple uses of the millifortnight (about 20 minutes) and
nanofortnight have also been
reported.
Node:microLenat, Next:microReid, Previous:microfortnight, Up:= M =
microLenat /mi:`-kroh-len'-*t/ n.
The unit of bogosity. consensus
is that this is the largest unit practical for everyday use. The
microLenat, originally invented by David Jefferson, was
promulgated as an attack against noted computer scientist Doug
Lenat by a tenured
graduate student at CMU. Doug had failed the student on
an important exam because the student gave only "AI is bogus" as
his answer to the questions. The slur is generally considered
unmerited, but it has become a running gag nevertheless. Some of
Doug's friends argue that of course a microLenat is
bogus, since it is only one millionth of a Lenat. Others have
suggested that the unit should be redesignated after the grad
student, as the microReid.
Node:microReid, Next:microserf, Previous:microLenat, Up:= M =
microReid /mi:'kroh-reed/ n.
See microLenat.
Node:microserf, Next:Microsloth Windows, Previous:microReid, Up:= M =
microserf /mi:'kro-s*rf/
[popularized, though not originated, by Douglas Copeland's
book "Microserfs"] A programmer at Microsoft, especially a low-level coder with
little chance of fame or fortune. Compare MicroDroid.
Node:Microsloth Windows,
Next:Microsoft, Previous:microserf, Up:= M =
Microsloth Windows /mi:'kroh-sloth` win'dohz/ n.
(Variants combine {Microshift, Macroshaft, Microsuck} with
{Windoze, WinDOS}. Hackerism(s) for `Microsoft Windows'. A
thirty-two bit extension and graphical shell to a sixteen bit
patch to an eight bit operating system originally coded for a
four bit microprocessor which was written by a two-bit company
that can't stand one bit of competition. Also just called
`Windoze', with the implication that you can fall asleep waiting
for it to do anything; the latter term is extremely common on
Usenet. See Black
Screen of Death and Blue Screen of Death;
compare X, sun-stools.
Node:Microsoft, Next:micros~1, Previous:Microsloth Windows, Up:= M =
Microsoft
The new Evil Empire (the
old one was IBM). The basic complaints
are, as formerly with IBM, that (a) their system designs are
horrible botches, (b) we can't get source to fix them, and (c) they throw their
weight around a lot. See also Halloween Documents.
Node:micros~1, Next:middle-endian, Previous:Microsoft, Up:= M =
micros~1
An abbreviation of the full name Microsoft resembling the rather bogus way Windows 9x's VFAT filesystem truncates
long file names to fit in the MS-DOS 8+3 scheme (the real
filename is stored elsewhere). If other files start with the same
prefix, they'll be called micros~2 and so on, causing lots of
problems with backups and other routine system-administration
problems. During the US Antitrust trial against Microsoft the
names Micros~1 ans Micros~2 were suggested for the two companies
that would exist after a break-up.
Node:middle-endian, Next:middle-out
implementation, Previous:micros~1, Up:= M =
middle-endian adj.
Not big-endian or little-endian. Used of perverse byte
orders such as 3-4-1-2 or 2-1-4-3, occasionally found in the
packed-decimal formats of minicomputer manufacturers who shall
remain nameless. See NUXI
problem. Non-US hackers use this term to describe the
American mm/dd/yy style of writing dates (Europeans write
little-endian dd/mm/yy, and Japanese use big-endian yy/mm/dd for
Western dates).
Node:middle-out
implementation, Next:milliLampson, Previous:middle-endian, Up:= M =
middle-out implementation
See bottom-up
implementation.
Node:milliLampson, Next:minifloppies, Previous:middle-out
implementation, Up:= M
=
milliLampson /mil'*-lamp`sn/ n.
A unit of talking speed, abbreviated mL. Most people run about
200 milliLampsons. The eponymous Butler Lampson (a CS theorist
and systems implementor highly regarded among hackers) goes at
1000. A few people speak faster. This unit is sometimes used to
compare the (sometimes widely disparate) rates at which people
can generate ideas and actually emit them in speech. For example,
noted computer architect C. Gordon Bell (designer of the PDP-11)
is said, with some awe, to think at about 1200 mL but only talk
at about 300; he is frequently reduced to fragments of sentences
as his mouth tries to keep up with his speeding brain.
Node:minifloppies, Next:MIPS, Previous:milliLampson, Up:= M =
minifloppies n.,obs.
5.25-inch floppy disks, as opposed to 3.5-inch or microfloppies and the long-obsolescent
8-inch variety (if there is ever a smaller size, they will
undoubtedly be tagged `nanofloppies'). At one time, this term was
a trademark of Shugart Associates for their SA-400 minifloppy
drive. Nobody paid any attention. See stiffy.
Node:MIPS, Next:misbug, Previous:minifloppies, Up:= M =
MIPS /mips/ n.
[abbreviation] 1. A measure of computing speed; formally,
`Million Instructions Per Second' (that's 10^6 per second, not
2^(20)!); often rendered by hackers as `Meaningless Indication of
Processor Speed' or in other unflattering ways, such as
`Meaningless Information Provided by Salesmen'. This joke
expresses an attitude nearly universal among hackers about the
value of most benchmark claims,
said attitude being one of the great cultural divides between
hackers and marketroids (see
also BogoMIPS). The singular is
sometimes `1 MIP' even though this is clearly etymologically
wrong. See also KIPS and GIPS. 2. Computers, especially large computers,
considered abstractly as sources of computrons. "This is just a workstation; the
heavy MIPS are hidden in the basement." 3. The corporate name of
a particular RISC-chip company; among other things, they designed
the processor chips used in DEC's 3100
workstation series. 4. Acronym for `Meaningless Information per
Second' (a joke, prob. from sense 1).
Node:misbug, Next:misfeature, Previous:MIPS, Up:= M =
misbug /mis-buhg/ n.
[MIT; rare (like its referent)] An unintended property of a
program that turns out to be useful; something that should have
been a bug but turns out to be a feature. Compare green lightning. See miswart.
Node:misfeature, Next:Missed'em-five, Previous:misbug, Up:= M =
misfeature /mis-fee'chr/ or /mis'fee`chr/ n.
[common] A feature that eventually causes lossage, possibly
because it is not adequate for a new situation that has evolved.
Since it results from a deliberate and properly implemented
feature, a misfeature is not a bug. Nor is it a simple unforeseen
side effect; the term implies that the feature in question was
carefully planned, but its long-term consequences were not
accurately or adequately predicted (which is quite different from
not having thought ahead at all). A misfeature can be a
particularly stubborn problem to resolve, because fixing it
usually involves a substantial philosophical change to the
structure of the system involved.
Many misfeatures (especially in user-interface design) arise
because the designers/implementors mistake their personal tastes
for laws of nature. Often a former feature becomes a misfeature
because trade-offs were made whose parameters subsequently change
(possibly only in the judgment of the implementors). "Well, yeah,
it is kind of a misfeature that file names are limited to six
characters, but the original implementors wanted to save
directory space and we're stuck with it for now."
Node:Missed'em-five, Next:missile address, Previous:misfeature, Up:= M =
Missed'em-five n.
Pejorative hackerism for AT&T System V Unix, generally
used by BSD partisans in a bigoted
mood. (The synonym `SysVile' is also encountered.) See software bloat, Berzerkeley.
Node:missile address, Next:miswart, Previous:Missed'em-five, Up:= M =
missile address n.
See ICBM address.
Node:miswart, Next:MMF, Previous:missile address, Up:= M =
miswart /mis-wort/ n.
[from wart by analogy with misbug] A feature that superficially appears to be a
wart but has been determined to be the
Right Thing. For example, in
some versions of the EMACS text
editor, the `transpose characters' command exchanges the
character under the cursor with the one before it on the screen,
except when the cursor is at the end of a line, in which
case the two characters before the cursor are exchanged. While
this behavior is perhaps surprising, and certainly inconsistent,
it has been found through extensive experimentation to be what
most users want. This feature is a miswart.
Node:MMF, Next:mobo, Previous:miswart, Up:= M
=
MMF //
[Usenet; common] Abbreviation: "Make Money Fast". Refers to
any kind of scheme which promises participants large profits with
little or no risk or effort. Typically, it is a some kind of
multi-level marketing operation which involves recruiting more
members, or an illegal pyramid scam. The term is also used to
refer to any kind of spam which promotes this. For more
information, see the Make Money Fast Myth
Page.
Node:mobo, Next:moby, Previous:MMF,
Up:= M =
mobo /moh'bo/
Written and (rarely) spoken contraction of "motherboard"
Node:moby, Next:mockingbird, Previous:mobo, Up:= M =
moby /moh'bee/
[MIT: seems to have been in use among model railroad fans
years ago. Derived from Melville's "Moby Dick" (some say from
`Moby Pickle'). Now common.] 1. adj. Large, immense, complex,
impressive. "A Saturn V rocket is a truly moby frob." "Some MIT
undergrads pulled off a moby hack at the Harvard-Yale game." (See
Appendix A for discussion.) 2.
n. obs. The maximum address space of a machine (see below). For a
680[234]0 or VAX or most modern 32-bit architectures, it is
4,294,967,296 8-bit bytes (4 gigabytes). 3. A title of address
(never of third-person reference), usually used to show
admiration, respect, and/or friendliness to a competent hacker.
"Greetings, moby Dave. How's that address-book thing for the Mac
going?" 4. adj. In backgammon, doubles on the dice, as in `moby
sixes', `moby ones', etc. Compare this with bignum (sense 3): double sixes are both bignums
and moby sixes, but moby ones are not bignums (the use of `moby'
to describe double ones is sarcastic). Standard emphatic forms:
`Moby foo', `moby win', `moby loss'. `Foby moo': a spoonerism due
to Richard Greenblatt. 5. The largest available unit of something
which is available in discrete increments. Thus, ordering a "moby
Coke" at the local fast-food joint is not just a request for a
large Coke, it's an explicit request for the largest size they
sell.
This term entered hackerdom with the Fabritek 256K memory
added to the MIT AI PDP-6 machine, which was considered
unimaginably huge when it was installed in the 1960s (at a time
when a more typical memory size for a timesharing system was 72
kilobytes). Thus, a moby is classically 256K 36-bit words, the
size of a PDP-6 or PDP-10 moby. Back when address registers were
narrow the term was more generally useful, because when a
computer had virtual memory mapping, it might actually have more
physical memory attached to it than any one program could access
directly. One could then say "This computer has 6 mobies" meaning
that the ratio of physical memory to address space is 6, without
having to say specifically how much memory there actually is.
That in turn implied that the computer could timeshare six
`full-sized' programs without having to swap programs between
memory and disk.
Nowadays the low cost of processor logic means that address
spaces are usually larger than the most physical memory you can
cram onto a machine, so most systems have much less than
one theoretical `native' moby of core.
Also, more modern memory-management techniques (esp. paging) make
the `moby count' less significant. However, there is one series
of widely-used chips for which the term could stand to be revived
-- the Intel 8088 and 80286 with their incredibly brain-damaged segmented-memory designs.
On these, a `moby' would be the 1-megabyte address span of a
segment/offset pair (by coincidence, a PDP-10 moby was exactly 1
megabyte of 9-bit bytes).
Node:mockingbird, Next:mod, Previous:moby, Up:= M =
mockingbird n.
Software that intercepts communications (especially login
transactions) between users and hosts and provides system-like
responses to the users while saving their responses (especially
account IDs and passwords). A special case of Trojan horse.
Node:mod, Next:mode, Previous:mockingbird, Up:= M =
mod vt.,n.
[very common] 1. Short for `modify' or `modification'. Very
commonly used -- in fact the full terms are considered markers
that one is being formal. The plural `mods' is used esp. with
reference to bug fixes or minor design changes in hardware or
software, most esp. with respect to patch sets or a diff.
2. Short for modulo but used
only for its techspeak sense.
Node:mode, Next:mode bit, Previous:mod, Up:= M =
mode n.
[common] A general state, usually used with an adjective
describing the state. Use of the word `mode' rather than `state'
implies that the state is extended over time, and probably also
that some activity characteristic of that state is being carried
out. "No time to hack; I'm in thesis mode." In its jargon sense,
`mode' is most often attributed to people, though it is sometimes
applied to programs and inanimate objects. In particular, see
hack mode, day mode, night
mode, demo mode, fireworks mode, and yoyo mode; also talk mode.
One also often hears the verbs `enable' and `disable' used in
connection with jargon modes. Thus, for example, a sillier way of
saying "I'm going to crash" is "I'm going to enable crash mode
now". One might also hear a request to "disable flame mode,
please".
In a usage much closer to techspeak, a mode is a special state
that certain user interfaces must pass into in order to perform
certain functions. For example, in order to insert characters
into a document in the Unix editor vi, one must type
the "i" key, which invokes the "Insert" command. The effect of
this command is to put vi into "insert mode", in which typing the
"i" key has a quite different effect (to wit, it inserts an "i"
into the document). One must then hit another special key, "ESC",
in order to leave "insert mode". Nowadays, modeful interfaces are
generally considered losing but
survive in quite a few widely used tools built in less
enlightened times.
Node:mode bit, Next:modulo, Previous:mode, Up:= M =
mode bit n.
[common] A flag, usually in
hardware, that selects between two (usually quite different)
modes of operation. The connotations are different from flag bit in that mode bits are mainly
written during a boot or set-up phase, are seldom explicitly
read, and seldom change over the lifetime of an ordinary program.
The classic example was the EBCDIC-vs.-ASCII bit (#12) of the
Program Status Word of the IBM 360.
Node:modulo, Next:molly-guard, Previous:mode bit, Up:= M =
modulo /mod'yu-loh/ prep.
Except for. An overgeneralization of mathematical terminology;
one can consider saying that 4 equals 22 except for the 9s (4 =
22 mod 9). "Well, LISP seems to work okay now, modulo that GC bug." "I feel fine today modulo a slight
headache."
Node:molly-guard, Next:Mongolian Hordes
technique, Previous:modulo, Up:= M
=
molly-guard /mol'ee-gard/ n.
[University of Illinois] A shield to prevent tripping of some
Big Red Switch by clumsy
or ignorant hands. Originally used of the plexiglass covers
improvised for the BRS on an IBM 4341 after a programmer's
toddler daughter (named Molly) frobbed it twice in one day. Later
generalized to covers over stop/reset switches on disk drives and
networking equipment. In hardware catalogues, you'll see the much
less interesting description "guarded button".
Node:Mongolian Hordes
technique, Next:monkey
up, Previous:molly-guard, Up:= M =
Mongolian Hordes technique n.
[poss. from the Sixties counterculture expression `Mongolian
clusterfuck' for a public orgy] Development by gang bang. Implies that large numbers of
inexperienced programmers are being put on a job better performed
by a few skilled ones (but see bazaar). Also called `Chinese Army technique';
see also Brooks's Law.
Node:monkey up, Next:monkey scratch, Previous:Mongolian
Hordes technique, Up:= M
=
monkey up vt.
To hack together hardware for a particular task, especially a
one-shot job. Connotes an extremely crufty and consciously temporary solution.
Compare hack up, kluge up, cruft together.
Node:monkey scratch, Next:monstrosity, Previous:monkey up, Up:= M =
monkey, scratch n.
See scratch monkey.
Node:monstrosity, Next:monty, Previous:monkey scratch, Up:= M =
monstrosity
1. n. A ridiculously elephantine program or system, esp. one
that is buggy or only marginally functional. 2. adj. The quality
of being monstrous (see `Overgeneralization' in the discussion of
jargonification). See also baroque.
Node:monty, Next:Moof, Previous:monstrosity, Up:= M =
monty /mon'tee/ n.
1. [US Geological Survey] A program with a ludicrously complex
user interface written to perform extremely trivial tasks. An
example would be a menu-driven, button clicking, pulldown, pop-up
windows program for listing directories. The original monty was
an infamous weather-reporting program, Monty the Amazing Weather
Man, written at the USGS. Monty had a widget-packed X-window
interface with over 200 buttons; and all monty actually
did was FTP files off the
network. 2. [Great Britain; commonly capitalized as `Monty' or as
`the Full Monty'] 16 megabytes of memory, when fitted to an
IBM-PC or compatible. A standard PC-compatible using the AT- or
ISA-bus with a normal BIOS cannot access more than 16 megabytes
of RAM. Generally used of a PC, Unix workstation, etc. to mean
`fully populated with' memory, disk-space or some other desirable
resource. This usage may be related to a TV commercial for Del
Monte fruit juice, in which one of the characters insisted on
"the full Del Monte"; but see the World Wide Words article "The
Full Monty" for discussion of the rather complex etymology
that may lie behind this. Compare American moby.
Node:Moof, Next:Moore's Law, Previous:monty, Up:= M
=
Moof /moof/
[Macintosh users] 1. n. The call of a semi-legendary creature,
properly called the dogcow. (Some
previous versions of this entry claimed, incorrectly, that Moof
was the name of the creature.) 2. adj. Used to flag
software that's a hack, something untested and on the edge. On
one Apple CD-ROM, certain folders such as "Tools & Apps
(Moof!)" and "Development Platforms (Moof!)", are so marked to
indicate that they contain software not fully tested or
sanctioned by the powers that be. When you open these folders you
cross the boundary into hackerland. 3. v. On the Microsoft
Network, the term `moof' has gained popularity as a verb meaning
`to be suddenly disconnected by the system'. One might say "I got
moofed".
Node:Moore's Law, Next:moose call, Previous:Moof, Up:= M
=
Moore's Law /morz law/ prov.
The observation that the logic density of silicon integrated
circuits has closely followed the curve (bits per square inch) =
2^(t - 1962) where t is time in years; that is, the amount of
information storable on a given amount of silicon has roughly
doubled every year since the technology was invented. This
relation, first uttered in 1964 by semiconductor engineer Gordon
Moore (who co-founded Intel four years later) held until the late
1970s, at which point the doubling period slowed to 18 months.
The doubling period remained at that value through time of
writing (late 1999). Moore's Law is apparently self-fulfilling.
The implication is that somebody, somewhere is going to be able
to build a better chip than you if you rest on your laurels, so
you'd better start pushing hard on the problem. See also Parkinson's Law of
Data and Gates's
Law.
Node:moose call, Next:moria, Previous:Moore's Law, Up:= M =
moose call n.
See whalesong.
Node:moria, Next:MOTAS, Previous:moose call, Up:= M =
moria /mor'ee-*/ n.
Like nethack and rogue, one of the large PD
Dungeons-and-Dragons-like simulation games, available for a wide
range of machines and operating systems. The name is from
Tolkien's Mines of Moria; compare elder days, elvish. The game is extremely addictive and a
major consumer of time better used for hacking. See also nethack, rogue, Angband.
Node:MOTAS, Next:MOTOS, Previous:moria, Up:= M
=
MOTAS /moh-tahz/ n.
[Usenet: Member Of The Appropriate Sex, after MOTOS and MOTSS] A
potential or (less often) actual sex partner. See also SO.
Node:MOTOS, Next:MOTSS, Previous:MOTAS, Up:= M
=
MOTOS /moh-tohs/ n.
[acronym from the 1970 U.S. census forms via Usenet: Member Of
The Opposite Sex] A potential or (less often) actual sex partner.
See MOTAS, MOTSS, SO. Less common
than MOTSS or MOTAS, which has
largely displaced it.
Node:MOTSS, Next:mouse ahead, Previous:MOTOS, Up:= M
=
MOTSS /mots/ or /M-O-T-S-S/ n.
[from the 1970 U.S. census forms via Usenet] Member Of The
Same Sex, esp. one considered as a possible sexual partner. The
gay-issues newsgroup on Usenet is called _soc.motss_. See
MOTOS and MOTAS, which derive from it. See also SO.
Node:mouse ahead, Next:mouse around, Previous:MOTSS, Up:= M =
mouse ahead vi.
Point-and-click analog of `type ahead'. To manipulate a
computer's pointing device (almost always a mouse in this usage,
but not necessarily) and its selection or command buttons before
a computer program is ready to accept such input, in anticipation
of the program accepting the input. Handling this properly is
rare, but it can help make a WIMP environment much more usable,
assuming the users are familiar with the behavior of the user
interface.
Node:mouse around, Next:mouse belt, Previous:mouse ahead, Up:= M =
mouse around vi.
To explore public portions of a large system, esp. a network
such as Internet via FTP or TELNET, looking for interesting stuff to snarf.
Node:mouse belt, Next:mouse droppings, Previous:mouse around, Up:= M =
mouse belt n.
See rat belt.
Node:mouse droppings, Next:mouse elbow, Previous:mouse belt, Up:= M =
mouse droppings n.
[MS-DOS] Pixels (usually single) that are not properly
restored when the mouse pointer moves away from a particular
location on the screen, producing the appearance that the mouse
pointer has left droppings behind. The major causes for this
problem are programs that write to the screen memory
corresponding to the mouse pointer's current location without
hiding the mouse pointer first, and mouse drivers that do not
quite support the graphics mode in use.
Node:mouse elbow, Next:mouso, Previous:mouse droppings, Up:= M =
mouse elbow n.
A tennis-elbow-like fatigue syndrome resulting from excessive
use of a WIMP
environment. Similarly, `mouse shoulder'; GLS reports
that he used to get this a lot before he taught himself to be
ambimoustrous.
Node:mouso, Next:MS-DOS, Previous:mouse elbow, Up:= M =
mouso /mow'soh/ n.
[by analogy with `typo'] An error in mouse usage resulting in
an inappropriate selection or graphic garbage on the screen.
Compare thinko, braino.
Node:MS-DOS, Next:mu, Previous:mouso,
Up:= M =
MS-DOS /M-S-dos/ n.
[MicroSoft Disk Operating System] A clone of CP/M for
the 8088 crufted together in 6 weeks by hacker Tim Paterson at
Seattle Computer Products, who called the original QDOS (Quick
and Dirty Operating System) and is said to have regretted it ever
since. Microsoft licensed QDOS order to have something to demo
for IBM on time, and the rest is history. Numerous features,
including vaguely Unix-like but rather broken support for
subdirectories, I/O redirection, and pipelines, were hacked into
Microsoft's 2.0 and subsequent versions; as a result, there are
two or more incompatible versions of many system calls, and
MS-DOS programmers can never agree on basic things like what
character to use as an option switch or whether to be
case-sensitive. The resulting appalling mess is now the
highest-unit-volume OS in history. Often known simply as DOS,
which annoys people familiar with other similarly abbreviated
operating systems (the name goes back to the mid-1960s, when it
was attached to IBM's first disk operating system for the 360).
The name further annoys those who know what the term operating system does (or ought to)
connote; DOS is more properly a set of relatively simple
interrupt services. Some people like to pronounce DOS like
"dose", as in "I don't work on dose, man!", or to compare it to a
dose of brain-damaging drugs (a slogan button in wide circulation
among hackers exhorts: "MS-DOS: Just say No!"). See mess-dos, ill-behaved.
Node:mu, Next:MUD,
Previous:MS-DOS, Up:= M =
mu /moo/
The correct answer to the classic trick question "Have you
stopped beating your wife yet?". Assuming that you have no wife
or you have never beaten your wife, the answer "yes" is wrong
because it implies that you used to beat your wife and then
stopped, but "no" is worse because it suggests that you have one
and are still beating her. According to various Discordians and
Douglas Hofstadter the correct answer is usually "mu", a Japanese
word alleged to mean "Your question cannot be answered because it
depends on incorrect assumptions". Hackers tend to be sensitive
to logical inadequacies in language, and many have adopted this
suggestion with enthusiasm. The word `mu' is actually from
Chinese, meaning `nothing'; it is used in mainstream Japanese in
that sense. Native speakers do not recognize the Discordian
question-denying use, which almost certainly derives from
overgeneralization of the answer in the following well-known
Rinzai Zen koan:
A monk asked Joshu, "Does a dog have the Buddha
nature?" Joshu retorted, "Mu!"
See also has the X
nature, Some AI
Koans, and Douglas Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher,
Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" (pointer in the Bibliography in Appendix C.
Node:MUD, Next:muddie, Previous:mu, Up:= M =
MUD /muhd/ n.
[acronym, Multi-User Dungeon; alt. Multi-User Dimension] 1. A
class of virtual reality
experiments accessible via the Internet. These are real-time chat
forums with structure; they have multiple `locations' like an
adventure game, and may include combat, traps, puzzles, magic, a
simple economic system, and the capability for characters to
build more structure onto the database that represents the
existing world. 2. vi. To play a MUD. The acronym MUD is often
lowercased and/or verbed; thus, one may speak of `going mudding',
etc.
Historically, MUDs (and their more recent progeny with names
of MU- form) derive from a hack by Richard Bartle and Roy
Trubshaw on the University of Essex's DEC-10 in the early 1980s;
descendants of that game still exist today and are sometimes
generically called _BartleMUD_s. There is a widespread myth
(repeated, unfortunately, by earlier versions of this lexicon)
that the name MUD was trademarked to the commercial MUD run by
Bartle on British Telecom (the motto: "You haven't lived
'til you've died on MUD!"); however, this is false --
Richard Bartle explicitly placed `MUD' in the public domain in
1985. BT was upset at this, as they had already printed trademark
claims on some maps and posters, which were released and created
the myth.
Students on the European academic networks quickly improved on
the MUD concept, spawning several new MUDs (VAXMUD, AberMUD,
LPMUD). Many of these had associated bulletin-board systems for
social interaction. Because these had an image as `research' they
often survived administrative hostility to BBSs in general. This,
together with the fact that Usenet feeds were often spotty and
difficult to get in the U.K., made the MUDs major foci of hackish
social interaction there.
AberMUD and other variants crossed the Atlantic around 1988
and quickly gained popularity in the U.S.; they became nuclei for
large hacker communities with only loose ties to traditional
hackerdom (some observers see parallels with the growth of Usenet
in the early 1980s). The second wave of MUDs (TinyMUD and
variants) tended to emphasize social interaction, puzzles, and
cooperative world-building as opposed to combat and competition
(in writing, these social MUDs are sometimes referred to as
`MU*', with `MUD' implicitly reserved for the more game-oriented
ones). By 1991, over 50% of MUD sites were of a third major
variety, LPMUD, which synthesizes the combat/puzzle aspects of
AberMUD and older systems with the extensibility of TinyMud. In
1996 the cutting edge of the technology is Pavel Curtis's MOO,
even more extensible using a built-in object-oriented language.
The trend toward greater programmability and flexibility will
doubtless continue.
The state of the art in MUD design is still moving very
rapidly, with new simulation designs appearing (seemingly) every
month. Around 1991 there was an unsuccessful movement to
deprecate the term MUD itself, as newer
designs exhibit an exploding variety of names corresponding to
the different simulation styles being explored. It survived. See
also bonk/oif, FOD, link-dead,
mudhead, talk mode.
Node:muddie, Next:mudhead, Previous:MUD, Up:= M =
muddie n.
Syn. mudhead. More common in
Great Britain, possibly because system administrators there like
to mutter "bloody muddies" when annoyed at the species.
Node:mudhead, Next:muggle, Previous:muddie, Up:= M
=
mudhead n.
Commonly used to refer to a MUD
player who eats, sleeps, and breathes MUD. Mudheads have been
known to fail their degrees, drop out, etc., with the
consolation, however, that they made wizard level. When
encountered in person, on a MUD, or in a chat system, all a
mudhead will talk about is three topics: the tactic, character,
or wizard that is supposedly always unfairly stopping him/her
from becoming a wizard or beating a favorite MUD; why the
specific game he/she has experience with is so much better than
any other; and the MUD he or she is writing or going to write
because his/her design ideas are so much better than in any
existing MUD. See also wannabee.
To the anthropologically literate, this term may recall the
Zuni/Hopi legend of the mudheads or `koyemshi', mythical
half-formed children of an unnatural union. Figures representing
them act as clowns in Zuni sacred ceremonies. Others may recall
the `High School Madness' sequence from the Firesign Theatre
album "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers", in which
there is a character named "Mudhead".
Node:muggle, Next:multician, Previous:mudhead, Up:= M
=
muggle
[from J.K. Rowling's `Harry Potter' books, 1998] A non-wizard. Not as disparaging as luser; implies vague pity rather than contempt.
In the universe of Rowling's enormously (and deservedly) popular
children's series, muggles and wizards inhabit the same modern
world, but each group is ignorant of the commonplaces of the
others' existence - most muggles are unaware that wizards exist,
and wizards (used to magical ways of doing everything) are
perplexed and fascinated by muggle artifacts.
In retrospect it seems completely inevitable that hackers
would adopt this metaphor, and in hacker usage it readily forms
compounds such as `muggle-friendly'. Compare luser, mundane.
Node:multician, Next:Multics, Previous:muggle, Up:= M
=
multician /muhl-ti'shn/ n.
[coined at Honeywell, ca. 1970] Competent user of Multics. Perhaps oddly, no one has ever
promoted the analogous `Unician'.
Node:Multics, Next:multitask, Previous:multician, Up:= M =
Multics /muhl'tiks/ n.
[from "MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service"] An
early time-sharing operating
system co-designed by a consortium including MIT, GE, and
Bell Laboratories as a successor to CTSS. The design was first presented in 1965,
planned for operation in 1967, first operational in 1969, and
took several more years to achieve respectable performance and
stability.
Multics was very innovative for its time -- among other
things, it provided a hierarchical file system with access
control on individual files and introduced the idea of treating
all devices uniformly as special files. It was also the first OS
to run on a symmetric multiprocessor, and the only
general-purpose system to be awarded a B2 security rating by the
NSA (see Orange Book).
Bell Labs left the development effort in 1969 after judging
that second-system
effect had bloated Multics to the point of practical
unusability. Honeywell commercialized Multics in 1972 after
buying out GE's computer group, but it was never very successful:
at its peak in the 1980s, there were between 75 and 100 Multics
sites, each a multi-million dollar mainframe.
One of the former Multics developers from Bell Labs was Ken
Thompson, and Unix deliberately
carried through and extended many of Multics' design ideas;
indeed, Thompson described the very name `Unix' as `a weak pun on
Multics'. For this and other reasons, aspects of the Multics
design remain a topic of occasional debate among hackers. See
also brain-damaged and GCOS.
MIT ended its development association with Multics in 1977.
Honeywell sold its computer business to Bull in the mid 80s, and
development on Multics was stopped in 1988. Four Multics sites
were known to be still in use as late as 1998. There is a Multics
page at http://www.stratus.com/pub/vos/multics/tvv/multics.html.
Node:multitask, Next:mumblage, Previous:Multics, Up:= M
=
multitask n.
Often used of humans in the same meaning it has for computers,
to describe a person doing several things at once (but see thrash). The term `multiplex', from
communications technology (meaning to handle more than one
channel at the same time), is used similarly.
Node:mumblage, Next:mumble, Previous:multitask, Up:= M =
mumblage /muhm'bl*j/ n.
The topic of one's mumbling (see mumble). "All that mumblage" is used like "all
that stuff" when it is not quite clear how the subject of
discussion works, or like "all that crap" when `mumble' is being
used as an implicit replacement for pejoratives.
Node:mumble, Next:munch, Previous:mumblage, Up:=
M =
mumble interj.
1. Said when the correct response is too complicated to
enunciate, or the speaker has not thought it out. Often prefaces
a longer answer, or indicates a general reluctance to get into a
long discussion. "Don't you think that we could improve LISP
performance by using a hybrid reference-count transaction garbage
collector, if the cache is big enough and there are some extra
cache bits for the microcode to use?" "Well, mumble
... I'll have to think about it." 2. [MIT]
Expression of not-quite-articulated agreement, often used as an
informal vote of consensus in a meeting: "So, shall we dike out
the COBOL emulation?" "Mumble!" 3. Sometimes used as an
expression of disagreement (distinguished from sense 2 by tone of
voice and other cues). "I think we should buy a VAX." "Mumble!" Common variant: `mumble frotz'
(see frotz; interestingly, one does
not say `mumble frobnitz' even though `frotz' is short for
`frobnitz'). 4. Yet another metasyntactic variable, like
foo. 5. When used as a question
("Mumble?") means "I didn't understand you". 6. Sometimes used in
`public' contexts on-line as a placefiller for things one is
barred from giving details about. For example, a poster with
pre-released hardware in his machine might say "Yup, my machine
now has an extra 16M of memory, thanks to the card I'm testing
for Mumbleco." 7. A conversational wild card used to designate
something one doesn't want to bother spelling out, but which can
be glarked from context. Compare
blurgle. 8. [XEROX PARC] A
colloquialism used to suggest that further discussion would be
fruitless.
Node:munch, Next:munching, Previous:mumble, Up:= M
=
munch vt.
[often confused with mung, q.v.] To
transform information in a serial fashion, often requiring large
amounts of computation. To trace down a data structure. Related
to crunch and nearly synonymous with
grovel, but connotes less pain.
Node:munching, Next:munching squares, Previous:munch, Up:= M =
munching n.
Exploration of security holes of someone else's computer for
thrills, notoriety, or to annoy the system manager. Compare cracker. See also hacked off.
Node:munching squares, Next:munchkin, Previous:munching, Up:= M =
munching squares n.
A display hack dating
back to the PDP-1 (ca. 1962, reportedly discovered by Jackson
Wright), which employs a trivial computation (repeatedly plotting
the graph Y = X XOR T for successive values of T -- see HAKMEM items 146-148) to produce an
impressive display of moving and growing squares that devour the
screen. The initial value of T is treated as a parameter, which,
when well-chosen, can produce amazing effects. Some of these,
later (re)discovered on the LISP machine, have been christened
`munching triangles' (try AND for XOR and toggling points instead
of plotting them), `munching w's', and `munching mazes'. More
generally, suppose a graphics program produces an impressive and
ever-changing display of some basic form, foo, on a display
terminal, and does it using a relatively simple program; then the
program (or the resulting display) is likely to be referred to as
`munching foos'. [This is a good example of the use of the word
foo as a metasyntactic variable.]
Node:munchkin, Next:mundane, Previous:munching squares, Up:= M =
munchkin /muhnch'kin/ n.
[from the squeaky-voiced little people in L. Frank Baum's "The
Wizard of Oz"] A teenage-or-younger micro enthusiast hacking
BASIC or something else equally constricted. A term of mild
derision -- munchkins are annoying but some grow up to be hackers
after passing through a larval
stage. The term urchin is
also used. See also wannabee,
bitty box.
Node:mundane, Next:mung, Previous:munchkin, Up:=
M =
mundane n.
[from SF fandom] 1. A person who is not in science fiction
fandom. 2. A person who is not in the computer industry. In this
sense, most often an adjectival modifier as in "in my mundane
life...." See also Real
World, muggle.
Node:mung, Next:munge, Previous:mundane, Up:= M
=
mung /muhng/ vt.
[in 1960 at MIT, `Mash Until No Good'; sometime after that the
derivation from the recursive
acronym `Mung Until No Good' became standard; but see
munge] 1. To make changes to a file,
esp. large-scale and irrevocable changes. See BLT. 2. To destroy, usually accidentally,
occasionally maliciously. The system only mungs things
maliciously; this is a consequence of Finagle's Law. See scribble, mangle, trash,
nuke. Reports from Usenet suggest that the pronunciation /muhnj/
is now usual in speech, but the spelling `mung' is still common
in program comments (compare the widespread confusion over the
proper spelling of kluge). 3. The
kind of beans the sprouts of which are used in Chinese food.
(That's their real name! Mung beans! Really!)
Like many early hacker terms, this one seems to have
originated at TMRC; it was already in
use there in 1958. Peter Samson (compiler of the original TMRC
lexicon) thinks it may originally have been onomatopoeic for the
sound of a relay spring (contact) being twanged. However, it is
known that during the World Wars, `mung' was U.S. army slang for
the ersatz creamed chipped beef better known as `SOS', and it
seems quite likely that the word in fact goes back to
Scots-dialect munge.
Node:munge, Next:Murphy's Law, Previous:mung, Up:= M
=
munge /muhnj/ vt.
1. [derogatory] To imperfectly transform information. 2. A
comprehensive rewrite of a routine, data structure or the whole
program. 3. To modify data in some way the speaker doesn't need
to go into right now or cannot describe succinctly (compare mumble). 4. To add spamblock to an email address.
This term is often confused with mung, which probably was derived from it.
However, it also appears the word `munge' was in common use in
Scotland in the 1940s, and in Yorkshire in the 1950s, as a verb,
meaning to munch up into a masticated mess, and as a noun,
meaning the result of munging something up (the parallel with the
kluge/kludge pair is amusing). The OED reports
`munge' as an archaic verb nmeaning "to wipe (a person's
nose)".
Node:Murphy's Law, Next:music, Previous:munge, Up:= M
=
Murphy's Law prov.
The correct, original Murphy's Law reads: "If there
are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can
result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it." This is a
principle of defensive design, cited here because it is usually
given in mutant forms less descriptive of the challenges of
design for lusers. For example, you
don't make a two-pin plug symmetrical and then label it `THIS WAY
UP'; if it matters which way it is plugged in, then you make the
design asymmetrical (see also the anecdote under magic smoke).
Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was one of the engineers on the
rocket-sled experiments that were done by the U.S. Air Force in
1949 to test human acceleration tolerances (USAF project MX981).
One experiment involved a set of 16 accelerometers mounted to
different parts of the subject's body. There were two ways each
sensor could be glued to its mount, and somebody methodically
installed all 16 the wrong way around. Murphy then made the
original form of his pronouncement, which the test subject (Major
John Paul Stapp) quoted at a news conference a few days
later.
Within months `Murphy's Law' had spread to various technical
cultures connected to aerospace engineering. Before too many
years had gone by variants had passed into the popular
imagination, changing as they went. Most of these are variants on
"Anything that can go wrong, will"; this is correctly referred to
as Finagle's Law. The
memetic drift apparent in these mutants clearly demonstrates
Murphy's Law acting on itself!
Node:music, Next:mutter, Previous:Murphy's Law, Up:= M =
music n.
A common extracurricular interest of hackers (compare science-fiction fandom,
oriental food; see also
filk). Hackish folklore has long
claimed that musical and programming abilities are closely
related, and there has been at least one large-scale statistical
study that supports this. Hackers, as a rule, like music and
often develop musical appreciation in unusual and interesting
directions. Folk music is very big in hacker circles; so is
electronic music, and the sort of elaborate instrumental
jazz/rock that used to be called `progressive' and isn't recorded
much any more. The hacker's musical range tends to be wide; many
can listen with equal appreciation to (say) Talking Heads, Yes,
Gentle Giant, Pat Metheny, Scott Joplin, Tangerine Dream, Dream
Theater, King Sunny Ade, The Pretenders, Screaming Trees, or the
Brandenburg Concerti. It is also apparently true that hackerdom
includes a much higher concentration of talented amateur
musicians than one would expect from a similar-sized control
group of mundane types.
Node:mutter, Next:N, Previous:music,
Up:= M =
mutter vt.
To quietly enter a command not meant for the ears, eyes, or
fingers of ordinary mortals. Often used in `mutter an incantation'. See also wizard.
Node:= N =, Next:= O =, Previous:= M =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= N =
N:
nadger:
nagware:
nailed to the
wall:
nailing jelly:
naive:
naive user:
NAK:
NANA:
nano:
nano-:
nanoacre:
nanobot:
nanocomputer:
nanofortnight:
nanotechnology:
nasal demons:
nastygram:
Nathan Hale:
nature:
neat hack:
neats vs.
scruffies:
neep-neep:
neophilia:
nerd:
nerd knob:
net.-:
net.god:
net.personality:
net.police:
NetBOLLIX:
netburp:
netdead:
nethack:
netiquette:
netlag:
netnews:
netrock:
Netscrape:
netsplit:
netter:
network address:
network meltdown:
New Jersey:
New Testament:
newbie:
newgroup wars:
newline:
NeWS:
newsfroup:
newsgroup:
nick:
nickle:
night mode:
Nightmare File
System:
NIL:
Ninety-Ninety Rule:
nipple mouse:
NMI:
no-op:
noddy:
node:
Nominal
Semidestructor:
non-optimal
solution:
nonlinear:
nontrivial:
not ready for
prime time:
notwork:
NP-:
nroff:
NSA line eater:
NSP:
nude:
nugry:
nuke:
number-crunching:
numbers:
NUXI problem:
nybble:
nyetwork:
Node:N, Next:nadger, Previous:mutter, Up:= N
=
N /N/ quant.
1. A large and indeterminate number of objects: "There were N
bugs in that crock!" Also used in its original sense of a
variable name: "This crock has N bugs, as N goes to infinity."
(The true number of bugs is always at least N + 1; see Lubarsky's Law
of Cybernetic Entomology.) 2. A variable whose value is
inherited from the current context. For example, when a meal is
being ordered at a restaurant, N may be understood to mean
however many people there are at the table. From the remark "We'd
like to order N wonton soups and a family dinner for N - 1" you
can deduce that one person at the table wants to eat only soup,
even though you don't know how many people there are (see great-wall). 3. `Nth': adj. The
ordinal counterpart of N, senses 1 and 2. "Now for the Nth and
last time..." In the specific context "Nth-year
grad student", N is generally assumed to be at least 4, and is
usually 5 or more (see tenured graduate
student). See also random
numbers, two-to-the-N.
Node:nadger, Next:nagware, Previous:N, Up:= N =
nadger /nad'jr/ v.
[UK, from rude slang noun `nadgers' for testicles; compare
American & British `bollixed'] Of software or hardware (not
people), to twiddle some object in a hidden manner, generally so
that it conforms better to some format. For instance, string
printing routines on 8-bit processors often take the string text
from the instruction stream, thus a print call looks like
jsr print:"Hello world". The print routine has to
`nadger' the saved instruction pointer so that the processor
doesn't try to execute the text as instructions when the
subroutine returns. See adger.
Node:nagware, Next:nailed to the wall, Previous:nadger, Up:= N =
nagware /nag'weir/ n.
[Usenet] The variety of shareware that displays a large screen at
the beginning or end reminding you to register, typically
requiring some sort of keystroke to continue so that you can't
use the software in batch mode. Compare annoyware, crippleware.
Node:nailed to the wall,
Next:nailing jelly,
Previous:nagware, Up:= N =
nailed to the wall adj.
[like a trophy] Said of a bug finally eliminated after
protracted, and even heroic, effort.
Node:nailing jelly, Next:naive, Previous:nailed to the wall, Up:= N =
nailing jelly vi.
See like
nailing jelly to a tree.
Node:naive, Next:naive user, Previous:nailing jelly, Up:= N =
naive adj.
1. Untutored in the perversities of some particular program or
system; one who still tries to do things in an intuitive way,
rather than the right way (in really good designs these coincide,
but most designs aren't `really good' in the appropriate sense).
This trait is completely unrelated to general maturity or
competence, or even competence at any other specific program. It
is a sad commentary on the primitive state of computing that the
natural opposite of this term is often claimed to be `experienced
user' but is really more like `cynical user'. 2. Said of an
algorithm that doesn't take advantage of some superior but
advanced technique, e.g., the bubble
sort. It may imply naivete on the part of the programmer,
although there are situations where a naive algorithm is
preferred, because it is more important to keep the code
comprehensible than to go for maximum performance. "I know the
linear search is naive, but in this case the list typically only
has half a dozen items."
Node:naive user, Next:NAK, Previous:naive, Up:= N
=
naive user n.
A luser. Tends to imply someone
who is ignorant mainly owing to inexperience. When this is
applied to someone who has experience, there is a
definite implication of stupidity.
Node:NAK, Next:NANA, Previous:naive user, Up:= N =
NAK /nak/ interj.
[from the ASCII mnemonic for 0010101] 1. On-line joke answer
to ACK?: "I'm not here." 2. On-line
answer to a request for chat: "I'm not available." 3. Used to
politely interrupt someone to tell them you don't understand
their point or that they have suddenly stopped making sense. See
ACK, sense 3. "And then, after we
recode the project in COBOL...." "Nak, Nak, Nak! I
thought I heard you say COBOL!" 4. A negative answer. "OK if I
boot the server?" "NAK!"
Node:NANA, Next:nano, Previous:NAK,
Up:= N =
NANA //
[Usenet] The newsgroups news.admin.net-abuse.*, devoted to
fighting spam and network abuse. Each
individual newsgroup is often referred to by adding a letter to
NANA. For example, NANAU would refer to
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet.
When spam began to be a serious problem around 1995, and a
loose network of anti-spammers formed to combat it, spammers
immediately accused them of being the backbone cabal, or the Cabal reborn.
Though this was not true, spam-fighters ironically accepted the
label and the tag line "There is No Cabal" reappeared (later, and
now commonly, abbreviated to "TINC"). Nowadays "the Cabal" is
generally understood to refer to the NANA regulars.
Node:nano, Next:nano-, Previous:NANA, Up:= N =
nano /nan'oh/ n.
[CMU: from `nanosecond'] A brief period of time. "Be with you
in a nano" means you really will be free shortly, i.e., implies
what mainstream people mean by "in a jiffy" (whereas the hackish
use of `jiffy' is quite different -- see jiffy).
Node:nano-, Next:nanoacre, Previous:nano, Up:= N =
nano- pref.
[SI: the next quantifier below micro-; meaning * 10^(-9)] Smaller than micro-, and used in the same rather loose
and connotative way. Thus, one has nanotechnology (coined by hacker K.
Eric Drexler) by analogy with `microtechnology'; and a few
machine architectures have a `nanocode' level below `microcode'.
Tom Duff at Bell Labs has also pointed out that "Pi seconds is a
nanocentury". See also quantifiers, pico-, nanoacre,
nanobot, nanocomputer, nanofortnight.
Node:nanoacre, Next:nanobot, Previous:nano-, Up:= N
=
nanoacre /nan'oh-ay`kr/ n.
A unit (about 2 mm square) of real estate on a VLSI chip. The
term gets its giggle value from the fact that VLSI nanoacres have
costs in the same range as real acres once one figures in design
and fabrication-setup costs.
Node:nanobot, Next:nanocomputer, Previous:nanoacre, Up:= N =
nanobot /nan'oh-bot/ n.
A robot of microscopic proportions, presumably built by means
of nanotechnology. As yet,
only used informally (and speculatively!). Also called a
`nanoagent'.
Node:nanocomputer, Next:nanofortnight, Previous:nanobot, Up:= N =
nanocomputer /nan'oh-k*m-pyoo'tr/ n.
A computer with molecular-sized switching elements. Designs
for mechanical nanocomputers which use single-molecule sliding
rods for their logic have been proposed. The controller for a
nanobot would be a
nanocomputer.
Node:nanofortnight, Next:nanotechnology, Previous:nanocomputer, Up:= N =
nanofortnight n.
[Adelaide University] 1 fortnight * 10^(-9), or about 1.2
msec. This unit was used largely by students doing undergraduate
practicals. See microfortnight, attoparsec, and micro-.
Node:nanotechnology, Next:nasal demons, Previous:nanofortnight, Up:= N =
nanotechnology /nan'-oh-tek-no`l*-jee/ n.
A hypothetical fabrication technology in which objects are
designed and built with the individual specification and
placement of each separate atom. The first unequivocal
nanofabrication experiments took place in 1990, for example with
the deposition of individual xenon atoms on a nickel substrate to
spell the logo of a certain very large computer company.
Nanotechnology has been a hot topic in the hacker subculture ever
since the term was coined by K. Eric Drexler in his book "Engines
of Creation" (Anchor/Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-19973-2), where he
predicted that nanotechnology could give rise to replicating
assemblers, permitting an exponential growth of productivity and
personal wealth (there's an authorized transcription at http://www.foresight.org/EOC/index.html.).
See also blue goo, gray goo, nanobot.
Node:nasal demons, Next:nastygram, Previous:nanotechnology, Up:= N =
nasal demons n.
Recognized shorthand on the Usenet group _comp.std.c_ for
any unexpected behavior of a C compiler on encountering an
undefined construct. During a discussion on that group in early
1992, a regular remarked "When the compiler encounters [a given
undefined construct] it is legal for it to make demons fly out of
your nose" (the implication is that the compiler may choose any
arbitrarily bizarre way to interpret the code without violating
the ANSI C standard). Someone else followed up with a reference
to "nasal demons", which quickly became established.
Node:nastygram, Next:Nathan Hale, Previous:nasal demons, Up:= N =
nastygram /nas'tee-gram/ n.
1. A protocol packet or item of email (the latter is also
called a letterbomb) that takes
advantage of misfeatures or security holes on the target system
to do untoward things. 2. Disapproving mail, esp. from a net.god, pursuant to a violation of netiquette or a complaint about
failure to correct some mail- or news-transmission problem.
Compare shitogram, mailbomb. 3. A status report from an unhappy,
and probably picky, customer. "What'd Corporate say in today's
nastygram?" 4. [deprecated] An error reply by mail from a daemon; in particular, a bounce message.
Node:Nathan Hale, Next:nature, Previous:nastygram, Up:= N =
Nathan Hale n.
An asterisk (see also splat, ASCII). Oh, you want an etymology?
Notionally, from "I regret that I have only one asterisk for my
country!", a misquote of the famous remark uttered by Nathan Hale
just before he was hanged. Hale was a (failed) spy for the rebels
in the American War of Independence.
Node:nature, Next:neat hack, Previous:Nathan Hale, Up:= N =
nature n.
See has the X
nature.
Node:neat hack, Next:neats vs. scruffies,
Previous:nature, Up:= N =
neat hack n.
[very common] 1. A clever technique. 2. A brilliant practical
joke, where neatness is correlated with cleverness, harmlessness,
and surprise value. Example: the Caltech Rose Bowl card display
switch (see Appendix A for
discussion). See also hack.
Node:neats vs. scruffies,
Next:neep-neep, Previous:neat hack, Up:= N =
neats vs. scruffies n.
The label used to refer to one of the continuing holy wars in AI research. This conflict
tangles together two separate issues. One is the relationship
between human reasoning and AI; `neats' tend to try to build
systems that `reason' in some way identifiably similar to the way
humans report themselves as doing, while `scruffies' profess not
to care whether an algorithm resembles human reasoning in the
least as long as it works. More importantly, neats tend to
believe that logic is king, while scruffies favor looser, more
ad-hoc methods driven by empirical knowledge. To a neat, scruffy
methods appear promiscuous, successful only by accident, and not
productive of insights about how intelligence actually works; to
a scruffy, neat methods appear to be hung up on formalism and
irrelevant to the hard-to-capture `common sense' of living
intelligences.
Node:neep-neep, Next:neophilia, Previous:neats vs. scruffies, Up:= N =
neep-neep /neep neep/ n.
[onomatopoeic, widely spread through SF fandom but reported to
have originated at Caltech in the 1970s] One who is fascinated by
computers. Less specific than hacker, as it need not imply more skill than is
required to boot games on a PC. The derived noun `neeping'
applies specifically to the long conversations about computers
that tend to develop in the corners at most SF-convention parties
(the term `neepery' is also in wide use). Fandom has a related
proverb to the effect that "Hacking is a conversational black
hole!".
Node:neophilia, Next:nerd, Previous:neep-neep, Up:= N =
neophilia /nee`oh-fil'-ee-*/ n.
The trait of being excited and pleased by novelty. Common
among most hackers, SF fans, and members of several other
connected leading-edge subcultures, including the pro-technology
`Whole Earth' wing of the ecology movement, space activists, many
members of Mensa, and the Discordian/neo-pagan underground. All
these groups overlap heavily and (where evidence is available)
seem to share characteristic hacker tropisms for science fiction,
music, and oriental food. The opposite tendency
is `neophobia'.
Node:nerd, Next:nerd knob, Previous:neophilia, Up:= N =
nerd n.
1. [mainstream slang] Pejorative applied to anyone with an
above-average IQ and few gifts at small talk and ordinary social
rituals. 2. [jargon] Term of praise applied (in conscious ironic
reference to sense 1) to someone who knows what's really
important and interesting and doesn't care to be distracted by
trivial chatter and silly status games. Compare the two senses of
computer geek.
The word itself appears to derive from the lines "And then,
just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo / And Bring Back an
It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo, / A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a
Seersucker, too!" in the Dr. Seuss book "If I Ran the Zoo"
(1950). (The spellings `nurd' and `gnurd' also used to be current
at MIT, where `nurd' is reported from as far back as 1957.) How
it developed its mainstream meaning is unclear, but sense 1 seems
to have entered mass culture in the early 1970s (there are
reports that in the mid-1960s it meant roughly "annoying misfit"
without the connotation of intelligence).
An IEEE Spectrum article (4/95, page 16) once derived `nerd'
in its variant form `knurd' from the word `drunk' backwards, but
this bears all the hallmarks of a bogus folk etymology.
Hackers developed sense 2 in self-defense perhaps ten years
later, and some actually wear "Nerd Pride" buttons, only half as
a joke. At MIT one can find not only buttons but (what else?)
pocket protectors bearing the slogan and the MIT seal.
Node:nerd knob, Next:net.-, Previous:nerd, Up:= N =
nerd knob n.
[Cisco] a command in a complex piece of software which is more
likely to be used by an extremely experienced user to tweak a
setting of one sort or another - a setting which the average user
may not even know exists. Nerd knobs tend to be toggles, turning
on or off a particular, specific, narrowly defined behavior.
Node:net.-, Next:net.god, Previous:nerd knob, Up:= N =
net.- /net dot/ pref.
[Usenet] Prefix used to describe people and events related to
Usenet. From the time before the Great Renaming, when most non-local
newsgroups had names beginning `net.'. Includes net.gods, `net.goddesses' (various charismatic
net.women with circles of on-line admirers), `net.lurkers' (see
lurker), `net.person', `net.parties'
(a synonym for boink, sense 2), and
many similar constructs. See also net.police.
Node:net.god, Next:net.personality, Previous:net.-, Up:= N =
net.god /net god/ n.
Accolade referring to anyone who satisfies some combination of
the following conditions: has been visible on Usenet for more
than 5 years, ran one of the original backbone sites, moderated
an important newsgroup, wrote news software, or knows Gene, Mark,
Rick, Mel, Henry, Chuq, and Greg personally. See demigod. Net.goddesses such as Rissa or the
Slime Sisters have (so far) been distinguished more by
personality than by authority.
Node:net.personality, Next:net.police, Previous:net.god, Up:= N =
net.personality /net per`sn-al'-*-tee/ n.
Someone who has made a name for him or herself on Usenet, through either longevity or
attention-getting posts, but doesn't meet the other requirements
of net.godhood.
Node:net.police, Next:NetBOLLIX, Previous:net.personality, Up:= N =
net.police /net-p*-lees'/ n.
(var. `net.cops') Those Usenet readers who feel it is their
responsibility to pounce on and flame
any posting which they regard as offensive or in violation of
their understanding of netiquette. Generally used sarcastically or
pejoratively. Also spelled `net police'. See also net.-, code
police.
Node:NetBOLLIX, Next:netburp, Previous:net.police, Up:= N =
NetBOLLIX n.
[from bollix: to bungle, or British `bollocks'] IBM's NetBIOS, an extremely brain-damaged network protocol that,
like Blue Glue, is used at
commercial shops that don't know any better.
Node:netburp, Next:netdead, Previous:NetBOLLIX, Up:= N =
netburp n.
[IRC] When netlag gets really
bad, and delays between servers exceed a certain threshhold, the
IRC network effectively becomes
partitioned for a period of time, and large numbers of people
seem to be signing off at the same time and then signing back on
again when things get better. An instance of this is called a
`netburp' (or, sometimes, netsplit).
Node:netdead, Next:nethack, Previous:netburp, Up:= N
=
netdead n.
[IRC] The state of someone who signs off IRC, perhaps during a netburp, and doesn't sign back on until later.
In the interim, he is "dead to the net". Compare link-dead.
Node:nethack, Next:netiquette, Previous:netdead, Up:= N
=
nethack /net'hak/ n.
[Unix] A dungeon game similar to rogue but more elaborate, distributed in C
source over Usenet and very popular
at Unix sites and on PC-class machines (nethack is probably the
most widely distributed of the freeware dungeon games). The
earliest versions, written by Jay Fenlason and later considerably
enhanced by Andries Brouwer, were simply called `hack'. The name
changed when maintenance was taken over by a group of hackers
originally organized by Mike Stephenson. There is now an official
site one at http://www.nethack.org/. See also
moria, rogue, Angband.
Node:netiquette, Next:netlag, Previous:nethack, Up:= N
=
netiquette /net'ee-ket/ or /net'i-ket/ n.
[portmanteau, network + etiquette] The conventions of
politeness recognized on Usenet,
such as avoidance of cross-posting to inappropriate groups and
refraining from commercial pluggery outside the _biz_
groups.
Node:netlag, Next:netnews, Previous:netiquette, Up:= N =
netlag n.
[IRC, MUD] A condition that occurs when the delays in the
IRC network or on a MUD become severe enough that servers briefly lose
and then reestablish contact, causing messages to be delivered in
bursts, often with delays of up to a minute. (Note that this term
has nothing to do with mainstream "jet lag", a condition which
hackers tend not to be much bothered by.) Often shortened to just
`lag'.
Node:netnews, Next:netrock, Previous:netlag, Up:= N
=
netnews /net'n[y]ooz/ n.
1. The software that makes Usenet
run. 2. The content of Usenet. "I read netnews right after my
mail most mornings."
Node:netrock, Next:Netscrape, Previous:netnews, Up:= N
=
netrock /net'rok/ n.
[IBM] A flame; used esp. on VNET,
IBM's internal corporate network.
Node:Netscrape, Next:netsplit, Previous:netrock, Up:= N
=
Netscrape n.
[sometimes elaborated to `Netscrape Fornicator', also
`Nutscrape'] Standard name-of-insult for Netscape
Navigator/Communicator, Netscape's overweight Web browser.
Compare Internet
Exploiter.
Node:netsplit, Next:netter, Previous:Netscrape, Up:= N =
netsplit n.
Syn. netburp.
Node:netter, Next:network address, Previous:netsplit, Up:= N =
netter n.
1. Loosely, anyone with a network address. 2. More
specifically, a Usenet regular. Most
often found in the plural. "If you post that in a
technical group, you're going to be flamed by angry netters for
the rest of time!"
Node:network address, Next:network meltdown,
Previous:netter, Up:= N =
network address n.
(also `net address') As used by hackers, means an address on
`the' network (see the
network; this used to include bang path addresses but now almost always
implies an Internet
address). Net addresses are often used in email text as a
more concise substitute for personal names; indeed, hackers may
come to know each other quite well by network names without ever
learning each others' `legal' monikers. Indeed, display of a
network address (e.g on business cards) used to function as an
important hacker identification signal, like lodge pins among
Masons or tie-dyed T-shirts among Grateful Dead fans. In the day
of pervasive Internet this is less true, but you can still be
fairly sure that anyone with a network address handwritten on his
or her convention badge is a hacker.
Node:network meltdown, Next:New Jersey, Previous:network address, Up:= N =
network meltdown n.
A state of complete network overload; the network equivalent
of thrashing. This may be induced by
a Chernobyl packet. See
also broadcast storm,
kamikaze packet.
Network meltdown is often a result of network designs that are
optimized for a steady state of moderate load and don't cope well
with the very jagged, bursty usage patterns of the real world.
One amusing instance of this is triggered by the popular and very
bloody shoot-'em-up game _Doom_ on the PC. When used in
multiplayer mode over a network, the game uses broadcast packets
to inform other machines when bullets are fired. This causes
problems with weapons like the chain gun which fire rapidly -- it
can blast the network into a meltdown state just as easily as it
shreds opposing monsters.
Node:New Jersey, Next:New Testament, Previous:network meltdown, Up:= N =
New Jersey adj.
[primarily Stanford/Silicon Valley] Brain-damaged or of poor
design. This refers to the allegedly wretched quality of such
software as C, C++, and Unix (which originated at Bell Labs in
Murray Hill, New Jersey). "This compiler bites the bag, but what
can you expect from a compiler designed in New Jersey?" Compare
Berkeley Quality
Software. See also Unix
conspiracy.
Node:New Testament, Next:newbie, Previous:New Jersey, Up:= N =
New Testament n.
[C programmers] The second edition of K&R's "The C
Programming Language" (Prentice-Hall, 1988; ISBN 0-13-110362-8),
describing ANSI Standard C. See K&R; this version is also called
`K&R2'.
Node:newbie, Next:newgroup wars, Previous:New Testament, Up:= N =
newbie /n[y]oo'bee/ n.
[verry common; orig. from British public-school and military
slang variant of `new boy'] A Usenet neophyte. This term surfaced
in the newsgroup
_talk.bizarre_ but is now in wide use (the combination
"clueless newbie" is especially common). Criteria for being
considered a newbie vary wildly; a person can be called a newbie
in one newsgroup while remaining a respected regular in another.
The label `newbie' is sometimes applied as a serious insult to a
person who has been around Usenet for a long time but who
carefully hides all evidence of having a clue. See B1FF; see also gnubie.
Node:newgroup wars, Next:newline, Previous:newbie, Up:=
N =
newgroup wars /n[y]oo'groop worz/ n.
[Usenet] The salvos of dueling newgroup and
rmgroup messages sometimes exchanged by persons on
opposite sides of a dispute over whether a newsgroup should be created net-wide, or
(even more frequently) whether an obsolete one should be removed.
These usually settle out within a week or two as it becomes clear
whether the group has a natural constituency (usually, it
doesn't). At times, especially in the completely anarchic
_alt_ hierarchy, the names of newsgroups themselves become a
form of comment or humor; e.g., the group
_alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork_ which originated as a
birthday joke for a Muppets fan, or any number of specialized
abuse groups named after particularly notorious flamers, e.g., _alt.weemba_.
Node:newline, Next:NeWS, Previous:newgroup wars, Up:= N =
newline /n[y]oo'li:n/ n.
1. [techspeak, primarily Unix] The ASCII LF character
(0001010), used under Unix as a text
line terminator. Though the term `newline' appears in ASCII
standards, it never caught on in the general computing world
before Unix. 2. More generally, any magic character, character
sequence, or operation (like Pascal's writeln procedure) required
to terminate a text record or separate lines. See crlf, terpri.
Node:NeWS, Next:newsfroup, Previous:newline, Up:= N
=
NeWS /nee'wis/, /n[y]oo'is/ or /n[y]ooz/ n.
[acronym; the `Network Window System'] The road not taken in
window systems, an elegant PostScript-based environment that would
almost certainly have won the standards war with X if it hadn't been proprietary to Sun Microsystems. There is
a lesson here that too many software vendors haven't yet heeded.
Many hackers insist on the two-syllable pronunciations above as a
way of distinguishing NeWS from Usenet news (the netnews software).
Node:newsfroup, Next:newsgroup, Previous:NeWS, Up:= N =
newsfroup // n.
[Usenet] Silly synonym for newsgroup, originally a typo but now in
regular use on Usenet's talk.bizarre, and other lunatic-fringe
groups. Compare hing, grilf, pr0n and filk.
Node:newsgroup, Next:nick, Previous:newsfroup, Up:= N =
newsgroup n.
[Usenet] One of Usenet's huge
collection of topic groups or fora.
Usenet groups can be `unmoderated' (anyone can post) or
`moderated' (submissions are automatically directed to a
moderator, who edits or filters and then posts the results). Some
newsgroups have parallel mailing
lists for Internet people with no netnews access, with
postings to the group automatically propagated to the list and
vice versa. Some moderated groups (especially those which are
actually gatewayed Internet mailing lists) are distributed as
`digests', with groups of postings periodically collected into a
single large posting with an index.
Among the best-known are _comp.lang.c_ (the C-language
forum), _comp.arch_ (on computer architectures),
_comp.unix.wizards_ (for Unix wizards),
_rec.arts.sf.written_ and siblings (for science-fiction
fans), and _talk.politics.misc_ (miscellaneous political
discussions and flamage).
Node:nick, Next:nickle, Previous:newsgroup, Up:= N =
nick n.
[IRC; very common] Short for nickname. On IRC, every user must pick a nick, which is
sometimes the same as the user's real name or login name, but is
often more fanciful. Compare handle,
screen name.
Node:nickle, Next:night mode, Previous:nick, Up:= N =
nickle /ni'kl/ n.
[from `nickel', common name for the U.S. 5-cent coin] A nybble + 1; 5 bits. Reported among
developers for Mattel's GI 1600 (the Intellivision games
processor), a chip with 16-bit-wide RAM but 10-bit-wide ROM. See
also deckle, and nybble for names of other bit units.
Node:night mode, Next:Nightmare File System,
Previous:nickle, Up:= N =
night mode n.
See phase (of people).
Node:Nightmare File
System, Next:NIL, Previous:night mode, Up:= N =
Nightmare File System n.
Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In
any nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS
cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze
up. Some machine tries to access the down one, and (getting no
response) repeats indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to
some messages (what is actually happening is that it is locked up
in what should have been a brief excursion to a higher spl level). Then another machine tries to
reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and
itself becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to discover the
down one is now trying both to access the down one and to respond
to the pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. This
situation snowballs very quickly, and soon the entire network of
machines is frozen -- worst of all, the user can't even abort the
file access that started the problem! Many of NFS's problems are
excused by partisans as being an inevitable result of its
statelessness, which is held to be a great feature (critics, of
course, call it a great misfeature). (ITS partisans are apt to cite
this as proof of Unix's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working
NFS-like shared file system with none of these problems in the
early 1970s.) See also broadcast
storm.
Node:NIL, Next:Ninety-Ninety Rule, Previous:Nightmare File
System, Up:= N =
NIL /nil/
No. Used in reply to a question, particularly one asked using
the `-P' convention. Most hackers assume this derives simply from
LISP terminology for `false' (see also T), but NIL as a negative reply was well-established
among radio hams decades before the advent of LISP. The
historical connection between early hackerdom and the ham radio
world was strong enough that this may have been an influence.
Node:Ninety-Ninety Rule,
Next:nipple mouse,
Previous:NIL, Up:= N =
Ninety-Ninety Rule n.
"The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the
development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the
other 90% of the development time." Attributed to Tom Cargill of
Bell Labs, and popularized by Jon Bentley's September 1985
"Bumper-Sticker Computer Science" column in "Communications of
the ACM". It was there called the "Rule of Credibility", a name
which seems not to have stuck. Other maxims in the same vein
include the law attributed to the early British computer
scientist Douglas Hartree: "The time from now until the
completion of the project tends to become constant."
Node:nipple mouse, Next:NMI, Previous:Ninety-Ninety Rule, Up:= N =
nipple mouse n.
Var. `clit mouse, clitoris' Common term for the pointing
device used on IBM ThinkPads and a few other laptop computers.
The device, which sits between the `g' and `h' keys on the
keyboard, indeed resembles a rubber nipple intended to be tweaked
by a forefinger. Many hackers consider these superior to the
glide pads found on most laptops, which are harder to control
precisely.
Node:NMI, Next:no-op, Previous:nipple mouse, Up:= N =
NMI /N-M-I/ n.
Non-Maskable Interrupt. An IRQ 7 on the PDP-11 or 680[01234]0;
the NMI line on an 80[1234]86. In contrast with a priority interrupt (which might
be ignored, although that is unlikely), an NMI is never
ignored. Except, that is, on clone
boxes, where NMI is often ignored on the motherboard because
flaky hardware can generate many spurious ones.
Node:no-op, Next:noddy, Previous:NMI, Up:= N =
no-op /noh'op/ n.,v.
alt. NOP /nop/ [no operation] 1. A machine instruction that
does nothing (sometimes used in assembler-level programming as
filler for data or patch areas, or to overwrite code to be
removed in binaries). 2. A person who contributes nothing to a
project, or has nothing going on upstairs, or both. As in "He's a
no-op." 3. Any operation or sequence of operations with no
effect, such as circling the block without finding a parking
space, or putting money into a vending machine and having it fall
immediately into the coin-return box, or asking someone for help
and being told to go away. "Oh, well, that was a no-op."
Hot-and-sour soup (see great-wall) that is insufficiently either
is `no-op soup'; so is wonton soup if everybody else is having
hot-and-sour.
Node:noddy, Next:node, Previous:no-op, Up:= N
=
noddy /nod'ee/ adj.
[UK: from the children's books] 1. Small and un-useful, but
demonstrating a point. Noddy programs are often written by people
learning a new language or system. The archetypal noddy program
is hello world. Noddy code
may be used to demonstrate a feature or bug of a compiler. May be
used of real hardware or software to imply that it isn't worth
using. "This editor's a bit noddy." 2. A program that is more or
less instant to produce. In this use, the term does not
necessarily connote uselessness, but describes a hack sufficiently trivial that it can be written
and debugged while carrying on (and during the space of) a normal
conversation. "I'll just throw together a noddy awk script to dump all the first fields." In North
America this might be called a mickey mouse program. See
toy program.
Node:node, Next:Nominal Semidestructor,
Previous:noddy, Up:= N =
node n.
1. [Internet, UUCP] A host machine on the network. 2. [MS-DOS
BBSes] A dial-in line on a BBS. Thus an MS-DOS sysop might say that his BBS has 4 nodes even
though it has a single machine and no Internet link, confusing an
Internet hacker no end.
Node:Nominal
Semidestructor, Next:non-optimal solution, Previous:node, Up:= N =
Nominal Semidestructor n.
Soundalike slang for `National Semiconductor', found among
other places in the Networking/2 networking sources. During the
late 1970s to mid-1980s this company marketed a series of
microprocessors including the NS16000 and NS32000 and several
variants. At one point early in the great microprocessor race,
the specs on these chips made them look like serious competition
for the rising Intel 80x86 and Motorola 680x0 series.
Unfortunately, the actual parts were notoriously flaky and never
implemented the full instruction set promised in their
literature, apparently because the company couldn't get any of
the mask steppings to work as designed. They eventually sank
without trace, joining the Zilog Z8000 and a few even more
obscure also-rans in the graveyard of forgotten microprocessors.
Compare HP-SUX, AIDX, buglix, Macintrash, Telerat, ScumOS,
sun-stools, Slowlaris, Internet Exploder.
Node:non-optimal solution,
Next:nonlinear, Previous:Nominal
Semidestructor, Up:= N
=
non-optimal solution n.
(also `sub-optimal solution') An astoundingly stupid way to do
something. This term is generally used in deadpan sarcasm, as its
impact is greatest when the person speaking looks completely
serious. Compare stunning. See
also Bad Thing.
Node:nonlinear, Next:nontrivial, Previous:non-optimal solution, Up:= N =
nonlinear adj.
[scientific computation] 1. Behaving in an erratic and
unpredictable fashion; unstable. When used to describe the
behavior of a machine or program, it suggests that said machine
or program is being forced to run far outside of design
specifications. This behavior may be induced by unreasonable
inputs, or may be triggered when a more mundane bug sends the
computation far off from its expected course. 2. When describing
the behavior of a person, suggests a tantrum or a flame. "When you talk to Bob, don't mention the
drug problem or he'll go nonlinear for hours." In this context,
`go nonlinear' connotes `blow up out of proportion' (proportion
connotes linearity).
Node:nontrivial, Next:not ready for prime
time, Previous:nonlinear, Up:= N =
nontrivial adj.
Requiring real thought or significant computing power. Often
used as an understated way of saying that a problem is quite
difficult or impractical, or even entirely unsolvable ("Proving
P=NP is nontrivial"). The preferred emphatic form is `decidedly
nontrivial'. See trivial, uninteresting, interesting.
Node:not ready for
prime time, Next:notwork,
Previous:nontrivial,
Up:= N =
not ready for prime time adj.
Usable, but only just so; not very robust; for internal use
only. Said of a program or device. Often connotes that the thing
will be made more solid Real Soon
Now. This term comes from the ensemble name of the
original cast of "Saturday Night Live", the "Not Ready for Prime
Time Players". It has extra flavor for hackers because of the
special (though now semi-obsolescent) meaning of prime time. Compare beta.
Node:notwork, Next:NP-, Previous:not ready for prime time,
Up:= N =
notwork /not'werk/ n.
A network, when it is acting flaky
or is down. Compare nyetwork. Said at IBM to have originally
referred to a particular period of flakiness on IBM's VNET
corporate network ca. 1988; but there are independent reports of
the term from elsewhere.
Node:NP-, Next:nroff, Previous:notwork, Up:= N
=
NP- /N-P/ pref.
Extremely. Used to modify adjectives describing a level or
quality of difficulty; the connotation is often `more so than it
should be' This is generalized from the computer-science terms
`NP-hard' and `NP-complete'; NP-complete problems all seem to be
very hard, but so far no one has found a proof that they are. NP
is the set of Nondeterministic-Polynomial algorithms, those that
can be completed by a nondeterministic Turing machine in an
amount of time that is a polynomial function of the size of the
input; a solution for one NP-complete problem would solve all the
others. "Coding a BitBlt implementation to perform correctly in
every case is NP-annoying."
Note, however, that strictly speaking this usage is
misleading; there are plenty of easy problems in class NP.
NP-complete problems are hard not because they are in class NP,
but because they are the hardest problems in class NP.
Node:nroff, Next:NSA line eater, Previous:NP-, Up:= N =
nroff /N'rof/
n. [Unix, from "new roff" (see troff)] A companion program to the Unix
typesetter troff, accepting identical
input but preparing output for terminals and line printers.
Node:NSA line eater, Next:NSP, Previous:nroff, Up:= N
=
NSA line eater n.
The National Security Agency trawling program sometimes
assumed to be reading the net for the U.S. Government's spooks.
Most hackers used to think it was mythical but believed in acting
as though existed just in case. since the mid-1990s it has
gradually become known that the NSA actually does this, quite
illegaly, through its Echelon program.
The standard countermeasure is to put loaded phrases like
`KGB', `Uzi', `nuclear materials', `Palestine', `cocaine', and
`assassination' in their sig
blocks in a (probably futile) attempt to confuse and
overload the creature. The GNU version
of EMACS actually has a command that
randomly inserts a bunch of insidious anarcho-verbiage into your
edited text.
As far back as the 1970s there was a mainstream variant of
this myth involving a `Trunk Line Monitor', which supposedly used
speech recognition to extract words from telephone trunks. This
is much harder than noticing keywords in email, and most of the
people who originally propagated it had no idea of then-current
technology or the storage, signal-processing, or speech
recognition needs of such a project. On the basis of mass-storage
costs alone it would have been cheaper to hire 50 high-school
students and just let them listen in. Twenty years and several
orders of technological magnitude later, however, there are clear
indications that the NSA has actually deployed such filtering
(again, very much against U.S. law).
Node:NSP, Next:nude, Previous:NSA line eater, Up:= N =
NSP /N-S-P/ n.
Common abbreviation for `Network Service Provider', one of the
big national or regional companies that maintains a portion of
the Internet backbone and resells connectivity to ISPs. In 1996, major NSPs include ANS, MCI, UUNET,
and Sprint. An Internet wholesaler.
Node:nude, Next:nugry, Previous:NSP, Up:= N =
nude adj.
Said of machines delivered without an operating system
(compare bare metal). "We
ordered 50 systems, but they all arrived nude, so we had to spend
a an extra weekend with the installation disks." This usage is a
recent innovation reflecting the fact that most IBM-PC clones are
now delivered with an operating system pre-installed at the
factory. Other kinds of hardware are still normally delivered
without OS, so this term is particular to PC support groups.
Node:nugry, Next:nuke, Previous:nude, Up:= N =
nugry /n[y]oo'gree/
[Usenet, 'newbie' + '-gry'] `. n. A newbie who posts a FAQ in the rec.puzzles newsgroup, especially if it
is a variant of the notorious and unanswerable "What, besides
`angry' and `hungry', is the third common English word that ends
in -GRY?". In the newsgroup, the canonical answer is of course
`nugry' itself. Plural is `nusgry' /n[y]oos'gree/. 2. adj. Having
the qualities of a nugry.
Node:nuke, Next:number-crunching, Previous:nugry, Up:= N =
nuke /n[y]ook/ vt.
[common] 1. To intentionally delete the entire contents of a
given directory or storage volume. "On Unix, rm -r
/usr will nuke everything in the usr filesystem." Never
used for accidental deletion; contrast blow away. 2. Syn. for dike, applied to smaller things such as files,
features, or code sections. Often used to express a final
verdict. "What do you want me to do with that 80-meg wallpaper file?" "Nuke it." 3. Used of
processes as well as files; nuke is a frequent verbal alias for
kill -9 on Unix. 4. On IBM PCs, a bug that results
in fandango on core
can trash the operating system, including the FAT (the in-core
copy of the disk block chaining information). This can utterly
scramble attached disks, which are then said to have been
`nuked'. This term is also used of analogous lossages on
Macintoshes and other micros without memory protection.
Node:number-crunching, Next:numbers, Previous:nuke, Up:= N =
number-crunching n.
[common] Computations of a numerical nature, esp. those that
make extensive use of floating-point numbers. The only thing
Fortrash is good for. This term is
in widespread informal use outside hackerdom and even in
mainstream slang, but has additional hackish connotations:
namely, that the computations are mindless and involve massive
use of brute force. This is
not always evil, esp. if it involves
ray tracing or fractals or some other use that makes pretty pictures, esp. if such
pictures can be used as wallpaper. See also crunch.
Node:numbers, Next:NUXI problem, Previous:number-crunching, Up:= N =
numbers n.
[scientific computation] Output of a computation that may not
be significant results but at least indicate that the program is
running. May be used to placate management, grant sponsors, etc.
`Making numbers' means running a program because output -- any
output, not necessarily meaningful output -- is needed as a
demonstration of progress. See pretty pictures, math-out, social science number.
Node:NUXI problem, Next:nybble, Previous:numbers, Up:= N =
NUXI problem /nuk'see pro'bl*m/ n.
Refers to the problem of transferring data between machines
with differing byte-order. The string `UNIX' might look like
`NUXI' on a machine with a different `byte sex' (e.g., when
transferring data from a little-endian to a big-endian, or vice-versa). See also middle-endian, swab, and bytesexual.
Node:nybble, Next:nyetwork, Previous:NUXI problem, Up:= N =
nybble /nib'l/ (alt. `nibble') n.
[from v. `nibble' by analogy with `bite' => `byte'] Four
bits; one hex digit; a half-byte.
Though `byte' is now techspeak, this useful relative is still
jargon. Compare byte; see also bit. The more mundane spelling "nibble" is
also commonly used. Apparently the `nybble' spelling is uncommon
in Commonwealth Hackish, as British orthography would suggest the
pronunciation /ni:'bl/.
Following `bit', `byte' and `nybble' there have been quite a
few analogical attempts to construct unambiguous terms for bit
blocks of other sizes. All of these are strictly jargon, not
techspeak, and not very common jargon at that (most hackers would
recognize them in context but not use them spontaneously). We
collect them here for reference together with the ambiguous
techspeak terms `word', `half-word' and `double word'; some
(indicated) have substantial information separate entries.
2 bits:
crumb, quad, quarter,
tayste, tydbit
4 bits:
nybble
5 bits:
nickle
10 bits:
deckle
16 bits:
playte, chawmp (on a 32-bit
machine), word (on a 16-bit machine), half-word (on a 32-bit
machine).
18 bits:
chawmp (on a 36-bit machine),
half-word (on a 36-bit machine)
32 bits:
dynner, gawble (on a 32-bit
machine), word (on a 32-bit machine), longword (on a 16-bit
machine).
36:
word (on a 36-bit machine)
48 bits:
gawble (under circumstances that
remain obscure)
64 bits
double word (on a 32-bit machine)
The fundamental motivation for most of these jargon terms
(aside from the normal hackerly enjoyment of punning wordplay) is
the extreme ambiguity of the term `word' and its derivatives.
Node:nyetwork, Next:Ob-, Previous:nybble, Up:= N
=
nyetwork /nyet'werk/ n.
[from Russian `nyet' = no] A network, when it is acting flaky or is down. Compare notwork.
Node:= O =, Next:= P =, Previous:= N =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= O =
Ob-:
Obfuscated C
Contest:
obi-wan error:
Objectionable-C:
obscure:
octal forty:
off the trolley:
off-by-one error:
offline:
ogg:
-oid:
old fart:
Old Testament:
on the gripping
hand:
one-banana problem:
one-line fix:
one-liner wars:
ooblick:
op:
open:
open source:
open switch:
operating system:
optical diff:
optical grep:
optimism:
Oracle the:
Orange Book:
oriental food:
orphan:
orphaned i-node:
orthogonal:
OS:
OS/2:
OSS:
OSU:
OTOH:
out-of-band:
overclock:
overflow bit:
overflow pdl:
overrun:
overrun screw:
Node:Ob-, Next:Obfuscated C Contest, Previous:nyetwork, Up:= O =
Ob- /ob/ pref.
Obligatory. A piece of netiquette acknowledging that the author
has been straying from the newsgroup's charter topic. For
example, if a posting in alt.sex is a response to a part of
someone else's posting that has nothing particularly to do with
sex, the author may append `ObSex' (or `Obsex') and toss off a
question or vignette about some unusual erotic act. It is
considered a sign of great winnitude when one's Obs are more
interesting than other people's whole postings.
Node:Obfuscated C Contest,
Next:obi-wan error,
Previous:Ob-, Up:= O =
Obfuscated C Contest n.
(in full, the `International Obfuscated C Code Contest', or
IOCCC) An annual contest run since 1984 over Usenet by Landon
Curt Noll and friends. The overall winner is whoever produces the
most unreadable, creative, and bizarre (but working) C program;
various other prizes are awarded at the judges' whim. C's terse
syntax and macro-preprocessor facilities give contestants a lot
of maneuvering room. The winning programs often manage to be
simultaneously (a) funny, (b) breathtaking works of art, and (c)
horrible examples of how not to code in C.
This relatively short and sweet entry might help convey the
flavor of obfuscated C:
/*
* HELLO WORLD program
* by Jack Applin and Robert Heckendorn, 1985
* (Note: depends on being able to modify elements of argv[],
* which is not guaranteed by ANSI and often not possible.)
*/
main(v,c)char**c;{for(v[c++]="Hello, world!\n)";
(!!c)[*c]&&(v--||--c&&execlp(*c,*c,c[!!c]+!!c,!c));
**c=!c)write(!!*c,*c,!!**c);}
Here's another good one:
/*
* Program to compute an approximation of pi
* by Brian Westley, 1988
* (requires pcc macro concatenation; try gcc -traditional-cpp)
*/
#define _ -F<00||--F-OO--;
int F=00,OO=00;
main(){F_OO();printf("%1.3f\n",4.*-F/OO/OO);}F_OO()
{
_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_
}
Note that this program works by computing its own area. For
more digits, write a bigger program. See also hello world.
The IOCCC has an official home page at http://www.ioccc.org.
Node:obi-wan error, Next:Objectionable-C, Previous:Obfuscated C
Contest, Up:= O =
obi-wan error /oh'bee-won` er'*r/ n.
[RPI, from `off-by-one' and the Obi-Wan Kenobi character in
"Star Wars"] A loop of some sort in which the index is off by 1.
Common when the index should have started from 0 but instead
started from 1. A kind of off-by-one error. See also zeroth.
Node:Objectionable-C, Next:obscure, Previous:obi-wan error, Up:= O =
Objectionable-C n.
Hackish take on "Objective-C", the name of an object-oriented
dialect of C in competition with the better-known C++ (it is used
to write native applications on the NeXT machine).
Objectionable-C uses a Smalltalk-like syntax, but lacks the
flexibility of Smalltalk method calls, and (like many such
efforts) comes frustratingly close to attaining the Right Thing without actually doing
so.
Node:obscure, Next:octal forty, Previous:Objectionable-C, Up:= O =
obscure adj.
Used in an exaggeration of its normal meaning, to imply total
incomprehensibility. "The reason for that last crash is obscure."
"The find(1) command's syntax is obscure!" The
phrase `moderately obscure' implies that something could be
figured out but probably isn't worth the trouble. The
construction `obscure in the extreme' is the preferred emphatic
form.
Node:octal forty, Next:off the trolley, Previous:obscure, Up:= O =
octal forty /ok'tl for'tee/ n.
Hackish way of saying "I'm drawing a blank." Octal 40 is the
ASCII space character, 0100000; by an
odd coincidence, hex 40 (01000000) is
the EBCDIC space character. See
wall.
Node:off the trolley, Next:off-by-one error,
Previous:octal forty,
Up:= O =
off the trolley adj.
Describes the behavior of a program that malfunctions and goes
catatonic, but doesn't actually crash
or abort. See glitch, bug, deep
space, wedged.
This term is much older than computing, and is (uncommon)
slang elsewhere. A trolley is the small wheel that trolls, or
runs against, the heavy wire that carries the current to run a
streetcar. It's at the end of the long pole (the trolley pole)
that reaches from the roof of the streetcar to the overhead line.
When the trolley stops making contact with the wire (from passing
through a switch, going over bumpy track, or whatever), the
streetcar comes to a halt, (usually) without crashing. The
streetcar is then said to be off the trolley, or off the wire.
Later on, trolley came to mean the streetcar itself. Since
streetcars became common in the 1890s, the term is more than 100
years old. Nowadays, trolleys are only seen on historic
streetcars, since modern streetcars use pantographs to contact
the wire.
Node:off-by-one error, Next:offline, Previous:off the trolley, Up:= O =
off-by-one error n.
[common] Exceedingly common error induced in many ways, such
as by starting at 0 when you should have started at 1 or
vice-versa, or by writing < N instead of
<= N or vice-versa. Also applied to giving
something to the person next to the one who should have gotten
it. Often confounded with fencepost error, which is properly a
particular subtype of it.
Node:offline, Next:ogg, Previous:off-by-one error, Up:= O =
offline adv.
Not now or not here. "Let's take this discussion offline."
Specifically used on Usenet to
suggest that a discussion be moved off a public newsgroup to
email.
Node:ogg, Next:-oid, Previous:offline, Up:= O
=
ogg /og/ v.
[CMU] 1. In the multi-player space combat game Netrek, to
execute kamikaze attacks against enemy ships which are carrying
armies or occupying strategic positions. Named during a game in
which one of the players repeatedly used the tactic while playing
Orion ship G, showing up in the player list as "Og". This trick
has been roundly denounced by those who would return to the good
old days when the tactic of dogfighting was dominant, but as Sun
Tzu wrote, "What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the
enemy's strategy, not his tactics." However, the traditional
answer to the newbie question "What does ogg mean?" is just "Pick
up some armies and I'll show you." 2. In other games, to
forcefully attack an opponent with the expectation that the
resources expended will be renewed faster than the opponent will
be able to regain his previous advantage. Taken more seriously as
a tactic since it has gained a simple name. 3. To do anything
forcefully, possibly without consideration of the drain on future
resources. "I guess I'd better go ogg the problem set that's due
tomorrow." "Whoops! I looked down at the map for a sec and almost
ogged that oncoming car."
Node:-oid, Next:old fart, Previous:ogg, Up:= O =
-oid suff.
[from Greek suffix -oid = `in the image of'] 1. Used as in
mainstream slang English to indicate a poor imitation, a
counterfeit, or some otherwise slightly bogus resemblance.
Hackers will happily use it with all sorts of non-Greco/Latin
stem words that wouldn't keep company with it in mainstream
English. For example, "He's a nerdoid" means that he
superficially resembles a nerd but can't make the grade; a
`modemoid' might be a 300-baud box (Real Modems run at 28.8 or
up); a `computeroid' might be any bitty
box. The word `keyboid' could be used to describe a chiclet keyboard, but would
have to be written; spoken, it would confuse the listener as to
the speaker's city of origin. 2. More specifically, an indicator
for `resembling an android' which in the past has been confined
to science-fiction fans and hackers. It too has recently (in
1991) started to go mainstream (most notably in the term
`trendoid' for victims of terminal hipness). This is probably
traceable to the popularization of the term droid in "Star Wars" and its sequels. (See also
windoid.)
Coinages in both forms have been common in science fiction for
at least fifty years, and hackers (who are often SF fans) have
probably been making `-oid' jargon for almost that long [though
GLS and I can personally confirm only that they were already
common in the mid-1970s --ESR].
Node:old fart, Next:Old Testament, Previous:-oid, Up:= O
=
old fart n.
Tribal elder. A title self-assumed with remarkable frequency
by (esp.) Usenetters who have been programming for more than
about 25 years; often appears in sig
blocks attached to Jargon File contributions of great
archeological significance. This is a term of insult in the
second or third person but one of pride in first person.
Node:Old Testament, Next:on the gripping
hand, Previous:old
fart, Up:= O =
Old Testament n.
[C programmers] The first edition of K&R, the sacred text describing Classic C.
Node:on the gripping
hand, Next:one-banana problem, Previous:Old Testament, Up:= O =
on the gripping hand
In the progression that starts "On the one hand..." and
continues "On the other hand..." mainstream English may add "on
the third hand..." even though most people don't have three
hands. Among hackers, it is just as likely to be "on the gripping
hand". This metaphor supplied the title of Larry Niven &
Jerry Pournelle's 1993 SF novel "The Gripping Hand" which
involved a species of hostile aliens with three arms (the same
species, in fact, referenced in juggling eggs). As with TANSTAAFL and con,
this usage one of the naturalized imports from SF fandom
frequently observed among hackers.
Node:one-banana problem,
Next:one-line fix,
Previous:on
the gripping hand, Up:= O
=
one-banana problem n.
At mainframe shops, where the computers have operators for
routine administrivia, the programmers and hardware people tend
to look down on the operators and claim that a trained monkey
could do their job. It is frequently observed that the incentives
that would be offered said monkeys can be used as a scale to
describe the difficulty of a task. A one-banana problem is
simple; hence, "It's only a one-banana job at the most; what's
taking them so long?"
At IBM, folklore divides the world into one-, two-, and
three-banana problems. Other cultures have different hierarchies
and may divide them more finely; at ICL, for example, five grapes
(a bunch) equals a banana. Their upper limit for the in-house
sysapes is said to be two bananas
and three grapes (another source claims it's three bananas and
one grape, but observes "However, this is subject to local
variations, cosmic rays and ISO"). At a complication level any
higher than that, one asks the manufacturers to send someone
around to check things.
See also Infinite-Monkey Theorem.
Node:one-line fix, Next:one-liner wars, Previous:one-banana
problem, Up:= O =
one-line fix n.
Used (often sarcastically) of a change to a program that is
thought to be trivial or insignificant right up to the moment it
crashes the system. Usually `cured' by another one-line fix. See
also I didn't
change anything!
Node:one-liner wars, Next:ooblick, Previous:one-line fix, Up:= O =
one-liner wars n.
A game popular among hackers who code in the language APL (see
write-only language
and line noise). The objective
is to see who can code the most interesting and/or useful routine
in one line of operators chosen from APL's exceedingly hairy primitive set. A similar amusement
was practiced among TECO hackers and
is now popular among Perl
aficionados.
Ken Iverson, the inventor of APL, has been credited with a
one-liner that, given a number N, produces a list of the prime
numbers from 1 to N inclusive. It looks like this:
(2 = 0 +.= T o.| T) / T <- iN
where `o' is the APL null character, the assignment arrow is a
single character, and `i' represents the APL iota.
Here's a Perl program that prints
primes:
perl -wle '(1 x $_) !~ /^(11+)\1+$/ && print while ++ $_'
In the Perl world this game is sometimes called Perl Golf
because the player with the fewest (key)strokes wins.
Node:ooblick, Next:op, Previous:one-liner wars, Up:= O =
ooblick /oo'blik/ n.
[from the Dr. Seuss title "Bartholomew and the Oobleck"; the
spelling `oobleck' is still current in the mainstream] A bizarre
semi-liquid sludge made from cornstarch and water. Enjoyed among
hackers who make batches during playtime at parties for its
amusing and extremely non-Newtonian behavior; it pours and
splatters, but resists rapid motion like a solid and will even
crack when hit by a hammer. Often found near lasers.
Here is a field-tested ooblick recipe contributed by GLS:
1 cup cornstarch
1 cup baking soda
3/4 cup water
N drops of food coloring
This recipe isn't quite as non-Newtonian as a pure cornstarch
ooblick, but has an appropriately slimy feel.
Some, however, insist that the notion of an ooblick
recipe is far too mechanical, and that it is best to add
the water in small increments so that the various mixed states
the cornstarch goes through as it becomes ooblick can be
grokked in fullness by many hands. For optional ingredients of
this experience, see the "Ceremonial Chemicals" section
of Appendix B.
Node:op, Next:open, Previous:ooblick, Up:= O
=
op /op/ n.
1. In England and Ireland, common verbal abbreviation for
`operator', as in system operator. Less common in the U.S., where
sysop seems to be preferred. 2. [IRC]
Someone who is endowed with privileges on IRC, not limited to a particular channel. These
are generally people who are in charge of the IRC server at their
particular site. Sometimes used interchangeably with CHOP. Compare sysop.
Node:open, Next:open source, Previous:op, Up:= O =
open n.
Abbreviation for `open (or left) parenthesis' -- used when
necessary to eliminate oral ambiguity. To read aloud the LISP
form (DEFUN FOO (X) (PLUS X 1)) one might say: "Open defun foo,
open eks close, open, plus eks one, close close."
Node:open source, Next:open switch, Previous:open, Up:= O
=
open source n.
[common; also adj. `open-source'] Term coined in March 1998
following the Mozilla release to describe software distributed in
source under licenses guaranteeing anybody rights to freely use,
modify, and redistribute, the code. The intent was to be able to
sell the hackers' ways of doing software to industry and the
mainstream by avoid the negative connotations (to suits) of the term "free software". For discussion of the
followon tactics and their consequences, see the Open Source Initiative site.
Node:open switch, Next:operating system, Previous:open source, Up:= O =
open switch n.
[IBM: prob. from railroading] An unresolved question, issue,
or problem.
Node:operating system, Next:optical diff, Previous:open switch, Up:= O =
operating system n.
[techspeak] (Often abbreviated `OS') The foundation software
of a machine; that which schedules tasks, allocates storage, and
presents a default interface to the user between applications.
The facilities an operating system provides and its general
design philosophy exert an extremely strong influence on
programming style and on the technical cultures that grow up
around its host machines. Hacker folklore has been shaped
primarily by the Unix, ITS, TOPS-10, TOPS-20/TWENEX, WAITS,
CP/M, MS-DOS, and Multics operating systems (most importantly by
ITS and Unix).
Node:optical diff, Next:optical grep, Previous:operating system, Up:= O =
optical diff n.
See vdiff.
Node:optical grep, Next:optimism, Previous:optical diff, Up:= O =
optical grep n.
See vgrep.
Node:optimism, Next:Oracle the, Previous:optical grep, Up:= O =
optimism n.
What a programmer is full of after fixing the last bug and
before discovering the next last bug. Fred Brooks's book
"The Mythical Man-Month" (See "Brooks's Law") contains the
following paragraph that describes this extremely well:
All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern
sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings
and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations
drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal.
Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are
younger, and the young are always optimists. But however the
selection process works, the result is indisputable: "This time
it will surely run," or "I just found the last
bug.".
See also Lubarsky's Law
of Cybernetic Entomology.
Node:Oracle the, Next:Orange Book, Previous:optimism, Up:= O =
Oracle, the
The all-knowing, all-wise Internet Oracle
_rec.humor.oracle_), or one of the foreign language
derivatives of same. Newbies frequently confuse the Oracle with
Oracle, a database vendor. As a result, the unmoderated
_rec.humor.oracle.d_ is frequently crossposted to by the
clueless, looking for advice on SQL. As more than one person has
said in similar situations, "Don't people bother to look at the
newsgroup description line anymore?" (To which the standard
response is, "Did people ever read it in the first place?")
Node:Orange Book, Next:oriental food, Previous:Oracle the, Up:= O =
Orange Book n.
The U.S. Government's standards document "Trusted Computer
System Evaluation Criteria, DOD standard 5200.28-STD, December,
1985" which characterize secure computing architectures and
defines levels A1 (most secure) through D (least). Modern Unixes
are roughly C2. See also crayola
books, book
titles.
Node:oriental food, Next:orphan, Previous:Orange Book, Up:= O =
oriental food n.
Hackers display an intense tropism towards oriental cuisine,
especially Chinese, and especially of the spicier varieties such
as Szechuan and Hunan. This phenomenon (which has also been
observed in subcultures that overlap heavily with hackerdom, most
notably science-fiction fandom) has never been satisfactorily
explained, but is sufficiently intense that one can assume the
target of a hackish dinner expedition to be the best local
Chinese place and be right at least three times out of four. See
also ravs, great-wall, stir-fried random, laser chicken, Yu-Shiang Whole Fish. Thai,
Indian, Korean, and Vietnamese cuisines are also quite
popular.
Node:orphan, Next:orphaned i-node, Previous:oriental food, Up:= O =
orphan n.
[Unix] A process whose parent has died; one inherited by
init(1). Compare zombie.
Node:orphaned i-node, Next:orthogonal, Previous:orphan, Up:= O =
orphaned i-node /or'f*nd i:'nohd/ n.
[Unix] 1. [techspeak] A file that retains storage but no
longer appears in the directories of a filesystem. 2. By
extension, a pejorative for any person no longer serving a useful
function within some organization, esp. lion food without subordinates.
Node:orthogonal, Next:OS, Previous:orphaned i-node, Up:= O =
orthogonal adj.
[from mathematics] Mutually independent; well separated;
sometimes, irrelevant to. Used in a generalization of its
mathematical meaning to describe sets of primitives or
capabilities that, like a vector basis in geometry, span the
entire `capability space' of the system and are in some sense
non-overlapping or mutually independent. For example, in
architectures such as the PDP-11 or VAX where all or nearly all
registers can be used interchangeably in any role with respect to
any instruction, the register set is said to be orthogonal. Or,
in logic, the set of operators `not' and `or' is orthogonal, but
the set `nand', `or', and `not' is not (because any one of these
can be expressed in terms of the others). Also used in comments
on human discourse: "This may be orthogonal to the discussion,
but...."
Node:OS, Next:OS/2, Previous:orthogonal, Up:= O =
OS /O-S/
1. [Operating System] n. An abbreviation heavily used in
email, occasionally in speech. 2. n. obs. On ITS, an output spy.
See "OS and JEDGAR" in
Appendix A.
Node:OS/2, Next:OSS, Previous:OS,
Up:= O =
OS/2 /O S too/ n.
The anointed successor to MS-DOS for Intel 286- and 386-based
micros; proof that IBM/Microsoft couldn't get it right the second
time, either. Often called `Half-an-OS'. Mentioning it is usually
good for a cheap laugh among hackers -- the design was so baroque, and the implementation of 1.x so
bad, that 3 years after introduction you could still count the
major apps shipping for it on the
fingers of two hands -- in unary. The 2.x versions are said to
have improved somewhat, and informed hackers now rate them
superior to Microsoft Windows (an endorsement which, however,
could easily be construed as damning with faint praise). See
monstrosity, cretinous, second-system effect.
Node:OSS, Next:OSU, Previous:OS/2, Up:= O
=
OSS
Written-only acronym for "Open Source Software" (see open source. This is a rather ugly
TLA, and the principals in the
open-source movement don't use it, but it has (perhaps
inevitably) spread through the trade press like kudzu.
Node:OSU, Next:OTOH, Previous:OSS,
Up:= O =
OSU /O-S-U/ n. obs.
[TMRC] Acronym for Officially Sanctioned User; a user who is
recognized as such by the computer authorities and allowed to use
the computer above the objections of the security monitor.
Node:OTOH, Next:out-of-band, Previous:OSU, Up:= O =
OTOH //
[Usenet; very common] On The Other Hand.
Node:out-of-band, Next:overclock, Previous:OTOH, Up:= O =
out-of-band adj.
[from telecommunications and network theory] 1. In software,
describes values of a function which are not in its `natural'
range of return values, but are rather signals that some kind of
exception has occurred. Many C functions, for example, return a
nonnegative integral value, but indicate failure with an
out-of-band return value of -1. Compare hidden flag, green bytes, fence. 2. Also sometimes used to describe what
communications people call `shift characters', such as the ESC
that leads control sequences for many terminals, or the level
shift indicators in the old 5-bit Baudot codes. 3. In personal
communication, using methods other than email, such as telephones
or snail-mail.
Node:overclock, Next:overflow bit, Previous:out-of-band, Up:= O =
overclock /oh'vr-klok'/ vt.
To operate a CPU or other digital logic device at a rate
higher than it was designed for, under the assumption that the
manufacturer put some slop into the
specification to account for manufacturing tolerances.
Overclocking something can result in intermittent crashes, and can even burn things out, since
power dissipation is directly proportional to clock frequency. People who make a hobby of this
are sometimes called "overclockers"; they are thrilled that they
can run their 450MHz CPU at 500MHz, even though they can only
tell the difference by running a benchmark program.
Node:overflow bit, Next:overflow pdl, Previous:overclock, Up:= O =
overflow bit n.
1. [techspeak] A flag on some
processors indicating an attempt to calculate a result too large
for a register to hold. 2. More generally, an indication of any
kind of capacity overload condition. "Well, the Ada description was baroque all right, but I could hack it OK
until they got to the exception handling ... that
set my overflow bit." 3. The hypothetical bit that will be set if
a hacker doesn't get to make a trip to the Room of Porcelain
Fixtures: "I'd better process an internal interrupt before the
overflow bit gets set."
Node:overflow pdl, Next:overrun, Previous:overflow bit, Up:= O =
overflow pdl n.
[MIT] The place where you put things when your PDL is full. If you don't have one and too many
things get pushed, you forget something. The overflow pdl for a
person's memory might be a memo pad. This usage inspired the
following doggerel:
Hey, diddle, diddle
The overflow pdl
To get a little more stack;
If that's not enough
Then you lose it all,
And have to pop all the way back.
-The Great Quux
The term `pdl' (see PDL) seems to be
primarily an MITism; outside MIT this term is replaced by
`overflow stack' (but that wouldn't
rhyme with `diddle').
Node:overrun, Next:overrun screw, Previous:overflow pdl, Up:= O =
overrun n.
1. [techspeak] Term for a frequent consequence of data
arriving faster than it can be consumed, esp. in serial line
communications. For example, at 9600 baud there is almost exactly
one character per millisecond, so if a silo can hold only two characters and the machine
takes longer than 2 msec to get to service the interrupt, at
least one character will be lost. 2. Also applied to
non-serial-I/O communications. "I forgot to pay my electric bill
due to mail overrun." "Sorry, I got four phone calls in 3 minutes
last night and lost your message to overrun." When thrashing at tasks, the next person to make a
request might be told "Overrun!" Compare firehose syndrome. 3. More
loosely, may refer to a buffer
overflow not necessarily related to processing time (as
in overrun screw).
Node:overrun screw, Next:P-mail, Previous:overrun, Up:= O =
overrun screw n.
[C programming] A variety of fandango on core produced by
scribbling past the end of an array (C implementations typically
have no checks for this error). This is relatively benign and
easy to spot if the array is static; if it is auto, the result
may be to smash the
stack -- often resulting in heisenbugs of the most diabolical subtlety.
The term `overrun screw' is used esp. of scribbles beyond the end
of arrays allocated with malloc(3); this typically
trashes the allocation header for the next block in the arena, producing massive lossage within
malloc and often a core dump on the next operation to use
stdio(3) or malloc(3) itself. See spam, overrun;
see also memory leak, memory smash, aliasing bug, precedence lossage, fandango on core, secondary damage.
Node:= P =, Next:= Q =, Previous:= O =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= P =
P-mail:
P.O.D.:
packet over air:
padded cell:
page in:
page out:
pain in the net:
Pangloss parity:
paper-net:
param:
PARC:
parent message:
parity errors:
Parkinson's Law of
Data:
parm:
parse:
Pascal:
pastie:
patch:
patch pumpkin:
patch space:
path:
pathological:
payware:
PBD:
PC-ism:
PD:
PDL:
PDP-10:
PDP-20:
PEBKAC:
peek:
pencil and paper:
Pentagram Pro:
Pentium:
peon:
percent-S:
perf:
perfect programmer
syndrome:
Perl:
person of no
account:
pessimal:
pessimizing
compiler:
peta-:
PETSCII:
PFY:
phage:
phase:
phase of the
moon:
phase-wrapping:
PHB:
phreaker:
phreaking:
pico-:
pig-tail:
pilot error:
ping:
Ping O' Death:
ping storm:
pink wire:
pipe:
pistol:
pixel sort:
pizza box:
plaid screen:
plain-ASCII:
plan file:
platinum-iridium:
playpen:
playte:
plingnet:
plokta:
plonk:
plug-and-pray:
plugh:
plumbing:
PM:
pnambic:
pod:
point-and-drool
interface:
pointy hat:
pointy-haired:
poke:
poll:
polygon pusher:
POM:
pop:
POPJ:
poser:
post:
postcardware:
posting:
postmaster:
PostScript:
pound on:
power cycle:
power hit:
PPN:
pr0n:
precedence lossage:
prepend:
prestidigitization:
pretty pictures:
prettyprint:
pretzel key:
priesthood:
prime time:
print:
printing
discussion:
priority interrupt:
profile:
progasm:
proggy:
proglet:
program:
Programmer's Cheer:
programming:
programming fluid:
propeller head:
propeller key:
proprietary:
protocol:
provocative
maintenance:
prowler:
pseudo:
pseudoprime:
pseudosuit:
psychedelicware:
psyton:
pubic directory:
puff:
pumpkin holder:
pumpking:
punched card:
punt:
Purple Book:
purple wire:
push:
Python:
Node:P-mail, Next:P.O.D., Previous:overrun screw, Up:= P =
P-mail n.
[rare] Physical mail, as opposed to email. Synonymous with snail-mail, but much less common.
Node:P.O.D., Next:packet over air, Previous:P-mail, Up:= P =
P.O.D. /P-O-D/
[rare] Acronym for `Piece Of Data' (as opposed to a code
section). See also pod.
Node:packet over air, Next:padded cell, Previous:P.O.D., Up:= P =
packet over air
[common among backbone ISPs] The protocol notionally being
used by Internet data attempting to traverse a physical gap or
break in the network, such as might be caused by a fiber-seeking backhoe. "I see
why you're dropping packets. You seem to have a packet over air
problem.
Node:padded cell, Next:page in, Previous:packet over air, Up:= P =
padded cell n.
Where you put lusers so they can't
hurt anything. A program that limits a luser to a carefully
restricted subset of the capabilities of the host system (for
example, the rsh(1) utility on USG Unix). Note that
this is different from an iron
box because it is overt and not aimed at enforcing
security so much as protecting others (and the luser) from the
consequences of the luser's boundless naivete (see naive). Also `padded cell environment'.
Node:page in, Next:page out, Previous:padded cell, Up:= P =
page in v.
[MIT] 1. To become aware of one's surroundings again after
having paged out (see page out).
Usually confined to the sarcastic comment: "Eric pages in, film at 11!" 2. Syn. `swap in';
see swap.
Node:page out, Next:pain in the net, Previous:page in, Up:= P =
page out vi.
[MIT] 1. To become unaware of one's surroundings temporarily,
due to daydreaming or preoccupation. "Can you repeat that? I
paged out for a minute." See page
in. Compare glitch, thinko. 2. Syn. `swap out'; see swap.
Node:pain in the net, Next:Pangloss parity,
Previous:page out, Up:= P =
pain in the net n.
A flamer.
Node:Pangloss parity, Next:paper-net, Previous:pain in the net,
Up:= P =
Pangloss parity n.
[from Dr. Pangloss, the eternal optimist in Voltaire's
"Candide"] In corporate DP shops, a common condition of severe
but equally shared lossage
resulting from the theory that as long as everyone in the
organization has the exactly the same model of obsolete
computer, everything will be fine.
Node:paper-net, Next:param, Previous:Pangloss parity, Up:= P =
paper-net n.
Hackish way of referring to the postal service, analogizing it
to a very slow, low-reliability network. Usenet sig blocks sometimes include a
"Paper-Net:" header just before the sender's postal address;
common variants of this are "Papernet" and "P-Net". Note that the
standard netiquette guidelines
discourage this practice as a waste of bandwidth, since netters
are quite unlikely to casually use postal addresses. Compare
voice-net, snail-mail, P-mail.
Node:param, Next:PARC, Previous:paper-net, Up:= P =
param /p*-ram'/ n.
[common] Shorthand for `parameter'. See also parm; compare arg,
var.
Node:PARC, Next:parent message, Previous:param, Up:= P =
PARC n.
See XEROX PARC.
Node:parent message, Next:parity errors, Previous:PARC, Up:= P =
parent message n.
What a followup follows up.
Node:parity errors, Next:Parkinson's Law of
Data, Previous:parent message, Up:= P =
parity errors pl.n.
Little lapses of attention or (in more severe cases)
consciousness, usually brought on by having spent all night and
most of the next day hacking. "I need to go home and crash; I'm
starting to get a lot of parity errors." Derives from a
relatively common but nearly always correctable transient error
in memory hardware. It predates RAM; in fact, this term is
reported to have already have been in use in its jargoin sense
back in the 1960s when magnetic cores ruled. Parity errors can
also afflict mass storage and serial communication lines; this is
more serious because not always correctable.
Node:Parkinson's Law of
Data, Next:parm, Previous:parity errors, Up:= P =
Parkinson's Law of Data prov.
"Data expands to fill the space available for storage"; buying
more memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive
techniques. It has been observed since the mid-1980s that the
memory usage of evolving systems tends to double roughly once
every 18 months. Fortunately, memory density available for
constant dollars also tends to about double once every 18 months
(see Moore's Law);
unfortunately, the laws of physics guarantee that the latter
cannot continue indefinitely.
Node:parm, Next:parse, Previous:Parkinson's Law of Data,
Up:= P =
parm /parm/ n.
Further-compressed form of param.
This term is an IBMism, and written use is almost unknown outside
IBM shops; spoken /parm/ is more widely distributed, but the
synonym arg is favored among hackers.
Compare arg, var.
Node:parse, Next:Pascal, Previous:parm, Up:= P =
parse [from linguistic terminology] vt.
1. To determine the syntactic structure of a sentence or other
utterance (close to the standard English meaning). "That was the
one I saw you." "I can't parse that." 2. More generally, to
understand or comprehend. "It's very simple; you just kretch the
glims and then aos the zotz." "I can't parse that." 3. Of fish,
to have to remove the bones yourself. "I object to parsing fish",
means "I don't want to get a whole fish, but a sliced one is
okay". A `parsed fish' has been deboned. There is some
controversy over whether `unparsed' should mean `bony', or also
mean `deboned'.
Node:Pascal, Next:pastie, Previous:parse, Up:= P
=
Pascal n.
An Algol-descended language designed by Niklaus Wirth on the
CDC 6600 around 1967-68 as an instructional tool for elementary
programming. This language, designed primarily to keep students
from shooting themselves in the foot and thus extremely
restrictive from a general-purpose-programming point of view, was
later promoted as a general-purpose tool and, in fact, became the
ancestor of a large family of languages including Modula-2 and
Ada (see also bondage-and-discipline
language). The hackish point of view on Pascal was
probably best summed up by a devastating (and, in its deadpan
way, screamingly funny) 1981 paper by Brian Kernighan (of K&R fame) entitled "Why Pascal is Not
My Favorite Programming Language", which was turned down by the
technical journals but circulated widely via photocopies. It was
eventually published in "Comparing and Assessing Programming
Languages", edited by Alan Feuer and Narain Gehani
(Prentice-Hall, 1984). Part of his discussion is worth repeating
here, because its criticisms are still apposite to Pascal itself
after ten years of improvement and could also stand as an
indictment of many other bondage-and-discipline languages. At the
end of a summary of the case against Pascal, Kernighan wrote:
9. There is no escape
This last point is perhaps the most important. The language is
inadequate but circumscribed, because there is no way to escape
its limitations. There are no casts to disable the type-checking
when necessary. There is no way to replace the defective run-time
environment with a sensible one, unless one controls the compiler
that defines the "standard procedures". The language is
closed.
People who use Pascal for serious programming fall into a
fatal trap. Because the language is impotent, it must be
extended. But each group extends Pascal in its own direction, to
make it look like whatever language they really want. Extensions
for separate compilation, FORTRAN-like COMMON, string data types,
internal static variables, initialization, octal numbers, bit
operators, etc., all add to the utility of the language for one
group but destroy its portability to others.
I feel that it is a mistake to use Pascal for anything much
beyond its original target. In its pure form, Pascal is a toy
language, suitable for teaching but not for real programming.
Pascal has since been almost entirely displaced (by C) from the niches it had acquired in serious
applications and systems programming, but retains some popularity
as a hobbyist language in the MS-DOS and Macintosh worlds.
Node:pastie, Next:patch, Previous:Pascal, Up:= P
=
pastie /pay'stee/ n.
An adhesive-backed label designed to be attached to a key on a
keyboard to indicate some non-standard character which can be
accessed through that key. Pasties are likely to be used in APL
environments, where almost every key is associated with a special
character. A pastie on the R key, for example, might remind the
user that it is used to generate the rho character. The term
properly refers to nipple-concealing devices formerly worn by
strippers in concession to indecent-exposure laws; compare tits on a keyboard.
Node:patch, Next:patch pumpkin, Previous:pastie, Up:=
P =
patch
1. n. A temporary addition to a piece of code, usually as a
quick-and-dirty remedy to
an existing bug or misfeature. A patch may or may not work, and
may or may not eventually be incorporated permanently into the
program. Distinguished from a diff or
mod by the fact that a patch is
generated by more primitive means than the rest of the program;
the classical examples are instructions modified by using the
front panel switches, and changes made directly to the binary
executable of a program originally written in an HLL. Compare one-line
fix. 2. vt. To insert a patch into a piece of code. 3.
[in the Unix world] n. A diff (sense
2). 4. A set of modifications to binaries to be applied by a
patching program. IBM operating systems often receive updates to
the operating system in the form of absolute hexadecimal patches.
If you have modified your OS, you have to disassemble these back
to the source. The patches might later be corrected by other
patches on top of them (patches were said to "grow scar tissue").
The result was often a convoluted patch space and headaches galore. 5.
[Unix] the patch(1) program, written by Larry Wall,
which automatically applies a patch (sense 3) to a set of source
code.
There is a classic story of a tiger
team penetrating a secure military computer that
illustrates the danger inherent in binary patches (or, indeed,
any patches that you can't -- or don't -- inspect and examine
before installing). They couldn't find any trap doors or any way to penetrate
security of IBM's OS, so they made a site visit to an IBM office
(remember, these were official military types who were
purportedly on official business), swiped some IBM stationery,
and created a fake patch. The patch was actually the trapdoor
they needed. The patch was distributed at about the right time
for an IBM patch, had official stationery and all accompanying
documentation, and was dutifully installed. The installation
manager very shortly thereafter learned something about proper
procedures.
Node:patch pumpkin, Next:patch space, Previous:patch, Up:= P =
patch pumpkin n.
[Perl hackers] A notional token passed around among the
members of a project. Possession of the patch pumpkin means one
has the exclusive authority to make changes on the project's
master source tree. The implicit assumption is that `pumpkin
holder' status is temporary and rotates periodically among senior
project members.
This term comes from the Perl development community, but has
been sighted elsewhere. It derives from a stuffed-toy pumpkin
that was passed around at a development shop years ago as the
access control for a shared backup-tape drive.
Node:patch space, Next:path, Previous:patch pumpkin, Up:= P =
patch space n.
An unused block of bits left in a binary so that it can later
be modified by insertion of machine-language instructions there
(typically, the patch space is modified to contain new code, and
the superseded code is patched to contain a jump or call to the
patch space). The near-universal use of compilers and
interpreters has made this term rare; it is now primarily
historical outside IBM shops. See patch (sense 4), zap
(sense 4), hook.
Node:path, Next:pathological, Previous:patch space, Up:= P =
path n.
1. A bang path or explicitly
routed Internet address;
a node-by-node specification of a link between two machines.
Though these are now obsolete as a form of addressing, they still
show up in diagnostics and trace headers ocvcasionally (e.g. in
NNTP headers). 2. [Unix] A filename, fully specified relative to
the root directory (as opposed to relative to the current
directory; the latter is sometimes called a `relative path').
This is also called a `pathname'. 3. [Unix and MS-DOS] The
`search path', an environment variable specifying the directories
in which the shell (COMMAND.COM,
under MS-DOS) should look for commands. Other, similar constructs
abound under Unix (for example, the C preprocessor has a `search
path' it uses in looking for #include files).
Node:pathological, Next:payware, Previous:path, Up:= P =
pathological adj.
1. [scientific computation] Used of a data set that is grossly
atypical of normal expected input, esp. one that exposes a
weakness or bug in whatever algorithm one is using. An algorithm
that can be broken by pathological inputs may still be useful if
such inputs are very unlikely to occur in practice. 2. When used
of test input, implies that it was purposefully engineered as a
worst case. The implication in both senses is that the data is
spectacularly ill-conditioned or that someone had to explicitly
set out to break the algorithm in order to come up with such a
crazy example. 3. Also said of an unlikely collection of
circumstances. "If the network is down and comes up halfway
through the execution of that command by root, the system may
just crash." "Yes, but that's a pathological case." Often used to
dismiss the case from discussion, with the implication that the
consequences are acceptable, since they will happen so
infrequently (if at all) that it doesn't seem worth going to the
extra trouble to handle that case (see sense 1).
Node:payware, Next:PBD, Previous:pathological, Up:= P =
payware /pay'weir/ n.
Commercial software. Oppose shareware or freeware.
Node:PBD, Next:PC-ism, Previous:payware, Up:= P
=
PBD /P-B-D/ n.
[abbrev. of `Programmer Brain Damage'] Applied to bug reports
revealing places where the program was obviously broken by an
incompetent or short-sighted programmer. Compare UBD; see also brain-damaged.
Node:PC-ism, Next:PD, Previous:PBD,
Up:= P =
PC-ism /P-C-izm/ n.
A piece of code or coding technique that takes advantage of
the unprotected single-tasking environment in IBM PCs and the
like running DOS, e.g., by busy-waiting on a hardware register,
direct diddling of screen memory, or using hard timing loops.
Compare ill-behaved, vaxism, unixism. Also, `PC-ware' n., a program full of
PC-isms on a machine with a more capable operating system.
Pejorative.
Node:PD, Next:PDL,
Previous:PC-ism, Up:= P =
PD /P-D/ adj.
[common] Abbreviation for `public domain', applied to software
distributed over Usenet and from
Internet archive sites. Much of this software is not in fact
public domain in the legal sense but travels under various
copyrights granting reproduction and use rights to anyone who can
snarf a copy. See copyleft.
Node:PDL, Next:PDP-10, Previous:PD, Up:= P =
PDL /P-D-L/, /pid'l/, /p*d'l/ or /puhd'l/
1. n. `Program Design Language'. Any of a large class of
formal and profoundly useless pseudo-languages in which management forces one to design
programs. Too often, management expects PDL descriptions to be
maintained in parallel with the code, imposing massive overhead
to little or no benefit. See also flowchart. 2. v. To design using a program
design language. "I've been pdling so long my eyes won't focus
beyond 2 feet." 3. n. `Page Description Language'. Refers to any
language which is used to control a graphics device, usually a
laserprinter. The most common example is, of course, Adobe's
PostScript language, but there
are many others, such as Xerox InterPress, etc. 4. In ITS days,
the preferred MITism for stack. See
overflow pdl. 5. Dave
Lebling, one of the co-authors of Zork; (his network address on the ITS machines
was at one time pdl@dms).
Node:PDP-10, Next:PDP-20, Previous:PDL, Up:= P =
PDP-10 n.
[Programmed Data Processor model 10] The machine that made
timesharing real. It looms large in hacker folklore because of
its adoption in the mid-1970s by many university computing
facilities and research labs, including the MIT AI Lab, Stanford,
and CMU. Some aspects of the instruction set (most notably the
bit-field instructions) are still considered unsurpassed. The 10
was eventually eclipsed by the VAX machines (descendants of the
PDP-11) when DEC recognized that the 10
and VAX product lines were competing with each other and decided
to concentrate its software development effort on the more
profitable VAX. The machine was finally dropped from DEC's line
in 1983, following the failure of the Jupiter Project at DEC to
build a viable new model. (Some attempts by other companies to
market clones came to nothing; see Foonly and Mars.)
This event spelled the doom of ITS and
the technical cultures that had spawned the original Jargon File,
but by mid-1991 it had become something of a badge of honorable
old-timerhood among hackers to have cut one's teeth on a PDP-10.
See TOPS-10, ITS, BLT, DDT, DPB, EXCH, HAKMEM, LDB, pop, push. See also http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/.
Node:PDP-20, Next:PEBKAC, Previous:PDP-10, Up:= P
=
PDP-20 n.
The most famous computer that never was. PDP-10 computers running the TOPS-10 operating system were labeled
`DECsystem-10' as a way of differentiating them from the PDP-11.
Later on, those systems running TOPS-20 were labeled `DECSYSTEM-20' (the block
capitals being the result of a lawsuit brought against DEC by
Singer, which once made a computer called `system-10'), but
contrary to popular lore there was never a `PDP-20'; the only
difference between a 10 and a 20 was the operating system and the
color of the paint. Most (but not all) machines sold to run
TOPS-10 were painted `Basil Blue', whereas most TOPS-20 machines
were painted `Chinese Red' (often mistakenly called orange).
Node:PEBKAC, Next:peek, Previous:PDP-20, Up:= P
=
PEBKAC /peb'kak/
[Abbrev., "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair"] Used by
support people, particularly at call centers and help desks. Not
used with the public. Denotes pilot error as the cause of the
crash, especially stupid errors that even a luser could figure out. Very derogatory. Usage:
"Did you ever figure out why that guy couldn't print?" "Yeah, he
kept cancelling the operation before it could finish.
PEBKAC."
Node:peek, Next:pencil and paper, Previous:PEBKAC, Up:= P =
peek n.,vt.
(and poke) The commands in most
microcomputer BASICs for directly accessing memory contents at an
absolute address; often extended to mean the corresponding
constructs in any HLL (peek reads
memory, poke modifies it). Much hacking on small, non-MMU micros
used to consist of `peek'ing around memory, more or less at
random, to find the location where the system keeps interesting
stuff. Long (and variably accurate) lists of such addresses for
various computers circulated (see interrupt list). The results of
`poke's at these addresses may be highly useful, mildly amusing,
useless but neat, or (most likely) total lossage (see killer poke).
Since a real operating
system provides useful, higher-level services for the
tasks commonly performed with peeks and pokes on micros, and real
languages tend not to encourage low-level memory groveling, a
question like "How do I do a peek in C?" is diagnostic of the
newbie. (Of course, OS kernels often
have to do exactly this; a real kernel hacker would
unhesitatingly, if unportably, assign an absolute address to a
pointer variable and indirect through it.)
Node:pencil and paper, Next:Pentagram Pro, Previous:peek, Up:= P =
pencil and paper n.
An archaic information storage and transmission device that
works by depositing smears of graphite on bleached wood pulp.
More recent developments in paper-based technology include
improved `write-once' update devices which use tiny rolling heads
similar to mouse balls to deposit colored pigment. All these
devices require an operator skilled at so-called `handwriting'
technique. These technologies are ubiquitous outside hackerdom,
but nearly forgotten inside it. Most hackers had terrible
handwriting to begin with, and years of keyboarding tend to have
encouraged it to degrade further. Perhaps for this reason,
hackers deprecate pencil-and-paper technology and often resist
using it in any but the most trivial contexts.
Node:Pentagram Pro, Next:Pentium, Previous:pencil and paper, Up:= P =
Pentagram Pro n.
A humorous corruption of "Pentium Pro", with a Satanic
reference, implying that the chip is inherently evil. Often used with "666 MHz"; there is a
T-shirt. See Pentium
Node:Pentium, Next:peon, Previous:Pentagram Pro, Up:= P =
Pentium n.
The name given to Intel's P5 chip, the successor to the 80486.
The name was chosen because of difficulties Intel had in
trademarking a number. It suggests the number five (implying 586)
while (according to Intel) conveying a meaning of strength "like
titanium". Among hackers, the plural is frequently `pentia'. See
also Pentagram Pro.
Intel did not stick to this convention when naming its P6
processor the Pentium Pro; many believe this is due to
difficulties in selling a chip with "sex" in its name. Successor
chips have been called `Pentium II' and `Pentium III'.
Node:peon, Next:percent-S, Previous:Pentium, Up:= P
=
peon n.
A person with no special (root or
wheel) privileges on a computer
system. "I can't create an account on foovax for you;
I'm only a peon there."
Node:percent-S, Next:perf, Previous:peon, Up:= P =
percent-S /per-sent' es'/ n.
[From the code in C's printf(3) library function
used to insert an arbitrary string argument] An unspecified
person or object. "I was just talking to some percent-s in
administration." Compare random.
Node:perf, Next:perfect programmer
syndrome, Previous:percent-S, Up:= P =
perf /perf/ n.
Syn. chad (sense 1). The term
`perfory' /per'f*-ree/ is also heard. The term perf may also refer to the perforations
themselves, rather than the chad they produce when torn
(philatelists use it this way).
Node:perfect programmer
syndrome, Next:Perl,
Previous:perf, Up:= P =
perfect programmer syndrome n.
Arrogance; the egotistical conviction that one is above normal
human error. Most frequently found among programmers of some
native ability but relatively little experience (especially new
graduates; their perceptions may be distorted by a history of
excellent performance at solving toy
problems). "Of course my program is correct, there is no
need to test it." "Yes, I can see there may be a problem here,
but I'll never type rm -r / while in root mode."
Node:Perl, Next:person of no account,
Previous:perfect programmer
syndrome, Up:= P =
Perl /perl/ n.
[Practical Extraction and Report Language, a.k.a.
Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister] An interpreted language
developed by Larry Wall (,
author of patch(1) and rn(1)) and
distributed over Usenet. Superficially resembles awk, but is much hairier, including many
facilities reminiscent of sed(1) and shells and a
comprehensive Unix system-call interface. Unix sysadmins, who are
almost always incorrigible hackers, generally consider it one of
the languages of
choice, and it is by far the most widely used tool for
making `live' web pages via CGI. Perl has been described, in a
parody of a famous remark about lex(1), as the
"Swiss-Army chainsaw" of Unix programming. Though Perl is very
useful, it would be a stretch to describe it as pretty or elegant; people who like clean, spare
design generally prefer Python. See
also Camel Book, TMTOWTDI.
Node:person of no
account, Next:pessimal,
Previous:Perl, Up:= P =
person of no account n.
[University of California at Santa Cruz] Used when referring
to a person with no network
address, frequently to forestall confusion. Most often as
part of an introduction: "This is Bill, a person of no account,
but he used to be bill@random.com". Compare return from the dead.
Node:pessimal, Next:pessimizing compiler, Previous:person of no
account, Up:= P =
pessimal /pes'im-l/ adj.
[Latin-based antonym for `optimal'] Maximally bad. "This is a
pessimal situation." Also `pessimize' vt. To make as bad as
possible. These words are the obvious Latin-based antonyms for
`optimal' and `optimize', but for some reason they do not appear
in most English dictionaries, although `pessimize' is listed in
the OED.
Node:pessimizing compiler,
Next:peta-, Previous:pessimal, Up:= P =
pessimizing compiler /pes'*-mi:z`ing k*m-pi:l'r/ n.
A compiler that produces object [antonym of techspeak
`optimizing compiler'] code that is worse than the
straightforward or obvious hand translation. The implication is
that the compiler is actually trying to optimize the program, but
through excessive cleverness is doing the opposite. A few
pessimizing compilers have been written on purpose, however, as
pranks or burlesques.
Node:peta-, Next:PETSCII, Previous:pessimizing compiler, Up:= P =
peta- /pe't*/ pref
[SI] See quantifiers.
Node:PETSCII, Next:PFY, Previous:peta-, Up:= P
=
PETSCII /pet'skee/ n. obs.
[abbreviation of PET ASCII] The variation (many would say
perversion) of the ASCII character
set used by the Commodore Business Machines PET series of
personal computers and the later Commodore C64, C16, C128, and
VIC20 machines. The PETSCII set used left-arrow and up-arrow (as
in old-style ASCII) instead of underscore and caret, placed the
unshifted alphabet at positions 65-90, put the shifted alphabet
at positions 193-218, and added graphics characters.
Node:PFY, Next:phage, Previous:PETSCII, Up:= P
=
PFY n.
[Usenet; common] Abbreviation for `Pimply-Faced Youth'. A
BOFH in training, esp. one apprenticed
to an elder BOFH aged in evil.
Node:phage, Next:phase, Previous:PFY, Up:= P =
phage n.
A program that modifies other programs or databases in
unauthorized ways; esp. one that propagates a virus or Trojan
horse. See also worm, mockingbird. The analogy, of course,
is with phage viruses in biology.
Node:phase, Next:phase of the moon, Previous:phage, Up:= P =
phase
1. n. The offset of one's waking-sleeping schedule with
respect to the standard 24-hour cycle; a useful concept among
people who often work at night and/or according to no fixed
schedule. It is not uncommon to change one's phase by as much as
6 hours per day on a regular basis. "What's your phase?" "I've
been getting in about 8 P.M. lately, but I'm going
to wrap around to the day
schedule by Friday." A person who is roughly 12 hours out of
phase is sometimes said to be in `night mode'. (The term `day
mode' is also (but less frequently) used, meaning you're working
9 to 5 (or, more likely, 10 to 6).) The act of altering one's
cycle is called `changing phase'; `phase shifting' has also been
recently reported from Caltech. 2. `change phase the hard way':
To stay awake for a very long time in order to get into a
different phase. 3. `change phase the easy way': To stay asleep,
etc. However, some claim that either staying awake longer or
sleeping longer is easy, and that it is shortening your
day or night that is really hard (see wrap around). The `jet lag' that
afflicts travelers who cross many time-zone boundaries may be
attributed to two distinct causes: the strain of travel per se,
and the strain of changing phase. Hackers who suddenly find that
they must change phase drastically in a short period of time,
particularly the hard way, experience something very like jet lag
without traveling.
Node:phase of the moon,
Next:phase-wrapping,
Previous:phase, Up:= P =
phase of the moon n.
Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is
said to depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is
dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on
conditions nobody has been able to determine. "This feature
depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo
switch set, and on the phase of the moon." See also heisenbug.
True story: Once upon a time there was a program bug that
really did depend on the phase of the moon. There was a little
subroutine that had traditionally been used in various programs
at MIT to calculate an approximation to the moon's true phase.
GLS incorporated this routine into a LISP program that, when it
wrote out a file, would print a timestamp line almost 80
characters long. Very occasionally the first line of the message
would be too long and would overflow onto the next line, and when
the file was later read back in the program would barf. The length of the first line depended on
both the precise date and time and the length of the phase
specification when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug
literally depended on the phase of the moon!
The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983)
included an example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited
this bug, but the typesetter `corrected' it. This has since been
described as the phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.
However, beware of assumptions. A few years ago, engineers of
CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) were baffled by some
errors in experiments conducted with the LEP particle
accelerator. As the formidable amount of data generated by such
devices is heavily processed by computers before being seen by
humans, many people suggested the software was somehow sensitive
to the phase of the moon. A few desperate engineers discovered
the truth; the error turned out to be the result of a tiny change
in the geometry of the 27km circumference ring, physically caused
by the deformation of the Earth by the passage of the Moon! This
story has entered physics folklore as a Newtonian vengeance on
particle physics and as an example of the relevance of the
simplest and oldest physical laws to the most modern science.
Node:phase-wrapping, Next:PHB, Previous:phase of the moon, Up:= P =
phase-wrapping n.
[MIT] Syn. wrap around,
sense 2.
Node:PHB, Next:phreaker, Previous:phase-wrapping, Up:= P =
PHB /P-H-B/
[Usenet; common; rarely spoken] Abbreviation, "Pointy-Haired
Boss". From the Dilbert character,
the archetypal halfwitted middle-management type. See also pointy-haired.
Node:phreaker, Next:phreaking, Previous:PHB, Up:= P =
phreaker /freek'r/ n.
One who engages in phreaking.
See also blue box.
Node:phreaking, Next:pico-, Previous:phreaker, Up:=
P =
phreaking /freek'ing/ n.
[from `phone phreak'] 1. The art and science of cracking the phone network (so as, for
example, to make free long-distance calls). 2. By extension,
security-cracking in any other context (especially, but not
exclusively, on communications networks) (see cracking).
At one time phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among
hackers; there was a gentleman's agreement that phreaking as an
intellectual game and a form of exploration was OK, but serious
theft of services was taboo. There was significant crossover
between the hacker community and the hard-core phone phreaks who
ran semi-underground networks of their own through such media as
the legendary "TAP Newsletter". This ethos began to break down in
the mid-1980s as wider dissemination of the techniques put them
in the hands of less responsible phreaks. Around the same time,
changes in the phone network made old-style technical ingenuity
less effective as a way of hacking it, so phreaking came to
depend more on overtly criminal acts such as stealing phone-card
numbers. The crimes and punishments of gangs like the `414 group'
turned that game very ugly. A few old-time hackers still phreak
casually just to keep their hand in, but most these days have
hardly even heard of `blue boxes' or any of the other
paraphernalia of the great phreaks of yore.
Node:pico-, Next:pig-tail, Previous:phreaking, Up:= P =
pico- pref.
[SI: a quantifier meaning * 10^-12] Smaller than nano-; used in the same rather loose connotative
way as nano- and micro-. This
usage is not yet common in the way nano- and micro-
are, but should be instantly recognizable to any hacker. See also
quantifiers, micro-.
Node:pig-tail, Next:pilot error, Previous:pico-, Up:= P
=
pig-tail
[radio hams] A short piece of cable with two connectors on
each end for converting between one connector type and another.
Common pig-tails are 9-to-25-pin serial-port converters and
cables to connect PCMCIA network cards to an RJ-45 network
cable.
Node:pilot error, Next:ping, Previous:pig-tail, Up:=
P =
pilot error n.
[Sun: from aviation] A user's misconfiguration or misuse of a
piece of software, producing apparently buglike results (compare
UBD). "Joe Luser reported a bug in
sendmail that causes it to generate bogus headers." "That's not a
bug, that's pilot error. His sendmail.cf is
hosed."
Node:ping, Next:Ping O' Death, Previous:pilot error, Up:= P =
ping
[from the submariners' term for a sonar pulse] 1. n. Slang
term for a small network message (ICMP ECHO) sent by a computer
to check for the presence and alertness of another. The Unix
command ping(8) can be used to do this manually
(note that ping(8)'s author denies the widespread
folk etymology that the name was ever intended as acronym for
`Packet INternet Groper'). Occasionally used as a phone greeting.
See ACK, also ENQ. 2. vt. To verify the presence of. 3. vt. To
get the attention of. 4. vt. To send a message to all members of
a mailing list requesting an
ACK (in order to verify that
everybody's addresses are reachable). "We haven't heard much of
anything from Geoff, but he did respond with an ACK both times I
pinged jargon-friends." 5. n. A quantum packet of happiness.
People who are very happy tend to exude pings; furthermore, one
can intentionally create pings and aim them at a needy party
(e.g., a depressed person). This sense of ping may appear as an
exclamation; "Ping!" (I'm happy; I am emitting a quantum of
happiness; I have been struck by a quantum of happiness). The
form "pingfulness", which is used to describe people who exude
pings, also occurs. (In the standard abuse of language,
"pingfulness" can also be used as an exclamation, in which case
it's a much stronger exclamation than just "ping"!). Oppose blargh.
The funniest use of `ping' to date was described in January
1991 by Steve Hayman on the Usenet group _comp.sys.next_. He
was trying to isolate a faulty cable segment on a TCP/IP Ethernet
hooked up to a NeXT machine, and got tired of having to run back
to his console after each cabling tweak to see if the ping
packets were getting through. So he used the sound-recording
feature on the NeXT, then wrote a script that repeatedly invoked
ping(8), listened for an echo, and played back the
recording on each returned packet. Result? A program that caused
the machine to repeat, over and over, "Ping ...
ping ... ping ..." as long as the
network was up. He turned the volume to maximum, ferreted through
the building with one ear cocked, and found a faulty tee
connector in no time.
Node:Ping O' Death, Next:ping storm, Previous:ping, Up:= P =
Ping O' Death n.
A notorious exploit that (when
first discovered) could be easily used to crash a wide variety of
machines by overunning size limits in their TCP/IP stacks. First
revealed in late 1996. The open-source Unix community patched its
systems to remove the vulnerability within days or weeks, the
closed-source OS vendors generally took months. While the
difference in response times repeated a pattern familiar from
other security incidents, the accompanying glare of Web-fueled
publicity proved unusually embarrassing to the OS vendors and so
passed into history and myth. The term is now used to refer to
any nudge delivered by network wizards over the network that
causes bad things to happen on the system being nudged. For the
full story on the original exploit, see http://www.insecure.org/sploits/ping-o-death.html.
Compare with 'kamikaze packet,' 'Finger of Death' and
'Chernobyl packet.'
Node:ping storm, Next:pink wire, Previous:Ping O' Death, Up:= P =
ping storm n.
A form of DoS attack
consisting of a flood of ping requests
(normally used to check network conditions) designed to disrupt
the normal activity of a system. This act is sometimes called
`ping lashing' or `ping flood'. Compare mail storm, broadcast storm.
Node:pink wire, Next:pipe, Previous:ping storm, Up:= P =
pink wire n.
[from the pink PTFE wire used in military equipment] As blue wire, but used in military
applications. 2. vi. To add a pink wire to a board.
Node:pipe, Next:pistol, Previous:pink wire, Up:= P =
pipe n.
[common] Idiomatically, one's connection to the Internet; in
context, the expansion "bit pipe" is understood. A "fat pipe" is
a line with T1 or higher capacity. A person with a 28.8 modem
might be heard to complain "I need a bigger pipe".
Node:pistol, Next:pixel sort, Previous:pipe, Up:= P =
pistol n.
[IBM] A tool that makes it all too easy for you to shoot
yourself in the foot. "Unix rm * makes such a nice
pistol!"
Node:pixel sort, Next:pizza box, Previous:pistol, Up:=
P =
pixel sort n.
[Commodore users] Any compression routine which irretrievably
loses valuable data in the process of crunching it. Disparagingly used for `lossy'
methods such as JPEG. The theory, of course, is that these
methods are only used on photographic images in which minor
loss-of-data is not visible to the human eye. The term `pixel
sort' implies distrust of this theory. Compare bogo-sort.
Node:pizza box, Next:plaid screen, Previous:pixel sort, Up:= P =
pizza box n.
[Sun] The largish thin box housing the electronics in
(especially Sun) desktop workstations, so named because of its
size and shape and the dimpled pattern that looks like air
holes.
Two meg single-platter removable disk packs used to be called
pizzas, and the huge drive they were stuck into was referred to
as a pizza oven. It's an index of progress that in the old days
just the disk was pizza-sized, while now the entire computer
is.
Node:plaid screen, Next:plain-ASCII, Previous:pizza box, Up:= P =
plaid screen n.
[XEROX PARC] A `special effect' that occurs when certain kinds
of memory smashes overwrite
the control blocks or image memory of a bit-mapped display. The
term "salt and pepper" may refer to a different pattern of
similar origin. Though the term as coined at PARC refers to the
result of an error, some of the X demos
induce plaid-screen effects deliberately as a display hack.
Node:plain-ASCII, Next:plan file, Previous:plaid screen, Up:= P =
plain-ASCII /playn-as'kee/
Syn. flat-ASCII.
Node:plan file, Next:platinum-iridium, Previous:plain-ASCII, Up:= P =
plan file n.
[Unix] On systems that support finger, the `.plan' file in a user's home
directory is displayed when the user is fingered. This feature
was originally intended to be used to keep potential fingerers
apprised of one's location and near-future plans, but has been
turned almost universally to humorous and self-expressive
purposes (like a sig block).
See also Hacking X for
Y.
A recent innovation in plan files has been the introduction of
"scrolling plan files" which are one-dimensional animations made
using only the printable ASCII character set, carriage return and
line feed, avoiding terminal specific escape sequences, since the
finger command will (for security
reasons; see letterbomb) not
pass the escape character.
Scrolling .plan files have become art forms in miniature, and
some sites have started competitions to find who can create the
longest running, funniest, and most original animations. Various
animation characters include:
Centipede:
mmmmme
Lorry/Truck:
oo-oP
Andalusian Video Snail:
_@/
and a compiler (ASP) is available on Usenet for producing
them. See also twirling
baton.
Node:platinum-iridium, Next:playpen, Previous:plan file, Up:= P =
platinum-iridium adj.
Standard, against which all others of the same category are
measured. Usage: silly. The notion is that one of whatever it is
has actually been cast in platinum-iridium alloy and placed in
the vault beside the Standard Kilogram at the International
Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris. (From 1889 to 1960,
the meter was defined to be the distance between two scratches in
a platinum-iridium bar kept in that same vault -- this replaced
an earlier definition as 10^(-7) times the distance between the
North Pole and the Equator along a meridian through Paris;
unfortunately, this had been based on an inexact value of the
circumference of the Earth. From 1960 to 1984 it was defined to
be 1650763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red line of krypton-86
propagating in a vacuum. It is now defined as the length of the
path traveled by light in a vacuum in the time interval of
1/299,792,458 of a second. The kilogram is now the only unit of
measure officially defined in terms of a unique artifact.) "This
garbage-collection algorithm has been tested against the
platinum-iridium cons cell in Paris." Compare golden.
Node:playpen, Next:playte, Previous:platinum-iridium, Up:= P =
playpen n.
[IBM] A room where programmers work. Compare salt mines.
Node:playte, Next:plingnet, Previous:playpen, Up:= P
=
playte /playt/
16 bits, by analogy with nybble
and byte. Usage: rare and extremely
silly. See also dynner and crumb. General discussion of such terms is
under nybble.
Node:plingnet, Next:plokta, Previous:playte, Up:= P
=
plingnet /pling'net/ n.
Syn. UUCPNET. Also see Commonwealth Hackish,
which uses `pling' for bang (as in
bang path).
Node:plokta, Next:plonk, Previous:plingnet, Up:=
P =
plokta /plok't*/ v.
[acronym: Press Lots Of Keys To Abort] To press random keys in
an attempt to get some response from the system. One might plokta
when the abort procedure for a program is not known, or when
trying to figure out if the system is just sluggish or really
hung. Plokta can also be used while trying to figure out any
unknown key sequence for a particular operation. Someone going
into `plokta mode' usually places both hands flat on the keyboard
and mashes them down, hoping for some useful response.
A slightly more directed form of plokta can often be seen in
mail messages or Usenet articles from new users -- the text might
end with
^X^C
q
quit
:q
^C
end
x
exit
ZZ
^D
?
help
as the user vainly tries to find the right exit sequence, with
the incorrect tries piling up at the end of the
message....
Node:plonk, Next:plug-and-pray, Previous:plokta, Up:=
P =
plonk excl.,vt.
[Usenet: possibly influenced by British slang `plonk' for
cheap booze, or `plonker' for someone behaving stupidly (latter
is lit. equivalent to Yiddish `schmuck')] The sound a newbie makes as he falls to the bottom of a
kill file. While it originated
in the newsgroup
_talk.bizarre_, this term (usually written "*plonk*") is now
(1994) widespread on Usenet as a form of public ridicule.
Node:plug-and-pray, Next:plugh, Previous:plonk, Up:= P
=
plug-and-pray adj.,vi.
Parody of the techspeak term `plug-and-play', describing a PC
peripheral card which is claimed to have no need for hardware
configuration via DIP switches, and which should be work as soon
as it is inserted in the PC. Unfortunately, even the PCI bus is
not up to pulling this off reliably, and people who have to do
installation or troubleshoot PCs soon find themselves longing for
the DIP switches.
Node:plugh, Next:plumbing, Previous:plug-and-pray, Up:= P =
plugh /ploogh/ v.
[from the ADVENT game] See xyzzy.
Node:plumbing, Next:PM, Previous:plugh,
Up:= P =
plumbing n.
[Unix] Term used for shell code,
so called because of the prevalence of `pipelines' that feed the
output of one program to the input of another. Under Unix, user
utilities can often be implemented or at least prototyped by a
suitable collection of pipelines and temp-file grinding
encapsulated in a shell script; this is much less effort than
writing C every time, and the capability is considered one of
Unix's major winning features. A few other OSs such as IBM's
VM/CMS support similar facilities. Esp. used in the construction
`hairy plumbing' (see hairy). "You
can kluge together a basic spell-checker out of
sort(1), comm(1), and
tr(1) with a little plumbing." See also tee.
Node:PM, Next:pnambic, Previous:plumbing, Up:=
P =
PM /P-M/
1. v. (from `preventive maintenance') To bring down a machine
for inspection or test purposes. See provocative maintenance; see
also scratch monkey. 2. n.
Abbrev. for `Presentation Manager', an elephantine OS/2 graphical user
interface.
Node:pnambic, Next:pod, Previous:PM,
Up:= P =
pnambic /p*-nam'bik/
[Acronym from the scene in the film version of "The Wizard of
Oz" in which the true nature of the wizard is first discovered:
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."] 1. A stage of
development of a process or function that, owing to incomplete
implementation or to the complexity of the system, requires human
interaction to simulate or replace some or all of the actions,
inputs, or outputs of the process or function. 2. Of or
pertaining to a process or function whose apparent operations are
wholly or partially falsified. 3. Requiring prestidigitization.
The ultimate pnambic product was "Dan Bricklin's Demo", a
program which supported flashy user-interface design prototyping.
There is a related maxim among hackers: "Any sufficiently
advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo." See
magic, sense 1, for illumination of
this point.
Node:pod, Next:point-and-drool interface,
Previous:pnambic, Up:= P =
pod n.
[allegedly from abbreviation POD for `Prince Of Darkness'] A
Diablo 630 (or, latterly, any letter-quality impact printer).
From the DEC-10 PODTYPE program used to feed formatted text to
it. Not to be confused with P.O.D..
Node:point-and-drool
interface, Next:pointy
hat, Previous:pod, Up:= P =
point-and-drool interface n.
Parody of the techspeak term `point-and-shoot interface',
describing a windows, icons, and mouse-based interface such as is
found on the Macintosh. The implication, of course, is that such
an interface is only suitable for idiots. See for the rest of us, WIMP environment, Macintrash, drool-proof paper. Also
`point-and-grunt interface'.
Node:pointy hat, Next:pointy-haired, Previous:point-and-drool
interface, Up:= P =
pointy hat n.
See wizard hat. This
synonym specifically refers to the wizards of Unseen University
in Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" serious of humorous fantasies;
these books are extremely popular among hackers.
Node:pointy-haired, Next:poke, Previous:pointy hat, Up:= P =
pointy-haired adj.
[after the character in the Dilbert comic strip] Describes the extreme
form of the property that separates suits and marketroids from hackers. Compare brain-dead; demented; see PHB.
Always applied to people, never to ideas. The plural form is
often used as a noun. "The pointy-haireds ordered me to use
Windows NT, but I set up a Linux server with Samba instead."
Node:poke, Next:poll, Previous:pointy-haired, Up:= P =
poke n.,vt.
See peek.
Node:poll, Next:polygon pusher, Previous:poke, Up:= P =
poll v.,n.
1. [techspeak] The action of checking the status of an input
line, sensor, or memory location to see if a particular external
event has been registered. 2. To repeatedly call or check with
someone: "I keep polling him, but he's not answering his phone;
he must be swapped out." 3. To ask. "Lunch? I poll for a takeout
order daily."
Node:polygon pusher, Next:POM, Previous:poll, Up:= P =
polygon pusher n.
A chip designer who spends most of his or her time at the
physical layout level (which requires drawing lots of
multi-colored polygons). Also `rectangle slinger'.
Node:POM, Next:pop, Previous:polygon pusher, Up:= P =
POM /P-O-M/ n.
Common abbreviation for phase of the moon. Usage:
usually in the phrase `POM-dependent', which means flaky.
Node:pop, Next:POPJ, Previous:POM,
Up:= P =
pop /pop/
[from the operation that removes the top of a stack, and the
fact that procedure return addresses are usually saved on the
stack] (also capitalized `POP') 1. vt. To remove something from a
stack or PDL. If a person says he/she has popped something
from his stack, that means he/she has finally finished working on
it and can now remove it from the list of things hanging
overhead. 2. When a discussion gets to a level of detail so deep
that the main point of the discussion is being lost, someone will
shout "Pop!", meaning "Get back up to a higher level!" The shout
is frequently accompanied by an upthrust arm with a finger
pointing to the ceiling. 3. [all-caps, as `POP'] Point of
Presence, a bank of dial-in lines allowing customers to make
(local) calls into an ISP. This is borderline techspeak.
Node:POPJ, Next:poser, Previous:pop, Up:= P =
POPJ /pop'J/ n.,v.
[from a PDP-10
return-from-subroutine instruction] To return from a digression.
By verb doubling, "Popj, popj" means roughly "Now let's see,
where were we?" See RTI.
Node:poser, Next:post, Previous:POPJ, Up:= P =
poser n.
A wannabee; not hacker slang,
but used among crackers, phreaks and warez d00dz. Not as negative as lamer or leech.
Probably derives from a similar usage among punk-rockers and
metalheads, putting down those who "talk the talk but don't walk
the walk".
Node:post, Next:postcardware, Previous:poser, Up:= P
=
post v.
To send a message to a mailing
list or newsgroup.
Distinguished in context from `mail'; one might ask, for example:
"Are you going to post the patch or mail it to known users?"
Node:postcardware, Next:posting, Previous:post, Up:= P =
postcardware n.
A kind of shareware that
borders on freeware, in that the
author requests only that satisfied users send a postcard of
their home town or something. (This practice, silly as it might
seem, serves to remind users that they are otherwise getting
something for nothing, and may also be psychologically related to
real estate `sales' in which $1 changes hands just to keep the
transaction from being a gift.)
Node:posting, Next:postmaster, Previous:postcardware, Up:= P =
posting n.
Noun corresp. to v. post (but note
that post can be nouned).
Distinguished from a `letter' or ordinary email message by the fact that it is broadcast
rather than point-to-point. It is not clear whether messages sent
to a small mailing list are postings or email; perhaps the best
dividing line is that if you don't know the names of all the
potential recipients, it is a posting.
Node:postmaster, Next:PostScript, Previous:posting, Up:= P =
postmaster n.
The email contact and maintenance person at a site connected
to the Internet or UUCPNET. Often, but not always, the same as
the admin. The Internet standard for
electronic mail (RFC-822) requires each
machine to have a `postmaster' address; usually it is aliased to
this person.
Node:PostScript, Next:pound on, Previous:postmaster, Up:= P =
PostScript n.
A Page Description Language (PDL),
based on work originally done by John Gaffney at Evans and
Sutherland in 1976, evolving through `JaM' (`John and Martin',
Martin Newell) at XEROX PARC,
and finally implemented in its current form by John Warnock et
al. after he and Chuck Geschke founded Adobe Systems Incorporated
in 1982. PostScript gets its leverage by using a full programming
language, rather than a series of low-level escape sequences, to
describe an image to be printed on a laser printer or other
output device (in this it parallels EMACS, which exploited a similar insight about
editing tasks). It is also noteworthy for implementing on-the fly
rasterization, from Bezier curve descriptions, of high-quality
fonts at low (e.g. 300 dpi) resolution (it was formerly believed
that hand-tuned bitmap fonts were required for this task).
Hackers consider PostScript to be among the most elegant hacks of
all time, and the combination of technical merits and widespread
availability has made PostScript the language of choice for
graphical output.
Node:pound on, Next:power cycle, Previous:PostScript, Up:= P =
pound on vt.
Syn. bang on.
Node:power cycle, Next:power hit, Previous:pound on, Up:= P =
power cycle vt.
(also, `cycle power' or just `cycle') To power off a machine
and then power it on immediately, with the intention of clearing
some kind of hung or gronked state. Syn. 120 reset; see also Big Red Switch. Compare Vulcan nerve pinch, bounce (sense 4), and boot, and see the "Some AI Koans" (in Appendix A) about
Tom Knight and the novice.
Node:power hit, Next:PPN, Previous:power cycle, Up:= P =
power hit n.
A spike or drop-out in the electricity supplying your machine;
a power glitch. These can cause
crashes and even permanent damage to your machine(s).
Node:PPN, Next:pr0n, Previous:power hit, Up:= P =
PPN /P-P-N/, /pip'n/ n. obs.
[from `Project-Programmer Number'] A user-ID under TOPS-10 and its various mutant progeny at
SAIL, BBN, CompuServe, and elsewhere. Old-time hackers from the
PDP-10 era sometimes use this to refer to user IDs on other
systems as well.
Node:pr0n, Next:precedence lossage, Previous:PPN, Up:= P =
pr0n //
[Usenet, IRC] Pornography. Originally this referred only to
Internet porn but since then it has expanded to refer to just
about anything. The term comes from the warez kiddies tendency to replace
letters with numbers. At some point on IRC someone mistyped,
swapped the middle two letters, and the name stuck, then
propagated over into mainstream hacker usage. Compare filk, grilf, hing and newsfroup.
Node:precedence lossage,
Next:prepend, Previous:pr0n, Up:= P =
precedence lossage /pre's*-dens los'*j/ n.
[C programmers] Coding error in an expression due to
unexpected grouping of arithmetic or logical operators by the
compiler. Used esp. of certain common coding errors in C due to
the nonintuitively low precedence levels of &,
|, ^, <<, and
>> (for this reason, experienced C programmers
deliberately forget the language's baroque precedence hierarchy and parenthesize
defensively). Can always be avoided by suitable use of
parentheses. LISP fans enjoy pointing
out that this can't happen in their favorite language,
which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit
parentheses everywhere. See aliasing
bug, memory leak,
memory smash, smash the stack, fandango on core, overrun screw.
Node:prepend, Next:prestidigitization, Previous:precedence lossage,
Up:= P =
prepend /pree`pend'/ vt.
[by analogy with `append'] To prefix. As with `append' (but
not `prefix' or `suffix' as a verb), the direct object is always
the thing being added and not the original word (or character
string, or whatever). "If you prepend a semicolon to the line,
the translation routine will pass it through unaltered."
Node:prestidigitization, Next:pretty pictures,
Previous:prepend, Up:= P =
prestidigitization /pres`t*-di`j*-ti:-zay'sh*n/ n.
1. The act of putting something into digital notation via
sleight of hand. 2. Data entry through legerdemain.
Node:pretty pictures, Next:prettyprint, Previous:prestidigitization,
Up:= P =
pretty pictures n.
[scientific computation] The next step up from numbers. Interesting graphical output from a
program that may not have any sensible relationship to the system
the program is intended to model. Good for showing to management.
Node:prettyprint, Next:pretzel key, Previous:pretty pictures, Up:= P =
prettyprint /prit'ee-print/ v.
(alt. `pretty-print') 1. To generate `pretty' human-readable
output from a hairy internal
representation; esp. used for the process of grinding (sense 1) program code, and most esp.
for LISP code. 2. To format in some particularly slick and
nontrivial way.
Node:pretzel key, Next:priesthood, Previous:prettyprint, Up:= P =
pretzel key n.
[Mac users] See feature
key.
Node:priesthood, Next:prime time, Previous:pretzel key, Up:= P =
priesthood n. obs.
[TMRC] The select group of system managers responsible for the
operation and maintenance of a batch operated computer system. On
these computers, a user never had direct access to a computer,
but had to submit his/her data and programs to a priest for
execution. Results were returned days or even weeks later. See
acolyte.
Node:prime time, Next:print, Previous:priesthood, Up:= P =
prime time n.
[from TV programming] Normal high-usage hours on a system or
network. Back in the days of big timesharing machines `prime
time' was when lots of people were competing for limited cycles,
usually the day shift. Avoidance of prime time was traditionally
given as a major reason for night
mode hacking. The term fell into disuse during the early
PC era, but has been revived to refer to times of day or evening
at which the Internet tends to be heavily loaded, making Web
access slow. The hackish tendency to late-night hacking runs has changed not a bit.
Node:print, Next:printing discussion, Previous:prime time, Up:= P =
print v.
To output, even if to a screen. If a hacker says that a
program "printed a message", he means this; if he refers to
printing a file, he probably means it in the conventional sense
of writing to a hardcopy device (compounds like `print job' and
`printout', on the other hand, always refer to the latter). This
very common term is likely a holdover from the days when printing
terminals were the norm, perpetuated by programming language
constructs like C's printf(3). See senses
1 and 2 of tty.
Node:printing discussion,
Next:priority
interrupt, Previous:print, Up:= P
=
printing discussion n.
[XEROX PARC] A protracted, low-level, time-consuming,
generally pointless discussion of something only peripherally
interesting to all.
Node:priority interrupt,
Next:profile, Previous:printing discussion,
Up:= P =
priority interrupt n.
[from the hardware term] Describes any stimulus compelling
enough to yank one right out of hack
mode. Classically used to describe being dragged away by
an SO for immediate sex, but may also
refer to more mundane interruptions such as a fire alarm going
off in the near vicinity. Also called an NMI (non-maskable interrupt), especially in
PC-land.
Node:profile, Next:progasm, Previous:priority interrupt, Up:= P =
profile n.
1. A control file for a program, esp. a text file
automatically read from each user's home directory and intended
to be easily modified by the user in order to customize the
program's behavior. Used to avoid hardcoded choices (see also dot file, rc
file). 2. [techspeak] A report on the amounts of time
spent in each routine of a program, used to find and tune away the hot
spots in it. This sense is often verbed. Some profiling
modes report units other than time (such as call counts) and/or
report at granularities other than per-routine, but the idea is
similar. 3.[techspeak] A subset of a standard used for a
particular purpose. This sense confuses hackers who wander into
the weird world of ISO standards no end!
Node:progasm, Next:proggy, Previous:profile, Up:= P
=
progasm /proh'gaz-m/ n.
[University of Wisconsin] The euphoria experienced upon the
completion of a program or other computer-related project.
Node:proggy, Next:proglet, Previous:progasm, Up:= P
=
proggy n.
1. Any computer program that is considered a full application.
2. Any computer program that is made up of or otherwise contains
proglets. 3. Any computer program
that is large enough to be normally distributed as an RPM or
tarball.
Node:proglet, Next:program, Previous:proggy, Up:= P
=
proglet /prog'let/ n.
[UK] A short _extempore_ program written to meet an
immediate, transient need. Often written in BASIC, rarely more
than a dozen lines long, and containing no subroutines. The
largest amount of code that can be written off the top of one's
head, that does not need any editing, and that runs correctly the
first time (this amount varies significantly according to one's
skill and the language one is using). Compare toy program, noddy, one-liner
wars.
Node:program, Next:Programmer's Cheer, Previous:proglet, Up:= P =
program n.
1. A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn
one's input into error messages. 2. An exercise in experimental
epistemology. 3. A form of art, ostensibly intended for the
instruction of computers, which is nevertheless almost inevitably
a failure if other programmers can't understand it.
Node:Programmer's Cheer,
Next:programming,
Previous:program, Up:= P =
Programmer's Cheer
"Shift to the left! Shift to the right! Pop up, push down!
Byte! Byte! Byte!" A joke so old it has hair on it.
Node:programming, Next:programming fluid, Previous:Programmer's
Cheer, Up:= P =
programming n.
1. The art of debugging a blank sheet of paper (or, in these
days of on-line editing, the art of debugging an empty file).
"Bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague their
inventor" ("Macbeth", Act 1, Scene 7) 2. A pastime similar to
banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities
for reward. 3. The most fun you can have with your clothes on. 4.
The least fun you can have with your clothes off.
Node:programming fluid, Next:propeller head,
Previous:programming,
Up:= P =
programming fluid n.
1. Coffee. 2. Cola. 3. Any caffeinacious stimulant. Many
hackers consider these essential for those all-night hacking
runs. See wirewater.
Node:propeller head, Next:propeller key, Previous:programming fluid,
Up:= P =
propeller head n.
Used by hackers, this is syn. with computer geek. Non-hackers sometimes
use it to describe all techies. Prob. derives from SF fandom's
tradition (originally invented by old-time fan Ray Faraday
Nelson) of propeller beanies as fannish insignia (though nobody
actually wears them except as a joke).
Node:propeller key, Next:proprietary, Previous:propeller head, Up:= P =
propeller key n.
[Mac users] See feature
key.
Node:proprietary, Next:protocol, Previous:propeller key, Up:= P =
proprietary adj.
1. In marketroid-speak,
superior; implies a product imbued with exclusive magic by the
unmatched brilliance of the company's own hardware or software
designers. 2. In the language of hackers and users, inferior;
implies a product not conforming to open-systems standards, and
thus one that puts the customer at the mercy of a vendor able to
gouge freely on service and upgrade charges after the initial
sale has locked the customer in. Often in the phrase "proprietary
crap". 3. Synonym for closed-source, e.g. software issued in
binary without source and under a restructive license.
Since the coining of the term open
source, many hackers have made a conscious effort to
distinguish between `proprietary' and `commercial' software. It
is possible for software to be commercial (that is, intended to
make a profit for the producers) without being proprietary. The
reverse is also possible, for example in binary-only
freeware.
Node:protocol, Next:provocative maintenance,
Previous:proprietary,
Up:= P =
protocol n.
As used by hackers, this never refers to niceties about the
proper form for addressing letters to the Papal Nuncio or the
order in which one should use the forks in a Russian-style place
setting; hackers don't care about such things. It is used instead
to describe any set of rules that allow different machines or
pieces of software to coordinate with each other without
ambiguity. So, for example, it does include niceties about the
proper form for addressing packets on a network or the order in
which one should use the forks in the Dining Philosophers
Problem. It implies that there is some common message format and
an accepted set of primitives or commands that all parties
involved understand, and that transactions among them follow
predictable logical sequences. See also handshaking, do protocol.
Node:provocative
maintenance, Next:prowler,
Previous:protocol, Up:= P =
provocative maintenance n.
[common ironic mutation of `preventive maintenance'] Actions
performed upon a machine at regularly scheduled intervals to
ensure that the system remains in a usable state. So called
because it is all too often performed by a field servoid who doesn't know what he
is doing; such `maintenance' often induces problems, or
otherwise results in the machine's remaining in an
unusable state for an indeterminate amount of time. See
also scratch monkey.
Node:prowler, Next:pseudo, Previous:provocative maintenance, Up:= P =
prowler n.
[Unix] A daemon that is run
periodically (typically once a week) to seek out and erase core files, truncate administrative
logfiles, nuke lost+found directories, and otherwise
clean up the cruft that tends to pile
up in the corners of a file system. See also GFR, reaper, skulker.
Node:pseudo, Next:pseudoprime, Previous:prowler, Up:= P
=
pseudo /soo'doh/ n.
[Usenet: truncation of `pseudonym'] 1. An electronic-mail or
Usenet persona adopted by a human
for amusement value or as a means of avoiding negative
repercussions of one's net.behavior; a `nom de Usenet', often
associated with forged postings designed to conceal message
origins. Perhaps the best-known and funniest hoax of this type is
B1FF. See also tentacle. 2. Notionally, a flamage-generating AI program simulating a
Usenet user. Many flamers have been accused of actually being
such entities, despite the fact that no AI program of the
required sophistication yet exists. However, in 1989 there was a
famous series of forged postings that used a
phrase-frequency-based travesty generator to simulate the styles
of several well-known flamers; it was based on large samples of
their back postings (compare Dissociated Press). A significant
number of people were fooled by the forgeries, and the debate
over their authenticity was settled only when the perpetrator
came forward to publicly admit the hoax.
Node:pseudoprime, Next:pseudosuit, Previous:pseudo, Up:=
P =
pseudoprime n.
A backgammon prime (six consecutive occupied points) with one
point missing. This term is an esoteric pun derived from number
theory: a number that passes a certain kind of "primality test"
may be called a `pseudoprime' (all primes pass any such test, but
so do some composite numbers), and any number that passes several
is, in some sense, almost certainly prime. The hacker backgammon
usage stems from the idea that a pseudoprime is almost as good as
a prime: it will do the same job unless you are unlucky.
Node:pseudosuit, Next:psychedelicware, Previous:pseudoprime, Up:= P =
pseudosuit /soo'doh-s[y]oot`/ n.
A suit wannabee; a hacker who has
decided that he wants to be in management or administration and
begins wearing ties, sport coats, and (shudder!) suits
voluntarily. It's his funeral. See also lobotomy.
Node:psychedelicware, Next:psyton, Previous:pseudosuit, Up:= P =
psychedelicware /si:`k*-del'-ik-weir/ n.
[UK] Syn. display hack.
See also smoking
clover.
Node:psyton, Next:pubic directory, Previous:psychedelicware, Up:= P =
psyton /si:'ton/ n.
[TMRC] The elementary particle carrying the sinister force.
The probability of a process losing is proportional to the number
of psytons falling on it. Psytons are generated by observers,
which is why demos are more likely to fail when lots of people
are watching. [This term appears to have been largely superseded
by bogon; see also quantum bogodynamics.
--ESR]
Node:pubic directory, Next:puff, Previous:psyton, Up:=
P =
pubic directory /pyoob'ik d*-rek't*-ree/) n.
[NYU] (also `pube directory' /pyoob' d*-rek't*-ree/) The `pub'
(public) directory on a machine that allows FTP access. So called because it is the default
location for SEX (sense 1). "I'll have
the source in the pube directory by Friday."
Node:puff, Next:pumpkin holder, Previous:pubic directory, Up:= P =
puff vt.
To decompress data that has been crunched by Huffman coding.
At least one widely distributed Huffman decoder program was
actually named `PUFF', but these days it is usually
packaged with the encoder. Oppose huff, see inflate.
Node:pumpkin holder, Next:pumpking, Previous:puff, Up:= P
=
pumpkin holder n.
See patch pumpkin.
Node:pumpking, Next:punched card, Previous:pumpkin holder, Up:= P =
pumpking n.
Syn. for pumpkin
holder; see patch
pumpkin.
Node:punched card, Next:punt, Previous:pumpking, Up:=
P =
punched card n.obs.
[techspeak] (alt. `punch card') The signature medium of
computing's Stone Age, now
obsolescent outside of some IBM shops. The punched card actually
predated computers considerably, originating in 1801 as a control
device for mechanical looms. The version patented by Hollerith
and used with mechanical tabulating machines in the 1890 U.S.
Census was a piece of cardboard about 90 mm by 215 mm. There is a
widespread myth that it was designed to fit in the currency trays
used for that era's larger dollar bills, but recent
investigations have falsified this.
IBM (which originated as a tabulating-machine manufacturer)
married the punched card to computers, encoding binary
information as patterns of small rectangular holes; one character
per column, 80 columns per card. Other coding schemes, sizes of
card, and hole shapes were tried at various times.
The 80-column width of most character terminals is a legacy of
the IBM punched card; so is the size of the quick-reference cards
distributed with many varieties of computers even today. See
chad, chad
box, eighty-column
mind, green card,
dusty deck, lace card, card walloper.
Node:punt, Next:Purple Book, Previous:punched card, Up:= P =
punt v.
[from the punch line of an old joke referring to American
football: "Drop back 15 yards and punt!"] 1. To give up,
typically without any intention of retrying. "Let's punt the
movie tonight." "I was going to hack all night to get this
feature in, but I decided to punt" may mean that you've decided
not to stay up all night, and may also mean you're not ever even
going to put in the feature. 2. More specifically, to give up on
figuring out what the Right
Thing is and resort to an inefficient hack. 3. A design
decision to defer solving a problem, typically because one cannot
define what is desirable sufficiently well to frame an
algorithmic solution. "No way to know what the right form to dump
the graph in is -- we'll punt that for now." 4. To hand a tricky
implementation problem off to some other section of the design.
"It's too hard to get the compiler to do that; let's punt to the
runtime system." 5. To knock someone off an Internet or chat
connection; a `punter' thus, is a person or program that does
this.
Node:Purple Book, Next:purple wire, Previous:punt, Up:= P
=
Purple Book n.
1. The "System V Interface Definition". The covers of the
first editions were an amazingly nauseating shade of
off-lavender. 2. Syn. Wizard
Book. Donald Lewine's "POSIX Programmer's Guide"
(O'Reilly, 1991, ISBN 0-937175-73-0). See also book titles.
Node:purple wire, Next:push, Previous:Purple Book, Up:= P =
purple wire n.
[IBM] Wire installed by Field Engineers to work around
problems discovered during testing or debugging. These are called
`purple wires' even when (as is frequently the case) their actual
physical color is yellow.... Compare blue wire, yellow wire, and red wire.
Node:push, Next:Python, Previous:purple wire, Up:= P =
push
[from the operation that puts the current information on a
stack, and the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on
a stack] (Also PUSH /push/ or PUSHJ /push'J/, the latter based on
the PDP-10 procedure call instruction.) 1. To put something onto
a stack or PDL. If one says that something has been pushed
onto one's stack, it means that the Damoclean list of things
hanging over ones's head has grown longer and heavier yet. This
may also imply that one will deal with it before other
pending items; otherwise one might say that the thing was `added
to my queue'. 2. vi. To enter upon a digression, to save the
current discussion for later. Antonym of pop; see also stack,
PDL.
Node:Python, Next:quad, Previous:push, Up:= P =
Python /pi:'thon/
In the words of its author, "the other scripting language"
(other than Perl, that is). Python's
design is notably clean, elegant, and well thought through; it
tends to attract the sort of programmers who find Perl grubby and
exiguous. Python's relationship with Perl is rather like the
BSD community's relationship to Linux - it's the smaller party in a
(usually friendly) rivalry, but the average quality of its
developers is generally conceded to be rather higher than in the
larger community it competes with. There's a Python resource page
at http://www.python.org. See
also Guido.
Node:= Q =, Next:= R =, Previous:= P =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= Q =
quad:
quadruple bucky:
quantifiers:
quantum
bogodynamics:
quarter:
ques:
quick-and-dirty:
quine:
quote chapter and
verse:
quotient:
quux:
qux:
QWERTY:
Node:quad, Next:quadruple bucky, Previous:Python, Up:= Q =
quad n.
1. Two bits; syn. for quarter,
crumb, tayste. 2. A four-pack of anything (compare
hex, sense 2). 3. The rectangle or box
glyph used in the APL language for various arcane purposes mostly
related to I/O. Former Ivy-Leaguers and Oxford types are said to
associate it with nostalgic memories of dear old University.
Node:quadruple bucky, Next:quantifiers, Previous:quad, Up:= Q =
quadruple bucky n. obs.
1. On an MIT space-cadet
keyboard, use of all four of the shifting keys (control,
meta, hyper, and super) while typing a character key. 2. On a
Stanford or MIT keyboard in raw
mode, use of four shift keys while typing a fifth
character, where the four shift keys are the control and meta
keys on both sides of the keyboard. This was very
difficult to do! One accepted technique was to press the
left-control and left-meta keys with your left hand, the
right-control and right-meta keys with your right hand, and the
fifth key with your nose.
Quadruple-bucky combinations were very seldom used in
practice, because when one invented a new command one usually
assigned it to some character that was easier to type. If you
want to imply that a program has ridiculously many commands or
features, you can say something like: "Oh, the command that makes
it spin the tapes while whistling Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is
quadruple-bucky-cokebottle." See double bucky, bucky bits, cokebottle.
Node:quantifiers, Next:quantum bogodynamics,
Previous:quadruple
bucky, Up:= Q =
quantifiers
In techspeak and jargon, the standard metric prefixes used in
the SI (Système International) conventions for scientific
measurement have dual uses. With units of time or things that
come in powers of 10, such as money, they retain their usual
meanings of multiplication by powers of 1000 = 10^3. But when
used with bytes or other things that naturally come in powers of
2, they usually denote multiplication by powers of 1024 =
2^(10).
Here are the SI magnifying prefixes, along with the
corresponding binary interpretations in common use:
prefix decimal binary
kilo- 1000^1 1024^1 = 2^10 = 1,024
mega- 1000^2 1024^2 = 2^20 = 1,048,576
giga- 1000^3 1024^3 = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824
tera- 1000^4 1024^4 = 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776
peta- 1000^5 1024^5 = 2^50 = 1,125,899,906,842,624
exa- 1000^6 1024^6 = 2^60 = 1,152,921,504,606,846,976
zetta- 1000^7 1024^7 = 2^70 = 1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424
yotta- 1000^8 1024^8 = 2^80 = 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176
Here are the SI fractional prefixes:
prefix decimal jargon usage
milli- 1000^-1 (seldom used in jargon)
micro- 1000^-2 small or human-scale (see micro-)
nano- 1000^-3 even smaller (see nano-)
pico- 1000^-4 even smaller yet (see pico-)
femto- 1000^-5 (not used in jargon---yet)
atto- 1000^-6 (not used in jargon---yet)
zepto- 1000^-7 (not used in jargon---yet)
yocto- 1000^-8 (not used in jargon---yet)
The prefixes zetta-, yotta-, zepto-, and yocto- have been
included in these tables purely for completeness and giggle
value; they were adopted in 1990 by the `19th Conference Generale
des Poids et Mesures'. The binary peta- and exa- loadings, though
well established, are not in jargon use either -- yet. The prefix
milli-, denoting multiplication by 1/1000, has always been rare
in jargon (there is, however, a standard joke about the
`millihelen' -- notionally, the amount of beauty required to
launch one ship). See the entries on micro-, pico-, and
nano- for more information on
connotative jargon use of these terms. `Femto' and `atto' (which,
interestingly, derive not from Greek but from Danish) have not
yet acquired jargon loadings, though it is easy to predict what
those will be once computing technology enters the required
realms of magnitude (however, see attoparsec).
There are, of course, some standard unit prefixes for powers
of 10. In the following table, the `prefix' column is the
international standard suffix for the appropriate power of ten;
the `binary' column lists jargon abbreviations and words for the
corresponding power of 2. The B-suffixed forms are commonly used
for byte quantities; the words `meg' and `gig' are nouns that may
(but do not always) pluralize with `s'.
_prefix decimal binary pronunciation_
kilo- k K, KB, /kay/
mega- M M, MB, meg /meg/
giga- G G, GB, gig /gig/,/jig/
Confusingly, hackers often use K or M as though they were
suffix or numeric multipliers rather than a prefix; thus "2K
dollars", "2M of disk space". This is also true (though less
commonly) of G.
Note that the formal SI metric prefix for 1000 is `k'; some
use this strictly, reserving `K' for multiplication by 1024 (KB
is thus `kilobytes').
K, M, and G used alone refer to quantities of bytes; thus, 64G
is 64 gigabytes and `a K' is a kilobyte (compare mainstream use
of `a G' as short for `a grand', that is, $1000). Whether one
pronounces `gig' with hard or soft `g' depends on what one thinks
the proper pronunciation of `giga-' is.
Confusing 1000 and 1024 (or other powers of 2 and 10 close in
magnitude) -- for example, describing a memory in units of 500K
or 524K instead of 512K -- is a sure sign of the marketroid. One example of this: it is
common to refer to the capacity of 3.5" microfloppies as `1.44 MB' In fact, this
is a completely bogus number. The
correct size is 1440 KB, that is, 1440 * 1024 = 1474560 bytes. So
the `mega' in `1.44 MB' is compounded of two `kilos', one of
which is 1024 and the other of which is 1000. The correct number
of megabytes would of course be 1440 / 1024 = 1.40625. Alas, this
fine point is probably lost on the world forever.
[1993 update: hacker Morgan Burke has proposed, to general
approval on Usenet, the following additional prefixes:
groucho
10^(-30)
harpo
10^(-27)
harpi
10^(27)
grouchi
10^(30)
We observe that this would leave the prefixes zeppo-, gummo-,
and chico- available for future expansion. Sadly, there is little
immediate prospect that Mr. Burke's eminently sensible proposal
will be ratified.]
[1999 upate: there is an
IEC proposal for binary multipliers, but no evidence that any
of its proposals are in live use.]
Node:quantum bogodynamics,
Next:quarter, Previous:quantifiers, Up:= Q =
quantum bogodynamics /kwon'tm boh`goh-di:-nam'iks/
n.
A theory that characterizes the universe in terms of bogon
sources (such as politicians, used-car salesmen, TV evangelists,
and suits in general), bogon sinks
(such as taxpayers and computers), and bogosity potential fields.
Bogon absorption, of course, causes human beings to behave
mindlessly and machines to fail (and may also cause both to emit
secondary bogons); however, the precise mechanics of the
bogon-computron interaction are not yet understood and remain to
be elucidated. Quantum bogodynamics is most often invoked to
explain the sharp increase in hardware and software failures in
the presence of suits; the latter emit bogons, which the former
absorb. See bogon, computron, suit,
psyton.
Node:quarter, Next:ques, Previous:quantum bogodynamics, Up:= Q =
quarter n.
Two bits. This in turn comes from the `pieces of eight' famed
in pirate movies -- Spanish silver crowns that could be broken
into eight pie-slice-shaped `bits' to make change. Early in
American history the Spanish coin was considered equal to a
dollar, so each of these `bits' was considered worth 12.5 cents.
Syn. tayste, crumb, quad. Usage:
rare. General discussion of such terms is under nybble.
Node:ques, Next:quick-and-dirty, Previous:quarter, Up:= Q =
ques /kwes/
1. n. The question mark character (?, ASCII
0111111). 2. interj. What? Also frequently verb-doubled as "Ques
ques?" See wall.
Node:quick-and-dirty, Next:quine, Previous:ques, Up:= Q =
quick-and-dirty adj.
[common] Describes a crock put
together under time or user pressure. Used esp. when you want to
convey that you think the fast way might lead to trouble further
down the road. "I can have a quick-and-dirty fix in place
tonight, but I'll have to rewrite the whole module to solve the
underlying design problem." See also kluge.
Node:quine, Next:quote chapter and verse,
Previous:quick-and-dirty, Up:= Q =
quine /kwi:n/ n.
[from the name of the logician Willard van Orman Quine, via
Douglas Hofstadter] A program that generates a copy of its own
source text as its complete output. Devising the shortest
possible quine in some given programming language is a common
hackish amusement. (We ignore some variants of BASIC in which a
program consisting of a single empty string literal reproduces
itself trivially.) Here is one classic quine:
((lambda (x)
(list x (list (quote quote) x)))
(quote
(lambda (x)
(list x (list (quote quote) x)))))
This one works in LISP or Scheme. It's relatively easy to
write quines in other languages such as Postscript which readily
handle programs as data; much harder (and thus more challenging!)
in languages like C which do not. Here is a classic C quine for
ASCII machines:
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main()
{printf(f,34,f,34,10);}%c";
main(){printf(f,34,f,34,10);}
For excruciatingly exact quinishness, remove the interior line
breaks. Here is another elegant quine in ANSI C:
#define q(k)main(){return!puts(#k"\nq("#k")");}
q(#define q(k)main(){return!puts(#k"\nq("#k")");})
Some infamous Obfuscated C Contest entries
have been quines that reproduced in exotic ways. There is an
amusing Quine
Home Page.
Node:quote chapter and
verse, Next:quotient,
Previous:quine, Up:= Q =
quote chapter and verse v.
[by analogy with the mainstream phrase] To cite a relevant
excerpt from an appropriate bible. "I
don't care if rn gets it wrong; `Followup-To:
poster' is explicitly permitted by RFC-1036. I'll quote chapter and verse if you
don't believe me." See also legalese, language lawyer, RTFS (sense 2).
Node:quotient, Next:quux, Previous:quote chapter and verse,
Up:= Q =
quotient n.
See coefficient of
X.
Node:quux, Next:qux, Previous:quotient, Up:=
Q =
quux /kwuhks/ n.
[Mythically, from the Latin semi-deponent verb quuxo, quuxare,
quuxandum iri; noun form variously `quux' (plural `quuces',
anglicized to `quuxes') and `quuxu' (genitive plural is
`quuxuum', for four u-letters out of seven in all, using up all
the `u' letters in Scrabble).] 1. Originally, a metasyntactic variable like
foo and foobar. Invented by Guy Steele for precisely
this purpose when he was young and naive and not yet interacting
with the real computing community. Many people invent such words;
this one seems simply to have been lucky enough to have spread a
little. In an eloquent display of poetic justice, it has returned
to the originator in the form of a nickname. 2. interj. See foo; however, denotes very little disgust,
and is uttered mostly for the sake of the sound of it. 3. Guy
Steele in his persona as `The Great Quux', which is somewhat
infamous for light verse and for the `Crunchly' cartoons. 4. In
some circles, used as a punning opposite of `crux'. "Ah, that's
the quux of the matter!" implies that the point is not
crucial (compare tip of
the ice-cube). 5. quuxy: adj. Of or pertaining to a
quux.
Node:qux, Next:QWERTY, Previous:quux, Up:= Q =
qux /kwuhks/
The fourth of the standard metasyntactic variable, after
baz and before the
quu(u...)x series. See foo, bar, baz, quux. This appears
to be a recent mutation from quux, and
many versions (especially older versions) of the standard series
just run foo, bar, baz, quux, ....
Node:QWERTY, Next:rabbit job, Previous:qux, Up:= Q =
QWERTY /kwer'tee/ adj.
[from the keycaps at the upper left] Pertaining to a standard
English-language typewriter keyboard (sometimes called the Sholes
keyboard after its inventor), as opposed to Dvorak or
non-US-ASCII layouts or a space-cadet keyboard or APL
keyboard.
Historical note: The QWERTY layout is a fine example of a
fossil. It is sometimes said that it
was designed to slow down the typist, but this is wrong; it was
designed to allow faster typing -- under a constraint
now long obsolete. In early typewriters, fast typing using nearby
type-bars jammed the mechanism. So Sholes fiddled the layout to
separate the letters of many common digraphs (he did a far from
perfect job, though; `th', `tr', `ed', and `er', for example,
each use two nearby keys). Also, putting the letters of
`typewriter' on one line allowed it to be typed with particular
speed and accuracy for demos. The
jamming problem was essentially solved soon afterward by a
suitable use of springs, but the keyboard layout lives on.
The QWERTY keyboard has also spawned some unhelpful economic
myths about how technical standards get and stay established; see
http://www.reasonmag.com/9606/Fe.QWERTY.html.
Node:= R =, Next:= S =, Previous:= Q =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= R =
rabbit job:
rain dance:
rainbow series:
random:
Random Number God:
random numbers:
randomness:
rape:
rare mode:
raster blaster:
raster burn:
rasterbation:
rat belt:
rat dance:
ratio site:
rave:
rave on!:
ravs:
raw mode:
RBL:
rc file:
RE:
read-only user:
README file:
real:
real estate:
real hack:
real operating
system:
Real Programmer:
Real Soon Now:
real time:
real user:
Real World:
reality check:
reality-distortion
field:
reaper:
recompile the
world:
rectangle slinger:
recursion:
recursive acronym:
Red Book:
red wire:
regexp:
register dancing:
rehi:
reincarnation cycle
of:
reinvent the
wheel:
relay rape:
religion of CHI:
religious issues:
replicator:
reply:
restriction:
retcon:
RETI:
retrocomputing:
return from the
dead:
RFC:
RFE:
rib site:
rice box:
Right Thing:
rip:
ripoff:
RL:
roach:
robocanceller:
robot:
robust:
rococo:
rogue:
room-temperature
IQ:
root:
root mode:
rot13:
rotary debugger:
round tape:
RSN:
RTBM:
RTFAQ:
RTFB:
RTFM:
RTFS:
RTI:
RTM:
RTS:
rude:
runes:
runic:
rusty iron:
rusty memory:
rusty wire:
Node:rabbit job, Next:rain dance, Previous:QWERTY, Up:=
R =
rabbit job n.
[Cambridge] A batch job that does little, if any, real work,
but creates one or more copies of itself, breeding like rabbits.
Compare wabbit, fork bomb.
Node:rain dance, Next:rainbow series, Previous:rabbit job, Up:= R =
rain dance n.
1. Any ceremonial action taken to correct a hardware problem,
with the expectation that nothing will be accomplished. This
especially applies to reseating printed circuit boards,
reconnecting cables, etc. "I can't boot up the machine. We'll
have to wait for Greg to do his rain dance." 2. Any arcane
sequence of actions performed with computers or software in order
to achieve some goal; the term is usually restricted to rituals
that include both an incantation or two and physical activity
or motion. Compare magic, voodoo programming, black art, cargo cult programming,
wave a dead
chicken; see also casting the runes.
Node:rainbow series, Next:random, Previous:rain dance, Up:= R =
rainbow series n.
Any of several series of technical manuals distinguished by
cover color. The original rainbow series was the NCSC security
manuals (see Orange Book,
crayola books); the term
has also been commonly applied to the PostScript reference set
(see Red Book, Green Book, Blue Book, White Book). Which books are meant by
"`the' rainbow series" unqualified is thus dependent on one's
local technical culture.
Node:random, Next:Random Number God, Previous:rainbow series, Up:= R =
random adj.
1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical definition); weird.
"The system's been behaving pretty randomly." 2. Assorted;
undistinguished. "Who was at the conference?" "Just a bunch of
random business types." 3. (pejorative) Frivolous; unproductive;
undirected. "He's just a random loser." 4. Incoherent or
inelegant; poorly chosen; not well organized. "The program has a
random set of misfeatures." "That's a random name for that
function." "Well, all the names were chosen pretty randomly." 5.
In no particular order, though deterministic. "The I/O channels
are in a pool, and when a file is opened one is chosen randomly."
6. Arbitrary. "It generates a random name for the scratch file."
7. Gratuitously wrong, i.e., poorly done and for no good apparent
reason. For example, a program that handles file name defaulting
in a particularly useless way, or an assembler routine that could
easily have been coded using only three registers, but
redundantly uses seven for values with non-overlapping lifetimes,
so that no one else can invoke it without first saving four extra
registers. What randomness! 8.
n. A random hacker; used particularly of high-school students who
soak up computer time and generally get in the way. 9. n. Anyone
who is not a hacker (or, sometimes, anyone not known to the
hacker speaking); the noun form of sense 2. "I went to the talk,
but the audience was full of randoms asking bogus questions". 10.
n. (occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random Hall. See also
J. Random, some random X. 11. [UK]
Conversationally, a non sequitur or something similarly
out-of-the-blue. As in: "Stop being so random!" This sense
equates to `hatstand', taken from the Viz comic character "Roger
Irrelevant - He's completely Hatstand."
Node:Random Number God,
Next:random numbers,
Previous:random, Up:= R =
Random Number God
[rec.games.roguelike.angband; often abbreviated `RNG'] The
malign force which lurks behind the random number generator in
Angband (and by extension
elsewhere). A dark god that demands sacrifices and toys with its
victims. "I just found a really great item; I suppose the RNG is
about to punish me..." Apparently, Angband's random number
generator occasionally gets locked in a repetition, so you get
something with a 3% chance happening 8 times in a row.
Improbable, but far too common to be pure chance. Compare Shub-Internet.
Node:random numbers, Next:randomness, Previous:Random Number God,
Up:= R =
random numbers n.
When one wishes to specify a large but random number of
things, and the context is inappropriate for N, certain numbers are preferred by hacker tradition
(that is, easily recognized as placeholders). These include the
following:
17
Long described at MIT as `the least random number'; see
23.
23
Sacred number of Eris, Goddess of Discord (along with 17 and
5).
42
The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe,
and Everything. (Note that this answer is completely fortuitous.
:-))
69
From the sexual act. This one was favored in MIT's ITS
culture.
105
69 hex = 105 decimal, and 69 decimal = 105 octal.
666
The Number of the Beast.
For further enlightenment, study the "Principia Discordia",
"The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", "The Joy of Sex", and
the Christian Bible (Revelation 13:18). See also Discordianism or consult your pineal
gland. See also for values
of.
Node:randomness, Next:rape, Previous:random numbers, Up:= R =
randomness n.
1. An inexplicable misfeature; gratuitous inelegance. 2. A
hack or crock that depends on a complex combination of
coincidences (or, possibly, the combination upon which the crock
depends for its accidental failure to malfunction). "This hack
can output characters 40-57 by putting the character in the
four-bit accumulator field of an XCT and then extracting six bits
-- the low 2 bits of the XCT opcode are the right thing." "What
randomness!" 3. Of people, synonymous with `flakiness'. The
connotation is that the person so described is behaving weirdly,
incompetently, or inappropriately for reasons which are (a) too
tiresome to bother inquiring into, (b) are probably as
inscrutable as quantum phenomena anyway, and (c) are likely to
pass with time. "Maybe he has a real complaint, or maybe it's
just randomness. See if he calls back."
Despite the negative connotations jargon uses of this term
have, it is worth noting that randomness can actually be a
valuable resource, very useful for applications in cryptography
and elsewhere. Computers are so thoroughly deterministic that
they have a hard time generating high-quality randomess, so
hackers have sometimes felt the need to built special-purpose
contraptions for this purpose alone. One well-known website
offers random bits generated by radioactive
decay. Another derives random bits from images of Lava Lite lamps.
(Hackers invariably find the latter hilarious. If you have to ask
why, you'll never get it.)
Node:rape, Next:rare mode, Previous:randomness, Up:= R =
rape vt.
1. To screw someone or something,
violently; in particular, to destroy a program or information
irrecoverably. Often used in describing file-system damage.
"So-and-so was running a program that did absolute disk I/O and
ended up raping the master directory." 2. To strip a piece of
hardware for parts. 3. [CMU/Pitt] To mass-copy files from an
anonymous ftp site. "Last night I raped Simtel's dskutl
directory."
Node:rare mode, Next:raster blaster, Previous:rape, Up:= R =
rare mode adj.
[Unix] CBREAK mode (character-by-character with interrupts
enabled). Distinguished from raw
mode and cooked mode;
the phrase "a sort of half-cooked (rare?) mode" is used in the
V7/BSD manuals to describe the mode. Usage: rare.
Node:raster blaster, Next:raster burn, Previous:rare mode, Up:= R =
raster blaster n.
[Cambridge] Specialized hardware for bitblt operations (a blitter). Allegedly inspired by `Rasta
Blasta', British slang for the sort of portable stereo Americans
call a `boom box' or `ghetto blaster'.
Node:raster burn, Next:rasterbation, Previous:raster blaster, Up:= R =
raster burn n.
Eyestrain brought on by too many hours of looking at low-res,
poorly tuned, or glare-ridden monitors, esp. graphics monitors.
See terminal
illness.
Node:rasterbation, Next:rat belt, Previous:raster burn, Up:= R =
rasterbation n.
[portmanteau: raster + masturbation] The gratuituous use of
comuputer generated images and effects in movies and graphic art
which would have been better without them. Especially employed as
a term of abuse by Photoshop/GIMP users and graphic artists.
Node:rat belt, Next:rat dance, Previous:rasterbation, Up:= R =
rat belt n.
A cable tie, esp. the sawtoothed, self-locking plastic kind
that you can remove only by cutting (as opposed to a random twist
of wire or a twist tie or one of those humongous metal clip
frobs). Small cable ties are `mouse belts'.
Node:rat dance, Next:ratio site, Previous:rat belt, Up:= R =
rat dance n.
[From the Dilbert comic strip of
November 14, 1995] A hacking
run that produces results which, while superficially
coherent, have little or nothing to do with its original
objectives. There are strong connotations that the coding process
and the objectives themselves were pretty random. (In the original comic strip, the
Ratbert is invited to dance on Dilbert's keyboard in order to
produce bugs for him to fix, and authors a Web browser instead.)
Compare Infinite-Monkey
Theorem.
This term seems to have become widely recognized quite rapidly
after the original strip, a fact which testifies to Dilbert's
huge popularity among hackers. All too many find the perverse
incentives and Kafkaesque atmosphere of Dilbert's mythical
workplace reflective of their own experiences.
Node:ratio site, Next:rave, Previous:rat dance, Up:= R =
ratio site
[warez d00dz] A FTP site storing pirated files where one must
first upload something before being able to download. There is a
ratio, based on bytes or files count, between the uploads and
download. For instance, on a 2:1 site, to download a 4 Mb file,
one must first upload at least 2 Mb of files. The hotter the
contents of the server are, the smaller the ratio is. More often
than not, the server refuses uploads because its disk is full,
making it useless for downloading - or the connection magically
breaks after one has uploaded a large amount of files, just
before the downloading phase begins. See also banner site, leech mode.
Node:rave, Next:rave on!, Previous:ratio site, Up:= R =
rave vi.
[WPI] 1. To persist in discussing a specific subject. 2. To
speak authoritatively on a subject about which one knows very
little. 3. To complain to a person who is not in a position to
correct the difficulty. 4. To purposely annoy another person
verbally. 5. To evangelize. See flame. 6. Also used to describe a less negative
form of blather, such as friendly bullshitting. `Rave' differs
slightly from flame in that `rave'
implies that it is the persistence or obliviousness of the person
speaking that is annoying, while flame implies somewhat more strongly that the
tone or content is offensive as well.
Node:rave on!, Next:ravs, Previous:rave, Up:= R =
rave on! imp.
Sarcastic invitation to continue a rave, often by someone who wishes the raver would
get a clue but realizes this is unlikely.
Node:ravs, Next:raw mode, Previous:rave on!, Up:= R =
ravs /ravz/, also `Chinese ravs' n.
[primarily MIT/Boston usage] Jiao-zi (steamed or boiled) or
Guo-tie (pan-fried). A Chinese appetizer, known variously in the
plural as dumplings, pot stickers (the literal translation of
guo-tie), and (around Boston) `Peking Ravioli'. The term `rav' is
short for `ravioli', and among hackers always means the Chinese
kind rather than the Italian kind. Both consist of a filling in a
pasta shell, but the Chinese kind includes no cheese, uses a
thinner pasta, has a pork-vegetable filling (good ones include
Chinese chives), and is cooked differently, either by steaming or
frying. A rav or dumpling can be cooked any way, but a potsticker
is always the pan-fried kind (so called because it sticks to the
frying pot and has to be scraped off). "Let's get hot-and-sour
soup and three orders of ravs." See also oriental food.
Node:raw mode, Next:RBL, Previous:ravs,
Up:= R =
raw mode n.
A mode that allows a program to transfer bits directly to or
from an I/O device (or, under bogus
operating systems that make a distinction, a disk file) without
any processing, abstraction, or interpretation by the operating
system. Compare rare mode,
cooked mode. This is
techspeak under Unix, jargon elsewhere.
Node:RBL, Next:rc file, Previous:raw mode, Up:= R =
RBL /R-B-L/
Abbreviation: "Realtime Blackhole List". A service that allows
people to blacklist sites for emitting spam, and makes the blacklist available in real
time to electronic-mail transport programs that know how to use
RBL so they can filter out mail from those sites. Drastic (and
controversial) but effective. There is an RBL home page.
Node:rc file, Next:RE, Previous:RBL,
Up:= R =
rc file /R-C fi:l/ n.
[Unix: from `runcom files' on the CTSS system 1962-63, via the startup script
/etc/rc] Script file containing startup instructions
for an application program (or an entire operating system),
usually a text file containing commands of the sort that might
have been invoked manually once the system was running but are to
be executed automatically each time the system starts up. See
also dot file, profile (sense 1).
Node:RE, Next:read-only user, Previous:rc file, Up:= R =
RE /R-E/ n.
Common spoken and written shorthand for regexp.
Node:read-only user, Next:README file, Previous:RE, Up:= R =
read-only user n.
Describes a luser who uses
computers almost exclusively for reading Usenet, bulletin boards,
and/or email, rather than writing code or purveying useful
information. See twink, terminal junkie, lurker.
Node:README file, Next:real, Previous:read-only user, Up:= R =
README file n.
Hacker's-eye introduction traditionally included in the
top-level directory of a Unix source distribution, containing a
pointer to more detailed documentation, credits, miscellaneous
revision history, notes, etc. (The file may be named README, or
READ.ME, or rarely ReadMe or readme.txt or some other variant.)
In the Mac and PC worlds, software is not usually distributed in
source form, and the README is more likely to contain
user-oriented material like last-minute documentation changes,
error workarounds, and restrictions. When asked, hackers
invariably relate the README convention to the famous scene in
Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland" in which Alice
confronts magic munchies labeled "Eat Me" and "Drink Me".
Node:real, Next:real estate, Previous:README file, Up:= R =
real adj.
Not simulated. Often used as a specific antonym to virtual in any of its jargon senses.
Node:real estate, Next:real hack, Previous:real, Up:= R
=
real estate n.
May be used for any critical resource measured in units of
area. Most frequently used of `chip real estate', the area
available for logic on the surface of an integrated circuit (see
also nanoacre). May also be used
of floor space in a dinosaur
pen, or even space on a crowded desktop (whether physical
or electronic).
Node:real hack, Next:real operating system,
Previous:real estate,
Up:= R =
real hack n.
A crock. This is sometimes used
affectionately; see hack.
Node:real operating
system, Next:Real
Programmer, Previous:real hack, Up:= R =
real operating system n.
The sort the speaker is used to. People from the BSDophilic
academic community are likely to issue comments like "System V?
Why don't you use a real operating system?", people from
the commercial/industrial Unix sector are known to complain "BSD?
Why don't you use a real operating system?", and people
from IBM object "Unix? Why don't you use a real
operating system?" Only MS-DOS is
universally considered unreal. See holy
wars, religious
issues, proprietary,
Get a real
computer!
Node:Real Programmer, Next:Real Soon Now,
Previous:real
operating system, Up:= R
=
Real Programmer n.
[indirectly, from the book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche"] A
particular sub-variety of hacker: one possessed of a flippant
attitude toward complexity that is arrogant even when justified
by experience. The archetypal `Real Programmer' likes to program
on the bare metal and is very
good at same, remembers the binary opcodes for every machine he
has ever programmed, thinks that HLLs are sissy, and uses a
debugger to edit his code because full-screen editors are for
wimps. Real Programmers aren't satisfied with code that hasn't
been bummed into a state of tenseness just short of rupture. Real
Programmers never use comments or write documentation: "If it was
hard to write", says the Real Programmer, "it should be hard to
understand." Real Programmers can make machines do things that
were never in their spec sheets; in fact, they are seldom really
happy unless doing so. A Real Programmer's code can awe with its
fiendish brilliance, even as its crockishness appalls. Real
Programmers live on junk food and coffee, hang line-printer art
on their walls, and terrify the crap out of other programmers --
because someday, somebody else might have to try to understand
their code in order to change it. Their successors generally
consider it a Good Thing that
there aren't many Real Programmers around any more. For a famous
(and somewhat more positive) portrait of a Real Programmer, see
"The Story of Mel"
in Appendix A. The term itself was popularized by a 1983
Datamation article "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal" by Ed
Post, still circulating on Usenet and Internet in on-line form.
You can browse "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal" from the
Datamation home page http://www.datamation.com.
Node:Real Soon Now, Next:real time, Previous:Real Programmer, Up:= R =
Real Soon Now adv.
[orig. from SF's fanzine community, popularized by Jerry
Pournelle's column in "BYTE"] 1. Supposed to be available (or
fixed, or cheap, or whatever) real soon now according to
somebody, but the speaker is quite skeptical. 2. When one's gods,
fates, or other time commitments permit one to get to it (in
other words, don't hold your breath). Often abbreviated RSN.
Compare copious free
time.
Node:real time, Next:real user, Previous:Real Soon Now, Up:= R =
real time
1. [techspeak] adj. Describes an application which requires a
program to respond to stimuli within some small upper limit of
response time (typically milli- or microseconds). Process control
at a chemical plant is the canonical example. Such applications often
require special operating systems (because everything else must
take a back seat to response time) and speed-tuned hardware. 2.
adv. In jargon, refers to doing something while people are
watching or waiting. "I asked her how to find the calling
procedure's program counter on the stack and she came up with an
algorithm in real time."
Node:real user, Next:Real World, Previous:real time, Up:= R =
real user n.
1. A commercial user. One who is paying real money
for his computer usage. 2. A non-hacker. Someone using the system
for an explicit purpose (a research project, a course, etc.)
other than pure exploration. See user.
Hackers who are also students may also be real users. "I need
this fixed so I can do a problem set. I'm not complaining out of
randomness, but as a real user." See also luser.
Node:Real World, Next:reality check, Previous:real user, Up:= R =
Real World n.
1. Those institutions at which `programming' may be used in
the same sentence as `FORTRAN', `COBOL', `RPG', `IBM',
`DBASE', etc. Places where programs do such commercially
necessary but intellectually uninspiring things as generating
payroll checks and invoices. 2. The location of non-programmers
and activities not related to programming. 3. A bizarre dimension
in which the standard dress is shirt and tie and in which a
person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5 (see code grinder). 4. Anywhere outside a
university. "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the Real
World." Used pejoratively by those not in residence there. In
conversation, talking of someone who has entered the Real World
is not unlike speaking of a deceased person. It is also
noteworthy that on the campus of Cambridge University in England,
there is a gaily-painted lamp-post which bears the label `REALITY
CHECKPOINT'. It marks the boundary between university and the
Real World; check your notions of reality before passing. This
joke is funnier because the Cambridge `campus' is actually
coextensive with the center of Cambridge town. See also fear and loathing, mundane, and uninteresting.
Node:reality check, Next:reality-distortion
field, Previous:Real
World, Up:= R =
reality check n.
1. The simplest kind of test of software or hardware; doing
the equivalent of asking it what 2 + 2 is and seeing if you get
4. The software equivalent of a smoke
test. 2. The act of letting a real user try out prototype software.
Compare sanity check.
Node:reality-distortion
field, Next:reaper,
Previous:reality
check, Up:= R =
reality-distortion field n.
An expression used to describe the persuasive ability of
managers like Steve Jobs (the term originated at Apple in the
1980s to describe his peculiar charisma). Those close to these
managers become passionately committed to possibly insane
projects, without regard to the practicality of their
implementation or competitive forces in the marketpace.
Node:reaper, Next:recompile the world, Previous:reality-distortion field, Up:= R =
reaper n.
A prowler that GFRs files. A file removed in this way is said to
have been `reaped'.
Node:recompile the world,
Next:rectangle
slinger, Previous:reaper, Up:= R
=
recompile the world
The surprisingly large amount of work that needs to be done as
the result of any small but globally visible program change. "The
world" may mean the entirety of some huge program, or may in
theory refer to every program of a certain class in the entire
known universe. For instance, "Add one #define to stdio.h, and
you have to recompile the world." This means that any minor
change to the standard-I/O header file theoretically mandates
recompiling every C program in existence, even if only to verify
that the change didn't screw something else up. In practice, you
may not actually have to recompile the world, but the implication
is that some human cleverness is required to figure out what
parts can be safely left out.
Node:rectangle slinger, Next:recursion, Previous:recompile the
world, Up:= R =
rectangle slinger n.
See polygon pusher.
Node:recursion, Next:recursive acronym, Previous:rectangle slinger,
Up:= R =
recursion n.
See recursion. See also tail recursion.
Node:recursive acronym, Next:Red Book, Previous:recursion, Up:= R =
recursive acronym n.
A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose
acronyms/abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to
other acronyms/abbreviations. The classic examples were two MIT
editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not EMACS") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was
EINE Initially"). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler
called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU (q.v., sense 1) stands for "GNU's Not Unix!"
-- and a company with the name Cygnus, which expands to "Cygnus,
Your GNU Support" (though Cygnus people say this is a backronym). See also mung, EMACS.
Node:Red Book, Next:red wire, Previous:recursive acronym, Up:= R =
Red Book n.
1. Informal name for one of the four standard references on
PostScript ("PostScript Language
Reference Manual", Adobe Systems (Addison-Wesley, 1985;
QA76.73.P67P67; ISBN 0-201-10174-2, or the 1990 second edition
ISBN 0-201-18127-4); the others are known as the Green Book, the Blue Book, and the White Book (sense 2). 2. Informal name
for one of the 3 standard references on Smalltalk ("Smalltalk-80:
The Interactive Programming Environment" by Adele Goldberg
(Addison-Wesley, 1984; QA76.8.S635G638; ISBN 0-201-11372-4); this
too is associated with blue and green books). 3. Any of the 1984
standards issued by the CCITT eighth plenary assembly. These
include, among other things, the X.400 email spec and the Group 1
through 4 fax standards. 4. The new version of the Green Book (sense 4) -- IEEE 1003.1-1990,
a.k.a ISO 9945-1 -- is (because of the color and the fact that it
is printed on A4 paper) known in the USA as "the Ugly Red Book
That Won't Fit On The Shelf" and in Europe as "the Ugly Red Book
That's A Sensible Size". 5. The NSA "Trusted Network
Interpretation" companion to the Orange Book. 6. Nemeth, Snyder, Seebass,
Hein; "Unix System Administration Handbook, Second Edition"
(Prentice Hall PTR, New Jersey; 1995; QA76.76.063N45; ISBN
0-13-151051-7). See also book
titles.
Node:red wire, Next:regexp, Previous:Red Book, Up:= R =
red wire n.
[IBM] Patch wires installed by programmers who have no
business mucking with the hardware. It is said that the only
thing more dangerous than a hardware guy with a code patch is a
softy with a soldering
iron.... Compare blue
wire, yellow wire,
purple wire.
Node:regexp, Next:register dancing, Previous:red wire, Up:= R =
regexp /reg'eksp/ n.
[Unix] (alt. `regex' or `reg-ex') 1. Common written and spoken
abbreviation for `regular expression', one of the wildcard
patterns used, e.g., by Unix utilities such as
grep(1), sed(1), and
awk(1). These use conventions similar to but more
elaborate than those described under glob. For purposes of this lexicon, it is
sufficient to note that regexps also allow complemented character
sets using ^; thus, one can specify `any
non-alphabetic character' with [^A-Za-z]. 2. Name of
a well-known PD regexp-handling package in portable C, written by
revered Usenetter Henry Spencer .
Node:register dancing, Next:rehi, Previous:regexp, Up:=
R =
register dancing n.
Many older processor architectures suffer from a serious
shortage of general-purpose registers. This is especially a
problem for compiler-writers, because their generated code needs
places to store temporaries for things like intermediate values
in expression evaluation. Some designs with this problem, like
the Intel 80x86, do have a handful of special-purpose registers
that can be pressed into service, providing suitable care is
taken to avoid unpleasant side effects on the state of the
processor: while the special-purpose register is being used to
hold an intermediate value, a delicate minuet is required in
which the previous value of the register is saved and then
restored just before the official function (and value) of the
special-purpose register is again needed.
Node:rehi, Next:reincarnation cycle of,
Previous:register
dancing, Up:= R =
rehi
[IRC, MUD] "Hello again." Very commonly used to greet people
upon returning to an IRC channel after channel hopping.
Node:reincarnation cycle
of, Next:reinvent the wheel, Previous:rehi, Up:= R =
reincarnation, cycle of n.
See cycle of
reincarnation.
Node:reinvent the wheel,
Next:relay rape,
Previous:reincarnation cycle of, Up:= R =
reinvent the wheel v.
To design or implement a tool equivalent to an existing one or
part of one, with the implication that doing so is silly or a
waste of time. This is often a valid criticism. On the other
hand, automobiles don't use wooden rollers, and some kinds of
wheel have to be reinvented many times before you get them right.
On the third hand, people reinventing the wheel do tend to come
up with the moral equivalent of a trapezoid with an offset
axle.
Node:relay rape, Next:religion of CHI, Previous:reinvent the wheel,
Up:= R =
relay rape n.
The hijacking of a third party's unsecured mail server to
deliver spam.
Node:religion of CHI, Next:religious issues,
Previous:relay rape,
Up:= R =
religion of CHI /ki:/ n.
[Case Western Reserve University] Yet another hackish parody
religion (see also Church of the SubGenius,
Discordianism). In the
mid-70s, the canonical "Introduction to Programming" courses at
CWRU were taught in Algol, and student exercises were punched on
cards and run on a Univac 1108 system using a homebrew operating
system named CHI. The religion had no doctrines and but one
ritual: whenever the worshipper noted that a digital clock read
11:08, he or she would recite the phrase "It is 11:08; ABS,
ALPHABETIC, ARCSIN, ARCCOS, ARCTAN." The last five words were the
first five functions in the appropriate chapter of the Algol
manual; note the special pronunciations /obz/ and /ark'sin/
rather than the more common /ahbz/ and /ark'si:n/. Using an alarm
clock to warn of 11:08's arrival was considered harmful.
Node:religious issues, Next:replicator, Previous:religion of CHI, Up:= R =
religious issues n.
Questions which seemingly cannot be raised without touching
off holy wars, such as "What is
the best operating system (or editor, language, architecture,
shell, mail reader, news reader)?", "What about that Heinlein
guy, eh?", "What should we add to the new Jargon File?" See holy wars; see also theology, bigot.
This term is a prime example of ha ha only serious. People
actually develop the most amazing and religiously intense
attachments to their tools, even when the tools are intangible.
The most constructive thing one can do when one stumbles into the
crossfire is mumble Get a
life! and leave -- unless, of course, one's own
unassailably rational and obviously correct choices are being
slammed.
Node:replicator, Next:reply, Previous:religious issues, Up:= R =
replicator n.
Any construct that acts to produce copies of itself; this
could be a living organism, an idea (see meme), a program (see quine, worm, wabbit, fork
bomb, and virus), a pattern
in a cellular automaton (see life,
sense 1), or (speculatively) a robot or nanobot. It is even claimed by some that Unix and C are the
symbiotic halves of an extremely successful replicator; see Unix conspiracy.
Node:reply, Next:restriction, Previous:replicator, Up:= R =
reply n.
See followup.
Node:restriction, Next:retcon, Previous:reply, Up:= R
=
restriction n.
A bug or design error that limits a
program's capabilities, and which is sufficiently egregious that
nobody can quite work up enough nerve to describe it as a feature. Often used (esp. by marketroid types) to make it sound as
though some crippling bogosity had been intended by the designers
all along, or was forced upon them by arcane technical
constraints of a nature no mere user could possibly comprehend
(these claims are almost invariably false).
Old-time hacker Joseph M. Newcomer advises that whenever
choosing a quantifiable but arbitrary restriction, you should
make it either a power of 2 or a power of 2 minus 1. If you
impose a limit of 107 items in a list, everyone will know it is a
random number -- on the other hand, a limit of 15 or 16 suggests
some deep reason (involving 0- or 1-based indexing in binary) and
you will get less flamage for it.
Limits which are round numbers in base 10 are always especially
suspect.
Node:retcon, Next:RETI, Previous:restriction, Up:= R =
retcon /ret'kon/
[short for `retroactive continuity', from the Usenet newsgroup
_rec.arts.comics_] 1. n. The common situation in pulp
fiction (esp. comics or soap operas) where a new story `reveals'
things about events in previous stories, usually leaving the
`facts' the same (thus preserving continuity) while completely
changing their interpretation. For example, revealing that a
whole season of "Dallas" was a dream was a retcon. 2. vt. To
write such a story about a character or fictitious object. "Byrne
has retconned Superman's cape so that it is no longer
unbreakable." "Marvelman's old adventures were retconned into
synthetic dreams." "Swamp Thing was retconned from a transformed
person into a sentient vegetable." "Darth Vader was retconned
into Luke Skywalker's father in "The Empire Strikes Back".
[This term is included because it is a good example of hackish
linguistic innovation in a field completely unrelated to
computers. The word `retcon' will probably spread through comics
fandom and lose its association with hackerdom within a couple of
years; for the record, it started here. --ESR]
[1993 update: some comics fans on the net now claim that
retcon was independently in use in comics fandom before
_rec.arts.comics_. In lexicography, nothing is ever simple.
--ESR]
Node:RETI, Next:retrocomputing, Previous:retcon, Up:=
R =
RETI v.
Syn. RTI
Node:retrocomputing, Next:return from the
dead, Previous:RETI, Up:= R =
retrocomputing /ret'-roh-k*m-pyoo'ting/ n.
Refers to emulations of way-behind-the-state-of-the-art
hardware or software, or implementations of
never-was-state-of-the-art; esp. if such implementations are
elaborate practical jokes and/or parodies, written mostly for
hack value, of more `serious'
designs. Perhaps the most widely distributed retrocomputing
utility was the pnch(6) or bcd(6)
program on V7 and other early Unix versions, which would accept
up to 80 characters of text argument and display the
corresponding pattern in punched
card code. Other well-known retrocomputing hacks have
included the programming language INTERCAL, a JCL-emulating shell for Unix, the
card-punch-emulating editor named 029, and various elaborate
PDP-11 hardware emulators and RT-11 OS emulators written just to
keep an old, sourceless Zork binary
running.
A tasty selection of retrocomputing programs are made
available at the Retrocomputing Museum, http://www.ccil.org/retro.
Node:return from the
dead, Next:RFC, Previous:retrocomputing, Up:= R =
return from the dead v.
To regain access to the net after a long absence. Compare
person of no
account.
Node:RFC, Next:RFE, Previous:return from the dead, Up:= R =
RFC /R-F-C/ n.
[Request For Comment] One of a long-established series of
numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely
followed by commercial software and freeware in the Internet and
Unix communities. Perhaps the single most influential one has
been RFC-822 (the Internet mail-format standard). The RFCs are
unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on
their own initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large,
rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as
ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once
adopted as standards.
The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven,
after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or small
working groups has important advantages over the more formal,
committee-driven process typical of ANSI or ISO. Emblematic of
some of these advantages is the existence of a flourishing
tradition of `joke' RFCs; usually at least one a year is
published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs have
included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973), 748
("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1 April 1978),
and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on
Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first
was a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP-IP
documentation style, and the third a deadpan skewering of
standards-document legalese, describing protocols for
transmitting Internet data packets by carrier pigeon.
The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work -- they
manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in
informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated
misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they define a
network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions.
Node:RFE, Next:rib site, Previous:RFC, Up:= R =
RFE /R-F-E/ n.
1. [techspeak] Request For Enhancement (compare RFC). 2. [from `Radio Free Europe', Bellcore and
Sun] Radio Free Ethernet, a system (originated by Peter Langston)
for broadcasting audio among Sun SPARCstations over the
ethernet.
Node:rib site, Next:rice box, Previous:RFE, Up:= R =
rib site n.
[by analogy with backbone
site] A machine that has an on-demand high-speed link to
a backbone site and serves
as a regional distribution point for lots of third-party traffic
in email and Usenet news. Compare leaf
site, backbone
site.
Node:rice box, Next:Right Thing, Previous:rib site, Up:= R =
rice box n.
[from ham radio slang] Any Asian-made commodity computer, esp.
an 80x86-based machine built to IBM PC-compatible ISA or EISA-bus
standards.
Node:Right Thing, Next:rip, Previous:rice box, Up:= R =
Right Thing n.
That which is compellingly the correct or appropriate
thing to use, do, say, etc. Often capitalized, always emphasized
in speech as though capitalized. Use of this term often implies
that in fact reasonable people may disagree. "What's the right
thing for LISP to do when it sees (mod a 0)? Should
it return a, or give a divide-by-0 error?" Oppose
Wrong Thing.
Node:rip, Next:ripoff, Previous:Right Thing, Up:= R =
rip v.
1. To extract the digital representation of a piece of music
from an audio CD. Software that does this is often called a "CD
ripper". 2. [Amiga hackers] To extract sound or graphics from a
program that they have been compiled/assembled into, or which
generates them at run-time. In the case of older Amiga games this
entails searching through memory shortly after a reboot. This
sense has been in use for many years and probably gave rise to
the (now more common) sense 1.
Node:ripoff, Next:RL, Previous:rip,
Up:= R =
ripoff n.
Synonym for chad, sense 1.
Node:RL, Next:roach, Previous:ripoff, Up:= R
=
RL // n.
[MUD community] Real Life. "Firiss laughs in RL" means that
Firiss's player is laughing. Compare meatspace; oppose VR.
Node:roach, Next:robocanceller, Previous:RL, Up:= R =
roach vt.
[Bell Labs] To destroy, esp. of a data structure. Hardware
gets toasted or fried, software gets roached.
Node:robocanceller, Next:robot, Previous:roach, Up:= R
=
robocanceller /roh-boh-kan'sel-*r/
A program that monitors Usenet feeds, attempting to detect and
eliminate spam by sending appropriate
cancel messages . Robocancellers may use the Breidbart Index as a trigger.
Programming them is not a game for amateurs; see ARMM. See also Dave the Resurrector.
Node:robot, Next:robust, Previous:robocanceller, Up:= R =
robot n.
See bot.
Node:robust, Next:rococo, Previous:robot, Up:= R
=
robust adj.
Said of a system that has demonstrated an ability to recover
gracefully from the whole range of exceptional inputs and
situations in a given environment. One step below bulletproof. Carries the additional
connotation of elegance in addition to just careful attention to
detail. Compare smart, oppose brittle.
Node:rococo, Next:rogue, Previous:robust, Up:= R
=
rococo adj.
Terminally baroque. Used to
imply that a program has become so encrusted with the software
equivalent of gold leaf and curlicues that they have completely
swamped the underlying design. Called after the later and more
extreme forms of Baroque architecture and decoration prevalent
during the mid-1700s in Europe. Alan Perlis said: "Every program
eventually becomes rococo, and then rubble." Compare critical mass.
Node:rogue, Next:room-temperature IQ, Previous:rococo, Up:= R =
rogue
1. [Unix] n. A Dungeons-and-Dragons-like game using character
graphics, written under BSD Unix and subsequently ported to other
Unix systems. The original BSD curses(3)
screen-handling package was hacked together by Ken Arnold
primarily to support games, and the development of
rogue(6) popularized its use; it has since become
one of Unix's most important and heavily used application
libraries. Nethack, Omega, Larn, Angband, and an entire subgenre
of computer dungeon games (all known as `roguelikes') all took
off from the inspiration provided by rogue(6); the
popular Windows game Diablo, though graphics-intensive, has very
similar play logic. See also nethack. 2. [Usenet] adj. An ISP which permits net abuse (usually in the form
of spamming) by its customers, or
which itself engages in such activities. Rogue ISPs are sometimes
subject to IDPs or UDPs. Sometimes deliberately mispelled as "rouge".
See also nethack, moria, Angband.
Node:room-temperature IQ,
Next:root, Previous:rogue, Up:= R =
room-temperature IQ quant.
[IBM] 80 or below (nominal room temperature is 72 degrees
Fahrenheit, 22 degrees Celsius). Used in describing the expected
intelligence range of the luser.
"Well, but how's this interface going to play with the
room-temperature IQ crowd?" See drool-proof paper. This is a much
more insulting phrase in countries that use Celsius
thermometers.
Node:root, Next:root mode, Previous:room-temperature IQ, Up:= R =
root n.
[Unix] 1. The superuser
account (with user name `root') that ignores permission bits,
user number 0 on a Unix system. The term avatar is also used. 2. The top node of the
system directory structure; historically the home directory of
the root user, but probably named after the root of an (inverted)
tree. 3. By extension, the privileged system-maintenance login on
any OS. See root mode, go root, see also wheel.
Node:root mode, Next:rot13, Previous:root, Up:= R =
root mode n.
Syn. with wizard mode or
`wheel mode'. Like these, it is often generalized to describe
privileged states in systems other than OSes.
Node:rot13, Next:rotary debugger, Previous:root mode, Up:= R =
rot13 /rot ther'teen/ n.,v.
[Usenet: from `rotate alphabet 13 places'] The simple
Caesar-cypher encryption that replaces each English letter with
the one 13 places forward or back along the alphabet, so that
"The butler did it!" becomes "Gur ohgyre qvq vg!" Most Usenet
news reading and posting programs include a rot13 feature. It is
used to enclose the text in a sealed wrapper that the reader must
choose to open -- e.g., for posting things that might offend some
readers, or spoilers. A major
advantage of rot13 over rot(N) for other N is that it is
self-inverse, so the same code can be used for encoding and
decoding. See also spoiler
space, which has partly displaced rot13 since
non-Unix-based newsreaders became common.
Node:rotary debugger, Next:round tape, Previous:rot13, Up:= R =
rotary debugger n.
[Commodore] Essential equipment for those late-night or
early-morning debugging sessions. Mainly used as sustenance for
the hacker. Comes in many decorator colors, such as Sausage,
Pepperoni, and Garbage. See ANSI standard pizza.
Node:round tape, Next:RSN, Previous:rotary debugger, Up:= R =
round tape n.
Industry-standard 1/2-inch magnetic tape (7- or 9-track) on
traditional circular reels. See macrotape, oppose square tape.
Node:RSN, Next:RTBM, Previous:round tape, Up:= R =
RSN /R-S-N/ adj.
See Real Soon Now.
Node:RTBM, Next:RTFAQ, Previous:RSN, Up:= R =
RTBM /R-T-B-M/ imp.
[Unix] Commonwealth Hackish variant of RTFM; expands to `Read The Bloody Manual'. RTBM
is often the entire text of the first reply to a question from a
newbie; the second would
escalate to "RTFM".
Node:RTFAQ, Next:RTFB, Previous:RTBM, Up:= R =
RTFAQ /R-T-F-A-Q/ imp.
[Usenet: primarily written, by analogy with RTFM] Abbrev. for `Read the FAQ!', an exhortation
that the person addressed ought to read the newsgroup's FAQ list before posting questions.
Node:RTFB, Next:RTFM, Previous:RTFAQ, Up:= R
=
RTFB /R-T-F-B/ imp.
[Unix] Abbreviation for `Read The Fucking Binary'. Used when
neither documentation nor source for the problem at hand exists,
and the only thing to do is use some debugger or monitor and
directly analyze the assembler or even the machine code. "No
source for the buggy port driver? Aaargh! I hate
proprietary operating systems. Time to RTFB."
Of the various RTF? forms, `RTFB' is the least pejorative
against anyone asking a question for which RTFB is the answer;
the anger here is directed at the absence of both source
and adequate documentation.
Node:RTFM, Next:RTFS, Previous:RTFB, Up:= R =
RTFM /R-T-F-M/ imp.
[Unix] Abbreviation for `Read The Fucking Manual'. 1. Used by
gurus to brush off questions they
consider trivial or annoying. Compare Don't do that then!. 2. Used
when reporting a problem to indicate that you aren't just asking
out of randomness. "No, I can't
figure out how to interface Unix to my toaster, and yes, I have
RTFM." Unlike sense 1, this use is considered polite. See also
FM, RTFAQ,
RTFB, RTFS,
STFW, RTM,
all of which mutated from RTFM, and compare UTSL.
Node:RTFS, Next:RTI, Previous:RTFM,
Up:= R =
RTFS /R-T-F-S/
[Unix] 1. imp. Abbreviation for `Read The Fucking Source'.
Variant form of RTFM, used when the
problem at hand is not necessarily obvious and not answerable
from the manuals -- or the manuals are not yet written and maybe
never will be. For even trickier situations, see RTFB. Unlike RTFM, the anger inherent in RTFS is
not usually directed at the person asking the question, but
rather at the people who failed to provide adequate
documentation. 2. imp. `Read The Fucking Standard'; this oath can
only be used when the problem area (e.g., a language or operating
system interface) has actually been codified in a ratified
standards document. The existence of these standards documents
(and the technically inappropriate but politically mandated
compromises that they inevitably contain, and the impenetrable
legalese in which they are
invariably written, and the unbelievably tedious bureaucratic
process by which they are produced) can be unnerving to hackers,
who are used to a certain amount of ambiguity in the
specifications of the systems they use. (Hackers feel that such
ambiguities are acceptable as long as the Right Thing to do is obvious to any
thinking observer; sadly, this casual attitude towards
specifications becomes unworkable when a system becomes popular
in the Real World.) Since a
hacker is likely to feel that a standards document is both
unnecessary and technically deficient, the deprecation inherent
in this term may be directed as much against the standard as
against the person who ought to read it.
Node:RTI, Next:RTM, Previous:RTFS,
Up:= R =
RTI /R-T-I/ interj.
The mnemonic for the `return from interrupt' instruction on
many computers including the 6502 and 6800. The variant `RETI' is
found among former Z80 hackers (almost nobody programs these
things in assembler anymore). Equivalent to "Now, where was I?"
or used to end a conversational digression. See pop; see also POPJ.
Node:RTM, Next:RTS, Previous:RTI,
Up:= R =
RTM /R-T-M/
[Usenet: abbreviation for `Read The Manual'] 1. Politer
variant of RTFM. 2. Robert Tappan
Morris, perpetrator of the great Internet worm of 1988 (see Great Worm); villain to many, naive
hacker gone wrong to a few. Morris claimed that the worm that
brought the Internet to its knees was a benign experiment that
got out of control as the result of a coding error. After the
storm of negative publicity that followed this blunder, Morris's
username on ITS was hacked from RTM to RTFM.
Node:RTS, Next:rude, Previous:RTM,
Up:= R =
RTS /R-T-S/ imp.
Abbreviation for `Read The Screen'. Mainly used by hackers in
the microcomputer world. Refers to what one would like to tell
the suit one is forced to explain an
extremely simple application to. Particularly appropriate when
the suit failed to notice the `Press any key to continue' prompt,
and wishes to know `why won't it do anything'. Also seen as
`RTFS' in especially deserving cases.
Node:rude, Next:runes, Previous:RTS, Up:= R =
rude [WPI] adj.
1. (of a program) Badly written. 2. Functionally poor, e.g., a
program that is very difficult to use because of gratuitously
poor (random?) design decisions. Oppose cuspy. 3. Anything that manipulates a shared
resource without regard for its other users in such a way as to
cause a (non-fatal) problem. Examples: programs that change tty
modes without resetting them on exit, or windowing programs that
keep forcing themselves to the top of the window stack. Compare
all-elbows.
Node:runes, Next:runic, Previous:rude, Up:= R =
runes pl.n.
1. Anything that requires heavy
wizardry or black art
to parse: core dumps, JCL commands,
APL, or code in a language you haven't a clue how to read. Not
quite as bad as line noise,
but close. Compare casting
the runes, Great
Runes. 2. Special display characters (for example, the
high-half graphics on an IBM PC). 3. [borderline techspeak]
16-bit characters from the Unicode multilingual character
set.
Node:runic, Next:rusty iron, Previous:runes, Up:= R
=
runic adj.
Syn. obscure. VMS fans sometimes
refer to Unix as `Runix'; Unix fans return the compliment by
expanding VMS to `Very Messy Syntax' or `Vachement Mauvais
Système' (French idiom, "Hugely Bad System").
Node:rusty iron, Next:rusty memory, Previous:runic, Up:= R =
rusty iron n.
Syn. tired iron. It has
been claimed that this is the inevitable fate of water MIPS.
Node:rusty memory, Next:rusty wire, Previous:rusty iron, Up:= R =
rusty memory n.
Mass-storage that uses iron-oxide-based magnetic media (esp.
tape and the pre-Winchester removable disk packs used in washing machines). Compare
donuts.
Node:rusty wire, Next:S/N ratio, Previous:rusty memory, Up:= R =
rusty wire n.
[Amateur Packet Radio] Any very noisy network medium, in which
the packets are subject to frequent corruption. Most prevalent in
reference to wireless links subject to all the vagaries of RF
noise and marginal propagation conditions. "Yes, but how good is
your whizbang new protocol on really rusty wire?".
Node:= S =, Next:= T =, Previous:= R =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= S =
S/N ratio:
sacred:
saga:
sagan:
SAIL:
salescritter:
salt:
salt mines:
salt substrate:
same-day service:
samizdat:
samurai:
sandbender:
sandbox:
sanity check:
Saturday-night
special:
say:
scag:
scanno:
scary devil
monastery:
schroedinbug:
science-fiction
fandom:
scram switch:
scratch:
scratch monkey:
scream and die:
screaming tty:
screen:
screen name:
screw:
screwage:
scribble:
script kiddies:
scrog:
scrool:
scrozzle:
scruffies:
SCSI:
ScumOS:
search-and-destroy
mode:
second-system
effect:
secondary damage:
security through
obscurity:
SED:
segfault:
seggie:
segment:
segmentation fault:
segv:
self-reference:
selvage:
semi:
semi-automated:
semi-infinite:
senior bit:
September that
never ended:
server:
SEX:
sex changer:
shambolic link:
shar file:
sharchive:
Share and enjoy!:
shareware:
sharing violation:
shebang:
shelfware:
shell:
shell out:
shift left
(or right) logical:
shim:
shitogram:
short card:
shotgun debugging:
shovelware:
showstopper:
shriek:
Shub-Internet:
sidecar:
SIG:
sig block:
sig quote:
sig virus:
signal-to-noise
ratio:
silicon:
silly walk:
silo:
Silver Book:
since
time T equals minus infinity:
sitename:
skrog:
skulker:
slab:
slack:
slap on the side:
slash:
slashdot effect:
sleep:
slim:
slop:
slopsucker:
Slowlaris:
slurp:
smart:
smart terminal:
smash case:
smash the stack:
smiley:
smoke:
smoke and mirrors:
smoke test:
smoking clover:
smoot:
SMOP:
smurf:
SNAFU principle:
snail:
snail-mail:
snap:
snarf:
snarf & barf:
snarf down:
snark:
sneaker:
sneakernet:
sniff:
snivitz:
'Snooze:
SO:
social engineering:
social science
number:
sock puppet:
sodium substrate:
soft boot:
softcopy:
software bloat:
software hoarding:
software laser:
software rot:
softwarily:
softy:
some random X:
sorcerer's
apprentice mode:
SOS:
source:
source of all good
bits:
space-cadet
keyboard:
spaceship operator:
SPACEWAR:
spaghetti code:
spaghetti
inheritance:
spam:
spam bait:
spamblock:
spamhaus:
spamvertize:
spangle:
spawn:
special-case:
speedometer:
spell:
spelling flame:
spider:
spider food:
spiffy:
spike:
spin:
spl:
splash screen:
splat:
splat out:
spod:
spoiler:
spoiler space:
sponge:
spoof:
spool:
spool file:
spungle:
square tape:
squirrelcide:
stack:
stack puke:
stale pointer bug:
star out:
state:
stealth manager:
steam-powered:
STFW:
stiffy:
stir-fried random:
stomp on:
Stone Age:
stone knives and
bearskins:
stoppage:
store:
strided:
stroke:
strudel:
stubroutine:
studly:
studlycaps:
stunning:
stupid-sort:
Stupids:
Sturgeon's Law:
sucking mud:
sufficiently small:
suit:
suitable win:
suitably small:
Sun:
sun lounge:
sun-stools:
sunspots:
super source
quench:
superloser:
superprogrammer:
superuser:
support:
surf:
Suzie COBOL:
swab:
swap:
swap space:
swapped in:
swapped out:
swizzle:
sync:
syntactic salt:
syntactic sugar:
sys-frog:
sysadmin:
sysape:
sysop:
system:
systems jock:
system mangler:
SysVile:
Node:S/N ratio, Next:sacred, Previous:rusty wire, Up:= S =
S/N ratio // n.
(also `s/n ratio', `s:n ratio'). Syn. signal-to-noise ratio. Often
abbreviated `SNR'.
Node:sacred, Next:saga, Previous:S/N ratio, Up:= S =
sacred adj.
Reserved for the exclusive use of something (an extension of
the standard meaning). Often means that anyone may look at the
sacred object, but clobbering it will screw whatever it is sacred
to. The comment "Register 7 is sacred to the interrupt handler"
appearing in a program would be interpreted by a hacker to mean
that if any other part of the program changes the
contents of register 7, dire consequences are likely to
ensue.
Node:saga, Next:sagan, Previous:sacred, Up:= S
=
saga n.
[WPI] A cuspy but bogus raving story about N random broken
people.
Here is a classic example of the saga form, as told by Guy L.
Steele:
Jon L. White (login name JONL) and I (GLS) were
office mates at MIT for many years. One April, we both flew from
Boston to California for a week on research business, to consult
face-to-face with some people at Stanford, particularly our
mutual friend Richard P. Gabriel (RPG; see gabriel).
RPG picked us up at the San Francisco airport and drove us
back to Palo Alto (going logical
south on route 101, parallel to El Camino Bignum). Palo Alto is
adjacent to Stanford University and about 40 miles south of San
Francisco. We ate at The Good Earth, a `health food' restaurant,
very popular, the sort whose milkshakes all contain honey and
protein powder. JONL ordered such a shake -- the waitress claimed
the flavor of the day was "lalaberry". I still have no idea what
that might be, but it became a running joke. It was the color of
raspberry, and JONL said it tasted rather bitter. I ate a better
tostada there than I have ever had in a Mexican restaurant.
After this we went to the local Uncle Gaylord's Old Fashioned
Ice Cream Parlor. They make ice cream fresh daily, in a variety
of intriguing flavors. It's a chain, and they have a slogan: "If
you don't live near an Uncle Gaylord's -- MOVE!" Also, Uncle
Gaylord (a real person) wages a constant battle to force big-name
ice cream makers to print their ingredients on the package (like
air and plastic and other non-natural garbage). JONL and I had
first discovered Uncle Gaylord's the previous August, when we had
flown to a computer-science conference in Berkeley, California,
the first time either of us had been on the West Coast. When not
in the conference sessions, we had spent our time wandering the
length of Telegraph Avenue, which (like Harvard Square in
Cambridge) was lined with picturesque street vendors and
interesting little shops. On that street we discovered Uncle
Gaylord's Berkeley store. The ice cream there was very good.
During that August visit JONL went absolutely bananas (so to
speak) over one particular flavor, ginger honey.
Therefore, after eating at The Good Earth -- indeed, after
every lunch and dinner and before bed during our April visit -- a
trip to Uncle Gaylord's (the one in Palo Alto) was mandatory. We
had arrived on a Wednesday, and by Thursday evening we had been
there at least four times. Each time, JONL would get ginger honey
ice cream, and proclaim to all bystanders that "Ginger was the
spice that drove the Europeans mad! That's why they sought a
route to the East! They used it to preserve their otherwise
off-taste meat." After the third or fourth repetition RPG and I
were getting a little tired of this spiel, and began to
paraphrase him: "Wow! Ginger! The spice that makes rotten meat
taste good!" "Say! Why don't we find some dog that's been run
over and sat in the sun for a week and put some ginger
on it for dinner?!" "Right! With a lalaberry shake!" And so on.
This failed to faze JONL; he took it in good humor, as long as we
kept returning to Uncle Gaylord's. He loves ginger honey ice
cream.
Now RPG and his then-wife KBT (Kathy Tracy) were putting us up
(putting up with us?) in their home for our visit, so to thank
them JONL and I took them out to a nice French restaurant of
their choosing. I unadventurously chose the filet mignon, and KBT
had _je ne sais quoi du jour_, but RPG and JONL had
_lapin_ (rabbit). (Waitress: "_Oui_, we have fresh
rabbit, fresh today." RPG: "Well, JONL, I guess we won't need any
ginger!")
We finished the meal late, about 11 P.M., which
is 2 A.M Boston time, so JONL and I were rather
droopy. But it wasn't yet midnight. Off to Uncle Gaylord's!
Now the French restaurant was in Redwood City, north of Palo
Alto. In leaving Redwood City, we somehow got onto route 101
going north instead of south. JONL and I wouldn't have known the
difference had RPG not mentioned it. We still knew very little of
the local geography. I did figure out, however, that we were
headed in the direction of Berkeley, and half-jokingly suggested
that we continue north and go to Uncle Gaylord's in Berkeley.
RPG said "Fine!" and we drove on for a while and talked. I was
drowsy, and JONL actually dropped off to sleep for 5 minutes.
When he awoke, RPG said, "Gee, JONL, you must have slept all the
way over the bridge!", referring to the one spanning San
Francisco Bay. Just then we came to a sign that said "University
Avenue". I mumbled something about working our way over to
Telegraph Avenue; RPG said "Right!" and maneuvered some more.
Eventually we pulled up in front of an Uncle Gaylord's.
Now, I hadn't really been paying attention because I was so
sleepy, and I didn't really understand what was happening until
RPG let me in on it a few moments later, but I was just alert
enough to notice that we had somehow come to the Palo Alto Uncle
Gaylord's after all.
JONL noticed the resemblance to the Palo Alto store, but
hadn't caught on. (The place is lit with red and yellow lights at
night, and looks much different from the way it does in
daylight.) He said, "This isn't the Uncle Gaylord's I went to in
Berkeley! It looked like a barn! But this place looks just
like the one back in Palo Alto!"
RPG deadpanned, "Well, this is the one I always come
to when I'm in Berkeley. They've got two in San Francisco, too.
Remember, they're a chain."
JONL accepted this bit of wisdom. And he was not totally
ignorant -- he knew perfectly well that University Avenue was in
Berkeley, not far from Telegraph Avenue. What he didn't know was
that there is a completely different University Avenue in Palo
Alto.
JONL went up to the counter and asked for ginger honey. The
guy at the counter asked whether JONL would like to taste it
first, evidently their standard procedure with that flavor, as
not too many people like it.
JONL said, "I'm sure I like it. Just give me a cone." The guy
behind the counter insisted that JONL try just a taste first.
"Some people think it tastes like soap." JONL insisted, "Look, I
love ginger. I eat Chinese food. I eat raw ginger roots.
I already went through this hassle with the guy back in Palo
Alto. I know I like that flavor!"
At the words "back in Palo Alto" the guy behind the counter
got a very strange look on his face, but said nothing. KBT caught
his eye and winked. Through my stupor I still hadn't quite
grasped what was going on, and thought RPG was rolling on the
floor laughing and clutching his stomach just because JONL had
launched into his spiel ("makes rotten meat a dish for princes")
for the forty-third time. At this point, RPG clued me in
fully.
RPG, KBT, and I retreated to a table, trying to stifle our
chuckles. JONL remained at the counter, talking about ice cream
with the guy b.t.c., comparing Uncle Gaylord's to other ice cream
shops and generally having a good old time.
At length the g.b.t.c. said, "How's the ginger honey?" JONL
said, "Fine! I wonder what exactly is in it?" Now Uncle Gaylord
publishes all his recipes and even teaches classes on how to make
his ice cream at home. So the g.b.t.c. got out the recipe, and he
and JONL pored over it for a while. But the g.b.t.c. could
contain his curiosity no longer, and asked again, "You really
like that stuff, huh?" JONL said, "Yeah, I've been eating it
constantly back in Palo Alto for the past two days. In fact, I
think this batch is about as good as the cones I got back in Palo
Alto!"
G.b.t.c. looked him straight in the eye and said, "You're
in Palo Alto!"
JONL turned slowly around, and saw the three of us collapse in
a fit of giggles. He clapped a hand to his forehead and
exclaimed, "I've been hacked!"
[My spies on the West Coast inform me that there is a close
relative of the raspberry found out there called an
`ollalieberry' --ESR]
[Ironic footnote: the meme about
ginger vs. rotting meat is an urban legend. It's not borne out by
an examination of medieval recipes or period purchase records for
spices, and appears full-blown in the works of Samuel Pegge, a
gourmand and notorious flake case who originated numerous food
myths. The truth seems to be that ginger was used to cover not
rot but the extreme salt taste of meat packed in brine, which was
the best method available before refrigeration. --ESR]
Node:sagan, Next:SAIL, Previous:saga, Up:= S =
sagan /say'gn/ n.
[from Carl Sagan's TV series "Cosmos"; think "billions and
billions"] A large quantity of anything. "There's a sagan
different ways to tweak EMACS." "The U.S. Government spends
sagans on bombs and welfare -- hard to say which is more
destructive."
Node:SAIL, Next:salescritter, Previous:sagan, Up:= S
=
SAIL /sayl/, not /S-A-I-L/ n.
1. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab. An important site
in the early development of LISP; with the MIT AI Lab, BBN, CMU,
XEROX PARC, and the Unix community, one of the major wellsprings
of technical innovation and hacker-culture traditions (see the
WAITS entry for details). The SAIL
machines were shut down in late May 1990, scant weeks after the
MIT AI Lab's ITS cluster was officially decommissioned. 2. The
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Language used at SAIL (sense 1).
It was an Algol-60 derivative with a coroutining facility and
some new data types intended for building search trees and
association lists.
Node:salescritter, Next:salt, Previous:SAIL, Up:= S =
salescritter /sayls'kri`tr/ n.
Pejorative hackerism for a computer salesperson. Hackers tell
the following joke:
Q. What's the difference between a used-car dealer and a
computer salesman?
A. The used-car dealer knows he's lying. [Some versions add:
...and probably knows how to drive.]
This reflects the widespread hacker belief that salescritters
are self-selected for stupidity (after all, if they had brains
and the inclination to use them, they'd be in programming). The
terms `salesthing' and `salesdroid' are also common. Compare
marketroid, suit, droid.
Node:salt, Next:salt mines, Previous:salescritter, Up:= S =
salt n.
A tiny bit of near-random data inserted where too much
regularity would be undesirable; a data frob (sense 1). For example, the Unix crypt(3)
man page mentions that "the salt string is used to perturb the
DES algorithm in one of 4096 different ways."
Node:salt mines, Next:salt substrate, Previous:salt, Up:= S =
salt mines n.
Dense quarters housing large numbers of programmers working
long hours on grungy projects, with some hope of seeing the end
of the tunnel in N years. Noted for their absence of sunshine.
Compare playpen, sandbox.
Node:salt substrate, Next:same-day service,
Previous:salt mines,
Up:= S =
salt substrate n.
[MIT] Collective noun used to refer to potato chips, pretzels,
saltines, or any other form of snack food designed primarily as a
carrier for sodium chloride. Also `sodium substrate'. From the
technical term `chip substrate', used to refer to the silicon on
the top of which the active parts of integrated circuits are
deposited.
Node:same-day service, Next:samizdat, Previous:salt substrate, Up:= S =
same-day service n.
Ironic term used to describe long response time, particularly
with respect to MS-DOS system calls
(which ought to require only a tiny fraction of a second to
execute). Such response time is a major incentive for programmers
to write programs that are not well-behaved. See also PC-ism.
Node:samizdat, Next:samurai, Previous:same-day service, Up:= S =
samizdat /sahm-iz-daht/ n.
[Russian, literally "self publishing"] The process of
disseminating documentation via underground channels. Originally
referred to underground duplication and distribution of banned
books in the Soviet Union; now refers by obvious extension to any
less-than-official promulgation of textual material, esp. rare,
obsolete, or never-formally-published computer documentation.
Samizdat is obviously much easier when one has access to
high-bandwidth networks and high-quality laser printers. Note
that samizdat is properly used only with respect to documents
which contain needed information (see also hacker ethic) but which are for some
reason otherwise unavailable, but not in the context of
documents which are available through normal channels, for which
unauthorized duplication would be unethical copyright violation.
See Lions Book for a
historical example.
Node:samurai, Next:sandbender, Previous:samizdat, Up:=
S =
samurai n.
A hacker who hires out for legal cracking jobs, snooping for
factions in corporate political fights, lawyers pursuing
privacy-rights and First Amendment cases, and other parties with
legitimate reasons to need an electronic locksmith. In 1991,
mainstream media reported the existence of a loose-knit culture
of samurai that meets electronically on BBS systems, mostly
bright teenagers with personal micros; they have modeled
themselves explicitly on the historical samurai of Japan and on
the "net cowboys" of William Gibson's cyberpunk novels. Those interviewed claim to
adhere to a rigid ethic of loyalty to their employers and to
disdain the vandalism and theft practiced by criminal crackers as
beneath them and contrary to the hacker ethic; some quote
Miyamoto Musashi's "Book of Five Rings", a classic of historical
samurai doctrine, in support of these principles. See also sneaker, Stupids, social engineering, cracker, hacker
ethic, and dark-side
hacker.
Node:sandbender, Next:sandbox, Previous:samurai, Up:= S
=
sandbender n.
[IBM] A person involved with silicon lithography and the
physical design of chips. Compare ironmonger, polygon pusher.
Node:sandbox, Next:sanity check, Previous:sandbender, Up:= S =
sandbox n.
1. (also `sandbox, the') Common term for the R&D
department at many software and computer companies (where hackers
in commercial environments are likely to be found).
Half-derisive, but reflects the truth that research is a form of
creative play. Compare playpen. 2.
Syn. link farm. 3. A controlled
environment within which potentially dangerous programs are run.
Used esp. in reference to Java implementations.
Node:sanity check, Next:Saturday-night
special, Previous:sandbox, Up:= S
=
sanity check n.
[very common] 1. The act of checking a piece of code (or
anything else, e.g., a Usenet posting) for completely stupid
mistakes. Implies that the check is to make sure the author was
sane when it was written; e.g., if a piece of scientific software
relied on a particular formula and was giving unexpected results,
one might first look at the nesting of parentheses or the coding
of the formula, as a `sanity check', before looking at the more
complex I/O or data structure manipulation routines, much less
the algorithm itself. Compare reality check. 2. A run-time test,
either validating input or ensuring that the program hasn't
screwed up internally (producing an inconsistent value or
state).
Node:Saturday-night
special, Next:say, Previous:sanity check, Up:= S =
Saturday-night special n.
[from police slang for a cheap handgun] A quick-and-dirty program or feature
kluged together during off hours, under a deadline, and in
response to pressure from a salescritter. Such hacks are dangerously
unreliable, but all too often sneak into a production release
after insufficient review.
Node:say, Next:scag, Previous:Saturday-night special, Up:= S =
say vt.
1. To type to a terminal. "To list a directory verbosely, you
have to say ls -l." Tends to imply a newline-terminated command (a `sentence'). 2.
A computer may also be said to `say' things to you, even if it
doesn't have a speech synthesizer, by displaying them on a
terminal in response to your commands. Hackers find it odd that
this usage confuses mundanes.
Node:scag, Next:scanno, Previous:say, Up:= S =
scag vt.
To destroy the data on a disk, either by corrupting the
filesystem or by causing media damage. "That last power hit
scagged the system disk." Compare scrog, roach.
Node:scanno, Next:scary devil monastery,
Previous:scag, Up:= S =
scanno /skan'oh/ n.
An error in a document caused by a scanner glitch, analogous
to a typo or thinko.
Node:scary devil
monastery, Next:schroedinbug, Previous:scanno, Up:=
S =
scary devil monastery n.
Anagram frequently used to refer to the newsgroup
_alt.sysadmin.recovery_, which is populated with characters
that rather justify the reference.
Node:schroedinbug, Next:science-fiction fandom,
Previous:scary devil monastery, Up:= S =
schroedinbug /shroh'din-buhg/ n.
[MIT: from the Schroedinger's Cat thought-experiment in
quantum physics] A design or implementation bug in a program that
doesn't manifest until someone reading source or using the
program in an unusual way notices that it never should have
worked, at which point the program promptly stops working for
everybody until fixed. Though (like bit
rot) this sounds impossible, it happens; some programs
have harbored latent schroedinbugs for years. Compare heisenbug, Bohr
bug, mandelbug.
Node:science-fiction
fandom, Next:scram
switch, Previous:schroedinbug, Up:= S =
science-fiction fandom n.
Another voluntary subculture having a very heavy overlap with
hackerdom; most hackers read SF and/or fantasy fiction avidly,
and many go to `cons' (SF conventions) or are involved in
fandom-connected activities such as the Society for Creative
Anachronism. Some hacker jargon originated in SF fandom; see
defenestration, great-wall, cyberpunk, h, ha ha only serious,
IMHO, mundane, neep-neep, Real Soon Now. Additionally, the
jargon terms cowboy, cyberspace, de-rezz, go
flatline, ice, phage, virus, wetware, wirehead, and worm
originated in SF stories.
Node:scram switch, Next:scratch, Previous:science-fiction fandom,
Up:= S =
scram switch n.
[from the nuclear power industry] An emergency-power-off
switch (see Big Red
Switch), esp. one positioned to be easily hit by
evacuating personnel. In general, this is not something
you frob lightly; these often initiate
expensive events (such as Halon dumps) and are installed in a
dinosaur pen for use in case
of electrical fire or in case some luckless field servoid should put 120 volts
across himself while Easter
egging. (See also molly-guard, TMRC.)
A correspondent reports a legend that "Scram" is an acronym
for "Start Cutting Right Away, Man" (another less plausible
variant of this legend refers to "Safety Control Rod Axe Man";
these are almost certainly both backronyms). The story goes that in the
earliest nuclear power experiments the engineers recognized the
possibility that the reactor wouldn't behave exactly as predicted
by their mathematical models. Accordingly, they made sure that
they had mechanisms in place that would rapidly drop the control
rods back into the reactor. One mechanism took the form of `scram
technicians'. These individuals stood next to the ropes or cables
that raised and lowered the control rods. Equipped with axes or
cable-cutters, these technicians stood ready for the (literal)
`scram' command. If necessary, they would cut the cables, and
gravity would expeditiously return the control rods to the
reactor, thereby averting yet another kind of core dump.
Modern reactor control rods are held in place with claw-like
devices, held closed by current. SCRAM switches are circuit
breakers that immediately open the circuit to the rod arms,
resulting in the rapid insertion and subsequent bottoming of the
control rods.
Node:scratch, Next:scratch monkey, Previous:scram switch, Up:= S =
scratch
1. [from `scratchpad'] adj. Describes a data structure or
recording medium attached to a machine for testing or
temporary-use purposes; one that can be scribbled on without loss. Usually in the
combining forms `scratch memory', `scratch register', `scratch
disk', `scratch tape', `scratch volume'. See also scratch monkey. 2. [primarily IBM]
vt. To delete (as in a file).
Node:scratch monkey, Next:scream and die, Previous:scratch, Up:= S =
scratch monkey n.
As in "Before testing or reconfiguring, always mount a scratch monkey", a proverb used
to advise caution when dealing with irreplaceable data or
devices. Used to refer to any scratch volume hooked to a computer
during any risky operation as a replacement for some precious
resource or data that might otherwise get trashed.
This term preserves the memory of Mabel, the Swimming Wonder
Monkey, star of a biological research program at the University
of Toronto. Mabel was not (so the legend goes) your ordinary
monkey; the university had spent years teaching her how to swim,
breathing through a regulator, in order to study the effects of
different gas mixtures on her physiology. Mabel suffered an
untimely demise one day when a DEC
field circus engineer
troubleshooting a crash on the program's VAX inadvertently
interfered with some custom hardware that was wired to Mabel.
It is reported that, after calming down an understandably
irate customer sufficiently to ascertain the facts of the matter,
a DEC troubleshooter called up the field circus manager responsible and
asked him sweetly, "Can you swim?"
Not all the consequences to humans were so amusing; the sysop
of the machine in question was nearly thrown in jail at the
behest of certain clueless droids at
the local `humane' society. The moral is clear: When in doubt,
always mount a scratch monkey.
[The actual incident occured in 1979 or 1980. There is a
version of this story, complete with reported dialogue between
one of the project people and DEC field service, that has been
circulating on Internet since 1986. It is hilarious and mythic,
but gets some facts wrong. For example, it reports the machine as
a PDP-11 and alleges that Mabel's demise occurred when DEC PMed the machine. Earlier versions of this
entry were based on that story; this one has been corrected from
an interview with the hapless sysop. --ESR]
Node:scream and die, Next:screaming tty, Previous:scratch monkey, Up:= S =
scream and die v.
Syn. cough and die,
but connotes that an error message was printed or displayed
before the program crashed.
Node:screaming tty, Next:screen, Previous:scream and die, Up:= S =
screaming tty n.
[Unix] A terminal line which spews an infinite number of
random characters at the operating system. This can happen if the
terminal is either disconnected or connected to a powered-off
terminal but still enabled for login; misconfiguration,
misimplementation, or simple bad luck can start such a terminal
screaming. A screaming tty or two can seriously degrade the
performance of a vanilla Unix system; the arriving "characters"
are treated as userid/password pairs and tested as such. The Unix
password encryption algorithm is designed to be computationally
intensive in order to foil brute-force crack attacks, so although
none of the logins succeeds; the overhead of rejecting them all
can be substantial.
Node:screen, Next:screen name, Previous:screaming tty, Up:= S =
screen n.
[Atari ST demoscene] One demoeffect or one screenful of them.
Probably comes from old Sierra-style adventures or shoot-em-ups
where one travels from one place to another one screenful at a
time.
Node:screen name, Next:screw, Previous:screen, Up:= S
=
screen name n.
A handle sense 1. This term has
been common among users of IRC, MUDs, and commercial on-line
services since the mid-1990s. Hackers recognize the term but
don't generally use it.
Node:screw, Next:screwage, Previous:screen name, Up:= S =
screw n.
[MIT] A lose, usually in software.
Especially used for user-visible misbehavior caused by a bug or
misfeature. This use has become quite widespread outside MIT.
Node:screwage, Next:scribble, Previous:screw, Up:= S
=
screwage /skroo'*j/ n.
Like lossage but connotes that
the failure is due to a designed-in misfeature rather than a
simple inadequacy or a mere bug.
Node:scribble, Next:script kiddies, Previous:screwage, Up:= S =
scribble n.
To modify a data structure in a random and unintentionally
destructive way. "Bletch! Somebody's disk-compactor program went
berserk and scribbled on the i-node table." "It was working fine
until one of the allocation routines scribbled on low core."
Synonymous with trash; compare mung, which conveys a bit more intention,
and mangle, which is more violent
and final.
Node:script kiddies, Next:scrog, Previous:scribble, Up:=
S =
script kiddies pl.n.
1. The lowest form of cracker;
script kiddies do mischief with scripts and programs written by
others, often without understanding the exploit. 2. People who cannot program, but who
create tacky HTML pages by copying JavaScript routines from other
tacky HTML pages. More generally, a script kiddie writes (or more
likely cuts and pastes) code without either having or desiring to
have a mental model of what the code does; someone who thinks of
code as magical incantations and asks only "what do I need to
type to make this happen?"
Node:scrog, Next:scrool, Previous:script kiddies, Up:= S =
scrog /skrog/ vt.
[Bell Labs] To damage, trash, or corrupt a data structure.
"The list header got scrogged." Also reported as `skrog', and
ascribed to the comic strip "The Wizard of Id". Compare scag; possibly the two are related.
Equivalent to scribble or mangle.
Node:scrool, Next:scrozzle, Previous:scrog, Up:= S
=
scrool /skrool/ n.
[from the pioneering Roundtable chat system in Houston ca.
1984; prob. originated as a typo for `scroll'] The log of old
messages, available for later perusal or to help one get back in
synch with the conversation. It was originally called the `scrool
monster', because an early version of the roundtable software had
a bug where it would dump all 8K of scrool on a user's
terminal.
Node:scrozzle, Next:scruffies, Previous:scrool, Up:= S
=
scrozzle /skroz'l/ vt.
Used when a self-modifying code segment runs incorrectly and
corrupts the running program or vital data. "The damn compiler
scrozzled itself again!"
Node:scruffies, Next:SCSI, Previous:scrozzle, Up:=
S =
scruffies n.
See neats vs.
scruffies.
Node:SCSI, Next:ScumOS, Previous:scruffies, Up:= S =
SCSI n.
[Small Computer System Interface] A bus-independent standard
for system-level interfacing between a computer and intelligent
devices. Typically annotated in literature with `sexy'
(/sek'see/), `sissy' (/sis'ee/), and `scuzzy' (/skuh'zee/) as
pronunciation guides -- the last being the overwhelmingly
predominant form, much to the dismay of the designers and their
marketing people. One can usually assume that a person who
pronounces it /S-C-S-I/ is clueless.
Node:ScumOS, Next:search-and-destroy mode,
Previous:SCSI, Up:= S =
ScumOS /skuhm'os/ or /skuhm'O-S/ n.
Unflattering hackerism for SunOS, the BSD Unix variant
supported on Sun Microsystems's Unix workstations (see also sun-stools), and compare AIDX, Macintrash, Nominal Semidestructor, HP-SUX. Despite what this term might
suggest, Sun was founded by hackers and still enjoys excellent
relations with hackerdom; usage is more often in exasperation
than outright loathing.
Node:search-and-destroy
mode, Next:second-system effect, Previous:ScumOS, Up:= S =
search-and-destroy mode n.
Hackerism for a noninteractive search-and-replace facility in
an editor, so called because an incautiously chosen match pattern
can cause infinite damage.
Node:second-system effect,
Next:secondary
damage, Previous:search-and-destroy mode, Up:= S =
second-system effect n.
(sometimes, more euphoniously, `second-system syndrome') When
one is designing the successor to a relatively small, elegant,
and successful system, there is a tendency to become grandiose in
one's success and design an elephantine feature-laden monstrosity. The
term was first used by Fred Brooks in his classic "The Mythical
Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering" (Addison-Wesley, 1975;
ISBN 0-201-00650-2). It described the jump from a set of nice,
simple operating systems on the IBM 70xx series to OS/360 on the
360 series. A similar effect can also happen in an evolving
system; see Brooks's Law,
creeping elegance,
creeping featurism.
See also Multics, OS/2, X, software bloat.
This version of the jargon lexicon has been described (with
altogether too much truth for comfort) as an example of
second-system effect run amok on jargon-1....
Node:secondary damage, Next:security
through obscurity, Previous:second-system effect, Up:= S =
secondary damage n.
When a fatal error occurs (esp. a segfault) the immediate cause may be that a
pointer has been trashed due to a previous fandango on core. However, this
fandango may have been due to an earlier fandango, so no
amount of analysis will reveal (directly) how the damage
occurred. "The data structure was clobbered, but it was secondary
damage."
By extension, the corruption resulting from N cascaded
fandangoes on core is `Nth-level damage'. There is at least one
case on record in which 17 hours of grovelling with adb actually dug
up the underlying bug behind an instance of seventh-level damage!
The hacker who accomplished this near-superhuman feat was
presented with an award by his fellows.
Node:security through
obscurity, Next:SED,
Previous:secondary
damage, Up:= S =
security through obscurity
(alt. `security by obscurity') A term applied by hackers to
most OS vendors' favorite way of coping with security holes --
namely, ignoring them, documenting neither any known holes nor
the underlying security algorithms, trusting that nobody will
find out about them and that people who do find out about them
won't exploit them. This "strategy" never works for long and
occasionally sets the world up for debacles like the RTM worm of 1988 (see Great Worm), but once the brief moments
of panic created by such events subside most vendors are all too
willing to turn over and go back to sleep. After all, actually
fixing the bugs would siphon off the resources needed to
implement the next user-interface frill on marketing's wish list
-- and besides, if they started fixing security bugs customers
might begin to expect it and imagine that their
warranties of merchantability gave them some sort of
right to a system with fewer holes in it than a
shotgunned Swiss cheese, and then where would we be?
Historical note: There are conflicting stories about the
origin of this term. It has been claimed that it was first used
in the Usenet newsgroup in _comp.sys.apollo_ during a
campaign to get HP/Apollo to fix security problems in its
Unix-clone Aegis/DomainOS (they
didn't change a thing). ITS fans, on
the other hand, say it was coined years earlier in opposition to
the incredibly paranoid Multics
people down the hall, for whom security was everything. In the
ITS culture it referred to (1) the fact that by the time a
tourist figured out how to make trouble he'd generally gotten
over the urge to make it, because he felt part of the community;
and (2) (self-mockingly) the poor coverage of the documentation
and obscurity of many commands. One instance of
deliberate security through obscurity is recorded; the
command to allow patching the running ITS system (escape escape
control-R) echoed as $$^D. If you actually typed alt alt ^D, that
set a flag that would prevent patching the system even if you
later got it right.
Node:SED, Next:segfault, Previous:security through obscurity,
Up:= S =
SED /S-E-D/ n.
[TMRC, from `Light-Emitting Diode'] Smoke-emitting diode. A
friode that lost the war. See also
LER.
Node:segfault, Next:seggie, Previous:SED, Up:= S =
segfault n.,vi.
Syn. segment, segmentation fault.
Node:seggie, Next:segment, Previous:segfault, Up:=
S =
seggie /seg'ee/ n.
[Unix] Shorthand for segmentation fault reported from
Britain.
Node:segment, Next:segmentation fault, Previous:seggie, Up:= S =
segment /seg'ment/ vi.
To experience a segmentation fault. Confusingly,
this is often pronounced more like the noun `segment' than like
mainstream v. segment; this is because it is actually a noun
shorthand that has been verbed.
Node:segmentation fault,
Next:segv, Previous:segment, Up:= S =
segmentation fault n.
[Unix] 1. [techspeak] An error in which a running program
attempts to access memory not allocated to it and core dumps with a segmentation violation
error. This is often caused by improper usage of pointers in the
source code, dereferencing a null pointer, or (in C)
inadvertently using a non-pointer variable as a pointer. The
classic example is:
int i;
scanf ("%d", i); /* should have used &i */
2. To lose a train of thought or a line of reasoning. Also
uttered as an exclamation at the point of befuddlement.
Node:segv, Next:self-reference, Previous:segmentation fault, Up:= S =
segv /seg'vee/ n.,vi.
Yet another synonym for segmentation fault (actually, in
this case, `segmentation violation').
Node:self-reference, Next:selvage, Previous:segv, Up:= S
=
self-reference n.
See self-reference.
Node:selvage, Next:semi, Previous:self-reference, Up:= S =
selvage /sel'v*j/ n.
[from sewing and weaving] See chad
(sense 1).
Node:semi, Next:semi-automated, Previous:selvage, Up:= S =
semi /se'mee/ or /se'mi:/
1. n. Abbreviation for `semicolon', when speaking. "Commands
to grind are prefixed by
semi-semi-star" means that the prefix is ;;*, not
1/4 of a star. 2. A prefix used with words such as `immediately'
as a qualifier. "When is the system coming up?"
"Semi-immediately." (That is, maybe not for an hour.) "We did
consider that possibility semi-seriously." See also infinite.
Node:semi-automated, Next:semi-infinite, Previous:semi, Up:= S =
semi-automated adj.
[US Geological Survey] A procedure that has yet to be
completely automated; it still requires a smidge of clueful human
interaction. Semi-automated programs usually come with
written-out operator instructions that are worth their weight in
gold - without them, very nasty things can happen. At USGS
semi-automated programs are often referred to as "semi-automated
weapons".
Node:semi-infinite, Next:senior bit, Previous:semi-automated, Up:= S =
semi-infinite n.
See infinite.
Node:senior bit, Next:September that never
ended, Previous:semi-infinite, Up:= S =
senior bit n.
[IBM; rare] Syn. meta
bit.
Node:September that
never ended, Next:server,
Previous:senior bit,
Up:= S =
September that never ended
All time since September 1993. One of the seasonal rhythms of
the Usenet used to be the annual September influx of clueless
newbies who, lacking any sense of netiquette, made a general nuisance of
themselves. This coincided with people starting college, getting
their first internet accounts, and plunging in without bothering
to learn what was acceptable. These relatively small drafts of
newbies could be assimilated within a few months. But in
September 1993, AOL users became able to post to Usenet, nearly
overwhelming the old-timers' capacity to acculturate them; to
those who nostalgically recall the period before hand, this
triggered an inexorable decline in the quality of discussions on
newsgroups. See also AOL!.
Node:server, Next:SEX, Previous:September that never
ended, Up:= S =
server n.
A kind of daemon that performs a
service for the requester and which often runs on a computer
other than the one on which the server runs. A particularly
common term on the Internet, which is rife with `web servers',
`name servers', `domain servers', `news servers', `finger
servers', and the like.
Node:SEX, Next:sex changer, Previous:server, Up:=
S =
SEX /seks/
[Sun Users' Group & elsewhere] n. 1. Software EXchange. A
technique invented by the blue-green algae hundreds of millions
of years ago to speed up their evolution, which had been terribly
slow up until then. Today, SEX parties are popular among hackers
and others (of course, these are no longer limited to exchanges
of genetic software). In general, SEX parties are a Good Thing, but unprotected SEX can
propagate a virus. See also pubic directory. 2. The rather
Freudian mnemonic often used for Sign EXtend, a machine
instruction found in the PDP-11 and many other architectures. The
RCA 1802 chip used in the early Elf and SuperElf personal
computers had a `SEt X register' SEX instruction, but this seems
to have had little folkloric impact. The Data General instruction
set also had SEX.
DEC's engineers nearly got a PDP-11
assembler that used the SEX mnemonic out the door at
one time, but (for once) marketing wasn't asleep and forced a
change. That wasn't the last time this happened, either. The
author of "The Intel 8086 Primer", who was one of the original
designers of the 8086, noted that there was originally a
SEX instruction on that processor, too. He says that
Intel management got cold feet and decreed that it be changed,
and thus the instruction was renamed CBW and
CWD (depending on what was being extended).
Amusingly, the Intel 8048 (the microcontroller used in IBM PC
keyboards) is also missing straight SEX but has
logical-or and logical-and instructions ORL and
ANL.
The Motorola 6809, used in the Radio Shack Color Computer and
in U.K.'s `Dragon 32' personal computer, actually had an official
SEX instruction; the 6502 in the Apple II with which
it competed did not. British hackers thought this made perfect
mythic sense; after all, it was commonly observed, you could (on
some theoretical level) have sex with a dragon, but you can't
have sex with an apple.
Node:sex changer, Next:shambolic link, Previous:SEX, Up:= S =
sex changer n.
Syn. gender mender.
Node:shambolic link, Next:shar file, Previous:sex changer, Up:= S =
shambolic link /sham-bol'ik link/ n.
A Unix symbolic link, particularly when it confuses you,
points to nothing at all, or results in your ending up in some
completely unexpected part of the
filesystem....
Node:shar file, Next:sharchive, Previous:shambolic link, Up:= S =
shar file /shar' fi:l/ n.
Syn. sharchive.
Node:sharchive, Next:Share and enjoy!, Previous:shar file, Up:= S =
sharchive /shar'ki:v/ n.
[Unix and Usenet; from /bin/sh archive] A flattened representation of a set of one or
more files, with the unique property that it can be unflattened
(the original files restored) by feeding it through a standard
Unix shell; thus, a sharchive can be distributed to anyone
running Unix, and no special unpacking software is required.
Sharchives are also intriguing in that they are typically created
by shell scripts; the script that produces sharchives is thus a
script which produces self-unpacking scripts, which may
themselves contain scripts. (The downsides of sharchives are that
they are an ideal venue for Trojan
horse attacks and that, for recipients not running Unix,
no simple un-sharchiving program is possible; sharchives can and
do make use of arbitrarily-powerful shell features.) Sharchives
are also commonly referred to as `shar files' after the name of
the most common program for generating them.
Node:Share and enjoy!, Next:shareware, Previous:sharchive, Up:= S =
Share and enjoy! imp.
1. Commonly found at the end of software release announcements
and README files, this phrase
indicates allegiance to the hacker ethic of free information
sharing (see hacker ethic,
sense 1). 2. The motto of the complaints division of Sirius
Cybernetics Corporation (the ultimate gaggle of incompetent suits) in Douglas Adams's "Hitch Hiker's
Guide to the Galaxy". The irony of using this as a cultural
recognition signal appeals to hackers.
Node:shareware, Next:sharing violation, Previous:Share and enjoy!,
Up:= S =
shareware /sheir'weir/ n.
A kind of freeware (sense 1)
for which the author requests some payment, usually in the
accompanying documentation files or in an announcement made by
the software itself. Such payment may or may not buy additional
support or functionality. See also careware, charityware, crippleware, FRS, guiltware,
postcardware, and -ware; compare payware.
Node:sharing violation, Next:shebang, Previous:shareware, Up:= S =
sharing violation
[From a file error common to several OSs] A response to receiving information, typically
of an excessively personal nature, that you were probably happier
not knowing. "You know those little noises that Pat makes in
bed..?" "Whoa! Sharing violation!" In contrast to the original
file error, which indicated that you were not being
given data that you did want.
Node:shebang, Next:shelfware, Previous:sharing violation, Up:= S =
shebang /sh*-bang/ n.
The character sequence "#!" that frequently begins executable
shell scripts under Unix. Probably derived from "shell bang"
under the influence of American slang "the whole shebang"
(everything, the works).
Node:shelfware, Next:shell, Previous:shebang, Up:= S
=
shelfware /shelf'weir/ n.
Software purchased on a whim (by an individual user) or in
accordance with policy (by a corporation or government agency),
but not actually required for any particular use. Therefore, it
often ends up on some shelf.
Node:shell, Next:shell out, Previous:shelfware, Up:= S =
shell [orig. Multics
n.
techspeak, widely propagated via Unix] 1. [techspeak] The
command interpreter used to pass commands to an operating system;
so called because it is the part of the operating system that
interfaces with the outside world. 2. More generally, any
interface program that mediates access to a special resource or
server for convenience, efficiency,
or security reasons; for this meaning, the usage is usually `a
shell around' whatever. This sort of program is also called a
`wrapper'. 3. A skeleton program, created by hand or by another
program (like, say, a parser generator), which provides the
necessary incantations to set
up some task and the control flow to drive it (the term driver is sometimes used synonymously).
The user is meant to fill in whatever code is needed to get real
work done. This usage is common in the AI and Microsoft Windows
worlds, and confuses Unix hackers.
Historical note: Apparently, the original Multics shell (sense
1) was so called because it was a shell (sense 3); it ran user
programs not by starting up separate processes, but by
dynamically linking the programs into its own code, calling them
as subroutines, and then dynamically de-linking them on return.
The VMS command interpreter still does something very like
this.
Node:shell out, Next:shift left (or
right) logical, Previous:shell, Up:= S
=
shell out vi.
[Unix] To spawn an interactive
subshell from within a program (e.g., a mailer or editor). "Bang
foo runs foo in a subshell, while bang alone shells out."
Node:shift left
(or right) logical, Next:shim,
Previous:shell out,
Up:= S =
shift left (or right) logical
[from any of various machines' instruction sets] 1. vi. To
move oneself to the left (right). To move out of the way. 2.
imper. "Get out of that (my) seat! You can shift to that empty
one to the left (right)." Often used without the `logical', or as
`left shift' instead of `shift left'. Sometimes heard as LSH
/lish/, from the PDP-10 instruction
set. See Programmer's
Cheer.
Node:shim, Next:shitogram, Previous:shift left (or right)
logical, Up:= S =
shim n.
A small piece of data inserted in order to achieve a desired
memory alignment or other addressing property. For example, the
PDP-11 Unix linker, in split I&D (instructions and data)
mode, inserts a two-byte shim at location 0 in data space so that
no data object will have an address of 0 (and be confused with
the C null pointer). See also loose
bytes.
Node:shitogram, Next:short card, Previous:shim, Up:= S =
shitogram /shit'oh-gram/ n.
A really nasty piece of email. Compare nastygram, flame.
Node:short card, Next:shotgun debugging, Previous:shitogram, Up:= S =
short card n.
A half-length IBM XT expansion card or adapter that will fit
in one of the two short slots located towards the right rear of a
standard chassis (tucked behind the floppy disk drives). See also
tall card.
Node:shotgun debugging, Next:shovelware, Previous:short card, Up:= S =
shotgun debugging n.
The software equivalent of Easter egging; the making of
relatively undirected changes to software in the hope that a bug
will be perturbed out of existence. This almost never works, and
usually introduces more bugs.
Node:shovelware, Next:showstopper, Previous:shotgun debugging, Up:= S =
shovelware /shuh'v*l-weir`/ n.
1. Extra software dumped onto a CD-ROM or tape to fill up the
remaining space on the medium after the software distribution
it's intended to carry, but not integrated with the distribution.
2. A slipshod compilation of software dumped onto a CD-ROM
without much care for organization or even usability.
Node:showstopper, Next:shriek, Previous:shovelware, Up:= S =
showstopper n.
A hardware or (especially) software bug that makes an
implementation effectively unusable; one that absolutely has to
be fixed before development can go on. Opposite in connotation
from its original theatrical use, which refers to something
stunningly good.
Node:shriek, Next:Shub-Internet, Previous:showstopper, Up:= S =
shriek n.
See excl. Occasional CMU usage,
also in common use among APL fans and mathematicians, especially
category theorists.
Node:Shub-Internet, Next:sidecar, Previous:shriek, Up:=
S =
Shub-Internet /shuhb' in't*r-net/ n.
[MUD: from H. P. Lovecraft's evil fictional deity
Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat with a Thousand Young] The harsh
personification of the Internet: Beast of a Thousand Processes,
Eater of Characters, Avatar of Line Noise, and Imp of Call
Waiting; the hideous multi-tendriled entity formed of all the
manifold connections of the net. A sect of MUDders worships
Shub-Internet, sacrificing objects and praying for good
connections. To no avail -- its purpose is malign and evil, and
is the cause of all network slowdown. Often heard as in "Freela
casts a tac nuke at Shub-Internet for slowing her down." (A
forged response often follows along the lines of: "Shub-Internet
gulps down the tac nuke and burps happily.") Also cursed by users
of the Web, FTP and TELNET when the system slows down. The dread
name of Shub-Internet is seldom spoken aloud, as it is said that
repeating it three times will cause the being to wake, deep
within its lair beneath the Pentagon. Compare Random Number God.
[January 1996: It develops that one of the computer
administrators in the basement of the Pentagon read this entry
and fell over laughing. As a result, you too can now poke
Shub-Internet by pinging
_shub-internet.ims.disa.mil_. See also kremvax. - ESR]
[April 1999: shub-internet.ims.disa.mil is no more, alas. But
Shub-Internet lives o^$#$*^ - ESR]
Node:sidecar, Next:SIG, Previous:Shub-Internet, Up:= S =
sidecar n.
1. Syn. slap on the
side. Esp. used of add-ons for the late and unlamented
IBM PCjr. 2. The IBM PC compatibility box that could be bolted
onto the side of an Amiga. Designed and produced by Commodore, it
broke all of the company's own design rules. If it worked with
any other peripherals, it was by magic. 3. More generally, any of various devices
designed to be connected to the expansion slot on the left side
of the Amiga 500 (and later, 600 & 1200), which included a
hard drive controller, a hard drive, and additional memory.
Node:SIG, Next:sig block, Previous:sidecar, Up:= S
=
SIG /sig/ n.
(also common as a prefix in combining forms) A Special
Interest Group, in one of several technical areas, sponsored by
the Association for Computing Machinery; well-known ones include
SIGPLAN (the Special Interest Group on Programming Languages),
SIGARCH (the Special Interest Group for Computer Architecture)
and SIGGRAPH (the Special Interest Group for Computer Graphics).
Hackers, not surprisingly, like to overextend this naming
convention to less formal associations like SIGBEER (at ACM
conferences) and SIGFOOD (at University of Illinois).
Node:sig block, Next:sig quote, Previous:SIG, Up:= S
=
sig block /sig blok/ n.
[Unix; often written `.sig' there] Short for `signature', used
specifically to refer to the electronic signature block that most
Unix mail- and news-posting software will automagically append to outgoing mail
and news. The composition of one's sig can be quite an art form,
including an ASCII logo or one's choice of witty sayings (see
sig quote, fool file); but many consider large sigs a
waste of bandwidth, and it has
been observed that the size of one's sig block is usually
inversely proportional to one's longevity and level of prestige
on the net. See also doubled
sig.
Node:sig quote, Next:sig virus, Previous:sig block, Up:= S =
sig quote /sig kwoht/ n.
[Usenet] A maxim, quote, proverb, joke, or slogan embedded in
one's sig block and intended to
convey something of one's philosophical stance, pet peeves, or
sense of humor. "Calm down, it's only ones and zeroes."
Node:sig virus, Next:signal-to-noise ratio,
Previous:sig quote,
Up:= S =
sig virus n.
A parasitic meme embedded in a
sig block. There was a meme plague or fad for these on
Usenet in late 1991. Most were equivalents of "I am a .sig virus.
Please reproduce me in your .sig block.". Of course, the .sig
virus's memetic hook is the giggle value of going along with the
gag; this, however, was a self-limiting phenomenon as more and
more people picked up on the idea. There were creative variants
on it; some people stuck `sig virus antibody' texts in their
sigs, and there was at least one instance of a sig virus
eater.
Node:signal-to-noise ratio,
Next:silicon, Previous:sig virus, Up:= S =
signal-to-noise ratio [from analog electronics] n.
Used by hackers in a generalization of its technical meaning.
`Signal' refers to useful information conveyed by some
communications medium, and `noise' to anything else on that
medium. Hence a low ratio implies that it is not worth paying
attention to the medium in question. Figures for such
metaphorical ratios are never given. The term is most often
applied to Usenet newsgroups during
flame wars. Compare bandwidth. See also coefficient of X, lost in the noise.
Node:silicon, Next:silly walk, Previous:signal-to-noise ratio, Up:= S =
silicon n.
Hardware, esp. ICs or microprocessor-based computer systems
(compare iron). Contrasted with
software. See also sandbender.
Node:silly walk, Next:silo, Previous:silicon, Up:= S
=
silly walk vi.
[from Monty Python's Flying Circus] 1. A ridiculous procedure
required to accomplish a task. Like grovel, but more random and humorous. "I had to silly-walk
through half the /usr directories to find the maps file." 2. Syn.
fandango on core.
Node:silo, Next:Silver Book, Previous:silly walk, Up:= S =
silo n.
The FIFO input-character buffer in an RS-232 line card. So
called from DEC terminology used on DH
and DZ line cards for the VAX and PDP-11, presumably because it
was a storage space for fungible stuff that went in at the top
and came out at the bottom.
Node:Silver Book, Next:since time T
equals minus infinity, Previous:silo, Up:= S =
Silver Book n.
Jensen and Wirth's infamous "Pascal User Manual and Report",
so called because of the silver cover of the widely distributed
Springer-Verlag second edition of 1978 (ISBN 0-387-90144-2). See
book titles, Pascal.
Node:since
time T equals minus infinity, Next:sitename, Previous:Silver Book, Up:= S =
since time T equals minus infinity adv.
A long time ago; for as long as anyone can remember; at the
time that some particular frob was first designed. Usually the
word `time' is omitted. See also time
T; contrast epoch.
Node:sitename, Next:skrog, Previous:since time T
equals minus infinity, Up:=
S =
sitename /si:t'naym/ n.
[Unix/Internet] The unique electronic name of a computer
system, used to identify it in UUCP mail, Usenet, or other forms
of electronic information interchange. The folklore interest of
sitenames stems from the creativity and humor they often display.
Interpreting a sitename is not unlike interpreting a vanity
license plate; one has to mentally unpack it, allowing for
mono-case and length restrictions and the lack of whitespace.
Hacker tradition deprecates dull, institutional-sounding names in
favor of punchy, humorous, and clever coinages (except that it is
considered appropriate for the official public gateway machine of
an organization to bear the organization's name or acronym).
Mythological references, cartoon characters, animal names, and
allusions to SF or fantasy literature are probably the most
popular sources for sitenames (in roughly descending order). The
obligatory comment when discussing these is Harris's Lament: "All
the good ones are taken!" See also network address.
Node:skrog, Next:skulker, Previous:sitename, Up:=
S =
skrog v.
Syn. scrog.
Node:skulker, Next:slab, Previous:skrog, Up:= S
=
skulker n.
Syn. prowler.
Node:slab, Next:slack, Previous:skulker, Up:= S
=
slab [Apple]
1. n. A continuous horizontal line of pixels, all with the
same color. 2. vi. To paint a slab on an output device. Apple's
QuickDraw, like most other professional-level graphics systems,
renders polygons and lines not with Bresenham's algorithm, but by
calculating `slab points' for each scan line on the screen in
succession, and then slabbing in the actual image pixels.
Node:slack, Next:slap on the side, Previous:slab, Up:= S =
slack n.
1. Space allocated to a disk file but not actually used to
store useful information. The techspeak equivalent is `internal
fragmentation'. Antonym: hole. 2. In
the theology of the Church of the SubGenius,
a mystical substance or quality that is the prerequisite of all
human happiness.
Since Unix files are stored compactly, except for the
unavoidable wastage in the last block or fragment, it might be
said that "Unix has no slack". See ha ha only serious.
Node:slap on the side,
Next:slash, Previous:slack, Up:= S =
slap on the side n.
(also called a sidecar, or
abbreviated `SOTS'.) A type of external expansion hardware
marketed by computer manufacturers (e.g., Commodore for the Amiga
500/1000 series and IBM for the hideous failure called `PCjr').
Various SOTS boxes provided necessities such as memory, hard
drive controllers, and conventional expansion slots.
Node:slash, Next:slashdot effect, Previous:slap on the side,
Up:= S =
slash n.
Common name for the slant (`/', ASCII 0101111) character. See
ASCII for other synonyms.
Node:slashdot effect, Next:sleep, Previous:slash, Up:= S
=
slashdot effect n.
1. Also spelled "/. effect"; what is said to have happened
when a website being virtually unreachable because too many
people are hitting it after the site was mentioned in an
interesting article on the popular Slashdot news service. The term is
quite widely used by /. readers, including variants like "That
site has been slashdotted again!" 2. In a perhaps inevitable
generation, the term is being used to describe any similar effect
from being listed on a popular site. This would better be
described as a flash
crowd.
Node:sleep, Next:slim, Previous:slashdot effect, Up:= S =
sleep vi.
1. [techspeak] To relinquish a claim (of a process on a
multitasking system) for service; to indicate to the scheduler
that a process may be deactivated until some given event occurs
or a specified time delay elapses. 2. In jargon, used very
similarly to v. block; also in `sleep
on', syn. with `block on'. Often used to indicate that the
speaker has relinquished a demand for resources until some
(possibly unspecified) external event: "They can't get the fix
I've been asking for into the next release, so I'm going to sleep
on it until the release, then start hassling them again."
Node:slim, Next:slop, Previous:sleep, Up:= S
=
slim n.
A small, derivative change (e.g., to code).
Node:slop, Next:slopsucker, Previous:slim, Up:= S =
slop n.
1. A one-sided fudge
factor, that is, an allowance for error but in only one
of two directions. For example, if you need a piece of wire 10
feet long and have to guess when you cut it, you make very sure
to cut it too long, by a large amount if necessary, rather than
too short by even a little bit, because you can always cut off
the slop but you can't paste it back on again. When discrete
quantities are involved, slop is often introduced to avoid the
possibility of being on the losing side of a fencepost error. 2. The percentage
of `extra' code generated by a compiler over the size of
equivalent assembler code produced by hand-hacking; i.e., the space (or maybe
time) you lose because you didn't do it yourself. This number is
often used as a measure of the goodness of a compiler; slop below
5% is very good, and 10% is usually acceptable. With modern
compiler technology, esp. on RISC machines, the compiler's slop
may actually be negative; that is, humans may be unable
to generate code as good. This is one of the reasons assembler
programming is no longer common.
Node:slopsucker, Next:Slowlaris, Previous:slop, Up:= S =
slopsucker /slop'suhk-r/ n.
A lowest-priority task that waits around until everything else
has `had its fill' of machine resources. Only when the machine
would otherwise be idle is the task allowed to `suck up the
slop'. Also called a `hungry puppy' or `bottom feeder'. One
common variety of slopsucker hunts for large prime numbers.
Compare background.
Node:Slowlaris, Next:slurp, Previous:slopsucker, Up:= S =
Slowlaris /slo'-lahr-is/ n.
[Usenet; poss. from the variety of prosimian called a "slow
loris". The variant `Slowlartus' is also common, related to LART] Common hackish term for Solaris, Sun's
System VR4 version of UNIX that came out of the standardization
wars of the early 1990s. So named because especially on older
hardware, responsiveness was much less crisp than under the
preceding SunOS. Early releases of Solaris (that is, Solaris 2,
as some marketroids at Sun
retroactively rechristened SunOS as Solaris 1) were quite buggy,
and Sun was forced by customer demand to support SunOS for quite
some time. Newer versions are acknowledged to be among the best
commercial UNIX variants in 1998, but still lose single-processor
benchmarks to Sparc Linux. Compare
AIDX, HP-SUX, Nominal Semidestructor, Telerat, sun-stools.
Node:slurp, Next:smart, Previous:Slowlaris, Up:= S =
slurp vt.
To read a large data file entirely into core before working on it. This may be contrasted
with the strategy of reading a small piece at a time, processing
it, and then reading the next piece. "This program slurps in a
1K-by-1K matrix and does an FFT." See also sponge.
Node:smart, Next:smart terminal, Previous:slurp, Up:= S =
smart adj.
Said of a program that does the Right Thing in a wide variety of
complicated circumstances. There is a difference between calling
a program smart and calling it intelligent; in particular, there
do not exist any intelligent programs (yet -- see AI-complete). Compare robust (smart programs can be brittle).
Node:smart terminal, Next:smash case, Previous:smart, Up:= S =
smart terminal n.
1. A terminal that has enough computing capability to render
graphics or to offload some kind of front-end processing from the
computer it talks to. The development of workstations and
personal computers has made this term and the product it
describes semi-obsolescent, but one may still hear variants of
the phrase `act like a smart terminal' used to describe the
behavior of workstations or PCs with respect to programs that
execute almost entirely out of a remote server's storage, using local devices as
displays. 2. obs. Any terminal with an addressable cursor; the
opposite of a glass tty. Today,
a terminal with merely an addressable cursor, but with none of
the more-powerful features mentioned in sense 1, is called a
dumb terminal.
There is a classic quote from Rob Pike (inventor of the blit terminal): "A smart terminal is not a
smartass terminal, but rather a terminal you can
educate." This illustrates a common design problem: The attempt
to make peripherals (or anything else) intelligent sometimes
results in finicky, rigid `special features' that become just so
much dead weight if you try to use the device in any way the
designer didn't anticipate. Flexibility and programmability, on
the other hand, are really smart. Compare hook.
Node:smash case, Next:smash the stack, Previous:smart terminal, Up:= S =
smash case vi.
To lose or obliterate the uppercase/lowercase distinction in
text input. "MS-DOS will automatically smash case in the names of
all the files you create." Compare fold
case.
Node:smash the stack, Next:smiley, Previous:smash case, Up:= S =
smash the stack n.
[C programming] To corrupt the execution stack by writing past
the end of a local array or other data structure. Code that
smashes the stack can cause a return from the routine to jump to
a random address, resulting in some of the most insidious
data-dependent bugs known to mankind. Variants include `trash'
the stack, scribble the stack,
mangle the stack; the term **mung the stack is not used, as this is never
done intentionally. See spam; see also
aliasing bug, fandango on core, memory leak, memory smash, precedence lossage, overrun screw.
Node:smiley, Next:smoke, Previous:smash the stack, Up:= S =
smiley n.
See emoticon.
Node:smoke, Next:smoke and mirrors, Previous:smiley, Up:= S =
smoke vi.
1. To crash or blow up, usually
spectacularly. "The new version smoked, just like the last one."
Used for both hardware (where it often describes an actual
physical event), and software (where it's merely colorful). 2.
[from automotive slang] To be conspicuously fast. "That processor
really smokes." Compare magic
smoke.
Node:smoke and mirrors,
Next:smoke test,
Previous:smoke, Up:= S =
smoke and mirrors n.
Marketing deceptions. The term is mainstream in this general
sense. Among hackers it's strongly associated with bogus demos
and crocked benchmarks (see also
MIPS, machoflops). "They claim their new box
cranks 50 MIPS for under $5000, but didn't specify the
instruction mix -- sounds like smoke and mirrors to me." The
phrase, popularized by newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin c.1975,
has been said to derive from carnie slang for magic acts and
`freak show' displays that depend on `trompe l'oeil' effects, but
also calls to mind the fierce Aztec god Tezcatlipoca (lit.
"Smoking Mirror") for whom the hearts of huge numbers of human
sacrificial victims were regularly cut out. Upon hearing about a
rigged demo or yet another round of fantasy-based marketing
promises, hackers often feel analogously disheartened. See also
stealth manager.
Node:smoke test, Next:smoking clover, Previous:smoke and mirrors,
Up:= S =
smoke test n.
1. A rudimentary form of testing applied to electronic
equipment following repair or reconfiguration, in which power is
applied and the tester checks for sparks, smoke, or other
dramatic signs of fundamental failure. See magic smoke. 2. By extension, the first
run of a piece of software after construction or a critical
change. See and compare reality
check.
There is an interesting semi-parallel to this term among
typographers and printers: When new typefaces are being punch-cut
by hand, a `smoke test' (hold the letter in candle smoke, then
press it onto paper) is used to check out new dies.
Node:smoking clover, Next:smoot, Previous:smoke test, Up:= S =
smoking clover n.
[ITS] A display hack
originally due to Bill Gosper. Many convergent lines are drawn on
a color monitor in such a way that every pixel struck has its
color incremented. The lines all have one endpoint in the middle
of the screen; the other endpoints are spaced one pixel apart
around the perimeter of a large square. The color map is then
repeatedly rotated. This results in a striking, rainbow-hued,
shimmering four-leaf clover. Gosper joked about keeping it hidden
from the FDA (the U.S.'s Food and Drug Administration) lest its
hallucinogenic properties cause it to be banned.
Node:smoot, Next:SMOP, Previous:smoking clover, Up:= S =
smoot /smoot/ n.
[MIT] A unit of length equal five feet seven inches. The
length of the Harvard Bridge in Boston is famously 364.4 smoots
plus or minus an ear (the ear stands for epsilon). This legend began with a fraternity
prank in 1958 during which the body length of Oliver Smoot (class
of '62) was actually used to measure out that distance. It is
commemorated by smoot marks that MIT students repaint every few
years; the tradition even survived the demolition and rebuilding
of the bridge in the late 1980s. The Boston police have been
known to use smoot markers to indicate accident locations on the
bridge.
Node:SMOP, Next:smurf, Previous:smoot, Up:= S
=
SMOP /S-M-O-P/ n.
[Simple (or Small) Matter of Programming] 1. A piece of code,
not yet written, whose anticipated length is significantly
greater than its complexity. Used to refer to a program that
could obviously be written, but is not worth the trouble. Also
used ironically to imply that a difficult problem can be easily
solved because a program can be written to do it; the irony is
that it is very clear that writing such a program will be a great
deal of work. "It's easy to enhance a FORTRAN compiler to compile
COBOL as well; it's just an SMOP." 2. Often used ironically by
the intended victim when a suggestion for a program is made which
seems easy to the suggester, but is obviously (to the victim) a
lot of work.
Node:smurf, Next:SNAFU principle, Previous:SMOP, Up:= S =
smurf /smerf/ n.
1. [from the _soc.motss_ newsgroup on Usenet, after some
obnoxiously gooey cartoon characters] A newsgroup regular with a
habitual style that is irreverent, silly, and _cute_. Like
many other hackish terms for people, this one may be praise or
insult depending on who uses it. In general, being referred to as
a smurf is probably not going to make your day unless you've
previously adopted the label yourself in a spirit of irony.
Compare old fart. 2. [techspeak]
A ping packet with a forged source address sent to some other
network's broadcast address. All the machines on the destination
network will send a ping response to the forged source address
(the victim). This both overloads the victim's network and hides
the location of the attacker.
Node:SNAFU principle, Next:snail, Previous:smurf, Up:= S
=
SNAFU principle /sna'foo prin'si-pl/ n.
[from a WWII Army acronym for `Situation Normal, All Fucked
Up'] "True communication is possible only between equals, because
inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their
superiors pleasant lies than for telling the truth." -- a central
tenet of Discordianism, often
invoked by hackers to explain why authoritarian hierarchies screw
up so reliably and systematically. The effect of the SNAFU
principle is a progressive disconnection of decision-makers from
reality. This lightly adapted version of a fable dating back to
the early 1960s illustrates the phenomenon perfectly:
In the beginning was the plan,
and then the specification;
And the plan was without form,
and the specification was void.
And darkness
was on the faces of the implementors thereof;
And they spake unto their leader,
saying:
"It is a crock of shit,
and smells as of a sewer."
And the leader took pity on them,
and spoke to the project leader:
"It is a crock of excrement,
and none may abide the odor thereof."
And the project leader
spake unto his section head, saying:
"It is a container of excrement,
and it is very strong, such that none may abide it."
The section head then hurried to his department manager,
and informed him thus:
"It is a vessel of fertilizer,
and none may abide its strength."
The department manager carried these words
to his general manager,
and spoke unto him
saying:
"It containeth that which aideth the growth of plants,
and it is very strong."
And so it was that the general manager rejoiced
and delivered the good news unto the Vice President.
"It promoteth growth,
and it is very powerful."
The Vice President rushed to the President's side,
and joyously exclaimed:
"This powerful new software product
will promote the growth of the company!"
And the President looked upon the product,
and saw that it was very good.
After the subsequent and inevitable disaster, the suits protect themselves by saying "I was
misinformed!", and the implementors are demoted or fired. Compare
Conway's Law.
Node:snail, Next:snail-mail, Previous:SNAFU principle, Up:= S =
snail vt.
To snail-mail something.
"Snail me a copy of those graphics, will you?"
Node:snail-mail, Next:snap, Previous:snail, Up:= S
=
snail-mail n.
Paper mail, as opposed to electronic. Sometimes written as the
single word `SnailMail'. One's postal address is,
correspondingly, a `snail address'. Derives from earlier coinage
`USnail' (from `U.S. Mail'), for which there have even been
parody posters and stamps made. Also (less commonly) called
`P-mail', from `paper mail' or `physical mail'. Oppose email.
Node:snap, Next:snarf, Previous:snail-mail, Up:= S =
snap v.
To replace a pointer to a pointer with a direct pointer; to
replace an old address with the forwarding address found there.
If you telephone the main number for an institution and ask for a
particular person by name, the operator may tell you that
person's extension before connecting you, in the hopes that you
will `snap your pointer' and dial direct next time. The
underlying metaphor may be that of a rubber band stretched
through a number of intermediate points; if you remove all the
thumbtacks in the middle, it snaps into a straight line from
first to last. See chase
pointers.
Often, the behavior of a trampoline is to perform an error check
once and then snap the pointer that invoked it so as henceforth
to bypass the trampoline (and its one-shot error check). In this
context one also speaks of `snapping links'. For example, in a
LISP implementation, a function interface trampoline might check
to make sure that the caller is passing the correct number of
arguments; if it is, and if the caller and the callee are both
compiled, then snapping the link allows that particular path to
use a direct procedure-call instruction with no further
overhead.
Node:snarf, Next:snarf & barf, Previous:snap, Up:= S =
snarf /snarf/ vt.
1. To grab, esp. to grab a large document or file for the
purpose of using it with or without the author's permission. See
also BLT. 2. [in the Unix community] To
fetch a file or set of files across a network. See also blast. This term was mainstream in the late
1960s, meaning `to eat piggishly'. It may still have this
connotation in context. "He's in the snarfing phase of hacking --
FTPing megs of stuff a day." 3. To
acquire, with little concern for legal forms or _politesse_
(but not quite by stealing). "They were giving away samples, so I
snarfed a bunch of them." 4. Syn. for slurp. "This program starts by snarfing the
entire database into core, then...." 5. [GEnie] To
spray food or programming
fluids due to laughing at the wrong moment. "I was
drinking coffee, and when I read your post I snarfed all over my
desk." "If I keep reading this topic, I think I'll have to
snarf-proof my computer with a keyboard condom." [This sense appears to be widespread
among mundane teenagers --ESR]
Node:snarf & barf, Next:snarf down, Previous:snarf, Up:= S =
snarf & barf /snarf'n-barf`/ n.
Under a WIMP
environment, the act of grabbing a region of text and
then stuffing the contents of that region into another region (or
the same one) to avoid retyping a command line. In the late
1960s, this was a mainstream expression for an `eat now, regret
it later' cheap-restaurant expedition.
Node:snarf down, Next:snark, Previous:snarf & barf, Up:= S =
snarf down v.
To snarf, with the connotation of
absorbing, processing, or understanding. "I'll snarf down the
latest version of the nethack
user's guide -- it's been a while since I played last and I don't
know what's changed recently."
Node:snark, Next:sneaker, Previous:snarf down, Up:= S =
snark n.
[Lewis Carroll, via the Michigan Terminal System] 1. A system
failure. When a user's process bombed, the operator would get the
message "Help, Help, Snark in MTS!" 2. More generally, any kind
of unexplained or threatening event on a computer (especially if
it might be a boojum). Often used to refer to an event or a log
file entry that might indicate an attempted security violation.
See snivitz. 3. UUCP name of
_snark.thyrsus.com_, home site of the Jargon File versions
from 2.*.* on (i.e., this lexicon).
Node:sneaker, Next:sneakernet, Previous:snark, Up:= S
=
sneaker n.
An individual hired to break into places in order to test
their security; analogous to tiger
team. Compare samurai.
Node:sneakernet, Next:sniff, Previous:sneaker, Up:= S
=
sneakernet /snee'ker-net/ n.
Term used (generally with ironic intent) for transfer of
electronic information by physically carrying tape, disks, or
some other media from one machine to another. "Never
underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with
magtape, or a 747 filled with CD-ROMs." Also called `Tennis-Net',
`Armpit-Net', `Floppy-Net' or `Shoenet'; in the 1990s, `Nike
network' after a well-known sneaker brand.
Node:sniff, Next:snivitz, Previous:sneakernet, Up:= S =
sniff v.,n.
1. To watch IP packets traversing a local network. Most often
in the phrase `packet sniffer', a program for doing same.
2.Synonym for poll.
Node:snivitz, Next:'Snooze, Previous:sniff, Up:= S
=
snivitz /sniv'itz/ n.
A hiccup in hardware or software; a small, transient problem
of unknown origin (less serious than a snark). Compare glitch.
Node:'Snooze, Next:SO, Previous:snivitz, Up:= S
=
'Snooze /snooz/ [FidoNet] n.
Fidonews, the weekly official on-line newsletter of FidoNet.
As the editorial policy of Fidonews is "anything that arrives, we
print", there are often large articles completely unrelated to
FidoNet, which in turn tend to elicit flamage in subsequent issues.
Node:SO, Next:social engineering, Previous:'Snooze, Up:= S =
SO /S-O/ n.
1. (also `S.O.') Abbrev. for Significant Other, almost
invariably written abbreviated and pronounced /S-O/ by hackers.
Used to refer to one's primary relationship, esp. a live-in to
whom one is not married. See MOTAS,
MOTOS, MOTSS. 2. [techspeak] The Shift Out control
character in ASCII (Control-N, 0001110).
Node:social engineering,
Next:social
science number, Previous:SO,
Up:= S =
social engineering n.
Term used among crackers and
samurai for cracking techniques
that rely on weaknesses in wetware
rather than software; the aim is to trick people into revealing
passwords or other information that compromises a target system's
security. Classic scams include phoning up a mark who has the
required information and posing as a field service tech or a
fellow employee with an urgent access problem. See also the tiger team story in the patch entry.
Node:social science
number, Next:sock
puppet, Previous:social engineering, Up:= S =
social science number n. //
[IBM] A statistic that is content-free, or nearly so. A measure
derived via methods of questionable validity from data of a
dubious and vague nature. Predictively, having a social science
number in hand is seldom much better than nothing, and can be
considerably worse. As a rule, management loves them. See also numbers, math-out, pretty pictures.
Node:sock puppet, Next:sodium substrate, Previous:social science
number, Up:= S =
sock puppet n.
[Usenet: from the act of placing a sock over your hand and
talking to it and pretending it's talking back] In Usenet
parlance, a pseudo through which the
puppeteer posts follow-ups to their own original message to give
the appearance that a number of people support the views held in
the original message.
Node:sodium substrate, Next:soft boot, Previous:sock puppet, Up:= S =
sodium substrate n.
Syn salt substrate.
Node:soft boot, Next:softcopy, Previous:sodium substrate, Up:= S =
soft boot n.
See boot.
Node:softcopy, Next:software bloat, Previous:soft boot, Up:= S =
softcopy /soft'kop-ee/ n.
[by analogy with `hardcopy'] A machine-readable form of
corresponding hardcopy. See bits,
machinable.
Node:software bloat, Next:software hoarding,
Previous:softcopy, Up:= S =
software bloat n.
The results of second-system effect or creeping featuritis.
Commonly cited examples include ls(1), X, BSD, Missed'em-five, and OS/2.
Node:software hoarding, Next:software laser,
Previous:software
bloat, Up:= S =
software hoarding n.
Pejorative term employed by members and adherents of the GNU project to describe the act of holding
software proprietary, keeping it under trade secret or license
terms which prohibit free redistribution and modification. Used
primarily in Free Software Foundation propaganda. For a summary
of related issues, see GNU.
Node:software laser, Next:software rot, Previous:software hoarding,
Up:= S =
software laser n.
An optical laser works by bouncing photons back and forth
between two mirrors, one totally reflective and one partially
reflective. If the lasing material (usually a crystal) has the
right properties, photons scattering off the atoms in the crystal
will excite cascades of more photons, all in lockstep. Eventually
the beam will escape through the partially-reflective mirror. One
kind of sorcerer's
apprentice mode involving bounce messages can produce closely
analogous results, with a cascade
of messages escaping to flood nearby systems. By mid-1993 there
had been at least two publicized incidents of this kind.
Node:software rot, Next:softwarily, Previous:software laser, Up:= S =
software rot n.
Term used to describe the tendency of software that has not
been used in a while to lose; such
failure may be semi-humorously ascribed to bit rot. More commonly, `software rot'
strikes when a program's assumptions become out of date. If the
design was insufficiently robust,
this may cause it to fail in mysterious ways. Syn. `code rot'.
See also link rot.
For example, owing to endemic shortsightedness in the design
of COBOL programs, a good number of them succumbed to software
rot when their 2-digit year counters underwent wrap around at the beginning of the year
2000. Actually, related lossages often afflict centenarians who
have to deal with computer software designed by unimaginative
clods. One such incident became the focus of a minor public flap
in 1990, when a gentleman born in 1889 applied for a driver's
license renewal in Raleigh, North Carolina. The new system
refused to issue the card, probably because with 2-digit years
the ages 101 and 1 cannot be distinguished.
Historical note: Software rot in an even funnier sense than
the mythical one was a real problem on early research computers
(e.g., the R1; see grind
crank). If a program that depended on a peculiar
instruction hadn't been run in quite a while, the user might
discover that the opcodes no longer did the same things they once
did. ("Hey, so-and-so needs an instruction to do such-and-such.
We can snarf this opcode, right? No
one uses it.")
Another classic example of this sprang from the time an MIT
hacker found a simple way to double the speed of the
unconditional jump instruction on a PDP-6, so he patched the
hardware. Unfortunately, this broke some fragile timing software
in a music-playing program, throwing its output out of tune. This
was fixed by adding a defensive initialization routine to compare
the speed of a timing loop with the real-time clock; in other
words, it figured out how fast the PDP-6 was that day, and
corrected appropriately.
Compare bit rot.
Node:softwarily, Next:softy, Previous:software rot, Up:= S =
softwarily /soft-weir'i-lee/ adv.
In a way pertaining to software. "The system is softwarily
unreliable." The adjective **`softwary' is not used. See
hardwarily.
Node:softy, Next:some random X, Previous:softwarily, Up:= S =
softy n.
[IBM] Hardware hackers' term for a software expert who is
largely ignorant of the mysteries of hardware.
Node:some random X, Next:sorcerer's
apprentice mode, Previous:softy, Up:= S
=
some random X adj.
Used to indicate a member of class X, with the implication
that Xs are interchangeable. "I think some random cracker tripped
over the guest timeout last night." See also J. Random.
Node:sorcerer's
apprentice mode, Next:SOS,
Previous:some random
X, Up:= S =
sorcerer's apprentice mode n.
[from Goethe's "Der Zauberlehrling" via Paul Dukas's
"L'apprenti sorcier" the film "Fantasia"] A bug in a protocol
where, under some circumstances, the receipt of a message causes
multiple messages to be sent, each of which, when received,
triggers the same bug. Used esp. of such behavior caused by bounce message loops in email software. Compare broadcast storm, network meltdown, software laser, ARMM.
Node:SOS, Next:source, Previous:sorcerer's apprentice mode,
Up:= S =
SOS /S-O-S/
n.,obs. An infamously losing text
editor. Once, back in the 1960s, when a text editor was needed
for the PDP-6, a hacker crufted together a quick-and-dirty `stopgap editor' to be
used until a better one was written. Unfortunately, the old one
was never really discarded when new ones came along. SOS is a
descendant (`Son of Stopgap') of that editor, and many PDP-10
users gained the dubious pleasure of its acquaintance. Since then
other programs similar in style to SOS have been written, notably
the early font editor BILOS /bye'lohs/, the Brother-In-Law Of
Stopgap (the alternate expansion `Bastard Issue, Loins of
Stopgap' has been proposed).
Node:source, Next:source of all good bits,
Previous:SOS, Up:= S =
source n.
[very common] In reference to software, `source' is invariably
shorthand for `source code', the preferred human-readable and
human-modifiable form of the program. This is as opposed to
object code, the derived binary executable form of a program.
This shorthand readily takes derivative forms; one may speak of
"the sources of a system" or of "having source".
Node:source of all good
bits, Next:space-cadet keyboard, Previous:source, Up:= S =
source of all good bits n.
A person from whom (or a place from which) useful information
may be obtained. If you need to know about a program, a guru might be the source of all good bits.
The title is often applied to a particularly competent
secretary.
Node:space-cadet keyboard,
Next:spaceship
operator, Previous:source of all good bits,
Up:= S =
space-cadet keyboard n.
A now-legendary device used on MIT LISP machines, which
inspired several still-current jargon terms and influenced the
design of EMACS. It was equipped with
no fewer than seven shift keys: four keys for bucky bits (`control', `meta',
`hyper', and `super') and three like regular shift keys, called
`shift', `top', and `front'. Many keys had three symbols on them:
a letter and a symbol on the top, and a Greek letter on the
front. For example, the `L' key had an `L' and a two-way arrow on
the top, and the Greek letter lambda on the front. By pressing
this key with the right hand while playing an appropriate `chord'
with the left hand on the shift keys, you could get the following
results:
L
lowercase l
shift-L
uppercase L
front-L
lowercase lambda
front-shift-L
uppercase lambda
top-L
two-way arrow (front and shift are ignored)
And of course each of these might also be typed with any
combination of the control, meta, hyper, and super keys. On this
keyboard, you could type over 8000 different characters! This
allowed the user to type very complicated mathematical text, and
also to have thousands of single-character commands at his
disposal. Many hackers were actually willing to memorize the
command meanings of that many characters if it reduced typing
time (this attitude obviously shaped the interface of EMACS).
Other hackers, however, thought having that many bucky bits was
overkill, and objected that such a keyboard can require three or
four hands to operate. See bucky
bits, cokebottle, double bucky, meta bit, quadruple bucky.
Note: early versions of this entry incorrectly identified the
space-cadet keyboard with the `Knight keyboard'. Though both were
designed by Tom Knight, the latter term was properly applied only
to a keyboard used for ITS on the PDP-10 and modeled on the
Stanford keyboard (as described under bucky bits). The true space-cadet
keyboard evolved from the first Knight keyboard.
Node:spaceship operator,
Next:SPACEWAR, Previous:space-cadet
keyboard, Up:= S =
spaceship operator n.
The glyph <=>, so-called apparently because
in the low-resolution constant-width font used on many terminals
it vaguely resembles a flying saucer. Perl uses this to denote the signum-of-difference
operation.
Node:SPACEWAR, Next:spaghetti code, Previous:spaceship operator,
Up:= S =
SPACEWAR n.
A space-combat simulation game, inspired by E. E. "Doc"
Smith's "Lensman" books, in which two spaceships duel around a
central sun, shooting torpedoes at each other and jumping through
hyperspace. This game was first implemented on the PDP-1 at MIT
in 1962. In 1968-69, a descendant of the game motivated Ken
Thompson to build, in his spare time on a scavenged PDP-7, the
operating system that became Unix.
Less than nine years after that, SPACEWAR was commercialized as
one of the first video games; descendants are still feeping in video arcades everywhere.
Node:spaghetti code, Next:spaghetti inheritance,
Previous:SPACEWAR, Up:= S =
spaghetti code n.
Code with a complex and tangled control structure, esp. one
using many GOTOs, exceptions, or other `unstructured' branching
constructs. Pejorative. The synonym `kangaroo code' has been
reported, doubtless because such code has so many jumps in
it.
Node:spaghetti inheritance,
Next:spam, Previous:spaghetti code, Up:= S =
spaghetti inheritance n.
[encountered among users of object-oriented languages that use
inheritance, such as Smalltalk] A convoluted class-subclass
graph, often resulting from carelessly deriving subclasses from
other classes just for the sake of reusing their code. Coined in
a (successful) attempt to discourage such practice, through
guilt-by-association with spaghetti code.
Node:spam, Next:spam bait, Previous:spaghetti inheritance, Up:= S =
spam vt.,vi.,n.
[from "Monty Python's Flying Circus"] 1. To crash a program by
overrunning a fixed-size buffer with excessively large input
data. See also buffer
overflow, overrun
screw, smash the
stack. 2. To cause a newsgroup to be flooded with
irrelevant or inappropriate messages. You can spam a newsgroup
with as little as one well- (or ill-) planned message (e.g.
asking "What do you think of abortion?" on _soc.women_).
This is often done with cross-posting (e.g. any message which is
crossposted to _alt.rush-limbaugh_ and
_alt.politics.homosexuality_ will almost inevitably spam
both groups). This overlaps with troll behavior; the latter more specific term
has become more common. 3. To send many identical or
nearly-identical messages separately to a large number of Usenet
newsgroups. This is more specifically called `ECP', Excessive
Cross-Posting. This is one sure way to infuriate nearly everyone
on the Net. See also velveeta and
jello. 4. To bombard a newsgroup with
multiple copies of a message. This is more specifically called
`EMP', Excessive Multi-Posting. 5. To mass-mail unrequested
identical or nearly-identical email messages, particularly those
containing advertising. Especially used when the mail addresses
have been culled from network traffic or databases without the
consent of the recipients. Synonyms include UCE, UBE. 6. Any large,
annoying, quantity of output. For instance, someone on IRC who
walks away from their screen and comes back to find 200 lines of
text might say "Oh no, spam".
The later definitions have become much more prevalent as the
Internet has opened up to non-techies, and to most people senses
3 4 and 5 are now primary. All three behaviors are considered
abuse of the net, and are almost universally grounds for
termination of the originator's email account or network
connection. In these senses the term `spam' has gone mainstream,
though without its original sense or folkloric freight - there is
apparently a widespread myth among lusers that "spamming" is what happens when you
dump cans of Spam into a revolving fan.
Node:spam bait, Next:spamblock, Previous:spam, Up:= S =
spam bait n.
Email addresses included in, or comprising the entirety of, a
usenet message so that spammers mining a newsgroup with an address harvester will
collect them. These addresses can be people who have offended or
annoyed the poster, or who are included so that a spammer will
spam an official, thereby causing himself trouble. One
particularly effective form of spam bait is the address of a
teergrube.
Node:spamblock, Next:spamhaus, Previous:spam bait, Up:= S =
spamblock /spam'blok/ n.
[poss. by analogy to sunblock] Text inserted in an email
address to render it invalid and thus useless to spammers. For
example, the address `jrandom@hacker.org' might be transformed to
`jrandom@NOSPAM.hacker.org'. Adding spamblock to an address is
often referred to as `munging' it (see munge)-. This evasion tactic depends on the fact
that most spammers collect names with some sort of address harvester on volumes too
high to de-mung by hand, but individual humans reading an email
message can readily spot and remove a spamblock in the from
address.
Note: This is not actually a very effective tactic, and may
already be passing out of use in early 1999 after about two years
of life. In both mail and news, it's essentially impossible to
keep a smart address harvester from mining out the addresses in
the message header and trace lines. Therefore the only people who
can be protected are third parties mentioned by email address in
the message - not a common enough case to interest spammers.
Node:spamhaus, Next:spamvertize, Previous:spamblock, Up:= S =
spamhaus spam'hows n.
Pejorative term for an internet service provider that permits
or even encourages spam mailings from
its systems. The plural is `spamhausen'. There is a web page
devoted to tracking
spamhausen.
The most notorious of the spamhausen was Sanford Wallace's
Cyber Promotions Inc., shut down by a lawsuit on 16 October 1997.
The anniversary of the shutdown is celebrated on Usenet as Spam
Freedom Day, but lesser imitators of the Spamford still infest
various murky corners of the net. Since prosecution of spammers
became routine under the junk-fax laws and statues specifically
targeting spam, spamhausen have declined in relative importance;
today, hit-and-run attacks by spammers using relay rape and throwaway accounts on reputable
ISPs seem to account for most of the flow.
Node:spamvertize, Next:spangle, Previous:spamhaus, Up:=
S =
spamvertize v.
To advertise using spam.
Pejorative.
Node:spangle, Next:spawn, Previous:spamvertize, Up:= S =
spangle n.
[UK] The singular of bells and whistles. See also
spungle.
Node:spawn, Next:special-case, Previous:spangle, Up:= S =
spawn n.,vi.
1. [techspeak] In UNIX parlance, to create a child process
from within a process. Technically this is a `fork'; the term
`spawn' is a bit more general and is used for threads
(lightweight processes) as well as traditional heavyweight
processes. 2. In gaming, meant to indicate where (`spawn-point')
and when a player comes to life (or `re-spawns') after being
killed. Opposite of frag.
Node:special-case, Next:speedometer, Previous:spawn, Up:= S
=
special-case vt.
To write unique code to handle input to or situations arising
in a program that are somehow distinguished from normal
processing. This would be used for processing of mode switches or
interrupt characters in an interactive interface (as opposed,
say, to text entry or normal commands), or for processing of
hidden flags in the input of
a batch program or filter.
Node:speedometer, Next:spell, Previous:special-case, Up:= S =
speedometer n.
A pattern of lights displayed on a linear set of LEDs (today)
or nixie tubes (yesterday, on ancient mainframes). The pattern is
shifted left every N times the operating system goes through its
main loop. A swiftly moving
pattern indicates that the system is mostly idle; the speedometer
slows down as the system becomes overloaded. The speedometer on
Sun Microsystems hardware bounces back and forth like the eyes on
one of the Cylons from the wretched "Battlestar Galactica" TV
series.
Historical note: One computer, the GE 600 (later Honeywell
6000) actually had an analog speedometer on the front
panel, calibrated in instructions executed per second.
Node:spell, Next:spelling flame, Previous:speedometer, Up:= S =
spell n.
Syn. incantation.
Node:spelling flame, Next:spider, Previous:spell, Up:= S
=
spelling flame n. //
[Usenet] A posting ostentatiously correcting a previous
article's spelling as a way of casting scorn on the point the
article was trying to make, instead of actually responding to
that point (compare dictionary
flame). Of course, people who are more than usually
slovenly spellers are prone to think any correction is a
spelling flame. It's an amusing comment on human nature that
spelling flames themselves often contain spelling errors.
Node:spider, Next:spider food, Previous:spelling flame, Up:= S =
spider
The Web-walking part of a search engine that collects pages
for indexing in the search engine's database. Also called a bot. The best-known spider is Scooter, the
web-walker for the Alta Vista search engine.
Node:spider food, Next:spiffy, Previous:spider, Up:= S
=
spider food n.
Keywords embedded (usually invisibly) into a web page to
attract search engines (spiders). The intended result of
including spider food in one's web page is to insure that the
page appears high on the list of matching entries to a search
engine query. There are right and wrong ways to do this; the
right way is a discreet `meta keywords' tag, the wrong way is to
embed many repeats of a keyword in comments (and many search
engines now detect and ignore the latter).
Node:spiffy, Next:spike, Previous:spider food, Up:= S =
spiffy /spi'fee/ adj.
1. Said of programs having a pretty, clever, or exceptionally
well-designed interface. "Have you seen the spiffy X version of empire
yet?" 2. Said sarcastically of a program that is perceived to
have little more than a flashy interface going for it. Which
meaning should be drawn depends delicately on tone of voice and
context. This word was common mainstream slang during the 1940s,
in a sense close to 1.
Node:spike, Next:spin, Previous:spiffy, Up:= S
=
spike v.
To defeat a selection mechanism by introducing a (sometimes
temporary) device that forces a specific result. The word is used
in several industries; telephone engineers refer to spiking a
relay by inserting a pin to hold the relay in either the closed
or open state, and railroaders refer to spiking a track switch so
that it cannot be moved. In programming environments it normally
refers to a temporary change, usually for testing purposes (as
opposed to a permanent change, which would be called hardwired).
Node:spin, Next:spl, Previous:spike, Up:= S
=
spin vi.
Equivalent to buzz. More common
among C and Unix programmers. See the discussion of `spinlock'
under busy-wait.
Node:spl, Next:splash screen, Previous:spin, Up:= S
=
spl /S-P-L/
[abbrev, from Set Priority Level] The way traditional Unix
kernels implement mutual exclusion by running code at high
interrupt levels. Used in jargon to describe the act of tuning in
or tuning out ordinary communication. Classically, spl levels run
from 1 to 7; "Fred's at spl 6 today" would mean that he is very
hard to interrupt. "Wait till I finish this; I'll spl down then."
See also interrupts
locked out.
Node:splash screen, Next:splat, Previous:spl, Up:= S =
splash screen n.
[Mac users] Syn. banner, sense
3.
Node:splat, Next:splat out, Previous:splash screen, Up:= S =
splat n.
1. Name used in many places (DEC, IBM, and others) for the
asterisk (*) character (ASCII 0101010). This may
derive from the `squashed-bug' appearance of the asterisk on many
early line printers. 2. [MIT] Name used by some people for the
# character (ASCII 0100011). 3. The feature key on a Mac (same as alt, sense 2). 4. obs. Name used by some
people for the Stanford/ITS extended ASCII circle-x character.
This character is also called `blobby' and `frob', among other
names; it is sometimes used by mathematicians as a notation for
`tensor product'. 5. obs. Name for the semi-mythical Stanford
extended ASCII circle-plus character. See also ASCII.
Node:splat out, Next:spod, Previous:splat, Up:= S
=
splat out v.
[Usenet] To partially obscure a potentially provocative word
by substituting splat characters for
some of its letters (usually, but not always, the vowels). The
purpose is not to make the word unrecognizable but to make it a
mention rather than a use, so that no flamewar ensues. Words
often splatted out include N*z* (see Godwin's Law), *v*l*t**n (anywhere
fundamentalists might be lurking), *b*rt**n, and g*n c*ntr*l.
Compare UN*X.
Node:spod, Next:spoiler, Previous:splat out, Up:= S =
spod n.
[UK] 1. A lower form of life found on talker systems and MUDs. The spod has few friends in RL and uses talkers instead, finding communication
easier and preferable over the net. He has all the negative
traits of the computer geek
without having any interest in computers per se. Lacking any
knowledge of or interest in how networks work, and considering
his access a God-given right, he is a major irritant to
sysadmins, clogging up lines in order to reach new MUDs,
following passed-on instructions on how to sneak his way onto
Internet ("Wow! It's in America!") and complaining when he is not
allowed to use busy routes. A true spod will start any
conversation with "Are you male or female?" (and follow it up
with "Got any good numbers/IDs/passwords?") and will not talk to
someone physically present in the same terminal room until they
log onto the same machine that he is using and enter talk mode.
Compare newbie, tourist, weenie,
twink, terminal junkie, warez d00dz. 2. A backronym for "Sole Purpose, Obtain a
Degree"; according to some self-described spods, this term is
used by indifferent students to condemn their harder-working
fellows. Compare the defiant adoption of the term `geek' in the
mid-1990s by people who would previously have been stigmatized by
it (see computer geek). 3.
[obs.] An ordinary person; a random.
This is the meaning with which the term was coined, but the
inventor informs us he has himself accepted sense 1.
Node:spoiler, Next:spoiler space, Previous:spod, Up:= S
=
spoiler n.
[Usenet] 1. A remark which reveals important plot elements
from books or movies, thus denying the reader (of the article)
the proper suspense when reading the book or watching the movie.
2. Any remark which telegraphs the solution of a problem or
puzzle, thus denying the reader the pleasure of working out the
correct answer (see also interesting). Either sense readily forms
compounds like `total spoiler', `quasi-spoiler' and even
`pseudo-spoiler'.
By convention, articles which are spoilers in either sense
should contain the word `spoiler' in the Subject: line, or
guarantee via various tricks that the answer appears only after
several screens-full of warning, or conceal the sensitive
information via rot13, spoiler space or some combination of
these techniques.
Node:spoiler space, Next:sponge, Previous:spoiler, Up:= S =
spoiler space
[also `spoiler spoo'] A screenful of blank lines (and, often,
form-feeds) deliberately inserted in a message following a spoiler warning, so the actual spoiler
can't be seen without hitting a key.
Node:sponge, Next:spoof, Previous:spoiler space, Up:= S =
sponge n.
[Unix] A special case of a filter
that reads its entire input before writing any output; the
canonical example is a sort utility. Unlike most filters, a
sponge can conveniently overwrite the input file with the output
data stream. If a file system has versioning (as ITS did and VMS
does now) the sponge/filter distinction loses its usefulness,
because directing filter output would just write a new version.
See also slurp.
Node:spoof, Next:spool, Previous:sponge, Up:= S
=
spoof vi.
To capture, alter, and retransmit a communication stream in a
way that misleads the recipient. As used by hackers, refers
especially to altering TCP/IP packet source addresses or other
packet-header data in order to masquerade as a trusted machine.
This term has become very widespread and is borderline
techspeak.
Node:spool, Next:spool file, Previous:spoof, Up:= S
=
spool vi.
[from early IBM `Simultaneous Peripheral Operation On-Line',
but is widely thought to be a backronym] To send files to some device or
program (a `spooler') that queues them up and does something
useful with them later. Without qualification, the spooler is the
`print spooler' controlling output of jobs to a printer; but the
term has been used in connection with other peripherals
(especially plotters and graphics devices) and occasionally even
for input devices. See also demon.
Node:spool file, Next:spungle, Previous:spool, Up:= S
=
spool file n.
Any file to which data is spooled
to await the next stage of processing. Especially used in
circumstances where spooling the data copes with a mismatch
between speeds in two devices or pieces of software. For example,
when you send mail under Unix, it's typically copied to a spool
file to await a transport demon's
attentions. This is borderline techspeak.
Node:spungle, Next:square tape, Previous:spool file, Up:= S =
spungle n.
[Durham, UK; portmanteau, spangle + bungle] A spangle of no actual usefulness. Example:
Roger the Bent Paperclip in Microsoft Word '98. A spungle's only
virtue is that it looks pretty, unless you find creeping
featurism ugly.
Node:square tape, Next:squirrelcide, Previous:spungle, Up:= S =
square tape n.
Mainframe magnetic tape cartridges for use with IBM 3480 or
compatible tape drives; or QIC tapes used on workstations and
micros. The term comes from the square (actually rectangular)
shape of the cartridges; contrast round tape.
Node:squirrelcide, Next:stack, Previous:square tape, Up:= S =
squirrelcide n.
[common on Usenet's _comp.risks_ newsgroup.] (alt.
`squirrelicide') What all too frequently happens when a squirrel
decides to exercise its species's unfortunate penchant for
shorting out power lines with their little furry bodies. Result:
one dead squirrel, one down computer installation. In this
situation, the computer system is said to have been
squirrelcided.
Node:stack, Next:stack puke, Previous:squirrelcide, Up:= S =
stack n.
The set of things a person has to do in the future. One speaks
of the next project to be attacked as having risen to the top of
the stack. "I'm afraid I've got real work to do, so this'll have
to be pushed way down on my stack." "I haven't done it yet
because every time I pop my stack something new gets pushed." If
you are interrupted several times in the middle of a
conversation, "My stack overflowed" means "I forget what we were
talking about." The implication is that more items were pushed
onto the stack than could be remembered, so the least recent
items were lost. The usual physical example of a stack is to be
found in a cafeteria: a pile of plates or trays sitting on a
spring in a well, so that when you put one on the top they all
sink down, and when you take one off the top the rest spring up a
bit. See also push and pop.
At MIT, PDL used to be a more common
synonym for stack in all these
contexts, and this may still be true. Everywhere else stack seems to be the preferred term. Knuth ("The Art of Computer Programming",
second edition, vol. 1, p. 236) says:
Many people who realized the importance of stacks and
queues independently have given other names to these structures:
stacks have been called push-down lists, reversion storages,
cellars, nesting stores, piles, last-in-first-out ("LIFO") lists,
and even yo-yo lists!
Node:stack puke, Next:stale pointer bug, Previous:stack, Up:= S =
stack puke n.
Some processor architectures are said to `puke their guts onto
the stack' to save their internal state during exception
processing. The Motorola 68020, for example, regurgitates up to
92 bytes on a bus fault. On a pipelined machine, this can take a
while.
Node:stale pointer bug,
Next:star out, Previous:stack puke, Up:= S =
stale pointer bug n.
Synonym for aliasing bug
used esp. among microcomputer hackers.
Node:star out, Next:state, Previous:stale pointer bug, Up:= S =
star out v.
[University of York, England] To replace a user's encrypted
password in /etc/passwd with a single asterisk. Under Unix this
is not a legal encryption of any password; hence the user is not
permitted to log in. In general, accounts like adm, news, and
daemon are permanently "starred out"; occasionally a real user
might have the this inflicted upon him/her as a punishment, e.g.
"Graham was starred out for playing Omega in working hours". Also
occasionally known as The Order Of The Gold Star in this context.
"Don't do that, or you'll be awarded the Order of the Gold
Star..." Compare disusered.
Node:state, Next:stealth manager, Previous:star out, Up:= S =
state n.
1. Condition, situation. "What's the state of your latest
hack?" "It's winning away." "The system tried to read and write
the disk simultaneously and got into a totally wedged state." The standard question "What's
your state?" means "What are you doing?" or "What are you about
to do?" Typical answers are "about to gronk out", or "hungry".
Another standard question is "What's the state of the world?",
meaning "What's new?" or "What's going on?". The more terse and
humorous way of asking these questions would be "State-p?".
Another way of phrasing the first question under sense 1 would be
"state-p latest hack?". 2. Information being maintained in
non-permanent memory (electronic or human).
Node:stealth manager, Next:steam-powered, Previous:state, Up:= S =
stealth manager n.
[Corporate DP] A manager that appears out of nowhere, promises
undeliverable software to unknown end users, and vanishes before
the programming staff realizes what has happened. See smoke and mirrors.
Node:steam-powered, Next:STFW, Previous:stealth manager, Up:= S =
steam-powered adj.
Old-fashioned or underpowered; archaic. This term does not
have a strong negative loading and may even be used
semi-affectionately for something that clanks and wheezes a lot
but hangs in there doing the job.
Node:STFW, Next:stiffy, Previous:steam-powered, Up:= S =
STFW imp. /S-T-F-W/
[Usenet] Commmon abbreviation for "Search The Fucking Web", a
suggestion that what you're asking for is a query better handled
by a search engine than a human being. Usage is common and
exactly parallel to both senses of RTFM.
Node:stiffy, Next:stir-fried random, Previous:STFW, Up:= S =
stiffy n.
3.5-inch microfloppies, so
called because their jackets are more rigid than those of the
5.25-inch and the (now totally obsolete) 8-inch floppy. Elsewhere
this might be called a `firmy'. For some odd reason, several
sources have taken the trouble to inform us that this term is
widespread in South Africa.
Node:stir-fried random, Next:stomp on, Previous:stiffy, Up:= S =
stir-fried random n.
(alt. `stir-fried mumble') Term used for the best dish of many
of those hackers who can cook. Consists of random fresh veggies
and meat wokked with random spices. Tasty and economical. See
random, great-wall, ravs, laser
chicken, oriental
food; see also mumble.
Node:stomp on, Next:Stone Age, Previous:stir-fried random, Up:= S =
stomp on vt.
To inadvertently overwrite something important, usually
automatically. "All the work I did this weekend got stomped on
last night by the nightly server script." Compare scribble, mangle, trash,
scrog, roach.
Node:Stone Age, Next:stone knives and
bearskins, Previous:stomp on, Up:= S =
Stone Age n.,adj.
1. In computer folklore, an ill-defined period from ENIAC (ca.
1943) to the mid-1950s; the great age of electromechanical dinosaurs. Sometimes used for the entire
period up to 1960-61 (see Iron
Age); however, it is funnier and more descriptive to
characterize the latter period in terms of a `Bronze Age' era of
transistor-logic, pre-ferrite-core
machines with drum or CRT mass storage (as opposed to just
mercury delay lines and/or relays). See also Iron Age. 2. More generally, a pejorative
for any crufty, ancient piece of hardware or software technology.
Note that this is used even by people who were there for the
Stone Age (sense 1).
Node:stone knives and
bearskins, Next:stoppage,
Previous:Stone Age,
Up:= S =
stone knives and bearskins n.
[from the Star Trek Classic episode "The City on the Edge of
Forever"] A term traditionally used to describe (and deprecate)
computing environments that are grotesquely primitive in light of
what is known about good ways to design things. As in "Don't get
too used to the facilities here. Once you leave SAIL it's stone
knives and bearskins as far as the eye can see". Compare steam-powered.
Node:stoppage, Next:store, Previous:stone knives and
bearskins, Up:= S =
stoppage /sto'p*j/ n.
Extreme lossage that renders
something (usually something vital) completely unusable. "The
recent system stoppage was caused by a fried transformer."
Node:store, Next:strided, Previous:stoppage, Up:=
S =
store n.
[prob. from techspeak `main store'] In some varieties of
Commonwealth hackish, the preferred synonym for core. Thus, `bringing a program into store' means
not that one is returning shrink-wrapped software but that a
program is being swapped in.
Node:strided, Next:stroke, Previous:store, Up:= S
=
strided /stri:'d*d/ adj.
[scientific computing] Said of a sequence of memory reads and
writes to addresses, each of which is separated from the last by
a constant interval called the `stride length'. These can be a
worst-case access pattern for the standard memory-caching schemes
when the stride length is a multiple of the cache line size.
Strided references are often generated by loops through an array,
and (if your data is large enough that access-time is
significant) it can be worthwhile to tune for better locality by
inverting double loops or by partially unrolling the outer loop
of a loop nest. This usage is borderline techspeak; the related
term `memory stride' is definitely techspeak.
Node:stroke, Next:strudel, Previous:strided, Up:= S
=
stroke n.
Common name for the slant (`/', ASCII 0101111) character. See
ASCII for other synonyms.
Node:strudel, Next:stubroutine, Previous:stroke, Up:= S
=
strudel n.
Common (spoken) name for the at-sign (`@', ASCII 1000000)
character. See ASCII for other
synonyms.
Node:stubroutine, Next:studly, Previous:strudel, Up:= S
=
stubroutine /stuhb'roo-teen/ n.
[contraction of `stub subroutine'] Tiny, often vacuous
placeholder for a subroutine that is to be written or fleshed out
later.
Node:studly, Next:studlycaps, Previous:stubroutine, Up:= S =
studly adj.
Impressive; powerful. Said of code and designs which exhibit
both complexity and a virtuoso flair. Has connotations similar to
hairy but is more positive in tone.
Often in the emphatic `most studly' or as noun-form `studliness'.
"Smail 3.0's configuration parser is most studly."
Node:studlycaps, Next:stunning, Previous:studly, Up:= S
=
studlycaps /stuhd'lee-kaps/ n.
A hackish form of silliness similar to BiCapitalization for trademarks, but
applied randomly and to arbitrary text rather than to trademarks.
ThE oRigiN and SigNificaNce of thIs pRacTicE iS oBscuRe.
Node:stunning, Next:stupid-sort, Previous:studlycaps, Up:= S =
stunning adj.
Mind-bogglingly stupid. Usually used in sarcasm. "You want to
code what in ADA? That's a ... stunning
idea!"
Node:stupid-sort, Next:Stupids, Previous:stunning, Up:=
S =
stupid-sort n.
Syn. bogo-sort.
Node:Stupids, Next:Sturgeon's Law, Previous:stupid-sort, Up:= S =
Stupids n.
Term used by samurai for the
suits who employ them; succinctly
expresses an attitude at least as common, though usually better
disguised, among other subcultures of hackers. There may be
intended reference here to an SF story originally published in
1952 but much anthologized since, Mark Clifton's "Star, Bright".
In it, a super-genius child classifies humans into a very few
`Brights' like herself, a huge majority of `Stupids', and a
minority of `Tweens', the merely ordinary geniuses.
Node:Sturgeon's Law, Next:sucking mud, Previous:Stupids, Up:= S =
Sturgeon's Law prov.
"Ninety percent of everything is crap". Derived from a quote
by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said,
"Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of
everything is crud." Oddly, when Sturgeon's Law is cited, the
final word is almost invariably changed to `crap'. Compare Hanlon's Razor, Ninety-Ninety Rule. Though this
maxim originated in SF fandom, most hackers recognize it and are
all too aware of its truth.
Node:sucking mud, Next:sufficiently small, Previous:Sturgeon's Law, Up:= S =
sucking mud adj.
[Applied Data Research] (also `pumping mud') Crashed or wedged. Usually said of a machine that
provides some service to a network, such as a file server. This
Dallas regionalism derives from the East Texas oilfield lament,
"Shut 'er down, Ma, she's a-suckin' mud". Often used as a query.
"We are going to reconfigure the network, are you ready to suck
mud?"
Node:sufficiently small,
Next:suit, Previous:sucking mud, Up:= S =
sufficiently small adj.
Syn. suitably
small.
Node:suit, Next:suitable win, Previous:sufficiently small, Up:= S =
suit n.
1. Ugly and uncomfortable `business clothing' often worn by
non-hackers. Invariably worn with a `tie', a strangulation device
that partially cuts off the blood supply to the brain. It is
thought that this explains much about the behavior of
suit-wearers. Compare droid. 2. A
person who habitually wears suits, as distinct from a techie or
hacker. See pointy-haired,
burble, management, Stupids, SNAFU
principle, PHB, and brain-damaged.
Node:suitable win, Next:suitably small, Previous:suit, Up:= S =
suitable win n.
See win.
Node:suitably small, Next:Sun, Previous:suitable win, Up:= S =
suitably small adj.
[perverted from mathematical jargon]
An expression used ironically to characterize unquantifiable
behavior that differs from expected or required behavior. For
example, suppose a newly created program came up with a correct
full-screen display, and one publicly exclaimed: "It works!"
Then, if the program dumped core on the first mouse click, one
might add: "Well, for suitably small values of `works'." Compare
the characterization of pi under random numbers.
Node:Sun, Next:sun lounge, Previous:suitably small, Up:= S =
Sun n.
Sun Microsystems. Hackers remember that the name was
originally an acronym, Stanford University Network. Sun started
out around 1980 with some hardware hackers (mainly) from Stanford
talking to some software hackers (mainly) from UC Berkeley; Sun's
original technology concept married a clever board design based
on the Motorola 68000 to BSD Unix. Sun
went on to lead the worstation industry through the 1980s, and
for years afterwards remained an engineering-driven company and a
good place for hackers to work. Though Sun drifted away from its
techie origins after 1990 and has since made some strategic moves
that disappointed and annoyed many hackers (especially by
maintaining proprietary control of Java and rejecting Linux),
it's still considered within the family in much the same way
DEC was in the 1970s and early
1980s.
Node:sun lounge, Next:sun-stools, Previous:Sun, Up:= S
=
sun lounge n.
[UK] The room where all the Sun workstations live. The humor
in this term comes from the fact that it's also in mainstream use
to describe a solarium, and all those Sun workstations clustered
together give off an amazing amount of heat.
Node:sun-stools, Next:sunspots, Previous:sun lounge, Up:= S =
sun-stools n.
Unflattering hackerism for SunTools, a pre-X windowing
environment notorious in its day for size, slowness, and
misfeatures. X, however, is larger and
(some claim) slower; see second-system effect.
Node:sunspots, Next:super source quench, Previous:sun-stools, Up:= S =
sunspots n.
1. Notional cause of an odd error. "Why did the program
suddenly turn the screen blue?" "Sunspots, I guess." 2. Also the
cause of bit rot -- from the myth
that sunspots will increase cosmic
rays, which can flip single bits in memory. See also
phase of the
moon.
Node:super source quench,
Next:superloser, Previous:sunspots, Up:= S =
super source quench n.
A special packet designed to shut up an Internet host. The
Internet Protocol (IP) has a control message called Source Quench
that asks a host to transmit more slowly on a particular
connection to avoid congestion. It also has a Redirect control
message intended to instruct a host to send certain packets to a
different local router. A "super source quench" is actually a
redirect control packet, forged to look like it came from a local
router, that instructs a host to send all packets to its own
local loopback address. This will effectively tie many Internet
hosts up in knots. Compare Godzillagram, breath-of-life packet.
Node:superloser, Next:superprogrammer, Previous:super source
quench, Up:= S =
superloser n.
[Unix] A superuser with no clue - someone with root privileges
on a Unix system and no idea what he/she is doing, the moral
equivalent of a three-year-old with an unsafetied Uzi. Anyone who
thinks this is an uncommon situation reckons without the
territorial urges of management.
Node:superprogrammer, Next:superuser, Previous:superloser, Up:= S =
superprogrammer n.
A prolific programmer; one who can code exceedingly well and
quickly. Not all hackers are superprogrammers, but many are.
(Productivity can vary from one programmer to another by three
orders of magnitude. For example, one programmer might be able to
write an average of 3 lines of working code in one day, while
another, with the proper tools, might be able to write 3,000.
This range is astonishing; it is matched in very few other areas
of human endeavor.) The term `superprogrammer' is more commonly
used within such places as IBM than in the hacker community. It
tends to stress naive measures of productivity and to underweight
creativity, ingenuity, and getting the job done -- and
to sidestep the question of whether the 3,000 lines of code do
more or less useful work than three lines that do the Right Thing. Hackers tend to prefer the
terms hacker and wizard.
Node:superuser, Next:support, Previous:superprogrammer, Up:= S =
superuser n.
[Unix] Syn. root, avatar. This usage has spread to non-Unix
environments; the superuser is any account with all wheel bits on. A more specific term than wheel.
Node:support, Next:surf, Previous:superuser, Up:= S =
support n.
After-sale handholding; something many software vendors
promise but few deliver. To hackers, most support people are
useless -- because by the time a hacker calls support he or she
will usually know the software and the relevant manuals better
than the support people (sadly, this is not a joke or
exaggeration). A hacker's idea of `support' is a
tête-à-tête with the software's designer.
Node:surf, Next:Suzie COBOL, Previous:support, Up:= S =
surf v.
[from the `surf' idiom for rapidly flipping TV channels] To
traverse the Internet in search of interesting stuff, used esp.
if one is doing so with a World Wide Web browser. It is also
common to speak of `surfing in' to a particular resource.
Hackers adopted this term early, but many have stopped using
it since it went completely mainstream around 1995. The passive,
couch-potato connotations that go with TV channel surfing were
never pleasant, and hearing non-hackers wax enthusiastic about
"surfing the net" tends to make hackers feel a bit as though
their home is being overrun by ignorami.
Node:Suzie COBOL, Next:swab, Previous:surf, Up:= S =
Suzie COBOL /soo'zee koh'bol/
1. [IBM: prob. from Frank Zappa's `Suzy Creamcheese'] n. A
coder straight out of training school who knows everything except
the value of comments in plain English. Also (fashionable among
personkind wishing to avoid accusations of sexism) `Sammy Cobol'
or (in some non-IBM circles) `Cobol Charlie'. 2. [proposed]
Meta-name for any code
grinder, analogous to J. Random Hacker.
Node:swab, Next:swap, Previous:Suzie COBOL, Up:= S =
swab /swob/
[From the mnemonic for the PDP-11 `SWAp Byte' instruction, as
immortalized in the dd(1) option
conv=swab (see dd)] 1. vt.
To solve the NUXI problem by
swapping bytes in a file. 2. n. The program in V7 Unix used to
perform this action, or anything functionally equivalent to it.
See also big-endian, little-endian, middle-endian, bytesexual.
Node:swap, Next:swap space, Previous:swab, Up:= S =
swap vt.
1. [techspeak] To move information from a fast-access memory
to a slow-access memory (`swap out'), or vice versa (`swap in').
Often refers specifically to the use of disks as `virtual
memory'. As pieces of data or program are needed, they are
swapped into core for processing; when
they are no longer needed they may be swapped out again. 2. The
jargon use of these terms analogizes people's short-term memories
with core. Cramming for an exam might be spoken of as swapping
in. If you temporarily forget someone's name, but then remember
it, your excuse is that it was swapped out. To `keep something
swapped in' means to keep it fresh in your memory: "I reread the
TECO manual every few months to keep it swapped in." If someone
interrupts you just as you got a good idea, you might say "Wait a
moment while I swap this out", implying that a piece of paper is
your extra-somatic memory and that if you don't swap the idea out
by writing it down it will get overwritten and lost as you talk.
Compare page in, page out.
Node:swap space, Next:swapped in, Previous:swap, Up:= S
=
swap space n.
Storage space, especially temporary storage space used during
a move or reconfiguration. "I'm just using that corner of the
machine room for swap space."
Node:swapped in, Next:swapped out, Previous:swap space, Up:= S =
swapped in n.
See swap. See also page in.
Node:swapped out, Next:swizzle, Previous:swapped in, Up:= S =
swapped out n.
See swap. See also page out.
Node:swizzle, Next:sync, Previous:swapped out, Up:= S =
swizzle v.
To convert external names, array indices, or references within
a data structure into address pointers when the data structure is
brought into main memory from external storage (also called
`pointer swizzling'); this may be done for speed in chasing
references or to simplify code (e.g., by turning lots of name
lookups into pointer dereferences). The converse operation is
sometimes termed `unswizzling'. See also snap.
Node:sync, Next:syntactic salt, Previous:swizzle, Up:= S =
sync /sink/ n., vi.
(var. `synch') 1. To synchronize, to bring into
synchronization. 2. [techspeak] To force all pending I/O to the
disk; see flush, sense 2. 3. More
generally, to force a number of competing processes or agents to
a state that would be `safe' if the system were to crash; thus,
to checkpoint (in the database-theory sense).
Node:syntactic salt, Next:syntactic sugar, Previous:sync, Up:= S =
syntactic salt n.
The opposite of syntactic
sugar, a feature designed to make it harder to write bad
code. Specifically, syntactic salt is a hoop the programmer must
jump through just to prove that he knows what's going on, rather
than to express a program action. Some programmers consider
required type declarations to be syntactic salt. A requirement to
write end if, end while, end
do, etc. to terminate the last block controlled by a
control construct (as opposed to just end) would
definitely be syntactic salt. Syntactic salt is like the real
thing in that it tends to raise hackers' blood pressures in an
unhealthy way. Compare candygrammar.
Node:syntactic sugar, Next:sys-frog, Previous:syntactic salt, Up:= S =
syntactic sugar n.
[coined by Peter Landin] Features added to a language or other
formalism to make it `sweeter' for humans, features which do not
affect the expressiveness of the formalism (compare chrome). Used esp. when there is an obvious and
trivial translation of the `sugar' feature into other constructs
already present in the notation. C's a[i] notation
is syntactic sugar for *(a + i). "Syntactic sugar
causes cancer of the semicolon." -- Alan Perlis.
The variants `syntactic saccharin' and `syntactic syrup' are
also recorded. These denote something even more gratuitous, in
that syntactic sugar serves a purpose (making something more
acceptable to humans), but syntactic saccharin or syrup serve no
purpose at all. Compare candygrammar, syntactic salt.
Node:sys-frog, Next:sysadmin, Previous:syntactic sugar, Up:= S =
sys-frog /sis'frog/ n.
[the PLATO system] Playful variant of `sysprog', which is in
turn short for `systems programmer'.
Node:sysadmin, Next:sysape, Previous:sys-frog, Up:=
S =
sysadmin /sis'ad-min/ n.
Common contraction of `system admin'; see admin.
Node:sysape, Next:sysop, Previous:sysadmin, Up:=
S =
sysape /sys'ayp/ n.
A rather derogatory term for a computer operator; a play on
sysop common at sites that use the
banana hierarchy of problem complexity (see one-banana problem).
Node:sysop, Next:system, Previous:sysape, Up:= S
=
sysop /sis'op/ n.
[esp. in the BBS world] The operator (and usually the owner)
of a bulletin-board system. A common neophyte mistake on FidoNet is to address a message to
`sysop' in an international echo, thus
sending it to hundreds of sysops around the world.
Node:system, Next:systems jock, Previous:sysop, Up:= S
=
system n.
1. The supervisor program or OS on a computer. 2. The entire
computer system, including input/output devices, the supervisor
program or OS, and possibly other software. 3. Any large-scale
program. 4. Any method or algorithm. 5. `System hacker': one who
hacks the system (in senses 1 and 2 only; for sense 3 one
mentions the particular program: e.g., `LISP hacker')
Node:systems jock, Next:system mangler, Previous:system, Up:= S =
systems jock n.
See jock, sense 2.
Node:system mangler, Next:SysVile, Previous:systems jock, Up:= S =
system mangler n.
Humorous synonym for `system manager', poss. from the fact
that one major IBM OS had a root
account called SYSMANGR. Refers specifically to a systems
programmer in charge of administration, software maintenance, and
updates at some site. Unlike admin,
this term emphasizes the technical end of the skills
involved.
Node:SysVile, Next:T, Previous:system mangler, Up:= S =
SysVile /sis-vi:l'/ n.
See Missed'em-five.
Node:= T =, Next:= U =, Previous:= S =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= T =
T:
tail recursion:
talk mode:
talker system:
tall card:
tanked:
TANSTAAFL:
tape monkey:
tar and feather:
tarball:
tardegy:
taste:
tayste:
TCB:
TCP/IP:
TechRef:
TECO:
tee:
teergrube:
teledildonics:
Telerat:
TELNET:
ten-finger
interface:
tense:
tentacle:
tenured graduate
student:
tera-:
teraflop club:
terminak:
terminal brain
death:
terminal illness:
terminal junkie:
terpri:
test:
TeX:
text:
thanks in advance:
That's not a
bug that's a feature!:
the literature:
the network:
the
X that can be Y is not the true X:
theology:
theory:
thinko:
This can't happen:
This time for
sure!:
thrash:
thread:
three-finger
salute:
throwaway account:
thud:
thumb:
thundering herd
problem:
thunk:
tick:
tick-list features:
tickle a bug:
tiger team:
time bomb:
time sink:
time T:
times-or-divided-by:
TINC:
Tinkerbell program:
TINLC:
tip of the
ice-cube:
tired iron:
tits on a
keyboard:
TLA:
(TM):
TMRC:
TMRCie:
TMTOWTDI:
to a first
approximation:
to a zeroth
approximation:
toad:
toast:
toaster:
toeprint:
toggle:
tool:
toolsmith:
toor:
topic drift:
topic group:
TOPS-10:
TOPS-20:
tourist:
tourist
information:
touristic:
toy:
toy language:
toy problem:
toy program:
trampoline:
trap:
trap door:
trash:
trawl:
tree-killer:
treeware:
trit:
trivial:
troff:
troglodyte:
troglodyte mode:
Trojan horse:
troll:
Troll-O-Meter:
tron:
true-hacker:
tty:
tube:
tube time:
tunafish:
tune:
turbo nerd:
Turing tar-pit:
turist:
Tux:
tweak:
tweeter:
TWENEX:
twiddle:
twiddle:
twilight zone:
twink:
twirling baton:
two pi:
two-to-the-N:
twonkie:
Node:T, Next:tail recursion, Previous:SysVile, Up:= T =
T /T/
1. [from LISP terminology for `true'] Yes. Used in reply to a
question (particularly one asked using The -P convention). In LISP, the
constant T means `true', among other things. Some Lisp hackers
use `T' and `NIL' instead of `Yes' and `No' almost reflexively.
This sometimes causes misunderstandings. When a waiter or flight
attendant asks whether a hacker wants coffee, he may absently
respond `T', meaning that he wants coffee; but of course he will
be brought a cup of tea instead. Fortunately, most hackers
(particularly those who frequent Chinese restaurants) like tea at
least as well as coffee -- so it is not that big a problem. 2.
See time T (also since time T
equals minus infinity). 3. [techspeak] In
transaction-processing circles, an abbreviation for the noun
`transaction'. 4. [Purdue] Alternate spelling of tee. 5. A dialect of LISP developed at Yale. (There is an intended
allusion to NIL, "New Implementation of Lisp", another dialect of
Lisp developed for the VAX)
Node:tail recursion, Next:talk mode, Previous:T, Up:= T =
tail recursion n.
If you aren't sick of it already, see tail recursion.
Node:talk mode, Next:talker system, Previous:tail recursion, Up:= T =
talk mode n.
A feature supported by Unix, ITS, and some other OSes that
allows two or more logged-in users to set up a real-time on-line
conversation. It combines the immediacy of talking with all the
precision (and verbosity) that written language entails. It is
difficult to communicate inflection, though conventions have
arisen for some of these (see the section on writing style in the
Prependices for details).
Talk mode has a special set of jargon words, used to save
typing, which are not used orally. Some of these are identical to
(and probably derived from) Morse-code jargon used by ham-radio
amateurs since the 1920s.
AFAIAC
as far as I am concerned
AFAIK
as far as I know
BCNU
be seeing you
BTW
by the way
BYE?
are you ready to unlink? (this is the standard way to end a
talk-mode conversation; the other person types BYE
to confirm, or else continues the conversation)
CUL
see you later
ENQ?
are you busy? (expects ACK or NAK
in return)
FOO?
are you there? (often used on unexpected links, meaning also
"Sorry if I butted in ..." (linker) or "What's
up?" (linkee))
FWIW
for what it's worth
FYI
for your information
FYA
for your amusement
GA
go ahead (used when two people have tried to type
simultaneously; this cedes the right to type to the other)
GRMBL
grumble (expresses disquiet or disagreement)
HELLOP
hello? (an instance of the `-P' convention)
IIRC
if I recall correctly
JAM
just a minute (equivalent to SEC....)
MIN
same as JAM
NIL
no (see NIL)
NP
no problem
O
over to you
OO
over and out
/
another form of "over to you" (from x/y as "x over y")
\
lambda (used in discussing LISPy things)
OBTW
oh, by the way
OTOH
on the other hand
R U THERE?
are you there?
SEC
wait a second (sometimes written SEC...)
SYN
Are you busy? (expects ACK, SYN|ACK, or RST in return; this
is modeled on the TCP/IP handshake sequence)
T
yes (see the main entry for T)
TNX
thanks
TNX 1.0E6
thanks a million (humorous)
TNXE6
another form of "thanks a million"
WRT
with regard to, or with respect to.
WTF
the universal interrogative particle; WTF knows what it
means?
WTH
what the hell?
When the typing party has finished, he/she types two newlines
to signal that he/she is done; this leaves a blank line between
`speeches' in the conversation, making it easier to reread the
preceding text.
:
When three or more terminals are linked, it is conventional
for each typist to prepend his/her
login name or handle and a colon (or a hyphen) to each line to
indicate who is typing (some conferencing facilities do this
automatically). The login name is often shortened to a unique
prefix (possibly a single letter) during a very long
conversation.
/\/\/\
A giggle or chuckle. On a MUD, this usually means `earthquake
fault'.
Most of the above sub-jargon is used at both Stanford and MIT.
Several of these expressions are also common in email, esp. FYI, FYA, BTW, BCNU, WTF, and CUL. A
few other abbreviations have been reported from commercial
networks, such as GEnie and CompuServe, where on-line `live' chat
including more than two people is common and usually involves a
more `social' context, notably the following:
grin
grinning, ducking, and running
BBL
be back later
BRB
be right back
HHOJ
ha ha only joking
HHOK
ha ha only kidding
HHOS
ha ha only
serious
IMHO
in my humble opinion (see IMHO)
LOL
laughing out loud
NHOH
Never Heard of Him/Her (often used in initgame)
ROTF
rolling on the floor
ROTFL
rolling on the floor laughing
AFK
away from keyboard
b4
before
CU l8tr
see you later
MORF
male or female?
TTFN
ta-ta for now
TTYL
talk to you later
OIC
oh, I see
rehi
hello again
Most of these are not used at universities or in the Unix
world, though ROTF and TTFN have gained some currency there and
IMHO is common; conversely, most of the people who know these are
unfamiliar with FOO?, BCNU, HELLOP, NIL, and T.
The MUD community uses a mixture of
Usenet/Internet emoticons, a few of the more natural of the
old-style talk-mode abbrevs, and some of the `social' list above;
specifically, MUD respondents report use of BBL, BRB, LOL, b4,
BTW, WTF, TTFN, and WTH. The use of `rehi' is also common; in
fact, mudders are fond of re- compounds and will frequently
`rehug' or `rebonk' (see bonk/oif) people. The word `re' by itself
is taken as `regreet'. In general, though, MUDders express a
preference for typing things out in full rather than using
abbreviations; this may be due to the relative youth of the MUD
cultures, which tend to include many touch typists and to assume
high-speed links. The following uses specific to MUDs are
reported:
CU l8er
see you later (mutant of CU l8tr)
FOAD
fuck off and die (use of this is generally OTT)
OTT
over the top (excessive, uncalled for)
ppl
abbrev for "people"
THX
thanks (mutant of TNX; clearly this comes in
batches of 1138 (the Lucasian K)).
UOK?
are you OK?
Some B1FFisms (notably the variant
spelling d00d) appear to be passing into wider use
among some subgroups of MUDders.
One final note on talk mode style: neophytes, when in talk
mode, often seem to think they must produce letter-perfect prose
because they are typing rather than speaking. This is not the
best approach. It can be very frustrating to wait while your
partner pauses to think of a word, or repeatedly makes the same
spelling error and backs up to fix it. It is usually best just to
leave typographical errors behind and plunge forward, unless
severe confusion may result; in that case it is often fastest
just to type "xxx" and start over from before the mistake.
See also hakspek, emoticon.
Node:talker system, Next:tall card, Previous:talk mode, Up:= T =
talker system n.
British hackerism for software that enables real-time chat or
talk mode.
Node:tall card, Next:tanked, Previous:talker system, Up:= T =
tall card n.
A PC/AT-size expansion card (these can be larger than IBM PC
or XT cards because the AT case is bigger). See also short card. When IBM introduced the PS/2
model 30 (its last gasp at supporting the ISA) they made the case
lower and many industry-standard tall cards wouldn't fit; this
was felt to be a reincarnation of the connector conspiracy, done with
less style.
Node:tanked, Next:TANSTAAFL, Previous:tall card, Up:= T =
tanked adj.
Same as down, used primarily by
Unix hackers. See also hosed.
Popularized as a synonym for `drunk' by Steve Dallas in the late
lamented "Bloom County" comic strip.
Node:TANSTAAFL, Next:tape monkey, Previous:tanked, Up:=
T =
TANSTAAFL /tan'stah-fl/
[acronym, from Robert Heinlein's classic "The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress".] "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch", often
invoked when someone is balking at the prospect of using an
unpleasantly heavyweight
technique, or at the poor quality of some piece of software, or
at the signal-to-noise
ratio of unmoderated Usenet newsgroups. "What? Don't tell
me I have to implement a database back end to get my address book
program to work!" "Well, TANSTAAFL you know." This phrase owes
some of its popularity to the high concentration of
science-fiction fans and political libertarians in hackerdom (see
Appendix B for
discussion).
Node:tape monkey, Next:tar and feather, Previous:TANSTAAFL, Up:= T =
tape monkey n.
A junior system administrator, one who might plausibly be
assigned to do physical swapping of tapes and subsequent storage.
When a backup needs to be restored, one might holler "Tape
monkey!" (Compare one-banana
problem) Also used to dismiss jobs not worthy of a highly
trained sysadmin's ineffable talents: "Cable up her PC? You must
be joking - I'm no tape monkey."
Node:tar and feather, Next:tarball, Previous:tape monkey, Up:= T =
tar and feather vi.
[from Unix tar(1)] To create a transportable
archive from a group of files by first sticking them together
with tar(1) (the Tape ARchiver) and then compressing
the result (see compress). The
latter action is dubbed `feathering' partly for euphony and (if
only for contrived effect) by analogy to what you do with an
airplane propeller to decrease wind resistance, or with an oar to
reduce water resistance; smaller files, after all, slip through
comm links more easily. Compare the more common tarball.
Node:tarball, Next:tardegy, Previous:tar and feather, Up:= T =
tarball n.
[very common; prob. based on the "tar baby" in the Uncle Remus
folk tales] An archive, created with the Unix tar(1) utility,
containing myriad related files. "Here, I'll just ftp you a
tarball of the whole project." Tarballs have been the standard
way to ship around source-code distributions since the mid-1980s;
in retrospect it seems odd that this term did not enter common
usage until the late 1990s.
Node:tardegy, Next:taste, Previous:tarball, Up:= T
=
tardegy
n. [deliberate mangling of `tragedy'] An incident in which
someone who clearly deserves to be selected out of the gene pool
on grounds of extreme stupidity meets with a messy end. Coined on
the Darwin list, which is dedicated to chronicling such
incidents; but almost all hackers would instantly recognize the
intention of the term and laugh.
Node:taste, Next:tayste, Previous:tardegy, Up:= T
=
taste [primarily MIT] n.
1. The quality in a program that tends to be inversely
proportional to the number of features, hacks, and kluges
programmed into it. Also `tasty', `tasteful', `tastefulness'.
"This feature comes in N tasty flavors." Although `tasty' and
`flavorful' are essentially synonyms, `taste' and flavor are not. Taste refers to sound judgment
on the part of the creator; a program or feature can
exhibit taste but cannot have taste. On the
other hand, a feature can have flavor. Also, flavor has the additional meaning of `kind' or
`variety' not shared by `taste'. The marked sense of flavor is more popular than `taste', though
both are widely used. See also elegant. 2. Alt. sp. of tayste.
Node:tayste, Next:TCB, Previous:taste, Up:= T
=
tayste /tayst/
n. Two bits; also as taste. Syn.
crumb, quarter. See nybble.
Node:TCB, Next:TCP/IP, Previous:tayste, Up:= T
=
TCB /T-C-B/ n.
[IBM] 1. Trouble Came Back. An intermittent or
difficult-to-reproduce problem that has failed to respond to
neglect or shotgun
debugging. Compare heisenbug. Not to be confused with: 2.
Trusted Computing Base, an `official' jargon term from the Orange Book.
Node:TCP/IP, Next:TechRef, Previous:TCB, Up:= T =
TCP/IP /T'C-P I'P/ n.
1. [Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol] The
wide-area-networking protocol that makes the Internet work, and
the only one most hackers can speak the name of without laughing
or retching. Unlike such allegedly `standard' competitors such as
X.25, DECnet, and the ISO 7-layer stack, TCP/IP evolved primarily
by actually being used, rather than being handed down
from on high by a vendor or a heavily-politicized standards
committee. Consequently, it (a) works, (b) actually promotes
cheap cross-platform connectivity, and (c) annoys the hell out of
corporate and governmental empire-builders everywhere. Hackers
value all three of these properties. See creationism. 2. [Amateur Packet Radio]
Formerly expanded as "The Crap Phil Is Pushing". The reference is
to Phil Karn, KA9Q, and the context was an ongoing
technical/political war between the majority of sites still
running AX.25 and the TCP/IP relays. TCP/IP won.
Node:TechRef, Next:TECO, Previous:TCP/IP, Up:= T
=
TechRef /tek'ref/ n.
[MS-DOS] The original "IBM PC Technical Reference Manual",
including the BIOS listing and complete schematics for the PC.
The only PC documentation in the original-issue package that was
considered serious by real hackers.
Node:TECO, Next:tee, Previous:TechRef, Up:= T
=
TECO /tee'koh/ n.,v. obs.
1. [originally an acronym for `[paper] Tape Editor and
COrrector'; later, `Text Editor and COrrector'] n. A text editor
developed at MIT and modified by just about everybody. With all
the dialects included, TECO may have been the most prolific
editor in use before EMACS, to which
it was directly ancestral. Noted for its powerful
programming-language-like features and its unspeakably hairy
syntax. It is literally the case that every string of characters
is a valid TECO program (though probably not a useful one); one
common game used to be mentally working out what the TECO
commands corresponding to human names did. 2. vt. Originally, to
edit using the TECO editor in one of its infinite variations (see
below). 3. vt.,obs. To edit even when TECO is not the
editor being used! This usage is rare and now primarily
historical.
As an example of TECO's obscurity, here is a TECO program that
takes a list of names such as:
Loser, J. Random
Quux, The Great
Dick, Moby
sorts them alphabetically according to surname, and then puts
the surname last, removing the comma, to produce the
following:
Moby Dick
J. Random Loser
The Great Quux
The program is
[1 J^P$L$$
J <.-Z; .,(S,$ -D .)FX1 @F^B $K :L I $ G1 L>$$
(where ^B means `Control-B' (ASCII 0000010) and $ is actually
an alt or escape (ASCII 0011011)
character).
In fact, this very program was used to produce the second,
sorted list from the first list. The first hack at it had a bug: GLS (the author) had accidentally
omitted the @ in front of F^B, which as
anyone can see is clearly the Wrong
Thing. It worked fine the second time. There is no space
to describe all the features of TECO, but it may be of interest
that ^P means `sort' and J<.-Z;
... L> is an idiomatic series of
commands for `do once for every line'.
In mid-1991, TECO is pretty much one with the dust of history,
having been replaced in the affections of hackerdom by EMACS. Descendants of an early (and
somewhat lobotomized) version adopted by DEC can still be found
lurking on VMS and a couple of crufty PDP-11 operating systems,
however, and ports of the more advanced MIT versions remain the
focus of some antiquarian interest. See also retrocomputing, write-only language.
Node:tee, Next:teergrube, Previous:TECO, Up:= T =
tee n.,vt.
[Purdue] A carbon copy of an electronic transmission. "Oh,
you're sending him the bits to that?
Slap on a tee for me." From the Unix command tee(1),
itself named after a pipe fitting (see plumbing). Can also mean `save one for me',
as in "Tee a slice for me!" Also spelled `T'.
Node:teergrube, Next:teledildonics, Previous:tee, Up:= T
=
teergrube /teer'groob/ n.
[German for `tar pit'] A trap set to punish spammers who use
an address harvester; a
mail server deliberately set up to be really, really slow. To
activate it, scatter addresses that look like users on the
teergrube's host in places where the address harvester will be
trolling (one popular way is to embed the fake address in a
Usenet sig block next to a human-readable warning not to send
mail to it). The address harvester will dutifully collect the
address. When the spammer tries to mailbomb it, his mailer will
get stuck.
Node:teledildonics, Next:Telerat, Previous:teergrube, Up:= T =
teledildonics /tel`*-dil-do'-niks/ n.
Sex in a computer simulated virtual reality, esp.
computer-mediated sexual interaction between the VR presences of two humans. This practice is not
yet possible except in the rather limited form of erotic
conversation on MUDs and the like. The
term, however, is widely recognized in the VR community as a
ha ha only serious
projection of things to come. "When we can sustain a
multi-sensory surround good enough for teledildonics,
then we'll know we're getting somewhere." See also hot chat.
Node:Telerat, Next:TELNET, Previous:teledildonics, Up:= T =
Telerat /tel'*-rat/ n. obs.
Unflattering hackerism for `Teleray', a now-extinct line of
extremely losing terminals. Compare AIDX, Macintrash
Nominal
Semidestructor, ScumOS,
sun-stools, HP-SUX, Slowlaris.
Node:TELNET, Next:ten-finger interface, Previous:Telerat, Up:= T =
TELNET /tel'net/ vt.
(also commonly lowercased as `telnet') To communicate with
another Internet host using the TELNET (RFC 854) protocol (usually using a program of the
same name). TOPS-10 people used the word IMPCOM, since that was
the program name for them. Sometimes abbreviated to TN /T-N/. "I
usually TN over to SAIL just to read the AP News."
Node:ten-finger interface,
Next:tense, Previous:TELNET, Up:= T =
ten-finger interface n.
The interface between two networks that cannot be directly
connected for security reasons; refers to the practice of placing
two terminals side by side and having an operator read from one
and type into the other.
Node:tense, Next:tentacle, Previous:ten-finger interface, Up:= T =
tense adj.
Of programs, very clever and efficient. A tense piece of code
often got that way because it was highly bummed, but sometimes it was just based on a great
idea. A comment in a clever routine by Mike Kazar, once a
grad-student hacker at CMU: "This routine is so tense it will
bring tears to your eyes." A tense programmer is one who produces
tense code.
Node:tentacle, Next:tenured graduate student,
Previous:tense, Up:= T =
tentacle n.
A covert pseudo, sense 1. An
artificial identity created in cyberspace for nefarious and
deceptive purposes. The implication is that a single person may
have multiple tentacles. This term was originally floated in some
paranoid ravings on the cypherpunks list (see cypherpunk), and adopted in a spirit of
irony by other, saner members. It has since shown up, used
seriously, in the documentation for some remailer software, and
is now (1994) widely recognized on the net.
Node:tenured graduate
student, Next:tera-,
Previous:tentacle, Up:= T =
tenured graduate student n.
One who has been in graduate school for 10 years (the usual
maximum is 5 or 6): a `ten-yeared' student (get it?). Actually,
this term may be used of any grad student beginning in his
seventh year. Students don't really get tenure, of course, the
way professors do, but a tenth-year graduate student has probably
been around the university longer than any untenured
professor.
Node:tera-, Next:teraflop club, Previous:tenured graduate
student, Up:= T =
tera- /te'r*/ pref.
[SI] See quantifiers.
Node:teraflop club, Next:terminak, Previous:tera-, Up:= T
=
teraflop club /te'r*-flop kluhb/ n.
[FLOP = Floating Point Operation] A mythical association of
people who consume outrageous amounts of computer time in order
to produce a few simple pictures of glass balls with intricate
ray-tracing techniques. Caltech professor James Kajiya is said to
have been the founder. Compare Knights of the Lambda
Calculus.
Node:terminak, Next:terminal brain death, Previous:teraflop club, Up:= T =
terminak /ter'mi-nak`/ n.
[Caltech, ca. 1979] Any malfunctioning computer terminal. A
common failure mode of Lear-Siegler ADM 3a terminals caused the
`L' key to produce the `K' code instead; complaints about this
tended to look like "Terminak #3 has a bad keyboard. Pkease fix."
Compare dread high-bit
disease, frogging; see
also AIDX, Nominal Semidestructor, ScumOS, sun-stools, Telerat, HP-SUX,
Slowlaris.
Node:terminal brain death,
Next:terminal
illness, Previous:terminak, Up:=
T =
terminal brain death n.
The extreme form of terminal
illness (sense 1). What someone who has obviously been
hacking continuously for far too long is said to be suffering
from.
Node:terminal illness, Next:terminal junkie,
Previous:terminal brain death, Up:= T =
terminal illness n.
1. Syn. raster burn. 2.
The `burn-in' condition your CRT tends to get if you don't have a
screen saver.
Node:terminal junkie, Next:terpri, Previous:terminal illness, Up:= T =
terminal junkie n.
[UK] A wannabee or early larval stage hacker who spends
most of his or her time wandering the directory tree and writing
noddy programs just to get a fix of
computer time. Variants include `terminal jockey', `console
junkie', and console
jockey. The term `console jockey' seems to imply more
expertise than the other three (possibly because of the exalted
status of the console relative to
an ordinary terminal). See also twink, read-only
user. Appropriately, this term was used in the works of
William S. Burroughs to describe a heroin addict with an
unlimited supply.
Node:terpri, Next:test, Previous:terminal junkie, Up:= T =
terpri /ter'pree/ vi.
[from LISP 1.5 (and later, MacLISP)] To output a newline. Now rare as jargon, though still used
as techspeak in Common LISP. It is a contraction of `TERminate
PRInt line', named for the fact that, on some early OSes and
hardware, no characters would be printed until a complete line
was formed, so this operation terminated the line and emitted the
output.
Node:test, Next:TeX, Previous:terpri, Up:= T
=
test n.
1. Real users bashing on a prototype long enough to get
thoroughly acquainted with it, with careful monitoring and
followup of the results. 2. Some bored random user trying a
couple of the simpler features with a developer looking over his
or her shoulder, ready to pounce on mistakes. Judging by the
quality of most software, the second definition is far more
prevalent. See also demo.
Node:TeX, Next:text, Previous:test, Up:= T =
TeX /tekh/ n.
An extremely powerful macro-based
text formatter written by Donald E. Knuth, very popular in the computer-science
community (it is good enough to have displaced Unix troff, the other favored formatter, even at many
Unix installations). TeX fans insist on the correct (guttural)
pronunciation, and the correct spelling (all caps, squished
together, with the E depressed below the baseline; the mixed-case
`TeX' is considered an acceptable kluge on ASCII-only devices).
Fans like to proliferate names from the word `TeX' -- such as
TeXnician (TeX user), TeXhacker (TeX programmer), TeXmaster
(competent TeX programmer), TeXhax, and TeXnique. See also CrApTeX.
Knuth began TeX because he had become annoyed at the declining
quality of the typesetting in volumes I-III of his monumental
"Art of Computer Programming" (see Knuth, also bible).
In a manifestation of the typical hackish urge to solve the
problem at hand once and for all, he began to design his own
typesetting language. He thought he would finish it on his
sabbatical in 1978; he was wrong by only about 8 years. The
language was finally frozen around 1985, but volume IV of "The
Art of Computer Programming" is not expected to appear until
2002. The impact and influence of TeX's design has been such that
nobody minds this very much. Many grand hackish projects have
started as a bit of toolsmithing
on the way to something else; Knuth's diversion was simply on a
grander scale than most.
TeX has also been a noteworthy example of free, shared, but
high-quality software. Knuth offers a monetary awards to anyone
who found and reported bugs dating from before the 1989 code
freeze; as the years wore on and the few remaining bugs were
fixed (and new ones even harder to find), the bribe went up.
Though well-written, TeX is so large (and so full of cutting edge
technique) that it is said to have unearthed at least one bug in
every Pascal system it has been compiled with.
Node:text, Next:thanks in advance, Previous:TeX, Up:= T =
text n.
1. [techspeak] Executable code, esp. a `pure code' portion
shared between multiple instances of a program running in a
multitasking OS. Compare English.
2. Textual material in the mainstream sense; data in ordinary
ASCII or EBCDIC representation (see flat-ASCII). "Those are text files; you can
review them using the editor." These two contradictory senses
confuse hackers, too.
Node:thanks in advance,
Next:That's not a
bug that's a feature!, Previous:text, Up:= T =
thanks in advance
[Usenet] Conventional net.politeness ending a posted request
for information or assistance. Sometimes written `advTHANKSance'
or `aTdHvAaNnKcSe' or abbreviated `TIA'. See net.-, netiquette.
Node:That's not a bug
that's a feature!, Next:the literature, Previous:thanks in advance,
Up:= T =
That's not a bug, that's a feature!
The canonical first parry in a
debate about a purported bug. The complainant, if unconvinced, is
likely to retort that the bug is then at best a misfeature. See also feature.
Node:the literature, Next:the network, Previous:That's not a
bug that's a feature!, Up:=
T =
the literature n.
Computer-science journals and other publications, vaguely
gestured at to answer a question that the speaker believes is
trivial. Thus, one might answer an
annoying question by saying "It's in the literature." Oppose
Knuth, which has no connotation of
triviality.
Node:the network, Next:the
X that can be Y is not the true X, Previous:the literature, Up:= T =
the network n.
1. Historicaslly, the union of all the major noncommercial,
academic, and hacker-oriented networks, such as Internet, the
pre-1990 ARPANET, NSFnet, BITNET,
and the virtual UUCP and Usenet
`networks', plus the corporate in-house networks and commercial
time-sharing services (such as CompuServe, GEnie and AOL) that
gateway to them. A site is generally considered `on the network'
if it can be reached through some combination of Internet-style
(@-sign) and UUCP (bang-path) addresses. See Internet, bang
path, Internet
address, network
address. 2. Following the mass-culture discovery of the
Internet in 1994 and subsequent proliferation of cheap TCP/IP
connections, "the network" is increasingly synonymous with the
Internet itself (as it was before the second wave of wide-area
computer networking began around 1980). 3. A fictional conspiracy
of libertarian hacker-subversives and anti-authoritarian
monkeywrenchers described in Robert Anton Wilson's novel
"Schrödinger's Cat", to which many hackers have subsequently
decided they belong (this is an example of ha ha only serious).
In sense 1, `the network' is often abbreviated to `the net'.
"Are you on the net?" is a frequent question when hackers first
meet face to face, and "See you on the net!" is a frequent
goodbye.
Node:the X
that can be Y is not the true X, Next:theology, Previous:the network, Up:= T =
the X that can be Y is not the true X
Yet another instance of hackerdom's peculiar attraction to
mystical references -- a common humorous way of making exclusive
statements about a class of things. The template is from the "Tao
te Ching": "The Tao which can be spoken of is not the true Tao."
The implication is often that the X is a mystery accessible only
to the enlightened. See the trampoline entry for an example, and
compare has the X
nature.
Node:theology, Next:theory, Previous:the
X that can be Y is not the true X, Up:= T =
theology n.
1. Ironically or humorously used to refer to religious issues. 2. Technical fine
points of an abstruse nature, esp. those where the resolution is
of theoretical interest but is relatively marginal with respect to actual use of a
design or system. Used esp. around software issues with a heavy
AI or language-design component, such as the smart-data vs.
smart-programs dispute in AI.
Node:theory, Next:thinko, Previous:theology, Up:=
T =
theory n.
The consensus, idea, plan, story, or set of rules that is
currently being used to inform a behavior. This usage is a
generalization and (deliberate) abuse of the technical meaning.
"What's the theory on fixing this TECO loss?" "What's the theory
on dinner tonight?" ("Chinatown, I guess.") "What's the current
theory on letting lusers on during the day?" "The theory behind
this change is to fix the following well-known
screw...."
Node:thinko, Next:This can't happen, Previous:theory, Up:= T =
thinko /thing'koh/ n.
[by analogy with `typo'] A momentary, correctable glitch in
mental processing, especially one involving recall of information
learned by rote; a bubble in the stream of consciousness. Syn.
braino; see also brain fart. Compare mouso.
Node:This can't happen,
Next:This time
for sure!, Previous:thinko, Up:= T
=
This can't happen
Less clipped variant of can't
happen.
Node:This time for sure!,
Next:thrash, Previous:This can't happen,
Up:= T =
This time, for sure! excl.
Ritual affirmation frequently uttered during protracted
debugging sessions involving numerous small obstacles (e.g.,
attempts to bring up a UUCP connection). For the proper effect,
this must be uttered in a fruity imitation of Bullwinkle J.
Moose. Also heard: "Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my
hat!" The canonical response is,
of course, "But that trick never works!" See hacker humor.
Node:thrash, Next:thread, Previous:This time for sure!, Up:= T =
thrash vi.
To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing anything
useful. Paging or swapping systems that are overloaded waste most
of their time moving data into and out of core (rather than
performing useful computation) and are therefore said to thrash.
Someone who keeps changing his mind (esp. about what to work on
next) is said to be thrashing. A person frantically trying to
execute too many tasks at once (and not spending enough time on
any single task) may also be described as thrashing. Compare
multitask.
Node:thread, Next:three-finger salute, Previous:thrash, Up:= T =
thread n.
[Usenet, GEnie, CompuServe] Common abbreviation of `topic
thread', a more or less continuous chain of postings on a single
topic. To `follow a thread' is to read a series of Usenet
postings sharing a common subject or (more correctly) which are
connected by Reference headers. The better newsreaders can
present news in thread order automatically. Not to be confused
with the techspeak sense of `thread', e.g. a lightweight
process.
Interestingly, this is far from a neologism. The OED says:
"That which connects the successive points in anything, esp. a
narrative, train of thought, or the like; the sequence of events
or ideas continuing throughout the whole course of anything;"
Citations are given going back to 1642!
Node:three-finger salute,
Next:throwaway
account, Previous:thread, Up:= T
=
three-finger salute n.
Syn. Vulcan nerve
pinch.
Node:throwaway account, Next:thud, Previous:three-finger salute, Up:= T =
throwaway account n.
1. An inexpensive Internet account purchased on a legitimate
ISP for the the sole purpose of spewing
spam. 2. An inexpensive Internet
account obtained for the sole purpose of doing something which
requires a valid email address but being able to ignore spam
since the user will not look at the account again.
Node:thud, Next:thumb, Previous:throwaway account, Up:= T =
thud n.
1. Yet another metasyntactic variable (see
foo). It is reported that at CMU from
the mid-1970s the canonical series of these was `foo', `bar',
`thud', `blat'. 2. Rare term for the hash character, `#' (ASCII
0100011). See ASCII for other
synonyms.
Node:thumb, Next:thundering herd problem,
Previous:thud, Up:= T =
thumb n.
The slider on a window-system scrollbar. So called because
moving it allows you to browse through the contents of a text
window in a way analogous to thumbing through a book.
Node:thundering herd
problem, Next:thunk,
Previous:thumb, Up:= T =
thundering herd problem
Scheduler thrashing. This can happen under Unix when you have
a number of processes that are waiting on a single event. When
that event (a connection to the web server, say) happens, every
process which could possibly handle the event is awakened. In the
end, only one of those processes will actually be able to do the
work, but, in the meantime, all the others wake up and contend
for CPU time before being put back to sleep. Thus the system
thrashes briefly while a herd of processes thunders through. If
this starts to happen many times per second, the performance
impact can be significant.
Node:thunk, Next:tick, Previous:thundering herd problem, Up:= T =
thunk /thuhnk/ n.
1. [obs.]"A piece of coding which provides an address",
according to P. Z. Ingerman, who invented thunks in 1961 as a way
of binding actual parameters to their formal definitions in
Algol-60 procedure calls. If a procedure is called with an
expression in the place of a formal parameter, the compiler
generates a thunk which computes the expression and leaves the
address of the result in some standard location. 2. Later
generalized into: an expression, frozen together with its
environment, for later evaluation if and when needed (similar to
what in techspeak is called a `closure'). The process of
unfreezing these thunks is called `forcing'. 3. A stubroutine, in an overlay programming
environment, that loads and jumps to the correct overlay. Compare
trampoline. 4. People and
activities scheduled in a thunklike manner. "It occurred to me
the other day that I am rather accurately modeled by a thunk -- I
frequently need to be forced to completion." -- paraphrased from
a plan file.
Historical note: There are a couple of onomatopoeic myths
circulating about the origin of this term. The most common is
that it is the sound made by data hitting the stack; another
holds that the sound is that of the data hitting an accumulator.
Yet another suggests that it is the sound of the expression being
unfrozen at argument-evaluation time. In fact, according to the
inventors, it was coined after they realized (in the wee hours
after hours of discussion) that the type of an argument in
Algol-60 could be figured out in advance with a little
compile-time thought, simplifying the evaluation machinery. In
other words, it had `already been thought of'; thus it was
christened a `thunk', which is "the past tense of `think' at two
in the morning".
Node:tick, Next:tick-list features, Previous:thunk, Up:= T =
tick n.
1. A jiffy (sense 1). 2. In
simulations, the discrete unit of time that passes between
iterations of the simulation mechanism. In AI applications, this
amount of time is often left unspecified, since the only
constraint of interest is the ordering of events. This sort of AI
simulation is often pejoratively referred to as `tick-tick-tick'
simulation, especially when the issue of simultaneity of events
with long, independent chains of causes is handwaved. 3. In the FORTH language, a single
quote character.
Node:tick-list features,
Next:tickle a bug,
Previous:tick, Up:= T =
tick-list features n.
[Acorn Computers] Features in software or hardware that
customers insist on but never use (calculators in desktop TSRs
and that sort of thing). The American equivalent would be
`checklist features', but this jargon sense of the phrase has not
been reported.
Node:tickle a bug, Next:tiger team, Previous:tick-list features,
Up:= T =
tickle a bug vt.
To cause a normally hidden bug to manifest itself through some
known series of inputs or operations. "You can tickle the bug in
the Paradise VGA card's highlight handling by trying to set
bright yellow reverse video."
Node:tiger team, Next:time bomb, Previous:tickle a bug, Up:= T =
tiger team n.
[U.S. military jargon] 1. Originally, a team (of sneakers) whose purpose is to penetrate
security, and thus test security measures. These people are paid
professionals who do hacker-type tricks, e.g., leave cardboard
signs saying "bomb" in critical defense installations,
hand-lettered notes saying "Your codebooks have been stolen"
(they usually haven't been) inside safes, etc. After a successful
penetration, some high-ranking security type shows up the next
morning for a `security review' and finds the sign, note, etc.,
and all hell breaks loose. Serious successes of tiger teams
sometimes lead to early retirement for base commanders and
security officers (see the patch
entry for an example). 2. Recently, and more generally, any
official inspection team or special firefighting group called in to look at a
problem.
A subset of tiger teams are professional crackers, testing the security of military
computer installations by attempting remote attacks via networks
or supposedly `secure' comm channels. Some of their escapades, if
declassified, would probably rank among the greatest hacks of all
times. The term has been adopted in commercial computer-security
circles in this more specific sense.
Node:time bomb, Next:time sink, Previous:tiger team, Up:= T =
time bomb n.
A subspecies of logic bomb
that is triggered by reaching some preset time, either once or
periodically. There are numerous legends about time bombs set up
by programmers in their employers' machines, to go off if the
programmer is fired or laid off and is not present to perform the
appropriate suppressing action periodically.
Interestingly, the only such incident for which we have been
pointed to documentary evidence took place in the Soviet Union in
1986! A disgruntled programmer at the Volga Automobile Plant
(where the Fiat clones called Ladas were manufactured) planted a
time bomb which, a week after he'd left on vacation, stopped the
entire main assembly line for a day. The case attracted lots of
attention in the Soviet Union because it was the first cracking
case to make it to court there. The perpetrator got a suspended
sentence of 3 years in jail and was barred from future work as a
programmer.
Node:time sink, Next:time T, Previous:time bomb, Up:= T =
time sink n.
[poss. by analogy with `heat sink' or `current sink'] A
project that consumes unbounded amounts of time.
Node:time T, Next:times-or-divided-by, Previous:time sink, Up:= T =
time T /ti:m T/ n.
1. An unspecified but usually well-understood time, often used
in conjunction with a later time T+1. "We'll meet on campus at
time T or at Louie's at time T+1" means, in the context of going
out for dinner: "We can meet on campus and go to Louie's, or we
can meet at Louie's itself a bit later." (Louie's was a Chinese
restaurant in Palo Alto that was a favorite with hackers.) Had
the number 30 been used instead of the number 1, it would have
implied that the travel time from campus to Louie's is 30
minutes; whatever time T is (and that hasn't been decided on
yet), you can meet half an hour later at Louie's than you could
on campus and end up eating at the same time. See also since time T
equals minus infinity.
Node:times-or-divided-by,
Next:TINC, Previous:time T, Up:= T =
times-or-divided-by quant.
[by analogy with `plus-or-minus'] Term occasionally used when
describing the uncertainty associated with a scheduling estimate,
for either humorous or brutally honest effect. For a software
project, the scheduling uncertainty factor is usually at least
2.
Node:TINC, Next:Tinkerbell program, Previous:times-or-divided-by,
Up:= T =
TINC //
[Usenet] Abbreviation: "There Is No Cabal". See backbone cabal and NANA, but note that this abbreviation did not
enter use until long after the dispersal of the backbone
cabal.
Node:Tinkerbell program,
Next:TINLC, Previous:TINC, Up:= T =
Tinkerbell program n.
[Great Britain] A monitoring program used to scan incoming
network calls and generate alerts when calls are received from
particular sites, or when logins are attempted using certain IDs.
Named after `Project Tinkerbell', an experimental phone-tapping
program developed by British Telecom in the early 1980s.
Node:TINLC, Next:tip of the ice-cube, Previous:Tinkerbell
program, Up:= T =
TINLC //
Abbreviation: "There Is No Lumber Cartel". See Lumber Cartel. TINLC is a takeoff on
TINC.
Node:tip of the ice-cube,
Next:tired iron,
Previous:TINLC, Up:= T =
tip of the ice-cube n. //
[IBM] The visible part of something small and insignificant.
Used as an ironic comment in situations where `tip of the
iceberg' might be appropriate if the subject were at all
important.
Node:tired iron, Next:tits on a keyboard,
Previous:tip
of the ice-cube, Up:= T
=
tired iron n.
[IBM] Hardware that is perfectly functional but far enough
behind the state of the art to have been superseded by new
products, presumably with sufficient improvement in bang-per-buck
that the old stuff is starting to look a bit like a dinosaur.
Node:tits on a keyboard,
Next:TLA, Previous:tired iron, Up:= T =
tits on a keyboard n.
Small bumps on certain keycaps to keep touch-typists
registered. Usually on the 5 of a numeric keypad,
and on the F and J of a QWERTY keyboard; but older Macs, perverse as
usual, had them on the D and K keys
(this changed in 1999).
Node:TLA, Next:(TM), Previous:tits on a keyboard, Up:= T =
TLA /T-L-A/ n.
[Three-Letter Acronym] 1. Self-describing abbreviation for a
species with which computing terminology is infested. 2. Any
confusing acronym. Examples include MCA, FTP, SNA, CPU, MMU,
SCCS, DMU, FPU, NNTP, TLA. People who like this looser usage
argue that not all TLAs have three letters, just as not all
four-letter words have four letters. One also hears of `ETLA'
(Extended Three-Letter Acronym, pronounced /ee tee el ay/) being
used to describe four-letter acronyms. The term `SFLA' (Stupid
Four-Letter Acronym) has also been reported. See also YABA.
The self-effacing phrase "TDM TLA" (Too Damn
Many...) is often used to bemoan the plethora of
TLAs in use. In 1989, a random of the journalistic persuasion
asked hacker Paul Boutin "What do you think will be the biggest
problem in computing in the 90s?" Paul's straight-faced response:
"There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms." (To be exact,
there are 26^3 = 17,576.) There is probably some karmic justice
in the fact that Paul Boutin subsequently became a
journalist.
Node:(TM), Next:TMRC, Previous:TLA,
Up:= T =
(TM) //
[Usenet] ASCII rendition of the trademark-superscript symbol
appended to phrases that the author feels should be recorded for
posterity, perhaps in future editions of this lexicon. Sometimes
used ironically as a form of protest against the recent spate of
software and algorithm patents and `look and feel' lawsuits. See
also UN*X.
Node:TMRC, Next:TMRCie, Previous:(TM), Up:= T =
TMRC /tmerk'/ n.
The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT, one of the wellsprings of
hacker culture. The 1959 "Dictionary of the TMRC Language"
compiled by Peter Samson included several terms that became
basics of the hackish vocabulary (see esp. foo, mung, and frob).
By 1962, TMRC's legendary layout was already a marvel of
complexity and has grown in the years since. All the features
described here were still present when the old layout was
decomissioned in 1998 just before the demolition of MIT Building
20, and will almost certainly be retained when the old layout is
rebuilt (expected in 2003). The control system alone featured
about 1200 relays. There were scram
switches located at numerous places around the room that
could be thwacked if something undesirable was about to occur,
such as a train going full-bore at an obstruction. Another
feature of the system was a digital clock on the dispatch board,
which was itself something of a wonder in those bygone days
before cheap LEDs and seven-segment displays. When someone hit a
scram switch the clock stopped and the display was replaced with
the word `FOO'; at TMRC the scram switches are therefore called
`foo switches'.
Steven Levy, in his book "Hackers" (see the Bibliography in Appendix C), gives a
stimulating account of those early years. TMRC's Signals and
Power Committee included many of the early PDP-1 hackers and the
people who later became the core of the MIT AI Lab staff. Thirty
years later that connection is still very much alive, and this
lexicon accordingly includes a number of entries from a recent
revision of the TMRC dictionary.
TMRC has a web page at http://web.mit.edu/tmrc/www/.
Node:TMRCie, Next:TMTOWTDI, Previous:TMRC, Up:= T =
TMRCie /tmerk'ee/, n.
[MIT] A denizen of TMRC.
Node:TMTOWTDI, Next:to a first approximation,
Previous:TMRCie, Up:= T =
TMTOWTDI /tim-toh'-dee/
There's More Than One Way To Do It. This abbreviation of the
official motto of Perl is frequently
used on newsgroups and mailing lists related to that
language.
Node:to a first
approximation, Next:to a zeroth approximation,
Previous:TMTOWTDI, Up:= T =
to a first approximation adj.
1. [techspeak] When one is doing certain numerical
computations, an approximate solution may be computed by any of
several heuristic methods, then refined to a final value. By
using the starting point of a first approximation of the answer,
one can write an algorithm that converges more quickly to the
correct result. 2. In jargon, a preface to any comment that
indicates that the comment is only approximately true. The remark
"To a first approximation, I feel good" might indicate that
deeper questioning would reveal that not all is perfect (e.g., a
nagging cough still remains after an illness).
Node:to a zeroth
approximation, Next:toad,
Previous:to a first approximation,
Up:= T =
to a zeroth approximation
[from `to a first approximation'] A really sloppy
approximation; a wild guess. Compare social science number.
Node:toad, Next:toast, Previous:to a zeroth approximation,
Up:= T =
toad vt. [MUD]
1. Notionally, to change a MUD
player into a toad. 2. To permanently and totally exile a player
from the MUD. A very serious action, which can only be done by a
MUD wizard; often involves a lot of
debate among the other characters first. See also frog, FOD.
Node:toast, Next:toaster, Previous:toad, Up:= T =
toast 1. n.
Any completely inoperable system or component, esp. one that
has just crashed and burned: "Uh, oh ... I think
the serial board is toast." 2. vt. To cause a system to crash
accidentally, especially in a manner that requires manual
rebooting. "Rick just toasted the firewall machine again." Compare
fried.
Node:toaster, Next:toeprint, Previous:toast, Up:= T
=
toaster n.
1. The archetypal really stupid application for an embedded
microprocessor controller; often used in comments that imply that
a scheme is inappropriate technology (but see elevator controller). "DWIM for an assembler? That'd be as silly as
running Unix on your toaster!"
2. A very, very dumb computer. "You could run this program on any
dumb toaster." See bitty box,
Get a real
computer!, toy, beige toaster. 3. A Macintosh, esp.
the Classic Mac. Some hold that this is implied by sense 2. 4. A
peripheral device. "I bought my box without toasters, but since
then I've added two boards and a second disk drive." 5. A
specialized computer used as an appliance. See web toaster, video toaster.
Node:toeprint, Next:toggle, Previous:toaster, Up:= T
=
toeprint n.
A footprint of especially
small size.
Node:toggle, Next:tool, Previous:toeprint, Up:=
T =
toggle vt.
To change a bit from whatever state
it is in to the other state; to change from 1 to 0 or from 0 to
1. This comes from `toggle switches', such as standard light
switches, though the word `toggle' actually refers to the
mechanism that keeps the switch in the position to which it is
flipped rather than to the fact that the switch has two
positions. There are four things you can do to a bit: set it
(force it to be 1), clear (or zero) it, leave it alone, or toggle
it. (Mathematically, one would say that there are four distinct
boolean-valued functions of one boolean argument, but saying that
is much less fun than talking about toggling bits.)
Node:tool, Next:toolsmith, Previous:toggle, Up:= T
=
tool 1. n.
A program used primarily to create, manipulate, modify, or
analyze other programs, such as a compiler or an editor or a
cross-referencing program. Oppose app,
operating system. 2.
[Unix] An application program with a simple, `transparent'
(typically text-stream) interface designed specifically to be
used in programmed combination with other tools (see filter, plumbing). 3. [MIT: general to students
there] vi. To work; to study (connotes tedium). The TMRC
Dictionary defined this as "to set one's brain to the
grindstone". See hack. 4. n. [MIT] A
student who studies too much and hacks too little. (MIT's student
humor magazine rejoices in the name "Tool and Die".)
Node:toolsmith, Next:toor, Previous:tool, Up:= T =
toolsmith n.
The software equivalent of a tool-and-die specialist; one who
specializes in making the tools with
which other programmers create applications. Many hackers
consider this more fun than applications per se; to understand
why, see uninteresting. Jon
Bentley, in the "Bumper-Sticker Computer Science" chapter of his
book "More Programming Pearls", quotes Dick Sites from DEC as saying "I'd rather write programs to
write programs than write programs".
Node:toor, Next:topic drift, Previous:toolsmith, Up:= T =
toor n.
The Bourne-Again Super-user. An alternate account with UID of
0, created on Unix machines where the root user has an
inconvenient choice of shell. Compare avatar.
Node:topic drift, Next:topic group, Previous:toor, Up:= T
=
topic drift n.
Term used on GEnie, Usenet and other electronic fora to
describe the tendency of a thread to
drift away from the original subject of discussion (and thus,
from the Subject header of the originating message), or the
results of that tendency. The header in each post can be changed
to keep current with the posts, but usually isn't due to
forgetfulness or laziness. A single post may often result in
several posts each responding to a different point in the
original. Some subthreads will actually be in response to some
off-the-cuff side comment, possibly degenerating into a flame war, or just as often evolving
into a separate discussion. Hence, discussions aren't really so
much threads as they are trees. Except that they don't really
have leaves, or multiple branching roots; usually some lines of
discussion will just sort of die off after everyone gets tired of
them. This could take anywhere from hours to weeks, or even
longer.
The term `topic drift' is often used in gentle reminders that
the discussion has strayed off any useful track. "I think we
started with a question about Niven's last book, but we've ended
up discussing the sexual habits of the common marmoset. Now
that's topic drift!"
Node:topic group, Next:TOPS-10, Previous:topic drift, Up:= T =
topic group n.
Syn. forum.
Node:TOPS-10, Next:TOPS-20, Previous:topic group, Up:= T =
TOPS-10 /tops-ten/ n.
DEC's proprietary OS for the fabled
PDP-10 machines, long a favorite of
hackers but now effectively extinct. A fountain of hacker
folklore; see Appendix A. See also ITS,
TOPS-20, TWENEX, VMS, operating system. TOPS-10 was
sometimes called BOTS-10 (from `bottoms-ten') as a comment on the
inappropriateness of describing it as the top of anything.
Node:TOPS-20, Next:tourist, Previous:TOPS-10, Up:= T
=
TOPS-20 /tops-twen'tee/ n.
See TWENEX.
Node:tourist, Next:tourist information, Previous:TOPS-20, Up:= T =
tourist n.
1. [ITS] A guest on the system, especially one who generally
logs in over a network from a remote location for comm mode, email, games, and other trivial
purposes. One step below luser. ITS
hackers often used to spell this turist, perhaps by some sort of tenuous analogy
with luser (this usage may also have
expressed the ITS culture's penchant for six-letterisms, and-or
been some sort of tribute to Alan Turing). Compare twink, lurker,
read-only user. 2. [IRC]
An IRC user who goes from channel to
channel without saying anything; see channel hopping.
Node:tourist information,
Next:touristic, Previous:tourist, Up:= T =
tourist information n.
Information in an on-line display that is not immediately
useful, but contributes to a viewer's gestalt of what's going on
with the software or hardware behind it. Whether a given piece of
info falls in this category depends partly on what the user is
looking for at any given time. The `bytes free' information at
the bottom of an MS-DOS dir display is tourist
information; so (most of the time) is the TIME information in a
Unix ps(1) display.
Node:touristic, Next:toy, Previous:tourist information, Up:= T =
touristic adj.
Having the quality of a tourist.
Often used as a pejorative, as in `losing touristic scum'. Often
spelled `turistic' or `turistik', so that phrase might be more
properly rendered `lusing turistic scum'.
Node:toy, Next:toy language, Previous:touristic, Up:= T =
toy n.
A computer system; always used with qualifiers. 1. `nice toy':
One that supports the speaker's hacking style adequately. 2.
`just a toy': A machine that yields insufficient computrons for the speaker's preferred uses.
This is not condemnatory, as is bitty
box; toys can at least be fun. It is also strongly
conditioned by one's expectations; Cray XMP users sometimes
consider the Cray-1 a `toy', and certainly all RISC boxes and
mainframes are toys by their standards. See also Get a real computer!.
Node:toy language, Next:toy problem, Previous:toy, Up:= T =
toy language n.
A language useful for instructional purposes or as a
proof-of-concept for some aspect of computer-science theory, but
inadequate for general-purpose programming. Bad Things can result when a toy language
is promoted as a general purpose solution for programming (see
bondage-and-discipline
language); the classic example is Pascal. Several moderately well-known
formalisms for conceptual tasks such as programming Turing
machines also qualify as toy languages in a less negative sense.
See also MFTL.
Node:toy problem, Next:toy program, Previous:toy language, Up:= T =
toy problem n.
[AI] A deliberately oversimplified case of a challenging
problem used to investigate, prototype, or test algorithms for a
real problem. Sometimes used pejoratively. See also gedanken, toy
program.
Node:toy program, Next:trampoline, Previous:toy problem, Up:= T =
toy program n.
1. One that can be readily comprehended; hence, a trivial
program (compare noddy). 2. One for
which the effort of initial coding dominates the costs through
its life cycle. See also noddy.
Node:trampoline, Next:trap, Previous:toy program, Up:= T =
trampoline n.
An incredibly hairy technique,
found in some HLL and program-overlay
implementations (e.g., on the Macintosh), that involves
on-the-fly generation of small executable (and, likely as not,
self-modifying) code objects to do indirection between code
sections. Under BSD and possibly in other Unixes, trampoline code
is used to transfer control from the kernel back to user mode
when a signal (which has had a handler installed) is sent to a
process. hese pieces of live
data are called `trampolines'. Trampolines are
notoriously difficult to understand in action; in fact, it is
said by those who use this term that the trampoline that doesn't
bend your brain is not the true trampoline. See also snap.
Node:trap, Next:trap door, Previous:trampoline, Up:= T =
trap
1. n. A program interrupt, usually an interrupt caused by some
exceptional situation in the user program. In most cases, the OS
performs some action, then returns control to the program. 2. vi.
To cause a trap. "These instructions trap to the monitor." Also
used transitively to indicate the cause of the trap. "The monitor
traps all input/output instructions."
This term is associated with assembler programming
(`interrupt' or `exception' is more common among HLL programmers) and appears to be fading into
history among programmers as the role of assembler continues to
shrink. However, it is still important to computer architects and
systems hackers (see system, sense
1), who use it to distinguish deterministically repeatable
exceptions from timing-dependent ones (such as I/O
interrupts).
Node:trap door, Next:trash, Previous:trap, Up:= T =
trap door n.
(alt. `trapdoor') 1. Syn. back
door -- a Bad Thing. 2.
[techspeak] A `trap-door function' is one which is easy to
compute but very difficult to compute the inverse of. Such
functions are Good Things with
important applications in cryptography, specifically in the
construction of public-key cryptosystems.
Node:trash, Next:trawl, Previous:trap door, Up:= T =
trash vt.
To destroy the contents of (said of a data structure). The
most common of the family of near-synonyms including mung, mangle, and
scribble.
Node:trawl, Next:tree-killer, Previous:trash, Up:= T
=
trawl v.
To sift through large volumes of data (e.g., Usenet postings,
FTP archives, or the Jargon File) looking for something of
interest.
Node:tree-killer, Next:treeware, Previous:trawl, Up:= T
=
tree-killer n.
[Sun] 1. A printer. 2. A person who wastes paper. This epithet
should be interpreted in a broad sense; `wasting paper' includes
the production of spiffy but content-free documents. Thus, most
suits are tree-killers. The negative
loading of this term may reflect the epithet `tree-killer'
applied by Treebeard the Ent to the Orcs in J.R.R. Tolkien's
"Lord of the Rings" (see also elvish, elder
days).
Node:treeware, Next:trit, Previous:tree-killer, Up:= T =
treeware /tree'weir/ n.
Printouts, books, and other information media made from pulped
dead trees. Compare tree-killer, see documentation.
Node:trit, Next:trivial, Previous:treeware, Up:=
T =
trit /trit/ n.
[by analogy with `bit'] One base-3 digit; the amount of
information conveyed by a selection among one of three equally
likely outcomes (see also bit). Trits
arise, for example, in the context of a flag that should actually be able to assume
three values -- such as yes, no, or unknown. Trits are
sometimes jokingly called `3-state bits'. A trit may be
semi-seriously referred to as `a bit and a half', although it is
linearly equivalent to 1.5849625 bits (that is, log2(3)
bits).
Node:trivial, Next:troff, Previous:trit, Up:= T =
trivial adj.
1. Too simple to bother detailing. 2. Not worth the speaker's
time. 3. Complex, but solvable by methods so well known that
anyone not utterly cretinous
would have thought of them already. 4. Any problem one has
already solved (some claim that hackish `trivial' usually
evaluates to `I've seen it before'). Hackers' notions of
triviality may be quite at variance with those of non-hackers.
See nontrivial, uninteresting.
The physicist Richard Feynman, who had the hacker nature to an
amazing degree (see his essay "Los Alamos From Below" in "Surely
You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"), defined `trivial theorem' as "one
that has already been proved".
Node:troff, Next:troglodyte, Previous:trivial, Up:= T
=
troff /T'rof/ or /trof/ n.
[Unix] The gray eminence of Unix text processing; a formatting
and phototypesetting program, written originally in PDP-11
assembler and then in barely-structured early C by the late
Joseph Ossanna, modeled after the earlier ROFF which was in turn
modeled after the Multics and CTSS program RUNOFF by Jerome Saltzer
(that name came from the expression "to run off a
copy"). A companion program, nroff,
formats output for terminals and line printers.
In 1979, Brian Kernighan modified troff so that it could drive
phototypesetters other than the Graphic Systems CAT. His paper
describing that work ("A Typesetter-independent troff," AT&T
CSTR #97) explains troff's durability. After discussing the
program's "obvious deficiencies -- a rebarbative input syntax,
mysterious and undocumented properties in some areas, and a
voracious appetite for computer resources" and noting the
ugliness and extreme hairiness of the code and internals,
Kernighan concludes:
None of these remarks should be taken as denigrating
Ossanna's accomplishment with TROFF. It has proven a remarkably
robust tool, taking unbelievable abuse from a variety of
preprocessors and being forced into uses that were never
conceived of in the original design, all with considerable grace
under fire.
The success of TeX and desktop
publishing systems have reduced troff's relative
importance, but this tribute perfectly captures the strengths
that secured troff a place in hacker folklore;
indeed, it could be taken more generally as an indication of
those qualities of good programs that, in the long run, hackers
most admire.
Node:troglodyte, Next:troglodyte mode, Previous:troff, Up:= T =
troglodyte n.
[Commodore] 1. A hacker who never leaves his cubicle. The term
`gnoll' (from Dungeons & Dragons) is also reported. 2. A
curmudgeon attached to an obsolescent computing environment. The
combination `ITS troglodyte' was flung around some during the
Usenet and email wringle-wrangle attending the 2.x.x revision of
the Jargon File; at least one of the people it was intended to
describe adopted it with pride.
Node:troglodyte mode, Next:Trojan horse, Previous:troglodyte, Up:= T =
troglodyte mode n.
[Rice University] Programming with the lights turned off,
sunglasses on, and the terminal inverted (black on white) because
you've been up for so many days straight that your eyes hurt (see
raster burn). Loud music
blaring from a stereo stacked in the corner is optional but
recommended. See larval
stage, hack mode.
Node:Trojan horse, Next:troll, Previous:troglodyte mode, Up:= T =
Trojan horse n.
[coined by MIT-hacker-turned-NSA-spook Dan Edwards] A
malicious, security-breaking program that is disguised as
something benign, such as a directory lister, archiver, game, or
(in one notorious 1990 case on the Mac) a program to find and
destroy viruses! See back door,
virus, worm, phage, mockingbird.
Node:troll, Next:Troll-O-Meter, Previous:Trojan horse, Up:= T =
troll v.,n.
1. [From the Usenet group _alt.folklore.urban_] To utter
a posting on Usenet designed to
attract predictable responses or flames; or, the post itself. Derives from the
phrase "trolling for newbies" which
in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in
which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite.
The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies
and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they
already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and
experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't
fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. See also YHBT. 2. An individual who chronically trolls in
sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal
attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other
purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are
recognizable by the fact that the have no real interest in
learning about the topic at hand - they simply want to utter
flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they
exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are
recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in, "Oh, ignore
him, he's just a troll." 3. [Berkeley] Computer lab monitor. A
popular campus job for CS students. Duties include helping
newbies and ensuring that lab policies are followed. Probably
so-called because it involves lurking in dark cavelike
corners.
Some people claim that the troll (sense 1) is properly a
narrower category than flame
bait, that a troll is categorized by containing some
assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial. See also
Troll-O-Meter.
The use of `troll' in either sense is a live metaphor that
readily produces elaborations and combining forms. For example,
one not infrequently sees the warning "Do not feed the troll" as
part of a followup to troll postings.
Node:Troll-O-Meter, Next:tron, Previous:troll, Up:= T
=
Troll-O-Meter n.
Common Usenet jargon for a notional instrument used to measure
the quality of a Usenet troll. "Come
on, everyone! If the above doesn't set off the Troll-O-Meter,
we're going to have to get him to run around with a big blinking
sign saying `I am a troll, I'm only in it for the controversy and
flames' and shooting random gobs of Jell-O(tm) at us before the
point is proven." Mentions of the Troll-O-Meter are often
accompanied by an ASCII picture of an arrow pointing at a numeric
scale. Compare bogometer.
Node:tron, Next:true-hacker, Previous:Troll-O-Meter, Up:= T =
tron v.
[NRL, CMU; prob. fr. the movie "Tron"] To become inaccessible
except via email or talk(1), especially when one is
normally available via telephone or in person. Frequently used in
the past tense, as in: "Ran seems to have tronned on us this
week" or "Gee, Ran, glad you were able to un-tron yourself". One
may also speak of `tron mode'; compare spod.
Note that many dialects of BASIC have a TRON/TROFF command
pair that enables/disables line number tracing; this has no
obvious relationship to the slang usage.
Node:true-hacker, Next:tty, Previous:tron, Up:= T =
true-hacker n.
[analogy with `trufan' from SF fandom] One who exemplifies the
primary values of hacker culture, esp. competence and helpfulness
to other hackers. A high compliment. "He spent 6 hours helping me
bring up UUCP and netnews on my FOOBAR 4000 last week --
manifestly the act of a true-hacker." Compare demigod, oppose munchkin.
Node:tty, Next:tube, Previous:true-hacker, Up:= T =
tty /T-T-Y/, /tit'ee/ n.
The latter pronunciation was primarily ITS, but some Unix
people say it this way as well; this pronunciation is
not considered to have sexual undertones. 1. A terminal
of the teletype variety, characterized by a noisy mechanical
printer, a very limited character set, and poor print quality.
Usage: antiquated (like the TTYs themselves). See also bit-paired keyboard. 2.
[especially Unix] Any terminal at all; sometimes used to refer to
the particular terminal controlling a given job. 3. [Unix] Any
serial port, whether or not the device connected to it is a
terminal; so called because under Unix such devices have names of
the form tty*. Ambiguity between senses 2 and 3 is common but
seldom bothersome.
Node:tube, Next:tube time, Previous:tty, Up:= T =
tube
1. n. A CRT terminal. Never used in the mainstream sense of
TV; real hackers don't watch TV, except for Loony Toons, Rocky
& Bullwinkle, Trek Classic, the Simpsons, and the occasional
cheesy old swashbuckler movie. 2. [IBM] To send a copy of
something to someone else's terminal. "Tube me that note?"
Node:tube time, Next:tunafish, Previous:tube, Up:= T =
tube time n.
Time spent at a terminal or console. More inclusive than
hacking time; commonly used in discussions of what parts of one's
environment one uses most heavily. "I find I'm spending too much
of my tube time reading mail since I started this revision."
Node:tunafish, Next:tune, Previous:tube time, Up:= T =
tunafish n.
In hackish lore, refers to the mutated punchline of an age-old
joke to be found at the bottom of the manual pages of
tunefs(8) in the original BSD 4.2 distribution. The joke was removed in
later releases once commercial sites started using 4.2, but
apparently restored on the 4.4BSD tape and in {Net,Free,Open}BSD.
Tunefs relates to the `tuning' of file-system parameters for
optimum performance, and at the bottom of a few pages of wizardly
inscriptions was a `BUGS' section consisting of the line "You can
tune a file system, but you can't tunafish". Variants of this can
be seen in other BSD versions, though it has been excised from
some versions by humorless management droids. The [nt]roff source for SunOS 4.1.1
contains a comment apparently designed to prevent this: "Take
this out and a Unix Demon will dog your steps from now until the
time_t's wrap around."
[It has since been pointed out that indeed you can tunafish.
Usually at a canning factory... --ESR]
Node:tune, Next:turbo nerd, Previous:tunafish, Up:=
T =
tune vt.
[from automotive or musical usage] To optimize a program or
system for a particular environment, esp. by adjusting numerical
parameters designed as hooks for
tuning, e.g., by changing #define lines in C. One
may `tune for time' (fastest execution), `tune for space' (least
memory use), or `tune for configuration' (most efficient use of
hardware). See bum, hot spot, hand-hacking.
Node:turbo nerd, Next:Turing tar-pit, Previous:tune, Up:= T =
turbo nerd n.
See computer geek.
Node:Turing tar-pit, Next:turist, Previous:turbo nerd, Up:= T =
Turing tar-pit n.
1. A place where anything is possible but nothing of interest
is practical. Alan Turing helped lay the foundations of computer
science by showing that all machines and languages capable of
expressing a certain very primitive set of operations are
logically equivalent in the kinds of computations they can carry
out, and in principle have capabilities that differ only in speed
from those of the most powerful and elegantly designed computers.
However, no machine or language exactly matching Turing's
primitive set has ever been built (other than possibly as a
classroom exercise), because it would be horribly slow and far
too painful to use. A `Turing tar-pit' is any computer language
or other tool that shares this property. That is, it's
theoretically universal -- but in practice, the harder you
struggle to get any real work done, the deeper its inadequacies
suck you in. Compare bondage-and-discipline
language. 2. The perennial holy
wars over whether language A or B is the "most
powerful".
Node:turist, Next:Tux, Previous:Turing tar-pit, Up:= T =
turist /too'rist/ n.
Var. sp. of tourist, q.v. Also
in adjectival form, `turistic'. Poss. influenced by luser and `Turing'.
Node:Tux, Next:tweak, Previous:turist, Up:= T
=
Tux
Tux the Penguin is the official emblem of Linux, This eventuated after a logo contest in
1996, during which Linus Torvalds endorsed the idea of a penguin
logo in a couple of famously funny postings. Linus
explained that he was once bitten by a killer penguin in
Australia and has felt a special affinity for the species ever
since. (Linus has since admitted that he was also thinking of
Feathers McGraw, the evil-genius penguin jewel thief who appeared
in a Wallace & Grommit feature cartoon, "The Wrong
Trousers".)
Larry Ewing designed the
official Tux logo. It has proved a wise choice, amenable to
hundreds of recognizable variations used as emblems of
Linux-related projects, products, and user groups. In fact, Tux
has spawned an entire mythology, of which the Gospel According to
Tux and the mock-epic poem "Tuxowolf" are among the
best-known examples.
There is a `real' Tux - a black-footed penguin resident at the
Bristol Zoo. Several friends of Linux bought a zoo sponsorship
for Linus as a birthday present in 1996.
Node:tweak, Next:tweeter, Previous:Tux, Up:= T =
tweak vt.
1. To change slightly, usually in reference to a value. Also
used synonymously with twiddle. If
a program is almost correct, rather than figure out the precise
problem you might just keep tweaking it until it works. See frobnicate and fudge factor; also see shotgun debugging. 2. To tune or bum a
program; preferred usage in the U.K.
Node:tweeter, Next:TWENEX, Previous:tweak, Up:= T
=
tweeter n.
[University of Waterloo] Syn. perf,
chad (sense 1). This term (like woofer) has been in use at Waterloo since
1972 but is elsewhere unknown. In audio jargon, the word refers
to the treble speaker(s) on a hi-fi.
Node:TWENEX, Next:twiddle, Previous:tweeter, Up:= T
=
TWENEX /twe'neks/ n.
The TOPS-20 operating system by DEC
-- the second proprietary OS for the PDP-10 -- preferred by most
PDP-10 hackers over TOPS-10 (that is, by those who were not ITS or WAITS
partisans). TOPS-20 began in 1969 as Bolt, Beranek & Newman's
TENEX operating system using special paging hardware. By the
early 1970s, almost all of the systems on the ARPANET ran TENEX.
DEC purchased the rights to TENEX from BBN and began work to make
it their own. The first in-house code name for the operating
system was VIROS (VIRtual memory Operating System); when
customers started asking questions, the name was changed to SNARK
so DEC could truthfully deny that there was any project called
VIROS. When the name SNARK became known, the name was briefly
reversed to become KRANS; this was quickly abandoned when someone
objected that `krans' meant `funeral wreath' in Swedish (though
some Swedish speakers have since said it means simply `wreath';
this part of the story may be apocryphal). Ultimately DEC picked
TOPS-20 as the name of the operating system, and it was as
TOPS-20 that it was marketed. The hacker community, mindful of
its origins, quickly dubbed it TWENEX (a contraction of `twenty
TENEX'), even though by this point very little of the original
TENEX code remained (analogously to the differences between
AT&T V6 Unix and BSD). DEC people cringed when they heard
"TWENEX", but the term caught on nevertheless (the written
abbreviation `20x' was also used). TWENEX was successful and very
popular; in fact, there was a period in the early 1980s when it
commanded as fervent a culture of partisans as Unix or ITS -- but
DEC's decision to scrap all the internal rivals to the VAX
architecture and its relatively stodgy VMS OS killed the DEC-20
and put a sad end to TWENEX's brief day in the sun. DEC attempted
to convince TOPS-20 users to convert to VMS, but instead, by the late 1980s, most of the
TOPS-20 hackers had migrated to Unix.
Node:twiddle, Next:twilight zone, Previous:TWENEX, Up:=
T =
twiddle n.
1. Tilde (ASCII 1111110, ~). Also called
`squiggle', `sqiggle' (sic -- pronounced /skig'l/), and
`twaddle', but twiddle is the most common term. 2. A small and
insignificant change to a program. Usually fixes one bug and
generates several new ones (see also shotgun debugging). 3. vt. To
change something in a small way. Bits, for example, are often
twiddled. Twiddling a switch or knobs
implies much less sense of purpose than toggling or tweaking it;
see frobnicate. To speak of
twiddling a bit connotes aimlessness, and at best doesn't specify
what you're doing to the bit; `toggling a bit' has a more
specific meaning (see bit
twiddling, toggle). 4.
Uncommon name for the twirling
baton prompt.
Node:twilight zone, Next:twink, Previous:twiddle, Up:= T
=
twilight zone n. //
[IRC] Notionally, the area of cyberspace where IRC operators live. An op
is said to have a "connection to the twilight zone".
Node:twink, Next:twirling baton, Previous:twilight zone, Up:= T =
twink /twink/ n.
1. [Berkeley] A clue-repellant user; the next step beyond a
clueless one. 2. [UCSC] A read-only user. Also reported on the
Usenet group _soc.motss_; may derive from gay slang for a
cute young thing with nothing upstairs (compare mainstream
`chick').
Node:twirling baton, Next:two pi, Previous:twink, Up:= T
=
twirling baton n.
[PLATO] The overstrike sequence -/|\-/|\- which produces an
animated twirling baton. If you output it with a single backspace
between characters, the baton spins in place. If you output the
sequence BS SP between characters, the baton spins from left to
right. If you output BS SP BS BS between characters, the baton
spins from right to left. This is also occasionally called a
twiddle prompt.
The twirling baton was a popular component of animated
signature files on the pioneering PLATO educational timesharing
system. The archie Internet service is perhaps the
best-known baton program today; it uses the twirling baton as an
idler indicating that the program is working on a query. The
twirling baton is also used as a boot progress indicator on
several BSD variants of Unix; if it stops you're probably going
to have a long and trying day.
Node:two pi, Next:two-to-the-N, Previous:twirling baton, Up:= T =
two pi quant.
The number of years it takes to finish one's thesis. Occurs in
stories in the following form: "He started on his thesis; 2 pi
years later..."
Node:two-to-the-N, Next:twonkie, Previous:two pi, Up:= T
=
two-to-the-N quant.
An amount much larger than N but
smaller than infinity. "I have
2-to-the-N things to do before I can go out for lunch" means you
probably won't show up.
Node:twonkie, Next:u-, Previous:two-to-the-N, Up:= T =
twonkie /twon'kee/ n.
The software equivalent of a Twinkie (a variety of
sugar-loaded junk food, or (in gay slang with a small t) the male
equivalent of `chick'); a useless `feature' added to look sexy
and placate a marketroid
(compare Saturday-night
special). The term may also be related to "The Twonky",
title menace of a classic SF short story by Lewis Padgett (Henry
Kuttner and C. L. Moore), first published in the September 1942
"Astounding Science Fiction" and subsequently much
anthologized.
Node:= U =, Next:= V =, Previous:= T =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= U =
u-:
UBD:
UBE:
UCE:
UDP:
UN*X:
undefined
external reference:
under the hood:
undocumented
feature:
uninteresting:
Unix:
Unix brain damage:
Unix conspiracy:
Unix weenie:
unixism:
unswizzle:
unwind the stack:
unwind-protect:
up:
upload:
upthread:
urchin:
URL:
Usenet:
Usenet Death
Penalty:
user:
user-friendly:
user-obsequious:
userland:
USG Unix:
UTSL:
UUCPNET:
Node:u-, Next:UBD,
Previous:twonkie, Up:= U =
u- pref.
Written shorthand for micro-;
techspeak when applied to metric units, jargon when used
otherwise. Derived from the Greek letter "mu", the first letter
of "micro" (and which letter looks a lot like the English letter
"u").
Node:UBD, Next:UBE, Previous:u-,
Up:= U =
UBD /U-B-D/ n.
[abbreviation for `User Brain Damage'] An abbreviation used to
close out trouble reports obviously due to utter cluelessness on
the user's part. Compare pilot
error; oppose PBD; see also
brain-damaged.
Node:UBE, Next:UCE, Previous:UBD,
Up:= U =
UBE // n.
[abbrev., Unsoliclited Bulk Email] A widespread, more formal
term for email spam. Compare UCE. The UBE term recognizes that spam is
uttered by nonprofit and advocacy groups whose motives are not
commercial.
Node:UCE, Next:UDP, Previous:UBE,
Up:= U =
UCE n.
[abbrev., Unsolicited Commercial Email] A widespread, more
formal term for email spam. Compare
UBE, which may be superseding it.
Node:UDP, Next:UN*X, Previous:UCE,
Up:= U =
UDP /U-D-P/ v.,n.
[Usenet] Abbreviation for Usenet Death Penalty. Common
(probably now more so than the full form), and frequently verbed.
Compare IDP.
Node:UN*X, Next:undefined external
reference, Previous:UDP,
Up:= U =
UN*X n.
Used to refer to the Unix operating system (a trademark of
AT&T, then of Novell, then of SCO, and then of Caldera) in
writing, but avoiding the need for the ugly (TM) typography. Also used to refer to any or all
varieties of Unixoid operating systems. Ironically, lawyers now
say that the requirement for the trademark postfix has no legal
force, but the asterisk usage is entrenched anyhow. It has been
suggested that there may be a psychological connection to
practice in certain religions (especially Judaism) in which the
name of the deity is never written out in full, e.g., `YHWH' or
`G-d' is used. See also glob and splat out.
Node:undefined
external reference, Next:under the hood, Previous:UN*X, Up:= U =
undefined external reference excl.
[Unix] A message from Unix's linker. Used in speech to flag
loose ends or dangling references in an argument or
discussion.
Node:under the hood, Next:undocumented
feature, Previous:undefined external
reference, Up:= U =
under the hood adj.
[hot-rodder talk] 1. Used to introduce the underlying
implementation of a product (hardware, software, or idea).
Implies that the implementation is not intuitively obvious from
the appearance, but the speaker is about to enable the listener
to grok it. "Let's now look under the
hood to see how ...." 2. Can also imply that the
implementation is much simpler than the appearance would
indicate: "Under the hood, we are just fork/execing the shell."
3. Inside a chassis, as in "Under the hood, this baby has a 40MHz
68030!"
Node:undocumented feature,
Next:uninteresting,
Previous:under the
hood, Up:= U =
undocumented feature n.
See feature.
Node:uninteresting, Next:Unix, Previous:undocumented feature, Up:= U =
uninteresting adj.
1. Said of a problem that, although nontrivial, can be solved simply by
throwing sufficient resources at it. 2. Also said of problems for
which a solution would neither advance the state of the art nor
be fun to design and code.
Hackers regard uninteresting problems as intolerable wastes of
time, to be solved (if at all) by lesser mortals. Real
hackers (see toolsmith)
generalize uninteresting problems enough to make them interesting
and solve them -- thus solving the original problem as a special
case (and, it must be admitted, occasionally turning a molehill
into a mountain, or a mountain into a tectonic plate). See WOMBAT, SMOP;
compare toy problem, oppose
interesting.
Node:Unix, Next:Unix brain damage, Previous:uninteresting, Up:= U =
Unix /yoo'niks/ n.
[In the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics"; very early on
it was `UNICS'] (also `UNIX') An interactive time-sharing system
invented in 1969 by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left the Multics
project, originally so he could play games on his scavenged
PDP-7. Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of C, is considered a
co-author of the system. The turning point in Unix's history came
when it was reimplemented almost entirely in C during 1972-1974,
making it the first source-portable OS. Unix subsequently
underwent mutations and expansions at the hands of many different
people, resulting in a uniquely flexible and developer-friendly
environment. By 1991, Unix had become the most widely used
multiuser general-purpose operating system in the world - and
since 1996 the variiant called Linux
has been at the cutting edge of the open source movement. Many people
consider the success of Unix the most important victory yet of
hackerdom over industry opposition (but see Unix weenie and Unix conspiracy for an opposing
point of view). See Version 7,
BSD, USG
Unix, Linux.
Some people are confused over whether this word is
appropriately `UNIX' or `Unix'; both forms are common, and used
interchangeably. Dennis Ritchie says that the `UNIX' spelling
originally happened in CACM's 1974 paper "The UNIX Time-Sharing
System" because "we had a new typesetter and troff had just been invented and we were
intoxicated by being able to produce small caps." Later, dmr
tried to get the spelling changed to `Unix' in a couple of Bell
Labs papers, on the grounds that the word is not acronymic. He
failed, and eventually (his words) "wimped out" on the issue. So,
while the trademark today is `UNIX', both capitalizations are
grounded in ancient usage; the Jargon File uses `Unix' in
deference to dmr's wishes.
Node:Unix brain damage,
Next:Unix conspiracy,
Previous:Unix, Up:= U =
Unix brain damage n.
Something that has to be done to break a network program
(typically a mailer) on a non-Unix system so that it will
interoperate with Unix systems. The hack may qualify as `Unix
brain damage' if the program conforms to published standards and
the Unix program in question does not. Unix brain damage happens
because it is much easier for other (minority) systems to change
their ways to match non-conforming behavior than it is to change
all the hundreds of thousands of Unix systems out there.
An example of Unix brain damage is a kluge in a mail server to recognize bare line
feed (the Unix newline) as an equivalent form to the Internet
standard newline, which is a carriage return followed by a line
feed. Such things can make even a hardened jock weep.
Node:Unix conspiracy, Next:Unix weenie, Previous:Unix brain
damage, Up:= U =
Unix conspiracy n.
[ITS] According to a conspiracy theory long popular among
ITS and TOPS-20 fans, Unix's growth is the result of a
plot, hatched during the 1970s at Bell Labs, whose intent was to
hobble AT&T's competitors by making them dependent upon a
system whose future evolution was to be under AT&T's control.
This would be accomplished by disseminating an operating system
that is apparently inexpensive and easily portable, but also
relatively unreliable and insecure (so as to require continuing
upgrades from AT&T). This theory was lent a substantial
impetus in 1984 by the paper referenced in the back door entry.
In this view, Unix was designed to be one of the first
computer viruses (see virus) -- but a
virus spread to computers indirectly by people and market forces,
rather than directly through disks and networks. Adherents of
this `Unix virus' theory like to cite the fact that the
well-known quotation "Unix is snake oil" was uttered by DEC president Kenneth Olsen shortly before
DEC began actively promoting its own family of Unix workstations.
(Olsen now claims to have been misquoted.)
[If there was ever such a conspiracy, it got thoroughly out of
the plotters' control after 1990. AT&T sold its UNIX
operation to Novell around the same time Linux and other free-UNIX distributions were
beginning to make noise. --ESR]
Node:Unix weenie, Next:unixism, Previous:Unix conspiracy, Up:= U =
Unix weenie n.
[ITS] 1. A derogatory play on `Unix wizard', common among
hackers who use Unix by necessity but would prefer alternatives.
The implication is that although the person in question may
consider mastery of Unix arcana to be a wizardly skill, the only
real skill involved is the ability to tolerate (and the bad taste
to wallow in) the incoherence and needless complexity that is
alleged to infest many Unix programs. "This shell script tries to
parse its arguments in 69 bletcherous ways. It must have been
written by a real Unix weenie." 2. A derogatory term for anyone
who engages in uncritical praise of Unix. Often appearing in the
context "stupid Unix weenie". See Weenix, Unix
conspiracy. See also weenie.
Node:unixism, Next:unswizzle, Previous:Unix weenie, Up:= U =
unixism n.
A piece of code or a coding technique that depends on the
protected multi-tasking environment with relatively low
process-spawn overhead that exists on virtual-memory Unix
systems. Common unixisms include:
gratuitous use of fork(2); the assumption that
certain undocumented but well-known features of Unix libraries
such as stdio(3) are supported elsewhere; reliance
on obscure side-effects of system
calls (use of sleep(2) with a 0 argument to clue the
scheduler that you're willing to give up your time-slice, for
example); the assumption that freshly allocated memory is zeroed;
and the assumption that fragmentation problems won't arise from
never free()ing memory. Compare vaxocentrism; see also New Jersey.
Node:unswizzle, Next:unwind the stack, Previous:unixism, Up:= U =
unswizzle v.
See swizzle.
Node:unwind the stack, Next:unwind-protect, Previous:unswizzle, Up:= U =
unwind the stack vi.
1. [techspeak] During the execution of a procedural language,
one is said to `unwind the stack' from a called procedure up to a
caller when one discards the stack frame and any number of frames
above it, popping back up to the level of the given caller. In C
this is done with longjmp/setjmp, in
LISP or C++ with throw/catch. See also smash the stack. 2. People can
unwind the stack as well, by quickly dealing with a bunch of
problems: "Oh heck, let's do lunch. Just a second while I unwind
my stack."
Node:unwind-protect, Next:up, Previous:unwind the stack, Up:= U =
unwind-protect n.
[MIT: from the name of a LISP operator] A task you must
remember to perform before you leave a place or finish a project.
"I have an unwind-protect to call my advisor."
Node:up, Next:upload, Previous:unwind-protect, Up:= U =
up adj.
1. Working, in order. "The down escalator is up." Oppose down. 2. `bring up': vt. To create a working
version and start it. "They brought up a down system." 3. `come
up' vi. To become ready for production use.
Node:upload, Next:upthread, Previous:up, Up:= U =
upload /uhp'lohd/ v.
1. [techspeak] To transfer programs or data over a digital
communications link from a system near you (espercially a smaller
or peripheral `client' system) to one further away from you
(especially a larger or central `host' system). A transfer in the
other direction is, of course, called a download 2. [speculatively] To move the
essential patterns and algorithms that make up one's mind from
one's brain into a computer. Those who are convinced that such
patterns and algorithms capture the complete essence of the self
view this prospect with pleasant anticipation.
Node:upthread, Next:urchin, Previous:upload, Up:= U
=
upthread adv.
Earlier in the discussion (see thread), i.e., `above'. "As Joe pointed out
upthread, ..." See also followup.
Node:urchin, Next:URL, Previous:upthread, Up:=
U =
urchin n.
See munchkin.
Node:URL, Next:Usenet, Previous:urchin, Up:= U
=
URL /U-R-L/ or /erl/ n.
Uniform Resource Locator, an address widget that identifies a
document or resource on the World Wide Web. This entry is here
primarily to record the fact that the term is commonly pronounced
both /erl/, and /U-R-L/ (the latter predominates in more formal
contexts).
Node:Usenet, Next:Usenet Death Penalty, Previous:URL, Up:= U =
Usenet /yoos'net/ or /yooz'net/ n.
[from `Users' Network'; the original spelling was USENET, but
the mixed-case form is now widely preferred] A distributed bboard (bulletin board) system supported
mainly by Unix machines. Originally implemented in 1979-1980 by
Steve Bellovin, Jim Ellis, Tom Truscott, and Steve Daniel at Duke
University, it has swiftly grown to become international in scope
and is now probably the largest decentralized information utility
in existence. As of early 1996, it hosts over 10,000 newsgroups and an average of over 500
megabytes (the equivalent of several thousand paper pages) of new
technical articles, news, discussion, chatter, and flamage every day (and that leaves out the
graphics...).
By the year the Internet hit the mainstream (1994) the
original UUCP transport for Usenet was fading out of use (see
UUCPNET) - almost all Usenet
connections were over Internet links. A lot of newbies and
journalists began to refer to "Internet newsgroups" as though
Usenet was and always had been just another Internet service.
This ignorance greatly annoys experienced Usenetters.
Node:Usenet Death Penalty,
Next:user, Previous:Usenet, Up:= U =
Usenet Death Penalty
[Usenet] A sanction against sites that habitually spew Usenet
spam. This can be either passive or
active. A passive UDP refers to the dropping of all postings by a
particular domain so as to inhibit propagation. An active UDP
refers to third-party cancellation of all postings by the UDPed
domain. A partial UDP is one which applies only to certain
newsgroups or hierarchies in Usenet. Compare Internet Death Penalty,
with which this term is sometimes confused.
Node:user, Next:user-friendly, Previous:Usenet Death Penalty, Up:= U =
user n.
1. Someone doing `real work' with the computer, using it as a
means rather than an end. Someone who pays to use a computer. See
real user. 2. A programmer who
will believe anything you tell him. One who asks silly questions.
[GLS observes: This is slightly unfair. It is true that users ask
questions (of necessity). Sometimes they are thoughtful or deep.
Very often they are annoying or downright stupid, apparently
because the user failed to think for two seconds or look in the
documentation before bothering the maintainer.] See luser. 3. Someone who uses a program from the
outside, however skillfully, without getting into the internals
of the program. One who reports bugs instead of just going ahead
and fixing them.
The general theory behind this term is that there are two
classes of people who work with a program: there are implementors
(hackers) and lusers. The users are
looked down on by hackers to some extent because they don't
understand the full ramifications of the system in all its glory.
(The few users who do are known as `real winners'.) The term is a
relative one: a skilled hacker may be a user with respect to some
program he himself does not hack. A LISP hacker might be one who
maintains LISP or one who uses LISP (but with the skill of a
hacker). A LISP user is one who uses LISP, whether skillfully or
not. Thus there is some overlap between the two terms; the subtle
distinctions must be resolved by context.
Node:user-friendly, Next:user-obsequious, Previous:user, Up:= U =
user-friendly adj.
Programmer-hostile. Generally used by hackers in a critical
tone, to describe systems that hold the user's hand so
obsessively that they make it painful for the more experienced
and knowledgeable to get any work done. See menuitis, drool-proof paper, Macintrash, user-obsequious.
Node:user-obsequious, Next:userland, Previous:user-friendly, Up:= U =
user-obsequious adj.
Emphatic form of user-friendly. Connotes a system so
verbose, inflexible, and determinedly simple-minded that it is
nearly unusable. "Design a system any fool can use and only a
fool will want to use it." See WIMP environment, Macintrash.
Node:userland, Next:USG Unix, Previous:user-obsequious, Up:= U =
userland n.
Anywhere outside the kernel. "That code belongs in userland."
This term has been in common use among Linux kernel hackers since at leat 1997, and
seems to have originated in that community.
Node:USG Unix, Next:UTSL, Previous:userland, Up:=
U =
USG Unix /U-S-G yoo'niks/ n.,obs.
Refers to AT&T Unix commercial versions after Version 7, especially System III and
System V releases 1, 2, and 3. So called because during most of
the lifespan of those versions AT&T's support crew was called
the `Unix Support Group', but it is applied to version that pre-
and post-dated the USG group but were of the same lineage. This
term is now historical. See BSD, Unix.
Node:UTSL, Next:UUCPNET, Previous:USG Unix, Up:= U =
UTSL // n.
[Unix] On-line acronym for `Use the Source, Luke' (a pun on
Obi-Wan Kenobi's "Use the Force, Luke!" in "Star Wars") --
analogous to RTFS (sense 1), but more
polite. This is a common way of suggesting that someone would be
better off reading the source code that supports whatever feature
is causing confusion, rather than making yet another futile pass
through the manuals, or broadcasting questions on Usenet that
haven't attracted wizards to answer
them.
Once upon a time in elder
days, everyone running Unix had source. After 1978,
AT&T's policy tightened up, so this objurgation was in theory
appropriately directed only at associates of some outfit with a
Unix source license. In practice, bootlegs of Unix source code
(made precisely for reference purposes) were so ubiquitous that
one could utter it at almost anyone on the network without
concern.
Nowadays, free Unix clones have become widely enough
distributed that anyone can read source legally. The most widely
distributed is certainly Linux, with variants of the NET/2 and
4.4BSD distributions running second. Cheap commercial Unixes with
source such as BSD/OS are accelerating this trend.
Node:UUCPNET, Next:V7, Previous:UTSL,
Up:= U =
UUCPNET n. obs.
The store-and-forward network consisting of all the world's
connected Unix machines (and others running some clone of the
UUCP (Unix-to-Unix CoPy) software). Any machine reachable only
via a bang path is on UUCPNET.
This term has been rendered obsolescent by the spread of cheap
Internet connections in the 1990s; the few remaining UUCP links
are essentially slow channels to the Internet rather than an
autonomous network. See network
address.
Node:= V =, Next:= W =, Previous:= U =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= V =
V7:
vadding:
vanilla:
vanity domain:
vannevar:
vaporware:
var:
vaston:
VAX:
VAXectomy:
VAXen:
vaxherd:
vaxism:
vaxocentrism:
vdiff:
veeblefester:
velveeta:
ventilator card:
Venus flytrap:
verbage:
verbiage:
Version 7:
vgrep:
vi:
video toaster:
videotex:
virgin:
virtual:
virtual beer:
virtual Friday:
virtual reality:
virtual shredder:
virus:
visionary:
VMS:
voice:
voice-net:
voodoo programming:
VR:
Vulcan nerve
pinch:
vulture capitalist:
Node:V7, Next:vadding, Previous:UUCPNET, Up:= V
=
V7 /V'sev'en/ n.
See Version 7.
Node:vadding, Next:vanilla, Previous:V7, Up:= V =
vadding /vad'ing/ n.
[from VAD, a permutation of ADV (i.e., ADVENT), used to avoid a particular admin's continual search-and-destroy sweeps for
the game] A leisure-time activity of certain hackers involving
the covert exploration of the `secret' parts of large buildings
-- basements, roofs, freight elevators, maintenance crawlways,
steam tunnels, and the like. A few go so far as to learn
locksmithing in order to synthesize vadding keys. The verb is `to
vad' (compare phreaking; see also
hack, sense 9). This term dates from
the late 1970s, before which such activity was simply called
`hacking'; the older usage is still prevalent at MIT.
The most extreme and dangerous form of vadding is `elevator
rodeo', a.k.a. `elevator surfing', a sport played by wrasslin'
down a thousand-pound elevator car with a 3-foot piece of string,
and then exploiting this mastery in various stimulating ways
(such as elevator hopping, shaft exploration, rat-racing, and the
ever-popular drop experiments). Kids, don't try this at home! See
also hobbit (sense 2).
Node:vanilla, Next:vanity domain, Previous:vadding, Up:= V =
vanilla adj.
[from the default flavor of ice cream in the U.S.] Ordinary
flavor, standard. When used of food,
very often does not mean that the food is flavored with vanilla
extract! For example, `vanilla wonton soup' means ordinary wonton
soup, as opposed to hot-and-sour wonton soup. Applied to hardware
and software, as in "Vanilla Version 7 Unix can't run on a
vanilla 11/34." Also used to orthogonalize chip nomenclature; for
instance, a 74V00 means what TI calls a 7400, as distinct from a
74LS00, etc. This word differs from canonical in that the latter means
`default', whereas vanilla simply means `ordinary'. For example,
when hackers go on a great-wall,
hot-and-sour soup is the canonical soup to get (because that is what
most of them usually order) even though it isn't the vanilla
(wonton) soup.
Node:vanity domain, Next:vannevar, Previous:vanilla, Up:= V =
vanity domain n.
[common; from `vanity plate' as in car license plate] An
Internet domain, particularly in the .com or .org top-level
domains, apparently created for no reason other than boosting the
creator's ego.
Node:vannevar, Next:vaporware, Previous:vanity domain, Up:= V =
vannevar /van'*-var/ n.
A bogus technological prediction or a foredoomed engineering
concept, esp. one that fails by implicitly assuming that
technologies develop linearly, incrementally, and in isolation
from one another when in fact the learning curve tends to be
highly nonlinear, revolutions are common, and competition is the
rule. The prototype was Vannevar Bush's prediction of `electronic
brains' the size of the Empire State Building with a
Niagara-Falls-equivalent cooling system for their tubes and
relays, a prediction made at a time when the semiconductor effect
had already been demonstrated. Other famous vannevars have
included magnetic-bubble memory, LISP machines, videotex, and a paper from the late 1970s
that computed a purported ultimate limit on areal density for ICs
that was in fact less than the routine densities of 5 years
later.
Node:vaporware, Next:var, Previous:vannevar, Up:=
V =
vaporware /vay'pr-weir/ n.
Products announced far in advance of any release (which may or
may not actually take place). See also brochureware.
Node:var, Next:vaston, Previous:vaporware, Up:= V =
var /veir/ or /var/ n.
Short for `variable'. Compare arg,
param.
Node:vaston, Next:VAX, Previous:var,
Up:= V =
vaston n.
[Durham, UK] The unit of `load average'. A measure of how much
work a computer is doing. A meter displaying this as a function
of time is known as a `vastometer'. First used during a computing
practical in December 1996.
Node:VAX, Next:VAXectomy, Previous:vaston, Up:= V
=
VAX /vaks/ n.
1. [from Virtual Address eXtension] The most successful
minicomputer design in industry history, possibly excepting its
immediate ancestor, the PDP-11. Between its release in 1978 and
its eclipse by killer micros
after about 1986, the VAX was probably the hacker's favorite
machine of them all, esp. after the 1982 release of 4.2 BSD Unix
(see BSD). Esp. noted for its large,
assembler-programmer-friendly instruction set -- an asset that
became a liability after the RISC revolution. 2. A major brand of
vacuum cleaner in Britain. Cited here because its sales pitch,
"Nothing sucks like a VAX!" became a sort of battle-cry of RISC
partisans. It is even sometimes claimed that DEC actually entered
a cross-licensing deal with the vacuum-Vax people that allowed
them to market VAX computers in the U.K. in return for not
challenging the vacuum cleaner trademark in the U.S.
A rival brand actually pioneered the slogan: its original form
was "Nothing sucks like Electrolux". It has apparently become a
classic example (used in advertising textbooks) of the perils of
not knowing the local idiom. But in 1996, the press manager of
Electrolux AB, while confirming that the company used this slogan
in the late 1960s, also tells us that their marketing people were
fully aware of the possible double entendre and intended it to
gain attention.
And gain attention it did - the VAX-vacuum-cleaner people
thought the slogan a sufficiently good idea to copy it. Several
British hackers report that VAX's promotions used it in
1986-1987, and we have one report from a New Zealander that the
infamous slogan surfaced there in TV ads for the product in
1992.
Node:VAXectomy, Next:VAXen, Previous:VAX, Up:= V =
VAXectomy /vak-sek't*-mee/ n.
[by analogy with `vasectomy'] A VAX removal. DEC's Microvaxen, especially, are much slower than
newer RISC-based workstations such as the SPARC. Thus, if one
knows one has a replacement coming, VAX removal can be cause for
celebration.
Node:VAXen, Next:vaxherd, Previous:VAXectomy, Up:= V =
VAXen /vak'sn/ n.
[from `oxen', perhaps influenced by `vixen'] (alt. `vaxen')
The plural canonically used among hackers for the DEC VAX computers. "Our installation has four
PDP-10s and twenty vaxen." See boxen.
Node:vaxherd, Next:vaxism, Previous:VAXen, Up:= V
=
vaxherd /vaks'herd/ n. obs.
[from `oxherd'] A VAX operator. The image is reinforced
because VAXen actually did tend to come in herds, technically
known as `clusters'.
Node:vaxism, Next:vaxocentrism, Previous:vaxherd, Up:= V =
vaxism /vak'sizm/ n.
A piece of code that exhibits vaxocentrism in critical areas. Compare
PC-ism, unixism.
Node:vaxocentrism, Next:vdiff, Previous:vaxism, Up:= V
=
vaxocentrism /vak`soh-sen'trizm/ n.
[analogy with `ethnocentrism'] A notional disease said to
afflict C programmers who persist in coding according to certain
assumptions that are valid (esp. under Unix) on VAXen but false elsewhere. Among these are:
The assumption that dereferencing a null pointer is safe
because it is all bits 0, and location 0 is readable and 0.
Problem: this may instead cause an illegal-address trap on
non-VAXen, and even on VAXen under OSes other than BSD Unix.
Usually this is an implicit assumption of sloppy code (forgetting
to check the pointer before using it), rather than deliberate
exploitation of a misfeature.
The assumption that characters are signed.
The assumption that a pointer to any one type can freely be
cast into a pointer to any other type. A stronger form of this is
the assumption that all pointers are the same size and format,
which means you don't have to worry about getting the casts or
types correct in calls. Problem: this fails on word-oriented
machines or others with multiple pointer formats.
The assumption that the parameters of a routine are stored in
memory, on a stack, contiguously, and in strictly ascending or
descending order. Problem: this fails on many RISC
architectures.
The assumption that pointer and integer types are the same
size, and that pointers can be stuffed into integer variables
(and vice-versa) and drawn back out without being truncated or
mangled. Problem: this fails on segmented architectures or
word-oriented machines with funny pointer formats.
The assumption that a data type of any size may begin at any
byte address in memory (for example, that you can freely
construct and dereference a pointer to a word- or greater-sized
object at an odd char address). Problem: this fails on many (esp.
RISC) architectures better optimized for HLL execution speed, and can cause an illegal
address fault or bus error.
The (related) assumption that there is no padding at the end
of types and that in an array you can thus step right from the
last byte of a previous component to the first byte of the next
one. This is not only machine- but compiler-dependent.
The assumption that memory address space is globally flat and
that the array reference foo[-1] is necessarily
valid. Problem: this fails at 0, or other places on
segment-addressed machines like Intel chips (yes, segmentation is
universally considered a brain-damaged way to design machines
(see moby), but that is a separate
issue).
The assumption that objects can be arbitrarily large with no
special considerations. Problem: this fails on segmented
architectures and under non-virtual-addressing environments.
The assumption that the stack can be as large as memory.
Problem: this fails on segmented architectures or almost anything
else without virtual addressing and a paged stack.
The assumption that bits and addressable units within an
object are ordered in the same way and that this order is a
constant of nature. Problem: this fails on big-endian machines.
The assumption that it is meaningful to compare pointers to
different objects not located within the same array, or to
objects of different types. Problem: the former fails on
segmented architectures, the latter on word-oriented machines or
others with multiple pointer formats.
The assumption that an int is 32 bits, or
(nearly equivalently) the assumption that sizeof(int) ==
sizeof(long). Problem: this fails on PDP-11s, 286-based
systems and even on 386 and 68000 systems under some compilers
(and on 64-bit systems like the Alpha, of course).
The assumption that argv[] is writable. Problem:
this fails in many embedded-systems C environments and even under
a few flavors of Unix.
Note that a programmer can validly be accused of vaxocentrism
even if he or she has never seen a VAX. Some of these assumptions
(esp. 2-5) were valid on the PDP-11, the original C machine, and
became endemic years before the VAX. The terms `vaxocentricity'
and `all-the-world's-a-VAX syndrome' have been used
synonymously.
Node:vdiff, Next:veeblefester, Previous:vaxocentrism, Up:= V =
vdiff /vee'dif/ v.,n.
Visual diff. The operation of finding differences between two
files by eyeball search.
The term `optical diff' has also been reported, and is sometimes
more specifically used for the act of superimposing two nearly
identical printouts on one another and holding them up to a light
to spot differences. Though this method is poor for detecting
omissions in the `rear' file, it can also be used with printouts
of graphics, a claim few if any diff programs can make. See diff.
Node:veeblefester, Next:velveeta, Previous:vdiff, Up:= V
=
veeblefester /vee'b*l-fes`tr/ n.
[from the "Born Loser" comix via Commodore; prob. originally
from "Mad" Magazine's `Veeblefetzer' parodies beginning in #15,
1954] Any obnoxious person engaged in the (alleged) professions
of marketing or management. Antonym of hacker. Compare suit, marketroid.
Node:velveeta, Next:ventilator card, Previous:veeblefester, Up:= V =
velveeta n.
[Usenet: by analogy with spam. The
trade name Velveeta is attached in the U.S. to a particularly
nasty processed-cheese spread.] Also knows as ECP; a message that is excessively cross-posted,
as opposed to spam which is too
frequently posted. This term is widely recognized but not
commonly used; most people refer to both kinds of abuse as spam.
Compare jello.
Node:ventilator card, Next:Venus flytrap, Previous:velveeta, Up:= V =
ventilator card n.
Syn. lace card.
Node:Venus flytrap, Next:verbage, Previous:ventilator card, Up:= V =
Venus flytrap n.
[after the insect-eating plant] See firewall machine.
Node:verbage, Next:verbiage, Previous:Venus flytrap, Up:= V =
verbage /ver'b*j/ n.
A deliberate misspelling and mispronunciation of verbiage that assimilates it to the word
`garbage'. Compare content-free. More pejorative than
`verbiage'.
Node:verbiage, Next:Version 7, Previous:verbage, Up:= V
=
verbiage n.
When the context involves a software or hardware system, this
refers to documentation. This
term borrows the connotations of mainstream `verbiage' to suggest
that the documentation is of marginal utility and that the
motives behind its production have little to do with the
ostensible subject.
Node:Version 7, Next:vgrep, Previous:verbiage, Up:=
V =
Version 7 alt. V7 /vee' se'vn/ n.
The first widely distributed version of Unix, released unsupported by Bell Labs in 1978.
The term is used adjectivally to describe Unix features and
programs that date from that release, and are thus guaranteed to
be present and portable in all Unix versions (this was the
standard gauge of portability before the POSIX and IEEE 1003
standards). Note that this usage does not derive from
the release being the "seventh version of Unix"; research Unix
at Bell Labs has traditionally been numbered according to the
edition of the associated documentation. Indeed, only the
widely-distributed Sixth and Seventh Editions are widely known as
V[67]; the OS that might today be known as `V10' is instead known
in full as "Tenth Edition Research Unix" or just "Tenth Edition"
for short. For this reason, "V7" is often read by cognoscenti as
"Seventh Edition". See BSD, USG Unix, Unix.
Some old-timers impatient with commercialization and kernel bloat
still maintain that V7 was the Last True Unix.
Node:vgrep, Next:vi, Previous:Version 7, Up:= V =
vgrep /vee'grep/ v.,n.
Visual grep. The operation of finding patterns in a file
optically rather than digitally (also called an `optical grep').
See grep; compare vdiff.
Node:vi, Next:video toaster, Previous:vgrep, Up:= V
=
vi /V-I/, not /vi:/ and never /siks/
n.
[from `Visual Interface'] A screen editor crufted together by
Bill Joy for an early BSD release.
Became the _de facto_ standard Unix editor and a nearly
undisputed hacker favorite outside of MIT until the rise of EMACS after about 1984. Tends to frustrate
new users no end, as it will neither take commands while
expecting input text nor vice versa, and the default setup on
older versions provides no indication of which mode the editor is
in (years ago, a correspondent reported that he has often heard
the editor's name pronounced /vi:l/; there is now a vi clone
named `vile'). Nevertheless vi (and variants such as vim and
elvis) is still widely used (about half the respondents in a 1991
Usenet poll preferred it), and even EMACS fans often resort to it
as a mail editor and for small editing jobs (mainly because it
starts up faster than the bulkier versions of EMACS). See holy wars.
Node:video toaster, Next:videotex, Previous:vi, Up:= V =
video toaster n.
Historically, an Amiga fitted with a particular line of
special video effects hardware from NewTek - long a popular
platform at special-effects and video production houses. More
generally, any computer system designed specifically for video
production and manipulation. Compare web toaster and see toaster.
Node:videotex, Next:virgin, Previous:video toaster, Up:= V =
videotex n. obs.
An electronic service offering people the privilege of paying
to read the weather on their television screens instead of having
somebody read it to them for free while they brush their teeth.
The idea bombed everywhere it wasn't government-subsidized,
because by the time videotex was practical the installed base of
personal computers could hook up to timesharing services and do
the things for which videotex might have been worthwhile better
and cheaper. Videotex planners badly overestimated both the
appeal of getting information from a computer and the cost of
local intelligence at the user's end. Like the gorilla arm effect, this has been a
cautionary tale to hackers ever since. See also vannevar.
Node:virgin, Next:virtual, Previous:videotex, Up:=
V =
virgin adj.
Unused; pristine; in a known initial state. "Let's bring up a
virgin system and see if it crashes again." (Esp. useful after
contracting a virus through SEX.) Also, by extension, buffers and the
like within a program that have not yet been used.
Node:virtual, Next:virtual beer, Previous:virgin, Up:=
V =
virtual adj.
[via the technical term `virtual memory', prob. from the term
`virtual image' in optics] 1. Common alternative to logical; often used to refer to the artificial
objects (like addressable virtual memory larger than physical
memory) simulated by a computer system as a convenient way to
manage access to shared resources. 2. Simulated; performing the
functions of something that isn't really there. An imaginative
child's doll may be a virtual playmate. Oppose real.
Node:virtual beer, Next:virtual Friday, Previous:virtual, Up:= V =
virtual beer n.
Praise or thanks. Used universally in the Linux community.
Originally this term signified cash, after a famous incident in
which some some Britishers who wanted to buy Linus a beer and
sent him money to Finland to do so.
Node:virtual Friday, Next:virtual reality, Previous:virtual beer, Up:= V =
virtual Friday n.
(also `logical Friday') The last day before an extended
weekend, if that day is not a `real' Friday. For example, the
U.S. holiday Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday. The next day
is often also a holiday or taken as an extra day off, in which
case Wednesday of that week is a virtual Friday (and Thursday is
a virtual Saturday, as is Friday). There are also `virtual
Mondays' that are actually Tuesdays, after the three-day weekends
associated with many national holidays in the U.S.
Node:virtual reality, Next:virtual shredder,
Previous:virtual
Friday, Up:= V =
virtual reality n.
1. Computer simulations that use 3-D graphics and devices such
as the Dataglove to allow the user to interact with the
simulation. See cyberspace. 2. A
form of network interaction incorporating aspects of role-playing
games, interactive theater, improvisational comedy, and `true
confessions' magazines. In a virtual reality forum (such as
Usenet's _alt.callahans_ newsgroup or the MUD experiments on Internet), interaction between
the participants is written like a shared novel complete with
scenery, `foreground characters' that may be personae utterly
unlike the people who write them, and common `background
characters' manipulable by all parties. The one iron law is that
you may not write irreversible changes to a character without the
consent of the person who `owns' it. Otherwise anything goes. See
bamf, cyberspace, teledildonics.
Node:virtual shredder, Next:virus, Previous:virtual reality, Up:= V =
virtual shredder n.
The jargonic equivalent of the bit
bucket at shops using IBM's VM/CMS operating system.
VM/CMS officially supports a whole bestiary of virtual card
readers, virtual printers, and other phantom devices; these are
used to supply some of the same capabilities Unix gets from pipes
and I/O redirection.
Node:virus, Next:visionary, Previous:virtual shredder, Up:= V =
virus n.
[from the obvious analogy with biological viruses, via SF] A
cracker program that searches out other programs and `infects'
them by embedding a copy of itself in them, so that they become
Trojan horses. When these
programs are executed, the embedded virus is executed too, thus
propagating the `infection'. This normally happens invisibly to
the user. Unlike a worm, a virus
cannot infect other computers without assistance. It is
propagated by vectors such as humans trading programs with their
friends (see SEX). The virus may do
nothing but propagate itself and then allow the program to run
normally. Usually, however, after propagating silently for a
while, it starts doing things like writing cute messages on the
terminal or playing strange tricks with the display (some viruses
include nice display hacks).
Many nasty viruses, written by particularly perversely minded
crackers, do irreversible damage,
like nuking all the user's files.
In the 1990s, viruses became a serious problem, especially
among Windows users; the lack of security on these machines
enables viruses to spread easily, even infecting the operating
system (Unix machines, by contrast, are immune to such attacks).
The production of special anti-virus software has become an
industry, and a number of exaggerated media reports have caused
outbreaks of near hysteria among users; many lusers tend to blame everything that
doesn't work as they had expected on virus attacks. Accordingly,
this sense of `virus' has passed not only into techspeak but into
also popular usage (where it is often incorrectly used to denote
a worm or even a Trojan horse). See phage; compare back
door; see also Unix
conspiracy.
Node:visionary, Next:VMS, Previous:virus, Up:= V
=
visionary n.
1. One who hacks vision, in the sense of an Artificial
Intelligence researcher working on the problem of getting
computers to `see' things using TV cameras. (There isn't any
problem in sending information from a TV camera to a computer.
The problem is, how can the computer be programmed to make use of
the camera information? See SMOP,
AI-complete.) 2. [IBM] One who
reads the outside literature. At IBM, apparently, such a penchant
is viewed with awe and wonder.
Node:VMS, Next:voice, Previous:visionary, Up:= V =
VMS /V-M-S/ n.
DEC's proprietary operating system
for its VAX minicomputer; one of the seven or so environments
that loom largest in hacker folklore. Many Unix fans generously
concede that VMS would probably be the hacker's favorite
commercial OS if Unix didn't exist; though true, this makes VMS
fans furious. One major hacker gripe with VMS concerns its
slowness -- thus the following limerick:
There once was a system called VMS
Of cycles by no means abstemious.
It's chock-full of hacks
And runs on a VAX
And makes my poor stomach all squeamious.
--- The Great Quux
See also VAX, TOPS-10, TOPS-20, Unix,
runic.
Node:voice, Next:voice-net, Previous:VMS, Up:= V =
voice vt.
To phone someone, as opposed to emailing them or connecting in
talk mode. "I'm busy now; I'll
voice you later."
Node:voice-net, Next:voodoo programming, Previous:voice, Up:= V =
voice-net n.
Hackish way of referring to the telephone system, analogizing
it to a digital network. Usenet sig
blocks not uncommonly include the sender's phone next to
a "Voice:" or "Voice-Net:" header; common variants of this are
"Voicenet" and "V-Net". Compare paper-net, snail-mail.
Node:voodoo programming,
Next:VR, Previous:voice-net, Up:= V =
voodoo programming n.
[from George Bush's "voodoo economics"] 1. The use by guess or
cookbook of an obscure or hairy system, feature, or algorithm that
one does not truly understand. The implication is that the
technique may not work, and if it doesn't, one will never know
why. Almost synonymous with black
magic, except that black magic typically isn't documented
and nobody understands it. Compare magic, deep
magic, heavy
wizardry, rain dance,
cargo cult
programming, wave
a dead chicken. 2. Things programmers do that they know
shouldn't work but they try anyway, and which sometimes actually
work, such as recompiling everything.
Node:VR, Next:Vulcan nerve pinch, Previous:voodoo
programming, Up:= V =
VR // [MUD] n.
On-line abbrev for virtual
reality, as opposed to RL.
Node:Vulcan nerve pinch,
Next:vulture
capitalist, Previous:VR,
Up:= V =
Vulcan nerve pinch n.
[from the old "Star Trek" TV series via Commodore Amiga
hackers] The keyboard combination that forces a soft-boot or jump
to ROM monitor (on machines that support such a feature). On PC
clones this is Ctrl-Alt-Del; on Suns, L1-A; on Macintoshes, it is
- or
--! Also called three-finger salute. Compare
quadruple bucky.
Node:vulture capitalist,
Next:W2K bug, Previous:Vulcan nerve
pinch, Up:= V =
vulture capitalist n.
Pejorative hackerism for `venture capitalist', deriving from
the common practice of pushing contracts that deprive inventors
of control over their own innovations and most of the money they
ought to have made from them.
Node:= W =, Next:= X =, Previous:= V =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= W =
W2K bug:
wabbit:
WAITS:
waldo:
walk:
walk off the end
of:
walking drives:
wall:
wall follower:
wall time:
wall wart:
wallpaper:
wango:
wank:
wannabee:
war dialer:
-ware:
warez:
warez d00dz:
warez kiddies:
warlording:
warm boot:
wart:
washing machine:
washing software:
water MIPS:
wave a dead
chicken:
weasel:
web pointer:
web toaster:
webify:
webmaster:
web ring:
wedged:
wedgie:
wedgitude:
weeble:
weeds:
weenie:
Weenix:
well-behaved:
well-connected:
wetware:
whack:
whack-a-mole:
whacker:
whales:
whalesong:
What's a spline?:
wheel:
wheel bit:
wheel of
reincarnation:
wheel wars:
White Book:
whitelist:
whizzy:
wibble:
WIBNI:
widget:
wiggles:
WIMP environment:
win:
win big:
win win:
Winchester:
windoid:
window shopping:
Windoze:
winged comments:
winkey:
winnage:
winner:
winnitude:
Wintel:
wired:
wirehead:
wirewater:
wish list:
within delta of:
within epsilon of:
wizard:
Wizard Book:
wizard hat:
wizard mode:
wizardly:
wok-on-the-wall:
womb box:
WOMBAT:
womble:
wonky:
woofer:
workaround:
working as
designed:
worm:
wormhole:
wound around the
axle:
wrap around:
write-only code:
write-only
language:
write-only memory:
Wrong Thing:
wugga wugga:
wumpus:
WYSIAYG:
WYSIWYG:
Node:W2K bug, Next:wabbit, Previous:vulture capitalist, Up:= W =
W2K bug
[from `Y2K bug' for the Year 2000 problem] The upcoming
deployment of Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system, which
hackers generally expect will be among the worst train wrecks in
the history of software engineering. Such is the power of
Microsoft marketing, however, that it is also expected this will
not become obvious until it has incurred hundreds of millions of
dollars in downtime and lost opportunity costs.
Node:wabbit, Next:WAITS, Previous:W2K bug, Up:=
W =
wabbit /wab'it/ n.
[almost certainly from Elmer Fudd's immortal line "You
wascawwy wabbit!"] 1. A legendary early hack reported on a
System/360 at RPI and elsewhere around 1978; this may have
descended (if only by inspiration) from a hack called RABBITS
reported from 1969 on a Burroughs 5500 at the University of
Washington Computer Center. The program would make two copies of
itself every time it was run, eventually crashing the system. 2.
By extension, any hack that includes infinite self-replication
but is not a virus or worm. See fork
bomb and rabbit job,
see also cookie
monster.
Node:WAITS, Next:waldo, Previous:wabbit, Up:= W
=
WAITS /wayts/ n.
The mutant cousin of TOPS-10
used on a handful of systems at SAIL
up to 1990. There was never an `official' expansion of WAITS (the
name itself having been arrived at by a rather sideways process),
but it was frequently glossed as `West-coast Alternative to ITS'.
Though WAITS was less visible than ITS, there was frequent
exchange of people and ideas between the two communities, and
innovations pioneered at WAITS exerted enormous indirect
influence. The early screen modes of EMACS, for example, were directly inspired by
WAITS's `E' editor -- one of a family of editors that were the
first to do `real-time editing', in which the editing commands
were invisible and where one typed text at the point of
insertion/overwriting. The modern style of multi-region windowing
is said to have originated there, and WAITS alumni at XEROX PARC
and elsewhere played major roles in the developments that led to
the XEROX Star, the Macintosh, and the Sun workstations. Also
invented there were bucky bits
-- thus, the ALT key on every IBM PC is a WAITS legacy. One WAITS
feature very notable in pre-Web days was a news-wire interface
that allowed WAITS hackers to read, store, and filter AP and UPI
dispatches from their terminals; the system also featured a
still-unusual level of support for what is now called
`multimedia' computing, allowing analog audio and video signals
to be switched to programming terminals.
Node:waldo, Next:walk, Previous:WAITS, Up:= W
=
waldo /wol'doh/ n.
[From Robert A. Heinlein's story "Waldo"] 1. A mechanical
agent, such as a gripper arm, controlled by a human limb. When
these were developed for the nuclear industry in the mid-1940s
they were named after the invention described by Heinlein in the
story, which he wrote in 1942. Now known by the more generic term
`telefactoring', this technology is of intense interest to NASA
for tasks like space station maintenance. 2. At Harvard
(particularly by Tom Cheatham and students), this is used instead
of foobar as a metasyntactic
variable and general nonsense word. See foo, bar, foobar, quux.
Node:walk, Next:walk off the end of,
Previous:waldo, Up:= W =
walk n.,vt.
Traversal of a data structure, especially an array or
linked-list data structure in core.
See also codewalker, silly walk, clobber.
Node:walk off the end
of, Next:walking
drives, Previous:walk,
Up:= W =
walk off the end of vt.
To run past the end of an array, list, or medium after
stepping through it -- a good way to land in trouble. Often the
result of an off-by-one
error. Compare clobber,
roach, smash the stack.
Node:walking drives, Next:wall, Previous:walk off the end of, Up:= W =
walking drives n.
An occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk drives back in the
days when they were huge, clunky washing machines. Those old dinosaur parts carried terrific angular
momentum; the combination of a misaligned spindle or worn
bearings and stick-slip interactions with the floor could cause
them to `walk' across a room, lurching alternate corners forward
a couple of millimeters at a time. There is a legend about a
drive that walked over to the only door to the computer room and
jammed it shut; the staff had to cut a hole in the wall in order
to get at it! Walking could also be induced by certain patterns
of drive access (a fast seek across the whole width of the disk,
followed by a slow seek in the other direction). Some bands of
old-time hackers figured out how to induce disk-accessing
patterns that would do this to particular drive models and held
disk-drive races.
Node:wall, Next:wall follower, Previous:walking drives, Up:= W =
wall interj.
[WPI] 1. An indication of confusion, usually spoken with a
quizzical tone: "Wall??" 2. A request for further explication.
Compare octal forty. 3.
[Unix, from `write all'] v. To send a message to everyone
currently logged in, esp. with the wall(8) utility.
It is said that sense 1 came from the idiom `like talking to a
blank wall'. It was originally used in situations where, after
you had carefully answered a question, the questioner stared at
you blankly, clearly having understood nothing that was
explained. You would then throw out a "Hello, wall?" to elicit
some sort of response from the questioner. Later, confused
questioners began voicing "Wall?" themselves.
Node:wall follower, Next:wall time, Previous:wall, Up:= W =
wall follower n.
A person or algorithm that compensates for lack of
sophistication or native stupidity by efficiently following some
simple procedure shown to have been effective in the past. Used
of an algorithm, this is not necessarily pejorative; it recalls
`Harvey Wallbanger', the winning robot in an early AI contest
(named, of course, after the cocktail). Harvey successfully
solved mazes by keeping a `finger' on one wall and running till
it came out the other end. This was inelegant, but it was
mathematically guaranteed to work on simply-connected mazes --
and, in fact, Harvey outperformed more sophisticated robots that
tried to `learn' each maze by building an internal representation
of it. Used of humans, the term is pejorative and
implies an uncreative, bureaucratic, by-the-book mentality. See
also code grinder; compare
droid.
Node:wall time, Next:wall wart, Previous:wall follower, Up:= W =
wall time n.
(also `wall clock time') 1. `Real world' time (what the clock
on the wall shows), as opposed to the system clock's idea of
time. 2. The real running time of a program, as opposed to the
number of ticks required to execute it
(on a timesharing system these always differ, as no one program
gets all the ticks, and on multiprocessor systems with good
thread support one may get more processor time than real
time).
Node:wall wart, Next:wallpaper, Previous:wall time, Up:= W =
wall wart n.
A small power-supply brick with integral male plug, designed
to plug directly into a wall outlet; called a `wart' because when
installed on a power strip it tends to block up at least one more
socket than it uses.. These are frequently associated with modems
and other small electronic devices which would become
unacceptably bulky or hot if they had power supplies on board
(there are other reasons as well having to do with the cost of UL
certification).
Node:wallpaper, Next:wango, Previous:wall wart, Up:= W =
wallpaper n.
1. A file containing a listing (e.g., assembly listing) or a
transcript, esp. a file containing a transcript of all or part of
a login session. (The idea was that the paper for such listings
was essentially good only for wallpaper, as evidenced at
Stanford, where it was used to cover windows.) Now rare, esp.
since other systems have developed other terms for it (e.g.,
PHOTO on TWENEX). However, the Unix world doesn't have an
equivalent term, so perhaps wallpaper will take hold there. The term
probably originated on ITS, where the commands to begin and end
transcript files were :WALBEG and
:WALEND, with default file WALL PAPER
(the space was a path delimiter). 2. The background pattern used
on graphical workstations (this is techspeak under the `Windows'
graphical user interface to MS-DOS). 3. `wallpaper file' n. The
file that contains the wallpaper information before it is
actually printed on paper. (Even if you don't intend ever to
produce a real paper copy of the file, it is still called a
wallpaper file.)
Node:wango, Next:wank, Previous:wallpaper, Up:= W =
wango /wang'goh/ n.
Random bit-level grovelling going
on in a system during some unspecified operation. Often used in
combination with mumble. For
example: "You start with the `.o' file, run it through this
postprocessor that does mumble-wango -- and it comes out a snazzy
object-oriented executable."
Node:wank, Next:wannabee, Previous:wango, Up:= W
=
wank /wangk/ n.,v.,adj.
[Columbia University: prob. by mutation from Commonwealth
slang v. `wank', to masturbate] Used much as hack is elsewhere, as a noun denoting a clever
technique or person or the result of such cleverness. May
describe (negatively) the act of hacking for hacking's sake
("Quit wanking, let's go get supper!") or (more positively) a
wizard. Adj. `wanky' describes
something particularly clever (a person, program, or algorithm).
Conversations can also get wanky when there are too many wanks
involved. This excess wankiness is signalled by an overload of
the `wankometer' (compare bogometer). When the wankometer overloads,
the conversation's subject must be changed, or all non-wanks will
leave. Compare `neep-neeping' (under neep-neep). Usage: U.S. only. In Britain and
the Commonwealth this word is extremely rude and is best
avoided unless one intends to give offense. Adjectival `wanky' is
less offensive and simply means `stupid' or `broken' (this is
mainstream in Great Britain).
Node:wannabee, Next:war dialer, Previous:wank, Up:= W =
wannabee /won'*-bee/ n.
(also, more plausibly, spelled `wannabe') [from a term
recently used to describe Madonna fans who dress, talk, and act
like their idol; prob. originally from biker slang] A would-be
hacker. The connotations of this
term differ sharply depending on the age and exposure of the
subject. Used of a person who is in or might be entering larval stage, it is
semi-approving; such wannabees can be annoying but most hackers
remember that they, too, were once such creatures. When used of
any professional programmer, CS academic, writer, or suit, it is derogatory, implying that said person
is trying to cuddle up to the hacker mystique but doesn't,
fundamentally, have a prayer of understanding what it is all
about. Overuse of terms from this lexicon is often an indication
of the wannabee nature. Compare
newbie.
Historical note: The wannabee phenomenon has a slightly
different flavor now (1993) than it did ten or fifteen years ago.
When the people who are now hackerdom's tribal elders were in
larval stage, the process of
becoming a hacker was largely unconscious and unaffected by
models known in popular culture -- communities formed
spontaneously around people who, as individuals, felt
irresistibly drawn to do hackerly things, and what wannabees
experienced was a fairly pure, skill-focused desire to become
similarly wizardly. Those days of innocence are gone forever;
society's adaptation to the advent of the microcomputer after
1980 included the elevation of the hacker as a new kind of folk
hero, and the result is that some people semi-consciously set out
to be hackers and borrow hackish prestige by fitting the
popular image of hackers. Fortunately, to do this really well,
one has to actually become a wizard. Nevertheless, old-time
hackers tend to share a poorly articulated disquiet about the
change; among other things, it gives them mixed feelings about
the effects of public compendia of lore like this one.
Node:war dialer, Next:-ware, Previous:wannabee, Up:=
W =
war dialer n.
A cracking tool, a program that calls a given list or range of
phone numbers and records those which answer with handshake tones
(and so might be entry points to computer or telecommunications
systems). Some of these programs have become quite sophisticated,
and can now detect modem, fax, or PBX tones and log each one
separately. The war dialer is one of the most important tools in
the phreaker's kit. These programs
evolved from early demon
dialers.
Node:-ware, Next:warez, Previous:war dialer, Up:= W =
-ware suff.
[from `software'] Commonly used to form jargon terms for
classes of software. For examples, see annoyware, careware, crippleware, crudware, freeware, fritterware, guiltware, liveware, meatware, payware, psychedelicware, shareware, shelfware, vaporware, wetware.
Node:warez, Next:warez d00dz, Previous:-ware, Up:= W
=
warez /weirz/ n.
Widely used in cracker
subcultures to denote cracked version of commercial software,
that is versions from which copy-protection has been stripped.
Hackers recognize this term but don't use it themselves. See
warez d00dz, courier, leech,
elite.
Node:warez d00dz, Next:warez kiddies, Previous:warez, Up:= W =
warez d00dz /weirz doodz/ n.
A substantial subculture of crackers refer to themselves as `warez d00dz';
there is evidently some connection with B1FF here. As `Ozone Pilot', one former warez
d00d, wrote:
Warez d00dz get illegal copies of copyrighted
software. If it has copy protection on it, they break the
protection so the software can be copied. Then they distribute it
around the world via several gateways. Warez d00dz form badass
group names like RAZOR and the like. They put up boards that
distribute the latest ware, or pirate program. The whole point of
the Warez sub-culture is to get the pirate program released and
distributed before any other group. I know, I know. But don't
ask, and it won't hurt as much. This is how they prove their
poweress [sic]. It gives them the right to say, "I released
King's Quest IVXIX before you so obviously my testicles are
larger." Again don't ask...
The studly thing to do if one is a warez d00d, it appears, is
emit `0-day warez', that is copies of commercial software copied
and cracked on the same day as its retail release. Warez d00ds
also hoard software in a big way, collecting untold megabytes of
arcade-style games, pornographic JPGs, and applications they'll
never use onto their hard disks. As Ozone Pilot acutely
observes:
[BELONG] is the only word you will need to know.
Warez d00dz want to belong. They have been shunned by everyone,
and thus turn to cyberspace for acceptance. That is why they
always start groups like TGW, FLT, USA and the like. Structure
makes them happy. [...] Warez d00dz will never have a handle like
"Pink Daisy" because warez d00dz are insecure. Only someone who
is very secure with a good dose of self-esteem can stand up to
the cries of fag and girlie-man. More likely you will find warez
d00dz with handles like: Doctor Death, Deranged Lunatic,
Hellraiser, Mad Prince, Dreamdevil, The Unknown, Renegade
Chemist, Terminator, and Twin Turbo. They like to sound badass
when they can hide behind their terminals. More likely, if you
were given a sample of 100 people, the person whose handle is
Hellraiser is the last person you'd associate with the
name.
The contrast with Internet hackers is stark and instructive.
See cracker, wannabee, handle, elite,
courier, leech; compare weenie, spod.
Node:warez kiddies, Next:warlording, Previous:warez d00dz, Up:= W =
warez kiddies n.
Even more derogatory way of referring to warez d00dz; refers to the fact that
most warez d00dz are around the age of puberty. Compare script kiddies.
Node:warlording, Next:warm boot, Previous:warez kiddies, Up:= W =
warlording v.
[from the Usenet group _alt.fan.warlord_] The act of
excoriating a bloated, ugly, or derivative sig block. Common grounds for warlording
include the presence of a signature rendered in a BUAF, over-used or cliched sig quotes, ugly ASCII art, or simply excessive size. The
original `Warlord' was a B1FF-like
newbie c.1991 who featured in his
sig a particularly large and obnoxious ASCII graphic resembling
the sword of Conan the Barbarian in the 1981 John Milius movie;
the group name _alt.fan.warlord_ was sarcasm, and the
characteristic mode of warlording is devastatingly sarcastic
praise.
Node:warm boot, Next:wart, Previous:warlording, Up:= W =
warm boot n.
See boot.
Node:wart, Next:washing machine, Previous:warm boot, Up:= W =
wart n.
A small, crocky feature that sticks out of an otherwise clean design. Something conspicuous for
localized ugliness, especially a special-case exception to a
general rule. For example, in some versions of
csh(1), single quotes literalize every character
inside them except !. In ANSI C, the ??
syntax used for obtaining ASCII characters in a foreign
environment is a wart. See also miswart.
Node:washing machine, Next:washing software,
Previous:wart, Up:= W =
washing machine n.
1. Old-style 14-inch hard disks in floor-standing cabinets. So
called because of the size of the cabinet and the `top-loading'
access to the media packs -- and, of course, they were always set
on `spin cycle'. The washing-machine idiom transcends language
barriers; it is even used in Russian hacker jargon. See also
walking drives. The thick
channel cables connecting these were called `bit hoses' (see
hose, sense 3). 2. [CMU] A machine
used exclusively for washing
software. CMU has clusters of these.
Node:washing software, Next:water MIPS, Previous:washing machine, Up:= W =
washing software n.
The process of recompiling a software distribution (used more
often when the recompilation is occuring from scratch) to pick up
and merge together all of the various changes that have been made
to the source.
Node:water MIPS, Next:wave a dead chicken,
Previous:washing
software, Up:= W =
water MIPS n.
(see MIPS, sense 2) Large,
water-cooled machines of either today's ECL-supercomputer flavor
or yesterday's traditional mainframe type.
Node:wave a dead chicken,
Next:weasel, Previous:water MIPS, Up:= W =
wave a dead chicken v.
To perform a ritual in the direction of crashed software or
hardware that one believes to be futile but is nevertheless
necessary so that others are satisfied that an appropriate degree
of effort has been expended. "I'll wave a dead chicken over the
source code, but I really think we've run into an OS bug."
Compare voodoo
programming, rain
dance; see also casting the runes.
Node:weasel, Next:web pointer, Previous:wave a dead chicken, Up:= W =
weasel n.
[Cambridge] A naive user, one who deliberately or accidentally
does things that are stupid or ill-advised. Roughly synonymous
with loser.
Node:web pointer, Next:web toaster, Previous:weasel, Up:=
W =
web pointer n.
A World Wide Web URL. See also hotlink, which has slightly different
connotations.
Node:web toaster, Next:webify, Previous:web pointer, Up:= W =
web toaster n.
A small specialized computer, shipped with no monitor or
keyboard or any other external peripherals, pre-configured to be
controlled through an Ethernet port and function as a WWW server.
Products of this kind (for example the Cobalt Qube) are often
about the size of a toaster. See toaster; compare video toaster.
Node:webify, Next:webmaster, Previous:web toaster, Up:= W =
webify n.
To put a piece of (possibly already existing) material on the
WWW. Frequently used for papers ("Why don't you webify all your
publications?") or for demos ("They webified their 6.866 final
project"). This term seems to have been (rather logically)
independently invented multiple times in the early 1990s.
Node:webmaster, Next:web ring, Previous:webify, Up:= W
=
webmaster n.
[WWW: from postmaster] The
person at a site providing World Wide Web information who is
responsible for maintaining the public pages and keeping the Web
server running and properly configured.
Node:web ring, Next:wedged, Previous:webmaster, Up:= W =
web ring n.
Two or more web sites connected by prominent links between
sites sharing a common interest or theme. Usually such cliques
have the topology of a ring, in order to make it easy for
visitors to navigate through all of them.
Node:wedged, Next:wedgie, Previous:web ring, Up:= W =
wedged adj.
1. To be stuck, incapable of proceeding without help. This is
different from having crashed. If the system has crashed, it has
become totally non-functioning. If the system is wedged, it is
trying to do something but cannot make progress; it may be
capable of doing a few things, but not be fully operational. For
example, a process may become wedged if it deadlocks with another (but not all instances
of wedging are deadlocks). See also gronk, locked
up, hosed, hung (wedged is more severe than hung). 2. Often refers to humans suffering
misconceptions. "He's totally wedged -- he's convinced that he
can levitate through meditation." 3. [Unix] Specifically used to
describe the state of a TTY left in a losing state by abort of a
screen-oriented program or one that has messed with the line
discipline in some obscure way.
There is some dispute over the origin of this term. It is
usually thought to derive from a common description of
recto-cranial inversion; however, it may actually have originated
with older `hot-press' printing technology in which physical type
elements were locked into type frames with wedges driven in by
mallets. Once this had been done, no changes in the typesetting
for that page could be made.
Node:wedgie, Next:wedgitude, Previous:wedged, Up:= W
=
wedgie n.
[Fairchild] A bug. Prob. related to wedged.
Node:wedgitude, Next:weeble, Previous:wedgie, Up:= W
=
wedgitude /wedj'i-t[y]ood/ n.
The quality or state of being wedged.
Node:weeble, Next:weeds, Previous:wedgitude, Up:= W =
weeble /weeb'l/ interj.
[Cambridge] Used to denote frustration, usually at amazing
stupidity. "I stuck the disk in upside down."
"Weeble...." Compare gurfle.
Node:weeds, Next:weenie, Previous:weeble, Up:= W
=
weeds n.
1. Refers to development projects or algorithms that have no
possible relevance or practical application. Comes from `off in
the weeds'. Used in phrases like "lexical analysis for microcode
is serious weeds...." 2. At CDC/ETA before its
demise, the phrase `go off in the weeds' was equivalent to IBM's
branch to Fishkill
and mainstream hackerdom's jump off into
never-never land.
Node:weenie, Next:Weenix, Previous:weeds, Up:= W
=
weenie n.
1. [on BBSes] Any of a species of luser resembling a less
amusing version of B1FF that infests
many BBS systems. The typical weenie is
a teenage boy with poor social skills travelling under a
grandiose handle derived from
fantasy or heavy-metal rock lyrics. Among sysops, `the weenie
problem' refers to the marginally literate and profanity-laden
flamage weenies tend to spew all
over a newly-discovered BBS. Compare spod, computer
geek, terminal
junkie, warez d00dz.
2. [Among hackers] When used with a qualifier (for example, as in
Unix weenie, VMS weenie, IBM
weenie) this can be either an insult or a term of praise,
depending on context, tone of voice, and whether or not it is
applied by a person who considers him or herself to be the same
sort of weenie. Implies that the weenie has put a major
investment of time, effort, and concentration into the area
indicated; whether this is good or bad depends on the hearer's
judgment of how the speaker feels about that area. See also bigot. 3. The semicolon character,
; (ASCII 0111011).
Node:Weenix, Next:well-behaved, Previous:weenie, Up:=
W =
Weenix /wee'niks/ n.
1. [ITS] A derogatory term for Unix, derived from Unix weenie. According to one noted
ex-ITSer, it is "the operating system preferred by Unix Weenies:
typified by poor modularity, poor reliability, hard file
deletion, no file version numbers, case sensitivity everywhere,
and users who believe that these are all advantages". (Some ITS
fans behave as though they believe Unix stole a future that
rightfully belonged to them. See ITS,
sense 2.) 2. [Brown University] A Unix-like OS developed for
tutorial purposes at Brown University. See http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs167/weenix.html.
Named independently of the ITS usage.
Node:well-behaved, Next:well-connected, Previous:Weenix, Up:= W =
well-behaved adj.
1. [primarily MS-DOS] Said of
software conforming to system interface guidelines and standards.
Well-behaved software uses the operating system to do chores such
as keyboard input, allocating memory and drawing graphics. Oppose
ill-behaved. 2. Software that
does its job quietly and without counterintuitive effects. Esp.
said of software having an interface spec sufficiently simple and
well-defined that it can be used as a tool by other software. See cat. 3. Said of an algorithm that doesn't crash or blow
up, even when given pathological input. Implies that the
stability of the algorithm is intrinsic, which makes this
somewhat different from bulletproof.
Node:well-connected, Next:wetware, Previous:well-behaved, Up:= W =
well-connected adj.
Said of a computer installation, asserts that it has reliable
email links with the network and/or that it relays a large
fraction of available Usenet
newsgroups. `Well-known' can be almost synonymous, but also
implies that the site's name is familiar to many (due perhaps to
an archive service or active Usenet users).
Node:wetware, Next:whack, Previous:well-connected, Up:= W =
wetware /wet'weir/ n.
[prob. from the novels of Rudy Rucker] 1. The human nervous
system, as opposed to computer hardware or software. "Wetware has
7 plus or minus 2 temporary registers." 2. Human beings
(programmers, operators, administrators) attached to a computer
system, as opposed to the system's hardware or software. See
liveware, meatware.
Node:whack, Next:whack-a-mole, Previous:wetware, Up:= W =
whack v.
According to arch-hacker James Gosling (designer of NeWS, GOSMACS
and Java), to "...modify a program with no idea whatsoever how it
works." (See whacker.) It is
actually possible to do this in nontrivial circumstances if the
change is small and well-defined and you are very good at glarking things from context. As a trivial
example, it is relatively easy to change all stderr
writes to stdout writes in a piece of C filter code
which remains otherwise mysterious.
Node:whack-a-mole, Next:whacker, Previous:whack, Up:= W
=
whack-a-mole n.
[from the carnival game which involves quickly and repeatedly
hitting the heads of mechanical moles with a mallet as they pop
up from their holes.] 1. The practice of repeatedly causing
spammers' throwaway
accounts and drop boxes to be terminated. 2. After sense
1 became established in the mid-1990s the term passed into more
generalized use, and now is commonly found in such combinations
as `whack-a-mole windows'; the obnoxious pop-ip advertisement
windows spawned in flocks when you surg to sites like Geocities
or Tripod.
Node:whacker, Next:whales, Previous:whack-a-mole, Up:= W =
whacker n.
[University of Maryland: from hacker] 1. A person, similar to a hacker, who enjoys exploring the details of
programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities.
Whereas a hacker tends to produce great hacks, a whacker only
ends up whacking the system or program in question. Whackers are
often quite egotistical and eager to claim wizard status, regardless of the views of their
peers. 2. A person who is good at programming quickly, though
rather poorly and ineptly.
Node:whales, Next:whalesong, Previous:whacker, Up:= W
=
whales n.
See like
kicking dead whales down the beach.
Node:whalesong, Next:What's a spline?, Previous:whales, Up:= W =
whalesong n.
The peculiar clicking and whooshing sounds made by a PEP modem
such as the Telebit Trailblazer as it tries to synchronize with
another PEP modem for their special high-speed mode. This sound
isn't anything like the normal two-tone handshake between
conventional V-series modems and is instantly recognizable to
anyone who has heard it more than once. It sounds, in fact, very
much like whale songs. This noise is also called "the moose call"
or "moose tones".
Node:What's a spline?,
Next:wheel, Previous:whalesong, Up:= W =
What's a spline?
[XEROX PARC] This phrase expands to: "You have just used a
term that I've heard for a year and a half, and I feel I should
know, but don't. My curiosity has finally overcome my guilt." The
PARC lexicon adds "Moral: don't hesitate to ask questions, even
if they seem obvious."
Node:wheel, Next:wheel bit, Previous:What's a spline?, Up:= W =
wheel n.
[from slang `big wheel' for a powerful person] A person who
has an active wheel bit. "We
need to find a wheel to unwedge the hung tape drives." (See wedged, sense 1.) The traditional name of
security group zero in BSD (to which
the major system-internal users like root belong) is `wheel'. Some vendors have
expanded on this usage, modifying Unix so that only members of
group `wheel' can go root.
Node:wheel bit, Next:wheel of reincarnation,
Previous:wheel, Up:= W =
wheel bit n.
A privilege bit that allows the possessor to perform some
restricted operation on a timesharing system, such as read or
write any file on the system regardless of protections, change or
look at any address in the running monitor, crash or reload the
system, and kill or create jobs and user accounts. The term was
invented on the TENEX operating system, and carried over to
TOPS-20, XEROX-IFS, and others. The state of being in a
privileged logon is sometimes called `wheel mode'. This term
entered the Unix culture from TWENEX in the mid-1980s and has
been gaining popularity there (esp. at university sites). See
also root.
Node:wheel of
reincarnation, Next:wheel
wars, Previous:wheel
bit, Up:= W =
wheel of reincarnation
[coined in a paper by T. H. Myer and I.E. Sutherland "On the
Design of Display Processors", Comm. ACM, Vol. 11, no. 6, June
1968)] Term used to refer to a well-known effect whereby function
in a computing system family is migrated out to special-purpose
peripheral hardware for speed, then the peripheral evolves toward
more computing power as it does its job, then somebody notices
that it is inefficient to support two asymmetrical processors in
the architecture and folds the function back into the main CPU,
at which point the cycle begins again.
Several iterations of this cycle have been observed in
graphics-processor design, and at least one or two in
communications and floating-point processors. Also known as `the
Wheel of Life', `the Wheel of Samsara', and other variations of
the basic Hindu/Buddhist theological idea. See also blitter, bit
bang.
Node:wheel wars, Next:White Book, Previous:wheel of reincarnation,
Up:= W =
wheel wars n.
[Stanford University] A period in larval stage during which student
hackers hassle each other by attempting to log each other out of
the system, delete each other's files, and otherwise wreak havoc,
usually at the expense of the lesser users.
Node:White Book, Next:whitelist, Previous:wheel wars, Up:= W =
White Book n.
1. Syn. K&R. 2. Adobe's
fourth book in the PostScript series, describing the
previously-secret format of Type 1 fonts; "Adobe Type 1 Font
Format, version 1.1", (Addison-Wesley, 1990, ISBN 0-201-57044-0).
See also Red Book, Green Book, Blue Book.
Node:whitelist, Next:whizzy, Previous:White Book, Up:= W =
whitelist n.
The opposite of a blacklist. That is, instead of being an
explicit list of people who are banned, it's an explicit list of
people who are to be admitted. Hackers use this especially of
lists of email addresses that are explicitly enabled to get past
strict anti-spam filters.
Node:whizzy, Next:wibble, Previous:whitelist, Up:= W =
whizzy adj.
(alt. `wizzy') [Sun] Describes a cuspy program; one that is feature-rich and well
presented.
Node:wibble, Next:WIBNI, Previous:whizzy, Up:= W
=
wibble
[UK, perh. originally from the first "Roger Irrelevant" strip
in "VIZ" comics, spread via "Your Sinclair magazine in the 1980s
and early 1990s"] 1. n.,v. Commonly used to describe chatter,
content-free remarks or other essentially meaningless
contributions to threads in newsgroups. "Oh, rspence is wibbling
again". 2. [UK IRC] An explicit on-line no-op equivalent to humma. 3. One of the preferred metasyntactic variables in
the UK, forming a series with wobble,
wubble, and flob (attributed to the
hilarious historical comedy "Blackadder"). 4. A pronounciation of
the letters "www", as seen in URLs; i.e., www.foo.com may be pronounced "wibble dot foo dot com"
(compare dub dub dub).
The ancestral sense of this word is reported to have been "My
brain is packing it in now. I give up. Tilt! Tilt!
Tilt!"
Node:WIBNI, Next:widget, Previous:wibble, Up:= W
=
WIBNI // n.
[Bell Labs: Wouldn't It Be Nice If] What most requirements
documents and specifications consist entirely of. Compare IWBNI.
Node:widget, Next:wiggles, Previous:WIBNI, Up:= W
=
widget n.
1. A meta-thing. Used to stand for a real object in didactic
examples (especially database tutorials). Legend has it that the
original widgets were holders for buggy whips. "But suppose the
parts list for a widget has 52 entries...." 2.
[poss. evoking `window gadget'] A user interface object in X graphical user interfaces.
Node:wiggles, Next:WIMP environment, Previous:widget, Up:= W =
wiggles n.
[scientific computation] In solving partial differential
equations by finite difference and similar methods, wiggles are
sawtooth (up-down-up-down) oscillations at the shortest
wavelength representable on the grid. If an algorithm is
unstable, this is often the most unstable waveform, so it grows
to dominate the solution. Alternatively, stable (though
inaccurate) wiggles can be generated near a discontinuity by a
Gibbs phenomenon.
Node:WIMP environment, Next:win, Previous:wiggles, Up:= W
=
WIMP environment n.
[acronym: `Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing device (or Pull-down
menu)'] A graphical-user-interface environment such as X or the Macintosh interface, esp. as described
by a hacker who prefers command-line interfaces for their
superior flexibility and extensibility. However, it is also used
without negative connotations; one must pay attention to voice
tone and other signals to interpret correctly. See menuitis, user-obsequious.
Node:win, Next:win big, Previous:WIMP environment, Up:= W =
win
[MIT; now common everywhere] 1. vi. To succeed. A program wins
if no unexpected conditions arise, or (especially) if it
sufficiently robust to take
exceptions in stride. 2. n. Success, or a specific instance
thereof. A pleasing outcome. "So it turned out I could use a
lexer generator instead of
hand-coding my own pattern recognizer. What a win!" Emphatic
forms: `moby win', `super win', `hyper-win' (often used
interjectively as a reply). For some reason `suitable win' is
also common at MIT, usually in reference to a satisfactory
solution to a problem. Oppose lose;
see also big win, which isn't
quite just an intensification of `win'.
Node:win big, Next:win win, Previous:win, Up:= W =
win big vi.
To experience serendipity. "I went shopping and won big; there
was a 2-for-1 sale." See big
win.
Node:win win, Next:Winchester, Previous:win big, Up:=
W =
win win excl.
Expresses pleasure at a win.
Node:Winchester, Next:windoid, Previous:win win, Up:=
W =
Winchester n.
Informal generic term for sealed-enclosure magnetic-disk
drives in which the read-write head planes over the disk surface
on an air cushion. There is a legend that the name arose because
the original 1973 engineering prototype for what later became the
IBM 3340 featured two 30-megabyte volumes; 30-30 became
`Winchester' when somebody noticed the similarity to the common
term for a famous Winchester rifle (in the latter, the first 30
referred to caliber and the second to the grain weight of the
charge). (It is sometimes incorrectly claimed that Winchester was
the laboratory in which the technology was developed.)
Node:windoid, Next:window shopping, Previous:Winchester, Up:= W =
windoid n.
In the Macintosh world, a style of window with much less
adornment (smaller or missing title bar, zoom box, etc, etc) than
a standard window.
Node:window shopping, Next:Windoze, Previous:windoid, Up:= W =
window shopping n.
[US Geological Survey] Among users of WIMP environments like X or the Macintosh, extended experimentation with
new window colors, fonts, and icon shapes. This activity can take
up hours of what might otherwise have been productive working
time. "I spent the afternoon window shopping until I found the
coolest shade of green for my active window borders -- now they
perfectly match my medium slate blue background." Serious window
shoppers will spend their days with bitmap editors, creating new
and different icons and background patterns for all to see. Also:
`window dressing', the act of applying new fonts, colors, etc.
See fritterware, compare macdink.
Node:Windoze, Next:winged comments, Previous:window shopping, Up:= W =
Windoze /win'dohz/ n.
See Microsloth
Windows.
Node:winged comments, Next:winkey, Previous:Windoze, Up:= W =
winged comments n.
Comments set on the same line as code, as opposed to boxed comments. In C, for
example:
d = sqrt(x*x + y*y); /* distance from origin */
Generally these refer only to the action(s) taken on that
line.
Node:winkey, Next:winnage, Previous:winged comments, Up:= W =
winkey n.
(alt. `winkey face') See emoticon.
Node:winnage, Next:winner, Previous:winkey, Up:= W
=
winnage /win'*j/ n.
The situation when a lossage is corrected, or when something
is winning.
Node:winner, Next:winnitude, Previous:winnage, Up:= W
=
winner
1. n. An unexpectedly good situation, program, programmer, or
person. 2. `real winner': Often sarcastic, but also used as high
praise (see also the note under user).
"He's a real winner -- never reports a bug till he can duplicate
it and send in an example."
Node:winnitude, Next:Wintel, Previous:winner, Up:= W
=
winnitude /win'*-t[y]ood/ n.
The quality of winning (as opposed to winnage, which is the result of winning).
"Guess what? They tweaked the microcode and now the LISP
interpreter runs twice as fast as it used to." "That's really
great! Boy, what winnitude!" "Yup. I'll probably get a
half-hour's winnage on the next run of my program." Perhaps
curiously, the obvious antonym `lossitude' is rare.
Node:Wintel, Next:wired, Previous:winnitude, Up:= W =
Wintel n.
Microsoft Windows plus Intel - the tacit alliance that
dominated desktop computing in the 1990s. Now (1999) possibly on
the verge of breaking up under pressure from Linux; see Lintel.
Node:wired, Next:wirehead, Previous:Wintel, Up:= W
=
wired n.
See hardwired.
Node:wirehead, Next:wirewater, Previous:wired, Up:= W
=
wirehead /wi:r'hed/ n.
[prob. from SF slang for an electrical-brain-stimulation
addict] 1. A hardware hacker, especially one who concentrates on
communications hardware. 2. An expert in local-area networks. A
wirehead can be a network software wizard too, but will always
have the ability to deal with network hardware, down to the
smallest component. Wireheads are known for their ability to lash
up an Ethernet terminator from spare resistors, for example.
Node:wirewater, Next:wish list, Previous:wirehead, Up:=
W =
wirewater n.
Syn. programming
fluid. This melds the mainstream slang adjective `wired'
(stimulated, up, hyperactive) with `firewater'; however, it
refers to caffeinacious rather than alcoholic beverages.
Node:wish list, Next:within delta of, Previous:wirewater, Up:= W =
wish list n.
A list of desired features or bug fixes that probably won't
get done for a long time, usually because the person responsible
for the code is too busy or can't think of a clean way to do it.
"OK, I'll add automatic filename completion to the wish list for
the new interface." Compare tick-list features.
Node:within delta of, Next:within epsilon of,
Previous:wish list,
Up:= W =
within delta of adj.
See delta.
Node:within epsilon of,
Next:wizard, Previous:within delta of, Up:= W =
within epsilon of adj.
See epsilon.
Node:wizard, Next:Wizard Book, Previous:within epsilon of, Up:= W =
wizard n.
1. Transitively, a person who knows how a complex piece of
software or hardware works (that is, who groks it); esp. someone who can find and fix bugs
quickly in an emergency. Someone is a hacker if he or she has general hacking
ability, but is a wizard with respect to something only if he or
she has specific detailed knowledge of that thing. A good hacker
could become a wizard for something given the time to study it.
2. The term `wizard' is also used intransitively of someone who
has extremely high-level hacking or problem-solving ability. 3. A
person who is permitted to do things forbidden to ordinary
people; one who has wheel privileges
on a system. 4. A Unix expert, esp. a Unix systems programmer.
This usage is well enough established that `Unix Wizard' is a
recognized job title at some corporations and to most
headhunters. See guru, lord high fixer. See also deep magic, heavy wizardry, incantation, magic, mutter,
rain dance, voodoo programming, wave a dead chicken.
Node:Wizard Book, Next:wizard hat, Previous:wizard, Up:=
W =
Wizard Book n.
"Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (Hal
Abelson, Jerry Sussman and Julie Sussman; MIT Press, 1984, 1996;
ISBN 0-262-01153-0), an excellent computer science text used in
introductory courses at MIT. So called because of the wizard on
the jacket. One of the bibles of the
LISP/Scheme world. Also, less commonly, known as the Purple Book.
Node:wizard hat, Next:wizard mode, Previous:Wizard Book, Up:= W =
wizard hat n.
[also, after Terry Pratchett, `pointy hat'] Notional headgear
worn by whoever is the wizard in a
particular context. The implication is that it's a transferable
role. "Talk to Alice, she's wearing the TCP/IP wizard hat while
Bob is on vacation." This metaphor is sufficiently live that one
may actually see hackers miming the act of putting on, taking
off, or transferring a phantom hat. Compare patch pumpkin.
Node:wizard mode, Next:wizardly, Previous:wizard hat, Up:= W =
wizard mode n.
[from rogue] A special access mode
of a program or system, usually passworded, that permits some
users godlike privileges. Generally not used for operating
systems themselves (`root mode' or `wheel mode' would be used
instead). This term is often used with respect to games that have
editable state.
Node:wizardly, Next:wok-on-the-wall, Previous:wizard mode, Up:= W =
wizardly adj.
Pertaining to wizards. A wizardly feature is one that only a wizard could
understand or use properly.
Node:wok-on-the-wall, Next:womb box, Previous:wizardly, Up:= W =
wok-on-the-wall n.
A small microwave dish antenna used for cross-campus private
network circuits, from the obvious resemblance between a
microwave dish and the Chinese culinary utensil.
Node:womb box, Next:WOMBAT, Previous:wok-on-the-wall, Up:= W =
womb box n.
1. [TMRC] Storage space for equipment. 2. [proposed] A variety
of hard-shell equipment case with heavy interior padding and/or
shaped carrier cutouts in a foam-rubber matrix; mundanely called
a `flight case'. Used for delicate test equipment, electronics,
and musical instruments.
Node:WOMBAT, Next:womble, Previous:womb box, Up:= W =
WOMBAT /wom'bat/ adj.
[acronym: Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time] Applied to
problems which are both profoundly uninteresting in themselves and unlikely
to benefit anyone interesting even if solved. Often used in
fanciful constructions such as `wrestling with a wombat'. See
also crawling horror,
SMOP. Also note the rather different
usage as a metasyntactic variable in Commonwealth Hackish.
Users of the PDP-11 database program DATATRIEVE adopted the
wombat as their notional mascot; the program's help file
responded to "HELP WOMBAT" with factual information about Real
World wombats.
Node:womble, Next:wonky, Previous:WOMBAT, Up:= W
=
womble n.
[Unisys UK: from British animated characters] A user who has
great difficulty in communicating their requirements and/or in
using the resulting software. Extreme case of luser. An especially senior or high-ranking
womble is referred to as Great-Uncle Bulgaria.
Node:wonky, Next:woofer, Previous:womble, Up:= W
=
wonky /wong'kee/ adj.
[from Australian slang] Yet another approximate synonym for
broken. Specifically connotes a
malfunction that produces behavior seen as crazy, humorous, or
amusingly perverse. "That was the day the printer's font logic
went wonky and everybody's listings came out in Tengwar." Also in
`wonked out'. See funky, demented, bozotic.
Node:woofer, Next:workaround, Previous:wonky, Up:= W
=
woofer n.
[University of Waterloo] Some varieties of wide paper for
printers have a perforation 8.5 inches from the left margin that
allows the excess on the right-hand side to be torn off when the
print format is 80 columns or less wide. The right-hand excess
may be called `woofer'. This term (like tweeter) has been in use at Waterloo since
1972, but is elsewhere unknown. In audio jargon, the word refers
to the bass speaker(s) on a hi-fi.
Node:workaround, Next:working as designed,
Previous:woofer, Up:= W =
workaround n.
1. A temporary kluge used to
bypass, mask, or otherwise avoid a bug
or misfeature in some system.
Theoretically, workarounds are always replaced by fixes; in practice, customers often find
themselves living with workarounds for long periods of time. "The
code died on NUL characters in the input, so I fixed it to
interpret them as spaces." "That's not a fix, that's a
workaround!" 2. A procedure to be employed by the user in order
to do what some currently non-working feature should do.
Hypothetical example: "Using META-F7 crashes the 4.43 build of Weemax, but as a
workaround you can type CTRL-R, then SHIFT-F5, and delete the
remaining cruft by hand."
Node:working as designed,
Next:worm, Previous:workaround, Up:= W =
working as designed adj.
[IBM] 1. In conformance to a wrong or inappropriate
specification; useful, but misdesigned. 2. Frequently used as a
sardonic comment on a program's utility. 3. Unfortunately also
used as a bogus reason for not accepting a criticism or
suggestion. At IBM, this sense is used
in official documents! See BAD.
Node:worm, Next:wormhole, Previous:working as designed, Up:= W =
worm n.
[from `tapeworm' in John Brunner's novel "The Shockwave
Rider", via XEROX PARC] A program that propagates itself over a
network, reproducing itself as it goes. Compare virus. Nowadays the term has negative
connotations, as it is assumed that only crackers write worms. Perhaps the best-known
example was Robert T. Morris's Great
Worm of 1988, a `benign' one that got out of control and
hogged hundreds of Suns and VAXen across the U.S. See also cracker, RTM,
Trojan horse, ice.
Node:wormhole, Next:wound around the axle,
Previous:worm, Up:= W =
wormhole /werm'hohl/ n.
[from the `wormhole' singularities hypothesized in some
versions of General Relativity theory] 1. [n.,obs.] A location in
a monitor which contains the address of a routine, with the
specific intent of making it easy to substitute a different
routine. This term is now obsolescent; modern operating systems
use clusters of wormholes extensively (for modularization of I/O
handling in particular, as in the Unix device-driver
organization) but the preferred techspeak for these clusters is
`device tables', `jump tables' or `capability tables'. 2.
[Amateur Packet Radio] A network path using a commercial
satellite link to join two or more amateur VHF networks. So
called because traffic routed through a wormhole leaves and
re-enters the amateur network over great distances with usually
little clue in the message routing header as to how it got from
one relay to the other. Compare gopher hole (sense 2).
Node:wound around the
axle, Next:wrap
around, Previous:wormhole, Up:=
W =
wound around the axle adj.
In an infinite loop. Often used by older computer types.
Node:wrap around, Next:write-only code, Previous:wound around the
axle, Up:= W =
wrap around vi.
(also n. `wraparound' and v. shorthand `wrap') 1. [techspeak]
The action of a counter that starts over at zero or at `minus
infinity' (see infinity) after its
maximum value has been reached, and continues incrementing,
either because it is programmed to do so or because of an
overflow (as when a car's odometer starts over at 0). 2. To
change phase gradually and
continuously by maintaining a steady wake-sleep cycle somewhat
longer than 24 hours, e.g., living six long (28-hour) days in a
week (or, equivalently, sleeping at the rate of 10 microhertz).
This sense is also called phase-wrapping.
Node:write-only code, Next:write-only language,
Previous:wrap around,
Up:= W =
write-only code n.
[a play on `read-only memory'] Code so arcane, complex, or
ill-structured that it cannot be modified or even comprehended by
anyone but its author, and possibly not even by him/her. A Bad Thing.
Node:write-only language,
Next:write-only
memory, Previous:write-only code, Up:= W =
write-only language n.
A language with syntax (or semantics) sufficiently dense and
bizarre that any routine of significant size is automatically
write-only code. A
sobriquet applied occasionally to C and often to APL, though
INTERCAL and TECO certainly deserve it more. See also Befunge.
Node:write-only memory, Next:Wrong Thing, Previous:write-only
language, Up:= W =
write-only memory n.
The obvious antonym to `read-only memory'. Out of frustration
with the long and seemingly useless chain of approvals required
of component specifications, during which no actual checking
seemed to occur, an engineer at Signetics once created a
specification for a write-only memory and included it with a
bunch of other specifications to be approved. This inclusion came
to the attention of Signetics management only when regular customers
started calling and asking for pricing information. Signetics
published a corrected edition of the data book and requested the
return of the `erroneous' ones. Later, in 1972, Signetics bought
a double-page spread in "Electronics" magazine's April issue and
used the spec as an April Fools' Day joke. Instead of the more
conventional characteristic curves, the 25120 "fully encoded,
9046 x N, Random Access, write-only-memory" data sheet included
diagrams of "bit capacity vs. Temp.", "Iff vs. Vff", "Number of
pins remaining vs. number of socket insertions", and "AQL vs.
selling price". The 25120 required a 6.3 VAC VFF supply, a +10V
VCC, and VDD of 0V, +/- 2%.
Node:Wrong Thing, Next:wugga wugga, Previous:write-only memory, Up:= W =
Wrong Thing n.
A design, action, or decision that is clearly incorrect or
inappropriate. Often capitalized; always emphasized in speech as
if capitalized. The opposite of the Right Thing; more generally, anything
that is not the Right Thing. In cases where `the good is the
enemy of the best', the merely good -- although good -- is
nevertheless the Wrong Thing. "In C, the default is for
module-level declarations to be visible everywhere, rather than
just within the module. This is clearly the Wrong Thing."
Node:wugga wugga, Next:wumpus, Previous:Wrong Thing, Up:= W =
wugga wugga /wuh'g* wuh'g*/ n.
Imaginary sound that a computer program makes as it labors
with a tedious or difficult task.grind (sense 4).
Node:wumpus, Next:WYSIAYG, Previous:wugga wugga, Up:= W =
wumpus /wuhm'p*s/ n.
The central monster (and, in many versions, the name) of a
famous family of very early computer games called "Hunt The
Wumpus'. The original was invented in 1970 (several years before
ADVENT) by Gregory Yob. The wumpus
lived somewhere in a cave with the topology of an dodecahedron's
edge/vertex graph (later versions supported other topologies,
including an icosahedron and Möbius strip). The player
started somewhere at random in the cave with five `crooked
arrows'; these could be shot through up to three connected rooms,
and would kill the wumpus on a hit (later versions introduced the
wounded wumpus, which got very angry). Unfortunately for players,
the movement necessary to map the maze was made hazardous not
merely by the wumpus (which would eat you if you stepped on him)
but also by bottomless pits and colonies of super bats that would
pick you up and drop you at a random location (later versions
added `anaerobic termites' that ate arrows, bat migrations, and
earthquakes that randomly changed pit locations).
This game appears to have been the first to use a non-random
graph-structured map (as opposed to a rectangular grid like the
even older Star Trek games). In this respect, as in the
dungeon-like setting and its terse, amusing messages, it
prefigured ADVENT and Zork and was directly ancestral to the latter
(Zork acknowledged this heritage by including a super-bat
colony). A C emulation of the original Basic game is available at
the Retrocomputing Museum, http://www.ccil.org/retro.
Node:WYSIAYG, Next:WYSIWYG, Previous:wumpus, Up:= W
=
WYSIAYG /wiz'ee-ayg/ adj.
Describes a user interface under which "What You See Is
All You Get"; an unhappy variant of WYSIWYG. Visual, `point-and-shoot'-style
interfaces tend to have easy initial learning curves, but also to
lack depth; they often frustrate advanced users who would be
better served by a command-style interface. When this happens,
the frustrated user has a WYSIAYG problem. This term is most
often used of editors, word processors, and document formatting
programs. WYSIWYG `desktop publishing' programs, for example, are
a clear win for creating small documents with lots of fonts and
graphics in them, especially things like newsletters and
presentation slides. When typesetting book-length manuscripts, on
the other hand, scale changes the nature of the task; one quickly
runs into WYSIAYG limitations, and the increased power and
flexibility of a command-driven formatter like TeX or Unix's troff
becomes not just desirable but a necessity. Compare YAFIYGI.
Node:WYSIWYG, Next:X, Previous:WYSIAYG, Up:= W
=
WYSIWYG /wiz'ee-wig/ adj.
[Traced to Flip Wilson's "Geraldine" character c.1970]
Describes a user interface under which "What You See Is What You
Get", as opposed to one that uses more-or-less obscure commands
that do not result in immediate visual feedback. True WYSIWYG in
environments supporting multiple fonts or graphics is a a
rarely-attained ideal; there are variants of this term to express
real-world manifestations including WYSIAWYG (What You See Is
Almost What You Get) and WYSIMOLWYG (What You See Is
More or Less What You Get). All these can be mildly derogatory,
as they are often used to refer to dumbed-down user-friendly interfaces targeted at
non-programmers; a hacker has no fear of obscure commands
(compare WYSIAYG). On the other
hand, EMACS was one of the very first
WYSIWYG editors, replacing (actually, at first overlaying) the
extremely obscure, command-based TECO.
See also WIMP
environment. [Oddly enough, WYSIWYG has already made it
into the OED, in lower case yet. --ESR]
Node:= X =, Next:= Y =, Previous:= W =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= X =
X:
XEROX PARC:
XOFF:
XON:
xor:
xref:
XXX:
xyzzy:
Node:X, Next:XEROX PARC, Previous:WYSIWYG, Up:= X
=
X /X/ n.
1. Used in various speech and writing contexts (also in
lowercase) in roughly its algebraic sense of `unknown within a
set defined by context' (compare N).
Thus, the abbreviation 680x0 stands for 68000, 68010, 68020,
68030, or 68040, and 80x86 stands for 80186, 80286, 80386, 80486,
80586 or 80686 (note that a Unix hacker might write these as
680[0-6]0 and 80[1-6]86 or 680?0 and 80?86 respectively; see
glob). 2. [after the name of an
earlier window system called `W'] An over-sized, over-featured,
over-engineered and incredibly over-complicated window system
developed at MIT and widely used on Unix systems.
Node:XEROX PARC, Next:XOFF, Previous:X, Up:= X =
XEROX PARC /zee'roks park'/ n.
The famed Palo Alto Research Center. For more than a decade,
from the early 1970s into the mid-1980s, PARC yielded an
astonishing volume of groundbreaking hardware and software
innovations. The modern mice, windows, and icons style of
software interface was invented there. So was the laser printer
and the local-area network; and PARC's series of D machines
anticipated the powerful personal computers of the 1980s by a
decade. Sadly, the prophets at PARC were without honor in their
own company, so much so that it became a standard joke to
describe PARC as a place that specialized in developing brilliant
ideas for everyone else.
The stunning shortsightedness and obtusity of XEROX's
top-level suits has been well
anatomized in "Fumbling The Future: How XEROX Invented, Then
Ignored, the First Personal Computer" by Douglas K. Smith and
Robert C. Alexander (William Morrow & Co., 1988, ISBN
0-688-09511-9).
Node:XOFF, Next:XON, Previous:XEROX PARC, Up:= X =
XOFF /X-of/ n.
Syn. control-S.
Node:XON, Next:xor, Previous:XOFF,
Up:= X =
XON /X-on/ n.
Syn. control-Q.
Node:xor, Next:xref, Previous:XON,
Up:= X =
xor /X'or/, /kzor/ conj.
Exclusive or. `A xor B' means `A or B, but not both'. "I want
to get cherry pie xor a banana split." This derives from the
technical use of the term as a function on truth-values that is
true if exactly one of its two arguments is true.
Node:xref, Next:XXX, Previous:xor,
Up:= X =
xref /X'ref/ v.,n.
Hackish standard abbreviation for `cross-reference'.
Node:XXX, Next:xyzzy, Previous:xref, Up:= X =
XXX /X-X-X/ n.
A marker that attention is needed. Commonly used in program
comments to indicate areas that are kluged up or need to be. Some
hackers liken `XXX' to the notional heavy-porn movie rating.
Compare FIXME.
Node:xyzzy, Next:YA-, Previous:XXX,
Up:= X =
xyzzy /X-Y-Z-Z-Y/, /X-Y-ziz'ee/, /ziz'ee/, or
/ik-ziz'ee/ adj.
[from the ADVENT game] The canonical `magic word'. This comes from
ADVENT, in which the idea is to
explore an underground cave with many rooms and to collect the
treasures you find there. If you type `xyzzy' at the appropriate
time, you can move instantly between two otherwise distant
points. If, therefore, you encounter some bit of magic, you might remark on this quite succinctly
by saying simply "Xyzzy!" "Ordinarily you can't look at someone
else's screen if he has protected it, but if you type
quadruple-bucky-clear the system will let you do it anyway."
"Xyzzy!" It's traditional for xyzzy to be an Easter egg in games with text
interfaces.
Xyzzy has actually been implemented as an undocumented no-op
command on several OSes; in Data General's AOS/VS, for example,
it would typically respond "Nothing happens", just as ADVENT did if the magic was invoked at the
wrong spot or before a player had performed the action that
enabled the word. In more recent 32-bit versions, by the way,
AOS/VS responds "Twice as much happens".
Early versions of the popular `minesweeper' game under
Microsoft Windows had a cheat mode triggered by the command
`xyzzy' that turns the top-left
pixel of the screen different colors depending on whether or not
the cursor is over a bomb. This feature temporarily diasappeared
in Windows 98, but reappeared in Windows 2000.
The following passage from "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" by L.
Frank Baum, suggesting a possible pre-ADVENT origin, has recently
come to light:
"Ziz-zy, zuz-zy, zik!" said Dorothy, who was now standing on
both feet. This ended the saying of the charm, and they heard a
great chattering and flapping of wings, as the band of Winged
Monkeys flew up to them.
Node:= Y =, Next:= Z =, Previous:= X =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= Y =
YA-:
YABA:
YAFIYGI:
YAUN:
Yellow Book:
yellow card:
yellow wire:
Yet Another:
YHBT:
YKYBHTLW:
YMMV:
You are
not expected to understand this:
You
know you've been hacking too long when:
Your mileage may
vary:
Yow!:
yoyo mode:
Yu-Shiang Whole
Fish:
Node:YA-, Next:YABA, Previous:xyzzy, Up:= Y
=
YA- abbrev.
[Yet Another] In hackish acronyms this almost invariably
expands to Yet Another,
following the precedent set by Unix yacc(1) (Yet
Another Compiler-Compiler). See YABA.
Node:YABA, Next:YAFIYGI, Previous:YA-, Up:= Y =
YABA /ya'b*/ n.
[Cambridge] Yet Another Bloody Acronym. Whenever some program
is being named, someone invariably suggests that it be given a
name that is acronymic. The response from those with a trace of
originality is to remark ironically that the proposed name would
then be `YABA-compatible'. Also used in response to questions
like "What is WYSIWYG?" See also TLA.
Node:YAFIYGI, Next:YAUN, Previous:YABA, Up:= Y =
YAFIYGI /yaf'ee-y*-gee/ adj.
[coined in response to WYSIWYG] Describes the command-oriented
ed/vi/nroff/TeX style of word processing or other user interface,
the opposite of WYSIWYG. Stands for
"You asked for it, you got it", because what you actually asked
for is often not apparent until long after it is too late to do
anything about it. Used to denote perversity ("Real Programmers
use YAFIYGI tools...and like it!") or,
less often, a necessary tradeoff ("Only a YAFIYGI tool can have
full programmable flexibility in its interface.").
This precise sense of "You asked for it, you got it" seems to
have first appeared in Ed Post's classic parody "Real Programmers
don't use Pascal" (see Real
Programmers); the acronym is a more recent invention.
Node:YAUN, Next:Yellow Book, Previous:YAFIYGI, Up:= Y =
YAUN /yawn/ n.
[Acronym for `Yet Another Unix Nerd'] Reported from the San
Diego Computer Society (predominantly a microcomputer users'
group) as a good-natured punning insult aimed at Unix
zealots.
Node:Yellow Book, Next:yellow card, Previous:YAUN, Up:= Y
=
Yellow Book n.
The print version of this Jargon File; "The New Hacker's
Dictionary" from MIT Press; The book includes essentially all the
material the File, plus a Foreword by Guy L. Steele Jr. and a
Preface by Eric S. Raymond. Most importantly, the book version is
nicely typeset and includes almost all of the infamous Crunchly
cartoons by the Great Quux, each attached to an appropriate
entry. The first edition (1991, ISBN 0-262-68069-6) corresponded
to the Jargon File version 2.9.6. The second edition (1993, ISBN
0-262-68079-3) corresponded to the Jargon File 3.0.0. The third
(1996, ISBN 0-262-68092-0) corresponded to 4.0.0.
Node:yellow card, Next:yellow wire, Previous:Yellow Book, Up:= Y =
yellow card n.
See green card.
Node:yellow wire, Next:Yet Another, Previous:yellow card, Up:= Y =
yellow wire n.
[IBM] Repair wires used when connectors (especially ribbon
connectors) got broken due to some schlemiel pinching them, or to
reconnect cut traces after the FE mistakenly cut one. Compare
blue wire, purple wire, red wire.
Node:Yet Another, Next:YHBT, Previous:yellow wire, Up:= Y =
Yet Another adj.
[From Unix's yacc(1), `Yet Another
Compiler-Compiler', a LALR parser generator] 1. Of your own work:
A humorous allusion often used in titles to acknowledge that the
topic is not original, though the content is. As in `Yet Another
AI Group' or `Yet Another Simulated Annealing Algorithm'. 2. Of
others' work: Describes something of which there are already far
too many. See also YA-, YABA, YAUN.
Node:YHBT, Next:YKYBHTLW, Previous:Yet Another, Up:= Y =
YHBT //
[Usenet: very common] Abbreviation: You Have Been Trolled (see
troll, sense 1). Especially used in
"YHBT. YHL. HAND.", which is widely understood to expand to "You
Have Been Trolled. You Have Lost. Have A Nice Day". You are quite
likely to see this if you respond incautiously to a
flame-provoking post that was obviously floated as sucker
bait.
Node:YKYBHTLW, Next:YMMV, Previous:YHBT, Up:= Y =
YKYBHTLW // abbrev.
Abbreviation of `You know you've been hacking too long
when...', which became established on the Usenet group
_alt.folklore.computers_ during extended discussion of the
indicated entry in the Jargon File.
Node:YMMV, Next:You are
not expected to understand this, Previous:YKYBHTLW, Up:= Y =
YMMV // cav.
Abbreviation for Your mileage may vary
common on Usenet.
Node:You are not
expected to understand this, Next:You
know you've been hacking too long when, Previous:YMMV, Up:= Y =
You are not expected to understand this [Unix] cav.
The canonical comment describing something magic or too complicated to bother explaining
properly. From an infamous comment in the context-switching code
of the V6 Unix kernel. Dennis Ritchie has explained this
in detail.
Node:You
know you've been hacking too long when, Next:Your mileage may vary,
Previous:You are
not expected to understand this, Up:= Y =
You know you've been hacking too long when
The set-up line for a genre of one-liners told by hackers
about themselves. These include the following:
not only do you check your email more often than your paper
mail, but you remember your network address faster than your
postal one.
your SO kisses you on the neck and
the first thing you think is "Uh, oh, priority interrupt."
you go to balance your checkbook and discover that you're
doing it in octal.
your computers have a higher street value than your car.
in your universe, `round numbers' are powers of 2, not
10.
more than once, you have woken up recalling a dream in some
programming language.
you realize you have never seen half of your best
friends.
A list
list of these can be found by searching for this phrase on the
web.
[An early version of this entry said "All but one of these
have been reliably reported as hacker traits (some of them quite
often). Even hackers may have trouble spotting the ringer." The
ringer was balancing one's checkbook in octal, which I made up
out of whole cloth. Although more respondents picked that one out
as fiction than any of the others, I also received multiple
independent reports of its actually happening, most famously to
Grace Hopper while she was working with BINAC in 1949. --ESR]
Node:Your mileage may
vary, Next:Yow!, Previous:You
know you've been hacking too long when, Up:= Y =
Your mileage may vary cav.
[from the standard disclaimer attached to EPA mileage ratings
by American car manufacturers] 1. A ritual warning often found in
Unix freeware distributions. Translates roughly as "Hey, I tried
to write this portably, but who knows what'll happen on
your system?" 2. More generally, a qualifier attached to advice.
"I find that sending flowers works well, but your mileage may
vary."
Node:Yow!, Next:yoyo mode, Previous:Your mileage may vary, Up:= Y =
Yow! /yow/ interj.
[from "Zippy the Pinhead" comix] A favored hacker expression
of humorous surprise or emphasis. "Yow! Check out what happens
when you twiddle the foo option on this display hack!" Compare
gurfle.
Node:yoyo mode, Next:Yu-Shiang Whole Fish,
Previous:Yow!, Up:= Y =
yoyo mode n.
The state in which the system is said to be when it rapidly
alternates several times between being up and being down.
Interestingly (and perhaps not by coincidence), many hardware
vendors give out free yoyos at Usenix exhibits.
Sun Microsystems gave out logoized yoyos at SIGPLAN '88.
Tourists staying at one of Atlanta's most respectable hotels were
subsequently treated to the sight of 200 of the country's top
computer scientists testing yo-yo algorithms in the lobby.
Node:Yu-Shiang Whole Fish,
Next:zap, Previous:yoyo mode, Up:= Y =
Yu-Shiang Whole Fish /yoo-shyang hohl fish/ n. obs.
The character gamma (extended SAIL ASCII 0001001), which with
a loop in its tail looks like a little fish swimming down the
page. The term is actually the name of a Chinese dish in which a
fish is cooked whole (not parsed) and
covered with Yu-Shiang (or Yu-Hsiang) sauce. Usage: primarily by
people on the MIT LISP Machine, which could display this
character on the screen. Tends to elicit incredulity from people
who hear about it second-hand.
Node:= Z =, Previous:= Y =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon
= Z =
zap:
zapped:
Zawinski's Law:
zbeba:
zen:
zero:
zero-content:
Zero-One-Infinity
Rule:
zeroth:
zigamorph:
zip:
zipperhead:
zombie:
zorch:
Zork:
zorkmid:
Node:zap, Next:zapped, Previous:Yu-Shiang Whole Fish, Up:= Z =
zap
1. n. Spiciness. 2. vt. To make food spicy. 3. vt. To make
someone `suffer' by making his food spicy. (Most hackers love
spicy food. Hot-and-sour soup is considered wimpy unless it makes
you wipe your nose for the rest of the meal.) See zapped. 4. vt. To modify, usually to correct;
esp. used when the action is performed with a debugger or binary
patching tool. Also implies surgical precision. "Zap the debug
level to 6 and run it again." In the IBM mainframe world, binary
patches are applied to programs or to the OS with a program
called `superzap', whose file name is `IMASPZAP' (possibly
contrived from I M A SuPerZAP). 5. vt. To erase or reset. 6. To
fry a chip with static electricity. "Uh
oh -- I think that lightning strike may have zapped the disk
controller."
Node:zapped, Next:Zawinski's Law, Previous:zap, Up:= Z =
zapped adj.
Spicy. This term is used to distinguish between food that is
hot (in temperature) and food that is spicy-hot. For
example, the Chinese appetizer Bon Bon Chicken is a kind of
chicken salad that is cold but zapped; by contrast, vanilla wonton soup is hot but not zapped. See
also oriental food, laser chicken. See zap, senses 1 and 2.
Node:Zawinski's Law, Next:zbeba, Previous:zapped, Up:= Z
=
Zawinski's Law
"Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail.
Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which
can." Coined by Jamie Zawinski (who called it the "Law of
Software Envelopment") to express his belief that all truly
useful programs experience pressure to evolve into toolkits and
application platforms (the mailer thing, he says, is just a side
effect of that). It is commonly cited, though with widely varying
degrees of accuracy.
Node:zbeba, Next:zen, Previous:Zawinski's Law, Up:= Z =
zbeba n.
[USENET] The word `moron' in rot13. Used to describe newbies who are behaving
with especial cluelessness.
Node:zen, Next:zero, Previous:zbeba, Up:= Z
=
zen vt.
To figure out something by meditation or by a sudden flash of
enlightenment. Originally applied to bugs, but occasionally
applied to problems of life in general. "How'd you figure out the
buffer allocation problem?" "Oh, I zenned it." Contrast grok, which connotes a time-extended version
of zenning a system. Compare hack
mode. See also guru.
Node:zero, Next:zero-content, Previous:zen, Up:= Z
=
zero vt.
1. To set to 0. Usually said of small pieces of data, such as
bits or words (esp. in the construction `zero out'). 2. To erase;
to discard all data from. Said of disks and directories, where
`zeroing' need not involve actually writing zeroes throughout the
area being zeroed. One may speak of something being `logically
zeroed' rather than being `physically zeroed'. See scribble.
Node:zero-content, Next:Zero-One-Infinity Rule,
Previous:zero, Up:= Z =
zero-content adj.
Syn. content-free.
Node:Zero-One-Infinity
Rule, Next:zeroth,
Previous:zero-content,
Up:= Z =
Zero-One-Infinity Rule prov.
"Allow none of foo, one of foo, or any number of foo." A rule of thumb for software design, which
instructs one to not place random
limits on the number of instances of a given entity (such as:
windows in a window system, letters in an OS's filenames, etc.).
Specifically, one should either disallow the entity entirely,
allow exactly one instance (an "exception"), or allow as many as
the user wants - address space and memory permitting.
The logic behind this rule is that there are often situations
where it makes clear sense to allow one of something instead of
none. However, if one decides to go further and allow N (for N
> 1), then why not N+1? And if N+1, then why not N+2, and so
on? Once above 1, there's no excuse not to allow any N; hence,
infinity.
Many hackers recall in this connection Isaac Asimov's SF novel
"The Gods Themselves" in which a character announces that the
number 2 is impossible - if you're going to believe in more than
one universe, you might as well believe in an infinite number of
them.
Node:zeroth, Next:zigamorph, Previous:Zero-One-Infinity Rule, Up:= Z =
zeroth /zee'rohth/ adj.
First. Among software designers, comes from C's and LISP's
0-based indexing of arrays. Hardware people also tend to start
counting at 0 instead of 1; this is natural since, e.g., the 256
states of 8 bits correspond to the binary numbers 0, 1,
..., 255 and the digital devices known as
`counters' count in this way.
Hackers and computer scientists often like to call the first
chapter of a publication `Chapter 0', especially if it is of an
introductory nature (one of the classic instances was in the
First Edition of K&R). In
recent years this trait has also been observed among many pure
mathematicians (who have an independent tradition of numbering
from 0). Zero-based numbering tends to reduce fencepost errors, though it cannot
eliminate them entirely.
Node:zigamorph, Next:zip, Previous:zeroth, Up:= Z
=
zigamorph /zig'*-morf/ n.
1. Hex FF (11111111) when used as a delimiter or fence character. Usage: primarily at IBM shops.
2. [proposed] n. The Unicode non-character U+FFFF
(1111111111111111), a character code which is not assigned to any
character, and so is usable as end-of-string. (Unicode is a
16-bit character code intended to cover all of the world's
writing systems, including Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Chinese,
hiragana, katakana, Devanagari, Thai, Laotian and many other
scripts - support for elvish is
planned for a future release).
Node:zip, Next:zipperhead, Previous:zigamorph, Up:= Z =
zip vt.
[primarily MS-DOS] To create a compressed archive from a group
of files using PKWare's PKZIP or a compatible archiver. Its use
is spreading now that portable implementations of the algorithm
have been written. Commonly used as follows: "I'll zip it up and
send it to you." See tar and
feather.
Node:zipperhead, Next:zombie, Previous:zip, Up:= Z =
zipperhead n.
[IBM] A person with a closed mind.
Node:zombie, Next:zorch, Previous:zipperhead, Up:= Z =
zombie n.
[Unix] A process that has died but has not yet relinquished
its process table slot (because the parent process hasn't
executed a wait(2) for it yet). These can be seen in
ps(1) listings occasionally. Compare orphan.
Node:zorch, Next:Zork, Previous:zombie, Up:= Z
=
zorch /zorch/
1. [TMRC] v. To attack with an inverse heat sink. 2. [TMRC] v.
To travel, with v approaching c [that is, with velocity
approaching lightspeed --ESR]. 3. [MIT] v. To propel something
very quickly. "The new comm software is very fast; it really
zorches files through the network." 4. [MIT] n. Influence.
Brownie points. Good karma. The intangible and fuzzy currency in
which favors are measured. "I'd rather not ask him for that just
yet; I think I've used up my quota of zorch with him for the
week." 5. [MIT] n. Energy, drive, or ability. "I think I'll punt that change for now; I've been up for
30 hours and I've run out of zorch." 6. [MIT] v. To flunk an exam
or course.
Node:Zork, Next:zorkmid, Previous:zorch, Up:= Z
=
Zork /zork/ n.
The second of the great early experiments in computer fantasy
gaming; see ADVENT. Originally
written on MIT-DM during 1977-1979, later distributed with BSD
Unix (as a patched, sourceless RT-11 FORTRAN binary; see retrocomputing) and commercialized
as `The Zork Trilogy' by Infocom.
The FORTRAN source was later rewritten for portability and
released to Usenet under the name "Dungeon". Both FORTRAN
"Dungeon" and translated C versions are available at many FTP
sites. See also grue.
Node:zorkmid, Previous:Zork, Up:= Z
=
zorkmid /zork'mid/ n.
The canonical unit of currency in hacker-written games. This
originated in Zork but has spread to
nethack and is referred to in
several other games.
(Lexicon Entries End Here)
Node:Appendix A, Next:Appendix B, Previous:The Jargon Lexicon, Up:Top
Hacker Folklore
This appendix contains several legends and fables that
illuminate the meaning of various entries in the lexicon.
The Meaning of Hack:
...and three famous ones
TV Typewriters: A Tale of
Hackish Ingenuity
A Story About Magic:
By Guy Steele
Some AI Koans: Wit and
Wisdom of the Masters
OS and JEDGAR: Intrigue and
mayhem under ITS
The Story of Mel: One
of hackerdom's great myths
Node:The Meaning of Hack,
Next:TV Typewriters,
Previous:Appendix A,
Up:Appendix A
The Meaning of `Hack'
"The word hack doesn't really have
69 different meanings", according to MIT hacker Phil Agre. "In
fact, hack has only one meaning, an
extremely subtle and profound one which defies articulation.
Which connotation is implied by a given use of the word depends
in similarly profound ways on the context. Similar remarks apply
to a couple of other hacker words, most notably random."
Hacking might be characterized as `an appropriate application
of ingenuity'. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork
job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the
cleverness that went into it.
An important secondary meaning of hack is `a creative practical joke'. This kind of
hack is easier to explain to non-hackers than the programming
kind. Of course, some hacks have both natures; see the lexicon
entries for pseudo and kgbvax. But here are some examples of pure
practical jokes that illustrate the hacking spirit:
In 1961, students from Caltech (California Institute
of Technology, in Pasadena) hacked the Rose Bowl football game.
One student posed as a reporter and `interviewed' the director of
the University of Washington card stunts (such stunts involve
people in the stands who hold up colored cards to make pictures).
The reporter learned exactly how the stunts were operated, and
also that the director would be out to dinner later.
While the director was eating, the students (who called
themselves the `Fiendish Fourteen') picked a lock and stole a
blank direction sheet for the card stunts. They then had a
printer run off 2300 copies of the blank. The next day they
picked the lock again and stole the master plans for the stunts
-- large sheets of graph paper colored in with the stunt
pictures. Using these as a guide, they made new instructions for
three of the stunts on the duplicated blanks. Finally, they broke
in once more, replacing the stolen master plans and substituting
the stack of diddled instruction sheets for the original set.
The result was that three of the pictures were totally
different. Instead of `WASHINGTON', the word ``CALTECH' was
flashed. Another stunt showed the word `HUSKIES', the Washington
nickname, but spelled it backwards. And what was supposed to have
been a picture of a husky instead showed a beaver. (Both Caltech
and MIT use the beaver -- nature's engineer -- as a mascot.)
After the game, the Washington faculty athletic representative
said: "Some thought it ingenious; others were indignant." The
Washington student body president remarked: "No hard feelings,
but at the time it was unbelievable. We were amazed."
This is now considered a classic hack, particularly because
revising the direction sheets constituted a form of
programming.
Here is another classic hack:
On November 20, 1982, MIT hacked the Harvard-Yale
football game. Just after Harvard's second touchdown against
Yale, in the first quarter, a small black ball popped up out of
the ground at the 40-yard line, and grew bigger, and bigger, and
bigger. The letters `MIT' appeared all over the ball. As the
players and officials stood around gawking, the ball grew to six
feet in diameter and then burst with a bang and a cloud of white
smoke.
The "Boston Globe" later reported: "If you want to know the
truth, MIT won The Game."
The prank had taken weeks of careful planning by members of
MIT's Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. The device consisted of a
weather balloon, a hydraulic ram powered by Freon gas to lift it
out of the ground, and a vacuum-cleaner motor to inflate it. They
made eight separate expeditions to Harvard Stadium between 1 and
5 A.M., locating an unused 110-volt circuit in the
stadium and running buried wires from the stadium circuit to the
40-yard line, where they buried the balloon device. When the time
came to activate the device, two fraternity members had merely to
flip a circuit breaker and push a plug into an outlet.
This stunt had all the earmarks of a perfect hack: surprise,
publicity, the ingenious use of technology, safety, and
harmlessness. The use of manual control allowed the prank to be
timed so as not to disrupt the game (it was set off between
plays, so the outcome of the game would not be unduly affected).
The perpetrators had even thoughtfully attached a note to the
balloon explaining that the device was not dangerous and
contained no explosives.
Harvard president Derek Bok commented: "They have an awful lot
of clever people down there at MIT, and they did it again."
President Paul E. Gray of MIT said: "There is absolutely no truth
to the rumor that I had anything to do with it, but I wish there
were."
The hacks above are verifiable history; they can be proved to
have happened. Many other classic-hack stories from MIT and
elsewhere, though retold as history, have the characteristics of
what Jan Brunvand has called `urban folklore' (see FOAF). Perhaps the best known of these is the
legend of the infamous trolley-car hack, an alleged incident in
which engineering students are said to have welded a trolley car
to its tracks with thermite. Numerous versions of this have been
recorded from the 1940s to the present, most set at MIT but at
least one very detailed version set at CMU.
Brian Leibowitz has researched MIT hacks both real and
mythical extensively; the interested reader is referred to his
delightful pictorial compendium "The Journal of the Institute for
Hacks, Tomfoolery, and Pranks" (MIT Museum, 1990; ISBN
0-917027-03-5). The Institute has a World Wide Web page at http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/Gallery.html.
There is rumored to be a sequel entitled "Is This The Way To
Baker Street?". The Caltech Alumni Association has published two
similar books titled "Legends of Caltech" and "More Legends of
Caltech".
Finally, here is a story about one of the classic computer
hacks.
Back in the mid-1970s, several of the system support
staff at Motorola discovered a relatively simple way to crack
system security on the Xerox CP-V timesharing system. Through a
simple programming strategy, it was possible for a user program
to trick the system into running a portion of the program in
`master mode' (supervisor state), in which memory protection does
not apply. The program could then poke a large value into its
`privilege level' byte (normally write-protected) and could then
proceed to bypass all levels of security within the
file-management system, patch the system monitor, and do numerous
other interesting things. In short, the barn door was wide open.
Motorola quite properly reported this problem to Xerox via an
official `level 1 SIDR' (a bug report with an intended urgency of
`needs to be fixed yesterday'). Because the text of each SIDR was
entered into a database that could be viewed by quite a number of
people, Motorola followed the approved procedure: they simply
reported the problem as `Security SIDR', and attached all of the
necessary documentation, ways-to-reproduce, etc.
The CP-V people at Xerox sat on their thumbs; they either
didn't realize the severity of the problem, or didn't assign the
necessary operating-system-staff resources to develop and
distribute an official patch.
Months passed. The Motorola guys pestered their Xerox
field-support rep, to no avail. Finally they decided to take
direct action, to demonstrate to Xerox management just how easily
the system could be cracked and just how thoroughly the security
safeguards could be subverted.
They dug around in the operating-system listings and devised a
thoroughly devilish set of patches. These patches were then
incorporated into a pair of programs called `Robin Hood' and
`Friar Tuck'. Robin Hood and Friar Tuck were designed to run as
`ghost jobs' (daemons, in Unix terminology); they would use the
existing loophole to subvert system security, install the
necessary patches, and then keep an eye on one another's statuses
in order to keep the system operator (in effect, the superuser)
from aborting them.
One fine day, the system operator on the main CP-V software
development system in El Segundo was surprised by a number of
unusual phenomena. These included the following:
Tape drives would rewind and dismount their tapes in the
middle of a job.
Disk drives would seek back and forth so rapidly that they
would attempt to walk across the floor (see walking drives).
The card-punch output device would occasionally start up of
itself and punch a lace card.
These would usually jam in the punch.
The console would print snide and insulting messages from
Robin Hood to Friar Tuck, or vice versa.
The Xerox card reader had two output stackers; it could be
instructed to stack into A, stack into B, or stack into A (unless
a card was unreadable, in which case the bad card was placed into
stacker B). One of the patches installed by the ghosts added some
code to the card-reader driver... after reading a
card, it would flip over to the opposite stacker. As a result,
card decks would divide themselves in half when they were read,
leaving the operator to recollate them manually.
Naturally, the operator called in the operating-system
developers. They found the bandit ghost jobs running, and gunned them... and were once
again surprised. When Robin Hood was gunned, the following
sequence of events took place:
!X id1
id1: Friar Tuck... I am under attack! Pray save me!
id1: Off (aborted)
id2: Fear not, friend Robin! I shall rout the Sheriff
of Nottingham's men!
id1: Thank you, my good fellow!
Each ghost-job would detect the fact that the other had been
killed, and would start a new copy of the recently slain program
within a few milliseconds. The only way to kill both ghosts was
to kill them simultaneously (very difficult) or to deliberately
crash the system.
Finally, the system programmers did the latter -- only to find
that the bandits appeared once again when the system rebooted! It
turned out that these two programs had patched the boot-time OS
image (the kernel file, in Unix terms) and had added themselves
to the list of programs that were to be started at boot time
(this is similar to the way MS-DOS viruses propagate).
The Robin Hood and Friar Tuck ghosts were finally eradicated
when the system staff rebooted the system from a clean boot-tape
and reinstalled the monitor. Not long thereafter, Xerox released
a patch for this problem.
It is alleged that Xerox filed a complaint with Motorola's
management about the merry-prankster actions of the two employees
in question. It is not recorded that any serious disciplinary
action was taken against either of them.
Node:TV Typewriters, Next:A Story About Magic,
Previous:The
Meaning of Hack, Up:Appendix
A
TV Typewriters A Tale of Hackish Ingenuity
Here is a true story about a glass tty: One day an MIT hacker
was in a motorcycle accident and broke his leg. He had to stay in
the hospital quite a while, and got restless because he couldn't
hack. Two of his friends therefore
took a terminal and a modem for it to the hospital, so that he
could use the computer by telephone from his hospital bed.
Now this happened some years before the spread of home
computers, and computer terminals were not a familiar sight to
the average person. When the two friends got to the hospital, a
guard stopped them and asked what they were carrying. They
explained that they wanted to take a computer terminal to their
friend who was a patient.
The guard got out his list of things that patients were
permitted to have in their rooms: TV, radio, electric razor,
typewriter, tape player, ... no computer
terminals. Computer terminals weren't on the list, so the guard
wouldn't let it in. Rules are rules, you know. (This guard was
clearly a droid.)
Fair enough, said the two friends, and they left again. They
were frustrated, of course, because they knew that the terminal
was as harmless as a TV or anything else on the
list... which gave them an idea.
The next day they returned, and the same thing happened: a
guard stopped them and asked what they were carrying. They said:
"This is a TV typewriter!" The guard was skeptical, so they
plugged it in and demonstrated it. "See? You just type on the
keyboard and what you type shows up on the TV screen." Now the
guard didn't stop to think about how utterly useless a typewriter
would be that didn't produce any paper copies of what you typed;
but this was clearly a TV typewriter, no doubt about it. So he
checked his list: "A TV is all right, a typewriter is all right
... okay, take it on in!"
[Historical note: Many years ago, "Popular Electronics"
published solder-it-yourself plans for a TV typewriter. Despite
the essential uselessness of the device, it was an enormously
popular project. Steve Ciarcia, the man behind "Byte" magazine's
"Circuit Cellar" feature, resurrected this ghost in one of his
books of the early 1980s. He ascribed its popularity (no doubt
correctly) to the feeling of power the builder could achieve by
being able to decide himself what would be shown on the TV.
--ESR]
[Antihistorical note: On September 23rd, 1992, the L.A. Times
ran the following bit in Steve Harvey's `Only in L.A.'
column:
It must have been borrowed from a museum: Solomon
Waters of Altadena, a 6-year-old first-grader, came home from his
first day of school and excitedly told his mother how he had
written on "a machine that looks like a computer-but without the
TV screen."
She asked him if it could have been a "typewriter."
"Yeah! Yeah!" he said. "That's what it was called."
I have since investigated this matter and determined that many
of today's teenagers have never seen a slide rule,
either.... - ESR]
Node:A Story About Magic,
Next:Some AI Koans,
Previous:TV
Typewriters, Up:Appendix
A
A Story About `Magic'
Some years ago, I (GLS) was snooping around in the cabinets
that housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch
glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew
job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no one knows
who).
You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without
knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The
switch was labeled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions,
and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words
`magic' and `more magic'. The switch was in the `more magic'
position.
I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen
the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the
switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire
did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but
it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything
unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a
wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side.
It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly
joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative,
we flipped it. The computer instantly crashed.
Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as
coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the `more
magic' position before reviving the computer.
A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David
Moon as I recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me
of a supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps
thought I was fooling him with a bogus saga. To prove it to him,
I showed him the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame
with only one wire connected to it, still in the `more magic'
position. We scrutinized the switch and its lone connection, and
found that the other end of the wire, though connected to the
computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That clearly made
the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically
nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't
affect anything anyway. So we flipped the switch.
The computer promptly crashed.
This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT
hacker, who was close at hand. He had never noticed the switch
before, either. He inspected it, concluded it was useless, got
some diagonal cutters and diked it
out. We then revived the computer and it has run fine ever
since.
We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There
is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal,
and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough
to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through
it. But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that
the switch was magic.
I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but
I usually keep it set on `more magic'.
1994: Another explanation of this story has since been
offered. Note that the switch body was metal. Suppose that the
non-connected side of the switch was connected to the switch body
(usually the body is connected to a separate earth lug, but there
are exceptions). The body is connected to the computer case,
which is, presumably, grounded. Now the circuit ground within the
machine isn't necessarily at the same potential as the case
ground, so flipping the switch connected the circuit ground to
the case ground, causing a voltage drop/jump which reset the
machine. This was probably discovered by someone who found out
the hard way that there was a potential difference between the
two, and who then wired in the switch as a joke.
Node:Some AI Koans, Next:OS and JEDGAR, Previous:A Story About
Magic, Up:Appendix A
Some AI Koans
These are some of the funniest examples of a genre of jokes
told at the MIT AI Lab about various noted hackers. The original
koans were composed by Danny Hillis, who would later found
Connection Machines, Inc. In reading these, it is at least useful
to know that Minsky, Sussman, and Drescher are AI researchers of
note, that Tom Knight was one of the Lisp machine's principal
designers, and that David Moon wrote much of Lisp Machine
Lisp.
* * *
A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning
the power off and on.
Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "You
cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no
understanding of what is going wrong."
Knight turned the machine off and on.
The machine worked.
* * *
One day a student came to Moon and said: "I understand how to
make a better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count
of the pointers to each cons."
Moon patiently told the student the following story:
"One day a student came to Moon and said: `I
understand how to make a better garbage
collector...
[Ed. note: Pure reference-count garbage collectors have
problems with circular structures that point to themselves.]
* * *
In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him
as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.
"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play
Tic-Tac-Toe" Sussman replied.
"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.
"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play",
Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes.
"Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher.
"So that the room will be empty."
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
* * *
A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was
eating his morning meal.
"I would like to give you this personality test", said the
outsider, "because I want you to be happy."
Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into
the toaster, saying: "I wish the toaster to be happy, too."
Node:OS and JEDGAR, Next:The Story of Mel,
Previous:Some AI
Koans, Up:Appendix A
OS and JEDGAR
This story says a lot about the ITS ethos.
On the ITS system there was a program that allowed you to see
what was being printed on someone else's terminal. It spied on
the other guy's output by examining the insides of the monitor
system. The output spy program was called OS. Throughout the rest
of the computer science world (and at IBM too) OS means
`operating system', but among old-time ITS hackers it almost
always meant `output spy'.
OS could work because ITS purposely had very little in the way
of `protection' that prevented one user from trespassing on
another's areas. Fair is fair, however. There was another program
that would automatically notify you if anyone started to spy on
your output. It worked in exactly the same way, by looking at the
insides of the operating system to see if anyone else was looking
at the insides that had to do with your output. This `counterspy'
program was called JEDGAR (a six-letterism pronounced as two
syllables: /jed'gr/), in honor of the former head of the FBI.
But there's more. JEDGAR would ask the user for `license to
kill'. If the user said yes, then JEDGAR would actually gun the job of the luser who was spying. Unfortunately, people
found that this made life too violent, especially when tourists
learned about it. One of the systems hackers solved the problem
by replacing JEDGAR with another program that only pretended to
do its job. It took a long time to do this, because every copy of
JEDGAR had to be patched. To this day no one knows how many
people never figured out that JEDGAR had been defanged.
Interestingly, there is still a security module named JEDGAR
alive as of late 1994 -- in the Unisys MCP for large systems. It
is unknown to us whether the name is tribute or independent
invention.
Node:The Story of Mel,
Previous:OS and
JEDGAR, Up:Appendix A
The Story of Mel
This was posted to Usenet by its author, Ed Nather (utastro!nather), on May 21, 1983.
A recent article devoted to the macho side of programming
made the bald and unvarnished statement:
Real Programmers write in FORTRAN.
Maybe they do now,
in this decadent era of
Lite beer, hand calculators, and ``user-friendly'' software
but back in the Good Old Days,
when the term ``software'' sounded funny
and Real Computers were made out of drums and vacuum tubes,
Real Programmers wrote in machine code.
Not FORTRAN. Not RATFOR. Not, even, assembly language.
Machine Code.
Raw, unadorned, inscrutable hexadecimal numbers.
Directly.
Lest a whole new generation of programmers
grow up in ignorance of this glorious past,
I feel duty-bound to describe,
as best I can through the generation gap,
how a Real Programmer wrote code.
I'll call him Mel,
because that was his name.
I first met Mel when I went to work for Royal McBee Computer Corp.,
a now-defunct subsidiary of the typewriter company.
The firm manufactured the LGP-30,
a small, cheap (by the standards of the day)
drum-memory computer,
and had just started to manufacture
the RPC-4000, a much-improved,
bigger, better, faster --- drum-memory computer.
Cores cost too much,
and weren't here to stay, anyway.
(That's why you haven't heard of the company,
or the computer.)
I had been hired to write a FORTRAN compiler
for this new marvel and Mel was my guide to its wonders.
Mel didn't approve of compilers.
``If a program can't rewrite its own code'',
he asked, ``what good is it?''
Mel had written,
in hexadecimal,
the most popular computer program the company owned.
It ran on the LGP-30
and played blackjack with potential customers
at computer shows.
Its effect was always dramatic.
The LGP-30 booth was packed at every show,
and the IBM salesmen stood around
talking to each other.
Whether or not this actually sold computers
was a question we never discussed.
Mel's job was to re-write
the blackjack program for the RPC-4000.
(Port? What does that mean?)
The new computer had a one-plus-one
addressing scheme,
in which each machine instruction,
in addition to the operation code
and the address of the needed operand,
had a second address that indicated where, on the revolving drum,
the next instruction was located.
In modern parlance,
every single instruction was followed by a GO TO!
Put that in Pascal's pipe and smoke it.
Mel loved the RPC-4000
because he could optimize his code:
that is, locate instructions on the drum
so that just as one finished its job,
the next would be just arriving at the ``read head''
and available for immediate execution.
There was a program to do that job,
an ``optimizing assembler'',
but Mel refused to use it.
``You never know where it's going to put things'',
he explained, ``so you'd have to use separate constants''.
It was a long time before I understood that remark.
Since Mel knew the numerical value
of every operation code,
and assigned his own drum addresses,
every instruction he wrote could also be considered
a numerical constant.
He could pick up an earlier ``add'' instruction, say,
and multiply by it,
if it had the right numeric value.
His code was not easy for someone else to modify.
I compared Mel's hand-optimized programs
with the same code massaged by the optimizing assembler program,
and Mel's always ran faster.
That was because the ``top-down'' method of program design
hadn't been invented yet,
and Mel wouldn't have used it anyway.
He wrote the innermost parts of his program loops first,
so they would get first choice
of the optimum address locations on the drum.
The optimizing assembler wasn't smart enough to do it that way.
Mel never wrote time-delay loops, either,
even when the balky Flexowriter
required a delay between output characters to work right.
He just located instructions on the drum
so each successive one was just past the read head
when it was needed;
the drum had to execute another complete revolution
to find the next instruction.
He coined an unforgettable term for this procedure.
Although ``optimum'' is an absolute term,
like ``unique'', it became common verbal practice
to make it relative:
``not quite optimum'' or ``less optimum''
or ``not very optimum''.
Mel called the maximum time-delay locations
the ``most pessimum''.
After he finished the blackjack program
and got it to run
(``Even the initializer is optimized'',
he said proudly),
he got a Change Request from the sales department.
The program used an elegant (optimized)
random number generator
to shuffle the ``cards'' and deal from the ``deck'',
and some of the salesmen felt it was too fair,
since sometimes the customers lost.
They wanted Mel to modify the program
so, at the setting of a sense switch on the console,
they could change the odds and let the customer win.
Mel balked.
He felt this was patently dishonest,
which it was,
and that it impinged on his personal integrity as a programmer,
which it did,
so he refused to do it.
The Head Salesman talked to Mel,
as did the Big Boss and, at the boss's urging,
a few Fellow Programmers.
Mel finally gave in and wrote the code,
but he got the test backwards,
and, when the sense switch was turned on,
the program would cheat, winning every time.
Mel was delighted with this,
claiming his subconscious was uncontrollably ethical,
and adamantly refused to fix it.
After Mel had left the company for greener pa$ture$,
the Big Boss asked me to look at the code
and see if I could find the test and reverse it.
Somewhat reluctantly, I agreed to look.
Tracking Mel's code was a real adventure.
I have often felt that programming is an art form,
whose real value can only be appreciated
by another versed in the same arcane art;
there are lovely gems and brilliant coups
hidden from human view and admiration, sometimes forever,
by the very nature of the process.
You can learn a lot about an individual
just by reading through his code,
even in hexadecimal.
Mel was, I think, an unsung genius.
Perhaps my greatest shock came
when I found an innocent loop that had no test in it.
No test. None.
Common sense said it had to be a closed loop,
where the program would circle, forever, endlessly.
Program control passed right through it, however,
and safely out the other side.
It took me two weeks to figure it out.
The RPC-4000 computer had a really modern facility
called an index register.
It allowed the programmer to write a program loop
that used an indexed instruction inside;
each time through,
the number in the index register
was added to the address of that instruction,
so it would refer
to the next datum in a series.
He had only to increment the index register
each time through.
Mel never used it.
Instead, he would pull the instruction into a machine register,
add one to its address,
and store it back.
He would then execute the modified instruction
right from the register.
The loop was written so this additional execution time
was taken into account ---
just as this instruction finished,
the next one was right under the drum's read head,
ready to go.
But the loop had no test in it.
The vital clue came when I noticed
the index register bit,
the bit that lay between the address
and the operation code in the instruction word,
was turned on ---
yet Mel never used the index register,
leaving it zero all the time.
When the light went on it nearly blinded me.
He had located the data he was working on
near the top of memory ---
the largest locations the instructions could address ---
so, after the last datum was handled,
incrementing the instruction address
would make it overflow.
The carry would add one to the
operation code, changing it to the next one in the instruction set:
a jump instruction.
Sure enough, the next program instruction was
in address location zero,
and the program went happily on its way.
I haven't kept in touch with Mel,
so I don't know if he ever gave in to the flood of
change that has washed over programming techniques
since those long-gone days.
I like to think he didn't.
In any event,
I was impressed enough that I quit looking for the
offending test,
telling the Big Boss I couldn't find it.
He didn't seem surprised.
When I left the company,
the blackjack program would still cheat
if you turned on the right sense switch,
and I think that's how it should be.
I didn't feel comfortable
hacking up the code of a Real Programmer.
This is one of hackerdom's great heroic epics, free verse or
no. In a few spare images it captures more about the esthetics
and psychology of hacking than all the scholarly volumes on the
subject put together. For an opposing point of view, see the
entry for Real
Programmer.
[1992 postscript -- the author writes: "The original
submission to the net was not in free verse, nor any
approximation to it -- it was straight prose style, in
non-justified paragraphs. In bouncing around the net it
apparently got modified into the `free verse' form now popular.
In other words, it got hacked on the net. That seems appropriate,
somehow." The author adds that he likes the `free-verse' version
better...]
[1999 update: Mel's last name is now known. The manual for the
LGP-30 refers to "Mel Kaye of Royal McBee who did the bulk of the
programming [...] of the ACT 1 system".]
Node:Appendix B, Next:Appendix C, Previous:Appendix A, Up:Top
A Portrait of J. Random Hacker
This profile reflects detailed comments on an earlier `trial
balloon' version from about a hundred Usenet respondents. Where
comparatives are used, the implicit `other' is a randomly
selected segment of the non-hacker population of the same size as
hackerdom.
An important point: Except in some relatively minor respects
such as slang vocabulary, hackers don't get to be the way they
are by imitating each other. Rather, it seems to be the case that
the combination of personality traits that makes a hacker so
conditions one's outlook on life that one tends to end up being
like other hackers whether one wants to or not (much as bizarrely
detailed similarities in behavior and preferences are found in
genetic twins raised separately).
General Appearance:
Dress:
Reading Habits:
Other Interests:
Physical
Activity and Sports:
Education:
Things
Hackers Detest and Avoid:
Food:
Politics:
Gender and
Ethnicity:
Religion:
Ceremonial
Chemicals:
Communication
Style:
Geographical
Distribution:
Sexual Habits:
Personality
Characteristics:
Weaknesses of the
Hacker Personality:
Miscellaneous:
Node:General Appearance,
Next:Dress, Up:Appendix B
General Appearance
Intelligent. Scruffy. Intense. Abstracted. Surprisingly for a
sedentary profession, more hackers run to skinny than fat; both
extremes are more common than elsewhere. Tans are rare.
Node:Dress, Next:Reading Habits, Previous:General Appearance,
Up:Appendix B
Dress
Casual, vaguely post-hippie; T-shirts, jeans, running shoes,
Birkenstocks (or bare feet). Long hair, beards, and moustaches
are common. High incidence of tie-dye and intellectual or
humorous `slogan' T-shirts (only rarely computer related; that
would be too obvious).
A substantial minority prefers `outdoorsy' clothing -- hiking
boots ("in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the
machine room", as one famous parody put it), khakis, lumberjack
or chamois shirts, and the like.
Very few actually fit the "National Lampoon" Nerd stereotype,
though it lingers on at MIT and may have been more common before
1975. At least since the late Seventies backpacks have been more
common than briefcases, and the hacker `look' has been more
whole-earth than whole-polyester.
Hackers dress for comfort, function, and minimal maintenance
hassles rather than for appearance (some, perhaps unfortunately,
take this to extremes and neglect personal hygiene). They have a
very low tolerance of suits and other `business' attire; in fact,
it is not uncommon for hackers to quit a job rather than conform
to a dress code.
Female hackers almost never wear visible makeup, and many use
none at all.
Node:Reading Habits, Next:Other Interests, Previous:Dress, Up:Appendix B
Reading Habits
Omnivorous, but usually includes lots of science and science
fiction. The typical hacker household might subscribe to
"Analog", "Scientific American", "Whole-Earth Review", and
"Smithsonian" (most hackers ignore "Wired" and other
self-consciously `cyberpunk' magazines, considering them wannabee fodder). Hackers often have a
reading range that astonishes liberal arts people but tend not to
talk about it as much. Many hackers spend as much of their spare
time reading as the average American burns up watching TV, and
often keep shelves and shelves of well-thumbed books in their
homes.
Node:Other Interests, Next:Physical
Activity and Sports, Previous:Reading Habits, Up:Appendix B
Other Interests
Some hobbies are widely shared and recognized as going with
the culture: science fiction, music, medievalism (in the active
form practiced by the Society for Creative Anachronism and
similar organizations), chess, go, backgammon, wargames, and
intellectual games of all kinds. (Role-playing games such as
Dungeons and Dragons used to be extremely popular among hackers
but they lost a bit of their luster as they moved into the
mainstream and became heavily commercialized. More recently,
"Magic: The Gathering" has been widely popular among hackers.)
Logic puzzles. Ham radio. Other interests that seem to correlate
less strongly but positively with hackerdom include linguistics
and theater teching.
Node:Physical
Activity and Sports, Next:Education, Previous:Other Interests, Up:Appendix B
Physical Activity and Sports
Many (perhaps even most) hackers don't follow or do sports at
all and are determinedly anti-physical. Among those who do,
interest in spectator sports is low to non-existent; sports are
something one does, not something one watches on TV.
Further, hackers avoid most team sports like the plague.
Volleyball was long a notable exception, perhaps because it's
non-contact and relatively friendly; Ultimate Frisbee has become
quite popular for similar reasons. Hacker sports are almost
always primarily self-competitive ones involving concentration,
stamina, and micromotor skills: martial arts, bicycling, auto
racing, kite flying, hiking, rock climbing, aviation,
target-shooting, sailing, caving, juggling, skiing, skating,
skydiving, scuba diving. Hackers' delight in techno-toys also
tends to draw them towards hobbies with nifty complicated
equipment that they can tinker with.
The popularity of martial arts in the hacker culture deserves
special mention. Many observers have noted it, and the connection
has grown noticeably stronger over time. In the 1970s, many
hackers admired martial arts disciplines from a distance, sensing
a compatible ideal in their exaltation of skill through rigorous
self-discipline and concentration. As martial arts became
increasingly mainstreamed in the U.S. and other western
countries, hackers moved from admiring to doing in large numbers.
In 1997, for example, your humble editor recalls sitting down
with five strangers at the first Perl conference and discovering
that four of us were in active training in some sort of martial
art - and, what is more interesting, nobody at the table found
this particularly odd.
Today (2000), martial arts seems to have become established as
the hacker exercise form of choice, and the martial-arts culture
combining skill-centered elitism with a willingness to let
anybody join seems a stronger parallel to hacker behavior than
ever. Common usages in hacker slang un-ironically analogize
programming to kung fu (thus, one hears talk of "code-fu" or in
reference to specific skills like "HTML-fu"). Albeit with
slightly more irony, today's hackers readily analogize
assimilation into the hacker culture with the plot of a Jet Li
movie: the aspiring newbie studies with masters of the tradition,
develops his art through deep meditation, ventures forth to
perform heroic feats of hacking, and eventually becomes a master
who trains the next generation of newbies.
Node:Education, Next:Things Hackers Detest
and Avoid, Previous:Physical Activity and
Sports, Up:Appendix B
Education
Nearly all hackers past their teens are either college-degreed
or self-educated to an equivalent level. The self-taught hacker
is often considered (at least by other hackers) to be
better-motivated, and may be more respected, than his
school-shaped counterpart. Academic areas from which people often
gravitate into hackerdom include (besides the obvious computer
science and electrical engineering) physics, mathematics,
linguistics, and philosophy.
Node:Things
Hackers Detest and Avoid, Next:Food, Previous:Education, Up:Appendix B
Things Hackers Detest and Avoid
IBM mainframes. All the works of Microsoft. Smurfs, Ewoks, and
other forms of offensive cuteness. Bureaucracies. Stupid people.
Easy listening music. Television (with occasional exceptions for
cartoons, movies, and good SF like "Star Trek" classic or Babylon
5). Business suits. Dishonesty. Incompetence. Boredom. COBOL.
BASIC. Character-based menu interfaces.
Node:Food, Next:Politics, Previous:Things Hackers Detest
and Avoid, Up:Appendix B
Food
Ethnic. Spicy. Oriental, esp. Chinese and most esp. Szechuan,
Hunan, and Mandarin (hackers consider Cantonese vaguely
_déclassé_). Hackers prefer the exotic; for
example, the Japanese-food fans among them will eat with gusto
such delicacies as fugu (poisonous pufferfish) and whale. Thai
food has experienced flurries of popularity. Where available,
high-quality Jewish delicatessen food is much esteemed. A visible
minority of Southwestern and Pacific Coast hackers prefers
Mexican.
For those all-night hacks, pizza and microwaved burritos are
big. Interestingly, though the mainstream culture has tended to
think of hackers as incorrigible junk-food junkies, many have at
least mildly health-foodist attitudes and are fairly
discriminating about what they eat. This may be generational;
anecdotal evidence suggests that the stereotype was more on the
mark before the early 1980s.
Node:Politics, Next:Gender and Ethnicity, Previous:Food, Up:Appendix B
Politics
Vaguely liberal-moderate, except for the strong libertarian
contingent which rejects conventional left-right politics
entirely. The only safe generalization is that hackers tend to be
rather anti-authoritarian; thus, both conventional conservatism
and `hard' leftism are rare. Hackers are far more likely than
most non-hackers to either (a) be aggressively apolitical or (b)
entertain peculiar or idiosyncratic political ideas and actually
try to live by them day-to-day.
Node:Gender and Ethnicity,
Next:Religion, Previous:Politics, Up:Appendix B
Gender and Ethnicity
Hackerdom is still predominantly male. However, the percentage
of women is clearly higher than the low-single-digit range
typical for technical professions, and female hackers are
generally respected and dealt with as equals.
In the U.S., hackerdom is predominantly Caucasian with strong
minorities of Jews (East Coast) and Orientals (West Coast). The
Jewish contingent has exerted a particularly pervasive cultural
influence (see Food, above, and note
that several common jargon terms are obviously mutated
Yiddish).
The ethnic distribution of hackers is understood by them to be
a function of which ethnic groups tend to seek and value
education. Racial and ethnic prejudice is notably uncommon and
tends to be met with freezing contempt.
When asked, hackers often ascribe their culture's gender- and
color-blindness to a positive effect of text-only network
channels, and this is doubtless a powerful influence. Also, the
ties many hackers have to AI research and SF literature may have
helped them to develop an idea of personhood that is inclusive
rather than exclusive -- after all, if one's imagination readily
grants full human rights to future AI programs, robots, dolphins,
and extraterrestrial aliens, mere color and gender can't seem
very important any more.
Node:Religion, Next:Ceremonial Chemicals, Previous:Gender and
Ethnicity, Up:Appendix B
Religion
Agnostic. Atheist. Non-observant Jewish. Neo-pagan. Very
commonly, three or more of these are combined in the same person.
Conventional faith-holding Christianity is rare though not
unknown.
Even hackers who identify with a religious affiliation tend to
be relaxed about it, hostile to organized religion in general and
all forms of religious bigotry in particular. Many enjoy `parody'
religions such as Discordianism and the Church of the
SubGenius.
Also, many hackers are influenced to varying degrees by Zen
Buddhism or (less commonly) Taoism, and blend them easily with
their `native' religions.
There is a definite strain of mystical, almost Gnostic
sensibility that shows up even among those hackers not actively
involved with neo-paganism, Discordianism, or Zen. Hacker
folklore that pays homage to `wizards' and speaks of incantations
and demons has too much psychological truthfulness about it to be
entirely a joke.
Node:Ceremonial Chemicals,
Next:Communication
Style, Previous:Religion, Up:Appendix B
Ceremonial Chemicals
Most hackers don't smoke tobacco, and use alcohol in
moderation if at all. However, there has been something of a
trend towards exotic beers since about 1995, especially among
younger Linux hackers apparently influenced by Linus Torvalds's
fondness for Guiness.
Limited use of non-addictive psychedelic drugs, such as
cannabis, LSD, psilocybin, nitrous oxide, etc., used to be
relatively common and is still regarded with more tolerance than
in the mainstream culture. Use of `downers' and opiates, on the
other hand, appears to be particularly rare; hackers seem in
general to dislike drugs that make them stupid. But on the gripping hand, many
hackers regularly wire up on caffeine and/or sugar for all-night
hacking runs.
Node:Communication Style,
Next:Geographical Distribution,
Previous:Ceremonial Chemicals, Up:Appendix B
Communication Style
See the discussions of speech and writing styles near the
beginning of this File. Though hackers often have poor
person-to-person communication skills, they are as a rule quite
sensitive to nuances of language and very precise in their use of
it. They are often better at writing than at speaking.
Node:Geographical
Distribution, Next:Sexual Habits, Previous:Communication Style, Up:Appendix B
Geographical Distribution
In the United States, hackerdom revolves on a Bay
Area-to-Boston axis; about half of the hard core seems to live
within a hundred miles of Cambridge (Massachusetts) or Berkeley
(California), although there are significant contingents in Los
Angeles, in the Pacific Northwest, and around Washington DC.
Hackers tend to cluster around large cities, especially
`university towns' such as the Raleigh-Durham area in North
Carolina or Princeton, New Jersey (this may simply reflect the
fact that many are students or ex-students living near their alma
maters).
Node:Sexual Habits, Next:Personality
Characteristics, Previous:Geographical Distribution,
Up:Appendix B
Sexual Habits
Hackerdom easily tolerates a much wider range of sexual and
lifestyle variation than the mainstream culture. It includes a
relatively large gay and bisexual contingent. Hackers are
somewhat more likely to live in polygynous or polyandrous
relationships, practice open marriage, or live in communes or
group houses. In this, as in general appearance, hackerdom
semi-consciously maintains `counterculture' values.
Node:Personality
Characteristics, Next:Weaknesses of the
Hacker Personality, Previous:Sexual Habits, Up:Appendix B
Personality Characteristics
The most obvious common `personality' characteristics of
hackers are high intelligence, consuming curiosity, and facility
with intellectual abstractions. Also, most hackers are
`neophiles', stimulated by and appreciative of novelty
(especially intellectual novelty). Most are also relatively
individualistic and anti-conformist.
Although high general intelligence is common among hackers, it
is not the _sine qua non_ one might expect. Another trait is
probably even more important: the ability to mentally absorb,
retain, and reference large amounts of `meaningless' detail,
trusting to later experience to give it context and meaning. A
person of merely average analytical intelligence who has this
trait can become an effective hacker, but a creative genius who
lacks it will swiftly find himself outdistanced by people who
routinely upload the contents of thick reference manuals into
their brains. [During the production of the first book version of
this document, for example, I learned most of the rather complex
typesetting language TeX over about four working days, mainly by
inhaling Knuth's 477-page manual. My editor's flabbergasted
reaction to this genuinely surprised me, because years of
associating with hackers have conditioned me to consider such
performances routine and to be expected. --ESR]
Contrary to stereotype, hackers are not usually
intellectually narrow; they tend to be interested in any subject
that can provide mental stimulation, and can often discourse
knowledgeably and even interestingly on any number of obscure
subjects -- if you can get them to talk at all, as opposed to,
say, going back to their hacking.
It is noticeable (and contrary to many outsiders'
expectations) that the better a hacker is at hacking, the more
likely he or she is to have outside interests at which he or she
is more than merely competent.
Hackers are `control freaks' in a way that has nothing to do
with the usual coercive or authoritarian connotations of the
term. In the same way that children delight in making model
trains go forward and back by moving a switch, hackers love
making complicated things like computers do nifty stuff for them.
But it has to be their nifty stuff. They don't like
tedium, nondeterminism, or most of the fussy, boring, ill-defined
little tasks that go with maintaining a normal existence.
Accordingly, they tend to be careful and orderly in their
intellectual lives and chaotic elsewhere. Their code will be
beautiful, even if their desks are buried in 3 feet of crap.
Hackers are generally only very weakly motivated by
conventional rewards such as social approval or money. They tend
to be attracted by challenges and excited by interesting toys,
and to judge the interest of work or other activities in terms of
the challenges offered and the toys they get to play with.
In terms of Myers-Briggs and equivalent psychometric systems,
hackerdom appears to concentrate the relatively rare INTJ and
INTP types; that is, introverted, intuitive, and thinker types
(as opposed to the extroverted-sensate personalities that
predominate in the mainstream culture). ENT[JP] types are also
concentrated among hackers but are in a minority.
Node:Weaknesses of the
Hacker Personality, Next:Miscellaneous, Previous:Personality
Characteristics, Up:Appendix
B
Weaknesses of the Hacker Personality
Hackers have relatively little ability to identify emotionally
with other people. This may be because hackers generally aren't
much like `other people'. Unsurprisingly, hackers also tend
towards self-absorption, intellectual arrogance, and impatience
with people and tasks perceived to be wasting their time.
As cynical as hackers sometimes wax about the amount of idiocy
in the world, they tend by reflex to assume that everyone is as
rational, `cool', and imaginative as they consider themselves.
This bias often contributes to weakness in communication skills.
Hackers tend to be especially poor at confrontation and
negotiation.
Because of their passionate embrace of (what they consider to
be) the Right Thing, hackers
can be unfortunately intolerant and bigoted on technical issues,
in marked contrast to their general spirit of camaraderie and
tolerance of alternative viewpoints otherwise. Old-time ITS partisans look down on the ever-growing
hordes of Unix hackers; Unix
aficionados despise VMS and MS-DOS; and hackers who are used to
conventional command-line user interfaces loudly loathe
mouse-and-menu based systems such as the Macintosh. Hackers who
don't indulge in Usenet consider it
a huge waste of time and bandwidth; fans of old adventure games such
as ADVENT and Zork consider MUDs to
be glorified chat systems devoid of atmosphere or interesting
puzzles; hackers who are willing to devote endless hours to
Usenet or MUDs consider IRC to be a
real waste of time; IRCies think MUDs might be okay if
there weren't all those silly puzzles in the way. And, of course,
there are the perennial holy
wars -- EMACS vs. vi, big-endian vs.
little-endian, RISC vs. CISC,
etc., etc., etc. As in society at large, the intensity and
duration of these debates is usually inversely proportional to
the number of objective, factual arguments available to buttress
any position.
As a result of all the above traits, many hackers have
difficulty maintaining stable relationships. At worst, they can
produce the classic computer
geek: withdrawn, relationally incompetent, sexually
frustrated, and desperately unhappy when not submerged in his or
her craft. Fortunately, this extreme is far less common than
mainstream folklore paints it -- but almost all hackers will
recognize something of themselves in the unflattering paragraphs
above.
Hackers are often monumentally disorganized and sloppy about
dealing with the physical world. Bills don't get paid on time,
clutter piles up to incredible heights in homes and offices, and
minor maintenance tasks get deferred indefinitely.
1994-95's fad behavioral disease was a syndrome called
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), supposedly characterized by
(among other things) a combination of short attention span with
an ability to `hyperfocus' imaginatively on interesting tasks. In
1998-1999 another syndrome that is said to overlap with many
hacker traits entered popular awareness: Asperger's syndrome
(AS). This disorder is also sometimes called `high-function
autism', though researchers are divided on whether AS is in fact
a mild form of autism or a distinct syndrome with a different
etiology. AS patients exhibit mild to severe deficits in
interpreting facial and body-language cues and in modeling or
empathizing with others' emotions. Though some AS patients
exhibit mild retardation, others compensate for their deficits
with high intelligence and analytical ability, and frequently
seek out technical fields where problem-solving abilities are at
a premium and people skills are relatively unimportant. Both
syndromes are thought to relate to abnormalities in
neurotransmitter chemistry, especially the brain's processing of
serotonin.
Many hackers have noticed that mainstream culture has shown a
tendency to pathologize and medicalize normal variations in
personality, especially those variations that make life more
complicated for authority figures and conformists. Thus, hackers
aware of the issue tend to be among those questioning whether ADD
and AS actually exist; and if so whether they are really
`diseases' rather than extremes of a normal genetic variation
like having freckles or being able to taste DPT. In either case,
they have a sneaking tendency to wonder if these syndromes are
over-diagnosed and over-treated. After all, people in authority
will always be inconvenienced by schoolchildren or workers or
citizens who are prickly, intelligent individualists - thus, any
social system that depends on authority relationships will tend
to helpfully ostracize and therapize and drug such `abnormal'
people until they are properly docile and stupid and
`well-socialized'.
So hackers tend to believe they have good reason for
skepticism about clinical explanations of the hacker personality.
That being said, most would also concede that some hacker traits
coincide with indicators for ADD and AS - the status of caffeeine
as a hacker beverage of choice may be connected to the fact that
it bonds to the same neural receptors as Ritalin, the drug most
commonly prescribed for ADD. It is probably true that boosters of
both would find a rather higher rate of clinical ADD among
hackers than the supposedly mainstream-normal 3-5% (AS is rarer
and there are not yet good estimates of incidence as of
2000).
Node:Miscellaneous, Previous:Weaknesses of the
Hacker Personality, Up:Appendix B
Miscellaneous
Hackers are more likely to have cats than dogs (in fact, it is
widely grokked that cats have the hacker nature). Many drive
incredibly decrepit heaps and forget to wash them; richer ones
drive spiffy Porsches and RX-7s and then forget to have them
washed. Almost all hackers have terribly bad handwriting, and
often fall into the habit of block-printing everything like
junior draftsmen.
Node:Appendix C, Next:Bibliography, Previous:Appendix B, Up:Top
Helping Hacker Culture Grow
If you enjoyed the Jargon File, please help the culture that
created it grow and flourish. Here are several ways you can
help:
• If you are a writer or journalist, don't say or write
hacker when you mean cracker. If you work with writers or
journalists, educate them on this issue and push them to do the
right thing. If you catch a newspaper or magazine abusing the
work `hacker', write them and straighten them out (this appendix
includes a model letter).
• If you're a techie or computer hobbyist, get involved
with one of the free Unixes. Toss out that lame Microsoft OS, or
confine it to one disk partition and put Linux or FreeBSD or
NetBSD on the other one. And the next time your friend or boss is
thinking about some proprietary software `solution' that costs
more than it's worth, be ready to blow the competition away with
open-source software running over a Unix.
• Contribute to organizations like the Free Software
Foundation that promote the production of high-quality free and
open-source software. You can reach the Free Software Foundation
at _gnu@gnu.org_, by phone at +1-617-542-5942, or by
snail-mail at 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307
USA.
• Support the League for Programming Freedom, which
opposes over-broad software patents that constantly threaten to
blow up in hackers' faces, preventing them from developing
innovative software for tomorrow's needs. You can reach the
League for Programming Freedom at _lpf@uunet.uu.net_. by
phone at +1 617 621 7084, or by snail-mail at 1 Kendall Square
#143, P.O.Box 9171, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 USA.
• Join the continuing fight against Internet censorship,
visit the Center for Democracy and Technology Home Page at http://www.cdt.org.
• If you do nothing else, please help fight government
attempts to seize political control of Internet content and
restrict strong cryptography. The so-called `Communications
Decency Act' was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court,
but U.S. cryptography policy still infringes our First Amendment
rights. Surf to the Center for Democracy and technology's home
page at http://www.cdt.org to
see what you can do to help fight censorship of the net.
Here's the text of a letter RMS wrote to the Wall Street
Journal to complain about their policy of using "hacker" only in
a pejorative sense. We hear that most major newspapers have the
same policy. If you'd like to help change this situation, send
your favorite newspaper the same letter - or, better yet, write
your own letter.
Dear Editor:
This letter is not meant for publication, although you can
publish it if you wish. It is meant specifically for you, the
editor, not the public.
I am a hacker. That is to say, I enjoy playing with computers
-- working with, learning about, and writing clever computer
programs. I am not a cracker; I don't make a practice of breaking
computer security.
There's nothing shameful about the hacking I do. But when I
tell people I am a hacker, people think I'm admitting something
naughty -- because newspapers such as yours misuse the word
"hacker", giving the impression that it means "security breaker"
and nothing else. You are giving hackers a bad name.
The saddest thing is that this problem is perpetuated
deliberately. Your reporters know the difference between "hacker"
and "security breaker". They know how to make the distinction,
but you don't let them! You insist on using "hacker"
pejoratively. When reporters try to use another word, you change
it. When reporters try to explain the other meanings, you cut
it.
Of course, you have a reason. You say that readers have become
used to your insulting usage of "hacker", so that you cannot
change it now. Well, you can't undo past mistakes today; but that
is no excuse to repeat them tomorrow.
If I were what you call a "hacker", at this point I would
threaten to crack your computer and crash it. But I am a hacker,
not a cracker. I don't do that kind of thing! I have enough
computers to play with at home and at work; I don't need yours.
Besides, it's not my way to respond to insults with violence. My
response is this letter.
You owe hackers an apology; but more than that, you owe us
ordinary respect.
Sincerely, etc.
Node:Bibliography, Previous:Appendix C, Up:Top
Bibliography
Here are some other books you can read to help you understand
the hacker mindset.
Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden
BraidGödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Douglas Hofstadter
Basic Books, 1979
ISBN 0-394-74502-7
This book reads like an intellectual Grand Tour of hacker
preoccupations. Music, mathematical logic, programming,
speculations on the nature of intelligence, biology, and Zen are
woven into a brilliant tapestry themed on the concept of encoded
self-reference. The perfect left-brain companion to
"Illuminatus".
Illuminatus!
I. "The Eye in the Pyramid"
II. "The Golden Apple"
III. "Leviathan".
Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
Dell, 1988
ISBN 0-440-53981-1
This work of alleged fiction is an incredible
berserko-surrealist rollercoaster of world-girdling conspiracies,
intelligent dolphins, the fall of Atlantis, who really killed
JFK, sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, and the Cosmic Giggle Factor. First
published in three volumes, but there is now a one-volume trade
paperback, carried by most chain bookstores under SF. The perfect
right-brain companion to Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach".
See Eris, Discordianism, random numbers, Church of the
SubGenius.
The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
Pocket Books, 1981
ISBN 0-671-46149-4
This `Monty Python in Space' spoof of SF genre traditions has
been popular among hackers ever since the original British radio
show. Read it if only to learn about Vogons (see bogon) and the significance of the number 42
(see random numbers) --
and why the winningest chess program of 1990 was called `Deep
Thought'.
The Tao of
Programming
James Geoffrey
Infobooks, 1987
ISBN 0-931137-07-1
This gentle, funny spoof of the "Tao Te Ching" contains much
that is illuminating about the hacker way of thought. "When you
have learned to snatch the error code from the trap frame, it
will be time for you to leave."
Hackers
Steven Levy
Anchor/Doubleday 1984
ISBN 0-385-19195-2
Levy's book is at its best in describing the early MIT hackers
at the Model Railroad Club and the early days of the
microcomputer revolution. He never understood Unix or the
networks, though, and his enshrinement of Richard Stallman as
"the last true hacker" turns out (thankfully) to have been quite
misleading. Despite being a bit dated and containing some minor
errors (many fixed in the paperback edition), this remains a
useful and stimulating book that captures the feel of several
important hacker subcultures.
The
Computer Contradictionary
Stan Kelly-Bootle
MIT Press, 1995
ISBN 0-262-61112-0
This pastiche of Ambrose Bierce's famous work is similar in
format to the Jargon File (and quotes several entries from
TNHD-2) but somewhat different in tone and intent. It is more
satirical and less anthropological, and is largely a product of
the author's literate and quirky imagination. For example, it
defines `computer science' as "a study akin to numerology and
astrology, but lacking the precision of the former and the
success of the latter" and `implementation' as "The fruitless
struggle by the talented and underpaid to fulfill promises made
by the rich and ignorant"; `flowchart' becomes "to obfuscate a
problem with esoteric cartoons". Revised and expanded from "The
Devil's DP Dictionary", McGraw-Hill 1981, ISBN 0-07-034022-6;
that work had some stylistic influence on TNHD-1.
The Devouring Fungus: Tales from the Computer Age
Karla Jennings
Norton, 1990
ISBN 0-393-30732-8
The author of this pioneering compendium knits together a
great deal of computer- and hacker-related folklore with good
writing and a few well-chosen cartoons. She has a keen eye for
the human aspects of the lore and is very good at illuminating
the psychology and evolution of hackerdom. Unfortunately, a
number of small errors and awkwardnesses suggest that she didn't
have the final manuscript checked over by a native speaker; the
glossary in the back is particularly embarrassing, and at least
one classic tale (the Magic Switch story, retold here under A Story About Magic in
Appendix A is given in incomplete and badly mangled form.
Nevertheless, this book is a win overall and can be enjoyed by
hacker and non-hacker alike.
The Soul
of a New Machine
Tracy Kidder
Little, Brown, 1981
(paperback: Avon, 1982
ISBN 0-380-59931-7)
This book (a 1982 Pulitzer Prize winner) documents the
adventure of the design of a new Data General computer, the
MV-8000 Eagle. It is an amazingly well-done portrait of the
hacker mindset -- although largely the hardware hacker -- done by
a complete outsider. It is a bit thin in spots, but with enough
technical information to be entertaining to the serious hacker
while providing non-technical people a view of what day-to-day
life can be like -- the fun, the excitement, the disasters.
During one period, when the microcode and logic were glitching at
the nanosecond level, one of the overworked engineers departed
the company, leaving behind a note on his terminal as his letter
of resignation: "I am going to a commune in Vermont and will deal
with no unit of time shorter than a season."
Life
with UNIX: a Guide for Everyone
Don Libes and Sandy Ressler
Prentice-Hall, 1989
ISBN 0-13-536657-7
The authors of this book set out to tell you all the things
about Unix that tutorials and technical books won't. The result
is gossipy, funny, opinionated, downright weird in spots, and
invaluable. Along the way they expose you to enough of Unix's
history, folklore and humor to qualify as a first-class source
for these things. Because so much of today's hackerdom is
involved with Unix, this in turn illuminates many of its in-jokes
and preoccupations.
True
Names ... and Other Dangers
Vernor Vinge
Baen Books, 1987
ISBN 0-671-65363-6
Hacker demigod Richard Stallman used to say that the title
story of this book "expresses the spirit of hacking best". Until
the subject of the next entry came out, it was hard to even
nominate another contender. The other stories in this collection
are also fine work by an author who has since won multiple Hugos
and is one of today's very best practitioners of hard SF.
Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson
Bantam, 1992
ISBN 0-553-56261-4
Stephenson's epic, comic cyberpunk novel is deeply knowing
about the hacker psychology and its foibles in a way no other
author of fiction has ever even approached. His imagination, his
grasp of the relevant technical details, and his ability to
communicate the excitement of hacking and its results are
astonishing, delightful, and (so far) unsurpassed.
Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer
Frontier
Katie Hafner & John Markoff
Simon & Schuster 1991
ISBN 0-671-68322-5
This book gathers narratives about the careers of three
notorious crackers into a clear-eyed but sympathetic portrait of
hackerdom's dark side. The principals are Kevin Mitnick, "Pengo"
and "Hagbard" of the Chaos Computer Club, and Robert T. Morris
(see RTM, sense 2) . Markoff and Hafner
focus as much on their psychologies and motivations as on the
details of their exploits, but don't slight the latter. The
result is a balanced and fascinating account, particularly useful
when read immediately before or after Cliff Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg. It is
especially instructive to compare RTM, a true hacker who
blundered, with the sociopathic phone-freak Mitnick and the
alienated, drug-addled crackers who made the Chaos Club
notorious. The gulf between wizard
and wannabee has seldom been made
more obvious.
Technobabble
John Barry
MIT Press 1991
ISBN 0-262-02333-4
Barry's book takes a critical and humorous look at the
`technobabble' of acronyms, neologisms, hyperbole, and metaphor
spawned by the computer industry. Though he discusses some of the
same mechanisms of jargon formation that occur in hackish, most
of what he chronicles is actually suit-speak -- the obfuscatory
language of press releases, marketroids, and Silicon Valley CEOs
rather than the playful jargon of hackers (most of whom wouldn't
be caught dead uttering the kind of pompous, passive-voiced word
salad he deplores).
The Cuckoo's Egg
Clifford Stoll
Doubleday 1989
ISBN 0-385-24946-2
Clifford Stoll's absorbing tale of how he tracked Markus Hess
and the Chaos Club cracking ring nicely illustrates the
difference between `hacker' and `cracker'. Stoll's portrait of
himself, his lady Martha, and his friends at Berkeley and on the
Internet paints a marvelously vivid picture of how hackers and
the people around them like to live and how they think.
#===================== THE JARGON FILE ENDS HERE ====================#
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