Amethyst
view release on metacpan or search on metacpan
Amethyst/Brain/Infobot/Module/Zappa.pm view on Meta::CPAN
__DATA__
Don't eat yellow snow!
Remember there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
You have just destroyed one model XQJ-37 nuclear powered pansexual roto-plooker....and you're gonna have to pay for it.
He was in a quandary...being devoured by the swirling cesspool of his own steaming desires... uh.. the guy was a wreck
All people have the right to be stupid, some people just abuse it!
And now....you are going to dance...like you've never danced before!
Bring the band on down behind me, boys.
Not a speck of cereal.
Nothing but the best for my dog.
You drank beer, you played golf, you watched football - WE EVOLVED!
It looks just like a Telefunken U-47!
Don't mind your make-up, you'd better make your mind up.
They're serving burgers in the back!
Jazz is not dead...it just smells funny. -- Beebop tango introduction
I have a message to deliver to the cute people of the world...if you're cute, or maybe you're beautiful...there's MORE OF US UGLY MOTHERFUCKERS OUT THERE THAN YOU ARE!! So watch out.
Is that a real poncho or a Sears poncho?
You're an asshole! You're an asshole! That's right! You're an asshole! You're an asshole! Yes yes!
Number one ain't you... You ain't even number two.
Who are the brain police?
Amethyst/Brain/Infobot/Module/Zappa.pm view on Meta::CPAN
Beauty is a French phonetic corruption of a short, cloth neck ornament, currently in resurgence.
Modern music is a sick puppy.
Some Scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.
Most people wouldn't know good music if it came up and bit them in the äss. -- Whole Grains
I figure the odds be fifty-fifty I just might have some thing to say.
The person who stands up and says, `This is stupid,' either is asked to behave or, worse, is greeted with a cheerful `Yes, we know! Isn't it terrific!'
The more BORING a child is, the more the parents, when showing off the child, receive adulation for being GOOD PARENTS -- because they have a TAME CHILD-CREATURE in their house.
The worst aspect of `typical familyism' (as media-merchandised) is that it glorifies _involuntary_homogenization_.
Gail has said in interviews that one of the things that makes our relationship work is the fact that we hardly ever get to talk to each other.
The language and concepts contained herein are guaranteed not to cause eternal torment in the place where the guy with the horns and pointed stick conducts his business.
My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.
I like having the capitol of the United States in Washington, D.C., in spite of recent efforts to move it to Lynchburg, Virginia.
He [Barney Frank] is one of the most impressive guys in Congress. He is a great model for young gay men.
Children are naive -- they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you're asking for trouble.
It would be easier to pay off the national debt overnight than to neutralize the long-range effects of OUR NATIONAL STUPIDITY.
Nuclear explosions under the Nevada desert? What the fück are we testing for? We already know the shit blows up.
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.
Star Wars won't work. Star Wars won't work. The gas still gets through; it could get right on you. And what about those germs, now? Star Wars won't work.
Washington, D.C.: a city infested with statues -- and Congressional Blow-Boys who WISH they were statues.
Thanks to our schools and political leadership, the U.S. has acquired an international reputation as the home of 250 million people dumb enough to buy 'The Wacky Wall-Walker.'
Stupidity has a certain charm -- ignorance does not.
Amethyst/Brain/Infobot/Module/Zappa.pm view on Meta::CPAN
If your children ever find out how lame you really are, they'll gonna murder you in your sleep....-- Whole Grains
I'm not a man for all seasons but I'm doing something right. -- Frank Zappa during the Senate PMRC hearings.
Ugly as I mights be, I is your futum!
There is no hell. There is only France.
`Conducting' is when you draw `designs' in the nowhere -- with your stick, or with your hands -- which are interpreted as `instructional messages' by guys wearing bow ties who wish they were fishing.
Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
The bassoon is one of my favorite instruments. It has the medieval aroma -- like the days when everything used to sound like that.
Some people crave baseball -- I find this unfathomable -- but I can easily understand why a person could get excited about playing a bassoon.
Whatever you have to do to have a good time, let's get on with it, so long as it doesn't cause a murder.
Politics is the showbiz of industry.
Let's just admit that public education is mediocre at best.
Without deviation from the norm, 'progress' is not possible.
The last election just laid the foundation of the next 500 years of Dark Ages -- 1981
Look, just because you have got that fuckin' thing between your legs it doesn't make any diference. If a girl does something stupid I am going to call her just as I would a guy.
A world of sexual incompetents, encountering each other, under disco circumstances... Now can't you do songs about that?
A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules,often with the assistence of unsuspecting musicians.
There is no such thing as a dirty word. Nor is there a word so powerful, that it's going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it.
Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?
Life is like highschool with money.
Information doesn't kill you... -- PMRC Hearings during an exchange with a Born Again Christian.
Where ever you're going, don't walk there first. If you do, people will think you know where you're going.
A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a licence to behave like an asshole.
Flatulence can be cruel!
Speed: It will turn you into your parents. -- 1970 public service announcement regarding drug (namely, speed) use
Winos don't march.
Reporter: This is a personal thing, I think that if you wanted to make top ten hits and sell millions of records, you could. FZ: Yeah, but who wants to go through life with a tiny nose and one glove on?
It is always advisable to be a loser if you cannot become a winner.
I knew Jimi (Hendrix) and I think that the best thing you could say about Jimi was: there was a person who shouldn't use drugs.
The emotion of every player is the most important thing, what stands behind this chord or tone. If you leave that out, the music does not touch you. -- Interview from Keyboard June 1980.
It's better to have something to remember than nothing to reget...
Why do people continue to compose music, and even pretend to teach others how to do it, when they already know the answer? Nobody gives a fuck.
If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest or some guy on TV telling you how to do your shit, then YOU DESERVE IT. -- The Real Frank Zappa Book
A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it not open.
You've got to be digging it while it's happening 'cause it just might be a one shot deal -- Waka/Jawaka
There will never be a nuclear war; there's too much real estate involved. -- Tonight Show, C.A. 1988
Heaven would be a place where bullshit existed only on television. (Hallelujah! We's halfway there!) -- The Real Frank Zappa Book
Don't expect anything,don't expect fun, don't expect friends.. if you get something...it's a BONUS
Golly, do I ever have alot of soul!!
Amethyst/Brain/Infobot/Module/Zappa.pm view on Meta::CPAN
The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garde...
When we talk about artistic freedom in this country We sometime lose sight of the fact that freedom is often dependent on adequate financing.
If you want to get laid, go to college, but if you want an education, go to the library.
Outdoors for me is walking from the car to the ticket desk at the airport -- Regarding secondhand smoke in The Real FZ Book
My music is like a movie for your ear
Here I stand hoping against hope that it's a chick with a low voice -- After a guy in the audience yelled out, 'Eat me Zappa'
Don't clap for destroying America. This place is as good as you want to make it.
The whole Universe is a large joke. Everything in the Universe is just subdivisions of this joke. So why take anything too serious. -- September 1992 during an interview about the Yellow Shark.
Kid's heads are filled with so many nonfacts that when they get out of school they're totally unprepared to do anything. They can't read, they can't write, they can't think. Talk about child abuse. The U.S. school system as a whole qualifies. -...
Drop out of school, before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts...--SLUG Magazine June 1995
Never stop until your good becomes better, and your better becomes the best.
The people of your century no longer require the service of composers. A composer is as useful to a person in a jogging suit as a dinsoaur turd in the middle of his runway.--from the Them Or Us The Book
THE VERY BIG STUPID is a thing which breeds by eating The Future. Have you seen it? It sometimes disguises itself as a good-looking quarterly bottom line, derived by closing the R&D Department. -- The Real Frank Zappa Book.
Most rock journalism is people who can not write interviewing people who can not talk.
The typical rock fan is not smart enough to know when he is being dumped on.
It's not pretty, also you can't dance to it.
It's all one big note.
Ladies and gentleman, watch Ruth. All through the show, Ruth has been thinking...Ruth has been thinking? ALL THROUGH THE SHOW???
You can tell what they think of our music by the places we are forced to play it in. This looks like a good spot for a livestock show. -- April 1968, Chicago, Mothers of Invention open for Cream
I'm not going to be Bill Clinton and say I never inhaled. I did inhale. I liked tobacco a lot better.
Consider for a moment any beauty in the name Ralph. -- FZ on why he gave his children such odd names
Amethyst/Brain/Infobot/Module/Zippy.pm view on Meta::CPAN
How many retured bricklayers from FLORIDA are out purchasing PENCIL
SHARPENERS right NOW??
How's it going in those MODULAR LOVE UNITS??
How's the wife? Is she at home enjoying capitalism?
hubub, hubub, HUBUB, hubub, hubub, hubub, HUBUB, hubub, hubub, hubub.
HUGH BEAUMONT died in 1982!!
HUMAN REPLICAS are inserted into VATS of NUTRITIONAL YEAST ...
I always have fun because I'm out of my mind!!!
I am a jelly donut. I am a jelly donut.
I am a traffic light, and Alan Ginzberg kidnapped my laundry in 1927!
I am covered with pure vegetable oil and I am writing a best seller!
I am deeply CONCERNED and I want something GOOD for BREAKFAST!
I am having FUN... I wonder if it's NET FUN or GROSS FUN?
I am NOT a nut....
I appoint you ambassador to Fantasy Island!!!
I brought my BOWLING BALL -- and some DRUGS!!
I can't decide which WRONG TURN to make first!! I wonder if BOB GUCCIONE has these problems!
I can't think about that. It doesn't go with HEDGES in the shape of LITTLE LULU -- or ROBOTS making BRICKS ...
I demand IMPUNITY!
I didn't order any WOO-WOO ... Maybe a YUBBA ... But no WOO-WOO!
I don't believe there really IS a GAS SHORTAGE.. I think it's all just a BIG HOAX on the part of the plastic sign salesmen -- to sell more numbers!!
-e 'print " appropriate files manually.\n Sorry for the inconveniences.\n"'
# --- MakeMaker dist section:
DISTVNAME = $(DISTNAME)-$(VERSION)
TAR = tar
TARFLAGS = cvf
ZIP = zip
ZIPFLAGS = -r
COMPRESS = gzip --best
SUFFIX = .gz
SHAR = shar
PREOP = @$(NOOP)
POSTOP = @$(NOOP)
TO_UNIX = @$(NOOP)
CI = ci -u
RCS_LABEL = rcs -Nv$(VERSION_SYM): -q
DIST_CP = best
DIST_DEFAULT = tardist
# --- MakeMaker macro section:
# --- MakeMaker depend section:
# --- MakeMaker cflags section:
factpacks/Linux.fact view on Meta::CPAN
Darxite => <reply> $who, Controllable daemon that downloads via FTP in the background. URL: http://darxite.cjb.net/
DashO-Pro => <reply> $who, Java Application Size-Reducer, Optimizer, and Obfuscator. URL: http://www.preemptive.com
Data::Address::Standardize Perl Module => <reply> $who, A Perl module for standardizing U.S. URL: http://www.focusresearch.com/gregor/Data-Address-Standardize-0.001.html
Data::Locations => <reply> $who, A virtual file manager which allows to read/write data to and from virtual files. URL: http://www.engelschall.com/u/sb/download/
DataGate's Connector => <reply> $who, DG Connector is a Web-based Instant Intranet solution.. URL: http://www.datagate.co.uk/products/connector/index.html
Datalink library => <reply> $who, Send data to the Timex DataLink watches. URL: http://datalink.fries.net/
DataManager => <reply> $who, Shared memory ringbuffers client-server library. URL: http://www.anatom.uni-tuebingen.de/~richi/linux/DataManager/datamanager.html
Datasphere => <reply> $who, Non-IRC text-based conferencing package. URL: http://www.wwcn.org/
Datbkr => <reply> $who, Tar based tape backup program with remote SSH support. URL: http://www.psychosis.com/datbkr/
Date::Calc => <reply> $who, Package for all kinds of date calculations based onthe Gregorian calendar. URL: http://www.engelschall.com/u/sb/download/
Date::Pcalc => <reply> $who, All-Perl module for date calculations, based on Date::Calc. URL: http://www.best.com/~nessus/date/pcalc.html
Dave Gnukem => <reply> $who, GGI-based 2D scrolling platform game, similar to Duke Nukem 1. URL: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/2018/djgame.html
daVinci => <reply> $who, daVinci is a X-Window visualization tool for drawing directed graphs automatical. URL: http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~davinci/
Daydream => <reply> $who, Daydream BBS version 2.07. URL: http://daydream.iwn.fi/
DB2 => <reply> $who, Universal Database for Linux. URL: http://www.software.ibm.com/data/db2/linux/
DBE => <reply> $who, Easily insert, delete, and update records in a database table.. URL: http://edseek.com/developers.shtml
DBedit => <reply> $who, A system for integrating development web database applications. URL: http://admin.gnacademy.org:8001/uu-gna/tech/dbedit/dbedit.html
dbf2pos => <reply> $who, Dbf to Postgresql converter. URL: http://www.mat.uni.torun.pl/~jerzy/wegorz/
DBInspector => <reply> $who, Easy-to-use front end to Oracle Databases written in Java.. URL: http://dbinspector.com/
DBIx::CGI => <reply> $who, Easy to Use DBI Interface for CGI Scripts. URL: http://www.linuxia.net/DBIx/CGI/
DBMAIL => <reply> $who, A mailsystem that uses a SQL database to store it's messages (POP3). URL: http://www.dbmail.org/
factpacks/Linux.fact view on Meta::CPAN
Ecology-HOWTO => <reply> $who, Linux as a mean to protect our environment.. URL: http://www.snafu.de/~wehe/eco_linux.html
eCos => <reply> $who, Real Time Operating System. URL: http://sourceware.cygnus.com/ecos/
Edcom => <reply> $who, An easy to administer, multiuser, story posting system, written in perl5.. URL: http://edseek.com/developers.shtml
Eddie => <reply> $who, Robust, clustering, load balancing, high availability, web server tool.. URL: http://www.eddieware.org/
editek => <reply> $who, Colorizer for /etc/issue, /etc/issue.net and /etc/motd. URL: http://www.xnot.com/editek/
edna => <reply> $who, tiny HTTP server for selecting and streaming MP3 files. URL:
eEMU => <reply> $who, Enterprise Event Management and Monitoring Utility. URL: http://www.jarrix.com.au/
efingerd => <reply> $who, Another finger daemon for linux. URL: http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik/efingerd.html
EFMC => <reply> $who, EFMC (Element's Formula Mass Calculator) calculates Formula Mass. URL: http://emu.simplenet.com/misc/efmc-0.1.tar.gz
efs => <reply> $who, Extent File System support (read-only). URL: http://aeschi.ch.eu.org/efs/
Efsane => <reply> $who, Turkish Window Manager for X. URL: http://efsane.sitebest.com/
efsmod => <reply> $who, Read EFS (Silicon Graphic's own Filesystem) Media on a Linux Platform. URL: http://wwwcip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/user/cnvogelg/proj.html
egcs => <reply> $who, Experimental set of enhancements for the GNU tools. URL: http://www.cygnus.com/egcs/
Egg => <reply> $who, Interpreter for the language in Dijkstra's Discipline of Computer Programming. URL: http://www.andrewcooke.free-online.co.uk/jara/egg/index.html
ZNibbles => <reply> $who, Networked multiplayer nibbles/snake game for X11/Motif. URL: http://www.stud.enst.fr/~vmallet/ZNibbles.html
eggdrop2 => <reply> $who, IRC bot, written in C. URL: http://www.eggdrop.net/
Egoistic Wordlist Generator => <reply> $who, A wordlist generator with a variety of options.. URL: http://www.geocities.com/divideb0/
egrep-finger => <reply> $who, Extended finger program using extended regular expressions. URL: http://torch.rowan.edu/egrep-finger/
eGTK => <reply> $who, Bindings to GTK+ widget toolkit for Eiffel.. URL: http://www.netlabs.net/hp/richieb/gtk_eiffel.html
EHD => <reply> $who, patch for login to allow encrypted home directories under linux. URL: http://members.home.net/id-est/
EHeadlines => <reply> $who, Root Menu news system.. URL: http://dragon.acadiau.ca/~015940b/escripts/
factpacks/Linux.fact view on Meta::CPAN
laddr => <reply> $who, Lesstif Address Book. URL: http://cse.unl.edu/~cluening/laddr/
LAGII => <reply> $who, Linux AGI Interpreter. URL: http://www.zip.com.au/~gsymonds/LAGII/
LAIM => <reply> $who, An ncurses based AOL Instant Messenger(tm) client. URL: http://www.angelfire.com/biz/majutsu/laim.html
LAME => <reply> $who, open source MP3 encoder and graphical frame analyzer. URL: http://www.sulaco.org/mp3/
LANdb => <reply> $who, Provides network managers with a means of cataloging network connections.. URL: http://avenir.dhs.org/landb/
lando => <reply> $who, command execution server for UNIX. URL: http://www.moonglade.com/lando/
Langton's Ant => <reply> $who, Langton's Ant-Cellular Automata. URL: http://theory.org/software/ant/
Lanlord => <reply> $who, A dhcpd lease reporting program. URL: http://linux.uhw.com/software/lanlord/index.html
LAPACK-D => <reply> $who, Dynamically loadable version of LAPACK libraries. URL: http://www.honeylocust.com/lapack_d/
Laptop Tracker => <reply> $who, Client for SaveTheLaptop. URL: http://savethelaptop.zzweb.com/
Laptop-HOWTO => <reply> $who, How to make the best of Linux features with laptops.. URL: http://www.snafu.de/~wehe/index_li.html
lasteject => <reply> $who, Eject CD on reboot/halt. URL: http://home.pages.de/~stesch/stuff/lasteject/lasteject.html
latencytest => <reply> $who, benchmarks scheduling latencies (of audio apps) during high system load. URL: http://www.gardena.net/benno/linux/audio/
lathi-themes => <reply> $who, Perl script to implement themes for the AfterStep window manager. URL: http://home.earthlink.net/~alcornd/
Latrell Sprewell => <reply> $who, Linux Mini-distribution based on Slackware v3.6. URL: http://www.linuxsupportline.com/~pygmy/
Latte => <reply> $who, Better web authoring language. URL: http://www.latte.org/
Launcher => <reply> $who, One-stop filetype/application mapping solution. URL: http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~etgold/software/launcher/
LAuRA => <reply> $who, Little Audiogram Recorder/Archiver. URL: http://stud4.tuwien.ac.at/~e9525556/audiometry/
lavaps => <reply> $who, A lava lamp of currently running processes. URL: http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/SOFTWARE/LAVAPS/index.html
Lazarus => <reply> $who, Lazarus Object Pascal IDE. URL: http://www.pcpros.net/~vbman/
Lazy Solitaire => <reply> $who, Solitaire card game for lazy people. URL: http://www.seindal.dk/rene/software/gtkabale/
factpacks/Linux.fact view on Meta::CPAN
Millenium counter => <reply> $who, Millenium counter for Linux/unix. URL: http://www.vip.fi/~baze/millenium/
Milo 2.2 => <reply> $who, The Alpha-Linux bootloader.. URL: http://www.stefan-reinauer.de/Milo/
MindsEye => <reply> $who, 3D modelling program for Linux. URL: http://mindseye.luna.net/
MindTemplate => <reply> $who, A robust, high performance template engine for web development. URL: http://www.mindbright.se/mindtemplate.html
MindTerm => <reply> $who, SSH-client in pure Java, includes stand-alone ssh- and terminal(vt100)-packages. URL: http://www.mindbright.se/mindterm/
Mini-Commander => <reply> $who, Configurable Application and URL launcher for Gnome. URL: http://lfw.linuxhq.com/oliver_maruhn/mcl/
miniBar => <reply> $who, Small, Fast, Single click program launcher.. URL: http://www.phed.org/miniProject/
MiniCGI.pm => <reply> $who, Small CGI package for when CGI.pm is overkill.. URL: http://www.devzero.org/code/minicgi.tar.gz
miniCHESS => <reply> $who, chess dock app. URL: http://www.pobox.com/~ead/miniCHESS/
minicom => <reply> $who, Serial communication program. URL: http://www.clinet.fi/~walker/minicom.html
Minimalist => <reply> $who, Easy-but-powerful Mailing List Manager. URL: http://www.webest.com/minimalist/
MiniMate => <reply> $who, Administration tool for MiniVend. URL: http://linuxia.cobolt.ch/minimate/
MinIRC => <reply> $who, Ultra-small IRC client which uses Tcl/Tk (NOT a front-end for ircII). URL: http://minirc.hypermart.net
MiniSearch => <reply> $who, a simple website search engine written in Perl. URL: http://www.dansteinman.com/minisearch/
Ministry of Truth => <reply> $who, Web-based job tracking system. URL: http://tomato.nvgc.vt.edu/~hroberts/mot
MiniVend => <reply> $who, Powerful freely redistributable shopping cart package. URL: http://www.minivend.com/
minordomo => <reply> $who, A minimalistic mailing list manager. URL: http://www.nodomainname.net/software/minordomo/
Minotaur => <reply> $who, Embedding Perl, Python, Tcl scripts in each other. URL: http://mini.net/pub/ts2/minotaur.html
Mirror => <reply> $who, . URL: http://sunsite.org.uk/packages/mirror/
mirrordir => <reply> $who, Provides mirroring, backup, ftp, secure shell, secure file tranfer. URL: http://www.obsidian.co.za/mirrordir/
Miscellaneous Unix scripts => <reply> $who, A collection of miscellaneous useful Unix scripts. URL: http://www.linuxstart.com/~winitzki/
factpacks/Linux.fact view on Meta::CPAN
plugger => <reply> $who, Streaming multimedia plugin for UNIX netscape. URL: http://fredrik.hubbe.net/plugger.html
PM3 => <reply> $who, Modula-3 compiler, debugger, libraries, and applications. URL: http://m3.polymtl.ca/m3/
pmail => <reply> $who, Perl mail program/scripts. URL: http://junior.apk.net/~qc/goodies/
PMan => <reply> $who, FLTK-based Project Manager. URL: http://r10k.webcity.nl/pman/
PMFirewall => <reply> $who, An Ipchains Firewall and Masquerading Configuration Utility.. URL: http://www.pointman.org/
pmpp => <reply> $who, A Poor Man's Pre-Processor. URL: http://www.zip.com.au/~kev/pmpp/
Pmw => <reply> $who, Python GUI-Widget Toolkit based on Tkinter (Tcl/Tk). URL: http://www.dscpl.com.au/pmw/
png2html => <reply> $who, Converts a PNG image into a web page.. URL: http://www.engr.mun.ca/~holden/png2html.html
png2jpg proxy => <reply> $who, HTTP proxy with png to jpg conversion.. URL: http://www.penguin.cz/~martinmv/index_eng.html
pngcrush => <reply> $who, Optimizer for PNG files that can also delete specified chunks. URL: http://www.xnot.com/pmt/pngcrush/
PngEncoder => <reply> $who, A Java class to convert Java images to a byte-array in PNG format. URL: http://www.best.com/~nessus/pngencoder/
PNGgraph.pm => <reply> $who, Chart-plotting perl module. URL: ftp://ftp.mobile.ru/pub/DISTRIB/PNGgraph-1.11.tar.gz
PNMA => <reply> $who, PNM based plug-in for GIMP with alpha and layering capabilities.. URL: http://cemtach.org/software/pnma/pnma.html
pnmtopng => <reply> $who, PBMplus/NetPBM converters to/from PNG image format. URL: http://www.cdrom.com/pub/png/pngcode.html
pnpmodem => <reply> $who, Simple bourne shell script for setting up ISA plug and play modems. URL: http://linuxmafia.org/~shaded/dist/pnpmodem-0.2.gz
Pocket Frog => <reply> $who, Green Frog Linux for the Mobile Gear. URL: http://www.linuxstart.com/~austin/pocket-frog.html
Pocket Linux => <reply> $who, A modern, single floppy distribution of Linux dedicated to networking. URL: http://pocket-linux.coven.vmh.net/
pod2ps => <reply> $who, A pod to PostScript translator, with PDF support. URL: http://www.oasis.leo.org/perl/scripts/textproc/pod2ps.dsc.html
pointlist.pl => <reply> $who, Pointlist generator script. URL: http://acidlinux.webjump.com/perl.htm
poll => <reply> $who, Script for automating Fidonet polls. URL: http://www.drmach.demon.co.uk/vashti/software/index.html
Pollera => <reply> $who, A www poll system meant to be run via CGI.. URL: http://bachue.com/alejo/pollera.html
factpacks/Linux.fact view on Meta::CPAN
swapd => <reply> $who, Swapspace management daemon. URL: ftp://ftp.replicant.nu/pub/swapd/
swatch => <reply> $who, The Simple WATCHdog: syslog monitoring utility/daemon.. URL: http://www.stanford.edu/~atkins/swatch/
swc => <reply> $who, Simple Webpage Counter. URL: http://whatsis.com/swc/
swebget => <reply> $who, Prints a webpage to stdout. URL: http://www.uni-hildesheim.de/~smol0075/swebget/
SWI-Prolog => <reply> $who, Cross-Platform Prolog Compiler and Library. URL: http://swi.psy.uva.nl/projects/SWI-Prolog/
Swift Generator => <reply> $who, Dynamic Flash content generator.. URL: http://www.swift-tools.com/
Swift Inspector => <reply> $who, Flash file editor. URL: http://perso.club-internet.fr/odebon/swift.html
SwiftView => <reply> $who, HPGL, PCL Online Document Viewing System. URL: http://www.swiftview.com/
swim => <reply> $who, Package administration and research tool for Debian. URL: http://the.netpedia.net/the-software.html
Swish => <reply> $who, CGI news engine. URL: http://munchkin.comlab.ox.ac.uk/~simon/about.html
SWISH++ => <reply> $who, File indexing and searching engine (typically used for web servers).. URL: http://www.best.com/~pjl/software/swish/
SWORD Project => <reply> $who, Free Bible Study Software Development Libraries and Tools. URL: http://www.crosswire.org
SWplayer => <reply> $who, Plays Simon Jansen's Star Wars ASCIImation on a Unix text terminal. URL: http://people.tamu.edu/~cwb2900/
sws => <reply> $who, A Star Wars style scroller using GLUT. URL: http://helllabs.org/~claudio/sws/
swsus => <reply> $who, Software Suspend using pretty near only high level routines. URL: http://falcon.sch.bme.hu/~seasons/linux/swsusp.html
sXid => <reply> $who, All in one suid/sgid monitoring script written in C. URL: ftp://marcus.seva.net/pub/sxid/
Sybase ASE => <reply> $who, Full featured SQL Backend. URL: http://www.sybase.com
SybSQL => <reply> $who, X11-based SQL Query tool for Sybase and MS SQL.. URL: http://www.megsinet.net/~agatka/
sybtable.pl => <reply> $who, Web-based table browser/SQL interface for Sybase databases. URL: http://www.pdamusic.com/computer/sybtable.html
Sybtcl => <reply> $who, Sybase interface for Tcl. URL: http://www.nyx.net/~tpoindex/tcl.html#Sybtcl
Sympa => <reply> $who, A powerful multilingual List Manager- LDAP and SQL features.. URL: http://listes.cru.fr/sympa/
factpacks/Linux.fact view on Meta::CPAN
TwinTRIS => <reply> $who, Multiplayer tetris clone for all Unix boxes. URL: http://membres.tripod.fr/twintris/
Twist => <reply> $who, Embedded Python text processor. URL: http://pyrite.linuxbox.com/twist/twist.html
Twisted Reality => <reply> $who, A fully buzzword-compliant roleplaying system.. URL: http://www.twistedmatrix.com/
twonz => <reply> $who, secure hash calculator for password management. URL: http://www.pobox.com/~graydon/twonz/twonz.html
twz1jdbcForMysql => <reply> $who, A type 4 JDBC driver for MySQL. URL: http://www.voicenet.com/~zellert/tjFM/
txt2html => <reply> $who, Converts plain text to HTML. URL: http://www.thehouse.org/txt2html/
txt2pdf => <reply> $who, A very flexible and powerful PERL5 converter from text files to PDF. URL: http://www.sanface.com/
txt2pdf.cgi => <reply> $who, a very flexible PERL cgi-bin application based on the powerful txt2pdf script. URL: http://www.sanface.com/
Tya => <reply> $who, JIT-compiler. URL: ftp://gonzalez.cyberus.ca/pub/Linux/java/
Type decomposition library => <reply> $who, C++ library for discovering compile-time type information.. URL: http://lazy.ton.tut.fi/type_decomposition/index.html
typespeed => <reply> $who, Type speed testing program, gives your fingers' CPS. URL: http://www.sicom.fi/~bestis/typespeed.html
Typhoon RDBMS => <reply> $who, Relational database library.. URL: http://users.footprints.net/~kaz/typhoon.html
TZO Internet Naming System => <reply> $who, Dynamic DNS Software client. URL: http://www.tzo.com/
U.S. Street Map database => <reply> $who, Complete digital street map of the U.S.. URL: http://perens.com/FreeSoftware/
U2NT => <reply> $who, Unix to NT porting library. URL: http://www.ede.com/free/u2nt/
UAE => <reply> $who, Software emulation of the hardware of theCommodore Amiga 500/1000/2000. URL: http://www.freiburg.linux.de/~uae/
ubiqx library => <reply> $who, Base-level utility modules from undergrad CS books.. URL: http://ubiqx.org/
UCD-SNMP => <reply> $who, Various tools relating to the Simple Network Managemnet Protocol. URL: http://ucd-snmp.ucdavis.edu/
UCDP => <reply> $who, A console-based Linux CD-player with a nice interface.. URL: http://home.sol.no/~upstream/ucdp/
uCON => <reply> $who, uCON - SNES/Genesis Image Conversion/Edit/Patch/Fix Utility. URL: http://spliceworld.parodius.com/
UConvert => <reply> $who, A units conversion program with thousdands of possible conversions.. URL: http://www.posc.org/
factpacks/Linux.fact view on Meta::CPAN
unixODBC => <reply> $who, Provides ODBC 3 connectivity for Unix. URL: http://www.unixodbc.org/
Unlimited Simulator => <reply> $who, General purpose simulator. URL: http://www.hozelhoff.com/~brunobg/
UnLockPRO => <reply> $who, ZZT world lock manipulator. URL: http://www.linuxstart.com/~kvance/sw_byname.html#U
unrar => <reply> $who, extract, test and view RAR archives. URL: ftp://ftp.elf.stuba.sk/pub/pc/pack/
Unreal Tournament demo => <reply> $who, Unreal Tournament demo (client/server). URL: http://www.unrealtournament.com/
UnrealIRCd => <reply> $who, Advanced IRC daemon based off EliteIRCd with numerous of new features. URL: http://toybox.flirt.org/~cmunk/unreal/
unzip => <reply> $who, Unpacks .zip files such as those made by pkzip under DOS. URL: http://www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/
UOOS => <reply> $who, Ultima Online Game Server Emulator. URL: http://www.uoos.com/
up => <reply> $who, Replacement program for uptime.. URL: http://www.burdell.org/up.php3
uparrow => <reply> $who, tcl command loop. URL: http://www.aist.go.jp/NIBH/~tomh/
upd => <reply> $who, Makes hiscores of your best five uptimes, ready for when showing off!. URL: http://tisprut.n3.net/
UPS => <reply> $who, Light C and C++ debugger under X11.. URL: http://www.concerto.demon.co.uk/UPS/
UPSomatic => <reply> $who, UPS parcel pricing for US sources, all destinations. URL: ftp://ftp.linux.org.uk/pub/linux/alan/UPSomatic/
Uptime client => <reply> $who, Keep track of your uptime and compare it with other hosts.. URL: http://uptime.hexon.cx/
Uptime Daemon => <reply> $who, Constantly checks your current uptime against uptime records. URL: http://www.vistasafe.com/ud/
Uptime Record Suite => <reply> $who, Records the record uptime. URL: http://jaeger.festing.org/projects/uptime-record/
Uptimed => <reply> $who, Uptime record daemon keeping track of the highest uptimes the system ever had. URL: http://capsi.cx/?q=code/uptimed
uptimer => <reply> $who, Adds the current uptime to your .sig file. URL: http://212.19.67.58/
uptime_applet => <reply> $who, Gnome applet which will display your system uptime. URL: http://outsole.com/uptime.shtml
UPX => <reply> $who, powerful executable packer. URL: http://wildsau.idv.uni-linz.ac.at/mfx/upx.html
URBAN => <reply> $who, A nice shoot-'em-up game for Linux and DOS, lots of blood and gore.. URL: http://urban.home.dhs.org/
factpacks/Linux.fact view on Meta::CPAN
xhangglider => <reply> $who, X-based program that makes hanggliders fly in the background of your screen.. URL: http://plaza.harmonix.ne.jp/~redstar/xhang-en.html
xhdbench => <reply> $who, Qt-based X-program for testing the output speed of severaldevices. URL: ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/benchmark/
XHourGas => <reply> $who, An alarm clock that exhibits what can happen with an improper diet. URL: http://qu.dhs.org/xhourgas/xhourgas.html
XHpcd => <reply> $who, A GIMP plugin to read Kodak PhotoCD images. URL: http://studenti.csr.unibo.it/~abaldoni/hpcd.html
XIAS => <reply> $who, Tcl/Tk-based front-end to IAS (N64 backup device transfer tool). URL: http://www.dextrose.com/info/0719xias-1_1_tar.htm
Xicq / KXicq => <reply> $who, An ICQ client for use in both console and X11.. URL: http://www.xtrophy.dk/xicq/
xinetd => <reply> $who, Powerful inetd replacement. URL: http://www.synack.net/xinetd/
Xing MP3 Encoder => <reply> $who, MP3 encoder. URL: http://www.xingtech.com/mp3/encoder/
xipdump => <reply> $who, displays ip packets using the X Window System.. URL: http://www.epita.fr/~lse/xipdump/
xIrc => <reply> $who, . URL: http://www.croftj.net/~xirc/
Xitami => <reply> $who, A fast, portable, and best of all free multi-threaded web server. URL: http://www.xitami.com/
XKeyCaps => <reply> $who, A graphical front-end to xmodmap.. URL: http://www.jwz.org/xkeycaps/
XKobo => <reply> $who, Fastpaced multiway scrolling shoot-em-up.. URL: ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/games/arcade/
Xlab => <reply> $who, Automates any X application by recording and playing backX-events.. URL: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~mvertes/xlab.html
xlHtml => <reply> $who, XLS to HTML converter. URL: http://www.gate.net/~ddata/xlHtml/index.htm
xlnotice => <reply> $who, Login time public notice board for X. URL: http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~guazzibe/XLN/
Xlockmore => <reply> $who, screen saver / locker for the X Window System. URL: http://www.tux.org/~bagleyd/xlockmore.html
Xlogmaster => <reply> $who, Tool to monitor logfiles and hardware status. URL: http://www.gnu.org/software/xlogmaster/xlogmaster.html
XLogMonitor => <reply> $who, Tool for monitoring linux log's. URL: http://members.xoom.com/chaosmaker/linux/
xls2xml => <reply> $who, A free converter from Microsoft Excel to XML, and a free C library. URL: http://arturo.directmail.org/filtersweb/
Xmahjongg => <reply> $who, Colorful X solitaire Mah Jongg game. URL: http://www.lcdf.org/xmahjongg/
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
arc2 is feather}, {zip}.
arc wars is [primarily MSDOS] n. {holy wars} over which archiving program one should use. The first arc war was sparked when System Enhancement Associates (SEA) sued PKWare for copyright and trademark infringement on its ARC program. PKWare'...
arc wars2 is and speed while largely retaining compatibility (it introduced a new compression type that could be disabled for backward-compatibility). PKWare settled out of court to avoid enormous legal costs (both SEA and PKWare are small ...
arc wars3 is of PKARC was changed to PKPAK. The public backlash against SEA for bringing suit helped to hasten the demise of ARC as a standard when PKWare and others introduced new, incompatible archivers with better compression algorithms....
archive is n. 1. A collection of several files bundled into one file by a program such as `ar(1)', `tar(1)', `cpio(1)', or {arc} for shipment or archiving (sense 2). See also {tar and feather}. 2. A collection of files or archives (sense 1) ...
archive2 is {FTP} or an email server.
arena is [UNIX] n. 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 semi-mythical `malloc corrupt arena' message supposedly emitted when some early versions becam...
arena2 is {aliasing bug}, {memory leak}, {smash the stack}.
arg is /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 {p...
armor-plated is n. Syn. for {bulletproof}.
asbestos is adj. Used as a modifier to anything intended to protect one from {flame}s. Important cases of this include {asbestos longjohns} and {asbestos cork award}, but it is used more generally.
asbestos cork award is 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'. Pers...
asbestos cork award2 is 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 agreeme...
asbestos longjohns is n. Notional garments often 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', e...
attoparsec is n. `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} equal...
attoparsec2 is be in use (though probably not very seriously) among hackers in the U.K. See {micro-}.
autobogotiphobia is /aw'to-boh-got`*-foh'bee-*/ n. See {bogotify}.
automagically is /aw-toh-maj'i-klee/ or /aw-toh-maj'i-k*l-ee/ 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 ...
automagically2 is compiler generates C, then automagically invokes `cc(1)' to produce an executable."
avatar is [CMU, Tektronix] n. Syn. {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 disliked the term `superuser...
avatar2 is hacker at Tektronix.
awk is 1. n. [UNIX techspeak] An interpreted language for massaging text data developed by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan (the name is from their initials). It is characterized by C-like syntax, a declaration-free approach ...
awk2 is 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 d...
awk3 is security of a system deliberately left in place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for this is not always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out of the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field ...
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book titles is 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 thi...
book titles2 is {Aluminum Book}, {Blue Book}, {Cinderella Book}, {Devil Book}, {Dragon Book}, {Green Book}, {Orange Book}, {Pink-Shirt Book}, {Purple Book}, {Red Book}, {Silver Book}, {White Book}, {Wizard Book}, {Yellow Book}, and {bible}.b...
book titles3 is v.,n. 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...
book titles4 is that the boot is a {bounce} 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 als...
book titles5 is 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 oth...
book titles6 is 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...
book titles7 is hard-boot this losing Sun." "I recommend booting it hard." 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...
book titles8 is 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), t...
book titles9 is 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 th...
book titles10 is 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.
bottom-up implementation is n. Hackish opposite of the techspeak term `top-down design'. It is now received wisdom in most programming cultures that it is best to design from higher levels of abstraction down to lower, specifying sequences of...
bottom-up implementation2 is 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 ...
bounce is v. 1. [perhaps from the image of a thrown ball bouncing off a wall] 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 pl...
bounce2 is Power Lab} building used by the Stanford AI Lab in the 1970s, there was 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 the computer would b...
bounce3 is voice would 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 `bounci...
bounce4 is psychosexually loaded "Bounce on me too, 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} users. 5. [IBM] To {po...
bounce message is [UNIX] n. 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}). Reasons might include a nonexistent or missp...
bounce message2 is Bounce messages can themselves fail, with occasionally ugly results; see {sorcerer's apprentice mode}. The term `bounce mail' is also common.
box is 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...
box2 is 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 p...
box3 is 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}, {fepped out}, {Blue Glue}.
boxed comments is 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 Common va...
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brute force and ignorance is 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 te...
brute force and ignorance2 is 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}.
BSD is /B-S-D/ n. [acronym for `Berkeley System Distribution'] a family of {{UNIX}} versions for the DEC {VAX} and PDP-11 developed by Bill Joy and others at {Berzerkeley} starting around 1980, incorporating paged virtual memory, TCP/IP networ...
BSD2 is 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, and are stil...
bubble sort is 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 in...
bubble sort2 is is not very good relative to other methods and is the one typically stumbled on by {na"ive} and untutored programmers, hackers consider it the {canonical} example of a na"ive algorithm. The canonical example of a really *bad...
bubble sort3 is might be used out of ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could issue only from brain damage or willful perversity.
bucky bits is /buh'kee bits/ n. 1. obs. The bits produced by the CONTROL and META shift keys on a SAIL keyboard, resulting in a 9-bit keyboard character set. The MIT AI TV (Knight) keyboards extended this with TOP and separate left and right ...
bucky bits2 is 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 ...
bucky bits3 is that `bucky bits' were named for Buckminster Fuller during a period when he was consulting at Stanford. Actually, `Bucky' was Niklaus Wirth's nickname when *he* was at Stanford; he first suggested the idea of an EDIT key to set...
bucky bits4 is character. This was used in a number of editors written at Stanford or in its environs (TV-EDIT and NLS being the best-known). The term spread to MIT and CMU early and is now in general use. See {double bucky}, {quadruple b...
buffer overflow is n. What happens when you try to stuff more data into a buffer (holding area) than it can handle. This may be due to a mismatch in the processing rates of the producing and consuming processes (see {overrun}), or because the...
buffer overflow2 is data that must accumulate before a piece of it can be processed. For example, in a text-processing tool that {crunch}es a line at a time, a short line buffer can result in {lossage} as input from a long line overflows the ...
buffer overflow3 is 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...
buffer overflow4 is phone my buffer is going to overflow." See also {spam}, {overrun screw}.
bug is n. An unwanted and unintended property of a program or 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 har...
bug2 is few bugs" (i.e., Fred is a good guy, but he has a few personality problems). Historical note Some have said this term came from telephone company usage, in which "bugs in a telephone cable" were blamed for noisy lines, but this appe...
bug3 is Admiral Grace Hopper (an early computing pioneer better known for inventing {COBOL}) liked to tell a story in which a technician solved a persistent {glitch} in the Harvard Mark II machine by pulling an actual insect out from between t...
bug4 is 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...
bug5 is Naval Surface Warfare Center. 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 (f...
bug6 is Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of bug being found". This wording seems to establish that the term was already in use at the time in its current specific sense. Indeed, the use of `bug' to mean an industrial defect was al...
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bum2 is 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 t...
bum3 is 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 `bum' is a rude synonym for...
bump is 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.
burble is [from Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky"] v. 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 ...
buried treasure is 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. Use...
buried treasure2 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!"
burn-in period is 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 m...
burn-in period2 is 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 stag...
burst page is n. Syn. {banner}, sense 1.
busy-wait is 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 ti...
busy-wait2 is `busy-wait' means to wait on an event by {spin}ning 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. T...
busy-wait3 is time-sharing systems where a busy-waiting program may {hog} the processor.
buzz is 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 yo...
buzz2 is 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 cont...
buzz3 is Some wire faults will pass DC tests but fail a 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."
BWQ is /B-W-Q/ [IBM acronym, `Buzz Word Quotient'] The percentage of buzzwords in a speech or documents. Usually roughly proportional to {bogosity}. See {TLA}.
by hand is adv. 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 ...
by hand2 is 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, r...
by hand3 is 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 ...
byte is /bit/ [techspeak] n. 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...
byte2 is `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 originated in 1956 during the earl...
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
Church of the SubGenius is 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...
Church of the SubGenius2 is "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'.
Cinderella Book is [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 R...
Cinderella Book2 is coming out of it. The back cover depicts the girl with the device in shambles after she has pulled on the rope. See also {{book titles}}.
CI$ is // n. Hackerism for `CIS', CompuServe Information Service. The dollar sign refers to CompuServe's rather steep line charges. Often used in {sig block}s just before a CompuServe address. Syn. {Compu$erve}.
Classic C is /klas'ik C/ [a play on `Coke Classic'] n. 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 ...
Classic C2 is This 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 us...
Classic C3 is versions are considered serious losers relative to the older ones.
clean is 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...
clean2 is 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."
CLM is /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'." ...
CLM2 is discovered by a customer and obviously missed earlier because of poor testing "That's a CLM bug!"
clobber is 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}.
clocks is 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 frac...
clocks2 is 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}.
clone is 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...
clone2 is likely violating copyright, patent, or trade secret protections "Your product is a clone of my product." This use implies legal action is pending. 4. A `PC clone'; a PC-BUS/ISA or EISA-compatible 80x86-based microcomputer (this u...
clone3 is 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 `mis...
clone4 is 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".
clover key is [Mac users] n. See {command key}.
clustergeeking is /kluh'st*r-gee`king/ [CMU] n. Spending more time at a computer cluster doing CS homework than most people spend breathing.
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
Compu$erve is n. See {CI$}.
computer confetti is n. Syn. {chad}. Though this term is common, this use of the 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 ...
computer confetti2 is 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.
computer geek is n. 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 b...
computer geek2 is hackers; compare black-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 {clustergeeking},...
computron is /kom'pyoo-tron`/ n. 1. 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 machi...
computron2 is 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 mythi...
computron3 is 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 f...
computron4 is 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 ho...
computron5 is 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 ...
computron6 is other hardware. (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'.)
condition out is 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 are `#if 0' (or `#ifdef notdef', though some find this ...
condom is 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 al...
condom2 is drive mechanisms attempt to access the disk --- and can even fatally frustrate insertion. 2. The protective cladding on a {light pipe}.
connector conspiracy is [probably came into prominence with the appearance of the KL-10 (one model of the {PDP-10}), none of whose connectors matched anything else] n. The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors o...
connector conspiracy2 is 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 ...
connector conspiracy3 is parties out of competition for the lucrative Massbus peripherals market. This 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 st...
connector conspiracy4 is drives with low capacity and high power requirements. 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 ...
cons is /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 ex...
cons2 is 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 bin...
cons3 is think of it as a sort of universal constructor, and that is where the jargon meanings spring from.
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
down2 is mainstream; the extension to other kinds of machine is still hackish. 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 "The sys...
down3 is 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. sens...
download is vt. To transfer data or (esp.) code from a larger `host' system (esp. a {mainframe}) over a digital comm link to a smaller `client' system, esp. a microcomputer or specialized peripheral. Oppose {upload}. However, note that groun...
download2 is rule for this term. Space-to-earth transmission is always download and the reverse upload regardless of the relative size of the computers involved. So far the in-space machines have invariably been smaller; thus the upload/down...
DP is /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}.
DPB is /d*-pib'/ [from the PDP-10 instruction set] vt. 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 you to ...
DPB2 is the name of a PDP-10 instruction that inserts some bits into the middle of some other bits. This usage has been kept alive by the Common LISP function of the same name.
DPer is /dee-pee-er/ n. Data Processor. Hackers are absolutely amazed that {suit}s use this term self-referentially. "*Computers* process data, not people!" See {DP}.
dragon is 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 logg...
dragon2 is 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 d...
dragon3 is 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'.
Dragon Book is 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 `c...
Dragon Book2 is 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. A...
Dragon Book3 is 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 gaun...
Dragon Book4 is representation of the Red Dragon's head while the rest of the beast extends back in normal space. See also {{book titles}}.
drain is [IBM] v. Syn. for {flush} (sense 2). Has a connotation of finality about it; one speaks of draining a device before taking it offline.
dread high-bit disease is n. A condition endemic to PRIME (a.k.a. PR1ME) minicomputers that results in all the characters having their high (0x80) bit ON rather than OFF. This of course makes transporting files to other systems much more diff...
dread high-bit disease2 is devices. It is reported that PRIME adopted the reversed-8-bit convention in order to save 25 cents per serial line per machine. This probably qualifies as one of the most {cretinous} design tradeoffs ever made. Se...
dread high-bit disease3 is (including the Atari 800) have exhibited similar brain damage.
DRECNET is /drek'net/ [from Yiddish/German `dreck', meaning dirt] n. 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 o...
DRECNET2 is violated that spec in the design of DRECNET in a way that made it incompatible. See also {connector conspiracy}.
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
flag is n. 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...
flag2 is status word contains several flag bits." Used of humans analogously to {bit}. See also {hidden flag}, {mode bit}.
flag day is 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...
flag day2 is two values. It came into use when a massive change was made to the {{Multics}} timesharing system to convert from the old ASCII code to the new one; this was scheduled for Flag Day (a U.S. holiday), June 14, 1966. See also {ba...
flaky is 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 --- eno...
flaky2 is --- but fails frequently enough that the odds in favor of finishing what you start are low. Commonwealth hackish prefers {dodgy} or {wonky}.
flamage is /flay'm*j/ n. 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...
flame is 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 wit...
flame2 is 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). ...
flame3 is to 1976, adds "I am 99% certain that the use of `flame' originated at WPI. Those who made a nuisance of themselves insisting that they needed to use a TTY for `real work' came to be known as `flaming asshole lusers'. Other particu...
flame4 is ravers', which shortened to `flaming ravers', and ultimately `flamers'. I remember someone picking up on the Human Torch pun, but I don't think `flame on/off' was ever much used at WPI." See also {asbestos}. The term may have b...
flame5 is places; it is also reported that `flaming' was in use to mean something like `interminably drawn-out semi-serious discussions' (late-night bull sessions) at Carleton College during 1968--1971.
flame bait is n. A posting intended to trigger a {flame war}, or one that invites flames in reply.
flame on is 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}.
flame war is n. (var. `flamewar') An acrimonious dispute, especially when conducted on a public electronic forum such as {USENET}.
flamer is n. One who habitually {flame}s. Said esp. of obnoxious {USENET} personalities.
flap is vt. 1. 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 {microtape}s were 1, 2,... and attempting to flap device 0 would instead start a motor banging insi...
flap2 is to unload any magnetic tape. See also {macrotape}. Modern cartridge tapes no longer actually flap, but the usage has remained.
flarp is /flarp/ [Rutgers University] n. 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 discreetl...
flarp2 is which *do* contain the magic word.
flat is adj. 1. 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 line...
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
JEDR is // n. Synonymous with {IYFEG}. At one time, people in the USENET newsgroup rec.humor.funny tended to use `JEDR' instead of {IYFEG} or `<ethnic>'; this stemmed from a public attempt to suppress the group once made by a loser with initi...
JEDR2 is joke posted there. (The practice was {retcon}ned 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...
JEDR3 is `sensitivity' arguments for censorship so thoroughly that more recent attempts to raise them have met with immediate and near-universal rejection.
JFCL is /jif'kl/, /jaf'kl/, /j*-fi'kl/ vt., obs. (alt. `jfcl') To cancel or annul something. "Why don't you jfcl that out?" The fastest do-nothing instruction on older models of the PDP-10 happened to be JFCL, which stands for "Jump if Flag ...
JFCL2 is something useful, but is a very fast no-operation if no flag is specified. Geoff Goodfellow, one of the jargon-1 co-authors, has long had JFCL on the license plate of his BMW. Usage rare except among old-time PDP-10 hackers.
jiffy is n. 1. The duration of one tick of the system clock on the 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 ...
jiffy2 is 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. Indeterminate time from a few secon...
jiffy3 is 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}.
job security is 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 secur...
job security2 is 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.
jock is 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 `sy...
jock2 is examples of this.
joe code is /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 ...
joe code2 is the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and observed that usage has drifted slightly; the original sobriquet `Joe code' was intended in sense 1.
JR[LN] is /J-R-L/, /J-R-N/ n. The names JRL and JRN were sometimes used as example names when discussing a kind of user ID used under {{TOPS-10}}; they were understood to be the initials of (fictitious) programmers named `J. Random Loser' and ...
JR[LN]2 is example, if one said "To log in, type log one comma jay are en" (that is, "log 1,JRN"), the listener would have understood that he should use his own computer ID in place of `JRN'.
JRST is /jerst/ [based on the PDP-10 jump instruction] v.,obs. To suddenly change subjects, with no intention of returning to the previous topic. Usage rather rare except among PDP-10 diehards, and considered silly. See also {AOS}.
juggling eggs is 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 first-contact SF nov...
juggling eggs2 is and Jerry Pournelle, an alien describes a very difficult task by saying "We juggle priceless eggs in variable gravity." That is a very hackish use of language. See also {hack mode}.
jump off into never-never land is [from J. M. Barrie's `Peter Pan'] v. 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}.*...
jump off into never-never land2 is used both as a spoken word and a written suffix (like {meg} and {gig} for megabyte and gigabyte). See {{quantifiers}}.
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
livelock2 is waiting for anything, but has a virtually infinite amount of work to do and can never catch up.
liveware is /liv'weir/ n. 1. Synonym for {wetware}. Less common. 2. [Cambridge] Vermin. "Waiter, there's some liveware in my salad..."
lobotomy is 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 remov...
lobotomy2 is order to replace or upgrade it. Some very cheap {clone} systems are sold in `lobotomized' form --- everything but the brain.
locked and loaded is [from military slang for an M-16 rifle with magazine inserted and prepared for firing] adj. Said of a removable disk volume properly prepared for use --- that is, locked into the drive and with the heads loaded. Ironicall...
locked and loaded2 is the power is up, this description is never used of {{Winchester}} drives (which are named after a rifle).
locked up is adj. Syn. for {hung}, {wedged}.
logic bomb is n. Code surreptitiously inserted in an application or OS that causes it to perform some destructive or security-compromising activity whenever specified conditions are met. Compare {back door}.
logical is [from the technical term `logical device', wherein a physical device is referred to by an arbitrary `logical' name] adj. Having the role of. If a person (say, Les Earnest at SAIL) who had long held a certain post left and were rep...
logical2 is 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,...
logical3 is 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 givi...
logical4 is 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...
logical5 is 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 cir...
logical6 is 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. ...
logical7 is `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...
logical8 is and finish headed due east!)
loop through is 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...
loop through2 is say `IRP over' after an obscure pseudo-op in the MIDAS PDP-10 assembler.
lord high fixer is [primarily British, from Gilbert & Sullivan's `lord high executioner'] n. The person in an organization who knows the most about some aspect of a system. See {wizard}.
lose is [MIT] vi. 1. 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...
lose 2 is 4. n. Refers to something that is {losing}, especially in the phrases "That's a lose!" and "What a lose!"
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
MFTL is /M-F-T-L/ [acronym: `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, h...
MFTL2 is 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...
MFTL3 is which the developers are passionate (often to the point of prosyletic 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 fir...
MFTL4 is 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...
MFTL5 is other hand, a language that *cannot* be used to write its own compiler is beneath contempt...
mickey is n. The resolution unit of mouse movement. It has been suggested that the `disney' will become a benchmark unit for animation graphics performance.
mickey mouse program is 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 ve...
micro- is 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 ...
micro-2 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}, a...
micro-3 is 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...
micro-4 is 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 di...
micro-5 is 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 floa...
micro-6 is {stiffy}, {minifloppies}.
microfortnight is n. About 1.2 sec. 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...
microfortnight2 is current value is bogus. This time is specified in microfortnights!
microLenat is /mi:-kroh-len'-*t/ n. See {bogosity}.
microReid is /mi:'kroh-reed/ n. See {bogosity}.
Microsloth Windows is /mi:'kroh-sloth` win'dohz/ n. Hackerism for `Microsoft Windows', a windowing system for the IBM-PC which is so limited by bug-for-bug compatibility with {mess-dos} that it is agonizingly slow on anything less than a fast ...
microtape is /mi:'kroh-tayp/ n. Occasionally used to mean a DECtape, as opposed to a {macrotape}. A DECtape is a small reel, about 4 inches in diameter, of magnetic tape about an inch wide. Unlike drivers for today's {macrotape}s, microtape ...
microtape2 is therefore could be used to support file systems and even for swapping (this was generally done purely for {hack value}, as they were far too slow for practical use). In their heyday they were used in pretty much the same ways ...
microtape3 is portable way to save and transport files and programs. Apparently the term `microtape' was actually the official term used within DEC for these tapes until someone coined the word `DECtape', which, of course, sounded sexier to t...
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
newgroup wars3 is alt.tv.muppets in early 1990, or any number of specialized abuse groups named after particularly notorious {flamer}s, e.g., alt.weemba.
newline is /n[y]oo'li:n/ n. 1. [techspeak, primarily UNIX] The ASCII LF character (0001010), used under {{UNIX}} as a text line terminator. A Bell-Labs-ism rather than a Berkeleyism; interestingly (and unusually for UNIX jargon), it is said t...
newline2 is (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) re...
newline3 is lines. See {crlf}, {terpri}.
NeWS is /nee'wis/, /n[y]oo'is/ or /n[y]ooz/ [acronym; the `Network Window System'] n. 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 be...
NeWS2 is 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 {news} (the {netnews} software).
news is n. See {netnews}.
newsfroup is // [USENET] n. Silly synonym for {newsgroup}, originally a typo but now in regular use on USENET's talk.bizarre and other lunatic-fringe groups.
newsgroup is [USENET] n. 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 po...
newsgroup2 is parallel {mailing list}s 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...
newsgroup3 is 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...
newsgroup4 is fans), and talk.politics.misc (miscellaneous political discussions and {flamage}).
nickle is /ni'kl/ [from `nickel', common name for the U.S. 5-cent coin] n. 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 als...
night mode is n. See {phase} (of people).
Nightmare File System is 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 acc...
Nightmare File System2 is 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 trie...
Nightmare File System3 is 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 sn...
Nightmare File System4 is network of machines is frozen --- the user can't even abort the file access that started the problem! (ITS partisans are apt to cite this as proof of UNIX's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like shared file sy...
Nightmare File System5 is 1970s.) See also {broadcast storm}.
NIL is /nil/ [from LISP terminology for `false'] No. Used in reply to a question, particularly one asked using the `-P' convention. See {T}.
NMI is /N-M-I/ n. Non-Maskable Interrupt. An IRQ 7 on the PDP-11 or 680[01234]0; the NMI line on an 80{88,[1234]}86. In contrast with a {priority interrupt} (which might be ignored, although that is unlikely), an NMI is *never* ignored.
no-op is /noh'op/ alt. NOP /nop/ [no operation] n. 1. (also v.) 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). See als...
no-op2 is 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 ...
no-op3 is 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...
noddy is /nod'ee/ [UK: from the children's books] adj. 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 co...
noddy2 is 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 connot...
noddy3 is 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...
NOMEX underwear is /noh'meks uhn'-der-weir/ [USENET] n. Syn. {asbestos longjohns}, used mostly in auto-related mailing lists and newsgroups. NOMEX underwear is an actual product available on the racing equipment market, used as a fire resista...
non-optimal solution is 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 {stunni...
nonlinear is adj. [scientific computation] 1. Behaving in an erratic and unpredictable fashion. 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 ...
nonlinear2 is 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...
nonlinear3 is go nonlinear for hours." In this context, `go nonlinear' connotes `blow up out of proportion' (proportion connotes linearity).
nontrivial is 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 ...
nontrivial2 is See {trivial}, {uninteresting}, {interesting}.
notwork is /not'werk/ n. A network, when it is acting {flaky} or is {down}. Compare {nyetwork}. Said at IBM to have orig. referred to a particular period of flakiness on IBM's VNET corporate network, ca. 1988; but there are independent repor...
NP- is /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' (NP-complete problems all seem to be very hard, but so far no one has found a good a pri...
NP-2 is this algorithm to perform correctly in every case is NP-annoying." This is generalized from the computer-science terms `NP-hard' and `NP-complete'. NP is the set of Nondeterministic-Polynomial algorithms, those that can be complete...
NP-3 is 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.
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
offline is adv. Not now or not here. "Let's take this discussion offline." Specifically used on {USENET} to suggest that a discussion be taken off a public newsgroup to email.
old fart is 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 block}s attached to Jargon File contributions of great archeologica...
old fart2 is the second or third person but one of pride in first person.
Old Testament is n. [C programmers] The first edition of {K&R}, the sacred text describing {Classic C}.
one-line fix is 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!}
one-liner wars is n. A game popular among hackers who code in the language APL (see {write-only language}). 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...
one-liner wars2 is was practiced among {TECO} hackers. 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...
one-liner wars3 is character, the assignment arrow is a single character, and `i' represents the APL iota.
ooblick is /oo'blik/ [from Dr. Seuss's `Bartholomew and the Oobleck'] n. 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-Newtonia...
ooblick2 is 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 o...
ooblick3 is 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...
ooblick4 is 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.
open is 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 clos...
open switch is [IBM prob. from railroading] n. An unresolved question, issue, or problem.
operating system is [techspeak] n. (Often abbreviated `OS') The foundation software of a machine, of course; that which schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents a default interface to the user between applications. The facilities an o...
operating system2 is 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...
operating system3 is {{CP/M}}, {{MS-DOS}}, and {{Multics}} operating systems (most importantly by ITS and UNIX).
Orange Book is 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 ...
Orange Book2 is can be upgraded to about C1 without excessive pain. See also {{book titles}}.
oriental food is 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...
oriental food2 is 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 o...
oriental food3 is {stir-fried random}, {laser chicken}, {Yu-Shiang Whole Fish}. Thai, Indian, Korean, and Vietnamese cuisines are also quite popular.
orphan is [UNIX] n. A process whose parent has died; one inherited by `init(1)'. Compare {zombie}.
orphaned i-node is /or'f*nd i'nohd/ [UNIX] n. 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 serving no useful function within some organizatio...
orthogonal is [from mathematics] adj. 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, s...
orthogonal2 is 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 instr...
orthogonal3 is 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 disco...
OS is /O-S/ 1. [Operating System] n. An acronym heavily used in email, occasionally in speech. 2. n.,obs. On ITS, an output spy. See appendix A.
OS/2 is /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. Mentioning it is usually good for a cheap laugh among hackers --- the design wa...
OS/22 is 1.x so bad, that 3 years after introduction you could still count the major {app}s shipping for it on the fingers of two hands --- in unary. Often called `Half-an-OS'. On January 28, 1991, Microsoft announced that it was dropping it...
OS/23 is leaving the OS entirely in the hands of IBM; on January 29 they claimed the media had got the story wrong, but were vague about how. It looks as though OS/2 is moribund. See {vaporware}, {monstrosity}, {cretinous}, {second-system ...
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
parity errors is 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...
parity errors2 is nearly always correctable transient error in RAM hardware.
Parkinson's Law of Data is 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 over the last 10 years that the memory usage of evolving ...
Parkinson's Law of Data2 is 18 months. Fortunately, memory density available for constant dollars tends to double about once every 12 months (see {Moore's Law}); unfortunately, the laws of physics guarantee that the latter cannot continue ind...
parm is /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}...
parse is [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 understan...
parse2 is 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 fis...
parse3 is over whether `unparsed' should mean `bony', or also mean `deboned'.
Pascal is 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 an...
Pascal2 is 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}). T...
Pascal3 is 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 never formally published ...
Pascal4 is 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 th...
Pascal5 is 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 ...
Pascal6 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 in...
Pascal7 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, interna...
Pascal8 is 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...
Pascal9 is 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 ...
patch is 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. Distingu...
patch2 is 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 ori...
patch3 is 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 op...
patch4 is 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 of...
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
polygon pusher is 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'.
POM is /P-O-M/ n. Common acronym for {phase of the moon}. Usage usually in the phrase `POM-dependent', which means {flaky}.
pop is [from the operation that removes the top of a stack, and the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on the stack] (also capitalized `POP' /pop/) 1. vt. To remove something from a {stack} or {pdl}. If a person says he/she has po...
pop2 is 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 too deep a level of detail so that the main point of the discussion is being lost, someone will s...
pop3 is level!" The shout is frequently accompanied by an upthrust arm with a finger pointing to the ceiling.
POPJ is /pop'J/ [from a {PDP-10} return-from-subroutine instruction] n.,v. To return from a digression. By verb doubling, "Popj, popj" means roughly "Now let's see, where were we?" See {RTI}.
posing is n. On a {MUD}, the use of `' or an equivalent command to announce to other players that one is taking a certain physical action that has no effect on the game (it may, however, serve as a social signal or propaganda device that induc...
posing2 is example, if one's character name is Firechild, one might type ` looks delighted at the idea and begins hacking on the nearest terminal' to broadcast a message that says "Firechild looks delighted at the idea and begins hacking on ...
post is 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?"
posting is 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 ...
posting2 is perhaps the best dividing line is that if you don't know the names of all the potential recipients, it is a posting.
postmaster is 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}. It is conventional for each machine to have a `postmaster' address that is aliased to t...
pound on is vt. Syn. {bang on}.
power cycle is 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 {gronk}ed state. Syn. {120 reset}; see also {Big Red Switch}. Compare {V...
power cycle2 is see the AI Koan in appendix A about Tom Knight and the novice.
PPN is /P-P-N/, /pip'n/ [from `Project-Programmer Number'] n. 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 ...
precedence lossage is /pre's*-dens los'*j/ [C programmers] n. 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 nonintuitivel...
precedence lossage2 is `<<', 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}...
precedence lossage3 is happen in *their* favorite language, which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit parentheses everywhere. See {aliasing bug}, {memory leak}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {overrun screw}.
prepend is /pree`pend'/ [by analogy with `append'] vt. 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 ...
prepend2 is translation routine will pass it through unaltered."
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
proprietary is adj. 1. In {marketroid}-speak, superior; implies a product imbued with exclusive magic by the unmatched brilliance of the company's hardware or software designers. 2. In the language of hackers and users, inferior; implies a pr...
proprietary2 is 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 (that's assuming it wasn't too expensive in the first...
protocol is 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 th...
protocol2 is 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...
protocol3 is 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. ...
provocative maintenance is [common ironic mutation of `preventive maintenance'] n. 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 pe...
provocative maintenance2 is know what he is doing; this results in the machine's remaining in an *un*usable state for an indeterminate amount of time. See also {scratch monkey}.
prowler is [UNIX] n. 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 t...
prowler2 is {GFR}, {reaper}, {skulker}.
pseudo is /soo'doh/ [USENET truncation of `pseudonym'] n. 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 associa...
pseudo2 is message origins. Perhaps the best-known and funniest hoax of this type is {BIFF}. 2. Notionally, a {flamage}-generating AI program simulating a USENET user. Many flamers have been accused of actually being such entities, despite...
pseudo3 is 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 t...
pseudo4 is 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.
pseudoprime is n. A backgammon prime (six consecutive occupied points) with one point missing. This term is an esoteric pun derived from a mathematical method that, rather than determining precisely whether a number is prime (has no divisors)...
pseudoprime2 is whether the number is `probably' prime. A number that passes this test is called a pseudoprime. The hacker backgammon usage stems from the idea that a pseudoprime is almost as good as a prime it does the job of a prime until ...
pseudosuit is /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}...
psychedelicware is /si`k*-del'-ik-weir/ [UK] n. Syn. {display hack}. See also {smoking clover}.
psyton is /si'ton/ [TMRC] n. 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 lik...
psyton2 is watching. [This term appears to have been largely superseded by {bogon}; see also {quantum bogodynamics}. --- ESR]
pubic directory is [NYU] (also `pube directory' /pyoob' d*-rek't*-ree/) n. 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 p...
puff is 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}.
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
Red Book is n. 1. Informal name for one of the three standard references on PostScript (`PostScript Language Reference Manual', Adobe Systems (Addison-Wesley, 1985; QA76.73.P67P67; ISBN 0-201-10174-2); the others are known as the {Green Book} ...
Red Book2 is 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 book...
Red Book3 is CCITT eighth plenary assembly. Until now, these have changed color each review cycle (1988 was {Blue Book}, 1992 will be {Green Book}); however, it is rumored that this convention is going to be dropped before 1992. These incl...
Red Book4 is 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 U.S.A. as "th...
Red Book5 is and in Europe as "the Ugly Red Book That's A Sensible Size". 5. The NSA `Trusted Network Interpretation' companion to the {Orange Book}. See also {{book titles}}.
regexp is /reg'eksp/ [UNIX] n. (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 con...
regexp2 is 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 o...
regexp3 is portable C, written by revered USENETter Henry Spencer (henry@zoo.toronto.edu).
reinvent the wheel is 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 woo...
reinvent the wheel2 is 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.
religious issues is 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 gu...
religious issues2 is Jargon File?" See {holy wars}; see also {theology}, {bigot}. This term is an example of {ha ha only serious}. People actually develop the most amazing and religiously intense attachments to their tools, even when the t...
religious issues3 is 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.
replicator is n. Any construct that acts to produce copies of itself; this could be a living organism, an idea (see {meme}), a program (see {worm}, {wabbit}, and {virus}), a pattern in a cellular automaton (see {life}, sense 1), or (speculativ...
replicator2 is claimed by some that {{UNIX}} and {C} are the symbiotic halves of an extremely successful replicator; see {UNIX conspiracy}.
reply is n. See {followup}.
reset is [the MUD community] v. In AberMUD, to bring all dead mobiles to life and move items back to their initial starting places. New players who can't find anything shout "Reset! Reset!" quite a bit. Higher-level players shout back "No way!...
reset2 is found. Used in {RL}, it means to put things back to the way they were when you found them.
restriction is 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 s...
restriction2 is 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. Newcom...
restriction3 is 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 17 items in a list, everyone will know it is a random number --- on the other hand, a limit of 15...
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
stack4 is 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 ...
stack5 is 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, nesti...
stack6 is lists, and even yo-yo lists!
stack puke is 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 ...
stale pointer bug is n. Synonym for {aliasing bug} used esp. among microcomputer hackers.
state is 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?" ...
state2 is 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...
state3 is 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).
steam-powered is 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.
stiffy is [University of Lowell, Massachusetts.] n. 3.5-inch {microfloppies}, so called because their jackets are more firm than those of the 5.25-inch and the 8-inch floppy. Elsewhere this might be called a `firmy'.
stir-fried random is alt. `stir-fried mumble' n. 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}, {rav...
stomp on is 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}.
Stone Age is n., adj. 1. In computer folklore, an ill-defined period from ENIAC (ca. 1943) to the mid-1950s; the great age of electromechanical {dinosaur}s. Sometimes used for the entire period up to 1960--61 (see {Iron Age}); however, it is ...
Stone Age2 is 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...
Stone Age3 is hardware or software technology. Note that this is used even by people who were there for the {Stone Age} (sense 1).
stoppage is /sto'p*j/ n. Extreme {lossage} that renders something (usually something vital) completely unusable. "The recent system stoppage was caused by a {fried} transformer."
store is [prob. from techspeak `main store'] n. Preferred Commonwealth synonym for {core}. Thus, `bringing a program into store' means not that one is returning shrink-wrapped software but that a program is being {swap}ped in.
stroke is n. Common name for the slant (`/', ASCII 0101111) character. See {ASCII} for other synonyms.
strudel is n. Common (spoken) name for the circumflex (`', ASCII 1000000) character. See {ASCII} for other synonyms.
stubroutine is /stuhb'roo-teen/ [contraction of `stub routine'] n. Tiny, often vacuous placeholder for a subroutine that is to be written or fleshed out later.
studlycaps is /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.
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
system mangler4 is it happens, 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. [techs...
system mangler5 is abbreviation for the noun `transaction. 4. [Purdue] Alternate spelling of {tee}.
tail recursion is n. If you arent sick of it already, see {tail recursion}.
talk mode is 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...
talk mode2 is 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 or...
talk mode3 is probably derived from) Morse-code jargon used by ham-radio amateurs since the 1920s. 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; conv...
talk mode4 is 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, ...
talk mode5 is 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, t...
talk mode6 is 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 a...
talk mode7 is 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 t...
talk mode8 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...
talk mode9 is 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}, {bonk/oif}.
talker system is n. British hackerism for software that enables real-time chat or {talk mode}.
tall card is 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 lo...
tall card2 is wouldnt fit; this was felt to be a reincarnation of the {connector conspiracy}, done with less style.
tanked is 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.
tar and feather is [from UNIX `tar(1)] vt. 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 dubbe...
tar and feather2 is 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.
taste is [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." ...
taste2 is 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...
taste3 is `kind or `variety not shared by `taste. {Flavor} is a more popular word than `taste, though both are used. See also {elegant}. 2. Alt. sp. of {tayste}.
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
tweak is 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 {frobn...
tweak2 is debugging}. 2. To {tune} or {bum} a program; preferred usage in the U.K.
TWENEX is /tweneks/ 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 a...
TWENEX2 is 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 ...
TWENEX3 is 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 be...
TWENEX4 is it was discovered that `krans meant `funeral shroud in Swedish. 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 d...
TWENEX5 is 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 (th...
TWENEX6 is 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 DECs decision to scrap all the internal rivals to the VAX architecture...
TWENEX7 is DEC-20 and put a sad end to TWENEXs brief day in the sun. DEC attempted to convince TOPS-20 hackers to convert to {VMS}, but instead, by the late 1980s, most of the TOPS-20 hackers had migrated to UNIX.
twiddle is n. 1. Tilde (ASCII 1111110, `~). Also called `squiggle, `sqiggle (sic --- pronounced /skigl/), and `twaddle, but twiddle is the most common term. 2. A small and insignificant change to a program. Usually fixes one bug and gener...
twiddle2 is something in a small way. Bits, for example, are often twiddled. Twiddling a switch or knob implies much less sense of purpose than toggling or tweaking it; see {frobnicate}. To speak of twiddling a bit connotes aimlessness, a...
twiddle3 is the bit; `toggling a bit has a more specific meaning (see {bit twiddling}, {toggle}).
twink is /twink/ [UCSC] n. Equivalent to {read-only user}. Also reported on the USENET group soc.motss; may derive from gay slang for a cute young thing with nothing upstairs.
two pi is quant. The number of years it takes to finish ones thesis. Occurs in stories in the following form "He started on his thesis; 2 pi years later..."
two-to-the-N is 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 wont show up.
twonkie is /twonkee/ n. The software equivalent of a Twinkie (a variety of sugar-loaded junk food, or (in gay slang) the male equivalent of `chick); a useless `feature added to look sexy and placate a {marketroid} (compare {Saturday-night sp...
twonkie2 is 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.*UBD /U-B-D/ [abbreviation f...
twonkie3 is to close out trouble reports obviously due to utter cluelessness on the user's part. Compare {pilot error}; oppose {PBD}; see also {brain-damaged}.
UN*X is n. Used to refer to the UNIX operating system (a trademark of AT&T) 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 s...
UN*X2 is TM-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 ne...
UN*X3 is `G--d' is used. See also {glob}.
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
user is 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. ...
user2 is 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 befo...
user3 is 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 ther...
user4 is program there are implementors (hackers) and {luser}s. The users are looked down on by hackers to a mild degree because they don't understand the full ramifications of the system in all its glory. (The few users who do are known as ...
user5 is 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 s...
user6 is between the two terms; the subtle distinctions must be resolved by context.
user-friendly is 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. S...
user-friendly2 is {Macintrash}, {user-obsequious}.
user-obsequious is 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...
USG UNIX is /U-S-G yoo'niks/ n. 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 life-span of those versions AT&T's support crew was calle...
UTSL is // [UNIX] n. On-line acronym for `Use the Source, Luke' (a pun on Obi-Wan Kenobi's "Use the Force, Luke!" in `Star Wars') --- analogous to {RTFM} but more polite. This is a common way of suggesting that someone would be best off readi...
UTSL2 is feature is causing confusion, rather than making yet another futile pass through the manuals or broadcasting questions that haven't attracted {wizard}s to answer them. In theory, this is appropriately directed only at associates of...
UTSL3 is practice, bootlegs of UNIX source code (made precisely for reference purposes) are so ubiquitous that one may utter this at almost anyone on {the network} without concern. In the near future (this written in 1991) source licenses m...
UTSL4 is recent release of the Mach 3.0 microkernal, given the continuing efforts of the {GNU} project, and with the 4.4BSD release on the horizon, complete free source code for UNIX-clone toolsets and kernels should soon be widely available.
UUCPNET is n. 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. See {netw...
UUCPNET2 is permutation of ADV (i.e., {ADVENT}), used to avoid a particular {admin}'s continual search-and-destroy sweeps for the game] n. A leisure-time activity of certain hackers involving the covert exploration of the `secret' parts of l...
UUCPNET3 is 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}). The most extreme and dangerous form of vadd...
UUCPNET4 is 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 th...
UUCPNET5 is try this at home! See also {hobbit} (sense 2).
vanilla is [from the default flavor of ice cream in the U.S.] adj. 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 won...
vanilla2 is 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...
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
wall time2 is differ, as no one program gets all the {clocks}, and on multiprocessor systems with good thread support one may get more processor clocks than real-time clocks).
wallpaper is 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 wallp...
wallpaper2 is 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 t...
wallpaper3 is 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 `Win...
wallpaper4 is 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.)
wango is /wang'goh/ n. Random bit-level {grovel}ling 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 mumb...
wango2 is object-oriented executable."
wank is /wangk/ [Columbia University prob. by mutation from Commonwealth slang v. `wank', to masturbate] n.,v. Used much as {hack} is elsewhere, as a noun denoting a clever technique or person or the result of such cleverness. May describe (n...
wank2 is 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 ...
wank3 is 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 Br...
wank4 is *extremely* rude and is best avoided unless one intends to give offense.
wannabee is /won'*-bee/ (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] n. A would-be {hacker}. The connotations of thi...
wannabee2 is 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 ...
wannabee3 is 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...
wannabee4 is Compare {newbie}. Historical note The wannabee phenomenon has a slightly different flavor now (1991) than it did ten or fifteen years ago. When the people who are now hackerdom's tribal elders were in {larval stage}, the proc...
wannabee5 is 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 p...
wannabee6 is 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-consc...
wannabee7 is 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; amo...
wannabee8 is about the effects of public compendia of lore like this one.
warm boot is n. See {boot}.
wart is n. A small, {crock}y {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 quot...
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
womb box is 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...
WOMBAT is [Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time] adj. 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 w...
WOMBAT2 is {SMOP}. Also note the rather different usage as a meta-syntactic variable in {{Commonwealth Hackish}}.
wonky is /wong'kee/ [from Australian slang] adj. 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 lo...
wonky2 is out in Tengwar." Also in `wonked out'. See {funky}, {demented}, {bozotic}.
workaround is n. A temporary {kluge} inserted in a system under development or test in order to avoid the effects of a {bug} or {misfeature} so that work can continue. Theoretically, workarounds are always replaced by {fix}es; in practice, ...
workaround2 is workarounds in the first couple of releases. "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!"
working as designed is [IBM] adj. 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 accep...
working as designed2 is this sense is used in official documents! See {BAD}.
worm is [from `tapeworm' in John Brunner's novel `The Shockwave Rider', via XEROX PARC] n. A program that propagates itself over a network, reproducing itself as it goes. Compare {virus}. Nowadays the term has negative connotations, as it is...
worm2 is Perhaps the best-known example was Robert T. Morris's `Internet 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}.
wound around the axle is adj. In an infinite loop. Often used by older computer types.
wrap around is 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, eit...
wrap around2 is 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 i...
wrap around3 is rate of 10 microhertz).
write-only code is [a play on `read-only memory'] n. 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}.
write-only language is n. A language with syntax (or semantics) sufficiently dense and bizarre that any routine of significant size is {write-only code}. A sobriquet applied occasionally to C and often to APL, though {INTERCAL} and {TECO} cer...
write-only memory is 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...
write-only memory2 is 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 ...
write-only memory3 is edition of the data book and requested the return of the `erroneous' ones. Later, around 1974, Signetics bought a double-page spread in `Electronics' magazine's April issue and used the spec as an April Fools' Day joke...
write-only memory4 is 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 insert...
write-only memory5 is required a 6.3 VAC VFF supply, a +10V VCC, and VDD of 0V, +/- 2%.
Wrong Thing is 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 T...
Wrong Thing2 is 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 T...
wugga wugga is /wuh'g* wuh'g*/ n. Imaginary sound that a computer program makes as it labors with a tedious or difficult task. Compare {cruncha cruncha cruncha}, {grind} (sense 4).
WYSIWYG is /wiz'ee-wig/ adj. Describes a user interface under which "What You See Is What You Get", as opposed to one that uses more-or-less obscure commands which do not result in immediate visual feedback. The term can be mildly derogatory,...
WYSIWYG2 is {user-friendly} interfaces targeted at non-programmers; a hacker has no fear of obscure commands. On the other hand, EMACS was one of the very first WYSIWYG editors, replacing (actually, at first overlaying) the extremely obscure, ...
WYSIWYG3 is environment}. [Oddly enough, this term has already made it into the OED. --- ESR]*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 conte...
WYSIWYG4 is 680x0 stands for 68000, 68010, 68020, 68030, or 68040, and 80x86 stands for 80186, 80286 80386 or 80486 (note that a UNIX hacker might write these as 680[0-4]0 and 80[1-4]86 or 680?0 and 80?86 respectively; see {glob}). 2. [after ...
WYSIWYG5 is `W'] An over-sized, over-featured, over-engineered and incredibly over-complicated window system developed at MIT and widely used on UNIX systems.
XOFF is /X'of/ n. Syn. {control-s}.
xor is /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 it...
xref is /X'ref/ vt., n. Hackish standard abbreviation for `cross-reference'.
XXX is /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.
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
YABA is /ya'b*/ [Cambridge] n. 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 ironical...
YABA2 is `YABA-compatible'. Also used in response to questions like "What is WYSIWYG?" See also {TLA}.
YAUN is /yawn/ [Acronym for `Yet Another UNIX Nerd'] n. Reported from the San Diego Computer Society (predominantly a microcomputer users' group) as a good-natured punning insult aimed at UNIX zealots.
Yellow Book is [proposed] n. The print version of this Jargon File; `The New Hacker's Dictionary', forthcoming from MIT Press, 1991. Includes all the material in the File, plus a Foreword by Guy L. Steele and a Preface by Eric S. Raymond. M...
Yellow Book2 is typeset and includes almost all of the infamous Crunchly cartoons by the Great Quux, each attached to an appropriate entry.
Yet Another is 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 Another2 is Simulated Annealing Algorithm'. 2. Of others' work Describes something of which there are far too many. See also {YA-}, {YABA}, {YAUN}.
You are not expected to understand this is cav. [UNIX] 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.
You know you've been hacking too long when... is 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 ...
You know you've been hacking too long when...2 is 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 oct...
You know you've been hacking too long when...3 is 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 ...
You know you've been hacking too long when...4 is 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 ...
You know you've been hacking too long when...5 is 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. --- ESR]
Your mileage may vary is 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 porta...
Your mileage may vary2 is system?" 2. A qualifier more generally attached to advice. "I find that sending flowers works well, but your mileage may vary."
Yow! is /yow/ [from "Zippy the Pinhead" comix] interj. 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}.
yoyo mode is 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....
yoyo mode2 is 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.
Yu-Shiang Whole Fish is /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 ...
Yu-Shiang Whole Fish2 is 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....
zap is 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.)...
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
AOS => 1. /aws/ (East Coast), /ay-os/ (West Coast) [based on a PDP-10 increment instruction] vt.,obs. To increase the amount of something. "AOS the campfire." Usage considered silly, and now obsolete. Now largely supplanted by bump. See SOS. 2. A {Mu...
app => /ap/ n. Short for `application program', as opposed to a systems program. 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...
arc => [primarily MSDOS] vt. To create a compressed archive from a group of files using SEA ARC, PKWare PKARC, or a compatible program. Rapidly becoming obsolete as the ARC compression method is falling into disuse, having been replaced by newer comp...
arc wars => [primarily MSDOS] n. {holy wars} over which archiving program one should use. The first arc war was sparked when System Enhancement Associates (SEA) sued PKWare for copyright and trademark infringement on its ARC program. PKWare's PKARC o...
arc wars2 => and speed while largely retaining compatibility (it introduced a new compression type that could be disabled for backward-compatibility). PKWare settled out of court to avoid enormous legal costs (both SEA and PKWare are small companies)...
arc wars3 => of PKARC was changed to PKPAK. The public backlash against SEA for bringing suit helped to hasten the demise of ARC as a standard when PKWare and others introduced new, incompatible archivers with better compression algorithms.
archive => n. 1. A collection of several files bundled into one file by a program such as `ar(1)', `tar(1)', `cpio(1)', or arc for shipment or archiving (sense 2). See also {tar and feather}. 2. A collection of files or archives (sense 1) made availa...
arena => [UNIX] n. 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 semi-mythical `malloc corrupt arena' message supposedly emitted when some early versions became terminal...
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, ...
armor-plated => n. Syn. for bulletproof.
asbestos => adj. Used as a modifier to anything intended to protect one from flames. Important cases of this include {asbestos longjohns} and {asbestos cork award}, but it is used more generally.
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'. Persons in any...
asbestos cork award2 => 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 *whi...
asbestos longjohns => n. Notional garments often 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.
attoparsec => n. `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/s...
autobogotiphobia => /aw'to-boh-got`*-foh'bee-*/ n. See bogotify.
automagically => /aw-toh-maj'i-klee/ or /aw-toh-maj'i-k*l-ee/ 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....
avatar => [CMU, Tektronix] n. Syn. 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 disliked the term `superuser', and was pr...
awk => 1. n. [UNIX techspeak] An interpreted language for massaging text data developed by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan (the name is from their initials). It is characterized by C-like syntax, a declaration-free approach to varia...
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. The cabal {mailing list} disbanded in late 1988 after a bitter internal catfight, but the ne...
backbone site => n. 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 1991 include uune...
backbone site2 => University, UC Berkeley, DEC's Western Research Laboratories, Ohio State University, and the University of Texas. Compare {rib site}, {leaf site}.
backgammon => See bignum, moby, and pseudoprime.
background => n.,adj.,vt. 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 nod...
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
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 lexico...
book titles2 => {Aluminum Book}, {Blue Book}, {Cinderella Book}, {Devil Book}, {Dragon Book}, {Green Book}, {Orange Book}, {Pink-Shirt Book}, {Purple Book}, {Red Book}, {Silver Book}, {White Book}, {Wizard Book}, {Yellow Book}, and bible.boot [techsp...
book titles3 => v.,n. 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 machi...
book titles4 => that the boot is a bounce 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 ...
book titles5 => 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 softwa...
book titles6 => 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 be...
book titles7 => hard-boot this losing Sun." "I recommend booting it hard." 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...
book titles8 => 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...
book titles9 => 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 bootstr...
book titles10 => 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.
bottom-up implementation => n. Hackish opposite of the techspeak term `top-down design'. It is now received wisdom in most programming cultures that it is best to design from higher levels of abstraction down to lower, specifying sequences of action ...
bottom-up implementation2 => 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 primitiv...
bounce => v. 1. [perhaps from the image of a thrown ball bouncing off a wall] 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 volle...
bounce message => [UNIX] n. 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). Reasons might include a nonexistent or misspelled usern...
bounce message2 => Bounce messages can themselves fail, with occasionally ugly results; see {sorcerer's apprentice mode}. The term `bounce mail' is also common.
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 mainfra...
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 Common variants of...
boxed comments2 => 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}.
boxen => /bok'sn/ [by analogy with VAXen] pl.n. 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.
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.
bozotic => /boh-zoh'tik/ or /boh-zo'tik/ [from the name of a TV clown even more losing than Ronald McDonald] adj. Resembling or having the quality of a bozo; that is, clownish, ludicrously wrong, unintentionally humorous. Compare wonky, demented. Not...
BQS => /B-Q-S/ adj. Syn. {Berkeley Quality Software}.
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
brute force9 => 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.
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 e...
brute force and ignorance2 => 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.
BSD => /B-S-D/ n. [acronym for `Berkeley System Distribution'] a family of {UNIX} versions for the DEC VAX and PDP-11 developed by Bill Joy and others at Berzerkeley starting around 1980, incorporating paged virtual memory, TCP/IP networking enhancem...
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 ...
bubble sort2 => is not very good relative to other methods and is the one typically stumbled on by na"ive and untutored programmers, hackers consider it the canonical example of a na"ive algorithm. The canonical example of a really *bad* algorithm is...
bubble sort3 => might be used out of ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could issue only from brain damage or willful perversity.
bucky bits => /buh'kee bits/ n. 1. obs. The bits produced by the CONTROL and META shift keys on a SAIL keyboard, resulting in a 9-bit keyboard character set. The MIT AI TV (Knight) keyboards extended this with TOP and separate left and right CONTROL ...
bucky bits2 => 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 key...
bucky bits3 => that `bucky bits' were named for Buckminster Fuller during a period when he was consulting at Stanford. Actually, `Bucky' was Niklaus Wirth's nickname when *he* was at Stanford; he first suggested the idea of an EDIT key to set the 8th...
bucky bits4 => character. This was used in a number of editors written at Stanford or in its environs (TV-EDIT and NLS being the best-known). The term spread to MIT and CMU early and is now in general use. See {double bucky}, {quadruple bucky}.
buffer overflow => n. What happens when you try to stuff more data into a buffer (holding area) than it can handle. This may be due to a mismatch in the processing rates of the producing and consuming processes (see overrun), or because the buffer is...
buffer overflow2 => 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 t...
buffer overflow3 => 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 hav...
buffer overflow4 => phone my buffer is going to overflow." See also spam, {overrun screw}.
bug => n. An unwanted and unintended property of a program or 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."...
bug-compatible => adj. 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 bu...
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.
buglix => /buhg'liks/ n. Pejorative term referring to DEC's ULTRIX operating system in its earlier *severely* buggy versions. Still used to describe ULTRIX, but without venom. Compare HP-SUX.
bulletproof => adj. Used of an algorithm or implementation considered extremely robust; lossage-resistant; capable of correctly recovering from any imaginable exception condition. This is a rare and valued quality. Syn. armor-plated.
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." 2. To squeeze out excess; to remove so...
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.
burble => [from Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky"] v. 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 FUL...
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 sarcastical...
buried treasure2 => 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!"
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})....
burn-in period2 => 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}.
burst page => n. Syn. banner, sense 1.
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 ...
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 you never ge...
BWQ => /B-W-Q/ [IBM acronym, `Buzz Word Quotient'] The percentage of buzzwords in a speech or documents. Usually roughly proportional to bogosity. See TLA.
by hand => adv. 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 inclu...
by hand2 => 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 ...
by hand3 => 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. Com...
byte => /bit/ [techspeak] n. 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 ...
bytesexual => /bit`sek'shu-*l/ adj. 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}.*C n. 1. The third letter of th...
calculator => [Cambridge] n. Syn. for {bitty box}.
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!" Synony...
canonical => [historically, `according to religious law'] adj. 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 ...
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
chug => vi. To run slowly; to grind or grovel. "The disk is chugging like crazy."
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 bizarr...
Church of the SubGenius2 => "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'.
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 Gold...
Cinderella Book2 => coming out of it. The back cover depicts the girl with the device in shambles after she has pulled on the rope. See also {{book titles}}.
CI$ => // n. Hackerism for `CIS', CompuServe Information Service. The dollar sign refers to CompuServe's rather steep line charges. Often used in {sig block}s just before a CompuServe address. Syn. Compu$erve.
Classic C => /klas'ik C/ [a play on `Coke Classic'] n. 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 ...
Classic C2 => This 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 prod...
Classic C3 => versions are considered serious losers relative to the older ones.
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 t...
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. D...
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}.
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 o...
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...
clover key => [Mac users] n. See {command key}.
clustergeeking => /kluh'st*r-gee`king/ [CMU] n. Spending more time at a computer cluster doing CS homework than most people spend breathing.
COBOL => /koh'bol/ [COmmon Business-Oriented Language] n. (Synonymous with evil.) A weak, verbose, and flabby language used by {card walloper}s to do boring mindless things on dinosaur mainframes. Hackers believe all COBOL programmers are suits or {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; thus it is alleged that programming too much in COBOL causes one's fingers...
COBOL fingers2 => endless typing. "I refuse to type in all that source code again; it would give me COBOL fingers!"
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 his native habitat, the code grinder often removes the suit ...
code grinder2 => 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 h...
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
Commonwealth Hackish6 => fixer}, noddy, psychedelicware, plingnet, {raster blaster}, seggie, {terminal junkie}, {tick-list features}, weeble, weasel, YABA, and notes or definitions under {Bad Thing}, barf, bogus, bum, {chase pointers}, {cosmic rays},...
Commonwealth Hackish7 => crunch, dodgy, gonk, hamster, hardwarily, mess-dos, nybble, proglet, root, SEX, tweak, and xyzzy.
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 ...
compiler jock => n. See jock (sense 2).
compress => [UNIX] vt. When used without a qualifier, generally refers to crunching of a file using a particular C implementation of Lempel-Ziv compression by James A. Woods et al. and widely circulated via USENET. Use of crunch itself in this sense ...
Compu$erve => n. See CI$.
computer confetti => n. Syn. chad. Though this term is common, this use of the 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 ...
computer confetti2 => 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.
computer geek => n. 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 outside...
computer geek2 => hackers; compare black-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 clustergeeking, {geek out}, w...
computron => /kom'pyoo-tron`/ n. 1. 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...
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 are `#if 0' (or `#ifdef notdef', though some find this bletcherou...
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 sh...
connector conspiracy => [probably came into prominence with the appearance of the KL-10 (one model of the PDP-10), none of whose connectors matched anything else] n. The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anythin...
connector conspiracy2 => 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...
connector conspiracy3 => parties out of competition for the lucrative Massbus peripherals market. This 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 dy...
connector conspiracy4 => drives with low capacity and high power requirements. 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* ...
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". I...
considered harmful => adj. 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. Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony su...
considered harmful2 => policy) no longer print an article taking so assertive a position against a coding practice. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and parodies have borne titles of the form "X considered Y". The structu...
considered harmful3 => 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).
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
double bucky4 => 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 671-21036-X). Thes...
double bucky5 => 1978, in celebration of the Stanford keyboard See also {meta bit}, cokebottle, and {quadruple bucky}.
double DECkers => n. Used to describe married couples in which both partners work for Digital Equipment Corporation.
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,...
doubled sig2 => experience in electronic communication. See BIFF, pseudo.
down => 1. adj. Not operating. "The up escalator is down" is considered a humorous thing to say, 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 u...
download => vt. To transfer data or (esp.) code from a larger `host' system (esp. a mainframe) over a digital comm link to a smaller `client' system, esp. a microcomputer or specialized peripheral. Oppose upload. However, note that ground-to-space co...
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}.
DPB => /d*-pib'/ [from the PDP-10 instruction set] vt. 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 you to sit in. DPB...
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.
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, acc...
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 `complexi...
Dragon Book2 => 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 Jef...
Dragon Book3 => 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 ...
Dragon Book4 => representation of the Red Dragon's head while the rest of the beast extends back in normal space. See also {{book titles}}.
drain => [IBM] v. Syn. for flush (sense 2). Has a connotation of finality about it; one speaks of draining a device before taking it offline.
dread high-bit disease => n. A condition endemic to PRIME (a.k.a. PR1ME) minicomputers that results in all the characters having their high (0x80) bit ON rather than OFF. This of course makes transporting files to other systems much more difficult, n...
dread high-bit disease2 => devices. It is reported that PRIME adopted the reversed-8-bit convention in order to save 25 cents per serial line per machine. This probably qualifies as one of the most cretinous design tradeoffs ever made. See {meta bit}...
dread high-bit disease3 => (including the Atari 800) have exhibited similar brain damage.
DRECNET => /drek'net/ [from Yiddish/German `dreck', meaning dirt] n. 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 mal...
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 u...
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
firmy => /fer'mee/ Syn. stiffy (a 3.5-inch floppy disk).
fish => [Adelaide University, Australia] n. 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 cabine...
FISH queue => [acronym, by analogy with FIFO (First In, First Out)] n. `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 ma...
FISH queue2 => running really slowly or exhibiting extreme flakiness.
fix => n.,v. What one does when a problem has been reported too many times to be ignored.
flag => n. 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...
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 day2 => two values. It came into use when a massive change was made to the {Multics} timesharing system to convert from the old ASCII code to the new one; this was scheduled for Flag Day (a U.S. holiday), June 14, 1966. See also {backward combat...
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 y...
flamage => /flay'm*j/ n. 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. Se...
flame => 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 hostili...
flame bait => n. A posting intended to trigger a {flame war}, or one that invites flames in reply.
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.
flame war => n. (var. `flamewar') An acrimonious dispute, especially when conducted on a public electronic forum such as USENET.
flamer => n. One who habitually flames. Said esp. of obnoxious USENET personalities.
flap => vt. 1. 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 microtapes were 1, 2,... and attempting to flap device 0 would instead start a motor banging inside a cabinet...
flarp => /flarp/ [Rutgers University] n. 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...
flat => adj. 1. 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 s...
flat-ASCII => adj. 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 or markup language, and no meta-characters). Syn....
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.
flatten => vt. 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 equivale...
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
IWBNI => // [acronym] `It Would Be Nice If'. Compare WIBNI.
IYFEG => // [USENET] Abbreviation for `Insert Your Favorite Ethnic Group'. Used as a meta-name when telling racist jokes on the net to avoid offending anyone. See JEDR.*J. Random /J rand'm/ n. [generalized from {J. Random Hacker}] Arbitrary; ordinary...
J. Random Hacker => [MIT] /J rand'm hak'r/ n. A mythical figure like the Unknown Soldier; the archetypal hacker nerd. See random, {Suzie COBOL}. This may originally have been inspired or influenced by `J. Fred Muggs', a show-biz chimpanzee whose name...
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).
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...
JEDR => // n. Synonymous with IYFEG. At one time, people in the USENET newsgroup rec.humor.funny tended to use `JEDR' instead of IYFEG or `<ethnic>'; this stemmed from a public attempt to suppress the group once made by a loser with initials JEDR aft...
JFCL => /jif'kl/, /jaf'kl/, /j*-fi'kl/ vt., obs. (alt. `jfcl') To cancel or annul something. "Why don't you jfcl that out?" The fastest do-nothing instruction on older models of the PDP-10 happened to be JFCL, which stands for "Jump if Flag set and t...
jiffy => n. 1. The duration of one tick of the system clock on the 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 jif...
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....
job security2 => 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.
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...
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 ...
joe code2 => the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and observed that usage has drifted slightly; the original sobriquet `Joe code' was intended in sense 1.
JR[LN] => /J-R-L/, /J-R-N/ n. The names JRL and JRN were sometimes used as example names when discussing a kind of user ID used under {TOPS-10}; they were understood to be the initials of (fictitious) programmers named `J. Random Loser' and `J. Rando...
JRST => /jerst/ [based on the PDP-10 jump instruction] v.,obs. To suddenly change subjects, with no intention of returning to the previous topic. Usage rather rare except among PDP-10 diehards, and considered silly. See also AOS.
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 first-contact SF novel `The Mot...
juggling eggs2 => and Jerry Pournelle, an alien describes a very difficult task by saying "We juggle priceless eggs in variable gravity." That is a very hackish use of language. See also {hack mode}.
jump off into never-never land => [from J. M. Barrie's `Peter Pan'] v. 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.*K /K/ [fro...
jump off into never-never land2 => used both as a spoken word and a written suffix (like meg and gig for megabyte and gigabyte). See {quantifiers}.
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 0-113-110163-3). Syn. {White Book}, {Old Testament}. See also {New Test...
kahuna => /k*-hoo'nuh/ [IBM from the Hawaiian title for a shaman] n. Synonym for wizard, guru.
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
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 tilt...
Live Free Or Die!2 => industry. The "free" referred specifically to freedom from the fascist design philosophies and crufty misfeatures common on commercial operating systems. Armando Stettner, one of the early UNIX developers, used to give out fake ...
Live Free Or Die!3 => under a large UNIX, all in New Hampshire colors of green and white. These are now valued collector's items.
livelock => /liv'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 th...
liveware => /liv'weir/ n. 1. Synonym for wetware. Less common. 2. [Cambridge] Vermin. "Waiter, there's some liveware in my salad..."
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 p...
locked and loaded => [from military slang for an M-16 rifle with magazine inserted and prepared for firing] adj. Said of a removable disk volume properly prepared for use --- that is, locked into the drive and with the heads loaded. Ironically, becau...
locked and loaded2 => the power is up, this description is never used of {Winchester} drives (which are named after a rifle).
locked up => adj. Syn. for hung, wedged.
logic bomb => n. Code surreptitiously inserted in an application or OS that causes it to perform some destructive or security-compromising activity whenever specified conditions are met. Compare {back door}.
logical => [from the technical term `logical device', wherein a physical device is referred to by an arbitrary `logical' name] adj. Having the role of. If a person (say, Les Earnest at SAIL) who had long held a certain post left and were replaced, th...
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 ...
loop through2 => say `IRP over' after an obscure pseudo-op in the MIDAS PDP-10 assembler.
lord high fixer => [primarily British, from Gilbert & Sullivan's `lord high executioner'] n. The person in an organization who knows the most about some aspect of a system. See wizard.
lose => [MIT] vi. 1. 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)...
lose 2 => 4. n. Refers to something that is losing, especially in the phrases "That's a lose!" and "What a lose!"
lose lose => interj. A reply to or comment on an undesirable situation. "I accidentally deleted all my files!" "Lose, lose."
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 ...
losing => adj. Said of anything that is or causes a lose or lossage.
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 ...
lossage => /los'*j/ n. 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 ...
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
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}. See {aliasing bug}, {fandango o...
memory leak2 => {precedence lossage}, {overrun screw}, {leaky heap}, leak.
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,...
mess-dos => /mes-dos/ n. Derisory term for MS-DOS. Often followed by the ritual banishing "Just say No!" See {MS-DOS}. Most hackers (even many MS-DOS hackers) loathe MS-DOS for its single-tasking nature, its limits on application size, its nasty prim...
meta => /me't*/ or /may't*/ or (Commonwealth) /mee't*/ [from analytic philosophy] adj.,pref. One level of description up. A meta-syntactic variable is a variable in notation used to describe syntax, and meta-language is language used to describe lang...
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 hobbit. Some terminals and consoles (see {space-cadet keyboard}) have a META shift key. Others (including, *mirabile dic...
meta bit2 => machines) have an ALT key. See also {bucky bits}.
MFTL => /M-F-T-L/ [acronym: `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 ...
mickey => n. The resolution unit of mouse movement. It has been suggested that the `disney' will become a benchmark unit for animation graphics performance.
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.
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 arou...
microfortnight => n. About 1.2 sec. 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 a...
microLenat => /mi:-kroh-len'-*t/ n. See bogosity.
microReid => /mi:'kroh-reed/ n. See bogosity.
Microsloth Windows => /mi:'kroh-sloth` win'dohz/ n. Hackerism for `Microsoft Windows', a windowing system for the IBM-PC which is so limited by bug-for-bug compatibility with mess-dos that it is agonizingly slow on anything less than a fast 386. Comp...
microtape => /mi:'kroh-tayp/ n. Occasionally used to mean a DECtape, as opposed to a macrotape. A DECtape is a small reel, about 4 inches in diameter, of magnetic tape about an inch wide. Unlike drivers for today's macrotapes, microtape drivers allow...
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}.
milliLampson => /mil'*-lamp`sn/ n. A unit of talking speed, abbreviated mL. Most people run about 200 milliLampsons. Butler Lampson (a CS theorist and systems implementor highly regarded among hackers) goes at 1000. A few people speak faster. This un...
minifloppies => n. 5.25-inch vanilla floppy disks, as opposed to 3.5-inch or microfloppies and the now-obsolescent 8-inch variety. At one time, this term was a trademark of Shugart Associates for their SA-400 minifloppy drive. Nobody paid any attenti...
MIPS => /mips/ [acronym] n. 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. This...
misbug => /mis-buhg/ [MIT] n. 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. Usage: rare. Compare {green lightning}. See miswart.
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
New Jersey2 => from a compiler designed in New Jersey?" Compare {Berkeley Quality Software}. See also {UNIX conspiracy}.
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.
newbie => /n[y]oo'bee/ n. [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. Criteria for being considered a newbie vary wildly; a per...
newgroup wars => /n[y]oo'groop wohrz/ [USENET] n. 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. These usually settle out with...
newgroup wars2 => 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 spinoff of alt....
newgroup wars3 => alt.tv.muppets in early 1990, or any number of specialized abuse groups named after particularly notorious flamers, e.g., alt.weemba.
newline => /n[y]oo'li:n/ n. 1. [techspeak, primarily UNIX] The ASCII LF character (0001010), used under {UNIX} as a text line terminator. A Bell-Labs-ism rather than a Berkeleyism; interestingly (and unusually for UNIX jargon), it is said to have ori...
NeWS => /nee'wis/, /n[y]oo'is/ or /n[y]ooz/ [acronym; the `Network Window System'] n. 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 propri...
news => n. See netnews.
newsfroup => // [USENET] n. Silly synonym for newsgroup, originally a typo but now in regular use on USENET's talk.bizarre and other lunatic-fringe groups.
newsgroup => [USENET] n. 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 resu...
nickle => /ni'kl/ [from `nickel', common name for the U.S. 5-cent coin] n. 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.
night mode => n. See phase (of people).
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 d...
Nightmare File System2 => 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 ...
Nightmare File System3 => 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 snowballs v...
Nightmare File System4 => network of machines is frozen --- the user can't even abort the file access that started the problem! (ITS partisans are apt to cite this as proof of UNIX's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like shared file system wit...
Nightmare File System5 => 1970s.) See also {broadcast storm}.
NIL => /nil/ [from LISP terminology for `false'] No. Used in reply to a question, particularly one asked using the `-P' convention. See T.
NMI => /N-M-I/ n. Non-Maskable Interrupt. An IRQ 7 on the PDP-11 or 680[01234]0; the NMI line on an 8088,[1234]86. In contrast with a {priority interrupt} (which might be ignored, although that is unlikely), an NMI is *never* ignored.
no-op => /noh'op/ alt. NOP /nop/ [no operation] n. 1. (also v.) 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). See also JFCL. ...
noddy => /nod'ee/ [UK: from the children's books] adj. 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 ...
NOMEX underwear => /noh'meks uhn'-der-weir/ [USENET] n. Syn. {asbestos longjohns}, used mostly in auto-related mailing lists and newsgroups. NOMEX underwear is an actual product available on the racing equipment market, used as a fire resistance meas...
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 al...
nonlinear => adj. [scientific computation] 1. Behaving in an erratic and unpredictable fashion. 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 specific...
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 ...
notwork => /not'werk/ n. A network, when it is acting flaky or is down. Compare nyetwork. Said at IBM to have orig. referred to a particular period of flakiness on IBM's VNET corporate network, ca. 1988; but there are independent reports of the term ...
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' (NP-complete problems all seem to be very hard, but so far no one has found a good a priori reas...
nuke => vt. 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. Oppose {blow away}. 2. Syn. for dike, applied t...
number-crunching => n. 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 ...
numbers => [scientific computation] n. 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 bec...
NUXI problem => /nuk'see pro'bl*m/ n. This 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 l...
NUXI problem2 => vice-versa). See also middle-endian, swab, and bytesexual.
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
off-by-one error => n. 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 t...
off-by-one error2 => Often confounded with {fencepost error}, which is properly a particular subtype of it.
offline => adv. Not now or not here. "Let's take this discussion offline." Specifically used on USENET to suggest that a discussion be taken off a public newsgroup to email.
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 block}s attached to Jargon File contributions of great archeological signif...
old fart2 => the second or third person but one of pride in first person.
Old Testament => n. [C programmers] The first edition of K&R, the sacred text describing {Classic C}.
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!}
one-liner wars => n. A game popular among hackers who code in the language APL (see {write-only language}). 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 p...
one-liner wars2 => was practiced among TECO hackers. 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 <...
one-liner wars3 => character, the assignment arrow is a single character, and `i' represents the APL iota.
ooblick => /oo'blik/ [from Dr. Seuss's `Bartholomew and the Oobleck'] n. 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 behavi...
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."
open switch => [IBM prob. from railroading] n. An unresolved question, issue, or problem.
operating system => [techspeak] n. (Often abbreviated `OS') The foundation software of a machine, of course; that which schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents a default interface to the user between applications. The facilities an operating...
operating system2 => 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}}...
operating system3 => {CP/M}, {MS-DOS}, and {Multics} operating systems (most importantly by ITS and UNIX).
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)...
Orange Book2 => can be upgraded to about C1 without excessive pain. See also {{book titles}}.
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...
oriental food2 => 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 f...
oriental food3 => {stir-fried random}, {laser chicken}, {Yu-Shiang Whole Fish}. Thai, Indian, Korean, and Vietnamese cuisines are also quite popular.
orphan => [UNIX] n. A process whose parent has died; one inherited by `init(1)'. Compare zombie.
orphaned i-node => /or'f*nd i'nohd/ [UNIX] n. 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 serving no useful function within some organization, esp. ...
orthogonal => [from mathematics] adj. 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 ...
OS => /O-S/ 1. [Operating System] n. An acronym heavily used in email, occasionally in speech. 2. n.,obs. On ITS, an output spy. See appendix A.
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. Mentioning it is usually good for a cheap laugh among hackers --- the design was so bar...
out-of-band => [from telecommunications and network theory] adj. 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, ...
overflow bit => n. 1. [techspeak] On some processors, an attempt to calculate a result too large for a register to hold causes a particular flag called an {overflow bit} to be set. 2. Hackers use the term of human thought too. "Well, the {Ada} descri...
overflow bit2 => 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 i...
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 your silo can hol...
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
pain in the net => n. A flamer.
paper-net => n. Hackish way of referring to the postal service, analogizing it to a very slow, low-reliability network. USENET {sig block}s not uncommonly include a "Paper-Net" header just before the sender's postal address; common variants of this a...
param => /p*-ram'/ n. Shorthand for `parameter'. See also parm; Compare arg, var.
parent message => n. See followup.
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." Deriv...
parity errors2 => nearly always correctable transient error in RAM hardware.
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 over the last 10 years that the memory usage of evolving systems ...
Parkinson's Law of Data2 => 18 months. Fortunately, memory density available for constant dollars tends to double about once every 12 months (see {Moore's Law}); unfortunately, the laws of physics guarantee that the latter cannot continue indefinitel...
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.
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 compr...
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 e...
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 ...
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...
patch space2 => The widening use of HLLs has made this term rare; it is now primarily historical outside IBM shops. See patch (sense 4), zap (sense 4), hook.
path => n. 1. A {bang path} or explicitly routed {{Internet address}}; a node-by-node specification of a link between two machines. 2. [UNIX] A filename, fully specified relative to the root directory (as opposed to relative to the current directory;...
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 ...
payware => /pay'weir/ n. Commercial software. Oppose shareware or freeware.
PBD => /P-B-D/ [abbrev. of `Programmer Brain Damage'] n. 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.
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, e.g., by busy-waiting on a hardware register, direct diddling of screen memory, or using hard timin...
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...
pdl => /pid'l/ or /puhd'l/ [acronym for `Push Down List'] 1. In ITS days, the preferred MITism for stack. 2. Dave Lebling, one of the co-authors of Zork; (his {network address} on the ITS machines was at one time pdl@dms). 3. `Program Design Language...
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
pnambic => /p*-nam'bik/ [Acronym from the scene in the film version of `The Wizard of Oz' in which 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 tha...
pod => [allegedly from acronym POD for `Prince Of Darkness'] n. A Diablo 630 (or, latterly, any letter-quality impact printer). From the DEC-10 PODTYPE program used to feed formatted text to it. See also P.O.D.
poke => n.,vt. See peek.
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 answe...
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'.
POM => /P-O-M/ n. Common acronym for {phase of the moon}. Usage usually in the phrase `POM-dependent', which means flaky.
pop => [from the operation that removes the top of a stack, and the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on the stack] (also capitalized `POP' /pop/) 1. vt. To remove something from a stack or pdl. If a person says he/she has popped somethi...
POPJ => /pop'J/ [from a PDP-10 return-from-subroutine instruction] n.,v. To return from a digression. By verb doubling, "Popj, popj" means roughly "Now let's see, where were we?" See RTI.
posing => n. On a MUD, the use of `' or an equivalent command to announce to other players that one is taking a certain physical action that has no effect on the game (it may, however, serve as a social signal or propaganda device that induces other ...
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?"
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 l...
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. It is conventional for each machine to have a `postmaster' address that is aliased to this person.
pound on => vt. Syn. {bang on}.
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 pi...
power cycle2 => see the AI Koan in appendix A about Tom Knight and the novice.
PPN => /P-P-N/, /pip'n/ [from `Project-Programmer Number'] n. 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 syst...
precedence lossage => /pre's*-dens los'*j/ [C programmers] n. 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 pr...
precedence lossage2 => `<<', 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 poi...
precedence lossage3 => happen in *their* favorite language, which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit parentheses everywhere. See {aliasing bug}, {memory leak}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {overrun screw}.
prepend => /pree`pend'/ [by analogy with `append'] vt. 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 prepe...
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.
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
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.
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). 2. n. A pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward. 3. n. ...
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 f...
propeller head2 => actually wears them except as a joke).
propeller key => [Mac users] n. See {command key}.
proprietary => adj. 1. In marketroid-speak, superior; implies a product imbued with exclusive magic by the unmatched brilliance of the company's hardware or software designers. 2. In the language of hackers and users, inferior; implies a product not ...
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. I...
provocative maintenance => [common ironic mutation of `preventive maintenance'] n. 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 ...
provocative maintenance2 => know what he is doing; this results in the machine's remaining in an *un*usable state for an indeterminate amount of time. See also {scratch monkey}.
prowler => [UNIX] n. 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...
pseudo => /soo'doh/ [USENET truncation of `pseudonym'] n. 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 ...
pseudoprime => n. A backgammon prime (six consecutive occupied points) with one point missing. This term is an esoteric pun derived from a mathematical method that, rather than determining precisely whether a number is prime (has no divisors), uses a...
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.
psychedelicware => /si`k*-del'-ik-weir/ [UK] n. Syn. {display hack}. See also {smoking clover}.
psyton => /si'ton/ [TMRC] n. 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 fa...
pubic directory => [NYU] (also `pube directory' /pyoob' d*-rek't*-ree/) n. 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 b...
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.
punched card => alt. `punch card' [techspeak] n.obs. 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 me...
punched card2 => 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, designed to fit exactly in the currency trays used for that era's larger dollar bills. IBM (wh...
punched card3 => 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 a...
punched card4 => 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}, {du...
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
recursive acronym => pl.n. A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms. The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not EMACS") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE I...
recursive acronym2 => 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". See also mung, EMACS.
Red Book => n. 1. Informal name for one of the three standard references on PostScript (`PostScript Language Reference Manual', Adobe Systems (Addison-Wesley, 1985; QA76.73.P67P67; ISBN 0-201-10174-2); the others are known as the {Green Book} and the...
Red Book2 => 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. An...
Red Book3 => CCITT eighth plenary assembly. Until now, these have changed color each review cycle (1988 was {Blue Book}, 1992 will be {Green Book}); however, it is rumored that this convention is going to be dropped before 1992. These include, among ...
Red Book4 => 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 U.S.A. as "the Ugly R...
Red Book5 => and in Europe as "the Ugly Red Book That's A Sensible Size". 5. The NSA `Trusted Network Interpretation' companion to the {Orange Book}. See also {{book titles}}.
regexp => /reg'eksp/ [UNIX] n. (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 ...
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 roll...
reinvent the wheel2 => 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.
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?"...
religious issues2 => Jargon File?" See {holy wars}; see also theology, bigot. This term is an example of {ha ha only serious}. People actually develop the most amazing and religiously intense attachments to their tools, even when the tools are intang...
religious issues3 => 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.
replicator => n. Any construct that acts to produce copies of itself; this could be a living organism, an idea (see meme), a program (see worm, wabbit, and virus), a pattern in a cellular automaton (see life, sense 1), or (speculatively) a robot or n...
reply => n. See followup.
reset => [the MUD community] v. In AberMUD, to bring all dead mobiles to life and move items back to their initial starting places. New players who can't find anything shout "Reset! Reset!" quite a bit. Higher-level players shout back "No way!" since...
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...
retcon => /ret'kon/ [`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...
RETI => v. Syn. RTI
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 o...
RFC => /R-F-C/ [Request For Comment] n. One of a long-established series of numbered Internet standards widely followed by commercial and PD software in the Internet and UNIX communities. Perhaps the single most influential one has been RFC-822 (the ...
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
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...
sponge => [UNIX] n. 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 you...
spooge => /spooj/ 1. n. Inexplicable or arcane code, or random and probably incorrect output from a computer program. 2. vi. To generate spooge (sense 1).
spool => [from early IBM `Simultaneous Peripheral Operation Off-Line', but this acronym is widely thought to have been contrived for effect] vt. To send files to some device or program (a `spooler') that queues them up and does something useful with ...
stack => n. A person's stack is the set of things he or she 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...
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, ...
stale pointer bug => n. Synonym for {aliasing bug} used esp. among microcomputer hackers.
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...
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.
stiffy => [University of Lowell, Massachusetts.] n. 3.5-inch microfloppies, so called because their jackets are more firm than those of the 5.25-inch and the 8-inch floppy. Elsewhere this might be called a `firmy'.
stir-fried random => alt. `stir-fried mumble' n. 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 chick...
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.
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 an...
Stone Age2 => 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 f...
Stone Age3 => hardware or software technology. Note that this is used even by people who were there for the {Stone Age} (sense 1).
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."
store => [prob. from techspeak `main store'] n. Preferred Commonwealth 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.
stroke => n. Common name for the slant (`/', ASCII 0101111) character. See ASCII for other synonyms.
strudel => n. Common (spoken) name for the circumflex (`', ASCII 1000000) character. See ASCII for other synonyms.
stubroutine => /stuhb'roo-teen/ [contraction of `stub routine'] n. Tiny, often vacuous placeholder for a subroutine that is to be written or fleshed out later.
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.
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
system mangler4 => it happens, 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 ...
system mangler5 => abbreviation for the noun `transaction. 4. [Purdue] Alternate spelling of tee.
tail recursion => n. If you arent sick of it already, see {tail recursion}.
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 languag...
talk mode2 => 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. Som...
talk mode3 => probably derived from) Morse-code jargon used by ham-radio amateurs since the 1920s. 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, m...
talk mode4 => 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 responden...
talk mode5 => 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, MUDde...
talk mode6 => 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 repor...
talk mode7 => 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 typ...
talk mode8 => 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...
talk mode9 => 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, bonk/oif.
talker system => n. British hackerism for software that enables real-time chat or {talk mode}.
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 m...
tall card2 => wouldnt fit; this was felt to be a reincarnation of the {connector conspiracy}, done with less style.
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.
tar and feather => [from UNIX `tar(1)] vt. 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 `featherin...
tar and feather2 => 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.
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 ...
tayste => /tayst/ n. Two bits; also as taste. Syn. crumb, quarter. Compare {byte}, dynner, playte, nybble, quad.
TCB => /T-C-B/ [IBM] n. 1. Trouble Came Back. An intermittent or difficult-to-reproduce problem that has failed to respond to neglect. Compare heisenbug. Not to be confused with 2. Trusted Computing Base, an `official jargon term from the {Orange Boo...
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
true-hacker => [analogy with `trufan from SF fandom] n. 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...
tty => /T-T-Y/ [UNIX], /titee/ [ITS, but some UNIX people say it this way as well; this pronunciation is not considered to have sexual undertones] n. 1. A terminal of the teletype variety, characterized by a noisy mechanical printer, a very limited c...
tube => 1. n. A CRT terminal. Never used in the mainstream sense of TV; real hackers dont watch TV, except for Loony Toons, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Trek Classic, the Simpsons, and the occasional cheesy old swashbuckler movie (see appendix B). 2. [IBM] To...
tube time => n. Time spent at a terminal or console. More inclusive than hacking time; commonly used in discussions of what parts of ones environment one uses most heavily. "I find Im spending too much of my tube time reading mail since I started thi...
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 ...
tune => [from automotive or musical usage] vt. 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 e...
turbo nerd => n. See {computer geek}.
turist => /toorist/ n. Var. sp. of tourist, q.v. Also in adjectival form, `turistic. Poss. influenced by luser and `Turing.
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 {f...
TWENEX => /tweneks/ 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, Bera...
twiddle => n. 1. Tilde (ASCII 1111110, `~). Also called `squiggle, `sqiggle (sic --- pronounced /skigl/), 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...
twink => /twink/ [UCSC] n. Equivalent to {read-only user}. Also reported on the USENET group soc.motss; may derive from gay slang for a cute young thing with nothing upstairs.
two pi => quant. The number of years it takes to finish ones thesis. Occurs in stories in the following form "He started on his thesis; 2 pi years later..."
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 wont show up.
twonkie => /twonkee/ n. The software equivalent of a Twinkie (a variety of sugar-loaded junk food, or (in gay slang) the male equivalent of `chick); a useless `feature added to look sexy and placate a marketroid (compare {Saturday-night special}). Th...
UN*X => n. Used to refer to the UNIX operating system (a trademark of AT&T) 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 (1990) th...
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.
under the hood => prep. [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 enabl...
under the hood2 => 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,...
undocumented feature => n. See feature.
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....
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
unwind-protect => [MIT from the name of a LISP operator] n. 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."
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.
upload => /uhp'lohd/ v. 1. [techspeak] To transfer programs or data over a digital communications link from a smaller or peripheral `client' system to a larger or central `host' one. A transfer in the other direction is, of course, called a download ...
upthread => adv. Earlier in the discussion (see thread), i.e., `above'. "As Joe pointed out upthread, ..." See also followup.
urchin => n. See munchkin.
USENET => /yoos'net/ or /yooz'net/ [from `Users' Network'] n. 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 Uni...
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 observe...
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 menuit...
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...
USG UNIX => /U-S-G yoo'niks/ n. 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 life-span of those versions AT&T's support crew was called the `U...
UTSL => // [UNIX] n. On-line acronym for `Use the Source, Luke' (a pun on Obi-Wan Kenobi's "Use the Force, Luke!" in `Star Wars') --- analogous to RTFM but more polite. This is a common way of suggesting that someone would be best off reading the sou...
UUCPNET => n. 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. See {network addre...
vanilla => [from the default flavor of ice cream in the U.S.] adj. 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, a...
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...
vaporware => /vay'pr-weir/ n. Products announced far in advance of any release (which may or may not actually take place).
var => /veir/ or /var/ n. Short for `variable'. Compare arg, param.
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 micro}s after about 1986, ...
VAXectomy => /vak-sek't*-mee/ [by analogy with `vasectomy'] n. 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 caus...
VAXen => /vak'sn/ [from `oxen', perhaps influenced by `vixen'] n. (alt. `vaxen') The plural canonically used among hackers for the DEC VAX computers. "Our installation has four PDP-10s and twenty vaxen." See boxen.
vaxherd => n. /vaks'herd/ [from `oxherd'] A VAX operator.
vaxism => /vak'sizm/ n. A piece of code that exhibits vaxocentrism in critical areas. Compare PC-ism, unixism.
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
walking drives4 => patterns that would do this to particular drive models and held disk-drive races.
wall => [WPI] interj. 1. An indication of confusion, usually spoken with a quizzical tone "Wall??" 2. A request for further explication. Compare {octal forty}. It is said that "Wall?" really came from `like talking to a blank wall'. It was initially ...
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 pejorativ...
wall follower2 => 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 mathemati...
wall follower3 => 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,...
wall follower4 => See also {code grinder}, droid.
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 clocks required to execute it (on a ti...
wall time2 => differ, as no one program gets all the clocks, and on multiprocessor systems with good thread support one may get more processor clocks than real-time clocks).
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...
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 --- ...
wank => /wangk/ [Columbia University prob. by mutation from Commonwealth slang v. `wank', to masturbate] n.,v. Used much as hack is elsewhere, as a noun denoting a clever technique or person or the result of such cleverness. May describe (negatively)...
wannabee => /won'*-bee/ (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] n. A would-be hacker. The connotations of this term dif...
warm boot => n. See boot.
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 ...
washing machine => n. 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 ...
washing machine2 => it is even used in Russian hacker jargon. See also {walking drives}. The thick channel cables connecting these were called `bit hoses' (see hose).
water MIPS => n. (see MIPS, sense 2) Large, water-cooled machines of either today's ECL-supercomputer flavor or yesterday's traditional mainframe type.
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 wav...
wave a dead chicken2 => code, but I really think we've run into an OS bug." Compare {voodoo programming}, {rain dance}.
weasel => n. [Cambridge] A na"ive user, one who deliberately or accidentally does things that are stupid or ill-advised. Roughly synonymous with loser.
wedged => [from a common description of recto-cranial inversion] adj. 1. To be stuck, incapable of proceeding without help. This is different from having crashed. If the system has crashed, then it has become totally non-functioning. If the system is...
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
Wizard Book => n. Hal Abelson and Jerry Sussman's `Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs' (MIT Press, 1984; ISBN 0-262-01077-1, an excellent computer science text used in introductory courses at MIT. So called because of the wizard on the...
Wizard Book2 => LISP/Scheme world.
wizard mode => [from rogue] n. 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).
wizardly => adj. Pertaining to wizards. A wizardly feature is one that only a wizard could understand or use properly.
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 equ...
WOMBAT => [Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time] adj. 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 womb...
wonky => /wong'kee/ [from Australian slang] adj. 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 wo...
workaround => n. A temporary kluge inserted in a system under development or test in order to avoid the effects of a bug or misfeature so that work can continue. Theoretically, workarounds are always replaced by fixes; in practice, customers often fi...
working as designed => [IBM] adj. 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 ...
working as designed2 => this sense is used in official documents! See BAD.
worm => [from `tapeworm' in John Brunner's novel `The Shockwave Rider', via XEROX PARC] n. 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 th...
wound around the axle => adj. In an infinite loop. Often used by older computer types.
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 becau...
wrap around2 => 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 (...
wrap around3 => rate of 10 microhertz).
write-only code => [a play on `read-only memory'] n. 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}.
write-only language => n. A language with syntax (or semantics) sufficiently dense and bizarre that any routine of significant size is {write-only code}. A sobriquet applied occasionally to C and often to APL, though INTERCAL and TECO certainly deser...
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 Signeti...
write-only memory2 => 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...
write-only memory3 => edition of the data book and requested the return of the `erroneous' ones. Later, around 1974, Signetics bought a double-page spread in `Electronics' magazine's April issue and used the spec as an April Fools' Day joke. Instead ...
write-only memory4 => 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", an...
write-only memory5 => required a 6.3 VAC VFF supply, a +10V VCC, and VDD of 0V, +/- 2%.
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 ...
Wrong Thing2 => 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."
wugga wugga => /wuh'g* wuh'g*/ n. Imaginary sound that a computer program makes as it labors with a tedious or difficult task. Compare {cruncha cruncha cruncha}, grind (sense 4).
WYSIWYG => /wiz'ee-wig/ adj. Describes a user interface under which "What You See Is What You Get", as opposed to one that uses more-or-less obscure commands which do not result in immediate visual feedback. The term can be mildly derogatory, as it i...
XOFF => /X'of/ n. Syn. control-s.
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 argu...
xref => /X'ref/ vt., n. Hackish standard abbreviation for `cross-reference'.
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.
xyzzy => /X-Y-Z-Z-Y/, /X-Y-ziz'ee/, /ziz'ee/, or /ik-ziz'ee/ [from the ADVENT game] adj. 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 the...
YA- => [Yet Another] abbrev. In hackish acronyms this almost invariably expands to {Yet Another}, following the precedent set by UNIX `yacc(1)'. See YABA.
YABA => /ya'b*/ [Cambridge] n. 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 t...
YAUN => /yawn/ [Acronym for `Yet Another UNIX Nerd'] n. Reported from the San Diego Computer Society (predominantly a microcomputer users' group) as a good-natured punning insult aimed at UNIX zealots.
Yellow Book => [proposed] n. The print version of this Jargon File; `The New Hacker's Dictionary', forthcoming from MIT Press, 1991. Includes all the material in the File, plus a Foreword by Guy L. Steele and a Preface by Eric S. Raymond. Most import...
Yellow Book2 => typeset and includes almost all of the infamous Crunchly cartoons by the Great Quux, each attached to an appropriate entry.
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 Anoth...
Yet Another2 => Simulated Annealing Algorithm'. 2. Of others' work Describes something of which there are far too many. See also YA-, YABA, YAUN.
You are not expected to understand this => cav. [UNIX] 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.
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 {networ...
You know you've been hacking too long when...2 => 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 comp...
You know you've been hacking too long when...3 => 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 ...
You know you've been hacking too long when...4 => 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 balan...
You know you've been hacking too long when...5 => 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. --- ESR]
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...
Your mileage may vary2 => system?" 2. A qualifier more generally attached to advice. "I find that sending flowers works well, but your mileage may vary."
Yow! => /yow/ [from "Zippy the Pinhead" comix] interj. 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.
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 Mi...
yoyo mode2 => 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.
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 i...
Yu-Shiang Whole Fish2 => 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.
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...
factpacks/old_test_meanings.fact view on Meta::CPAN
Arcturus => a gathering together
Ard => one that commands; he that descends
Ardon => ruling; a judgment of malediction
Areli => the light or vision of God
Areopagus => the hill of Mars
Aretas => agreeable, virtuous
Argob => a turf, or fat land
Ariel => altar; light or lion of God
Arimathea => a lion dead to the Lord
Arioch => long; great; tall
Aristarchus => the best prince
Aristobulus => a good counselor
Armageddon => hill of fruits; mountain of Megiddo
Arnon => rejoicing; sunlight
Aroer => heath; tamarisk
Arpad => the light of redemption
Arphaxad => a healer; a releaser
Artaxerxes => the silence of light; fervent to spoil
Artemas => whole, sound
Arumah => high; exalted
Asa => physician; cure
factpacks/techdict.fact view on Meta::CPAN
Clustering => Clustering is an up-and-coming technology using two or more computers that function together as a single entity for fault tolerance and load balancing. This increases reliability and up-time in a client/server environment. One computer ...
CLV => (Constant Linear Velocity) In terms of disk drives, it means that the rate of data being read off of the disk stays the same from center to outer edge. To accomplish this, the drive motor speeds up and slows down as data is read from different...
CMOS => (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) This is the common reference for the BIOS preferences in your computer. Actually, it is a low power version of a chip. The low power comes into play because it is what commonly holds your BIOS prefere...
Coaxial cable => This is the original Ethernet cable. It consists of a single, insulated copper wire, surrounded by a copper braid or foil. The wire is then coated with plastic. Coaxial cable is used in bus topology.
COBOL => (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) This is a programming language developed in the '60s by several computer companies and the US Department of Defense. COBOL is still used today for programming business applications and COBOL programmers ar...
Code => A series of instructions that make up a program.
Code generator => A code generator is part of a compiler. It takes intermediate code and translates it into the final workable code in the target language.
Coily => Enemy of Q-Bert.
COM => (Component Object Model) This is a Microsoft specification that describes methods of communication between components. For example, if you were to drag an item over a window, the item and window would have some rules of communication that they...
Compiler => A compiler translates a computer program from one language into another, catching any errors in syntax along the way. Most commonly, you translate some high level language, such as C++ or COBOL, into optimized machine language. This form ...
Compression => Takes something large and makes it smaller. Compression generally comes in two forms, lossy and lossless. Lossy compression is best used on graphics files and sound files. It crunches down the data at a much higher ratio, at the expens...
Computer => Technically, this is anything that inputs data, processes it in some way, and outputs it.
Control Program for Microprocessors (CP/M) => CP/M was THE operating system before IBM created the PC. IBM was shopping for an OS for the PC, ended up going with Microsoft, and Bill Gates created DOS. CP/M is not really used on anything but fossils a...
Convergence => The ability of the three electron beams (red, green and blue) in a CRT monitor to meet at a single point and produce one dot. If a monitor is mis-converging, you will notice shadows of blue or red around any white images. Often, this w...
Cookie => Web sites send these to your browser so that the site is customized based on your previous actions on that site. For example, someday UGeek may send a cookie to your browser to let us know whether you are a new visitor or if you've been her...
Core => In UNIX systems this term is commonly used in reference to core dumps.
Core Dump => In UNIX systems, when a program crashes, it "dumps" out an image of the memory and registers so that you may go through and see what caused the problem. This is almost as useful as the Netware and Windows NT memory dumps (which is not ve...
CP/M => see Control Program for Microprocessors.
CPU => (Central Processing Unit) Think of this as the brains of the computer. When most people think of processors, they think of Intel. The Pentium and Pentium Pro are CPUs.
CRC => (Cyclic Redundancy Check) A mathematical calculation that produces a number that can be used to check the integrity of a file by regenerating the number and comparing the results.
CRT => (Cathode Ray Tube) This is one of the main components of monitors and TVs. A beam of electrons is shot towards the CRT and as they collide with phosphors on the inside surface, they produce light. Today, other technologies are performing bette...
factpacks/techdict.fact view on Meta::CPAN
Mission-Critical Application => This is any application that is critical to the proper running of a business. If this application fails for any length of time, you may be out of business. For example, an order-entry system may be considered mission c...
MMX => (Matrix Math Extensions / Multi Media Extensions) 64 additional instructions for matrix math operations that are commonly used to process multimedia data. A slight improvement of the Pentium and Pentium Pro chip designs that is supposed to mak...
MODEM => (Modulator/Demodulator) A device to turn digital signals to analog ones and back again, so they can be transmitted and translated back to digital at another modem without loss. Used for communication through means of audio, telephone, CB, et...
Moiré => An interference pattern that gets created when small dots are placed in a tight pattern.
Monitor => A device for viewing the output from a computer, traditionally a much more precise TV set.
Moore's Law => Former Intel chairman Gordon Moore is credited with predicting the trend that transistor counts in processors double every 18 months. This law has held true since the 1970s. The law can also be applied to other technologies and works f...
Motherboard => The circuit board that your CPU, IO chips and all the peripheral cards plug into.
MotherGlass => The sheet of silicon that the wafers are stamped out of to make computer chips.
Mouse => A pointing device that uses a roller ball on the bottom to detect motion.
Mousepad => A pad that has a surface made for use with a mouse.
MP3 => (MPEG 3) This is a compression standard for music. It enables you to fit over 100 full length songs on a single CD with almost no loss of quality. You can find MP3 players and MP3 files on the Web--you just have to look. The music industry is ...
MPEG => (Moving Pictures Expert Group) This is a format for compressing video in a format similar to JPEG. It works.
MTBF => (Mean Time Between Failures) This is a time normally given in hours that predicts the failure of a device. The larger the number the better.
Multi-Threaded => Some operating systems allow multiple parts, or threads, of a single process to run simultaneously. These OSs are referred to as multi-threaded. UNIX is a multi-threaded OS, as is Windows NT.
Multi-tier client server => This is a form of client/server application that uses the multi-tiered architecture.
Multi-tiered architecture => This is the most scalable application architecture (over 2-tier and 3-tier). This architecture refers to 4-, 5-, or even higher-tiered architectures. It is the most complex type of architecture, splitting the application ...
Multicast IP => This is a form of TCP/IP being proposed that will allow for high-bandwidth transmissions (like television channels) to be broadcast over the Internet to all the routers in the world (possibly) that are connected to someone watching th...
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions => (MIME) This refers to functions used for the attachment of binary files to an e-mail message. MIME is the most common group of functions used to make this translation, and allows us to tack on graphics, sound,...
n-tuple => ((pronounced en-too-pull)) This is a mathematical term for a finite sequence of n terms. For example, the set {1, 2, 3, 4} is a 4-tuple. The set {Frank, Jane, Ed} is a 3-tuple. Any time there is a list of n things in a certain order, you c...
Nanosecond => (One billionth of a second) Used most often to measure the speed of memory.
NC => (Network Computer) This is a concept that came from the old days of dumb terminals. They are supposed to reduce the cost of standardized computers in the office environment.
factpacks/techdict.fact view on Meta::CPAN
OC3 => See Optical Carrier 3.
OCR => (Optical Character Recognition) This is the technology that allows computers to "read" the text from physical objects. It requires a graphical representation of text to interpret. This usually comes from a scanned image.
OEM => (Original Equipment Manufacturer) This acronym is used to denote equipment that is sold to other companies or resellers for integration into systems. For example, a hard drive manufacturer may sell an OEM hard drive in bulk quantities and no m...
Office Suite => The set of software products that are required by an office. Most often comprised of a spreadsheet program, a word processor, a scheduler, and a presentation manager. Sometimes they will include a financial package and a database prog...
OLE => (see Object Linking and Embedding) see Object Linking and Embedding
Online => The term refers to anything that's on the Internet, as in "I've got this great online magazine for you to check out at www.ugeek.com."
OpenGL => (Open Graphics Language) This is a 3D graphics language developed by Silicon Graphics. OpenGL support is built into Windows NT. You can see some examples by checking out the NT screen savers. Some 3D graphics accelerators have OpenGL accele...
Optical Carrier 12 => (OC-12) This stands for the 622 Mbps ATM protocol. Some large Internet providers are using OC-12 for their backbones.
Optical Carrier 3 => (OC-3) Synonym for the 155 Mbps ATM protocol.
Optical Drive => A storage device that uses light to store data instead of magnetism. To write it (usually) uses a laser to change a tiny portion of an optical disk so that it can be read later by checking the state of that portion.
OS => (Operating System) The program that allows you to access the basic functions of your computer. It is the minimum software required to run a program. The best one by far is the MacOS.
Output => Anything that comes out of a computer or system. As in, "Watch out for that pile of OUTPUT on the sidewalk."
Over-clocking => This is the act of running a chip at a higher clock speed than it was specified for. Very often, chips are capable of running faster than they are specified for, and can be safely over-clocked.
P54C => This is the official part number for the Pentium processor from Intel.
P55C => This is the official part number for the Pentium processor with MMX technology from Intel.
Packet => A collection of information. It's often used to refer to the chunks of information sent over computer networks.
Packet Filter => This is anything that filters out network traffic based on sender's address, receiver's address, and the type of protocol being sent. Some routers support packet filtering, all firewalls do, and some proxy servers will as well.
Packet InterNet Gopher => (PING) Part of the standard TCP/IP suite of protocols that allows you to check your connectivity with other devices, or to check whether your own TCP/IP stack is working properly. Normally, you type in something like "ping 2...
Page Fault => This is not an error. It means that the computer had to resort to using the swap file as memory.
Parallel => Meaning in unison, or many things at the same time. Most commonly refers to a computer with multiple processors that can execute multiple instructions at the same time.
Parallel Port => The parallel port is found on just about all PCs. It's a 25-pin interface cable (DB-25) that is designed for connection to a printer. Normally, it will take up IRQ 7. In addition to printers, you can connect many other devices such a...
factpacks/usazips.fact view on Meta::CPAN
76873 => Rockwood Coleman TX
76874 => Roosevelt Kimble TX
76875 => Rowena Runnels TX
76877 => San Saba San Saba TX
76878 => Santa Anna Coleman TX
76880 => Star Mills TX
76882 => Talpa Coleman TX
76883 => Telegraph Edwards TX
76884 => Valera Coleman TX
76885 => Valley Spring Llano TX
76886 => Veribest Tom Green TX
76887 => Voca McCulloch TX
76888 => Voss Coleman TX
76890 => Zephyr Brown TX
76901 => San Angelo Tom Green TX
76902 => San Angelo Tom Green TX
76903 => San Angelo Tom Green TX
76904 => San Angelo Tom Green TX
76905 => San Angelo Tom Green TX
76906 => San Angelo Tom Green TX
76908 => Goodfellow Afb Tom Green TX
factpacks/usazips.fact view on Meta::CPAN
95930 => Clipper Mills Butte CA
95931 => College City Colusa CA
95932 => Colusa Colusa CA
95934 => Crescent Mills Plumas CA
95935 => Dobbins Yuba CA
95936 => Downieville Sierra CA
95937 => Dunnigan Yolo CA
95938 => Durham Butte CA
95939 => Elk Creek Glenn CA
95940 => Feather Falls Butte CA
95941 => Forbestown Butte CA
95942 => Forest Ranch Butte CA
95943 => Glenn Glenn CA
95944 => Goodyears Bar Sierra CA
95945 => Grass Valley Nevada CA
95946 => Penn Valley Nevada CA
95947 => Greenville Plumas CA
95948 => Gridley Butte CA
95949 => Grass Valley Nevada CA
95950 => Grimes Colusa CA
95951 => Hamilton City Glenn CA
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