Amethyst
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Amethyst/Brain/Infobot/Module/Zippy.pm view on Meta::CPAN
FUN is never having to say you're SUSHI!!
Gee, I feel kind of LIGHT in the head now, knowing I can't make my satellite dish PAYMENTS!
Gibble, Gobble, we ACCEPT YOU ...
Give them RADAR-GUIDED SKEE-BALL LANES and VELVEETA BURRITOS!!
Go on, EMOTE! I was RAISED on thought balloons!!
GOOD-NIGHT, everybody ... Now I have to go administer FIRST-AID to my pet LEISURE SUIT!!
HAIR TONICS, please!!
Half a mind is a terrible thing to waste!
Hand me a pair of leather pants and a CASIO keyboard -- I'm living for today!
Has everybody got HALVAH spread all over their ANKLES?? ... Now, it's time to "HAVE A NAGEELA"!! ... he dominates the DECADENT SUBWAY SCENE.
He is the MELBA-BEING ... the ANGEL CAKE ... XEROX him ... XEROX him -- He probably just wants to take over my CELLS and then EXPLODE inside me like a BARREL of runny CHOPPED LIVER! Or maybe he'd like to PSYCHOLIGICALLY TERRORISE ME until I have no ...
HELLO KITTY gang terrorizes town, family STICKERED to death!
HELLO, everybody, I'm a HUMAN!!
Hello, GORRY-O!! I'm a GENIUS from HARVARD!!
Hello. I know the divorce rate among unmarried Catholic Alaskan females!!
Hello. Just walk along and try NOT to think about your INTESTINES being almost FORTY YARDS LONG!!
Hello... IRON CURTAIN? Send over a SAUSAGE PIZZA! World War III? No thanks!
Hello? Enema Bondage? I'm calling because I want to be happy, I guess ...
Here I am at the flea market but nobody is buying my urine sample bottles ...
Here I am in 53 B.C. and all I want is a dill pickle!!
Here I am in the POSTERIOR OLFACTORY LOBULE but I don't see CARL SAGAN anywhere!!
Here we are in America ... when do we collect unemployment?
Hey, wait a minute!! I want a divorce!! ... you're not Clint Eastwood!!
Hey, waiter! I want a NEW SHIRT and a PONY TAIL with lemon sauce!
Hiccuping & trembling into the WASTE DUMPS of New Jersey like some drunken CABBAGE PATCH DOLL, coughing in line at FIORUCCI'S!!
Hmmm ... a CRIPPLED ACCOUNTANT with a FALAFEL sandwich is HIT by a TROLLEY-CAR ...
Hmmm ... A hash-singer and a cross-eyed guy were SLEEPING on a deserted island, when ...
Hmmm ... a PINHEAD, during an EARTHQUAKE, encounters an ALL-MIDGET FIDDLE ORCHESTRA ... ha ... ha ...
Amethyst/Brain/Infobot/Module/Zippy.pm view on Meta::CPAN
... I don't know why but, suddenly, I want to discuss declining I.Q. LEVELS with a blue ribbon SENATE SUB-COMMITTEE!
I don't know WHY I said that ... I think it came from the FILLINGS in my read molars ...
... I don't like FRANK SINATRA or his CHILDREN. I don't understand the HUMOUR of the THREE STOOGES!!
I feel ... JUGULAR ...
I feel better about world problems now!
I feel like a wet parking meter on Darvon!
I feel like I am sharing a ``CORN-DOG'' with NIKITA KHRUSCHEV ...
I feel like I'm in a Toilet Bowl with a thumbtack in my forehead!!
I feel partially hydrogenated!
I fill MY industrial waste containers with old copies of the "WATCHTOWER" and then add HAWAIIAN PUNCH to the top ... They look NICE in the yard ...
I guess it was all a DREAM ... or an episode of HAWAII FIVE-O ...
I guess you guys got BIG MUSCLES from doing too much STUDYING!
I had a lease on an OEDIPUS COMPLEX back in '81 ...
I had pancake makeup for brunch!
I have a TINY BOWL in my HEAD
I have a very good DENTAL PLAN. Thank you.
I have a VISION! It's a RANCID double-FISHWICH on an ENRICHED BUN!!
I have accepted Provolone into my life!
I have many CHARTS and DIAGRAMS..
... I have read the INSTRUCTIONS ...
-- I have seen the FUN --
I have seen these EGG EXTENDERS in my Supermarket ... I have read the INSTRUCTIONS ...
factpacks/Linux.fact view on Meta::CPAN
gman => <reply> $who, A user-friendly graphical front end for the man page system. URL: http://homex.s-one.net.sg/user/xkwang/gman/
GMasqdialer => <reply> $who, Gnome Client for the Masqdialer System. URL: http://xlife.dhs.org/gmasqdialer/
GMatH => <reply> $who, Computer Algebra Environment. URL: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dreamworld/1535/gmath.html
GMedia => <reply> $who, . URL: http://members.xoom.com/NadirX/gmedia/index.html
GMem => <reply> $who, A tool to monitor the memory usage of your system. URL: http://sbase.uground.org/gmem.html
Gmemusage => <reply> $who, Graphical memory usage viewer.. URL: http://reality.sgi.com/raju/software.html
Gmenu2Kmenu => <reply> $who, Script to convert a Gnome panel structure to a KDE panel structure. URL: http://linux.netnerve.com/g2k/
gmessage => <reply> $who, xmessage clone written in gtk+. URL: http://www.math.uni-goettingen.de/dadler/gmessage/
gMessaging System => <reply> $who, Multiple data stream manager. URL: http://www.casema.net/~jarl/
gMetronome => <reply> $who, A metronome written with the GTK+ toolkit.. URL: http://www.wpi.edu/~davidl/gMetronome/
gmind => <reply> $who, gmind is a code-guessing game for GNOME, much like MasterMind.. URL: http://voidptr.rh.rit.edu/~voidptr/gmind.html
gmixer => <reply> $who, X11/gtk+ OSS mixer control for linux. URL: http://junior.technion.ac.il/~sergey/linux.html
GMMF => <reply> $who, Godot's Modular Firewall. URL: http://muse.linuxgeek.org/
gMOO => <reply> $who, GTK+ based MOO (and MUD) client. URL: http://www.nowmoo.demon.nl
Gmosaic => <reply> $who, Creates a gray scale mosaic of an input image. URL: http://www.nyx.net/~jbuzbee/Gmosaic.html
GMP => <reply> $who, A free arbitrary-precision math library.. URL: http://www.swox.com/gmp/
Gmp3 => <reply> $who, GTK based front-end to mpg123. URL: http://www.ksirc.org/gmp3
Gmp32cinta => <reply> $who, Adjusts the times of MP3's to make them fit perfectly onto an audio tape. URL: http://linux.apostols.org/guru/graffic/
GMT => <reply> $who, Generic Mapping Tools. URL: http://imina.soest.hawaii.edu/gmt/
Gmurf => <reply> $who, A wave audio processor for Linux to mix and edit waves.. URL: http://www.epita.fr/~sam-lo_p/Gmurf/
GMyNews => <reply> $who, MyNews Admin utility for GNOME.. URL: http://tigris.sonicom.net/projects/gmynews.html
factpacks/Linux.fact view on Meta::CPAN
GoldED => <reply> $who, Mail/newsreader for Fidonet and Internet. URL: http://www.goldware.dk
Golgotha Forever => <reply> $who, 3D FPS/strategy game that will be available on nearly platform/OS.. URL: http://golgotha.opengames.org/
gomenu => <reply> $who, Menu script (bash/ksh) allows dynamic menu and help editing.. URL: http://www.digizen.net/members/geoffm/
Gomoku Apprentice => <reply> $who, A gomoku player learning from its own mistakes. URL: http://www.student.nada.kth.se/~d92-jwa/code/
Gone => <reply> $who, Newsreader for the Gnome Desktop Environment. URL: http://www.mvdstreek.cistron.nl/gone/
good-dog => <reply> $who, better than cat. URL: http://jl.photodex.com/dog/
Goose => <reply> $who, Statistical library.. URL: http://www.gnu.org/software/goose/
got_it => <reply> $who, Simple URL grabber. URL: http://www.roger.samond.ru/
gpak => <reply> $who, GPak is a utility to extract files contained in Quake II PAK-files.. URL: http://www.engren.org/quake2/gpak/
gPalmDoc => <reply> $who, GUI web page to AportisDoc converter.. URL: http://users.linuxbox.com/~jiva/index.html
gpart => <reply> $who, A utility which guesses PC-type hard disk partitions. URL: http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/user/76201/gpart/
Gpasman => <reply> $who, Keeps track of all your passwords in a secure way. URL: http://gpasman.nl.linux.org/
GPC => <reply> $who, . URL: http://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/~gnu-pascal/
GPCL => <reply> $who, Creates images to use as textures using repeatable paramaterized patterns.. URL: http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/4206/gpcl.html
GPeriodic => <reply> $who, Periodic Table Reference and Browser. URL: http://gperiodic.seul.org/
gPhoto => <reply> $who, GNU Digital Camera download software. URL: http://www.gphoto.org/
GPhysics => <reply> $who, Simple game physics lib, planning on becoming large complex physics lib. URL: http://members.tripod.com/CrescentGraphics/gphysics.html
GPI => <reply> $who, A user friendly networked database management system generator. URL: http://www.ldh.org/gpi/
GPL Argument Analyser => <reply> $who, Utility to manage the arguments of your programs. URL: http://wwwetu.utc.fr/~maillejo/
GPLAboutDialog.java => <reply> $who, Generic Java About Dialog generator for GPL'd programs. URL: http://www.eldritch.org/erskin/GPLAboutDialog/
GPlayCD => <reply> $who, A simple Gtk+ based music CD playing program.. URL: http://cs.alfred.edu/~lansdoct/linux/gplaycd/
factpacks/Linux.fact view on Meta::CPAN
locus => <reply> $who, personal fulltext database. URL: http://www.locus.cz/locus/
log => <reply> $who, a simple system changelog script, useful for multiple admins. URL: http://www.users.cloud9.net/~hennessy/log.txt
Log Scanner => <reply> $who, Real Time log watcher and notification program. URL: http://logscanner.tradeservices.com
log-proxy => <reply> $who, A proxy server that creates easily viewed logs of all data going in or out. URL: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Hardware/6846/
log4j => <reply> $who, Fast and flexible logging tool written in Java.. URL: http://www.zurich.ibm.com/~cgu/log4j/
Logcheck => <reply> $who, helps spot problems and security violations in your logfiles. URL: http://www.psionic.com/
Logcleanup => <reply> $who, Simple system log archiver and event emailer. URL: http://moses.datasys.net/~power/logcleanup/logcleanup-1.0.tgz
logcolorise => <reply> $who, Syslog log colourising PERL script. URL: http://www.linuxsupportline.com/~pgp/linux/scripts.html
logController => <reply> $who, Console-log size controller. URL: http://www.goupil.linuxfr.org/downloads/
logi.crypto => <reply> $who, Pure Java Strong Encryption Package. URL: http://www.hi.is/~logir/logi.crypto/
logicMind => <reply> $who, color guessing game. URL: http://members.chello.at/cosmo/
Login Page System => <reply> $who, CGI scripts that allow to place WWW behind user identification system. URL: http://azzie.home.staszic.waw.pl/?en
Login.app => <reply> $who, . URL: http://www.student.hk-r.se/~pt96pli/login/
loginshell => <reply> $who, perl script as an interface for shell account users. URL: http://www.jaos.org/scripts/
Logresolve.pl => <reply> $who, Replaces the standard logresolve application that comes bundled with Apache. URL: http://www.jdrowell.com/Linux/Projects/Logresolve/
logrotate => <reply> $who, Rotates, compresses, and mails system logs. URL: ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/code/logrotate/
Logwatch => <reply> $who, Monitor logfiles on networked machines. URL: http://logwatch.xidus.net/
Loki => <reply> $who, A webserver written in Java specializing in multiplayer games. URL: http://www.gimp.org/~rock/
Lokkit => <reply> $who, End User Firewall Configuration Tool. URL: http://roadrunner.swansea.linux.org.uk/lokkit.html
lold => <reply> $who, The LameOver Linux Demo Project. URL: http://makosteszta.sote.hu/linux/lold.html
LOMAC => <reply> $who, Low Water-Mark Mandatory Access Control for Linux. URL: ftp://ftp.tislabs.com/pub/lomac/
factpacks/Linux.fact view on Meta::CPAN
Oregano => <reply> $who, Schematic capture and circuit simulation application. URL: http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d4hult/oregano/
Orgasm => <reply> $who, Machine code assembler for 6502 microprocessors. URL: http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~box/c64.html
osar => <reply> $who, Free implementation of 'sar' system reporting suite. URL: http://www.starnix.com/osar/
Oscar => <reply> $who, Public Key Infrastructure Toolkit. URL: http://oscar.dstc.qut.edu.au/
OSE => <reply> $who, C++ class library, build environment and documentation tools.. URL: http://www.dscpl.com.au
OSKit => <reply> $who, Software kit for easily building new OSes. URL: http://www.cs.utah.edu/projects/flux/oskit/
OSP Tourney DM => <reply> $who, Tournament mod for Quake2. URL: http://www.OrangeSmoothie.org/tourney/
OSS => <reply> $who, Provides sound card drivers for most popular sound cards under Linux. URL: http://www.opensound.com/
Othello => <reply> $who, Graphical othello game written with GTK. URL: http://hobbe.lub.lu.se/~bjorn/othello.html
oTOSis => <reply> $who, A reimplementation of the Atari TOS operating system. URL: http://www.nocrew.org/osis/otosis/
OutGuess => <reply> $who, Universal steganographic program.. URL: http://www.outguess.org/
OverCR => <reply> $who, A simple system monitoring tool that utilizes a simple language for queries. URL: http://www.molitor.org/overcr/
Overlay Filesystem => <reply> $who, Overlay one filesystem on top of another,. URL: http://home.att.net/~artnaseef/ovlfs/ovlfs.html
OWSKiller => <reply> $who, Replacement for Oracle Web Server based on Java Servlets. URL: http://www.adela.sk/kuzela/OWSKiller/
Ox => <reply> $who, Full, complete object model project. URL: http://www.webcom.com/lalo/ox
Oxyd => <reply> $who, Logic game like Marble Madness or Rock'n'Roll. URL: http://www.phreax.net/oxyd/
P'mail => <reply> $who, Interface between PalmOS (TM) Mail application and Unix mailbox files. URL: http://www.linuxcenter.com.br/lalo/eng.html#pmail
P-Synch => <reply> $who, Password management software for users, help desk operators and sys-admins.. URL: http://www.psynch.com/
p910nd => <reply> $who, Non-spooling printer daemon for diskless hosts. URL: http://www.slug.org.au/etherboot/p910nd/
paai's Text Utilities => <reply> $who, . URL: http://pi0959.kub.nl:2080/Paai/Publiek
Pack install monitor => <reply> $who, Pack install monitor. URL: http://www.linuxos.org/Pack.html
factpacks/Linux.fact view on Meta::CPAN
rndln - randomize lines => <reply> $who, Randomize the line sequence of file(s) or standard in and output to standard out. URL: http://deutschsoft.com/rndln/
ROADS => <reply> $who, A free Yahoo-like system written in Perl. URL: http://www.roads.lut.ac.uk/
roaming.pl => <reply> $who, Program to parse maillog and update btree for remote sendmail relaying. URL: http://synaptic.org/roaming/
ROBODoc => <reply> $who, Documentation tool for many programming languages. URL: http://www.xs4all.nl/~rfsber/Robo/robodoc.html
RoboFics => <reply> $who, A chess engine interface to Internet Chess Servers. URL: ftp://ftp.freechess.org/pub/chess/Unix
robomod => <reply> $who, Perl sripts(s) to moderate newsgruops; multiple moderators support. URL: http://195.116.6.19/robomod-0.4.3.tar.gz
Robot Race => <reply> $who, An Excellent 90% completed Robo Rally server needing an equivalent client.. URL: http://roborally.linuxguru.net/
ROCK Linux => <reply> $who, Linux Distribution for high skilled Linux User and Admins. URL: http://linux.rock-projects.com/
RockBot => <reply> $who, A powerfull, smart, IRC robot.. URL: http://www.rdrop.com/~rubin/irc/RockBot/
RocketJSP => <reply> $who, JSP 1.0 Engine. URL: http://rocketjsp.homepage.com/index.html
RockHead => <reply> $who, Plays rock paper scissors, and guesses your next move.. URL: http://aix2.uottawa.ca/~vtu001/rh.html
Rocks'n'Diamonds => <reply> $who, Arcade style Boulderdash/EmeraldMine clone for X11 with stereo sounds. URL: http://www.artsoft.org/rocksndiamonds/
Rodian => <reply> $who, Layer for handling, representing and storing information objects in a tree. URL: http://www.edlund.org/hacks/rodian/index.html
RODUN => <reply> $who, An extended Rogue clone (Dungeon Game). URL: http://members.xoom.com/jrocho/
Roids => <reply> $who, Scrolling asteroids game using (mostly) simple X11 polygons. URL: http://sdcc10.ucsd.edu/~bschroed/roids.html
Roll => <reply> $who, A program for rolling complex dice combinations. URL: http://electricrain.com/epos_6/downloads.html
ROOT => <reply> $who, Comprehensive object oriented framework. URL: http://root.cern.ch/
Root Park => <reply> $who, Build a network that will stand the test of time. URL: http://root.park.free.fr/
Root-Portal => <reply> $who, Background Desktop System Logger. URL: http://driftwood.draconic.com/root-portal/
root-tail => <reply> $who, Allows printing of text directly to the X11 rootwindow. URL: http://208.240.253.47/root-tail/
Rosegarden => <reply> $who, . URL: http://www.bath.ac.uk/~masjpf/rose.html
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
bagbiter2 is inadvertently or otherwise, typically by failing to program the computer properly. Synonyms {loser}, {cretin}, {chomper}. 3. adj. `bagbiting' Having the quality of a bagbiter. "This bagbiting system won't let me compute the f...
bagbiter3 is {losing}, {cretinous}, {bletcherous}, `barfucious' (under {barfulous}) and `chomping' (under {chomp}). 4. `bite the bag' vi. To fail in some manner. "The computer keeps crashing every 5 minutes." "Yes, the disk controller is ...
bagbiter4 is of these terms was almost undoubtedly obscene, possibly referring to the scrotum, but in their current usage they have become almost completely sanitized. A program called Lexiphage on the old MIT AI PDP-10 would draw on a selec...
bagbiter5 is BAG" in ornate letters, and then a pair of jaws biting pieces of it off. This is the first and to date only known example of a program *intended* to be a bagbiter.
bamf is /bamf/ 1. [from old X-Men comics] interj. Notional sound made by a person or object teleporting in or out of the hearer's vicinity. Often used in {virtual reality} (esp. {MUD}) electronic {fora} when a character wishes to make a drama...
bamf2 is magical transformation, used in virtual reality {fora} like sense 1. 3. [from `Don Washington's Survival Guide'] n. Acronym for `Bad-Ass Mother Fucker', used to refer to one of the handful of nastiest monsters on an LPMUD or other ...
banana label is n. The labels often used on the sides of {macrotape} reels, so called because they are shaped roughly like blunt-ended bananas. This term, like macrotapes themselves, is still current but visibly headed for obsolescence.
banana problem is n. [from the story of the little girl who said "I know how to spell `banana', but I don't know when to stop"]. Not knowing where or when to bring a production to a close (compare {fencepost error}). One may say `there is a ...
banana problem2 is defined or incorrect termination conditions, or in discussing the evolution of a design that may be succumbing to featuritis (see also {creeping elegance}, {creeping featuritis}). See item 176 under {HAKMEM}, which describe...
banana problem3 is implementation.bandwidth n. 1. Used by hackers in a generalization of its technical meaning as the volume of information per unit time that a computer, person, or transmission medium can handle. "Those are amazing graphics,...
banana problem4 is bandwidth, I guess." Compare {low-bandwidth}. 2. Attention span. 3. On {USENET}, a measure of network capacity that is often wasted by people complaining about how items posted by others are a waste of bandwidth.
bang is 1. n. Common spoken name for `!' (ASCII 0100001), especially when used in pronouncing a {bang path} in spoken hackish. In {elder days} this was considered a CMUish usage, with MIT and Stanford hackers preferring {excl} or {shriek}; ...
bang2 is it (esp. via the term {bang path}) and it is now certainly the most common spoken name for `!'. Note that it is used exclusively for non-emphatic written `!'; one would not say "Congratulations bang" (except possibly for humorous p...
bang3 is exact characters `foo!' one would speak "Eff oh oh bang". See {shriek}, {{ASCII}}. 2. interj. An exclamation signifying roughly "I have achieved enlightenment!", or "The dynamite has cleared out my brain!" Often used to acknowledge...
bang4 is immediately after one has been called on it.
bang on is vt. To stress-test a piece of hardware or software "I banged on the new version of the simulator all day yesterday and it didn't crash once. I guess it is ready to release." The term {pound on} is synonymous.
bang path is n. An old-style UUCP electronic-mail address specifying hops to get from some assumed-reachable location to the addressee, so called because each {hop} is signified by a {bang} sign. Thus, for example, the path ...!bigsite!foovax!...
bang path2 is to machine bigsite (presumably a well-known location accessible to everybody) and from there through the machine foovax to the account of user me on barbox. In the bad old days of not so long ago, before autorouting mailers b...
bang path3 is compound bang addresses using the { } convention (see {glob}) to give paths from *several* big machines, in the hopes that one's correspondent might be able to get mail to one of them reliably (example ...!{seismo, ut-sally, ih...
bang path4 is 10 hops were not uncommon in 1981. Late-night dial-up UUCP links would cause week-long transmission times. Bang paths were often selected by both transmission time and reliability, as messages would often get lost. See {{Inter...
banner is n. 1. The title page added to printouts by most print spoolers (see {spool}). Typically includes user or account ID information in very large character-graphics capitals. Also called a `burst page', because it indicates where to bu...
banner2 is one user's printout from the next. 2. A similar printout generated (typically on multiple pages of fan-fold paper) from user-specified text, e.g., by a program such as UNIX's `banner({1,6})'. 3. On interactive software, a first sc...
banner3 is and/or a copyright notice.
bar is /bar/ n. 1. The second metasyntactic variable, after {foo} and before {baz}. "Suppose we have two functions FOO and BAR. FOO calls BAR...." 2. Often appended to {foo} to produce {foobar}.
bare metal is n. 1. New computer hardware, unadorned with such snares and delusions as an {operating system}, an {HLL}, or even assembler. Commonly used in the phrase `programming on the bare metal', which refers to the arduous work of {bit b...
bare metal2 is for a new machine. Real bare-metal programming involves things like building boot proms and BIOS chips, implementing basic monitors used to test device drivers, and writing the assemblers that will be used to write the compil...
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
barfulation is /bar`fyoo-lay'sh*n/ interj. Variation of {barf} used around the Stanford area. An exclamation, expressing disgust. On seeing some particularly bad code one might exclaim, "Barfulation! Who wrote this, Quux?"
barfulous is /bar'fyoo-l*s/ adj. (alt. `barfucious', /bar-fyoo-sh*s/) Said of something that would make anyone barf, if only for esthetic reasons.
baroque is adj. Feature-encrusted; complex; gaudy; verging on excessive. Said of hardware or (esp.) software designs, this has many of the connotations of {elephantine} or {monstrosity} but is less extreme and not pejorative in itself. "Meta...
baroque2 is variations to its letterform output. Now *that* is baroque!" See also {rococo}.
BartleMUD is /bar'tl-muhd/ n. Any of the MUDs derived from the original MUD game by Richard Bartle (see {MUD}). BartleMUDs are noted for their (usually slightly offbeat) humor, dry but friendly syntax, and lack of adjectives in object descrip...
BartleMUD2 is `brand172', for instance (see {brand brand brand}). Some MUDders intensely dislike Bartle and this term, and prefer to speak of `MUD-1'.
BASIC is n. A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which has since become the leading cause of brain-damage in proto-hackers. This is another case (like {Pascal}) of t...
BASIC2 is deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10--20 lines) very easily; writing anything longer is (a) very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits tha...
BASIC3 is hack in a real language. This wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on low-end micros. As it is, it ruins thousands of potential wizards a year.
batch is adj. 1. Non-interactive. Hackers use this somewhat more loosely than the traditional technical definitions justify; in particular, switches on a normally interactive program that prepare it to receive non-interactive command input ar...
batch2 is switches. A `batch file' is a series of instructions written to be handed to an interactive program running in batch mode. 2. Performance of dreary tasks all at one sitting. "I finally sat down in batch mode and wrote out checks fo...
batch3 is electricity back on next week..." 3. Accumulation of a number of small tasks that can be lumped together for greater efficiency. "I'm batching up those letters to send sometime" "I'm batching up bottles to take to the recycling ce...
bathtub curve is n. Common term for the curve (resembling an end-to-end section of one of those claw-footed antique bathtubs) that describes the expected failure rate of electronics with time initially high, dropping to near 0 for most of the ...
bathtub curve2 is `tires out'. See also {burn-in period}, {infant mortality}.
baud is /bawd/ [simplified from its technical meaning] n. Bits per second. Hence kilobaud or Kbaud, thousands of bits per second. The technical meaning is `level transitions per second'; this coincides with bps only for two-level modulation w...
baud2 is are aware of these nuances but blithely ignore them.
baud barf is /bawd barf/ n. The garbage one gets on the monitor when using a modem connection with some protocol setting (esp. line speed) incorrect, or when someone picks up a voice extension on the same line, or when really bad line noise di...
baud barf2 is completely {random}, by the way; hackers with a lot of serial-line experience can usually tell whether the device at the other end is expecting a higher or lower speed than the terminal is set to. *Really* experienced ones can...
baz is /baz/ [Stanford corruption of {bar}] n. 1. The third metasyntactic variable, after {foo} and {bar} and before {quux} (or, occasionally, `qux'; or local idiosyncracies like `rag', `zowie', etc.). "Suppose we have three functions FOO,BAR...
baz2 is BAZ...." 2. interj. A term of mild annoyance. In this usage the term is often drawn out for 2 or 3 seconds, producing an effect not unlike the bleating of a sheep; /baaaaaaz/. 3. Occasionally appended to {foo} to produce `foobaz'.
bboard is /bee'bord/ [contraction of `bulletin board'] n. 1. Any electronic bulletin board; esp. used of {BBS} systems running on personal micros, less frequently of a USENET {newsgroup} (in fact, use of the term for a newsgroup generally ma...
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core is n. Main storage or RAM. Dates from the days of ferrite-core memory; now archaic as techspeak most places outside IBM, but also still used in the UNIX community and by old-time hackers or those who would sound like them. Some derived ...
core2 is example, means `in memory' (as opposed to `on disk'), and both {core dump} and the `core image' or `core file' produced by one are terms in favor. Commonwealth hackish prefers {store}.
core dump is n. [common {Iron Age} jargon, preserved by UNIX] 1. [techspeak] A copy of the contents of {core}, produced when a process is aborted by certain kinds of internal error. 2. By extension, used for humans passing out, vomiting, or r...
core dump2 is All over the floor. What a mess." "He heard about X and dumped core." 3. Occasionally used for a human rambling on pointlessly at great length; esp. in apology "Sorry, I dumped core on you". 4. A recapitulation of knowledge...
core dump3 is one knows about a topic, esp. in a lecture or answer to an exam question. "Short, concise answers are better than core dumps" (from the instructions to an exam at Columbia; syn. {brain dump}). See {core}.
core leak is n. Syn. {memory leak}.
Core Wars is n. A game between `assembler' programs in a simulated machine, where the objective is to kill your opponent's program by overwriting it. Popularized by A. K. Dewdney's column in `Scientific American' magazine, this was actually ...
Core Wars2 is and Dennis Ritchie in the early 1960s (their original game was called `Darwin' and ran on a PDP-1 at Bell Labs). See {core}.
corge is /korj/ [originally, the name of a cat] n. Yet another meta-syntactic variable, invented by Mike Gallaher and propagated by the {GOSMACS} documentation. See {grault}.
cosmic rays is n. Notionally, the cause of {bit rot}. However, this is a semi-independent usage that may be invoked as a humorous way to {handwave} away any minor {randomness} that doesn't seem worth the bother of investigating. "Hey, Eric -...
cosmic rays2 is {tube}, where did that come from?" "Cosmic rays, I guess." Compare {sunspots}, {phase of the moon}. The British seem to prefer the usage `cosmic showers'; `alpha particles' is also heard, because stray alpha particles passin...
cosmic rays3 is errors (this becomes increasingly more likely as memory sizes and densities increase). Factual note Alpha particles cause bit rot, cosmic rays do not (except occasionally in spaceborne computers). Intel could not explain ran...
cosmic rays4 is hypothesis was cosmic rays. So they created the World's Largest Lead Safe, using 25 tons of the stuff, and used two identical boards for testing. One was placed in the safe, one outside. The hypothesis was that if cosmic r...
cosmic rays5 is a statistically significant difference between the error rates on the two boards. They did not observe such a difference. Further investigation demonstrated conclusively that the bit drops were due to alpha particle emissio...
cosmic rays6 is uranium) in the encapsulation material. Since it is impossible to eliminate these radioactives (they are uniformly distributed through the earth's crust, with the statistically insignificant exception of uranium lodes) it beca...
cosmic rays7 is to withstand these hits.
cough and die is v. Syn. {barf}. Connotes that the program is throwing its hands up by design rather than because of a bug or oversight. "The parser saw a control-A in its input where it was looking for a printable, so it coughed and died."
cowboy is [Sun, from William Gibson's {cyberpunk} SF] n. Synonym for {hacker}. It is reported that at Sun this word is often said with reverence.
CP/M is /C-P-M/ n. [Control Program for Microcomputers] An early microcomputer {OS} written by hacker Gary Kildall for 8080- and Z80-based machines, very popular in the late 1970s but virtually wiped out by MS-DOS after the release of the IBM ...
CP/M2 is company blew its chance to write the OS for the IBM PC because Kildall decided to spend a day IBM's reps wanted to meet with him enjoying the perfect flying weather in his private plane. Many of CP/M's features and conventions stro...
CP/M3 is systems such as {{TOPS-10}}, OS/8, RSTS, and RSX-11. See {{MS-DOS}}, {operating system}.
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dumbass attack is /duhm'as *-tak'/ [Purdue] n. Notional cause of a novice's mistake made by the experienced, especially one made while running as root under UNIX, e.g., typing `rm -r *' or `mkfs' on a mounted file system. Compare {adger}.
dumbed down is adj. Simplified, with a strong connotation of *over*simplified. Often, a {marketroid} will insist that the interfaces and documentation of software be dumbed down after the designer has burned untold gallons of midnight oil mak...
dump is n. 1. An undigested and voluminous mass of information about a problem or the state of a system, especially one routed to the slowest available output device (compare {core dump}), and most especially one consisting of hex or octal {ru...
dump2 is memory, mass storage, or some file. In {elder days}, debugging was generally done by `groveling over' a dump (see {grovel}); increasing use of high-level languages and interactive debuggers has made this uncommon, and the term `dump'...
dump3 is backup. This usage is typical only at large timesharing installations.
dup killer is /d[y]oop kill'r/ [FidoNet] n. Software that is supposed to detect and delete duplicates of a message that may have reached the FidoNet system via different routes.
dup loop is /d[y]oop loop/ (also `dupe loop') [FidoNet] n. An incorrectly configured system or network gateway may propagate duplicate messages on one or more {echo}es, with different identification information that renders {dup killer}s ine...
dup loop2 is eventually reaches a system through which it has already passed (with the original identification information), all systems passed on the way back to that system are said to be involved in a {dup loop}.
dusty deck is n. Old software (especially applications) which one is obliged to remain compatible with (or to maintain). The term implies that the software in question is a holdover from card-punch days. Used esp. when referring to old scien...
dusty deck2 is of which was written in FORTRAN and very poorly documented but is believed to be too expensive to replace. See {fossil}.
DWIM is /dwim/ [acronym, `Do What I Mean'] 1. adj. Able to guess, sometimes even correctly, the result intended when bogus input was provided. 2. n.,obs. The BBNLISP/INTERLISP function that attempted to accomplish this feat by correcting many ...
DWIM2 is Occasionally, an interjection hurled at a balky computer, esp. when one senses one might be tripping over legalisms (see {legalese}). Warren Teitelman originally wrote DWIM to fix his typos and spelling errors, so it was somewhat id...
DWIM3 is make hash of anyone else's typos if they were stylistically different. This led a number of victims of DWIM to claim the acronym stood for `Damn Warren's Infernal Machine!'. In one notorious incident, Warren added a DWIM feature to t...
DWIM4 is One day another hacker there typed `delete *$' to free up some disk space. (The editor there named backup files by appending `$' to the original file name, so he was trying to delete any backup files left over from old editing sess...
DWIM5 is editor backup files, so DWIM helpfully reported `*$ not found, assuming you meant 'delete *'.' It then started to delete all the files on the disk! The hacker managed to stop it with a {Vulcan nerve pinch} after only a half dozen ...
DWIM6 is said he had been sorely tempted to go to Warren's office, tie Warren down in his chair in front of his workstation, and then type `delete *$' twice. DWIM is often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a complex program; it is a...
DWIM7 is instruction the ideal computer would have. Back when proofs of program correctness were in vogue, there were also jokes about `DWIMC' (Do What I Mean, Correctly). A related term, more often seen as a verb, is DTRT (Do The Right Thin...
dynner is /din'r/ 32 bits, by analogy with {nybble} and {{byte}}. Usage rare and extremely silly. See also {playte}, {tayste}, {crumb}.*earthquake [IBM] n. The ultimate real-world shock test for computer hardware. Hackish sources at IBM deny th...
dynner2 is initiated by the company to test quality-assurance procedures at its California plants.
Easter egg is n. 1. A message hidden in the object code of a program as a joke, intended to be found by persons disassembling or browsing the code. 2. A message, graphic, or sound effect emitted by a program (or, on a PC, the BIOS ROM) in res...
Easter egg2 is or keystrokes, intended as a joke or to display program credits. One well-known early Easter egg found in a couple of OSes caused them to respond to the command `make love' with `not war?'. Many personal computers have much ...
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Foonly6 is attention from more than usually competent site personnel, and thus had significant reliability problems. Poole's legendary temper and unwillingness to suffer fools gladly did not help matters. By the time of the Jupiter project c...
Foonly7 is build another F-1 was eclipsed by the {Mars}, and the company never quite recovered. See the {Mars} entry for the continuation and moral of this story.
footprint is n. 1. The floor or desk area taken up by a piece of hardware. 2. [IBM] The audit trail (if any) left by a crashed program (often in plural, `footprints'). See also {toeprint}.
for free is adj. Said of a capability of a programming language or hardware equipment that is available by its design without needing cleverness to implement "In APL, we get the matrix operations for free." "And owing to the way revisions are...
for free2 is trees for free." Usually it refers to a serendipitous feature of doing things a certain way (compare {big win}), but it may refer to an intentional but secondary feature.
for the rest of us is [from the Mac slogan "The computer for the rest of us"] adj. 1. Used to describe a {spiffy} product whose affordability shames other comparable products, or (more often) used sarcastically to describe {spiffy} but very ov...
for the rest of us2 is with a limited interface, deliberately limited capabilities, non-orthogonality, inability to compose primitives, or any other limitation designed to not `confuse' a na"ive user. This places an upper bound on how far tha...
for the rest of us3 is get in the way of the task instead of helping accomplish it. Used in reference to Macintosh software which doesn't provide obvious capabilities because it is thought that the poor lusers might not be able to handle them...
for the rest of us4 is third-party reference; thus, "Yes, it is an attractive program, but it's designed for The Rest Of Them" means a program that superficially looks neat but has no depth beyond the surface flash. See also {WIMP environme...
fora is pl.n. Plural of {forum}.
foreground is [UNIX] vt. To foreground a task is to bring it to the top of one's {stack} for immediate processing, and hackers often use it in this sense for non-computer tasks. "If your presentation is due next week, I guess I'd better foregr...
foreground2 is Technically, on a time-sharing system, a task executing in foreground is one able to accept input from and return output to the user; oppose {background}. Nowadays this term is primarily associated with {{UNIX}}, but it appears...
foreground3 is OS/360. Normally, there is only one foreground task per terminal (or terminal window); having multiple processes simultaneously reading the keyboard is a good way to {lose}.
forked is [UNIX; prob. influenced by a mainstream expletive] adj. Terminally slow, or dead. Originated when one system slowed to incredibly bad speeds because of a process recursively spawning copies of itself (using the UNIX system call `for...
Fortrash is /for'trash/ n. Hackerism for the FORTRAN language, referring to its primitive design, gross and irregular syntax, limited control constructs, and slippery, exception-filled semantics.
fortune cookie is [UNIX] n. A random quote, item of trivia, joke, or maxim printed to the user's tty at login time or (less commonly) at logout time. Items from this lexicon have often been used as fortune cookies. See {cookie file}.
forum is n. [USENET, GEnie CI$; pl. `fora' or `forums'] Any discussion group accessible through a dial-in {BBS}, a {mailing list}, or a {newsgroup} (see {network, the}). A forum functions much like a bulletin board; users submit {posting}s ...
forum2 is Contrast real-time chat via {talk mode} or point-to-point personal {email}.
fossil is n. 1. In software, a misfeature that becomes understandable only in historical context, as a remnant of times past retained so as not to break compatibility. Example the retention of octal as default base for string escapes in {C}, ...
fossil2 is to ASCII and modern byte-addressable architectures. See {dusty deck}. 2. More restrictively, a feature with past but no present utility. Example the force-all-caps (LCASE) bits in the V7 and {BSD} UNIX tty driver, designed for ...
fossil3 is of the usual backward-compatibility goal, this functionality has actually been expanded and renamed in some later {USG UNIX} releases as the IUCLC and OLCUC bits. 3. The FOSSIL (Fido/Opus/Seadog Standard Interface Level) driver s...
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General Public Virus4 is the {copyleft} language is `boobytrapped' has caused many developers to avoid using GNU tools and the GPL. Recent (July 1991) changes in the language of the version 2.00 language may eliminate this problem.
generate is vt. To produce something according to an algorithm or program or set of rules, or as a (possibly unintended) side effect of the execution of an algorithm or program. The opposite of {parse}. This term retains its mechanistic conn...
generate2 is of human behavior. "The guy is rational most of the time, but mention nuclear energy around him and he'll generate {infinite} flamage."
gensym is /jen'sim/ [from MacLISP for `generated symbol'] 1. v. To invent a new name for something temporary, in such a way that the name is almost certainly not in conflict with one already in use. 2. n. The resulting name. The canonical f...
gensym2 is represents a number; any LISP hacker would recognize G0093 (for example) as a gensym. 3. A freshly generated data structure with a gensymmed name. These are useful for storing or uniquely identifying crufties (see {cruft}).
Get a life! is imp. Hacker-standard way of suggesting that the person to whom you are speaking has succumbed to terminal geekdom (see {computer geek}). Often heard on {USENET}, esp. as a way of suggesting that the target is taking some obscur...
Get a life!2 is exhortation was popularized by William Shatner on a "Saturday Night Live" episode in a speech that ended "Get a *life*!", but some respondents believe it to have been in use before then.
Get a real computer! is imp. Typical hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a system that (a) is single-tasking, (b) has no hard disk, or (c) has an address space smaller than 4 megabytes. This is as of m...
Get a real computer!2 is computer' rises with time, and it may well be (for example) that machines with character-only displays will be generally considered `unreal' in a few years (GLS points out that they already are in some circles). See {...
GFR is /G-F-R/ vt. [ITS] From `Grim File Reaper', an ITS and Lisp Machine utility. To remove a file or files according to some program-automated or semi-automatic manual procedure, especially one designed to reclaim mass storage space or redu...
GFR2 is actually moved files to tape). Often generalized to pieces of data below file level. "I used to have his phone number, but I guess I {GFR}ed it." See also {prowler}, {reaper}. Compare {GC}, which discards only provably worthless ...
gig is /jig/ or /gig/ [SI] n. See {{quantifiers}}.
giga- is /ji'ga/ or /gi'ga/ [SI] pref. See {{quantifiers}}.
GIGO is /gi'goh/ [acronym] 1. `Garbage In, Garbage Out' --- usually said in response to {luser}s who complain that a program didn't complain about faulty data. Also commonly used to describe failures in human decision making due to faulty, in...
GIGO2 is In, Gospel Out' this more recent expansion is a sardonic comment on the tendency human beings have to put excessive trust in `computerized' data.
gillion is /gil'y*n/ or /jil'y*n/ [formed from {giga-} by analogy with mega/million and tera/trillion] n. 10^9. Same as an American billion or a British `milliard'. How one pronounces this depends on whether one speaks {giga-} with a hard or ...
GIPS is /gips/ or /jips/ [analogy with {MIPS}] n. Giga-Instructions per Second (also possibly `Gillions of Instructions per Second'; see {gillion}). In 1991, this is used of only a handful of highly parallel machines, but this is expected t...
glark is /glark/ vt. To figure something out from context. "The System III manuals are pretty poor, but you can generally glark the meaning from context." Interestingly, the word was originally `glork'; the context was "This gubblick contain...
glark2 is the overall pluggandisp can be glorked [sic] from context" (David Moser, quoted by Douglas Hofstadter in his "Metamagical Themas" column in the January 1981 `Scientific American'). It is conjectured that hackish usage mutated the ve...
glark3 is established jargon term. Compare {grok}, {zen}.
glass is [IBM] n. Synonym for {silicon}.
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GNU is /gnoo/, *not* /noo/ 1. [acronym `GNU's Not UNIX!', see {{recursive acronym}}] A UNIX-workalike development effort of the Free Software Foundation headed by Richard Stallman (rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu). GNU EMACS and the GNU C compiler, two to...
GNU2 is very popular in hackerdom and elsewhere. The GNU project was designed partly to proselytize for RMS's position that information is community property and all software source should be shared. One of its slogans is "Help stamp out s...
GNU3 is controversial (because it implicitly denies any right of designers to own, assign, and sell the results of their labors), many hackers who disagree with RMS have nevertheless cooperated to produce large amounts of high-quality softwa...
GNU4 is Software Foundation's imprimatur. See {EMACS}, {copyleft}, {General Public Virus}. 2. Noted UNIX hacker John Gilmore (gnu@toad.com), founder of USENET's anarchic alt.* hierarchy.
GNUMACS is /gnoo'maks/ [contraction of `GNU EMACS'] Often-heard abbreviated name for the {GNU} project's flagship tool, {EMACS}. Used esp. in contrast with {GOSMACS}.
go flatline is [from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG traces upon brain-death] vi., also adjectival `flatlined'. 1. To die, terminate, or fail, esp. irreversibly. In hacker parlance, this is used of machines only, human death being c...
go flatline2 is employ jargon-jokes. 2. To go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing controlled shutdown. "You can suffer file damage if you shut down UNIX but power off before the system has gone flatline." 3. Of a video tube, t...
go flatline3 is sees is a bright horizontal line bisecting the screen.
go root is [UNIX] vi. To temporarily enter {root mode} in order to perform a privileged operation. This use is deprecated in Australia, where v. `root' refers to animal sex.
go-faster stripes is [UK] Syn. {chrome}.
gobble is vt. To consume or to obtain. The phrase `gobble up' tends to imply `consume', while `gobble down' tends to imply `obtain'. "The output spy gobbles characters out of a {tty} output buffer." "I guess I'll gobble down a copy of the doc...
Godzillagram is /god-zil'*-gram/ n. [from Japan's national hero] 1. A network packet that in theory is a broadcast to every machine in the universe. The typical case of this is an IP datagram whose destination IP address is [255.255.255.255]....
Godzillagram2 is enough to attempt to implement this! 2. A network packet of maximum size. An IP Godzillagram has 65,536 octets.
golden is adj. [prob. from folklore's `golden egg'] When used to describe a magnetic medium (e.g., `golden disk', `golden tape'), describes one containing a tested, up-to-spec, ready-to-ship software version. Compare {platinum-iridium}.
golf-ball printer is n. The IBM 2741, a slow but letter-quality printing device and terminal based on the IBM Selectric typewriter. The `golf ball' was a round object bearing reversed embossed images of 88 different characters arranged on four...
golf-ball printer2 is font by swapping in a different golf ball. This was the technology that enabled APL to use a non-EBCDIC, non-ASCII, and in fact completely non-standard character set. This put it 10 years ahead of its time --- where it ...
golf-ball printer3 is character displays gave way to programmable bit-mapped devices with the flexibility to support other character sets.
gonk is /gonk/ vt.,n. 1. To prevaricate or to embellish the truth beyond any reasonable recognition. It is alleged that in German the term is (mythically) `gonken'; in Spanish the verb becomes `gonkar'. "You're gonking me. That story you ju...
gonk2 is for example, "Du gonkst mir" (You're pulling my leg). See also {gonkulator}. 2. [British] To grab some sleep at an odd time; compare {gronk out}.
gonkulator is /gon'kyoo-lay-tr/ [from the old "Hogan's Heroes" TV series] n. A pretentious piece of equipment that actually serves no useful purpose. Usually used to describe one's least favorite piece of computer hardware. See {gonk}.
gonzo is /gon'zoh/ [from Hunter S. Thompson] adj. Overwhelming; outrageous; over the top; very large, esp. used of collections of source code, source files, or individual functions. Has some of the connotations of {moby} and {hairy}, but with...
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grind3 is Similar to {crunch} or {grovel}. Grinding has a connotation of using a lot of CPU time, but it is possible to grind a disk, network, etc. See also {hog}. 4. To make the whole system slow. "Troff really grinds a PDP-11." 5. `grin...
grind crank is n. A mythical accessory to a terminal. A crank on the side of a monitor, which when operated makes a zizzing noise and causes the computer to run faster. Usually one does not refer to a grind crank out loud, but merely makes t...
grind crank2 is {grind} and {wugga wugga}. Historical note At least one real machine actually had a grind crank --- the R1, a research machine built toward the end of the days of the great vacuum tube computers, in 1959. R1 (also known as `...
grind crank3 is as `The Rice University Computer' (TRUC)) had a single-step/free-run switch for use when debugging programs. Since single-stepping through a large program was rather tedious, there was also a crank with a cam and gear arrang...
grind crank4 is button. This allowed one to `crank' through a lot of code, then slow down to single-step for a bit when you got near the code of interest, poke at some registers using the console typewriter, and then keep on cranking.
gritch is /grich/ 1. n. A complaint (often caused by a {glitch}). 2. vi. To complain. Often verb-doubled "Gritch gritch". 3. A synonym for {glitch} (as verb or noun).
grok is /grok/, var. /grohk/ [from the novel `Stranger in a Strange Land', by Robert A. Heinlein, where it is a Martian word meaning literally `to drink' and metaphorically `to be one with'] vt. 1. To understand, usually in a global sense. Co...
grok2 is Contrast {zen}, similar supernal understanding as a single brief flash. See also {glark}. 2. Used of programs, may connote merely sufficient understanding. "Almost all C compilers grok the `void' type these days."
gronk is /gronk/ [popularized by Johnny Hart's comic strip "B.C." but the word apparently predates that] vt. 1. To clear the state of a wedged device and restart it. More severe than `to {frob}'. 2. [TMRC] To cut, sever, smash, or similarl...
gronk2 is diskette drives. In particular, the microfloppies on a Commodore Amiga go "grink, gronk".
gronk out is vi. To cease functioning. Of people, to go home and go to sleep. "I guess I'll gronk out now; see you all tomorrow."
gronked is adj. 1. Broken. "The teletype scanner was gronked, so we took the system down." 2. Of people, the condition of feeling very tired or (less commonly) sick. "I've been chasing that bug for 17 hours now and I am thoroughly gronked!"...
gronked2 is same as {gronk} used of hardware, but connotes depression or mental/emotional problems in people.
grovel is vi. 1. To work interminably and without apparent progress. Often used transitively with `over' or `through'. "The file scavenger has been groveling through the file directories for 10 minutes now." Compare {grind} and {crunch}. Em...
grovel2 is examine minutely or in complete detail. "The compiler grovels over the entire source program before beginning to translate it." "I grovelled through all the documentation, but I still couldn't find the command I wanted."
grunge is /gruhnj/ n. 1. That which is grungy, or that which makes it so. 2. [Cambridge] Code which is inaccessible due to changes in other parts of the program. The preferred term in North America is {dead code}.
gubbish is /guhb'*sh/ [a portmanteau of `garbage' and `rubbish'?] n. Garbage; crap; nonsense. "What is all this gubbish?" The opposite portmanteau `rubbage' is also reported.
guiltware is /gilt'weir/ n. 1. A piece of {freeware} decorated with a message telling one how long and hard the author worked on it and intimating that one is a no-good freeloader if one does not immediately send the poor suffering martyr gobs...
gumby is /guhm'bee/ [from a class of Monty Python characters, poss. themselves named after the 1960s claymation character] n. An act of minor but conspicuous stupidity, often in `gumby maneuver' or `pull a gumby'.
gun is [ITS from the `GUN' command] vt. To forcibly terminate a program or job (computer, not career). "Some idiot left a background process running soaking up half the cycles, so I gunned it." Compare {can}.
gunch is /guhnch/ [TMRC] vt. To push, prod, or poke at a device that has almost produced the desired result. Implies a threat to {mung}.
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sitename3 is and clever coinages (except that it is considered appropriate for the official public gateway machine of an organization to bear the organization's name or acronym). Mythological references, cartoon characters, animal names, an...
sitename4 is probably the most popular sources for sitenames (in roughly descending order). The obligatory comment when discussing these is Harris's Lament "All the good ones are taken!" See also {network address}.
skrog is v. Syn. {scrog}.
skulker is n. Syn. {prowler}.
slap on the side is n. (also called a {sidecar}, or abbreviated `SOTS'.) A type of external expansion hardware marketed by computer manufacturers (e.g., Commodore for the Amiga 500/1000 series and IBM for the hideous failure called `PCjr'). ...
slap on the side2 is as memory, hard drive controllers, and conventional expansion slots.
slash is n. Common name for the slant (`/', ASCII 0101111) character. See {ASCII} for other synonyms.
sleep is vi. 1. [techspeak] On a timesharing system, a process that relinquishes its claim on the scheduler until some given event occurs or a specified time delay elapses is said to `go to sleep'. 2. In jargon, used very similarly to v. {blo...
sleep2 is on'. Often used to indicate that the speaker has relinquished a demand for resources until some (possibly unspecified) external event "They can't get the fix I've been asking for into the next release, so I'm going to sleep on it ...
slim is n. A small, derivative change (e.g., to code).
slop is n. 1. A one-sided {fudge factor}, that is, an allowance for error but in only one of two directions. For example, if you need a piece of wire 10 feet long and have to guess when you cut it, you make very sure to cut it too long, by a ...
slop2 is short by even a little bit, because you can always cut off the slop but you can't paste it back on again. When discrete quantities are involved, slop is often introduced to avoid the possibility of being on the losing side of a {fence...
slop3 is code generated by a compiler over the size of equivalent assembler code produced by {hand-hacking}; i.e., the space (or maybe time) you lose because you didn't do it yourself. This number is often used as a measure of the goodness ...
slop4 is 10% is usually acceptable. With modern compiler technology, esp. on RISC machines, the compiler's slop may actually be *negative*; that is, humans may be unable to generate code as good. This is one of the reasons assembler program...
slopsucker is /slop'suhk-r/ n. A lowest-priority task that must wait around until everything else has `had its fill' of machine resources. Only when the machine would otherwise be idle is the task allowed to `suck up the slop'. Also called a...
slopsucker2 is slopsucker hunts for large prime numbers. Compare {background}.
slurp is vt. To read a large data file entirely into {core} before working on it. This may be contrasted with the strategy of reading a small piece at a time, processing it, and then reading the next piece. "This program slurps in a 1K-by-1K...
smart is adj. Said of a program that does the {Right Thing} in a wide variety of complicated circumstances. There is a difference between calling a program smart and calling it intelligent; in particular, there do not exist any intelligent pr...
smart2 is {robust} (smart programs can be {brittle}).
smart terminal is n. A terminal that has enough computing capability to render graphics or to offload some kind of front-end processing from the computer it talks to. The development of workstations and personal computers has made this term a...
smart terminal2 is semi-obsolescent, but one may still hear variants of the phrase `act like a smart terminal' used to describe the behavior of workstations or PCs with respect to programs that execute almost entirely out of a remote {server}'...
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sucking mud is [Applied Data Research] adj. (also `pumping mud') Crashed or wedged. Usually said of a machine that provides some service to a network, such as a file server. This Dallas regionalism derives from the East Texas oilfield lament...
sucking mud2 is Often used as a query. "We are going to reconfigure the network, are you ready to suck mud?"
sufficiently small is adj. Syn. {suitably small}.
suit is n. 1. Ugly and uncomfortable `business clothing' often worn by non-hackers. Invariably worn with a `tie', a strangulation device that partially cuts off the blood supply to the brain. It is thought that this explains much about the b...
suit2 is 2. A person who habitually wears suits, as distinct from a techie or hacker. See {loser}, {burble}, {management}, and {brain-damaged}. English, by the way, is relatively kind; our Soviet correspondent informs us that the correspon...
suit3 is lit. a tool for grabbing garbage.
suitable win is n. See {win}.
suitably small is [perverted from mathematical jargon] adj. An expression used ironically to characterize unquantifiable behavior that differs from expected or required behavior. For example, suppose a newly created program came up with a cor...
suitably small2 is exclaimed "It works!" Then, if the program dumps core on the first mouse click, one might add "Well, for suitably small values of `works'." Compare the characterization of pi under {{random numbers}}.
sun-stools is n. Unflattering hackerism for SunTools, a pre-X windowing environment notorious in its day for size, slowness, and misfeatures. {X}, however, is larger and slower; see {second-system effect}.
sunspots is n. 1. Notional cause of an odd error. "Why did the program suddenly turn the screen blue?" "Sunspots, I guess." 2. Also the cause of {bit rot} --- from the myth that sunspots will increase {cosmic rays}, which can flip single bit...
superprogrammer is n. A prolific programmer; one who can code exceedingly well and quickly. Not all hackers are superprogrammers, but many are. (Productivity can vary from one programmer to another by three orders of magnitude. For example,...
superprogrammer2 is average of 3 lines of working code in one day, while another, with the proper tools, might be able to write 3,000. This range is astonishing; it is matched in very few other areas of human endeavor.) The term `superprog...
superprogrammer3 is places as IBM than in the hacker community. It tends to stress na"ive measures of productivity and to underweight creativity, ingenuity, and getting the job *done* --- and to sidestep the question of whether the 3,000 li...
superprogrammer4 is three lines that do the {Right Thing}. Hackers tend to prefer the terms {hacker} and {wizard}.
superuser is [UNIX] n. Syn. {root}, {avatar}. This usage has spread to non-UNIX environments; the superuser is any account with all {wheel} bits on. A more specific term than {wheel}.
support is n. After-sale handholding; something many software vendors promise but few deliver. To hackers, most support people are useless --- because by the time a hacker calls support he or she will usually know the relevant manuals better ...
support2 is *not* a joke or exaggeration). A hacker's idea of `support' is a t^ete-`a-t^ete with the software's designer.
Suzie COBOL is /soo'zee koh'bol/ 1. [IBM prob. from Frank Zappa's `Suzy Creamcheese'] n. A coder straight out of training school who knows everything except the value of comments in plain English. Also (fashionable among personkind wishing to ...
Suzie COBOL2 is or (in some non-IBM circles) `Cobol Charlie'. 2. [proposed] Meta-name for any {code grinder}, analogous to {J. Random Hacker}.
swab is /swob/ [From the mnemonic for the PDP-11 `SWAp Byte' instruction, as immortalized in the `dd(1)' option `conv=swab' (see {dd})] 1. vt. To solve the {NUXI problem} by swapping bytes in a file. 2. n. The program in V7 UNIX used to perfo...
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TeX4 is {bible}). In a manifestation of the typical hackish urge to solve the problem at hand once and for all, he began to design his own typesetting language. He thought he would finish it on his sabbatical in 1978; he was wrong by only ...
TeX5 is frozen around 1985, but volume IV of `The Art of Computer Programming has yet to appear as of mid-1991. The impact and influence of TeXs design has been such that nobody minds this very much. Many grand hackish projects have started ...
TeX6 is something else; Knuths diversion was simply on a grander scale than most.
text is n. 1. [techspeak] Executable code, esp. a `pure code portion shared between multiple instances of a program running in a multitasking OS (compare {English}). 2. Textual material in the mainstream sense; data in ordinary {{ASCII}} or {...
text2 is "Those are text files; you can review them using the editor." These two contradictory senses confuse hackers, too.
thanks in advance is [USENET] Conventional net.politeness ending a posted request for information or assistance. Sometimes written `advTHANKSance or `aTdHvAaNnKcSe or abbreviated `TIA. See {net.-}, {netiquette}.
the X that can be Y is not the true X is Yet another instance of hackerdoms peculiar attraction to mystical references --- a common humorous way of making exclusive statements about a class of things. The template is from the `Tao te Ching "T...
the X that can be Y is not the true X2 is true Tao." The implication is often that the X is a mystery accessible only to the enlightened. See the {trampoline} entry for an example, and compare {has the X nature}.
theology is n. 1. Ironically or humorously used to refer to {religious issues}. 2. Technical fine points of an abstruse nature, esp. those where the resolution is of theoretical interest but is relatively {marginal} with respect to actual use...
theology2 is software issues with a heavy AI or language-design component, such as the smart-data vs. smart-programs dispute in AI.
theory is n. The consensus, idea, plan, story, or set of rules that is currently being used to inform a behavior. This is a generalization and abuse of the technical meaning. "Whats the theory on fixing this TECO loss?" "Whats the theory on...
theory2 is "Whats the current theory on letting lusers on during the day?" "The theory behind this change is to fix the following well-known screw...."
thinko is /thingkoh/ [by analogy with `typo] n. A momentary, correctable glitch in mental processing, especially one involving recall of information learned by rote; a bubble in the stream of consciousness. Syn. {braino}. Compare {mouso}.
This time, for sure! is excl. Ritual affirmation frequently uttered during protracted debugging sessions involving numerous small obstacles (e.g., attempts to bring up a UUCP connection). For the proper effect, this must be uttered in a fruit...
This time, for sure!2 is heard "Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" The {canonical} response is, of course, "But that trick *never* works!" See {{Humor, Hacker}}.
thrash is vi. To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing anything useful. Paging or swapping systems that are overloaded waste most of their time moving data into and out of core (rather than performing useful computation) and are the...
thrash2 is changing his mind (esp. about what to work on next) is said to be thrashing. A person frantically trying to execute too many tasks at once (and not spending enough time on any single task) may also be described as thrashing. Compa...
thread is n. [USENET, GEnie, CompuServe] Common abbreviation of `topic thread, a more or less continuous chain of postings on a single topic.
three-finger salute is n. Syn. {Vulcan nerve pinch}.
thud is n. 1. Yet another meta-syntactic variable (see {foo}). It is reported that at CMU from the mid-1970s the canonical series of these was `foo, `bar, `thud, `blat. 2. Rare term for the hash character, `# (ASCII 0100011). See {ASCII} for...
thunk is /thuhnk/ n. 1. "A piece of coding which provides an address", according to P. Z. Ingerman, who invented thunks in 1961 as a way of binding actual parameters to their formal definitions in Algol-60 procedure calls. If a procedure is c...
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TLA3 is {YABA}. The self-effacing phrase "TDM TLA" (Too Damn Many...) is often used to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin "What do you think will be the biggest prob...
TLA4 is straight-faced response "There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms." (To be exact, there are 26^3 = 17,576.)
TMRC is /tmerk/ n. The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT, one of the wellsprings of hacker culture. The 1959 `Dictionary of the TMRC Language compiled by Peter Samson included several terms which became basics of the hackish vocabulary (see esp...
TMRC2 is legendary layout was already a marvel of complexity. The control system alone featured about 1200 relays. There were {scram switch}es located at numerous places around the room that could be pressed if something undesirable was about...
TMRC3 is an obstruction. Another feature of the system was a digital clock on the dispatch board. Normally it ran at some multiple of real time, but if someone hit a scram switch the clock stopped and the display was replaced with the word ...
TMRC4 is the Bibliography), gives a stimulating account of those early years. TMRCs Power and Signals group included most of the early PDP-1 hackers and the people who later bacame the core of the MIT AI Lab staff. Thirty years later that ...
TMRC5 is lexicon accordingly includes a number of entries from a recent revision of the TMRC Dictionary.
to a first approximation is 1. [techspeak] When one is doing certain numerical computations, an approximate solution may be computed by any of several heuristic methods, then refined to a final value. By using the starting point of a first app...
to a first approximation2 is algorithm that converges more quickly to the correct result. 2. In jargon, a preface to any comment that indicates that the comment is only approximately true. The remark "To a first approximation, I feel good" m...
to a first approximation3 is reveal that not all is perfect (e.g., a nagging cough still remains after an illness).
to a zeroth approximation is [from `to a first approximation] A *really* sloppy approximation; a wild guess. Compare {social science number}.
toast is 1. n. Any completely inoperable system or component, esp. one that has just crashed and burned "Uh, oh ... I think the serial board is toast." 2. vt. To cause a system to crash accidentally, especially in a manner that requires manua...
toast2 is {firewall machine} again."
toaster is n. 1. The archetypal really stupid application for an embedded microprocessor controller; often used in comments that imply that a scheme is inappropriate technology (but see {elevator controller}). "{DWIM} for an assembler? Thatd...
toaster2 is toaster!" 2. A very, very dumb computer. "You could run this program on any dumb toaster." See {bitty box}, {Get a real computer!}, {toy}, {beige toaster}. 3. A Macintosh, esp. the Classic Mac. Some hold that this is implied b...
toaster3 is my box without toasters, but since then Ive added two boards and a second disk drive."
toeprint is n. A {footprint} of especially small size.
toggle is vt. To change a {bit} from whatever state it is in to the other state; to change from 1 to 0 or from 0 to 1. This comes from `toggle switches, such as standard light switches, though the word `toggle actually refers to the mechanism...
toggle2 is which it is flipped rather than to the fact that the switch has two positions. There are four things you can do to a bit set it (force it to be 1), clear (or zero) it, leave it alone, or toggle it. (Mathematically, one would say t...
toggle3 is functions of one boolean argument, but saying that is much less fun than talking about toggling bits.)
tool is 1. n. A program used primarily to create, manipulate, modify, or analyze other programs, such as a compiler or an editor or a cross-referencing program. Oppose {app}, {operating system}. 2. [UNIX] An application program with a simple,...
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
virus4 is Many nasty viruses, written by particularly perversely minded {cracker}s, do irreversible damage, like nuking all the user's files. In the 1990s, viruses have become a serious problem, especially among IBM PC and Macintosh users (t...
virus5 is viruses to spread easily, even infecting the operating system). The production of special anti-virus software has become an industry, and a number of exaggerated media reports have caused outbreaks of near hysteria among users; many...
virus6 is doesn't work as they had expected on virus attacks. Accordingly, this sense of `virus' has passed not only into techspeak but into also popular usage (where it is often incorrectly used to denote a {worm} or even a {Trojan horse})...
visionary is n. 1. One who hacks vision, in the sense of an Artificial Intelligence researcher working on the problem of getting computers to `see' things using TV cameras. (There isn't any problem in sending information from a TV camera to a...
visionary2 is computer be programmed to make use of the camera information? See {SMOP}, {AI-complete}.) 2. [IBM] One who reads the outside literature. At IBM, apparently, such a penchant is viewed with awe and wonder.
VMS is /V-M-S/ n. DEC's proprietary operating system for its VAX minicomputer; one of the seven or so environments that loom largest in hacker folklore. Many UNIX fans generously concede that VMS would probably be the hacker's favorite commer...
VMS2 is this makes VMS fans furious. One major hacker gripe with VMS concerns its slowness --- thus the following limerick There once was a system called VMS Of cycles by no means abstemious. It's chock-full of hacks ...
VMS3 is my poor stomach all squeamious. --- The Great Quux See also {VAX}, {{TOPS-10}}, {{TOPS-20}}, {{UNIX}}, {runic}.
voice is vt. To phone someone, as opposed to emailing them or connecting in talk mode. "I'm busy now; I'll voice you later."
voice-net is n. Hackish way of referring to the telephone system, analogizing it to a digital network. USENET {sig block}s not uncommonly include the sender's phone next to a "Voice" or "Voice-Net" header; common variants of this are "Voicene...
voodoo programming is [from George Bush's "voodoo economics"] n. The use by guess or cookbook of an {obscure} or {hairy} system, feature, or algorithm that one does not truly understand. The implication is that the technique may not work, and...
voodoo programming2 is Almost synonymous with {black magic}, except that black magic typically isn't documented and *nobody* understands it. Compare {magic}, {deep magic}, {heavy wizardry}, {rain dance}, {cargo cult programming}, {wave a de...
VR is // [MUD] n. On-line abbrev for {virtual reality}, as opposed to {RL}.
Vulcan nerve pinch is n. [from the old "Star Trek" TV series via Commodore Amiga hackers] The keyboard combination that forces a soft-boot or jump to ROM monitor (on machines that support such a feature). On many micros this is Ctrl-Alt-Del; ...
Vulcan nerve pinch2 is <Cmd>-<Power switch>! Also called {three-finger salute}. Compare {quadruple bucky}.
vulture capitalist is n. Pejorative hackerism for `venture capitalist', deriving from the common practice of pushing contracts that deprive inventors of control over their own innovations and most of the money they ought to have made from them...
vulture capitalist2 is Fudd's immortal line "You wascawwy wabbit!"] n. 1. A legendary early hack reported on a System/360 at RPI and elsewhere around 1978. The program would make two copies of itself every time it was run, eventually crashi...
vulture capitalist3 is includes infinite self-replication but is not a {virus} or {worm}. See also {cookie monster}.
WAITS is /wayts/ n. The mutant cousin of {{TOPS-10}} used on a handful of systems at {{SAIL}} up to 1990. There was never an `official' expansion of WAITS (the name itself having been arrived at by a rather sideways process), but it was frequ...
WAITS2 is ITS'. Though WAITS was less visible than ITS, there was frequent exchange of people and ideas between the two communities, and innovations pioneered at WAITS exerted enormous indirect influence. The early screen modes of {EMACS}, ...
WAITS3 is `E' editor --- one of a family of editors that were the first to do `real-time editing', in which the editing commands were invisible and where one typed text at the point of insertion/overwriting. The modern style of multi-region...
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Bad Thing2 => Thing}. British correspondents confirm that {Bad Thing} and {Good Thing} (and prob. therefore {Right Thing} and {Wrong Thing}) come from the book referenced in the etymology, which discusses rulers who were Good Kings but Bad Things. Th...
Bad Thing3 => mainstream idiom on the British side of the pond.
bag on the side => n. An extension to an established hack that is supposed to add some functionality to the original. Usually derogatory, implying that the original was being overextended and should have been thrown away, and the new product is ugly,...
bag on the side2 => phrase, `to hang a bag on the side [of]'. "C++? That's just a bag on the side of C ...." "They want me to hang a bag on the side of the accounting system."
bagbiter => /bag'bit-*r/ n. 1. Something, such as a program or a computer, that fails to work, or works in a remarkably clumsy manner. "This text editor won't let me make a file with a line longer than 80 characters! What a bagbiter!" 2. A person who...
bamf => /bamf/ 1. [from old X-Men comics] interj. Notional sound made by a person or object teleporting in or out of the hearer's vicinity. Often used in {virtual reality} (esp. MUD) electronic fora when a character wishes to make a dramatic entrance...
banana label => n. The labels often used on the sides of macrotape reels, so called because they are shaped roughly like blunt-ended bananas. This term, like macrotapes themselves, is still current but visibly headed for obsolescence.
banana problem => n. [from the story of the little girl who said "I know how to spell `banana', but I don't know when to stop"]. Not knowing where or when to bring a production to a close (compare {fencepost error}). One may say `there is a banana pr...
banana problem2 => defined or incorrect termination conditions, or in discussing the evolution of a design that may be succumbing to featuritis (see also {creeping elegance}, {creeping featuritis}). See item 176 under HAKMEM, which describes a banana...
banana problem3 => implementation.bandwidth n. 1. Used by hackers in a generalization of its technical meaning as the volume of information per unit time that a computer, person, or transmission medium can handle. "Those are amazing graphics, but I m...
banana problem4 => bandwidth, I guess." Compare low-bandwidth. 2. Attention span. 3. On USENET, a measure of network capacity that is often wasted by people complaining about how items posted by others are a waste of bandwidth.
bang => 1. n. Common spoken name for `!' (ASCII 0100001), especially when used in pronouncing a {bang path} in spoken hackish. In {elder days} this was considered a CMUish usage, with MIT and Stanford hackers preferring excl or shriek; but the spread...
bang on => vt. To stress-test a piece of hardware or software "I banged on the new version of the simulator all day yesterday and it didn't crash once. I guess it is ready to release." The term {pound on} is synonymous.
bang path => n. An old-style UUCP electronic-mail address specifying hops to get from some assumed-reachable location to the addressee, so called because each hop is signified by a bang sign. Thus, for example, the path ...!bigsite!foovax!barbox!me d...
bang path2 => to machine bigsite (presumably a well-known location accessible to everybody) and from there through the machine foovax to the account of user me on barbox. In the bad old days of not so long ago, before autorouting mailers became commo...
bang path3 => compound bang addresses using the { } convention (see glob) to give paths from *several* big machines, in the hopes that one's correspondent might be able to get mail to one of them reliably (example ...!{seismo, ut-sally, ihnp4}!rice!b...
bang path4 => 10 hops were not uncommon in 1981. Late-night dial-up UUCP links would cause week-long transmission times. Bang paths were often selected by both transmission time and reliability, as messages would often get lost. See {{Internet addres...
banner => n. 1. The title page added to printouts by most print spoolers (see spool). Typically includes user or account ID information in very large character-graphics capitals. Also called a `burst page', because it indicates where to burst (tear a...
bar => /bar/ n. 1. The second metasyntactic variable, after foo and before baz. "Suppose we have two functions FOO and BAR. FOO calls BAR...." 2. Often appended to foo to produce foobar.
bare metal => n. 1. New computer hardware, unadorned with such snares and delusions as an {operating system}, an HLL, or even assembler. Commonly used in the phrase `programming on the bare metal', which refers to the arduous work of {bit bashing} ne...
bare metal2 => for a new machine. Real bare-metal programming involves things like building boot proms and BIOS chips, implementing basic monitors used to test device drivers, and writing the assemblers that will be used to write the compiler back en...
bare metal3 => real development environment. 2. `Programming on the bare metal' is also used to describe a style of hand-hacking that relies on bit-level peculiarities of a particular hardware design, esp. tricks for speed and space optimization that...
bare metal4 => overlapping instructions (or, as in the famous case described in appendix A, interleaving of opcodes on a magnetic drum to minimize fetch delays due to the device's rotational latency). This sort of thing has become less common as the ...
bare metal5 => and machine resources have changed, but is still found in heavily constrained environments such as industrial embedded systems. See {real programmer}. In the world of personal computing, bare metal programming (especially in sense 1 bu...
bare metal6 => considered a {Good Thing}, or at least a necessary thing (because these machines have often been sufficiently slow and poorly designed to make it necessary; see ill-behaved). There, the term usually refers to bypassing the BIOS or OS i...
bare metal7 => application to directly access device registers and machine addresses. "To get 19.2 kilobaud on the serial port, you need to get down to the bare metal." People who can do this sort of thing are held in high regard.
barf => /barf/ [from mainstream slang meaning `vomit'] 1. interj. Term of disgust. This is the closest hackish equivalent of the Val\-speak "gag me with a spoon". (Like, euwww!) See bletch. 2. vi. To say "Barf!" or emit some similar expression of dis...
barfulation => /bar`fyoo-lay'sh*n/ interj. Variation of barf used around the Stanford area. An exclamation, expressing disgust. On seeing some particularly bad code one might exclaim, "Barfulation! Who wrote this, Quux?"
barfulous => /bar'fyoo-l*s/ adj. (alt. `barfucious', /bar-fyoo-sh*s/) Said of something that would make anyone barf, if only for esthetic reasons.
baroque => adj. Feature-encrusted; complex; gaudy; verging on excessive. Said of hardware or (esp.) software designs, this has many of the connotations of elephantine or monstrosity but is less extreme and not pejorative in itself. "Metafont even has...
BartleMUD => /bar'tl-muhd/ n. Any of the MUDs derived from the original MUD game by Richard Bartle (see MUD). BartleMUDs are noted for their (usually slightly offbeat) humor, dry but friendly syntax, and lack of adjectives in object descriptions, so ...
BASIC => n. A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which has since become the leading cause of brain-damage in proto-hackers. This is another case (like Pascal) of the bad thing...
batch => adj. 1. Non-interactive. Hackers use this somewhat more loosely than the traditional technical definitions justify; in particular, switches on a normally interactive program that prepare it to receive non-interactive command input are often ...
bathtub curve => n. Common term for the curve (resembling an end-to-end section of one of those claw-footed antique bathtubs) that describes the expected failure rate of electronics with time initially high, dropping to near 0 for most of the system'...
bathtub curve2 => `tires out'. See also {burn-in period}, {infant mortality}.
baud => /bawd/ [simplified from its technical meaning] n. Bits per second. Hence kilobaud or Kbaud, thousands of bits per second. The technical meaning is `level transitions per second'; this coincides with bps only for two-level modulation with no f...
baud barf => /bawd barf/ n. The garbage one gets on the monitor when using a modem connection with some protocol setting (esp. line speed) incorrect, or when someone picks up a voice extension on the same line, or when really bad line noise disrupts ...
baud barf2 => completely random, by the way; hackers with a lot of serial-line experience can usually tell whether the device at the other end is expecting a higher or lower speed than the terminal is set to. *Really* experienced ones can identify pa...
baz => /baz/ [Stanford corruption of bar] n. 1. The third metasyntactic variable, after foo and bar and before quux (or, occasionally, `qux'; or local idiosyncracies like `rag', `zowie', etc.). "Suppose we have three functions FOO,BAR, and BAZ. FOO c...
bboard => /bee'bord/ [contraction of `bulletin board'] n. 1. Any electronic bulletin board; esp. used of BBS systems running on personal micros, less frequently of a USENET newsgroup (in fact, use of the term for a newsgroup generally marks one eithe...
BBS => /B-B-S/ [acronym, `Bulletin Board System'] n. An electronic bulletin board system; that is, a message database where people can log in and leave broadcast messages for others grouped (typically) into {topic group}s. Thousands of local BBS syst...
beam => [from Star Trek Classic's "Beam me up, Scotty!"] vt. To transfer softcopy of a file electronically; most often in combining forms such as `beam me a copy' or `beam that over to his site'. Compare blast, snarf, BLT.
beanie key => [Mac users] n. See {command key}.
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
copywronged => /ko'pee-rongd/ [play on `copyright'] adj. Syn. for copybroke.
core => n. Main storage or RAM. Dates from the days of ferrite-core memory; now archaic as techspeak most places outside IBM, but also still used in the UNIX community and by old-time hackers or those who would sound like them. Some derived idioms ar...
core dump => n. [common {Iron Age} jargon, preserved by UNIX] 1. [techspeak] A copy of the contents of core, produced when a process is aborted by certain kinds of internal error. 2. By extension, used for humans passing out, vomiting, or registering...
core dump2 => All over the floor. What a mess." "He heard about X and dumped core." 3. Occasionally used for a human rambling on pointlessly at great length; esp. in apology "Sorry, I dumped core on you". 4. A recapitulation of knowledge (compare bit...
core dump3 => one knows about a topic, esp. in a lecture or answer to an exam question. "Short, concise answers are better than core dumps" (from the instructions to an exam at Columbia; syn. {brain dump}). See core.
core leak => n. Syn. {memory leak}.
Core Wars => n. A game between `assembler' programs in a simulated machine, where the objective is to kill your opponent's program by overwriting it. Popularized by A. K. Dewdney's column in `Scientific American' magazine, this was actually devised b...
Core Wars2 => and Dennis Ritchie in the early 1960s (their original game was called `Darwin' and ran on a PDP-1 at Bell Labs). See core.
corge => /korj/ [originally, the name of a cat] n. Yet another meta-syntactic variable, invented by Mike Gallaher and propagated by the GOSMACS documentation. See grault.
cosmic rays => n. Notionally, the cause of {bit rot}. However, this is a semi-independent usage that may be invoked as a humorous way to handwave away any minor randomness that doesn't seem worth the bother of investigating. "Hey, Eric --- I just got...
cosmic rays2 => tube, where did that come from?" "Cosmic rays, I guess." Compare sunspots, {phase of the moon}. The British seem to prefer the usage `cosmic showers'; `alpha particles' is also heard, because stray alpha particles passing through a me...
cosmic rays3 => errors (this becomes increasingly more likely as memory sizes and densities increase). Factual note Alpha particles cause bit rot, cosmic rays do not (except occasionally in spaceborne computers). Intel could not explain random bit dr...
cosmic rays4 => hypothesis was cosmic rays. So they created the World's Largest Lead Safe, using 25 tons of the stuff, and used two identical boards for testing. One was placed in the safe, one outside. The hypothesis was that if cosmic rays were cau...
cosmic rays5 => a statistically significant difference between the error rates on the two boards. They did not observe such a difference. Further investigation demonstrated conclusively that the bit drops were due to alpha particle emissions from tho...
cosmic rays6 => uranium) in the encapsulation material. Since it is impossible to eliminate these radioactives (they are uniformly distributed through the earth's crust, with the statistically insignificant exception of uranium lodes) it became obvio...
cosmic rays7 => to withstand these hits.
cough and die => v. Syn. barf. Connotes that the program is throwing its hands up by design rather than because of a bug or oversight. "The parser saw a control-A in its input where it was looking for a printable, so it coughed and died."
cowboy => [Sun, from William Gibson's cyberpunk SF] n. Synonym for hacker. It is reported that at Sun this word is often said with reverence.
CP/M => /C-P-M/ n. [Control Program for Microcomputers] An early microcomputer OS written by hacker Gary Kildall for 8080- and Z80-based machines, very popular in the late 1970s but virtually wiped out by MS-DOS after the release of the IBM PC in 198...
CPU Wars => /C-P-U worz/ n. A 1979 large-format comic by Chas Andres chronicling the attempts of the brainwashed androids of IPM (Impossible to Program Machines) to conquer and destroy the peaceful denizens of HEC (Human Engineered Computers). This r...
CPU Wars2 => many references to ADVENT and the immortal line "Eat flaming death, minicomputer mongrels!" (uttered, of course, by an IPM stormtrooper). It is alleged that the author subsequently received a letter of appreciation on IBM company station...
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
drunk mouse syndrome3 => up enough cruft to be unreliable, the mouse was doused in cleaner, which restored it for a while. However, this operation left a fine residue that accelerated the accumulation of cruft, so the dousings became more and more fr...
drunk mouse syndrome4 => declared `alcoholic' and sent to the clinic to be dried out in a CFC ultrasonic bath.
dumbass attack => /duhm'as *-tak'/ [Purdue] n. Notional cause of a novice's mistake made by the experienced, especially one made while running as root under UNIX, e.g., typing `rm -r *' or `mkfs' on a mounted file system. Compare adger.
dumbed down => adj. Simplified, with a strong connotation of *over*simplified. Often, a marketroid will insist that the interfaces and documentation of software be dumbed down after the designer has burned untold gallons of midnight oil making it sma...
dump => n. 1. An undigested and voluminous mass of information about a problem or the state of a system, especially one routed to the slowest available output device (compare {core dump}), and most especially one consisting of hex or octal runes desc...
dup killer => /d[y]oop kill'r/ [FidoNet] n. Software that is supposed to detect and delete duplicates of a message that may have reached the FidoNet system via different routes.
dup loop => /d[y]oop loop/ (also `dupe loop') [FidoNet] n. An incorrectly configured system or network gateway may propagate duplicate messages on one or more echoes, with different identification information that renders {dup killer}s ineffective. I...
dup loop2 => eventually reaches a system through which it has already passed (with the original identification information), all systems passed on the way back to that system are said to be involved in a {dup loop}.
dusty deck => n. Old software (especially applications) which one is obliged to remain compatible with (or to maintain). The term implies that the software in question is a holdover from card-punch days. Used esp. when referring to old scientific and...
dusty deck2 => of which was written in FORTRAN and very poorly documented but is believed to be too expensive to replace. See fossil.
DWIM => /dwim/ [acronym, `Do What I Mean'] 1. adj. Able to guess, sometimes even correctly, the result intended when bogus input was provided. 2. n.,obs. The BBNLISP/INTERLISP function that attempted to accomplish this feat by correcting many of the ...
dynner => /din'r/ 32 bits, by analogy with nybble and {byte}. Usage rare and extremely silly. See also playte, tayste, crumb.*earthquake [IBM] n. The ultimate real-world shock test for computer hardware. Hackish sources at IBM deny the rumor that the...
Easter egg => n. 1. A message hidden in the object code of a program as a joke, intended to be found by persons disassembling or browsing the code. 2. A message, graphic, or sound effect emitted by a program (or, on a PC, the BIOS ROM) in response to...
Easter egg2 => or keystrokes, intended as a joke or to display program credits. One well-known early Easter egg found in a couple of OSes caused them to respond to the command `make love' with `not war?'. Many personal computers have much more elabor...
Easter egg3 => lists of the developers' names, political exhortations, snatches of music, and (in one case) graphics images of the entire development team.
Easter egging => [IBM] n. The act of replacing unrelated parts more or less at random in hopes that a malfunction will go away. Hackers consider this the normal operating mode of {field circus} techs and do not love them for it. Compare {shotgun debu...
eat flaming death => imp. A construction popularized among hackers by the infamous {CPU Wars} comic; supposed to derive from a famously turgid line in a WWII-era anti-Nazi propaganda comic that ran "Eat flaming death, non-Aryan mongrels!" or somethin...
eat flaming death2 => reported that the Firesign Theater's 1975 album "In The Next World, You're On Your Own" included the phrase "Eat flaming death, fascist media pigs"; this may have been an influence). Used in humorously overblown expressions of h...
EBCDIC => /eb's*-dik/, /eb'see`dik/, or /eb'k*-dik/ [acronym, Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code] n. An alleged character set used on IBM dinosaurs. It exists in at least six mutually incompatible versions, all featuring such delights as ...
echo => [FidoNet] n. A {topic group} on FidoNet's echomail system. Compare newsgroup.
eighty-column mind => [IBM] n. The sort said to be possessed by persons for whom the transition from {punched card} to tape was traumatic (nobody has dared tell them about disks yet). It is said that these people, including (according to an old joke)...
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fool file, the2 => dimwittery; for this to be really effective, the quote has to be so obviously wrong as to be laughable. More than one USENETter has achieved an unwanted notoriety by being quoted in this way.
Foonly => n. 1. The PDP-10 successor that was to have been built by the Super Foonly project at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory along with a new operating system. The intention was to leapfrog from the old DEC timesharing system SAIL ...
footprint => n. 1. The floor or desk area taken up by a piece of hardware. 2. [IBM] The audit trail (if any) left by a crashed program (often in plural, `footprints'). See also toeprint.
for free => adj. Said of a capability of a programming language or hardware equipment that is available by its design without needing cleverness to implement "In APL, we get the matrix operations for free." "And owing to the way revisions are stored ...
for free2 => trees for free." Usually it refers to a serendipitous feature of doing things a certain way (compare {big win}), but it may refer to an intentional but secondary feature.
for the rest of us => [from the Mac slogan "The computer for the rest of us"] adj. 1. Used to describe a spiffy product whose affordability shames other comparable products, or (more often) used sarcastically to describe spiffy but very overpriced pr...
for the rest of us2 => with a limited interface, deliberately limited capabilities, non-orthogonality, inability to compose primitives, or any other limitation designed to not `confuse' a na"ive user. This places an upper bound on how far that user c...
for the rest of us3 => get in the way of the task instead of helping accomplish it. Used in reference to Macintosh software which doesn't provide obvious capabilities because it is thought that the poor lusers might not be able to handle them. Become...
for the rest of us4 => third-party reference; thus, "Yes, it is an attractive program, but it's designed for The Rest Of Them" means a program that superficially looks neat but has no depth beyond the surface flash. See also {WIMP environment}, Macin...
fora => pl.n. Plural of forum.
foreground => [UNIX] vt. To foreground a task is to bring it to the top of one's stack for immediate processing, and hackers often use it in this sense for non-computer tasks. "If your presentation is due next week, I guess I'd better foreground writ...
forked => [UNIX; prob. influenced by a mainstream expletive] adj. Terminally slow, or dead. Originated when one system slowed to incredibly bad speeds because of a process recursively spawning copies of itself (using the UNIX system call `fork(2)') a...
Fortrash => /for'trash/ n. Hackerism for the FORTRAN language, referring to its primitive design, gross and irregular syntax, limited control constructs, and slippery, exception-filled semantics.
fortune cookie => [UNIX] n. A random quote, item of trivia, joke, or maxim printed to the user's tty at login time or (less commonly) at logout time. Items from this lexicon have often been used as fortune cookies. See {cookie file}.
forum => n. [USENET, GEnie CI$; pl. `fora' or `forums'] Any discussion group accessible through a dial-in BBS, a {mailing list}, or a newsgroup (see {network, the}). A forum functions much like a bulletin board; users submit postings for all to read ...
fossil => n. 1. In software, a misfeature that becomes understandable only in historical context, as a remnant of times past retained so as not to break compatibility. Example the retention of octal as default base for string escapes in C, in spite o...
four-color glossies => 1. Literature created by marketroids that allegedly containing technical specs but which is in fact as superficial as possible without being totally content-free. "Forget the four-color glossies, give me the tech ref manuals." ...
four-color glossies2 => superficiality even when the material is printed on ordinary paper in black and white. Four-color-glossy manuals are *never* useful for finding a problem. 2. [rare] Applied by extension to manual pages that don't contain enoug...
four-color glossies3 => program doesn't produce the expected or desired output.
fragile => adj. Syn brittle.
fred => n. 1. The personal name most frequently used as a metasyntactic variable (see foo). Allegedly popular because it's easy for a non-touch-typist to type on a standard QWERTY keyboard. Unlike {J. Random Hacker} or `J. Random Loser', this name ha...
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General Public Virus => n. Pejorative name for some versions of the GNU project copyleft or General Public License (GPL), which requires that any tools or apps incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same counter-commercial te...
General Public Virus2 => alleged that the copyleft `infects' software generated with GNU tools, which may in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code. The Free Software Foundation's official position as of January 1991 is that copyright...
General Public Virus3 => "programs textually incorporating significant amounts of GNU code", and that the `infection' is not passed on to third parties unless actual GNU source is transmitted (as in, for example, use of the Bison parser skeleton). Ne...
General Public Virus4 => the copyleft language is `boobytrapped' has caused many developers to avoid using GNU tools and the GPL. Recent (July 1991) changes in the language of the version 2.00 language may eliminate this problem.
generate => vt. To produce something according to an algorithm or program or set of rules, or as a (possibly unintended) side effect of the execution of an algorithm or program. The opposite of parse. This term retains its mechanistic connotations (t...
gensym => /jen'sim/ [from MacLISP for `generated symbol'] 1. v. To invent a new name for something temporary, in such a way that the name is almost certainly not in conflict with one already in use. 2. n. The resulting name. The canonical form of a g...
Get a life! => imp. Hacker-standard way of suggesting that the person to whom you are speaking has succumbed to terminal geekdom (see {computer geek}). Often heard on USENET, esp. as a way of suggesting that the target is taking some obscure issue of...
Get a life!2 => exhortation was popularized by William Shatner on a "Saturday Night Live" episode in a speech that ended "Get a *life*!", but some respondents believe it to have been in use before then.
Get a real computer! => imp. Typical hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a system that (a) is single-tasking, (b) has no hard disk, or (c) has an address space smaller than 4 megabytes. This is as of mid-1991;...
Get a real computer!2 => computer' rises with time, and it may well be (for example) that machines with character-only displays will be generally considered `unreal' in a few years (GLS points out that they already are in some circles). See essential...
GFR => /G-F-R/ vt. [ITS] From `Grim File Reaper', an ITS and Lisp Machine utility. To remove a file or files according to some program-automated or semi-automatic manual procedure, especially one designed to reclaim mass storage space or reduce name-...
gig => /jig/ or /gig/ [SI] n. See {quantifiers}.
giga- => /ji'ga/ or /gi'ga/ [SI] pref. See {quantifiers}.
GIGO => /gi'goh/ [acronym] 1. `Garbage In, Garbage Out' --- usually said in response to lusers who complain that a program didn't complain about faulty data. Also commonly used to describe failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, ...
gillion => /gil'y*n/ or /jil'y*n/ [formed from giga- by analogy with mega/million and tera/trillion] n. 10^9. Same as an American billion or a British `milliard'. How one pronounces this depends on whether one speaks giga- with a hard or soft `g'.
GIPS => /gips/ or /jips/ [analogy with MIPS] n. Giga-Instructions per Second (also possibly `Gillions of Instructions per Second'; see gillion). In 1991, this is used of only a handful of highly parallel machines, but this is expected to change. Comp...
glark => /glark/ vt. To figure something out from context. "The System III manuals are pretty poor, but you can generally glark the meaning from context." Interestingly, the word was originally `glork'; the context was "This gubblick contains many no...
glass => [IBM] n. Synonym for silicon.
glass tty => /glas T-T-Y/ or /glas ti'tee/ n. A terminal that has a display screen but which, because of hardware or software limitations, behaves like a teletype or some other printing terminal, thereby combining the disadvantages of both like a pri...
glass tty2 => display hacks, and like a display terminal, it doesn't produce hard copy. An example is the early `dumb' version of Lear-Siegler ADM 3 (without cursor control). See tube, tty. See appendix A for an interesting true story about a glass t...
glassfet => /glas'fet/ [by analogy with MOSFET, the acronym for `Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor'] n. Syn. firebottle, a humorous way to refer to a vacuum tube.
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glork => /glork/ 1. interj. Term of mild surprise, usually tinged with outrage, as when one attempts to save the results of 2 hours of editing and finds that the system has just crashed. 2. Used as a name for just about anything. See foo. 3. vt. Simi...
glue => n. Generic term for any interface logic or protocol that connects two component blocks. For example, {Blue Glue} is IBM's SNA protocol, and hardware designers call anything used to connect large VLSI's or circuit blocks `glue logic'.
gnarly => /nar'lee/ adj. Both obscure and hairy in the sense of complex. "Yow! --- the tuned assembler implementation of BitBlt is really gnarly!" From a similar but less specific usage in surfer slang.
GNU => /gnoo/, *not* /noo/ 1. [acronym `GNU's Not UNIX!', see {{recursive acronym}}] A UNIX-workalike development effort of the Free Software Foundation headed by Richard Stallman (rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu). GNU EMACS and the GNU C compiler, two tools desi...
GNUMACS => /gnoo'maks/ [contraction of `GNU EMACS'] Often-heard abbreviated name for the GNU project's flagship tool, EMACS. Used esp. in contrast with GOSMACS.
go flatline => [from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG traces upon brain-death] vi., also adjectival `flatlined'. 1. To die, terminate, or fail, esp. irreversibly. In hacker parlance, this is used of machines only, human death being considere...
go flatline2 => employ jargon-jokes. 2. To go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing controlled shutdown. "You can suffer file damage if you shut down UNIX but power off before the system has gone flatline." 3. Of a video tube, to fail by ...
go flatline3 => sees is a bright horizontal line bisecting the screen.
go root => [UNIX] vi. To temporarily enter {root mode} in order to perform a privileged operation. This use is deprecated in Australia, where v. `root' refers to animal sex.
go-faster stripes => [UK] Syn. chrome.
gobble => vt. To consume or to obtain. The phrase `gobble up' tends to imply `consume', while `gobble down' tends to imply `obtain'. "The output spy gobbles characters out of a tty output buffer." "I guess I'll gobble down a copy of the documentation...
Godzillagram => /god-zil'*-gram/ n. [from Japan's national hero] 1. A network packet that in theory is a broadcast to every machine in the universe. The typical case of this is an IP datagram whose destination IP address is [255.255.255.255]. Fortuna...
golden => adj. [prob. from folklore's `golden egg'] When used to describe a magnetic medium (e.g., `golden disk', `golden tape'), describes one containing a tested, up-to-spec, ready-to-ship software version. Compare platinum-iridium.
golf-ball printer => n. The IBM 2741, a slow but letter-quality printing device and terminal based on the IBM Selectric typewriter. The `golf ball' was a round object bearing reversed embossed images of 88 different characters arranged on four meridi...
golf-ball printer2 => font by swapping in a different golf ball. This was the technology that enabled APL to use a non-EBCDIC, non-ASCII, and in fact completely non-standard character set. This put it 10 years ahead of its time --- where it stayed, f...
golf-ball printer3 => character displays gave way to programmable bit-mapped devices with the flexibility to support other character sets.
gonk => /gonk/ vt.,n. 1. To prevaricate or to embellish the truth beyond any reasonable recognition. It is alleged that in German the term is (mythically) `gonken'; in Spanish the verb becomes `gonkar'. "You're gonking me. That story you just told me...
gonkulator => /gon'kyoo-lay-tr/ [from the old "Hogan's Heroes" TV series] n. A pretentious piece of equipment that actually serves no useful purpose. Usually used to describe one's least favorite piece of computer hardware. See gonk.
gonzo => /gon'zoh/ [from Hunter S. Thompson] adj. Overwhelming; outrageous; over the top; very large, esp. used of collections of source code, source files, or individual functions. Has some of the connotations of moby and hairy, but without the impl...
Good Thing => n.,adj. Often capitalized; always pronounced as if capitalized. 1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a position to notice "The Trailblazer's 19.2Kbaud PEP mode with on-the-fly Lempel-Ziv compression is a Good Thing for sites relayin...
Good Thing2 => possibly have any ill side-effects and may save considerable grief later "Removing the self-modifying code from that shared library would be a Good Thing." 3. When said of software tools or libraries, as in "YACC is a Good Thing", spec...
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Green's Theorem => [TMRC] prov. For any story, in any group of people there will be at least one person who has not heard the story. [The name of this theorem is a play on a fundamental theorem in calculus. --- ESR]
grep => /grep/ [from the qed/ed editor idiom g/re/p , where re stands for a regular expression, to Globally search for the Regular Expression and Print the lines containing matches to it, via {UNIX} `grep(1)'] vt. To rapidly scan a file or file set l...
grind => vt. 1. [MIT and Berkeley] To format code, especially LISP code, by indenting lines so that it looks pretty. This usage was associated with the MacLISP community and is now rare; prettyprint was and is the generic term for such operations. 2....
grind crank => n. A mythical accessory to a terminal. A crank on the side of a monitor, which when operated makes a zizzing noise and causes the computer to run faster. Usually one does not refer to a grind crank out loud, but merely makes the approp...
grind crank2 => grind and {wugga wugga}. Historical note At least one real machine actually had a grind crank --- the R1, a research machine built toward the end of the days of the great vacuum tube computers, in 1959. R1 (also known as `The Rice Ins...
grind crank3 => as `The Rice University Computer' (TRUC)) had a single-step/free-run switch for use when debugging programs. Since single-stepping through a large program was rather tedious, there was also a crank with a cam and gear arrangement that...
grind crank4 => button. This allowed one to `crank' through a lot of code, then slow down to single-step for a bit when you got near the code of interest, poke at some registers using the console typewriter, and then keep on cranking.
gritch => /grich/ 1. n. A complaint (often caused by a glitch). 2. vi. To complain. Often verb-doubled "Gritch gritch". 3. A synonym for glitch (as verb or noun).
grok => /grok/, var. /grohk/ [from the novel `Stranger in a Strange Land', by Robert A. Heinlein, where it is a Martian word meaning literally `to drink' and metaphorically `to be one with'] vt. 1. To understand, usually in a global sense. Connotes i...
gronk => /gronk/ [popularized by Johnny Hart's comic strip "B.C." but the word apparently predates that] vt. 1. To clear the state of a wedged device and restart it. More severe than `to frob'. 2. [TMRC] To cut, sever, smash, or similarly disable. 3....
gronk out => vi. To cease functioning. Of people, to go home and go to sleep. "I guess I'll gronk out now; see you all tomorrow."
gronked => adj. 1. Broken. "The teletype scanner was gronked, so we took the system down." 2. Of people, the condition of feeling very tired or (less commonly) sick. "I've been chasing that bug for 17 hours now and I am thoroughly gronked!" Compare b...
grovel => vi. 1. To work interminably and without apparent progress. Often used transitively with `over' or `through'. "The file scavenger has been groveling through the file directories for 10 minutes now." Compare grind and crunch. Emphatic form `g...
grunge => /gruhnj/ n. 1. That which is grungy, or that which makes it so. 2. [Cambridge] Code which is inaccessible due to changes in other parts of the program. The preferred term in North America is {dead code}.
gubbish => /guhb'*sh/ [a portmanteau of `garbage' and `rubbish'?] n. Garbage; crap; nonsense. "What is all this gubbish?" The opposite portmanteau `rubbage' is also reported.
guiltware => /gilt'weir/ n. 1. A piece of freeware decorated with a message telling one how long and hard the author worked on it and intimating that one is a no-good freeloader if one does not immediately send the poor suffering martyr gobs of money...
gumby => /guhm'bee/ [from a class of Monty Python characters, poss. themselves named after the 1960s claymation character] n. An act of minor but conspicuous stupidity, often in `gumby maneuver' or `pull a gumby'.
gun => [ITS from the `GUN' command] vt. To forcibly terminate a program or job (computer, not career). "Some idiot left a background process running soaking up half the cycles, so I gunned it." Compare can.
gunch => /guhnch/ [TMRC] vt. To push, prod, or poke at a device that has almost produced the desired result. Implies a threat to mung.
gurfle => /ger'fl/ interj. An expression of shocked disbelief. "He said we have to recode this thing in FORTRAN by next week. Gurfle!" Compare weeble.
guru => n. 1. [UNIX] An expert. Implies not only wizard skill but also a history of being a knowledge resource for others. Less often, used (with a qualifier) for other experts on other systems, as in `VMS guru'. See {source of all good bits}. 2. Ami...
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Silver Book => n. Jensen and Wirth's infamous `Pascal User Manual and Report', so called because of the silver cover of the widely distributed Springer-Verlag second edition of 1978 (ISBN 0-387-90144-2). See {{book titles}}, Pascal.
since time T equals minus infinity => adj. A long time ago; for as long as anyone can remember; at the time that some particular frob was first designed. Usually the word `time' is omitted. See also {time T}.
sitename => /sit'naym/ [UNIX/Internet] n. The unique electronic name of a computer system, used to identify it in UUCP mail, USENET, or other forms of electronic information interchange. The folklore interest of sitenames stems from the creativity an...
skrog => v. Syn. scrog.
skulker => n. Syn. prowler.
slap on the side => n. (also called a sidecar, or abbreviated `SOTS'.) A type of external expansion hardware marketed by computer manufacturers (e.g., Commodore for the Amiga 500/1000 series and IBM for the hideous failure called `PCjr'). Various SOT...
slap on the side2 => as memory, hard drive controllers, and conventional expansion slots.
slash => n. Common name for the slant (`/', ASCII 0101111) character. See ASCII for other synonyms.
sleep => vi. 1. [techspeak] On a timesharing system, a process that relinquishes its claim on the scheduler until some given event occurs or a specified time delay elapses is said to `go to sleep'. 2. In jargon, used very similarly to v. block; also ...
slim => n. A small, derivative change (e.g., to code).
slop => n. 1. A one-sided {fudge factor}, that is, an allowance for error but in only one of two directions. For example, if you need a piece of wire 10 feet long and have to guess when you cut it, you make very sure to cut it too long, by a large am...
slopsucker => /slop'suhk-r/ n. A lowest-priority task that must wait around until everything else has `had its fill' of machine resources. Only when the machine would otherwise be idle is the task allowed to `suck up the slop'. Also called a {hungry ...
slurp => vt. To read a large data file entirely into core before working on it. This may be contrasted with the strategy of reading a small piece at a time, processing it, and then reading the next piece. "This program slurps in a 1K-by-1K matrix and...
smart => adj. Said of a program that does the {Right Thing} in a wide variety of complicated circumstances. There is a difference between calling a program smart and calling it intelligent; in particular, there do not exist any intelligent programs (...
smart terminal => n. A terminal that has enough computing capability to render graphics or to offload some kind of front-end processing from the computer it talks to. The development of workstations and personal computers has made this term and the p...
smart terminal2 => semi-obsolescent, but one may still hear variants of the phrase `act like a smart terminal' used to describe the behavior of workstations or PCs with respect to programs that execute almost entirely out of a remote server's storage...
smart terminal3 => Compare {glass tty}. There is a classic quote from Rob Pike (inventor of the blit terminal) "A smart terminal is not a smart*ass* terminal, but rather a terminal you can educate." This illustrates a common design problem The attemp...
smart terminal4 => else) intelligent sometimes results in finicky, rigid `special features' that become just so much dead weight if you try to use the device in any way the designer didn't anticipate. Flexibility and programmability, on the other han...
smash case => vi. To lose or obliterate the uppercase/lowercase distinction in text input. "MS-DOS will automatically smash case in the names of all the files you create." Compare {fold case}.
smash the stack => [C programming] n. On many C implementations it is possible to corrupt the execution stack by writing past the end of an array declared `auto' in a routine. Code that does this is said to `smash the stack', and can cause return fro...
smash the stack2 => address. This can produce some of the most insidious data-dependent bugs known to mankind. Variants include `trash' the stack, scribble the stack, mangle the stack; the term *mung the stack is not used, as this is never done inten...
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stupid-sort => n. Syn. bogo-sort.
subshell => /suhb'shel/ [UNIX, MS-DOS] n. An OS command interpreter (see shell) spawned from within a program, such that exit from the command interpreter returns one to the parent program in a state that allows it to continue execution. Compare {she...
sucking mud => [Applied Data Research] adj. (also `pumping mud') Crashed or wedged. Usually said of a machine that provides some service to a network, such as a file server. This Dallas regionalism derives from the East Texas oilfield lament, "Shut '...
sucking mud2 => Often used as a query. "We are going to reconfigure the network, are you ready to suck mud?"
sufficiently small => adj. Syn. {suitably small}.
suit => n. 1. Ugly and uncomfortable `business clothing' often worn by non-hackers. Invariably worn with a `tie', a strangulation device that partially cuts off the blood supply to the brain. It is thought that this explains much about the behavior o...
suitable win => n. See win.
suitably small => [perverted from mathematical jargon] adj. An expression used ironically to characterize unquantifiable behavior that differs from expected or required behavior. For example, suppose a newly created program came up with a correct ful...
suitably small2 => exclaimed "It works!" Then, if the program dumps core on the first mouse click, one might add "Well, for suitably small values of `works'." Compare the characterization of pi under {{random numbers}}.
sun-stools => n. Unflattering hackerism for SunTools, a pre-X windowing environment notorious in its day for size, slowness, and misfeatures. X, however, is larger and slower; see {second-system effect}.
sunspots => n. 1. Notional cause of an odd error. "Why did the program suddenly turn the screen blue?" "Sunspots, I guess." 2. Also the cause of {bit rot} --- from the myth that sunspots will increase {cosmic rays}, which can flip single bits in memo...
superprogrammer => n. A prolific programmer; one who can code exceedingly well and quickly. Not all hackers are superprogrammers, but many are. (Productivity can vary from one programmer to another by three orders of magnitude. For example, one progr...
superuser => [UNIX] n. Syn. root, avatar. This usage has spread to non-UNIX environments; the superuser is any account with all wheel bits on. A more specific term than wheel.
support => n. After-sale handholding; something many software vendors promise but few deliver. To hackers, most support people are useless --- because by the time a hacker calls support he or she will usually know the relevant manuals better than the...
Suzie COBOL => /soo'zee koh'bol/ 1. [IBM prob. from Frank Zappa's `Suzy Creamcheese'] n. A coder straight out of training school who knows everything except the value of comments in plain English. Also (fashionable among personkind wishing to avoid a...
Suzie COBOL2 => or (in some non-IBM circles) `Cobol Charlie'. 2. [proposed] Meta-name for any {code grinder}, analogous to {J. Random Hacker}.
swab => /swob/ [From the mnemonic for the PDP-11 `SWAp Byte' instruction, as immortalized in the `dd(1)' option `conv=swab' (see dd)] 1. vt. To solve the {NUXI problem} by swapping bytes in a file. 2. n. The program in V7 UNIX used to perform this ac...
swap => vt. 1. [techspeak] To move information from a fast-access memory to a slow-access memory (`swap out'), or vice versa (`swap in'). Often refers specifically to the use of disks as `virtual memory'. As pieces of data or program are needed, they...
swap space => n. Storage space, especially temporary storage space used during a move or reconfiguration. "I'm just using that corner of the machine room for swap space."
swapped in => n. See swap. See also {page in}.
swapped out => n. See swap. See also {page out}.
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
terminal junkie => [UK] n. A wannabee or early {larval stage} hacker who spends most of his or her time wandering the directory tree and writing noddy programs just to get a fix of computer time. Variants include `terminal jockey, `console junkie, an...
terminal junkie2 => `console jockey seems to imply more expertise than the other three (possibly because of the exalted status of the {console} relative to an ordinary terminal). See also twink, {read-only user}.
terpri => /terpree/ [from LISP 1.5 (and later, MacLISP)] vi. To output a newline. Now rare as jargon, though still used as techspeak in Common LISP. It is a contraction of `TERminate PRInt line, named for the fact that, on early OSes, no characters w...
test => n. 1. Real users bashing on a prototype long enough to get thoroughly acquainted with it, with careful monitoring and followup of the results. 2. Some bored random user trying a couple of the simpler features with a developer looking over his...
TeX => /tekh/ n. An extremely powerful macro-based text formatter written by Donald E. Knuth, very popular in the computer-science community (it is good enough to have displaced UNIX `troff(1), the other favored formatter, even at many UNIX installat...
text => n. 1. [techspeak] Executable code, esp. a `pure code portion shared between multiple instances of a program running in a multitasking OS (compare English). 2. Textual material in the mainstream sense; data in ordinary {ASCII} or {EBCDIC} repr...
thanks in advance => [USENET] Conventional net.politeness ending a posted request for information or assistance. Sometimes written `advTHANKSance or `aTdHvAaNnKcSe or abbreviated `TIA. See net.-, netiquette.
the X that can be Y => not the true X is Yet another instance of hackerdoms peculiar attraction to mystical references --- a common humorous way of making exclusive statements about a class of things. The template is from the `Tao te Ching "The Tao w...
the X that can be Y => not the true X2 is true Tao." The implication is often that the X is a mystery accessible only to the enlightened. See the trampoline entry for an example, and compare {has the X nature}.
theology => n. 1. Ironically or humorously used to refer to {religious issues}. 2. Technical fine points of an abstruse nature, esp. those where the resolution is of theoretical interest but is relatively marginal with respect to actual use of a desi...
theory => n. The consensus, idea, plan, story, or set of rules that is currently being used to inform a behavior. This is a generalization and abuse of the technical meaning. "Whats the theory on fixing this TECO loss?" "Whats the theory on dinner to...
thinko => /thingkoh/ [by analogy with `typo] n. A momentary, correctable glitch in mental processing, especially one involving recall of information learned by rote; a bubble in the stream of consciousness. Syn. braino. Compare mouso.
This time, for sure! => excl. Ritual affirmation frequently uttered during protracted debugging sessions involving numerous small obstacles (e.g., attempts to bring up a UUCP connection). For the proper effect, this must be uttered in a fruity imitat...
This time, for sure!2 => heard "Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" The canonical response is, of course, "But that trick *never* works!" See {{Humor, Hacker}}.
thrash => vi. To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing anything useful. Paging or swapping systems that are overloaded waste most of their time moving data into and out of core (rather than performing useful computation) and are therefore s...
thread => n. [USENET, GEnie, CompuServe] Common abbreviation of `topic thread, a more or less continuous chain of postings on a single topic.
three-finger salute => n. Syn. {Vulcan nerve pinch}.
thud => n. 1. Yet another meta-syntactic variable (see foo). It is reported that at CMU from the mid-1970s the canonical series of these was `foo, `bar, `thud, `blat. 2. Rare term for the hash character, `# (ASCII 0100011). See ASCII for other synony...
thunk => /thuhnk/ n. 1. "A piece of coding which provides an address", according to P. Z. Ingerman, who invented thunks in 1961 as a way of binding actual parameters to their formal definitions in Algol-60 procedure calls. If a procedure is called wi...
tick => n. 1. A jiffy (sense 1). 2. In simulations, the discrete unit of time that passes between iterations of the simulation mechanism. In AI applications, this amount of time is often left unspecified, since the only constraint of interest is the ...
tick-list features => [Acorn Computers] n. Features in software or hardware that customers insist on but never use (calculators in desktop TSRs and that sort of thing). The American equivalent would be `checklist features, but this jargon sense of th...
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
times-or-divided-by => [by analogy with `plus-or-minus] quant. Term occasionally used when describing the uncertainty associated with a scheduling estimate, for either humorous or brutally honest effect. For a software project, the factor is usually ...
tinycrud => /tinee-kruhd/ n. A pejorative used by habitues of older game-oriented MUD versions for TinyMUDs and other user-extensible MUD variants; esp. common among users of the rather violent and competitive AberMUD and MIST systems. These people j...
tip of the ice-cube => [IBM] n. The visible part of something small and insignificant. Used as an ironic comment in situations where `tip of the iceberg might be appropriate if the subject were actually nontrivial.
tired iron => [IBM] n. Hardware that is perfectly functional but far enough behind the state of the art to have been superseded by new products, presumably with sufficient improvement in bang-per-buck that the old stuff is starting to look a bit like...
tits on a keyboard => n. Small bumps on certain keycaps to keep touch-typists registered (usually on the `5 of a numeric keypad, and on the `F and `J of a QWERTY keyboard).
TLA => /T-L-A/ [Three-Letter Acronym] n. 1. Self-describing acronym for a species with which computing terminology is infested. 2. Any confusing acronym. Examples include MCA, FTP, SNA, CPU, MMU, SCCS, DMU, FPU, NNTP, TLA. People who like this looser...
TMRC => /tmerk/ n. The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT, one of the wellsprings of hacker culture. The 1959 `Dictionary of the TMRC Language compiled by Peter Samson included several terms which became basics of the hackish vocabulary (see esp. foo an...
to a first approximation => 1. [techspeak] When one is doing certain numerical computations, an approximate solution may be computed by any of several heuristic methods, then refined to a final value. By using the starting point of a first approximat...
to a first approximation2 => algorithm that converges more quickly to the correct result. 2. In jargon, a preface to any comment that indicates that the comment is only approximately true. The remark "To a first approximation, I feel good" might indi...
to a first approximation3 => reveal that not all is perfect (e.g., a nagging cough still remains after an illness).
to a zeroth approximation => [from `to a first approximation] A *really* sloppy approximation; a wild guess. Compare {social science number}.
toast => 1. n. Any completely inoperable system or component, esp. one that has just crashed and burned "Uh, oh ... I think the serial board is toast." 2. vt. To cause a system to crash accidentally, especially in a manner that requires manual reboot...
toaster => n. 1. The archetypal really stupid application for an embedded microprocessor controller; often used in comments that imply that a scheme is inappropriate technology (but see {elevator controller}). "DWIM for an assembler? Thatd be as sill...
toeprint => n. A footprint of especially small size.
toggle => vt. To change a bit from whatever state it is in to the other state; to change from 1 to 0 or from 0 to 1. This comes from `toggle switches, such as standard light switches, though the word `toggle actually refers to the mechanism that keep...
tool => 1. n. A program used primarily to create, manipulate, modify, or analyze other programs, such as a compiler or an editor or a cross-referencing program. Oppose app, {operating system}. 2. [UNIX] An application program with a simple, `transpar...
toolsmith => n. The software equivalent of a tool-and-die specialist; one who specializes in making the tools with which other programmers create applications. See also uninteresting.
topic drift => n. Term used on GEnie, USENET and other electronic fora to describe the tendency of a thread to drift away from the original subject of discussion (and thus, from the Subject header of the originating message), or the results of that t...
topic drift2 => reminders that the discussion has strayed off any useful track. "I think we started with a question about Nivens last book, but weve ended up discussing the sexual habits of the common marmoset. Now *thats* topic drift!"
topic group => n. Syn. forum.
TOPS-10 => /tops-ten/ n. DECs proprietary OS for the fabled PDP-10 machines, long a favorite of hackers but now effectively extinct. A fountain of hacker folklore; see appendix A. See also {ITS}, {TOPS-20}, {TWENEX}, VMS, {operating system}. TOPS-10 ...
factpacks/jargon.fact view on Meta::CPAN
virtual Friday2 => Friday (and Thursday is a virtual Saturday, as is Friday). There are also `virtual Mondays' that are actually Tuesdays, after the three-day weekends associated with many national holidays in the U.S.
virtual reality => n. 1. Computer simulations that use 3-D graphics and devices such as the Dataglove to allow the user to interact with the simulation. See cyberspace. 2. A form of network interaction incorporating aspects of role-playing games, int...
virtual reality2 => comedy, and `true confessions' magazines. In a virtual reality forum (such as USENET's alt.callahans newsgroup or the MUD experiments on Internet), interaction between the participants is written like a shared novel complete with ...
virtual reality3 => that may be personae utterly unlike the people who write them, and common `background characters' manipulable by all parties. The one iron law is that you may not write irreversible changes to a character without the consent of th...
virtual reality4 => anything goes. See bamf, cyberspace.
virus => [from the obvious analogy with biological viruses, via SF] n. A cracker program that searches out other programs and `infects' them by embedding a copy of itself in them, so that they become {Trojan Horse}s. When these programs are executed,...
visionary => n. 1. One who hacks vision, in the sense of an Artificial Intelligence researcher working on the problem of getting computers to `see' things using TV cameras. (There isn't any problem in sending information from a TV camera to a compute...
VMS => /V-M-S/ n. DEC's proprietary operating system for its VAX minicomputer; one of the seven or so environments that loom largest in hacker folklore. Many UNIX fans generously concede that VMS would probably be the hacker's favorite commercial OS ...
voice => vt. To phone someone, as opposed to emailing them or connecting in talk mode. "I'm busy now; I'll voice you later."
voice-net => n. Hackish way of referring to the telephone system, analogizing it to a digital network. USENET {sig block}s not uncommonly include the sender's phone next to a "Voice" or "Voice-Net" header; common variants of this are "Voicenet" and "...
voodoo programming => [from George Bush's "voodoo economics"] n. The use by guess or cookbook of an obscure or hairy system, feature, or algorithm that one does not truly understand. The implication is that the technique may not work, and if it doesn...
voodoo programming2 => Almost synonymous with {black magic}, except that black magic typically isn't documented and *nobody* understands it. Compare magic, {deep magic}, {heavy wizardry}, {rain dance}, {cargo cult programming}, {wave a dead chicken}....
VR => // [MUD] n. On-line abbrev for {virtual reality}, as opposed to RL.
Vulcan nerve pinch => n. [from the old "Star Trek" TV series via Commodore Amiga hackers] The keyboard combination that forces a soft-boot or jump to ROM monitor (on machines that support such a feature). On many micros this is Ctrl-Alt-Del; on Suns,...
Vulcan nerve pinch2 => <Cmd>-<Power switch>! Also called {three-finger salute}. Compare {quadruple bucky}.
vulture capitalist => n. Pejorative hackerism for `venture capitalist', deriving from the common practice of pushing contracts that deprive inventors of control over their own innovations and most of the money they ought to have made from them.*wabbi...
vulture capitalist2 => Fudd's immortal line "You wascawwy wabbit!"] n. 1. A legendary early hack reported on a System/360 at RPI and elsewhere around 1978. The program would make two copies of itself every time it was run, eventually crashing the sys...
vulture capitalist3 => includes infinite self-replication but is not a virus or worm. See also {cookie monster}.
WAITS => /wayts/ n. The mutant cousin of {TOPS-10} used on a handful of systems at {SAIL} up to 1990. There was never an `official' expansion of WAITS (the name itself having been arrived at by a rather sideways process), but it was frequently glosse...
waldo => /wol'doh/ [From Robert A. Heinlein's story "Waldo"] 1. A mechanical agent, such as a gripper arm, controlled by a human limb. When these were developed for the nuclear industry in the mid-1940s they were named after the invention described b...
walk => n.,vt. Traversal of a data structure, especially an array or linked-list data structure in core. See also codewalker, {silly walk}, clobber.
factpacks/security.fact view on Meta::CPAN
integrity policy => a security policy to prevent unauthorized users from modifying, viz., writing, sensitive information. See also Security Policy.
interdiction => See denial of service - DOS.
internal security controls => Mechanisms implemented in the hardware, firmware, and soft- ware of an IT product which provide protection for the IT product.
internal subject => a subject which is not acting as direct surrogate for a user. A process which is not associated with any user but performs system-wide functions such as packet switching, line printer spooling, and so on. Also known as a daemon or...
interoperability => The ability of computers to act upon information received from one another.
isolation => The containment of subjects and objects in a system in such a way that they are separated from one another, as well as from the protection controls of the operating system.
IT Security => The state of security in an IT system.
IT System => A specific IT installation, with a particular purpose and operational environment.
key management => A method of electronically transmitting, in a secure fashion, a secret key for use with a secret key cryptographic system. Key management can be used to support communications privacy. This method can be accomplished most securely w...
key escrow system => An electronic means of reconstructing a secret key (for secret key encryption) or a private key (for public key encryption)=2E The reconstructed key can then be used in a process to decrypt a communication.
key => A long string of seemingly random bits used with cryptographic algorithms to create or verify digital signatures and encrypt or decrypt messages and conversations. The keys must be known or guessed to forge a digital signature or decrypt an en...
label => see Security Label and Sensitivity Label.
lattice => A partially ordered set for which every pair of elements has a greatest lower bound and a least upper bound.
least privilege => The principle that requires that each subject be granted the most restrictive set of privileges needed for the performance of authorized tasks. The application of this principle limits the damage that can result from accident, erro...
limited access => Synonymous with access control.
list oriented => A computer protection system in which each protected object has a list of all subjects authorized to access it. Compare ticket-oriented.
local requirements => Those for which separate analysis of the individual TCB (trusted computing base) subsets suffices to determine compliance for the composite TCB. (See the trusted database interpretation of the Trusted Computer System Evaluation ...
lock and key protection system => A protection system that involves matching a key or password with a specific access requirement.
logic bomb => A resident computer program that triggers the perpetration of an unauthorized act when particular states of the system are realized.
loophole => An error of omission or oversight in software or hardware that permits circumventing the system security policy.
*-property => (Star Property) - A Bell-LaPadula security model rule allowing a subject write access to an object only if the security level of the subject is dominated by the security level of the object. Also known as the Confinement Property.
factpacks/techdict.fact view on Meta::CPAN
56Kflex => This is one of the two competing 56 Kbps modem standards. It was developed by Rockwell and Lucent and hasmore market share than USR's X2 technology due to the fact that it is licensed to over 700 modem manufacturers.
64-bit Chips => (see 64-bit processor) see 64-bit processor
64-bit Memory Chips => DIMMs are 64-bit memory chips.
64-bit Operating Systems => Some flavors of UNIX are 64-bit operating systems designed to run on 64-bit chips. There areplans to port Windows NT to 64 bits so that it can run on the P7.
64-bit processor => This describes a processor that can run a 64-bit OS. The DEC Alpha is 64-bit, and Intel's Merced will be a64-bit processor. The 386, 486 and Pentium and Pentium II are all 32-bit processors, even though the Pentium has a 64-bitmem...
64-bit Video Cards => Most current video cards have a 64-bit bus with their memory on them. 64-bit cards must have at least 2MB (or multiples of 2) of memory.
8 bits => Make up 1 byte.
8-bit Memory Chips => 30-pin SIMMs are 8-bit memory chips. If you want to use them with a 32-bit chip such as a 386 or a486 you need to put four of them in at a time.
Access Speed => This refers to the average amount of time it takes for a floppy drive, hard drive, CD drive or other drive to find any particular piece of data on a disk.
Accuracy => Accuracy is how close to the actual value you are. For example, if the number you are representing is 4 and you say it's 3, you are inaccurate by 1.
Accuracy/Precision => If the actual value is 4.321 and you say that it is 4.30, then you are precise to 3 places but inaccurate by .021. If a value is represented as a bullseye on a target, a group of guesses or measurements represented by closely gr...
ACPI => (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) This power management interface takes the power management out of the BIOS and gives control to the OS. Typically, a system's BIOS is only able to turn a device off after a certain period of inacti...
Active Matrix => LCD panels that are active matrix have a sharper, brighter image than those with passive matrix screens. They can also continue to be seen at much greater angles off of central viewing.
Active Movie => This is a Microsoft technology used for streaming video and audio over the Internet. It is an ActiveX control.
Active Server Pages => (ASP) Microsoft created this technology and bundled it with their IIS Web server. It is designed to allow easy combination of HTML, scripts (such as Javascript and Microsoft's VBScript), and ActiveX. Active Server Pages promise...
ActiveX => Microsoft technology designed to enable easier multimedia on the Web. ActiveX controls can be used in Java to create multimedia effects. For now, that means that when you go to Web sites, buttons can light up and sound effects can play whe...
ADSL => (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line) This is a new technology just starting to come out that is the phone company's answer to cable modems. It supports data speeds over 2 Mbps downstream (to the user) and slower speeds upstream (to the Inte...
AGP => (Accelerated Graphics Port) This is a special port that will begin to show up on motherboards in the second half of 1997. The port will bypass the PCI bus and allow much higher throughput from the graphics card to the processor for speedier 3D...
Alpha Blending => This allows two objects to be blended together. This is primarily used for atmospheric and environmental effects. It allows such things as "fogging," where an image is rendered behind a "translucent" image, which creates the effect ...
Analog => Analog refers to a representation of a quantity that varies over any continuous range of values. Analog signals can be thought of as pure in nature and not processed. Thus, the debate over whether record albums (analog representation of sou...
Analog Control => An analog control changes value in non-discrete steps. You can tune an analog control to non-distinct values. In some cases, like for volume, analog controls are better. Have you ever used a digital volume control on a new TV, and o...
factpacks/techdict.fact view on Meta::CPAN
DVD => (Digital Variable/Versatile/Video Disc) Much like a CD-ROM except that it stores up to 12 times as much and is re-writeable. Although the industry claims that DVD really stands for NOTHING, I think otherwise. DVD is the successor to CD-ROM tec...
EBCDIC => see Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code.
EBIOS => (Enhanced BIOS) The EBIOS translates between the partition table limitations of a standard computer BIOS and the IDE limitations to provide up to 8 GB of storage space using the IDE interface. Your computer's BIOS has maximums of 1024 cylind...
ECC => (Error Checking and Correcting) Generally refers to memory chips, or motherboards that support this type of behavior in full-parity memory chips. ECC memory uses some extra memory on the memory chips for parity information and checks to see wh...
EDO RAM => (Extended Data Out RAM) This refers to the successor of DRAM. Most systems today support EDO RAM. It's a conceptually faster RAM chip that has small bits of SRAM cache built into it. It still runs at slow DRAM speeds ( <= 50 MHz), however.
EIDE => (Enhanced IDE) Allows for two IDE channels that can each support two devices in peaceful coexistence. It also allows for hard drives up to 8 GB in size and CD-ROM devices.
EISA => (Extended Industry Standard Architecture) 16-bit ISA was extended to 32-bits and they called it EISA. Pretty creative. But, really, it's generally used only in server machines, and it never caught on because of VL-Bus and PCI. It beats out VL...
Enhanced Small Device Interface => (ESDI) This was a popular form of hard drive and controller before IDE took over the PC market.
Environment => Normally, this is your surroundings. In your computer, the environment is what a group of variables are set to. Think of it as your computer's surroundings.
EPIC => see Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing.
ESCD => (Extended System Configuration Data) This is setup data that is stored in a Plug-and-Play-compatible system BIOS. It consists of the system resource requirements of legacy (non PNP) devices, and the last working configuration of Plug-and-Play...
ESDI => see Enhanced Small Device Interface.
Expansion Slot => Refers to any type of slot in a computer that you can plug an expansion card into. Generally, it's limited to ISA, EISA, PCI, and PCMCIA, but there are other types and there will be more in the future.
Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing => (EPIC) This is Intel and Hewlett-Packard's invention, designed to be used on Intel's forthcoming Merced processor. It is a method for arranging instructions so that they are ordered to be explicitly parall...
Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code => (EBCDIC) This is a way of encoding 256 characters in binary, much like ASCII, but used mainly on mainframes. Most of the time, EBCDIC is only mentioned in translations between EBCDIC and ASCII.
Extended partition => This is a type of partition that is an extension of a primary partition. It's possible to have many extended partitions on a hard drive.
Extranet => An Extranet is an intranet that extends onto the Internet. Confusing? Yes. Extranets are external extensions of a company's intranet that allow certain people to interact from the Internet. Not all intranets are Extranets.
Fabless => This term refers to a company that produces chips but doesn't own a fabrication plant, or fab. These companies are starting to become more and more successful at creating chips and renting out other companies' excess fabs to produce their ...
Fabrication Plant => A fab is a factory that takes raw silicon wafers and creates chips with them. Often, fabs are categorized by what micron process they use. For example, the Intel Pentium chip with MMX is produced in a fab with a 0.35 micron proce...
FAQ => (Frequently Asked Questions) This is a document that lists the most common questions about something (with the answers, of course).
Fast SCSI 2 => This version of SCSI transfers data at 10 Mbps. The connections all contain 50 pins. See also Fast-Wide SCSI 2.
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