Amethyst

 view release on metacpan or  search on metacpan

factpacks/jargon-split.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

console3 is  character-only terminals talking   to a serial port).  Typically only the console can do real graphics   or run {X}.  See also {CTY}. 
console jockey is  n. See {terminal junkie}.
content-free is  [by analogy with techspeak `context-free'] adj.   Used of a message that adds nothing to the recipient's knowledge.   Though this adjective is sometimes applied to {flamage}, it more   usually connotes derision for communication styl...
content-free2 is  centered on concerns irrelevant to the   subject ostensibly at hand.  Perhaps most used with reference to   speeches by company presidents and other professional manipulators.   "Content-free?  Uh...that's anything printed on glossy...
content-free3 is  "He gave a talk on   the implications of electronic networks for postmodernism and the   fin-de-siecle aesthetic.  It was content-free." 
control-C is  vi. 1. "Stop whatever you are doing."  From the   interrupt character used on many operating systems to abort a   running program.  Considered silly.  2. interj. Among BSD UNIX   hackers, the canonical humorous response to "Give me a br...
control-O is  vi. "Stop talking."  From the character used on some   operating systems to abort output but allow the program to keep on   running.  Generally means that you are not interested in hearing   anything more from that person, at least on t...
control-O2 is  who is flaming.  Considered silly. 
control-Q is  vi. "Resume."  From the ASCII XON character used to   undo a previous control-S (in fact it is also pronounced   XON /X-on/).
control-S is  vi. "Stop talking for a second."  From the ASCII XOFF   character (this is also pronounced XOFF /X-of/).  Control-S   differs from {control-O} in that the person is asked to stop   talking (perhaps because you are on the phone) but will...
control-S2 is  listen to him --- as opposed to   control-O, which has more of the meaning of "Shut up."  Considered   silly. 
Conway's Law is  prov. The rule that the organization of the software and   the organization of the software team will be congruent; originally   stated as "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll   get a 4-pass compiler".   This was or...
Conway's Law2 is  early   proto-hacker who wrote an assembler for the Burroughs 220 called   SAVE.  The name `SAVE' didn't stand for anything; it was just that   you lost fewer card decks and listings because they all had SAVE   written on them. 
cookbook is  [from amateur electronics and radio] n. A book of small   code segments that the reader can use to do various {magic}   things in programs.  One current example is the `PostScript   Language Tutorial and Cookbook' by Adobe Systems, Inc  ...
cookbook2 is  has recipes for things   like wrapping text around arbitrary curves and making 3D fonts.   Cookbooks, slavishly followed, can lead one into {voodoo   programming}, but are useful for hackers trying to {monkey up}   small programs in unk...
cookbook3 is   of phrasebooks in human languages. 
cookie is  n. A handle, transaction ID, or other token of agreement   between cooperating programs.  "I give him a packet, he gives me   back a cookie."  The claim check you get from a dry-cleaning shop   is a perfect mundane example of a cookie; the...
cookie2 is  later transaction to this one (so you get   the same clothes back).  Compare {magic cookie}; see also   {fortune cookie}. 
cookie bear is  n. Syn. {cookie monster}.
cookie file is  n. A collection of {fortune cookie}s in a format   that facilitates retrieval by a fortune program.  There are several   different ones in public distribution, and site admins often   assemble their own from various sources including ...
cookie monster is  [from "Sesame Street"] n. Any of a family of   early (1970s) hacks reported on {{TOPS-10}}, {{ITS}}, {{Multics}},   and elsewhere that would lock up either the victim's terminal (on a   time-sharing machine) or the {{console}} (on ...
cookie monster2 is  "I WANT A COOKIE".  The   required responses ranged in complexity from "COOKIE" through   "HAVE A COOKIE" and upward.  See also {wabbit}. 
copper is  n. Conventional electron-carrying network cable with a   core conductor of copper --- or aluminum!  Opposed to {light   pipe} or, say, a short-range microwave link.
copy protection is  n. A class of clever methods for preventing   incompetent pirates from stealing software and legitimate customers   from using it.  Considered silly.
copybroke is  /ko'pee-brohk/ adj. [play on `copyright'] Used to   describe an instance of a copy-protected program that has been   `broken'; that is, a copy with the copy-protection scheme disabled.   Syn.  {copywronged}.
copyleft is  /kop'ee-left/ [play on `copyright'] n. 1. The   copyright notice (`General Public License') carried by {GNU}   {EMACS} and other Free Software Foundation software, granting reuse   and reproduction rights to all comers (but see also {Gen...
copyleft2 is  copyright notice intended to   achieve similar aims. 
copywronged is  /ko'pee-rongd/ [play on `copyright'] adj. Syn. for   {copybroke}.
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}. 
CPU Wars is  /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)....
CPU Wars2 is  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   com...
CPU Wars3 is  J. Watson Research   Laboratories (then, as now, one of the few islands of true   hackerdom in the IBM archipelago).  The lower loop of the B in the   IBM logo, it is said, had been carefully whited out.  See {eat   flaming death}. 
cracker is  n. One who breaks security on a system.  Coined ca. 1985   by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of {hacker}   (q.v., sense 8).  An earlier attempt to establish `worm' in this   sense around 1981--82 on USENET was largely a fa...
crank is  [from automotive slang] vt. Verb used to describe the   performance of a machine, especially sustained performance.  "This   box cranks (or, cranks at) about 6 {megaflops}, with a burst mode   of twice that on vectorized operations."
crash is  1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure.  Most often said   of the {system} (q.v., sense 1), sometimes of magnetic disk   drives.  "Three {luser}s lost their files in last night's disk   crash."  A disk crash that involves the read/write he...
crash2 is  and scraping off the oxide may also   be referred to as a `head crash', whereas the term `system   crash' usually, though not always, implies that the operating   system or other software was at fault.  2. v. To fail suddenly.   "Has the s...
crash3 is  OS!" See   {down}.  Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the   crash (usually a person or a program, or both).  "Those idiots   playing {SPACEWAR} crashed the system." 3. vi. Sometimes said   of people hitting the sack after a l...
crash and burn is  vi.,n. A spectacular crash, in the mode of the   conclusion of the car-chase scene in the movie "Bullitt" and   many subsequent imitators.  Sun-3 monitors losing the flyback   transformer and lightning strikes on VAX-11/780 backpla...
crash and burn2 is  The construction   `crash-and-burn machine' is reported for a computer used   exclusively for alpha or {beta} testing, or reproducing bugs   (i.e., not for development).  The implication is that it wouldn't   be such a disaster if...
crash and burn3 is  would be inconvenienced. 
crawling horror is  n. Ancient crufty hardware or software that is   kept obstinately alive by forces beyond the control of the hackers   at a site.  Like {dusty deck} or {gonkulator}, but connotes   that the thing described is not just an irritation...
crawling horror2 is  "Mostly we code new stuff in C, but   they pay us to maintain one big FORTRAN II application from   nineteen-sixty-X that's a real crawling horror...."  Compare   {WOMBAT}. 
cray is  /kray/ n. 1. (properly, capitalized) One of the line of   supercomputers designed by Cray Research.  2. Any supercomputer at   all.  3. The {canonical} {number-crunching} machine.   The term is actually the lowercased last name of Seymour Cr...
cray2 is  co-founder of the company.  Numerous   vivid legends surround him, some true and some admittedly invented   by Cray Research brass to shape their corporate culture and image. 
cray instability is  n. A shortcoming of a program or algorithm that   manifests itself only when a large problem is being run on a powerful   machine (see {cray}).  Generally more subtle than bugs that can   be detected in smaller problems running o...
crayola is  /kray-oh'l*/ n. A super-mini or -micro computer that   provides some reasonable percentage of supercomputer performance   for an unreasonably low price.  Might also be a {killer micro}.
crayon is  n. 1. Someone who works on Cray supercomputers.  More   specifically, it implies a programmer, probably of the CDC ilk,   probably male, and almost certainly wearing a tie (irrespective of   gender).  Systems types who have a UNIX backgrou...
crayon2 is  A {computron} (sense 2) that   participates only in {number-crunching}.  3. A unit of   computational power equal to that of a single Cray-1.  There is a   standard joke about this that derives from an old Crayola crayon   promotional gim...
creationism is  n. The (false) belief that large, innovative designs   can be completely specified in advance and then painlessly magicked   out of the void by the normal efforts of a team of normally   talented programmers.  In fact, experience has ...
creationism2 is  only from evolutionary, exploratory   interaction between one (or at most a small handful of)   exceptionally able designer(s) and an active user population ---   and that the first try at a big new idea is always wrong.   Unfortunat...
creationism3 is  planning models   beloved of {management}, they are generally ignored. 
creeping elegance is  n. Describes a tendency for parts of a design to   become {elegant} past the point of diminishing return.  This   often happens at the expense of the less interesting parts of the   design, the schedule, and other things deemed ...
creeping elegance2 is  {creeping featurism}, {second-system   effect}, {tense}. 
creeping featurism is  /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ n. 1. Describes a   systematic tendency to load more {chrome} and {feature}s onto   systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed   when originally designed.  See also {feeping crea...
creeping featurism2 is  {BSD} UNIX has always been creeping   featurism."  2. More generally, the tendency for anything   complicated to become even more complicated because people keep   saying "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature   ...
creeping featurism3 is  a patchwork   because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being   planned.  Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one   extra little feature to help someone ... and then another ...   and another.... ...
creeping featurism4 is    like a cancer.  Usually this term is used to describe computer   programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the   IRS 1040 form, and new cars.  A similar phenomenon sometimes   afflicts conscious redesign...
creeping featuritis is  /kree'ping fee'-chr-i`t*s/ n. Variant of   {creeping featurism}, with its own spoonerization `feeping   creaturitis'.  Some people like to reserve this form for the   disease as it actually manifests in software or hardware, a...
creeping featuritis2 is  designers' minds.  (After   all, -ism means `condition' or `pursuit of', whereas -itis usually   means `inflammation of'.) 
cretin is  /kret'n/ or /kree'tn/ n. Congenital {loser}; an obnoxious   person; someone who can't do anything right.  It has been observed   that many American hackers tend to favor the British pronunciation   /kre'tn/ over standard American /kree'tn/...
cretin2 is  insidious phonetic influence of Monty Python's Flying   Circus. 
cretinous is  /kret'n-*s/ or /kreet'n-*s/ adj. Wrong; stupid;   non-functional; very poorly designed.  Also used pejoratively of   people.  See {dread high-bit disease} for an example.   Approximate synonyms {bletcherous}, `bagbiting' (see   {bagbite...
crippleware is  n. 1. Software that has some important functionality   deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users to pay for a   working version.  2. [Cambridge] {Guiltware} that exhorts you to   donate to some charity (compare {careware})...
crippleware2 is  can be upgraded to a more expensive   model by a trivial change (e.g., cutting a jumper). 
critical mass is  n. In physics, the minimum amount of fissionable   material required to sustain a chain reaction.  Of a software   product, describes a condition of the software such that fixing one   bug introduces one plus {epsilon} bugs.  When s...
critical mass2 is  be discarded and rewritten. 
crlf is  /ker'l*f/, sometimes /kru'l*f/ or /C-R-L-F/ n. (often   capitalized as `CRLF') A carriage return (CR) followed by a line   feed (LF).  More loosely, whatever it takes to get you from the   end of one line of text to the beginning of the next...
crlf2 is  {{UNIX}} influence this usage   has become less common (UNIX uses a bare line feed as its `CRLF'). 
crock is  [from the obvious mainstream scatologism] n. 1. An awkward   feature or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner.   Using small integers to represent error codes without the   program interpreting them to the user (as in, for exa...
crock2 is  for a process that dies due   to {segfault}).  2. A technique that works acceptably, but which   is quite prone to failure if disturbed in the least, for example   depending on the machine opcodes having particular bit patterns so   that y...
crock3 is  tightly woven,   almost completely unmodifiable structure.  See {kluge},   {brittle}.  Also in the adjectives `crockish' and   `crocky', and the nouns `crockishness' and `crockitude'. 
cross-post is  [USENET] vi. To post a single article simultaneously to   several newsgroups.  Distinguished from posting the article   repeatedly, once to each newsgroup, which causes people to see it   multiple times (this is very bad form).  Gratui...
cross-post2 is  line directing responses to a single followup   group is frowned upon, as it tends to cause {followup} articles   to go to inappropriate newsgroups when people respond to only one   part of the original posting. 
crudware is  /kruhd'weir/ n. Pejorative term for the hundreds of   megabytes of low-quality {freeware} circulated by user's groups   and BBS systems in the micro-hobbyist world.  "Yet *another*   set of disk catalog utilities for {{MS-DOS}}?  What cr...
cruft is  /kruhft/ [back-formation from {crufty}] 1. n. An   unpleasant substance.  The dust that gathers under your bed is   cruft; the TMRC Dictionary correctly noted that attacking it with a   broom only produces more.  2. n. The results of shoddy...
cruft2 is  pun on `hand craft'] To   write assembler code for something normally (and better) done by a   compiler (see {hand-hacking}).  4. n. Excess; superfluous junk.   Esp. used of redundant or superseded code. 
cruft together is  vt. (also `cruft up') To throw together   something ugly but temporarily workable.  Like vt. {kluge up},   but more pejorative.  "There isn't any program now to reverse all   the lines of a file, but I can probably cruft one togeth...
cruft together2 is  together}, {hack up}, {kluge up},   {crufty}. 
cruftsmanship is  /kruhfts'm*n-ship / n. [from {cruft}] The   antithesis of craftsmanship.
crufty is  /kruhf'tee/ [origin unknown; poss. from `crusty' or   `cruddy'] adj. 1. Poorly built, possibly over-complex.  The   {canonical} example is "This is standard old crufty DEC   software".  In fact, one fanciful theory of the origin of `crufty...
crufty2 is  `crusty' applied to DEC   software so old that the `s' characters were tall and skinny, looking   more like `f' characters.  2. Unpleasant, especially to the touch,   often with encrusted junk.  Like spilled coffee smeared with peanut   b...
crufty3 is  (sometimes spelled   `cruftie') n. A small crufty object (see {frob}); often one   that doesn't fit well into the scheme of things.  "A LISP property   list is a good place to store crufties (or, collectively,   {random} cruft)." 
crumb is  n. Two binary digits; a {quad}.  Larger than a {bit},   smaller than a {nybble}.  Considered silly.  Syn. {tayste}.
crunch is  1. vi. To process, usually in a time-consuming or   complicated way.  Connotes an essentially trivial operation that is   nonetheless painful to perform.  The pain may be due to the   triviality's being embedded in a loop from 1 to 1,000,0...
crunch2 is  {number-crunching}."  2. vt. To   reduce the size of a file by a complicated scheme that produces bit   configurations completely unrelated to the original data, such as   by a Huffman code.  (The file ends up looking like a paper documen...
crunch3 is  wad.)  Since such   compression usually takes more computations than simpler methods   such as run-length encoding, the term is doubly appropriate.  (This   meaning is usually used in the construction `file crunch(ing)' to   distinguish i...
crunch4 is  3. n. The character `#'.  Used at XEROX and CMU, among other   places.  See {{ASCII}}.  4. vt. To squeeze program source into a   minimum-size representation that will still compile or execute.   The term came into being specifically for ...
crunch5 is  crunched BASIC source in order to make it run more   quickly (it was a wholly interpretive BASIC, so the number of   characters mattered).  {Obfuscated C Contest} entries are often   crunched; see the first example under that entry. 
cruncha cruncha cruncha is  /kruhn'ch* kruhn'ch* kruhn'ch*/ interj.   An encouragement sometimes muttered to a machine bogged down in a   serious {grovel}.  Also describes a notional sound made by   groveling hardware.  See {wugga wugga}, {grind} (se...
cryppie is  /krip'ee/ n. A cryptographer.  One who hacks or implements   cryptographic software or hardware.
CTSS is  /C-T-S-S/ n. Compatible Time-Sharing System.  An early   (1963) experiment in the design of interactive time-sharing   operating systems, ancestral to {{Multics}}, {{UNIX}}, and   {{ITS}}.  The name {{ITS}} (Incompatible Time-sharing System)...
CTSS2 is  and to express some basic   differences in philosophy about the way I/O services should be   presented to user programs. 
CTY is  /sit'ee/ or /C-T-Y/ n. [MIT] The terminal physically   associated with a computer's system {{console}}.  The term is a   contraction of `Console {tty}', that is, `Console TeleTYpe'.   This {{ITS}}- and {{TOPS-10}}-associated term has become l...
CTY2 is  refer to the CTY as `the   console'. 
cube is  n. 1. [short for `cubicle'] A module in the open-plan   offices used at many programming shops.  "I've got the manuals in   my cube."  2. A NeXT machine (which resembles a matte-black cube).
cubing is  [parallel with `tubing'] vi. 1. Hacking on an IPSC (Intel   Personal SuperComputer) hypercube.  "Louella's gone cubing   *again*!!"  2. Hacking Rubik's Cube or related puzzles,   either physically or mathematically.  3. An indescribable fo...
cursor dipped in X is  n. There are a couple of metaphors in English   of the form `pen dipped in X' (perhaps the most common values of X   are `acid', `bile', and `vitriol').  These map over neatly to this   hackish usage (the cursor being what move...
cursor dipped in X2 is  composing on-line).  "Talk about a {nastygram}!  He   must've had his cursor dipped in acid when he wrote that one!" 
cuspy is  /kuhs'pee/ [WPI from the DEC acronym CUSP, for `Commonly   Used System Program', i.e., a utility program used by many people]   adj. 1. (of a program) Well-written.  2. Functionally excellent.  A   program that performs well and interfaces ...
cuspy2 is  [NYU] Said of an attractive woman, especially one   regarded as available.  Implies a certain curvaceousness. 
cut a tape is  [poss. fr. mainstream `cut a check' or from the   recording industry's `cut a record'] vi. To write a software or   document distribution on magnetic tape for shipment.  Has nothing   to do with physically cutting the medium!  Though t...

factpacks/jargon-split.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

dinosaur pen is  n. A traditional {mainframe} computer room complete with   raised flooring, special power, its own ultra-heavy-duty air   conditioning, and a side order of Halon fire extinguishers.  See   {boa}.
dinosaurs mating is  n. Said to occur when yet another {big iron}   merger or buyout occurs; reflects a perception by hackers that   these signal another stage in the long, slow dying of the   {mainframe} industry.  In its glory days of the 1960s, it...
dinosaurs mating2 is  Control Data, General   Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA, and Univac.  RCA and GE sold out   early, and it was `IBM and the Bunch' (Burroughs, Univac, NCR,   Control Data, and Honeywell) for a while.  Honeywell was bought out   by ...
dinosaurs mating3 is  Unisys (in 1984 --- this   was when the phrase `dinosaurs mating' was coined); and as this is   written AT&T is attempting to recover from a disastrously bad first   6 years in the hardware industry by absorbing NCR.  More such ...
dirty power is  n. Electrical mains voltage that is unfriendly to   the delicate innards of computers.  Spikes, {drop-outs}, average   voltage significantly higher or lower than nominal, or just plain   noise can all cause problems of varying subtlet...
Discordianism is  /dis-kor'di-*n-ism/ n. The veneration of   {Eris}, a.k.a. Discordia; widely popular among hackers.   Discordianism was popularized by Robert Anton Wilson's   `Illuminatus!' trilogy as a sort of self-subverting Dada-Zen   for Western...
Discordianism2 is  seriously but   is far more serious than most jokes.  Consider, for example, the   Fifth Commandment of the Pentabarf, from `Principia   Discordia' "A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing What he   Reads."  Discordianism is usuall...
Discordianism3 is  theory/joke involving millennia-long warfare between the   anarcho-surrealist partisans of Eris and a malevolent,   authoritarian secret society called the Illuminati.  See   appendix B, {Church of the SubGenius}, and {ha ha only  ...
disk farm is  n. (also {laundromat}) A large room or rooms filled   with disk drives (esp. {washing machine}s).
display hack is  n. A program with the same approximate purpose as a   kaleidoscope to make pretty pictures.  Famous display hacks   include {munching squares}, {smoking clover}, the BSD UNIX   `rain(6)' program, `worms(6)' on miscellaneous UNIXes,  ...
display hack2 is  hacks can also be   implemented without programming by creating text files containing   numerous escape sequences for interpretation by a video terminal;   one notable example displayed, on any VT100, a Christmas tree with   twinkli...
display hack3 is  The {hack   value} of a display hack is proportional to the esthetic value of   the images times the cleverness of the algorithm divided by the   size of the code.  Syn. {psychedelicware}. 
Dissociated Press is  [play on `Associated Press'; perhaps inspired   by a reference in the 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon "What's Up,   Doc?"] n.  An algorithm for transforming any text into potentially   humorous garbage even more efficiently than by pass...
Dissociated Press2 is  printing any N consecutive   words (or letters) in the text.  Then at every step you search for   any random occurrence in the original text of the last N   words (or letters) already printed and then print the next word or   l...
Dissociated Press3 is  Here is a short   example of word-based Dissociated Press applied to an earlier   version of this Jargon File     wart n. A small, crocky {feature} that sticks out of     an array (C has no checks for this).  This is relatively...
Dissociated Press4 is  bent so as to be     not worth paying attention to the medium in question.   Here is a short example of letter-based Dissociated Press applied   to the same source     window sysIWYG n. A bit was named aften /bee't*/ prefer    ...
Dissociated Press5 is  cast a     chuckle on neithout getting into useful informash speech     makes removing a featuring a move or usage actual     abstractionsidered interj. Indeed spectace logic or problem!   A hackish idle pastime is to apply let...
Dissociated Press6 is  of text and {vgrep} the output in hopes of finding   an interesting new word.  (In the preceding example, `window   sysIWYG' and `informash' show some promise.)  Iterated applications   of Dissociated Press usually yield better...
Dissociated Press7 is  `travesty generators' have been employed with   considerable satirical effect to the utterances of USENET flamers;   see {pseudo}. 
distribution is  n. 1. A software source tree packaged for   distribution; but see {kit}.  2. A vague term encompassing   mailing lists and USENET newsgroups (but not {BBS} {fora}); any   topic-oriented message channel with multiple recipients.  3. A...
distribution2 is  correlated with   geography) to which propagation of a USENET message is restricted;   a much-underutilized feature. 
do protocol is  [from network protocol programming] vi. To perform an   interaction with somebody or something that follows a clearly   defined procedure.  For example, "Let's do protocol with the   check" at a restaurant means to ask for the check, ...
do protocol2 is  collect money from everybody, generate   change as necessary, and pay the bill.  See {protocol}. 
doc is  /dok/ n. Common spoken and written shorthand for   `documentation'.  Often used in the plural `docs' and in the   construction `doc file' (documentation available on-line).
doco is  /do'koh/ [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] n. A   documentation writer.  See also {devo} and {mango}.
documentation is  n. The multiple kilograms of macerated, pounded,   steamed, bleached, and pressed trees that accompany most modern   software or hardware products (see also {tree-killer}).  Hackers   seldom read paper documentation and (too) often ...
documentation2 is  terse and on-line.  A common comment on   this is "You can't {grep} dead trees".  See {drool-proof   paper}, {verbiage}. 
dodgy is  adj. Syn. with {flaky}.  Preferred outside the U.S.
dogcow is  /dog'kow/ n. See {Moof}.
dogwash is  /dog'wosh/ [From a quip in the `urgency' field of a very   optional software change request, ca. 1982.  It was something like   "Urgency Wash your dog first".] 1. n. A project of minimal   priority, undertaken as an escape from more serio...
dogwash2 is   Many games and much {freeware} get   written this way. 
domainist is  /doh-mayn'ist/ adj. 1. Said of an {{Internet   address}} (as opposed to a {bang path}) because the part to the   right of the `@' specifies a nested series of `domains';   for example, eric@snark.thyrsus.com specifies the machine   call...
domainist2 is  within the   top-level domain called com.  See also {big-endian}, sense 2.   2. Said of a site, mailer, or routing program which knows how to   handle domainist addresses.  3. Said of a person (esp. a site   admin) who prefers domain a...
domainist3 is  prosyletizes for domainist addressing and disdains {bang   path}s.  This is now (1991) semi-obsolete, as most sites have   converted. 
Don't do that, then! is  [from an old doctor's office joke about a   patient with a trivial complaint] Stock response to a user   complaint.  "When I type control-S, the whole system comes to a   halt for thirty seconds."  "Don't do that, then!" (or ...
dongle is  /dong'gl/ n. 1. A security or {copy-protection} device   for commercial microcomputer programs consisting of a serialized   EPROM and some drivers in a D-25 connector shell, which must be   connected to an I/O port of the computer while th...
dongle2 is  query the port at startup and at   programmed intervals thereafter, and terminate if it does not   respond with the dongle's programmed validation code.  Thus, users   can make as many copies of the program as they want but must pay   for...
dongle3 is  initially a failure, as   users disliked tying up a serial port this way.  Most dongles on   the market today (1991) will pass data through the port and monitor   for {magic} codes (and combinations of status lines) with minimal   if any ...
dongle4 is  --- this   innovation was necessary to allow daisy-chained dongles for   multiple pieces of software.  The devices are still not widely   used, as the industry has moved away from copy-protection schemes   in general.  2. By extension, an...
dongle5 is  required for a program to function.  See   {dongle-disk}. 
dongle-disk is  /don'gl disk/ n. See {dongle}; a `dongle-disk'   is a floppy disk with some coding that allows an application to   identify it uniquely.  It can therefore be used as a {dongle}.   Also called a `key disk'.
donuts is  n.obs. A collective noun for any set of memory bits.  This is   extremely archaic and may no longer be live jargon; it dates from the   days of ferrite-{core} memories in which each bit was implemented by   a doughnut-shaped magnetic flip-...
doorstop is  n. Used to describe equipment that is non-functional and   halfway expected to remain so, especially obsolete equipment kept   around for political reasons or ostensibly as a backup.  "When we   get another Wyse-50 in here, that ADM 3 wi...
dot file is  [UNIX] n. A file which is not visible to normal   directory-browsing tools (on UNIX, files named with a leading dot   are, by convention, not normally presented in directory listings).   Many programs define one or more dot files in whic...
dot file2 is  be optionally recorded; a user can   customize the program's behavior by creating the appropriate file in   the current or home directory.  See also {rc file}. 
double bucky is  adj. Using both the CTRL and META keys.  "The   command to burn all LEDs is double bucky F."   This term originated on the Stanford extended-ASCII keyboard, and   was later taken up by users of the {space-cadet keyboard} at   MIT.  A...
double bucky2 is  {bucky bits}   (control and meta shifting keys) were nice, but there weren't   enough of them; you could type only 512 different characters on a   Stanford keyboard.  An obvious way to address this was simply to   add more shifting ...
double bucky3 is  keyboard with that many shifting keys is hard on touch-typists, who   don't like to move their hands away from the home position on the   keyboard.  It was half-seriously suggested that the extra shifting   keys be implemented as pe...
double bucky4 is  much like playing a full pipe organ.  This idea is mentioned   in a parody of a very fine song by Jeffrey Moss called   "Rubber Duckie", which was published in `The Sesame   Street Songbook' (Simon and Schuster 1971, ISBN 671-21036-...
double bucky5 is  1978, in celebration of the   Stanford keyboard   See also {meta bit}, {cokebottle}, and {quadruple bucky}. 
double DECkers is  n. Used to describe married couples in which both   partners work for Digital Equipment Corporation.
doubled sig is  [USENET] n. A {sig block} that has been included   twice in a {USENET} article or, less commonly, in an electronic   mail message.  An article or message with a doubled sig can be   caused by improperly configured software.  More ofte...
doubled sig2 is  experience in electronic   communication.  See {BIFF}, {pseudo}. 
down is  1. adj. Not operating.  "The up escalator is down" is   considered a humorous thing to say, and "The elevator is down"   always means "The elevator isn't working" and never refers to   what floor the elevator is on.  With respect to computer...
down2 is  mainstream; the extension to other kinds   of machine is still hackish.  2. `go down' vi. To stop   functioning; usually said of the {system}.  The message from the   {console} that every hacker hates to hear from the operator is   "The sys...
down3 is  down',   `bring down' vt. To deactivate purposely, usually for repair work   or {PM}.  "I'm taking the system down to work on that bug in the   tape drive."  Occasionally one hears the word `down' by itself   used as a verb in this vt. sens...
download is  vt. To transfer data or (esp.) code from a larger `host'   system (esp. a {mainframe}) over a digital comm link to a smaller   `client' system, esp. a microcomputer or specialized peripheral.   Oppose {upload}.   However, note that groun...
download2 is  rule for this term.  Space-to-earth transmission is always download   and the reverse upload regardless of the relative size of the   computers involved.  So far the in-space machines have invariably   been smaller; thus the upload/down...
DP is  /D-P/ n. 1. Data Processing.  Listed here because,   according to hackers, use of the term marks one immediately as a   {suit}.  See {DPer}.  2. Common abbrev for {Dissociated   Press}.
DPB is  /d*-pib'/ [from the PDP-10 instruction set] vt. To plop   something down in the middle.  Usage silly.  "DPB   yourself into that couch there."  The connotation would be that   the couch is full except for one slot just big enough for you to  ...
DPB2 is  the name of a PDP-10   instruction that inserts some bits into the middle of some other   bits.  This usage has been kept alive by the Common LISP function   of the same name. 
DPer is  /dee-pee-er/ n. Data Processor.  Hackers are absolutely   amazed that {suit}s use this term self-referentially.   "*Computers* process data, not people!"  See {DP}.
dragon is  n. [MIT] A program similar to a {daemon}, except that it   is not invoked at all, but is instead used by the system to perform   various secondary tasks.  A typical example would be an accounting   program, which keeps track of who is logg...
dragon2 is  etc.  Under ITS, many terminals displayed   a list of people logged in, where they were, what they were   running, etc., along with some random picture (such as a unicorn,   Snoopy, or the Enterprise), which was generated by the `name   d...
dragon3 is  and most other OSes   this would be called a `background demon' or {daemon}.  The   best-known UNIX example of a dragon is `cron(1)'.  At SAIL,   they called this sort of thing a `phantom'. 
Dragon Book is  n. The classic text `Compilers Principles,   Techniques and Tools', by Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D.   Ullman (Addison-Wesley 1986; ISBN 0-201-10088-6), so called because   of the cover design featuring a dragon labeled `c...
Dragon Book2 is  bearing the lance `LALR parser   generator' among his other trappings.  This one is more   specifically known as the `Red Dragon Book' (1986); an earlier   edition, sans Sethi and titled `Principles Of Compiler Design'   (Alfred V. A...
Dragon Book3 is  ISBN   0-201-00022-9), was the `Green Dragon Book' (1977).  (Also `New   Dragon Book', `Old Dragon Book'.)  The horsed knight and the   Green Dragon were warily eying each other at a distance; now the   knight is typing (wearing gaun...
Dragon Book4 is  representation of the Red Dragon's head while the rest   of the beast extends back in normal space.  See also {{book   titles}}. 
drain is  [IBM] v. Syn. for {flush} (sense 2).  Has a connotation   of finality about it; one speaks of draining a device before taking   it offline.
dread high-bit disease is  n. A condition endemic to PRIME (a.k.a.   PR1ME) minicomputers that results in all the characters having   their high (0x80) bit ON rather than OFF.  This of course makes   transporting files to other systems much more diff...
dread high-bit disease2 is  devices.  It is reported that   PRIME adopted the reversed-8-bit convention in order to save   25 cents per serial line per machine.  This probably qualifies as one   of the most {cretinous} design tradeoffs ever made.  Se...
dread high-bit disease3 is  (including the Atari 800) have exhibited   similar brain damage. 
DRECNET is  /drek'net/ [from Yiddish/German `dreck', meaning   dirt] n. Deliberate distortion of DECNET, a networking protocol   used in the {VMS} community.  So called because DEC helped write   the Ethernet specification and then (either stupidly o...
DRECNET2 is  violated that spec in the design   of DRECNET in a way that made it incompatible.  See also   {connector conspiracy}. 
driver is  n. 1. The {main loop} of an event-processing program;   the code that gets commands and dispatches them for execution.   2. [techspeak] In `device driver', code designed to handle a   particular peripheral device such as a magnetic disk or...
driver2 is  `driver' also means a program that translates some   device-independent or other common format to something a real   device can actually understand. 
droid is  n. A person (esp. a low-level bureaucrat or   service-business employee) exhibiting most of the following   characteristics (a) na"ive trust in the wisdom of the parent   organization or `the system'; (b) a propensity to believe   obvious n...
droid2 is  computers!);   blind faith; (c) a rule-governed mentality, one unwilling or unable   to look beyond the `letter of the law' in exceptional   situations; and (d) no interest in fixing that which is broken; an   "It's not my job, man" attitu...
droid3 is  supermarket checkout assistant and   bank clerk; the syndrome is also endemic in low-level government   employees.  The implication is that the rules and official   procedures constitute software that the droid is executing.  This   become...
droid4 is  properly debugged.   The term `droid mentality' is also used to describe the mindset   behind this behavior. Compare {suit}, {marketroid}; see   {-oid}. 
drool-proof paper is  n. Documentation that has been obsessively {dumbed   down}, to the point where only a {cretin} could bear to read it, is   said to have succumbed to the `drool-proof paper syndrome' or to   have been `written on drool-proof pape...
drool-proof paper2 is  from Apple's LaserWriter manual "Do not expose   your LaserWriter to open fire or flame." 
drop on the floor is  vt. To react to an error condition by silently   discarding messages or other valuable data.  "The gateway   ran out of memory, so it just started dropping packets on the   floor."  Also frequently used of faulty mail and netnew...
drop on the floor2 is  {black hole}, {bit bucket}. 
drop-ins is  [prob. by analogy with {drop-outs}] n. Spurious   characters appearing on a terminal or console as a result of line noise or   a system malfunction of some sort.  Esp. used when these are   interspersed with one's own typed input.  Compa...
drop-outs is  n. 1. A variety of `power glitch' (see {glitch});   momentary 0 voltage on the electrical mains.  2. Missing characters   in typed input due to software malfunction or system saturation   (this can happen under UNIX when a bad connectio...
drop-outs2 is  spurious character interrupts).  3. Mental   glitches; used as a way of describing those occasions when the mind   just seems to shut down for a couple of beats.  See {glitch},   {fried}. 
drugged is  adj. (also `on drugs') 1. Conspicuously stupid,   heading toward {brain-damaged}.  Often accompanied by a   pantomime of toking a joint (but see appendix B).  2. Of hardware,   very slow relative to normal performance.
drunk mouse syndrome is  n. A malady exhibited by the mouse pointing   device of some computers.  The typical symptom is for the mouse   cursor on the screen to move in random directions and not in sync   with the motion of the actual mouse.  Can usu...
drunk mouse syndrome2 is  and plugging it back again.  Another   recommended fix for optical mice is to rotate your mouse pad   90 degrees.   At Xerox PARC in the 1970s, most people kept a can of copier   cleaner (isopropyl alcohol) at their desks.  ...
drunk mouse syndrome3 is  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 a...
drunk mouse syndrome4 is  declared `alcoholic' and sent to the clinic to be   dried out in a CFC ultrasonic bath. 
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 ...
Easter egg3 is  lists of the   developers' names, political exhortations, snatches of music, and   (in one case) graphics images of the entire development team. 
Easter egging is  [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 {sho...
eat flaming death is  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 s...
eat flaming death2 is  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 expressi...
EBCDIC is  /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 {dinosaur}s.  It exists in at least six   mutually incompatible versions, all featuring such de...
EBCDIC2 is  and the absence of several ASCII   punctuation characters fairly important for modern computer   languages (exactly which characters are absent varies according to   which version of EBCDIC you're looking at).  IBM adapted EBCDIC   from {...
EBCDIC3 is  promulgated it   as a customer-control tactic (see {connector conspiracy}),   spurning the already established ASCII standard.  Today, IBM claims   to be an open-systems company, but IBM's own description of the   EBCDIC variants and how ...

factpacks/jargon-split.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

Hacking X for Y2 is  `"Hacking perceptrons for   Minsky"').  This form of description became traditional and has   since been carried over to other systems with more general   facilities for self-advertisement (such as UNIX {plan file}s). 
Hackintosh is  n. 1. An Apple Lisa that has been hacked into emulating a   Macintosh (also called a `Mac XL').  2. A Macintosh assembled   from parts theoretically belonging to different models in the line.
hackish is  /hak'ish/ adj. (also {hackishness} n.) 1. Said of   something that is or involves a hack.  2. Of or pertaining to   hackers or the hacker subculture.  See also {true-hacker}.
hackishness is  n. The quality of being or involving a hack.  This   term is considered mildly silly.  Syn.  {hackitude}.
hackitude is  n. Syn. {hackishness}; this word is considered sillier.
hair is  [back-formation from {hairy}] n. The complications that   make something hairy.  "Decoding {TECO} commands requires a   certain amount of hair."  Often seen in the phrase `infinite   hair', which connotes extreme complexity.  Also in `hairif...
hair2 is  "GNUMACS Elisp encourages lusers   to write complex editing modes."  "Yeah, it's pretty hairiferous   all right." (or just "Hair squared!") 
hairy is  adj. 1. Annoyingly complicated.  "{DWIM} is incredibly   hairy."  2. Incomprehensible.  "{DWIM} is incredibly hairy."   3. Of people, high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or   incomprehensible.  Hard to explain except in context "...
hairy2 is  nothing to worry about."  See   also {hirsute}. 
HAKMEM is  /hak'mem/ n. MIT AI Memo 239 (February 1972).  A   legendary collection of neat mathematical and programming hacks   contributed by many people at MIT and elsewhere.  (The title of the   memo really is "HAKMEM", which is a 6-letterism for ...
HAKMEM2 is  techniques, powerful   theorems, or interesting unsolved problems, but most fall into the   category of mathematical and computer trivia.  Here is a sampling   of the entries (with authors), slightly paraphrased   Item 41 (Gene Salamin) T...
HAKMEM3 is  than 2^18.   Item 46 (Rich Schroeppel) The most *probable* suit   distribution in bridge hands is 4-4-3-2, as compared to 4-3-3-3,   which is the most *evenly* distributed.  This is because the   world likes to have unequal numbers a ther...
HAKMEM4 is  the state of lowest energy, but in the state   of lowest disordered energy.   Item 81 (Rich Schroeppel) Count the magic squares of order 5   (that is, all the 5-by-5 arrangements of the numbers from 1 to 25   such that all rows, columns, ...
HAKMEM5 is  There are about 320 million, not counting those that   differ only by rotation and reflection.   Item 154 (Bill Gosper) The myth that any given programming language is   machine independent is easily exploded by computing the sum of   pow...
HAKMEM6 is  with   sign +, you are on a sign-magnitude machine.  If the result   loops with period = 1 at -1, you are on a   twos-complement machine.  If the result loops with period greater   than 1, including the beginning, you are on a ones-comple...
HAKMEM7 is  period greater than 1, not   including the beginning, your machine isn't binary --- the pattern   should tell you the base.  If you run out of memory, you are on a   string or bignum system.  If arithmetic overflow is a fatal error,   som...
HAKMEM8 is  to enforce machine   independence.  But the very ability to trap overflow is machine   dependent.  By this strategy, consider the universe, or, more   precisely, algebra Let X = the sum of many powers of 2 =   ...111111.  Now add X to its...
HAKMEM9 is  X = -1.  Therefore algebra is run on a machine (the   universe) that is two's-complement.   Item 174 (Bill Gosper and Stuart Nelson) 21963283741 is the only   number such that if you represent it on the {PDP-10} as both an   integer and a...
HAKMEM10 is  two   representations are identical.   Item 176 (Gosper) The "banana phenomenon" was encountered when   processing a character string by taking the last 3 letters typed   out, searching for a random occurrence of that sequence in the   t...
HAKMEM11 is  occurrence, typing it out,   and iterating.  This ensures that every 4-letter string output   occurs in the original.  The program typed BANANANANANANANA....  We   note an ambiguity in the phrase, "the Nth occurrence of."  In one   sense...
HAKMEM12 is  there are   nine.  The editing program TECO finds five.  Thus it finds only the   first ANA in BANANA, and is thus obligated to type N next.  By   Murphy's Law, there is but one NAN, thus forcing A, and thus a   loop.  An option to find ...
HAKMEM13 is  it would require backing up N - 1 characters before   seeking the next N-character string.   Note This last item refers to a {Dissociated Press}   implementation.  See also {banana problem}.   HAKMEM also contains some rather more compli...
HAKMEM14 is  these examples show some of its fun flavor. 
hakspek is  /hak'speek/ n. A shorthand method of spelling found on   many British academic bulletin boards and {talker system}s.   Syllables and whole words in a sentence are replaced by single   ASCII characters the names of which are phonetically s...
hakspek2 is  are usually dropped.  Hence,   `for' becomes `4'; `two', `too', and `to' become `2'; `ck'   becomes `k'.  "Before I see you tomorrow" becomes "b4 i c u   2moro".  First appeared in London about 1986, and was probably   caused by the slow...
hakspek3 is  operated on archaic machines with outdated operating systems and   no standard methods of communication.  Has become rarer since.   See also {talk mode}. 
hamster is  n. 1. [Fairchild] A particularly slick little piece of code   that does one thing well; a small, self-contained hack.  The image   is of a hamster happily spinning its exercise wheel.  2. [UK] Any item   of hardware made by Amstrad, a com...
hand-hacking is  n. 1. The practice of translating {hot spot}s from   an {HLL} into hand-tuned assembler, as opposed to trying to   coerce the compiler into generating better code.  Both the term and   the practice are becoming uncommon.  See {tune},...
hand-hacking2 is  2. More generally, manual   construction or patching of data sets that would normally be   generated by a translation utility and interpreted by another   program, and aren't really designed to be read or modified by   humans. 
handshaking is  n. Hardware or software activity designed to start or   keep two machines or programs in synchronization as they {do   protocol}.  Often applied to human activity; thus, a hacker might   watch two people in conversation nodding their ...
handshaking2 is  others' points and say "Oh, they're   handshaking!".  See also {protocol}. 
handwave is  [poss. from gestures characteristic of stage magicians]   1. v. To gloss over a complex point; to distract a listener; to   support a (possibly actually valid) point with blatantly faulty   logic.  2. n. The act of handwaving.  "Boy, wha...
handwave2 is  with "Clearly..." or   "Obviously..." or "It is self-evident that...", it is   a good bet he is about to handwave (alternatively, use of these   constructions in a sarcastic tone before a paraphrase of someone   else's argument suggests...
handwave3 is  this term is that if you wave your hands at the right moment, the   listener may be sufficiently distracted to not notice that what you   have said is {bogus}.  Failing that, if a listener does object,   you might try to dismiss the obj...
handwave4 is  this word is often accompanied by gestures both hands   up, palms forward, swinging the hands in a vertical plane pivoting   at the elbows and/or shoulders (depending on the magnitude of the   handwave); alternatively, holding the forea...
handwave5 is  at the wrist to make them flutter.  In   context, the gestures alone can suffice as a remark; if a speaker   makes an outrageously unsupported assumption, you might simply wave   your hands in this way, as an accusation, far more eloque...
hang is  v. 1. To wait for an event that will never occur.  "The   system is hanging because it can't read from the crashed drive".   See {wedged}, {hung}.  2. To wait for some event to occur; to   hang around until something happens.  "The program d...
hang2 is  a character."  Compare {block}.   3. To attach a peripheral device, esp. in the construction `hang   off'  "We're going to hang another tape drive off the file   server."  Implies a device attached with cables, rather than   something that ...
Hanlon's Razor is  prov. A corollary of {Finagle's Law}, similar to   Occam's Razor, that reads "Never attribute to malice that which can   be adequately explained by stupidity."  The derivation of the   common title Hanlon's Razor is unknown; a simi...
Hanlon's Razor2 is  James.  Quoted here because it seems to be a   particular favorite of hackers, often showing up in {fortune   cookie} files and the login banners of BBS systems and commercial   networks.  This probably reflects the hacker's daily...
Hanlon's Razor3 is  well-intentioned but short-sighted people. 
happily is  adv.  Of software, used to emphasize that a program is   unaware of some important fact about its environment, either   because it has been fooled into believing a lie, or because it   doesn't care.  The sense of `happy' here is not that ...
happily2 is  ignorance.  "The program continues to   run, happily unaware that its output is going to /dev/null." 
hard boot is  n. See {boot}.
hardcoded is  adj. 1. Said of data inserted directly into a program,   where it cannot be easily modified, as opposed to data in some   {profile}, resource (see {de-rezz} sense 2), or environment   variable that a {user} or hacker can easily modify. ...
hardcoded2 is  literal instead of a   `#define' macro (see {magic number}). 
hardwarily is  /hard-weir'*-lee/ adv. In a way pertaining to   hardware.  "The system is hardwarily unreliable."  The adjective   `hardwary' is *not* traditionally used, though it has recently   been reported from the U.K.  See {softwarily}.
hardwired is  adj. 1. In software, syn. for {hardcoded}.  2. By   extension, anything that is not modifiable, especially in the sense   of customizable to one's particular needs or tastes.
has the X nature is  [seems to derive from Zen Buddhist koans of the   form "Does an X have the Buddha-nature?"] adj. Common hacker   construction for `is an X', used for humorous emphasis.  "Anyone   who can't even use a program with on-screen help ...
has the X nature2 is  nature!"  See also {the X that can be Y   is not the true X}. 
hash bucket is  n. A notional receptacle into which more than one   thing accessed by the same key or short code might be dropped.   When you look up a name in the phone book (for example), you   typically hash it by extracting its first letter; the ...
hash bucket2 is  letter sections.  This is used as   techspeak with respect to code that uses actual hash functions; in   jargon, it is used for human associative memory as well.  Thus, two   things `in the same hash bucket' may be confused with each...
hash bucket3 is  length, you get too many common   grammar words in the first couple of hash buckets." Compare {hash   collision}. 
hash collision is  [from the technical usage] n. (var. `hash   clash') When used of people, signifies a confusion in associative   memory or imagination, especially a persistent one (see   {thinko}).  True story One of us [ESR] was once on the phone ...
hash collision2 is   When asked what he   expected Berkeley to be like, the friend replied "Well, I have   this mental picture of naked women throwing Molotov cocktails, but   I think that's just a collision in my hash tables."  Compare   {hash bucke...
hat is  n. Common (spoken) name for the circumflex (`^', ASCII   1011110) character.  See {ASCII} for other synonyms.
HCF is  /H-C-F/ n. Mnemonic for `Halt and Catch Fire', any of   several undocumented and semi-mythical machine instructions with   destructive side-effects, supposedly included for test purposes on   several well-known architectures going as far back...
HCF2 is  was the first for which the HCF opcode   became widely known.  This instruction caused the processor to   {toggle} a subset of the bus lines as rapidly as it could; in   some configurations this can actually cause lines to burn   up. 
heads down is  [Sun] adj. Concentrating, usually so heavily and for so   long that everything outside the focus area is missed.  See also   {hack mode} and {larval stage}, although it is not confined to   fledgling hackers.
heartbeat is  n. 1. The signal emitted by a Level 2 Ethernet   transceiver at the end of every packet to show that the   collision-detection circuit is still connected.  2. A periodic   synchronization signal used by software or hardware, such as a b...
heartbeat2 is  `natural' oscillation   frequency of a computer's clock crystal, before frequency division   down to the machine's clock rate.  4. A signal emitted at regular   intervals by software to demonstrate that it is still alive.   Sometimes h...
heartbeat3 is  stops   hearing a heartbeat.  See also {breath-of-life packet}. 
heavy metal is  [Cambridge] n. Syn. {big iron}.
heavy wizardry is  n. Code or designs that trade on a particularly   intimate knowledge or experience of a particular operating system   or language or complex application interface.  Distinguished from   {deep magic}, which trades more on arcane *th...
heavy wizardry2 is  drivers is heavy wizardry; so is   interfacing to {X} (sense 2) without a toolkit.  Esp. found in   comments similar to "Heavy wizardry begins here ...".  Compare   {voodoo programming}. 
heavyweight is  adj. High-overhead; {baroque}; code-intensive;   featureful, but costly.  Esp. used of communication protocols,   language designs, and any sort of implementation in which maximum   generality and/or ease of implementation has been pu...
heavyweight2 is  considerations such as speed, memory utilization,   and startup time.  {EMACS} is a heavyweight editor; {X} is an   *extremely* heavyweight window system.  This term isn't   pejorative, but one man's heavyweight is another's {elephan...
heisenbug is  /hi'zen-buhg/ [from Heisenberg's Uncertainty   Principle in quantum physics] n. A bug that disappears or alters   its behavior when one attempts to probe or isolate it.  Antonym of   {Bohr bug}; see also {mandelbug}.  In C, nine out of ...
heisenbug2 is  on core} phenomena (esp. lossage   related to corruption of the malloc {arena}) or errors that   {smash the stack}. 
Helen Keller mode is  n. State of a hardware or software system that   is deaf, dumb, and blind, i.e., accepting no input and generating no   output, usually due to an infinite loop or some other excursion   into {deep space}.  (Unfair to the real He...
Helen Keller mode2 is  was triumphant.)  See also   {go flatline}, {catatonic}. 
hello, sailor! is  interj. Occasional West Coast equivalent of   {hello, world}; seems to have originated at SAIL, later   associated with the game {Zork} (which also included "hello,   aviator" and "hello, implementor").  Originally from the   tradi...
hello, sailor!2 is  off the boat, of   course. 
hello, wall! is  excl. See {wall}.
hello, world is  interj. 1. The canonical minimal test message in the   C/UNIX universe.  2. Any of the minimal programs that emit this   message.  Traditionally, the first program a C coder is supposed to   write in a new environment is one that jus...
hello, world2 is  (and indeed it is the first example program   in {K&R}).  Environments that generate an unreasonably large   executable for this trivial test or which require a {hairy}   compiler-linker invocation to generate it are considered to  ...
hello, world3 is  hacker making an   entrance or requesting information from anyone present.  "Hello,   world!  Is the {VAX} back up yet?" 
hex is  n. 1. Short for {{hexadecimal}}, base 16.  2. A 6-pack   of anything (compare {quad}, sense 2).  Neither usage has   anything to do with {magic} or {black art}, though the pun is   appreciated and occasionally used by hackers.  True story As ...
hex2 is  surplus ICs for sale to be   worn as protective amulets against hostile magic.  The chips were,   of course, hex inverters. 
hexadecimal is  n. Base 16.  Coined in the early 1960s to replace   earlier `sexadecimal', which was too racy and amusing for stuffy   IBM, and later adopted by the rest of the industry.   Actually, neither term is etymologically pure.  If we take `b...
hexadecimal2 is  etymologically correct term for   base 10, for example, is `denary', which   comes from `deni' (ten at a time, ten each), a Latin `distributive'   number; the corresponding term for base-16 would be something like   `sendenary'.  `De...
hexadecimal3 is  corresponding prefix for 6 would imply something like   `sextidecimal'.  The `sexa-' prefix is Latin but incorrect in this   context, and `hexa-' is Greek.  The word `octal' is similarly   incorrect; a correct form would be `octaval'...
hexadecimal4 is  with binary).  If anyone ever implements a   base-3 computer, computer scientists will be faced with the   unprecedented dilemma of a choice between two *correct* forms;   both `ternary' and `trinary' have a claim to this throne. 
hexit is  /hek'sit/ n. A hexadecimal digit (0--9, and A--F or a--f).   Used by people who claim that there are only *ten* digits,   dammit; sixteen-fingered human beings are rather rare, despite what   some keyboard designs might seem to imply (see {...
hidden flag is  [scientific computation] n. An extra option added to a   routine without changing the calling sequence.  For example,   instead of adding an explicit input variable to instruct a routine   to give extra diagnostic output, the programm...
hidden flag2 is  meaningless feature of the existing inputs,   such as a negative mass.  Liberal use of hidden flags can make a   program very hard to debug and understand. 
high bit is  [from `high-order bit'] n. 1. The most significant   bit in a byte.  2. By extension, the most significant part of   something other than a data byte "Spare me the whole {saga},   just give me the high bit."  See also {meta bit}, {hobbit...
high bit2 is  mainstream slang   `bottom line'. 
high moby is  /hi' mohb'ee/ n. The high half of a 512K {PDP-10}'s   physical address space; the other half was of course the low moby.  This   usage has been generalized in a way that has outlasted the   {PDP-10}; for example, at the 1990 Washington ...
high moby2 is  (Disclave), when a miscommunication resulted in two   separate wakes being held in commemoration of the shutdown of MIT's   last {{ITS}} machines, the one on the upper floor was dubbed the   `high moby' and the other the `low moby'.  A...
highly is  [scientific computation] adv. The preferred modifier for   overstating an understatement.  As in `highly nonoptimal', the   worst possible way to do something; `highly nontrivial', either   impossible or requiring a major research project;...
highly2 is  unpredictable; `highly   nontechnical', drivel written for {luser}s, oversimplified to the   point of being misleading or incorrect (compare {drool-proof   paper}).  In other computing cultures, postfixing of {in the   extreme} might be p...
hirsute is  adj. Occasionally used humorously as a synonym for {hairy}.
HLL is  /H-L-L/ n. [High-Level Language (as opposed to assembler)]   Found primarily in email and news rather than speech.  Rarely, the   variants `VHLL' and `MLL' are found.  VHLL stands for `Very-High-Level   Language' and is used to describe a {bo...
HLL2 is  speaker happens to like; Prolog and Backus's FP   are often called VHLLs.  `MLL' stands for `Medium-Level Language' and is   sometimes used half-jokingly to describe {C}, alluding to its   `structured-assembler' image.  See also {languages o...
hobbit is  n. 1. The High Order Bit of a byte; same as the {meta   bit} or {high bit}.  2. The non-ITS name of vad@ai.mit.edu   (*Hobbit*), master of lasers.
hog is  n.,vt. 1. Favored term to describe programs or hardware that   seem to eat far more than their share of a system's resources,   esp. those which noticeably degrade interactive response.   *Not* used of programs that are simply extremely large...
hog2 is  slow themselves (see {pig,   run like a}).  More often than not encountered in qualified forms,   e.g., `memory hog', `core hog', `hog the processor', `hog   the disk'.  "A controller that never gives up the I/O bus   gets killed after the b...
hog3 is  *people* who use more than their fair share of resources   (particularly disk, where it seems that 10% of the people use 90%   of the disk, no matter how big the disk is or how many people use   it).  Of course, once disk hogs fill up one fi...
hog4 is  one to infect, claiming to the   sysadmin that they have an important new project to complete. 
holy wars is  [from {USENET}, but may predate it] n. {flame   war}s over {religious issues}.  The paper by Danny Cohen that   popularized the terms {big-endian} and {little-endian} in   connection with the LSB-first/MSB-first controversy was entitled...
holy wars2 is  perennial Holy   Wars have included {EMACS} vs. {vi}, my personal computer vs.   everyone else's personal computer, {{ITS}} vs. {{UNIX}},   {{UNIX}} vs. {VMS}, {BSD} UNIX vs. {USG UNIX}, {C} vs.   {{Pascal}}, {C} vs. {LISP}, etc., ad n...
holy wars3 is  distinguishes {holy wars} from normal   technical disputes is that in a holy wars most of the participants   spend their time trying to pass off personal value choices and   cultural attachments as objective technical evaluations. See ...
home box is  n. A hacker's personal machine, especially one he or she   owns.  "Yeah?  Well, *my* home box runs a full 4.2 BSD, so   there!"
hook is  n. A software or hardware feature included in order to   simplify later additions or changes by a user.  For example,   a simple program that prints numbers might always print them in   base 10, but a more flexible version would let a variab...
hook2 is  variable to 5 would make   the program print numbers in base 5.  The variable is a simple   hook.  An even more flexible program might examine the variable   and treat a value of 16 or less as the base to use, but treat any   other number a...
hook3 is  printing   a number.  This is a {hairy} but powerful hook; one can then write a   routine to print numbers as Roman numerals, say, or as Hebrew   characters, and plug it into the program through the hook.  Often   the difference between a g...
hook4 is  latter has useful hooks in judiciously chosen places.  Both may do   the original job about equally well, but the one with the hooks is   much more flexible for future expansion of capabilities ({EMACS},   for example, is *all* hooks).  The...
hook5 is  formal and less hackish. 
hop is  n. One file transmission in a series required to get a file   from point A to point B on a store-and-forward network.  On such   networks (including {UUCPNET} and {FidoNet}), the important   inter-machine metric is the number of hops in the s...
hop2 is  geographical separation.  See   {bang path}. 
hose is  1. vt. To make non-functional or greatly degraded in   performance.  "That big ray-tracing program really hoses the   system."  See {hosed}.  2. n. A narrow channel through which   data flows under pressure.  Generally denotes data paths tha...
hose2 is  Cabling, especially   thick Ethernet cable.  This is sometimes called `bit hose' or   `hosery' (play on `hosiery') or `etherhose'.  See also   {washing machine}. 
hosed is  adj. Same as {down}.  Used primarily by UNIX hackers.   Humorous also implies a condition thought to be relatively easy to   reverse.  Probably derived from the Canadian slang `hoser'   popularized by the Bob and Doug Mackenzie skits on SCT...
hosed2 is  people in the mainstream sense   of `in an extremely unfortunate situation'.   Once upon a time, a Cray that had been experiencing periodic   difficulties crashed, and it was announced to have been hosed.   It was discovered that the crash...
hosed3 is  hoses.  The problem was corrected, and users were then   assured that everything was OK because the system had been rehosed.   See also {dehose}. 
hot spot is  n. 1. [primarily used by C/UNIX programmers, but   spreading] It is received wisdom that in most programs, less than   10% of the code eats 90% of the execution time; if one were to   graph instruction visits versus code addresses, one w...
hot spot2 is  a lot of low-level noise.  Such spikes   are called `hot spots' and are good candidates for heavy   optimization or {hand-hacking}.  The term is especially used of   tight loops and recursions in the code's central algorithm, as   oppos...
hot spot3 is  infrequent I/O   operations.  See {tune}, {bum}, {hand-hacking}.  2. The   active location of a cursor on a bit-map display.  "Put the   mouse's hot spot on the `ON' widget and click the left button."   3. In a massively parallel comput...
hot spot4 is  all 10,000 processors are trying to read or   write at once (perhaps because they are all doing a {busy-wait}   on the same lock). 
house wizard is  [prob. from ad-agency lingo, `house freak'] n. A   hacker occupying a technical-specialist, R&D, or systems position   at a commercial shop.  A really effective house wizard can have   influence out of all proportion to his/her osten...

factpacks/jargon-split.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

juggling eggs is  vi. Keeping a lot of {state} in your head while   modifying a program.  "Don't bother me now, I'm juggling eggs",   means that an interrupt is likely to result in the program's being   scrambled.  In the classic first-contact SF nov...
juggling eggs2 is  and Jerry Pournelle, an alien describes a   very difficult task by saying "We juggle priceless eggs in   variable gravity."  That is a very hackish use of language.  See   also {hack mode}. 
jump off into never-never land is  [from J. M. Barrie's `Peter   Pan'] v. Same as {branch to Fishkill}, but more common in   technical cultures associated with non-IBM computers that use the   term `jump' rather than `branch'.  Compare {hyperspace}.*...
jump off into never-never land2 is  used both as a   spoken word and a written suffix (like {meg} and {gig} for   megabyte and gigabyte).  See {{quantifiers}}. 
K&R is  [Kernighan and Ritchie] n. Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie's   book `The C Programming Language', esp. the classic and influential   first edition (Prentice-Hall 1978; ISBN 0-113-110163-3).  Syn.   {White Book}, {Old Testament}.  See also ...
kahuna is  /k*-hoo'nuh/ [IBM from the Hawaiian title for a shaman] n.   Synonym for {wizard}, {guru}.
kamikaze packet is  n. The `official' jargon for what is more commonly   called a {Christmas tree packet}. RFC-1025, `TCP and IP Bake Off'   says     10 points for correctly being able to process a "Kamikaze"     packet (AKA nastygram, christmas tree...
kamikaze packet2 is  is, correctly handle a segment with the     maximum combination of features at once (e.g., a SYN URG PUSH     FIN segment with options and data).   See also {Chernobyl packet}. 
kangaroo code is  n. Syn. {spaghetti code}.
ken is  /ken/ n. 1. [UNIX] Ken Thompson, principal inventor of   UNIX.  In the early days he used to hand-cut distribution tapes,   often with a note that read "Love, ken".  Old-timers still use   his first name (sometimes uncapitalized, because it's...
ken2 is  third-person reference; it is widely   understood (on USENET, in particular) that without a last name   `Ken' refers only to Ken Thompson.  Similarly, Dennis without last   name means Dennis Ritchie (and he is often known as dmr).  See   als...
ken3 is  This was   originated by the Software Support group at Symbolics because the   two greatest flamers in the user community were both named Ken. 
kgbvax is  /K-G-B'vaks/ n. See {kremvax}.
kill file is  [USENET] n. (alt. `KILL file') Per-user file(s) used   by some {USENET} reading programs (originally Larry Wall's   `rn(1)') to discard summarily (without presenting for reading)   articles matching some particularly uninteresting (or u...
kill file2 is  other header lines.  Thus to add   a person (or subject) to one's kill file is to arrange for that   person to be ignored by one's newsreader in future.  By extension,   it may be used for a decision to ignore the person or subject in ...
killer micro is  [popularized by Eugene Brooks] n. A   microprocessor-based machine that infringes on mini, mainframe, or   supercomputer performance turf.  Often heard in "No one will   survive the attack of the killer micros!", the battle cry of th...
killer micro2 is  architectures.   The popularity of the phrase `attack of the killer micros' is   doubtless reinforced by the movie title "Attack Of The Killer   Tomatoes" (one of the {canonical} examples of   so-bad-it's-wonderful among hackers).  ...
killer micro3 is  micros have gone on the offensive not just   individually (in workstations) but in hordes (within massively   parallel computers). 
killer poke is  n. A recipe for inducing hardware damage on a machine   via insertion of invalid values (see {poke}) in a memory-mapped   control register; used esp. of various fairly well-known tricks   on {bitty box}es without hardware memory manag...
killer poke2 is  that can overload and trash analog   electronics in the monitor.  See also {HCF}. 
kilo- is  [SI] pref. See {{quantifiers}}.
KIPS is  /kips/ [acronym, by analogy with {MIPS} using {K}] n.   Thousands (*not* 1024s) of Instructions Per Second.  Usage   rare.
KISS Principle is  /kis' prin'si-pl/ n. "Keep It Simple, Stupid".   A maxim often invoked when discussing design to fend off   {creeping featurism} and control development complexity.   Possibly related to the {marketroid} maxim on sales   presentati...
kit is  [USENET] n. A source software distribution that has been   packaged in such a way that it can (theoretically) be unpacked and   installed according to a series of steps using only standard UNIX   tools, and entirely documented by some reasona...
kit2 is  {README file}.  The more general   term {distribution} may imply that special tools or more   stringent conditions on the host environment are required. 
klone is  /klohn/ n. See {clone}, sense 4.
kludge is  /kluhj/ n. Common (but incorrect) variant of {kluge}, q.v.
kluge is  /klooj/ [from the German `klug', clever] 1. n.  A Rube   Goldberg (or Heath Robinson) device, whether in hardware or   software.  (A long-ago `Datamation' article by Jackson Granholme   said "An ill-assorted collection of poorly matching pa...
kluge2 is  clever programming trick   intended to solve a particular nasty case in an expedient, if not   clear, manner.  Often used to repair bugs.  Often involves   {ad-hockery} and verges on being a {crock}.  In fact, the   TMRC Dictionary defined...
kluge3 is  Something that works for the wrong reason.  4. vt. To insert a   kluge into a program.  "I've kluged this routine to get around   that weird bug, but there's probably a better way."  5. [WPI] n. A   feature that is implemented in a {rude} ...
kluge4 is  encountered in the variant spelling   `kludge'.  Reports from {old fart}s are consistent that `kluge'   was the original spelling, and that `kludge' arose by mutation   sometime in the early 1970s.  Some people who encountered the word   f...
kluge5 is  reasonable but incorrect   conclusion that the word should be pronounced /kluhj/ (rhyming   with `sludge').  The result of this tangled history is a mess; in   1991, many (perhaps even most) hackers pronounce the word correctly   as /klooj...
kluge6 is  the   pronunciation drift of {mung}).  Some observers consider this   appropriate in view of its meaning. 
kluge around is  vt. To avoid a bug or difficult condition by   inserting a {kluge}.  Compare {workaround}.
kluge up is  vt. To lash together a quick hack to perform a task; this   is milder than {cruft together} and has some of the connotations   of {hack up} (note, however, that the construction `kluge on'   corresponding to {hack on} is never used).  "I...
kluge up2 is  buffer contents to a safe place." 
Knights of the Lambda Calculus is  n. A semi-mythical organization of   wizardly LISP and Scheme hackers.  The name refers to a   mathematical formalism invented by Alonzo Church, with which LISP is   intimately connected.  There is no enrollment lis...
Knights of the Lambda Calculus2 is  unclear, but one well-known LISPer has been known   to give out buttons and, in general, the *members* know who   they are.... 
Knuth is  [Donald E. Knuth's `The Art of Computer Programming']   n. Mythically, the reference that answers all questions about data   structures or algorithms.  A safe answer when you do not know   "I think you can find that in Knuth."  Contrast {li...
kremvax is  /krem-vaks/ [from the then large number of {USENET}   {VAXen} with names of the form foovax] n. Originally, a   fictitious USENET site at the Kremlin, announced on April 1, 1984   in a posting ostensibly originated there by Soviet leader ...
kremvax2 is  actually forged by Piet   Beertema as an April Fool's joke.  Other fictitious sites mentioned in the   hoax were moskvax and {kgbvax}, which now seems to be the one by   which it is remembered.  This was probably the funniest of the many...
kremvax3 is  (which has negligible   security against them), because the notion that USENET might ever   penetrate the Iron Curtain seemed so totally absurd at the time.   In fact, it was only six years later that the first genuine site in   Moscow, ...
kremvax4 is  convincing that the postings from it weren't just another prank.   Vadim Antonov (avg@hq.demos.su), the major poster from there   up to at least the end of 1990, was quite aware of all this,   referred to it frequently in his own posting...
kremvax5 is  readers by blandly asserting that he   *was* a hoax!   Eventually he even arranged to have the domain's gateway site   *named* kremvax, thus neatly turning fiction into truth   and demonstrating that the hackish sense of humor transcends...
kremvax6 is  contributed the   Russian-language material for this lexicon. --- ESR]*lace card n. obs. A {{punched card}} with all holes punched (also   called a `whoopee card').  Card readers jammed when they got to   one of these, as the resulting c...
kremvax7 is  avoid buckling inside the mechanism.  Card punches   could also jam trying to produce these things owing to power-supply   problems.  When some practical joker fed a lace card through the   reader, you needed to clear the jam with a `car...
language lawyer is  n. A person, usually an experienced or senior   software engineer, who is intimately familiar with many or most of   the numerous restrictions and features (both useful and esoteric)   applicable to one or more computer programmin...
language lawyer2 is  distinguished by the ability to show you the   five sentences scattered through a 200-plus-page manual that   together imply the answer to your question "if only you had   thought to look there".  Compare {wizard}, {legal},   {le...
languages of choice is  n. {C} and {LISP}.  Nearly every hacker   knows one of these, and most good ones are fluent in both.  Smalltalk   and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities.   There is also a rapidly dwindling category o...
languages of choice2 is  assembler, as their language of choice.  They   often prefer to be known as {real programmer}s, and other hackers   consider them a bit odd (see "The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer"   in appendix A).  Assembler is generally ...
languages of choice3 is  appropriate for anything but {HLL} implementation,   {glue}, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems   programs.  FORTRAN occupies a shrinking niche in scientific   programming.   Most hackers tend to fr...
languages of choice4 is  which don't give them the near-total freedom considered   necessary for hacking (see {bondage-and-discipline language}), and   to regard everything that's even remotely connected with {COBOL}   or other traditional {card wall...
larval stage is  n. Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration   on coding apparently passed through by all fledgling hackers.   Common symptoms include the perpetration of more than one 36-hour   {hacking run} in a given week; neglect of all o...
larval stage2 is  food, sleep, and personal hygiene; and   a chronic case of advanced bleary-eye.  Can last from 6 months to 2   years, the apparent median being around 18 months.  A few so   afflicted never resume a more `normal' life, but the ordea...
larval stage3 is  wizardly (as opposed to   merely competent) programmers.  See also {wannabee}.  A less   protracted and intense version of larval stage (typically lasting   about a month) may recur when one is learning a new {OS} or   programming l...
lase is  /layz/ vt. To print a given document via a laser printer.   "OK, let's lase that sucker and see if all those graphics-macro   calls did the right things."
laser chicken is  n. Kung Pao Chicken, a standard Chinese dish   containing chicken, peanuts, and hot red peppers in a spicy   pepper-oil sauce.  Many hackers call it `laser chicken' for   two reasons It can {zap} you just like a laser, and the   sau...
laser chicken2 is  beams.   In a variation on this theme, it is reported that some Australian   hackers have redesignated the common dish `lemon chicken' as   `Chernobyl Chicken'.  The name is derived from the color of the   sauce, which is considere...
laser chicken3 is  mythically, do some of the inhabitants of Chernobyl). 
laundromat is  n. Syn. {disk farm}; see {washing machine}.
LDB is  /l*'d*b/ [from the PDP-10 instruction set] vt. To extract   from the middle.  "LDB me a slice of cake, please." This usage   has been kept alive by Common LISP's function of the same name.   Considered silly.  See also {DPB}.
leaf site is  n. A machine that merely originates and reads USENET   news or mail, and does not relay any third-party traffic.  Often   uttered in a critical tone; when the ratio of leaf sites to   backbone, rib, and other relay sites gets too high, ...
leaf site2 is  Compare {backbone site}, {rib   site}. 
leak is  n. With qualifier, one of a class of resource-management bugs   that occur when resources are not freed properly after operations   on them are finished, so they effectively disappear (leak out).   This leads to eventual exhaustion as new al...
leak2 is  and {fd leak} have their own entries; one   might also refer, to, say, a `window handle leak' in a window   system. 
leaky heap is  [Cambridge] n. An {arena} with a {memory leak}.
legal is  adj. Loosely used to mean `in accordance with all the   relevant rules', esp. in connection with some set of constraints   defined by software.  "The older =+ alternate for += is no longer   legal syntax in ANSI C."  "This parser processes ...
legal2 is  the trailing linefeed."  Hackers   often model their work as a sort of game played with the   environment in which the objective is to maneuver through the   thicket of `natural laws' to achieve a desired objective.  Their   use of `legal'...
legal3 is  as by   the more conventional one having to do with courts and lawyers.   Compare {language lawyer}, {legalese}. 
legalese is  n. Dense, pedantic verbiage in a language description,   product specification, or interface standard; text that seems   designed to obfuscate and requires a {language lawyer} to   {parse} it.  Though hackers are not afraid of high infor...
legalese2 is  (indeed, they rather enjoy   both), they share a deep and abiding loathing for legalese; they   associate it with deception, {suit}s, and situations in which   hackers generally get the short end of the stick. 
LER is  /L-E-R/ [TMRC, from `Light-Emitting Diode] n. A   light-emitting resistor (that is, one in the process of burning   up).  Ohm's law was broken.  See {SED}.
LERP is  /lerp/ vi.,n. Quasi-acronym for Linear Interpolation, used as a   verb or noun for the operation.  E.g., Bresenham's algorithm lerps   incrementally between the two endpoints of the line.
let the smoke out is  v. To fry hardware (see {fried}).  See   {magic smoke} for the mythology behind this.
letterbomb is  n. A piece of {email} containing {live data}   intended to do nefarious things to the recipient's machine or   terminal.  It is possible, for example, to send letterbombs that   will lock up some specific kinds of terminals when they a...
letterbomb2 is  {cycle power} to unwedge them.   Under UNIX, a letterbomb can also try to get part of its contents   interpreted as a shell command to the mailer.  The results of this   could range from silly to tragic.  See also {Trojan horse};   co...
lexer is  /lek'sr/ n. Common hacker shorthand for `lexical   analyzer', the input-tokenizing stage in the parser for a language   (the part that breaks it into word-like pieces).  "Some C lexers   get confused by the old-style compound ops like `=-'....
lexiphage is  /lek'si-fayj`/ n. A notorious word {chomper} on   ITS.  See {bagbiter}.
life is  n. 1. A cellular-automata game invented by John Horton   Conway and first introduced publicly by Martin Gardner (`Scientific   American', October 1970).  Many hackers pass through a stage of   fascination with it, and hackers at various plac...
life2 is  analysis of this game (most notably   Bill Gosper at MIT, who even implemented life in {TECO}!; see   {Gosperism}).  When a hacker mentions `life', he is much more   likely to mean this game than the magazine, the breakfast cereal,   or the...
life3 is  {USENET}.   As in {Get a life!} 
light pipe is  n. Fiber optic cable.  Oppose {copper}.
like kicking dead whales down the beach is  adj. Describes a slow,   difficult, and disgusting process.  First popularized by a famous   quote about the difficulty of getting work done under one of IBM's   mainframe OSes.  "Well, you *could* write a ...
like kicking dead whales down the beach2 is  kicking dead whales down the beach."   See also {fear and loathing} 
like nailing jelly to a tree is  adj. Used to describe a task thought   to be impossible, esp. one in which the difficulty arises from   poor specification or inherent slipperiness in the problem domain.   "Trying to display the `prettiest' arrangeme...
like nailing jelly to a tree2 is  graph is like nailing jelly to a tree,   because nobody's sure what `prettiest' means algorithmically." 
line eater, the is  [USENET] n. 1. A bug in some now-obsolete   versions of the netnews software that used to eat up to BUFSIZ   bytes of the article text.  The bug was triggered by having the   text of the article start with a space or tab.  This bu...
line eater, the2 is  creature called the `line   eater', and postings often included a dummy line of `line eater   food'.  Ironically, line eater `food' not beginning with a space or   tab wasn't actually eaten, since the bug was avoided; but if ther...
line eater, the3 is  line eater would eat   the food *and* the beginning of the text it was supposed to be   protecting.  The practice of `sacrificing to the line eater'   continued for some time after the bug had been {nailed to the   wall}, and is ...
line eater, the4 is  is   still (in mid-1991) occasionally reported to be lurking in some   mail-to-netnews gateways.  2. See {NSA line eater}. 
line starve is  [MIT] 1. vi. To feed paper through a printer the wrong   way by one line (most printers can't do this).  On a display   terminal, to move the cursor up to the previous line of the screen.   "To print `X squared', you just output `X', ...
line starve2 is  starve causes the `2' to appear on the   line above the `X', and the line feed gets back to the original   line.)  2. n. A character (or character sequence) that causes a   terminal to perform this action.  Unlike `line feed', `line ...
line starve3 is  terminology.  Even among hackers   it is considered a bit silly.  3. [proposed] A sequence such as \c   (used in System V echo, as well as nroff/troff) that suppresses a   {newline} or other character(s) that would normally be emitte...
link farm is  [UNIX] n. A directory tree that contains many links to   files in a master directory tree of files.  Link farms save space   when (for example) one is maintaining several nearly identical   copies of the same source tree, e.g., when the...
link farm2 is  object files.  "Let's freeze the source and   then rebuild the FROBOZZ-3 and FROBOZZ-4 link farms."  Link farms   may also be used to get around restrictions on the number of   `-I' (include-file directory) arguments on older   C prepr...
link-dead is  [MUD] adj. Said of a {MUD} character who has frozen in   place because of a dropped Internet connection.
lint is  [from UNIX's `lint(1)', named perhaps for the bits of   fluff it picks from programs] 1. vt. To examine a program closely   for style, language usage, and portability problems, esp. if   in C, esp. if via use of automated analysis tools, mos...
lint2 is  used.  This term used to be   restricted to use of `lint(1)' itself, but (judging by   references on USENET) it has become a shorthand for {desk check}   at some non-UNIX shops, even in languages other than C.  Also as   v.  {delint}.  2. n...
lint3 is  draft has too much lint". 
lion food is  [IBM] n. Middle management or HQ staff (by extension,   administrative drones in general).  From an old joke about two   lions who, escaping from the zoo, split up to increase their   chances but agreed to meet after 2 months.  When the...
lion food2 is  overweight.  The thin one says   "How did you manage?  I ate a human just once and they turned out   a small army to chase me --- guns, nets, it was terrible.  Since   then I've been reduced to eating mice, insects, even grass."  The  ...
lion food3 is  office and ate a   manager a day.  And nobody even noticed!"Lions Book n. `Source Code and Commentary on UNIX level 6',   by John Lions.  The two parts of this book contained (1) the entire   source listing of the UNIX Version 6 kernel...
lion food4 is  discussing the algorithms.  These were circulated   internally at the University of New South Wales beginning 1976--77,   and were for years after the *only* detailed kernel   documentation available to anyone outside Bell Labs.  Becau...
lion food5 is  secret status on the   kernel, the Lions book was never formally published and was only   supposed to be distributed to affiliates of source licensees.  In   spite of this, it soon spread by samizdat to a good many of the   early UNIX ...
LISP is  [from `LISt Processing language', but mythically from   `Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses'] n. The name of AI's   mother tongue, a language based on the ideas of (a) variable-length   lists and trees as fundamental data types, and ...
LISP2 is  vice-versa.  Invented by John   McCarthy at MIT in the late 1950s, it is actually older than any   other {HLL} still in use except FORTRAN.  Accordingly, it has   undergone considerable adaptive radiation over the years; modern   variants a...
LISP3 is  LISP 1.5.   The dominant HLL among hackers until the early 1980s, LISP now   shares the throne with {C}.  See {languages of choice}.   All LISP functions and programs are expressions that return   values; this, together with the high memory...
LISP4 is  Perlis's famous quip (itself a take on an Oscar   Wilde quote) that "LISP programmers know the value of everything   and the cost of nothing".   One significant application for LISP has been as a proof by example   that most newer languages...
LISP5 is  unnecessary {crock}s.  When the {Right Thing} has already   been done once, there is no justification for {bogosity} in newer   languages. 
literature, the is  n. Computer-science journals and other   publications, vaguely gestured at to answer a question that the   speaker believes is {trivial}.  Thus, one might answer an   annoying question by saying "It's in the literature."  Oppose  ...
little-endian is  adj. Describes a computer architecture in which,   within a given 16- or 32-bit word, bytes at lower addresses have   lower significance (the word is stored `little-end-first').  The   PDP-11 and VAX families of computers and Intel ...
little-endian2 is  and networking hardware are little-endian.   See {big-endian}, {middle-endian}, {NUXI problem}.  The term   is sometimes used to describe the ordering of units other than   bytes; most often these are bits within a byte. 
live data is  n. 1. Data that is written to be interpreted and takes   over program flow when triggered by some un-obvious operation, such   as viewing it.  One use of such hacks is to break security.  For   example, some smart terminals have command...
live data2 is  program keys; this can be used to write live   data that, when listed to the terminal, infects it with a   security-breaking {virus} that is triggered the next time a   hapless user strikes that key.  For another, there are some   well...
live data3 is  send   arbitrary commands back to the machine when they are simply viewed.   2. In C code, data that includes pointers to function {hook}s   (executable code).  3. An object, such as a {trampoline}, that is   constructed on the fly by ...
live data4 is  code. 4. Actual real-world data, as opposed to `test data'.   For example, "I think I have the record deletion module   finished."  "Have you tried it out on live data?"  It usually   carries the connotation that live data is more frag...
live data5 is  things will happen.  So a possible alternate   response to the above claim might be "Well, make sure it works   perfectly before we throw live data at it."  The implication here   is that record deletion is something pretty significant...
live data6 is  running amok on live data would   cause great harm and probably require restoring from backups. 
Live Free Or Die! is  imp. 1. The state motto of New Hampshire, which   appears on that state's automobile license plates.  2. A slogan   associated with UNIX in the romantic days when UNIX aficionados saw   themselves as a tiny, beleaguered undergro...
Live Free Or Die!2 is  industry.  The "free" referred specifically to   freedom from the {fascist} design philosophies and crufty   misfeatures common on commercial operating systems.  Armando   Stettner, one of the early UNIX developers, used to giv...
Live Free Or Die!3 is  under a large UNIX, all in New   Hampshire colors of green and white.  These are now valued   collector's items. 

factpacks/jargon-split.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

pathological2 is  are very unlikely to occur in practice.   2. When used of test input, implies that it was purposefully   engineered as a worst case.  The implication in both senses is that   the data is spectacularly ill-conditioned or that someone...
pathological3 is  algorithm in order to come up with   such a crazy example.  3. Also said of an unlikely collection of   circumstances.  "If the network is down and comes up halfway   through the execution of that command by root, the system may   j...
pathological4 is  case."  Often used   to dismiss the case from discussion, with the implication that the   consequences are acceptable since that they will happen so   infrequently (if at all) that there is no justification for   going to extra trou...
payware is  /pay'weir/ n. Commercial software.  Oppose {shareware}   or {freeware}.
PBD is  /P-B-D/ [abbrev. of `Programmer Brain Damage'] n.  Applied   to bug reports revealing places where the program was obviously   broken by an incompetent or short-sighted programmer.  Compare   {UBD}; see also {brain-damaged}.
PC-ism is  /P-C-izm/ n. A piece of code or coding technique that   takes advantage of the unprotected single-tasking environment in   IBM PCs and the like, e.g., by busy-waiting on a hardware register,   direct diddling of screen memory, or using har...
PC-ism2 is  {vaxism}, {unixism}.  Also,   `PC-ware' n., a program full of PC-isms on a machine with a more   capable operating system.  Pejorative. 
PD is  /P-D/ adj. Common abbreviation for `public domain', applied   to software distributed over {USENET} and from Internet archive   sites.  Much of this software is not in fact public domain in   the legal sense but travels under various copyright...
PD2 is  anyone who can {snarf} a copy.  See   {copyleft}. 
pdl is  /pid'l/ or /puhd'l/ [acronym for `Push Down List'] 1. In   ITS days, the preferred MITism for {stack}.  2. Dave Lebling, one   of the co-authors of {Zork}; (his {network address} on the ITS   machines was at one time pdl@dms).  3. `Program De...
pdl2 is  formal and profoundly useless   pseudo-languages in which {management} forces one to design   programs.  {Management} often expects it to be maintained in   parallel with the code.  See also {{flowchart}}.  4. To design   using a program des...
pdl3 is  eyes won't focus beyond 2 feet." 
PDP-10 is  [Programmed Data Processor model 10] n. The machine that   made timesharing real.  It looms large in hacker folklore because   of its adoption in the mid-1970s by many university computing   facilities and research labs, including the MIT ...
PDP-102 is  the instruction set (most notably the   bit-field instructions) are still considered unsurpassed.  The 10   was eventually eclipsed by the VAX machines (descendants of the   PDP-11) when DEC recognized that the 10 and VAX product lines we...
PDP-103 is  concentrate its software   development effort on the more profitable VAX.  The machine was   finally dropped from DEC's line in 1983, following the failure of   the Jupiter Project at DEC to build a viable new model. (Some   attempts by o...
PDP-104 is  nothing; see   {Foonly}) This event spelled the doom of {{ITS}} and the   technical cultures that had spawned the original Jargon File, but   by mid-1991 it had become something of a badge of honorable   old-timerhood among hackers to hav...
PDP-105 is  {{TOPS-10}}, {{ITS}}, {AOS}, {BLT}, {DDT}, {DPB},   {EXCH}, {HAKMEM}, {JFCL}, {LDB}, {pop}, {push},   appendix A. 
PDP-20 is  n. The most famous computer that never was.  {PDP-10}   computers running the {{TOPS-10}} operating system were labeled   `DECsystem-10' as a way of differentiating them from the PDP-11.   Later on, those systems running {TOPS-20} were lab...
PDP-202 is  being the result of a lawsuit   brought against DEC by Singer, which once made a computer called   `system-10'), but contrary to popular lore there was never a   `PDP-20'; the only difference between a 10 and a 20 was the   operating syst...
PDP-203 is  all)   machines sold to run TOPS-10 were painted `Basil Blue', whereas   most TOPS-20 machines were painted `Chinese Red' (often mistakenly   called orange). 
peek is  n.,vt. (and {poke}) The commands in most microcomputer   BASICs for directly accessing memory contents at an absolute   address; often extended to mean the corresponding constructs in any   {HLL} (peek reads memory, poke modifies it).  Much ...
peek2 is  {peek}ing around memory, more   or less at random, to find the location where the system keeps   interesting stuff.  Long (and variably accurate) lists of such   addresses for various computers circulate (see {{interrupt list,   the}}).  Th...
peek3 is  highly   useful, mildly amusing, useless but neat, or (most likely) total   {lossage} (see {killer poke}). 
pencil and paper is  n. An archaic information storage and   transmission device that works by depositing smears of graphite on   bleached wood pulp.  More recent developments in paper-based   technology include improved `write-once' update devices w...
pencil and paper2 is  balls to deposit colored   pigment.  All these devices require an operator skilled at   so-called `handwriting' technique.  These technologies are   ubiquitous outside hackerdom, but nearly forgotten inside it.  Most   hackers h...
pencil and paper3 is  years of   keyboarding tend to have encouraged it to degrade further.  Perhaps   for this reason, hackers deprecate pencil-and-paper technology and   often resist using it in any but the most trivial contexts.  See   also append...
peon is  n. A person with no special ({root} or {wheel})   privileges on a computer system.  "I can't create an account on   *foovax* for you; I'm only a peon there."
percent-S is  /per-sent' es'/ [From the code in C's `printf(3)'   library function used to insert an arbitrary string argument] n. An   unspecified person or object.  "I was just talking to some   percent-s in administration."  Compare {random}.
perf is  /perf/ n. See {chad} (sense 1).  The term `perfory'   /per'f*-ree/ is also heard.
perfect programmer syndrome is  n. Arrogance; the egotistical   conviction that one is above normal human error.  Most frequently   found among programmers of some native ability but relatively   little experience (especially new graduates; their per...
perfect programmer syndrome2 is  excellent performance at solving {toy   problem}s).  "Of course my program is correct, there is no need to   test it."  "Yes, I can see there may be a problem here, but   *I'll* never type `rm -r /' while in {root}." 
Perl is  /perl/ [Practical Extraction and Report Language, a.k.a   Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister] n. An interpreted language   developed by Larry Wall (lwall@jpl.nasa.gov, author of   `patch(1)' and `rn(1)') and distributed over USENET.   Su...
Perl2 is  hairier (see   {awk}).  UNIX sysadmins, who are almost always incorrigible   hackers, increasingly consider it one of the {languages of   choice}.  Perl has been described, in a parody of a famous remark   about `lex(1)', as the "Swiss-Army...
pessimal is  /pes'im-l/ [Latin-based antonym for `optimal'] adj.   Maximally bad.  "This is a pessimal situation."  Also `pessimize'   vt. To make as bad as possible.  These words are the obvious   Latin-based antonyms for `optimal' and `optimize', b...
pessimal2 is  most English dictionaries, although   `pessimize' is listed in the OED. 
pessimizing compiler is  /pes'*-miz`ing k*m-pil'r/ [antonym of   `optimizing compiler'] n. A compiler that produces object code that   is worse than the straightforward or obvious hand translation.  The   implication is that the compiler is actually ...
pessimizing compiler2 is  excessive cleverness is doing the opposite.  A   few pessimizing compilers have been written on purpose, however, as   pranks or burlesques. 
peta- is  /pe't*/ [SI] pref. See {{quantifiers}}.
PETSCII is  /pet'skee/ [abbreviation of PET ASCII] n. The variation   (many would say perversion) of the {{ASCII}} character set used by   the Commodore Business Machines PET series of personal computers   and the later Commodore C64, C16, and C128 m...
PETSCII2 is  and up-arrow (as in old-style ASCII) instead of   underscore and caret, placed the unshifted alphabet at positions   65--90, put the shifted alphabet at positions 193--218, and added   graphics characters. 
phase is  1. n. The phase of one's waking-sleeping schedule with   respect to the standard 24-hour cycle.  This is a useful concept   among people who often work at night and/or according to no fixed   schedule.  It is not uncommon to change one's ph...
phase2 is  regular basis.  "What's your phase?"  "I've   been getting in about 8 P.M. lately, but I'm going to {wrap   around} to the day schedule by Friday."  A person who is roughly   12 hours out of phase is sometimes said to be in `night mode'.  ...
phase3 is  frequently) used, meaning   you're working 9 to 5 (or, more likely, 10 to 6).)  The act of   altering one's cycle is called `changing phase'; `phase   shifting' has also been recently reported from Caltech.   2. `change phase the hard way'...
phase4 is  to get into a different phase.  3. `change phase   the easy way' To stay asleep, etc.  However, some claim that   either staying awake longer or sleeping longer is easy, and that it   is *shortening* your day or night that's hard (see {wra...
phase5 is  travelers who cross many   time-zone boundaries may be attributed to two distinct causes the   strain of travel per se, and the strain of changing phase.  Hackers   who suddenly find that they must change phase drastically in a   short per...
phase6 is  experience   something very like jet lag without traveling. 
phase of the moon is  n. Used humorously as a random parameter on which   something is said to depend.  Sometimes implies unreliability of   whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on   conditions nobody has been able to dete...
phase of the moon2 is  channel open in mumble mode, having the foo   switch set, and on the phase of the moon."   True story Once upon a time there was a bug that really did depend   on the phase of the moon.  There is a little subroutine that had   ...
phase of the moon3 is  MIT to calculate an   approximation to the moon's true phase.  GLS incorporated this   routine into a LISP program that, when it wrote out a file, would   print a timestamp line almost 80 characters long.  Very   occasionally t...
phase of the moon4 is  and   would overflow onto the next line, and when the file was later read   back in the program would {barf}.  The length of the first line   depended on both the precise date and time and the length of the   phase specificatio...
phase of the moon5 is  bug   literally depended on the phase of the moon!   The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included   an example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but   the typesetter `corrected' it.  Th...
phreaking is  [from `phone phreak'] n. 1. The art and science of   cracking the phone network (so as, for example, to make free   long-distance calls).  2. By extension, security-cracking in any   other context (especially, but not exclusively, on co...
phreaking2 is  phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among   hackers; there was a gentleman's agreement that phreaking as an   intellectual game and a form of exploration was OK, but serious   theft of services was taboo.  There was significant c...
phreaking3 is  hard-core phone phreaks who   ran semi-underground networks of their own through such media as   the legendary `TAP Newsletter'.  This ethos began to break   down in the mid-1980s as wider dissemination of the techniques put   them in ...
phreaking4 is  the same   time, changes in the phone network made old-style technical   ingenuity less effective as a way of hacking it, so phreaking came   to depend more on overtly criminal acts such as stealing phone-card   numbers.  The crimes an...
phreaking5 is  turned that game very ugly.  A few old-time hackers still phreak   casually just to keep their hand in, but most these days have   hardly even heard of `blue boxes' or any of the other   paraphernalia of the great phreaks of yore. 
pico- is  [SI a quantifier   meaning * 10^-12]   pref. Smaller than {nano-}; used in the same rather loose   connotative way as {nano-} and {micro-}.  This usage is not yet   common in the way {nano-} and {micro-} are, but should be   instantly recog...
pico-2 is  {{quantifiers}},   {micro-}. 
run like a pig is  v. To run very slowly on given hardware, said of   software.  Distinct from {hog}.
pilot error is  [Sun from aviation] n. A user's misconfiguration or   misuse of a piece of software, producing apparently buglike results   (compare {UBD}).  "Joe Luser reported a bug in sendmail that   causes it to generate bogus headers."  "That's ...
ping is  [from the TCP/IP acronym `Packet INternet Groper', prob.   originally contrived to match the submariners' term for a sonar   pulse] 1. n.  Slang term for a small network message (ICMP ECHO)   sent by a computer to check for the presence and ...
ping2 is  a phone greeting.  See {ACK},   also {ENQ}.  2. vt. To verify the presence of.  3. vt. To get   the attention of.  From the UNIX command `ping(1)' that sends   an ICMP ECHO packet to another host.  4. vt. To send a message to   all members ...
ping3 is  order   to verify that everybody's addresses are reachable).  "We haven't   heard much of anything from Geoff, but he did respond with an ACK   both times I pinged jargon-friends."   The funniest use of `ping' to date was described in Janua...
ping4 is  comp.sys.next.  He was trying   to isolate a faulty cable segment on a TCP/IP Ethernet hooked up to   a NeXT machine, and got tired of having to run back to his console   after each cabling tweak to see if the ping packets were getting   th...
ping5 is  on the NeXT, then   wrote a script that repeatedly invoked `ping(8)', listened for   an echo, and played back the recording on each returned packet.   Result?  A program that caused the machine to repeat, over and   over, "Ping ... ping ......
ping6 is  turned the volume to maximum, ferreted through   the building with one ear cocked, and found a faulty tee connector   in no time. 
Pink-Shirt Book is  `The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM   PC'.  The original cover featured a picture of Peter Norton with a   silly smirk on his face, wearing a pink shirt.  Perhaps in   recognition of this usage, the current edition has...
Pink-Shirt Book2 is  pink shirt.  See also {{book titles}}. 
PIP is  /pip/ [Peripheral Interchange Program] vt.,obs. To copy; from   the program PIP on CP/M, RSX-11, RSTS/E, and OS/8 (derived from a   utility on the PDP-6) that was used for file copying (and in OS/8   and RT-11 for just about every other file ...
PIP2 is  that when the program was originated, during the   development of the PDP-6 in 1963, it was called ATLATL (`Anything,   Lord, to Anything, Lord'). 
pistol is  [IBM] n. A tool that makes it all too easy for you to   shoot yourself in the foot.  "UNIX `rm *' makes such a nice   pistol!"
pizza box is  [Sun] n. The largish thin box housing the electronics   in (especially Sun) desktop workstations, so named because of its   size and shape and the dimpled pattern that looks like air holes.   Two meg single-platter removable disk packs ...
pizza box2 is  they were stuck into was referred to as a pizza   oven.  It's an index of progress that in the old days just the disk   was pizza-sized, while now the entire computer is. 
ANSI standard pizza is  /an'see stan'd*rd peet'z*/ [CMU] Pepperoni   and mushroom pizza.  Coined allegedly because most pizzas ordered   by CMU hackers during some period leading up to mid-1990 were of   that flavor.  See also {rotary debugger}; comp...
plain-ASCII is  /playn-as'kee/ Syn. {flat-ASCII}.
plan file is  [UNIX] n. On systems that support {finger}, the   `.plan' file in a user's home directory is displayed when the user   is fingered.  This feature was originally intended to be used to   keep potential fingerers apprised of one's locatio...
plan file2 is  almost universally to humorous and   self-expressive purposes (like a {sig block}).  See {Hacking X   for Y}. 
platinum-iridium is  adj. Standard, against which all others of the   same category are measured.  Usage silly.  The notion is that one   of whatever it is has actually been cast in platinum-iridium alloy   and placed in the vault beside the Standard...
platinum-iridium2 is  Weights and Measures near Paris.  (From   1889 to 1960, the meter was defined to be the distance between two   scratches in a platinum-iridium bar kept in that vault --- this   replaced an earlier definition as 10^7 times the di...
platinum-iridium3 is  along a meridian through   Paris; unfortunately, this had been based on an inexact value of   the circumference of the Earth.  From 1960 to 1984 it was defined   to be 1650763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red line of krypton-86 ...
platinum-iridium4 is  as the length of the   path traveled by light in a vacuum in the time interval of   1/299,792,458 of a second.  The kilogram is now the only unit of   measure officially defined in terms of a unique artifact.)  "This   garbage-c...
platinum-iridium5 is    platinum-iridium cons cell in Paris."  Compare {golden}. 
playpen is  [IBM] n. A room where programmers work.  Compare {salt   mines}.
playte is  /playt/ 16 bits, by analogy with {nybble} and {{byte}}.  Usage   rare and extremely silly.  See also {dynner} and {crumb}.
plingnet is  /pling'net/ n. Syn. {UUCPNET}.  Also see   {{Commonwealth Hackish}}, which uses `pling' for {bang} (as in   {bang path}).
plokta is  /plok't*/ [Acronym for `Press Lots Of Keys To Abort']   v.  To press random keys in an attempt to get some response from   the system.  One might plokta when the abort procedure for a   program is not known, or when trying to figure out if...
plokta2 is   Plokta can also be used while trying   to figure out any unknown key sequence for a particular operation.   Someone going into `plokta mode' usually places both hands flat   on the keyboard and presses down, hoping for some useful   resp...
plonk is  [USENET possibly influenced by British slang `plonk' for   cheap booze] The sound a {newbie} makes as he falls to the bottom   of a {kill file}.  Used almost exclusively in the {newsgroup}   talk.bizarre, this term (usually written "*plonk*...
plugh is  /ploogh/ [from the {ADVENT} game] v. See {xyzzy}.
plumbing is  [UNIX] n. Term used for {shell} code, so called because   of the prevalence of `pipelines' that feed the output of one   program to the input of another.  Under UNIX, user utilities can   often be implemented or at least prototyped by a ...
plumbing2 is  temp-file grinding encapsulated in a   shell script; this is much less effort than writing C every time,   and the capability is considered one of UNIX's major winning   features.  Esp. used in the construction `hairy plumbing' (see   {...
plumbing3 is  spell-checker out of   `sort(1)', `comm(1)', and `tr(1)' with a little   plumbing." See also {tee}. 
PM  is  /P-M/ 1. v. (from `preventive maintenance') To bring   down a machine for inspection or test purposes; see {scratch   monkey}.  2. n. Abbrev. for `Presentation Manager', an   {elephantine} OS/2 graphical user interface.  See also   {provocati...
pnambic is  /p*-nam'bik/ [Acronym from the scene in the film   version of `The Wizard of Oz' in which true nature of the   wizard is first discovered "Pay no attention to the man behind   the curtain."]  1. A stage of development of a process or func...
pnambic2 is  implementation or to the complexity of   the system, requires human interaction to simulate or replace some   or all of the actions, inputs, or outputs of the process or   function.  2. Of or pertaining to a process or function whose   a...
pnambic3 is  falsified.  3. Requiring   {prestidigitization}.   The ultimate pnambic product was "Dan Bricklin's Demo", a program   which supported flashy user-interface design prototyping.  There is   a related maxim among hackers "Any sufficiently ...
pnambic4 is  a rigged demo."  See   {magic}, sense 1, for illumination of this point. 
pod is  [allegedly from acronym POD for `Prince Of Darkness'] n. A   Diablo 630 (or, latterly, any letter-quality impact printer).  From   the DEC-10 PODTYPE program used to feed formatted text to it.   See also {P.O.D.}
poke is  n.,vt. See {peek}.
poll is  v.,n. 1. [techspeak] The action of checking the status of an   input line, sensor, or memory location to see if a particular   external event has been registered.  2. To repeatedly call or check   with someone "I keep polling him, but he's n...
poll2 is  out."  3. To ask.  "Lunch?  I poll for   a takeout order daily." 
polygon pusher is  n. A chip designer who spends most of his or her time at   the physical layout level (which requires drawing *lots* of   multi-colored polygons).  Also `rectangle slinger'.
POM is  /P-O-M/ n. Common acronym for {phase of the moon}.  Usage   usually in the phrase `POM-dependent', which means {flaky}.
pop is  [from the operation that removes the top of a stack, and the   fact that procedure return addresses are saved on the stack] (also   capitalized `POP' /pop/) 1. vt. To remove something from a   {stack} or {pdl}.  If a person says he/she has po...
pop2 is  he/she has finally finished   working on it and can now remove it from the list of things hanging   overhead.  2. When a discussion gets to too deep a level of detail   so that the main point of the discussion is being lost, someone   will s...
pop3 is  level!"   The shout is frequently accompanied by an upthrust arm with a   finger pointing to the ceiling. 
POPJ is  /pop'J/ [from a {PDP-10} return-from-subroutine   instruction] n.,v. To return from a digression.  By verb doubling,   "Popj, popj" means roughly "Now let's see, where were we?"   See {RTI}.
posing is  n. On a {MUD}, the use of `' or an equivalent   command to announce to other players that one is taking a certain   physical action that has no effect on the game (it may, however,   serve as a social signal or propaganda device that induc...
posing2 is  example, if one's character name   is Firechild, one might type ` looks delighted at the idea and   begins hacking on the nearest terminal' to broadcast a message that   says "Firechild looks delighted at the idea and begins hacking on   ...
post is  v. To send a message to a {mailing list} or {newsgroup}.   Distinguished in context from `mail'; one might ask, for   example "Are you going to post the patch or mail it to known   users?"
posting is  n. Noun corresp. to v. {post} (but note that   {post} can be nouned).  Distinguished from a `letter' or ordinary   {email} message by the fact that it is broadcast rather than   point-to-point.  It is not clear whether messages sent to a ...
posting2 is  perhaps the best dividing line   is that if you don't know the names of all the potential   recipients, it is a posting. 
postmaster is  n. The email contact and maintenance person at a site   connected to the Internet or UUCPNET.  Often, but not always, the   same as the {admin}.  It is conventional for each machine to have   a `postmaster' address that is aliased to t...
pound on is  vt.  Syn. {bang on}.
power cycle is  vt. (also, `cycle power' or just `cycle') To   power off a machine and then power it on immediately, with the   intention of clearing some kind of {hung} or {gronk}ed state.   Syn. {120 reset}; see also {Big Red Switch}.  Compare   {V...
power cycle2 is  see the   AI Koan in appendix A about Tom Knight and the novice. 
PPN is  /P-P-N/, /pip'n/ [from `Project-Programmer Number'] n. A   user-ID under {{TOPS-10}} and its various mutant progeny at SAIL,   BBN, CompuServe, and elsewhere.  Old-time hackers from the PDP-10   era sometimes use this to refer to user IDs on ...
precedence lossage is  /pre's*-dens los'*j/ [C programmers] n. Coding   error in an expression due to unexpected grouping of arithmetic or   logical operators by the compiler.  Used esp. of certain common   coding errors in C due to the nonintuitivel...
precedence lossage2 is  `<<', and `>>' (for this   reason, experienced C programmers deliberately forget the   language's {baroque} precedence hierarchy and parenthesize   defensively).  Can always be avoided by suitable use of   parentheses.  {LISP}...
precedence lossage3 is  happen in *their* favorite language, which eschews precedence   entirely, requiring one to use explicit parentheses everywhere.   See {aliasing bug}, {memory leak}, {smash the stack},   {fandango on core}, {overrun screw}. 
prepend is  /pree`pend'/ [by analogy with `append'] vt. To   prefix.  As with `append' (but not `prefix' or `suffix' as a   verb), the direct object is always the thing being added and not   the original word (or character string, or whatever).  "If ...

factpacks/jargon-split.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

terpri is  /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 c...
terpri2 is  line was formed, so this operation   terminated the line and emitted the output. 
test is  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 ...
test2 is  mistakes.  Judging by the quality of most   software, the second definition is far more prevalent.  See also   {demo}. 
TeX is  /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   UNI...
TeX2 is  correct (guttural)   pronunciation, and the correct spelling (all caps, squished   together, with the E depressed below the baseline; the   mixed-case `TeX is considered an acceptable kluge on ASCII-only   devices).  Fans like to proliferate...
TeX3 is  TeXnician (TeX user), TeXhacker (TeX   programmer), TeXmaster (competent TeX programmer), TeXhax,   and TeXnique.   Knuth began TeX because he had become annoyed at the declining   quality of the typesetting in volumes I--III of his monument...
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...
thunk2 is  formal parameter, the compiler   generates a {thunk} to compute the expression and leave the   address of the result in some standard location.  2. Later   generalized into an expression, frozen together with its   environment, for later e...
thunk3 is  in techspeak is called a `closure).  The process of   unfreezing these thunks is called `forcing.  3. A   {stubroutine}, in an overlay programming environment, that loads   and jumps to the correct overlay.  Compare {trampoline}.   4. Peop...
thunk4 is  manner.  "It   occurred to me the other day that I am rather accurately modeled by   a thunk --- I frequently need to be forced to completion." ---   paraphrased from a {plan file}.   Historical note There are a couple of onomatopoeic myth...
thunk5 is  The most common is that   it is the sound made by data hitting the stack; another holds that   the sound is that of the data hitting an accumulator.  Yet another   holds that it is the sound of the expression being unfrozen at   argument-e...
thunk6 is  inventors, it   was coined after they realized (in the wee hours after hours of   discussion) that the type of an argument in Algol-60 could be   figured out in advance with a little compile-time thought,   simplifying the evaluation machi...
thunk7 is  thought of; thus it was christened a `thunk,   which is "the past tense of `think at two in the morning". 
tick is  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 inter...
tick2 is  AI simulation is often   pejoratively referred to as `tick-tick-tick simulation,   especially when the issue of simultaneity of events with long,   independent chains of causes is {handwave}d. 3. In the FORTH   language, a single quote char...
tick-list features is  [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 sen...
tickle a bug is  vt. To cause a normally hidden bug to manifest   through some known series of inputs or operations.  "You can   tickle the bug in the Paradise VGA cards highlight handling by   trying to set bright yellow reverse video."
tiger team is  [U.S. military jargon] n. A team whose purpose is to   penetrate security, and thus test security measures.  These people   are paid professionals who do hacker-type tricks, e.g., leave   cardboard signs saying "bomb" in critical defen...
tiger team2 is  "Your codebooks have been stolen"   (they usually havent been) inside safes, etc.  After a successful   penetration, some high-ranking security type shows up the next   morning for a `security review and finds the sign, note, etc.,   ...
tiger team3 is  of tiger teams   sometimes lead to early retirement for base commanders and security   officers (see the {patch} entry for an example).   A subset of tiger teams are professional {cracker}s, testing the   security of military computer...
tiger team4 is  via networks or supposedly `secure comm channels.  Some of   their escapades, if declassified, would probably rank among the   greatest hacks of all times.  The term has been adopted in   commercial computer-security circles in this m...
time sink is  [poss. by analogy with `heat sink or `current sink] n.   A project that consumes unbounded amounts of time.
time T is  /tim T/ n. 1. An unspecified but usually well-understood   time, often used in conjunction with a later time T+1.   "Well meet on campus at time T or at Louies at   time T+1" means, in the context of going out for dinner   "We can meet on ...
time T2 is  Louies   itself a bit later."  (Louies is a Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto   that is a favorite with hackers.)  Had the number 30 been used instead   of the number 1, it would have implied that the travel time from   campus to Louies is ...
time T3 is  hasnt been decided on yet), you can meet half an hour later at   Louies than you could on campus and end up eating at the same time.   See also {since time T equals minus infinity}. 
times-or-divided-by is  [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 u...
tinycrud is  /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.  Th...
tinycrud2 is  how (allegedly)   inconsistent and lacking in genuine atmosphere the scenarios   generated in user extensible MUDs can be.  Other common knocks on   them are that they feature little overall plot, bad game topology,   little competitive...
tinycrud3 is  alleged   horrors of the TinyMUD code itself.  This dispute is one of the MUD   worlds hardiest perennial {holy wars}. 
tip of the ice-cube is  [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 is  [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 b...
tits on a keyboard is  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 is  /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 th...
TLA2 is  three letters, just as not all four-letter   words have four letters.  One also hears of `ETLA (Extended   Three-Letter Acronym, pronounced /ee tee el ay/) being used to   describe four-letter acronyms.  The term `SFLA (Stupid Four-Letter   ...
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,...
tool2 is  interface designed specifically to be used   in programmed combination with other tools (see {filter}).   3. [MIT general to students there] vi. To work; to study (connotes   tedium).  The TMRC Dictionary defined this as "to set ones brain ...
tool3 is  A student who   studies too much and hacks too little.  (MITs student humor   magazine rejoices in the name `Tool and Die.) 
toolsmith is  n. The software equivalent of a tool-and-die specialist;   one who specializes in making the {tool}s with which other   programmers create applications.  See also {uninteresting}.
topic drift is  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 ...
topic drift2 is  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 is  n. Syn. {forum}.
TOPS-10 is  /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...
TOPS-102 is  BOTS-10 (from `bottoms-ten) as a comment on the   inappropriateness of describing it as the top of anything. 
TOPS-20 is  /tops-twentee/ n. See {{TWENEX}}.
toto is  /tohtoh/ n. This is reported to be the default scratch   file name among French-speaking programmers --- in other words, a   francophone {foo}.
tourist is  [ITS] n. A guest on the system, especially one who   generally logs in over a network from a remote location for {comm   mode}, email, games, and other trivial purposes.  One step below   {luser}.  Hackers often spell this {turist}, perha...
tourist2 is  {luser} (this also expresses the   ITS cultures penchant for six-letterisms).  Compare {twink},   {read-only user}. 
tourist information is  n. Information in an on-line display that is   not immediately useful, but contributes to a viewers gestalt of   whats going on with the software or hardware behind it.  Whether a   given piece of info falls in this category d...
tourist information2 is  for at any given time.  The `bytes free   information at the bottom of an MS-DOS `dir display is   tourist information; so (most of the time) is the TIME information   in a UNIX `ps(1) display. 
touristic is  adj. Having the quality of a {tourist}.  Often used   as a pejorative, as in `losing touristic scum.  Often spelled   `turistic or `turistik, so that phrase might be more properly   rendered `lusing turistic scum.
toy is  n. A computer system; always used with qualifiers.   1. `nice toy One that supports the speakers hacking style   adequately.  2. `just a toy A machine that yields   insufficient {computron}s for the speakers preferred uses.  This   is not con...
toy2 is  least be fun.   It is also strongly conditioned by ones expectations; Cray XMP   users sometimes consider the Cray-1 a `toy, and certainly all RISC   boxes and mainframes are toys by their standards.  See also {Get   a real computer!}. 
toy language is  n. A language useful for instructional purposes or   as a proof-of-concept for some aspect of computer-science theory,   but inadequate for general-purpose programming.  {Bad Thing}s   can result when a toy language is promoted as a ...
toy language2 is  (see {bondage-and-discipline   language}); the classic example is {{Pascal}}.  Several moderately   well-known formalisms for conceptual tasks such as programming Turing   machines also qualify as toy languages in a less negative se...
toy problem is  [AI] n. A deliberately oversimplified case of a   challenging problem used to investigate, prototype, or test   algorithms for a real problem.  Sometimes used pejoratively.  See   also {gedanken}, {toy program}.
toy program is  n. 1. One that can be readily comprehended; hence, a   trivial program (compare {noddy}).  2. One for which the effort   of initial coding dominates the costs through its life cycle.   See also {noddy}.
trampoline is  n. An incredibly {hairy} technique, found in some   {HLL} and program-overlay implementations (e.g., on the   Macintosh), that involves on-the-fly generation of small executable   (and, likely as not, self-modifying) code objects to do...
trampoline2 is  pieces of {live data} are called   `trampolines.  Trampolines are notoriously difficult to understand   in action; in fact, it is said by those who use this term that the   trampoline that doesnt bend your brain is not the true   tram...
trap is  1. n. A program interrupt, usually an interrupt caused by   some exceptional situation in the user program.  In most cases, the   OS performs some action, then returns control to the program.   2. vi. To cause a trap.  "These instructions tr...
trap2 is  to indicate the cause of the   trap.  "The monitor traps all input/output instructions."   This term is associated with assembler programming (`interrupt   or `exception is more common among {HLL} programmers) and   appears to be fading int...
trap3 is  assembler continues to shrink.  However, it is still important to   computer architects and systems hackers (see {system},   sense 1), who use it to distinguish deterministically repeatable   exceptions from timing-dependent ones (such as I...
trap door is  alt. `trapdoor n. 1. Syn. {back door}.   2. [techspeak] A `trap-door function is one which is easy to   compute but very difficult to compute the inverse of.  Such   functions have important applications in cryptography, specifically   ...
trash is  vt. To destroy the contents of (said of a data structure).   The most common of the family of near-synonyms including {mung},   {mangle}, and {scribble}.
tree-killer is  [Sun] n. 1. A printer.  2. A person who wastes paper.   This should be interpreted in a broad sense; `wasting paper   includes the production of {spiffy} but {content-free} documents.   Thus, most {suit}s are tree-killers.
trit is  /trit/ [by analogy with `bit] n. One base-3 digit; the   amount of information conveyed by a selection among one of three   equally likely outcomes (see also {bit}).  These arise, for   example, in the context of a {flag} that should actuall...
trit2 is  as yes, no, or unknown.  Trits are   sometimes jokingly called `3-state bits.  A trit may be   semi-seriously referred to as `a bit and a half, although it is   linearly equivalent to 1.5849625 bits (that is,   log2(3)   bits). 
trivial is  adj. 1. Too simple to bother detailing.  2. Not worth the   speakers time.  3. Complex, but solvable by methods so well known   that anyone not utterly {cretinous} would have thought of them   already.  4. Any problem one has already solv...
trivial2 is  evaluates to `Ive seen it before).   Hackers notions of triviality may be quite at variance with those   of non-hackers.  See {nontrivial}, {uninteresting}. 
troglodyte is  [Commodore] n. 1. A hacker who never leaves his   cubicle.  The term `Gnoll (from Dungeons & Dragons) is also   reported.  2. A curmudgeon attached to an obsolescent computing   environment.  The combination `ITS troglodyte was flung a...
troglodyte2 is  wringle-wrangle attending the   2.x.x revision of the Jargon File; at least one of the people it   was intended to describe adopted it with pride. 
troglodyte mode is  [Rice University] n. Programming with the lights   turned off, sunglasses on, and the terminal inverted (black on   white) because youve been up for so many days straight that your   eyes hurt (see {raster burn}).  Loud music blar...
troglodyte mode2 is  optional but recommended.  See {larval   stage}, {hack mode}. 
Trojan horse is  [coined by MIT-hacker-turned-NSA-spook Dan Edwards]   n. A program designed to break security or damage a system that is   disguised as something else benign, such as a directory lister,   archiver, a game, or (in one notorious 1990 ...
Trojan horse2 is  destroy viruses!  See {back door}, {virus},   {worm}. 
true-hacker is  [analogy with `trufan from SF fandom] n. One who   exemplifies the primary values of hacker culture, esp. competence   and helpfulness to other hackers.  A high compliment.  "He spent   6 hours helping me bring up UUCP and netnews on ...
true-hacker2 is  act of a true-hacker."  Compare   {demigod}, oppose {munchkin}. 
tty is  /T-T-Y/ [UNIX], /titee/ [ITS, but some UNIX people say it   this way as well; this pronunciation is not considered to have   sexual undertones] n. 1. A terminal of the teletype variety,   characterized by a noisy mechanical printer, a very li...
tty2 is   Usage antiquated (like the   TTYs themselves).  See also {bit-paired keyboard}.   2. [especially UNIX] Any terminal at all; sometimes used to refer   to the particular terminal controlling a given job. 
tube is  1. n. A CRT terminal.  Never used in the mainstream sense of   TV; real hackers dont watch TV, except for Loony Toons, Rocky &   Bullwinkle, Trek Classic, the Simpsons, and the occasional cheesy   old swashbuckler movie (see appendix B).  2....
tube2 is  someone elses terminal.  "Tube me that   note?"