Amethyst
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accumulator is n. 1. Archaic term for a register. On-line use of it as a synonym for `register' is a fairly reliable indication that the user has been around for quite a while and/or that the architecture under discussion is quite old. The t...
accumulator2 is microprocessor registers, for example, though symbolic names for arithmetic registers beginning in `A' derive from historical use of the term `accumulator' (and not, actually, from `arithmetic'). Confusingly, though, an `A' re...
accumulator3 is `address', as for example on the Motorola 680x0 family. 2. A register being used for arithmetic or logic (as opposed to addressing or a loop index), especially one being used to accumulate a sum or count of many items. This u...
accumulator4 is stretch of code. "The FOOBAZ routine uses A3 as an accumulator." 3. One's in-basket (esp. among old-timers who might use sense 1). "You want this reviewed? Sure, just put it in the accumulator." (See {stack}.)
ACK is /ak/ interj. 1. [from the ASCII mnemonic for 0000110] Acknowledge. Used to register one's presence (compare mainstream *Yo!*). An appropriate response to {ping} or {ENQ}. 2. [from the comic strip "Bloom County"] An exclamation of su...
ACK2 is Semi-humorous. Generally this sense is not spelled in caps (ACK) and is distinguished by a following exclamation point. 3. Used to politely interrupt someone to tell them you understand their point (see {NAK}). Thus, for example, y...
ACK3 is with "Ack. Ack. Ack. I get it now". There is also a usage "ACK?" (from sense 1) meaning "Are you there?", often used in email when earlier mail has produced no reply, or during a lull in {talk mode} to see if the person has gone a...
ACK4 is course {NAK} (sense 2), i.e., "I'm not here").
ad-hockery is /ad-hok'*r-ee/ [Purdue] n. 1. Gratuitous assumptions made inside certain programs, esp. expert systems, which lead to the appearance of semi-intelligent behavior but are in fact entirely arbitrary. For example, fuzzy-matching in...
ad-hockery2 is against a symbol table can make it look as though a program knows how to spell. 2. Special-case code to cope with some awkward input that would otherwise cause a program to {choke}, presuming normal inputs are dealt with in som...
ad-hockery3 is `ad-hackery', `ad-hocity' (/ad-hos'*-tee/). See also {ELIZA effect}.
Ada is n. A {{Pascal}}-descended language that has been made mandatory for Department of Defense software projects by the Pentagon. Hackers are nearly unanimous in observing that, technically, it is precisely what one might expect given that ...
Ada2 is committee, crockish, difficult to use, and overall a disastrous, multi-billion-dollar boondoggle (one common description is "The PL/I of the 1980s"). Hackers find Ada's exception-handling and inter-process communication features par...
Ada3 is daughter of Lord Byron who became the world's first programmer while cooperating with Charles Babbage on the design of his mechanical computing engines in the mid-1800s) would almost certainly blanch at the use to which her name has ...
Ada4 is been said about it is that there is probably a good small language screaming to get out from inside its vast, {elephantine} bulk.
adger is /aj'r/ [UCLA] vt. To make a bonehead move with consequences that could have been foreseen with a slight amount of mental effort. E.g., "He started removing files and promptly adgered the whole project". Compare {dumbass attack}.
admin is /ad-min'/ n. Short for `administrator'; very commonly used in speech or on-line to refer to the systems person in charge on a computer. Common constructions on this include `sysadmin' and `site admin' (emphasizing the administrator's...
admin2 is or `newsadmin' (focusing specifically on news). Compare {postmaster}, {sysop}, {system mangler}.
ADVENT is /ad'vent/ n. The prototypical computer adventure game, first implemented on the {PDP-10} by Will Crowther as an attempt at computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods. Now better known as ...
ADVENT2 is system permitted only 6-letter filenames. See also {vadding}. This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style now expected in text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines that have become fixtures of hacker-speak "A...
ADVENT3 is see no X here" (for some noun X). "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike." "You are in a little maze of twisty passages, all different." The `magic words' {xyzzy} and {plugh} also derive from this game. Crowthe...
ADVENT4 is of the Mammoth & Flint Ridge cave system; it actually *has* a `Colossal Cave' and a `Bedquilt' as in the game, and the `Y2' that also turns up is cavers' jargon for a map reference to a secondary entrance.
AI-complete is /A-I k*m-pleet'/ [MIT, Stanford by analogy with `NP-complete' (see {NP-})] adj. Used to describe problems or subproblems in AI, to indicate that the solution presupposes a solution to the `strong AI problem' (that is, the synthe...
AI-complete2 is problem that is AI-complete is, in other words, just too hard. Examples of AI-complete problems are `The Vision Problem' (building a system that can see as well as a human) and `The Natural Language Problem' (building a syste...
AI-complete3 is language as well as a human). These may appear to be modular, but all attempts so far (1991) to solve them have foundered on the amount of context information and `intelligence' they seem to require. See also {gedanken}.
AI koans is /A-I koh'anz/ pl.n. A series of pastiches of Zen teaching riddles created by Danny Hillis at the MIT AI Lab around various major figures of the Lab's culture (several are included in appendix A). See also {ha ha only serious}, {mu...
AIDS is /aydz/ n. Short for A* Infected Disk Syndrome (`A*' is a {glob} pattern that matches, but is not limited to, Apple), this condition is quite often the result of practicing unsafe {SEX}. See {virus}, {worm}, {Trojan horse}, {virgin}.
airplane rule is n. "Complexity increases the possibility of failure; a twin-engine airplane has twice as many engine problems as a single-engine airplane." By analogy, in both software and electronics, the rule that simplicity increases robu...
airplane rule2 is correspondingly argued that the right way to build reliable systems is to put all your eggs in one basket, after making sure that you've built a really *good* basket.
aliasing bug is n. A class of subtle programming errors that can arise in code that does dynamic allocation, esp. via `malloc(3)' or equivalent. If more than one pointer addresses (`aliases for') a given hunk of storage, it may happen that th...
aliasing bug2 is then referenced through another, which may lead to subtle (and possibly intermittent) lossage depending on the state and the allocation history of the malloc {arena}. Avoidable by use of allocation strategies that never ali...
aliasing bug3 is higher-level languages, such as {LISP}, which employ a garbage collector (see {GC}). Also called a {stale pointer bug}. See also {precedence lossage}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {memory leak}, {overrun screw}, ...
aliasing bug4 is nowadays associated with C programming, it was already in use in a very similar sense in the Algol-60 and FORTRAN communities in the 1960s.
all-elbows is adj. Of a TSR (terminate-and-stay-resident) IBM PC program, such as the N pop-up calendar and calculator utilities that circulate on {BBS} systems unsociable. Used to describe a program that rudely steals the resources that it n...
all-elbows2 is also be resident. One particularly common form of rudeness is lock-up due to programs fighting over the keyboard interrupt. See also {mess-dos}.
alpha particles is n. See {bit rot}.
ALT is /awlt/ 1. n. The ALT shift key on an IBM PC or {clone}. 2. [possibly lowercased] n. The `clover' or `Command' key on a Macintosh; use of this term usually reveals that the speaker hacked PCs before coming to the Mac (see also {command k...
ALT2 is reserve `ALT' for the Option key. 3. n.obs. [PDP-10] Alternate name for the ASCII ESC character (ASCII 0011011), after the keycap labeling on some older terminals. Also `ALTMODE' (/awlt'mohd/). This character was almost never pron...
ALT3 is under TOPS-10 --- always ALT, as in "Type ALT ALT to end a TECO command" or "ALT U onto the system" (for "log onto the [ITS] system"). This was probably because ALT is more convenient to say than `escape', especially when followed b...
ALT4 is *and* a character, for that matter).
alt bit is /awlt bit/ [from alternate] adj. See {meta bit}.
Aluminum Book is [MIT] n. `Common LISP The Language', by Guy L. Steele Jr. (Digital Press, first edition 1984, second edition 1990). Note that due to a technical screwup some printings of the second edition are actually of a color the author...
Aluminum Book2 is also {{book titles}}.
amoeba is n. Humorous term for the Commodore Amiga personal computer.
amp off is [Purdue] vt. To run in {background}. From the UNIX shell `&' operator.
amper is n. Common abbreviation for the name of the ampersand (`&', ASCII 0100110) character. See {ASCII} for other synonyms.
angle brackets is n. Either of the characters `<' (ASCII 0111100) and `>' (ASCII 0111110) (ASCII less-than or greater-than signs). The {Real World} angle brackets used by typographers are actually taller than a less-than or greater-than sig...
angry fruit salad is n. A bad visual-interface design that uses too many colors. This derives, of course, from the bizarre day-glo colors found in canned fruit salad. Too often one sees similar affects from interface designers using color wi...
angry fruit salad2 is tendency to create displays that are flashy and attention-getting but uncomfortable for long-term use.
AOS is 1. /aws/ (East Coast), /ay-os/ (West Coast) [based on a PDP-10 increment instruction] vt.,obs. To increase the amount of something. "AOS the campfire." Usage considered silly, and now obsolete. Now largely supplanted by {bump}. See ...
AOS2 is supported at one time by Data General. This was pronounced /A-O-S/ or /A-os/. A spoof of the standard AOS system administrator's manual (`How to load and generate your AOS system') was created, issued a part number, and circulated ...
AOS3 is goad and levitate your chaos system'. 3. Algebraic Operating System, in reference to those calculators which use infix instead of postfix (reverse Polish) notation. Historical note AOS in sense 1 was the name of a {PDP-10} instruc...
AOS4 is computer and added 1 to it; AOS meant `Add One and do not Skip'. Why, you may ask, does the `S' stand for `do not Skip' rather than for `Skip'? Ah, here was a beloved piece of PDP-10 folklore. There were eight such instructions AO...
AOS5 is instruction if the result was Equal to zero; AOSG added 1 and then skipped if the result was Greater than 0; AOSN added 1 and then skipped if the result was Not 0; AOSA added 1 and then skipped Always; and so on. Just plain AOS didn...
AOS6 is For similar reasons, AOJ meant `Add One and do not Jump'. Even more bizarre, SKIP meant `do not SKIP'! If you wanted to skip the next instruction, you had to say `SKIPA'. Likewise, JUMP meant `do not JUMP'; the unconditional form wa...
AOS7 is By some quirk of the 10's design, the {JRST} (Jump and ReSTore flag with no flag specified) was actually faster and so was invariably used. Such were the perverse mysteries of assembler programming.
app is /ap/ n. Short for `application program', as opposed to a systems program. What systems vendors are forever chasing developers to create for their environments so they can sell more boxes. Hackers tend not to think of the things they t...
app2 is parlance the term excludes compilers, program editors, games, and messaging systems, though a user would consider all those to be apps. Oppose {tool}, {operating system}.
arc is [primarily MSDOS] vt. To create a compressed {archive} from a group of files using SEA ARC, PKWare PKARC, or a compatible program. Rapidly becoming obsolete as the ARC compression method is falling into disuse, having been replaced by ...
arc2 is feather}, {zip}.
arc wars is [primarily MSDOS] n. {holy wars} over which archiving program one should use. The first arc war was sparked when System Enhancement Associates (SEA) sued PKWare for copyright and trademark infringement on its ARC program. PKWare'...
arc wars2 is and speed while largely retaining compatibility (it introduced a new compression type that could be disabled for backward-compatibility). PKWare settled out of court to avoid enormous legal costs (both SEA and PKWare are small ...
arc wars3 is of PKARC was changed to PKPAK. The public backlash against SEA for bringing suit helped to hasten the demise of ARC as a standard when PKWare and others introduced new, incompatible archivers with better compression algorithms....
archive is n. 1. A collection of several files bundled into one file by a program such as `ar(1)', `tar(1)', `cpio(1)', or {arc} for shipment or archiving (sense 2). See also {tar and feather}. 2. A collection of files or archives (sense 1) ...
archive2 is {FTP} or an email server.
arena is [UNIX] n. The area of memory attached to a process by `brk(2)' and `sbrk(2)' and used by `malloc(3)' as dynamic storage. So named from a semi-mythical `malloc corrupt arena' message supposedly emitted when some early versions becam...
arena2 is {aliasing bug}, {memory leak}, {smash the stack}.
arg is /arg/ n. Abbreviation for `argument' (to a function), used so often as to have become a new word (like `piano' from `pianoforte'). "The sine function takes 1 arg, but the arc-tangent function can take either 1 or 2 args." Compare {p...
armor-plated is n. Syn. for {bulletproof}.
asbestos is adj. Used as a modifier to anything intended to protect one from {flame}s. Important cases of this include {asbestos longjohns} and {asbestos cork award}, but it is used more generally.
asbestos cork award is n. Once, long ago at MIT, there was a {flamer} so consistently obnoxious that another hacker designed, had made, and distributed posters announcing that said flamer had been nominated for the `asbestos cork award'. Pers...
asbestos cork award2 is application of the cork should consult the etymology under {flame}. Since then, it is agreed that only a select few have risen to the heights of bombast required to earn this dubious dignity --- but there is no agreeme...
asbestos longjohns is n. Notional garments often donned by {USENET} posters just before emitting a remark they expect will elicit {flamage}. This is the most common of the {asbestos} coinages. Also `asbestos underwear', `asbestos overcoat', e...
attoparsec is n. `atto-' is the standard SI prefix for multiplication by 10^{-18}. A parsec (parallax-second) is 3.26 light-years; an attoparsec is thus 3.26 * 10^{-18} light years, or about 3.1 cm (thus, 1 attoparsec/{microfortnight} equal...
attoparsec2 is be in use (though probably not very seriously) among hackers in the U.K. See {micro-}.
autobogotiphobia is /aw'to-boh-got`*-foh'bee-*/ n. See {bogotify}.
automagically is /aw-toh-maj'i-klee/ or /aw-toh-maj'i-k*l-ee/ adv. Automatically, but in a way that, for some reason (typically because it is too complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too trivial), the speaker doesn't feel like explaining ...
automagically2 is compiler generates C, then automagically invokes `cc(1)' to produce an executable."
avatar is [CMU, Tektronix] n. Syn. {root}, {superuser}. There are quite a few UNIX machines on which the name of the superuser account is `avatar' rather than `root'. This quirk was originated by a CMU hacker who disliked the term `superuser...
avatar2 is hacker at Tektronix.
awk is 1. n. [UNIX techspeak] An interpreted language for massaging text data developed by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan (the name is from their initials). It is characterized by C-like syntax, a declaration-free approach ...
awk2 is associative arrays, and field-oriented text processing. See also {Perl}. 2. n. Editing term for an expression awkward to manipulate through normal {regexp} facilities (for example, one containing a {newline}). 3. vt. To process d...
awk3 is security of a system deliberately left in place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for this is not always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out of the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field ...
awk4 is maintenance programmers. Historically, back doors have often lurked in systems longer than anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely known. The infamous {RTM} worm of late 1988, for example, used a back door in the {BS...
awk5 is 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM revealed the existence of a back door in early UNIX versions that may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. The C compiler contained code that would recognize when ...
awk6 is insert some code recognizing a password chosen by Thompson, giving him entry to the system whether or not an account had been created for him. Normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from the source code for the com...
awk7 is recompile the compiler, you have to *use* the compiler --- so Thompson also arranged that the compiler would *recognize when it was compiling a version of itself*, and insert into the recompiled compiler the code to insert into the rec...
awk8 is entry --- and, of course, the code to recognize itself and do the whole thing again the next time around! And having done this once, he was then able to recompile the compiler from the original sources, leaving his back door in place ...
awk9 is The talk that revealed this truly moby hack was published as "Reflections on Trusting Trust", `Communications of the ACM 27', 8 (August 1984), pp. 761--763. Syn. {trap door}; may also be called a `wormhole'. See also {iron box}, {cr...
backbone cabal is n. A group of large-site administrators who pushed through the {Great Renaming} and reined in the chaos of {USENET} during most of the 1980s. The cabal {mailing list} disbanded in late 1988 after a bitter internal catfight, ...
backbone site is n. A key USENET and email site; one that processes a large amount of third-party traffic, especially if it is the home site of any of the regional coordinators for the USENET maps. Notable backbone sites as of early 1991 inclu...
backbone site2 is University, UC Berkeley, DEC's Western Research Laboratories, Ohio State University, and the University of Texas. Compare {rib site}, {leaf site}.
backgammon is See {bignum}, {moby}, and {pseudoprime}.
background is n.,adj.,vt. To do a task `in background' is to do it whenever {foreground} matters are not claiming your undivided attention, and `to background' something means to relegate it to a lower priority. "For now, we'll just print a ...
background2 is graph-printing problem in background." Note that this implies ongoing activity but at a reduced level or in spare time, in contrast to mainstream `back burner' (which connotes benign neglect until some future resumption of activ...
background3 is processing that they have queued up for their unconscious minds (a tack that one can often fruitfully take upon encountering an obstacle in creative work). Compare {amp off}, {slopsucker}. Technically, a task running in backgr...
background4 is was started (and often running at a lower priority); oppose {foreground}. Nowadays this term is primarily associated with {{UNIX}}, but it appears to have been first used in this sense on OS/360.
backspace and overstrike is interj. Whoa! Back up. Used to suggest that someone just said or did something wrong. Common among APL programmers.
backward combatability is /bak'w*rd k*m-bat'*-bil'*-tee/ [from `backward compatibility'] n. A property of hardware or software revisions in which previous protocols, formats, and layouts are discarded in favor of `new and improved' protocols, ...
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
deep space2 is in deep space somewhere." Compare {buzz}, {catatonic}, {hyperspace}. 2. The metaphorical location of a human so dazed and/or confused or caught up in some esoteric form of {bogosity} that he or she no longer responds coherent...
defenestration is [from the traditional Czechoslovak method of assassinating prime ministers, via SF fandom] n. 1. Proper karmic retribution for an incorrigible punster. "Oh, ghod, that was *awful*!" "Quick! Defenestrate him!" 2. The act of...
defenestration2 is better response time from a full-screen program. This comes from the dictionary meaning of `defenestrate', which is to throw something out a window. 3. The act of discarding something under the assumption that it will im...
defenestration3 is left." "Well, why don't you defenestrate that 100 megs worth of old core dumps?" 4. [proposed] The requirement to support a command-line interface. "It has to run on a VT100." "Curses! I've been defenestrated!"
defined as is adj. In the role of, usually in an organization-chart sense. "Pete is currently defined as bug prioritizer." Compare {logical}.
dehose is /dee-hohz/ vt. To clear a {hosed} condition.
delint is /dee-lint/ v. To modify code to remove problems detected when {lint}ing.
delta is n. 1. [techspeak] A quantitative change, especially a small or incremental one (this use is general in physics and engineering). "I just doubled the speed of my program!" "What was the delta on program size?" "About 30 percent." (...
delta2 is increased its size by only 30 percent.) 2. [UNIX] A {diff}, especially a {diff} stored under the set of version-control tools called SCCS (Source Code Control System) or RCS (Revision Control System). 3. n. A small quantity, but ...
delta3 is {delta} and {epsilon} stems from the traditional use of these letters in mathematics for very small numerical quantities, particularly in `epsilon-delta' proofs in limit theory (as in the differential calculus). The term {delta} i...
delta4 is mentioned, to mean a quantity that is slightly bigger than {epsilon} but still very small. "The cost isn't epsilon, but it's delta" means that the cost isn't totally negligible, but it is nevertheless very small. Common construct...
delta5 is epsilon of ---' that is, close to and even closer to.
demented is adj. Yet another term of disgust used to describe a program. The connotation in this case is that the program works as designed, but the design is bad. Said, for example, of a program that generates large numbers of meaningless e...
demented2 is brink of imminent collapse. Compare {wonky}, {bozotic}.
demigod is n. A hacker with years of experience, a national reputation, and a major role in the development of at least one design, tool, or game used by or known to more than half of the hacker community. To qualify as a genuine demigod, the ...
demigod2 is hacker community and have helped shape it. Major demigods include Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (co-inventors of {{UNIX}} and {C}) and Richard M. Stallman (inventor of {EMACS}). In their hearts of hearts, most hackers dream of ...
demigod3 is more than one major software project has been driven to completion by the author's veiled hopes of apotheosis. See also {net.god}, {true-hacker}.
demo is /de'moh/ [short for `demonstration'] 1. v. To demonstrate a product or prototype. A far more effective way of inducing bugs to manifest than any number of {test} runs, especially when important people are watching. 2. n. The act of d...
demo mode is [Sun] n. 1. The state of being {heads down} in order to finish code in time for a {demo}, usually due yesterday. 2. A mode in which video games sit there by themselves running through a portion of the game, also known as `attract ...
demo mode2 is they use as a screen saver, or may go through a demo mode on startup (for example, the Microsoft Windows opening screen --- which lets you impress your neighbors without actually having to put up with {Microsloth Windows}).
demon is n. 1. [MIT] A portion of a program that is not invoked explicitly, but that lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. See {daemon}. The distinction is that demons are usually processes within a program, while daemons are ...
demon2 is system. Demons are particularly common in AI programs. For example, a knowledge-manipulation program might implement inference rules as demons. Whenever a new piece of knowledge was added, various demons would activate (which de...
demon3 is and would create additional pieces of knowledge by applying their respective inference rules to the original piece. These new pieces could in turn activate more demons as the inferences filtered down through chains of logic. Mean...
demon4 is whatever its primary task was. 2. [outside MIT] Often used equivalently to {daemon} --- especially in the {{UNIX}} world, where the latter spelling and pronunciation is considered mildly archaic.
depeditate is /dee-ped'*-tayt/ [by (faulty) analogy with `decapitate'] vt. Humorously, to cut off the feet of. When one is using some computer-aided typesetting tools, careless placement of text blocks within a page or above a rule can resul...
depeditate2 is letters are said to have been depeditated.
deprecated is adj. Said of a program or feature that is considered obsolescent and in the process of being phased out, usually in favor of a specified replacement. Deprecated features can, unfortunately, linger on for many years.
deserves to lose is adj. Said of someone who willfully does the {Wrong Thing}; humorously, if one uses a feature known to be {marginal}. What is meant is that one deserves the consequences of one's {losing} actions. "Boy, anyone who tries to...
deserves to lose2 is ({{ITS}} fans used to say this of {{UNIX}}; many still do.) See also {screw}, {chomp}, {bagbiter}.
desk check is n.,v. To {grovel} over hardcopy of source code, mentally simulating the control flow; a method of catching bugs. No longer common practice in this age of on-screen editing, fast compiles, and sophisticated debuggers --- though so...
desk check2 is Compare {eyeball search}, {vdiff}, {vgrep}.
Devil Book is n. `The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System', by Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael J. Karels, and John S. Quarterman (Addison-Wesley Publishers, 1989) --- the standard reference book on ...
Devil Book2 is because the cover has a picture depicting a little devil (a visual play on {daemon}) in sneakers, holding a pitchfork (referring to one of the characteristic features of UNIX, the {fork(2)} system call).
devo is /dee'voh/ [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] n. A person in a development group. See also {doco} and {mango}.
dickless workstation is n. Extremely pejorative hackerism for `diskless workstation', a class of botches including the Sun 3/50 and other machines designed exclusively to network with an expensive central disk server. These combine all the di...
dickless workstation2 is disadvantages of distributed personal computers.
dictionary flame is [USENET] n. An attempt to sidetrack a debate away from issues by insisting on meanings for key terms that presuppose a desired conclusion or smuggle in an implicit premise. A common tactic of people who prefer argument over...
diddle is 1. vt. To work with or modify in a not particularly serious manner. "I diddled a copy of {ADVENT} so it didn't double-space all the time." "Let's diddle this piece of code and see if the problem goes away." See {tweak} and {twiddl...
diddle2 is See also {tweak}, {twiddle}, {frob}.
diff is /dif/ n. 1. A change listing, especially giving differences between (and additions to) source code or documents (the term is often used in the plural `diffs'). "Send me your diffs for the Jargon File!" Compare {vdiff}. 2. Specifical...
diff2 is command, esp. when used as specification input to the `patch(1)' utility (which can actually perform the modifications; see {patch}). This is a common method of distributing patches and source updates in the UNIX/C world. See also...
digit is n. An employee of Digital Equipment Corporation. See also {VAX}, {VMS}, {PDP-10}, {{TOPS-10}}, {DEChead}, {double DECkers}, {field circus}.
dike is vt. To remove or disable a portion of something, as a wire from a computer or a subroutine from a program. A standard slogan is "When in doubt, dike it out". (The implication is that it is usually more effective to attack software pr...
dike2 is increasing it.) The word `dikes' is widely used among mechanics and engineers to mean `diagonal cutters', esp. a heavy-duty metal-cutting device, but may also refer to a kind of wire-cutters used by electronics techs. To `dike so...
dike3 is remove something. Indeed, the TMRC Dictionary defined dike as "to attack with dikes". Among hackers this term has been metaphorically extended to informational objects such as sections of code.
ding is n.,vi. 1. Synonym for {feep}. Usage rare among hackers, but commoner in the {Real World}. 2. `dinged' What happens when someone in authority gives you a minor bitching about something, esp. something trivial. "I was dinged for havin...
dink is /dink/ n. Said of a machine that has the {bitty box} nature; a machine too small to be worth bothering with --- sometimes the system you're currently forced to work on. First heard from an MIT hacker (BADOB) working on a CP/M system w...
dink2 is then from fans of 32-bit architectures about 16-bit machines. "GNUMACS will never work on that dink machine." Probably derived from mainstream `dinky', which isn't sufficiently pejorative.
dinosaur is n. 1. Any hardware requiring raised flooring and special power. Used especially of old minis and mainframes, in contrast with newer microprocessor-based machines. In a famous quote from the 1988 UNIX EXPO, Bill Joy compared the m...
dinosaur2 is grazing dinosaur "with a truck outside pumping its bodily fluids through it". IBM was not amused. Compare {big iron}; see also {mainframe}. 2. [IBM] A very conservative user; a {zipperhead}.
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...
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
flavor is n. 1. Variety, type, kind. "DDT commands come in two flavors." "These lights come in two flavors, big red ones and small green ones." See {vanilla}. 2. The attribute that causes something to be {flavorful}. Usually used in the p...
flavor2 is convention yields additional flavor by allowing one to print text either right-side-up or upside-down." See {vanilla}. This usage was certainly reinforced by the terminology of quantum chromodynamics, in which quarks (the constit...
flavor3 is (up, down, strange, charm, top, bottom) and three colors (red, blue, green) --- however, hackish use of `flavor' at MIT predated QCD. 3. The term for `class' (in the object-oriented sense) in the LISP Machine Flavors system. Tho...
flavor4 is (notably by the Common LISP CLOS facility), the term `flavor' is still used as a general synonym for `class' by some LISP hackers.
flavorful is adj. Full of {flavor}; esthetically pleasing. See {random} and {losing} for antonyms. See also the entries for {taste} and {elegant}.
flippy is /flip'ee/ n. A single-sided floppy disk altered for double-sided use by addition of a second write-notch, so called because it must be flipped over for the second side to be accessible. No longer common.
flowchart is [techspeak] n. An archaic form of visual control-flow specification employing arrows and `speech balloons' of various shapes. Hackers never use flowcharts, consider them extremely silly, and associate them with {COBOL} programmer...
flowchart2 is of life. This is because (from a hacker's point of view) they are no easier to read than code, are less precise, and tend to fall out of sync with the code (so that they either obfuscate it rather than explaining it or require ...
flowchart3 is the code). See also {pdl}, sense 3.
flower key is [Mac users] n. See {command key}.
flush is v. 1. To delete something, usually superfluous, or to abort an operation. "All that nonsense has been flushed." 2. [UNIX/C] To force buffered I/O to disk, as with an `fflush(3)' call. This is *not* an abort or deletion as in sense 1...
flush2 is leave at the end of a day's work (as opposed to leaving for a meal). "I'm going to flush now." "Time to flush." 4. To exclude someone from an activity, or to ignore a person. `Flush' was standard ITS terminology for aborting an ...
flush3 is would have been printed, but was not, as having been flushed. It is speculated that this term arose from a vivid image of flushing unwanted characters by hosing down the internal output buffer, washing the characters away before t...
flush4 is other hand, was propagated by the `fflush(3)' call in C's standard I/O library (though it is reported to have been in use among BLISS programmers at DEC and on Honeywell and IBM machines as far back as 1965). UNIX/C hackers find th...
Flyspeck 3 is n. Standard name for any font that is so tiny as to be unreadable (by analogy with such names as `Helvetica 10' for 10-point Helvetica). Legal boilerplate is usually printed in Flyspeck 3.
flytrap is n. See {firewall machine}.
FOAF is // [USENET] n. Acronym for `Friend Of A Friend'. The source of an unverified, possibly untrue story. This was not originated by hackers (it is used in Jan Brunvand's books on urban folklore), but is much better recognized on USENET a...
FOD is /fod/ v. [Abbreviation for `Finger of Death', originally a spell-name from fantasy gaming] To terminate with extreme prejudice and with no regard for other people. From {MUD}s where the wizard command `FOD <player>' results in the imme...
FOD2 is as punishment for obnoxious behavior. This migrated to other circumstances, such as "I'm going to fod the process that is burning all the cycles." Compare {gun}. In aviation, FOD means Foreign Object Damage, e.g., what happens when ...
FOD3 is bird in flight. Finger of Death is a distressingly apt description of what this does to the engine.
fold case is v. See {smash case}. This term tends to be used more by people who don't mind that their tools smash case. It also connotes that case is ignored but case distinctions in data processed by the tool in question aren't destroyed.
followup is n. On USENET, a {posting} generated in response to another posting (as opposed to a {reply}, which goes by email rather than being broadcast). Followups include the ID of the {parent message} in their headers; smart news-readers c...
followup2 is news in `conversation' sequence rather than order-of-arrival. See {thread}.
foo is /foo/ 1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. Used very generally as a sample name for absolutely anything, esp. programs and files (esp. scratch files). 3. First on the standard list of metasyntactic variables used in syntax examples. See al...
foo2 is {grault}, {garply}, {waldo}, {fred}, {plugh}, {xyzzy}, {thud}. {foo} is the {canonical} example of a `metasyntactic variable' --- a name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random...
foo3 is discussion. To avoid confusion, hackers never use `foo' or other words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning `foo' is a scratch file that may be deleted at any time....
foo4 is When used in connection with `bar' it is generally traced to the WWII-era Army slang acronym FUBAR (`Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition'), later bowdlerized to {foobar}. (See also {FUBAR}). However, the use of the word `foo' itself ha...
foo5 is long history in comic strips and cartoons. The old "Smokey Stover" comic strips by Bill Holman often included the word `FOO', in particular on license plates of cars; allegedly, `FOO' and `BAR' also occurred in Walt Kelly's "Pogo" st...
foo6 is early version of Daffy Duck holds up a sign saying "SILENCE IS FOO!"; oddly, this seems to refer to some approving or positive affirmative use of foo. It is even possible that hacker usage actually springs from `FOO, Lampoons and Par...
foo7 is in September 1958; the byline read `C. Crumb' but this may well have been a sort-of pseudonym for noted weird-comix artist Robert Crumb. The title FOO was featured in large letters on the front cover. An old-time member reports that...
foo8 is Language', compiled at {TMRC} there was an entry that went something like this FOO The first syllable of the sacred chant phrase "FOO MANE PADME HUM." Our first obligation is to keep the foo counters turning. For more abou...
foo9 is Almost the entire AI staff was involved with TMRC, so it is not clear which group introduced the other to the word FOO. Very probably, hackish `foo' had no single origin and derives through all these channels from Yiddish `feh' and/o...
foobar is n. Another common metasyntactic variable; see {foo}. Hackers do *not* generally use this to mean {FUBAR} in either the slang or jargon sense.
fool is n. As used by hackers, specifically describes a person who habitually reasons from obviously or demonstrably incorrect premises and cannot be persuaded by evidence to do otherwise; it is not generally used in its other senses, i.e., to...
fool2 is to reason correctly, or a clown. Indeed, in hackish experience many fools are capable of reasoning all too effectively in executing their errors. See also {cretin}, {loser}, {fool file, the}.
fool file, the is [USENET] n. A notional repository of all the most dramatically and abysmally stupid utterances ever. There is a subgenre of {sig block}s that consists of the header "From the fool file" followed by some quote the poster wish...
fool file, the2 is dimwittery; for this to be really effective, the quote has to be so obviously wrong as to be laughable. More than one USENETter has achieved an unwanted notoriety by being quoted in this way.
Foonly is n. 1. The {PDP-10} successor that was to have been built by the Super Foonly project at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory along with a new operating system. The intention was to leapfrog from the old DEC timesharing sy...
Foonly2 is bypassing TENEX which at that time was the ARPANET standard. ARPA funding for both the Super Foonly and the new operating system was cut in 1974. Most of the design team went to DEC and contributed greatly to the design of the PDP...
Foonly3 is formed by Dave Poole, one of the principal Super Foonly designers, and one of hackerdom's more colorful personalities. Many people remember the parrot which sat on Poole's shoulder and was a regular companion. 3. Any of the mach...
Foonly4 is the F-1 (a.k.a. Super Foonly), which was the computational engine used to create the graphics in the movie "TRON". The F-1 was the fastest PDP-10 ever built, but only one was ever made. The effort drained Foonly of its financial...
Foonly5 is smaller, slower, and much less expensive machines. Unfortunately, these ran not the popular {TOPS-20} but a TENEX varient called Foonex; this seriously limited their market. Also, the machines shipped were actually wire-wrapped en...
Foonly6 is attention from more than usually competent site personnel, and thus had significant reliability problems. Poole's legendary temper and unwillingness to suffer fools gladly did not help matters. By the time of the Jupiter project c...
Foonly7 is build another F-1 was eclipsed by the {Mars}, and the company never quite recovered. See the {Mars} entry for the continuation and moral of this story.
footprint is n. 1. The floor or desk area taken up by a piece of hardware. 2. [IBM] The audit trail (if any) left by a crashed program (often in plural, `footprints'). See also {toeprint}.
for free is adj. Said of a capability of a programming language or hardware equipment that is available by its design without needing cleverness to implement "In APL, we get the matrix operations for free." "And owing to the way revisions are...
for free2 is trees for free." Usually it refers to a serendipitous feature of doing things a certain way (compare {big win}), but it may refer to an intentional but secondary feature.
for the rest of us is [from the Mac slogan "The computer for the rest of us"] adj. 1. Used to describe a {spiffy} product whose affordability shames other comparable products, or (more often) used sarcastically to describe {spiffy} but very ov...
for the rest of us2 is with a limited interface, deliberately limited capabilities, non-orthogonality, inability to compose primitives, or any other limitation designed to not `confuse' a na"ive user. This places an upper bound on how far tha...
for the rest of us3 is get in the way of the task instead of helping accomplish it. Used in reference to Macintosh software which doesn't provide obvious capabilities because it is thought that the poor lusers might not be able to handle them...
for the rest of us4 is third-party reference; thus, "Yes, it is an attractive program, but it's designed for The Rest Of Them" means a program that superficially looks neat but has no depth beyond the surface flash. See also {WIMP environme...
fora is pl.n. Plural of {forum}.
foreground is [UNIX] vt. To foreground a task is to bring it to the top of one's {stack} for immediate processing, and hackers often use it in this sense for non-computer tasks. "If your presentation is due next week, I guess I'd better foregr...
foreground2 is Technically, on a time-sharing system, a task executing in foreground is one able to accept input from and return output to the user; oppose {background}. Nowadays this term is primarily associated with {{UNIX}}, but it appears...
foreground3 is OS/360. Normally, there is only one foreground task per terminal (or terminal window); having multiple processes simultaneously reading the keyboard is a good way to {lose}.
forked is [UNIX; prob. influenced by a mainstream expletive] adj. Terminally slow, or dead. Originated when one system slowed to incredibly bad speeds because of a process recursively spawning copies of itself (using the UNIX system call `for...
Fortrash is /for'trash/ n. Hackerism for the FORTRAN language, referring to its primitive design, gross and irregular syntax, limited control constructs, and slippery, exception-filled semantics.
fortune cookie is [UNIX] n. A random quote, item of trivia, joke, or maxim printed to the user's tty at login time or (less commonly) at logout time. Items from this lexicon have often been used as fortune cookies. See {cookie file}.
forum is n. [USENET, GEnie CI$; pl. `fora' or `forums'] Any discussion group accessible through a dial-in {BBS}, a {mailing list}, or a {newsgroup} (see {network, the}). A forum functions much like a bulletin board; users submit {posting}s ...
forum2 is Contrast real-time chat via {talk mode} or point-to-point personal {email}.
fossil is n. 1. In software, a misfeature that becomes understandable only in historical context, as a remnant of times past retained so as not to break compatibility. Example the retention of octal as default base for string escapes in {C}, ...
fossil2 is to ASCII and modern byte-addressable architectures. See {dusty deck}. 2. More restrictively, a feature with past but no present utility. Example the force-all-caps (LCASE) bits in the V7 and {BSD} UNIX tty driver, designed for ...
fossil3 is of the usual backward-compatibility goal, this functionality has actually been expanded and renamed in some later {USG UNIX} releases as the IUCLC and OLCUC bits. 3. The FOSSIL (Fido/Opus/Seadog Standard Interface Level) driver s...
fossil4 is replace the {brain-dead} routines in the IBM PC ROMs. Fossils are used by most MS-DOS {BBS} software in lieu of programming the {bare metal} of the serial ports, as the ROM routines do not support interrupt-driven operation or setti...
fossil5 is specification allows additional functionality to be hooked in, drivers that use the {hook} but do not provide serial-port access themselves are named with a modifier, as in `video fossil'.
four-color glossies is 1. Literature created by {marketroid}s that allegedly containing technical specs but which is in fact as superficial as possible without being totally {content-free}. "Forget the four-color glossies, give me the tech ref...
four-color glossies2 is superficiality even when the material is printed on ordinary paper in black and white. Four-color-glossy manuals are *never* useful for finding a problem. 2. [rare] Applied by extension to manual pages that don't con...
four-color glossies3 is program doesn't produce the expected or desired output.
fragile is adj. Syn {brittle}.
fred is n. 1. The personal name most frequently used as a metasyntactic variable (see {foo}). Allegedly popular because it's easy for a non-touch-typist to type on a standard QWERTY keyboard. Unlike {J. Random Hacker} or `J. Random Loser', ...
fred2 is (but see {Mbogo, Dr. Fred}). 2. An acronym for `Flipping Ridiculous Electronic Device'; other F-verbs may be substituted for `flipping'.
frednet is /fred'net/ n. Used to refer to some {random} and uncommon protocol encountered on a network. "We're implementing bridging in our router to solve the frednet problem."
freeware is n. Free software, often written by enthusiasts and distributed by users' groups, or via electronic mail, local bulletin boards, {USENET}, or other electronic media. At one time, `freeware' was a trademark of Andrew Fluegelman, the...
freeware2 is program PC-TALK III. It wasn't enforced after his mysterious disappearance and presumed death in 1984. See {shareware}.
freeze is v. To lock an evolving software distribution or document against changes so it can be released with some hope of stability. Carries the strong implication that the item in question will `unfreeze' at some future date. "OK, fix that ...
freeze2 is are more specific constructions on this. A `feature freeze', for example, locks out modifications intended to introduce new features; a `code freeze' connotes no more changes at all. At Sun Microsystems and elsewhere, one may also ...
freeze3 is an almost-but-not-quite frozen state.
fried is adj. 1. Non-working due to hardware failure; burnt out. Especially used of hardware brought down by a `power glitch' (see {glitch}), {drop-outs}, a short, or some other electrical event. (Sometimes this literally happens to electroni...
fried2 is burn out and transformers can melt down, emitting noxious smoke. However, this term is also used metaphorically.) Compare {frotzed}. 2. Of people, exhausted. Said particularly of those who continue to work in such a state. Often...
fried3 is know that fix destroyed the file system, but I was fried when I put it in." Esp. common in conjunction with `brain' "My brain is fried today, I'm very short on sleep."
friode is /fri'ohd/ [TMRC] n. A reversible (that is, fused or blown) diode. Compare {fried}.
fritterware is n. An excess of capability that serves no productive end. The canonical example is font-diddling software on the Mac (see {macdink}); the term describes anything that eats huge amounts of time for quite marginal gains in functi...
frob is /frob/ 1. n. [MIT] The {TMRC} definition was "FROB = a protruding arm or trunnion"; by metaphoric extension, a `frob' is any random small thing; an object that you can comfortably hold in one hand; something you can frob. See {frobnit...
frob2 is {frobnicate}. 3. [from the {MUD} world] A command on some MUDs that changes a player's experience level (this can be used to make wizards); also, to request {wizard} privileges on the `professional courtesy' grounds that one is a w...
frobnicate is /frob'ni-kayt/ vt. [Poss. derived from {frobnitz}, and usually abbreviated to {frob}, but `frobnicate' is recognized as the official full form.] To manipulate or adjust, to tweak. One frequently frobs bits or other 2-state device...
frobnicate2 is (that is, flip it), but also "Stop frobbing that clasp; you'll break it". One also sees the construction `to frob a frob'. See {tweak} and {twiddle}. Usage frob, twiddle, and tweak sometimes connote points along a continuum....
frobnicate3 is `twiddle' connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse search for a proper setting; `tweak' connotes fine-tuning. If someone is turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it, he is probably tweaking it; ...
frobnicate4 is screen, he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it. The variant `frobnosticate' has been recently reported.
frobnitz is /frob'nits/, pl. `frobnitzem' /frob'nit-zm/ or `frobni' /frob'ni/ n. An unspecified physical object, a widget. Also refers to electronic black boxes. This rare form is usually abbreviated to `frotz', or more commonly to {frob}. ...
frobnitz2 is `frobule' (/frob'yool/). Starting perhaps in 1979, `frobozz' /fruh-boz'/ (plural `frobbotzim' /fruh-bot'zm/) has also become very popular, largely through its exposure as a name via {Zork}. These can also be applied to nonphys...
frog is alt. `phrog' 1. interj. Term of disgust (we seem to have a lot of them). 2. Used as a name for just about anything. See {foo}. 3. n. Of things, a crock. 4. n. Of people, somewhere in between a turkey and a toad. 5. `froggy' adj. S...
frog2 is milder. "This froggy program is taking forever to run!"front end n. 1. An intermediary computer that does set-up and filtering for another (usually more powerful but less friendly) machine (a `back end'). 2. What you're talking to w...
frog3 is is making replies without paying attention. "Look at the dancing elephants!" "Uh-huh." "Do you know what I just said?" "Sorry, you were talking to the front end." See also {fepped out}. 3. Software that provides an interface to...
frog4 is as user-friendly. Probably from analogy with hardware front-ends (see sense 1) that interfaced with mainframes.
frotz is /frots/ 1. n. See {frobnitz}. 2. `mumble frotz' An interjection of very mild disgust.
frotzed is /frotst/ adj. {down} because of hardware problems. Compare {fried}. A machine that is merely frotzed may be fixable without replacing parts, but a fried machine is more seriously damaged.
frowney is n. (alt. `frowney face') See {emoticon}.
fry is 1. vi. To fail. Said especially of smoke-producing hardware failures. More generally, to become non-working. Usage never said of software, only of hardware and humans. See {fried}, {magic smoke}. 2. vt. To cause to fail; to {roach}...
fry2 is Never used of software or humans, but compare {fried}.
FTP is /F-T-P/, *not* /fit'ip/ 1. [techspeak] n. The File Transfer Protocol for transmitting files between systems on the Internet. 2. vt. To {beam} a file using the File Transfer Protocol. 3. Sometimes used as a generic even for file transf...
FTP2 is `Wuthering Heights' ftp'd from uunet."
FUBAR is n. The Failed UniBus Address Register in a VAX. A good example of how jargon can occasionally be snuck past the {suit}s; see {foobar}.
fuck me harder is excl. Sometimes uttered in response to egregious misbehavior, esp. in software, and esp. of misbehaviors which seem unfairly persistent (as though designed in by the imp of the perverse). Often theatrically elaborated "Aiigh...
fuck me harder2 is curare-tipped wrought-iron fence *and no lubricants*!" The phrase is sometimes heard abbreviated `FMH' in polite company. [This entry is an extreme example of the hackish habit of coining elaborate and evocative terms for ...
fuck me harder3 is parody of mainstream expletives that has become a running gag in part of the hacker culture; it illustrates the hackish tendency to turn any situation, even one of extreme frustration, into an intellectual game (the point be...
fuck me harder4 is long-winded description of the most anatomically absurd mental image possible --- the short forms implicitly allude to all the ridiculous long forms ever spoken). Scatological language is actually relatively uncommon among ...
fuck me harder5 is whether this entry ought to be included at all. As it reflects a live usage recognizably peculiar to the hacker culture, we feel it is in the hackish spirit of truthfulness and opposition to all forms of censorship to rec...
FUD is /fuhd/ n. Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering [Amdahl] products." The ide...
FUD2 is with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This was traditionally done by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or so...
FUD wars is /fuhd worz/ n. [from {FUD}] Political posturing engaged in by hardware and software vendors ostensibly committed to standardization but actually willing to fragment the market to protect their own shares. The UNIX International vs...
fudge is 1. vt. To perform in an incomplete but marginally acceptable way, particularly with respect to the writing of a program. "I didn't feel like going through that pain and suffering, so I fudged it --- I'll fix it later." 2. n. The res...
fudge factor is n. A value or parameter that is varied in an ad hoc way to produce the desired result. The terms `tolerance' and {slop} are also used, though these usually indicate a one-sided leeway, such as a buffer that is made larger than...
fudge factor2 is how large it needs to be, and it is better to waste a little space than to lose completely for not having enough. A fudge factor, on the other hand, can often be tweaked in more than one direction. A good example is the `fuz...
fudge factor3 is calculations two numbers being compared for equality must be allowed to differ by a small amount; if that amount is too small, a computation may never terminate, while if it is too large, results will be needlessly inaccurate....
fudge factor4 is incorrectly by programmers who don't fully understand their import. See also {coefficient of X}.
fuel up is vi. To eat or drink hurriedly in order to get back to hacking. "Food-p?" "Yeah, let's fuel up." "Time for a {great-wall}!" See also {{oriental food}}.
fuggly is /fuhg'lee/ adj. Emphatic form of {funky}; funky + ugly). Unusually for hacker jargon, this may actually derive from black street-jive. To say it properly, the first syllable should be growled rather than spoken. Usage humorous. "...
fuggly2 is that printer driver is *fuggly*." See also {wonky}.
funky is adj. Said of something that functions, but in a slightly strange, klugey way. It does the job and would be difficult to change, so its obvious non-optimality is left alone. Often used to describe interfaces. The more bugs something...
funky2 is workarounds are easier, the funkier it is. {TECO} and UUCP are funky. The Intel i860's exception handling is extraordinarily funky. Most standards acquire funkiness as they age. "The new mailer is installed, but is still somewhat ...
funky3 is try resubmitting it." "This UART is pretty funky. The data ready line is active-high in interrupt mode and active-low in DMA mode." See {fuggly}.
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
magic2 is computes the parity of an 8-bit byte in three instructions." 2. Characteristic of something that works although no one really understands why (this is especially called {black magic}). 3. [Stanford] A feature not generally public...
magic3 is impossible, or a feature formerly in that category but now unveiled. Compare {black magic}, {wizardly}, {deep magic}, {heavy wizardry}. For more about hackish `magic', see appendix A.
magic cookie is [UNIX] n. 1. Something passed between routines or programs that enables the receiver to perform some operation; a capability ticket or opaque identifier. Especially used of small data objects that contain data encoded in a str...
magic cookie2 is E.g., on non-UNIX OSes with a non-byte-stream model of files, the result of `ftell(3)' may be a magic cookie rather than a byte offset; it can be passed to `fseek(3)', but not operated on in any meaningful way. The phrase ...
magic cookie3 is a result whose contents are not defined but which can be passed back to the same or some other program later. 2. An in-band code for changing graphic rendition (e.g., inverse video or underlining) or performing other contro...
magic cookie4 is leave a blank on the screen corresponding to mode-change magic cookies; this was also called a {glitch}. See also {cookie}.
magic number is [UNIX/C] n. 1. In source code, some non-obvious constant whose value is significant to the operation of a program and that is inserted inconspicuously in-line ({hardcoded}), rather than expanded in by a symbol set by a commente...
magic number2 is are bad style. 2. A number that encodes critical information used in an algorithm in some opaque way. The classic examples of these are the numbers used in hash or CRC functions, or the coefficients in a linear congruentia...
magic number3 is sense actually predates and was ancestral to the more common sense 1. 3. Special data located at the beginning of a binary data file to indicate its type to a utility. Under UNIX, the system and various applications program...
magic number4 is types of executable file by looking for a magic number. Once upon a time, these magic numbers were PDP-11 branch instructions that skipped over header data to the start of executable code; the 0407, for example, was octal for...
magic number5 is {wizard} knows the spells to create magic numbers. How do you choose a fresh magic number of your own? Simple --- you pick one at random. See? It's magic!
magic smoke is n. A substance trapped inside IC packages that enables them to function (also called `blue smoke'; this is similar to the archaic `phlogiston' hypothesis about combustion). Its existence is demonstrated by what happens when a c...
magic smoke2 is out, so it doesn't work any more. See {smoke test}, {let the smoke out}. USENETter Jay Maynard tells the following story: "Once, while hacking on a dedicated Z80 system, I was testing code by blowing EPROMs and plugging them...
magic smoke3 is One time, I plugged one in backwards. I only discovered that *after* I realized that Intel didn't put power-on lights under the quartz windows on the tops of their EPROMs --- the die was glowing white-hot. Amazingly, the EPRO...
magic smoke4 is full of zeros, then erased it again. For all I know, it's still in service. Of course, this is because the magic smoke didn't get let out." Compare the original phrasing of {Murphy's Law}.
main loop is n. Software tools are often written to perform some actions repeatedly on whatever input is handed to them, terminating when there is no more input or they are explicitly told to go away. In such programs, the loop that gets and p...
mainframe is n. This term originally referred to the cabinet containing the central processor unit or `main frame' of a room-filling {Stone Age} batch machine. After the emergence of smaller `minicomputer' designs in the early 1970s, the tr...
mainframe2 is as `mainframe computers' and eventually just as mainframes. The term carries the connotation of a machine designed for batch rather than interactive use, though possibly with an interactive timesharing operating system retrofi...
mainframe3 is built by IBM, Unisys, and the other great {dinosaur}s surviving from computing's {Stone Age}. It is common wisdom among hackers that the mainframe architectural tradition is essentially dead (outside of the tiny market for {n...
mainframe4 is having been swamped by the recent huge advances in IC technology and low-cost personal computing. As of 1991, corporate America hasn't quite figured this out yet, though the wave of failures, takeovers, and mergers among tradi...
mainframe5 is the wind (see {dinosaurs mating}).
management is n. 1. Corporate power elites distinguished primarily by their distance from actual productive work and their chronic failure to manage (see also {suit}). Spoken derisively, as in "*Management* decided that ...". 2. Mythically, ...
management2 is world's minor irritations. Hackers' satirical public notices are often signed `The Mgt'; this derives from the `Illuminatus' novels (see the Bibliography).
mandelbug is /mon'del-buhg/ [from the Mandelbrot set] n. A bug whose underlying causes are so complex and obscure as to make its behavior appear chaotic or even non-deterministic. This term implies that the speaker thinks it is a {Bohr bug}, ...
manged is /monjd/ [probably from the French `manger' or Italian `mangiare', to eat; perhaps influenced by English n. `mange', `mangy'] adj. Refers to anything that is mangled or damaged, usually beyond repair. "The disk was manged after the e...
mangle is vt. Used similarly to {mung} or {scribble}, but more violent in its connotations; something that is mangled has been irreversibly and totally trashed.
mangler is [DEC] n. A manager. Compare {mango}; see also {management}. Note that {system mangler} is somewhat different in connotation.
mango is /mang'go/ [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] n. A manager. Compare {mangler}. See also {devo} and {doco}.
marbles is [from mainstream "lost all his/her marbles"] pl.n. The minimum needed to build your way further up some hierarchy of tools or abstractions. After a bad system crash, you need to determine if the machine has enough marbles to come u...
marbles2 is rebuild from backups, or if you need to rebuild from scratch. "This compiler doesn't even have enough marbles to compile `Hello World'."
marginal is adj. 1. Extremely small. "A marginal increase in {core} can decrease {GC} time drastically." In everyday terms, this means that it is a lot easier to clean off your desk if you have a spare place to put some of the junk while you...
marginal2 is merit. "This proposed new feature seems rather marginal to me." 3. Of extremely small probability of {win}ning. "The power supply was rather marginal anyway; no wonder it fried."
Marginal Hacks is n. Margaret Jacks Hall, a building into which the Stanford AI Lab was moved near the beginning of the 1980s (from the {D. C. Power Lab}).
marginally is adv. Slightly. "The ravs here are only marginally better than at Small Eating Place." See {epsilon}.
marketroid is /mar'k*-troyd/ alt. `marketing slime', `marketing droid', `marketeer' n. A member of a company's marketing department, esp. one who promises users that the next version of a product will have features that are not actually sche...
marketroid2 is to implement, and/or are in violation of the laws of physics; and/or one who describes existing features (and misfeatures) in ebullient, buzzword-laden adspeak. Derogatory. Compare {droid}.* martian: n. A packet sent on a TC...
marketroid3 is test loopback interface [127.0.0.1]. This means that it will come back at you labeled with a source address that is clearly not of this earth. "The domain server is getting lots of packets from Mars. Does that gateway have a ...
massage: vt. Vague term used to describe `smooth' transformations of is a data set into a different form, esp. transformations that do not lose information. Connotes less pain than {munch} or {crunch}. "He wrote a program that massages X bitm...
math-out: [poss. from `white-out' (the blizzard variety)] n. A is paper or presentation so encrusted with mathematical or other formal notation as to be incomprehensible. This may be a device for concealing the fact that it is actually {conte...
Matrix: [FidoNet] n. 1. What the Opus BBS software and sysops call is {FidoNet}. 2. Fanciful term for a {cyberspace} expected to emerge from current networking experiments (see {network, the}). Some people refer to the totality of present net...
Mbogo, Dr. Fred: /*m-boh'goh, dok'tr fred/ [Stanford] n. The is archetypal man you don't want to see about a problem, esp. an incompetent professional; a shyster. "Do you know a good eye doctor?" "Sure, try Mbogo Eye Care and Professional Dr...
Mbogo, Dr. Fred: /*m-boh'goh, dok'tr fred/ [Stanford] n. The2 is between {bogus} and the original Dr. Mbogo, a witch doctor who was Gomez Addams' physician on the old "Addams Family" TV show. See also {fred}.
meatware is n. Synonym for {wetware}. Less common.
meeces is /mees'*z/ [TMRC] n. Occasional furry visitors who are not {urchin}s. [That is, mice. This may no longer be in live use; it clearly derives from the refrain of the early-1960s cartoon character Mr. Jinx: "I hate meeces to *pieces*!" ...
meg is /meg/ n. See {{quantifiers}}.
mega- is /me'g*/ [SI] pref. See {{quantifiers}}.
megapenny is /meg'*-pen`ee/ n. $10,000 (1 cent * 10^6). Used semi-humorously as a unit in comparing computer cost and performance figures.
MEGO is /me'goh/ or /mee'goh/ [`My Eyes Glaze Over', often `Mine Eyes Glazeth (sic) Over', attributed to the futurologist Herman Kahn] Also `MEGO factor'. 1. n. A {handwave} intended to confuse the listener and hopefully induce agreement beca...
MEGO2 is not understanding what is going on. MEGO is usually directed at senior management by engineers and contains a high proportion of {TLA}s. 2. excl. An appropriate response to MEGO tactics. 3. Among non-hackers this term often refers ...
MEGO3 is glaze, but to the eye-glazing reaction itself, which may be triggered by the mere threat of technical detail as effectively as by an actual excess of it.
meltdown, network is n. See {network meltdown}.
meme is /meem/ [coined on analogy with `gene' by Richard Dawkins] n. An idea considered as a {replicator}, esp. with the connotation that memes parasitize people into propagating them much as viruses do. Used esp. in the phrase `meme complex'...
meme2 is memes that form an organized belief system, such as a religion. This lexicon is an (epidemiological) vector of the `hacker subculture' meme complex; each entry might be considered a meme. However, `meme' is often misused to mean `...
meme3 is acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool- and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has superseded biological evolution by selection of hereditary traits. Hackers find this...
meme plague is n. The spread of a successful but pernicious {meme}, esp. one that parasitizes the victims into giving their all to propagate it. Astrology, BASIC, and the other guy's religion are often considered to be examples. This usage i...
meme plague2 is `joiner' ideologies like Naziism or various forms of millennarian Christianity have exhibited plague-like cycles of exponential growth followed by collapses to small reservoir populations.
memetics is /me-met'iks/ [from {meme}] The study of memes. As of mid-1991, this is still an extremely informal and speculative endeavor, though the first steps towards at least statistical rigor have been made by H. Keith Henson and others. ...
memetics2 is among hackers, who like to see themselves as the architects of the new information ecologies in which memes live and replicate.
memory leak is n. An error in a program's dynamic-store allocation logic that causes it to fail to reclaim discarded memory, leading to eventual collapse due to memory exhaustion. Also (esp. at CMU) called {core leak}. See {aliasing bug}, {f...
memory leak2 is {precedence lossage}, {overrun screw}, {leaky heap}, {leak}.
menuitis is /men`yoo-i:'tis/ n. Notional disease suffered by software with an obsessively simple-minded menu interface and no escape. Hackers find this intensely irritating and much prefer the flexibility of command-line or language-style inte...
menuitis2 is macros or a special-purpose language in which one can encode useful hacks. See {user-obsequious}, {drool-proof paper}, {WIMP environment}, {for the rest of us}.
mess-dos is /mes-dos/ n. Derisory term for MS-DOS. Often followed by the ritual banishing "Just say No!" See {{MS-DOS}}. Most hackers (even many MS-DOS hackers) loathe MS-DOS for its single-tasking nature, its limits on application size, it...
mess-dos2 is IBMness (see {fear and loathing}). Also `mess-loss', `messy-dos', `mess-dog', `mess-dross', `mush-dos', and various combinations thereof. In Ireland and the U.K. it is even sometimes called `Domestos' after a brand of toilet c...
meta is /me't*/ or /may't*/ or (Commonwealth) /mee't*/ [from analytic philosophy] adj.,pref. One level of description up. A meta-syntactic variable is a variable in notation used to describe syntax, and meta-language is language used to descri...
meta2 is briefly, but much hacker humor turns on deliberate confusion between meta-levels. See {{Humor, Hacker}}.
meta bit is n. The top bit of an 8-bit character, which is on in character values 128--255. Also called {high bit}, {alt bit}, or {hobbit}. Some terminals and consoles (see {space-cadet keyboard}) have a META shift key. Others (including, ...
meta bit2 is machines) have an ALT key. See also {bucky bits}.
MFTL is /M-F-T-L/ [acronym: `My Favorite Toy Language'] 1. adj. Describes a talk on a programming language design that is heavy on the syntax (with lots of BNF), sometimes even talks about semantics (e.g., type systems), but rarely, if ever, h...
MFTL2 is broadly applied to talks --- even when the topic is not a programming language --- in which the subject matter is gone into in unnecessary and meticulous detail at the sacrifice of any conceptual content. "Well, it was a typical MFTL...
MFTL3 is which the developers are passionate (often to the point of prosyletic zeal) but no one else cares about. Applied to the language by those outside the originating group. "He cornered me about type resolution in his MFTL." The fir...
MFTL4 is MFTL is usually to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design away from contamination by lesser languages by writing a compiler for it in itself. Thus, the standard put-down question at an MFTL talk is "Has it been used for...
MFTL5 is other hand, a language that *cannot* be used to write its own compiler is beneath contempt...
mickey is n. The resolution unit of mouse movement. It has been suggested that the `disney' will become a benchmark unit for animation graphics performance.
mickey mouse program is n. North American equivalent of a {noddy} (that is, trivial) program. Doesn't necessarily have the belittling connotations of mainstream slang "Oh, that's just mickey mouse stuff!"; sometimes trivial programs can be ve...
micro- is pref. 1. Very small; this is the root of its use as a quantifier prefix. 2. A quantifier prefix, calling for multiplication by 10^{-6} (see {{quantifiers}}). Neither of these uses is peculiar to hackers, but hackers tend to fling ...
micro-2 is countenanced in standard English. It is recorded, for example, that one CS professor used to characterize the standard length of his lectures as a microcentury --- that is, about 52.6 minutes (see also {attoparsec}, {nanoacre}, a...
micro-3 is or human-scale --- that is, capable of being maintained or comprehended or manipulated by one human being. This sense is generalized from `microcomputer', and is esp. used in contrast with `macro-' (the corresponding Greek prefix...
micro-4 is global (or {macro-}). Thus a hacker might say that buying a smaller car to reduce pollution only solves a microproblem; the macroproblem of getting to work might be better solved by using mass transit, moving to within walking di...
micro-5 is microfloppies n. 3.5-inch floppies, as opposed to 5.25-inch {vanilla} or mini-floppies and the now-obsolete 8-inch variety. This term may be headed for obsolescence as 5.25-inchers pass out of use, only to be revived if anybody floa...
micro-6 is {stiffy}, {minifloppies}.
microfortnight is n. About 1.2 sec. The VMS operating system has a lot of tuning parameters that you can set with the SYSGEN utility, and one of these is TIMEPROMPTWAIT, the time the system will wait for an operator to set the correct date and...
microfortnight2 is current value is bogus. This time is specified in microfortnights!
microLenat is /mi:-kroh-len'-*t/ n. See {bogosity}.
microReid is /mi:'kroh-reed/ n. See {bogosity}.
Microsloth Windows is /mi:'kroh-sloth` win'dohz/ n. Hackerism for `Microsoft Windows', a windowing system for the IBM-PC which is so limited by bug-for-bug compatibility with {mess-dos} that it is agonizingly slow on anything less than a fast ...
microtape is /mi:'kroh-tayp/ n. Occasionally used to mean a DECtape, as opposed to a {macrotape}. A DECtape is a small reel, about 4 inches in diameter, of magnetic tape about an inch wide. Unlike drivers for today's {macrotape}s, microtape ...
microtape2 is therefore could be used to support file systems and even for swapping (this was generally done purely for {hack value}, as they were far too slow for practical use). In their heyday they were used in pretty much the same ways ...
microtape3 is portable way to save and transport files and programs. Apparently the term `microtape' was actually the official term used within DEC for these tapes until someone coined the word `DECtape', which, of course, sounded sexier to t...
middle-endian is adj. Not {big-endian} or {little-endian}. Used of perverse byte orders such as 3-4-1-2 or 2-1-4-3, occasionally found in the packed-decimal formats of minicomputer manufacturers who shall remain nameless. See {NUXI problem}.
milliLampson is /mil'*-lamp`sn/ n. A unit of talking speed, abbreviated mL. Most people run about 200 milliLampsons. Butler Lampson (a CS theorist and systems implementor highly regarded among hackers) goes at 1000. A few people speak faste...
milliLampson2 is the (sometimes widely disparate) rates at which people can generate ideas and actually emit them in speech. For example, noted computer architect C. Gordon Bell (designer of the PDP-11) is said, with some awe, to think at abo...
milliLampson3 is frequently reduced to fragments of sentences as his mouth tries to keep up with his speeding brain.
minifloppies is n. 5.25-inch {vanilla} floppy disks, as opposed to 3.5-inch or {microfloppies} and the now-obsolescent 8-inch variety. At one time, this term was a trademark of Shugart Associates for their SA-400 minifloppy drive. Nobody pai...
MIPS is /mips/ [acronym] n. 1. A measure of computing speed; formally, `Million Instructions Per Second' (that's 10^6 per second, not 2^{20}!); often rendered by hackers as `Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed' or in other unflattering...
MIPS2 is attitude about the value of most {benchmark} claims, said attitude being one of the great cultural divides between hackers and {marketroid}s. The singular is sometimes `1 MIP' even though this is clearly etymologically wrong. See ...
MIPS3 is especially large computers, considered abstractly as sources of {computron}s. "This is just a workstation; the heavy MIPS are hidden in the basement." 3. The corporate name of a particular RISC-chip company; among other things, th...
MIPS4 is 3100 workstation series. 4. Acronym for `Meaningless Information per Second' (a joke, prob. from sense 1).
misbug is /mis-buhg/ [MIT] n. An unintended property of a program that turns out to be useful; something that should have been a {bug} but turns out to be a {feature}. Usage: rare. Compare {green lightning}. See {miswart}.
misfeature is /mis-fee'chr/ or /mis'fee`chr/ n. A feature that eventually causes lossage, possibly because it is not adequate for a new situation which has evolved. It is not the same as a bug, because fixing it involves a substantial philoso...
misfeature2 is involved. A misfeature is different from a simple unforeseen side effect; the term implies that the misfeature was actually carefully planned to be that way, but its future consequences or circumstances just weren't predicted ...
misfeature3 is having thought ahead about it at all. Many misfeatures (especially in user-interface design) arise because the designers/implementors mistook their personal tastes for laws of nature. Often a former feature becomes a misfeat...
misfeature4 is parameters subsequently changed (possibly only in the judgment of the implementors). "Well, yeah, it is kind of a misfeature that file names are limited to 6 characters, but the original implementors wanted to save directory ...
Missed'em-five is n. Pejorative hackerism for AT&T System V UNIX, generally used by {BSD} partisans in a bigoted mood. (The synonym `SysVile' is also encountered.) See {software bloat}, {Berzerkeley}.
miswart is /mis-wort/ [from {wart} by analogy with {misbug}] n. A {feature} that superficially appears to be a {wart} but has been determined to be the {Right Thing}. For example, in some versions of the {EMACS} text editor, the `transpose ch...
miswart2 is characters on either side of the cursor on the screen, *except* when the cursor is at the end of a line, in which case the two characters before the cursor are exchanged. While this behavior is perhaps surprising, and certainly i...
miswart3 is extensive experimentation to be what most users want. This feature is a miswart.
mod is vt.,n. 1. Short for `modify' or `modification'. Very commonly used --- in fact the full terms are considered markers that one is being formal. The plural `mods' is used esp. with reference to bug fixes or minor design changes in hardw...
mod2 is {patch} sets or a {diff}. 2. Short for {modulo} but used *only* for its techspeak sense.
mode is n. A general state, usually used with an adjective describing the state. Use of the word `mode' rather than `state' implies that the state is extended over time, and probably also that some activity characteristic of that state is b...
mode2 is thesis mode." In its jargon sense, `mode' is most often attributed to people, though it is sometimes applied to programs and inanimate objects. In particular, see {hack mode}, {day mode}, {night mode}, {demo mode}, {fireworks mode}...
mode3 is also often hears the verbs `enable' and `disable' used in connection with jargon modes. Thus, for example, a sillier way of saying "I'm going to crash" is "I'm going to enable crash mode now". One might also hear a request to "disab...
mode bit is n. A {flag}, usually in hardware, that selects between two (usually quite different) modes of operation. The connotations are different from {flag} bit in that mode bits are mainly written during a boot or set-up phase, are seldom...
mode bit2 is lifetime of an ordinary program. The classic example was the EBCDIC-vs.-ASCII bit (#12) of the Program Status Word of the IBM 360. Another was the bit on a PDP-12 that controlled whether it ran the PDP-8 or the LINC instruction ...
modulo is /mo'dyu-loh/ prep. Except for. From mathematical terminology; one can consider saying that 4 = 22 except for the 9s (4 = 22 mod 9). "Well, LISP seems to work okay now, modulo that {GC} bug." "I feel fine today modulo a slight he...
molly-guard is /mol'ee-gard/ [University of Illinois] n. A shield to prevent tripping of some {Big Red Switch} by clumsy or ignorant hands. Originally used of some plexiglass covers improvised for the BRS on an IBM 4341 after a programmer's t...
molly-guard2 is twice in one day. Later generalized to covers over stop/reset switches on disk drives and networking equipment.
Mongolian Hordes technique is n. Development by {gang bang} (poss. from the Sixties counterculture expression `Mongolian clusterfuck' for a public orgy). Implies that large numbers of inexperienced programmers are being put on a job better pe...
Mongolian Hordes technique2 is `Chinese Army technique'; see also {Brooks's Law}.
monkey up is vt. To hack together hardware for a particular task, especially a one-shot job. Connotes an extremely {crufty} and consciously temporary solution. Compare {hack up}, {kluge up}, {cruft together}, {cruft together}.
monkey, scratch is n. See {scratch monkey}.
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
one-line fix is n. Used (often sarcastically) of a change to a program that is thought to be trivial or insignificant right up to the moment it crashes the system. Usually `cured' by another one-line fix. See also {I didn't change anything!}
one-liner wars is n. A game popular among hackers who code in the language APL (see {write-only language}). The objective is to see who can code the most interesting and/or useful routine in one line of operators chosen from APL's exceedingly...
one-liner wars2 is was practiced among {TECO} hackers. Ken Iverson, the inventor of APL, has been credited with a one-liner that, given a number N, produces a list of the prime numbers from 1 to N inclusive. It looks like this (2 = 0 +.= T...
one-liner wars3 is character, the assignment arrow is a single character, and `i' represents the APL iota.
ooblick is /oo'blik/ [from Dr. Seuss's `Bartholomew and the Oobleck'] n. A bizarre semi-liquid sludge made from cornstarch and water. Enjoyed among hackers who make batches during playtime at parties for its amusing and extremely non-Newtonia...
ooblick2 is resists rapid motion like a solid and will even crack when hit by a hammer. Often found near lasers. Here is a field-tested ooblick recipe contributed by GLS 1 cup cornstarch 1 cup baking soda 3/4 cup water N drops o...
ooblick3 is non-Newtonian as a pure cornstarch ooblick, but has an appropriately slimy feel. Some, however, insist that the notion of an ooblick *recipe* is far too mechanical, and that it is best to add the water in small increments so that...
ooblick4 is through as it *becomes* ooblick can be grokked in fullness by many hands. For optional ingredients of this experience, see the "Ceremonial Chemicals" section of appendix B.
open is n. Abbreviation for `open (or left) parenthesis' --- used when necessary to eliminate oral ambiguity. To read aloud the LISP form (DEFUN FOO (X) (PLUS X 1)) one might say "Open defun foo, open eks close, open, plus eks one, close clos...
open switch is [IBM prob. from railroading] n. An unresolved question, issue, or problem.
operating system is [techspeak] n. (Often abbreviated `OS') The foundation software of a machine, of course; that which schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents a default interface to the user between applications. The facilities an o...
operating system2 is design philosophy exert an extremely strong influence on programming style and on the technical cultures that grow up around its host machines. Hacker folklore has been shaped primarily by the {{UNIX}}, {{ITS}}, {{TOPS-10...
operating system3 is {{CP/M}}, {{MS-DOS}}, and {{Multics}} operating systems (most importantly by ITS and UNIX).
Orange Book is n. The U.S. Government's standards document `Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria, DOD standard 5200.28-STD, December, 1985' which characterize secure computing architectures and defines levels A1 (most secure) through D ...
Orange Book2 is can be upgraded to about C1 without excessive pain. See also {{book titles}}.
oriental food is n. Hackers display an intense tropism towards oriental cuisine, especially Chinese, and especially of the spicier varieties such as Szechuan and Hunan. This phenomenon (which has also been observed in subcultures that overlap...
oriental food2 is science-fiction fandom) has never been satisfactorily explained, but is sufficiently intense that one can assume the target of a hackish dinner expedition to be the best local Chinese place and be right at least three times o...
oriental food3 is {stir-fried random}, {laser chicken}, {Yu-Shiang Whole Fish}. Thai, Indian, Korean, and Vietnamese cuisines are also quite popular.
orphan is [UNIX] n. A process whose parent has died; one inherited by `init(1)'. Compare {zombie}.
orphaned i-node is /or'f*nd i'nohd/ [UNIX] n. 1. [techspeak] A file that retains storage but no longer appears in the directories of a filesystem. 2. By extension, a pejorative for any person serving no useful function within some organizatio...
orthogonal is [from mathematics] adj. Mutually independent; well separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. Used in a generalization of its mathematical meaning to describe sets of primitives or capabilities that, like a vector basis in geometry, s...
orthogonal2 is system and are in some sense non-overlapping or mutually independent. For example, in architectures such as the PDP-11 or VAX where all or nearly all registers can be used interchangeably in any role with respect to any instr...
orthogonal3 is orthogonal. Or, in logic, the set of operators `not' and `or' is orthogonal, but the set `nand', `or', and `not' is not (because any one of these can be expressed in terms of the others). Also used in comments on human disco...
OS is /O-S/ 1. [Operating System] n. An acronym heavily used in email, occasionally in speech. 2. n.,obs. On ITS, an output spy. See appendix A.
OS/2 is /O S too/ n. The anointed successor to MS-DOS for Intel 286- and 386-based micros; proof that IBM/Microsoft couldn't get it right the second time, either. Mentioning it is usually good for a cheap laugh among hackers --- the design wa...
OS/22 is 1.x so bad, that 3 years after introduction you could still count the major {app}s shipping for it on the fingers of two hands --- in unary. Often called `Half-an-OS'. On January 28, 1991, Microsoft announced that it was dropping it...
OS/23 is leaving the OS entirely in the hands of IBM; on January 29 they claimed the media had got the story wrong, but were vague about how. It looks as though OS/2 is moribund. See {vaporware}, {monstrosity}, {cretinous}, {second-system ...
out-of-band is [from telecommunications and network theory] adj. 1. In software, describes values of a function which are not in its `natural' range of return values, but are rather signals that some kind of exception has occurred. Many C fun...
out-of-band2 is nonnegative integral value, or indicate failure with an out-of-band return value of -1. Compare {hidden flag}, {green bytes}. 2. Also sometimes used to describe what communications people call `shift characters', like the E...
out-of-band3 is terminals, or the level shift indicators in the old 5-bit Baudot codes. 3. In personal communication, using methods other than email, such as telephones or {snail-mail}.
overflow bit is n. 1. [techspeak] On some processors, an attempt to calculate a result too large for a register to hold causes a particular {flag} called an {overflow bit} to be set. 2. Hackers use the term of human thought too. "Well, the {{...
overflow bit2 is but I could hack it OK until they got to the exception handling ... that set my overflow bit." 3. The hypothetical bit that will be set if a hacker doesn't get to make a trip to the Room of Porcelain Fixtures "I'd better proce...
overrun is n. 1. [techspeak] Term for a frequent consequence of data arriving faster than it can be consumed, esp. in serial line communications. For example, at 9600 baud there is almost exactly one character per millisecond, so if your {sil...
overrun2 is machine takes longer than 2 msec to get to service the interrupt, at least one character will be lost. 2. Also applied to non-serial-I/O communications. "I forgot to pay my electric bill due to mail overrun." "Sorry, I got four ph...
overrun3 is your message to overrun." When {thrash}ing at tasks, the next person to make a request might be told "Overrun!" 3. More loosely, may refer to a {buffer overflow} not necessarily related to processing time (as in {overrun screw}...
overrun screw is [C programming] n. A variety of {fandango on core} produced by scribbling past the end of an array (C has no checks for this). This is relatively benign and easy to spot if the array is static; if it is auto, the result may b...
overrun screw2 is in {heisenbug}s of the most diabolical subtlety. The term `overrun screw' is used esp. of scribbles beyond the end of arrays allocated with `malloc(3)'; this typically trashes the allocation header for the next block in the ...
overrun screw3 is malloc and often a core dump on the next operation to use `stdio(3)' or `malloc(3)' itself. See {spam}, {overrun}; see also {memory leak}, {aliasing bug}, {precedence lossage}, {fandango on core}, {secondary damage}.*P.O.D...
overrun screw4 is opposed to a code section). Usage pedantic and rare. See also {pod}.
padded cell is n. Where you put {luser}s so they can't hurt anything. A program that limits a luser to a carefully restricted subset of the capabilities of the host system (for example, the `rsh(1)' utility on USG UNIX). Note that this is di...
padded cell2 is overt and not aimed at enforcing security so much as protecting others (and the luser) from the consequences of the luser's boundless na"ivet'e (see {na"ive}). Also `padded cell environment'.
page in is [MIT] vi. 1. To become aware of one's surroundings again after having paged out (see {page out}). Usually confined to the sarcastic comment "Eric pages in. Film at 11." See {film at 11}. 2. Syn. `swap in'; see {swap}.
page out is [MIT] vi. 1. To become unaware of one's surroundings temporarily, due to daydreaming or preoccupation. "Can you repeat that? I paged out for a minute." See {page in}. Compare {glitch}, {thinko}. 2. Syn. `swap out'; see {swap}.
pain in the net is n. A {flamer}.
paper-net is n. Hackish way of referring to the postal service, analogizing it to a very slow, low-reliability network. USENET {sig block}s not uncommonly include a "Paper-Net" header just before the sender's postal address; common variants o...
paper-net2 is {voice-net}, {snail-mail}.
param is /p*-ram'/ n. Shorthand for `parameter'. See also {parm}; Compare {arg}, {var}.
parent message is n. See {followup}.
parity errors is pl.n. Little lapses of attention or (in more severe cases) consciousness, usually brought on by having spent all night and most of the next day hacking. "I need to go home and crash; I'm starting to get a lot of parity errors...
parity errors2 is nearly always correctable transient error in RAM hardware.
Parkinson's Law of Data is prov. "Data expands to fill the space available for storage"; buying more memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive techniques. It has been observed over the last 10 years that the memory usage of evolving ...
Parkinson's Law of Data2 is 18 months. Fortunately, memory density available for constant dollars tends to double about once every 12 months (see {Moore's Law}); unfortunately, the laws of physics guarantee that the latter cannot continue ind...
parm is /parm/ n. Further-compressed form of {param}. This term is an IBMism, and written use is almost unknown outside IBM shops; spoken /parm/ is more widely distributed, but the synonym {arg} is favored among hackers. Compare {arg}, {var}...
parse is [from linguistic terminology] vt. 1. To determine the syntactic structure of a sentence or other utterance (close to the standard English meaning). "That was the one I saw you." "I can't parse that." 2. More generally, to understan...
parse2 is just kretch the glims and then aos the zotz." "I can't parse that." 3. Of fish, to have to remove the bones yourself. "I object to parsing fish", means "I don't want to get a whole fish, but a sliced one is okay". A `parsed fis...
parse3 is over whether `unparsed' should mean `bony', or also mean `deboned'.
Pascal is n. An Algol-descended language designed by Niklaus Wirth on the CDC 6600 around 1967--68 as an instructional tool for elementary programming. This language, designed primarily to keep students from shooting themselves in the foot an...
Pascal2 is general-purpose-programming point of view, was later promoted as a general-purpose tool and, in fact, became the ancestor of a large family of languages including Modula-2 and {{Ada}} (see also {bondage-and-discipline language}). T...
Pascal3 is probably best summed up by a devastating (and, in its deadpan way, screamingly funny) 1981 paper by Brian Kernighan (of {K&R} fame) entitled "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language", which was never formally published ...
Pascal4 is Part of his discussion is worth repeating here, because its criticisms are still apposite to Pascal itself after ten years of improvement and could also stand as an indictment of many other bondage-and-discipline languages. At th...
Pascal5 is Pascal, Kernighan wrote 9. There is no escape This last point is perhaps the most important. The language is inadequate but circumscribed, because there is no way to escape its limitations. There are no casts to disable ...
Pascal6 is no way to replace the defective run-time environment with a sensible one, unless one controls the compiler that defines the "standard procedures". The language is closed. People who use Pascal for serious programming fall in...
Pascal7 is impotent, it must be extended. But each group extends Pascal in its own direction, to make it look like whatever language they really want. Extensions for separate compilation, FORTRAN-like COMMON, string data types, interna...
Pascal8 is numbers, bit operators, etc., all add to the utility of the language for one group but destroy its portability to others. I feel that it is a mistake to use Pascal for anything much beyond its original target. In its pure...
Pascal9 is for teaching but not for real programming. Pascal has since been almost entirely displaced (by {C}) from the niches it had acquired in serious applications and systems programming, but retains some popularity as a hobbyist language ...
patch is 1. n. A temporary addition to a piece of code, usually as a {quick-and-dirty} remedy to an existing bug or misfeature. A patch may or may not work, and may or may not eventually be incorporated permanently into the program. Distingu...
patch2 is that a patch is generated by more primitive means than the rest of the program; the classical examples are instructions modified by using the front panel switches, and changes made directly to the binary executable of a program ori...
patch3 is fix}. 2. vt. To insert a patch into a piece of code. 3. [in the UNIX world] n. A {diff} (sense 2). 4. A set of modifications to binaries to be applied by a patching program. IBM operating systems often receive updates to the op...
patch4 is hexadecimal patches. If you have modified your OS, you have to disassemble these back to the source. The patches might later be corrected by other patches on top of them (patches were said to "grow scar tissue"). The result was of...
patch5 is galore. There is a classic story of a {tiger team} penetrating a secure military computer that illustrates the danger inherent in binary patches (or, indeed, any that you can't --- or don't --- inspect and examine before installing...
patch6 is any way to penetrate security of IBM's OS, so they made a site visit to an IBM office (remember, these were official military types who were purportedly on official business), swiped some IBM stationery, and created a fake patch. Th...
patch7 is needed. The patch was distributed at about the right time for an IBM patch, had official stationery and all accompanying documentation, and was dutifully installed. The installation manager very shortly thereafter learned something...
patch space is n. An unused block of bits left in a binary so that it can later be modified by insertion of machine-language instructions there (typically, the patch space is modified to contain new code, and the superseded code is patched to ...
patch space2 is The widening use of HLLs has made this term rare; it is now primarily historical outside IBM shops. See {patch} (sense 4), {zap} (sense 4), {hook}.
path is n. 1. A {bang path} or explicitly routed {{Internet address}}; a node-by-node specification of a link between two machines. 2. [UNIX] A filename, fully specified relative to the root directory (as opposed to relative to the current di...
path2 is `relative path'). This is also called a `pathname'. 3. [UNIX and MS-DOS] The `search path', an environment variable specifying the directories in which the {shell} (COMMAND.COM, under MS-DOS) should look for commands. Other, simila...
path3 is the C preprocessor has a `search path' it uses in looking for `#include' files).
pathological is adj. 1. [scientific computation] Used of a data set that is grossly atypical of normal expected input, esp. one that exposes a weakness or bug in whatever algorithm one is using. An algorithm that can be broken by pathological...
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'...
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
support2 is *not* a joke or exaggeration). A hacker's idea of `support' is a t^ete-`a-t^ete with the software's designer.
Suzie COBOL is /soo'zee koh'bol/ 1. [IBM prob. from Frank Zappa's `Suzy Creamcheese'] n. A coder straight out of training school who knows everything except the value of comments in plain English. Also (fashionable among personkind wishing to ...
Suzie COBOL2 is or (in some non-IBM circles) `Cobol Charlie'. 2. [proposed] Meta-name for any {code grinder}, analogous to {J. Random Hacker}.
swab is /swob/ [From the mnemonic for the PDP-11 `SWAp Byte' instruction, as immortalized in the `dd(1)' option `conv=swab' (see {dd})] 1. vt. To solve the {NUXI problem} by swapping bytes in a file. 2. n. The program in V7 UNIX used to perfo...
swab2 is equivalent to it. See also {big-endian}, {little-endian}, {middle-endian}, {bytesexual}.
swap is vt. 1. [techspeak] To move information from a fast-access memory to a slow-access memory (`swap out'), or vice versa (`swap in'). Often refers specifically to the use of disks as `virtual memory'. As pieces of data or program are nee...
swap2 is processing; when they are no longer needed they may be swapped out again. 2. The jargon use of these terms analogizes people's short-term memories with core. Cramming for an exam might be spoken of as swapping in. If you temporaril...
swap3 is it, your excuse is that it was swapped out. To `keep something swapped in' means to keep it fresh in your memory "I reread the TECO manual every few months to keep it swapped in." If someone interrupts you just as you got a good i...
swap4 is this out", implying that the piece of paper is your extra-somatic memory and if you don't swap the info out by writing it down it will get overwritten and lost as you talk. Compare {page in}, {page out}.
swap space is n. Storage space, especially temporary storage space used during a move or reconfiguration. "I'm just using that corner of the machine room for swap space."
swapped in is n. See {swap}. See also {page in}.
swapped out is n. See {swap}. See also {page out}.
swizzle is v. To convert external names, array indices, or references within a data structure into address pointers when the data structure is brought into main memory from external storage (also called `pointer swizzling'); this may be done f...
swizzle2 is simplify code (e.g., by turning lots of name lookups into pointer dereferences). The converse operation is sometimes termed `unswizzling'. See also {snap}.
sync is /sink/ (var. `synch') n., vi. 1. To synchronize, to bring into synchronization. 2. [techspeak] To force all pending I/O to the disk; see {flush}, sense 2. 3. More generally, to force a number of competing processes or agents to a sta...
sync2 is to crash; thus, to checkpoint (in the database-theory sense).
syntactic sugar is [coined by Peter Landin] n. Features added to a language or other formalism to make it `sweeter' for humans, that do not affect the expressiveness of the formalism (compare {chrome}). Used esp. when there is an obvious and ...
syntactic sugar2 is into other constructs already present in the notation. C's `a[i]' notation is syntactic sugar for `*(a + i)'. "Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon." --- Alan Perlis The variant `syntactic saccharine' is also...
syntactic sugar3 is gratuitous, in that syntactic sugar serves a purpose (making something more acceptable to humans) but syntactic saccharine serves no purpose at all.
sys-frog is /sis'frog/ [the PLATO system] n. Playful variant of `sysprog', which is in turn short for `systems programmer'.
sysadmin is /sis'ad-min/ n. Common contraction of `system admin'; see {admin}.
sysop is /sis'op/ n. [esp. in the BBS world] The operator (and usually the owner) of a bulletin-board system. A common neophyte mistake on {FidoNet} is to address a message to `sysop' in an international {echo}, thus sending it to hundreds of...
system is n. 1. The supervisor program or OS on a computer. 2. The entire computer system, including input/output devices, the supervisor program or OS, and possibly other software. 3. Any large-scale program. 4. Any method or algorithm. 5...
system2 is (in senses 1 and 2 only; for sense 3 one mentions the particular program e.g., `LISP hacker')
systems jock is n. See {jock}, (sense 2).
SysVile is /sis-vil'/ n. See {Missed'em-five}.
system mangler is n. Humorous synonym for `system manager', poss. from the fact that one major IBM OS had a {root} account called SYSMANGR. Refers specifically to a systems programmer in charge of administration, software maintenance, and upd...
system mangler2 is emphasizes the technical end of the skills involved.*T /T/ 1. [from LISP terminology for `true] Yes. Used in reply to a question (particularly one asked using the `-P convention). In LISP, the constant T means `true, among...
system mangler3 is instead of `Yes and `No almost reflexively. This sometimes causes misunderstandings. When a waiter or flight attendant asks whether a hacker wants coffee, he may well respond `T, meaning that he wants coffee; but of course...
system mangler4 is it happens, most hackers (particularly those who frequent Chinese restaurants) like tea at least as well as coffee --- so it is not that big a problem. 2. See {time T} (also {since time T equals minus infinity}). 3. [techs...
system mangler5 is abbreviation for the noun `transaction. 4. [Purdue] Alternate spelling of {tee}.
tail recursion is n. If you arent sick of it already, see {tail recursion}.
talk mode is n. A feature supported by UNIX, ITS, and some other OSes that allows two or more logged-in users to set up a real-time on-line conversation. It combines the immediacy of talking with all the precision (and verbosity) that written...
talk mode2 is communicate inflection, though conventions have arisen for some of these (see the section on writing style in the Prependices for details). Talk mode has a special set of jargon words, used to save typing, which are not used or...
talk mode3 is probably derived from) Morse-code jargon used by ham-radio amateurs since the 1920s. Most of these are not used at universities or in the UNIX world, though ROTF and TTFN have gained some currency there and IMHO is common; conv...
talk mode4 is unfamiliar with FOO?, BCNU, HELLOP, {NIL}, and {T}. The {MUD} community uses a mixture of USENET/Internet emoticons, a few of the more natural of the old-style talk-mode abbrevs, and some of the `social list above; specifically, ...
talk mode5 is b4, BTW, WTF, TTFN, and WTH. The use of `rehi is also common; in fact, mudders are fond of re- compounds and will frequently `rehug or `rebonk (see {bonk/oif}) people. The word `re by itself is taken as `regreet. In general, t...
talk mode6 is typing things out in full rather than using abbreviations; this may be due to the relative youth of the MUD cultures, which tend to include many touch typists and to assume high-speed links. The following uses specific to MUDs a...
talk mode7 is variant spelling `d00d) appear to be passing into wider use among some subgroups of MUDders. One final note on talk mode style neophytes, when in talk mode, often seem to think they must produce letter-perfect prose because t...
talk mode8 is not the best approach. It can be very frustrating to wait while your partner pauses to think of a word, or repeatedly makes the same spelling error and backs up to fix it. It is usually best just to leave typographical errors...
talk mode9 is confusion may result; in that case it is often fastest just to type "xxx" and start over from before the mistake. See also {hakspek}, {emoticon}, {bonk/oif}.
talker system is n. British hackerism for software that enables real-time chat or {talk mode}.
tall card is n. A PC/AT-size expansion card (these can be larger than IBM PC or XT cards because the AT case is bigger). See also {short card}. When IBM introduced the PS/2 model 30 (its last gasp at supporting the ISA) they made the case lo...
tall card2 is wouldnt fit; this was felt to be a reincarnation of the {connector conspiracy}, done with less style.
tanked is adj. Same as {down}, used primarily by UNIX hackers. See also {hosed}. Popularized as a synonym for `drunk by Steve Dallas in the late lamented "Bloom County" comic strip.
tar and feather is [from UNIX `tar(1)] vt. To create a transportable archive from a group of files by first sticking them together with `tar(1) (the Tape ARchiver) and then compressing the result (see {compress}). The latter action is dubbe...
tar and feather2 is an airplane propeller to decrease wind resistance, or with an oar to reduce water resistance; smaller files, after all, slip through comm links more easily.
taste is [primarily MIT] n. 1. The quality in a program that tends to be inversely proportional to the number of features, hacks, and kluges programmed into it. Also `tasty, `tasteful, `tastefulness. "This feature comes in N tasty flavors." ...
taste2 is essentially synonyms, `taste and {flavor} are not. Taste refers to sound judgment on the part of the creator; a program or feature can *exhibit* taste but cannot {have} taste. On the other hand, a feature can have {flavor}. Also...
taste3 is `kind or `variety not shared by `taste. {Flavor} is a more popular word than `taste, though both are used. See also {elegant}. 2. Alt. sp. of {tayste}.
tayste is /tayst/ n. Two bits; also as {taste}. Syn. {crumb}, {quarter}. Compare {{byte}}, {dynner}, {playte}, {nybble}, {quad}.
TCB is /T-C-B/ [IBM] n. 1. Trouble Came Back. An intermittent or difficult-to-reproduce problem that has failed to respond to neglect. Compare {heisenbug}. Not to be confused with 2. Trusted Computing Base, an `official jargon term from the...
ISO standard cup of tea is [South Africa] n. A cup of tea with milk and one teaspoon of sugar, where the milk is poured into the cup before the tea. Variations are ISO 0, with no sugar; ISO 2, with two spoons of sugar; and so on. Like many ...
ISO standard cup of tea2 is ring in North America, where hackers generally shun the decadent British practice of adulterating perfectly good tea with dairy products and prefer instead to add a wedge of lemon, if anything. If one were feelin...
ISO standard cup of tea3 is analogous `ANSI standard cup of tea and wind up with a political situation distressingly similar to several that arise in much more serious technical contexts. Milk and lemon dont mix very well.
TechRef is /tekref/ [MS-DOS] n. The original `IBM PC Technical Reference Manual, including the BIOS listing and complete schematics for the PC. The only PC documentation in the issue package thats considered serious by real hackers.
TECO is /teekoh/ obs. 1. vt. Originally, to edit using the TECO editor in one of its infinite variations (see below). 2. vt.,obs. To edit even when TECO is *not* the editor being used! This usage is rare and now primarily historical. 2. [or...
TECO2 is and COrrector; later, `Text Editor and COrrector] n. A text editor developed at MIT and modified by just about everybody. With all the dialects included, TECO might have been the most prolific editor in use before {EMACS}, to which...
TECO3 is powerful programming-language-like features and its unspeakably hairy syntax. It is literally the case that every string of characters is a valid TECO program (though probably not a useful one); one common hacker game used to be ment...
TECO4 is corresponding to human names did. As an example of TECOs obscurity, here is a TECO program that takes a list of names such as Loser, J. Random Quux, The Great Dick, Moby sorts them alphabetically according to surname, and...
TECO5 is comma, to produce the following Moby Dick J. Random Loser The Great Quux The program is [1 J^P$L$$ J <.-Z; .,(S,$ -D .)FX1 @F^B $K L I $ G1 L>$$ (where ^B means `Control-B (ASCII 0000010) and $ is actually an {ALT}...
TECO6 is fact, this very program was used to produce the second, sorted list from the first list. The first hack at it had a {bug} GLS (the author) had accidentally omitted the `@ in front of `F^B, which as anyone can see is clearly the {Wron...
TECO7 is There is no space to describe all the features of TECO, but it may be of interest that `^P means `sort and `J<.-Z; ... L> is an idiomatic series of commands for `do once for every line. In mid-1991, TECO is pretty much one with the ...
TECO8 is affections of hackerdom by {EMACS}. Descendants of an early (and somewhat lobotomized) version adopted by DEC can still be found lurking on VMS and a couple of crufty PDP-11 operating systems, however, and ports of the more advanced ...
TECO9 is antiquarian interest. See also {retrocomputing}, {write-only language}.
tee is n.,vt. [Purdue] A carbon copy of an electronic transmission. "Oh, youre sending him the {bits} to that? Slap on a tee for me." From the UNIX command `tee(1), itself named after a pipe fitting (see {plumbing}). Can also mean `save one...
Telerat is /tel*-rat/ n. Unflattering hackerism for `Teleray, a line of extremely losing terminals. See also {terminak}, {sun-stools}, {HP-SUX}.
TELNET is /telnet/ vt. To communicate with another Internet host using the {TELNET} program. TOPS-10 people used the word IMPCOM, since that was the program name for them. Sometimes abbreviated to TN /T-N/. "I usually TN over to SAIL just t...
ten-finger interface is n. The interface between two networks that cannot be directly connected for security reasons; refers to the practice of placing two terminals side by side and having an operator read from one and type into the other.
tense is adj. Of programs, very clever and efficient. A tense piece of code often got that way because it was highly {bum}med, but sometimes it was just based on a great idea. A comment in a clever routine by Mike Kazar, once a grad-student ...
tense2 is will bring tears to your eyes." A tense programmer is one who produces tense code.
tenured graduate student is n. One who has been in graduate school for 10 years (the usual maximum is 5 or 6) a `ten-yeared student (get it?). Actually, this term may be used of any grad student beginning in his seventh year. Students dont r...
tenured graduate student2 is professors do, but a tenth-year graduate student has probably been around the university longer than any untenured professor.
tera- is /ter*/ [SI] pref. See {{quantifiers}}.
teraflop club is /ter*-flop kluhb/ [FLOP = Floating Point Operation] n. A mythical association of people who consume outrageous amounts of computer time in order to produce a few simple pictures of glass balls with intricate ray-tracing techni...
teraflop club2 is said to have been the founder.
terminak is /termi-nak`/ [Caltech, ca. 1979] n. Any malfunctioning computer terminal. A common failure mode of Lear-Siegler ADM 3a terminals caused the `L key to produce the `K code instead; complaints about this tended to look like "Terminak...
terminak2 is {sun-stools}, {Telerat}, {HP-SUX}.
terminal brain death is n. The extreme form of {terminal illness} (sense 1). What someone who has obviously been hacking continuously for far too long is said to be suffering from.
terminal illness is n. 1. Syn. {raster burn}. 2. The `burn-in condition your CRT tends to get if you dont have a screen saver.
terminal junkie is [UK] n. A {wannabee} or early {larval stage} hacker who spends most of his or her time wandering the directory tree and writing {noddy} programs just to get a fix of computer time. Variants include `terminal jockey, `cons...
terminal junkie2 is `console jockey seems to imply more expertise than the other three (possibly because of the exalted status of the {{console}} relative to an ordinary terminal). See also {twink}, {read-only user}.
terpri 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...
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