Amethyst
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bit bucket is n. 1. The universal data sink (originally, the mythical receptacle used to catch bits when they fall off the end of a register during a shift instruction). Discarded, lost, or destroyed data is said to have `gone to the bit buck...
bit bucket2 is {/dev/null}. Sometimes amplified as `the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky'. 2. The place where all lost mail and news messages eventually go. The selection is performed according to {Finagle's Law}; important mail is much more lik...
bit bucket3 is mail, which has an almost 100% probability of getting delivered. Routing to the bit bucket is automatically performed by mail-transfer agents, news systems, and the lower layers of the network. 3. The ideal location for all un...
bit bucket4 is article to the bit bucket." Such a request is guaranteed to overflow one's mailbox with flames. 4. Excuse for all mail that has not been sent. "I mailed you those figures last week; they must have ended in the bit bucket." Co...
bit bucket5 is in jest. It is based on the fanciful notion that bits are objects that are not destroyed but only misplaced. This appears to have been a mutation of an earlier term `bit box', about which the same legend was current; old-time ...
bit bucket6 is told that when the CPU stored bits into memory it was actually pulling them `out of the bit box'. See also {chad box}. Another variant of this legend has it that, as a consequence of the `parity preservation law', the number ...
bit bucket7 is equal the number of 0 bits. Any imbalance results in bits filling up the bit bucket. A qualified computer technician can empty a full bit bucket as part of scheduled maintenance.
bit decay is n. See {bit rot}. People with a physics background tend to prefer this one for the analogy with particle decay. See also {computron}, {quantum bogodynamics}.
bit rot is n. Also {bit decay}. Hypothetical disease the existence of which has been deduced from the observation that unused programs or features will often stop working after sufficient time has passed, even if `nothing has changed'. The t...
bit rot2 is were radioactive. As time passes, the contents of a file or the code in a program will become increasingly garbled. There actually are physical processes that produce such effects (alpha particles generated by trace radionuclide...
bit rot3 is change the contents of a computer memory unpredictably, and various kinds of subtle media failures can corrupt files in mass storage), but they are quite rare (and computers are built with error-detecting circuitry to compensate ...
bit rot4 is hackers that cosmic rays are among the causes of such events turns out to be a myth; see the {cosmic rays} entry for details. The term {software rot} is almost synonymous. Software rot is the effect, bit rot the notional cause.
bit twiddling is n. 1. (pejorative) An exercise in {tuning} in which incredible amounts of time and effort go to produce little noticeable improvement, often with the result that the code has become incomprehensible. 2. Aimless small modifica...
bit twiddling2 is goal. 3. Approx. syn. for {bit bashing}; esp. used for the act of frobbing the device control register of a peripheral in an attempt to get it back to a known state.
bit-paired keyboard is n. obs. (alt. `bit-shift keyboard') A non-standard keyboard layout that seems to have originated with the Teletype ASR-33 and remained common for several years on early computer equipment. The ASR-33 was a mechanical de...
bit-paired keyboard2 is generate the character codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage. The design of the ASR-33 assigned each character key a basic pattern that could be modified by flipping bits if the SHIFT or the CTRL key was p...
bit-paired keyboard3 is more of a Rube Goldberg kluge than it already was, the design had to group characters that shared the same basic bit pattern on one key. This is why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do on a Teletype (thankfu...
bit-paired keyboard4 is was *not* the weirdest variant of the {QWERTY} layout widely seen, by the way; that prize should probably go to one of several (differing) arrangements on IBM's even clunkier 026 and 029 card punches. When electroni...
bit-paired keyboard5 is there was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards should be laid out. Some vendors opted to emulate the Teletype keyboard, while others used the flexibility of electronic circuitry to make their product l...
bit-paired keyboard6 is alternatives became known as `bit-paired' and `typewriter-paired' keyboards. To a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more logical --- and because most hackers in those days had never learned to touch-type, th...
bit-paired keyboard7 is users to adapt keyboards to the typewriter standard. The doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale introduction of the computer terminal into the normal office environment, where out-and-out technophobes wer...
bit-paired keyboard8 is `typewriter-paired' standard became universal, `bit-paired' hardware was quickly junked or relegated to dusty corners, and both terms passed into disuse.
bitblt is /bit'blit/ n. [from {BLT}, q.v.] 1. Any of a family of closely related algorithms for moving and copying rectangles of bits between main and display memory on a bit-mapped device, or between two areas of either main or display memory...
bitblt2 is the case of overlapping source and destination rectangles is what makes BitBlt tricky). 2. Synonym for {blit} or {BLT}. Both uses are borderline techspeak.
BITNET is /bit'net/ [acronym Because It's Time NETwork] n. Everybody's least favorite piece of the network (see {network, the}). The BITNET hosts are a collection of IBM dinosaurs and VAXen (the latter with lobotomized comm hardware) that com...
BITNET2 is images (see {eighty-column mind}); thus, they tend to mangle the headers and text of third-party traffic from the rest of the ASCII/RFC-822 world with annoying regularity. BITNET is also notorious as the apparent home of {BIFF}.
bits is n.pl. 1. Information. Examples "I need some bits about file formats." ("I need to know about file formats.") Compare {core dump}, sense 4. 2. Machine-readable representation of a document, specifically as contrasted with paper "I ...
bits2 is does anyone know where I can get the bits?". See {softcopy}, {source of all good bits} See also {bit}.
bitty box is /bit'ee boks/ n. 1. A computer sufficiently small, primitive, or incapable as to cause a hacker acute claustrophobia at the thought of developing software for it. Especially used of small, obsolescent, single-tasking-only persona...
bitty box2 is Sinclair, VIC-20, TRS-80, or IBM PC. 2. [Pejorative] More generally, the opposite of `real computer' (see {Get a real computer!}). See also {mess-dos}, {toaster}, and {toy}.
bixie is /bik'see/ n. Variant {emoticon}s used on BIX (the Byte Information eXchange). The {smiley} bixie is <@_@>, apparently intending to represent two cartoon eyes and a mouth. A few others have been reported.
black art is n. A collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by implication) mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular application or systems area (compare {black magic}). VLSI design and compiler code optimization were (in their begin...
black art2 is art; as theory developed they became {deep magic}, and once standard textbooks had been written, became merely {heavy wizardry}. The huge proliferation of formal and informal channels for spreading around new computer-related ...
black art3 is made both the term `black art' and what it describes less common than formerly. See also {voodoo programming}.
black hole is n. When a piece of email or netnews disappears mysteriously between its origin and destination sites (that is, without returning a {bounce message}) it is commonly said to have `fallen into a black hole'. "I think there's a blac...
black hole2 is site foovax has been dropping a lot of stuff on the floor lately (see {drop on the floor}). The implied metaphor of email as interstellar travel is interesting in itself. Compare {bit bucket}.
black magic is n. A technique that works, though nobody really understands why. More obscure than {voodoo programming}, which may be done by cookbook. Compare also {black art}, {deep magic}, and {magic number} (sense 2).
blast is 1. vt.,n. Synonym for {BLT}, used esp. for large data sends over a network or comm line. Opposite of {snarf}. Usage uncommon. The variant `blat' has been reported. 2. vt. [HP/Apollo] Synonymous with {nuke} (sense 3). Sometimes th...
blast2 is Blast them (y/n)?' would appear in the command window upon logout.
blat is n. 1. Syn. {blast}, sense 1. 2. See {thud}.
bletch is /blech/ [from Yiddish/German `brechen', to vomit, poss. via comic-strip exclamation `blech'] interj. Term of disgust. Often used in "Ugh, bletch". Compare {barf}.
bletcherous is /blech'*-r*s/ adj. Disgusting in design or function; esthetically unappealing. This word is seldom used of people. "This keyboard is bletcherous!" (Perhaps the keys don't work very well, or are misplaced.) See {losing}, {creti...
bletcherous2 is The term {bletcherous} applies to the esthetics of the thing so described; similarly for {cretinous}. By contrast, something that is `losing' or `bagbiting' may be failing to meet objective criteria. See also {bogus} and {r...
bletcherous3 is meaning than any of the above.
blinkenlights is /blink'*n-litz/ n. Front-panel diagnostic lights on a computer, esp. a {dinosaur}. Derives from the last word of the famous blackletter-Gothic sign in mangled pseudo-German that once graced about half the computer rooms i...
blinkenlights2 is in its entirety as follows ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken ...
blinkenlights3 is bei das dumpkopfen. Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das cotten-pickenen hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten. This silliness dates back at least as far as 1959 at Stanford Universit...
blinkenlights4 is early 1960s, when it was reported at London University's ATLAS computing site. There are several variants of it in circulation, some of which actually do end with the word `blinkenlights'. In an amusing example of turnabout...
blinkenlights5 is their own versions of the blinkenlights poster in fractured English, one of which is reproduced here ATTENTION This room is fullfilled mit special electronische equippment. Fingergrabbi...
blinkenlights6 is computers is allowed for die experts only! So all the "lefthanders" stay away and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working intelligencies. Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked andersw...
blinkenlights7 is astaunished the blinkenlights. See also {geef}.
blit is /blit/ vt. 1. To copy a large array of bits from one part of a computer's memory to another part, particularly when the memory is being used to determine what is shown on a display screen. "The storage allocator picks through the tabl...
blit2 is memory, and then blits it all back down again." See {bitblt}, {BLT}, {dd}, {cat}, {blast}, {snarf}. More generally, to perform some operation (such as toggling) on a large array of bits while moving them. 2. All-capitalized as `BL...
blit3 is designed by Rob Pike at Bell Labs, later commercialized as the AT&T 5620. (The folk etymology from `Bell Labs Intelligent Terminal' is incorrect.)
blitter is /blit'r/ n. A special-purpose chip or hardware system built to perform {blit} operations, esp. used for fast implementation of bit-mapped graphics. The Commodore Amiga and a few other micros have these, but in 1991 the trend is awa...
blitter2 is reincarnation}). Syn. {raster blaster}.
blivet is /bliv'*t/ [allegedly from a World War II military term meaning "ten pounds of manure in a five-pound bag"] n. 1. An intractable problem. 2. A crucial piece of hardware that can't be fixed or replaced if it breaks. 3. A tool that ha...
blivet2 is programmers that it has become an unmaintainable tissue of hacks. 4. An out-of-control but unkillable development effort. 5. An embarrassing bug that pops up during a customer demo. This term has other meanings in other technica...
blivet3 is hardware engineers of various kinds it seems to mean any random object of unknown purpose (similar to hackish use of {frob}). It has also been used to describe an amusing trick-the-eye drawing resembling a three-pronged fork that ...
blivet4 is until one realizes that the parts fit together in an impossible way.
block is [from process scheduling terminology in OS theory] 1. vi. To delay or sit idle while waiting for something. "We're blocking until everyone gets here." Compare {busy-wait}. 2. `block on' vt. To block, waiting for (something). "Lunc...
block transfer computations is n. From the television series "Dr. Who", in which it referred to computations so fiendishly subtle and complex that they could not be performed by machines. Used to refer to any task that should be expressible as...
blow an EPROM is /bloh *n ee'prom/ v. (alt. `blast an EPROM', `burn an EPROM') To program a read-only memory, e.g. for use with an embedded system. This term arises because the programming process for the Programmable Read-Only Memories (PROM...
blow an EPROM2 is Programmable Read-Only Memories (EPROMs) involved intentionally blowing tiny electrical fuses on the chip. Thus, one was said to `blow' (or `blast') a PROM, and the terminology carried over even though the write process on ...
blow away is vt. To remove (files and directories) from permanent storage, generally by accident. "He reformatted the wrong partition and blew away last night's netnews." Oppose {nuke}.
blow out is vi. Of software, to fail spectacularly; almost as serious as {crash and burn}. See {blow past}, {blow up}.
blow past is vt. To {blow out} despite a safeguard. "The server blew past the 5K reserve buffer."
blow up is vi. 1. [scientific computation] To become unstable. Suggests that the computation is diverging so rapidly that it will soon overflow or at least go {nonlinear}. 2. Syn. {blow out}.
BLT is /B-L-T/, /bl*t/ or (rarely) /belt/ n.,vt. Synonym for {blit}. This is the original form of {blit} and the ancestor of {bitblt}. It referred to any large bit-field copy or move operation (one resource-intensive memory-shuffling operati...
BLT2 is and TOPS-10 was sardonically referred to as `The Big BLT'). The jargon usage has outlasted the {PDP-10} BLock Transfer instruction from which {BLT} derives; nowadays, the assembler mnemonic {BLT} almost always means `Branch if Less ...
Blue Book is n. 1. Informal name for one of the three standard references on the page-layout and graphics-control language PostScript (`PostScript Language Tutorial and Cookbook', Adobe Systems, Addison-Wesley 1985, QA76.73.P67P68, ISBN 0-201-...
Blue Book2 is known as the {Green Book} and {Red Book}. 2. Informal name for one of the three standard references on Smalltalk `Smalltalk-80 The Language and its Implementation', David Robson, Addison-Wesley 1983, QA76.8.S635G64, ISBN 0-201...
Blue Book3 is and red books). 3. Any of the 1988 standards issued by the CCITT's ninth plenary assembly. Until now, they have changed color each review cycle (1984 was {Red Book}, 1992 would be {Green Book}); however, it is rumored that th...
Blue Book4 is 1992. These include, among other things, the X.400 email spec and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also {{book titles}}.
Blue Glue is [IBM] n. IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture), an incredibly {losing} and {bletcherous} communications protocol widely favored at commercial shops that don't know any better. The official IBM definition is "that which binds b...
Blue Glue2 is loathing}. It may not be irrelevant that {Blue Glue} is the trade name of a 3M product that is commonly used to hold down the carpet squares to the removable panel floors common in {dinosaur pens}. A correspondent at U. Minn....
Blue Glue3 is 80 bottles of the stuff hanging about, so they often refer to any messy work to be done as `using the blue glue'.
blue goo is n. Term for `police' {nanobot}s intended to prevent {gray goo}, denature hazardous waste, destroy pollution, put ozone back into the stratosphere, prevent halitosis, and promote truth, justice, and the American way, etc. See {{n...
BNF is /B-N-F/ n. 1. [techspeak] Acronym for `Backus-Naur Form', a metasyntactic notation used to specify the syntax of programming languages, command sets, and the like. Widely used for language descriptions but seldom documented anywhere, s...
BNF2 is from other hackers. 2. In {{science-fiction fandom}}, BNF means `Big-Name Fan' (someone famous or notorious). Years ago a fan started handing out black-on-green BNF buttons at SF conventions; this confused the hacker contingent ter...
boa is [IBM] n. Any one of the fat cables that lurk under the floor in a {dinosaur pen}. Possibly so called because they display a ferocious life of their own when you try to lay them straight and flat after they have been coiled for some tim...
boa2 is cables for the 370 are limited to 200 feet because beyond that length the boas get dangerous --- and it is worth noting that one of the major cable makers uses the trademark `Anaconda'.
board is n. 1. In-context synonym for {bboard}; sometimes used even for USENET newsgroups. 2. An electronic circuit board (compare {card}).
boat anchor is n. 1. Like {doorstop} but more severe; implies that the offending hardware is irreversibly dead or useless. "That was a working motherboard once. One lightning strike later, instant boat anchor!" 2. A person who just takes up...
bogo-sort is /boh`goh-sort'/ n. (var. `stupid-sort') The archetypical perversely awful algorithm (as opposed to {bubble sort}, which is merely the generic *bad* algorithm). Bogo-sort is equivalent to repeatedly throwing a deck of cards in th...
bogo-sort2 is testing whether they are in order. It serves as a sort of canonical example of awfulness. Looking at a program and seeing a dumb algorithm, one might say "Oh, I see, this program uses bogo-sort." Compare {bogus}, {brute forc...
bogometer is /boh-gom'-*t-er/ n. See {bogosity}. Compare the `wankometer' described in the {wank} entry; see also {bogus}.
bogon is /boh'gon/ [by analogy with proton/electron/neutron, but doubtless reinforced after 1980 by the similarity to Douglas Adams's `Vogons'; see the Bibliography] n. 1. The elementary particle of bogosity (see {quantum bogodynamics}). For ...
bogon2 is again" means that it is broken or acting in an erratic or bogus fashion. 2. A query packet sent from a TCP/IP domain resolver to a root server, having the reply bit set instead of the query bit. 3. Any bogus or incorrectly formed ...
bogon3 is used to refer to any bogus thing, as in "I'd like to go to lunch with you but I've got to go to the weekly staff bogon". 5. A person who is bogus or who says bogus things. This was historically the original usage, but has been ov...
bogon4 is also {bogosity}, {bogus}; compare {psyton}.
bogon filter is /boh'gon fil'tr/ n. Any device, software or hardware, that limits or suppresses the flow and/or emission of bogons. "Engineering hacked a bogon filter between the Cray and the VAXen, and now we're getting fewer dropped packets....
bogon flux is /boh'gon fluhks/ n. A measure of a supposed field of {bogosity} emitted by a speaker, measured by a {bogometer}; as a speaker starts to wander into increasing bogosity a listener might say "Warning, warning, bogon flux is rising"...
bogosity is /boh-go's*-tee/ n. 1. The degree to which something is {bogus}. At CMU, bogosity is measured with a {bogometer}; in a seminar, when a speaker says something bogus, a listener might raise his hand and say "My bogometer just trigger...
bogosity2 is bogometer" means you just said or did something so outrageously bogus that it is off the scale, pinning the bogometer needle at the highest possible reading (one might also say "You just redlined my bogometer"). The agreed-upo...
bogosity3 is /mik`roh-len'*t/ (uL). The consensus is that this is the largest unit practical for everyday use. 2. The potential field generated by a {bogon flux}; see {quantum bogodynamics}. See also {bogon flux}, {bogon filter}, {bogus}...
bogosity4 is as a attack against noted computer scientist Doug Lenat by a {tenured graduate student}. Doug had failed the student on an important exam for giving only "AI is bogus" as his answer to the questions. The slur is generally cons...
bogosity5 is gag nevertheless. Some of Doug's friends argue that *of course* a microLenat is bogus, since it is only one millionth of a Lenat. Others have suggested that the unit should be redesignated after the grad student, as the microRei...
bogotify is /boh-go't*-fi/ vt. To make or become bogus. A program that has been changed so many times as to become completely disorganized has become bogotified. If you tighten a nut too hard and strip the threads on the bolt, the bolt has b...
bogotify2 is it any more. This coinage led to the notional `autobogotiphobia' defined as `the fear of becoming bogotified'; but is not clear that the latter has ever been `live' jargon rather than a self-conscious joke in jargon about jargo...
bogue out is /bohg owt/ vi. To become bogus, suddenly and unexpectedly. "His talk was relatively sane until somebody asked him a trick question; then he bogued out and did nothing but {flame} afterwards." See also {bogosity}, {bogus}.
bogus is adj. 1. Non-functional. "Your patches are bogus." 2. Useless. "OPCON is a bogus program." 3. False. "Your arguments are bogus." 4. Incorrect. "That algorithm is bogus." 5. Unbelievable. "You claim to have solved the halting pro...
bogus2 is bogus." 6. Silly. "Stop writing those bogus sagas." Astrology is bogus. So is a bolt that is obviously about to break. So is someone who makes blatantly false claims to have solved a scientific problem. (This word seems to have...
bogus3 is {random} --- mostly the negative ones.) It is claimed that `bogus' was originally used in the hackish sense at Princeton in the late 1960s. It was spread to CMU and Yale by Michael Shamos, a migratory Princeton alumnus. A glossary ...
bogus4 is word was first popularized (see {autobogotiphobia} under {bogotify}). The word spread into hackerdom from CMU and MIT. By the early 1980s it was also current in something like the hackish sense in West Coast teen slang, and it had...
bogus5 is Cambridge reports, by contrast, that these uses of `bogus' grate on British nerves; in Britain the word means, rather specifically, `counterfeit', as in "a bogus 10-pound note".
Bohr bug is /bohr buhg/ [from quantum physics] n. A repeatable {bug}; one that manifests reliably under a possibly unknown but well-defined set of conditions. Antonym of {heisenbug}; see also {mandelbug}.
boink is /boynk/ [USENET ascribed there to the TV series "Cheers" and "Moonlighting"] 1. To have sex with; compare {bounce}, sense 3. (This is mainstream slang.) In Commonwealth hackish the variant `bonk' is more common. 2. After the origin...
boink2 is for almost any net social gathering, e.g., Miniboink, a small boink held by Nancy Gillett in 1988; Minniboink, a Boinkcon in Minnesota in 1989; Humpdayboinks, Wednesday get-togethers held in the San Francisco Bay Area. Compare {@-...
bomb is 1. v. General synonym for {crash} (sense 1) except that it is not used as a noun; esp. used of software or OS failures. "Don't run Empire with less than 32K stack, it'll bomb." 2. n.,v. Atari ST and Macintosh equivalents of a UNIX `pan...
bomb2 is of little black-powder bombs or mushroom clouds are displayed, indicating that the system has died. On the Mac, this may be accompanied by a decimal (or occasionally hexadecimal) number indicating what went wrong, similar to the Ami...
bomb3 is {{MS-DOS}} machines tend to get {locked up} in this situation.
bondage-and-discipline language is A language (such as Pascal, Ada, APL, or Prolog) that, though ostensibly general-purpose, is designed so as to enforce an author's theory of `right programming' even though said theory is demonstrably inadequ...
bondage-and-discipline language2 is general-purpose programming. Often abbreviated `B&D'; thus, one may speak of things "having the B&D nature". See {{Pascal}}; oppose {languages of choice}.
bonk/oif is /bonk/, /oyf/ interj. In the {MUD} community, it has become traditional to express pique or censure by `bonking' the offending person. There is a convention that one should acknowledge a bonk by saying `oif!' and a myth to the eff...
bonk/oif2 is bonk/oif balance, causing much trouble in the universe. Some MUDs have implemented special commands for bonking and oifing. See also {talk mode}, {posing}.
book titles is There is a tradition in hackerdom of informally tagging important textbooks and standards documents with the dominant color of their covers or with some other conspicuous feature of the cover. Many of these are described in thi...
book titles2 is {Aluminum Book}, {Blue Book}, {Cinderella Book}, {Devil Book}, {Dragon Book}, {Green Book}, {Orange Book}, {Pink-Shirt Book}, {Purple Book}, {Red Book}, {Silver Book}, {White Book}, {Wizard Book}, {Yellow Book}, and {bible}.b...
book titles3 is v.,n. To load and initialize the operating system on a machine. This usage is no longer jargon (having passed into techspeak) but has given rise to some derivatives that are still jargon. The derivative `reboot' implies that...
book titles4 is that the boot is a {bounce} intended to clear some state of {wedgitude}. This is sometimes used of human thought processes, as in the following exchange "You've lost me." "OK, reboot. Here's the theory...." This term is als...
book titles5 is power-off condition) and `warm boot' (with the CPU and all devices already powered up, as after a hardware reset or software crash). Another variant `soft boot', reinitialization of only part of a system, under control of oth...
book titles6 is the {mess-dos} emulator, control-alt-insert will cause a soft-boot of the emulator, while leaving the rest of the system running." Opposed to this there is `hard boot', which connotes hostility towards or frustration with the...
book titles7 is hard-boot this losing Sun." "I recommend booting it hard." Historical note this term derives from `bootstrap loader', a short program that was read in from cards or paper tape, or toggled in from the front panel switches. This...
book titles8 is were expended on making it short in order to minimize the labor and chance of error involved in toggling it in), but was just smart enough to read in a slightly more complex program (usually from a card or paper tape reader), t...
book titles9 is turn was smart enough to read the application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer `pulled itself up by its bootstraps' to a useful operating state. Nowadays th...
book titles10 is and reads the first stage in from a fixed location on the disk, called the `boot block'. When this program gains control, it is powerful enough to load the actual OS and hand control over to it.
bottom-up implementation is n. Hackish opposite of the techspeak term `top-down design'. It is now received wisdom in most programming cultures that it is best to design from higher levels of abstraction down to lower, specifying sequences of...
bottom-up implementation2 is to actual code. Hackers often find (especially in exploratory designs that cannot be closely specified in advance) that it works best to *build* things in the opposite order, by writing and testing a clean set of ...
bounce is v. 1. [perhaps from the image of a thrown ball bouncing off a wall] An electronic mail message that is undeliverable and returns an error notification to the sender is said to `bounce'. See also {bounce message}. 2. [Stanford] To pl...
bounce2 is Power Lab} building used by the Stanford AI Lab in the 1970s, there was a volleyball court on the front lawn. From 5 P.M. to 7 P.M. was the scheduled maintenance time for the computer, so every afternoon at 5 the computer would b...
bounce3 is voice would cry, "Now hear this bounce, bounce!" followed by Brian McCune loudly bouncing a volleyball on the floor outside the offices of known volleyballers. 3. To engage in sexual intercourse; prob. from the expression `bounci...
bounce4 is psychosexually loaded "Bounce on me too, Tigger!" from the "Winnie-the-Pooh" books. Compare {boink}. 4. To casually reboot a system in order to clear up a transient problem. Reported primarily among {VMS} users. 5. [IBM] To {po...
bounce message is [UNIX] n. Notification message returned to sender by a site unable to relay {email} to the intended {{Internet address}} recipient or the next link in a {bang path} (see {bounce}). Reasons might include a nonexistent or missp...
bounce message2 is Bounce messages can themselves fail, with occasionally ugly results; see {sorcerer's apprentice mode}. The term `bounce mail' is also common.
box is n. 1. A computer; esp. in the construction `foo box' where foo is some functional qualifier, like `graphics', or the name of an OS (thus, `UNIX box', `MS-DOS box', etc.) "We preprocess the data on UNIX boxes before handing it up to the...
box2 is qualification but within an SNA-using site, this refers specifically to an IBM front-end processor or FEP /F-E-P/. An FEP is a small computer necessary to enable an IBM {mainframe} to communicate beyond the limits of the {dinosaur p...
box3 is cry that goes up when an SNA network goes down "Looks like the {box} has fallen over." (See {fall over}.) See also {IBM}, {fear and loathing}, {fepped out}, {Blue Glue}.
boxed comments is n. Comments (explanatory notes attached to program instructions) that occupy several lines by themselves; so called because in assembler and C code they are often surrounded by a box in a style something like this Common va...
boxed comments2 is column 2 or add a matching row of asterisks closing the right side of the box. The sparest variant omits all but the comment delimiters themselves; the `box' is implied. Oppose {winged comments}.
boxen is /bok'sn/ [by analogy with {VAXen}] pl.n. Fanciful plural of {box} often encountered in the phrase `UNIX boxen', used to describe commodity {{UNIX}} hardware. The connotation is that any two UNIX boxen are interchangeable.
boxology is /bok-sol'*-jee/ n. Syn. {ASCII art}. This term implies a more restricted domain, that of box-and-arrow drawings. "His report has a lot of boxology in it." Compare {macrology}.
bozotic is /boh-zoh'tik/ or /boh-zo'tik/ [from the name of a TV clown even more losing than Ronald McDonald] adj. Resembling or having the quality of a bozo; that is, clownish, ludicrously wrong, unintentionally humorous. Compare {wonky}, {de...
bozotic2 is in slang, but the mainstream adjectival form would be `bozo-like' or (in New England) `bozoish'.
BQS is /B-Q-S/ adj. Syn. {Berkeley Quality Software}.
brain dump is n. The act of telling someone everything one knows about a particular topic or project. Typically used when someone is going to let a new party maintain a piece of code. Conceptually analogous to an operating system {core dump}...
brain dump2 is before an exit. "You'll have to give me a brain dump on FOOBAR before you start your new job at HackerCorp." See {core dump} (sense 4). At Sun, this is also known as `TOI' (transfer of information).
brain-damaged is 1. [generalization of `Honeywell Brain Damage' (HBD), a theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in Honeywell {{Multics}}] adj. Obviously wrong; {cretinous}; {demented}. There is an implication that th...
brain-damaged2 is brain damage, because he should have known better. Calling something brain-damaged is really bad; it also implies it is unusable, and that its failure to work is due to poor design rather than some accident. "Only six mon...
brain-damaged3 is brain-damaged!" 2. [esp. in the Mac world] May refer to free demonstration software that has been deliberately crippled in some way so as not to compete with the commercial product it is intended to sell. Syn. {crippleware...
brain-dead is adj. Brain-damaged in the extreme. It tends to imply terminal design failure rather than malfunction or simple stupidity. "This comm program doesn't know how to send a break --- how brain-dead!"
braino is /bray'no/ n. Syn. for {thinko}.
branch to Fishkill is [IBM from the location of one of the corporation's facilities] n. Any unexpected jump in a program that produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. See {jump off into never-never land}, {hyperspace}.
brand brand brand is n. Humorous catch-phrase from {BartleMUD}s, in which players were described carrying a list of objects, the most common of which would usually be a brand. Often used as a joke in {talk mode} as in "Fred the wizard is here...
brand brand brand2 is kettle broadsword flamethrower". A brand is a torch, of course; one burns up a lot of those exploring dungeons. Prob. influenced by the famous Monty Python "Spam" skit.
break is 1. vt. To cause to be broken (in any sense). "Your latest patch to the editor broke the paragraph commands." 2. v. (of a program) To stop temporarily, so that it may debugged. The place where it stops is a `breakpoint'. 3. [techs...
break2 is of line high) over a serial comm line. 4. [UNIX] vi. To strike whatever key currently causes the tty driver to send SIGINT to the current process. Normally, break (sense 3) or delete does this. 5. `break break' may be said to int...
break3 is verb doubling).
breath-of-life packet is [XEROX PARC] n. An Ethernet packet that contained bootstrap (see {boot}) code, periodically sent out from a working computer to infuse the `breath of life' into any computer on the network that had happened to crash. ...
breath-of-life packet2 is would wait for such a packet after a catastrophic error.
breedle is n. See {feep}.
bring X to its knees is v. To present a machine, operating system, piece of software, or algorithm with a load so extreme or {pathological} that it grinds to a halt. "To bring a MicroVAX to its knees, try twenty users running {vi} --- or four...
brittle is adj. Said of software that is functional but easily broken by changes in operating environment or configuration, or by any minor tweak to the software itself. Also, any system that responds inappropriately and disastrously to expec...
brittle2 is that is usually totally scrambled by a power failure is said to be brittle. This term is often used to describe the results of a research effort that were never intended to be robust, but it can be applied to commercially develope...
brittle3 is more often than it ought to. Oppose {robust}.
broadcast storm is n. An incorrect packet broadcast on a network that causes most hosts to respond all at once, typically with wrong answers that start the process over again. See {network meltdown}.
broken is adj. 1. Not working properly (of programs). 2. Behaving strangely; especially (when used of people) exhibiting extreme depression.
broken arrow is [IBM] n. The error code displayed on line 25 of a 3270 terminal (or a PC emulating a 3270) for various kinds of protocol violations and "unexpected" error conditions (including connection to a {down} computer). On a PC, simula...
broken arrow2 is characters overstruck. In true {luser} fashion, the original documentation of these codes (visible on every 3270 terminal, and necessary for debugging network problems) was confined to an IBM customer engineering manual. N...
broken arrow3 is know that `broken arrow' is also military jargon for an accident involving nuclear weapons....
broket is /broh'k*t/ or /broh'ket`/ [by analogy with `bracket' a `broken bracket'] n. Either of the characters `<' and `>', when used as paired enclosing delimiters. This word originated as a contraction of the phrase `broken bracket', that ...
broket2 is (At MIT, and apparently in the {Real World} as well, these are usually called {angle brackets}.)
Brooks's Law is prov. "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" --- a result of the fact that the advantage from splitting work among N programmers is O(N) (that is, proportional to N), but the complexity and communications ...
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
code grinder2 is consisting of button-down shirt (starch optional) and a tie. In times of dire stress, the sleeves (if long) may be rolled up and the tie loosened about half an inch. It seldom helps. The {code grinder}'s milieu is about as ...
code grinder3 is touch a computer; the term connotes pity. See {Real World}, {suit}. 2. Used of or to a hacker, a really serious slur on the person's creative ability; connotes a design style characterized by primitive technique, rule-boun...
code grinder4 is imagination. Compare {card walloper}; contrast {hacker}, {real programmer}.
code police is [by analogy with George Orwell's `thought police'] n. A mythical team of Gestapo-like storm troopers that might burst into one's office and arrest one for violating programming style rules. May be used either seriously, to unde...
code police2 is violation is dangerous, or ironically, to suggest that the practice under discussion is condemned mainly by anal-retentive {weenie}s. "Dike out that goto or the code police will get you!" The ironic usage is perhaps more comm...
codewalker is n. A program component that traverses other programs for a living. Compilers have codewalkers in their front ends; so do cross-reference generators and some database front ends. Other utility programs that try to do too much wi...
codewalker2 is As in "This new `vgrind' feature would require a codewalker to implement."
coefficient of X is n. Hackish speech makes rather heavy use of pseudo-mathematical metaphors. Four particularly important ones involve the terms `coefficient', `factor', `index', and `quotient'. They are often loosely applied to things you ...
coefficient of X2 is there are subtle distinctions among them that convey information about the way the speaker mentally models whatever he or she is describing. `Foo factor' and `foo quotient' tend to describe something for which the issue ...
coefficient of X3 is example is {fudge factor}. It's not important how much you're fudging; the term simply acknowledges that some fudging is needed. You might talk of liking a movie for its silliness factor. Quotient tends to imply that the ...
coefficient of X4 is "I would have won except for my luck quotient." This could also be "I would have won except for the luck factor", but using *quotient* emphasizes that it was bad luck overpowering good luck (or someone else's good luck ov...
coefficient of X5 is `coefficient of foo' both tend to imply that foo is, if not strictly measurable, at least something that can be larger or smaller. Thus, you might refer to a paper or person as having a `high bogosity index', whereas you ...
coefficient of X6 is bogosity factor'. `Foo index' suggests that foo is a condensation of many quantities, as in the mundane cost-of-living index; `coefficient of foo' suggests that foo is a fundamental quantity, as in a coefficient of fricti...
coefficient of X7 is one of personal preference; e.g., some people might feel that bogosity is a fundamental attribute and thus say `coefficient of bogosity', whereas others might feel it is a combination of factors and thus say `bogosity inde...
cokebottle is /kohk'bot-l/ n. Any very unusual character, particularly one you can't type because it it isn't on your keyboard. MIT people used to complain about the `control-meta-cokebottle' commands at SAIL, and SAIL people complained rig...
cokebottle2 is commands at MIT. After the demise of the {space-cadet keyboard}, `cokebottle' faded away as serious usage, but was often invoked humorously to describe an (unspecified) weird or non-intuitive keystroke command. It may be due...
cokebottle3 is window manager, `mwm(1)', has a reserved keystroke for switching to the default set of keybindings and behavior. This keystroke is (believe it or not) `control-meta-bang' (see {bang}). Since the exclamation point looks a lot...
cokebottle4 is have begun referring to this keystroke as `cokebottle'. See also {quadruple bucky}.
cold boot is n. See {boot}.
COME FROM is n. A semi-mythical language construct dual to the `go to'; `COME FROM' <label> would cause the referenced label to act as a sort of trapdoor, so that if the program ever reached it control would quietly and {automagically} be tran...
COME FROM2 is FROM'. `COME FROM' was first proposed in a {Datamation} article of December 1973 (reprinted in the April 1984 issue of `Communications of the ACM') that parodied the then-raging `structured programming' {holy wars} (see {consi...
COME FROM3 is the `assigned COME FROM' and the `computed COME FROM' (parodying some nasty control constructs in FORTRAN and some extended BASICs). Of course, multi-tasking (or non-determinism) could be implemented by having more than one `C...
COME FROM4 is label. In some ways the FORTRAN `DO' looks like a `COME FROM' statement. After the terminating statement number/`CONTINUE' is reached, control continues at the statement following the DO. Some generous FORTRANs would allow arb...
COME FROM5 is the statement, leading to examples like DO 10 I=1,LIMIT C imagine many lines of code here, leaving the C original DO statement lost in the spaghetti... WRITE(6,10) I,FROB(I) 10 FORMAT(1X,I5,G10.4) i...
COME FROM6 is statement labeled 10. (This is particularly surprising because the label doesn't appear to have anything to do with the flow of control at all!) While sufficiently astonishing to the unsuspecting reader, this form of `COME FROM...
COME FROM7 is all, control will eventually pass to the following statement. The implementation of the general form was left to Univac FORTRAN, ca. 1975. The statement `AT 100' would perform a `COME FROM 100'. It was intended strictly as a...
COME FROM8 is promised to anyone so deranged as to use it in production code. More horrible things had already been perpetrated in production languages, however; doubters need only contemplate the `ALTER' verb in {COBOL}. `COME FROM' was su...
COME FROM9 is 15 years later, in C-INTERCAL (see {INTERCAL}, {retrocomputing}); knowledgeable observers are still reeling from the shock.
comm mode is /kom mohd/ [ITS from the feature supporting on-line chat; the term may spelled with one or two m's] Syn. for {talk mode}.
command key is [Mac users] n. The Macintosh key with the cloverleaf graphic on its keytop; sometimes referred to as `flower', `pretzel', `clover', `propeller', `beanie' (an apparent reference to the major feature of a propeller beanie), or {...
command key2 is The proliferation of terms for this creature may illustrate one subtle peril of iconic interfaces.
comment out is vt. To surround a section of code with comment delimiters or to prefix every line in the section with a comment marker; this prevents it from being compiled or interpreted. Often done when the code is redundant or obsolete, but...
comment out2 is the intent of the active code clearer; also when the code in that section is broken and you want to bypass it in order to debug some other part of the code. Compare {condition out}, usually the preferred technique in languages...
Commonwealth Hackish is n. Hacker jargon as spoken outside the U.S., esp. in the British Commonwealth. It is reported that Commonwealth speakers are more likely to pronounce truncations like `char' and `soc', etc., as spelled (/char/, /sok/),...
Commonwealth Hackish2 is Dots in {newsgroup} names tend to be pronounced more often (so soc.wibble is /sok dot wib'l/ rather than /sohsh wib'l/). The prefix {meta} may be pronounced /mee't*/; similarly, Greek letter beta is often /bee't*/, ...
Commonwealth Hackish3 is Preferred metasyntactic variables include `eek', `ook', `frodo', and `bilbo'; `wibble', `wobble', and in emergencies `wubble'; `banana', `wombat', `frog', {fish}, and so on and on (see {foo}, sense 4). Alternatives...
Commonwealth Hackish4 is `frenzy' (as in feeding frenzy), and `city' (examples "barf city!" "hack-o-rama!" "core dump frenzy!"). Finally, note that the American terms `parens', `brackets', and `braces' for (), [], and {} are uncommon; Commonw...
Commonwealth Hackish5 is brackets', and `curly brackets'. Also, the use of `pling' for {bang} is common outside the United States. See also {attoparsec}, {calculator}, {chemist}, {console jockey}, {fish}, {go-faster stripes}, {grunge}, {haksp...
Commonwealth Hackish6 is fixer}, {noddy}, {psychedelicware}, {plingnet}, {raster blaster}, {seggie}, {terminal junkie}, {tick-list features}, {weeble}, {weasel}, {YABA}, and notes or definitions under {Bad Thing}, {barf}, {bogus}, {bum}, {ch...
Commonwealth Hackish7 is {crunch}, {dodgy}, {gonk}, {hamster}, {hardwarily}, {mess-dos}, {nybble}, {proglet}, {root}, {SEX}, {tweak}, and {xyzzy}.
compact is adj. Of a design, describes the valuable property that it can all be apprehended at once in one's head. This generally means the thing created from the design can be used with greater facility and fewer errors than an equivalent to...
compact2 is imply triviality or lack of power; for example, C is compact and FORTRAN is not, but C is more powerful than FORTRAN. Designs become non-compact through accreting {feature}s and {cruft} that don't merge cleanly into the overall ...
compact3 is maintain that ANSI C is no longer compact).
compiler jock is n. See {jock} (sense 2).
compress is [UNIX] vt. When used without a qualifier, generally refers to {crunch}ing of a file using a particular C implementation of Lempel-Ziv compression by James A. Woods et al. and widely circulated via {USENET}. Use of {crunch} itself ...
Compu$erve is n. See {CI$}.
computer confetti is n. Syn. {chad}. Though this term is common, this use of the punched-card chad is not a good idea, as the pieces are stiff and have sharp corners that could injure the eyes. GLS reports that he once attended a wedding at ...
computer confetti2 is enthusiastically threw chad instead of rice. The groom later grumbled that he and his bride had spent most of the evening trying to get the stuff out of their hair.
computer geek is n. One who eats (computer) bugs for a living. One who fulfills all the dreariest negative stereotypes about hackers an asocial, malodorous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the personality of a cheese grater. Cannot be used b...
computer geek2 is hackers; compare black-on-black usage of `nigger'. A computer geek may be either a fundamentally clueless individual or a proto-hacker in {larval stage}. Also called `turbo nerd', `turbo geek'. See also {clustergeeking},...
computron is /kom'pyoo-tron`/ n. 1. A notional unit of computing power combining instruction speed and storage capacity, dimensioned roughly in instructions-per-second times megabytes-of-main-store times megabytes-of-mass-storage. "That machi...
computron2 is enough computrons!" This usage is usually found in metaphors that treat computing power as a fungible commodity good, like a crop yield or diesel horsepower. See {bitty box}, {Get a real computer!}, {toy}, {crank}. 2. A mythi...
computron3 is quantity of computation or information, in much the same way that an electron bears one unit of electric charge (see also {bogon}). An elaborate pseudo-scientific theory of computrons has been developed based on the physical f...
computron4 is more rapidly as it is heated. It is argued that an object melts because the molecules have lost their information about where they are supposed to be (that is, they have emitted computrons). This explains why computers get so ho...
computron5 is computrons. Conversely, it should be possible to cool down an object by placing it in the path of a computron beam. It is believed that this may also explain why machines that work at the factory fail in the computer room the ...
computron6 is other hardware. (This theory probably owes something to the "Warlock" stories by Larry Niven, the best known being "What Good is a Glass Dagger?", in which magic is fueled by an exhaustible natural resource called `mana'.)
condition out is vt. To prevent a section of code from being compiled by surrounding it with a conditional-compilation directive whose condition is always false. The {canonical} examples are `#if 0' (or `#ifdef notdef', though some find this ...
condom is n. 1. The protective plastic bag that accompanies 3.5-inch microfloppy diskettes. Rarely, also used of (paper) disk envelopes. Unlike the write protect tab, the condom (when left on) not only impedes the practice of {SEX} but has al...
condom2 is drive mechanisms attempt to access the disk --- and can even fatally frustrate insertion. 2. The protective cladding on a {light pipe}.
connector conspiracy is [probably came into prominence with the appearance of the KL-10 (one model of the {PDP-10}), none of whose connectors matched anything else] n. The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors o...
connector conspiracy2 is that don't fit together with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive interface devices. The KL-10 Massbus connector was actually *patented* by DEC, which reputedly refused to license ...
connector conspiracy3 is parties out of competition for the lucrative Massbus peripherals market. This is a source of never-ending frustration for the diehards who maintain older PDP-10 or VAX systems. Their CPUs work fine, but they are st...
connector conspiracy4 is drives with low capacity and high power requirements. In these latter days of open-systems computing this term has fallen somewhat into disuse, to be replaced by the observation that "Standards are great! There are ...
cons is /konz/ or /kons/ [from LISP] 1. vt. To add a new element to a specified list, esp. at the top. "OK, cons picking a replacement for the console TTY onto the agenda." 2. `cons up' vt. To synthesize from smaller pieces "to cons up an ex...
cons2 is fundamental operation for building structures. It takes any two objects and returns a `dot-pair' or two-branched tree with one object hanging from each branch. Because the result of a cons is an object, it can be used to build bin...
cons3 is think of it as a sort of universal constructor, and that is where the jargon meanings spring from.
considered harmful is adj. Edsger W. Dijkstra's note in the March 1968 `Communications of the ACM', "Goto Statement Considered Harmful", fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars. Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting a...
considered harmful2 is policy) no longer print an article taking so assertive a position against a coding practice. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and parodies have borne titles of the form "X considered Y". ...
considered harmful3 is over with the realization that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has remained as a persistent minor in-joke (the `considered silly' found at various places in this lexicon is related).
console is n. 1. The operator's station of a {mainframe}. In times past, this was a privileged location that conveyed godlike powers to anyone with fingers on its keys. Under UNIX and other modern timesharing OSes, such privileges are guarde...
console2 is just the {tty} the system was booted from. Some of the mystique remains, however, and it is traditional for sysadmins to post urgent messages to all users from the console (on UNIX, /dev/console). 2. On microcomputer UNIX boxes, ...
console3 is character-only terminals talking to a serial port). Typically only the console can do real graphics or run {X}. See also {CTY}.
console jockey is n. See {terminal junkie}.
content-free is [by analogy with techspeak `context-free'] adj. Used of a message that adds nothing to the recipient's knowledge. Though this adjective is sometimes applied to {flamage}, it more usually connotes derision for communication styl...
content-free2 is centered on concerns irrelevant to the subject ostensibly at hand. Perhaps most used with reference to speeches by company presidents and other professional manipulators. "Content-free? Uh...that's anything printed on glossy...
content-free3 is "He gave a talk on the implications of electronic networks for postmodernism and the fin-de-siecle aesthetic. It was content-free."
control-C is vi. 1. "Stop whatever you are doing." From the interrupt character used on many operating systems to abort a running program. Considered silly. 2. interj. Among BSD UNIX hackers, the canonical humorous response to "Give me a br...
control-O is vi. "Stop talking." From the character used on some operating systems to abort output but allow the program to keep on running. Generally means that you are not interested in hearing anything more from that person, at least on t...
control-O2 is who is flaming. Considered silly.
control-Q is vi. "Resume." From the ASCII XON character used to undo a previous control-S (in fact it is also pronounced XON /X-on/).
control-S is vi. "Stop talking for a second." From the ASCII XOFF character (this is also pronounced XOFF /X-of/). Control-S differs from {control-O} in that the person is asked to stop talking (perhaps because you are on the phone) but will...
control-S2 is listen to him --- as opposed to control-O, which has more of the meaning of "Shut up." Considered silly.
Conway's Law is prov. The rule that the organization of the software and the organization of the software team will be congruent; originally stated as "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler". This was or...
Conway's Law2 is early proto-hacker who wrote an assembler for the Burroughs 220 called SAVE. The name `SAVE' didn't stand for anything; it was just that you lost fewer card decks and listings because they all had SAVE written on them.
cookbook is [from amateur electronics and radio] n. A book of small code segments that the reader can use to do various {magic} things in programs. One current example is the `PostScript Language Tutorial and Cookbook' by Adobe Systems, Inc ...
cookbook2 is has recipes for things like wrapping text around arbitrary curves and making 3D fonts. Cookbooks, slavishly followed, can lead one into {voodoo programming}, but are useful for hackers trying to {monkey up} small programs in unk...
cookbook3 is of phrasebooks in human languages.
cookie is n. A handle, transaction ID, or other token of agreement between cooperating programs. "I give him a packet, he gives me back a cookie." The claim check you get from a dry-cleaning shop is a perfect mundane example of a cookie; the...
cookie2 is later transaction to this one (so you get the same clothes back). Compare {magic cookie}; see also {fortune cookie}.
cookie bear is n. Syn. {cookie monster}.
cookie file is n. A collection of {fortune cookie}s in a format that facilitates retrieval by a fortune program. There are several different ones in public distribution, and site admins often assemble their own from various sources including ...
cookie monster is [from "Sesame Street"] n. Any of a family of early (1970s) hacks reported on {{TOPS-10}}, {{ITS}}, {{Multics}}, and elsewhere that would lock up either the victim's terminal (on a time-sharing machine) or the {{console}} (on ...
cookie monster2 is "I WANT A COOKIE". The required responses ranged in complexity from "COOKIE" through "HAVE A COOKIE" and upward. See also {wabbit}.
copper is n. Conventional electron-carrying network cable with a core conductor of copper --- or aluminum! Opposed to {light pipe} or, say, a short-range microwave link.
copy protection is n. A class of clever methods for preventing incompetent pirates from stealing software and legitimate customers from using it. Considered silly.
copybroke is /ko'pee-brohk/ adj. [play on `copyright'] Used to describe an instance of a copy-protected program that has been `broken'; that is, a copy with the copy-protection scheme disabled. Syn. {copywronged}.
copyleft is /kop'ee-left/ [play on `copyright'] n. 1. The copyright notice (`General Public License') carried by {GNU} {EMACS} and other Free Software Foundation software, granting reuse and reproduction rights to all comers (but see also {Gen...
copyleft2 is copyright notice intended to achieve similar aims.
copywronged is /ko'pee-rongd/ [play on `copyright'] adj. Syn. for {copybroke}.
core is n. Main storage or RAM. Dates from the days of ferrite-core memory; now archaic as techspeak most places outside IBM, but also still used in the UNIX community and by old-time hackers or those who would sound like them. Some derived ...
core2 is example, means `in memory' (as opposed to `on disk'), and both {core dump} and the `core image' or `core file' produced by one are terms in favor. Commonwealth hackish prefers {store}.
core dump is n. [common {Iron Age} jargon, preserved by UNIX] 1. [techspeak] A copy of the contents of {core}, produced when a process is aborted by certain kinds of internal error. 2. By extension, used for humans passing out, vomiting, or r...
core dump2 is All over the floor. What a mess." "He heard about X and dumped core." 3. Occasionally used for a human rambling on pointlessly at great length; esp. in apology "Sorry, I dumped core on you". 4. A recapitulation of knowledge...
core dump3 is one knows about a topic, esp. in a lecture or answer to an exam question. "Short, concise answers are better than core dumps" (from the instructions to an exam at Columbia; syn. {brain dump}). See {core}.
core leak is n. Syn. {memory leak}.
Core Wars is n. A game between `assembler' programs in a simulated machine, where the objective is to kill your opponent's program by overwriting it. Popularized by A. K. Dewdney's column in `Scientific American' magazine, this was actually ...
Core Wars2 is and Dennis Ritchie in the early 1960s (their original game was called `Darwin' and ran on a PDP-1 at Bell Labs). See {core}.
corge is /korj/ [originally, the name of a cat] n. Yet another meta-syntactic variable, invented by Mike Gallaher and propagated by the {GOSMACS} documentation. See {grault}.
cosmic rays is n. Notionally, the cause of {bit rot}. However, this is a semi-independent usage that may be invoked as a humorous way to {handwave} away any minor {randomness} that doesn't seem worth the bother of investigating. "Hey, Eric -...
cosmic rays2 is {tube}, where did that come from?" "Cosmic rays, I guess." Compare {sunspots}, {phase of the moon}. The British seem to prefer the usage `cosmic showers'; `alpha particles' is also heard, because stray alpha particles passin...
cosmic rays3 is errors (this becomes increasingly more likely as memory sizes and densities increase). Factual note Alpha particles cause bit rot, cosmic rays do not (except occasionally in spaceborne computers). Intel could not explain ran...
cosmic rays4 is hypothesis was cosmic rays. So they created the World's Largest Lead Safe, using 25 tons of the stuff, and used two identical boards for testing. One was placed in the safe, one outside. The hypothesis was that if cosmic r...
cosmic rays5 is a statistically significant difference between the error rates on the two boards. They did not observe such a difference. Further investigation demonstrated conclusively that the bit drops were due to alpha particle emissio...
cosmic rays6 is uranium) in the encapsulation material. Since it is impossible to eliminate these radioactives (they are uniformly distributed through the earth's crust, with the statistically insignificant exception of uranium lodes) it beca...
cosmic rays7 is to withstand these hits.
cough and die is v. Syn. {barf}. Connotes that the program is throwing its hands up by design rather than because of a bug or oversight. "The parser saw a control-A in its input where it was looking for a printable, so it coughed and died."
cowboy is [Sun, from William Gibson's {cyberpunk} SF] n. Synonym for {hacker}. It is reported that at Sun this word is often said with reverence.
CP/M is /C-P-M/ n. [Control Program for Microcomputers] An early microcomputer {OS} written by hacker Gary Kildall for 8080- and Z80-based machines, very popular in the late 1970s but virtually wiped out by MS-DOS after the release of the IBM ...
CP/M2 is company blew its chance to write the OS for the IBM PC because Kildall decided to spend a day IBM's reps wanted to meet with him enjoying the perfect flying weather in his private plane. Many of CP/M's features and conventions stro...
CP/M3 is systems such as {{TOPS-10}}, OS/8, RSTS, and RSX-11. See {{MS-DOS}}, {operating system}.
CPU Wars is /C-P-U worz/ n. A 1979 large-format comic by Chas Andres chronicling the attempts of the brainwashed androids of IPM (Impossible to Program Machines) to conquer and destroy the peaceful denizens of HEC (Human Engineered Computers)....
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
hello, world2 is (and indeed it is the first example program in {K&R}). Environments that generate an unreasonably large executable for this trivial test or which require a {hairy} compiler-linker invocation to generate it are considered to ...
hello, world3 is hacker making an entrance or requesting information from anyone present. "Hello, world! Is the {VAX} back up yet?"
hex is n. 1. Short for {{hexadecimal}}, base 16. 2. A 6-pack of anything (compare {quad}, sense 2). Neither usage has anything to do with {magic} or {black art}, though the pun is appreciated and occasionally used by hackers. True story As ...
hex2 is surplus ICs for sale to be worn as protective amulets against hostile magic. The chips were, of course, hex inverters.
hexadecimal is n. Base 16. Coined in the early 1960s to replace earlier `sexadecimal', which was too racy and amusing for stuffy IBM, and later adopted by the rest of the industry. Actually, neither term is etymologically pure. If we take `b...
hexadecimal2 is etymologically correct term for base 10, for example, is `denary', which comes from `deni' (ten at a time, ten each), a Latin `distributive' number; the corresponding term for base-16 would be something like `sendenary'. `De...
hexadecimal3 is corresponding prefix for 6 would imply something like `sextidecimal'. The `sexa-' prefix is Latin but incorrect in this context, and `hexa-' is Greek. The word `octal' is similarly incorrect; a correct form would be `octaval'...
hexadecimal4 is with binary). If anyone ever implements a base-3 computer, computer scientists will be faced with the unprecedented dilemma of a choice between two *correct* forms; both `ternary' and `trinary' have a claim to this throne.
hexit is /hek'sit/ n. A hexadecimal digit (0--9, and A--F or a--f). Used by people who claim that there are only *ten* digits, dammit; sixteen-fingered human beings are rather rare, despite what some keyboard designs might seem to imply (see {...
hidden flag is [scientific computation] n. An extra option added to a routine without changing the calling sequence. For example, instead of adding an explicit input variable to instruct a routine to give extra diagnostic output, the programm...
hidden flag2 is meaningless feature of the existing inputs, such as a negative mass. Liberal use of hidden flags can make a program very hard to debug and understand.
high bit is [from `high-order bit'] n. 1. The most significant bit in a byte. 2. By extension, the most significant part of something other than a data byte "Spare me the whole {saga}, just give me the high bit." See also {meta bit}, {hobbit...
high bit2 is mainstream slang `bottom line'.
high moby is /hi' mohb'ee/ n. The high half of a 512K {PDP-10}'s physical address space; the other half was of course the low moby. This usage has been generalized in a way that has outlasted the {PDP-10}; for example, at the 1990 Washington ...
high moby2 is (Disclave), when a miscommunication resulted in two separate wakes being held in commemoration of the shutdown of MIT's last {{ITS}} machines, the one on the upper floor was dubbed the `high moby' and the other the `low moby'. A...
highly is [scientific computation] adv. The preferred modifier for overstating an understatement. As in `highly nonoptimal', the worst possible way to do something; `highly nontrivial', either impossible or requiring a major research project;...
highly2 is unpredictable; `highly nontechnical', drivel written for {luser}s, oversimplified to the point of being misleading or incorrect (compare {drool-proof paper}). In other computing cultures, postfixing of {in the extreme} might be p...
hirsute is adj. Occasionally used humorously as a synonym for {hairy}.
HLL is /H-L-L/ n. [High-Level Language (as opposed to assembler)] Found primarily in email and news rather than speech. Rarely, the variants `VHLL' and `MLL' are found. VHLL stands for `Very-High-Level Language' and is used to describe a {bo...
HLL2 is speaker happens to like; Prolog and Backus's FP are often called VHLLs. `MLL' stands for `Medium-Level Language' and is sometimes used half-jokingly to describe {C}, alluding to its `structured-assembler' image. See also {languages o...
hobbit is n. 1. The High Order Bit of a byte; same as the {meta bit} or {high bit}. 2. The non-ITS name of vad@ai.mit.edu (*Hobbit*), master of lasers.
hog is n.,vt. 1. Favored term to describe programs or hardware that seem to eat far more than their share of a system's resources, esp. those which noticeably degrade interactive response. *Not* used of programs that are simply extremely large...
hog2 is slow themselves (see {pig, run like a}). More often than not encountered in qualified forms, e.g., `memory hog', `core hog', `hog the processor', `hog the disk'. "A controller that never gives up the I/O bus gets killed after the b...
hog3 is *people* who use more than their fair share of resources (particularly disk, where it seems that 10% of the people use 90% of the disk, no matter how big the disk is or how many people use it). Of course, once disk hogs fill up one fi...
hog4 is one to infect, claiming to the sysadmin that they have an important new project to complete.
holy wars is [from {USENET}, but may predate it] n. {flame war}s over {religious issues}. The paper by Danny Cohen that popularized the terms {big-endian} and {little-endian} in connection with the LSB-first/MSB-first controversy was entitled...
holy wars2 is perennial Holy Wars have included {EMACS} vs. {vi}, my personal computer vs. everyone else's personal computer, {{ITS}} vs. {{UNIX}}, {{UNIX}} vs. {VMS}, {BSD} UNIX vs. {USG UNIX}, {C} vs. {{Pascal}}, {C} vs. {LISP}, etc., ad n...
holy wars3 is distinguishes {holy wars} from normal technical disputes is that in a holy wars most of the participants spend their time trying to pass off personal value choices and cultural attachments as objective technical evaluations. See ...
home box is n. A hacker's personal machine, especially one he or she owns. "Yeah? Well, *my* home box runs a full 4.2 BSD, so there!"
hook is n. A software or hardware feature included in order to simplify later additions or changes by a user. For example, a simple program that prints numbers might always print them in base 10, but a more flexible version would let a variab...
hook2 is variable to 5 would make the program print numbers in base 5. The variable is a simple hook. An even more flexible program might examine the variable and treat a value of 16 or less as the base to use, but treat any other number a...
hook3 is printing a number. This is a {hairy} but powerful hook; one can then write a routine to print numbers as Roman numerals, say, or as Hebrew characters, and plug it into the program through the hook. Often the difference between a g...
hook4 is latter has useful hooks in judiciously chosen places. Both may do the original job about equally well, but the one with the hooks is much more flexible for future expansion of capabilities ({EMACS}, for example, is *all* hooks). The...
hook5 is formal and less hackish.
hop is n. One file transmission in a series required to get a file from point A to point B on a store-and-forward network. On such networks (including {UUCPNET} and {FidoNet}), the important inter-machine metric is the number of hops in the s...
hop2 is geographical separation. See {bang path}.
hose is 1. vt. To make non-functional or greatly degraded in performance. "That big ray-tracing program really hoses the system." See {hosed}. 2. n. A narrow channel through which data flows under pressure. Generally denotes data paths tha...
hose2 is Cabling, especially thick Ethernet cable. This is sometimes called `bit hose' or `hosery' (play on `hosiery') or `etherhose'. See also {washing machine}.
hosed is adj. Same as {down}. Used primarily by UNIX hackers. Humorous also implies a condition thought to be relatively easy to reverse. Probably derived from the Canadian slang `hoser' popularized by the Bob and Doug Mackenzie skits on SCT...
hosed2 is people in the mainstream sense of `in an extremely unfortunate situation'. Once upon a time, a Cray that had been experiencing periodic difficulties crashed, and it was announced to have been hosed. It was discovered that the crash...
hosed3 is hoses. The problem was corrected, and users were then assured that everything was OK because the system had been rehosed. See also {dehose}.
hot spot is n. 1. [primarily used by C/UNIX programmers, but spreading] It is received wisdom that in most programs, less than 10% of the code eats 90% of the execution time; if one were to graph instruction visits versus code addresses, one w...
hot spot2 is a lot of low-level noise. Such spikes are called `hot spots' and are good candidates for heavy optimization or {hand-hacking}. The term is especially used of tight loops and recursions in the code's central algorithm, as oppos...
hot spot3 is infrequent I/O operations. See {tune}, {bum}, {hand-hacking}. 2. The active location of a cursor on a bit-map display. "Put the mouse's hot spot on the `ON' widget and click the left button." 3. In a massively parallel comput...
hot spot4 is all 10,000 processors are trying to read or write at once (perhaps because they are all doing a {busy-wait} on the same lock).
house wizard is [prob. from ad-agency lingo, `house freak'] n. A hacker occupying a technical-specialist, R&D, or systems position at a commercial shop. A really effective house wizard can have influence out of all proportion to his/her osten...
house wizard2 is suit. Used esp. of UNIX wizards. The term `house guru' is equivalent.
HP-SUX is /H-P suhks/ n. Unflattering hackerism for HP-UX, Hewlett-Packard's UNIX port. Features some truly unique bogosities in the filesystem internals and elsewhere which occasionally create portability problems. HP-UX is often referred t...
HP-SUX2 is respondent claims that the proper pronunciation is /H-P ukkkhhhh/ as though one were about to spit. Another such alternate spelling and pronunciation is "H-PUX" /H-puhks/. Hackers at HP/Apollo (the former Apollo Computers which was...
HP-SUX3 is complain that Mr. Packard should have pushed to have his name first, if for no other reason than the greater eloquence of the resulting acronym. Compare {buglix}. See also {Telerat}, {sun-stools}, {terminak}.
huff is v. To compress data using a Huffman code. Various programs that use such methods have been called `HUFF' or some variant thereof. Oppose {puff}. Compare {crunch}, {compress}.
humma is // excl. A filler word used on various `chat' and `talk' programs when you had nothing to say but felt that it was important to say something. The word apparently originated (at least with this definition) on the MECC Timeshare Syste...
humma2 is time-sharing system running in Minnesota during the 1970s and the early 1980s) but was later sighted on early UNIX systems.
Humor, Hacker is n. A distinctive style of shared intellectual humor found among hackers, having the following distinctive characteristics 1. Fascination with form-vs.-content jokes, paradoxes, and humor having to do with confusion of metale...
Humor, Hacker2 is laugh hold a red index card in front of him/her with "GREEN" written on it, or vice-versa (note, however, that this is funny only the first time). 2. Elaborate deadpan parodies of large intellectual constructs, such as spec...
Humor, Hacker3 is documents, language descriptions (see {INTERCAL}), and even entire scientific theories (see {quantum bogodynamics}, {computron}). 3. Jokes that involve screwily precise reasoning from bizarre, ludicrous, or just grossly cou...
Humor, Hacker4 is puns and wordplay. 5. A fondness for apparently mindless humor with subversive currents of intelligence in it --- for example, old Warner Brothers and Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, the Marx brothers, the early B-52s, and Mon...
Humor, Hacker5 is this trait with elements of high camp and slapstick is especially favored. 6. References to the symbol-object antinomies and associated ideas in Zen Buddhism and (less often) Taoism. See {has the X nature}, {Discordianis...
Humor, Hacker6 is See also {filk}, {retrocomputing}, and appendix B. If you have an itchy feeling that all 6 of these traits are really aspects of one thing that is incredibly difficult to talk about exactly, you are (a) correct and (b) respo...
Humor, Hacker7 is recognizable (though in a less marked form) throughout {{science-fiction fandom}}.
hung is [from `hung up'] adj. Equivalent to {wedged}, but more common at UNIX/C sites. Not generally used of people. Syn. with {locked up}, {wedged}; compare {hosed}. See also {hang}. A hung state is distinguished from {crash}ed or {down}, ...
hung2 is but because it is not running rather than because it is waiting for something. However, the recovery from both situations is often the same.
hungry puppy is n. Syn. {slopsucker}.
hungus is /huhng'g*s/ [perhaps related to slang `humongous'] adj. Large, unwieldy, usually unmanageable. "TCP is a hungus piece of code." "This is a hungus set of modifications."
hyperspace is /hi'per-spays/ n. A memory location that is *far* away from where the program counter should be pointing, often inaccessible because it is not even mapped in. "Another core dump --- looks like the program jumped off to hyperspac...
hyperspace2 is never-never land}.) This usage is from the SF notion of a spaceship jumping `into hyperspace', that is, taking a shortcut through higher-dimensional space --- in other words, bypassing this universe. The variant `east hypers...
hyperspace3 is hackers.*I didn't change anything! interj. An aggrieved cry often heard as bugs manifest during a regression test. The {canonical} reply to this assertion is "Then it works just the same as it did before, doesn't it?" See also...
hyperspace4 is applications programmers trying to blame an obvious applications problem on an unrelated systems software change, for example a divide-by-0 fault after terminals were added to a network. Usually, their statement is found to be f...
hyperspace5 is admit some major restructuring of the program that shouldn't have broken anything, in their opinion, but which actually {hosed} the code completely.
I see no X here. is Hackers (and the interactive computer games they write) traditionally favor this slightly marked usage over other possible equivalents such as "There's no X here!" or "X is missing." or "Where's the X?". This goes back to...
I see no X here.2 is respond in this wise if you asked it to do something involving an object not present at your location in the game.
i14y is // n. Abbrev. for `interoperability', with the `14' replacing fourteen letters. Used in the {X} (windows) community. Refers to portability and compatibility of data formats (even binary ones) between different programs or implementat...
i18n is // n. Abbrev. for `internationali{z,s}ation', with the 18 replacing 18 letters. Used in the {X} (windows) community.
IBM is /I-B-M/ Inferior But Marketable; It's Better Manually; Insidious Black Magic; It's Been Malfunctioning; Incontinent Bowel Movement; and a near-{infinite} number of even less complimentary expansions, including `International Business Ma...
IBM2 is illustrate the considerable antipathy most hackers have long felt toward the `industry leader' (see {fear and loathing}). What galls hackers about most IBM machines above the PC level isn't so much that they are underpowered and over...
IBM3 is but that the designs are incredibly archaic, {crufty}, and {elephantine} ... and you can't *fix* them --- source code is locked up tight, and programming tools are expensive, hard to find, and bletcherous to use once you've found the...
IBM4 is family this may have begun to change --- but then, we thought that when the PC-RT came out, too. In the spirit of universal peace and brotherhood, this lexicon now includes a number of entries attributed to `IBM'; these derive from s...
IBM5 is circulated within IBM's own beleaguered hacker underground.
IBM discount is n. A price increase. Outside IBM, this derives from the common perception that IBM products are generally overpriced (see {clone}); inside, it is said to spring from a belief that large numbers of IBM employees living in an ar...
ice is [coined by USENETter Tom Maddox, popularized by William Gibson's cyberpunk SF novels acronym for `Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics'] Security software (in Gibson's novels, software that responds to intrusion by attempting to literal...
ice2 is program designed for cracking security on a system. Neither term is in serious use yet as of mid-1991, but many hackers find the metaphor attractive, and each may develop a denotation in the future.
ifdef out is /if'def owt/ v. Syn. for {condition out}, specific to {C}.
ill-behaved is adj. 1. [numerical analysis] Said of an algorithm or computational method that tends to blow up because of accumulated roundoff error or poor convergence properties. 2. Software that bypasses the defined {OS} interfaces to do t...
ill-behaved2 is itself, often in a way that depends on the hardware of the machine it is running on or which is nonportable or incompatible with other pieces of software. In the IBM PC/MS-DOS world, there is a folk theorem (nearly true) to th...
ill-behaved3 is and performance penalties in the OS interface) all interesting applications are ill-behaved. See also {bare metal}. Oppose {well-behaved}, compare {PC-ism}. See {mess-dos}.
IMHO is // [from SF fandom via USENET; acronym for `In My Humble Opinion'] "IMHO, mixed-case C names should be avoided, as mistyping something in the wrong case can cause hard-to-detect errors --- and they look too Pascalish anyhow." Also se...
IMHO2 is Not-So-Humble Opinion) and IMAO (In My Arrogant Opinion).
in the extreme is adj. A preferred superlative suffix for many hackish terms. See, for example, `obscure in the extreme' under {obscure}, and compare {highly}.
incantation is n. Any particularly arbitrary or obscure command that one must mutter at a system to attain a desired result. Not used of passwords or other explicit security features. Especially used of tricks that are so poorly documented t...
incantation2 is compiler normally locates initialized data in the data segment, but if you {mutter} the right incantation they will be forced into text space."
include is vt. [USENET] 1. To duplicate a portion (or whole) of another's message (typically with attribution to the source) in a reply or followup, for clarifying the context of one's response. See the the discussion of inclusion styles under...
include2 is `#include <disclaimer.h>' has appeared in {sig block}s to refer to a notional `standard disclaimer file'.
include war is n. Excessive multi-leveled including within a discussion {thread}, a practice that tends to annoy readers. In a forum with high-traffic newsgroups, such as USENET, this can lead to {flame}s and the urge to start a {kill file}.
indent style is [C programmers] n. The rules one uses to indent code in a readable fashion; a subject of {holy wars}. There are four major C indent styles, described below; all have the aim of making it easier for the reader to visually track...
indent style2 is significant variable is the placement of `{' and `}' with respect to the statement(s) they enclose and the guard or controlling statement (`if', `else', `for', `while', or `do') on the block, if any. `K&R style' --- Named ...
indent style3 is examples in {K&R} are formatted this way. Also called `kernel style' because the UNIX kernel is written in it, and the `One True Brace Style' (abbrev. 1TBS) by its partisans. The basic indent shown here is eight spaces (or o...
indent style4 is seen, but are much less common. if (cond) { <body> } `Allman style' --- Named for Eric Allman, a Berkeley hacker who wrote a lot of the BSD utilities in it (it is sometimes called `BSD style'). Resembles n...
indent style5 is indent per level shown here is eight spaces, but four is just as common (esp. in C++ code). if (cond) { <body> } `Whitesmiths style' --- popularized by the examples that came with Whitesmiths C, an earl...
indent style6 is level shown here is eight spaces, but four is occasionally seen. if (cond) { <body> } `GNU style' --- Used throughout GNU EMACS and the Free Software Foundation code, and just about nowher...
indent style7 is level, with `{' and `}' halfway between the outer and inner indent levels. if (cond) { <body> } Surveys have shown the Allman and Whitesmiths styles to be the most common, with about equal mind shares. ...
indent style8 is now much less common (the opening brace tends to get lost against the right paren of the guard part in an `if' or `while', which is a {Bad Thing}). Defenders of 1TBS argue that any putative gain in readability is less importa...
indent style9 is vertical space, which enables one to see more code on one's screen at once. Doubtless these issues will continue to be the subject of {holy wars}.
index is n. See {coefficient}.
infant mortality is n. It is common lore among hackers that the chances of sudden hardware failure drop off exponentially with a machine's time since power-up (that is, until the relatively distant time at which enough mechanical wear in I/O d...
infant mortality2 is components has accumulated for the machine to start going senile). Up to half of all chip and wire failures happen within a new system's first few weeks; such failures are often referred to as `infant mortality' problems ...
infant mortality3 is syndrome'). See {bathtub curve}, {burn-in period}.
infinite is adj. Consisting of a large number of objects; extreme. Used very loosely as in "This program produces infinite garbage." "He is an infinite loser." The word most likely to follow `infinite', though, is {hair} (it has been pointed...
infinite2 is of infinite hair). These uses are abuses of the word's mathematical meaning. The term `semi-infinite', denoting an immoderately large amount of some resource, is also heard. "This compiler is taking a semi-infinite amount of ...
infinite loop is n. One that never terminates (that is, the machine {spin}s or {buzz}es forever; the usual symptom is {catatonia}). There is a standard joke that has been made about each generation's exemplar of the ultra-fast machine "The Cr...
infinite loop2 is loop in under 2 seconds!"
infinity is n. 1. The largest value that can be represented in a particular type of variable (register, memory location, data type, whatever). 2. `minus infinity' The smallest such value, not necessarily or even usually the simple negation of...
infinity2 is arithmetic, infinity is 2^{N-1} - 1 but minus infinity is - (2^{N-1}), not -(2^{N-1} - 1). Note also that this is different from "time T equals minus infinity", which is closer to a mathematician's usage of infinity.
insanely great is adj. [Mac community, from Steve Jobs; also BSD UNIX people via Bill Joy] Something so incredibly {elegant} that it is imaginable only to someone possessing the most puissant of {hacker}-natures.
INTERCAL is /in't*r-kal/ [said by the authors to stand for `Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym'] n. A computer language designed by Don Woods and James Lyon in 1972. INTERCAL is purposely different from all other computer langua...
INTERCAL2 is written language, being totally unspeakable. An excerpt from the INTERCAL Reference Manual will make the style of the language clear It is a well-known and oft-demonstrated fact that a person whose work is incomprehen...
INTERCAL3 is one were to state that the simplest way to store a value of 65536 in a 32-bit INTERCAL variable is DO 1 <- #0$#256 any sensible programmer would say that that was absurd. Since this is indeed the sim...
INTERCAL4 is look foolish in front of his boss, who would of course have happened to turn up, as bosses are wont to do. The effect would be no less devastating for the programmer having been correct. INTERCAL has many other p...
INTERCAL5 is more unspeakable. The Woods-Lyons implementation was actually used by many (well, at least several) people at Princeton. The language has been recently reimplemented as C-INTERCAL and is consequently enjoying an unprecedented le...
INTERCAL6 is alt.lang.intercal newsgroup devoted to the study and ... appreciation of the language on USENET.
interesting is adj. In hacker parlance, this word has strong connotations of `annoying', or `difficult', or both. Hackers relish a challenge, and enjoy wringing all the irony possible out of the ancient Chinese curse "May you live in interest...
Internet address is n. 1. [techspeak] An absolute network address of the form foo@bar.baz, where foo is a user name, bar is a {sitename}, and baz is a `domain' name, possibly including periods itself. Contrast with {bang path}; see also {netw...
Internet address2 is Internet machines and most UUCP sites can now resolve these addresses, thanks to a large amount of behind-the-scenes magic and PD software written since 1980 or so. See also {bang path}, {domainist}. 2. More loosely, any ...
Internet address3 is this includes {bang path} addresses and some internal corporate and government networks. Reading Internet addresses is something of an art. Here are the four most important top-level functional Internet domains followed...
Internet address4 is com commercial organizations edu educational institutions gov U.S. government civilian sites mil U.S. military sites Note that most of the sites in the com and edu domains are in...
Internet address5 is the U.S. outside the functional domains su sites in the Soviet Union (see {kremvax}). uk sites in the United Kingdom Within the us domain, there are subdomains for the fifty states, each generally w...
Internet address6 is abbreviation. Within the uk domain, there is an ac subdomain for academic sites and a co domain for commercial ones. Other top-level domains may be divided up in similar ways.
interrupt is 1. [techspeak] n. On a computer, an event that interrupts normal processing and temporarily diverts flow-of-control through an "interrupt handler" routine. See also {trap}. 2. interj. A request for attention from a hacker. Oft...
interrupt2 is seen Joe recently?" See {priority interrupt}. 3. Under MS-DOS, the term `interrupt' is nearly synonymous with `system call', because the OS and BIOS routines are both called using the INT instruction (see {{interrupt list, th...
interrupt3 is bypass the OS (going directly to a BIOS interrupt) to get reasonable performance.
interrupt list, the is [MS-DOS] n. The list of all known software interrupt calls (both documented and undocumented) for IBM PCs and compatibles, maintained and made available for free redistribution by Ralf Brown (ralf@cs.cmu.edu). As of ear...
interrupts locked out is When someone is ignoring you. In a restaurant, after several fruitless attempts to get the waitress's attention, a hacker might well observe "She must have interrupts locked out". The synonym `interrupts disabled' is...
interrupts locked out2 is have one's interrupt mask bit set" or "interrupts masked out" is also heard. See also {spl}.
iron is n. Hardware, especially older and larger hardware of {mainframe} class with big metal cabinets housing relatively low-density electronics (but the term is also used of modern supercomputers). Often in the phrase {big iron}. Oppose ...
Iron Age is n. In the history of computing, 1961--1971 --- the formative era of commercial {mainframe} technology, when {big iron} {dinosaur}s ruled the earth. These began with the delivery of the first PDP-1, coincided with the dominance of ...
Iron Age2 is introduction of the first commercial microprocessor (the Intel 4004) in 1971. See also {Stone Age}; compare {elder days}.
iron box is [UNIX/Internet] n. A special environment set up to trap a {cracker} logging in over remote connections long enough to be traced. May include a modified {shell} restricting the hacker's movements in unobvious ways, and `bait' files...
iron box2 is on. See also {back door}, {firewall machine}, {Venus flytrap}, and Clifford Stoll's account in `The Cuckoo's Egg' of how he made and used one (see the Bibliography). Compare {padded cell}.
ironmonger is [IBM] n. Derogatory. A hardware specialist. Compare {sandbender}, {polygon pusher}.
ITS is /I-T-S/ n. 1. Incompatible Time-sharing System, an influential but highly idiosyncratic operating system written for PDP-6s and PDP-10s at MIT and long used at the MIT AI Lab. Much AI-hacker jargon derives from ITS folklore, and to hav...
ITS2 is instantly as an old-timer of the most venerable sort. ITS pioneered many important innovations, including transparent file sharing between machines and terminal-independent I/O. After about 1982, most actual work was shifted to new...
ITS3 is essentially as a hobby and service to the hacker community. The shutdown of the lab's last ITS machine in May 1990 marked the end of an era and sent old-time hackers into mourning nationwide (see {high moby}). The Royal Institute of ...
ITS4 is `live' ITS site at its computer museum (right next to the only TOPS-10 system still on the Internet), so ITS is still alleged to hold the record for OS in longest continuous use (however, {{WAITS}} is a credible rival for this palm). ...
ITS5 is operating-system perfection worshiped by a bizarre, fervent retro-cult of old-time hackers and ex-users (see {troglodyte}, sense 2). ITS worshipers manage somehow to continue believing that an OS maintained by assembly-language hand...
ITS6 is 6-character filenames in one directory per account remains superior to today's state of commercial art (their venom against UNIX is particularly intense). See also {holy wars}, {Weenix}.
IWBNI is // [acronym] `It Would Be Nice If'. Compare {WIBNI}.
IYFEG is // [USENET] Abbreviation for `Insert Your Favorite Ethnic Group'. Used as a meta-name when telling racist jokes on the net to avoid offending anyone. See {JEDR}.*J. Random /J rand'm/ n. [generalized from {J. Random Hacker}] Arbitrar...
IYFEG2 is often prefixed to a noun to make a name out of it. It means roughly `some particular' or `any specific one'. "Would you let J. Random Loser marry your daughter?" The most common uses are `J. Random Hacker', `J. Random Loser', an...
IYFEG3 is be allowed to {gun} down other people?"), but it can be used simply as an elaborate version of {random} in any sense.
J. Random Hacker is [MIT] /J rand'm hak'r/ n. A mythical figure like the Unknown Soldier; the archetypal hacker nerd. See {random}, {Suzie COBOL}. This may originally have been inspired or influenced by `J. Fred Muggs', a show-biz chimpanzee...
jaggies is /jag'eez/ n. The `stairstep' effect observable when an edge (esp. a linear edge of very shallow or steep slope) is rendered on a pixel device (as opposed to a vector display).
JCL is /J-C-L/ n. 1. IBM's supremely {rude} Job Control Language. JCL is the script language used to control the execution of programs in IBM's batch systems. JCL has a very {fascist} syntax, and some versions will, for example, {barf} if tw...
JCL2 is programmers confronted with JCL simply copy a working file (or card deck), changing the file names. Someone who actually understands and generates unique JCL is regarded with the mixed respect one gives to someone who memorizes the ...
JCL3 is itself sometimes sing "Who's the breeder of the crud that mangles you and me? I-B-M, J-C-L, M-o-u-s-e" to the tune of the "Mickey Mouse Club" theme to express their opinion of the beast. 2. A comparative for any very {rude} softwar...
JCL4 is as bad as JCL." As with {COBOL}, JCL is often used as an archetype of ugliness even by those who haven't experienced it. See also {IBM}, {fear and loathing}.
JEDR is // n. Synonymous with {IYFEG}. At one time, people in the USENET newsgroup rec.humor.funny tended to use `JEDR' instead of {IYFEG} or `<ethnic>'; this stemmed from a public attempt to suppress the group once made by a loser with initi...
JEDR2 is joke posted there. (The practice was {retcon}ned by the expanding these initials as `Joke Ethnic/Denomination/Race'.) After much sound and fury JEDR faded away; this term appears to be doing likewise. JEDR's only permanent effect...
JEDR3 is `sensitivity' arguments for censorship so thoroughly that more recent attempts to raise them have met with immediate and near-universal rejection.
JFCL is /jif'kl/, /jaf'kl/, /j*-fi'kl/ vt., obs. (alt. `jfcl') To cancel or annul something. "Why don't you jfcl that out?" The fastest do-nothing instruction on older models of the PDP-10 happened to be JFCL, which stands for "Jump if Flag ...
JFCL2 is something useful, but is a very fast no-operation if no flag is specified. Geoff Goodfellow, one of the jargon-1 co-authors, has long had JFCL on the license plate of his BMW. Usage rare except among old-time PDP-10 hackers.
jiffy is n. 1. The duration of one tick of the system clock on the computer (see {tick}). Often one AC cycle time (1/60 second in the U.S. and Canada, 1/50 most other places), but more recently 1/100 sec has become common. "The swapper runs ...
jiffy2 is memory management routine is executed once for every 6 ticks of the clock, or about ten times a second. 2. Confusingly, the term is sometimes also used for a 1-millisecond {wall time} interval. 3. Indeterminate time from a few secon...
jiffy3 is certainly not now and possibly never. This is a bit contrary to the more widespread use of the word. Oppose {nano}. See also {Real Soon Now}.
job security is n. When some piece of code is written in a particularly {obscure} fashion, and no good reason (such as time or space optimization) can be discovered, it is often said that the programmer was attempting to increase his job secur...
job security2 is for maintenance). This sour joke seldom has to be said in full; if two hackers are looking over some code together and one points at a section and says "job security", the other one may just nod.
jock is n. 1. A programmer who is characterized by large and somewhat brute-force programs. See {brute force}. 2. When modified by another noun, describes a specialist in some particular computing area. The compounds `compiler jock' and `sy...
jock2 is examples of this.
joe code is /joh' kohd`/ n. 1. Code that is overly {tense} and unmaintainable. "{Perl} may be a handy program, but if you look at the source, it's complete joe code." 2. Badly written, possibly buggy code. Correspondents wishing to remain ...
joe code2 is the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and observed that usage has drifted slightly; the original sobriquet `Joe code' was intended in sense 1.
JR[LN] is /J-R-L/, /J-R-N/ n. The names JRL and JRN were sometimes used as example names when discussing a kind of user ID used under {{TOPS-10}}; they were understood to be the initials of (fictitious) programmers named `J. Random Loser' and ...
JR[LN]2 is example, if one said "To log in, type log one comma jay are en" (that is, "log 1,JRN"), the listener would have understood that he should use his own computer ID in place of `JRN'.
JRST is /jerst/ [based on the PDP-10 jump instruction] v.,obs. To suddenly change subjects, with no intention of returning to the previous topic. Usage rather rare except among PDP-10 diehards, and considered silly. See also {AOS}.
juggling eggs is vi. Keeping a lot of {state} in your head while modifying a program. "Don't bother me now, I'm juggling eggs", means that an interrupt is likely to result in the program's being scrambled. In the classic first-contact SF nov...
juggling eggs2 is and Jerry Pournelle, an alien describes a very difficult task by saying "We juggle priceless eggs in variable gravity." That is a very hackish use of language. See also {hack mode}.
jump off into never-never land is [from J. M. Barrie's `Peter Pan'] v. Same as {branch to Fishkill}, but more common in technical cultures associated with non-IBM computers that use the term `jump' rather than `branch'. Compare {hyperspace}.*...
jump off into never-never land2 is used both as a spoken word and a written suffix (like {meg} and {gig} for megabyte and gigabyte). See {{quantifiers}}.
K&R is [Kernighan and Ritchie] n. Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie's book `The C Programming Language', esp. the classic and influential first edition (Prentice-Hall 1978; ISBN 0-113-110163-3). Syn. {White Book}, {Old Testament}. See also ...
kahuna is /k*-hoo'nuh/ [IBM from the Hawaiian title for a shaman] n. Synonym for {wizard}, {guru}.
kamikaze packet is n. The `official' jargon for what is more commonly called a {Christmas tree packet}. RFC-1025, `TCP and IP Bake Off' says 10 points for correctly being able to process a "Kamikaze" packet (AKA nastygram, christmas tree...
kamikaze packet2 is is, correctly handle a segment with the maximum combination of features at once (e.g., a SYN URG PUSH FIN segment with options and data). See also {Chernobyl packet}.
kangaroo code is n. Syn. {spaghetti code}.
ken is /ken/ n. 1. [UNIX] Ken Thompson, principal inventor of UNIX. In the early days he used to hand-cut distribution tapes, often with a note that read "Love, ken". Old-timers still use his first name (sometimes uncapitalized, because it's...
ken2 is third-person reference; it is widely understood (on USENET, in particular) that without a last name `Ken' refers only to Ken Thompson. Similarly, Dennis without last name means Dennis Ritchie (and he is often known as dmr). See als...
ken3 is This was originated by the Software Support group at Symbolics because the two greatest flamers in the user community were both named Ken.
kgbvax is /K-G-B'vaks/ n. See {kremvax}.
kill file is [USENET] n. (alt. `KILL file') Per-user file(s) used by some {USENET} reading programs (originally Larry Wall's `rn(1)') to discard summarily (without presenting for reading) articles matching some particularly uninteresting (or u...
kill file2 is other header lines. Thus to add a person (or subject) to one's kill file is to arrange for that person to be ignored by one's newsreader in future. By extension, it may be used for a decision to ignore the person or subject in ...
killer micro is [popularized by Eugene Brooks] n. A microprocessor-based machine that infringes on mini, mainframe, or supercomputer performance turf. Often heard in "No one will survive the attack of the killer micros!", the battle cry of th...
killer micro2 is architectures. The popularity of the phrase `attack of the killer micros' is doubtless reinforced by the movie title "Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes" (one of the {canonical} examples of so-bad-it's-wonderful among hackers). ...
killer micro3 is micros have gone on the offensive not just individually (in workstations) but in hordes (within massively parallel computers).
killer poke is n. A recipe for inducing hardware damage on a machine via insertion of invalid values (see {poke}) in a memory-mapped control register; used esp. of various fairly well-known tricks on {bitty box}es without hardware memory manag...
killer poke2 is that can overload and trash analog electronics in the monitor. See also {HCF}.
kilo- is [SI] pref. See {{quantifiers}}.
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
leaf site is n. A machine that merely originates and reads USENET news or mail, and does not relay any third-party traffic. Often uttered in a critical tone; when the ratio of leaf sites to backbone, rib, and other relay sites gets too high, ...
leaf site2 is Compare {backbone site}, {rib site}.
leak is n. With qualifier, one of a class of resource-management bugs that occur when resources are not freed properly after operations on them are finished, so they effectively disappear (leak out). This leads to eventual exhaustion as new al...
leak2 is and {fd leak} have their own entries; one might also refer, to, say, a `window handle leak' in a window system.
leaky heap is [Cambridge] n. An {arena} with a {memory leak}.
legal is adj. Loosely used to mean `in accordance with all the relevant rules', esp. in connection with some set of constraints defined by software. "The older =+ alternate for += is no longer legal syntax in ANSI C." "This parser processes ...
legal2 is the trailing linefeed." Hackers often model their work as a sort of game played with the environment in which the objective is to maneuver through the thicket of `natural laws' to achieve a desired objective. Their use of `legal'...
legal3 is as by the more conventional one having to do with courts and lawyers. Compare {language lawyer}, {legalese}.
legalese is n. Dense, pedantic verbiage in a language description, product specification, or interface standard; text that seems designed to obfuscate and requires a {language lawyer} to {parse} it. Though hackers are not afraid of high infor...
legalese2 is (indeed, they rather enjoy both), they share a deep and abiding loathing for legalese; they associate it with deception, {suit}s, and situations in which hackers generally get the short end of the stick.
LER is /L-E-R/ [TMRC, from `Light-Emitting Diode] n. A light-emitting resistor (that is, one in the process of burning up). Ohm's law was broken. See {SED}.
LERP is /lerp/ vi.,n. Quasi-acronym for Linear Interpolation, used as a verb or noun for the operation. E.g., Bresenham's algorithm lerps incrementally between the two endpoints of the line.
let the smoke out is v. To fry hardware (see {fried}). See {magic smoke} for the mythology behind this.
letterbomb is n. A piece of {email} containing {live data} intended to do nefarious things to the recipient's machine or terminal. It is possible, for example, to send letterbombs that will lock up some specific kinds of terminals when they a...
letterbomb2 is {cycle power} to unwedge them. Under UNIX, a letterbomb can also try to get part of its contents interpreted as a shell command to the mailer. The results of this could range from silly to tragic. See also {Trojan horse}; co...
lexer is /lek'sr/ n. Common hacker shorthand for `lexical analyzer', the input-tokenizing stage in the parser for a language (the part that breaks it into word-like pieces). "Some C lexers get confused by the old-style compound ops like `=-'....
lexiphage is /lek'si-fayj`/ n. A notorious word {chomper} on ITS. See {bagbiter}.
life is n. 1. A cellular-automata game invented by John Horton Conway and first introduced publicly by Martin Gardner (`Scientific American', October 1970). Many hackers pass through a stage of fascination with it, and hackers at various plac...
life2 is analysis of this game (most notably Bill Gosper at MIT, who even implemented life in {TECO}!; see {Gosperism}). When a hacker mentions `life', he is much more likely to mean this game than the magazine, the breakfast cereal, or the...
life3 is {USENET}. As in {Get a life!}
light pipe is n. Fiber optic cable. Oppose {copper}.
like kicking dead whales down the beach is adj. Describes a slow, difficult, and disgusting process. First popularized by a famous quote about the difficulty of getting work done under one of IBM's mainframe OSes. "Well, you *could* write a ...
like kicking dead whales down the beach2 is kicking dead whales down the beach." See also {fear and loathing}
like nailing jelly to a tree is adj. Used to describe a task thought to be impossible, esp. one in which the difficulty arises from poor specification or inherent slipperiness in the problem domain. "Trying to display the `prettiest' arrangeme...
like nailing jelly to a tree2 is graph is like nailing jelly to a tree, because nobody's sure what `prettiest' means algorithmically."
line eater, the is [USENET] n. 1. A bug in some now-obsolete versions of the netnews software that used to eat up to BUFSIZ bytes of the article text. The bug was triggered by having the text of the article start with a space or tab. This bu...
line eater, the2 is creature called the `line eater', and postings often included a dummy line of `line eater food'. Ironically, line eater `food' not beginning with a space or tab wasn't actually eaten, since the bug was avoided; but if ther...
line eater, the3 is line eater would eat the food *and* the beginning of the text it was supposed to be protecting. The practice of `sacrificing to the line eater' continued for some time after the bug had been {nailed to the wall}, and is ...
line eater, the4 is is still (in mid-1991) occasionally reported to be lurking in some mail-to-netnews gateways. 2. See {NSA line eater}.
line starve is [MIT] 1. vi. To feed paper through a printer the wrong way by one line (most printers can't do this). On a display terminal, to move the cursor up to the previous line of the screen. "To print `X squared', you just output `X', ...
line starve2 is starve causes the `2' to appear on the line above the `X', and the line feed gets back to the original line.) 2. n. A character (or character sequence) that causes a terminal to perform this action. Unlike `line feed', `line ...
line starve3 is terminology. Even among hackers it is considered a bit silly. 3. [proposed] A sequence such as \c (used in System V echo, as well as nroff/troff) that suppresses a {newline} or other character(s) that would normally be emitte...
link farm is [UNIX] n. A directory tree that contains many links to files in a master directory tree of files. Link farms save space when (for example) one is maintaining several nearly identical copies of the same source tree, e.g., when the...
link farm2 is object files. "Let's freeze the source and then rebuild the FROBOZZ-3 and FROBOZZ-4 link farms." Link farms may also be used to get around restrictions on the number of `-I' (include-file directory) arguments on older C prepr...
link-dead is [MUD] adj. Said of a {MUD} character who has frozen in place because of a dropped Internet connection.
lint is [from UNIX's `lint(1)', named perhaps for the bits of fluff it picks from programs] 1. vt. To examine a program closely for style, language usage, and portability problems, esp. if in C, esp. if via use of automated analysis tools, mos...
lint2 is used. This term used to be restricted to use of `lint(1)' itself, but (judging by references on USENET) it has become a shorthand for {desk check} at some non-UNIX shops, even in languages other than C. Also as v. {delint}. 2. n...
lint3 is draft has too much lint".
lion food is [IBM] n. Middle management or HQ staff (by extension, administrative drones in general). From an old joke about two lions who, escaping from the zoo, split up to increase their chances but agreed to meet after 2 months. When the...
lion food2 is overweight. The thin one says "How did you manage? I ate a human just once and they turned out a small army to chase me --- guns, nets, it was terrible. Since then I've been reduced to eating mice, insects, even grass." The ...
lion food3 is office and ate a manager a day. And nobody even noticed!"Lions Book n. `Source Code and Commentary on UNIX level 6', by John Lions. The two parts of this book contained (1) the entire source listing of the UNIX Version 6 kernel...
lion food4 is discussing the algorithms. These were circulated internally at the University of New South Wales beginning 1976--77, and were for years after the *only* detailed kernel documentation available to anyone outside Bell Labs. Becau...
lion food5 is secret status on the kernel, the Lions book was never formally published and was only supposed to be distributed to affiliates of source licensees. In spite of this, it soon spread by samizdat to a good many of the early UNIX ...
LISP is [from `LISt Processing language', but mythically from `Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses'] n. The name of AI's mother tongue, a language based on the ideas of (a) variable-length lists and trees as fundamental data types, and ...
LISP2 is vice-versa. Invented by John McCarthy at MIT in the late 1950s, it is actually older than any other {HLL} still in use except FORTRAN. Accordingly, it has undergone considerable adaptive radiation over the years; modern variants a...
LISP3 is LISP 1.5. The dominant HLL among hackers until the early 1980s, LISP now shares the throne with {C}. See {languages of choice}. All LISP functions and programs are expressions that return values; this, together with the high memory...
LISP4 is Perlis's famous quip (itself a take on an Oscar Wilde quote) that "LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing". One significant application for LISP has been as a proof by example that most newer languages...
LISP5 is unnecessary {crock}s. When the {Right Thing} has already been done once, there is no justification for {bogosity} in newer languages.
literature, the is n. Computer-science journals and other publications, vaguely gestured at to answer a question that the speaker believes is {trivial}. Thus, one might answer an annoying question by saying "It's in the literature." Oppose ...
little-endian is adj. Describes a computer architecture in which, within a given 16- or 32-bit word, bytes at lower addresses have lower significance (the word is stored `little-end-first'). The PDP-11 and VAX families of computers and Intel ...
little-endian2 is and networking hardware are little-endian. See {big-endian}, {middle-endian}, {NUXI problem}. The term is sometimes used to describe the ordering of units other than bytes; most often these are bits within a byte.
live data is n. 1. Data that is written to be interpreted and takes over program flow when triggered by some un-obvious operation, such as viewing it. One use of such hacks is to break security. For example, some smart terminals have command...
live data2 is program keys; this can be used to write live data that, when listed to the terminal, infects it with a security-breaking {virus} that is triggered the next time a hapless user strikes that key. For another, there are some well...
live data3 is send arbitrary commands back to the machine when they are simply viewed. 2. In C code, data that includes pointers to function {hook}s (executable code). 3. An object, such as a {trampoline}, that is constructed on the fly by ...
live data4 is code. 4. Actual real-world data, as opposed to `test data'. For example, "I think I have the record deletion module finished." "Have you tried it out on live data?" It usually carries the connotation that live data is more frag...
live data5 is things will happen. So a possible alternate response to the above claim might be "Well, make sure it works perfectly before we throw live data at it." The implication here is that record deletion is something pretty significant...
live data6 is running amok on live data would cause great harm and probably require restoring from backups.
Live Free Or Die! is imp. 1. The state motto of New Hampshire, which appears on that state's automobile license plates. 2. A slogan associated with UNIX in the romantic days when UNIX aficionados saw themselves as a tiny, beleaguered undergro...
Live Free Or Die!2 is industry. The "free" referred specifically to freedom from the {fascist} design philosophies and crufty misfeatures common on commercial operating systems. Armando Stettner, one of the early UNIX developers, used to giv...
Live Free Or Die!3 is under a large UNIX, all in New Hampshire colors of green and white. These are now valued collector's items.
livelock is /liv'lok/ n. A situation in which some critical stage of a task is unable to finish because its clients perpetually create more work for it to do after they have been serviced but before it can clear its queue. Differs from {deadl...
livelock2 is waiting for anything, but has a virtually infinite amount of work to do and can never catch up.
liveware is /liv'weir/ n. 1. Synonym for {wetware}. Less common. 2. [Cambridge] Vermin. "Waiter, there's some liveware in my salad..."
lobotomy is n. 1. What a hacker subjected to formal management training is said to have undergone. At IBM and elsewhere this term is used by both hackers and low-level management; the latter doubtless intend it as a joke. 2. The act of remov...
lobotomy2 is order to replace or upgrade it. Some very cheap {clone} systems are sold in `lobotomized' form --- everything but the brain.
locked and loaded is [from military slang for an M-16 rifle with magazine inserted and prepared for firing] adj. Said of a removable disk volume properly prepared for use --- that is, locked into the drive and with the heads loaded. Ironicall...
locked and loaded2 is the power is up, this description is never used of {{Winchester}} drives (which are named after a rifle).
locked up is adj. Syn. for {hung}, {wedged}.
logic bomb is n. Code surreptitiously inserted in an application or OS that causes it to perform some destructive or security-compromising activity whenever specified conditions are met. Compare {back door}.
logical is [from the technical term `logical device', wherein a physical device is referred to by an arbitrary `logical' name] adj. Having the role of. If a person (say, Les Earnest at SAIL) who had long held a certain post left and were rep...
logical2 is known as the `logical' Les Earnest. (This does not imply any judgment on the replacement.) Compare {virtual}. At Stanford, `logical' compass directions denote a coordinate system in which `logical north' is toward San Francisco,...
logical3 is even though logical north varies between physical (true) north near San Francisco and physical west near San Jose. (The best rule of thumb here is that, by definition, El Camino Real always runs logical north-and-south.) In givi...
logical4 is Tarasco restaurant, get onto {El Camino Bignum} going logical north." Using the word `logical' helps to prevent the recipient from worrying about that the fact that the sun is setting almost directly in front of him. The concept...
logical5 is which are almost, but not quite, consistently labeled with logical rather than physical directions. A similar situation exists at MIT. Route 128 (famous for the electronics industry that has grown up along it) is a 3-quarters cir...
logical6 is miles, terminating near the coastline at each end. It would be most precise to describe the two directions along this highway as `clockwise' and `counterclockwise', but the road signs all say "north" and "south", respectively. ...
logical7 is `logical north' and `logical south', to indicate that they are conventional directions not corresponding to the usual denotation for those words. (If you went logical south along the entire length of route 128, you would start out...
logical8 is and finish headed due east!)
loop through is vt. To process each element of a list of things. "Hold on, I've got to loop through my paper mail." Derives from the computer-language notion of an iterative loop; compare `cdr down' (under {cdr}), which is less common among C...
loop through2 is say `IRP over' after an obscure pseudo-op in the MIDAS PDP-10 assembler.
lord high fixer is [primarily British, from Gilbert & Sullivan's `lord high executioner'] n. The person in an organization who knows the most about some aspect of a system. See {wizard}.
lose is [MIT] vi. 1. To fail. A program loses when it encounters an exceptional condition or fails to work in the expected manner. 2. To be exceptionally unesthetic or crocky. 3. Of people, to be obnoxious or unusually stupid (as opposed to...
lose 2 is 4. n. Refers to something that is {losing}, especially in the phrases "That's a lose!" and "What a lose!"
lose lose is interj. A reply to or comment on an undesirable situation. "I accidentally deleted all my files!" "Lose, lose."
loser is n. An unexpectedly bad situation, program, programmer, or person. Someone who habitually loses. (Even winners can lose occasionally.) Someone who knows not and knows not that he knows not. Emphatic forms are `real loser', `total l...
loser2 is loser', which would be a contradiction in terms). See {luser}.
losing is adj. Said of anything that is or causes a {lose} or {lossage}.
loss is n. Something (not a person) that loses; a situation in which something is losing. Emphatic forms include `moby loss', and `total loss', `complete loss'. Common interjections are "What a loss!" and "What a moby loss!" Note that `mob...
loss2 is not used; applied to an abstract noun, moby is simply a magnifier, whereas when applied to a person it implies substance and has positive connotations. Compare {lossage}.
lossage is /los'*j/ n. The result of a bug or malfunction. This is a mass or collective noun. "What a loss!" and "What lossage!" are nearly synonymous. The former is slightly more particular to the speaker's present circumstances; the latt...
lossage2 is speaker is currently a victim. Thus (for example) a temporary hardware failure is a loss, but bugs in an important tool (like a compiler) are serious lossage.
lost in the noise is adj. Syn. {lost in the underflow}. This term is from signal processing, where signals of very small amplitude cannot be separated from low-intensity noise in the system. Though popular among hackers, it is not confined t...
lost in the noise2 is astronomers, and statisticians all use it.
lost in the underflow is adj. Too small to be worth considering; more specifically, small beyond the limits of accuracy or measurement. This is a reference to `floating underflow', a condition that can occur when a floating-point arithmetic p...
lost in the underflow2 is than its limit of magnitude. It is also a pun on `undertow' (a kind of fast, cold current that sometimes runs just offshore and can be dangerous to swimmers). "Well, sure, photon pressure from the stadium lights alte...
lost in the underflow3 is effect gets lost in the underflow." See also {overflow bit}.
lots of MIPS but no I/O is adj. Used to describe a person who is technically brilliant but can't seem to communicate with human beings effectively. Technically it describes a machine that has lots of processing power but is bottlenecked on in...
lots of MIPS but no I/O2 is RS/6000, is a notorious recent example).
low-bandwidth is [from communication theory] adj. Used to indicate a talk that, although not {content-free}, was not terribly informative. "That was a low-bandwidth talk, but what can you expect for an audience of {suit}s!" Compare {zero-con...
LPT is /L-P-T/ or /lip'it/ or /lip-it'/ [MIT, via DEC] n. Line printer, of course. Rare under UNIX, commoner in hackers with MS-DOS or CP/M background. The printer device is called `LPT' on those systems that, like ITS, were strongly infl...
lunatic fringe is [IBM] n. Customers who can be relied upon to accept release 1 versions of software.
lurker is n. One of the `silent majority' in a electronic forum; one who posts occasionally or not at all but is known to read the group's postings regularly. This term is not pejorative and indeed is casually used reflexively "Oh, I'm just l...
lurker2 is hypothetical audience for the group's {flamage}-emitting regulars.
luser is /loo'zr/ n. A {user}; esp. one who is also a {loser}. ({luser} and {loser} are pronounced identically.) This word was coined around 1975 at MIT. Under ITS, when you first walked up to a terminal at MIT and typed Control-Z to get the...
luser2 is status information, including how many people were already using the computer; it might print "14 users", for example. Someone thought it would be a great joke to patch the system to print "14 losers" instead. There ensued a grea...
luser3 is particularly want to be called losers to their faces every time they used the computer. For a while several hackers struggled covertly, each changing the message behind the back of the others; any time you logged into the computer ...
luser4 is or "losers". Finally, someone tried the compromise "lusers", and it stuck. Later one of the ITS machines supported `luser' as a request-for-help command. ITS died the death in mid-1990, except as a museum piece; the usage lives ...
luser5 is seen in program comments.*M [SI] pref. (on units) suff. (on numbers) See {{quantifiers}}.
macdink is /mak'dink/ [from the Apple Macintosh, which is said to encourage such behavior] vt. To make many incremental and unnecessary cosmetic changes to a program or file. Often the subject of the macdinking would be better off without the...
macdink2 is was still macdinking the slides for his presentation." See also {fritterware}.
machinable is adj. Machine-readable. Having the {softcopy} nature.
machoflops is /mach'oh-flops/ [pun on `megaflops', a coinage for `millions of FLoating-point Operations Per Second'] n. Refers to artificially inflated performance figures often quoted by computer manufacturers. Real applications are lucky to...
machoflops2 is mileage may vary}, {benchmark}.
Macintoy is /mak'in-toy/ n. The Apple Macintosh, considered as a {toy}. Less pejorative than {Macintrash}.
Macintrash is /mak'in-trash`/ n. The Apple Macintosh, as described by a hacker who doesn't appreciate being kept away from the *real computer* by the interface. The term {maggotbox} has been reported in regular use in the Research Triangle ar...
Macintrash2 is See also {beige toaster}, {WIMP environment}, {drool-proof paper}, {user-friendly}.
macro is /mak'roh/ [techspeak] n. A name (possibly followed by a formal {arg} list) that is equated to a text or symbolic expression to which it is to be expanded (possibly with the substitution of actual arguments) by a macro expander. This ...
macro2 is dictionary; what those won't tell you is how the hackish connotations of the term have changed over time. The term `macro' originated in early assemblers, which encouraged the use of macros as a structuring and information-hiding d...
macro3 is assemblers became ubiquitous, and sometimes quite as powerful and expensive as {HLL}s, only to fall from favor as improving compiler technology marginalized assembler programming (see {languages of choice}). Nowadays the term is m...
macro4 is preprocessor, LISP, or one of several special-purpose languages built around a macro-expansion facility (such as TeX or UNIX's [nt]roff suite). Indeed, the meaning has drifted enough that the collective `macros' is now sometimes us...
macro5 is application control language (whether or not the language is actually translated by text expansion), and for macro-like entities such as the `keyboard macros' supported in some text editors (and PC TSR or Macintosh INIT/CDEV keyboard...
macro- is pref. Large. Opposite of {micro-}. In the mainstream and among other technical cultures (for example, medical people) this competes with the prefix {mega-}, but hackers tend to restrict the latter to quantification.
macrology is /mak-rol'*-jee/ n. 1. Set of usually complex or crufty macros, e.g., as part of a large system written in {LISP}, {TECO}, or (less commonly) assembler. 2. The art and science involved in comprehending a macrology in sense 1. Som...
macrology2 is not unlike archeology, ecology, or {theology}, hence the sound-alike construction. See also {boxology}.
macrotape is /ma'kroh-tayp/ n. An industry-standard reel of tape, as opposed to a {microtape}.
maggotbox is /mag'*t-boks/ n. See {Macintrash}. This is even more derogatory.
magic is adj. 1. As yet unexplained, or too complicated to explain; compare {automagically} and (Arthur C.) Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." "TTY echoing is controlled by a large numb...
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.
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
nanofortnight is [Adelaide University] n. 1 fortnight * 10^-9, or about 1.2 msec. This unit was used largely by students doing undergraduate practicals. See {microfortnight}, {attoparsec}, and {micro-}.
nanotechnology is /nan'-oh-tek-no`l*-jee/ n. A hypothetical fabrication technology in which objects are designed and built with the individual specification and placement of each separate atom. The first unequivocal nanofabrication experiments...
nanotechnology2 is with the deposition of individual xenon atoms on a nickel substrate to spell the logo of a certain very large computer company. Nanotechnology has been a hot topic in the hacker subculture ever since the term was coined by ...
nanotechnology3 is Creation', where he predicted that nanotechnology could give rise to replicating assemblers, permitting an exponential growth of productivity and personal wealth. See also {blue goo}, {gray goo}, {nanobot}.
nastygram is /nas'tee-gram/ n. 1. A protocol packet or item of email (the latter is also called a {letterbomb}) that takes advantage of misfeatures or security holes on the target system to do untoward things. 2. Disapproving mail, esp. from ...
nastygram2 is {netiquette} or a complaint about failure to correct some mail- or news-transmission problem. Compare {shitogram}. 3. A status report from an unhappy, and probably picky, customer. "What'd Corporate say in today's nastygram?" ...
nastygram3 is {daemon}; in particular, a {bounce message}.
Nathan Hale is n. An asterisk (see also {splat}, {{ASCII}}). Oh, you want an etymology? Notionally, from "I regret that I have only one asterisk for my country!", a misquote of the famous remark uttered by Nathan Hale just before he was hang...
Nathan Hale2 is in the American War of Independence.
nature is n. See {has the X nature}.
neat hack is n. 1. A clever technique. 2. A brilliant practical joke, where neatness is correlated with cleverness, harmlessness, and surprise value. Example: the Caltech Rose Bowl card display switch (see appendix A). See {hack}.
neep-neep is /neep neep/ [onomatopoeic, from New York SF fandom] n. One who is fascinated by computers. More general than {hacker}, as it need not imply more skill than is required to boot games on a PC. The derived noun `neep-neeping' appli...
neep-neep2 is about computers that tend to develop in the corners at most SF-convention parties. Fandom has a related proverb to the effect that "Hacking is a conversational black hole!".
neophilia is /nee`oh-fil'-ee-*/ n. The trait of being excited and pleased by novelty. Common trait of most hackers, SF fans, and members of several other connected leading-edge subcultures, including the pro-technology `Whole Earth' wing of t...
neophilia2 is members of Mensa, and the Discordian/neo-pagan underground. All these groups overlap heavily and (where evidence is available) seem to share characteristic hacker tropisms for science fiction, {{Music}}, and {{oriental food}}....
net.- is /net dot/ pref. [USENET] Prefix used to describe people and events related to USENET. From the time before the {Great Renaming}, when most non-local newsgroups had names beginning `net.'. Includes {net.god}s, `net.goddesses' (variou...
net.-2 is on-line admirers), `net.lurkers' (see {lurker}), `net.person', `net.parties' (a synonym for {boink}, sense 2), and many similar constructs. See also {net.police}.
net.god is /net god/ n. Used to refer to anyone who satisfies some combination of the following conditions: has been visible on USENET for more than 5 years, ran one of the original backbone sites, moderated an important newsgroup, wrote news ...
net.god2 is Henry, Chuq, and Greg personally. See {demigod}. Net.goddesses such as Rissa or the Slime Sisters have (so far) been distinguished more by personality than by authority.
net.personality is /net per`sn-al'-*-tee/ n. Someone who has made a name for him or herself on {USENET}, through either longevity or attention-getting posts, but doesn't meet the other requirements of {net.god}hood.
net.police is /net-p*-lees'/ n. (var. `net.cops') Those USENET readers who feel it is their responsibility to pounce on and {flame} any posting which they regard as offensive or in violation of their understanding of {netiquette}. Generally ...
net.police2 is spelled `net police'. See also {net.-}, {code police}.
nethack is /net'hak/ [UNIX] n. A dungeon game similar to {rogue} but more elaborate, distributed in C source over {USENET} and very popular at UNIX sites and on PC-class machines (nethack is probably the most widely distributed of the freeware...
nethack2 is written by Jay Fenlason and later considerably enhanced by Andries Brouwer, were simply called `hack'. The name changed when maintenance was taken over by a group of hackers originally organized by Mike Stephenson; the current c...
nethack3 is nethack-bugs@linc.cis.upenn.edu.
netiquette is /net'ee-ket/ or /net'i-ket/ [portmanteau from "network etiquette"] n. Conventions of politeness recognized on {USENET}, such as avoidance of cross-posting to inappropriate groups or refraining from commercial pluggery on the net.
netnews is /net'n[y]ooz/ n. 1. The software that makes {USENET} run. 2. The content of USENET. "I read netnews right after my mail most mornings."
netrock is /net'rok/ [IBM] n. A {flame}; used esp. on VNET, IBM's internal corporate network.
network address is n. (also `net address') As used by hackers, means an address on `the' network (see {network, the}; this is almost always a {bang path} or {{Internet address}}). Such an address is essential if one wants to be to be taken se...
network address2 is or organizations that claim to understand, work with, sell to, or recruit from among hackers but *don't* display net addresses are quietly presumed to be clueless poseurs and mentally flushed (see {flush}, sense 4). Hacke...
network address3 is business cards and wear them prominently in contexts where they expect to meet other hackers face-to-face (see also {{science-fiction fandom}}). This is mostly functional, but is also a signal that one identifies with ha...
network address4 is tie-dyed T-shirts among Grateful Dead fans). Net addresses are often used in email text as a more concise substitute for personal names; indeed, hackers may come to know each other quite well by network names without ever ...
network address5 is also {sitename}, {domainist}.
network meltdown is n. A state of complete network overload; the network equivalent of {thrash}ing. This may be induced by a {Chernobyl packet}. See also {broadcast storm}, {kamikaze packet}.
network, the is n. 1. The union of all the major noncommercial, academic, and hacker-oriented networks, such as Internet, the old ARPANET, NSFnet, {BITNET}, and the virtual UUCP and {USENET} `networks', plus the corporate in-house networks and...
network, the2 is CompuServe) that gateway to them. A site is generally considered `on the network' if it can be reached through some combination of Internet-style (@-sign) and UUCP (bang-path) addresses. See {bang path}, {{Internet address}}...
network, the3 is conspiracy of libertarian hacker-subversives and anti-authoritarian monkeywrenchers described in Robert Anton Wilson's novel `Schr"odinger's Cat', to which many hackers have subsequently decided they belong (this is an examp...
network, the4 is `network' is often abbreviated to `net'. "Are you on the net?" is a frequent question when hackers first meet face to face, and "See you on the net!" is a frequent goodbye.
New Jersey is [primarily Stanford/Silicon Valley] adj. Brain-damaged or of poor design. This refers to the allegedly wretched quality of such software as C, C++, and UNIX (which originated at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey). "This comp...
New Jersey2 is from a compiler designed in New Jersey?" Compare {Berkeley Quality Software}. See also {UNIX conspiracy}.
New Testament is n. [C programmers] The second edition of K&R's `The C Programming Language' (Prentice-Hall, 1988; ISBN 0-13-110362-8), describing ANSI Standard C. See {K&R}.
newbie is /n[y]oo'bee/ n. [orig. from British public-school and military slang variant of `new boy'] A USENET neophyte. This term surfaced in the {newsgroup} talk.bizarre but is now in wide use. Criteria for being considered a newbie vary w...
newbie2 is newsgroup while remaining a respected regular in another. The label `newbie' is sometimes applied as a serious insult to a person who has been around USENET for a long time but who carefully hides all evidence of having a clue. ...
newgroup wars is /n[y]oo'groop wohrz/ [USENET] n. The salvos of dueling `newgroup' and `rmgroup' messages sometimes exchanged by persons on opposite sides of a dispute over whether a {newsgroup} should be created net-wide. These usually settl...
newgroup wars2 is clear whether the group has a natural constituency (usually, it doesn't). At times, especially in the completely anarchic alt hierarchy, the names of newsgroups themselves become a form of comment or humor; e.g., the spinoff...
newgroup wars3 is alt.tv.muppets in early 1990, or any number of specialized abuse groups named after particularly notorious {flamer}s, e.g., alt.weemba.
newline is /n[y]oo'li:n/ n. 1. [techspeak, primarily UNIX] The ASCII LF character (0001010), used under {{UNIX}} as a text line terminator. A Bell-Labs-ism rather than a Berkeleyism; interestingly (and unusually for UNIX jargon), it is said t...
newline2 is (Though the term `newline' appears in ASCII standards, it never caught on in the general computing world before UNIX). 2. More generally, any magic character, character sequence, or operation (like Pascal's writeln procedure) re...
newline3 is lines. See {crlf}, {terpri}.
NeWS is /nee'wis/, /n[y]oo'is/ or /n[y]ooz/ [acronym; the `Network Window System'] n. The road not taken in window systems, an elegant PostScript-based environment that would almost certainly have won the standards war with {X} if it hadn't be...
NeWS2 is is a lesson here that too many software vendors haven't yet heeded. Many hackers insist on the two-syllable pronunciations above as a way of distinguishing NeWS from {news} (the {netnews} software).
news is n. See {netnews}.
newsfroup is // [USENET] n. Silly synonym for {newsgroup}, originally a typo but now in regular use on USENET's talk.bizarre and other lunatic-fringe groups.
newsgroup is [USENET] n. One of {USENET}'s huge collection of topic groups or {fora}. Usenet groups can be `unmoderated' (anyone can post) or `moderated' (submissions are automatically directed to a moderator, who edits or filters and then po...
newsgroup2 is parallel {mailing list}s for Internet people with no netnews access, with postings to the group automatically propagated to the list and vice versa. Some moderated groups (especially those which are actually gatewayed Internet...
newsgroup3 is with groups of postings periodically collected into a single large posting with an index. Among the best-known are comp.lang.c (the C-language forum), comp.arch (on computer architectures), comp.unix.wizards (for UNIX wizards...
newsgroup4 is fans), and talk.politics.misc (miscellaneous political discussions and {flamage}).
nickle is /ni'kl/ [from `nickel', common name for the U.S. 5-cent coin] n. A {nybble} + 1; 5 bits. Reported among developers for Mattel's GI 1600 (the Intellivision games processor), a chip with 16-bit-wide RAM but 10-bit-wide ROM. See als...
night mode is n. See {phase} (of people).
Nightmare File System is n. Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In any nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up. Some machine tries to acc...
Nightmare File System2 is repeats indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to some messages (what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should have been a brief excursion to a higher {spl} level). Then another machine trie...
Nightmare File System3 is pseudo-down machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to discover the down one is now trying both to access the down one and to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. This sn...
Nightmare File System4 is network of machines is frozen --- the user can't even abort the file access that started the problem! (ITS partisans are apt to cite this as proof of UNIX's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like shared file sy...
Nightmare File System5 is 1970s.) See also {broadcast storm}.
NIL is /nil/ [from LISP terminology for `false'] No. Used in reply to a question, particularly one asked using the `-P' convention. See {T}.
NMI is /N-M-I/ n. Non-Maskable Interrupt. An IRQ 7 on the PDP-11 or 680[01234]0; the NMI line on an 80{88,[1234]}86. In contrast with a {priority interrupt} (which might be ignored, although that is unlikely), an NMI is *never* ignored.
no-op is /noh'op/ alt. NOP /nop/ [no operation] n. 1. (also v.) A machine instruction that does nothing (sometimes used in assembler-level programming as filler for data or patch areas, or to overwrite code to be removed in binaries). See als...
no-op2 is nothing to a project, or has nothing going on upstairs, or both. As in "He's a no-op." 3. Any operation or sequence of operations with no effect, such as circling the block without finding a parking space, or putting money into a ...
no-op3 is into the coin-return box, or asking someone for help and being told to go away. "Oh, well, that was a no-op." Hot-and-sour soup (see {great-wall}) that is insufficiently either is `no-op soup'; so is wonton soup if everybody else...
noddy is /nod'ee/ [UK: from the children's books] adj. 1. Small and un-useful, but demonstrating a point. Noddy programs are often written by people learning a new language or system. The archetypal noddy program is {hello, world}. Noddy co...
noddy2 is bug of a compiler. May be used of real hardware or software to imply that it isn't worth using. "This editor's a bit noddy." 2. A program that is more or less instant to produce. In this use, the term does not necessarily connot...
noddy3 is sufficiently trivial that it can be written and debugged while carrying on (and during the space of) a normal conversation. "I'll just throw together a noddy {awk} script to dump all the first fields." In North America this might...
NOMEX underwear is /noh'meks uhn'-der-weir/ [USENET] n. Syn. {asbestos longjohns}, used mostly in auto-related mailing lists and newsgroups. NOMEX underwear is an actual product available on the racing equipment market, used as a fire resista...
non-optimal solution is n. (also `sub-optimal solution') An astoundingly stupid way to do something. This term is generally used in deadpan sarcasm, as its impact is greatest when the person speaking looks completely serious. Compare {stunni...
nonlinear is adj. [scientific computation] 1. Behaving in an erratic and unpredictable fashion. When used to describe the behavior of a machine or program, it suggests that said machine or program is being forced to run far outside of design ...
nonlinear2 is induced by unreasonable inputs, or may be triggered when a more mundane bug sends the computation far off from its expected course. 2. When describing the behavior of a person, suggests a tantrum or a {flame}. "When you talk to...
nonlinear3 is go nonlinear for hours." In this context, `go nonlinear' connotes `blow up out of proportion' (proportion connotes linearity).
nontrivial is adj. Requiring real thought or significant computing power. Often used as an understated way of saying that a problem is quite difficult or impractical, or even entirely unsolvable ("Proving P=NP is nontrivial"). The preferred ...
nontrivial2 is See {trivial}, {uninteresting}, {interesting}.
notwork is /not'werk/ n. A network, when it is acting {flaky} or is {down}. Compare {nyetwork}. Said at IBM to have orig. referred to a particular period of flakiness on IBM's VNET corporate network, ca. 1988; but there are independent repor...
NP- is /N-P/ pref. Extremely. Used to modify adjectives describing a level or quality of difficulty; the connotation is often `more so than it should be' (NP-complete problems all seem to be very hard, but so far no one has found a good a pri...
NP-2 is this algorithm to perform correctly in every case is NP-annoying." This is generalized from the computer-science terms `NP-hard' and `NP-complete'. NP is the set of Nondeterministic-Polynomial algorithms, those that can be complete...
NP-3 is amount of time that is a polynomial function of the size of the input; a solution for one NP-complete problem would solve all the others.
nuke is vt. 1. To intentionally delete the entire contents of a given directory or storage volume. "On UNIX, `rm -r /usr' will nuke everything in the usr filesystem." Never used for accidental deletion. Oppose {blow away}. 2. Syn. for {d...
nuke2 is features, or code sections. Often used to express a final verdict. "What do you want me to do with that 80-meg {wallpaper} file?" "Nuke it." 3. Used of processes as well as files; nuke is a frequent verbal alias for `kill -9' on...
nuke3 is {fandango on core} can trash the operating system, including the FAT (the in-core copy of the disk block chaining information). This can utterly scramble attached disks, which are then said to have been `nuked'. This term is also ...
nuke4 is other micros without memory protection.
number-crunching is n. Computations of a numerical nature, esp. those that make extensive use of floating-point numbers. The only thing {Fortrash} is good for. This term is in widespread informal use outside hackerdom and even in mainstream ...
number-crunching2 is connotations: namely, that the computations are mindless and involve massive use of {brute force}. This is not always {evil}, esp. if it involves ray tracing or fractals or some other use that makes {pretty pictures}, esp...
numbers is [scientific computation] n. Output of a computation that may not be significant results but at least indicate that the program is running. May be used to placate management, grant sponsors, etc. `Making numbers' means running a pr...
numbers2 is necessarily meaningful output --- is needed as a demonstration of progress. See {pretty pictures}, {math-out}, {social science number}.
NUXI problem is /nuk'see pro'bl*m/ n. This refers to the problem of transferring data between machines with differing byte-order. The string `UNIX' might look like `NUXI' on a machine with a different `byte sex' (e.g., when transferring data ...
NUXI problem2 is vice-versa). See also {middle-endian}, {swab}, and {bytesexual}.
nybble is /nib'l/ (alt. `nibble') [from v. `nibble' by analogy with `bite' => `byte'] n. Four bits; one {hex} digit; a half-byte. Though `byte' is now techspeak, this useful relative is still jargon. Compare {{byte}}, {crumb}, {tayste}, {d...
nybble2 is Apparently this spelling is uncommon in Commonwealth Hackish, as British orthography suggests the pronunciation /ni:'bl/.
nyetwork is /nyet'werk/ [from Russian `nyet' = no] n. A network, when it is acting {flaky} or is {down}. Compare {notwork}.
Ob- is /ob/ pref. Obligatory. A piece of {netiquette} acknowledging that the author has been straying from the newsgroup's charter topic. For example, if a posting in alt.sex is a response to a part of someone else's posting that has nothing...
Ob-2 is append `ObSex' (or `Obsex') and toss off a question or vignette about some unusual erotic act. It is considered a sign of great {winnitude} when your Obs are more interesting than other people's whole postings.
Obfuscated C Contest is n. An annual contest run since 1984 over USENET by Landon Curt Noll and friends. The overall winner is whoever produces the most unreadable, creative, and bizarre (but working) C program; various other prizes are award...
Obfuscated C Contest2 is and macro-preprocessor facilities give contestants a lot of maneuvering room. The winning programs often manage to be simultaneously (a) funny, (b) breathtaking works of art, and (c) horrible examples of how *not* to ...
Obfuscated C Contest3 is entry might help convey the flavor of obfuscated C /* * HELLO WORLD program * by Jack Applin and Robert Heckendorn, 1985 */ main(v,c)char**c;{for(v[c++]="Hello, world!\n)"; (!!c)[*c]&&(v--||--c&&...
obi-wan error is /oh'bee-won` er'*r/ [RPI, from `off-by-one' and the Obi-Wan Kenobi character in "Star Wars"] n. A loop of some sort in which the index is off by 1. Common when the index should have started from 0 but instead started from 1....
Objectionable-C is n. Hackish take on "Objective-C", the name of an object-oriented dialect of C in competition with the better-known C++ (it is used to write native applications on the NeXT machine). Objectionable-C uses a Smalltalk-like sy...
Objectionable-C2 is method calls, and (like many such efforts) comes frustratingly close to attaining the {Right Thing} without actually doing so.
obscure is adj. Used in an exaggeration of its normal meaning, to imply total incomprehensibility. "The reason for that last crash is obscure." "The `find(1)' command's syntax is obscure!" The phrase `moderately obscure' implies that it coul...
obscure2 is the trouble. The construction `obscure in the extreme' is the preferred emphatic form.
octal forty is /ok'tl for'tee/ n. Hackish way of saying "I'm drawing a blank." Octal 40 is the {{ASCII}} space character, 0100000; by an odd coincidence, {hex} 40 (01000000) is the {{EBCDIC}} space character. See {wall}.
off the trolley is adj. Describes the behavior of a program that malfunctions and goes catatonic, but doesn't actually {crash} or abort. See {glitch}, {bug}, {deep space}.
off-by-one error is n. Exceedingly common error induced in many ways, such as by starting at 0 when you should have started at 1 or vice versa, or by writing `< N' instead of `<= N' or vice-versa. Also applied to giving something to the perso...
off-by-one error2 is Often confounded with {fencepost error}, which is properly a particular subtype of it.
offline is adv. Not now or not here. "Let's take this discussion offline." Specifically used on {USENET} to suggest that a discussion be taken off a public newsgroup to email.
old fart is n. Tribal elder. A title self-assumed with remarkable frequency by (esp.) USENETters who have been programming for more than about 25 years; often appears in {sig block}s attached to Jargon File contributions of great archeologica...
old fart2 is the second or third person but one of pride in first person.
Old Testament is n. [C programmers] The first edition of {K&R}, the sacred text describing {Classic C}.
one-line fix is n. Used (often sarcastically) of a change to a program that is thought to be trivial or insignificant right up to the moment it crashes the system. Usually `cured' by another one-line fix. See also {I didn't change anything!}
one-liner wars is n. A game popular among hackers who code in the language APL (see {write-only language}). The objective is to see who can code the most interesting and/or useful routine in one line of operators chosen from APL's exceedingly...
one-liner wars2 is was practiced among {TECO} hackers. Ken Iverson, the inventor of APL, has been credited with a one-liner that, given a number N, produces a list of the prime numbers from 1 to N inclusive. It looks like this (2 = 0 +.= T...
one-liner wars3 is character, the assignment arrow is a single character, and `i' represents the APL iota.
ooblick is /oo'blik/ [from Dr. Seuss's `Bartholomew and the Oobleck'] n. A bizarre semi-liquid sludge made from cornstarch and water. Enjoyed among hackers who make batches during playtime at parties for its amusing and extremely non-Newtonia...
ooblick2 is resists rapid motion like a solid and will even crack when hit by a hammer. Often found near lasers. Here is a field-tested ooblick recipe contributed by GLS 1 cup cornstarch 1 cup baking soda 3/4 cup water N drops o...
ooblick3 is non-Newtonian as a pure cornstarch ooblick, but has an appropriately slimy feel. Some, however, insist that the notion of an ooblick *recipe* is far too mechanical, and that it is best to add the water in small increments so that...
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
playpen is [IBM] n. A room where programmers work. Compare {salt mines}.
playte is /playt/ 16 bits, by analogy with {nybble} and {{byte}}. Usage rare and extremely silly. See also {dynner} and {crumb}.
plingnet is /pling'net/ n. Syn. {UUCPNET}. Also see {{Commonwealth Hackish}}, which uses `pling' for {bang} (as in {bang path}).
plokta is /plok't*/ [Acronym for `Press Lots Of Keys To Abort'] v. To press random keys in an attempt to get some response from the system. One might plokta when the abort procedure for a program is not known, or when trying to figure out if...
plokta2 is Plokta can also be used while trying to figure out any unknown key sequence for a particular operation. Someone going into `plokta mode' usually places both hands flat on the keyboard and presses down, hoping for some useful resp...
plonk is [USENET possibly influenced by British slang `plonk' for cheap booze] The sound a {newbie} makes as he falls to the bottom of a {kill file}. Used almost exclusively in the {newsgroup} talk.bizarre, this term (usually written "*plonk*...
plugh is /ploogh/ [from the {ADVENT} game] v. See {xyzzy}.
plumbing is [UNIX] n. Term used for {shell} code, so called because of the prevalence of `pipelines' that feed the output of one program to the input of another. Under UNIX, user utilities can often be implemented or at least prototyped by a ...
plumbing2 is temp-file grinding encapsulated in a shell script; this is much less effort than writing C every time, and the capability is considered one of UNIX's major winning features. Esp. used in the construction `hairy plumbing' (see {...
plumbing3 is spell-checker out of `sort(1)', `comm(1)', and `tr(1)' with a little plumbing." See also {tee}.
PM is /P-M/ 1. v. (from `preventive maintenance') To bring down a machine for inspection or test purposes; see {scratch monkey}. 2. n. Abbrev. for `Presentation Manager', an {elephantine} OS/2 graphical user interface. See also {provocati...
pnambic is /p*-nam'bik/ [Acronym from the scene in the film version of `The Wizard of Oz' in which true nature of the wizard is first discovered "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."] 1. A stage of development of a process or func...
pnambic2 is implementation or to the complexity of the system, requires human interaction to simulate or replace some or all of the actions, inputs, or outputs of the process or function. 2. Of or pertaining to a process or function whose a...
pnambic3 is falsified. 3. Requiring {prestidigitization}. The ultimate pnambic product was "Dan Bricklin's Demo", a program which supported flashy user-interface design prototyping. There is a related maxim among hackers "Any sufficiently ...
pnambic4 is a rigged demo." See {magic}, sense 1, for illumination of this point.
pod is [allegedly from acronym POD for `Prince Of Darkness'] n. A Diablo 630 (or, latterly, any letter-quality impact printer). From the DEC-10 PODTYPE program used to feed formatted text to it. See also {P.O.D.}
poke is n.,vt. See {peek}.
poll is v.,n. 1. [techspeak] The action of checking the status of an input line, sensor, or memory location to see if a particular external event has been registered. 2. To repeatedly call or check with someone "I keep polling him, but he's n...
poll2 is out." 3. To ask. "Lunch? I poll for a takeout order daily."
polygon pusher is n. A chip designer who spends most of his or her time at the physical layout level (which requires drawing *lots* of multi-colored polygons). Also `rectangle slinger'.
POM is /P-O-M/ n. Common acronym for {phase of the moon}. Usage usually in the phrase `POM-dependent', which means {flaky}.
pop is [from the operation that removes the top of a stack, and the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on the stack] (also capitalized `POP' /pop/) 1. vt. To remove something from a {stack} or {pdl}. If a person says he/she has po...
pop2 is he/she has finally finished working on it and can now remove it from the list of things hanging overhead. 2. When a discussion gets to too deep a level of detail so that the main point of the discussion is being lost, someone will s...
pop3 is level!" The shout is frequently accompanied by an upthrust arm with a finger pointing to the ceiling.
POPJ is /pop'J/ [from a {PDP-10} return-from-subroutine instruction] n.,v. To return from a digression. By verb doubling, "Popj, popj" means roughly "Now let's see, where were we?" See {RTI}.
posing is n. On a {MUD}, the use of `' or an equivalent command to announce to other players that one is taking a certain physical action that has no effect on the game (it may, however, serve as a social signal or propaganda device that induc...
posing2 is example, if one's character name is Firechild, one might type ` looks delighted at the idea and begins hacking on the nearest terminal' to broadcast a message that says "Firechild looks delighted at the idea and begins hacking on ...
post is v. To send a message to a {mailing list} or {newsgroup}. Distinguished in context from `mail'; one might ask, for example "Are you going to post the patch or mail it to known users?"
posting is n. Noun corresp. to v. {post} (but note that {post} can be nouned). Distinguished from a `letter' or ordinary {email} message by the fact that it is broadcast rather than point-to-point. It is not clear whether messages sent to a ...
posting2 is perhaps the best dividing line is that if you don't know the names of all the potential recipients, it is a posting.
postmaster is n. The email contact and maintenance person at a site connected to the Internet or UUCPNET. Often, but not always, the same as the {admin}. It is conventional for each machine to have a `postmaster' address that is aliased to t...
pound on is vt. Syn. {bang on}.
power cycle is vt. (also, `cycle power' or just `cycle') To power off a machine and then power it on immediately, with the intention of clearing some kind of {hung} or {gronk}ed state. Syn. {120 reset}; see also {Big Red Switch}. Compare {V...
power cycle2 is see the AI Koan in appendix A about Tom Knight and the novice.
PPN is /P-P-N/, /pip'n/ [from `Project-Programmer Number'] n. A user-ID under {{TOPS-10}} and its various mutant progeny at SAIL, BBN, CompuServe, and elsewhere. Old-time hackers from the PDP-10 era sometimes use this to refer to user IDs on ...
precedence lossage is /pre's*-dens los'*j/ [C programmers] n. Coding error in an expression due to unexpected grouping of arithmetic or logical operators by the compiler. Used esp. of certain common coding errors in C due to the nonintuitivel...
precedence lossage2 is `<<', and `>>' (for this reason, experienced C programmers deliberately forget the language's {baroque} precedence hierarchy and parenthesize defensively). Can always be avoided by suitable use of parentheses. {LISP}...
precedence lossage3 is happen in *their* favorite language, which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit parentheses everywhere. See {aliasing bug}, {memory leak}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {overrun screw}.
prepend is /pree`pend'/ [by analogy with `append'] vt. To prefix. As with `append' (but not `prefix' or `suffix' as a verb), the direct object is always the thing being added and not the original word (or character string, or whatever). "If ...
prepend2 is translation routine will pass it through unaltered."
prestidigitization is /pres`t*-di`j*-ti-zay'sh*n/ n. 1. The act of putting something into digital notation via sleight of hand. 2. Data entry through legerdemain.
pretty pictures is n. [scientific computation] The next step up from {numbers}. Interesting graphical output from a program that may not have any sensible relationship to the system the program is intended to model. Good for showing to {mana...
prettyprint is /prit'ee-print/ (alt. `pretty-print') v. 1. To generate `pretty' human-readable output from a {hairy} internal representation; esp. used for the process of {grind}ing (sense 2) LISP code. 2. To format in some particularly slick...
pretzel key is [Mac users] n. See {command key}.
prime time is [from TV programming] n. Normal high-usage hours on a timesharing system; the day shift. Avoidance of prime time is a major reason for {night mode} hacking.
priority interrupt is [from the hardware term] n. Describes any stimulus compelling enough to yank one right out of {hack mode}. Classically used to describe being dragged away by an {SO} for immediate sex, but may also refer to more mundane i...
priority interrupt2 is in the near vicinity. Also called an {NMI} (non-maskable interrupt), especially in PC-land.
profile is n. 1. A control file for a program, esp. a text file automatically read from each user's home directory and intended to be easily modified by the user in order to customize the program's behavior. Used to avoid {hardcoded} choices....
profile2 is time spent in each routine of a program, used to find and {tune} away the {hot spot}s in it. This sense is often verbed. Some profiling modes report units other than time (such as call counts) and/or report at granularities other...
proglet is /prog'let/ [UK] n. A short extempore program written to meet an immediate, transient need. Often written in BASIC, rarely more than a dozen lines long, and contains no subroutines. The largest amount of code that can be written off...
proglet2 is any editing, and that runs correctly the first time (this amount varies significantly according to the language one is using). Compare {toy program}, {noddy}, {one-liner wars}.
program is n. 1. A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's input into error messages. 2. An exercise in experimental epistemology. 3. A form of art, ostensibly intended for the instruction of computers, which is neverthele...
program2 is programmers can't understand it.
Programmer's Cheer is "Shift to the left! Shift to the right! Pop up, push down! Byte! Byte! Byte!" A joke so old it has hair on it.
programming is n. 1. The art of debugging a blank sheet of paper (or, in these days of on-line editing, the art of debugging an empty file). 2. n. A pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward...
programming2 is clothes on (although clothes are not mandatory).
propeller head is n. Used by hackers, this is syn. with {computer geek}. Non-hackers sometimes use it to describe all techies. Prob. derives from SF fandom's tradition (originally invented by old-time fan Ray Faraday Nelson) of propeller bean...
propeller head2 is actually wears them except as a joke).
propeller key is [Mac users] n. See {command key}.
proprietary is adj. 1. In {marketroid}-speak, superior; implies a product imbued with exclusive magic by the unmatched brilliance of the company's hardware or software designers. 2. In the language of hackers and users, inferior; implies a pr...
proprietary2 is standards, and thus one that puts the customer at the mercy of a vendor able to gouge freely on service and upgrade charges after the initial sale has locked the customer in (that's assuming it wasn't too expensive in the first...
protocol is n. As used by hackers, this never refers to niceties about the proper form for addressing letters to the Papal Nuncio or the order in which one should use the forks in a Russian-style place setting; hackers don't care about such th...
protocol2 is set of rules that allow different machines or pieces of software to coordinate with each other without ambiguity. So, for example, it does include niceties about the proper form for addressing packets on a network or the order in...
protocol3 is Philosophers Problem. It implies that there is some common message format and an accepted set of primitives or commands that all parties involved understand, and that transactions among them follow predictable logical sequences. ...
provocative maintenance is [common ironic mutation of `preventive maintenance'] n. Actions performed upon a machine at regularly scheduled intervals to ensure that the system remains in a usable state. So called because it is all too often pe...
provocative maintenance2 is know what he is doing; this results in the machine's remaining in an *un*usable state for an indeterminate amount of time. See also {scratch monkey}.
prowler is [UNIX] n. A {daemon} that is run periodically (typically once a week) to seek out and erase {core} files, truncate administrative logfiles, nuke `lost+found' directories, and otherwise clean up the {cruft} that tends to pile up in t...
prowler2 is {GFR}, {reaper}, {skulker}.
pseudo is /soo'doh/ [USENET truncation of `pseudonym'] n. 1. An electronic-mail or {USENET} persona adopted by a human for amusement value or as a means of avoiding negative repercussions of one's net.behavior; a `nom de USENET', often associa...
pseudo2 is message origins. Perhaps the best-known and funniest hoax of this type is {BIFF}. 2. Notionally, a {flamage}-generating AI program simulating a USENET user. Many flamers have been accused of actually being such entities, despite...
pseudo3 is sophistication yet exists. However, in 1989 there was a famous series of forged postings that used a phrase-frequency-based travesty generator to simulate the styles of several well-known flamers; it was based on large samples of t...
pseudo4 is Press}). A significant number of people were fooled by the forgeries, and the debate over their authenticity was settled only when the perpetrator came forward to publicly admit the hoax.
pseudoprime is n. A backgammon prime (six consecutive occupied points) with one point missing. This term is an esoteric pun derived from a mathematical method that, rather than determining precisely whether a number is prime (has no divisors)...
pseudoprime2 is whether the number is `probably' prime. A number that passes this test is called a pseudoprime. The hacker backgammon usage stems from the idea that a pseudoprime is almost as good as a prime it does the job of a prime until ...
pseudosuit is /soo'doh-s[y]oot`/ n. A {suit} wannabee; a hacker who has decided that he wants to be in management or administration and begins wearing ties, sport coats, and (shudder!) suits voluntarily. It's his funeral. See also {lobotomy}...
psychedelicware is /si`k*-del'-ik-weir/ [UK] n. Syn. {display hack}. See also {smoking clover}.
psyton is /si'ton/ [TMRC] n. The elementary particle carrying the sinister force. The probability of a process losing is proportional to the number of psytons falling on it. Psytons are generated by observers, which is why demos are more lik...
psyton2 is watching. [This term appears to have been largely superseded by {bogon}; see also {quantum bogodynamics}. --- ESR]
pubic directory is [NYU] (also `pube directory' /pyoob' d*-rek't*-ree/) n. The `pub' (public) directory on a machine that allows {FTP} access. So called because it is the default location for {SEX} (sense 1). "I'll have the source in the p...
puff is vt. To decompress data that has been crunched by Huffman coding. At least one widely distributed Huffman decoder program was actually *named* `PUFF', but these days it is usually packaged with the encoder. Oppose {huff}.
punched card is alt. `punch card' [techspeak] n.obs. The signature medium of computing's {Stone Age}, now obsolescent outside of some IBM shops. The punched card actually predated computers considerably, originating in 1801 as a control devic...
punched card2 is patented by Hollerith and used with mechanical tabulating machines in the 1890 U.S. Census was a piece of cardboard about 90 mm by 215 mm, designed to fit exactly in the currency trays used for that era's larger dollar bills. ...
punched card3 is manufacturer) married the punched card to computers, encoding binary information as patterns of small rectangular holes; one character per column, 80 columns per card. Other coding schemes, sizes of card, and hole shapes we...
punched card4 is width of most character terminals is a legacy of the IBM punched card; so is the size of the quick-reference cards distributed with many varieties of computers even today. See {chad}, {chad box}, {eighty-column mind}, {green ...
punt is [from the punch line of an old joke referring to American football "Drop back 15 yards and punt!"] v. 1. To give up, typically without any intention of retrying. "Let's punt the movie tonight." "I was going to hack all night to get t...
punt2 is mean that you've decided not to stay up all night, and may also mean you're not ever even going to put in the feature. 2. More specifically, to give up on figuring out what the {Right Thing} is and resort to an inefficient hack. 3...
punt3 is problem, typically because one cannot define what is desirable sufficiently well to frame an algorithmic solution. "No way to know what the right form to dump the graph in is --- we'll punt that for now." 4. To hand a tricky impleme...
punt4 is the design. "It's too hard to get the compiler to do that; let's punt to the runtime system."
Purple Book is n. The `System V Interface Definition'. The covers of the first editions were an amazingly nauseating shade of off-lavender. See also {{book titles}}.
push is [from the operation that puts the current information on a stack, and the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on a stack] Also PUSH /push/ or PUSHJ /push'J/ (the latter based on the PDP-10 procedure call instruction). 1. To...
push2 is one says that something has been pushed onto one's stack, it means that the Damoclean list of things hanging over ones's head has grown longer and heavier yet. This may also imply that one will deal with it *before* other pending i...
push3 is was `added to my queue'. 2. vi. To enter upon a digression, to save the current discussion for later. Antonym of {pop}; see also {stack}, {pdl}.*quad n. 1. Two bits; syn. for {quarter}, {crumb}, {tayste}. 2. A four-pack of anything ...
push4 is box glyph used in the APL language for various arcane purposes mostly related to I/O. Former Ivy-Leaguers and Oxbridge types are said to associate it with nostalgic memories of dear old University.
quadruple bucky is n., obs. 1. On an MIT {space-cadet keyboard}, use of all four of the shifting keys (control, meta, hyper, and super) while typing a character key. 2. On a Stanford or MIT keyboard in {raw mode}, use of four shift keys while...
quadruple bucky2 is shift keys are the control and meta keys on *both* sides of the keyboard. This was very difficult to do! One accepted technique was to press the left-control and left-meta keys with your left hand, the right-control and ...
quadruple bucky3 is fifth key with your nose. Quadruple-bucky combinations were very seldom used in practice, because when one invented a new command one usually assigned it to some character that was easier to type. If you want to imply th...
quadruple bucky4 is or features, you can say something like "Oh, the command that makes it spin the tapes while whistling Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is quadruple-bucky-cokebottle." See {double bucky}, {bucky bits}, {cokebottle}.
quantifiers is In techspeak and jargon, the standard metric prefixes used in the SI (Syst`eme International) conventions for scientific measurement have dual uses. With units of time or things that come in powers of 10, such as money, they re...
quantifiers2 is by powers of 1000 = 10^3. But when used with bytes or other things that naturally come in powers of 2, they usually denote multiplication by powers of 1024 = 2^{10}. The binary peta- and exa- loadings are not in common us...
quantifiers3 is multiplication by 1000^{-1}, has always been rare (there is, however, a standard joke about the `millihelen' --- notionally, the amount of beauty required to launch one ship). See the entries on {micro-}, {pico-}, and {nano-...
quantifiers4 is use of these terms. `Femto' and `atto' (which, interestingly, derive not from Greek but from Danish) have not yet acquired jargon loadings, though it is easy to predict what those will be once computing technology enters the...
quantifiers5 is {attoparsec}). There are, of course, some standard unit prefixes for powers of 10. In the following table, the `prefix' column is the international standard suffix for the appropriate power of ten; the `binary' column lists ...
quantifiers6 is corresponding power of 2. The B-suffixed forms are commonly used for byte quantities; the words `meg' and `gig' are nouns which may (but do not always) pluralize with `s'. Confusingly, hackers often use K as though it were...
quantifiers7 is prefix; thus "2K dollars". This is also true (though less commonly) of G and M. Note that the formal SI metric prefix for 1000 is `k'; some use this strictly, reserving `K' for multiplication by 1024 (KB is `kilobytes'). K...
quantifiers8 is bytes; thus, 64G is 64 gigabytes and `a K' is a kilobyte (compare mainstream use of `a G' as short for `a grand', that is, $1000). Whether one pronounces `gig' with hard or soft `g' depends on what one thinks the proper pron...
quantifiers9 is 1024 (or other powers of 2 and 10 close in magnitude) --- for example, describing a memory in units of 500K or 524K instead of 512K --- is a sure sign of the {marketroid}.
quantum bogodynamics is /kwon'tm boh`goh-di-nam'iks/ n. A theory that characterizes the universe in terms of bogon sources (such as politicians, used-car salesmen, TV evangelists, and {suit}s in general), bogon sinks (such as taxpayers and com...
quantum bogodynamics2 is Bogon absorption, of course, causes human beings to behave mindlessly and machines to fail (and may also cause both to emit secondary bogons); however, the precise mechanics of the bogon-computron interaction are not y...
quantum bogodynamics3 is Quantum bogodynamics is most often invoked to explain the sharp increase in hardware and software failures in the presence of suits; the latter emit bogons, which the former absorb. See {bogon}, {computron}, {suit}, ...
quarter is n. Two bits. This in turn comes from the `pieces of eight' famed in pirate movies --- Spanish gold pieces that could be broken into eight pie-slice-shaped `bits' to make change. Early in American history the Spanish coin was consi...
quarter2 is `bits' was considered worth 12.5 cents. Syn. {tayste}, {crumb}, {quad}. Usage rare. See also {nickle}, {nybble}, {{byte}}, {dynner}.
ques is /kwes/ 1. n. The question mark character (`?', ASCII 0111111). 2. interj. What? Also frequently verb-doubled as "Ques ques?" See {wall}.
quick-and-dirty is adj. Describes a {crock} put together under time or user pressure. Used esp. when you want to convey that you think the fast way might lead to trouble further down the road. "I can have a quick-and-dirty fix in place tonig...
quick-and-dirty2 is module to solve the underlying design problem." See also {kluge}.
quote chapter and verse is [by analogy with the mainstream phrase] v. To reproduce a relevant excerpt from an appropriate {bible}. "I don't care if `rn' gets it wrong; `Followup-To poster' is explicitly permitted by RFC-1036. I'll quote chap...
quotient is n. See {coefficient}.
quux is /kwuhks/ Mythically, from the Latin semi-deponent verb quuxo, quuxare, quuxandum iri; noun form variously `quux' (plural `quuces', anglicized to `quuxes') and `quuxu' (genitive plural is `quuxuum', for four u-letters out of seven in al...
quux2 is Scrabble).] 1. Originally, a metasyntactic variable like {foo} and {foobar}. Invented by Guy Steele for precisely this purpose when he was young and na"ive and not yet interacting with the real computing community. Many people in...
quux3 is been lucky enough to have spread a little. In an eloquent display of poetic justice, it has returned to the originator in the form of a nickname. 2. interj. See {foo}; however, denotes very little disgust, and is uttered mostly fo...
quux4 is in his persona as `The Great Quux', which is somewhat infamous for light verse and for the `Crunchly' cartoons. 4. In some circles, quux is used as a punning opposite of `crux'. "Ah, that's the quux of the matter!" implies that the ...
quux5 is ice-cube}). 5. quuxy adj. Of or pertaining to a quux.
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
snap5 is to use a direct procedure-call instruction with no further overhead.
snarf is /snarf/ vt. 1. To grab, esp. to grab a large document or file for the purpose of using it with or without the author's permission. See also {BLT}. 2. [in the UNIX community] To fetch a file or set of files across a network. See als...
snarf2 is late 1960s, meaning `to eat piggishly'. It may still have this connotation in context. "He's in the snarfing phase of hacking --- {FTP}ing megs of stuff a day." 3. To acquire, with little concern for legal forms or politesse (but...
snarf3 is away samples, so I snarfed a bunch of them." 4. Syn. for {slurp}. "This program starts by snarfing the entire database into core, then...."
snarf & barf is /snarf'n-barf`/ n. Under a {WIMP environment}, the act of grabbing a region of text and then stuffing the contents of that region into another region (or the same one) to avoid retyping a command line. In the late 1960s, this ...
snarf & barf2 is regret it later' cheap-restaurant expedition.
snarf down is v. To {snarf}, with the connotation of absorbing, processing, or understanding. "I'll snarf down the latest version of the {nethack} user's guide --- It's been a while since I played last and I don't know what's changed recentl...
snark is [Lewis Carroll, via the Michigan Terminal System] n. 1. A system failure. When a user's process bombed, the operator would get the message "Help, Help, Snark in MTS!" 2. More generally, any kind of unexplained or threatening event o...
snark2 is boojum). Often used to refer to an event or a log file entry that might indicate an attempted security violation. See {snivitz}. 3. UUCP name of snark.thyrsus.com, home site of the Jargon File 2.*.* versions (i.e., this lexicon)...
sneakernet is /snee'ker-net/ n. Term used (generally with ironic intent) for transfer of electronic information by physically carrying tape, disks, or some other media from one machine to another. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a stati...
sneakernet2 is filled with CD-ROMs." Also called `Tennis-Net', `Armpit-Net', `Floppy-Net'.
sniff is v.,n. Synonym for {poll}.
snivitz is /sniv'itz/ n. A hiccup in hardware or software; a small, transient problem of unknown origin (less serious than a {snark}). Compare {glitch}.
SO is /S-O/ n. 1. (also `S.O.') Abbrev. for Significant Other, almost invariably written abbreviated and pronounced /S-O/ by hackers. Used to refer to one's primary relationship, esp. a live-in to whom one is not married. See {MOTAS}, {MOT...
SO2 is character in ASCII (Control-N, 0001110).
social science number is [IBM] n. A statistic that is {content-free}, or nearly so. A measure derived via methods of questionable validity from data of a dubious and vague nature. Predictively, having a social science number in hand is seldom...
social science number2 is considerably worse. {Management} loves them. See also {numbers}, {math-out}, {pretty pictures}.
soft boot is n. See {boot}.
softcopy is /soft'ko-pee/ n. [by analogy with `hardcopy'] A machine-readable form of corresponding hardcopy. See {bits}, {machinable}.
software bloat is n. The results of {second-system effect} or {creeping featuritis}. Commonly cited examples include `ls(1)', {X}, {BSD}, {Missed'em-five}, and {OS/2}.
software rot is n. Term used to describe the tendency of software that has not been used in a while to {lose}; such failure may be semi-humorously ascribed to {bit rot}. More commonly, `software rot' strikes when a program's assumptions becom...
software rot2 is insufficiently {robust}, this may cause it to fail in mysterious ways. For example, owing to endemic shortsightedness in the design of COBOL programs, most will succumb to software rot when their 2-digit year counters {wrap ...
software rot3 is Actually, related lossages often afflict centenarians who have to deal with computer software designed by unimaginative clods. One such incident became the focus of a minor public flap in 1990, when a gentleman born in 1889 a...
software rot4 is Raleigh, North Carolina. The new system refused to issue the card, probably because with 2-digit years the ages 101 and 1 cannot be distinguished. Historical note Software rot in an even funnier sense than the mythical one ...
software rot5 is (e.g., the R1; see {grind crank}). If a program that depended on a peculiar instruction hadn't been run in quite a while, the user might discover that the opcodes no longer did the same things they once did. ("Hey, so-and-...
software rot6 is We can {snarf} this opcode, right? No one uses it.") Another classic example of this sprang from the time an MIT hacker found a simple way to double the speed of the unconditional jump instruction on a PDP-6, so he patched ...
software rot7 is fragile timing software in a music-playing program, throwing its output out of tune. This was fixed by adding a defensive initialization routine to compare the speed of a timing loop with the real-time clock; in other words, ...
software rot8 is day, and corrected appropriately. Compare {bit rot}.
softwarily is /soft-weir'i-lee/ adv. In a way pertaining to software. "The system is softwarily unreliable." The adjective `softwary' is *not* used. See {hardwarily}.
softy is [IBM] n. Hardware hackers' term for a software expert who is largely ignorant of the mysteries of hardware.
some random X is adj. Used to indicate a member of class X, with the implication that Xs are interchangeable. "I think some random cracker tripped over the guest timeout last night." See also {J. Random}.
sorcerer's apprentice mode is [from the film "Fantasia"] n. A bug in a protocol where, under some circumstances, the receipt of a message causes multiple messages to be sent, each of which, when received, triggers the same bug. Used esp. of s...
sorcerer's apprentice mode2 is loops in {email} software. Compare {broadcast storm}, {network meltdown}.
SOS is n.,obs. /S-O-S/ 1. An infamously {losing} text editor. Once, back in the 1960s, when a text editor was needed for the PDP-6, a hacker crufted together a {quick-and-dirty} `stopgap editor' to be used until a better one was written. Unfo...
SOS2 is discarded when new ones (in particular, {TECO}) came along. SOS is a descendant (`Son of Stopgap') of that editor, and many PDP-10 users gained the dubious pleasure of its acquaintance. Since then other programs similar in style to...
SOS3 is editor BILOS /bye'lohs/, the Brother-In-Law Of Stopgap (the alternate expansion `Bastard Issue, Loins of Stopgap' has been proposed). 2. /sos/ n. To decrease; inverse of {AOS}, from the PDP-10 instruction set.
source of all good bits is n. A person from whom (or a place from which) useful information may be obtained. If you need to know about a program, a {guru} might be the source of all good bits. The title is often applied to a particularly comp...
space-cadet keyboard is n. The Knight keyboard, a now-legendary device used on MIT LISP machines, which inspired several still-current jargon terms and influenced the design of {EMACS}. It was inspired by the Stanford keyboard and equipped wi...
space-cadet keyboard2 is keys for {bucky bits} (`control', `meta', `hyper', and `super') and three like regular shift keys, called `shift', `top', and `front'. Many keys had three symbols on them a letter and a symbol on the top, and a Greek ...
space-cadet keyboard3 is key had an `L' and a two-way arrow on the top, and the Greek letter lambda on the front. And of course each of these might also be typed with any combination of the control, meta, hyper, and super keys. On this keyb...
space-cadet keyboard4 is characters! This allowed the user to type very complicated mathematical text, and also to have thousands of single-character commands at his disposal. Many hackers were actually willing to memorize the command mean...
space-cadet keyboard5 is typing time (this attitude obviously shaped the interface of EMACS). Other hackers, however, thought having that many bucky bits was overkill, and objected that such a keyboard can require three or four hands to ope...
space-cadet keyboard6 is bucky}, {meta bit}, {quadruple bucky}.
SPACEWAR is n. A space-combat simulation game, inspired by E. E. "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" books, in which two spaceships duel around a central sun, shooting torpedoes at each other and jumping through hyperspace. This game was first implemente...
SPACEWAR2 is aficionados formed the core of the early hacker culture at MIT. Nine years later, a descendant of the game motivated Ken Thompson to build, in his spare time on a scavenged PDP-7, the operating system that became {{UNIX}}. Less ...
SPACEWAR3 is commercialized as one of the first video games; descendants are still {feep}ing in video arcades everywhere.
spaghetti code is n. Code with a complex and tangled control structure, esp. one using many GOTOs, exceptions, or other `unstructured' branching constructs. Pejorative. The synonym `kangaroo code' has been reported, doubtless because such co...
spaghetti inheritance is n. [encountered among users of object-oriented languages that use inheritance, such as Smalltalk] A convoluted class-subclass graph, often resulting from carelessly deriving subclasses from other classes just for the s...
spaghetti inheritance2 is (successful) attempt to discourage such practice, through guilt-by-association with {spaghetti code}.
spam is [from the {MUD} community] vt. To crash a program by overrunning a fixed-size buffer with excessively large input data. See also {buffer overflow}, {overrun screw}, {smash the stack}.
special-case is vt. To write unique code to handle input to or situations arising in program that are somehow distinguished from normal processing. This would be used for processing of mode switches or interrupt characters in an interactive i...
special-case2 is normal commands), or for processing of {hidden flag}s in the input of a batch program or {filter}.
speedometer is n. A pattern of lights displayed on a linear set of LEDs (today) or nixie tubes (yesterday, on ancient mainframes). The pattern is shifted left every N times the software goes through its main loop. A swiftly moving pattern in...
speedometer2 is speedometer slows down as the system becomes overloaded. The speedometer on Sun Microsystems hardware bounces back and forth like the eyes on one of the Cylons from the wretched "Battlestar Galactica" TV series. Historical n...
speedometer3 is 600) actually had an *analog* speedometer on the front panel, calibrated in instructions executed per second.
spell is n. Syn. {incantation}.
spiffy is /spi'fee/ adj. 1. Said of programs having a pretty, clever, or exceptionally well-designed interface. "Have you seen the spiffy {X} version of {empire} yet?" 2. Said sarcastically of a program that is perceived to have little more ...
spiffy2 is meaning should be drawn depends delicately on tone of voice and context. This word was common mainstream slang during the 1940s, in a sense close to #1.
spin is vi. Equivalent to {buzz}. More common among C and UNIX programmers.
spl is /S-P-L/ [abbrev, from Set Priority Level] The way traditional UNIX kernels implement mutual exclusion by running code at high interrupt levels. Used in jargon to describe the act of tuning in or tuning out ordinary communication. Clas...
spl2 is at spl 6 today." would mean that he is very hard to interrupt. "Wait till I finish this; I'll spl down then." See also {interrupts locked out}.
splat is n. 1. Name used in many places (DEC, IBM, and others) for the asterisk (`*') character (ASCII 0101010). This may derive from the `squashed-bug' appearance of the asterisk on many early line printers. 2. [MIT] Name used by some peopl...
splat2 is [Rochester Institute of Technology] The {command key} on a Mac (same as {ALT}, sense 2). 4. [Stanford] Name used by some people for the Stanford/ITS extended ASCII circle-x character. This character is also called `blobby' and ...
splat3 is used by mathematicians as a notation for `tensor product'. 5. [Stanford] Name for the semi-mythical extended ASCII circle-plus character. 6. Canonical name for an output routine that outputs whatever the local interpretation of...
splat4 is 4--6 are now nearly obsolete. See also {{ASCII}}.
sponge is [UNIX] n. A special case of a {filter} that reads its entire input before writing any output; the canonical example is a sort utility. Unlike most filters, a sponge can conveniently overwrite the input file with the output data stre...
sponge2 is ITS did and VMS does now) the sponge/filter distinction loses its usefulness, because directing filter output would just write a new version. See also {slurp}.
spooge is /spooj/ 1. n. Inexplicable or arcane code, or random and probably incorrect output from a computer program. 2. vi. To generate spooge (sense 1).
spool is [from early IBM `Simultaneous Peripheral Operation Off-Line', but this acronym is widely thought to have been contrived for effect] vt. To send files to some device or program (a `spooler') that queues them up and does something usefu...
spool2 is understood is the `print spooler' controlling output of jobs to a printer, but the term has been used in connection with other peripherals (especially plotters and graphics devices). See also {demon}.
stack is n. A person's stack is the set of things he or she has to do in the future. One speaks of the next project to be attacked as having risen to the top of the stack. "I'm afraid I've got real work to do, so this'll have to be pushed wa...
stack2 is because every time I pop my stack something new gets pushed." If you are interrupted several times in the middle of a conversation, "My stack overflowed" means "I forget what we were talking about." The implication is that more i...
stack3 is remembered, so the least recent items were lost. The usual physical example of a stack is to be found in a cafeteria a pile of plates or trays sitting on a spring in a well, so that when you put one on the top they all sink down, ...
stack4 is spring up a bit. See also {push} and {pop}. At MIT, {pdl} used to be a more common synonym for {stack} in all these contexts, and this may still be true. Everywhere else {stack} seems to be the preferred term. {Knuth} (`The Art ...
stack5 is 1, p. 236) says Many people who realized the importance of stacks and queues independently have given other names to these structures stacks have been called push-down lists, reversion storages, cellars, nesti...
stack6 is lists, and even yo-yo lists!
stack puke is n. Some processor architectures are said to `puke their guts onto the stack' to save their internal state during exception processing. The Motorola 68020, for example, regurgitates up to 92 bytes on a bus fault. On a pipelined ...
stale pointer bug is n. Synonym for {aliasing bug} used esp. among microcomputer hackers.
state is n. 1. Condition, situation. "What's the state of your latest hack?" "It's winning away." "The system tried to read and write the disk simultaneously and got into a totally wedged state." The standard question "What's your state?" ...
state2 is you about to do?" Typical answers are "about to gronk out", or "hungry". Another standard question is "What's the state of the world?", meaning "What's new?" or "What's going on?". The more terse and humorous way of asking these...
state3 is of phrasing the first question under sense 1 would be "state-p latest hack?". 2. Information being maintained in non-permanent memory (electronic or human).
steam-powered is adj. Old-fashioned or underpowered; archaic. This term does not have a strong negative loading and may even be used semi-affectionately for something that clanks and wheezes a lot but hangs in there doing the job.
stiffy is [University of Lowell, Massachusetts.] n. 3.5-inch {microfloppies}, so called because their jackets are more firm than those of the 5.25-inch and the 8-inch floppy. Elsewhere this might be called a `firmy'.
stir-fried random is alt. `stir-fried mumble' n. Term used for the best dish of many of those hackers who can cook. Consists of random fresh veggies and meat wokked with random spices. Tasty and economical. See {random}, {great-wall}, {rav...
stomp on is vt. To inadvertently overwrite something important, usually automatically. "All the work I did this weekend got stomped on last night by the nightly server script." Compare {scribble}, {mangle}, {trash}, {scrog}, {roach}.
Stone Age is n., adj. 1. In computer folklore, an ill-defined period from ENIAC (ca. 1943) to the mid-1950s; the great age of electromechanical {dinosaur}s. Sometimes used for the entire period up to 1960--61 (see {Iron Age}); however, it is ...
Stone Age2 is the latter period in terms of a `Bronze Age' era of transistor-logic, pre-ferrite-{core} machines with drum or CRT mass storage (as opposed to just mercury delay lines and/or relays). See also {Iron Age}. 2. More generally, a...
Stone Age3 is hardware or software technology. Note that this is used even by people who were there for the {Stone Age} (sense 1).
stoppage is /sto'p*j/ n. Extreme {lossage} that renders something (usually something vital) completely unusable. "The recent system stoppage was caused by a {fried} transformer."
store is [prob. from techspeak `main store'] n. Preferred Commonwealth synonym for {core}. Thus, `bringing a program into store' means not that one is returning shrink-wrapped software but that a program is being {swap}ped in.
stroke is n. Common name for the slant (`/', ASCII 0101111) character. See {ASCII} for other synonyms.
strudel is n. Common (spoken) name for the circumflex (`', ASCII 1000000) character. See {ASCII} for other synonyms.
stubroutine is /stuhb'roo-teen/ [contraction of `stub routine'] n. Tiny, often vacuous placeholder for a subroutine that is to be written or fleshed out later.
studlycaps is /stuhd'lee-kaps/ n. A hackish form of silliness similar to {BiCapitalization} for trademarks, but applied randomly and to arbitrary text rather than to trademarks. ThE oRigiN and SigNificaNce of thIs pRacTicE iS oBscuRe.
stunning is adj. Mind-bogglingly stupid. Usually used in sarcasm. "You want to code *what* in ADA? That's ... a stunning idea!"
stupid-sort is n. Syn. {bogo-sort}.
subshell is /suhb'shel/ [UNIX, MS-DOS] n. An OS command interpreter (see {shell}) spawned from within a program, such that exit from the command interpreter returns one to the parent program in a state that allows it to continue execution. Co...
sucking mud is [Applied Data Research] adj. (also `pumping mud') Crashed or wedged. Usually said of a machine that provides some service to a network, such as a file server. This Dallas regionalism derives from the East Texas oilfield lament...
sucking mud2 is Often used as a query. "We are going to reconfigure the network, are you ready to suck mud?"
sufficiently small is adj. Syn. {suitably small}.
suit is n. 1. Ugly and uncomfortable `business clothing' often worn by non-hackers. Invariably worn with a `tie', a strangulation device that partially cuts off the blood supply to the brain. It is thought that this explains much about the b...
suit2 is 2. A person who habitually wears suits, as distinct from a techie or hacker. See {loser}, {burble}, {management}, and {brain-damaged}. English, by the way, is relatively kind; our Soviet correspondent informs us that the correspon...
suit3 is lit. a tool for grabbing garbage.
suitable win is n. See {win}.
suitably small is [perverted from mathematical jargon] adj. An expression used ironically to characterize unquantifiable behavior that differs from expected or required behavior. For example, suppose a newly created program came up with a cor...
suitably small2 is exclaimed "It works!" Then, if the program dumps core on the first mouse click, one might add "Well, for suitably small values of `works'." Compare the characterization of pi under {{random numbers}}.
sun-stools is n. Unflattering hackerism for SunTools, a pre-X windowing environment notorious in its day for size, slowness, and misfeatures. {X}, however, is larger and slower; see {second-system effect}.
sunspots is n. 1. Notional cause of an odd error. "Why did the program suddenly turn the screen blue?" "Sunspots, I guess." 2. Also the cause of {bit rot} --- from the myth that sunspots will increase {cosmic rays}, which can flip single bit...
superprogrammer is n. A prolific programmer; one who can code exceedingly well and quickly. Not all hackers are superprogrammers, but many are. (Productivity can vary from one programmer to another by three orders of magnitude. For example,...
superprogrammer2 is average of 3 lines of working code in one day, while another, with the proper tools, might be able to write 3,000. This range is astonishing; it is matched in very few other areas of human endeavor.) The term `superprog...
superprogrammer3 is places as IBM than in the hacker community. It tends to stress na"ive measures of productivity and to underweight creativity, ingenuity, and getting the job *done* --- and to sidestep the question of whether the 3,000 li...
superprogrammer4 is three lines that do the {Right Thing}. Hackers tend to prefer the terms {hacker} and {wizard}.
superuser is [UNIX] n. Syn. {root}, {avatar}. This usage has spread to non-UNIX environments; the superuser is any account with all {wheel} bits on. A more specific term than {wheel}.
support is n. After-sale handholding; something many software vendors promise but few deliver. To hackers, most support people are useless --- because by the time a hacker calls support he or she will usually know the relevant manuals better ...
support2 is *not* a joke or exaggeration). A hacker's idea of `support' is a t^ete-`a-t^ete with the software's designer.
Suzie COBOL is /soo'zee koh'bol/ 1. [IBM prob. from Frank Zappa's `Suzy Creamcheese'] n. A coder straight out of training school who knows everything except the value of comments in plain English. Also (fashionable among personkind wishing to ...
Suzie COBOL2 is or (in some non-IBM circles) `Cobol Charlie'. 2. [proposed] Meta-name for any {code grinder}, analogous to {J. Random Hacker}.
swab is /swob/ [From the mnemonic for the PDP-11 `SWAp Byte' instruction, as immortalized in the `dd(1)' option `conv=swab' (see {dd})] 1. vt. To solve the {NUXI problem} by swapping bytes in a file. 2. n. The program in V7 UNIX used to perfo...
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...
factpacks/jargon-split.fact view on Meta::CPAN
voodoo programming2 is Almost synonymous with {black magic}, except that black magic typically isn't documented and *nobody* understands it. Compare {magic}, {deep magic}, {heavy wizardry}, {rain dance}, {cargo cult programming}, {wave a de...
VR is // [MUD] n. On-line abbrev for {virtual reality}, as opposed to {RL}.
Vulcan nerve pinch is n. [from the old "Star Trek" TV series via Commodore Amiga hackers] The keyboard combination that forces a soft-boot or jump to ROM monitor (on machines that support such a feature). On many micros this is Ctrl-Alt-Del; ...
Vulcan nerve pinch2 is <Cmd>-<Power switch>! Also called {three-finger salute}. Compare {quadruple bucky}.
vulture capitalist is n. Pejorative hackerism for `venture capitalist', deriving from the common practice of pushing contracts that deprive inventors of control over their own innovations and most of the money they ought to have made from them...
vulture capitalist2 is Fudd's immortal line "You wascawwy wabbit!"] n. 1. A legendary early hack reported on a System/360 at RPI and elsewhere around 1978. The program would make two copies of itself every time it was run, eventually crashi...
vulture capitalist3 is includes infinite self-replication but is not a {virus} or {worm}. See also {cookie monster}.
WAITS is /wayts/ n. The mutant cousin of {{TOPS-10}} used on a handful of systems at {{SAIL}} up to 1990. There was never an `official' expansion of WAITS (the name itself having been arrived at by a rather sideways process), but it was frequ...
WAITS2 is ITS'. Though WAITS was less visible than ITS, there was frequent exchange of people and ideas between the two communities, and innovations pioneered at WAITS exerted enormous indirect influence. The early screen modes of {EMACS}, ...
WAITS3 is `E' editor --- one of a family of editors that were the first to do `real-time editing', in which the editing commands were invisible and where one typed text at the point of insertion/overwriting. The modern style of multi-region...
WAITS4 is and WAITS alumni at XEROX PARC and elsewhere played major roles in the developments that led to the XEROX Star, the Macintosh, and the Sun workstations. {Bucky bits} were also invented there --- thus, the ALT key on every IBM PC is ...
WAITS5 is seldom duplicated elsewhere was a news-wire interface that allowed WAITS hackers to read, store, and filter AP and UPI dispatches from their terminals; the system also featured a still-unusual level of support for what is now called ...
WAITS6 is and video signals to be switched to programming terminals.
waldo is /wol'doh/ [From Robert A. Heinlein's story "Waldo"] 1. A mechanical agent, such as a gripper arm, controlled by a human limb. When these were developed for the nuclear industry in the mid-1940s they were named after the invention des...
waldo2 is wrote in 1942. Now known by the more generic term `telefactoring', this technology is of intense interest to NASA for tasks like space station maintenance. 2. At Harvard (particularly by Tom Cheatham and students), this is used i...
waldo3 is and general nonsense word. See {foo}, {bar}, {foobar}, {quux}.
walk is n.,vt. Traversal of a data structure, especially an array or linked-list data structure in {core}. See also {codewalker}, {silly walk}, {clobber}.
walk off the end of is vt. To run past the end of an array, list, or medium after stepping through it --- a good way to land in trouble. Often the result of an {off-by-one error}. Compare {clobber}, {roach}, {smash the stack}.
walking drives is n. An occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk drives back in the days when they were huge, clunky {washing machine}s. Those old {dinosaur} parts carried terrific angular momentum; the combination of a misaligned spindle or ...
walking drives2 is with the floor could cause them to `walk' across a room, lurching alternate corners forward a couple of millimeters at a time. There is a legend about a drive that walked over to the only door to the computer room and jamme...
walking drives3 is wall in order to get at it! Walking could also be induced by certain patterns of drive access (a fast seek across the whole width of the disk, followed by a slow seek in the other direction). Some bands of old-time hacke...
walking drives4 is patterns that would do this to particular drive models and held disk-drive races.
wall is [WPI] interj. 1. An indication of confusion, usually spoken with a quizzical tone "Wall??" 2. A request for further explication. Compare {octal forty}. It is said that "Wall?" really came from `like talking to a blank wall'. It w...
wall2 is you had carefully answered a question, the questioner stared at you blankly, clearly having understood nothing that was explained. You would then throw out a "Hello, wall?" to elicit some sort of response from the questioner. Late...
wall3 is themselves.
wall follower is n. A person or algorithm that compensates for lack of sophistication or native stupidity by efficiently following some simple procedure shown to have been effective in the past. Used of an algorithm, this is not necessarily p...
wall follower2 is the winning robot in an early AI contest (named, of course, after the cocktail). Harvey successfully solved mazes by keeping a `finger' on one wall and running till it came out the other end. This was inelegant, but it was ...
wall follower3 is simply-connected mazes --- and, in fact, Harvey outperformed more sophisticated robots that tried to `learn' each maze by building an internal representation of it. Used of humans, the term *is* pejorative and implies an un...
wall follower4 is See also {code grinder}, {droid}.
wall time is n. (also `wall clock time') 1. `Real world' time (what the clock on the wall shows), as opposed to the system clock's idea of time. 2. The real running time of a program, as opposed to the number of {clocks} required to execute i...
wall time2 is differ, as no one program gets all the {clocks}, and on multiprocessor systems with good thread support one may get more processor clocks than real-time clocks).
wallpaper is n. 1. A file containing a listing (e.g., assembly listing) or a transcript, esp. a file containing a transcript of all or part of a login session. (The idea was that the paper for such listings was essentially good only for wallp...
wallpaper2 is used to cover windows.) Now rare, esp. since other systems have developed other terms for it (e.g., PHOTO on TWENEX). However, the UNIX world doesn't have an equivalent term, so perhaps {wallpaper} will take hold there. The t...
wallpaper3 is commands to begin and end transcript files were `WALBEG' and `WALEND', with default file `WALL PAPER' (the space was a path delimiter). 2. The background pattern used on graphical workstations (this is techspeak under the `Win...
wallpaper4 is 3. `wallpaper file' n. The file that contains the wallpaper information before it is actually printed on paper. (Even if you don't intend ever to produce a real paper copy of the file, it is still called a wallpaper file.)
wango is /wang'goh/ n. Random bit-level {grovel}ling going on in a system during some unspecified operation. Often used in combination with {mumble}. For example "You start with the `.o' file, run it through this postprocessor that does mumb...
wango2 is object-oriented executable."
wank is /wangk/ [Columbia University prob. by mutation from Commonwealth slang v. `wank', to masturbate] n.,v. Used much as {hack} is elsewhere, as a noun denoting a clever technique or person or the result of such cleverness. May describe (n...
wank2 is sake ("Quit wanking, let's go get supper!") or (more positively) a {wizard}. Adj. `wanky' describes something particularly clever (a person, program, or algorithm). Conversations can also get wanky when there are too many wanks ...
wank3 is by an overload of the `wankometer' (compare {bogometer}). When the wankometer overloads, the conversation's subject must be changed, or all non-wanks will leave. Compare `neep-neeping' (under {neep-neep}). Usage U.S. only. In Br...
wank4 is *extremely* rude and is best avoided unless one intends to give offense.
wannabee is /won'*-bee/ (also, more plausibly, spelled `wannabe') [from a term recently used to describe Madonna fans who dress, talk, and act like their idol; prob. originally from biker slang] n. A would-be {hacker}. The connotations of thi...
wannabee2 is and exposure of the subject. Used of a person who is in or might be entering {larval stage}, it is semi-approving; such wannabees can be annoying but most hackers remember that they, too, were once such creatures. When used of ...
wannabee3 is writer, or {suit}, it is derogatory, implying that said person is trying to cuddle up to the hacker mystique but doesn't, fundamentally, have a prayer of understanding what it is all about. Overuse of terms from this lexicon is...
wannabee4 is Compare {newbie}. Historical note The wannabee phenomenon has a slightly different flavor now (1991) than it did ten or fifteen years ago. When the people who are now hackerdom's tribal elders were in {larval stage}, the proc...
wannabee5 is unconscious and unaffected by models known in popular culture --- communities formed spontaneously around people who, *as individuals*, felt irresistibly drawn to do hackerly things, and what wannabees experienced was a fairly p...
wannabee6 is wizardly. Those days of innocence are gone forever; society's adaptation to the advent of the microcomputer after 1980 included the elevation of the hacker as a new kind of folk hero, and the result is that some people semi-consc...
wannabee7 is hackish prestige by fitting the popular image of hackers. Fortunately, to do this really well, one has to actually become a wizard. Nevertheless, old-time hackers tend to share a poorly articulated disquiet about the change; amo...
wannabee8 is about the effects of public compendia of lore like this one.
warm boot is n. See {boot}.
wart is n. A small, {crock}y {feature} that sticks out of an otherwise {clean} design. Something conspicuous for localized ugliness, especially a special-case exception to a general rule. For example, in some versions of `csh(1)', single quot...
wart2 is except `!'. In ANSI C, the `??' syntax used obtaining ASCII characters in a foreign environment is a wart. See also {miswart}.
washing machine is n. Old-style 14-inch hard disks in floor-standing cabinets. So called because of the size of the cabinet and the `top-loading' access to the media packs --- and, of course, they were always set on `spin cycle'. The washing...
washing machine2 is it is even used in Russian hacker jargon. See also {walking drives}. The thick channel cables connecting these were called `bit hoses' (see {hose}).
water MIPS is n. (see {MIPS}, sense 2) Large, water-cooled machines of either today's ECL-supercomputer flavor or yesterday's traditional {mainframe} type.
wave a dead chicken is v. To perform a ritual in the direction of crashed software or hardware that one believes to be futile but is nevertheless necessary so that others are satisfied that an appropriate degree of effort has been expended. "...
wave a dead chicken2 is code, but I really think we've run into an OS bug." Compare {voodoo programming}, {rain dance}.
weasel is n. [Cambridge] A na"ive user, one who deliberately or accidentally does things that are stupid or ill-advised. Roughly synonymous with {loser}.
wedged is [from a common description of recto-cranial inversion] adj. 1. To be stuck, incapable of proceeding without help. This is different from having crashed. If the system has crashed, then it has become totally non-functioning. If the...
wedged2 is something but cannot make progress; it may be capable of doing a few things, but not be fully operational. For example, a process may become wedged if it {deadlock}s with another (but not all instances of wedging are deadlocks). B...
wedged3 is {hung}. See also {gronk}, {locked up}, {hosed}. Describes a {deadlock}ed condition. 2. Often refers to humans suffering misconceptions. "He's totally wedged --- he's convinced that he can levitate through meditation." 3. [UNIX...
wedged4 is TTY left in a losing state by abort of a screen-oriented program or one that has messed with the line discipline in some obscure way.
wedgie is [Fairchild] n. A bug. Prob. related to {wedged}.
wedgitude is /wedj'i-t[y]ood/ n. The quality or state of being {wedged}.
weeble is /weeb'l/ [Cambridge] interj. Used to denote frustration, usually at amazing stupidity. "I stuck the disk in upside down." "Weeble...." Compare {gurfle}.
weeds is n. 1. Refers to development projects or algorithms that have no possible relevance or practical application. Comes from `off in the weeds'. Used in phrases like "lexical analysis for microcode is serious weeds...." 2. At CDC/ETA be...
weeds2 is weeds' was equivalent to IBM's {branch to Fishkill} and mainstream hackerdom's {jump off into never-never land}.
weenie is n. 1. When used with a qualifier (for example, as in {UNIX weenie}, VMS weenie, IBM weenie) this can be either an insult or a term of praise, depending on context, tone of voice, and whether or not it is applied by a person who consi...
weenie2 is weenie. Implies that the weenie has put a major investment of time, effort, and concentration into the area indicated; whether this is positive or negative depends on the hearer's judgment of how the speaker feels about that area. ...
weenie3 is character, `;' (ASCII 0111011).
Weenix is /wee'niks/ [ITS] n. A derogatory term for {{UNIX}}, derived from {UNIX weenie}. According to one noted ex-ITSer, it is "the operating system preferred by Unix Weenies typified by poor modularity, poor reliability, hard file deletion...
Weenix2 is everywhere, and users who believe that these are all advantages". Some ITS fans behave as though they believe UNIX stole a future that rightfully belonged to them. See {{ITS}}, sense 2.
well-behaved is adj. 1. [primarily {{MS-DOS}}] Said of software conforming to system interface guidelines and standards. Well-behaved software uses the operating system to do chores such as keyboard input, allocating memory and drawing graphic...
well-behaved2 is does its job quietly and without counterintuitive effects. Esp. said of software having an interface spec sufficiently simple and well-defined that it can be used as a {tool} by other software. See {cat}.
well-connected is adj. Said of a computer installation, this means that it has reliable email links with {the network} and/or that it relays a large fraction of available {USENET} newsgroups. `Well-known' can be almost synonymous, but also imp...
well-connected2 is many (due perhaps to an archive service or active USENET users).
wetware is /wet'weir/ [prob. from the novels of Rudy Rucker] n. 1. The human nervous system, as opposed to computer hardware or software. "Wetware has 7 plus or minus 2 temporary registers." 2. Human beings (programmers, operators, administra...
wetware2 is opposed to the system's hardware or software. See {liveware}, {meatware}.
whacker is [University of Maryland from {hacker}] n. 1. A person, similar to a {hacker}, who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities. Whereas a hacker tends to produce great hacks, a whacker o...
whacker2 is in question. Whackers are often quite egotistical and eager to claim {wizard} status, regardless of the views of their peers. 2. A person who is good at programming quickly, though rather poorly and ineptly.
whales is n. See {like kicking dead whales down the beach}.
wheel is [from slang `big wheel' for a powerful person] n. A person who has an active a {wheel bit}. "We need to find a wheel to un{wedge} the hung tape drives."
wheel bit is n. A privilege bit that allows the possessor to perform some restricted operation on a timesharing system, such as read or write any file on the system regardless of protections, change or look at any address in the running monito...
wheel bit2 is create jobs and user accounts. The term was invented on the TENEX operating system, and carried over to TOPS-20, XEROX-IFS, and others. The state of being in a privileged logon is sometimes called `wheel mode'. This term enter...
wheel bit3 is mid-1980s and has been gaining popularity there (esp. at university sites). See also {root}.
wheel wars is [Stanford University] A period in {larval stage} during which student hackers hassle each other by attempting to log each other out of the system, delete each other's files, and otherwise wreak havoc, usually at the expense of th...
White Book is n. Syn. {K&R}.
whizzy is [Sun] adj. (alt. `wizzy') Describes a {cuspy} program; one that is feature-rich and well presented.
WIBNI is // [Bell Labs Wouldn't It Be Nice If] n. What most requirements documents and specifications consist entirely of. Compare {IWBNI}.
widget is n. 1. A meta-thing. Used to stand for a real object in didactic examples (especially database tutorials). Legend has it that the original widgets were holders for buggy whips. "But suppose the parts list for a widget has 52 entrie...
widget2 is user interface object in {X} graphical user interfaces.
wiggles is n. [scientific computation] In solving partial differential equations by finite difference and similar methods, wiggles are sawtooth (up-down-up-down) oscillations at the shortest wavelength representable on the grid. If an algorit...
wiggles2 is unstable waveform, so it grows to dominate the solution. Alternatively, stable (though inaccurate) wiggles can be generated near a discontinuity by a Gibbs phenomenon.
WIMP environment is n. [acronymic from `Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing device (or Pull-down menu)'] A graphical-user-interface-based environment such as {X} or the Macintosh interface, as described by a hacker who prefers command-line interfaces...
WIMP environment2 is extensibility. See {menuitis}, {user-obsequious}.
win is [MIT] 1. vi. To succeed. A program wins if no unexpected conditions arise, or (especially) if it sufficiently {robust} to take exceptions in stride. 2. n. Success, or a specific instance thereof. A pleasing outcome. A {feature}. Em...
win2 is `hyper-win' (often used interjectively as a reply). For some reason `suitable win' is also common at MIT, usually in reference to a satisfactory solution to a problem. Oppose {lose}; see also {big win}, which isn't quite just an in...
win big is vi. To experience serendipity. "I went shopping and won big; there was a 2-for-1 sale." See {big win}.
win win is interj. Expresses pleasure at a {win}.
Winchester is n. Informal generic term for `floating-head' magnetic-disk drives in which the read-write head planes over the disk surface on an air cushion. The name arose because the original 1973 engineering prototype for what later became ...
Winchester2 is volumes; 30--30 became `Winchester' when somebody noticed the similarity to the common term for a famous Winchester rifle (in the latter, the first 30 referred to caliber and the second to the grain weight of the charge).
winged comments is n. Comments set on the same line as code, as opposed to {boxed comments}. In C, for example d = sqrt(x*x + y*y); /* distance from origin */ Generally these refer only to the action(s) taken on that line.
winkey is n. (alt. `winkey face') See {emoticon}.
winnage is /win'*j/ n. The situation when a lossage is corrected, or when something is winning.
winner is 1. n. An unexpectedly good situation, program, programmer, or person. "So it turned out I could use a {lexer} generator instead of hand-coding my own pattern recognizer. What a win!" 2. `real winner' Often sarcastic, but also used ...
winner2 is {user}). "He's a real winner --- never reports a bug till he can duplicate it and send in an example."
winnitude is /win'*-t[y]ood/ n. The quality of winning (as opposed to {winnage}, which is the result of winning). "Guess what? They tweaked the microcode and now the LISP interpreter runs twice as fast as it used to." "That's really great! B...
winnitude2 is a half-hour's winnage on the next run of my program." Perhaps curiously, the obvious antonym `lossitude' is rare.
wired is n. See {hardwired}.
wirehead is /wir'hed/ n. [prob. from SF slang for an electrical-brain-stimulation addict] 1. A hardware hacker, especially one who concentrates on communications hardware. 2. An expert in local-area networks. A wirehead can be a network so...
wirehead2 is ability to deal with network hardware, down to the smallest component. Wireheads are known for their ability to lash up an Ethernet terminator from spare resistors, for example.
wish list is n. A list of desired features or bug fixes that probably won't get done for a long time, usually because the person responsible for the code is too busy or can't think of a clean way to do it. "OK, I'll add automatic filename com...
wish list2 is interface." Compare {tick-list features}.
within delta of is adj. See {delta}.
within epsilon of is adj. See {epsilon}.
wizard is n. 1. A person who knows how a complex piece of software or hardware works (that is, who {grok}s it); esp. someone who can find and fix bugs quickly in an emergency. Someone is a {hacker} if he or she has general hacking ability, bu...
wizard2 is if he or she has specific detailed knowledge of that thing. A good hacker could become a wizard for something given the time to study it. 2. A person who is permitted to do things forbidden to ordinary people; one who has {wheel} ...
wizard3 is esp. a UNIX systems programmer. This usage is well enough established that `UNIX Wizard' is a recognized job title at some corporations and to most headhunters. See {guru}, {lord high fixer}. See also {deep magic}, {heavy wizar...
wizard4 is dance}, {voodoo programming}, {wave a dead chicken}.
Wizard Book is n. Hal Abelson and Jerry Sussman's `Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs' (MIT Press, 1984; ISBN 0-262-01077-1, an excellent computer science text used in introductory courses at MIT. So called because of the wizar...
Wizard Book2 is LISP/Scheme world.
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