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green machine => n. A computer or peripheral device that has been designed and built to military specifications for field equipment (that is, to withstand mechanical shock, extremes of temperature and humidity, and so forth). Comes from the olive-dra...
Green's Theorem => [TMRC] prov. For any story, in any group of people there will be at least one person who has not heard the story. [The name of this theorem is a play on a fundamental theorem in calculus. --- ESR]
grep => /grep/ [from the qed/ed editor idiom g/re/p , where re stands for a regular expression, to Globally search for the Regular Expression and Print the lines containing matches to it, via {UNIX} `grep(1)'] vt. To rapidly scan a file or file set l...
grind => vt. 1. [MIT and Berkeley] To format code, especially LISP code, by indenting lines so that it looks pretty. This usage was associated with the MacLISP community and is now rare; prettyprint was and is the generic term for such operations. 2....
grind crank => n. A mythical accessory to a terminal. A crank on the side of a monitor, which when operated makes a zizzing noise and causes the computer to run faster. Usually one does not refer to a grind crank out loud, but merely makes the approp...
grind crank2 => grind and {wugga wugga}. Historical note At least one real machine actually had a grind crank --- the R1, a research machine built toward the end of the days of the great vacuum tube computers, in 1959. R1 (also known as `The Rice Ins...
grind crank3 => as `The Rice University Computer' (TRUC)) had a single-step/free-run switch for use when debugging programs. Since single-stepping through a large program was rather tedious, there was also a crank with a cam and gear arrangement that...
grind crank4 => button. This allowed one to `crank' through a lot of code, then slow down to single-step for a bit when you got near the code of interest, poke at some registers using the console typewriter, and then keep on cranking. 
gritch => /grich/ 1. n. A complaint (often caused by a glitch). 2. vi. To complain. Often verb-doubled "Gritch gritch". 3. A synonym for glitch (as verb or noun).
grok => /grok/, var. /grohk/ [from the novel `Stranger in a Strange Land', by Robert A. Heinlein, where it is a Martian word meaning literally `to drink' and metaphorically `to be one with'] vt. 1. To understand, usually in a global sense. Connotes i...
gronk => /gronk/ [popularized by Johnny Hart's comic strip "B.C." but the word apparently predates that] vt. 1. To clear the state of a wedged device and restart it. More severe than `to frob'. 2. [TMRC] To cut, sever, smash, or similarly disable. 3....
gronk out => vi. To cease functioning. Of people, to go home and go to sleep. "I guess I'll gronk out now; see you all tomorrow."
gronked => adj. 1. Broken. "The teletype scanner was gronked, so we took the system down." 2. Of people, the condition of feeling very tired or (less commonly) sick. "I've been chasing that bug for 17 hours now and I am thoroughly gronked!" Compare b...
grovel => vi. 1. To work interminably and without apparent progress. Often used transitively with `over' or `through'. "The file scavenger has been groveling through the file directories for 10 minutes now." Compare grind and crunch. Emphatic form `g...
grunge => /gruhnj/ n. 1. That which is grungy, or that which makes it so. 2. [Cambridge] Code which is inaccessible due to changes in other parts of the program. The preferred term in North America is {dead code}.
gubbish => /guhb'*sh/ [a portmanteau of `garbage' and `rubbish'?] n. Garbage; crap; nonsense. "What is all this gubbish?" The opposite portmanteau `rubbage' is also reported.
guiltware => /gilt'weir/ n. 1. A piece of freeware decorated with a message telling one how long and hard the author worked on it and intimating that one is a no-good freeloader if one does not immediately send the poor suffering martyr gobs of money...
gumby => /guhm'bee/ [from a class of Monty Python characters, poss. themselves named after the 1960s claymation character] n. An act of minor but conspicuous stupidity, often in `gumby maneuver' or `pull a gumby'.
gun => [ITS from the `GUN' command] vt. To forcibly terminate a program or job (computer, not career). "Some idiot left a background process running soaking up half the cycles, so I gunned it." Compare can.
gunch => /guhnch/ [TMRC] vt. To push, prod, or poke at a device that has almost produced the desired result. Implies a threat to mung.
gurfle => /ger'fl/ interj. An expression of shocked disbelief. "He said we have to recode this thing in FORTRAN by next week. Gurfle!" Compare weeble.
guru => n. 1. [UNIX] An expert. Implies not only wizard skill but also a history of being a knowledge resource for others. Less often, used (with a qualifier) for other experts on other systems, as in `VMS guru'. See {source of all good bits}. 2. Ami...
ha ha only serious => [from SF fandom, orig. as mutation of HHOK, `Ha Ha Only Kidding'] A phrase (often seen abbreviated as HHOS) that aptly captures the flavor of much hacker discourse. Applied especially to parodies, absurdities, and ironic jokes t...
ha ha only serious2 => to contain a possibly disquieting amount of truth, or truths that are constructed on in-joke and self-parody. This lexicon contains many examples of ha-ha-only-serious in both form and content. Indeed, the entirety of hacker cu...
ha ha only serious3 => ha-ha-only-serious by hackers themselves; to take it either too lightly or too seriously marks a person as an outsider, a wannabee, or in {larval stage}. For further enlightenment on this subject, consult any Zen master. See al...
hack => 1. n. Originally, a quick job that produces what is needed, but not well. 2. n. An incredibly good, and perhaps very time-consuming, piece of work that produces exactly what is needed. 3. vt. To bear emotionally or physically. "I can't hack t...
hack attack => [poss. by analogy with `Big Mac Attack' from ads for the McDonald's fast-food chain; the variant `big hack attack' is reported] n. Nearly synonymous with {hacking run}, though the latter more strongly implies an all-nighter.
hack mode => n. 1. What one is in when hacking, of course. 2. More specifically, a Zen-like state of total focus on The Problem that may be achieved when one is hacking (this is why every good hacker is part mystic). Ability to enter such concentrati...
hack mode2 => wizardliness; it is one of the most important skills learned during {larval stage}. Sometimes amplified as `deep hack mode'. Being yanked out of hack mode (see {priority interrupt}) may be experienced as a physical shock, and the sensat...
hack mode3 => little habituating. The intensity of this experience is probably by itself sufficient explanation for the existence of hackers, and explains why many resist being promoted out of positions where they can code. See also cyberspace (sense...
hack mode4 => etiquette will appear quite odd to an observer unaware of the high value placed on hack mode. For example, if someone appears at your door, it is perfectly okay to hold up a hand (without turning one's eyes away from the screen) to avoi...
hack mode5 => type, and interact with the computer for quite some time before further acknowledging the other's presence (of course, he or she is reciprocally free to leave without a word). The understanding is that you might be in {hack mode} with a...
hack mode6 => your head, and you dare not swap that context out until you have reached a good point to pause. See also {juggling eggs}. 
hack on => vt. To hack; implies that the subject is some pre-existing hunk of code that one is evolving, as opposed to something one might {hack up}.
hack together => vt. To throw something together so it will work. Unlike `kluge together' or {cruft together}, this does not necessarily have negative connotations.
hack up => vt. To hack, but generally implies that the result is a hack in sense 1 (a quick hack). Contrast this with {hack on}. To `hack up on' implies a quick-and-dirty modification to an existing system. Contrast {hacked up}; compare {kluge up}, {...
hack value => n. Often adduced as the reason or motivation for expending effort toward a seemingly useless goal, the point being that the accomplished goal is a hack. For example, MacLISP had features for reading and printing Roman numerals, which we...
hack value2 => See {display hack} for one method of computing hack value, but this cannot really be explained. As a great artist once said of jazz "If you hafta ask, you ain't never goin' to find out." 
hack-and-slay => v. (also `hack-and-slash') 1. To play a MUD or go mudding, especially with the intention of berserking for pleasure. 2. To undertake an all-night programming/hacking session, interspersed with stints of mudding as a change of pace. T...
hacked off => [analogous to `pissed off'] adj. Said of system administrators who have become annoyed, upset, or touchy owing to suspicions that their sites have been or are going to be victimized by crackers, or used for inappropriate, technically il...
hacked off2 => activities. For example, having unreadable files in your home directory called `worm', `lockpick', or `goroot' would probably be an effective (as well as impressively obvious and stupid) way to get your sysadmin hacked off at you. 
hacked up => adj. Sufficiently patched, kluged, and tweaked that the surgical scars are beginning to crowd out normal tissue (compare {critical mass}). Not all programs that are hacked become `hacked up'; if modifications are done with some eye to co...
hacked up2 => maintainability, the software may emerge better for the experience. Contrast {hack up}. 
hacker => [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] n. 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2...
hacking run => [analogy with `bombing run' or `speed run'] n. A hack session extended long outside normal working times, especially one longer than 12 hours. May cause you to `change phase the hard way' (see phase).
Hacking X for Y => [ITS] n. The information ITS made publicly available about each user (the INQUIR record) was a sort of form in which the user could fill out fields. On display, two of these fields were combined into a project description of the fo...
Hacking X for Y2 => `"Hacking perceptrons for Minsky"'). This form of description became traditional and has since been carried over to other systems with more general facilities for self-advertisement (such as UNIX {plan file}s). 
Hackintosh => n. 1. An Apple Lisa that has been hacked into emulating a Macintosh (also called a `Mac XL'). 2. A Macintosh assembled from parts theoretically belonging to different models in the line.
hackish => /hak'ish/ adj. (also hackishness n.) 1. Said of something that is or involves a hack. 2. Of or pertaining to hackers or the hacker subculture. See also true-hacker.
hackishness => n. The quality of being or involving a hack. This term is considered mildly silly. Syn. hackitude.
hackitude => n. Syn. hackishness; this word is considered sillier.
hair => [back-formation from hairy] n. The complications that make something hairy. "Decoding TECO commands requires a certain amount of hair." Often seen in the phrase `infinite hair', which connotes extreme complexity. Also in `hairiferous' (tendin...
hairy => adj. 1. Annoyingly complicated. "DWIM is incredibly hairy." 2. Incomprehensible. "DWIM is incredibly hairy." 3. Of people, high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or incomprehensible. Hard to explain except in context "He knows this h...
HAKMEM => /hak'mem/ n. MIT AI Memo 239 (February 1972). A legendary collection of neat mathematical and programming hacks contributed by many people at MIT and elsewhere. (The title of the memo really is "HAKMEM", which is a 6-letterism for `hacks me...
hakspek => /hak'speek/ n. A shorthand method of spelling found on many British academic bulletin boards and {talker system}s. Syllables and whole words in a sentence are replaced by single ASCII characters the names of which are phonetically similar ...
hamster => n. 1. [Fairchild] A particularly slick little piece of code that does one thing well; a small, self-contained hack. The image is of a hamster happily spinning its exercise wheel. 2. [UK] Any item of hardware made by Amstrad, a company famo...
hand-hacking => n. 1. The practice of translating {hot spot}s from an HLL into hand-tuned assembler, as opposed to trying to coerce the compiler into generating better code. Both the term and the practice are becoming uncommon. See tune, bum, {by han...
handshaking => n. Hardware or software activity designed to start or keep two machines or programs in synchronization as they {do protocol}. Often applied to human activity; thus, a hacker might watch two people in conversation nodding their heads to...
handwave => [poss. from gestures characteristic of stage magicians] 1. v. To gloss over a complex point; to distract a listener; to support a (possibly actually valid) point with blatantly faulty logic. 2. n. The act of handwaving. "Boy, what a handw...
hang => v. 1. To wait for an event that will never occur. "The system is hanging because it can't read from the crashed drive". See wedged, hung. 2. To wait for some event to occur; to hang around until something happens. "The program displays a menu...
Hanlon's Razor => prov. A corollary of {Finagle's Law}, similar to Occam's Razor, that reads "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." The derivation of the common title Hanlon's Razor is unknown; a similar epig...
Hanlon's Razor2 => James. Quoted here because it seems to be a particular favorite of hackers, often showing up in {fortune cookie} files and the login banners of BBS systems and commercial networks. This probably reflects the hacker's daily experien...
Hanlon's Razor3 => well-intentioned but short-sighted people. 
happily => adv. Of software, used to emphasize that a program is unaware of some important fact about its environment, either because it has been fooled into believing a lie, or because it doesn't care. The sense of `happy' here is not that of elatio...
hard boot => n. See boot.
hardcoded => adj. 1. Said of data inserted directly into a program, where it cannot be easily modified, as opposed to data in some profile, resource (see de-rezz sense 2), or environment variable that a user or hacker can easily modify. 2. In C, this...
hardwarily => /hard-weir'*-lee/ adv. In a way pertaining to hardware. "The system is hardwarily unreliable." The adjective `hardwary' is *not* traditionally used, though it has recently been reported from the U.K. See softwarily.
hardwired => adj. 1. In software, syn. for hardcoded. 2. By extension, anything that is not modifiable, especially in the sense of customizable to one's particular needs or tastes.
has the X nature => [seems to derive from Zen Buddhist koans of the form "Does an X have the Buddha-nature?"] adj. Common hacker construction for `is an X', used for humorous emphasis. "Anyone who can't even use a program with on-screen help embedded...
has the X nature2 => nature!" See also {the X that can be Y is not the true X}. 
hash bucket => n. A notional receptacle into which more than one thing accessed by the same key or short code might be dropped. When you look up a name in the phone book (for example), you typically hash it by extracting its first letter; the hash bu...
hash bucket2 => letter sections. This is used as techspeak with respect to code that uses actual hash functions; in jargon, it is used for human associative memory as well. Thus, two things `in the same hash bucket' may be confused with each other. "...
hash bucket3 => length, you get too many common grammar words in the first couple of hash buckets." Compare {hash collision}. 
hash collision => [from the technical usage] n. (var. `hash clash') When used of people, signifies a confusion in associative memory or imagination, especially a persistent one (see thinko). True story One of us [ESR] was once on the phone with a fri...
hash collision2 => When asked what he expected Berkeley to be like, the friend replied "Well, I have this mental picture of naked women throwing Molotov cocktails, but I think that's just a collision in my hash tables." Compare {hash bucket}. 
hat => n. Common (spoken) name for the circumflex (`^', ASCII 1011110) character. See ASCII for other synonyms.
HCF => /H-C-F/ n. Mnemonic for `Halt and Catch Fire', any of several undocumented and semi-mythical machine instructions with destructive side-effects, supposedly included for test purposes on several well-known architectures going as far back as the...
heads down => [Sun] adj. Concentrating, usually so heavily and for so long that everything outside the focus area is missed. See also {hack mode} and {larval stage}, although it is not confined to fledgling hackers.
heartbeat => n. 1. The signal emitted by a Level 2 Ethernet transceiver at the end of every packet to show that the collision-detection circuit is still connected. 2. A periodic synchronization signal used by software or hardware, such as a bus clock...
heavy metal => [Cambridge] n. Syn. {big iron}.
heavy wizardry => n. Code or designs that trade on a particularly intimate knowledge or experience of a particular operating system or language or complex application interface. Distinguished from {deep magic}, which trades more on arcane *theoretica...
heavy wizardry2 => drivers is heavy wizardry; so is interfacing to X (sense 2) without a toolkit. Esp. found in comments similar to "Heavy wizardry begins here ...". Compare {voodoo programming}. 
heavyweight => adj. High-overhead; baroque; code-intensive; featureful, but costly. Esp. used of communication protocols, language designs, and any sort of implementation in which maximum generality and/or ease of implementation has been pushed at th...
heisenbug => /hi'zen-buhg/ [from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics] n. A bug that disappears or alters its behavior when one attempts to probe or isolate it. Antonym of {Bohr bug}; see also mandelbug. In C, nine out of ten heisenb...
Helen Keller mode => n. State of a hardware or software system that is deaf, dumb, and blind, i.e., accepting no input and generating no output, usually due to an infinite loop or some other excursion into {deep space}. (Unfair to the real Helen Kell...
Helen Keller mode2 => was triumphant.) See also {go flatline}, catatonic. 
hello, sailor! => interj. Occasional West Coast equivalent of {hello, world}; seems to have originated at SAIL, later associated with the game Zork (which also included "hello, aviator" and "hello, implementor"). Originally from the traditional hooke...
hello, sailor!2 => off the boat, of course. 
hello, wall! => excl. See wall.
hello, world => interj. 1. The canonical minimal test message in the C/UNIX universe. 2. Any of the minimal programs that emit this message. Traditionally, the first program a C coder is supposed to write in a new environment is one that just prints ...
hello, world2 => (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 lose (see X)....
hello, world3 => hacker making an entrance or requesting information from anyone present. "Hello, world! Is the VAX back up yet?" 
hex => 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 a joke, some hac...
hexadecimal => 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 `binary' to...
hexit => /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 {space-c...
hidden flag => [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 programmer might...
hidden flag2 => 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 => [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, {dread hig...
high bit2 => mainstream slang `bottom line'. 
high moby => /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 D.C. Area Sc...
high moby2 => (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'. All parties...
highly => [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; `highly...
hirsute => adj. Occasionally used humorously as a synonym for hairy.
HLL => /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 {bondage-and...
hobbit => 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 => 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 or com...
holy wars => [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 "On Holy Wars...
holy wars2 => 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 nauseam. The characteristic that...
holy wars3 => 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 also th...
home box => 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 => 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 variable deter...
hop => 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 shortest path...
hose => 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 that represent p...
hosed => 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 SCTV. See hose...
hot spot => 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 would ty...
hot spot2 => 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 opposed to (say) i...
hot spot3 => 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 computer with shared mem...
hot spot4 => 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 => [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 ostensible ra...
house wizard2 => suit. Used esp. of UNIX wizards. The term `house guru' is equivalent. 
HP-SUX => /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 to as `hoc...

factpacks/jargon.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

real time2 => special operating systems (because everything else must take a back seat to response time) and speed-tuned hardware. 2. adv. In jargon, refers to doing something while people are watching or waiting. "I asked her how to find the calling...
real time3 => stack and she came up with an algorithm in real time." 
real user => n. 1. A commercial user. One who is paying *real* money for his computer usage. 2. A non-hacker. Someone using the system for an explicit purpose (a research project, a course, etc.) other than pure exploration. See user. Hackers who are...
real user2 => real users. "I need this fixed so I can do a problem set. I'm not complaining out of randomness, but as a real user." See also luser. 
Real World => n. 1. Those institutions at which `programming' may be used in the same sentence as `FORTRAN', `COBOL', `RPG', `IBM', `DBASE', etc. Places where programs do such commercially necessary but intellectually uninspiring things as generating...
Real World2 => 2. The location of non-programmers and activities not related to programming. 3. A bizarre dimension in which the standard dress is shirt and tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5 (see {code grinder}). 4. Anyw...
Real World3 => fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the Real World." Used pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking of someone who has entered the Real World is not unlike speaking of a deceased person. See also {fear and ...
reality check => n. 1. The simplest kind of test of software or hardware; doing the equivalent of asking it what 2 + 2 is and seeing if you get 4. The software equivalent of a {smoke test}. 2. The act of letting a {real user} try out prototype softwa...
reaper => n. A prowler that GFRs files. A file removed in this way is said to have been `reaped'.
rectangle slinger => n. See {polygon pusher}.
recursion => n. See recursion. See also {tail recursion}.
recursive acronym => pl.n. A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms. The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not EMACS") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE I...
recursive acronym2 => a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU (q.v., sense 1) stands for "GNU's Not UNIX!" --- and a company with the name CYGNUS, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support". See also mung, EMACS. 
Red Book => n. 1. Informal name for one of the three standard references on PostScript (`PostScript Language Reference Manual', Adobe Systems (Addison-Wesley, 1985; QA76.73.P67P67; ISBN 0-201-10174-2); the others are known as the {Green Book} and the...
Red Book2 => one of the 3 standard references on Smalltalk (`Smalltalk-80 The Interactive Programming Environment' by Adele Goldberg (Addison-Wesley, 1984; QA76.8.S635G638; ISBN 0-201-11372-4); this too is associated with blue and green books). 3. An...
Red Book3 => CCITT eighth plenary assembly. Until now, these have changed color each review cycle (1988 was {Blue Book}, 1992 will be {Green Book}); however, it is rumored that this convention is going to be dropped before 1992. These include, among ...
Red Book4 => and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. 4. The new version of the {Green Book} (sense 4) --- IEEE 1003.1-1990, a.k.a ISO 9945-1 --- is (because of the color and the fact that it is printed on A4 paper) known in the U.S.A. as "the Ugly R...
Red Book5 => and in Europe as "the Ugly Red Book That's A Sensible Size". 5. The NSA `Trusted Network Interpretation' companion to the {Orange Book}. See also {{book titles}}. 
regexp => /reg'eksp/ [UNIX] n. (alt. `regex' or `reg-ex') 1. Common written and spoken abbreviation for `regular expression', one of the wildcard patterns used, e.g., by UNIX utilities such as `grep(1)', `sed(1)', and `awk(1)'. These use conventions ...
reinvent the wheel => v. To design or implement a tool equivalent to an existing one or part of one, with the implication that doing so is silly or a waste of time. This is often a valid criticism. On the other hand, automobiles don't use wooden roll...
reinvent the wheel2 => be reinvented many times before you get them right. On the third hand, people reinventing the wheel do tend to come up with the moral equivalent of a trapezoid with an offset axle. 
religious issues => n. Questions which seemingly cannot be raised without touching off {holy wars}, such as "What is the best operating system (or editor, language, architecture, shell, mail reader, news reader)?", "What about that Heinlein guy, eh?"...
religious issues2 => Jargon File?" See {holy wars}; see also theology, bigot. This term is an example of {ha ha only serious}. People actually develop the most amazing and religiously intense attachments to their tools, even when the tools are intang...
religious issues3 => thing one can do when one stumbles into the crossfire is mumble {Get a life!} and leave --- unless, of course, one's *own* unassailably rational and obviously correct choices are being slammed. 
replicator => n. Any construct that acts to produce copies of itself; this could be a living organism, an idea (see meme), a program (see worm, wabbit, and virus), a pattern in a cellular automaton (see life, sense 1), or (speculatively) a robot or n...
reply => n. See followup.
reset => [the MUD community] v. In AberMUD, to bring all dead mobiles to life and move items back to their initial starting places. New players who can't find anything shout "Reset! Reset!" quite a bit. Higher-level players shout back "No way!" since...
restriction => n. A bug or design error that limits a program's capabilities, and which is sufficiently egregious that nobody can quite work up enough nerve to describe it as a feature. Often used (esp. by marketroid types) to make it sound as though...
retcon => /ret'kon/ [`retroactive continuity', from the USENET newsgroup rec.arts.comics] 1. n. The common situation in pulp fiction (esp. comics or soap operas) where a new story `reveals' things about events in previous stories, usually leaving the...
RETI => v. Syn. RTI
retrocomputing => /ret'-roh-k*m-pyoo'ting/ n. Refers to emulations of way-behind-the-state-of-the-art hardware or software, or implementations of never-was-state-of-the-art; esp. if such implementations are elaborate practical jokes and/or parodies o...
RFC => /R-F-C/ [Request For Comment] n. One of a long-established series of numbered Internet standards widely followed by commercial and PD software in the Internet and UNIX communities. Perhaps the single most influential one has been RFC-822 (the ...
RFE => /R-F-E/ n. 1. [techspeak] Request For Enhancement. 2. [from `Radio Free Europe', Bellcore and Sun] Radio Free Ethernet, a system (originated by Peter Langston) for broadcasting audio among Sun SPARCstations over the ethernet.
rib site => [by analogy with {backbone site}] n. A machine that has an on-demand high-speed link to a {backbone site} and serves as a regional distribution point for lots of third-party traffic in email and USENET news. Compare {leaf site}, {backbone...
rice box => [from ham radio slang] n. Any Asian-made commodity computer, esp. an 80x86-based machine built to IBM PC-compatible ISA or EISA-bus standards.
Right Thing => n. That which is compellingly the correct or appropriate thing to use, do, say, etc. Often capitalized, always emphasized in speech as though capitalized. Use of this term often implies that in fact reasonable people may disagree. "Wha...
Right Thing2 => do when it sees `(mod a 0)'? Should it return `a', or give a divide-by-0 error?" Oppose {Wrong Thing}. 
RL => // [MUD community] n. Real Life. "Firiss laughs in RL" means that Firiss's player is laughing. Oppose VR.
roach => [Bell Labs] vt. To destroy, esp. of a data structure. Hardware gets toasted or fried, software gets roached.
robust => adj. Said of a system that has demonstrated an ability to recover gracefully from the whole range of exceptional inputs and situations in a given environment. One step below bulletproof. Carries the additional connotation of elegance in add...
rococo => adj. Baroque in the extreme. Used to imply that a program has become so encrusted with the software equivalent of gold leaf and curlicues that they have completely swamped the underlying design. Called after the later and more extreme forms...
rogue => [UNIX] n. A Dungeons-and-Dragons-like game using character graphics, written under BSD UNIX and subsequently ported to other UNIX systems. The original BSD `curses(3)' screen-handling package was hacked together by Ken Arnold to support `rog...
room-temperature IQ => [IBM] quant. 80 or below. Used in describing the expected intelligence range of the luser. "Well, but how's this interface going to play with the room-temperature IQ crowd?" See {drool-proof paper}. This is a much more insultin...
root => [UNIX] n. 1. The superuser account that ignores permission bits, user number 0 on a UNIX system. This account has the user name `root'. The term avatar is also used. 2. The top node of the system directory structure (home directory of the roo...
root mode => n. Syn. with {wizard mode} or `wheel mode'. Like these, it is often generalized to describe privileged states in systems other than OSes.
rot13 => /rot ther'teen/ [USENET from `rotate alphabet 13 places'] n., v. The simple Caesar-cypher encryption that replaces each English letter with the one 13 places forward or back along the alphabet, so that "The butler did it!" becomes "Gur ohgyr...
rotary debugger => [Commodore] n. Essential equipment for those late-night or early-morning debugging sessions. Mainly used as sustenance for the hacker. Comes in many decorator colors, such as Sausage, Pepperoni, and Garbage. See {pizza, ANSI standa...
RSN => // adj. See {Real Soon Now}.
RTFAQ => /R-T-F-A-Q/ [USENET primarily written, by analogy with RTFM] imp. Abbrev. for `Read the FAQ!', an exhortation that the person addressed ought to read the newsgroup's {FAQ list} before posting questions.
RTFM => /R-T-F-M/ [UNIX] imp. Acronym for `Read The Fucking Manual'. 1. Used by gurus to brush off questions they consider trivial or annoying. Compare {Don't do that, then!} 2. Used when reporting a problem to indicate that you aren't just asking ou...
RTI => /R-T-I/ interj. The mnemonic for the `return from interrupt' instruction on many computers including the 6502 and 6800. The variant `RETI' is found among former Z80 hackers (almost nobody programs these things in assembler anymore). Equivalent...
RTM => /R-T-M/ [USENET acronym for `Read The Manual'] 1. Politer variant of RTFM. 2. Robert T. Morris, perpetrator of the great Internet worm of 1988; villain to many, na"ive hacker gone wrong to a few. Morris claimed that the worm that brought the I...
rude => [WPI] adj. 1. (of a program) Badly written. 2. Functionally poor, e.g., a program that is very difficult to use because of gratuitously poor (random?) design decisions. See cuspy.
runes => pl.n. 1. Anything that requires {heavy wizardry} or {black art} to parse core dumps, JCL commands, APL, or code in a language you haven't a clue how to read. Compare {casting the runes}, {Great Runes}. 2. Special display characters (for exam...
runic => adj. Syn. obscure. VMS fans sometimes refer to UNIX as `Runix'; UNIX fans return the compliment by expanding VMS to `Very Messy Syntax' or `Vachement Mauvais Syst`eme' (French; lit. "Cowlike Bad System", idiomatically "Bitchy Bad System").
rusty iron => n. Syn. {tired iron}. It has been claimed that this is the inevitable fate of {water MIPS}.
rusty memory => n. Mass-storage that uses iron-oxide-based magnetic media (esp. tape and the pre-Winchester removable disk packs used in {washing machine}s). Compare donuts.*S/N ratio // n. (also `s/n ratio', `sn ratio'). Syn. {signal-to-noise ratio}...
sacred => adj. Reserved for the exclusive use of something (an extension of the standard meaning). Often means that anyone may look at the sacred object, but clobbering it will screw whatever it is sacred to. The comment "Register 7 is sacred to the ...
saga => [WPI] n. A cuspy but bogus raving story about N random broken people.
sagan => /say'gn/ [from Carl Sagan's TV series "Cosmos"; think "billions and billions"] n. A large quantity of anything. "There's a sagan different ways to tweak EMACS." "The U.S. Government spends sagans on bombs and welfare --- hard to say which is...
SAIL => /sayl/, not /S-A-I-L/ n. 1. Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab. An important site in the early development of LISP; with the MIT AI Lab, BBN, CMU, and the UNIX community, one of the major wellsprings of technical innovation and hacker-cultu...
salescritter => /sayls'kri`tr/ n. Pejorative hackerism for a computer salesperson. Hackers tell the following joke Q. What's the difference between a used-car dealer and a computer salesman? A. The used-car dealer knows he's lying. This reflects the ...
salsman => /salz'm*n/ v. To flood a mailing list or newsgroup with huge amounts of useless, trivial or redundant information. From the name of a hacker who has frequently done this on some widely distributed mailing lists.
salt mines => n. Dense quarters housing large numbers of programmers working long hours on grungy projects, with some hope of seeing the end of the tunnel in N years. Noted for their absence of sunshine. Compare playpen, sandbox.
salt substrate => [MIT] n. Collective noun used to refer to potato chips, pretzels, saltines, or any other form of snack food designed primarily as a carrier for sodium chloride. From the technical term `chip substrate', used to refer to the silicon ...
salt substrate2 => of integrated circuits are deposited. 
same-day service => n. Ironic term used to describe long response time, particularly with respect to {MS-DOS} system calls (which ought to require only a tiny fraction of a second to execute). Such response time is a major incentive for programmers t...
same-day service2 => well-behaved. See also PC-ism. 
sandbender => [IBM] n. A person involved with silicon lithography and the physical design of chips. Compare ironmonger, {polygon pusher}.
sandbox => n. (or `sandbox, the') Common term for the R&D department at many software and computer companies (where hackers in commercial environments are likely to be found). Half-derisive, but reflects the truth that research is a form of creative ...
sanity check => n. 1. The act of checking a piece of code (or anything else, e.g., a USENET posting) for completely stupid mistakes. Implies that the check is to make sure the author was sane when it was written; e.g., if a piece of scientific softwa...
sanity check2 => was giving unexpected results, one might first look at the nesting of parentheses or the coding of the formula, as a {sanity check}, before looking at the more complex I/O or data structure manipulation routines, much less the algori...
sanity check3 => 2. A run-time test, either validating input or ensuring that the program hasn't screwed up internally (producing an inconsistent value or state). 
Saturday night special => [from police slang for a cheap handgun] n. A program or feature kluged together during off hours, under a deadline, and in response to pressure from a salescritter. Such hacks are dangerously unreliable, but all too often sn...
say => vt. 1. To type to a terminal. "To list a directory verbosely, you have to say `ls -l'." Tends to imply a newline-terminated command (a `sentence'). 2. A computer may also be said to `say' things to you, even if it doesn't have a speech synthes...
science-fiction fandom => n. Another voluntary subculture having a very heavy overlap with hackerdom; most hackers read SF and/or fantasy fiction avidly, and many go to `cons' (SF conventions) or are involved in fandom-connected activities such as th...
science-fiction fandom2 => Some hacker jargon originated in SF fandom; see defenestration, great-wall, cyberpunk, h, {ha ha only serious}, IMHO, mundane, neep-neep, {Real Soon Now}. Additionally, the jargon terms cowboy, cyberspace, de-rezz, {go flat...
science-fiction fandom3 => virus, wetware, wirehead, and worm originated in SF stories. 
scram switch => [from the nuclear power industry] n. An emergency-power-off switch (see {Big Red Switch}), esp. one positioned to be easily hit by evacuating personnel. In general, this is *not* something you frob lightly; these often initiate expens...
scram switch2 => and are installed in a {dinosaur pen} for use in case of electrical fire or in case some luckless {field servoid} should put 120 volts across himself while {Easter egging}. 
scratch => 1. [from `scratchpad'] adj. Describes a data structure or recording medium attached to a machine for testing or temporary-use purposes; one that can be scribbled on without loss. Usually in the combining forms `scratch memory', `scratch re...
scratch monkey => n. As in "Before testing or reconfiguring, always mount a {scratch monkey}", a proverb used to advise caution when dealing with irreplaceable data or devices. Used to refer to any scratch volume hooked to a computer during any risky...
scratch monkey2 => precious resource or data that might otherwise get trashed. This term preserves the memory of Mabel, the Swimming Wonder Monkey, star of a biological research program at the University of Toronto ca. 1986. Mabel was not (so the leg...
scratch monkey3 => university had spent years teaching her how to swim, breathing through a regulator, in order to study the effects of different gas mixtures on her physiology. Mabel suffered an untimely demise one day when DEC PMed the PDP-11 contr...
scratch monkey4 => {provocative maintainance}). It is recorded that, after calming down an understandably irate customer sufficiently to ascertain the facts of the matter, a DEC troubleshooter called up the {field circus} manager responsible and aske...
scratch monkey5 => all the consequences to humans were so amusing; the sysop of the machine in question was nearly thrown in jail at the behest of certain clueless droids at the local `humane' society. The moral is clear When in doubt, always mount a...
screw => [MIT] n. A lose, usually in software. Especially used for user-visible misbehavior caused by a bug or misfeature. This use has become quite widespread outside MIT.
screwage => /skroo'*j/ n. Like lossage but connotes that the failure is due to a designed-in misfeature rather than a simple inadequacy or a mere bug.
scribble => n. To modify a data structure in a random and unintentionally destructive way. "Bletch! Somebody's disk-compactor program went berserk and scribbled on the i-node table." "It was working fine until one of the allocation routines scribbled...
scrog => /skrog/ [Bell Labs] vt. To damage, trash, or corrupt a data structure. "The list header got scrogged." Also reported as `skrog', and ascribed to the comic strip "The Wizard of Id". Equivalent to scribble or mangle.
scrool => /skrool/ [from the pioneering Roundtable chat system in Houston ca. 1984; prob. originated as a typo for `scroll'] n. The log of old messages, available for later perusal or to help one get back in synch with the conversation. It was origin...
scrozzle => /skroz'l/ vt. Used when a self-modifying code segment runs incorrectly and corrupts the running program or vital data. "The damn compiler scrozzled itself again!"
SCSI => [Small Computer System Interface] n. A bus-independent standard for system-level interfacing between a computer and intelligent devices. Typically annotated in literature with `sexy' (/sek'see/), `sissy' (/sis'ee/), and `scuzzy' (/skuh'zee/) ...
search-and-destroy mode => n. Hackerism for the search-and-replace facility in an editor, so called because an incautiously chosen match pattern can cause infinite damage.
second-system effect => n. (sometimes, more euphoniously, `second-system syndrome') When one is designing the successor to a relatively small, elegant, and successful system, there is a tendency to become grandiose in one's success and design an elep...
second-system effect2 => The term was first used by Fred Brooks in his classic `The Mythical Man-Month Essays on Software Engineering' (Addison-Wesley, 1975; ISBN 0-201-00650-2). It described the jump from a set of nice, simple operating systems on t...
second-system effect3 => 360 series. A similar effect can also happen in an evolving system; see {Brooks's Law}, {creeping elegance}, {creeping featurism}. See also {Multics}, OS/2, X, {software bloat}. This version of the jargon lexicon has been des...
second-system effect4 => much truth for comfort) as an example of second-system effect run amok on jargon-1.... 
secondary damage => n. When a fatal error occurs (esp. a segfault) the immediate cause may be that a pointer has been trashed due to a previous {fandango on core}. However, this fandango may have been due to an *earlier* fandango, so no amount of ana...
secondary damage2 => the damage occurred. "The data structure was clobbered, but it was secondary damage." By extension, the corruption resulting from N cascaded fandangoes on core is `Nth-level damage'. There is at least one case on record in which ...
secondary damage3 => actually dug up the underlying bug behind an instance of seventh-level damage! The hacker who accomplished this near-superhuman feat was presented with an award by his fellows. 
security through obscurity => n. A name applied by hackers to most OS vendors' favorite way of coping with security holes --- namely, ignoring them and not documenting them and trusting that nobody will find out about them and that people who do find...
security through obscurity2 => This never works for long and occasionally sets the world up for debacles like the RTM worm of 1988, but once the brief moments of panic created by such events subside most vendors are all too willing to turn over and g...
security through obscurity3 => fixing the bugs would siphon off the resources needed to implement the next user-interface frill on marketing's wish list --- and besides, if they started fixing security bugs customers might begin to *expect* it and im...
security through obscurity4 => merchantability gave them some sort of *right* to a system with fewer holes in it than a shotgunned Swiss cheese, and then where would we be? Historical note It is claimed (with dissent from {ITS} fans who say they used...
security through obscurity5 => in a positive sense) that this term was first used in the USENET newsgroup in comp.sys.apollo during a campaign to get HP/Apollo to fix security problems in its UNIX-clone Aegis/DomainOS. They didn't change a thing. 
SED => [TMRC, from `Light-Emitting Diode'] /S-E-D/ n. Smoke-emitting diode. A friode that lost the war. See LER.
segfault => n.,vi. Syn. segment, seggie.
seggie => /seg'ee/ [UNIX] n. Shorthand for {segmentation fault} reported from Britain.
segment => /seg'ment/ vi. To experience a {segmentation fault}. Confusingly, this is often pronounced more like the noun `segment' than like mainstream v. segment; this is because it is actually a noun shorthand that has been verbed.
segmentation fault => n. [UNIX] 1. An error in which a running program attempts to access memory not allocated to it and {core dump}s with a segmentation violation error. 2. To lose a train of thought or a line of reasoning. Also uttered as an exclam...
segv => /seg'vee/ n.,vi. Yet another synonym for {segmentation fault} (actually, in this case, `segmentation violation').
self-reference => n. See self-reference.
selvage => /sel'v*j/ [from sewing] n. See chad (sense 1).
semi => /se'mee/ or /se'mi/ 1. n. Abbreviation for `semicolon', when speaking. "Commands to grind are prefixed by semi-semi-star" means that the prefix is `;;*', not 1/4 of a star. 2. A prefix used with words such as `immediately' as a qualifier. "Wh...
semi-infinite => n. See infinite.
senior bit => [IBM] n. Syn. {meta bit}.
server => n. A kind of daemon that performs a service for the requester and which often runs on a computer other than the one on which the server runs. A particularly common term on the Internet, which is rife with `name servers', `domain servers', `...
SEX => /seks/ [Sun Users' Group & elsewhere] n. 1. Software EXchange. A technique invented by the blue-green algae hundreds of millions of years ago to speed up their evolution, which had been terribly slow up until then. Today, SEX parties are popul...
sex changer => n. Syn. {gender mender}.
shareware => /sheir'weir/ n. Freeware (sense 1) for which the author requests some payment, usually in the accompanying documentation files or in an announcement made by the software itself. Such payment may or may not buy additional support or funct...