Amethyst

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AI-complete => /A-I k*m-pleet'/ [MIT, Stanford by analogy with `NP-complete' (see NP-)] adj. Used to describe problems or subproblems in AI, to indicate that the solution presupposes a solution to the `strong AI problem' (that is, the synthesis of a ...
AI koans => /A-I koh'anz/ pl.n. A series of pastiches of Zen teaching riddles created by Danny Hillis at the MIT AI Lab around various major figures of the Lab's culture (several are included in appendix A). See also {ha ha only serious}, mu, and {{H...
AIDS => /aydz/ n. Short for A* Infected Disk Syndrome (`A*' is a glob pattern that matches, but is not limited to, Apple), this condition is quite often the result of practicing unsafe SEX. See virus, worm, {Trojan horse}, virgin.
airplane rule => n. "Complexity increases the possibility of failure; a twin-engine airplane has twice as many engine problems as a single-engine airplane." By analogy, in both software and electronics, the rule that simplicity increases robustness (...
airplane rule2 => correspondingly argued that the right way to build reliable systems is to put all your eggs in one basket, after making sure that you've built a really *good* basket. 
aliasing bug => n. A class of subtle programming errors that can arise in code that does dynamic allocation, esp. via `malloc(3)' or equivalent. If more than one pointer addresses (`aliases for') a given hunk of storage, it may happen that the storag...
aliasing bug2 => then referenced through another, which may lead to subtle (and possibly intermittent) lossage depending on the state and the allocation history of the malloc arena. Avoidable by use of allocation strategies that never alias allocated...
aliasing bug3 => higher-level languages, such as LISP, which employ a garbage collector (see GC). Also called a {stale pointer bug}. See also {precedence lossage}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {memory leak}, {overrun screw}, spam. Historica...
aliasing bug4 => nowadays associated with C programming, it was already in use in a very similar sense in the Algol-60 and FORTRAN communities in the 1960s. 
all-elbows => adj. Of a TSR (terminate-and-stay-resident) IBM PC program, such as the N pop-up calendar and calculator utilities that circulate on BBS systems unsociable. Used to describe a program that rudely steals the resources that it needs witho...
alpha particles => n. See {bit rot}.
ALT => /awlt/ 1. n. The ALT shift key on an IBM PC or clone. 2. [possibly lowercased] n. The `clover' or `Command' key on a Macintosh; use of this term usually reveals that the speaker hacked PCs before coming to the Mac (see also {command key}). Som...
alt bit => /awlt bit/ [from alternate] adj. See {meta bit}.
Aluminum Book => [MIT] n. `Common LISP The Language', by Guy L. Steele Jr. (Digital Press, first edition 1984, second edition 1990). Note that due to a technical screwup some printings of the second edition are actually of a color the author describe...
Aluminum Book2 => also {{book titles}}. 
amoeba => n. Humorous term for the Commodore Amiga personal computer.
amp off => [Purdue] vt. To run in background. From the UNIX shell `&' operator.
amper => n. Common abbreviation for the name of the ampersand (`&', ASCII 0100110) character. See ASCII for other synonyms.
angle brackets => n. Either of the characters `<' (ASCII 0111100) and `>' (ASCII 0111110) (ASCII less-than or greater-than signs). The {Real World} angle brackets used by typographers are actually taller than a less-than or greater-than sign. See bro...
angry fruit salad => n. A bad visual-interface design that uses too many colors. This derives, of course, from the bizarre day-glo colors found in canned fruit salad. Too often one sees similar affects from interface designers using color window syst...
angry fruit salad2 => tendency to create displays that are flashy and attention-getting but uncomfortable for long-term use. 
AOS => 1. /aws/ (East Coast), /ay-os/ (West Coast) [based on a PDP-10 increment instruction] vt.,obs. To increase the amount of something. "AOS the campfire." Usage considered silly, and now obsolete. Now largely supplanted by bump. See SOS. 2. A {Mu...
app => /ap/ n. Short for `application program', as opposed to a systems program. What systems vendors are forever chasing developers to create for their environments so they can sell more boxes. Hackers tend not to think of the things they themselves...
arc => [primarily MSDOS] vt. To create a compressed archive from a group of files using SEA ARC, PKWare PKARC, or a compatible program. Rapidly becoming obsolete as the ARC compression method is falling into disuse, having been replaced by newer comp...
arc wars => [primarily MSDOS] n. {holy wars} over which archiving program one should use. The first arc war was sparked when System Enhancement Associates (SEA) sued PKWare for copyright and trademark infringement on its ARC program. PKWare's PKARC o...
arc wars2 => and speed while largely retaining compatibility (it introduced a new compression type that could be disabled for backward-compatibility). PKWare settled out of court to avoid enormous legal costs (both SEA and PKWare are small companies)...
arc wars3 => of PKARC was changed to PKPAK. The public backlash against SEA for bringing suit helped to hasten the demise of ARC as a standard when PKWare and others introduced new, incompatible archivers with better compression algorithms. 
archive => n. 1. A collection of several files bundled into one file by a program such as `ar(1)', `tar(1)', `cpio(1)', or arc for shipment or archiving (sense 2). See also {tar and feather}. 2. A collection of files or archives (sense 1) made availa...
arena => [UNIX] n. The area of memory attached to a process by `brk(2)' and `sbrk(2)' and used by `malloc(3)' as dynamic storage. So named from a semi-mythical `malloc corrupt arena' message supposedly emitted when some early versions became terminal...
arg => /arg/ n. Abbreviation for `argument' (to a function), used so often as to have become a new word (like `piano' from `pianoforte'). "The sine function takes 1 arg, but the arc-tangent function can take either 1 or 2 args." Compare param, parm, ...
armor-plated => n. Syn. for bulletproof.
asbestos => adj. Used as a modifier to anything intended to protect one from flames. Important cases of this include {asbestos longjohns} and {asbestos cork award}, but it is used more generally.
asbestos cork award => n. Once, long ago at MIT, there was a flamer so consistently obnoxious that another hacker designed, had made, and distributed posters announcing that said flamer had been nominated for the `asbestos cork award'. Persons in any...
asbestos cork award2 => application of the cork should consult the etymology under flame. Since then, it is agreed that only a select few have risen to the heights of bombast required to earn this dubious dignity --- but there is no agreement on *whi...
asbestos longjohns => n. Notional garments often donned by USENET posters just before emitting a remark they expect will elicit flamage. This is the most common of the asbestos coinages. Also `asbestos underwear', `asbestos overcoat', etc.
attoparsec => n. `atto-' is the standard SI prefix for multiplication by 10^-18. A parsec (parallax-second) is 3.26 light-years; an attoparsec is thus 3.26 * 10^-18 light years, or about 3.1 cm (thus, 1 attoparsec/microfortnight equals about 1 inch/s...
autobogotiphobia => /aw'to-boh-got`*-foh'bee-*/ n. See bogotify.
automagically => /aw-toh-maj'i-klee/ or /aw-toh-maj'i-k*l-ee/ adv. Automatically, but in a way that, for some reason (typically because it is too complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too trivial), the speaker doesn't feel like explaining to you....
avatar => [CMU, Tektronix] n. Syn. root, superuser. There are quite a few UNIX machines on which the name of the superuser account is `avatar' rather than `root'. This quirk was originated by a CMU hacker who disliked the term `superuser', and was pr...
awk => 1. n. [UNIX techspeak] An interpreted language for massaging text data developed by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan (the name is from their initials). It is characterized by C-like syntax, a declaration-free approach to varia...
backbone cabal => n. A group of large-site administrators who pushed through the {Great Renaming} and reined in the chaos of USENET during most of the 1980s. The cabal {mailing list} disbanded in late 1988 after a bitter internal catfight, but the ne...
backbone site => n. A key USENET and email site; one that processes a large amount of third-party traffic, especially if it is the home site of any of the regional coordinators for the USENET maps. Notable backbone sites as of early 1991 include uune...
backbone site2 => University, UC Berkeley, DEC's Western Research Laboratories, Ohio State University, and the University of Texas. Compare {rib site}, {leaf site}. 
backgammon => See bignum, moby, and pseudoprime.
background => n.,adj.,vt. To do a task `in background' is to do it whenever foreground matters are not claiming your undivided attention, and `to background' something means to relegate it to a lower priority. "For now, we'll just print a list of nod...
backspace and overstrike => interj. Whoa! Back up. Used to suggest that someone just said or did something wrong. Common among APL programmers.
backward combatability => /bak'w*rd k*m-bat'*-bil'*-tee/ [from `backward compatibility'] n. A property of hardware or software revisions in which previous protocols, formats, and layouts are discarded in favor of `new and improved' protocols, formats...
backward combatability2 => making the transition between major releases. When the change is so drastic that the old formats are not retained in the new version, it is said to be `backward combatable'. See {flag day}. 
BAD => /B-A-D/ [IBM acronym, `Broken As Designed'] adj. Said of a program that is bogus because of bad design and misfeatures rather than because of bugginess. See {working as designed}.
Bad Thing => [from the 1930 Sellar & Yeatman parody `1066 And All That'] n. Something that can't possibly result in improvement of the subject. This term is always capitalized, as in "Replacing all of the 9600-baud modems with bicycle couriers would ...
Bad Thing2 => Thing}. British correspondents confirm that {Bad Thing} and {Good Thing} (and prob. therefore {Right Thing} and {Wrong Thing}) come from the book referenced in the etymology, which discusses rulers who were Good Kings but Bad Things. Th...
Bad Thing3 => mainstream idiom on the British side of the pond. 
bag on the side => n. An extension to an established hack that is supposed to add some functionality to the original. Usually derogatory, implying that the original was being overextended and should have been thrown away, and the new product is ugly,...
bag on the side2 => phrase, `to hang a bag on the side [of]'. "C++? That's just a bag on the side of C ...." "They want me to hang a bag on the side of the accounting system." 
bagbiter => /bag'bit-*r/ n. 1. Something, such as a program or a computer, that fails to work, or works in a remarkably clumsy manner. "This text editor won't let me make a file with a line longer than 80 characters! What a bagbiter!" 2. A person who...
bamf => /bamf/ 1. [from old X-Men comics] interj. Notional sound made by a person or object teleporting in or out of the hearer's vicinity. Often used in {virtual reality} (esp. MUD) electronic fora when a character wishes to make a dramatic entrance...
banana label => n. The labels often used on the sides of macrotape reels, so called because they are shaped roughly like blunt-ended bananas. This term, like macrotapes themselves, is still current but visibly headed for obsolescence.
banana problem => n. [from the story of the little girl who said "I know how to spell `banana', but I don't know when to stop"]. Not knowing where or when to bring a production to a close (compare {fencepost error}). One may say `there is a banana pr...
banana problem2 => defined or incorrect termination conditions, or in discussing the evolution of a design that may be succumbing to featuritis (see also {creeping elegance}, {creeping featuritis}). See item 176 under HAKMEM, which describes a banana...
banana problem3 => implementation.bandwidth n. 1. Used by hackers in a generalization of its technical meaning as the volume of information per unit time that a computer, person, or transmission medium can handle. "Those are amazing graphics, but I m...
banana problem4 => bandwidth, I guess." Compare low-bandwidth. 2. Attention span. 3. On USENET, a measure of network capacity that is often wasted by people complaining about how items posted by others are a waste of bandwidth. 
bang => 1. n. Common spoken name for `!' (ASCII 0100001), especially when used in pronouncing a {bang path} in spoken hackish. In {elder days} this was considered a CMUish usage, with MIT and Stanford hackers preferring excl or shriek; but the spread...
bang on => vt. To stress-test a piece of hardware or software "I banged on the new version of the simulator all day yesterday and it didn't crash once. I guess it is ready to release." The term {pound on} is synonymous.
bang path => n. An old-style UUCP electronic-mail address specifying hops to get from some assumed-reachable location to the addressee, so called because each hop is signified by a bang sign. Thus, for example, the path ...!bigsite!foovax!barbox!me d...
bang path2 => to machine bigsite (presumably a well-known location accessible to everybody) and from there through the machine foovax to the account of user me on barbox. In the bad old days of not so long ago, before autorouting mailers became commo...
bang path3 => compound bang addresses using the { } convention (see glob) to give paths from *several* big machines, in the hopes that one's correspondent might be able to get mail to one of them reliably (example ...!{seismo, ut-sally, ihnp4}!rice!b...
bang path4 => 10 hops were not uncommon in 1981. Late-night dial-up UUCP links would cause week-long transmission times. Bang paths were often selected by both transmission time and reliability, as messages would often get lost. See {{Internet addres...
banner => n. 1. The title page added to printouts by most print spoolers (see spool). Typically includes user or account ID information in very large character-graphics capitals. Also called a `burst page', because it indicates where to burst (tear a...
bar => /bar/ n. 1. The second metasyntactic variable, after foo and before baz. "Suppose we have two functions FOO and BAR. FOO calls BAR...." 2. Often appended to foo to produce foobar.
bare metal => n. 1. New computer hardware, unadorned with such snares and delusions as an {operating system}, an HLL, or even assembler. Commonly used in the phrase `programming on the bare metal', which refers to the arduous work of {bit bashing} ne...
bare metal2 => for a new machine. Real bare-metal programming involves things like building boot proms and BIOS chips, implementing basic monitors used to test device drivers, and writing the assemblers that will be used to write the compiler back en...
bare metal3 => real development environment. 2. `Programming on the bare metal' is also used to describe a style of hand-hacking that relies on bit-level peculiarities of a particular hardware design, esp. tricks for speed and space optimization that...
bare metal4 => overlapping instructions (or, as in the famous case described in appendix A, interleaving of opcodes on a magnetic drum to minimize fetch delays due to the device's rotational latency). This sort of thing has become less common as the ...
bare metal5 => and machine resources have changed, but is still found in heavily constrained environments such as industrial embedded systems. See {real programmer}. In the world of personal computing, bare metal programming (especially in sense 1 bu...
bare metal6 => considered a {Good Thing}, or at least a necessary thing (because these machines have often been sufficiently slow and poorly designed to make it necessary; see ill-behaved). There, the term usually refers to bypassing the BIOS or OS i...
bare metal7 => application to directly access device registers and machine addresses. "To get 19.2 kilobaud on the serial port, you need to get down to the bare metal." People who can do this sort of thing are held in high regard. 
barf => /barf/ [from mainstream slang meaning `vomit'] 1. interj. Term of disgust. This is the closest hackish equivalent of the Val\-speak "gag me with a spoon". (Like, euwww!) See bletch. 2. vi. To say "Barf!" or emit some similar expression of dis...
barfulation => /bar`fyoo-lay'sh*n/ interj. Variation of barf used around the Stanford area. An exclamation, expressing disgust. On seeing some particularly bad code one might exclaim, "Barfulation! Who wrote this, Quux?"
barfulous => /bar'fyoo-l*s/ adj. (alt. `barfucious', /bar-fyoo-sh*s/) Said of something that would make anyone barf, if only for esthetic reasons.
baroque => adj. Feature-encrusted; complex; gaudy; verging on excessive. Said of hardware or (esp.) software designs, this has many of the connotations of elephantine or monstrosity but is less extreme and not pejorative in itself. "Metafont even has...
BartleMUD => /bar'tl-muhd/ n. Any of the MUDs derived from the original MUD game by Richard Bartle (see MUD). BartleMUDs are noted for their (usually slightly offbeat) humor, dry but friendly syntax, and lack of adjectives in object descriptions, so ...
BASIC => n. A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which has since become the leading cause of brain-damage in proto-hackers. This is another case (like Pascal) of the bad thing...
batch => adj. 1. Non-interactive. Hackers use this somewhat more loosely than the traditional technical definitions justify; in particular, switches on a normally interactive program that prepare it to receive non-interactive command input are often ...
bathtub curve => n. Common term for the curve (resembling an end-to-end section of one of those claw-footed antique bathtubs) that describes the expected failure rate of electronics with time initially high, dropping to near 0 for most of the system'...
bathtub curve2 => `tires out'. See also {burn-in period}, {infant mortality}. 
baud => /bawd/ [simplified from its technical meaning] n. Bits per second. Hence kilobaud or Kbaud, thousands of bits per second. The technical meaning is `level transitions per second'; this coincides with bps only for two-level modulation with no f...
baud barf => /bawd barf/ n. The garbage one gets on the monitor when using a modem connection with some protocol setting (esp. line speed) incorrect, or when someone picks up a voice extension on the same line, or when really bad line noise disrupts ...
baud barf2 => completely random, by the way; hackers with a lot of serial-line experience can usually tell whether the device at the other end is expecting a higher or lower speed than the terminal is set to. *Really* experienced ones can identify pa...
baz => /baz/ [Stanford corruption of bar] n. 1. The third metasyntactic variable, after foo and bar and before quux (or, occasionally, `qux'; or local idiosyncracies like `rag', `zowie', etc.). "Suppose we have three functions FOO,BAR, and BAZ. FOO c...
bboard => /bee'bord/ [contraction of `bulletin board'] n. 1. Any electronic bulletin board; esp. used of BBS systems running on personal micros, less frequently of a USENET newsgroup (in fact, use of the term for a newsgroup generally marks one eithe...
BBS => /B-B-S/ [acronym, `Bulletin Board System'] n. An electronic bulletin board system; that is, a message database where people can log in and leave broadcast messages for others grouped (typically) into {topic group}s. Thousands of local BBS syst...
beam => [from Star Trek Classic's "Beam me up, Scotty!"] vt. To transfer softcopy of a file electronically; most often in combining forms such as `beam me a copy' or `beam that over to his site'. Compare blast, snarf, BLT.
beanie key => [Mac users] n. See {command key}.
beep => n.,v. Syn. feep. This term seems to be preferred among micro hobbyists.
beige toaster => n. A Macintosh. See toaster; compare Macintrash, maggotbox.
bells and whistles => [by analogy with the toyboxes on theater organs] n. Features added to a program or system to make it more flavorful from a hacker's point of view, without necessarily adding to its utility for its primary function. Distinguished...
bells and whistles2 => to attract users. "Now that we've got the basic program working, let's go back and add some bells and whistles." No one seems to know what distinguishes a bell from a whistle. 
bells, whistles, and gongs => n. A standard elaborated form of {bells and whistles}; typically said with a pronounced and ironic accent on the `gongs'.
benchmark => [techspeak] n. An inaccurate measure of computer performance. "In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies lies, damn lies, and benchmarks." Well-known ones include Whetstone, Dhrystone, Rhealstone (see h), the Gabriel LISP b...
Berkeley Quality Software => adj. (often abbreviated `BQS') Term used in a pejorative sense to refer to software that was apparently created by rather spaced-out hackers late at night to solve some unique problem. It usually has nonexistent, incomple...
Berkeley Quality Software2 => been tested on at least two examples, and core dumps when anyone else attempts to use it. This term was frequently applied to early versions of the `dbx(1)' debugger. See also Berzerkeley. 
berklix => /berk'liks/ n.,adj. [contraction of `Berkeley UNIX'] See BSD. Not used at Berkeley itself. May be more common among suits attempting to sound like cognoscenti than among hackers, who usually just say `BSD'.
berserking => vi. A MUD term meaning to gain points *only* by killing other players and mobiles (non-player characters). Hence, a Berserker-Wizard is a player character that has achieved enough points to become a wizard, but only by killing other cha...
Berzerkeley => /b*r-zer'klee/ [from `berserk', via the name of a now-deceased record label] n. Humorous distortion of `Berkeley' used esp. to refer to the practices or products of the BSD UNIX hackers. See {software bloat}, Missed'em-five, {Berkeley ...
beta => /bay't*/, /be't*/ or (Commonwealth) /bee't*/ n. 1. In the {Real World}, software often goes through two stages of testing Alpha (in-house) and Beta (out-house?). Software is said to be `in beta'. 2. Anything that is new and experimental is in...
BFI => /B-F-I/ n. See {brute force and ignorance}. Also encountered in the variant `BFMI', `brute force and *massive* ignorance'.
bible => n. 1. One of a small number of fundamental source books such as Knuth and K&R. 2. The most detailed and authoritative reference for a particular language, operating system, or other complex software system.
BiCapitalization => n. The act said to have been performed on trademarks (such as NeXT, NeWS, VisiCalc, FrameMaker, TK!solver, EasyWriter) that have been raised above the ruck of common coinage by nonstandard capitalization. Too many marketroid types...
BIFF => /bif/ [USENET] n. The most famous pseudo, and the prototypical newbie. Articles from BIFF are characterized by all uppercase letters sprinkled liberally with bangs, typos, `cute' misspellings (EVRY BUDY LUVS GOOD OLD BIFF CUZ HE"S A K00L DOOD...
biff => /bif/ vt. To notify someone of incoming mail. From the BSD utility `biff(1)', which was in turn named after the implementor's dog (it barked whenever the mailman came). No relation to BIFF.
Big Gray Wall => n. What faces a VMS user searching for documentation. A full VMS kit comes on a pallet, the documentation taking up around 15 feet of shelf space before the addition of layered products such as compilers, databases, multivendor netwo...
Big Gray Wall2 => Recent (since VMS version 5) DEC documentation comes with gray binders; under VMS version 4 the binders were orange (`big orange wall'), and under version 3 they were blue. See VMS. 
big iron => n. Large, expensive, ultra-fast computers. Used generally of number-crunching supercomputers such as Crays, but can include more conventional big commercial IBMish mainframes. Term of approval; compare {heavy metal}, oppose dinosaur.
Big Red Switch => [IBM] n. The power switch on a computer, esp. the `Emergency Pull' switch on an IBM mainframe or the power switch on an IBM PC where it really is large and red. "This !@%$% {bitty box} is hung again; time to hit the Big Red Switch."...
Big Red Switch2 => tune with the company's passion for TLAs, this is often acronymized as `BRS' (this has also become established on FidoNet and in the PC clone world). It is alleged that the emergency pull switch on an IBM 360/91 actually fired a no...
Big Red Switch3 => power feed; the BRSes on more recent machines physically drop a block into place so that they can't be pushed back in. People get fired for pulling them, especially inappropriately (see also molly-guard). Compare {power cycle}, {th...
the Big Room => n. The extremely large room with the blue ceiling and intensely bright light (during the day) or black ceiling with lots of tiny night-lights (during the night) found outside all computer installations. "He can't come to the phone rig...
big win => n. Serendipity. "Yes, those two physicists discovered high-temperature superconductivity in a batch of ceramic that had been prepared incorrectly according to their experimental schedule. Small mistake; big win!" See {win big}.
big-endian => [From Swift's `Gulliver's Travels' via the famous paper `On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace' by Danny Cohen, USC/ISI IEN 137, dated April 1, 1980] adj. 1. Describes a computer architecture in which, within a given multi-byte numeric repr...
bignum => /big'nuhm/ [orig. from MIT MacLISP] n. 1. [techspeak] A multiple-precision computer representation for very large integers. More generally, any very large number. "Have you ever looked at the United States Budget? There's bignums for you!" ...
bigot => n. A person who is religiously attached to a particular computer, language, operating system, editor, or other tool (see {religious issues}). Usually found with a specifier; thus, `cray bigot', {ITS bigot}, `APL bigot', `VMS bigot', {Berkele...
bit => [from the mainstream meaning and `Binary digIT'] n. 1. [techspeak] The unit of information; the amount of information obtained by asking a yes-or-no question for which the two outcomes are equally probable. 2. [techspeak] A computational quant...
bit bang => n. Transmission of data on a serial line, when accomplished by rapidly tweaking a single output bit at the appropriate times. The technique is a simple loop with eight OUT and SHIFT instruction pairs for each byte. Input is more interesti...
bit bang2 => and output at the same time) is one way to separate the real hackers from the wannabees. Bit bang was used on certain early models of Prime computers, presumably when UARTs were too expensive, and on archaic Z80 micros with a Zilog PIO b...
bit bang3 => instance of the {cycle of reincarnation}, this technique is now (1991) coming back into use on some RISC architectures because it consumes such an infinitesimal part of the processor that it actually makes sense not to have a UART. 
bit bashing => n. (alt. `bit diddling' or {bit twiddling}) Term used to describe any of several kinds of low-level programming characterized by manipulation of bit, flag, nybble, and other smaller-than-character-sized pieces of data; these include lo...
bit bashing2 => encryption algorithms, checksum and error-correcting codes, hash functions, some flavors of graphics programming (see bitblt), and assembler/compiler code generation. May connote either tedium or a real technical challenge (more usual...
bit bashing3 => decoding for the new tape driver looks pretty solid but the bit-bashing for the control registers still has bugs." See also {bit bang}, {mode bit}. 
bit bucket => 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 bucket'. On ...
bit bucket2 => /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 likely to end u...
bit bucket3 => 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 unwanted ma...
bit bucket4 => 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." Compare {bla...
bit bucket5 => 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 hackers a...
bit bucket6 => 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 of 1 bits ...
bit bucket7 => 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 => 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 => 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 theory exp...
bit rot2 => 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 radionuclides in ceram...
bit rot3 => 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 for them)...
bit rot4 => 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 => 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 modification to a ...
bit twiddling2 => 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 => 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 device (se...

factpacks/jargon.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

comm mode => /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 => [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 splat. The...
command key2 => The proliferation of terms for this creature may illustrate one subtle peril of iconic interfaces. 
comment out => 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 you wan...
comment out2 => 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 (such a...
Commonwealth Hackish => 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/), as oppo...
Commonwealth Hackish2 => 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*/, zeta is often ...
Commonwealth Hackish3 => 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 to verb doubli...
Commonwealth Hackish4 => `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; Commonwealth ha...
Commonwealth Hackish5 => 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, hakspek, {heavy metal}, {l...
Commonwealth Hackish6 => 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, {chase pointers}, {cosmic rays},...
Commonwealth Hackish7 => crunch, dodgy, gonk, hamster, hardwarily, mess-dos, nybble, proglet, root, SEX, tweak, and xyzzy. 
compact => 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 tool that ...
compiler jock => n. See jock (sense 2).
compress => [UNIX] vt. When used without a qualifier, generally refers to crunching 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 in this sense ...
Compu$erve => n. See CI$.
computer confetti => 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 MIT during ...
computer confetti2 => 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 => 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 by outside...
computer geek2 => 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, {geek out}, w...
computron => /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 machine can't...
condition out => 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 bletcherou...
condom => 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 also been sh...
connector conspiracy => [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 of anythin...
connector conspiracy2 => 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 the design...
connector conspiracy3 => 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 stuck with dy...
connector conspiracy4 => 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 so *many* ...
cons => /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 example". I...
considered harmful => 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 acrimony su...
considered harmful2 => 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". The structu...
considered harmful3 => 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 => 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 guarded by passwo...
console jockey => n. See {terminal junkie}.
content-free => [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 styles that e...
control-C => 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 break!"
control-O => 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 that topic...
control-Q => 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 => 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 be allowed...
Conway's Law => 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 originally ...
Conway's Law2 => 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 => [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 (Addison-We...
cookie => 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 only thi...
cookie bear => n. Syn. {cookie monster}.
cookie file => 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 this lex...
cookie monster => [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 a batch mainfra...
cookie monster2 => "I WANT A COOKIE". The required responses ranged in complexity from "COOKIE" through "HAVE A COOKIE" and upward. See also wabbit. 
copper => 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 => n. A class of clever methods for preventing incompetent pirates from stealing software and legitimate customers from using it. Considered silly.
copybroke => /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 => /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 {General Public...
copywronged => /ko'pee-rongd/ [play on `copyright'] adj. Syn. for copybroke.
core => n. Main storage or RAM. Dates from the days of ferrite-core memory; now archaic as techspeak most places outside IBM, but also still used in the UNIX community and by old-time hackers or those who would sound like them. Some derived idioms ar...
core dump => n. [common {Iron Age} jargon, preserved by UNIX] 1. [techspeak] A copy of the contents of core, produced when a process is aborted by certain kinds of internal error. 2. By extension, used for humans passing out, vomiting, or registering...
core dump2 => All over the floor. What a mess." "He heard about X and dumped core." 3. Occasionally used for a human rambling on pointlessly at great length; esp. in apology "Sorry, I dumped core on you". 4. A recapitulation of knowledge (compare bit...
core dump3 => one knows about a topic, esp. in a lecture or answer to an exam question. "Short, concise answers are better than core dumps" (from the instructions to an exam at Columbia; syn. {brain dump}). See core. 
core leak => n. Syn. {memory leak}.
Core Wars => n. A game between `assembler' programs in a simulated machine, where the objective is to kill your opponent's program by overwriting it. Popularized by A. K. Dewdney's column in `Scientific American' magazine, this was actually devised b...
Core Wars2 => and Dennis Ritchie in the early 1960s (their original game was called `Darwin' and ran on a PDP-1 at Bell Labs). See core. 
corge => /korj/ [originally, the name of a cat] n. Yet another meta-syntactic variable, invented by Mike Gallaher and propagated by the GOSMACS documentation. See grault.
cosmic rays => n. Notionally, the cause of {bit rot}. However, this is a semi-independent usage that may be invoked as a humorous way to handwave away any minor randomness that doesn't seem worth the bother of investigating. "Hey, Eric --- I just got...
cosmic rays2 => tube, where did that come from?" "Cosmic rays, I guess." Compare sunspots, {phase of the moon}. The British seem to prefer the usage `cosmic showers'; `alpha particles' is also heard, because stray alpha particles passing through a me...
cosmic rays3 => errors (this becomes increasingly more likely as memory sizes and densities increase). Factual note Alpha particles cause bit rot, cosmic rays do not (except occasionally in spaceborne computers). Intel could not explain random bit dr...
cosmic rays4 => hypothesis was cosmic rays. So they created the World's Largest Lead Safe, using 25 tons of the stuff, and used two identical boards for testing. One was placed in the safe, one outside. The hypothesis was that if cosmic rays were cau...
cosmic rays5 => a statistically significant difference between the error rates on the two boards. They did not observe such a difference. Further investigation demonstrated conclusively that the bit drops were due to alpha particle emissions from tho...
cosmic rays6 => uranium) in the encapsulation material. Since it is impossible to eliminate these radioactives (they are uniformly distributed through the earth's crust, with the statistically insignificant exception of uranium lodes) it became obvio...
cosmic rays7 => to withstand these hits. 
cough and die => v. Syn. barf. Connotes that the program is throwing its hands up by design rather than because of a bug or oversight. "The parser saw a control-A in its input where it was looking for a printable, so it coughed and died."
cowboy => [Sun, from William Gibson's cyberpunk SF] n. Synonym for hacker. It is reported that at Sun this word is often said with reverence.
CP/M => /C-P-M/ n. [Control Program for Microcomputers] An early microcomputer OS written by hacker Gary Kildall for 8080- and Z80-based machines, very popular in the late 1970s but virtually wiped out by MS-DOS after the release of the IBM PC in 198...
CPU Wars => /C-P-U worz/ n. A 1979 large-format comic by Chas Andres chronicling the attempts of the brainwashed androids of IPM (Impossible to Program Machines) to conquer and destroy the peaceful denizens of HEC (Human Engineered Computers). This r...
CPU Wars2 => many references to ADVENT and the immortal line "Eat flaming death, minicomputer mongrels!" (uttered, of course, by an IPM stormtrooper). It is alleged that the author subsequently received a letter of appreciation on IBM company station...
CPU Wars3 => J. Watson Research Laboratories (then, as now, one of the few islands of true hackerdom in the IBM archipelago). The lower loop of the B in the IBM logo, it is said, had been carefully whited out. See {eat flaming death}. 
cracker => n. One who breaks security on a system. Coined ca. 1985 by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of hacker (q.v., sense 8). An earlier attempt to establish `worm' in this sense around 1981--82 on USENET was largely a failure.
crank => [from automotive slang] vt. Verb used to describe the performance of a machine, especially sustained performance. "This box cranks (or, cranks at) about 6 megaflops, with a burst mode of twice that on vectorized operations."
crash => 1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often said of the system (q.v., sense 1), sometimes of magnetic disk drives. "Three lusers lost their files in last night's disk crash." A disk crash that involves the read/write heads dropping o...
crash and burn => vi.,n. A spectacular crash, in the mode of the conclusion of the car-chase scene in the movie "Bullitt" and many subsequent imitators. Sun-3 monitors losing the flyback transformer and lightning strikes on VAX-11/780 backplanes are ...
crash and burn2 => The construction `crash-and-burn machine' is reported for a computer used exclusively for alpha or beta testing, or reproducing bugs (i.e., not for development). The implication is that it wouldn't be such a disaster if that machin...
crash and burn3 => would be inconvenienced. 
crawling horror => n. Ancient crufty hardware or software that is kept obstinately alive by forces beyond the control of the hackers at a site. Like {dusty deck} or gonkulator, but connotes that the thing described is not just an irritation but an ac...
crawling horror2 => "Mostly we code new stuff in C, but they pay us to maintain one big FORTRAN II application from nineteen-sixty-X that's a real crawling horror...." Compare WOMBAT. 
cray => /kray/ n. 1. (properly, capitalized) One of the line of supercomputers designed by Cray Research. 2. Any supercomputer at all. 3. The canonical number-crunching machine. The term is actually the lowercased last name of Seymour Cray, a noted c...
cray instability => n. A shortcoming of a program or algorithm that manifests itself only when a large problem is being run on a powerful machine (see cray). Generally more subtle than bugs that can be detected in smaller problems running on a workst...
crayola => /kray-oh'l*/ n. A super-mini or -micro computer that provides some reasonable percentage of supercomputer performance for an unreasonably low price. Might also be a {killer micro}.
crayon => n. 1. Someone who works on Cray supercomputers. More specifically, it implies a programmer, probably of the CDC ilk, probably male, and almost certainly wearing a tie (irrespective of gender). Systems types who have a UNIX background tend n...
creationism => n. The (false) belief that large, innovative designs can be completely specified in advance and then painlessly magicked out of the void by the normal efforts of a team of normally talented programmers. In fact, experience has shown re...
creeping elegance => n. Describes a tendency for parts of a design to become elegant past the point of diminishing return. This often happens at the expense of the less interesting parts of the design, the schedule, and other things deemed important ...
creeping elegance2 => {creeping featurism}, {second-system effect}, tense. 
creeping featurism => /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ n. 1. Describes a systematic tendency to load more chrome and features onto systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed when originally designed. See also {feeping creaturism}. "Yo...
creeping featurism2 => BSD UNIX has always been creeping featurism." 2. More generally, the tendency for anything complicated to become even more complicated because people keep saying "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature too". (See f...
creeping featurism3 => a patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra little feature to help someone ... and then another ... and another.... When creep...
creeping featurism4 => like a cancer. Usually this term is used to describe computer programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes afflicts conscious redesigns; see {sec...
creeping featuritis => /kree'ping fee'-chr-i`t*s/ n. Variant of {creeping featurism}, with its own spoonerization `feeping creaturitis'. Some people like to reserve this form for the disease as it actually manifests in software or hardware, as oppose...
creeping featuritis2 => designers' minds. (After all, -ism means `condition' or `pursuit of', whereas -itis usually means `inflammation of'.) 
cretin => /kret'n/ or /kree'tn/ n. Congenital loser; an obnoxious person; someone who can't do anything right. It has been observed that many American hackers tend to favor the British pronunciation /kre'tn/ over standard American /kree'tn/; it is th...
cretinous => /kret'n-*s/ or /kreet'n-*s/ adj. Wrong; stupid; non-functional; very poorly designed. Also used pejoratively of people. See {dread high-bit disease} for an example. Approximate synonyms bletcherous, `bagbiting' (see bagbiter), losing, br...
crippleware => n. 1. Software that has some important functionality deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users to pay for a working version. 2. [Cambridge] Guiltware that exhorts you to donate to some charity (compare careware). 3. Hardwar...
critical mass => n. In physics, the minimum amount of fissionable material required to sustain a chain reaction. Of a software product, describes a condition of the software such that fixing one bug introduces one plus epsilon bugs. When software ach...
critical mass2 => be discarded and rewritten. 
crlf => /ker'l*f/, sometimes /kru'l*f/ or /C-R-L-F/ n. (often capitalized as `CRLF') A carriage return (CR) followed by a line feed (LF). More loosely, whatever it takes to get you from the end of one line of text to the beginning of the next line. S...
crock => [from the obvious mainstream scatologism] n. 1. An awkward feature or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner. Using small integers to represent error codes without the program interpreting them to the user (as in, for example, U...
cross-post => [USENET] vi. To post a single article simultaneously to several newsgroups. Distinguished from posting the article repeatedly, once to each newsgroup, which causes people to see it multiple times (this is very bad form). Gratuitous cros...
crudware => /kruhd'weir/ n. Pejorative term for the hundreds of megabytes of low-quality freeware circulated by user's groups and BBS systems in the micro-hobbyist world. "Yet *another* set of disk catalog utilities for {MS-DOS}? What crudware!"
cruft => /kruhft/ [back-formation from crufty] 1. n. An unpleasant substance. The dust that gathers under your bed is cruft; the TMRC Dictionary correctly noted that attacking it with a broom only produces more. 2. n. The results of shoddy constructi...
cruft together => vt. (also `cruft up') To throw together something ugly but temporarily workable. Like vt. {kluge up}, but more pejorative. "There isn't any program now to reverse all the lines of a file, but I can probably cruft one together in abo...
cruft together2 => together}, {hack up}, {kluge up}, crufty. 
cruftsmanship => /kruhfts'm*n-ship / n. [from cruft] The antithesis of craftsmanship.
crufty => /kruhf'tee/ [origin unknown; poss. from `crusty' or `cruddy'] adj. 1. Poorly built, possibly over-complex. The canonical example is "This is standard old crufty DEC software". In fact, one fanciful theory of the origin of `crufty' holds tha...
crumb => n. Two binary digits; a quad. Larger than a bit, smaller than a nybble. Considered silly. Syn. tayste.
crunch => 1. vi. To process, usually in a time-consuming or complicated way. Connotes an essentially trivial operation that is nonetheless painful to perform. The pain may be due to the triviality's being embedded in a loop from 1 to 1,000,000,000. "...
cruncha cruncha cruncha => /kruhn'ch* kruhn'ch* kruhn'ch*/ interj. An encouragement sometimes muttered to a machine bogged down in a serious grovel. Also describes a notional sound made by groveling hardware. See {wugga wugga}, grind (sense 3).
cryppie => /krip'ee/ n. A cryptographer. One who hacks or implements cryptographic software or hardware.
CTSS => /C-T-S-S/ n. Compatible Time-Sharing System. An early (1963) experiment in the design of interactive time-sharing operating systems, ancestral to {Multics}, {UNIX}, and {ITS}. The name {ITS} (Incompatible Time-sharing System) was a hack on CT...
CTY => /sit'ee/ or /C-T-Y/ n. [MIT] The terminal physically associated with a computer's system {console}. The term is a contraction of `Console tty', that is, `Console TeleTYpe'. This {ITS}- and {TOPS-10}-associated term has become less common, as m...
cube => n. 1. [short for `cubicle'] A module in the open-plan offices used at many programming shops. "I've got the manuals in my cube." 2. A NeXT machine (which resembles a matte-black cube).
cubing => [parallel with `tubing'] vi. 1. Hacking on an IPSC (Intel Personal SuperComputer) hypercube. "Louella's gone cubing *again*!!" 2. Hacking Rubik's Cube or related puzzles, either physically or mathematically. 3. An indescribable form of self...
cursor dipped in X => n. There are a couple of metaphors in English of the form `pen dipped in X' (perhaps the most common values of X are `acid', `bile', and `vitriol'). These map over neatly to this hackish usage (the cursor being what moves, leavi...
cursor dipped in X2 => composing on-line). "Talk about a nastygram! He must've had his cursor dipped in acid when he wrote that one!" 
cuspy => /kuhs'pee/ [WPI from the DEC acronym CUSP, for `Commonly Used System Program', i.e., a utility program used by many people] adj. 1. (of a program) Well-written. 2. Functionally excellent. A program that performs well and interfaces well to u...
cut a tape => [poss. fr. mainstream `cut a check' or from the recording industry's `cut a record'] vi. To write a software or document distribution on magnetic tape for shipment. Has nothing to do with physically cutting the medium! Though this usage...
cut a tape2 => speaks of analogously `cutting a disk' or anything else in this sense. 
cybercrud => /si'ber-kruhd/ [coined by Ted Nelson] n. Obfuscatory tech-talk. Verbiage with a high MEGO factor. The computer equivalent of bureaucratese.

factpacks/jargon.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

do protocol => [from network protocol programming] vi. To perform an interaction with somebody or something that follows a clearly defined procedure. For example, "Let's do protocol with the check" at a restaurant means to ask for the check, calculat...
do protocol2 => collect money from everybody, generate change as necessary, and pay the bill. See protocol. 
doc => /dok/ n. Common spoken and written shorthand for `documentation'. Often used in the plural `docs' and in the construction `doc file' (documentation available on-line).
doco => /do'koh/ [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] n. A documentation writer. See also devo and mango.
documentation => n. The multiple kilograms of macerated, pounded, steamed, bleached, and pressed trees that accompany most modern software or hardware products (see also tree-killer). Hackers seldom read paper documentation and (too) often resist wri...
dodgy => adj. Syn. with flaky. Preferred outside the U.S.
dogcow => /dog'kow/ n. See Moof.
dogwash => /dog'wosh/ [From a quip in the `urgency' field of a very optional software change request, ca. 1982. It was something like "Urgency Wash your dog first".] 1. n. A project of minimal priority, undertaken as an escape from more serious work....
domainist => /doh-mayn'ist/ adj. 1. Said of an {{Internet address}} (as opposed to a {bang path}) because the part to the right of the `@' specifies a nested series of `domains'; for example, eric@snark.thyrsus.com specifies the machine called snark ...
Don't do that, then! => [from an old doctor's office joke about a patient with a trivial complaint] Stock response to a user complaint. "When I type control-S, the whole system comes to a halt for thirty seconds." "Don't do that, then!" (or "So don't...
dongle => /dong'gl/ n. 1. A security or copy-protection device for commercial microcomputer programs consisting of a serialized EPROM and some drivers in a D-25 connector shell, which must be connected to an I/O port of the computer while the program...
dongle-disk => /don'gl disk/ n. See dongle; a `dongle-disk' is a floppy disk with some coding that allows an application to identify it uniquely. It can therefore be used as a dongle. Also called a `key disk'.
donuts => n.obs. A collective noun for any set of memory bits. This is extremely archaic and may no longer be live jargon; it dates from the days of ferrite-core memories in which each bit was implemented by a doughnut-shaped magnetic flip-flop.
doorstop => n. Used to describe equipment that is non-functional and halfway expected to remain so, especially obsolete equipment kept around for political reasons or ostensibly as a backup. "When we get another Wyse-50 in here, that ADM 3 will turn ...
dot file => [UNIX] n. A file which is not visible to normal directory-browsing tools (on UNIX, files named with a leading dot are, by convention, not normally presented in directory listings). Many programs define one or more dot files in which start...
dot file2 => be optionally recorded; a user can customize the program's behavior by creating the appropriate file in the current or home directory. See also {rc file}. 
double bucky => adj. Using both the CTRL and META keys. "The command to burn all LEDs is double bucky F." This term originated on the Stanford extended-ASCII keyboard, and was later taken up by users of the {space-cadet keyboard} at MIT. A typical MI...
double bucky2 => {bucky bits} (control and meta shifting keys) were nice, but there weren't enough of them; you could type only 512 different characters on a Stanford keyboard. An obvious way to address this was simply to add more shifting keys, and ...
double bucky3 => keyboard with that many shifting keys is hard on touch-typists, who don't like to move their hands away from the home position on the keyboard. It was half-seriously suggested that the extra shifting keys be implemented as pedals; ty...
double bucky4 => much like playing a full pipe organ. This idea is mentioned in a parody of a very fine song by Jeffrey Moss called "Rubber Duckie", which was published in `The Sesame Street Songbook' (Simon and Schuster 1971, ISBN 671-21036-X). Thes...
double bucky5 => 1978, in celebration of the Stanford keyboard See also {meta bit}, cokebottle, and {quadruple bucky}. 
double DECkers => n. Used to describe married couples in which both partners work for Digital Equipment Corporation.
doubled sig => [USENET] n. A {sig block} that has been included twice in a USENET article or, less commonly, in an electronic mail message. An article or message with a doubled sig can be caused by improperly configured software. More often, however,...
doubled sig2 => experience in electronic communication. See BIFF, pseudo. 
down => 1. adj. Not operating. "The up escalator is down" is considered a humorous thing to say, and "The elevator is down" always means "The elevator isn't working" and never refers to what floor the elevator is on. With respect to computers, this u...
download => vt. To transfer data or (esp.) code from a larger `host' system (esp. a mainframe) over a digital comm link to a smaller `client' system, esp. a microcomputer or specialized peripheral. Oppose upload. However, note that ground-to-space co...
DP => /D-P/ n. 1. Data Processing. Listed here because, according to hackers, use of the term marks one immediately as a suit. See DPer. 2. Common abbrev for {Dissociated Press}.
DPB => /d*-pib'/ [from the PDP-10 instruction set] vt. To plop something down in the middle. Usage silly. "DPB yourself into that couch there." The connotation would be that the couch is full except for one slot just big enough for you to sit in. DPB...
DPer => /dee-pee-er/ n. Data Processor. Hackers are absolutely amazed that suits use this term self-referentially. "*Computers* process data, not people!" See DP.
dragon => n. [MIT] A program similar to a daemon, except that it is not invoked at all, but is instead used by the system to perform various secondary tasks. A typical example would be an accounting program, which keeps track of who is logged in, acc...
Dragon Book => n. The classic text `Compilers Principles, Techniques and Tools', by Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman (Addison-Wesley 1986; ISBN 0-201-10088-6), so called because of the cover design featuring a dragon labeled `complexi...
Dragon Book2 => bearing the lance `LALR parser generator' among his other trappings. This one is more specifically known as the `Red Dragon Book' (1986); an earlier edition, sans Sethi and titled `Principles Of Compiler Design' (Alfred V. Aho and Jef...
Dragon Book3 => ISBN 0-201-00022-9), was the `Green Dragon Book' (1977). (Also `New Dragon Book', `Old Dragon Book'.) The horsed knight and the Green Dragon were warily eying each other at a distance; now the knight is typing (wearing gauntlets!) at ...
Dragon Book4 => representation of the Red Dragon's head while the rest of the beast extends back in normal space. See also {{book titles}}. 
drain => [IBM] v. Syn. for flush (sense 2). Has a connotation of finality about it; one speaks of draining a device before taking it offline.
dread high-bit disease => n. A condition endemic to PRIME (a.k.a. PR1ME) minicomputers that results in all the characters having their high (0x80) bit ON rather than OFF. This of course makes transporting files to other systems much more difficult, n...
dread high-bit disease2 => devices. It is reported that PRIME adopted the reversed-8-bit convention in order to save 25 cents per serial line per machine. This probably qualifies as one of the most cretinous design tradeoffs ever made. See {meta bit}...
dread high-bit disease3 => (including the Atari 800) have exhibited similar brain damage. 
DRECNET => /drek'net/ [from Yiddish/German `dreck', meaning dirt] n. Deliberate distortion of DECNET, a networking protocol used in the VMS community. So called because DEC helped write the Ethernet specification and then (either stupidly or as a mal...
driver => n. 1. The {main loop} of an event-processing program; the code that gets commands and dispatches them for execution. 2. [techspeak] In `device driver', code designed to handle a particular peripheral device such as a magnetic disk or tape u...
droid => n. A person (esp. a low-level bureaucrat or service-business employee) exhibiting most of the following characteristics (a) na"ive trust in the wisdom of the parent organization or `the system'; (b) a propensity to believe obvious nonsense e...
drool-proof paper => n. Documentation that has been obsessively {dumbed down}, to the point where only a cretin could bear to read it, is said to have succumbed to the `drool-proof paper syndrome' or to have been `written on drool-proof paper'. For e...
drool-proof paper2 => from Apple's LaserWriter manual "Do not expose your LaserWriter to open fire or flame." 
drop on the floor => vt. To react to an error condition by silently discarding messages or other valuable data. "The gateway ran out of memory, so it just started dropping packets on the floor." Also frequently used of faulty mail and netnews relay s...
drop on the floor2 => {black hole}, {bit bucket}. 
drop-ins => [prob. by analogy with drop-outs] n. Spurious characters appearing on a terminal or console as a result of line noise or a system malfunction of some sort. Esp. used when these are interspersed with one's own typed input. Compare drop-out...
drop-outs => n. 1. A variety of `power glitch' (see glitch); momentary 0 voltage on the electrical mains. 2. Missing characters in typed input due to software malfunction or system saturation (this can happen under UNIX when a bad connection to a mod...
drugged => adj. (also `on drugs') 1. Conspicuously stupid, heading toward brain-damaged. Often accompanied by a pantomime of toking a joint (but see appendix B). 2. Of hardware, very slow relative to normal performance.
drunk mouse syndrome => n. A malady exhibited by the mouse pointing device of some computers. The typical symptom is for the mouse cursor on the screen to move in random directions and not in sync with the motion of the actual mouse. Can usually be c...
drunk mouse syndrome2 => and plugging it back again. Another recommended fix for optical mice is to rotate your mouse pad 90 degrees. At Xerox PARC in the 1970s, most people kept a can of copier cleaner (isopropyl alcohol) at their desks. When the st...
drunk mouse syndrome3 => up enough cruft to be unreliable, the mouse was doused in cleaner, which restored it for a while. However, this operation left a fine residue that accelerated the accumulation of cruft, so the dousings became more and more fr...
drunk mouse syndrome4 => declared `alcoholic' and sent to the clinic to be dried out in a CFC ultrasonic bath. 
dumbass attack => /duhm'as *-tak'/ [Purdue] n. Notional cause of a novice's mistake made by the experienced, especially one made while running as root under UNIX, e.g., typing `rm -r *' or `mkfs' on a mounted file system. Compare adger.
dumbed down => adj. Simplified, with a strong connotation of *over*simplified. Often, a marketroid will insist that the interfaces and documentation of software be dumbed down after the designer has burned untold gallons of midnight oil making it sma...
dump => n. 1. An undigested and voluminous mass of information about a problem or the state of a system, especially one routed to the slowest available output device (compare {core dump}), and most especially one consisting of hex or octal runes desc...
dup killer => /d[y]oop kill'r/ [FidoNet] n. Software that is supposed to detect and delete duplicates of a message that may have reached the FidoNet system via different routes.
dup loop => /d[y]oop loop/ (also `dupe loop') [FidoNet] n. An incorrectly configured system or network gateway may propagate duplicate messages on one or more echoes, with different identification information that renders {dup killer}s ineffective. I...
dup loop2 => eventually reaches a system through which it has already passed (with the original identification information), all systems passed on the way back to that system are said to be involved in a {dup loop}. 
dusty deck => n. Old software (especially applications) which one is obliged to remain compatible with (or to maintain). The term implies that the software in question is a holdover from card-punch days. Used esp. when referring to old scientific and...
dusty deck2 => of which was written in FORTRAN and very poorly documented but is believed to be too expensive to replace. See fossil. 
DWIM => /dwim/ [acronym, `Do What I Mean'] 1. adj. Able to guess, sometimes even correctly, the result intended when bogus input was provided. 2. n.,obs. The BBNLISP/INTERLISP function that attempted to accomplish this feat by correcting many of the ...
dynner => /din'r/ 32 bits, by analogy with nybble and {byte}. Usage rare and extremely silly. See also playte, tayste, crumb.*earthquake [IBM] n. The ultimate real-world shock test for computer hardware. Hackish sources at IBM deny the rumor that the...
Easter egg => n. 1. A message hidden in the object code of a program as a joke, intended to be found by persons disassembling or browsing the code. 2. A message, graphic, or sound effect emitted by a program (or, on a PC, the BIOS ROM) in response to...
Easter egg2 => or keystrokes, intended as a joke or to display program credits. One well-known early Easter egg found in a couple of OSes caused them to respond to the command `make love' with `not war?'. Many personal computers have much more elabor...
Easter egg3 => lists of the developers' names, political exhortations, snatches of music, and (in one case) graphics images of the entire development team. 
Easter egging => [IBM] n. The act of replacing unrelated parts more or less at random in hopes that a malfunction will go away. Hackers consider this the normal operating mode of {field circus} techs and do not love them for it. Compare {shotgun debu...
eat flaming death => imp. A construction popularized among hackers by the infamous {CPU Wars} comic; supposed to derive from a famously turgid line in a WWII-era anti-Nazi propaganda comic that ran "Eat flaming death, non-Aryan mongrels!" or somethin...
eat flaming death2 => reported that the Firesign Theater's 1975 album "In The Next World, You're On Your Own" included the phrase "Eat flaming death, fascist media pigs"; this may have been an influence). Used in humorously overblown expressions of h...
EBCDIC => /eb's*-dik/, /eb'see`dik/, or /eb'k*-dik/ [acronym, Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code] n. An alleged character set used on IBM dinosaurs. It exists in at least six mutually incompatible versions, all featuring such delights as ...
echo => [FidoNet] n. A {topic group} on FidoNet's echomail system. Compare newsgroup.
eighty-column mind => [IBM] n. The sort said to be possessed by persons for whom the transition from {punched card} to tape was traumatic (nobody has dared tell them about disks yet). It is said that these people, including (according to an old joke)...
eighty-column mind2 => `face down, 9-edge first' (the 9-edge being the bottom of the card). This directive is inscribed on IBM's 1422 and 1602 card readers and is referenced in a famous bit of doggerel called "The Last Bug", the climactic lines of wh...
eighty-column mind3 => the console Of hunger and thirst. Next day he was buried, Face down, 9-edge first. The eighty-column mind is thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's customer base and its thinking. See IBM, {fear and loathing}, {card walloper...
El Camino Bignum => /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ n. The road mundanely called El Camino Real, a road through the San Francisco peninsula that originally extended all the way down to Mexico City and many portions of which are still intact. Navigation on ...
El Camino Bignum2 => usually done relative to El Camino Real, which defines logical north and south even though it isn't really north-south many places. El Camino Real runs right past Stanford University and so is familiar to hackers. The Spanish wor...
El Camino Bignum3 => /ray-ahl'/) means `royal'; El Camino Real is `the royal road'. In the FORTRAN language, a `real' quantity is a number typically precise to 7 significant digits, and a `double precision' quantity is a larger floating-point number,...
El Camino Bignum4 => significant digits (other languages have similar `real' types). When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on `real', he started calling it `El Camino Double Pre...
El Camino Bignum5 => told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it `El Camino Bignum', and that name has stuck. (See bignum.) 
elder days => n. The heroic age of hackerdom (roughly, pre-1980); the era of the PDP-10, TECO, {ITS}, and the ARPANET. This term has been rather consciously adopted from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy epic `The Lord of the Rings'. Compare {Iron Age}; see...
elegant => [from mathematical usage] adj. Combining simplicity, power, and a certain ineffable grace of design. Higher praise than `clever', `winning', or even cuspy.
elephantine => adj. Used of programs or systems that are both conspicuous hogs (owing perhaps to poor design founded on {brute force and ignorance}) and exceedingly hairy in source form. An elephantine program may be functional and even friendly, but...
elevator controller => n. Another archetypal dumb embedded-systems application, like toaster (which superseded it). During one period (1983--84) in the deliberations of ANSI X3J11 (the C standardization committee) this was the canonical example of a ...
elevator controller2 => computation environment. "You can't require `printf(3)' to be part of the default runtime library --- what if you're targeting an elevator controller?" Elevator controllers became important rhetorical weapons on both sides of ...
ELIZA effect => /*-li'z* *-fekt'/ [AI community] n. The tendency of humans to attach associations to terms from prior experience. For example, there is nothing magic about the symbol `+' that makes it well-suited to indicate addition; it's just that ...
ELIZA effect2 => Using `+' or `plus' to mean addition in a computer language is taking advantage of the ELIZA effect. This term comes from the famous ELIZA program, which simulated a Rogerian psychoanalyst by rephrasing many of the patient's statemen...
ELIZA effect3 => patient. It worked by simple pattern recognition and substitution of key words into canned phrases. It was so convincing, however, that there are many anecdotes about people becoming very emotionally caught up in dealing with ELIZA. ...
ELIZA effect4 => tendency to attach to words meanings which the computer never put there. The ELIZA effect is a {Good Thing} when writing a programming language, but it can blind you to serious shortcomings when analyzing an Artificial Intelligence s...
elvish => n. 1. The Tengwar of Feanor, a table of letterforms resembling the beautiful Celtic half-uncial hand of the `Book of Kells'. Invented and described by J. R. R. Tolkien in `The Lord of The Rings' as an orthography for his fictional `elvish' ...
EMACS => /ee'maks/ [from Editing MACroS] n. The ne plus ultra of hacker editors, a program editor with an entire LISP system inside it. It was originally written by Richard Stallman in TECO under {ITS} at the MIT AI lab, but the most widely used vers...
email => /ee'mayl/ 1. n. Electronic mail automatically passed through computer networks and/or via modems over common-carrier lines. Contrast snail-mail, paper-net, voice-net. See {network address}. 2. vt. To send electronic mail. Oddly enough, the w...
emoticon => /ee-moh'ti-kon/ n. An ASCII glyph used to indicate an emotional state in email or news. Hundreds have been proposed, but only a few are in common use. These include (These may become more comprehensible if you tilt your head sideways, to ...
empire => n. Any of a family of military simulations derived from a game written by Peter Langston many years ago. There are five or six multi-player variants of varying degrees of sophistication, and one single-player version implemented for both UN...
engine => n. 1. A piece of hardware that encapsulates some function but can't be used without some kind of {front end}. Today we have, especially, `print engine' the guts of a laser printer. 2. An analogous piece of software; notionally, one that doe...
English => 1. n.,obs. The source code for a program, which may be in any language, as opposed to the linkable or executable binary produced from it by a compiler. The idea behind the term is that to a real hacker, a program written in his favorite pr...
enhancement => n. Marketroid-speak for a bug fix. This abuse of language is a popular and time-tested way to turn incompetence into increased revenue. A hacker being ironic would instead call the fix a feature --- or perhaps save some effort by decla...
ENQ => /enkw/ or /enk/ [from the ASCII mnemonic ENQuire for 0000101] An on-line convention for querying someone's availability. After opening a {talk mode} connection to someone apparently in heavy hack mode, one might type `SYN SYN ENQ?' (the SYNs r...
EOF => /E-O-F/ [acronym, `End Of File'] n. 1. [techspeak] Refers esp. to whatever out-of-band value is returned by C's sequential character-input functions (and their equivalents in other environments) when end of file has been reached. This value is...
EOL => /E-O-L/ [End Of Line] n. Syn. for newline, derived perhaps from the original CDC6600 Pascal. Now rare, but widely recognized and occasionally used for brevity. Used in the example entry under BNF. See also EOF.
EOU => /E-O-U/ n. The mnemonic of a mythical ASCII control character (End Of User) that could make an ASR-33 Teletype explode on receipt. This parodied the numerous obscure delimiter and control characters left in ASCII from the days when it was asso...
epoch => [UNIX prob. from astronomical timekeeping] n. The time and date corresponding to 0 in an operating system's clock and timestamp values. Under most UNIX versions the epoch is 000000 GMT, January 1, 1970. System time is measured in seconds or ...
epsilon => [see delta] 1. n. A small quantity of anything. "The cost is epsilon." 2. adj. Very small, negligible; less than marginal. "We can get this feature for epsilon cost." 3. `within epsilon of' close enough to be indistinguishable for all prac...
epsilon squared => n. A quantity even smaller than epsilon, as small in comparison to epsilon as epsilon is to something normal; completely negligible. If you buy a supercomputer for a million dollars, the cost of the thousand-dollar terminal to go w...
epsilon squared2 => of the ten-dollar cable to connect them is epsilon squared. Compare {lost in the underflow}, {lost in the noise}. 
the era => Syn. epoch. Webster's Unabridged makes these words almost synonymous, but `era' usually connotes a span of time rather than a point in time. The epoch usage is recommended.
Eric Conspiracy => n. A shadowy group of mustachioed hackers named Eric first pinpointed as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous talk.bizarre posting ca. 1986; this was doubtless influenced by the numerous `Eric' jokes in the Monty Python oeuvre. The...
Eric Conspiracy2 => more mustachioed Erics in hackerdom than the frequency of these three traits can account for unless they are correlated in some arcane way. Well-known examples include Eric Allman (he of the `Allman style' described under {indent ...
Eric Conspiracy3 => NNTP); your editor has heard from about fourteen others by email, and the organization line `Eric Conspiracy Secret Laboratories' now emanates regularly from more than one site. 
Eris => /e'ris/ n. The Greek goddess of Chaos, Discord, Confusion, and Things You Know Not Of; her name was latinized to Discordia and she was worshiped by that name in Rome. Not a very friendly deity in the Classical original, she was reinvented as ...
erotics => /ee-ro'tiks/ n. [Helsinki University of Technology, Finland] n. English-language university slang for electronics. Often used by hackers in Helsinki, maybe because good electronics excites them and makes them warm.
essentials => n. Things necessary to maintain a productive and secure hacking environment. "A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, a 20-megahertz 80386 box with 8 meg of core and a 300-megabyte disk supporting full UNIX with source and X windows and EMACS a...
evil => adj. As used by hackers, implies that some system, program, person, or institution is sufficiently maldesigned as to be not worth the bother of dealing with. Unlike the adjectives in the cretinous}/{losing}/{brain-damaged series, `evil' does ...
exa- => /ek's*/ [SI] pref. See {quantifiers}.
examining the entrails => n. The process of grovelling through a core dump or hex image in the attempt to discover the bug that brought a program or system down. Compare runes, incantation, {black art}, {desk check}.
EXCH => /eks'ch*/ or /eksch/ vt. To exchange two things, each for the other; to swap places. If you point to two people sitting down and say "Exch!", you are asking them to trade places. EXCH, meaning EXCHange, was originally the name of a PDP-10 ins...
excl => /eks'kl/ n. Abbreviation for `exclamation point'. See bang, shriek, {ASCII}.
EXE => /eks'ee/ or /eek'see/ or /E-X-E/ n. An executable binary file. Some operating systems (notably MS-DOS, VMS, and TWENEX) use the extension .EXE to mark such files. This usage is also occasionally found among UNIX programmers even though UNIX ex...
exec => /eg-zek'/ vt.,n. 1. [UNIX from `execute'] Synonym for chain, derives from the `exec(2)' call. 2. [from `executive'] obs. The command interpreter for an OS (see shell); term esp. used around mainframes, and prob. derived from UNIVAC's archaic ...
left as an exercise => [from technical books] Used to complete a proof when one doesn't mind a handwave, or to avoid one entirely. The complete phrase is "The proof (or the rest) is left as an exercise for the reader." This comment *has* occasionally...
left as an exercise2 => research problems by authors possessed of either an evil sense of humor or a vast faith in the capabilities of their audiences. 
eyeball search => n. To look for something in a mass of code or data with one's own native optical sensors, as opposed to using some sort of pattern matching software like grep or any other automated search tool. Also called a vgrep; compare vdiff, {...
eyeball search2 => `fabricate'] v. 1. To produce chips from a design that may have been created by someone at another company. Fabbing chips based on the designs of others is the activity of a {silicon foundry}. To a hacker, `fab' is practically neve...

factpacks/jargon.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

Finagle's Law2 => {Hanlon's Razor}). The label `Finagle's Law' was popularized by SF author Larry Niven in several stories depicting a frontier culture of asteroid miners; this `Belter' culture professed a religion and/or running joke involving the w...
Finagle's Law3 => his mad prophet Murphy. 
fine => [WPI] adj. Good, but not good enough to be cuspy. The word `fine' is used elsewhere, of course, but without the implicit comparison to the higher level implied by cuspy.
finger => [WAITS, via BSD UNIX] 1. n. A program that displays a particular user or all users logged on the system or a remote system. Typically shows full name, last login time, idle time, terminal line, and terminal location (where applicable). May ...
finger-pointing syndrome => n. All-too-frequent result of bugs, esp. in new or experimental configurations. The hardware vendor points a finger at the software. The software vendor points a finger at the hardware. All the poor users get is the finger...
firebottle => n. A large, primitive, power-hungry active electrical device, similar in function to a FET but constructed out of glass, metal, and vacuum. Characterized by high cost, low density, low reliability, high-temperature operation, and high p...
firefighting => n. 1. What sysadmins have to do to correct sudden operational problems. An opposite of hacking. "Been hacking your new newsreader?" "No, a power glitch hosed the network and I spent the whole afternoon fighting fires." 2. The act of t...
firewall code => n. The code you put in a system (say, a telephone switch) to make sure that the users can't do any damage. Since users always want to be able to do everything but never want to suffer for any mistakes, the construction of a firewall ...
firewall code2 => coding but also of interface presentation, so that users don't even get curious about those corners of a system where they can burn themselves. 
firewall machine => n. A dedicated gateway machine with special security precautions on it, used to service outside network connections and dial-in lines. The idea is to protect a cluster of more loosely administered machines hidden behind it from cr...
firewall machine2 => an inexpensive micro-based UNIX box kept clean of critical data, with a bunch of modems and public network ports on it but just one carefully watched connection back to the rest of the cluster. The special precautions may include...
firewall machine3 => even a complete {iron box} keyable to particular incoming IDs or activity patterns. Syn. flytrap, {Venus flytrap}. 
fireworks mode => n. The mode a machine is sometimes said to be in when it is performing a {crash and burn} operation.
firmy => /fer'mee/ Syn. stiffy (a 3.5-inch floppy disk).
fish => [Adelaide University, Australia] n. 1. Another metasyntactic variable. See foo. Derived originally from the Monty Python skit in the middle of "The Meaning of Life" entitled "Find the Fish". 2. A pun for `microfiche'. A microfiche file cabine...
FISH queue => [acronym, by analogy with FIFO (First In, First Out)] n. `First In, Still Here'. A joking way of pointing out that processing of a particular sequence of events or requests has stopped dead. Also `FISH mode' and `FISHnet'; the latter ma...
FISH queue2 => running really slowly or exhibiting extreme flakiness. 
fix => n.,v. What one does when a problem has been reported too many times to be ignored.
flag => n. A variable or quantity that can take on one of two values; a bit, particularly one that is used to indicate one of two outcomes or is used to control which of two things is to be done. "This flag controls whether to clear the screen before...
flag day => n. A software change that is neither forward- nor backward-compatible, and which is costly to make and costly to reverse. "Can we install that without causing a flag day for all users?" This term has nothing to do with the use of the word...
flag day2 => two values. It came into use when a massive change was made to the {Multics} timesharing system to convert from the old ASCII code to the new one; this was scheduled for Flag Day (a U.S. holiday), June 14, 1966. See also {backward combat...
flaky => adj. (var sp. `flakey') Subject to frequent lossage. This use is of course related to the common slang use of the word to describe a person as eccentric, crazy, or just unreliable. A system that is flaky is working, sort of --- enough that y...
flamage => /flay'm*j/ n. Flaming verbiage, esp. high-noise, low-signal postings to USENET or other electronic fora. Often in the phrase `the usual flamage'. `Flaming' is the act itself; `flamage' the content; a `flame' is a single flaming message. Se...
flame => 1. vi. To post an email message intended to insult and provoke. 2. vi. To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude. 3. vt. Either of senses 1 or 2, directed with hostili...
flame bait => n. A posting intended to trigger a {flame war}, or one that invites flames in reply.
flame on => vi.,interj. 1. To begin to flame. The punning reference to Marvel Comics's Human Torch is no longer widely recognized. 2. To continue to flame. See rave, burble.
flame war => n. (var. `flamewar') An acrimonious dispute, especially when conducted on a public electronic forum such as USENET.
flamer => n. One who habitually flames. Said esp. of obnoxious USENET personalities.
flap => vt. 1. To unload a DECtape (so it goes flap, flap, flap...). Old-time hackers at MIT tell of the days when the disk was device 0 and microtapes were 1, 2,... and attempting to flap device 0 would instead start a motor banging inside a cabinet...
flarp => /flarp/ [Rutgers University] n. Yet another metasyntactic variable (see foo). Among those who use it, it is associated with a legend that any program not containing the word `flarp' somewhere will not work. The legend is discreetly silent on...
flat => adj. 1. Lacking any complex internal structure. "That {bitty box} has only a flat filesystem, not a hierarchical one." The verb form is flatten. 2. Said of a memory architecture (like that of the VAX or 680x0) that is one big linear address s...
flat-ASCII => adj. Said of a text file that contains only 7-bit ASCII characters and uses only ASCII-standard control characters (that is, has no embedded codes specific to a particular text formatter or markup language, and no meta-characters). Syn....
flat-file => adj. A flattened representation of some database or tree or network structure as a single file from which the structure could implicitly be rebuilt, esp. one in flat-ASCII form.
flatten => vt. To remove structural information, esp. to filter something with an implicit tree structure into a simple sequence of leaves; also tends to imply mapping to flat-ASCII. "This code flattens an expression with parentheses into an equivale...
flavor => n. 1. Variety, type, kind. "DDT commands come in two flavors." "These lights come in two flavors, big red ones and small green ones." See vanilla. 2. The attribute that causes something to be flavorful. Usually used in the phrase "yields ad...
flavorful => adj. Full of flavor; esthetically pleasing. See random and losing for antonyms. See also the entries for taste and elegant.
flippy => /flip'ee/ n. A single-sided floppy disk altered for double-sided use by addition of a second write-notch, so called because it must be flipped over for the second side to be accessible. No longer common.
flowchart => [techspeak] n. An archaic form of visual control-flow specification employing arrows and `speech balloons' of various shapes. Hackers never use flowcharts, consider them extremely silly, and associate them with COBOL programmers, {card w...
flower key => [Mac users] n. See {command key}.
flush => v. 1. To delete something, usually superfluous, or to abort an operation. "All that nonsense has been flushed." 2. [UNIX/C] To force buffered I/O to disk, as with an `fflush(3)' call. This is *not* an abort or deletion as in sense 1, but a d...
Flyspeck 3 => n. Standard name for any font that is so tiny as to be unreadable (by analogy with such names as `Helvetica 10' for 10-point Helvetica). Legal boilerplate is usually printed in Flyspeck 3.
flytrap => n. See {firewall machine}.
FOAF => // [USENET] n. Acronym for `Friend Of A Friend'. The source of an unverified, possibly untrue story. This was not originated by hackers (it is used in Jan Brunvand's books on urban folklore), but is much better recognized on USENET and elsewh...
FOD => /fod/ v. [Abbreviation for `Finger of Death', originally a spell-name from fantasy gaming] To terminate with extreme prejudice and with no regard for other people. From MUDs where the wizard command `FOD <player>' results in the immediate and ...
fold case => v. See {smash case}. This term tends to be used more by people who don't mind that their tools smash case. It also connotes that case is ignored but case distinctions in data processed by the tool in question aren't destroyed.
followup => n. On USENET, a posting generated in response to another posting (as opposed to a reply, which goes by email rather than being broadcast). Followups include the ID of the {parent message} in their headers; smart news-readers can use this ...
foo => /foo/ 1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. Used very generally as a sample name for absolutely anything, esp. programs and files (esp. scratch files). 3. First on the standard list of metasyntactic variables used in syntax examples. See also bar, ba...
foobar => n. Another common metasyntactic variable; see foo. Hackers do *not* generally use this to mean FUBAR in either the slang or jargon sense.
fool => n. As used by hackers, specifically describes a person who habitually reasons from obviously or demonstrably incorrect premises and cannot be persuaded by evidence to do otherwise; it is not generally used in its other senses, i.e., to descri...
fool file, the => [USENET] n. A notional repository of all the most dramatically and abysmally stupid utterances ever. There is a subgenre of {sig block}s that consists of the header "From the fool file" followed by some quote the poster wishes to re...
fool file, the2 => dimwittery; for this to be really effective, the quote has to be so obviously wrong as to be laughable. More than one USENETter has achieved an unwanted notoriety by being quoted in this way. 
Foonly => n. 1. The PDP-10 successor that was to have been built by the Super Foonly project at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory along with a new operating system. The intention was to leapfrog from the old DEC timesharing system SAIL ...
footprint => n. 1. The floor or desk area taken up by a piece of hardware. 2. [IBM] The audit trail (if any) left by a crashed program (often in plural, `footprints'). See also toeprint.
for free => adj. Said of a capability of a programming language or hardware equipment that is available by its design without needing cleverness to implement "In APL, we get the matrix operations for free." "And owing to the way revisions are stored ...
for free2 => trees for free." Usually it refers to a serendipitous feature of doing things a certain way (compare {big win}), but it may refer to an intentional but secondary feature. 
for the rest of us => [from the Mac slogan "The computer for the rest of us"] adj. 1. Used to describe a spiffy product whose affordability shames other comparable products, or (more often) used sarcastically to describe spiffy but very overpriced pr...
for the rest of us2 => with a limited interface, deliberately limited capabilities, non-orthogonality, inability to compose primitives, or any other limitation designed to not `confuse' a na"ive user. This places an upper bound on how far that user c...
for the rest of us3 => get in the way of the task instead of helping accomplish it. Used in reference to Macintosh software which doesn't provide obvious capabilities because it is thought that the poor lusers might not be able to handle them. Become...
for the rest of us4 => third-party reference; thus, "Yes, it is an attractive program, but it's designed for The Rest Of Them" means a program that superficially looks neat but has no depth beyond the surface flash. See also {WIMP environment}, Macin...
fora => pl.n. Plural of forum.
foreground => [UNIX] vt. To foreground a task is to bring it to the top of one's stack for immediate processing, and hackers often use it in this sense for non-computer tasks. "If your presentation is due next week, I guess I'd better foreground writ...
forked => [UNIX; prob. influenced by a mainstream expletive] adj. Terminally slow, or dead. Originated when one system slowed to incredibly bad speeds because of a process recursively spawning copies of itself (using the UNIX system call `fork(2)') a...
Fortrash => /for'trash/ n. Hackerism for the FORTRAN language, referring to its primitive design, gross and irregular syntax, limited control constructs, and slippery, exception-filled semantics.
fortune cookie => [UNIX] n. A random quote, item of trivia, joke, or maxim printed to the user's tty at login time or (less commonly) at logout time. Items from this lexicon have often been used as fortune cookies. See {cookie file}.
forum => n. [USENET, GEnie CI$; pl. `fora' or `forums'] Any discussion group accessible through a dial-in BBS, a {mailing list}, or a newsgroup (see {network, the}). A forum functions much like a bulletin board; users submit postings for all to read ...
fossil => n. 1. In software, a misfeature that becomes understandable only in historical context, as a remnant of times past retained so as not to break compatibility. Example the retention of octal as default base for string escapes in C, in spite o...
four-color glossies => 1. Literature created by marketroids that allegedly containing technical specs but which is in fact as superficial as possible without being totally content-free. "Forget the four-color glossies, give me the tech ref manuals." ...
four-color glossies2 => superficiality even when the material is printed on ordinary paper in black and white. Four-color-glossy manuals are *never* useful for finding a problem. 2. [rare] Applied by extension to manual pages that don't contain enoug...
four-color glossies3 => program doesn't produce the expected or desired output. 
fragile => adj. Syn brittle.
fred => n. 1. The personal name most frequently used as a metasyntactic variable (see foo). Allegedly popular because it's easy for a non-touch-typist to type on a standard QWERTY keyboard. Unlike {J. Random Hacker} or `J. Random Loser', this name ha...
frednet => /fred'net/ n. Used to refer to some random and uncommon protocol encountered on a network. "We're implementing bridging in our router to solve the frednet problem."
freeware => n. Free software, often written by enthusiasts and distributed by users' groups, or via electronic mail, local bulletin boards, USENET, or other electronic media. At one time, `freeware' was a trademark of Andrew Fluegelman, the author of...
freeze => v. To lock an evolving software distribution or document against changes so it can be released with some hope of stability. Carries the strong implication that the item in question will `unfreeze' at some future date. "OK, fix that bug and ...
fried => adj. 1. Non-working due to hardware failure; burnt out. Especially used of hardware brought down by a `power glitch' (see glitch), drop-outs, a short, or some other electrical event. (Sometimes this literally happens to electronic circuits! ...
friode => /fri'ohd/ [TMRC] n. A reversible (that is, fused or blown) diode. Compare fried.
fritterware => n. An excess of capability that serves no productive end. The canonical example is font-diddling software on the Mac (see macdink); the term describes anything that eats huge amounts of time for quite marginal gains in function but sed...
frob => /frob/ 1. n. [MIT] The TMRC definition was "FROB = a protruding arm or trunnion"; by metaphoric extension, a `frob' is any random small thing; an object that you can comfortably hold in one hand; something you can frob. See frobnitz. 2. vt. A...
frobnicate => /frob'ni-kayt/ vt. [Poss. derived from frobnitz, and usually abbreviated to frob, but `frobnicate' is recognized as the official full form.] To manipulate or adjust, to tweak. One frequently frobs bits or other 2-state devices. Thus "Pl...
frobnitz => /frob'nits/, pl. `frobnitzem' /frob'nit-zm/ or `frobni' /frob'ni/ n. An unspecified physical object, a widget. Also refers to electronic black boxes. This rare form is usually abbreviated to `frotz', or more commonly to frob. Also used ar...
frog => alt. `phrog' 1. interj. Term of disgust (we seem to have a lot of them). 2. Used as a name for just about anything. See foo. 3. n. Of things, a crock. 4. n. Of people, somewhere in between a turkey and a toad. 5. `froggy' adj. Similar to `bag...
frotz => /frots/ 1. n. See frobnitz. 2. `mumble frotz' An interjection of very mild disgust.
frotzed => /frotst/ adj. down because of hardware problems. Compare fried. A machine that is merely frotzed may be fixable without replacing parts, but a fried machine is more seriously damaged.
frowney => n. (alt. `frowney face') See emoticon.
fry => 1. vi. To fail. Said especially of smoke-producing hardware failures. More generally, to become non-working. Usage never said of software, only of hardware and humans. See fried, {magic smoke}. 2. vt. To cause to fail; to roach, toast, or hose...
FTP => /F-T-P/, *not* /fit'ip/ 1. [techspeak] n. The File Transfer Protocol for transmitting files between systems on the Internet. 2. vt. To beam a file using the File Transfer Protocol. 3. Sometimes used as a generic even for file transfers not usi...
FUBAR => n. The Failed UniBus Address Register in a VAX. A good example of how jargon can occasionally be snuck past the suits; see foobar.
fuck me harder => excl. Sometimes uttered in response to egregious misbehavior, esp. in software, and esp. of misbehaviors which seem unfairly persistent (as though designed in by the imp of the perverse). Often theatrically elaborated "Aiighhh! Fuck...
fuck me harder2 => curare-tipped wrought-iron fence *and no lubricants*!" The phrase is sometimes heard abbreviated `FMH' in polite company. [This entry is an extreme example of the hackish habit of coining elaborate and evocative terms for lossage. ...
fuck me harder3 => parody of mainstream expletives that has become a running gag in part of the hacker culture; it illustrates the hackish tendency to turn any situation, even one of extreme frustration, into an intellectual game (the point being, in...
fuck me harder4 => long-winded description of the most anatomically absurd mental image possible --- the short forms implicitly allude to all the ridiculous long forms ever spoken). Scatological language is actually relatively uncommon among hackers,...
fuck me harder5 => whether this entry ought to be included at all. As it reflects a live usage recognizably peculiar to the hacker culture, we feel it is in the hackish spirit of truthfulness and opposition to all forms of censorship to record it her...
FUD => /fuhd/ n. Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering [Amdahl] products." The idea, of co...
FUD wars => /fuhd worz/ n. [from FUD] Political posturing engaged in by hardware and software vendors ostensibly committed to standardization but actually willing to fragment the market to protect their own shares. The UNIX International vs. OSF conf...
fudge => 1. vt. To perform in an incomplete but marginally acceptable way, particularly with respect to the writing of a program. "I didn't feel like going through that pain and suffering, so I fudged it --- I'll fix it later." 2. n. The resulting co...
fudge factor => n. A value or parameter that is varied in an ad hoc way to produce the desired result. The terms `tolerance' and slop are also used, though these usually indicate a one-sided leeway, such as a buffer that is made larger than necessary...
fudge factor2 => how large it needs to be, and it is better to waste a little space than to lose completely for not having enough. A fudge factor, on the other hand, can often be tweaked in more than one direction. A good example is the `fuzz' typica...
fudge factor3 => calculations two numbers being compared for equality must be allowed to differ by a small amount; if that amount is too small, a computation may never terminate, while if it is too large, results will be needlessly inaccurate. Fudge ...
fudge factor4 => incorrectly by programmers who don't fully understand their import. See also {coefficient of X}. 
fuel up => vi. To eat or drink hurriedly in order to get back to hacking. "Food-p?" "Yeah, let's fuel up." "Time for a great-wall!" See also {{oriental food}}.
fuggly => /fuhg'lee/ adj. Emphatic form of funky; funky + ugly). Unusually for hacker jargon, this may actually derive from black street-jive. To say it properly, the first syllable should be growled rather than spoken. Usage humorous. "Man, the {ASC...
funky => adj. Said of something that functions, but in a slightly strange, klugey way. It does the job and would be difficult to change, so its obvious non-optimality is left alone. Often used to describe interfaces. The more bugs something has that ...
funny money => n. 1. Notional `dollar' units of computing time and/or storage handed to students at the beginning of a computer course; also called `play money' or `purple money' (in implicit opposition to real or `green' money). When your funny mone...
funny money2 => you needed to go to a professor to get more. Fortunately, the plunging cost of timesharing cycles has made this less common. The amounts allocated were almost invariably too small, even for the non-hackers who wanted to slide by with ...
funny money3 => practice led to small-scale black markets in bootlegged computer accounts. 2. By extension, phantom money or quantity tickets of any kind used as a resource-allocation hack within a system. Antonym `real money'. 
fuzzball => [TCP/IP hackers] n. A DEC LSI-11 running a particular suite of homebrewed software written by Dave Mills and assorted co-conspirators, used in the early 1980s for Internet protocol testbedding and experimentation. These were used as NSFne...
gabriel => /gay'bree-*l/ [for Dick Gabriel, SAIL LISP hacker and volleyball fanatic] n. An unnecessary (in the opinion of the opponent) stalling tactic, e.g., tying one's shoelaces or combing one's hair repeatedly, asking the time, etc. Also used to ...
gag => vi. Equivalent to choke, but connotes more disgust. "Hey, this is FORTRAN code. No wonder the C compiler gagged." See also barf.
gang bang => n. The use of large numbers of loosely coupled programmers in an attempt to wedge a great many features into a product in a short time. Though there have been memorable gang bangs (e.g., that over-the-weekend assembler port mentioned in ...
gang bang2 => perpetrated by large companies trying to meet deadlines and produce enormous buggy masses of code entirely lacking in orthogonality. When market-driven managers make a list of all the features the competition has and assign one programm...
gang bang3 => miss the importance of maintaining a coherent design. See also firefighting, {Mongolian Hordes technique}, {Conway's Law}. 
garbage collect => vi. (also `garbage collection', n.) See GC.
garply => /gar'plee/ [Stanford] n. Another meta-syntactic variable (see foo); once popular among SAIL hackers.
gas => [as in `gas chamber'] 1. interj. A term of disgust and hatred, implying that gas should be dispensed in generous quantities, thereby exterminating the source of irritation. "Some loser just reloaded the system for no reason! Gas!" 2. interj. A...
gaseous => adj. Deserving of being gassed. Disseminated by Geoff Goodfellow while at SRI; became particularly popular after the Moscone-Milk killings in San Francisco, when it was learned that the defendant Dan White (a politician who had supported P...
GC => /G-C/ [from LISP terminology; `Garbage Collect'] 1. vt. To clean up and throw away useless things. "I think I'll GC the top of my desk today." When said of files, this is equivalent to GFR. 2. vt. To recycle, reclaim, or put to another use. 3. ...
GCOS => /jee'kohs/ n. A quick-and-dirty clone of System/360 DOS that emerged from GE around 1970; originally called GECOS (the General Electric Comprehensive Operating System). Later kluged to support primitive timesharing and transaction processing....
GECOS => /jee'kohs/ n. See {GCOS}.
gedanken => /g*-don'kn/ adj. Ungrounded; impractical; not well-thought-out; untried; untested. `Gedanken' is a German word for `thought'. A thought experiment is one you carry out in your head. In physics, the term `gedanken experiment' is used to re...
geef => v. [ostensibly from `gefingerpoken'] vt. Syn. mung. See also blinkenlights.
geek out => vi. To temporarily enter techno-nerd mode while in a non-hackish context, for example at parties held near computer equipment. Especially used when you need to do something highly technical and don't have time to explain "Pardon me while ...
gen => /jen/ n.,v. Short for generate, used frequently in both spoken and written contexts.
gender mender => n. A cable connector shell with either two male or two female connectors on it, used to correct the mismatches that result when some loser didn't understand the RS232C specification and the distinction between DTE and DCE. Used esp. ...
gender mender2 => original D-25 or the IBM PC's bogus D-9 format. Also called `gender bender', `gender blender', `sex changer', and even `homosexual adapter'; however, there appears to be some confusion as to whether a `male homosexual adapter' has p...
gender mender3 => on both sides (connects two males). 
General Public Virus => n. Pejorative name for some versions of the GNU project copyleft or General Public License (GPL), which requires that any tools or apps incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same counter-commercial te...
General Public Virus2 => alleged that the copyleft `infects' software generated with GNU tools, which may in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code. The Free Software Foundation's official position as of January 1991 is that copyright...
General Public Virus3 => "programs textually incorporating significant amounts of GNU code", and that the `infection' is not passed on to third parties unless actual GNU source is transmitted (as in, for example, use of the Bison parser skeleton). Ne...
General Public Virus4 => the copyleft language is `boobytrapped' has caused many developers to avoid using GNU tools and the GPL. Recent (July 1991) changes in the language of the version 2.00 language may eliminate this problem. 
generate => vt. To produce something according to an algorithm or program or set of rules, or as a (possibly unintended) side effect of the execution of an algorithm or program. The opposite of parse. This term retains its mechanistic connotations (t...
gensym => /jen'sim/ [from MacLISP for `generated symbol'] 1. v. To invent a new name for something temporary, in such a way that the name is almost certainly not in conflict with one already in use. 2. n. The resulting name. The canonical form of a g...
Get a life! => imp. Hacker-standard way of suggesting that the person to whom you are speaking has succumbed to terminal geekdom (see {computer geek}). Often heard on USENET, esp. as a way of suggesting that the target is taking some obscure issue of...
Get a life!2 => exhortation was popularized by William Shatner on a "Saturday Night Live" episode in a speech that ended "Get a *life*!", but some respondents believe it to have been in use before then. 
Get a real computer! => imp. Typical hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a system that (a) is single-tasking, (b) has no hard disk, or (c) has an address space smaller than 4 megabytes. This is as of mid-1991;...
Get a real computer!2 => computer' rises with time, and it may well be (for example) that machines with character-only displays will be generally considered `unreal' in a few years (GLS points out that they already are in some circles). See essential...
GFR => /G-F-R/ vt. [ITS] From `Grim File Reaper', an ITS and Lisp Machine utility. To remove a file or files according to some program-automated or semi-automatic manual procedure, especially one designed to reclaim mass storage space or reduce name-...
gig => /jig/ or /gig/ [SI] n. See {quantifiers}.
giga- => /ji'ga/ or /gi'ga/ [SI] pref. See {quantifiers}.
GIGO => /gi'goh/ [acronym] 1. `Garbage In, Garbage Out' --- usually said in response to lusers who complain that a program didn't complain about faulty data. Also commonly used to describe failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, ...
gillion => /gil'y*n/ or /jil'y*n/ [formed from giga- by analogy with mega/million and tera/trillion] n. 10^9. Same as an American billion or a British `milliard'. How one pronounces this depends on whether one speaks giga- with a hard or soft `g'.
GIPS => /gips/ or /jips/ [analogy with MIPS] n. Giga-Instructions per Second (also possibly `Gillions of Instructions per Second'; see gillion). In 1991, this is used of only a handful of highly parallel machines, but this is expected to change. Comp...
glark => /glark/ vt. To figure something out from context. "The System III manuals are pretty poor, but you can generally glark the meaning from context." Interestingly, the word was originally `glork'; the context was "This gubblick contains many no...
glass => [IBM] n. Synonym for silicon.
glass tty => /glas T-T-Y/ or /glas ti'tee/ n. A terminal that has a display screen but which, because of hardware or software limitations, behaves like a teletype or some other printing terminal, thereby combining the disadvantages of both like a pri...
glass tty2 => display hacks, and like a display terminal, it doesn't produce hard copy. An example is the early `dumb' version of Lear-Siegler ADM 3 (without cursor control). See tube, tty. See appendix A for an interesting true story about a glass t...
glassfet => /glas'fet/ [by analogy with MOSFET, the acronym for `Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor'] n. Syn. firebottle, a humorous way to refer to a vacuum tube.
glitch => /glich/ [from German `glitschen' to slip, via Yiddish `glitshen', to slide or skid] 1. n. A sudden interruption in electric service, sanity, continuity, or program function. Sometimes recoverable. An interruption in electric service is spec...
glob => /glob/, *not* /glohb/ [UNIX] vt.,n. To expand special characters in a wildcarded name, or the act of so doing (the action is also called `globbing'). The UNIX conventions for filename wildcarding have become sufficiently pervasive that many h...
glork => /glork/ 1. interj. Term of mild surprise, usually tinged with outrage, as when one attempts to save the results of 2 hours of editing and finds that the system has just crashed. 2. Used as a name for just about anything. See foo. 3. vt. Simi...
glue => n. Generic term for any interface logic or protocol that connects two component blocks. For example, {Blue Glue} is IBM's SNA protocol, and hardware designers call anything used to connect large VLSI's or circuit blocks `glue logic'.
gnarly => /nar'lee/ adj. Both obscure and hairy in the sense of complex. "Yow! --- the tuned assembler implementation of BitBlt is really gnarly!" From a similar but less specific usage in surfer slang.
GNU => /gnoo/, *not* /noo/ 1. [acronym `GNU's Not UNIX!', see {{recursive acronym}}] A UNIX-workalike development effort of the Free Software Foundation headed by Richard Stallman (rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu). GNU EMACS and the GNU C compiler, two tools desi...
GNUMACS => /gnoo'maks/ [contraction of `GNU EMACS'] Often-heard abbreviated name for the GNU project's flagship tool, EMACS. Used esp. in contrast with GOSMACS.
go flatline => [from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG traces upon brain-death] vi., also adjectival `flatlined'. 1. To die, terminate, or fail, esp. irreversibly. In hacker parlance, this is used of machines only, human death being considere...
go flatline2 => employ jargon-jokes. 2. To go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing controlled shutdown. "You can suffer file damage if you shut down UNIX but power off before the system has gone flatline." 3. Of a video tube, to fail by ...
go flatline3 => sees is a bright horizontal line bisecting the screen. 
go root => [UNIX] vi. To temporarily enter {root mode} in order to perform a privileged operation. This use is deprecated in Australia, where v. `root' refers to animal sex.
go-faster stripes => [UK] Syn. chrome.
gobble => vt. To consume or to obtain. The phrase `gobble up' tends to imply `consume', while `gobble down' tends to imply `obtain'. "The output spy gobbles characters out of a tty output buffer." "I guess I'll gobble down a copy of the documentation...
Godzillagram => /god-zil'*-gram/ n. [from Japan's national hero] 1. A network packet that in theory is a broadcast to every machine in the universe. The typical case of this is an IP datagram whose destination IP address is [255.255.255.255]. Fortuna...
golden => adj. [prob. from folklore's `golden egg'] When used to describe a magnetic medium (e.g., `golden disk', `golden tape'), describes one containing a tested, up-to-spec, ready-to-ship software version. Compare platinum-iridium.
golf-ball printer => n. The IBM 2741, a slow but letter-quality printing device and terminal based on the IBM Selectric typewriter. The `golf ball' was a round object bearing reversed embossed images of 88 different characters arranged on four meridi...
golf-ball printer2 => font by swapping in a different golf ball. This was the technology that enabled APL to use a non-EBCDIC, non-ASCII, and in fact completely non-standard character set. This put it 10 years ahead of its time --- where it stayed, f...
golf-ball printer3 => character displays gave way to programmable bit-mapped devices with the flexibility to support other character sets. 
gonk => /gonk/ vt.,n. 1. To prevaricate or to embellish the truth beyond any reasonable recognition. It is alleged that in German the term is (mythically) `gonken'; in Spanish the verb becomes `gonkar'. "You're gonking me. That story you just told me...
gonkulator => /gon'kyoo-lay-tr/ [from the old "Hogan's Heroes" TV series] n. A pretentious piece of equipment that actually serves no useful purpose. Usually used to describe one's least favorite piece of computer hardware. See gonk.
gonzo => /gon'zoh/ [from Hunter S. Thompson] adj. Overwhelming; outrageous; over the top; very large, esp. used of collections of source code, source files, or individual functions. Has some of the connotations of moby and hairy, but without the impl...
Good Thing => n.,adj. Often capitalized; always pronounced as if capitalized. 1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a position to notice "The Trailblazer's 19.2Kbaud PEP mode with on-the-fly Lempel-Ziv compression is a Good Thing for sites relayin...
Good Thing2 => possibly have any ill side-effects and may save considerable grief later "Removing the self-modifying code from that shared library would be a Good Thing." 3. When said of software tools or libraries, as in "YACC is a Good Thing", spec...
Good Thing3 => drastically reduced a programmer's work load. Oppose {Bad Thing}. 
gorilla arm => n. The side-effect that destroyed touch-screens as a mainstream input technology despite a promising start in the early 1980s. It seems the designers of all those spiffy touch-menu systems failed to notice that humans aren't designed t...
gorilla arm2 => their faces making small motions. After more than a very few selections, the arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and oversized; hence `gorilla arm'. This is now considered a classic cautionary tale to human-factors designers; "Remember ...
gorilla arm3 => "How is this going to fly in *real* use?". 
gorp => /gorp/ [CMU perhaps from the canonical hiker's food, Good Old Raisins and Peanuts] Another metasyntactic variable, like foo and bar.
GOSMACS => /goz'maks/ [contraction of `Gosling EMACS'] n. The first EMACS-in-C implementation, predating but now largely eclipsed by GNUMACS. Originally freeware; a commercial version is now modestly popular as `UniPress EMACS'. The author (James Gos...
Gosperism => /gos'p*r-izm/ A hack, invention, or saying by arch-hacker R. William (Bill) Gosper. This notion merits its own term because there are so many of them. Many of the entries in HAKMEM are Gosperisms; see also life.
gotcha => n. A misfeature of a system, especially a programming language or environment, that tends to breed bugs or mistakes because it behaves in an unexpected way. For example, a classic gotcha in C is the fact that `if (a=b) code;' is syntactical...
GPL => /G-P-L/ n. Abbrev. for `General Public License' in widespread use; see copyleft.
GPV => /G-P-V/ n. Abbrev. for {General Public Virus} in widespread use.
grault => /grawlt/ n. Yet another meta-syntactic variable, invented by Mike Gallaher and propagated by the GOSMACS documentation. See corge.
gray goo => n. A hypothetical substance composed of sagans of sub-micron-sized self-replicating robots programmed to make copies of themselves out of whatever is available. The image that goes with the term is one of the entire biosphere of Earth bei...
gray goo2 => goo. This is the simplest of the {nanotechnology} disaster scenarios, easily refuted by arguments from energy requirements and elemental abundances. Compare {blue goo}. 
Great Renaming => n. The {flag day} on which all of the non-local groups on the USENET had their names changed from the net.- format to the current multiple-hierarchies scheme.
Great Runes => n. Uppercase-only text or display messages. Some archaic operating systems still emit these. See also runes, {smash case}, {fold case}. Decades ago, back in the days when it was the sole supplier of long-distance hardcopy transmittal d...
Great Runes2 => Corporation was faced with a major design choice. To shorten code lengths and cut complexity in the printing mechanism, it had been decided that teletypes would use a monocase font, either ALL UPPER or all lower. The question was, whi...
Great Runes3 => conducted on readability under various conditions of bad ribbon, worn print hammers, etc. Lowercase won; it is less dense and has more distinctive letterforms, and is thus much easier to read both under ideal conditions and when the l...
Great Runes4 => obscured. The results were filtered up through management. The chairman of Teletype killed the proposal because it failed one incredibly important criterion "It would be impossible to spell the name of the Deity correctly." In this wa...
Great Runes5 => folklore has it) superstition triumphed over utility. Teletypes were the major input devices on most early computers, and terminal manufacturers looking for corners to cut naturally followed suit until well into the 1970s. Thus, that ...
Great Runes6 => Runes for thirty years. 
great-wall => [from SF fandom] vi.,n. A mass expedition to an oriental restaurant, esp. one where food is served family-style and shared. There is a common heuristic about the amount of food to order, expressed as "Get N - 1 entrees"; the value of N,...
Green Book => n. 1. One of the three standard PostScript references `PostScript Language Program Design', bylined `Adobe Systems' (Addison-Wesley, 1988; QA76.73.P67P66 ISBN; 0-201-14396-8); see also {Red Book}, {Blue Book}). 2. Informal name for one ...
Green Book2 => SmallTalk `Smalltalk-80 Bits of History, Words of Advice', by Glenn Krasner (Addison-Wesley, 1983; QA76.8.S635S58; ISBN 0-201-11669-3) (this, too, is associated with blue and red books). 3. The `X/Open Compatibility Guide'. Defines an ...
Green Book3 => environment that is a proper superset of POSIX/SVID; also includes descriptions of a standard utility toolkit, systems administrations features, and the like. This grimoire is taken with particular seriousness in Europe. See {Purple Bo...
Green Book4 => Operating Systems Interface standard has been dubbed "The Ugly Green Book". 5. Any of the 1992 standards which will be issued by the CCITT's tenth plenary assembly. Until now, these have changed color each review cycle (1984 was {Red B...
Green Book5 => is rumored that this convention is going to be dropped before 1992. These include, among other things, the X.400 email standard and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also {{book titles}}. 
green bytes => n. 1. Meta-information embedded in a file, such as the length of the file or its name; as opposed to keeping such information in a separate description file or record. The term comes from an IBM user's group meeting (ca. 1962) at which...
green bytes2 => debated and the diagram of the file on the blackboard had the `green bytes' drawn in green. 2. By extension, the non-data bits in any self-describing format. "A GIF file contains, among other things, green bytes describing the packing...
green bytes3 => out-of-band, zigamorph, fence (sense 1). 
green card => n. [after the `IBM System/360 Reference Data' card] This is used for any summary of an assembly language, even if the color is not green. Less frequently used now because of the decrease in the use of assembly language. "I'll go get my ...
green card2 => addressing mode for that instruction." Some green cards are actually booklets. The original green card became a yellow card when the System/370 was introduced, and later a yellow booklet. An anecdote from IBM refers to a scene that too...
green card3 => room at Yorktown in 1978. A luser overheard one of the programmers ask another "Do you have a green card?" The other grunted and passed the first a thick yellow booklet. At this point the luser turned a delicate shade of olive and rapi...
green card4 => return. See also card. 
green lightning => [IBM] n. 1. Apparently random flashing streaks on the face of 3278-9 terminals while a new symbol set is being downloaded. This hardware bug was left deliberately unfixed, as some genius within IBM suggested it would let the user k...
green lightning2 => That, it certainly does. Later microprocessor-driven IBM color graphics displays were actually *programmed* to produce green lightning! 2. [proposed] Any bug perverted into an alleged feature by adroit rationalization or marketing...
green lightning3 => the 88000 architecture `compatibility logic', but I call it green lightning". See also feature. 
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. "...

factpacks/jargon.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

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...
shelfware => /shelfweir/ n. Software purchased on a whim (by an individual user) or in accordance with policy (by a corporation or government agency), but not actually required for any particular use. Therefore, it often ends up on some shelf.
shell => [orig. {Multics} techspeak, widely propagated via UNIX] n. 1. [techspeak] The command interpreter used to pass commands to an operating system; so called because it is the part of the operating system that interfaces with the outside world. ...
shell out => [UNIX] n. To spawn an interactive subshell from within a program (e.g., a mailer or editor). "Bang foo runs foo in a subshell, while bang alone shells out."
shift left logical => [from any of various machines' instruction sets] 1. vi. To move oneself to the left (right). To move out of the way. 2. imper. "Get out of that (my) seat! You can shift to that empty one to the left (right)." Often used without ...
shift left logical2 => instead of `shift left'. Sometimes heard as LSH /lish/, from the PDP-10 instruction set. See {Programmer's Cheer}. 
shitogram => /shit'oh-gram/ n. A *really* nasty piece of email. Compare nastygram, flame.
short card => n. A half-length IBM PC expansion card or adapter that will fit in one of the two short slots located towards the right rear of a standard chassis (tucked behind the floppy disk drives). See also {tall card}.
shotgun debugging => n. The software equivalent of {Easter egging}; the making of relatively undirected changes to software in the hope that a bug will be perturbed out of existence. This almost never works, and usually introduces more bugs.
showstopper => n. A hardware or (especially) software bug that makes an implementation effectively unusable; one that absolutely has to be fixed before development can go on. Opposite in connotation from its original theatrical use, which refers to s...
shriek => n. See excl. Occasional CMU usage, also in common use among APL fans and mathematicians, especially category theorists.
Shub-Internet => /shuhb in't*r-net/ [MUD from H. P. Lovecraft's evil fictional deity `Shub-Niggurath', the Black Goat with a Thousand Young] n. The harsh personification of the Internet, Beast of a Thousand Processes, Eater of Characters, Avatar of L...
sidecar => n. 1. Syn. {slap on the side}. Esp. used of add-ons for the late and unlamented IBM PCjr. 2. The IBM PC compatibility box that could be bolted onto the side of an Amiga. Designed and produced by Commodore, it broke all of the company's own...
sig block => /sig blok/ [UNIX often written `.sig' there] n. Short for `signature', used specifically to refer to the electronic signature block that most UNIX mail- and news-posting software will automagically append to outgoing mail and news. The c...
sig block2 => quite an art form, including an ASCII logo or one's choice of witty sayings (see {sig quote}, {fool file}); but many consider large sigs a waste of bandwidth, and it has been observed that the size of one's sig block is usually inversel...
sig block3 => and level of prestige on the net. 
sig quote => /sig kwoht/ [USENET] n. A maxim, quote, proverb, joke, or slogan embedded in one's {sig block} and intended to convey something of one's philosophical stance, pet peeves, or sense of humor. "Calm down, it's only ones and zeroes."
signal-to-noise ratio => [from analog electronics] n. Used by hackers in a generalization of its technical meaning. `Signal' refers to useful information conveyed by some communications medium, and `noise' to anything else on that medium. Hence a low...
signal-to-noise ratio2 => paying attention to the medium in question. Figures for such metaphorical ratios are never given. The term is most often applied to USENET newsgroups during {flame war}s. Compare bandwidth. See also {coefficient of X}, {lost...
silicon => n. Hardware, esp. ICs or microprocessor-based computer systems (compare iron). Contrasted with software. See also sandbender.
silicon foundry => n. A company that fabs chips to the designs of others. As of the late 1980s, the combination of silicon foundries and good computer-aided design software made it much easier for hardware-designing startup companies to come into bei...
silicon foundry2 => silicon foundry is that the distance from the actual chip-fabrication processes reduces designers' control of detail. This is somewhat analogous to the use of HLLs versus coding in assembler. 
silly walk => [from Monty Python's Flying Circus] vi. 1. A ridiculous procedure required to accomplish a task. Like grovel, but more random and humorous. "I had to silly-walk through half the /usr directories to find the maps file." 2. Syn. {fandango...
silo => n. The FIFO input-character buffer in an RS-232 line card. So called from DEC terminology used on DH and DZ line cards for the VAX and PDP-11, presumably because it was a storage space for fungible stuff that you put in the top and took out t...
Silver Book => n. Jensen and Wirth's infamous `Pascal User Manual and Report', so called because of the silver cover of the widely distributed Springer-Verlag second edition of 1978 (ISBN 0-387-90144-2). See {{book titles}}, Pascal.
since time T equals minus infinity => adj. A long time ago; for as long as anyone can remember; at the time that some particular frob was first designed. Usually the word `time' is omitted. See also {time T}.
sitename => /sit'naym/ [UNIX/Internet] n. The unique electronic name of a computer system, used to identify it in UUCP mail, USENET, or other forms of electronic information interchange. The folklore interest of sitenames stems from the creativity an...
skrog => v. Syn. scrog.
skulker => n. Syn. prowler.
slap on the side => n. (also called a sidecar, or abbreviated `SOTS'.) A type of external expansion hardware marketed by computer manufacturers (e.g., Commodore for the Amiga 500/1000 series and IBM for the hideous failure called `PCjr'). Various SOT...
slap on the side2 => as memory, hard drive controllers, and conventional expansion slots. 
slash => n. Common name for the slant (`/', ASCII 0101111) character. See ASCII for other synonyms.
sleep => vi. 1. [techspeak] On a timesharing system, a process that relinquishes its claim on the scheduler until some given event occurs or a specified time delay elapses is said to `go to sleep'. 2. In jargon, used very similarly to v. block; also ...
slim => n. A small, derivative change (e.g., to code).
slop => n. 1. A one-sided {fudge factor}, that is, an allowance for error but in only one of two directions. For example, if you need a piece of wire 10 feet long and have to guess when you cut it, you make very sure to cut it too long, by a large am...
slopsucker => /slop'suhk-r/ n. A lowest-priority task that must wait around until everything else has `had its fill' of machine resources. Only when the machine would otherwise be idle is the task allowed to `suck up the slop'. Also called a {hungry ...
slurp => vt. To read a large data file entirely into core before working on it. This may be contrasted with the strategy of reading a small piece at a time, processing it, and then reading the next piece. "This program slurps in a 1K-by-1K matrix and...
smart => adj. Said of a program that does the {Right Thing} in a wide variety of complicated circumstances. There is a difference between calling a program smart and calling it intelligent; in particular, there do not exist any intelligent programs (...
smart terminal => n. A terminal that has enough computing capability to render graphics or to offload some kind of front-end processing from the computer it talks to. The development of workstations and personal computers has made this term and the p...
smart terminal2 => semi-obsolescent, but one may still hear variants of the phrase `act like a smart terminal' used to describe the behavior of workstations or PCs with respect to programs that execute almost entirely out of a remote server's storage...
smart terminal3 => Compare {glass tty}. There is a classic quote from Rob Pike (inventor of the blit terminal) "A smart terminal is not a smart*ass* terminal, but rather a terminal you can educate." This illustrates a common design problem The attemp...
smart terminal4 => else) intelligent sometimes results in finicky, rigid `special features' that become just so much dead weight if you try to use the device in any way the designer didn't anticipate. Flexibility and programmability, on the other han...
smash case => vi. To lose or obliterate the uppercase/lowercase distinction in text input. "MS-DOS will automatically smash case in the names of all the files you create." Compare {fold case}.
smash the stack => [C programming] n. On many C implementations it is possible to corrupt the execution stack by writing past the end of an array declared `auto' in a routine. Code that does this is said to `smash the stack', and can cause return fro...
smash the stack2 => address. This can produce some of the most insidious data-dependent bugs known to mankind. Variants include `trash' the stack, scribble the stack, mangle the stack; the term *mung the stack is not used, as this is never done inten...
smash the stack3 => also {aliasing bug}, {fandango on core}, {memory leak}, {precedence lossage}, {overrun screw}. 
smiley => n. See emoticon.
smoke test => n. 1. A rudimentary form of testing applied to electronic equipment following repair or reconfiguration, in which power is applied and the tester checks for sparks, smoke, or other dramatic signs of fundamental failure. See {magic smoke...
smoke test2 => of a piece of software after construction or a critical change. See and compare {reality check}. There is an interesting semi-parallel to this term among typographers and printers When new typefaces are being punch-cut by hand, a `smok...
smoke test3 => smoke, then press it onto paper) is used to check out new dies. 
smoking clover => [ITS] n. A {display hack} originally due to Bill Gosper. Many convergent lines are drawn on a color monitor in AOS mode (so that every pixel struck has its color incremented). The lines all have one endpoint in the middle of the scr...
smoking clover2 => spaced one pixel apart around the perimeter of a large square. The color map is then repeatedly rotated. This results in a striking, rainbow-hued, shimmering four-leaf clover. Gosper joked about keeping it hidden from the FDA (the ...
smoking clover3 => Administration) lest its hallucinogenic properties cause it to be banned. 
SMOP => /S-M-O-P/ [Simple (or Small) Matter of Programming] n. 1. A piece of code, not yet written, whose anticipated length is significantly greater than its complexity. Used to refer to a program that could obviously be written, but is not worth th...
SNAFU principle => /sna'foo prin'si-pl/ [from WWII Army acronym for `Situation Normal, All Fucked Up'] n. "True communication is possible only between equals, because inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their superiors pleasant lies ...
SNAFU principle2 => central tenet of Discordianism, often invoked by hackers to explain why authoritarian hierarchies screw up so reliably and systematically. The effect of the SNAFU principle is a progressive disconnection of decision-makers from re...
snail => vt. To snail-mail something. "Snail me a copy of those graphics, will you?"
snail-mail => n. Paper mail, as opposed to electronic. Sometimes written as the single word `SnailMail'. One's postal address is, correspondingly, a `snail address'. Derives from earlier coinage `USnail' (from `U.S. Mail'), for which there have been ...
snap => v. To replace a pointer to a pointer with a direct pointer; to replace an old address with the forwarding address found there. If you telephone the main number for an institution and ask for a particular person by name, the operator may tell ...
snarf => /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 also blast. Thi...
snarf & barf => /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 was a ma...
snarf & barf2 => regret it later' cheap-restaurant expedition. 
snarf down => 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 recently."
snark => [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 on a compu...
sneakernet => /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 station wagon...
sniff => v.,n. Synonym for poll.
snivitz => /sniv'itz/ n. A hiccup in hardware or software; a small, transient problem of unknown origin (less serious than a snark). Compare glitch.
SO => /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, MOTOS, MOTSS. 2. ...
social science number => [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 much bett...
social science number2 => considerably worse. Management loves them. See also numbers, math-out, {pretty pictures}. 
soft boot => n. See boot.
softcopy => /soft'ko-pee/ n. [by analogy with `hardcopy'] A machine-readable form of corresponding hardcopy. See bits, machinable.
software bloat => 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 => 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 become out of d...
software rot2 => 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 around} at ...
software rot3 => 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 applied f...
software rot4 => 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 was a real...
software rot5 => (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-so needs an...
software rot6 => 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 the hardware...
software rot7 => 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, it figur...
software rot8 => day, and corrected appropriately. Compare {bit rot}. 
softwarily => /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 => [IBM] n. Hardware hackers' term for a software expert who is largely ignorant of the mysteries of hardware.
some random X => 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 => [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 such beha...
sorcerer's apprentice mode2 => loops in email software. Compare {broadcast storm}, {network meltdown}. 
SOS => 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. Unfortunately, t...
source of all good bits => 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 competent secr...
space-cadet keyboard => 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 with no fewe...
space-cadet keyboard2 => 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 letter o...
space-cadet keyboard3 => 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 keyboard, you ...
space-cadet keyboard4 => 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 meanings of tha...
space-cadet keyboard5 => 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 operate. See ...
space-cadet keyboard6 => bucky}, {meta bit}, {quadruple bucky}. 
SPACEWAR => 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 implemented on the...
spaghetti code => 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 code has ma...
spaghetti inheritance => 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 sake of ...
spaghetti inheritance2 => (successful) attempt to discourage such practice, through guilt-by-association with {spaghetti code}. 
spam => [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 => 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 interface...
speedometer => 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 indicates t...
spell => n. Syn. incantation.
spiffy => /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 than a flashy...
spin => vi. Equivalent to buzz. More common among C and UNIX programmers.
spl => /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. Classically, ...
splat => 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 people for the...
sponge => [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 stream. If you...
spooge => /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 => [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 useful with ...
stack => 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 way down on...
stack puke => 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 machine, ...
stale pointer bug => n. Synonym for {aliasing bug} used esp. among microcomputer hackers.
state => 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?" means "What...
steam-powered => 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 => [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 => 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, ravs, {{laser chick...
stomp on => 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 => n., adj. 1. In computer folklore, an ill-defined period from ENIAC (ca. 1943) to the mid-1950s; the great age of electromechanical dinosaurs. Sometimes used for the entire period up to 1960--61 (see {Iron Age}); however, it is funnier an...
Stone Age2 => 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 pejorative f...
Stone Age3 => hardware or software technology. Note that this is used even by people who were there for the {Stone Age} (sense 1). 
stoppage => /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 => [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 swapped in.
stroke => n. Common name for the slant (`/', ASCII 0101111) character. See ASCII for other synonyms.
strudel => n. Common (spoken) name for the circumflex (`', ASCII 1000000) character. See ASCII for other synonyms.
stubroutine => /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 => /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 => adj. Mind-bogglingly stupid. Usually used in sarcasm. "You want to code *what* in ADA? That's ... a stunning idea!"
stupid-sort => n. Syn. bogo-sort.
subshell => /suhb'shel/ [UNIX, MS-DOS] n. An OS command interpreter (see shell) spawned from within a program, such that exit from the command interpreter returns one to the parent program in a state that allows it to continue execution. Compare {she...
sucking mud => [Applied Data Research] adj. (also `pumping mud') Crashed or wedged. Usually said of a machine that provides some service to a network, such as a file server. This Dallas regionalism derives from the East Texas oilfield lament, "Shut '...
sucking mud2 => Often used as a query. "We are going to reconfigure the network, are you ready to suck mud?" 
sufficiently small => adj. Syn. {suitably small}.
suit => n. 1. Ugly and uncomfortable `business clothing' often worn by non-hackers. Invariably worn with a `tie', a strangulation device that partially cuts off the blood supply to the brain. It is thought that this explains much about the behavior o...
suitable win => n. See win.
suitably small => [perverted from mathematical jargon] adj. An expression used ironically to characterize unquantifiable behavior that differs from expected or required behavior. For example, suppose a newly created program came up with a correct ful...
suitably small2 => exclaimed "It works!" Then, if the program dumps core on the first mouse click, one might add "Well, for suitably small values of `works'." Compare the characterization of pi under {{random numbers}}. 
sun-stools => n. Unflattering hackerism for SunTools, a pre-X windowing environment notorious in its day for size, slowness, and misfeatures. X, however, is larger and slower; see {second-system effect}.
sunspots => n. 1. Notional cause of an odd error. "Why did the program suddenly turn the screen blue?" "Sunspots, I guess." 2. Also the cause of {bit rot} --- from the myth that sunspots will increase {cosmic rays}, which can flip single bits in memo...
superprogrammer => n. A prolific programmer; one who can code exceedingly well and quickly. Not all hackers are superprogrammers, but many are. (Productivity can vary from one programmer to another by three orders of magnitude. For example, one progr...
superuser => [UNIX] n. Syn. root, avatar. This usage has spread to non-UNIX environments; the superuser is any account with all wheel bits on. A more specific term than wheel.
support => n. After-sale handholding; something many software vendors promise but few deliver. To hackers, most support people are useless --- because by the time a hacker calls support he or she will usually know the relevant manuals better than the...
Suzie COBOL => /soo'zee koh'bol/ 1. [IBM prob. from Frank Zappa's `Suzy Creamcheese'] n. A coder straight out of training school who knows everything except the value of comments in plain English. Also (fashionable among personkind wishing to avoid a...
Suzie COBOL2 => or (in some non-IBM circles) `Cobol Charlie'. 2. [proposed] Meta-name for any {code grinder}, analogous to {J. Random Hacker}. 
swab => /swob/ [From the mnemonic for the PDP-11 `SWAp Byte' instruction, as immortalized in the `dd(1)' option `conv=swab' (see dd)] 1. vt. To solve the {NUXI problem} by swapping bytes in a file. 2. n. The program in V7 UNIX used to perform this ac...
swap => vt. 1. [techspeak] To move information from a fast-access memory to a slow-access memory (`swap out'), or vice versa (`swap in'). Often refers specifically to the use of disks as `virtual memory'. As pieces of data or program are needed, they...
swap space => n. Storage space, especially temporary storage space used during a move or reconfiguration. "I'm just using that corner of the machine room for swap space."
swapped in => n. See swap. See also {page in}.
swapped out => n. See swap. See also {page out}.
swizzle => v. To convert external names, array indices, or references within a data structure into address pointers when the data structure is brought into main memory from external storage (also called `pointer swizzling'); this may be done for spee...
sync => /sink/ (var. `synch') n., vi. 1. To synchronize, to bring into synchronization. 2. [techspeak] To force all pending I/O to the disk; see flush, sense 2. 3. More generally, to force a number of competing processes or agents to a state that wou...
syntactic sugar => [coined by Peter Landin] n. Features added to a language or other formalism to make it `sweeter' for humans, that do not affect the expressiveness of the formalism (compare chrome). Used esp. when there is an obvious and trivial tr...
syntactic sugar2 => into other constructs already present in the notation. C's `a[i]' notation is syntactic sugar for `*(a + i)'. "Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon." --- Alan Perlis The variant `syntactic saccharine' is also recorded. T...
syntactic sugar3 => gratuitous, in that syntactic sugar serves a purpose (making something more acceptable to humans) but syntactic saccharine serves no purpose at all. 
sys-frog => /sis'frog/ [the PLATO system] n. Playful variant of `sysprog', which is in turn short for `systems programmer'.
sysadmin => /sis'ad-min/ n. Common contraction of `system admin'; see admin.
sysop => /sis'op/ n. [esp. in the BBS world] The operator (and usually the owner) of a bulletin-board system. A common neophyte mistake on FidoNet is to address a message to `sysop' in an international echo, thus sending it to hundreds of sysops arou...
system => n. 1. The supervisor program or OS on a computer. 2. The entire computer system, including input/output devices, the supervisor program or OS, and possibly other software. 3. Any large-scale program. 4. Any method or algorithm. 5. `System h...
systems jock => n. See jock, (sense 2).
SysVile => /sis-vil'/ n. See Missed'em-five.
system mangler => n. Humorous synonym for `system manager', poss. from the fact that one major IBM OS had a root account called SYSMANGR. Refers specifically to a systems programmer in charge of administration, software maintenance, and updates at so...
system mangler2 => emphasizes the technical end of the skills involved.*T /T/ 1. [from LISP terminology for `true] Yes. Used in reply to a question (particularly one asked using the `-P convention). In LISP, the constant T means `true, among other th...
system mangler3 => instead of `Yes and `No almost reflexively. This sometimes causes misunderstandings. When a waiter or flight attendant asks whether a hacker wants coffee, he may well respond `T, meaning that he wants coffee; but of course he will ...
system mangler4 => it happens, most hackers (particularly those who frequent Chinese restaurants) like tea at least as well as coffee --- so it is not that big a problem. 2. See {time T} (also {since time T equals minus infinity}). 3. [techspeak] In ...
system mangler5 => abbreviation for the noun `transaction. 4. [Purdue] Alternate spelling of tee. 
tail recursion => n. If you arent sick of it already, see {tail recursion}.
talk mode => n. A feature supported by UNIX, ITS, and some other OSes that allows two or more logged-in users to set up a real-time on-line conversation. It combines the immediacy of talking with all the precision (and verbosity) that written languag...
talk mode2 => communicate inflection, though conventions have arisen for some of these (see the section on writing style in the Prependices for details). Talk mode has a special set of jargon words, used to save typing, which are not used orally. Som...
talk mode3 => probably derived from) Morse-code jargon used by ham-radio amateurs since the 1920s. Most of these are not used at universities or in the UNIX world, though ROTF and TTFN have gained some currency there and IMHO is common; conversely, m...
talk mode4 => unfamiliar with FOO?, BCNU, HELLOP, NIL, and T. The MUD community uses a mixture of USENET/Internet emoticons, a few of the more natural of the old-style talk-mode abbrevs, and some of the `social list above; specifically, MUD responden...
talk mode5 => b4, BTW, WTF, TTFN, and WTH. The use of `rehi is also common; in fact, mudders are fond of re- compounds and will frequently `rehug or `rebonk (see bonk/oif) people. The word `re by itself is taken as `regreet. In general, though, MUDde...
talk mode6 => typing things out in full rather than using abbreviations; this may be due to the relative youth of the MUD cultures, which tend to include many touch typists and to assume high-speed links. The following uses specific to MUDs are repor...
talk mode7 => variant spelling `d00d) appear to be passing into wider use among some subgroups of MUDders. One final note on talk mode style neophytes, when in talk mode, often seem to think they must produce letter-perfect prose because they are typ...
talk mode8 => not the best approach. It can be very frustrating to wait while your partner pauses to think of a word, or repeatedly makes the same spelling error and backs up to fix it. It is usually best just to leave typographical errors behind and...
talk mode9 => confusion may result; in that case it is often fastest just to type "xxx" and start over from before the mistake. See also hakspek, emoticon, bonk/oif. 
talker system => n. British hackerism for software that enables real-time chat or {talk mode}.
tall card => n. A PC/AT-size expansion card (these can be larger than IBM PC or XT cards because the AT case is bigger). See also {short card}. When IBM introduced the PS/2 model 30 (its last gasp at supporting the ISA) they made the case lower and m...
tall card2 => wouldnt fit; this was felt to be a reincarnation of the {connector conspiracy}, done with less style. 
tanked => adj. Same as down, used primarily by UNIX hackers. See also hosed. Popularized as a synonym for `drunk by Steve Dallas in the late lamented "Bloom County" comic strip.
tar and feather => [from UNIX `tar(1)] vt. To create a transportable archive from a group of files by first sticking them together with `tar(1) (the Tape ARchiver) and then compressing the result (see compress). The latter action is dubbed `featherin...
tar and feather2 => an airplane propeller to decrease wind resistance, or with an oar to reduce water resistance; smaller files, after all, slip through comm links more easily. 
taste => [primarily MIT] n. 1. The quality in a program that tends to be inversely proportional to the number of features, hacks, and kluges programmed into it. Also `tasty, `tasteful, `tastefulness. "This feature comes in N tasty flavors." Although ...
tayste => /tayst/ n. Two bits; also as taste. Syn. crumb, quarter. Compare {byte}, dynner, playte, nybble, quad.
TCB => /T-C-B/ [IBM] n. 1. Trouble Came Back. An intermittent or difficult-to-reproduce problem that has failed to respond to neglect. Compare heisenbug. Not to be confused with 2. Trusted Computing Base, an `official jargon term from the {Orange Boo...
ISO standard cup of tea => [South Africa] n. A cup of tea with milk and one teaspoon of sugar, where the milk is poured into the cup before the tea. Variations are ISO 0, with no sugar; ISO 2, with two spoons of sugar; and so on. Like many ISO standa...
ISO standard cup of tea2 => ring in North America, where hackers generally shun the decadent British practice of adulterating perfectly good tea with dairy products and prefer instead to add a wedge of lemon, if anything. If one were feeling extremel...
ISO standard cup of tea3 => analogous `ANSI standard cup of tea and wind up with a political situation distressingly similar to several that arise in much more serious technical contexts. Milk and lemon dont mix very well. 
TechRef => /tekref/ [MS-DOS] n. The original `IBM PC Technical Reference Manual, including the BIOS listing and complete schematics for the PC. The only PC documentation in the issue package thats considered serious by real hackers.
TECO => /teekoh/ obs. 1. vt. Originally, to edit using the TECO editor in one of its infinite variations (see below). 2. vt.,obs. To edit even when TECO is *not* the editor being used! This usage is rare and now primarily historical. 2. [originally a...
tee => n.,vt. [Purdue] A carbon copy of an electronic transmission. "Oh, youre sending him the bits to that? Slap on a tee for me." From the UNIX command `tee(1), itself named after a pipe fitting (see plumbing). Can also mean `save one for me, as in...
Telerat => /tel*-rat/ n. Unflattering hackerism for `Teleray, a line of extremely losing terminals. See also terminak, sun-stools, HP-SUX.
TELNET => /telnet/ vt. To communicate with another Internet host using the TELNET program. TOPS-10 people used the word IMPCOM, since that was the program name for them. Sometimes abbreviated to TN /T-N/. "I usually TN over to SAIL just to read the A...
ten-finger interface => n. The interface between two networks that cannot be directly connected for security reasons; refers to the practice of placing two terminals side by side and having an operator read from one and type into the other.
tense => adj. Of programs, very clever and efficient. A tense piece of code often got that way because it was highly bummed, but sometimes it was just based on a great idea. A comment in a clever routine by Mike Kazar, once a grad-student hacker at C...
tenured graduate student => n. One who has been in graduate school for 10 years (the usual maximum is 5 or 6) a `ten-yeared student (get it?). Actually, this term may be used of any grad student beginning in his seventh year. Students dont really get...
tenured graduate student2 => professors do, but a tenth-year graduate student has probably been around the university longer than any untenured professor. 
tera- => /ter*/ [SI] pref. See {quantifiers}.
teraflop club => /ter*-flop kluhb/ [FLOP = Floating Point Operation] n. A mythical association of people who consume outrageous amounts of computer time in order to produce a few simple pictures of glass balls with intricate ray-tracing techniques. C...
teraflop club2 => said to have been the founder. 
terminak => /termi-nak`/ [Caltech, ca. 1979] n. Any malfunctioning computer terminal. A common failure mode of Lear-Siegler ADM 3a terminals caused the `L key to produce the `K code instead; complaints about this tended to look like "Terminak #3 has ...
terminal brain death => n. The extreme form of {terminal illness} (sense 1). What someone who has obviously been hacking continuously for far too long is said to be suffering from.
terminal illness => n. 1. Syn. {raster burn}. 2. The `burn-in condition your CRT tends to get if you dont have a screen saver.
terminal junkie => [UK] n. A wannabee or early {larval stage} hacker who spends most of his or her time wandering the directory tree and writing noddy programs just to get a fix of computer time. Variants include `terminal jockey, `console junkie, an...
terminal junkie2 => `console jockey seems to imply more expertise than the other three (possibly because of the exalted status of the {console} relative to an ordinary terminal). See also twink, {read-only user}. 
terpri => /terpree/ [from LISP 1.5 (and later, MacLISP)] vi. To output a newline. Now rare as jargon, though still used as techspeak in Common LISP. It is a contraction of `TERminate PRInt line, named for the fact that, on early OSes, no characters w...
test => n. 1. Real users bashing on a prototype long enough to get thoroughly acquainted with it, with careful monitoring and followup of the results. 2. Some bored random user trying a couple of the simpler features with a developer looking over his...
TeX => /tekh/ n. An extremely powerful macro-based text formatter written by Donald E. Knuth, very popular in the computer-science community (it is good enough to have displaced UNIX `troff(1), the other favored formatter, even at many UNIX installat...
text => n. 1. [techspeak] Executable code, esp. a `pure code portion shared between multiple instances of a program running in a multitasking OS (compare English). 2. Textual material in the mainstream sense; data in ordinary {ASCII} or {EBCDIC} repr...
thanks in advance => [USENET] Conventional net.politeness ending a posted request for information or assistance. Sometimes written `advTHANKSance or `aTdHvAaNnKcSe or abbreviated `TIA. See net.-, netiquette.
the X that can be Y => not the true X is Yet another instance of hackerdoms peculiar attraction to mystical references --- a common humorous way of making exclusive statements about a class of things. The template is from the `Tao te Ching "The Tao w...
the X that can be Y => not the true X2 is true Tao." The implication is often that the X is a mystery accessible only to the enlightened. See the trampoline entry for an example, and compare {has the X nature}. 
theology => n. 1. Ironically or humorously used to refer to {religious issues}. 2. Technical fine points of an abstruse nature, esp. those where the resolution is of theoretical interest but is relatively marginal with respect to actual use of a desi...
theory => n. The consensus, idea, plan, story, or set of rules that is currently being used to inform a behavior. This is a generalization and abuse of the technical meaning. "Whats the theory on fixing this TECO loss?" "Whats the theory on dinner to...
thinko => /thingkoh/ [by analogy with `typo] n. A momentary, correctable glitch in mental processing, especially one involving recall of information learned by rote; a bubble in the stream of consciousness. Syn. braino. Compare mouso.
This time, for sure! => excl. Ritual affirmation frequently uttered during protracted debugging sessions involving numerous small obstacles (e.g., attempts to bring up a UUCP connection). For the proper effect, this must be uttered in a fruity imitat...
This time, for sure!2 => heard "Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" The canonical response is, of course, "But that trick *never* works!" See {{Humor, Hacker}}. 
thrash => vi. To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing anything useful. Paging or swapping systems that are overloaded waste most of their time moving data into and out of core (rather than performing useful computation) and are therefore s...
thread => n. [USENET, GEnie, CompuServe] Common abbreviation of `topic thread, a more or less continuous chain of postings on a single topic.
three-finger salute => n. Syn. {Vulcan nerve pinch}.
thud => n. 1. Yet another meta-syntactic variable (see foo). It is reported that at CMU from the mid-1970s the canonical series of these was `foo, `bar, `thud, `blat. 2. Rare term for the hash character, `# (ASCII 0100011). See ASCII for other synony...
thunk => /thuhnk/ n. 1. "A piece of coding which provides an address", according to P. Z. Ingerman, who invented thunks in 1961 as a way of binding actual parameters to their formal definitions in Algol-60 procedure calls. If a procedure is called wi...
tick => n. 1. A jiffy (sense 1). 2. In simulations, the discrete unit of time that passes between iterations of the simulation mechanism. In AI applications, this amount of time is often left unspecified, since the only constraint of interest is the ...
tick-list features => [Acorn Computers] n. Features in software or hardware that customers insist on but never use (calculators in desktop TSRs and that sort of thing). The American equivalent would be `checklist features, but this jargon sense of th...
tickle a bug => vt. To cause a normally hidden bug to manifest through some known series of inputs or operations. "You can tickle the bug in the Paradise VGA cards highlight handling by trying to set bright yellow reverse video."
tiger team => [U.S. military jargon] n. A team whose purpose is to penetrate security, and thus test security measures. These people are paid professionals who do hacker-type tricks, e.g., leave cardboard signs saying "bomb" in critical defense insta...
tiger team2 => "Your codebooks have been stolen" (they usually havent been) inside safes, etc. After a successful penetration, some high-ranking security type shows up the next morning for a `security review and finds the sign, note, etc., and all he...
tiger team3 => of tiger teams sometimes lead to early retirement for base commanders and security officers (see the patch entry for an example). A subset of tiger teams are professional crackers, testing the security of military computer installation...
tiger team4 => via networks or supposedly `secure comm channels. Some of their escapades, if declassified, would probably rank among the greatest hacks of all times. The term has been adopted in commercial computer-security circles in this more speci...
time sink => [poss. by analogy with `heat sink or `current sink] n. A project that consumes unbounded amounts of time.
time T => /tim T/ n. 1. An unspecified but usually well-understood time, often used in conjunction with a later time T+1. "Well meet on campus at time T or at Louies at time T+1" means, in the context of going out for dinner "We can meet on campus an...
time T2 => Louies itself a bit later." (Louies is a Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto that is a favorite with hackers.) Had the number 30 been used instead of the number 1, it would have implied that the travel time from campus to Louies is 30 minutes;...
time T3 => hasnt been decided on yet), you can meet half an hour later at Louies than you could on campus and end up eating at the same time. See also {since time T equals minus infinity}. 
times-or-divided-by => [by analogy with `plus-or-minus] quant. Term occasionally used when describing the uncertainty associated with a scheduling estimate, for either humorous or brutally honest effect. For a software project, the factor is usually ...
tinycrud => /tinee-kruhd/ n. A pejorative used by habitues of older game-oriented MUD versions for TinyMUDs and other user-extensible MUD variants; esp. common among users of the rather violent and competitive AberMUD and MIST systems. These people j...
tip of the ice-cube => [IBM] n. The visible part of something small and insignificant. Used as an ironic comment in situations where `tip of the iceberg might be appropriate if the subject were actually nontrivial.
tired iron => [IBM] n. Hardware that is perfectly functional but far enough behind the state of the art to have been superseded by new products, presumably with sufficient improvement in bang-per-buck that the old stuff is starting to look a bit like...
tits on a keyboard => n. Small bumps on certain keycaps to keep touch-typists registered (usually on the `5 of a numeric keypad, and on the `F and `J of a QWERTY keyboard).
TLA => /T-L-A/ [Three-Letter Acronym] n. 1. Self-describing acronym for a species with which computing terminology is infested. 2. Any confusing acronym. Examples include MCA, FTP, SNA, CPU, MMU, SCCS, DMU, FPU, NNTP, TLA. People who like this looser...
TMRC => /tmerk/ n. The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT, one of the wellsprings of hacker culture. The 1959 `Dictionary of the TMRC Language compiled by Peter Samson included several terms which became basics of the hackish vocabulary (see esp. foo an...
to a first approximation => 1. [techspeak] When one is doing certain numerical computations, an approximate solution may be computed by any of several heuristic methods, then refined to a final value. By using the starting point of a first approximat...
to a first approximation2 => algorithm that converges more quickly to the correct result. 2. In jargon, a preface to any comment that indicates that the comment is only approximately true. The remark "To a first approximation, I feel good" might indi...
to a first approximation3 => reveal that not all is perfect (e.g., a nagging cough still remains after an illness). 
to a zeroth approximation => [from `to a first approximation] A *really* sloppy approximation; a wild guess. Compare {social science number}.
toast => 1. n. Any completely inoperable system or component, esp. one that has just crashed and burned "Uh, oh ... I think the serial board is toast." 2. vt. To cause a system to crash accidentally, especially in a manner that requires manual reboot...
toaster => n. 1. The archetypal really stupid application for an embedded microprocessor controller; often used in comments that imply that a scheme is inappropriate technology (but see {elevator controller}). "DWIM for an assembler? Thatd be as sill...
toeprint => n. A footprint of especially small size.
toggle => vt. To change a bit from whatever state it is in to the other state; to change from 1 to 0 or from 0 to 1. This comes from `toggle switches, such as standard light switches, though the word `toggle actually refers to the mechanism that keep...
tool => 1. n. A program used primarily to create, manipulate, modify, or analyze other programs, such as a compiler or an editor or a cross-referencing program. Oppose app, {operating system}. 2. [UNIX] An application program with a simple, `transpar...
toolsmith => n. The software equivalent of a tool-and-die specialist; one who specializes in making the tools with which other programmers create applications. See also uninteresting.
topic drift => n. Term used on GEnie, USENET and other electronic fora to describe the tendency of a thread to drift away from the original subject of discussion (and thus, from the Subject header of the originating message), or the results of that t...
topic drift2 => reminders that the discussion has strayed off any useful track. "I think we started with a question about Nivens last book, but weve ended up discussing the sexual habits of the common marmoset. Now *thats* topic drift!" 
topic group => n. Syn. forum.
TOPS-10 => /tops-ten/ n. DECs proprietary OS for the fabled PDP-10 machines, long a favorite of hackers but now effectively extinct. A fountain of hacker folklore; see appendix A. See also {ITS}, {TOPS-20}, {TWENEX}, VMS, {operating system}. TOPS-10 ...
TOPS-20 => /tops-twentee/ n. See {TWENEX}.
toto => /tohtoh/ n. This is reported to be the default scratch file name among French-speaking programmers --- in other words, a francophone foo.
tourist => [ITS] n. A guest on the system, especially one who generally logs in over a network from a remote location for {comm mode}, email, games, and other trivial purposes. One step below luser. Hackers often spell this turist, perhaps by some so...
tourist information => n. Information in an on-line display that is not immediately useful, but contributes to a viewers gestalt of whats going on with the software or hardware behind it. Whether a given piece of info falls in this category depends p...
tourist information2 => for at any given time. The `bytes free information at the bottom of an MS-DOS `dir display is tourist information; so (most of the time) is the TIME information in a UNIX `ps(1) display. 
touristic => adj. Having the quality of a tourist. Often used as a pejorative, as in `losing touristic scum. Often spelled `turistic or `turistik, so that phrase might be more properly rendered `lusing turistic scum.
toy => n. A computer system; always used with qualifiers. 1. `nice toy One that supports the speakers hacking style adequately. 2. `just a toy A machine that yields insufficient computrons for the speakers preferred uses. This is not condemnatory, as...
toy language => n. A language useful for instructional purposes or as a proof-of-concept for some aspect of computer-science theory, but inadequate for general-purpose programming. {Bad Thing}s can result when a toy language is promoted as a general ...
toy language2 => (see {bondage-and-discipline language}); the classic example is {Pascal}. Several moderately well-known formalisms for conceptual tasks such as programming Turing machines also qualify as toy languages in a less negative sense. See a...
toy problem => [AI] n. A deliberately oversimplified case of a challenging problem used to investigate, prototype, or test algorithms for a real problem. Sometimes used pejoratively. See also gedanken, {toy program}.
toy program => n. 1. One that can be readily comprehended; hence, a trivial program (compare noddy). 2. One for which the effort of initial coding dominates the costs through its life cycle. See also noddy.
trampoline => n. An incredibly hairy technique, found in some HLL and program-overlay implementations (e.g., on the Macintosh), that involves on-the-fly generation of small executable (and, likely as not, self-modifying) code objects to do indirectio...
trap => 1. n. A program interrupt, usually an interrupt caused by some exceptional situation in the user program. In most cases, the OS performs some action, then returns control to the program. 2. vi. To cause a trap. "These instructions trap to the...
trap door => alt. `trapdoor n. 1. Syn. {back door}. 2. [techspeak] A `trap-door function is one which is easy to compute but very difficult to compute the inverse of. Such functions have important applications in cryptography, specifically in the con...
trash => vt. To destroy the contents of (said of a data structure). The most common of the family of near-synonyms including mung, mangle, and scribble.
tree-killer => [Sun] n. 1. A printer. 2. A person who wastes paper. This should be interpreted in a broad sense; `wasting paper includes the production of spiffy but content-free documents. Thus, most suits are tree-killers.
trit => /trit/ [by analogy with `bit] n. One base-3 digit; the amount of information conveyed by a selection among one of three equally likely outcomes (see also bit). These arise, for example, in the context of a flag that should actually be able to...
trivial => adj. 1. Too simple to bother detailing. 2. Not worth the speakers time. 3. Complex, but solvable by methods so well known that anyone not utterly cretinous would have thought of them already. 4. Any problem one has already solved (some cla...
troglodyte => [Commodore] n. 1. A hacker who never leaves his cubicle. The term `Gnoll (from Dungeons & Dragons) is also reported. 2. A curmudgeon attached to an obsolescent computing environment. The combination `ITS troglodyte was flung around some...
troglodyte mode => [Rice University] n. Programming with the lights turned off, sunglasses on, and the terminal inverted (black on white) because youve been up for so many days straight that your eyes hurt (see {raster burn}). Loud music blaring from...
troglodyte mode2 => optional but recommended. See {larval stage}, {hack mode}. 
Trojan horse => [coined by MIT-hacker-turned-NSA-spook Dan Edwards] n. A program designed to break security or damage a system that is disguised as something else benign, such as a directory lister, archiver, a game, or (in one notorious 1990 case on...
Trojan horse2 => destroy viruses! See {back door}, virus, worm. 
true-hacker => [analogy with `trufan from SF fandom] n. One who exemplifies the primary values of hacker culture, esp. competence and helpfulness to other hackers. A high compliment. "He spent 6 hours helping me bring up UUCP and netnews on my FOOBAR...
tty => /T-T-Y/ [UNIX], /titee/ [ITS, but some UNIX people say it this way as well; this pronunciation is not considered to have sexual undertones] n. 1. A terminal of the teletype variety, characterized by a noisy mechanical printer, a very limited c...
tube => 1. n. A CRT terminal. Never used in the mainstream sense of TV; real hackers dont watch TV, except for Loony Toons, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Trek Classic, the Simpsons, and the occasional cheesy old swashbuckler movie (see appendix B). 2. [IBM] To...
tube time => n. Time spent at a terminal or console. More inclusive than hacking time; commonly used in discussions of what parts of ones environment one uses most heavily. "I find Im spending too much of my tube time reading mail since I started thi...
tunafish => n. In hackish lore, refers to the mutated punchline of an age-old joke to be found at the bottom of the manual pages of `tunefs(8) in the original BSD 4.2 distribution. The joke was removed in later releases once commercial sites started ...
tune => [from automotive or musical usage] vt. To optimize a program or system for a particular environment, esp. by adjusting numerical parameters designed as hooks for tuning, e.g., by changing `#define lines in C. One may `tune for time (fastest e...
turbo nerd => n. See {computer geek}.
turist => /toorist/ n. Var. sp. of tourist, q.v. Also in adjectival form, `turistic. Poss. influenced by luser and `Turing.
tweak => vt. 1. To change slightly, usually in reference to a value. Also used synonymously with twiddle. If a program is almost correct, rather than figure out the precise problem you might just keep tweaking it until it works. See frobnicate and {f...
TWENEX => /tweneks/ n. The TOPS-20 operating system by DEC --- the second proprietary OS for the PDP-10 --- preferred by most PDP-10 hackers over TOPS-10 (that is, by those who were not {ITS} or {WAITS} partisans). TOPS-20 began in 1969 as Bolt, Bera...
twiddle => n. 1. Tilde (ASCII 1111110, `~). Also called `squiggle, `sqiggle (sic --- pronounced /skigl/), and `twaddle, but twiddle is the most common term. 2. A small and insignificant change to a program. Usually fixes one bug and generates several...
twink => /twink/ [UCSC] n. Equivalent to {read-only user}. Also reported on the USENET group soc.motss; may derive from gay slang for a cute young thing with nothing upstairs.
two pi => quant. The number of years it takes to finish ones thesis. Occurs in stories in the following form "He started on his thesis; 2 pi years later..."
two-to-the-N => quant. An amount much larger than N but smaller than infinity. "I have 2-to-the-N things to do before I can go out for lunch" means you probably wont show up.
twonkie => /twonkee/ n. The software equivalent of a Twinkie (a variety of sugar-loaded junk food, or (in gay slang) the male equivalent of `chick); a useless `feature added to look sexy and placate a marketroid (compare {Saturday-night special}). Th...
UN*X => n. Used to refer to the UNIX operating system (a trademark of AT&T) in writing, but avoiding the need for the ugly (TM) typography. Also used to refer to any or all varieties of Unixoid operating systems. Ironically, lawyers now say (1990) th...
undefined external reference => excl. [UNIX] A message from UNIX's linker. Used in speech to flag loose ends or dangling references in an argument or discussion.
under the hood => prep. [hot-rodder talk] 1. Used to introduce the underlying implementation of a product (hardware, software, or idea). Implies that the implementation is not intuitively obvious from the appearance, but the speaker is about to enabl...
under the hood2 => now look under the hood to see how ...." 2. Can also imply that the implementation is much simpler than the appearance would indicate "Under the hood, we are just fork/execing the shell." 3. Inside a chassis, as in "Under the hood,...
undocumented feature => n. See feature.
uninteresting => adj. 1. Said of a problem that, although nontrivial, can be solved simply by throwing sufficient resources at it. 2. Also said of problems for which a solution would neither advance the state of the art nor be fun to design and code....
UNIX => /yoo'niks/ [In the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics"] n. (also `Unix') An interactive time-sharing system originally invented in 1969 by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left the Multics project, originally so he could play games on his sca...
UNIX brain damage => n. Something that has to be done to break a network program (typically a mailer) on a non-UNIX system so that it will interoperate with UNIX systems. The hack may qualify as `UNIX brain damage' if the program conforms to publishe...
UNIX brain damage2 => question does not. UNIX brain damage happens because it is much easier for other (minority) systems to change their ways to match non-conforming behavior than it is to change all the hundreds of thousands of UNIX systems out the...
UNIX brain damage3 => is a kluge in a mail server to recognize bare line feed (the UNIX newline) as an equivalent form to the Internet standard newline, which is a carriage return followed by a line feed. Such things can make even a hardened jock wee...
UNIX conspiracy => [ITS] n. According to a conspiracy theory long popular among {ITS} and {TOPS-20} fans, UNIX's growth is the result of a plot, hatched during the 1970s at Bell Labs, whose intent was to hobble AT&T's competitors by making them depen...
UNIX conspiracy2 => evolution was to be under AT&T's control. This would be accomplished by disseminating an operating system that is apparently inexpensive and easily portable, but also relatively unreliable and insecure (so as to require continuing...
UNIX conspiracy3 => was lent a substantial impetus in 1984 by the paper referenced in the {back door} entry. In this view, UNIX was designed to be one of the first computer viruses (see virus) --- but a virus spread to computers indirectly by people ...
UNIX conspiracy4 => directly through disks and networks. Adherents of this `UNIX virus' theory like to cite the fact that the well-known quotation "UNIX is snake oil" was uttered by DEC president Kenneth Olsen shortly before DEC began actively promot...
UNIX conspiracy5 => workstations. (Olsen now claims to have been misquoted.) 
UNIX weenie => [ITS] n. 1. A derogatory play on `UNIX wizard', common among hackers who use UNIX by necessity but would prefer alternatives. The implication is that although the person in question may consider mastery of UNIX arcana to be a wizardly ...
UNIX weenie2 => is the ability to tolerate (and the bad taste to wallow in) the incoherence and needless complexity that is alleged to infest many UNIX programs. "This shell script tries to parse its arguments in 69 bletcherous ways. It must have bee...
UNIX weenie3 => 2. A derogatory term for anyone who engages in uncritical praise of UNIX. Often appearing in the context "stupid UNIX weenie". See Weenix, {UNIX conspiracy}. See also weenie. 
unixism => n. A piece of code or a coding technique that depends on the protected multi-tasking environment with relatively low process-spawn overhead that exists on virtual-memory UNIX systems. Common unixisms include gratuitous use of `fork(2)'; th...
unswizzle => v. See swizzle.
unwind the stack => vi. 1. [techspeak] During the execution of a procedural language, one is said to `unwind the stack' from a called procedure up to a caller when one discards the stack frame and any number of frames above it, popping back up to the...
unwind the stack2 => this is done with `longjmp'/`setjmp', in LISP with `throw/catch'. See also {smash the stack}. 2. People can unwind the stack as well, by quickly dealing with a bunch of problems "Oh heck, let's do lunch. Just a second while I unw...
unwind-protect => [MIT from the name of a LISP operator] n. A task you must remember to perform before you leave a place or finish a project. "I have an unwind-protect to call my advisor."
up => adj. 1. Working, in order. "The down escalator is up." Oppose down. 2. `bring up' vt. To create a working version and start it. "They brought up a down system." 3. `come up' vi. To become ready for production use.
upload => /uhp'lohd/ v. 1. [techspeak] To transfer programs or data over a digital communications link from a smaller or peripheral `client' system to a larger or central `host' one. A transfer in the other direction is, of course, called a download ...
upthread => adv. Earlier in the discussion (see thread), i.e., `above'. "As Joe pointed out upthread, ..." See also followup.
urchin => n. See munchkin.
USENET => /yoos'net/ or /yooz'net/ [from `Users' Network'] n. A distributed bboard (bulletin board) system supported mainly by UNIX machines. Originally implemented in 1979-1980 by Steve Bellovin, Jim Ellis, Tom Truscott, and Steve Daniel at Duke Uni...
user => n. 1. Someone doing `real work' with the computer, using it as a means rather than an end. Someone who pays to use a computer. See {real user}. 2. A programmer who will believe anything you tell him. One who asks silly questions. [GLS observe...
user-friendly => adj. Programmer-hostile. Generally used by hackers in a critical tone, to describe systems that hold the user's hand so obsessively that they make it painful for the more experienced and knowledgeable to get any work done. See menuit...
user-obsequious => adj. Emphatic form of user-friendly. Connotes a system so verbose, inflexible, and determinedly simple-minded that it is nearly unusable. "Design a system any fool can use and only a fool will want to use it." See {WIMP environment...
USG UNIX => /U-S-G yoo'niks/ n. Refers to AT&T UNIX commercial versions after {Version 7}, especially System III and System V releases 1, 2, and 3. So called because during most of the life-span of those versions AT&T's support crew was called the `U...
UTSL => // [UNIX] n. On-line acronym for `Use the Source, Luke' (a pun on Obi-Wan Kenobi's "Use the Force, Luke!" in `Star Wars') --- analogous to RTFM but more polite. This is a common way of suggesting that someone would be best off reading the sou...
UUCPNET => n. The store-and-forward network consisting of all the world's connected UNIX machines (and others running some clone of the UUCP (UNIX-to-UNIX CoPy) software). Any machine reachable only via a {bang path} is on UUCPNET. See {network addre...
vanilla => [from the default flavor of ice cream in the U.S.] adj. Ordinary flavor, standard. When used of food, very often does not mean that the food is flavored with vanilla extract! For example, `vanilla wonton soup' means ordinary wonton soup, a...
vannevar => /van'*-var/ n. A bogus technological prediction or a foredoomed engineering concept, esp. one that fails by implicitly assuming that technologies develop linearly, incrementally, and in isolation from one another when in fact the learning...
vaporware => /vay'pr-weir/ n. Products announced far in advance of any release (which may or may not actually take place).
var => /veir/ or /var/ n. Short for `variable'. Compare arg, param.
VAX => /vaks/ n. 1. [from Virtual Address eXtension] The most successful minicomputer design in industry history, possibly excepting its immediate ancestor, the PDP-11. Between its release in 1978 and its eclipse by {killer micro}s after about 1986, ...
VAXectomy => /vak-sek't*-mee/ [by analogy with `vasectomy'] n. A VAX removal. DEC's Microvaxen, especially, are much slower than newer RISC-based workstations such as the SPARC. Thus, if one knows one has a replacement coming, VAX removal can be caus...
VAXen => /vak'sn/ [from `oxen', perhaps influenced by `vixen'] n. (alt. `vaxen') The plural canonically used among hackers for the DEC VAX computers. "Our installation has four PDP-10s and twenty vaxen." See boxen.
vaxherd => n. /vaks'herd/ [from `oxherd'] A VAX operator.
vaxism => /vak'sizm/ n. A piece of code that exhibits vaxocentrism in critical areas. Compare PC-ism, unixism.
vaxocentrism => /vak`soh-sen'trizm/ [analogy with `ethnocentrism'] n. A notional disease said to afflict C programmers who persist in coding according to certain assumptions that are valid (esp. under UNIX) on VAXen but false elsewhere. Among these a...
vdiff => /vee'dif/ v.,n. Visual diff. The operation of finding differences between two files by {eyeball search}. The term `optical diff' has also been reported. See diff.
veeblefester => /vee'b*l-fes`tr/ [from the "Born Loser" comix via Commodore; prob. originally from `Mad' Magazine's `Veeblefeetzer' parodies ca. 1960] n. Any obnoxious person engaged in the (alleged) professions of marketing or management. Antonym of...
Venus flytrap => [after the insect-eating plant] n. See {firewall machine}.
verbage => /ver'b*j/ n. A deliberate misspelling and mispronunciation of verbiage that assimilates it to the word `garbage'. Compare content-free. More pejorative than `verbiage'.
verbiage => n. When the context involves a software or hardware system, this refers to {documentation}. This term borrows the connotations of mainstream `verbiage' to suggest that the documentation is of marginal utility and that the motives behind i...
Version 7 => alt. V7 /vee' se'vn/ n. The 1978 unsupported release of {UNIX} ancestral to all current commercial versions. Before the release of the POSIX/SVID standards, V7's features were often treated as a UNIX portability baseline. See BSD, {USG U...
Version 72 => old-timers impatient with commercialization and kernel bloat still maintain that V7 was the Last True UNIX. 
vgrep => /vee'grep/ v.,n. Visual grep. The operation of finding patterns in a file optically rather than digitally. See grep; compare vdiff.
vi => /V-I/, *not* /vi/ and *never* /siks/ [from `Visual Interface'] n. A screen editor crufted together by Bill Joy for an early BSD version. Became the de facto standard UNIX editor and a nearly undisputed hacker favorite until the rise of EMACS af...
videotex => n. obs. An electronic service offering people the privilege of paying to read the weather on their television screens instead of having somebody read it to them for free while they brush their teeth. The idea bombed everywhere it wasn't g...
virgin => adj. Unused; pristine; in a known initial state. "Let's bring up a virgin system and see if it crashes again." (Esp. useful after contracting a virus through SEX.) Also, by extension, buffers and the like within a program that have not yet ...
virtual => [via the technical term `virtual memory', prob. from the term `virtual image' in optics] adj. 1. Common alternative to logical. 2. Simulated; performing the functions of something that isn't really there. An imaginative child's doll may be...
virtual Friday => n. The last day before an extended weekend, if that day is not a `real' Friday. For example, the U.S. holiday Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday. The next day is often also a holiday or taken as an extra day off, in which case Wed...
virtual Friday2 => Friday (and Thursday is a virtual Saturday, as is Friday). There are also `virtual Mondays' that are actually Tuesdays, after the three-day weekends associated with many national holidays in the U.S. 
virtual reality => n. 1. Computer simulations that use 3-D graphics and devices such as the Dataglove to allow the user to interact with the simulation. See cyberspace. 2. A form of network interaction incorporating aspects of role-playing games, int...
virtual reality2 => comedy, and `true confessions' magazines. In a virtual reality forum (such as USENET's alt.callahans newsgroup or the MUD experiments on Internet), interaction between the participants is written like a shared novel complete with ...
virtual reality3 => that may be personae utterly unlike the people who write them, and common `background characters' manipulable by all parties. The one iron law is that you may not write irreversible changes to a character without the consent of th...
virtual reality4 => anything goes. See bamf, cyberspace. 
virus => [from the obvious analogy with biological viruses, via SF] n. A cracker program that searches out other programs and `infects' them by embedding a copy of itself in them, so that they become {Trojan Horse}s. When these programs are executed,...
visionary => n. 1. One who hacks vision, in the sense of an Artificial Intelligence researcher working on the problem of getting computers to `see' things using TV cameras. (There isn't any problem in sending information from a TV camera to a compute...
VMS => /V-M-S/ n. DEC's proprietary operating system for its VAX minicomputer; one of the seven or so environments that loom largest in hacker folklore. Many UNIX fans generously concede that VMS would probably be the hacker's favorite commercial OS ...
voice => vt. To phone someone, as opposed to emailing them or connecting in talk mode. "I'm busy now; I'll voice you later."
voice-net => n. Hackish way of referring to the telephone system, analogizing it to a digital network. USENET {sig block}s not uncommonly include the sender's phone next to a "Voice" or "Voice-Net" header; common variants of this are "Voicenet" and "...
voodoo programming => [from George Bush's "voodoo economics"] n. The use by guess or cookbook of an obscure or hairy system, feature, or algorithm that one does not truly understand. The implication is that the technique may not work, and if it doesn...
voodoo programming2 => Almost synonymous with {black magic}, except that black magic typically isn't documented and *nobody* understands it. Compare magic, {deep magic}, {heavy wizardry}, {rain dance}, {cargo cult programming}, {wave a dead chicken}....
VR => // [MUD] n. On-line abbrev for {virtual reality}, as opposed to RL.
Vulcan nerve pinch => n. [from the old "Star Trek" TV series via Commodore Amiga hackers] The keyboard combination that forces a soft-boot or jump to ROM monitor (on machines that support such a feature). On many micros this is Ctrl-Alt-Del; on Suns,...
Vulcan nerve pinch2 => <Cmd>-<Power switch>! Also called {three-finger salute}. Compare {quadruple bucky}. 
vulture capitalist => n. Pejorative hackerism for `venture capitalist', deriving from the common practice of pushing contracts that deprive inventors of control over their own innovations and most of the money they ought to have made from them.*wabbi...
vulture capitalist2 => Fudd's immortal line "You wascawwy wabbit!"] n. 1. A legendary early hack reported on a System/360 at RPI and elsewhere around 1978. The program would make two copies of itself every time it was run, eventually crashing the sys...
vulture capitalist3 => includes infinite self-replication but is not a virus or worm. See also {cookie monster}. 
WAITS => /wayts/ n. The mutant cousin of {TOPS-10} used on a handful of systems at {SAIL} up to 1990. There was never an `official' expansion of WAITS (the name itself having been arrived at by a rather sideways process), but it was frequently glosse...
waldo => /wol'doh/ [From Robert A. Heinlein's story "Waldo"] 1. A mechanical agent, such as a gripper arm, controlled by a human limb. When these were developed for the nuclear industry in the mid-1940s they were named after the invention described b...
walk => n.,vt. Traversal of a data structure, especially an array or linked-list data structure in core. See also codewalker, {silly walk}, clobber.
walk off the end of => 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 => 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 worn beari...
walking drives2 => 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 jammed it shu...
walking drives3 => 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 hackers figured ...
walking drives4 => patterns that would do this to particular drive models and held disk-drive races. 
wall => [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 was initially ...
wall follower => 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 pejorativ...
wall follower2 => 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 mathemati...
wall follower3 => 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 uncreative,...
wall follower4 => See also {code grinder}, droid. 
wall time => 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 it (on a ti...
wall time2 => 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 => 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 wallpaper, as...
wango => /wang'goh/ n. Random bit-level grovelling 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 mumble-wango --- ...
wank => /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 (negatively)...
wannabee => /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 this term dif...
warm boot => n. See boot.
wart => n. A small, crocky 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 quotes literalize ...
washing machine => 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-machine ...
washing machine2 => 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 => 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 => 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. "I'll wav...
wave a dead chicken2 => code, but I really think we've run into an OS bug." Compare {voodoo programming}, {rain dance}. 
weasel => n. [Cambridge] A na"ive user, one who deliberately or accidentally does things that are stupid or ill-advised. Roughly synonymous with loser.
wedged => [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 system is...
wedgie => [Fairchild] n. A bug. Prob. related to wedged.
wedgitude => /wedj'i-t[y]ood/ n. The quality or state of being wedged.
weeble => /weeb'l/ [Cambridge] interj. Used to denote frustration, usually at amazing stupidity. "I stuck the disk in upside down." "Weeble...." Compare gurfle.
weeds => 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 before its d...
weenie => 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 considers hi...
Weenix => /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, no file ...
well-behaved => 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 graphics. Oppose...
well-connected => 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 implies that...
wetware => /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, administrators) at...
whacker => [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 only ends up...
whales => n. See {like kicking dead whales down the beach}.
wheel => [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 unwedge the hung tape drives."
wheel bit => 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 monitor, cras...
wheel bit2 => 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 entered the UNI...
wheel bit3 => mid-1980s and has been gaining popularity there (esp. at university sites). See also root. 
wheel wars => [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 the lesse...
White Book => n. Syn. K&R.
whizzy => [Sun] adj. (alt. `wizzy') Describes a cuspy program; one that is feature-rich and well presented.
WIBNI => // [Bell Labs Wouldn't It Be Nice If] n. What most requirements documents and specifications consist entirely of. Compare IWBNI.
widget => 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 entries...." 2. ...
wiggles => 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 algorithm is un...
WIMP environment => 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 for thei...
WIMP environment2 => extensibility. See menuitis, user-obsequious. 
win => [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. Emphatic forms `mo...
win big => vi. To experience serendipity. "I went shopping and won big; there was a 2-for-1 sale." See {big win}.