Amethyst

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Amethyst/Brain/Infobot/Module/Zippy.pm  view on Meta::CPAN

Is it NOUVELLE CUISINE when 3 olives are struggling with a scallop in a plate of SAUCE MORNAY?
Is something VIOLENT going to happen to a GARBAGE CAN?
Is this an out-take from the "BRADY BUNCH"?
Is this going to involve RAW human ecstasy?
Is this TERMINAL fun?
Is this the line for the latest whimsical YUGOSLAVIAN drama which also makes you want to CRY and reconsider the VIETNAM WAR?
Isn't this my STOP?!
It don't mean a THING if you ain't got that SWING!!
It was a JOKE!!  Get it??  I was receiving messages from DAVID LETTERMAN!!
YOW!!
It's a lot of fun being alive ... I wonder if my bed is made?!?
It's NO USE ... I've gone to "CLUB MED"!!
It's OBVIOUS ... The FURS never reached ISTANBUL ... You were an EXTRA in the REMAKE of "TOPKAPI" ... Go home to your WIFE ... She's making FRENCH TOAST!
It's OKAY -- I'm an INTELLECTUAL, too.
It's the RINSE CYCLE!!  They've ALL IGNORED the RINSE CYCLE!!
JAPAN is a WONDERFUL planet -- I wonder if we'll ever reach their level of COMPARATIVE SHOPPING ...
Jesuit priests are DATING CAREER DIPLOMATS!!
Jesus is my POSTMASTER GENERAL ...
Kids, don't gross me off ... "Adventures with MENTAL HYGIENE" can be carried too FAR!
Kids, the seven basic food groups are GUM, PUFF PASTRY, PIZZA, PESTICIDES, ANTIBIOTICS, NUTRA-SWEET and MILK DUDS!! 
Laundry is the fifth dimension!!  ... um ... um ... th' washing machine is a black hole and the pink socks are bus drivers who just fell in!!

Amethyst/Connection.pm  view on Meta::CPAN

sub new {
	my $class = shift;
	my $args = ($#_ == 0) ? { %{ (shift) } } : { @_ };

	die "No name for connection" unless $args->{Name};

	my %states = map { $_ => "handler_$_" } qw(
					_start _stop
					connect connect_ok connect_fail
					disconnect keepalive
					read write error
					init login logout send process
					);

	POE::Session->create(
		package_states	=> [ $class => \%states, ],
		args			=> [ $args ],
			);
}

Amethyst/Connection.pm  view on Meta::CPAN

	my ($kernel, $session, $sender, $heap, $args) =
					@_[KERNEL, SESSION, SENDER, HEAP, ARG0];

	$heap->{Args} = $args;
	$heap->{Amethyst} = $sender->ID;

	$kernel->alias_set($args->{Alias}) if $args->{Alias};

	$heap->{Debug} = exists $args->{Debug} ? $args->{Debug} : 0;
	$heap->{Brains} = $args->{Brains} if exists $args->{Brains};
	$heap->{Keepalive} = 0;

	print STDERR "START(Connection $session)\n" if $heap->{Debug} > 7;

	# This has to happen _now_ before the 'connect' trigger
	# happens in Amethyst herself, that being already on the
	# queue.
	$kernel->call($sender, 'register_connection', $args->{Name});
	$kernel->yield('init');
}

sub handler__stop {
	my ($kernel, $session, $heap) = @_[KERNEL, SESSION, HEAP];
	print STDERR "STOP(Connection $session)\n" if $heap->{Debug} > 7;
}

sub handler_read {
	my ($kernel, $heap, $session, $data) = @_[KERNEL, HEAP, SESSION, ARG0];

	warn "<<< $data\n" if $heap->{Debug} > 5;

	$kernel->delay('keepalive', $heap->{Keepalive})
					if $heap->{Keepalive};

	$kernel->yield('process', $data);
}

sub handler_write {
	my ($kernel, $session, $heap) = @_[KERNEL, SESSION, HEAP];
	my @data = @_[ARG0 .. $#_];

	my $wheel = $heap->{ReadWrite};

	unless ($wheel) {
		print STDERR "No write wheel\n";
		return;
	}

	foreach my $data (@data) {
		warn ">>> $data\n" if $heap->{Debug} > 5;
		$wheel->put($data);
	}

	$kernel->delay('keepalive', $heap->{Keepalive})
					if $heap->{Keepalive};
}

sub handler_init {
	my ($kernel, $session, $heap) = @_[KERNEL, SESSION, HEAP];
	# Not overriding this is not fatal.
}

sub handler_login {
	my ($kernel, $session, $heap) = @_[KERNEL, SESSION, HEAP];
	die "Login not implemented by connection";

Amethyst/Connection.pm  view on Meta::CPAN

sub handler_logout {
	my ($kernel, $session, $heap) = @_[KERNEL, SESSION, HEAP];
}

sub handler_disconnect {
	my ($kernel, $session, $heap) = @_[KERNEL, SESSION, HEAP];
	$kernel->yield('logout');
}

sub handler_keepalive {
	my ($kernel, $session, $heap) = @_[KERNEL, SESSION, HEAP];
	die "Keepalive requested but not implemented by connection";
}

sub handler_send {
	my ($kernel, $session, $heap) = @_[KERNEL, SESSION, HEAP];
	die "Send not implemented by connection";
}

sub handler_process {
	my ($kernel, $session, $heap) = @_[KERNEL, SESSION, HEAP];
	die "Process not implemented by connection";

Amethyst/Connection/Anarres.pm  view on Meta::CPAN

	                @INTEGER,
					@OBJECT,
					@STRING,
					@DTUPLE,
					@ERROR  
						);
	$clexer->skip(':');

	$heap->{ConnectionLexer} = $clexer;

	$heap->{Keepalive} = 60;

	$session->register_state('mung', __PACKAGE__, 'handler_mung');
}

sub handler_login {
	my ($kernel, $session, $heap) = @_[KERNEL, SESSION, HEAP];

	$kernel->yield('write', $heap->{Args}->{Login}, $heap->{Args}->{Password});
	# $kernel->yield('write', 'set PS1=', 'set TERM=none');
	$kernel->yield('write', 'config', 'if', 'prompt', 'mp off', 'q');

Amethyst/Connection/Anarres.pm  view on Meta::CPAN

					Channel		=> $channel,
					User		=> $source,
					Action		=> ACT_SAY,
					Content		=> $content,
					Hints		=> { Anarres => $data },
						);

	$kernel->call($heap->{Amethyst}, 'think', $message,$heap->{Brains});
}

sub handler_keepalive {
	my ($kernel, $session, $heap) = @_[KERNEL, SESSION, HEAP];
	# print STDERR "Anarres: keepalive\n";
	$kernel->yield('write', '');
}

1;

factpacks/Linux.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

VMWare => <reply> $who, Allows you to run multiple OSs at the same time. URL: http://www.vmware.com/
VOBSplit => <reply> $who, Splits up VOB files.. URL: http://daggit.pagecreator.com/vobsplit/
vobTools => <reply> $who, manipulation tools for MPEG2 VOB files. URL: http://fdd.com/vobTools/vobTools-src-1.0.tgz
VoiceCall => <reply> $who, . URL: http://www.annicnova.force9.co.uk/voicecall.html
volumed => <reply> $who, Networked remote volume control. URL: ftp://ftp.eznet.net/pub/users/aturn/
Voodoo Tracker => <reply> $who, GNOME based tracker. URL: http://www.syncomm.org/voodoo
Voyager Application Server => <reply> $who, Build scalable, secure, distributed, transaction-oriented applications with VAS.. URL: http://www.objectspace.com/
Voyager ORB => <reply> $who, State-of-the-art FREE Object Request Broker (ORB) !. URL: http://www.objectspace.com/
Vpb-driver => <reply> $who, Telephony device-driver for Voicetronix hardware. URL: http://www.users.bigpond.com/voicet/
vpnd => <reply> $who, Virtual Private Network Daemon - encrypted TCP/IP.. URL: http://sunsite.auc.dk/vpnd/
vpnstarter => <reply> $who, A light-weight VPN suite with keep-alive utilities using free software.. URL: http://detached.net/vpnstarter/
vpopmail => <reply> $who, qmail addon package for virtual domain email. URL: http://www.inter7.com/vpopmail/
VPS => <reply> $who, Virtual Private Network package for Linux. URL: http://www.strongcrypto.com/
vRouter => <reply> $who, vRouter is an experimental open-source IP-network simulator. URL: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~bscholl/vRouter/
vs3fs => <reply> $who, Steganographic Encrypted File System. URL: http://www.leg.uct.ac.za/~carl/vs3fs/
vsa => <reply> $who, Visual Sound Analyzer. URL: http://vsa.linuxcore.com/
VShop => <reply> $who, e-commerce for you - easy, fast and efficient. URL: http://www.vshop.de/
VSound => <reply> $who, Allows you to record the audio stream of most sound applications. URL: ftp://ftp.daa.com.au/pub/james/misc/
VSW4 => <reply> $who, Test Suite for the X Window System. URL: http://www.opengroup.org/testing/
VSX-PCTS => <reply> $who, A verification suite for assessing your system's conformance to ISO/IEC 9945-1.. URL: http://www.opengroup.org/testing/downloads/vsx-pcts-faq.html
vTcLava => <reply> $who, Visual Java development module for Visual Tcl. URL: http://www.java.ro/vtclava/index.html

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

CPU Wars2 is  many references to {ADVENT} and   the immortal line "Eat flaming death, minicomputer mongrels!"   (uttered, of course, by an IPM stormtrooper).  It is alleged that   the author subsequently received a letter of appreciation on IBM   com...
CPU Wars3 is  J. Watson Research   Laboratories (then, as now, one of the few islands of true   hackerdom in the IBM archipelago).  The lower loop of the B in the   IBM logo, it is said, had been carefully whited out.  See {eat   flaming death}. 
cracker is  n. One who breaks security on a system.  Coined ca. 1985   by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of {hacker}   (q.v., sense 8).  An earlier attempt to establish `worm' in this   sense around 1981--82 on USENET was largely a fa...
crank is  [from automotive slang] vt. Verb used to describe the   performance of a machine, especially sustained performance.  "This   box cranks (or, cranks at) about 6 {megaflops}, with a burst mode   of twice that on vectorized operations."
crash is  1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure.  Most often said   of the {system} (q.v., sense 1), sometimes of magnetic disk   drives.  "Three {luser}s lost their files in last night's disk   crash."  A disk crash that involves the read/write he...
crash2 is  and scraping off the oxide may also   be referred to as a `head crash', whereas the term `system   crash' usually, though not always, implies that the operating   system or other software was at fault.  2. v. To fail suddenly.   "Has the s...
crash3 is  OS!" See   {down}.  Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the   crash (usually a person or a program, or both).  "Those idiots   playing {SPACEWAR} crashed the system." 3. vi. Sometimes said   of people hitting the sack after a l...
crash and burn is  vi.,n. A spectacular crash, in the mode of the   conclusion of the car-chase scene in the movie "Bullitt" and   many subsequent imitators.  Sun-3 monitors losing the flyback   transformer and lightning strikes on VAX-11/780 backpla...
crash and burn2 is  The construction   `crash-and-burn machine' is reported for a computer used   exclusively for alpha or {beta} testing, or reproducing bugs   (i.e., not for development).  The implication is that it wouldn't   be such a disaster if...
crash and burn3 is  would be inconvenienced. 
crawling horror is  n. Ancient crufty hardware or software that is   kept obstinately alive by forces beyond the control of the hackers   at a site.  Like {dusty deck} or {gonkulator}, but connotes   that the thing described is not just an irritation...
crawling horror2 is  "Mostly we code new stuff in C, but   they pay us to maintain one big FORTRAN II application from   nineteen-sixty-X that's a real crawling horror...."  Compare   {WOMBAT}. 
cray is  /kray/ n. 1. (properly, capitalized) One of the line of   supercomputers designed by Cray Research.  2. Any supercomputer at   all.  3. The {canonical} {number-crunching} machine.   The term is actually the lowercased last name of Seymour Cr...
cray2 is  co-founder of the company.  Numerous   vivid legends surround him, some true and some admittedly invented   by Cray Research brass to shape their corporate culture and image. 
cray instability is  n. A shortcoming of a program or algorithm that   manifests itself only when a large problem is being run on a powerful   machine (see {cray}).  Generally more subtle than bugs that can   be detected in smaller problems running o...
crayola is  /kray-oh'l*/ n. A super-mini or -micro computer that   provides some reasonable percentage of supercomputer performance   for an unreasonably low price.  Might also be a {killer micro}.
crayon is  n. 1. Someone who works on Cray supercomputers.  More   specifically, it implies a programmer, probably of the CDC ilk,   probably male, and almost certainly wearing a tie (irrespective of   gender).  Systems types who have a UNIX backgrou...
crayon2 is  A {computron} (sense 2) that   participates only in {number-crunching}.  3. A unit of   computational power equal to that of a single Cray-1.  There is a   standard joke about this that derives from an old Crayola crayon   promotional gim...
creationism is  n. The (false) belief that large, innovative designs   can be completely specified in advance and then painlessly magicked   out of the void by the normal efforts of a team of normally   talented programmers.  In fact, experience has ...
creationism2 is  only from evolutionary, exploratory   interaction between one (or at most a small handful of)   exceptionally able designer(s) and an active user population ---   and that the first try at a big new idea is always wrong.   Unfortunat...
creationism3 is  planning models   beloved of {management}, they are generally ignored. 

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

double DECkers is  n. Used to describe married couples in which both   partners work for Digital Equipment Corporation.
doubled sig is  [USENET] n. A {sig block} that has been included   twice in a {USENET} article or, less commonly, in an electronic   mail message.  An article or message with a doubled sig can be   caused by improperly configured software.  More ofte...
doubled sig2 is  experience in electronic   communication.  See {BIFF}, {pseudo}. 
down is  1. adj. Not operating.  "The up escalator is down" is   considered a humorous thing to say, and "The elevator is down"   always means "The elevator isn't working" and never refers to   what floor the elevator is on.  With respect to computer...
down2 is  mainstream; the extension to other kinds   of machine is still hackish.  2. `go down' vi. To stop   functioning; usually said of the {system}.  The message from the   {console} that every hacker hates to hear from the operator is   "The sys...
down3 is  down',   `bring down' vt. To deactivate purposely, usually for repair work   or {PM}.  "I'm taking the system down to work on that bug in the   tape drive."  Occasionally one hears the word `down' by itself   used as a verb in this vt. sens...
download is  vt. To transfer data or (esp.) code from a larger `host'   system (esp. a {mainframe}) over a digital comm link to a smaller   `client' system, esp. a microcomputer or specialized peripheral.   Oppose {upload}.   However, note that groun...
download2 is  rule for this term.  Space-to-earth transmission is always download   and the reverse upload regardless of the relative size of the   computers involved.  So far the in-space machines have invariably   been smaller; thus the upload/down...
DP is  /D-P/ n. 1. Data Processing.  Listed here because,   according to hackers, use of the term marks one immediately as a   {suit}.  See {DPer}.  2. Common abbrev for {Dissociated   Press}.
DPB is  /d*-pib'/ [from the PDP-10 instruction set] vt. To plop   something down in the middle.  Usage silly.  "DPB   yourself into that couch there."  The connotation would be that   the couch is full except for one slot just big enough for you to  ...
DPB2 is  the name of a PDP-10   instruction that inserts some bits into the middle of some other   bits.  This usage has been kept alive by the Common LISP function   of the same name. 
DPer is  /dee-pee-er/ n. Data Processor.  Hackers are absolutely   amazed that {suit}s use this term self-referentially.   "*Computers* process data, not people!"  See {DP}.
dragon is  n. [MIT] A program similar to a {daemon}, except that it   is not invoked at all, but is instead used by the system to perform   various secondary tasks.  A typical example would be an accounting   program, which keeps track of who is logg...
dragon2 is  etc.  Under ITS, many terminals displayed   a list of people logged in, where they were, what they were   running, etc., along with some random picture (such as a unicorn,   Snoopy, or the Enterprise), which was generated by the `name   d...
dragon3 is  and most other OSes   this would be called a `background demon' or {daemon}.  The   best-known UNIX example of a dragon is `cron(1)'.  At SAIL,   they called this sort of thing a `phantom'. 
Dragon Book is  n. The classic text `Compilers Principles,   Techniques and Tools', by Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D.   Ullman (Addison-Wesley 1986; ISBN 0-201-10088-6), so called because   of the cover design featuring a dragon labeled `c...
Dragon Book2 is  bearing the lance `LALR parser   generator' among his other trappings.  This one is more   specifically known as the `Red Dragon Book' (1986); an earlier   edition, sans Sethi and titled `Principles Of Compiler Design'   (Alfred V. A...
Dragon Book3 is  ISBN   0-201-00022-9), was the `Green Dragon Book' (1977).  (Also `New   Dragon Book', `Old Dragon Book'.)  The horsed knight and the   Green Dragon were warily eying each other at a distance; now the   knight is typing (wearing gaun...
Dragon Book4 is  representation of the Red Dragon's head while the rest   of the beast extends back in normal space.  See also {{book   titles}}. 
drain is  [IBM] v. Syn. for {flush} (sense 2).  Has a connotation   of finality about it; one speaks of draining a device before taking   it offline.
dread high-bit disease is  n. A condition endemic to PRIME (a.k.a.   PR1ME) minicomputers that results in all the characters having   their high (0x80) bit ON rather than OFF.  This of course makes   transporting files to other systems much more diff...

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

hash bucket is  n. A notional receptacle into which more than one   thing accessed by the same key or short code might be dropped.   When you look up a name in the phone book (for example), you   typically hash it by extracting its first letter; the ...
hash bucket2 is  letter sections.  This is used as   techspeak with respect to code that uses actual hash functions; in   jargon, it is used for human associative memory as well.  Thus, two   things `in the same hash bucket' may be confused with each...
hash bucket3 is  length, you get too many common   grammar words in the first couple of hash buckets." Compare {hash   collision}. 
hash collision is  [from the technical usage] n. (var. `hash   clash') When used of people, signifies a confusion in associative   memory or imagination, especially a persistent one (see   {thinko}).  True story One of us [ESR] was once on the phone ...
hash collision2 is   When asked what he   expected Berkeley to be like, the friend replied "Well, I have   this mental picture of naked women throwing Molotov cocktails, but   I think that's just a collision in my hash tables."  Compare   {hash bucke...
hat is  n. Common (spoken) name for the circumflex (`^', ASCII   1011110) character.  See {ASCII} for other synonyms.
HCF is  /H-C-F/ n. Mnemonic for `Halt and Catch Fire', any of   several undocumented and semi-mythical machine instructions with   destructive side-effects, supposedly included for test purposes on   several well-known architectures going as far back...
HCF2 is  was the first for which the HCF opcode   became widely known.  This instruction caused the processor to   {toggle} a subset of the bus lines as rapidly as it could; in   some configurations this can actually cause lines to burn   up. 
heads down is  [Sun] adj. Concentrating, usually so heavily and for so   long that everything outside the focus area is missed.  See also   {hack mode} and {larval stage}, although it is not confined to   fledgling hackers.
heartbeat is  n. 1. The signal emitted by a Level 2 Ethernet   transceiver at the end of every packet to show that the   collision-detection circuit is still connected.  2. A periodic   synchronization signal used by software or hardware, such as a b...
heartbeat2 is  `natural' oscillation   frequency of a computer's clock crystal, before frequency division   down to the machine's clock rate.  4. A signal emitted at regular   intervals by software to demonstrate that it is still alive.   Sometimes h...
heartbeat3 is  stops   hearing a heartbeat.  See also {breath-of-life packet}. 
heavy metal is  [Cambridge] n. Syn. {big iron}.
heavy wizardry is  n. Code or designs that trade on a particularly   intimate knowledge or experience of a particular operating system   or language or complex application interface.  Distinguished from   {deep magic}, which trades more on arcane *th...
heavy wizardry2 is  drivers is heavy wizardry; so is   interfacing to {X} (sense 2) without a toolkit.  Esp. found in   comments similar to "Heavy wizardry begins here ...".  Compare   {voodoo programming}. 
heavyweight is  adj. High-overhead; {baroque}; code-intensive;   featureful, but costly.  Esp. used of communication protocols,   language designs, and any sort of implementation in which maximum   generality and/or ease of implementation has been pu...
heavyweight2 is  considerations such as speed, memory utilization,   and startup time.  {EMACS} is a heavyweight editor; {X} is an   *extremely* heavyweight window system.  This term isn't   pejorative, but one man's heavyweight is another's {elephan...
heisenbug is  /hi'zen-buhg/ [from Heisenberg's Uncertainty   Principle in quantum physics] n. A bug that disappears or alters   its behavior when one attempts to probe or isolate it.  Antonym of   {Bohr bug}; see also {mandelbug}.  In C, nine out of ...
heisenbug2 is  on core} phenomena (esp. lossage   related to corruption of the malloc {arena}) or errors that   {smash the stack}. 
Helen Keller mode is  n. State of a hardware or software system that   is deaf, dumb, and blind, i.e., accepting no input and generating no   output, usually due to an infinite loop or some other excursion   into {deep space}.  (Unfair to the real He...
Helen Keller mode2 is  was triumphant.)  See also   {go flatline}, {catatonic}. 

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

languages of choice3 is  appropriate for anything but {HLL} implementation,   {glue}, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems   programs.  FORTRAN occupies a shrinking niche in scientific   programming.   Most hackers tend to fr...
languages of choice4 is  which don't give them the near-total freedom considered   necessary for hacking (see {bondage-and-discipline language}), and   to regard everything that's even remotely connected with {COBOL}   or other traditional {card wall...
larval stage is  n. Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration   on coding apparently passed through by all fledgling hackers.   Common symptoms include the perpetration of more than one 36-hour   {hacking run} in a given week; neglect of all o...
larval stage2 is  food, sleep, and personal hygiene; and   a chronic case of advanced bleary-eye.  Can last from 6 months to 2   years, the apparent median being around 18 months.  A few so   afflicted never resume a more `normal' life, but the ordea...
larval stage3 is  wizardly (as opposed to   merely competent) programmers.  See also {wannabee}.  A less   protracted and intense version of larval stage (typically lasting   about a month) may recur when one is learning a new {OS} or   programming l...
lase is  /layz/ vt. To print a given document via a laser printer.   "OK, let's lase that sucker and see if all those graphics-macro   calls did the right things."
laser chicken is  n. Kung Pao Chicken, a standard Chinese dish   containing chicken, peanuts, and hot red peppers in a spicy   pepper-oil sauce.  Many hackers call it `laser chicken' for   two reasons It can {zap} you just like a laser, and the   sau...
laser chicken2 is  beams.   In a variation on this theme, it is reported that some Australian   hackers have redesignated the common dish `lemon chicken' as   `Chernobyl Chicken'.  The name is derived from the color of the   sauce, which is considere...
laser chicken3 is  mythically, do some of the inhabitants of Chernobyl). 
laundromat is  n. Syn. {disk farm}; see {washing machine}.
LDB is  /l*'d*b/ [from the PDP-10 instruction set] vt. To extract   from the middle.  "LDB me a slice of cake, please." This usage   has been kept alive by Common LISP's function of the same name.   Considered silly.  See also {DPB}.
leaf site is  n. A machine that merely originates and reads USENET   news or mail, and does not relay any third-party traffic.  Often   uttered in a critical tone; when the ratio of leaf sites to   backbone, rib, and other relay sites gets too high, ...
leaf site2 is  Compare {backbone site}, {rib   site}. 
leak is  n. With qualifier, one of a class of resource-management bugs   that occur when resources are not freed properly after operations   on them are finished, so they effectively disappear (leak out).   This leads to eventual exhaustion as new al...
leak2 is  and {fd leak} have their own entries; one   might also refer, to, say, a `window handle leak' in a window   system. 
leaky heap is  [Cambridge] n. An {arena} with a {memory leak}.
legal is  adj. Loosely used to mean `in accordance with all the   relevant rules', esp. in connection with some set of constraints   defined by software.  "The older =+ alternate for += is no longer   legal syntax in ANSI C."  "This parser processes ...
legal2 is  the trailing linefeed."  Hackers   often model their work as a sort of game played with the   environment in which the objective is to maneuver through the   thicket of `natural laws' to achieve a desired objective.  Their   use of `legal'...
legal3 is  as by   the more conventional one having to do with courts and lawyers.   Compare {language lawyer}, {legalese}. 
legalese is  n. Dense, pedantic verbiage in a language description,   product specification, or interface standard; text that seems   designed to obfuscate and requires a {language lawyer} to   {parse} it.  Though hackers are not afraid of high infor...
legalese2 is  (indeed, they rather enjoy   both), they share a deep and abiding loathing for legalese; they   associate it with deception, {suit}s, and situations in which   hackers generally get the short end of the stick. 

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

phase of the moon5 is  bug   literally depended on the phase of the moon!   The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included   an example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but   the typesetter `corrected' it.  Th...
phreaking is  [from `phone phreak'] n. 1. The art and science of   cracking the phone network (so as, for example, to make free   long-distance calls).  2. By extension, security-cracking in any   other context (especially, but not exclusively, on co...
phreaking2 is  phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among   hackers; there was a gentleman's agreement that phreaking as an   intellectual game and a form of exploration was OK, but serious   theft of services was taboo.  There was significant c...
phreaking3 is  hard-core phone phreaks who   ran semi-underground networks of their own through such media as   the legendary `TAP Newsletter'.  This ethos began to break   down in the mid-1980s as wider dissemination of the techniques put   them in ...
phreaking4 is  the same   time, changes in the phone network made old-style technical   ingenuity less effective as a way of hacking it, so phreaking came   to depend more on overtly criminal acts such as stealing phone-card   numbers.  The crimes an...
phreaking5 is  turned that game very ugly.  A few old-time hackers still phreak   casually just to keep their hand in, but most these days have   hardly even heard of `blue boxes' or any of the other   paraphernalia of the great phreaks of yore. 
pico- is  [SI a quantifier   meaning * 10^-12]   pref. Smaller than {nano-}; used in the same rather loose   connotative way as {nano-} and {micro-}.  This usage is not yet   common in the way {nano-} and {micro-} are, but should be   instantly recog...
pico-2 is  {{quantifiers}},   {micro-}. 
run like a pig is  v. To run very slowly on given hardware, said of   software.  Distinct from {hog}.
pilot error is  [Sun from aviation] n. A user's misconfiguration or   misuse of a piece of software, producing apparently buglike results   (compare {UBD}).  "Joe Luser reported a bug in sendmail that   causes it to generate bogus headers."  "That's ...
ping is  [from the TCP/IP acronym `Packet INternet Groper', prob.   originally contrived to match the submariners' term for a sonar   pulse] 1. n.  Slang term for a small network message (ICMP ECHO)   sent by a computer to check for the presence and ...
ping2 is  a phone greeting.  See {ACK},   also {ENQ}.  2. vt. To verify the presence of.  3. vt. To get   the attention of.  From the UNIX command `ping(1)' that sends   an ICMP ECHO packet to another host.  4. vt. To send a message to   all members ...
ping3 is  order   to verify that everybody's addresses are reachable).  "We haven't   heard much of anything from Geoff, but he did respond with an ACK   both times I pinged jargon-friends."   The funniest use of `ping' to date was described in Janua...
ping4 is  comp.sys.next.  He was trying   to isolate a faulty cable segment on a TCP/IP Ethernet hooked up to   a NeXT machine, and got tired of having to run back to his console   after each cabling tweak to see if the ping packets were getting   th...
ping5 is  on the NeXT, then   wrote a script that repeatedly invoked `ping(8)', listened for   an echo, and played back the recording on each returned packet.   Result?  A program that caused the machine to repeat, over and   over, "Ping ... ping ......
ping6 is  turned the volume to maximum, ferreted through   the building with one ear cocked, and found a faulty tee connector   in no time. 
Pink-Shirt Book is  `The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM   PC'.  The original cover featured a picture of Peter Norton with a   silly smirk on his face, wearing a pink shirt.  Perhaps in   recognition of this usage, the current edition has...
Pink-Shirt Book2 is  pink shirt.  See also {{book titles}}. 
PIP is  /pip/ [Peripheral Interchange Program] vt.,obs. To copy; from   the program PIP on CP/M, RSX-11, RSTS/E, and OS/8 (derived from a   utility on the PDP-6) that was used for file copying (and in OS/8   and RT-11 for just about every other file ...
PIP2 is  that when the program was originated, during the   development of the PDP-6 in 1963, it was called ATLATL (`Anything,   Lord, to Anything, Lord'). 
pistol is  [IBM] n. A tool that makes it all too easy for you to   shoot yourself in the foot.  "UNIX `rm *' makes such a nice   pistol!"

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

tip of the ice-cube is  [IBM] n. The visible part of something small and   insignificant.  Used as an ironic comment in situations where `tip   of the iceberg might be appropriate if the subject were actually   nontrivial.
tired iron is  [IBM] n. Hardware that is perfectly functional but   far enough behind the state of the art to have been superseded by new   products, presumably with sufficient improvement in bang-per-buck that   the old stuff is starting to look a b...
tits on a keyboard is  n. Small bumps on certain keycaps to keep   touch-typists registered (usually on the `5 of a numeric keypad,   and on the `F and `J of a QWERTY keyboard).
TLA is  /T-L-A/ [Three-Letter Acronym] n. 1. Self-describing   acronym for a species with which computing terminology is infested.   2. Any confusing acronym.  Examples include MCA, FTP, SNA, CPU,   MMU, SCCS, DMU, FPU, NNTP, TLA.  People who like th...
TLA2 is  three letters, just as not all four-letter   words have four letters.  One also hears of `ETLA (Extended   Three-Letter Acronym, pronounced /ee tee el ay/) being used to   describe four-letter acronyms.  The term `SFLA (Stupid Four-Letter   ...
TLA3 is  {YABA}.   The self-effacing phrase "TDM TLA" (Too Damn Many...) is   often used to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use.  In 1989, a   random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin   "What do you think will be the biggest prob...
TLA4 is  straight-faced response "There are only   17,000 three-letter acronyms." (To be exact, there are 26^3   = 17,576.) 
TMRC is  /tmerk/ n. The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT, one of   the wellsprings of hacker culture.  The 1959 `Dictionary of   the TMRC Language compiled by Peter Samson included several terms   which became basics of the hackish vocabulary (see esp...
TMRC2 is  legendary layout was already a marvel of   complexity.  The control system alone featured about 1200 relays.   There were {scram switch}es located at numerous places around   the room that could be pressed if something undesirable was about...
TMRC3 is  an obstruction.   Another feature of the system was a digital clock on the dispatch   board.  Normally it ran at some multiple of real time, but if   someone hit a scram switch the clock stopped and the display was   replaced with the word ...
TMRC4 is  the Bibliography), gives a   stimulating account of those early years.  TMRCs Power and Signals   group included most of the early PDP-1 hackers and the people who   later bacame the core of the MIT AI Lab staff.  Thirty years later   that ...
TMRC5 is  lexicon   accordingly includes a number of entries from a recent revision of   the TMRC Dictionary. 
to a first approximation is  1. [techspeak] When one is doing certain   numerical computations, an approximate solution may be computed by   any of several heuristic methods, then refined to a final value.   By using the starting point of a first app...
to a first approximation2 is  algorithm that converges more quickly to the   correct result.  2. In jargon, a preface to any comment that   indicates that the comment is only approximately true.  The remark   "To a first approximation, I feel good" m...
to a first approximation3 is  reveal that not all is perfect (e.g., a   nagging cough still remains after an illness). 
to a zeroth approximation is  [from `to a first approximation] A   *really* sloppy approximation; a wild guess.  Compare   {social science number}.
toast is  1. n. Any completely inoperable system or component, esp.   one that has just crashed and burned "Uh, oh ... I think the   serial board is toast."  2. vt. To cause a system to crash   accidentally, especially in a manner that requires manua...
toast2 is  {firewall machine} again." 
toaster is  n. 1. The archetypal really stupid application for an   embedded microprocessor controller; often used in comments that   imply that a scheme is inappropriate technology (but see   {elevator controller}).  "{DWIM} for an assembler?  Thatd...
toaster2 is  toaster!"  2. A very, very dumb   computer. "You could run this program on any dumb toaster."  See   {bitty box}, {Get a real computer!}, {toy}, {beige toaster}.   3. A Macintosh, esp. the Classic Mac.  Some hold that this is   implied b...
toaster3 is  my box   without toasters, but since then Ive added two boards and a second   disk drive." 

factpacks/jargon.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

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...

factpacks/jargon.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

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. 

factpacks/jargon.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

has the X nature => [seems to derive from Zen Buddhist koans of the form "Does an X have the Buddha-nature?"] adj. Common hacker construction for `is an X', used for humorous emphasis. "Anyone who can't even use a program with on-screen help embedded...
has the X nature2 => nature!" See also {the X that can be Y is not the true X}. 
hash bucket => n. A notional receptacle into which more than one thing accessed by the same key or short code might be dropped. When you look up a name in the phone book (for example), you typically hash it by extracting its first letter; the hash bu...
hash bucket2 => letter sections. This is used as techspeak with respect to code that uses actual hash functions; in jargon, it is used for human associative memory as well. Thus, two things `in the same hash bucket' may be confused with each other. "...
hash bucket3 => length, you get too many common grammar words in the first couple of hash buckets." Compare {hash collision}. 
hash collision => [from the technical usage] n. (var. `hash clash') When used of people, signifies a confusion in associative memory or imagination, especially a persistent one (see thinko). True story One of us [ESR] was once on the phone with a fri...
hash collision2 => When asked what he expected Berkeley to be like, the friend replied "Well, I have this mental picture of naked women throwing Molotov cocktails, but I think that's just a collision in my hash tables." Compare {hash bucket}. 
hat => n. Common (spoken) name for the circumflex (`^', ASCII 1011110) character. See ASCII for other synonyms.
HCF => /H-C-F/ n. Mnemonic for `Halt and Catch Fire', any of several undocumented and semi-mythical machine instructions with destructive side-effects, supposedly included for test purposes on several well-known architectures going as far back as the...
heads down => [Sun] adj. Concentrating, usually so heavily and for so long that everything outside the focus area is missed. See also {hack mode} and {larval stage}, although it is not confined to fledgling hackers.
heartbeat => n. 1. The signal emitted by a Level 2 Ethernet transceiver at the end of every packet to show that the collision-detection circuit is still connected. 2. A periodic synchronization signal used by software or hardware, such as a bus clock...
heavy metal => [Cambridge] n. Syn. {big iron}.
heavy wizardry => n. Code or designs that trade on a particularly intimate knowledge or experience of a particular operating system or language or complex application interface. Distinguished from {deep magic}, which trades more on arcane *theoretica...
heavy wizardry2 => drivers is heavy wizardry; so is interfacing to X (sense 2) without a toolkit. Esp. found in comments similar to "Heavy wizardry begins here ...". Compare {voodoo programming}. 
heavyweight => adj. High-overhead; baroque; code-intensive; featureful, but costly. Esp. used of communication protocols, language designs, and any sort of implementation in which maximum generality and/or ease of implementation has been pushed at th...
heisenbug => /hi'zen-buhg/ [from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics] n. A bug that disappears or alters its behavior when one attempts to probe or isolate it. Antonym of {Bohr bug}; see also mandelbug. In C, nine out of ten heisenb...
Helen Keller mode => n. State of a hardware or software system that is deaf, dumb, and blind, i.e., accepting no input and generating no output, usually due to an infinite loop or some other excursion into {deep space}. (Unfair to the real Helen Kell...
Helen Keller mode2 => was triumphant.) See also {go flatline}, catatonic. 
hello, sailor! => interj. Occasional West Coast equivalent of {hello, world}; seems to have originated at SAIL, later associated with the game Zork (which also included "hello, aviator" and "hello, implementor"). Originally from the traditional hooke...
hello, sailor!2 => off the boat, of course. 
hello, wall! => excl. See wall.

factpacks/jargon.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

languages of choice3 => appropriate for anything but HLL implementation, glue, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs. FORTRAN occupies a shrinking niche in scientific programming. Most hackers tend to frown on languag...
languages of choice4 => which don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for hacking (see {bondage-and-discipline language}), and to regard everything that's even remotely connected with COBOL or other traditional {card walloper} lan...
larval stage => n. Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration on coding apparently passed through by all fledgling hackers. Common symptoms include the perpetration of more than one 36-hour {hacking run} in a given week; neglect of all other ac...
larval stage2 => food, sleep, and personal hygiene; and a chronic case of advanced bleary-eye. Can last from 6 months to 2 years, the apparent median being around 18 months. A few so afflicted never resume a more `normal' life, but the ordeal seems t...
larval stage3 => wizardly (as opposed to merely competent) programmers. See also wannabee. A less protracted and intense version of larval stage (typically lasting about a month) may recur when one is learning a new OS or programming language. 
lase => /layz/ vt. To print a given document via a laser printer. "OK, let's lase that sucker and see if all those graphics-macro calls did the right things."
laser chicken => n. Kung Pao Chicken, a standard Chinese dish containing chicken, peanuts, and hot red peppers in a spicy pepper-oil sauce. Many hackers call it `laser chicken' for two reasons It can zap you just like a laser, and the sauce has a red...
laser chicken2 => beams. In a variation on this theme, it is reported that some Australian hackers have redesignated the common dish `lemon chicken' as `Chernobyl Chicken'. The name is derived from the color of the sauce, which is considered bright e...
laser chicken3 => mythically, do some of the inhabitants of Chernobyl). 
laundromat => n. Syn. {disk farm}; see {washing machine}.
LDB => /l*'d*b/ [from the PDP-10 instruction set] vt. To extract from the middle. "LDB me a slice of cake, please." This usage has been kept alive by Common LISP's function of the same name. Considered silly. See also DPB.
leaf site => n. A machine that merely originates and reads USENET news or mail, and does not relay any third-party traffic. Often uttered in a critical tone; when the ratio of leaf sites to backbone, rib, and other relay sites gets too high, the netw...
leaf site2 => Compare {backbone site}, {rib site}. 
leak => n. With qualifier, one of a class of resource-management bugs that occur when resources are not freed properly after operations on them are finished, so they effectively disappear (leak out). This leads to eventual exhaustion as new allocatio...
leaky heap => [Cambridge] n. An arena with a {memory leak}.
legal => adj. Loosely used to mean `in accordance with all the relevant rules', esp. in connection with some set of constraints defined by software. "The older =+ alternate for += is no longer legal syntax in ANSI C." "This parser processes each line...
legalese => n. Dense, pedantic verbiage in a language description, product specification, or interface standard; text that seems designed to obfuscate and requires a {language lawyer} to parse it. Though hackers are not afraid of high information den...
LER => /L-E-R/ [TMRC, from `Light-Emitting Diode] n. A light-emitting resistor (that is, one in the process of burning up). Ohm's law was broken. See SED.
LERP => /lerp/ vi.,n. Quasi-acronym for Linear Interpolation, used as a verb or noun for the operation. E.g., Bresenham's algorithm lerps incrementally between the two endpoints of the line.
let the smoke out => v. To fry hardware (see fried). See {magic smoke} for the mythology behind this.
letterbomb => n. A piece of email containing {live data} intended to do nefarious things to the recipient's machine or terminal. It is possible, for example, to send letterbombs that will lock up some specific kinds of terminals when they are viewed,...

factpacks/jargon.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

phase => 1. n. The phase of one's waking-sleeping schedule with respect to the standard 24-hour cycle. This is a useful concept among people who often work at night and/or according to no fixed schedule. It is not uncommon to change one's phase by as...
phase of the moon => n. Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been able to determine. "...
phase of the moon2 => channel open in mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the moon." True story Once upon a time there was a bug that really did depend on the phase of the moon. There is a little subroutine that had traditiona...
phase of the moon3 => MIT to calculate an approximation to the moon's true phase. GLS incorporated this routine into a LISP program that, when it wrote out a file, would print a timestamp line almost 80 characters long. Very occasionally the first li...
phase of the moon4 => and would overflow onto the next line, and when the file was later read back in the program would barf. The length of the first line depended on both the precise date and time and the length of the phase specification when the t...
phase of the moon5 => bug literally depended on the phase of the moon! The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included an example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but the typesetter `corrected' it. This has sin...
phreaking => [from `phone phreak'] n. 1. The art and science of cracking the phone network (so as, for example, to make free long-distance calls). 2. By extension, security-cracking in any other context (especially, but not exclusively, on communicat...
pico- => [SI a quantifier meaning * 10^-12] pref. Smaller than nano-; used in the same rather loose connotative way as nano- and micro-. This usage is not yet common in the way nano- and micro- are, but should be instantly recognizable to any hacker....
run like a pig => v. To run very slowly on given hardware, said of software. Distinct from hog.
pilot error => [Sun from aviation] n. A user's misconfiguration or misuse of a piece of software, producing apparently buglike results (compare UBD). "Joe Luser reported a bug in sendmail that causes it to generate bogus headers." "That's not a bug, ...
ping => [from the TCP/IP acronym `Packet INternet Groper', prob. originally contrived to match the submariners' term for a sonar pulse] 1. n. Slang term for a small network message (ICMP ECHO) sent by a computer to check for the presence and alivenes...
Pink-Shirt Book => `The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC'. The original cover featured a picture of Peter Norton with a silly smirk on his face, wearing a pink shirt. Perhaps in recognition of this usage, the current edition has a differ...
Pink-Shirt Book2 => pink shirt. See also {{book titles}}. 
PIP => /pip/ [Peripheral Interchange Program] vt.,obs. To copy; from the program PIP on CP/M, RSX-11, RSTS/E, and OS/8 (derived from a utility on the PDP-6) that was used for file copying (and in OS/8 and RT-11 for just about every other file operati...
pistol => [IBM] n. A tool that makes it all too easy for you to shoot yourself in the foot. "UNIX `rm *' makes such a nice pistol!"
pizza box => [Sun] n. The largish thin box housing the electronics in (especially Sun) desktop workstations, so named because of its size and shape and the dimpled pattern that looks like air holes. Two meg single-platter removable disk packs used to...
pizza box2 => they were stuck into was referred to as a pizza oven. It's an index of progress that in the old days just the disk was pizza-sized, while now the entire computer is. 
ANSI standard pizza => /an'see stan'd*rd peet'z*/ [CMU] Pepperoni and mushroom pizza. Coined allegedly because most pizzas ordered by CMU hackers during some period leading up to mid-1990 were of that flavor. See also {rotary debugger}; compare {tea,...
plain-ASCII => /playn-as'kee/ Syn. flat-ASCII.
plan file => [UNIX] n. On systems that support finger, the `.plan' file in a user's home directory is displayed when the user is fingered. This feature was originally intended to be used to keep potential fingerers apprised of one's location and near...
plan file2 => almost universally to humorous and self-expressive purposes (like a {sig block}). See {Hacking X for Y}. 

factpacks/jargon.fact  view on Meta::CPAN

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.