line noise

n. 1. [techspeak] Spurious characters due to electrical noise in a
communications link, especially an RS-232 serial connection. Line noise may
be induced by poor connections, interference or crosstalk from other
circuits, electrical storms, cosmic rays , or (notionally) birds crapping on
the phone wires. 2. Any chunk of data in a file or elsewhere that looks like
the results of line noise in sense 1. 3. Text that is theoretically a
readable text or program source but employs syntax so bizarre that it looks
like line noise in senses 1 or 2. Yes, there are languages this ugly. The
canonical example is TECO ; it is often claimed that TECO's input syntax is
indistinguishable from line noise. Other non- WYSIWYG editors, such as
Multics qed and Unix ed , in the hands of a real hacker, also qualify
easily, as do deliberately obfuscated languages such as INTERCAL.

