Remove misc editorializing and irrelevant anecdotes

entries/-oid.txt

@@ -16,6 +16,4 @@ trendoid for victims of terminal hipness). This is probably traceable to the
 popularization of the term droid in Star Wars and its sequels. (See also
 windoid. ) Coinages in both forms have been common in science fiction for at
 least fifty years, and hackers (who are often SF fans) have probably been
-making -oid jargon for almost that long [though GLS and I can personally
+making -oid jargon for almost that long.
-confirm only that they were already common in the mid-1970s ESR].
-

entries/BASIC.txt

@@ -14,9 +14,5 @@ longer (a) is very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits that will make it
 harder to use more powerful languages well. This wouldn't be so bad if
 historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on low-end micros in the
 1980s. As it is, it probably ruined tens of thousands of potential wizards.
-[1995: Some languages called BASIC aren't quite this nasty any more, having
+BASIC stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Earlier
-acquired Pascal- and C-like procedures and control structures and shed their
+versions of this entry claiming this was a later backronym were incorrect.
-line numbers. ESR] BASIC stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic
-Instruction Code. Earlier versions of this entry claiming this was a later
-backronym were incorrect.
-

entries/C++.txt

@@ -10,6 +10,4 @@ too large to hold in even hackers' heads. Much of the cruft results from
 C++'s attempt to be backward compatible with C. Stroustrup himself has said
 in his retrospective book The Design and Evolution of C++ (p. 207), Within
 C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get out.
-[Many hackers would now add Yes, and it's called Java ESR] Nowadays we say
+Nowadays we say this of C++.
-this of C++.
-

entries/El Camino Bignum.txt

@@ -15,12 +15,10 @@ 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 Precision but when the hacker
 was told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it El Camino
-Bignum , and that name has stuck. (See bignum. ) [GLS has since let slip
+Bignum , and that name has stuck. (See bignum. ) In the early
-that the unnamed hacker in this story was in fact himself ESR] In the early
 1990s, the synonym El Camino Virtual was been reported as an alternate at
 IBM and Amdahl sites in the Valley. Mathematically literate hackers in the
 Valley have also been heard to refer to some major cross-street intersecting
 El Camino Real as El Camino Imaginary. One popular theory is that the
 intersection is located near Moffett Field where they keep all those complex
 planes.
-

entries/Shub-Internet.txt

@@ -13,10 +13,4 @@ the lines of: Shub-Internet gulps down the tac nuke and burps happily. )
 Also cursed by users of the Web, FTP and telnet when the network lags. The
 dread name of Shub-Internet is seldom spoken aloud, as it is said that
 repeating it three times will cause the being to wake, deep within its lair
-beneath the Pentagon. Compare Random Number God. [January 1996: It develops
+beneath the Pentagon. Compare Random Number God.
-that one of the computer administrators in the basement of the Pentagon read
-this entry and fell over laughing. As a result, you too can now poke
-Shub-Internet by ping ing shub-internet.ims.disa.mil. Compare kremvax. ESR]
-[April 1999: shub-internet.ims.disa.mil is no more, alas. But Shub-Internet
-lives, and even has a home page.
-

entries/bug.txt

@@ -67,18 +67,6 @@ plausible conversation that never actually happened: There is a bug in this
 ant farm! What do you mean? I don't see any ants in it. That's the bug. A
 careful discussion of the etymological issues can be found in a paper by
 Fred R. Shapiro, 1987, Entomology of the Computer Bug: History and Folklore
-, American Speech 62(4):376-378. [There has been a widespread myth that the
+, American Speech 62(4):376-378. It helps to remember that this dates
-original bug was moved to the Smithsonian, and an earlier version of this
+from 1973. (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-10-31. The
-entry so asserted. A correspondent who thought to check discovered that the
+previous cartoon was 73-07-24.
-bug was not there. While investigating this in late 1990, your editor
-discovered that the NSWC still had the bug, but had unsuccessfully tried to
-get the Smithsonian to accept it and that the present curator of their
-History of American Technology Museum didn't know this and agreed that it
-would make a worthwhile exhibit. It was moved to the Smithsonian in
-mid-1991, but due to space and money constraints was not actually exhibited
-for years afterwards. Thus, the process of investigating the
-original-computer-bug bug fixed it in an entirely unexpected way, by making
-the myth true! ESR] It helps to remember that this dates from 1973. (The
-next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-10-31. The previous cartoon was
-73-07-24.
-

entries/candygrammar.txt

@@ -14,9 +14,8 @@ the old Chevy Chase skit on Saturday Night Live should not be overlooked.
 This was a Jaws parody. Someone lurking outside an apartment door tries all
 kinds of bogus ways to get the occupant to open up, while ominous music
 plays in the background. The last attempt is a half-hearted Candygram! When
-the door is opened, a shark bursts in and chomps the poor occupant. [There
+the door is opened, a shark bursts in and chomps the poor occupant. There
-is a similar gag in Blazing Saddles ESR] There is a moral here for those
+is a moral here for those attracted to candygrammars. Note that, in many
-attracted to candygrammars. Note that, in many circles, pretty much the same
+circles, pretty much the same ones who remember Monty Python sketches,
-ones who remember Monty Python sketches, all it takes is the word Candygram!
+all it takes is the word Candygram!, suitably timed, to get people
-, suitably timed, to get people rolling on the floor.
+rolling on the floor.
-

entries/choad.txt

@@ -1,11 +0,0 @@
-choad
-
-/chohd/ , n. Synonym for penis used in alt.tasteless and popularized by the
-denizens thereof. They say: We think maybe it's from Middle English but
-we're all too damned lazy to check the OED. [I'm not. It isn't. ESR] This
-term is alleged to have been inherited through 1960s underground comics, and
-to have been recently sighted in the Beavis and Butthead cartoons. Speakers
-of the Hindi, Bengali and Gujarati languages have confirmed that choad is in
-fact an Indian vernacular word equivalent to fuck ; it is therefore likely
-to have entered English slang via the British Raj.
-

entries/fat electrons.txt

@@ -9,7 +9,5 @@ problem, because when they do that they get not ordinary or thin electrons,
 but the fat'n'sloppy electrons that are heavier and so settle to the bottom
 of the generator. These flow down ordinary wires just fine, but when they
 have to turn a sharp corner (as in an integrated-circuit via), they're apt
-to get stuck. This is what causes computer glitches. [Fascinating.
+to get stuck. This is what causes computer glitches. Compare
-Obviously, fat electrons must gain mass by bogon absorption ESR] Compare
 bogon , magic smoke.
-

entries/gorets.txt

@@ -3,8 +3,4 @@ gorets
 /gorets/ , n. The unknown ur-noun, fill in your own meaning. Found esp. on
 the Usenet newsgroup alt.gorets , which seems to be a running contest to
 redefine the word by implication in the funniest and most peculiar way, with
-the understanding that no definition is ever final. [A correspondent from
+the understanding that no definition is ever final. Compare frink.
-the former Soviet Union informs me that gorets is Russian for mountain
-dweller. Another from France informs me that goret is archaic French for a
-young pig ESR] Compare frink.
-

entries/kremvax.txt

@@ -4,32 +4,4 @@ kremvax
 the form foovax ] Originally, a fictitious Usenet site at the Kremlin,
 announced on April 1, 1984 in a posting ostensibly originated there by
 Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. The posting was actually forged by Piet
-Beertema as an April Fool's joke. Other fictitious sites mentioned in the
+Beertema as an April Fool's joke.
-hoax were moskvax and kgbvax. This was probably the funniest of the many
-April Fool's forgeries perpetrated on Usenet (which has negligible security
-against them), because the notion that Usenet might ever penetrate the Iron
-Curtain seemed so totally absurd at the time. In fact, it was only six years
-later that the first genuine site in Moscow, demos.su , joined Usenet. Some
-readers needed convincing that the postings from it weren't just another
-prank. Vadim Antonov, senior programmer at Demos and the major poster from
-there up to mid-1991, was quite aware of all this, referred to it frequently
-in his own postings, and at one point twitted some credulous readers by
-blandly asserting that he was a hoax! Eventually he even arranged to have
-the domain's gateway site named kremvax , thus neatly turning fiction into
-fact and demonstrating that the hackish sense of humor transcends cultural
-barriers. [Mr. Antonov also contributed the Russian-language material for
-this lexicon. ESR] In an even more ironic historical footnote, kremvax
-became an electronic center of the anti-communist resistance during the
-bungled hard-line coup of August 1991. During those three days the Soviet
-UUCP network centered on kremvax became the only trustworthy news source for
-many places within the USSR. Though the sysops were concentrating on
-internal communications, cross-border postings included immediate
-transliterations of Boris Yeltsin's decrees condemning the coup and
-eyewitness reports of the demonstrations in Moscow's streets. In those
-hours, years of speculation that totalitarianism would prove unable to
-maintain its grip on politically-loaded information in the age of computer
-networking were proved devastatingly accurate and the original kremvax joke
-became a reality as Yeltsin and the new Russian revolutionaries of glasnost
-and perestroika made kremvax one of the timeliest means of their outreach to
-the West.
-

entries/retcon.txt

@@ -9,12 +9,4 @@ a whole season of Dallas was a dream was a retcon. 2. vt. To write such a
 story about a character or fictitious object. Byrne has retconned Superman's
 cape so that it is no longer unbreakable. Marvelman's old adventures were
 retconned into synthetic dreams. Swamp Thing was retconned from a
-transformed person into a sentient vegetable. [This term is included because
+transformed person into a sentient vegetable.
-it is a good example of hackish linguistic innovation in a field completely
-unrelated to computers. The word retcon will probably spread through comics
-fandom and lose its association with hackerdom within a couple of years; for
-the record, it started here. ESR] [1993 update: some comics fans on the net
-now claim that retcon was independently in use in comics fandom before
-rec.arts.comics , and have citations from around 1981. In lexicography,
-nothing is ever simple.
-

entries/saga.txt

@@ -1,114 +0,0 @@
-saga
-
-n. [WPI] A cuspy but bogus raving story about N random broken people. Here
-is a classic example of the saga form, as told by Guy L. Steele: Jon L.
-White (login name JONL) and I (GLS) were office mates at MIT for many years.
-One April, we both flew from Boston to California for a week on research
-business, to consult face-to-face with some people at Stanford, particularly
-our mutual friend Richard P. Gabriel (RPG). RPG picked us up at the San
-Francisco airport and drove us back to Palo Alto (going logical south on
-route 101, parallel to El Camino Bignum ). Palo Alto is adjacent to Stanford
-University and about 40 miles south of San Francisco. We ate at The Good
-Earth, a health food restaurant, very popular, the sort whose milkshakes all
-contain honey and protein powder. JONL ordered such a shake the waitress
-claimed the flavor of the day was lalaberry. I still have no idea what that
-might be, but it became a running joke. It was the color of raspberry, and
-JONL said it tasted rather bitter. I ate a better tostada there than I have
-ever had in a Mexican restaurant. After this we went to the local Uncle
-Gaylord's Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor. They make ice cream fresh daily,
-in a variety of intriguing flavors. It's a chain, and they have a slogan: If
-you don't live near an Uncle Gaylord's MOVE! Also, Uncle Gaylord (a real
-person) wages a constant battle to force big-name ice cream makers to print
-their ingredients on the package (like air and plastic and other non-natural
-garbage). JONL and I had first discovered Uncle Gaylord's the previous
-August, when we had flown to a computer-science conference in Berkeley,
-California, the first time either of us had been on the West Coast. When not
-in the conference sessions, we had spent our time wandering the length of
-Telegraph Avenue, which (like Harvard Square in Cambridge) was lined with
-picturesque street vendors and interesting little shops. On that street we
-discovered Uncle Gaylord's Berkeley store. The ice cream there was very
-good. During that August visit JONL went absolutely bananas (so to speak)
-over one particular flavor, ginger honey. Therefore, after eating at The
-Good Earth indeed, after every lunch and dinner and before bed during our
-April visit a trip to Uncle Gaylord's (the one in Palo Alto) was mandatory.
-We had arrived on a Wednesday, and by Thursday evening we had been there at
-least four times. Each time, JONL would get ginger honey ice cream, and
-proclaim to all bystanders that Ginger was the spice that drove the
-Europeans mad! That's why they sought a route to the East! They used it to
-preserve their otherwise off-taste meat. After the third or fourth
-repetition RPG and I were getting a little tired of this spiel, and began to
-paraphrase him: Wow! Ginger! The spice that makes rotten meat taste good!
-Say! Why don't we find some dog that's been run over and sat in the sun for
-a week and put some ginger on it for dinner?! Right! With a lalaberry shake!
-And so on. This failed to faze JONL; he took it in good humor, as long as we
-kept returning to Uncle Gaylord's. He loves ginger honey ice cream. Now RPG
-and his then-wife KBT (Kathy Tracy) were putting us up (putting up with us?)
-in their home for our visit, so to thank them JONL and I took them out to a
-nice French restaurant of their choosing. I unadventurously chose the filet
-mignon, and KBT had je ne sais quoi du jour , but RPG and JONL had lapin
-(rabbit). (Waitress: Oui , we have fresh rabbit, fresh today. RPG: Well,
-JONL, I guess we won't need any ginger ! ) We finished the meal late, about
-11PM, which is 2AM Boston time, so JONL and I were rather droopy. But it
-wasn't yet midnight. Off to Uncle Gaylord's! Now the French restaurant was
-in Redwood City, north of Palo Alto. In leaving Redwood City, we somehow got
-onto route 101 going north instead of south. JONL and I wouldn't have known
-the difference had RPG not mentioned it. We still knew very little of the
-local geography. I did figure out, however, that we were headed in the
-direction of Berkeley, and half-jokingly suggested that we continue north
-and go to Uncle Gaylord's in Berkeley. RPG said Fine! and we drove on for a
-while and talked. I was drowsy, and JONL actually dropped off to sleep for 5
-minutes. When he awoke, RPG said, Gee, JONL, you must have slept all the way
-over the bridge! , referring to the one spanning San Francisco Bay. Just
-then we came to a sign that said University Avenue. I mumbled something
-about working our way over to Telegraph Avenue; RPG said Right! and
-maneuvered some more. Eventually we pulled up in front of an Uncle
-Gaylord's. Now, I hadn't really been paying attention because I was so
-sleepy, and I didn't really understand what was happening until RPG let me
-in on it a few moments later, but I was just alert enough to notice that we
-had somehow come to the Palo Alto Uncle Gaylord's after all. JONL noticed
-the resemblance to the Palo Alto store, but hadn't caught on. (The place is
-lit with red and yellow lights at night, and looks much different from the
-way it does in daylight.) He said, This isn't the Uncle Gaylord's I went to
-in Berkeley! It looked like a barn! But this place looks just like the one
-back in Palo Alto! RPG deadpanned, Well, this is the one I always come to
-when I'm in Berkeley. They've got two in San Francisco, too. Remember,
-they're a chain. JONL accepted this bit of wisdom. And he was not totally
-ignorant he knew perfectly well that University Avenue was in Berkeley, not
-far from Telegraph Avenue. What he didn't know was that there is a
-completely different University Avenue in Palo Alto. JONL went up to the
-counter and asked for ginger honey. The guy at the counter asked whether
-JONL would like to taste it first, evidently their standard procedure with
-that flavor, as not too many people like it. JONL said, I'm sure I like it.
-Just give me a cone. The guy behind the counter insisted that JONL try just
-a taste first. Some people think it tastes like soap. JONL insisted, Look, I
-love ginger. I eat Chinese food. I eat raw ginger roots. I already went
-through this hassle with the guy back in Palo Alto. I know I like that
-flavor! At the words back in Palo Alto the guy behind the counter got a very
-strange look on his face, but said nothing. KBT caught his eye and winked.
-Through my stupor I still hadn't quite grasped what was going on, and
-thought RPG was rolling on the floor laughing and clutching his stomach just
-because JONL had launched into his spiel ( makes rotten meat a dish for
-princes ) for the forty-third time. At this point, RPG clued me in fully.
-RPG, KBT, and I retreated to a table, trying to stifle our chuckles. JONL
-remained at the counter, talking about ice cream with the guy b.t.c.,
-comparing Uncle Gaylord's to other ice cream shops and generally having a
-good old time. At length the g.b.t.c.: said, How's the ginger honey? JONL
-said, Fine! I wonder what exactly is in it? Now Uncle Gaylord publishes all
-his recipes and even teaches classes on how to make his ice cream at home.
-So the g.b.t.c.: got out the recipe, and he and JONL pored over it for a
-while. But the g.b.t.c.: could contain his curiosity no longer, and asked
-again, You really like that stuff, huh? JONL said, Yeah, I've been eating it
-constantly back in Palo Alto for the past two days. In fact, I think this
-batch is about as good as the cones I got back in Palo Alto! G.b.t.c.:
-looked him straight in the eye and said, You're in Palo Alto! JONL turned
-slowly around, and saw the three of us collapse in a fit of giggles. He
-clapped a hand to his forehead and exclaimed, I've been hacked! [My spies on
-the West Coast inform me that there is a close relative of the raspberry
-found out there called an ollalieberry ESR] [Ironic footnote: the meme about
-ginger vs. rotting meat is an urban legend. It's not borne out by an
-examination of medieval recipes or period purchase records for spices, and
-appears full-blown in the works of Samuel Pegge, a gourmand and notorious
-flake case who originated numerous food myths. The truth seems to be that
-ginger was used to cover not rot but the extreme salt taste of meat packed
-in brine, which was the best method available before refrigeration.
-

entries/snarf.txt

@@ -12,5 +12,5 @@ slurp. This program starts by snarfing the entire database into core,
 then.... 5. [GEnie] To spray food or programming fluids due to laughing at
 the wrong moment. I was drinking coffee, and when I read your post I snarfed
 all over my desk. If I keep reading this topic, I think I'll have to
-snarf-proof my computer with a keyboard condom. [This sense appears to be
+snarf-proof my computer with a keyboard condom. The sound of snarfing
-widespread among mundane teenagers ESR] The sound of snarfing is splork!.
+is splork!.