Also called ad-hackery, + ad-hocity (/ad-hos'@-tee/), ad-crockery. See also + ELIZA effect.
This is ad-hockery in action.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is + 74-08-18. The previous one is + 73-07-29.)
[Usenet] ASCII rendition of the ™ appended to phrases that the + author feels should be recorded for posterity, perhaps in future editions + of this lexicon. Sometimes used ironically as a form of protest against + the recent spate of software and algorithm patents and look and feel lawsuits. See also + UN*X.
[from the @-sign in an Internet address] (alt.: ‘@-sign + party’ /atsi:n par`tee/) A + semi-closed party thrown for hackers at a science-fiction convention (esp. + the annual World Science Fiction Convention or “Worldcon”); + one must have a network address to get in, or at + least be in company with someone who does. One of the most reliable + opportunities for hackers to meet face to face with people who might + otherwise be represented by mere phosphor dots on their screens. Compare + boink.
The first recorded @-party was held at the Westercon (a U.S. western + regional SF convention) over the July 4th weekend in 1980. It is not clear + exactly when the canonical @-party venue shifted to the Worldcon but it had + certainly become established by Constellation in 1983. Sadly, the @-party + tradition has been in decline since about 1996, mainly because having an + @-address no longer functions as an effective lodge pin.
We are informed, however, that rec.skydiving members have maintained a + tradition of formation jumps in the shape of an @.
The status of a website which has been completely removed, usually + by the administrators of the hosting site as a result of net abuse by the + website operators. The term is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the standard + “301 compliant” Murkowski Bill disclaimer used by spammers. + See also: spam, + spamvertize.
[from the HTTP error “file not found on server”] + Extended to humans to convey that the subject has no idea or no clue -- + sapience not found. May be used reflexively; “Uh, I'm 404ing” + means “I'm drawing a blank”.
[from the Unix null device, used as a data sink] A notional + ‘black hole’ in any information space being discussed, used, or + referred to. A controversial posting, for example, might end “Kudos + to rasputin@kremlin.org, flames to /dev/null”. See + bit bucket.
In translation software written by hackers, infix 2 often represents + the syllable to with the connotation ‘translate + to’: as in dvi2ps (DVI to PostScript), int2string (integer to + string), and texi2roff (Texinfo to [nt]roff). Several versions of a joke + have floated around the internet in which some idiot programmer fixes the + Y2K bug by changing all the Y's in something to K's, as in Januark, + Februark, etc.
[IRC; common] Under most IRC, /me is the “pose” + command; if you are logged on as Foonly and type “/me laughs”, + others watching the channel will see “* Joe Foonly + laughs”. This usage has been carried over to mail and news, where + the reader is expected to perform the same expansion in his or her + head.
Numeric zero, as opposed to the letter ‘O’ (the 15th + letter of the English alphabet). In their unmodified forms they look a lot + alike, and various kluges invented to make them visually distinct have + compounded the confusion. If your zero is center-dotted and letter-O is + not, or if letter-O looks almost rectangular but zero looks more like an + American football stood on end (or the reverse), you're probably looking at + a modern character display (though the dotted zero seems to have originated + as an option on IBM 3270 controllers). If your zero is slashed but + letter-O is not, you're probably looking at an old-style ASCII graphic set + descended from the default typewheel on the venerable ASR-33 Teletype + (Scandinavians, for whom is a letter, curse this arrangement). + (Interestingly, the slashed zero long predates computers; Florian Cajori's + monumental A History of Mathematical Notations notes + that it was used in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.) If letter-O has + a slash across it and the zero does not, your display is tuned for a very + old convention used at IBM and a few other early mainframe makers + (Scandinavians curse this arrangement even more, + because it means two of their letters collide). Some Burroughs/Unisys + equipment displays a zero with a reversed slash. Old + CDC computers rendered letter O as an unbroken oval and 0 as an oval broken + at upper right and lower left. And yet another convention common on early + line printers left zero unornamented but added a tail or hook to the + letter-O so that it resembled an inverted Q or cursive capital letter-O + (this was endorsed by a draft ANSI standard for how to draw ASCII + characters, but the final standard changed the distinguisher to a tick-mark + in the upper-left corner). Are we sufficiently confused yet?
The “One True Brace Style”; see + indent style.
[ABnormal END]
1. Abnormal termination (of software); crash; + lossage. Derives from an error message on the IBM + 360; used jokingly by hackers but seriously mainly by code + grinders. Usually capitalized, but may appear as + ‘abend’. Hackers will try to persuade you that ABEND is called + abend because it is what system + operators do to the machine late on Friday when they want to call it a day, + and hence is from the German Abend = + ‘Evening’.
2. [alt.callahans] Absent + By Enforced Net Deprivation — used in the subject lines of postings + warning friends of an imminent loss of Internet access. (This can be + because of computer downtime, loss of provider, moving or illness.) + Variants of this also appear: ABVND = ‘Absent By Voluntary Net + Deprivation’ and ABSEND = ‘Absent By Self-Enforced Net + Deprivation’ have been sighted.
1. [common; from the ASCII mnemonic for 0000110] Acknowledge. Used + to register one's presence (compare mainstream Yo!). + An appropriate response to ping or + ENQ.
2. [from the comic strip Bloom County] An + exclamation of surprised disgust, esp. in “Ack pffft!” + Semi-humorous. Generally this sense is not spelled in caps (ACK) and is + distinguished by a following exclamation point.
3. Used to politely interrupt someone to tell them you understand + their point (see NAK). Thus, for example, you might + cut off an overly long explanation with “Ack. Ack. Ack. I get it + now”.
4. An affirmative. “Think we ought to ditch that damn NT + server for a Linux box?” “ACK!”
There is also a usage “ACK?” (from sense 1) meaning + “Are you there?”, often used in email when earlier mail has + produced no reply, or during a lull in talk mode to + see if the person has gone away (the standard humorous response is of + course NAK, i.e., “I'm not + here”).
The prototypical computer adventure game, first designed by Will + Crowther on the PDP-10 in the mid-1970s as an + attempt at computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a + puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods at Stanford in 1976. (Woods had been one + of the authors of INTERCAL.) Now better known as + Adventure or Colossal Cave Adventure, but the + TOPS-10 operating system permitted only six-letter + filenames in uppercase. See also vadding, + Zork, and Infocom.
Figure1.Screen shot of the original ADVENT game
+Orange River Chamber +You are in a splendid chamber thirty feet high. The walls are frozen rivers of +orange stone. An awkward canyon and a good passage exit from east and west +sidesof the chamber. + +A cheerful little bird is sitting here singing. + +>drop rod +Dropped. + +>take bird +You catch the bird in the wicker cage. + +>take rod +Taken. + +>w +At Top of Small Pit +At your feet is a small pit breathing traces of white mist. A west passage ends +here except for a small crack leading on. + +Rough stone steps lead down the pit. + +>down + +In Hall of Mists +You are at one end of a vast hall stretching forward out of sight to the west. +There are openings to either side. Nearby, a wide stone staircase leads +downward. The hall is filled with wisps of white mist swaying to and fro almost +as if alive. A cold wind blows up the staircase. There is a passage at the top +of a dome behind you. + +Rough stone steps lead up the dome. + |
This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style since expected in + text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines that have become + fixtures of hacker-speak: “A huge green fierce snake bars the + way!” “I see no X here” (for some noun X). “You + are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.” “You are + in a little maze of twisty passages, all different.” The + ‘magic words’ xyzzy and + plugh also derive from this game.
Crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the Mammoth + & Flint Ridge cave system; it actually has a + Colossal Cave and a Bedquilt as in the game, and the Y2 that also + turns up is cavers' jargon for a map reference to a secondary + entrance.
ADVENT sources are available for FTP at ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/doc/misc/if-archive/games/source/advent.tar.Z. + You can also play it as a Java applet. + There is a good page of resources at the Colossal Cave Adventure + Page.
[Usenet; common] Abbrev. for “As Far As I Know”. There + is a variant AFAICT “As Far As I Can Tell”; where AFAIK + suggests that the writer knows his knowledge is limited, AFAICT suggests + that he feels his knowledge is as complete as anybody else's but that the + best available knowledge does not support firm conclusions.
Written-only abbreviation for “April Fool's Joke”. + Elaborate April Fool's hoaxes are a long-established tradition on Usenet + and Internet; see kremvax for an example. In fact, + April Fool's Day is the only seasonal holiday + consistently marked by customary observances on Internet and other hacker + networks.
[MUD] Abbrev. for “Away From Keyboard”. Used to notify + others that you will be momentarily unavailable online. eg. “Let's + not go kill that frost giant yet, I need to go AFK to make a phone + call”. Often MUDs will have a command to politely inform others of + your absence when they try to talk with you. The term is not restricted to + MUDs, however, and has become common in many chat situations, from IRC to + Unix talk.
[MIT, Stanford: by analogy with NP-complete (see NP-)] + 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 human-level intelligence). A problem that is + AI-complete is, in other words, just too hard.
Examples of AI-complete problems are ‘The Vision Problem’ + (building a system that can see as well as a human) and ‘The Natural + Language Problem’ (building a system that can understand and speak a + natural language as well as a human). These may appear to be modular, but + all attempts so far (2003) to solve them have foundered on the amount of + context information and ‘intelligence’ they seem to + require. See also gedanken.
Abbreviation for ‘Artificial Intelligence’, so common + that the full form is almost never written or spoken among hackers.
[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 ISO standard cup of tea.
The ANSI standard usage of ANSI + standard refers to any practice which is typical or broadly + done. It's most appropriately applied to things that everyone does that + are not quite regulation. For example: ANSI standard shaking of a laser + printer cartridge to get extra life from it, or the ANSI standard word + tripling in names of usenet alt groups.
This usage derives from the American National Standards + Institute. ANSI, along with the International Organization for Standards + (ISO), standardized the C programming language (see K&R, Classic + C), and promulgates many other important software standards. +
[Usenet] Common synonym for “Me, too!” alluding to the + legendary propensity of America Online users to utter contentless + “Me, too!” postings. The number of exclamation points + following varies from zero to five or so. The pseudo-HTML
<AOL>Me, too!</AOL>
is also frequently seen. See also + September that never ended.
[acronym, ‘Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation’] A + Usenet cancelbot created by Dick Depew of Munroe + Falls, Ohio. ARMM was intended to automatically cancel posts from + anonymous-posting sites. Unfortunately, the robot's recognizer for + anonymous postings triggered on its own automatically-generated control + messages! Transformed by this stroke of programming ineptitude into a + monster of Frankensteinian proportions, it broke loose on the night of + March 30, 1993 and proceeded to spam news.admin.policy with a recursive explosion + of over 200 messages.
ARMM's bug produced a recursive cascade of + messages each of which mechanically added text to the ID and Subject and + some other headers of its parent. This produced a flood of messages in + which each header took up several screens and each message ID and subject + line got longer and longer and longer.
Reactions varied from amusement to outrage. The pathological + messages crashed at least one mail system, and upset people paying line + charges for their Usenet feeds. One poster described the ARMM debacle as + “instant Usenet history” (also establishing the term + despew), and it has since been widely cited as a + cautionary example of the havoc the combination of good intentions and + incompetence can wreak on a network. The Usenet thread on the subject is + + archived here. Compare Great Worm; + sorcerer's apprentice mode. See also + software laser, + network meltdown.
The fine art of drawing diagrams using the ASCII character set + (mainly |, -, /, + \, and +). Also known as character graphics or ASCII graphics; see also + boxology. Here is a serious example:
+ + o----)||(--+--|<----+ +---------o + D O + L )||( | | | C U + A I )||( +-->|-+ | +-\/\/-+--o - T + C N )||( | | | | P + E )||( +-->|-+--)---+--|(--+-o U + )||( | | | GND T + o----)||(--+--|<----+----------+ + + A power supply consisting of a full wave rectifier circuit + feeding a capacitor input filter circuit + |
And here are some very silly examples:
+ + |\/\/\/| ____/| ___ |\_/| ___ + | | \ o.O| ACK! / \_ |` '| _/ \ + | | =(_)= THPHTH! / \/ \/ \ + | (o)(o) U / \ + C _) (__) \/\/\/\ _____ /\/\/\/ + | ,___| (oo) \/ \/ + | / \/-------\ U (__) + /____\ || | \ /---V `v'- oo ) +/ \ ||---W|| * * |--| || |`. |_/\ + + //-o-\\ + ____---=======---____ + ====___\ /.. ..\ /___==== Klingons rule OK! + // ---\__O__/--- \\ + \_\ /_/ + |
There is an important subgenre of ASCII art that puns on the standard + character names in the fashion of a rebus.
++--------------------------------------------------------+ +| ^^^^^^^^^^^^ | +| ^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ | +| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | +| ^^^^^^^ B ^^^^^^^^^ | +| ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | ++--------------------------------------------------------+ + " A Bee in the Carrot Patch " + |
Within humorous ASCII art, there is for some reason an entire + flourishing subgenre of pictures of silly cows. Four of these are + reproduced in the examples above, here are three more:
+ + (__) (__) (__) + (\/) ($$) (**) + /-------\/ /-------\/ /-------\/ + / | 666 || / |=====|| / | || +* ||----|| * ||----|| * ||----|| + ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ +Satanic cow This cow is a Yuppie Cow in love + |
Finally, here's a magnificent example of ASCII art depicting an + Edwardian train station in Dunedin, New Zealand:
+ .-. + /___\ + |___| + |]_[| + / I \ + JL/ | \JL + .-. i () | () i .-. + |_| .^. /_\ LJ=======LJ /_\ .^. |_| +._/___\._./___\_._._._._.L_J_/.-. .-.\_L_J._._._._._/___\._./___\._._._ + ., |-,-| ., L_J |_| [I] |_| L_J ., |-,-| ., ., + JL |-O-| JL L_J%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%L_J JL |-O-| JL JL +IIIIII_HH_'-'-'_HH_IIIIII|_|=======H=======|_|IIIIII_HH_'-'-'_HH_IIIIII_HH_ +-------[]-------[]-------[_]----\.=I=./----[_]-------[]-------[]--------[]- + _/\_ ||\\_I_//|| _/\_ [_] []_/_L_J_\_[] [_] _/\_ ||\\_I_//|| _/\_ ||\ + |__| ||=/_|_\=|| |__|_|_| _L_L_J_J_ |_|_|__| ||=/_|_\=|| |__| ||- + |__| |||__|__||| |__[___]__--__===__--__[___]__| |||__|__||| |__| ||| +IIIIIII[_]IIIII[_]IIIIIL___J__II__|_|__II__L___JIIIII[_]IIIII[_]IIIIIIII[_] + \_I_/ [_]\_I_/[_] \_I_[_]\II/[]\_\I/_/[]\II/[_]\_I_/ [_]\_I_/[_] \_I_/ [_] +./ \.L_J/ \L_J./ L_JI I[]/ \[]I IL_J \.L_J/ \L_J./ \.L_J +| |L_J| |L_J| L_J| |[]| |[]| |L_J |L_J| |L_J| |L_J +|_____JL_JL___JL_JL____|-|| |[]| |[]| ||-|_____JL_JL___JL_JL_____JL_J + |
The next step beyond static tableaux in ASCII art is ASCII animation. + There are not many large examples of this; perhaps the best known is the + ASCII animation of the original Star Wars movie at + http://www.asciimation.co.nz/.
There is a newsgroup, alt.ascii-art, devoted to this genre; + however, see also warlording.
[originally an acronym (American Standard Code for Information + Interchange) but now merely conventional] The predominant character set + encoding of present-day computers. The standard version uses 7 bits for + each character, whereas most earlier codes (including early drafts of ASCII + prior to June 1961) used fewer. This change allowed the inclusion of + lowercase letters — a major win — but it + did not provide for accented letters or any other letterforms not used in + English (such as the German sharp-S . or the ae-ligature + which is a letter in, for example, Norwegian). It could be worse, though. + It could be much worse. See EBCDIC to understand + how. A history of ASCII and its ancestors is at http://www.wps.com/texts/codes/index.html.
Computers are much pickier and less flexible about spelling than + humans; thus, hackers need to be very precise when talking about + characters, and have developed a considerable amount of verbal shorthand + for them. Every character has one or more names — some formal, some + concise, some silly. Common jargon names for ASCII characters are + collected here. See also individual entries for + bang, excl, + open, ques, + semi, shriek, + splat, twiddle, and + Yu-Shiang Whole Fish.
This list derives from revision 2.3 of the Usenet ASCII pronunciation + guide. Single characters are listed in ASCII order; character pairs are + sorted in by first member. For each character, common names are given in + rough order of popularity, followed by names that are reported but rarely + seen; official ANSI/CCITT names are surrounded by brokets: <>. + Square brackets mark the particularly silly names introduced by + INTERCAL. The abbreviations “l/r” and + “o/c” stand for left/right and “open/close” + respectively. Ordinary parentheticals provide some usage + information.
| ! | Common: + bang + + ; pling; excl; not; shriek; ball-bat; <exclamation mark>. Rare: + factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey; wham; eureka; + [spark-spot]; soldier, control. |
| " | Common: double quote; quote. Rare: literal mark; + double-glitch; snakebite; <quotation marks>; <dieresis>; + dirk; [rabbit-ears]; double prime. |
| # | Common: number sign; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp; + crunch + + ; hex; [mesh]. Rare: grid; crosshatch; octothorpe; + flash; <square>, pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; + thud; thump; + splat + + . |
| $ | Common: dollar; <dollar sign>. Rare: currency symbol; + buck; cash; bling; string (from BASIC); escape (when used as the echo of + ASCII ESC); ding; cache; [big money]. |
| % | Common: percent; <percent sign>; mod; grapes. Rare: + [double-oh-seven]. |
| & | Common: <ampersand>; amp; amper; and, and sign. Rare: + address (from C); reference (from C++); andpersand; bitand; + background (from + sh(1) + + ); pretzel. [INTERCAL called this + ampersand + + ; what could be sillier?] |
| ' | Common: single quote; quote; <apostrophe>. Rare: prime; + glitch; tick; irk; pop; [spark]; <closing single quotation + mark>; <acute accent>. |
| ( ) | Common: l/r paren; l/r parenthesis; left/right; + open/close; paren/thesis; o/c paren; + o/c parenthesis; l/r parenthesis; l/r + banana. Rare: so/already; lparen/rparen; + <opening/closing parenthesis>; o/c round bracket, l/r round + bracket, [wax/wane]; + parenthisey/unparenthisey; + l/r ear. |
| * | Common: star; [ + splat + + ]; <asterisk>. Rare: wildcard; gear; dingle; mult; spider; + aster; times; twinkle; glob (see + glob + + ); + Nathan Hale + + . |
| + | Common: <plus>; add. Rare: cross; + [intersection]. |
| , | Common: <comma>. Rare: <cedilla>; [tail]. |
| - | Common: dash; <hyphen>; <minus>. Rare: [worm]; + option; dak; bithorpe. |
| . | Common: dot; point; <period>; <decimal point>. + Rare: radix point; full stop; [spot]. |
| / | Common: slash; stroke; <slant>; forward slash. Rare: + diagonal; solidus; over; slak; virgule; [slat]. |
| : | Common: <colon>. Rare: dots; [two-spot]. |
| ; | Common: <semicolon>; semi. Rare: weenie; [hybrid], + pit-thwong. |
| < > | Common: <less/greater than>; bra/ket; l/r angle; + l/r angle bracket; l/r broket. Rare: from/{into, towards}; read + from/write to; suck/blow; comes-from/gozinta; in/out; crunch/zap (all + from UNIX); tic/tac; [angle/right angle]. |
| = | Common: <equals>; gets; takes. Rare: quadrathorpe; + [half-mesh]. |
| ? | Common: query; <question mark>; + ques + + . Rare: quiz; whatmark; [what]; wildchar; huh; hook; buttonhook; + hunchback. |
| @ | Common: at sign; at; strudel. Rare: each; vortex; whorl; + [whirlpool]; cyclone; snail; ape; cat; rose; cabbage; <commercial + at>. |
| V | Rare: [book]. |
| [ ] | Common: l/r square bracket; l/r bracket; <opening/closing + bracket>; bracket/unbracket. Rare: + square/unsquare; [U turn/U turn back]. |
| \ | Common: backslash, hack, whack; escape (from C/UNIX); reverse + slash; slosh; backslant; backwhack. Rare: bash; <reverse + slant>; reversed virgule; [backslat]. |
| ^ | Common: hat; control; uparrow; caret; <circumflex>. + Rare: xor sign, chevron; [shark (or shark-fin)]; to the (‘to + the power of’); fang; pointer (in Pascal). |
| _ | Common: <underline>; underscore; underbar; under. Rare: + score; backarrow; skid; [flatworm]. |
| ` | Common: backquote; left quote; left single quote; open quote; + <grave accent>; grave. Rare: backprime; [backspark]; + unapostrophe; birk; blugle; back tick; back glitch; push; <opening + single quotation mark>; quasiquote. |
| { } | Common: o/c brace; l/r brace; l/r squiggly; l/r squiggly + bracket/brace; l/r curly bracket/brace; <opening/closing + brace>. Rare: brace/unbrace; curly/uncurly; leftit/rytit; + l/r squirrelly; [embrace/bracelet]. A balanced pair of these may be + called + curlies + + . |
| | | Common: bar; or; or-bar; v-bar; pipe; vertical bar. Rare: + <vertical line>; gozinta; thru; pipesinta (last three from + UNIX); [spike]. |
| ~ | Common: <tilde>; squiggle; + twiddle + + ; not. Rare: approx; wiggle; swung dash; enyay; [sqiggle + (sic)]. |
The pronunciation of # as ‘pound’ is + common in the U.S. but a bad idea; + Commonwealth Hackish + has its own, rather more apposite use of ‘pound + sign’ (confusingly, on British keyboards the happens to + replace #; thus Britishers sometimes call + # on a U.S.-ASCII keyboard ‘pound’, + compounding the American error). The U.S. usage derives from an + old-fashioned commercial practice of using a # suffix to + tag pound weights on bills of lading. The character is usually pronounced + ‘hash’ outside the U.S. There are more culture wars over the + correct pronunciation of this character than any other, which has led to + the ha ha only serious suggestion that it be + pronounced “shibboleth” (see Judges 12:6 in an Old Testament or + Tanakh).
The ‘uparrow’ name for circumflex and + ‘leftarrow’ name for underline are historical relics from + archaic ASCII (the 1963 version), which had these graphics in those + character positions rather than the modern punctuation characters.
The ‘swung dash’ or ‘approximation’ sign + (∼) is not quite the same as tilde ~ in typeset material, but the ASCII + tilde serves for both (compare angle brackets). +
Some other common usages cause odd overlaps. The + #, $, >, and + & characters, for example, are all pronounced + “hex” in different communities because various assemblers use + them as a prefix tag for hexadecimal constants (in particular, + # in many assembler-programming cultures, + $ in the 6502 world, > at Texas + Instruments, and & on the BBC Micro, Sinclair, and + some Z80 machines). See also splat.
The inability of ASCII text to correctly represent any of the world's + other major languages makes the designers' choice of 7 bits look more and + more like a serious misfeature as the use of + international networks continues to increase (see + software rot). + Hardware and software from the U.S. still tends to + embody the assumption that ASCII is the universal character set and that + characters have 7 bits; this is a major irritant to people who want to use + a character set suited to their own languages. Perversely, though, efforts + to solve this problem by proliferating ‘national’ character + sets produce an evolutionary pressure to use a smaller + subset common to all those in use.
Used to indicate that data is sorted in ASCII collated order rather + than alphabetical order. This lexicon is sorted in something close to + ASCIIbetical order, but with case ignored and entries beginning with + non-alphabetic characters moved to the beginning.
Abbreviation, “Acceptable Use Policy”. The policy of a + given ISP which sets out what the ISP considers to be (un)acceptable uses + of its Internet resources.
[from Greek akme highest point of + perfection or achievement] The canonical supplier of bizarre, elaborate, + and non-functional gadgetry — where Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson + (two cartoonists who specialized in elaborate contraptions) shop. The name + has been humorously expanded as A (or American) Company Making Everything. + (In fact, Acme was a real brand sold from Sears Roebuck catalogs in the + early 1900s.) Describing some X as an “Acme X” either means + “This is insanely great”, or, more + likely, “This looks insanely great on paper, + but in practice it's really easy to shoot yourself in the foot with + it.” Compare pistol.
This term, specially cherished by American hackers and explained here + for the benefit of our overseas brethren, comes from the Warner Brothers' + series of “Road-runner” cartoons. In these cartoons, the + famished Wile E. Coyote was forever attempting to catch up with, trap, and + eat the Road-runner. His attempts usually involved one or more + high-technology Rube Goldberg devices — rocket jetpacks, catapults, + magnetic traps, high-powered slingshots, etc. These were usually delivered + in large wooden crates labeled prominently with the Acme name — + which, probably not by coincidence, was the trade name of a peg bar system + for superimposing animation cels used by cartoonists since forever. Acme + devices invariably malfunctioned in improbable and violent ways.
[Intel] A special version of an infinite loop + where there is an exit condition available, but inaccessible in the current + implementation of the code. Typically this is created while debugging user + interface code. An example would be when there is a menu stating, + “Select 1-3 or 9 to quit” and 9 is not allowed by the function + that takes the selection from the user.
This term received its name from a programmer who had coded a modal + message box in MSAccess with no Ok or Cancel buttons, thereby disabling the + entire program whenever the box came up. The message box had the proper + code for dismissal and even was set up so that when the non-existent Ok + button was pressed the proper code would be called.
The archetypal individuals used as examples in discussions of + cryptographic protocols. Originally, theorists would say something like: + “A communicates with someone who claims to be B, So to be sure, A + tests that B knows a secret number K. So A sends to B a random number X. B + then forms Y by encrypting X under key K and sends Y back to A” + Because this sort of thing is quite hard to follow, theorists stopped using + the unadorned letters A and B to represent the main players and started + calling them Alice and Bob. So now we say “Alice communicates with + someone claiming to be Bob, and to be sure, Alice tests that Bob knows a + secret number K. Alice sends to Bob a random number X. Bob then forms Y by + encrypting X under key K and sends Y back to Alice”. A whole + mythology rapidly grew up around the metasyntactic names; see http://www.conceptlabs.co.uk/alicebob.html.
In Bruce Schneier's definitive introductory text Applied + Cryptography (2nd ed., 1996, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN + 0-471-11709-9) he introduced a table of dramatis personae headed by Alice + and Bob. Others include Carol (a participant in three- and four-party + protocols), Dave (a participant in four-party protocols), Eve (an + eavesdropper), Mallory (a malicious active attacker), Trent (a trusted + arbitrator), Walter (a warden), Peggy (a prover) and Victor (a verifier). + These names for roles are either already standard or, given the wide + popularity of the book, may be expected to quickly become so.
[from scary devil monastery] A general + recognition of the fallibility of any computer system, ritually intoned as + an attempt to quell incipient holy wars. It is a + common response to any sort of bigot. When + discussing Wintel systems, however, it is often + snidely appended with, ‘but some suck more than others.’
[MIT] 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 describes succinctly as “yucky + green”. See also book titles.
The disorder suffered by a particularly egregious variety of + bigot, those who believe that the marginality of + their preferred machine is the result of some kind of industry-wide + conspiracy (for without a conspiracy of some kind, the eminent superiority + of their beloved shining jewel of a platform would obviously win over all, + market pressures be damned!) Those afflicted are prone to engaging in + flame wars and calling for boycotts and + mailbombings. Amiga Persecution Complex is by no means limited to Amiga + users; NeXT, NeWS, OS/2, + Macintosh, LISP, and GNU + users are also common victims. Linux users used to + display symptoms very frequently before Linux started winning; some still + do. See also newbie, troll, + holy wars, weenie, + Get a life!.
A series of personal computer models originally sold by Commodore, + based on 680x0 processors, custom support chips and an operating system + that combined some of the best features of Macintosh and Unix with + compatibility with neither.
The Amiga was released just as the personal computing world + standardized on IBM-PC clones. This prevented it from gaining serious + market share, despite the fact that the first Amigas had a substantial + technological lead on the IBM XTs of the time. Instead, it acquired a small + but zealous population of enthusiastic hackers who dreamt of one day + unseating the clones (see Amiga Persecution Complex). + The traits of this culture are both spoofed and + illuminated in The BLAZE Humor + Viewer. The strength of the Amiga platform seeded a small industry + of companies building software and hardware for the platform, especially in + graphics and video applications (see video toaster). +
Due to spectacular mismanagement, Commodore did hardly any R&D, + allowing the competition to close Amiga's technological lead. After + Commodore went bankrupt in 1994 the technology passed through several + hands, none of whom did much with it. However, the Amiga is still being + produced in Europe under license and has a substantial number of fans, + which will probably extend the platform's life considerably.
Like nethack, moria, + and rogue, one of the large freely distributed + Dungeons-and-Dragons-like simulation games, available for a wide range of + machines and operating systems. The name is from Tolkien's Pits of Angband + (compare elder days, elvish). + Has been described as “Moria on steroids”; but, unlike Moria, + many aspects of the game are customizable. This leads many hackers and + would-be hackers into fooling with these instead of doing productive work. + There are many Angband variants, of which the most notorious is probably + the rather whimsical Zangband. In this game, when a key that does not + correspond to a command is pressed, the game will display “Type ? for + help” 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time, random error + messages including “An error has occurred because an error of type 42 + has occurred” and “Windows 95 uninstalled successfully” + will be displayed. Zangband also allows the player to kill Santa Claus + (who has some really good stuff, but also has a lot of friends), + “Bull Gates”, and Barney the Dinosaur (but be watchful; Barney + has a nasty case of halitosis). There is an official angband home page at + http://thangorodrim.angband.org/ + and a zangband one at http://www.zangband.org/. See also + Random Number God.
The world's first RISC microcomputer, available only in the British + Commonwealth and europe. Built in 1987 in Great Britain by Acorn Computers, + it was legendary for its use of the ARM-2 microprocessor as a CPU. Many a + novice hacker in the Commonwealth first learnt his or her skills on the + Archimedes, since it was specifically designed for use in schools and + educational institutions. Owners of Archimedes machines are often still + treated with awe and reverence. Familiarly, “archi”.
[linux-kernel mailing list] The archetypal non-technical user, one's + elderly and scatterbrained maiden aunt. Invoked in discussions of + usability for people who are not hackers and geeks; one sees references to + the “Aunt Tillie test”.
Common abbreviation for ‘abbreviation’.
1. Archaic term for a register. On-line use of it as a synonym for + register is a fairly reliable + indication that the user has been around for quite a while and/or that the + architecture under discussion is quite old. The term in full is almost + never used of microprocessor registers, for example, though symbolic names + for arithmetic registers beginning in ‘A’ derive from + historical use of the term accumulator (and not, actually, from + ‘arithmetic’). Confusingly, though, an ‘A’ + register name prefix may also stand for address, as for example on the Motorola 680x0 + family.
2. A register being used for arithmetic or logic (as opposed to + addressing or a loop index), especially one being used to accumulate a sum + or count of many items. This use is in context of a particular routine or + stretch of code. “The FOOBAZ routine uses A3 as an + accumulator.”
3. One's in-basket (esp. among old-timers who might use sense 1). + “You want this reviewed? Sure, just put it in the + accumulator.” (See stack.)
[Purdue]
1. Gratuitous assumptions made inside certain programs, esp. expert + systems, which lead to the appearance of semi-intelligent behavior but are + in fact entirely arbitrary. For example, fuzzy-matching of input tokens + that might be typing errors against a symbol table can make it look as + though a program knows how to spell.
2. Special-case code to cope with some awkward input that would + otherwise cause a program to choke, presuming normal + inputs are dealt with in some cleaner and more regular way.
Also called ad-hackery, + ad-hocity (/ad-hos'@-tee/), ad-crockery. See also + ELIZA effect.
This is ad-hockery in action.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is + 74-08-18. The previous one is + 73-07-29.)
A robot that searches web pages and/or filters netnews traffic + looking for valid email addresses. Some address harvesters are benign, + used only for compiling address directories. Most, unfortunately, are run + by miscreants compiling address lists to spam. + Address harvesters can be foiled by a teergrube. +
[UCLA mutant of nadger, poss. also from the + middle name of an infamous tenured graduate student] + To make a bonehead move with consequences that could have been foreseen + with even slight mental effort. E.g., “He started removing files and + promptly adgered the whole project”. Compare + dumbass attack.
Short for ‘administrator’; very commonly used in speech + or on-line to refer to the systems person in charge on a computer. Common + constructions on this include sysadmin and site + admin (emphasizing the administrator's role as a site contact + for email and news) or newsadmin + (focusing specifically on news). Compare + postmaster, sysop, + system mangler.
Software which is free to download and use but includes pop-up + banner ads somewhere. See also -ware.
“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. It is 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. See also + KISS Principle, + elegant.
A class of subtle programming errors that can arise in code that + does dynamic allocation, esp. via + malloc(3) + or equivalent. If several pointers address (are aliases for) a given hunk of storage, it may + happen that the storage is freed or reallocated (and thus moved) through + one alias and 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 core, or by use + of 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, + memory smash, + overrun screw, spam.
Historical note: Though this term is 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.
A declaration of victory or superiority. The phrase stems from a + 1991 adaptation of Toaplan's “Zero Wing” shoot-'em-up arcade + game for the Sega Genesis game console. A brief introduction was added to + the opening screen, and it has what many consider to be the worst + Japanese-to-English translation in video game history. The introduction + shows the bridge of a starship in chaos as a Borg-like figure named CATS + materializes and says, “How are you gentlemen!! All your base are + belong to us.” [sic] In 2001, this amusing mistranslation spread + virally through the Internet, bringing with it a slew of JPEGs and a movie + of hacked photographs, each showing a street sign, store front, package + label, etc. hacked to read “All your base are belong to us” or + one of the other many supremely dopey lines from the game (such as + “Somebody set up usthe bomb!!!” or “What + happen?”). When these phrases are used properly, the overall effect + is both screamingly funny and somewhat chilling, reminiscent of the B movie + “They Live”.
The original has been generalized to “All your X are belong to + us”, where X is filled in to connote a sinister takeover of some + sort. Thus, “When Joe signed up for his new job at Yoyodyne, he had + to sign a draconian NDA. It basically said: All your code are belong to + us.” Has many of the connotations of “Resistance is futile; + you will be assimilated” (see + Borg). Considered silly, and most likely to be used + by the type of person that finds Jeff K. + hilarious.
[from animal ethologists' alpha + male] The most technically accomplished or skillful person in + some implied context. “Ask Larry, he's the alpha geek + here.”
See bit rot.
See meta bit.
1. n. The alt shift key on an + IBM PC or clone keyboard; see + bucky bits, sense 2 + (though typical PC usage does not simply set the 0200 bit).
2. n. The option key on a + Macintosh; use of this term usually reveals that the speaker hacked PCs + before coming to the Mac (see also feature key, + which is sometimes incorrectly called + ‘alt’).
3. The alt hierarchy on + Usenet, the tree of newsgroups created by users without a formal vote and + approval procedure. There is a myth, not entirely implausible, that + alt is acronymic for + “anarchists, lunatics, and terrorists”; but in fact it is + simply short for “alternative”.
4. n.,obs. + Rare alternate name for the ASCII ESC character (ASCII 0011011). + This use, derives, with the alt key itself, from archaic PDP-10 + operating systems, especially ITS.
[modeled on ambidextrous] Able to use + a mouse with either hand.
[Purdue] To run in background. From the Unix + shell ‘&’ operator.
Common abbreviation for the name of the ampersand + (‘&’, ASCII 0100110) character. See + ASCII for other synonyms.
[from the movie Monty Python and the Holy +Grail.]
Acknowledgement of a notable accomplishment. Something long-awaited, +widely desired, possibly unexpected but secretly wished-for, with a suggestion +that something about the problem (and perhaps the steps necessary to make it +go away) was deeply disturbing to hacker sensibilities.
In person, the phrase is almost invariably pronounced with the same +portentious intonation as the movie. The customary in-person (approving) +response is a weak and halfhearted “Yaaaay...”, +with one index finger raised like a flag and moved in a small circle. +The reason for this, like most of the Monty Python +oeuvre, cannot easily be explained +outside its original context.
Example: "changelog entry #436: with the foo driver brain damage taken +care of, finally obsoleted BROKEN_EVIL_KLUDGE. Removed from source tree. +(And there was much rejoicing)."
Either of the characters < (ASCII 0111100) and + > (ASCII 0111110) (ASCII less-than or greater-than + signs). Typographers in the Real World use angle + brackets which are either taller and slimmer (the ISO lang 〈 and rang + 〉 characters), or significantly smaller (single or double guillemets) + than the less-than and greater-than signs. See + broket, ASCII.
A bad visual-interface design that uses too many colors. (This term + derives, of course, from the bizarre day-glo colors found in canned fruit + salad.) Too often one sees similar effects from interface designers using + color window systems such as X; there is a tendency + to create displays that are flashy and attention-getting but uncomfortable + for long-term use.
[IRC] See bot.
A type of shareware that frequently disrupts + normal program operation to display requests for payment to the author in + return for the ability to disable the request messages. (Also called + nagware) The requests generally + require user action to acknowledge the message before normal operation is + resumed and are often tied to the most frequently used features of the + software. See also careware, + charityware, crippleware, + freeware, FRS, + guiltware, postcardware, and + -ware; compare + payware.
[very common] Opposition to idiots of all political stripes. First + coined in the blog named + Little Green + Footballs as part of a post expressing disgust with inane responses + to post-9/11 Islamic terrorism. Anti-idiotarian wrath has focused on + Islamic terrorists and their sympathizers in the Western political left, + but also routinely excoriated right-wing politicians backing repressive + ’anti-terror‘ legislation and Christian religious figures who + (in the blogosphere's view of the matter) have descended nearly to the + level of jihad themselves.
Short for ‘application program’, as opposed to a systems + program. Apps are 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 run as apps; thus, in hacker + parlance the term excludes compilers, program editors, games, and messaging + systems, though a user would consider all those to be apps. (Broadly, an + app is often a self-contained environment for performing some well-defined + task such as ‘word processing’; hackers tend to prefer more + general-purpose tools.) See killer app; oppose + tool, operating + system.
[common; Unix] 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 malloc: corrupt + arena message emitted when some early versions detected an + impossible value in the free block list. See overrun + screw, aliasing bug, memory + leak, memory smash, smash the + stack.
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, + var.
Syn. for bulletproof.
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. (Any reader in + doubt as to the intended 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 + which few.
Notional garments 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.
[common] Used as a modifier to anything intended to protect one from + flames; also in other highly + flame-suggestive usages. See, for example, + asbestos longjohns and + asbestos cork award.
1. The use of paid shills to create the impression of a popular + movement, through means like letters to newspapers from soi-disant + ‘concerned citizens’, paid opinion pieces, and the formation of + grass-roots lobbying groups that are actually funded by a PR group + (AstroTurf is fake grass; hence the term). See also sock + puppet, tentacle.
2. What an individual posting to a public forum under an assumed + name is said to be doing.
This term became common among hackers after it came to light in early + 1998 that Microsoft had attempted to use such tactics to forestall the + U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust action against the company. The + maneuver backfired horribly, angering a number of state attorneys-general + enough to induce them to go public with plans to join the Federal suit. It + also set anybody defending Microsoft on the net for the accusation + “You're just astroturfing!”.
[from Gk. atomos, indivisible]
1. Indivisible; cannot be split up. For example, an instruction may + be said to do several things ‘atomically’, i.e., all the things + are done immediately, and there is no chance of the instruction being + half-completed or of another being interspersed. Used esp. to convey that + an operation cannot be screwed up by interrupts. “This routine locks + the file and increments the file's semaphore atomically.”
2. [primarily techspeak] Guaranteed to complete successfully or not + at all, usu. refers to database transactions. If an error prevents a + partially-performed transaction from proceeding to completion, it must be + “backed out”, as the database must not be left in an + inconsistent state.
Computer usage, in either of the above senses, has none of the + connotations that ‘atomic’ has in mainstream English (i.e. of + particles of matter, nuclear explosions etc.).
About an inch. 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/sec). This unit is reported to be in use (though probably not very + seriously) among hackers in the U.K. See + micro-.
n. See + bogotify.
To set up or modify a source-code + distribution so that it configures and builds using + the GNU project's autoconf/automake/libtools suite. Among open-source + hackers, a mere running binary of a program is not considered a full + release; what's interesting is a source tree that can be built into + binaries using standard tools. Since the mid-1990s, autoconf and friends + been the standard way to adapt a distribution for portability so that it + can be built on multiple operating systems without change.
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. See + magic. “The C-INTERCAL compiler generates C, + then automagically invokes + cc(1) + to produce an executable.”
This term is quite old, going back at least to the mid-70s in jargon + and probably much earlier. The word ‘automagic’ occurred in + advertising (for a shirt-ironing gadget) as far back as the late + 1940s.
[in Hindu mythology, the incarnation of a god]
1. Among people working on virtual reality and + cyberspace interfaces, an avatar is an icon or representation of a user + in a shared virtual reality. The term is sometimes used on + MUDs.
2. [CMU, Tektronix] 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 found + the terms root and superuser unimaginative, and thought + ‘avatar’ might better impress people with the responsibility + they were accepting.
1. n. [Unix techspeak] An + interpreted language for massaging text data developed by Alfred Aho, Peter + Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan (the name derives from their initials). It + is characterized by C-like syntax, a declaration-free approach to variable + typing and declarations, associative arrays, and field-oriented text + processing. See also Perl.
2. n. Editing term for an + expression awkward to manipulate through normal + regexp facilities (for example, one containing a + newline).
3. vt. To process data using + awk(1).
The most famous pseudo, and the prototypical + newbie. Articles from B1FF feature all uppercase + letters sprinkled liberally with bangs, typos, ‘cute’ + misspellings (EVRY BUDY LUVS GOOD OLD BIFF CUZ KL DOOD AN + HE RITES REEL AWESUM THINGZ IN CAPITULL LETTRS LIKE THIS!!!), use (and + often misuse) of fragments of talk mode + abbreviations, a long sig block (sometimes even a + doubled sig), and unbounded naivete. B1FF posts + articles using his elder brother's VIC-20. B1FF's location is a mystery, + as his articles appear to come from a variety of sites. However, BITNET + seems to be the most frequent origin. The theory that B1FF is a denizen of + BITNET is supported by B1FF's (unfortunately invalid) electronic mail + address: B1FF@BIT.NET.
[1993: Now It Can Be Told! My spies inform me that B1FF was + originally created by Joe Talmadge <jat@cup.hp.com>, also the author + of the infamous and much-plagiarized “Flamer's Bible”. The + BIFF filter he wrote was later passed to Richard Sexton, who posted + BIFFisms much more widely. Versions have since been posted for the + amusement of the net at large. See also Jeff K. + —ESR]
[common] Abbreviation for “Babylon 5”, a + science-fiction TV series as revered among hackers as was the original Star + Trek.
[IBM: acronym, “Broken As Designed”] Said of a program + that is bogus because of bad design and misfeatures + rather than because of bugginess. See working as + designed.
A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's + experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which for many years + was the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger W. Dijkstra + observed in Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal + Perspective that “It is practically impossible to teach + good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: + as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of + regeneration.” This is another case (like + Pascal) of the cascading + lossage that happens when a language deliberately + designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can + write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20 lines) very easily; + writing anything 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 acquired Pascal- and C-like procedures and control + structures and shed their 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.
[common; abbreviation, “Bulletin Board System”] 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 groups. The term was especially applied to + the thousands of local BBS systems that operated during the pre-Internet + microcomputer era of roughly 1980 to 1995, typically run by amateurs for + fun out of their homes on MS-DOS boxes with a single modem line each. Fans + of Usenet and Internet or the big commercial timesharing bboards such as + CompuServe and GEnie tended to consider local BBSes the low-rent district + of the hacker culture, but they served a valuable function by knitting + together lots of hackers and users in the personal-micro world who would + otherwise have been unable to exchange code at all. Post-Internet, BBSs + are likely to be local newsgroups on an ISP; efficiency has increased but a + certain flavor has been lost. See also + bboard.
[abbreviation, “Basic Combined Programming Language”) A + programming language developed by Martin Richards in Cambridge in 1967. It + is remarkable for its rich syntax, small size of compiler (it can be run in + 16k) and extreme portability. It reached break-even point at a very early + stage, and was the language in which the original hello + world program was written. It has been ported to so many + different systems that its creator confesses to having lost count. It has + only one data type (a machine word) which can be used as an integer, a + character, a floating point number, a pointer, or almost anything else, + depending on context. BCPL was a precursor of C, which inherited some of + its features.
[Python; common] Benevolent Dictator For Life. + Guido, considered in his role as the project leader + of Python. People who are feeling temporarily + cheesed off by one of his decisions sometimes leave off the B. The mental + image that goes with this, of a cigar-chomping caudillo in gold braid and + sunglasses, is extremely funny to anyone who has ever met Guido in + person.
See brute force and ignorance. Also + encountered in the variants BFMI, + “brute force and massive ignorance” and + BFBI “brute force and bloody + ignorance”. In some parts of the U.S. this abbreviation was probably + reinforced by a company called Browning-Ferris Industries in the + waste-management business; a large BFI logo in white-on-blue could be seen + on the sides of garbage trucks.
Common written abbreviation for + Breidbart Index.
1. n. [acronym: Binary Large + OBject] Used by database people to refer to any random large block of bits + that needs to be stored in a database, such as a picture or sound file. + The essential point about a BLOB is that it's an object that cannot be + interpreted within the database itself.
2. v. To + mailbomb someone by sending a BLOB to him/her; + esp. used as a mild threat. “If that program crashes again, I'm + going to BLOB the core dump to you.”
Synonym for blit. This is the original form + of blit and the ancestor of + bitblt. It referred to any large bit-field copy or + move operation (one resource-intensive memory-shuffling operation done on + pre-paged versions of ITS, WAITS, and TOPS-10 was sardonically referred to + as “The Big BLT”). The jargon usage has outlasted the + PDP-10 BLock Transfer instruction from which + BLT derives; nowadays, the assembler mnemonic + BLT almost always means “Branch if Less Than + zero”.
1. [techspeak] Acronym for Backus Normal + Form (later retronymed to Backus-Naur + Form because BNF was not in fact a normal form), a metasyntactic + notation used to specify the syntax of programming languages, command sets, + and the like. Widely used for language descriptions but seldom documented + anywhere, so that it must usually be learned by osmosis from other hackers. + Consider this BNF for a U.S. postal address:
+<postal-address>::=<name-part><street-address><zip-part>
+
+<personal-part>::=<name>|<initial>"."
+
+<name-part>::=<personal-part><last-name>[<jr-part>]<EOL>
+|<personal-part><name-part>
+
+<street-address>::=[<apt>]<house-num><street-name><EOL>
+
+<zip-part>::=<town-name>","<state-code><ZIP-code><EOL>
+
This translates into English as: “A postal-address consists of + a name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a zip-code + part. A personal-part consists of either a first name or an initial + followed by a dot. A name-part consists of either: a personal-part + followed by a last name followed by an optional jr-part (Jr., Sr., or + dynastic number) and end-of-line, or a personal part followed by a name + part (this rule illustrates the use of recursion in BNFs, covering the case + of people who use multiple first and middle names and/or initials). A + street address consists of an optional apartment specifier, followed by a + street number, followed by a street name. A zip-part consists of a + town-name, followed by a comma, followed by a state code, followed by a + ZIP-code followed by an end-of-line.” Note that many things (such as + the format of a personal-part, apartment specifier, or ZIP-code) are left + unspecified. These are presumed to be obvious from context or detailed + somewhere nearby. See also parse.
2. Any of a number of variants and extensions of BNF proper, + possibly containing some or all of the regexp + wildcards such as * or +. In fact the example above isn't the pure form + invented for the Algol-60 report; it uses [], which was introduced a few years later in IBM's + PL/I definition but is now universally recognized.
3. In science-fiction fandom, a + ‘Big-Name Fan’ (someone famous or notorious). Years ago a fan + started handing out black-on-green BNF buttons at SF conventions; this + confused the hacker contingent terribly.
1. [common] Abbreviation for the phrase “Birds Of a + Feather” (flocking together), an informal discussion group and/or + bull session scheduled on a conference program. It is not clear where or + when this term originated, but it is now associated with the USENIX + conferences for Unix techies and was already established there by 1984. It + was used earlier than that at DECUS conferences and is reported to have + been common at SHARE meetings as far back as the early 1960s.
2. Acronym, “Beginning of File”.
[common] Acronym, Bastard Operator From Hell. A system + administrator with absolutely no tolerance for + lusers. “You say you need more filespace? + <massive-global-delete> Seems to me you have plenty left...” + Many BOFHs (and others who would be BOFHs if they could get away with it) + hang out in the newsgroup alt.sysadmin.recovery, although there has + also been created a top-level newsgroup hierarchy (bofh.*) of their own.
Several people have written stories about BOFHs. The set usually + considered canonical is by Simon Travaglia and may be found at the Bastard Home Page. BOFHs + and BOFH wannabes hang out on scary devil monastery + and wield LARTs.
Syn. Big Red Switch. This abbreviation is + fairly common on-line.
[abbreviation for ‘Berkeley Software Distribution’] a + family of Unix versions for the + DEC VAX and + PDP-11 developed by Bill Joy and others at + Berzerkeley starting around 1977, incorporating + paged virtual memory, TCP/IP networking enhancements, and many other + features. The BSD versions (4.1, 4.2, and 4.3) and the commercial versions + derived from them (SunOS, ULTRIX, and Mt. Xinu) held the technical lead in + the Unix world until AT&T's successful standardization efforts after + about 1986; descendants including Free/Open/NetBSD, BSD/OS and MacOS X are + still widely popular. Note that BSD versions going back to 2.9 are often + referred to by their version numbers alone, without the BSD prefix. See + also Unix.
Very common abbreviation for + Blue Screen of Death. Both spoken and written.
[abbreviation, from alt.fan.warlord] Big Ugly ASCII Font — + a special form of ASCII art. Various programs exist + for rendering text strings into block, bloob, and pseudo-script fonts in + cells between four and six character cells on a side; this is smaller than + the letters generated by older banner (sense 2) + programs. These are sometimes used to render one's name in a + sig block, and are critically referred to as + BUAFs. See + warlording.
[abbreviation, from alt.fan.warlord] Big Ugly ASCII Graphic. + Pejorative term for ugly ASCII art, especially as + found in sig blocks. For some reason, mutations of + the head of Bart Simpson are particularly common in the least imaginative + sig blocks. See + warlording.
[IBM: abbreviation, `Buzz Word Quotient'] The percentage of + buzzwords in a speech or documents. Usually roughly proportional to + bogosity. See TLA.
[very common; always pronounced as if capitalized. Orig. fr. the + 1930 Sellar & Yeatman parody of British history 1066 And All + That, but well-established among hackers in the U.S. as well.] + Something that can't possibly result in improvement of the subject. This + term is always capitalized, as in “Replacing all of the DSL links + with bicycle couriers would be a Bad Thing”. Oppose + Good 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. + This has apparently created a mainstream idiom on the British side of the + pond. It is very common among American hackers, but not in mainstream + usage in the U.S. Compare Bad and Wrong.
[Durham, UK] Said of something that is both badly designed and + wrongly executed. This common term is the prototype of, and is used by + contrast with, three less common terms — Bad and Right (a kludge, + something ugly but functional); Good and Wrong (an overblown GUI or other + attractive nuisance); and (rare praise) Good and Right. These terms + entered common use at Durham c.1994 and may have been imported from + elsewhere; they are also in use at Oxford, and the emphatic form + “Evil and Bad and Wrong” (abbreviated EBW) is reported from + there. There are standard abbreviations: they start with B&R, a typo + for “Bad and Wrong”. Consequently, B&W is actually + “Bad and Right”, G&R = “Good and Wrong”, and + G&W = “Good and Right”. Compare + evil and rude, + Good Thing, Bad Thing.
1. An integer number representing the number of items hanging from a + batbelt. In most settings, a Batman factor of more + than 3 is not acceptable without odd stares and whispering. This encourages + the hacker in question to choose items for the batbelt carefully to avoid + awkward social situations, usually amongst non-hackers.
2. A somewhat more vaguely defined index of contribution to sense 1. + Devices that are especially obtrusive, such as large, older model cell + phones, “Pocket” PC devices and walkie talkies are said to + have a high batman factor. Sleeker devices such as a later-model Palm or + StarTac phone are prized for their low batman factor and lessened + obtrusiveness and weight.
A worthy companion to INTERCAL; a computer + language family which escapes the quotidian limitation of linear control + flow and embraces program counters flying through multiple dimensions with + exotic topologies. The Befunge home page is at http://www.catseye.mb.ca/esoteric/befunge/.
(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, incomplete, or incorrect documentation, has 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.
Note to British and Commonwealth readers: that's /berklee/, not /barklee/ as in British Received + Pronunciation.
[from ‘berserk’, via the name of a now-deceased record + label; poss. originated by famed columnist Herb Caen] Humorous distortion + of “Berkeley” used esp. to refer to the practices or products + of the BSD Unix hackers. See software + bloat, Berkeley Quality Software.
Mainstream use of this term in reference to the cultural and + political peculiarities of UC Berkeley as a whole has been reported from as + far back as the 1960s.
The act said to have been performed on trademarks (such as + PostScript, NeXT, NeWS, + VisiCalc, FrameMaker, TK!solver, EasyWriter) that have been raised above + the ruck of common coinage by nonstandard capitalization. Too many + marketroid types think this sort of thing is really + cute, even the 2,317th time they do it. Compare + studlycaps, InterCaps.
[IBM] 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.” Sources at IBM report that, in tune with the company's + passion for TLAs, this is often abbreviated 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 + non-conducting bolt into the main power feed; the BRSes on more recent + mainframes 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, three-finger salute; see also + scram switch.
(Also Big Blue Room) 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 right now, he's somewhere out in the Big Room.”
[prob.: related to the Floating Head of Death in a famous + Far Side cartoon.] A failure mode of + Microsloth Windows. On an attempt to launch a DOS + box, a networked Windows system not uncommonly blanks the screen and locks + up the PC so hard that it requires a cold boot to + recover. This unhappy phenomenon is known as The Black Screen of Death. + See also Blue Screen of Death, which has become + rather more common.
An imaginary family consisting of Fred and Mary Bloggs and their + children. Used as a standard example in knowledge representation to show + the difference between extensional and intensional objects. For example, + every occurrence of “Fred Bloggs” is the same unique person, + whereas occurrences of “person” may refer to different people. + Members of the Bloggs family have been known to pop up in bizarre places + such as the old DEC Telephone Directory. Compare + Dr. Fred Mbogo; + J. Random Hacker; Fred Foobar.
[IBM; obs.] IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture), an incredibly + losing and bletcherous + communications protocol once widely favored at commercial shops that didn't + know any better (like other proprietary networking protocols, it became + obsolete and effectively disappeared after the Internet explosion c.1994). + The official IBM definition is “that which binds blue boxes + together.” See fear and loathing. It may not + be irrelevant that Blue Glue is the trade name of a 3M product that is + commonly used to hold down the carpet squares to the removable panel floors + common in dinosaur pens. A correspondent at + U. Minn. reports that the CS department there has about 80 bottles of the + stuff hanging about, so they often refer to any messy work to be done as + using the blue glue.
[common] This term is closely related to the older + Black Screen of Death but much more common (many non-hackers have + picked it up). Due to the extreme fragility and bugginess of Microsoft + Windows, misbehaving applications can readily crash the OS (and the OS + sometimes crashes itself spontaneously). The Blue Screen of Death, + sometimes decorated with hex error codes, is what you get when this + happens. (Commonly abbreviated BSOD.) The + following entry from the Salon + Haiku Contest, seems to have predated popular use of the + term:
+WindowsNTcrashed.
+IamtheBlueScreenofDeath
+Noonehearsyourscreams.
+
The number of million times a second a processor can do absolutely + nothing. The Linux OS measures BogoMIPS at startup + in order to calibrate some soft timing loops that will be used later on; + details at the BogoMIPS + mini-HOWTO. The name Linus chose, of course, is an ironic comment + on the uselessness of all other + MIPS figures.
[from quantum physics] A repeatable bug; one + that manifests reliably under a possibly unknown but well-defined set of + conditions. Antonym of heisenbug; see also + mandelbug, + schroedinbug.
In Star Trek: The Next Generation the Borg is + a species of cyborg that ruthlessly seeks to incorporate all sentient life + into itself; their slogan is “You will be assimilated. Resistance is + futile.” In hacker parlance, the Borg is usually + Microsoft, which is thought to be trying just as + ruthlessly to assimilate all computers and the entire Internet to itself + (there is a widely circulated image of Bill Gates as a Borg). Being forced + to use Windows or NT is often referred to as being “Borged”. + Interestingly, the Halloween Documents reveal that + this jargon is live within Microsoft itself. See also + Evil Empire, + Internet Exploiter.
Other companies, notably Intel and UUNet, have also occasionally been + equated to the Borg. In IETF circles, where direct pressure from Microsoft + is not a daily reality, the Borg is sometimes Cisco. This usage + commemorates their tendency to pay any price to hire talent away from their + competitors. In fact, at the Spring 1997 IETF, a large number of ex-Cisco + employees, all former members of Routing Geeks, showed up with t-shirts + printed with “Recovering Borg”.
A measurement of the severity of spam invented by long-time hacker + Seth Breidbart, used for programming cancelbots. The Breidbart Index takes + into account the fact that excessive multi-posting + EMP is worse than excessive cross-posting + ECP. The Breidbart Index is computed as follows: + For each article in a spam, take the square-root of the number of + newsgroups to which the article is posted. The Breidbart Index is the sum + of the square roots of all of the posts in the spam. For example, one + article posted to nine newsgroups and again to sixteen would have BI = + sqrt(9) + sqrt(16) = 7. It is generally agreed that a spam is cancelable + if the Breidbart Index exceeds 20.
The Breidbart Index accumulates over a 45-day window. Ten articles + yesterday and ten articles today and ten articles tomorrow add up to a + 30-article spam. Spam fighters will often reset the count if you can + convince them that the spam was accidental and/or you have seen the error + of your ways and won't repeat it. Breidbart Index can accumulate over + multiple authors. For example, the “Make Money Fast” pyramid + scheme exceeded a BI of 20 a long time ago, and is now considered + “cancel on sight”.
Abusive hackerism for the crufty and + elephantine X environment on + Sun machines; properly called ‘OpenWindows’.
“Adding manpower to a late software project makes it + later” — a result of the fact that the expected advantage from + splitting development work among N + programmers is O(N) (that is, proportional + to N), but the complexity and + communications cost associated with coordinating and then merging their + work is O(N^2) (that is, proportional to + the square of N). The quote is from Fred + Brooks, a manager of IBM's OS/360 project and author of The + Mythical Man-Month (Addison-Wesley, 1975, ISBN 0-201-00650-2), + an excellent early book on software engineering. The myth in question has + been most tersely expressed as “Programmer time is fungible” + and Brooks established conclusively that it is not. Hackers have never + forgotten his advice (though it's not the whole story; see + bazaar); too often, + management still does. See also + creationism, + second-system effect, optimism.
[common; Usenet/Internet; punctuation varies] From a Robin Williams + routine in the movie Dead Poets Society spoofing + radio or TV quiz programs, such as Truth or + Consequences, where an incorrect answer earns one a blast from + the buzzer and condolences from the interlocutor. A way of expressing + mock-rude disagreement, usually immediately following an included quote + from another poster. The less abbreviated “*Bzzzzt*, wrong, but + thank you for playing” is also common; capitalization and emphasis + of the buzzer sound varies.
[common] A hole in the security of a system deliberately left in + place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for such holes is not + always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out of the box + with privileged accounts intended for use by field service technicians or + the vendor's maintenance programmers. Syn. + trap door; may also be called a wormhole. See also + iron box, cracker, + worm, logic bomb.
Historically, back doors have often lurked in systems longer than + anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely known. Ken + Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM admitted the existence of a + back door in early Unix versions that may have qualified as the most + fiendishly clever security hack of all time. In this scheme, the C + compiler contained code that would recognize when the login command was being recompiled and insert + some code recognizing a password chosen by Thompson, giving him entry to + the system whether or not an account had been created for him.
Normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from the + source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler. But to + recompile the compiler, you have to use the compiler + — so Thompson also arranged that the compiler would + recognize when it was compiling a version of itself, + and insert into the recompiled compiler the code to insert into the + recompiled login the code to allow + Thompson entry — and, of course, the code to recognize itself and do + the whole thing again the next time around! And having done this once, he + was then able to recompile the compiler from the original sources; the hack + perpetuated itself invisibly, leaving the back door in place and active but + with no trace in the sources.
The Turing lecture that reported this truly moby hack was later + published as “Reflections on Trusting Trust”, + Communications of the ACM 27, 8 (August 1984), + pp. 761--763 (text available at http://www.acm.org/classics/). + Ken Thompson has since confirmed that this hack was implemented and that + the Trojan Horse code did appear in the login binary of a Unix Support + group machine. Ken says the crocked compiler was never distributed. Your + editor has heard two separate reports that suggest that the crocked login + did make it out of Bell Labs, notably to BBN, and that it enabled at least + one late-night login across the network by someone using the login name + “kt”.
A group of large-site administrators who pushed through the + Great Renaming and reined in the chaos of + Usenet during most of the 1980s. During most of its + lifetime, the Cabal (as it was sometimes capitalized) steadfastly denied + its own existence; it was almost obligatory for anyone privy to their + secrets to respond “There is no Cabal” whenever the existence + or activities of the group were speculated on in public.
The result of this policy was an attractive aura of mystery. Even a + decade after the cabal mailing list disbanded in + late 1988 following a bitter internal catfight, many people believed (or + claimed to believe) that it had not actually disbanded but only gone deeper + underground with its power intact.
This belief became a model for various paranoid theories about + various Cabals with dark nefarious objectives beginning with taking over + the Usenet or Internet. These paranoias were later satirized in ways that + took on a life of their own. See Eric Conspiracy + for one example. Part of the background for this kind of humor is that + many hackers cultivate a fondness for conspiracy theory considered as a + kind of surrealist art; see the bibliography entry om + Illuminatus! for the novel that launched this + trend.
See NANA for the subsequent history of + “the Cabal”.
Formerly, 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 1993, when this sense of the term was beginning to pass out of + general use due to wide availability of cheap Internet connections, + included uunet and the mail + machines at Rutgers University, UC Berkeley, DEC's + Western Research Laboratories, Ohio State University, and the University of + Texas. Compare leaf site.
[2001 update: This term has passed into history. The UUCP network + world that gave it meaning is gone; everyone is on the Internet now and + network traffic is distributed in very different patterns. Today one might + see references to a “backbone router” instead + —ESR]
See bignum (sense 3), + moby (sense 4), and + pseudoprime.
[common] 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 nodes and links; I'm working on the graph-printing + problem in background.” Note that this implies ongoing activity but + at a reduced level or in spare time, in contrast to mainstream ‘back + burner’ (which connotes benign neglect until some future resumption + of activity). Some people prefer to use the term for processing that they + have queued up for their unconscious minds (a tack that one can often + fruitfully take upon encountering an obstacle in creative work). Compare + amp off, slopsucker.
Technically, a task running in background is detached from the + terminal where it was started (and often running at a lower priority); + oppose foreground. Nowadays this term is primarily + associated with Unix, but it appears to have been + first used in this sense on OS/360.
1. In a regular expression or pattern match, the text which was + matched within grouping parentheses
2. The part of the pattern which refers back to the matched + text.
3. By extension, anything which refers back to something which has + been seen or discussed before. “When you said ‘she’ just + now, who were you backreferencing?”
[portmanteau of back + acronym] A word interpreted as an acronym + that was not originally so intended. This is a special case of what + linguists call back formation. + Examples are given under recursive acronym (Cygnus), + Acme, and mung. Discovering + backronyms is a common form of wordplay among hackers. Compare + retcon.
[CMU, Tektronix: from backward + compatibility] A property of hardware or software revisions in + which previous protocols, formats, layouts, etc. are irrevocably discarded + in favor of ‘new and improved’ protocols, formats, and layouts, + leaving the previous ones not merely deprecated but actively defeated. + (Too often, the old and new versions cannot definitively be distinguished, + such that lingering instances of the previous ones yield crashes or other + infelicitous effects, as opposed to a simple “version + mismatch” message.) A backwards compatible change, on the other + hand, allows old versions to coexist without crashes or error messages, but + too many major changes incorporating elaborate backwards compatibility + processing can lead to extreme software bloat. See + also flag day.
[prob. originally related to a colostomy bag] 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, + inelegant, or bloated. Also v. 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.”
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 has caused you some trouble, inadvertently or + otherwise, typically by failing to program the computer properly. + Synonyms: loser, cretin, + chomper.
3. bite the bag vi. To fail in some manner. “The computer + keeps crashing every five minutes.” “Yes, the disk controller + is really biting the bag.”
The original loading of these terms was almost undoubtedly obscene, + possibly referring to a douche bag or the scrotum (we have reports of + “Bite the douche bag!” being used as a taunt at MIT 1970-1976, + and we have another report that “Bite the bag!” was in common + use at least as early as 1965), but in their current usage they have become + almost completely sanitized.
[MIT; now rare] Having the quality of a + bagbiter. “This bagbiting system won't let me + compute the factorial of a negative number.” Compare + losing, cretinous, + bletcherous, barfucious (under + barfulous) and chomping (under + chomp).
[Georgia Tech] A “baggy pantsing” is used to reprimand + hackers who incautiously leave their terminals unlocked. The affected user + will come back to find a post from them on internal newsgroups discussing + exactly how baggy their pants are, an accepted stand-in for + “unattentive user who left their work unprotected in the + clusters”. A properly-done baggy pantsing is highly mocking and + humorous. It is considered bad form to post a baggy pantsing to off-campus + newsgroups or the more technical, serious groups. A particularly nice + baggy pantsing may be “claimed” by immediately quoting the + message in full, followed by your sig block; this + has the added benefit of keeping the embarassed victim from being able to + delete the post. Interesting baggy-pantsings have been done involving + adding commands to login scripts to repost the message every time the + unlucky user logs in; Unix boxes on the residential network, when cracked, + oftentimes have their homepages replaced (after being politely backed-up to + another file) with a baggy-pants message; .plan files are also occasionally + targeted. Usage: “Prof. Greenlee fell asleep in the Solaris cluster + again; we baggy-pantsed him to git.cc.class.2430.flame.” Compare + derf.
[Commodore users; perh. a deliberate phonetic mangling of boolean variable?] Any variable that doesn't + actually hold or control state, but must nevertheless be declared, checked, + or set. A typical balloonian variable started out as a flag attached to + some environment feature that either became obsolete or was planned but + never implemented. Compatibility concerns (or politics attached to same) + may require that such a flag be treated as though it were + live.
1. [from X-Men comics; originally “bampf”] 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 or exit.
2. The sound of magical transformation, used in virtual reality + fora like MUDs.
3. In MUD circles, “bamf” is also used to refer to the + act by which a MUD server sends a special notification to the MUD client to + switch its connection to another server (“I'll set up the old site to + just bamf people over to our new location.”).
4. Used by MUDders on occasion in a more general sense related to + sense 3, to refer to directing someone to another location or resource + (“A user was asking about some technobabble so I bamfed them to + http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/”.)
[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 problem of an algorithm with + poorly 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 problem in a + Dissociated Press implementation. + Also, see one-banana problem + for a superficially similar but unrelated usage.
1. [common] 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 missed some of the detail — not enough bandwidth, I + guess.” Compare low-bandwidth; see also + brainwidth. This generalized usage began to go + mainstream after the Internet population explosion of 1993-1994.
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.
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 for release.” The term + pound on is synonymous.
[now historical] 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 + directs people to route their mail 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 + and Internet became commonplace, people often published 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!beta!gamma!me}). Bang paths of 8 to 10 hops were + not uncommon. 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 not infrequently get lost. See + the network and + sitename.
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 of Unix has carried + ‘bang’ with it (esp. via the term bang + path) and it is now certainly the most common spoken name for + !. Note that it is used exclusively for non-emphatic + written !; one would not say “Congratulations + bang” (except possibly for humorous purposes), but if one wanted to + specify the exact characters “foo!” one would speak “Eff + oh oh bang”. See shriek, + ASCII.
2. interj. An exclamation + signifying roughly “I have achieved enlightenment!”, or + “The dynamite has cleared out my brain!” Often used to + acknowledge that one has perpetrated a thinko + immediately after one has been called on it.
Any of the annoying graphical advertisements that span the tops of + way too many Web pages.
[warez d00dz] An FTP site storing pirated files where one must first + click on several banners and/or subscribe to various ‘free’ + services, usually generating some form of revenues for the site owner, to + be able to access the site. More often than not, the username/password + painfully obtained by clicking on banners and subscribing to bogus services + or mailing lists turns out to be non-working or gives access to a site that + always responds busy. See ratio site, + leech mode.
1. A top-centered graphic on a web page. Esp. used in + banner ad.
2. On interactive software, a first screen containing a logo and/or + author credits and/or a copyright notice. Similar to splash + screen.
3. 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 apart) fanfold paper to separate one user's printout + from the next.
4. A similar printout generated (typically on multiple pages of + fan-fold paper) from user-specified text, e.g., by a program such as Unix's + banner({1,6)}.
1. [very common] The second + metasyntactic variable, + after foo and before + baz. “Suppose we have two functions: FOO and + BAR. FOO calls BAR....”
1. [common] 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 needed to + create these basic tools 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 ends that will give the new machine a + 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 rely on crocks such as overlapping + instructions (or, as in the famous case described in The Story of Mel' (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 rare as + the relative costs of programming time and machine resources have changed, + but is still found in heavily constrained environments such as industrial + embedded systems. See Real Programmer.
[common; from mainstream slang meaning ‘vomit’]
1. interj. Term of disgust. + This is the closest hackish equivalent of the Valspeak “gag me with a + spoon”. (Like, euwww!) See bletch.
2. vi. To say + “Barf!” or emit some similar expression of disgust. “I + showed him my latest hack and he barfed” means only that he + complained about it, not that he literally vomited.
3. vi. To fail to work because + of unacceptable input, perhaps with a suitable error message, perhaps not. + Examples: “The division operation barfs if you try to divide by + 0.” (That is, the division operation checks for an attempt to divide + by zero, and if one is encountered it causes the operation to fail in some + unspecified, but generally obvious, manner.) “The text editor barfs + if you try to read in a new file before writing out the old + one.”
See choke. In + Commonwealth Hackish, barf is + generally replaced by ‘puke’ or ‘vom’. + barf is sometimes also used as a + metasyntactic variable, like + foo or bar.
Multiple bounce messages accumulating to the + level of serious annoyance, or worse. The sort of thing that happens when + an inter-network mail gateway goes down or wonky.
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?”
(alt.: barfucious, /bar-fyoo-sh@s/) Said of something + that would make anyone barf, if only for esthetic reasons.
[uncommon; prob. from the nuclear military] An unexpectedly large + quantity of something: a unit of measurement. “Why is /var/adm + taking up so much space?” “The logs have grown to several + barns.” The source of this is clear: when physicists were first + studying nuclear interactions, the probability was thought to be + proportional to the cross-sectional area of the nucleus (this probability + is still called the cross-section). Upon experimenting, they discovered + the interactions were far more probable than expected; the nuclei were + “as big as a barn”. The units for cross-sections were + christened Barns, (10-24 + cm2) and the book containing cross-sections has + a picture of a barn on the cover.
In Commonwealth hackish, barney is to fred (sense + #1) as bar is to foo. That + is, people who commonly use fred as + their first metasyntactic variable will often use barney second. The reference is, of course, to + Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble in the Flintstones cartoons.
[common] 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. In the absence of other, more negative descriptions this term + suggests that the software is trembling on the edge of bad taste but has + not quite tipped over into it. “Metafont even has features to + introduce random variations to its letterform output. Now + that is baroque!” See also + rococo.
Many hackers routinely hang numerous devices such as pagers, + cell-phones, personal organizers, leatherman multitools, pocket knives, + flashlights, walkie-talkies, even miniature computers from their + belts. When many of these devices are worn at once, the hacker's belt + somewhat resembles Batman's utility belt; hence it is referred to as a + batbelt.
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 referred to as batch + mode switches. A batch + file is a series of instructions written to be handed to an + interactive program running in batch mode.
2. Performance of dreary tasks all at one sitting. “I finally + sat down in batch mode and wrote out checks for all those bills; I guess + they'll turn the electricity back on next week...”
3. batching up: Accumulation + of a number of small tasks that can be lumped together for greater + efficiency. “I'm batching up those letters to send sometime” + “I'm batching up bottles to take to the recycling + center.”
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's lifetime, then rising again as it ‘tires out’. + See also burn-in period, + infant mortality.
[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 framing or stop bits. Most + hackers are aware of these nuances but blithely ignore them.
Historical note: baud was + originally a unit of telegraph signalling speed, set at one pulse per + second. It was proposed at the November, 1926 conference of the + Comit Consultatif International Des Communications + Tlgraphiques as an improvement on the then standard + practice of referring to line speeds in terms of words per minute, and + named for Jean Maurice Emile Baudot (1845-1903), a French engineer who did + a lot of pioneering work in early teleprinters.
1. [common] The third metasyntactic variable + “Suppose we have three functions: FOO, BAR, and BAZ. FOO calls BAR, + which calls BAZ....” (See also + fum)
2. interj. A term of mild + annoyance. In this usage the term is often drawn out for 2 or 3 seconds, + producing an effect not unlike the bleating of a sheep; /baaaaaaz/.
3. Occasionally appended to foo to produce + ‘foobaz’.
Earlier versions of this lexicon derived baz as a Stanford corruption of + bar. However, Pete Samson (compiler of the + TMRC lexicon) reports it was already current when he + joined TMRC in 1958. He says “It came from + Pogo. Albert the Alligator, when vexed or outraged, + would shout ‘Bazz Fazz!’ or ‘Rowrbazzle!’ The + club layout was said to model the (mythical) New England counties of + Rowrfolk and Bassex (Rowrbazzle mingled with + (Norfolk/Suffolk/Middlesex/Essex).”
In 1997, after meditating on the success of + Linux for three years, the Jargon File's own editor + ESR wrote an analytical paper on hacker culture and development models + titled + The Cathedral and the Bazaar. The main argument of the paper was + that Brooks's Law is not the whole story; given the + right social machinery, debugging can be efficiently parallelized across + large numbers of programmers. The title metaphor caught on (see also + cathedral), and the style of development typical in + the Linux community is now often referred to as the bazaar mode. Its + characteristics include releasing code early and often, and actively + seeking the largest possible pool of peer reviewers. After 1998, the + evident success of this way of doing things became one of the strongest + arguments for open source.
[contraction of ‘bulletin board’]
1. Any electronic bulletin board; esp. used of + BBS systems running on personal micros, less + frequently of a Usenet newsgroup (in fact, use of + this term for a newsgroup generally marks one either as a + newbie fresh in from the BBS world or as a real + old-timer predating Usenet).
2. At CMU and other colleges with similar facilities, refers to + campus-wide electronic bulletin boards.
3. The term physical bboard is + sometimes used to refer to an old-fashioned, non-electronic + cork-and-thumbtack memo board. At CMU, it refers to a particular one + outside the CS Lounge.
In either of senses 1 or 2, the term is usually prefixed by the name + of the intended board (‘the Moonlight Casino bboard’ or + ‘market bboard’); however, if the context is clear, the + better-read bboards may be referred to by name alone, as in (at CMU) + “Don't post for-sale ads on general”.
[from Star Trek Classic's “Beam me up, Scotty!”] +
1. 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.
2. Palm Pilot users very commonly use this term for the act of + exchanging bits via the infrared links on their machines (this term seems + to have originated with the ill-fated Newton Message Pad). Compare + blast, snarf, + BLT.
[Mac users] See command key.
Syn. feep. This term is techspeak under + MS-DOS/Windows and OS/2, and seems to be generally preferred among micro + hobbyists.
[obs.] An original Macintosh in the boxy beige case. See + toaster; compare Macintrash, + maggotbox.
[common] 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 + from chrome, which is intended 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. The recognized emphatic form is “bells, + whistles, and gongs”.
It used to be thought that this term derived from the toyboxes on + theater organs. However, the “and gongs” strongly suggests a + different origin, at sea. Before powered horns, ships routinely used + bells, whistles, and gongs to signal each other over longer distances than + voice can carry.
Sometimes ‘trouble’ is spelled + bells and whistles...
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is + 73-06-04. The previous one is + 73-05-28.)
A standard elaborated form of + bells and whistles; + typically said with a pronounced and ironic accent + on the ‘gongs’.
[techspeak] 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 benchmarks, the + SPECmark suite, and LINPACK. See also machoflops, + MIPS, smoke and mirrors.
1. Mostly working, but still under test; usu. used with + “in”: in beta. In the + Real World, hardware or software systems often go + through two stages of release testing: Alpha (in-house) and Beta + (out-house?). Beta releases are generally made to a group of lucky (or + unlucky) trusted customers.
2. Anything that is new and experimental. “His girlfriend is + in beta” means that he is still testing for compatibility and + reserving judgment.
3. Flaky; dubious; suspect (since beta software is notoriously + buggy).
Historical note: More formally, to beta-test is to test a pre-release + (potentially unreliable) version of a piece of software by making it + available to selected (or self-selected) customers and users. This term + derives from early 1960s terminology for product cycle checkpoints, first + used at IBM but later standard throughout the industry. Alpha Test was the unit, module, or component + test phase; Beta Test was initial + system test. These themselves came from earlier A- and B-tests for + hardware. The A-test was a feasibility and manufacturability evaluation + done before any commitment to design and development. The B-test was a + demonstration that the engineering model functioned as specified. The + C-test (corresponding to today's beta) was the B-test performed on early + samples of the production design, and the D test was the C test repeated + after the model had been in production a while.
1. One of a small number of fundamental source books such as + Knuth, K&R, or the Camel + Book.
2. The most detailed and authoritative reference for a particular + language, operating system, or other complex software system.
[now rare] To notify someone of incoming mail. From the BSD utility + biff(1), + which was in turn named after a friendly dog who used to chase frisbees in + the halls at UCB while 4.2BSD was in development. There was a legend that + it had a habit of barking whenever the mailman came, but the author of + biff says this is not true. No relation to + B1FF.
[common; 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]
1. Describes a computer architecture in which, within a given + multi-byte numeric representation, the most significant byte has the lowest + address (the word is stored ‘big-end-first’). Most processors, + including the IBM 370 family, the PDP-10, the + Motorola microprocessor families, and most of the various RISC designs are + big-endian. Big-endian byte order is also sometimes called network order. See + little-endian, middle-endian, + NUXI problem, swab.
2. An Internet address the wrong way round. Most of the world + follows the Internet standard and writes email addresses starting with the + name of the computer and ending up with the name of the country. In the + U.K.: the Joint Academic Networking Team had decided to do it the other way + round before the Internet domain standard was established. Most gateway + sites have ad-hockery in their mailers to handle + this, but can still be confused. In particular, the address me@uk.ac.bris.pys.as could be interpreted in + JANET's big-endian way as one in the U.K. (domain uk) or in the standard little-endian way as + one in the domain as (American + Samoa) on the opposite side of the world.
[common] Large, expensive, ultra-fast computers. Used generally of + number-crunching supercomputers, but + can include more conventional big commercial IBMish mainframes. Term of + approval; compare heavy metal, oppose + dinosaur.
1. [common] Major success.
2. [MIT] 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.
[common; orig. from MIT MacLISP]
1. [techspeak] A multiple-precision computer representation for very + large integers.
2. More generally, any very large number. “Have you ever + looked at the United States Budget? There's bignums for you!” +
3. [Stanford] In backgammon, large numbers on the dice especially a + roll of double fives or double sixes (compare moby, + sense 4). See also El Camino Bignum.
Sense 1 may require some explanation. Most computer languages + provide a kind of data called integer, but such computer integers are usually + very limited in size; usually they must be smaller than + 231 (2,147,483,648). If you + want to work with numbers larger than that, you have to use floating-point + numbers, which are usually accurate to only six or seven decimal places. + Computer languages that provide bignums can perform exact calculations on + very large numbers, such as 1000! (the factorial of 1000, which is 1000 + times 999 times 998 times ... times 2 times 1). For example, this + value for 1000! was computed by the MacLISP system using bignums:
+40238726007709377354370243392300398571937486421071
+46325437999104299385123986290205920442084869694048
+00479988610197196058631666872994808558901323829669
+94459099742450408707375991882362772718873251977950
+59509952761208749754624970436014182780946464962910
+56393887437886487337119181045825783647849977012476
+63288983595573543251318532395846307555740911426241
+74743493475534286465766116677973966688202912073791
+43853719588249808126867838374559731746136085379534
+52422158659320192809087829730843139284440328123155
+86110369768013573042161687476096758713483120254785
+89320767169132448426236131412508780208000261683151
+02734182797770478463586817016436502415369139828126
+48102130927612448963599287051149649754199093422215
+66832572080821333186116811553615836546984046708975
+60290095053761647584772842188967964624494516076535
+34081989013854424879849599533191017233555566021394
+50399736280750137837615307127761926849034352625200
+01588853514733161170210396817592151090778801939317
+81141945452572238655414610628921879602238389714760
+88506276862967146674697562911234082439208160153780
+88989396451826324367161676217916890977991190375403
+12746222899880051954444142820121873617459926429565
+81746628302955570299024324153181617210465832036786
+90611726015878352075151628422554026517048330422614
+39742869330616908979684825901254583271682264580665
+26769958652682272807075781391858178889652208164348
+34482599326604336766017699961283186078838615027946
+59551311565520360939881806121385586003014356945272
+24206344631797460594682573103790084024432438465657
+24501440282188525247093519062092902313649327349756
+55139587205596542287497740114133469627154228458623
+77387538230483865688976461927383814900140767310446
+64025989949022222176590433990188601856652648506179
+97023561938970178600408118897299183110211712298459
+01641921068884387121855646124960798722908519296819
+37238864261483965738229112312502418664935314397013
+74285319266498753372189406942814341185201580141233
+44828015051399694290153483077644569099073152433278
+28826986460278986432113908350621709500259738986355
+42771967428222487575867657523442202075736305694988
+25087968928162753848863396909959826280956121450994
+87170124451646126037902930912088908694202851064018
+21543994571568059418727489980942547421735824010636
+77404595741785160829230135358081840096996372524230
+56085590370062427124341690900415369010593398383577
+79394109700277534720000000000000000000000000000000
+00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
+00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
+00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
+00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
+00000000000000000.
+
[common] 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, + Berkeley bigot. Real bigots can be + distinguished from mere partisans or zealots by the fact that they refuse + to learn alternatives even when the march of time and/or technology is + threatening to obsolete the favored tool. It is truly said “You can + tell a bigot, but you can't tell him much.” Compare + weenie, + Amiga Persecution Complex.
[originally BSD, now common] Technical disputes over minor, marginal + issues conducted while more serious ones are being overlooked. The + implied image is of people arguing over what color to paint the bicycle + shed while the house is not finished.
[Usenet] The finger, in the sense of digitus + impudicus. This comes from an analogy between binary and + the hand, i.e. 1=00001=thumb, 2=00010=index finger, 3=00011=index and + thumb, 4=00100. Considered silly. Prob. from humorous derivative of + finger, sense 4.
Transmission of data on a serial line, when accomplished by rapidly + tweaking a single output bit, in software, at the appropriate times. The + technique is a simple loop with eight OUT and SHIFT instruction pairs for + each byte. Input is more interesting. And full duplex (doing input 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 but no SIO. In an interesting instance of the cycle + of reincarnation, this technique returned to use in the early + 1990s on some RISC architectures because it consumes such an infinitesimal + part of the processor that it actually makes sense not to have a UART. + Compare cycle of reincarnation. Nowadays it's used + to describe I2C, a serial protocol for monitoring motherboard + hardware.
(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 low-level device control, 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 usually the former). “The command decoding + for the new tape driver looks pretty solid but the bit-bashing for the + control registers still has bugs.” See also + mode bit.
[very common]
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 + Unix, often used for + /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 up in the bit + bucket than junk 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 mail responses: “Flames + about this 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 landed in the bit bucket.” + Compare black hole.
This term is used purely 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 also report that + trainees used to be 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 that go to the + bit bucket must 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.
The source for all these meanings, is, historically, the fact that + the chad box on a paper-tape punch was sometimes + called a bit bucket.
A literal bit bucket.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is + 76-02-14. The previous one is + 75-10-04.)
See bit rot. People with a physics + background tend to prefer this variant for the analogy with particle decay. + See also computron, + quantum bogodynamics.
(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 (see + EOU), so the only way to generate the character + codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage. The design of the + ASR-33 assigned each character key a basic pattern that could be modified + by flipping bits if the SHIFT or the CTRL key was pressed. In order to + avoid making the thing even more of a kluge than it already was, the design + had to group characters that shared the same basic bit pattern on one + key.
Looking at the ASCII chart, we find:
+high low bits +bits 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 + 010 ! " # $ % & ' ( ) + 011 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 + |
This is why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do on a + Teletype (thankfully, they didn't use shift-0 for space). The Teletype + Model 33 was actually designed before ASCII existed, and was originally + intended to use a code that contained these two rows:
+ low bits +high 0000 0010 0100 0110 1000 1010 1100 1110 +bits 0001 0011 0101 0111 1001 1011 1101 1111 + 10 ) ! bel # $ % wru & * ( " : ? _ , . + 11 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ' ; / - esc del + |
The result would have been something closer to a normal keyboard. + But as it happened, Teletype had to use a lot of persuasion just to keep + ASCII, and the Model 33 keyboard, from looking like this instead:
+ ! " ? $ ' & - ( ) ; : * / , . + 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 + ~ < > | + |
Teletype's was not the weirdest variant of the + QWERTY layout widely seen, by the way; that prize + should probably go to one of several (differing) arrangements on IBM's even + clunkier 026 and 029 card punches.
When electronic terminals became popular, in the early 1970s, there + was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards should be laid out. + Some vendors opted to emulate the Teletype keyboard, while others used the + flexibility of electronic circuitry to make their product look like an + office typewriter. Either choice was supported by the ANSI computer + keyboard standard, X4.14-1971, which referred to the alternatives as + “logical bit pairing” and “typewriter + pairing”. These alternatives became known as bit-paired and typewriter-paired keyboards. To a hacker, the + bit-paired keyboard seemed far more logical — and because most + hackers in those days had never learned to touch-type, there was little + pressure from the pioneering users to adapt keyboards to the typewriter + standard.
The doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale introduction + of the computer terminal into the normal office environment, where + out-and-out technophobes were expected to use the equipment. The typewriter-paired standard became universal, + X4.14 was superseded by X4.23-1982, bit-paired hardware was quickly junked or + relegated to dusty corners, and both terms passed into disuse.
However, in countries without a long history of touch typing, the + argument against the bit-paired keyboard layout was weak or nonexistent. As + a result, the standard Japanese keyboard, used on PCs, Unix boxen + etc. still has all of the !"#$%&'() characters above the numbers in the + ASR-33 layout.
[common] 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 explains + that bits decay as if they 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 ceramic chip packages, + for example, can 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). The notion long favored + among 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.
[very common]
1. (pejorative) An exercise in tuning (see + tune) in which incredible amounts of time and effort + go to produce little noticeable improvement, often with the result that the + code becomes incomprehensible.
2. Aimless small modification to a program, esp. for some pointless + 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.
[from the mainstream meaning and “Binary digIT”]
1. [techspeak] The unit of information; the amount of information + obtained from knowing the answer to a yes-or-no question for which the two + outcomes are equally probable.
2. [techspeak] A computational quantity that can take on one of two + values, such as true and false or 0 and 1.
3. A mental flag: a reminder that something should be done + eventually. “I have a bit set for you.” (I haven't seen you + for a while, and I'm supposed to tell or ask you something.)
4. More generally, a (possibly incorrect) mental state of belief. + “I have a bit set that says that you were the last guy to hack on + EMACS.” (Meaning “I think you were the last guy to hack on + EMACS, and what I am about to say is predicated on this, so please stop me + if this isn't true.”) “I just need one bit from you” is + a polite way of indicating that you intend only a short interruption for a + question that can presumably be answered yes or no.
A bit is said to be set if its + value is true or 1, and reset or + clear if its value is false or 0. + One speaks of setting and clearing bits. To toggle + or invert a bit is to change it, + either from 0 to 1 or from 1 to 0. See also flag, + trit, mode bit.
The term bit first appeared in + print in the computer-science sense in a 1948 paper by information theorist + Claude Shannon, and was there credited to the early computer scientist John + Tukey (who also seems to have coined the term software). Tukey records that bit evolved over a lunch table as a handier + alternative to bigit or binit, at a conference in the winter of + 1943-44.
[from BLT, q.v.:]
1. [common] Any of a family of closely related algorithms for moving + and copying rectangles of bits between main and display memory on a + bit-mapped device, or between two areas of either main or display memory + (the requirement to do the Right Thing in the case + of overlapping source and destination rectangles is what makes BitBlt + tricky).
2. Synonym for blit or + BLT. Both uses are borderline techspeak.
1. Information. Examples: “I need some bits about file + formats.” (“I need to know about file formats.”) + Compare core dump, sense 4.
2. Machine-readable representation of a document, specifically as + contrasted with paper: “I have only a photocopy of the Jargon File; + does anyone know where I can get the bits?”. See + softcopy, + source of all good bits See also bit.
1. A computer sufficiently small, primitive, or incapable as to + cause a hacker acute claustrophobia at the thought of developing software + on or for it. Especially used of small, obsolescent, single-tasking-only + personal machines such as the Atari 800, Osborne, Sinclair, VIC-20, TRS-80, + or IBM PC.
2. [Pejorative] More generally, the opposite of ‘real + computer’ (see Get a real computer!). See + also mess-dos, toaster, and + toy.
Variant emoticons used BIX (the BIX + Information eXchange); the term survived the demise of BIX itself. The + most common (smiley) bixie is <@_@>, + representing two cartoon eyes and a mouth. These were originally invented + in an SF fanzine called APA-L and imported to BIX by one of the earliest + users.
[common] A collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by implication) + mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular application or systems + area (compare black magic). VLSI design and + compiler code optimization were (in their beginnings) considered classic + examples of black art; as theory developed they became + deep magic, and once standard textbooks had been written, became + merely heavy wizardry. The huge proliferation of + formal and informal channels for spreading around new computer-related + technologies during the last twenty years has made both the term black art and what it describes less common + than formerly. See also voodoo programming.
1. [common among security specialists] A + cracker, someone bent on breaking into the system + you are protecting. Oppose the less comon white + hat for an ally or friendly security specialist; the term + gray hat is in occasional use for + people with cracker skills operating within the law, e.g. in doing security + evaluations. All three terms derive from the dress code of formulaic + Westerns, in which bad guys wore black hats and good guys white + ones.
2. [spamfighters] ‘Black hat’, ‘white hat’, + and ‘gray hat’ are also used to denote the spam-friendliness of + ISPs: a black hat ISP harbors spammers and doesn't terminate them; a white + hat ISP terminates upon the first LART; and gray hat ISPs terminate only + reluctantly and/or slowly. This has led to the concept of a hat check: someone considering a potential + business relationship with an ISP or other provider will post a query to a + NANA group, asking about the provider's hat + color. The term albedo has also been + used to describe a provider's spam-friendliness.
[common] What data (a piece of email or netnews, or a stream of + TCP/IP packets) has fallen into if it disappears mysteriously between its + origin and destination sites (that is, without returning a + bounce message). “I think there's a black + hole at foovax!” conveys + suspicion that site foovax has + been dropping a lot of stuff on the floor lately (see + drop on the floor). The implied metaphor of email as interstellar + travel is interesting in itself. Readily verbed as blackhole: “That router is blackholing + IDP packets.” Compare bit bucket and see + RBL.
[common] A technique that works, though nobody really understands + why. More obscure than voodoo programming, which + may be done by cookbook. Compare also black art, + deep magic, and magic number + (sense 2).
[Oxford Brookes University and alumni, UK] To forcibly remove + someone from any interactive system, especially talker systems. The + operators, who may remain hidden, may “blammo” a user who is + misbehaving. Very similar to archaic MIT gun; in fact, the blammo-gun is a notional device used to + “blammo” someone. While in actual fact the only incarnation + of the blammo-gun is the command used to forcibly eject a user, operators + speak of different levels of blammo-gun fire; e.g., a blammo-gun to + ‘stun’ will temporarily remove someone, but a blammo-gun set to + ‘maim’ will stop someone coming back on for a while.
[MIT; now common] The opposite of ping, sense + 5; an exclamation indicating that one has absorbed or is emitting a quantum + of unhappiness. Less common than ping.
1. v.,n. Synonym for + BLT, used esp. for large data sends over a network + or comm line. Opposite of snarf. Usage: uncommon. + The variant ‘blat’ has been reported.
2. vt. [HP/Apollo] Synonymous with nuke + (sense 3). Sometimes the message Unable to kill all + processes. Blast them (y/n)? would appear in the command window + upon logout.
1. Syn. blast, sense 1.
2. See thud.
[very common; from Yiddish/German ‘brechen’, to vomit, + poss. via comic-strip exclamation ‘blech’] Term of disgust. + Often used in “Ugh, bletch”. Compare + barf.
Disgusting in design or function; esthetically unappealing. This + word is seldom used of people. “This keyboard is + bletcherous!” (Perhaps the keys don't work very well, or are + misplaced.) See losing, + cretinous, bagbiting, + bogus, and random. The term + bletcherous applies to the esthetics of the thing so + described; similarly for cretinous. By contrast, + something that is losing or bagbiting may be failing to meet objective + criteria. See also bogus and + random, which have richer and wider shades of + meaning than any of the above.
[common] Front-panel diagnostic lights on a computer, esp. a + dinosaur. Now that dinosaurs are rare, this term + usually refers to status lights on a modem, network hub, or the + like.
This term derives from the last word of the famous blackletter-Gothic + sign in mangled pseudo-German that once graced about half the computer + rooms in the English-speaking world. One version ran in its entirety as + follows:
+ACHTUNG!ALLESLOOKENSPEEPERS!
+
+Allestouristenundnon-technischenlookenpeepers!
+Dascomputermachineistnichtfuergefingerpokenundmittengrabben.
+Isteasyschnappenderspringenwerk,blowenfusenundpoppencorken
+mitspitzensparken.Istnichtfuergewerkenbeidasdumpkopfen.
+Dasrubberneckensichtseerenkeependascotten-pickenenhansindas
+pocketsmuss;relaxenundwatchendasblinkenlichten.
+
This silliness dates back at least as far as 1955 at IBM + and had already gone international by the early 1960s, when it + was reported at London University's ATLAS computing site. There are + several variants of it in circulation, some of which actually do end with + the word ‘blinkenlights’.
In an amusing example of turnabout-is-fair-play, German hackers have + developed their own versions of the blinkenlights poster in fractured + English, one of which is reproduced here:
+ATTENTION
+
+Thisroomisfullfilledmitspecialelectronischeequippment.
+Fingergrabbingandpressingthecnoeppkesfromthecomputersis
+allowedfordieexpertsonly!Soallthe“lefthanders”stayaway
+anddonotdisturbenthebrainstormingvonhereworking
+intelligencies.Otherwiseyouwillbeoutthrownandkicked
+anderswhere!Also:pleasekeepstillandonlywatchenastaunished
+theblinkenlights.
+
See also geef.
Old-time hackers sometimes get nostalgic for blinkenlights because + they were so much more fun to look at than a blank panel. Sadly, very few + computers still have them (the three LEDs on a PC keyboard certainly don't + count). The obvious reasons (cost of wiring, cost of front-panel cutouts, + almost nobody needs or wants to interpret machine-register states on the + fly anymore) are only part of the story. Another part of it is that + radio-frequency leakage from the lamp wiring was beginning to be a problem + as far back as transistor machines. But the most fundamental fact is that + there are very few signals slow enough to blink an LED these days! With + slow CPUs, you could watch the bus register or instruction counter tick, + but even at 33/66/150MHz (let alone gigahertz speeds) it's all a + blur.
Despite this, a couple of relatively recent computer designs of note + have featured programmable blinkenlights that were added just because they + looked cool. The Connection Machine, a 65,536-processor parallel computer + designed in the mid-1980s, was a black cube with one side covered with a + grid of red blinkenlights; the sales demo had them evolving + life patterns. A few years later the ill-fated + BeBox (a personal computer designed to run the BeOS operating system) + featured twin rows of blinkenlights on the case front. When Be, + Inc. decided to get out of the hardware business in 1996 and instead ported + their OS to the PowerPC and later to the Intel architecture, many users + suffered severely from the absence of their beloved blinkenlights. Before + long an external version of the blinkenlights driven by a PC serial port + became available; there is some sort of plot symmetry in the fact that it + was assembled by a German.
Finally, a version updated for the Internet has been seen on + news.admin.net-abuse.email:
+ACHTUNG!ALLESLOOKENSPEEPERS!
+
+DasInternetisnichtfuergefingerclickenundgiffengrabben.Isteasy
+droppenpacketderroutersundoverloadenderbackbonemitderspammen
+undderme-tooen.Istnichtfuergewerkenbeidasdumpkopfen.Das
+mausklickensichtseerenkeependasbandwit-spewinhansindaspockets
+muss;relaxenundwatchendascursorblinken.
+
This newest version partly reflects reports that the word + ‘blinkenlights’ is (in 1999) undergoing something of a revival + in usage, but applied to networking equipment. The transmit and receive + lights on routers, activity lights on switches and hubs, and other network + equipment often blink in visually pleasing and seemingly coordinated + ways. Although this is different in some ways from register readings, a + tall stack of Cisco equipment or a 19-inch rack of ISDN terminals can + provoke a similar feeling of hypnotic awe, especially in a darkened network + operations center or server room.
The ancestor of the original blinkenlights posters of the 1950s was + probably this:
We are informed that cod-German parodies of this kind were very + common in Allied machine shops during and following WWII. Germans, + then as now, had a reputation for being both good with precision + machinery and prone to officious notices.
1. [common] To copy a large array of bits from one part of a + computer's memory to another part, particularly when the memory is being + used to determine what is shown on a display screen. “The storage + allocator picks through the table and copies the good parts up into high + memory, and then blits it all back down again.” See + bitblt, BLT, + dd, cat, + blast, snarf. More + generally, to perform some operation (such as toggling) on a large array of + bits while moving them.
2. [historical, rare] Sometimes all-capitalized as BLIT: an early experimental bit-mapped terminal + designed by Rob Pike at Bell Labs, later commercialized as the AT&T + 5620. (The folk etymology from “Bell Labs Intelligent + Terminal” is incorrect. Its creators liked to claim that + “Blit” stood for the Bacon, Lettuce, and Interactive + Tomato.)
[common] A special-purpose chip or hardware system built to perform + blit operations, esp. used for fast implementation + of bit-mapped graphics. The Commodore Amiga and a few other micros have + these, but since 1990 the trend has been away from them (however, see + cycle of reincarnation). Syn. + raster blaster.
[allegedly from a World War II military term meaning “ten + pounds of manure in a five-pound bag”]
1. An intractable problem.
2. A crucial piece of hardware that can't be fixed or replaced if it + breaks.
3. A tool that has been hacked over by so many incompetent + programmers that it has become an unmaintainable tissue of hacks.
4. An out-of-control but unkillable development effort.
5. An embarrassing bug that pops up during a customer demo.
6. In the subjargon of computer security specialists, a + denial-of-service attack performed by hogging limited resources that have + no access controls (for example, shared spool space on a multi-user + system).
This term has other meanings in other technical cultures; among + experimental physicists and hardware engineers of various kinds it seems to + mean any random object of unknown purpose (similar to hackish use of + frob). It has also been used to describe an amusing + trick-the-eye drawing resembling a three-pronged fork that appears to + depict a three-dimensional object until one realizes that the parts fit + together in an impossible way.
This is a blivet
[common] Software that provides minimal functionality while + requiring a disproportionate amount of diskspace and memory. Especially + used for application and OS upgrades. This term is very common in the + Windows/NT world. So is its cause.
[common; from process scheduling terminology in OS theory]
1. vi. To delay or sit idle + while waiting for something. “We're blocking until everyone gets + here.” Compare busy-wait.
2. block on vt. To block, waiting for (something). + “Lunch is blocked on Phil's arrival.”
[common] Short for weblog, an + on-line web-zine or diary (usually with facilities for reader comments and + discussion threads) made accessible through the World Wide Web. This term + is widespread and readily forms derivatives, of which the best known may be + blogosphere.
The totality of all blogs. A culture heavily + overlapping with but not coincident with hackerdom; a few of its key + coinages (blogrolling, + fisking, anti-idiotarianism) + are recorded in this lexicon for flavor. Bloggers often divide themselves + into warbloggers and techbloggers. The techbloggers write about technology + and technology policy, while the warbloggers are more politically focused + and tend to be preoccupied with U.S. and world response to the post-9/11 + war against terrorism. The overlap with hackerdom is heaviest among the + techbloggers, but several of the most prominent warbloggers are also + hackers. Bloggers in general tend to be aware of and sympathetic to the + hacker culture.
[From the American political term ‘logrolling’, for + supporting another's pet bill in the legislature in exchange for reciprocal + support,] When you hotlink to other bloggers' blogs (and-or other bloggers' + specific blog entries) in your blog, you are blogrolling. This is + frequently reciprocal.
(alt.: blast an EPROM, + burn an EPROM) To program a read-only + memory, e.g.: for use with an embedded system. This term arose because the + programming process for the Programmable Read-Only Memories (PROMs) that + preceded present-day Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memories (EPROMs) + involved intentionally blowing tiny electrical fuses on the chip. The + usage lives on (it's too vivid and expressive to discard) even though the + write process on EPROMs is nondestructive.
To remove (files and directories) from permanent storage, generally + by accident. “He reformatted the wrong partition and blew away last + night's netnews.” Oppose nuke.
[prob.: from mining and tunneling jargon] Of software, to fail + spectacularly; almost as serious as crash and burn. + See blow past, blow up, + die horribly.
To blow out despite a safeguard. “The + server blew past the 5K reserve buffer.”
1. [scientific computation] To become unstable. Suggests that the + computation is diverging so rapidly that it will soon overflow or at least + go nonlinear.
2. Syn. blow out.
n.
1. obs. Once upon a time, before all-digital switches made it + possible for the phone companies to move them out of band, one could + actually hear the switching tones used to route long-distance calls. Early + phreakers built devices called blue boxes that could reproduce these tones, + which could be used to commandeer portions of the phone network. (This was + not as hard as it may sound; one early phreak acquired the sobriquet + “Captain Crunch” after he proved that he could generate + switching tones with a plastic whistle pulled out of a box of Captain + Crunch cereal!) There were other colors of box with more specialized + phreaking uses; red boxes, black boxes, silver boxes, etc. There were + boxes of other + colors as well, but the blue box was the original and + archetype.
2. n. An + IBM machine, especially a large (non-PC) one.
Term for ‘police’ nanobots + intended to prevent gray goo, denature hazardous + waste, destroy pollution, put ozone back into the stratosphere, prevent + halitosis, and promote truth, justice, and the American way, etc. The term + “Blue Goo” can be found in Dr. Seuss's Fox In + Socks to refer to a substance much like bubblegum. + ‘Would you like to chew blue goo, sir?’. See + nanotechnology.
[IBM] Patch wires (esp. 30 AWG gauge) added to circuit boards at the + factory to correct design or fabrication problems. Blue wire is not + necessarily blue, the term describes function rather than color. These may + be necessary if there hasn't been time to design and qualify another board + version. In Great Britain this can be bodge + wire, after mainstream slang bodge for a clumsy improvisation or sloppy job + of work. Compare purple wire, + red wire, yellow wire, + pink wire.
[UK] Spoken metasyntactic variable, to + indicate some text that is obvious from context, or which is already + known. If several words are to be replaced, blurgle may well be doubled or + tripled. “To look for something in several files use ‘grep + string blurgle blurgle’.” In each case, “blurgle + blurgle” would be understood to be replaced by the file you wished + to search. Compare mumble, sense 7.
Any one of the fat cables that lurk under the floor in a + dinosaur pen. Possibly so called because they + display a ferocious life of their own when you try to lay them straight and + flat after they have been coiled for some time. It is rumored within IBM + that channel cables for the 370 are limited to 200 feet because beyond that + length the boas get dangerous — and it is worth noting that one of + the major cable makers uses the trademark ‘Anaconda’.
1. In-context synonym for bboard; sometimes + used even for Usenet newsgroups (but see usage note under + bboard, sense 1).
2. An electronic circuit board.
[common; from ham radio]
1. Like doorstop but more severe; implies + that the offending hardware is irreversibly dead or useless. “That + was a working motherboard once. One lightning strike later, instant boat + anchor!”
2. A person who just takes up space.
3. Obsolete but still working hardware, especially when used of an + old, bulky, quirky system; originally a term of annoyance, but became + more and more affectionate as the hardware became more and more + obsolete.
Auctioneers use this term for a large, undesirable object such as a + washing machine; actual boating enthusiasts, however, use “mooring + anchor” for frustrating (not actually useless) equipment.
At Demon Internet, all + tech support personnel are called “Bob”. (Female support + personnel have an option on “Bobette”). This has nothing to + do with Bob the divine drilling-equipment salesman of the + Church of the SubGenius. Nor is it acronymized from “Brother Of + BOFH”, though all parties agree it could have + been. Rather, it was triggered by an unusually large draft of new + tech-support people in 1995. It was observed that there would be much + duplication of names. To ease the confusion, it was decided that all + support techs would henceforth be known as “Bob”, and identity + badges were created labelled “Bob 1” and “Bob 2”. + (“No, we never got any further” reports a witness).
The reason for “Bob” rather than anything else is due to + a luser calling and asking to speak to + “Bob”, despite the fact that no “Bob” was + currently working for Tech Support. Since we all know “the customer + is always right”, it was decided that there had to be at least one + “Bob” on duty at all times, just in case.
This sillyness snowballed inexorably. Shift leaders and managers + began to refer to their groups of “bobs”. Whole ranks of + support machines were set up (and still exist in the DNS as of 1999) as + bob1 through bobN. Then came alt.tech-support.recovery, and it was filled + with Demon support personnel. They all referred to themselves, and to + others, as “bob”, and after a while it caught on. There is + now a Bob + Code describing the Bob nature.
[Commonwealth hackish] Syn. kludge or + hack (sense 1). “I'll bodge this in now and + fix it later”.
(var.: stupid-sort) The + archetypical perversely awful algorithm (as opposed to + bubble sort, which is merely the generic bad + algorithm). Bogo-sort is equivalent to repeatedly throwing a deck of cards + in the air, picking them up at random, and then testing whether they are in + order. It serves as a sort of canonical example of awfulness. Looking at + a program and seeing a dumb algorithm, one might say “Oh, I see, this + program uses bogo-sort.” Esp. appropriate for algorithms with + factorial or super-exponential running time in the average case and + probabilistically infinite worst-case running time. Compare + bogus, brute force.
A spectacular variant of bogo-sort has been proposed which has the + interesting property that, if the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum + mechanics is true, it can sort an arbitrarily large array in linear time. + (In the Many-Worlds model, the result of any quantum action is to split the + universe-before into a sheaf of universes-after, one for each possible way + the state vector can collapse; in any one of the universes-after the result + appears random.) The steps are: 1. Permute the array randomly using a + quantum process, 2. If the array is not sorted, destroy the universe + (checking that the list is sorted requires O(n) time). Implementation of + step 2 is left as an exercise for the reader.
A notional instrument for measuring bogosity. + Compare the Troll-O-Meter and the + ‘wankometer’ described in the wank + entry; see also bogus.
Any device, software or hardware, that limits or suppresses the flow + and/or emission of bogons. “Engineering hacked a bogon filter + between the Cray and the VAXen, and now we're getting fewer dropped + packets.” See also bogosity, + bogus.
A measure of a supposed field of bogosity + emitted by a speaker, measured by a bogometer; as a + speaker starts to wander into increasing bogosity a listener might say + “Warning, warning, bogon flux is rising”. See + quantum bogodynamics.
[very common; by analogy with proton/electron/neutron, but doubtless + reinforced after 1980 by the similarity to Douglas Adams's + ‘Vogons’; see the Bibliography in Appendix C and note that + Arthur Dent actually mispronounces ‘Vogons’ as + ‘Bogons’ at one point]
1. The elementary particle of bogosity (see + quantum bogodynamics). For instance, “the Ethernet is emitting + bogons again” means that it is broken or acting in an erratic or + bogus fashion.
2. A query packet sent from a TCP/IP domain resolver to a root + server, having the reply bit set instead of the query bit.
3. Any bogus or incorrectly formed packet sent on a network. +
4. By synecdoche, used to refer to any bogus thing, as in “I'd + like to go to lunch with you but I've got to go to the weekly staff + bogon”.
5. A person who is bogus or who says bogus things. This was + historically the original usage, but has been overtaken by its derivative + senses 1--4. See also bogosity, + bogus; compare psyton, + fat electrons, + magic smoke.
The bogon has become the type case for a whole bestiary of nonce + particle names, including the ‘clutron’ or ‘cluon’ + (indivisible particle of cluefulness, obviously the antiparticle of the + bogon) and the futon (elementary particle of + randomness, or sometimes of lameness). These are + not so much live usages in themselves as examples of a live meta-usage: + that is, it has become a standard joke or linguistic maneuver to + “explain” otherwise mysterious circumstances by inventing + nonce particle names. And these imply nonce particle theories, with all + their dignity or lack thereof (we might note parenthetically that this is a + generalization from “(bogus particle) theories” to + “bogus (particle theories)”!). Perhaps such particles are the + modern-day equivalents of trolls and wood-nymphs as standard + starting-points around which to construct explanatory myths. Of course, + playing on an existing word (as in the ‘futon’) yields + additional flavor. Compare magic smoke.
1. [orig. CMU, now very common] The degree to which something is + bogus. Bogosity is measured with a + bogometer; in a seminar, when a speaker says + something bogus, a listener might raise his hand and say “My + bogometer just triggered”. More extremely, “You just pinned + my bogometer” means you just said or did something so outrageously + bogus that it is off the scale, pinning the bogometer needle at the highest + possible reading (one might also say “You just redlined my + bogometer”). The agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the + microLenat.
2. The potential field generated by a + bogon flux; see quantum bogodynamics. See + also bogon flux, + bogon filter, bogus.
To make or become bogus. A program that has been changed so many + times as to become completely disorganized has become bogotified. If you + tighten a nut too hard and strip the threads on the bolt, the bolt has + become bogotified and you had better not use it any more. This coinage led + to the notional autobogotiphobia + defined as ‘the fear of becoming bogotified’; but is not clear + that the latter has ever been ‘live’ jargon rather than a + self-conscious joke in jargon about jargon. See also + bogosity, bogus.
To become bogus, suddenly and unexpectedly. “His talk was + relatively sane until somebody asked him a trick question; then he bogued + out and did nothing but flame afterwards.” + See also bogosity, + bogus.
1. Non-functional. “Your patches are bogus.”
2. Useless. “OPCON is a bogus program.”
3. False. “Your arguments are bogus.”
4. Incorrect. “That algorithm is bogus.”
5. Unbelievable. “You claim to have solved the halting + problem for Turing Machines? That's totally bogus.”
6. Silly. “Stop writing those bogus sagas.”
Astrology is bogus. So is a bolt that is obviously about to break. + So is someone who makes blatantly false claims to have solved a scientific + problem. (This word seems to have some, but not all, of the connotations + of random — mostly the negative ones.)
It is claimed that bogus was + originally used in the hackish sense at Princeton in the late 1960s. It + was spread to CMU and Yale by Michael Shamos, a migratory Princeton + alumnus. A glossary of bogus words was compiled at Yale when the word was + first popularized there about 1975-76. These coinages spread into + hackerdom from CMU and MIT. Most of them remained wordplay objects rather + than actual vocabulary items or live metaphors. Examples: amboguous (having multiple bogus + interpretations); bogotissimo (in a + gloriously bogus manner); bogotophile + (one who is pathologically fascinated by the bogus); paleobogology (the study of primeval + bogosity).
Some bogowords, however, obtained sufficient live currency to be + listed elsewhere in this lexicon; see bogometer, + bogon, bogotify, and + quantum bogodynamics and the related but unlisted + Dr. Fred Mbogo.
By the early 1980s ‘bogus’ was also current in something + like hacker usage sense in West Coast teen slang, and it had gone + mainstream by 1985. A correspondent from Cambridge reports, by contrast, + that these uses of bogus grate on + British nerves; in Britain the word means, rather specifically, + ‘counterfeit’, as in “a bogus 10-pound note”. + According to Merriam-Webster, the word dates back to 1825 and originally + referred to a counterfeiting machine.
1. [Usenet: variously ascribed to the TV series + Cheers, Moonlighting, and + Soap]v. To have + sex with; compare bounce, sense 2. (This is + mainstream slang.) In Commonwealth hackish the variant ‘bonk’ + is more common.
2. n. After the original Peter + Korn ‘Boinkon’ Usenet parties, used for + almost any net social gathering, e.g., Miniboink, a small boink held by + Nancy Gillett in 1988; Minniboink, a Boinkcon in Minnesota in 1989; + Humpdayboinks, Wednesday get-togethers held in the San Francisco Bay Area. + Compare @-party.
3. Var of bonk; see + bonk/oif.
1. v. General synonym for + crash (sense 1) except that it is not used as a + noun; esp. used of software or OS failures. “Don't run Empire with + less than 32K stack, it'll bomb.”
2. n.,v. Atari ST and Macintosh + equivalents of a Unix panic or Amiga + guru meditation, in which icons of little + black-powder bombs or mushroom clouds are displayed, indicating that the + system has died. On the Mac, this may be accompanied by a decimal (or + occasionally hexadecimal) number indicating what went wrong, similar to the + Amiga guru meditation number. + MS-DOS machines tend to get + locked up in this situation.
A language (such as Pascal, Ada, APL, or + Prolog) that, though ostensibly general-purpose, is designed so as to + enforce an author's theory of ‘right programming’ even though + said theory is demonstrably inadequate for systems hacking or even vanilla + general-purpose programming. Often abbreviated ‘B&D’; + thus, one may speak of things “having the B&D nature”. + See Pascal; oppose languages of + choice.
In the U.S. MUD community, it has become + traditional to express pique or censure by bonking the offending person. Convention holds + that one should acknowledge a bonk by saying “oif!” and there + is a myth to the effect that failing to do so upsets the cosmic bonk/oif + balance, causing much trouble in the universe. Some MUDs have implemented + special commands for bonking and oifing. Note: in parts of the + U.K. ‘bonk’ is a sexually loaded slang term; care is advised in + transatlantic conversations (see boink). + Commonwealth hackers report a similar convention involving the + ‘fish/bang’ balance. See also talk + mode.
There is a tradition in hackerdom of informally tagging important + textbooks and standards documents with the dominant color of their covers + or with some other conspicuous feature of the cover. Many of these are + described in this lexicon under their own entries. See + Aluminum Book, + Camel Book, Cinderella Book, + daemon book, Dragon Book, + Orange Book, Purple Book, + Wizard Book, and bible; + see also rainbow series. Since about 1993 this + tradition has gotten a boost from the popular O'Reilly and Associates + line of technical books, which usually feature some kind of exotic + animal on the cover and are often called by the name of that animal.
[techspeak; from ‘by one's bootstraps’] To load and + initialize the operating system on a machine. This usage is no longer + jargon (having passed into techspeak) but has given rise to some + derivatives that are still jargon.
The derivative reboot implies + that the machine hasn't been down for long, or that the boot is a + bounce (sense 4) intended to clear some state of + wedgitude. This is sometimes used of human thought + processes, as in the following exchange: “You've lost me.” + “OK, reboot. Here's the theory....”
This term is also found in the variants cold boot (from power-off condition) and + warm boot (with the CPU and all + devices already powered up, as after a hardware reset or software + crash).
Another variant: soft boot, + reinitialization of only part of a system, under control of other software + still running: “If you're running the mess-dos + emulator, control-alt-insert will cause a soft-boot of the emulator, while + leaving the rest of the system running.”
Opposed to this there is hard + boot, which connotes hostility towards or frustration with the + machine being booted: “I'll have to hard-boot this losing + Sun.” “I recommend booting it hard.” One often + hard-boots by performing a power cycle.
Historical note: this term derives from bootstrap loader, a short program that was read + in from cards or paper tape, or toggled in from the front panel switches. + This program was always very short (great efforts were expended on making + it short in order to minimize the labor and chance of error involved in + toggling it in), but was just smart enough to read in a slightly more + complex program (usually from a card or paper tape reader), to which it + handed control; this program in turn was smart enough to read the + application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk drive. + Thus, in successive steps, the computer ‘pulled itself up by its + bootstraps’ to a useful operating state. Nowadays the bootstrap is + usually found in ROM or EPROM, and reads the first stage in from a fixed + location on the disk, called the ‘boot block’. When this + program gains control, it is powerful enough to load the actual OS and hand + control over to it.
(also borked) Common + deliberate typo for ‘broken’.
[common on IRC, MUD and among gamers; from “robot”] +
1. An IRC or MUD user + who is actually a program. On IRC, typically the robot provides some + useful service. Examples are NickServ, which tries to prevent random users + from adopting nicks already claimed by others, and + MsgServ, which allows one to send asynchronous messages to be delivered + when the recipient signs on. Also common are ‘annoybots’, such + as KissServ, which perform no useful function except to send cute messages + to other people. Service bots are less common on MUDs; but some others, + such as the ‘Julia’ bot active in 1990--91, have been + remarkably impressive Turing-test experiments, able to pass as human for as + long as ten or fifteen minutes of conversation.
2. An AI-controlled player in a computer game (especially a + first-person shooter such as Quake) which, unlike ordinary monsters, + operates like a human-controlled player, with access to a player's weapons + and abilities. An example can be found at http://www.telefragged.com/thefatal/. +
3. Term used, though less commonly, for a web + spider. The file for controlling spider behavior on + your site is officially the “Robots Exclusion File” and its + URL is “http://<somehost>/robots.txt”)
Note that bots in all senses were ‘robots’ when the terms + first appeared in the early 1990s, but the shortened form is now + habitual.
1. An Internet user that leeches off ISPs — the sort you can + never provide good enough services for, always complains about the price, + no matter how low it may be, and will bolt off to another service the + moment there is even the slimmest price difference. While most bottom + feeders infest free or almost free services such as AOL, MSN, and Hotmail, + too many flock to whomever happens to be the cheapest regional ISP at the + time. Bottom feeders are often the classic problem user, known for + unleashing spam, flamage, and other breaches of + netiquette.
2. Syn. for slopsucker, derived from the + fishermen's and naturalists' term for finny creatures who subsist on the + primordial ooze. (This sense is older.)
In a news or mail reply, to put the response to a news or email + message after the quoted content from the parent message. This is correct + form, and until around 2000 was so universal on the Internet that neither + the term ‘bottom-post’ nor its antonym + top-post existed. Hackers consider that the best + practice is actually to excerpt only the relevent portions of the parent + message, then intersperse the poster's response in such a way that each + section of response appears directly after the excerpt it applies to. This + reduces message bulk, keeps thread content in a logical order, and + facilitates reading.
Hackish opposite of the techspeak term top-down design. It has been received wisdom + in most programming cultures that it is best to design from higher levels + of abstraction down to lower, specifying sequences of action in increasing + detail until you get to actual code. Hackers often find (especially in + exploratory designs that cannot be closely specified in advance) that it + works best to build things in the opposite order, by + writing and testing a clean set of primitive operations and then knitting + them together. Naively applied, this leads to hacked-together bottom-up + implementations; a more sophisticated response is middle-out implementation, in which scratch + code within primitives at the mid-level of the system is gradually replaced + with a more polished version of the lowest level at the same time the + structure above the midlevel is being built.
[common] Notification message returned to sender by a site unable to + relay email to the intended Internet address + recipient or the next link in a bang path (see + bounce, sense 1). Reasons might include a + nonexistent or misspelled username or a down relay + site. Bounce messages can themselves fail, with occasionally ugly results; + see sorcerer's apprentice mode and + software laser. The terms bounce mail and barfmail are also common.
1. [common; perhaps by analogy to a bouncing check] An electronic + mail message that is undeliverable and returns an error notification to the + sender is said to bounce. See also + bounce message.
2. To engage in sexual intercourse; prob.: from the expression + ‘bouncing the mattress’, but influenced by Roo's psychosexually + loaded “Try bouncing me, Tigger!” from the + Winnie-the-Pooh books. Compare + boink.
3. To casually reboot a system in order to clear up a transient + problem (possibly editing a configuration file in the process, if it is one + that is only re-read at boot time). Reported primarily among + VMS and Unix users.
4. [VM/CMS programmers] Automatic warm-start + of a machine after an error. “I logged on this morning and found it + had bounced 7 times during the night”
6. [IBM] To power cycle a peripheral in order + to reset it.
[from a Greek word for turning like an ox while plowing] An ancient + method of writing using alternate left-to-right and right-to-left lines. + This term is actually philologists' techspeak and typesetters' jargon. + Erudite hackers use it for an optimization performed by some computer + typesetting software and moving-head printers. The adverbial form + ‘boustrophedonically’ is also found (hackers purely love + constructions like this).
A computer; esp. in the construction foo box where foo + is some functional qualifier, like graphics, or the name of an OS (thus, Unix box, Windows + box, etc.) “We preprocess the data on Unix boxes before + handing it up to the mainframe.”
Comments (explanatory notes attached to program instructions) that + occupy several lines by themselves; so called because in assembler and C + code they are often surrounded by a box in a style something like this: +
+/************************************************* + * + * This is a boxed comment in C style + * + *************************************************/ + |
Common variants of this style omit the asterisks in column 2 or add a + matching row of asterisks closing the right side of the box. The sparest + variant omits all but the comment delimiters themselves; the + ‘box’ is implied. Oppose + winged comments.
[very common; by analogy with VAXen] Fanciful + plural of box often encountered in the phrase + ‘Unix boxen’, used to describe commodity + Unix hardware. The connotation is that any two Unix + boxen are interchangeable.
Syn. ASCII art. This term implies a more + restricted domain, that of box-and-arrow drawings. “His report has a + lot of boxology in it.” Compare + macrology.
[from the name of a TV clown even more losing than Ronald McDonald] + Resembling or having the quality of a bozo; that is, clownish, ludicrously + wrong, unintentionally humorous. Compare wonky, + demented. Note that the noun ‘bozo’ + occurs in slang, but the mainstream adjectival form would be + ‘bozo-like’ or (in New England) ‘bozoish’.
1. [common; generalization of “Honeywell Brain Damage” + (HBD), a theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms + in Honeywell Multics] adj. Obviously wrong; + cretinous; demented. There + is an implication that the person responsible must have suffered brain + damage, because he should have known better. Calling something + brain-damaged is really bad; it also implies it is unusable, and that its + failure to work is due to poor design rather than some accident. + “Only six monocase characters per file name? Now + that's brain-damaged!”
2. [esp. in the Mac world] May refer to free demonstration software + that has been deliberately crippled in some way so as not to compete with + the product it is intended to sell. Syn. + crippleware.
[common] Brain-damaged in the extreme. It tends to imply terminal + design failure rather than malfunction or simple stupidity. “This + comm program doesn't know how to send a break — how + brain-dead!”
[common] The act of telling someone everything one knows about a + particular topic or project. Typically used when someone is going to let a + new party maintain a piece of code. Conceptually analogous to an operating + system core dump in that it saves a lot of useful + state before an exit. “You'll have to give me + a brain dump on FOOBAR before you start your new job at HackerCorp.” + See core dump (sense 4). At Sun, this is also known + as TOI (transfer of + information).
The actual result of a braino, as opposed to + the mental glitch that is the braino itself. E.g., typing dir on a Unix box after a session with DOS.
Syn. for thinko. See also + brain fart.
[Great Britain] Analagous to bandwidth but + used strictly for human capacity to process information and especially to + multitask. “Writing email is taking up most of my brainwidth right + now, I can't look at that Flash animation.”
1. Debugging statements inserted into a program that emit output or + log indicators of the program's state to a file so + you can see where it dies or pin down the cause of surprising behavior. The + term is probably a reference to the Hansel and Gretel story from the + Brothers Grimm or the older French folktale of Thumbelina; in several + variants of these, a character leaves a trail of bread crumbs so as not to + get lost in the woods.
2. In user-interface design, any feature that allows some tracking + of where you've been, like coloring visited links purple rather than blue + in Netscape (also called footprinting).
In the process of implementing a new computer language, the point at + which the language is sufficiently effective that one can implement the + language in itself. That is, for a new language called, hypothetically, + FOOGOL, one has reached break-even when one can write a demonstration + compiler for FOOGOL in FOOGOL, discard the original implementation + language, and thereafter use working versions of FOOGOL to develop newer + ones. This is an important milestone; see + MFTL.
Since this entry was first written, several correspondents have + reported that there actually was a compiler for a tiny Algol-like language + called Foogol floating around on various VAXen in + the early and mid-1980s. A FOOGOL implementation is available at the + Retrocomputing Museum http://www.catb.org/retro/.
1. vt. To cause to be + broken (in any sense). “Your latest patch to + the editor broke the paragraph commands.”
2. v. (of a program) To stop + temporarily, so that it may debugged. The place where it stops is a + breakpoint.
3. [techspeak] vi. To send an + RS-232 break (two character widths of line high) over a serial comm line. +
4. [Unix] vi. To strike whatever + key currently causes the tty driver to send SIGINT to the current process. + Normally, break (sense 3), delete or control-C does + this.
5. break break may be said to + interrupt a conversation (this is an example of verb doubling). This usage + comes from radio communications, which in turn probably came from landline + telegraph/teleprinter usage, as badly abused in the Citizen's Band craze of + the early 1980s.
[XEROX PARC] An Ethernet packet that contains bootstrap (see + boot) code, periodically sent out from a working + computer to infuse the ‘breath of life’ into any computer on + the network that has happened to crash. Machines depending on such packets + have sufficient hardware or firmware code to wait for (or request) such a + packet during the reboot process. See also + dickless workstation.
The notional kiss-of-death + packet, with a function complementary to that of a + breath-of-life packet, is recommended for dealing with hosts that consume + too many network resources. Though ‘kiss-of-death packet’ is + usually used in jest, there is at least one documented instance of an + Internet subnet with limited address-table slots in a gateway machine in + which such packets were routinely used to compete for slots, rather like + Christmas shoppers competing for scarce parking spaces.
See feep.
1. A piece of equipment that has been programmed or configured into a + hung, wedged,unusable + state. Especially used to describe what happens to devices like routers or + PDAs that run from firmware when the firmware image is damaged or its + settings are somehow patched to impossible values. This term usually + implies irreversibility, but equipment can sometimes be unbricked by + performing a hard reset or some other drastic operation. Sometimes verbed: + “Yeah, I bricked the router because I forgot about adding in the new + access-list.”.
2. An outboard power transformer of the kind associated with laptops, + modems, routers and other small computing appliances, especially one of the + modern type with cords on both ends, as opposed to the older and obnoxious + type that plug directly into wall or barrier strip.
[Usenet: common] Text which is carefully composed to be + right-justified (and sometimes to have a deliberate gutter at mid-page) + without use of extra spaces, just through careful word-length choices. A + minor art form. The best examples have something of the quality of imagist + poetry.
[common] To present a machine, operating system, piece of software, + or algorithm with a load so extreme or pathological + that it grinds to a halt.: “To bring a MicroVAX to its knees, try + twenty users running vi — or four running + EMACS.” Compare + hog.
Said of software that is functional but easily broken by changes in + operating environment or configuration, or by any minor tweak to the + software itself. Also, any system that responds inappropriately and + disastrously to abnormal but expected external stimuli; e.g., a file system + that is usually totally scrambled by a power failure is said to be brittle. + This term is often used to describe the results of a research effort that + were never intended to be robust, but it can be applied to commercial + software, which (due to closed-source development) displays the quality far + more often than it ought to. Oppose robust.
[common] An incorrect packet broadcast on a network that causes most + hosts to respond all at once, typically with wrong answers that start the + process over again. See network meltdown; compare + mail storm.
[IBM] The error code displayed on line 25 of a 3270 terminal (or a + PC emulating a 3270) for various kinds of protocol violations and + “unexpected” error conditions (including connection to a + down computer). On a PC, simulated with + ‘->/_’, with the two center characters overstruck.
Note: to appreciate this term fully, it helps to know that + “broken arrow” is also military jargon for an accident + involving nuclear weapons....
Pejorative hackerism for “token-ring network”, an early + and very slow LAN technology from IBM that lost the standards war to + Ethernet. Though token-ring survives in a few niche markets (such as + factory automation) that put a high premium on resistance to electrical + noise, the term is now (2000) primarily historical.
1. Not working according to design (of programs). This is the + mainstream sense.
2. Improperly designed, This sense carries a more or less + disparaging implication that the designer should have known better, while + sense 1 doesn't necessarily assign blame. Which of senses 1 or 2 is + intended is conveyed by context and nonverbal cues.
3. Behaving strangely; especially (when used of people) exhibiting + extreme depression.
[rare; by analogy with ‘bracket’: a ‘broken + bracket’] Either of the characters < and + >, when used as paired enclosing delimiters. This + word originated as a contraction of the phrase ‘broken + bracket’, that is, a bracket that is bent in the middle. (At MIT, + and apparently in the Real World as well, these are + usually called angle brackets.)
A bug in a public software release that is so embarrassing that the + author notionally wears a brown paper bag over his head for a while so he + won't be recognized on the net. Entered popular usage after the early-1999 + release of the first Linux 2.2, which had one. The phrase was used in + Linus Torvalds's apology posting.
A program specifically designed to help users view and navigate + hypertext, on-line documentation, or a database. While this general sense + has been present in jargon for a long time, the proliferation of browsers + for the World Wide Web after 1992 has made it much more popular and + provided a central or default techspeak meaning of the word previously + lacking in hacker usage. Nowadays, if someone mentions using a + ‘browser’ without qualification, one may assume it is a Web + browser.
A popular design technique at many software houses — + brute force coding unrelieved by any knowledge of + how problems have been previously solved in elegant ways. Dogmatic + adherence to design methodologies tends to encourage this sort of thing. + Characteristic of early larval stage programming; + unfortunately, many never outgrow it. Often abbreviated BFI: “Gak, + they used a bubble sort! That's strictly from + BFI.” Compare bogosity. A very similar usage + is said to be mainstream in Great Britain.
Describes a primitive programming style, one in which the programmer + relies on the computer's processing power instead of using his or her own + intelligence to simplify the problem, often ignoring problems of scale and + applying naive methods suited to small problems directly to large ones. + The term can also be used in reference to programming style: brute-force + programs are written in a heavyhanded, tedious way, full of repetition and + devoid of any elegance or useful abstraction (see also + brute force and ignorance).
The canonical example of a brute-force + algorithm is associated with the ‘traveling salesman problem’ + (TSP), a classical NP-hard problem: Suppose a person + is in, say, Boston, and wishes to drive to N other + cities. In what order should the cities be visited in order to minimize + the distance travelled? The brute-force method is to simply generate all + possible routes and compare the distances; while guaranteed to work and + simple to implement, this algorithm is clearly very stupid in that it + considers even obviously absurd routes (like going from Boston to Houston + via San Francisco and New York, in that order). For very small + N it works well, but it rapidly becomes absurdly + inefficient when N increases (for N = + 15, there are already 1,307,674,368,000 possible routes to + consider, and for N = 1000 — well, see + bignum). Sometimes, unfortunately, there is no + better general solution than brute force. See also + NP- and rubber-hose + cryptanalysis.
A more simple-minded example of brute-force programming is finding + the smallest number in a large list by first using an existing program to + sort the list in ascending order, and then picking the first number off the + front.
Whether brute-force programming should actually be considered stupid + or not depends on the context; if the problem is not terribly big, the + extra CPU time spent on a brute-force solution may cost less than the + programmer time it would take to develop a more ‘intelligent’ + algorithm. Additionally, a more intelligent algorithm may imply more + long-term complexity cost and bug-chasing than are justified by the speed + improvement.
Ken Thompson, co-inventor of Unix, is reported to have uttered the + epigram “When in doubt, use brute force”. He probably + intended this as a ha ha only serious, but the + original Unix kernel's preference for simple, robust, and portable + algorithms over brittle ‘smart’ ones + does seem to have been a significant factor in the success of that OS. + Like so many other tradeoffs in software design, the choice between brute + force and complex, finely-tuned cleverness is often a difficult one that + requires both engineering savvy and delicate esthetic judgment.
Techspeak for a particular sorting technique in which pairs of + adjacent values in the list to be sorted are compared and interchanged if + they are out of order; thus, list entries ‘bubble upward’ in + the list until they bump into one with a lower sort value. Because it is + not very good relative to other methods and is the one typically stumbled + on by naive and untutored programmers, hackers + consider it the canonical example of a naive + algorithm. (However, it's been shown by repeated experiment that below + about 5000 records bubble-sort is OK anyway.) The canonical example of a + really bad algorithm is + bogo-sort. A bubble sort might be used out of + ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could issue only from brain damage or + willful perversity.
1. [obs.] The bits produced by the CONTROL and META shift keys on a + SAIL keyboard (octal 200 and 400 respectively), resulting in a 9-bit + keyboard character set. The MIT AI TV (Knight) keyboards extended this + with TOP and separate left and right CONTROL and META keys, resulting in a + 12-bit character set; later, LISP Machines added such keys as SUPER, HYPER, + and GREEK (see space-cadet keyboard).
2. By extension, bits associated with ‘extra’ shift keys + on any keyboard, e.g., the ALT on an IBM PC or command and option keys on a + Macintosh.
It has long been rumored that bucky + bits were named for Buckminster Fuller during a period when he + was consulting at Stanford. Actually, bucky bits were invented by Niklaus + Wirth when he was at Stanford in 1964--65; he first + suggested the idea of an EDIT key to set the 8th bit of an otherwise 7-bit + ASCII character). It seems that, unknown to Wirth, certain Stanford + hackers had privately nicknamed him ‘Bucky’ after a prominent + portion of his dental anatomy, and this nickname transferred to the bit. + Bucky-bit commands were used in a number of editors written at Stanford, + including most notably TV-EDIT and NLS.
The term spread to MIT and CMU early and is now in general use. + Ironically, Wirth himself remained unaware of its derivation for nearly 30 + years, until GLS dug up this history in early 1993! See + double bucky, quadruple bucky.
Shorter and ruder syn. for + buffer overflow.
What happens when you try to stuff more data into a buffer (holding + area) than it can handle. This problem is commonly exploited by + crackers to get arbitrary commands executed by a + program running with root permissions. This may be due to a mismatch in + the processing rates of the producing and consuming processes (see + overrun and + firehose syndrome), or because the buffer is simply too small to hold + all the data that must accumulate before a piece of it can be processed. + For example, in a text-processing tool that crunches + a line at a time, a short line buffer can result in + lossage as input from a long line overflows the + buffer and trashes data beyond it. Good defensive programming would check + for overflow on each character and stop accepting data when the buffer is + full up. The term is used of and by humans in a metaphorical sense. + “What time did I agree to meet you? My buffer must have + overflowed.” Or “If I answer that phone my buffer is going to + overflow.” See also spam, + overrun screw.
[common] Said of a design or revision that has been badly + compromised by a requirement to be compatible with + fossils or misfeatures in + other programs or (esp.) previous releases of itself. “MS-DOS 2.0 + used \ as a path separator to be bug-compatible with some cretin's choice + of / as an option character in 1.0.”
Same as bug-compatible, with the additional + implication that much tedious effort went into ensuring that each (known) + bug was replicated.
[from “book-of-the-month club”, a time-honored + mail-order-marketing technique in the U.S.] A mythical club which users of + sendmail(8) (the Unix mail daemon) + belong to; this was coined on the Usenet newsgroup comp.security.unix at a + time when sendmail security holes, which allowed outside + crackers access to the system, were being uncovered + at an alarming rate, forcing sysadmins to update very often. Also, more + completely, fatal security bug-of-the-month + club. See also + kernel-of-the-week club.
An unwanted and unintended property of a program or piece of + hardware, esp. one that causes it to malfunction. Antonym of + feature. Examples: “There's a bug in the + editor: it writes things out backwards.” “The system crashed + because of a hardware bug.” “Fred is a winner, but he has a + few bugs” (i.e., Fred is a good guy, but he has a few personality + problems).
Historical note: Admiral Grace Hopper (an early computing pioneer + better known for inventing COBOL) liked to tell a + story in which a technician solved a glitch in the + Harvard Mark II machine by pulling an actual insect out from between the + contacts of one of its relays, and she subsequently promulgated + bug in its hackish sense as a joke about the + incident (though, as she was careful to admit, she was not there when it + happened). For many years the logbook associated with the incident and the + actual bug in question (a moth) sat in a display case at the Naval Surface + Warfare Center (NSWC). The entire story, with a picture of the logbook and + the moth taped into it, is recorded in the Annals of the History + of Computing, Vol. 3, No. 3 (July 1981), pp. 285--286.
The text of the log entry (from September 9, 1947), reads “1545 + Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of bug being + found”. This wording establishes that the term was already in use + at the time in its current specific sense — and Hopper herself + reports that the term bug was + regularly applied to problems in radar electronics during WWII.
Indeed, the use of bug to mean + an industrial defect was already established in Thomas Edison's time, and a + more specific and rather modern use can be found in an electrical handbook + from 1896 (Hawkin's New Catechism of Electricity, + Theo. Audel & Co.) which says: “The term ‘bug’ is + used to a limited extent to designate any fault or trouble in the + connections or working of electric apparatus.” It further notes that + the term is “said to have originated in quadruplex telegraphy and + have been transferred to all electric apparatus.”
The latter observation may explain a common folk etymology of the + term; that it came from telephone company usage, in which “bugs in a + telephone cable” were blamed for noisy lines. Though this + derivation seems to be mistaken, it may well be a distorted memory of a + joke first current among telegraph operators more than + a century ago!
Or perhaps not a joke. Historians of the field inform us that the + term “bug” was regularly used in the early days of telegraphy + to refer to a variety of semi-automatic telegraphy keyers that would send a + string of dots if you held them down. In fact, the Vibroplex keyers (which + were among the most common of this type) even had a graphic of a beetle on + them (and still do)! While the ability to send repeated dots automatically + was very useful for professional morse code operators, these were also + significantly trickier to use than the older manual keyers, and it could + take some practice to ensure one didn't introduce extraneous dots into the + code by holding the key down a fraction too long. In the hands of an + inexperienced operator, a Vibroplex “bug” on the line could + mean that a lot of garbled Morse would soon be coming your way.
Further, the term “bug” has long been used among radio + technicians to describe a device that converts electromagnetic field + variations into acoustic signals. It is used to trace radio interference + and look for dangerous radio emissions. Radio community usage derives from + the roach-like shape of the first versions used by 19th century physicists. + The first versions consisted of a coil of wire (roach body), with the two + wire ends sticking out and bent back to nearly touch forming a spark gap + (roach antennae). The bug is to the radio technician what the stethoscope + is to the stereotypical medical doctor. This sense is almost certainly + ancestral to modern use of “bug” for a covert monitoring + device, but may also have contributed to the use of “bug” for + the effects of radio interference itself.
Actually, use of bug in the + general sense of a disruptive event goes back to Shakespeare! (Henry VI, + part III - Act V, Scene II: King Edward: “So, lie thou there. Die + thou; and die our fear; For Warwick was a bug that fear'd us all.”) + In the first edition of Samuel Johnson's dictionary one meaning of + bug is “A frightful object; a + walking spectre”; this is traced to ‘bugbear’, a Welsh + term for a variety of mythological monster which (to complete the circle) + has recently been reintroduced into the popular lexicon through fantasy + role-playing games.
In any case, in jargon the word almost never refers to insects. Here + is a 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 original bug was moved to + the Smithsonian, and an earlier version of this entry so asserted. A + correspondent who thought to check discovered that the 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]
Used of an algorithm or implementation considered extremely + robust; lossage-resistant; capable of correctly + recovering from any imaginable exception condition — a rare and + valued quality. Implies that the programmer has thought of all possible + errors, and added code to protect against each one. + Thus, in some cases, this can imply code that is too heavyweight, due to + excessive paranoia on the part of the + programmer. Syn. armor-plated.
[comp.lang.c on USENET] A confident, but incorrect, statement about + a programming language. This immortalizes a very bad book about + C, Herbert Schildt's C - The Complete + Reference. One reviewer commented “The naive errors in + this book would be embarrassing even in a programming assignment turned in + by a computer science college sophomore.”
Synonym for increment. Has the same meaning as C's ++ operator. + Used esp. of counter variables, pointers, and index dummies in for, while, and + do-while loops.
[from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky] Like + flame, but connotes that the source is truly + clueless and ineffectual (mere flamers can be competent). A term of deep + contempt. “There's some guy on the phone burbling about how he got a + DISK FULL error and it's all our comm software's fault.” This is + mainstream slang in some parts of England.
A surprising piece of code found in some program. While usually not + wrong, it tends to vary from crufty to + bletcherous, and has lain undiscovered only because + it was functionally correct, however horrible it is. Used sarcastically, + because what is found is anything but treasure. + Buried treasure almost always needs to be dug up and removed. “I + just found that the scheduler sorts its queue using + bubble sort! Buried treasure!”
To write a software or document distribution on a CDR. Coined from + the fact that a laser is used to inscribe the information by burning small + pits in the medium, and from the fact that disk comes out of the drive warm + to the touch. Writable CDs can be done on a normal desk-top machine with a + suitable drive (so there is no protracted release cycle associated with + making them) but each one takes a long time to make, so they are not + appropriate for volume production. Writable CDs are suitable for software + backups and for short-turnaround-time low-volume software distribution, + such as sending a beta release version to a few selected field test sites. + Compare cut a tape.
1. A factory test designed to catch systems with + marginal components before they get out the door; + the theory is that burn-in will protect customers by outwaiting the + steepest part of the bathtub curve (see + infant mortality).
2. A period of indeterminate length in which a person using a + computer is so intensely involved in his project that he forgets basic + needs such as food, drink, sleep, etc. Warning: Excessive burn-in can lead + to burn-out. See hack mode, + larval stage.
Historical note: the origin of “burn-in” (sense 1) is + apparently the practice of setting a new-model airplane's brakes on fire, + then extinguishing the fire, in order to make them hold better. This was + done on the first version of the U.S. spy-plane, the U-2.
Syn. banner, sense 1.
Used of human behavior, conveys that the subject is busy waiting for + someone or something, intends to move instantly as soon as it shows up, and + thus cannot do anything else at the moment. “Can't talk now, I'm + busy-waiting till Bill gets off the phone.”
Technically, busy-wait means to + wait on an event by spinning through a tight or + timed-delay loop that polls for the event on each pass, as opposed to + setting up an interrupt handler and continuing execution on another part of + the task. In applications this is a wasteful technique, and best avoided + on timesharing systems where a busy-waiting program may + hog the processor. However, it is often unavoidable + in kernel programming. In the Linux world, kernel busy-waits are usually + referred to as spinlocks.
1. Of a program, to run with no indication of progress and perhaps + without guarantee of ever finishing; esp. said of programs thought to be + executing tight loops of code. A program that is buzzing appears to be + catatonic, but never gets out of catatonia, while a + buzzing loop may eventually end of its own accord. “The program + buzzes for about 10 seconds trying to sort all the names into + order.” See spin; see also + grovel.
2. [ETA Systems] To test a wire or printed circuit trace for + continuity, esp. by applying an AC rather than DC signal. Some wire faults + will pass DC tests but fail an AC buzz test.
3. To process an array or list in sequence, doing the same thing to + each element. “This loop buzzes through the tz array looking for a + terminator type.”
[also buzzword-enabled] Used + (disparagingly) of products that seem to have been specified to incorporate + all of this month's trendy technologies. Key buzzwords that often show up + in buzzword-compliant specifications as of 2001 include ‘XML’, + ‘Java’, ‘peer-to-peer’, ‘distributed’, + and ‘open’.
1. [common] Said of an operation (especially a repetitive, trivial, + and/or tedious one) that ought to be performed automatically by the + computer, but which a hacker instead has to step tediously through. + “My mailer doesn't have a command to include the text of the message + I'm replying to, so I have to do it by hand.” This does not + necessarily mean the speaker has to retype a copy of the message; it might + refer to, say, dropping into a subshell from the mailer, making a copy of + one's mailbox file, reading that into an editor, locating the top and + bottom of the message in question, deleting the rest of the file, inserting + `>' characters on each line, writing the file, leaving the editor, + returning to the mailer, reading the file in, and later remembering to + delete the file. Compare eyeball search.
2. [common] By extension, writing code which does something in an + explicit or low-level way for which a presupplied library routine ought to + have been available. “This cretinous B-tree library doesn't supply a + decent iterator, so I'm having to walk the trees by hand.”
[common] The byte sex of hardware is + big-endian or little-endian; + see those entries.
[techspeak] A unit of memory or data equal to the amount used to + represent one character; on modern architectures this is invariably 8 bits. + Some older architectures used byte + for quantities of 6, 7, or (especially) 9 bits, and the PDP-10 supported + bytes that were actually bitfields of + 1 to 36 bits! These usages are now obsolete, killed off by universal + adoption of power-of-2 word sizes.
Historical note: The term was coined by Werner Buchholz in 1956 + during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer; originally it + was described as 1 to 6 bits (typical I/O equipment of the period used + 6-bit chunks of information). The move to an 8-bit byte happened in late + 1956, and this size was later adopted and promulgated as a standard by the + System/360. The word was coined by mutating the word ‘bite’ so + it would not be accidentally misspelled as bit. See + also nybble.
[rare] Said of hardware, denotes willingness to compute or pass data + in either big-endian or + little-endian format (depending, presumably, on a + mode bit somewhere). See also + NUXI problem.
The tendency of the undisciplined C programmer to set arbitrary but + supposedly generous static limits on table sizes (defined, if you're lucky, + by constants in header files) rather than taking the trouble to do proper + dynamic storage allocation. If an application user later needs to put 68 + elements into a table of size 50, the afflicted programmer reasons that he + or she can easily reset the table size to 68 (or even as much as 70, to + allow for future expansion) and recompile. This gives the programmer the + comfortable feeling of having made the effort to satisfy the user's + (unreasonable) demands, and often affords the user multiple opportunities + to explore the marvelous consequences of + fandango on core. In severe cases of the disease, the programmer cannot + comprehend why each fix of this kind seems only to further disgruntle the + user.
[common, esp. on news.admin.net-abuse.email] Contraction of + “Coffee & Cats”. This frequently occurs as a warning + label on USENET posts that are likely to cause you to + snarf coffee onto your keyboard and startle the cat + off your lap.
Designed by Bjarne Stroustrup of AT&T Bell Labs as a successor + to C. Now one of the languages of + choice, although many hackers still grumble that it is the + successor to either Algol 68 or Ada (depending on generation), and a prime + example of second-system effect. Almost anything + that can be done in any language can be done in C++, but it requires a + language lawyer to know what is and what is not + legal — the design is almost 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]
1. The third letter of the English alphabet.
2. ASCII 1000011.
3. The name of a programming language designed by Dennis Ritchie + during the early 1970s and immediately used to reimplement + Unix; so called because many features derived from + an earlier compiler named ‘B’ in commemoration of + its parent, BCPL. (BCPL was in turn descended from an + earlier Algol-derived language, CPL.) Before Bjarne Stroustrup settled the + question by designing C++, there was a humorous + debate over whether C's successor should be named ‘D’ or + ‘P’. C became immensely popular outside Bell Labs after about + 1980 and is now the dominant language in systems and microcomputer + applications programming. C is often described, with a mixture of fondness + and disdain varying according to the speaker, as “a language that + combines all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the + readability and maintainability of assembly language” See also + languages of choice, indent + style.
The Crunchly on the left sounds a little ANSI.
The “Communications Decency Act”, passed as section 502 + of a major telecommunications reform bill on February 8th, 1996 + (“Black Thursday”). The CDA made it a federal crime in the USA + to send a communication which is “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, + or indecent, with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another + person.” It also threatened with imprisonment anyone who + “knowingly” makes accessible to minors any message that + “describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary + community standards, sexual or excretory activities or + organs”.
While the CDA was sold as a measure to protect minors from the + putative evils of pornography, the repressive political aims of the bill + were laid bare by the Hyde amendment, which intended to outlaw discussion + of abortion on the Internet.
To say that this direct attack on First Amendment free-speech rights + was not well received on the Internet would be putting it mildly. A + firestorm of protest followed, including a February 29th 1996 mass + demonstration by thousands of netters who turned their home + pages black for 48 hours. Several civil-rights groups and + computing/telecommunications companies mounted a constitutional challenge. + The CDA was demolished by a strongly-worded decision handed down in + 8th-circuit Federal court and subsequently affirmed by the U.S. Supreme + Court on 26 June 1997 (“White Thursday”). See also + Exon.
[IRC] See channel op.
Hackerism for ‘CIS’, CompuServe Information Service. + The dollar sign refers to CompuServe's rather steep line charges. Often + used in sig blocks just before a CompuServe address. + Syn. Compu$erve.
[Sun: ‘Career Limiting Move’]
1. n. An action endangering + one's future prospects of getting plum projects and raises, and possibly + one's job: “His Halloween costume was a parody of his manager. He + won the prize for ‘best CLM’.”
2. adj. Denotes extreme severity of a bug, discovered by a customer + and obviously missed earlier because of poor testing: “That's a CLM + bug!”
[Usenet] Coffee through Nose to Keyboard; that is, “I laughed + so hard I snarfed my coffee onto my + keyboard.”. Common on alt.fan.pratchett and scary devil + monastery; recognized elsewhere. The Acronymphomania + FAQ on alt.fan.pratchett + recognizes variants such as T|N>K = ‘Tea through Nose to + Keyboard’ and C|N>S = ‘Coffee through Nose to + Screen’.
Reported from Sweden, a (hypothetical) disease one might get from + coding in COBOL. The language requires code verbose beyond all reason (see + candygrammar); thus it is alleged that programming + too much in COBOL causes one's fingers to wear down to stubs by the endless + typing. “I refuse to type in all that source code again; it would + give me COBOL fingers!”
[COmmon Business-Oriented Language] (Synonymous with + evil.) A weak, verbose, and flabby language used by + code grinders to do boring mindless things on + dinosaur mainframes. Hackers believe that all COBOL + programmers are suits or + code grinders, and no self-respecting hacker will ever admit to + having learned the language. Its very name is seldom uttered without + ritual expressions of disgust or horror. One popular one is Edsger W. + Dijkstra's famous observation that “The use of COBOL cripples the + mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal + offense.” (from Selected Writings on Computing: A + Personal Perspective) See also + fear and loathing, software rot.
A semi-mythical language construct dual to the ‘go to’; + COME FROM <label> would cause the + referenced label to act as a sort of trapdoor, so that if the program ever + reached it control would quietly and automagically + be transferred to the statement following the COME + FROM. COME FROM was first + proposed in R. Lawrence Clark's A Linguistic Contribution to + GOTO-less programming, which appeared in a 1973 + Datamation issue (and was reprinted in the April + 1984 issue of Communications of the ACM). This + parodied the then-raging ‘structured programming’ + holy wars (see considered + harmful). Mythically, some variants are the assigned COME FROM and the computed COME FROM (parodying some nasty + control constructs in FORTRAN and some extended BASICs). Of course, + multi-tasking (or non-determinism) could be implemented by having more than + one COME FROM statement coming from the + same label.
In some ways the FORTRAN DO looks + like a COME FROM statement. After the + terminating statement number/CONTINUE is + reached, control continues at the statement following the DO. Some + generous FORTRANs would allow arbitrary statements (other than CONTINUE) for the statement, leading to examples + like:
+ DO 10 I=1,LIMIT +C imagine many lines of code here, leaving the +C original DO statement lost in the spaghetti... + WRITE(6,10) I,FROB(I) + 10 FORMAT(1X,I5,G10.4) + |
in which the trapdoor is just after the statement labeled 10. (This + is particularly surprising because the label doesn't appear to have + anything to do with the flow of control at all!) While sufficiently + astonishing to the unsuspecting reader, this form of COME FROM statement isn't completely general. After + all, control will eventually pass to the following statement. The + implementation of the general form was left to Univac FORTRAN, ca. 1975 + (though a roughly similar feature existed on the IBM 7040 ten years + earlier). The statement AT 100 would + perform a COME FROM 100. It was intended + strictly as a debugging aid, with dire consequences promised to anyone so + deranged as to use it in production code. More horrible things had already + been perpetrated in production languages, however; doubters need only + contemplate the ALTER verb in + COBOL. COME FROM + was supported under its own name for the first time 15 years later, in + C-INTERCAL (see INTERCAL, + retrocomputing); knowledgeable observers are still + reeling from the shock.
[Control Program/Monitor; later retconned to + 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 1981. Legend has it that + Kildall's company blew its chance to write the OS for the IBM PC because + Kildall decided to spend a day IBM's reps wanted to meet with him enjoying + the perfect flying weather in his private plane (another variant has it + that Gary's wife was much more interested in packing her suitcases for an + upcoming vacation than in clinching a deal with IBM). Many of CP/M's + features and conventions strongly resemble those of early + DEC operating systems such as + TOPS-10, OS/8, RSTS, and RSX-11. See + MS-DOS, + operating system.
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 rather transparent allegory featured many references to + ADVENT and the immortal line “Eat flaming + death, minicomputer mongrels!” (uttered, of course, by an IPM + stormtrooper). The whole shebang is now available on the + Web.
It is alleged that the author subsequently received a letter of + appreciation on IBM company stationery from the head of IBM's Thomas + J. Watson Research Laboratories (at that time 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.
Any of the editions of the Chemical Rubber Company + Handbook of Chemistry and Physics; there are other CRC + handbooks, such as the CRC Standard Mathematical Tables and + Formulae, but “the” CRC handbook is the chemistry + and physics reference. It is massive tome full of mathematical tables, + physical constants of thousands of alloys and chemical compounds, + dielectric strengths, vapor pressure, resistivity, and the like. Hackers + have remarkably little actual use for these sorts of arcana, but are such + information junkies that a large percentage of them acquire copies anyway + and would feel vaguely bereft if they couldn't look up the magnetic + susceptibility of potassium permanganate at a moment's notice. On hackers' + bookshelves, the CRC handbook is rather likely to keep company with an + unabridged Oxford English Dictionary and a good atlas.
Compatible Time-Sharing System. An early (1963) experiment in the + design of interactive timesharing operating systems, ancestral to + Multics, Unix, and + ITS. The name ITS + (Incompatible Time-sharing System) was a hack on CTSS, meant both as a joke + and to express some basic differences in philosophy about the way I/O + services should be presented to user programs. See + timesharing
Universally recognized nickname for the book Programming + Perl, by Larry Wall and Randal L. Schwartz, O'Reilly and + Associates 1991, ISBN 0-937175-64-1 (second edition 1996, ISBN + 1-56592-149-6; third edition 2000, 0-596-00027-8, adding as authors Tom + Christiansen and Jon Orwant but dropping Randal Schwartz). The definitive + reference on Perl.
[Usenet] The archetype and model of all good + spam-fighters. Once upon a time, the 'Moose would + send out spam-cancels and then post notice anonymously to news.admin.policy, news.admin.misc, and alt.current-events.net-abuse. The 'Moose + stepped to the fore on its own initiative, at a time (mid-1994) when + spam-cancels were irregular and disorganized, and behaved altogether + admirably — fair, even-handed, and quick to respond to comments and + criticism, all without self-aggrandizement or martyrdom. Cancelmoose[tm] + quickly gained near-unanimous support from the readership of all three + above-mentioned groups.
Nobody knows who Cancelmoose[tm] really is, and there aren't even any + good rumors. However, the 'Moose now has an e-mail address + (<moose@cm.org>) and a web site (http://www.cm.org/.) By early 1995, + others had stepped into the spam-cancel business, and appeared to be + comporting themselves well, after the 'Moose's manner. The 'Moose has now + gotten out of the business, and is more interested in ending spam (and + cancels) entirely.
See laser chicken.
A network packet that induces a + broadcast storm and/or network meltdown, in memory + of the April 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine. The typical + scenario involves an IP Ethernet datagram that passes through a gateway + with both source and destination Ether and IP address set as the respective + broadcast addresses for the subnetworks being gated between. Compare + Christmas tree packet.
A packet with every single option set for whatever protocol is in + use. See kamikaze packet, + Chernobyl packet. (The term doubtless derives from a fanciful image of + each little option bit being represented by a different-colored light bulb, + all turned on.) Compare Godzillagram.
A kind of RS-232 line tester or breakout box featuring rows of + blinking red and green LEDs suggestive of Christmas lights.
A mutant offshoot of Discordianism launched + in 1981 as a spoof of fundamentalist Christianity by the + ‘Reverend’ Ivan Stang, a brilliant satirist with a gift for + promotion. Popular among hackers as a rich source of bizarre imagery and + references such as “Bob” the divine drilling-equipment + salesman, the Benevolent Space Xists, and the Stark Fist of Removal. Much + SubGenius theory is concerned with the acquisition of the mystical + substance or quality of slack. There is a home page + at http://www.subgenius.com/.
[CMU] Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and + Computation, by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman, + (Addison-Wesley, 1979). So called because the cover depicts a girl + (putatively Cinderella) sitting in front of a Rube Goldberg device and + holding a rope coming out of it. On the back cover, the device is in + shambles after she has (inevitably) pulled on the rope. See also + book titles.
[a play on ‘Coke Classic’] The C programming language as + defined in the first edition of K&R, with some small additions. It + is also known as ‘K&R C’. The name came into use while C + was being standardized by the ANSI X3J11 committee. Also ‘C + Classic’.
An analogous construction is sometimes applied elsewhere: thus, + ‘X Classic’, where X = Star Trek (referring to the original TV + series) or X = PC (referring to IBM's ISA-bus machines as opposed to the + PS/2 series). This construction is especially used of product series in + which the newer versions are considered serious losers relative to the + older ones.
see geek code.
Hacker jargon as spoken in English 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 opposed to American /keir/ and /sohsh/. Dots in + newsgroup names (especially two-component names) + tend to be pronounced more often (so soc.wibble is /sok dot wibl/ rather than /sohsh wibl/).
Preferred metasyntactic variables include + blurgle, eek, + ook, frodo, + and bilbo; wibble, + wobble, and in emergencies wubble; flob, + banana, tom, dick, harry, wombat, + frog, fish, + womble and so on and on (see + foo, sense 4). Alternatives to verb doubling + include suffixes -o-rama, frenzy (as in feeding frenzy), and city (examples: “barf city!” + “hack-o-rama!” “core dump frenzy!”).
All the generic differences within the anglophone world inevitably + show themselves in the associated hackish dialects. The Greek letters beta + and zeta are usually pronounced /beet@/ and /zeet@/; meta may also be + pronounced /meet@/. + Various punctuators (and even letters - Z is called ‘zed’, not + ‘zee’) are named differently: most crucially, for hackish, + where Americans use ‘parens’, ‘brackets’ and + `braces' for (), [] and {}, Commonwealth English uses + ‘brackets’, ‘square brackets’ and ‘curly + brackets’, though ‘parentheses’ may be used for the + first; the exclamation mark, ‘!’, is called pling rather than + bang and the pound sign, ‘#’, is called hash; furthermore, the + term ‘the pound sign’ is understood to mean the (of + course). Canadian hacker slang, as with mainstream language, mixes + American and British usages about evenly.
See also attoparsec, + calculator, chemist, + console jockey, fish, + go-faster stripes, grunge, + hakspek, heavy metal, + leaky heap, lord high fixer, + loose bytes, muddie, + nadger, noddy, + psychedelicware, + raster blaster, RTBM, + seggie, spod, + sun lounge, terminal junkie, + tick-list features, weeble, + weasel, YABA, and notes or + definitions under Bad Thing, + barf, bogus, + chase pointers, cosmic rays, + crippleware, crunch, + dodgy, gonk, + hamster, hardwarily, + mess-dos, nybble, + proglet, root, + SEX, tweak, + womble, and xyzzy.
See CI$. Synonyms CompuSpend and Compu$pend + are also reported.
The rule that the organization of the software and the organization + of the software team will be congruent; commonly stated as “If you + have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass + compiler”. The original statement was more general, + “Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce + designs which are copies of the communication structures of these + organizations.” This first appeared in the April 1968 issue of + Datamation. Compare + SNAFU principle.
The law was named after Melvin Conway, an 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.) + There is also Tom Cheatham's amendment of Conway's Law: “If a group + of N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be N-1 passes. + Someone in the group has to be the manager.”
A game between assembler + programs in a machine or machine simulator, where the objective is to kill + your opponent's program by overwriting it. Popularized in the 1980s by + A. K. Dewdney's column in Scientific American + magazine, but described in Software Practice And + Experience a decade earlier. The game was actually devised and + played by Victor Vyssotsky, Robert Morris Sr., and Doug McIlroy in the + early 1960s (Dennis Ritchie is sometimes incorrectly cited as a co-author, + but was not involved). Their original game was called ‘Darwin’ + and ran on a IBM 7090 at Bell Labs. See core. For + information on the modern game, do a web search for the + ‘rec.games.corewar FAQ’ or surf to the King Of The Hill site.
[University of York, England] Term of abuse used to describe TeX and + LaTeX when they don't work (when used by TeXhackers), or all the time (by + everyone else). The non-TeX-enthusiasts generally dislike it because it is + more verbose than other formatters (e.g. troff) and + because (particularly if the standard Computer Modern fonts are used) it + generates vast output files. See religious issues, + TeX.
Syn. for bitty box.
A variable in a programming language is sait to be camelCased when + all words but the first are capitalized. This practice contrasts with the + C tradition of either running syllables together or marking syllable breaks + with underscores; thus, where a C programmer would write + thisverylongname or this_very_long_name, + the camelCased version would be thisVeryLongName. This + practice is common in certain language communities (formerly Pascal; today + Java and Visual Basic) and tends to be associated with object-oriented + programming.
Compare BiCapitalization; but where that + practice is primarily associated with marketing, camelCasing is not aimed + at impressing anybody, and hackers consider it respectable.
See PascalCasing.
The traditional program comment for code executed under a condition + that should never be true, for example a file size computed as negative. + Often, such a condition being true indicates data corruption or a faulty + algorithm; it is almost always handled by emitting a fatal error message + and terminating or crashing, since there is little else that can be done. + Some case variant of “can't happen” is also often the text + emitted if the ‘impossible’ error actually happens! Although + “can't happen” events are genuinely infrequent in production + code, programmers wise enough to check for them habitually are often + surprised at how frequently they are triggered during development and how + many headaches checking for them turns out to head off. See also + firewall code (sense 2).
[Usenet: compound, cancel + robot]
1. Mythically, a robocanceller
2. In reality, most cancelbots are manually operated by being fed + lists of spam message IDs.
A programming-language grammar that is mostly syntactic + sugar; the term is also a play on ‘candygram’. + COBOL, Apple's Hypertalk language, and a lot of the + so-called ‘4GL’ database languages share this property. The + usual intent of such designs is that they be as English-like as possible, + on the theory that they will then be easier for unskilled people to + program. This intention comes to grief on the reality that syntax isn't + what makes programming hard; it's the mental effort and organization + required to specify an algorithm precisely that costs. Thus the invariable + result is that ‘candygrammar’ languages are just as difficult + to program in as terser ones, and far more painful for the experienced + hacker.
[The overtones from 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 is a + similar gag in “Blazing Saddles” —ESR] There is a moral + here for those attracted to candygrammars. Note that, in many circles, + pretty much the same ones who remember Monty Python sketches, all it takes + is the word “Candygram!”, suitably timed, to get people + rolling on the floor. — GLS]
[very common; historically, ‘according to religious + law’] The usual or standard state or manner of something. This word + has a somewhat more technical meaning in mathematics. Two formulas such as + 9 + x and x + + 9 are said to be equivalent because they mean the same + thing, but the second one is in canonical + form because it is written in the usual way, with the highest + power of x first. Usually there are fixed + rules you can use to decide whether something is in canonical form. The + jargon meaning, a relaxation of the technical meaning, acquired its present + loading in computer-science culture largely through its prominence in + Alonzo Church's work in computation theory and mathematical logic (see + Knights of the Lambda Calculus). Compare + vanilla.
Non-technical academics do not use the adjective + ‘canonical’ in any of the senses defined above with any + regularity; they do however use the nouns canon and canonicity (not **canonicalness or + **canonicality). The canon of a given + author is the complete body of authentic works by that author (this usage + is familiar to Sherlock Holmes fans as well as to literary scholars). + ‘The canon’ is the body of works in a + given field (e.g., works of literature, or of art, or of music) deemed + worthwhile for students to study and for scholars to investigate.
The word ‘canon’ has an interesting history. It derives + ultimately from the Greek + κανον (akin to the + English ‘cane’) referring to a reed. Reeds were used for + measurement, and in Latin and later Greek the word ‘canon’ + meant a rule or a standard. The establishment of a canon of scriptures + within Christianity was meant to define a standard or a rule for the + religion. The above non-techspeak academic usages stem from this instance + of a defined and accepted body of work. Alongside this usage was the + promulgation of ‘canons’ (‘rules’) for the + government of the Catholic Church. The techspeak usages (“according + to religious law”) derive from this use of the Latin + ‘canon’.
Hackers invest this term with a playfulness that makes an ironic + contrast with its historical meaning. A true story: One Bob Sjoberg, new + at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some annoyance at the incessant use of jargon. + Over his loud objections, GLS and RMS made a point of using as much of it + as possible in his presence, and eventually it began to sink in. Finally, + in one conversation, he used the word canonical in jargon-like fashion without + thinking. Steele: “Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon + too!” Stallman: “What did he say?” Steele: “Bob + just used ‘canonical’ in the canonical way.”
Of course, canonicality depends on context, but it is implicitly + defined as the way hackers normally expect things to + be. Thus, a hacker may claim with a straight face that ‘according to + religious law’ is not the canonical meaning of + canonical.
A variety of shareware for which either the + author suggests that some payment be made to a nominated charity or a levy + directed to charity is included on top of the distribution charge. Syn.: + charityware; compare + crippleware, sense 2.
A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion + of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. A cargo cult + programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of working around + some bug encountered in the past, but usually neither the bug nor the + reason the code apparently avoided the bug was ever fully understood + (compare shotgun debugging, + voodoo programming).
The term ‘cargo cult’ is a reference to aboriginal + religions that grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The + practices of these cults center on building elaborate mockups of airplanes + and military style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of the + god-like airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war. + Hackish usage probably derives from Richard Feynman's characterization of + certain practices as “cargo cult science” in his book + Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (W. W. Norton + & Co, New York 1985, ISBN 0-393-01921-7).
1. A huge volume of spurious error-message output produced by a + compiler with poor error recovery. Too frequently, one trivial syntax + error (such as a missing ‘)’ or ‘}’) throws the + parser out of synch so that much of the remaining program text is + interpreted as garbaged or ill-formed.
2. A chain of Usenet followups, each adding some trivial variation + or riposte to the text of the previous one, all of which is reproduced in + the new message; an include war in which the object + is to create a sort of communal graffito.
[from ‘cut and paste’]
The addition of a new feature to an existing + system by selecting the code from an existing feature and pasting it in + with minor changes. Common in telephony circles because most operations in + a telephone switch are selected using case + statements. Leads to software bloat.
In some circles of EMACS users this is called ‘programming by + Meta-W’, because Meta-W is the EMACS command for copying a block of + text to a kill buffer in preparation to pasting it in elsewhere. The term + is condescending, implying that the programmer is acting mindlessly rather + than thinking carefully about what is required to integrate the code for + two similar cases.
At DEC (now HP), this is sometimes called + clone-and-hack coding.
[from ‘case modification’]
1. Originally a kind of hardware hack on a PC intended to support + overclocking (e.g. with cutouts + for oversized fans, or a freon-based or water-cooling system).
2. Nowadays, similar drastic surgery that's done just to make a + machine look nifty. The commonest case mods combine acrylic case windows + with LEDs to give the machine an eerie interior glow like a B-movie flying + saucer. More advanced forms of case modding involve building machines into + weird and unlikely shapes. The effect can be quite artistic, but one of + the unwritten rules is that the machine must continue to function as + a computer.
[IBM, prob. fr. slang belly + up] Yet another synonym for ‘broken’ or + ‘down’. Usually connotes a major failure. A system (hardware + or software) which is down may be + already being restarted before the failure is noticed, whereas one which is + casters up is usually a good excuse + to take the rest of the day off (as long as you're not responsible for + fixing it).
What a guru does when you ask him or her to + run a particular program and type at it because it never works for anyone + else; esp. used when nobody can ever see what the guru is doing different + from what J. Random Luser does. Compare + incantation, runes, + examining the entrails; also see the AI koan about + Tom Knight in Some AI Koans (in Appendix + A).
A correspondent from England tells us that one of ICL's most talented + systems designers used to be called out occasionally to service machines + which the field circus had given up on. Since he + knew the design inside out, he could often find faults simply by listening + to a quick outline of the symptoms. He used to play on this by going to + some site where the field circus had just spent the last two weeks solid + trying to find a fault, and spreading a diagram of the system out on a + table top. He'd then shake some chicken bones and cast them over the + diagram, peer at the bones intently for a minute, and then tell them that a + certain module needed replacing. The system would start working again + immediately upon the replacement.
[from catenate via + Unix + cat(1)]
1. [techspeak] To spew an entire file to the screen or some other + output sink without pause (syn. blast).
2. By extension, to dump large amounts of data at an unprepared + target or with no intention of browsing it carefully. Usage: considered + silly. Rare outside Unix sites. See also dd, + BLT.
Among Unix fans, + cat(1) + is considered an excellent example of user-interface design, because it + delivers the file contents without such verbosity as spacing or headers + between the files, and because it does not require the files to consist of + lines of text, but works with any sort of data.
Among Unix haters, + cat(1) + is considered the canonical example of + bad user-interface design, because of its woefully + unobvious name. It is far more often used to blast + a file to standard output than to concatenate two files. The name cat for the former operation is just as unintuitive + as, say, LISP's cdr.
Describes a condition of suspended animation in which something is + so wedged or hung that it + makes no response. If you are typing on a terminal and suddenly the + computer doesn't even echo the letters back to the screen as you type, let + alone do what you're asking it to do, then the computer is suffering from + catatonia (possibly because it has crashed). “There I was in the + middle of a winning game of nethack and it went + catatonic on me! Aaargh!” Compare + buzz.
[see bazaar for derivation] The + ‘classical’ mode of software engineering long thought to be + necessarily implied by Brooks's Law. Features small + teams, tight project control, and long release intervals. This term came + into use after analysis of the Linux experience suggested there might be + something wrong (or at least incomplete) in the classical + assumptions.
To go home. From the Unix C-shell and Korn-shell command cd ~, which takes one to one's $HOME (cd with no + arguments happens to do the same thing). By extension, may be used with + other arguments; thus, over an electronic chat link, cd ~coffee would mean “I'm going to the coffee + machine.”
[from LISP] To skip past the first item from a list of things + (generalized from the LISP operation on binary tree structures, which + returns a list consisting of all but the first element of its argument). + In the form cdr down, to trace down a + list of elements: “Shall we cdr down the agenda?” Usage: + silly. See also loop through.
Historical note: The instruction format of the IBM 704 that hosted + the original LISP implementation featured two 15-bit fields called the + address and decrement parts. The term cdr was originally Contents of Decrement part of Register. + Similarly, car stood for Contents of Address part of Register.
The cdr and car operations have since become bases for formation of + compound metaphors in non-LISP contexts. GLS recalls, for example, a + programming project in which strings were represented as linked lists; the + get-character and skip-character operations were of course called CHAR and + CHDR.
A metal box about the size of a lunchbox (or in some models a large + wastebasket), for collecting the chad (sense 2) that + accumulated in Iron Age card punches. You had to + open the covers of the card punch periodically and empty the chad box. The + bit bucket was notionally the equivalent device in + the CPU enclosure, which was typically across the room in another great + gray-and-blue box.
1. [common] The perforated edge strips on printer paper, after they + have been separated from the printed portion. Also called + selvage, perf, and + ripoff.
2. The confetti-like paper bits punched out of cards or paper tape; + this has also been called chaff, + computer confetti, and keypunch droppings. It's reported that this + was very old Army slang (associated with teletypewriters before the + computer era), and has been occasionally sighted in directions for + punched-card vote tabulators long after it passed out of live use among + computer programmers in the late 1970s. This sense of ‘chad’ + returned to the mainstream during the finale of the hotly disputed + U.S. presidential election in 2000 via stories about the Florida vote + recounts. Note however that in the revived mainstream usage chad is not a + mass noun and ‘a chad’ is a single piece of the stuff.
There is an urban legend that chad (sense 2) derives from the Chadless + keypunch (named for its inventor), which cut little u-shaped tabs in the + card to make a hole when the tab folded back, rather than punching out a + circle/rectangle; it was clear that if the Chadless keypunch didn't make + them, then the stuff that other keypunches made had to be + ‘chad’. However, serious attempts to track down + “Chadless” as a personal name or U.S. trademark have failed, + casting doubt on this etymology — and the U.S. Patent Classification + System uses “chadless” (small c) as an adjective, suggesting + that “chadless” derives from “chad” and not the + other way around. There is another legend that the word was originally + acronymic, standing for “Card Hole Aggregate Debris”, but this + has all the earmarks of a backronym. It has also + been noted that the word “chad” is Scots dialect for gravel, + but nobody has proposed any plausible reason that card chaff should be + thought of as gravel. None of these etymologies is really + plausible.
1. vi. [orig. from BASIC's + CHAIN statement] To hand off execution to a + child or successor without going through the OS + command interpreter that invoked it. The state of the parent program is + lost and there is no returning to it. Though this facility used to be + common on memory-limited micros and is still widely supported for backward + compatibility, the jargon usage is semi-obsolescent; in particular, most + Unix programmers will think of this as an exec. + Oppose the more modern subshell. +
2. n. A series of linked data + areas within an operating system or application. Chain rattling is the process of repeatedly + running through the linked data areas searching for one which is of + interest to the executing program. The implication is that there is a very + large number of links on the chain.
[Russian, literally “teapot”] Almost synonymous with + muggle. Implies both ignorance and a certain amount + of willingness to learn, but does not necessarily imply as little + experience or short exposure time as newbie and is + not as derogatory as luser. Both a novice user and + someone using a system for a long time without any understanding of the + internals can be referred to as chainiks. Very widespread term in Russian + hackish, often used in an English context by Russian-speaking hackers + esp. in Israel (e.g. “Our new colleague is a complete + chainik”). FidoNet discussion groups often had a + “chainik” subsection for newbies and, well, old chainiks (eg. + su.asm.chainik, ru.linux.chainik, ru.html.chainik). Public projects often + have a chainik mailing list to keep the chainiks off the developers' and + experienced users' discussions. Today, the word is slowly slipping into + mainstream Russian due to the Russian translation of the popular + yellow-black covered “foobar for dummies” series, which + (correctly) uses “chainik” for “dummy”, but its + frequent (though not excessive) use is still characteristic + hacker-speak.
[common; IRC, GEnie] To rapidly switch channels on + IRC, or a GEnie chat board, just as a social + butterfly might hop from one group to another at a party. This term may + derive from the TV watcher's idiom, channel + surfing.
[IRC] Someone who is endowed with privileges on a particular + IRC channel; commonly abbreviated chanop or CHOP or just op (as of 2000 these short forms have almost + crowded out the parent usage). These privileges include the right to + kick users, to change various status bits, and to + make others into CHOPs.
[IRC] The basic unit of discussion on IRC. + Once one joins a channel, everything one types is read by others on that + channel. Channels are named with strings that begin with a ‘#’ + sign and can have topic descriptions (which are generally irrelevant to the + actual subject of discussion). Some notable channels are #initgame, #hottub, + callahans, and #report. At times of international crisis, #report has hundreds of members, some of whom take + turns listening to various news services and typing in summaries of the + news, or in some cases, giving first-hand accounts of the action (e.g., + Scud missile attacks in Tel Aviv during the Gulf War in 1991).
[IRC] See channel op.
Shorthand for ‘character’. Esp.: used by C programmers, + as char is C's typename for character + data.
Syn. careware.
1. vi. To go through multiple + levels of indirection, as in traversing a linked list or graph structure. + Used esp. by programmers in C, where explicit pointers are a very common + data type. This is techspeak, but it remains jargon when used of human + networks. “I'm chasing pointers. Bob said you could tell me who to + talk to about....” See + dangling pointer and snap.
2. [Cambridge] pointer chase + or pointer hunt: The process of going + through a core dump (sense 1), interactively or on a + large piece of paper printed with hex runes, + following dynamic data-structures. Used only in a debugging + context.
[University of Florida] 16 or 18 bits (half of a machine word). + This term was used by FORTH hackers during the late 1970s/early 1980s; it + is said to have been archaic then, and may now be obsolete. It was coined + in revolt against the promiscuous use of ‘word’ for anything + between 16 and 32 bits; ‘word’ has an additional special + meaning for FORTH hacks that made the overloading intolerable. For similar + reasons, /gawbl/ (spelled + ‘gawble’ or possibly ‘gawbul’) was in use as a term + for 32 or 48 bits (presumably a full machine word, but our sources are + unclear on this). These terms are more easily understood if one thinks of + them as faithful phonetic spellings of ‘chomp’ and + ‘gobble’ pronounced in a Florida or other Southern + U.S. dialect. For general discussion of similar terms, see + nybble.
A hardware-detected error condition, most commonly used to refer to + actual hardware failures rather than software-induced traps. E.g., a + parity check is the result of a + hardware-detected parity error. Recorded here because the word often + humorously extended to non-technical problems. For example, the term + child check has been used to refer to + the problems caused by a small child who is curious to know what happens + when s/he presses all the cute buttons on a computer's console (of course, + this particular problem could have been prevented with + molly-guards).
See happily.
[Cambridge] Someone who wastes computer time on + number-crunching when you'd far rather the machine + were doing something more productive, such as working out anagrams of your + name or printing Snoopy calendars or running life + patterns. May or may not refer to someone who actually studies + chemistry.
[Commodore] The Commodore Business Machines logo, which strongly + resembles a poultry part (within Commodore itself the logo was always + called chicken lips). Rendered in + ASCII as ‘C=’. With the arguable exception of the + Amiga, Commodore's machines were notoriously crocky + little bitty boxes, albeit people have written + multitasking Unix-like operating systems with TCP/IP networking for them. + Thus, this usage may owe something to Philip K. Dick's novel Do + Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the basis for the movie + Blade Runner; the novel is now sold under that + title), in which a ‘chickenhead’ is a mutant with below-average + intelligence.
[spamfighters] Derogatory term for a spammer. The image that goes + with it is of an overweight redneck with bad teeth living in a trailer, + hunched in semi-darkness over his computer and surrounded by rotting + chicken bones in half-eaten KFC buckets and empty beer cans. See http://www.spamfaq.net/terminology.shtml#chickenboner + for discussion.
A keyboard with a small, flat rectangular or lozenge-shaped rubber + or plastic keys that look like pieces of chewing gum. (Chiclets is the + brand name of a variety of chewing gum that does in fact resemble the keys + of chiclet keyboards.) Used esp. to describe the original IBM PCjr + keyboard. Vendors unanimously liked these because they were cheap, and a + lot of early portable and laptop products got launched using them. + Customers rejected the idea with almost equal unanimity, and chiclets are + not often seen on anything larger than a digital watch any more.
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.
[common] To reject input, often ungracefully. “NULs make + System V's + lpr(1) + choke.” “I tried building an EMACS + binary to use X, but + cpp(1) + choked on all those #defines.” See + barf, vi.
1. To lose; specifically, to chew on + something of which more was bitten off than one can. Probably related to + gnashing of teeth.
2. To bite the bag; See bagbiter.
A hand gesture commonly accompanies this. To perform it, hold the + four fingers together and place the thumb against their tips. Now open and + close your hand rapidly to suggest a biting action (much like what Pac-Man + does in the classic video game, though this pantomime seems to predate + that). The gesture alone means ‘chomp chomp’ (see + Verb Doubling in the + Jargon Construction section + of the Prependices). The hand may be pointed at the object of complaint, + and for real emphasis you can use both hands at once. Doing this to a + person is equivalent to saying “You chomper!” If you point the + gesture at yourself, it is a humble but humorous admission of some failure. + You might do this if someone told you that a program you had written had + failed in some surprising way and you felt dumb for not having anticipated + it.
Someone or something that is chomping; a loser. See + loser, bagbiter, + chomp.
[from automotive slang via wargaming] Showy features added to + attract users but contributing little or nothing to the power of a system. + “The 3D icons in Motif are just chrome, but they certainly are + pretty chrome!” Distinguished from + bells and whistles by the fact that the latter are + usually added to gratify developers' own desires for featurefulness. Often + used as a term of contempt.
To run slowly; to grind or + grovel. “The disk is chugging like + crazy.”
1. adj. Used of hardware or + software designs, implies ‘elegance in the small’, that is, a + design or implementation that may not hold any surprises but does things in + a way that is reasonably intuitive and relatively easy to comprehend from + the outside. The antonym is ‘grungy’ or + crufty.
2. v. To remove unneeded or + undesired files in a effort to reduce clutter: “I'm cleaning up my + account.” “I cleaned up the garbage and now have 100 Meg free + on that partition.”
A syndrome of certain Iomega ZIP drives, named for the clicking noise + that is caused by the malady. An affected drive will, after accepting a + disk, will start making a clicking noise and refuse to eject the disk. A + common solution for retrieving the disk is to insert the bent end of a + paper clip into a small hole adjacent to the slot. “Clicked” + disks are generally unusable after being retrieved from the drive.
The clicking noise is caused by the drive's read/write head bumping + against its movement stops when it fails to find track 0 on the disk, + causing the head to become misaligned. This can happen when the drive has + been subjected to a physical shock, or when the disk is exposed to an + electromagnetic field, such as that of the CRT. Another common cause + is when a package of disks is armed with an anti-theft strip + at a store. When the clerk scans the product to disarm the strip, it can + demagnetize the disks, wiping out track 0.
There is evidence that the click of death is a communicable disease; + a “clicked” disk can cause the read/write head of a "clean" + drive to become misaligned. Iomega at first denied the existence of the + click of death, but eventually offered to replace free of charge any drives + affected by the condition.
To overwrite, usually unintentionally: “I walked off the end + of the array and clobbered the stack.” Compare + mung, scribble, + trash, and + smash the stack.
n.,v.
1. [techspeak] The master oscillator that steps a CPU or other + digital circuit through its paces. This has nothing to do with the time of + day, although the software counter that keeps track of the latter may be + derived from the former.
2. vt. To run a CPU or other + digital circuit at a particular rate. “If you clock it at 1000MHz, it + gets warm.”. See overclock.
3. vt. To force a digital + circuit from one state to the next by applying a single clock + pulse. “The data must be stable 10ns before you clock the + latch.”
Processor logic cycles, so called because each generally corresponds + to one clock pulse in the processor's timing. The relative execution times + of instructions on a machine are usually discussed in clocks rather than + absolute fractions of a second; one good reason for this is that clock + speeds for various models of the machine may increase as technology + improves, and it is usually the relative times one is interested in when + discussing the instruction set. Compare cycle, + jiffy.
[DEC] Syn. case and paste.
1. An exact duplicate: “Our product is a clone of their + product.” Implies a legal reimplementation from documentation or by + reverse-engineering. Also connotes lower price.
2. A shoddy, spurious copy: “Their product is a clone of our + product.”
3. A blatant ripoff, most likely violating copyright, patent, or + trade secret protections: “Your product is a clone of my + product.” This use implies legal action is pending.
4. [obs] PC clone: a + PC-BUS/ISA/EISA/PCI-compatible 80x86-based microcomputer (this use is + sometimes spelled klone or PClone). These invariably have much more bang + for the buck than the IBM archetypes they resemble. This term fell out of + use in the 1990s; the class of machines it describes are now simply + PCs or Intel machines.
5. [obs.] In the construction Unix + clone: An OS designed to deliver a Unix-lookalike environment + without Unix license fees, or with additional + ‘mission-critical’ features such as support for real-time + programming. Linux and the free BSDs killed off + this product category and the term with it.
6. v. To make an exact copy of + something. “Let me clone that” might mean “I want to + borrow that paper so I can make a photocopy” or “Let me get a + copy of that file before you mung it”.
[Mac users] See feature key.
[Usenet: portmanteau, clue + two-by-four] The notional stick with + which one whacks an aggressively clueless person. This term derives from a + western American folk saying about training a mule “First, you got to + hit him with a two-by-four. That's to get his attention.” The + clue-by-four is a close relative of the LART. + Syn. clue stick. This metaphor is + commonly elaborated; your editor once heard a hacker say “I smite you + with the great sword Cluebringer!”
[CMU] Spending more time at a computer cluster doing CS homework + than most people spend breathing.
[very common; first heard c.1995] Short for + ‘co-location’, used of a machine you own that is physically + sited on the premises of an ISP in order to take advantage of the ISP's + direct access to lots of network bandwidth. Often in the phrases co-lo box or co-lo + machines. Co-lo boxes are typically web and FTP servers + remote-administered by their owners, who may seldom or never visit the + actual site.
A writer for recordable CD-Rs, especially cheap IDE models that + tend to produce a high proportion of + coasters.
1. Unuseable CD produced during failed attempt at writing to + writeable or re-writeable CD media. Certainly related to the coaster-like + shape of a CD, and the relative value of these failures. “I made a + lot of coasters before I got a good CD.”
2. Useless CDs received in the mail from the likes of AOL, MSN, CI$, + Prodigy, ad nauseam.
In the U.K., beermat is often + used in these senses.
A World Wide Web Site that hasn't been updated so long it has + figuratively grown cobwebs.
1. A suit-wearing minion of the sort hired in + legion strength by banks and insurance companies to implement payroll + packages in RPG and other such unspeakable horrors. In its native habitat, + the code grinder often removes the suit jacket to reveal an underplumage + consisting of button-down shirt (starch optional) and a tie. In times of + dire stress, the sleeves (if long) may be rolled up and the tie loosened + about half an inch. It seldom helps. The + code grinder's milieu is about as far from hackerdom as one can get + and still touch a computer; the term connotes pity. See + Real World, suit.
2. Used of or to a hacker, a really serious slur on the person's + creative ability; connotes a design style characterized by primitive + technique, rule-boundedness, brute force, and utter + lack of imagination.
Contrast + hacker, + Real Programmer.
1. A person only capable of grinding out code, but unable to perform + the higher-primate tasks of software architecture, analysis, and design. + Mildly insulting. Often applied to the most junior people on a programming + team.
2. Anyone who writes code for a living; a programmer.
3. A self-deprecating way of denying responsibility for a + management decision, or of complaining about having + to live with such decisions. As in “Don't ask me why we need to + write a compiler in COBOL, I'm just a code monkey.”
[by analogy with George Orwell's ‘thought police’] A + mythical team of Gestapo-like storm troopers that might burst into one's + office and arrest one for violating programming style rules. May be used + either seriously, to underline a claim that a particular style violation is + dangerous, or ironically, to suggest that the practice under discussion is + condemned mainly by anal-retentive weenies. + “Dike out that goto or the code police will get you!” The + ironic usage is perhaps more common.
1. n. The stuff that software + writers write, either in source form or after translation by a compiler or + assembler. Often used in opposition to “data”, which is the + stuff that code operates on. Among hackers this is a mass noun, as in + “How much code does it take to do a bubble + sort?”, or “The code is loaded at the high end of + RAM.” Among scientific programmers it is sometimes a count noun + equilvalent to “program”; thus they may speak of + “codes” in the plural. Anyone referring to software as + “the software codes” is probably a + newbie or a suit.
2. v. To write code. In this + sense, always refers to source code rather than compiled. “I coded + an Emacs clone in two hours!” This verb is a bit of a cultural + marker associated with the Unix and minicomputer traditions (and lately + Linux); people within that culture prefer v. ‘code’ to + v. ‘program’ whereas outside it the reverse is normally + true.
[scientific computing] Programs. This usage is common in people who + hack supercomputers and heavy-duty number-crunching, + rare to unknown elsewhere (if you say “codes” to hackers + outside scientific computing, their first association is likely to be + “and cyphers”).
A program component that traverses other programs for a living. + Compilers have codewalkers in their front ends; so do cross-reference + generators and some database front ends. Other utility programs that try + to do too much with source code may turn into codewalkers. As in + “This new vgrind feature would + require a codewalker to implement.”
Hackish speech makes heavy use of pseudo-mathematical metaphors. + Four particularly important ones involve the terms coefficient, factor, index of + X, and quotient. They are + often loosely applied to things you cannot really be quantitative about, + but there are subtle distinctions among them that convey information about + the way the speaker mentally models whatever he or she is describing. + Foo factor and foo quotient tend to describe something for + which the issue is one of presence or absence. The canonical example is + fudge factor. It's not important how much you're + fudging; the term simply acknowledges that some fudging is needed. You + might talk of liking a movie for its silliness factor. Quotient tends to + imply that the property is a ratio of two opposing factors: “I would + have won except for my luck quotient.” This could also be “I + would have won except for the luck factor”, but using + quotient emphasizes that it was bad luck overpowering + good luck (or someone else's good luck overpowering your own). Foo index and coefficient of foo both tend to imply that foo + is, if not strictly measurable, at least something that can be larger or + smaller. Thus, you might refer to a paper or person as having a high bogosity index, whereas you would be less + likely to speak of a high bogosity + factor. Foo index + suggests that foo is a condensation of many quantities, as in the mundane + cost-of-living index; coefficient of + foo suggests that foo is a fundamental quantity, as in a + coefficient of friction. The choice between these terms is often one of + personal preference; e.g., some people might feel that bogosity is a + fundamental attribute and thus say coefficient + of bogosity, whereas others might feel it is a combination of + factors and thus say bogosity + index.
Any very unusual character, particularly one you can't type because + it isn't on your keyboard. MIT people used to complain about the + ‘control-meta-cokebottle’ commands at SAIL, and SAIL people + complained right back about the ‘escape-escape-cokebottle’ + commands at MIT. After the demise of the space-cadet + keyboard, cokebottle + faded away as serious usage, but was often invoked humorously to describe + an (unspecified) weird or non-intuitive keystroke command. It may be due + for a second inning, however. The OSF/Motif window manager, + mwm(1), + has a reserved keystroke for switching to the default set of keybindings + and behavior. This keystroke is (believe it or not) + ‘control-meta-bang’ (see bang). Since + the exclamation point looks a lot like an upside down Coke bottle, Motif + hackers have begun referring to this keystroke as cokebottle. See also quadruple + bucky.
See boot.
[ITS: from the feature supporting on-line chat; the first word may + be spelled with one or two m's] Syn. for + talk mode.
[Mac users] Syn. feature key.
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 is being left in the source to make 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 as C) that make it possible.
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 is not compact. Compactness does not imply triviality + or lack of power; for example, C is compact and FORTRAN is not, but C is + more powerful than FORTRAN. Designs become non-compact through accreting + features and cruft that don't + merge cleanly into the overall design scheme (thus, some fans of + Classic C maintain that ANSI C is no longer + compact).
See jock (sense 2).
[demoscene] Finnish-originated slang for + ‘competition’. Demo compos are held at a + demoparty. The usual protocol is that several groups + make demos for a compo, they are shown on a big screen, and then the party + participants vote for the best one. Prizes (from sponsors and party + entrance fees) are given. Standard compo formats include + intro compos (4k or 64k demos), music compos, + graphics compos, quick demo compos (build a demo + within 4 hours for example), etc.
[Unix] When used without a qualifier, generally refers to + crunching of a file using a particular C + implementation of compression by Joseph M. Orost et al.: and widely + circulated via Usenet; use of + crunch itself in this sense is rare among Unix + hackers. Specifically, compress is built around the Lempel-Ziv-Welch + algorithm as described in “A Technique for High Performance Data + Compression”, Terry A. Welch, IEEE Computer, + vol. 17, no. 6 (June 1984), pp. 8--19.
Syn. chad. [obs.] Though this term was + common at one time, this use of 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 which he and a + few other guests 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.
[2001 update: this term has passed out of use for two reasons; (1) + the stuff it describes is now quite rare, and (2) the term + chad, which was half-forgotten in 1990, has enjoyed + a revival. —ESR]
1. [common] 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 run GNU Emacs, it doesn't have enough computrons!” + This usage is usually found in metaphors that treat computing power as a + fungible commodity good, like a crop yield or diesel horsepower. See + bitty box, + Get a real computer!, toy, + crank.
2. A mythical subatomic particle that bears the unit quantity of + computation or information, in much the same way that an electron bears one + unit of electric charge (see also bogon). An + elaborate pseudo-scientific theory of computrons has been developed based + on the physical fact that the molecules in a solid object move more rapidly + as it is heated. It is argued that an object melts because the molecules + have lost their information about where they are supposed to be (that is, + they have emitted computrons). This explains why computers get so hot and + require air conditioning; they use up computrons. Conversely, it should be + possible to cool down an object by placing it in the path of a computron + beam. It is believed that this may also explain why machines that work at + the factory fail in the computer room: the computrons there have been all + used up by the other hardware. (The popularity of this theory probably + owes something to the Warlock stories by Larry + Niven, the best known being What Good is a Glass + Dagger?, in which magic is fueled by an exhaustible natural + resource called mana.)
[from SF fandom] A science-fiction convention. Not used of other + sorts of conventions, such as professional meetings. This term, unlike + many others imported from SF-fan slang, is widely recognized even by + hackers who aren't fans. “We'd been + corresponding on the net for months, then we met face-to-face at a + con.”
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 of these directives are + #if 0 (or #ifdef + notdef, though some find the latter + bletcherous) and #endif in C. Compare + comment out.
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 shown to have a high failure + rate as drive mechanisms attempt to access the disk — and can even + fatally frustrate insertion.
2. The protective cladding on a light pipe. +
3. keyboard condom: A + flexible, transparent plastic cover for a keyboard, designed to provide + some protection against dust and programming fluid + without impeding typing.
4. elephant condom: the + plastic shipping bags used inside cardboard boxes to protect hardware in + transit.
5. n. obs. A dummy directory + /usr/tmp/sh, created to foil the + Great Worm by exploiting a portability bug in one of its parts. So + named in the title of a comp.risks article by Gene Spafford during + the Worm crisis, and again in the text of The Internet Worm + Program: An Analysis, Purdue Technical Report + CSD-TR-823.
Common soundalike slang for ‘computer’. Usually + encountered in compounds such as confuser + room, personal confuser, + confuser guru. Usage: silly.
[probably came into prominence with the appearance of the KL-10 (one + model of the PDP-10), none of whose connectors + matched anything else] The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, + programmers or purveyors of anything) to come up with new products that + don't fit together with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all + new stuff or expensive interface devices.
(A closely related phenomenon, with a slightly different intent, is + the habit manufacturers have of inventing new screw heads so that only + Designated Persons, possessing the magic screwdrivers, can remove covers + and make repairs or install options. A good 1990s example is the use of + Torx screws for cable-TV set-top boxes. Older Apple Macintoshes took this + one step further, requiring not only a long Torx screwdriver but a + specialized case-cracking tool to open the box.)
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 of them to choose + from!” Compare backward combatability.
[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”.
In LISP itself, cons is the most + fundamental operation for building structures. It takes any two objects + and returns a dot-pair or + two-branched tree with one object hanging from each branch. Because the + result of a cons is an object, it can be used to build binary trees of any + shape and complexity. Hackers think of it as a sort of universal + constructor, and that is where the jargon meanings spring from.
[very common] 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 (text at http://www.acm.org/classics/). + As it turns + out, the title under which the letter appeared was actually + supplied by CACM's editor, Niklaus Wirth. Amusingly, the ACM considered + the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that it will (by policy) no + longer print an article taking so assertive a position against a coding + practice. (Years afterwards, a contrary view was uttered in a CACM letter + called, inevitably, ‘Goto considered harmful’ + considered harmful''. In the ensuing decades, a large number + of both serious papers and parodies have borne titles of the form + X considered Y. The structured-programming wars + eventually blew 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).
See terminal junkie.
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 passwords instead, and the console is + just the tty the system was booted from. Some of + the mystique remains, however, and it is traditional for sysadmins to post + urgent messages to all users from the console (on Unix, /dev/console). +
2. On microcomputer Unix boxes, the main screen and keyboard (as + opposed to character-only terminals talking to a serial port). Typically + only the console can do real graphics or run + X.
[by analogy with techspeak context-free] 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 exalt form over substance or are + centered on concerns irrelevant to the subject ostensibly at hand. Perhaps + most used with reference to speeches by company presidents and other + professional manipulators. “Content-free? Uh... that's + anything printed on glossy paper.” (See also + four-color glossies.) “He gave a talk on the implications of + electronic networks for postmodernism and the fin-de-siecle aesthetic. It + was content-free.”
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!”
“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; a standard response to someone who is + flaming. Considered silly. Compare + control-S.
“Resume.” From the ASCII DC1 or + XON character (the pronunciation /X-on/ is therefore also used), used to + undo a previous control-S.
“Stop talking for a second.” From the ASCII DC3 or XOFF + character (the pronunciation /X-of/ is therefore also used). 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 + to continue when you're ready to listen to him — as opposed to + control-O, which has more of the meaning of “Shut up.” + Considered silly.
[from amateur electronics and radio] A book of small code segments + that the reader can use to do various magic things + in programs. Cookbooks, slavishly followed, can lead one into + voodoo programming, but are useful for hackers + trying to monkey up small programs in unknown + languages. This function is analogous to the role of phrasebooks in human + languages.
[Unix, by opposition from raw mode] The + normal character-input mode, with interrupts enabled and with erase, kill + and other special-character interpretations performed directly by the tty + driver. Oppose raw mode, + rare mode. This term is techspeak under Unix but jargon elsewhere; + other operating systems often have similar mode distinctions, and the + raw/rare/cooked way of describing them has spread widely along with the C + language and other Unix exports. Most generally, cooked mode may refer to any mode of a system + that does extensive preprocessing before presenting data to a + program.
Original term, pre-Sesame-Street, for what is now universally called + a cookie monster. A correspondent observes “In + those days, hackers were actually getting their yucks from...sit + down now...Andy Williams. Yes, that Andy + Williams. Seems he had a rather hip (by the standards of the day) TV + variety show. One of the best parts of the show was the recurring + ‘cookie bear’ sketch. In these sketches, a guy in a bear suit + tried all sorts of tricks to get a cookie out of Williams. The sketches + would always end with Williams shrieking (and I don't mean figuratively), + ‘No cookies! Not now, not ever...NEVER!!!’ And the bear + would fall down. Great stuff.”
A collection of fortune cookies in a format + that facilitates retrieval by a fortune program. There are several + different cookie files in public distribution, and site admins often + assemble their own from various sources including this lexicon.
An area of memory set aside for storing + cookies. Most commonly heard in the Atari ST + community; many useful ST programs record their presence by storing a + distinctive magic number in the jar. Programs can + inquire after the presence or otherwise of other programs by searching the + contents of the jar.
[from the children's TV program Sesame + Street] 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 timesharing machine) or the + console (on a batch + mainframe), repeatedly demanding “I WANT A + COOKIE”. The required responses ranged in complexity from + “COOKIE” through “HAVE A COOKIE” and upward. + Folklorist Jan Brunvand (see FOAF) has described + these programs as urban legends (implying they probably never existed) but + they existed, all right, in several different versions. See also + wabbit. Interestingly, the term cookie monster appears to be a + retcon; the original term was + cookie bear.
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 thing it's useful for is to + relate a later transaction to this one (so you get the same clothes back). + Syn. magic cookie; see also + fortune cookie. Now mainstream in the specific sense of web-browser + cookies.
[Apple; orig. fr. the intro to Tom Lehrer's song It Makes + A Fellow Proud To Be A Soldier]
1. [used ironically to indicate the speaker's lack of the quantity + in question] A mythical schedule slot for accomplishing tasks held to be + unlikely or impossible. Sometimes used to indicate that the speaker is + interested in accomplishing the task, but believes that the opportunity + will not arise. “I'll implement the automatic layout stuff in my + copious free time.”
2. [Archly] Time reserved for bogus or otherwise idiotic tasks, such + as implementation of chrome, or the stroking of + suits. “I'll get back to him on that feature + in my copious free time.”
Conventional electron-carrying network cable with a core conductor + of copper — or aluminum! Opposed to + light pipe or, say, a short-range microwave link.
A class of methods for preventing incompetent pirates from stealing + software and legitimate customers from using it. Considered silly.
1. [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.
2. Copy-protected software which is unusable because of some bit-rot + or bug that has confused the anti-piracy check. See also + copy protection.
[play on ‘copyright’ and ‘copyleft’]
1. The copyright notice carried by the various flavors of freeware + BSD. According to Kirk McKusick at BSDCon 1999: “The way it was + characterized politically, you had copyright, which is what the big + companies use to lock everything up; you had copyleft, which is free + software's way of making sure they can't lock it up; and then Berkeley had + what we called ‘copycenter’, which is ‘take it down to + the copy center and make as many copies as you want’”.
[play on copyright]
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 + Virus).
2. By extension, any copyright notice intended to achieve similar + aims.
[C64/amiga demoscene] A computer party + organized so demosceners can meet other in real life, and to facilitate + software copying (mostly pirated software). The copyparty has become less + common as the Internet makes communication easier. The demoscene has + gradually evolved the demoparty to replace + it.
[play on copyright] Syn. for + copybroke.
[rare] A process that exhibits a slow but inexorable resource + leak — like a cancer, it kills by crowding out + productive tissue.
[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 extreme shock. “He dumped core. 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 + bits, sense 1). Hence, spewing all one knows about + a topic (syn. brain dump), 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). See + core.
Syn. memory leak.
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 are quite current; in + core, for example, means ‘in memory’ (as opposed to + ‘on disk’), and both core dump and the + core image or core file produced by one are terms in favor. + Some varieties of Commonwealth hackish prefer + store.
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 a burst of garbage on + my 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 memory chip + can cause single-bit 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 drops in their early chips, and one 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 causing the bit + drops, they should see 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 thorium (and to a much lesser degree + 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 obvious that one has to design memories to withstand these + hits.
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.” Compare + die, die horribly, + scream and die.
[BBS & cracker cultures] A person who distributes newly cracked + warez, as opposed to a server + who makes them available for download or a leech who + merely downloads them. Hackers recognize this term but don't use it + themselves, as the act is not part of their culture. See also + warez d00dz, cracker, + elite.
[Usenet] n. fortuitous typo for co-worker, widely used in Usenet, + with perhaps a hint that orking cows is illegal. This term was popularized + by Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) but already + appears in the January 1996 version of the + scary devil monastery FAQ, and has been traced back to a 1989 + sig block. Compare hing, + grilf, filk, + newsfroup.
[Sun, from William Gibson's cyberpunk SF] + Synonym for hacker. It is reported that at Sun this + word is often said with reverence.
[very common] To defeat the security system of a Unix machine and + gain root privileges thereby; see + cracking.
[warez d00dz]
1. v. To break into a system + (compare cracker).
2. v. Action of removing the + copy protection from a commercial program. People who write cracks + consider themselves challenged by the copy protection measures. They will + often do it as much to show that they are smarter than the developer who + designed the copy protection scheme than to actually copy the + program.
3. n. A program, instructions or + patch used to remove the copy protection of a program or to uncripple + features from a demo/time limited program.
4. An exploit.
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.
Use of both these neologisms reflects a strong revulsion against the + theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings. The neologism + “cracker” in this sense may have been influenced not so much + by the term “safe-cracker” as by the non-jargon term + “cracker”, which in Middle English meant an obnoxious person + (e.g., “What cracker is this same that deafs our ears / With this + abundance of superfluous breath?” — Shakespeare's King John, Act + II, Scene I) and in modern colloquial American English survives as a barely + gentler synonym for “white trash”.
While it is expected that any real hacker will have done some playful + cracking and knows many of the basic techniques, anyone past + larval stage is expected to have outgrown the desire + to do so except for immediate, benign, practical reasons (for example, if + it's necessary to get around some security in order to get some work + done).
Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and crackerdom than + the mundane reader misled by sensationalistic + journalism might expect. Crackers tend to gather in small, tight-knit, + very secretive groups that have little overlap with the huge, open + poly-culture this lexicon describes; though crackers often like to describe + themselves as hackers, most true hackers consider them + a separate and lower form of life. An easy way for outsiders to spot + the difference is that crackers use grandiose screen names that conceal + their identities. Hackers never do this; they only rarely use + noms de guerre at all, and when they + do it is for display rather than concealment.
Ethical considerations aside, hackers figure that anyone who can't + imagine a more interesting way to play with their computers than breaking + into someone else's has to be pretty losing. Some + other reasons crackers are looked down on are discussed in the entries on + cracking and phreaking. See + also samurai, + dark-side hacker, and hacker ethic. For a + portrait of the typical teenage cracker, see + warez d00dz.
[very common] The act of breaking into a computer system; what a + cracker does. Contrary to widespread myth, this + does not usually involve some mysterious leap of hackerly brilliance, but + rather persistence and the dogged repetition of a handful of fairly + well-known tricks that exploit common weaknesses in the security of target + systems. Accordingly, most crackers are incompetent as hackers. This + entry used to say 'mediocre', but the spread of + rootkit and other automated cracking has + depressed the average level of skill among crackers.
[from automotive slang] 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.”
[portmanteau, crap + applet] A worthless applet, esp. a Java widget + attached to a web page that doesn't work or even crashes your browser. + Also spelled ‘craplet’.
A spectacular crash, in the mode of the conclusion of the car-chase + scene in the movie Bullitt and many subsequent + imitators (compare die horribly). 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 machine crashed, since only + the testers would be inconvenienced.
1. n. A sudden, usually drastic + failure. Most often said of the system (q.v., sense + 1), esp. of magnetic disk drives (the term originally described what + happens when the air gap of a hard disk collapses). “Three + lusers lost their files in last night's disk + crash.” A disk crash that involves the read/write heads dropping + onto the surface of the disks 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 system just crashed?” “Something crashed the + 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 long hacking run; see + gronk out.
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 active + menace to health and sanity. “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.
This usage is almost certainly derived from the fiction of + H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft may never have used the exact phrase + “crawling horror” in his writings, but one of the fearsome + Elder Gods that he wrote extensively about was Nyarlethotep, who had as an + epithet “The Crawling Chaos”. Certainly the extreme, even + melodramatic horror of his characters at the weird monsters they encounter, + even to the point of going insane with fear, is what hackers are referring + to with this phrase when they use it for horribly bad code. Compare + cthulhic.
The (false) belief that large, innovative software 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 repeatedly that good designs arise 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. + Unfortunately, because these truths don't fit the planning models beloved + of management, they are generally ignored.
To advance, grow, or multiply inexorably. In hackish usage this + verb has overtones of menace and silliness, evoking the creeping horrors of + low-budget monster movies.
Describes a tendency for parts of a design to become + elegant past the point of diminishing return, + something which often happens at the expense of the less interesting parts + of the design, the schedule, and other things deemed important in the + Real World. See also + creeping featurism, second-system effect, + tense.
+ [common]
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. + “You know, the main problem with 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 + feature.) The result is usually 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 creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer. The GNU + hello program, intended to illustrate GNU + command-line switch and coding conventions, is also a wonderful parody of + creeping featurism; the distribution changelog is particularly funny. + 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 + second-system effect. See also + creeping elegance.
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 opposed to the lurking general + tendency in designers' minds. (After all, -ism means + ‘condition’ or ‘pursuit of’, whereas -itis usually + means ‘inflammation of’.)
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 /kretin/ over standard American + /kreetn/; it is thought + this may be due to the insidious phonetic influence of Monty Python's + Flying Circus.
Wrong; stupid; non-functional; very poorly designed. Also used + pejoratively of people. See dread high-bit disease + for an example. Approximate synonyms: bletcherous, + bagbiting, losing, + brain-damaged.
1. [common] Software that has some important functionality + deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users to pay for a working + version.
2. [Cambridge] Variety of guiltware that + exhorts you to donate to some charity (compare + careware, nagware).
3. Hardware deliberately crippled, which can be upgraded to a more + expensive model by a trivial change (e.g., cutting a jumper).
An excellent example of crippleware (sense 3) is Intel's 486SX chip, + which is a standard 486DX chip with the co-processor diked out (in some + early versions it was present but disabled). To upgrade, you buy a + complete 486DX chip with working co-processor (its + identity thinly veiled by a different pinout) and plug it into the board's + expansion socket. It then disables the SX, which becomes a fancy power + sink. Don't you love Intel?
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. (This malady has many causes: + creeping featurism, ports to too many disparate + environments, poor initial design, etc.) When software achieves critical + mass, it can never be fixed; it can only be discarded and rewritten.
(often capitalized as ‘CRLF’) A carriage return (CR, + ASCII 0001101) followed by a line feed (LF, ASCII 0001010). More loosely, + whatever it takes to get you from the end of one line of text to the + beginning of the next line. See newline. Under + Unix influence this usage has become less common + (Unix uses a bare line feed as its ‘CRLF’).
[from the American scatologism crock of + shit]
1. An awkward feature or programming technique that ought to be made + cleaner. For example, using small integers to represent error codes + without the program interpreting them to the user (as in, for example, Unix + make(1), + which returns code 139 for a process that dies due to + segfault).
2. A technique that works acceptably, but which is quite prone to + failure if disturbed in the least. For example, a too-clever programmer + might write an assembler which mapped instruction mnemonics to numeric + opcodes algorithmically, a trick which depends far too intimately on the + particular bit patterns of the opcodes. (For another example of + programming with a dependence on actual opcode values, see + The Story of Mel' in Appendix A.) Many crocks have a tightly woven, + almost completely unmodifiable structure. See + kluge, brittle. The + adjectives crockish and crocky, and the nouns crockishness and crockitude, are also used.
[Usenet; very common] 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 (which + is very bad form). Gratuitous cross-posting without a Followup-To line + directing responses to a single followup group is frowned upon, as it tends + to cause followup articles to go to inappropriate + newsgroups when people respond to various parts of the original posting. +
[proposed, by analogy with upload and + download] To move files between machines on a + peer-to-peer network of nodes that act as both servers and clients for a + distributed file store. Esp. appropriate for anonymized networks like + Gnutella and Freenet.
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!”
(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 about 10 minutes.” + See hack together, hack up, + kluge up, crufty.
[very common; 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 + construction.
3. vt. [from hand cruft, pun on ‘hand craft’] To + write assembler code for something normally (and better) done by a compiler + (see hand-hacking).
4. n. Excess; superfluous junk; + used esp. of redundant or superseded code.
5. [University of Wisconsin] n. + Cruft is to hackers as gaggle is to geese; that is, at UW one properly says + “a cruft of hackers”.
[from cruft] The antithesis of + craftsmanship.
[very common; origin unknown; poss. from ‘crusty’ or + ‘cruddy’]
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 + that was originally a mutation of ‘crusty’ applied to DEC + software so old that the ‘s’ characters were tall and skinny, + looking more like ‘f’ characters.
2. Unpleasant, especially to the touch, often with encrusted junk. + Like spilled coffee smeared with peanut butter and catsup.
3. Generally unpleasant.
4. (sometimes spelled cruftie) + n. A small crufty object (see + frob); often one that doesn't fit well into the + scheme of things. “A LISP property list is a good place to store + crufties (or, collectively, random + cruft).”
This term is one of the oldest in the jargon and no one is sure of + its etymology, but it is suggestive that there is a Cruft Hall at Harvard + University which is part of the old physics building; it's said to have + been the physics department's radar lab during WWII. To this day (early + 1993) the windows appear to be full of random techno-junk. MIT or Lincoln + Labs people may well have coined the term as a knock on the + competition.
Two binary digits; a quad. Larger than a + bit, smaller than a nybble. + Considered silly. Syn. tayste. General discussion + of such terms is under nybble.
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. + “FORTRAN programs do mostly + number-crunching.”
2. vt. To reduce the size of a + file by a complicated scheme that produces bit configurations completely + unrelated to the original data, such as by a Huffman code. (The file ends + up looking something like a paper document would if somebody crunched the + paper into a wad.) Since such compression usually takes more computations + than simpler methods such as run-length encoding, the term is doubly + appropriate. (This meaning is usually used in the construction file crunch(ing) to distinguish it from + number-crunching.) See + compress.
3. n. The character + #. Used at XEROX and CMU, among other places. See + ASCII.
4. vt. To squeeze program source + into a minimum-size representation that will still compile or execute. The + term came into being specifically for a famous program on the BBC micro + that crunched BASIC source in order to make it run more quickly (it was a + wholly interpretive BASIC, so the number of characters mattered). + Obfuscated C Contest entries are often crunched; see + the first example under that entry.
A cryptographer. One who hacks or implements cryptographic software + or hardware.
Having the nature of a Cthulhu, the horrific tentacled green + monstrosity from H.P. Lovecraft's seminal horror fiction. Cthulhu sends + dreams that drive men mad, feeds on the flesh of screaming victims rent + limb from limb, and is served by a cult of degenerates. Hackers think this + describes large proprietary systems such as + traditional mainframes, installations of SAP and + Oracle, or rooms full of Windows servers remarkably well, and the adjective + is used casually. Compare Shub-Internet and + crawling horror.
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).
The tray of a CD-ROM drive, or by extension the CD drive itself. So + called because of a common tech support legend about the idiot who called + to complain that the cup holder on his computer broke. A joke program was + once distributed around the net called “cupholder.exe”, which + when run simply extended the CD drive tray. The humor of this was of course + lost on people whose drive had a slot or a caddy instead.
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, leaving + letters behind, when one is composing on-line). “Talk about a + nastygram! He must've had his cursor dipped in acid + when he wrote that one!”
[WPI: from the DEC abbreviation CUSP, for + ‘Commonly Used System Program’, i.e., a utility program used by + many people. Now rare.]
1. (of a program) Well-written.
2. Functionally excellent. A program that performs well and + interfaces well to users is cuspy. Oppose + rude.
3. [NYU] Said of an attractive woman, especially one regarded as + available. Implies a certain curvaceousness.
To write a software or document distribution on magnetic tape for + shipment. Has nothing to do with physically cutting the medium! Early + versions of this lexicon claimed that one never analogously speaks of + ‘cutting a disk’, but this has since been reported as live + usage. Related slang usages are mainstream business's ‘cut a + check’, the recording industry's ‘cut a record’, and the + military's ‘cut an order’.
All of these usages reflect physical processes in obsolete recording + and duplication technologies. The first stage in manufacturing an + old-style vinyl record involved cutting grooves in a stamping die with a + precision lathe. More mundanely, the dominant technology for mass + duplication of paper documents in pre-photocopying days involved + “cutting a stencil”, punching away portions of the wax overlay + on a silk screen. More directly, paper tape with holes punched in it was + an important early storage medium. See also + burn a CD.
1. [coined by Ted Nelson] Obfuscatory tech-talk. Verbiage with a + high MEGO factor. The computer equivalent of + bureaucratese.
2. Incomprehensible stuff embedded in email. First there were the + “Received” headers that show how mail flows through systems, + then MIME (Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions) headers and part + boundaries, and now huge blocks of radix-64 for PEM (Privacy Enhanced Mail) + or PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) digital signatures and certificates of + authenticity. This stuff all serves a purpose and good user interfaces + should hide it, but all too often users are forced to wade through + it.
[orig. by SF writer Bruce Bethke and/or editor Gardner Dozois] A + subgenre of SF launched in 1982 by William Gibson's epoch-making novel + Neuromancer (though its roots go back through Vernor + Vinge's True Names (see the Bibliography in Appendix C) to John + Brunner's 1975 novel The Shockwave Rider). Gibson's + near-total ignorance of computers and the present-day hacker culture + enabled him to speculate about the role of computers and hackers in the + future in ways hackers have since found both irritatingly nave and + tremendously stimulating. Gibson's work was widely imitated, in particular + by the short-lived but innovative Max Headroom TV + series. See cyberspace, ice, + jack in, go flatline.
Since 1990 or so, popular culture has included a movement or fashion + trend that calls itself ‘cyberpunk’, associated especially with + the rave/techno subculture. Hackers have mixed feelings about this. On + the one hand, self-described cyberpunks too often seem to be shallow + trendoids in black leather who have substituted enthusiastic blathering + about technology for actually learning and doing it. + Attitude is no substitute for competence. On the other hand, at least + cyberpunks are excited about the right things and properly respectful of + hacking talent in those who have it. The general consensus is to tolerate + them politely in hopes that they'll attract people who grow into being true + hackers.
1. Notional ‘information-space’ loaded with visual cues + and navigable with brain-computer interfaces called cyberspace decks; a characteristic prop of + cyberpunk SF. Serious efforts to construct + virtual reality interfaces modeled explicitly on + Gibsonian cyberspace are under way, using more conventional devices such as + glove sensors and binocular TV headsets. Few hackers are prepared to deny + outright the possibility of a cyberspace someday evolving out of the + network (see the network).
2. The Internet or Matrix (sense #2) as a + whole, considered as a crude cyberspace (sense 1). Although this usage + became widely popular in the mainstream press during 1994 when the Internet + exploded into public awareness, it is strongly deprecated among hackers + because the Internet does not meet the high, SF-inspired standards they + have for true cyberspace technology. Thus, this use of the term usually + tags a wannabee or outsider. Oppose + meatspace.
3. Occasionally, the metaphoric location of the mind of a person in + hack mode. Some hackers report experiencing strong + synesthetic imagery when in hack mode; interestingly, independent reports + from multiple sources suggest that there are common features to the + experience. In particular, the dominant colors of this subjective + cyberspace are often gray and silver, + and the imagery often involves constellations of marching dots, elaborate + shifting patterns of lines and angles, or moire patterns.
A powerful machine that exists primarily for running large compute-, + disk-, or memory-intensive jobs (more formally called a compute server). Implies that interactive + tasks such as editing are done on other machines on the network, such as + workstations.
1. n. The basic unit of + computation. What every hacker wants more of (noted hacker Bill Gosper + described himself as a “cycle junkie”). One can describe an + instruction as taking so many clock + cycles. Often the computer can access its memory once on every + clock cycle, and so one speaks also of memory + cycles. These are technical meanings of + cycle. The jargon meaning comes from the + observation that there are only so many cycles per second, and when you are + sharing a computer the cycles get divided up among the users. The more + cycles the computer spends working on your program rather than someone + else's, the faster your program will run. That's why every hacker wants + more cycles: so he can spend less time waiting for the computer to respond. +
2. By extension, a notional unit of human + thought power, emphasizing that lots of things compete for the typical + hacker's think time. “I refused to get involved with the Rubik's + Cube back when it was big. Knew I'd burn too many cycles on it if I let + myself.”
3. vt. + Syn. bounce (sense 4), from the phrase ‘cycle + power’. “Cycle the machine again, that serial port's still + hung.”
[from cyberpunk] Someone interested in the + uses of encryption via electronic ciphers for enhancing personal privacy + and guarding against tyranny by centralized, authoritarian power + structures, especially government. There is an active cypherpunks mailing + list at <cypherpunks-request@toad.com> coordinating work on + public-key encryption freeware, privacy, and digital cash. See also + tentacle.
[German FidoNet] German acronym for Dmmster Anzunehmender User + (stupidest imaginable user). From the engineering-slang GAU for + Grsster Anzunehmender Unfall, worst assumable accident, esp. of a LNG + tank farm plant or something with similarly disastrous consequences. In + popular German, GAU is used only to refer to worst-case nuclear accidents + such as a core meltdown. See cretin, + fool, loser and + weasel.
[from the insecticide para-dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethene] +
1. Generic term for a program that assists in debugging other + programs by showing individual machine instructions in a readable symbolic + form and letting the user change them. In this sense the term DDT is now + archaic, having been widely displaced by debugger or names of individual programs like + adb, sdb, + dbx, or gdb.
2. [ITS] Under MIT's fabled ITS operating + system, DDT (running under the alias HACTRN, a six-letterism for + ‘Hack Translator’) was also used as the + shell or top level command language used to execute + other programs.
3. Any one of several specific DDTs (sense 1) supported on early + DEC hardware and CP/M. The PDP-10 Reference + Handbook (1969) contained a footnote on the first page of the documentation + for DDT that illuminates the origin of the term:
Historical footnote: DDT was developed at MIT for the PDP-1 +computer in 1961. At that time DDT stood for “DEC Debugging +Tape”. Since then, the idea of an on-line debugging program has +propagated throughout the computer industry. DDT programs are now +available for all DEC computers. Since media other than tape are +now frequently used, the more descriptive name “Dynamic Debugging +Technique” has been adopted, retaining the DDT abbreviation. Confusion +between DDT-10 and another well known pesticide, +dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane +C14H9Cl5 +should be minimal since each attacks a +different, and apparently mutually exclusive, class of bugs.
(The ‘tape’ referred to was, incidentally, not magnetic + but paper.) Sadly, this quotation was removed from later editions of the + handbook after the suits took over and + DEC became much more + ‘businesslike’.
The history above is known to many old-time hackers. But there's + more: Peter Samson, compiler of the original TMRC + lexicon, reports that he named DDT + after a similar tool on the TX-0 computer, the direct ancestor of the PDP-1 + built at MIT's Lincoln Lab in 1957. The debugger on that ground-breaking + machine (the first transistorized computer) rejoiced in the name FLIT + (FLexowriter Interrogation Tape). Flit was for many years the trade-name + of a popular insecticide.
The hexadecimal word-fill pattern for freshly allocated memory under + a number of IBM environments, including the RS/6000. Some modern debugging + tools deliberately fill freed memory with this value as a way of converting + heisenbugs into Bohr bugs. + As in “Your program is DEADBEEF” (meaning gone, aborted, + flushed from memory); if you start from an odd half-word boundary, of + course, you have BEEFDEAD. See also the anecdote under + fool and + dead beef attack.
A 1983 Usenet posting by Alan Hastings and + Steve Tarr spoofing the Star Wars movies in hackish + terms. Some years later, ESR (disappointed by Hastings and Tarr's failure + to exploit a great premise more thoroughly) posted a 3-times-longer + complete rewrite called Unix WARS; + the two are often confused.
n. Commonly used abbreviation + for Digital Equipment Corporation, later deprecated by DEC itself in favor + of “Digital” and now entirely obsolete following the buyout by + Compaq. Before the killer micro revolution of the + late 1980s, hackerdom was closely symbiotic with DEC's pioneering + timesharing machines. The first of the group of cultures described by this + lexicon nucleated around the PDP-1 (see TMRC). + Subsequently, the PDP-6, PDP-10, + PDP-20, PDP-11 and + VAX were all foci of large and important hackerdoms, + and DEC machines long dominated the ARPANET and Internet machine + population. DEC was the technological leader of the minicomputer era + (roughly 1967 to 1987), but its failure to embrace microcomputers and Unix + early cost it heavily in profits and prestige after + silicon got cheap. Nevertheless, the microprocessor + design tradition owes a major debt to the PDP-11 + instruction set, and every one of the major general-purpose microcomputer + OSs so far (CP/M, MS-DOS, Unix, OS/2, Windows NT) was either genetically + descended from a DEC OS, or incubated on DEC hardware, or both. + Accordingly, DEC was for many years still regarded with a certain wry + affection even among many hackers too young to have grown up on DEC + machines.
Dark-Emitting Diode (that is, a burned-out LED). Compare + SED, LER, + write-only memory. In the early 1970s both + Signetics and Texas instruments released DED spec sheets as + AFJs (suggested uses included “as a power-off + indicator”).
[common] Literally, De-Militarized Zone. Figuratively, the portion + of a private network that is visible through the network's firewalls (see + firewall machine). Coined in the late 1990s as + jargon, this term is now borderline techspeak.
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.
Data Processor. Hackers are absolutely amazed that + suits use this term self-referentially. + Computers process data, not people! See + DP.
[from Yiddish/German ‘dreck’, meaning filth] 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 malignant customer-control tactic) violated that + spec in the design of DRECNET in a way that made it incompatible. See also + connector conspiracy.
[alt.(sysadmin|tech-support).recovery; abbrev. for Dick Size War] A contest between two or more + people boasting about who has the faster machine, keys on (either physical + or cryptographic) keyring, greyer hair, or almost anything. Salvos in a + DSW are typically humorous and playful, often self-mocking.
[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 + more common errors. See hairy.
3. Occasionally, an interjection hurled at a balky computer, esp. + when one senses one might be tripping over legalisms (see + legalese).
4. Of a person, someone whose directions are incomprehensible and + vague, but who nevertheless has the expectation that you will solve the + problem using the specific method he/she has in mind.
Warren Teitelman originally wrote DWIM to fix his typos and spelling + errors, so it was somewhat idiosyncratic to his style, and would often make + hash of anyone else's typos if they were stylistically different. Some + victims of DWIM thus claimed that the acronym stood for ‘Damn + Warren’s Infernal Machine!'.
In one notorious incident, Warren added a DWIM feature to the command + interpreter used at Xerox PARC. One day another hacker there typed + delete *$ to free up some disk space. (The + editor there named backup files by appending $ to the original file name, so he was trying to + delete any backup files left over from old editing sessions.) It happened + that there weren't any editor backup files, so DWIM helpfully reported + *$ not found, assuming you meant 'delete + *'. It then started to delete all the files on the disk! The + hacker managed to stop it with a Vulcan nerve pinch + after only a half dozen or so files were lost.
The disgruntled victim later said he had been sorely tempted to go to + Warren's office, tie Warren down in his chair in front of his workstation, + and then type delete *$ twice.
DWIM is often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a complex + program; it is also occasionally described as the single instruction the + ideal computer would have. Back when proofs of program correctness were in + vogue, there were also jokes about DWIMC (Do What I Mean, Correctly). A related + term, more often seen as a verb, is DTRT (Do The Right Thing); see + Right Thing.
A magazine that many hackers assume all suits + read. Used to question an unbelieved quote, as in “Did you read that + in Datamation?”. It used to publish something + hackishly funny every once in a while, like the original paper on + COME FROM in 1973, and Ed Post's Real + Programmers Don't Use Pascal ten years later, but for a long + time after that it was much more exclusively + suit-oriented and boring. Following a change of + editorship in 1994, Datamation briefly tried for more the technical content + and irreverent humor that marked its early days, but this did not + last.
[Usenet; also abbreviated DtR] A cancelbot + that cancels cancels. Dave the Resurrector originated when some + spam-spewers decided to try to impede spam-fighting + by wholesale cancellation of anti-spam coordination messages in the + news.admin.net-abuse.usenet + newsgroup.
[common] A construction used to imbue the subject with campy menace, + usually with intent to ridicule. The ancestor of this term is a famous + Far Side cartoon from the 1980s in which a balloon + with a fierce face painted on it is passed off as the “Floating Head + of Death”. Hackers and SF fans have been using the suffix “of + Death” ever since to label things which appear to be vastly + threatening but will actually pop like a balloon if you prick them. Such + constructions are properly spoken in a tone of over-exagerrated + portentiousness: “Behold! The Spinning - Pizza - of - + Death!” See + Blue Screen of Death, Ping O' Death, + Spinning Pizza of Death, + click of death. Compare Doom, X of.
The corporate logo of Novell, the people who acquired USL after + AT&T let go of it (Novell eventually sold the Unix group to SCO). + Coined by analogy with Death Star, because many + people believed Novell was bungling the lead in Unix systems exactly as + AT&T did for many years.
[They were right —ESR]
[from the movie Star Wars]
1. The AT&T corporate logo, which bears an uncanny resemblance + to the Death Star in the Star Wars movies. This usage was particularly + common among partisans of BSD Unix in the 1980s, who + tended to regard the AT&T versions as inferior and AT&T as a bad + guy. Copies still circulate of a poster printed by Mt. Xinu showing a + starscape with a space fighter labeled 4.2 BSD streaking away from a broken + AT&T logo wreathed in flames.
2. AT&T's internal magazine, Focus, uses + death star to describe an incorrectly + done AT&T logo in which the inner circle in the top left is dark + instead of light — a frequent result of dark-on-light logo + images.
[Portmanteau of Dejanews and Google] Google newsgroups. Became + common in 2001 after Google acquired Dejanews, and with it the largest + on-line archive of Usenet postings.
n. Name and title character of a + comic strip nationally syndicated in the U.S. and enormously popular among + hackers. Dilbert is an archetypical engineer-nerd who works at an + anonymous high-technology company; the strips present a lacerating satire + of insane working conditions and idiotic management + practices all too readily recognized by hackers. Adams, who spent nine + years in cube 4S700R at Pacific Bell (not + DEC as often reported), often remarks that he has + never been able to come up with a fictional management blunder that his + correspondents didn't quickly either report to have actually happened or + top with a similar but even more bizarre incident. In 1996 Adams distilled + his insights into the collective psychology of businesses into an even + funnier book, The Dilbert Principle (HarperCollins, + ISBN 0-887-30787-6). See also pointy-haired, + rat dance.
The veneration of Eris, a.k.a. Discordia; + widely popular among hackers. Discordianism was popularized by Robert Shea + and Robert Anton Wilson's novel Illuminatus! as a + sort of self-subverting Dada-Zen for Westerners — it should on no + account be taken seriously but is far more serious than most jokes. + Consider, for example, the Fifth Commandment of the Pentabarf, from + Principia Discordia: “A Discordian is + Prohibited of Believing What he Reads.” Discordianism is usually + connected with an elaborate conspiracy theory/joke involving millennia-long + warfare between the anarcho-surrealist partisans of Eris and a malevolent, + authoritarian secret society called the Illuminati. See + Religion in Appendix B, + Church of the SubGenius, and + ha ha only serious.
[play on ‘Associated Press’; perhaps inspired by a + reference in the 1950 Bugs Bunny cartoon What's Up, + Doc?] An algorithm for transforming any text into potentially + humorous garbage even more efficiently than by passing it through a + marketroid. The algorithm starts by printing any + N consecutive words (or letters) in the text. Then at + every step it searches for any random occurrence in the original text of + the last N words (or letters) already printed and then + prints the next word or letter. EMACS has a handy + command for this. Here is a short example of word-based Dissociated Press + applied to an earlier version of this Jargon File:
+wart: n. A small, crocky +feature that sticks out of an array (C has no checks +for this). This is relatively benign and easy to spot if the phrase is bent +so as to be not worth paying attention to the medium in question. +
Here is a short example of letter-based Dissociated Press applied to + the same source:
window sysIWYG: n. A bit was named aften /beet@/ prefer to use the other +guy's re, especially in every cast a chuckle on neithout getting into useful +informash speech makes removing a featuring a move or usage actual +abstractionsidered interj. Indeed spectace +logic or problem!
A hackish idle pastime is to apply letter-based Dissociated Press to + a random body of text and vgrep the output in hopes + of finding an interesting new word. (In the preceding example, + ‘window sysIWYG’ and ‘informash’ show some + promise.) Iterated applications of Dissociated Press usually yield better + results. Similar techniques called travesty + generators have been employed with considerable satirical effect + to the utterances of Usenet flamers; see + pseudo.
[Usenet,common; note that it's unrelated to DOS as name of an operating system] + Abbreviation for Denial-Of-Service attack. This abbreviation is most often + used of attempts to shut down newsgroups with floods of + spam, or to flood network links with large amounts + of traffic, or to flood network links with large amounts of traffic, often + by abusing network broadcast addresses. Compare + slashdot effect.
[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 do that!”). + Compare RTFM.
Here's a classic example of “Don't do that then!” from + Neal Stephenson's In The Beginning Was The Command + Line. A friend of his built a network with a load of Macs and + a few high-powered database servers. He found that from time to time the + whole network would lock up for no apparent reason. The problem was + eventually tracked down to MacOS's cooperative multitasking: when a user + held down the mouse button for too long, the network stack wouldn't get a + chance to run...
[common] A construction similar to ‘Death, X + of, but derived rather from the Cracks of Doom in + J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. + The connotations are slightly different; a Foo of Death is mainly being + held up to ridicule, but one would have to take a Foo of Doom a bit more + seriously.
[Stanford] The archetypal man you don't want to see about a problem, + esp. an incompetent professional; a shyster. “Do you know a good + eye doctor?” “Sure, try Mbogo Eye Care and Professional Dry + Cleaning.” The name comes from synergy between + bogus and the original Dr. Mbogo, a witch doctor who + was Gomez Addams' physician on the old Addams Family + TV show. Interestingly enough, it turns out that under the rules for + Swahili noun classes, ‘m-’ is the characteristic prefix of + “nouns referring to human beings”. As such, + “mbogo” is quite plausible as a Swahili coinage for a person + having the nature of a bogon. Actually, + “mbogo” is indeed a Ki-Swahili word referring to the African + Cape Buffalo, syncerus caffer. It is one of + the “big five” dangerous African game animals, and many people + with bush experience believe it to be the most dangerous of them. Compare + Bloggs Family and + J. Random Hacker; see also Fred Foobar and + fred.
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 ‘complexity of compiler + design’ and a knight 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 Jeffrey D. Ullman; Addison-Wesley, 1977; ISBN + 0-201-00022-9), was the `‘reen 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 a terminal showing a video-game + representation of the Red Dragon's head while the rest of the beast extends + back in normal space. See also book titles.
The most dramatic use yet seen of + fall through in C, invented by Tom Duff when he was at Lucasfilm. + Trying to optimize all the instructions he could out of an inner loop that + copied data serially onto an output port, he decided to unroll it. He then + realized that the unrolled version could be implemented by + interlacing the structures of a switch and a + loop:
+ register n = (count + 7) / 8; /* count > 0 assumed */
+
+ switch (count % 8)
+ {
+ case 0: do { *to = *from++;
+ case 7: *to = *from++;
+ case 6: *to = *from++;
+ case 5: *to = *from++;
+ case 4: *to = *from++;
+ case 3: *to = *from++;
+ case 2: *to = *from++;
+ case 1: *to = *from++;
+ } while (--n > 0);
+ }
+ |
Shocking though it appears to all who encounter it for the first + time, the device is actually perfectly valid, legal C. C's default + fall through in case statements has long been its + most controversial single feature; Duff observed that “This code + forms some sort of argument in that debate, but I'm not sure whether it's + for or against.” Duff has discussed the device in detail at http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/duffs-device.html. + Note that the omission of postfix ++ from + *to was intentional (though confusing). + Duff's device can be used to implement memory copy, but the original aim + was to copy values serially into a magic IO register.
[For maximal obscurity, the outermost pair of braces above could + actually be removed — GLS]
The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX + Operating System, by Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, + Michael J. Karels, and John S. Quarterman (Addison-Wesley Publishers, 1989, + ISBN 0-201-06196-1); or The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 + BSD Operating System by Marshall Kirk McKusick, Keith Bostic, + Michael J. Karels and John S. Quarterman (Addison-Wesley Longman, 1996, + ISBN 0-201-54979-4) Either of the standard reference books on the internals + of BSD Unix. So called because the covers have a + picture depicting a little demon (a visual play on + daemon) in sneakers, holding a pitchfork (referring + to one of the characteristic features of Unix, the + fork(2) + system call).
[from Maxwell's Demon, later incorrectly retronymed as ‘Disk + And Execution MONitor’] A program that is not invoked explicitly, but + lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. The idea is that the + perpetrator of the condition need not be aware that a daemon is lurking + (though often a program will commit an action only because it knows that it + will implicitly invoke a daemon). For example, under + ITS, writing a file on the LPT spooler's directory + would invoke the spooling daemon, which would then print the file. The + advantage is that programs wanting (in this example) files printed need + neither compete for access to nor understand any idiosyncrasies of the LPT. + They simply enter their implicit requests and let the daemon decide what to + do with them. Daemons are usually spawned automatically by the system, and + may either live forever or be regenerated at intervals.
Daemon and demon are often used + interchangeably, but seem to have distinct connotations. The term + daemon was introduced to computing by + CTSS people (who pronounced it /deemon/) and used it to refer to + what ITS called a dragon; the prototype was a + program called DAEMON that automatically made tape backups of the file + system. Although the meaning and the pronunciation have drifted, we think + this glossary reflects current (2003) usage.
[Usenet] The material of which protracted + flame wars, especially those about operating systems, is composed. + Homeomorphic to spam. The term dahmum is derived from the name of a militant + OS/2 advocate, and originated when an extensively + cross-posted OS/2-versus-Linux debate was fed + through Dissociated Press.
[Vancouver area] A problem that occurs on a computer that will not + reappear while anyone else is watching. From the classic Warner Brothers + cartoon One Froggy Evening, featuring a dancing and + singing Michigan J. Frog that just croaks when anyone else is around (now + the WB network mascot).
[common] A reference that doesn't actually lead anywhere (in C and + some other languages, a pointer that doesn't actually point at anything + valid). Usually this happens because it formerly pointed to something that + has moved or disappeared. Used as jargon in a generalization of its + techspeak meaning; for example, a local phone number for a person who has + since moved to the other coast is a dangling pointer.
A criminal or malicious hacker; a cracker. + From George Lucas's Darth Vader, “seduced by the dark side of the + Force”. The implication that hackers form a sort of elite of + technological Jedi Knights is intended. Oppose + samurai.
See phase (sense 1). Used of people + only.
[Unix: from IBM JCL] Equivalent to + cat or BLT. Originally the + name of a Unix copy command with special options suitable for + block-oriented devices; it was often used in heavy-handed system + maintenance, as in “Let's dd the root + partition onto a tape, then use the boot PROM to load it back on to a new + disk”. The Unix + dd(1) + was designed with a weird, distinctly non-Unixy keyword option syntax + reminiscent of IBM System/360 JCL (which had an elaborate DD ‘Dataset + Definition’ specification for I/O devices); though the command filled + a need, the interface design was clearly a prank. The jargon usage is now + very rare outside Unix sites and now nearly obsolete even there, as + dd(1) + has been deprecated for a long time (though it has + no exact replacement). The term has been displaced by + BLT or simple English ‘copy’.
[from ‘de-resolve’ via the movie + Tron] (also derez)
1. vi. To disappear or dissolve; + the image that goes with it is of an object breaking up into raster lines + and static and then dissolving. Occasionally used of a person who seems to + have suddenly ‘fuzzed out’ mentally rather than physically. + Usage: extremely silly, also rare. This verb was actually invented as + fictional hacker jargon, and adopted in a spirit of + irony by real hackers years after the fact.
2. vt. The Macintosh resource + decompiler. On a Macintosh, many program structures (including the code + itself) are managed in small segments of the program file known as + resources; Rez and DeRez are a pair of utilities for compiling and + decompiling resource files. Thus, decompiling a resource is derezzing. Usage: very common.
[cypherpunks list, 1996] An attack on a public-key cryptosystem + consisting of publishing a key having the same ID as another key (thus + making it possible to spoof a user's identity if recipients aren't careful + about verifying keys). In PGP and GPG the key ID is the last eight hex + digits of (for RSA keys) the product of two primes. The attack was + demonstrated by creating a key whose ID was 0xdeadbeef (see + DEADBEEF).
Routines that can never be accessed because all calls to them have + been removed, or code that cannot be reached because it is guarded by a + control structure that provably must always transfer control somewhere + else. The presence of dead code may reveal either logical errors due to + alterations in the program or significant changes in the assumptions and + environment of the program (see also software rot); + a good compiler should report dead code so a maintainer can think about + what it means. (Sometimes it simply means that an + extremely defensive programmer has inserted + can't happen tests which really can't happen — + yet.) Syn. grunge. See also + dead, and + The Story of Mel'.
[common] A paper version of an on-line document; one printed on dead + trees. In this context, “dead trees” always refers to paper. + See also tree-killer.
1. Non-functional; down; + crashed. Especially used of hardware.
2. At XEROX PARC, software that is working but not undergoing + continued development and support.
3. Useless; inaccessible. Antonym: live. Compare + dead code.
1. [techspeak] A situation wherein two or more processes are unable + to proceed because each is waiting for one of the others to do something. + A common example is a program communicating to a server, which may find + itself waiting for output from the server before sending anything more to + it, while the server is similarly waiting for more input from the + controlling program before outputting anything. (It is reported that this + particular flavor of deadlock is sometimes called a starvation deadlock, though the term starvation is more properly used for situations + where a program can never run simply because it never gets high enough + priority. Another common flavor is constipation, in which each process is trying + to send stuff to the other but all buffers are full because nobody is + reading anything.) See deadly embrace.
2. Also used of deadlock-like interactions between humans, as when + two people meet in a narrow corridor, and each tries to be polite by moving + aside to let the other pass, but they end up swaying from side to side + without making any progress because they always move the same way at the + same time.
Same as deadlock, though usually used only + when exactly two processes are involved. This is the more popular term in + Europe, while deadlock predominates in the United + States.
A routine whose job is to set everything in the computer — + registers, memory, flags, everything — to zero, including that + portion of memory where it is running; its last act is to stomp + on its own “store zero” instruction. Death code + isn't very useful, but writing it is an interesting hacking challenge on + architectures where the instruction set makes it possible, such as the + PDP-8 (it has also been done on the DG Nova).
Perhaps the ultimate death code is on the TI 990 series, where all + registers are actually in RAM, and the instruction “store immediate + 0” has the opcode “0”. The PC will immediately wrap + around core as many times as it can until a user hits HALT. Any empty + memory location is death code. Worse, the manufacturer recommended use of + this instruction in startup code (which would be in ROM and therefore + survive).
[from nuclear physics] An automatic conversion which is applied to + most array-valued expressions in C; they + ‘decay into’ pointer-valued expressions pointing to the array's + first element. This term is borderline techspeak, but is not used in the + official standard for the language.
[from dec- and nybble; the original spelling + seems to have been decle] Two + nickles; 10 bits. Reported among developers for + Mattel's GI 1600 (the Intellivision games processor), a chip with + 16-bit-wide RAM but 10-bit-wide ROM. See nybble for + other such terms.
See hack mode.
[poss. from C. S. Lewis's Narnia books] An + awesomely arcane technique central to a program or system, esp. one + neither generally published nor available to hackers at large (compare + black art); one that could only have been composed + by a true wizard. Compiler optimization techniques + and many aspects of OS design used to be + deep magic; many techniques in cryptography, signal + processing, graphics, and AI still are. Compare + heavy wizardry. Esp.: found in comments of the form “Deep + magic begins here...”. Compare + voodoo programming.
1. Describes the notional location of any program that has gone + off the trolley. Esp.: used of programs that just + sit there silently grinding long after either failure or some output is + expected. “Uh oh. I should have gotten a prompt ten seconds ago. + The program's in deep space somewhere.” Compare + buzz, catatonic, + hyperspace.
2. The metaphorical location of a human so dazed and/or confused or + caught up in some esoteric form of bogosity that he + or she no longer responds coherently to normal communication. Compare + page out.
[mythically from a traditional Bohemian assassination method, via SF + fandom]
1. Proper karmic retribution for an incorrigible punster. + “Oh, ghod, that was awful!” “Quick! + Defenestrate him!”
2. The act of completely removing Micro$oft Windows from a PC in + favor of a better OS (typically Linux).
3. The act of discarding something under the assumption that it will + improve matters. “I don't have any disk space left.” + “Well, why don't you defenestrate that 100 megs worth of old core + dumps?”
4. Under a GUI, the act of dragging something out of a window (onto + the screen). “Next, defenestrate the MugWump icon.”
5. [obs.] The act of exiting a window system in order to get better + response time from a full-screen program. This comes from the dictionary + meaning of defenestrate, which is to + throw something out a window.
In the role of, usually in an organization-chart sense. “Pete + is currently defined as bug prioritizer.” Compare + logical.
[portmanteau of “defective” and + “afflicted”; common among PC repair technicians, and probably + originated among hardware techs outside the hacker community proper] Term + used of hardware that is broken due to poor design or shoddy manufacturing + or (especially) both; less frequently used of software and rarely of + people. This term is normally employed in a tone of weary contempt by + technicians who have seen the specific failure in the trouble report before + and are cynically confident they'll see it again. Ultimately this may + derive from Frank Zappa's 1974 album Apostrophe, on + which the Fur Trapper infamously rubs his deflicted eyes...
To clear a hosed condition.
[USENET; common] In an email reply, material omitted from the quote + of the original. Usually written rather than spoken; often appears as a + pseudo-tag or ellipsis in the body of the reply, as + “[deletia]” or “<deletia>” or + “<snip>”.
[portmanteau, delimiter + eliminate] A string or pattern used to + delimit text into fields, but which is itself eliminated from the resulting + list of fields. This jargon seems to have originated among Perl hackers in + connection with the Perl split() function; however, it has been sighted in + live use among Java and even Visual Basic programmers.
To modify code to remove problems detected when + linting. Confusingly, this process is also referred + to as linting code. This term is no + longer in general use because ANSI C compilers typically issue compile-time + warnings almost as detailed as lint warnings.
1. [techspeak] A quantitative change, especially a small or + incremental one (this use is general in physics and engineering). “I + just doubled the speed of my program!” “What was the delta on + program size?” “About 30 percent.” (He doubled the + speed of his program, but increased its size by only 30 percent.)
2. [Unix] A diff, especially a + diff stored under the set of version-control tools + called SCCS (Source Code Control System) or RCS (Revision Control System). +
3. n. A small quantity, but not + as small as epsilon. The jargon usage of + delta and epsilon stems from + the traditional use of these letters in mathematics for very small + numerical quantities, particularly in ‘epsilon-delta’ proofs in + limit theory (as in the differential calculus). The term + delta is often used, once + epsilon has been mentioned, to mean a quantity that + is slightly bigger than epsilon but still very + small. “The cost isn't epsilon, but it's delta” means that + the cost isn't totally negligible, but it is nevertheless very small. + Common constructions include within delta of + —, within epsilon of + —: that is, ‘close to’ and ‘even closer + to’.
Yet another term of disgust used to describe a malfunctioning + program. The connotation in this case is that the program works as + designed, but the design is bad. Said, for example, of a program that + generates large numbers of meaningless error messages, implying that it is + on the brink of imminent collapse. Compare wonky, + brain-damaged, + bozotic.
A hacker with years of experience, a world-wide reputation, and a + major role in the development of at least one design, tool, or game used by + or known to more than half of the hacker community. To qualify as a + genuine demigod, the person must recognizably identify with the hacker + community and have helped shape it. Major demigods include Ken Thompson + and Dennis Ritchie (co-inventors of Unix and + C), Richard M. Stallman (inventor of + EMACS), Larry Wall (inventor of + Perl), Linus Torvalds (inventor of + Linux), and most recently James Gosling (inventor of + Java, NeWS, and GOSMACS) and + Guido van Rossum (inventor of Python). In their + hearts of hearts, most hackers dream of someday becoming demigods + themselves, and more than one major software project has been driven to + completion by the author's veiled hopes of apotheosis. See also + net.god, true-hacker, + ubergeek. Since 1995 or so this term has been + gradually displaced by ubergeek.
1. [Sun] The state of being heads down in + order to finish code in time for a demo, usually due + yesterday.
2. A mode in which video games sit by themselves running through a + portion of the game, also known as attract + mode. Some serious apps have a demo mode + they use as a screen saver, or may go through a demo mode on startup (for + example, the Microsoft Windows opening screen — which lets you + impress your neighbors without actually having to put up with + Microsloth Windows).
[short for ‘demonstration’]
1. v. To demonstrate a product + or prototype. A far more effective way of inducing bugs to manifest than + any number of test runs, especially when important + people are watching.
2. n. The act of demoing. + “I've gotta give a demo of the drool-proof interface; how does it + work again?”
3. n. Esp. as demo version, can refer either to an early, + barely-functional version of a program which can be used for demonstration + purposes as long as the operator uses exactly the + right commands and skirts its numerous bugs, deficiencies, and + unimplemented portions, or to a special version of a program (frequently + with some features crippled) which is distributed at little or no cost to + the user for enticement purposes.
4. [demoscene] A sequence of + demoeffects (usually) combined with self-composed + music and hand-drawn (“pixelated”) graphics. These days (1997) + usually built to attend a compo. Often called + eurodemos outside Europe, as most of + the demoscene activity seems to have gathered in + northern Europe and especially Scandinavia. See also + intro, dentro.
1. What among hackers is called a + display hack. Classical effects include “plasma” (colorful + mess), “keftales” (x*x+y*y + and other similar patterns, usually combined with color-cycling), realtime + fractals, realtime 3d graphics, etc. Historically, demo effects have + cheated as much as possible to gain more speed and more complexity, using + low-precision math and masses of assembler code and building animation + realtime are three common tricks, but use of special hardware to fake + effects is a Good Thing on the demoscene (though + this is becoming less common as platforms like the Amiga fade + away).
2. [Finland] Opposite of dancing frog. The + crash that happens when you demonstrate a perfectly good prototype to a + client. Plagues most often CS students and small businesses, but there is a + well-known case involving Bill Gates demonstrating a brand new version of a + major operating system.
[demoscene] A group of + demo (sense 4) composers. Job titles within a group + include coders (the ones who write programs), graphicians (the ones who + painstakingly pixelate the fine art), musicians (the music composers), + sysops, traders/swappers (the ones who do the + trading and other PR), and organizers (in larger groups). It is not + uncommon for one person to do multiple jobs, but it has been observed that + good coders are rarely good composers and vice versa. [How odd. Musical + talent seems common among Internet/Unix hackers —ESR]
A program which repeatedly calls the same telephone number. Demon + dialing may be benign (as when a number of communications programs contend + for legitimate access to a BBS line) or malign (that + is, used as a prank or denial-of-service attack). This term dates from the + blue box days of the 1970s and early 1980s and is + now semi-obsolescent among phreakers; see + war dialer for its contemporary progeny.
1. Often used equivalently to daemon — + especially in the Unix world, where the latter + spelling and pronunciation is considered mildly archaic.
2. [MIT; now probably obsolete] A portion of a program that is not + invoked explicitly, but that lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to + occur. See daemon. The distinction is that demons + are usually processes within a program, while daemons are usually programs + running on an operating system.
Demons in sense 2 are particularly common in AI programs. For + example, a knowledge-manipulation program might implement inference rules + as demons. Whenever a new piece of knowledge was added, various demons + would activate (which demons depends on the particular piece of data) and + would create additional pieces of knowledge by applying their respective + inference rules to the original piece. These new pieces could in turn + activate more demons as the inferences filtered down through chains of + logic. Meanwhile, the main program could continue with whatever its + primary task was.
[demoscene] Aboveground descendant of the + copyparty, with emphasis shifted away from software + piracy and towards compos. Smaller demoparties, for + 100 persons or less, are held quite often, sometimes even once a month, and + usually last for one to two days. On the other end of the scale, huge demo + parties are held once a year (and four of these have grown very large and + occur annually — Assembly in Finland, The Party in Denmark, The Gathering + in Norway, and NAID somewhere in north America). These parties usually last + for three to five days, have room for 3000-5000 people, and have a party + network with connection to the internet.
[also ‘demo scene’] A culture of multimedia hackers + located primarily in Scandinavia and northern Europe. Demoscene folklore + recounts that when old-time warez d00dz cracked some + piece of software they often added an advertisement in the beginning, + usually containing colorful display hacks with + greetings to other cracking groups. The demoscene was born among people + who decided building these display hacks is more interesting than hacking + — or anyway safer. Around 1990 there began to be very serious police + pressure on cracking groups, including raids with SWAT teams crashing into + bedrooms to confiscate computers. Whether in response to this or for + esthetic reasons, crackers of that period began to build self-contained + display hacks of considerable elaboration and beauty (within the culture + such a hack is called a demo). As more of these + demogroups emerged, they started to have + compos at copying parties (see + copyparty), which later evolved to standalone events + (see demoparty). The demoscene has retained some + traits from the warez d00dz, including their style + of handles and group names and some of their jargon.
Traditionally demos were written in assembly language, with lots of + smart tricks, self-modifying code, undocumented op-codes and the like. + Some time around 1995, people started coding demos in C, and a couple of + years after that, they also started using Java.
Ten years on (in 1998-1999), the demoscene is changing as its + original platforms (C64, Amiga, Spectrum, Atari ST, IBM PC under DOS) die + out and activity shifts towards Windows, Linux, and the Internet. While + deeply underground in the past, demoscene is trying to get into the + mainstream as accepted art form, and one symptom of this is the + commercialization of bigger demoparties. Older demosceners frown at this, + but the majority think it's a good direction. Many demosceners end up + working in the computer game industry. Demoscene resource pages are + available at http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained/ + and http://www.scene.org/.
[demoscene] Combination of + demo (sense 4) and + intro. Other name mixings include intmo, dentmo + etc. and are used usually when the authors are not quite sure whether the + program is a demo or an + intro. Special-purpose coinages like wedtro (some + member of a group got married), invtro (invitation intro) etc. have also + been sighted.
[by (faulty) analogy with decapitate] Humorously, to cut off the feet of. + When one is using some computer-aided typesetting tools, careless placement + of text blocks within a page or above a rule can result in chopped-off + letter descenders. Such letters are said to have been depeditated.
Said of a program or feature that is considered obsolescent and in + the process of being phased out, usually in favor of a specified + replacement. Deprecated features can, unfortunately, linger on for many + years. This term appears with distressing frequency in standards documents + when the committees writing the documents realize that large amounts of + extant (and presumably happily working) code depend on the feature(s) that + have passed out of favor. See also + dusty deck.
[Usage note: don't confuse this word with ‘depreciated’, + or the verb form ‘deprecate’ with ‘depreciate’. + They are different words; see any dictionary for discussion.]
[PLATO]
1. v. The act of exploiting a + terminal which someone else has absentmindedly left logged on, to use that + person's account, especially to post articles intended to make an ass of + the victim you're impersonating. It has been alleged that the term + originated as a reversal of the name of the gentleman who most usually left + himself vulnerable to it, who also happened to be the head of the + department that handled PLATO at the University of Delaware. Compare + baggy pantsing.
2. n. The victim of an act of + derfing, sense 1. The most typical posting from a derfed account read + “I am a derf.”.
[common] Said of someone who willfully does the + Wrong Thing; humorously, if one uses a feature known to be + marginal. What is meant is that one deserves the + consequences of one's losing actions. “Boy, + anyone who tries to use mess-dos deserves to + lose!” (ITS fans used + to say the same thing of Unix; many still do.) See + also screw, chomp, + bagbiter.
[Usenet] To automatically generate a large amount of garbage to the + net, esp. from an automated posting program gone wild. See + ARMM.
Extremely pejorative hackerism for ‘diskless + workstation’, a class of botches including the Sun 3/50 and other + machines designed exclusively to network with an expensive central disk + server. These combine all the disadvantages of timesharing with all the + disadvantages of distributed personal computers; typically, they cannot + even boot themselves without help (in the form of + some kind of breath-of-life packet) from the + server.
[Usenet] An attempt to sidetrack a debate away from issues by + insisting on meanings for key terms that presuppose a desired conclusion or + smuggle in an implicit premise. A common tactic of people who prefer + argument over definitions to disputes about reality. Compare + spelling flame.
1. vt. To work with or modify in + a not-particularly-serious manner. “I diddled a copy of + ADVENT so it didn't double-space all the + time.” “Let's diddle this piece of code and see if the problem + goes away.” See tweak and + twiddle.
2. n. The action or result of + diddling.
The software equivalent of crash and burn, + and the preferred emphatic form of die. “The + converter choked on an FF in its input and died horribly”.
Syn. crash. Unlike + crash, which is used primarily of hardware, this + verb is used of both hardware and software. See also + go flatline, casters-up mode.
1. A change listing, especially giving differences between (and + additions to) source code or documents (the term is often used in the + plural diffs). “Send me your + diffs for the Jargon File!” Compare vdiff. +
2. Specifically, such a listing produced by the + diff(1) + command, esp. when used as specification input to the + patch(1) + utility (which can actually perform the modifications; see + patch). This is a common method of distributing + patches and source updates in the Unix/C world.
3. v. To compare (whether or not + by use of automated tools on machine-readable files); see also + vdiff, mod.
To remove or disable a portion of something, as a wire from a + computer or a subroutine from a program. A standard slogan is “When + in doubt, dike it out”. (The implication is that it is usually more + effective to attack software problems by reducing complexity than by + increasing it.) The word ‘dikes’ is widely used to mean + ‘diagonal cutters’, a kind of wire cutter. To ‘dike + something out’ means to use such cutters to remove something. Indeed, + the TMRC Dictionary defined dike as “to attack with + dikes”. Among hackers this term has been metaphorically extended to + informational objects such as sections of code.
1. Synonym for feep. Usage: rare among + hackers, but more common in the Real World.
2. dinged: What happens when + someone in authority gives you a minor bitching about something, esp. + something trivial. “I was dinged for having a messy + desk.”
Said of a machine that has the bitty box + nature; a machine too small to be worth bothering with — sometimes + the system you're currently forced to work on. First heard from an MIT + hacker working on a CP/M system with 64K, in reference to any 6502 system, + then from fans of 32-bit architectures about 16-bit machines. + “GNUMACS will never work on that dink machine.” Probably + derived from mainstream ‘dinky’, which isn't sufficiently + pejorative. See macdink.
A traditional mainframe computer room + complete with raised flooring, special power, its own ultra-heavy-duty air + conditioning, and a side order of Halon fire extinguishers. See + boa.
1. Any hardware requiring raised flooring and special power. Used + especially of old minis and mainframes, in contrast with newer + microprocessor-based machines. In a famous quote from the 1998 Unix EXPO, + Bill Joy compared the liquid-cooled mainframe in the massive IBM display + with a grazing dinosaur “with a truck outside pumping its bodily + fluids through it”. IBM was not amused. Compare + big iron; see also mainframe.
2. [IBM] A very conservative user; a + zipperhead.
Said to occur when yet another big iron + merger or buyout occurs; originally reflected a perception by hackers that + these signal another stage in the long, slow dying of the + mainframe industry. In the mainframe industry's + glory days of the 1960s, it was ‘IBM and the Seven Dwarfs’: + Burroughs, Control Data, General Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA, and Univac. + RCA and GE sold out early, and it was ‘IBM and the Bunch’ + (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell) for a while. + Honeywell was bought out by Bull; Burroughs merged with Univac to form + Unisys (in 1984 — this was when the phrase dinosaurs mating was coined); and in 1991 + AT&T absorbed NCR (but spat it back out a few years later). Control + Data still exists but is no longer in the mainframe business. In similar + wave of dinosaur-matings as the PC business began to consolidate after + 1995, Digital Equipment was bought by Compaq which was bought by + Hewlett-Packard. More such earth-shaking unions of doomed giants seem + inevitable.
[XEROX PARC] A small, perhaps struggling outsider; not in the major + or even the minor leagues. For example, “Xerox is not a dirtball + company”.
[Outsiders often observe in the PARC culture an institutional + arrogance which usage of this term exemplifies. The brilliance and scope + of PARC's contributions to computer science have been such that this + superior attitude is not much resented. —ESR]
Electrical mains voltage that is unfriendly to the delicate innards + of computers. Spikes, drop-outs, average voltage + significantly higher or lower than nominal, or just plain noise can all + cause problems of varying subtlety and severity (these are collectively + known as power hits).
[Usenet] Statement ritually appended to many Usenet postings + (sometimes automatically, by the posting software) reiterating the fact + (which should be obvious, but is easily forgotten) that the article + reflects its author's opinions and not necessarily those of the + organization running the machine through which the article entered the + network.
[USENET: play on ‘disembowel’] Less common synonym for + splat out.
A large room or rooms filled with disk drives (esp. + washing machines). This term was well established + by 1990, and generalized by about ten years later; see + farm. It has become less common as disk strange + densities reached livels where terabytes of storage can easily be fit in a + single rack.
A program with the same approximate purpose as a kaleidoscope: to + make pretty pictures. Famous display hacks include + munching squares, smoking clover, the BSD Unix + rain(6) + program, + worms(6) + on miscellaneous Unixes, and the X + kaleid(1) + program. Display hacks can also be implemented by creating text files + containing numerous escape sequences for interpretation by a video + terminal; one notable example displayed, on any VT100, a Christmas tree + with twinkling lights and a toy train circling its base. The + hack value of a display hack is proportional to the + esthetic value of the images times the cleverness of the algorithm divided + by the size of the code. + Syn. psychedelicware.
[contraction of ‘Dissociated Press’ due to + eight-character MS-DOS filenames] To apply the Dissociated + Press algorithm to a block of text. The resultant output is + also referred to as a 'dispression'.
1. A software source tree packaged for distribution; but see + kit. Since about 1996 unqualified use of this term + often implies ‘Linux distribution’. The + short form distro is often used for this sense. +
2. A vague term encompassing mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups + (but not BBS fora); any + topic-oriented message channel with multiple recipients.
3. An information-space domain (usually loosely correlated with + geography) to which propagation of a Usenet message is restricted; a + much-underutilized feature.
Synonym for distribution, sense 1.
[Usenet] Said of a person whose account on a computer has been + removed, esp. for cause rather than through normal attrition. “He + got disusered when they found out he'd been cracking through the school's + Internet access.” The verbal form disuser is live but less common. Both usages + probably derive from the DISUSER account status flag on VMS; setting it + disables the account. Compare star out.
[from network protocol programming] 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, calculate the tip and everybody's share, + collect money from everybody, generate change as necessary, and pay the + bill. See protocol.
Common spoken and written shorthand for ‘documentation’. + Often used in the plural docs and in + the construction doc file (i.e., + documentation available on-line).
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 writing it; they prefer theirs to be + terse and on-line. A common comment on this predilection is “You + can't grep dead trees”. See + drool-proof paper, verbiage, + treeware.
Syn. with flaky. Preferred outside the + U.S.
See Moof. The dogcow is a semi-legendary + creature that lurks in the depths of the Macintosh Technical Notes + Hypercard stack V3.1. The full story of the dogcow is told in technical + note #31 (the particular dogcow illustrated is properly named + ‘Clarus’). Option-shift-click will cause it to emit a + characteristic “Moof!” or “!fooM” sound. + Getting to tech note 31 is the hard part; to discover + how to do that, one must needs examine the stack script with a hackerly + eye. Clue: rot13 is involved. A dogcow also + appears if you choose ‘Page Setup...’ with a LaserWriter + selected and click on the ‘Options’ button. It also lurks in + other Mac printer drivers, notably those for the now-discontinued Style + Writers. See http://developer.apple.com/products/techsupport/dogcow/tn31.html.
[Microsoft, Netscape] Interim software used internally for testing. + “To eat one's own dogfood” (from which the slang noun derives) + means to use the software one is developing, as part of one's everyday + development environment (the phrase is used outside Microsoft and + Netscape). The practice is normal in the Linux community and elsewhere, but + the term ‘dogfood’ is seldom used as open-source betas tend to + be quite tasty and nourishing. The idea is that developers who are using + their own software will quickly learn what's missing or broken. Dogfood is + typically not even of beta quality.
[Usenet: prob. fr. mainstream “puppy pile”] When many + people post unfriendly responses in short order to a single posting, they + are sometimes said to “dogpile” or “dogpile on” + the person to whom they're responding. For example, when a religious + missionary posts a simplistic appeal to alt.atheism, he can expect to be dogpiled. + It has been suggested that this derives from U.S. football slang for a + tackle involving three or more people; among hackers, it seems at least as + likely to derive from an ‘autobiographical’ Bugs Bunny cartoon + in which a gang of attacking canines actually yells “Dogpile on the + rabbit!”.
[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.
2. v. To engage in such a + project. Many games and much freeware get written + this way.
A special floppy disk that is required in order to perform some + task. Some contain special coding that allows an application to identify + it uniquely, others are special code that does + something that normally-resident programs don't or can't. (For example, + AT&T's “Unix PC” would only come up in + root mode with a special boot disk.) Also called a key disk. See + dongle.
1. [now obs.] A security or copy protection + device for proprietary software 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 is run. Programs that use a dongle query + the port at startup and at programmed intervals thereafter, and terminate + if it does not respond with the dongle's programmed validation code. Thus, + users can make as many copies of the program as they want but must pay for + each dongle. The first sighting of a dongle was in 1984, associated with a + software product called PaperClip. The idea was clever, but it was + initially a failure, as users disliked tying up a serial port this way. By + 1993, dongles would typically pass data through the port and monitor for + magic codes (and combinations of status lines) with + minimal if any interference with devices further down the line — this + innovation was necessary to allow daisy-chained dongles for multiple pieces + of software. These devices have become rare as the industry has moved away + from copy-protection schemes in general.
2. By extension, any physical electronic key or transferable ID + required for a program to function. Common variations on this theme have + used parallel or even joystick ports. See + dongle-disk.
3. An adaptor cable mating a special edge-type connector on a PCMCIA + or on-board Ethernet card to a standard 8p8c Ethernet jack. This usage + seems to have surfaced in 1999 and is now dominant. Laptop owners curse + these things because they're notoriously easy to lose and the vendors + commonly charge extortionate prices for replacements.
[Note: in early 1992, advertising copy from Rainbow Technologies (a + manufacturer of dongles) included a claim that the word derived from + “Don Gall”, allegedly the inventor of the device. The + company's receptionist will cheerfully tell you that the story is a myth + invented for the ad copy. Nevertheless, I expect it to haunt my life as a + lexicographer for at least the next ten years. :-( —ESR]
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. Compare + boat anchor.
A file that is not visible by default 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 startup or configuration information may be + optionally recorded; a user can customize the program's behavior by + creating the appropriate file in the current or home directory. + (Therefore, dot files tend to creep — with + every nontrivial application program defining at least one, a user's home + directory can be filled with scores of dot files, of course without the + user's really being aware of it.) See also profile + (sense 1), rc file.
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 MIT comment was that the Stanford + 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 this was eventually done; but a 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; typing on + such a keyboard would be very 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 + 0-671-21036-X). These lyrics were written on May 27, 1978, in celebration + of the Stanford keyboard:
+ DoubleBucky
+
+ Doublebucky,you'retheone!
+ Youmakemykeyboardlotsoffun.
+ Doublebucky,anadditionalbitortwo:
+ (Vo-vo-de-o!)
+ Controlandmeta,sidebyside,
+ AugmentedASCII,ninebitswide!
+ Doublebucky!Halfathousandglyphs,plusafew!
+ Oh,
+ IsurewishthatI
+ Hadacoupleof
+ Bitsmore!
+ Perhapsa
+ Setofpedalsto
+ Makethenumberof
+ Bitsfour:
+ Doubledoublebucky!
+ Doublebucky,leftandright
+ OR'dtogether,outtasight!
+ Doublebucky,I'dlikeawholewordof
+ Doublebucky,I'mhappyIheardof
+ Doublebucky,I'dlikeawholewordofyou!
+
+ —TheGreatQuux(withapologiestoJeffreyMoss)
+
[This, by the way, is an excellent example of computer + filk —ESR] See also + meta bit, cokebottle, and + quadruple bucky.
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, it reveals the + author's lack of experience in electronic communication. See + B1FF, pseudo.
1. adj. Not operating. + “The up escalator is down” is considered a humorous thing to + say (unless of course you were expecting to use it), 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 term has passed into the mainstream; the + extension to other kinds of machine is still confined to techies + (e.g. boiler mechanics may speak of a boiler being down).
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 “System going down in 5 minutes”.
3. take 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. sense.
To transfer data or (esp.) code from a far-away system (especially + a larger host system) over a digital + communications link to a nearby system (especially a smaller client system. Oppose + upload.
Historical use of these terms was at one time associated with + transfers from large timesharing machines to PCs or peripherals (download) + and vice-versa (upload). The modern usage relative to the speaker (rather + than as an indicator of the size and role of the machines) evolved as + machine categories lost most of their former functional importance.
[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, accumulates load-average statistics, + 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 dragon’. Usage: rare outside MIT — under Unix 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.
[IBM] Syn. for flush (sense 2). Has a + connotation of finality about it; one speaks of draining a device before + taking it offline.
A condition endemic to some now-obsolete computers and peripherals + (including ASR-33 teletypes and PRIME minicomputers) that results in all + characters having their high (0x80) bit forced on. This of course makes + transporting files to other systems much more difficult, not to mention the + problems these machines have talking with true 8-bit devices.
This term was originally used specifically of PRIME (a.k.a. PR1ME) + minicomputers. Folklore has it that PRIME adopted the reversed-8-bit + convention in order to save 25 cents per serial line per machine; PRIME + old-timers, on the other hand, claim they inherited the disease from + Honeywell via customer NASA's compatibility requirements and struggled + heroically to cure it. Whoever was responsible, this probably qualifies as + one of the most cretinous design tradeoffs ever + made. See meta bit.
n. The result of saving HTML + from Microsoft Word or some other program that uses the nonstandard + Microsoft variant of Latin-1; the symptom is that various of those + nonstandard characters in positions 128-160 show up as questionmarks. The + usual culprit is the misnamed ‘smart quotes’ feature in + Microsoft Word. For more details (and a program called + demoroniser that cleans up the mess) see http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/.
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 unit.
3. In the TeX world and the computerized typesetting world in + general, a program that translates some device-independent or other common + format to something a real device can actually understand.
[from android, SF terminology + for a humanoid robot of essentially biological (as opposed to + mechanical/electronic) construction] A person (esp. a low-level bureaucrat + or service-business employee) exhibiting most of the following + characteristics: (a) naive trust in the wisdom of the parent organization + or ‘the system’; (b) a blind-faith propensity to believe + obvious nonsense emitted by authority figures (or computers!); (c) a + rule-governed mentality, one unwilling or unable to look beyond the + ‘letter of the law’ in exceptional situations; (d) a paralyzing + fear of official reprimand or worse if Procedures are not followed No + Matter What; and (e) no interest in doing anything above or beyond the call + of a very narrowly-interpreted duty, or in particular in fixing that which + is broken; an “It's not my job, man” attitude.
Typical droid positions include supermarket checkout assistant and + bank clerk; the syndrome is also endemic in low-level government employees. + The implication is that the rules and official procedures constitute + software that the droid is executing; problems arise when the software has + not been properly debugged. The term droid + mentality is also used to describe the mindset behind this + behavior. Compare suit, + marketroid; see -oid.
In England there is equivalent mainstream slang; a + ‘jobsworth’ is an obstructive, rule-following bureaucrat, often + of the uniformed or suited variety. Named for the habit of denying a + reasonable request by sucking his teeth and saying “Oh no, guv, sorry + I can't help you: that's more than my job's worth”.
Ignorant sales or customer service personnel in computer or + electronics superstores. Characterized by a lack of even superficial + knowledge about the products they sell, yet possessed of the conviction + that they are more competent than their hacker customers. Usage: + “That video board probably sucks, it was recommended by a drone at + Fry's” In the year 2000, their natural habitats include Fry's + Electronics, Best Buy, and CompUSA.
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 example, this is an actual quote from Apple's + LaserWriter manual: “Do not expose your LaserWriter to open fire or + flame.” The SGI Indy manual included the line “[Do not] dangle + the mouse by the cord or throw it at coworkers.”
[prob.: by analogy with drop-outs] 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-outs, + sense 2.
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 sites that lose messages. See also + black hole, + bit bucket.
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 (one cause of such behavior under Unix when a bad + connection to a modem swamps the processor with spurious character + interrupts; see screaming tty).
3. Mental glitches; used as a way of describing those occasions when + the mind just seems to shut down for a couple of beats. See + glitch, fried.
(also on drugs)
1. Conspicuously stupid, heading toward + brain-damaged. Often accompanied by a pantomime of + toking a joint.
2. Of hardware, very slow relative to normal performance.
Ancient techspeak term referring to slow, cylindrical magnetic media + that were once state-of-the-art storage devices. Under some versions of + BSD Unix the disk partition used for swapping is still called + /dev/drum; this has led to considerable humor and not + a few straight-faced but utterly bogus ‘explanations’ getting + foisted on newbies. See also “ The Story of Mel'” in Appendix + A.
(also mouse on drugs) 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 + corrected by unplugging the mouse 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 steel ball on the mouse had + picked 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 frequent. Finally, the mouse was + declared ‘alcoholic’ and sent to the clinic to be dried out in + a CFC ultrasonic bath.
[common] Spoken-only shorthand for the “www” (double-u + double-u double-u) in many web host names. Nothing to do with the style of + reggae music called ‘dub’.
A terminal that is one step above a + glass tty, having a minimally addressable cursor but no on-screen + editing or other features normally supported by a + smart terminal. Once upon a time, when glass ttys were common and + addressable cursors were something special, what is now called a dumb + terminal could pass for a smart terminal.
[Purdue] 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.
Simplified, with a strong connotation of + oversimplified. 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 smart. This creates friction. + See user-friendly.
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 + describing the byte-by-byte state of memory, mass storage, or some file. + In elder days, debugging was generally done by + groveling over a dump (see + grovel); increasing use of high-level languages and + interactive debuggers has made such tedium uncommon, and the term dump now has a faintly archaic flavor.
2. A backup. This usage is typical only at large timesharing + installations.
1. The practice of sifting refuse from an office or technical + installation to extract confidential data, especially security-compromising + information (‘dumpster’ is an Americanism for what is elsewhere + called a skip). Back in AT&T's + monopoly days, before paper shredders became common office equipment, phone + phreaks (see phreaking) used to organize regular + dumpster runs against phone company plants and offices. Discarded and + damaged copies of AT&T internal manuals taught them much. The + technique is still rumored to be a favorite of crackers operating against + careless targets.
2. The practice of raiding the dumpsters behind buildings where + producers and/or consumers of high-tech equipment are located, with the + expectation (usually justified) of finding discarded but still-valuable + equipment to be nursed back to health in some hacker's den. Experienced + dumpster-divers not infrequently accumulate basements full of moldering + (but still potentially useful) cruft.
Old software (especially applications) which one is obliged to + remain compatible with, or to maintain (DP types + call this legacy code, a term hackers + consider smarmy and excessively reverent). The term implies that the + software in question is a holdover from card-punch days. Used esp. when + referring to old scientific and number-crunching + software, much of which was written in FORTRAN and very poorly documented + but is believed to be too expensive to replace. See + fossil; compare + crawling horror.
32 bits, by analogy with nybble and + byte. Usage: rare and extremely silly. See also + playte, tayste, + crumb. General discussion of such terms is under + nybble.
[abbreviation, Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code] An + alleged character set used on IBM dinosaurs. It + exists in at least six mutually incompatible versions, all featuring such + delights as non-contiguous letter sequences and the absence of several + ASCII punctuation characters fairly important for modern computer languages + (exactly which characters are absent varies according to which version of + EBCDIC you're looking at). IBM adapted EBCDIC from + punched card code in the early 1960s and promulgated it as a + customer-control tactic (see connector conspiracy), + spurning the already established ASCII standard. Today, IBM claims to be + an open-systems company, but IBM's own description of the EBCDIC variants + and how to convert between them is still internally classified top-secret, + burn-before-reading. Hackers blanch at the very name + of EBCDIC and consider it a manifestation of purest + evil. See also + fear and loathing.
[AI community] 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 people associate it with addition. 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 by Joseph Weizenbaum, + which simulated a Rogerian psychotherapist by rephrasing many of the + patient's statements as questions and posing them to the 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. All this was due to people's 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 system. + Compare ad-hockery; see also + AI-complete. Sources for a clone of the original + Eliza are available at ftp://ftp.cc.utexas.edu/pub/AI_ATTIC/Programs/Classic/Eliza/Eliza.c.
[from Editing MACroS] The ne plus ultra of hacker editors, a + programmable text editor with an entire LISP system inside it. It was + originally written by Richard Stallman in TECO under + ITS at the MIT AI lab; AI Memo 554 described it as + “an advanced, self-documenting, customizable, extensible real-time + display editor”. It has since been reimplemented any number of + times, by various hackers, and versions exist that run under most major + operating systems. Perhaps the most widely used version, also written by + Stallman and now called “GNU EMACS” or + GNUMACS, runs principally under Unix. (Its close + relative XEmacs is the second most popular version.) It includes + facilities to run compilation subprocesses and send and receive mail or + news; many hackers spend up to 80% of their tube + time inside it. Other variants include + GOSMACS, CCA EMACS, UniPress EMACS, Montgomery + EMACS, jove, epsilon, and MicroEMACS. (Though we use the original all-caps + spelling here, it is nowadays very commonly ‘Emacs’.) Some + EMACS versions running under window managers iconify as an overflowing + kitchen sink, perhaps to suggest the one feature the editor does not (yet) + include. Indeed, some hackers find EMACS too + heavyweight and baroque for + their taste, and expand the name as ‘Escape Meta Alt Control + Shift’ to spoof its heavy reliance on keystrokes decorated with + bucky bits. Other spoof expansions include + ‘Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping’ (from when that was a + lot of core), ‘Eventually + malloc()s + All Computer Storage’, and ‘EMACS Makes A Computer Slow’ + (see recursive acronym). See also + vi.
See spam.
[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 + representing notional synchronization bytes), and expect a return of + ACK or NAK depending on + whether or not the person felt interruptible. Compare + ping, finger, and the usage + of FOO? listed under + talk mode.
[IRC, Usenet] Abbreviation: End of Discussion. Used when the speaker + believes he has stated his case and will not respond to further arguments + or attacks.
[abbreviation, ‘End Of File’]
1. [techspeak] The out-of-band value returned + by C's sequential character-input functions (and their equivalents in other + environments) when end of file has been reached. This value is usually + -1 under C libraries postdating V6 Unix, but was + originally 0. DOS hackers think EOF is ^Z, and a few + Amiga hackers think it's ^\.
2. [Unix] The keyboard character (usually control-D, the ASCII EOT + (End Of Transmission) character) that is mapped by the terminal driver into + an end-of-file condition.
3. Used by extension in non-computer contexts when a human is doing + something that can be modeled as a sequential read and can't go further. + “Yeah, I looked for a list of 360 mnemonics to post as a joke, but I + hit EOF pretty fast; all the library had was a JCL + manual.” See also EOL.
[End Of Line] 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.
The mnemonic of a mythical ASCII control character (End Of User) + that would make an ASR-33 Teletype explode on receipt. This construction + parodies the numerous obscure delimiter and control characters left in + ASCII from the days when it was associated more with wire-service teletypes + than computers (e.g., FS, GS, RS, US, EM, SUB, ETX, and esp. EOT). It is + worth remembering that ASR-33s were big, noisy mechanical beasts with a lot + of clattering parts; the notion that one might explode was nowhere near as + ridiculous as it might seem to someone sitting in front of a + tube or flatscreen today.
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 instruction that exchanged the contents of a register and + a memory location. Many newer hackers are probably thinking instead of the + PostScript exchange operator (which is usually + written in lowercase).
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 executables + don't have any required suffix.
[from the custom of the Easter Egg hunt observed in the U.S. and + many parts of Europe]
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 some undocumented set of commands 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 elaborate eggs hidden in ROM, including lists of the developers' + names, political exhortations, snatches of music, and (in one case) + graphics images of the entire development team.
[IBM] The act of replacing unrelated components 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. See also the jokes under + field circus. Compare + shotgun debugging.
The road mundanely called El Camino Real, running along San + Francisco peninsula. It originally extended all the way down to Mexico + City; many portions of the old road are still intact. Navigation on the + San Francisco peninsula is usually done relative to El Camino Real, which + defines logical north and south even though it isn't + really north-south in many places. El Camino Real runs right past Stanford + University and so is familiar to hackers.
The Spanish word ‘real’ (which has two syllables: + /rayahl/) means + ‘royal’; El Camino Real is ‘the royal road’. In + the FORTRAN language, a real quantity + is a number typically precise to seven significant digits, and a double precision quantity is a larger + floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen 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 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 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.
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 programming + language is at least as readable as English. Usage: mostly by old-time + hackers, though recognizable in context. Today the preferred shorthand is + simply source.
2. The official name of the database language used by the old Pick + Operating System, actually a sort of crufty, brain-damaged SQL with + delusions of grandeur. The name permitted + marketroids to say “Yes, and you can program + our computers in English!” to ignorant suits + without quite running afoul of the truth-in-advertising laws.
A shadowy group of mustachioed hackers named Eric first pinpointed + as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous talk.bizarre posting ca. 1987; this was + doubtless influenced by the numerous ‘Eric’ jokes in the Monty + Python oeuvre. There do indeed seem to be considerably 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 style) and Erik Fair (co-author of NNTP); + your editor has heard from more than a hundred others by email, and the + organization line ‘Eric Conspiracy Secret Laboratories’ now + emanates regularly from more than one site. See the Eric Conspiracy Web + Page at http://www.catb.org/~esr/ecsl/ for full + details.
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 a more benign personification of creative anarchy starting in + 1959 by the adherents of Discordianism and has since + been a semi-serious subject of veneration in several ‘fringe’ + cultures, including hackerdom. See Discordianism, + Church of the SubGenius.
[from Ronald Reagan's famous characterization of the communist + Soviet Union] Formerly IBM, now + Microsoft. Functionally, the company most hackers + love to hate at any given time. Hackers like to see themselves as romantic + rebels against the Evil Empire, and frequently adopt this role to the point + of ascribing rather more power and malice to the Empire than it actually + has. See also Borg and search for ‘Evil + Empire’ pages on the Web.
A generic obscenity that quickly entered wide use on the Internet + and Usenet after the passage of the Communications Decency Act. From the + last name of Senator James Exon (Democrat-Nebraska), primary author of the + CDA. This usage outlasted the CDA itself, which was + quashed a little over a year later by one of the most acerbic + pro-free-speech opinions ever uttered by the Supreme Court. The campaign + against it was led by an alliance of hackers and civil libertarians, and + was the first effective political mobilization of the hacker + culture. Use of Exon's name as an expletive outlived the CDA controversy + itself.
Used within Microsoft to refer to the Windows Explorer, the + web-interface component of Windows 95 and WinNT 4. Our spies report that + most of the heavy guns at MS came from a Unix background and use command + line utilities; even they are scornful of the over-gingerbreaded + WIMP environments that they have been called upon to + create.
A construction popularized among hackers by the infamous + CPU Wars comic; supposedly derived from a famously + turgid line in a WWII-era anti-Nazi propaganda comic that ran “Eat + flaming death, non-Aryan mongrels!” or something of the sort + (however, it is also reported that on the Firesign Theatre's 1975 album + In The Next World, You're On Your Own a character + won the right to scream “Eat flaming death, fascist media + pigs” in the middle of Oscar night on a game show; this may have + been an influence). Used in humorously overblown expressions of + hostility. “Eat flaming death, EBCDIC + users!”
IPM tells us to eat flaming death.
“ed is the standard text editor.” Line taken from the + original Unix manual page on ed, an ancient + line-oriented editor that is by now used only by a few + Real Programmers, and even then only for batch operations. The + original line is sometimes uttered near the beginning of an emacs vs. vi + holy war on Usenet, with the (vain) hope to quench + the discussion before it really takes off. Often followed by a standard + text describing the many virtues of ed (such as the small memory + footprint on a Timex Sinclair, and the consistent + (because nearly non-existent) user interface).
The binary code that is the payload for buffer overflow and format + string attacks. Typically, an egg written in assembly and designed to + enable remote access or escalate privileges from an ordinary user account + to administrator level when it hatches. Also known as shellcode.
The name comes from a particular buffer-overflow exploit that was + co-written by a cracker named eggplant. The variable name + ‘egg’ was used to store the payload. The usage + spread from people who saw and analyzed the code. +
To search the net for your name or links to your web pages. Perhaps + connected to long-established SF-fan slang egoscan, to search for one's name in a + fanzine.
[IBM] 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) the founder of IBM, will be + buried ‘face down, 9-edge first’ (the 9-edge being the bottom + of the card). This directive is inscribed on IBM's 1402 and 1622 card + readers and is referenced in a famous bit of doggerel called The + Last Bug, the climactic lines of which are as follows:
+Hediedattheconsole
+Ofhungerandthirst.
+Nextdayhewasburied,
+Facedown,9-edgefirst.
+
The eighty-column mind was thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's + customer base and its thinking. This only began to change in the mid-1990s + when IBM began to reinvent itself after the triumph of the + killer micro. See IBM, + fear and loathing, + code grinder. A copy of The Last Bug lives + on the the GNU site at http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/last.bug.html.
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 also elvish and + Great Worm.
[common; from mathematical usage] Combining simplicity, power, and a + certain ineffable grace of design. Higher praise than + ‘clever’, ‘winning’, or even + cuspy.
The French aviator, adventurer, and author Antoine de + Saint-Exupry, probably best known for his classic children's book + The Little Prince, was also an aircraft designer. + He gave us perhaps the best definition of engineering elegance when he said + “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is + nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take + away.”
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 (as in the old joke about being in bed + with an elephant) it's tough to have around all the same (and, like a + pachyderm, difficult to maintain). In extreme cases, hackers have been + known to make trumpeting sounds or perform expressive proboscatory mime at + the mention of the offending program. Usage: semi-humorous. Compare + ‘has the elephant nature’ and the somewhat more pejorative + monstrosity. See also + second-system effect and baroque.
An 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 really stupid, + memory-limited 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 several + holy wars.
Clueful. Plugged-in. One of the cognoscenti. Also used as a + general positive adjective. This term is not actually native hacker slang; + it is used primarily by crackers and warez d00dz, + for which reason hackers use it only with heavy irony. The term used to + refer to the folks allowed in to the “hidden” or + “privileged” sections of BBSes in the early 1980s (which, + typically, contained pirated software). Frequently, early boards would only + let you post, or even see, a certain subset of the sections (or + ‘boards’) on a BBS. Those who got to the frequently legendary + ‘triple super secret’ boards were elite. Misspellings of this + term in warez d00dz style abound; the forms l337 eleet, and 31337 (among others) have been sighted.
A true hacker would be more likely to use + ‘wizardly’. Oppose lamer.
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’ languages, this system (which is both + visually and phonetically elegant) has long + fascinated hackers (who tend to be intrigued by artificial languages in + general). It is traditional for graphics printers, plotters, window + systems, and the like to support a Feanorian typeface as one of their demo + items. See also elder days.
2. By extension, any odd or unreadable typeface produced by a + graphics device.
3. The typeface mundanely called ‘Bcklin’, an + art-Noveau display font.
(also written ‘e-mail’ and ‘E-mail’)
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 word emailed + is actually listed in the OED; it means “embossed (with a raised + pattern) or perh. arranged in a net or open work”. A use from 1480 + is given. The word is probably derived from French maill (enameled) and related to + Old French emmaillere + (network). A French correspondent tells us that in modern French, + ‘email’ is a hard enamel obtained by heating special paints in + a furnace; an ‘emailleur’ (no final e) is a craftsman who makes + email (he generally paints some objects (like, say, jewelry) and cooks them + in a furnace).
There are numerous spelling variants of this word. In Internet + traffic up to 1995, ‘email’ predominates, ‘e-mail’ + runs a not-too-distant second, and ‘E-mail’ and + ‘Email’ are a distant third and fourth.
[common] An ASCII glyph used to indicate an emotional state in email + or news. Although originally intended mostly as jokes, emoticons (or some + other explicit humor indication) are virtually required under certain + circumstances in high-volume text-only communication forums such as Usenet; + the lack of verbal and visual cues can otherwise cause what were intended + to be humorous, sarcastic, ironic, or otherwise non-100%-serious comments + to be badly misinterpreted (not always even by + newbies), resulting in arguments and + flame wars.
Hundreds of emoticons have been proposed, but only a few are in + common use. These include:
| :-) | ‘smiley face’ (for humor, + laughter, friendliness, occasionally sarcasm) |
| :-( | ‘frowney face’ (for sadness, + anger, or upset) |
| ;-) | ‘half-smiley’ ( + ha ha only serious); also known as semi-smiley or winkey face. |
| :-/ | ‘wry face’ |
(These may become more comprehensible if you + tilt your head sideways, to the left.) The first two listed are by far the + most frequently encountered. Hyphenless forms of them are common on + CompuServe, GEnie, and BIX; see also bixie. On + Usenet, smiley + is often used as a generic term synonymous with + emoticon, as well as specifically for the happy-face + emoticon.
The invention of the original smiley and frowney emoticons is + generally credited to Scott Fahlman at CMU in 1982. He later wrote: + “I wish I had saved the original post, or at least recorded the date + for posterity, but I had no idea that I was starting something that would + soon pollute all the world's communication channels.” In September + 2002 the original post was + recovered.
There is a rival claim by one Kevin McKenzie, who seems to have + proposed the smiley on the MsgGroup mailing list, April 12 1979. It seems + likely these two inventions were independent. Users of the PLATO + educational system + report using emoticons composed from overlaid dot-matrix graphics + in the 1970s.
Note for the newbie: Overuse of the smiley is + a mark of loserhood! More than one per paragraph is a fairly sure sign + that you've gone over the line.
Any of a family of military simulations derived from a game written + by Peter Langston many years ago. A number of multi-player variants of + varying degrees of sophistication exist, and one single-player version + implemented for both Unix and VMS; the latter is even available as + MS-DOS/Windows freeware. All are notoriously addictive. Of various + commercial derivatives the best known is probably “Empire + Deluxe” on PCs and Amigas.
Modern empire is a real-time wargame played over the internet by up + to 120 players. Typical games last from 24 hours (blitz) to a couple of + months (long term). The amount of sleep you can get while playing is a + function of the rate at which updates occur and the number of co-rulers of + your country. Empire server software is available for Unix-like machines, + and clients for Unix and other platforms. A comprehensive history of the + game is available at http://www.empire.cx/infopages/History.html. + The Empire resource site is at http://www.empire.cx/.
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 does a lot + of noisy crunching, such as a database + engine.
The hacker senses of engine are + actually close to its original, pre-Industrial-Revolution sense of a skill, + clever device, or instrument (the word is cognate to + ‘ingenuity’). This sense had not been completely eclipsed by + the modern connotation of power-transducing machinery in Charles Babbage's + time, which explains why he named the stored-program computer that he + designed in 1844 the Analytical + Engine.
Common 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 declaring the bug itself to be a + feature.
[Unix: prob.: from astronomical timekeeping] The time and date + corresponding to 0 in an operating system's clock and timestamp values. + Under most Unix versions the epoch is 00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970; under + VMS, it's 00:00:00 of November 17, 1858 (base date of the U.S. Naval + Observatory's ephemerides); on a Macintosh, it's the midnight beginning + January 1 1904. System time is measured in seconds or + ticks past the epoch. Weird problems may ensue when + the clock wraps around (see wrap around), which is + not necessarily a rare event; on systems counting 10 ticks per second, a + signed 32-bit count of ticks is good only for 6.8 years. The + 1-tick-per-second clock of Unix is good only until January 18, 2038, + assuming at least some software continues to consider it signed and that + word lengths don't increase by then. See also + wall time. Microsoft Windows, on the other hand, has an epoch + problem every 49.7 days — but this is seldom noticed as Windows is almost + incapable of staying up continuously for that long.
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 with it is + epsilon, and the cost of the ten-dollar cable to + connect them is epsilon squared. Compare + lost in the underflow, lost in the noise.
[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 practical purposes, even closer than + being within delta of. “That's + not what I asked for, but it's within epsilon of what I wanted.” + Alternatively, it may mean not close enough, but very little is required to + get it there: “My program is within epsilon of + working.”
Syn. epoch. Webster's Unabridged makes these + words almost synonymous, but era more + often connotes a span of time rather than a point in time, whereas the + reverse is true for epoch. The + epoch usage is recommended.
[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.
1. [XEROX PARC] Predicating one research effort upon the success of + another.
2. Allowing your own research effort to be placed on the critical + path of some other project (be it a research effort or not).
a demo, sense 4
Both evil and rude, + but with the additional connotation that the rudeness was due to malice + rather than incompetence. Thus, for example: Microsoft's Windows NT is + evil because it's a competent implementation + of a bad design; it's rude because it's + gratuitously incompatible with Unix in places where compatibility would + have been as easy and effective to do; but it's evil and + rude because the incompatibilities are apparently there not to + fix design bugs in Unix but rather to lock hapless customers and developers + into the Microsoft way. Hackish evil and + rude is close to the mainstream sense of + ‘evil’.
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 not imply + incompetence or bad design, but rather a set of goals or design criteria + fatally incompatible with the speaker's. This usage is more an esthetic + and engineering judgment than a moral one in the mainstream sense. + “We thought about adding a Blue Glue interface + but decided it was too evil to deal with.” + “TECO is neat, but it can be pretty evil if + you're prone to typos.” Often pronounced with the first syllable + lengthened, as /eeee'vil/. + Compare evil and rude.
[SI] See quantifiers.
The process of grovelling through a + core dump or hex image in an attempt to discover the + bug that brought a program or system down. The reference is to divination + from the entrails of a sacrificed animal. Compare + runes, incantation, + black art.
Abbreviation for ‘exclamation point’. See + bang, shriek, + ASCII.
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 EXEC 2 and EXEC 8 operating systems. +
3. At IBM and VM/CMS shops, the equivalent of a shell command file + (among VM/CMS users).
The mainstream ‘exec’ as an abbreviation for (human) + executive is not used. To a hacker, an + ‘exec’ is always a program, never a person.
[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 been attached to unsolved research problems by authors + possessed of either an evil sense of humor or a vast faith in the + capabilities of their audiences.
[originally cracker slang]
1. A vulnerability in software that can be used for breaking + security or otherwise attacking an Internet host over the network. The + Ping O' Death is a famous exploit.
2. More grammatically, a program that exploits an exploit in sense + 1.
A memo pad, palmtop computer, or written notes. “Hold on + while I write that to external memory”. The analogy is with store + or DRAM versus nonvolatile disk storage on computers.
[from mainstream slang “ear candy”] A display of some + sort that's presented to lusers to keep them + distracted while the program performs necessary background tasks. + “Give 'em some eye candy while the back-end + slurps that BLOB into + core.” Reported as mainstream usage among players of graphics-heavy + computer games. We're also told this term is mainstream slang for soft + pornography, but that sense does not appear to be live among + hackers.
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.
[common; Usenet] Syn FAQ, sense 2.
[Usenet]
1. A Frequently Asked Question.
2. A compendium of accumulated lore, posted periodically to + high-volume newsgroups in an attempt to forestall such questions. Some + people prefer the term ‘FAQ list’ or ‘FAQL’ + /fakl/, reserving + ‘FAQ’ for sense 1.
This lexicon itself serves as a good example of a collection of one + kind of lore, although it is far too big for a regular FAQ posting. + Examples: “What is the proper type of NULL?” and “What's + that funny name for the # character?” are both + Frequently Asked Questions. Several FAQs refer readers to the Jargon + File.
Syn. FAQ list.
[acronym, by analogy with FIFO (First In, First Out)] ‘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 may be applied to any + network that is running really slowly or exhibiting extreme + flakiness.
[Thinking Machines, Inc.] Fixed In The Next Release. A written-only + notation attached to bug reports. Often wishful thinking.
[common] A standard tag often put in C comments near a piece of code + that needs work. The point of doing so is that a grep or a similar pattern-matching tool can find all + such places quickly.
+/*FIXME:notethisiscommoninGNUcode.*/
+
Compare XXX.
1. [common] Not ‘Frequency + Modulation’ but rather an abbreviation for ‘Fucking + Manual’, the back-formation from RTFM. Used to + refer to the manual itself in the RTFM. “Have + you seen the Networking FM lately?”
2. Abbreviation for “Fucking Magic”, used in the sense + of black magic.
[Usenet; common] Acronym for ‘Friend Of A Friend’. The + source of an unverified, possibly untrue story. This term was not + originated by hackers (it is used in Jan Brunvand's books on urban + folklore), but is much better recognized on Usenet and elsewhere than in + mainstream English.
[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 total death of <player>, usually as punishment for + obnoxious behavior. This usage migrated to other circumstances, such as + “I'm going to fod the process that is burning all the + cycles.”
In aviation, FOD means Foreign Object Damage, e.g., what happens when + a jet engine sucks up a rock on the runway or a bird in flight. Finger of + Death is a distressingly apt description of what this generally does to the + engine.
[obs.] Abbreviation for “Freely Redistributable + Software” which entered general use on the Internet in 1995 after + years of low-level confusion over what exactly to call software written to + be passed around and shared (contending terms including + freeware, shareware, and + sourceware were never universally + felt to be satisfactory for various subtle reasons). The first formal + conference on freely redistributable software was held in Cambridge, + Massachussetts, in February 1996 (sponsored by the Free Software + Foundation). The conference organizers used the FRS abbreviation heavily in + its calls for papers and other literature during 1995. The term was in + steady though not common use until 1998 and the invention of + open source, after which it became swiftly + obsolete.
Common abbreviation (both spoken and written) for the name of the + Free Software Foundation, a nonprofit educational association formed to + support the GNU project.
The Failed UniBus Address Register in a VAX. + A good example of how jargon can occasionally be snuck past the + suits; see foobar, and + foo for a fuller etymology.
1, [from FUD] Historically, 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 conflict about Unix + standards was one outstanding example; Microsoft vs. Netscape vs. W3C about + HTML standards is another.
2. Since about 2000 the FUD wars have a different character; the + battle over open standards has been partly replaced and partly subsumed by + the argument between closed- and open source + proponents. Nowadays, accordingly, the term is most likely to be used of + anti-open-source propaganda emitted by Microsoft. Compare + astroturfing.
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 course, was to persuade them to go + with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This implicit + coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would + happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the + future of competitors' equipment or software. See + IBM. After 1990 the term FUD was associated + increasingly frequently with Microsoft, and has + become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a + competitive weapon.
[In 2003, SCO sued IBM in an action which, among other things, + alleged SCO's proprietary control of Linux. The SCO + suit rapidly became infamous for the number and magnitude of falsehoods + alleged in SCO's filings. In October 2003, SCO's lawyers filed a memorandum + in which they actually had the temerity to link to the web version of + this entry in furtherance of their claims. Whilst we + appreciate the compliment of being treated as an authority, we can return + it only by observing that SCO has become a nest of liars and thieves + compared to which IBM at its historic worst looked positively + angelic. Any judge or law clerk reading this should surf through to + my collected resources on this + topic for the appalling details.—ESR]
A worldwide hobbyist network of personal computers which exchanges + mail, discussion groups, and files. Founded in 1984 and originally + consisting only of IBM PCs and compatibles, FidoNet now includes such + diverse machines as Apple ][s, Ataris, Amigas, and Unix systems. For years + FidoNet actually grew faster than Usenet, but the advent of cheap Internet + access probably means its days are numbered. FidoNet's site count has + dropped from 38K nodes in 1996 through 15K nodes in 2001 to 10K nodes in + late 2003, and most of those are probably single-user machines rather than + the thriving BBSes of yore.
The generalized or ‘folk’ version of + Murphy's Law, fully named “Finagle's Law of Dynamic + Negatives” and usually rendered “Anything that can go wrong, + will”. May have been first published by Francis P. Chisholm in his + 1963 essay The Chisholm Effect, later reprinted in + the classic anthology A Stress Analysis Of A Strapless Evening + Gown: And Other Essays For A Scientific Eye (Robert Baker ed, + Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-852608-7).
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 worship of the dread god Finagle and his mad + prophet Murphy. Some technical and scientific cultures (e.g., + paleontologists) know it under the name Sod's + Law; this usage may be more common in Great Britain. One + variant favored among hackers is “The perversity of the Universe + tends towards a maximum”; Niven specifically referred to this as + O'Toole's Corollary of Finagle's Law. See also + Hanlon's Razor.
Standard name for any font that is so tiny as to be unreadable (by + analogy with names like Helvetica 10 + for 10-point Helvetica). Legal boilerplate is usually printed in Flyspeck + 3.
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 name itself came from + FOO NLI, an error message emitted by a PDP-10 assembler at SAIL meaning + “FOO is Not a Legal Identifier”. The intention was to + leapfrog from the old DEC timesharing system SAIL + was then running to a new generation, bypassing TENEX which at that time + was the ARPANET standard. ARPA funding for both the Super Foonly and the + new operating system was cut in 1974. Most of the design team went to DEC + and contributed greatly to the design of the PDP-10 model KL10.
2. The name of the company formed by Dave Poole, one of the + principal Super Foonly designers, and one of hackerdom's more colorful + personalities. Many people remember the parrot which sat on Poole's + shoulder and was a regular companion.
3. Any of the machines built by Poole's company. The first was the + F-1 (a.k.a. Super Foonly), which was the computational engine used to + create the graphics in the movie TRON. The F-1 was + the fastest PDP-10 ever built, but only one was ever made. The effort + drained Foonly of its financial resources, and the company turned towards + building smaller, slower, and much less expensive machines. Unfortunately, + these ran not the popular TOPS-20 but a TENEX + variant called Foonex; this seriously limited their market. Also, the + machines shipped were actually wire-wrapped engineering prototypes + requiring individual attention from more than usually competent site + personnel, and thus had significant reliability problems. Poole's + legendary temper and unwillingness to suffer fools gladly did not help + matters. By the time DEC's “Jupiter Project” followon to the + PDP-10 was cancelled in 1983, Foonly's proposal to build another F-1 was + eclipsed by the Mars, and the company never quite + recovered. See the Mars entry for the continuation + and moral of this story.
“The truly insane have enough on their plates without us adding + to it.” That is, flaming someone with an obvious mental problem + can't make it any better. Most often cited on alt.usenet.kooks as a reason + not to issue a Kook-of the-Month Award; often cited as + a companion to Godwin's Law.
Hackerism for the FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator) language, referring + to its primitive design, gross and irregular syntax, limited control + constructs, and slippery, exception-filled semantics.
1. A mostly-working computer thrown together from the spare parts of + several machines out of which the magic smoke had + been let. Most shops have a closet full of nonworking machines. When a + new machine is needed immediately (for testing, for example) and there is + no time (or budget) to requisition a new box, someone (often an intern) is + tasked with building a Frankenputer.
2. Also used in referring to a machine that once was a name-brand + computer, but has been upgraded long beyond its useful life, to the point + at which the nameplate violates truth-in-advertising laws (e.g., a Pentium + III-class machine inexplicably living in a case marked “Gateway + 486/66”).
J. Random Hacker's cousin. Any typical human + being, more or less synonymous with ‘someone’ except that Fred + Foobar can be backreferenced by name later on. + “So Fred Foobar will enter his phone number into the database, and + it'll be archived with the others. Months later, when Fred + searches...” See also Bloggs Family and + Dr. Fred Mbogo
See monty, sense 2.
[common] Time spent interacting with somebody face-to-face (as + opposed to via electronic links). “Oh, yeah, I spent some face time + with him at the last Usenix.”
See coefficient of X.
[FreeBSD; orig. a typo for fairness] A term thrown out in discussion + whenever a completely and transparently nonsensical argument in one's + favor(?) seems called for, e,g. at the end of a really long thread for + which the outcome is no longer even cared about since everyone is now so + sick of it; or in rebuttal to another nonsensical argument (“Change + the loader to look for /kernel.pl? What about fairings?”)
[IBM] Yet another synonym for crash or + lose. ‘Fall over hard’ equates to + crash and burn.
(n. fallthrough, var.: + fall-through)
1. To exit a loop by exhaustion, i.e., by having fulfilled its exit + condition rather than via a break or exception condition that exits from + the middle of it. This usage appears to be really + old, dating from the 1940s and 1950s.
2. To fail a test that would have passed control to a subroutine or + some other distant portion of code.
3. In C, ‘fall-through’ occurs when the flow of + execution in a switch statement reaches a case label other than by jumping there from the + switch header, passing a point where one would normally expect to find a + break. A trivial example:
+switch(color)
+{
+caseGREEN:
+do_green();
+break;
+casePINK:
+do_pink();
+/*FALLTHROUGH*/
+caseRED:
+do_red();
+break;
+default:
+do_blue();
+break;
+}
+
The variant spelling /* FALL THRU */ is also + common.
The effect of the above code is to + do_green() + when color is GREEN, + do_red() + when color is RED, + do_blue() + on any other color other than PINK, and + (and this is the important part) + do_pink() + and then + do_red() + when color is PINK. Fall-through is + considered harmful by some, though there are + contexts (such as the coding of state machines) in which it is natural; it + is generally considered good practice to include a comment highlighting the + fall-through where one would normally expect a break. See also + Duff's device.
Without qualification, indicates a fan of science fiction, + especially one who goes to cons and tends to hang + out with other fans. Many hackers are fans, so this term has been imported + from fannish slang; however, unlike much fannish slang it is recognized by + most non-fannish hackers. Among SF fans the plural is correctly fen, but this usage is not automatic to + hackers. “Laura reads the stuff occasionally but isn't really a + fan.”
[Unix/C hackers, from the Iberian dance] In C, a wild pointer that + runs out of bounds, causing a core dump, or corrupts + the + malloc(3) + arena in such a way as to cause mysterious failures + later on, is sometimes said to have ‘done a fandango on core’. + On low-end personal machines without an MMU (or Windows boxes, which have + an MMU but use it incompetently), this can corrupt the OS itself, causing + massive lossage. Other frenetic dances, such as the cha-cha or the watusi, + may be substituted. See aliasing bug, + precedence lossage, smash the + stack, memory leak, memory + smash, overrun screw, + core.
[US Geological Survey] To start any hyper-addictive process or + trend, or to continue adding current to such a trend. Telling one user + about a new octo-tetris game you compiled would be a faradizing act — + in two weeks you might find your entire department playing the faradic + game.
[DeVry Institute of Technology, Atlanta] + Syn. hosed. Poss. owes something to Yiddish + farblondjet and/or the ‘Farkle + Family’ skits on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, + a popular comedy show of the late 1960s.
A group of machines, especially a large group of near-identical + machines running load-balancing software, dedicated to a single task. + Historically the term server farm, + used especially for a group of web servers, seems to have been coined by + analogy with earlier disk farm in the early 1990s; + generalization began with render farm + for a group of machines dedicated to rendering computer animations (this + term appears to have been popularized by publicity about the pioneering + “Linux render farm” used to produce the movie + Titanic). By 2001 other combinations such as + “compile farm” and “compute farm” were + increasingly common, and arguably borderline techspeak. More jargon uses + seem likely to arise (and be absorbed into techspeak over time) as new uses + are discovered for networked machine clusters. Compare + link farm.
1. [common] Said of a computer system with excessive or annoying + security barriers, usage limits, or access policies. The implication is + that said policies are preventing hackers from getting interesting work + done. The variant fascistic seems to + have been preferred at MIT, poss. by analogy with touristic (see tourist + or under the influence of German/Yiddish faschistisch).
2. In the design of languages and other software tools, the fascist alternative is the most restrictive + and structured way of capturing a particular function; the implication is + that this may be desirable in order to simplify the implementation or + provide tighter error checking. Compare bondage-and-discipline + language, although that term is global rather than + local.
Old-time hacker David Cargill's theory on the causation of computer + glitches. Your typical electric utility draws its line current out of the + big generators with a pair of coil taps located near the top of the dynamo. + When the normal tap brushes get dirty, they take them off line to clean + them up, and use special auxiliary taps on the bottom + of the coil. Now, this is a 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. Obviously, fat + electrons must gain mass by bogon absorption + —ESR] Compare bogon, magic + smoke.
1. To introduce a typo while editing in such a way that the + resulting manglification of a configuration file does something useless, + damaging, or wildly unexpected. “NSI fat-fingered their DNS zone file + and took half the net down again.”
2. More generally, any typo that produces dramatically bad + results.
A high-bandwidth connection to the Internet. When the term gained + currency in the mid-1990s, a T-1 (at 1.5 Mbits/second) was considered a fat + pipe, but the standard has risen. Now it suggests multiple T3s.
Non-functional; buggy. Same denotation as + bletcherous, losing, q.v., + but the connotation is much milder.
[from Hunter S. Thompson] A state inspired by the prospect of + dealing with certain real-world systems and standards that are totally + brain-damaged but ubiquitous — Intel 8086s, or + COBOL, or EBCDIC, or any + IBM machine bigger than a workstation. “Ack! + They want PCs to be able to talk to the AI machine. Fear and loathing + time!”
[poss. fr. slang ‘creature feature’ for a horror movie] +
1. One who loves to add features to designs or programs, perhaps at + the expense of coherence, concision, or taste. +
2. Alternately, a mythical being that induces otherwise rational + programmers to perpetrate such crocks. See also + feeping creaturism, creeping featurism.
[common] The result of creeping featurism, as + in “Emacs has a bad case of feature creep”.
[common] 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), splat, open-apple or (officially, in Mac + documentation) the command key. In + French, the term papillon (butterfly) has + been reported. The proliferation of terms for this creature may illustrate + one subtle peril of iconic interfaces.
Many people have been mystified by the cloverleaf-like symbol that + appears on the feature key. Its oldest name is ‘cross of St. + Hannes’, but it occurs in pre-Christian Viking art as a decorative + motif. Throughout Scandinavia today the road agencies use it to mark sites + of historical interest. Apple picked up the symbol from an early Mac + developer who happened to be Swedish. Apple documentation gives the + translation “interesting feature”!
There is some dispute as to the proper (Swedish) name of this symbol. + It technically stands for the word + sevrdhet (thing worth seeing); many of + these are old churches. Some Swedes report as an idiom for the sign the + word kyrka, cognate to English + ‘church’ and pronounced (roughly) /churka/ in modern Swedish. Others + say this is nonsense. Other idioms reported for the sign are + runa (rune) or runsten /roonstn/ (runestone), derived from + the fact that many of the interesting features are Viking rune-stones. The + term fornminne /foornmin'@/ (relic of + antiquity, ancient monument) is also reported, especially among those who + think that the Mac itself is a relic of antiquity.
[from Alvin Toffler's book title Future + Shock] A user's (or programmer's!) confusion when confronted + with a package that has too many features and poor introductory + material.
1. [common] A good property or behavior (as of a program). Whether + it was intended or not is immaterial.
2. [common] An intended property or behavior (as of a program). + Whether it is good or not is immaterial (but if bad, it is also a + misfeature).
3. A surprising property or behavior; in particular, one that is + purposely inconsistent because it works better that way — such an + inconsistency is therefore a feature and not a + bug. This kind of feature is sometimes called a + miswart; see that entry for a classic example. +
4. A property or behavior that is gratuitous or unnecessary, though + perhaps also impressive or cute. For example, one feature of Common LISP's + format function is the ability to print + numbers in two different Roman-numeral formats (see + bells whistles and gongs).
5. A property or behavior that was put in to help someone else but + that happens to be in your way.
6. [common] A bug that has been documented. To call something a + feature sometimes means the author of the program did not consider the + particular case, and that the program responded in a way that was + unexpected but not strictly incorrect. A standard joke is that a bug can + be turned into a feature simply by documenting it + (then theoretically no one can complain about it because it's in the + manual), or even by simply declaring it to be good. “That's not a + bug, that's a feature!” is a common catchphrase. See also + feetch feetch, + creeping featurism, wart, + green lightning.
The relationship among bugs, features, misfeatures, warts, and + miswarts might be clarified by the following hypothetical exchange between + two hackers on an airliner:
A: “This seat doesn't recline.”
B: “That's not a bug, that's a feature. There is an emergency + exit door built around the window behind you, and the route has to be kept + clear.”
A: “Oh. Then it's a misfeature; they should have increased the + spacing between rows here.”
B: “Yes. But if they'd increased spacing in only one section + it would have been a wart — they would've had to make + nonstandard-length ceiling panels to fit over the displaced + seats.”
A: “A miswart, actually. If they increased spacing throughout + they'd lose several rows and a chunk out of the profit margin. So unequal + spacing would actually be the Right Thing.”
B: “Indeed.”
Undocumented feature is a + common, allegedly humorous euphemism for a bug. + There's a related joke that is sometimes referred to as the + “one-question geek test”. You say to someone “I saw a + Volkswagen Beetle today with a vanity license plate that read + FEATURE”. If he/she laughs, he/she is a + geek.
The act of removing a feature from a program. Featurectomies come + in two flavors, the righteous and the + reluctant. Righteous featurectomies + are performed because the remover believes the program would be more + elegant without the feature, or there is already an equivalent and better + way to achieve the same end. (Doing so is not quite the same thing as + removing a misfeature.) Reluctant featurectomies + are performed to satisfy some external constraint such as code size or + execution speed.
1. n. The soft electronic + ‘bell’ sound of a display terminal (except for a VT-52); a beep + (in fact, the microcomputer world seems to prefer + beep).
2. vi. To cause the display to + make a feep sound. ASR-33s (the original TTYs) do not feep; they have + mechanical bells that ring. Alternate forms: beep, + ‘bleep’, or just about anything suitably onomatopoeic. (Jeff + MacNelly, in his comic strip Shoe, uses the word + ‘eep’ for sounds made by computer terminals and video games; + this is perhaps the closest written approximation yet.) The term + ‘breedle’ was sometimes heard at SAIL, where the terminal + bleepers are not particularly soft (they sound more like the musical + equivalent of a raspberry or Bronx cheer; for a close approximation, + imagine the sound of a Star Trek communicator's beep lasting for five + seconds). The ‘feeper’ on a VT-52 has been compared to the + sound of a '52 Chevy stripping its gears. See also + ding.
The device in a terminal or workstation (usually a loudspeaker of + some kind) that makes the feep sound.
[from feeping creaturism] An unnecessary + feature; a bit of chrome that, in the speaker's + judgment, is the camel's nose for a whole horde of new features.
A deliberate spoonerism for creeping + featurism, meant to imply that the system or program in + question has become a misshapen creature of hacks. This term isn't really + well defined, but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard + it. It is probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in + the dark making their customary noises.
If someone tells you about some new improvement to a program, you + might respond: “Feetch, feetch!” The meaning of this depends + critically on vocal inflection. With enthusiasm, it means something like + “Boy, that's great! What a great hack!” Grudgingly or with + obvious doubt, it means “I don't know; it sounds like just one more + unnecessary and complicated thing”. With a tone of resignation, it + means, “Well, I'd rather keep it simple, but I suppose it has to be + done”.
n.
1. A sequence of one or more distinguished + (out-of-band) characters (or other data items), used + to delimit a piece of data intended to be treated as a unit (the + computer-science literature calls this a sentinel). The NUL (ASCII 0000000) character + that terminates strings in C is a fence. Hex FF is also (though slightly + less frequently) used this way. See zigamorph. +
2. An extra data value inserted in an array or other data structure + in order to allow some normal test on the array's contents also to function + as a termination test. For example, a highly optimized routine for finding + a value in an array might artificially place a copy of the value to be + searched for after the last slot of the array, thus allowing the main + search loop to search for the value without having to check at each pass + whether the end of the array had been reached.
3. [among users of optimizing compilers] Any technique, usually + exploiting knowledge about the compiler, that blocks certain optimizations. + Used when explicit mechanisms are not available or are overkill. Typically + a hack: “I call a dummy procedure there to force a flush of the + optimizer's register-coloring info” can be expressed by the shorter + “That's a fence procedure”.
1. [common] A problem with the discrete equivalent of a boundary + condition, often exhibited in programs by iterative loops. From the + following problem: “If you build a fence 100 feet long with posts 10 + feet apart, how many posts do you need?” (Either 9 or 11 is a better + answer than the obvious 10.) For example, suppose you have a long list or + array of items, and want to process items + m through + n; how many items are there? The obvious + answer is n - m, but that is off by one; + the right answer is n - m + 1. A program + that used the ‘obvious’ formula would have a fencepost error in + it. See also zeroth and + off-by-one error, and note that not all off-by-one errors are fencepost + errors. The game of Musical Chairs involves a catastrophic off-by-one + error where N people try to sit in + N - 1 chairs, but it's not a fencepost + error. Fencepost errors come from counting things rather than the spaces + between them, or vice versa, or by neglecting to consider whether one + should count one or both ends of a row.
2. [rare] An error induced by unexpected regularities in input + values, which can (for instance) completely thwart a theoretically + efficient binary tree or hash table implementation. (The error here + involves the difference between expected and worst case behaviors of an + algorithm.)
[common among backbone ISP personnel] Any of a genus of large, + disruptive machines which routinely cut critical backbone links, creating + Internet outages and packet over air + problems.
[a derogatory pun on ‘field service’] The field service + organization of any hardware manufacturer, but originally + DEC. There is an entire genre of jokes about field + circus engineers:
+Q:Howcanyourecognizeafieldcircusengineer
+withaflattire?
+A:He'schangingonetireatatimetoseewhichoneisflat.
+
+Q:Howcanyourecognizeafieldcircusengineer
+whoisoutofgas?
+A:He'schangingonetireatatimetoseewhichoneisflat.
+
+Q:Howcanyoutellit'syourfieldcircusengineer?
+A:Thespareisflat,too.
+
[See Easter egging for additional insight on + these jokes.]
There is also the ‘Field Circus Cheer’ (from the old + plan file for DEC on MIT-AI):
+Maynard!Maynard!
+Don'tmesswithus!
+We'remeanandwe'retough!
+Ifyougetusconfused
+We'llscrewupyourstuff.
+
(DEC's service HQ, still extant under the HP regime, is located + in Maynard, Massachusetts.)
[play on ‘android’] Representative of a field service + organization (see field circus). This has many of + the implications of droid.
A magic number, sense 3.
[from SF fandom, where a typo for ‘folk’ was adopted as + a new word] Originally, a popular or folk song with lyrics revised or + completely new lyrics and/or music, intended for humorous effect when read, + and/or to be sung late at night at SF conventions. More recently + (especially since the late 1980s), filk has come to include a great deal of + originally-composed music on SFnal or fantasy themes and a range of moods + wider than simple parody or humor. Worthy of mention here because there is + a flourishing subgenre of filks called computer + filks, written by hackers and often containing rather + sophisticated technical humor. See double bucky for + an example. Compare grilf, + hing, pr0n, and + newsfroup.
[MIT: in parody of TV newscasters]
1. Used in conversation to announce ordinary events, with a + sarcastic implication that these events are earth-shattering. + “ITS crashes; film at 11.” “Bug + found in scheduler; film at 11.”
2. Also widely used outside MIT to indicate that additional + information will be available at some future time, + without the implication of anything particularly + ordinary about the referenced event. For example, “The mail file + server died this morning; we found garbage all over the root directory. + Film at 11.” would indicate that a major failure had occurred but + that the people working on it have no additional information about it as + yet; use of the phrase in this way suggests gently that the problem is + liable to be fixed more quickly if the people doing the fixing can spend + time doing the fixing rather than responding to questions, the answers to + which will appear on the normal “11:00 news”, if people will + just be patient.
The variant “MPEGs at 11” has recently been cited (MPEG + is a digital-video format.)
[very common; orig. Unix] A program that + processes an input data stream into an output data stream in some + well-defined way, and does no I/O to anywhere else except possibly on error + conditions; one designed to be used as a stage in a pipeline (see plumbing). + Compare sponge.
[WPI] 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.
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.
Mistyping, typos, or generalized keyboard incompetence (this is + surprisingly common among hackers, given the amount of time they spend at + keyboards). “I keep putting colons at the end of statements instead + of semicolons”, “Finger trouble again, eh?”.
[WAITS, via BSD Unix]
1. n. A program that displays + information about 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 also display + a plan file left by the user (see also + Hacking X for Y).
2. vt. To apply finger to a + username.
3. vt. By extension, to check a + human's current state by any means. “Foodp?” + “T!” “OK, finger Lisa and see if she's idle.” +
4. Any picture (composed of ASCII characters) depicting ‘the + finger’, see See figure 1. Originally a + humorous component of one's plan file to deter the curious fingerer (sense + 2), it has entered the arsenal of some + flamers.
[IRC] To pull rank on somebody based on the amount of time one has + spent on IRC. The term derives from the fact that + IRC was originally written in Finland in 1987. There may be some influence + from the ‘Finn’ character in William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk + novel Count Zero, who at one point says to another + (much younger) character “I have a pair of shoes older than you are, + so shut up!”
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 power dissipation. Sometimes mistakenly called a + tube in the U.S. or a valve in England; another hackish term is + glassfet.
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 throwing lots of manpower and late nights at a + project, esp. to get it out before deadline. See also + gang bang, Mongolian Hordes technique; + however, the term firefighting + connotes that the effort is going into chasing bugs rather than adding + features.
In mainstream folklore it is observed that trying to drink from a + firehose can be a good way to rip your lips off. On computer networks, the + absence or failure of flow control mechanisms can lead to situations in + which the sending system sprays a massive flood of packets at an + unfortunate receiving system, more than it can handle. Compare + overrun, + buffer overflow.
1. 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 is a question not only of defensive 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.
2. Any sanity check inserted to catch a + can't happen error. Wise programmers often change code to fix a bug + twice: once to fix the bug, and once to insert a firewall which would have + arrested the bug before it did quite as much damage.
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 crackers. The typical firewall is 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 threat monitoring, callback, and even a complete + iron box keyable to particular incoming IDs or activity patterns. + Syn. flytrap, Venus flytrap. + See also wild side.
[When first coined in the mid-1980s this term was pure jargon. Now + (1999) it is techspeak, and has been retained only as an example of uptake + —ESR]
1. The mode a machine is sometimes said to be in when it is + performing a crash and burn operation.
2. There is (or was) a more specific meaning of this term in the + Amiga community. The word fireworks described the effects of a particularly + serious crash which prevented the video pointer(s) from getting reset at + the start of the vertical blank. This caused the DAC to scroll through the + entire contents of CHIP (video or video+CPU) memory. Since each bit plane + would scroll separately this was quite a spectacular effect.
Embedded software contained in EPROM or flash memory. It isn't quite + hardware, but at least doesn't have to be loaded from a disk like regular + software. Hacker usage differs from straight techspeak in that hackers + don't normally apply it to stuff that you can't possibly get at, such as + the program that runs a pocket calculator. Instead, it implies that the + firmware could be changed, even if doing so would mean opening a box and + plugging in a new chip. A computer's BIOS is the classic example, although + nowadays there is firmware in disk controllers, modems, video cards and + even CD-ROM drives.
[Adelaide University, Australia]
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 cabinet may be referred to as a fish tank.
[blogosphere; very common] A point-by-point refutation of a + blog entry or (especially) news story. A really + stylish fisking is witty, logical, sarcastic and ruthlessly factual; + flaming or handwaving is considered poor form. Named after Robert Fisk, a + British journalist who was a frequent (and deserving) early target of such + treatment. See also MiSTing, + anti-idiotarianism
What one does when a problem has been reported too many times to be + ignored.
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 to mean + a variable that has two values. It came into use when a + change was made to the definition of the ASCII character set + during the development of Multics. + The change was scheduled for Flag Day (a U.S. holiday), + June 14, 1966.
The change altered the Multics definition of ASCII from the + short-lived 1965 version of the ASCII code to the 1967 version (in draft at + the time); this moved code points for braces, vertical bar, and + circumflex. See also backward combatability. The + Great Renaming was a flag day.
[Most of the changes were made to files stored on + CTSS, the system used to support + Multics development before it became self-hosting.] +
[As it happens, the first installation of a + commercially-produced computer, a Univac I, took place on + Flag Day of 1951 —ESR]
[very common] 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 printing the + message.” “The program status word contains several flag + bits.” Used of humans analogously to bit. + See also hidden flag, + mode bit.
(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 you are tempted to try to use it — but fails frequently + enough that the odds in favor of finishing what you start are low. + Commonwealth hackish prefers dodgy or + wonky.
[very common] 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. See + flame, also dahmum.
[common] A posting intended to trigger a + flame war, or one that invites flames in reply. See also + troll.
1. To begin to flame. The punning reference + to Marvel Comics's Human Torch is no longer widely recognized.
[common] (var.: flamewar) An + acrimonious dispute, especially when conducted on a public electronic forum + such as Usenet.
[at MIT, orig. from the phrase flaming + asshole]
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 hostility at a particular person or people.
4. n. An instance of flaming. + When a discussion degenerates into useless controversy, one might tell the + participants “Now you're just flaming” or “Stop all that + flamage!” to try to get them to cool down (so to speak).
The term may have been independently invented at several different + places. It has been reported from MIT, Carleton College and RPI (among + many other places) from as far back as 1969, and from the University of + Virginia in the early 1960s.
It is possible that the hackish sense of ‘flame’ is much + older than that. The poet Chaucer was also what passed for a wizard hacker + in his time; he wrote a treatise on the astrolabe, the most advanced + computing device of the day. In Chaucer's Troilus and + Cressida, Cressida laments her inability to grasp the proof of + a particular mathematical theorem; her uncle Pandarus then observes that + it's called “the fleminge of wrecches.” This phrase seems to + have been intended in context as “that which puts the wretches to + flight” but was probably just as ambiguous in Middle English as + “the flaming of wretches” would be today. One suspects that + Chaucer would feel right at home on Usenet.
[common] One who habitually flames. Said + esp. of obnoxious Usenet personalities.
1. [obs.] 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 DEC microtapes were 1, 2,... and attempting to flap + device 0 would instead start a motor banging inside a cabinet near the + disk.
2. By extension, to unload any magnetic tape. Modern cartridge + tapes no longer actually flap, but the usage has remained. (The term could + well be re-applied to DEC's TK50 cartridge tape drive, a spectacularly + misengineered contraption which makes a loud flapping sound, almost like an + old reel-type lawnmower, in one of its many tape-eating failure + modes.)
[Rutgers University] 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 the reliability of programs which + do contain the magic word.
Larry Niven's 1973 SF short story Flash Crowd + predicted that one consequence of cheap teleportation would be huge crowds + materializing almost instantly at the sites of interesting news stories. + Twenty years later the term passed into common use on the Internet to + describe exponential spikes in website or server usage when one passes a + certain threshold of popular interest (what this does to the server may + also be called slashdot effect). It has been + pointed out that the effect was anticipated years earlier in Alfred Bester's + 1956 The Stars My Destination.
[common] 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 markup language, or + output device, and no meta-characters). + Syn. plain-ASCII. Compare + flat-file.
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. See also sharchive.
1. [common] 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 space + (typically with each possible value of a processor register corresponding + to a unique core address), as opposed to a segmented architecture (like that of the 80x86) + in which addresses are composed from a base-register/offset pair (segmented + designs are generally considered cretinous).
Note that sense 1 (at least with respect to filesystems) is usually + used pejoratively, while sense 2 is a + Good Thing.
[common] 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 equivalent + canonical form.”
1. [common] Variety, type, kind. “DDT commands come in two + flavors.” “These lights come in two flavors, big red ones and + small green ones.” “Linux is a flavor of Unix” See + vanilla.
2. The attribute that causes something to be + flavorful. Usually used in the phrase “yields + additional flavor”. “This convention yields additional flavor + by allowing one to print text either right-side-up or upside-down.” + See vanilla. This usage was certainly reinforced by + the terminology of quantum chromodynamics, in which quarks (the + constituents of, e.g., protons) come in six flavors (up, down, strange, + charm, top, bottom) and three colors (red, blue, green) — however, + hackish use of flavor at MIT predated + QCD.
3. The term for class (in the + object-oriented sense) in the LISP Machine Flavors system. Though the + Flavors design has been superseded (notably by the Common LISP CLOS + facility), the term flavor is still + used as a general synonym for class + by some LISP hackers.
Full of flavor (sense 2); esthetically + pleasing. See random and + losing for antonyms. See also the entries for + taste and elegant.
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.
[common]
1. To overwhelm a network channel with mechanically-generated + traffic; especially used of IP, TCP/IP, UDP, or ICMP denial-of-service + attacks.
2. To dump large amounts of text onto an IRC + channel. This is especially rude when the text is uninteresting and the + other users are trying to carry on a serious conversation. Also used in a + similar sense on Usenet.
3. [Usenet] To post an unusually large number or volume of files on + a related topic.
[techspeak] 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, + code grinders, and other lower forms of life. This + attitude follows from the observations that flowcharts (at least from a + hacker's point of view) are no easier to read than code, are less precise, + and tend to fall out of sync with the code (so that they either obfuscate + it rather than explaining it, or require extra maintenance effort that + doesn't improve the code).
[Mac users] See feature key.
1. [common] 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 demand for early completion!
3. To leave at the end of a day's work (as opposed to leaving for a + meal). “I'm going to flush now.” “Time to + flush.”
4. To exclude someone from an activity, or to ignore a + person.
‘Flush’ was standard ITS terminology for aborting an + output operation; one spoke of the text that would have been printed, but + was not, as having been flushed. It is speculated that this term arose + from a vivid image of flushing unwanted characters by hosing down the + internal output buffer, washing the characters away before they could be + printed. The Unix/C usage, on the other hand, was propagated by the + fflush(3) + call in C's standard I/O library (though it is reported to have been in use + among BLISS programmers at DEC and on Honeywell and + IBM machines as far back as 1965). Unix/C hackers found the ITS usage + confusing, and vice versa.
Crunchly gets flushed.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is + 76-05-01. The previous + cartoon was 76-02-20:2.)
(alt.: fly page) A + banner, sense 1.
[rare] See firewall machine.
[from the Illuminatus Trilogy]
1. A word used in email and news postings to tag utterances as + surrealist mind-play or humor, esp. in connection with + Discordianism and elaborate conspiracy theories. + “I heard that David Koresh is sharing an apartment in Argentina with + Hitler. (Fnord.)” “Where can I fnord get the Principia + Discordia from?”
2. A metasyntactic variable, commonly used by + hackers with ties to Discordianism or the + Church of the SubGenius.
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.
[common] 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 information to present Usenet news in + ‘conversation’ sequence rather than order-of-arrival. See + thread.
[XEROX PARC] The body of knowledge dealing with the construction and + use of new fonts (e.g., for window systems and typesetting software). It + has been said that fontology recapitulates file-ogeny.
[Unfortunately, this reference to the embryological dictum that + “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” is not merely a joke. On + the Macintosh, for example, System 7 has to go through contortions to + compensate for an earlier design error that created a whole different set + of abstractions for fonts parallel to ‘files’ and + ‘folders’ —ESR]
1. interj. Term of disgust. +
2. [very common] 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, baz, + qux, quux, + garply, waldo, + fred, plugh, + xyzzy, thud.
When ‘foo’ is used in connection with ‘bar’ + it has generally traced to the WWII-era Army slang acronym + FUBAR (‘Fucked Up Beyond All Repair’ or + ‘Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition’), later modified to + foobar. Early versions of the Jargon File + interpreted this change as a post-war bowdlerization, but it it now seems + more likely that FUBAR was itself a derivative of ‘foo’ perhaps + influenced by German furchtbar (terrible) + — ‘foobar’ may actually have been the + original form.
For, it seems, the word ‘foo’ itself had an immediate + prewar history in comic strips and cartoons. The earliest documented uses + were in the Smokey Stover comic strip published from + about 1930 to about 1952. Bill Holman, the author of the strip, filled it + with odd jokes and personal contrivances, including other nonsense phrases + such as “Notary Sojac” and “1506 nix nix”. The + word “foo” frequently appeared on license plates of cars, in + nonsense sayings in the background of some frames (such as “He who + foos last foos best” or “Many smoke but foo men chew”), + and Holman had Smokey say “Where there's foo, there's + fire”.
According to the + Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion Holman claimed to have found the + word “foo” on the bottom of a Chinese figurine. This is + plausible; Chinese statuettes often have apotropaic inscriptions, and this + one was almost certainly the Mandarin Chinese word + fu (sometimes transliterated + foo), which can mean + “happiness” or “prosperity” when spoken with the + rising tone (the lion-dog guardians flanking the steps of many Chinese + restaurants are properly called “fu dogs”). English speakers' + reception of Holman's ‘foo’ nonsense word was undoubtedly + influenced by Yiddish ‘feh’ and English ‘fooey’ and + ‘fool’.
Holman's strip featured a firetruck called the Foomobile that rode on + two wheels. The comic strip was tremendously popular in the late 1930s, + and legend has it that a manufacturer in Indiana even produced an operable + version of Holman's Foomobile. According to the Encyclopedia of American + Comics, ‘Foo’ fever swept the U.S., finding its way into + popular songs and generating over 500 ‘Foo Clubs.’ The fad left + ‘foo’ references embedded in popular culture (including a + couple of appearances in Warner Brothers cartoons of 1938-39; notably in + Robert Clampett's “Daffy Doc” of 1938, in which a very early + version of Daffy Duck holds up a sign saying “SILENCE IS + FOO!”) When the fad faded, the origin of “foo” was + forgotten.
One place “foo” is known to have remained live is in the + U.S. military during the WWII years. In 1944-45, the term ‘foo + fighters’ was in use by radar operators for the kind of mysterious or + spurious trace that would later be called a UFO (the older term resurfaced + in popular American usage in 1995 via the name of one of the better + grunge-rock bands). Because informants connected the term directly to the + Smokey Stover strip, the folk etymology that connects it to French + “feu” (fire) can be gently dismissed.
The U.S. and British militaries frequently swapped slang terms during + the war (see kluge and kludge + for another important example) Period sources reported that + ‘FOO’ became a semi-legendary subject of WWII British-army + graffiti more or less equivalent to the American Kilroy. Where British + troops went, the graffito “FOO was here” or something similar + showed up. Several slang dictionaries aver that FOO probably came from + Forward Observation Officer, but this (like the contemporaneous + “FUBAR”) was probably a backronym . + Forty years later, Paul Dickson's excellent book “Words” + (Dell, 1982, ISBN 0-440-52260-7) traced “Foo” to an + unspecified British naval magazine in 1946, quoting as follows: + “Mr. Foo is a mysterious Second World War product, gifted with bitter + omniscience and sarcasm.”
Earlier versions of this entry suggested the possibility that hacker + usage actually sprang from FOO, Lampoons and Parody, + the title of a comic book first issued in September 1958, a joint project + of Charles and Robert Crumb. Though Robert Crumb (then in his mid-teens) + later became one of the most important and influential artists in + underground comics, this venture was hardly a success; indeed, the brothers + later burned most of the existing copies in disgust. The title FOO was + featured in large letters on the front cover. However, very few copies of + this comic actually circulated, and students of Crumb's + oeuvre have established that this title was + a reference to the earlier Smokey Stover comics. The Crumbs may also have + been influenced by a short-lived Canadian parody magazine named + ‘Foo’ published in 1951-52.
An old-time member reports that in the 1959 Dictionary of + the TMRC Language, compiled at TMRC, + there was an entry that went something like this:
+FOO: The first syllable of the sacred chant phrase “FOO MANE PADME +HUM.” Our first obligation is to keep the foo counters turning. +
(For more about the legendary foo counters, see + TMRC.) This definition used Bill Holman's nonsense + word, then only two decades old and demonstrably still live in popular + culture and slang, to a ha ha only serious analogy + with esoteric Tibetan Buddhism. Today's hackers would find it difficult to + resist elaborating a joke like that, and it is not likely 1959's were any + less susceptible. Almost the entire staff of what later became the MIT AI + Lab was involved with TMRC, and the word spread from there.
[very common] Another widely used + metasyntactic variable; see foo for etymology. + Probably originally propagated through DECsystem manuals by Digital + Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1960s and early + 1970s; confirmed sightings there go back to 1972. Hackers do + not generally use this to mean + FUBAR in either the slang or jargon sense. See also + Fred Foobar. In RFC1639, “FOOBAR” was + made an abbreviation for “FTP Operation Over Big Address + Records”, but this was an obvious backronym. + It has been plausibly suggested that “foobar” spread among + early computer engineers partly because of FUBAR and partly because + “foo bar” parses in electronics techspeak as an inverted foo + signal; if a digital signal is active low (so a negative or zero-voltage + condition represents a "1") then a horizontal bar is commonly placed over + the signal label.
[Usenet] A notional repository of all the most dramatically and + abysmally stupid utterances ever. An entire subgenre of + sig blocks consists of the header “From the fool + file:” followed by some quote the poster wishes to represent as an + immortal gem of dimwittery; for this usage 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.
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 describe a person with a native incapacity to reason + correctly, or a clown. Indeed, in hackish experience many fools are + capable of reasoning all too effectively in executing their errors. See + also cretin, loser, + fool file.
The Algol 68-R compiler used to initialize its storage to the + character string "F00LF00LF00LF00L..." because as a pointer or as a + floating point number it caused a crash, and as an integer or a character + string it was very recognizable in a dump. Sadly, one day a very senior + professor at Nottingham University wrote a program that called him a fool. + He proceeded to demonstrate the correctness of this assertion by lobbying + the university (not quite successfully) to forbid the use of Algol on its + computers. See also DEADBEEF.
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.
3. RAM footprint: The minimum + amount of RAM which an OS or other program takes; this figure gives one an + idea of how much will be left for other applications. How actively this + RAM is used is another matter entirely. Recent tendencies to featuritis + and software bloat can expand the RAM footprint of an OS to the point of + making it nearly unusable in practice. [This problem is, thankfully, + limited to operating systems so stupid that they don't do virtual memory -- + ESR]
[common] Said of a capability of a programming language or hardware + 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 in this system, you get revision + trees for free.” The term usually refers to a serendipitous feature + of doing things a certain way (compare big win), but + it may refer to an intentional but secondary feature.
[from the Mac slogan “The computer for the rest of us”] +
1. Used to describe a spiffy product whose + affordability shames other comparable products, or (more often) used + sarcastically to describe spiffy but very overpriced + products.
2. Describes a program with a limited interface, deliberately + limited capabilities, non-orthogonality, inability to compose primitives, + or any other limitation designed to not ‘confuse’ a naive user. + This places an upper bound on how far that user can go before the program + begins to 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. Becomes ‘the rest of + them’ when used in 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, Macintrash, + point-and-drool interface, + user-friendly.
[MIT] A common rhetorical maneuver at MIT is to use any of the + canonical random numbers as placeholders for + variables. “The max function takes 42 arguments, for arbitrary + values of 42.:” “There are 69 ways to leave your lover, for 69 + = 50.” This is especially likely when the speaker has uttered a + random number and realizes that it was not recognized as such, but even + ‘non-random’ numbers are occasionally used in this fashion. A + related joke is that π equals 3 — + for small values of π and large values + of 3.
Historical note: at MIT this usage has traditionally been traced to + the programming language MAD (Michigan Algorithm Decoder), an Algol-58-like + language that was the most common choice among mainstream (non-hacker) + users at MIT in the mid-60s. It inherited from Algol-58 a control + structure FOR VALUES OF X = 3, 7, 99 DO ... that would repeat the indicated + instructions for each value in the list (unlike the usual FOR that only + works for arithmetic sequences of values). MAD is long extinct, but + similar for-constructs still flourish (e.g., in Unix's shell + languages).
Plural of forum.
[Unix; common] To bring a task 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 writing up the design + document.”
Technically, on a timesharing system, a task executing in foreground + is one able to accept input from and return output to the user; oppose + background. Nowadays this term is primarily + associated with Unix, but it appears first to have + been used in this sense on OS/360. Normally, there is only one foreground + task per terminal (or terminal window); having multiple processes + simultaneously reading the keyboard is a good way to + lose.
[Unix] A particular species of wabbit that + can be written in one line of C (main() + {for(;;)fork();}) or shell ($0 & $0 + &) on any Unix system, or occasionally created by an + egregious coding bug. A fork bomb process ‘explodes’ by + recursively spawning copies of itself (using the Unix system call + fork(2)). + Eventually it eats all the process table entries and effectively wedges the + system. Fortunately, fork bombs are relatively easy to spot and kill, so + creating one deliberately seldom accomplishes more than to bring the just + wrath of the gods down upon the perpetrator. Also called a fork bunny. See also + logic bomb.
In the open-source community, a fork is what occurs when two (or + more) versions of a software package's source code are being developed in + parallel which once shared a common code base, and these multiple versions + of the source code have irreconcilable differences between them. This + should not be confused with a development branch, which may later be folded + back into the original source code base. Nor should it be confused with + what happens when a new distribution of Linux or some other distribution is + created, because that largely assembles pieces than can and will be used in + other distributions without conflict.
Forking is uncommon; in fact, it is so uncommon that individual + instances loom large in hacker folklore. Notable in this class were the + Emacs/XEmacs fork, the GCC/EGCS fork (later healed by a merger) and the + forks among the FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD operating systems.
1. [common after 1997, esp. in the Linux community] An open-source + software project is said to have forked or be forked when the project group + fissions into two or more parts pursuing separate lines of development (or, + less commonly, when a third party unconnected to the project group begins + its own line of development). Forking is considered a + Bad Thing — not merely because it implies a lot of wasted effort + in the future, but because forks tend to be accompanied by a great deal of + strife and acrimony between the successor groups over issues of legitimacy, + succession, and design direction. There is serious social pressure against + forking. As a result, major forks (such as the Gnu-Emacs/XEmacs split, the + fissionings of the 386BSD group into three daughter projects, and the + short-lived GCC/EGCS split) are rare enough that they are remembered + individually in hacker folklore.
2. [Unix; uncommon; prob.: influenced by a mainstream expletive] + Terminally slow, or dead. Originated when one system was slowed to a + snail's pace by an inadvertent fork bomb.
[WAITS, via Unix; common] 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.
[Usenet, GEnie, CI$; pl. fora + or forums] Any discussion group + accessible through a dial-in BBS, a + mailing list, or a newsgroup + (see the network). A forum functions much like a + bulletin board; users submit postings for all to + read and discussion ensues. Contrast real-time chat via + talk mode or point-to-point personal + email.
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 of the better match of + hexadecimal to ASCII and modern byte-addressable architectures. See + dusty deck.
2. More restrictively, a feature with past but no present utility. + Example: the force-all-caps (LCASE) bits in the V7 and + BSD Unix tty driver, designed for use with monocase + terminals. (In a perversion of the usual backward-compatibility goal, this + functionality has actually been expanded and renamed in some later USG Unix + releases as the IUCLC and OLCUC bits.)
1. Literature created by marketroids that + allegedly contains 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.” Often applied as an indication of superficiality even when + the material is printed on ordinary paper in black and white. + Four-color-glossy manuals are never useful for solving + a problem.
2. [rare] Applied by extension to manual pages that don't contain + enough information to diagnose why the program doesn't produce the expected + or desired output.
[from Vietnam-era U.S. military slang via the games Doom and Quake] +
1. To kill another player's avatar in a + multiuser game. “I hold the office Quake record with 40 + frags.”
2. To completely ruin something. “Forget that power supply, + the lightning strike fragged it.” See also + gib.
Syn brittle.
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. In Great Britain, + ‘fred’, ‘jim’ and ‘sheila’ are common + metasyntactic variables because their uppercase versions were + official names given to the 3 memory areas that held + I/O status registers on the lovingly-remembered BBC Microcomputer! (It is + reported that SHEILA was poked the most often.) Unlike + J. Random Hacker or J. Random Loser, the name ‘fred’ + has no positive or negative loading (but see Dr. Fred + Mbogo). See also barney.
2. An acronym for ‘Flipping Ridiculous Electronic + Device’; other F-verbs may be substituted for + ‘flipping’.
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.”
As defined by Richard M. Stallman and used by the Free Software + movement, this means software that gives users enough freedom to be used by + the free software community. Specifically, users must be free to modify + the software for their private use, and free to redistribute it either with + or without modifications, either commercially or noncommercially, either + gratis or charging a distribution fee. Free software has existed since the + dawn of computing; Free Software as a movement began in 1984 with the GNU + Project.
RMS observes that the English word “free” can refer + either to liberty (where it means the same as the Spanish or French + “libre”) or to price (where it means the same as the Spanish + “gratis” or French “gratuit”). RMS and other + people associated with the FSF like to explain the word “free” + in “free software” by saying “Free as in speech, not as + in beer.”
See also open source. Hard-core proponents of + the term “free software” sometimes reject this newer term, + claiming that the style of argument associated with it ignores or downplays + the moral imperative at the heart of free software.
[common] Freely-redistributable software, often written by + enthusiasts and distributed by users' groups, or via electronic mail, local + bulletin boards, Usenet, or other electronic media. + As the culture of the Internet has displaced the older BBS world, this term + has lost ground to both open source and + free software; it has increasingly tended to be + restricted to software distributed in binary rather than source-code form. + At one time, freeware was a trademark + of Andrew Fluegelman, the author of the well-known MS-DOS comm program + PC-TALK III. It wasn't enforced after his mysterious disappearance and + presumed death in 1984. See shareware, + FRS.
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 we'll freeze for + release.” There are more specific constructions on this term. A + feature freeze, for example, locks + out modifications intended to introduce new features but still allows + bugfixes and completion of existing features; a code freeze connotes no more changes at all. + At Sun Microsystems and elsewhere, one may also hear references to + code slush — that is, an + almost-but-not-quite frozen state.
1. [common] 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! In particular, resistors can burn out and + transformers can melt down, emitting noxious smoke — see + friode, SED and + LER. However, this term is also used + metaphorically.) Compare frotzed.
2. [common] Of people, exhausted. Said particularly of those who + continue to work in such a state. Often used as an explanation or excuse. + “Yeah, I know that fix destroyed the file system, but I was fried + when I put it in.” Esp.: common in conjunction with brain: “My brain is fried today, I'm very + short on sleep.”
The unknown ur-verb, fill in your own meaning. Found esp. on the + Usenet newsgroup alt.fan.lemurs, + where it is said that the lemurs know what ‘frink’ means, but + they aren't telling. Compare gorets.
[TMRC] A reversible (that is, fused or blown) diode. Compare + fried; see also SED, + LER.
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 seduces people + into using it anyway. See also + window shopping.
1. n. [MIT; very common] 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 (sense 2). + See frobnitz.
2. vt. Abbreviated form of + frobnicate.
3. [from the MUD world] A command on some + MUDs that changes a player's experience level (this can be used to make + wizards); also, to request wizard privileges on the + ‘professional courtesy’ grounds that one is a wizard elsewhere. + The command is actually ‘frobnicate’ but is universally + abbreviated to the shorter form.
[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: “Please frob the light switch” + (that is, flip it), but also “Stop frobbing that clasp; you'll break + it”. One also sees the construction to + frob a frob. See tweak and + twiddle.
Usage: frob, twiddle, and tweak sometimes connote points along a + continuum. ‘Frob’ connotes aimless manipulation; twiddle connotes gross manipulation, often a + coarse search for a proper setting; tweak connotes fine-tuning. If someone is + turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it, he + is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the + screen, he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because + turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it. The variant frobnosticate has been recently + reported.
[TMRC] 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 are frobnule (/frobn[y]ool/) and frobule (/frobyool/). Starting perhaps in 1979, + frobozz /fr@-boz/ (plural: frobbotzim /fr@-botzm/) has also become very + popular, largely through its exposure as a name via + Zork. These variants can also be applied to + nonphysical objects, such as data structures. For related amusement, see + the + Encyclopedia Frobozzica.
Pete Samson, compiler of the original TMRC + lexicon, adds, “Under the TMRC [railroad] layout were many storage + boxes, managed (in 1958) by David R. Sawyer. Several had fanciful + designations written on them, such as ‘Frobnitz Coil Oil’. + Perhaps DRS intended Frobnitz to be a proper name, but the name was quickly + taken for the thing”. This was almost certainly the origin of the + term.
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 bagbiting, + but milder. “This froggy program is taking forever to + run!”
1. Partial corruption of a text file or input stream by some bug or + consistent glitch, as opposed to random events like line noise or media + failures. Might occur, for example, if one bit of each incoming character + on a tty were stuck, so that some characters were correct and others were + not. See dread high-bit disease.
2. By extension, accidental display of text in a mode where the + output device emits special symbols or mnemonics rather than conventional + ASCII. This often happens, for example, when using a terminal or comm + program on a device like an IBM PC with a special ‘high-half’ + character set and with the bit-parity assumption wrong. A hacker + sufficiently familiar with ASCII bit patterns might be able to read the + display anyway.
1. An intermediary computer that does set-up and filtering for + another (usually more powerful but less friendly) machine (a back end).
2. What you're talking to when you have a conversation with someone + who is making replies without paying attention. “Look at the dancing + elephants!” “Uh-huh.” “Do you know what I just + said?” “Sorry, you were talking to the front end.” +
3. Software that provides an interface to another program + ‘behind’ it, which may not be as user-friendly. Probably from + analogy with hardware front-ends (see sense 1) that interfaced with + mainframes.
1. n. See + frobnitz.
2. mumble frotz: An + interjection of mildest disgust. The word ‘frotzen’ is live in + this sense in some eastern German dialects; the safe bet is that it came to + hackers via Yiddish.
To be 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.
(alt.: frowney face) See + emoticon.
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 a piece of hardware. Never used of software or + humans, but compare fried.
[Usenet; very common] Fucking, in the expletive sense (it refers to + the Unix filesystem-repair command + fsck(8), + of which it can be said that if you have to use it at all you are having a + bad day). Originated on scary devil monastery and + the bofh.net newsgroups, but + became much more widespread following the passage of + CDA. Also occasionally seen in the variant + “What the fsck?”
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 me with a piledriver and 16 feet of + 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. Here we see a quite + self-conscious 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 this case, to creatively produce a 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, and there was some controversy over 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 here. —ESR & + GLS]
[common] 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 because one isn't sure exactly + 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 typically allowed in + floating-point 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 factors are frequently adjusted incorrectly + by programmers who don't fully understand their import. See also + coefficient of X.
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 code.
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.
[XEROX PARC] At PARC, often the third of the standard + metasyntactic variables (after + foo and bar). Competes with + baz, which is more common outside PARC.
[uncommon, U.K.; originally a serendipitous typo in 1994] A pointer + to a function in C and C++. By association with sub-atomic particles such + as the neutrino, it accurately conveys an impression of smallness (one + pointer is four bytes on most systems) and speed (hackers can and do use + arrays of functinos to replace a switch() statement).
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 nobody has bothered to fix because workarounds are + easier, the funkier it is. TECO and UUCP are funky. + The Intel i860's exception handling is extraordinarily funky. Most + standards acquire funkiness as they age. “The new mailer is + installed, but is still somewhat funky; if it bounces your mail for no + reason, try resubmitting it.” “This UART is pretty funky. The + data ready line is active-high in interrupt mode and active-low in DMA + mode.”
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). In New Zealand and + Germany the odd usage paper money has + been recorded; in Germany, the particularly amusing synonym transfer ruble commemorates the funny money + used for trade between COMECON countries back when the Soviet Bloc still + existed. When your funny money ran out, your account froze and 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 minimum work. In extreme cases, the 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.
[Usenet; written, only rarely spoken] Written-only equivalent of + “Sheesh!”; it is, in fact, “sheesh” modified by + rot13. Evolved in mid-1992 as a response to notably + silly postings repeating urban myths on the Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban, after some posters + complained that “Sheesh!” as a response to + newbies was being overused. See also + FOAF.
[common; generalized from kung-fu] + Combining form denoting expert practice of a skill. “That's going to + take some serious code-fu.” First sighted in connection with the + GIMP's remote-scripting facility, script-fu, in 1998.
1. [SI] See quantifiers.
2. The letter G has special significance in the hacker community, + largely thanks to the GNU project and the GPL.
Many free software projects have names that + names that begin with G. The GNU project gave many of its projects names + that were acronyms beginning with the word “GNU”, such as + “GNU C Compiler” (gcc) and “GNU Debugger” (gdb), + and this launched a tradition. Just as many Java developers will begin + their projects with J, many free software developers will begin theirs with + G. It is often the case that a program with a G-prefixed name is licensed + under the GNU GPL.
For example, someone may write a free Enterprise Engineering Kludge + package (EEK technology is all the rage in the technical journals) and name + it “geek” to imply that it is a GPL'd EEK package.
[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.”
2. vt. To recycle, reclaim, or + put to another use.
3. n. An instantiation of the + garbage collector process.
Garbage collection is + computer-science techspeak for a particular class of strategies for + dynamically but transparently reallocating computer memory (i.e., without + requiring explicit allocation and deallocation by higher-level software). + One such strategy involves periodically scanning all the data in memory and + determining what is no longer accessible; useless data items are then + discarded so that the memory they occupy can be recycled and used for + another purpose. Implementations of the LISP language usually use garbage + collection.
In jargon, the full phrase is sometimes heard but the + abbrev GC is more frequently used because it is + shorter. Note that there is an ambiguity in usage that has to be resolved + by context: “I'm going to garbage-collect my desk” usually + means to clean out the drawers, but it could also mean to throw away or + recycle the desk itself.
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. After the buyout of GE's computer division by Honeywell, the + name was changed to General Comprehensive Operating System (GCOS). Other + OS groups at Honeywell began referring to it as ‘God's Chosen + Operating System’, allegedly in reaction to the GCOS crowd's + uninformed and snotty attitude about the superiority of their product. All + this might be of zero interest, except for two facts: (1) The GCOS people + won the political war, and this led in the orphaning and eventual death of + Honeywell Multics, and (2) GECOS/GCOS left one + permanent mark on Unix. Some early Unix systems at Bell Labs used GCOS + machines for print spooling and various other services; the field added to + /etc/passwd to carry GCOS ID information was called + the GECOS field and survives today as + the pw_gecos member used for the user's + full name and other human-ID information. GCOS later played a major role + in keeping Honeywell a dismal also-ran in the mainframe market, and was + itself mostly ditched for Unix in the late 1980s when Honeywell began to + retire its aging big iron designs.
See GCOS.
[Fidonet] Fidonet alternative to film at 11, + especially in echoes (Fidonet topic areas) where uuencoded GIFs are + permitted. Other formats, especially JPEG and MPEG, may be referenced + instead.
1. ‘Garbage In, Garbage Out’ — usually said in + response to lusers who complain that a program + didn't “do the right thing” when given imperfect input or + otherwise mistreated in some way. Also commonly used to describe failures + in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or imprecise data. +
2. Garbage In, Gospel Out: + this more recent expansion is a sardonic comment on the tendency human + beings have to put excessive trust in ‘computerized’ + data.
[analogy with MIPS] Giga-Instructions per + Second (also possibly ‘Gillions of Instructions per Second’; + see gillion). + Compare KIPS.
Abbrev: Google Is Your Friend. Used to suggest, gently and politely, + that you have just asked a question of human beings that would have been + better directed to a search engine. See also + STFW.
1. [acronym: ‘GNU’s Not Unix!', see recursive + acronym] A Unix-workalike development effort of the Free + Software Foundation headed by Richard Stallman. GNU EMACS and the GNU C + compiler, two tools designed for this project, have become very popular in + hackerdom and elsewhere. The GNU project was designed partly to + proselytize for RMS's position that information is community property and + all software source should be shared. One of its slogans is “Help + stamp out software hoarding!” Though this remains controversial + (because it implicitly denies any right of designers to own, assign, and + sell the results of their labors), many hackers who disagree with RMS have + nevertheless cooperated to produce large amounts of high-quality software + for free redistribution under the Free Software Foundation's imprimatur. + The GNU project has a web page at http://www.gnu.org/. See + EMACS, copyleft, + General Public Virus, Linux. +
2. Noted Unix hacker John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>}, + founder of Usenet's anarchic alt.* hierarchy.
[contraction of ‘GNU EMACS’] Often-heard abbreviated + name for the GNU project's flagship tool, + EMACS. StallMACS, referring to Richard Stallman, is + less common but also heard. Used esp. in contrast with + GOSMACS and X Emacs.
[contraction of ‘Gosling EMACS’] The first + EMACS-in-C implementation, predating but now largely + eclipsed by GNUMACS. Originally freeware; a + commercial version was modestly popular as ‘UniPress EMACS’ + during the 1980s. The author, James Gosling, went on to invent + NeWS and the programming language Java; the latter + earned him demigod status.
Abbreviation for ‘General Public License’ in widespread + use; see copyleft, General Public + Virus. Often mis-expanded as ‘GNU Public + License’.
Abbrev. for General Public Virus in + widespread use.
“Common abbreviation for Goober with Firewall”. A + luser who has equipped his desktop computer with a + hypersensitive “software firewall” or host intrusion detection + program, and who gives its alerts absolute credence. ISP tech support and + abuse desks dread hearing from such persons, who insist that every packet + of abnormal traffic the software detects is “a hacker” (sic) + and, occasionally, threatening lawsuits or prosecution. GWFs have been + known to assert that they are being attacked from 127.0.0.1, and that their + ISP is criminally negligent for failing to block these attacks. + “GWF” is used similarly to ID10T error + and PEBKAC to flag trouble tickets opened by such + users.
There is a quote from Mohandas Gandhi, describing the stages of + establishment resistence to a winning strategy of nonviolent activism, that + partisans of open source and especially + Linux have embraced as almost an explanatory framework + for the behaviors they observe while trying to get corporations and other + large institutions to take new ways of doing things seriously:
+ First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. + Then they fight you. Then you win. +
In hacker usage this quote has miscegenated with the U.S military's + DefCon + terminology describing ‘defense conditions’ or degrees of war + alert. At GandhiCon One, you're being ignored. At GandhiCon Two, + opponents are laughing at you and dismissing the idea that you could ever + be a threat. At GandhiCon Three, they're fighting you on the merits and/or + attempting to discredit you. At GandhiCon Four, you're winning and they + are arguing to save face or stave off complete collapse of their + position.
(also abbreviated GOF) + [prob. a play on the ‘Gang Of Four’ who briefly ran Communist + China after the death of Mao] Describes either the authors or the book + Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented + Software published in 1995 by Addison-Wesley (ISBN + 0-201-63361-2). The authors forming the Gang Of Four are Erich Gamma, + Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides. They are also sometimes + referred to as ‘Gamma et. al.’ The authors state at http://www.hillside.net/patterns/DPBook/GOF.html + “Why are we ... called this? Who knows. Somehow the name just + stuck.” The term is also used to describe any of the design patterns + that are used in the book, referring to the patterns within it as + ‘Gang Of Four Patterns.’
“The speed of software halves every 18 months.” This + oft-cited law is an ironic comment on the tendency of software bloat to + outpace the every-18-month doubling in hardware capacity per dollar + predicted by Moore's Law. The reference is to Bill + Gates; Microsoft is widely considered among the worst if not the worst of + the perpetrators of bloat.
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 anti-proprietary + terms as GNU stuff. Thus it is 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 is that copyright law limits the scope of + the GPL to “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. Nevertheless, + widespread suspicion that the copyleft language is + ‘boobytrapped’ has caused many developers to avoid using GNU + tools and the GPL. Changes in the language of the version 2.0 GPL did not + eliminate this problem.
[TMRC] A visionary quality which enables one to ignore the standard + approach and come up with a totally unexpected new algorithm. An attack on + a problem from an offbeat angle that no one has ever thought of before, but + that in retrospect makes total sense. Compare grok, + zen.
Hacker-standard way of suggesting that the person to whom it is + directed has succumbed to terminal geekdom (see + geek). Often heard on + Usenet, esp. as a way of suggesting that the target + is taking some obscure issue of theology too + seriously. This exhortation was popularized by William Shatner on a 1987 + Saturday Night Live episode in a speech that ended + “Get a life!”, but it can be traced back + at least to ‘Valley Girl’ slang in 1983. It was certainly in + wide use among hackers for years before achieving mainstream currency via + the sitcom Get A Life in 1990.
In 1996 when this entry first entered the File, it was the typical + hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done + on a system that (a) was single-tasking, (b) had no hard disk, or (c) had + an address space smaller than 16 megabytes. In 2003 anything less powerful + than a 500MHz Pentium with a multi-gigabyte hard disk would probably be + similarly written off. The threshold for ‘real computer’ rises + with time. See bitty box and + toy.
[Usenet] Abbreviation: “Go Away, Troll”. See + troll.
[Usenet] “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability + of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” There is + a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and + whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in + progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an + upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a + widely- recognized codicil that any intentional + triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects + will be unsuccessful. Godwin himself has discussed + the subject. See also Formosa's Law.
[from Japan's national hero]
1. A network packet that in theory is a broadcast to every machine + in the universe. The typical case is an IP datagram whose destination IP + address is [255.255.255.255]. Fortunately, few gateways are foolish enough + to attempt to implement this case!
2. A network packet of maximum size. An IP Godzillagram has 65,535 + octets. Compare super source quench, + Christmas tree packet, + martian.
[very common; always pronounced as if capitalized. Orig. fr. the + 1930 Sellar & Yeatman parody of British history 1066 And All + That, but well-established among hackers in the U.S. as well.] +
1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a position to notice: + “A language that manages dynamic memory automatically for you is a + Good Thing.”
2. Something that can't 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”, specifically connotes that the thing has drastically + reduced a programmer's work load. Oppose + Bad Thing.
The mainstreaming of the Internet in 1993-1994. Used normally in + time comparatives; before the Great Internet Explosion and after it were + very different worlds from a hacker's point of view. Before it, Internet + access was expensive and available only to an elite few through + universities, research laboratories, and well-heeled corporations; after + it, everybody's mother had access.
The flag day in 1987 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. + Used esp. in discussing the history of newsgroup names. “The oldest + sources group is comp.sources.misc; before the Great Renaming, + it was net.sources.” There + is a Great + Renaming FAQ on the Web.
Uppercase-only text or display messages. Some archaic operating + systems still emit these. See also runes, + smash case, fold case.
There is a widespread legend (repeated by earlier versions of this + entry, though tagged as folklore) that the uppercase-only support of + various old character codes and I/O equipment was chosen by a religious + person in a position of power at the Teletype Company because supporting + both upper and lower cases was too expensive and supporting lower case only + would have made it impossible to spell ‘God’ correctly. Not + true; the upper-case interpretation of teleprinter codes was well + established by 1870, long before Teletype was even founded.
The 1988 Internet worm perpetrated by + RTM. This is a play on Tolkien (compare + elvish, elder days). In the + fantasy history of his Middle Earth books, there were dragons powerful + enough to lay waste to entire regions; two of these (Scatha and Glaurung) + were known as “the Great Worms”. This usage expresses the + connotation that the RTM crack was a sort of devastating watershed event in + hacker history; certainly it did more to make non-hackers nervous about the + Internet than anything before or since.
[TMRC] For any story, in any group of people there will be at least + one person who has not heard the story. A refinement of the theorem states + that there will be exactly one person (if there were + more than one, it wouldn't be as bad to re-tell the story). [The name of + this theorem is a play on a fundamental theorem in + calculus. —ESR]
Without qualification, Guido van Rossum (author of + Python). Note that Guido answers to English + /gweedo/ but in Dutch it's + /khweedo/. Mythically, + Guido's most important attribute besides Python itself is Guido's time + machine, a device he is reputed to possess because of the unnerving + frequency with which user requests for new features have been met with the + response “I just implemented that last night...”. See + BDFL.
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 Steven Levy's Hackers), + and large numbers of loosely-coupled programmers operating in + bazaar mode can do very useful work when they're not + on a deadline, most are perpetrated by large companies trying to meet + unrealistic deadlines; the inevitable result is 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 programmer to implement each, the probability of maintaining + a coherent (or even functional) design goes to + epsilon. See also + firefighting, + Mongolian Hordes technique, Conway's Law.
(also garbage collection, n.) + See GC.
[Stanford] Another metasyntactic variable (see + foo); once popular among SAIL hackers.
[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 suggestion that + someone or something ought to be flushed out of mercy. “The system's + getting wedged every few minutes. Gas!” +
3. vt. To + flush (sense 1). “You should gas that old + crufty software.”
4. [IBM] n. Dead space in + nonsequentially organized files that was occupied by data that has since + been deleted; the compression operation that removes it is called degassing (by analogy, perhaps, with the use of + the same term in vacuum technology).
5. [IBM] n. Empty space on a + disk that has been clandestinely allocated against future need.
See chawmp.
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 refer to an + experiment that is impractical to carry out, but useful to consider because + it can be reasoned about theoretically. (A classic gedanken experiment of + relativity theory involves thinking about a man in an elevator accelerating + through space.) Gedanken experiments are very useful in physics, but must + be used with care. It's too easy to idealize away some important aspect of + the real world in constructing the ‘apparatus’.
Among hackers, accordingly, the word has a pejorative connotation. + It is typically used of a project, especially one in artificial + intelligence research, that is written up in grand detail (typically as a + Ph.D. thesis) without ever being implemented to any great extent. Such a + project is usually perpetrated by people who aren't very good hackers or + find programming distasteful or are just in a hurry. A gedanken thesis is usually marked by an obvious + lack of intuition about what is programmable and what is not, and about + what does and does not constitute a clear specification of an algorithm. + See also AI-complete, + DWIM.
[ostensibly from ‘gefingerpoken’] vt. Syn. mung. See also + blinkenlights.
(also “Code of the Geeks”). A set of codes commonly + used in sig blocks to broadcast the interests, + skills, and aspirations of the poster. Features a G at the left margin + followed by numerous letter codes, often suffixed with plusses or minuses. + Because many net users are involved in computer science, the most common + prefix is ‘GCS’. To see a copy of the current code, browse + http://www.geekcode.com/. + Here is a sample geek code (that of Robert Hayden, the code's inventor) + from that page:
+-----BEGINGEEKCODEBLOCK-----
+Version:3.1
+GED/Jd--s:++>:a-C++(++++)$ULUO++P+>+++L++!E----W+(---)N+++
+o+K+++w+(---)O-M+$>++V--PS++(+++)>$PE++(+)>$Y++PGP++t-5+++
+X++R+++>$tv+b+DI+++D+++G+++++>$e++$>++++hr--y+**
+------ENDGEEKCODEBLOCK------
+
The geek code originated in 1993; it was inspired (according to the + inventor) by previous “bear”, “smurf” and + “twink” style-and-sexual-preference codes from lesbian and gay + newsgroups. It has in turn spawned imitators; there + is now even a “Saturn geek code” for owners of the Saturn car. + See also geek.
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 or say something highly technical and don't have + time to explain: “Pardon me while I geek out for a moment.” + See geek; see also + propeller head.
A person who has chosen concentration rather than conformity; one + who pursues skill (especially technical skill) and imagination, not + mainstream social acceptance. Geeks usually have a strong case of + neophilia. Most geeks are adept with computers and + treat hacker as a term of respect, but not all are + hackers themselves — and some who are in fact + hackers normally call themselves geeks anyway, because they (quite + properly) regard ‘hacker’ as a label that should be bestowed by + others rather than self-assumed.
One + description accurately if a little breathlessly enumerates + “gamers, ravers, science fiction fans, punks, perverts, programmers, + nerds, subgenii, and trekkies. These are people who did not go to their + high school proms, and many would be offended by the suggestion that they + should have even wanted to.”
Originally, a geek was a + carnival performer who bit the heads off chickens. (In early 20th-century + Scotland a ‘geek’ was an immature coley, a type of fish.) + Before about 1990 usage of this term was rather negative. Earlier versions + of this lexicon defined a computer + geek as one who eats (computer) bugs for a living — an + asocial, malodorous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the personality of a + cheese grater. This is often still the way geeks are regarded by + non-geeks, but as the mainstream culture becomes more dependent on + technology and technical skill mainstream attitudes have tended to shift + towards grudging respect. Correspondingly, there are now ‘geek + pride’ festivals (the implied reference to ‘gay pride’ is + not accidental).
See also propeller head, + clustergeeking, geek out, + wannabee, terminal junkie, + spod, weenie, + geek code, alpha geek.
Originally from a quote on the PBS show Scientific + American Frontiers (week of May 21st 2002) by MIT professor + Alex Slocum: “When they build a machine, if they do the calculations + right, the machine works and you get this intense ... uhh ... just like a + geekasm, from knowing that what you created in your mind and on the + computer is actually doing what you told it to do”. Unsurprisingly, + this usage went live on the Web almost instantly. Every hacker knows this + feeling. Compare earlier progasm.
Short for generate, used frequently in both + spoken and written contexts.
[common] 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. for RS-232C parts in + either the 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 + pins on both sides (is doubly male) or sockets on both sides (connects two + males).
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 (though often humorously) when + used of human behavior. “The guy is rational most of the time, but + mention nuclear energy around him and he'll generate + infinite flamage.”
[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 gensym is ‘Gnnnn’ where nnnn represents a + number; any LISP hacker would recognize G0093 (for example) as a gensym. +
3. A freshly generated data structure with a gensymmed name. + Gensymmed names are useful for storing or uniquely identifying crufties + (see cruft).
1. vi. To destroy utterly. Like + frag, but much more violent and final. + “There's no trace left. You definitely gibbed that + bug”.
2. n. Remnants after total obliteration.
Originated first by id software in the game Quake. It's short for + giblets (thus pronounced “jib”), and referred to the bloody + remains of slain opponents. Eventually the word was verbed, and leaked + into general usage afterward.
[SI] See quantifiers.
[SI] See quantifiers.
[Usenet] The unit of analogical bogosity. + According to its originator, the standard for one gilley was “the act + of bogotoficiously comparing the shutting down of 1000 machines for a day + with the killing of one person”. The milligilley has been found to + suffice for most normal conversational exchanges.
[formed from giga- by analogy with + mega/million and tera/trillion] 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’.
See saga.
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 + nonsklarkish English flutzpahs, but the overall pluggandisp can be glorked + [sic] from context” (David Moser, quoted by Douglas Hofstadter in + his Metamagical Themas column in the January 1981 + Scientific American). It is conjectured that hacker + usage mutated the verb to ‘glark’ because + glork was already an established jargon term (some + hackers do report using the original term). Compare + grok, zen.
[obs.] 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 + printing terminal, it can't do fancy 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; compare + dumb terminal. See TV Typewriters (Appendix A) for + an interesting true story about a glass tty.
[IBM] Synonym for silicon.
[by analogy with MOSFET, the acronym for Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect + Transistor] Syn. firebottle, a humorous + way to refer to a vacuum tube.
[very common; from German ‘glitschig’ slippery, 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 specifically called a + power glitch (also + power hit), of grave concern because it usually crashes all the + computers. In jargon, though, a hacker who got to the middle of a sentence + and then forgot how he or she intended to complete it might say, + “Sorry, I just glitched”.
2. vi. To commit a glitch. See + gritch.
3. vt. [Stanford] To scroll a + display screen, esp. several lines at a time. + WAITS terminals used to do this in order to avoid + continuous scrolling, which is distracting to the eye.
4. obs. Same as magic cookie, sense + 2.
All these uses of glitch derive + from the specific technical meaning the term has in the electronic hardware + world, where it is now techspeak. A glitch can occur when the inputs of a + circuit change, and the outputs change to some + random value for some very brief time before they + settle down to the correct value. If another circuit inspects the output + at just the wrong time, reading the random value, the results can be very + wrong and very hard to debug (a glitch is one of many causes of electronic + heisenbugs).
[Unix; common] 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 hackers use some + of them in written English, especially in email or news on technical + topics. Those commonly encountered include the following:
| * | wildcard for any string (see also UN*X) + |
| ? | wildcard for any single character (generally read this way only at the +beginning or in the middle of a word) + |
| [] | delimits a wildcard matching any of the enclosed characters + |
| {} | alternation of comma-separated alternatives; thus, ‘foo{baz,qux}’ +would be read as ‘foobaz’ or ‘fooqux’ |
Some examples: “He said his name was [KC]arl” (expresses + ambiguity). “I don't read talk.politics.*” (any of the + talk.politics subgroups on Usenet). Other examples + are given under the entry for X. Note that glob + patterns are similar, but not identical, to those used in + regexps.
Historical note: The jargon usage derives from glob, the name of a subprogram that expanded + wildcards in archaic pre-Bourne versions of the Unix shell.
1. interj. Term of mild + surprise, usually tinged with outrage, as when one attempts to save the + results of two hours of editing and finds that the system has just + crashed.
2. Used as a name for just about anything. See + foo.
3. vt. Similar to + glitch, but usually used reflexively. “My + program just glorked itself.”
4. Syn. for glark, which see.
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.
Both obscure and hairy + (sense 1). “Yow! — the tuned assembler + implementation of BitBlt is really gnarly!” From a similar but less + specific usage in surfer slang.
Written-only variant of newbie in common use + on IRC channels, which implies specifically someone who is new to the + Linux/open-source/free-software world.
[UK] Syn. chrome. Mainstream in some parts + of UK.
[from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG traces upon + brain-death] (also adjectival flatlined).
1. To die, terminate, or fail, esp. + irreversibly. In hacker parlance, this is used of machines only, human + death being considered somewhat too serious a matter to employ jargon-jokes + about.
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 losing vertical scan, so all one sees + is a bright horizontal line bisecting the screen.
[common] See golden.
[Unix; common] To temporarily enter root mode + in order to perform a privileged operation. This use is deprecated in + Australia, where v. ‘root’ + is a synonym for “fuck”.
A sacrificial file used to test a computer virus, i.e. a dummy + executable that carries a sample of the virus, isolated so it can be + studied. Not common among hackers, since the Unix systems most use + basically don't get viruses.
1. To consume, usu.: used with ‘up’. “The output + spy gobbles characters out of a tty output + buffer.”
2. To obtain, usu.: used with ‘down’. “I guess + I'll gobble down a copy of the documentation tomorrow.” See also + snarf.
[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. One may also + “go gold”, which is the act of releasing a golden version. + The gold color of many CDROMs is a coincidence; this term was well + established a decade before CDROM distribution become common in the + mid-1990s.
The IBM 2741, a slow but letter-quality printing device and terminal + based on the IBM Selectric typewriter. The golf + ball was a little spherical frob bearing reversed embossed + images of 88 different characters arranged on four parallels of latitude; + one could change the font by swapping in a different golf ball. The print + element spun and jerked alarmingly in action and when in motion was + sometimes described as an infuriated 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, firmly + rooted, for the next 20, until character displays gave way to programmable + bit-mapped devices with the flexibility to support other character + sets.
1. [prob. back-formed from gonkulator.] To + prevaricate or to embellish the truth beyond any reasonable recognition. + In German the term is (mythically) gonken; in Spanish the verb becomes gonkar. “You're gonking me. That story + you just told me is a bunch of gonk.” In German, for example, + “Du gonkst mich” (You're pulling my leg). See also + gonkulator.
2. [British] To grab some sleep at an odd time; compare + gronk out.
[common; from the 1960s Hogan's Heroes TV + series] 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.
[from Hunter S. Thompson]
1. With total commitment, total concentration, and a mad sort of + panache. (Thompson's original sense.)
2. More loosely: 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 implication of obscurity or + complexity.
A hypothetical substance which attracts the index bots of + Google.com. In common usage, a web page or web site with high placement in + the results of a particular search on Google or frequent placement in the + results of a various searches is said to have “a lot of google + juice” or “good google juice”. Also used to compare + web pages or web sites, for example “CrackMonkey has more google + juice than KPMG”. See also juice, + kilogoogle.
[common] To search the Web using the Google search engine, http://www.google.com. Google is + highly esteemed among hackers for its significance ranking system, which is + so uncannily effective that many hackers consider it to have rendered other + search engines effectively irrelevant. The name ‘google’ has + additional flavor for hackers because most know that it was copied from a + mathematical term for ten to the 100th power, famously first uttered as + ‘googol’ by a mathematician's nine-year-old nephew.
1. Any access to a gopher.
2. [Amateur Packet Radio] The terrestrial analog of a + wormhole (sense 2), from which this term was coined. + A gopher hole links two amateur packet relays through some non-ham radio + medium.
[obs.] A type of Internet service first floated around 1991 and + obsolesced around 1995 by the World Wide Web. Gopher presents a menuing + interface to a tree or graph of links; the links can be to documents, + runnable programs, or other gopher menus arbitrarily far across the + net.
Some claim that the gopher software, which was originally developed + at the University of Minnesota, was named after the Minnesota Gophers (a + sports team). Others claim the word derives from American slang gofer (from “go for”, dialectal + “go fer”), one whose job is to run and fetch things. Finally, + observe that gophers dig long tunnels, and the idea of tunneling through + the net to find information was a defining metaphor for the developers. + Probably all three things were true, but with the first two coming first + and the gopher-tunnel metaphor serendipitously adding flavor and impetus to + the project as it developed out of its concept stage.
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 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.
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 to hold their arms in front of + their faces making small motions. After more than a very few selections, + the arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and oversized — the operator + looks like a gorilla while using the touch screen and feels like one + afterwards. This is now considered a classic cautionary tale to + human-factors designers; “Remember the gorilla arm!” is + shorthand for “How is this going to fly in real + use?”.
[CMU: perhaps from the canonical hiker's food, Good Old Raisins and + Peanuts] Another metasyntactic variable, like + foo and bar.
A misfeature of a system, especially a + programming language or environment, that tends to breed bugs or mistakes + because it is both enticingly easy to invoke and completely unexpected + and/or unreasonable in its outcome. For example, a classic gotcha in + C is the fact that if (a=b) + {code;} is syntactically valid and sometimes even correct. It + puts the value of b into a and then executes code if a is + non-zero. What the programmer probably meant was if + (a==b) {code;}, which executes code if a and + b are equal.
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 being eventually converted to robot + goo. This is the simplest of the nanotechnology + disaster scenarios, easily refuted by arguments from energy requirements + and elemental abundances. Compare blue goo.
See black hat.
[from SF fandom] 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, which is the number of people in the + group, can be inferred from context (see N). See + oriental food, ravs, + stir-fried random.
(also green words)
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 these two approaches were being 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 method for the image.” Compare + out-of-band, zigamorph, + fence (sense 1).
[after the IBM System/360 Reference Data + card] A summary of an assembly language, even if the color is not green and + not a card. Less frequently used now because of the decrease in the use of + assembly language. “I'll go get my green card so I can check the + addressing mode for that instruction.”
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 took place in a programmers' terminal 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 rapidly left the room, never to return.
In fall 2000 it was reported from Electronic Data Systems that the + green card for 370 machines has been a blue-green booklet since + 1989.
[IBM]
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 know that ‘something is happening’. 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. “Motorola calls the CISC cruft in the + 88000 architecture ‘compatibility logic’, but I call it green + lightning”. See also feature (sense + 6).
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-drab ‘uniform’ paint used for military + equipment.
A style of fanfolded continuous-feed paper with alternating green + and white bars on it, especially used in old-style line printers. This + slang almost certainly dates way back to mainframe days.
[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)] + To rapidly scan a file or set of files looking for a particular string or + pattern (when browsing through a large set of files, one may speak of + grepping around). By extension, to + look for something by pattern. “Grep the bulletin board for the + system backup schedule, would you?” See also + vgrep.
[It has been alleged that the source is from the title of a paper + “A General Regular Expression Parser”, but dmr confirms the + g/re/p etymology --ESR]
Random binary data rendered as unreadable text. Noise characters in + a data stream are displayed as gribble. Dumping a binary file to the screen + is an excellent source of gribble, and (if the bell/speaker is active) + headaches.
Girlfriend. Like newsfroup and + filk, a typo reincarnated as a new word. Seems to + have originated sometime in 1990 on Usenet. [A + friend tells me there was a Lloyd Biggle SF novel Watchers Of + The Dark, in which alien species after species goes insane and + begins to chant “Grilf! Grilf!”. A human detective + eventually determines that the word means “Liar!” I hope this + has nothing to do with the popularity of the Usenet + term. —ESR]
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 appropriate gesture and noise. See + grind.
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 + Institute Computer’ (TRIC) and later 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 + repeatedly pushed the single-step 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. See http://www.cs.rice.edu/History/R1/.
1. [MIT and Berkeley; now rare] To prettify hardcopy of code, + especially LISP code, by reindenting lines, printing keywords and comments + in distinct fonts (if available), etc. This usage was associated with the + MacLISP community and is now rare; prettyprint was + and is the generic term for such operations.
2. [Unix] To generate the formatted version of a document from the + troff, TeX, or Scribe source. +
3. [common] To run seemingly interminably, esp. (but not + necessarily) if performing some tedious and inherently useless task. + Similar to crunch or grovel. + Grinding has a connotation of using a lot of CPU time, but it is possible + to grind a disk, network, etc. See also hog. +
4. To make the whole system slow. “Troff really grinds a + PDP-11.”
5. grind grind excl. Roughly, “Isn't the machine slow + today!”
[MIT]
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).
Interestingly, this word seems to have a separate history from + glitch, with which it is often confused. Back in + the early 1960s, when ‘glitch’ was strictly a hardware-tech's + term of art, the Burton House dorm at M.I.T. maintained a “Gritch + Book”, a blank volume, into which the residents hand-wrote + complaints, suggestions, and witticisms. Previous years' volumes of this + tradition were maintained, dating back to antiquity. The word + “gritch” was described as a portmanteau of + “gripe” and “bitch”. Thus, sense 3 above is at + least historically incorrect.
[common; 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’] The emphatic form is grok in + fullness.
1. To understand. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. When + you claim to ‘grok’ some knowledge or technique, you are + asserting that you have not merely learned it in a detached instrumental + way but that it has become part of you, part of your identity. For + example, to say that you “know” LISP is + simply to assert that you can code in it if necessary — but to say + you “grok” LISP is to claim that you have deeply entered the + world-view and spirit of the language, with the implication that it has + transformed your view of programming. Contrast zen, + which is similar supernal understanding experienced as a single brief + flash. See also glark.
2. Used of programs, may connote merely sufficient understanding. + “Almost all C compilers grok the void + type these days.”
To cease functioning. Of people, to go home and go to sleep. + “I guess I'll gronk out now; see you all tomorrow.”
[popularized by Johnny Hart's comic strip + B.C.: but the word apparently predates that]
1. To clear the state of a wedged device and restart it. More + severe than ‘to frob’ (sense 2). +
2. [TMRC] To cut, sever, smash, or similarly disable.
3. The sound made by many 3.5-inch diskette drives. In particular, + the microfloppies on a Commodore Amiga go “grink, + gronk”.
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 broken, which + means about the same as gronk used of hardware, but + connotes depression or mental/emotional problems in people.
1. To work interminably and without apparent progress. Often used + transitively with ‘over’ or ‘through’. “The + file scavenger has been groveling through the /usr directories for 10 + minutes now.” Compare grind and + crunch. Emphatic form: grovel obscenely.
2. To examine minutely or in complete detail. “The compiler + grovels over the entire source program before beginning to translate + it.” “I grovelled through all the documentation, but I still + couldn't find the command I wanted.”
[from archaic English verb for shudder, as with fear] The grue was originated + in the game Zork (Dave Lebling took the name from + Jack Vance's Dying Earth fantasies) and used in + several other Infocom games as a hint that you + should perhaps look for a lamp, torch or some type of light source. + Wandering into a dark area would cause the game to prompt you, “It is + very dark. If you continue you are likely to be eaten by a grue.” + If you failed to locate a light source within the next couple of moves this + would indeed be the case.
The grue, according to scholars of the Great Underground Empire, is a + sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth. Its favorite + diet is either adventurers or enchanters, but its insatiable appetite is + tempered by its extreme fear of light. No grues have ever been seen by the + light of day, and only a few have been observed in their underground + lairs. Of those who have seen grues, few have survived their fearsome jaws + to tell the tale. Grues have sickly glowing fur, fish-mouthed faces, sharp + claws and fangs, and an uncontrollable tendency to slaver and gurgle. They + are certainly the most evil-tempered of all creatures; to say they are + touchy is a dangerous understatement. “Sour as a grue” is a + common expression, even among grues themselves.
All this folklore is widely known among hackers.
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.
[a portmanteau of ‘garbage’ and ‘rubbish’; + may have originated with SF author Philip K. Dick] Garbage; crap; nonsense. + “What is all this gubbish?” The opposite portmanteau + ‘rubbage’ is also reported; in fact, it was British slang + during the 19th century and appears in Dickens.
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.
2. A piece of shareware that works.
[from a class of Monty Python characters, poss. with some influence + from the 1960s claymation character]
1. An act of minor but conspicuous stupidity, often in gumby maneuver or pull a gumby.
2. [NRL] n. A bureaucrat, or + other technical incompetent who impedes the progress of real work.
3. adj. Relating to things + typically associated with people in sense 2. (e.g. “Ran would be + writing code, but Richard gave him gumby work that's due on Friday”, + or, “Dammit! Travel screwed up my plane tickets. I have to go out + on gumby patrol.”)
[TMRC] To push, prod, or poke at a device that has almost (but not + quite) produced the desired result. Implies a threat to + mung.
Same as laser chicken.
Amiga equivalent of panic in + Unix (sometimes just called a guru or + guru event). When the system + crashes, a cryptic message of the form “GURU MEDITATION + #XXXXXXXX.YYYYYYYY” may appear, indicating what the problem was. An + Amiga guru can figure things out from the numbers. Sometimes a + guru event must be followed by a + Vulcan nerve pinch.
This term is (no surprise) an in-joke from the earliest days of the + Amiga. An earlier product of the Amiga corporation was a device called a + ‘Joyboard’ which was basically a plastic board built onto a + joystick-like device; it was sold with a skiing game cartridge for the + Atari game machine. It is said that whenever the prototype OS crashed, the + system programmer responsible would calm down by concentrating on a + solution while sitting cross-legged on a Joyboard trying to keep the board + in balance. This position resembled that of a meditating guru. Sadly, the + joke was removed fairly early on (but there's a well-known patch to restore + it in more recent versions).
[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.
[WPI]
1. v. To + hack, usually at night. At WPI, from 1975 onwards, + one who gweeped could often be found at the College Computing Center + punching cards or crashing the PDP-10 or, later, the + DEC-20. A correspondent who was there at the time opines that the term was + originally onomatopoetic, describing the keyclick sound of the Datapoint + terminals long connected to the PDP-10; others allege that + ‘gweep’ was the sound of the Datapoint's bell (compare + feep). The term has survived the demise of those + technologies, however, and was still alive in early 1999. “I'm going + to go gweep for a while. See you in the morning.” “I gweep + from 8 PM till 3 AM during the week.”
2. n. One who habitually gweeps + in sense 1; a hacker. “He's a hard-core + gweep, mumbles code in his sleep.” Around 1979 this was considered + derogatory and not used in self-reference; it has since been proudly + claimed in much the same way as geek.
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 memo’.) Some of them are very + useful techniques, powerful theorems, or interesting unsolved problems, but + most fall into the category of mathematical and computer trivia. Here is a + sampling of the entries (with authors), slightly paraphrased:
Item 41 (Gene Salamin): There are exactly 23,000 prime numbers less + than + 218.
Item 46 (Rich Schroeppel): The most probable + suit distribution in bridge hands is 4-4-3-2, as compared to 4-3-3-3, which + is the most evenly distributed. This is because the + world likes to have unequal numbers: a thermodynamic effect saying things + will not be in the state of lowest energy, but in the state of lowest + disordered energy.
Item 81 (Rich Schroeppel): Count the magic squares of order 5 (that + is, all the 5-by-5 arrangements of the numbers from 1 to 25 such that all + rows, columns, and diagonals add up to the same number). There are about + 320 million, not counting those that differ only by rotation and + reflection.
Item 154 (Bill Gosper): The myth that any given programming language + is machine independent is easily exploded by computing the sum of powers of + 2. If the result loops with period = 1 + with sign +, you are on a sign-magnitude + machine. If the result loops with period = + 1 at -1, you are on a + twos-complement machine. If the result loops with period greater than 1, + including the beginning, you are on a ones-complement machine. If the + result loops with period greater than 1, not including the beginning, your + machine isn't binary — the pattern should tell you the base. If you + run out of memory, you are on a string or bignum system. If arithmetic + overflow is a fatal error, some fascist pig with a read-only mind is trying + to enforce machine independence. But the very ability to trap overflow is + machine dependent. By this strategy, consider the universe, or, more + precisely, algebra: Let X = the sum of + many powers of 2 = ...111111 (base 2). Now add + X to itself: X + X + = ...111110. Thus, 2X = X - + 1, so X = -1. Therefore + algebra is run on a machine (the universe) that is two's-complement.
Item 174 (Bill Gosper and Stuart Nelson): 21963283741 is the only + number such that if you represent it on the PDP-10 + as both an integer and a floating-point number, the bit patterns of the two + representations are identical.
Item 176 (Gosper): The “banana phenomenon” was + encountered when processing a character string by taking the last 3 letters + typed out, searching for a random occurrence of that sequence in the text, + taking the letter following that occurrence, typing it out, and iterating. + This ensures that every 4-letter string output occurs in the original. The + program typed BANANANANANANANA.... We note an ambiguity in the + phrase, “the Nth occurrence + of.” In one sense, there are five 00's in 0000000000; in another, + there are nine. The editing program TECO finds five. Thus it finds only + the first ANA in BANANA, and is thus obligated to type N next. By Murphy's + Law, there is but one NAN, thus forcing A, and thus a loop. An option to + find overlapped instances would be useful, although it would require + backing up N − 1 characters before + seeking the next N-character + string.
Note: This last item refers to a + Dissociated Press implementation. See also + banana problem.
HAKMEM also contains some rather more complicated mathematical and + technical items, but these examples show some of its fun flavor.
An HTML transcription of the entire document is available at http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/hbaker/hakmem/hakmem.html.
[Usenet: very common] Abbreviation: Have A Nice Day. Typically used + to close a Usenet posting, but also used to + informally close emails; often preceded by + HTH.
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 IBM 360. The MC6800 microprocessor + was the first for which an 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 could + actually cause lines to burn up. Compare + killer poke.
See ha ha only serious.
See ha ha only serious.
[High-Level Language (as opposed to assembler)] Found primarily in + email and news rather than speech. Rarely, the variants ‘VHLL’ + and ‘MLL’ are found. VHLL stands for ‘Very-High-Level + Language’ and is used to describe a bondage-and-discipline + language that the speaker happens to like; Prolog and Backus's + FP are often called VHLLs. ‘MLL’ stands for + ‘Medium-Level Language’ and is sometimes used half-jokingly to + describe C, alluding to its + ‘structured-assembler’ image. See also languages of + choice.
Unflattering hackerism for HP-UX, Hewlett-Packard's Unix port, which + features some truly unique bogosities in the filesystem internals and + elsewhere (these occasionally create portability problems). HP-UX is often + referred to as ‘hockey-pux’ inside HP, and one respondent + claims that the proper pronunciation is /HP + ukkkhhhh/ as though one were about to spit. Another such + alternate spelling and pronunciation is “H-PUX” /H-puhks/. Hackers at HP/Apollo (the + former Apollo Computers which was swallowed by HP in 1989) have been heard + to complain that Mr. Packard should have pushed to have his name first, if + for no other reason than the greater eloquence of the resulting acronym. + See sun-stools, + Slowlaris.
[Usenet: very common] Abbreviation: Hope This Helps (e.g. following + a response to a technical question). Often used just before + HAND. See also YHBT.
A notable bomb from 1995. Should have been titled + Crackers, because cracking is what the movie was + about. It's understandable that they didn't however; titles redolent of + snack food are probably a tough sell in Hollywood.
[ITS] Ritual phrasing of part of the information which ITS made + publicly available about each user. This information (the INQUIR record) + was a sort of form in which the user could fill out various fields. On + display, two of these fields were always combined into a project + description of the form “Hacking X for Y” (e.g., + “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 files).
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.
A pair of Microsoft internal strategy memoranda leaked to ESR in + late 1998 that confirmed everybody's paranoia about the current + Evil Empire. These documents praised + the technical excellence of Linux and outlined a + counterstrategy of attempting to lock in customers by + “de-commoditizing” Internet protocols and services. They were + extensively cited on the Internet and in the press and proved so + embarrassing that Microsoft PR barely said a word in public for six months + afterwards.
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.” Quoted here because it seems + to be a particular favorite of hackers, often showing up in + sig blocks, fortune cookie files and the + login banners of BBS systems and commercial networks. This probably + reflects the hacker's daily experience of environments created by + well-intentioned but short-sighted people. Compare + Sturgeon's Law, Ninety-Ninety Rule.
At http://www.statusq.org/2001/11/26.html + it is claimed that Hanlon's Razor was coined by one Robert J. Hanlon of + Scranton, PA. However, a curiously similar remark (“You have + attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from + stupidity.”) appears in Logic of Empire, a + classic 1941 SF story by Robert A. Heinlein, who calls the error it + indicates the ‘devil theory’ of sociology. Similar epigrams + have been attributed to William James and (on dubious evidence) Napoleon + Bonaparte.
Unflattering spoonerism of Red Hat, a popular + Linux distribution. Compare + Macintrash. + sun-stools, HP-SUX, + Slowlaris.
[from SF fandom] A method of ‘marking’ common words, + i.e., calling attention to the fact that they are being used in a + nonstandard, ironic, or humorous way. Originated in the fannish + catchphrase “Bheer is the One True Ghod!” from decades ago. + H-infix marking of ‘Ghod’ and other words spread into the 1960s + counterculture via underground comix, and into early hackerdom either from + the counterculture or from SF fandom (the three overlapped heavily at the + time). More recently, the h infix has become an expected feature of + benchmark names (Dhrystone, Rhealstone, etc.); this is probably patterning + on the original Whetstone (the name of a laboratory) but influenced by the + fannish/counterculture h infix.
[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 that are both intended and + perceived 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 culture is often perceived as 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 also + hacker humor, and koan.
[poss. by analogy with ‘Big Mac Attack’ from ads for the + McDonald's fast-food chain; the variant big hack + attack is reported] Nearly synonymous with + hacking run, though the latter more strongly implies an + all-nighter.
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 concentration at will correlates + strongly with 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 + sensation of being in hack mode is more than a 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 3).
Some aspects of hacker 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 avoid being interrupted. One + may read, 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 lot of delicate + state (sense 2) in your head, and you dare not + swap that context out until you have reached a good + point to pause. See also juggling eggs.
[very common] 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.
[common] To throw something together so it will work. Unlike + kluge together or + cruft together, this does not necessarily have negative + connotations.
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, monkey up, + cruft together.
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 were installed purely for hack value. See + display hack for one method of computing hack value, + but this cannot really be explained, only experienced. As Louis Armstrong + once said when asked to explain jazz: “Man, if you gotta ask you'll + never know.” (Feminists please note Fats Waller's explanation of + rhythm: “Lady, if you got to ask, you ain't got it.”)
[very common]
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 this heat!”
4. vt. To work on something + (typically a program). In an immediate sense: “What are you + doing?” “I'm hacking TECO.” In a general + (time-extended) sense: “What do you do around here?” “I + hack TECO.” More generally, “I hack foo” is roughly equivalent to + “foo is my major interest (or + project)”. “I hack solid-state physics.” See + Hacking X for Y.
5. vt. To pull a prank on. See + sense 2 and hacker (sense 5).
6. vi. To interact with a + computer in a playful and exploratory rather than goal-directed way. + “Whatcha up to?” “Oh, just hacking.”
7. n. Short for + hacker.
8. See nethack.
9. [MIT] v. To explore the + basements, roof ledges, and steam tunnels of a large, institutional + building, to the dismay of Physical Plant workers and (since this is + usually performed at educational institutions) the Campus Police. This + activity has been found to be eerily similar to playing adventure games + such as Dungeons and Dragons and Zork. See also + vadding.
Constructions on this term abound. They include happy hacking (a farewell), how's hacking? (a friendly greeting among + hackers) and hack, hack (a fairly + content-free but friendly comment, often used as a temporary farewell). + For more on this totipotent term see + The Meaning of Hack. See also neat hack, + real hack.
[analogous to ‘pissed off’] 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 illegal, or even overtly + criminal 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.
It has been pointed out that there is precedent for this usage in + U.S. Navy slang, in which officers under discipline are sometimes said to + be “in hack” and one may speak of “hacking off the + C.O.”.
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 coherence and continued maintainability, the software may emerge + better for the experience. Contrast hack up.
1. The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, + and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by + writing open-source code and facilitating access to information and to + computing resources wherever possible.
2. The belief that system-cracking for fun and exploration is + ethically OK as long as the cracker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach + of confidentiality.
Both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but by no + means universally, accepted among hackers. Most hackers subscribe to the + hacker ethic in sense 1, and many act on it by writing and giving away + open-source software. A few go further and assert that + all information should be free and + any proprietary control of it is bad; this is the + philosophy behind the GNU project.
Sense 2 is more controversial: some people consider the act of + cracking itself to be unethical, like breaking and entering. But the + belief that ‘ethical’ cracking excludes destruction at least + moderates the behavior of people who see themselves as ‘benign’ + crackers (see also samurai, gray + hat). On this view, it may be one of the highest forms of + hackerly courtesy to (a) break into a system, and then (b) explain to the + sysop, preferably by email from a superuser account, + exactly how it was done and how the hole can be plugged — acting as + an unpaid (and unsolicited) tiger team.
The most reliable manifestation of either version of the hacker ethic + is that almost all hackers are actively willing to share technical tricks, + software, and (where possible) computing resources with other hackers. + Huge cooperative networks such as Usenet, + FidoNet and the Internet itself can function without + central control because of this trait; they both rely on and reinforce a + sense of community that may be hackerdom's most valuable intangible + asset.
A distinctive style of shared intellectual humor found among + hackers, having the following marked characteristics:
1. Fascination with form-vs.-content jokes, paradoxes, and humor + having to do with confusion of metalevels (see + meta). One way to make a hacker laugh: hold a red + index card in front of him/her with “GREEN” written on it, or + vice-versa (note, however, that this is funny only the first time).
2. Elaborate deadpan parodies of large intellectual constructs, such + as specifications (see write-only memory), standards + documents, language descriptions (see INTERCAL), and + even entire scientific theories (see + quantum bogodynamics, computron).
3. Jokes that involve screwily precise reasoning from bizarre, + ludicrous, or just grossly counter-intuitive premises.
4. Fascination with puns and wordplay.
5. A fondness for apparently mindless humor with subversive currents + of intelligence in it — for example, old Warner Brothers and Rocky + & Bullwinkle cartoons, the Marx brothers, the early B-52s, and Monty + Python's Flying Circus. Humor that combines this trait with elements of + high camp and slapstick is especially favored.
6. References to the symbol-object antinomies and associated ideas in + Zen Buddhism and (less often) Taoism. See + has the X nature, Discordianism, + zen, ha ha only serious, + koan.
See also filk, + retrocomputing, and the Portrait of J. Random + Hacker in Appendix B. If you have an + itchy feeling that all six of these traits are really aspects of one thing + that is incredibly difficult to talk about exactly, you are (a) correct and + (b) responding like a hacker. These traits are also recognizable (though + in a less marked form) throughout science-fiction fandom.
[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe]
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. RFC1392, the Internet + Users' Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who + delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a + system, computers and computer networks in particular.
2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who + enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming.
3. A person capable of appreciating + hack value.
4. A person who is good at programming quickly.
5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does + work using it or on it; as in ‘a Unix hacker’. (Definitions 1 + through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.)
6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy + hacker, for example.
7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively + overcoming or circumventing limitations.
8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive + information by poking around. Hence password + hacker, network hacker. + The correct term for this sense is cracker.
The term ‘hacker’ also tends to connote membership in the + global community defined by the net (see + the network. For discussion of some of the basics of this culture, + see the How + To Become A Hacker FAQ. It also implies that the person described + is seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic (see + hacker ethic).
It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describe + oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something of an elite (a + meritocracy based on ability), though one to which new members are gladly + welcome. There is thus a certain ego satisfaction to be had in identifying + yourself as a hacker (but if you claim to be one and are not, you'll + quickly be labeled bogus). See also + geek, wannabee.
This term seems to have been first adopted as a badge in the 1960s by + the hacker culture surrounding TMRC and the MIT AI Lab. We have a report + that it was used in a sense close to this entry's by teenage radio hams and + electronics tinkerers in the mid-1950s.
[analogy with ‘bombing run’ or ‘speed run’] + 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).
(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.
The quality of being or involving a hack. This term is considered + mildly silly. Syn. hackitude.
Syn. hackishness; this word is considered + sillier.
[back-formation from hairy] 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 (tending to promote hair growth): + “GNUMACS elisp encourages lusers to write complex editing + modes.” “Yeah, it's pretty hairiferous all right.” (or + just: “Hair squared!”)
1. [Fidonet] A large batch of messages that a store-and-forward + network is failing to forward when it should. Often used in the phrase + “Fido coughed up a hairball today”, meaning that the stuck + messages have just come unstuck, producing a flood of mail where there had + previously been drought.
2. An unmanageably huge mass of source code. “JWZ thought the + Mozilla effort bogged down because the code was a huge hairball.” +
3. Any large amount of garbage coming out suddenly. “Sendmail + is coughing up a hairball, so expect some slowness accessing the + Internet.”
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 + hairy lawyer who says there's nothing to worry about.” See also + hirsute.
There is a theorem in simplicial homology theory which states that + any continuous tangent field on a 2-sphere is null at least in a point. + Mathematically literate hackers tend to associate the term + ‘hairy’ with the informal version of this theorem; “You + can't comb a hairy ball smooth.” (Previous versions of this entry + associating the above informal statement with the Brouwer fixed-point + theorem were incorrect.)
The adjective ‘long-haired’ is well-attested to have been + in slang use among scientists and engineers during the early 1950s; it was + equivalent to modern hairy senses 1 + and 2, and was very likely ancestral to the hackish use. In fact the noun + ‘long-hair’ was at the time used to describe a person + satisfying sense 3. Both senses probably passed out of use when long hair + was adopted as a signature trait by the 1960s counterculture, leaving + hackish hairy as a sort of stunted + mutant relic.
In British mainstream use, “hairy” means + “dangerous”, and consequently, in British programming terms, + “hairy” may be used to denote complicated and/or + incomprehensible code, but only if that complexity or incomprehesiveness is + also considered dangerous.
A shorthand method of spelling found on many British academic + bulletin boards and talker systems. Syllables and + whole words in a sentence are replaced by single ASCII characters the names + of which are phonetically similar or equivalent, while multiple letters are + usually dropped. Hence, ‘for’ becomes ‘4’; + ‘two’, ‘too’, and ‘to’ become + ‘2’; ‘ck’ becomes ‘k’. “Before I + see you tomorrow” becomes “b4 i c u 2moro”. First + appeared in London about 1986, and was probably caused by the slowness of + available talker systems, which operated on archaic machines with outdated + operating systems and no standard methods of communication.
Hakspek almost disappeared after the great bandwidth explosion of the + early 1990s, as fast Internet links wiped out the old-style talker systems. + However, it has enjoyed a revival in another medium — the Short Message + Service (SMS) associated with GSM cellphones. SMS sends are limited to a + maximum of 160 characters, and typing on a cellphone keypad is difficult + and slow anyway. There are now even published paper dictionaries for SMS + users to help them do hakspek-to-English and vice-versa.
See also talk mode.
The opposite of spam, sense 3; that is, + incoming mail that the user actually wants to see.
Commonwealth hackish syn. for bang on.
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. A tailless mouse; that is, one with an infrared link to a + receiver on the machine, as opposed to the conventional cable.
3. [UK] Any item of hardware made by Amstrad, a company famous for + its cheap plastic PC-almost-compatibles.
[pun on ‘hand craft’] See cruft, + sense 3.
1. [rare] The practice of translating + hot spots 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, by hand; syn. with + v. cruft.
2. [common] More generally, manual construction or patching of data + sets that would normally be generated by a translation utility and + interpreted by another program, and aren't really designed to be read or + modified by humans.
[from obs. mainstream slang hand-rolled in opposition to ready-made, referring to cigarettes] To perform + a normally automated software installation or configuration process + by hand; implies that the normal process failed due + to bugs in the configurator or was defeated by something exceptional in the + local environment. “The worst thing about being a gateway between + four different nets is having to hand-roll a new sendmail configuration + every time any of them upgrades.”
1. [from CB slang] An electronic pseudonym; a nom de + guerre intended to conceal the user's true identity. + Network and BBS handles function as the same sort of simultaneous + concealment and display one finds on Citizen's Band radio, from which the + term was adopted. Use of grandiose handles is characteristic of + warez d00dz, crackers, + weenies, spods, and other + lower forms of network life; true hackers travel on their own reputations + rather than invented legendry. Compare nick, + screen name.
2. A magic cookie, often in the form of a + numeric index into some array somewhere, through which you can manipulate + an object like a file or window. The form file + handle is especially common.
3. [Mac] A pointer to a pointer to dynamically-allocated memory; the + extra level of indirection allows on-the-fly memory compaction (to cut down + on fragmentation) or aging out of unused resources, with minimal impact on + the (possibly multiple) parts of the larger program containing references + to the allocated memory. Compare snap (to snap a + handle would defeat its purpose); see also + aliasing bug, dangling pointer.
[very common] 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 indicate that + they have heard each others' points and say “Oh, they're + handshaking!”. See also protocol.
[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 handwave!”
If someone starts a sentence with “Clearly...” or + “Obviously...” or “It is self-evident + that...”, it is a good bet he is about to handwave + (alternatively, use of these constructions in a sarcastic tone before a + paraphrase of someone else's argument suggests that it is a handwave). The + theory behind this term is that if you wave your hands at the right moment, + the listener may be sufficiently distracted to not notice that what you + have said is bogus. Failing that, if a listener + does object, you might try to dismiss the objection with a wave of your + hand.
The use of this word is often accompanied by gestures: both hands up, + palms forward, swinging the hands in a vertical plane pivoting at the + elbows and/or shoulders (depending on the magnitude of the handwave); + alternatively, holding the forearms in one position while rotating the + hands at the wrist to make them flutter. In context, the gestures alone + can suffice as a remark; if a speaker makes an outrageously unsupported + assumption, you might simply wave your hands in this way, as an accusation, + far more eloquent than words could express, that his logic is + faulty.
1. [very common] 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 and then hangs until you type + a character.” Compare block.
3. To attach a peripheral device, esp. in the construction + ‘hang off’: “We're going to hang another tape drive off + the file server.” Implies a device attached with cables, rather than + something that is strictly inside the machine's chassis.
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 elation, but rather that of + blissful ignorance. “The program continues to run, happily unaware + that its output is going to /dev/null.” Also used to suggest that a + program or device would really rather be doing something destructive, and + is being given an opportunity to do so. “If you enter an O here + instead of a zero, the program will happily erase all your data.” + Nevertheless, use of this term implies a basically benign attitude towards + the program: It didn't mean any harm, it was just eager to do its job. We'd + like to be angry at it but we shouldn't, we should try to understand it + instead. The adjective “cheerfully” is often used in exactly + the same way.
See boot.
1. [common] 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 is esp. applied to use of a literal instead of a + #define macro (see + magic number).
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.
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.
[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 in it truly has the loser nature!” + See also the X that can be Y is not the true X. See + also mu.
A notional receptacle, a set of which might be used to apportion + data items for sorting or lookup purposes. When you look up a name in the + phone book (for example), you typically hash it by extracting its first + letter; the hash buckets are the alphabetically ordered letter sections. + This term 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’ are more difficult + to discriminate, and may be confused. “If you hash English words + only by length, you get too many common grammar words in the first couple + of hash buckets.” Compare hash + collision.
[from the techspeak] (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 friend about to move out to Berkeley. 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.
Common (spoken) name for the circumflex (‘^’, ASCII + 1011110) character. See ASCII for other + synonyms.
Concentrating, usually so heavily and for so long that everything + outside the focus area is missed. See also + hack mode and larval stage, although this + mode is hardly confined to fledgling hackers.
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 or a periodic interrupt.
3. The ‘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 hardware is designed to reboot the + machine if it stops hearing a heartbeat. See also + breath-of-life packet.
[IBM] A customer who can be relied upon to buy, without fail, the + latest version of an existing product (not quite the same as a member of + the lunatic fringe). A 1993 example of a heatseeker + was someone who, owning a 286 PC and Windows 3.0, went out and bought + Windows 3.1 (which offers no worthwhile benefits unless you have a 386). + If all customers were heatseekers, vast amounts of money could be made by + just fixing some of the bugs in each release (n) and selling it to them as + release (n+1). Microsoft in fact seems to have mastered this + technique.
[Cambridge] Syn. big iron.
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 + theoretical knowledge. Writing device drivers is + heavy wizardry; so is interfacing to X (sense 2) + without a toolkit. Esp.: found in source-code comments of the form + “Heavy wizardry begins here”. Compare + voodoo programming.
[common] 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 the + expense of mundane 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 hacker's heavyweight is + another's elephantine and a third's + monstrosity. Oppose lightweight. Usage: now borders on techspeak, + especially in the compound heavyweight + process.
[from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics] A bug + that disappears or alters its behavior when one attempts to probe or + isolate it. (This usage is not even particularly fanciful; the use of a + debugger sometimes alters a program's operating environment significantly + enough that buggy code, such as that which relies on the values of + uninitialized memory, behaves quite differently.) Antonym of + Bohr bug; see also mandelbug, + schroedinbug. In C, nine out of ten heisenbugs + result from uninitialized auto variables, + fandango on core phenomena (esp. lossage related to corruption of the + malloc arena) or errors that + smash the stack.
Common mispronunciation of ‘help desk’, especially among + people who have to answer phones at one.
See wall.
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 hooker's greeting to a swabbie fresh off the boat, of + course. The standard response is “Nothing happens here.”; of + all the Zork/Dungeon games, only in Infocom's Zork 3 is “Hello, + Sailor” actually useful (excluding the unique situation where + _knowing_ this fact is important in Dungeon...).
1. The canonical minimal test message in the C/Unix universe. +
2. Any of the minimal programs that emit this message (a + representative sample in various languages can be found at http://www.latech.edu/~acm/helloworld/). + Traditionally, the first program a C coder is supposed to write in a new + environment is one that just prints “hello, world” to standard + output (and indeed it is the first example program in K&R). Environments that generate + an unreasonably large executable for this trivial test or which require a + hairy compiler-linker invocation to generate it are + considered to lose (see X). +
3. Greeting uttered by a hacker making an entrance or requesting + information from anyone present. “Hello, world! Is the LAN back up + yet?”
1. Short for hexadecimal, base 16.
2. A 6-pack of anything (compare quad, sense + 2). Neither usage has anything to do with magic or + black art, though the pun is appreciated and + occasionally used by hackers. True story: As a joke, some hackers once + offered some surplus ICs for sale to be worn as protective amulets against + hostile magic. The chips were, of course, hex inverters.
Base 16. Coined in the early 1950s to replace earlier sexadecimal, which was too racy and amusing for + stuffy IBM, and later adopted by the rest of the industry.
Actually, neither term is etymologically pure. If we take binary to be paradigmatic, the most + etymologically correct term for base 10, for example, is + ‘denary’, which comes from ‘deni’ (ten at a time, + ten each), a Latin distributive + number; the corresponding term for base-16 would be something like + ‘sendenary’. “Decimal” comes from the combining + root of decem, Latin for 10. If wish + to create a truly analogous word for base 16, we should start with + sedecim, Latin for 16. Ergo, + sedecimal is the word that would have + been created by a Latin scholar. The ‘sexa-’ prefix is Latin + but incorrect in this context, and + ‘hexa-’ is Greek. The word octal is similarly incorrect; a correct form + would be ‘octaval’ (to go with decimal), or + ‘octonary’ (to go with binary). If anyone ever implements a + base-3 computer, computer scientists will be faced with the unprecedented + dilemma of a choice between two correct forms; both + ternary and trinary have a claim to this throne.
A hexadecimal digit (0-9, and A-F or a-f). Used by people who + claim that there are only ten digits, dammit; + sixteen-fingered human beings are rather rare, despite what some keyboard + designs might seem to imply (see + space-cadet keyboard).
[scientific computation] An extra option added to a routine without + changing the calling sequence. For example, instead of adding an explicit + input variable to instruct a routine to give extra diagnostic output, the + programmer might just add a test for some otherwise meaningless feature of + the existing inputs, such as a negative mass. The use of hidden flags can + make a program very hard to debug and understand, but is all too common + wherever programs are hacked on in a hurry.
[from high-order bit]
1. The most significant bit in a byte.
2. [common] By extension, the most significant part of something + other than a data byte: “Spare me the whole + saga, just give me the high bit.” See also + meta bit, + dread high-bit disease, and compare the mainstream + slang bottom line.
The high half of a 512K PDP-10's physical + address space; the other half was of course the low moby. This usage has + been generalized in a way that has outlasted the + PDP-10; for example, at the 1990 Washington D.C. + Area Science Fiction Conclave (Disclave), when a miscommunication resulted + in two separate wakes being held in commemoration of the shutdown of MIT's + last ITS machines, the one on the upper floor was + dubbed the ‘high moby’ and the other the ‘low + moby’. All parties involved grokked this + instantly. See moby.
[scientific computation] The preferred modifier for overstating an + understatement. As in: highly + nonoptimal, the worst possible way to do something; highly nontrivial, either impossible or + requiring a major research project; highly + nonlinear, completely erratic and unpredictable; highly nontechnical, drivel written for + lusers, oversimplified to the point of being + misleading or incorrect (compare drool-proof paper). + In other computing cultures, postfixing of + in the extreme might be preferred.
[IRC] Fortuitous typo for ‘hint’, now in wide + intentional use among players of initgame. Compare + newsfroup, filk.
A contract programmer, as opposed to a full-time staff member. All + the connotations of this term suggested by innumerable spaghetti Westerns + are intentional.
Occasionally used humorously as a synonym for + hairy.
See software hoarding.
1. Favored term to describe programs or hardware that seem to eat + far more than their share of a system's resources, esp. those which + noticeably degrade interactive response. Not used of + programs that are simply extremely large or complex or that are merely + painfully slow themselves. More often than not encountered in qualified + forms, e.g., memory hog, core hog, hog the + processor, hog the disk. + “A controller that never gives up the I/O bus gets killed after the + bus-hog timer expires.”
2. Also said of people who use more than their + fair share of resources (particularly disk, where it seems that 10% of the + people use 90% of the disk, no matter how big the disk is or how many + people use it). Of course, once disk hogs fill up one filesystem, they + typically find some other new one to infect, claiming to the sysadmin that + they have an important new project to complete.
A region in an otherwise flat entity which is + not actually present. For example, some Unix filesystems can store large + files with holes so that unused regions of the file are never actually + stored on disk. (In techspeak, these are referred to as + ‘sparse’ files.) As another example, the region of memory in + IBM PCs reserved for memory-mapped I/O devices which may not actually be + present is called ‘the I/O hole’, since memory-management + systems must skip over this area when filling user requests for + memory.
[Usenet: sci.space] To be + hollised is to have been ordered by one's employer not to post any even + remotely job-related material to Usenet (or, by extension, to other + Internet media). The original and most notorious case of this involved one + Ken Hollis, a Lockheed employee and space-program enthusiast who posted + publicly available material on access to Space Shuttle launches to + sci.space. He was gagged under + threat of being fired in 1994 at the behest of NASA public-relations + officers. The result was, of course, a huge publicity black eye for NASA. + Nevertheless several other NASA contractor employees were subsequently + hollised for similar activities. Use of this term carries the strong + connotation that the persons doing the gagging are bureaucratic idiots + blinded to their own best interests by territorial reflexes.
[Linux] Notional substance said to be sprinkled by + Linus onto other people's contributions. With this + ritual, he blesses them, officially making them part of the kernel. First + used in November 1998 just after Linus had handed the maintenance of the + stable kernel over to Alan Cox.
[from Usenet, but may predate it; common] + n. flame wars + over religious issues. The paper by Danny Cohen + that popularized the terms big-endian and + little-endian in connection with the + LSB-first/MSB-first controversy was entitled On Holy Wars and a + Plea for Peace.
Great holy wars of the past have included ITS + vs.: Unix, Unix vs.: + VMS, BSD Unix vs.: System V, + C vs.: Pascal, + C vs.: FORTRAN, etc. In the year 2003, popular + favorites of the day are KDE vs, GNOME, vim vs. elvis, Linux + vs. [Free|Net|Open]BSD. Hardy perennials include + EMACS vs.: vi, my personal + computer vs.: everyone else's personal computer, ad nauseam. The + characteristic that distinguishes holy wars from normal technical disputes + is that in a holy war most of the participants spend their time trying to + pass off personal value choices and cultural attachments as objective + technical evaluations. This happens precisely because in a true holy war, + the actual substantive differences between the sides are relatively minor. + See also theology.
A hacker's personal machine, especially one he or she owns. + “Yeah? Well, my home box runs a full 4.4 BSD, + so there!”
1. Syn. home box.
2. The machine that receives your email. These senses might be + distinct, for example, for a hacker who owns one computer at home, but + reads email at work.
1. One's personal billboard on the World Wide Web. The term + ‘home page’ is perhaps a bit misleading because home + directories and physical homes in RL are private, + but home pages are designed to be very public.
2. By extension, a WWW repository for information and links related + to a project or organization. Compare + home box.
1. A box designed to attract crackers so that + they can be observed in action. It is usually well isolated from the rest + of the network, but has extensive logging (usually network layer, on a + different machine). Different from an iron box in + that its purpose is to attract, not merely observe. Sometimes, it is also + a defensive network security tactic — you set up an easy-to-crack box so + that your real servers don't get messed with. The concept was presented in + Cheswick & Bellovin's book Firewalls and Internet + Security.
2. A mail server that acts as an open relay when a single message is + attempted to send through it, but discards or diverts for examination + messages that are detected to be part of a spam run.
A software or hardware feature included in order to simplify later + additions or changes by a user. For example, a simple program that prints + numbers might always print them in base 10, but a more flexible version + would let a variable determine what base to use; setting the variable to 5 + would make the program print numbers in base 5. The variable is a simple + hook. An even more flexible program might examine the variable and treat a + value of 16 or less as the base to use, but treat any other number as the + address of a user-supplied routine for printing a number. This is a + hairy but powerful hook; one can then write a + routine to print numbers as Roman numerals, say, or as Hebrew characters, + and plug it into the program through the hook. Often the difference + between a good program and a superb one is that the latter has useful hooks + in judiciously chosen places. Both may do the original job about equally + well, but the one with the hooks is much more flexible for future expansion + of capabilities (EMACS, for example, is + all hooks). The term user + exit is synonymous but much more formal and less hackish.
1. n. [common] One file + transmission in a series required to get a file from point A to point B on + a store-and-forward network. On such networks (including + the old UUCP network and and FidoNet), an + important inter-machine metric is the number of hops in the shortest path + between them, which can be more significant than their geographical + separation. See bang path.
2. v. [rare] To log in to a + remote machine, esp. via rlogin or telnet. “I'll hop over to foovax + to FTP that.”
Broken. Confused. Trashed. Now common; seems to be post-1995. + There is an entertaining web page of related definitions, few of + which seem to be in live use but many of which would be in the recognition + vocabulary of anyone familiar with the adjective.
1. vt. [common] To make + non-functional or greatly degraded in performance. “That big + ray-tracing program really hoses the system.” See + hosed.
2. n. A narrow channel through + which data flows under pressure. Generally denotes data paths that + represent performance bottlenecks.
3. n. Cabling, especially thick + Ethernet cable. This is sometimes called bit + hose or hosery (play on + ‘hosiery’) or ‘etherhose’. See also + washing machine.
Same as down. Used primarily by Unix + hackers. Humorous: also implies a condition thought to be relatively easy + to reverse. Probably derived from the Canadian slang ‘hoser’ + popularized by the Bob and Doug Mackenzie skits on SCTV, but this usage + predated SCTV by years in hackerdom (it was certainly already live at CMU + in the 1970s). See hose. It is also widely used of + people in the mainstream sense of ‘in an extremely unfortunate + situation’.
Once upon a time, a Cray that had been experiencing periodic + difficulties crashed, and it was announced to have been hosed. It was + discovered that the crash was due to the disconnection of some coolant + hoses. The problem was corrected, and users were then assured that + everything was OK because the system had been rehosed. See also + dehose.
Sexually explicit one-on-one chat. See + teledildonics.
1. [primarily used by C/Unix programmers, but spreading] It is + received wisdom that in most programs, less than 10% of the code eats 90% + of the execution time; if one were to graph instruction visits versus code + addresses, one would typically see a few huge spikes amidst a lot of + low-level noise. Such spikes are called hot + spots and are good candidates for heavy optimization or + hand-hacking. The term is especially used of tight + loops and recursions in the code's central algorithm, as opposed to (say) + initial set-up costs or large but infrequent I/O operations. See + tune, hand-hacking.
2. The active location of a cursor on a bit-map display. “Put + the mouse's hot spot on the ‘ON’ widget and click the left + button.”
3. A screen region that is sensitive to mouse gestures, which + trigger some action. World Wide Web pages now provide the + canonical examples; WWW browsers present hypertext + links as hot spots which, when clicked on, point the browser at another + document (these are specifically called + hotlinks).
4. In a massively parallel computer with shared memory, the one + location that all 10,000 processors are trying to read or write at once + (perhaps because they are all doing a busy-wait on + the same lock).
5. More generally, any place in a hardware design that turns into a + performance bottleneck due to resource contention.
A hot spot on a World Wide Web page; an area, + which, when clicked or selected, chases a URL. Also spelled ‘hot + link’. Use of this term focuses on the link's role as an immediate + part of your display, as opposed to the timeless sense of logical + connection suggested by web pointer. Your screen + shows hotlinks but your document has web pointers, not (in normal usage) + the other way around.
[prob.: from ad-agency tradetalk, ‘house freak’] A + hacker occupying a technical-specialist, R&D, or systems position at a + commercial shop. A really effective house wizard can have influence out of + all proportion to his/her ostensible rank and still not have to wear a + suit. Used esp. of Unix wizards. The term house guru is equivalent.
To compress data using a Huffman code. Various programs that use + such methods have been called ‘HUFF’ or some variant thereof. + Oppose puff. Compare crunch, + compress.
[from ‘hung up’; common] Equivalent to + wedged, but more common at Unix/C sites. Not + generally used of people. Syn. with locked up, + wedged; compare hosed. See + also hang. A hung state is distinguished from + crashed or down, where the + program or system is also unusable but because it is not running rather + than because it is waiting for something. However, the recovery from both + situations is often the same. It is also distinguished from the similar + but more drastic state wedged — hung software can + be woken up with easy things like interrupt keys, but wedged will need a + kill -9 or even reboot.
Syn. slopsucker.
[perhaps related to slang ‘humongous’] Large, unwieldy, + usually unmanageable. “TCP is a hungus piece of code.” + “This is a hungus set of modifications.” The + Infocom text adventure game Beyond + Zork included two monsters called hunguses.
A memory location that is far away from where + the program counter should be pointing, especially a place that is + inaccessible because it is not even mapped in by the virtual-memory system. + “Another core dump — looks like the program jumped off to + hyperspace somehow.” (Compare + jump off into never-never land.) This usage is from the SF notion of a spaceship jumping + into hyperspace, that is, taking a + shortcut through higher-dimensional space — in other words, bypassing + this universe. The variant east + hyperspace is recorded among CMU and Bliss hackers.
(also hysterical raisins) A + variant on the stock phrase “for historical reasons”, + indicating specifically that something must be done in some stupid way for + backwards compatibility, and moreover that the feature it must be + compatible with was the result of a bad design in the first place. + “All IBM PC video adapters have to support MDA text mode for + hysterical reasons.” Compare + bug-for-bug compatible.
An aggrieved cry often heard as bugs manifest during a regression + test. The canonical reply to this assertion is + “Then it works just the same as it did before, doesn't it?” + See also one-line fix. This is also heard from + applications programmers trying to blame an obvious applications problem on + an unrelated systems software change, for example a divide-by-0 fault after + terminals were added to a network. Usually, their statement is found to be + false. Upon close questioning, they will admit some major restructuring of + the program that shouldn't have broken anything, in their opinion, but + which actually hosed the code completely.
Variants of this phrase with various values of X came into common use + in 2002-2003, generally used to suggest that whatever party referred to as + the new overlords is deeply evil. In the original + Simpsons episode (#96, + Homer In Space) X = “insect” + and th line is part of a speech in which a smarmy newscaster expresses his + willingness to collaborate with an invading race of giant space + ants.
Hackers (and the interactive computer games they write) + traditionally favor this slightly marked usage over other possible + equivalents such as “There's no X here!” or “X is + missing.” or “Where's the X?”. This goes back to the + original PDP-10 ADVENT, which would respond in this + wise if you asked it to do something involving an object not present at + your location in the game.
[Usenet] Abbreviation, “I Am Not A Lawyer”. Usually + precedes legal advice.
Once upon a time, the computer company most hackers loved to hate; + today, the one they are most puzzled to find themselves liking.
From hackerdom's beginnings in the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, IBM + was regarded with active loathing. Common expansions of the corporate name + included: Inferior But Marketable; It's Better Manually; Insidious Black + Magic; It's Been Malfunctioning; Incontinent Bowel Movement; and a + near-infinite number of even less complimentary + expansions (see also fear and loathing). What + galled hackers about most IBM machines above the PC level wasn't so much + that they were underpowered and overpriced (though that counted against + them), but that the designs were incredibly archaic, + crufty, and elephantine + ... and you couldn't fix them — source + code was locked up tight, and programming tools were expensive, hard to + find, and bletcherous to use once you had found them.
We didn't know how good we had it back then. In the 1980s IBM had + its own troubles with Microsoft and lost its strategic way, receding from + the hacker community's view. Then, in the 1990s, Microsoft became more + noxious and omnipresent than IBM had ever been.
In the late 1990s IBM re-invented itself as a services company, began + to release open-source software through its AlphaWorks group, and began + shipping Linux systems and building ties to the + Linux community. To the astonishment of all parties, IBM emerged as a + staunch friend of the hacker community and + open source development, with ironic consequences + noted in the FUD entry.
This lexicon includes a number of entries attributed to + ‘IBM’; these derive from some rampantly unofficial jargon lists + circulated within IBM's formerly beleaguered hacker underground.
(Also missile address) The + form used to register a site with the Usenet mapping project, back before + the day of pervasive Internet, included a blank for longitude and latitude, + preferably to seconds-of-arc accuracy. This was actually used for + generating geographically-correct maps of Usenet links on a plotter; + however, it became traditional to refer to this as one's ICBM address or missile address, and some people include it in + their sig block with that name. (A real missile + address would include target elevation.)
[Usenet] Abbreviation for + Internet Death Penalty. Common (probably now more so than the full form), and + frequently verbed. Compare UDP.
Common abbreviation for “If I Recall Correctly”.
[from SF fandom via Usenet; abbreviation for ‘In My Humble + Opinion’] “IMHO, mixed-case C names should be avoided, as + mistyping something in the wrong case can cause hard-to-detect errors + — and they look too Pascalish anyhow.” Also seen in variant + forms such as IMNSHO (In My Not-So-Humble Opinion) and IMAO (In My Arrogant + Opinion).
[said by the authors to stand for Compiler Language With No Pronounceable + Acronym] A computer language designed by Don Woods and James + Lyons in 1972. INTERCAL is purposely different from all other computer + languages in all ways but one; it is purely a written language, being + totally unspeakable. An excerpt from the INTERCAL Reference Manual will + make the style of the language clear:
It is a well-known and oft-demonstrated fact that a person whose work is +incomprehensible is held in high esteem. For example, if one were to state +that the simplest way to store a value of 65536 in a 32-bit INTERCAL variable +is:
+DO:1<-#0$#256
+any sensible programmer would say that that was absurd. Since this is +indeed the simplest method, the programmer would be made to look foolish in +front of his boss, who would of course have happened to turn up, as bosses are +wont to do. The effect would be no less devastating for the programmer having +been correct.
INTERCAL has many other peculiar features designed to make it even + more unspeakable. The Woods-Lyons implementation was actually used by many + (well, at least several) people at Princeton. The language has been + recently reimplemented as C-INTERCAL and is consequently enjoying an + unprecedented level of unpopularity; there is even an alt.lang.intercal newsgroup devoted to the + study and ... appreciation of the language on Usenet.
Inevitably, INTERCAL has a home page on the Web: http://www.catb.org/~esr/intercal/. An + extended version, implemented in (what else?) Perl + and adding object-oriented features, is rumored to exist. See also + Befunge.
[Internet Relay Chat] A worldwide “party line” network + that allows one to converse with others in real time. IRC is structured as + a network of Internet servers, each of which accepts connections from + client programs, one per user. The IRC community and the + Usenet and MUD communities + overlap to some extent, including both hackers and regular folks who have + discovered the wonders of computer networks. Some Usenet jargon has been + adopted on IRC, as have some conventions such as + emoticons. There is also a vigorous native jargon, + represented in this lexicon by entries marked ‘[IRC]’. See + also talk mode.
[South Africa] 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.
This may derive from the “NATO standard” cup of coffee + and tea (milk and two sugars), military slang going back to the late 1950s + and parodying NATO's relentless bureaucratic drive to standardize parts + across European and U.S. militaries.
Like many ISO standards, this one has a faintly alien 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 extremely silly, + one might hypothesize an 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 don't mix very well.)
[2000 update: There is now, in fact, an ISO standard 3103: + ‘Method for preparation of a liquor of tea for use in sensory + tests.’, alleged to be equivalent to British Standard BS6008: + How to make a standard cup of tea. + —ESR]
Common abbreviation for Internet Service Provider, a kind of company + that barely existed before 1993. ISPs sell Internet access to the mass + market. While the big nationwide commercial BBSs with Internet access + (like America Online, CompuServe, GEnie, Netcom, etc.) are technically + ISPs, the term is usually reserved for local or regional small providers + (often run by hackers turned entrepreneurs) who resell Internet access + cheaply without themselves being information providers or selling + advertising. Compare NSP.
1. Incompatible Time-sharing System, an influential though highly + idiosyncratic operating system written for PDP-6s and PDP-10s at MIT and + long used at the MIT AI Lab. Much AI-hacker jargon derives from ITS + folklore, and to have been ‘an ITS hacker’ qualifies one + instantly as an old-timer of the most venerable sort. ITS pioneered many + important innovations, including transparent file sharing between machines + and terminal-independent I/O. After about 1982, most actual work was + shifted to newer machines, with the remaining ITS boxes run essentially as + a hobby and service to the hacker community. The shutdown of the lab's + last ITS machine in May 1990 marked the end of an era and sent old-time + hackers into mourning nationwide (see + high moby). There is an ITS home page.
2. A mythical image of operating-system perfection worshiped by a + bizarre, fervent retro-cult of old-time hackers and ex-users (see + troglodyte, sense 2). ITS worshipers manage somehow + to continue believing that an OS maintained by assembly-language + hand-hacking that supported only monocase 6-character filenames in one + directory per account remains superior to today's state of commercial art + (their venom against Unix is particularly intense). + See also holy wars, + Weenix.
Abbreviation for ‘It Would Be Nice If’. Compare + WIBNI.
[Usenet] Abbreviation for ‘Insert Your Favorite Ethnic + Group’. Used as a meta-name when telling ethnic jokes on the net to + avoid offending anyone. See JEDR.
There is a legend that Dennis Ritchie, inventor of + C, once responded to demands for features resembling + those of what at the time was a much more popular language by observing + “If you want PL/I, you know where to find it.” Ever since, + this has been hackish standard form for fending off requests to alter a new + design to mimic some older (and, by implication, inferior and + baroque) one. The case X = + Pascal manifests semi-regularly on Usenet's + comp.lang.c newsgroup. Indeed, + the case X = X has been reported in discussions of graphics software (see + X).
[Usenet] Since Usenet first got off the + ground in 1980--81, it has grown exponentially, approximately doubling in + size every year. On the other hand, most people feel the + signal-to-noise ratio of Usenet has dropped + steadily. These trends led, as far back as mid-1983, to predictions of the + imminent collapse (or death) of the net. Ten years and numerous doublings + later, enough of these gloomy prognostications have been confounded that + the phrase “Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!” has become a + running joke, hauled out any time someone grumbles about the + S/N ratio or the huge and steadily increasing volume, or the + possible loss of a key node or link, or the potential for lawsuits when + ignoramuses post copyrighted material, etc., etc., etc.
[] A fiendishly clever ASCII display hack that became a brief fad in + 1993-1994; it used combinations of tabs and spaces to produce an analog + indicator of the amount of indentation an included portion of a reply had + undergone. The full story is at http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/indent.html.
“If you put an infinite number of + monkeys at typewriters, eventually one will bash out the script for + Hamlet.” (One may also hypothesize a small number of monkeys and a + very long period of time.) This theorem asserts nothing about the + intelligence of the one random monkey that + eventually comes up with the script (and note that the mob will also type + out all the possible incorrect versions of Hamlet). + It may be referred to semi-seriously when justifying a brute + force method; the implication is that, with enough resources + thrown at it, any technical challenge becomes a one-banana + problem. This argument gets more respect since + Linux justified the bazaar + mode of development.
Other hackers maintain that the Infinite-Monkey Theorem cannot be + true — otherwise Usenet would have reproduced the entire canon of + great literature by now.
In mid-2002, researchers at Plymouth Univesity in England actually + put a working computer in a cage with six crested macaques. The monkeys + proceeded to bash the machine with a rock, urinate on it, and type the + letter S a lot (later, the letters A, J, L, and M also crept in). The + results were published in a limited-edition book, Notes Towards + The Complete Works of Shakespeare. A researcher reported: + “They were quite interested in the screen, and they saw that when + they typed a letter, something happened. There was a level of intention + there.” Scattered field reports that there are AOL users this + competent have been greeted with well-deserved skepticism.
This theorem has been traced to the mathematiciamn mile + Borel in 1913, and was first popularized by the astronomer Sir Arthur + Eddington. It became part of the idiom of techies via the classic SF short + story Inflexible + Logic by Russell Maloney, and many younger hackers know it through + a reference in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the + Galaxy. Some other references have been collected + on the Web. + On 1 April 2000 the usage acquired its own Internet standard, RFC2795 (Infinite Monkey + Protocol Suite).
A now-legendary games company, active from 1979 to 1989, that + commercialized the MDL parser technology used for + Zork to produce a line of text adventure games that + remain favorites among hackers. Infocom's games were intelligent, funny, + witty, erudite, irreverent, challenging, satirical, and most thoroughly + hackish in spirit. The physical game packages from Infocom are now prized + collector's items. After being acquired by Activision in 1989 they did a + few more “modern” (e.g. graphics-intensive) games which were + less successful than reissues of their classics.
The software, thankfully, is still extant; Infocom games were written + in a kind of P-code (called, actually, z-code) and distributed with a P-code + interpreter core, and not only open-source emulators for that interpreter + but an actual compiler as well have been written to permit the P-code to be + run on platforms the games never originally graced. In fact, new games + written in this P-code are still being written. There is a home page at + http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/, + and it is even possible to play these games in your browser if it is + Java-capable.
[Great Britain] Synonym for + BiCapitalization.
[Usenet] (often abbreviated IDP) The ultimate sanction against + spam-emitting sites — complete shunning at the + router level of all mail and packets, as well as Usenet messages, from the + offending domain(s). Compare Usenet Death Penalty, + with which it is sometimes confused.
[very common] Pejorative hackerism for Microsoft's “Internet + Explorer” web browser (also “Internet + Exploiter”). Compare HP-SUX, + Macintrash, sun-stools, + Slowlaris.
Another common name-of-insult for Internet Explorer, Microsoft's + overweight Web Browser; more hostile than + Internet Exploder. Reflects widespread hostility to Microsoft and a + sense that it is seeking to hijack, monopolize, and corrupt the Internet. + Compare Exploder and the less pejorative + Netscrape.
The mother of all networks. First incarnated beginning in 1969 as + the ARPANET, a U.S. Department of Defense research testbed. Though it has + been widely believed that the goal was to develop a network architecture + for military command-and-control that could survive disruptions up to and + including nuclear war, this is a myth; in fact, ARPANET was conceived from + the start as a way to get most economical use out of then-scarce + large-computer resources. Robert Herzfeld, who was director of ARPA at + the time, has been at some pains to debunk the + “survive-a-nuclear-war” myth, but it seems unkillable.
As originally imagined, ARPANET's major use would have been to + support what is now called remote login and more sophisticated forms of + distributed computing, but the infant technology of electronic mail quickly + grew to dominate actual usage. Universities, research labs and defense + contractors early discovered the Internet's potential as a medium of + communication between humans and linked up in steadily + increasing numbers, connecting together a quirky mix of academics, techies, + hippies, SF fans, hackers, and anarchists. The roots of this lexicon lie + in those early years.
Over the next quarter-century the Internet evolved in many ways. The + typical machine/OS combination moved from DEC + PDP-10s and PDP-20s, running + TOPS-10 and TOPS-20, to + PDP-11s and VAXen and Suns running + Unix, and in the 1990s to Unix on Intel + microcomputers. The Internet's protocols grew more capable, most notably + in the move from NCP/IP to TCP/IP in 1982 and the + implementation of Domain Name Service in 1983. It was around this time + that people began referring to the collection of interconnected networks + with ARPANET at its core as “the Internet”.
The ARPANET had a fairly strict set of participation guidelines -- + connected institutions had to be involved with a DOD-related research + project. By the mid-80s, many of the organizations clamoring to join + didn't fit this profile. In 1986, the National Science Foundation built + NSFnet to open up access to its five regional supercomputing centers; + NSFnet became the backbone of the Internet, replacing the original ARPANET + pipes (which were formally shut down in 1990). Between 1990 and late 1994 + the pieces of NSFnet were sold to major telecommunications companies until + the Internet backbone had gone completely commercial.
That year, 1994, was also the year the mainstream culture discovered + the Internet. Once again, the killer app was not + the anticipated one — rather, what caught the public imagination was + the hypertext and multimedia features of the World Wide Web. Subsequently + the Internet has seen off its only serious challenger (the OSI protocol + stack favored by European telecoms monopolies) and is in the process of + absorbing into itself many of the proprietary networks built during the + second wave of wide-area networking after 1980. By 1996 it had become a + commonplace even in mainstream media to predict that a globally-extended + Internet would become the key unifying communications technology of the + next century. See also the network.
In the history of computing, 1961-1971 — the formative era of + commercial mainframe technology, when ferrite-core + dinosaurs ruled the earth. The Iron Age began, + ironically enough, with the delivery of the first minicomputer (the PDP-1) + and ended with the introduction of the first commercial microprocessor (the + Intel 4004) in 1971. See also Stone Age; compare + elder days.
The Intel Itanium, so called in reference to the legendary disaster + that was the Titanic. This term bubbled up in several places on the + Internet in 1999 when it was beginning to become clear that the Itanium was + turning into the most expensive and protracted flop in the history of the + semiconductor industry.
[coined by Usenetter Tom Maddox, popularized by William Gibson's + cyberpunk SF novels: a contrived acronym for ‘Intrusion + Countermeasure Electronics’] Security software (in Gibson's novels, + software that responds to intrusion by attempting to immobilize or even + literally kill the intruder). Hence, icebreaker: a program designed for cracking + security on a system.
Neither term is in serious use yet as of late 2003, but many hackers + find the metaphor attractive, and each may develop a denotation in the + future. In the meantime, the speculative usage could be confused with + ‘ICE’, an acronym for “in-circuit + emulator”.
In ironic reference to the speculative usage, however, some hackers + and computer scientists formed ICE (International Cryptographic Experiment) + in 1994. ICE is a consortium to promote uniform international access to + strong cryptography.
[from mathematical techspeak] Acting as if used only once, even if + used multiple times. This term is often used with respect to + C header files, which contain common definitions and + declarations to be included by several source files. If a header file is + ever included twice during the same compilation (perhaps due to nested + #include files), compilation errors can result unless the header file has + protected itself against multiple inclusion; a header file so protected is + said to be idempotent. The term can also be used to describe an + initialization subroutine that is arranged to perform some critical action + exactly once, even if the routine is called several times.
Synonym for PEBKAC, e.g. “The user is + being an idiot”. Tech-support people passing a problem report to + someone higher up the food chain (and presumably better equipped to deal + with idiots) may ask the user to convey that there seems to be an I-D-ten-T + error. Users never twig.
Syn. for condition out, specific to + C.
1. [numerical analysis] Said of an algorithm or computational method + that tends to blow up because of accumulated roundoff error or poor + convergence properties.
2. [obs.] Software that bypasses the defined + OS interfaces to do things (like screen, keyboard, + and disk I/O) itself, often in a way that depends on the hardware of the + machine it is running on or which is nonportable or incompatible with other + pieces of software. In the MS-DOS world, there was a folk theorem (nearly + true) to the effect that (owing to gross inadequacies and performance + penalties in the OS interface) all interesting applications were + ill-behaved. See also bare metal. Oppose + well-behaved. See also + mess-dos.
3. In modern usage, a program is called ill-behaved if it uses + interfaces to the OS or other programs that are private, undocumented, or + grossly non-portable. Another way to be ill-behaved is to use headers or + files that are theoretically private to another application.
A preferred superlative suffix for many hackish terms. See, for + example, obscure in the extreme under + obscure, and compare + highly.
Any particularly arbitrary or obscure command that one must mutter + at a system to attain a desired result. Not used of passwords or other + explicit security features. Especially used of tricks that are so poorly + documented that they must be learned from a wizard. + “This compiler normally locates initialized data in the data segment, + but if you mutter the right incantation they will be + forced into text space.”
Excessive multi-leveled inclusion within a discussion + thread, a practice that tends to annoy readers. In + a forum with high-traffic newsgroups, such as Usenet, this can lead to + flames and the urge to start a + kill file.
[Usenet]
1. To duplicate a portion (or whole) of another's message (typically + with attribution to the source) in a reply or followup, for clarifying the + context of one's response. See the discussion of inclusion styles under + Hacker Writing Style.
2. [from C] #include + <disclaimer.h> has appeared in + sig blocks to refer to a notional standard disclaimer + file.
[C, C++, and Java programmers] The rules one uses to indent code in + a readable fashion. There are four major C indent styles, described below; + all have the aim of making it easier for the reader to visually track the + scope of control constructs. They have been inherited by C++ and Java, + which have C-like syntaxes. The significant variable is the placement of + { and } with respect to the + statement(s) they enclose and to the guard or controlling statement + (if, else, + for, while, + or do) on the block, if any.
K&R style — Named + after Kernighan & Ritchie, because the examples in K&R are formatted this way. Also + called kernel style because the Unix + kernel is written in it, and the ‘One True Brace Style’ + (abbrev. 1TBS) by its partisans. In C code, the body is typically indented + by eight spaces (or one tab) per level, as shown here. Four spaces are + occasionally seen in C, but in C++ and Java four tends to be the rule + rather than the exception.
+if(<cond>){
+<body>
+}
+
Allman style — Named for + Eric Allman, a Berkeley hacker who wrote a lot of the BSD utilities in it + (it is sometimes called BSD style). + Resembles normal indent style in Pascal and Algol. It is the only style + other than K&R in widespread use among Java programmers. Basic indent + per level shown here is eight spaces, but four (or sometimes three) spaces + are generally preferred by C++ and Java programmers.
+if(<cond>)
+{
+<body>
+}
+
Whitesmiths style — + popularized by the examples that came with Whitesmiths C, an early + commercial C compiler. Basic indent per level shown here is eight spaces, + but four spaces are occasionally seen.
+if(<cond>)
+{
+<body>
+}
+
GNU style — Used + throughout GNU EMACS and the Free Software Foundation code, and just about + nowhere else. Indents are always four spaces per level, with { and } halfway + between the outer and inner indent levels.
+if(<cond>)
+{
+<body>
+}
+
Surveys have shown the Allman and Whitesmiths styles to be the most + common, with about equal mind shares. K&R/1TBS used to be nearly + universal, but is now much less common in C (the opening brace tends to get + lost against the right paren of the guard part in an if or while, which + is a Bad Thing). Defenders of 1TBS argue that any + putative gain in readability is less important than their style's relative + economy with vertical space, which enables one to see more code on one's + screen at once. The Java Language Specification legislates not only the + capitalization of identifiers, but where nouns, adjectives, and verbs + should be in method, class, interface, and variable names (section + 6.8). While the specification stops short of also standardizing on a + bracing style, all source code originating from Sun Laboratories uses the + K&R style. This has set a precedent for Java programmers, which most + follow.
Doubtless these issues will continue to be the subject of + holy wars.
See coefficient of X.
It is common lore among hackers (and in the electronics industry at + large; this term is possibly techspeak by now) that the chances of sudden + hardware failure drop off exponentially with a machine's time since first + use (that is, until the relatively distant time at which enough mechanical + wear in I/O devices and thermal-cycling stress in components has + accumulated for the machine to start going senile). Up to half of all chip + and wire failures happen within a new system's first few weeks; such + failures are often referred to as infant + mortality problems (or, occasionally, as sudden infant death syndrome). See + bathtub curve, + burn-in period.
One that never terminates (that is, the machine + spins or buzzes forever and + goes catatonic). There is a standard joke that has + been made about each generation's exemplar of the ultra-fast machine: + “The Cray-3 is so fast it can execute an infinite loop in under 2 + seconds!”
[common] Consisting of a large number of objects; extreme. Used + very loosely as in: “This program produces infinite garbage.” + “He is an infinite loser.” The word most likely to follow + infinite, though, is + hair. (It has been pointed out that fractals are an + excellent example of infinite hair.) These uses are abuses of the word's + mathematical meaning. The term semi-infinite, denoting an immoderately large + amount of some resource, is also heard. “This compiler is taking a + semi-infinite amount of time to optimize my program.” See also + semi.
1. The largest value that can be represented in a particular type of + variable (register, memory location, data type, whatever).
2. minus infinity: The + smallest such value, not necessarily or even usually the simple negation of + plus infinity. In N-bit twos-complement + arithmetic, infinity is 2N-1 - + 1 but minus infinity is - + (2N-1), not + -(2N-1 - 1). + Note also that this is different from time T + equals minus infinity, which is closer to a mathematician's + usage of infinity.
To decompress or puff a file. Rare among + Internet hackers, used primarily by MS-DOS/Windows types.
[IRC] An IRC version of the trivia game + “Botticelli”, in which one user changes his + nick to the initials of a famous person or other + named entity, and the others on the channel ask yes or no questions, with + the one to guess the person getting to be “it” next. As a + courtesy, the one picking the initials starts by providing a 4-letter hint + of the form sex, nationality, life-status, reality-status. For example, + MAAR means “Male, American, Alive, Real” (as opposed to + “fictional”). Initgame can be surprisingly addictive. See + also hing.
[1996 update: a recognizable version of the initgame has become a + staple of some radio talk shows in the U.S. We had it first! -- + ESR]
[Mac community, from Steve Jobs; also BSD Unix people via Bill Joy] + Something so incredibly elegant that it is + imaginable only to someone possessing the most puissant of + hacker-natures.
[Linux community since c.1998] Common portmanteau word for + “installation festival”; Linux user groups frequently run + these. Computer users are invited to bring their machines to have Linux + installed on their machines. The idea is to get them painlessly over the + biggest hump in migrating to Linux, which is initially installing and + configuring it for the user's machine.
In hacker parlance, this word has strong connotations of + ‘annoying’, or ‘difficult’, or both. Hackers + relish a challenge, and enjoy wringing all the irony possible out of the + ancient Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times”. + Oppose trivial, + uninteresting.
1. [techspeak] n. On a computer, + an event that interrupts normal processing and temporarily diverts + flow-of-control through an “interrupt handler” routine. See + also trap.
2. interj. A request for + attention from a hacker. Often explicitly spoken. “Interrupt + — have you seen Joe recently?” See + priority interrupt.
When someone is ignoring you. In a restaurant, after several + fruitless attempts to get the waitress's attention, a hacker might well + observe “She must have interrupts locked out”. The synonym + interrupts disabled is also common. + Variations abound; “to have one's interrupt mask bit set” and + “interrupts masked out” are also heard. See also + spl.
adj. [Invented by Theodor Holm + Nelson, prob. a blend of “mingled” and + “intertwined”.] Connected together in a complex way; + specifically, composed of one another's components.
3. Small, usually 64k, 40k or 4k demo. Sizes + are generally dictated by compo rules. See also + dentro, demo.
[Unix/Internet] A special environment set up to trap a + cracker logging in over remote connections long + enough to be traced. May include a modified shell + restricting the cracker's movements in unobvious ways, and + ‘bait’ files designed to keep him interested and logged on. + See also back door, + firewall machine, + Venus flytrap, and Clifford + Stoll's account in The Cuckoo's + Egg of how he made and used one (see the Bibliography in Appendix C). Compare + padded cell, honey pot.
Hardware, especially older and larger hardware of + mainframe class with big metal cabinets housing + relatively low-density electronics (but the term is also used of modern + supercomputers). Often in the phrase big iron. + Oppose silicon. See also + dinosaur.
[IBM] A hardware specialist (derogatory). Compare + sandbender, + polygon pusher.
[very common] A mythical figure like the Unknown Soldier; the + archetypal hacker nerd. This term is one of the oldest in the jargon, + apparently going back to MIT in the 1960s. See + random, Suzie COBOL. This + may originally have been inspired by ‘J. Fred Muggs’, a + show-biz chimpanzee whose name was a household word back in the early days + of TMRC, and was probably influenced by + ‘J. Presper Eckert’ (one of the co-inventors of the electronic + computer). See also Fred Foobar.
[common; generalized from J. Random Hacker] + Arbitrary; ordinary; any one; any old. ‘J. Random’ is often + prefixed to a noun to make a name out of it. It means roughly some particular or any specific one. “Would you let + J. Random Loser marry your daughter?” The most common uses are + ‘J. Random Hacker’, ‘J. Random Loser’, and + ‘J. Random Nerd’ (“Should J. Random Loser be allowed to + kill other peoples' processes?”), but it can be used simply as an + elaborate version of random in any sense.
1. IBM's supremely rude Job Control Language. + JCL is the script language used to control the execution of programs in + IBM's batch systems. JCL has a very fascist syntax, + and some versions will, for example, barf if two + spaces appear where it expects one. Most programmers confronted with JCL + simply copy a working file (or card deck), changing the file names. + Someone who actually understands and generates unique JCL is regarded with + the mixed respect one gives to someone who memorizes the phone book. It is + reported that hackers at IBM itself sometimes sing “Who's the breeder + of the crud that mangles you and me? I-B-M, J-C-L, M-o-u-s-e” to + the tune of the Mickey Mouse Club theme to express + their opinion of the beast.
2. A comparative for any very rude software + that a hacker is expected to use. “That's as bad as JCL.” As + with COBOL, JCL is often used as an archetype of + ugliness even by those who haven't experienced it. See also + IBM, + fear and loathing.
A (poorly documented, naturally) shell simulating JCL syntax is + available at the Retrocomputing Museum http://www.catb.org/retro/.
Synonymous with IYFEG. At one time, people + in the Usenet newsgroup rec.humor.funny tended to use + ‘JEDR’ instead of IYFEG or + ‘<ethnic>’; this stemmed from a public attempt to + suppress the group once made by a loser with initials JEDR after he was + offended by an ethnic joke posted there. (The practice was + retconned by expanding these initials as ‘Joke + Ethnic/Denomination/Race’.) After much sound and fury JEDR faded + away; this term appears to be doing likewise. JEDR's only permanent effect + on the net.culture was to discredit ‘sensitivity’ arguments for + censorship so thoroughly that more recent attempts to raise them have met + with immediate and near-universal rejection.
An object-oriented language originally developed at Sun by James + Gosling (and known by the name “Oak”) with the intention of + being the successor to C++ (the project was however + originally sold to Sun as an embedded language for use in set-top boxes). + After the great Internet explosion of 1993-1994, Java was hacked into a + byte-interpreted language and became the focus of a relentless hype + campaign by Sun, which touted it as the new language of choice for + distributed applications.
Java is indeed a stronger and cleaner design than C++ and has been + embraced by many in the hacker community — but it has been a + considerable source of frustration to many others, for reasons ranging from + uneven support on different Web browser platforms, performance issues, and + some notorious deficiencies in some of the standard toolkits (AWT in + particular). Microsoft's determined attempts to + corrupt the language (which it rightly sees as a threat to its OS monopoly) + have not helped. As of 2003, these issues are still in the process of + being resolved.
Despite many attractive features and a good design, it is difficult + to find people willing to praise Java who have tried to implement a + complex, real-world system with it (but to be fair it is early days yet, + and no other language has ever been forced to spend its childhood under the + limelight the way Java has). On the other hand, Java has already been a + big win in academic circles, where it has taken the + place of Pascal as the preferred tool for teaching + the basics of good programming to the next generation of hackers.
The spiritual successor to B1FF and the + archetype of script kiddies. Jeff K. is a + sixteen-year-old suburbanite who fancies himself a “l33t + haX0r”, although his knowledge of computers seems to be limited to + the procedure for getting Quake up and running. His Web page http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/ + features a number of hopelessly naive articles, essays, and rants, all + filled with the kind of misspellings, studlycaps, + and number-for-letter substitutions endemic to the script kiddie and + warez d00dz communities. Jeff's offerings, among + other things, include hardware advice (such as “AMD VERSIS + PENTIUM” and “HOW TO OVARCLOAK YOUR COMPUTAR”), his own + Quake clan (Clan 40 OUNSCE), and his own comic strip (Wacky Fun Computar + Comic Jokes).
Like B1FF, Jeff K. is (fortunately) a hoax. Jeff K. was created by + internet game journalist Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, whose web + site Something Awful (http://www.somethingawful.com) highlights + unintentionally humorous news items and Web sites, as a parody of the kind + of teenage luser who infests Quake servers, chat + rooms, and other places where computer enthusiasts congregate. He is + well-recognized in the PC game community and his influence has spread to + hacker fora like Slashdot as well.
See top-post.
To log on to a machine or connect to a network or + BBS, esp. for purposes of entering a + virtual reality simulation such as a + MUD or IRC (leaving is + “jacking out”). This term derives from + cyberpunk SF, in which it was used for the act of + plugging an electrode set into neural sockets in order to interface the + brain directly to a virtual reality. It is primarily used by MUD and IRC + fans and younger hackers on BBS systems.
The ‘stairstep’ effect observable when an edge (esp. a + linear edge of very shallow or steep slope) is rendered on a pixel device + (as opposed to a vector display).
[Usenet: by analogy with spam] A message that + is both excessively cross-posted and too frequently posted, as opposed to + spam (which is merely too frequently posted) or + velveeta (which is merely excessively cross-posted). + This term is widely recognized but not commonly used; most people refer to + both kinds of abuse or their combination as spam.
[UK] Unspecified stuff. An unspecified action. A deliberately + blank word; compare gorets. A deliberate experiment + in tracking the spread of a near-meaningless word. See http://www.jibble.org/jibblemeaning.php.
1. The duration of one tick of the system clock on your computer + (see tick). Often one AC cycle time (1/60 second in + the U.S. and Canada, 1/50 most other places), but more recently 1/100 sec + has become common. “The swapper runs every 6 jiffies” means + that the virtual memory management routine is executed once for every 6 + ticks of the clock, or about ten times a second.
2. Confusingly, the term is sometimes also used for a 1-millisecond + wall time interval.
3. Even more confusingly, physicists semi-jokingly use + ‘jiffy’ to mean the time required for light to travel one foot + in a vacuum, which turns out to be close to one + nanosecond. Other physicists use the term for the + quantum-nechanical lower bound on meaningful time lengths,
4. Indeterminate time from a few seconds to forever. “I'll do + it in a jiffy” means certainly not now and possibly never. This is + a bit contrary to the more widespread use of the word. Oppose + nano. See also + Real Soon Now.
When some piece of code is written in a particularly + obscure fashion, and no good reason (such as time or + space optimization) can be discovered, it is often said that the programmer + was attempting to increase his job security (i.e., by making himself + indispensable for maintenance). This sour joke seldom has to be said in + full; if two hackers are looking over some code together and one points at + a section and says “job security”, the other one may just + nod.
1. A programmer who is characterized by large and somewhat + brute-force programs. See brute force.
2. When modified by another noun, describes a specialist in some + particular computing area. The compounds compiler jock and systems jock seem to be the best-established + examples.
1. Code that is overly tense and + unmaintainable. “Perl may be a handy program, + but if you look at the source, it's complete joe code.”
2. Badly written, possibly buggy code.
Correspondents wishing to remain anonymous have fingered a particular + Joe at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and observed that usage has drifted + slightly; the original sobriquet ‘Joe code’ was intended in + sense 1.
1994 update: This term has now generalized to ‘<name> + code’, used to designate code with distinct characteristics traceable + to its author. “This section doesn't check for a NULL return from + malloc()! Oh. No wonder! It's Ed code!”. Used most often with a + programmer who has left the shop and thus is a convenient scapegoat for + anything that is wrong with the project.
A spam run forged to appear as though it came from an innocent party, + who is then generally flooded by the bounces; or, the act of performing + such a run. The original incident is described here.
Keeping a lot of state in your head while + modifying a program. “Don't bother me now, I'm juggling + eggs”, means that an interrupt is likely to result in the program's + being scrambled. In the classic 1975 first-contact SF novel The + Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, an alien + describes a very difficult task by saying “We juggle priceless eggs + in variable gravity.” It is possible that this was intended as + tribute to a less colorful use of the same image in Robert Heinlein's + influential 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange + Land. See also hack mode and + on the gripping hand.
The weight of a given node in some sort of graph (like a web of + trust or a relevance-weighted search query). This appears to have been + generalized from google juice, but may derive from + black urban slang for power or a respect. Example: “I + signed your key, but I really don't have the juice to be + authoritative.”
[from J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan] An unexpected + jump in a program that produces catastrophic or just plain weird + results. Compare hyperspace.
[IRC] To kill an IRC + bot or user and then take its place by adopting its + nick so that it cannot reconnect. Named after a + particular IRC user who did this to NickServ, the robot in charge of + preventing people from inadvertently using a nick claimed by another user. + Now commonly shortened to jupe.
Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie's book The C + Programming Language, esp. the classic and influential first + edition (Prentice-Hall 1978; ISBN 0-13-110163-3). Syn. + Old Testament. See also + New Testament.
[from kilo-] A kilobyte. Used both as a + spoken word and a written suffix (like meg and + gig for megabyte and gigabyte). See + quantifiers.
1. [acronym] Knowledge In, Bullshit Out. A summary of what happens + whenever valid data is passed through an organization (or person) that + deliberately or accidentally disregards or ignores its significance. + Consider, for example, what an advertising campaign can do with a product's + actual specifications. Compare GIGO; see also + SNAFU principle.
2. James Parry <kibo@world.std.com>, a Usenetter infamous for + various surrealist net.pranks and an uncanny, machine-assisted knack for + joining any thread in which his nom de guerre is mentioned. He has a + website at http://www.kibo.com/.
[abbreviation, by analogy with MIPS using + K] Thousands (not 1024s) of + Instructions Per Second. Usage: rare.
“Keep It Simple, Stupid”. A maxim often invoked when + discussing design to fend off creeping featurism and + control development complexity. Possibly related to the + marketroid maxim on sales presentations, “Keep + It Short and Simple”.
[common among Perl hackers] Known Lazy Bastard. Used to describe + somebody who perpetually asks questions which are easily answered by + referring to the reference material or manual.
A semi-mythical organization of wizardly LISP and Scheme hackers. + The name refers to a mathematical formalism invented by Alonzo Church, with + which LISP is intimately connected. There is no enrollment list and the + criteria for induction are unclear, but one well-known LISPer has been + known to give out buttons and, in general, the members + know who they are....
[Donald E. Knuth's The Art of Computer + Programming] Mythically, the reference that answers all + questions about data structures or algorithms. A safe answer when you do + not know: “I think you can find that in Knuth.” Contrast + the literature. See also + bible. There is a Donald Knuth home page at http://Sunburn.Stanford.EDU/~knuth/.
[from a kid's sugar-enriched drink in fruity flavors] When someone + who should know better succumbs to marketing influences and actually begins + to believe the propaganda being dished out by a vendor, they are said to + have drunk the Kool-Aid. Usually the decortication process is slow and + almost unnoticeable until one day the victim emerges as a True Believer and + begins spreading the faith himself. The term originates in the suicide of + 914 followers of Jim Jones's People's Temple cult in Guyana in 1978 (there + are also resonances with Ken Kesey's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests from the + 1960s). What the Jonestown victims actually drank was cyanide-laced + Flavor-Aid, a cheap knockoff, rather than Kool-Aid itself. There is a + + FAQ on this topic.
This has live variants. When a suit is blithering on about their + latest technology and how it will save the world, that's ‘pouring + Kool-Aid’. When the suit does not violate the laws of physics, + doesn't make impossible claims, and in fact says something reasonable and + believable, that's pouring good Kool-Aid, usually used in the sentence + “He pours good Kool-Aid, doesn't he?” This connotes that the + speaker might be about to drink same.
[rare; poss fr. kilo- prefix] + Extremely. Rare among hackers, but quite common among crackers and + warez d00dz in compounds such as k-kool /Kkool/, k-rad /Krad/, and k-awesome /Kaw`sm/. Also used to intensify + negatives; thus, k-evil, k-lame, k-screwed, and k-annoying. Overuse of this prefix, or use in + more formal or technical contexts, is considered an indicator of + lamer status.
[IBM: from the Hawaiian title for a shaman] Synonym for + wizard, guru.
The ‘official’ jargon for what is more commonly called a + + Christmas tree packet. RFC-1025, TCP and IP + Bake Off says:
+10 points for correctly being able to process a “Kamikaze” packet +(AKA nastygram, christmas tree packet, lamp test segment, et al.). That is, +correctly handle a segment with the maximum combination of features at once +(e.g., a SYN URG PUSH FIN segment with options and data). +
See also Chernobyl packet.
Syn. spaghetti code.
1. [Unix] Ken Thompson, principal inventor of Unix. In the early + days he used to hand-cut distribution tapes, often with a note that read + “Love, ken”. Old-timers still use his first name (sometimes + uncapitalized, because it's a login name and mail address) in third-person + reference; it is widely understood (on Usenet, in particular) that without + a last name ‘Ken’ refers only to Ken Thompson. Similarly, + ‘Dennis’ without last name means Dennis Ritchie (and he is + often known as dmr). See also + demigod, Unix.
2. A flaming user. This was originated by the Software Support + group at Symbolics because the two greatest flamers in the user community + were both named Ken.
The fictional society that BSD + bigots claim Linux users + belong to, alluding to the release-early-release-often style preferred by + the kernel maintainers. See bazaar. This was almost + certainly inspired by the earlier + bug-of-the-month club.
See kremvax.
[Usenet] To grep the Usenet news for a + string, especially with the intention of posting a follow-up. This + activity was popularised by Kibo (see KIBO, sense + 2).
[Usenet] One who kibozes but is not Kibo (see + KIBO, sense 2).
1. [IRC] To cause somebody to be removed from a + IRC channel, an option only available to channel + ops. This is an extreme measure, often used to combat extreme + flamage or flooding, but + sometimes used at the CHOP's whim.
2. To reboot a machine or kill a running process. “The + server's down, let me go kick it.”
[Usenet; very common] (alt.: KILL + file) Per-user file(s) used by some + Usenet reading programs (originally Larry Wall's + rn(1)) + to discard summarily (without presenting for reading) articles matching + some particularly uninteresting (or unwanted) patterns of subject, author, + or other header lines. Thus to add a person (or subject) to one's kill + file is to arrange for that person to be ignored by one's newsreader in + future. By extension, it may be used for a decision to ignore the person + or subject in other media. See also plonk.
The application that actually makes a sustaining market for a + promising but under-utilized technology. First used in the mid-1980s to + describe Lotus 1-2-3 once it became evident that demand for that product + had been the major driver of the early business market for IBM PCs. The + term was then retrospectively applied to VisiCalc, which had played a + similar role in the success of the Apple II. After 1994 it became + commonplace to describe the World Wide Web as the Internet's killer app. + One of the standard questions asked about each new personal-computer + technology as it emerges has become “what's the killer + app?”
[popularized by Eugene Brooks c.1990] A microprocessor-based machine + that infringes on mini, mainframe, or supercomputer performance turf. + Often heard in “No one will survive the attack of the killer + micros!”, the battle cry of the downsizers.
The popularity of the phrase ‘attack of the killer + micros’ is doubtless reinforced by the title of the movie + Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes (one of the + canonical examples of so-bad-it's-wonderful among + hackers). This has even more flavor now that killer + micros have gone on the offensive not just individually (in workstations) + but in hordes (within massively parallel computers).
[2002 update: Eugene Brooks was right. Since this term first entered + the Jargon File in 1990, the minicomputer has effectively vanished, the + mainframe sector is in deep and apparently terminal + decline, and even the supercomputer business has contracted into a smaller + niche. It's networked killer micros as far as the eye can see. + —ESR]
A recipe for inducing hardware damage on a machine via insertion of + invalid values (see poke) into a memory-mapped + control register; used esp. of various fairly well-known tricks on + bitty boxes without hardware memory management (such + as the IBM PC and Commodore PET) that can overload and trash analog + electronics in the monitor. See also HCF.
[SI] See quantifiers.
The standard unit of measurement for Web search hits: a thousand + Google matches. “There are about a kilogoogle and a half sites with + that band's name on it.” Compare google + juice.
[Usenet; poss.: fr.: DEC slang for a full + software distribution, as opposed to a patch or upgrade] A source software + distribution that has been packaged in such a way that it can + (theoretically) be unpacked and installed according to a series of steps + using only standard Unix tools, and entirely documented by some reasonable + chain of references from the top-level README file. + The more general term distribution may imply that + special tools or more stringent conditions on the host environment are + required.
See clone, sense 4.
1. /kluhj/ n. Incorrect (though regrettably common) spelling + of kluge (US). These two words have been confused + in American usage since the early 1960s, and widely confounded in Great + Britain since the end of World War II.
2. [TMRC] A crock that works. (A long-ago + Datamation article by Jackson Granholme similarly + said: “An ill-assorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a + distressing whole.”)
3. v. To use a kludge to get + around a problem. “I've kludged around it for now, but I'll fix it + up properly later.”
This word appears to have derived from Scots kludge or kludgie for a common toilet, via British + military slang. It apparently became confused with + U.S. kluge during or after World War II; some + Britons from that era use both words in definably different ways, but + kluge is now uncommon in Great Britain. + ‘Kludge’ in Commonwealth hackish differs in meaning from + ‘kluge’ in that it lacks the positive senses; a kludge is + something no Commonwealth hacker wants to be associated too closely with. + Also, ‘kludge’ is more widely known in British mainstream slang + than ‘kluge’ is in the U.S.
To avoid a bug or difficult condition by inserting a + kluge. Compare + workaround.
To lash together a quick hack to perform a task; this is milder than + cruft together and has some of the connotations of + hack up (note, however, that the construction + kluge on corresponding to + hack on is never used). “I've kluged up this + routine to dump the buffer contents to a safe place.”
[from the German ‘klug’, clever; poss. related to + Polish & Russian ‘klucz’ (a key, a hint, a main + point)]
1. n. A Rube Goldberg (or Heath + Robinson) device, whether in hardware or software.
2. n. A clever programming trick + intended to solve a particular nasty case in an expedient, if not clear, + manner. Often used to repair bugs. Often involves + ad-hockery and verges on being a + crock.
3. n. Something that works for + the wrong reason.
4. vt. To insert a kluge into a + program. “I've kluged this routine to get around that weird bug, but + there's probably a better way.”
5. [WPI] n. A feature that is + implemented in a rude manner.
Nowadays this term is often encountered in the variant spelling + ‘kludge’. Reports from old farts are + consistent that ‘kluge’ was the original spelling, reported + around computers as far back as the mid-1950s and, at that time, used + exclusively of hardware kluges. In 1947, the + New York Folklore Quarterly reported a classic + shaggy-dog story ‘Murgatroyd the Kluge Maker’ then current in + the Armed Forces, in which a ‘kluge’ was a complex and puzzling + artifact with a trivial function. Other sources report that + ‘kluge’ was common Navy slang in the WWII era for any piece of + electronics that worked well on shore but consistently failed at + sea.
However, there is reason to believe this slang use may be a decade + older. Several respondents have connected it to the brand name of a device + called a “Kluge paper feeder”, an adjunct to mechanical + printing presses. Legend has it that the Kluge feeder was designed before + small, cheap electric motors and control electronics; it relied on a + fiendishly complex assortment of cams, belts, and linkages to both power + and synchronize all its operations from one motive driveshaft. It was + accordingly temperamental, subject to frequent breakdowns, and devilishly + difficult to repair — but oh, so clever! People who tell this story + also aver that ‘Kluge’ was the name of a design + engineer.
There is in fact a Brandtjen & Kluge Inc., an old family business + that manufactures printing equipment — interestingly, their name is + pronounced /kloogee/! + Henry Brandtjen, president of the firm, told me (ESR, 1994) that his + company was co-founded by his father and an engineer named Kluge /kloogee/, who built and co-designed + the original Kluge automatic feeder in 1919. Mr. Brandtjen claims, + however, that this was a simple device (with only four + cams); he says he has no idea how the myth of its complexity took hold. + Other correspondents differ with Mr. Brandtjen's history of the device and + his allegation that it was a simple rather than complex one, but agree that + the Kluge automatic feeder was the most likely source of the + folklore.
TMRC and the MIT hacker culture of the early + '60s seems to have developed in a milieu that remembered and still used + some WWII military slang (see also foobar). It + seems likely that ‘kluge’ came to MIT via alumni of the many + military electronics projects that had been located in Cambridge (many in + MIT's venerable Building 20, in which TMRC is also + located) during the war.
The variant ‘kludge’ was apparently popularized by the + Datamation article mentioned under + kludge; it was titled How to Design a + Kludge (February 1962, pp. 30, 31). This spelling was probably + imported from Great Britain, where kludge has an + independent history (though this fact was largely unknown to hackers on + either side of the Atlantic before a mid-1993 debate in the Usenet group + alt.folklore.computers over the + First and Second Edition versions of this entry; everybody used to think + kludge was just a mutation of + kluge). It now appears that the British, having + forgotten the etymology of their own ‘kludge’ when + ‘kluge’ crossed the Atlantic, repaid the U.S. by lobbing the + ‘kludge’ orthography in the other direction and confusing their + American cousins' spelling!
The result of this history is a tangle. Many younger U.S. hackers + pronounce the word as /klooj/ but + spell it, incorrectly for its meaning and pronunciation, as + ‘kludge’. (Phonetically, consider huge, refuge, centrifuge, and + deluge as opposed to sludge, judge, budge, and fudge. Whatever its + failings in other areas, English spelling is perfectly consistent about + this distinction.) British hackers mostly learned /kluhj/ orally, use it in a restricted + negative sense and are at least consistent. European hackers have mostly + learned the word from written American sources and tend to pronounce it + /kluhj/ but use the wider + American meaning!
Some observers consider this mess appropriate in view of the word's + meaning.
Configurable options, even in software and even those you can't + adjust in real time. Anything you can twiddle is a + knob. “Has this PNG viewer got an alpha knob?” Software may + be described as having “knobs and switches” or occasionally + “knobs and lights”. See also nerd knob
1. [RPI] Renssaleer Polytechnic Institute local slang roughly + equivalent to the positive sense of geek, + referring to people who prefer technical hobbies to socializing.
2. In older usage at RPI, the term signified someone new to college + life, fresh out of high school, and wet behind the ears.
An IEEE Spectrum article (4/95, page 16) once derived + ‘nerd’ in its variant form ‘knurd’ from the word + ‘drunk’ backwards; this etymology was common at RPI. Though it + is commonly confused with nerd, it appears these + words have separate origins (compare the + kluge/kludge pair).
A Zen teaching riddle. Classically, koans are attractive paradoxes + to be meditated on; their purpose is to help one to enlightenment by + temporarily jamming normal cognitive processing so that something more + interesting can happen (this practice is associated with Rinzai Zen + Buddhism). Defined here because hackers are very fond of the koan form and + compose their own koans for humorous and/or enlightening effect. See + Some AI Koans, + has the X nature, hacker humor.
[Usenet; originally and more formally, net.kook] Term used to describe a regular + poster who continually posts messages with no apparent grounding in + reality. Different from a troll, which implies a + sort of sly wink on the part of a poster who knows better, kooks really + believe what they write, to the extent that they believe anything.
The kook trademark is paranoia and grandiosity. Kooks will often + build up elaborate imaginary support structures, fake corporations and the + like, and continue to act as if those things are real even after their + falsity has been documented in public.
While they may appear harmless, and are usually filtered out by the + other regular participants in a newsgroup of mailing list, they can still + cause problems because the necessity for these measures is not immediately + apparent to newcomers; there are several instances on record, for example, + of journalists writing stories with quotes from kooks who caught them + unaware.
An entertaining web page chronicling the activities of many notable + kooks can be found at http://www.crank.net/usenet.html.
[from the then-large number of Usenet + VAXen with names of 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 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.
[Swedish] See feature key.
An event to which several users bring their boxes and hook them up + to a common LAN (Local Area Network), often for the purpose of playing + multiplayer computer games, especially action games such as Quake or Unreal + Tournament. This is also a good venue for people to show-off their fancy + new hardware. Such events can get pretty large, several hundred people + attend the annual QuakeCon in Texas. The theoretical rationale behind LAN + parties is that playing over the Internet often introduces too much lag in + the playing experience — but just as important is the special quality of + trash-talking each other across the room while playing, and the instinctive + social ritual of consuming vast amounts of food and drink together.
Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool.
1. n. In the collective mythos + of scary devil monastery, this is an essential item + in the toolkit of every BOFH. The LART classic is a + 2x4 or other large billet of wood usable as a club, to be applied upside + the head of spammers and other people who cause sysadmins more grief than + just naturally goes with the job. Perennial debates rage on alt.sysadmin.recovery over what constitutes + the truly effective LART; knobkerries, automatic weapons, + flamethrowers, and tactical nukes all have their partisans. Compare + clue-by-four.
2. v. To use a LART. Some would + add “in malice”, but some sysadmins do prefer to gently lart + their users as a first (and sometimes final) warning.
3. interj. Calling for one's LART, much as a surgeon might call + “Scalpel!”.
4. interj. [rare] Used in flames as a + rebuke. “LART! LART! LART!”
n.
1. [TMRC, from ‘Light-Emitting Diode’] A light-emitting + resistor (that is, one in the process of burning up). Ohm's law was + broken. See also SED.
2. An incandescent light bulb (the filament emits light because it's + resistively heated).
Quasi-acronym for Linear Interpolation, used as a verb or noun for + the operation. “Bresenham's algorithm lerps incrementally between the + two endpoints of the line.”
[from ‘LISt Processing language’, but mythically from + ‘Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses’] AI's mother + tongue, a language based on the ideas of (a) variable-length lists and + trees as fundamental data types, and (b) the interpretation of code as data + and vice-versa. Invented by John McCarthy at MIT in the late 1950s, it is + actually older than any other HLL still in use + except FORTRAN. Accordingly, it has undergone considerable adaptive + radiation over the years; modern variants are quite different in detail + from the original LISP 1.5. The dominant HLL among hackers until the early + 1980s, LISP has since shared the throne with C. Its + partisans claim it is the only language that is truly beautiful. See + languages of choice.
All LISP functions and programs are expressions that return values; + this, together with the high memory utilization of LISPs, gave rise to Alan + Perlis's famous quip (itself a take on an Oscar Wilde quote) that + “LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of + nothing”.
One significant application for LISP has been as a proof by example + that most newer languages, such as COBOL and + Ada, are full of unnecessary + crocks. When the Right Thing + has already been done once, there is no justification for + bogosity in newer languages.
We've got your numbers....
[XEROX PARC] This phrase has two possible interpretations: (1) + “While your suggestion may have some merit, I will behave as though I + hadn't heard it.” (2) “While your suggestion has obvious + merit, equally obvious circumstances prevent it from being seriously + considered.” The charm of the phrase lies precisely in this subtle + but important ambiguity.
The emerging Linux/Intel alliance. This term + began to be used in early 1999 after it became clear that the + Wintel alliance was under increasing strain and + Intel started taking stakes in Linux companies.
Linus Torvalds, the author of Linux. Nobody + in the hacker culture has been as readily recognized by first name alone + since ken.
The free Unix workalike created by Linus Torvalds and friends + starting about 1991. The pronunciation /linuhks/ is preferred because the + name ‘Linus’ has an /ee/ sound in Swedish (Linus's family is + part of Finland's 6% ethnic-Swedish minority) and Linus considers English + short /i/ to be closer to + /ee/ than English long /i:/. This may be the most remarkable + hacker project in history — an entire clone of Unix for 386, 486 and + Pentium micros, distributed for free with sources over the net (ports to + Alpha and Sparc and many other machines are also in use).
Linux is what GNU aimed to be, and it relies + on the GNU toolset. But the Free Software Foundation didn't produce the + kernel to go with that toolset until 1999, which was too late. Other, + similar efforts like FreeBSD and NetBSD have been technically successful + but never caught fire the way Linux has; as this is written in 2003, Linux + has effectively swallowed all proprietary Unixes except Solaris and is + seriously challenging Microsoft. It has already captured 41% of the + Internet-server market and over 25% of general business servers.
An earlier version of this entry opined “The secret of Linux's + success seems to be that Linus worked much harder early on to keep the + development process open and recruit other hackers, creating a snowball + effect.” Truer than we knew. See + bazaar.
(Some people object that the name ‘Linux’ should be used + to refer only to the kernel, not the entire operating system. This claim + is a proxy for an underlying territorial dispute; people who insist on the + term GNU/Linux want the + FSF to get most of the credit for Linux because RMS + and friends wrote many of its user-level tools. Neither this theory nor + the term GNU/Linux has gained more + than minority acceptance).
Source Code and Commentary on Unix level 6, + by John Lions. The two parts of this book contained (1) the entire source + listing of the Unix Version 6 kernel, and (2) a commentary on the source + discussing the algorithms. These were circulated internally at the + University of New South Wales beginning 1976--77, and were, for years + after, the only detailed kernel documentation + available to anyone outside Bell Labs. Because Western Electric wished to + maintain trade secret status on the kernel, the Lions Book was only + supposed to be distributed to affiliates of source licensees. In spite of + this, it soon spread by samizdat to a good many of + the early Unix hackers.
[1996 update: The Lions book lives again! It was put back in print as + ISBN 1-57398-013-7 from Peer-To-Peer Communications, with forewords by + Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson. In a neat bit of reflexivity, the page + before the contents quotes this entry.]
[1998 update: John Lions's death was an occasion of general mourning + in the hacker community.]
1. The state motto of New Hampshire, which appears on that state's + automobile license plates.
2. A slogan associated with Unix in the romantic days when Unix + aficionados saw themselves as a tiny, beleaguered underground tilting + against the windmills of industry. The “free” referred + specifically to freedom from the fascist design + philosophies and crufty misfeatures common on competing operating systems. + Armando Stettner, one of the early Unix developers, used to give out fake + license plates bearing this motto under a large Unix, all in New Hampshire + colors of green and white. These are now valued collector's items. In + 1994 DEC put an inferior imitation of these in + circulation with a red corporate logo added. Compaq (half of which was + once DEC) continued the practice.
Armando Stettner's original Unix license plate.
“There is always one more + bug.”
A mythical conspiracy accused by spam-spewers + of funding anti-spam activism in order to force the direct-mail promotions + industry back onto paper. Hackers, predictably, responded by forming a + “Lumber Cartel” spoofing this paranoid theory; the web page is + http://come.to/the.lumber.cartel/. Members + often include the tag TINLC (“There Is No Lumber Cartel”) in + their postings; see TINC, + backbone cabal and NANA for explanation.
[MUD, IRC; very common] When used without qualification this is + synonymous with netlag. Curiously, people will + often complain “I'm really lagged” when in fact it is their + server or network connection that is lagging.
[originally among Amiga fans]
1. Synonym for luser, not used much by + hackers but common among warez d00dz, crackers, and + phreakers. A person who downloads much, but who + never uploads. (Also known as leecher). Oppose elite. + Has the same connotations of self-conscious elitism that use of + luser does among hackers.
2. Someone who tries to crack a BBS.
3. Someone who annoys the sysop or other BBS users — for instance, + by posting lots of silly messages, uploading virus-ridden software, + frequently dropping carrier, etc.
Crackers also use it to refer to cracker + wannabees. In phreak culture, a lamer is one who + scams codes off others rather than doing cracks or really understanding the + fundamental concepts. In warez d00dz culture, where + the ability to wave around cracked commercial software within days of (or + before) release to the commercial market is much esteemed, the lamer might + try to upload garbage or shareware or something incredibly old (old in this + context is read as a few years to anything older than 3 days). + ‘Lamer’ is also much used in the IRC world in a similar sense + to the above.
This term seems to have originated in the Commodore-64 scene in the + mid 1980s. It was popularized among Amiga crackers of the mid-1980s by + ‘Lamer Exterminator’, the most famous and feared Amiga virus + ever, which gradually corrupted non-write-protected floppy disks with bad + sectors. The bad sectors, when looked at, were overwritten with repetitions + of the string “LAMER!”.
A person, usually an experienced or senior software engineer, who is + intimately familiar with many or most of the numerous restrictions and + features (both useful and esoteric) applicable to one or more computer + programming languages. A language lawyer is distinguished by the ability + to show you the five sentences scattered through a 200-plus-page manual + that together imply the answer to your question “if only you had + thought to look there”. Compare wizard, + legal, legalese.
C, Perl, + Python, Java and + LISP — the dominant languages in open-source + development. This list has changed over time, but slowly. Java bumped C++ + off of it, and Python appears to be recruiting people who would otherwise + gravitate to LISP (which used to be much more important than it is now). + Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential + communities.
The Real Programmers who loved FORTRAN and + assembler have pretty much all retired or died since 1990. Assembler is + generally no longer considered interesting or 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 languages like + Pascal and Ada, which don't + give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for hacking (see + bondage-and-discipline language), and to regard + everything even remotely connected with COBOL or + other traditional DP languages as a total + and unmitigated loss.
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 activities including + usual basics like 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 to be necessary to produce + really 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.
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.”
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 color reminiscent of some laser beams. The dish has also + been called gunpowder chicken.
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 enough to + glow in the dark (as, mythically, do some of the inhabitants of + Chernobyl).
[obs.] Before pervasive TCP/IP, this term was used of a machine that + merely originated and read Usenet news or mail, and did not relay any + third-party traffic. It was often uttered in a critical tone; when the + ratio of leaf sites to backbone, rib, and other relay sites got too high, + the network tended to develop bottlenecks. Compare + backbone site. Now that traffic + patterns depend more on the distribution of routers than of host machines + this term has largely fallen out of use.
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 allocation requests come in. + memory leak has its own entry; + one might also refer, to, say, a window handle + leak in a window system.
[Cambridge] An arena with a + memory leak.
Use of userid and password information obtained illicitly from one + host (e.g., downloading a file of account IDs and passwords, tapping + TELNET, etc.) to compromise another host. Also, the act of TELNETting + through one or more hosts in order to confuse a trace (a standard cracker + procedure).
[warez d00dz] “Leech mode” or “leech + access” or (simply “leech” as in “You get + leech”) is the access mode on a FTP site where one can download as + many files as one wants, without having to upload. Leech mode is often + promised on banner sites, but rarely obtained. See + ratio site, banner site.
1. n. (Also leecher.) Among BBS types, crackers and + warez d00dz, one who consumes knowledge without + generating new software, cracks, or techniques. BBS culture specifically + defines a leech as someone who downloads files with few or no uploads in + return, and who does not contribute to the message section. Cracker + culture extends this definition to someone (a lamer, + usually) who constantly presses informed sources for information and/or + assistance, but has nothing to contribute. See + troughie.
2. v. [common, Toronto area] + v. To download a file across any kind of internet link. “Hop on IRC + later so I can leech some MP3s from you.” Used to describe + activities ranging from FTP, to IRC DCC-send, to ICQ file requests, to + Napster searches (but never to downloading email with file attachments; the + implication is that the download is the result of a browse or search of + some sort of file server). Seems to be a holdover from the early 1990s + when Toronto had a very active BBS and warez scene. Synonymous with + snarf (sense 2), and contrast + snarf (sense 4).
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 of legal input + the moment it sees 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 is flavored as much by this game-playing + sense as by the more conventional one having to do with courts and lawyers. + Compare language lawyer, + legalese.
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 density and complexity in language (indeed, they rather enjoy + both), they share a deep and abiding loathing for legalese; they associate + it with deception, suits, and situations in which + hackers generally get the short end of the stick.
The Internet's first poster girl, a standard test load used in the + image processing community. The image was originally cropped from the + November 1972 issue of Playboy Magazine, which + anglicized the model's name with a double n. It has interesting properties + — complex feathers, shadows, smooth (but not flat) surfaces — + that are pertinent in demonstrating various processing algorithms for image + compression, filtering, dithering, texture mapping, image recognition, and + so on. After a quarter century of remaining completely unaware that she + had become an icon, a gray-haired but still winsome Lenna finally met her + fans at a computer graphics conference in 1997. There is a fan page at + www.lenna.org, with more + details. Compare Utah teapot + and Stanford Bunny
Miss Lena Sjblom
To fry hardware (see fried). See + magic smoke for a discussion of the underlying + mythology.
1. n. A piece of + email containing live data + intended to do nefarious things to the recipient's machine or terminal. It + used to be possible, for example, to send letterbombs that would lock up + some specific kinds of terminals when they are viewed, so thoroughly that + the user must cycle power (see cycle, sense 3) to + unwedge them. Under Unix, a letterbomb can also try to get part of its + contents interpreted as a shell command to the mailer. The results of this + could range from silly to tragic; fortunately it has been some years since + any of the standard Unix/Internet mail software was vulnerable to such an + attack (though, as the Melissa virus attack demonstrated in early 1999, + Microsoft systems can have serious problems). See also + Trojan horse; compare nastygram.
2. Loosely, a mailbomb.
Common hacker shorthand for lexical + analyzer, the input-tokenizing stage in the parser for a + language (the part that breaks it into word-like pieces). “Some C + lexers get confused by the old-style compound ops like =-.”
1. A cellular-automata game invented by John Horton Conway + and first introduced publicly by Martin Gardner + (Scientific American, October 1970); the + game's popularity had to wait a few years for computers on which it + could reasonably be played, as it's no fun to simulate the cells by + hand. Many hackers pass through a stage of fascination with it, + and hackers at various places contributed heavily to the + mathematical analysis of this game (most notably Bill Gosper at + MIT, who even implemented life in TECO!). + When a hacker mentions ‘life’, he is much more likely + to mean this game than the magazine, the breakfast cereal, or the + human state of existence. Many web resources are + available starting from the Open + Directory page of Life. The Life + Lexicon is a good indicator of what makes the game so fascinating.
2. The opposite of Usenet. As in + “Get a life!”
Fiber optic cable. Oppose copper.
Opposite of heavyweight; usually found in + combining forms such as lightweight + process.
Describes a slow, difficult, and disgusting process. First + popularized by a famous quote about the difficulty of getting work done + under one of IBM's mainframe OSes. “Well, you + could write a C compiler in COBOL, but it would be + like kicking dead whales down the beach.” See also + fear and loathing.
Used to describe a task thought to be impossible, esp. one in which + the difficulty arises from poor specification or inherent slipperiness in + the problem domain. “Trying to display the ‘prettiest’ + arrangement of nodes and arcs that diagrams a given graph is like nailing + jelly to a tree, because nobody's sure what ‘prettiest’ means + algorithmically.”
Hacker use of this term may recall mainstream slang originated early + in the 20th century by President Theodore Roosevelt. There is a legend + that, weary of inconclusive talks with Colombia over the right to dig a + canal through its then-province Panama, he remarked, “Negotiating + with those pirates is like trying to nail currant jelly to the + wall.” Roosevelt's government subsequently encouraged the + anti-Colombian insurgency that created the nation of Panama.
[from Christian eschatological myth] n. The notional line of source at which a program + fails for obscure reasons, implying either that + somebody is out to get it (when you are the + programmer), or that it richly deserves to be so gotten (when you are not). + “It works when I trace through it, but seems to crash on line 666 + when I run it.” “What happens is that whenever a large batch + comes through, mmdf dies on the Line of the Beast. Probably some twit + hardcoded a buffer size.”
1. [Usenet] A bug in some now-obsolete versions of the netnews + software that used to eat up to BUFSIZ bytes of the article text. The bug + was triggered by having the text of the article start with a space or tab. + This bug was quickly personified as a mythical creature called the + line eater, and postings often + included a dummy line of line eater + food. Ironically, line eater ‘food’ not beginning + with a space or tab wasn't actually eaten, since the bug was avoided; but + if there was a space or tab before it, then the line + eater would eat the food and the beginning of the text + it was supposed to be protecting. The practice of sacrificing to the line eater continued for + some time after the bug had been nailed to the wall, + and is still humorously referred to. The bug itself was still occasionally + reported to be lurking in some mail-to-netnews gateways as late as 1991. +
2. See NSA line eater.
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.
Of an algorithm, having running time that is O(N log + N). Coined as a portmanteau of ‘linear’ and + ‘logarithmic’ in Algorithms In C by + Robert Sedgewick (Addison-Wesley 1990, ISBN 0-201-51425-7).
[MUD] The state a player is in when they kill their connection to a + MUD without leaving it properly. The player is then + commonly left as a statue in the game, and is only removed after a certain + period of time (an hour on most MUDs). Used on IRC + as well, although it is inappropriate in that context. Compare + netdead.
[Unix] A directory tree that contains many links to files in a + master directory tree of files. Link farms save space when one is + maintaining several nearly identical copies of the same source tree — + for example, when the only difference is architecture-dependent object + files. “Let's freeze the source and then rebuild the FROBOZZ-3 and + FROBOZZ-4 link farms.” Link farms may also be used to get around + restrictions on the number of -I + (include-file directory) arguments on older C preprocessors. However, they + can also get completely out of hand, becoming the filesystem equivalent of + spaghetti code. See also + farm.
The natural decay of web links as the sites they're connected to + change or die. Compare bit rot.
[from Unix's + lint(1), + named for the bits of fluff it supposedly picks from programs]
1. vt. To examine a program + closely for style, language usage, and portability problems, esp. if in C, + esp. if via use of automated analysis tools, most esp. if the Unix + utility + lint(1) + is used. This term used to be restricted to use of + lint(1) + itself, but (judging by references on Usenet) it has become a shorthand for + any exhaustive review process at some non-Unix shops, even in languages + other than C. Also as v. + delint.
2. n. Excess verbiage in a + document, as in “This draft has too much lint”.
[IBM] Middle management or HQ staff (or, by extension, + administrative drones in general). From an old joke about two lions who, + escaping from the zoo, split up to increase their chances but agree to meet + after 2 months. When they finally meet, one is skinny and the other + overweight. The thin one says: “How did you manage? I ate a human + just once and they turned out a small army to chase me — guns, nets, + it was terrible. Since then I've been reduced to eating mice, insects, + even grass.” The fat one replies: “Well, + I hid near an IBM office and ate a manager a day. And + nobody even noticed!”
To mailbomb someone by forging messages + causing the victim to become a subscriber to many mailing lists. This is a + self-defeating tactic; it merely forces mailing list servers to require + confirmation by return message for every subscription.
[NeXT] Steve Jobs. Employees who have gotten too much attention + from their esteemed founder are said to have ‘lithium lick’ + when they begin to show signs of Jobsian fervor and repeat the most recent + catch phrases in normal conversation — for example, “It just + works, right out of the box!”
Describes a computer architecture in which, within a given 16- or + 32-bit word, bytes at lower addresses have lower significance (the word is + stored ‘little-end-first’). The PDP-11 + and VAX families of computers and Intel + microprocessors and a lot of communications and networking hardware are + little-endian. See big-endian, + middle-endian, NUXI problem. + The term is sometimes used to describe the ordering of units other than + bytes; most often, bits within a byte.
1. Data that is written to be interpreted and takes over program + flow when triggered by some un-obvious operation, such as viewing it. One + use of such hacks is to break security. For example, some smart terminals + have commands that allow one to download strings to program keys; this can + be used to write live data that, when listed to the terminal, infects it + with a security-breaking virus that is triggered the + next time a hapless user strikes that key. For another, there are some + well-known bugs in vi that allow certain texts to + send arbitrary commands back to the machine when they are simply + viewed.
2. In C code, data that includes pointers to function + hooks (executable code).
3. An object, such as a trampoline, that is + constructed on the fly by a program and intended to be executed as + code.
[common] Opposite of ‘test’. Refers to actual + real-world data or a program working with it. For example, the response to + “I think the record deleter is finished” might be “Is it + live yet?” or “Have you tried it out on live data?” + This usage usually carries the connotation that live data is more fragile + and must not be corrupted, or bad things will happen. So a more + appropriate response might be: “Well, make sure it works perfectly + before we throw live data at it.” The implication here is that + record deletion is something pretty significant, and a haywire + record-deleter running amok live would probably cause great harm.
A situation in which some critical stage of a task is unable to + finish because its clients perpetually create more work for it to do after + they have been serviced but before it can clear its queue. Differs from + deadlock in that the process is not blocked or + waiting for anything, but has a virtually infinite amount of work to do and + can never catch up.
1. Synonym for wetware. Less common. +
2. [Cambridge] Vermin. “Waiter, there's some liveware in my + salad...”
1. What a hacker subjected to formal management training is said to + have undergone. At IBM and elsewhere this term is used by both hackers and + low-level management; the latter doubtless intend it as a joke.
2. The act of removing the processor from a microcomputer in order + to replace or upgrade it. Some very cheap clone + systems are sold in lobotomized form + — everything but the brain.
The users on one's local network (as opposed, say, to people one + reaches via public Internet connections). The marked thing about this + usage is how little it has to do with real-space distance. “I have to + do some tweaking on this mail utility before releasing it to the + locals.”
[from military slang for an M-16 rifle with magazine inserted and + prepared for firing] Said of a removable disk volume properly prepared for + use — that is, locked into the drive and with the heads loaded. + Ironically, because their heads are ‘loaded’ whenever the power + is up, this description is never used of Winchester + drives (which are named after a rifle).
Code surreptitiously inserted into an application or OS that causes + it to perform some destructive or security-compromising activity whenever + specified conditions are met. Compare + back door.
[from the technical term logical + device, wherein a physical device is referred to by an arbitrary + ‘logical’ name] Having the role of. If a person (say, Les + Earnest at SAIL) who had long held a certain post left and were replaced, + the replacement would for a while be known as the logical Les Earnest. (This does not imply any + judgment on the replacement.) Compare + virtual.
At Stanford, ‘logical’ compass directions denote a + coordinate system relative to El Camino Real, in which ‘logical + north’ is always toward San Francisco and ‘logical south’ + is always toward San Jose--in spite of the fact that El Camino Real runs + physical north/south near San Francisco, physical east/west near San Jose, + and along a curve everywhere in between. (The best rule of thumb here is + that, by definition, El Camino Real always runs logical + north-south.)
In giving directions, one might say: “To get to Rincon Tarasco + restaurant, get onto El Camino Bignum going logical + north.” Using the word ‘logical’ helps to prevent the + recipient from worrying about that the fact that the sun is setting almost + directly in front of him. The concept is reinforced by North American + highways which are almost, but not quite, consistently labeled with logical + rather than physical directions. A similar situation exists at MIT: Route + 128 (famous for the electronics industry that grew up along it) wraps + roughly 3 quarters around Boston at a radius of 10 miles, terminating near + the coastline at each end. It would be most precise to describe the two + directions along this highway as ‘clockwise’ and + ‘counterclockwise’, but the road signs all say + “north” and “south”, respectively. A hacker + might describe these directions as logical + north and logical south, + to indicate that they are conventional directions not corresponding to the + usual denotation for those words.
To process each element of a list of things. “Hold on, I've + got to loop through my paper mail.” Derives from the + computer-language notion of an iterative loop; compare cdr down (under cdr), + which is less common among C and Unix programmers. ITS hackers used to say + IRP over after an obscure pseudo-op + in the MIDAS PDP-10 assembler (the same IRP op can nowadays be found in + Microsoft's assembler).
Commonwealth hackish term for the padding bytes or + shims many compilers insert between members of a + record or structure to cope with alignment requirements imposed by the + machine architecture.
[primarily British, from Gilbert & Sullivan's ‘lord high + executioner’] The person in an organization who knows the most about + some aspect of a system. See wizard.
A reply to or comment on an undesirable situation. “I + accidentally deleted all my files!” “Lose, + lose.”
1. [very common] To fail. A program loses when it encounters an + exceptional condition or fails to work in the expected manner.
2. To be exceptionally unesthetic or crocky.
3. Of people, to be obnoxious or unusually stupid (as opposed to + ignorant). See also deserves to lose.
4. n. Refers to something that + is losing, especially in the phrases “That's a + lose!” and “What a lose!”
An unexpectedly bad situation, program, programmer, or person. + Someone who habitually loses. (Even winners can lose occasionally.) + Someone who knows not and knows not that he knows not. Emphatic forms are + real loser, total loser, and complete loser (but not **moby loser, which would be a contradiction in + terms). See luser.
Said of anything that is or causes a lose or + lossage. “The compiler is losing badly when I + try to use templates.”
Something (not a person) that loses; a situation in which something + is losing. Emphatic forms include moby + loss, and total loss, + complete loss. Common interjections + are “What a loss!” and “What a moby loss!” Note + that moby loss is OK even though + **moby loser is not used; applied to + an abstract noun, moby is simply a magnifier, whereas when applied to a + person it implies substance and has positive connotations. Compare + lossage.
[very common] The result of a bug or malfunction. This is a mass or + collective noun. “What a loss!” and “What + lossage!” are nearly synonymous. The former is slightly more + particular to the speaker's present circumstances; the latter implies a + continuing lose of which the speaker is currently a + victim. Thus (for example) a temporary hardware failure is a loss, but + bugs in an important tool (like a compiler) are serious lossage.
[Usenet]
1. Said of people, this indicates a poor memory, usually short-term. + This usage is analogical to the same term applied to data compression and + analysis. “He's very lossy.” means that you can't rely on him + to accurately remember recent experiences or conversations, or requests. + Not to be confused with a ‘loser’, which is a person who is in + a continual state of lossiness, as in sense 2 (see below).
2. Said of an attitude or a situation, this indicates a general + downturn in emotions, lack of success in attempted endeavors, etc. Eg, + “I'm having a lossy day today.” means that the speaker has + ‘lost’ or is ‘losing’ in all of their activities, + and that this is causing some increase in negative emotions.
Syn. lost in the underflow. This term is + from signal processing, where signals of very small amplitude cannot be + separated from low-intensity noise in the system. Though popular among + hackers, it is not confined to hackerdom; physicists, engineers, + astronomers, and statisticians all use it.
Too small to be worth considering; more specifically, small beyond + the limits of accuracy or measurement. This is a reference to floating underflow, a condition that can occur + when a floating-point arithmetic processor tries to handle quantities + smaller than its limit of magnitude. It is also a pun on + ‘undertow’ (a kind of fast, cold current that sometimes runs + just offshore and can be dangerous to swimmers). “Well, sure, photon + pressure from the stadium lights alters the path of a thrown baseball, but + that effect gets lost in the underflow.” Compare + epsilon, epsilon squared; see + also overflow bit.
Used to describe a person who is technically brilliant but can't + seem to communicate with human beings effectively. Technically it + describes a machine that has lots of processing power but is bottlenecked + on input-output (in 1991, the IBM Rios, a.k.a. RS/6000, was a notorious + example).
[from communication theory] Used to indicate a talk that, although + not content-free, was not terribly informative. + “That was a low-bandwidth talk, but what can you expect for an + audience of suits!” Compare + zero-content, bandwidth, + math-out.
[IBM] Customers who can be relied upon to accept release 1 versions + of software. Compare heatseeker.
One of the ‘silent majority’ in an electronic forum; one + who posts occasionally or not at all but is known to read the group's + postings regularly. This term is not pejorative and indeed is casually + used reflexively: “Oh, I'm just lurking.” Often used in + the lurkers, the hypothetical + audience for the group's flamage-emitting regulars. + When a lurker speaks up for the first time, this is called delurking.
The creator of the popular science-fiction TV series + Babylon 5 has ties to SF fandom and the hacker + culture. In that series, the use of the term ‘lurker’ for a + homeless or displaced person is a conscious reference to the jargon + term.
[common] A user; esp. one who is also a + loser. (luser and + loser are pronounced identically.) This word was + coined around 1975 at MIT. Under ITS, when you first walked up to a + terminal at MIT and typed Control-Z to get the computer's attention, it + printed out some status information, including how many people were already + using the computer; it might print “14 users”, for example. + Someone thought it would be a great joke to patch the system to print + “14 losers” instead. There ensued a great controversy, as + some of the users didn't particularly want to be called losers to their + faces every time they used the computer. For a while several hackers + struggled covertly, each changing the message behind the back of the + others; any time you logged into the computer it was even money whether it + would say “users” or “losers”. Finally, someone + tried the compromise “lusers”, and it stuck. Later one of the + ITS machines supported luser as a + request-for-help command. ITS died the death in mid-1990, except as a + museum piece; the usage lives on, however, and the term luser is often seen in program comments and on + Usenet. Compare mundane, + muggle, newbie, + chainik.
[SI] See quantifiers.
[“My Eyes Glaze Over”, often “Mine Eyes Glazeth + (sic) Over”, attributed to the futurologist Herman Kahn] Also + MEGO factor.
1. n. A + handwave intended to confuse the listener and + hopefully induce agreement because the listener does not want to admit to + not understanding what is going on. MEGO is usually directed at senior + management by engineers and contains a high proportion of + TLAs.
2. excl. An appropriate response to MEGO tactics.
3. Among non-hackers, often refers not to behavior that causes the + eyes to glaze, but to the eye-glazing reaction itself, which may be + triggered by the mere threat of excessive technical detail as effectively + as by an actual excess of it.
[abbreviation: ‘My Favorite Toy Language’]
1. adj. Describes a talk on a + programming language design that is heavy on the syntax (with lots of BNF), + sometimes even talks about semantics (e.g., type systems), but rarely, if + ever, has any content (see content-free). More + broadly applied to talks — even when the topic is not a programming + language — in which the subject matter is gone into in unnecessary + and meticulous detail at the sacrifice of any conceptual content. + “Well, it was a typical MFTL talk”.
2. n. Describes a language about + which the developers are passionate (often to the point of proselytic zeal) + but no one else cares about. Applied to the language by those outside the + originating group. “He cornered me about type resolution in his + MFTL.”
The first great goal in the mind of the designer of an MFTL is + usually to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design away from + contamination by lesser languages by writing a compiler for it in itself. + Thus, the standard put-down question at an MFTL talk is “Has it been + used for anything besides its own compiler?” On the other hand, a + (compiled) language that cannot even be used to write its own compiler is + beneath contempt. (The qualification has become necessary because of the + increasing popularity of interpreted languages like + Perl and Python.) See + break-even point. (On a related note, Doug McIlroy + once proposed a test of the generality and utility of a language and the + operating system under which it is compiled: “Is the output of a + FORTRAN program acceptable as input to the FORTRAN compiler?” In + other words, can you write programs that write programs? (See + toolsmith.) Alarming numbers of (language, OS) + pairs fail this test, particularly when the language is FORTRAN; + aficionados are quick to point out that Unix (even + using FORTRAN) passes it handily. That the test could ever be failed is + only surprising to those who have had the good fortune to have worked only + under modern systems which lack OS-supported and -imposed “file + types”.)
[abbreviation]
1. A measure of computing speed; formally, ‘Million + Instructions Per Second’ (that's + 106 per second, not + 220!); often rendered by + hackers as ‘Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed’ or in + other unflattering ways, such as ‘Meaningless Information Provided by + Salesmen’. This joke expresses an attitude nearly universal among + hackers about the value of most benchmark claims, + said attitude being one of the great cultural divides between hackers and + marketroids (see also + BogoMIPS). The singular is sometimes ‘1 + MIP’ even though this is clearly etymologically wrong. See also + KIPS and GIPS.
2. Computers, especially large computers, considered abstractly as + sources of computrons. “This is just a + workstation; the heavy MIPS are hidden in the basement.”
3. The corporate name of a particular RISC-chip company, + later acquired by SGI.
4. Acronym for ‘Meaningless Information per Second’ (a + joke, prob.: from sense 1).
[Usenet; common] Abbreviation: “Make Money Fast”. + Refers to any kind of scheme which promises participants large profits with + little or no risk or effort. Typically, it is a some kind of multi-level + marketing operation which involves recruiting more members, or an illegal + pyramid scam. The term is also used to refer to any kind of spam which + promotes this. For more information, see the Make Money Fast Myth + Page.
[Usenet: Member Of The Appropriate Sex, after + MOTOS and MOTSS] A potential + or (less often) actual sex partner. See also + SO.
[acronym from the 1970 U.S. census forms via Usenet: Member Of The + Opposite Sex] A potential or (less often) actual sex partner. See + MOTAS, MOTSS, + SO. Less common than MOTSS or + MOTAS, which has largely displaced it.
[from the 1970 U.S. census forms via Usenet] Member Of The Same Sex, + esp. one considered as a possible sexual partner. The gay-issues newsgroup + on Usenet is called soc.motss. + See MOTOS and MOTAS, which + derive from it. See also SO.
[MicroSoft Disk Operating System] A clone of + CP/M for the 8088 crufted together in 6 weeks by + hacker Tim Paterson at Seattle Computer Products, who called the original + QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) and is said to have regretted it + ever since. Microsoft licensed QDOS in order to have something to demo for + IBM on time, and the rest is history. Numerous features, including vaguely + Unix-like but rather broken support for subdirectories, I/O redirection, + and pipelines, were hacked into Microsoft's 2.0 and subsequent versions; as + a result, there are two or more incompatible versions of many system calls, + and MS-DOS programmers can never agree on basic things like what character + to use as an option switch or whether to be case-sensitive. The resulting + appalling mess is now the highest-unit-volume OS in history. Often known + simply as DOS, which annoys people familiar with other similarly + abbreviated operating systems (the name goes back to the mid-1960s, when it + was attached to IBM's first disk operating system for the 360). The name + further annoys those who know what the term + operating system does (or ought to) connote; DOS is more properly a set + of relatively simple interrupt services. Some people like to pronounce DOS + like “dose”, as in “I don't work on dose, man!”, + or to compare it to a dose of brain-damaging drugs (a slogan button in wide + circulation among hackers exhorts: “MS-DOS: Just say No!”). + See mess-dos.
Common net abbreviation for Microsoft, everybody's least favorite + monopoly.
[acronym, Multi-User Dungeon; alt.: Multi-User Dimension]
1. A class of virtual reality experiments + accessible via the Internet. These are real-time chat forums with + structure; they have multiple ‘locations’ like an adventure + game, and may include combat, traps, puzzles, magic, a simple economic + system, and the capability for characters to build more structure onto the + database that represents the existing world.
2. vi. To play a MUD. The + acronym MUD is often lowercased and/or verbed; thus, one may speak of + going mudding, etc.
Historically, MUDs (and their more recent progeny with names of MU- + form) derive from a hack by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw on the + University of Essex's DEC-10 in the early 1980s; descendants of that game + still exist today and are sometimes generically called + BartleMUDs. There is a widespread myth (repeated, + unfortunately, by earlier versions of this lexicon) that the name MUD was + trademarked to the commercial MUD run by Bartle on British Telecom (the + motto: “You haven't lived 'til you've + died on MUD!”); however, this is false — + Richard Bartle explicitly placed ‘MUD’ in the public domain in + 1985. BT was upset at this, as they had already printed trademark claims + on some maps and posters, which were released and created the myth.
Students on the European academic networks quickly improved on the + MUD concept, spawning several new MUDs (VAXMUD, AberMUD, LPMUD). Many of + these had associated bulletin-board systems for social interaction. + Because these had an image as ‘research’ they often survived + administrative hostility to BBSs in general. This, together with the fact + that Usenet feeds were often spotty and difficult to get in the U.K., made + the MUDs major foci of hackish social interaction there.
AberMUD and other variants crossed the Atlantic around 1988 and + quickly gained popularity in the U.S.; they became nuclei for large hacker + communities with only loose ties to traditional hackerdom (some observers + see parallels with the growth of Usenet in the early 1980s). The second + wave of MUDs (TinyMUD and variants) tended to emphasize social interaction, + puzzles, and cooperative world-building as opposed to combat and + competition (in writing, these social MUDs are sometimes referred to as + ‘MU*’, with ‘MUD’ implicitly reserved for the more + game-oriented ones). By 1991, over 50% of MUD sites were of a third major + variety, LPMUD, which synthesizes the combat/puzzle aspects of AberMUD and + older systems with the extensibility of TinyMud. In 1996 the cutting edge + of the technology is Pavel Curtis's MOO, even more extensible using a + built-in object-oriented language. The trend toward greater + programmability and flexibility will doubtless continue.
The state of the art in MUD design is still moving very rapidly, with + new simulation designs appearing (seemingly) every month. Around 1991 + there was an unsuccessful movement to deprecate the term + MUD itself, as newer designs exhibit an exploding + variety of names corresponding to the different simulation styles being + explored. It survived. See also bonk/oif, + FOD, link-dead, + mudhead, talk mode.
The Apple Macintosh, considered as a toy. + Less pejorative than Macintrash.
The Apple Macintosh, as described by a hacker who doesn't appreciate + being kept away from the real computer by the + interface. The term maggotbox has been reported in + regular use in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. Compare + Macintoy. See also + beige toaster, WIMP environment, + point-and-drool interface, + drool-proof paper, user-friendly.
A legendary tragic failure, the archetypal Hacker Dream Gone Wrong. + Mars was the code name for a family of PDP-10-compatible computers built by + Systems Concepts (now, The SC Group): the multi-processor SC-30M, the small + uniprocessor SC-25, and the never-built superprocessor SC-40. These + machines were marvels of engineering design; although not much slower than + the unique Foonly F-1, they were physically smaller + and consumed less power than the much slower DEC + KS10 or Foonly F-2, F-3, or F-4 machines. They were also completely + compatible with the DEC KL10, and ran all KL10 binaries (including the + operating system) with no modifications at about 2--3 times faster than a + KL10.
When DEC cancelled the Jupiter project in 1983 (their followup to the + PDP-10), Systems Concepts should have made a bundle selling their machine + into shops with a lot of software investment in PDP-10s, and in fact their + spring 1984 announcement generated a great deal of excitement in the PDP-10 + world. TOPS-10 was running on the Mars by the summer of 1984, and TOPS-20 + by early fall. Unfortunately, the hackers running Systems Concepts were + much better at designing machines than at mass producing or selling them; + the company allowed itself to be sidetracked by a bout of perfectionism + into continually improving the design, and lost credibility as delivery + dates continued to slip. They also overpriced the product ridiculously; + they believed they were competing with the KL10 and + VAX 8600 and failed to reckon with the likes of Sun + Microsystems and other hungry startups building workstations with power + comparable to the KL10 at a fraction of the price. By the time SC shipped + the first SC-30M to Stanford in late 1985, most customers had already made + the traumatic decision to abandon the PDP-10, usually for VMS or Unix + boxes. Most of the Mars computers built ended up being purchased by + CompuServe.
This tale and the related saga of Foonly hold + a lesson for hackers: if you want to play in the + Real World, you need to learn Real World moves.
[FidoNet]
1. What the Opus BBS software and sysops call + FidoNet.
2. Fanciful term for a cyberspace expected to + emerge from current networking experiments (see + the network). The name of the rather good 1999 + cypherpunk movie The Matrix + played on this sense, which however had been established for years before. +
3. The totality of present-day computer networks (popularized in + this sense by John Quarterman; rare outside academic literature).
[from the name of the founder of alt.fan.warlord; see + warlording.] 4 lines of at most 80 characters each, + sometimes still cited on Usenet as the maximum acceptable size of a + sig block. Before the great bandwidth explosion of + the early 1990s, long sigs actually cost people running Usenet servers + significant amounts of money. Nowadays social pressure against long sigs + is intended to avoid waste of human attention rather than machine + bandwidth. Accordingly, the McQuary limit should be considered a rule of + thumb rather than a hard limit; it's best to avoid sigs that are large, + repetitive, and distracting. See also + warlording.
[blogosphere] A variant of fisking patterned + on the protocol of Mystery Science Theater 3000, In a MiSTing, the satire + is spoken through characters purporting to be the MST3K robots or other + suitably bizarre characters, such as the Roman emperors Augustus and + Caligula.
[Usenet] A Microsoft employee, esp. one who posts to various + operating-system advocacy newsgroups. MicroDroids post follow-ups to any + messages critical of Microsoft's operating systems, and often end up + sounding like visiting fundamentalist missionaries. See also + astroturfing; compare + microserf.
(Variants combine {Microshift, Macroshaft, Microsuck} with {Windoze, + WinDOS}. Hackerism(s) for ‘Microsoft Windows’. A thirty-two + bit extension and graphical shell to a sixteen-bit patch to an eight-bit + operating system originally coded for a four-bit microprocessor which was + written by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition. Also + just called Windoze, with the + implication that you can fall asleep waiting for it to do anything; the + latter term is extremely common on Usenet. See + Black Screen of Death and Blue Screen of Death; compare + X, sun-stools.
The new Evil Empire (the old one was + IBM). The basic complaints are, as formerly with + IBM, that (a) their system designs are horrible botches, (b) we can't get + source to fix them, and (c) they throw their weight + around a lot. See also Halloween Documents.
[poss. from the Sixties counterculture expression Mongolian clusterfuck for a public orgy] + Development by gang bang. Implies that large + numbers of inexperienced programmers are being put on a job better + performed by a few skilled ones (but see bazaar). + Also called Chinese Army technique; + see also Brooks's Law.
[Macintosh users]
1. n. The call of a + semi-legendary creature, properly called the dogcow. + (Some previous versions of this entry claimed, incorrectly, that Moof was + the name of the creature.)
2. adj. Used to flag software + that's a hack, something untested and on the edge. On one Apple CD-ROM, + certain folders such as “Tools & Apps (Moof!)” and + “Development Platforms (Moof!)”, are so marked to indicate + that they contain software not fully tested or sanctioned by the powers + that be. When you open these folders you cross the boundary into + hackerland.
3. v. On the Microsoft Network, + the term ‘moof’ has gained popularity as a verb meaning + ‘to be suddenly disconnected by the system’. One might say + “I got moofed”.
Any one of several similar folk theorems that fit computing capacity + or cost to a 2t exponential curve, with doubling + time close to a year. The most common fits component density to such a + curve (previous versions of this entry gave that form). Another variant + asserts that the dollar cost of constant computing power decreases on the + same curve. The original Moore's Law, first uttered in 1965 by + semiconductor engineer Gordon Moore (who co-founded Intel four years + later), spoke of the number of components on the lowest-cost silicon + integrated circuits — but Moore's own formulation varied somewhat + over the years, and reconstructing the meaning of the terminology he used + in the original turns out to be fraught with difficulties. Further + variants were spawned by Intel's PR department and various + journalists.
It has been shown + that none of the variants of Moore's Law actually fit the data very well + (the price curves within DRAM generations perhaps come closest). + Nevertheless, Moore's Law is constantly invoked to set up expectations + about the next generation of computing technology. See also + Parkinson's Law of Data and Gates's + Law.
[from “MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service”] + An early timesharing operating system co-designed + by a consortium including MIT, GE, and Bell Laboratories as a successor to + CTSS. The design was first presented in 1965, + planned for operation in 1967, first operational in 1969, and took several + more years to achieve respectable performance and stability.
Multics was very innovative for its time — among other things, + it provided a hierarchical file system with access control on individual + files and introduced the idea of treating all devices uniformly as special + files. It was also the first OS to run on a symmetric multiprocessor, and + the only general-purpose system to be awarded a B2 security rating by the + NSA (see Orange Book).
Bell Labs left the development effort in 1969 after judging that + second-system effect had bloated Multics to the + point of practical unusability. Honeywell commercialized Multics in 1972 + after buying out GE's computer group, but it was never very successful: at + its peak in the 1980s, there were between 75 and 100 Multics sites, each a + multi-million dollar mainframe.
One of the former Multics developers from Bell Labs was Ken Thompson, + and Unix deliberately carried through and extended + many of Multics' design ideas; indeed, Thompson described the very name + ‘Unix’ as “a weak pun on Multics”. For this and + other reasons, aspects of the Multics design remain a topic of occasional + debate among hackers. See also brain-damaged and + GCOS.
MIT ended its development association with Multics in 1977. + Honeywell sold its computer business to Bull in the mid 80s, and + development on Multics was stopped in 1988. Four Multics sites were known + to be still in use as late as 1998, but the last one (a Canadian military + site) was decommissioned in November 2000. There is a Multics page at + http://www.stratus.com/pub/vos/multics/tvv/multics.html.
The correct, original Murphy's Law reads: + “If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways + can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.” This is a + principle of defensive design, cited here because it is usually given in + mutant forms less descriptive of the challenges of design for + lusers. For example, you don't make a two-pin plug + symmetrical and then label it “THIS WAY UP”; if it matters + which way it is plugged in, then you make the design asymmetrical (see also + the anecdote under magic smoke).
Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was one of McDonnell-Douglas's test + engineers on the rocket-sled experiments that were done by the U.S. Air + Force in 1949 to test human acceleration tolerances (USAF project MX981). + One experiment involved a set of 16 accelerometers mounted to different + parts of the subject's body. There were two ways each sensor could be + glued to its mount, and somebody methodically installed all 16 in a + replacement set the wrong way around. Murphy then made the original form + of his pronouncement, which the test subject (Major John Paul Stapp) + mis-quoted (apparently in the more general form “Whatever can go + wrong, will go wrong)” at a news conference a + few days later.
Within months ‘Murphy's Law’ had spread to various + technical cultures connected to aerospace engineering. Before too many + years had gone by variants had passed into the popular imagination, + changing as they went. Most of these are variants on “Anything that + can go wrong, will”; this is more correctly referred to as + Finagle's Law. The memetic drift apparent in these + mutants clearly demonstrates Murphy's Law acting on itself!
[from the Apple Macintosh, which is said to encourage such behavior] + To make many incremental and unnecessary cosmetic changes to a program or + file. Often the subject of the macdinking would be better off without + them. “When I left at 11PM last night, he was still macdinking the + slides for his presentation.” See also + fritterware, + window shopping.
[pun on megaflops, a coinage + for ‘millions of FLoating-point Operations Per Second’] Refers + to artificially inflated performance figures often quoted by computer + manufacturers. Real applications are lucky to get half the quoted + speed. See Your mileage may vary, + benchmark.
Large. Opposite of micro-. In the + mainstream and among other technical cultures (for example, medical people) + this competes with the prefix mega-, but hackers + tend to restrict the latter to quantification.
[techspeak] A name (possibly followed by a formal + arg list) that is equated to a text or symbolic + expression to which it is to be expanded (possibly with the substitution of + actual arguments) by a macro expander. This definition can be found in any + technical dictionary; what those won't tell you is how the hackish + connotations of the term have changed over time.
The term macro originated in + early assemblers, which encouraged the use of macros as a structuring and + information-hiding device. During the early 1970s, macro assemblers became + ubiquitous, and sometimes quite as powerful and expensive as + HLLs, only to fall from favor as improving compiler + technology marginalized assembler programming (see + languages of choice). Nowadays the term is most often used in connection + with the C preprocessor, LISP, or one of several special-purpose languages + built around a macro-expansion facility (such as TeX or Unix's [nt]roff + suite).
Indeed, the meaning has drifted enough that the collective macros is now sometimes used for code in any + special-purpose application control language (whether or not the language + is actually translated by text expansion), and for macro-like entities such + as the keyboard macros supported in + some text editors (and PC TSR or Macintosh INIT/CDEV keyboard + enhancers).
1. Set of usually complex or crufty macros, e.g., as part of a large + system written in LISP, TECO, + or (less commonly) assembler.
2. The art and science involved in comprehending a macrology in + sense 1. Sometimes studying the macrology of a system is not unlike + archeology, ecology, or theology, hence the + sound-alike construction. See also boxology.
See Macintrash. This is even more + derogatory.
[Unix; common]
1. Something passed between routines or programs that enables the + receiver to perform some operation; a capability ticket or opaque + identifier. Especially used of small data objects that contain data + encoded in a strange or intrinsically machine-dependent way. E.g., on + non-Unix OSes with a non-byte-stream model of files, the result of + ftell(3) + may be a magic cookie rather than a byte offset; it can be passed to + fseek(3), + but not operated on in any meaningful way. The phrase it hands you a magic cookie means it returns a + result whose contents are not defined but which can be passed back to the + same or some other program later.
2. An in-band code for changing graphic rendition (e.g., inverse + video or underlining) or performing other control functions (see also + cookie). Some older terminals would leave a blank + on the screen corresponding to mode-change magic cookies; this was also + called a glitch (or occasionally a turd; compare + mouse droppings). See also cookie.
[Unix/C; common]
1. In source code, some non-obvious constant whose value is + significant to the operation of a program and that is inserted + inconspicuously in-line (hardcoded), rather than + expanded in by a symbol set by a commented #define. Magic numbers in this sense are bad style. +
2. A number that encodes critical information used in an algorithm + in some opaque way. The classic examples of these are the numbers used in + hash or CRC functions, or the coefficients in a linear congruential + generator for pseudo-random numbers. This sense actually predates and was + ancestral to the more common sense
3. Special data located at the beginning of a binary data file to + indicate its type to a utility. Under Unix, the system and various + applications programs (especially the linker) distinguish between types of + executable file by looking for a magic number. Once upon a time, these + magic numbers were PDP-11 branch instructions that + skipped over header data to the start of executable code; 0407, for + example, was octal for ‘branch 16 bytes relative’. Many other + kinds of files now have magic numbers somewhere; some magic numbers are, in + fact, strings, like the !<arch> at the beginning + of a Unix archive file or the %! leading PostScript + files. Nowadays only a wizard knows the spells to + create magic numbers. How do you choose a fresh magic number of your own? + Simple — you pick one at random. See? It's magic!
4. An input that leads to a computational boundary condition, where + algorithm behavior becomes discontinuous. Numeric overflows (particularly + with signed data types) and run-time errors (divide by zero, stack + overflows) are indications of magic numbers. The Y2K scare was probably + the most notorious magic number non-incident.
The magic number, on the other hand, is + 72. See The magical + number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing + information by George Miller, in the Psychological + Review 63:81-97 (1956). This classic paper established the + number of distinct items (such as numeric digits) that humans can hold in + short-term memory. Among other things, this strongly influenced the + interface design of the phone system.
A substance trapped inside IC packages that enables them to function + (also called blue smoke; this is + similar to the archaic phlogiston + hypothesis about combustion). Its existence is demonstrated by what + happens when a chip burns up — the magic smoke gets let out, so it + doesn't work any more. See smoke test, + let the smoke out.
Usenetter Jay Maynard tells the following story: “Once, while + hacking on a dedicated Z80 system, I was testing code by blowing EPROMs and + plugging them in the system, then seeing what happened. One time, I + plugged one in backwards. I only discovered that + after I realized that Intel didn't put power-on lights + under the quartz windows on the tops of their EPROMs — the die was + glowing white-hot. Amazingly, the EPROM worked fine after I erased it, + filled it full of zeros, then erased it again. For all I know, it's still + in service. Of course, this is because the magic smoke didn't get let + out.” Compare the original phrasing of + Murphy's Law.
1. adj. As yet unexplained, or + too complicated to explain; compare automagically + and (Arthur C.) Clarke's Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced + technology is indistinguishable from magic.” “TTY echoing is + controlled by a large number of magic bits.” “This routine + magically computes the parity of an 8-bit byte in three + instructions.”
2. adj. Characteristic of + something that works although no one really understands why (this is + especially called black magic).
3. n. [Stanford] A feature not + generally publicized that allows something otherwise impossible, or a + feature formerly in that category but now unveiled.
4. n. The ultimate goal of all + engineering & development, elegance in the extreme; from the first + corollary to Clarke's Third Law: “Any technology distinguishable from + magic is insufficiently advanced”.
Parodies playing on these senses of the term abound; some have made + their way into serious documentation, as when a MAGIC directive was + described in the Control Card Reference for GCOS c.1978. For more about + hackish ‘magic’, see Appendix + A. Compare black magic, + wizardly, deep magic, + heavy wizardry.
[from broadcast storm, influenced by + maelstrom] What often happens when a machine + with an Internet connection and active users re-connects after extended + downtime — a flood of incoming mail that brings the machine to its + knees. See also hairball.
(also mail bomb) [Usenet]
1. v. To send, or urge others to + send, massive amounts of email to a single system or + person, esp. with intent to crash or spam the + recipient's system. Sometimes done in retaliation for a perceived serious + offense. Mailbombing is itself widely regarded as a serious offense + — it can disrupt email traffic or other facilities for innocent users + on the victim's system, and in extreme cases, even at upstream sites. +
2. n. An automatic procedure + with a similar effect.
3. n. The mail sent. Compare + letterbomb, nastygram, + BLOB (sense 2), + list-bomb.
(often shortened in context to list)
1. An email address that is an alias (or + macro, though that word is never used in this + connection) for many other email addresses. Some mailing lists are simple + reflectors, redirecting mail sent to + them to the list of recipients. Others are filtered by humans or programs + of varying degrees of sophistication; lists filtered by humans are said to + be moderated.
2. The people who receive your email when you send it to such an + address.
Mailing lists are one of the primary forms of hacker interaction, + along with Usenet. They predate Usenet, having + originated with the first UUCP and ARPANET connections. They are often + used for private information-sharing on topics that would be too + specialized for or inappropriate to public Usenet groups. Though some of + these maintain almost purely technical content (such as the Internet + Engineering Task Force mailing list), others (like the + ‘sf-lovers’ list maintained for many years by Saul Jaffe) are + recreational, and many are purely social. Perhaps the most infamous of the + social lists was the eccentric bandykin distribution; its latter-day progeny, + lectroids and tanstaafl, still include a number of the + oddest and most interesting people in hackerdom.
Mailing lists are easy to create and (unlike Usenet) don't tie up a + significant amount of machine resources (until they get very large, at + which point they can become interesting torture tests for mail software). + Thus, they are often created temporarily by working groups, the members of + which can then collaborate on a project without ever needing to meet + face-to-face. Much of the material in this lexicon was criticized and + polished on just such a mailing list (called ‘jargon-friends’), + which included all the co-authors of Steele-1983.
The top-level control flow construct in an input- or event-driven + program, the one which receives and acts or dispatches on the program's + input. See also driver.
Term originally referring to the cabinet containing the central + processor unit or ‘main frame’ of a room-filling + Stone Age batch machine. After the emergence of + smaller minicomputer designs in the + early 1970s, the traditional big iron machines were + described as ‘mainframe computers’ and eventually just as + mainframes. The term carries the connotation of a machine designed for + batch rather than interactive use, though possibly with an interactive + timesharing operating system retrofitted onto it; it is especially used of + machines built by IBM, Unisys, and the other great + dinosaurs surviving from computing's + Stone Age.
It has been common wisdom among hackers since the late 1980s that the + mainframe architectural tradition is essentially dead (outside of the tiny + market for number-crunching supercomputers having + been swamped by the recent huge advances in IC technology and low-cost + personal computing. The wave of failures, takeovers, and mergers among + traditional mainframe makers in the early 1990s bore this out. The biggest + mainframer of all, IBM, was compelled to re-invent itself as a huge + systems-consulting house. (See dinosaurs mating and + killer micro).
However, in yet another instance of the + cycle of reincarnation, the port of Linux to the IBM S/390 architecture + in 1999 — assisted by IBM — produced a resurgence of interest in mainframe + computing as a way of providing huge quantities of easily maintainable, + reliable virtual Linux servers, saving IBM's mainframe division from almost + certain extinction.
1. Spam emitted by a reputable, mainstream company (as opposed to + fly-by-night Viagra oeddlers and the like). Sometime this happens in + honest ignorance, but the reputation danage can take years to live + down.
2. Occasionally used for a big-time spammer, with its own + fat pipe, their own mailservers, and a + pink contract. Almost impossible to get shut down.
[Common] Malicious software. Software intended to cause consequences + the unwitting user would not choose; especially used of + virus or Trojan horse + software.
A page from the Unix Programmer's Manual, + documenting one of Unix's many commands, system calls, + library subroutines, device driver interfaces, file formats, + games, macro packages, or maintenance utilities. + By extension, the term “man page” may be used to refer to + documentation of any kind, under any system, though it is most likely to be + confined to short on-line references.
As mentioned in Chapter11, Other Lexicon Conventions, there is a + standard syntax for referring to man page entries: the phrase + “foo(n)” refers to the page for “foo” in chapter + n of the manual, where chapter 1 is user commands, chapter 2 is system + calls, etc.
The man page format is beloved, or berated, for having the same sort + of pithy utility as the rest of Unix. Man pages tend to be written as very + compact, concise descriptions which are complete but not forgiving of the + lazy or careless reader. Their stylized format does a good job of + summarizing the essentials: invocation syntax, options, basic + functionality. While such a concise reference is perfect for the + do-one-thing-and-do-it-well tools which are favored by the Unix philosophy, + it admittedly breaks down when applied to a command which is itself a major + subsystem.
1. Corporate power elites distinguished primarily by their distance + from actual productive work and their chronic failure to manage (see also + suit). Spoken derisively, as in + “Management decided that ...”. +
2. Mythically, a vast bureaucracy responsible for all the world's + minor irritations. Hackers' satirical public notices are often signed + ‘The Mgt’; this derives from the + Illuminatus novels (see the Bibliography in Appendix C).
[from the Mandelbrot set] A bug whose underlying causes are so + complex and obscure as to make its behavior appear chaotic or even + non-deterministic. This term implies that the speaker thinks it is a + Bohr bug, rather than a + heisenbug. See also + schroedinbug.
[probably from the French ‘manger’ or Italian + ‘mangiare’, to eat; perhaps influenced by English + ‘mange’, ‘mangy’] adj. Refers to anything that is mangled or + damaged, usually beyond repair. “The disk was manged after the + electrical storm.” Compare mung.
1. Used similarly to mung or + scribble, but more violent in its connotations; + something that is mangled has been irreversibly and totally + trashed.
2. To produce the mangled name corresponding + to a C++ declaration.
A name, appearing in a C++ object file, that is a coded + representation of the object declaration as it appears in the + source. Mangled names are used because C++ allows multiple objects to have + the same name, as long as they are distinguishable in some other way, such + as by having different parameter types. Thus, the internal name must have + that additional information embedded in it, using the limited character set + allowed by most linkers. For instance, one popular compiler encodes the + standard library function declaration “memchr(const + void*,int,unsigned int)” as “@memchr$qpxviui”.
[DEC] A manager. Compare management. Note + that system mangler is somewhat different in + connotation.
[prob. fr. techspeak manual + + granularity] A notional measure of + the manual labor required for some task, particularly one of the sort that + automation is supposed to eliminate. “Composing English on paper has + much higher manularity than using a text editor, especially in the revising + stage.” Hackers tend to consider manularity a symptom of primitive + methods; in fact, a true hacker confronted with an apparent requirement to + do a computing task by hand will inevitably seize + the opportunity to build another tool (see + toolsmith).
[from mainstream “lost all his/her marbles”] The + minimum needed to build your way further up some hierarchy of tools or + abstractions. After a bad system crash, you need to determine if the + machine has enough marbles to come up on its own, or enough marbles to + allow a rebuild from backups, or if you need to rebuild from scratch. + “This compiler doesn't even have enough marbles to compile + hello world.”
The animated dotted-line marquee that indicates a rectangle or item + select in Adobe Photoshop, the GIMP, and other similar image-editing + programs.
[common]
1. [techspeak] An extremely small change. “A marginal + increase in core can decrease + GC time drastically.” In everyday terms, this + means that it is a lot easier to clean off your desk if you have a spare + place to put some of the junk while you sort through it.
2. Of little merit. “This proposed new feature seems rather + marginal to me.”
3. Of extremely small probability of winning. + “The power supply was rather marginal anyway; no wonder it + fried.”
Slightly. “The ravs here are only marginally better than at + Small Eating Place.” See epsilon.
alt.: marketing slime, + marketeer, marketing droid, marketdroid. A member of a company's marketing + department, esp. one who promises users that the next version of a product + will have features that are not actually scheduled for inclusion, are + extremely difficult to implement, and/or are in violation of the laws of + physics; and/or one who describes existing features (and misfeatures) in + ebullient, buzzword-laden adspeak. Derogatory. Compare + droid.
A packet sent on a TCP/IP network with a source address of the test + loopback interface [127.0.0.1]. This means that it will come back labeled + with a source address that is clearly not of this earth. “The domain + server is getting lots of packets from Mars. Does that gateway have a + martian filter?” Compare + Christmas tree packet, Godzillagram.
[common] Vague term used to describe ‘smooth’ + transformations of a data set into a different form, esp. transformations + that do not lose information. Connotes less pain than + munch or crunch. “He + wrote a program that massages X bitmap files into GIF format.” + Compare slurp.
[poss. from ‘white-out’ (the blizzard variety)] A paper + or presentation so encrusted with mathematical or other formal notation as + to be incomprehensible. This may be a device for concealing the fact that + it is actually content-free. See also + numbers, social science + number.
A math-out approach to history.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is + 73-05-19. The previous one is + the frontispiece.)
What a washing machine or, by extension, any + disk drive is in when it's being used so heavily that it's shaking like an + old Maytag with an unbalanced load. If prolonged for any length of time, + can lead to disks becoming walking drives. In 1999 + it's been some years since hard disks were large enough to do this, but the + same phenomenon has recently been reported with 24X CD-ROM drives.
The physical world, where the meat lives — as opposed to + cyberspace. Hackers are actually more willing to + use this term than ‘cyberspace’, because it's not speculative + — we already have a running meatspace implementation (the universe). + Compare RL.
Synonym for wetware. Less common.
[TMRC] Occasional furry visitors who are not + urchins. [That is, mice. This may no longer be in + live use; it clearly derives from the refrain of the early-1960s cartoon + character Mr. Jinks: “I hate meeces to + pieces!” — ESR]
See quantifiers.
[SI] See quantifiers.
$10,000 (1 cent * + 106). Used + semi-humorously as a unit in comparing computer cost and performance + figures.
See network meltdown.
The spread of a successful but pernicious + meme, esp. one that parasitizes the victims into + giving their all to propagate it. Astrology, BASIC, and the other guy's + religion are often considered to be examples. This usage is given point by + the historical fact that ‘joiner’ ideologies like Naziism or + various forms of millennarian Christianity have exhibited plague-like + cycles of exponential growth followed by collapses to small reservoir + populations.
[coined by analogy with ‘gene’, by Richard Dawkins] An + idea considered as a replicator, esp. with the + connotation that memes parasitize people into propagating them much as + viruses do. Used esp. in the phrase meme + complex denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form + an organized belief system, such as a religion. This lexicon is an + (epidemiological) vector of the ‘hacker subculture’ meme + complex; each entry might be considered a meme. However, meme is often misused to mean meme complex. Use of the term connotes + acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool- and + language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas + has superseded biological evolution by selection of hereditary traits. + Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably obvious reasons.
[from meme] The study of memes. As of early + 2003, this is still an extremely informal and speculative endeavor, though + the first steps towards at least statistical rigor have been made by + H. Keith Henson and others. Memetics is a popular topic for speculation + among hackers, who like to see themselves as the architects of the new + information ecologies in which memes live and replicate.
The flatulent sounds that some DOS box BIOSes (most notably AMI's) + make when checking memory on bootup.
An error in a program's dynamic-store allocation logic that causes + it to fail to reclaim discarded memory, leading to eventual collapse due to + memory exhaustion. Also (esp. at CMU) called + core leak. These problems were severe on older machines with small, + fixed-size address spaces, and special “leak detection” tools + were commonly written to root them out. With the advent of virtual memory, + it is unfortunately easier to be sloppy about wasting a bit of memory + (although when you run out of memory on a VM machine, it means you've got a + real leak!). See aliasing bug, + fandango on core, + smash the stack, precedence lossage, + overrun screw, leaky heap, + leak.
[XEROX PARC] Writing through a pointer that doesn't point to what + you think it does. This occasionally reduces your memory to a rubble of + bits. Note that this is subtly different from (and more general than) + related terms such as a memory leak or + fandango on core because it doesn't imply an + allocation error or overrun condition.
Notional disease suffered by software with an obsessively + simple-minded menu interface and no escape. Hackers find this intensely + irritating and much prefer the flexibility of command-line or + language-style interfaces, especially those customizable via macros or a + special-purpose language in which one can encode useful hacks. See + user-obsequious, + drool-proof paper, WIMP environment, + for the rest of us.
[semi-obsolescent now that DOS is] Derisory term for MS-DOS. Often + followed by the ritual banishing “Just say No!” See + MS-DOS. Most hackers (even many MS-DOS hackers) + loathed MS-DOS for its single-tasking nature, its limits on application + size, its nasty primitive interface, and its ties to IBMness and + Microsoftness (see fear and loathing). Also + mess-loss, messy-dos, mess-dog, mess-dross, mush-dos, and various combinations thereof. In + Ireland and the U.K. it is even sometimes called ‘Domestos’ + after a brand of toilet cleanser.
The top bit of an 8-bit character, which is on in character values + 128--255. Also called high bit, + alt bit. Some terminals and consoles (see + space-cadet keyboard) have a META shift key. Others (including, + mirabile dictu, keyboards on IBM PC-class machines) + have an ALT key. See also bucky bits.
Historical note: although in modern usage shaped by a universe of + 8-bit bytes the meta bit is invariably hex 80 (octal 0200), things were + different on earlier machines with 36-bit words and 9-bit bytes. The MIT + and Stanford keyboards (see space-cadet keyboard) + generated hex 100 (octal 400) from their meta keys.
[from analytic philosophy] One level of description up. A + metasyntactic variable is a variable in notation used to describe syntax, + and meta-language is language used to describe language. This is difficult + to explain briefly, but much hacker humor turns on deliberate confusion + between meta-levels. See hacker humor.
A name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing + is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under + discussion. The word foo is the + canonical example. To avoid confusion, hackers + never (well, hardly ever) use ‘foo’ or other words like it as + permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common convention is that + any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a + scratch file that may be deleted at any time.
Metasyntactic variables are so called because (1) they are variables + in the metalanguage used to talk about programs etc; (2) they are variables + whose values are often variables (as in usages like “the value of + f(foo,bar) is the sum of foo and bar”). However, it has been + plausibly suggested that the real reason for the term “metasyntactic + variable” is that it sounds good. To some extent, the list of one's + preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur both + in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as + singletons. Here are a few common signatures:
| foo, + bar, + baz, + quux, + quuux, quuuux...: + | MIT/Stanford usage, now found everywhere (thanks largely to + early versions of this lexicon!). At MIT (but not at Stanford), + baz dropped out of use for a while in the + 1970s and '80s. A common recent mutation of this sequence inserts + quxbefore quux. |
| bazola, ztesch: | Stanford (from mid-'70s on). |
| foo, + bar, thud, grunt: | This series was popular at CMU. Other CMU-associated variables + include gorp. |
| foo, bar, bletch: + | Waterloo University. We are informed that the CS club at + Waterloo formerly had a sign on its door reading + “Ye Olde Foo Bar and Grill”; this led to an attempt + to establish “grill” as the third metasyntactic variable, + but it never caught on. |
| foo, + bar, fum: | This series is reported to be common at XEROX PARC. |
| fred, jim, sheila, + barney: | See the entry for + fred. These tend to be Britishisms. |
| flarp: | Popular at Rutgers University and among + GOSMACS hackers. |
| zxc, spqr, wombat: | Cambridge University (England). |
| shme | Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced + /shme/ with a short + /e/. |
| foo, bar, baz, bongo | Yale, late 1970s. |
| spam, eggs | Python programmers. |
| snork | Brown University, early 1970s. |
| foo, bar, zot + | Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. |
| blarg, wibble | New Zealand. |
| toto, titi, tata, tutu | France. |
| pippo, pluto, paperino | Italy. Pippo /peepo/ + and Paperino + /paperee'no/ + are the Italian names for Goofy and Donald Duck. |
| aap, noot, mies | The Netherlands. These are the first words a child used to + learn to spell on a Dutch spelling board. |
| oogle, foogle, boogle; zork, gork, bork | These two series (which may be continued with other initial + consonents) are reportedly common in England, and said to go back to + Lewis Carroll. |
Of all these, + only foo and bar are universal (and + baz nearly so). The compounds + foobar and foobaz also enjoy very wide currency. Some + jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; + barf and mumble, for example. + See also Commonwealth Hackish for discussion of + numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the + Commonwealth.
North American equivalent of a noddy (that + is, trivial) program. Doesn't necessarily have the belittling connotations + of mainstream slang “Oh, that's just mickey mouse stuff!”; + sometimes trivial programs can be very useful.
The resolution unit of mouse movement. It has been suggested that + the disney will become a benchmark + unit for animation graphics performance.
1. Very small; this is the root of its use as a quantifier prefix. +
2. A quantifier prefix, calling for multiplication by + 10-6 (see + quantifiers). Neither of these uses is peculiar to + hackers, but hackers tend to fling them both around rather more freely than + is countenanced in standard English. It is recorded, for example, that one + CS professor used to characterize the standard length of his lectures as a + microcentury — that is, about 52.6 minutes (see also + attoparsec, nanoacre, and + especially microfortnight).
3. Personal or human-scale — that is, capable of being + maintained or comprehended or manipulated by one human being. This sense + is generalized from microcomputer, + and is esp. used in contrast with macro- (the corresponding Greek prefix meaning + ‘large’).
4. Local as opposed to global (or macro-). + Thus a hacker might say that buying a smaller car to reduce pollution only + solves a microproblem; the macroproblem of getting to work might be better + solved by using mass transit, moving to within walking distance, or (best + of all) telecommuting.
The unit of bogosity. Abbreviated L + or mL in ASCII Consensus is that this is the largest unit practical for + everyday use. The microLenat, originally invented by David Jefferson, was + promulgated as an attack against noted computer scientist Doug Lenat by a + tenured graduate student at CMU. Doug had failed + the student on an important exam because the student gave only “AI is + bogus” as his answer to the questions. The slur is generally + considered unmerited, but it has become a running gag nevertheless. Some + of Doug's friends argue that of course a microLenat is + bogus, since it is only one millionth of a Lenat. Others have suggested + that the unit should be redesignated after the grad student, as the + microReid.
See microLenat.
1/1000000 of the fundamental unit of time in the + Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight system of measurement; 1.2096 sec. (A furlong is + 1/8th of a mile; a firkin is 9 imperial gallons; the mass unit of the + system is taken to be a firkin of water). The VMS operating system has a + lot of tuning parameters that you can set with the SYSGEN utility, and one + of these is TIMEPROMPTWAIT, the time the system will wait for an operator + to set the correct date and time at boot if it realizes that the current + value is bogus. This time is specified in microfortnights!
Multiple uses of the millifortnight (about 20 minutes) and + nanofortnight have also been reported.
An abbreviation of the full name Microsoft + resembling the rather bogus way Windows 9x's VFAT + filesystem truncates long file names to fit in the MS-DOS 8+3 scheme (the + real filename is stored elsewhere). If other files start with the same + prefix, they'll be called micros~2 and so on, causing lots of problems with + backups and other routine system-administration problems. During the US + Antitrust trial against Microsoft the names Micros~1 and Micros~2 were + suggested for the two companies that would exist after a break-up.
[popularized, though not originated, by Douglas Coupland's book + Microserfs] A programmer at + Microsoft, especially a low-level coder with little + chance of fame or fortune. Compare + MicroDroid.
Not big-endian or + little-endian. Used of perverse byte orders such as + 3-4-1-2 or 2-1-4-3, occasionally found in the packed-decimal formats of + minicomputer manufacturers who shall remain nameless. See + NUXI problem. Non-US hackers use this term to describe the American + mm/dd/yy style of writing dates (Europeans write little-endian dd/mm/yy, + and Japanese use big-endian yy/mm/dd for Western dates).
A unit of talking speed, abbreviated mL. Most people run about 200 + milliLampsons. The eponymous Butler Lampson (a CS theorist and systems + implementor highly regarded among hackers) goes at 1000. A few people + speak faster. This unit is sometimes used to compare the (sometimes widely + disparate) rates at which people can generate ideas and actually emit them + in speech. For example, noted computer architect C. Gordon Bell (designer + of the PDP-11) is said, with some awe, to think at about 1200 mL but only + talk at about 300; he is frequently reduced to fragments of sentences as + his mouth tries to keep up with his speeding brain.
Often used in an ironic sense about brokenness or problems that + while apparently major, are in principle solvable. “It works — the + fact that it crashes the system right after is a minor detail.” + Compare SMOP.
[MIT; rare (like its referent)] An unintended property of a program + that turns out to be useful; something that should have been a + bug but turns out to be a + feature. Compare + green lightning. See miswart.
+ [common] A feature that eventually causes lossage, possibly because it is + not adequate for a new situation that has evolved. Since it results from a + deliberate and properly implemented feature, a misfeature is not a bug. + Nor is it a simple unforeseen side effect; the term implies that the + feature in question was carefully planned, but its long-term consequences + were not accurately or adequately predicted (which is quite different from + not having thought ahead at all). A misfeature can be a particularly + stubborn problem to resolve, because fixing it usually involves a + substantial philosophical change to the structure of the system + involved.
Many misfeatures (especially in user-interface design) arise because + the designers/implementors mistake their personal tastes for laws of + nature. Often a former feature becomes a misfeature because trade-offs + were made whose parameters subsequently change (possibly only in the + judgment of the implementors). “Well, yeah, it is kind of a + misfeature that file names are limited to six characters, but the original + implementors wanted to save directory space and we're stuck with it for + now.”
See ICBM address.
[from wart by analogy with + misbug] A feature that + superficially appears to be a wart but has been + determined to be the Right Thing. For example, in + some versions of the EMACS text editor, the + ‘transpose characters’ command exchanges the character under + the cursor with the one before it on the screen, + except when the cursor is at the end of a line, in + which case the two characters before the cursor are exchanged. While this + behavior is perhaps surprising, and certainly inconsistent, it has been + found through extensive experimentation to be what most users want. This + feature is a miswart.
Written and (rarely) spoken contraction of + “motherboard”
[MIT: seems to have been in use among model railroad fans years ago. + Derived from Melville's Moby Dick (some say from + ‘Moby Pickle’). Now common.]
1. adj. Large, immense, complex, + impressive. “A Saturn V rocket is a truly moby frob.” + “Some MIT undergrads pulled off a moby hack at the Harvard-Yale + game.” (See Appendix A for + discussion.)
2. n. obs. The maximum address + space of a machine (see below). For a 680[234]0 or + VAX or most modern 32-bit architectures, it is + 4,294,967,296 8-bit bytes (4 gigabytes).
3. A title of address (never of third-person reference), usually + used to show admiration, respect, and/or friendliness to a competent + hacker. “Greetings, moby Dave. How's that address-book thing for + the Mac going?”
4. adj. In backgammon, doubles + on the dice, as in moby sixes, + moby ones, etc. Compare this with + bignum (sense 3): double sixes are both bignums and + moby sixes, but moby ones are not bignums (the use of moby to describe double ones is sarcastic). + Standard emphatic forms: Moby foo, + moby win, moby loss. Foby + moo: a spoonerism due to Richard Greenblatt.
5. The largest available unit of something which is available in + discrete increments. Thus, ordering a “moby Coke” at the + local fast-food joint is not just a request for a large Coke, it's an + explicit request for the largest size they sell.
This term entered hackerdom with the Fabritek 256K memory added to + the MIT AI PDP-6 machine, which was considered unimaginably huge when it + was installed in the 1960s (at a time when a more typical memory size for a + timesharing system was 72 kilobytes). Thus, a moby is classically 256K + 36-bit words, the size of a PDP-6 or PDP-10 moby. Back when address + registers were narrow the term was more generally useful, because when a + computer had virtual memory mapping, it might actually have more physical + memory attached to it than any one program could access directly. One + could then say “This computer has 6 mobies” meaning that the + ratio of physical memory to address space is 6, without having to say + specifically how much memory there actually is. That in turn implied that + the computer could timeshare six ‘full-sized’ programs without + having to swap programs between memory and disk.
Nowadays the low cost of processor logic means that address spaces + are usually larger than the most physical memory you can cram onto a + machine, so most systems have much less than one + theoretical ‘native’ moby of core. + Also, more modern memory-management techniques (esp. paging) make the + ‘moby count’ less significant. However, there is one series of + widely-used chips for which the term could stand to be revived — the + Intel 8088 and 80286 with their incredibly + brain-damaged segmented-memory designs. On these, a + moby would be the 1-megabyte address + span of a segment/offset pair (by coincidence, a PDP-10 moby was exactly 1 + megabyte of 9-bit bytes).
Software that intercepts communications (especially login + transactions) between users and hosts and provides system-like responses to + the users while saving their responses (especially account IDs and + passwords). A special case of Trojan horse.
[very common]
1. Short for ‘modify’ or ‘modification’. + Very commonly used — in fact the full terms are considered markers + that one is being formal. The plural ‘mods’ is used esp. with + reference to bug fixes or minor design changes in hardware or software, + most esp. with respect to patch sets or a + diff. See also case mod.
2. Short for modulo but used + only for its techspeak sense.
[common] A flag, usually in hardware, that + selects between two (usually quite different) modes of operation. The + connotations are different from flag bit in that + mode bits are mainly written during a boot or set-up phase, are seldom + explicitly read, and seldom change over the lifetime of an ordinary + program. The classic example was the EBCDIC-vs.-ASCII bit (#12) of the + Program Status Word of the IBM 360.
[common] A general state, usually used with an adjective describing + the state. Use of the word ‘mode’ rather than + ‘state’ implies that the state is extended over time, and + probably also that some activity characteristic of that state is being + carried out. “No time to hack; I'm in thesis mode.” In its + jargon sense, ‘mode’ is most often attributed to people, though + it is sometimes applied to programs and inanimate objects. In particular, + see hack mode, day mode, + night mode, demo mode, + fireworks mode, and + yoyo mode; also talk mode.
One also often hears the verbs enable and disable used in connection with jargon modes. + Thus, for example, a sillier way of saying “I'm going to + crash” is “I'm going to enable crash mode now”. One + might also hear a request to “disable flame mode, + please”.
In a usage much closer to techspeak, a mode is a special state that + certain user interfaces must pass into in order to perform certain + functions. For example, in order to insert characters into a document in + the Unix editor vi, one must type the + “i” key, which invokes the “Insert” command. The + effect of this command is to put vi into “insert mode”, in + which typing the “i” key has a quite different effect (to wit, + it inserts an “i” into the document). One must then hit + another special key, “ESC”, in order to leave “insert + mode”. Nowadays, modeful interfaces are generally considered + losing but survive in quite a few widely used tools + built in less enlightened times.
Except for. An overgeneralization of mathematical terminology; one + can consider saying that 4 equals 22 except for the 9s (4 = + 22 mod 9). “Well, LISP seems to work okay now, + modulo that GC bug.” “I feel fine today + modulo a slight headache.”
Japanese for “ghost characters”, the garbage that comes + out when one tries to display international character sets through software + not configured for them. There is a page on the topic at http://www.debian.or.jp/~kubota/mojibake/.
[University of Illinois] A shield to prevent tripping of some + Big Red Switch by clumsy or ignorant hands. + Originally used of the plexiglass covers improvised for the BRS on an IBM + 4341 after a programmer's toddler daughter (named Molly) frobbed it twice + in one day. Later generalized to covers over stop/reset switches on disk + drives and networking equipment. In hardware catalogues, you'll see the + much less interesting description “guarded button”.
See scratch monkey.
To hack together hardware for a particular task, especially a + one-shot job. Connotes an extremely crufty and + consciously temporary solution. Compare hack up, + kluge up, + cruft together.
1. n. A ridiculously + elephantine program or system, esp. one that is + buggy or only marginally functional.
2. adj. The quality of being + monstrous (see the section called “Overgeneralization” in the discussion of + jargonification). See also baroque.
1. [US Geological Survey] A program with a ludicrously complex user + interface written to perform extremely trivial tasks. An example would be + a menu-driven, button clicking, pulldown, pop-up windows program for + listing directories. The original monty was an infamous weather-reporting + program, Monty the Amazing Weather Man, written at the USGS. Monty had a + widget-packed X-window interface with over 200 buttons; and all monty + actually did was files off the network.
2. [Great Britain; commonly capitalized as Monty or as the Full + Monty] 16 megabytes of memory, when fitted to an IBM-PC or + compatible. A standard PC-compatible using the AT- or ISA-bus with a + normal BIOS cannot access more than 16 megabytes of RAM. Generally used of + a PC, Unix workstation, etc. to mean fully + populated with memory, disk-space or some other desirable + resource. See the World Wide Words article “The Full + Monty” for discussion of the rather complex etymology that + may lie behind this phrase. Compare American + moby.
Like nethack and + rogue, one of the large PD Dungeons-and-Dragons-like + simulation games, available for a wide range of machines and operating + systems. The name is from Tolkien's Mines of Moria; compare + elder days, elvish. The game + is extremely addictive and a major consumer of time better used for + hacking. See also nethack, + rogue, Angband.
Point-and-click analog of type + ahead. To manipulate a computer's pointing device (almost + always a mouse in this usage, but not necessarily) and its selection or + command buttons before a computer program is ready to accept such input, in + anticipation of the program accepting the input. Handling this properly is + rare, but it can help make a WIMP environment much + more usable, assuming the users are familiar with the behavior of the user + interface.
See rat belt.
[MS-DOS] Pixels (usually single) that are not properly restored when + the mouse pointer moves away from a particular location on the screen, + producing the appearance that the mouse pointer has left droppings behind. + The major causes for this problem are programs that write to the screen + memory corresponding to the mouse pointer's current location without hiding + the mouse pointer first, and mouse drivers that do not quite support the + graphics mode in use.
A tennis-elbow-like fatigue syndrome resulting from excessive use of + a WIMP environment. Similarly, mouse shoulder; GLS reports that he used to get + this a lot before he taught himself to be ambimoustrous.
[common] A person that prefers a mouse over a keyboard; originally + used for Macintosh fans. The derogatory implication is that the person has + nothing but the most superficial knowledge of the software he/she is + employing, and is incapable of using or appreciating the full glory of the + command line.
[by analogy with ‘typo’] An error in mouse usage + resulting in an inappropriate selection or graphic garbage on the screen. + Compare thinko, + braino.
The correct answer to the classic trick question “Have you + stopped beating your wife yet?”. Assuming that you have no wife or + you have never beaten your wife, the answer “yes” is wrong + because it implies that you used to beat your wife and then stopped, but + “no” is worse because it suggests that you have one and are + still beating her. According to various Discordians and Douglas Hofstadter + the correct answer is usually “mu”, a Japanese word alleged to + mean “Your question cannot be answered because it depends on + incorrect assumptions”. Hackers tend to be sensitive to logical + inadequacies in language, and many have adopted this suggestion with + enthusiasm. The word ‘mu’ is actually from Chinese, meaning + ‘nothing’; it is used in mainstream Japanese in that sense. In + Chinese it can also mean “have not” (as in “I have not + done it”), or “lack of”, which may or may not be a + definite, complete 'nothing'). Native speakers of Japanese do not + recognize the Discordian question-denying use, which almost certainly + derives from overgeneralization of the answer in the following well-known + Rinzai Zen koan:
+A monk asked Joshu, “Does a dog have the Buddha nature?” Joshu +retorted, “Mu!”
See also has the X nature, + Some AI Koans, and Douglas Hofstadter's Gdel, Escher, + Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (pointer in the + Bibliography in Appendix C.
Syn. mudhead. More common in Great Britain, + possibly because system administrators there like to mutter “bloody + muddies” when annoyed at the species.
Commonly used to refer to a MUD player who + eats, sleeps, and breathes MUD. Mudheads have been known to fail their + degrees, drop out, etc., with the consolation, however, that they made + wizard level. When encountered in person, on a MUD, or in a chat system, + all a mudhead will talk about is three topics: the tactic, character, or + wizard that is supposedly always unfairly stopping him/her from becoming a + wizard or beating a favorite MUD; why the specific game he/she has + experience with is so much better than any other; and the MUD he or she is + writing or going to write because his/her design ideas are so much better + than in any existing MUD. See also wannabee.
To the anthropologically literate, this term may recall the Zuni/Hopi + legend of the mudheads or koyemshi, mythical + half-formed children of an unnatural union. Figures representing them act + as clowns in Zuni sacred ceremonies. Others may recall the ‘High + School Madness’ sequence from the Firesign Theatre album + Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers, in which + there is a character named “Mudhead”.
[from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, + 1998] A non-wizard. Not as disparaging as + luser; implies vague pity rather than contempt. In + the universe of Rowling's enormously (and deservedly) popular children's + series, muggles and wizards inhabit the same modern world, but each group + is ignorant of the commonplaces of the others' existence — most + muggles are unaware that wizards exist, and wizards (used to magical ways + of doing everything) are perplexed and fascinated by muggle + artifacts.
In retrospect it seems completely inevitable that hackers would adopt + this metaphor, and in hacker usage it readily forms compounds such as + muggle-friendly. Compare + luser, mundane, + chainik, newbie.
Often used of humans in the same meaning it has for computers, to + describe a person doing several things at once (but see + thrash). The term multiplex, from communications technology + (meaning to handle more than one channel at the same time), is used + similarly.
The topic of one's mumbling (see mumble). + “All that mumblage” is used like “all that stuff” + when it is not quite clear how the subject of discussion works, or like + “all that crap” when ‘mumble’ is being used as an + implicit replacement for pejoratives.
1. Said when the correct response is too complicated to enunciate, + or the speaker has not thought it out. Often prefaces a longer answer, or + indicates a general reluctance to get into a long discussion. “Don't + you think that we could improve LISP performance by using a hybrid + reference-count transaction garbage collector, if the cache is big enough + and there are some extra cache bits for the microcode to use?” + “Well, mumble ... I'll have to think about it.”
2. [MIT] Expression of not-quite-articulated agreement, often used + as an informal vote of consensus in a meeting: “So, shall we dike out + the COBOL emulation?” “Mumble!”
3. Sometimes used as an expression of disagreement (distinguished + from sense 2 by tone of voice and other cues). “I think we should + buy a VAX.” + “Mumble!” Common variant: mumble + frotz (see frotz; interestingly, one does + not say ‘mumble frobnitz’ even though ‘frotz’ is + short for ‘frobnitz’).
4. Yet another metasyntactic variable, like + foo.
5. When used as a question (“Mumble?”) means “I + didn't understand you”.
6. Sometimes used in ‘public’ contexts on-line as a + placefiller for things one is barred from giving details about. For + example, a poster with pre-released hardware in his machine might say + “Yup, my machine now has an extra 16M of memory, thanks to the card + I'm testing for Mumbleco.”
7. A conversational wild card used to designate something one + doesn't want to bother spelling out, but which can be + glarked from context. Compare + blurgle.
8. [XEROX PARC] A colloquialism used to suggest that further + discussion would be fruitless.
[often confused with mung, q.v.] To transform + information in a serial fashion, often requiring large amounts of + computation. To trace down a data structure. Related to + crunch and nearly synonymous with + grovel, but connotes less pain.
A display hack dating back to the PDP-1 + (ca. 1962, reportedly discovered by Jackson Wright), which employs a + trivial computation (repeatedly plotting the graph Y = X XOR T for + successive values of T — see HAKMEM items + 146--148) to produce an impressive display of moving and growing squares + that devour the screen. The initial value of T is treated as a parameter, + which, when well-chosen, can produce amazing effects. Some of these, later + (re)discovered on the LISP machine, have been christened munching triangles (try AND for XOR and + toggling points instead of plotting them), munching w's, and munching mazes. More generally, suppose a + graphics program produces an impressive and ever-changing display of some + basic form, foo, on a display terminal, and does it using a relatively + simple program; then the program (or the resulting display) is likely to be + referred to as munching foos. [This + is a good example of the use of the word foo as a + metasyntactic variable.]
Exploration of security holes of someone else's computer for + thrills, notoriety, or to annoy the system manager. Compare + cracker. See also + hacked off.
[from the squeaky-voiced little people in L. Frank Baum's + The Wizard of Oz] A teenage-or-younger micro + enthusiast hacking BASIC or something else equally constricted. A term of + mild derision — munchkins are annoying but some grow up to be hackers + after passing through a larval stage. The term + urchin is also used. See also + wannabee, bitty box.
[from SF fandom]
1. A person who is not in science fiction fandom.
2. A person who is not in the computer industry. In this sense, + most often an adjectival modifier as in “in my mundane + life....” See also Real World, + muggle.
[in 1960 at MIT, “Mash Until No Good”; sometime after + that the derivation from the recursive acronym + “Mung Until No Good” became standard; but see + munge]
1. To make changes to a file, esp. large-scale and irrevocable + changes. See BLT.
2. To destroy, usually accidentally, occasionally maliciously. The + system only mungs things maliciously; this is a consequence of + Finagle's Law. See scribble, + mangle, trash, + nuke. Reports from Usenet + suggest that the pronunciation /muhnj/ is now usual in speech, but the + spelling ‘mung’ is still common in program comments (compare + the widespread confusion over the proper spelling of + kluge).
3. In the wake of the spam epidemics of the + 1990s, mung is now commonly used to describe the act of modifying an email + address in a sig block in a way that human beings can readily reverse but + that will fool an address harvester. Example: + johnNOSPAMsmith@isp.net.
4. The kind of beans the sprouts of which are used in Chinese food. + (That's their real name! Mung beans! Really!)
Like many early hacker terms, this one seems to have originated at + TMRC; it was already in use there in 1958. Peter + Samson (compiler of the original TMRC lexicon) thinks it may originally + have been onomatopoeic for the sound of a relay spring (contact) being + twanged. However, it is known that during the World Wars, + ‘mung’ was U.S.: army slang for the ersatz creamed chipped beef + better known as ‘SOS’, and it seems quite likely that the word + in fact goes back to Scots-dialect munge.
Charles Mackay's 1874 book Lost Beauties of the English + Language defined “mung” as follows: + “Preterite of ming, to ming or mingle; when the substantive meaning + of mingled food of bread, potatoes, etc. thrown to poultry. In America, + ‘mung news’ is a common expression applied to false news, but + probably having its derivation from mingled (or mung) news, in which the + true and the false are so mixed up together that it is impossible to + distinguish one from another.”
1. [derogatory] To imperfectly transform information.
2. A comprehensive rewrite of a routine, data structure or the whole + program.
3. To modify data in some way the speaker doesn't need to go into + right now or cannot describe succinctly (compare + mumble).
4. To add spamblock to an email + address.
This term is often confused with mung, which + probably was derived from it. However, it also appears the word munge was in common use in Scotland in the + 1940s, and in Yorkshire in the 1950s, as a verb, meaning to munch up into a + masticated mess, and as a noun, meaning the result of munging something up + (the parallel with the + kluge/kludge pair is + amusing). The OED reports “munge” as an archaic verb meaning + “to wipe (a person's nose)”.
A common extracurricular interest of hackers (compare + science-fiction fandom, + oriental food; see also filk). Hackish folklore + has long claimed that musical and programming abilities are closely + related, and there has been at least one large-scale statistical study that + supports this. Hackers, as a rule, like music and often develop musical + appreciation in unusual and interesting directions. Folk music is very big + in hacker circles; so is electronic music, and the sort of elaborate + instrumental jazz/rock that used to be called ‘progressive’ and + isn't recorded much any more. The hacker's musical range tends to be wide; + many can listen with equal appreciation to (say) Talking Heads, Yes, Gentle + Giant, Pat Metheny, Scott Joplin, Tangerine Dream, Dream Theater, King + Sunny Ade, The Pretenders, Screaming Trees, or the Brandenburg Concerti. + It is also apparently true that hackerdom includes a much higher + concentration of talented amateur musicians than one would expect from a + similar-sized control group of mundane types.
To quietly enter a command not meant for the ears, eyes, or fingers + of ordinary mortals. Often used in “mutter an + incantation”. See also + wizard.
1. A large and indeterminate number of objects: “There were + N bugs in that crock!” Also used in + its original sense of a variable name: “This crock has + N bugs, as + N goes to infinity.” (The true + number of bugs is always at least N + 1; + see Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology.) +
2. A variable whose value is inherited from the current context. + For example, when a meal is being ordered at a restaurant, + N may be understood to mean however many + people there are at the table. From the remark “We'd like to order + N wonton soups and a family dinner for + N - 1” you can deduce that one + person at the table wants to eat only soup, even though you don't know how + many people there are (see great-wall).
3. Nth: adj. The ordinal counterpart of + N, senses 1 and 2.
4. “Now for the Nth and last + time...” In the specific context + “Nth-year grad student”, + N is generally assumed to be at least 4, + and is usually 5 or more (see + tenured graduate student). See also random numbers, + two-to-the-N.
[from the ASCII mnemonic for 0010101]
1. On-line joke answer to ACK?: “I'm + not here.”
2. On-line answer to a request for chat: “I'm not + available.”
3. Used to politely interrupt someone to tell them you don't + understand their point or that they have suddenly stopped making sense. + See ACK, sense
3. “And then, after we recode the project in + COBOL....” “Nak, Nak, Nak! I thought I heard you say + COBOL!”
4. A negative answer. “OK if I boot the server?” + “NAK!”
[Usenet] The newsgroups news.admin.net-abuse.*, devoted to fighting + spam and network abuse. Each individual newsgroup is + often referred to by adding a letter to NANA. For example, NANAU would + refer to news.admin.net-abuse.usenet.
When spam began to be a serious problem around 1995, and a loose + network of anti-spammers formed to combat it, spammers immediately accused + them of being the backbone cabal, or the Cabal + reborn. Though this was not true, spam-fighters ironically accepted the + label and the tag line “There is No Cabal” reappeared (later, + and now commonly, abbreviated to “TINC”). Nowadays “the + Cabal” is generally understood to refer to the NANA regulars.
No. Used in reply to a question, particularly one asked using the + ‘-P’ convention. Most hackers assume this derives simply from + LISP terminology for ‘false’ (see also + T), but NIL as a negative reply was well-established + among radio hams decades before the advent of LISP. The historical + connection between early hackerdom and the ham radio world was strong + enough that this may have been an influence.
Non-Maskable Interrupt. An IRQ 7 on the PDP-11 or 680[01234]0; the + NMI line on an 80[1234]86. In contrast with a + priority interrupt (which might be ignored, although that is unlikely), + an NMI is never ignored. Except, that is, on + clone boxes, where NMI is often ignored on the + motherboard because flaky hardware can generate many spurious ones.
Extremely. Used to modify adjectives describing a level or quality + of difficulty; the connotation is often ‘more so than it should + be’. This is generalized from the computer-science terms NP-hard and NP-complete; NP-complete problems all seem to + be very hard, but so far no one has found a proof that they are. NP is the + set of Nondeterministic-Polynomial problems, those that can be completed + by a nondeterministic Turing machine in an amount of time that is a + polynomial function of the size of the input; a solution for one + NP-complete problem would solve all the others. “Coding a BitBlt + implementation to perform correctly in every case is + NP-annoying.”
Note, however, that strictly speaking this usage is misleading; there + are plenty of easy problems in class NP. NP-complete problems are hard not + because they are in class NP, but because they are the hardest problems in + class NP.
The National Security Agency trawling program sometimes assumed to + be reading the net for the U.S. Government's spooks. Most hackers used to + think it was mythical but believed in acting as though existed just in + case. Since the mid-1990s it has gradually become known that the NSA + actually does this, quite illegally, through its Echelon program.
The standard countermeasure is to put loaded phrases like + ‘KGB’, ‘Uzi’, ‘nuclear materials’, + ‘Palestine’, ‘cocaine’, and + ‘assassination’ in their sig blocks in a + (probably futile) attempt to confuse and overload the creature. The + GNU version of EMACS actually + has a command that randomly inserts a bunch of insidious anarcho-verbiage + into your edited text.
As far back as the 1970s there was a mainstream variant of this myth + involving a ‘Trunk Line Monitor’, which supposedly used speech + recognition to extract words from telephone trunks. This is much harder + than noticing keywords in email, and most of the people who originally + propagated it had no idea of then-current technology or the storage, + signal-processing, or speech recognition needs of such a project. On the + basis of mass-storage costs alone it would have been cheaper to hire 50 + high-school students and just let them listen in.
Twenty years and several orders of technological magnitude later, + however, there are clear indications that the NSA has actually deployed + such filtering (again, very much against U.S. law). In 2000, the FBI wants + to get into this act with its ‘Carnivore’ surveillance + system.
Common abbreviation for ‘Network Service Provider’, one + of the big national or regional companies that maintains a portion of the + Internet backbone and resells connectivity to ISPs. + In 1996, major NSPs include ANS, MCI, UUNET, and Sprint. An Internet + wholesaler.
Refers to the problem of transferring data between machines with + differing byte-order. The string “UNIX” might look like + “NUXI” on a machine with a different byte sex (e.g., when transferring data from a + little-endian to a + big-endian, or vice-versa). See also + middle-endian, swab, and + bytesexual.
An asterisk (see also splat, + ASCII). Oh, you want an etymology? Notionally, + from “I regret that I have only one asterisk for my country!”, + a misquote of the famous remark uttered by Nathan Hale just before he was + hanged. Hale was a (failed) spy for the rebels in the American War of + Independence.
[acronym; the “Network Window System”] The road not + taken in window systems, an elegant PostScript-based + environment that would almost certainly have won the standards war with + X if it hadn't been + proprietary to Sun Microsystems. There is a lesson + here that too many software vendors haven't yet heeded. Many hackers + insist on the two-syllable pronunciations above as a way of distinguishing + NeWS from Usenet news (the netnews software).
[sometimes elaborated to Netscrape + Fornicator, also Nutscrape] Standard name-of-insult for Netscape + Navigator/Communicator, Netscape's overweight Web browser. Compare + Internet Exploiter.
[primarily Stanford/Silicon Valley] Brain-damaged or of poor + design. This refers to the allegedly wretched quality of such software as + C, C++, and Unix (which originated at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New + Jersey). “This compiler bites the bag, but what can you expect from + a compiler designed in New Jersey?” Compare + Berkeley Quality Software. See also + Unix conspiracy.
[C programmers] The second edition of K&R's The C + Programming Language (Prentice-Hall, 1988; ISBN 0-13-110362-8), + describing ANSI Standard C. See K&R; this version is also called + ‘K&R2’.
Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In any + nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS cross-mounting, when + one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up. Some machine tries to + access the down one, and (getting no response) repeats indefinitely. This + causes it to appear dead to some messages (what is actually happening is + that it is locked up in what should have been a brief excursion to a higher + spl level). Then another machine tries to reach + either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and itself becomes + pseudo-down. The first machine to discover the down one is now trying both + to access the down one and to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even + harder to reach. This situation snowballs very quickly, and soon the + entire network of machines is frozen — worst of all, the user can't + even abort the file access that started the problem! Many of NFS's + problems are excused by partisans as being an inevitable result of its + statelessness, which is held to be a great feature (critics, of course, + call it a great misfeature). (ITS partisans are apt + to cite this as proof of Unix's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working + NFS-like shared file system with none of these problems in the early + 1970s.) See also broadcast storm.
“The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the + development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% + of the development time.” Attributed to Tom Cargill of Bell Labs, + and popularized by Jon Bentley's September 1985 Bumper-Sticker + Computer Science column in Communications of the + ACM. It was there called the “Rule of + Credibility”, a name which seems not to have stuck. Other maxims in + the same vein include the law attributed to the early British computer + scientist Douglas Hartree: “The time from now until the completion of + the project tends to become constant.”
[UK, from rude slang noun nadgers for testicles; compare American & + British bollixed] Of software or + hardware (not people), to twiddle some object in a hidden manner, generally + so that it conforms better to some format. For instance, string printing + routines on 8-bit processors often take the string text from the + instruction stream, thus a print call looks like jsr + print:"Hello world". The print routine has to nadger the saved instruction pointer so that + the processor doesn't try to execute the text as instructions when the + subroutine returns. See adger.
[Usenet] The variety of shareware that + displays a large screen at the beginning or end reminding you to register, + typically requiring some sort of keystroke to continue so that you can't + use the software in batch mode. Compare annoyware, + crippleware.
[like a trophy] Said of a bug finally eliminated after protracted, + and even heroic, effort.
A luser. Tends to imply someone who is + ignorant mainly owing to inexperience. When this is applied to someone who + has experience, there is a definite implication of + stupidity.
1. Untutored in the perversities of some particular program or + system; one who still tries to do things in an intuitive way, rather than + the right way (in really good designs these coincide, but most designs + aren't ‘really good’ in the appropriate sense). This trait is + completely unrelated to general maturity or competence, or even competence + at any other specific program. It is a sad commentary on the primitive + state of computing that the natural opposite of this term is often claimed + to be experienced user but is really + more like cynical user.
2. Said of an algorithm that doesn't take advantage of some superior + but advanced technique, e.g., the bubble sort. It + may imply naivete on the part of the programmer, although there are + situations where a naive algorithm is preferred, because it is more + important to keep the code comprehensible than to go for maximum + performance. “I know the linear search is naive, but in this case the + list typically only has half a dozen items.” Compare + brute force.
[SI: the next quantifier below micro-; + meaning + 10-9] Smaller than + micro-, and used in the same rather loose and + connotative way. Thus, one has nanotechnology + (coined by hacker K. Eric Drexler) by analogy with microtechnology; and a few machine + architectures have a nanocode level + below microcode. Tom Duff at Bell + Labs has also pointed out that “Pi seconds is a nanocentury”. + See also quantifiers, pico-, + nanoacre, nanobot, + nanocomputer, + nanofortnight.
[CMU: from nanosecond] A brief + period of time. “Be with you in a nano” means you really will + be free shortly, i.e., implies what mainstream people mean by “in a + jiffy” (whereas the hackish use of ‘jiffy’ is quite + different — see jiffy).
A unit (about 2 mm square) of real estate on a VLSI chip. The term + gets its giggle value from the fact that VLSI nanoacres have costs in the + same range as real acres once one figures in design and fabrication-setup + costs.
A robot of microscopic proportions, presumably built by means of + nanotechnology. As yet, only used informally (and + speculatively!). Also called a nanoagent.
A computer with molecular-sized switching elements. + Designs for mechanical nanocomputers which use single-molecule sliding rods + for their logic have been proposed. The controller for a + nanobot would be a nanocomputer.
[Adelaide University] 1 fortnight + 10-9, or about 1.2 msec. This + unit was used largely by students doing undergraduate practicals. See + microfortnight, attoparsec, + and micro-.
A hypothetical fabrication technology in which objects are designed + and built with the individual specification and placement of each separate + atom. The first unequivocal nanofabrication experiments took place in + 1990, for example with the deposition of individual xenon atoms on a nickel + substrate to spell the logo of a certain very large computer company. + Nanotechnology has been a hot topic in the hacker subculture ever since the + term was coined by K. Eric Drexler in his book Engines of + Creation (Anchor/Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-19973-2), where he + predicted that nanotechnology could give rise to replicating assemblers, + permitting an exponential growth of productivity and personal wealth + (there's an authorized transcription at http://www.foresight.org/EOC/index.html). + See also blue goo, gray goo, + nanobot.
[Cambridge] Short for “Not A Real Gentleman”, i.e. one + who excessively talks shop out of hours.
Recognized shorthand on the Usenet group comp.std.c for any unexpected behavior of a C + compiler on encountering an undefined construct. During a discussion on + that group in early 1992, a regular remarked “When the compiler + encounters [a given undefined construct] it is legal for it to make demons + fly out of your nose” (the implication is that the compiler may + choose any arbitrarily bizarre way to interpret the code without violating + the ANSI C standard). Someone else followed up with a reference to + “nasal demons”, which quickly became established. The + original post is web-accessible at http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=10195%40ksr.com.
1. A protocol packet or item of email (the latter is also called a + letterbomb) that takes advantage of misfeatures or + security holes on the target system to do untoward things.
2. Disapproving mail, esp. from a net.god, + pursuant to a violation of netiquette or a complaint + about failure to correct some mail- or news-transmission problem. Compare + shitogram, mailbomb.
3. A status report from an unhappy, and probably picky, customer. + “What'd Corporate say in today's nastygram?”
4. [deprecated] An error reply by mail from a + daemon; in particular, a + bounce message.
See has the X nature.
[very common]
1. A clever technique.
2. A brilliant practical joke, where neatness is correlated with + cleverness, harmlessness, and surprise value. Example: the Caltech Rose + Bowl card display switch (see Appendix A + for discussion). See also hack.
The label used to refer to one of the continuing + holy wars in AI research. This conflict tangles together two + separate issues. One is the relationship between human reasoning and AI; + ‘neats’ tend to try to build systems that ‘reason’ + in some way identifiably similar to the way humans report themselves as + doing, while ‘scruffies’ profess not to care whether an + algorithm resembles human reasoning in the least as long as it works. More + importantly, neats tend to believe that logic is king, while scruffies + favor looser, more ad-hoc methods driven by empirical knowledge. To a + neat, scruffy methods appear promiscuous, successful only by accident, and + not productive of insights about how intelligence actually works; to a + scruffy, neat methods appear to be hung up on formalism and irrelevant to + the hard-to-capture ‘common sense’ of living + intelligences.
[onomatopoeic, widely spread through SF fandom but reported to have + originated at Caltech in the 1970s] One who is fascinated by computers. + Less specific than hacker, as it need not imply more + skill than is required to play games on a PC. The derived noun neeping applies specifically to the long + conversations about computers that tend to develop in the corners at most + SF-convention parties (the term neepery is also in wide use). Fandom has a + related proverb to the effect that “Hacking is a conversational black + hole!”.
The trait of being excited and pleased by novelty. Common among + most hackers, SF fans, and members of several other connected leading-edge + subcultures, including the pro-technology ‘Whole Earth’ wing of + the ecology movement, space activists, many members of Mensa, and the + Discordian/neo-pagan underground (see geek). All + these groups overlap heavily and (where evidence is available) seem to + share characteristic hacker tropisms for science fiction, + music, and oriental food. + The opposite tendency is neophobia.
[Cisco] A command in a complex piece of software which is more + likely to be used by an extremely experienced user to tweak a setting of + one sort or another - a setting which the average user may not even know + exists. Nerd knobs tend to be toggles, turning on or off a particular, + specific, narrowly defined behavior. Special case of + knobs.
1. [mainstream slang] Pejorative applied to anyone with an + above-average IQ and few gifts at small talk and ordinary social rituals. +
2. [jargon] Term of praise applied (in conscious ironic reference to + sense 1) to someone who knows what's really important and interesting and + doesn't care to be distracted by trivial chatter and silly status games. + Compare geek.
The word itself appears to derive from the lines “And then, + just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo / And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a + Preep and a Proo, / A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!” in the + Dr. Seuss book If I Ran the Zoo (1950). (The + spellings ‘nurd’ and ‘gnurd’ also used to be + current at MIT, where ‘nurd’ is reported from as far back as + 1957; however, knurd appears to have a separate + etymology.) How it developed its mainstream meaning is unclear, but sense 1 + seems to have entered mass culture in the early 1970s (there are reports + that in the mid-1960s it meant roughly “annoying misfit” + without the connotation of intelligence.
Hackers developed sense 2 in self-defense perhaps ten years later, + and some actually wear “Nerd Pride” buttons, only half as a + joke. At MIT one can find not only buttons but (what else?) pocket + protectors bearing the slogan and the MIT seal.
[Usenet] Prefix used to describe people and events related to + Usenet. From the time before the Great Renaming, + when most non-local newsgroups had names beginning “net.”. + Includes net.gods, net.goddesses (various charismatic net.women + with circles of on-line admirers), net.lurkers (see + lurker), net.person, net.parties (a synonym for + boink, sense 2), and many similar constructs. See + also net.police.
Accolade referring to anyone who satisfies some combination of the + following conditions: has been visible on Usenet for more than 5 years, ran + one of the original backbone sites, moderated an important newsgroup, wrote + news software, or knows Gene, Mark, Rick, Mel, Henry, Chuq, and Greg + personally. See demigod. Net.goddesses such as + Rissa or the Slime Sisters have (so far) been distinguished more by + personality than by authority.
Someone who has made a name for him or herself on + Usenet, through either longevity or + attention-getting posts, but doesn't meet the other requirements of + net.godhood.
(var.: net.cops) Those Usenet + readers who feel it is their responsibility to pounce on and + flame any posting which they regard as offensive or + in violation of their understanding of netiquette. + Generally used sarcastically or pejoratively. Also spelled ‘net + police’. See also net.-, + code police.
[IRC] When netlag gets really bad, and delays + between servers exceed a certain threshold, the IRC + network effectively becomes partitioned for a period of time, and large + numbers of people seem to be signing off at the same time and then signing + back on again when things get better. An instance of this is called a + netburp (or, sometimes, + netsplit).
[IRC] The state of someone who signs off IRC, + perhaps during a netburp, and doesn't sign back on + until later. In the interim, he is “dead to the net”. + Compare link-dead.
[Unix] A dungeon game similar to rogue but + more elaborate, distributed in C source over Usenet + and very popular at Unix sites and on PC-class machines (nethack is + probably the most widely distributed of the freeware dungeon games). The + earliest versions, written by Jay Fenlason and later considerably enhanced + by Andries Brouwer, were simply called ‘hack’. The name + changed when maintenance was taken over by a group of hackers originally + organized by Mike Stephenson. There is now an official site at http://www.nethack.org/. See also + moria, rogue, + Angband.
[Coined by Chuq von Rospach c.1983] [portmanteau, network + + etiquette] The conventions of politeness recognized on + Usenet, such as avoidance of cross-posting to + inappropriate groups and refraining from commercial pluggery outside the + biz groups.
[IRC, MUD] A condition that occurs when the delays in the + IRC network or on a MUD + become severe enough that servers briefly lose and then reestablish + contact, causing messages to be delivered in bursts, often with delays of + up to a minute. (Note that this term has nothing to do with mainstream + “jet lag”, a condition which hackers tend not to be much + bothered by.) Often shortened to just ‘lag’.
1. The software that makes Usenet run. +
2. The content of Usenet. “I read netnews right after my mail + most mornings.”
Syn. netburp.
1. Loosely, anyone with a + network address.
2. More specifically, a Usenet regular. Most + often found in the plural. “If you post that in + a technical group, you're going to be flamed by angry netters for the rest + of time!”
(also net address) As used by + hackers, means an address on ‘the’ network (see + the network; this used to include bang path + addresses but now always implies an Internet address). Net addresses are + often used in email text as a more concise substitute for personal names; + indeed, hackers may come to know each other quite well by network names + without ever learning each others' ‘legal’ monikers. Display + of a network address (e.g. on business cards) used to function as an + important hacker identification signal, like lodge pins among Masons or + tie-dyed T-shirts among Grateful Dead fans. In the day of pervasive + Internet this is less true, but you can still be fairly sure that anyone + with a network address handwritten on his or her convention badge is a + hacker.
A state of complete network overload; the network equivalent of + thrashing. This may be induced by a + Chernobyl packet. See also + broadcast storm, kamikaze packet.
Network meltdown is often a result of network designs that are + optimized for a steady state of moderate load and don't cope well with the + very jagged, bursty usage patterns of the real world. One amusing instance + of this is triggered by the popular and very bloody shoot-'em-up game + Doom on the PC. When used in multiplayer + mode over a network, the game uses broadcast packets to inform other + machines when bullets are fired. This causes problems with weapons like + the chain gun which fire rapidly — it can blast the network into a + meltdown state just as easily as it shreds opposing monsters.
[very common; orig. from British public-school and military slang + variant of ‘new boy’] A Usenet neophyte. This term surfaced in + the newsgroup talk.bizarre but is now in wide use (the + combination “clueless newbie” is especially common). Criteria + for being considered a newbie vary wildly; a person can be called a newbie + in one newsgroup while remaining a respected regular in another. The label + newbie is sometimes applied as a + serious insult to a person who has been around Usenet for a long time but + who carefully hides all evidence of having a clue. See + B1FF; see also gnubie. + Compare chainik, + luser.
[Usenet] The salvos of dueling newgroup and rmgroup + messages sometimes exchanged by persons on opposite sides of a dispute over + whether a newsgroup should be created net-wide, or + (even more frequently) whether an obsolete one should be removed. These + usually settle out within a week or two as it becomes clear whether the + group has a natural constituency (usually, it doesn't). At times, + especially in the completely anarchic alt hierarchy, the names of newsgroups + themselves become a form of comment or humor; e.g., the group alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork which + originated as a birthday joke for a Muppets fan, or any number of + specialized abuse groups named after particularly notorious + flamers, e.g., alt.weemba.
1. [techspeak, primarily Unix] The ASCII LF character (0001010), + used under Unix as a text line terminator. Though + the term newline appears in ASCII + standards, it never caught on in the general computing world before Unix. +
2. More generally, any magic character, character sequence, or + operation (like Pascal's writeln procedure) required to terminate a text + record or separate lines. See crlf.
[Usenet] Silly synonym for newsgroup, + originally a typo but now in regular use on Usenet's talk.bizarre, and + other lunatic-fringe groups. Compare hing, + grilf, pr0n and + filk.
[Usenet] One of Usenet's huge collection of + topic groups or fora. Usenet groups can be + unmoderated (anyone can post) or + moderated (submissions are + automatically directed to a moderator, who edits or filters and then posts + the results). Some newsgroups have parallel + mailing lists for Internet people with no netnews access, with postings + to the group automatically propagated to the list and vice versa. Some + moderated groups (especially those which are actually gatewayed Internet + mailing lists) are distributed as digests, with groups of postings periodically + collected into a single large posting with an index.
Among the best-known are comp.lang.c (the C-language forum), + comp.arch (on computer + architectures), comp.unix.wizards + (for Unix wizards), rec.arts.sf.written and siblings (for + science-fiction fans), and talk.politics.misc (miscellaneous political + discussions and flamage).
[IRC; very common] Short for nickname. On + IRC, every user must pick a nick, which is sometimes + the same as the user's real name or login name, but is often more fanciful. + Compare handle, + screen name.
[from ‘nickel’, common name for the U.S. 5-cent coin] A + nybble + 1; 5 bits. Reported among developers for + Mattel's GI 1600 (the Intellivision games processor), a chip with + 16-bit-wide RAM but 10-bit-wide ROM. See also + deckle, and nybble for names + of other bit units.
See phase (of people).
Var. clit mouse, clitoris + Common term for the pointing device used on IBM ThinkPads and a few other + laptop computers. The device, which sits between the ‘g’ and + ‘h’ keys on the keyboard, indeed resembles a rubber nipple + intended to be tweaked by a forefinger. Many hackers consider these + superior to the glide pads found on most laptops, which are harder to + control precisely.
alt.: NOP /nop/ [no + operation]
1. A machine instruction that does nothing (sometimes used in + assembler-level programming as filler for data or patch areas, or to + overwrite code to be removed in binaries).
2. A person who contributes nothing to a project, or has nothing + going on upstairs, or both. As in “He's a no-op.”
3. Any operation or sequence of operations with no effect, such as + circling the block without finding a parking space, or putting money into a + vending machine and having it fall immediately into the coin-return box, or + asking someone for help and being told to go away. “Oh, well, that + was a no-op.” Hot-and-sour soup (see + great-wall) that is insufficiently either is + no-op soup; so is wonton soup if + everybody else is having hot-and-sour.
[UK: from the children's books]
1. Small and un-useful, but demonstrating a point. Noddy programs + are often written by people learning a new language or system. The + archetypal noddy program is hello world. Noddy code + may be used to demonstrate a feature or bug of a compiler. May be used of + real hardware or software to imply that it isn't worth using. “This + editor's a bit noddy.”
2. A program that is more or less instant to produce. In this use, + the term does not necessarily connote uselessness, but describes a + hack sufficiently trivial that it can be written and + debugged while carrying on (and during the space of) a normal conversation. + “I'll just throw together a noddy awk script + to dump all the first fields.” In North America this might be called + a mickey mouse program. See + toy program.
(also sub-optimal solution) An + astoundingly stupid way to do something. This term is generally used in + deadpan sarcasm, as its impact is greatest when the person speaking looks + completely serious. Compare stunning. See also + Bad Thing.
[scientific computation]
1. Behaving in an erratic and unpredictable fashion; unstable. When + used to describe the behavior of a machine or program, it suggests that + said machine or program is being forced to run far outside of design + specifications. This behavior may be induced by unreasonable inputs, or + may be triggered when a more mundane bug sends the computation far off from + its expected course.
2. When describing the behavior of a person, suggests a tantrum or a + flame. “When you talk to Bob, don't mention + the drug problem or he'll go nonlinear for hours.” In this context, + go nonlinear connotes ‘blow up + out of proportion’ (proportion connotes linearity).
Requiring real thought or significant computing power. Often used + as an understated way of saying that a problem is quite difficult or + impractical, or even entirely unsolvable (“Proving P=NP is + nontrivial”). The preferred emphatic form is decidedly nontrivial. See + trivial, uninteresting, + interesting.
Used ironically of things which are in fact almost entirely unlike + X, except for one feature which the speaker clearly regards as + insignificant. “That is not entirely unlike cool...at least + it's small.” Comes directly from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy + scene in which the food synthesizer on the starship Heart of + Gold dispenses something “almost, but not quite, entirely + unlike tea”.
Usable, but only just so; not very robust; for internal use only. + Said of a program or device. Often connotes that the thing will be made + more solid Real Soon Now. This term comes from the + ensemble name of the original cast of Saturday Night + Live, the “Not Ready for Prime Time Players”. It + has extra flavor for hackers because of the special (though now + semi-obsolescent) meaning of prime time. Compare + beta.
A network, when it is acting flaky or is + down. Compare nyetwork. + Said at IBM to have originally referred to a particular period of flakiness + on IBM's VNET corporate network ca. 1988; but there are independent reports + of the term from elsewhere.
Said of machines delivered without an operating system (compare + bare metal). “We ordered 50 systems, but they + all arrived nude, so we had to spend an extra weekend with the installation + disks.” This usage is a recent innovation reflecting the fact that + most IBM-PC clones are now delivered with an operating system pre-installed + at the factory. Other kinds of hardware are still normally delivered + without OS, so this term is particular to PC support groups.
[Usenet, ‘newbie’ + ‘-gry’] n. A newbie who posts a + FAQ in the rec.puzzles newsgroup, especially if it + is a variant of the notorious trick question: “Think of words ending + in ‘gry’. Angry and hungry are two of them. There are three + words in the English language. What is the third word?” In the + newsgroup, the canonical answer is of course ‘nugry’ + itself. Plural is nusgry /n[y]oosgree/.
2. adj. Having the qualities of + a nugry.
[common]
1. To intentionally delete the entire contents of a given directory + or storage volume. “On Unix, rm -r + /usr will nuke everything in the usr filesystem.” Never + used for accidental deletion; contrast blow away. +
2. Syn. for dike, applied to smaller things + such as files, features, or code sections. Often used to express a final + verdict. “What do you want me to do with that 80-meg session + file?” “Nuke it.”
3. Used of processes as well as files; nuke is a frequent verbal + alias for kill -9 on Unix.
4. On IBM PCs, a bug that results in + fandango on core can trash the operating system, including the FAT (the + in-core copy of the disk block chaining information). This can utterly + scramble attached disks, which are then said to have been nuked. This term is also used of analogous + lossages on Macintoshes and other micros without memory protection.
[common] Computations of a numerical nature, esp. those that make + extensive use of floating-point numbers. The only thing + Fortrash is good for. This term is in widespread + informal use outside hackerdom and even in mainstream slang, but has + additional hackish connotations: namely, that the computations are mindless + and involve massive use of brute force. This is not + always evil, esp. if it involves ray tracing or + fractals or some other use that makes + pretty pictures, esp. if such pictures can be used as screen + backgrounds. See also crunch.
Hydrodynamic number-crunching.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is + 74-12-29. The previous + cartoon was 74-08-18.)
[scientific computation] Output of a computation that may not be + significant results but at least indicate that the program is running. May + be used to placate management, grant sponsors, etc. Making numbers means running a program because + output — any output, not necessarily meaningful output — is + needed as a demonstration of progress. See + pretty pictures, math-out, + social science number.
[from v. nibble by analogy with ‘bite’ + → ‘byte’] Four bits; one hex digit; + a half-byte. Though ‘byte’ is now techspeak, this useful + relative is still jargon. Compare byte; see also + bit. The more mundane spelling “nibble” + is also commonly used. Apparently the ‘nybble’ spelling is + uncommon in Commonwealth Hackish, as British orthography would suggest the + pronunciation /ni:bl/.
Following ‘bit’, ‘byte’ and + ‘nybble’ there have been quite a few analogical attempts to + construct unambiguous terms for bit blocks of other sizes. All of these + are strictly jargon, not techspeak, and not very common jargon at that + (most hackers would recognize them in context but not use them + spontaneously). We collect them here for reference together with the + ambiguous techspeak terms ‘word’, ‘half-word’, + ‘double word’, and ‘quad’ or quad word; some (indicated) have substantial + information separate entries.
| 2 bits: | crumb, quad, quarter, tayste, tydbit, morsel |
| 4 bits: | nybble |
| 5 bits: | nickle |
| 10 bits: | deckle |
| 16 bits: | playte, chawmp (on a 32-bit machine), word (on a 16-bit machine), +half-word (on a 32-bit machine). |
| 18 bits: | chawmp (on a 36-bit machine), half-word (on a 36-bit machine) |
| 32 bits: | dynner, gawble (on a 32-bit machine), word (on a 32-bit machine), +longword (on a 16-bit machine). |
| 36 bits: | word (on a 36-bit machine) |
| 48 bits: | gawble (under circumstances that remain obscure) |
| 64 bits: | double word (on a 32-bit machine) +quad (on a 16-bit machine) |
| 128 bits: | quad (on a 32-bit machine) |
The fundamental motivation for most of these jargon terms (aside from + the normal hackerly enjoyment of punning wordplay) is the extreme ambiguity + of the term word and its + derivatives.
[from Russian ‘nyet’ = no] A network, when it is acting + flaky or is down. Compare + notwork.
The anointed successor to MS-DOS for Intel 286- and 386-based + micros; proof that IBM/Microsoft couldn't get it right the second time, + either. Often called ‘Half-an-OS’. Mentioning it is usually + good for a cheap laugh among hackers — the design was so + baroque, and the implementation of 1.x so bad, that + three years after introduction you could still count the major + apps shipping for it on the fingers of two hands + — in unary. The 2.x versions were said to have improved somewhat, + and informed hackers rated them superior to Microsoft Windows (an + endorsement which, however, could easily be construed as damning with faint + praise). In the mid-1990s IBM put OS/2 on life support, refraining from + killing it outright purely for internal political reasons; by 1999 the + success of Linux had effectively ended any + possibility of a renaissance. See monstrosity, + cretinous, second-system + effect.
1. [Operating System] n. An + abbreviation heavily used in email, occasionally in speech.
2. n. obs. On ITS, an output + spy. See OS and + JEDGAR in Appendix A.
Written-only acronym for “Open Source Software” (see + open source). This is a rather ugly + TLA, and the principals in the open-source movement + don't use it, but it has (perhaps inevitably) spread through the trade + press like kudzu.
[Usenet: common] Abbreviation for “off-topic”. This is + used to respond to a question that is inappropriate for the newsgroup that + the questioner posted to. Often used in an HTML-style modifier or with + adverbs. See also TAN.
[Usenet; very common] On The Other Hand.
Obligatory. A piece of netiquette + acknowledging that the author has been straying from the newsgroup's + charter topic. For example, if a posting in alt.sex is a response to a + part of someone else's posting that has nothing particularly to do with + sex, the author may append ‘ObSex’ (or ‘Obsex’) and + toss off a question or vignette about some unusual erotic act. It is + considered a sign of great winnitude when one's Obs + are more interesting than other people's whole postings.
(in full, the ‘International Obfuscated C Code Contest’, + or IOCCC) An annual contest run since 1984 over Usenet by Landon Curt Noll + and friends. The overall winner is whoever produces the most unreadable, + creative, and bizarre (but working) C program; various other prizes are + awarded at the judges' whim. C's terse syntax and macro-preprocessor + facilities give contestants a lot of maneuvering room. The winning + programs often manage to be simultaneously (a) funny, (b) breathtaking + works of art, and (c) horrible examples of how not to + code in C.
This relatively short and sweet entry might help convey the flavor of + obfuscated C:
+/*
+ * HELLO WORLD program
+ * by Jack Applin and Robert Heckendorn, 1985
+ * (Note: depends on being able to modify elements of argv[],
+ * which is not guaranteed by ANSI and often not possible.)
+ */
+main(v,c)char**c;{for(v[c++]="Hello, world!\n)";
+(!!c)[*c]&&(v--||--c&&execlp(*c,*c,c[!!c]+!!c,!c));
+**c=!c)write(!!*c,*c,!!**c);}
+ |
Here's another good one:
+/*
+ * Program to compute an approximation of pi
+ * by Brian Westley, 1988
+ * (requires pcc macro concatenation; try gcc -traditional-cpp)
+ */
+
+#define _ -F<00||--F-OO--;
+int F=00,OO=00;
+main(){F_OO();printf("%1.3f\n",4.*-F/OO/OO);}F_OO()
+{
+ _-_-_-_
+ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
+ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
+ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
+ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
+ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
+_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
+_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
+_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
+_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
+ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
+ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
+ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
+ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
+ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
+ _-_-_-_
+}
+ |
Note that this program works by computing its own area. For more + digits, write a bigger program. See also + hello world.
The IOCCC has an official home page at http://www.ioccc.org/.
Hackish take on “Objective-C”, the name of an + object-oriented dialect of C in competition with the better-known C++ (it + is used to write native applications on the NeXT machine). Objectionable-C + uses a Smalltalk-like syntax, but lacks the flexibility of Smalltalk method + calls, and (like many such efforts) comes frustratingly close to attaining + the Right Thing without actually doing so.
[C programmers] The first edition of K&R, the sacred text describing + Classic C.
The all-knowing, all-wise Internet Oracle rec.humor.oracle, or one of the foreign + language derivatives of same. Newbies frequently confuse the Oracle with + Oracle, a database vendor. As a result, the unmoderated rec.humor.oracle.d is frequently cross-posted + to by the clueless, looking for advice on SQL. As more than one person has + said in similar situations, “Don't people bother to look at the + newsgroup description line anymore?” (To which the standard response + is, “Did people ever read it in the first place?”)
The U.S. Government's (now obsolete) standards document + Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria, DOD standard + 5200.28-STD, December, 1985 which characterize secure computing + architectures and defines levels A1 (most secure) through D (least). + Modern Unixes are roughly C2. See also + book titles.
[RPI, from off-by-one and the + Obi-Wan Kenobi character in Star Wars] A loop of + some sort in which the index is off by one.
1. Common when the index should have started from 0 but instead + started from 1.
2. A kind of off-by-one error. See also + zeroth.
Used in an exaggeration of its normal meaning, to imply total + incomprehensibility. “The reason for that last crash is + obscure.” “The + find(1) + command's syntax is obscure!” The phrase moderately obscure implies that something could + be figured out but probably isn't worth the trouble. The construction + obscure in the extreme is the + preferred emphatic form.
Hackish way of saying “I'm drawing a blank.” Octal 40 + is the ASCII space character, 0100000; by an odd + coincidence, hex 40 (01000000) is the + EBCDIC space character. See + wall.
[common] Exceedingly common error induced in many ways, such as by + starting at 0 when you should have started at 1 or vice-versa, or by + writing < N instead of <= N or vice-versa. Also applied to giving + something to the person next to the one who should have gotten it. Often + confounded with fencepost error, which is properly a + particular subtype of it.
Describes the behavior of a program that malfunctions and goes + catatonic, but doesn't actually crash or abort. See + glitch, bug, + deep space, wedged.
This term is much older than computing, and is (uncommon) slang + elsewhere. A trolley is the small wheel that trolls, or runs against, the + heavy wire that carries the current to run a streetcar. It's at the end of + the long pole (the trolley pole) that reaches from the roof of the + streetcar to the overhead line. When the trolley stops making contact with + the wire (from passing through a switch, going over bumpy track, or + whatever), the streetcar comes to a halt, (usually) without crashing. The + streetcar is then said to be off the trolley, or off the wire. Later on, + trolley came to mean the streetcar itself. Since streetcars became common + in the 1890s, the term is more than 100 years old. Nowadays, trolleys are + only seen on historic streetcars, since modern streetcars use pantographs + to contact the wire.
Not now or not here. “Let's take this discussion + offline.” Specifically used on Usenet to + suggest that a discussion be moved off a public newsgroup to email.
[CMU]
1. In the multi-player space combat game Netrek, to execute kamikaze + attacks against enemy ships which are carrying armies or occupying + strategic positions. Named during a game in which one of the players + repeatedly used the tactic while playing Orion ship G, showing up in the + player list as “Og”. This trick has been roundly denounced by + those who would return to the good old days when the tactic of dogfighting + was dominant, but as Sun Tzu wrote, “What is of supreme importance in + war is to attack the enemy's strategy, not his tactics.” However, + the traditional answer to the newbie question “What does ogg + mean?” is just “Pick up some armies and I'll show you.” +
2. In other games, to forcefully attack an opponent with the + expectation that the resources expended will be renewed faster than the + opponent will be able to regain his previous advantage. Taken more + seriously as a tactic since it has gained a simple name.
3. To do anything forcefully, possibly without consideration of the + drain on future resources. “I guess I'd better go ogg the problem + set that's due tomorrow.” “Whoops! I looked down at the map + for a sec and almost ogged that oncoming car.”
Tribal elder. A title self-assumed with remarkable frequency by + (esp.) Usenetters who have been programming for more than about 25 years; + often appears in sig blocks attached to Jargon File + contributions of great archeological significance. This is a term of + insult in the second or third person but one of pride in first + person.
In the progression that starts “On the one hand...” and + continues “On the other hand...” mainstream English may add + “on the third hand...” even though most people don't have + three hands. Among hackers, it is just as likely to be “on the + gripping hand”. This metaphor supplied the title of Larry Niven + & Jerry Pournelle's 1993 SF novel “The Gripping Hand” + which involved a species of hostile aliens with three arms (the same + species, in fact, referenced in juggling eggs). As + with TANSTAAFL and con, this + usage became one of the naturalized imports from SF fandom frequently + observed among hackers.
At mainframe shops, where the computers have operators for routine + administrivia, the programmers and hardware people tend to look down on the + operators and claim that a trained monkey could do their job. It is + frequently observed that the incentives that would be offered said monkeys + can be used as a scale to describe the difficulty of a task. A one-banana + problem is simple; hence, “It's only a one-banana job at the most; + what's taking them so long?” At IBM, folklore divides the world into + one-, two-, and three-banana problems. Other cultures have different + hierarchies and may divide them more finely; at ICL, for example, five + grapes (a bunch) equals a banana. Their upper limit for the in-house + sysapes is said to be two bananas and three grapes + (another source claims it's three bananas and one grape, but observes + “However, this is subject to local variations, cosmic rays and + ISO”). At a complication level any higher than that, one asks the + manufacturers to send someone around to check things.
See also Infinite-Monkey Theorem.
Used (often sarcastically) of a change to a program that is thought + to be trivial or insignificant right up to the moment it crashes the + system. Usually ‘cured’ by another one-line fix. See also + I didn't change anything!
A game popular among hackers who code in the language APL (see + write-only language and + line noise). The objective is to see who can code the most + interesting and/or useful routine in one line of operators chosen from + APL's exceedingly hairy primitive set. A similar + amusement was practiced among TECO hackers and is + now popular among Perl aficionados.
Ken Iverson, the inventor of APL, has been credited with a one-liner + that, given a number N, produces a list of + the prime numbers from 1 to N inclusive. + It looks like this:
+ (2=0+.=T∅.|T)/T←ιN + |
Here's a Perl program that prints + primes:
+ perl -wle '(1 x $_) !~ /^(11+)\1+$/ && print while ++ $_' + |
In the Perl world this game is sometimes called Perl Golf because the + player with the fewest (key)strokes wins.
[from the Dr. Seuss title Bartholomew and the + Oobleck; the spelling ‘oobleck’ is still current in + the mainstream] A bizarre semi-liquid sludge made from cornstarch and + water. Enjoyed among hackers who make batches during playtime at parties + for its amusing and extremely non-Newtonian behavior; it pours and + splatters, but resists rapid motion like a solid and will even crack when + hit by a hammer. Often found near lasers.
Here is a field-tested ooblick recipe contributed by GLS:
1 cup cornstarch
1 cup baking soda
3/4 cup water
N drops of food coloring
This recipe isn't quite as non-Newtonian as a pure cornstarch + ooblick, but has an appropriately slimy feel.
Some, however, insist that the notion of an ooblick + recipe is far too mechanical, and that it is best to + add the water in small increments so that the various mixed states the + cornstarch goes through as it becomes ooblick can be + grokked in fullness by many hands. For optional ingredients of this + experience, see the + Ceremonial Chemicals section of Appendix B.
1. In England and Ireland, common verbal abbreviation for + ‘operator’, as in system operator. Less common in the U.S., + where sysop seems to be preferred.
2. [IRC] Someone who is endowed with privileges on + IRC, not limited to a particular channel. These are + generally people who are in charge of the IRC server at their particular + site. Sometimes used interchangeably with CHOP. + Compare sysop.
[common; also adj. open-source] Term coined in March 1998 + following the Mozilla release to describe software distributed in source + under licenses guaranteeing anybody rights to freely use, modify, and + redistribute, the code. The intent was to be able to sell the hackers' + ways of doing software to industry and the mainstream by avoiding the + negative connotations (to suits) of the term + “free software”. For discussion of the + follow-on tactics and their consequences, see the Open Source Initiative + site.
Five years after this term was invented, in 2003, it is worth noting + the huge shift in assumptions it helped bring about, if only because the + hacker culture's collective memory of what went before is in some ways + blurring. Hackers have so completely refocused themselves around the idea + and ideal of open source that we are beginning to forget that we used to do + most of our work in closed-source environments. Until the late 1990s open + source was a sporadic exception that usually had to live on top of a + closed-source operating system and alongside closed-source tools; entire + open-source environments like Linux and the *BSD + systems didn't even exist in a usable form until around 1993 and weren't + taken very seriously by anyone but a pioneering few until about five years + later.
[IBM: prob.: from railroading] An unresolved question, issue, or + problem.
Abbreviation for ‘open (or left) parenthesis’ — + used when necessary to eliminate oral ambiguity. To read aloud the LISP + form (DEFUN FOO (X) (PLUS X 1)) one might say: “Open defun foo, open + eks close, open, plus eks one, close close.”
[techspeak] (Often abbreviated ‘OS’) The foundation + software of a machine; that which schedules tasks, allocates storage, and + presents a default interface to the user between applications. The + facilities an operating system provides and its general design philosophy + exert an extremely strong influence on programming style and on the + technical cultures that grow up around its host machines. Hacker folklore + has been shaped primarily by the Unix, + ITS, TOPS-10, + TOPS-20/TWENEX, + WAITS, CP/M, + MS-DOS, and Multics operating + systems (most importantly by ITS and Unix). See also + timesharing.
[common] More fully, “operator headspace error”. Synonym +for pilot error — a dumb move, especially one +pulled by someone who ought to know better. Often used reflexively.
See vdiff.
See vgrep.
What a programmer is full of after fixing the last bug and before + discovering the next last bug. Fred Brooks's book + The Mythical Man-Month (See Brooks's + Law) contains the following paragraph that describes this + extremely well:
+All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially +attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the +hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus +on the end goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers +are younger, and the young are always optimists. But however the selection +process works, the result is indisputable: “This time it will surely +run,” or “I just found the last bug.”. +
See also + Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology.
Hackers display an intense tropism towards oriental cuisine, + especially Chinese, and especially of the spicier varieties such as + Szechuan and Hunan. This phenomenon (which has also been observed in + subcultures that overlap heavily with hackerdom, most notably + science-fiction fandom) has never been satisfactorily explained, but is + sufficiently intense that one can assume the target of a hackish dinner + expedition to be the best local Chinese place and be right at least three + times out of four. See also ravs, + great-wall, + stir-fried random, laser chicken, + Yu-Shiang Whole Fish. Thai, Indian, Korean, + Burmese, and Vietnamese cuisines are also quite popular.
[Unix] A process whose parent has died; one inherited by + init(1). + Compare zombie.
[Unix]
1. [techspeak] A file that retains storage but no longer appears in + the directories of a filesystem.
2. By extension, a pejorative for any person no longer serving a + useful function within some organization, esp. + lion food without subordinates.
[from mathematics] Mutually independent; well separated; sometimes, + irrelevant to. Used in a generalization of its mathematical meaning to + describe sets of primitives or capabilities that, like a vector basis in + geometry, span the entire ‘capability space’ of the system and + are in some sense non-overlapping or mutually independent. For example, in + architectures such as the PDP-11 or + VAX where all or nearly all registers can be used + interchangeably in any role with respect to any instruction, the register + set is said to be orthogonal. Or, in logic, the set of operators not and or is orthogonal, but the set nand, or, + and not is not (because any one of + these can be expressed in terms of the others). Also used in comments on + human discourse: “This may be orthogonal to the discussion, + but....”
[from telecommunications and network theory]
1. In software, describes values of a function which are not in its + ‘natural’ range of return values, but are rather signals that + some kind of exception has occurred. Many C functions, for example, return + a nonnegative integral value, but indicate failure with an out-of-band + return value of −1. Compare hidden flag, + green bytes, fence.
2. Also sometimes used to describe what communications people call + shift characters, such as the ESC + that leads control sequences for many terminals, or the level shift + indicators in the old 5-bit Baudot codes.
3. In personal communication, using methods other than email, such + as telephones or snail-mail.
To operate a CPU or other digital logic device at a rate higher than + it was designed for, under the assumption that the manufacturer put some + slop into the specification to account for + manufacturing tolerances. Overclocking something can result in intermittent + crashes, and can even burn things out, since power + dissipation is directly proportional to clock + frequency. People who make a hobby of this are sometimes called + “overclockers”; they are thrilled that they can run their + CPU a few percent faster, even though they can only tell the difference by + running a benchmark program. See also + case mod.
1. [techspeak] A flag on some processors + indicating an attempt to calculate a result too large for a register to + hold.
2. More generally, an indication of any kind of capacity overload + condition. “Well, the Ada description was + baroque all right, but I could hack it OK until they + got to the exception handling ... that set my overflow bit.” +
3. The hypothetical bit that will be set if a hacker doesn't get to + make a trip to the Room of Porcelain Fixtures: “I'd better process an + internal interrupt before the overflow bit gets set.”
Crunchly and the overflow bit.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is + 73-07-29. The previous one is + 73-06-04.)
[C programming] A variety of fandango on core + produced by scribbling past the end of an array (C implementations + typically have no checks for this error). This is relatively benign and + easy to spot if the array is static; if it is auto, the result may be to + smash the stack — often resulting in + heisenbugs of the most diabolical subtlety. The + term overrun screw is used esp. of + scribbles beyond the end of arrays allocated with + malloc(3); + this typically trashes the allocation header for the next block in the + arena, producing massive lossage within malloc and + often a core dump on the next operation to use + stdio(3) + or + malloc(3) + itself. See spam, overrun; + see also memory leak, + memory smash, aliasing bug, + precedence lossage, + fandango on core, secondary damage.
1. [techspeak] Term for a frequent consequence of data arriving + faster than it can be consumed, esp. in serial line communications. For + example, at 9600 baud there is almost exactly one character per + millisecond, so if a silo can hold only two + characters and the machine takes longer than 2 msec to get to service the + interrupt, at least one character will be lost.
2. Also applied to non-serial-I/O communications. “I forgot + to pay my electric bill due to mail overrun.” “Sorry, I got + four phone calls in 3 minutes last night and lost your message to + overrun.” When thrashing at tasks, the next + person to make a request might be told “Overrun!” Compare + firehose syndrome.
3. More loosely, may refer to a + buffer overflow not necessarily related to processing time (as in + overrun screw).
1. [cracker slang; often written “0wned”] Your condition + when your machine has been cracked by a root exploit, and the attacker can + do anything with it. This sense is occasionally used by hackers.
2. [gamers, IRC, crackers] To be dominated, controlled, mastered. + For example, if you make a statement completely and utterly false, and + someone else corrects it in a way that humiliates or removes you, you are + said to “have been owned” by that person. When referring to + games, “I own0r UT GOTYE” means that one has mastered Unreal + Tournament, Game of the Year Edition to such a level that even the hardest + AI characters are mere lunchmeat, and that no ordinary mortal player would + even receive a point in competition. There are several spelling variants: + 0wned, 0wn0r3d, even pwn0r3d. Hackers do not use this sense.
[from Greek suffix -oid = in the image + of]
1. Used as in mainstream slang English to indicate a poor imitation, + a counterfeit, or some otherwise slightly bogus resemblance. Hackers will + happily use it with all sorts of non-Greco/Latin stem words that wouldn't + keep company with it in mainstream English. For example, “He's a + nerdoid” means that he superficially resembles a nerd but can't make + the grade; a modemoid might be a + 300-baud box (Real Modems run at 28.8 or up); a computeroid might be any + bitty box. The word keyboid + could be used to describe a chiclet keyboard, but + would have to be written; spoken, it would confuse the listener as to the + speaker's city of origin.
2. More specifically, an indicator for ‘resembling an + android’ which in the past has been confined to science-fiction fans + and hackers. It too has recently (in 1991) started to go mainstream (most + notably in the term ‘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 confirm only that they were already + common in the mid-1970s —ESR].
[Usenet; common] Abbreviation for “original poster”, the + originator of a particular thread.
[rare; sometimes ‘POD’ without the periods] Acronym for + ‘Piece Of Data’ or ‘Plain Old Data’ (as opposed to + a code section, or a section containing mixed code and data). The latter + expansion was in use by the C++ standards committee, for which it indicated + a struct or class which only contains data (as in C), distinguished from + one which has a constructor and member functions. There are things which + you can do with a P.O.D. which you can't with a more general class.
See XEROX PARC.
[abbrev. of ‘Programmer Brain Damage’] Applied to bug + reports revealing places where the program was obviously broken by an + incompetent or short-sighted programmer. Compare + UBD; see also + brain-damaged.
[common] Abbreviation for ‘public domain’, applied to + software distributed over Usenet and from Internet + archive sites. Much of this software is not in fact public domain in the + legal sense but travels under various copyrights granting reproduction and + use rights to anyone who can snarf a copy. See + copyleft.
[Programmed Data Processor model 10] The machine that made + timesharing real. It looms large in hacker folklore + because of its adoption in the mid-1970s by many university computing + facilities and research labs, including the MIT AI Lab, Stanford, and CMU. + Some aspects of the instruction set (most notably the bit-field + instructions) are still considered unsurpassed. The 10 was eventually + eclipsed by the VAX machines (descendants of the + PDP-11) when DEC recognized + that the 10 and VAX product lines were competing + with each other and decided to concentrate its software development effort + on the more profitable VAX. The machine was finally + dropped from DEC's line in 1983, following the failure of the Jupiter + Project at DEC to build a viable new model. (Some attempts by other + companies to market clones came to nothing; see + Foonly and Mars.) This event + spelled the doom of ITS and the technical cultures + that had spawned the original Jargon File, but by mid-1991 it had become + something of a badge of honorable old-timerhood among hackers to have cut + one's teeth on a PDP-10. See TOPS-10, + ITS, BLT, + DDT, EXCH, + HAKMEM, pop, + push. See also http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/.
Possibly the single most successful minicomputer design in history, a + favorite of hackers for many years, and the first major Unix machine, The + first PDP-11s (the 11/15 and 11/20) shipped in 1970 from + DEC; the last (11/93 and 11/94) in 1990. Along the + way, the 11 gave birth to the VAX, strongly + influenced the design of microprocessors such as the Motorola 6800 and + Intel 386, and left a permanent imprint on the C language (which has an odd + preference for octal embedded in its syntax because of the way PDP-11 + machine instructions were formatted). There is a history site.
The most famous computer that never was. + PDP-10 computers running the + TOPS-10 operating system were labeled + ‘DECsystem-10’ as a way of differentiating them from the + PDP-11. Later on, those systems running + TOPS-20 were labeled ‘DECSYSTEM-20’ (the + block capitals being the result of a lawsuit brought against DEC by Singer, + which once made a computer called ‘system-10’), but contrary to + popular lore there was never a ‘PDP-20’; the only difference + between a 10 and a 20 was the operating system and the color of the paint. + Most (but not all) machines sold to run TOPS-10 were painted ‘Basil + Blue’, whereas most TOPS-20 machines were painted ‘Chinese + Red’ (often mistakenly called orange).
[Abbrev., “Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair”] + Used by support people, particularly at call centers and help desks. Not + used with the public. Denotes pilot error as the cause of the crash, + especially stupid errors that even a luser could + figure out. Very derogatory. Usage: “Did you ever figure out why that + guy couldn't print?” “Yeah, he kept cancelling the operation + before it could finish. PEBKAC”. See also ID10T. Compare pilot + error, UBD.
[Usenet; common, originally from the BOFH + mythos] Abbreviation for Pimply-Faced + Youth. A BOFH in training, esp. one + apprenticed to an elder BOFH aged in evil.
[Usenet; common; rarely spoken] Abbreviation, “Pointy-Haired + Boss”. From the Dilbert character, the + archetypal halfwitted middle-management type. See + also pointy-haired.
1. v. (from preventive maintenance) To bring down a machine + for inspection or test purposes. See + provocative maintenance; see also + scratch monkey.
2. n. Abbrev. for + ‘Presentation Manager’, an elephantine + OS/2 graphical user interface.
Common abbreviation for phase of the moon. + Usage: usually in the phrase POM-dependent, which means + flaky.
“Data expands to fill the space available for storage”; + buying more memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive techniques. + (The original 1958 Parkinson's Law described the structural tendency of + bureaucracies to make work for themselves.) It has been observed since the + mid-1980s that the memory usage of evolving systems tends to double roughly + once every 18 months. Fortunately, memory density available for constant + dollars also tends to about double once every 18 months (see + Moore's Law); unfortunately, the laws of physics + guarantee that the latter cannot continue indefinitely.
An Algol-descended language designed by Niklaus Wirth on the CDC + 6600 around 1967--68 as an instructional tool for elementary programming. + This language, designed primarily to keep students from shooting themselves + in the foot and thus extremely restrictive from a + general-purpose-programming point of view, was later promoted as a + general-purpose tool and, in fact, became the ancestor of a large family of + languages including Modula-2 and Ada (see also + bondage-and-discipline language). The hackish point + of view on Pascal was probably best summed up by a devastating (and, in its + deadpan way, screamingly funny) 1981 paper by Brian Kernighan (of + K&R fame) entitled + Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language, + which was turned down by the technical journals but circulated widely via + photocopies. It was eventually published in Comparing and + Assessing Programming Languages, edited by Alan Feuer and + Narain Gehani (Prentice-Hall, 1984). Part of his discussion is worth + repeating here, because its criticisms are still apposite to Pascal itself + after many years of improvement and could also stand as an indictment of + many other bondage-and-discipline languages. (The entire essay is + available at http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html.) + At the end of a summary of the case against Pascal, Kernighan wrote:
9. There is no escape
This last point is perhaps the most important. The language is +inadequate but circumscribed, because there is no way to escape its +limitations. There are no casts to disable the type-checking when necessary. +There is no way to replace the defective run-time environment with a sensible +one, unless one controls the compiler that defines the “standard +procedures”. The language is closed.
People who use Pascal for serious programming fall into a fatal trap. +Because the language is impotent, it must be extended. But each group extends +Pascal in its own direction, to make it look like whatever language they +really want. Extensions for separate compilation, FORTRAN-like COMMON, string +data types, internal static variables, initialization, octal numbers, bit +operators, etc., all add to the utility of the language for one group but +destroy its portability to others.
I feel that it is a mistake to use Pascal for anything much beyond its +original target. In its pure form, Pascal is a toy language, suitable for +teaching but not for real programming.
Pascal has since been entirely displaced (mainly by + C) from the niches it had acquired in serious + applications and systems programming, and from its role as a teaching + language by Java.
The practice of marking all word boundaries in long identifiers (such + as ThisIsASampleVariable) (including the first letter of + the identifier) with uppercase. Constrasts with camelCasing, in which the first character of + the identifier is left in lowercase + (thisIsASampleVariable), and with the traditional C style + of short all-lower-case names with internal word breaks marked by an + underscore (sample_var).
Where these terms are used, they usually go with advice to use + PascalCasing for public interfaces and camelCasing for private ones. They + may have originated at Microsoft, but are in more general use in ECMA + standards, among Java programmers, and elsewhere.
A humorous corruption of “Pentium Pro”, with a Satanic + reference, implying that the chip is inherently + evil. Often used with “666 MHz”; there + is a T-shirt. See Pentium
The name given to Intel's P5 chip, the successor to the 80486. The + name was chosen because of difficulties Intel had in trademarking a + number. It suggests the number five (implying 586) while (according to + Intel) conveying a meaning of strength “like titanium”. Among + hackers, the plural is frequently ‘pentia’. See also + Pentagram Pro.
Intel did not stick to this convention when naming its P6 processor + the Pentium Pro; many believe this is due to difficulties in selling a chip + with “hex” or “sex” in its name. Successor chips + have been called Pentium II, + Pentium III, and Pentium IV.
[Practical Extraction and Report Language, a.k.a. Pathologically + Eclectic Rubbish Lister] An interpreted language developed by Larry Wall, + author of + patch(1) + and + rn(1)). + Superficially resembles awk, but is much hairier, + including many facilities reminiscent of + sed(1) + and shells and a comprehensive Unix system-call interface. Unix sysadmins, + who are almost always incorrigible hackers, generally consider it one of + the languages of choice, and it is by far the most + widely used tool for making ‘live’ web pages via CGI. Perl has + been described, in a parody of a famous remark about + lex(1), + as the Swiss-Army chainsaw of Unix programming. + Though Perl is very useful, it would be a stretch to describe it as pretty + or elegant; people who like clean, spare design + generally prefer Python. See also Camel + Book, TMTOWTDI.
A notorious exploit that (when first + discovered) could be easily used to crash a wide variety of machines by + overrunning size limits in their TCP/IP stacks. First revealed in late + 1996. The open-source Unix community patched its systems to remove the + vulnerability within days or weeks, the closed-source OS vendors generally + took months. While the difference in response times repeated a pattern + familiar from other security incidents, the accompanying glare of + Web-fueled publicity proved unusually embarrassing to the OS vendors and so + passed into history and myth. The term is now used to refer to any nudge + delivered by network wizards over the network that causes bad things to + happen on the system being nudged. For the full story on the original + exploit, see http://www.insecure.org/sploits/ping-o-death.html. Compare + kamikaze packet and 'Chernobyl packet.'
In the late 1980s, researchers at Bell Labs (especially Rob Pike of + Kernighan & Pike fame) got bored with the limitations of UNIX and + decided to reimplement the entire system. The result was called Plan 9 in + “the Bell Labs tradition of selecting names that make marketeers + wince.” The developers also wished to pay homage to the famous film, + “Plan 9 From Outer Space”, considered by some to be the worst + movie ever made. The source is available for download under + open-source terms. The developers and a small fan base hang out at + comp.os.plan9, where one can + occasionally hear “If you want UNIX, you know where to find + it”
A page description language, based on work originally done by John + Gaffney at Evans and Sutherland in 1976, evolving through ‘JaM’ + (‘John and Martin’, Martin Newell) at XEROX + PARC, and finally implemented in its current form by John + Warnock et al. after he and Chuck Geschke founded Adobe Systems + Incorporated in 1982. PostScript gets its leverage by using a full + programming language, rather than a series of low-level escape sequences, + to describe an image to be printed on a laser printer or other output + device (in this it parallels EMACS, which exploited + a similar insight about editing tasks). It is also noteworthy for + implementing on-the fly rasterization, from Bezier curve descriptions, of + high-quality fonts at low (e.g. 300 dpi) resolution (it was formerly + believed that hand-tuned bitmap fonts were required for this task). + Hackers consider PostScript to be among the most elegant hacks of all time, + and the combination of technical merits and widespread availability has + made PostScript the language of choice for graphical output.
[proposed] Several of the key Internet RFCs, + especially 1122 and 791 contain a piece of advice due to Jon Postel, + which is most often stated as:
“Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you + send.”
That is, a well-engineered implementation of any of the + Internet protocols should be willing to deal with marginal + and imperfectly-formed inputs, but should not assume that the + program on the other end (that is, the program dealing with the + well-engineered implementation's output) will be anything other + than rigid and inflexible, and perhaps even incomplete or downright + buggy.
This property is valuable because a network of programs adhering + to it will be much more robust in the presence of any uncertainties + in the protocol specifications, or any individual implementor's + failure to understand those specifications perfectly. Though the + policy does tend to accommodate broken implementations it is held + to more important to get the communication flowing than to + immediately (but terminally) diagnose the broken implementations + at the expense of the people trying to use them.
The principle is a well-known one in the design of programs + that handle Internet wire protocols, especially network + relays and servers, and it is regularly applied by extension + in any situation where two or more separately-implemented + pieces of software are supposed to interoperate even though the + various implementors have never talked to each other and have + absolutely nothing whatsoever in common other than having + all read the same protocol specification. The principle travels + under several different names, including “the Internet credo”, + “the IETF maxim”, “the Internet Engineering + Principle”, and + “the liberal/conservative rule”; the [proposed] term + “Postel' Prescription” is a tribute to its inventor, the first + RFC editor + and (until his untimely death) probably the single most respected + individual in the Internet engineering community.
“Shift to the left! Shift to the right! Pop up, push down! + Byte! Byte! Byte!” A joke so old it has hair on it.
1. The System V Interface Definition. The + covers of the first editions were an amazingly nauseating shade of + off-lavender.
2. Syn. Wizard Book. Donald Lewine's + POSIX Programmer's Guide (O'Reilly, 1991, ISBN + 0-937175-73-0). See also book titles.
In the words of its author, “the other scripting + language” (other than Perl, that is). + Python's design is notably clean, elegant, and well thought through; it + tends to attract the sort of programmers who find Perl grubby and exiguous. + Some people revolt at its use of whitespace to define logical structure by + indentation, objecting that this harks back to the horrible old fixed-field + languages of the 1960s. Python's relationship with Perl is rather like the + BSD community's relationship to + Linux — it's the smaller party in a (usually + friendly) rivalry, but the average quality of its developers is generally + conceded to be rather higher than in the larger community it competes with. + There's a Python resource page at http://www.python.org. See also + Guido, BDFL.
[common among backbone ISPs] The protocol notionally being used by + Internet data attempting to traverse a physical gap or break in the + network, such as might be caused by a + fiber-seeking backhoe. “I see why you're dropping packets. You seem to + have a packet over air problem.”
Where you put lusers so they can't hurt + anything. A program that limits a luser to a carefully restricted subset + of the capabilities of the host system (for example, the + rsh(1) + utility on USG Unix). Note that this is different from an + iron box because it is overt and not aimed at enforcing security so + much as protecting others (and the luser) from the consequences of the + luser's boundless naivete (see naive). Also + padded cell environment.
[MIT]
1. To become aware of one's surroundings again after having paged + out (see page out). Usually confined to the + sarcastic comment: “Eric pages in, + film at 11!”
2. Syn. swap in; see + swap.
[MIT]
1. To become unaware of one's surroundings temporarily, due to + daydreaming or preoccupation. “Can you repeat that? I paged out for + a minute.” See page in. Compare + glitch, thinko.
2. Syn. swap out; see + swap.
A flamer.
Hackish way of referring to the postal service, analogizing it to a + very slow, low-reliability network. Usenet + sig blocks sometimes include a “Paper-Net:” header + just before the sender's postal address; common variants of this are + “Papernet” and “P-Net”. Note that the standard + netiquette guidelines discourage this practice as a + waste of bandwidth, since netters are quite unlikely to casually use postal + addresses. Compare voice-net, + snail-mail.
[common] Shorthand for parameter. See also + parm; compare arg, + var.
What a followup follows up.
Little lapses of attention or (in more severe cases) consciousness, + usually brought on by having spent all night and most of the next day + hacking. “I need to go home and crash; I'm starting to get a lot of + parity errors.” Derives from a relatively common but nearly always + correctable transient error in memory hardware. It predates RAM; in fact, + this term is reported to have already have been in use in its jargon sense + back in the 1960s when magnetic cores ruled. Parity errors can also + afflict mass storage and serial communication lines; this is more serious + because not always correctable.
Further-compressed form of param. This term + is an IBMism, and written use is almost unknown + outside IBM shops; spoken /parm/ + is more widely distributed, but the synonym arg is + favored among hackers. Compare arg, + var.
1. To determine the syntactic structure of a sentence or other + utterance (close to the standard English meaning). “That was the one + I saw you.” “I can't parse that.”
2. More generally, to understand or comprehend. “It's very + simple; you just kretch the glims and then aos the zotz.” “I + can't parse that.”
3. Of fish, to have to remove the bones yourself. “I object + to parsing fish”, means “I don't want to get a whole fish, but + a sliced one is okay”. A parsed + fish has been deboned. There is some controversy over whether + unparsed should mean + ‘bony’, or also mean ‘deboned’.
An adhesive-backed label designed to be attached to a key on a + keyboard to indicate some non-standard character which can be accessed + through that key. Pasties are likely to be used in APL environments, where + almost every key is associated with a special character. A pastie on the R + key, for example, might remind the user that it is used to generate the + ρ character. The term properly refers to nipple-concealing devices + formerly worn by strippers in concession to indecent-exposure laws; compare + tits on a keyboard.
[Perl hackers] A notional token passed around among the members of a + project. Possession of the patch pumpkin means one has the exclusive + authority to make changes on the project's master source tree. The + implicit assumption is that pumpkin + holder status is temporary and rotates periodically among senior + project members.
This term comes from the Perl development community, but has been + sighted elsewhere. It derives from a stuffed-toy pumpkin that was passed + around at a development shop years ago as the access control for a shared + backup-tape drive.
An unused block of bits left in a binary so that it can later be + modified by insertion of machine-language instructions there (typically, + the patch space is modified to contain new code, and the superseded code is + patched to contain a jump or call to the patch space). The near-universal + use of compilers and interpreters has made this term rare; it is now + primarily historical outside IBM shops. See patch + (sense 4), zap (sense 4), + hook.
1. n. A temporary addition to a + piece of code, usually as a quick-and-dirty remedy + to an existing bug or misfeature. A patch may or may not work, and may or + may not eventually be incorporated permanently into the program. + Distinguished from a diff or + mod by the fact that a patch is generated by more + primitive means than the rest of the program; the classical examples are + instructions modified by using the front panel switches, and changes made + directly to the binary executable of a program originally written in an + HLL. Compare one-line fix. +
2. vt. To insert a patch into a + piece of code.
3. [in the Unix world] n. A + diff (sense 2).
4. A set of modifications to binaries to be applied by a patching + program. IBM operating systems often receive updates to the operating + system in the form of absolute hexadecimal patches. If you have modified + your OS, you have to disassemble these back to the source. The patches + might later be corrected by other patches on top of them (patches were said + to “grow scar tissue”). The result was often a convoluted + patch space and headaches galore.
5. [Unix] the + patch(1) + program, written by Larry Wall, which automatically applies a patch (sense + 3) to a set of source code.
There is a classic story of a tiger team + penetrating a secure military computer that illustrates the danger inherent + in binary patches (or, indeed, any patches that you can't — or don't + — inspect and examine before installing). They couldn't find any + trap doors or any way to penetrate security of IBM's + OS, so they made a site visit to an IBM office (remember, these were + official military types who were purportedly on official business), swiped + some IBM stationery, and created a fake patch. The patch was actually the + trapdoor they needed. The patch was distributed at about the right time + for an IBM patch, had official stationery and all accompanying + documentation, and was dutifully installed. The installation manager very + shortly thereafter learned something about proper procedures.
1. A bang path or explicitly routed Internet + address; a node-by-node specification of a link between two machines. + Though these are now obsolete as a form of addressing, they still show up + in diagnostics and trace headers occasionally (e.g. in NNTP headers). +
2. [Unix] A filename, fully specified relative to the root directory + (as opposed to relative to the current directory; the latter is sometimes + called a relative path). This is + also called a pathname.
3. [Unix and MS-DOS/Windows] The search + path, an environment variable specifying the directories in + which the shell (COMMAND.COM, under MS-DOS) should + look for commands. Other, similar constructs abound under Unix (for + example, the C preprocessor has a search + path it uses in looking for #include files).
1. [scientific computation] Used of a data set that is grossly + atypical of normal expected input, esp. one that exposes a weakness or bug + in whatever algorithm one is using. An algorithm that can be broken by + pathological inputs may still be useful if such inputs are very unlikely to + occur in practice.
2. When used of test input, implies that it was purposefully + engineered as a worst case. The implication in both senses is that the + data is spectacularly ill-conditioned or that someone had to explicitly set + out to break the algorithm in order to come up with such a crazy example. +
3. Also said of an unlikely collection of circumstances. “If + the network is down and comes up halfway through the execution of that + command by root, the system may just crash.” “Yes, but that's + a pathological case.” Often used to dismiss the case from + discussion, with the implication that the consequences are acceptable, + since they will happen so infrequently (if at all) that it doesn't seem + worth going to the extra trouble to handle that case (see sense 1).
(and poke) The commands in most microcomputer + BASICs for directly accessing memory contents at an absolute address; often + extended to mean the corresponding constructs in any + HLL (peek reads memory, poke modifies it). Much + hacking on small, non-MMU micros used to consist of peeking around memory, more or less at random, + to find the location where the system keeps interesting stuff. Long (and + variably accurate) lists of such addresses for various computers + circulated. The results of pokes at + these addresses may be highly useful, mildly amusing, useless but neat, or + (most likely) total lossage (see + killer poke).
Since a real operating system provides useful, + higher-level services for the tasks commonly performed with peeks and pokes + on micros, and real languages tend not to encourage low-level memory + groveling, a question like “How do I do a peek in C?” is + diagnostic of the newbie. (Of course, OS kernels + often have to do exactly this; a real kernel hacker would unhesitatingly, + if unportably, assign an absolute address to a pointer variable and + indirect through it.)
An archaic information storage and transmission device that works by + depositing smears of graphite on bleached wood pulp. More recent + developments in paper-based technology include improved + ‘write-once’ update devices which use tiny rolling heads + similar to mouse balls to deposit colored pigment. All these devices + require an operator skilled at so-called ‘handwriting’ + technique. These technologies are ubiquitous outside hackerdom, but nearly + forgotten inside it. Most hackers had terrible handwriting to begin with, + and years of keyboarding tend to have encouraged it to degrade further. + Perhaps for this reason, hackers deprecate pencil-and-paper technology and + often resist using it in any but the most trivial contexts.
A person with no special (root or + wheel) privileges on a computer system. “I + can't create an account on foovax for you; I'm only a + peon there.”
[From the code in C's + printf(3) + library function used to insert an arbitrary string argument] An + unspecified person or object. “I was just talking to some percent-s + in administration.” Compare random.
Syn. chad (sense 1). The term perfory /perf@-ree/ is also heard. The term + perf may also refer to the perforations themselves, + rather than the chad they produce when torn (philatelists use it this + way).
Arrogance; the egotistical conviction that one is above normal human + error. Most frequently found among programmers of some native ability but + relatively little experience (especially new graduates; their perceptions + may be distorted by a history of excellent performance at solving + toy problems). “Of course my program is + correct, there is no need to test it.” “Yes, I can see there + may be a problem here, but I'll never type rm -r / while in + root mode.”
[University of California at Santa Cruz] Used when referring to a + person with no network address, frequently to + forestall confusion. Most often as part of an introduction: “This is + Bill, a person of no account, but he used to be bill@random.com”. + Compare return from the dead.
[Latin-based antonym for optimal] Maximally bad. “This is a + pessimal situation.” Also pessimize vt. To make as bad as possible. These words are + the obvious Latin-based antonyms for optimal and optimize, but for some reason they do not + appear in most English dictionaries, although ‘pessimize’ is + listed in the OED.
[antonym of techspeak ‘optimizing compiler’] A compiler + that produces object code that is worse than the straightforward or obvious + hand translation. The implication is that the compiler is actually trying + to optimize the program, but through excessive cleverness is doing the + opposite. A few pessimizing compilers have been written on purpose, + however, as pranks or burlesques.
[SI] See quantifiers.
[IRC] A metamorphic expletive which can be used to convey emotion, + particularly shock or surprise, disgust or anger. The amplitude of the + reaction can be measured by counting intermediary fs. For example:
+<jrandom> someone stole my hotdog +<fred> pffft + +<frodo> Cthulhu stole my hotdog +<joe> pffffffffffffft! + |
A program that modifies other programs or databases in unauthorized + ways; esp. one that propagates a virus or + Trojan horse. See also worm, + mockingbird. The analogy, of course, is with phage + viruses in biology.
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. “This feature depends on having the channel open in + mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the + moon.” See also heisenbug.
True story: Once upon a time there was a program bug that really did + depend on the phase of the moon. There was a little subroutine that had + traditionally been used in various programs at 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 line of the message + would be too long 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 timestamp was printed, and so + the 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 since been described as + the phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.
However, beware of assumptions. A few years ago, engineers of CERN + (European Center for Nuclear Research) were baffled by some errors in + experiments conducted with the LEP particle accelerator. As the formidable + amount of data generated by such devices is heavily processed by computers + before being seen by humans, many people suggested the software was somehow + sensitive to the phase of the moon. A few desperate engineers discovered + the truth; the error turned out to be the result of a tiny change in the + geometry of the 27km circumference ring, physically caused by the + deformation of the Earth by the passage of the Moon! This story has + entered physics folklore as a Newtonian vengeance on particle physics and + as an example of the relevance of the simplest and oldest physical laws to + the most modern science.
[MIT] Syn. wrap around, sense 2.
1. n. The offset of one's + waking-sleeping schedule with respect to the standard 24-hour cycle; 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 much as 6 + hours per day on a regular basis. “What's your phase?” + “I've been getting in about 8PM lately, but I'm going to + wrap around to the day schedule by Friday.” A + person who is roughly 12 hours out of phase is sometimes said to be in + night mode. (The term day mode is also (but less frequently) used, + meaning you're working 9 to 5 (or, more likely, 10 to 6).) The act of + altering one's cycle is called changing + phase; phase shifting has + also been recently reported from Caltech.
2. change phase the hard way: + To stay awake for a very long time in order to get into a different phase. +
3. change phase the easy way: + To stay asleep, etc. However, some claim that either staying awake longer + or sleeping longer is easy, and that it is shortening + your day or night that is really hard (see + wrap around). The ‘jet lag’ that afflicts travelers who + cross many time-zone boundaries may be attributed to two distinct causes: + the strain of travel per se, and the strain of changing phase. Hackers who + suddenly find that they must change phase drastically in a short period of + time, particularly the hard way, experience something very like jet lag + without traveling.
[from ‘phone phreak’]
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 communications networks) (see + cracking).
At one time 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 crossover between the hacker community and the + 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 the hands of less responsible phreaks. Around + 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 and punishments of gangs like the ‘414 group’ 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.
[SI: a quantifier meaning 10-12] + 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. See also + quantifiers, micro-.
[radio hams] A short piece of cable with two connectors on each end + for converting between one connector type and another. Common pig-tails + are 9-to-25-pin serial-port converters and cables to connect PCMCIA network + cards to an RJ-45 network cable.
[Sun: from aviation] 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, + that's pilot error. His sendmail.cf is + hosed.” Compare PEBKAC, + UBD, ID10T.
A form of DoS attack consisting of a flood of + ping requests (normally used to check network + conditions) designed to disrupt the normal activity of a system. This act + is sometimes called ping lashing or + ping flood. Compare + mail storm, broadcast storm.
[from 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 alertness of another. The Unix + command + ping(8) + can be used to do this manually (note that + ping(8)'s + author denies the widespread folk etymology that the name was ever intended + as an acronym for ‘Packet INternet Groper’). Occasionally used + as a phone greeting. See ACK, also + ENQ.
2. vt. To verify the presence + of.
3. vt. To get the attention of. +
4. vt. To send a message to all + members of a mailing list requesting an + ACK (in 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.” +
5. n. A quantum packet of + happiness. People who are very happy tend to exude pings; furthermore, one + can intentionally create pings and aim them at a needy party (e.g., a + depressed person). This sense of ping may appear as an exclamation; + “Ping!” (I'm happy; I am emitting a quantum of happiness; I + have been struck by a quantum of happiness). The form + “pingfulness”, which is used to describe people who exude + pings, also occurs. (In the standard abuse of language, + “pingfulness” can also be used as an exclamation, in which + case it's a much stronger exclamation than just “ping”!). + Oppose blargh.
The funniest use of ‘ping’ to date was +described in January 1991 by Steve Hayman on the Usenet group +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 through. So he used the +sound-recording feature 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 ... ping ...” as long as the +network was up. He turned the volume to maximum, ferreted through the +building with one ear cocked, and found a faulty tee connector in no +time.
[spamfighters: from the color of the tinned meat] A contract from an + Internet service provider to a spammer exempting the spammer from the usual + terms of service prohibiting spamming. Usually pink contracts come about + because ISPs can charge the spammer a great deal more than they would a + normal client.
[from the pink PTFE wire used in military equipment] As + blue wire, but used in military + applications.
2. vi. To add a pink wire to a + board.
[common] Idiomatically, one's connection to the Internet; in + context, the expansion “bit pipe” is understood. A “fat + pipe” is a line with T1 or higher capacity. A person with a 28.8 + modem might be heard to complain “I need a bigger + pipe”.
[IBM] A tool that makes it all too easy for you to shoot yourself in + the foot. “Unix rm * makes such a + nice pistol!”
[Commodore users] Any compression routine which irretrievably loses + valuable data in the process of crunching it. + Disparagingly used for ‘lossy’ methods such as JPEG. The + theory, of course, is that these methods are only used on photographic + images in which minor loss-of-data is not visible to the human eye. The + term pixel sort implies distrust of + this theory. Compare bogo-sort.
[Sun] 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 be called pizzas, + and the huge drive 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.
[XEROX PARC] A ‘special effect’ that occurs when certain + kinds of memory smashes overwrite the control blocks + or image memory of a bit-mapped display. The term “salt and + pepper” may refer to a different pattern of similar origin. Though + the term as coined at PARC refers to the result of an error, some of the + X demos induce plaid-screen effects deliberately as + a display hack.
Syn. flat-ASCII.
[Unix] 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-future + plans, but has been turned almost universally to humorous and + self-expressive purposes (like a sig block). See + also Hacking X for Y.
A recent innovation in plan files has been the introduction of + “scrolling plan files” which are one-dimensional animations + made using only the printable ASCII character set, carriage return and line + feed, avoiding terminal specific escape sequences, since the + finger command will (for security reasons; see + letterbomb) not pass the escape character.
Scrolling .plan files have become art forms in miniature, and some + sites have started competitions to find who can create the longest running, + funniest, and most original animations. Various animation characters + include:
| Centipede: | mmmmme |
| Lorry/Truck: | oo-oP |
| Andalusian Video Snail: | _@/ |
and a compiler (ASP) is available on + Usenet for producing them. See also + twirling baton.
Standard, against which all others of the same category are + measured. Usage: silly. The notion is that one of whatever it is has + actually been cast in platinum-iridium alloy and placed in the vault beside + the Standard Kilogram at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures + near Paris. (From 1889 to 1960, the meter was defined to be the distance + between two scratches in a platinum-iridium bar kept in that same vault + — this replaced an earlier definition as + 10-7 times the distance + between the North Pole and the Equator along a meridian through Paris; + unfortunately, this had been based on an inexact value of the circumference + of the Earth. From 1960 to 1984 it was defined to be 1650763.73 + wavelengths of the orange-red line of krypton-86 propagating in a vacuum. + It is now defined as the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum + in the time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. The kilogram is now the + only unit of measure officially defined in terms of a unique artifact. But + this will have to change; in 2003 it was revealed that the reference + kilogram has been shedding mass over time, and is down by 50 micrograms.) + “This garbage-collection algorithm has been tested against the + platinum-iridium cons cell in Paris.” Compare + golden.
[IBM] A room where programmers work. Compare + salt mines.
16 bits, by analogy with nybble and + byte. Usage: rare and extremely silly. See also + dynner and crumb. General + discussion of such terms is under nybble.
[acronym: Press Lots Of Keys To Abort] To press random keys in an + attempt to get some response from the system. One might plokta when the + abort procedure for a program is not known, or when trying to figure out if + the system is just sluggish or really hung. Plokta can also be used while + trying to figure out any unknown key sequence for a particular operation. + Someone going into plokta mode + usually places both hands flat on the keyboard and mashes them down, hoping + for some useful response.
A slightly more directed form of plokta can often be seen in mail + messages or Usenet articles from new users — the text might end + with
+ ^X^C + q + quit + :q + ^C + end + x + exit + ZZ + ^D + ? + help + |
as the user vainly tries to find the right exit sequence, with the + incorrect tries piling up at the end of the message....
[Usenet: possibly influenced by British slang ‘plonk’ + for cheap booze, or ‘plonker’ for someone behaving stupidly + (latter is lit. equivalent to Yiddish + schmuck)] The sound a + newbie makes as he falls to the bottom of a + kill file. While it originated in the + newsgroup talk.bizarre, this term (usually written + “*plonk*”) is now (1994) widespread on Usenet as a form of + public ridicule.
Parody of the techspeak term plug-and-play, describing a PC peripheral card + which is claimed to have no need for hardware configuration via jumpers or + DIP switches, and which should work as soon as it is inserted in the PC. + Unfortunately, even the PCI bus is all too often not up to pulling this off + reliably, and people who have to do installation or troubleshoot PCs soon + find themselves longing for the jumpers and switches.
[Unix] Term used for shell code, so called + because of the prevalence of pipelines that feed the output of one program + to the input of another. Under Unix, user utilities can often be + implemented or at least prototyped by a suitable collection of pipelines + and temp-file grinding encapsulated in a shell script; this is much less + effort than writing C every time, and the capability is considered one of + Unix's major winning features. A few other OSs such as IBM's VM/CMS + support similar facilities. Esp.: used in the construction hairy plumbing (see + hairy). “You can kluge together a basic + spell-checker out of + sort(1), + comm(1), + and + tr(1) + with a little plumbing.” See also tee.
Parody of the techspeak term point-and-click interface, describing a + windows, icons, and mouse-based interface such as is found on the + Macintosh. The implication, of course, is that such an interface is only + suitable for idiots. See for the rest of us, + WIMP environment, Macintrash, + drool-proof paper. Also point-and-grunt interface.
[common] A minor release of a software project, especially one + intended to fix bugs or do minor cleanups rather than add features. The + term implies that such releases are relatively frequent, and is generally + used with respect to open source projects being + developed in bazaar mode.
[after the character in the Dilbert comic + strip] Describes the extreme form of the property that separates + suits and marketroids from + hackers. Compare brain-dead; + demented; see PHB. Always + applied to people, never to ideas. The plural form is often used as a + noun. “The pointy-haireds ordered me to use Windows NT, but I set up + a Linux server with Samba instead.”
See wizard hat. This synonym specifically + refers to the wizards of Unseen University in Terry Pratchett's + Discworld series of humorous fantasies; these books + are extremely popular among hackers.
See peek.
1. [techspeak] The action of checking the status of an input line, + sensor, or memory location to see if a particular external event has been + registered.
2. To repeatedly call or check with someone: “I keep polling + him, but he's not answering his phone; he must be swapped out.” +
3. To ask. “Lunch? I poll for a takeout order + daily.”
A chip designer who spends most of his or her time at the physical + layout level (which requires drawing lots of + multi-colored polygons). Also rectangle + slinger.
1. A hairstyle in which long hair is held back so as to hang down + like a pony's tail.
2. A descriptive term for a man having a ponytail hairstyle, or such + character traits as might be associated with having a ponytail, eg: + effeminacy, narcissism, undue concern with fashion etc.
3. A general term used by hackers for 'creatives': advertising + copywriters, graphic designers, video compositors, users characterised by a + preference for the Macintosh, recreational drug use, and better sex lives + than programmers.
4. A derogatory term for web designers and other persons + peripherally associated with IT projects, devoid of programming skills and + dismissed as being concerned with visual presentation to the exclusion of + actual technical reality.
[from the operation that removes the top of a stack, and the fact + that procedure return addresses are usually saved on the stack] (also + capitalized ‘POP’)
1. vt. To remove something from + a stack. If a person says he/she has popped + something from his stack, that means he/she has finally finished working on + it and can now remove it from the list of things hanging overhead.
2. When a discussion gets to a level of detail so deep that the main + point of the discussion is being lost, someone will shout + “Pop!”, meaning “Get back up to a higher level!” + The shout is frequently accompanied by an upthrust arm with a finger + pointing to the ceiling.
3. [all-caps, as ‘POP’] Point of Presence, a bank of + dial-in lines allowing customers to make (local) calls into an ISP. This + is borderline techspeak.
[from French poseur] A + wannabee; not hacker slang, but used among crackers, + phreaks and warez d00dz. Not as negative as + lamer or leech. Probably + derives from a similar usage among punk-rockers and metalheads, putting + down those who “talk the talk but don't walk the walk”.
To send a message to a mailing list or + newsgroup. Distinguished in context from mail; one might ask, for example: “Are + you going to post the patch or mail it to known users?”
A kind of shareware that borders on + freeware, in that the author requests only that + satisfied users send a postcard of their home town or something. (This + practice, silly as it might seem, serves to remind users that they are + otherwise getting something for nothing, and may also be psychologically + related to real estate ‘sales’ in which $1 changes hands just + to keep the transaction from being a gift.)
Noun corresp. to v.: post (but note that + post can be nouned). Distinguished from a + ‘letter’ or ordinary email message by + the fact that it is broadcast rather than point-to-point. It is not clear + whether messages sent to a small mailing list are postings or email; + perhaps the best dividing line is that if you don't know the names of all + the potential recipients, it is a posting.
The email contact and maintenance person at a site connected to the + network. Often, but not always, the same as the + admin. The Internet standard for electronic mail + (RFC-822) requires each machine to have a + ‘postmaster’ address; usually it is aliased to this + person.
Syn. bang on.
(also, cycle power or just + cycle) To power off a machine and + then power it on immediately, with the intention of clearing some kind of + hung or gronked state. See + also Big Red Switch. Compare + Vulcan nerve pinch, bounce (sense 4), and + boot, and see the + Some AI Koans (in Appendix A) + about Tom Knight and the novice.
A spike or drop-out in the electricity supplying your machine; a + power glitch. These can cause crashes and even + permanent damage to your machine(s).
[Usenet, IRC] Pornography. Originally this referred only to + Internet porn but since then it has expanded to refer to just about any + kind. The term comes from the warez kiddies + tendency to replace letters with numbers. At some point on IRC someone + mistyped, swapping the middle two characters, and the name stuck. It then + propagated over into mainstream hacker usage. New versions of the Mozilla + web browser internally refer to the image library as + “libpr0n”. Compare filk, + grilf, hing and + newsfroup.
[C programmers] Coding error in an expression due to unexpected + grouping of arithmetic or logical operators by the compiler. Used esp. of + certain common coding errors in C due to the nonintuitively low precedence + levels of &, |, ^, <<, and >> (for this reason, experienced C programmers + deliberately forget the language's baroque + precedence hierarchy and parenthesize defensively). Can always be avoided + by suitable use of parentheses. LISP fans enjoy + pointing out that this can't happen in their favorite + language, which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit + parentheses everywhere. See aliasing bug, + memory leak, memory smash, + smash the stack, + fandango on core, overrun screw.
[Usenet; orig. fr. the Island MUD via Oxford University] Abbreviation + for “predictable”, used to signify or preempt responses that + are extremely predictable but have to be filled in for the sake of form + (the phrase is bracketed by <pred>...</pred>). X-Pred headers + in mail or news serve the same end. Figuring out the connection between + the X-Pred tagline and the thread is part of the entertainment. For + example, it is said that any thread about taxation must contain a reference + to Raquel Welch, if only to stop other people from mentioning her. This is + allegedly due to a Monty Python sketch where a character declares that he + would tax Raquel Welch, and he has a feeling she would tax him.
[by analogy with ‘append’] To prefix. As with + ‘append’ (but not ‘prefix’ or ‘suffix’ + as a verb), the direct object is always the thing being added and not the + original word (or character string, or whatever). “If you prepend a + semicolon to the line, the translation routine will pass it through + unaltered.”
1. The act of putting something into digital notation via sleight of + hand.
2. Data entry through legerdemain.
[scientific computation] The next step up from + numbers. Interesting graphical output from a + program that may not have any sensible relationship to the system the + program is intended to model. Good for showing to + management.
(alt.: pretty-print)
1. To generate ‘pretty’ human-readable output from a + hairy internal representation; esp. used for the + process of grinding (sense 1) program code, and most + esp. for LISP code.
2. To format in some particularly slick and nontrivial way.
[Mac users] See feature key.
[TMRC; obs.] The select group of system managers responsible for the + operation and maintenance of a batch computer system. On these computers, + a user never had direct access to a computer, but had to submit his/her + data and programs to a priest for execution. Results were returned days or + even weeks later.
[from TV programming] Normal high-usage hours on a system or + network. Back in the days of big timesharing machines ‘prime + time’ was when lots of people were competing for limited cycles, + usually the day shift. Avoidance of prime time was traditionally given as + a major reason for night mode hacking. The term + fell into disuse during the early PC era, but has been revived to refer to + times of day or evening at which the Internet tends to be heavily loaded, + making Web access slow. The hackish tendency to late-night + hacking runs has changed not a bit.
To output, even if to a screen. If a hacker says that a program + “printed a message”, he means this; if he refers to printing a + file, he probably means it in the conventional sense of writing to a + hardcopy device (compounds like ‘print job’ and + ‘printout’, on the other hand, always refer to the + latter). This very common term is likely a holdover from the days when + printing terminals were the norm, perpetuated by programming language + constructs like C's + printf(3). + See senses 1 and 2 of tty.
[XEROX PARC] A protracted, low-level, time-consuming, generally + pointless discussion of something only peripherally interesting to + all.
[from the hardware term] Describes any stimulus compelling enough to + yank one right out of hack mode. Classically used + to describe being dragged away by an SO for + immediate sex, but may also refer to more mundane interruptions such as a + fire alarm going off in the near vicinity. Also called an + NMI (non-maskable interrupt), especially in + PC-land.
1. A control file for a program, esp. a text file automatically + read from each user's home directory and intended to be easily modified by + the user in order to customize the program's behavior. Used to avoid + hardcoded choices (see also + dot file, rc file).
2. [techspeak] A report on the amounts of time spent in each routine + of a program, used to find and tune away the + hot spots in it. This sense is often verbed. Some + profiling modes report units other than time (such as call counts) and/or + report at granularities other than per-routine, but the idea is similar. + 3.[techspeak] A subset of a standard used for a particular purpose. This + sense confuses hackers who wander into the weird world of ISO standards no + end!
[University of Wisconsin] The euphoria experienced upon the + completion of a program or other computer-related project. For example, + the rush you get when you finally run the code you've been hacking for the + past week and it works first time. (The quality of the experience is + directly proportional to the complexity of the code and inversely + proportional to the amount of debugging it took to get the code working.) + Compare geekasm.
1. Any computer program that is considered a full + application.
2. Any computer program that is made up of or otherwise contains + proglets.
3. Any computer program that is large enough to be normally + distributed as an RPM or tarball.
[UK] A short extempore program written + to meet an immediate, transient need. Often written in BASIC, rarely more + than a dozen lines long, and containing no subroutines. The largest amount + of code that can be written off the top of one's head, that does not need + any editing, and that runs correctly the first time (this amount varies + significantly according to one's skill and the language one is using). + Compare toy program, noddy, + one-liner wars.
1. A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's + input into error messages.
2. An exercise in experimental epistemology.
3. A form of art, ostensibly intended for the instruction of + computers, which is nevertheless almost inevitably a failure if other + programmers can't understand it.
1. Coffee.
2. Cola.
3. Any caffeinacious stimulant. Many hackers consider these + essential for those all-night hacking runs. See + wirewater.
1. The art of debugging a blank sheet of paper (or, in these days of + on-line editing, the art of debugging an empty file). “Bloody + instructions which, being taught, return to plague their inventor” + (Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7)
2. A pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with + fewer opportunities for reward.
3. The most fun you can have with your clothes on.
4. The least fun you can have with your clothes off.
Used by hackers, this is syn. with geek. + Non-hackers sometimes use it to describe all techies. Prob. derives from + SF fandom's tradition (originally invented by old-time fan Ray Faraday + Nelson) of propeller beanies as fannish insignia (though nobody actually + wears them except as a joke).
[Mac users] See feature key.
1. In marketroid-speak, superior; implies a + product imbued with exclusive magic by the unmatched brilliance of the + company's own hardware or software designers.
2. In the language of hackers and users, inferior; implies a product + not conforming to open-systems standards, and thus one that puts the + customer at the mercy of a vendor able to gouge freely on service and + upgrade charges after the initial sale has locked the customer in. Often + used in the phrase “proprietary crap”.
3. Synonym for closed-source or non-free, e.g. software issued + without license rights permitting the public to independently review, + develop and redistribute it.
Proprietary software should be distinguished from commercial + software. It is possible for software to be commercial (that is, intended + to make a profit for the producers) without being proprietary. The + reverse is also possible, for example in binary-only freeware.
As used by hackers, this never refers to niceties about the proper + form for addressing letters to the Papal Nuncio or the order in which one + should use the forks in a Russian-style place setting; hackers don't care + about such things. It is used instead to describe any set of rules that + allow different machines or pieces of software to coordinate with each + other without ambiguity. So, for example, it does include niceties about + the proper form for addressing packets on a network or the order in which + one should use the forks in the Dining Philosophers Problem. It implies + that there is some common message format and an accepted set of primitives + or commands that all parties involved understand, and that transactions + among them follow predictable logical sequences. See also + handshaking, + do protocol.
[common ironic mutation of preventive + maintenance] Actions performed upon a machine at regularly + scheduled intervals to ensure that the system remains in a usable state. + So called because it is all too often performed by a + field servoid who doesn't know what he is doing; such + ‘maintenance’ often induces problems, or + otherwise results in the machine's remaining in an + unusable state for an indeterminate amount of time. + See also scratch monkey.
[Unix] A daemon that is run periodically + (typically once a week) to seek out and erase core + files, truncate administrative logfiles, nuke lost+found directories, and otherwise clean up the + cruft that tends to pile up in the corners of a file + system. See also reaper, + skulker.
[Usenet: truncation of ‘pseudonym’]
1. An electronic-mail or Usenet persona + adopted by a human for amusement value or as a means of avoiding negative + repercussions of one's net.behavior; a ‘nom de Usenet’, often + associated with forged postings designed to conceal message origins. + Perhaps the best-known and funniest hoax of this type is + B1FF. See also tentacle. +
2. Notionally, a flamage-generating AI + program simulating a Usenet user. Many flamers have been accused of + actually being such entities, despite the fact that no AI program of the + required sophistication yet exists. However, in 1989 there was a famous + series of forged postings that used a phrase-frequency-based travesty + generator to simulate the styles of several well-known flamers; it was + based on large samples of their back postings (compare + Dissociated Press). A significant number of people + were fooled by the forgeries, and the debate over their authenticity was + settled only when the perpetrator came forward to publicly admit the + hoax.
A backgammon prime (six consecutive occupied points) with one point + missing. This term is an esoteric pun derived from number theory: a number + that passes a certain kind of “primality test” may be called a + pseudoprime (all primes pass any such + test, but so do some composite numbers), and any number that passes several + is, in some sense, almost certainly prime. The hacker backgammon usage + stems from the idea that a pseudoprime is almost as good as a prime: it + will do the same job unless you are unlucky.
A suit wannabee; a hacker who has decided + that he wants to be in management or administration and begins wearing + ties, sport coats, and (shudder!) suits voluntarily. It's his funeral. + See also lobotomy.
[UK] Syn. display hack. See also + smoking clover.
[TMRC] The elementary particle carrying the sinister force. The + probability of a process losing is proportional to the number of psytons + falling on it. Psytons are generated by observers, which is why demos are + more likely to fail when lots of people are watching. [This term appears + to have been largely superseded by bogon; see also + quantum bogodynamics. —ESR]
[NYU] (also pube directory + /pyoob' + d@rekt@ree/) The pub (public) directory on a machine that allows + FTP access. So called because it is the default + location for SEX (sense 1). “I'll have the + source in the pube directory by Friday.”
To decompress data that has been crunched by Huffman coding. At + least one widely distributed Huffman decoder program was actually + named ‘PUFF’, but these days it is usually + packaged with the encoder. Oppose huff, see + inflate.
See patch pumpkin.
Syn. for pumpkin holder; see + patch pumpkin.
[techspeak] (alt.: punch card) + The signature medium of computing's Stone Age, now + obsolescent. The punched card actually predated computers considerably, + originating in 1801 as a control device for mechanical looms. The version + patented by Hollerith and used with mechanical tabulating machines in the + 1890 U.S. Census was a piece of cardboard about 90 mm by 215 mm. There is + a widespread myth that it was designed to fit in the currency trays used + for that era's larger dollar bills, but recent investigations have + falsified this.
IBM (which originated as a tabulating-machine manufacturer) married + the punched card to computers, encoding binary information as patterns of + small rectangular holes; one character per column, 80 columns per card. + Other coding schemes, sizes of card, and hole shapes were tried at various + times.
The 80-column width of most character terminals is a legacy of the + IBM punched card; so is the size of the quick-reference cards distributed + with many varieties of computers even today. See + chad, chad box, + eighty-column mind, + green card, dusty deck, + code grinder.
[from the punch line of an old joke referring to American football: + “Drop back 15 yards and punt!”]
1. To give up, typically without any intention of retrying. + “Let's punt the movie tonight.” “I was going to hack all + night to get this feature in, but I decided to punt” may mean that + you've decided not to stay up all night, and may also mean you're not ever + even going to put in the feature.
2. More specifically, to give up on figuring out what the + Right Thing is and resort to an inefficient hack. +
3. A design decision to defer solving a problem, typically because + one cannot define what is desirable sufficiently well to frame an + algorithmic solution. “No way to know what the right form to dump + the graph in is — we'll punt that for now.”
4. To hand a tricky implementation problem off to some other section + of the design. “It's too hard to get the compiler to do that; let's + punt to the runtime system.”
5. To knock someone off an Internet or chat connection; a punter thus, is a person or program that does + this.
[IBM] Wire installed by Field Engineers to work around problems + discovered during testing or debugging. These are called ‘purple + wires’ even when (as is frequently the case) their actual physical + color is yellow.... Compare blue wire, + yellow wire, and + red wire.
[from the operation that puts the current information on a stack, + and the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on a stack] (Also + PUSH /push/ or PUSHJ /pushJ/, the latter based on the + PDP-10 procedure call instruction.)
1. To put something onto a stack. If one + says that something has been pushed onto one's stack, it means that the + Damoclean list of things hanging over ones's head has grown longer and + heavier yet. This may also imply that one will deal with it + before other pending items; otherwise one might say + that the thing was ‘added to my queue’.
2. vi. To enter upon a + digression, to save the current discussion for later. Antonym of + pop; see also stack.
[from the keycaps at the upper left] Pertaining to a standard + English-language typewriter keyboard (sometimes called the Sholes keyboard + after its inventor), as opposed to Dvorak or non-US-ASCII layouts or a + space-cadet keyboard or APL keyboard.
Historical note: The QWERTY layout is a fine example of a + fossil. It is sometimes said that it was designed + to slow down the typist, but this is wrong; it was designed to allow + faster typing — under a constraint now long + obsolete. In early typewriters, fast typing using nearby type-bars jammed + the mechanism. So Sholes fiddled the layout to separate the letters of + many common digraphs (he did a far from perfect job, though; + ‘th’, ‘tr’, ‘ed’, and ‘er’, + for example, each use two nearby keys). Also, putting the letters of + ‘typewriter’ on one line allowed it to be typed with particular + speed and accuracy for demos. The jamming problem + was essentially solved soon afterward by a suitable use of springs, but the + keyboard layout lives on.
The QWERTY keyboard has also spawned some unhelpful economic myths + about how technical standards get and stay established; see http://www.reasonmag.com/9606/Fe.QWERTY.html.
[Named for Captain Gym Z. Quirk, the first to raise it.] + “Objection! Assumes organ not in evidence!” Used in + news.admin.net-abuse.email to + point out that a comment assumes the presence of something whose existence + has not been proven, such as a spammer's brain or gonads. This is not used + to refer to things that are definitely proven not to + exist, such as a spammer's ethics. It's applicable to enough postings + there that a poster wishing to raise the objection often need merely say + “ObQuirk!”, an instance of the Ob- + convention.
2. A four-pack of anything (compare hex, + sense 2).
3. The rectangle or box glyph used in the APL language for various + arcane purposes mostly related to I/O. Former Ivy-Leaguers and Oxford + types are said to associate it with nostalgic memories of dear old + University.
1. On an MIT space-cadet keyboard, use of all + four of the shifting keys (control, meta, hyper, and super) while typing a + character key.
2. On a Stanford or MIT keyboard in raw mode, + use of four shift keys while typing a fifth character, where the four shift + keys are the control and meta keys on both sides of + the keyboard. This was very difficult to do! One accepted technique was + to press the left-control and left-meta keys with your left hand, the + right-control and right-meta keys with your right hand, and the fifth key + with your nose.
Quadruple-bucky combinations were very seldom used in practice, + because when one invented a new command one usually assigned it to some + character that was easier to type. If you want to imply that a program has + ridiculously many commands or features, you can say something like: + “Oh, the command that makes it spin the tapes while whistling + Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is quadruple-bucky-cokebottle.” See + double bucky, bucky bits, + cokebottle.
In techspeak and jargon, the standard metric prefixes used in the SI + (Systme International) conventions for scientific measurement have + dual uses. With units of time or things that come in powers of 10, such as + money, they retain their usual meanings of multiplication by powers of + 1000 = 10^3. But when used with bytes or + other things that naturally come in powers of 2, they usually denote + multiplication by powers of 1024 = 2^10.
Here are the SI magnifying prefixes, along with the corresponding + binary interpretations in common use:
+prefixdecimalbinary
+kilo-1000^11024^1=2^10=1,024
+mega-1000^21024^2=2^20=1,048,576
+giga-1000^31024^3=2^30=1,073,741,824
+tera-1000^41024^4=2^40=1,099,511,627,776
+peta-1000^51024^5=2^50=1,125,899,906,842,624
+exa-1000^61024^6=2^60=1,152,921,504,606,846,976
+zetta-1000^71024^7=2^70=1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424
+yotta-1000^81024^8=2^80=1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176
+
Here are the SI fractional prefixes:
+prefixdecimaljargonusage
+milli-1000^-1(seldomusedinjargon)
+micro-1000^-2smallorhuman-scale(seemicro-)
+nano-1000^-3evensmaller(seenano-)
+pico-1000^-4evensmalleryet(seepico-)
+femto-1000^-5(notusedinjargon—yet)
+atto-1000^-6(notusedinjargon—yet)
+zepto-1000^-7(notusedinjargon—yet)
+yocto-1000^-8(notusedinjargon—yet)
+
The prefixes zetta-, yotta-, zepto-, and yocto- have been included in + these tables purely for completeness and giggle value; they were adopted in + 1990 by the 19th Conference Generale des Poids et + Mesures. The binary peta- and exa- loadings, though well + established, are not in jargon use either — yet. The prefix milli-, + denoting multiplication by 1/1000, has + always been rare in jargon (there is, however, a standard joke about the + millihelen — notionally, the + amount of beauty required to launch one ship). See the entries on + micro-, pico-, and + nano- for more information on connotative jargon use + of these terms. ‘Femto’ and ‘atto’ (which, + interestingly, derive not from Greek but from Danish) have not yet acquired + jargon loadings, though it is easy to predict what those will be once + computing technology enters the required realms of magnitude (however, see + attoparsec).
There are, of course, some standard unit prefixes for powers of 10. + In the following table, the ‘prefix’ column is the + international standard prefix for the appropriate power of ten; the + ‘binary’ column lists jargon abbreviations and words for the + corresponding power of 2. The B-suffixed forms are commonly used for byte + quantities; the words ‘meg’ and ‘gig’ are nouns + that may (but do not always) pluralize with ‘s’.
+prefixdecimalbinarypronunciation}
+kilo-kK,KB,kay
+mega-MM,MB,megmeg
+giga-GG,GB,giggig,jig
+
Confusingly, hackers often use K or M as though they were suffix or + numeric multipliers rather than a prefix; thus “2K dollars”, + “2M of disk space”. This is also true (though less commonly) + of G.
Note that the formal SI metric prefix for 1000 is ‘k’; + some use this strictly, reserving ‘K’ for multiplication by + 1024 (KB is thus ‘kilobytes’).
K, M, and G used alone refer to quantities of bytes; thus, 64G is 64 + gigabytes and ‘a K’ is a kilobyte (compare mainstream use of + ‘a G’ as short for ‘a grand’, that is, $1000). + Whether one pronounces ‘gig’ with hard or soft ‘g’ + depends on what one thinks the proper pronunciation of ‘giga-’ + is.
Confusing 1000 and 1024 (or other powers of 2 and 10 close in + magnitude) — for example, describing a memory in units of 500K or + 524K instead of 512K — is a sure sign of the + marketroid. One example of this: it is common to + refer to the capacity of 3.5" floppies as ‘1.44 MB’ In + fact, this is a completely bogus number. The + correct size is 1440 KB, that is, 1440 * 1024 = 1474560 bytes. So the + ‘mega’ in ‘1.44 MB’ is compounded of two + ‘kilos’, one of which is 1024 and the other of which is 1000. + The correct number of megabytes would of course be 1440 / 1024 = 1.40625. + Alas, this fine point is probably lost on the world forever. [1993 update: + hacker Morgan Burke has proposed, to general approval on Usenet, the + following additional prefixes:
| groucho | 10^-30 |
| harpo | 10^-27 |
| harpi | 10^27 |
| grouchi | 10^30 |
We observe that this would leave the prefixes zeppo-, gummo-, and + chico- available for future expansion. Sadly, there is little immediate + prospect that Mr. Burke's eminently sensible proposal will be + ratified.]
A theory that characterizes the universe in terms of bogon sources + (such as politicians, used-car salesmen, TV evangelists, and + suits in general), bogon sinks (such as taxpayers + and computers), and bogosity potential fields. Bogon absorption, of + course, causes human beings to behave mindlessly and machines to fail (and + may also cause both to emit secondary bogons); however, the precise + mechanics of the bogon-computron interaction are not yet understood and + remain to be elucidated. Quantum bogodynamics is most often invoked to + explain the sharp increase in hardware and software failures in the + presence of suits; the latter emit bogons, which the former absorb. See + bogon, computron, + suit, psyton.
Here is a representative QBD theory: The bogon is a boson (integral + spin, +1 or -1), and has zero rest mass. In this respect it is very much + like a photon. However, it has a much greater momentum, thus explaining + its destructive effect on computer electronics and human nervous systems. + The corollary to this is that bogons also have tremendous inertia, and + therefore a bogon beam is deflected only with great difficulty. When the + bogon encounters its antiparticle, the cluon, they mutually annihilate each + other, releasing magic smoke. Furthermore 1 Lenat = 1 mole (6.022E23) of + bogons (see microLenat).
Two bits. This in turn comes from the ‘pieces of eight’ + famed in pirate movies — Spanish silver crowns that could be broken + into eight pie-slice-shaped ‘bits’ to make change. Early in + American history the Spanish coin was considered equal to a dollar, so each + of these ‘bits’ was considered worth 12.5 cents. Syn. + tayste, crumb, + quad. Usage: rare. General discussion of such + terms is under nybble.
1. n. The question mark + character (?, ASCII 0111111).
2. interj. What? Also + frequently verb-doubled as “Ques ques?” See + wall.
[common] Describes a crock put together under + time or user pressure. Used esp. when you want to convey that you think + the fast way might lead to trouble further down the road. “I can + have a quick-and-dirty fix in place tonight, but I'll have to rewrite the + whole module to solve the underlying design problem.” See also + kluge.
[from the name of the logician Willard van Orman Quine, via Douglas + Hofstadter] A program that generates a copy of its own source text as its + complete output. Devising the shortest possible quine in some given + programming language is a common hackish amusement. (We ignore some + variants of BASIC in which a program consisting of a single empty string + literal reproduces itself trivially.) Here is one classic quine:
+((lambda (x) + (list x (list (quote quote) x))) + (quote + (lambda (x) + (list x (list (quote quote) x))))) + |
This one works in LISP or Scheme. It's relatively easy to write + quines in other languages such as Postscript which readily handle programs + as data; much harder (and thus more challenging!) in languages like C + which do not. Here is a classic C quine for ASCII machines:
+char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main()
+{printf(f,34,f,34,10);}%c";
+main(){printf(f,34,f,34,10);}
+ |
For excruciatingly exact quinishness, remove the interior line + breaks. Here is another elegant quine in ANSI C:
+#define q(k)main(){return!puts(#k"\nq("#k")");}
+q(#define q(k)main(){return!puts(#k"\nq("#k")");})
+ |
Some infamous Obfuscated C Contest entries + have been quines that reproduced in exotic ways. There is an amusing + Quine Home + Page.
[by analogy with the mainstream phrase] To cite a relevant excerpt + from an appropriate bible. “I don't care if + rn gets it wrong; ‘Followup-To: + poster’ is explicitly permitted by RFC-1036. + I'll quote chapter and verse if you don't believe me.” See also + legalese, language lawyer, + RTFS (sense 2).
See coefficient of X.
[Mythically, from the Latin semi-deponent verb quuxo, quuxare, + quuxandum iri; noun form variously ‘quux’ (plural + ‘quuces’, anglicized to ‘quuxes’) and + ‘quuxu’ (genitive plural is ‘quuxuum’, for four + u-letters out of seven in all, using up all the ‘u’ letters in + Scrabble).]
1. Originally, a metasyntactic variable like + foo and foobar. Invented by + Guy Steele for precisely this purpose when he was young and naive and not + yet interacting with the real computing community. Many people invent such + words; this one seems simply to have been lucky enough to have spread a + little. In an eloquent display of poetic justice, it has returned to the + originator in the form of a nickname.
2. interj. See + foo; however, denotes very little disgust, and is + uttered mostly for the sake of the sound of it.
3. Guy Steele in his persona as ‘The Great Quux’, which + is somewhat infamous for light verse and for the ‘Crunchly’ + cartoons.
4. In some circles, used as a punning opposite of + ‘crux’. “Ah, that's the quux of the matter!” + implies that the point is not crucial (compare + tip of the ice-cube).
5. quuxy: adj. Of or pertaining + to a quux.
The fourth of the standard + metasyntactic variable, after baz and before the + quu(u...)x series. See foo, + bar, baz, + quux. This appears to be a recent mutation from + quux, and many versions (especially older versions) + of the standard series just run foo, + bar, baz, + quux, ....
Abbreviation: “Realtime Blackhole List”. A service that + allows people to blacklist sites for emitting spam, + and makes the blacklist available in real time to electronic-mail transport + programs that know how to use RBL so they can filter out mail from those + sites. Drastic (and controversial) but effective. There is an RBL home page.
Common spoken and written shorthand for + regexp.
Hacker's-eye introduction traditionally included in the top-level + directory of a Unix source distribution, containing a pointer to more + detailed documentation, credits, miscellaneous revision history, notes, + etc. In the Mac and PC worlds, software is not usually distributed in + source form, and the README is more likely to contain user-oriented + material like last-minute documentation changes, error workarounds, and + restrictions. When asked, hackers invariably relate the README convention + to the famous scene in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In + Wonderland in which Alice confronts magic munchies labeled + “Eat Me” and “Drink Me”.
The file may be named README, or READ.ME, or rarely ReadMe or + readme.txt or some other variant. The all-upper-case spellings, + however, are universal among Unix programmers. By ancient tradition, + real source files have all-lowercase names and all-uppercase is + reserved for metadata, comments, and grafitti. This is functional; + because 'A' sorts before 'a' in ASCII, the README will appear in directory + listings before any source file.
Syn. RTI
[Request For Comment] One of a long-established series of + numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by + commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix communities. + Perhaps the single most influential one has been RFC-822 (the Internet + mail-format standard). The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by + technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the + Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution + such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted + as standards.
The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact + standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has important + advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ANSI + or ISO. Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a + flourishing tradition of ‘joke’ RFCs; usually at least one a + year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs have + included 527 (“ARPAWOCKY”, R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973), + 748 (“Telnet Randomly-Lose Option”, Mark R. Crispin; 1 April + 1978), and 1149 (“A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on + Avian Carriers”, D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was + a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP-IP documentation + style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese, + describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrier + pigeon (since actually implemented; see Appendix A). See also + Infinite-Monkey Theorem.
The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work — they + frequently manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in + informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that + often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to + truly worldwide proportions.
1. [techspeak] Request For Enhancement (compare + RFC).
2. [from ‘Radio Free Europe’, Bellcore and Sun] Radio + Free Ethernet, a system (originated by Peter Langston) for broadcasting + audio among Sun SPARCstations over the ethernet.
[MUD community] Real Life. “Firiss laughs in RL” means + that Firiss's player is laughing. Compare + meatspace; oppose VR.
See Real Soon Now.
[Unix] Commonwealth Hackish variant of RTFM; + expands to ‘Read The Bloody Manual’. RTBM is often the entire + text of the first reply to a question from a newbie; + the second would escalate to + “RTFM”.
[Usenet: primarily written, by analogy with + RTFM] Abbrev. for ‘Read the FAQ!’, an + exhortation that the person addressed ought to read the newsgroup's + FAQ list before posting questions.
[Unix] Abbreviation for ‘Read The Fucking Binary’. Used + when neither documentation nor source for the problem at hand exists, and + the only thing to do is use some debugger or monitor and directly analyze + the assembler or even the machine code. “No source for the buggy + port driver? Aaargh! I hate proprietary operating + systems. Time to RTFB.”
Of the various RTF? forms, ‘RTFB’ is the least pejorative + against anyone asking a question for which RTFB is the answer; the anger + here is directed at the absence of both source and + adequate documentation.
[Unix] Abbreviation for ‘Read The Fucking Manual’. +
1. Used by gurus to brush off questions they + consider trivial or annoying. Compare + Don't do that then!.
2. Used when reporting a problem to indicate that you aren't just + asking out of randomness. “No, I can't figure + out how to interface Unix to my toaster, and yes, I have RTFM.” + Unlike sense 1, this use is considered polite. See also + FM, RTFAQ, + RTFB, RTFS, + STFW, RTM, all of which + mutated from RTFM, and compare UTSL.
[Unix]
1. imp. Abbreviation for + ‘Read The Fucking Source’. Variant form of + RTFM, used when the problem at hand is not + necessarily obvious and not answerable from the manuals — or the + manuals are not yet written and maybe never will be. For even trickier + situations, see RTFB. Unlike RTFM, the anger + inherent in RTFS is not usually directed at the person asking the question, + but rather at the people who failed to provide adequate documentation. +
2. imp. ‘Read The Fucking + Standard’; this oath can only be used when the problem area (e.g., a + language or operating system interface) has actually been codified in a + ratified standards document. The existence of these standards documents + (and the technically inappropriate but politically mandated compromises + that they inevitably contain, and the impenetrable + legalese in which they are invariably written, and + the unbelievably tedious bureaucratic process by which they are produced) + can be unnerving to hackers, who are used to a certain amount of ambiguity + in the specifications of the systems they use. (Hackers feel that such + ambiguities are acceptable as long as the Right + Thing to do is obvious to any thinking observer; sadly, this + casual attitude towards specifications becomes unworkable when a system + becomes popular in the Real World.) Since a hacker + is likely to feel that a standards document is both unnecessary and + technically deficient, the deprecation inherent in this term may be + directed as much against the standard as against the person who ought to + read it.
The mnemonic for the ‘return from interrupt’ instruction + on many computers including the 6502 and 6800. The variant RETI is found among Z80 hackers. Equivalent to + “Now, where was I?” or used to end a conversational + digression. See pop.
1. [Usenet: abbreviation for ‘Read The Manual’] Politer + variant of RTFM.
2. Robert Tappan Morris, perpetrator of the great Internet worm of + 1988 (see Great Worm); villain to many, naive hacker + gone wrong to a few. Morris claimed that the worm that brought the + Internet to its knees was a benign experiment that got out of control as + the result of a coding error. After the storm of negative publicity that + followed this blunder, Morris's username on ITS was hacked from RTM to + RTFM.
Abbreviation for ‘Read The Screen’. Mainly used by + hackers in the microcomputer world. Refers to what one would like to tell + the suit one is forced to explain an extremely + simple application to. Particularly appropriate when the suit failed to + notice the ‘Press any key to continue’ prompt, and wishes to + know ‘why won't it do anything’. Also seen as + ‘RTFS’ in especially deserving cases.
[rec.games.roguelike.angband; often abbreviated ‘RNG’] + The malign force which lurks behind the random number generator in + Angband (and by extension elsewhere). A dark god + that demands sacrifices and toys with its victims. “I just found a + really great item; I suppose the RNG is about to punish me...” + Apparently, Angband's random number generator occasionally gets locked in a + repetition, so you get something with a 3% chance happening 8 times in a + row. Improbable, but far too common to be pure chance. Compare + Shub-Internet.
[indirectly, from the book Real Men Don't Eat + Quiche] A particular sub-variety of hacker: one possessed of a + flippant attitude toward complexity that is arrogant even when justified by + experience. The archetypal Real + Programmer likes to program on the bare + metal and is very good at same, remembers the binary opcodes + for every machine he has ever programmed, thinks that HLLs are sissy, and + uses a debugger to edit his code because full-screen editors are for wimps. + Real Programmers aren't satisfied with code that hasn't been tuned into a + state of tenseness just short of rupture. Real + Programmers never use comments or write documentation: “If it was + hard to write”, says the Real Programmer, “it should be hard + to understand.” Real Programmers can make machines do things that + were never in their spec sheets; in fact, they are seldom really happy + unless doing so. A Real Programmer's code can awe with its fiendish + brilliance, even as its crockishness appalls. Real Programmers live on + junk food and coffee, hang line-printer art on their walls, and terrify the + crap out of other programmers — because someday, somebody else might + have to try to understand their code in order to change it. Their + successors generally consider it a Good Thing that + there aren't many Real Programmers around any more. For a famous (and + somewhat more positive) portrait of a Real Programmer, see The Story of Mel' in Appendix A. The term + itself was popularized by a letter to the editor in the July 1983 + Datamation titled Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal + by Ed Post, still circulating on Usenet and Internet in on-line + form.
Typing Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal into + a web search engine should turn up a copy.
[orig. from SF's fanzine community, popularized by Jerry Pournelle's + column in BYTE]
1. Supposed to be available (or fixed, or cheap, or whatever) real + soon now according to somebody, but the speaker is quite skeptical. +
2. When one's gods, fates, or other time commitments permit one to + get to it (in other words, don't hold your breath). Often abbreviated RSN. + Compare copious free time.
1. Those institutions at which ‘programming’ may be used + in the same sentence as ‘FORTRAN’, + ‘COBOL’, ‘RPG’, + ‘IBM’, ‘DBASE’, etc. Places + where programs do such commercially necessary but intellectually + uninspiring things as generating payroll checks and invoices.
2. The location of non-programmers and activities not related to + programming.
3. A bizarre dimension in which the standard dress is shirt and tie + and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5 (see + code grinder).
4. Anywhere outside a university. “Poor fellow, he's left MIT + and gone into the Real World.” Used pejoratively by those not in + residence there. In conversation, talking of someone who has entered the + Real World is not unlike speaking of a deceased person. It is also + noteworthy that on the campus of Cambridge University in England, there is + a gaily-painted lamp-post which bears the label ‘REALITY + CHECKPOINT’. It marks the boundary between university and the Real + World; check your notions of reality before passing. This joke is funnier + because the Cambridge ‘campus’ is actually coextensive with the + center of Cambridge town. See also fear and + loathing, mundane, and + uninteresting.
()
That which is compellingly the correct or + appropriate thing to use, do, say, etc. Often capitalized, always + emphasized in speech as though capitalized. Use of this term often implies + that in fact reasonable people may disagree. “What's the right thing + for LISP to do when it sees + (mod a + 0)? Should it return a, or give a divide-by-0 error?” Oppose + Wrong Thing.
[Cambridge] A batch job that does little, if any, real work, but + creates one or more copies of itself, breeding like rabbits. Compare + wabbit, fork bomb.
1. Any ceremonial action taken to correct a hardware problem, with + the expectation that nothing will be accomplished. This especially applies + to reseating printed circuit boards, reconnecting cables, etc. “I + can't boot up the machine. We'll have to wait for Greg to do his rain + dance.”
2. Any arcane sequence of actions performed with computers or + software in order to achieve some goal; the term is usually restricted to + rituals that include both an incantation or two and + physical activity or motion. Compare magic, + voodoo programming, + black art, cargo cult programming, + wave a dead chicken; see also + casting the runes.
Any of several series of technical manuals distinguished by cover + color. The original rainbow series was the NCSC security manuals (see + Orange Book). + These are now available via the web. + the term has also been commonly applied to the PostScript reference set. + Which books are meant by “the + rainbow series” unqualified is thus dependent on one's local + technical culture.
When one wishes to specify a large but random number of things, and + the context is inappropriate for N, certain numbers + are preferred by hacker tradition (that is, easily recognized as + placeholders). These include the following:
| 17 | Long described at MIT as ‘the least random number’; see also +23. This may be Discordian in origin, or it may be related to some in-jokes +about 17 and “yellow +pig” propagated by the mathematician Michael +Spivak. |
| 23 | Sacred number of Eris, Goddess of Discord (along with 17 and 5). |
| 37 | The most random two-digit number is 37, When groups of people are polled +to pick a “random number between 1 and 100”, the most commonly +chosen number is 37. |
| 42 | The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and +Everything (“what is 6 times 9”, correct in base 13). (This +answer is perhaps not completely fortuitous; in Kabbalism, the true +unspeakable name of God is said to have 42 characters.) + |
| 69 | From the sexual act. This one was favored in MIT's ITS culture. |
| 105 | 69 hex = 105 decimal, and 69 decimal = 105 octal. |
| 666 | In Christian mythology, the Number of the Beast. |
For further enlightenment, study the Principia + Discordia, + The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Joy of Sex, and + the Christian Bible (Revelation 13:18). See also + Discordianism or consult your pineal gland. See + also for values of.
1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical definition); weird. + “The system's been behaving pretty randomly.”
2. Assorted; undistinguished. “Who was at the + conference?” “Just a bunch of random business + types.”
3. (pejorative) Frivolous; unproductive; undirected. “He's + just a random loser.”
4. Incoherent or inelegant; poorly chosen; not well organized. + “The program has a random set of misfeatures.” “That's a + random name for that function.” “Well, all the names were + chosen pretty randomly.”
5. In no particular order, though deterministic. “The I/O + channels are in a pool, and when a file is opened one is chosen + randomly.”
6. Arbitrary. “It generates a random name for the scratch + file.”
7. Gratuitously wrong, i.e., poorly done and for no good apparent + reason. For example, a program that handles file name defaulting in a + particularly useless way, or an assembler routine that could easily have + been coded using only three registers, but redundantly uses seven for + values with non-overlapping lifetimes, so that no one else can invoke it + without first saving four extra registers. What + randomness!
8. n. A random hacker; used + particularly of high-school students who soak up computer time and + generally get in the way.
9. n. Anyone who is not a hacker + (or, sometimes, anyone not known to the hacker speaking); the noun form of + sense 2. “I went to the talk, but the audience was full of randoms + asking bogus questions”.
10. n. (occasional MIT usage) + One who lives at Random Hall. See also J. Random, + some random X.
11. [UK] Conversationally, a non sequitur or something similarly + out-of-the-blue. As in: “Stop being so random!” This sense + equates to ‘hatstand’, taken from the Viz comic character + “Roger Irrelevant - He's completely Hatstand.”
1. An inexplicable misfeature; gratuitous inelegance.
2. A hack or crock + that depends on a complex combination of coincidences (or, possibly, the + combination upon which the crock depends for its accidental failure to + malfunction). “This hack can output characters 40--57 by putting the + character in the four-bit accumulator field of an XCT and then extracting + six bits — the low 2 bits of the XCT opcode are the right + thing.” “What randomness!”
3. Of people, synonymous with flakiness. The connotation is that the person + so described is behaving weirdly, incompetently, or inappropriately for + reasons which are (a) too tiresome to bother inquiring into, (b) are + probably as inscrutable as quantum phenomena anyway, and (c) are likely to + pass with time. “Maybe he has a real complaint, or maybe it's just + randomness. See if he calls back.”
Despite the negative connotations of most jargon uses of this term + have, it is worth noting that randomness can actually be a valuable + resource, very useful for applications in cryptography and elsewhere. + Computers are so thoroughly deterministic that they have a hard time + generating high-quality randomness, so hackers have sometimes felt the need + to built special-purpose contraptions for this purpose alone. One + well-known website offers random bits generated by radioactive + decay. Another derives random bits from chaotic systems in analog electronics. + Originally, the latter site got its random bits by doing photometry on lava + lamps. Hackers invariably found this hilarious. If you have to ask why, + you'll never get it.)
1. To screw someone or something, violently; + in particular, to destroy a program or information irrecoverably. Often + used in describing file-system damage. “So-and-so was running a + program that did absolute disk I/O and ended up raping the master + directory.”
2. To strip a piece of hardware for parts.
3. [CMU/Pitt] To mass-copy files from an anonymous ftp site. + “Last night I raped Simtel's dskutl directory.”
[Unix] CBREAK mode (character-by-character with interrupts enabled). + Distinguished from raw mode and + cooked mode; the phrase “a sort of half-cooked (rare?) + mode” is used in the V7/BSD manuals to describe the mode. Usage: + rare.
[Cambridge] Specialized hardware for bitblt + operations (a blitter). Allegedly inspired by + ‘Rasta Blasta’, British slang for the sort of portable stereo + Americans call a ‘boom box’ or ‘ghetto + blaster’.
Eyestrain brought on by too many hours of looking at low-res, poorly + tuned, or glare-ridden monitors, esp. graphics monitors. See + terminal illness.
[portmanteau: raster + masturbation] The gratuitous use of + computer-generated images and effects in movies and graphic art which would + have been better without them. Especially employed as a term of abuse by + Photoshop/GIMP users and graphic artists.
A cable tie, esp. the sawtoothed, self-locking plastic kind that + you can remove only by cutting (as opposed to a random twist of wire or a + twist tie or one of those humongous metal clip frobs). Small cable ties + are mouse belts.
[From the Dilbert comic strip of November 14, + 1995] A hacking run that produces results which, + while superficially coherent, have little or nothing to do with its + original objectives. There are strong connotations that the coding process + and the objectives themselves were pretty random. + (In the original comic strip, the Ratbert is invited to dance on Dilbert's + keyboard in order to produce bugs for him to fix, and authors a Web browser + instead.) Compare Infinite-Monkey Theorem.
This term seems to have become widely recognized quite rapidly after + the original strip, a fact which testifies to Dilbert's huge popularity + among hackers. All too many find the perverse incentives and Kafkaesque + atmosphere of Dilbert's mythical workplace reflective of their own + experiences.
[from the English idiom “down a rathole” for a waste of + money or time] A technical subject that is known to be able to absorb + infinite amounts of discussion time without more than an infinitesimal + probability of arrival at a conclusion or consensus. “That's a + rathole” (or just “Rathole!”) is considered a + pre-emptive bid to change the subject. The difference between ratholes and + religious issues is that a holy war cannot be + pre-empted in this way. Canonical examples are XML namespaces and + open-source licensing.
[warez d00dz] An FTP site storing pirated files where one must first + upload something before being able to download. There is a ratio, based on + bytes or files count, between the uploads and download. For instance, on a + 2:1 site, to download a 4 Mb file, one must first upload at least 2 Mb of + files. The hotter the contents of the server are, the smaller the ratio + is. More often than not, the server refuses uploads because its disk is + full, making it useless for downloading — or the connection magically + breaks after one has uploaded a large amount of files, just before the + downloading phase begins. See also banner site, + leech mode.
Sarcastic invitation to continue a rave, + often by someone who wishes the raver would get a clue but realizes this is + unlikely.
[WPI]
1. To persist in discussing a specific subject.
2. To speak authoritatively on a subject about which one knows very + little.
3. To complain to a person who is not in a position to correct the + difficulty.
4. To purposely annoy another person verbally.
5. To evangelize. See flame.
6. Also used to describe a less negative form of blather, such as + friendly bullshitting. ‘Rave’ differs slightly from + flame in that rave implies that it is the persistence or + obliviousness of the person speaking that is annoying, while + flame implies somewhat more strongly that the tone + or content is offensive as well.
[primarily MIT/Boston usage] Jiao-zi (steamed or boiled) or Guo-tie + (pan-fried). A Chinese appetizer, known variously in the plural as + dumplings, pot stickers (the literal translation of guo-tie), and (around + Boston) ‘Peking Ravioli’. The term rav is short for ‘ravioli’, and + among hackers always means the Chinese kind rather than the Italian kind. + Both consist of a filling in a pasta shell, but the Chinese kind includes + no cheese, uses a thinner pasta, has a pork-vegetable filling (good ones + include Chinese chives), and is cooked differently, either by steaming or + frying. A rav or dumpling can be cooked any way, but a potsticker is + always the pan-fried kind (so called because it sticks to the frying pot + and has to be scraped off). “Let's get hot-and-sour soup and three + orders of ravs.” See also oriental + food.
A mode that allows a program to transfer bits directly to or from an + I/O device (or, under bogus operating systems that + make a distinction, a disk file) without any processing, abstraction, or + interpretation by the operating system. Compare + rare mode, cooked mode. This is techspeak + under Unix, jargon elsewhere.
[Unix: from runcom files on + the CTSS system 1962-63, via the startup script + /etc/rc] Script file containing startup instructions + for an application program (or an entire operating system), usually a text + file containing commands of the sort that might have been invoked manually + once the system was running but are to be executed automatically each time + the system starts up. See also dot file, + profile (sense 1).
Describes a luser who uses computers almost + exclusively for reading Usenet, bulletin boards, and/or email, rather than + writing code or purveying useful information. See + twink, terminal junkie, + lurker.
May be used for any critical resource measured in units of area. + Most frequently used of chip real + estate, the area available for logic on the surface of an + integrated circuit (see also nanoacre). May also be + used of floor space in a dinosaur pen, or even space + on a crowded desktop (whether physical or electronic).
The sort the speaker is used to. People from the BSDophilic + academic community are likely to issue comments like “System V? Why + don't you use a real operating system?”, people + from the commercial/industrial Unix sector are known to complain + “BSD? Why don't you use a real operating + system?”, and people from IBM object “Unix? Why don't you use + a real operating system?” Only + MS-DOS is universally considered unreal. See + holy wars, religious issues, + proprietary, + Get a real computer!
1. [techspeak] adj. Describes an + application which requires a program to respond to stimuli within some + small upper limit of response time (typically milli- or microseconds). + Process control at a chemical plant is the canonical + example. Such applications often require special operating systems + (because everything else must take a back seat to response time) and + speed-tuned hardware.
2. adv. In jargon, refers to + doing something while people are watching or waiting. “I asked her + how to find the calling procedure's program counter on the stack and she + came up with an algorithm in real time.”
1. A commercial user. One who is paying real + money for his computer usage.
2. A non-hacker. Someone using the system for an explicit purpose + (a research project, a course, etc.) other than pure exploration. See + user. Hackers who are also students may also be + real users. “I need this fixed so I can do a problem set. I'm not + complaining out of randomness, but as a real user.” See also + luser.
Not simulated. Often used as a specific antonym to + virtual in any of its jargon senses.
1. The simplest kind of test of software or hardware; doing the + equivalent of asking it what 2 + 2 is and + seeing if you get 4. The software equivalent of a + smoke test.
2. The act of letting a real user try out + prototype software. Compare sanity check.
An expression used to describe the persuasive ability of managers + like Steve Jobs (the term originated at Apple in the 1980s to describe his + peculiar charisma). Those close to these managers become passionately + committed to possibly insane projects, without regard to the practicality + of their implementation or competitive forces in the marketplace.
A prowler that removes + files. A file removed in this way is said to have been reaped.
The surprisingly large amount of work that needs to be done as the + result of any small but globally visible program change. “The + world” may mean the entirety of some huge program, or may in theory + refer to every program of a certain class in the entire known universe. For + instance, “Add one #define to stdio.h, and you have to recompile the + world.” This means that any minor change to the standard-I/O header + file theoretically mandates recompiling every C program in existence, even + if only to verify that the change didn't screw something else up. In + practice, you may not actually have to recompile the world, but the + implication is that some human cleverness is required to figure out what + parts can be safely left out.
See polygon pusher.
See recursion. See also + tail recursion.
A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose + acronyms/abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other + acronyms/abbreviations. The original of the breed may have been TINT + (“TINT Is Not TECO”). The classic examples were two MIT + editors called EINE (“EINE Is Not EMACS”) and ZWEI + (“ZWEI Was EINE Initially”). More recently, there is a Scheme + compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and + GNU (q.v., sense 1) stands for “GNU's Not + Unix!” — and a company with the name Cygnus, which expands to + “Cygnus, Your GNU Support” (though Cygnus people say this is a + backronym). The GNU recursive acronym may have been + patterned on XINU, “XINU Is Not Unix” — a particularly + nice example because it is a mirror image, a backronym, and a recursive + acronym. See also mung, + EMACS.
[IBM] Patch wires installed by programmers who have no business + mucking with the hardware. It is said that the only thing more dangerous + than a hardware guy with a code patch is a softy + with a soldering iron.... Compare + blue wire, yellow wire, + purple wire.
[Unix] (alt.: regex or + reg-ex)
1. Common written and spoken abbreviation for regular expression, one of the wildcard + patterns used, e.g., by Unix utilities such as + grep(1), + sed(1), + and + awk(1). + These use conventions similar to but more elaborate than those described + under glob. For purposes of this lexicon, it is + sufficient to note that regexps also allow complemented character sets + using ^; thus, one can specify ‘any non-alphabetic + character’ with [^A-Za-z].
2. Name of a well-known PD regexp-handling package in portable C, + written by revered Usenetter Henry Spencer.
Many older processor architectures suffer from a serious shortage of + general-purpose registers. This is especially a problem for + compiler-writers, because their generated code needs places to store + temporaries for things like intermediate values in expression evaluation. + Some designs with this problem, like the Intel 80x86, do have a handful of + special-purpose registers that can be pressed into service, providing + suitable care is taken to avoid unpleasant side effects on the state of the + processor: while the special-purpose register is being used to hold an + intermediate value, a delicate minuet is required in which the previous + value of the register is saved and then restored just before the official + function (and value) of the special-purpose register is again + needed.
[IRC, MUD] “Hello again.” Very commonly used to greet + people upon returning to an IRC channel after + channel hopping.
To design or implement a tool equivalent to an existing one or part + of one, with the implication that doing so is silly or a waste of time. + This is often a valid criticism. On the other hand, automobiles don't use + wooden rollers, and some kinds of wheel have to be reinvented many times + before you get them right. On the third hand, people reinventing the wheel + do tend to come up with the moral equivalent of a trapezoid with an offset + axle.
The hijacking of a third party's unsecured mail server to deliver + spam.
[Case Western Reserve University] Yet another hackish parody + religion (see also Church of the SubGenius, + Discordianism). In the mid-70s, the canonical + “Introduction to Programming” courses at CWRU were taught in + Algol, and student exercises were punched on cards and run on a Univac 1108 + system using a homebrew operating system named CHI. The religion had no + doctrines and but one ritual: whenever the worshiper noted that a digital + clock read 11:08, he or she would recite the phrase “It is 11:08; + ABS, ALPHABETIC, ARCSIN, ARCCOS, ARCTAN.” The last five words were + the first five functions in the appropriate chapter of the Algol manual; + note the special pronunciations /obz/ and /arksin/ rather than the more common + /ahbz/ and /arksi:n/. Using an alarm clock to warn + of 11:08's arrival was considered harmful.
Questions which seemingly cannot be raised without touching off + holy wars, such as “What is the best operating + system (or editor, language, architecture, shell, mail reader, news + reader)?”, “What about that Heinlein guy, eh?”, + “What should we add to the new Jargon File?” See + holy wars; see also theology, + bigot, and compare + rathole.
This term is a prime example of + ha ha only serious. People actually develop the most amazing and + religiously intense attachments to their tools, even when the tools are + intangible. The most constructive thing one can do when one stumbles into + the crossfire is mumble Get a life! and leave + — unless, of course, one's own unassailably + rational and obviously correct choices are being slammed.
Any construct that acts to produce copies of itself; this could be a + living organism, an idea (see meme), a program (see + quine, worm, + wabbit, fork bomb, and + virus), a pattern in a cellular automaton (see + life, sense 1), or (speculatively) a robot or + nanobot. It is even claimed by some that + Unix and C are the symbiotic + halves of an extremely successful replicator; see + Unix conspiracy.
See followup.
A bug or design error that limits a program's + capabilities, and which is sufficiently egregious that nobody can quite + work up enough nerve to describe it as a feature. + Often used (esp. by marketroid types) to make it + sound as though some crippling bogosity had been intended by the designers + all along, or was forced upon them by arcane technical constraints of a + nature no mere user could possibly comprehend (these claims are almost + invariably false).
Old-time hacker Joseph M. Newcomer advises that whenever choosing a + quantifiable but arbitrary restriction, you should make it either a power + of 2 or a power of 2 minus 1. If you impose a limit of 107 items in a + list, everyone will know it is a random number — on the other hand, a + limit of 15 or 16 suggests some deep reason (involving 0- or 1-based + indexing in binary) and you will get less flamage + for it. Limits which are round numbers in base 10 are always especially + suspect.
[short for ‘retroactive continuity’, from the Usenet + newsgroup rec.arts.comics] +
1. n. The common situation in + pulp fiction (esp. comics or soap operas) where a new story + ‘reveals’ things about events in previous stories, usually + leaving the ‘facts’ the same (thus preserving continuity) while + completely changing their interpretation. For example, revealing that 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 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. —ESR]
Refers to emulations of way-behind-the-state-of-the-art hardware or + software, or implementations of never-was-state-of-the-art; esp. if such + implementations are elaborate practical jokes and/or parodies, written + mostly for hack value, of more ‘serious’ + designs. Perhaps the most widely distributed retrocomputing utility was + the + pnch(6) + or + bcd(6) + program on V7 and other early Unix versions, which would accept up to 80 + characters of text argument and display the corresponding pattern in + punched card code. Other well-known retrocomputing + hacks have included the programming language + INTERCAL, a JCL-emulating + shell for Unix, the card-punch-emulating editor named 029, and various + elaborate PDP-11 hardware emulators and RT-11 OS emulators written just to + keep an old, sourceless Zork binary running.
A tasty selection of retrocomputing programs are made available at + the Retrocomputing Museum, http://www.catb.org/retro/.
To regain access to the net after a long absence. Compare + person of no account.
1. To extract the digital representation of a piece of music from an + audio CD. Software that does this is often called a “CD + ripper”.
2. [Amiga hackers] To extract sound or graphics from a program that + they have been compiled/assembled into, or which generates them at + run-time. In the case of older Amiga games this entails searching through + memory shortly after a reboot. This sense has been in use for many years + and probably gave rise to the (now more common) sense 1.
Synonym for chad, sense 1.
[Bell Labs] To destroy, esp. of a data structure. Hardware gets + toasted or fried, software + gets roached. Probably derived from '70s and '80s drug slang; marijuana + smokers used ‘roach’ to refer to the unsmokable remnant of a + joint, and to ‘roach’ a joint was therefore to destroy + it.
A program that monitors Usenet feeds, attempting to detect and + eliminate spam by sending appropriate cancel + messages. Robocancellers may use the + Breidbart Index as a trigger. Programming them is not a game for + amateurs; see ARMM. See also + Dave the Resurrector.
See bot.
Said of a system that has demonstrated an ability to recover + gracefully from the whole range of exceptional inputs and situations in a + given environment. One step below bulletproof. + Carries the additional connotation of elegance in addition to just careful + attention to detail. Compare smart, oppose + brittle.
Terminally baroque. Used to imply that a + program has become so encrusted with the software equivalent of gold leaf + and curlicues that they have completely swamped the underlying design. + Called after the later and more extreme forms of Baroque architecture and + decoration prevalent during the mid-1700s in Europe. Alan Perlis said: + “Every program eventually becomes rococo, and then rubble.” + Compare critical mass.
1. [Unix] n. A + Dungeons-and-Dragons-like game using character graphics, written under BSD + Unix and subsequently ported to other Unix systems. The original BSD + curses(3) + screen-handling package was hacked together by Ken Arnold primarily to + support games, and the development of + rogue(6) + popularized its use; it has since become one of Unix's most important and + heavily used application libraries. Nethack, Omega, Larn, Angband, and an + entire subgenre of computer dungeon games (all known as + ‘roguelikes’) all took off from the inspiration provided by + rogue(6); + the popular Windows game Diablo, though graphics-intensive, has very + similar play logic. See also nethack, + moria, Angband.
2. [Usenet] adj. An + ISP which permits net abuse (usually in the form of + spamming) by its customers, or which itself engages + in such activities. Rogue ISPs are sometimes subject to + IDPs or UDPs. Sometimes + deliberately misspelled as “rouge”.
[IBM] 80 or below (nominal room temperature is 72 degrees + Fahrenheit, 22 degrees Celsius). Used in describing the expected + intelligence range of the luser. “Well, but + how's this interface going to play with the room-temperature IQ + crowd?” See drool-proof paper. This is a + much more insulting phrase in countries that use Celsius + thermometers.
Syn. with wizard mode or wheel mode. Like these, it is often + generalized to describe privileged states in systems other than + OSes.
1. [Unix] The superuser account (with user + name ‘root’) that ignores permission bits, user number 0 on a + Unix system. The term avatar is also used.
2. The top node of the system directory structure; historically the + home directory of the root user, but probably named after the root of an + (inverted) tree.
3. By extension, the privileged system-maintenance login on any OS. + See root mode, go root, see + also wheel.
[very common] A kit for maintaining root; an + automated cracking tool. What script + kiddies use. After a cracker has first broken in and gained + root access, he or she will install modified binaries such as a modified + version login with a backdoor, or a version of + ps that will not report the cracker's + processes). This is a rootkit.
[Usenet: from ‘rotate alphabet 13 places’] The simple + Caesar-cypher encryption that replaces each English letter with the one 13 + places forward or back along the alphabet, so that “The butler did + it!” becomes “Gur ohgyre qvq vg!” Most Usenet news + reading and posting programs include a rot13 feature. It is used to + enclose the text in a sealed wrapper that the reader must choose to open + — e.g., for posting things that might offend some readers, or + spoilers. A major advantage of rot13 over + rot(N) for other N is that it is + self-inverse, so the same code can be used for encoding and decoding. See + also spoiler space, which has partly displaced rot13 + since non-Unix-based newsreaders became common.
[Commodore] Essential equipment for those late-night or + early-morning debugging sessions. Mainly used as sustenance for the + hacker. Comes in many decorator colors, such as Sausage, Pepperoni, and + Garbage. See ANSI standard pizza.
[sci.crypt newsgroup] The technique of breaking a code or cipher by + finding someone who has the key and applying a rubber hose vigorously and + repeatedly to the soles of that luckless person's feet until the key is + discovered. Shorthand for any method of coercion: the originator of the + term drily noted that it “can take a surprisingly short time and is + quite computationally inexpensive” relative to other cryptanalysis + methods. Compare social engineering, + brute force.
1. (of a program) Badly written.
2. Functionally poor, e.g., a program that is very difficult to use + because of gratuitously poor (random?) design decisions. Oppose + cuspy.
3. Anything that manipulates a shared resource without regard for + its other users in such a way as to cause a (non-fatal) problem. Examples: + programs that change tty modes without resetting them on exit, or windowing + programs that keep forcing themselves to the top of the window + stack.
1. Anything that requires heavy wizardry or + black art to parse: core + dumps, JCL commands, APL, or code in a language you haven't a clue how to + read. Not quite as bad as line noise, but close. + Compare casting the runes, + Great Runes.
2. Special display characters (for example, the high-half graphics + on an IBM PC).
3. [borderline techspeak] 16-bit characters from the Unicode + multilingual character set.
Syn. obscure. VMS fans sometimes refer to + Unix as ‘Runix’; Unix fans return the compliment by expanding + VMS to ‘Very Messy Syntax’ or ‘Vachement Mauvais + Systme’ (French idiom, “Hugely Bad + System”).
Syn. tired iron. It has been claimed that + this is the inevitable fate of water MIPS.
[Amateur Packet Radio] Any very noisy network medium, in which the + packets are subject to frequent corruption. Most prevalent in reference to + wireless links subject to all the vagaries of RF noise and marginal + propagation conditions. “Yes, but how good is your whizbang new + protocol on really rusty wire?”.
(also s/n ratio, s:n ratio). Syn. + signal-to-noise ratio. Often abbreviated SNR.
1. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab. An important site in + the early development of LISP; with the MIT AI Lab, BBN, CMU, XEROX PARC, + and the Unix community, one of the major wellsprings of technical + innovation and hacker-culture traditions (see the + WAITS entry for details). The SAIL machines were + shut down in late May 1990, scant weeks after the MIT AI Lab's ITS cluster + was officially decommissioned.
2. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Language used at SAIL (sense + 1). It was an Algol-60 derivative with a coroutining facility and some new + data types intended for building search trees and association lists.
[common] Sorry, Could Not Resist. Normally used to semi-apologize + for an obvious wisecrack.
[common among Mac users] SCSI interface + hardware is notoriously fickle of temperament. Often, the SCSI bus will + fail to work unless the cable order of devices is re-arranged, SCSI + termination is added or removed (sometimes double-termination or + no termination will fix the problem), or particular + devices are given particular SCSI IDs. The skills needed to trick the + naturally skittish demons of SCSI into working are collectively known as + SCSI voodoo. Compare magic, + deep magic, heavy wizardry, + rain dance, cargo cult programming, + wave a dead chicken, + voodoo programming.
While ordinary mortals frequently experience near-terminal + frustration when attempting to configure SCSI device chains, it is said + that a true master of this arcane art can (through rituals involving + chicken blood, ground rhino horn, hairs of a virgin, eye of newt, etc.) + hook up your personal computer with three scanners, a Zip drive, an IDE + hard drive, a home weather station, a Smith-Corona typewriter, and the + neighbor's garage door.
[Small Computer System Interface] A bus-independent standard for + system-level interfacing between a computer and intelligent devices. + Typically annotated in literature with ‘sexy’ (/seksee/), ‘sissy’ (/sisee/), and ‘scuzzy’ + (/skuhzee/) as pronunciation + guides — the last being the overwhelmingly predominant form, much to + the dismay of the designers and their marketing people. One can usually + assume that a person who pronounces it /S-C-S-I/ is clueless.
[TMRC, from ‘Light-Emitting Diode’] Smoke-emitting + diode. A friode that lost the war. See also + LER. [Not to be confused with sed(1), the Unix + stream editor. —ESR]
[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 popular among + hackers and others (of course, these are no longer limited to exchanges of + genetic software). In general, SEX parties are a + Good Thing, but unprotected SEX can propagate a + virus. See also + pubic directory.
2. The rather Freudian mnemonic often used for Sign EXtend, a + machine instruction found in the PDP-11 and many + other architectures. The RCA 1802 chip used in the early Elf and SuperElf + personal computers had a ‘SEt X register’ SEX instruction, but + this seems to have had little folkloric impact. The Data General + instruction set also had SEX.
DEC's engineers nearly got a + PDP-11 assembler that used the SEX mnemonic out the door at one time, but (for + once) marketing wasn't asleep and forced a change. That wasn't the last + time this happened, either. The author of The Intel 8086 + Primer, who was one of the original designers of the 8086, + noted that there was originally a SEX + instruction on that processor, too. He says that Intel management got cold + feet and decreed that it be changed, and thus the instruction was renamed + CBW and CWD + (depending on what was being extended). Amusingly, the Intel 8048 (the + microcontroller used in IBM PC keyboards) is also missing straight SEX but has logical-or and logical-and instructions + ORL and ANL.
The Motorola 6809, used in the Radio Shack Color Computer and in + U.K.'s ‘Dragon 32’ personal computer, actually had an official + SEX instruction; the 6502 in the Apple II + with which it competed did not. British hackers thought this made perfect + mythic sense; after all, it was commonly observed, you could (on some + theoretical level) have sex with a dragon, but you can't have sex with an + apple.
(also common as a prefix in combining forms) A Special Interest + Group, in one of several technical areas, sponsored by the Association for + Computing Machinery; well-known ones include SIGPLAN (the Special Interest + Group on Programming Languages), SIGARCH (the Special Interest Group for + Computer Architecture) and SIGGRAPH (the Special Interest Group for + Computer Graphics). Hackers, not surprisingly, like to overextend this + naming convention to less formal associations like SIGBEER (at ACM + conferences) and SIGFOOD (at University of Illinois).
[Simple (or Small) Matter of Programming]
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 the trouble. Also used + ironically to imply that a difficult problem can be easily solved because a + program can be written to do it; the irony is that it is very clear that + writing such a program will be a great deal of work. “It's easy to + enhance a FORTRAN compiler to compile COBOL as well; it's just a + SMOP.”
2. Often used ironically by the intended victim when a suggestion + for a program is made which seems easy to the suggester, but is obviously + (to the victim) a lot of work. Compare + minor detail.
[from a WWII Army acronym for ‘Situation Normal, All + Fucked Up’] “True communication is possible only between + equals, because inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their + superiors pleasant lies than for telling the truth.:” — a + 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 reality. This lightly adapted + version of a fable dating back to the early 1960s illustrates the + phenomenon perfectly:
+Inthebeginningwastheplan,
+andthenthespecification;
+Andtheplanwaswithoutform,
+andthespecificationwasvoid.
+
+Anddarkness
+wasonthefacesoftheimplementorsthereof;
+Andtheyspakeuntotheirleader,
+saying:
+“Itisacrockofshit,
+andsmellsasofasewer.”
+
+Andtheleadertookpityonthem,
+andspoketotheprojectleader:
+“Itisacrockofexcrement,
+andnonemayabidetheodorthereof.”
+
+Andtheprojectleader
+spakeuntohissectionhead,saying:
+“Itisacontainerofexcrement,
+anditisverystrong,suchthatnonemayabideit.”
+
+Thesectionheadthenhurriedtohisdepartmentmanager,
+andinformedhimthus:
+“Itisavesseloffertilizer,
+andnonemayabideitsstrength.”
+
+Thedepartmentmanagercarriedthesewords
+tohisgeneralmanager,
+andspokeuntohim
+saying:
+“Itcontaineththatwhichaideththegrowthofplants,
+anditisverystrong.”
+
+Andsoitwasthatthegeneralmanagerrejoiced
+anddeliveredthegoodnewsuntotheVicePresident.
+“Itpromotethgrowth,
+anditisverypowerful.”
+
+TheVicePresidentrushedtothePresident'sside,
+andjoyouslyexclaimed:
+“Thispowerfulnewsoftwareproduct
+willpromotethegrowthofthecompany!”
+
+AndthePresidentlookedupontheproduct,
+andsawthatitwasverygood.
+
After the subsequent and inevitable disaster, the + suits protect themselves by saying “I was + misinformed!”, and the implementors are demoted or fired. Compare + Conway's Law.
1. (also S.O.) Abbrev. for + Significant Other, almost invariably written abbreviated and pronounced + /SO/ 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. [techspeak] The Shift Out control character in ASCII (Control-N, + 0001110).
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 PDP-1 at MIT in 1962. + In 1968-69, a descendant of the game motivated Ken Thompson to build, in + his spare time on a scavenged PDP-7, the operating system that became + Unix. Less than nine years after that, SPACEWAR was + commercialized as one of the first video games; descendants are still + feeping in video arcades everywhere.
[Usenet] Common abbreviation for “Search The Fucking + Web”, a suggestion that what you're asking for is a query better + handled by a search engine than a human being. Usage is common and exactly + parallel to both senses of RTFM. A politer + equivalent is GIYF.
Spot the reference. Used in + scary devil monastery to mark the witticism one just uttered as a quote + from some work of art or literature, the more obscure the better. Those who + know where the reference comes from reply in the form “You are + $CHARACTER, and you owe me $ITEM”, where $CHARACTER is a character + from the story being referenced and $ITEM is something associated with that + character. This acronym is never actually expanded to its proper meaning in + the newsgroup; posters instead use obscure expansions, the most common + being “slurp the robot”, leading to comments like “I + pulled my hair out, but couldn't figure out which robot you're + slurping”.
[from police slang for a cheap handgun] A + quick-and-dirty program or feature kluged together + during off hours, under a deadline, and in response to pressure from a + salescritter. Such hacks are dangerously + unreliable, but all too often sneak into a production release after + insufficient review.
Metaphorically, “Get stuffed.” From the title of a + famous parody that can easily be found with a web search on this phrase; + figure 1, in fact, depicts the digitus impudicus.
All time since September 1993. One of the seasonal rhythms of the + Usenet used to be the annual September influx of clueless newbies who, + lacking any sense of netiquette, made a general + nuisance of themselves. This coincided with people starting college, + getting their first internet accounts, and plunging in without bothering to + learn what was acceptable. These relatively small drafts of newbies could + be assimilated within a few months. But in September 1993, AOL users + became able to post to Usenet, nearly overwhelming the old-timers' capacity + to acculturate them; to those who nostalgically recall the period before, + this triggered an inexorable decline in the quality of discussions on + newsgroups. Syn. eternal + September. See also AOL!.
1. Commonly found at the end of software release announcements and + README files, this phrase indicates allegiance to + the hacker ethic of free information sharing (see + hacker ethic, sense 1).
2. The motto of the complaints division of Sirius Cybernetics + Corporation (the ultimate gaggle of incompetent + suits) in Douglas Adams's Hitch Hiker's + Guide to the Galaxy. The irony of using this as a cultural + recognition signal appeals to hackers.
[MUD: from H. P. Lovecraft's evil fictional deity Shub-Niggurath, + the Black Goat with a Thousand Young] The harsh personification of the + Internet: Beast of a Thousand Processes, Eater of Characters, Avatar of + Line Noise, and Imp of Call Waiting; the hideous multi-tendriled entity + formed of all the manifold connections of the net. A sect of MUDders + worships Shub-Internet, sacrificing objects and praying for good + connections. To no avail — its purpose is malign and evil, and it is + the cause of all network slowdown. Often heard as in “Freela casts a + tac nuke at Shub-Internet for slowing her down.” (A forged response + often follows along 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 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 + pinging 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. —ESR]
[Usenet; poss. from the variety of prosimian called a “slow + loris”. The variant ‘Slowlartus’ is also common, related + to LART] Common hackish term for Solaris, Sun's + System VR4 version of Unix that came out of the standardization wars of the + early 1990s. So named because especially on older hardware, responsiveness + was much less crisp than under the preceding SunOS. Early releases of + Solaris (that is, Solaris 2, as some marketroids at + Sun retroactively rechristened SunOS as Solaris 1) were quite buggy, and + Sun was forced by customer demand to support SunOS for quite some + time. Newer versions are acknowledged to be among the best commercial Unix + variants in 1998, but still lose single-processor benchmarks to Sparc + Linux. Compare HP-SUX, + sun-stools.
[OS X; common] The quartered-circle busy indicator on Mac OS X + versions before 10.2, after which it was replaced by a sort of rainbow + pinwheel thingy. It was analogous to the Microsoft Windows hourglass, but + OS X 10.0's legendary slowness under the Aqua toolkit made this term rather + more evocative. See Death, X of.
The successor of the Utah + Teapot. The model is of a chocolate Easter bunny consisting of + about 5000 polygons. It is small by 2002 standards, but is more + illustrative than the teapot of of techniques such as surface radiance + (e.g. radiosity) and self-reflection. There is a history + page. Compare lenna.
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 + and more descriptive to characterize 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.
How things weren't in the Stone Age.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is + 76-07-18. The previous + cartoon was 76-03-14:5-8.)
2. More generally, a pejorative for any crufty, ancient piece of + hardware or software technology. Note that this is used even by people who + were there for the Stone Age (sense 1).
Term used by samurai for the + suits who employ them; succinctly expresses an + attitude at least as common, though usually better disguised, among other + subcultures of hackers. There may be intended reference here to an SF + story originally published in 1952 but much anthologized since, Mark + Clifton's Star, Bright. In it, a super-genius child + classifies humans into a very few ‘Brights’ like herself, a + huge majority of ‘Stupids’, and a minority of + ‘Tweens’, the merely ordinary geniuses.
“Ninety percent of everything is crud”. Derived from a + quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said, + “Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of + everything is crud.” Sturgeon himself called this “Sturgeon's + Revelation”, and it first appeared in the March 1958 issue of + Venture Science Fiction; he gave Sturgeon's Law as + “Nothing is always absolutely so.” Oddly, when Sturgeon's + Revelation is cited, the final word is almost invariably changed to + ‘crap’. Compare Hanlon's Razor, + Ninety-Ninety Rule. Though this maxim originated in + SF fandom, most hackers recognize it and are all too aware of its + truth.
Sun Microsystems. Hackers remember that the name was originally an + acronym, Stanford University Network. Sun started out around 1980 with + some hardware hackers (mainly) from Stanford talking to some software + hackers (mainly) from UC Berkeley; Sun's original technology concept + married a clever board design based on the Motorola 68000 to + BSD Unix. Sun went on to lead the workstation + industry through the 1980s, and for years afterwards remained an + engineering-driven company and a good place for hackers to work. Though + Sun drifted away from its techie origins after 1990 and has since made some + strategic moves that disappointed and annoyed many hackers (especially by + maintaining proprietary control of Java and rejecting Linux), it's still + considered within the family in much the same way + DEC was in the 1970s and early 1980s.
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 accusations of sexism) + ‘Sammy Cobol’ or (in some non-IBM circles) ‘Cobol + Charlie’.
2. [proposed] Meta-name for any code grinder, + analogous to J. Random Hacker.
In early Unix days, a well-known technical paper analogized the + lexical analyzer generator lex(1) to a Swiss-army knife; this was a comment + on the remarkable variety of more general uses discovered for a program + originally designed as a special-purpose code generator for writing + compilers. Two decades later, well-known hacker Henry Spencer described + the Perl scripting language as a “Swiss-Army + chainsaw”, intending to convey his evaluation of the language as + exceedingly powerful but ugly and noisy and prone to belch noxious fumes. + This had two results: (1) Perl fans adopted the epithet as a badge of + pride, and (2) it entered more general usage to describe software that is + highly versatile but distressingly inelegant.
Reserved for the exclusive use of something (an extension of the + standard meaning). Often means that anyone may look at the sacred object, + but clobbering it will screw whatever it is sacred to. The comment + “Register 7 is sacred to the interrupt handler” appearing in a + program would be interpreted by a hacker to mean that if any + other part of the program changes the contents of + register 7, dire consequences are likely to ensue.
[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. + —ESR]
[from Carl Sagan's TV series Cosmos; think + “billions and billions”] A large quantity of anything. + “There's a sagan different ways to tweak EMACS.” “The + U.S. Government spends sagans on bombs and welfare — hard to say + which is more destructive.”
Pejorative hackerism for a computer salesperson. Hackers tell the + following joke:
+Q.What'sthedifferencebetweenaused-cardealeranda
+computersalesman?
+A.Theused-cardealerknowshe'slying.[Someversionsadd:
+...andprobablyknowshowtodrive.]
+
This reflects the widespread hacker belief that salescritters are + self-selected for stupidity (after all, if they had brains and the + inclination to use them, they'd be in programming). The terms salesthing and salesdroid are also common. Compare + marketroid, suit, + droid.
Dense quarters housing large numbers of programmers working long + hours on grungy projects, with some hope of seeing the end of the tunnel in + N years. Noted for their absence of + sunshine. Compare playpen, + sandbox.
[MIT] Collective noun used to refer to potato chips, pretzels, + saltines, or any other form of snack food designed primarily as a carrier + for sodium chloride. Also sodium + substrate. From the technical term chip substrate, used to refer to the silicon on + the top of which the active parts of integrated circuits are + deposited.
A tiny bit of near-random data inserted where too much regularity + would be undesirable; a data frob (sense 1). For + example, the Unix crypt(3) man page mentions that “the salt string is + used to perturb the DES algorithm in one of 4096 different + ways.”
Ironic term used to describe long response time, particularly with + respect to MS-DOS and Windows system calls (which + ought to require only a tiny fraction of a second to execute). Such + response time is a major incentive for programmers to write programs that + are not well-behaved.
[Russian, literally “self publishing”] The process of + disseminating documentation via underground channels. Originally referred + to underground duplication and distribution of banned books in the Soviet + Union; now refers by obvious extension to any less-than-official + promulgation of textual material, esp. rare, obsolete, or + never-formally-published computer documentation. Samizdat is obviously + much easier when one has access to high-bandwidth networks and high-quality + laser printers. Note that samizdat is properly used only with respect to + documents which contain needed information (see also + hacker ethic) but which are for some reason otherwise unavailable, but + not in the context of documents which are available + through normal channels, for which unauthorized duplication would be + unethical copyright violation. See Lions Book for a + historical example.
A hacker who hires out for legal cracking jobs, snooping for + factions in corporate political fights, lawyers pursuing privacy-rights and + First Amendment cases, and other parties with legitimate reasons to need an + electronic locksmith. In 1991, mainstream media reported the existence of + a loose-knit culture of samurai that meets electronically on BBS systems, + mostly bright teenagers with personal micros; they have modeled themselves + explicitly on the historical samurai of Japan and on the “net + cowboys” of William Gibson's cyberpunk + novels. Those interviewed claim to adhere to a rigid ethic of loyalty to + their employers and to disdain the vandalism and theft practiced by + criminal crackers as beneath them and contrary to the hacker ethic; some + quote Miyamoto Musashi's Book of Five Rings, a + classic of historical samurai doctrine, in support of these principles. + See also sneaker, Stupids, + social engineering, cracker, + hacker ethic, and + dark-side hacker.
[IBM] A person involved with silicon lithography and the physical + design of chips. Compare ironmonger, + polygon pusher.
(also ‘sandbox, the’)
1. Common term for the R&D department at many software and + computer companies (where hackers in commercial environments are likely to + be found). Half-derisive, but reflects the truth that research is a form + of creative play. Compare playpen.
2. Syn. link farm.
3. A controlled environment within which potentially dangerous + programs are run. Used esp. in reference to Java implementations.
4. A checked-out copy of a source tree, on which one may safely + perform builds without interfereing with others.
[very common]
1. The act of checking a piece of code (or anything else, e.g., a + Usenet posting) for completely stupid mistakes. Implies that the check is + to make sure the author was sane when it was written; e.g., if a piece of + scientific software relied on a particular formula and was giving + unexpected results, one might first look at the nesting of parentheses or + the coding of the formula, as a sanity + check, before looking at the more complex I/O or data structure + manipulation routines, much less the algorithm itself. Compare + reality check.
2. A run-time test, either validating input or ensuring that the + program hasn't screwed up internally (producing an inconsistent value or + state).
3. Conversationally, saying “sanity check” means you + are requesting a check of your assumptions. “Wait a minute, sanity + check, are we talking about the same Kevin here?”
1. To type to a terminal. “To list a directory verbosely, you + have to say ls -l.” Tends to imply a + newline-terminated command (a + ‘sentence’).
2. A computer may also be said to ‘say’ things to you, + even if it doesn't have a speech synthesizer, by displaying them on a + terminal in response to your commands. Hackers find it odd that this usage + confuses mundanes.
To destroy the data on a disk, either by corrupting the filesystem + or by causing media damage. “That last power hit scagged the system + disk.” Compare scrog, + roach.
An error in a document caused by a scanner glitch, analogous to a + typo or thinko.
Anagram frequently used to refer to the newsgroup alt.sysadmin.recovery, which is populated + with characters that rather justify the reference.
[MIT: from the Schroedinger's Cat thought-experiment in quantum + physics] A design or implementation bug in a program that doesn't manifest + until someone reading source or using the program in an unusual way notices + that it never should have worked, at which point the program promptly stops + working for everybody until fixed. Though (like + bit rot) this sounds impossible, it happens; some programs have + harbored latent schroedinbugs for years. Compare + heisenbug, Bohr bug, + mandelbug.
Another voluntary subculture having a very heavy overlap with + hackerdom; most hackers read SF and/or fantasy fiction avidly, and many go + to ‘cons’ (SF conventions) or are involved in fandom-connected + activities such as the Society for Creative Anachronism. Some hacker + jargon originated in SF fandom; see defenestration, + great-wall, cyberpunk, + h, ha ha only serious, + IMHO, mundane, + neep-neep, Real Soon Now. + Additionally, the jargon terms cowboy, + cyberspace, de-rezz, + go flatline, ice, + phage, virus, + wetware, wirehead, and + worm originated in SF stories.
[from the nuclear power industry] An emergency-power-off switch (see + Big Red Switch), esp. one positioned to be easily + hit by evacuating personnel. In general, this is not + something you frob lightly; these often initiate + expensive events (such as Halon dumps) and are installed in a + dinosaur pen for use in case of electrical fire or + in case some luckless field servoid should put 120 + volts across himself while Easter egging. (See also + molly-guard, TMRC.)
“Scram” was in origin a backronym for “Safety Cut + Rope Axe Man” coined by Enrico Fermi himself. The story goes that + in the earliest nuclear power experiments the engineers recognized the + possibility that the reactor wouldn't behave exactly as predicted by their + mathematical models. Accordingly, they made sure that they had mechanisms + in place that would rapidly drop the control rods back into the reactor. + One mechanism took the form of ‘scram technicians’. These + individuals stood next to the ropes or cables that raised and lowered the + control rods. Equipped with axes or cable-cutters, these technicians stood + ready for the (literal) ‘scram’ command. If necessary, they + would cut the cables, and gravity would expeditiously return the control + rods to the reactor, thereby averting yet another kind of core + dump.
Modern reactor control rods are held in place with claw-like devices, + held closed by current. SCRAM switches are circuit breakers that + immediately open the circuit to the rod arms, resulting in the rapid + insertion and subsequent bottoming of the control rods.
As in “Before testing or reconfiguring, always mount a + scratch monkey”, a proverb used to advise + caution when dealing with irreplaceable data or devices. Used to refer to + any scratch volume hooked to a computer during any risky operation as a + replacement for some precious resource or data that might otherwise get + trashed.
This term preserves the memory of Mabel, the Swimming Wonder Monkey, + star of a biological research program at the University of Toronto. Mabel + was not (so the legend goes) your ordinary monkey; the university had spent + years teaching her how to swim, breathing through a regulator, in order to + study the effects of different gas mixtures on her physiology. Mabel + suffered an untimely demise one day when a DEC + field circus engineer troubleshooting a crash on the + program's VAX inadvertently interfered with some + custom hardware that was wired to Mabel.
It is reported that, after calming down an understandably irate + customer sufficiently to ascertain the facts of the matter, a DEC + troubleshooter called up the field circus manager + responsible and asked him sweetly, “Can you swim?” Not all the + consequences to humans were so amusing; the sysop of the machine in + question was nearly thrown in jail at the behest of certain clueless + droids at the local ‘humane’ society. + The moral is clear: When in doubt, always mount a scratch monkey. [The + actual incident occured in 1979 or 1980. There is a version of this story, + complete with reported dialogue between one of the project people and DEC + field service, that has been circulating on Internet since 1986. It is + hilarious and mythic, but gets some facts wrong. For example, it reports + the machine as a PDP-11 and alleges that Mabel's demise occurred when DEC + PMed the machine. Earlier versions of this entry + were based on that story; this one has been corrected from an interview + with the hapless sysop. —ESR]
1. [from scratchpad] adj. Describes a data structure or recording + medium attached to a machine for testing or temporary-use purposes; one + that can be scribbled on without loss. Usually in + the combining forms scratch memory, + scratch register, scratch disk, scratch tape, scratch volume. See also + scratch monkey.
2. [primarily IBM, also Commodore] vt. To delete (as in a file).
Syn. cough and die, but connotes that an + error message was printed or displayed before the program crashed.
[Unix] A terminal line which spews an infinite number of random + characters at the operating system. This can happen if the terminal is + either disconnected or connected to a powered-off terminal but still + enabled for login; misconfiguration, misimplementation, or simple bad luck + can start such a terminal screaming. A screaming tty or two can seriously + degrade the performance of a vanilla Unix system; the arriving + “characters” are treated as userid/password pairs and tested + as such. The Unix password encryption algorithm is designed to be + computationally intensive in order to foil brute-force crack attacks, so + although none of the logins succeeds; the overhead of rejecting them all + can be substantial.
A handle sense
1. This term has been common among users of IRC, MUDs, and + commercial on-line services since the mid-1990s. Hackers recognize the term + but don't generally use it.
The act of capturing data from a system or program by snooping the + contents of some display that is not actually intended for data transport + or inspection by programs. Around 1980 this term referred to tricks like + reading the display memory of a smart terminal through its auxiliary + port. Nowadays it often refers to parsing the HTML in generated web pages + with programs designed to mine out particular patterns of content. In + either guise screen-scraping is an ugly, ad-hoc, last-resort technique that + is very likely to break on even minor changes to the format of the data + being snooped.
[Atari ST demoscene] One + demoeffect or one screenful of them. Probably comes + from old Sierra-style adventures or shoot-em-ups where one travels from one + place to another one screenful at a time.
[MIT] A lose, usually in software. + Especially used for user-visible misbehavior caused by a bug or misfeature. + This use has become quite widespread outside MIT.
Like lossage but connotes that the failure is + due to a designed-in misfeature rather than a simple inadequacy or a mere + bug.
To modify a data structure in a random and unintentionally + destructive way. “Bletch! Somebody's disk-compactor program went + berserk and scribbled on the i-node table.” “It was working + fine until one of the allocation routines scribbled on low core.” + Synonymous with trash; compare + mung, which conveys a bit more intention, and + mangle, which is more violent and final.
1. [very common] The lowest form of cracker; + script kiddies do mischief with scripts and rootkits + written by others, often without understanding the + exploit they are using. Used of people with limited + technical expertise using easy-to-operate, pre-configured, and/or automated + tools to conduct disruptive activities against networked systems. Since + most of these tools are fairly well-known by the security community, the + adverse impact of such actions is usually minimal.
2. People who cannot program, but who create tacky HTML pages by + copying JavaScript routines from other tacky HTML pages. More generally, a + script kiddie writes (or more likely cuts and pastes) code without either + having or desiring to have a mental model of what the code does; someone + who thinks of code as magical incantations and asks only “what do I + need to type to make this happen?”
[Bell Labs] To damage, trash, or corrupt a data structure. + “The list header got scrogged.” Also reported as skrog, and ascribed to the comic strip + The Wizard of Id. Compare + scag; possibly the two are related. Equivalent to + scribble or mangle.
[from the pioneering Roundtable chat system in Houston ca.: 1984; + prob.: originated as a typo for ‘scroll’] The log of old + messages, available for later perusal or to help one get back in synch with + the conversation. It was originally called the scrool monster, because an early version of the + roundtable software had a bug where it would dump all 8K of scrool on a + user's terminal.
Used when a self-modifying code segment runs incorrectly and + corrupts the running program or vital data. “The damn compiler + scrozzled itself again!”
See neats vs. scruffies.
Hackerism for a noninteractive search-and-replace facility in an + editor, so called because an incautiously chosen match pattern can cause + infinite damage.
(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 + elephantine feature-laden monstrosity. 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 the IBM 70xx series to OS/360 on the 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 described (with + altogether too much truth for comfort) as an example of second-system + effect run amok on jargon-1....
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 analysis will reveal (directly) how 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 17 hours of + grovelling with adb + 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.
(alt.: security by obscurity) + A term applied by hackers to most OS vendors' favorite way of coping with + security holes — namely, ignoring them, documenting neither any known + holes nor the underlying security algorithms, trusting that nobody will + find out about them and that people who do find out about them won't + exploit them. This “strategy” never works for long and + occasionally sets the world up for debacles like the + RTM worm of 1988 (see + Great Worm), but once the brief moments of panic created by such + events subside most vendors are all too willing to turn over and go back to + sleep. After all, actually 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 imagine that their warranties + of 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: There are conflicting stories about the origin of + this term. It has been claimed that it was first used in the Usenet + newsgroup 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). ITS fans, on the other hand, say it was + coined years earlier in opposition to the incredibly paranoid + Multics people down the hall, for whom security was + everything. In the ITS culture it referred to (1) the fact that by the + time a tourist figured out how to make trouble he'd generally gotten over + the urge to make it, because he felt part of the community; and (2) + (self-mockingly) the poor coverage of the documentation and obscurity of + many commands. One instance of deliberate security + through obscurity is recorded; the command to allow patching the running + ITS system (escape escape control-R) echoed as $$^D. If you actually typed + alt alt ^D, that set a flag that would prevent patching the system even if + you later got it right.
Syn. segment, + segmentation fault.
[Unix] Shorthand for segmentation fault + reported from Britain.
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.
[Unix]
1. [techspeak] An error in which a running program attempts to + access memory not allocated to it and core dumps + with a segmentation violation error. This is often caused by improper + usage of pointers in the source code, dereferencing a null pointer, or (in + C) inadvertently using a non-pointer variable as a pointer. The classic + example is:
+inti;
+scanf("%d",i);/*shouldhaveused&i*/
+
2. To lose a train of thought or a line of reasoning. Also uttered + as an exclamation at the point of befuddlement.
Yet another synonym for segmentation fault + (actually, in this case, ‘segmentation violation’).
See self-reference.
[from sewing and weaving] See chad (sense + 1).
[US Geological Survey] A procedure that has yet to be completely + automated; it still requires a smidge of clueful human interaction. + Semi-automated programs usually come with written-out operator instructions + that are worth their weight in gold — without them, very nasty things can + happen. At USGS semi-automated programs are often referred to as + “semi-automated weapons”.
See infinite.
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. “When is the system coming up?” + “Semi-immediately.” (That is, maybe not for an hour.) + “We did consider that possibility semi-seriously.” See also + infinite.
[IBM; rare] Syn. meta bit.
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 requestor/client runs. A particularly common term on the + Internet, which is rife with web + servers, name servers, + domain servers, ‘news + servers’, finger servers, and + the like.
Syn. gender mender.
A Unix symbolic link, particularly when it confuses you, points to + nothing at all, or results in your ending up in some completely unexpected + part of the filesystem....
Syn. sharchive.
[Unix and Usenet; from /bin/sh archive] A + flattened representation of a set of one or more + files, with the unique property that it can be unflattened (the original + files restored) by feeding it through a standard Unix shell; thus, a + sharchive can be distributed to anyone running Unix, and no special + unpacking software is required. Sharchives are also intriguing in that + they are typically created by shell scripts; the script that produces + sharchives is thus a script which produces self-unpacking scripts, which + may themselves contain scripts. Sharchives are also commonly referred to as + ‘shar files’ after the name of the most common program for + generating them.
The downsides of sharchives are that they + are an ideal venue for Trojan horse attacks and + that, for recipients not running Unix, no simple un-sharchiving program is + possible; sharchives can and do make use of arbitrarily-powerful shell + features. For these reasons, this technique has largely fallen out + of use since the mid-1990s.
A kind of freeware 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 functionality. See also + careware, charityware, + crippleware, FRS, + guiltware, postcardware, and + -ware; compare + payware.
[From a file error common to several OSes] A + response to receiving information, typically of an excessively personal + nature, that you were probably happier not knowing. “You know those + little noises that Pat makes in bed?” “Whoa! Sharing + violation!” In contrast to the original file error, which indicated + that you were not being given data that you + did want.
[possibly a portmanteau of “sharp bang”] The character + sequence “#!” that frequently begins executable shell scripts + under Unix. Probably derived from “shell bang” under the + influence of American slang “the whole shebang” (everything, + the works).
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.
[Unix] 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.”
[orig. Multics techspeak, widely propagated + via Unix]
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.
2. More generally, any interface program that mediates access to a + special resource or server for convenience, + efficiency, or security reasons; for this meaning, the usage is usually + a shell around whatever. This sort + of program is also called a wrapper. +
3. A skeleton program, created by hand or by another program (like, + say, a parser generator), which provides the necessary + incantations to set up some task and the control + flow to drive it (the term driver is sometimes used + synonymously). The user is meant to fill in whatever code is needed to get + real work done. This usage is common in the AI and Microsoft Windows + worlds, and confuses Unix hackers.
Historical note: Apparently, the original Multics shell (sense 1) was + so called because it was a shell (sense 3); it ran user programs not by + starting up separate processes, but by dynamically linking the programs + into its own code, calling them as subroutines, and then dynamically + de-linking them on return. The VMS command interpreter still does + something very like this.
[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 my seat! You can shift to that empty + one to the left (right).” Often used without the logical, or as left + shift instead of shift + left. Sometimes heard as LSH /lish/, from the + PDP-10 instruction set. See + Programmer's Cheer.
1. A small piece of data inserted in order to achieve a desired + memory alignment or other addressing property. For example, the PDP-11 + Unix linker, in split I&D (instructions and data) mode, inserts a + two-byte shim at location 0 in data space so that no data object will have + an address of 0 (and be confused with the C null pointer). See also + loose bytes.
2. A type of small transparent image inserted into HTML documents by + certain WYSIWYG HTML editors, used to set the spacing of elements meant to + have a fixed positioning within a TABLE or DIVision. Hackers who work on + the HTML code of such pages afterwards invariably curse these for their + crocky dependence on the particular spacing of original image file, the + editor that generated them, and the version of the browser used to view + them. Worse, they are a poorly designed kludge which + the advent of Cascading Style Sheets makes wholly unnecessary; Any fool can + plainly see that use of borders, layers and positioned elements is the + Right Thing (or would be if adequate support for CSS were more + common).
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.
1. Extra software dumped onto a CD-ROM or tape to fill up the + remaining space on the medium after the software distribution it's intended + to carry, but not integrated with the distribution.
2. A slipshod compilation of software dumped onto a CD-ROM without + much care for organization or even usability.
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 something stunningly + good.
See excl. Occasional CMU usage, also in + common use among APL fans and mathematicians, especially category + theorists.
[Internet and Usenet; often written ‘.sig’ there] 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 + composition of one's sig can be quite an art form, including an ASCII logo, + one's choice of witty sayings (see sig quote, + fool file), or even source code for small programs + about which the author wishes to make a statement; but many consider large + sigs a waste of bandwidth, and it has been observed + that the size of one's sig block is usually inversely proportional to one's + longevity and level of prestige on the net. See also + doubled sig, McQuary limit.
[Usenet] 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.”
A parasitic meme embedded in a sig + block. There was a meme plague or fad + for these on Usenet in late 1991. Most were equivalents of “I am a + .sig virus. Please reproduce me in your .sig block.”. Of course, + the .sig virus's memetic hook is the giggle value of going along with the + gag; this, however, was a self-limiting phenomenon as more and more people + picked up on the idea. There were creative variants on it; some people + stuck ‘sig virus antibody’ texts in their sigs, and there was + at least one instance of a sig virus eater.
[common] A beast that randomly chooses one of a selection of + signatures for appending to mail and news messages. The creature is most + often mentioned directly when it has been in particularly good form and + selected a signature appropriate to the topic being discussed; the + construction “P.S.: good sigmonster, have a cookie” is not + uncommon. While the are sigmonster programs floating around on the net, + most hackers who keep one use a silly little Perl or Python script that + they threw together in the middle of the night under the influence of far + too much caffeine.
[from analog electronics] 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 ratio implies that it is not worth 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 wars. Compare bandwidth. See also + coefficient of X, + lost in the noise.
Hardware, esp. ICs or microprocessor-based computer systems + (compare iron). Contrasted with software. See also + sandbender.
[from Monty Python's Flying Circus]
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 on core.
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 went in + at the top and came out at the bottom.
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; + contrast epoch.
[Unix/Internet] The unique electronic name of a computer system, + used to identify it in email, Usenet, or other forms of electronic + information interchange. The folklore interest of sitenames stems from the + creativity and humor they often display. Interpreting a sitename is not + unlike interpreting a vanity license plate; one has to mentally unpack it, + allowing for mono-case and length restrictions and the lack of whitespace. + Hacker tradition deprecates dull, institutional-sounding names in favor of + punchy, humorous, and clever coinages (except that it is considered + appropriate for the official public gateway machine of an organization to + bear the organization's name or acronym). Mythological references, cartoon + characters, animal names, and allusions to SF or fantasy literature are + probably the most popular sources for sitenames (in roughly descending + order). The obligatory comment when discussing these is Harris's Lament: + “All the good ones are taken!” See also + network address.
Syn. scrog.
Syn. prowler.
1. n. A continuous horizontal + line of pixels, all with the same color.
2. vi. To paint a slab on an + output device. Apple's QuickDraw, like most other professional-level + graphics systems, renders polygons and lines not with Bresenham's + algorithm, but by calculating slab + points for each scan line on the screen in succession, and then + slabbing in the actual image pixels.
1. Space allocated to a disk file but not actually used to store + useful information. The techspeak equivalent is ‘internal + fragmentation’. Antonym: hole.
2. In the theology of the Church of the + SubGenius, a mystical substance or quality that is the + prerequisite of all human happiness.
Since Unix files are stored compactly, except for the unavoidable + wastage in the last block or fragment, it might be said that “Unix + has no slack”. See + ha ha only serious.
Common name for the slant (‘/’, ASCII 0101111) + character. See ASCII for other synonyms.
1. Also spelled “/. effect”; what is said to have + happened when a website becoming virtually unreachable because too many + people are hitting it after the site was mentioned in an interesting + article on the popular Slashdot + news service. The term is quite widely used by /. readers, including + variants like “That site has been slashdotted again!”
2. In a perhaps inevitable generation, the term is being used to + describe any similar effect from being listed on a popular site. This + would better be described as a flash crowd. Differs + from a DoS attack in being unintentional.
1. [techspeak] To relinquish a claim (of a process on a multitasking + system) for service; to indicate to the scheduler that a process may be + deactivated until some given event occurs or a specified time delay + elapses.
2. In jargon, used very similarly to v. block; also in + sleep on, syn.: with block on. Often used to indicate that the + speaker has relinquished a demand for resources until some (possibly + unspecified) external event: “They can't get the fix I've been asking + for into the next release, so I'm going to sleep on it until the release, + then start hassling them again.”
A small, derivative change (e.g., to code).
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 amount if necessary, rather + than too short by even a little bit, because you can always cut off the + slop but you can't paste it back on again. When discrete quantities are + involved, slop is often introduced to avoid the possibility of being on the + losing side of a fencepost error.
2. The percentage of ‘extra’ code generated by a + compiler over the size of equivalent assembler code produced by + hand-hacking; i.e., the space (or maybe time) you + lose because you didn't do it yourself. This number is often used as a + measure of the goodness of a compiler; slop below 5% is very good, and 10% + is usually acceptable. With modern compiler technology, esp. on RISC + machines, the compiler's slop may actually be + negative; that is, humans may be unable to generate + code as good. This is one of the reasons assembler programming is no + longer common.
A lowest-priority task that waits 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 + puppy or bottom feeder. + One common variety of slopsucker hunts for large prime numbers. Compare + background.
See STR.
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 does an FFT.” + See also sponge.
1. 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 product it describes 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, using local devices as displays. +
2. obs. Any terminal with an addressable cursor; the opposite of a + glass tty. Today, a terminal with merely an + addressable cursor, but with none of the more-powerful features mentioned + in sense 1, is called a dumb terminal.
There is a classic quote from Rob Pike (inventor of the + blit terminal): “A smart terminal is not a + smartass terminal, but rather a terminal you can + educate.” This illustrates a common design problem: The attempt to + make peripherals (or anything 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 hand, are + really smart. Compare + hook.
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 (yet — see + AI-complete). Compare robust + (smart programs can be brittle).
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.
[C programming] To corrupt the execution stack by writing past the + end of a local array or other data structure. Code that smashes the stack + can cause a return from the routine to jump to a random address, resulting + in 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 intentionally. See spam; see + also aliasing bug, + fandango on core, memory leak, + memory smash, precedence lossage, + overrun screw.
See emoticon.
Marketing deceptions. The term is mainstream in this general sense. + Among hackers it's strongly associated with bogus demos and crocked + benchmarks (see also MIPS, + machoflops). “They claim their new box cranks + 50 MIPS for under $5000, but didn't specify the instruction mix — + sounds like smoke and mirrors to me.” The phrase, popularized by + newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin c.1975, has been said to derive from + carnie slang for magic acts and ‘freak show’ displays that + depend on trompe l'oeil effects, but also + calls to mind the fierce Aztec god Tezcatlipoca (lit. “Smoking + Mirror”) for whom the hearts of huge numbers of human sacrificial + victims were regularly cut out. Upon hearing about a rigged demo or yet + another round of fantasy-based marketing promises, hackers often feel + analogously disheartened. See also stealth + manager.
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.
2. By extension, the first run 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 smoke test (hold the letter in candle smoke, + then press it onto paper) is used to check out new dies.
1. To crash or blow up, usually + spectacularly. “The new version smoked, just like the last + one.” Used for both hardware (where it often describes an actual + physical event), and software (where it's merely colorful).
2. [from automotive slang] To be conspicuously fast. “That + processor really smokes.” Compare + magic smoke.
[ITS] A display hack originally due to Bill + Gosper. Many convergent lines are drawn on a color monitor in such a way + that every pixel struck has its color incremented. The lines all have one + endpoint in the middle of the screen; the other endpoints are 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 + U.S.'s Food and Drug Administration) lest its hallucinogenic properties + cause it to be banned.
[MIT] A unit of length equal five feet seven inches. The length of + the Harvard Bridge in Boston is famously 364.4 smoots plus an ear (the ear + is allegedly the width of the earhole in the side of the football helmet + the victim was wearing when he was rolled over the bridge). This legend + began with a fraternity prank in 1958 during which the body length of + Oliver Smoot (class of '62) was actually used to measure out that distance. + It is commemorated by smoot marks that MIT students repaint every few + years; the tradition even survived the demolition and rebuilding of the + bridge in the late 1980s. The Boston police have been known to use smoot + markers to indicate accident locations on the bridge. Apparently Smoot's + experience as a unit of measurement led to a life-long career; he + eventually became Chairman of the Board of the American National Standards + Institute, and later President of the International Organization for + Standardization.
1. [from the soc.motss + newsgroup on Usenet, after some obnoxiously gooey cartoon characters] A + newsgroup regular with a habitual style that is irreverent, silly, and + cute. Like many other hackish terms for + people, this one may be praise or insult depending on who uses it. In + general, being referred to as a smurf is probably not going to make your + day unless you've previously adopted the label yourself in a spirit of + irony. Compare old fart.
2. [techspeak] A ping packet with a forged source address sent to + some other network's broadcast address. All the machines on the + destination network will send a ping response to the forged source address + (the victim). This both overloads the victim's network and hides the + location of the attacker.
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 even been parody + posters and stamps made. Also (less commonly) called P-mail, from ‘paper mail’ or + ‘physical mail’. Oppose email.
(Note: Actual garden snails progress at about 10 meters per hour, + which is about 25-50 times slower than the U.K.'s Royal Mail; comparable + measurements for other countries have not yet been made. More biologically + apt terms might be “sloth-mail” at 250 m/hr or + “tortoise-mail” at 270 m/hr. See http://www.newscientist.com/lastword/answers/789communication.jsp?tp=communication + for details.)
To snail-mail something. “Snail me a + copy of those graphics, will you?”
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 you that person's extension before connecting you, in + the hopes that you will snap your + pointer and dial direct next time. The underlying metaphor may + be that of a rubber band stretched through a number of intermediate points; + if you remove all the thumbtacks in the middle, it snaps into a straight + line from first to last. See chase pointers.
Often, the behavior of a trampoline is to + perform an error check once and then snap the pointer that invoked it so as + henceforth to bypass the trampoline (and its one-shot error check). In + this context one also speaks of snapping + links. For example, in a LISP implementation, a function + interface trampoline might check to make sure that the caller is passing + the correct number of arguments; if it is, and if the caller and the callee + are both compiled, then snapping the link allows that particular path to + use a direct procedure-call instruction with no further overhead.
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 mainstream expression for an ‘eat now, regret it + later’ cheap-restaurant expedition.
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.”
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. This term was mainstream + in the late 1960s, meaning ‘to eat piggishly’. It may still + have this connotation in context. “He's in the snarfing phase of + hacking — FTPing megs of stuff a day.”
3. To acquire, with little concern for legal forms or politesse (but not quite by stealing). “They + were giving away samples, so I snarfed a bunch of them.”
4. Syn. for 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 widespread + among mundane teenagers —ESR] The sound of snarfing is + splork!.
[Lewis Carroll, via the Michigan Terminal System]
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 + computer (especially if it might be a boojum). Often used to refer to an + event or a log file entry that might indicate an attempted security + violation.
3. UUCP name of snark.thyrsus.com, home site of the Jargon + File versions from 2.*.* on (i.e., this lexicon).
An individual hired to break into places in order to test their + security; analogous to tiger team. Compare + samurai.
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 filled with magtape, or a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.” + Also called ‘Tennis-Net’, ‘Armpit-Net’, + ‘Floppy-Net’ or ‘Shoenet’; in the 1990s, + ‘Nike network’ after a well-known sneaker brand.
1. To watch packets traversing a network. Most often in + the phrase packet sniffer, a program + for doing same. 2. Synonym for poll.
Synonym for deletia; the fact that something + has been snipped when quoting is often indicated with the pseudo-HTML + <snip>.
Term used among crackers and + samurai for cracking techniques that rely on + weaknesses in wetware rather than software; the aim + is to trick people into revealing passwords or other information that + compromises a target system's security. Classic scams include phoning up a + mark who has the required information and posing as a field service tech or + a fellow employee with an urgent access problem. See also the + tiger team story in the patch + entry, and rubber-hose cryptanalysis.
[IBM] 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 better than nothing, and can be considerably + worse. As a rule, management loves them. See also + numbers, math-out, + pretty pictures.
[Usenet: from the act of placing a sock over your hand and talking + to it and pretending it's talking back] In Usenet parlance, a + pseudo through which the puppeteer posts follow-ups + to their own original message to give the appearance that a number of + people support the views held in the original message. See also + astroturfing, tentacle.
Syn salt substrate.
See boot.
[by analogy with hardcopy] A + machine-readable form of corresponding hardcopy. See + bits.
The results of second-system effect or + creeping featuritis. Commonly cited examples + include + ls(1), + X, BSD, and + OS/2.
Pejorative term employed by members and adherents of the + GNU project to describe the act of holding software + proprietary, keeping it under trade secret or license terms which prohibit + free redistribution and modification. Used primarily in Free Software + Foundation propaganda. For a summary of related issues, see + GNU and free software.
An optical laser works by bouncing photons back and forth between + two mirrors, one totally reflective and one partially reflective. If the + lasing material (usually a crystal) has the right properties, photons + scattering off the atoms in the crystal will excite cascades of more + photons, all in lockstep. Eventually the beam will escape through the + partially-reflective mirror. One kind of + sorcerer's apprentice mode involving bounce messages can + produce closely analogous results, with a cascade of + messages escaping to flood nearby systems. By mid-1993 there had been at + least two publicized incidents of this kind.
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 date. If the design was insufficiently + robust, this may cause it to fail in mysterious + ways. Syn. code rot. See also + link rot.
For example, owing to endemic shortsightedness in the design of COBOL + programs, a good number of them succumbed to software rot when their + 2-digit year counters underwent wrap around at the + beginning of the year 2000. 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 for a driver's license + renewal in 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 problem on early research computers (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 instruction to do such-and-such. 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. Unfortunately, this broke some 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 figured out how fast the PDP-6 was that day, and corrected + appropriately.
Compare bit rot.
In a way pertaining to software. “The system is softwarily + unreliable.” The adjective **‘softwary’ is + not used. See + hardwarily.
[IBM] Hardware hackers' term for a software expert who is largely + ignorant of the mysteries of hardware.
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.
[from Goethe's Der Zauberlehrling via Paul + Dukas's L'apprenti sorcier in the film + Fantasia.] 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 behavior caused by bounce message loops in + email software. Compare + broadcast storm, network meltdown, + software laser, ARMM.
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 secretary.
[very common] In reference to software, source is invariably shorthand for + ‘source code’, the preferred human-readable and + human-modifiable form of the program. This is as opposed to object code, + the derived binary executable form of a program. This shorthand readily + takes derivative forms; one may speak of “the sources of a + system” or of “having source”.
A now-legendary device used on MIT LISP machines, which inspired + several still-current jargon terms and influenced the design of + EMACS. It was equipped with no fewer than + seven shift keys: four keys for bucky + bits (‘control’, ‘meta’, + ‘hyper’, and ‘super’) and three 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 on the front. For example, the ‘L’ key had an + ‘L’ and a two-way arrow on the top, and the Greek letter lambda + on the front. By pressing this key with the right hand while playing an + appropriate ‘chord’ with the left hand on the shift keys, you + could get the following results:
| L | lowercase l |
| shift-L | uppercase L |
| front-L | λ |
| front-shift-L | Λ |
| top-L | ⇔ (front and shift are ignored) |
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 could + type over 8000 different characters! This allowed the user to type very + complicated mathematical text, and also to have thousands of + single-character commands at his disposal. The keyboard of the Symbolics + Lisp machine was a simplified version, lacking Top and Front keys, that + could only send about 2000 characters.
Many hackers were actually willing to memorize the command meanings + of that many characters if it reduced 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 bucky + bits, cokebottle, double + bucky, meta bit, quadruple + bucky.
Simplified Symbolics version of the space-cadet keyboard
(Some relatively bad photographs of the earlier, more elaborate + version are available on + the Web.).
Note: early versions of this entry incorrectly identified the + space-cadet keyboard with the Knight + keyboard. Though both were designed by Tom Knight, the latter + term was properly applied only to a keyboard used for ITS on the PDP-10 and + modeled on the Stanford keyboard (as described under bucky + bits). The true space-cadet keyboard evolved from the first + Knight keyboard.
An early space-cadet keyboard
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is + 73-05-20. The previous one is + 73-05-18.)
The glyph <=>, so-called apparently because + in the low-resolution constant-width font used on many terminals it vaguely + resembles a flying saucer. Perl uses this to denote + the signum-of-difference operation.
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 so many + jumps in it.
[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 reusing their code. Coined in a (successful) attempt to + discourage such practice, through guilt-by-association with + spaghetti code.
Email addresses included in, or comprising the entirety of, a Usenet + message so that spammers mining a newsgroup with an + address harvester will collect them. These addresses can be people who + have offended or annoyed the poster, or who are included so that a spammer + will spam an official, thereby causing himself trouble. One particularly + effective form of spam bait is the address of a + teergrube.
[from Monty Python's Flying Circus]
1. To crash a program by overrunning a fixed-size buffer with + excessively large input data. See also + buffer overflow, overrun screw, + smash the stack.
2. To cause a newsgroup to be flooded with irrelevant or + inappropriate messages. You can spam a newsgroup with as little as one + well- (or ill-) planned message (e.g. asking “What do you think of + abortion?” on soc.women). + This is often done with cross-posting (e.g. any + message which is cross-posted to alt.rush-limbaugh and alt.politics.homosexuality will almost + inevitably spam both groups). This overlaps with + troll behavior; the latter more specific term has + become more common.
3. To send many identical or nearly-identical messages separately to + a large number of Usenet newsgroups. This is more specifically called + ECP, Excessive Cross-Posting. This + is one sure way to infuriate nearly everyone on the Net. See also + velveeta and jello.
4. To bombard a newsgroup with multiple copies of a message. This + is more specifically called EMP, + Excessive Multi-Posting.
5. To mass-mail unrequested identical or nearly-identical email + messages, particularly those containing advertising. Especially used when + the mail addresses have been culled from network traffic or databases + without the consent of the recipients. Synonyms include + UCE, UBE. + As a noun, ‘spam’ refers to the messages so sent.
6. Any large, annoying, quantity of output. For instance, someone + on IRC who walks away from their screen and comes back to find 200 lines of + text might say “Oh no, spam”.
The later definitions have become much more prevalent as the Internet + has opened up to non-techies, and to most people senses 3 4 and 5 are now + primary. All three behaviors are considered abuse of the net, and are + almost universally grounds for termination of the originator's email + account or network connection. In these senses the term ‘spam’ + has gone mainstream, though without its original sense or folkloric freight + — there is apparently a widespread myth among + lusers that “spamming” is what happens + when you dump cans of Spam into a revolving fan. Hormel, the makers of + Spam, have published a surprisingly enlightened position statement on the + Internet usage.
[poss. by analogy to sunblock] Text inserted in an email address to + render it invalid and thus useless to spammers. For example, the address + <jrandom@hacker.org> might be transformed to + <jrandom@NOSPAM.hacker.org>. Adding spamblock to an address + is often referred to as munging it + (see munge). This evasion tactic depends on the + fact that most spammers collect names with some sort of address + harvester on volumes too high to de-mung by hand, but + individual humans reading an email message can readily spot and remove a + spamblock in the From address.
Note: This is not actually a very effective tactic, and may already + be passing out of use in early 1999 after about two years of life. In both + mail and news, it's essentially impossible to keep a smart address + harvester from mining out the addresses in the message header and trace + lines. Therefore the only people who can be protected are third parties + mentioned by email address in the message — not a common enough case + to interest spammers.
Pejorative term for an internet service provider that permits or + even encourages spam mailings from its systems. The + plural is spamhausen. There is a web + page devoted to tracking + spamhausen.
The most notorious of the spamhausen was Sanford Wallace's Cyber + Promotions Inc., shut down by a lawsuit on 16 October 1997. The + anniversary of the shutdown is celebrated on Usenet as Spam Freedom Day, + but lesser imitators of the Spamford still infest various murky corners of + the net. Since prosecution of spammers became routine under the junk-fax + laws and statues specifically targeting spam, spamhausen have declined in + relative importance; today, hit-and-run attacks by spammers using + relay rape and + throwaway accounts on reputable ISPs seem to account for most of the + flow.
To advertise using spam. Pejorative.
[UK] The singular of bells and whistles. See + also spungle.
1. [techspeak] In Unix parlance, to create a child process from + within a process. Technically this is a ‘fork’; the term + ‘spawn’ is a bit more general and is used for threads + (lightweight processes) as well as traditional heavyweight processes. +
2. In gaming, meant to indicate where (spawn-point) and when a player comes to life + (or re-spawns) after being + killed. Opposite of frag.
To write unique code to handle input to or situations arising in a + program that are somehow distinguished from normal processing. This would + be used for processing of mode switches or interrupt characters in an + interactive interface (as opposed, say, to text entry or normal commands), + or for processing of hidden flags in the input of a + batch program or filter.
The absolutely fastest a particular algorithm or application could be + implemented, given a set of constraints that are assumed to be + unchangeable. For example, “This would take 60 microseconds without + any processing whatsoever, so that's the speed of light.” However, + as one brilliant hacker once commented: “Remember that the speed of + light only is constant if you can't redesign the universe.”
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 operating system + goes through its main loop. A swiftly moving + pattern indicates that the system is mostly idle; the speedometer slows + down as the system becomes overloaded. The speedometer on Sun Microsystems + hardware bounces back and forth like the eyes on one of the Cylons from the + wretched Battlestar Galactica TV series.
Historical note: One computer, the GE 600 (later Honeywell 6000) + actually had an analog speedometer on the front panel, + calibrated in instructions executed per second.
Syn. incantation.
[Usenet] A posting ostentatiously correcting a previous article's + spelling as a way of casting scorn on the point the article was trying to + make, instead of actually responding to that point (compare + dictionary flame). Of course, people who are more + than usually slovenly spellers are prone to think any + correction is a spelling flame. It's an amusing comment on human nature + that spelling flames themselves often contain spelling errors.
Keywords embedded (usually invisibly) into a web page to attract + search engines (spiders). The intended result of including spider food in + one's web page is to insure that the page appears high on the list of + matching entries to a search engine query. There are right and wrong ways + to do this; the right way is a discreet ‘meta keywords’ tag, + the wrong way is to embed many repeats of a keyword in comments (and many + search engines now detect and ignore the latter).
The Web-walking part of a search engine that collects pages for + indexing in the search engine's database. Also called a + bot. The best-known spider is Scooter, the + web-walker for the Alta Vista search engine.
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 interface going for it. Which meaning should be drawn + depends delicately on tone of voice and context. This word was common + mainstream slang during the 1940s, in a sense close to 1.
1. To defeat a selection mechanism by introducing a (sometimes + temporary) device that forces a specific result. The word is used in + several industries; telephone engineers refer to spiking a relay by + inserting a pin to hold the relay in either the closed or open state, and + railroaders refer to spiking a track switch so that it cannot be moved. In + programming environments it normally refers to a temporary change, usually + for testing purposes (as opposed to a permanent change, which would be + called hardwired).
2. [borderline techspeak] A visible peak in an otherwise rather + constant graph (e.g. a sudden surge in line voltage, an unexpected short + “high” on a logical line in a circuit). Hackers frequently use + this for a sudden short increase in some quantity such as system load or + network traffic.
Equivalent to buzz. More common among C and + Unix programmers. See the discussion of ‘spinlock’ under + busy-wait.
[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, spl levels run from 1 to 7; “Fred's at + spl 6 today” would mean that he is very hard to interrupt. + “Wait till I finish this; I'll spl down then.” See also + interrupts locked out.
[Mac users] Syn. banner, sense 3.
[Usenet; syn. disemvowel] To + partially obscure a potentially provocative word by substituting + splat characters for some of its letters (usually, + but not always, the vowels). The purpose is not to make the word + unrecognizable but to make it a mention rather than a use, so that no + flamewar ensues. Words often splatted out include N*z* (see + Godwin's Law), k*bo* (see + KIBO, sense 2), *v*l*t**n (anywhere fundamentalists + might be lurking), *b*rt**n, and g*n c*ntr*l. Compare + UN*X.
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 # + character (ASCII 0100011).
3. The feature key on a Mac (same as + alt, sense 2).
4. obs. Name used by some people for the Stanford/ITS extended ASCII + ⊗ character. This character is also called blobby and frob, among other names; it is sometimes used + by mathematicians as a notation for tensor + product.
5. obs. Name for the semi-mythical Stanford extended ASCII ⊕ + character. See also ASCII.
[Usenet; common] The sound of coffee (or other beverage) hitting the + monitor and/or keyboard after being forced out of the mouth via the nose. + It usually follows an unexpectedly funny thing in a Usenet post. Compare + snarf.
[UK]
1. A lower form of life found on + talker systems and MUDs. The spod has few + friends in RL and uses talkers instead, finding + communication easier and preferable over the net. He has all the negative + traits of the computer geek without having any interest in computers per + se. Lacking any knowledge of or interest in how networks work, and + considering his access a God-given right, he is a major irritant to + sysadmins, clogging up lines in order to reach new MUDs, following + passed-on instructions on how to sneak his way onto Internet (“Wow! + It's in America!”) and complaining when he is not allowed to use + busy routes. A true spod will start any conversation with “Are you + male or female?” (and follow it up with “Got any good + numbers/IDs/passwords?”) and will not talk to someone physically + present in the same terminal room until they log onto the same machine that + he is using and enter talk mode. Compare newbie, + tourist, weenie, + twink, terminal junkie, + warez d00dz.
2. A backronym for “Sole Purpose, + Obtain a Degree”; according to some self-described spods, this term + is used by indifferent students to condemn their harder-working + fellows. Compare the defiant adoption of the term + geek in the mid-1990s by people who would previously + have been stigmatized by it. Spods in the positive sense are talker users + who've accumulated a large amount of spod time, that is, they spend a lot + of time logged in to that talker (for example, my spod time on Uberworld as + of this moment is 131 days, 15 hours and 20 minutes). Spods are generally + highly knowledgeable about talkers and SGXStalker coding, as well as + computers and the internet in general.
3. [Glasgow University] An otherwise competent hacker who spends way + too much time on talker systems.
4. [obs.] An ordinary person; a random. This + is the meaning with which the term was coined, but the inventor informs us + he has himself accepted sense 1.
[also spoiler spoo or + spoiler protection] A screenful of + blank or spacer lines deliberately inserted in a message + following a spoiler warning, so the actual spoiler + can't be seen without hitting a key. Formfeeds used to be used + for this, but are now rare because so many people read news through Web + interfaces on which they have no good interpretation.
[Usenet]
1. A remark which reveals important plot elements from books or + movies, thus denying the reader (of the article) the proper suspense when + reading the book or watching the movie.
2. Any remark which telegraphs the solution of a problem or puzzle, + thus denying the reader the pleasure of working out the correct answer (see + also interesting). Either sense readily forms + compounds like total spoiler, + quasi-spoiler and even pseudo-spoiler.
By convention, articles which are spoilers in either sense should + contain the word ‘spoiler’ in the Subject: line, or guarantee + via various tricks that the answer appears only after several screens-full + of warning, or conceal the sensitive information via + rot13, spoiler space or some + combination of these techniques.
[Unix] 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 a file system has versioning + (as ITS did and VMS does now) the sponge/filter distinction loses its + usefulness, because directing filter output would just write a new version. + See also slurp.
To capture, alter, and retransmit a communication stream in a way + that misleads the recipient. As used by hackers, refers especially to + altering TCP/IP packet source addresses or other packet-header data in + order to masquerade as a trusted machine. This term has become very + widespread and is borderline techspeak. Interestingly, it was already in + use in its modern sense more than a century ago among Victorian + telegraphers; it shows up in Kipling.
Any file to which data is spooled to await + the next stage of processing. Especially used in circumstances where + spooling the data copes with a mismatch between speeds in two devices or + pieces of software. For example, when you send mail under Unix, it's + typically copied to a spool file to await a transport + demon's attentions. This is borderline + techspeak.
[from early IBM ‘Simultaneous Peripheral Operation + On-Line’, but is widely thought to be a + backronym] To send files to some device or program + (a spooler) that queues them up and + does something useful with them later. Without qualification, the spooler + is the print spooler controlling + output of jobs to a printer; but the term has been used in connection with + other peripherals (especially plotters and graphics devices) and + occasionally even for input devices. See also + demon.
[portmanteau of ‘spam’ or ‘spew’ and + ‘forgery’. Massive floods of forged articles intended to + disrupt a newsgroup. Typically these have reasonable-looking headers but + complete gibberish for content, making the legitimate articles too + difficult to find. This tactic has been most notoriously used by the + Church of Scientology to disrupt discussion on the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology, but is + unfortunately not by any means confined to that group.
[MIT] The masochistic extreme of hacking, where the body and mind + are pushed until their limits are reached, and the body is barely able to + support the mind. Then, once your extremes are reached, you push as far + beyond that point as you can, far beyond normal notions of all-nighters and + caffeine diets.
[Durham, UK; portmanteau, spangle + bungle] A + spangle of no actual usefulness. Example: Roger the + Bent Paperclip in Microsoft Word '98. A spungle's only virtue is that it + looks pretty, unless you find creeping featurism ugly.
1. Software which, when installed by a user insufficiently + enlightened to avoid it, enables third parties to snoop the user's hard + drive or monitor their network transactions. Though the term seems to have + entered use in the late 1990s, it achieved real popularity as applied to + Microsoft Windows XP. Some back door features in XP + permit Microsoft to (for example) covertly scan your disk directories for + the names of files it might deem to be warez. +
2. Systems for spying on email and web traffic, such as the FBI's + Carnivore.
[common on Usenet's comp.risks newsgroup.] (alt.: squirrelicide) What all too frequently happens + when a squirrel decides to exercise its species's unfortunate penchant for + shorting out power lines with their little furry bodies. Result: one dead + squirrel, one down computer installation. In this situation, the computer + system is said to have been squirrelcided.
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, this can take a while.
The set of things a person 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 my stack.” “I haven't done it yet because every + time I pop my stack something new gets pushed.” If you are + interrupted several times in the middle of a conversation, “My stack + overflowed” means “I forget what we were talking + about.” The implication is that more items were pushed onto the + stack than could be remembered, so the least recent items were lost. The + usual physical example of a stack is to be found in a cafeteria: a pile of + plates or trays sitting on a spring in a well, so that when you put one on + the top they all sink down, and when you take one off the top the rest + spring up a bit. See also push and + pop.
(The Art of Computer Programming, second + edition, vol. 1, p. 236) says:
Many people who realized the + importance of stacks and queues independently have given other names to + these structures: stacks have been called push-down lists, reversion + storages, cellars, nesting stores, piles, last-in-first-out + (“LIFO”) lists, and even yo-yo lists! +
The term “stack” was originally coined by Edsger + Dijkstra, who was quite proud of it.
Synonym for aliasing bug used esp. among + microcomputer hackers.
[University of York, England] To replace a user's encrypted password + in /etc/passwd with a single asterisk. Under Unix this is not a legal + encryption of any password; hence the user is not permitted to log in. In + general, accounts like adm, news, and daemon are permanently “starred + out”; occasionally a real user might have this inflicted upon + him/her as a punishment, e.g. “Graham was starred out for playing + Omega in working hours”. Also occasionally known as The Order Of The + Gold Star in this context. “Don't do that, or you'll be awarded the + Order of the Gold Star...” Compare + disusered.
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 are you doing?” + or “What are you about to do?” Typical answers are + “about to gronk out”, or “hungry”. Another + standard question is “What's the state of the world?”, meaning + “What's new?” or “What's going on?”. The more + terse and humorous way of asking these questions would be + “State-p?”. Another way of phrasing the first question under + sense 1 would be “state-p latest hack?”.
2. Information being maintained in non-permanent memory (electronic + or human).
[Corporate DP] A manager that appears out of nowhere, promises + undeliverable software to unknown end users, and vanishes before the + programming staff realizes what has happened. See + smoke and mirrors.
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.
[Apple employees and users] Terminated, said of a development + project. Originated after Steven P. Jobs returned to Apple as acting CEO + in 1997. Jobs immediated axed several development projects, including + OpenDoc and Newton that had been launched by John Sculley, the man who had + ousted Jobs in the mid 1980s. Now any project shut down at Apple and often + at any large firm connected with Apple may be said to have gotten + steved. It is usually spelled lowercase despite the origin. It is almost + always past-tense and used quasi-adjectivally.
(alt.: stir-fried mumble) 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 chicken, oriental food; + see also mumble.
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.
[from the Star Trek Classic episode The City on the Edge + of Forever] A term traditionally used to describe (and + deprecate) computing environments that are grotesquely primitive in light + of what is known about good ways to design things. As in “Don't get + too used to the facilities here. Once you leave SAIL it's stone knives and + bearskins as far as the eye can see”. Compare + steam-powered.
Extreme lossage that renders something + (usually something vital) completely unusable. “The recent system + stoppage was caused by a fried + transformer.”
[prob.: from techspeak main + store] In some varieties of Commonwealth hackish, the preferred + 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.
[scientific computing] Said of a sequence of memory reads and writes + to addresses, each of which is separated from the last by a constant + interval called the stride length. + These can be a worst-case access pattern for the standard memory-caching + schemes when the stride length is a multiple of the cache line size. + Strided references are often generated by loops through an array, and (if + your data is large enough that access-time is significant) it can be + worthwhile to tune for better locality by inverting double loops or by + partially unrolling the outer loop of a loop nest. This usage is + borderline techspeak; the related term memory + stride is definitely techspeak.
Common name for the slant (‘/’, ASCII 0101111) + character. See ASCII for other synonyms.
Common (spoken) name for the at-sign (‘@’, ASCII + 1000000) character. See ASCII for other + synonyms.
[contraction of stub + subroutine] Tiny, often vacuous placeholder for a subroutine + that is to be written or fleshed out later.
Impressive; powerful. Said of code and designs which exhibit both + complexity and a virtuoso flair. Has connotations similar to + hairy but is more positive in tone. Often in the + emphatic most studly or as noun-form + studliness. “Smail 3.0's + configuration parser is most studly.”
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.
Mind-bogglingly stupid. Usually used in sarcasm. “You want + to code what in Ada? That's a ... stunning + idea!”
Syn. bogo-sort.
[Applied Data Research] (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 'er down, Ma, she's a-suckin' mud”. Often used as a + query. “We are going to reconfigure the network, are you ready to + suck mud?”
Syn. suitably small.
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 of suit-wearers. + Compare droid.
2. A person who habitually wears suits, as distinct from a techie or + hacker. See pointy-haired, + burble, management, + Stupids, SNAFU principle, + PHB, and + brain-damaged.
See win.
[perverted from mathematical jargon] 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 full-screen display, and one publicly exclaimed: “It + works!” Then, if the program dumped core on the first mouse click, + one might add: “Well, for suitably small values of + ‘works’.”
[UK] The room where all the Sun workstations live. The humor in + this term comes from the fact that it's also in mainstream use to describe + a solarium, and all those Sun workstations clustered together give off an + amazing amount of heat.
Unflattering hackerism for SunTools, a pre-X windowing environment + notorious in its day for size, slowness, and misfeatures. + X, however, is larger and (some claim) slower; see + second-system effect.
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 memory. See also + phase of the moon.
A special packet designed to shut up an Internet host. The Internet + Protocol (IP) has a control message called Source Quench that asks a host + to transmit more slowly on a particular connection to avoid congestion. It + also has a Redirect control message intended to instruct a host to send + certain packets to a different local router. A “super source + quench” is actually a redirect control packet, forged to look like + it came from a local router, that instructs a host to send all packets to + its own local loopback address. This will effectively tie many Internet + hosts up in knots. Compare Godzillagram, + breath-of-life packet.
[Unix] A superuser with no clue — someone with root privileges + on a Unix system and no idea what he/she is doing, the moral equivalent of + a three-year-old with an unsafetied Uzi. Anyone who thinks this is an + uncommon situation reckons without the territorial urges of + management.
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 programmer might be able to write an average + of 3 lines of working code in one day, while another, with the proper + tools, might be able to write 3,000. This range is astonishing; it is + matched in very few other areas of human endeavor.) The term superprogrammer is more commonly used within + such places as IBM than in the hacker community. It tends to stress naive + measures of productivity and to underweight creativity, ingenuity, and + getting the job done — and to sidestep the + question of whether the 3,000 lines of code do more or less useful work + than three lines that do the Right Thing. Hackers + tend to prefer the terms hacker and + wizard.
[Unix] 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.
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 software + and the relevant manuals better than the support people (sadly, this is + not a joke or exaggeration). A hacker's idea of + ‘support’ is a + tete--tete with the + software's designer.
[from the ‘surf’ idiom for rapidly flipping TV channels] + To traverse the Internet in search of interesting stuff, used esp. if one + is doing so with a World Wide Web browser. It is also common to speak of + surfing in to a particular + resource.
Hackers adopted this term early, but many have stopped using it since + it went completely mainstream around 1995. The passive, couch-potato + connotations that go with TV channel surfing were never pleasant, and + hearing non-hackers wax enthusiastic about “surfing the net” + tends to make hackers feel a bit as though their home is being overrun by + ignorami.
[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 action, or anything functionally equivalent to it. + See also big-endian, + little-endian, middle-endian, + bytesexual.
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.”
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 are + swapped into core for processing; when they are no + longer needed they may be swapped out again.
2. The jargon use of these terms analogizes people's short-term + memories with core. Cramming for an exam might be spoken of as swapping + in. If you temporarily forget someone's name, but then remember it, your + excuse is that it was swapped out. To keep + something swapped in means to keep it fresh in your memory: + “I reread the TECO manual every few months to keep it swapped + in.” If someone interrupts you just as you got a good idea, you + might say “Wait a moment while I swap this out”, implying that + a piece of paper is your extra-somatic memory and that if you don't swap + the idea out by writing it down it will get overwritten and lost as you + talk. Compare page in, + page out.
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 speed + in chasing references or to simplify code (e.g., by turning lots of name + lookups into pointer dereferences). The converse operation is sometimes + termed unswizzling. See also + snap.
(var.: synch)
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 would be ‘safe’ if the system were to + crash; thus, to checkpoint (in the database-theory sense).
The opposite of syntactic sugar, a feature + designed to make it harder to write bad code. Specifically, syntactic salt + is a hoop the programmer must jump through just to prove that he knows + what's going on, rather than to express a program action. Some programmers + consider required type declarations to be syntactic salt. A requirement to + write end if, end + while, end do, etc.: to terminate + the last block controlled by a control construct (as opposed to just + end) would definitely be syntactic salt. + Syntactic salt is like the real thing in that it tends to raise hackers' + blood pressures in an unhealthy way. Compare + candygrammar.
[coined by Peter Landin] Features added to a language or other + formalism to make it ‘sweeter’ for humans, but which do not + affect the expressiveness of the formalism (compare + chrome). Used esp. when there is an obvious and + trivial translation of the ‘sugar’ feature 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 variants syntactic + saccharin and syntactic + syrup are also recorded. These denote something even more + gratuitous, in that syntactic sugar serves a purpose (making something more + acceptable to humans), but syntactic saccharin or syrup serve no purpose at + all. Compare candygrammar, + syntactic salt.
[the PLATO system] Playful variant of sysprog, which is in turn short for + ‘systems programmer’.
Common contraction of ‘system admin’; see + admin.
A rather derogatory term for a computer operator; a play on + sysop common at sites that use the banana hierarchy + of problem complexity (see + one-banana problem).
[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 + FidoNet board, thus sending it to hundreds of sysops around + the world.
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 some site. Unlike + admin, this term emphasizes the technical end of the + skills involved.
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 hacker: one who + hacks the system (in senses 1 and 2 only; for sense 3 one mentions the + particular program: e.g., LISP + hacker)
See jock, sense 2.
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 things. Some Lisp hackers use + ‘T’ and ‘NIL’ 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 absently respond ‘T’, meaning that he + wants coffee; but of course he will be brought a cup of tea instead. + Fortunately, 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 transaction-processing circles, an abbreviation + for the noun ‘transaction’.
4. [Purdue] Alternate spelling of tee. +
5. A dialect of LISP developed at + Yale. (There is an intended allusion to NIL, “New Implementation of + Lisp”, another dialect of Lisp developed for the + VAX)
[Usenet, particularly rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan] Abbrev. of + ‘tangent’, as in “off on a tangent”, and synonym + for OT. A number of hacker-humor synonyms are used + for TAN in some newsgroups. Instances such as BEIGE, OFF-WHITE, + BROWNISH-GRAY, and LIGHT BROWN have been observed. It is generally + understood on newsgroups with this convention that any color descriptor is + a TAN synonym if (a) used as the first word(s) of the topic of a Usenet + post, (b) written in ALL CAPS, and (c) followed immediately by a + colon. Usage: “OFF-WHITE: 2000 Presidential candidates” on an + SF newsgroup.
[acronym, from Robert Heinlein's classic SF novel The + Moon is a Harsh Mistress.] “There Ain't No Such Thing As + A Free Lunch”, often invoked when someone is balking at the prospect + of using an unpleasantly heavyweight technique, or + at the poor quality of some piece of software, or at the + signal-to-noise ratio of unmoderated Usenet + newsgroups. “What? Don't tell me I have to implement a database + back end to get my address book program to work!” “Well, + TANSTAAFL you know.” This phrase owes some of its popularity to the + high concentration of science-fiction fans and political libertarians in + hackerdom (see Appendix B for + discussion).
Outside hacker circles the variant TINSTAAFL (“There is No Such + Thing...”) is apparently more common, and can be traced back to 1952 + in the writings of ethicist Alvin Hansen. TANSTAAFL may well have arisen + from it by mutation.
[IBM] 1. Trouble Came Back. An intermittent or + difficult-to-reproduce problem that has failed to respond to neglect or + shotgun debugging. Compare + heisenbug. Not to be confused with:
2. Trusted Computing Base, an ‘official’ jargon term + from the Orange Book.
1. [Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol] The + wide-area-networking protocol that makes the Internet work, and the only + one most hackers can speak the name of without laughing or retching. + Unlike such allegedly ‘standard’ competitors such as X.25, + DECnet, and the ISO 7-layer stack, TCP/IP evolved primarily by actually + being used, rather than being handed down from on high + by a vendor or a heavily-politicized standards committee. Consequently, it + (a) works, (b) actually promotes cheap cross-platform connectivity, and (c) + annoys the hell out of corporate and governmental empire-builders + everywhere. Hackers value all three of these properties. See + creationism.
2. [Amateur Packet Radio] Formerly expanded as “The Crap Phil + Is Pushing”. The reference is to Phil Karn, KA9Q, and the context + was an ongoing technical/political war between the majority of sites still + running AX.25 and the TCP/IP relays. TCP/IP won.
1. [originally an acronym for ‘[paper] Tape Editor and + COrrector’; later, ‘Text Editor and COrrector’] n. A text editor developed at MIT and modified by + just about everybody. With all the dialects included, TECO may have been + the most prolific editor in use before EMACS, to + which it was directly ancestral. Noted for its powerful + programming-language-like features and its unspeakably + hairy syntax. It is literally the case that every + string of characters is a valid TECO program (though probably not a useful + one); one common game used to be mentally working out what the TECO + commands corresponding to human names did.
2. vt. Originally, to edit using + the TECO editor in one of its infinite variations (see below).
3. vt.,obs. To edit even when TECO is not the + editor being used! This usage is rare and now primarily historical.
As an example of TECO's obscurity, here is a TECO program that takes + a list of names such as:
+Loser,J.Random
+Quux,TheGreat
+Dick,Moby
+
sorts them alphabetically according to surname, and then puts the + surname last, removing the comma, to produce the following:
+MobyDick
+J.RandomLoser
+TheGreatQuux
+
The program is
+[1J^P$L$$
+J<.-Z;.,(S,$-D.)FX1@F^B$K:LI$G1L>$$
+
(where ^B means ‘Control-B’ (ASCII 0000010) and $ is + actually an alt or escape (ASCII 0011011) + character).
In fact, this very program was used to produce the second, sorted + list from the first list. The first hack at it had a + bug: GLS (the author) had accidentally omitted the + @ in front of F^B, which as anyone can see is clearly the + Wrong Thing. It worked fine the second time. There + is no space to describe all the features of TECO, but it may be of interest + that ^P means ‘sort’ and + J<.-Z; ... L> is an idiomatic + series of commands for ‘do once for every line’.
In mid-1991, TECO is pretty much one with the dust of history, having + been replaced in the affections of hackerdom by + EMACS. Descendants of an early (and somewhat + lobotomized) version adopted by DEC can still be found lurking on VMS and a + couple of crufty PDP-11 operating systems, however, and ports of the more + advanced MIT versions remain the focus of some antiquarian interest. See + also retrocomputing, + write-only language.
[Usenet] Abbreviation: “There Is No Cabal”. See + backbone cabal and NANA, but + note that this abbreviation did not enter use until long after the + dispersal of the backbone cabal.
Abbreviation: “There Is No Lumber Cartel”. See + Lumber Cartel. TINLC is a takeoff on + TINC.
[Three-Letter Acronym]
1. Self-describing abbreviation 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 usage argue that + not all TLAs have 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 terms + ‘SFLA’ (Stupid Four-Letter Acronym), ‘LFLA’ (Longer + Four Letter Acronym), and VLFLA (Very Long Five Letter Acronym) have also + been reported. See also 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 problem in computing in the + 90s?” Paul's straight-faced response: “There are only 17,000 + three-letter acronyms.” (To be exact, there are 26^3 + = 17,576.) There is probably some karmic justice in the + fact that Paul Boutin subsequently became a journalist.
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 that + became basics of the hackish vocabulary (see + esp. foo, mung, and + frob).
By 1962, TMRC's legendary layout was already a marvel of complexity + and has grown in the years since. All the features described here were + still present when the old layout was decommissioned in 1998 just before + the demolition of MIT Building 20, and will almost certainly be retained + when the old layout is rebuilt (expected in 2003). The control system + alone featured about 1200 relays. There were scram + switches located at numerous places around the room that could + be thwacked if something undesirable was about to occur, such as a train + going full-bore at an obstruction. Another feature of the system was a + digital clock on the dispatch board, which was itself something of a wonder + in those bygone days before cheap LEDs and seven-segment displays. When + someone hit a scram switch the clock stopped and the display was replaced + with the word ‘FOO’; at TMRC the scram switches are therefore + called foo switches.
Steven Levy, in his book Hackers (see the + Bibliography in Appendix C), gives a + stimulating account of those early years. TMRC's Signals and Power + Committee included many of the early PDP-1 hackers and the people who later + became the core of the MIT AI Lab staff. Thirty years later that + connection is still very much alive, and this lexicon accordingly includes + a number of entries from a recent revision of the TMRC dictionary.
TMRC has a web page at http://tmrc-www.mit.edu/. The TMRC + Dictionary is available there, at http://tmrc-www.mit.edu/dictionary.html.
[MIT] A denizen of TMRC.
There's More Than One Way To Do It. This abbreviation of the + official motto of Perl is frequently used on + newsgroups and mailing lists related to that language.
Text Over, Fullquote Under; see + top-post.
DEC's proprietary OS for the fabled + PDP-10 machines, long a favorite of hackers but now + long extinct. A fountain of hacker folklore; see Appendix A. See also + ITS, TOPS-20, + TWENEX, VMS, + operating system. TOPS-10 was sometimes called + BOTS-10 (from ‘bottoms-ten’) as a comment on the + inappropriateness of describing it as the top of anything.
See TWENEX.
[from the acronym for ‘Terms Of Service’ playing on the + verb “toss”]
1. The act of terminating an Internet access account because the + owner breached the terms of service (e.g. by spamming).
2. To successfully complain to the ISP for that reason so that they + then close the account.
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, Beranek & Newman's TENEX operating + system using special paging hardware. By the early 1970s, almost all of + the systems on the ARPANET ran TENEX. DEC purchased the rights to TENEX + from BBN and began work to make it their own. The first in-house code name + for the operating system was VIROS (VIRtual memory Operating System); when + customers started asking questions, the name was changed to SNARK so DEC + could truthfully deny that there was any project called VIROS. When the + name SNARK became known, the name was briefly reversed to become KRANS; + this was quickly abandoned when someone objected that krans meant ‘funeral wreath’ in + Swedish (though some Swedish speakers have since said it means simply + ‘wreath’; this part of the story may be apocryphal). + Ultimately DEC picked TOPS-20 as the name of the operating system, and it + was as TOPS-20 that it was marketed. The hacker community, mindful of its + origins, quickly dubbed it TWENEX (a contraction of ‘twenty + TENEX’), even though by this point very little of the original TENEX + code remained (analogously to the differences between AT&T V6 Unix and + BSD). DEC people cringed when they heard “TWENEX”, but the + term caught on nevertheless (the written abbreviation ‘20x’ was + also used). TWENEX was successful and very popular; in fact, there was a + period in the early 1980s when it commanded as fervent a culture of + partisans as Unix or ITS — but DEC's decision to scrap all the + internal rivals to the VAX architecture and its + relatively stodgy VMS OS killed the DEC-20 and put a sad end to TWENEX's + brief day in the sun. DEC attempted to convince TOPS-20 users to convert + to VMS, but instead, by the late 1980s, most of the + TOPS-20 hackers had migrated to Unix. There is a TOPS-20 home page.
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, the other favored formatter, even at many + Unix installations). TeX fans insist on the correct (guttural) + pronunciation, and the correct spelling (all caps, squished together, with + the E depressed below the baseline; the mixed-case ‘TeX’ is + considered an acceptable kluge on ASCII-only devices). Fans like to + proliferate names from the word ‘TeX’ — such as TeXnician + (TeX user), TeXhacker (TeX programmer), TeXmaster (competent TeX + programmer), TeXhax, and TeXnique. See also + CrApTeX.
Knuth began TeX because he had become annoyed at the declining + quality of the typesetting in volumes I--III of his monumental + Art of Computer Programming (see + Knuth, also bible). In a + manifestation of the typical hackish urge to solve the problem at hand once + and for all, he began to design his own typesetting language. He thought + he would finish it on his sabbatical in 1978; he was wrong by only about 8 + years. The language was finally frozen around 1985, but volume IV of + The Art of Computer Programming is not expected to + appear until 2007. The impact and influence of TeX's design has been such + that nobody minds this very much. Many grand hackish projects have started + as a bit of toolsmithing on the way to something + else; Knuth's diversion was simply on a grander scale than most.
TeX has also been a noteworthy example of free, shared, but + high-quality software. Knuth offers a monetary award to anyone who found + and reported bugs dating from before the 1989 code freeze; as the years + wore on and the few remaining bugs were fixed (and new ones even harder to + find), the bribe went up. Though well-written, TeX is so large (and so + full of cutting edge technique) that it is said to have unearthed at least + one bug in every Pascal system it has been compiled with.
The canonical first parry in a debate about a + purported bug. The complainant, if unconvinced, is likely to retort that + the bug is then at best a misfeature. See also + feature.
Less clipped variant of can't happen.
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 + imitation of Bullwinkle J. Moose. Also heard: “Hey, Rocky! Watch me + pull a rabbit out of my hat!” The canonical + response is, of course, “But that trick never + works!” See hacker humor.
[Great Britain] A monitoring program used to scan incoming network + calls and generate alerts when calls are received from particular sites, or + when logins are attempted using certain IDs. Named after ‘Project + Tinkerbell’, an experimental phone-tapping program developed by + British Telecom in the early 1980s.
[coined by MIT-hacker-turned-NSA-spook Dan Edwards] A malicious + security-breaking program that is disguised as something benign, such as a + directory lister, archiver, game, or (in one notorious 1990 case on the + Mac) a program to find and destroy viruses! See + back door, virus, + worm, phage, + mockingbird.
Common Usenet jargon for a notional instrument used to measure the + provocation level of a Usenet troll. “Come on, + everyone! If the above doesn't set off the Troll-O-Meter, we're going to + have to get him to run around with a big blinking sign saying ‘I am a + troll, I’m only in it for the controversy and flames', and shooting + random gobs of Jell-O(tm) at us before the point is proven.” + Mentions of the Troll-O-Meter are often accompanied by an ASCII picture of + an arrow pointing at a numeric scale. Compare + bogometer, + Indent-o-Meter.
1. A place where anything is possible but nothing of interest is + practical. Alan Turing helped lay the foundations of computer science by + showing that all machines and languages capable of expressing a certain + very primitive set of operations are logically equivalent in the kinds of + computations they can carry out, and in principle have capabilities that + differ only in speed from those of the most powerful and elegantly designed + computers. However, no machine or language exactly matching Turing's + primitive set has ever been built (other than possibly as a classroom + exercise), because it would be horribly slow and far too painful to use. A + Turing tar-pit is any computer + language or other tool that shares this property. That is, it's + theoretically universal — but in practice, the harder you struggle to + get any real work done, the deeper its inadequacies suck you in. Compare + bondage-and-discipline language.
2. The perennial holy wars over whether + language A or B is the “most powerful”.
Tux the Penguin is the official emblem of + Linux, This eventuated after a logo contest in 1996, + during which Linus Torvalds endorsed the idea of a penguin logo in a couple + of famously funny + postings. Linus explained that he was once bitten by a killer + penguin in Australia and has felt a special affinity for the species ever + since. (Linus has since admitted that he was also thinking of Feathers + McGraw, the evil-genius penguin jewel thief who appeared in a Wallace & + Grommit feature cartoon, The Wrong Trousers.)
Larry Ewing + designed the official Tux logo. It has proved a wise choice, + amenable to hundreds of recognizable variations used as emblems of + Linux-related projects, products, and user groups. In fact, Tux has spawned + an entire mythology, of which the Gospel According to + Tux and the mock-epic poem Tuxowolf are + among the best-known examples.
There is a ‘real’ Tux — a black-footed penguin + resident at the Bristol Zoo. Several friends of Linux bought a zoo + sponsorship for Linus as a birthday present in 1996.
If you aren't sick of it already, see + tail recursion.
A feature supported by Unix 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 language entails. It is difficult to 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. Some of these are identical to (and probably + derived from) Morse-code jargon used by ham-radio amateurs since the + 1920s.
| AFAIAC | as far as I am concerned |
| AFAIK | as far as I know |
| BCNU | be seeing you |
| BTW | by the way |
| BYE? | are you ready to unlink? (this is the standard way to end a + talk-mode conversation; the other person types + BYE + to confirm, or else continues the conversation) |
| CUL | see you later |
| ENQ? | are you busy? (expects ACK + or NAK in return) |
| FOO? | are you there? (often used on unexpected links, meaning also + “Sorry if I butted in &ellipsis;” (linker) or + “What's up?” (linkee)) |
| FWIW | for what it's worth |
| FYI | for your information |
| FYA | for your amusement |
| GA | go ahead (used when two people have tried to type + simultaneously; this cedes the right to type to the other) |
| GRMBL | grumble (expresses disquiet or disagreement) |
| HELLOP | hello? (an instance of the ‘-P’ convention) |
| IIRC | if I recall correctly |
| JAM | just a minute (equivalent to + SEC.... + + ) |
| MIN | same as JAM |
| NIL | no (see NIL) |
| NP | no problem |
| O | over to you |
| OO | over and out |
| / | another form of “over to you” + + (from x/y as “x over y”) |
| \ | lambda (used in discussing LISPy things) |
| OBTW | oh, by the way |
| OTOH | on the other hand |
| R U THERE? | are you there? |
| SEC | wait a second (sometimes written + SEC... + + ) |
| SYN | Are you busy? (expects ACK, SYN|ACK, or RST in return; this + is modeled on the TCP/IP handshake sequence) |
| T | yes (see the main entry for + T) |
| TNX | thanks |
| TNX 1.0E6 | thanks a million (humorous) |
| TNXE6 | another form of “thanks a million” |
| TTBOMK | to the best of my knowledge |
| WRT | with regard to, or with respect to. |
| WTF | the universal interrogative particle; WTF knows what it + means? |
| WTH | what the hell? |
| <double newline> | When the typing party has finished, he/she types two newlines + to signal that he/she is done; this leaves a blank line between + 'speeches' in the conversation, making it easier to reread the + preceding text. |
| YHTBT | You Had To Be There. Used of a situation which loses + significant meaning in the telling, usually because it's difficult + to convey tone and timing. |
| <name>: | When three or more terminals are linked, it is conventional + for each typist to prepend + his/her login name or handle and a colon (or a hyphen) to each line + to indicate who is typing (some conferencing facilities do this + automatically). The login name is often shortened to a unique prefix + (possibly a single letter) during a very long conversation. |
| /\/\/\ | A giggle or chuckle. On a MUD, this usually means 'earthquake + fault'. |
| <g> | grin |
| <gd&r> | grinning, ducking, and running |
| BBL | be back later |
| BRB | be right back |
| HHOJ | ha ha only joking |
| HHOK | ha ha only kidding |
| HHOS | ha ha only serious |
| IMHO | in my humble opinion (see IMHO) |
| LOL | laughing out loud |
| NHOH | Never Heard of Him/Her (often used in + initgame) |
| ROTF | rolling on the floor |
| ROTFL | rolling on the floor laughing |
| AFK | away from keyboard |
| b4 | before |
| CU l8tr | see you later |
| MORF | male or female? |
| TTFN | ta-ta for now |
| TTYL | talk to you later |
| OIC | oh, I see |
| rehi | hello again |
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, most of the people who know these are 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 respondents report use of BBL, BRB, LOL, 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, MUDders express a + preference for 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 reported:
| CU l8er | see you later (mutant of CU l8tr) |
| FOAD | fuck off and die (use of this is generally OTT) |
| OTT | over the top (excessive, uncalled for) |
| ppl | abbrev for “people” |
| THX | thanks (mutant of TNX; clearly this comes in batches of 1138 (the +Lucasian K)). |
| UOK? | are you OK? |
Some B1FFisms (notably the 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 + typing rather than speaking. This is 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 plunge forward, + unless severe confusion may result; in that case it is often fastest just + to type “xxx” and start over from before the mistake.
British hackerism for software that enables real-time chat or + talk mode.
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.
A junior system administrator, one who might plausibly be assigned + to do physical swapping of tapes and subsequent storage. When a backup + needs to be restored, one might holler “Tape monkey!” (Compare + one-banana problem) Also used to dismiss jobs not + worthy of a highly trained sysadmin's ineffable talents: “Cable up + her PC? You must be joking — I'm no tape monkey.”
[from Unix + tar(1)] + 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 feathering partly for euphony and (if only for + contrived effect) by analogy to what you do with 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. Compare the + more common tarball. Earlier, the phrase referred + to a punishment in which the victims had tar being poured upon them and + then, whilst the tar was still sticky, having a pillow full of feathers - + or other material — thrown at them. See http://www.nwta.com/Spy/spring99/tar.html.
[very common; prob. based on the “tar baby” in the + Uncle Remus folk tales] An archive, created with the Unix tar(1) utility, + containing myriad related files. “Here, I'll just ftp you a tarball + of the whole project.” Tarballs have been the standard way to ship + around source-code distributions since the mid-1980s; in retrospect it + seems odd that this term did not enter common usage until the late + 1990s.
[deliberate mangling of tragedy] An incident in which someone who + clearly deserves to be selected out of the gene pool on grounds of extreme + stupidity meets with a messy end. Coined on the Darwin list, which is + dedicated to chronicling such incidents; but almost all hackers would + instantly recognize the intention of the term and laugh.
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 + tasty and flavorful are essentially synonyms, taste and flavor are + not. Taste refers to sound judgment on the part of the creator; a program + or feature can exhibit taste but cannot + have taste. On the other hand, a feature can have + flavor. Also, flavor has the + additional meaning of ‘kind’ or ‘variety’ not + shared by taste. The marked sense of + flavor is more popular than taste, though both are widely used. See also + elegant.
2. Alt. sp. of tayste.
n. Two bits; also as + taste. Syn. crumb, + quarter. See nybble.
[Purdue] A carbon copy of an electronic transmission. “Oh, + you're 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 “Tee a slice for + me!” Also spelled ‘T’.
[German for tar pit] A trap + set to punish spammers who use an address harvester; + a mail server deliberately set up to be really, really slow. To activate + it, scatter addresses that look like users on the teergrube's host in + places where the address harvester will be trolling (one popular way is to + embed the fake address in a Usenet sig block next to a human-readable + warning not to send mail to it). The address harvester will dutifully + collect the address. When the spammer tries to mailbomb it, his mailer + will get stuck.
Sex in a computer simulated virtual reality, esp. computer-mediated + sexual interaction between the VR presences of two + humans. This practice is not yet possible except in the rather limited + form of erotic conversation on MUDs and the like. + The term, however, is widely recognized in the VR community as a + ha ha only serious projection of things to come. + “When we can sustain a multi-sensory surround good enough for + teledildonics, then we'll know we're getting + somewhere.” See also hot chat.
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.
Of programs, very clever and efficient. A tense piece of code often + got that way because it was highly tuned, 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 CMU: “This routine is so tense it will bring + tears to your eyes.” A tense programmer is one who produces tense + code.
A covert pseudo, sense 1. An artificial + identity created in cyberspace for nefarious and deceptive purposes. The + implication is that a single person may have multiple tentacles. This term + was originally floated in some paranoid ravings on the cypherpunks list + (see cypherpunk), and adopted in a spirit of irony + by other, saner members. It has since shown up, used seriously, in the + documentation for some remailer software, and is now (1994) widely + recognized on the net. Compare astroturfing, + sock puppet.
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 don't really get tenure, of course, the way professors do, but a + tenth-year graduate student has probably been around the university longer + than any untenured professor.
[SI] See quantifiers.
[FLOP = Floating Point Operation] 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. + Caltech professor James Kajiya is said to have been the founder. Compare + Knights of the Lambda Calculus.
[Caltech, ca. 1979] 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 a bad keyboard. Pkease + fix.” Compare dread high-bit disease, + frogging; see also + sun-stools, HP-SUX, + Slowlaris.
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.
1. Syn. raster burn.
2. The ‘burn-in’ condition your CRT tends to get if you + don't have a screen saver.
[UK] 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, and + console jockey. The term 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. + Appropriately, this term was used in the works of William S. Burroughs to + describe a heroin addict with an unlimited supply.
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 or her shoulder, ready to pounce on + mistakes.
Judging by the quality of most software, the second definition + is far more prevalent. See also demo.
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 + representation (see flat-ASCII). “Those are + text files; you can review them using the editor.”
These two contradictory senses confuse hackers, too.
[Usenet] Conventional net.politeness ending a posted request for + information or assistance. Sometimes written ‘advTHANKSance’ + or ‘aTdHvAaNnKcSe’ or abbreviated ‘TIA’. See + net.-, netiquette.
Yet another instance of hackerdom's 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 which can be spoken of is not the 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.
Computer-science journals and other publications, vaguely gestured + at to answer a question that the speaker believes is + trivial. Thus, one might answer an annoying + question by saying “It's in the literature.” Oppose + Knuth, which has no connotation of + triviality.
1. Historically, the union of all the major noncommercial, academic, + and hacker-oriented networks, such as Internet, the pre-1990 ARPANET, + NSFnet, BITNET, and the virtual UUCP and Usenet + ‘networks’, plus the corporate in-house networks and commercial + timesharing services (such as CompuServe, GEnie and AOL) that gateway to + them. A site is generally considered on the + network if it can be reached through some combination of + Internet-style (@-sign) and UUCP (bang-path) addresses. See + Internet, bang path, + network address.
2. Following the mass-culture discovery of the Internet in 1994 and + subsequent proliferation of cheap TCP/IP connections, “the + network” is increasingly synonymous with the Internet itself (as it + was before the second wave of wide-area computer networking began around + 1980).
3. A fictional conspiracy of libertarian hacker-subversives and + anti-authoritarian monkeywrenchers described in Robert Anton Wilson's novel + Schrdinger's Cat, to which many hackers have + subsequently decided they belong (this is an example of + ha ha only serious).
In sense 1, the network is + often abbreviated to the net. + “Are you on the net?” is a frequent question when hackers + first meet face to face, and “See you on the net!” is a + frequent goodbye.
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 design or + system. Used esp. around software issues with a heavy AI or + language-design component, such as the smart-data vs. smart-programs + dispute in AI.
The consensus, idea, plan, story, or set of rules that is currently + being used to inform a behavior. This usage is a generalization and + (deliberate) abuse of the technical meaning. “What's the theory on + fixing this TECO loss?” “What's the theory on dinner + tonight?” (“Chinatown, I guess.”) “What's the + current theory on letting lusers on during the day?” “The + theory behind this change is to fix the following well-known + screw....”
[by analogy with ‘typo’] 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; see also + brain fart. Compare mouso.
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 said to thrash. Someone who keeps changing + his mind (esp. about what to work on next) is said to be thrashing. A + person frantically trying to execute too many tasks at once (and not + spending enough time on any single task) may also be described as + thrashing. Compare multitask.
[Usenet, GEnie, CompuServe] Common abbreviation of topic thread, a more or less continuous chain + of postings on a single topic. To follow a + thread is to read a series of Usenet postings sharing a common + subject or (more correctly) which are connected by Reference headers. The + better newsreaders can present news in thread order automatically. Not to + be confused with the techspeak sense of ‘thread’, e.g. a + lightweight process.
Interestingly, this is far from a neologism. The OED says: + “That which connects the successive points in anything, esp. a + narrative, train of thought, or the like; the sequence of events or ideas + continuing throughout the whole course of anything;” Citations are + given going back to 1642!
Syn. Vulcan nerve pinch.
1. An inexpensive Internet account purchased on a legitimate + ISP for the sole purpose of spewing + spam.
2. An inexpensive Internet account obtained for the sole purpose of + doing something which requires a valid email address but being able to + ignore spam since the user will not look at the account again.
1. Yet another metasyntactic 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 synonyms.
The slider on a window-system scrollbar. So called because moving + it allows you to browse through the contents of a text window in a way + analogous to thumbing through a book.
Scheduler thrashing. This can happen under Unix when you have a + number of processes that are waiting on a single event. When that event (a + connection to the web server, say) happens, every process which could + possibly handle the event is awakened. In the end, only one of those + processes will actually be able to do the work, but, in the meantime, all + the others wake up and contend for CPU time before being put back to + sleep. Thus the system thrashes briefly while a herd of processes thunders + through. If this starts to happen many times per second, the performance + impact can be significant.
1. [obs.]“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 with an expression in + the place of a formal parameter, the compiler generates a thunk which + computes the expression and leaves the address of the result in some + standard location.
2. Later generalized into: an expression, frozen together with its + environment, for later evaluation if and when needed (similar to what in + techspeak is called a closure). The + process of unfreezing these thunks is called forcing.
3. A stubroutine, in an overlay programming + environment, that loads and jumps to the correct overlay. Compare + trampoline.
4. Microsoft and IBM have both defined, in their Intel-based + systems, a “16-bit environment” (with bletcherous segment + registers and 64K address limits) and a “32-bit environment” + (with flat addressing and semi-real memory management). The two + environments can both be running on the same computer and OS (thanks to + what is called, in the Microsoft world, WOW which stands for Windows On + Windows). MS and IBM have both decided that the process of getting from 16- + to 32-bit and vice versa is called a “thunk”; for Windows 95, + there is even a tool THUNK.EXE called a “thunk compiler”. +
5. A person or activity scheduled in a thunklike manner. “It + occurred to me the other day that I am rather accurately modeled by a thunk + — I frequently need to be forced to completion.:” — + paraphrased from a plan file.
Historical note: There are a couple of onomatopoeic myths circulating + about the origin of this term. The most common is that it is the sound + made by data hitting the stack; another holds that the sound is that of the + data hitting an accumulator. Yet another suggests that it is the sound of + the expression being unfrozen at argument-evaluation time. In fact, + according to the inventors, it was coined after they realized (in the wee + hours after hours of discussion) that the type of an argument in Algol-60 + could be figured out in advance with a little compile-time thought, + simplifying the evaluation machinery. In other words, it had + ‘already been thought of’; thus it was christened a thunk, which is “the past tense of + ‘think’ at two in the morning”.
[Acorn Computers] 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 + the phrase has not been reported.
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 ordering of events. This sort of AI simulation is often pejoratively + referred to as tick-tick-tick + simulation, especially when the issue of simultaneity of events with long, + independent chains of causes is handwaved.
3. In the FORTH language, a single quote character.
To cause a normally hidden bug to manifest itself through some known + series of inputs or operations. “You can tickle the bug in the + Paradise VGA card's highlight handling by trying to set bright yellow + reverse video.”
[U.S. military jargon]
1. Originally, a team (of sneakers) 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 + installations, hand-lettered notes saying “Your codebooks have been + stolen” (they usually haven't 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 hell breaks loose. Serious successes of tiger teams sometimes lead + to early retirement for base commanders and security officers (see the + patch entry for an example).
2. Recently, and more generally, any official inspection team or + special firefighting group called in to look at a + problem.
A subset of tiger teams are professional + crackers, testing the security of military computer + installations by attempting remote attacks 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 specific sense.
1. An unspecified but usually well-understood time, often used in + conjunction with a later time T+1. + “We'll meet on campus at time T or + at Louie's at time T+1” means, in + the context of going out for dinner: “We can meet on campus and go to + Louie's, or we can meet at Louie's itself a bit later.” (Louie's was + a Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto that was 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 Louie's is 30 minutes; whatever time + T is (and that hasn't been decided on + yet), you can meet half an hour later at Louie's than you could on campus + and end up eating at the same time. See also + since time T equals minus infinity.
A subspecies of logic bomb that is triggered + by reaching some preset time, either once or periodically. There are + numerous legends about time bombs set up by programmers in their employers' + machines, to go off if the programmer is fired or laid off and is not + present to perform the appropriate suppressing action periodically.
Interestingly, the only such incident for which we have been pointed + to documentary evidence took place in the Soviet Union in 1986! A + disgruntled programmer at the Volga Automobile Plant (where the Fiat clones + called Ladas were manufactured) planted a time bomb which, a week after + he'd left on vacation, stopped the entire main assembly line for a day. + The case attracted lots of attention in the Soviet Union because it was the + first cracking case to make it to court there. The perpetrator got a + suspended sentence of 3 years in jail and was barred from future work as a + programmer.
[poss.: by analogy with heat + sink or current sink] A + project that consumes unbounded amounts of time.
[by analogy with ‘plus-or-minus’] Term occasionally used + when describing the uncertainty associated with a scheduling estimate, for + either humorous or brutally honest effect. For a software project, the + scheduling uncertainty factor is usually at least 2.
[now primarily historical] Timesharing is the technique of scheduling + a computer's time so that they are shared across multiple tasks and + multiple users, with each user having the illusion that his or her + computation is going on continuously. John McCarthy, the inventor of + LISP, first imagined + this technique in the late 1950s. The first timesharing operating + systems, BBN's "Little Hospital" and CTSS, were + deplayed in 1962-63. The early hacker culture of the 1960s and 1970s grew + up around the first generation of relatively cheap timesharing computers, + notably the DEC 10, 11, and VAX lines. But these + were only cheap in a relative sense; though quite a bit less powerful than + today's personal computers, they had to be shared by dozens or even + hundreds of people each. The early hacker comunities nucleated around + places where it was relatively easy to get access to a timesharing + account.
Nowadays, communications bandwidth is usually the most important + constraint on what you can do with your computer. Not so back then; + timesharing machines were often loaded to capacity, and it was not uncommon + for everyone's work to grind to a halt while the machine scheduler + thrashed, trying to figure out what to do next. Early hacker slang + was replete with terms like cycle + crunch and cycle drought + for describing the consequences of too few instructions-per-second spread + among too many users. As GLS has noted, this sort of problem influenced + the tendency of many hackers to work odd schedules.
One reason this is worth noting here is to make the point that the + earliest hacker communities were physical, not distributed via networks; + they consisted of hackers who shared a machine and therefore had to deal + with many of the same problems with respect to it. A system crash could + idle dozens of eager programmers, all sitting in the same terminal room and + with little to do but talk with each other until normal operation + resumed.
Timesharing moved from being the luxury of a few large universities + runing semi-experimental operating systems to being more generally + available about 1975-76. Hackers in search of more cycles and more control + over their programming environment began to migrate off timesharing + machines and onto what are now called workstations around 1983. It took another ten + years, the development of powerful 32-bit personal micros, the + Great Internet Explosion before the migration was + complete. It is no coincidence that the last stages of this migration + coincided with the development of the first open-source operating + systems.
[IBM] 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 at all important.
[IBM] 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 a dinosaur.
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; but older Macs (like pre-PC + electric typewriters) had them on the D and + K keys (this changed in 1999).
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 + approximation of the answer, one can write an 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 indicate that deeper questioning + would reveal that not all is perfect (e.g., a nagging cough still remains + after an illness).
[from to a first + approximation] A + really sloppy approximation; + a wild guess. Compare social science number.
1. Notionally, to change a MUD player into a + toad.
2. To permanently and totally exile a player from the MUD. A very + serious action, which can only be done by a MUD + wizard; often involves a lot of debate among the + other characters first. See also frog, + FOD.
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.” (This sense went + mainstream around 1993.)
2. vt. To cause a system to + crash accidentally, especially in a manner that requires manual rebooting. + “Rick just toasted the firewall machine + again.” Compare fried.
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? That'd be as silly as running Unix on your 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. a Mac in the original unitary case. Some hold + that this is implied by sense 2.
4. A peripheral device. “I bought my box without toasters, + but since then I've added two boards and a second disk drive.” +
5. A specialized computer used as an appliance. See + web toaster, video toaster.
A footprint of especially small size.
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 + keeps the switch in the position to which it is flipped rather than to the + fact that the switch has two positions. There are four things you can do + to a bit: set it (force it to be 1), clear (or zero) it, leave it alone, or + toggle it. (Mathematically, one would say that there are four distinct + boolean-valued functions of one boolean argument, but saying that is much + less fun than talking about toggling bits.)
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; see + also toolchain.
2. [Unix] An application program with a simple, + ‘transparent’ (typically text-stream) interface designed + specifically to be used in programmed combination with other tools (see + filter, plumbing).
3. [MIT: general to students there] vi. To work; to study (connotes tedium). The + TMRC Dictionary defined this as “to set one's brain to the + grindstone”. See hack.
4. n. [MIT] A student who + studies too much and hacks too little. (MIT's student humor magazine + rejoices in the name Tool and Die.)
A collection of tools used to develop for a particular hardware + target, or to work with a particular data format (thus ‘the Crusoe + development toolchain’, or the ‘DocBook + toolchain’). Often used in the context of building software on one + system which will be installed or run on some other device; in that case + the chain of tools usually consists of such items as a particular version + of a compiler, libraries, special headers, etc. May also be used of + text-formatting, page layout, or multimedia tools which render from some + markup to a variety of production formats. Differs from + ‘toolkit’ in that the former implies a collection of + semi-independent tools with complementary functions, while + ‘toolchain’ implies that each of the parts is a serial stage in + a rather tightly bound pipeline. Seems to have become current in early + 1999 and 2000; now common.
The software equivalent of a tool-and-die specialist; one who + specializes in making the tools with which other + programmers create applications. Many hackers consider this more fun than + applications per se; to understand why, see + uninteresting. Jon Bentley, in the + “Bumper-Sticker Computer Science” chapter of his book + More Programming Pearls, quotes Dick Sites from + DEC as saying “I'd rather write programs to + write programs than write programs”.
The Bourne-Again Super-user. An alternate account with UID of 0, + created on Unix machines where the root user has an inconvenient choice of + shell. Compare avatar.
[common] To put the newly-added portion of an email or Usenet + response before the quoted part, as opposed to the more logical sequence of + quoted portion first with original following. The problem with this + practice is neatly summed up by the following FAQ entry:
+A: No. +Q: Should I include quotations after my reply? + |
This term is generally used pejoratively with the implication that + the offending person is a newbie, a Microsoft addict + (Microsoft mail tools produce a similar format by default), or simply a + common-and-garden-variety idiot.
One major problem with top-posting is that people who do it all too + frequently quote the entire parent message rather than + trimming it down to those portions relevent to their reply — this + makes threads bulky and unnecessarily difficult to read and arouses the + righteous ire of experienced Internet residents (this style is called + “TOFU” for “text over, fullquote under”, or + sometimes “jeopardy-style quoting”). Another problem is that + top-posters often word their replies on the assumption that you just read + the previous message, even though their perversity has put it further down + the page than you have yet read. Oppose + bottom-post.
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 tendency. The header in each post can be + changed to keep current with the posts, but usually isn't due to + forgetfulness or laziness. A single post may often result in several posts + each responding to a different point in the original. Some subthreads will + actually be in response to some off-the-cuff side comment, possibly + degenerating into a flame war, or just as often + evolving into a separate discussion. Hence, discussions aren't really so + much threads as they are trees. Except that they don't really have leaves, + or multiple branching roots; usually some lines of discussion will just + sort of die off after everyone gets tired of them. This could take + anywhere from hours to weeks, or even longer.
The term ‘topic drift’ is often used in gentle reminders + that the discussion has strayed off any useful track. “I think we + started with a question about Niven's last book, but we've ended up + discussing the sexual habits of the common marmoset. Now + that's topic drift!”
Syn. forum.
Information in an on-line display that is not immediately useful, + but contributes to a viewer's gestalt of what's going on with the software + or hardware behind it. Whether a given piece of info falls in this + category depends partly on what the user is looking for at any given time. + The ‘bytes free’ information at the bottom of an MS-DOS or + Windows dir display is tourist information; + so (most of the time) is the TIME information in a Unix + ps(1) + display.
1. [ITS] 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. ITS hackers often used to spell this + turist, perhaps by some sort of tenuous analogy with + luser (this usage may also have expressed the ITS + culture's penchant for six-letterisms, and/or been some sort of tribute to + Alan Turing). Compare twink, + lurker, read-only user. +
2. [IRC] An IRC user who goes from channel to + channel without saying anything; see + channel hopping.
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’.
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 Things can + result when a toy language is promoted as a general purpose solution for + programming (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 also + MFTL.
[AI] 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.
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.
A computer system; always used with qualifiers.
1. nice toy: One that supports + the speaker's hacking style adequately.
2. just a toy: A machine that + yields insufficient computrons for the speaker's + preferred uses. This is not condemnatory, as is + bitty box; toys can at least be fun. It is also strongly conditioned + by one's expectations; Cray XMP users sometimes consider the Cray-1 a + toy, and certainly all RISC boxes and + mainframes are toys by their standards. See also + Get a real computer!.
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 indirection between + code sections. Under BSD and possibly in other Unixes, trampoline code is + used to transfer control from the kernel back to user mode when a signal + (which has had a handler installed) is sent to a process. These pieces of + live data are called trampolines. Trampolines are notoriously + difficult to understand in action; in fact, it is said by those who use + this term that the trampoline that doesn't bend your brain is not the true + trampoline. See also snap.
(alt.: trapdoor)
2. [techspeak] A trap-door + function is one which is easy to compute but very difficult to + compute the inverse of. Such functions are + Good Things with important applications in cryptography, + specifically in the construction of public-key cryptosystems.
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 monitor.” Also used + transitively to indicate the cause of the trap. “The monitor traps + all input/output instructions.”
This term is associated with assembler programming (interrupt or exception is more common among + HLL programmers) and appears to be fading into + history among programmers as the role of assembler continues to shrink. + However, it is still important to computer architects and systems hackers + (see system, sense 1), who use it to distinguish + deterministically repeatable exceptions from timing-dependent ones (such as + I/O interrupts).
To destroy the contents of (said of a data structure). The most + common of the family of near-synonyms including + mung, mangle, + scribble, and roach.
To sift through large volumes of data (e.g., Usenet postings, FTP + archives, or the Jargon File) looking for something of interest.
[Sun]
1. A printer.
2. A person who wastes paper. This epithet should be interpreted in + a broad sense; ‘wasting paper’ includes the production of + spiffy but content-free + documents. Thus, most suits are + tree-killers.
It is likely that both senses derive their flavor from the epithet + ‘tree-killer’ applied by Treebeard the Ent to the Orcs in + J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. See also + elvish, elder days, and + especially dead-tree version.
Printouts, books, and other information media made from pulped dead + trees. Compare tree-killer, see + documentation.
[by analogy with bit] One + base-3 digit; the amount of information conveyed by a selection among one + of three equally likely outcomes (see also bit). + Trits arise, for example, in the context of a flag + that should actually be able to assume three values + — such as yes, no, or unknown. Trits are sometimes jokingly called + 3-state bits. A trit may be + semi-seriously referred to as a bit and a + half, although it is linearly equivalent to 1.5849625 bits (that + is, log_{2$(3)} bits).
1. Too simple to bother detailing.
2. Not worth the speaker's 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 claim that hackish + trivial usually evaluates to + “I've seen it before”). Hackers' notions of triviality may be + quite at variance with those of non-hackers. See + nontrivial, + uninteresting.
The physicist Richard Feynman, who had the hacker nature to an + amazing degree (see his essay “Los Alamos From Below” in + Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!), defined + trivial theorem as “one that + has already been proved”.
[Unix] The gray eminence of Unix text processing; a formatting and + phototypesetting program, written originally in PDP-11 assembler and then + in barely-structured early C by the late Joseph Ossanna, modeled after the + earlier ROFF which was in turn modeled after the + Multics and CTSS program + RUNOFF by Jerome Saltzer (that name came from the + expression “to run off a copy”). A companion program, + nroff, formats output for terminals and line + printers.
In 1979, Brian Kernighan modified troff so that it could drive + phototypesetters other than the Graphic Systems CAT. His paper describing + that work (“A Typesetter-independent troff,” AT&T CSTR + #97) explains troff's durability. After discussing the program's + “obvious deficiencies — a rebarbative input syntax, mysterious + and undocumented properties in some areas, and a voracious appetite for + computer resources” and noting the ugliness and extreme hairiness of + the code and internals, Kernighan concludes:
None of these remarks should be taken as denigrating +Ossanna's accomplishment with TROFF. It has proven a +remarkably robust tool, taking unbelievable abuse from a +variety of preprocessors and being forced into uses that +were never conceived of in the original design, all with +considerable grace under fire.
The success of TeX and desktop publishing + systems have reduced troff's relative + importance, but this tribute perfectly captures the strengths that secured + troff a place in hacker folklore; indeed, + it could be taken more generally as an indication of those qualities of + good programs that, in the long run, hackers most admire.
[Rice University] Programming with the lights turned off, sunglasses + on, and the terminal inverted (black on white) because you've been up for + so many days straight that your eyes hurt (see + raster burn). Loud music blaring from a stereo stacked in the corner + is optional but recommended. See larval stage, + hack mode.
[Commodore]
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 during the Usenet and email wringle-wrangle attending the + 2.x.x revision of the Jargon File; at least one of the people it was + intended to describe adopted it with pride.
1. v.,n. [From the Usenet group + alt.folklore.urban] To utter a + posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable + responses or flames; or, the post itself. Derives + from the phrase “trolling for newbies” + which in turn comes from mainstream “trolling”, a style of + fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. + The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and + flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, + while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact + a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on + it. See also YHBT.
2. n. An individual who + chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments, flames + or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no + other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are + recognizable by the fact that they have no real interest in learning about + the topic at hand - they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly + creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, + and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in, + “Oh, ignore him, he's just a troll.” Compare + kook.
3. n. [Berkeley] Computer lab + monitor. A popular campus job for CS students. Duties include helping + newbies and ensuring that lab policies are followed. Probably so-called + because it involves lurking in dark cavelike corners.
Some people claim that the troll (sense 1) is properly a narrower + category than flame bait, that a troll is + categorized by containing some assertion that is wrong but not overtly + controversial. See also Troll-O-Meter.
The use of ‘troll’ in any of these senses is a live + metaphor that readily produces elaborations and combining forms. For + example, one not infrequently sees the warning “Do not feed the + troll” as part of a followup to troll postings.
[NRL, CMU; prob. fr. the movie Tron] To + become inaccessible except via email or + talk(1), + especially when one is normally available via telephone or in person. + Frequently used in the past tense, as in: “Ran seems to have tronned + on us this week” or “Gee, Ran, glad you were able to un-tron + yourself”. One may also speak of tron + mode; compare spod.
Note that many dialects of BASIC have a TRON/TROFF command pair that + enables/disables line number tracing; this has no obvious relationship to + the slang usage.
[British BBS scene] Synonym for leech, sense + 1. The implied metaphor is that of a pig at a trough.
[analogy with ‘trufan’ from SF fandom] 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 4000 last week — + manifestly the act of a true-hacker.” Compare + demigod, oppose + munchkin.
The latter pronunciation was primarily ITS, but some Unix people say + it this way as well; this pronunciation is not + considered to have sexual undertones.
1. A terminal of the teletype variety, characterized by a noisy + mechanical printer, a very limited character set, and poor print quality. + Usage: antiquated (like the TTYs themselves). See also + bit-paired keyboard.
2. [especially Unix] Any terminal at all; sometimes used to refer to + the particular terminal controlling a given job.
3. [Unix] Any serial port, whether or not the device connected to it + is a terminal; so called because under Unix such devices have names of the + form tty*. Ambiguity between senses 2 and 3 is common but seldom + bothersome.
Time spent at a terminal or console. More inclusive than hacking + time; commonly used in discussions of what parts of one's environment one + uses most heavily. “I find I'm spending too much of my tube time + reading mail since I started this revision.”
1. n. A CRT terminal. Never + used in the mainstream sense of TV; real hackers don't watch TV, except for + Looney Toons, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Trek Classic, the Simpsons, Babylon + 5, and the occasional cheesy old swashbuckler movie.
2. [IBM] To send a copy of something to someone else's terminal. + “Tube me that note?”
1. [Originally from the Xanadu hypertext project] A tumbler is a + magic cookie generated as part of a record or + message to give it a unique identity. Usually a tumbler includes an + encoded form of its creation date, but if a software system has + more than one concurrent process that could generate tumblers + it must also include an encoding of the process ID. If tumblers will be + shared across multiple network hosts, they must also include the host name + or network address. Tumblers often include a hash of the rest of the + message or record content so that it is possible to verify the + correctness of the data the tumbler is attached to.
2. Variant text added to spam instances (often in the Subject line) to + make them unique. This kind of tumbler is used to defeat schemes that + check an exact hash of an incoming message against known spam signatures; + it also compromises some kinds of statistical spam recognition.
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 using 4.2, but + apparently restored on the 4.4BSD tape and in {Net,Free,Open}BSD. Tunefs + relates to the tuning of file-system + parameters for optimum performance, and at the bottom of a few pages of + wizardly inscriptions was a ‘BUGS’ section consisting of the + line “You can tune a file system, but you can't tunafish”. + Variants of this can be seen in other BSD versions, though it has been + excised from some versions by humorless management + droids. The [nt]roff source for SunOS 4.1.1 + contains a comment apparently designed to prevent this: “Take this + out and a Unix Demon will dog your steps from now until the time_t's wrap around.”
[It has since been pointed out that indeed you can tunafish. Usually + at a canning factory... —ESR]
[from automotive or musical usage] 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 execution), tune for space (least memory use), or tune for configuration (most efficient use of + hardware). See hot spot, + hand-hacking.
See geek.
Var. sp. of tourist, q.v. Also in adjectival + form, ‘turistic’. Poss. influenced by + luser and ‘Turing’.
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 + fudge factor; also see + shotgun debugging.
2. To tune a program; preferred usage in the + U.K.
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 new ones (see also + shotgun debugging).
3. vt. To change something in a + small way. Bits, for example, are often twiddled. Twiddling a switch or + knobs implies much less sense of purpose than + toggling or tweaking it; see frobnicate. To speak + of twiddling a bit connotes aimlessness, and at best doesn't specify what + you're doing to the bit; ‘toggling a bit’ has a more specific + meaning (see bit twiddling, + toggle). 4. Uncommon name for the + twirling baton prompt.
[IRC] Notionally, the area of cyberspace where + IRC operators live. An op is + said to have a “connection to the twilight zone”.
1. [Berkeley] A clue-repellant user; the next step beyond a clueless + one.
2. [UCSC] A read-only user. Also reported on + the Usenet group soc.motss; may + derive from gay slang for a cute young thing with nothing upstairs (compare + mainstream ‘chick’).
3. On MU* systems that specialize in role-playing, refers to + behavior of a (usually inexperienced) player that either ignores rules or + social convention, or disrupts the natural flow of a scene to show off + super powers.
We are informed that in Indian country, the term twink generally + refers to blondes into generic ‘Native American + spirituality’. Signs include Indian jewelry with MADE IN THAILAND + stamped on it, crystals, Clairol black hair, wearing swimsuits to powwows, + Cherokee princess grandmas, a love of Dances with + Wolves, and a fear of AIM and the NCAI. The twink nature + is everywhere.
[PLATO] The overstrike sequence -/|\-/|\- which produces an animated + twirling baton. If you output it with a single backspace between + characters, the baton spins in place. If you output the sequence BS SP + between characters, the baton spins from left to right. If you output BS + SP BS BS between characters, the baton spins from right to left. This is + also occasionally called a twiddle prompt.
The twirling baton was a popular component of animated signature + files on the pioneering PLATO educational timesharing system. The archie Internet service is perhaps the best-known + baton program today; it uses the twirling baton as an idler indicating that + the program is working on a query. The twirling baton is also used as a + boot progress indicator on several BSD variants of Unix; if it stops, + you're probably going to have a long and trying day.
The number of years it takes to finish one's thesis. Occurs in + stories in the following form: “He started on his thesis; 2 pi years + later...”
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 won't show up.
[USENET] A deliberate typo for ‘typo’. Used in satirical + reference. “There's a tyop in your posting”. Compare + grilf, hing.
[abbreviation for ‘User Brain Damage’] An abbreviation + used to close out trouble reports obviously due to utter cluelessness on + the user's part. Compare pilot error, + PEBKAC, ID10T; oppose PBD; see + also brain-damaged.
[abbrev., Unsolicited Bulk Email] A widespread, more formal term for + email spam. Compare UCE. The + UBE term recognizes that spam is uttered by nonprofit and advocacy groups + whose motives are not commercial.
[abbrev., Unsolicited Commercial Email] A widespread, more formal + term for email spam. Compare + UBE, which may be superseding it.
[Usenet] Abbreviation for + Usenet Death Penalty. Common (probably now more so than the full form), and + frequently verbed. Compare IDP.
Used to refer to the Unix operating system (a trademark of AT&T, + then of Novell, then of Unix Systems Laboratories, then of the Open Group; + the source code parted company with it after Novell and was owned by SCO, + which was acquired by Caldera) in writing, but avoiding the need for the + ugly ™ typography (see also (TM)). Also used + to refer to any or all varieties of Unixoid operating systems. Ironically, + lawyers now say that the requirement for the trademark postfix has no legal + force, but the asterisk usage is entrenched anyhow. It has been suggested + that there may be a psychological connection to practice in certain + religions (especially Judaism) in which the name of the deity is never + written out in full, e.g., ‘YHWH’ or ‘G--d’ is + used. See also glob and splat out.
Uniform Resource Locator, an address widget that identifies a + document or resource on the World Wide Web. This entry is here primarily + to record the fact that the term is commonly pronounced both /erl/, and /U-R-L/ (the latter predominates in more + formal contexts).
[Unix] On-line acronym for ‘Use the Source, Luke’ (a pun + on Obi-Wan Kenobi's “Use the Force, Luke!” in Star + Wars) — analogous to RTFS (sense + 1), but more polite. This is a common way of suggesting that someone would + be better off reading the source code that supports whatever feature is + causing confusion, rather than making yet another futile pass through the + manuals, or broadcasting questions on Usenet that haven't attracted + wizards to answer them.
Once upon a time in elder days, everyone + running Unix had source. After 1978, AT&T's policy tightened up, so + this objurgation was in theory appropriately directed only at associates of + some outfit with a Unix source license. In practice, bootlegs of Unix + source code (made precisely for reference purposes) were so ubiquitous that + one could utter it at almost anyone on the network without concern.
Nowadays, free Unix clones have become widely enough distributed that + anyone can read source legally. The most widely distributed is certainly + Linux, with variants of the NET/2 and 4.4BSD distributions running second. + Cheap commercial Unixes with source such as BSD/OS are accelerating this + trend.
[from the comp.unix.shell group on Usenet] Stands for Useless Use of cat; the + reference is to the Unix command + cat(1), + not the feline animal. As received wisdom on comp.unix.shell observes, + “The purpose of cat is to concatenate (or ‘catenate’) + files. If it's only one file, concatenating it with nothing at all is a + waste of time, and costs you a process.” Nevertheless one sees + people doing
+catfile|some_commandanditsargs...
+
instead of the equivalent and cheaper
+<filesome_commandanditsargs...
+
or (equivalently and more classically)
+some_commandanditsargs...<file
+
Since 1995, occasional awards for UUOC have been given out, usually + by Perl luminary Randal L. Schwartz. There is a web + page devoted to this and other similar awards.
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 published standards and the + Unix program in 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 there.
An example of Unix brain damage 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 weep.
[ITS] 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 dependent + upon a system whose future 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 upgrades from AT&T). This + theory 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 and market forces, rather than 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 promoting its own family of + Unix workstations. (Olsen now claims to have been misquoted.)
If there was ever such a conspiracy, it got thoroughly out of the + plotters' control after 1990. AT&T sold its Unix operation to Novell + around the same time Linux and other free-Unix + distributions were beginning to make noise.
[ITS]
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 skill, the only real skill involved 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 been written by a real Unix weenie.”
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.
[In the authors' words, “A weak pun on Multics”; very + early on it was “UNICS”] (also “UNIX”) An + interactive timesharing system invented in 1969 by Ken Thompson after Bell + Labs left the Multics project, originally so he could play games on his + scavenged PDP-7. Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of C, is considered a + co-author of the system. The turning point in Unix's history came when it + was reimplemented almost entirely in C during 1972—1974, making it + the first source-portable OS. Unix subsequently underwent mutations and + expansions at the hands of many different people, resulting in a uniquely + flexible and developer-friendly environment. By 1991, Unix had become the + most widely used multiuser general-purpose operating system in the world + — and since 1996 the variant called Linux has + been at the cutting edge of the open source + movement. Many people consider the success of Unix the most important + victory yet of hackerdom over industry opposition (but see Unix + weenie and Unix conspiracy for an + opposing point of view). See Version 7, + BSD, Linux.
Some people are confused over whether this word is appropriately + ‘UNIX’ or ‘Unix’; both forms are common, and used + interchangeably. Dennis Ritchie says that the ‘UNIX’ spelling + originally happened in CACM's 1974 paper The UNIX Time-Sharing + System because “we had a new typesetter and + troff had just been invented and we were intoxicated + by being able to produce small caps.” Later, dmr tried to get the + spelling changed to ‘Unix’ in a couple of Bell Labs papers, on + the grounds that the word is not acronymic. He failed, and eventually (his + words) “wimped out” on the issue. So, while the trademark + today is ‘UNIX’, both capitalizations are grounded in ancient + usage; the Jargon File uses ‘Unix’ in deference to dmr's + wishes.
[Usenet] A sanction against sites that habitually spew Usenet + spam. This can be either passive or active. A + passive UDP refers to the dropping of all postings by a particular domain + so as to inhibit propagation. An active UDP refers to third-party + cancellation of all postings by the UDPed domain. A partial UDP is one + which applies only to certain newsgroups or hierarchies in Usenet. Compare + Internet Death Penalty, with which this term is + sometimes confused.
[from ‘Users' Network’; the original spelling was + USENET, but the mixed-case form is now widely preferred] 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 University and the University + of North Carolina, it has swiftly grown to become international in scope + and is now probably the largest decentralized information utility in + existence. As of late 2002, it hosts over 100,000 + newsgroups and an unguessably huge volume of new + technical articles, news, discussion, chatter, and + flamage every day (and that leaves out the + graphics...).
By the year the Internet hit the mainstream (1994) the original UUCP + transport for Usenet was fading out of use — almost all Usenet + connections were over Internet links. A lot of newbies and journalists + began to refer to “Internet newsgroups” as though Usenet was + and always had been just another Internet service. This ignorance greatly + annoys experienced Usenetters.
This object is historically one of the first complex 3D models to be + rendered in computer graphics. It consisted of about 110 vertices, and was + generated by Martin Newell in 1974 using hand-drawn Bezier curves, based on + a real teapot that he and his wife had bought. This model served as a basis + for comparing various 3D rendering methodologies for lighting, textures, + bump-mapping, etc. By the standards of 2002, the model is trivial to render + and thus is often not suited to demonstrate the complexity of modern + research. Despite this, the tea pot still appears, now and then, in recent + papers. More on the teapot's history lives at The History Of The Teapot. + Compare lenna, Stanford + Bunny
Written shorthand for micro-; techspeak when + applied to metric units, jargon when used otherwise. Derived from the + Greek letter the first letter of “micro” (and which + letter looks a lot like the English letter “u”).
[common; often spelled with initial ; from German ber + + geek] Almost synonymous with + demigod; used as a compliment of someone regarded as + a paragon of geek achievement and virtue. Has + partially replaced earlier demigod.
[Unix] A message from Unix's linker. Used in speech to flag loose + ends or dangling references in an argument or discussion.
[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 enable + the listener to grok it. “Let's 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, this baby has a + 40MHz 68030!”
See feature.
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.
Hackers regard uninteresting problems as intolerable wastes of time, + to be solved (if at all) by lesser mortals. Real + hackers (see toolsmith) generalize uninteresting + problems enough to make them interesting and solve them — thus + solving the original problem as a special case (and, it must be admitted, + occasionally turning a molehill into a mountain, or a mountain into a + tectonic plate). See WOMBAT, + SMOP; compare toy problem, + oppose interesting.
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); + the assumption that certain undocumented but well-known features of Unix + libraries such as + stdio(3) + are supported elsewhere; reliance on obscure + side-effects of system calls (use of + sleep(2) + with a 0 argument to clue the scheduler that you're willing to give up your + time-slice, for example); the assumption that freshly allocated memory is + zeroed; and the assumption that fragmentation problems won't arise from + never + free()ing + memory. Compare vaxocentrism; see also + New Jersey.
See swizzle.
[MIT: from the name of a LISP operator] 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.”
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 level of the given + caller. In C this is done with longjmp/setjmp, in + LISP or C++ 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 + unwind my stack.”
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.
1. [techspeak] To transfer programs or data over a digital + communications link from a system near you (especially a smaller or + peripheral client system) to one + further away from you (especially a larger or central host system). A transfer in the other + direction is, of course, called a download
2. [speculatively] To move the essential patterns and algorithms + that make up one's mind from one's brain into a computer. Those who are + convinced that such patterns and algorithms capture the complete essence of + the self view this prospect with pleasant anticipation.
[common] Towards the original author(s) or maintainer(s) of a + project. Used in connection with software that is distributed both in its + original source form and in derived, adapted versions through a + distribution (like the Debian version of Linux or one of the BSD ports) + that has component maintainers for each of their parts. When a component + maintainer receives a bug report or patch, he may choose to retain the + patch as a porting tweak to the distribution's derivative of the project, + or to pass it upstream to the project's maintainer. The antonym downstream is rare.
Earlier in the discussion (see thread), i.e., + ‘above’. “As Joe pointed out upthread, + ...” See also followup.
Technically, a machine's time since last reboot; jargonically, how + long a hacker has gone without sleep. “What's your uptime?” + “Oh, about 28 hours so far, but I think I can probably do another + 12.” This is, of course, a reference to the uptime command and the + pride with which most Unix types note how long their computers go without + reboots. Uptime is a testament to the stability of the OS and the stamina + of the hacker.
See munchkin.
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 menuitis, + drool-proof paper, Macintrash, + user-obsequious.
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, + Macintrash.
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 observes: This is slightly unfair. It is true + that users ask questions (of necessity). Sometimes they are thoughtful or + deep. Very often they are annoying or downright stupid, apparently because + the user failed to think for two seconds or look in the documentation + before bothering the maintainer.] See luser.
3. Someone who uses a program from the outside, however skillfully, + without getting into the internals of the program. One who reports bugs + instead of just going ahead and fixing them.
The general theory behind this term is that there are two classes of + people who work with a program: there are implementors (hackers) and + lusers. The users are looked down on by hackers to + some extent because they don't understand the full ramifications of the + system in all its glory. (The few users who do are known as real winners.) The term is a relative one: a + skilled hacker may be a user with respect to some program he himself does + not hack. A LISP hacker might be one who maintains LISP or one who uses + LISP (but with the skill of a hacker). A LISP user is one who uses LISP, + whether skillfully or not. Thus there is some overlap between the two + terms; the subtle distinctions must be resolved by context.
Anywhere outside the kernel. “That code belongs in + userland.” This term has been in common use among Unix kernel + hackers since at least 1985, and may have have originated in that + community. The earliest sighting was reported from the usenet group + net.unix-wizards.
See Version 7.
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 micros after about 1986, the VAX was + probably the hacker's favorite machine of them all, esp. after the 1982 + release of 4.2 BSD Unix (see BSD). Especially noted + for its large, assembler-programmer-friendly instruction set — an + asset that became a liability after the RISC revolution.
It is worth noting that the standard plural of VAX was + ‘vaxen’ and that VAX system operators were sometimes referred + to as ‘vaxherds’
2. A major brand of vacuum cleaner in Britain. Cited here because + its sales pitch, “Nothing sucks like a VAX!” became a sort of + battle-cry of RISC partisans. It is even sometimes claimed that DEC + actually entered a cross-licensing deal with the vacuum-Vax people that + allowed them to market VAX computers in the U.K. in return for not + challenging the vacuum cleaner trademark in the U.S.
A rival brand actually pioneered the slogan: its original form was + “Nothing sucks like Electrolux”. It has apparently become a + classic example (used in advertising textbooks) of the perils of not + knowing the local idiom. But in 1996, the press manager of Electrolux AB, + while confirming that the company used this slogan in the late 1960s, also + tells us that their marketing people were fully aware of the possible + double entendre and intended it to gain attention.
And gain attention it did — the VAX-vacuum-cleaner people + thought the slogan a sufficiently good idea to copy it. Several British + hackers report that VAX's promotions used it in 1986--1987, and we have one + report from a New Zealander that the infamous slogan surfaced there in TV + ads for the product in 1992.
[from ‘oxen’, perhaps influenced by ‘vixen’] + (alt.: vaxen) The plural canonically + used among hackers for the DEC VAX computers. + “Our installation has four PDP-10s and twenty vaxen.” See + boxen.
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 if Unix didn't exist; though true, + this makes VMS fans furious. One major hacker gripe with VMS concerns its + slowness — thus the following limerick:
+ThereoncewasasystemcalledVMS
+Ofcyclesbynomeansabstemious.
+It'schock-fullofhacks
+AndrunsonaVAX
+Andmakesmypoorstomachallsqueamious.
+—TheGreatQuux
+
On-line abbrev for virtual reality, as + opposed to RL.
[after the insect-eating plant] See + firewall machine.
The first widely distributed version of Unix, + released unsupported by Bell Labs in 1978. The term is used adjectivally + to describe Unix features and programs that date from that release, and are + thus guaranteed to be present and portable in all Unix versions (this was + the standard gauge of portability before the POSIX and IEEE 1003 + standards). Note that this usage does not derive from + the release being the “seventh version of + Unix”; research Unix + at Bell Labs has traditionally been numbered according to the edition of + the associated documentation. Indeed, only the widely-distributed Sixth + and Seventh Editions are widely known as V[67]; the OS that might today be + known as ‘V10’ is instead known in full as “Tenth Edition + Research Unix” or just “Tenth Edition” for short. For + this reason, “V7” is often read by cognoscenti as + “Seventh Edition”. See BSD, + Unix. Some old-timers impatient with + commercialization and kernel bloat still maintain that V7 was the Last True + Unix.
Pejorative hackerism for VB.NET (Visual Basic for the .NET + framework). VB.NET has been marketed by Microsoft as an updated version of + the previous Visual Basic on its .NET framework, but VB.NET is really just + C# with a slightly different syntax and fewer libraries. Migrating + existing code from Visual Basic to VB.NET is generally impractical because + VB.NET has a large number of unnecessary incompatibilities with Visual + Basic. Since VB.NET has essentially nothing to do with Visual Basic, a + well-known ex-Microserf suggested that VB.NET should have a completely + different name — Visual Fred. This rapidly caught on.
[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 + Amigas this is <Ctrl>-<Left-Amiga>-<Right-Amiga>; on PC + clones this is Ctrl-Alt-Del; on Suns, L1-A; on Macintoshes, it is + <Cmd>-<Power switch> or <Cmd>-<Ctrl>-<Power>! + On IRIX, + <Left-Ctrl><Left-Shift><F12><Keypad-Slash>, which + kills and restarts the X server, is sometimes called a vulcan nerve pinch. + Also called three-finger salute and Vulcan death grip. At shops with a lot of + Microsoft Windows machines, this is often called the Microsoft Maneuver because of the distressing + frequency with which Microsoft's unreliable software requires it. Compare + quadruple bucky.
[from VAD, a permutation of ADV (i.e., + ADVENT), used to avoid a particular + admin's continual search-and-destroy sweeps for the + game] A leisure-time activity of certain hackers involving the covert + exploration of the ‘secret’ parts of large buildings — + basements, roofs, freight elevators, maintenance crawlways, steam tunnels, + and the like. A few go so far as to learn locksmithing in order to + synthesize vadding keys. The verb is to + vad (compare phreaking; see also + hack, sense 9). This term dates from the late + 1970s, before which such activity was simply called ‘hacking’; + the older usage is still prevalent at MIT.
The most extreme and dangerous form of vadding is elevator rodeo, a.k.a. elevator surfing, a sport played by wrasslin' + down a thousand-pound elevator car with a 3-foot piece of string, and then + exploiting this mastery in various stimulating ways (such as elevator + hopping, shaft exploration, rat-racing, and the ever-popular drop + experiments). Kids, don't try this at home!
[from the default flavor of ice cream in the U.S.] 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, as opposed to hot-and-sour wonton soup. Applied to hardware + and software, as in “Vanilla Version 7 Unix can't run on a vanilla + 11/34.” Also used to orthogonalize chip nomenclature; for instance, + a 74V00 means what TI calls a 7400, as distinct from a 74LS00, etc. This + word differs from canonical in that the latter means + ‘default’, whereas vanilla simply means ‘ordinary’. + For example, when hackers go on a great-wall, + hot-and-sour soup is the canonical soup to get + (because that is what most of them usually order) even though it isn't the + vanilla (wonton) soup.
[common; from ‘vanity plate’ as in car license plate] An + Internet domain, particularly in the .com or .org top-level domains, + apparently created for no reason other than boosting the creator's + ego.
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 curve tends to be highly nonlinear, revolutions are + common, and competition is the rule. The prototype was Vannevar Bush's + prediction of ‘electronic brains’ the size of the Empire State + Building with a Niagara-Falls-equivalent cooling system for their tubes and + relays, a prediction made at a time when the semiconductor effect had + already been demonstrated. Other famous vannevars have included + magnetic-bubble memory, LISP machines, videotex, and + a paper from the late 1970s that computed a purported ultimate limit on + areal density for ICs that was in fact less than the routine densities of 5 + years later.
Products announced far in advance of any release (which may or may + not actually take place).
[Durham, UK] The unit of ‘load average’. A measure of + how much work a computer is doing. A meter displaying this as a function of + time is known as a vastometer. First + used during a computing practical in December 1996.
[analogy with ‘ethnocentrism’] 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 are:
+The assumption that dereferencing a null pointer is safe because it is all +bits 0, and location 0 is readable and 0. Problem: this may instead cause an +illegal-address trap on non-VAXen, and even on VAXen under OSes other than BSD +Unix. Usually this is an implicit assumption of sloppy code (forgetting to +check the pointer before using it), rather than deliberate exploitation of a +misfeature.
+The assumption that characters are signed.
+The assumption that a pointer to any one type can freely be cast into a +pointer to any other type. A stronger form of this is the assumption that all +pointers are the same size and format, which means you don't have to worry +about getting the casts or types correct in calls. Problem: this fails on +word-oriented machines or others with multiple pointer formats. +
+The assumption that the parameters of a routine are stored in memory, on a +stack, contiguously, and in strictly ascending or descending order. Problem: +this fails on many RISC architectures.
+The assumption that pointer and integer types are the same size, and that +pointers can be stuffed into integer variables (and vice-versa) and drawn back +out without being truncated or mangled. Problem: this fails on segmented +architectures or word-oriented machines with funny pointer formats. +
+The assumption that a data type of any size may begin at any byte address in +memory (for example, that you can freely construct and dereference a pointer +to a word- or greater-sized object at an odd char address). Problem: this +fails on many (esp. RISC) architectures better optimized for +HLL execution speed, and can cause an illegal address +fault or bus error.
+The (related) assumption that there is no padding at the end of types and that +in an array you can thus step right from the last byte of a previous component +to the first byte of the next one. This is not only machine- but +compiler-dependent.
+The assumption that memory address space is globally flat and that the array +reference foo[-1] is necessarily valid. +Problem: this fails at 0, or other places on segment-addressed machines like +Intel chips (yes, segmentation is universally considered a +brain-damaged way to design machines (see +moby), but that is a separate issue). +
+The assumption that objects can be arbitrarily large with no special +considerations. Problem: this fails on segmented architectures and under +non-virtual-addressing environments.
+The assumption that the stack can be as large as memory. Problem: this fails +on segmented architectures or almost anything else without virtual addressing +and a paged stack.
+The assumption that bits and addressable units within an object are ordered in +the same way and that this order is a constant of nature. Problem: this fails +on big-endian machines.
+The assumption that it is meaningful to compare pointers to different objects +not located within the same array, or to objects of different types. Problem: +the former fails on segmented architectures, the latter on word-oriented +machines or others with multiple pointer formats.
+The assumption that an int is 32 bits, or (nearly equivalently) +the assumption that sizeof(int) == +sizeof(long). Problem: this fails on PDP-11s, 286-based systems and +even on 386 and 68000 systems under some compilers (and on 64-bit systems like +the Alpha, of course).
+The assumption that argv[] is +writable. Problem: this fails in many embedded-systems C environments and even +under a few flavors of Unix.
Note that a programmer can validly be accused of vaxocentrism even if + he or she has never seen a VAX. Some of these + assumptions (esp. 2--5) were valid on the PDP-11, + the original C machine, and became endemic years before the VAX. The terms + vaxocentricity and all-the-world's-a-VAX syndrome have been used + synonymously.
Visual diff. The operation of finding differences between two files + by eyeball search. The term optical diff has also been reported, and is + sometimes more specifically used for the act of superimposing two nearly + identical printouts on one another and holding them up to a light to spot + differences. Though this method is poor for detecting omissions in the + ‘rear’ file, it can also be used with printouts of graphics, a + claim few if any diff programs can make. See + diff.
An interesting variant of the vdiff technique usable by anyone who + has sufficient control over the parallax of their eyeballs (e.g. those who + can easily view random-dot stereograms), is to hold up two paper printouts + and go cross-eyed to superimpose them. This invokes deep, fast, built-in + image comparison wetware (the same machinery responsible for depth + perception) and differences stand out almost immediately. This technique + is good for finding edits in graphical images, or for comparing an image + with a compressed version to spot artifacts.
[from the Born Loser comix via Commodore; + prob.: originally from Mad Magazine's + ‘Veeblefetzer’ parodies beginning in #15, 1954] Any obnoxious + person engaged in the (alleged) professions of marketing or management. + Antonym of hacker. Compare + suit, marketroid.
[Usenet: by analogy with spam. The trade + name Velveeta is attached in the U.S. to a particularly nasty + processed-cheese spread.] Also knows as ECP; a + message that is excessively cross-posted, as opposed to + spam which is too frequently posted. This term is + widely recognized but not commonly used; most people refer to both kinds of + abuse as spam. Compare jello.
A deliberate misspelling and mispronunciation of + verbiage that assimilates it to the word + ‘garbage’. Compare content-free. More + pejorative than ‘verbiage’.
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 its + production have little to do with the ostensible subject.
Visual grep. The operation of finding patterns in a file optically + rather than digitally (also called an optical + grep). See grep; compare + vdiff.
[from ‘Visual Interface’] A screen editor crufted + together by Bill Joy for an early BSD release. + Became the de facto standard Unix editor and + a nearly undisputed hacker favorite outside of MIT until the rise of + EMACS after about 1984. Tends to frustrate new + users no end, as it will neither take commands while expecting input text + nor vice versa, and the default setup on older versions provides no + indication of which mode the editor is in (years ago, a correspondent + reported that he has often heard the editor's name pronounced /vi:l/; there is now a vi clone named + vile). Nevertheless vi (and variants + such as vim and elvis) is still widely used (about half the respondents in + a 1991 Usenet poll preferred it), and even EMACS fans often resort to it as + a mail editor and for small editing jobs (mainly because it starts up + faster than the bulkier versions of EMACS). See holy + wars.
Historically, an Amiga fitted with a particular line of special + video effects hardware from NewTek — long a popular platform at + special-effects and video production houses. More generally, any computer + system designed specifically for video production and manipulation. + Compare web toaster and see + toaster.
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 government-subsidized, because by the time videotex + was practical the installed base of personal computers could hook up to + timesharing services and do the things for which videotex might have been + worthwhile better and cheaper. Videotex planners badly overestimated both + the appeal of getting information from a computer and the cost of local + intelligence at the user's end. Like the + gorilla arm effect, this has been a cautionary tale to hackers ever + since. See also vannevar.
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 been used.
(also logical Friday) 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 Wednesday of that week is a virtual 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.
Praise or thanks. Used universally in the Linux + community. Originally this term signified cash, after a famous incident in + which some Britishers who wanted to buy Linus a beer sent him money to + Finland to do so.
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, interactive theater, improvisational 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 scenery, foreground + characters 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 the person who ‘owns’ it. Otherwise anything goes. See + bamf, cyberspace, + teledildonics.
The jargonic equivalent of the bit bucket at + shops using IBM's VM/CMS operating system. VM/CMS officially supports a + whole bestiary of virtual card readers, virtual printers, and other phantom + devices; these are used to supply some of the same capabilities Unix gets + from pipes and I/O redirection.
[via the technical term virtual + memory, prob.: from the term virtual + image in optics]
1. Common alternative to logical; often used + to refer to the artificial objects (like addressable virtual memory larger + than physical memory) simulated by a computer system as a convenient way to + manage access to shared resources.
2. Simulated; performing the functions of something that isn't + really there. An imaginative child's doll may be a virtual playmate. + Oppose real.
[from the obvious analogy with biological viruses, via SF] A cracker + program that searches out other programs and ‘infects’ them by + embedding a copy of itself in them, so that they become Trojan + horses. When these programs are executed, the embedded virus + is executed too, thus propagating the ‘infection’. This + normally happens invisibly to the user. Unlike a + worm, a virus cannot infect other computers without + assistance. It is propagated by vectors such as humans trading programs + with their friends (see SEX). The virus may do + nothing but propagate itself and then allow the program to run normally. + Usually, however, after propagating silently for a while, it starts doing + things like writing cute messages on the terminal or playing strange tricks + with the display (some viruses include nice display + hacks). Many nasty viruses, written by particularly perversely + minded crackers, do irreversible damage, like nuking + all the user's files.
In the 1990s, viruses became a serious problem, especially among + Windows users; the lack of security on these machines enables viruses to + spread easily, even infecting the operating system (Unix machines, by + contrast, are immune to such attacks). The production of special + anti-virus software has become an industry, and a number of exaggerated + media reports have caused outbreaks of near hysteria among users; many + lusers tend to blame everything + that doesn't work as they had expected on virus attacks. Accordingly, this + sense of virus has passed not only + into techspeak but into also popular usage (where it is often incorrectly + used to denote a worm or even a Trojan + horse). See phage; compare + back door; see also Unix + conspiracy.
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 computer. The problem is, how can the computer be + programmed to make use of the camera information? See + SMOP, AI-complete.)
2. [IBM] One who reads the outside literature. At IBM, apparently, + such a penchant is viewed with awe and wonder.
Hackish way of referring to the telephone system, analogizing it to + a digital network. Usenet sig blocks not uncommonly + include the sender's phone next to a “Voice:” or + “Voice-Net:” header; common variants of this are + “Voicenet” and “V-Net”. Compare + paper-net, snail-mail.
To phone someone, as opposed to emailing them or connecting in + talk mode. “I'm busy now; I'll voice you + later.”
[from George Bush Sr.'s “voodoo economics”]
1. 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't, one will never know why. 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, SCSI voodoo.
2. Things programmers do that they know shouldn't work but they try + anyway, and which sometimes actually work, such as recompiling + everything.
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.
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 + glossed as ‘West-coast Alternative to ITS’. Though WAITS was + less visible than ITS, there was frequent exchange of people and ideas + between the two communities, and innovations pioneered at WAITS exerted + enormous indirect influence. The early screen modes of + EMACS, for example, were directly inspired by + WAITS's ‘E’ editor — one of a family of editors that were + the first to do ‘real-time editing’, in which the editing + commands were invisible and where one typed text at the point of + insertion/overwriting. The modern style of multi-region windowing is said + to have originated there, and WAITS alumni at XEROX PARC and elsewhere + played major roles in the developments that led to the XEROX Star, the + Macintosh, and the Sun workstations. Also invented there were + bucky bits — thus, the ALT key on every IBM PC + is a WAITS legacy. One WAITS feature very notable in pre-Web days was a + news-wire interface that allowed WAITS hackers to read, store, and filter + AP and UPI dispatches from their terminals; the system also featured a + still-unusual level of support for what is now called multimedia computing, allowing analog audio and + video signals to be switched to programming terminals.
[Bell Labs: Wouldn't It Be Nice If] What most requirements documents + and specifications consist entirely of. Compare + IWBNI.
[acronym: ‘Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing device (or Pull-down + menu)’] A graphical-user-interface environment such as + X or the Macintosh interface, esp. as described by a + hacker who prefers command-line interfaces for their superior flexibility + and extensibility. However, it is also used without negative connotations; + one must pay attention to voice tone and other signals to interpret + correctly. See menuitis, + user-obsequious.
[acronym: Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time] Applied to problems + which are both profoundly uninteresting in + themselves and unlikely to benefit anyone interesting even if solved. + Often used in fanciful constructions such as wrestling with a wombat. See also + crawling horror, SMOP. Also + note the rather different usage as a metasyntactic variable in + Commonwealth Hackish.
Users of the PDP-11 database program + DATATRIEVE adopted the wombat as their notional mascot; the program's help + file responded to “HELP WOMBAT” with factual information about + Real World wombats.
Describes a user interface under which “What You See Is + All You Get”; an unhappy variant of + WYSIWYG. Visual, + ‘point-and-shoot’-style interfaces tend to have easy initial + learning curves, but also to lack depth; they often frustrate advanced + users who would be better served by a command-style interface. When this + happens, the frustrated user has a WYSIAYG problem. This term is most + often used of editors, word processors, and document formatting programs. + WYSIWYG ‘desktop publishing’ programs, for example, are a clear + win for creating small documents with lots of fonts and graphics in them, + especially things like newsletters and presentation slides. When + typesetting book-length manuscripts, on the other hand, scale changes the + nature of the task; one quickly runs into WYSIAYG limitations, and the + increased power and flexibility of a command-driven formatter like + TeX or Unix's troff becomes + not just desirable but a necessity. Compare + YAFIYGI.
[Traced to Flip Wilson's “Geraldine” character c.1970] + Describes a user interface under which “What You See Is What You + Get”, as opposed to one that uses more-or-less obscure commands that + do not result in immediate visual feedback. True WYSIWYG in environments + supporting multiple fonts or graphics is a rarely-attained ideal; there are + variants of this term to express real-world manifestations including + WYSIAWYG (What You See Is Almost What You Get) and + WYSIMOLWYG (What You See Is More or Less What You Get). All these can be + mildly derogatory, as they are often used to refer to dumbed-down + user-friendly interfaces targeted at + non-programmers; a hacker has no fear of obscure commands (compare + WYSIAYG). On the other hand, + EMACS was one of the very first WYSIWYG editors, + replacing (actually, at first overlaying) the extremely obscure, + command-based TECO. See also + WIMP environment. [Oddly enough, WYSIWYG made it into the 1986 + supplement to the OED, in lower case yet. —ESR]
1. [ITS] 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 version + numbers, case sensitivity everywhere, and users who believe that these are + all advantages”. (Some ITS fans behave as though they believe Unix + stole a future that rightfully belonged to them. See + ITS, sense 2.)
2. [Brown University] A Unix-like OS developed for tutorial purposes + at Brown University. See http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs167/weenix.html. + Named independently of the ITS usage.
[XEROX PARC] This phrase expands to: “You have just used a + term that I've heard for a year and a half, and I feel I should know, but + don't. My curiosity has finally overcome my guilt.” The PARC + lexicon adds “Moral: don't hesitate to ask questions, even if they + seem obvious.”
[from the Lojban-language list] Software designs are often restricted + in unavoidable ways by the capacities of the operating system or hardware + they have to work with. Sometimes they are restricted in avoidable ways by + mental habits a developer has picked up from a particular language or + environment (perhaps a now-obsolete one) and never discarded. When a + design develops complications that are the result of a mental habit that is + no longer adaptive, the developer has succumbed to Whorfian mind-lock. The + design itself has been ‘whorfed’.
For example, some Unix designs are whorfed by the assumption that + directory searches are linear and expensive for large directories; + therefore directories must be kept small. Another common way to succumb to + Whorfian mind-lock is to do serial processing with a small working set + rather than slurping an entire file or data structure into memory; the + hidden assumption here is that not much core is available and virtual + memory works poorly if at all. Detecting Whorfian mind-lock is important, + because it tends to introduce unnecessary complexity and bugs.
Informal generic term for sealed-enclosure magnetic-disk drives in + which the read-write head planes over the disk surface on an air cushion. + There is a legend that the name arose because the original 1973 engineering + prototype for what later became the IBM 3340 featured two 30-megabyte + volumes; 30--30 became ‘Winchester’ when somebody noticed the + similarity to the common term for a famous Winchester rifle (in the latter, + the first 30 referred to caliber and the second to the grain weight of the + charge). (It is sometimes incorrectly claimed that Winchester was the + laboratory in which the technology was developed.)
1. As a disease of people: the tendency of inexperienced (or + Windows-experienced) Web developers have to use backslashes in URLs, rather + than the correct forward slashes.
2. As a disease of programs: to be a rigid, clunky, bug-prone + monstrosity, all glossy surface with a hollow interior.
See Microsloth Windows. (Also Losedoze.)
Microsoft Windows plus Intel — the tacit alliance that dominated + desktop computing in the 1990s. After 1999 it began to break up under + pressure from Linux; see + Lintel.
[Play on “Nintendo”] A PC running the Windows operating + system kept primarily for the purpose of viewing multimedia and playing + games. The implication is that the speaker uses a Linux or *BSD box for + everything else.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer + Programs (Hal Abelson, Jerry Sussman and Julie Sussman; MIT + Press, 1984, 1996; ISBN 0-262-01153-0), an excellent computer science text + used in introductory courses at MIT. So called because of the wizard on + the jacket. One of the bibles of the LISP/Scheme + world. Also, less commonly, known as the + Purple Book. Now available on the http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
A design, action, or decision that is clearly incorrect or + inappropriate. Often capitalized; always emphasized in speech as if + capitalized. The opposite of the Right Thing; more + generally, anything that is not the Right Thing. In cases where ‘the + good is the enemy of the best’, the merely good — although good + — is nevertheless the Wrong Thing. “In C, the default is for + module-level declarations to be visible everywhere, rather than just within + the module. This is clearly the Wrong Thing.”
[from ‘software’] Commonly used to form jargon terms for + classes of software. For examples, see annoyware, + careware, crippleware, + crudware, freeware, + fritterware, guiltware, + liveware, meatware, + payware, psychedelicware, + shareware, shelfware, + vaporware, wetware, + spyware, adware.
An interjection similar to “Yay!”, as in: “w00t!!! + I just got a raise!” Often used for small victories the speaker dies + not expect to be of special interest to anyone else. Some claim this is a + bastardization of “root”, the highest level of access to a + system (particularly UNIX), originated by script kiddies as a 133tspeak + equivalent of “root”, and said as an exclamation upon gaining + root access. Others claim it originated in the Everquest multiplayer game + as an abbreviation of “wonderful loot”. Still other claim it + on originated on IRC as the “Ewok victory cheer”] Adj. + w00table has the sense of + “cool” or “nifty”. This is one of the few + leet-speak coinages to have crossed over into non-ironic use among + hackers.
[almost certainly from Elmer Fudd's immortal line “You + wascawwy wabbit!”]
1. A legendary early hack reported on a System/360 at RPI and + elsewhere around 1978; this may have descended (if only by inspiration) + from a hack called RABBITS reported from 1969 on a Burroughs 5500 at the + University of Washington Computer Center. The program would make two + copies of itself every time it was run, eventually crashing the + system.
2. By extension, any hack that includes infinite self-replication + but is not a virus or worm. + See fork bomb and rabbit job, + see also cookie monster.
[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 by Heinlein in the story, + which he wrote in 1942. Now known by the more generic term telefactoring, this technology is of intense + interest to NASA for tasks like space station maintenance.
2. At Harvard (particularly by Tom Cheatham and students), this is + used instead of foobar as a metasyntactic variable + and general nonsense word. See foo, + bar, foobar, + quux.
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.
Traversal of a data structure, especially an array or linked-list + data structure in core. See also + codewalker, silly walk, + clobber.
An occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk drives back in the days + when they were huge, clunky washing machines. Those + old dinosaur parts carried terrific angular + momentum; the combination of a misaligned spindle or worn bearings and + stick-slip interactions 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 shut; the + staff had to cut a hole in the 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 out how to induce disk-accessing + patterns that would do this to particular drive models and held disk-drive + races.
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 pejorative; it recalls ‘Harvey Wallbanger’, 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 mathematically guaranteed to work on + 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, bureaucratic, + by-the-book mentality. See also code grinder; + compare droid.
(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 + ticks required to execute it (on a timesharing + system these always differ, as no one program gets all the ticks, and on + multiprocessor systems with good thread support one may get more processor + time than real time).
A small power-supply brick with integral male plug, designed to plug + directly into a wall outlet; called a ‘wart’ because when + installed on a power strip it tends to block up at least one more socket + than it uses. These are frequently associated with modems and other small + electronic devices which would become unacceptably bulky or hot if they had + power supplies on board (there are other reasons as well having to do with + the cost of UL certification).
[WPI]
1. An indication of confusion, usually spoken with a quizzical tone: + “Wall??”
2. A request for further explication. Compare + octal forty.
3. [Unix, from ‘write all’] v. To send a message to everyone currently logged + in, esp. with the + wall(8) + utility.
It is said that sense 1 came from the idiom ‘like talking to a + blank wall’. It was originally used in situations where, after you + had carefully answered a question, the questioner stared at you blankly, + clearly having understood nothing that was explained. You would then throw + out a “Hello, wall?” to elicit some sort of response from the + questioner. Later, confused questioners began voicing “Wall?” + themselves.
A form of game cheat especially associated with first-person + shooters like Quake, in which the walls in the simulated maze or dungeon + are rendered transparent to the cheater. This gives the cheater normally + hidden information about the whereabouts of other players. Beyond gaming, + a wallhack is the paradigm case of a whole class of security problems that + stem from the fact that a server cannot trust client software, and server + authors must assume that all computation farmed out to a client is exposed + to and can be interfered with by the user.
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 — and it comes out a snazzy object-oriented + executable.”
[Columbia University: prob.: by mutation from Commonwealth slang + v. wank, to masturbate] Used much as + hack is elsewhere, as a noun denoting a clever + technique or person or the result of such cleverness. May describe + (negatively) the act of hacking for hacking's sake (“Quit wanking, + let's go get supper!”) or (more positively) a + wizard. Adj. wanky describes something particularly clever + (a person, program, or algorithm). Conversations can also get wanky when + there are too many wanks involved. This excess wankiness is signalled by + an overload of the wankometer + (compare bogometer). When the wankometer overloads, + the conversation's subject must be changed, or all non-wanks will leave. + Compare neep-neeping (under + neep-neep). Usage: U.S. only. In Britain and the + Commonwealth this word is extremely rude and is best + avoided unless one intends to give offense. Adjectival wanky is less offensive and simply means + ‘stupid’ or ‘broken’ (this is mainstream in Great + Britain).
(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] A would-be hacker. The + connotations of this term differ sharply depending on the age and exposure + of the subject. Used of a person who is in or might be entering + larval stage, it is semi-approving; such wannabees + can be annoying but most hackers remember that they, too, were once such + creatures. When used of any professional programmer, CS academic, writer, + or suit, it is derogatory, implying that said person + is trying to cuddle up to the hacker mystique but doesn't, fundamentally, + have a prayer of understanding what it is all about. Overuse of terms from + this lexicon is often an indication of the wannabee + nature. Compare newbie.
Historical note: The wannabee phenomenon has a slightly different + flavor now (1993) than it did ten or fifteen years ago. When the people + who are now hackerdom's tribal elders were in larval + stage, the process of becoming a hacker was largely unconscious + and unaffected by models known in popular culture — communities + formed spontaneously around people who, as + individuals, felt irresistibly drawn to do hackerly things, and + what wannabees experienced was a fairly pure, skill-focused desire to + become similarly wizardly. Those days of innocence are gone forever; + society's adaptation to the advent of the microcomputer after 1980 included + the elevation of the hacker as a new kind of folk hero, and the result is + that some people semi-consciously set out to be + hackers and borrow hackish prestige by fitting the popular image + of hackers. Fortunately, to do this really well, one has to actually + become a wizard. Nevertheless, old-time hackers tend to share a poorly + articulated disquiet about the change; among other things, it gives them + mixed feelings about the effects of public compendia of lore like this + one.
[play on war-driving; the first syllable has + since been reinterpreted as an acronym for “wireless access + revolution”] The practice of using chalk marks similar to hobo signs + to indicate the nearby presence of a wireless Internet access point, a boon + to strolling hackers with laptops. The concept was first floated in early + 2002 and was instantly seized upon with cries of glee by hackers all over + the portions of the world urbanized enough to have sidewalks and access + points. The process rather recalls the explosive spread of heraldry in the + medieval Europe of the 1120s. There is a site that explains the symbology;.
[originally from ‘wargames dialer’, a reference to the + movie War Games] A cracking tool, a program that + calls a given list or range of phone numbers and records those which answer + with handshake tones (and so might be entry points to computer or + telecommunications systems). Some of these programs have become quite + sophisticated, and can now detect modem, fax, or PBX tones and log each one + separately. The war dialer is one of the most important tools in the + phreaker's kit. These programs evolved from early + demon dialers.
[play on war dialer; also as single word + wardriving] Driving around looking + for unsecured wireless Internet access points to connect to. More at the + War Driving + home page. Compare war-chalking.
A substantial subculture of crackers refer to + themselves as warez d00dz; there is + evidently some connection with B1FF here. As + ‘Ozone Pilot’, one former warez d00d, wrote:
+Warez d00dz get illegal copies of copyrighted software. If +it has copy protection on it, they break the protection so +the software can be copied. Then they distribute it around +the world via several gateways. Warez d00dz form badass +group names like RAZOR and the like. They put up boards +that distribute the latest ware, or pirate program. The +whole point of the Warez sub-culture is to get the pirate +program released and distributed before any other group. I +know, I know. But don't ask, and it won't hurt as much. +This is how they prove their poweress [sic]. It gives them +the right to say, “I released King's Quest IVXIX before you +so obviously my testicles are larger.” Again don't ask... +
The studly thing to do if one is a warez d00d, it appears, is emit + 0-day warez, that is copies of + commercial software copied and cracked on the same day as its retail + release. Warez d00ds also hoard software in a big way, collecting untold + megabytes of arcade-style games, pornographic JPGs, and applications + they'll never use onto their hard disks. As Ozone Pilot acutely + observes:
[BELONG] is the only word you will need + to know. Warez d00dz want to belong. They have been shunned by everyone, + and thus turn to cyberspace for acceptance. That is why they always start + groups like TGW, FLT, USA and the like. Structure makes them happy. [...] + Warez d00dz will never have a handle like “Pink Daisy” because + warez d00dz are insecure. Only someone who is very secure with a good dose + of self-esteem can stand up to the cries of fag and girlie-man. More + likely you will find warez d00dz with handles like: Doctor Death, Deranged + Lunatic, Hellraiser, Mad Prince, Dreamdevil, The Unknown, Renegade Chemist, + Terminator, and Twin Turbo. They like to sound badass when they can hide + behind their terminals. More likely, if you were given a sample of 100 + people, the person whose handle is Hellraiser is the last person you'd + associate with the name.
The contrast with Internet hackers is stark and instructive. See + cracker, wannabee, + handle, elite, + courier, leech; compare + weenie, spod.
Even more derogatory way of referring to + warez d00dz; refers to the fact that most warez d00dz are around the + age of puberty. Compare script kiddies.
Widely used in cracker subcultures to denote + cracked version of commercial software, that is versions from which + copy-protection has been stripped. Hackers recognize this term but don't + use it themselves. See warez d00dz, + courier, leech, + elite.
[from the Usenet group alt.fan.warlord] The act of excoriating a + bloated, ugly, or derivative sig block. Common + grounds for warlording include the presence of a signature rendered in a + BUAF, over-used or cliched sig + quotes, ugly ASCII art, or simply + excessive size. The original ‘Warlord’ was a + B1FF-like newbie c.1991 who + featured in his sig a particularly large and obnoxious ASCII graphic + resembling the sword of Conan the Barbarian in the 1981 John Milius movie; + the group name alt.fan.warlord + was sarcasm, and the characteristic mode of warlording is devastatingly + sarcastic praise. See also McQuary limit.
See boot.
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 every character inside them except + !. In ANSI C, the ?? syntax used for + obtaining ASCII characters in a foreign environment is a wart. See also + miswart.
1. 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 idiom transcends language + barriers; it is even used in Russian hacker jargon. See also + walking drives. The thick channel cables connecting + these were called bit hoses (see + hose, sense 3).
2. [CMU] A machine used exclusively for + washing software. CMU has clusters of these.
The process of recompiling a software distribution (used more often + when the recompilation is occuring from scratch) to pick up and merge + together all of the various changes that have been made to the + source.
(see MIPS, sense 2) Large, water-cooled + machines of either today's ECL-supercomputer flavor or yesterday's + traditional mainframe type.
A really unusual kind of water MIPS.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is + 74-12-25. The previous + cartoon was 73-10-31.)
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 wave a dead chicken over the source code, but I really think + we've run into an OS bug.” Compare + voodoo programming, rain dance; see also + casting the runes.
[Cambridge] A naive user, one who deliberately or accidentally does + things that are stupid or ill-advised. Roughly synonymous with + loser.
A World Wide Web URL. See also + hotlink, which has slightly different + connotations.
Two or more web sites connected by prominent links between sites + sharing a common interest or theme. Usually such cliques have the topology + of a ring, in order to make it easy for visitors to navigate through all of + them.
A small specialized computer, shipped with no monitor or keyboard or + any other external peripherals, pre-configured to be controlled through an + Ethernet port and function as a WWW server. Products of this kind (for + example the Cobalt Qube) are often about the size of a toaster. See + toaster; compare + video toaster.
To put a piece of (possibly already existing) material on the WWW. + Frequently used for papers (“Why don't you webify all your + publications?”) or for demos (“They webified their 6.866 final + project”). This term seems to have been (rather logically) + independently invented multiple times in the early 1990s.
[WWW: from postmaster] The person at a site + providing World Wide Web information who is responsible for maintaining the + public pages and keeping the Web server running and properly + configured.
1. To be stuck, incapable of proceeding without help. This is + different from having crashed. If the system has crashed, it has become + totally non-functioning. If the system is wedged, it is trying to do + something but cannot make progress; it may be capable of doing a few + things, but not be fully operational. For example, a process may become + wedged if it deadlocks with another (but not all + instances of wedging are deadlocks). See also + gronk, locked up, + hosed, hung (wedged is more + severe than hung).
2. Often refers to humans suffering misconceptions. “He's + totally wedged — he's convinced that he can levitate through + meditation.”
3. [Unix] Specifically used to describe the state of a TTY left in a + losing state by abort of a screen-oriented program or one that has messed + with the line discipline in some obscure way.
There is some dispute over the origin of this term. It is usually + thought to derive from a common description of recto-cranial inversion; + however, it may actually have originated with older ‘hot-press’ + printing technology in which physical type elements were locked into type + frames with wedges driven in by mallets. Once this had been done, no + changes in the typesetting for that page could be made.
[Fairchild] A bug. Prob. related to + wedged.
The quality or state of being wedged.
[Cambridge] Used to denote frustration, usually at amazing + stupidity. “I stuck the disk in upside down.” + “Weeble....”.
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 demise, the phrase go off in the weeds was equivalent mainstream + hackerdom's jump off into never-never land.
1. [on BBSes] Any of a species of luser resembling a less amusing + version of B1FF that infests many + BBS systems. The typical weenie is a teenage boy + with poor social skills travelling under a grandiose + handle derived from fantasy or heavy-metal rock + lyrics. Among sysops, the weenie + problem refers to the marginally literate and profanity-laden + flamage weenies tend to spew all over a + newly-discovered BBS. Compare spod, + geek, terminal junkie, + warez d00dz.
2. [among hackers] 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 him or herself + to be the same sort of weenie. Implies that the weenie has put a major + investment of time, effort, and concentration into the area indicated; + whether this is good or bad depends on the hearer's judgment of how the + speaker feels about that area. See also bigot. +
3. The semicolon character, ; (ASCII + 0111011).
1. Software that does its job quietly and without counterintuitive + effects. Esp.: said of software having an interface spec sufficiently + simple and well-defined that it can be used as a + tool by other software. See + cat.
2. Said of an algorithm that doesn't crash + or blow up, even when given + pathological input. Implies that the stability of + the algorithm is intrinsic, which makes this somewhat different from + bulletproof.
Said of a computer installation, asserts 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 the site's name is familiar to many (due perhaps to an archive + service or active Usenet users).
[prob.: from the novels of Rudy Rucker]
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) attached to + a computer system, as opposed to the system's hardware or software. See + liveware, meatware.
[from the carnival game which involves quickly and repeatedly + hitting the heads of mechanical moles with a mallet as they pop up from + their holes.]
1. The practice of repeatedly causing spammers' + throwaway accounts and drop boxes to be terminated. +
2. After sense 1 became established in the mid-1990s the term passed + into more generalized use, and now is commonly found in such combinations + as whack-a-mole windows; the + obnoxious pop-up advertisement windows spawned in flocks when you surf to + sites like Angelfire or Lycos.
According to arch-hacker James Gosling (designer of + NeWS, GOSMACS and Java), to + “...modify a program with no idea whatsoever how it works.” + (See whacker.) It is actually possible to do this + in nontrivial circumstances if the change is small and well-defined and you + are very good at glarking things from context. As a + trivial example, it is relatively easy to change all stderr writes to stdout writes in a piece of C filter code which + remains otherwise mysterious.
[University of Maryland: from hacker]
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 whacking the system or program in question. Whackers are + often quite egotistical and eager to claim wizard + status, regardless of the views of their peers.
2. A person who is good at programming quickly, though rather poorly + and ineptly.
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, crash or reload the system, and kill or 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 Unix culture from TWENEX in the + mid-1980s and has been gaining popularity there (esp. at university + sites). See also root.
[coined in a paper by T.H. Myer and I.E. Sutherland On + the Design of Display Processors, Comm. ACM, Vol. 11, no. 6, + June 1968)] Term used to refer to a well-known effect whereby function in a + computing system family is migrated out to special-purpose peripheral + hardware for speed, then the peripheral evolves toward more computing power + as it does its job, then somebody notices that it is inefficient to support + two asymmetrical processors in the architecture and folds the function back + into the main CPU, at which point the cycle begins again.
Several iterations of this cycle have been observed in + graphics-processor design, and at least one or two in communications and + floating-point processors. Also known as the + Wheel of Life, the Wheel of + Samsara, and other variations of the basic Hindu/Buddhist + theological idea. See also blitter.
[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 lesser + users.
[from slang ‘big wheel’ for a powerful person] A person + who has an active wheel bit. “We need to find + a wheel to unwedge the hung tape drives.” (See + wedged, sense 1.) The traditional name of security + group zero in BSD (to which the major + system-internal users like root belong) is + ‘wheel’. Some vendors have expanded on this usage, modifying + Unix so that only members of group ‘wheel’ can + go root.
See black hat.
The opposite of a blacklist. That is, instead of being an explicit + list of people who are banned, it's an explicit list of people who are to + be admitted. Hackers use this especially of lists of email addresses that + are explicitly enabled to get past strict anti-spam filters.
(alt.: wizzy) [Sun] Describes + a cuspy program; one that is feature-rich and well + presented.
[UK, perh. originally from the first Roger + Irrelevant strip in VIZ comics, spread + via Your Sinclair magazine in the 1980s and early + 1990s]
1. n.,v. Commonly used to + describe chatter, content-free remarks or other essentially meaningless + contributions to threads in newsgroups. “Oh, rspence is wibbling + again”.
2. [UK IRC] An explicit on-line no-op.
3. One of the preferred + metasyntactic variables in the UK, forming a series with wobble, wubble, and + flob (attributed to the hilarious + historical comedy Blackadder).
4. A pronunciation of the letters “www”, as seen in + URLs; i.e., www.foo.com may be pronounced + “wibble dot foo dot com” (compare + dub dub dub).
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. [poss.: evoking ‘window gadget’] A user interface + object in X graphical user interfaces.
[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 unstable, this is often the most unstable + waveform, so it grows to dominate the solution. Alternatively, stable + (though inaccurate) wiggles can be generated near a discontinuity by a + Gibbs phenomenon.
The public or uncontrolled side of a + firewall machine.
To experience serendipity. “I went shopping and won big; + there was a 2-for-1 sale.” See + big win.
Expresses pleasure at a win.
[MIT; now common everywhere]
1. vi. To succeed. A program + wins if no unexpected conditions arise, or (especially) if it is + sufficiently robust to take exceptions in + stride.
2. n. Success, or a specific + instance thereof. A pleasing outcome. “So it turned out I could use + a lexer generator instead of hand-coding my own + pattern recognizer. What a win!” Emphatic forms: moby win, super + win, hyper-win (often used + interjectively as a reply). For some reason suitable win is also common at MIT, usually in + reference to a satisfactory solution to a problem. Oppose + lose; see also big win, which + isn't quite just an intensification of win.
In the Macintosh world, a style of window with much less adornment + (smaller or missing title bar, zoom box, etc.) than a standard + window.
[US Geological Survey] Among users of + WIMP environments like X or the Macintosh, + extended experimentation with new window colors, fonts, and icon shapes. + This activity can take up hours of what might otherwise have been + productive working time. “I spent the afternoon window shopping + until I found the coolest shade of green for my active window borders + — now they perfectly match my medium slate blue background.” + Serious window shoppers will spend their days with bitmap editors, creating + new and different icons and background patterns for all to see. Also: + window dressing, the act of applying + new fonts, colors, etc. See fritterware, compare + macdink.
Comments set on the same line as code, as opposed to + boxed comments. In C, for example:
+d=sqrt(x*x+y*y);/*distancefromorigin*/
+
Generally these refer only to the action(s) taken on that + line.
(alt.: winkey face) See + emoticon.
The situation when a lossage is corrected, or when something is + winning.
1. n. An unexpectedly good + situation, program, programmer, or person.
2. real winner: Often + sarcastic, but also used as high praise (see also the note under + user). “He's a real winner — never + reports a bug till he can duplicate it and send in an + example.”
The quality of winning (as opposed to + winnage, which is the result of winning). + “Guess what? They tweaked the microcode and now the LISP interpreter + runs twice as fast as it used to.” “That's really great! Boy, + what winnitude!” “Yup. I'll probably get a half-hour's winnage + on the next run of my program.” Perhaps curiously, the obvious + antonym ‘lossitude’ is rare.
See hardwired.
[prob.: from SF slang for an electrical-brain-stimulation addict] +
1. A hardware hacker, especially one who concentrates on + communications hardware.
2. An expert in local-area networks. A wirehead can be a network + software wizard too, but will always have the ability to deal with network + hardware, down to the smallest component. Wireheads are known for their + ability to lash up an Ethernet terminator from spare resistors, for + example.
Syn. programming fluid. This melds the + mainstream slang adjective ‘wired’ (stimulated, up, + hyperactive) with ‘firewater’; however, it refers to + caffeinacious rather than alcoholic beverages.
A list of desired features or bug fixes that probably won't get done + for a long time, usually because the person responsible for the code is too + busy or can't think of a clean way to do it. “OK, I'll add automatic + filename completion to the wish list for the new interface.” Compare + tick-list features.
See delta.
See epsilon.
[also, after Terry Pratchett, pointy + hat] Notional headgear worn by whoever is the + wizard in a particular context. The implication is + that it's a transferable role. “Talk to Alice, she's wearing the + TCP/IP wizard hat while Bob is on vacation.” This metaphor is + sufficiently live that one may actually see hackers miming the act of + putting on, taking off, or transferring a phantom hat. See also + pointy hat, compare + patch pumpkin.
[from rogue] A special access mode of a + program or system, usually passworded, that permits some users godlike + privileges. Generally not used for operating systems themselves (root mode or wheel + mode would be used instead). This term is often used with + respect to games that have editable state.
1. Transitively, a person who knows how a complex piece of software + or hardware works (that is, who groks it); esp. + someone who can find and fix bugs quickly in an emergency. Someone is a + hacker if he or she has general hacking ability, but + is a wizard with respect to something only if he or she has specific + detailed knowledge of that thing. A good hacker could become a wizard for + something given the time to study it.
2. The term ‘wizard’ is also used intransitively of + someone who has extremely high-level hacking or problem-solving + ability.
3. A person who is permitted to do things forbidden to ordinary + people; one who has wheel privileges on a system. +
4. A Unix expert, esp. a Unix systems programmer. This usage is + well enough established that ‘Unix Wizard’ is a recognized job + title at some corporations and to most headhunters.
See guru, + lord high fixer. See also deep magic, + heavy wizardry, incantation, + magic, mutter, + rain dance, + voodoo programming, wave a dead chicken.
Pertaining to wizards. A wizardly feature is + one that only a wizard could understand or use properly.
A small microwave dish antenna used for cross-campus private network + circuits, from the obvious resemblance between a microwave dish and the + Chinese culinary utensil.
1. [TMRC] Storage space for equipment.
2. [proposed] A variety of hard-shell equipment case with heavy + interior padding and/or shaped carrier cutouts in a foam-rubber matrix; + mundanely called a flight case. Used + for delicate test equipment, electronics, and musical instruments.
[Unisys UK: from British puppet-show characters] A user who has + great difficulty in communicating their requirements and/or in using the + resulting software. Extreme case of luser. An + especially senior or high-ranking womble is referred to as Great-Uncle + Bulgaria. Compare Aunt Tillie.
[from Australian slang] Yet another approximate synonym for + broken. Specifically connotes a malfunction that + produces behavior seen as crazy, humorous, or amusingly perverse. + “That was the day the printer's font logic went wonky and everybody's + listings came out in Tengwar.” Also in wonked out. See funky, + demented, bozotic.
1. A temporary kluge used to bypass, mask, or + otherwise avoid a bug or + misfeature in some system. Theoretically, + workarounds are always replaced by fixes; in + practice, customers often find themselves living with workarounds for long + periods of time. “The code died on NUL characters in the input, so I + fixed it to interpret them as spaces.” “That's not a fix, + that's a workaround!”
2. A procedure to be employed by the user in order to do what some + currently non-working feature should do. Hypothetical example: + “Using META-F7 crashes the 4.43 build of + Weemax, but as a workaround you can type CTRL-R, then SHIFT-F5, and delete + the remaining cruft by hand.”
[IBM]
1. In conformance to a wrong or inappropriate specification; useful, + but misdesigned.
2. Frequently used as a sardonic comment on a program's + utility.
3. Unfortunately also used as a bogus reason for not accepting a + criticism or suggestion. At IBM, this sense is used + in official documents! See BAD.
[from tapeworm in John + Brunner's novel The Shockwave Rider, via XEROX PARC] + A program that propagates itself over a network, reproducing itself as it + goes. Compare virus. Nowadays the term has + negative connotations, as it is assumed that only + crackers write worms. Perhaps the best-known + example was Robert T. Morris's Great Worm of 1988, a + ‘benign’ one that got out of control and hogged hundreds of + Suns and VAXen across the U.S. See also cracker, + RTM, Trojan horse, + ice.
[from the wormhole + singularities hypothesized in some versions of General Relativity theory] +
1. [n.,obs.] A location in a monitor which contains the address of a + routine, with the specific intent of making it easy to substitute a + different routine. This term is now obsolescent; modern operating systems + use clusters of wormholes extensively (for modularization of I/O handling + in particular, as in the Unix device-driver organization) but the preferred + techspeak for these clusters is ‘device tables’, ‘jump + tables’ or ‘capability tables’.
2. [Amateur Packet Radio] A network path using a commercial + satellite link to join two or more amateur VHF networks. So called because + traffic routed through a wormhole leaves and re-enters the amateur network + over great distances with usually little clue in the message routing header + as to how it got from one relay to the other. Compare + gopher hole (sense 2).
In an infinite loop. Often used by older computer types.
(also n. wraparound and v. shorthand wrap)
1. [techspeak] The action of a counter that starts over at zero or + at minus infinity (see + infinity) after its maximum value has been reached, + and continues incrementing, either because it is programmed to do so or + because of an overflow (as when a car's odometer starts over at 0). +
2. To change phase gradually and continuously + by maintaining a steady wake-sleep cycle somewhat longer than 24 hours, + e.g., living six long (28-hour) days in a week (or, equivalently, sleeping + at the rate of 10 microhertz). This sense is also called + phase-wrapping.
[a play on read-only memory] + Code so arcane, complex, or ill-structured that it cannot be modified or + even comprehended by anyone but its author, and possibly not even by + him/her. A Bad Thing.
A language with syntax (or semantics) sufficiently dense and bizarre + that any routine of significant size is automatically + write-only code. A sobriquet applied occasionally to C and often to APL, + though INTERCAL and TECO + certainly deserve it more. See also Befunge.
The obvious antonym to read-only + memory. Out of frustration with the long and seemingly useless + chain of approvals required of component specifications, during which no + actual checking seemed to occur, an engineer at Signetics once created a + specification for a write-only memory and included it with a bunch of other + specifications to be approved. This inclusion came to the attention of + Signetics management only when regular customers + started calling and asking for pricing information. Signetics published a + corrected edition of the data book and requested the return of the + ‘erroneous’ ones. Later, in 1972, Signetics bought a + double-page spread in Electronics magazine's April + issue and used the spec as an April Fools' Day joke. Instead of the more + conventional characteristic curves, the 25120 “fully encoded, 9046 x + N, Random Access, write-only-memory” data sheet included diagrams of + “bit capacity vs.: Temp.”, “Iff vs. Vff”, + “Number of pins remaining vs.: number of socket insertions”, + and “AQL vs.: selling price”. The 25120 required a 6.3 VAC + VFF supply, a +10V VCC, and VDD of 0V, + 2%.
Imaginary sound that a computer program makes as it labors with a + tedious or difficult task.grind (sense 4).
The central monster (and, in many versions, the name) of a famous + family of very early computer games called Hunt The + Wumpus. The original was invented in 1970 (several years + before ADVENT) by Gregory Yob. The wumpus lived + somewhere in a cave with the topology of an dodecahedron's edge/vertex + graph (later versions supported other topologies, including an icosahedron + and Mbius strip). The player started somewhere at random in the cave + with five ‘crooked arrows’; these could be shot through up to + three connected rooms, and would kill the wumpus on a hit (later versions + introduced the wounded wumpus, which got very angry). Unfortunately for + players, the movement necessary to map the maze was made hazardous not + merely by the wumpus (which would eat you if you stepped on him) but also + by bottomless pits and colonies of super bats that would pick you up and + drop you at a random location (later versions added ‘anaerobic + termites’ that ate arrows, bat migrations, and earthquakes that + randomly changed pit locations).
This game appears to have been the first to use a non-random + graph-structured map (as opposed to a rectangular grid like the even older + Star Trek games). In this respect, as in the dungeon-like setting and its + terse, amusing messages, it prefigured ADVENT and + Zork and was directly ancestral to the latter (Zork + acknowledged this heritage by including a super-bat colony). A C emulation + of the original Basic game is available at the Retrocomputing Museum, + http://www.catb.org/retro/.
1. Used in various speech and writing contexts (also in lowercase) + in roughly its algebraic sense of ‘unknown within a set defined by + context’ (compare N). Thus, the abbreviation + 680x0 stands for 68000, 68010, 68020, 68030, or 68040, and 80x86 stands for + 80186, 80286, 80386, 80486, 80586 or 80686 (note that a Unix hacker might + write these as 680[0-6]0 and 80[1-6]86 or 680?0 and 80?86 respectively; see + glob).
2. [after the name of an earlier window system called + ‘W’] An over-sized, over-featured, over-engineered and + incredibly over-complicated window system developed at MIT and widely used + on Unix systems.
The famed Palo Alto Research Center. For more than a decade, from + the early 1970s into the mid-1980s, PARC yielded an astonishing volume of + groundbreaking hardware and software innovations. The modern mice, + windows, and icons style of software interface was invented there. So was + the laser printer and the local-area network; and PARC's series of D + machines anticipated the powerful personal computers of the 1980s by a + decade. Sadly, the prophets at PARC were without honor in their own + company, so much so that it became a standard joke to describe PARC as a + place that specialized in developing brilliant ideas for everyone + else.
The stunning shortsightedness and obtusity of XEROX's top-level + suits has been well anatomized in + Fumbling The Future: How XEROX Invented, Then Ignored, the First + Personal Computer by Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexander + (William Morrow & Co., 1988, ISBN 0-688-09511-9).
Syn. control-S.
Syn. control-Q.
A marker that attention is needed. Commonly used in program + comments to indicate areas that are kluged up or need to be. Some hackers + liken ‘XXX’ to the notional heavy-porn movie rating. Compare + FIXME.
Exclusive or. ‘A xor B’ means ‘A or B, but not + both’. “I want to get cherry pie xor a banana split.” + This derives from the technical use of the term as a function on + truth-values that is true if exactly one of its two arguments is + true.
Hackish standard abbreviation for cross-reference.
[from the ADVENT game] The canonical + ‘magic word’. This comes from ADVENT, + in which the idea is to explore an underground cave with many rooms and to + collect the treasures you find there. If you type xyzzy at the appropriate time, you can move + instantly between two otherwise distant points. If, therefore, you + encounter some bit of magic, you might remark on + this quite succinctly by saying simply “Xyzzy!” + “Ordinarily you can't look at someone else's screen if he has + protected it, but if you type quadruple-bucky-clear the system will let you + do it anyway.” “Xyzzy!” It's traditional for xyzzy to + be an Easter egg in games with text + interfaces.
Xyzzy has actually been implemented as an undocumented no-op command + on several OSes; in Data General's AOS/VS, for example, it would typically + respond “Nothing happens”, just as + ADVENT did if the magic was invoked at the wrong + spot or before a player had performed the action that enabled the word. In + more recent 32-bit versions, by the way, AOS/VS responds “Twice as + much happens”.
Early versions of the popular ‘minesweeper’ game under + Microsoft Windows had a cheat mode triggered by the command + ‘xyzzy<enter><right-shift>’ that turns the top-left + pixel of the screen different colors depending on whether or not the cursor + is over a bomb. This feature temporarily disappeared in Windows 98, but + reappeared in Windows 2000.
The following passage from The Wonderful Wizard of + Oz by L. Frank Baum, suggesting a possible pre-ADVENT origin, + has recently come to light: “Ziz-zy, zuz-zy, zik!” said + Dorothy, who was now standing on both feet. This ended the saying of the + charm, and they heard a great chattering and flapping of wings, as the band + of Winged Monkeys flew up to them.
The text can be viewed at + Project Gutenberg.
[Yet Another] In hackish acronyms this almost invariably expands to + Yet Another, following the precedent set by Unix + yacc(1) + (Yet Another Compiler-Compiler). See YABA.
[Cambridge] Yet Another Bloody Acronym. Whenever some program is + being named, someone invariably suggests that it be given a name that is + acronymic. The response from those with a trace of originality is to + remark ironically that the proposed name would then be + ‘YABA-compatible’. Also used in response to questions like + “What is WYSIWYG?” See also TLA.
[coined in response to WYSIWYG] Describes the command-oriented + ed/vi/nroff/TeX style of word processing or other user interface, the + opposite of WYSIWYG. Stands for “You asked + for it, you got it”, because what you actually asked for is often + not apparent until long after it is too late to do anything about it. Used + to denote perversity (“Real Programmers use YAFIYGI + tools...and like it!”) or, less often, a + necessary tradeoff (“Only a YAFIYGI tool can have full programmable + flexibility in its interface.”).
This precise sense of “You asked for it, you got it” + seems to have first appeared in Ed Post's classic parody Real + Programmers don't use Pascal (see + Real Programmers); the acronym is a more recent invention.
[Acronym for ‘Yet Another Unix Nerd’] Reported from the + San Diego Computer Society (predominantly a microcomputer users' group) as + a good-natured punning insult aimed at Unix zealots.
[Usenet: very common] Abbreviation: You Have Been Trolled (see + troll, sense 1). Especially used in “YHBT. + YHL. HAND.”, which is widely understood to expand to “You + Have Been Trolled. You Have Lost. Have A Nice Day”. You are quite + likely to see this if you respond incautiously to a flame-provoking post + that was obviously floated as sucker bait.
Abbreviation of ‘You know you've been hacking too long + when...’, which became established on the Usenet group alt.folklore.computers during extended + discussion of the indicated entry in the Jargon File.
Abbreviation for Your mileage may vary common + on Usenet.
[From Unix's + yacc(1), + ‘Yet Another Compiler-Compiler’, a LALR parser generator] +
1. Of your own work: A humorous allusion often used in titles to + acknowledge that the topic is not original, though the content is. As in + ‘Yet Another AI Group’ or ‘Yet Another Simulated + Annealing Algorithm’.
2. Of others' work: Describes something of which there are already + far too many. See also YA-, + YABA, YAUN.
[Unix] The canonical comment describing something + magic or too complicated to bother explaining + properly. From an infamous comment in the context-switching code of the V6 + Unix kernel. Dennis Ritchie has explained this in + detail.
The set-up line for a genre of one-liners told by hackers about + themselves. These include the following:
+ not only do you check your email more often than your paper mail, but you + remember your network address faster than your + postal one.
+ your SO kisses you on the neck and the first thing + you think is “Uh, oh, + priority interrupt.”
+ you go to balance your checkbook and discover that you're doing it in + octal.
+ your computers have a higher street value than your car. +
+ in your universe, ‘round numbers’ are powers of 2, not 10. +
+ more than once, you have woken up recalling a dream in some programming + language.
you see the word “Oxford” and mentally trip over + the fact that ‘r’ is not a hex digit.
+ you realize you have never seen half of your best friends. +
A list + of these can be found by searching for this phrase on the web.
[An early version of this entry said “All but one of these have + been reliably reported as hacker traits (some of them quite often). Even + hackers may have trouble spotting the ringer.” The ringer was + balancing one's checkbook in octal, which I made up out of whole cloth. + Although more respondents picked that one out as fiction than any of the + others, I also received multiple independent reports of its actually + happening, most famously to Grace Hopper while she was working with BINAC + in 1949. —ESR]
[from the standard disclaimer attached to EPA mileage ratings by + American car manufacturers]
1. A ritual warning often found in Unix freeware distributions. + Translates roughly as “Hey, I tried to write this portably, but who + knows what'll happen on your system?”
2. More generally, a qualifier attached to advice. “I find + that sending flowers works well, but your mileage may vary.”
[from “Zippy the Pinhead” comix] A favored hacker + expression of humorous surprise or emphasis. “Yow! Check out what + happens when you twiddle the foo option on this display + hack!”.
The character gamma (extended SAIL ASCII 0001001), which with a loop + in its tail looks like a little fish swimming down the page. The term is + actually the name of a Chinese dish in which a fish is cooked whole (not + parsed) and covered with Yu-Shiang (or Yu-Hsiang, or + in modern Pinyin transliteration yuxiang) sauce. Usage: primarily by + people on the MIT LISP Machine, which could display this character on the + screen. Tends to elicit incredulity from people who hear about it + second-hand.
Yu Shiang Whole Fish is alive and well in Unicode as U+0263 LATIN + SMALL LETTER GAMMA (as opposed to the actual Greek letter at U+03B3, which + usually has a loopless glyph; the form of U+0263 is consistently + loopy). This symbol is included in Unicode as a Latin letter because it is + used in the International Phonetic Alphabet. In the IPA, gamma represents + a voiced velar fricative, the sound commonly transcribed “gh” + in Arabic or Klingon.
[MIT AI Lab, after 2000: orig. probably from a Ren & + Stimpy episode.] Any seemingly pointless activity which is + actually necessary to solve a problem which solves a problem which, several + levels of recursion later, solves the real problem you're working + on.
See green card.
[IBM] Repair wires used when connectors (especially ribbon + connectors) got broken due to some schlemiel pinching them, or to reconnect + cut traces after the FE mistakenly cut one. Compare + blue wire, purple wire, + red wire.
The state in which the system is said to be when it rapidly + alternates several times between being up and being down. Interestingly + (and perhaps not by coincidence), many hardware vendors give out free yoyos + at Usenix exhibits.
Sun Microsystems gave out logoized yoyos at SIGPLAN '88. Tourists + staying at one of Atlanta's most respectable hotels were subsequently + treated to the sight of 200 of the country's top computer scientists + testing yo-yo algorithms in the lobby.
“Every program attempts to expand until it can read + mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which + can.” Coined by Jamie Zawinski (who called it the “Law of + Software Envelopment”) to express his belief that all truly useful + programs experience pressure to evolve into toolkits and application + platforms (the mailer thing, he says, is just a side effect of that). It + is commonly cited, though with widely varying degrees of accuracy.
“Allow none of foo, one of + foo, or any number of + foo.” A rule of thumb for software design, + which instructs one to not place random limits on + the number of instances of a given entity (such as: windows in a window + system, letters in an OS's filenames, etc.). Specifically, one should + either disallow the entity entirely, allow exactly one instance (an + “exception”), or allow as many as the user wants — + address space and memory permitting.
The logic behind this rule is that there are often situations where + it makes clear sense to allow one of something instead of none. However, + if one decides to go further and allow N (for N > 1), then why not N+1? + And if N+1, then why not N+2, and so on? Once above 1, there's no excuse + not to allow any N; hence, infinity.
Many hackers recall in this connection Isaac Asimov's SF novel + The Gods Themselves in which a character announces + that the number 2 is impossible — if you're going to believe in more than + one universe, you might as well believe in an infinite number of + them.
The second of the great early experiments in computer fantasy + gaming; see ADVENT. Originally written on MIT-DM + during 1977-1979, later distributed with BSD Unix (as a patched, sourceless + RT-11 FORTRAN binary; see retrocomputing) and + commercialized as ‘The Zork Trilogy’ by + Infocom. The FORTRAN source was later rewritten for + portability and released to Usenet under the name “Dungeon”. + Both FORTRAN “Dungeon” and translated C versions are available + at many FTP sites; the commercial Zork trilogy is available at http://www.ifarchive.org/. See + also grue. You can play Zork via a Java + Applet.
1. n. Spiciness.
2. vt. To make food spicy. +
3. vt. To make someone + ‘suffer’ by making his food spicy. (Most hackers love spicy + food. Hot-and-sour soup is considered wimpy unless it makes you wipe your + nose for the rest of the meal.) See zapped. +
4. vt. To modify, usually to + correct; esp. used when the action is performed with a debugger or binary + patching tool. Also implies surgical precision. “Zap the debug + level to 6 and run it again.” In the IBM mainframe world, binary + patches are applied to programs or to the OS with a program called + ‘superzap’, whose file name is ‘IMASPZAP’ (possibly + contrived from I M A SuPerZAP).
5. vt. To erase or reset. +
6. To fry a chip with static electricity. + “Uh oh — I think that lightning strike may have zapped the disk + controller.”
Spicy. This term is used to distinguish between food that is hot + (in temperature) and food that is spicy-hot. For + example, the Chinese appetizer Bon Bon Chicken is a kind of chicken salad + that is cold but zapped; by contrast, vanilla wonton + soup is hot but not zapped. See also oriental food, + laser chicken. See zap, + senses 1 and 2.
[USENET] The word ‘moron’ in + rot13. Used to describe newbies who are behaving + with especial cluelessness.
To figure out something by meditation or by a sudden flash of + enlightenment. Originally applied to bugs, but occasionally applied to + problems of life in general. “How'd you figure out the buffer + allocation problem?” “Oh, I zenned it.” Contrast + grok, which connotes a time-extended version of + zenning a system. Compare hack mode. See also + guru.
Syn. content-free.
1. To set to 0. Usually said of small pieces of data, such as bits + or words (esp. in the construction zero + out).
2. To erase; to discard all data from. Said of disks and + directories, where ‘zeroing’ need not involve actually writing + zeroes throughout the area being zeroed. One may speak of something being + logically zeroed rather than being + physically zeroed. See + scribble.
First. Among software designers, comes from C's and LISP's 0-based + indexing of arrays. Hardware people also tend to start counting at 0 + instead of 1; this is natural since, e.g., the 256 states of 8 bits + correspond to the binary numbers 0, 1, ..., 255 and the digital + devices known as counters count in + this way.
Hackers and computer scientists often like to call the first chapter + of a publication ‘Chapter 0’, especially if it is of an + introductory nature (one of the classic instances was in the First Edition + of K&R). In recent + years this trait has also been observed among many pure mathematicians (who + have an independent tradition of numbering from 0). Zero-based numbering + tends to reduce fencepost errors, though it cannot + eliminate them entirely.
1. Hex FF (11111111) when used as a delimiter or +fence character. Usage: primarily at IBM shops. +
2. [proposed] n. The Unicode + non-character U+FFFF (1111111111111111), a character code which is not + assigned to any character, and so is usable as end-of-string. (Unicode is + a 16-bit character code intended to cover all of the world's writing + systems, including Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Chinese, hiragana, katakana, + Devanagari, Thai, Laotian and many other scripts — support for + elvish is planned for a future release).
[primarily MS-DOS/Windows] To create a compressed archive from a + group of files using PKWare's PKZIP or a compatible archiver. Its use is + spreading now that portable implementations of the algorithm have been + written. Commonly used as follows: “I'll zip it up and send it to + you.” See tar and feather.
[IBM] A person with a closed mind.
1. [Unix] A process that has died but has not yet relinquished its + process table slot (because the parent process hasn't executed a + wait(2) + for it yet). These can be seen in + ps(1) + listings occasionally. Compare orphan.
2. A machine, especially someone's home box, + that has been cracked and is being used as part of a second-stage attack by + miscreants trying to mask their home IP address. Especially used of + machines being exploited in large gangs for a mechanized denial-of-service + attack like Tribe Flood Network; the image that goes with this is of a + veritable army of zombies mindlessly doing the bidding of a + necromancer.
1. [TMRC] v. To attack with an + inverse heat sink.
2. [TMRC] v. To travel, with + v approaching + c [that is, with velocity approaching + lightspeed —ESR].
3. [MIT] v. To propel something + very quickly. “The new comm software is very fast; it really zorches + files through the network.”
4. [MIT] n. Influence. Brownie + points. Good karma. The intangible and fuzzy currency in which favors are + measured. “I'd rather not ask him for that just yet; I think I've + used up my quota of zorch with him for the week.”
5. [MIT] n. Energy, drive, or + ability. “I think I'll punt that change for + now; I've been up for 30 hours and I've run out of zorch.”
6. [MIT] v. To flunk an exam or + course.
A track called Zorch was the B-side of a + single called Captain Hideous, released by novelty + artist Nervous Norvous in 1955. Norvous was heavily influemced by a radio + comedian named Red Blanchard; the word “zorch” appears to have + been coined on Blanchard's show in the early 1950s. The word itself had no + meaning, but there where compounds using it that did — “zorch + cow”, for example, was a variant of the Chicago-area slang + “black cow” for a root beer float.
The canonical unit of currency in hacker-written games. This + originated in Zork but has spread to + nethack and is referred to in several other + games.
Semantically, one rich source of jargon constructions is the hackish +tendency to anthropomorphize hardware and software. English purists and +academic computer scientists frequently look down on others for +anthropomorphizing hardware and software, considering this sort of behavior to +be characteristic of naive misunderstanding. But most hackers anthropomorphize +freely, frequently describing program behavior in terms of wants and +desires.
Thus it is common to hear hardware or software talked about as though it +has homunculi talking to each other inside it, with intentions and desires. +Thus, one hears “The protocol handler got confused”, or that +programs “are trying” to do things, or one may say of a routine +that “its goal in life is to X”. Or: “You can't run those +two cards on the same bus; they fight over interrupt 9.”
One even hears explanations like “... and its poor little +brain couldn't understand X, and it died.” Sometimes modelling things +this way actually seems to make them easier to understand, perhaps because +it's instinctively natural to think of anything with a really complex +behavioral repertoire as ‘like a person’ rather than ‘like a +thing’.
At first glance, to anyone who understands how these programs actually +work, this seems like an absurdity. As hackers are among the people who know +best how these phenomena work, it seems odd that they would use language that +seems to ascribe consciousness to them. The mind-set behind this tendency +thus demands examination.
The key to understanding this kind of usage is that it isn't done in a +naive way; hackers don't personalize their stuff in the sense of feeling +empathy with it, nor do they mystically believe that the things they work on +every day are ‘alive’. To the contrary: hackers who +anthropomorphize are expressing not a vitalistic view of program behavior but +a mechanistic view of human behavior.
Almost all hackers subscribe to the mechanistic, materialistic ontology +of science (this is in practice true even of most of the minority with +contrary religious theories). In this view, people are biological machines +— consciousness is an interesting and valuable epiphenomenon, but mind is +implemented in machinery which is not fundamentally different in +information-processing capacity from computers.
Hackers tend to take this a step further and argue that the difference +between a substrate of CHON atoms and water and a substrate of silicon and +metal is a relatively unimportant one; what matters, what makes a thing +‘alive’, is information and richness of pattern. This is animism +from the flip side; it implies that humans and computers and dolphins and +rocks are all machines exhibiting a continuum of modes of +‘consciousness’ according to their information-processing +capacity.
Because hackers accept that a human machine can have intentions, it is +therefore easy for them to ascribe consciousness and intention to other +complex patterned systems such as computers. If consciousness is mechanical, +it is neither more or less absurd to say that “The program wants to go +into an infinite loop” than it is to say that “I want to go eat +some chocolate” — and even defensible to say that “The +stone, once dropped, wants to move towards the center of the +earth”.
This viewpoint has respectable company in academic philosophy. Daniel +Dennett organizes explanations of behavior using three stances: the +“physical stance” (thing-to-be-explained as a physical object), +the “design stance” (thing-to-be-explained as an artifact), and +the “intentional stance” (thing-to-be-explained as an agent with +desires and intentions). Which stances are appropriate is a matter not of +abstract truth but of utility. Hackers typically view simple programs from +the design stance, but more complex ones are often modelled using the +intentional stance.
It has also been argued that the anthropomorphization of software and +hardware reflects a blurring of the boundary between the programmer and his +artifacts — the human qualities belong to the programmer and the code merely +expresses these qualities as his/her proxy. On this view, a hacker saying a +piece of code ‘got confused’ is really saying that +he (or she) was confused about exactly what he wanted the +computer to do, the code naturally incorporated this confusion, and the code +expressed the programmer's confusion when executed by crashing or otherwise +misbehaving.
Note that by displacing from “I got confused” to “It +got confused”, the programmer is not avoiding responsibility, but +rather getting some analytical distance in order to be able to consider the +bug dispassionately.
It has also been suggested that anthropomorphizing complex systems is +actually an expression of humility, a way of acknowleging that simple rules we +do understand (or that we invented) can lead to emergent behavioral +complexities that we don't completely understand.
All three explanations accurately model hacker psychology, and should be +considered complementary rather than competing.
Intelligent. Scruffy. Intense. Abstracted. Surprisingly for a +sedentary profession, more hackers run to skinny than fat; both extremes are +more common than elsewhere. Tans are rare.
Table of Contents
This appendix contains several legends and fables that illuminate the +meaning of various entries in the lexicon.
Table of Contents
This profile reflects detailed comments on an earlier ‘trial +balloon’ version from about a hundred Usenet respondents. Where +comparatives are used, the implicit ‘other’ is a randomly selected +segment of the non-hacker population of the same size as hackerdom.
An important point: Except in some relatively minor respects such as +slang vocabulary, hackers don't get to be the way they are by imitating each +other. Rather, it seems to be the case that the combination of personality +traits that makes a hacker so conditions one's outlook on life that one tends +to end up being like other hackers whether one wants to or not (much as +bizarrely detailed similarities in behavior and preferences are found in +genetic twins raised separately).
If you have enjoyed the Jargon File, please help the culture that +created it grow and flourish. Here are several ways you can help:
If you are a writer or journalist, don't say or write +hacker when you mean cracker. +If you work with writers or journalists, educate them on this issue and push +them to do the right thing. If you catch a newspaper or magazine abusing the +word ‘hacker’, write them and straighten them out (this appendix +includes a model letter).
If you're a techie or computer hobbyist, get involved with one +of the free Unixes. Toss out that lame Microsoft OS, or confine it to one +disk partition and put Linux or FreeBSD or NetBSD on the other one. And the +next time your friend or boss is thinking about some proprietary software +‘solution’ that costs more than it's worth, be ready to blow the +competition away with open-source software running over a +Unix.
Contribute to organizations like the Free Software Foundation +that promote the production of high-quality free and open-source software. +You can reach the Free Software Foundation at <gnu@gnu.org>, by +phone at +1-617-542-5942, or by snail-mail at 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, +Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA.
Support the League for Programming Freedom, which opposes +over-broad software patents that constantly threaten to blow up in hackers' +faces, preventing them from developing innovative software for tomorrow's +needs. You can reach the League for Programming Freedom at +<lpf@uunet.uu.net>. by phone at +1 617 621 7084, or by +snail-mail at 1 Kendall Square #143, P.O.Box 9171, Cambridge, Massachusetts +02139 USA.
Join the continuing fight against Internet censorship, visit +the Center for Democracy and Technology Home Page at http://www.cdt.org/.
If you do nothing else, please help fight government attempts +to seize political control of Internet content and restrict strong +cryptography. The so-called ‘Communications Decency Act’ was +declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but U.S. cryptography policy +still infringes our First Amendment rights. Surf to the Center for Democracy +and technology's home page at http://www.cdt.org/ to see what you can do +to help fight censorship of the net.
Here's the text of a letter RMS wrote to the Wall Street Journal to +complain about their policy of using “hacker” only in a +pejorative sense. We hear that most major newspapers have the same policy. +If you'd like to help change this situation, send your favorite newspaper the +same letter — or, better yet, write your own letter.
This letter is not meant for publication, although you can publish it if +you wish. It is meant specifically for you, the editor, not the +public.
I am a hacker. That is to say, I enjoy playing with computers — +working with, learning about, and writing clever computer programs. I am not +a cracker; I don't make a practice of breaking computer security.
There's nothing shameful about the hacking I do. But when I tell people +I am a hacker, people think I'm admitting something naughty — because +newspapers such as yours misuse the word “hacker”, giving the +impression that it means “security breaker” and nothing else. +You are giving hackers a bad name.
The saddest thing is that this problem is perpetuated deliberately. +Your reporters know the difference between “hacker” and +“security breaker”. They know how to make the distinction, but +you don't let them! You insist on using “hacker” pejoratively. +When reporters try to use another word, you change it. When reporters try to +explain the other meanings, you cut it.
Of course, you have a reason. You say that readers have become used to +your insulting usage of “hacker”, so that you cannot change it +now. Well, you can't undo past mistakes today; but that is no excuse to +repeat them tomorrow.
If I were what you call a “hacker”, at this point I would +threaten to crack your computer and crash it. But I am a hacker, not a +cracker. I don't do that kind of thing! I have enough computers to play with +at home and at work; I don't need yours. Besides, it's not my way to respond +to insults with violence. My response is this letter.
You owe hackers an apology; but more than that, you owe us ordinary +respect.
Most hackers don't smoke tobacco, and use alcohol in moderation if at +all. However, there has been something of a trend towards exotic beers since +about 1995, especially among younger Linux hackers apparently influenced by +Linus Torvalds's fondness for Guinness.
Limited use of non-addictive psychedelic drugs, such as cannabis, LSD, +psilocybin, nitrous oxide, etc., used to be relatively common and is still +regarded with more tolerance than in the mainstream culture. Use of +‘downers’ and opiates, on the other hand, appears to be +particularly rare; hackers seem in general to dislike drugs that make them +stupid. But on the gripping hand, many hackers +regularly wire up on caffeine and/or sugar for all-night hacking runs.
See the discussions of speech and writing styles near the beginning of +this File. Though hackers often have poor person-to-person communication +skills, they are as a rule quite sensitive to nuances of language and very +precise in their use of it. They are often better at writing than at +speaking.
Finally, note that many words in hacker jargon have to be understood as +members of sets of comparatives. This is especially true of the adjectives +and nouns used to describe the beauty and functional quality of code. Here is +an approximately correct spectrum:
monstrosity brain-damage screw bug lose misfeature crock kluge hack win +feature elegance perfection
The last is spoken of as a mythical absolute, approximated but never +actually attained. Another similar scale is used for describing the +reliability of software:
broken flaky dodgy fragile brittle solid robust bulletproof +armor-plated
Note, however, that ‘dodgy’ is primarily Commonwealth +Hackish (it is rare in the U.S., where ‘squirrelly’ may be more +common) and may change places with ‘flaky’ for some +speakers.
Coinages for describing lossage seem to call +forth the very finest in hackish linguistic inventiveness; it has been truly +said that hackers have even more words for equipment failures than Yiddish has +for obnoxious people.
Table of Contents
There are some standard methods of jargonification that became +established quite early (i.e., before 1970), spreading from such sources as +the Tech Model Railroad Club, the PDP-1 SPACEWAR hackers, and John McCarthy's +original crew of LISPers. These include verb doubling, soundalike slang, the +‘-P’ convention, overgeneralization, spoken inarticulations, and +anthropomorphization. Each is discussed below. We also cover the standard +comparatives for design quality.
Of these six, verb doubling, overgeneralization, anthropomorphization, +and (especially) spoken inarticulations have become quite general; but +soundalike slang is still largely confined to MIT and other large +universities, and the ‘-P’ convention is found only where LISPers +flourish.
Entries are sorted in case-blind ASCII collation order (rather than the +letter-by-letter order ignoring interword spacing common in mainstream +dictionaries), except that all entries beginning with nonalphabetic characters +are sorted before A, except that leading dash is ignored. The case-blindness +is a feature, not a bug.
Prefix ** is used as linguists do; to mark examples of incorrect +usage.
We follow the ‘logical’ quoting convention described in the +Writing Style section above. In addition, we reserve double quotes for actual +excerpts of text or (sometimes invented) speech. Scare quotes (which mark a +word being used in a nonstandard way), and philosopher's quotes (which turn an +utterance into the string of letters or words that name it) are both rendered +with single quotes.
References such as +malloc(3) +and +patch(1) +are to Unix facilities (some of which, such as +patch(1), +are actually open source distributed over Usenet). The Unix manuals use +foo(n) to refer to item foo in section +(n) of the manual, where +n=1 is utilities, +n=2 is system calls, +n=3 is C library routines, +n=6 is games, and +n=8 (where present) is system administration +utilities. Sections 4, 5, and 7 of the manuals have changed roles frequently +and in any case are not referred to in any of the entries.
Various abbreviations used frequently in the lexicon are summarized +here:
Table 11.1. Abbreviations
| abbrev. | abbreviation |
|---|---|
| adj. | adjective |
| adv. | adverb |
| alt. | alternate |
| cav. | caveat |
| conj. | conjunction |
| esp. | especially |
| excl. | exclamation |
| imp. | imperative |
| interj. | interjection |
| n. | noun |
| obs. | obsolete |
| pl. | plural |
| poss. | possibly |
| pref. | prefix |
| prob. | probably |
| prov. | proverbial |
| quant. | quantifier |
| suff. | suffix |
| syn. | synonym (or synonymous with) |
| v. | verb (may be transitive or intransitive) |
| var. | variant |
| vi. | intransitive verb |
| vt. | transitive verb |
Where alternate spellings or pronunciations are given, +alt. separates two possibilities with nearly equal +distribution, while var. prefixes one that is markedly +less common than the primary.
Where a term can be attributed to a particular subculture or is known to +have originated there, we have tried to so indicate. Here is a list of +abbreviations used in etymologies:
Table 11.2. Origins
| Amateur Packet Radio | A technical culture of ham-radio sites using AX.25 and TCP/IP for +wide-area networking and BBS systems. |
| Berkeley | University of California at Berkeley |
| BBN | Bolt, Beranek & Newman |
| Cambridge | the university in England (not the city in Massachusetts where +MIT happens to be located!) |
| CMU | Carnegie-Mellon University |
| Commodore | Commodore Business Machines |
| DEC | The Digital Equipment Corporation (now HP). |
| Fairchild | The Fairchild Instruments Palo Alto development group |
| FidoNet | See the FidoNet entry |
| IBM | International Business Machines |
| MIT | Massachusetts Institute of Technology; esp. the legendary MIT AI Lab +culture of roughly 1971 to 1983 and its feeder groups, including the +Tech Model Railroad Club |
| NRL | Naval Research Laboratories |
| NYU | New York University |
| OED | The Oxford English Dictionary |
| Purdue | Purdue University |
| SAIL | Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory +(at Stanford University) |
| SI | From Système +International, the name for the standard abbreviations +of metric nomenclature used in the sciences |
| Stanford | Stanford University |
| Sun | Sun Microsystems |
| TMRC | Some MITisms go back as far as the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) at +MIT c. 1960. Material marked TMRC is from An Abridged Dictionary +of the TMRC Language, originally compiled by Pete Samson +in 1959 |
| UCLA | University of California, Los Angeles |
| UK | the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern +Ireland) |
| Usenet | See the Usenet entry |
| WPI | Worcester Polytechnic Institute, site of a very active community of +PDP-10 hackers during the 1970s |
| WWW | The World-Wide-Web. |
| XEROX PARC | XEROX's Palo Alto Research Center, site of much pioneering research in +user interface design and networking |
| Yale | Yale University |
Other etymology abbreviations such as Unix and +PDP-10 refer to technical cultures surrounding specific +operating systems, processors, or other environments. The fact that a term is +labelled with any one of these abbreviations does not necessarily mean its use +is confined to that culture. In particular, many terms labelled +‘MIT’ and ‘Stanford’ are in quite general use. We +have tried to give some indication of the distribution of speakers in the +usage notes; however, a number of factors mentioned in the introduction +conspire to make these indications less definite than might be +desirable.
A few new definitions attached to entries are marked [proposed]. These +are usually generalizations suggested by editors or Usenet respondents in the +process of commenting on previous definitions of those entries. These are +not represented as established jargon.
From the early 1980s onward, a flourishing culture of local, +MS-DOS-based bulletin boards developed separately from Internet hackerdom. +The BBS culture has, as its seamy underside, a stratum of ‘pirate +boards’ inhabited by crackers, phone phreaks, and +warez d00dz. These people (mostly teenagers running +IBM-PC clones from their bedrooms) have developed their own characteristic +jargon, heavily influenced by skateboard lingo and underground-rock slang. +While BBS technology essentially died out after the +Great Internet Explosion, the cracker culture +moved to IRC and other Internet-based network channels and maintained a +semi-underground existence.
Though crackers often call themselves ‘hackers’, they aren't +(they typically have neither significant programming ability, nor Internet +expertise, nor experience with UNIX or other true multi-user systems). Their +vocabulary has little overlap with hackerdom's, and hackers regard them with +varying degrees of contempt. But ten years on the brightest crackers tend to +become hackers, and sometimes to recall their origins by using cracker slang +in a marked and heavily ironic way.
This lexicon covers much of cracker slang (which is often called +“leet-speak”) so the reader will be able to understand both what +leaks out of the cracker underground and the occasional ironic use by +hackers.
Here is a brief guide to cracker and warez d00dz +usage:
Misspell frequently. The substitutions phone → fone and +freak → phreak are obligatory.
Always substitute ‘z’s for ‘s’s. +(i.e. “codes” → “codez”). The substitution of +‘z’ for ‘s’ has evolved so that a ‘z’ is +now systematically put at the end of words to denote an illegal or cracking +connection. Examples : Appz, passwordz, passez, utilz, MP3z, distroz, pornz, +sitez, gamez, crackz, serialz, downloadz, FTPz, etc.
Type random emphasis characters after a post line +(i.e. “Hey Dudes!#!$#$!#!$”).
Use the emphatic ‘k’ prefix +(“k-kool”, “k-rad”, “k-awesome”) +frequently.
Abbreviate compulsively (“I got lotsa warez w/ +docs”).
+TYPE ALL IN CAPS LOCK, SO IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE YELLING ALL THE TIME. +
The following letter substitutions are common:
+ a → 4
+ e → 3
+ f → ph
+ i → 1 or |
+ l → | or 1
+ m → |\/|
+ n → |\|
+ o → 0
+ s → 5
+ t → 7 or +
+
Thus, “elite” comes out “31337” and “all +your base are belong to us” becomes “4ll y0ur b4s3 4r3 b3l0ng t0 +us”, Other less common substitutions include:
+ b → 8
+ c → ( or k or |< or /<
+ d → <|
+ g → 6 or 9
+ h → |-|
+ k → |< or /<
+ p → |2
+ u → |_|
+ v → / or \/
+ w → // or \/\/
+ x → ><
+ y → '/
+
The word “cool” is spelled “kewl” and normally +used ironically; when crackers really want to praise something they use the +prefix “uber” (from German) which comes out “ub3r” +or even “|_|83r”
These traits are similar to those of B1FF, who +originated as a parody of naive BBS users; also of his +latter-day equivalent Jeff K.. Occasionally, this sort +of distortion may be used as heavy sarcasm or ironically by a real hacker, as +in:
+ > I got X Windows running under Linux! + + d00d! u R an 31337 hax0r + |
The words “hax0r” for “hacker” and +“sux0r” for “sucks” are the most common references; +more generally, to mark a term as cracker-speak one may add “0r” +or “xor”. Examples:
+ “The nightly build is sux0r today.”
+ “Gotta go reboot those b0x0rz.”
+ “Man, I really ought to fix0r my .fetchmailrc.”
+ “Yeah, well he's a 'leet VMS operat0r now, so he's too good for us.”
+
The only practice resembling this in native hacker usage is the +substitution of a dollar sign of ‘s’ in names of products or +service felt to be excessively expensive, e.g. Compu$erve, Micro$oft.
For further discussion of the pirate-board subculture, see +lamer, elite, +leech, poser, +cracker, and especially +warez d00dz, banner site, +ratio site, leech mode.
Hackerdom is still predominantly male. However, the percentage of women +is clearly higher than the low-single-digit range typical for technical +professions, and female hackers are generally respected and dealt with as +equals.
In the U.S., hackerdom is predominantly Caucasian with strong minorities +of Jews (East Coast) and Orientals (West Coast). The Jewish contingent has +exerted a particularly pervasive cultural influence (see Food, above, and note that several common jargon terms +are obviously mutated Yiddish).
The ethnic distribution of hackers is understood by them to be a +function of which ethnic groups tend to seek and value education. Racial and +ethnic prejudice is notably uncommon and tends to be met with freezing +contempt.
When asked, hackers often ascribe their culture's gender- and +color-blindness to a positive effect of text-only network channels, and this +is doubtless a powerful influence. Also, the ties many hackers have to AI +research and SF literature may have helped them to develop an idea of +personhood that is inclusive rather than exclusive — after all, if one's +imagination readily grants full human rights to future AI programs, robots, +dolphins, and extraterrestrial aliens, mere color and gender can't seem very +important any more.
Linguists usually refer to informal language as ‘slang’ and +reserve the term ‘jargon’ for the technical vocabularies of +various occupations. However, the ancestor of this collection was called the +‘Jargon File’, and hacker slang is traditionally ‘the +jargon’. When talking about the jargon there is therefore no convenient +way to distinguish it from what a linguist would call +hackers' jargon — the formal vocabulary they learn from textbooks, +technical papers, and manuals.
To make a confused situation worse, the line between hacker slang and +the vocabulary of technical programming and computer science is fuzzy, and +shifts over time. Further, this vocabulary is shared with a wider technical +culture of programmers, many of whom are not hackers and do not speak or +recognize hackish slang.
Accordingly, this lexicon will try to be as precise as the facts of +usage permit about the distinctions among three categories:
informal language from mainstream English or non-technical +subcultures (bikers, rock fans, surfers, etc).
without qualifier, denotes informal ‘slangy’ language +peculiar to or predominantly found among hackers — the subject of +this lexicon.
the formal technical vocabulary of programming, computer +science, electronics, and other fields connected to hacking.
This terminology will be consistently used throughout the remainder of +this lexicon.
The jargon/techspeak distinction is the delicate one. A lot of +techspeak originated as jargon, and there is a steady continuing uptake of +jargon into techspeak. On the other hand, a lot of jargon arises from +overgeneralization of techspeak terms (there is more about this in the Jargon Construction section below).
In general, we have considered techspeak any term that communicate +primarily by a denotation well established in textbooks, technical +dictionaries, or standards documents.
A few obviously techspeak terms (names of operating systems, languages, +or documents) are listed when they are tied to hacker folklore that isn't +covered in formal sources, or sometimes to convey critical historical +background necessary to understand other entries to which they are +cross-referenced. Some other techspeak senses of jargon words are listed in +order to make the jargon senses clear; where the text does not specify that a +straight technical sense is under discussion, these are marked with +‘[techspeak]’ as an etymology. Some entries have a primary sense +marked this way, with subsequent jargon meanings explained in terms of it. +
We have also tried to indicate (where known) the apparent origins of +terms. The results are probably the least reliable information in the +lexicon, for several reasons. For one thing, it is well known that many +hackish usages have been independently reinvented multiple times, even among +the more obscure and intricate neologisms. It often seems that the generative +processes underlying hackish jargon formation have an internal logic so +powerful as to create substantial parallelism across separate cultures and +even in different languages! For another, the networks tend to propagate +innovations so quickly that ‘first use’ is often impossible to pin +down. And, finally, compendia like this one alter what they observe by +implicitly stamping cultural approval on terms and widening their use.
Despite these problems, the organized collection of jargon-related oral +history for the new compilations has enabled us to put to rest quite a number +of folk etymologies, place credit where credit is due, and illuminate the +early history of many important hackerisms such as +kluge, cruft, and +foo. We believe specialist lexicographers will find +many of the historical notes more than casually instructive.
Casual, vaguely post-hippie; T-shirts, jeans, running shoes, +Birk-enstocks (or bare feet). Long hair, beards, and moustaches are common. +High incidence of tie-dye and intellectual or humorous ‘slogan’ +T-shirts. Until the mid-1990s such T-shirts were seldom computer-related, as +that would have been too obvious — but the hacker culture has since developed +its own icons, and J. Random Hacker now often wears a Linux penguin or BSD +daemon or a DeCSS protest shirt.
A substantial minority prefers ‘outdoorsy’ clothing — +hiking boots (“in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the +machine room”, as one famous parody put it), khakis, lumberjack or +chamois shirts, and the like.
After about 1995 hacker dress styles assimilated some influence from +punk, gothic, and rave subcultures. This was relatively mild and has +manifested mostly as a tendency to wear a lot of black, especially when +‘dressed up’ to the limit of formality. Other markers of those +subcultures such as piercings, chains, and dyed hair remain relatively +uncommon. Hackers appear to wear black more because it goes with everything +and hides dirt than because they want to look like goths.
Very few hackers actually fit the National +Lampoon Nerd stereotype, though it lingers on at MIT and may have +been more common before 1975. At least since the late Seventies backpacks +have been more common than briefcases, and the hacker ‘look’ has +been more whole-earth than whole-polyester.
Hackers dress for comfort, function, and minimal maintenance hassles +rather than for appearance (some, perhaps unfortunately, take this to extremes +and neglect personal hygiene). They have a very low tolerance of suits and +other ‘business’ attire; in fact, it is not uncommon for hackers +to quit a job rather than conform to a dress code. When they are somehow +backed into conforming to a dress code, they will find ways to subvert it, for +example by wearing absurd novelty ties.
Female hackers almost never wear visible makeup, and many use none at +all.
Nearly all hackers past their teens are either college-degreed or +self-educated to an equivalent level. The self-taught hacker is often +considered (at least by other hackers) to be better-motivated, and may be more +respected, than his school-shaped counterpart. Academic areas from which +people often gravitate into hackerdom include (besides the obvious computer +science and electrical engineering) physics, mathematics, linguistics, and +philosophy.
One area where conventions for on-line writing are still in some flux is +the marking of included material from earlier messages — what would be +called ‘block quotations’ in ordinary English. From the usual +typographic convention employed for these (smaller font at an extra indent), +there derived a practice of included text being indented by one ASCII TAB +(0001001) character, which under Unix and many other environments gives the +appearance of an 8-space indent.
Early mail and netnews readers had no facility for including messages +this way, so people had to paste in copy manually. BSD +Mail(1) was the first message agent to support inclusion, +and early Usenetters emulated its style. But the TAB character tended to push +included text too far to the right (especially in multiply nested inclusions), +leading to ugly wraparounds. After a brief period of confusion (during which +an inclusion leader consisting of three or four spaces became established in +EMACS and a few mailers), the use of leading > or +> became standard, perhaps owing to its use in +ed(1) to display tabs (alternatively, it may derive from +the > that some early Unix mailers used to quote lines +starting with "From" in text, so they wouldn't look like the beginnings of new +message headers). Inclusions within inclusions keep their +> leaders, so the ‘nesting level' of a quotation +is visually apparent.
The practice of including text from the parent article when posting a +followup helped solve what had been a major nuisance on Usenet: the fact that +articles do not arrive at different sites in the same order. Careless posters +used to post articles that would begin with, or even consist entirely of, +“No, that's wrong” or “I agree” or the like. It was +hard to see who was responding to what. Consequently, around 1984, new +news-posting software evolved a facility to automatically include the text of +a previous article, marked with “> ” or whatever the poster +chose. The poster was expected to delete all but the relevant lines. The +result has been that, now, careless posters post articles containing the +entire text of a preceding article, +followed only by “No, that's wrong” or +“I agree”.
Many people feel that this cure is worse than the original disease, and +there soon appeared newsreader software designed to let the reader skip over +included text if desired. Today, some posting software rejects articles +containing too high a proportion of lines beginning with ‘>' — +but this too has led to undesirable workarounds, such as the deliberate +inclusion of zero-content filler lines which aren't quoted and thus pull the +message below the rejection threshold.
Inclusion practice is still evolving, and disputes over the +‘correct’ inclusion style occasionally lead to +holy wars.
Most netters view an inclusion as a promise that comment on it will +immediately follow. The preferred, conversational style looks like +this,
+ > relevant excerpt 1
+ response to excerpt
+ > relevant excerpt 2
+ response to excerpt
+ > relevant excerpt 3
+ response to excerpt
+
or for short messages like this:
+ > entire message
+ response to message
+
Thanks to poor design of some PC-based mail agents (notably Microsoft +Outlook and Outlook Express), one will occasionally see the entire quoted +message after the response, like this
+ response to message
+ > entire message
+
but this practice is strongly deprecated.
Though > remains the standard inclusion leader, +| is occasionally used for extended quotations where +original variations in indentation are being retained (one mailer even +combines these and uses |>). One also sees different +styles of quoting a number of authors in the same message: one (deprecated +because it loses information) uses a leader of > for +everyone, another (the most common) is > > > > +, > > > , etc. (or +>>>> , >>>, etc., +depending on line length and nesting depth) reflecting the original order of +messages, and yet another is to use a different citation leader for each +author, say > , : , | +, @ (preserving nesting so that the inclusion +order of messages is still apparent, or tagging the inclusions with authors' +names). Yet another style is to use each poster's +initials (or login name) as a citation leader for that poster.
Occasionally one sees a # leader used for quotations +from authoritative sources such as standards documents; the intended allusion +is to the root prompt (the special Unix command prompt issued when one is +running as the privileged super-user).
Ethnic. Spicy. Oriental, esp. Chinese and most esp. Szechuan, Hunan, +and Mandarin (hackers consider Cantonese vaguely +déclassé). Hackers prefer the +exotic; for example, the Japanese-food fans among them will eat with gusto +such delicacies as fugu (poisonous pufferfish) and whale. Thai food has +experienced flurries of popularity. Where available, high-quality Jewish +delicatessen food is much esteemed. A visible minority of Southwestern and +Pacific Coast hackers prefers Mexican.
For those all-night hacks, pizza and microwaved burritos are big. +Interestingly, though the mainstream culture has tended to think of hackers as +incorrigible junk-food junkies, many have at least mildly health-foodist +attitudes and are fairly discriminating about what they eat. This may be +generational; anecdotal evidence suggests that the stereotype was more on the +mark before the early 1980s.
In the United States, hackerdom revolves on a Bay Area-to-Boston axis; +about half of the hard core seems to live within a hundred miles of Cambridge +(Massachusetts) or Berkeley (California), although there are significant +contingents in Los Angeles, in the Pacific Northwest, and around Washington +DC. Hackers tend to cluster around large cities, especially ‘university +towns’ such as the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina or Princeton, +New Jersey (this may simply reflect the fact that many are students or +ex-students living near their alma maters).
All the works of Microsoft. Smurfs, Ewoks, and other forms of offensive +cuteness. Bureaucracies. Stupid people. Easy listening music. Television +(with occasional exceptions for cartoons, movies, and good SF like +Star Trek classic or Babylon 5). Business suits. +Dishonesty. Incompetence. Boredom. COBOL. BASIC. Character-based menu +interfaces.
Words such as ‘mumble’, ‘sigh’, and +‘groan’ are spoken in places where their referent might more +naturally be used. It has been suggested that this usage derives from the +impossibility of representing such noises on a comm link or in electronic +mail, MUDs, and IRC channels (interestingly, the same sorts of constructions +have been showing up with increasing frequency in comic strips). Another +expression sometimes heard is “Complain!”, meaning “I have +a complaint!”
Table of Contents
Although the Jargon File remains primarily a lexicon of hacker usage in +American English, we have made some effort to get input from abroad. Though +the hacker-speak of other languages often uses translations of jargon from +English (often as transmitted to them by earlier Jargon File versions!), the +local variations are interesting, and knowledge of them may be of some use to +travelling hackers.
There are some references herein to ‘Commonwealth hackish’. +These are intended to describe some variations in hacker usage as reported in +the English spoken in Great Britain and the Commonwealth (Canada, Australia, +India, etc. — though Canada is heavily influenced by American usage). +There is also an entry on Commonwealth Hackish +reporting some general phonetic and vocabulary differences from +U.S. hackish.
Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia report that they +often use a mixture of English and their native languages for technical +conversation. Occasionally they develop idioms in their English usage that +are influenced by their native-language styles. Some of these are reported +here.
On the other hand, English often gives rise to grammatical and +vocabulary mutations in the native language. For example, Italian hackers +often use the nonexistent verbs ‘scrollare’ (to scroll) and +‘deletare’ (to delete) rather than native Italian +scorrere and +cancellare. Similarly, the English verb +‘to hack’ has been seen conjugated in Swedish. In German, many +Unix terms in English are casually declined as if they were German verbs -- +thus: mount/mounten/gemountet; grep/grepen/gegrept; fork/forken/geforkt; core +dump/core-dumpen, gecoredumpt. And Spanish-speaking hackers use +‘linkear’ (to link), ‘debugear’ (to debug), and +‘lockear’ (to lock).
European hackers report that this happens partly because the English +terms make finer distinctions than are available in their native vocabularies, +and partly because deliberate language-crossing makes for amusing +wordplay.
A few notes on hackish usages in Russian have been added where they are +parallel with English idioms and thus comprehensible to +English-speakers.
This document is a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures +of computer hackers. Though some technical material is included for +background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary; what we describe here +is the language hackers use among themselves for fun, social communication, +and technical debate.
The ‘hacker culture’ is actually a loosely networked +collection of subcultures that is nevertheless conscious of some important +shared experiences, shared roots, and shared values. It has its own myths, +heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. Because hackers +as a group are particularly creative people who define themselves partly by +rejection of ‘normal’ values and working habits, it has unusually +rich and conscious traditions for an intentional culture less than 50 years +old.
As usual with slang, the special vocabulary of hackers helps hold places +in the community and expresses shared values and experiences. Also as usual, +not knowing the slang (or using it inappropriately) +defines one as an outsider, a mundane, or (worst of all in hackish vocabulary) +possibly even a suit. All human cultures use slang in +this threefold way — as a tool of communication, and of inclusion, and +of exclusion.
Among hackers, though, slang has a subtler aspect, paralleled perhaps in +the slang of jazz musicians and some kinds of fine artists but hard to detect +in most technical or scientific cultures; parts of it are code for shared +states of consciousness. There is a whole range of +altered states and problem-solving mental stances basic to high-level hacking +which don't fit into conventional linguistic reality any better than a +Coltrane solo or one of Maurits Escher's surreal trompe +l'oeil compositions (Escher is a favorite of hackers), and +hacker slang encodes these subtleties in many unobvious ways. As a simple +example, take the distinction between a kluge and an +elegant solution, and the differing connotations +attached to each. The distinction is not only of engineering significance; it +reaches right back into the nature of the generative processes in program +design and asserts something important about two different kinds of +relationship between the hacker and the hack. Hacker slang is unusually rich +in implications of this kind, of overtones and undertones that illuminate the +hackish psyche.
Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are very conscious and inventive +in their use of language. These traits seem to be common in young children, +but the conformity-enforcing machine we are pleased to call an educational +system bludgeons them out of most of us before adolescence. Thus, linguistic +invention in most subcultures of the modern West is a halting and largely +unconscious process. Hackers, by contrast, regard slang formation and use as +a game to be played for conscious pleasure. Their inventions thus display an +almost unique combination of the neotenous enjoyment of language-play with the +discrimination of educated and powerful intelligence. Further, the electronic +media which knit them together are fluid, ‘hot’ connections, well +adapted to both the dissemination of new slang and the ruthless culling of +weak and superannuated specimens. The results of this process give us perhaps +a uniquely intense and accelerated view of linguistic evolution in action. +
Hacker slang also challenges some common linguistic and anthropological +assumptions. For example, in the early 1990s it became fashionable to speak +of ‘low-context’ versus ‘high-context’ communication, +and to classify cultures by the preferred context level of their languages and +art forms. It is usually claimed that low-context communication +(characterized by precision, clarity, and completeness of self-contained +utterances) is typical in cultures which value logic, objectivity, +individualism, and competition; by contrast, high-context communication +(elliptical, emotive, nuance-filled, multi-modal, heavily coded) is associated +with cultures which value subjectivity, consensus, cooperation, and tradition. +What then are we to make of hackerdom, which is themed around extremely +low-context interaction with computers and exhibits primarily +“low-context” values, but cultivates an almost absurdly +high-context slang style?
The intensity and consciousness of hackish invention make a compilation +of hacker slang a particularly effective window into the surrounding culture +— and, in fact, this one is the latest version of an evolving +compilation called the ‘Jargon File’, maintained by hackers +themselves since the early 1970s. This one (like its ancestors) is primarily +a lexicon, but also includes topic entries which collect background or +sidelight information on hacker culture that would be awkward to try to +subsume under individual slang definitions.
Though the format is that of a reference volume, it is intended that the +material be enjoyable to browse. Even a complete outsider should find at +least a chuckle on nearly every page, and much that is amusingly +thought-provoking. But it is also true that hackers use humorous wordplay to +make strong, sometimes combative statements about what they feel. Some of +these entries reflect the views of opposing sides in disputes that have been +genuinely passionate; this is deliberate. We have not tried to moderate or +pretty up these disputes; rather we have attempted to ensure that +everyone's sacred cows get gored, impartially. +Compromise is not particularly a hackish virtue, but the honest presentation +of divergent viewpoints is.
The reader with minimal computer background who finds some references +incomprehensibly technical can safely ignore them. We have not felt it either +necessary or desirable to eliminate all such; they, too, contribute flavor, +and one of this document's major intended audiences — fledgling hackers +already partway inside the culture — will benefit from them.
A selection of longer items of hacker folklore and humor is included in +Appendix A. The ‘outside’ +reader's attention is particularly directed to the Portrait of J. Random +Hacker in Appendix B. The Bibliography, lists some non-technical works +which have either influenced or described the hacker culture.
Because hackerdom is an intentional culture (one each individual must +choose by action to join), one should not be surprised that the line between +description and influence can become more than a little blurred. Earlier +versions of the Jargon File have played a central role in spreading hacker +language and the culture that goes with it to successively larger populations, +and we hope and expect that this one will do likewise.
These are some of the funniest examples of a genre of jokes told at the +MIT AI Lab about various noted hackers. The original koans were composed by +Danny Hillis, who would later found Connection Machines, Inc. In reading +these, it is at least useful to know that Minsky, Sussman, and Drescher are AI +researchers of note, that Tom Knight was one of the Lisp machine's principal +designers, and that David Moon wrote much of Lisp Machine Lisp.
A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power +off and on.
Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: “You +cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is +going wrong.”
Knight turned the machine off and on.
The machine worked.
One day a student came to Moon and said: “I understand how to make +a better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count of the pointers to +each cons.”
Moon patiently told the student the following story:
“One day a student came to Moon and said: ‘I understand how +to make a better garbage collector...
[Ed. note: Pure reference-count garbage collectors have problems with +circular structures that point to themselves.]
In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat +hacking at the PDP-6.
“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky.
“I am training a randomly wired neural net to play +Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied.
“Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky.
“I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to +play”, Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes.
“Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his +teacher.
“So that the room will be empty.”
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his +morning meal.
“I would like to give you this personality test”, said the +outsider, “because I want you to be happy.”
Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the +toaster, saying: “I wish the toaster to be happy, too.”
The Jargon File
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The Jargon File
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diff --git a/original/html/lexicon.html b/original/html/lexicon.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..01e3f8c --- /dev/null +++ b/original/html/lexicon.html @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ + +The infamous Crunchly cartoons by The Great Quux are woven into the +lexicon, each next to an appropriate entry. To read them in the sequence in +which they were written, chase pointers from here using +the ‘next cartoon’ information in the captions. A few don't have +next pointers; these are vignettes from the 1973 +Crunchland tableau spread that inaugurated the +strip.
Here is a framed version of +the glossary.
Table of Contents
Some years ago, I (GLS) was snooping around in the cabinets that housed +the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one +cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware +hackers (no one knows who).
You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it +does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labeled in a most +unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal +switch body were the words ‘magic' and ‘more magic'. The switch +was in the ‘more magic' position.
I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the +switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only +one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze +of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a +switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This +switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side.
It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. +Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. +The computer instantly crashed.
Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but +nevertheless restored the switch to the ‘more magic’ position +before reviving the computer.
A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as I +recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural +belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I was fooling him with +a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him the very switch, still glued +to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it, still in the +‘more magic’ position. We scrutinized the switch and its lone +connection, and found that the other end of the wire, though connected to the +computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That clearly made the switch +doubly useless: not only was it electrically nonoperative, but it was +connected to a place that couldn't affect anything anyway. So we flipped the +switch.
The computer promptly crashed.
This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who was +close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He inspected +it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and +diked it out. We then revived the computer and it has +run fine ever since.
We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There is a +theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the +switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as +millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for sure; +all we can really say is that the switch was +magic.
I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I usually +keep it set on ‘more magic’.
1994: Another explanation of this story has since been offered. Note +that the switch body was metal. Suppose that the non-connected side of the +switch was connected to the switch body (usually the body is connected to a +separate earth lug, but there are exceptions). The body is connected to the +computer case, which is, presumably, grounded. Now the circuit ground within +the machine isn't necessarily at the same potential as the case ground, so +flipping the switch connected the circuit ground to the case ground, causing a +voltage drop/jump which reset the machine. This was probably discovered by +someone who found out the hard way that there was a potential difference +between the two, and who then wired in the switch as a joke.
“The word hack doesn't really have 69 +different meanings”, according to MIT hacker Phil Agre. “In +fact, hack has only one meaning, an extremely subtle +and profound one which defies articulation. Which connotation is implied by a +given use of the word depends in similarly profound ways on the context. +Similar remarks apply to a couple of other hacker words, most notably +random.”
Hacking might be characterized as ‘an appropriate application of +ingenuity’. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a +carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went +into it.
An important secondary meaning of hack is +‘a creative practical joke’. This kind of hack is easier to +explain to non-hackers than the programming kind. Of course, some hacks have +both natures; see the lexicon entries for pseudo and +kgbvax. But here are some examples of pure practical +jokes that illustrate the hacking spirit:
In 1961, students from Caltech (California Institute of Technology, in +Pasadena) hacked the Rose Bowl football game. One student posed as a reporter +and ‘interviewed’ the director of the University of Washington +card stunts (such stunts involve people in the stands who hold up colored +cards to make pictures). The reporter learned exactly how the stunts were +operated, and also that the director would be out to dinner later.
While the director was eating, the students (who called themselves the +‘Fiendish Fourteen’) picked a lock and stole a blank direction +sheet for the card stunts. They then had a printer run off 2300 copies of the +blank. The next day they picked the lock again and stole the master plans for +the stunts — large sheets of graph paper colored in with the stunt +pictures. Using these as a guide, they made new instructions for three of the +stunts on the duplicated blanks. Finally, they broke in once more, replacing +the stolen master plans and substituting the stack of diddled instruction +sheets for the original set.
The result was that three of the pictures were totally different. +Instead of ‘WASHINGTON’, the word ‘CALTECH’ was +flashed. Another stunt showed the word ‘HUSKIES’, the Washington +nickname, but spelled it backwards. And what was supposed to have been a +picture of a husky instead showed a beaver. (Both Caltech and MIT use the +beaver — nature's engineer — as a mascot.)
After the game, the Washington faculty athletic representative said: +“Some thought it ingenious; others were indignant.” The +Washington student body president remarked: “No hard feelings, but at +the time it was unbelievable. We were amazed.”
This is now considered a classic hack, particularly because revising the +direction sheets constituted a form of programming.
Here is another classic hack:
On November 20, 1982, MIT hacked the Harvard-Yale football game. Just +after Harvard's second touchdown against Yale, in the first quarter, a small +black ball popped up out of the ground at the 40-yard line, and grew bigger, +and bigger, and bigger. The letters ‘MIT’ appeared all over the +ball. As the players and officials stood around gawking, the ball grew to six +feet in diameter and then burst with a bang and a cloud of white +smoke.
The Boston Globe later reported: “If you +want to know the truth, MIT won The Game.”
The prank had taken weeks of careful planning by members of MIT's Delta +Kappa Epsilon fraternity. The device consisted of a weather balloon, a +hydraulic ram powered by Freon gas to lift it out of the ground, and a +vacuum-cleaner motor to inflate it. They made eight separate expeditions to +Harvard Stadium between 1 and 5 AM, locating an unused 110-volt circuit in the +stadium and running buried wires from the stadium circuit to the 40-yard line, +where they buried the balloon device. When the time came to activate the +device, two fraternity members had merely to flip a circuit breaker and push a +plug into an outlet.
This stunt had all the earmarks of a perfect hack: surprise, publicity, +the ingenious use of technology, safety, and harmlessness. The use of manual +control allowed the prank to be timed so as not to disrupt the game (it was +set off between plays, so the outcome of the game would not be unduly +affected). The perpetrators had even thoughtfully attached a note to the +balloon explaining that the device was not dangerous and contained no +explosives.
Harvard president Derek Bok commented: “They have an awful lot of +clever people down there at MIT, and they did it again.” President Paul +E. Gray of MIT said: “There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that I +had anything to do with it, but I wish there were.”
The hacks above are verifiable history; they can be proved to have +happened. Many other classic-hack stories from MIT and elsewhere, though +retold as history, have the characteristics of what Jan Brunvand has called +‘urban folklore’ (see FOAF). Perhaps the +best known of these is the legend of the infamous trolley-car hack, an alleged +incident in which engineering students are said to have welded a trolley car +to its tracks with thermite. Numerous versions of this have been recorded +from the 1940s to the present, most set at MIT but at least one very detailed +version set at CMU.
Brian Leibowitz has researched MIT hacks both real and mythical +extensively; the interested reader is referred to his delightful pictorial +compendium The Journal of the Institute for Hacks, Tomfoolery, and +Pranks (MIT Museum, 1990; ISBN 0-917027-03-5). The Institute has +a World Wide Web page at http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/Gallery.html. There +is a sequel entitled Is This The Way To Baker House?. +The Caltech Alumni Association has published two similar books titled +Legends of Caltech and More Legends of +Caltech.
Here is a story about one of the classic computer hacks:
Back in the mid-1970s, several of the system support staff at Motorola +discovered a relatively simple way to crack system security on the Xerox CP-V +timesharing system. Through a simple programming strategy, it was possible +for a user program to trick the system into running a portion of the program +in ‘master mode’ (supervisor state), in which memory protection +does not apply. The program could then poke a large value into its +‘privilege level’ byte (normally write-protected) and could then +proceed to bypass all levels of security within the file-management system, +patch the system monitor, and do numerous other interesting things. In short, +the barn door was wide open.
Motorola quite properly reported this problem to Xerox via an official +‘level 1 SIDR’ (a bug report with an intended urgency of +‘needs to be fixed yesterday’). Because the text of each SIDR was +entered into a database that could be viewed by quite a number of people, +Motorola followed the approved procedure: they simply reported the problem as +‘Security SIDR’, and attached all of the necessary documentation, +ways-to-reproduce, etc.
The CP-V people at Xerox sat on their thumbs; they either didn't realize +the severity of the problem, or didn't assign the necessary +operating-system-staff resources to develop and distribute an official +patch.
Months passed. The Motorola guys pestered their Xerox field-support +rep, to no avail. Finally they decided to take direct action, to demonstrate +to Xerox management just how easily the system could be cracked and just how +thoroughly the security safeguards could be subverted.
They dug around in the operating-system listings and devised a +thoroughly devilish set of patches. These patches were then incorporated into +a pair of programs called ‘Robin Hood’ and ‘Friar +Tuck’. Robin Hood and Friar Tuck were designed to run as ‘ghost +jobs’ (daemons, in Unix terminology); they would use the existing +loophole to subvert system security, install the necessary patches, and then +keep an eye on one another's statuses in order to keep the system operator (in +effect, the superuser) from aborting them.
One fine day, the system operator on the main CP-V software development +system in El Segundo was surprised by a number of unusual phenomena. These +included the following:
Tape drives would rewind and dismount their tapes in the middle of a +job.
Disk drives would seek back and forth so rapidly that they would attempt +to walk across the floor (see walking drives).
The card-punch output device would occasionally start up of itself and +punch a ‘lace card’ (card with all positions punched). These +would usually jam in the punch.
The console would print snide and insulting messages from Robin Hood +to Friar Tuck, or vice versa.
The Xerox card reader had two output stackers; it could be instructed +to stack into A, stack into B, or stack into A (unless a card was +unreadable, in which case the bad card was placed into stacker B). One +of the patches installed by the ghosts added some code to the +card-reader driver... after reading a card, it would flip over to +the opposite stacker. As a result, card decks would divide themselves +in half when they were read, leaving the operator to recollate them +manually.
Naturally, the operator called in the operating-system developers. They +found the bandit ghost jobs running, and killed them... and were once +again surprised. When Robin Hood was gunned, the following sequence of events +took place:
Each ghost-job would detect the fact that the other had been killed, and +would start a new copy of the recently slain program within a few +milliseconds. The only way to kill both ghosts was to kill them +simultaneously (very difficult) or to deliberately crash the system.
Finally, the system programmers did the latter — only to find that +the bandits appeared once again when the system rebooted! It turned out that +these two programs had patched the boot-time OS image (the kernel file, in +Unix terms) and had added themselves to the list of programs that were to be +started at boot time (this is similar to the way Windows viruses +propagate).
The Robin Hood and Friar Tuck ghosts were finally eradicated when the +system staff rebooted the system from a clean boot-tape and reinstalled the +monitor. Not long thereafter, Xerox released a patch for this problem.
It is alleged that Xerox filed a complaint with Motorola's management +about the merry-prankster actions of the two employees in question. It is not +recorded that any serious disciplinary action was taken against either of +them.
Finally, here is a wonderful hack story for the new millennium:
1990's addition to the hallowed tradition of April Fool RFCs was RFC +1149, A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian +Carriers. This sketched a method for transmitting IP packets via +carrier pigeons.
Eleven years later, on 28 April 2001, the Bergen Linux User's Group +successfully demonstrated CPIP (Carrier Pigeon IP) between two Linux machines +running on opposite sides of a small mountain in Bergen, Norway. Their +network stack used printers to hex-dump packets onto paper, pigeons to +transport the paper, and OCR software to read the dumps at the other end and +feed them to the receiving machine's network layer.
Here is the actual log of the ping command they successfully executed. +Note the exceptional packet times.
+Script started on Sat Apr 28 11:24:09 2001 +vegard@gyversalen:~$ /sbin/ifconfig tun0 +tun0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol + inet addr:10.0.3.2 P-t-P:10.0.3.1 Mask:255.255.255.255 + UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:150 Metric:1 + RX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 + TX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 + collisions:0 + RX bytes:88 (88.0 b) TX bytes:168 (168.0 b) + +vegard@gyversalen:~$ ping -i 450 10.0.3.1 +PING 10.0.3.1 (10.0.3.1): 56 data bytes +64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=6165731.1 ms +64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=3211900.8 ms +64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=5124922.8 ms +64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=6388671.9 ms + +— 10.0.3.1 ping statistics — +9 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 55% packet loss +round-trip min/avg/max = 3211900.8/5222806.6/6388671.9 ms +vegard@gyversalen:~$ exit + +Script done on Sat Apr 28 14:14:28 2001 + |
A web page documenting the event, with pictures, is at http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/. In +the finest Internet tradition, all software involved was open-source; the +custom parts are available for download from the site.
While all acknowledged the magnitude of this achievement, some debate +ensued over whether BLUG's implementation was properly conformant to the RFC. +It seems they had not used the duct tape specified in 1149 to attach messages +to pigeon legs, but instead employed other methods less objectionable to the +pigeons. The debate was properly resolved when it was pointed out that the +duct-tape specification was not prefixed by a MUST, and was thus a +recommendation rather than a requirement.
The perpetrators finished their preliminary writeup in this wise: +“Now, we're waiting for someone to write other implementations, so that +we can do interoperability tests, and maybe we finally can get the RFC into +the standards track... ”.
The logical next step should be an implementation of RFC2549.
Hackers are more likely to have cats than dogs (in fact, it is widely +grokked that cats have the hacker nature). Many drive incredibly decrepit +heaps and forget to wash them; richer ones drive spiffy Porsches and RX-7s and +then forget to have them washed. Almost all hackers have terribly bad +handwriting, and often fall into the habit of block-printing everything like +junior draftsmen.
This is the Jargon File, a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang +illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor.
This document (the Jargon File) is in the public domain, to be freely +used, shared, and modified. There are (by intention) no legal restraints on +what you can do with it, but there are traditions about its proper use to +which many hackers are quite strongly attached. Please extend the courtesy of +proper citation when you quote the File, ideally with a version number, as it +will change and grow over time. (Examples of appropriate citation form: +“Jargon File 4.4.7” or “The on-line hacker Jargon File, +version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003”.)
The Jargon File is a common heritage of the hacker culture. Over the +years a number of individuals have volunteered considerable time to +maintaining the File and been recognized by the net at large as editors of it. +Editorial responsibilities include: to collate contributions and suggestions +from others; to seek out corroborating information; to cross-reference related +entries; to keep the file in a consistent format; and to announce and +distribute updated versions periodically. Current volunteer editors +include:
Eric Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>
Although there is no requirement that you do so, it is considered good +form to check with an editor before quoting the File in a published work or +commercial product. We may have additional information that would be helpful +to you and can assist you in framing your quote to reflect not only the letter +of the File but its spirit as well.
All contributions and suggestions about this file sent to a volunteer +editor are gratefully received and will be regarded, unless otherwise +labelled, as freely given donations for possible use as part of this +public-domain file.
From time to time a snapshot of this file has been polished, edited, and +formatted for commercial publication with the cooperation of the volunteer +editors and the hacker community at large. If you wish to have a bound paper +copy of this file, you may find it convenient to purchase one of these. They +often contain additional material not found in on-line versions. The three +‘authorized’ editions so far are described in the Revision History +section; there may be more in the future.
The Jargon File's online rendition uses an unusually large number of +special characters. This test page lists them so you can check what your +browser does with each one.
| glyph | description |
| α | greek character alpha |
| κ | greek character kappa |
| λ | greek character lambda |
| Λ | greek character Lambda |
| ν | greek character nu |
| ο | greek character omicron |
| π | greek character pi |
| £ | pound sterling |
| 〈 | left angle bracket |
| 〉 | right angle bracket |
| æ | ae ligature |
| ß | German sharp-s sign |
| ∼ | similarity sign |
| ⊕ | circle-plus |
| ⊗ | circle-times |
| × | times |
| ∅ | empty set (used for APL null) |
| µ | micro quantifier sign |
| → | right arrow |
| ⇔ | horizontal double arrow |
| ™ | trademark symbol |
| ® | registered-trademark symbol |
| − | minus |
| ± | plus-or-minus |
| Ø | slashed-O |
| @ | schwa |
| ´ | acute accent |
| · | medial dot |
We normally test with the latest build of Mozilla. If some of the +special characters above look wrong, your browser has bugs in its +standards-conformance and you should replace it.
This is the Jargon File, a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang +illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor.
This document (the Jargon File) is in the public domain, to be freely +used, shared, and modified. There are (by intention) no legal restraints on +what you can do with it, but there are traditions about its proper use to +which many hackers are quite strongly attached. Please extend the courtesy of +proper citation when you quote the File, ideally with a version number, as it +will change and grow over time. (Examples of appropriate citation form: +“Jargon File 4.4.6” or “The on-line hacker Jargon File, +version 4.4.6, 4 Oct 2003”.)
The Jargon File is a common heritage of the hacker culture. Over the +years a number of individuals have volunteered considerable time to +maintaining the File and been recognized by the net at large as editors of it. +Editorial responsibilities include: to collate contributions and suggestions +from others; to seek out corroborating information; to cross-reference related +entries; to keep the file in a consistent format; and to announce and +distribute updated versions periodically. Current volunteer editors +include:
Eric Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>
Although there is no requirement that you do so, it is considered good +form to check with an editor before quoting the File in a published work or +commercial product. We may have additional information that would be helpful +to you and can assist you in framing your quote to reflect not only the letter +of the File but its spirit as well.
All contributions and suggestions about this file sent to a volunteer +editor are gratefully received and will be regarded, unless otherwise +labelled, as freely given donations for possible use as part of this +public-domain file.
From time to time a snapshot of this file has been polished, edited, and +formatted for commercial publication with the cooperation of the volunteer +editors and the hacker community at large. If you wish to have a bound paper +copy of this file, you may find it convenient to purchase one of these. They +often contain additional material not found in on-line versions. The three +‘authorized’ editions so far are described in the Revision History +section; there may be more in the future.
The Jargon File's online rendition uses an unusually large number of +special characters. This test page lists them so you can check what your +browser does with each one.
| glyph | description |
| λ | greek character lambda |
| Λ | greek character Lambda |
| π | greek character pi |
| pound sterling | |
| 〈 | left angle bracket |
| 〉 | right angle bracket |
| ae ligature | |
| German sharp-s sign | |
| ∼ | similarity sign |
| ⊕ | circle-plus |
| ⊗ | circle-times |
| times | |
| ∅ | empty set (used for APL null) |
| micro quantifier sign | |
| → | right arrow |
| ⇔ | horizontal double arrow |
| ™ | trademark symbol |
| registered-trademark symbol | |
| − | minus |
| plus-or-minus | |
| slashed-O | |
| ə | schwa |
| acute accent | |
| medial dot |
This story says a lot about the ITS ethos.
On the ITS system there was a program that allowed you to see what was +being printed on someone else's terminal. It spied on the other guy's output +by examining the insides of the monitor system. The output spy program was +called OS. Throughout the rest of the computer science world (and at IBM too) +OS means ‘operating system’, but among old-time ITS hackers it +almost always meant ‘output spy’.
OS could work because ITS purposely had very little in the way of +‘protection’ that prevented one user from trespassing on another's +areas. Fair is fair, however. There was another program that would +automatically notify you if anyone started to spy on your output. It worked +in exactly the same way, by looking at the insides of the operating system to +see if anyone else was looking at the insides that had to do with your output. +This ‘counterspy’ program was called JEDGAR (a six-letterism +pronounced as two syllables: /jed´gr/), in honor of the former head +of the FBI.
But there's more. JEDGAR would ask the user for ‘license to +kill’. If the user said yes, then JEDGAR would actually gun the job of +the luser who was spying. Unfortunately, people found +that this made life too violent, especially when tourists learned about it. +One of the systems hackers solved the problem by replacing JEDGAR with another +program that only pretended to do its job. It took a long time to do this, +because every copy of JEDGAR had to be patched. To this day no one knows how +many people never figured out that JEDGAR had been defanged.
Interestingly, there is still a security module named JEDGAR alive as of +late 1999 — in the Unisys MCP for large systems. It is unknown to us +whether the name is tribute or independent invention.
Some hobbies are widely shared and recognized as going with the culture: +science fiction, music, medievalism (in the active form practiced by the +Society for Creative Anachronism and similar organizations), chess, go, +backgammon, wargames, and intellectual games of all kinds. (Role-playing +games such as Dungeons and Dragons used to be extremely popular among hackers +but they lost a bit of their luster as they moved into the mainstream and +became heavily commercialized. More recently, Magic: The +Gathering has been widely popular among hackers.) Logic puzzles. +Ham radio. Other interests that seem to correlate less strongly but +positively with hackerdom include linguistics and theater teching.
A very conspicuous feature of jargon is the frequency with which +techspeak items such as names of program tools, command language primitives, +and even assembler opcodes are applied to contexts outside of computing +wherever hackers find amusing analogies to them. Thus (to cite one of the +best-known examples) Unix hackers often grep for things +rather than searching for them. Many of the lexicon entries are +generalizations of exactly this kind.
Hackers enjoy overgeneralization on the grammatical level as well. Many +hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to them to make +nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule to nonuniform cases (or +vice versa). For example, because porous → porosity and generous → +generosity, hackers happily generalize:
mysterious → mysteriosity
ferrous → ferrosity
obvious → obviosity
dubious → dubiosity
Another class of common construction uses the suffix +‘-itude’ to abstract a quality from just about any adjective or +noun. This usage arises especially in cases where mainstream English would +perform the same abstraction through ‘-iness’ or +‘-ingness’. Thus:
win → winnitude (a common exclamation)
loss → lossitude
cruft → cruftitude
lame → lameitude
Some hackers cheerfully reverse this transformation; they argue, for +example, that the horizontal degree lines on a globe ought to be called +‘lats’ — after all, they're measuring latitude!
Also, note that all nouns can be verbed. E.g.: “All nouns can be +verbed”, “I'll mouse it up”, “Hang on while I +clipboard it over”, “I'm grepping the files”. English as +a whole is already heading in this direction (towards pure-positional grammar +like Chinese); hackers are simply a bit ahead of the curve.
The suffix “-full” can also be applied in generalized and +fanciful ways, as in “As soon as you have more than one cachefull of +data, the system starts thrashing,” or “As soon as I have more +than one headfull of ideas, I start writing it all down.” A common use +is “screenfull”, meaning the amount of text that will fit on one +screen, usually in text mode where you have no choice as to character +size. Another common form is “bufferfull”.
However, hackers avoid the unimaginative verb-making techniques +characteristic of marketroids, bean-counters, and the Pentagon; a hacker would +never, for example, ‘productize’, ‘prioritize’, or +‘securitize’ things. Hackers have a strong aversion to +bureaucratic bafflegab and regard those who use it with contempt.
Similarly, all verbs can be nouned. This is only a slight +overgeneralization in modern English; in hackish, however, it is good form to +mark them in some standard nonstandard way. Thus:
win → winnitude, winnage
disgust → disgustitude
hack → hackification
Further, note the prevalence of certain kinds of nonstandard plural +forms. Some of these go back quite a ways; the TMRC Dictionary includes an +entry which implies that the plural of ‘mouse’ is +meeces, and notes that the defined plural of +‘caboose’ is ‘cabeese’. This latter has apparently +been standard (or at least a standard joke) among railfans (railroad +enthusiasts) for many years
On a similarly Anglo-Saxon note, almost anything ending in +‘x’ may form plurals in ‘-xen’ (see +VAXen and boxen in the main +text). Even words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated this +way; e.g., ‘soxen’ for a bunch of socks. Other funny plurals are +the Hebrew-style ‘frobbotzim’ for the plural of +‘frobbozz’ (see frobnitz) and +‘Unices’ and ‘Twenices’ (rather than +‘Unixes’ and ‘Twenexes’; see +Unix, TWENEX in main text). But +note that ‘Twenexen’ was never used, and ‘Unixen’ was +seldom sighted in the wild until the year 2000, thirty years after it might +logically have come into use; it has been suggested that this is because +‘-ix’ and ‘-ex’ are Latin singular endings that +attract a Latinate plural. Among Perl hackers it is reported that +‘comma’ and ‘semicolon’ pluralize as +‘commata’ and ‘semicola’ respectively. Finally, it +has been suggested to general approval that the plural of +‘mongoose’ ought to be ‘polygoose’.
The pattern here, as with other hackish grammatical quirks, is +generalization of an inflectional rule that in English is either an import or +a fossil (such as the Hebrew plural ending ‘-im’, or the +Anglo-Saxon plural suffix ‘-en’) to cases where it isn't normally +considered to apply.
This is not ‘poor grammar’, as hackers are generally quite +well aware of what they are doing when they distort the language. It is +grammatical creativity, a form of playfulness. It is done not to impress but +to amuse, and never at the expense of clarity.
Turning a word into a question by appending the syllable +‘P’; from the LISP convention of appending the letter +‘P’ to denote a predicate (a boolean-valued function). The +question should expect a yes/no answer, though it needn't. (See +T and NIL.)
+ At dinnertime:
+ Q: “Foodp?”
+ A: “Yeah, I'm pretty hungry.” or “T!”
+
+ At any time:
+ Q: “State-of-the-world-P?”
+ A: (Straight) “I'm about to go home.”
+ A: (Humorous) “Yes, the world has a state.”
+
+ On the phone to Florida:
+ Q: “State-p Florida?”
+ A: “Been reading JARGON.TXT again, eh?”
+
[Once, when we were at a Chinese restaurant, Bill Gosper wanted to know +whether someone would like to share with him a two-person-sized bowl of soup. +His inquiry was: “Split-p soup?” — GLS]
The most obvious common ‘personality’ characteristics of +hackers are high intelligence, consuming curiosity, and facility with +intellectual abstractions. Also, most hackers are ‘neophiles’, +stimulated by and appreciative of novelty (especially intellectual novelty). +Most are also relatively individualistic and anti-conformist.
Although high general intelligence is common among hackers, it is not +the sine qua non one might expect. Another +trait is probably even more important: the ability to mentally absorb, retain, +and reference large amounts of ‘meaningless’ detail, trusting to +later experience to give it context and meaning. A person of merely average +analytical intelligence who has this trait can become an effective hacker, but +a creative genius who lacks it will swiftly find himself outdistanced by +people who routinely upload the contents of thick reference manuals into their +brains. [During the production of the first book version of this document, +for example, I learned most of the rather complex typesetting language TeX +over about four working days, mainly by inhaling Knuth's 477-page manual. My +editor's flabbergasted reaction to this genuinely surprised me, because years +of associating with hackers have conditioned me to consider such performances +routine and to be expected. —ESR]
Contrary to stereotype, hackers are not usually +intellectually narrow; they tend to be interested in any subject that can +provide mental stimulation, and can often discourse knowledgeably and even +interestingly on any number of obscure subjects — if you can get them to +talk at all, as opposed to, say, going back to their hacking.
It is noticeable (and contrary to many outsiders' expectations) that the +better a hacker is at hacking, the more likely he or she is to have outside +interests at which he or she is more than merely competent.
Hackers are ‘control freaks’ in a way that has nothing to do +with the usual coercive or authoritarian connotations of the term. In the +same way that children delight in making model trains go forward and back by +moving a switch, hackers love making complicated things like computers do +nifty stuff for them. But it has to be their nifty +stuff. They don't like tedium, nondeterminism, or most of the fussy, boring, +ill-defined little tasks that go with maintaining a normal existence. +Accordingly, they tend to be careful and orderly in their intellectual lives +and chaotic elsewhere. Their code will be beautiful, even if their desks are +buried in 3 feet of crap.
Hackers are generally only very weakly motivated by conventional rewards +such as social approval or money. They tend to be attracted by challenges and +excited by interesting toys, and to judge the interest of work or other +activities in terms of the challenges offered and the toys they get to play +with.
In terms of Myers-Briggs and equivalent psychometric systems, hackerdom +appears to concentrate the relatively rare INTJ and INTP types; that is, +introverted, intuitive, and thinker types (as opposed to the +extroverted-sensate personalities that predominate in the mainstream culture). +ENT[JP] types are also concentrated among hackers but are in a minority. +
Many (perhaps even most) hackers don't follow or do sports at all and +are determinedly anti-physical. Among those who do, interest in spectator +sports is low to non-existent; sports are something one +does, not something one watches on TV.
Further, hackers avoid most team sports like the plague. Volleyball was +long a notable exception, perhaps because it's non-contact and relatively +friendly; Ultimate Frisbee has become quite popular for similar reasons. +Hacker sports are almost always primarily self-competitive ones involving +concentration, stamina, and micromotor skills: martial arts, bicycling, auto +racing, kite flying, hiking, rock climbing, aviation, target-shooting, +sailing, caving, juggling, skiing, skating, skydiving, scuba diving. Hackers' +delight in techno-toys also tends to draw them towards hobbies with nifty +complicated equipment that they can tinker with.
The popularity of martial arts in the hacker culture deserves special +mention. Many observers have noted it, and the connection has grown +noticeably stronger over time. In the 1970s, many hackers admired martial +arts disciplines from a distance, sensing a compatible ideal in their +exaltation of skill through rigorous self-discipline and concentration. As +martial arts became increasingly mainstreamed in the U.S. and other western +countries, hackers moved from admiring to doing in large numbers. In 1997, +for example, your humble editor recalls sitting down with five strangers at +the first Perl conference and discovering that four of us were in active +training in some sort of martial art — and, what is more interesting, +nobody at the table found this high perecentage at all odd.
Today (2000), martial arts seems to have become firmly established as +the hacker exercise form of choice, and the martial-arts culture combining +skill-centered elitism with a willingness to let anybody join seems a stronger +parallel to hacker behavior than ever. Common usages in hacker slang +un-ironically analogize programming to kung fu (thus, one hears talk of +“code-fu” or in reference to specific skills like +“HTML-fu”). Albeit with slightly more irony, today's hackers +readily analogize assimilation into the hacker culture with the plot of a Jet +Li movie: the aspiring newbie studies with masters of the tradition, develops +his art through deep meditation, ventures forth to perform heroic feats of +hacking, and eventually becomes a master who trains the next generation of +newbies in the hacker way.
Formerly vaguely liberal-moderate, more recently +moderate-to-neoconservative (hackers too were affected by the collapse of +socialism). There is a strong libertarian contingent which rejects +conventional left-right politics entirely. The only safe generalization is +that hackers tend to be rather anti-authoritarian; thus, both +paleoconservatism and ‘hard’ leftism are rare. Hackers are far +more likely than most non-hackers to either (a) be aggressively apolitical or +(b) entertain peculiar or idiosyncratic political ideas and actually try to +live by them day-to-day.
Pronunciation keys are provided in the jargon listings for all entries +that are neither dictionary words pronounced as in standard English nor +obvious compounds thereof. Slashes bracket phonetic pronunciations, which are +to be interpreted using the following conventions:
Syllables are hyphen-separated, except that an accent or back-accent +follows each accented syllable (the back-accent marks a secondary accent in +some words of four or more syllables). If no accent is given, the word is +pronounced with equal accentuation on all syllables (this is common for +abbreviations).
Consonants are pronounced as in American English. The letter +‘g’ is always hard (as in “got” rather than +“giant”); ‘ch’ is soft (“church” rather +than “chemist”). The letter ‘j’ is the sound that +occurs twice in “judge”. The letter ‘s’ is always as +in “pass”, never a z sound. The digraph ‘kh’ is the +guttural of “loch” or “l'chaim”. The digraph +‘gh’ is the aspirated g+h of “bughouse” or +“ragheap” (rare in English).
Uppercase letters are pronounced as their English letter names; thus +(for example) /H-L-L/ is equivalent +to /aych el el/. /Z/ may be pronounced /zee/ or /zed/ depending on your local dialect.
Vowels are represented as follows:
Table 10.1. Vowels
| a | back, that |
| ah | father, palm (see note) |
| ar | far, mark |
| aw | flaw, caught |
| ay | bake, rain |
| e | less, men |
| ee | easy, ski |
| eir | their, software |
| i | trip, hit |
| i: | life, sky |
| o | block, stock (see note) |
| oh | flow, sew |
| oo | loot, through |
| or | more, door |
| ow | out, how |
| oy | boy, coin |
| uh | but, some |
| u | put, foot |
| y | yet, young |
| yoo | few, chew |
| [y]oo | /oo/ with +optional fronting as in ‘news’ (/nooz/ or /nyooz/) |
The glyph /@/ is used +for the ‘schwa’ sound of unstressed or occluded vowels.
The schwa vowel is omitted in syllables containing vocalic r, l, m or n; +that is, ‘kitten’ and ‘color’ would be rendered +/kit'n/ and /kuhl'r/, not /kit'@n/ and /kuhl'@r/.
Note that the above table reflects mainly distinctions found in standard +American English (that is, the neutral dialect spoken by TV network announcers +and typical of educated speech in the Upper Midwest, Chicago, +Minneapolis/St. Paul and Philadelphia). However, we separate /o/ from /ah/, which tend to merge in standard +American. This may help readers accustomed to accents resembling British +Received Pronunciation.
The intent of this scheme is to permit as many readers as possible to +map the pronunciations into their local dialect by ignoring some subset of the +distinctions we make. Speakers of British RP, for example, can smash terminal +/r/ and all unstressed vowels. +Speakers of many varieties of southern American will automatically map +/o/ to /aw/; and so forth. (Standard American makes +a good reference dialect for this purpose because it has crisp consonants and +more vowel distinctions than other major dialects, and tends to retain +distinctions between unstressed vowels. It also happens to be what your +editor speaks.)
Entries with a pronunciation of ‘//’ are written-only +usages. (No, Unix weenies, this does not mean +‘pronounce like previous pronunciation’!)
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Here are some other books you can read to help you understand the hacker +mindset.
[Hofstadter] Gödel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Copyright © 1979. Basic Books. ISBN 0-394-74502-7.
This book reads like an intellectual Grand Tour of hacker +preoccupations. Music, mathematical logic, programming, speculations +on the nature of intelligence, biology, and Zen are woven into a +brilliant tapestry themed on the concept of encoded self-reference. +The perfect left-brain companion to +Illuminatus.
[Shea-ampersand-Wilson] The Illuminatus! Trilogy. DTP. ISBN 0440539811.
(Originally in three volumes: The Eye in the +Pyramid, The Golden Apple, and +Leviathan).
This work of alleged fiction is an incredible berserko-surrealist +rollercoaster of world-girdling conspiracies, intelligent dolphins, the fall +of Atlantis, who really killed JFK, sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, and the Cosmic +Giggle Factor. First published in three volumes, but there is now a +one-volume trade paperback, carried by most chain bookstores under SF. The +perfect right-brain companion to Hofstadter's Göodel, Escher, +Bach. See Eris, +Discordianism, random numbers, +Church of the SubGenius.
[Adams] The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Pocket Books. Copyright © 1981. ISBN +0-671-46149-4.
This ‘Monty Python in +Space’ spoof of SF genre traditions has been popular among +hackers ever since the original British radio show. Read it if only +to learn about Vogons (see bogon) and the +significance of the number 42 (see random numbers) +— and why the winningest chess program of 1990 was called +‘Deep Thought’.
[Geoffrey] The Tao of Programming. Infobooks. Copyright © 1987. ISBN 0-931137-07-1.
This gentle, funny spoof of the Tao Te +Ching contains much that is illuminating about the hacker +way of thought. “When you have learned to snatch the error code +from the trap frame, it will be time for you to +leave.”
[Levy] Hackers. Anchor/Doubleday. Copyright © 1984. ISBN 0-385-19195-2.
Levy's book is at its best in describing the early MIT hackers +at the Model Railroad Club and the early days of the microcomputer revolution. +He never understood Unix or the networksthough, and his enshrinement of +Richard Stallman as “the last true hacker” turns out (thankfully) +to have been quite misleading. Despite being a bit dated and containing some +minor errors (many fixed in the paperback edition), this remains a useful and +stimulating book that captures the feel of several important hacker +subcultures.
[Kelly-Bootle] The Computer Contradictionary. MIT Press. Copyright © 1995. ISBN 0-262-61112-0.
This pastiche of Ambrose Bierce's famous work is similar in +format to the Jargon File (and quotes several entries from TNHD-2) but +somewhat different in tone and intent. It is more satirical and less +anthropological, and is largely a product of the author's literate and quirky +imagination. For example, it defines computer +science as “a study akin to numerology and astrology, but +lacking the precision of the former and the success of the latter” and +implementation as “The fruitless +struggle by the talented and underpaid to fulfill promises made by the rich +and ignorant”; flowchart becomes +“to obfuscate a problem with esoteric cartoons”. Revised and +expanded from The Devil's DP Dictionary, McGraw-Hill +1981, ISBN 0-07-034022-6; that work had some stylistic influence on +TNHD-1.
[Jennings] The Devouring Fungus: Tales from the Computer Age. Norton. Copyright © 1990. ISBN 0-393-30732-8.
The author of this pioneering compendium knits together a +great deal of computer- and hacker-related folklore with good writing and a +few well-chosen cartoons. She has a keen eye for the human aspects of the +lore and is very good at illuminating the psychology and evolution of +hackerdom. Unfortunately, a number of small errors and awkwardnesses suggest +that she didn't have the final manuscript checked over by a native speaker; +the glossary in the back is particularly embarrassing, and at least one +classic tale (the Magic Switch story, retold here under A Story About Magic in Appendix A) is given in +incomplete and badly mangled form. Nevertheless, this book is a win overall +and can be enjoyed by hacker and non-hacker alike.
[Kidder] The Soul of a New Machine. Avon. Copyright © 1982. ISBN 0-380-59931-7.
This book (a 1982 Pulitzer Prize winner) documents the +adventure of the design of a new Data General computer, the MV-8000 Eagle. It +is an amazingly well-done portrait of the hacker mindset — although +largely the hardware hacker — done by a complete outsider. It is a bit +thin in spots, but with enough technical information to be entertaining to the +serious hacker while providing non-technical people a view of what day-to-day +life can be like — the fun, the excitement, the disasters. During one +period, when the microcode and logic were glitching at the nanosecond level, +one of the overworked engineers departed the company, leaving behind a note on +his terminal as his letter of resignation: “I am going to a commune in +Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a +season.”
[Libes] Life with UNIX: a Guide for Everyone. Prentice-Hall. Copyright © 1989. ISBN 0-13-536657-7.
The authors of this book set out to tell you all the things +about Unix that tutorials and technical books won't. The result is gossipy, +funny, opinionated, downright weird in spots, and invaluable. Along the way +they expose you to enough of Unix's history, folklore and humor to qualify as +a first-class source for these things. Because so much of today's hackerdom +is involved with Unix, this in turn illuminates many of its in-jokes and +preoccupations.
[Vinge] True Names ... and Other Dangers. Baen Books. Copyright © 1987. ISBN 0-671-65363-6.
Hacker demigod Richard Stallman used to say that the title +story of this book “expresses the spirit of hacking best”. Until +the subject of the next entry came out, it was hard to even nominate another +contender. The other stories in this collection are also fine work by an +author who has since won multiple Hugos and is one of today's very best +practitioners of hard SF.
[Stephenson] Snow Crash. Bantam. Copyright © 1992. ISBN 0-553-56261-4.
Stephenson's epic, comic cyberpunk novel is deeply knowing +about the hacker psychology and its foibles in a way no other author of +fiction has ever even approached. His imagination, his grasp of the relevant +technical details, and his ability to communicate the excitement of hacking +and its results are astonishing, delightful, and (so far) +unsurpassed.
[Markoff-ampersand-Hafner] Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier. Simon & +Schuster. Copyright © 1991. ISBN 0-671-68322-5.
This book gathers narratives about the careers of three +notorious crackers into a clear-eyed but sympathetic portrait of hackerdom's +dark side. The principals are Kevin Mitnick, “Pengo” and +“Hagbard” of the Chaos Computer Club, and Robert T. Morris (see +RTM, sense 2). Markoff and Hafner focus as much on +their psychologies and motivations as on the details of their exploits, but +don't slight the latter. The result is a balanced and fascinating account, +particularly useful when read immediately before or after Cliff Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg. It is especially instructive to +compare RTM, a true hacker who blundered, with the sociopathic phone-freak +Mitnick and the alienated, drug-addled crackers who made the Chaos Club +notorious. The gulf between wizard and +wannabee has seldom been made more +obvious.
[Stoll] The Cuckoo's Egg. Doubleday. Copyright © 1989. ISBN 0-385-24946-2.
Clifford Stoll's absorbing tale of how he tracked Markus Hess +and the Chaos Club cracking ring nicely illustrates the difference between +‘hacker' and ‘cracker'. Stoll's portrait of himself, his lady +Martha, and his friends at Berkeley and on the Internet paints a marvelously +vivid picture of how hackers and the people around them like to live and how +they think.
Omnivorous, but usually includes lots of science and science fiction. +The typical hacker household might subscribe to Analog, +Scientific American, Whole-Earth +Review, and Smithsonian (most hackers +ignore Wired and other self-consciously +‘cyberpunk’ magazines, considering them +wannabee fodder). Hackers often have a reading range +that astonishes liberal arts people but tend not to talk about it as much. +Many hackers spend as much of their spare time reading as the average American +burns up watching TV, and often keep shelves and shelves of well-thumbed books +in their homes.
Agnostic. Atheist. Non-observant Jewish. Neo-pagan. Very commonly, +three or more of these are combined in the same person. Conventional +faith-holding Christianity is rare though not unknown.
Even hackers who identify with a religious affiliation tend to be +relaxed about it, hostile to organized religion in general and all forms of +religious bigotry in particular. Many enjoy ‘parody’ religions +such as Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius.
Also, many hackers are influenced to varying degrees by Zen Buddhism or +(less commonly) Taoism, and blend them easily with their ‘native’ +religions.
There is a definite strain of mystical, almost Gnostic sensibility that +shows up even among those hackers not actively involved with neo-paganism, +Discordianism, or Zen. Hacker folklore that pays homage to +‘wizards’ and speaks of incantations and demons has too much +psychological truthfulness about it to be entirely a joke.
The original Jargon File was a collection of hacker jargon from +technical cultures including the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI lab (SAIL), and +others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities including Bolt, Beranek +and Newman (BBN), Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU), and Worcester Polytechnic +Institute (WPI).
The Jargon File (hereafter referred to as ‘jargon-1’ or +‘the File’) was begun by Raphael Finkel at Stanford in 1975. From +this time until the plug was finally pulled on the SAIL computer in 1991, the +File was named AIWORD.RF[UP,DOC] there. Some terms in it date back +considerably earlier (frob and some senses of +moby, for instance, go back to the Tech Model Railroad +Club at MIT and are believed to date at least back to the early 1960s). The +revisions of jargon-1 were all unnumbered and may be collectively considered +‘Version 1’.
In 1976, Mark Crispin, having seen an announcement about the File on the +SAIL computer, FTPed a copy of the File to MIT. He +noticed that it was hardly restricted to ‘AI words’ and so stored +the file on his directory as AI:MRC;SAIL JARGON.
The file was quickly renamed JARGON > (the ‘>’ caused +versioning under ITS) as a flurry of enhancements were made by Mark Crispin +and Guy L. Steele Jr. Unfortunately, amidst all this activity, nobody +thought of correcting the term ‘jargon’ to ‘slang’ +until the compendium had already become widely known as the Jargon +File.
Raphael Finkel dropped out of active participation shortly thereafter +and Don Woods became the SAIL contact for the File (which was subsequently +kept in duplicate at SAIL and MIT, with periodic resynchronizations).
The File expanded by fits and starts until about 1983; Richard Stallman +was prominent among the contributors, adding many MIT and ITS-related +coinages.
In Spring 1981, a hacker named Charles Spurgeon got a large chunk of the +File published in Stewart Brand's CoEvolution Quarterly +(issue 29, pages 26—35) with illustrations by Phil Wadler and Guy Steele +(including a couple of the Crunchly cartoons). This appears to have been the +File's first paper publication.
A late version of jargon-1, expanded with commentary for the mass +market, was edited by Guy Steele into a book published in 1983 as +The Hacker's Dictionary (Harper & Row CN 1082, ISBN +0-06-091082-8). The other jargon-1 editors (Raphael Finkel, Don Woods, and +Mark Crispin) contributed to this revision, as did Richard M. Stallman and +Geoff Goodfellow. This book (now out of print) is hereafter referred to as +‘Steele-1983’ and those six as the Steele-1983 coauthors.
Shortly after the publication of Steele-1983, the File effectively +stopped growing and changing. Originally, this was due to a desire to freeze +the file temporarily to facilitate the production of Steele-1983, but external +conditions caused the ‘temporary’ freeze to become +permanent.
The AI Lab culture had been hit hard in the late 1970s by funding cuts +and the resulting administrative decision to use vendor-supported hardware and +software instead of homebrew whenever possible. At MIT, most AI work had +turned to dedicated LISP Machines. At the same time, the commercialization of +AI technology lured some of the AI Lab's best and brightest away to startups +along the Route 128 strip in Massachusetts and out West in Silicon Valley. +The startups built LISP machines for MIT; the central MIT-AI computer became a +TWENEX system rather than a host for the AI hackers' +beloved ITS.
The Stanford AI Lab had effectively ceased to exist by 1980, although +the SAIL computer continued as a Computer Science Department resource until +1991. Stanford became a major TWENEX site, at one +point operating more than a dozen TOPS-20 systems; but by the mid-1980s most +of the interesting software work was being done on the emerging BSD Unix +standard.
In April 1983, the PDP-10-centered cultures that had nourished the File +were dealt a death-blow by the cancellation of the Jupiter project at Digital +Equipment Corporation. The File's compilers, already dispersed, moved on to +other things. Steele-1983 was partly a monument to what its authors thought +was a dying tradition; no one involved realized at the time just how wide its +influence was to be.
By the mid-1980s the File's content was dated, but the legend that had +grown up around it never quite died out. The book, and softcopies obtained +off the ARPANET, circulated even in cultures far removed from MIT and +Stanford; the content exerted a strong and continuing influence on hacker +language and humor. Even as the advent of the microcomputer and other trends +fueled a tremendous expansion of hackerdom, the File (and related materials +such as the Some AI Koans in Appendix A) came to +be seen as a sort of sacred epic, a hacker-culture Matter of Britain +chronicling the heroic exploits of the Knights of the Lab. The pace of change +in hackerdom at large accelerated tremendously — but the Jargon File, +having passed from living document to icon, remained essentially untouched for +seven years.
This revision contains nearly the entire text of a late version of +jargon-1 (a few obsolete PDP-10-related entries were dropped after careful +consultation with the editors of Steele-1983). It merges in about 80% of the +Steele-1983 text, omitting some framing material and a very few entries +introduced in Steele-1983 that are now also obsolete.
This new version casts a wider net than the old Jargon File; its aim is +to cover not just AI or PDP-10 hacker culture but all the technical computing +cultures wherein the true hacker-nature is manifested. More than half of the +entries now derive from Usenet and represent jargon now +current in the C and Unix communities, but special efforts have been made to +collect jargon from other cultures including IBM PC programmers, Amiga fans, +Mac enthusiasts, and even the IBM mainframe world.
Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> maintains the new File +with assistance from Guy L. Steele Jr. <gls@think.com>; these are +the persons primarily reflected in the File's editorial ‘we’, +though we take pleasure in acknowledging the special contribution of the other +coauthors of Steele-1983. Please email all additions, corrections, and +correspondence relating to the Jargon File to Eric.
(Warning: other email addresses and URLs appear in this file +but are not guaranteed to be correct after date of +publication. Don't email us if an attempt to reach +someone bounces — we have no magic way of checking addresses or looking +up people. If a web reference goes stale, try a Google or Alta Vista search +for relevant phrases.
Please try to review a recent copy of the on-line document before +submitting entries; it is available on the Web. It will often contain new +material not recorded in the latest paper snapshot that could save you some +typing. It also includes some submission guidelines not reproduced +here.
The 2.9.6 version became the main text of The New Hacker's +Dictionary, by Eric Raymond (ed.), MIT Press 1991, ISBN +0-262-68069-6.
The 3.0.0 version was published in August 1993 as the second edition of +The New Hacker's Dictionary, again from MIT Press (ISBN +0-262-18154-1).
The 4.0.0 version was published in September 1996 as the third edition +of The New Hacker's Dictionary from MIT Press (ISBN +0-262-68092-0).
The maintainers are committed to updating the on-line version of the +Jargon File through and beyond paper publication, and will continue to make it +available to archives and public-access sites as a trust of the hacker +community.
Here is a chronology of major revisions:
| Version | Date | Lines | Words | Characters | Entries | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.1.1 | Jun 12 1990 | 5485 | 42842 | 278958 | 790 | The Jargon File comes alive again after a seven-year hiatus. +Reorganization and massive additions were by Eric S. Raymond, approved by Guy +Steele. Many items of UNIX, C, USENET, and microcomputer-based jargon were +added at that time. |
| 2.1.5 | Nov 28 1990 | 6028 | 46946 | 307510 | 866 | Changes and additions by ESR in response to numerous USENET submissions +and comment from the First Edition co-authors. The Bibliography (Appendix C) +was also appended. |
| 2.2.1 | Dec 15 1990 | 9394 | 75954 | 490501 | 1046 | Most of the contents of the 1983 paper edition edited by Guy Steele was +merged in. Many more USENET submissions added, including the International +Style and the material on Commonwealth Hackish. |
| 2.3.1 | Jan 03 1991 | 10728 | 85070 | 558261 | 1138 | The great format change — case is no longer smashed in lexicon +keys and cross-references. A very few entries from jargon-1 which were +basically straight techspeak were deleted; this enabled the rest of Appendix B +(created in 2.1.1) to be merged back into main text and the appendix replaced +with the Portrait of J. Random Hacker. More USENET submissions were +added. |
| 2.4.1 | Jan 14 1991 | 12362 | 97819 | 642899 | 1239 | The Story of Mel and many more USENET submissions merged in. More +material on hackish writing habits added. Numerous typo fixes. |
| 2.6.1 | Feb 12 1991 | 15011 | 118277 | 774942 | 1484 | Second great format change; no more <> around headwords or +references. Merged in results of serious copy-editing passes by Guy Steele, +Mark Brader. Still more entries added. |
| 2.7.1 | Mar 01 1991 | 16087 | 126885 | 831872 | 1533 | New section on slang/jargon/techspeak added. Results of Guy's second +edit pass merged in. |
| 2.8.1 | Mar 22 1991 | 17154 | 135647 | 888333 | 1602 | Material from the TMRC Dictionary and MRC's editing pass merged +in. |
| 2.9.6 | Aug 16 1991 | 18952 | 148629 | 975551 | 1702 | Corresponds to reproduction copy for book. |
| 2.9.8 | Jan 01 1992 | 19509 | 153108 | 1006023 | 1760 | First public release since the book, including over fifty new entries +and numerous corrections/additions to old ones. Packaged with version 1.1 of +vh(1) hypertext reader. |
| 2.9.9 | Apr 01 1992 | 20298 | 159651 | 1048909 | 1821 | Folded in XEROX PARC lexicon. |
| 2.9.10 | Jul 01 1992 | 21349 | 168330 | 1106991 | 1891 | lots of new historical material. |
| 2.9.11 | Jan 01 1993 | 21725 | 171169 | 1125880 | 1922 | Lots of new historical material. |
| 2.9.12 | May 10 1993 | 22238 | 175114 | 1152467 | 1946 | A few new entries & changes, marginal MUD/IRC slang and some +borderline techspeak removed, all in preparation for 2nd Edition of +TNHD. |
| 3.0.0 | Jul 27 1993 | 22548 | 177520 | 1169372 | 1961 | Manuscript freeze for 2nd edition of TNHD. |
| 3.1.0 | Oct 15 1994 | 23197 | 181001 | 1193818 | 1990 | Interim release to test WWW conversion. |
| 3.2.0 | Mar 15 1995 | 23822 | 185961 | 1226358 | 2031 | Spring 1995 update. |
| 3.3.0 | Jan 20 1996 | 24055 | 187957 | 1239604 | 2045 | Winter 1996 update. |
| 3.3.1 | Jan 25 1996 | 24147 | 188728 | 1244554 | 2050 | Copy-corrected improvement on 3.3.0 shipped to MIT Press as a step +towards TNHD III. |
| 4.0.0 | Jul 25 1996 | 24801 | 193697 | 1281402 | 2067 | The actual TNHD III version after copy-edit |
| 4.1.0 | 8 Apr 1999 | 25777 | 206825 | 1359992 | 2217 | The Jargon File rides again after three years. |
| 4.2.0 | 31 Jan 2000 | 26598 | 214639 | 1412243 | 2267 | Fix processing of URLs. |
| 4.3.0 | 30 Apr 2001 | 27805 | 224978 | 1480215 | 2319 | Special edition in honor of the first implementation of RFC 1149. Also +cleaned up a number of obsolete entries. |
| 4.4.0 | 10 May 2003 | 32004 | 230012 | 1707139 | 2290 | XML-Docbook format conversion. Serious pruning of old slang, +nearly 100 entries failed the Google test and were removed. |
| 4.4.1 | 13 May 2003 | 37157 | 234687 | 1618716 | 2290 | XML-Docbook format fixes. |
| 4.4.2 | 22 May 2003 | 32629 | 227852 | 1555125 | 2290 | Fix filename collisions and other small problems. |
| 4.4.3 | 15 Jul 2003 | 37363 | 235135 | 1629667 | 2293 | Fix some stylesheet problems leading to missing links. |
| 4.4.4 | 14 Aug 2003 | 37392 | 235271 | 1630579 | 2295 | Corrected build machinery; we can make RPMS now. |
| 4.4.5 | 4 Oct 2003 | 37482 | 235858 | 1634767 | 2299 | Minor updates. Four new entries and a better original-bug + picture. |
| 4.4.6 | 25 Oct 2003 | 37560 | 236406 | 1638454 | 2302 | Added glider illustration. Amended FUD entry pursuent to SCO's +attempt to abuse it. |
| 4.4.7 | 29 Dec 2003 | 37666 | 237206 | 1643609 | 2307 | Winter 2003 update. |
Version numbering: Version numbers should be read as +major.minor.revision. Major version 1 is reserved for the ‘old’ +(ITS) Jargon File, jargon-1. Major version 2 encompasses revisions by ESR +(Eric S. Raymond) with assistance from GLS (Guy L. Steele, Jr.) leading up to +and including the second paper edition. From now on, major version number +N.00 will probably correspond to the Nth paper edition. Usually later +versions will either completely supersede or incorporate earlier versions, so +there is generally no point in keeping old versions around.
Our thanks to the coauthors of Steele-1983 for oversight and assistance, +and to the hundreds of Usenetters (too many to name here) who contributed +entries and encouragement. More thanks go to several of the old-timers on the +Usenet group alt.folklore.computers, +who contributed much useful commentary and many corrections and valuable +historical perspective: Joseph M. Newcomer +<jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu>, Bernie Cosell +<cosell@bbn.com>, Earl Boebert <boebert@SCTC.com>, +and Joe Morris <jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org>.
We were fortunate enough to have the aid of some accomplished linguists. +David Stampe <stampe@hawaii.edu> and Charles Hoequist +<hoequist@bnr.ca> contributed valuable criticism; Joe Keane +<jgk@osc.osc.com> helped us improve the pronunciation +guides.
A few bits of this text quote previous works. We are indebted to Brian +A. LaMacchia <bal@zurich.ai.mit.edu> for obtaining permission for +us to use material from the TMRC Dictionary; also, Don +Libes <libes@cme.nist.gov> contributed some appropriate material +from his excellent book Life With UNIX. We thank Per +Lindberg <per@front.se>, author of the remarkable +Swedish-language 'zine Hackerbladet, for bringing +FOO! comics to our attention and smuggling one of the +IBM hacker underground's own baby jargon files out to us. Thanks also to +Maarten Litmaath for generously allowing the inclusion of the ASCII +pronunciation guide he formerly maintained. And our gratitude to Marc Weiser +of XEROX PARC <Marc_Weiser.PARC@xerox.com> for securing us +permission to quote from PARC's own jargon lexicon and shipping us a +copy.
It is a particular pleasure to acknowledge the major contributions of +Mark Brader and Steve Summit <scs@eskimo.com> to the File and +Dictionary; they have read and reread many drafts, checked facts, caught +typos, submitted an amazing number of thoughtful comments, and done yeoman +service in catching typos and minor usage bobbles. Their rare combination of +enthusiasm, persistence, wide-ranging technical knowledge, and precisionism in +matters of language has been of invaluable help. Indeed, the sustained volume +and quality of Mr. Brader's input over a decade and several different editions +has only allowed him to escape co-editor credit by the slimmest of +margins.
Finally, George V. Reilly <georgere@microsoft.com> helped +with TeX arcana and painstakingly proofread some 2.7 and 2.8 versions, and +Eric Tiedemann <est@thyrsus.com> contributed sage advice +throughout on rhetoric, amphigory, and philosophunculism.
Hackerdom easily tolerates a much wider range of sexual and lifestyle +variation than the mainstream culture. It includes a relatively large gay and +bisexual contingent. Hackers are somewhat more likely to live in polygynous +or polyandrous relationships, practice open marriage, or live in communes or +group houses. In this, as in general appearance, hackerdom semi-consciously +maintains ‘counterculture’ values.
Hackers will often make rhymes or puns in order to convert an ordinary +word or phrase into something more interesting. It is considered particularly +flavorful if the phrase is bent so as to include some +other jargon word; thus the computer hobbyist magazine Dr. Dobb's +Journal is almost always referred to among hackers as +‘Dr. Frob's Journal’ or simply ‘Dr. Frob's’. Terms of +this kind that have been in fairly wide use include names for +newspapers:
Boston Herald → Horrid (or Harried)
Boston Globe → Boston Glob
Houston (or San Francisco) Chronicle → the Crocknicle (or +the Comical)
New York Times → New York Slime
Wall Street Journal → Wall Street +Urinal
However, terms like these are often made up on the spur of the moment. +Standard examples include:
Data General → Dirty Genitals
IBM 360 → IBM Three-Sickly
Government Property — Do Not Duplicate (on keys) → +Government Duplicity — Do Not Propagate
for historical reasons → for hysterical +raisins
Margaret Jacks Hall (the CS building at Stanford) → +Marginal Hacks Hall
Microsoft → Microsloth
Internet Explorer → Internet Exploiter
FrontPage → AffrontPage
VB.NET → VB Nyet
Lotus Notes → Lotus Bloats
Microsoft Outlook → Microsoft Outhouse
Linux → Linsux
FreeBSD → FreeLSD
C# → C Flat
This is not really similar to the Cockney rhyming slang it has been +compared to in the past, because Cockney substitutions are opaque whereas +hacker punning jargon is intentionally transparent.
Hackish speech generally features extremely precise diction, careful +word choice, a relatively large working vocabulary, and relatively little use +of contractions or street slang. Dry humor, irony, puns, and a mildly +flippant attitude are highly valued — but an underlying seriousness and +intelligence are essential. One should use just enough jargon to communicate +precisely and identify oneself as a member of the culture; overuse of jargon +or a breathless, excessively gung-ho attitude is considered tacky and the mark +of a loser.
This speech style is a variety of the precisionist English normally +spoken by scientists, design engineers, and academics in technical fields. In +contrast with the methods of jargon construction, it is fairly constant +throughout hackerdom.
It has been observed that many hackers are confused by negative +questions — or, at least, that the people to whom they are talking are +often confused by the sense of their answers. The problem is that they have +done so much programming that distinguishes between
+if (going) ... + |
and
+if (!going) ... + |
that when they parse the question “Aren't you going?” it +may seem to be asking the opposite question from “Are you +going?”, and so to merit an answer in the opposite sense. This +confuses English-speaking non-hackers because they were taught to answer as +though the negative part weren't there. In some other languages (including +Russian, Chinese, and Japanese) the hackish interpretation is standard and the +problem wouldn't arise. Hackers often find themselves wishing for a word like +French ‘si’, German ‘doch’, or Dutch +‘jawel’ — a word with which one could unambiguously answer +‘yes’ to a negative question. (See also +mu)
For similar reasons, English-speaking hackers almost never use double +negatives, even if they live in a region where colloquial usage allows them. +The thought of uttering something that logically ought to be an affirmative +knowing it will be misparsed as a negative tends to disturb them.
In a related vein, hackers sometimes make a game of answering questions +containing logical connectives with a strictly literal rather than colloquial +interpretation. A non-hacker who is indelicate enough to ask a question like +“So, are you working on finding that bug now or +leaving it until later?” is likely to get the perfectly correct answer +“Yes!” (that is, “Yes, I'm doing it either now or later, +and you didn't ask which!”).
This was posted to Usenet by its author, Ed Nather +(<nather@astro.as.utexas.edu>), on May 21, 1983.
+A recent article devoted to the macho side of programming
+made the bald and unvarnished statement:
+
+ Real Programmers write in FORTRAN.
+
+Maybe they do now,
+in this decadent era of
+Lite beer, hand calculators, and “user-friendly” software
+but back in the Good Old Days,
+when the term “software” sounded funny
+and Real Computers were made out of drums and vacuum tubes,
+Real Programmers wrote in machine code.
+Not FORTRAN. Not RATFOR. Not, even, assembly language.
+Machine Code.
+Raw, unadorned, inscrutable hexadecimal numbers.
+Directly.
+
+Lest a whole new generation of programmers
+grow up in ignorance of this glorious past,
+I feel duty-bound to describe,
+as best I can through the generation gap,
+how a Real Programmer wrote code.
+I'll call him Mel,
+because that was his name.
+
+I first met Mel when I went to work for Royal McBee Computer Corp.,
+a now-defunct subsidiary of the typewriter company.
+The firm manufactured the LGP-30,
+a small, cheap (by the standards of the day)
+drum-memory computer,
+and had just started to manufacture
+the RPC-4000, a much-improved,
+bigger, better, faster — drum-memory computer.
+Cores cost too much,
+and weren't here to stay, anyway.
+(That's why you haven't heard of the company,
+or the computer.)
+
+I had been hired to write a FORTRAN compiler
+for this new marvel and Mel was my guide to its wonders.
+Mel didn't approve of compilers.
+
+“If a program can't rewrite its own code”,
+he asked, “what good is it?”
+
+Mel had written,
+in hexadecimal,
+the most popular computer program the company owned.
+It ran on the LGP-30
+and played blackjack with potential customers
+at computer shows.
+Its effect was always dramatic.
+The LGP-30 booth was packed at every show,
+and the IBM salesmen stood around
+talking to each other.
+Whether or not this actually sold computers
+was a question we never discussed.
+
+Mel's job was to re-write
+the blackjack program for the RPC-4000.
+(Port? What does that mean?)
+The new computer had a one-plus-one
+addressing scheme,
+in which each machine instruction,
+in addition to the operation code
+and the address of the needed operand,
+had a second address that indicated where, on the revolving drum,
+the next instruction was located.
+
+In modern parlance,
+every single instruction was followed by a GO TO!
+Put that in Pascal's pipe and smoke it.
+
+Mel loved the RPC-4000
+because he could optimize his code:
+that is, locate instructions on the drum
+so that just as one finished its job,
+the next would be just arriving at the “read head”
+and available for immediate execution.
+There was a program to do that job,
+an “optimizing assembler”,
+but Mel refused to use it.
+
+“You never know where it's going to put things”,
+he explained, “so you'd have to use separate constants”.
+
+It was a long time before I understood that remark.
+Since Mel knew the numerical value
+of every operation code,
+and assigned his own drum addresses,
+every instruction he wrote could also be considered
+a numerical constant.
+He could pick up an earlier “add” instruction, say,
+and multiply by it,
+if it had the right numeric value.
+His code was not easy for someone else to modify.
+
+I compared Mel's hand-optimized programs
+with the same code massaged by the optimizing assembler program,
+and Mel's always ran faster.
+That was because the “top-down” method of program design
+hadn't been invented yet,
+and Mel wouldn't have used it anyway.
+He wrote the innermost parts of his program loops first,
+so they would get first choice
+of the optimum address locations on the drum.
+The optimizing assembler wasn't smart enough to do it that way.
+
+Mel never wrote time-delay loops, either,
+even when the balky Flexowriter
+required a delay between output characters to work right.
+He just located instructions on the drum
+so each successive one was just past the read head
+when it was needed;
+the drum had to execute another complete revolution
+to find the next instruction.
+He coined an unforgettable term for this procedure.
+Although “optimum” is an absolute term,
+like “unique”, it became common verbal practice
+to make it relative:
+“not quite optimum” or “less optimum”
+or “not very optimum”.
+Mel called the maximum time-delay locations
+the “most pessimum”.
+
+After he finished the blackjack program
+and got it to run
+(“Even the initializer is optimized”,
+he said proudly),
+he got a Change Request from the sales department.
+The program used an elegant (optimized)
+random number generator
+to shuffle the “cards” and deal from the “deck”,
+and some of the salesmen felt it was too fair,
+since sometimes the customers lost.
+They wanted Mel to modify the program
+so, at the setting of a sense switch on the console,
+they could change the odds and let the customer win.
+
+Mel balked.
+He felt this was patently dishonest,
+which it was,
+and that it impinged on his personal integrity as a programmer,
+which it did,
+so he refused to do it.
+The Head Salesman talked to Mel,
+as did the Big Boss and, at the boss's urging,
+a few Fellow Programmers.
+Mel finally gave in and wrote the code,
+but he got the test backwards,
+and, when the sense switch was turned on,
+the program would cheat, winning every time.
+Mel was delighted with this,
+claiming his subconscious was uncontrollably ethical,
+and adamantly refused to fix it.
+
+After Mel had left the company for greener pa$ture$,
+the Big Boss asked me to look at the code
+and see if I could find the test and reverse it.
+Somewhat reluctantly, I agreed to look.
+Tracking Mel's code was a real adventure.
+
+I have often felt that programming is an art form,
+whose real value can only be appreciated
+by another versed in the same arcane art;
+there are lovely gems and brilliant coups
+hidden from human view and admiration, sometimes forever,
+by the very nature of the process.
+You can learn a lot about an individual
+just by reading through his code,
+even in hexadecimal.
+Mel was, I think, an unsung genius.
+
+Perhaps my greatest shock came
+when I found an innocent loop that had no test in it.
+No test. None.
+Common sense said it had to be a closed loop,
+where the program would circle, forever, endlessly.
+Program control passed right through it, however,
+and safely out the other side.
+It took me two weeks to figure it out.
+
+The RPC-4000 computer had a really modern facility
+called an index register.
+It allowed the programmer to write a program loop
+that used an indexed instruction inside;
+each time through,
+the number in the index register
+was added to the address of that instruction,
+so it would refer
+to the next datum in a series.
+He had only to increment the index register
+each time through.
+Mel never used it.
+
+Instead, he would pull the instruction into a machine register,
+add one to its address,
+and store it back.
+He would then execute the modified instruction
+right from the register.
+The loop was written so this additional execution time
+was taken into account —
+just as this instruction finished,
+the next one was right under the drum's read head,
+ready to go.
+But the loop had no test in it.
+
+The vital clue came when I noticed
+the index register bit,
+the bit that lay between the address
+and the operation code in the instruction word,
+was turned on —
+yet Mel never used the index register,
+leaving it zero all the time.
+When the light went on it nearly blinded me.
+
+He had located the data he was working on
+near the top of memory —
+the largest locations the instructions could address —
+so, after the last datum was handled,
+incrementing the instruction address
+would make it overflow.
+The carry would add one to the
+operation code, changing it to the next one in the instruction set:
+a jump instruction.
+Sure enough, the next program instruction was
+in address location zero,
+and the program went happily on its way.
+
+I haven't kept in touch with Mel,
+so I don't know if he ever gave in to the flood of
+change that has washed over programming techniques
+since those long-gone days.
+I like to think he didn't.
+In any event,
+I was impressed enough that I quit looking for the
+offending test,
+telling the Big Boss I couldn't find it.
+He didn't seem surprised.
+
+When I left the company,
+the blackjack program would still cheat
+if you turned on the right sense switch,
+and I think that's how it should be.
+I didn't feel comfortable
+hacking up the code of a Real Programmer.
+
This is one of hackerdom's great heroic epics, free verse or no. In a +few spare images it captures more about the esthetics and psychology of +hacking than all the scholarly volumes on the subject put together. (But for +an opposing point of view, see the entry for +Real Programmer.)
[1992 postscript — the author writes: “The original +submission to the net was not in free verse, nor any approximation to it +— it was straight prose style, in non-justified paragraphs. In bouncing +around the net it apparently got modified into the ‘free verse' form now +popular. In other words, it got hacked on the net. That seems appropriate, +somehow.” The author adds that he likes the ‘free-verse' version +better than his prose original...]
[1999 update: Mel's last name is now known. The manual for the LGP-30 +refers to “Mel Kaye of Royal McBee who did the bulk of the programming +[...] of the ACT 1 system”.]
[2001: The Royal McBee LPG-30 turns out to have one other claim to +fame. It turns out that meteorologist Edward Lorenz was doing weather +simulations on an LGP-30 when, in 1961, he discovered the “Butterfly +Effect” and computational chaos. This seems, somehow, +appropriate.]
[2002: A copy of the programming manual for the LGP-30 lives at http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/lgp-30-man.html]
We welcome new jargon, and corrections to or amplifications of existing +entries. You can improve your submission's chances of being included by +adding background information on user population and years of currency. +References to actual usage via URLs and/or Google pointers are particularly +welcomed.
All contributions and suggestions about the Jargon File will be +considered donations to be placed in the public domain as part of this File, +and may be used in subsequent paper editions. Submissions may be edited for +accuracy, clarity and concision.
We are looking to expand the File's range of technical specialties +covered. There are doubtless rich veins of jargon yet untapped in the +scientific computing, graphics, and networking hacker communities; also in +numerical analysis, computer architectures and VLSI design, language design, +and many other related fields. Send us your jargon!
We are not interested in straight technical terms +explained by textbooks or technical dictionaries unless an entry illuminates +‘underground’ meanings or aspects not covered by official +histories. We are also not interested in ‘joke’ entries — +there is a lot of humor in the file but it must flow naturally out of the +explanations of what hackers do and how they think.
It is OK to submit items of jargon you have originated if they have +spread to the point of being used by people who are not personally acquainted +with you. We prefer items to be attested by independent submission from two +different sites.
The Jargon File will be regularly maintained and made available for +browsing on the World Wide Web, and will include a version number. Read it, +pass it around, contribute — this is your +monument!
Here is a true story about a glass tty: One day an MIT hacker was in a +motorcycle accident and broke his leg. He had to stay in the hospital quite a +while, and got restless because he couldn't hack. Two +of his friends therefore took a terminal and a modem for it to the hospital, +so that he could use the computer by telephone from his hospital bed.
Now this happened some years before the spread of home computers, and +computer terminals were not a familiar sight to the average person. When the +two friends got to the hospital, a guard stopped them and asked what they were +carrying. They explained that they wanted to take a computer terminal to +their friend who was a patient.
The guard got out his list of things that patients were permitted to +have in their rooms: TV, radio, electric razor, typewriter, tape player, +... no computer terminals. Computer terminals weren't on the list, so +the guard wouldn't let it in. Rules are rules, you know. (This guard was +clearly a droid.)
Fair enough, said the two friends, and they left again. They were +frustrated, of course, because they knew that the terminal was as harmless as +a TV or anything else on the list... which gave them an idea.
The next day they returned, and the same thing happened: a guard stopped +them and asked what they were carrying. They said: “This is a TV +typewriter!” The guard was skeptical, so they plugged it in and +demonstrated it. “See? You just type on the keyboard and what you type +shows up on the TV screen.” Now the guard didn't stop to think about +how utterly useless a typewriter would be that didn't produce any paper copies +of what you typed; but this was clearly a TV typewriter, no doubt about it. +So he checked his list: “A TV is all right, a typewriter is all right +... okay, take it on in!”
[Historical note: Many years ago, Popular +Electronics published solder-it-yourself plans for a TV +typewriter. Despite the essential uselessness of the device, it was an +enormously popular project. Steve Ciarcia, the man behind +Byte magazine's “Circuit Cellar” feature, +resurrected this ghost in one of his books of the early 1980s. He ascribed +its popularity (no doubt correctly) to the feeling of power the builder could +achieve by being able to decide himself what would be shown on the TV. And, in +fact, the device was not entirely useless; when combined with a modem board, +it became a crude but serviceable terminal. —ESR]
[Antihistorical note: On September 23rd, 1992, the L.A. Times ran the +following bit in Steve Harvey's ‘Only in L.A.' column:
It must have been borrowed from a museum: Solomon Waters of Altadena, a +6-year-old first-grader, came home from his first day of school and excitedly +told his mother how he had written on “a machine that looks like a +computer--but without the TV screen.”
She asked him if it could have been a “typewriter.”
“Yeah! Yeah!” he said. “That's what it was +called.”
I have since investigated this matter and determined that many of +today's teenagers have never seen a slide rule, either.... +--ESR]
A standard construction in English is to double a verb and use it as an +exclamation, such as “Bang, bang!” or “Quack, +quack!”. Most of these are names for noises. Hackers also double +verbs as a concise, sometimes sarcastic comment on what the implied subject +does. Also, a doubled verb is often used to terminate a conversation, in the +process remarking on the current state of affairs or what the speaker intends +to do next. Typical examples involve win, +lose, hack, +flame, barf, +chomp:
“The disk heads just crashed.” “Lose, +lose.”
“Mostly he talked about his latest crock. Flame, +flame.”
“Boy, what a bagbiter! Chomp, chomp!
Some verb-doubled constructions have special meanings not immediately +obvious from the verb. These have their own listings in the lexicon.
The Usenet culture has one +tripling convention unrelated to this; the names of +‘joke’ topic groups often have a tripled last element. The first +and paradigmatic example was alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork (a +Muppet Show reference); other infamous examples have +included:
+alt.french.captain.borg.borg.borg +
+alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die +
+comp.unix.internals.system.calls.brk.brk.brk +
+sci.physics.edward.teller.boom.boom.boom +
+alt.sadistic.dentists.drill.drill.drill +
These two traditions fuse in the newsgroup alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb, devoted to +humor based on deliberately confounding parts of speech. Several observers +have noted that the contents of this group is excellently representative of +the peculiarities of hacker humor.
Hackers have relatively little ability to identify emotionally with +other people. This may be because hackers generally aren't much like +‘other people’. Unsurprisingly, hackers also tend towards +self-absorption, intellectual arrogance, and impatience with people and tasks +perceived to be wasting their time.
As cynical as hackers sometimes wax about the amount of idiocy in the +world, they tend by reflex to assume that everyone is as rational, +‘cool’, and imaginative as they consider themselves. This bias +often contributes to weakness in communication skills. Hackers tend to be +especially poor at confrontation and negotiation.
Another weakness of the hacker personality is a perverse tendancy to +attack all problems from the most technically complicated angle, just because +it may mean more interesting problems to solve, or cooler toys to play with. +Hackers sometimes have trouble grokking that the bubble gum and paperclip +hardware fix is actually the way to go, and that they really don't need to +convince the client to buy that shiny new tool they've had your eye on for two +months.
Because of their passionate embrace of (what they consider to be) the +Right Thing, hackers can be unfortunately intolerant +and bigoted on technical issues, in marked contrast to their general spirit of +camaraderie and tolerance of alternative viewpoints otherwise. Old-time +ITS partisans look down on the ever-growing hordes of +Unix and Linux hackers; Unix +aficionados despise VMS and Windows; and hackers who +are used to conventional command-line user interfaces loudly loathe +mouse-and-menu based systems such as the Macintosh. Hackers who don't indulge +in Usenet consider it a huge waste of time and +bandwidth; fans of old adventure games such as +ADVENT and Zork consider +MUDs to be glorified chat systems devoid of atmosphere +or interesting puzzles; hackers who are willing to devote endless hours to +Usenet or MUDs consider IRC to be a +real waste of time; IRCies think MUDs might be okay if +there weren't all those silly puzzles in the way. And, of course, there are +the perennial holy wars — +EMACS vs. vi, +big-endian vs. little-endian, +RISC vs. CISC, etc., etc., etc. As in society at large, the intensity and +duration of these debates is usually inversely proportional to the number of +objective, factual arguments available to buttress any position.
As a result of all the above traits, many hackers have difficulty +maintaining stable relationships. At worst, they can produce the classic +geek: withdrawn, relationally incompetent, sexually +frustrated, and desperately unhappy when not submerged in his or her craft. +Fortunately, this extreme is far less common than mainstream folklore paints +it — but almost all hackers will recognize something of themselves in +the unflattering paragraphs above.
Hackers are often monumentally disorganized and sloppy about dealing +with the physical world. Bills don't get paid on time, clutter piles up to +incredible heights in homes and offices, and minor maintenance tasks get +deferred indefinitely.
1994-95's fad behavioral disease was a syndrome called Attention Deficit +Disorder (ADD), supposedly characterized by (among other things) a combination +of short attention span with an ability to ‘hyperfocus’ +imaginatively on interesting tasks. In 1998-1999 another syndrome that is +said to overlap with many hacker traits entered popular awareness: Asperger's +syndrome (AS). This disorder is also sometimes called ‘high-function +autism’, though researchers are divided on whether AS is in fact a mild +form of autism or a distinct syndrome with a different etiology. AS patients +exhibit mild to severe deficits in interpreting facial and body-language cues +and in modeling or empathizing with others' emotions. Though some AS patients +exhibit mild retardation, others compensate for their deficits with high +intelligence and analytical ability, and frequently seek out technical fields +where problem-solving abilities are at a premium and people skills are +relatively unimportant. Both syndromes are thought to relate to abnormalities +in neurotransmitter chemistry, especially the brain's processing of +serotonin.
Many hackers have noticed that mainstream culture has shown a tendency +to pathologize and medicalize normal variations in personality, especially +those variations that make life more complicated for authority figures and +conformists. Thus, hackers aware of the issue tend to be among those +questioning whether ADD and AS actually exist; and if so whether they are +really ‘diseases’ rather than extremes of a normal genetic +variation like having freckles or being able to taste DPT. In either case, +they have a sneaking tendency to wonder if these syndromes are over-diagnosed +and over-treated. After all, people in authority will always be +inconvenienced by schoolchildren or workers or citizens who are prickly, +intelligent individualists — thus, any social system that depends on +authority relationships will tend to helpfully ostracize and therapize and +drug such ‘abnormal’ people until they are properly docile and +stupid and ‘well-socialized’.
So hackers tend to believe they have good reason for skepticism about +clinical explanations of the hacker personality. That being said, most would +also concede that some hacker traits coincide with indicators for +non-hyperactive ADD and AS — the status of caffeine as a hacker beverage of +choice may be connected to the fact that it bonds to the same neural receptors +as Ritalin, the drug most commonly prescribed for ADD. It is probably true +that boosters of both would find a rather higher rate of clinical ADD among +hackers than the supposedly mainstream-normal 3-5% (AS is rarer at +0.4-0.5%).
We've already seen that hackers often coin jargon by overgeneralizing +grammatical rules. This is one aspect of a more general fondness for +form-versus-content language jokes that shows up particularly in hackish +writing. One correspondent reports that he consistently misspells +‘wrong’ as ‘worng’. Others have been known to +criticize glitches in Jargon File drafts by observing (in the mode of Douglas +Hofstadter) “This sentence no verb”, or “Too +repetetetive”, or “Bad speling”, or “Incorrectspa +cing.” Similarly, intentional spoonerisms are often made of phrases +relating to confusion or things that are confusing; ‘dain bramage’ +for ‘brain damage’ is perhaps the most common (similarly, a hacker +would be likely to write “Excuse me, I'm cixelsyd today”, rather +than “I'm dyslexic today”). This sort of thing is quite common +and is enjoyed by all concerned.
Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses, much +to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if “Jim is going” is a +phrase, and so are “Bill runs” and “Spock groks”, +then hackers generally prefer to write: “Jim is going”, +“Bill runs”, and “Spock groks”. This is incorrect +according to standard American usage (which would put the continuation commas +and the final period inside the string quotes); however, it is +counter-intuitive to hackers to mutilate literal strings with characters that +don't belong in them. Given the sorts of examples that can come up in +discussions of programming, American-style quoting can even be grossly +misleading. When communicating command lines or small pieces of code, extra +characters can be a real pain in the neck.
Consider, for example, a sentence in a vi +tutorial that looks like this:
Then delete a line from the file by typing “dd”.
Standard usage would make this
Then delete a line from the file by typing “dd.”
but that would be very bad — because the reader would be prone to +type the string d-d-dot, and it happens that in +vi(1), +dot repeats the last command accepted. The net result would be to delete +two lines!
The Jargon File follows hackish usage throughout.
Interestingly, a similar style is now preferred practice in Great +Britain, though the older style (which became established for typographical +reasons having to do with the aesthetics of comma and quotes in typeset text) +is still accepted there. Hart's Rules and the +Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors call the +hacker-like style ‘new’ or ‘logical’ quoting. This +returns British English to the style many other languages (including Spanish, +French, Italian, Catalan, and German) have been using all along.
Another hacker habit is a tendency to distinguish between +‘scare’ quotes and ‘speech’ quotes; that is, to use +British-style single quotes for marking and reserve American-style double +quotes for actual reports of speech or text included from elsewhere. +Interestingly, some authorities describe this as correct general usage, but +mainstream American English has gone to using double-quotes indiscriminately +enough that hacker usage appears marked [and, in fact, I thought this was a +personal quirk of mine until I checked with Usenet —ESR] One further +permutation that is definitely not standard is a hackish +tendency to do marking quotes by using apostrophes (single quotes) in pairs; +that is, ’like this’. This is modelled on string and character +literal syntax in some programming languages (reinforced by the fact that many +character-only terminals display the apostrophe in typewriter style, as a +vertical single quote).
One quirk that shows up frequently in the email +style of Unix hackers in particular is a tendency for some things that are +normally all-lowercase (including usernames and the names of commands and C +routines) to remain uncapitalized even when they occur at the beginning of +sentences. It is clear that, for many hackers, the case of such identifiers +becomes a part of their internal representation (the ‘spelling’) +and cannot be overridden without mental effort (an appropriate reflex because +Unix and C both distinguish cases and confusing them can lead to +lossage). A way of escaping this dilemma is simply to +avoid using these constructions at the beginning of sentences.
There seems to be a meta-rule behind these nonstandard hackerisms to the +effect that precision of expression is more important than conformance to +traditional rules; where the latter create ambiguity or lose information they +can be discarded without a second thought. It is notable in this respect that +other hackish inventions (for example, in vocabulary) also tend to carry very +precise shades of meaning even when constructed to appear slangy and loose. +In fact, to a hacker, the contrast between ‘loose’ form and +‘tight’ content in jargon is a substantial part of its +humor!
Hackers have also developed a number of punctuation and emphasis +conventions adapted to single-font all-ASCII communications links, and these +are occasionally carried over into written documents even when normal means of +font changes, underlining, and the like are available.
One of these is that TEXT IN ALL CAPS IS INTERPRETED AS +‘LOUD’, and this becomes such an ingrained synesthetic reflex that +a person who goes to caps-lock while in talk mode may +be asked to “stop shouting, please, you're hurting my +ears!”.
Also, it is common to use bracketing with unusual characters to signify +emphasis. The asterisk is most common, as in “What the *hell*?” +even though this interferes with the common use of the asterisk suffix as a +footnote mark. The underscore is also common, suggesting underlining (this is +particularly common with book titles; for example, “It is often alleged +that Joe Haldeman wrote _The_Forever_War_ as a rebuttal to Robert Heinlein's +earlier novel of the future military, _Starship_Troopers_.”). Other +forms exemplified by “=hell=”, “\hell/”, or +“/hell/” are occasionally seen (it's claimed that in the last +example the first slash pushes the letters over to the right to make them +italic, and the second keeps them from falling over). On FidoNet, you might +see #bright# and ^dark^ text, which was actually interpreted by some reader +software. Finally, words may also be emphasized L I K E T H I S, or by a +series of carets (^) under them on the next line of the text.
There is a semantic difference between *emphasis like this* (which +emphasizes the phrase as a whole), and *emphasis* *like* *this* (which +suggests the writer speaking very slowly and distinctly, as if to a very young +child or a mentally impaired person). Bracketing a word with the +‘*’ character may also indicate that the writer wishes readers to +consider that an action is taking place or that a sound is being made. +Examples: *bang*, *hic*, *ring*, *grin*, *kick*, *stomp*, *mumble*.
One might also see the above sound effects as <bang>, <hic>, +<ring>, <grin>, <kick>, <stomp>, <mumble>. This +use of angle brackets to mark their contents originally derives from +conventions used in BNF, but since about 1993 it has +been reinforced by the HTML markup used on the World Wide Web.
Angle-bracket enclosure is also used to indicate that a term stands for +some random member of a larger class (this is straight +from BNF). Examples like the following are common: +
So this <ethnic> walks into a bar one day...
There is also an accepted convention for ‘writing under +erasure’; the text>
Be nice to this fool^H^H^H^Hgentleman, he's visiting from corporate +HQ.
reads roughly as “Be nice to this fool, er, +gentleman...”, with irony emphasized. The digraph ^H is often +used as a print representation for a backspace, and was actually very visible +on old-style printing terminals. As the text was being composed the characters +would be echoed and printed immediately, and when a correction was made the +backspace keystrokes would be echoed with the string ‘^H’. Of +course, the final composed text would have no trace of the backspace +characters (or the original erroneous text).
Accidental writing under erasure occurs when using the Unix +talk program to chat interactively to another user. On a +PC-style keyboard most users instinctively press the backspace key to delete +mistakes, but this may not achieve the desired effect, and merely displays a +^H symbol. The user typically presses backspace a few times before their brain +realises the problem — especially likely if the user is a touch-typist +— and since each character is transmitted as soon as it is typed, +Freudian slips and other inadvertent admissions are (barring network delays) +clearly visible for the other user to see.
Deliberate use of ^H for writing under erasure parallels (and may have +been influenced by) the ironic use of ‘slashouts’ in +science-fiction fanzines.
A related habit uses editor commands to signify corrections to previous +text. This custom faded in email as more mailers got good editing +capabilities, only to take on new life on IRCs and other line-based chat +systems.
+charlie: I've seen that term used on alt.foobar often. +lisa: Send it to Erik for the File. +lisa: Oops...s/Erik/Eric/. + |
The s/Erik/Eric/ says “change Erik to Eric in the +preceding”. This syntax is borrowed from the Unix editing tools +ed and sed, but is widely recognized by +non-Unix hackers as well.
In a formula, * signifies multiplication but two asterisks in a row are +a shorthand for exponentiation (this derives from FORTRAN, and is also used in +Ada). Thus, one might write 2 ** 8 = 256.
Another notation for exponentiation one sees more frequently uses the +caret (^, ASCII 1011110); one might write instead 2^8 = 256. This goes all +the way back to Algol-60, which used the archaic ASCII ‘up-arrow’ +that later became the caret; this was picked up by Kemeny and Kurtz's original +BASIC, which in turn influenced the design of the +bc(1) +and +dc(1) +Unix tools, which have probably done most to reinforce the convention on +Usenet. (TeX math mode also uses ^ for exponention.) The notation is mildly +confusing to C programmers, because ^ means bitwise exclusive-or in C. +Despite this, it was favored 3:1 over ** in a late-1990 snapshot of Usenet. +It is used consistently in this lexicon.
In on-line exchanges, hackers tend to use decimal forms or improper +fractions (‘3.5’ or ‘7/2’) rather than +‘typewriter style’ mixed fractions (‘3-1/2’). The +major motive here is probably that the former are more readable in a +monospaced font, together with a desire to avoid the risk that the latter +might be read as ‘three minus one-half’. The decimal form is +definitely preferred for fractions with a terminating decimal representation; +there may be some cultural influence here from the high status of scientific +notation.
Another on-line convention, used especially for very large or very small +numbers, is taken from C (which derived it from FORTRAN). This is a form of +‘scientific notation’ using ‘e’ to replace +‘*10^’; for example, one year is about 3e7 (that is, 3 × 10 +7) seconds long.
The tilde (~) is commonly used in a quantifying sense of +‘approximately’; that is, ~50 means +‘about fifty’.
On Usenet and in the MUD world, common C boolean, +logical, and relational operators such as |, +&, ||, +&&, !, ==, +!=, >, <, +>=, and <= are often combined with +English. The Pascal not-equals, <>, is also +recognized, and occasionally one sees /= for not-equals +(from Ada, Common Lisp, and Fortran 90). The use of prefix ‘!’ as +a loose synonym for ‘not-’ or ‘no-’ is particularly +common; thus, ‘!clue’ is read ‘no-clue’ or +‘clueless’.
A related practice borrows syntax from preferred programming languages +to express ideas in a natural-language text. For example, one might see the +following:
+In <jrh578689@thudpucker.com> J. R. Hacker wrote: +<I recently had occasion to field-test the Snafu +<Systems 2300E adaptive gonkulator. The price was +<right, and the racing stripe on the case looked +<kind of neat, but its performance left something +<to be desired. + +Yeah, I tried one out too. + +#ifdef FLAME +Hasn't anyone told those idiots that you can't get +decent bogon suppression with AFJ filters at today's +net volumes? +#endif /* FLAME */ + +I guess they figured the price premium for true +frame-based semantic analysis was too high. +Unfortunately, it's also the only workable approach. +I wouldn't recommend purchase of this product unless +you're on a *very* tight budget. + +#include <disclaimer.h> +-- + == Frank Foonly (Fubarco Systems) + |
In the above, the #ifdef/#endif +pair is a conditional compilation syntax from C; here, it implies that the +text between (which is a flame) should be evaluated +only if you have turned on (or defined on) the switch FLAME. The +#include at the end is C for “include standard +disclaimer here”; the ‘standard disclaimer’ is understood +to read, roughly, “These are my personal opinions and not to be +construed as the official position of my employer.”
The top section in the example, with < at the left margin, is an +example of an inclusion convention we'll discuss below.
More recently, following on the huge popularity of the World Wide Web, +pseudo-HTML markup has become popular for similar purposes:
+<flame> +Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries! +</flame> + |
You'll even see this with an HTML-style attribute modifier:
+<flame intensity="100%"> +You seem well-suited for a career in government. +</flame> + |
Another recent (late 1990s) construction now common on Usenet seems to +be borrowed from Unix shell syntax or Perl. It consists of using a dollar +sign before an uppercased form of a word or acronym to suggest any +random member of the class indicated by the word. +Thus: ‘$PHB’ means “any random member of the class +‘Pointy-Haired Boss’”.
Hackers also mix letters and numbers more freely than in mainstream +usage. In particular, it is good hackish style to write a digit sequence +where you intend the reader to understand the text string that names that +number in English. So, hackers prefer to write ‘1970s’ rather +than ‘nineteen-seventies’ or ‘1970's’ (the latter +looks like a possessive).
It should also be noted that hackers exhibit much less reluctance to use +multiply-nested parentheses than is normal in English. Part of this is almost +certainly due to influence from LISP (which uses deeply nested parentheses +(like this (see?)) in its syntax a lot), but it has also been suggested that a +more basic hacker trait of enjoying playing with complexity and pushing +systems to their limits is in operation.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that many studies of on-line +communication have shown that electronic links have a de-inhibiting effect on +people. Deprived of the body-language cues through which emotional state is +expressed, people tend to forget everything about other parties except what is +presented over that ASCII link. This has both good and bad effects. A good +one is that it encourages honesty and tends to break down hierarchical +authority relationships; a bad one is that it may encourage depersonalization +and gratuitous rudeness. Perhaps in response to this, experienced netters +often display a sort of conscious formal +politesse in their writing that has passed out +of fashion in other spoken and written media (for example, the phrase +“Well said, sir!” is not uncommon).
Many introverted hackers who are next to inarticulate in person +communicate with considerable fluency over the net, perhaps precisely because +they can forget on an unconscious level that they are dealing with people and +thus don't feel stressed and anxious as they would face to face.
Though it is considered gauche to publicly criticize posters for poor +spelling or grammar, the network places a premium on literacy and clarity of +expression. It may well be that future historians of literature will see in +it a revival of the great tradition of personal letters as art.
