19 lines
1.1 KiB
Plaintext
19 lines
1.1 KiB
Plaintext
blivet
|
|
|
|
/bliv'@t/ , n. [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.
|
|
|