JargonFile/entries/wormhole.txt

17 lines
926 B
Plaintext
Raw Normal View History

2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
wormhole
2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
/wermhohl/ , n. [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).