2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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blivet
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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/bliv'@t/ , n. [allegedly from a World War II military term meaning ten
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pounds of manure in a five-pound bag ] 1. An intractable problem. 2. A
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crucial piece of hardware that can't be fixed or replaced if it breaks. 3. A
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tool that has been hacked over by so many incompetent programmers that it
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has become an unmaintainable tissue of hacks. 4. An out-of-control but
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unkillable development effort. 5. An embarrassing bug that pops up during a
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customer demo. 6. In the subjargon of computer security specialists, a
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denial-of-service attack performed by hogging limited resources that have no
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access controls (for example, shared spool space on a multi-user system).
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This term has other meanings in other technical cultures; among experimental
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physicists and hardware engineers of various kinds it seems to mean any
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random object of unknown purpose (similar to hackish use of frob ). It has
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also been used to describe an amusing trick-the-eye drawing resembling a
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three-pronged fork that appears to depict a three-dimensional object until
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one realizes that the parts fit together in an impossible way.
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