JargonFile/entries/brain-damaged.txt

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2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
brain-damaged
2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
adj. 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.