28 lines
1.7 KiB
Plaintext
28 lines
1.7 KiB
Plaintext
random
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adj. 1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical definition); weird. The
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system's been behaving pretty randomly. 2. Assorted; undistinguished. Who
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was at the conference? Just a bunch of random business types. 3.
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(pejorative) Frivolous; unproductive; undirected. He's just a random loser.
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4. Incoherent or inelegant; poorly chosen; not well organized. The program
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has a random set of misfeatures. That's a random name for that function.
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Well, all the names were chosen pretty randomly. 5. In no particular order,
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though deterministic. The I/O channels are in a pool, and when a file is
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opened one is chosen randomly. 6. Arbitrary. It generates a random name for
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the scratch file. 7. Gratuitously wrong, i.e., poorly done and for no good
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apparent reason. For example, a program that handles file name defaulting in
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a particularly useless way, or an assembler routine that could easily have
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been coded using only three registers, but redundantly uses seven for values
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with non-overlapping lifetimes, so that no one else can invoke it without
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first saving four extra registers. What randomness ! 8. n. A random hacker;
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used particularly of high-school students who soak up computer time and
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generally get in the way. 9. n. Anyone who is not a hacker (or, sometimes,
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anyone not known to the hacker speaking); the noun form of sense 2. I went
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to the talk, but the audience was full of randoms asking bogus questions.
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10. n. (occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random Hall. See also J.
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Random , some random X. 11. [UK] Conversationally, a non sequitur or
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something similarly out-of-the-blue. As in: Stop being so random! This sense
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equates to hatstand , taken from the Viz comic character Roger Irrelevant -
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He's completely Hatstand.
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