32 lines
4.1 KiB
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32 lines
4.1 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>SEX</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../S.html" title="S"/><link rel="previous" href="server.html" title="server"/><link rel="next" href="sex-changer.html" title="sex changer"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">SEX</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="server.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">S</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="sex-changer.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="SEX"/><dt xmlns="" id="SEX"><b>SEX</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="pronunciation">/seks/</span></dt></dt><dd><p> [Sun Users' Group & elsewhere] <span class="grammar">n.</span> </p></dd><dd><p> 1. Software EXchange. A technique invented by the blue-green algae
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hundreds of millions of years ago to speed up their evolution, which had
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been terribly slow up until then. Today, SEX parties are popular among
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hackers and others (of course, these are no longer limited to exchanges of
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genetic software). In general, SEX parties are a
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<a href="../G/Good-Thing.html"><i class="glossterm">Good Thing</i></a>, but unprotected SEX can propagate a
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<a href="../V/virus.html"><i class="glossterm">virus</i></a>. See also
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<a href="../P/pubic-directory.html"><i class="glossterm">pubic directory</i></a>. </p></dd><dd><p> 2. The rather Freudian mnemonic often used for Sign EXtend, a
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machine instruction found in the <a href="../P/PDP-11.html"><i class="glossterm">PDP-11</i></a> and many
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other architectures. The RCA 1802 chip used in the early Elf and SuperElf
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personal computers had a ‘SEt X register’ SEX instruction, but
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this seems to have had little folkloric impact. The Data General
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instruction set also had <b class="command">SEX</b>.</p><p><a href="../D/DEC.html"><i class="glossterm">DEC</i></a>'s engineers nearly got a
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<a href="../P/PDP-11.html"><i class="glossterm">PDP-11</i></a> assembler that used the <b class="command">SEX</b> mnemonic out the door at one time, but (for
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once) marketing wasn't asleep and forced a change. That wasn't the last
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time this happened, either. The author of <i class="citetitle">The Intel 8086
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Primer</i>, who was one of the original designers of the 8086,
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noted that there was originally a <b class="command">SEX</b>
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instruction on that processor, too. He says that Intel management got cold
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feet and decreed that it be changed, and thus the instruction was renamed
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<b class="command">CBW</b> and <b class="command">CWD</b>
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(depending on what was being extended). Amusingly, the Intel 8048 (the
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microcontroller used in IBM PC keyboards) is also missing straight <b class="command">SEX</b> but has logical-or and logical-and instructions
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<b class="command">ORL</b> and <b class="command">ANL</b>.</p><p>The Motorola 6809, used in the Radio Shack Color Computer and in
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U.K.'s ‘Dragon 32’ personal computer, actually had an official
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<b class="command">SEX</b> instruction; the 6502 in the Apple II
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with which it competed did not. British hackers thought this made perfect
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mythic sense; after all, it was commonly observed, you could (on some
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theoretical level) have sex with a dragon, but you can't have sex with an
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apple.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="server.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../S.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="sex-changer.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">server </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> sex changer</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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