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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.07.00*END* _________________________________________________________________ Node:Top, Next:[2]Introduction, Previous:[3](dir), Up:[4](dir) #======= THIS IS THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 4.2.2, 20 AUG 2000 =======# This is the Jargon File, a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor. This document (the Jargon File) is in the public domain, to be freely used, shared, and modified. There are (by intention) no legal restraints on what you can do with it, but there are traditions about its proper use to which many hackers are quite strongly attached. Please extend the courtesy of proper citation when you quote the File, ideally with a version number, as it will change and grow over time. (Examples of appropriate citation form: "Jargon File 4.2.2" or "The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 4.2.2, 20 AUG 2000".) The Jargon File is a common heritage of the hacker culture. Over the years a number of individuals have volunteered considerable time to maintaining the File and been recognized by the net at large as editors of it. Editorial responsibilities include: to collate contributions and suggestions from others; to seek out corroborating information; to cross-reference related entries; to keep the file in a consistent format; and to announce and distribute updated versions periodically. Current volunteer editors include: Eric Raymond [5]esr@snark.thyrsus.com Although there is no requirement that you do so, it is considered good form to check with an editor before quoting the File in a published work or commercial product. We may have additional information that would be helpful to you and can assist you in framing your quote to reflect not only the letter of the File but its spirit as well. All contributions and suggestions about this file sent to a volunteer editor are gratefully received and will be regarded, unless otherwise labelled, as freely given donations for possible use as part of this public-domain file. From time to time a snapshot of this file has been polished, edited, and formatted for commercial publication with the cooperation of the volunteer editors and the hacker community at large. If you wish to have a bound paper copy of this file, you may find it convenient to purchase one of these. They often contain additional material not found in on-line versions. The two `authorized' editions so far are described in the Revision History section; there may be more in the future. * [6]Introduction: The purpose and scope of this File * [7]A Few Terms: Of Slang, Jargon and Techspeak * [8]Revision History: How the File came to be * [9]Jargon Construction: How hackers invent jargon * [10]Hacker Writing Style: How they write * [11]Email Quotes: And the Inclusion Problem * [12]Hacker Speech Style: How hackers talk * [13]International Style: Some notes on usage outside the U.S. * [14]Lamer-speak: Crackers, Phreaks, and Lamers * [15]Pronunciation Guide: How to read the pronunciation keys * [16]Other Lexicon Conventions: How to read lexicon entries * [17]Format for New Entries: How to submit new entries for the File * [18]The Jargon Lexicon: The lexicon itself * [19]Appendix A: Hacker Folklore * [20]Appendix B: A Portrait of J. Random Hacker * [21]Appendix C: Helping Hacker Culture Grow * [22]Bibliography: For your further enjoyment _________________________________________________________________ Node:Introduction, Next:[23]A Few Terms, Previous:[24]Top, Up:[25]Top Introduction This document is a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures of computer hackers. Though some technical material is included for background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary; what we describe here is the language hackers use among themselves for fun, social communication, and technical debate. The `hacker culture' is actually a loosely networked collection of subcultures that is nevertheless conscious of some important shared experiences, shared roots, and shared values. It has its own myths, heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. Because hackers as a group are particularly creative people who define themselves partly by rejection of `normal' values and working habits, it has unusually rich and conscious traditions for an intentional culture less than 40 years old. As usual with slang, the special vocabulary of hackers helps hold their culture together -- it helps hackers recognize each other's places in the community and expresses shared values and experiences. Also as usual, not knowing the slang (or using it inappropriately) defines one as an outsider, a mundane, or (worst of all in hackish vocabulary) possibly even a [26]suit. All human cultures use slang in this threefold way -- as a tool of communication, and of inclusion, and of exclusion. Among hackers, though, slang has a subtler aspect, paralleled perhaps in the slang of jazz musicians and some kinds of fine artists but hard to detect in most technical or scientific cultures; parts of it are code for shared states of consciousness. There is a whole range of altered states and problem-solving mental stances basic to high-level hacking which don't fit into conventional linguistic reality any better than a Coltrane solo or one of Maurits Escher's `trompe l'oeil' compositions (Escher is a favorite of hackers), and hacker slang encodes these subtleties in many unobvious ways. As a simple example, take the distinction between a [27]kluge and an [28]elegant solution, and the differing connotations attached to each. The distinction is not only of engineering significance; it reaches right back into the nature of the generative processes in program design and asserts something important about two different kinds of relationship between the hacker and the hack. Hacker slang is unusually rich in implications of this kind, of overtones and undertones that illuminate the hackish psyche. But there is more. Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are very conscious and inventive in their use of language. These traits seem to be common in young children, but the conformity-enforcing machine we are pleased to call an educational system bludgeons them out of most of us before adolescence. Thus, linguistic invention in most subcultures of the modern West is a halting and largely unconscious process. Hackers, by contrast, regard slang formation and use as a game to be played for conscious pleasure. Their inventions thus display an almost unique combination of the neotenous enjoyment of language-play with the discrimination of educated and powerful intelligence. Further, the electronic media which knit them together are fluid, `hot' connections, well adapted to both the dissemination of new slang and the ruthless culling of weak and superannuated specimens. The results of this process give us perhaps a uniquely intense and accelerated view of linguistic evolution in action. Hacker slang also challenges some common linguistic and anthropological assumptions. For example, it has recently become fashionable to speak of `low-context' versus `high-context' communication, and to classify cultures by the preferred context level of their languages and art forms. It is usually claimed that low-context communication (characterized by precision, clarity, and completeness of self-contained utterances) is typical in cultures which value logic, objectivity, individualism, and competition; by contrast, high-context communication (elliptical, emotive, nuance-filled, multi-modal, heavily coded) is associated with cultures which value subjectivity, consensus, cooperation, and tradition. What then are we to make of hackerdom, which is themed around extremely low-context interaction with computers and exhibits primarily "low-context" values, but cultivates an almost absurdly high-context slang style? The intensity and consciousness of hackish invention make a compilation of hacker slang a particularly effective window into the surrounding culture -- and, in fact, this one is the latest version of an evolving compilation called the `Jargon File', maintained by hackers themselves for over 15 years. This one (like its ancestors) is primarily a lexicon, but also includes topic entries which collect background or sidelight information on hacker culture that would be awkward to try to subsume under individual slang definitions. Though the format is that of a reference volume, it is intended that the material be enjoyable to browse. Even a complete outsider should find at least a chuckle on nearly every page, and much that is amusingly thought-provoking. But it is also true that hackers use humorous wordplay to make strong, sometimes combative statements about what they feel. Some of these entries reflect the views of opposing sides in disputes that have been genuinely passionate; this is deliberate. We have not tried to moderate or pretty up these disputes; rather we have attempted to ensure that everyone's sacred cows get gored, impartially. Compromise is not particularly a hackish virtue, but the honest presentation of divergent viewpoints is. The reader with minimal computer background who finds some references incomprehensibly technical can safely ignore them. We have not felt it either necessary or desirable to eliminate all such; they, too, contribute flavor, and one of this document's major intended audiences -- fledgling hackers already partway inside the culture -- will benefit from them. A selection of longer items of hacker folklore and humor is included in [29]Appendix A. The `outside' reader's attention is particularly directed to the Portrait of J. Random Hacker in [30]Appendix B. Appendix C, the [31]Bibliography, lists some non-technical works which have either influenced or described the hacker culture. Because hackerdom is an intentional culture (one each individual must choose by action to join), one should not be surprised that the line between description and influence can become more than a little blurred. Earlier versions of the Jargon File have played a central role in spreading hacker language and the culture that goes with it to successively larger populations, and we hope and expect that this one will do likewise. _________________________________________________________________ Node:A Few Terms, Next:[32]Revision History, Previous:[33]Introduction, Up:[34]Top Of Slang, Jargon, and Techspeak Linguists usually refer to informal language as `slang' and reserve the term `jargon' for the technical vocabularies of various occupations. However, the ancestor of this collection was called the `Jargon File', and hacker slang is traditionally `the jargon'. When talking about the jargon there is therefore no convenient way to distinguish it from what a linguist would call hackers' jargon -- the formal vocabulary they learn from textbooks, technical papers, and manuals. To make a confused situation worse, the line between hacker slang and the vocabulary of technical programming and computer science is fuzzy, and shifts over time. Further, this vocabulary is shared with a wider technical culture of programmers, many of whom are not hackers and do not speak or recognize hackish slang. Accordingly, this lexicon will try to be as precise as the facts of usage permit about the distinctions among three categories: * `slang': informal language from mainstream English or non-technical subcultures (bikers, rock fans, surfers, etc). * `jargon': without qualifier, denotes informal `slangy' language peculiar to or predominantly found among hackers -- the subject of this lexicon. * `techspeak': the formal technical vocabulary of programming, computer science, electronics, and other fields connected to hacking. This terminology will be consistently used throughout the remainder of this lexicon. The jargon/techspeak distinction is the delicate one. A lot of techspeak originated as jargon, and there is a steady continuing uptake of jargon into techspeak. On the other hand, a lot of jargon arises from overgeneralization of techspeak terms (there is more about this in the [35]Jargon Construction section below). In general, we have considered techspeak any term that communicates primarily by a denotation well established in textbooks, technical dictionaries, or standards documents. A few obviously techspeak terms (names of operating systems, languages, or documents) are listed when they are tied to hacker folklore that isn't covered in formal sources, or sometimes to convey critical historical background necessary to understand other entries to which they are cross-referenced. Some other techspeak senses of jargon words are listed in order to make the jargon senses clear; where the text does not specify that a straight technical sense is under discussion, these are marked with `[techspeak]' as an etymology. Some entries have a primary sense marked this way, with subsequent jargon meanings explained in terms of it. We have also tried to indicate (where known) the apparent origins of terms. The results are probably the least reliable information in the lexicon, for several reasons. For one thing, it is well known that many hackish usages have been independently reinvented multiple times, even among the more obscure and intricate neologisms. It often seems that the generative processes underlying hackish jargon formation have an internal logic so powerful as to create substantial parallelism across separate cultures and even in different languages! For another, the networks tend to propagate innovations so quickly that `first use' is often impossible to pin down. And, finally, compendia like this one alter what they observe by implicitly stamping cultural approval on terms and widening their use. Despite these problems, the organized collection of jargon-related oral history for the new compilations has enabled us to put to rest quite a number of folk etymologies, place credit where credit is due, and illuminate the early history of many important hackerisms such as [36]kluge, [37]cruft, and [38]foo. We believe specialist lexicographers will find many of the historical notes more than casually instructive. _________________________________________________________________ Node:Revision History, Next:[39]Jargon Construction, Previous:[40]A Few Terms, Up:[41]Top Revision History The original Jargon File was a collection of hacker jargon from technical cultures including the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI lab (SAIL), and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities including Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU), and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). The Jargon File (hereafter referred to as `jargon-1' or `the File') was begun by Raphael Finkel at Stanford in 1975. From this time until the plug was finally pulled on the SAIL computer in 1991, the File was named AIWORD.RF[UP,DOC] there. Some terms in it date back considerably earlier ([42]frob and some senses of [43]moby, for instance, go back to the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT and are believed to date at least back to the early 1960s). The revisions of jargon-1 were all unnumbered and may be collectively considered `Version 1'. In 1976, Mark Crispin, having seen an announcement about the File on the SAIL computer, [44]FTPed a copy of the File to MIT. He noticed that it was hardly restricted to `AI words' and so stored the file on his directory as AI:MRC;SAIL JARGON. The file was quickly renamed JARGON > (the `>' caused versioning under ITS) as a flurry of enhancements were made by Mark Crispin and Guy L. Steele Jr. Unfortunately, amidst all this activity, nobody thought of correcting the term `jargon' to `slang' until the compendium had already become widely known as the Jargon File. Raphael Finkel dropped out of active participation shortly thereafter and Don Woods became the SAIL contact for the File (which was subsequently kept in duplicate at SAIL and MIT, with periodic resynchronizations). The File expanded by fits and starts until about 1983; Richard Stallman was prominent among the contributors, adding many MIT and ITS-related coinages. In Spring 1981, a hacker named Charles Spurgeon got a large chunk of the File published in Stewart Brand's "CoEvolution Quarterly" (issue 29, pages 26-35) with illustrations by Phil Wadler and Guy Steele (including a couple of the Crunchly cartoons). This appears to have been the File's first paper publication. A late version of jargon-1, expanded with commentary for the mass market, was edited by Guy Steele into a book published in 1983 as "The Hacker's Dictionary" (Harper & Row CN 1082, ISBN 0-06-091082-8). The other jargon-1 editors (Raphael Finkel, Don Woods, and Mark Crispin) contributed to this revision, as did Richard M. Stallman and Geoff Goodfellow. This book (now out of print) is hereafter referred to as `Steele-1983' and those six as the Steele-1983 coauthors. Shortly after the publication of Steele-1983, the File effectively stopped growing and changing. Originally, this was due to a desire to freeze the file temporarily to facilitate the production of Steele-1983, but external conditions caused the `temporary' freeze to become permanent. The AI Lab culture had been hit hard in the late 1970s by funding cuts and the resulting administrative decision to use vendor-supported hardware and software instead of homebrew whenever possible. At MIT, most AI work had turned to dedicated LISP Machines. At the same time, the commercialization of AI technology lured some of the AI Lab's best and brightest away to startups along the Route 128 strip in Massachusetts and out West in Silicon Valley. The startups built LISP machines for MIT; the central MIT-AI computer became a [45]TWENEX system rather than a host for the AI hackers' beloved [46]ITS. The Stanford AI Lab had effectively ceased to exist by 1980, although the SAIL computer continued as a Computer Science Department resource until 1991. Stanford became a major [47]TWENEX site, at one point operating more than a dozen TOPS-20 systems; but by the mid-1980s most of the interesting software work was being done on the emerging BSD Unix standard. In April 1983, the PDP-10-centered cultures that had nourished the File were dealt a death-blow by the cancellation of the Jupiter project at Digital Equipment Corporation. The File's compilers, already dispersed, moved on to other things. Steele-1983 was partly a monument to what its authors thought was a dying tradition; no one involved realized at the time just how wide its influence was to be. By the mid-1980s the File's content was dated, but the legend that had grown up around it never quite died out. The book, and softcopies obtained off the ARPANET, circulated even in cultures far removed from MIT and Stanford; the content exerted a strong and continuing influence on hacker language and humor. Even as the advent of the microcomputer and other trends fueled a tremendous expansion of hackerdom, the File (and related materials such as the [48]Some AI Koans in Appendix A) came to be seen as a sort of sacred epic, a hacker-culture Matter of Britain chronicling the heroic exploits of the Knights of the Lab. The pace of change in hackerdom at large accelerated tremendously -- but the Jargon File, having passed from living document to icon, remained essentially untouched for seven years. This revision contains nearly the entire text of a late version of jargon-1 (a few obsolete PDP-10-related entries were dropped after careful consultation with the editors of Steele-1983). It merges in about 80% of the Steele-1983 text, omitting some framing material and a very few entries introduced in Steele-1983 that are now also obsolete. This new version casts a wider net than the old Jargon File; its aim is to cover not just AI or PDP-10 hacker culture but all the technical computing cultures wherein the true hacker-nature is manifested. More than half of the entries now derive from [49]Usenet and represent jargon now current in the C and Unix communities, but special efforts have been made to collect jargon from other cultures including IBM PC programmers, Amiga fans, Mac enthusiasts, and even the IBM mainframe world. Eric S. Raymond [50] maintains the new File with assistance from Guy L. Steele Jr. [51]; these are the persons primarily reflected in the File's editorial `we', though we take pleasure in acknowledging the special contribution of the other coauthors of Steele-1983. Please email all additions, corrections, and correspondence relating to the Jargon File to [52]jargon@thyrsus.com. (Warning: other email addresses appear in this file but are not guaranteed to be correct later than the revision date on the first line. Don't email us if an attempt to reach your idol bounces -- we have no magic way of checking addresses or looking up people.) The 2.9.6 version became the main text of "The New Hacker's Dictionary", by Eric Raymond (ed.), MIT Press 1991, ISBN 0-262-68069-6. The 3.0.0 version was published in September 1993 as the second edition of "The New Hacker's Dictionary", again from MIT Press (ISBN 0-262-18154-1). If you want the book, you should be able to find it at any of the major bookstore chains. Failing that, you can order by mail from The MIT Press 55 Hayward Street Cambridge, MA 02142 or order by phone at (800)-356-0343 or (617)-625-8481. The maintainers are committed to updating the on-line version of the Jargon File through and beyond paper publication, and will continue to make it available to archives and public-access sites as a trust of the hacker community. Here is a chronology of the high points in the recent on-line revisions: Version 2.1.1, Jun 12 1990: the Jargon File comes alive again after a seven-year hiatus. Reorganization and massive additions were by Eric S. Raymond, approved by Guy Steele. Many items of UNIX, C, USENET, and microcomputer-based jargon were added at that time. Version 2.9.6, Aug 16 1991: corresponds to reproduction copy for book. This version had 18952 lines, 148629 words, 975551 characters, and 1702 entries. Version 2.9.7, Oct 28 1991: first markup for hypertext browser. This version had 19432 lines, 152132 words, 999595 characters, and 1750 entries. Version 2.9.8, Jan 01 1992: first public release since the book, including over fifty new entries and numerous corrections/additions to old ones. Packaged with version 1.1 of vh(1) hypertext reader. This version had 19509 lines, 153108 words, 1006023 characters, and 1760 entries. Version 2.9.9, Apr 01 1992: folded in XEROX PARC lexicon. This version had 20298 lines, 159651 words, 1048909 characters, and 1821 entries. Version 2.9.10, Jul 01 1992: lots of new historical material. This version had 21349 lines, 168330 words, 1106991 characters, and 1891 entries. Version 2.9.11, Jan 01 1993: lots of new historical material. This version had 21725 lines, 171169 words, 1125880 characters, and 1922 entries. Version 2.9.12, May 10 1993: a few new entries & changes, marginal MUD/IRC slang and some borderline techspeak removed, all in preparation for 2nd Edition of TNHD. This version had 22238 lines, 175114 words, 1152467 characters, and 1946 entries. Version 3.0.0, Jul 27 1993: manuscript freeze for 2nd edition of TNHD. This version had 22548 lines, 177520 words, 1169372 characters, and 1961 entries. Version 3.1.0, Oct 15 1994: interim release to test WWW conversion. This version had 23197 lines, 181001 words, 1193818 characters, and 1990 entries. Version 3.2.0, Mar 15 1995: Spring 1995 update. This version had 23822 lines, 185961 words, 1226358 characters, and 2031 entries. Version 3.3.0, Jan 20 1996: Winter 1996 update. This version had 24055 lines, 187957 words, 1239604 characters, and 2045 entries. Version 3.3.1, Jan 25 1996: Copy-corrected improvement on 3.3.0 shipped to MIT Press as a step towards TNHD III. This version had 24147 lines, 188728 words, 1244554 characters, and 2050 entries. Version 3.3.2, Mar 20 1996: A number of new entries pursuant on 3.3.2. This version had 24442 lines, 190867 words, 1262468 characters, and 2061 entries. Version 3.3.3, Mar 25 1996: Cleanup before TNHD III manuscript freeze. This version had 24584 lines, 191932 words, 1269996 characters, and 2064 entries. Version 4.0.0, Jul 25 1996: The actual TNHD III version after copy-edit. This version had 24801 lines, 193697 words, 1281402 characters, and 2067 entries. Version 4.1.0, 8 Apr 1999: The Jargon File rides again after three years. This version had 25777 lines, 206825 words, 1359992 characters, and 2217 entries. Version 4.1.1, 18 Apr 1999: Corrections for minor errors in 4.1.0, and some new entries. This version had 25921 lines, 208483 words, 1371279 characters, and 2225 entries. Version 4.1.2, 28 Apr 1999: Moving texi2html out of the production path. This version had 26006 lines, 209479 words, 1377687 characters, and 2225 entries. Version 4.1.3, 14 Jun 1999: Minor updates and markup fixes. This version had 26108 lines, 210480 words, 1384546 characters, and 2234 entries. Version 4.1.4, 17 Jun 1999: Markup fixes for framed HTML. This version had 26117 lines, 210527 words, 1384902 characters, and 2234 entries. Version 4.2.0, 31 Jan 2000: Fix processing of URLs. This version had 26598 lines, 214639 words, 1412243 characters, and 2267 entries. Version 4.2.1, 5 Mar 2000: Point release to test new production machinery. This version had 26647 lines, 215040 words, 1414942 characters, and 2269 entries. Version 4.2.2, 12 Aug 2000: This version had 27171 lines, 219630 words, 1444887 characters, and 2302 entries. Version numbering: Version numbers should be read as major.minor.revision. Major version 1 is reserved for the `old' (ITS) Jargon File, jargon-1. Major version 2 encompasses revisions by ESR (Eric S. Raymond) with assistance from GLS (Guy L. Steele, Jr.) leading up to and including the second paper edition. From now on, major version number N.00 will probably correspond to the Nth paper edition. Usually later versions will either completely supersede or incorporate earlier versions, so there is generally no point in keeping old versions around. Our thanks to the coauthors of Steele-1983 for oversight and assistance, and to the hundreds of Usenetters (too many to name here) who contributed entries and encouragement. More thanks go to several of the old-timers on the Usenet group alt.folklore.computers, who contributed much useful commentary and many corrections and valuable historical perspective: Joseph M. Newcomer [53], Bernie Cosell [54], Earl Boebert [55], and Joe Morris [56]. We were fortunate enough to have the aid of some accomplished linguists. David Stampe [57] and Charles Hoequist [58] contributed valuable criticism; Joe Keane [59] helped us improve the pronunciation guides. A few bits of this text quote previous works. We are indebted to Brian A. LaMacchia [60] for obtaining permission for us to use material from the "TMRC Dictionary"; also, Don Libes [61] contributed some appropriate material from his excellent book "Life With UNIX". We thank Per Lindberg [62], author of the remarkable Swedish-language 'zine "Hackerbladet", for bringing "FOO!" comics to our attention and smuggling one of the IBM hacker underground's own baby jargon files out to us. Thanks also to Maarten Litmaath for generously allowing the inclusion of the ASCII pronunciation guide he formerly maintained. And our gratitude to Marc Weiser of XEROX PARC [63] for securing us permission to quote from PARC's own jargon lexicon and shipping us a copy. It is a particular pleasure to acknowledge the major contributions of Mark Brader [64] and Steve Summit [65] to the File and Dictionary; they have read and reread many drafts, checked facts, caught typos, submitted an amazing number of thoughtful comments, and done yeoman service in catching typos and minor usage bobbles. Their rare combination of enthusiasm, persistence, wide-ranging technical knowledge, and precisionism in matters of language has been of invaluable help. Indeed, the sustained volume and quality of Mr. Brader's input over several years and several different editions has only allowed him to escape co-editor credit by the slimmest of margins. Finally, George V. Reilly [66] helped with TeX arcana and painstakingly proofread some 2.7 and 2.8 versions, and Eric Tiedemann [67] contributed sage advice throughout on rhetoric, amphigory, and philosophunculism. _________________________________________________________________ Node:Jargon Construction, Next:[68]Hacker Writing Style, Previous:[69]Revision History, Up:[70]Top How Jargon Works Jargon Construction There are some standard methods of jargonification that became established quite early (i.e., before 1970), spreading from such sources as the Tech Model Railroad Club, the PDP-1 SPACEWAR hackers, and John McCarthy's original crew of LISPers. These include verb doubling, soundalike slang, the `-P' convention, overgeneralization, spoken inarticulations, and anthropomorphization. Each is discussed below. We also cover the standard comparatives for design quality. Of these six, verb doubling, overgeneralization, anthropomorphization, and (especially) spoken inarticulations have become quite general; but soundalike slang is still largely confined to MIT and other large universities, and the `-P' convention is found only where LISPers flourish. * [71]Verb Doubling: Doubling a verb may change its semantics * [72]Soundalike Slang: Punning jargon * [73]The -P convention: A LISPy way to form questions * [74]Overgeneralization: Standard abuses of grammar * [75]Spoken Inarticulations: Sighing and <*sigh*>ing * [76]Anthropomorphization: Homunculi, daemons, and confused programs * [77]Comparatives: Standard comparatives for design quality _________________________________________________________________ Node:Verb Doubling, Next:[78]Soundalike Slang, Up:[79]Jargon Construction Verb Doubling A standard construction in English is to double a verb and use it as an exclamation, such as "Bang, bang!" or "Quack, quack!". Most of these are names for noises. Hackers also double verbs as a concise, sometimes sarcastic comment on what the implied subject does. Also, a doubled verb is often used to terminate a conversation, in the process remarking on the current state of affairs or what the speaker intends to do next. Typical examples involve [80]win, [81]lose, [82]hack, [83]flame, [84]barf, [85]chomp: "The disk heads just crashed." "Lose, lose." "Mostly he talked about his latest crock. Flame, flame." "Boy, what a bagbiter! Chomp, chomp!" Some verb-doubled constructions have special meanings not immediately obvious from the verb. These have their own listings in the lexicon. The [86]Usenet culture has one tripling convention unrelated to this; the names of `joke' topic groups often have a tripled last element. The first and paradigmatic example was alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork (a "Muppet Show" reference); other infamous examples have included: alt.french.captain.borg.borg.borg alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die comp.unix.internals.system.calls.brk.brk.brk sci.physics.edward.teller.boom.boom.boom alt.sadistic.dentists.drill.drill.drill _________________________________________________________________ Node:Soundalike Slang, Next:[87]The -P convention, Previous:[88]Verb Doubling, Up:[89]Jargon Construction Soundalike slang Hackers will often make rhymes or puns in order to convert an ordinary word or phrase into something more interesting. It is considered particularly [90]flavorful if the phrase is bent so as to include some other jargon word; thus the computer hobbyist magazine "Dr. Dobb's Journal" is almost always referred to among hackers as `Dr. Frob's Journal' or simply `Dr. Frob's'. Terms of this kind that have been in fairly wide use include names for newspapers: Boston Herald => Horrid (or Harried) Boston Globe => Boston Glob Houston (or San Francisco) Chronicle => the Crocknicle (or the Comical) New York Times => New York Slime Wall Street Journal => Wall Street Urinal However, terms like these are often made up on the spur of the moment. Standard examples include: Data General => Dirty Genitals IBM 360 => IBM Three-Sickly Government Property --- Do Not Duplicate (on keys) => Government Duplicity --- Do Not Propagate for historical reasons => for hysterical raisins Margaret Jacks Hall (the CS building at Stanford) => Marginal Hacks Hall Microsoft => Microsloth Internet Explorer => Internet Exploiter This is not really similar to the Cockney rhyming slang it has been compared to in the past, because Cockney substitutions are opaque whereas hacker punning jargon is intentionally transparent. _________________________________________________________________ Node:The -P convention, Next:[91]Overgeneralization, Previous:[92]Soundalike Slang, Up:[93]Jargon Construction The `-P' convention Turning a word into a question by appending the syllable `P'; from the LISP convention of appending the letter `P' to denote a predicate (a boolean-valued function). The question should expect a yes/no answer, though it needn't. (See [94]T and [95]NIL.) At dinnertime: Q: ``Foodp?'' A: ``Yeah, I'm pretty hungry.'' or ``T!'' At any time: Q: ``State-of-the-world-P?'' A: (Straight) ``I'm about to go home.'' A: (Humorous) ``Yes, the world has a state.'' On the phone to Florida: Q: ``State-p Florida?'' A: ``Been reading JARGON.TXT again, eh?'' [One of the best of these is a [96]Gosperism. Once, when we were at a Chinese restaurant, Bill Gosper wanted to know whether someone would like to share with him a two-person-sized bowl of soup. His inquiry was: "Split-p soup?" -- GLS] _________________________________________________________________ Node:Overgeneralization, Next:[97]Spoken Inarticulations, Previous:[98]The -P convention, Up:[99]Jargon Construction Overgeneralization A very conspicuous feature of jargon is the frequency with which techspeak items such as names of program tools, command language primitives, and even assembler opcodes are applied to contexts outside of computing wherever hackers find amusing analogies to them. Thus (to cite one of the best-known examples) Unix hackers often [100]grep for things rather than searching for them. Many of the lexicon entries are generalizations of exactly this kind. Hackers enjoy overgeneralization on the grammatical level as well. Many hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to them to make nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule to nonuniform cases (or vice versa). For example, because porous => porosity generous => generosity hackers happily generalize: mysterious => mysteriosity ferrous => ferrosity obvious => obviosity dubious => dubiosity Another class of common construction uses the suffix `-itude' to abstract a quality from just about any adjective or noun. This usage arises especially in cases where mainstream English would perform the same abstraction through `-iness' or `-ingness'. Thus: win => winnitude (a common exclamation) loss => lossitude cruft => cruftitude lame => lameitude Some hackers cheerfully reverse this transformation; they argue, for example, that the horizontal degree lines on a globe ought to be called `lats' -- after all, they're measuring latitude! Also, note that all nouns can be verbed. E.g.: "All nouns can be verbed", "I'll mouse it up", "Hang on while I clipboard it over", "I'm grepping the files". English as a whole is already heading in this direction (towards pure-positional grammar like Chinese); hackers are simply a bit ahead of the curve. The suffix "-full" can also be applied in generalized and fanciful ways, as in "As soon as you have more than one cachefull of data, the system starts thrashing," or "As soon as I have more than one headfull of ideas, I start writing it all down." A common use is "screenfull", meaning the amount of text that will fit on one screen, usually in text mode where you have no choice as to character size. Another common form is "bufferfull". However, hackers avoid the unimaginative verb-making techniques characteristic of marketroids, bean-counters, and the Pentagon; a hacker would never, for example, `productize', `prioritize', or `securitize' things. Hackers have a strong aversion to bureaucratic bafflegab and regard those who use it with contempt. Similarly, all verbs can be nouned. This is only a slight overgeneralization in modern English; in hackish, however, it is good form to mark them in some standard nonstandard way. Thus: win => winnitude, winnage disgust => disgustitude hack => hackification Further, note the prevalence of certain kinds of nonstandard plural forms. Some of these go back quite a ways; the TMRC Dictionary includes an entry which implies that the plural of `mouse' is [101]meeces, and notes that the defined plural of `caboose' is `cabeese'. This latter has apparently been standard (or at least a standard joke) among railfans (railroad enthusiasts) for many years. On a similarly Anglo-Saxon note, almost anything ending in `x' may form plurals in `-xen' (see [102]VAXen and [103]boxen in the main text). Even words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated this way; e.g., `soxen' for a bunch of socks. Other funny plurals are `frobbotzim' for the plural of `frobbozz' (see [104]frobnitz) and `Unices' and `Twenices' (rather than `Unixes' and `Twenexes'; see [105]Unix, [106]TWENEX in main text). But note that `Twenexen' was never used, and `Unixen' was not sighted in the wild until the year 2000, thirty years after it might logically have come into use; it has been suggested that this is because `-ix' and `-ex' are Latin singular endings that attract a Latinate plural. Finally, it has been suggested to general approval that the plural of `mongoose' ought to be `polygoose'. The pattern here, as with other hackish grammatical quirks, is generalization of an inflectional rule that in English is either an import or a fossil (such as the Hebrew plural ending `-im', or the Anglo-Saxon plural suffix `-en') to cases where it isn't normally considered to apply. This is not `poor grammar', as hackers are generally quite well aware of what they are doing when they distort the language. It is grammatical creativity, a form of playfulness. It is done not to impress but to amuse, and never at the expense of clarity. _________________________________________________________________ Node:Spoken Inarticulations, Next:[107]Anthropomorphization, Previous:[108]Overgeneralization, Up:[109]Jargon Construction Spoken inarticulations Words such as `mumble', `sigh', and `groan' are spoken in places where their referent might more naturally be used. It has been suggested that this usage derives from the impossibility of representing such noises on a comm link or in electronic mail, MUDs, and IRC channels (interestingly, the same sorts of constructions have been showing up with increasing frequency in comic strips). Another expression sometimes heard is "Complain!", meaning "I have a complaint!" _________________________________________________________________ Node:Anthropomorphization, Next:[110]Comparatives, Previous:[111]Spoken Inarticulations, Up:[112]Jargon Construction Anthropomorphization Semantically, one rich source of jargon constructions is the hackish tendency to anthropomorphize hardware and software. English purists and academic computer scientists frequently look down on others for anthropomorphizing hardware and software, considering this sort of behavior to be characteristic of naive misunderstanding. But most hackers anthropomorphize freely, frequently describing program behavior in terms of wants and desires. Thus it is common to hear hardware or software talked about as though it has homunculi talking to each other inside it, with intentions and desires. Thus, one hears "The protocol handler got confused", or that programs "are trying" to do things, or one may say of a routine that "its goal in life is to X". One even hears explanations like "... and its poor little brain couldn't understand X, and it died." Sometimes modelling things this way actually seems to make them easier to understand, perhaps because it's instinctively natural to think of anything with a really complex behavioral repertoire as `like a person' rather than `like a thing'. At first glance, to anyone who understands how these programs actually work, this seems like an absurdity. As hackers are among the people who know best how these phenomena work, it seems odd that they would use language that seemds to ascribe conciousness to them. The mind-set behind this tendency thus demands examination. The key to understanding this kind of usage is that it isn't done in a naive way; hackers don't personalize their stuff in the sense of feeling empathy with it, nor do they mystically believe that the things they work on every day are `alive'. To the contrary: hackers who anthropomorphize are expressing not a vitalistic view of program behavior but a mechanistic view of human behavior. Almost all hackers subscribe to the mechanistic, materialistic ontology of science (this is in practice true even of most of the minority with contrary religious theories). In this view, people are biological machines - consciousness is an interesting and valuable epiphenomenon, but mind is implemented in machinery which is not fundamentally different in information-processing capacity from computers. Hackers tend to take this a step further and argue that the difference between a substrate of CHON atoms and water and a substrate of silicon and metal is a relatively unimportant one; what matters, what makes a thing `alive', is information and richness of pattern. This is animism from the flip side; it implies that humans and computers and dolphins and rocks are all machines exhibiting a continuum of modes of `consciousness' according to their information-processing capacity. Because hackers accept a that a human machine can have intentions, it is therefore easy for them to ascribe consciousness and intention to complex patterned systems such as computers. If consciousness is mechanical, it is neither more or less absurd to say that "The program wants to go into an infinite loop" than it is to say that "I want to go eat some chocolate" - and even defensible to say that "The stone, once dropped, wants to move towards the center of the earth". This viewpoint has respectable company in academic philosophy. Daniel Dennett organizes explanations of behavior using three stances: the "physical stance" (thing-to-be-explained as a physical object), the "design stance" (thing-to-be-explained as an artifact), and the "intentional stance" (thing-to-be-explained as an agent with desires and intentions). Which stances are appropriate is a matter not of truth but of utility. Hackers typically view simple programs from the design stance, but more complex ones are modelled using the intentional stance. _________________________________________________________________ Node:Comparatives, Previous:[113]Anthropomorphization, Up:[114]Jargon Construction Comparatives Finally, note that many words in hacker jargon have to be understood as members of sets of comparatives. This is especially true of the adjectives and nouns used to describe the beauty and functional quality of code. Here is an approximately correct spectrum: monstrosity brain-damage screw bug lose misfeature crock kluge hack win feature elegance perfection The last is spoken of as a mythical absolute, approximated but never actually attained. Another similar scale is used for describing the reliability of software: broken flaky dodgy fragile brittle solid robust bulletproof armor-plated Note, however, that `dodgy' is primarily Commonwealth Hackish (it is rare in the U.S.) and may change places with `flaky' for some speakers. Coinages for describing [115]lossage seem to call forth the very finest in hackish linguistic inventiveness; it has been truly said that hackers have even more words for equipment failures than Yiddish has for obnoxious people. _________________________________________________________________ Node:Hacker Writing Style, Next:[116]Email Quotes, Previous:[117]Jargon Construction, Up:[118]Top Hacker Writing Style We've already seen that hackers often coin jargon by overgeneralizing grammatical rules. This is one aspect of a more general fondness for form-versus-content language jokes that shows up particularly in hackish writing. One correspondent reports that he consistently misspells `wrong' as `worng'. Others have been known to criticize glitches in Jargon File drafts by observing (in the mode of Douglas Hofstadter) "This sentence no verb", or "Too repetetetive", or "Bad speling", or "Incorrectspa cing." Similarly, intentional spoonerisms are often made of phrases relating to confusion or things that are confusing; `dain bramage' for `brain damage' is perhaps the most common (similarly, a hacker would be likely to write "Excuse me, I'm cixelsyd today", rather than "I'm dyslexic today"). This sort of thing is quite common and is enjoyed by all concerned. Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses, much to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if "Jim is going" is a phrase, and so are "Bill runs" and "Spock groks", then hackers generally prefer to write: "Jim is going", "Bill runs", and "Spock groks". This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which would put the continuation commas and the final period inside the string quotes); however, it is counter-intuitive to hackers to mutilate literal strings with characters that don't belong in them. Given the sorts of examples that can come up in discussions of programming, American-style quoting can even be grossly misleading. When communicating command lines or small pieces of code, extra characters can be a real pain in the neck. Consider, for example, a sentence in a [119]vi tutorial that looks like this: Then delete a line from the file by typing "dd". Standard usage would make this Then delete a line from the file by typing "dd." but that would be very bad -- because the reader would be prone to type the string d-d-dot, and it happens that in vi(1) dot repeats the last command accepted. The net result would be to delete two lines! The Jargon File follows hackish usage throughout. Interestingly, a similar style is now preferred practice in Great Britain, though the older style (which became established for typographical reasons having to do with the aesthetics of comma and quotes in typeset text) is still accepted there. "Hart's Rules" and the "Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors" call the hacker-like style `new' or `logical' quoting. This returns British English to the style Latin languages (including Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan) have been using all along. Another hacker habit is a tendency to distinguish between `scare' quotes and `speech' quotes; that is, to use British-style single quotes for marking and reserve American-style double quotes for actual reports of speech or text included from elsewhere. Interestingly, some authorities describe this as correct general usage, but mainstream American English has gone to using double-quotes indiscriminately enough that hacker usage appears marked [and, in fact, I thought this was a personal quirk of mine until I checked with Usenet --ESR]. One further permutation that is definitely not standard is a hackish tendency to do marking quotes by using apostrophes (single quotes) in pairs; that is, 'like this'. This is modelled on string and character literal syntax in some programming languages (reinforced by the fact that many character-only terminals display the apostrophe in typewriter style, as a vertical single quote). One quirk that shows up frequently in the [120]email style of Unix hackers in particular is a tendency for some things that are normally all-lowercase (including usernames and the names of commands and C routines) to remain uncapitalized even when they occur at the beginning of sentences. It is clear that, for many hackers, the case of such identifiers becomes a part of their internal representation (the `spelling') and cannot be overridden without mental effort (an appropriate reflex because Unix and C both distinguish cases and confusing them can lead to [121]lossage). A way of escaping this dilemma is simply to avoid using these constructions at the beginning of sentences. There seems to be a meta-rule behind these nonstandard hackerisms to the effect that precision of expression is more important than conformance to traditional rules; where the latter create ambiguity or lose information they can be discarded without a second thought. It is notable in this respect that other hackish inventions (for example, in vocabulary) also tend to carry very precise shades of meaning even when constructed to appear slangy and loose. In fact, to a hacker, the contrast between `loose' form and `tight' content in jargon is a substantial part of its humor! Hackers have also developed a number of punctuation and emphasis conventions adapted to single-font all-ASCII communications links, and these are occasionally carried over into written documents even when normal means of font changes, underlining, and the like are available. One of these is that TEXT IN ALL CAPS IS INTERPRETED AS `LOUD', and this becomes such an ingrained synesthetic reflex that a person who goes to caps-lock while in [122]talk mode may be asked to "stop shouting, please, you're hurting my ears!". Also, it is common to use bracketing with unusual characters to signify emphasis. The asterisk is most common, as in "What the *hell*?" even though this interferes with the common use of the asterisk suffix as a footnote mark. The underscore is also common, suggesting underlining (this is particularly common with book titles; for example, "It is often alleged that Joe Haldeman wrote _The_Forever_War_ as a rebuttal to Robert Heinlein's earlier novel of the future military, _Starship_Troopers_."). Other forms exemplified by "=hell=", "\hell/", or "/hell/" are occasionally seen (it's claimed that in the last example the first slash pushes the letters over to the right to make them italic, and the second keeps them from falling over). On FidoNet, you might see #bright# and ^dark^ text, which was actually interpreted by some reader software. Finally, words may also be emphasized L I K E T H I S, or by a series of carets (^) under them on the next line of the text. There is a semantic difference between *emphasis like this* (which emphasizes the phrase as a whole), and *emphasis* *like* *this* (which suggests the writer speaking very slowly and distinctly, as if to a very young child or a mentally impaired person). Bracketing a word with the `*' character may also indicate that the writer wishes readers to consider that an action is taking place or that a sound is being made. Examples: *bang*, *hic*, *ring*, *grin*, *kick*, *stomp*, *mumble*. One might also see the above sound effects as , , , , , , . This use of angle brackets to mark their contents originally derives from conventions used in [123]BNF, but since about 1993 it has been reinforced by the HTML markup used on the World Wide Web. Angle-bracket enclosure is also used to indicate that a term stands for some [124]random member of a larger class (this is straight from [125]BNF). Examples like the following are common: So this walks into a bar one day... There is also an accepted convention for `writing under erasure'; the text Be nice to this fool^H^H^H^Hgentleman, he's visiting from corporate HQ. reads roughly as "Be nice to this fool, er, gentleman...", with irony emphasized. The digraph ^H is often used as a print representation for a backspace, and was actually very visible on old-style printing terminals. As the text was being composed the characters would be echoed and printed immediately, and when a correction was made the backspace keystrokes would be echoed with the string '^H'. Of course, the final composed text would have no trace of the backspace characters (or the original erroneous text). This convention parallels (and may have been influenced by) the ironic use of `slashouts' in science-fiction fanzines. A related habit uses editor commands to signify corrections to previous text. This custom faded in email as more mailers got good editing capabilities, only to tale on new life on IRCs and other line-based chat systems. I've seen that term used on alt.foobar often. Send it to Erik for the File. Oops...s/Erik/Eric/. The s/Erik/Eric/ says "change Erik to Eric in the preceding". This syntax is borrowed from the Unix editing tools ed and sed, but is widely recognized by non-Unix hackers as well. In a formula, * signifies multiplication but two asterisks in a row are a shorthand for exponentiation (this derives from FORTRAN). Thus, one might write 2 ** 8 = 256. Another notation for exponentiation one sees more frequently uses the caret (^, ASCII 1011110); one might write instead 2^8 = 256. This goes all the way back to Algol-60, which used the archaic ASCII `up-arrow' that later became the caret; this was picked up by Kemeny and Kurtz's original BASIC, which in turn influenced the design of the bc(1) and dc(1) Unix tools, which have probably done most to reinforce the convention on Usenet. (TeX math mode also uses ^ for exponention.) The notation is mildly confusing to C programmers, because ^ means bitwise exclusive-or in C. Despite this, it was favored 3:1 over ** in a late-1990 snapshot of Usenet. It is used consistently in this lexicon. In on-line exchanges, hackers tend to use decimal forms or improper fractions (`3.5' or `7/2') rather than `typewriter style' mixed fractions (`3-1/2'). The major motive here is probably that the former are more readable in a monospaced font, together with a desire to avoid the risk that the latter might be read as `three minus one-half'. The decimal form is definitely preferred for fractions with a terminating decimal representation; there may be some cultural influence here from the high status of scientific notation. Another on-line convention, used especially for very large or very small numbers, is taken from C (which derived it from FORTRAN). This is a form of `scientific notation' using `e' to replace `*10^'; for example, one year is about 3e7 seconds long. The tilde (~) is commonly used in a quantifying sense of `approximately'; that is, ~50 means `about fifty'. On Usenet and in the [126]MUD world, common C boolean, logical, and relational operators such as |, &, ||, &&, !, ==, !=, >, <, >=, and =< are often combined with English. The Pascal not-equals, <>, is also recognized, and occasionally one sees /= for not-equals (from Ada, Common Lisp, and Fortran 90). The use of prefix `!' as a loose synonym for `not-' or `no-' is particularly common; thus, `!clue' is read `no-clue' or `clueless'. A related practice borrows syntax from preferred programming languages to express ideas in a natural-language text. For example, one might see the following: In J. R. Hacker wrote: >I recently had occasion to field-test the Snafu >Systems 2300E adaptive gonkulator. The price was >right, and the racing stripe on the case looked >kind of neat, but its performance left something >to be desired. Yeah, I tried one out too. #ifdef FLAME Hasn't anyone told those idiots that you can't get decent bogon suppression with AFJ filters at today's net volumes? #endif /* FLAME */ I guess they figured the price premium for true frame-based semantic analysis was too high. Unfortunately, it's also the only workable approach. I wouldn't recommend purchase of this product unless you're on a *very* tight budget. #include -- == Frank Foonly (Fubarco Systems) In the above, the #ifdef/#endif pair is a conditional compilation syntax from C; here, it implies that the text between (which is a [127]flame) should be evaluated only if you have turned on (or defined on) the switch FLAME. The #include at the end is C for "include standard disclaimer here"; the `standard disclaimer' is understood to read, roughly, "These are my personal opinions and not to be construed as the official position of my employer." The top section in the example, with > at the left margin, is an example of an inclusion convention we'll discuss below. More recently, following on the huge popularity of the World Wide Web, pseudo-HTML markup has become popular for similar purposes: Your father was a hamster and your mother smelt of elderberries! You'll even see this with an HTML-style modifier: You seem well-suited for a career in government. Another recent (late 1990s) construction now common on USENET seems to be borrowed from Perl. It consists of using a dollar sign before an uppercased form of a word or acronym to suggest any [128]random member of the class indicated by the word. Thus: `$PHB' means "any random member of the class `Pointy-Haired Boss'". Hackers also mix letters and numbers more freely than in mainstream usage. In particular, it is good hackish style to write a digit sequence where you intend the reader to understand the text string that names that number in English. So, hackers prefer to write `1970s' rather than `nineteen-seventies' or `1970's' (the latter looks like a possessive). It should also be noted that hackers exhibit much less reluctance to use multiply-nested parentheses than is normal in English. Part of this is almost certainly due to influence from LISP (which uses deeply nested parentheses (like this (see?)) in its syntax a lot), but it has also been suggested that a more basic hacker trait of enjoying playing with complexity and pushing systems to their limits is in operation. Finally, it is worth mentioning that many studies of on-line communication have shown that electronic links have a de-inhibiting effect on people. Deprived of the body-language cues through which emotional state is expressed, people tend to forget everything about other parties except what is presented over that ASCII link. This has both good and bad effects. A good one is that it encourages honesty and tends to break down hierarchical authority relationships; a bad one is that it may encourage depersonalization and gratuitous rudeness. Perhaps in response to this, experienced netters often display a sort of conscious formal politesse in their writing that has passed out of fashion in other spoken and written media (for example, the phrase "Well said, sir!" is not uncommon). Many introverted hackers who are next to inarticulate in person communicate with considerable fluency over the net, perhaps precisely because they can forget on an unconscious level that they are dealing with people and thus don't feel stressed and anxious as they would face to face. Though it is considered gauche to publicly criticize posters for poor spelling or grammar, the network places a premium on literacy and clarity of expression. It may well be that future historians of literature will see in it a revival of the great tradition of personal letters as art. _________________________________________________________________ Node:Email Quotes, Next:[129]Hacker Speech Style, Previous:[130]Hacker Writing Style, Up:[131]Top Email Quotes and Inclusion Conventions One area where conventions for on-line writing are still in some flux is the marking of included material from earlier messages -- what would be called `block quotations' in ordinary English. From the usual typographic convention employed for these (smaller font at an extra indent), there derived a practice of included text being indented by one ASCII TAB (0001001) character, which under Unix and many other environments gives the appearance of an 8-space indent. Early mail and netnews readers had no facility for including messages this way, so people had to paste in copy manually. BSD Mail(1) was the first message agent to support inclusion, and early Usenetters emulated its style. But the TAB character tended to push included text too far to the right (especially in multiply nested inclusions), leading to ugly wraparounds. After a brief period of confusion (during which an inclusion leader consisting of three or four spaces became established in EMACS and a few mailers), the use of leading > or > became standard, perhaps owing to its use in ed(1) to display tabs (alternatively, it may derive from the > that some early Unix mailers used to quote lines starting with "From" in text, so they wouldn't look like the beginnings of new message headers). Inclusions within inclusions keep their > leaders, so the `nesting level' of a quotation is visually apparent. The practice of including text from the parent article when posting a followup helped solve what had been a major nuisance on Usenet: the fact that articles do not arrive at different sites in the same order. Careless posters used to post articles that would begin with, or even consist entirely of, "No, that's wrong" or "I agree" or the like. It was hard to see who was responding to what. Consequently, around 1984, new news-posting software evolved a facility to automatically include the text of a previous article, marked with "> " or whatever the poster chose. The poster was expected to delete all but the relevant lines. The result has been that, now, careless posters post articles containing the entire text of a preceding article, followed only by "No, that's wrong" or "I agree". Many people feel that this cure is worse than the original disease, and there soon appeared newsreader software designed to let the reader skip over included text if desired. Today, some posting software rejects articles containing too high a proportion of lines beginning with `>' -- but this too has led to undesirable workarounds, such as the deliberate inclusion of zero-content filler lines which aren't quoted and thus pull the message below the rejection threshold. Because the default mailers supplied with Unix and other operating systems haven't evolved as quickly as human usage, the older conventions using a leading TAB or three or four spaces are still alive; however, >-inclusion is now clearly the prevalent form in both netnews and mail. Inclusion practice is still evolving, and disputes over the `correct' inclusion style occasionally lead to [132]holy wars. Most netters view an inclusion as a promise that comment on it will immediately follow. The preferred, conversational style looks like this, > relevant excerpt 1 response to excerpt > relevant excerpt 2 response to excerpt > relevant excerpt 3 response to excerpt or for short messages like this: > entire message response to message Thanks to poor design of some PC-based mail agents, one will occasionally see the entire quoted message after the response, like this response to message > entire message but this practice is strongly deprecated. Though > remains the standard inclusion leader, | is occasionally used for extended quotations where original variations in indentation are being retained (one mailer even combines these and uses |>). One also sees different styles of quoting a number of authors in the same message: one (deprecated because it loses information) uses a leader of > for everyone, another (the most common) is > > > > , > > > , etc. (or >>>> , >>>, etc., depending on line length and nesting depth) reflecting the original order of messages, and yet another is to use a different citation leader for each author, say > , : , | , } (preserving nesting so that the inclusion order of messages is still apparent, or tagging the inclusions with authors' names). Yet another style is to use each poster's initials (or login name) as a citation leader for that poster. Occasionally one sees a # leader used for quotations from authoritative sources such as standards documents; the intended allusion is to the root prompt (the special Unix command prompt issued when one is running as the privileged super-user). _________________________________________________________________ Node:Hacker Speech Style, Next:[133]International Style, Previous:[134]Email Quotes, Up:[135]Top Hacker Speech Style Hackish speech generally features extremely precise diction, careful word choice, a relatively large working vocabulary, and relatively little use of contractions or street slang. Dry humor, irony, puns, and a mildly flippant attitude are highly valued -- but an underlying seriousness and intelligence are essential. One should use just enough jargon to communicate precisely and identify oneself as a member of the culture; overuse of jargon or a breathless, excessively gung-ho attitude is considered tacky and the mark of a loser. This speech style is a variety of the precisionist English normally spoken by scientists, design engineers, and academics in technical fields. In contrast with the methods of jargon construction, it is fairly constant throughout hackerdom. It has been observed that many hackers are confused by negative questions -- or, at least, that the people to whom they are talking are often confused by the sense of their answers. The problem is that they have done so much programming that distinguishes between if (going) ... and if (!going) ... that when they parse the question "Aren't you going?" it may seem to be asking the opposite question from "Are you going?", and so to merit an answer in the opposite sense. This confuses English-speaking non-hackers because they were taught to answer as though the negative part weren't there. In some other languages (including Russian, Chinese, and Japanese) the hackish interpretation is standard and the problem wouldn't arise. Hackers often find themselves wishing for a word like French `si', German `doch', or Dutch `jawel' - a word with which one could unambiguously answer `yes' to a negative question. (See also [136]mu) For similar reasons, English-speaking hackers almost never use double negatives, even if they live in a region where colloquial usage allows them. The thought of uttering something that logically ought to be an affirmative knowing it will be misparsed as a negative tends to disturb them. In a related vein, hackers sometimes make a game of answering questions containing logical connectives with a strictly literal rather than colloquial interpretation. A non-hacker who is indelicate enough to ask a question like "So, are you working on finding that bug now or leaving it until later?" is likely to get the perfectly correct answer "Yes!" (that is, "Yes, I'm doing it either now or later, and you didn't ask which!"). _________________________________________________________________ Node:International Style, Next:[137]Lamer-speak, Previous:[138]Hacker Speech Style, Up:[139]Top International Style Although the Jargon File remains primarily a lexicon of hacker usage in American English, we have made some effort to get input from abroad. Though the hacker-speak of other languages often uses translations of jargon from English (often as transmitted to them by earlier Jargon File versions!), the local variations are interesting, and knowledge of them may be of some use to travelling hackers. There are some references herein to `Commonwealth hackish'. These are intended to describe some variations in hacker usage as reported in the English spoken in Great Britain and the Commonwealth (Canada, Australia, India, etc. -- though Canada is heavily influenced by American usage). There is also an entry on [140]Commonwealth Hackish reporting some general phonetic and vocabulary differences from U.S. hackish. Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia report that they often use a mixture of English and their native languages for technical conversation. Occasionally they develop idioms in their English usage that are influenced by their native-language styles. Some of these are reported here. On the other hand, English often gives rise to grammatical and vocabulary mutations in the native language. For example, Italian hackers often use the nonexistent verbs `scrollare' (to scroll) and `deletare' (to delete) rather than native Italian `scorrere' and `cancellare'. Similarly, the English verb `to hack' has been seen conjugated in Swedish. In German, many Unix terms in English are casually declined as if they were German verbs - thus: mount/mounten/gemountet; grep/grepen/gegrept; fork/forken/geforkt; core dump/core-dumpen, core-gedumpt. And Spanish-speaking hackers use `linkar' (to link), `debugear' (to debug), and `lockear' (to lock). European hackers report that this happens partly because the English terms make finer distinctions than are available in their native vocabularies, and partly because deliberate language-crossing makes for amusing wordplay. A few notes on hackish usages in Russian have been added where they are parallel with English idioms and thus comprehensible to English-speakers. _________________________________________________________________ Node:Lamer-speak, Next:[141]Pronunciation Guide, Previous:[142]International Style, Up:[143]Top Crackers, Phreaks, and Lamers From the early 1980s onward, a flourishing culture of local, MS-DOS-based bulletin boards developed separately from Internet hackerdom. The BBS culture has, as its seamy underside, a stratum of `pirate boards' inhabited by [144]crackers, phone phreaks, and [145]warez d00dz. These people (mostly teenagers running IBM-PC clones from their bedrooms) have developed their own characteristic jargon, heavily influenced by skateboard lingo and underground-rock slang. Though crackers often call themselves `hackers', they aren't (they typically have neither significant programming ability, nor Internet expertise, nor experience with UNIX or other true multi-user systems). Their vocabulary has little overlap with hackerdom's. Nevertheless, this lexicon covers much of it so the reader will be able to understand what goes by on bulletin-board systems. Here is a brief guide to cracker and [146]warez d00dz usage: * Misspell frequently. The substitutions phone => fone freak => phreak are obligatory. * Always substitute `z's for `s's. (i.e. "codes" -> "codez"). The substitution of 'z' for 's' has evolved so that a 'z' is bow systematically put at the end of words to denote an illegal or cracking connection. Examples : Appz, passwordz, passez, utilz, MP3z, distroz, pornz, sitez, gamez, crackz, serialz, downloadz, FTPz, etc. * Type random emphasis characters after a post line (i.e. "Hey Dudes!#!$#$!#!$"). * Use the emphatic `k' prefix ("k-kool", "k-rad", "k-awesome") frequently. * Abbreviate compulsively ("I got lotsa warez w/ docs"). * Substitute `0' for `o' ("r0dent", "l0zer"). * TYPE ALL IN CAPS LOCK, SO IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE YELLING ALL THE TIME. These traits are similar to those of [147]B1FF, who originated as a parody of naive [148]BBS users; also of his latter-day equivalent [149]Jeff K.. Occasionally, this sort of distortion may be used as heavy sarcasm by a real hacker, as in: > I got X Windows running under Linux! d00d! u R an 31337 hax0r The only practice resembling this in actual hacker usage is the substitution of a dollar sign of `s' in names of products or service felt to be excessively expensive, e.g. Compu$erve, Micro$oft. For further discussion of the pirate-board subculture, see [150]lamer, [151]elite, [152]leech, [153]poser, [154]cracker, and especially [155]warez d00dz, [156]banner site, [157]ratio site, [158]leech mode. _________________________________________________________________ Node:Pronunciation Guide, Next:[159]Other Lexicon Conventions, Previous:[160]Lamer-speak, Up:[161]Top How to Use the Lexicon Pronunciation Guide Pronunciation keys are provided in the jargon listings for all entries that are neither dictionary words pronounced as in standard English nor obvious compounds thereof. Slashes bracket phonetic pronunciations, which are to be interpreted using the following conventions: 1. Syllables are hyphen-separated, except that an accent or back-accent follows each accented syllable (the back-accent marks a secondary accent in some words of four or more syllables). If no accent is given, the word is pronounced with equal accentuation on all syllables (this is common for abbreviations). 2. Consonants are pronounced as in American English. The letter `g' is always hard (as in "got" rather than "giant"); `ch' is soft ("church" rather than "chemist"). The letter `j' is the sound that occurs twice in "judge". The letter `s' is always as in "pass", never a z sound. The digraph `kh' is the guttural of "loch" or "l'chaim". The digraph 'gh' is the aspirated g+h of "bughouse" or "ragheap" (rare in English). 3. Uppercase letters are pronounced as their English letter names; thus (for example) /H-L-L/ is equivalent to /aych el el/. /Z/ may be pronounced /zee/ or /zed/ depending on your local dialect. 4. Vowels are represented as follows: /a/ back, that /ah/ father, palm (see note) /ar/ far, mark /aw/ flaw, caught /ay/ bake, rain /e/ less, men /ee/ easy, ski /eir/ their, software /i/ trip, hit /i:/ life, sky /o/ block, stock (see note) /oh/ flow, sew /oo/ loot, through /or/ more, door /ow/ out, how /oy/ boy, coin /uh/ but, some /u/ put, foot /y/ yet, young /yoo/ few, chew /[y]oo/ /oo/ with optional fronting as in `news' (/nooz/ or /nyooz/) The glyph /*/ is used for the `schwa' sound of unstressed or occluded vowels (the one that is often written with an upside-down `e'). The schwa vowel is omitted in syllables containing vocalic r, l, m or n; that is, `kitten' and `color' would be rendered /kit'n/ and /kuhl'r/, not /kit'*n/ and /kuhl'*r/. Note that the above table reflects mainly distinctions found in standard American English (that is, the neutral dialect spoken by TV network announcers and typical of educated speech in the Upper Midwest, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Philadelphia). However, we separate /o/ from /ah/, which tend to merge in standard American. This may help readers accustomed to accents resembling British Received Pronunciation. The intent of this scheme is to permit as many readers as possible to map the pronunciations into their local dialect by ignoring some subset of the distinctions we make. Speakers of British RP, for example, can smash terminal /r/ and all unstressed vowels. Speakers of many varieties of southern American will automatically map /o/ to /aw/; and so forth. (Standard American makes a good reference dialect for this purpose because it has crisp consonants and more vowel distinctions than other major dialects, and tends to retain distinctions between unstressed vowels. It also happens to be what your editor speaks.) Entries with a pronunciation of `//' are written-only usages. (No, Unix weenies, this does not mean `pronounce like previous pronunciation'!) _________________________________________________________________ Node:Other Lexicon Conventions, Next:[162]Format for New Entries, Previous:[163]Pronunciation Guide, Up:[164]Top Other Lexicon Conventions Entries are sorted in case-blind ASCII collation order (rather than the letter-by-letter order ignoring interword spacing common in mainstream dictionaries), except that all entries beginning with nonalphabetic characters are sorted after Z. The case-blindness is a feature, not a bug. The beginning of each entry is marked by a colon (:) at the left margin. This convention helps out tools like hypertext browsers that benefit from knowing where entry boundaries are, but aren't as context-sensitive as humans. In pure ASCII renderings of the Jargon File, you will see {} used to bracket words which themselves have entries in the File. This isn't done all the time for every such word, but it is done everywhere that a reminder seems useful that the term has a jargon meaning and one might wish to refer to its entry. In this all-ASCII version, headwords for topic entries are distinguished from those for ordinary entries by being followed by "::" rather than ":"; similarly, references are surrounded by "{{" and "}}" rather than "{" and "}". Defining instances of terms and phrases appear in `slanted type'. A defining instance is one which occurs near to or as part of an explanation of it. Prefixed ** is used as linguists do; to mark examples of incorrect usage. We follow the `logical' quoting convention described in the Writing Style section above. In addition, we reserve double quotes for actual excerpts of text or (sometimes invented) speech. Scare quotes (which mark a word being used in a nonstandard way), and philosopher's quotes (which turn an utterance into the string of letters or words that name it) are both rendered with single quotes. References such as malloc(3) and patch(1) are to Unix facilities (some of which, such as patch(1), are actually freeware distributed over Usenet). The Unix manuals use foo(n) to refer to item foo in section (n) of the manual, where n=1 is utilities, n=2 is system calls, n=3 is C library routines, n=6 is games, and n=8 (where present) is system administration utilities. Sections 4, 5, and 7 of the manuals have changed roles frequently and in any case are not referred to in any of the entries. Various abbreviations used frequently in the lexicon are summarized here: abbrev. abbreviation adj. adjective adv. adverb alt. alternate cav. caveat conj. conjunction esp. especially excl. exclamation imp. imperative interj. interjection n. noun obs. obsolete pl. plural poss. possibly pref. prefix prob. probably prov. proverbial quant. quantifier suff. suffix syn. synonym (or synonymous with) v. verb (may be transitive or intransitive) var. variant vi. intransitive verb vt. transitive verb Where alternate spellings or pronunciations are given, alt. separates two possibilities with nearly equal distribution, while var. prefixes one that is markedly less common than the primary. Where a term can be attributed to a particular subculture or is known to have originated there, we have tried to so indicate. Here is a list of abbreviations used in etymologies: Amateur Packet Radio A technical culture of ham-radio sites using AX.25 and TCP/IP for wide-area networking and BBS systems. Berkeley University of California at Berkeley BBN Bolt, Beranek & Newman Cambridge the university in England (not the city in Massachusetts where MIT happens to be located!) CMU Carnegie-Mellon University Commodore Commodore Business Machines DEC The Digital Equipment Corporation (now Compaq). Fairchild The Fairchild Instruments Palo Alto development group FidoNet See the [165]FidoNet entry IBM International Business Machines MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology; esp. the legendary MIT AI Lab culture of roughly 1971 to 1983 and its feeder groups, including the Tech Model Railroad Club NRL Naval Research Laboratories NYU New York University OED The Oxford English Dictionary Purdue Purdue University SAIL Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (at Stanford University) SI From Système International, the name for the standard conventions of metric nomenclature used in the sciences Stanford Stanford University Sun Sun Microsystems TMRC Some MITisms go back as far as the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) at MIT c. 1960. Material marked TMRC is from "An Abridged Dictionary of the TMRC Language", originally compiled by Pete Samson in 1959 UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UK the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) Usenet See the [166]Usenet entry WPI Worcester Polytechnic Institute, site of a very active community of PDP-10 hackers during the 1970s WWW The World-Wide-Web. XEROX PARC XEROX's Palo Alto Research Center, site of much pioneering research in user interface design and networking Yale Yale University Some other etymology abbreviations such as [167]Unix and [168]PDP-10 refer to technical cultures surrounding specific operating systems, processors, or other environments. The fact that a term is labelled with any one of these abbreviations does not necessarily mean its use is confined to that culture. In particular, many terms labelled `MIT' and `Stanford' are in quite general use. We have tried to give some indication of the distribution of speakers in the usage notes; however, a number of factors mentioned in the introduction conspire to make these indications less definite than might be desirable. A few new definitions attached to entries are marked [proposed]. These are usually generalizations suggested by editors or Usenet respondents in the process of commenting on previous definitions of those entries. These are not represented as established jargon. _________________________________________________________________ Node:Format for New Entries, Next:[169]The Jargon Lexicon, Previous:[170]Other Lexicon Conventions, Up:[171]Top Format For New Entries You can mail submissions for the Jargon File to [172]jargon@snark.thyrsus.com. We welcome new jargon, and corrections to or amplifications of existing entries. You can improve your submission's chances of being included by adding background information on user population and years of currency. References to actual usage via URLs and/or DejaNews pointers are particularly welcomed. All contributions and suggestions about the Jargon File will be considered donations to be placed in the public domain as part of this File, and may be used in subsequent paper editions. Submissions may be edited for accuracy, clarity and concision. We are looking to expand the File's range of technical specialties covered. There are doubtless rich veins of jargon yet untapped in the scientific computing, graphics, and networking hacker communities; also in numerical analysis, computer architectures and VLSI design, language design, and many other related fields. Send us your jargon! We are not interested in straight technical terms explained by textbooks or technical dictionaries unless an entry illuminates `underground' meanings or aspects not covered by official histories. We are also not interested in `joke' entries -- there is a lot of humor in the file but it must flow naturally out of the explanations of what hackers do and how they think. It is OK to submit items of jargon you have originated if they have spread to the point of being used by people who are not personally acquainted with you. We prefer items to be attested by independent submission from two different sites. An HTML version of the File is available at http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon. Please send us URLs for materials related to the entries, so we can enrich the File's link structure. The Jargon File will be regularly maintained and made available for browsing on the World Wide Web, and will include a version number. Read it, pass it around, contribute -- this is your monument! _________________________________________________________________ Node:The Jargon Lexicon, Next:[173]Appendix A, Previous:[174]Format for New Entries, Up:[175]Top The Jargon Lexicon * [176]= 0 =: * [177]= A =: * [178]= B =: * [179]= C =: * [180]= D =: * [181]= E =: * [182]= F =: * [183]= G =: * [184]= H =: * [185]= I =: * [186]= J =: * [187]= K =: * [188]= L =: * [189]= M =: * [190]= N =: * [191]= O =: * [192]= P =: * [193]= Q =: * [194]= R =: * [195]= S =: * [196]= T =: * [197]= U =: * [198]= V =: * [199]= W =: * [200]= X =: * [201]= Y =: * [202]= Z =: _________________________________________________________________ Node:= 0 =, Next:[203]= A =, Up:[204]The Jargon Lexicon = 0 = * [205]0: * [206]1TBS: * [207]120 reset: * [208]2: * [209]404: * [210]404 compliant: * [211]4.2: * [212]@-party: _________________________________________________________________ Node:0, Next:[213]1TBS, Up:[214]= 0 = 0 Numeric zero, as opposed to the letter `O' (the 15th letter of the English alphabet). In their unmodified forms they look a lot alike, and various kluges invented to make them visually distinct have compounded the confusion. If your zero is center-dotted and letter-O is not, or if letter-O looks almost rectangular but zero looks more like an American football stood on end (or the reverse), you're probably looking at a modern character display (though the dotted zero seems to have originated as an option on IBM 3270 controllers). If your zero is slashed but letter-O is not, you're probably looking at an old-style ASCII graphic set descended from the default typewheel on the venerable ASR-33 Teletype (Scandinavians, for whom Ø is a letter, curse this arrangement). (Interestingly, the slashed zero long predates computers; Florian Cajori's monumental "A History of Mathematical Notations" notes that it was used in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.) If letter-O has a slash across it and the zero does not, your display is tuned for a very old convention used at IBM and a few other early mainframe makers (Scandinavians curse this arrangement even more, because it means two of their letters collide). Some Burroughs/Unisys equipment displays a zero with a reversed slash. Old CDC computers rendered letter O as an unbroken oval and 0 as an oval broken at upper right and lower left. And yet another convention common on early line printers left zero unornamented but added a tail or hook to the letter-O so that it resembled an inverted Q or cursive capital letter-O (this was endorsed by a draft ANSI standard for how to draw ASCII characters, but the final standard changed the distinguisher to a tick-mark in the upper-left corner). Are we sufficiently confused yet? _________________________________________________________________ Node:1TBS, Next:[215]120 reset, Previous:[216]0, Up:[217]= 0 = 1TBS // n. The "One True Brace Style"; see [218]indent style. _________________________________________________________________ Node:120 reset, Next:[219]2, Previous:[220]1TBS, Up:[221]= 0 = 120 reset /wuhn-twen'tee ree'set/ n. [from 120 volts, U.S. wall voltage] To cycle power on a machine in order to reset or unjam it. Compare [222]Big Red Switch, [223]power cycle. _________________________________________________________________ Node:2, Next:[224]404, Previous:[225]120 reset, Up:[226]= 0 = 2 infix. In translation software written by hackers, infix 2 often represents the syllable to with the connotation `translate to': as in dvi2ps (DVI to PostScript), int2string (integer to string), and texi2roff (Texinfo to [nt]roff). Several versions of a joke have floated around the internet in which some idiot programmer fixes the Y2K bug by changing all the Y's in something to K's, as in Januark, Februark, etc. _________________________________________________________________ Node:404, Next:[227]404 compliant, Previous:[228]2, Up:[229]= 0 = 404 // n. [from the HTTP error "file not found on server"] Extended to humans to convey that the subject has no idea or no clue - sapience not found. May be used reflexively; "Uh, I'm 404ing" means "I'm drawing a blank". _________________________________________________________________ Node:404 compliant, Next:[230]4.2, Previous:[231]404, Up:[232]= 0 = 404 compliant adj. The status of a website which has been completely removed, usually by the administrators of the hosting site as a result of net abuse by the website operators. The term is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the standard "301 compliant" Murkowski Bill disclaimer used by spammers. See also: [233]spam, [234]spamvertize. _________________________________________________________________ Node:4.2, Next:[235]@-party, Previous:[236]404 compliant, Up:[237]= 0 = 4.2 /for' poynt too'/ n. Without a prefix, this almost invariably refers to [238]BSD Unix release 4.2. Note that it is an indication of cluelessness to say "version 4.2", and "release 4.2" is rare; the number stands on its own, or is used in the more explicit forms 4.2BSD or (less commonly) BSD 4.2. Similar remarks apply to "4.3", "4.4" and to earlier, less-widespread releases 4.1 and 2.9. _________________________________________________________________ Node:@-party, Next:[239]abbrev, Previous:[240]4.2, Up:[241]= 0 = @-party /at'par`tee/ n. [from the @-sign in an Internet address] (alt. `@-sign party' /at'si:n par`tee/) A semi-closed party thrown for hackers at a science-fiction convention (esp. the annual World Science Fiction Convention or "Worldcon"); one must have a [242]network address to get in, or at least be in company with someone who does. One of the most reliable opportunities for hackers to meet face to face with people who might otherwise be represented by mere phosphor dots on their screens. Compare [243]boink. The first recorded @-party was held at the Westercon (a U.S. western regional SF convention) over the July 4th weekend in 1980. It is not clear exactly when the canonical @-party venue shifted to the Worldcon but it had certainly become established by Constellation in 1983. Sadly, the @-party tradition has been in decline since about 1996, mainly because having an @-address no longer functions as an effective lodge pin. _________________________________________________________________ Node:= A =, Next:[244]= B =, Previous:[245]= 0 =, Up:[246]The Jargon Lexicon = A = * [247]abbrev: * [248]ABEND: * [249]accumulator: * [250]ACK: * [251]Acme: * [252]acolyte: * [253]ad-hockery: * [254]Ada: * [255]address harvester: * [256]adger: * [257]admin: * [258]ADVENT: * [259]AFAIK: * [260]AFJ: * [261]AFK: * [262]AI: * [263]AI-complete: * [264]AI koans: * [265]AIDS: * [266]AIDX: * [267]airplane rule: * [268]Alderson loop: * [269]aliasing bug: * [270]Alice and Bob: * [271]all-elbows: * [272]alpha geek: * [273]alpha particles: * [274]alt: * [275]alt bit: * [276]Aluminum Book: * [277]ambimouseterous: * [278]Amiga: * [279]Amiga Persecution Complex: * [280]amoeba: * [281]amp off: * [282]amper: * [283]Angband: * [284]angle brackets: * [285]angry fruit salad: * [286]annoybot: * [287]annoyware: * [288]ANSI: * [289]ANSI standard: * [290]ANSI standard pizza: * [291]AOL!: * [292]app: * [293]arena: * [294]arg: * [295]ARMM: * [296]armor-plated: * [297]asbestos: * [298]asbestos cork award: * [299]asbestos longjohns: * [300]ASCII: * [301]ASCII art: * [302]ASCIIbetical order: * [303]astroturfing: * [304]atomic: * [305]attoparsec: * [306]AUP: * [307]autobogotiphobia: * [308]automagically: * [309]avatar: * [310]awk: _________________________________________________________________ Node:abbrev, Next:[311]ABEND, Previous:[312]@-party, Up:[313]= A = abbrev /*-breev'/, /*-brev'/ n. Common abbreviation for `abbreviation'. _________________________________________________________________ Node:ABEND, Next:[314]accumulator, Previous:[315]abbrev, Up:[316]= A = ABEND /a'bend/, /*-bend'/ n. [ABnormal END] 1. Abnormal termination (of software); [317]crash; [318]lossage. Derives from an error message on the IBM 360; used jokingly by hackers but seriously mainly by [319]code grinders. Usually capitalized, but may appear as `abend'. Hackers will try to persuade you that ABEND is called `abend' because it is what system operators do to the machine late on Friday when they want to call it a day, and hence is from the German `Abend' = `Evening'. 2. [alt.callahans] Absent By Enforced Net Deprivation - used in the subject lines of postings warning friends of an imminent loss of Internet access. (This can be because of computer downtime, loss of provider, moving or illness.) Variants of this also appear: ABVND = `Absent By Voluntary Net Deprivation' and ABSEND = `Absent By Self-Enforced Net Deprivation' have been sighted. _________________________________________________________________ Node:accumulator, Next:[320]ACK, Previous:[321]ABEND, Up:[322]= A = accumulator n. obs. 1. Archaic term for a register. On-line use of it as a synonym for `register' is a fairly reliable indication that the user has been around for quite a while and/or that the architecture under discussion is quite old. The term in full is almost never used of microprocessor registers, for example, though symbolic names for arithmetic registers beginning in `A' derive from historical use of the term `accumulator' (and not, actually, from `arithmetic'). Confusingly, though, an `A' register name prefix may also stand for `address', as for example on the Motorola 680x0 family. 2. A register being used for arithmetic or logic (as opposed to addressing or a loop index), especially one being used to accumulate a sum or count of many items. This use is in context of a particular routine or stretch of code. "The FOOBAZ routine uses A3 as an accumulator." 3. One's in-basket (esp. among old-timers who might use sense 1). "You want this reviewed? Sure, just put it in the accumulator." (See [323]stack.) _________________________________________________________________ Node:ACK, Next:[324]Acme, Previous:[325]accumulator, Up:[326]= A = ACK /ak/ interj. 1. [common; from the ASCII mnemonic for 0000110] Acknowledge. Used to register one's presence (compare mainstream Yo!). An appropriate response to [327]ping or [328]ENQ. 2. [from the comic strip "Bloom County"] An exclamation of surprised disgust, esp. in "Ack pffft!" Semi-humorous. Generally this sense is not spelled in caps (ACK) and is distinguished by a following exclamation point. 3. Used to politely interrupt someone to tell them you understand their point (see [329]NAK). Thus, for example, you might cut off an overly long explanation with "Ack. Ack. Ack. I get it now". 4. An affirmative. "Think we ought to ditch that damn NT server for a Linux box?" "ACK!" There is also a usage "ACK?" (from sense 1) meaning "Are you there?", often used in email when earlier mail has produced no reply, or during a lull in [330]talk mode to see if the person has gone away (the standard humorous response is of course [331]NAK (sense 1), i.e., "I'm not here"). _________________________________________________________________ Node:Acme, Next:[332]acolyte, Previous:[333]ACK, Up:[334]= A = Acme n. The canonical supplier of bizarre, elaborate, and non-functional gadgetry - where Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson (two cartoonists who specialized in elaborate contraptions) shop. The name has been humorously expanded as A (or American) Company Making Everything. (In fact, Acme was a real brand sold from Sears Roebuck catalogs in the early 1900s.) Describing some X as an "Acme X" either means "This is [335]insanely great", or, more likely, "This looks [336]insanely great on paper, but in practice it's really easy to shoot yourself in the foot with it." Compare [337]pistol. This term, specially cherished by American hackers and explained here for the benefit of our overseas brethren, comes from the Warner Brothers' series of "Roadrunner" cartoons. In these cartoons, the famished Wile E. Coyote was forever attempting to catch up with, trap, and eat the Roadrunner. His attempts usually involved one or more high-technology Rube Goldberg devices - rocket jetpacks, catapults, magnetic traps, high-powered slingshots, etc. These were usually delivered in large cardboard boxes, labeled prominently with the Acme name. These devices invariably malfunctioned in improbable and violent ways. _________________________________________________________________ Node:acolyte, Next:[338]ad-hockery, Previous:[339]Acme, Up:[340]= A = acolyte n. obs. [TMRC] An [341]OSU privileged enough to submit data and programs to a member of the [342]priesthood. _________________________________________________________________ Node:ad-hockery, Next:[343]Ada, Previous:[344]acolyte, Up:[345]= A = ad-hockery /ad-hok'*r-ee/ n. [Purdue] 1. Gratuitous assumptions made inside certain programs, esp. expert systems, which lead to the appearance of semi-intelligent behavior but are in fact entirely arbitrary. For example, fuzzy-matching of input tokens that might be typing errors against a symbol table can make it look as though a program knows how to spell. 2. Special-case code to cope with some awkward input that would otherwise cause a program to [346]choke, presuming normal inputs are dealt with in some cleaner and more regular way. Also called `ad-hackery', `ad-hocity' (/ad-hos'*-tee/), `ad-crockery'. See also [347]ELIZA effect. _________________________________________________________________ Node:Ada, Next:[348]address harvester, Previous:[349]ad-hockery, Up:[350]= A = Ada n. A [351]Pascal-descended language that was at one time made mandatory for Department of Defense software projects by the Pentagon. Hackers are nearly unanimous in observing that, technically, it is precisely what one might expect given that kind of endorsement by fiat; designed by committee, crockish, difficult to use, and overall a disastrous, multi-billion-dollar boondoggle (one common description wss "The PL/I of the 1980s"). Hackers find Ada's exception-handling and inter-process communication features particularly hilarious. Ada Lovelace (the daughter of Lord Byron who became the world's first programmer while cooperating with Charles Babbage on the design of his mechanical computing engines in the mid-1800s) would almost certainly blanch at the use to which her name has latterly been put; the kindest thing that has been said about it is that there is probably a good small language screaming to get out from inside its vast, [352]elephantine bulk. _________________________________________________________________ Node:address harvester, Next:[353]adger, Previous:[354]Ada, Up:[355]= A = address harvester n. A robot that searches web pages and/or filters netnews traffic looking for valid email addresses. Some address harvesters are benign, used only for compiling address directories. Most, unfortunately, are run by miscreants compiling address lists to [356]spam. Address harvesters can be foiled by a [357]teergrube. _________________________________________________________________ Node:adger, Next:[358]admin, Previous:[359]address harvester, Up:[360]= A = adger /aj'r/ vt. [UCLA mutant of [361]nadger, poss. also from the middle name of an infamous [362]tenured graduate student] To make a bonehead move with consequences that could have been foreseen with even slight mental effort. E.g., "He started removing files and promptly adgered the whole project". Compare [363]dumbass attack. _________________________________________________________________ Node:admin, Next:[364]ADVENT, Previous:[365]adger, Up:[366]= A = admin /ad-min'/ n. Short for `administrator'; very commonly used in speech or on-line to refer to the systems person in charge on a computer. Common constructions on this include `sysadmin' and `site admin' (emphasizing the administrator's role as a site contact for email and news) or `newsadmin' (focusing specifically on news). Compare [367]postmaster, [368]sysop, [369]system mangler. _________________________________________________________________ Node:ADVENT, Next:[370]AFAIK, Previous:[371]admin, Up:[372]= A = ADVENT /ad'vent/ n. The prototypical computer adventure game, first designed by Will Crowther on the [373]PDP-10 in the mid-1970s as an attempt at computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods at Stanford in 1976. (Woods had been one of the authors of [374]INTERCAL.) Now better known as Adventure or Colossal Cave Adventure, but the [375]TOPS-10 operating system permitted only six-letter filenames. See also [376]vadding, [377]Zork, and [378]Infocom. This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style since expected in text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines that have become fixtures of hacker-speak: "A huge green fierce snake bars the way!" "I see no X here" (for some noun X). "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike." "You are in a little maze of twisty passages, all different." The `magic words' [379]xyzzy and [380]plugh also derive from this game. Crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the Mammoth & Flint Ridge cave system; it actually has a `Colossal Cave' and a `Bedquilt' as in the game, and the `Y2' that also turns up is cavers' jargon for a map reference to a secondary entrance. ADVENT sources are available for FTP at [381]ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/doc/misc/if-archive/games/source/advent.tar.Z . There is a [382]http://people.delphi.com/rickadams/adventure/index.html. _________________________________________________________________ Node:AFAIK, Next:[383]AFJ, Previous:[384]ADVENT, Up:[385]= A = AFAIK // n. [Usenet] Abbrev. for "As Far As I Know". _________________________________________________________________ Node:AFJ, Next:[386]AFK, Previous:[387]AFAIK, Up:[388]= A = AFJ // n. Written-only abbreviation for "April Fool's Joke". Elaborate April Fool's hoaxes are a long-established tradition on Usenet and Internet; see [389]kremvax for an example. In fact, April Fool's Day is the only seasonal holiday consistently marked by customary observances on Internet and other hacker networks. _________________________________________________________________ Node:AFK, Next:[390]AI, Previous:[391]AFJ, Up:[392]= A = AFK [MUD] Abbrev. for "Away From Keyboard". Used to notify others that you will be momentarily unavailable online. eg. "Let's not go kill that frost giant yet, I need to go AFK to make a phone call". Often MUDs will have a command to politely inform others of your absence when they try to talk with you. The term is not restricted to MUDs, however, and has become common in many chat situations, from IRC to Unix talk. _________________________________________________________________ Node:AI, Next:[393]AI-complete, Previous:[394]AFK, Up:[395]= A = AI /A-I/ n. Abbreviation for `Artificial Intelligence', so common that the full form is almost never written or spoken among hackers. _________________________________________________________________ Node:AI-complete, Next:[396]AI koans, Previous:[397]AI, Up:[398]= A = AI-complete /A-I k*m-pleet'/ adj. [MIT, Stanford: by analogy with `NP-complete' (see [399]NP-)] Used to describe problems or subproblems in AI, to indicate that the solution presupposes a solution to the `strong AI problem' (that is, the synthesis of a human-level intelligence). A problem that is AI-complete is, in other words, just too hard. Examples of AI-complete problems are `The Vision Problem' (building a system that can see as well as a human) and `The Natural Language Problem' (building a system that can understand and speak a natural language as well as a human). These may appear to be modular, but all attempts so far (1999) to solve them have foundered on the amount of context information and `intelligence' they seem to require. See also [400]gedanken. _________________________________________________________________ Node:AI koans, Next:[401]AIDS, Previous:[402]AI-complete, Up:[403]= A = AI koans /A-I koh'anz/ pl.n. A series of pastiches of Zen teaching riddles created by Danny Hillis at the MIT AI Lab around various major figures of the Lab's culture (several are included under [404]Some AI Koans in Appendix A). See also [405]ha ha only serious, [406]mu, and [407]hacker humor. _________________________________________________________________ Node:AIDS, Next:[408]AIDX, Previous:[409]AI koans, Up:[410]= A = AIDS /aydz/ n. Short for A* Infected Disk Syndrome (`A*' is a [411]glob pattern that matches, but is not limited to, Apple or Amiga), this condition is quite often the result of practicing unsafe [412]SEX. See [413]virus, [414]worm, [415]Trojan horse, [416]virgin. _________________________________________________________________ Node:AIDX, Next:[417]airplane rule, Previous:[418]AIDS, Up:[419]= A = AIDX /ayd'k*z/ n. Derogatory term for IBM's perverted version of Unix, AIX, especially for the AIX 3.? used in the IBM RS/6000 series (some hackers think it is funnier just to pronounce "AIX" as "aches"). A victim of the dreaded "hybridism" disease, this attempt to combine the two main currents of the Unix stream ([420]BSD and [421]USG Unix) became a [422]monstrosity to haunt system administrators' dreams. For example, if new accounts are created while many users are logged on, the load average jumps quickly over 20 due to silly implementation of the user databases. For a quite similar disease, compare [423]HP-SUX. Also, compare [424]Macintrash, [425]Nominal Semidestructor, [426]ScumOS, [427]sun-stools. _________________________________________________________________ Node:airplane rule, Next:[428]Alderson loop, Previous:[429]AIDX, Up:[430]= A = airplane rule n. "Complexity increases the possibility of failure; a twin-engine airplane has twice as many engine problems as a single-engine airplane." By analogy, in both software and electronics, the rule that simplicity increases robustness. It is correspondingly argued that the right way to build reliable systems is to put all your eggs in one basket, after making sure that you've built a really good basket. See also [431]KISS Principle, [432]elegant.