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#========= THIS IS THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10, 01 JUL 1992 =========#
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 2.9.10" or
"The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 2.9.10, 01 JUL 1992".)
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 eric@snark.thyrsus.com (215)-296-5718
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.
:Introduction:
**************
:About This File:
=================
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 35 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 {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 {kluge} and an {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.
Hackish 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 entries.
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
{appendix A}. The `outside' reader's attention is particularly directed
to {appendix B}, "A Portrait of J. Random Hacker". {Appendix C} is a
bibliography of 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.
: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 hackish slang is traditionally `the jargon'. When talking about the
jargon there is therefore no convenient way to distinguish 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 hackish 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-technicalsubcultures (bikers, rock fans, surfers, etc).
*`jargon': without qualifier, denotes informal `slangy' languagepeculiar to hackers --- the subject of this lexicon.
*`techspeak': the formal technical vocabulary of programming, computerscience, 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 "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.
: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 ({frob} and some senses of {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, {FTP}ed 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 `>' means numbered with a
version number) 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 Russell Brand's `CoEvolution Quarterly' (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 {TWENEX} system
rather than a host for the AI hackers' beloved {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 {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 hackish 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 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 {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 <eric@snark.thyrsus.com> maintains the new File with
assistance from Guy L. Steele Jr. <gls@think.com>; 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 jargon@thyrsus.com
(UUCP-only sites without connections to an autorouting smart site can
use ...!uunet!snark!jargon).
(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
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 (as well as The
Untimely Demise of Mabel The Monkey).
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 2.9.8, 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 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.).
Someday, the next maintainer will take over and spawn `version 3'.
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 <jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu>, Bernie Cosell
<cosell@bbn.com>, Earl Boebert <boebert@SCTC.com>, and Joe Morris
<jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org>.
We were fortunate enough to have the aid of some accomplished linguists.
David Stampe <stampe@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu> and Charles Hoequist
<hoequist@bnr.ca> contributed valuable criticism; Joe Keane
<jgk@osc.osc.com> helped us improve the pronunciation guides.
A few bits of this text quote previous works. We are indebted to Brian
A. LaMacchia <bal@zurich.ai.mit.edu> for obtaining permission for us to
use material from the `TMRC Dictionary'; also, Don Libes
<libes@cme.nist.gov> contributed some appropriate material from his
excellent book `Life With UNIX'. We thank Per Lindberg <per@front.se>,
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 <Marc_Weiser.PARC@xerox.com> 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 <msb@sq.com> to the final manuscript; he read and reread
many drafts, checked facts, caught typos, submitted an amazing number of
thoughtful comments, and did yeoman service in catching typos and minor
usage bobbles. Mr. Brader's rare combination of enthusiasm,
persistence, wide-ranging technical knowledge, and precisionism in
matters of language made his help invaluable, and the sustained volume
and quality of his input over many months only allowed him to escape
co-editor credit by the slimmest of margins.
Finally, George V. Reilly <gvr@cs.brown.edu> helped with TeX arcana and
painstakingly proofread some 2.7 and 2.8 versions; Steve Summit
<scs@adam.mit.edu> contributed a number of excellent new entries and
many small improvements to 2.9.10; and Eric Tiedemann <est@thyrsus.com>
contributed sage advice throughout on rhetoric, amphigory, and
philosophunculism.
: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 the following:
: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 {win},
{lose}, {hack}, {flame}, {barf}, {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 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 classics include
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, and
alt.sadistic.dentists.drill.drill.drill.
: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 {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
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
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.
: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 {T} and {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 {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]
: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 {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
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.
However, note that 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 noted
that the defined plural of `caboose' is `cabeese', and includes an entry
which implies that the plural of `mouse' is {meeces}. On a similarly
Anglo-Saxon note, almost anything ending in `x' may form plurals in
`-xen' (see {VAXen} and {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 {frobnitz}) and `Unices' and `Twenices' (rather than
`Unixes' and `Twenexes'; see {UNIX}, {TWENEX} in main text). But note
that `Unixen' and `Twenexen' are never used; 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.
: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 (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!"
:Anthromorphization: -------------------- Semantically, one rich source
of jargon constructions is the hackish tendency to anthropomorphize
hardware and software. This isn't done in a na"ive 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'. What *is* common is 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'.
Of the six listed constructions, verb doubling, peculiar noun
formations, anthromorphization, and (especially) spoken inarticulations
have become quite general; but punning jargon is still largely confined
to MIT and other large universities, and the `-P' convention is found
only where LISPers flourish.
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 {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.
: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 "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 {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.
Another hacker quirk 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 {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 {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 {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). 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*.
There is also an accepted convention for `writing under erasure'; the
text
Be nice to this fool^H^H^H^Hgentleman, he's in from corporate HQ.
would be read as "Be nice to this fool, I mean this gentleman...". This
comes from the fact that the digraph ^H is often used as a print
representation for a backspace. It parallels (and may have been
influenced by) the ironic use of `slashouts' in science-fiction
fanzines.
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. The notation is mildly confusing to
C programmers, because `^' means bitwise {XOR} in C. Despite this, it
was favored 3:1 over ** in a late-1990 snapshot of USENET. It is used
consistently in this text.
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 {MUD} world, common C boolean, logical, and
relational operators such as `|', `&', `||', `&&', `!', `==', `!=', `>',
and `<', `>=', 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:
I resently 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.
#ifdef FLAME
Hasn't anyone told those idiots that you can't get
decent bogon suppression with AFJ filters at today's
net speeds?
#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 <disclaimer.h>
--
== 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 {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."
Another habit is that of using angle-bracket enclosure to genericize a
term; this derives from conventions used in {BNF}. Uses like the
following are common:
So this <ethnic> walks into a bar one day, and...
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.
One area where hackish 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 the notation 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.
A few other idiosyncratic quoting styles survive because they are
automatically generated. One particularly ugly one looks like this:
/* Written hh:mm pm Mmm dd, yyyy by user@site in <group> */
/* ---------- "Article subject, chopped to 35 ch" ---------- */
<quoted text>
/* End of text from local:group */
It is generated by an elderly, variant news-reading system called
`notesfiles'. The overall trend, however, is definitely away from such
verbosity.
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.
In 1991 practice is still evolving, and disputes over the `correct'
inclusion style occasionally lead to {holy wars}. One variant style
reported uses the citation character `|' in place of `>' for extended
quotations where original variations in indentation are being retained.
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).
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. The good one is that it encourages honesty
and tends to break down hierarchical authority relationships; the bad 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.
: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 seems to be
asking the opposite question from "Are you going?", and so merits 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' or German `doch' with which one could
unambiguously answer `yes' to a negative question.
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.
Here's a related quirk. 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!").
: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 English'. 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 {{Commonwealth Hackish}} reporting some
general phonetic and vocabulary differences from U.S. hackish.
Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia are reported to
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.
A few notes on hackish usages in Russian have been added where they are
parallel with English idioms and thus comprehensible to
English-speakers.
: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).
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".
3. Uppercase letters are pronounced as their English letter names; thus
(for example) /H-L-L/ is equivalent to /aitch el el/. /Z/ may
be pronounced /zee/ or /zed/ depending on your local dialect.
4. Vowels are represented as follows:
a
back, that
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
father, palm
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/)
A /*/ 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/.
Entries with a pronunciation of `//' are written-only usages. (No, UNIX
weenies, this does *not* mean `pronounce like previous pronunciation'!)
: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.
Prefix * 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
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:
Berkeley
University of California at Berkeley
Cambridge
the university in England (*not* the city in Massachusetts where
MIT happens to be located!)
BBN
Bolt, Beranek & Newman
CMU
Carnegie-Mellon University
Commodore
Commodore Business Machines
DEC
The Digital Equipment Corporation
Fairchild
The Fairchild Instruments Palo Alto development group
Fidonet
See the {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 Syst`eme 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 {USENET} entry
WPI
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, site of a very active community of
PDP-10 hackers during the 1970s
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 {UNIX} and {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.
:Format For New Entries:
========================
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.
Try to conform to the format already being used --- head-words
separated from text by a colon (double colon for topic entries),
cross-references in curly brackets (doubled for topic entries),
pronunciations in slashes, etymologies in square brackets,
single-space after definition numbers and word classes, etc. Stick to
the standard ASCII character set (7-bit printable, no high-half
characters or [nt]roff/TeX/Scribe escapes), as one of the versions
generated from the master file is an info document that has to be
viewable on a character tty.
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.
The Jargon File will be regularly maintained and re-posted from now on
and will include a version number. Read it, pass it around,
contribute --- this is *your* monument!
The Jargon Lexicon
******************
= A =
=====
:abbrev: /*-breev'/, /*-brev'/ n. Common abbreviation for
`abbreviation'.
:ABEND: [ABnormal END] /ah'bend/, /*-bend'/ n. Abnormal
termination (of software); {crash}; {lossage}. Derives from an
error message on the IBM 360; used jokingly by hackers but
seriously mainly by {code grinder}s. 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'.
:accumulator: n. 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 {stack}.)
:ACK: /ak/ interj. 1. [from the ASCII mnemonic for 0000110]
Acknowledge. Used to register one's presence (compare mainstream
*Yo!*). An appropriate response to {ping} or {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 {NAK}). Thus, for example, you might cut off an overly
long explanation with "Ack. Ack. Ack. I get it now".
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 {talk mode} to see if the person has
gone away (the standard humorous response is of course {NAK}
(sense 2), i.e., "I'm not here").
:ad-hockery: /ad-hok'*r-ee/ [Purdue] n. 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 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
{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 {ELIZA effect}.
:Ada:: n. A {{Pascal}}-descended language that has been 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 is "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,
{elephantine} bulk.
:adger: /aj'r/ [UCLA] vt. To make a bonehead move with consequences
that could have been foreseen with a slight amount of mental
effort. E.g., "He started removing files and promptly adgered the
whole project". Compare {dumbass attack}.
: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 {postmaster}, {sysop}, {system
mangler}.
:ADVENT: /ad'vent/ n. The prototypical computer adventure game, first
implemented on the {PDP-10} by Will Crowther as an attempt at
computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a
puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods. Now better known as Adventure,
but the {{TOPS-10}} operating system permitted only 6-letter
filenames. See also {vadding}.
This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style now 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'
{xyzzy} and {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.
:AFJ: n. Written-only abbreviation for "April Fool's Joke".
Elaborate April Fool's hoaxes are a hallowed tradition on USENET
and Internet; see {kremvax} for an example. In fact, April
Fool's Day is the *only* seasonal holiday marked by customary
observances on the hacker networks.
:AI-complete: /A-I k*m-pleet'/ [MIT, Stanford: by analogy with
`NP-complete' (see {NP-})] adj. 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 (1991) to solve them have
foundered on the amount of context information and `intelligence'
they seem to require. See also {gedanken}.
: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 "{A Selection of AI Koans}" in {appendix
A}). See also {ha ha only serious}, {mu}, and {{Humor,
Hacker}}.
:AIDS: /aydz/ n. Short for A* Infected Disk Syndrome (`A*' is a
{glob} pattern that matches, but is not limited to, Apple),
this condition is quite often the result of practicing unsafe
{SEX}. See {virus}, {worm}, {Trojan horse},
{virgin}.
:AIDX: n. /aydkz/ n. Derogatory term for IBM's perverted version
of UNIX, AIX, especially for the AIX 3.? used in the IBM RS/6000
series. A victim of the dreaded "hybridism" disease, this
attempt to combine the two main currents of the UNIX stream
({BSD} and {USG UNIX}) became a {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 {HP-SUX}. Also, compare
{terminak}, {Macintrash} {Nominal Semidestructor},
{Open DeathTrap}, {ScumOS}, {sun-stools}.
: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 (see
also {KISS Principle}). 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.
:aliasing bug: n. A class of subtle programming errors that can
arise in code that does dynamic allocation, esp. via
`malloc(3)' or equivalent. If more than one pointer addresses
(`aliases for') a given hunk of storage, it may happen that the
storage is freed or reallocated (and thus moved) through one alias
and then referenced through another, which may lead to subtle (and
possibly intermittent) lossage depending on the state and the
allocation history of the malloc {arena}. Avoidable by use of
allocation strategies that never alias allocated core. Also
avoidable by use of higher-level languages, such as {LISP},
which employ a garbage collector (see {GC}). Also called a
{stale pointer bug}. See also {precedence lossage},
{smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {memory leak},
{memory smash}, {overrun screw}, {spam}.
Historical note: Though this term is nowadays associated with
C programming, it was already in use in a very similar sense in the
Algol-60 and FORTRAN communities in the 1960s.
:all-elbows: adj. Of a TSR (terminate-and-stay-resident) IBM PC
program, such as the N pop-up calendar and calculator utilities
that circulate on {BBS} systems: unsociable. Used to describe a
program that rudely steals the resources that it needs without
considering that other TSRs may also be resident. One particularly
common form of rudeness is lock-up due to programs fighting over
the keyboard interrupt. See {rude}, also {mess-dos}.
:alpha particles: n. See {bit rot}.
:alt: /awlt/ 1. n. The alt shift key on an IBM PC or {clone}.
2. n. The `clover' or `Command' key on a Macintosh; use of this
term usually reveals that the speaker hacked PCs before coming to
the Mac (see also {feature key}). Some Mac hackers,
confusingly, reserve `alt' for the Option key. 3. n.obs. [PDP-10;
often capitalized to ALT] Alternate name for the ASCII
ESC character (ASCII 0011011), after the keycap labeling on some
older terminals. Also `altmode' (/awlt'mohd/). This character
was almost never pronounced `escape' on an ITS system, in
{TECO}, or under TOPS-10 --- always alt, as in "Type alt alt to
end a TECO command" or "alt-U onto the system" (for "log onto
the [ITS] system"). This was probably because alt is more
convenient to say than `escape', especially when followed by
another alt or a character (or another alt *and* a character,
for that matter).
:alt bit: /awlt bit/ [from alternate] adj. See {meta bit}.
:altmode: n. Syn. {alt} sense 3.
:Aluminum Book: [MIT] n. `Common LISP: The Language', by
Guy L. Steele Jr. (Digital Press, first edition 1984, second
edition 1990). Note that due to a technical screwup some printings
of the second edition are actually of a color the author describes
succinctly as "yucky green". See also {{book titles}}.
:amoeba: n. Humorous term for the Commodore Amiga personal computer.
:amp off: [Purdue] vt. To run in {background}. From the UNIX shell `&'
operator.
:amper: n. Common abbreviation for the name of the ampersand (`&',
ASCII 0100110) character. See {{ASCII}} for other synonyms.
:angle brackets: n. Either of the characters `<' (ASCII
0111100) and `>' (ASCII 0111110) (ASCII less-than or
greater-than signs). The {Real World} angle brackets used by
typographers are actually taller than a less-than or greater-than
sign.
See {broket}, {{ASCII}}.
:angry fruit salad: n. A bad visual-interface design that uses too
many colors. This derives, of course, from the bizarre day-glo
colors found in canned fruit salad. Too often one sees similar
effects from interface designers using color window systems such as
{X}; there is a tendency to create displays that are flashy and
attention-getting but uncomfortable for long-term use.
:annoybot: /*-noy-bot/ [IRC] n. See {robot}.
:AOS: 1. /aws/ (East Coast), /ay-os/ (West Coast) [based on a
PDP-10 increment instruction] vt.,obs. To increase the amount of
something. "AOS the campfire." Usage: considered silly, and now
obsolete. Now largely supplanted by {bump}. See {SOS}. 2. A
{{Multics}}-derived OS supported at one time by Data General. This
was pronounced /A-O-S/ or /A-os/. A spoof of the standard
AOS system administrator's manual (`How to Load and Generate
your AOS System') was created, issued a part number, and circulated
as photocopy folklore. It was called `How to Goad and
Levitate your CHAOS System'. 3. Algebraic Operating System, in
reference to those calculators which use infix instead of postfix
(reverse Polish) notation.
Historical note: AOS in sense 1 was the name of a {PDP-10}
instruction that took any memory location in the computer and added
1 to it; AOS meant `Add One and do not Skip'. Why, you may ask,
does the `S' stand for `do not Skip' rather than for `Skip'? Ah,
here was a beloved piece of PDP-10 folklore. There were eight such
instructions: AOSE added 1 and then skipped the next instruction
if the result was Equal to zero; AOSG added 1 and then skipped if
the result was Greater than 0; AOSN added 1 and then skipped
if the result was Not 0; AOSA added 1 and then skipped Always;
and so on. Just plain AOS didn't say when to skip, so it never
skipped.
For similar reasons, AOJ meant `Add One and do not Jump'. Even
more bizarre, SKIP meant `do not SKIP'! If you wanted to skip the
next instruction, you had to say `SKIPA'. Likewise, JUMP meant
`do not JUMP'; the unconditional form was JUMPA. However, hackers
never did this. By some quirk of the 10's design, the {JRST}
(Jump and ReSTore flag with no flag specified) was actually faster
and so was invariably used. Such were the perverse mysteries of
assembler programming.
:app: /ap/ n. Short for `application program', as opposed to a
systems program. What systems vendors are forever chasing
developers to create for their environments so they can sell more
boxes. Hackers tend not to think of the things they themselves run
as apps; thus, in hacker parlance the term excludes compilers,
program editors, games, and messaging systems, though a user would
consider all those to be apps. Oppose {tool}, {operating
system}.
:arc: [primarily MSDOS] vt. To create a compressed {archive} from a
group of files using SEA ARC, PKWare PKARC, or a compatible
program. Rapidly becoming obsolete as the ARC compression method
is falling into disuse, having been replaced by newer compression
techniques. See {tar and feather}, {zip}.
:arc wars: [primarily MSDOS] n. {holy wars} over which archiving
program one should use. The first arc war was sparked when System
Enhancement Associates (SEA) sued PKWare for copyright and
trademark infringement on its ARC program. PKWare's PKARC
outperformed ARC on both compression and speed while largely
retaining compatibility (it introduced a new compression type that
could be disabled for backward-compatibility). PKWare settled out
of court to avoid enormous legal costs (both SEA and PKWare are
small companies); as part of the settlement, the name of PKARC was
changed to PKPAK. The public backlash against SEA for bringing
suit helped to hasten the demise of ARC as a standard when PKWare
and others introduced new, incompatible archivers with better
compression algorithms.
:archive: n. 1. A collection of several files bundled into one file
by a program such as `ar(1)', `tar(1)', `cpio(1)',
or {arc} for shipment or archiving (sense 2). See also {tar
and feather}. 2. A collection of files or archives (sense 1) made
available from an `archive site' via {FTP} or an email server.
:arena: [UNIX] n. The area of memory attached to a process by
`brk(2)' and `sbrk(2)' and used by `malloc(3)' as
dynamic storage. So named from a semi-mythical `malloc:
corrupt arena' message supposedly emitted when some early versions
became terminally confused. See {overrun screw}, {aliasing
bug}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {smash the stack}.
:arg: /arg/ n. Abbreviation for `argument' (to a function),
used so often as to have become a new word (like `piano' from
`pianoforte'). "The sine function takes 1 arg, but the
arc-tangent function can take either 1 or 2 args." Compare
{param}, {parm}, {var}.
:armor-plated: n. Syn. for {bulletproof}.
:asbestos: adj. Used as a modifier to anything intended to protect
one from {flame}s. Important cases of this include {asbestos
longjohns} and {asbestos cork award}, but it is used more
generally.
:asbestos cork award: n. Once, long ago at MIT, there was a {flamer}
so consistently obnoxious that another hacker designed, had made,
and distributed posters announcing that said flamer had been
nominated for the `asbestos cork award'. Persons in any doubt as
to the intended application of the cork should consult the
etymology under {flame}. Since then, it is agreed that only a
select few have risen to the heights of bombast required to earn
this dubious dignity --- but there is no agreement on *which*
few.
:asbestos longjohns: n. Notional garments often donned by {USENET}
posters just before emitting a remark they expect will elicit
{flamage}. This is the most common of the {asbestos} coinages.
Also `asbestos underwear', `asbestos overcoat', etc.
:ASCII:: [American Standard Code for Information Interchange]
/as'kee/ n. The predominant character set encoding of present-day
computers. Uses 7 bits for each character, whereas most earlier
codes (including an early version of ASCII) used fewer. This
change allowed the inclusion of lowercase letters --- a major
{win} --- but it did not provide for accented letters or any
other letterforms not used in English (such as the German sharp-S
and the ae-ligature
which is a letter in, for example, Norwegian). It could be worse,
though. It could be much worse. See {{EBCDIC}} to understand how.
Computers are much pickier and less flexible about spelling than
humans; thus, hackers need to be very precise when talking about
characters, and have developed a considerable amount of verbal
shorthand for them. Every character has one or more names --- some
formal, some concise, some silly. Common jargon names for ASCII
characters are collected here. See also individual entries for
{bang}, {excl}, {open}, {ques}, {semi}, {shriek},
{splat}, {twiddle}, and {Yu-Shiang Whole Fish}.
This list derives from revision 2.3 of the USENET ASCII
pronunciation guide. Single characters are listed in ASCII order;
character pairs are sorted in by first member. For each character,
common names are given in rough order of popularity, followed by
names that are reported but rarely seen; official ANSI/CCITT names
are surrounded by brokets: <>. Square brackets mark the
particularly silly names introduced by {INTERCAL}. Ordinary
parentheticals provide some usage information.
!
Common: {bang}; pling; excl; shriek; <exclamation mark>.
Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey;
wham; eureka; [spark-spot]; soldier.
"
Common: double quote; quote. Rare: literal mark;
double-glitch; <quotation marks>; <dieresis>; dirk;
[rabbit-ears]; double prime.
#
Common: <number sign>; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp;
{crunch}; hex; [mesh]; octothorpe. Rare: flash; crosshatch;
grid; pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; {splat}.
$
Common: dollar; <dollar sign>. Rare: currency symbol; buck;
cash; string (from BASIC); escape (when used as the echo of
ASCII ESC); ding; cache; [big money].
%
Common: percent; <percent sign>; mod; grapes. Rare:
[double-oh-seven].
&
Common: <ampersand>; amper; and. Rare: address (from C);
reference (from C++); andpersand; bitand; background (from
`sh(1)'); pretzel; amp. [INTERCAL called this `ampersand';
what could be sillier?]
'
Common: single quote; quote; <apostrophe>. Rare: prime;
glitch; tick; irk; pop; [spark]; <closing single quotation
mark>; <acute accent>.
()
Common: left/right paren; left/right parenthesis; left/right;
paren/thesis; open/close paren; open/close; open/close
parenthesis; left/right banana. Rare: so/al-ready;
lparen/rparen; <opening/closing parenthesis>; open/close round
bracket, parenthisey/unparenthisey; [wax/wane]; left/right
ear.
*
Common: star; [{splat}]; <asterisk>. Rare: wildcard; gear;
dingle; mult; spider; aster; times; twinkle; glob (see
{glob}); {Nathan Hale}.
+
Common: <plus>; add. Rare: cross; [intersection].
,
Common: <comma>. Rare: <cedilla>; [tail].
-
Common: dash; <hyphen>; <minus>. Rare: [worm]; option; dak;
bithorpe.
.
Common: dot; point; <period>; <decimal point>. Rare: radix
point; full stop; [spot].
/
Common: slash; stroke; <slant>; forward slash. Rare:
diagonal; solidus; over; slak; virgule; [slat].
:
Common: <colon>. Rare: dots; [two-spot].
;
Common: <semicolon>; semi. Rare: weenie; [hybrid],
pit-thwong.
<>
Common: <less/greater than>; left/right angle bracket;
bra/ket; left/right broket. Rare: from/{into, towards}; read
from/write to; suck/blow; comes-from/gozinta; in/out;
crunch/zap (all from UNIX); [angle/right angle].
=
Common: <equals>; gets; takes. Rare: quadrathorpe;
[half-mesh].
?
Common: query; <question mark>; {ques}. Rare: whatmark;
[what]; wildchar; huh; hook; buttonhook; hunchback.
@
Common: at sign; at; strudel. Rare: each; vortex; whorl;
[whirlpool]; cyclone; snail; ape; cat; rose; cabbage;
<commercial at>.
V
Rare: [book].
[]
Common: left/right square bracket; <opening/closing bracket>;
bracket/unbracket; left/right bracket. Rare: square/unsquare;
[U turn/U turn back].
\
Common: backslash; escape (from C/UNIX); reverse slash; slosh;
backslant; backwhack. Rare: bash; <reverse slant>; reversed
virgule; [backslat].
^
Common: hat; control; uparrow; caret; <circumflex>. Rare:
chevron; [shark (or shark-fin)]; to the (`to the power of');
fang; pointer (in Pascal).
_
Common: <underline>; underscore; underbar; under. Rare:
score; backarrow; skid; [flatworm].
`
Common: backquote; left quote; left single quote; open quote;
<grave accent>; grave. Rare: backprime; [backspark];
unapostrophe; birk; blugle; back tick; back glitch; push;
<opening single quotation mark>; quasiquote.
{}
Common: open/close brace; left/right brace; left/right
squiggly; left/right squiggly bracket/brace; left/right curly
bracket/brace; <opening/closing brace>. Rare: brace/unbrace;
curly/uncurly; leftit/rytit; left/right squirrelly;
[embrace/bracelet].
|
Common: bar; or; or-bar; v-bar; pipe; vertical bar. Rare:
<vertical line>; gozinta; thru; pipesinta (last three from
UNIX); [spike].
~
Common: <tilde>; squiggle; {twiddle}; not. Rare: approx;
wiggle; swung dash; enyay; [sqiggle (sic)].
The pronunciation of `#' as `pound' is common in the U.S.
but a bad idea; {{Commonwealth Hackish}} has its own, rather more
apposite use of `pound sign' (confusingly, on British keyboards
the pound graphic
happens to replace `#'; thus Britishers sometimes
call `#' on a U.S.-ASCII keyboard `pound', compounding the
American error). The U.S. usage derives from an old-fashioned
commercial practice of using a `#' suffix to tag pound weights
on bills of lading. The character is usually pronounced `hash'
outside the U.S.
The `uparrow' name for circumflex and `leftarrow' name for
underline are historical relics from archaic ASCII (the 1963
version), which had these graphics in those character positions
rather than the modern punctuation characters.
The `swung dash' or `approximation' sign is not quite the same
as tilde in typeset material
but the ASCII tilde serves for both (compare {angle
brackets}).
Some other common usages cause odd overlaps. The `#',
`$', `>', and `&' characters, for example, are all
pronounced "hex" in different communities because various
assemblers use them as a prefix tag for hexadecimal constants (in
particular, `#' in many assembler-programming cultures,
`$' in the 6502 world, `>' at Texas Instruments, and
`&' on the BBC Micro, Sinclair, and some Z80 machines). See
also {splat}.
The inability of ASCII text to correctly represent any of the
world's other major languages makes the designers' choice of 7 bits
look more and more like a serious {misfeature} as the use of
international networks continues to increase (see {software
rot}). Hardware and software from the U.S. still tends to embody
the assumption that ASCII is the universal character set; this is a
a major irritant to people who want to use a character set suited
to their own languages. Perversely, though, efforts to solve this
problem by proliferating `national' character sets produce an
evolutionary pressure to use a *smaller* subset common to all
those in use.
:ASCII art: n. The fine art of drawing diagrams using the ASCII
character set (mainly `|', `-', `/', `\', and
`+'). Also known as `character graphics' or `ASCII
graphics'; see also {boxology}. Here is a serious example:
o----)||(--+--|<----+ +---------o + D O
L )||( | | | C U
A I )||( +-->|-+ | +-\/\/-+--o - T
C N )||( | | | | P
E )||( +-->|-+--)---+--)|--+-o U
)||( | | | GND T
o----)||(--+--|<----+----------+
A power supply consisting of a full
wave rectifier circuit feeding a
capacitor input filter circuit
Figure 1.
And here are some very silly examples:
|\/\/\/| ____/| ___ |\_/| ___
| | \ o.O| ACK! / \_ |` '| _/ \
| | =(_)= THPHTH! / \/ \/ \
| (o)(o) U / \
C _) (__) \/\/\/\ _____ /\/\/\/
| ,___| (oo) \/ \/
| / \/-------\ U (__)
/____\ || | \ /---V `v'- oo )
/ \ ||---W|| * * |--| || |`. |_/\
Figure 2.
There is an important subgenre of humorous ASCII art that takes
advantage of the names of the various characters to tell a
pun-based joke.
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
| ^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ |
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
| ^^^^^^^ B ^^^^^^^^^ |
| ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
" A Bee in the Carrot Patch "
Figure 3.
Within humorous ASCII art, there is for some reason an entire
flourishing subgenre of pictures of silly cows. Four of these are
reproduced in Figure 2; here are three more:
(__) (__) (__)
(\/) ($$) (**)
/-------\/ /-------\/ /-------\/
/ | 666 || / |=====|| / | ||
* ||----|| * ||----|| * ||----||
~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~
Satanic cow This cow is a Yuppie Cow in love
Figure 4.
:attoparsec: n. `atto-' is the standard SI prefix for
multiplication by 10^(-18). A parsec (parallax-second) is
3.26 light-years; an attoparsec is thus 3.26 * 10^(-18) light
years, or about 3.1 cm (thus, 1 attoparsec/{microfortnight}
equals about 1 inch/sec). This unit is reported to be in use
(though probably not very seriously) among hackers in the U.K. See
{micro-}.
:autobogotiphobia: /aw'to-boh-got`*-foh'bee-*/ n. See {bogotify}.
:automagically: /aw-toh-maj'i-klee/ or /aw-toh-maj'i-k*l-ee/ adv.
Automatically, but in a way that, for some reason (typically
because it is too complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too
trivial), the speaker doesn't feel like explaining to you. See
{magic}. "The C-INTERCAL compiler generates C, then automagically
invokes `cc(1)' to produce an executable."
:avatar: [CMU, Tektronix] n. Syn. {root}, {superuser}. There
are quite a few UNIX machines on which the name of the superuser
account is `avatar' rather than `root'. This quirk was
originated by a CMU hacker who disliked the term `superuser',
and was propagated through an ex-CMU hacker at Tektronix.
:awk: 1. n. [UNIX techspeak] An interpreted language for massaging
text data developed by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian
Kernighan (the name is from their initials). It is characterized
by C-like syntax, a declaration-free approach to variable typing
and declarations, associative arrays, and field-oriented text
processing. See also {Perl}. 2. n. Editing term for an
expression awkward to manipulate through normal {regexp}
facilities (for example, one containing a {newline}). 3. vt. To
process data using `awk(1)'.
= B =
=====
:back door: n. A hole in the security of a system deliberately left
in place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for this is
not always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out
of the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field
service technicians or the vendor's maintenance programmers.
Historically, back doors have often lurked in systems longer than
anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely known.
The infamous {RTM} worm of late 1988, for example, used a back door
in the {BSD} UNIX `sendmail(8)' utility.
Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM revealed the
existence of a back door in early UNIX versions that may have
qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time.
The C compiler contained code that would recognize when the
`login' command was being recompiled and insert some code
recognizing a password chosen by Thompson, giving him entry to the
system whether or not an account had been created for him.
Normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from the
source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler. But to
recompile the compiler, you have to *use* the compiler --- so
Thompson also arranged that the compiler would *recognize when
it was compiling a version of itself*, and insert into the
recompiled compiler the code to insert into the recompiled `login'
the code to allow Thompson entry --- and, of course, the code to
recognize itself and do the whole thing again the next time around!
And having done this once, he was then able to recompile the
compiler from the original sources, leaving his back door in place
and active but with no trace in the sources.
The talk that revealed this truly moby hack was published as
"Reflections on Trusting Trust", `Communications of the
ACM 27', 8 (August 1984), pp. 761--763.
Syn. {trap door}; may also be called a `wormhole'. See also
{iron box}, {cracker}, {worm}, {logic bomb}.
:backbone cabal: n. A group of large-site administrators who pushed
through the {Great Renaming} and reined in the chaos of {USENET}
during most of the 1980s. The cabal {mailing list} disbanded in
late 1988 after a bitter internal catfight, but the net hardly
noticed.
:backbone site: n. A key USENET and email site; one that processes
a large amount of third-party traffic, especially if it is the home
site of any of the regional coordinators for the USENET maps.
Notable backbone sites as of early 1991 include uunet and the
mail machines at Rutgers University, UC Berkeley, DEC's Western
Research Laboratories, Ohio State University, and the University of
Texas. Compare {rib site}, {leaf site}.
:backgammon:: See {bignum}, {moby}, and {pseudoprime}.
:background: n.,adj.,vt. To do a task `in background' is to do
it whenever {foreground} matters are not claiming your undivided
attention, and `to background' something means to relegate it to
a lower priority. "For now, we'll just print a list of nodes and
links; I'm working on the graph-printing problem in background."
Note that this implies ongoing activity but at a reduced level or
in spare time, in contrast to mainstream `back burner' (which
connotes benign neglect until some future resumption of activity).
Some people prefer to use the term for processing that they have
queued up for their unconscious minds (a tack that one can often
fruitfully take upon encountering an obstacle in creative work).
Compare {amp off}, {slopsucker}.
Technically, a task running in background is detached from the
terminal where it was started (and often running at a lower
priority); oppose {foreground}. Nowadays this term is primarily
associated with {{UNIX}}, but it appears to have been first used
in this sense on OS/360.
:backspace and overstrike: interj. Whoa! Back up. Used to suggest
that someone just said or did something wrong. Common among
APL programmers.
:backward combatability: /bak'w*rd k*m-bat'*-bil'*-tee/ [from
`backward compatibility'] n. A property of hardware or software
revisions in which previous protocols, formats, and layouts are
discarded in favor of `new and improved' protocols, formats, and
layouts. Occurs usually when making the transition between major
releases. When the change is so drastic that the old formats are
not retained in the new version, it is said to be `backward
combatable'. See {flag day}.
:BAD: /B-A-D/ [IBM: acronym, `Broken As Designed'] adj. Said
of a program that is {bogus} because of bad design and misfeatures
rather than because of bugginess. See {working as designed}.
:Bad Thing: [from the 1930 Sellar & Yeatman parody `1066 And
All That'] n. Something that can't possibly result in improvement
of the subject. This term is always capitalized, as in "Replacing
all of the 9600-baud modems with bicycle couriers would be a Bad
Thing". Oppose {Good Thing}. British correspondents confirm
that {Bad Thing} and {Good Thing} (and prob. therefore {Right
Thing} and {Wrong Thing}) come from the book referenced in the
etymology, which discusses rulers who were Good Kings but Bad
Things. This has apparently created a mainstream idiom on the
British side of the pond.
:bag on the side: n. An extension to an established hack that is
supposed to add some functionality to the original. Usually
derogatory, implying that the original was being overextended and
should have been thrown away, and the new product is ugly,
inelegant, or bloated. Also v. phrase, `to hang a bag on the side
[of]'. "C++? That's just a bag on the side of C ...."
"They want me to hang a bag on the side of the accounting
system."
:bagbiter: /bag'bi:t-*r/ n. 1. Something, such as a program or a
computer, that fails to work, or works in a remarkably clumsy
manner. "This text editor won't let me make a file with a line
longer than 80 characters! What a bagbiter!" 2. A person who has
caused you some trouble, inadvertently or otherwise, typically by
failing to program the computer properly. Synonyms: {loser},
{cretin}, {chomper}. 3. adj. `bagbiting' Having the
quality of a bagbiter. "This bagbiting system won't let me
compute the factorial of a negative number." Compare {losing},
{cretinous}, {bletcherous}, `barfucious' (under
{barfulous}) and `chomping' (under {chomp}). 4. `bite
the bag' vi. To fail in some manner. "The computer keeps crashing
every 5 minutes." "Yes, the disk controller is really biting the
bag." The original loading of these terms was almost undoubtedly
obscene, possibly referring to the scrotum, but in their current
usage they have become almost completely sanitized.
A program called Lexiphage on the old MIT AI PDP-10 would draw on
a selected victim's bitmapped terminal the words "THE BAG" in
ornate letters, and then a pair of jaws biting pieces of it off.
This is the first and to date only known example of a program
*intended* to be a bagbiter.
:bamf: /bamf/ 1. [from old X-Men comics] interj. Notional sound
made by a person or object teleporting in or out of the hearer's
vicinity. Often used in {virtual reality} (esp. {MUD})
electronic {fora} when a character wishes to make a dramatic
entrance or exit. 2. The sound of magical transformation, used in
virtual reality {fora} like sense 1. 3. [from `Don
Washington's Survival Guide'] n. Acronym for `Bad-Ass Mother
Fucker', used to refer to one of the handful of nastiest monsters
on an LPMUD or other similar MUD.
:banana label: n. The labels often used on the sides of {macrotape}
reels, so called because they are shaped roughly like blunt-ended
bananas. This term, like macrotapes themselves, is still current
but visibly headed for obsolescence.
:banana problem: n. [from the story of the little girl who said "I
know how to spell `banana', but I don't know when to stop"]. Not
knowing where or when to bring a production to a close (compare
{fencepost error}). One may say `there is a banana problem' of an
algorithm with poorly defined or incorrect termination conditions,
or in discussing the evolution of a design that may be succumbing
to featuritis (see also {creeping elegance}, {creeping
featuritis}). See item 176 under {HAKMEM}, which describes a
banana problem in a {Dissociated Press} implementation. Also,
see {one-banana problem} for a superficially similar but
unrelated usage.
:bandwidth: n. 1. Used by hackers in a generalization of its
technical meaning as the volume of information per unit time that a
computer, person, or transmission medium can handle. "Those are
amazing graphics, but I missed some of the detail --- not enough
bandwidth, I guess." Compare {low-bandwidth}. 2. Attention
span. 3. On {USENET}, a measure of network capacity that is
often wasted by people complaining about how items posted by others
are a waste of bandwidth.
:bang: 1. n. Common spoken name for `!' (ASCII 0100001),
especially when used in pronouncing a {bang path} in spoken
hackish. In {elder days} this was considered a CMUish usage,
with MIT and Stanford hackers preferring {excl} or {shriek};
but the spread of UNIX has carried `bang' with it (esp. via the
term {bang path}) and it is now certainly the most common spoken
name for `!'. Note that it is used exclusively for
non-emphatic written `!'; one would not say "Congratulations
bang" (except possibly for humorous purposes), but if one wanted
to specify the exact characters `foo!' one would speak "Eff oh oh
bang". See {shriek}, {{ASCII}}. 2. interj. An exclamation
signifying roughly "I have achieved enlightenment!", or "The
dynamite has cleared out my brain!" Often used to acknowledge
that one has perpetrated a {thinko} immediately after one has
been called on it.
:bang on: vt. To stress-test a piece of hardware or software: "I
banged on the new version of the simulator all day yesterday and it
didn't crash once. I guess it is ready for release." The term
{pound on} is synonymous.
:bang path: n. An old-style UUCP electronic-mail address specifying
hops to get from some assumed-reachable location to the addressee,
so called because each {hop} is signified by a {bang} sign.
Thus, for example, the path ...!bigsite!foovax!barbox!me
directs people to route their mail to machine bigsite (presumably
a well-known location accessible to everybody) and from there
through the machine foovax to the account of user me on
barbox.
In the bad old days of not so long ago, before autorouting mailers
became commonplace, people often published compound bang addresses
using the { } convention (see {glob}) to give paths from
*several* big machines, in the hopes that one's correspondent
might be able to get mail to one of them reliably (example:
...!{seismo, ut-sally, ihnp4}!rice!beta!gamma!me). Bang paths
of 8 to 10 hops were not uncommon in 1981. Late-night dial-up
UUCP links would cause week-long transmission times. Bang paths
were often selected by both transmission time and reliability, as
messages would often get lost. See {{Internet address}},
{network, the}, and {sitename}.
:banner: n. 1. The title page added to printouts by most print
spoolers (see {spool}). Typically includes user or account ID
information in very large character-graphics capitals. Also called
a `burst page', because it indicates where to burst (tear apart)
fanfold paper to separate one user's printout from the next. 2. A
similar printout generated (typically on multiple pages of fan-fold
paper) from user-specified text, e.g., by a program such as UNIX's
`banner({1,6})'. 3. On interactive software, a first screen
containing a logo and/or author credits and/or a copyright notice.
:bar: /bar/ n. 1. The second {metasyntactic variable}, after {foo}
and before {baz}. "Suppose we have two functions: FOO and BAR.
FOO calls BAR...." 2. Often appended to {foo} to produce
{foobar}.
:bare metal: n. 1. New computer hardware, unadorned with such
snares and delusions as an {operating system}, an {HLL}, or
even assembler. Commonly used in the phrase `programming on the
bare metal', which refers to the arduous work of {bit bashing}
needed to create these basic tools for a new machine. Real
bare-metal programming involves things like building boot proms and
BIOS chips, implementing basic monitors used to test device
drivers, and writing the assemblers that will be used to write the
compiler back ends that will give the new machine a real
development environment. 2. `Programming on the bare metal' is
also used to describe a style of {hand-hacking} that relies on
bit-level peculiarities of a particular hardware design, esp.
tricks for speed and space optimization that rely on crocks such as
overlapping instructions (or, as in the famous case described in
{The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer} (in {appendix A}),
interleaving of opcodes on a magnetic drum to minimize fetch delays
due to the device's rotational latency). This sort of thing has
become less common as the relative costs of programming time and
machine resources have changed, but is still found in heavily
constrained environments such as industrial embedded systems. See
{real programmer}.
In the world of personal computing, bare metal programming
(especially in sense 1 but sometimes also in sense 2) is often
considered a {Good Thing}, or at least a necessary evil
(because these machines have often been sufficiently slow and
poorly designed to make it necessary; see {ill-behaved}).
There, the term usually refers to bypassing the BIOS or OS
interface and writing the application to directly access device
registers and machine addresses. "To get 19.2 kilobaud on the
serial port, you need to get down to the bare metal." People who
can do this sort of thing are held in high regard.
:barf: /barf/ [from mainstream slang meaning `vomit']
1. interj. Term of disgust. This is the closest hackish
equivalent of the Val\-speak "gag me with a spoon". (Like, euwww!)
See {bletch}. 2. vi. To say "Barf!" or emit some similar
expression of disgust. "I showed him my latest hack and he
barfed" means only that he complained about it, not that he
literally vomited. 3. vi. To fail to work because of unacceptable
input. May mean to give an error message. Examples: "The
division operation barfs if you try to divide by 0." (That is,
the division operation checks for an attempt to divide by zero, and
if one is encountered it causes the operation to fail in some
unspecified, but generally obvious, manner.) "The text editor
barfs if you try to read in a new file before writing out the old
one." See {choke}, {gag}. In Commonwealth hackish,
`barf' is generally replaced by `puke' or `vom'. {barf}
is sometimes also used as a {metasyntactic variable}, like {foo} or
{bar}.
:barfmail: n. Multiple {bounce message}s accumulating to the
level of serious annoyance, or worse. The sort of thing that
happens when an inter-network mail gateway goes down or
wonky.
:barfulation: /bar`fyoo-lay'sh*n/ interj. Variation of {barf}
used around the Stanford area. An exclamation, expressing disgust.
On seeing some particularly bad code one might exclaim,
"Barfulation! Who wrote this, Quux?"
:barfulous: /bar'fyoo-l*s/ adj. (alt. `barfucious',
/bar-fyoo-sh*s/) Said of something that would make anyone barf,
if only for esthetic reasons.
:barney: n. In Commonwealth hackish, `barney' is to {fred}
(sense #1) as {bar} is to {foo}. That is, people who
commonly use `fred' as their first metasyntactic variable will
often use `barney' second. The reference is, of course, to Fred
Flintstone and Barney Rubble in the Flintstones cartoons.
:baroque: adj. Feature-encrusted; complex; gaudy; verging on
excessive. Said of hardware or (esp.) software designs, this has
many of the connotations of {elephantine} or {monstrosity} but is
less extreme and not pejorative in itself. "Metafont even has
features to introduce random variations to its letterform output.
Now *that* is baroque!" See also {rococo}.
:BartleMUD: /bar'tl-muhd/ n. Any of the MUDs derived from the
original MUD game by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw (see
{MUD}). BartleMUDs are noted for their (usually slightly
offbeat) humor, dry but friendly syntax, and lack of adjectives in
object descriptions, so a player is likely to come across
`brand172', for instance (see {brand brand brand}). Bartle has
taken a bad rap in some MUDding circles for supposedly originating
this term, but (like the story that MUD is a trademark) this
appears to be a myth; he uses `MUD1'.
:BASIC: n. A programming language, originally designed for
Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s,
which has since become the leading cause of brain-damage in
proto-hackers. This is another case (like {Pascal}) of the bad
things that happen when a language deliberately designed as an
educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can write short
BASIC programs (on the order of 10--20 lines) very easily; writing
anything longer is (a) very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits
that will bite him/her later if he/she tries to hack in a real
language. This wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't
made BASIC so common on low-end micros. As it is, it ruins
thousands of potential wizards a year.
:batch: adj. 1. Non-interactive. Hackers use this somewhat more
loosely than the traditional technical definitions justify; in
particular, switches on a normally interactive program that prepare
it to receive non-interactive command input are often referred to
as `batch mode' switches. A `batch file' is a series of
instructions written to be handed to an interactive program running
in batch mode. 2. Performance of dreary tasks all at one sitting.
"I finally sat down in batch mode and wrote out checks for all
those bills; I guess they'll turn the electricity back on next
week..." 3. Accumulation of a number of small tasks that can be
lumped together for greater efficiency. "I'm batching up those
letters to send sometime" "I'm batching up bottles to take to the
recycling center."
:bathtub curve: n. Common term for the curve (resembling an
end-to-end section of one of those claw-footed antique bathtubs)
that describes the expected failure rate of electronics with time:
initially high, dropping to near 0 for most of the system's
lifetime, then rising again as it `tires out'. See also {burn-in
period}, {infant mortality}.
:baud: /bawd/ [simplified from its technical meaning] n. Bits per
second. Hence kilobaud or Kbaud, thousands of bits per second.
The technical meaning is `level transitions per second'; this
coincides with bps only for two-level modulation with no framing or
stop bits. Most hackers are aware of these nuances but blithely
ignore them.
Histotical note: this was originally a unit of telegraph signalling
speed, set at one pulse per second. It was proposed at the
International Telegraph Conference of 1927, and named after J.M.E.
Baudot (1845-1903), the French engineer who constructed the first
successful teleprinter.
:baud barf: /bawd barf/ n. The garbage one gets on the monitor
when using a modem connection with some protocol setting (esp.
line speed) incorrect, or when someone picks up a voice extension
on the same line, or when really bad line noise disrupts the
connection. Baud barf is not completely {random}, by the way;
hackers with a lot of serial-line experience can usually tell
whether the device at the other end is expecting a higher or lower
speed than the terminal is set to. *Really* experienced ones
can identify particular speeds.
:baz: /baz/ n. 1. The third {metasyntactic variable} "Suppose we
have three functions: FOO, BAR, and BAZ. FOO calls BAR, which
calls BAZ...." (See also {fum}) 2. interj. A term of mild
annoyance. In this usage the term is often drawn out for 2 or 3
seconds, producing an effect not unlike the bleating of a sheep;
/baaaaaaz/. 3. Occasionally appended to {foo} to produce
`foobaz'.
Earlier versions of this lexicon derived `baz' as a Stanford
corruption of {bar}. However, Pete Samson (compiler of the
{TMRC} lexicon) reports it was already current when he joined TMRC
in 1958. He says "It came from `Pogo'. Albert the Alligator,
when vexed or outraged, would shout `Bazz Fazz!' or `Rowrbazzle!'
The club layout was said to model the (mythical) New England
counties of Rowrfolk and Bassex (Rowrbazzle mingled with
(Norfolk/Suffolk/Middlesex/Essex)."
:bboard: /bee'bord/ [contraction of `bulletin board'] n.
1. Any electronic bulletin board; esp. used of {BBS} systems
running on personal micros, less frequently of a USENET
{newsgroup} (in fact, use of the term for a newsgroup generally
marks one either as a {newbie} fresh in from the BBS world or as
a real old-timer predating USENET). 2. At CMU and other colleges
with similar facilities, refers to campus-wide electronic bulletin
boards. 3. The term `physical bboard' is sometimes used to
refer to a old-fashioned, non-electronic cork memo board. At CMU,
it refers to a particular one outside the CS Lounge.
In either of senses 1 or 2, the term is usually prefixed by the
name of the intended board (`the Moonlight Casino bboard' or
`market bboard'); however, if the context is clear, the better-read
bboards may be referred to by name alone, as in (at CMU) "Don't
post for-sale ads on general".
:BBS: /B-B-S/ [abbreviation, `Bulletin Board System'] n. An electronic
bulletin board system; that is, a message database where people can
log in and leave broadcast messages for others grouped (typically)
into {topic group}s. Thousands of local BBS systems are in
operation throughout the U.S., typically run by amateurs for fun
out of their homes on MS-DOS boxes with a single modem line each.
Fans of USENET and Internet or the big commercial timesharing
bboards such as CompuServe and GEnie tend to consider local BBSes
the low-rent district of the hacker culture, but they serve a
valuable function by knitting together lots of hackers and users in
the personal-micro world who would otherwise be unable to exchange
code at all.
:beam: [from Star Trek Classic's "Beam me up, Scotty!"] vt. To
transfer {softcopy} of a file electronically; most often in
combining forms such as `beam me a copy' or `beam that over to
his site'. Compare {blast}, {snarf}, {BLT}.
:beanie key: [Mac users] n. See {command key}.
:beep: n.,v. Syn. {feep}. This term seems to be preferred among micro
hobbyists.
:beige toaster: n. A Macintosh. See {toaster}; compare
{Macintrash}, {maggotbox}.
:bells and whistles: [by analogy with the toyboxes on theater
organs] n. Features added to a program or system to make it more
{flavorful} from a hacker's point of view, without necessarily
adding to its utility for its primary function. Distinguished from
{chrome}, which is intended to attract users. "Now that we've
got the basic program working, let's go back and add some bells and
whistles." No one seems to know what distinguishes a bell from a
whistle.
:bells, whistles, and gongs: n. A standard elaborated form of
{bells and whistles}; typically said with a pronounced and ironic
accent on the `gongs'.
:benchmark: [techspeak] n. An inaccurate measure of computer
performance. "In the computer industry, there are three kinds of
lies: lies, damn lies, and benchmarks." Well-known ones include
Whetstone, Dhrystone, Rhealstone (see {h}), the Gabriel LISP
benchmarks (see {gabriel}), the SPECmark suite, and LINPACK. See
also {machoflops}, {MIPS}, {smoke and mirrors}.
:Berkeley Quality Software: adj. (often abbreviated `BQS') Term used
in a pejorative sense to refer to software that was apparently
created by rather spaced-out hackers late at night to solve some
unique problem. It usually has nonexistent, incomplete, or
incorrect documentation, has been tested on at least two examples,
and core dumps when anyone else attempts to use it. This term was
frequently applied to early versions of the `dbx(1)' debugger.
See also {Berzerkeley}.
:berklix: /berk'liks/ n.,adj. [contraction of `Berkeley UNIX'] See
{BSD}. Not used at Berkeley itself. May be more common among
{suit}s attempting to sound like cognoscenti than among hackers,
who usually just say `BSD'.
:berserking: vi. A {MUD} term meaning to gain points *only*
by killing other players and mobiles (non-player characters).
Hence, a Berserker-Wizard is a player character that has achieved
enough points to become a wizard, but only by killing other
characters. Berserking is sometimes frowned upon because of its
inherently antisocial nature, but some MUDs have a `berserker
mode' in which a player becomes *permanently* berserk, can
never flee from a fight, cannot use magic, gets no score for
treasure, but does get double kill points. "Berserker
wizards can seriously damage your elf!"
:Berzerkeley: /b*r-zer'klee/ [from `berserk', via the name of a
now-deceased record label] n. Humorous distortion of `Berkeley'
used esp. to refer to the practices or products of the
{BSD} UNIX hackers. See {software bloat}, {Missed'em-five},
{Berkeley Quality Software}.
Mainstream use of this term in reference to the cultural and
political peculiarities of UC Berkeley as a whole has been reported
from as far back as the 1960s.
:beta: /bay't*/, /be't*/ or (Commonwealth) /bee't*/ n. 1. In
the {Real World}, software often goes through two stages of
testing: Alpha (in-house) and Beta (out-house?). Software is said
to be `in beta'. 2. Anything that is new and experimental is in
beta. "His girlfriend is in beta" means that he is still testing
for compatibility and reserving judgment. 3. Beta software is
notoriously buggy, so `in beta' connotes flakiness.
Historical note: More formally, to beta-test is to test a
pre-release (potentially unreliable) version of a piece of software
by making it available to selected customers and users. This term
derives from early 1960s terminology for product cycle checkpoints,
first used at IBM but later standard throughout the industry.
`Alpha Test' was the unit, module, or component test phase; `Beta
Test' was initial system test. These themselves came from earlier
A- and B-tests for hardware. The A-test was a feasibility and
manufacturability evaluation done before any commitment to design
and development. The B-test was a demonstration that the
engineering model functioned as specified. The C-test
(corresponding to today's beta) was the B-test performed on early
samples of the production design.
:BFI: /B-F-I/ n. See {brute force and ignorance}. Also
encountered in the variants `BFMI', `brute force and
*massive* ignorance' and `BFBI' `brute force and bloody
ignorance'.
:bible: n. 1. One of a small number of fundamental source books
such as {Knuth} and {K&R}. 2. The most detailed and
authoritative reference for a particular language, operating
system, or other complex software system.
:BiCapitalization: n. The act said to have been performed on
trademarks (such as {PostScript}, NeXT, {NeWS}, VisiCalc,
FrameMaker, TK!solver, EasyWriter) that have been raised above the
ruck of common coinage by nonstandard capitalization. Too many
{marketroid} types think this sort of thing is really cute, even
the 2,317th time they do it. Compare {studlycaps}.
:BIFF: /bif/ [USENET] n. The most famous {pseudo}, and the
prototypical {newbie}. Articles from BIFF are characterized by
all uppercase letters sprinkled liberally with bangs, typos,
`cute' misspellings (EVRY BUDY LUVS GOOD OLD BIFF CUZ HE"S A
K00L DOOD AN HE RITES REEL AWESUM THINGZ IN CAPITULL LETTRS LIKE
THIS!!!), use (and often misuse) of fragments of {talk mode}
abbreviations, a long {sig block} (sometimes even a {doubled
sig}), and unbounded na"ivet'e. BIFF posts articles using his
elder brother's VIC-20. BIFF's location is a mystery, as his
articles appear to come from a variety of sites. However,
{BITNET} seems to be the most frequent origin. The theory that
BIFF is a denizen of BITNET is supported by BIFF's (unfortunately
invalid) electronic mail address: BIFF@BIT.NET.
:biff: /bif/ vt. To notify someone of incoming mail. From the
BSD utility `biff(1)', which was in turn named after a
friendly golden Labrador who used to chase frisbees in the halls at
UCB while 4.2BSD was in development (it had a well-known habit of
barking whenever the mailman came). No relation to
{BIFF}.
:Big Gray Wall: n. What faces a {VMS} user searching for
documentation. A full VMS kit comes on a pallet, the documentation
taking up around 15 feet of shelf space before the addition of
layered products such as compilers, databases, multivendor
networking, and programming tools. Recent (since VMS version 5)
DEC documentation comes with gray binders; under VMS version 4 the
binders were orange (`big orange wall'), and under version 3 they
were blue. See {VMS}. Often contracted to `Gray Wall'.
:big iron: n. Large, expensive, ultra-fast computers. Used generally
of {number-crunching} supercomputers such as Crays, but can include
more conventional big commercial IBMish mainframes. Term of
approval; compare {heavy metal}, oppose {dinosaur}.
:Big Red Switch: [IBM] n. The power switch on a computer, esp. the
`Emergency Pull' switch on an IBM {mainframe} or the power switch
on an IBM PC where it really is large and red. "This !@%$%
{bitty box} is hung again; time to hit the Big Red Switch."
Sources at IBM report that, in tune with the company's passion for
{TLA}s, this is often abbreviated as `BRS' (this has also
become established on FidoNet and in the PC {clone} world). It
is alleged that the emergency pull switch on an IBM 360/91 actually
fired a non-conducting bolt into the main power feed; the BRSes on
more recent machines physically drop a block into place so that
they can't be pushed back in. People get fired for pulling them,
especially inappropriately (see also {molly-guard}). Compare
{power cycle}, {three-finger salute}, {120 reset}; see
also {scram switch}.
:Big Room, the: n. The extremely large room with the blue ceiling
and intensely bright light (during the day) or black ceiling with
lots of tiny night-lights (during the night) found outside all
computer installations. "He can't come to the phone right now,
he's somewhere out in the Big Room."
:big win: n. Serendipity. "Yes, those two physicists discovered
high-temperature superconductivity in a batch of ceramic that had
been prepared incorrectly according to their experimental schedule.
Small mistake; big win!" See {win big}.
:big-endian: [From Swift's `Gulliver's Travels' via the famous
paper `On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace' by Danny Cohen,
USC/ISI IEN 137, dated April 1, 1980] adj. 1. Describes a computer
architecture in which, within a given multi-byte numeric
representation, the most significant byte has the lowest address
(the word is stored `big-end-first'). Most processors,
including the IBM 370 family, the {PDP-10}, the Motorola
microprocessor families, and most of the various RISC designs
current in mid-1991, are big-endian. See {little-endian},
{middle-endian}, {NUXI problem}. 2. An {{Internet address}}
the wrong way round. Most of the world follows the Internet
standard and writes email addresses starting with the name of the
computer and ending up with the name of the country. In the U.K.
the Joint Networking Team had decided to do it the other way round
before the Internet domain standard was established; e.g.,
me@uk.ac.wigan.cs. Most gateway sites have {ad-hockery} in
their mailers to handle this, but can still be confused. In
particular, the address above could be in the U.K. (domain uk)
or Czechoslovakia (domain cs).
:bignum: /big'nuhm/ [orig. from MIT MacLISP] n. 1. [techspeak] A
multiple-precision computer representation for very large integers.
More generally, any very large number. "Have you ever looked at
the United States Budget? There's bignums for you!"
2. [Stanford] In backgammon, large numbers on the dice are called
`bignums', especially a roll of double fives or double sixes
(compare {moby}, sense 4). See also {El Camino Bignum}.
Sense 1 may require some explanation. Most computer languages
provide a kind of data called `integer', but such computer
integers are usually very limited in size; usually they must be
smaller than than 2^(31) (2,147,483,648) or (on a losing
{bitty box}) 2^(15) (32,768). If you want to work with
numbers larger than that, you have to use floating-point numbers,
which are usually accurate to only six or seven decimal places.
Computer languages that provide bignums can perform exact
calculations on very large numbers, such as 1000! (the factorial
of 1000, which is 1000 times 999 times 998 times ... times 2
times 1). For example, this value for 1000! was computed by the
MacLISP system using bignums:
40238726007709377354370243392300398571937486421071
46325437999104299385123986290205920442084869694048
00479988610197196058631666872994808558901323829669
94459099742450408707375991882362772718873251977950
59509952761208749754624970436014182780946464962910
56393887437886487337119181045825783647849977012476
63288983595573543251318532395846307555740911426241
74743493475534286465766116677973966688202912073791
43853719588249808126867838374559731746136085379534
52422158659320192809087829730843139284440328123155
86110369768013573042161687476096758713483120254785
89320767169132448426236131412508780208000261683151
02734182797770478463586817016436502415369139828126
48102130927612448963599287051149649754199093422215
66832572080821333186116811553615836546984046708975
60290095053761647584772842188967964624494516076535
34081989013854424879849599533191017233555566021394
50399736280750137837615307127761926849034352625200
01588853514733161170210396817592151090778801939317
81141945452572238655414610628921879602238389714760
88506276862967146674697562911234082439208160153780
88989396451826324367161676217916890977991190375403
12746222899880051954444142820121873617459926429565
81746628302955570299024324153181617210465832036786
90611726015878352075151628422554026517048330422614
39742869330616908979684825901254583271682264580665
26769958652682272807075781391858178889652208164348
34482599326604336766017699961283186078838615027946
59551311565520360939881806121385586003014356945272
24206344631797460594682573103790084024432438465657
24501440282188525247093519062092902313649327349756
55139587205596542287497740114133469627154228458623
77387538230483865688976461927383814900140767310446
64025989949022222176590433990188601856652648506179
97023561938970178600408118897299183110211712298459
01641921068884387121855646124960798722908519296819
37238864261483965738229112312502418664935314397013
74285319266498753372189406942814341185201580141233
44828015051399694290153483077644569099073152433278
28826986460278986432113908350621709500259738986355
42771967428222487575867657523442202075736305694988
25087968928162753848863396909959826280956121450994
87170124451646126037902930912088908694202851064018
21543994571568059418727489980942547421735824010636
77404595741785160829230135358081840096996372524230
56085590370062427124341690900415369010593398383577
79394109700277534720000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000.
:bigot: n. A person who is religiously attached to a particular
computer, language, operating system, editor, or other tool (see
{religious issues}). Usually found with a specifier; thus,
`cray bigot', `ITS bigot', `APL bigot', `VMS bigot',
`Berkeley bigot'. True bigots can be distinguished from mere
partisans or zealots by the fact that they refuse to learn
alternatives even when the march of time and/or technology is
threatening to obsolete the favored tool. It is said "You can
tell a bigot, but you can't tell him much." Compare
{weenie}.
:bit: [from the mainstream meaning and `Binary digIT'] n.
1. [techspeak] The unit of information; the amount of information
obtained by asking a yes-or-no question for which the two outcomes
are equally probable. 2. [techspeak] A computational quantity that
can take on one of two values, such as true and false or 0 and 1.
3. A mental flag: a reminder that something should be done
eventually. "I have a bit set for you." (I haven't seen you for
a while, and I'm supposed to tell or ask you something.) 4. More
generally, a (possibly incorrect) mental state of belief. "I have
a bit set that says that you were the last guy to hack on EMACS."
(Meaning "I think you were the last guy to hack on EMACS, and what
I am about to say is predicated on this, so please stop me if this
isn't true.")
"I just need one bit from you" is a polite way of indicating that
you intend only a short interruption for a question that can
presumably be answered yes or no.
A bit is said to be `set' if its value is true or 1, and
`reset' or `clear' if its value is false or 0. One speaks of
setting and clearing bits. To {toggle} or `invert' a bit is
to change it, either from 0 to 1 or from 1 to 0. See also
{flag}, {trit}, {mode bit}.
The term `bit' first appeared in print in the computer-science
sense in 1949, and seems to have been coined by early computer
scientist John Tukey. Tukey records that it evolved over a lunch
table as a handier alternative to `bigit' or `binit'.
:bit bang: n. Transmission of data on a serial line, when
accomplished by rapidly tweaking a single output bit at the
appropriate times. The technique is a simple
loop with eight OUT and SHIFT instruction pairs for each byte.
Input is more interesting. And full duplex (doing input and output
at the same time) is one way to separate the real hackers from the
{wannabee}s.
Bit bang was used on certain early models of Prime computers,
presumably when UARTs were too expensive, and on archaic Z80 micros
with a Zilog PIO but no SIO. In an interesting instance of the
{cycle of reincarnation}, this technique is now (1991) coming
back into use on some RISC architectures because it consumes such
an infinitesimal part of the processor that it actually makes sense
not to have a UART.
:bit bashing: n. (alt. `bit diddling' or {bit twiddling}) Term
used to describe any of several kinds of low-level programming
characterized by manipulation of {bit}, {flag}, {nybble},
and other smaller-than-character-sized pieces of data; these
include low-level device control, encryption algorithms, checksum
and error-correcting codes, hash functions, some flavors of
graphics programming (see {bitblt}), and assembler/compiler code
generation. May connote either tedium or a real technical
challenge (more usually the former). "The command decoding for
the new tape driver looks pretty solid but the bit-bashing for the
control registers still has bugs." See also {bit bang},
{mode bit}.
:bit bucket: n. 1. The universal data sink (originally, the
mythical receptacle used to catch bits when they fall off the end
of a register during a shift instruction). Discarded, lost, or
destroyed data is said to have `gone to the bit bucket'. On
{{UNIX}}, often used for {/dev/null}. Sometimes amplified as
`the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky'. 2. The place where all lost
mail and news messages eventually go. The selection is performed
according to {Finagle's Law}; important mail is much more likely
to end up in the bit bucket than junk mail, which has an almost
100% probability of getting delivered. Routing to the bit bucket
is automatically performed by mail-transfer agents, news systems,
and the lower layers of the network. 3. The ideal location for all
unwanted mail responses: "Flames about this article to the bit
bucket." Such a request is guaranteed to overflow one's mailbox
with flames. 4. Excuse for all mail that has not been sent. "I
mailed you those figures last week; they must have ended in the bit
bucket." Compare {black hole}.
This term is used purely in jest. It is based on the fanciful
notion that bits are objects that are not destroyed but only
misplaced. This appears to have been a mutation of an earlier term
`bit box', about which the same legend was current; old-time
hackers also report that trainees used to be told that when the CPU
stored bits into memory it was actually pulling them `out of the
bit box'. See also {chad box}.
Another variant of this legend has it that, as a consequence of the
`parity preservation law', the number of 1 bits that go to the bit
bucket must equal the number of 0 bits. Any imbalance results in
bits filling up the bit bucket. A qualified computer technician
can empty a full bit bucket as part of scheduled maintenance.
:bit decay: n. See {bit rot}. People with a physics background
tend to prefer this one for the analogy with particle decay. See
also {computron}, {quantum bogodynamics}.
:bit rot: n. Also {bit decay}. Hypothetical disease the existence
of which has been deduced from the observation that unused programs
or features will often stop working after sufficient time has
passed, even if `nothing has changed'. The theory explains that
bits decay as if they were radioactive. As time passes, the
contents of a file or the code in a program will become
increasingly garbled.
There actually are physical processes that produce such effects
(alpha particles generated by trace radionuclides in ceramic chip
packages, for example, can change the contents of a computer memory
unpredictably, and various kinds of subtle media failures can
corrupt files in mass storage), but they are quite rare (and
computers are built with error-detecting circuitry to compensate
for them). The notion long favored among hackers that cosmic
rays are among the causes of such events turns out to be a myth;
see the {cosmic rays} entry for details.
The term {software rot} is almost synonymous. Software rot is
the effect, bit rot the notional cause.
:bit twiddling: n. 1. (pejorative) An exercise in tuning (see
{tune}) in which incredible amounts of time and effort go to
produce little noticeable improvement, often with the result that
the code has become incomprehensible. 2. Aimless small
modification to a program, esp. for some pointless goal.
3. Approx. syn. for {bit bashing}; esp. used for the act of
frobbing the device control register of a peripheral in an attempt
to get it back to a known state.
:bit-paired keyboard: n. obs. (alt. `bit-shift keyboard') A
non-standard keyboard layout that seems to have originated with the
Teletype ASR-33 and remained common for several years on early
computer equipment. The ASR-33 was a mechanical device (see
{EOU}), so the only way to generate the character codes from
keystrokes was by some physical linkage. The design of the ASR-33
assigned each character key a basic pattern that could be modified
by flipping bits if the SHIFT or the CTRL key was pressed. In
order to avoid making the thing more of a Rube Goldberg kluge than
it already was, the design had to group characters that shared the
same basic bit pattern on one key.
Looking at the ASCII chart, we find:
high low bits
bits 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001
010 ! " # $ % & ' ( )
011 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
This is why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do on a
Teletype (thankfully, they didn't use shift-0 for space). This was
*not* the weirdest variant of the {QWERTY} layout widely
seen, by the way; that prize should probably go to one of several
(differing) arrangements on IBM's even clunkier 026 and 029 card
punches.
When electronic terminals became popular, in the early 1970s, there
was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards should be
laid out. Some vendors opted to emulate the Teletype keyboard,
while others used the flexibility of electronic circuitry to make
their product look like an office typewriter. These alternatives
became known as `bit-paired' and `typewriter-paired' keyboards. To
a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more logical --- and
because most hackers in those days had never learned to touch-type,
there was little pressure from the pioneering users to adapt
keyboards to the typewriter standard.
The doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale
introduction of the computer terminal into the normal office
environment, where out-and-out technophobes were expected to use
the equipment. The `typewriter-paired' standard became universal,
`bit-paired' hardware was quickly junked or relegated to dusty
corners, and both terms passed into disuse.
:bitblt: /bit'blit/ n. [from {BLT}, q.v.] 1. Any of a family
of closely related algorithms for moving and copying rectangles of
bits between main and display memory on a bit-mapped device, or
between two areas of either main or display memory (the requirement
to do the {Right Thing} in the case of overlapping source and
destination rectangles is what makes BitBlt tricky). 2. Synonym
for {blit} or {BLT}. Both uses are borderline techspeak.
:BITNET: /bit'net/ [acronym: Because It's Time NETwork] n.
Everybody's least favorite piece of the network (see {network,
the}). The BITNET hosts are a collection of IBM dinosaurs and
VAXen (the latter with lobotomized comm hardware) that communicate
using 80-character {{EBCDIC}} card images (see {eighty-column
mind}); thus, they tend to mangle the headers and text of
third-party traffic from the rest of the ASCII/RFC-822 world with
annoying regularity. BITNET is also notorious as the apparent home
of {BIFF}.
:bits: n.pl. 1. Information. Examples: "I need some bits about file
formats." ("I need to know about file formats.") Compare {core
dump}, sense 4. 2. Machine-readable representation of a document,
specifically as contrasted with paper: "I have only a photocopy
of the Jargon File; does anyone know where I can get the bits?".
See {softcopy}, {source of all good bits} See also {bit}.
:bitty box: /bit'ee boks/ n. 1. A computer sufficiently small,
primitive, or incapable as to cause a hacker acute claustrophobia
at the thought of developing software on or for it. Especially
used of small, obsolescent, single-tasking-only personal machines
such as the Atari 800, Osborne, Sinclair, VIC-20, TRS-80, or
IBM PC. 2. [Pejorative] More generally, the opposite of `real
computer' (see {Get a real computer!}). See also {mess-dos},
{toaster}, and {toy}.
:bixie: /bik'see/ n. Variant {emoticon}s used on BIX (the Byte
Information eXchange). The {smiley} bixie is <@_@>, apparently
intending to represent two cartoon eyes and a mouth. A few others
have been reported.
:black art: n. A collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by
implication) mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular
application or systems area (compare {black magic}). VLSI design
and compiler code optimization were (in their beginnings)
considered classic examples of black art; as theory developed they
became {deep magic}, and once standard textbooks had been written,
became merely {heavy wizardry}. The huge proliferation of formal
and informal channels for spreading around new computer-related
technologies during the last twenty years has made both the term
`black art' and what it describes less common than formerly. See
also {voodoo programming}.
:black hole: n. When a piece of email or netnews disappears
mysteriously between its origin and destination sites (that is,
without returning a {bounce message}) it is commonly said to have
`fallen into a black hole'. "I think there's a black hole at
foovax!" conveys suspicion that site foovax has been dropping
a lot of stuff on the floor lately (see {drop on the floor}).
The implied metaphor of email as interstellar travel is interesting
in itself. Compare {bit bucket}.
:black magic: n. A technique that works, though nobody really
understands why. More obscure than {voodoo programming}, which
may be done by cookbook. Compare also {black art}, {deep
magic}, and {magic number} (sense 2).
:blargh: /blarg/ [MIT] n. The opposite of {ping}, sense 5; an
exclamation indicating that one has absorbed or is emitting a
quantum of unhappiness. Less common than {ping}.
:blast: 1. vt.,n. Synonym for {BLT}, used esp. for large data
sends over a network or comm line. Opposite of {snarf}. Usage:
uncommon. The variant `blat' has been reported. 2. vt.
[HP/Apollo] Synonymous with {nuke} (sense 3). Sometimes the
message `Unable to kill all processes. Blast them (y/n)?' would
appear in the command window upon logout.
:blat: n. 1. Syn. {blast}, sense 1. 2. See {thud}.
:bletch: /blech/ [from Yiddish/German `brechen', to vomit, poss.
via comic-strip exclamation `blech'] interj. Term of disgust.
Often used in "Ugh, bletch". Compare {barf}.
:bletcherous: /blech'*-r*s/ adj. Disgusting in design or function;
esthetically unappealing. This word is seldom used of people.
"This keyboard is bletcherous!" (Perhaps the keys don't work very
well, or are misplaced.) See {losing}, {cretinous},
{bagbiter}, {bogus}, and {random}. The term {bletcherous}
applies to the esthetics of the thing so described; similarly for
{cretinous}. By contrast, something that is `losing' or
`bagbiting' may be failing to meet objective criteria. See also
{bogus} and {random}, which have richer and wider shades of
meaning than any of the above.
:blinkenlights: /blink'*n-li:tz/ n. Front-panel diagnostic lights
on a computer, esp. a {dinosaur}. Derives from the last word
of the famous blackletter-Gothic sign in mangled pseudo-German that
once graced about half the computer rooms in the English-speaking
world. One version ran in its entirety as follows:
ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS! Das
computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben.
Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken
mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das cotten-pickenen hans in das
pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten.
This silliness dates back at least as far as 1959 at Stanford
University and had already gone international by the early 1960s,
when it was reported at London University's ATLAS computing site.
There are several variants of it in circulation, some of which
actually do end with the word `blinkenlights'.
In an amusing example of turnabout-is-fair-play, German hackers
have developed their own versions of the blinkenlights poster in
fractured English, one of which is reproduced here:
ATTENTION
This room is fullfilled mit special electronische equippment.
Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is
allowed for die experts only! So all the "lefthanders" stay away
and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working
intelligencies. Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked
anderswhere! Also: please keep still and only watchen astaunished
the blinkenlights.
See also {geef}.
:blit: /blit/ vt. 1. To copy a large array of bits from one part
of a computer's memory to another part, particularly when the
memory is being used to determine what is shown on a display
screen. "The storage allocator picks through the table and copies
the good parts up into high memory, and then blits it all back
down again." See {bitblt}, {BLT}, {dd}, {cat},
{blast}, {snarf}. More generally, to perform some operation
(such as toggling) on a large array of bits while moving them.
2. All-capitalized as `BLIT': an early experimental bit-mapped
terminal designed by Rob Pike at Bell Labs, later commercialized as
the AT&T 5620. (The folk etymology from `Bell Labs Intelligent
Terminal' is incorrect.)
:blitter: /blit'r/ n. A special-purpose chip or hardware system
built to perform {blit} operations, esp. used for fast
implementation of bit-mapped graphics. The Commodore Amiga and a
few other micros have these, but in 1991 the trend is away from
them (however, see {cycle of reincarnation}). Syn. {raster
blaster}.
:blivet: /bliv'*t/ [allegedly from a World War II military term
meaning "ten pounds of manure in a five-pound bag"] n. 1. An
intractable problem. 2. A crucial piece of hardware that can't be
fixed or replaced if it breaks. 3. A tool that has been hacked
over by so many incompetent programmers that it has become an
unmaintainable tissue of hacks. 4. An out-of-control but
unkillable development effort. 5. An embarrassing bug that pops up
during a customer demo.
This term has other meanings in other technical cultures; among
experimental physicists and hardware engineers of various kinds it
seems to mean any random object of unknown purpose (similar to
hackish use of {frob}). It has also been used to describe an
amusing trick-the-eye drawing resembling a three-pronged fork that
appears to depict a three-dimensional object until one realizes
that the parts fit together in an impossible way.
:BLOB: [acronym, Binary Large OBject] n. Used by database people to
refer to any random large block of bits which needs to be stored in
a database, such as a picture or sound file. The essential point
about a BLOB is that it's an object you can't interpret within the
database itself.
:block: [from process scheduling terminology in OS theory] 1. vi.
To delay or sit idle while waiting for something. "We're blocking
until everyone gets here." Compare {busy-wait}. 2. `block
on' vt. To block, waiting for (something). "Lunch is blocked on
Phil's arrival."
:block transfer computations: n. From the television series
"Dr. Who", in which it referred to computations so fiendishly
subtle and complex that they could not be performed by machines.
Used to refer to any task that should be expressible as an
algorithm in theory, but isn't.
:blow an EPROM: /bloh *n ee'prom/ v. (alt. `blast an EPROM',
`burn an EPROM') To program a read-only memory, e.g. for use
with an embedded system. This term arises because the programming
process for the Programmable Read-Only Memories (PROMs) that
preceded present-day Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memories
(EPROMs) involved intentionally blowing tiny electrical fuses on
the chip. Thus, one was said to `blow' (or `blast') a PROM, and
the terminology carried over even though the write process on
EPROMs is nondestructive.
:blow away: vt. To remove (files and directories) from permanent
storage, generally by accident. "He reformatted the wrong
partition and blew away last night's netnews." Oppose {nuke}.
:blow out: vi. Of software, to fail spectacularly; almost as
serious as {crash and burn}. See {blow past}, {blow up},
{die horribly}.
:blow past: vt. To {blow out} despite a safeguard. "The server blew
past the 5K reserve buffer."
:blow up: vi. 1. [scientific computation] To become unstable. Suggests
that the computation is diverging so rapidly that it will soon
overflow or at least go {nonlinear}. 2. Syn. {blow out}.
:BLT: /B-L-T/, /bl*t/ or (rarely) /belt/ n.,vt. Synonym for
{blit}. This is the original form of {blit} and the ancestor
of {bitblt}. It referred to any large bit-field copy or move
operation (one resource-intensive memory-shuffling operation done
on pre-paged versions of ITS, WAITS, and TOPS-10 was sardonically
referred to as `The Big BLT'). The jargon usage has outlasted the
{PDP-10} BLock Transfer instruction from which {BLT} derives;
nowadays, the assembler mnemonic {BLT} almost always means
`Branch if Less Than zero'.
:Blue Book: n. 1. Informal name for one of the three standard
references on the page-layout and graphics-control language
{PostScript} (`PostScript Language Tutorial and Cookbook',
Adobe Systems, Addison-Wesley 1985, QA76.73.P67P68, ISBN
0-201-10179-3); the other two official guides are known as the
{Green Book}, the {Red Book}, and the {White Book} (sense
2). 2. Informal name for one of the three standard references on
Smalltalk: `Smalltalk-80: The Language and its
Implementation', David Robson, Addison-Wesley 1983, QA76.8.S635G64,
ISBN 0-201-11371-63 (this is also associated with green and red
books). 3. Any of the 1988 standards issued by the CCITT's
ninth plenary assembly. Until now, they have changed color each
review cycle (1984 was {Red Book}, 1992 would be {Green
Book}); however, it is rumored that this convention is going to be
dropped before 1992. These include, among other things, the
X.400 email spec and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also
{{book titles}}.
:Blue Glue: [IBM] n. IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture), an
incredibly {losing} and {bletcherous} communications protocol
widely favored at commercial shops that don't know any better. The
official IBM definition is "that which binds blue boxes
together." See {fear and loathing}. It may not be irrelevant
that {Blue Glue} is the trade name of a 3M product that is
commonly used to hold down the carpet squares to the removable
panel floors common in {dinosaur pen}s. A correspondent at
U. Minn. reports that the CS department there has about 80 bottles
of the stuff hanging about, so they often refer to any messy work
to be done as `using the blue glue'.
:blue goo: n. Term for `police' {nanobot}s intended to prevent
{gray goo}, denature hazardous waste, destroy pollution, put
ozone back into the stratosphere, prevent halitosis, and promote
truth, justice, and the American way, etc. See
{{nanotechnology}}.
:blue wire: [IBM] n. Patch wires added to circuit boards at the factory to
correct design or fabrication problems. This may be necessary if
there hasn't been time to design and qualify another board version.
Compare {purple wire}, {red wire}, {yellow wire}.
:blurgle: /bler'gl/ [Great Britain] n. Spoken {metasyntactic
variable}, to indicate some text which is obvious from context, or
which is already known. If several words are to be replaced,
blurgle may well be doubled or trebled. "To look for something in
several files use `grep string blurgle blurgle'." In each case,
"blurgle blurgle" would be understood to be replaced by the file
you wished to search. Compare {mumble}, sense 6.
:BNF: /B-N-F/ n. 1. [techspeak] Acronym for `Backus-Naur Form', a
metasyntactic notation used to specify the syntax of programming
languages, command sets, and the like. Widely used for language
descriptions but seldom documented anywhere, so that it must
usually be learned by osmosis from other hackers. Consider this
BNF for a U.S. postal address:
<postal-address> ::= <name-part> <street-address> <zip-part>
<personal-part> ::= <name> | <initial> "."
<name-part> ::= <personal-part> <last-name> [<jr-part>] <EOL>
| <personal-part> <name-part>
<street-address> ::= [<apt>] <house-num> <street-name> <EOL>
<zip-part> ::= <town-name> "," <state-code> <ZIP-code> <EOL>
This translates into English as: "A postal-address consists of a
name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a
zip-code part. A personal-part consists of either a first name or
an initial followed by a dot. A name-part consists of either: a
personal-part followed by a last name followed by an optional
`jr-part' (Jr., Sr., or dynastic number) and end-of-line, or a
personal part followed by a name part (this rule illustrates the
use of recursion in BNFs, covering the case of people who use
multiple first and middle names and/or initials). A street address
consists of an optional apartment specifier, followed by a street
number, followed by a street name. A zip-part consists of a
town-name, followed by a comma, followed by a state code, followed
by a ZIP-code followed by an end-of-line." Note that many things
(such as the format of a personal-part, apartment specifier, or
ZIP-code) are left unspecified. These are presumed to be obvious
from context or detailed somewhere nearby. See also {parse}.
2. The term is also used loosely for any number of variants and
extensions, possibly containing some or all of the {regexp}
wildcards such as `*' or `+'. In fact the example above
isn't the pure form invented for the Algol-60 report; it uses
`[]', which was introduced a few years later in IBM's PL/I
definition but is now universally recognized. 3. In
{{science-fiction fandom}}, BNF means `Big-Name Fan'
(someone famous or notorious). Years ago a fan started handing out
black-on-green BNF buttons at SF conventions; this confused the
hacker contingent terribly.
:boa: [IBM] n. Any one of the fat cables that lurk under the floor
in a {dinosaur pen}. Possibly so called because they display a
ferocious life of their own when you try to lay them straight and
flat after they have been coiled for some time. It is rumored
within IBM that channel cables for the 370 are limited to 200 feet
because beyond that length the boas get dangerous --- and it is
worth noting that one of the major cable makers uses the trademark
`Anaconda'.
:board: n. 1. In-context synonym for {bboard}; sometimes used
even for USENET newsgroups. 2. An electronic circuit board
(compare {card}).
:boat anchor: n. 1. Like {doorstop} but more severe; implies that
the offending hardware is irreversibly dead or useless. "That was
a working motherboard once. One lightning strike later, instant
boat anchor!" 2. A person who just takes up space.
:BOF: /B-O-F/ or /bof/ n. Abbreviation for the phrase "Birds
Of a Feather" (flocking together), an informal discussion group
and/or bull session scheduled on a conference program. It is not
clear where or when this term originated, but it is now associated
with the USENIX conferences for UNIX techies and was already
established there by 1984. It was used earlier than that at DECUS
conferences, and is reported to have been common at SHARE meetings
as far back as the early 1960s.
:bogo-sort: /boh`goh-sort'/ n. (var. `stupid-sort') The
archetypical perversely awful algorithm (as opposed to {bubble
sort}, which is merely the generic *bad* algorithm).
Bogo-sort is equivalent to repeatedly throwing a deck of cards in
the air, picking them up at random, and then testing whether they
are in order. It serves as a sort of canonical example of
awfulness. Looking at a program and seeing a dumb algorithm, one
might say "Oh, I see, this program uses bogo-sort." Compare
{bogus}, {brute force}.
:bogometer: /boh-gom'-*t-er/ n. See {bogosity}. Compare the
`wankometer' described in the {wank} entry; see also
{bogus}.
:bogon: /boh'gon/ [by analogy with proton/electron/neutron, but
doubtless reinforced after 1980 by the similarity to Douglas
Adams's `Vogons'; see the Bibliography in {appendix C}] n.
1. The elementary particle of bogosity (see {quantum
bogodynamics}). For instance, "the Ethernet is emitting bogons
again" means that it is broken or acting in an erratic or bogus
fashion. 2. A query packet sent from a TCP/IP domain resolver to a
root server, having the reply bit set instead of the query bit.
3. Any bogus or incorrectly formed packet sent on a network. 4. By
synecdoche, used to refer to any bogus thing, as in "I'd like to
go to lunch with you but I've got to go to the weekly staff
bogon". 5. A person who is bogus or who says bogus things. This
was historically the original usage, but has been overtaken by its
derivative senses 1--4. See also {bogosity}, {bogus};
compare {psyton}, {fat electrons}, {magic smoke}.
The bogon has become the type case for a whole bestiary of nonce
particle names, including the `clutron' or `cluon' (indivisible
particle of cluefulness, obviously the antiparticle of the bogon)
and the futon (elementary particle of {randomness}). These are
not so much live usages in themselves as examples of a live
meta-usage: that is, it has become a standard joke or linguistic
maneuver to "explain" otherwise mysterious circumstances by inventing
nonce particle names. And these imply nonce particle theories, with
all their dignity or lack thereof (we might note *parenthetically* that
this is a generalization from "(bogus particle) theories" to "bogus
(particle theories)"!). Perhaps such particles are the modern-day
equivalents of trolls and wood-nymphs as standard starting-points
around which to construct explanatory myths. Of course, playing on
an existing word (as in the `futon') yields additional flavor.
Compare {magic smoke}.
:bogon filter: /boh'gon fil'tr/ n. Any device, software or hardware,
that limits or suppresses the flow and/or emission of bogons.
"Engineering hacked a bogon filter between the Cray and
the VAXen, and now we're getting fewer dropped packets." See
also {bogosity}, {bogus}.
:bogon flux: /boh'gon fluhks/ n. A measure of a supposed field of
{bogosity} emitted by a speaker, measured by a {bogometer};
as a speaker starts to wander into increasing bogosity a listener
might say "Warning, warning, bogon flux is rising". See
{quantum bogodynamics}.
:bogosity: /boh-go's*-tee/ n. 1. The degree to which something is
{bogus}. At CMU, bogosity is measured with a {bogometer}; in
a seminar, when a speaker says something bogus, a listener might
raise his hand and say "My bogometer just triggered". More
extremely, "You just pinned my bogometer" means you just said or
did something so outrageously bogus that it is off the scale,
pinning the bogometer needle at the highest possible reading (one
might also say "You just redlined my bogometer"). The
agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the microLenat /mi:k`roh-len'*t/
(uL). The consensus is that this is the largest unit practical
for everyday use. 2. The potential field generated by a {bogon
flux}; see {quantum bogodynamics}. See also {bogon flux},
{bogon filter}, {bogus}.
Historical note: The microLenat was invented as an attack against
noted computer scientist Doug Lenat by a {tenured graduate
student}. Doug had failed the student on an important exam for
giving only "AI is bogus" as his answer to the questions. The
slur is generally considered unmerited, but it has become a running
gag nevertheless. Some of Doug's friends argue that *of
course* a microLenat is bogus, since it is only one millionth of a
Lenat. Others have suggested that the unit should be redesignated
after the grad student, as the microReid.
:bogotify: /boh-go't*-fi:/ vt. To make or become bogus. A
program that has been changed so many times as to become completely
disorganized has become bogotified. If you tighten a nut too hard
and strip the threads on the bolt, the bolt has become bogotified
and you had better not use it any more. This coinage led to the
notional `autobogotiphobia' defined as `the fear of becoming
bogotified'; but is not clear that the latter has ever been
`live' jargon rather than a self-conscious joke in jargon about
jargon. See also {bogosity}, {bogus}.
:bogue out: /bohg owt/ vi. To become bogus, suddenly and
unexpectedly. "His talk was relatively sane until somebody asked
him a trick question; then he bogued out and did nothing but
{flame} afterwards." See also {bogosity}, {bogus}.
:bogus: adj. 1. Non-functional. "Your patches are bogus."
2. Useless. "OPCON is a bogus program." 3. False. "Your
arguments are bogus." 4. Incorrect. "That algorithm is bogus."
5. Unbelievable. "You claim to have solved the halting problem
for Turing Machines? That's totally bogus." 6. Silly. "Stop
writing those bogus sagas."
Astrology is bogus. So is a bolt that is obviously about to break.
So is someone who makes blatantly false claims to have solved a
scientific problem. (This word seems to have some, but not all, of
the connotations of {random} --- mostly the negative ones.)
It is claimed that `bogus' was originally used in the hackish sense
at Princeton in the late 1960s. It was spread to CMU and Yale by
Michael Shamos, a migratory Princeton alumnus. A glossary of bogus
words was compiled at Yale when the word was first popularized (see
{autobogotiphobia} under {bogotify}). The word spread into
hackerdom from CMU and MIT. By the early 1980s it was also
current in something like the hackish sense in West Coast teen
slang, and it had gone mainstream by 1985. A correspondent from
Cambridge reports, by contrast, that these uses of `bogus' grate on
British nerves; in Britain the word means, rather specifically,
`counterfeit', as in "a bogus 10-pound note".
:Bohr bug: /bohr buhg/ [from quantum physics] n. A repeatable
{bug}; one that manifests reliably under a possibly unknown but
well-defined set of conditions. Antonym of {heisenbug}; see also
{mandelbug}, {schroedinbug}.
:boink: /boynk/ [USENET: ascribed there to the TV series
"Cheers" and "Moonlighting"] 1. To have sex with;
compare {bounce}, sense 3. (This is mainstream slang.) In
Commonwealth hackish the variant `bonk' is more common. 2. After
the original Peter Korn `Boinkon' {USENET} parties, used for
almost any net social gathering, e.g., Miniboink, a small boink
held by Nancy Gillett in 1988; Minniboink, a Boinkcon in Minnesota
in 1989; Humpdayboinks, Wednesday get-togethers held in the San
Francisco Bay Area. Compare {@-party}. 3. Var of `bonk';
see {bonk/oif}.
:bomb: 1. v. General synonym for {crash} (sense 1) except that
it is not used as a noun; esp. used of software or OS failures.
"Don't run Empire with less than 32K stack, it'll bomb."
2. n.,v. Atari ST and Macintosh equivalents of a UNIX `panic' or
Amiga {guru} (sense 2), where icons of little black-powder bombs
or mushroom clouds are displayed, indicating that the system has
died. On the Mac, this may be accompanied by a decimal (or
occasionally hexadecimal) number indicating what went wrong,
similar to the Amiga {guru meditation} number. {{MS-DOS}}
machines tend to get {locked up} in this situation.
:bondage-and-discipline language: A language (such as Pascal, Ada,
APL, or Prolog) that, though ostensibly general-purpose, is
designed so as to enforce an author's theory of `right
programming' even though said theory is demonstrably inadequate for
systems hacking or even vanilla general-purpose programming. Often
abbreviated `B&D'; thus, one may speak of things "having the
B&D nature". See {{Pascal}}; oppose {languages of choice}.
:bonk/oif: /bonk/, /oyf/ interj. In the {MUD} community, it has
become traditional to express pique or censure by `bonking' the
offending person. There is a convention that one should
acknowledge a bonk by saying `oif!' and a myth to the effect that
failing to do so upsets the cosmic bonk/oif balance, causing much
trouble in the universe. Some MUDs have implemented special
commands for bonking and oifing. See also {talk mode},
{posing}.
:book titles:: There is a tradition in hackerdom of informally
tagging important textbooks and standards documents with the
dominant color of their covers or with some other conspicuous
feature of the cover. Many of these are described in this lexicon
under their own entries. See {Aluminum Book}, {Blue Book},
{Cinderella Book}, {Devil Book}, {Dragon Book}, {Green
Book}, {Orange Book}, {Pink-Shirt Book}, {Purple Book},
{Red Book}, {Silver Book}, {White Book}, {Wizard Book},
{Yellow Book}, and {bible}; see also {rainbow
series}.
:boot: [techspeak; from `by one's bootstraps'] v.,n. To load and
initialize the operating system on a machine. This usage is no
longer jargon (having passed into techspeak) but has given rise to
some derivatives that are still jargon.
The derivative `reboot' implies that the machine hasn't been
down for long, or that the boot is a {bounce} intended to clear
some state of {wedgitude}. This is sometimes used of human
thought processes, as in the following exchange: "You've lost
me." "OK, reboot. Here's the theory...."
This term is also found in the variants `cold boot' (from
power-off condition) and `warm boot' (with the CPU and all
devices already powered up, as after a hardware reset or software
crash).
Another variant: `soft boot', reinitialization of only part of a
system, under control of other software still running: "If
you're running the {mess-dos} emulator, control-alt-insert will
cause a soft-boot of the emulator, while leaving the rest of the
system running."
Opposed to this there is `hard boot', which connotes hostility
towards or frustration with the machine being booted: "I'll have
to hard-boot this losing Sun." "I recommend booting it
hard." One often hard-boots by performing a {power cycle}.
Historical note: this term derives from `bootstrap loader', a short
program that was read in from cards or paper tape, or toggled in
from the front panel switches. This program was always very short
(great efforts were expended on making it short in order to
minimize the labor and chance of error involved in toggling it in),
but was just smart enough to read in a slightly more complex
program (usually from a card or paper tape reader), to which it
handed control; this program in turn was smart enough to read the
application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk
drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer `pulled itself up
by its bootstraps' to a useful operating state. Nowadays the
bootstrap is usually found in ROM or EPROM, and reads the first
stage in from a fixed location on the disk, called the `boot
block'. When this program gains control, it is powerful enough to
load the actual OS and hand control over to it.
:bottom feeder: n. syn. for {slopsucker} derived from the
fisherman's and naturalist's term for finny creatures who subsist
on the primordial ooze.
:bottom-up implementation: n. Hackish opposite of the techspeak term
`top-down design'. It is now received wisdom in most
programming cultures that it is best to design from higher levels
of abstraction down to lower, specifying sequences of action in
increasing detail until you get to actual code. Hackers often find
(especially in exploratory designs that cannot be closely
specified in advance) that it works best to *build* things in
the opposite order, by writing and testing a clean set of primitive
operations and then knitting them together.
:bounce: v. 1. [perhaps from the image of a thrown ball bouncing
off a wall] An electronic mail message that is undeliverable and
returns an error notification to the sender is said to `bounce'.
See also {bounce message}. 2. [Stanford] To play volleyball.
At the now-demolished {D. C. Power Lab} building used by the
Stanford AI Lab in the 1970s, there was a volleyball court on the
front lawn. From 5 P.M. to 7 P.M. was the scheduled
maintenance time for the computer, so every afternoon at 5 the
computer would become unavailable, and over the intercom a voice
would cry, "Now hear this: bounce, bounce!" followed by Brian
McCune loudly bouncing a volleyball on the floor outside the
offices of known volleyballers. 3. To engage in sexual
intercourse; prob. from the expression `bouncing the mattress',
but influenced by Roo's psychosexually loaded "Try bouncing me,
Tigger!" from the "Winnie-the-Pooh" books. Compare
{boink}. 4. To casually reboot a system in order to clear up a
transient problem. Reported primarily among {VMS} users.
5. [IBM] To {power cycle} a peripheral in order to reset it.
:bounce message: [UNIX] n. Notification message returned to sender by
a site unable to relay {email} to the intended {{Internet address}}
recipient or the next link in a {bang path} (see {bounce}).
Reasons might include a nonexistent or misspelled username or a
{down} relay site. Bounce messages can themselves fail, with
occasionally ugly results; see {sorcerer's apprentice mode}.
The terms `bounce mail' and `barfmail' are also common.
:boustrophedon: [from a Greek word for turning like an ox while
plowing] n. An ancient method of writing using alternate
left-to-right and right-to-left lines. This term is actually
philologists' techspeak and typesetter's jargon. Erudite hackers
use it for an optimization performed by some computer typesetting
software (notably UNIX `troff(1)'). The adverbial form
`boustrophedonically' is also found (hackers purely love
constructions like this).
:box: n. 1. A computer; esp. in the construction `foo box'
where foo is some functional qualifier, like `graphics', or
the name of an OS (thus, `UNIX box', `MS-DOS box', etc.) "We
preprocess the data on UNIX boxes before handing it up to the
mainframe." 2. [within IBM] Without qualification but within an
SNA-using site, this refers specifically to an IBM front-end
processor or FEP /F-E-P/. An FEP is a small computer necessary
to enable an IBM {mainframe} to communicate beyond the limits of
the {dinosaur pen}. Typically used in expressions like the cry
that goes up when an SNA network goes down: "Looks like the
{box} has fallen over." (See {fall over}.) See also
{IBM}, {fear and loathing}, {fepped out}, {Blue
Glue}.
:boxed comments: n. Comments (explanatory notes attached to program
instructions) that occupy several lines by themselves; so called
because in assembler and C code they are often surrounded by a box
in a style something like this:
/*************************************************
*
* This is a boxed comment in C style
*
*************************************************/
Common variants of this style omit the asterisks in column 2 or add
a matching row of asterisks closing the right side of the box. The
sparest variant omits all but the comment delimiters themselves;
the `box' is implied. Oppose {winged comments}.
:boxen: /bok'sn/ [by analogy with {VAXen}] pl.n. Fanciful
plural of {box} often encountered in the phrase `UNIX boxen',
used to describe commodity {{UNIX}} hardware. The connotation is
that any two UNIX boxen are interchangeable.
:boxology: /bok-sol'*-jee/ n. Syn. {ASCII art}. This term
implies a more restricted domain, that of box-and-arrow drawings.
"His report has a lot of boxology in it." Compare
{macrology}.
:bozotic: /boh-zoh'tik/ or /boh-zo'tik/ [from the name of a TV
clown even more losing than Ronald McDonald] adj. Resembling or
having the quality of a bozo; that is, clownish, ludicrously wrong,
unintentionally humorous. Compare {wonky}, {demented}. Note
that the noun `bozo' occurs in slang, but the mainstream
adjectival form would be `bozo-like' or (in New England)
`bozoish'.
:BQS: /B-Q-S/ adj. Syn. {Berkeley Quality Software}.
:brain dump: n. The act of telling someone everything one knows
about a particular topic or project. Typically used when someone
is going to let a new party maintain a piece of code. Conceptually
analogous to an operating system {core dump} in that it saves a
lot of useful {state} before an exit. "You'll have to
give me a brain dump on FOOBAR before you start your new job at
HackerCorp." See {core dump} (sense 4). At Sun, this is also
known as `TOI' (transfer of information).
:brain fart: n. The actual result of a {braino}, as opposed to
the mental glitch which is the braino itself. E.g. typing
`dir' on a UNIX box after a session with DOS.
:brain-damaged: 1. [generalization of `Honeywell Brain Damage'
(HBD), a theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter
cretinisms in Honeywell {{Multics}}] adj. Obviously wrong;
{cretinous}; {demented}. There is an implication that the
person responsible must have suffered brain damage, because he
should have known better. Calling something brain-damaged is
really bad; it also implies it is unusable, and that its failure to
work is due to poor design rather than some accident. "Only six
monocase characters per file name? Now *that's*
brain-damaged!" 2. [esp. in the Mac world] May refer to free
demonstration software that has been deliberately crippled in some
way so as not to compete with the commercial product it is
intended to sell. Syn. {crippleware}.
:brain-dead: adj. Brain-damaged in the extreme. It tends to imply
terminal design failure rather than malfunction or simple
stupidity. "This comm program doesn't know how to send a break
--- how brain-dead!"
:braino: /bray'no/ n. Syn. for {thinko}. See also {brain
fart}.
:branch to Fishkill: [IBM: from the location of one of the
corporation's facilities] n. Any unexpected jump in a program that
produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. See {jump
off into never-never land}, {hyperspace}.
:brand brand brand: n. Humorous catch-phrase from {BartleMUD}s, in
which players were described carrying a list of objects, the most
common of which would usually be a brand. Often used as a joke in
{talk mode} as in "Fred the wizard is here, carrying brand ruby
brand brand brand kettle broadsword flamethrower". A brand is a
torch, of course; one burns up a lot of those exploring dungeons.
Prob. influenced by the famous Monty Python "Spam" skit.
:bread crumbs: n. Debugging statements inserted into a program that
emit output or log indicators of the program's {state} to a file
so you can see where it dies, or pin down the cause of surprising
behavior. The term is probably a reference to the Hansel and Gretel
story from the Brothers Grimm; in several variants, a character
leaves a trail of breadcrumbs so as not to get lost in the
woods.
:break: 1. vt. To cause to be broken (in any sense). "Your latest
patch to the editor broke the paragraph commands." 2. v. (of a
program) To stop temporarily, so that it may debugged. The place
where it stops is a `breakpoint'. 3. [techspeak] vi. To send an
RS-232 break (two character widths of line high) over a serial comm
line. 4. [UNIX] vi. To strike whatever key currently causes the
tty driver to send SIGINT to the current process. Normally, break
(sense 3) or delete does this. 5. `break break' may be said to
interrupt a conversation (this is an example of verb doubling).
This usage comes from radio communications, which in turn probably
came from landline telegraph/teleprinter usage, as badly abused in
the Citizen's Band craze a few years ago.
:break-even point: n. in the process of implementing a new computer
language, the point at which the language is sufficiently effective
that one can implement the language in itself. That is, for a new
language called, hypothetically, FOOGOL, one has reached break-even
when one can write a demonstration compiler for FOOGOL in FOOGOL,
discard the original implementation language, and thereafter use
older versions of FOOGOL to develop newer ones. This is an
important milestone; see {MFTL}.
:breath-of-life packet: [XEROX PARC] n. An Ethernet packet that
contained bootstrap (see {boot}) code, periodically sent out
from a working computer to infuse the `breath of life' into any
computer on the network that had happened to crash. Machines
depending on such packets have sufficient hardware or firmware code
to wait for (or request) such a packet during the reboot process.
See also {dickless workstation}.
:breedle: n. See {feep}.
:bring X to its knees: v. To present a machine, operating system,
piece of software, or algorithm with a load so extreme or
{pathological} that it grinds to a halt. "To bring a MicroVAX
to its knees, try twenty users running {vi} --- or four running
{EMACS}." Compare {hog}.
:brittle: adj. Said of software that is functional but easily broken
by changes in operating environment or configuration, or by any
minor tweak to the software itself. Also, any system that
responds inappropriately and disastrously to expected external
stimuli; e.g., a file system that is usually totally scrambled by a
power failure is said to be brittle. This term is often used to
describe the results of a research effort that were never intended
to be robust, but it can be applied to commercially developed
software, which displays the quality far more often than it ought
to. Oppose {robust}.
:broadcast storm: n. An incorrect packet broadcast on a network that
causes most hosts to respond all at once, typically with wrong
answers that start the process over again. See {network
meltdown}.
:broken: adj. 1. Not working properly (of programs). 2. Behaving
strangely; especially (when used of people) exhibiting extreme
depression.
:broken arrow: [IBM] n. The error code displayed on line 25 of a
3270 terminal (or a PC emulating a 3270) for various kinds of
protocol violations and "unexpected" error conditions (including
connection to a {down} computer). On a PC, simulated with
`->/_', with the two center characters overstruck. In true
{luser} fashion, the original documentation of these codes
(visible on every 3270 terminal, and necessary for debugging
network problems) was confined to an IBM customer engineering
manual.
Note: to appreciate this term fully, it helps to know that `broken
arrow' is also military jargon for an accident involving nuclear
weapons....
:broket: /broh'k*t/ or /broh'ket`/ [by analogy with `bracket': a
`broken bracket'] n. Either of the characters `<' and `>',
when used as paired enclosing delimiters. This word
originated as a contraction of the phrase `broken bracket', that
is, a bracket that is bent in the middle. (At MIT, and apparently
in the {Real World} as well, these are usually called {angle
brackets}.)
:Brooks's Law: prov. "Adding manpower to a late software project
makes it later" --- a result of the fact that the advantage from
splitting work among N programmers is O(N) (that is,
proportional to N), but the complexity and communications
cost associated with coordinating and then merging their work
is O(N^2) (that is, proportional to the square of N).
The quote is from Fred Brooks, a manager of IBM's OS/360 project
and author of `The Mythical Man-Month' (Addison-Wesley, 1975,
ISBN 0-201-00650-2), an excellent early book on software
engineering. The myth in question has been most tersely expressed
as "Programmer time is fungible" and Brooks established
conclusively that it is not. Hackers have never forgotten his
advice; too often, {management} does. See also
{creationism}, {second-system effect}.
:BRS: /B-R-S/ n. Syn. {Big Red Switch}. This abbreviation is
fairly common on-line.
:brute force: adj. Describes a primitive programming style, one in
which the programmer relies on the computer's processing power
instead of using his or her own intelligence to simplify the
problem, often ignoring problems of scale and applying na"ive
methods suited to small problems directly to large ones.
The {canonical} example of a brute-force algorithm is associated
with the `traveling salesman problem' (TSP), a classical {NP-}hard
problem: Suppose a person is in, say, Boston, and wishes to drive
to N other cities. In what order should he or she visit
them in order to minimize the distance travelled? The brute-force
method is to simply generate all possible routes and compare the
distances; while guaranteed to work and simple to implement, this
algorithm is clearly very stupid in that it considers even
obviously absurd routes (like going from Boston to Houston via San
Francisco and New York, in that order). For very small N it
works well, but it rapidly becomes absurdly inefficient when
N increases (for N = 15, there are already
1,307,674,368,000 possible routes to consider, and for
N = 1000 --- well, see {bignum}). See
also {NP-}.
A more simple-minded example of brute-force programming is finding
the smallest number in a large list by first using an existing
program to sort the list in ascending order, and then picking the
first number off the front.
Whether brute-force programming should be considered stupid or not
depends on the context; if the problem isn't too big, the extra CPU
time spent on a brute-force solution may cost less than the
programmer time it would take to develop a more `intelligent'
algorithm. Additionally, a more intelligent algorithm may imply
more long-term complexity cost and bug-chasing than are justified
by the speed improvement.
Ken Thompson, co-inventor of UNIX, is reported to have uttered the
epigram "When in doubt, use brute force". He probably intended
this as a {ha ha only serious}, but the original UNIX kernel's
preference for simple, robust, and portable algorithms over
{brittle} `smart' ones does seem to have been a significant
factor in the success of that OS. Like so many other tradeoffs in
software design, the choice between brute force and complex,
finely-tuned cleverness is often a difficult one that requires both
engineering savvy and delicate esthetic judgment.
:brute force and ignorance: n. A popular design technique at many
software houses --- {brute force} coding unrelieved by any
knowledge of how problems have been previously solved in elegant
ways. Dogmatic adherence to design methodologies tends to
encourage it. Characteristic of early {larval stage}
programming; unfortunately, many never outgrow it. Often
abbreviated BFI: "Gak, they used a bubble sort! That's strictly
from BFI." Compare {bogosity}.
:BSD: /B-S-D/ n. [abbreviation for `Berkeley System Distribution'] a
family of {{UNIX}} versions for the DEC {VAX} and PDP-11
developed by Bill Joy and others at {Berzerkeley} starting
around 1980, incorporating paged virtual memory, TCP/IP networking
enhancements, and many other features. The BSD versions (4.1, 4.2,
and 4.3) and the commercial versions derived from them (SunOS,
ULTRIX, and Mt. Xinu) held the technical lead in the UNIX world
until AT&T's successful standardization efforts after about 1986,
and are still widely popular. See {{UNIX}}, {USG UNIX}.
:BUAF: // [abbreviation, from the alt.fan.warlord] n. Big
Ugly ASCII Font --- a special form of {ASCII art}. Various
programs exist for rendering text strings into block, bloob, and
pseudo-script fonts in cells between four and six character cells
on a side; this is smaller than the letters generated by older
{banner} (sense 2) programs. These are sometimes used to render
one's name in a {sig block}, and are critically referred to as
`BUAF's. See {warlording}.
:BUAG: // [abbreviation, from the alt.fan.warlord] n. Big
Ugly ASCII Graphic. Pejorative term for ugly {ASCII ART},
especially as found in {sig block}s. For some reason, mutations
of the head of Bart Simpson are particularly common in the least
imaginative {sig block}s. See {warlording}.
:bubble sort: n. Techspeak for a particular sorting technique in
which pairs of adjacent values in the list to be sorted are
compared and interchanged if they are out of order; thus, list
entries `bubble upward' in the list until they bump into one with a
lower sort value. Because it is not very good relative to other
methods and is the one typically stumbled on by {na"ive} and
untutored programmers, hackers consider it the {canonical}
example of a na"ive algorithm. The canonical example of a really
*bad* algorithm is {bogo-sort}. A bubble sort might be used
out of ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could issue only from
brain damage or willful perversity.
:bucky bits: /buh'kee bits/ n. 1. obs. The bits produced by the
CONTROL and META shift keys on a SAIL keyboard (octal 200 and 400
respectively), resulting in a 9-bit keyboard character set. The
MIT AI TV (Knight) keyboards extended this with TOP and separate
left and right CONTROL and META keys, resulting in a 12-bit
character set; later, LISP Machines added such keys as SUPER,
HYPER, and GREEK (see {space-cadet keyboard}). 2. By extension,
bits associated with `extra' shift keys on any keyboard, e.g.,
the ALT on an IBM PC or command and option keys on a Macintosh.
It is rumored that `bucky bits' were named for Buckminster Fuller
during a period when he was consulting at Stanford. Actually,
`Bucky' was Niklaus Wirth's nickname when *he* was at
Stanford; he first suggested the idea of an EDIT key to set the
8th bit of an otherwise 7-bit ASCII character. This was used in a
number of editors written at Stanford or in its environs (TV-EDIT
and NLS being the best-known). The term spread to MIT and CMU
early and is now in general use. See {double bucky},
{quadruple bucky}.
:buffer overflow: n. What happens when you try to stuff more data
into a buffer (holding area) than it can handle. This may be due
to a mismatch in the processing rates of the producing and
consuming processes (see {overrun} and {firehose syndrome}),
or because the buffer is simply too small to hold all the data that
must accumulate before a piece of it can be processed. For example,
in a text-processing tool that {crunch}es a line at a time, a
short line buffer can result in {lossage} as input from a long
line overflows the buffer and trashes data beyond it. Good
defensive programming would check for overflow on each character
and stop accepting data when the buffer is full up. The term is
used of and by humans in a metaphorical sense. "What time did I
agree to meet you? My buffer must have overflowed." Or "If I
answer that phone my buffer is going to overflow." See also
{spam}, {overrun screw}.
:bug: n. An unwanted and unintended property of a program or piece
of hardware, esp. one that causes it to malfunction. Antonym of
{feature}. Examples: "There's a bug in the editor: it writes
things out backwards." "The system crashed because of a hardware
bug." "Fred is a winner, but he has a few bugs" (i.e., Fred is
a good guy, but he has a few personality problems).
Historical note: Some have said this term came from telephone
company usage, in which "bugs in a telephone cable" were blamed
for noisy lines, but this appears to be an incorrect folk
etymology. Admiral Grace Hopper (an early computing pioneer better
known for inventing {COBOL}) liked to tell a story in which a
technician solved a persistent {glitch} in the Harvard Mark II
machine by pulling an actual insect out from between the contacts
of one of its relays, and she subsequently promulgated {bug} in
its hackish sense as a joke about the incident (though, as she was
careful to admit, she was not there when it happened). For many
years the logbook associated with the incident and the actual bug
in question (a moth) sat in a display case at the Naval Surface
Warfare Center. The entire story, with a picture of the logbook
and the moth taped into it, is recorded in the `Annals of the
History of Computing', Vol. 3, No. 3 (July 1981), pp. 285--286.
The text of the log entry (from September 9, 1945), reads "1545
Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of bug being
found". This wording seems to establish that the term was already
in use at the time in its current specific sense --- and Hopper
herself reports that the term `bug' was regularly applied to
problems in radar electronics during WWII. Indeed, the use of
`bug' to mean an industrial defect was already established in
Thomas Edison's time, and `bug' in the sense of an disruptive
event goes back to Shakespeare! In the first edition of Samuel
Johnson's dictionary one meaning of `bug' is "A frightful
object; a walking spectre"; this is traced to `bugbear', a Welsh
term for a variety of mythological monster which (to complete the
circle) has recently been reintroduced into the popular lexicon
through fantasy role-playing games.
In any case, in jargon the word almost never refers to insects.
Here is a plausible conversation that never actually happened:
"There is a bug in this ant farm!"
"What do you mean? I don't see any ants in it."
"That's the bug."
[There has been a widespread myth that the original bug was moved
to the Smithsonian, and an earlier version of this entry so
asserted. A correspondent who thought to check discovered that the
bug was not there. While investigating this in late 1990, your
editor discovered that the NSWC still had the bug, but had
unsuccessfully tried to get the Smithsonian to accept it --- and
that the present curator of their History of American Technology
Museum didn't know this and agreed that it would make a worthwhile
exhibit. It was moved to the Smithsonian in mid-1991. Thus, the
process of investigating the original-computer-bug bug fixed it in
an entirely unexpected way, by making the myth true! --- ESR]
[1992 update: the plot thickens! A usually reliable source reports
having seen The Bug at the Smithsonian in 1978. I am unable to
reconcile the conflicting histories I have been offered, and merely
report this fact here. --- ESR.]
:bug-compatible: adj. Said of a design or revision that has been
badly compromised by a requirement to be compatible with
{fossil}s or {misfeature}s in other programs or (esp.)
previous releases of itself. "MS-DOS 2.0 used \ as a path
separator to be bug-compatible with some cretin's choice of / as an
option character in 1.0."
:bug-for-bug compatible: n. Same as {bug-compatible}, with the
additional implication that much tedious effort went into ensuring
that each (known) bug was replicated.
:buglix: /buhg'liks/ n. Pejorative term referring to DEC's ULTRIX
operating system in its earlier *severely* buggy versions.
Still used to describe ULTRIX, but without venom. Compare
{AIDX}, {HP-SUX}, {Nominal Semidestructor}, {Telerat},
{sun-stools}.
:bulletproof: adj. Used of an algorithm or implementation considered
extremely {robust}; lossage-resistant; capable of correctly
recovering from any imaginable exception condition. This is a rare
and valued quality. Syn. {armor-plated}.
:bum: 1. vt. To make highly efficient, either in time or space,
often at the expense of clarity. "I managed to bum three more
instructions out of that code." "I spent half the night bumming
the interrupt code." In {elder days}, John McCarthy (inventor
of {LISP}) used to compare some efficiency-obsessed hackers
among his students to "ski bums"; thus, optimization became
"program bumming", and eventually just "bumming". 2. To
squeeze out excess; to remove something in order to improve
whatever it was removed from (without changing function; this
distinguishes the process from a {featurectomy}). 3. n. A small
change to an algorithm, program, or hardware device to make it more
efficient. "This hardware bum makes the jump instruction
faster." Usage: now uncommon, largely superseded by v. {tune}
(and n. {tweak}, {hack}), though none of these exactly
capture sense 2. All these uses are rare in Commonwealth hackish,
because in the parent dialects of English `bum' is a rude synonym
for `buttocks'.
:bump: vt. Synonym for increment. Has the same meaning as
C's ++ operator. Used esp. of counter variables, pointers, and
index dummies in `for', `while', and `do-while'
loops.
:burble: [from Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky"] v. Like {flame},
but connotes that the source is truly clueless and ineffectual
(mere flamers can be competent). A term of deep contempt.
"There's some guy on the phone burbling about how he got a DISK
FULL error and it's all our comm software's fault."
:buried treasure: n. A surprising piece of code found in some
program. While usually not wrong, it tends to vary from {crufty}
to {bletcherous}, and has lain undiscovered only because it was
functionally correct, however horrible it is. Used sarcastically,
because what is found is anything *but* treasure. Buried
treasure almost always needs to be dug up and removed. "I just
found that the scheduler sorts its queue using {bubble sort}!
Buried treasure!"
:burn-in period: n. 1. A factory test designed to catch systems
with {marginal} components before they get out the door; the
theory is that burn-in will protect customers by outwaiting the
steepest part of the {bathtub curve} (see {infant
mortality}). 2. A period of indeterminate length in which a person
using a computer is so intensely involved in his project that he
forgets basic needs such as food, drink, sleep, etc. Warning:
Excessive burn-in can lead to burn-out. See {hack mode},
{larval stage}.
:burst page: n. Syn. {banner}, sense 1.
:busy-wait: vi. Used of human behavior, conveys that the subject is
busy waiting for someone or something, intends to move instantly as
soon as it shows up, and thus cannot do anything else at the
moment. "Can't talk now, I'm busy-waiting till Bill gets off the
phone."
Technically, `busy-wait' means to wait on an event by
{spin}ning through a tight or timed-delay loop that polls for
the event on each pass, as opposed to setting up an interrupt
handler and continuing execution on another part of the task. This
is a wasteful technique, best avoided on time-sharing systems where
a busy-waiting program may {hog} the processor.
:buzz: vi. 1. Of a program, to run with no indication of progress
and perhaps without guarantee of ever finishing; esp. said of
programs thought to be executing tight loops of code. A program
that is buzzing appears to be {catatonic}, but you never get out
of catatonia, while a buzzing loop may eventually end of its own
accord. "The program buzzes for about 10 seconds trying to sort
all the names into order." See {spin}; see also {grovel}.
2. [ETA Systems] To test a wire or printed circuit trace for
continuity by applying an AC rather than DC signal. Some wire
faults will pass DC tests but fail a buzz test. 3. To process an
array or list in sequence, doing the same thing to each element.
"This loop buzzes through the tz array looking for a terminator
type."
:BWQ: /B-W-Q/ [IBM: abbreviation, `Buzz Word Quotient'] The
percentage of buzzwords in a speech or documents. Usually roughly
proportional to {bogosity}. See {TLA}.
:by hand: adv. Said of an operation (especially a repetitive,
trivial, and/or tedious one) that ought to be performed
automatically by the computer, but which a hacker instead has to
step tediously through. "My mailer doesn't have a command to
include the text of the message I'm replying to, so I have to do it
by hand." This does not necessarily mean the speaker has to
retype a copy of the message; it might refer to, say, dropping into
a {subshell} from the mailer, making a copy of one's mailbox file,
reading that into an editor, locating the top and bottom of the
message in question, deleting the rest of the file, inserting `>'
characters on each line, writing the file, leaving the editor,
returning to the mailer, reading the file in, and later remembering
to delete the file. Compare {eyeball search}.
:byte:: /bi:t/ [techspeak] n. A unit of memory or data equal to
the amount used to represent one character; on modern architectures
this is usually 8 bits, but may be 9 on 36-bit machines. Some
older architectures used `byte' for quantities of 6 or 7 bits, and
the PDP-10 supported `bytes' that were actually bitfields of
1 to 36 bits! These usages are now obsolete, and even 9-bit bytes
have become rare in the general trend toward power-of-2 word sizes.
Historical note: The term originated in 1956 during the early
design phase for the IBM Stretch computer; originally it was
described as 1 to 6 bits (typical I/O equipment of the period
used 6-bit chunks of information). The move to an 8-bit byte
happened in late 1956, and this size was later adopted and
promulgated as a standard by the System/360. The term `byte' was
coined by mutating the word `bite' so it would not be accidentally
misspelled as {bit}. See also {nybble}.
:bytesexual: /bi:t`sek'shu-*l/ adj. Said of hardware, denotes
willingness to compute or pass data in either {big-endian} or
{little-endian} format (depending, presumably, on a {mode bit}
somewhere). See also {NUXI problem}.
:bzzzt, wrong: /bzt rong/ [USENET/Internet] From a Robin Williams
routine in the movie "Dead Poets Society" spoofing radio or
TV quiz programs, such as *Truth or Consequences*, where an
incorrect answer earns one a blast from the buzzer and condolences
from the interlocutor. A way of expressing mock-rude disagreement,
usually immediately following an included quote from another
poster. The less abbreviated "*Bzzzzt*, wrong, but thank you for
playing" is also common; capitalization and emphasis of the
buzzer sound varies.
= C =
=====
:C: n. 1. The third letter of the English alphabet. 2. ASCII
1000011. 3. The name of a programming language designed by
Dennis Ritchie during the early 1970s and immediately used to
reimplement {{UNIX}}; so called because many features derived
from an earlier compiler named `B' in commemoration of
*its* parent, BCPL. Before Bjarne Stroustrup settled the
question by designing C++, there was a humorous debate over whether
C's successor should be named `D' or `P'. C became immensely
popular outside Bell Labs after about 1980 and is now the dominant
language in systems and microcomputer applications programming.
See also {languages of choice}, {indent style}.
C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain
varying according to the speaker, as "a language that combines
all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the
readability and maintainability of assembly language".
:C Programmer's Disease: n. The tendency of the undisciplined C
programmer to set arbitrary but supposedly generous static limits
on table sizes (defined, if you're lucky, by constants in header
files) rather than taking the trouble to do proper dynamic storage
allocation. If an application user later needs to put 68 elements
into a table of size 50, the afflicted programmer reasons that he
can easily reset the table size to 68 (or even as much as 70, to
allow for future expansion), and recompile. This gives the
programmer the comfortable feeling of having done his bit to
satisfy the user's (unreasonable) demands, and often affords the
user multiple opportunities to explore the marvelous consequences
of {fandango on core}. In severe cases of the disease, the
programmer cannot comprehend why each fix of this kind seems only
to further disgruntle the user.
:calculator: [Cambridge] n. Syn. for {bitty box}.
:can: vt. To abort a job on a time-sharing system. Used esp. when the
person doing the deed is an operator, as in "canned from the
{{console}}". Frequently used in an imperative sense, as in "Can
that print job, the LPT just popped a sprocket!" Synonymous with
{gun}. It is said that the ASCII character with mnemonic CAN
(0011000) was used as a kill-job character on some early OSes.
:can't happen: The traditional program comment for code executed
under a condition that should never be true, for example a file
size computed as negative. Often, such a condition being true
indicates data corruption or a faulty algorithm; it is almost
always handled by emitting a fatal error message and terminating or
crashing, since there is little else that can be done. This is
also often the text emitted if the `impossible' error actually
happens! Although "can't happen" events are genuinely infrequent
in production code, programmers wise enough to check for them
habitually are often surprised at how often they are triggered
during development and how many headaches checking for them turns
out to head off.
:candygrammar: n. A programming-language grammar that is mostly
{syntactic sugar}; the term is also a play on `candygram'.
{COBOL}, Apple's Hypertalk language, and a lot of the so-called
`4GL' database languages are like this. The usual intent of such
designs is that they be as English-like as possible, on the theory
that they will then be easier for unskilled people to program.
This intention comes to grief on the reality that syntax isn't what
makes programming hard; it's the mental effort and organization
required to specify an algorithm precisely that costs. Thus the
invariable result is that `candygrammar' languages are just as
difficult to program in as terser ones, and far more painful for
the experienced hacker.
[The overtones from the old Chevy Chase skit on Saturday Night Live
should not be overlooked. (This was a "Jaws" parody.
Someone lurking outside an apartment door tries all kinds of bogus
ways to get the occupant to open up, while ominous music plays in
the background. The last attempt is a half-hearted "Candygram!"
When the door is opened, a shark bursts in and chomps the poor
occupant. There is a moral here for those attracted to
candygrammars. Note that, in many circles, pretty much the same
ones who remember Monty Python sketches, all it takes is the word
"Candygram!", suitably timed, to get people rolling on the
floor.) --- GLS]
:canonical: [historically, `according to religious law'] adj. The
usual or standard state or manner of something. This word has a
somewhat more technical meaning in mathematics. Two formulas such
as 9 + x and x + 9 are said to be equivalent because
they mean the same thing, but the second one is in `canonical
form' because it is written in the usual way, with the highest
power of x first. Usually there are fixed rules you can use
to decide whether something is in canonical form. The jargon
meaning, a relaxation of the technical meaning, acquired its
present loading in computer-science culture largely through its
prominence in Alonzo Church's work in computation theory and
mathematical logic (see {Knights of the Lambda Calculus}).
Compare {vanilla}.
This word has an interesting history. Non-technical academics do
not use the adjective `canonical' in any of the senses defined
above with any regularity; they do however use the nouns `canon'
and `canonicity' (not *canonicalness or *canonicality). The
`canon' of a given author is the complete body of authentic works
by that author (this usage is familiar to Sherlock Holmes fans as
well as to literary scholars). `*The* canon' is the body of
works in a given field (e.g., works of literature, or of art, or of
music) deemed worthwhile for students to study and for scholars to
investigate.
The word `canon' derives ultimately from the Greek
`kanon'
(akin to the English `cane') referring to a reed. Reeds were used
for measurement, and in Latin and later Greek the word `canon'
meant a rule or a standard. The establishment of a canon of
scriptures within Christianity was meant to define a standard or a
rule for the religion. The above non-techspeak academic usages
stem from this instance of a defined and accepted body of work.
Alongside this usage was the promulgation of `canons' (`rules')
for the government of the Catholic Church. The techspeak usages
("according to religious law") derive from this use of the Latin
`canon'.
Hackers invest this term with a playfulness that makes an ironic
contrast with its historical meaning. A true story: One Bob
Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some annoyance at the use
of jargon. Over his loud objections, GLS and RMS made a point of
using it as much as possible in his presence, and eventually it
began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used the word
`canonical' in jargon-like fashion without thinking. Steele:
"Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!" Stallman:
"What did he say?" Steele: "Bob just used `canonical' in the
canonical way."
Of course, canonicality depends on context, but it is implicitly
defined as the way *hackers* normally expect things to be.
Thus, a hacker may claim with a straight face that `according to
religious law' is *not* the canonical meaning of `canonical'.
:card: n. 1. An electronic printed-circuit board (see also {tall
card}, {short card}. 2. obs. Syn. {{punched card}}.
:card walloper: n. An EDP programmer who grinds out batch programs
that do stupid things like print people's paychecks. Compare
{code grinder}. See also {{punched card}}, {eighty-column
mind}.
:careware: /keir'weir/ n. {Shareware} for which either the
author suggests that some payment be made to a nominated charity
or a levy directed to charity is included on top of the
distribution charge. Syn. {charityware}; compare
{crippleware}, sense 2.
:cargo cult programming: n. A style of (incompetent) programming
dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that
serve no real purpose. A cargo cult programmer will usually
explain the extra code as a way of working around some bug
encountered in the past, but usually neither the bug nor the reason
the code apparently avoided the bug was ever fully understood
(compare {shotgun debugging}, {voodoo programming}).
The term `cargo cult' is a reference to aboriginal religions that
grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of
these cults center on building elaborate mockups of airplanes and
military style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of
the god-like airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the
war. Hackish usage probably derives from Richard Feynman's
characterization of certain practices as "cargo cult science" in
his book `Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman' (W. W. Norton
& Co, New York 1985, ISBN 0-393-01921-7).
:cascade: n. 1. A huge volume of spurious error-message output
produced by a compiler with poor error recovery. This can happen
when one initial error throws the parser out of synch so that much
of the remaining program text is interpreted as garbaged or
ill-formed. 2. A chain of USENET followups each adding some
trivial variation of riposte to the text of the previous one, all
of which is reproduced in the new message; an {include war} in which
the object is to create a sort of communal graffito.
:case and paste: [from `cut and paste'] n. 1. The addition of a new
{feature} to an existing system by selecting the code from an
existing feature and pasting it in with minor changes. Common in
telephony circles because most operations in a telephone switch are
selected using `case' statements. Leads to {software bloat}.
In some circles of EMACS users this is called `programming by
Meta-W', because Meta-W is the EMACS command for copying a block of
text to a kill buffer in preparation to pasting it in elsewhere.
The term is condescending, implying that the programmer is acting
mindlessly rather than thinking carefully about what is required to
integrate the code for two similar cases.
:casters-up mode: [IBM] n. Yet another synonym for `broken' or
`down'. Usually connotes a major failure. A system (hardware or
software) which is `down' may be already being restarted before
the failure is noticed, whereas one which is `casters up' is
usually a good excuse to take the rest of the day off (as long as
you're not responsible for fixing it).
:casting the runes: n. What a {guru} does when you ask him or
her to run a particular program and type at it because it never
works for anyone else; esp. used when nobody can ever see what
the guru is doing different from what J. Random Luser does.
Compare {incantation}, {runes}, {examining the entrails};
also see the AI koan about Tom Knight in "{A Selection
of AI Koans}" ({appendix A}).
:cat: [from `catenate' via {{UNIX}} `cat(1)'] vt.
1. [techspeak] To spew an entire file to the screen or some other
output sink without pause. 2. By extension, to dump large amounts
of data at an unprepared target or with no intention of browsing it
carefully. Usage: considered silly. Rare outside UNIX sites. See
also {dd}, {BLT}.
Among UNIX fans, `cat(1)' is considered an excellent example
of user-interface design, because it outputs the file contents
without such verbosity as spacing or headers between the files, and
because it does not require the files to consist of lines of text,
but works with any sort of data.
Among UNIX-haters, `cat(1)' is considered the {canonical}
example of *bad* user-interface design. This because it is more
often used to {blast} a file to standard output than to
concatenate two files. The name `cat' for the former
operation is just as unintuitive as, say, LISP's {cdr}.
Of such oppositions are {holy wars} made....
:catatonic: adj. Describes a condition of suspended animation in
which something is so {wedged} or {hung} that it makes no
response. If you are typing on a terminal and suddenly the
computer doesn't even echo the letters back to the screen as you
type, let alone do what you're asking it to do, then the computer
is suffering from catatonia (possibly because it has crashed).
"There I was in the middle of a winning game of {nethack} and it
went catatonic on me! Aaargh!" Compare {buzz}.
:cd tilde: /see-dee til-d*/ vi. To go home. From the UNIX
C-shell and Korn-shell command `cd ~', which takes
one `$HOME'. By extension, may be used with other arguments;
thus, over an electronic chat link, `cd ~coffee'
would mean "I'm going to the coffee machine."
:cdr: /ku'dr/ or /kuh'dr/ [from LISP] vt. To skip past the
first item from a list of things (generalized from the LISP
operation on binary tree structures, which returns a list
consisting of all but the first element of its argument). In the
form `cdr down', to trace down a list of elements: "Shall we
cdr down the agenda?" Usage: silly. See also {loop through}.
Historical note: The instruction format of the IBM 7090 that hosted
the original LISP implementation featured two 15-bit fields called
the `address' and `decrement' parts. The term `cdr' was originally
`Contents of Decrement part of Register'. Similarly, `car' stood
for `Contents of Address part of Register'.
The cdr and car operations have since become bases for
formation of compound metaphors in non-LISP contexts. GLS recalls,
for example, a programming project in which strings were
represented as linked lists; the get-character and skip-character
operations were of course called CHAR and CHDR.
:chad: /chad/ n. 1. The perforated edge strips on printer paper, after
they have been separated from the printed portion. Also called
{selvage} and {perf}. 2. obs. The confetti-like paper bits punched
out of cards or paper tape; this was also called `chaff', `computer
confetti', and `keypunch droppings'.
Historical note: One correspondent believes `chad' (sense 2)
derives from the Chadless keypunch (named for its inventor), which
cut little u-shaped tabs in the card to make a hole when the tab
folded back, rather than punching out a circle/rectangle; it was
clear that if the Chadless keypunch didn't make them, then the
stuff that other keypunches made had to be `chad'.
:chad box: n. {Iron Age} card punches contained boxes inside them,
about the size of a lunchbox (or in some models a large
wastebasket), that held the {chad} (sense 2). You had to open
the covers of the card punch periodically and empty the chad box.
The {bit bucket} was notionally the equivalent device in the CPU
enclosure, which was typically across the room in another great
gray-and-blue box.
:chain: 1. [orig. from BASIC's `CHAIN' statement] vi. To hand
off execution to a child or successor without going through the
{OS} command interpreter that invoked it. The state of the
parent program is lost and there is no returning to it. Though
this facility used to be common on memory-limited micros and is
still widely supported for backward compatibility, the jargon usage
is semi-obsolescent; in particular, most UNIX programmers will
think of this as an {exec}. Oppose the more modern
{subshell}. 2. A series of linked data areas within an
operating system or application. `Chain rattling' is the process
of repeatedly running through the linked data areas searching for
one which is of interest to the executing program. The implication
is that there is a very large number of links on the chain.
:channel: [IRC] n. The basic unit of discussion on {IRC}. Once
one joins a channel, everything one types is read by others on that
channel. Channels can either be named with numbers or with strings
that begin with a `#' sign, and can have topic descriptions (which
are generally irrelevant to the actual subject of discussion).
Some notable channels are `#initgame', `#hottub', and
`#report'. At times of international crisis, `#report'
has hundreds of members, some of whom take turns listening to
various news services and summarizing the news, or in some cases,
giving first-hand accounts of the action (e.g., Scud missile
attacks in Tel Aviv during the Gulf War in 1991).
:channel hopping: [IRC, GEnie] n. To rapidly switch channels on
{IRC}, or GEnie chat board, just as a social butterfly might hop
from one group to another at a party. This may derive from the TV
watcher's idiom `channel surfing'.
:channel op: /chan'l op/ [IRC] n. Someone who is endowed with
privileges on a particular {IRC} channel; commonly abbreviated
`chanop' or `CHOP'. These privileges include the right to
{kick} users, to change various status bits, and to make others
into CHOPs.
:chanop: /chan'-op/ [IRC] n. See {channel op}.
:char: /keir/ or /char/; rarely, /kar/ n. Shorthand for
`character'. Esp. used by C programmers, as `char' is
C's typename for character data.
:charityware: /char'it-ee-weir`/ n. Syn. {careware}.
:chase pointers: 1. vi. To go through multiple levels of
indirection, as in traversing a linked list or graph structure.
Used esp. by programmers in C, where explicit pointers are a very
common data type. This is techspeak, but it remains jargon when
used of human networks. "I'm chasing pointers. Bob said you
could tell me who to talk to about...." See {dangling
pointer} and {snap}. 2. [Cambridge] `pointer chase' or
`pointer hunt': The process of going through a dump
(interactively or on a large piece of paper printed with hex
{runes}) following dynamic data-structures. Used only in a
debugging context.
:check: n. A hardware-detected error condition, most commonly used
to refer to actual hardware failures rather than software-induced
traps. E.g., a `parity check' is the result of a
hardware-detected parity error. Recorded here because it's often
humorously extended to non-technical problems. For example, the
term `child check' has been used to refer to the problems caused
by a small child who is curious to know what happens when s/he
presses all the cute buttons on a computer's console (of course,
this particular problem could have been prevented with
{molly-guard}s).
:chemist: [Cambridge] n. Someone who wastes computer time on
{number-crunching} when you'd far rather the machine were doing
something more productive, such as working out anagrams of your
name or printing Snoopy calendars or running {life} patterns.
May or may not refer to someone who actually studies chemistry.
:Chernobyl chicken: n. See {laser chicken}.
:Chernobyl packet: /cher-noh'b*l pak'*t/ n. A network packet that
induces {network meltdown} (the result of a {broadcast
storm}), in memory of the April 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl
in Ukraine. The typical scenario involves an IP Ethernet datagram
that passes through a gateway with both source and destination
Ether and IP address set as the respective broadcast addresses for
the subnetworks being gated between. Compare {Christmas tree
packet}.
:chicken head: [Commodore] n. The Commodore Business Machines logo,
which strongly resembles a poultry part. Rendered in ASCII as
`C='. With the arguable exception of the Amiga (see {amoeba}),
Commodore's machines are notoriously crocky little {bitty box}es
(see also {PETSCII}). Thus, this usage may owe something to
Philip K. Dick's novel `Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'
(the basis for the movie `Blade Runner'), in which a
`chickenhead' is a mutant with below-average intelligence.
:chiclet keyboard: n. A keyboard with small rectangular or
lozenge-shaped rubber or plastic keys that look like pieces of
chewing gum. (Chiclets is the brand name of a variety of chewing
gum that does in fact resemble the keys of chiclet keyboards.)
Used esp. to describe the original IBM PCjr keyboard. Vendors
unanimously liked these because they were cheap, and a lot of early
portable and laptop products got launched using them. Customers
rejected the idea with almost equal unanimity, and chiclets are not
often seen on anything larger than a digital watch any more.
:chine nual: /sheen'yu-*l/ [MIT] n.,obs. The Lisp Machine Manual, so
called because the title was wrapped around the cover so only those
letters showed on the front.
:Chinese Army technique: n. Syn. {Mongolian Hordes technique}.
:choke: v. 1. To reject input, often ungracefully. "NULs make System
V's `lpr(1)' choke." "I tried building an {EMACS} binary to
use {X}, but `cpp(1)' choked on all those `#define's."
See {barf}, {gag}, {vi}. 2. [MIT] More generally, to fail at any
endeavor, but with some flair or bravado; the popular definition is
"to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."
:chomp: vi. To {lose}; specifically, to chew on something of
which more was bitten off than one can. Probably related to
gnashing of teeth. See {bagbiter}. A hand gesture commonly
accompanies this. To perform it, hold the four fingers together
and place the thumb against their tips. Now open and close your
hand rapidly to suggest a biting action (much like what Pac-Man
does in the classic video game, though this pantomime seems to
predate that). The gesture alone means `chomp chomp' (see
"{Verb Doubling}" in the "{Jargon
Construction}" section of the Prependices). The hand may be
pointed at the object of complaint, and for real emphasis you can
use both hands at once. Doing this to a person is equivalent to
saying "You chomper!" If you point the gesture at yourself, it
is a humble but humorous admission of some failure. You might do
this if someone told you that a program you had written had failed
in some surprising way and you felt dumb for not having anticipated
it.
:chomper: n. Someone or something that is chomping; a loser. See
{loser}, {bagbiter}, {chomp}.
:CHOP: /chop/ [IRC] n. See {channel op}.
:Christmas tree: n. A kind of RS-232 line tester or breakout box
featuring rows of blinking red and green LEDs suggestive of
Christmas lights.
:Christmas tree packet: n. A packet with every single option set for
whatever protocol is in use. See {kamikaze packet}, {Chernobyl
packet}. (The term doubtless derives from a fanciful image of each
little option bit being represented by a different-colored light
bulb, all turned on.)
:chrome: [from automotive slang via wargaming] n. Showy features
added to attract users but contributing little or nothing to
the power of a system. "The 3D icons in Motif are just chrome,
but they certainly are *pretty* chrome!" Distinguished from
{bells and whistles} by the fact that the latter are usually
added to gratify developers' own desires for featurefulness.
Often used as a term of contempt.
:chug: vi. To run slowly; to {grind} or {grovel}. "The disk is
chugging like crazy."
:Church of the SubGenius: n. A mutant offshoot of
{Discordianism} launched in 1981 as a spoof of fundamentalist
Christianity by the `Reverend' Ivan Stang, a brilliant satirist
with a gift for promotion. Popular among hackers as a rich source
of bizarre imagery and references such as "Bob" the divine
drilling-equipment salesman, the Benevolent Space Xists, and the
Stark Fist of Removal. Much SubGenius theory is concerned with the
acquisition of the mystical substance or quality of `slack'.
:Cinderella Book: [CMU] n. `Introduction to Automata Theory,
Languages, and Computation', by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman,
(Addison-Wesley, 1979). So called because the cover depicts a girl
(putatively Cinderella) sitting in front of a Rube Goldberg device
and holding a rope coming out of it. The back cover depicts the
girl with the device in shambles after she has pulled on the rope.
See also {{book titles}}.
:CI$: // n. Hackerism for `CIS', CompuServe Information Service.
The dollar sign refers to CompuServe's rather steep line charges.
Often used in {sig block}s just before a CompuServe address.
Syn. {Compu$erve}.
:Classic C: /klas'ik C/ [a play on `Coke Classic'] n. The
C programming language as defined in the first edition of {K&R},
with some small additions. It is also known as `K&R C'. The name
came into use while C was being standardized by the ANSI X3J11
committee. Also `C Classic'. This is sometimes applied
elsewhere: thus, `X Classic', where X = Star Trek (referring to the
original TV series) or X = PC (referring to IBM's ISA-bus machines
as opposed to the PS/2 series). This construction is especially
used of product series in which the newer versions are considered
serious losers relative to the older ones.
:clean: 1. adj. Used of hardware or software designs, implies
`elegance in the small', that is, a design or implementation that
may not hold any surprises but does things in a way that is
reasonably intuitive and relatively easy to comprehend from the
outside. The antonym is `grungy' or {crufty}. 2. v. To remove
unneeded or undesired files in a effort to reduce clutter: "I'm
cleaning up my account." "I cleaned up the garbage and now have
100 Meg free on that partition."
:CLM: /C-L-M/ [Sun: `Career Limiting Move'] 1. n. An action
endangering one's future prospects of getting plum projects and
raises, and possibly one's job: "His Halloween costume was a
parody of his manager. He won the prize for `best CLM'."
2. adj. Denotes extreme severity of a bug, discovered by a
customer and obviously missed earlier because of poor testing:
"That's a CLM bug!"
:clobber: vt. To overwrite, usually unintentionally: "I walked off
the end of the array and clobbered the stack." Compare {mung},
{scribble}, {trash}, and {smash the stack}.
:clocks: n. Processor logic cycles, so called because each
generally corresponds to one clock pulse in the processor's timing.
The relative execution times of instructions on a machine are
usually discussed in clocks rather than absolute fractions of a
second; one good reason for this is that clock speeds for various
models of the machine may increase as technology improves, and it
is usually the relative times one is interested in when discussing
the instruction set. Compare {cycle}.
:clone: n. 1. An exact duplicate: "Our product is a clone of
their product." Implies a legal reimplementation from
documentation or by reverse-engineering. Also connotes lower
price. 2. A shoddy, spurious copy: "Their product is a
clone of our product." 3. A blatant ripoff, most likely violating
copyright, patent, or trade secret protections: "Your
product is a clone of my product." This use implies legal
action is pending. 4. A `PC clone'; a PC-BUS/ISA or
EISA-compatible 80x86-based microcomputer (this use is sometimes
spelled `klone' or `PClone'). These invariably have much
more bang for the buck than the IBM archetypes they resemble.
5. In the construction `UNIX clone': An OS designed to deliver
a UNIX-lookalike environment without UNIX license fees, or with
additional `mission-critical' features such as support for
real-time programming. 6. v. To make an exact copy of something.
"Let me clone that" might mean "I want to borrow that paper so I
can make a photocopy" or "Let me get a copy of that file before
you {mung} it".
:clover key: [Mac users] n. See {feature key}.
:clustergeeking: /kluh'st*r-gee`king/ [CMU] n. Spending more time
at a computer cluster doing CS homework than most people spend
breathing.
:COBOL: /koh'bol/ [COmmon Business-Oriented Language] n.
(Synonymous with {evil}.) A weak, verbose, and flabby language
used by {card walloper}s to do boring mindless things on
{dinosaur} mainframes. Hackers believe that all COBOL
programmers are {suit}s or {code grinder}s, and no
self-respecting hacker will ever admit to having learned the
language. Its very name is seldom uttered without ritual
expressions of disgust or horror. See also {fear and loathing},
{software rot}.
:COBOL fingers: /koh'bol fing'grz/ n. Reported from Sweden, a
(hypothetical) disease one might get from coding in COBOL. The
language requires code verbose beyond all reason; thus it is
alleged that programming too much in COBOL causes one's fingers to
wear down to stubs by the endless typing. "I refuse to type in
all that source code again; it would give me COBOL fingers!"
:code grinder: n. 1. A {suit}-wearing minion of the sort hired in
legion strength by banks and insurance companies to implement
payroll packages in RPG and other such unspeakable horrors. In its
native habitat, the code grinder often removes the suit jacket to
reveal an underplumage consisting of button-down shirt (starch
optional) and a tie. In times of dire stress, the sleeves (if
long) may be rolled up and the tie loosened about half an inch. It
seldom helps. The {code grinder}'s milieu is about as far from
hackerdom as one can get and still touch a computer; the term
connotes pity. See {Real World}, {suit}. 2. Used of or to a
hacker, a really serious slur on the person's creative ability;
connotes a design style characterized by primitive technique,
rule-boundedness, {brute force}, and utter lack of imagination.
Compare {card walloper}; contrast {hacker}, {real
programmer}.
:code police: [by analogy with George Orwell's `thought police'] n.
A mythical team of Gestapo-like storm troopers that might burst
into one's office and arrest one for violating programming style
rules. May be used either seriously, to underline a claim that a
particular style violation is dangerous, or ironically, to suggest
that the practice under discussion is condemned mainly by
anal-retentive {weenie}s. "Dike out that goto or the code
police will get you!" The ironic usage is perhaps more common.
:codewalker: n. A program component that traverses other programs for
a living. Compilers have codewalkers in their front ends; so do
cross-reference generators and some database front ends. Other
utility programs that try to do too much with source code may turn
into codewalkers. As in "This new `vgrind' feature would require a
codewalker to implement."
:coefficient of X: n. Hackish speech makes rather heavy use of
pseudo-mathematical metaphors. Four particularly important ones
involve the terms `coefficient', `factor', `index', and
`quotient'. They are often loosely applied to things you
cannot really be quantitative about, but there are subtle
distinctions among them that convey information about the way the
speaker mentally models whatever he or she is describing.
`Foo factor' and `foo quotient' tend to describe something for
which the issue is one of presence or absence. The canonical
example is {fudge factor}. It's not important how much you're
fudging; the term simply acknowledges that some fudging is needed.
You might talk of liking a movie for its silliness factor.
Quotient tends to imply that the property is a ratio of two
opposing factors: "I would have won except for my luck quotient."
This could also be "I would have won except for the luck factor",
but using *quotient* emphasizes that it was bad luck
overpowering good luck (or someone else's good luck overpowering
your own).
`Foo index' and `coefficient of foo' both tend to imply
that foo is, if not strictly measurable, at least something that
can be larger or smaller. Thus, you might refer to a paper or
person as having a `high bogosity index', whereas you would be less
likely to speak of a `high bogosity factor'. `Foo index' suggests
that foo is a condensation of many quantities, as in the mundane
cost-of-living index; `coefficient of foo' suggests that foo is a
fundamental quantity, as in a coefficient of friction. The choice
between these terms is often one of personal preference; e.g., some
people might feel that bogosity is a fundamental attribute and thus
say `coefficient of bogosity', whereas others might feel it is a
combination of factors and thus say `bogosity index'.
:cokebottle: /kohk'bot-l/ n. Any very unusual character,
particularly one you can't type because it it isn't on your
keyboard. MIT people used to complain about the
`control-meta-cokebottle' commands at SAIL, and SAIL people
complained right back about the `{altmode}-altmode-cokebottle'
commands at MIT. After the demise of the {space-cadet
keyboard}, `cokebottle' faded away as serious usage, but was
often invoked humorously to describe an (unspecified) weird or
non-intuitive keystroke command. It may be due for a second
inning, however. The OSF/Motif window manager, `mwm(1)', has
a reserved keystroke for switching to the default set of
keybindings and behavior. This keystroke is (believe it or not)
`control-meta-bang' (see {bang}). Since the exclamation point
looks a lot like an upside down Coke bottle, Motif hackers have
begun referring to this keystroke as `cokebottle'. See also
{quadruple bucky}.
:cold boot: n. See {boot}.
:COME FROM: n. A semi-mythical language construct dual to the `go
to'; `COME FROM' <label> would cause the referenced label to
act as a sort of trapdoor, so that if the program ever reached it
control would quietly and {automagically} be transferred to the
statement following the `COME FROM'. `COME FROM' was
first proposed in R.L. Clark's "A Linguistic Contribution to
GOTO-less programming", which appeared in a 1973 {Datamation}
issue (and was reprinted in the April 1984 issue of
`Communications of the ACM'). This parodied the then-raging
`structured programming' {holy wars} (see {considered
harmful}). Mythically, some variants are the `assigned COME
FROM' and the `computed COME FROM' (parodying some nasty control
constructs in FORTRAN and some extended BASICs). Of course,
multi-tasking (or non-determinism) could be implemented by having
more than one `COME FROM' statement coming from the same
label.
In some ways the FORTRAN `DO' looks like a `COME FROM'
statement. After the terminating statement number/`CONTINUE'
is reached, control continues at the statement following the DO.
Some generous FORTRANs would allow arbitrary statements (other than
`CONTINUE') for the statement, leading to examples like:
DO 10 I=1,LIMIT
C imagine many lines of code here, leaving the
C original DO statement lost in the spaghetti...
WRITE(6,10) I,FROB(I)
10 FORMAT(1X,I5,G10.4)
in which the trapdoor is just after the statement labeled 10.
(This is particularly surprising because the label doesn't appear
to have anything to do with the flow of control at all!)
While sufficiently astonishing to the unsuspecting reader, this
form of `COME FROM' statement isn't completely general. After
all, control will eventually pass to the following statement. The
implementation of the general form was left to Univac FORTRAN,
ca. 1975 (though a roughly similar feature existed on the IBM 7040
ten years earlier). The statement `AT 100' would perform a
`COME FROM 100'. It was intended strictly as a debugging aid,
with dire consequences promised to anyone so deranged as to use it
in production code. More horrible things had already been
perpetrated in production languages, however; doubters need only
contemplate the `ALTER' verb in {COBOL}.
`COME FROM' was supported under its own name for the first
time 15 years later, in C-INTERCAL (see {INTERCAL},
{retrocomputing}); knowledgeable observers are still reeling
from the shock.
:comm mode: /kom mohd/ [ITS: from the feature supporting on-line
chat; the term may spelled with one or two m's] Syn. for {talk
mode}.
:command key: [Mac users] n. Syn. {feature key}.
:comment out: vt. To surround a section of code with comment
delimiters or to prefix every line in the section with a comment
marker; this prevents it from being compiled or interpreted. Often
done when the code is redundant or obsolete, but you want to leave
it in the source to make the intent of the active code clearer;
also when the code in that section is broken and you want to bypass
it in order to debug some other part of the code. Compare
{condition out}, usually the preferred technique in languages
(such as {C}) that make it possible.
:Commonwealth Hackish:: n. Hacker jargon as spoken outside
the U.S., esp. in the British Commonwealth. It is reported that
Commonwealth speakers are more likely to pronounce truncations like
`char' and `soc', etc., as spelled (/char/, /sok/), as
opposed to American /keir/ and /sohsh/. Dots in {newsgroup}
names tend to be pronounced more often (so soc.wibble is /sok dot
wib'l/ rather than /sohsh wib'l/). The prefix {meta} may be
pronounced /mee't*/; similarly, Greek letter beta is often
/bee't*/, zeta is often /zee't*/, and so forth. Preferred
{metasyntactic variable}s include {blurgle}, `eek',
`ook', `frodo', and `bilbo'; `wibble',
`wobble', and in emergencies `wubble'; `banana',
`wombat', `frog', {fish}, and so on and on (see
{foo}, sense 4).
Alternatives to verb doubling include suffixes `-o-rama',
`frenzy' (as in feeding frenzy), and `city' (examples: "barf
city!" "hack-o-rama!" "core dump frenzy!"). Finally, note
that the American terms `parens', `brackets', and `braces' for (),
[], and {} are uncommon; Commonwealth hackish prefers
`brackets', `square brackets', and `curly brackets'. Also, the
use of `pling' for {bang} is common outside the United States.
See also {attoparsec}, {calculator}, {chemist},
{console jockey}, {fish}, {go-faster stripes},
{grunge}, {hakspek}, {heavy metal}, {leaky heap},
{lord high fixer}, {loose bytes}, {muddie}, {nadger},
{noddy}, {psychedelicware}, {plingnet}, {raster
blaster}, {RTBM}, {seggie}, {spod}, {sun lounge},
{terminal junkie}, {tick-list features}, {weeble},
{weasel}, {YABA}, and notes or definitions under {Bad
Thing}, {barf}, {bogus}, {bum}, {chase pointers},
{cosmic rays}, {crippleware}, {crunch}, {dodgy},
{gonk}, {hamster}, {hardwarily}, {mess-dos},
{nybble}, {proglet}, {root}, {SEX}, {tweak}, and
{xyzzy}.
:compact: adj. Of a design, describes the valuable property that it
can all be apprehended at once in one's head. This generally means
the thing created from the design can be used with greater facility
and fewer errors than an equivalent tool that is not compact.
Compactness does not imply triviality or lack of power; for
example, C is compact and FORTRAN is not, but C is more powerful
than FORTRAN. Designs become non-compact through accreting
{feature}s and {cruft} that don't merge cleanly into the
overall design scheme (thus, some fans of {Classic C} maintain
that ANSI C is no longer compact).
:compiler jock: n. See {jock} (sense 2).
:compress: [UNIX] vt. When used without a qualifier, generally
refers to {crunch}ing of a file using a particular
C implementation of compression by James A. Woods et al. and
widely circulated via {USENET}; use of {crunch} itself in
this sense is rare among UNIX hackers. Specifically, compress is
built around the Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm as described in "A
Technique for High Performance Data Compression", Terry A. Welch,
`IEEE Computer', vol. 17, no. 6 (June 1984), pp. 8-19.
:Compu$erve: n. See {CI$}. The synonyms CompuSpend and
Compu$pend are also reported.
:computer confetti: n. Syn. {chad}. Though this term is common,
this use of punched-card chad is not a good idea, as the pieces are
stiff and have sharp corners that could injure the eyes. GLS
reports that he once attended a wedding at MIT during which he and
a few other guests enthusiastically threw chad instead of rice. The
groom later grumbled that he and his bride had spent most of the
evening trying to get the stuff out of their hair.
:computer geek: n. One who eats (computer) bugs for a living. One
who fulfills all the dreariest negative stereotypes about hackers:
an asocial, malodorous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the
personality of a cheese grater. Cannot be used by outsiders
without implied insult to all hackers; compare black-on-black usage
of `nigger'. A computer geek may be either a fundamentally
clueless individual or a proto-hacker in {larval stage}. Also
called `turbo nerd', `turbo geek'. See also {propeller head},
{clustergeeking}, {geek out}, {wannabee}, {terminal
junkie}, {spod}, {weenie}.
:computron: /kom'pyoo-tron`/ n. 1. A notional unit of computing
power combining instruction speed and storage capacity, dimensioned
roughly in instructions-per-second times megabytes-of-main-store
times megabytes-of-mass-storage. "That machine can't run GNU
EMACS, it doesn't have enough computrons!" This usage is usually
found in metaphors that treat computing power as a fungible
commodity good, like a crop yield or diesel horsepower. See
{bitty box}, {Get a real computer!}, {toy}, {crank}.
2. A mythical subatomic particle that bears the unit quantity of
computation or information, in much the same way that an electron
bears one unit of electric charge (see also {bogon}). An
elaborate pseudo-scientific theory of computrons has been developed
based on the physical fact that the molecules in a solid object
move more rapidly as it is heated. It is argued that an object
melts because the molecules have lost their information about where
they are supposed to be (that is, they have emitted computrons).
This explains why computers get so hot and require air
conditioning; they use up computrons. Conversely, it should be
possible to cool down an object by placing it in the path of a
computron beam. It is believed that this may also explain why
machines that work at the factory fail in the computer room: the
computrons there have been all used up by the other hardware.
(This theory probably owes something to the "Warlock" stories
by Larry Niven, the best known being "What Good is a Glass
Dagger?", in which magic is fueled by an exhaustible natural
resource called `mana'.)
:condition out: vt. To prevent a section of code from being compiled
by surrounding it with a conditional-compilation directive whose
condition is always false. The {canonical} examples are `#if
0' (or `#ifdef notdef', though some find this {bletcherous})
and `#endif' in C. Compare {comment out}.
:condom: n. 1. The protective plastic bag that accompanies 3.5-inch
microfloppy diskettes. Rarely, also used of (paper) disk
envelopes. Unlike the write protect tab, the condom (when left on)
not only impedes the practice of {SEX} but has also been shown
to have a high failure rate as drive mechanisms attempt to access
the disk --- and can even fatally frustrate insertion. 2. The
protective cladding on a {light pipe}.
:confuser: n. Common soundalike slang for `computer'. Usually
encountered in compounds such as `confuser room', `personal
confuser', `confuser guru'. Usage: silly.
:connector conspiracy: [probably came into prominence with the
appearance of the KL-10 (one model of the {PDP-10}), none of
whose connectors matched anything else] n. The tendency of
manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of
anything) to come up with new products that don't fit together
with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or
expensive interface devices. The KL-10 Massbus connector was
actually *patented* by DEC, which reputedly refused to license
the design and thus effectively locked third parties out of
competition for the lucrative Massbus peripherals market. This is
a source of never-ending frustration for the diehards who maintain
older PDP-10 or VAX systems. Their CPUs work fine, but they are
stuck with dying, obsolescent disk and tape drives with low
capacity and high power requirements.
(A closely related phenomenon, with a slightly different intent, is
the habit manufacturers have of inventing new screw heads so that
only Designated Persons, possessing the magic screwdrivers, can
remove covers and make repairs or install options. The Apple
Macintosh takes this one step further, requiring not only a hex
wrench but a specialized case-cracking tool to open the box.)
In these latter days of open-systems computing this term has fallen
somewhat into disuse, to be replaced by the observation that
"Standards are great! There are so *many* of them to choose
from!" Compare {backward combatability}.
:cons: /konz/ or /kons/ [from LISP] 1. vt. To add a new element
to a specified list, esp. at the top. "OK, cons picking a
replacement for the console TTY onto the agenda." 2. `cons up':
vt. To synthesize from smaller pieces: "to cons up an example".
In LISP itself, `cons' is the most fundamental operation for
building structures. It takes any two objects and returns a
`dot-pair' or two-branched tree with one object hanging from each
branch. Because the result of a cons is an object, it can be used
to build binary trees of any shape and complexity. Hackers think
of it as a sort of universal constructor, and that is where the
jargon meanings spring from.
:considered harmful: adj. Edsger W. Dijkstra's note in the
March 1968 `Communications of the ACM', "Goto Statement
Considered Harmful", fired the first salvo in the structured
programming wars. Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting
acrimony sufficiently harmful that it will (by policy) no longer
print an article taking so assertive a position against a coding
practice. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious
papers and parodies have borne titles of the form "X
considered Y". The structured-programming wars eventually blew
over with the realization that both sides were wrong, but use of
such titles has remained as a persistent minor in-joke (the
`considered silly' found at various places in this lexicon is
related).
:console:: n. 1. The operator's station of a {mainframe}. In
times past, this was a privileged location that conveyed godlike
powers to anyone with fingers on its keys. Under UNIX and other
modern timesharing OSes, such privileges are guarded by passwords
instead, and the console is just the {tty} the system was booted
from. Some of the mystique remains, however, and it is traditional
for sysadmins to post urgent messages to all users from the console
(on UNIX, /dev/console). 2. On microcomputer UNIX boxes, the main
screen and keyboard (as opposed to character-only terminals talking
to a serial port). Typically only the console can do real graphics
or run {X}. See also {CTY}.
:console jockey: n. See {terminal junkie}.
:content-free: [by analogy with techspeak `context-free'] adj.
Used of a message that adds nothing to the recipient's knowledge.
Though this adjective is sometimes applied to {flamage}, it more
usually connotes derision for communication styles that exalt form
over substance or are centered on concerns irrelevant to the
subject ostensibly at hand. Perhaps most used with reference to
speeches by company presidents and other professional manipulators.
"Content-free? Uh...that's anything printed on glossy
paper." See also {four-color glossies}. "He gave a talk on
the implications of electronic networks for postmodernism and the
fin-de-siecle aesthetic. It was content-free."
:control-C: vi. 1. "Stop whatever you are doing." From the
interrupt character used on many operating systems to abort a
running program. Considered silly. 2. interj. Among BSD UNIX
hackers, the canonical humorous response to "Give me a break!"
:control-O: vi. "Stop talking." From the character used on some
operating systems to abort output but allow the program to keep on
running. Generally means that you are not interested in hearing
anything more from that person, at least on that topic; a standard
response to someone who is flaming. Considered silly. Compare
{control-S}.
:control-Q: vi. "Resume." From the ASCII DC1 or {XON}
character (the pronunciation /X-on/ is therefore also used), used
to undo a previous {control-S}.
:control-S: vi. "Stop talking for a second." From the ASCII DC3
or XOFF character (the pronunciation /X-of/ is therefore also
used). Control-S differs from {control-O} in that the person is
asked to stop talking (perhaps because you are on the phone) but
will be allowed to continue when you're ready to listen to him ---
as opposed to control-O, which has more of the meaning of
"Shut up." Considered silly.
:Conway's Law: prov. The rule that the organization of the software and
the organization of the software team will be congruent; originally
stated as "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll
get a 4-pass compiler".
This was originally promulgated by Melvin Conway, an early
proto-hacker who wrote an assembler for the Burroughs 220 called
SAVE. The name `SAVE' didn't stand for anything; it was just that
you lost fewer card decks and listings because they all had SAVE
written on them.
:cookbook: [from amateur electronics and radio] n. A book of small
code segments that the reader can use to do various {magic}
things in programs. One current example is the `{PostScript}
Language Tutorial and Cookbook' by Adobe Systems, Inc
(Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-10179-3) which has recipes for things
like wrapping text around arbitrary curves and making 3D fonts.
Cookbooks, slavishly followed, can lead one into {voodoo
programming}, but are useful for hackers trying to {monkey up}
small programs in unknown languages. This is analogous to the role
of phrasebooks in human languages.
:cooked mode: [UNIX] n. The normal character-input mode, with
interrupts enabled and with erase, kill and other special-character
interpretations done directly by the tty driver. Oppose {raw
mode}, {rare mode}. This is techspeak under UNIX but jargon
elsewhere; other operating systems often have similar mode
distinctions, and the raw/rare/cooked way of describing them has
spread widely along with the C language and other UNIX exports.
Most generally, `cooked mode' may refer to any mode of a
system that does extensive preprocessing before presenting data to
a program.
:cookie: n. A handle, transaction ID, or other token of agreement
between cooperating programs. "I give him a packet, he gives me
back a cookie." The claim check you get from a dry-cleaning shop
is a perfect mundane example of a cookie; the only thing it's
useful for is to relate a later transaction to this one (so you get
the same clothes back). Compare {magic cookie}; see also
{fortune cookie}.
:cookie bear: n. Syn. {cookie monster}.
:cookie file: n. A collection of {fortune cookie}s in a format
that facilitates retrieval by a fortune program. There are several
different ones in public distribution, and site admins often
assemble their own from various sources including this lexicon.
:cookie monster: [from "Sesame Street"] n. Any of a family of
early (1970s) hacks reported on {{TOPS-10}}, {{ITS}}, {{Multics}},
and elsewhere that would lock up either the victim's terminal (on a
time-sharing machine) or the {{console}} (on a batch
{mainframe}), repeatedly demanding "I WANT A COOKIE". The
required responses ranged in complexity from "COOKIE" through
"HAVE A COOKIE" and upward. See also {wabbit}.
:copious free time: [Apple; orig. fr. the intro to Tom Lehrer's
song "It Makes A Fellow Proud To Be A Soldier"] n. 1. [used
ironically to indicate the speaker's lack of the quantity in
question] A mythical schedule slot for accomplishing tasks held to
be unlikely or impossible. Sometimes used to indicate that the
speaker is interested in accomplishing the task, but believes that
the opportunity will not arise. "I'll implement the automatic
layout stuff in my copious free time." 2. [Archly] Time reserved
for bogus or otherwise idiotic tasks, such as implementation of
{chrome}, or the stroking of {suit}s. "I'll get back to him
on that feature in my copious free time."
:copper: n. Conventional electron-carrying network cable with a
core conductor of copper --- or aluminum! Opposed to {light
pipe} or, say, a short-range microwave link.
:copy protection: n. A class of (occasionally clever) methods for
preventing incompetent pirates from stealing software and
legitimate customers from using it. Considered silly.
:copybroke: /ko'pee-brohk/ adj. 1. [play on `copyright'] Used
to describe an instance of a copy-protected program that has been
`broken'; that is, a copy with the copy-protection scheme
disabled. Syn. {copywronged}. 2. Copy-protected software
which is unusable because of some bit-rot or bug that has confused
the anti-piracy check.
:copyleft: /kop'ee-left/ [play on `copyright'] n. 1. The
copyright notice (`General Public License') carried by {GNU}
{EMACS} and other Free Software Foundation software, granting reuse
and reproduction rights to all comers (but see also {General
Public Virus}). 2. By extension, any copyright notice intended to
achieve similar aims.
:copywronged: /ko'pee-rongd/ [play on `copyright'] adj. Syn. for
{copybroke}.
:core: n. Main storage or RAM. Dates from the days of ferrite-core
memory; now archaic as techspeak most places outside IBM, but also
still used in the UNIX community and by old-time hackers or those
who would sound like them. Some derived idioms are quite current;
`in core', for example, means `in memory' (as opposed to `on
disk'), and both {core dump} and the `core image' or `core
file' produced by one are terms in favor. Commonwealth hackish
prefers {store}.
:core cancer: n. A process which exhibits a slow but inexorable
resource {leak} --- like a cancer, it kills by crowding out
productive `tissue'.
:core dump: n. [common {Iron Age} jargon, preserved by UNIX]
1. [techspeak] A copy of the contents of {core}, produced when a
process is aborted by certain kinds of internal error. 2. By
extension, used for humans passing out, vomiting, or registering
extreme shock. "He dumped core. All over the floor. What a
mess." "He heard about X and dumped core." 3. Occasionally
used for a human rambling on pointlessly at great length; esp. in
apology: "Sorry, I dumped core on you". 4. A recapitulation of
knowledge (compare {bits}, sense 1). Hence, spewing all one
knows about a topic (syn. {brain dump}), esp. in a lecture or
answer to an exam question. "Short, concise answers are better
than core dumps" (from the instructions to an exam at Columbia).
See {core}.
:core leak: n. Syn. {memory leak}.
:Core Wars: n. A game between `assembler' programs in a
simulated machine, where the objective is to kill your opponent's
program by overwriting it. Popularized by A. K. Dewdney's column
in `Scientific American' magazine, this was actually
devised by Victor Vyssotsky, Robert Morris, and Dennis Ritchie in
the early 1960s (their original game was called `Darwin' and ran on
a PDP-1 at Bell Labs). See {core}.
:corge: /korj/ [originally, the name of a cat] n. Yet another
{metasyntactic variable}, invented by Mike Gallaher and propagated
by the {GOSMACS} documentation. See {grault}.
:cosmic rays: n. Notionally, the cause of {bit rot}. However, this is
a semi-independent usage that may be invoked as a humorous way to
{handwave} away any minor {randomness} that doesn't seem worth the
bother of investigating. "Hey, Eric --- I just got a burst of
garbage on my {tube}, where did that come from?" "Cosmic rays, I
guess." Compare {sunspots}, {phase of the moon}. The British seem
to prefer the usage `cosmic showers'; `alpha particles' is also
heard, because stray alpha particles passing through a memory chip
can cause single-bit errors (this becomes increasingly more likely
as memory sizes and densities increase).
Factual note: Alpha particles cause bit rot, cosmic rays do not
(except occasionally in spaceborne computers). Intel could not
explain random bit drops in their early chips, and one hypothesis
was cosmic rays. So they created the World's Largest Lead Safe,
using 25 tons of the stuff, and used two identical boards for
testing. One was placed in the safe, one outside. The hypothesis
was that if cosmic rays were causing the bit drops, they should see
a statistically significant difference between the error rates on
the two boards. They did not observe such a difference. Further
investigation demonstrated conclusively that the bit drops were due
to alpha particle emissions from thorium (and to a much lesser
degree uranium) in the encapsulation material. Since it is
impossible to eliminate these radioactives (they are uniformly
distributed through the earth's crust, with the statistically
insignificant exception of uranium lodes) it became obvious that
you have to design memories to withstand these hits.
:cough and die: v. Syn. {barf}. Connotes that the program is
throwing its hands up by design rather than because of a bug or
oversight. "The parser saw a control-A in its input where it was
looking for a printable, so it coughed and died." Compare
{die}, {die horribly}.
:cowboy: [Sun, from William Gibson's {cyberpunk} SF] n. Synonym
for {hacker}. It is reported that at Sun this word is often
said with reverence.
:CP/M:: /C-P-M/ n. [Control Program for Microcomputers] An early
microcomputer {OS} written by hacker Gary Kildall for 8080- and
Z80-based machines, very popular in the late 1970s but virtually
wiped out by MS-DOS after the release of the IBM PC in 1981.
Legend has it that Kildall's company blew its chance to write the
OS for the IBM PC because Kildall decided to spend a day IBM's reps
wanted to meet with him enjoying the perfect flying weather in his
private plane. Many of CP/M's features and conventions strongly
resemble those of early DEC operating systems such as
{{TOPS-10}}, OS/8, RSTS, and RSX-11. See {{MS-DOS}},
{operating system}.
:CPU Wars: /C-P-U worz/ n. A 1979 large-format comic by Chas
Andres chronicling the attempts of the brainwashed androids of IPM
(Impossible to Program Machines) to conquer and destroy the
peaceful denizens of HEC (Human Engineered Computers). This rather
transparent allegory featured many references to {ADVENT} and
the immortal line "Eat flaming death, minicomputer mongrels!"
(uttered, of course, by an IPM stormtrooper). It is alleged that
the author subsequently received a letter of appreciation on IBM
company stationery from the head of IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research
Laboratories (then, as now, one of the few islands of true
hackerdom in the IBM archipelago). The lower loop of the B in the
IBM logo, it is said, had been carefully whited out. See {eat
flaming death}.
:crack root: v. To defeat the security system of a UNIX machine and
gain {root} privileges thereby; see {cracking}.
:cracker: n. One who breaks security on a system. Coined ca. 1985
by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of {hacker}
(q.v., sense 8). An earlier attempt to establish `worm' in this
sense around 1981--82 on USENET was largely a failure.
Both these neologisms reflected a strong revulsion against the
theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings. While it is
expected that any real hacker will have done some playful cracking
and knows many of the basic techniques, anyone past {larval
stage} is expected to have outgrown the desire to do so.
Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and crackerdom
than the {mundane} reader misled by sensationalistic journalism
might expect. Crackers tend to gather in small, tight-knit, very
secretive groups that have little overlap with the huge, open
poly-culture this lexicon describes; though crackers often like to
describe *themselves* as hackers, most true hackers consider
them a separate and lower form of life.
Ethical considerations aside, hackers figure that anyone who can't
imagine a more interesting way to play with their computers than
breaking into someone else's has to be pretty {losing}. Some
other reasons crackers are looked down on are discussed in the
entries on {cracking} and {phreaking}. See also
{samurai}, {dark-side hacker}, and {hacker ethic,
the}.
:cracking: n. The act of breaking into a computer system; what a
{cracker} does. Contrary to widespread myth, this does not
usually involve some mysterious leap of hackerly brilliance, but
rather persistence and the dogged repetition of a handful of fairly
well-known tricks that exploit common weaknesses in the security of
target systems. Accordingly, most crackers are only mediocre
hackers.
:crank: [from automotive slang] vt. Verb used to describe the
performance of a machine, especially sustained performance. "This
box cranks (or, cranks at) about 6 megaflops, with a burst mode
of twice that on vectorized operations."
:crash: 1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often said
of the {system} (q.v., sense 1), esp. of magnetic disk drives
(the term originally described what happened when the air gap of a
Winchester disk collapses). "Three {luser}s lost their files
in last night's disk crash." A disk crash that involves the
read/write heads dropping onto the surface of the disks and
scraping off the oxide may also be referred to as a `head crash',
whereas the term `system crash' usually, though not always,
implies that the operating system or other software was at fault.
2. v. To fail suddenly. "Has the system just crashed?"
"Something crashed the OS!" See {down}. Also used
transitively to indicate the cause of the crash (usually a person
or a program, or both). "Those idiots playing {SPACEWAR}
crashed the system." 3. vi. Sometimes said of people hitting the
sack after a long {hacking run}; see {gronk out}.
:crash and burn: vi.,n. A spectacular crash, in the mode of the
conclusion of the car-chase scene in the movie "Bullitt" and
many subsequent imitators (compare {die horribly}). Sun-3
monitors losing the flyback transformer and lightning strikes on
VAX-11/780 backplanes are notable crash and burn generators. The
construction `crash-and-burn machine' is reported for a computer
used exclusively for alpha or {beta} testing, or reproducing
bugs (i.e., not for development). The implication is that it
wouldn't be such a disaster if that machine crashed, since only the
testers would be inconvenienced.
:crawling horror: n. Ancient crufty hardware or software that is
kept obstinately alive by forces beyond the control of the hackers
at a site. Like {dusty deck} or {gonkulator}, but connotes
that the thing described is not just an irritation but an active
menace to health and sanity. "Mostly we code new stuff in C, but
they pay us to maintain one big FORTRAN II application from
nineteen-sixty-X that's a real crawling horror...." Compare
{WOMBAT}.
:cray: /kray/ n. 1. (properly, capitalized) One of the line of
supercomputers designed by Cray Research. 2. Any supercomputer at
all. 3. The {canonical} {number-crunching} machine.
The term is actually the lowercased last name of Seymour Cray, a
noted computer architect and co-founder of the company. Numerous
vivid legends surround him, some true and some admittedly invented
by Cray Research brass to shape their corporate culture and image.
:cray instability: n. A shortcoming of a program or algorithm that
manifests itself only when a large problem is being run on a
powerful machine (see {cray}). Generally more subtle than bugs
that can be detected in smaller problems running on a workstation
or mini.
:crayola: /kray-oh'l*/ n. A super-mini or -micro computer that
provides some reasonable percentage of supercomputer performance
for an unreasonably low price. Might also be a {killer micro}.
:crayon: n. 1. Someone who works on Cray supercomputers. More
specifically, it implies a programmer, probably of the CDC ilk,
probably male, and almost certainly wearing a tie (irrespective of
gender). Systems types who have a UNIX background tend not to be
described as crayons. 2. A {computron} (sense 2) that
participates only in {number-crunching}. 3. A unit of
computational power equal to that of a single Cray-1. There is a
standard joke about this that derives from an old Crayola crayon
promotional gimmick: When you buy 64 crayons you get a free
sharpener.
:creationism: n. The (false) belief that large, innovative software
designs can be completely specified in advance and then painlessly
magicked out of the void by the normal efforts of a team of
normally talented programmers. In fact, experience has shown
repeatedly that good designs arise only from evolutionary,
exploratory interaction between one (or at most a small handful of)
exceptionally able designer(s) and an active user population ---
and that the first try at a big new idea is always wrong.
Unfortunately, because these truths don't fit the planning models
beloved of {management}, they are generally ignored.
:creep: v. To advance, grow, or multiply inexorably. In hackish usage
this verb has overtones of menace and silliness, evoking the
creeping horrors of low-budget monster movies.
:creeping elegance: n. Describes a tendency for parts of a design to
become {elegant} past the point of diminishing return. This
often happens at the expense of the less interesting parts of the
design, the schedule, and other things deemed important in the
{Real World}. See also {creeping featurism}, {second-system
effect}, {tense}.
:creeping featurism: /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ n. 1. Describes a
systematic tendency to load more {chrome} and {feature}s onto
systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed
when originally designed. See also {feeping creaturism}. "You
know, the main problem with {BSD} UNIX has always been creeping
featurism." 2. More generally, the tendency for anything
complicated to become even more complicated because people keep
saying "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature too".
(See {feature}.) The result is usually a patchwork because it
grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned.
Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra
little feature to help someone ... and then another ... and
another.... When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's
like a cancer. Usually this term is used to describe computer
programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the
IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes
afflicts conscious redesigns; see {second-system effect}. See
also {creeping elegance}.
:creeping featuritis: /kree'ping fee'-chr-i:`t*s/ n. Variant of
{creeping featurism}, with its own spoonerization: `feeping
creaturitis'. Some people like to reserve this form for the
disease as it actually manifests in software or hardware, as
opposed to the lurking general tendency in designers' minds.
(After all, -ism means `condition' or `pursuit of', whereas
-itis usually means `inflammation of'.)
:cretin: /kret'n/ or /kree'tn/ n. Congenital {loser}; an obnoxious
person; someone who can't do anything right. It has been observed
that many American hackers tend to favor the British pronunciation
/kre'tn/ over standard American /kree'tn/; it is thought this may
be due to the insidious phonetic influence of Monty Python's Flying
Circus.
:cretinous: /kret'n-*s/ or /kreet'n-*s/ adj. Wrong; stupid;
non-functional; very poorly designed. Also used pejoratively of
people. See {dread high-bit disease} for an example.
Approximate synonyms: {bletcherous}, `bagbiting' (see
{bagbiter}), {losing}, {brain-damaged}.
:crippleware: n. 1. Software that has some important functionality
deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users to pay for a
working version. 2. [Cambridge] {Guiltware} that exhorts you to
donate to some charity (compare {careware}). 3. Hardware
deliberately crippled, which can be upgraded to a more expensive
model by a trivial change (e.g., cutting a jumper).
An excellent example of crippleware (sense 3) is Intel's 486SX
chip, which is a standard 486DX chip with the co-processor
disabled. To upgrade, you buy another 486 chip with everything
*but* the co-processor disabled. When you put them together
you have two crippled chips doing the work of one. Don't you love
Intel?
:critical mass: n. In physics, the minimum amount of fissionable
material required to sustain a chain reaction. Of a software
product, describes a condition of the software such that fixing one
bug introduces one plus {epsilon} bugs. When software achieves
critical mass, it can only be discarded and rewritten.
:crlf: /ker'l*f/, sometimes /kru'l*f/ or /C-R-L-F/ n. (often
capitalized as `CRLF') A carriage return (CR) followed by a line
feed (LF). More loosely, whatever it takes to get you from the
end of one line of text to the beginning of the next line. See
{newline}, {terpri}. Under {{UNIX}} influence this usage
has become less common (UNIX uses a bare line feed as its `CRLF').
:crock: [from the obvious mainstream scatologism] n. 1. An awkward
feature or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner.
Using small integers to represent error codes without the
program interpreting them to the user (as in, for example, UNIX
`make(1)', which returns code 139 for a process that dies due
to {segfault}). 2. A technique that works acceptably, but which
is quite prone to failure if disturbed in the least, for example
depending on the machine opcodes having particular bit patterns so
that you can use instructions as data words too; a tightly woven,
almost completely unmodifiable structure. See {kluge},
{brittle}. Also in the adjectives `crockish' and
`crocky', and the nouns `crockishness' and `crockitude'.
:cross-post: [USENET] vi. To post a single article simultaneously to
several newsgroups. Distinguished from posting the article
repeatedly, once to each newsgroup, which causes people to see it
multiple times (this is very bad form). Gratuitous cross-posting
without a Followup-To line directing responses to a single followup
group is frowned upon, as it tends to cause {followup} articles
to go to inappropriate newsgroups when people respond to only one
part of the original posting.
:crudware: /kruhd'weir/ n. Pejorative term for the hundreds of
megabytes of low-quality {freeware} circulated by user's groups
and BBS systems in the micro-hobbyist world. "Yet *another*
set of disk catalog utilities for {{MS-DOS}}? What crudware!"
:cruft: /kruhft/ [back-formation from {crufty}] 1. n. An
unpleasant substance. The dust that gathers under your bed is
cruft; the TMRC Dictionary correctly noted that attacking it with a
broom only produces more. 2. n. The results of shoddy
construction. 3. vt. [from `hand cruft', pun on `hand craft']
To write assembler code for something normally (and better) done by
a compiler (see {hand-hacking}). 4. n. Excess; superfluous
junk. Esp. used of redundant or superseded code.
This term is one of the oldest in the jargon and no one is sure of
its etymology, but it is suggestive that there is a Cruft Hall at
Harvard University which is part of the old physics building; it's
said to have been the physics department's radar lab during WWII.
To this day (early 1992) the windows appear to be full of random
techno-junk. MIT or Lincoln Labs people may well have coined the
term as a knock on the competition.
:cruft together: vt. (also `cruft up') To throw together
something ugly but temporarily workable. Like vt. {kluge up},
but more pejorative. "There isn't any program now to reverse all
the lines of a file, but I can probably cruft one together in about
10 minutes." See {hack together}, {hack up}, {kluge up},
{crufty}.
:cruftsmanship: /kruhfts'm*n-ship / n. [from {cruft}] The
antithesis of craftsmanship.
:crufty: /kruhf'tee/ [origin unknown; poss. from `crusty' or
`cruddy'] adj. 1. Poorly built, possibly over-complex. The
{canonical} example is "This is standard old crufty DEC
software". In fact, one fanciful theory of the origin of
`crufty' holds that was originally a mutation of `crusty'
applied to DEC software so old that the `s' characters were tall
and skinny, looking more like `f' characters. 2. Unpleasant,
especially to the touch, often with encrusted junk. Like spilled
coffee smeared with peanut butter and catsup. 3. Generally
unpleasant. 4. (sometimes spelled `cruftie') n. A small crufty
object (see {frob}); often one that doesn't fit well into the
scheme of things. "A LISP property list is a good place to store
crufties (or, collectively, {random} cruft)."
:crumb: n. Two binary digits; a {quad}. Larger than a {bit},
smaller than a {nybble}. Considered silly. Syn. {tayste}.
:crunch: 1. vi. To process, usually in a time-consuming or
complicated way. Connotes an essentially trivial operation that is
nonetheless painful to perform. The pain may be due to the
triviality's being embedded in a loop from 1 to 1,000,000,000.
"FORTRAN programs do mostly {number-crunching}." 2. vt. To
reduce the size of a file by a complicated scheme that produces bit
configurations completely unrelated to the original data, such as
by a Huffman code. (The file ends up looking like a paper document
would if somebody crunched the paper into a wad.) Since such
compression usually takes more computations than simpler methods
such as run-length encoding, the term is doubly appropriate. (This
meaning is usually used in the construction `file crunch(ing)' to
distinguish it from {number-crunching}.) See {compress}.
3. n. The character `#'. Used at XEROX and CMU, among other
places. See {{ASCII}}. 4. vt. To squeeze program source into a
minimum-size representation that will still compile or execute.
The term came into being specifically for a famous program on the
BBC micro that crunched BASIC source in order to make it run more
quickly (it was a wholly interpretive BASIC, so the number of
characters mattered). {Obfuscated C Contest} entries are often
crunched; see the first example under that entry.
:cruncha cruncha cruncha: /kruhn'ch* kruhn'ch* kruhn'ch*/ interj.
An encouragement sometimes muttered to a machine bogged down in a
serious {grovel}. Also describes a notional sound made by
groveling hardware. See {wugga wugga}, {grind} (sense 3).
:cryppie: /krip'ee/ n. A cryptographer. One who hacks or implements
cryptographic software or hardware.
:CTSS: /C-T-S-S/ n. Compatible Time-Sharing System. An early
(1963) experiment in the design of interactive time-sharing
operating systems, ancestral to {{Multics}}, {{UNIX}}, and
{{ITS}}. The name {{ITS}} (Incompatible Time-sharing System)
was a hack on CTSS, meant both as a joke and to express some basic
differences in philosophy about the way I/O services should be
presented to user programs.
:CTY: /sit'ee/ or /C-T-Y/ n. [MIT] The terminal physically
associated with a computer's system {{console}}. The term is a
contraction of `Console {tty}', that is, `Console TeleTYpe'.
This {{ITS}}- and {{TOPS-10}}-associated term has become less
common, as most UNIX hackers simply refer to the CTY as `the
console'.
:cube: n. 1. [short for `cubicle'] A module in the open-plan
offices used at many programming shops. "I've got the manuals in
my cube." 2. A NeXT machine (which resembles a matte-black cube).
:cubing: [parallel with `tubing'] vi. 1. Hacking on an IPSC (Intel
Personal SuperComputer) hypercube. "Louella's gone cubing
*again*!!" 2. Hacking Rubik's Cube or related puzzles,
either physically or mathematically. 3. An indescribable form of
self-torture (see sense 1 or 2).
:cursor dipped in X: n. There are a couple of metaphors in English
of the form `pen dipped in X' (perhaps the most common values of X
are `acid', `bile', and `vitriol'). These map over neatly to this
hackish usage (the cursor being what moves, leaving letters behind,
when one is composing on-line). "Talk about a {nastygram}! He
must've had his cursor dipped in acid when he wrote that one!"
:cuspy: /kuhs'pee/ [WPI: from the DEC abbreviation CUSP, for `Commonly
Used System Program', i.e., a utility program used by many people]
adj. 1. (of a program) Well-written. 2. Functionally excellent. A
program that performs well and interfaces well to users is cuspy.
See {rude}. 3. [NYU] Said of an attractive woman, especially one
regarded as available. Implies a certain curvaceousness.
:cut a tape: vi. To write a software or document distribution on
magnetic tape for shipment. Has nothing to do with physically
cutting the medium! Early versions of this lexicon claimed that
one never analogously speaks of `cutting a disk', but this has
since been reported as live usage. Related slang usages are
mainstream business's `cut a check', the recording industry's
`cut a record', and the military's `cut an order'.
All of these usages reflect physical processes in obsolete
recording and duplication technologies. The first stage in
manufacturing an old-style vinyl record involved cutting grooves in
a stamping die with a precision lathe. More mundanely, the
dominant technology for mass duplication of paper documents in
pre-photocopying days involved "cutting a stencil", punching away
portions of the wax overlay on a silk screen. More directly,
paper tape with holes punched in it was an inportant early storage
medium.
:cybercrud: /si:'ber-kruhd/ [coined by Ted Nelson] n. Obfuscatory
tech-talk. Verbiage with a high {MEGO} factor. The computer
equivalent of bureaucratese.
:cyberpunk: /si:'ber-puhnk/ [orig. by SF writer Bruce Bethke
and/or editor Gardner Dozois] n.,adj. A subgenre of SF launched
in 1982 by William Gibson's epoch-making novel `Neuromancer'
(though its roots go back through Vernor Vinge's `True Names'
(see "{True Names ... and Other Dangers}" in
appendix C) to John Brunner's 1975 novel `The Shockwave
Rider'). Gibson's near-total ignorance of computers and the
present-day hacker culture enabled him to speculate about the role
of computers and hackers in the future in ways hackers have since
found both irritatingly na"ive and tremendously stimulating.
Gibson's work was widely imitated, in particular by the short-lived
but innovative "Max Headroom" TV series. See
{cyberspace}, {ice}, {jack in}, {go flatline}.
:cyberspace: /si:'ber-spays/ n. 1. Notional `information-space'
loaded with visual cues and navigable with brain-computer
interfaces called `cyberspace decks'; a characteristic prop of
{cyberpunk} SF. At the time of this writing (mid-1991),
serious efforts to construct {virtual reality} interfaces
modeled explicitly on Gibsonian cyberspace are already under way,
using more conventional devices such as glove sensors and binocular
TV headsets. Few hackers are prepared to deny outright the
possibility of a cyberspace someday evolving out of the network
(see {network, the}). 2. Occasionally, the metaphoric location
of the mind of a person in {hack mode}. Some hackers report
experiencing strong eidetic imagery when in hack mode;
interestingly, independent reports from multiple sources suggest
that there are common features to the experience. In particular,
the dominant colors of this subjective `cyberspace' are often
gray and silver, and the imagery often involves constellations of
marching dots, elaborate shifting patterns of lines and angles, or
moire patterns.
:cycle: 1. n. The basic unit of computation. What every hacker
wants more of (noted hacker Bill Gosper describes himself as a
"cycle junkie"). One can describe an instruction as taking so
many `clock cycles'. Often the computer can access its
memory once on every clock cycle, and so one speaks also of
`memory cycles'. These are technical meanings of {cycle}. The
jargon meaning comes from the observation that there are only so
many cycles per second, and when you are sharing a computer the
cycles get divided up among the users. The more cycles the
computer spends working on your program rather than someone else's,
the faster your program will run. That's why every hacker wants
more cycles: so he can spend less time waiting for the computer to
respond. 2. By extension, a notional unit of *human* thought
power, emphasizing that lots of things compete for the typical
hacker's think time. "I refused to get involved with the Rubik's
Cube back when it was big. Knew I'd burn too many cycles on it if
I let myself." 3. vt. Syn. {bounce}, {120 reset}; from the
phrase `cycle power'. "Cycle the machine again, that serial port's
still hung."
:cycle crunch: n. A situation where the number of people trying to
use the computer simultaneously has reached the point where no one
can get enough cycles because they are spread too thin and the
system has probably begun to {thrash}. This is an inevitable
result of Parkinson's Law applied to timesharing. Usually the only
solution is to buy more computer. Happily, this has rapidly become
easier in recent years, so much so that the very term `cycle
crunch' now has a faintly archaic flavor; most hackers now use
workstations or personal computers as opposed to traditional
timesharing systems.
:cycle drought: n. A scarcity of cycles. It may be due to a {cycle
crunch}, but it could also occur because part of the computer is
temporarily not working, leaving fewer cycles to go around.
"The {high moby} is {down}, so we're running with only
half the usual amount of memory. There will be a cycle drought
until it's fixed."
:cycle of reincarnation: [coined by Ivan Sutherland ca. 1970] n.
Term used to refer to a well-known effect whereby function in a
computing system family is migrated out to special-purpose
peripheral hardware for speed, then the peripheral evolves toward
more computing power as it does its job, then somebody notices that
it is inefficient to support two asymmetrical processors in the
architecture and folds the function back into the main CPU, at
which point the cycle begins again. Several iterations of this
cycle have been observed in graphics-processor design, and at least
one or two in communications and floating-point processors. Also
known as `the Wheel of Life', `the Wheel of Samsara', and other
variations of the basic Hindu/Buddhist theological idea.
:cycle server: n. A powerful machine that exists primarily for
running large {batch} jobs. Implies that interactive tasks such as
editing are done on other machines on the network, such as
workstations.
= D =
=====
:D. C. Power Lab: n. The former site of {{SAIL}}. Hackers thought
this was very funny because the obvious connection to electrical
engineering was nonexistent --- the lab was named for a Donald C.
Power. Compare {Marginal Hacks}.
:daemon: /day'mn/ or /dee'mn/ [from the mythological meaning,
later rationalized as the acronym `Disk And Execution MONitor'] n.
A program that is not invoked explicitly, but lies dormant waiting
for some condition(s) to occur. The idea is that the perpetrator
of the condition need not be aware that a daemon is lurking (though
often a program will commit an action only because it knows that it
will implicitly invoke a daemon). For example, under {{ITS}}
writing a file on the {LPT} spooler's directory would invoke the
spooling daemon, which would then print the file. The advantage is
that programs wanting (in this example) files printed need not
compete for access to the {LPT}. They simply enter their
implicit requests and let the daemon decide what to do with them.
Daemons are usually spawned automatically by the system, and may
either live forever or be regenerated at intervals. Daemon and
{demon} are often used interchangeably, but seem to have
distinct connotations. The term `daemon' was introduced to
computing by {CTSS} people (who pronounced it /dee'mon/) and
used it to refer to what ITS called a {dragon}. Although the
meaning and the pronunciation have drifted, we think this glossary
reflects current (1991) usage.
:dangling pointer: n. A reference that doesn't actually lead
anywhere (in C and some other languages, a pointer that doesn't
actually point at anything valid). Usually this is because it
formerly pointed to something that has moved or disappeared. Used
as jargon in a generalization of its techspeak meaning; for
example, a local phone number for a person who has since moved to
the other coast is a dangling pointer.
:dark-side hacker: n. A criminal or malicious hacker; a
{cracker}. From George Lucas's Darth Vader, "seduced by the
dark side of the Force". The implication that hackers form a
sort of elite of technological Jedi Knights is intended. Oppose
{samurai}.
:Datamation: /day`t*-may'sh*n/ n. A magazine that many hackers
assume all {suit}s read. Used to question an unbelieved quote,
as in "Did you read that in `Datamation?'" It used to
publish something hackishly funny every once in a while, like the
original paper on {COME FROM} in 1973, but it has since become much
more exclusively {suit}-oriented and boring.
:day mode: n. See {phase} (sense 1). Used of people only.
:dd: /dee-dee/ [UNIX: from IBM {JCL}] vt. Equivalent to
{cat} or {BLT}. This was originally the name of a UNIX copy
command with special options suitable for block-oriented devices.
Often used in heavy-handed system maintenance, as in "Let's
`dd' the root partition onto a tape, then use the boot PROM to
load it back on to a new disk". The UNIX `dd(1)' was
designed with a weird, distinctly non-UNIXy keyword option syntax
reminiscent of IBM System/360 JCL (which had an elaborate DD `Data
Definition' specification for I/O devices); though the command
filled a need, the interface design was clearly a prank. The
jargon usage is now very rare outside UNIX sites and now nearly
obsolete even there, as `dd(1)' has been {deprecated} for a
long time (though it has no exact replacement). Replaced by
{BLT} or simple English `copy'.
:DDT: /D-D-T/ n. 1. Generic term for a program that assists in
debugging other programs by showing individual machine instructions
in a readable symbolic form and letting the user change them. In
this sense the term DDT is now archaic, having been widely
displaced by `debugger' or names of individual programs like
`dbx', `adb', `gdb', or `sdb'. 2. [ITS] Under
MIT's fabled {{ITS}} operating system, DDT (running under the alias
HACTRN) was also used as the {shell} or top level command
language used to execute other programs. 3. Any one of several
specific DDTs (sense 1) supported on early DEC hardware. The DEC
PDP-10 Reference Handbook (1969) contained a footnote on the first
page of the documentation for DDT which illuminates the origin of
the term:
Historical footnote: DDT was developed at MIT for the PDP-1
computer in 1961. At that time DDT stood for "DEC Debugging Tape".
Since then, the idea of an on-line debugging program has propagated
throughout the computer industry. DDT programs are now available
for all DEC computers. Since media other than tape are now
frequently used, the more descriptive name "Dynamic Debugging
Technique" has been adopted, retaining the DDT abbreviation.
Confusion between DDT-10 and another well known pesticide,
dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (C14-H9-Cl5) should be minimal
since each attacks a different, and apparently mutually exclusive,
class of bugs.
Sadly, this quotation was removed from later editions of the
handbook after the {suit}s took over and DEC became much more
`businesslike'.
The history above is known to many old-time hackers. But there's
more: Peter Samson, author of the {TMRC} lexicon, reports that
he named `DDT' after a similar tool on the TX-0 computer, the
direct ancestor of the PDP-1 built at MIT's Lincoln Lab in 1957.
The debugger on that ground-breaking machine (the first
transistorized computer) rejoiced in the name FLIT (FLexowriter
Interrogation Tape).
:de-rezz: /dee-rez'/ [from `de-resolve' via the movie "Tron"]
(also `derez') 1. vi. To disappear or dissolve; the image that goes
with it is of an object breaking up into raster lines and static
and then dissolving. Occasionally used of a person who seems to
have suddenly `fuzzed out' mentally rather than physically.
Usage: extremely silly, also rare. This verb was actually invented
as *fictional* hacker jargon, and adopted in a spirit of irony
by real hackers years after the fact. 2. vt. On a Macintosh, many
program structures (including the code itself) are managed in small
segments of the program file known as `resources'. The standard
resource compiler is Rez. The standard resource decompiler is
DeRez. Thus, decompiling a resource is `derezzing'. Usage: very
common.
:dead: adj. 1. Non-functional; {down}; {crash}ed. Especially
used of hardware. 2. At XEROX PARC, software that is working but
not undergoing continued development and support.
:dead code: n. Routines that can never be accessed because all calls
to them have been removed, or code that cannot be reached because
it is guarded by a control structure that provably must always
transfer control somewhere else. The presence of dead code may
reveal either logical errors due to alterations in the program or
significant changes in the assumptions and environment of the
program (see also {software rot}); a good compiler should report
dead code so a maintainer can think about what it means. Syn.
{grunge}.
:DEADBEEF: /ded-beef/ n. The hexadecimal word-fill pattern for
freshly allocated memory (decimal -21524111) under a number of
IBM environments, including the RS/6000. As in "Your program is
DEADBEEF" (meaning gone, aborted, flushed from memory); if you
start from an odd half-word boundary, of course, you have
BEEFDEAD.
:deadlock: n. 1. [techspeak] A situation wherein two or more
processes are unable to proceed because each is waiting for one of
the others to do something. A common example is a program
communicating to a server, which may find itself waiting for output
from the server before sending anything more to it, while the
server is similarly waiting for more input from the controlling
program before outputting anything. (It is reported that this
particular flavor of deadlock is sometimes called a `starvation
deadlock', though the term `starvation' is more properly used for
situations where a program can never run simply because it never
gets high enough priority. Another common flavor is
`constipation', where each process is trying to send stuff to
the other but all buffers are full because nobody is reading
anything.) See {deadly embrace}. 2. Also used of
deadlock-like interactions between humans, as when two people meet
in a narrow corridor, and each tries to be polite by moving aside
to let the other pass, but they end up swaying from side to side
without making any progress because they always both move the same
way at the same time.
:deadly embrace: n. Same as {deadlock}, though usually used only when
exactly 2 processes are involved. This is the more popular term in
Europe, while {deadlock} predominates in the United States.
:death code: n. A routine whose job is to set everything in the
computer --- registers, memory, flags, everything --- to zero,
including that portion of memory where it is running; its last act
is to stomp on its own "store zero" instruction. Death code
isn't very useful, but writing it is an interesting hacking
challenge on architectures where the instruction set makes it
possible, such as the PDP-8 (it has also been done on the DG Nova).
Death code is much less common, and more anti-social, on modern
multi-user machines. It was very impressive on earlier hardware
that provided front panel switches and displays to show register
and memory contents, esp. when these were used to prod the corpse
to see why it died.
Perhaps the ultimate death code is on the TI 990 series, where all
registers are actually in RAM, and the instruction "store immediate
0" has the opcode "0". The PC will immediately wrap around core as
many times as it can until a user hits HALT. Any empty memory
location is death code. Worse, the manufacturer recommended use of
this instruction in startup code (which would be in ROM and
therefore survive).
:Death Star: [from the movie "Star Wars"] 1. The AT&T corporate
logo, which appears on computers sold by AT&T and bears an uncanny
resemblance to the `Death Star' in the movie. This usage is
particularly common among partisans of {BSD} UNIX, who tend to
regard the AT&T versions as inferior and AT&T as a bad guy. Copies
still circulate of a poster printed by Mt. Xinu showing a starscape
with a space fighter labeled 4.2 BSD streaking away from a broken
AT&T logo wreathed in flames. 2. AT&T's internal magazine,
`Focus', uses `death star' for an incorrectly done AT&T logo
in which the inner circle in the top left is dark instead of light
--- a frequent result of dark-on-light logo images.
:DEC Wars: n. A 1983 {USENET} posting by Alan Hastings and Steve
Tarr spoofing the "Star Wars" movies in hackish terms. Some
years later, ESR (disappointed by Hastings and Tarr's failure to
exploit a great premise more thoroughly) posted a 3-times-longer
complete rewrite called "UNIX WARS"; the two are often
confused.
:DEChead: /dek'hed/ n. 1. A DEC {field servoid}. Not flattering.
2. [from `deadhead'] A Grateful Dead fan working at DEC.
:deckle: /dek'l/ [from dec- and {nybble}; the original
spelling seems to have been `decle'] n. Two {nickle}s;
10 bits. Reported among developers for Mattel's GI 1600 (the
Intellivision games processor), a chip with 16-bit-wide RAM but
10-bit-wide ROM.
:deep hack mode: n. See {hack mode}.
:deep magic: [poss. from C. S. Lewis's "Narnia" books] n. An
awesomely arcane technique central to a program or system, esp. one
not generally published and available to hackers at large (compare
{black art}); one that could only have been composed by a true
{wizard}. Compiler optimization techniques and many aspects of
{OS} design used to be {deep magic}; many techniques in
cryptography, signal processing, graphics, and AI still are.
Compare {heavy wizardry}. Esp. found in comments of the form
"Deep magic begins here...". Compare {voodoo programming}.
:deep space: n. 1. Describes the notional location of any program
that has gone {off the trolley}. Esp. used of programs that
just sit there silently grinding long after either failure or some
output is expected. "Uh oh. I should have gotten a prompt ten
seconds ago. The program's in deep space somewhere." Compare
{buzz}, {catatonic}, {hyperspace}. 2. The metaphorical
location of a human so dazed and/or confused or caught up in some
esoteric form of {bogosity} that he or she no longer responds
coherently to normal communication. Compare {page out}.
:defenestration: [from the traditional Czechoslovak method of
assassinating prime ministers, via SF fandom] n. 1. Proper karmic
retribution for an incorrigible punster. "Oh, ghod, that was
*awful*!" "Quick! Defenestrate him!" 2. The act of
exiting a window system in order to get better response time from a
full-screen program. This comes from the dictionary meaning of
`defenestrate', which is to throw something out a window. 3. The
act of discarding something under the assumption that it will
improve matters. "I don't have any disk space left." "Well,
why don't you defenestrate that 100 megs worth of old core dumps?"
4. [proposed] The requirement to support a command-line interface.
"It has to run on a VT100." "Curses! I've been
defenestrated!"
:defined as: adj. In the role of, usually in an organization-chart
sense. "Pete is currently defined as bug prioritizer." Compare
{logical}.
:dehose: /dee-hohz/ vt. To clear a {hosed} condition.
:delint: /dee-lint/ v. To modify code to remove problems detected
when {lint}ing. Confusingly, this is also referred to as
`linting' code.
:delta: n. 1. [techspeak] A quantitative change, especially a small
or incremental one (this use is general in physics and
engineering). "I just doubled the speed of my program!" "What
was the delta on program size?" "About 30 percent." (He
doubled the speed of his program, but increased its size by only 30
percent.) 2. [UNIX] A {diff}, especially a {diff} stored
under the set of version-control tools called SCCS (Source Code
Control System) or RCS (Revision Control System). 3. n. A small
quantity, but not as small as {epsilon}. The jargon usage of
{delta} and {epsilon} stems from the traditional use of these
letters in mathematics for very small numerical quantities,
particularly in `epsilon-delta' proofs in limit theory (as in the
differential calculus). The term {delta} is often used, once
{epsilon} has been mentioned, to mean a quantity that is
slightly bigger than {epsilon} but still very small. "The cost
isn't epsilon, but it's delta" means that the cost isn't totally
negligible, but it is nevertheless very small. Common
constructions include `within delta of ---', `within epsilon of
---': that is, close to and even closer to.
:demented: adj. Yet another term of disgust used to describe a
program. The connotation in this case is that the program works as
designed, but the design is bad. Said, for example, of a program
that generates large numbers of meaningless error messages,
implying that it is on the brink of imminent collapse. Compare
{wonky}, {bozotic}.
:demigod: n. A hacker with years of experience, a national reputation,
and a major role in the development of at least one design, tool,
or game used by or known to more than half of the hacker community.
To qualify as a genuine demigod, the person must recognizably
identify with the hacker community and have helped shape it. Major
demigods include Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (co-inventors of
{{UNIX}} and {C}) and Richard M. Stallman (inventor of
{EMACS}). In their hearts of hearts, most hackers dream of
someday becoming demigods themselves, and more than one major
software project has been driven to completion by the author's
veiled hopes of apotheosis. See also {net.god}, {true-hacker}.
:demo: /de'moh/ [short for `demonstration'] 1. v. To
demonstrate a product or prototype. A far more effective way of
inducing bugs to manifest than any number of {test} runs,
especially when important people are watching. 2. n. The act of
demoing. 3. n. Esp. as `demo version', can refer to either a
special version of a program (frequently with some features
crippled) which is distributed at little or no cost to the user for
demonstration purposes.
:demo mode: [Sun] n. 1. The state of being {heads down} in order
to finish code in time for a {demo}, usually due yesterday.
2. A mode in which video games sit there by themselves running
through a portion of the game, also known as `attract mode'.
Some serious {app}s have a demo mode they use as a screen saver,
or may go through a demo mode on startup (for example, the
Microsoft Windows opening screen --- which lets you impress your
neighbors without actually having to put up with {Microsloth
Windows}).
:demon: n. 1. [MIT] A portion of a program that is not invoked
explicitly, but that lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to
occur. See {daemon}. The distinction is that demons are
usually processes within a program, while daemons are usually
programs running on an operating system. Demons are particularly
common in AI programs. For example, a knowledge-manipulation
program might implement inference rules as demons. Whenever a new
piece of knowledge was added, various demons would activate (which
demons depends on the particular piece of data) and would create
additional pieces of knowledge by applying their respective
inference rules to the original piece. These new pieces could in
turn activate more demons as the inferences filtered down through
chains of logic. Meanwhile, the main program could continue with
whatever its primary task was. 2. [outside MIT] Often used
equivalently to {daemon} --- especially in the {{UNIX}} world,
where the latter spelling and pronunciation is considered mildly
archaic.
:depeditate: /dee-ped'*-tayt/ [by (faulty) analogy with
`decapitate'] vt. Humorously, to cut off the feet of. When one is
using some computer-aided typesetting tools, careless placement of
text blocks within a page or above a rule can result in chopped-off
letter descenders. Such letters are said to have been depeditated.
:deprecated: adj. Said of a program or feature that is considered
obsolescent and in the process of being phased out, usually in
favor of a specified replacement. Deprecated features can,
unfortunately, linger on for many years. This term appears with
distressing frequency in standards documents when the committees
which write them decide that a sufficient number of users have
written code which depends on specific features which are out of
favor.
:deserves to lose: adj. Said of someone who willfully does the
{Wrong Thing}; humorously, if one uses a feature known to be
{marginal}. What is meant is that one deserves the consequences
of one's {losing} actions. "Boy, anyone who tries to use
{mess-dos} deserves to {lose}!" ({{ITS}} fans used to say this
of {{UNIX}}; many still do.) See also {screw}, {chomp},
{bagbiter}.
:desk check: n.,v. To {grovel} over hardcopy of source code,
mentally simulating the control flow; a method of catching bugs.
No longer common practice in this age of on-screen editing, fast
compiles, and sophisticated debuggers --- though some maintain
stoutly that it ought to be. Compare {eyeball search},
{vdiff}, {vgrep}.
:Devil Book: n. `The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD
UNIX Operating System', by Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk
McKusick, Michael J. Karels, and John S. Quarterman (Addison-Wesley
Publishers, 1989) --- the standard reference book on the internals
of {BSD} UNIX. So called because the cover has a picture
depicting a little devil (a visual play on {daemon}) in
sneakers, holding a pitchfork (referring to one of the
characteristic features of UNIX, the `fork(2)' system call).
:devo: /dee'voh/ [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] n. A person in a
development group. See also {doco} and {mango}.
:dickless workstation: n. Extremely pejorative hackerism for
`diskless workstation', a class of botches including the Sun 3/50
and other machines designed exclusively to network with an
expensive central disk server. These combine all the disadvantages
of time-sharing with all the disadvantages of distributed personal
computers; typically, they cannot even {boot} themselves without
help (in the form of some kind of {breath-of-life packet}) from
the server.
:dictionary flame: [USENET] n. An attempt to sidetrack a debate
away from issues by insisting on meanings for key terms that
presuppose a desired conclusion or smuggle in an implicit premise.
A common tactic of people who prefer argument over definitions to
disputes about reality.
:diddle: 1. vt. To work with or modify in a not particularly
serious manner. "I diddled a copy of {ADVENT} so it didn't
double-space all the time." "Let's diddle this piece of code and
see if the problem goes away." See {tweak} and {twiddle}.
2. n. The action or result of diddling. See also {tweak},
{twiddle}, {frob}.
:die: v. Syn. {crash}. Unlike {crash}, which is used
primarily of hardware, this verb is used of both hardware and
software. See also {go flatline}, {casters-up mode}.
:die horribly: v. The software equivalent of {crash and burn},
and the preferred emphatic form of {die}. "The converter
choked on an FF in its input and died horribly".
:diff: /dif/ n. 1. A change listing, especially giving differences
between (and additions to) source code or documents (the term is
often used in the plural `diffs'). "Send me your diffs for the
Jargon File!" Compare {vdiff}. 2. Specifically, such a listing
produced by the `diff(1)' command, esp. when used as
specification input to the `patch(1)' utility (which can
actually perform the modifications; see {patch}). This is a
common method of distributing patches and source updates in the
UNIX/C world. See also {vdiff}, {mod}.
:digit: n. An employee of Digital Equipment Corporation. See also
{VAX}, {VMS}, {PDP-10}, {{TOPS-10}}, {DEChead}, {double
DECkers}, {field circus}.
:dike: vt. To remove or disable a portion of something, as a wire
from a computer or a subroutine from a program. A standard slogan
is "When in doubt, dike it out". (The implication is that it is
usually more effective to attack software problems by reducing
complexity than by increasing it.) The word `dikes' is widely
used among mechanics and engineers to mean `diagonal cutters',
esp. a heavy-duty metal-cutting device, but may also refer to a
kind of wire-cutters used by electronics techs. To `dike
something out' means to use such cutters to remove something.
Indeed, the TMRC Dictionary defined dike as "to attack with
dikes". Among hackers this term has been metaphorically extended
to informational objects such as sections of code.
:ding: n.,vi. 1. Synonym for {feep}. Usage: rare among hackers,
but commoner in the {Real World}. 2. `dinged': What happens
when someone in authority gives you a minor bitching about
something, esp. something trivial. "I was dinged for having a
messy desk."
:dink: /dink/ n. Said of a machine that has the {bitty box}
nature; a machine too small to be worth bothering with ---
sometimes the system you're currently forced to work on. First
heard from an MIT hacker working on a CP/M system with 64K, in
reference to any 6502 system, then from fans of 32-bit
architectures about 16-bit machines. "GNUMACS will never work on
that dink machine." Probably derived from mainstream `dinky',
which isn't sufficiently pejorative.
:dinosaur: n. 1. Any hardware requiring raised flooring and special
power. Used especially of old minis and mainframes, in contrast
with newer microprocessor-based machines. In a famous quote from
the 1988 UNIX EXPO, Bill Joy compared the mainframe in the massive
IBM display with a grazing dinosaur "with a truck outside pumping
its bodily fluids through it". IBM was not amused. Compare
{big iron}; see also {mainframe}. 2. [IBM] A very conservative
user; a {zipperhead}.
:dinosaur pen: n. A traditional {mainframe} computer room complete with
raised flooring, special power, its own ultra-heavy-duty air
conditioning, and a side order of Halon fire extinguishers. See
{boa}.
:dinosaurs mating: n. Said to occur when yet another {big iron}
merger or buyout occurs; reflects a perception by hackers that
these signal another stage in the long, slow dying of the
{mainframe} industry. In its glory days of the 1960s, it was
`IBM and the Seven Dwarves': Burroughs, Control Data, General
Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA, and Univac. RCA and GE sold out
early, and it was `IBM and the Bunch' (Burroughs, Univac, NCR,
Control Data, and Honeywell) for a while. Honeywell was bought out
by Bull; Burroughs merged with Univac to form Unisys (in 1984 ---
this was when the phrase `dinosaurs mating' was coined); and as
this is written (early 1991) AT&T is attempting to recover from a
disastrously bad first six years in the hardware industry by
absorbing NCR. More such earth-shaking unions of doomed giants
seem inevitable.
:dirtball: [XEROX PARC] n. A small, perhaps struggling outsider;
not in the major or even the minor leagues. For example, "Xerox
is not a dirtball company".
[Outsiders often observe in the PARC culture an institutional
arrogance which usage of this term exemplifies. The brilliance and
scope of PARC's contributions to computer science have been such
that this superior attitude is not much resented. --- ESR]
:dirty power: n. Electrical mains voltage that is unfriendly to
the delicate innards of computers. Spikes, {drop-outs}, average
voltage significantly higher or lower than nominal, or just plain
noise can all cause problems of varying subtlety and severity
(these are collectively known as {power hit}s).
:disclaimer: n. [USENET] n. Statement ritually appended to many USENET
postings (sometimes automatically, by the posting software) reiterating
the fact (which should be obvious, but is easily forgotten) that the
article reflects its author's opinions and not necessarily those of
the organization running the machine through which the article
entered the network.
:Discordianism: /dis-kor'di-*n-ism/ n. The veneration of
{Eris}, a.k.a. Discordia; widely popular among hackers.
Discordianism was popularized by Robert Shea and Robert Anton
Wilson's `{Illuminatus!}' trilogy as a sort of
self-subverting Dada-Zen for Westerners --- it should on no account
be taken seriously but is far more serious than most jokes.
Consider, for example, the Fifth Commandment of the Pentabarf, from
`Principia Discordia': "A Discordian is Prohibited of
Believing What he Reads." Discordianism is usually connected with
an elaborate conspiracy theory/joke involving millennia-long
warfare between the anarcho-surrealist partisans of Eris and a
malevolent, authoritarian secret society called the Illuminati.
See {Religion} under {appendix B}, {Church of the
SubGenius}, and {ha ha only serious}.
:disk farm: n. (also {laundromat}) A large room or rooms filled
with disk drives (esp. {washing machine}s).
:display hack: n. A program with the same approximate purpose as a
kaleidoscope: to make pretty pictures. Famous display hacks
include {munching squares}, {smoking clover}, the BSD UNIX
`rain(6)' program, `worms(6)' on miscellaneous UNIXes,
and the {X} `kaleid(1)' program. Display hacks can also be
implemented without programming by creating text files containing
numerous escape sequences for interpretation by a video terminal;
one notable example displayed, on any VT100, a Christmas tree with
twinkling lights and a toy train circling its base. The {hack
value} of a display hack is proportional to the esthetic value of
the images times the cleverness of the algorithm divided by the
size of the code. Syn. {psychedelicware}.
:Dissociated Press: [play on `Associated Press'; perhaps inspired
by a reference in the 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon "What's Up,
Doc?"] n. An algorithm for transforming any text into potentially
humorous garbage even more efficiently than by passing it through a
{marketroid}. You start by printing any N consecutive
words (or letters) in the text. Then at every step you search for
any random occurrence in the original text of the last N
words (or letters) already printed and then print the next word or
letter. {EMACS} has a handy command for this. Here is a short
example of word-based Dissociated Press applied to an earlier
version of this Jargon File:
wart: n. A small, crocky {feature} that sticks out of
an array (C has no checks for this). This is relatively
benign and easy to spot if the phrase is bent so as to be
not worth paying attention to the medium in question.
Here is a short example of letter-based Dissociated Press applied
to the same source:
window sysIWYG: n. A bit was named aften /bee't*/ prefer
to use the other guy's re, especially in every cast a
chuckle on neithout getting into useful informash speech
makes removing a featuring a move or usage actual
abstractionsidered interj. Indeed spectace logic or problem!
A hackish idle pastime is to apply letter-based Dissociated Press
to a random body of text and {vgrep} the output in hopes of finding
an interesting new word. (In the preceding example, `window
sysIWYG' and `informash' show some promise.) Iterated applications
of Dissociated Press usually yield better results. Similar
techniques called `travesty generators' have been employed with
considerable satirical effect to the utterances of USENET flamers;
see {pseudo}.
:distribution: n. 1. A software source tree packaged for
distribution; but see {kit}. 2. A vague term encompassing
mailing lists and USENET newsgroups (but not {BBS} {fora}); any
topic-oriented message channel with multiple recipients. 3. An
information-space domain (usually loosely correlated with
geography) to which propagation of a USENET message is restricted;
a much-underutilized feature.
:do protocol: [from network protocol programming] vi. To perform an
interaction with somebody or something that follows a clearly
defined procedure. For example, "Let's do protocol with the
check" at a restaurant means to ask for the check, calculate the
tip and everybody's share, collect money from everybody, generate
change as necessary, and pay the bill. See {protocol}.
:doc: /dok/ n. Common spoken and written shorthand for
`documentation'. Often used in the plural `docs' and in the
construction `doc file' (documentation available on-line).
:doco: /do'koh/ [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] n. A
documentation writer. See also {devo} and {mango}.
:documentation:: n. The multiple kilograms of macerated, pounded,
steamed, bleached, and pressed trees that accompany most modern
software or hardware products (see also {tree-killer}). Hackers
seldom read paper documentation and (too) often resist writing it;
they prefer theirs to be terse and on-line. A common comment on
this is "You can't {grep} dead trees". See {drool-proof
paper}, {verbiage}.
:dodgy: adj. Syn. with {flaky}. Preferred outside the U.S.
:dogcow: /dog'kow/ n. See {Moof}.
:dogwash: /dog'wosh/ [From a quip in the `urgency' field of a very
optional software change request, ca. 1982. It was something like
"Urgency: Wash your dog first".] 1. n. A project of minimal
priority, undertaken as an escape from more serious work. 2. v.
To engage in such a project. Many games and much {freeware} get
written this way.
:domainist: /doh-mayn'ist/ adj. 1. Said of an {{Internet
address}} (as opposed to a {bang path}) because the part to the
right of the `@' specifies a nested series of `domains';
for example, eric@snark.thyrsus.com specifies the machine
called snark in the subdomain called thyrsus within the
top-level domain called com. See also {big-endian}, sense 2.
2. Said of a site, mailer, or routing program which knows how to
handle domainist addresses. 3. Said of a person (esp. a site
admin) who prefers domain addressing, supports a domainist mailer,
or prosyletizes for domainist addressing and disdains {bang
path}s. This is now (1991) semi-obsolete, as most sites have
converted.
:Don't do that, then!: [from an old doctor's office joke about a
patient with a trivial complaint] Stock response to a user
complaint. "When I type control-S, the whole system comes to a
halt for thirty seconds." "Don't do that, then!" (or "So don't
do that!"). Compare {RTFM}.
:dongle: /dong'gl/ n. 1. A security or {copy protection}
device for commercial microcomputer programs consisting of a
serialized EPROM and some drivers in a D-25 connector shell, which
must be connected to an I/O port of the computer while the program
is run. Programs that use a dongle query the port at startup and
at programmed intervals thereafter, and terminate if it does not
respond with the dongle's programmed validation code. Thus, users
can make as many copies of the program as they want but must pay
for each dongle. The idea was clever, but it was initially a
failure, as users disliked tying up a serial port this way. Most
dongles on the market today (1991) will pass data through the port
and monitor for {magic} codes (and combinations of status lines)
with minimal if any interference with devices further down the line
--- this innovation was necessary to allow daisy-chained dongles
for multiple pieces of software. The devices are still not widely
used, as the industry has moved away from copy-protection schemes
in general. 2. By extension, any physical electronic key or
transferrable ID required for a program to function. See
{dongle-disk}.
[Note: in early 1992, advertising copy from Rainbow Technologies (a
manufacturer of dongles) included a claim that the word derived from
"Don Gall", allegedly the inventor of the device. The company's
receptionist will cheerfully tell you that the story is a myth
invented for the ad copy. Nevertheless, I expect it to haunt my
life as a lexicographer for at least the next ten years. ---ESR]
:dongle-disk: /don'gl disk/ n. See {dongle}; a `dongle-disk'
is a floppy disk which is required in order to perform some task.
Some contain special coding that allows an application to identify
it uniquely, others *are* special code that does something
that normally-resident programs don't or can't. (For example,
AT&T's "Unix PC" would only come up in {root mode} with a
special boot disk.) Also called a `key disk'.
:donuts: n.obs. A collective noun for any set of memory bits. This
is extremely archaic and may no longer be live jargon; it dates
from the days of ferrite-{core} memories in which each bit was
implemented by a doughnut-shaped magnetic flip-flop.
:doorstop: n. Used to describe equipment that is non-functional and
halfway expected to remain so, especially obsolete equipment kept
around for political reasons or ostensibly as a backup. "When we
get another Wyse-50 in here, that ADM 3 will turn into a doorstop."
Compare {boat anchor}.
:dot file: [UNIX] n. A file which is not visible by default to
normal directory-browsing tools (on UNIX, files named with a
leading dot are, by convention, not normally presented in directory
listings). Many programs define one or more dot files in which
startup or configuration information may be optionally recorded; a
user can customize the program's behavior by creating the
appropriate file in the current or home directory. (Therefore, dot
files tend to {creep} --- with every nontrivial application
program defining at least one, a user's home directory can be
filled with scores of dot files, of course without the user's
really being aware of it.) See also {rc file}.
:double bucky: adj. Using both the CTRL and META keys. "The
command to burn all LEDs is double bucky F."
This term originated on the Stanford extended-ASCII keyboard, and
was later taken up by users of the {space-cadet keyboard} at
MIT. A typical MIT comment was that the Stanford {bucky bits}
(control and meta shifting keys) were nice, but there weren't
enough of them; you could type only 512 different characters on a
Stanford keyboard. An obvious way to address this was simply to
add more shifting keys, and this was eventually done; but a
keyboard with that many shifting keys is hard on touch-typists, who
don't like to move their hands away from the home position on the
keyboard. It was half-seriously suggested that the extra shifting
keys be implemented as pedals; typing on such a keyboard would be
very much like playing a full pipe organ. This idea is mentioned
in a parody of a very fine song by Jeffrey Moss called
"Rubber Duckie", which was published in `The Sesame
Street Songbook' (Simon and Schuster 1971, ISBN 0-671-21036-X).
These lyrics were written on May 27, 1978, in celebration of the
Stanford keyboard:
Double Bucky
Double bucky, you're the one!
You make my keyboard lots of fun.
Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
(Vo-vo-de-o!)
Control and meta, side by side,
Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
Double bucky! Half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
Oh,
I sure wish that I
Had a couple of
Bits more!
Perhaps a
Set of pedals to
Make the number of
Bits four:
Double double bucky!
Double bucky, left and right
OR'd together, outta sight!
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!
--- The Great Quux (with apologies to Jeffrey Moss)
[This, by the way, is an excellent example of computer {filk}
--- ESR] See also {meta bit}, {cokebottle}, and {quadruple
bucky}.
:double DECkers: n. Used to describe married couples in which both
partners work for Digital Equipment Corporation.
:doubled sig: [USENET] n. A {sig block} that has been included
twice in a {USENET} article or, less commonly, in an electronic
mail message. An article or message with a doubled sig can be
caused by improperly configured software. More often, however, it
reveals the author's lack of experience in electronic
communication. See {BIFF}, {pseudo}.
:down: 1. adj. Not operating. "The up escalator is down" is
considered a humorous thing to say, and "The elevator is down"
always means "The elevator isn't working" and never refers to
what floor the elevator is on. With respect to computers, this
usage has passed into the mainstream; the extension to other kinds
of machine is still hackish. 2. `go down' vi. To stop
functioning; usually said of the {system}. The message from the
{console} that every hacker hates to hear from the operator is
"The system will go down in 5 minutes". 3. `take down',
`bring down' vt. To deactivate purposely, usually for repair work
or {PM}. "I'm taking the system down to work on that bug in the
tape drive." Occasionally one hears the word `down' by itself
used as a verb in this vt. sense. See {crash}; oppose {up}.
:download: vt. To transfer data or (esp.) code from a larger `host'
system (esp. a {mainframe}) over a digital comm link to a smaller
`client' system, esp. a microcomputer or specialized peripheral.
Oppose {upload}.
However, note that ground-to-space communications has its own usage
rule for this term. Space-to-earth transmission is always download
and the reverse upload regardless of the relative size of the
computers involved. So far the in-space machines have invariably
been smaller; thus the upload/download distinction has been
reversed from its usual sense.
:DP: /D-P/ n. 1. Data Processing. Listed here because,
according to hackers, use of the term marks one immediately as a
{suit}. See {DPer}. 2. Common abbrev for {Dissociated
Press}.
:DPB: /d*-pib'/ [from the PDP-10 instruction set] vt. To plop
something down in the middle. Usage: silly. "DPB
yourself into that couch there." The connotation would be that
the couch is full except for one slot just big enough for you to
sit in. DPB means `DePosit Byte', and was the name of a PDP-10
instruction that inserts some bits into the middle of some other
bits. This usage has been kept alive by the Common LISP function
of the same name.
:DPer: /dee-pee-er/ n. Data Processor. Hackers are absolutely
amazed that {suit}s use this term self-referentially.
"*Computers* process data, not people!" See {DP}.
:dragon: n. [MIT] A program similar to a {daemon}, except that
it is not invoked at all, but is instead used by the system to
perform various secondary tasks. A typical example would be an
accounting program, which keeps track of who is logged in,
accumulates load-average statistics, etc. Under ITS, many
terminals displayed a list of people logged in, where they were,
what they were running, etc., along with some random picture (such
as a unicorn, Snoopy, or the Enterprise), which was generated by
the `name dragon'. Usage: rare outside MIT --- under UNIX and most
other OSes this would be called a `background demon' or
{daemon}. The best-known UNIX example of a dragon is
`cron(1)'. At SAIL, they called this sort of thing a
`phantom'.
:Dragon Book: n. The classic text `Compilers: Principles,
Techniques and Tools', by Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D.
Ullman (Addison-Wesley 1986; ISBN 0-201-10088-6), so called because
of the cover design featuring a dragon labeled `complexity of
compiler design' and a knight bearing the lance `LALR parser
generator' among his other trappings. This one is more
specifically known as the `Red Dragon Book' (1986); an earlier
edition, sans Sethi and titled `Principles Of Compiler Design'
(Alfred V. Aho and Jeffrey D. Ullman; Addison-Wesley, 1977; ISBN
0-201-00022-9), was the `Green Dragon Book' (1977). (Also `New
Dragon Book', `Old Dragon Book'.) The horsed knight and the
Green Dragon were warily eying each other at a distance; now the
knight is typing (wearing gauntlets!) at a terminal showing a
video-game representation of the Red Dragon's head while the rest
of the beast extends back in normal space. See also {{book
titles}}.
:drain: [IBM] v. Syn. for {flush} (sense 2). Has a connotation
of finality about it; one speaks of draining a device before taking
it offline.
:dread high-bit disease: n. A condition endemic to PRIME (a.k.a.
PR1ME) minicomputers that results in all the characters having
their high (0x80) bit ON rather than OFF. This of course makes
transporting files to other systems much more difficult, not to
mention talking to true 8-bit devices. Folklore had it that PRIME
adopted the reversed-8-bit convention in order to save 25 cents per
serial line per machine; PRIME old-timers, on the other hand, claim
they inherited the disease from Honeywell via customer NASA's
compatibility requirements and struggled manfully to cure it.
Whoever was responsible, this probably qualifies as one of the
most {cretinous} design tradeoffs ever made. See {meta bit}.
A few other machines have exhibited similar brain damage.
:DRECNET: /drek'net/ [from Yiddish/German `dreck', meaning
dirt] n. Deliberate distortion of DECNET, a networking protocol
used in the {VMS} community. So called because DEC helped write
the Ethernet specification and then (either stupidly or as a
malignant customer-control tactic) violated that spec in the design
of DRECNET in a way that made it incompatible. See also
{connector conspiracy}.
:driver: n. 1. The {main loop} of an event-processing program;
the code that gets commands and dispatches them for execution.
2. [techspeak] In `device driver', code designed to handle a
particular peripheral device such as a magnetic disk or tape unit.
3. In the TeX world and the computerized typesetting world in
general, `driver' also means a program that translates some
device-independent or other common format to something a real
device can actually understand.
:droid: n. A person (esp. a low-level bureaucrat or
service-business employee) exhibiting most of the following
characteristics: (a) na"ive trust in the wisdom of the parent
organization or `the system'; (b) a propensity to believe
obvious nonsense emitted by authority figures (or computers!);
blind faith; (c) a rule-governed mentality, one unwilling or unable
to look beyond the `letter of the law' in exceptional
situations; and (d) no interest in fixing that which is broken; an
"It's not my job, man" attitude.
Typical droid positions include supermarket checkout assistant and
bank clerk; the syndrome is also endemic in low-level government
employees. The implication is that the rules and official
procedures constitute software that the droid is executing. This
becomes a problem when the software has not been properly debugged.
The term `droid mentality' is also used to describe the mindset
behind this behavior. Compare {suit}, {marketroid}; see
{-oid}.
:drool-proof paper: n. Documentation that has been obsessively {dumbed
down}, to the point where only a {cretin} could bear to read it, is
said to have succumbed to the `drool-proof paper syndrome' or to
have been `written on drool-proof paper'. For example, this is
an actual quote from Apple's LaserWriter manual: "Do not expose
your LaserWriter to open fire or flame."
:drop on the floor: vt. To react to an error condition by silently
discarding messages or other valuable data. "The gateway
ran out of memory, so it just started dropping packets on the
floor." Also frequently used of faulty mail and netnews relay
sites that lose messages. See also {black hole}, {bit bucket}.
:drop-ins: [prob. by analogy with {drop-outs}] n. Spurious
characters appearing on a terminal or console as a result of line
noise or a system malfunction of some sort. Esp. used when these
are interspersed with one's own typed input. Compare
{drop-outs}.
:drop-outs: n. 1. A variety of `power glitch' (see {glitch});
momentary 0 voltage on the electrical mains. 2. Missing characters
in typed input due to software malfunction or system saturation
(this can happen under UNIX when a bad connection to a modem swamps
the processor with spurious character interrupts). 3. Mental
glitches; used as a way of describing those occasions when the mind
just seems to shut down for a couple of beats. See {glitch},
{fried}.
:drugged: adj. (also `on drugs') 1. Conspicuously stupid,
heading toward {brain-damaged}. Often accompanied by a
pantomime of toking a joint (but see {appendix B}). 2. Of hardware,
very slow relative to normal performance.
:drum: adj,n. Ancient techspeak term referring to slow,
cylindrical magnetic media which were once state-of-the-art
mass-storage devices. Under BSD UNIX the disk partition used for
swapping is still called `/dev/drum'; this has led to
considerable humor and not a few straight-faced but utterly bogus
`explanations' getting foisted on {newbie}s. See also "{The
Story of Mel, a Real Programmer}" in {appendix A}.
:drunk mouse syndrome: (also `mouse on drugs') n. A malady
exhibited by the mouse pointing device of some computers. The
typical symptom is for the mouse cursor on the screen to move in
random directions and not in sync with the motion of the actual
mouse. Can usually be corrected by unplugging the mouse and
plugging it back again. Another recommended fix for optical mice
is to rotate your mouse pad 90 degrees.
At Xerox PARC in the 1970s, most people kept a can of copier
cleaner (isopropyl alcohol) at their desks. When the steel ball on
the mouse had picked up enough {cruft} to be unreliable, the
mouse was doused in cleaner, which restored it for a while.
However, this operation left a fine residue that accelerated the
accumulation of cruft, so the dousings became more and more
frequent. Finally, the mouse was declared `alcoholic' and sent
to the clinic to be dried out in a CFC ultrasonic bath.
:Duff's device: n. The most dramatic use yet seen of {fall
through} in C, invented by Tom Duff when he was at Lucasfilm.
Trying to {bum} all the instructions he could out of an inner
loop that copied data serially onto an output port, he decided to
{unroll} it. He then realized that the unrolled version could
be implemented by *interlacing* the structures of a switch and
a loop:
register n = (count + 7) / 8; /* count > 0 assumed */
switch (count % 8)
{
case 0: do { *to = *from++;
case 7: *to = *from++;
case 6: *to = *from++;
case 5: *to = *from++;
case 4: *to = *from++;
case 3: *to = *from++;
case 2: *to = *from++;
case 1: *to = *from++;
} while (--n > 0);
}
Having verified that the device is valid portable C, Duff announced
it. C's default {fall through} in case statements has long been
its most controversial single feature; Duff observed that "This
code forms some sort of argument in that debate, but I'm not sure
whether it's for or against."
:dumb terminal: n. A terminal which is one step above a {glass tty},
having a minimally-addressable cursor but no on-screen editing or
other features which are claimed by a {smart terminal}. Once upon a
time, when glass ttys were common and addressable cursors were
something special, what is now called a dumb terminal could pass for
a smart terminal.
:dumbass attack: /duhm'as *-tak'/ [Purdue] n. Notional cause of a
novice's mistake made by the experienced, especially one made while
running as {root} under UNIX, e.g., typing `rm -r *' or
`mkfs' on a mounted file system. Compare {adger}.
:dumbed down: adj. Simplified, with a strong connotation of
*over*simplified. Often, a {marketroid} will insist that
the interfaces and documentation of software be dumbed down after
the designer has burned untold gallons of midnight oil making it
smart. This creates friction. See {user-friendly}.
:dump: n. 1. An undigested and voluminous mass of information about
a problem or the state of a system, especially one routed to the
slowest available output device (compare {core dump}), and most
especially one consisting of hex or octal {runes} describing the
byte-by-byte state of memory, mass storage, or some file. In
{elder days}, debugging was generally done by `groveling over'
a dump (see {grovel}); increasing use of high-level languages
and interactive debuggers has made this uncommon, and the term
`dump' now has a faintly archaic flavor. 2. A backup. This
usage is typical only at large timesharing installations.
:dumpster diving: /dump'-ster di:'-ving/ n. 1. The practice of
sifting refuse from an office or technical installation to extract
confidential data, especially security-compromising information
(`dumpster' is an Americanism for what is elsewhere called a
`skip'). Back in AT&T's monopoly days, before paper shredders
became common office equipment, phone phreaks (see {phreaking})
used to organize regular dumpster runs against phone company plants
and offices. Discarded and damaged copies of AT&T internal manuals
taught them much. The technique is still rumored to be a favorite
of crackers operating against careless targets. 2. The practice of
raiding the dumpsters behind buildings where producers and/or
consumers of high-tech equipment are located, with the expectation
(usually justified) of finding discarded but still-valuable
equipment to be nursed back to health in some hacker's den.
Experienced dumpster-divers not infrequently accumulate basements
full of moldering (but still potentially useful) {cruft}.
:dup killer: /d[y]oop kill'r/ [FidoNet] n. Software that is
supposed to detect and delete duplicates of a message that may
have reached the FidoNet system via different routes.
:dup loop: /d[y]oop loop/ (also `dupe loop') [FidoNet] n. An
incorrectly configured system or network gateway may propagate
duplicate messages on one or more {echo}es, with different
identification information that renders {dup killer}s
ineffective. If such a duplicate message eventually reaches a
system through which it has already passed (with the original
identification information), all systems passed on the way back to
that system are said to be involved in a {dup loop}.
:dusty deck: n. Old software (especially applications) which one is
obliged to remain compatible with (or to maintain). The term
implies that the software in question is a holdover from card-punch
days. Used esp. when referring to old scientific and
{number-crunching} software, much of which was written in FORTRAN
and very poorly documented but is believed to be too expensive to
replace. See {fossil}.
:DWIM: /dwim/ [acronym, `Do What I Mean'] 1. adj. Able to guess,
sometimes even correctly, the result intended when bogus input was
provided. 2. n.,obs. The BBNLISP/INTERLISP function that attempted
to accomplish this feat by correcting many of the more common
errors. See {hairy}. 3. Occasionally, an interjection hurled
at a balky computer, esp. when one senses one might be tripping
over legalisms (see {legalese}).
Warren Teitelman originally wrote DWIM to fix his typos and
spelling errors, so it was somewhat idiosyncratic to his style, and
would often make hash of anyone else's typos if they were
stylistically different. This led a number of victims of DWIM to
claim the acronym stood for `Damn Warren's Infernal
Machine!'.
In one notorious incident, Warren added a DWIM feature to the
command interpreter used at Xerox PARC. One day another hacker
there typed `delete *$' to free up some disk space. (The
editor there named backup files by appending `$' to the
original file name, so he was trying to delete any backup files
left over from old editing sessions.) It happened that there
weren't any editor backup files, so DWIM helpfully reported
`*$ not found, assuming you meant 'delete *'.' It then started
to delete all the files on the disk! The hacker managed to stop it
with a {Vulcan nerve pinch} after only a half dozen or so files
were lost.
The hacker later said he had been sorely tempted to go to Warren's
office, tie Warren down in his chair in front of his workstation,
and then type `delete *$' twice.
DWIM is often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a complex
program; it is also occasionally described as the single
instruction the ideal computer would have. Back when proofs of
program correctness were in vogue, there were also jokes about
`DWIMC' (Do What I Mean, Correctly). A related term, more often
seen as a verb, is DTRT (Do The Right Thing); see {Right
Thing}.
:dynner: /din'r/ 32 bits, by analogy with {nybble} and
{{byte}}. Usage: rare and extremely silly. See also {playte},
{tayste}, {crumb}.
= E =
=====
:earthquake: [IBM] n. The ultimate real-world shock test for
computer hardware. Hackish sources at IBM deny the rumor that the
Bay Area quake of 1989 was initiated by the company to test
quality-assurance procedures at its California plants.
:Easter egg: [from the custom of the Easter Egg hunt observed in
the U.S. and many psparts of Europe] n. 1. A message hidden in the
object code of a program as a joke, intended to be found by persons
disassembling or browsing the code. 2. A message, graphic, or
sound effect emitted by a program (or, on a PC, the BIOS ROM) in
response to some undocumented set of commands or keystrokes,
intended as a joke or to display program credits. One well-known
early Easter egg found in a couple of OSes caused them to respond
to the command `make love' with `not war?'. Many
personal computers have much more elaborate eggs hidden in ROM,
including lists of the developers' names, political exhortations,
snatches of music, and (in one case) graphics images of the entire
development team.
:Easter egging: [IBM] n. The act of replacing unrelated parts more or
less at random in hopes that a malfunction will go away. Hackers
consider this the normal operating mode of {field circus} techs and
do not love them for it. Compare {shotgun debugging}.
:eat flaming death: imp. A construction popularized among hackers by
the infamous {CPU Wars} comic; supposed to derive from a famously
turgid line in a WWII-era anti-Nazi propaganda comic that ran
"Eat flaming death, non-Aryan mongrels!" or something of the sort
(however, it is also reported that the Firesign Theater's
1975 album "In The Next World, You're On Your Own" included the
phrase "Eat flaming death, fascist media pigs"; this may have been
an influence). Used in humorously overblown expressions of
hostility. "Eat flaming death, {{EBCDIC}} users!"
:EBCDIC:: /eb's*-dik/, /eb'see`dik/, or /eb'k*-dik/ [abbreviation,
Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code] n. An alleged
character set used on IBM {dinosaur}s. It exists in at least six
mutually incompatible versions, all featuring such delights as
non-contiguous letter sequences and the absence of several ASCII
punctuation characters fairly important for modern computer
languages (exactly which characters are absent varies according to
which version of EBCDIC you're looking at). IBM adapted EBCDIC
from {{punched card}} code in the early 1960s and promulgated it
as a customer-control tactic (see {connector conspiracy}),
spurning the already established ASCII standard. Today, IBM claims
to be an open-systems company, but IBM's own description of the
EBCDIC variants and how to convert between them is still internally
classified top-secret, burn-before-reading. Hackers blanch at the
very *name* of EBCDIC and consider it a manifestation of
purest {evil}. See also {fear and loathing}.
:echo: [FidoNet] n. A {topic group} on {FidoNet}'s echomail
system. Compare {newsgroup}.
:eighty-column mind: [IBM] n. The sort said to be possessed by
persons for whom the transition from {punched card} to tape was
traumatic (nobody has dared tell them about disks yet). It is said
that these people, including (according to an old joke) the founder
of IBM, will be buried `face down, 9-edge first' (the 9-edge being
the bottom of the card). This directive is inscribed on IBM's
1402 and 1622 card readers and is referenced in a famous bit of
doggerel called "The Last Bug", the climactic lines of which
are as follows:
He died at the console
Of hunger and thirst.
Next day he was buried,
Face down, 9-edge first.
The eighty-column mind is thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's
customer base and its thinking. See {IBM}, {fear and
loathing}, {card walloper}.
:El Camino Bignum: /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ n. The road
mundanely called El Camino Real, a road through the San Francisco
peninsula that originally extended all the way down to Mexico City
and many portions of which are still intact. Navigation on the San
Francisco peninsula is usually done relative to El Camino Real,
which defines {logical} north and south even though it isn't
really north-south many places. El Camino Real runs right past
Stanford University and so is familiar to hackers.
The Spanish word `real' (which has two syllables: /ray-ahl'/)
means `royal'; El Camino Real is `the royal road'. In the FORTRAN
language, a `real' quantity is a number typically precise to 7
significant digits, and a `double precision' quantity is a larger
floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant
digits (other languages have similar `real' types).
When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a
long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on `real', he started
calling it `El Camino Double Precision' --- but when the hacker
was told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it
`El Camino Bignum', and that name has stuck. (See {bignum}.)
:elder days: n. The heroic age of hackerdom (roughly, pre-1980); the
era of the {PDP-10}, {TECO}, {{ITS}}, and the ARPANET. This
term has been rather consciously adopted from J. R. R. Tolkien's
fantasy epic `The Lord of the Rings'. Compare {Iron Age};
see also {elvish}.
:elegant: [from mathematical usage] adj. Combining simplicity,
power, and a certain ineffable grace of design. Higher praise than
`clever', `winning', or even {cuspy}.
:elephantine: adj. Used of programs or systems that are both
conspicuous {hog}s (owing perhaps to poor design founded on
{brute force and ignorance}) and exceedingly {hairy} in source
form. An elephantine program may be functional and even friendly,
but (as in the old joke about being in bed with an elephant) it's
tough to have around all the same (and, like a pachyderm, difficult
to maintain). In extreme cases, hackers have been known to make
trumpeting sounds or perform expressive proboscatory mime at the
mention of the offending program. Usage: semi-humorous. Compare
`has the elephant nature' and the somewhat more pejorative
{monstrosity}. See also {second-system effect} and
{baroque}.
:elevator controller: n. Another archetypal dumb embedded-systems
application, like {toaster} (which superseded it). During one
period (1983--84) in the deliberations of ANSI X3J11 (the
C standardization committee) this was the canonical example of a
really stupid, memory-limited computation environment. "You can't
require `printf(3)' to be part of the default runtime library
--- what if you're targeting an elevator controller?" Elevator
controllers became important rhetorical weapons on both sides of
several {holy wars}.
:ELIZA effect: /*-li:'z* *-fekt'/ [AI community] n. The tendency of
humans to attach associations to terms from prior experience.
For example, there is nothing magic about the symbol `+' that
makes it well-suited to indicate addition; it's just that people
associate it with addition. Using `+' or `plus' to mean addition
in a computer language is taking advantage of the ELIZA effect.
This term comes from the famous ELIZA program by Joseph Weizenbaum,
which simulated a Rogerian psychoanalyst by rephrasing many of the
patient's statements as questions and posing them to the patient.
It worked by simple pattern recognition and substitution of key
words into canned phrases. It was so convincing, however, that
there are many anecdotes about people becoming very emotionally
caught up in dealing with ELIZA. All this was due to people's
tendency to attach to words meanings which the computer never put
there. The ELIZA effect is a {Good Thing} when writing a
programming language, but it can blind you to serious shortcomings
when analyzing an Artificial Intelligence system. Compare
{ad-hockery}; see also {AI-complete}.
:elvish: n. 1. The Tengwar of Feanor, a table of letterforms
resembling the beautiful Celtic half-uncial hand of the `Book
of Kells'. Invented and described by J. R. R. Tolkien
in `The Lord of The Rings' as an orthography for his fictional
`elvish' languages, this system (which is both visually and
phonetically elegant) has long fascinated hackers (who tend to be
interested by artificial languages in general). It is traditional
for graphics printers, plotters, window systems, and the like to
support a Feanorian typeface as one of their demo items. See also
{elder days}. 2. By extension, any odd or unreadable typeface
produced by a graphics device. 3. The typeface mundanely called
`B"ocklin', an art-decoish display font.
:EMACS: /ee'maks/ [from Editing MACroS] n. The ne plus ultra of
hacker editors, a programmable text editor with an entire LISP
system inside it. It was originally written by Richard Stallman in
{TECO} under {{ITS}} at the MIT AI lab; AI Memo 554 described
it as "an advanced, self-documenting, customizable, extensible
real-time display editor". It has since been reimplemented any
number of times, by various hackers, and versions exist which run
under most major operating systems. Perhaps the most widely used
version, also written by Stallman and now called "{GNU} EMACS"
or {GNUMACS}, runs principally under UNIX. It includes
facilities to run compilation subprocesses and send and receive
mail; many hackers spend up to 80% of their {tube time} inside
it. Other variants include {GOSMACS}, CCA EMACS, UniPress
EMACS, Montgomery EMACS, jove, epsilon, and MicroEMACS.
Some EMACS versions running under window managers iconify as an
overflowing kitchen sink, perhaps to suggest the one feature the
editor does not (yet) include. Indeed, some hackers find EMACS too
heavyweight and {baroque} for their taste, and expand the name as
`Escape Meta Alt Control Shift' to spoof its heavy reliance on
keystrokes decorated with {bucky bits}. Other spoof expansions
include `Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping', `Eventually
`malloc()'s All Computer Storage', and `EMACS Makes A Computer
Slow' (see {{recursive acronym}}). See also {vi}.
:email: /ee'mayl/ 1. n. Electronic mail automatically passed
through computer networks and/or via modems over common-carrier
lines. Contrast {snail-mail}, {paper-net}, {voice-net}. See
{network address}. 2. vt. To send electronic mail.
Oddly enough, the word `emailed' is actually listed in the OED; it
means "embossed (with a raised pattern) or arranged in a net work".
A use from 1480 is given. The word is derived from French
`emmailleure', network.
:emoticon: /ee-moh'ti-kon/ n. An ASCII glyph used to indicate an
emotional state in email or news. Although originally intended
mostly as jokes, emoticons (or some other explicit humor
indication) are virtually required under certain circumstances in
high-volume text-only communication forums such as USENET; the lack
of verbal and visual cues can otherwise cause what were intended to
be humorous, sarcastic, ironic, or otherwise non-100%-serious
comments to be badly misinterpreted (not always even by
{newbie}s), resulting in arguments and {flame war}s.
Hundreds of emoticons have been proposed, but only a few are in
common use. These include:
:-)
`smiley face' (for humor, laughter, friendliness,
occasionally sarcasm)
:-(
`frowney face' (for sadness, anger, or upset)
;-)
`half-smiley' ({ha ha only serious});
also known as `semi-smiley' or `winkey face'.
:-/
`wry face'
(These may become more comprehensible if you tilt your head
sideways, to the left.)
The first two listed are by far the most frequently encountered.
Hyphenless forms of them are common on CompuServe, GEnie, and BIX;
see also {bixie}. On {USENET}, `smiley' is often used as a
generic term synonymous with {emoticon}, as well as specifically
for the happy-face emoticon.
It appears that the emoticon was invented by one Scott Fahlman on
the CMU {bboard} systems around 1980. He later wrote: "I wish I
had saved the original post, or at least recorded the date for
posterity, but I had no idea that I was starting something that
would soon pollute all the world's communication channels." [GLS
confirms that he remembers this original posting].
Note for the {newbie}: Overuse of the smiley is a mark of
loserhood! More than one per paragraph is a fairly sure sign that
you've gone over the line.
:empire: n. Any of a family of military simulations derived from a
game written by Peter Langston many years ago. There are five or
six multi-player variants of varying degrees of sophistication, and
one single-player version implemented for both UNIX and VMS; the
latter is even available as MS-DOS freeware. All are notoriously
addictive.
:engine: n. 1. A piece of hardware that encapsulates some function
but can't be used without some kind of {front end}. Today we
have, especially, `print engine': the guts of a laser printer.
2. An analogous piece of software; notionally, one that does a lot
of noisy crunching, such as a `database engine'.
The hackish senses of `engine' are actually close to its original,
pre-Industrial-Revolution sense of a skill, clever device, or
instrument (the word is cognate to `ingenuity'). This sense had
not been completely eclipsed by the modern connotation of
power-transducing machinery in Charles Babbage's time, which
explains why he named the stored-program computer that
he designed in 1844 the `Analytical Engine'.
:English: 1. n.,obs. The source code for a program, which may be in
any language, as opposed to the linkable or executable binary
produced from it by a compiler. The idea behind the term is that
to a real hacker, a program written in his favorite programming
language is at least as readable as English. Usage: used mostly by
old-time hackers, though recognizable in context. 2. The official
name of the database language used by the Pick Operating System,
actually a sort of crufty, brain-damaged SQL with delusions of
grandeur. The name permits {marketroid}s to say "Yes, and you
can program our computers in English!" to ignorant {suit}s
without quite running afoul of the truth-in-advertising laws.
:enhancement: n. {Marketroid}-speak for a bug {fix}. This abuse
of language is a popular and time-tested way to turn incompetence
into increased revenue. A hacker being ironic would instead call
the fix a {feature} --- or perhaps save some effort by declaring
the bug itself to be a feature.
:ENQ: /enkw/ or /enk/ [from the ASCII mnemonic ENQuire for
0000101] An on-line convention for querying someone's availability.
After opening a {talk mode} connection to someone apparently in
heavy hack mode, one might type `SYN SYN ENQ?' (the SYNs
representing notional synchronization bytes), and expect a return
of {ACK} or {NAK} depending on whether or not the person felt
interruptible. Compare {ping}, {finger}, and the usage of
`FOO?' listed under {talk mode}.
:EOF: /E-O-F/ [abbreviation, `End Of File'] n. 1. [techspeak]
Refers esp. to whatever {out-of-band} value is returned by
C's sequential character-input functions (and their equivalents in
other environments) when end of file has been reached. This value
is -1 under C libraries postdating V6 UNIX, but was
originally 0. 2. [UNIX] The keyboard character (usually control-D,
the ASCII EOT (End Of Transmission) character) which is mapped by
the terminal driver into an end-of-file condition. 3. Used by
extension in non-computer contexts when a human is doing something
that can be modeled as a sequential read and can't go further.
"Yeah, I looked for a list of 360 mnemonics to post as a joke, but
I hit EOF pretty fast; all the library had was a {JCL} manual."
See also {EOL}.
:EOL: /E-O-L/ [End Of Line] n. Syn. for {newline}, derived
perhaps from the original CDC6600 Pascal. Now rare, but widely
recognized and occasionally used for brevity. Used in the
example entry under {BNF}. See also {EOF}.
:EOU: /E-O-U/ n. The mnemonic of a mythical ASCII control
character (End Of User) that could make an ASR-33 Teletype explode
on receipt. This parodied the numerous obscure delimiter and
control characters left in ASCII from the days when it was
associated more with wire-service teletypes than computers (e.g.,
FS, GS, RS, US, EM, SUB, ETX, and esp. EOT). It is worth
remembering that ASR-33s were big, noisy mechanical beasts with a
lot of clattering parts; the notion that one might explode was
nowhere near as ridiculous as it might seem to someone sitting in
front of a {tube} or flatscreen today.
:epoch: [UNIX: prob. from astronomical timekeeping] n. The time
and date corresponding to 0 in an operating system's clock and
timestamp values. Under most UNIX versions the epoch is 00:00:00
GMT, January 1, 1970; under VMS, it's 00:00:00 GMT of November 17,
1858 (base date of the U.S. Naval Observatory's ephemerides).
System time is measured in seconds or {tick}s past the epoch.
Weird problems may ensue when the clock wraps around (see {wrap
around}), which is not necessarily a rare event; on systems
counting 10 ticks per second, a signed 32-bit count of ticks is
good only for 6.8 years. The 1-tick-per-second clock of UNIX is
good only until January 18, 2038, assuming at least some software
continues to consider it signed and that word lengths don't
increase by then. See also {wall time}.
:epsilon: [see {delta}] 1. n. A small quantity of anything. "The
cost is epsilon." 2. adj. Very small, negligible; less than
{marginal}. "We can get this feature for epsilon cost."
3. `within epsilon of': close enough to be indistinguishable for
all practical purposes. This is even closer than being `within
delta of'. "That's not what I asked for, but it's within
epsilon of what I wanted." Alternatively, it may mean not close
enough, but very little is required to get it there: "My program
is within epsilon of working."
:epsilon squared: n. A quantity even smaller than {epsilon}, as
small in comparison to epsilon as epsilon is to something normal;
completely negligible. If you buy a supercomputer for a million
dollars, the cost of the thousand-dollar terminal to go with it is
{epsilon}, and the cost of the ten-dollar cable to connect them
is epsilon squared. Compare {lost in the underflow}, {lost
in the noise}.
:era, the: Syn. {epoch}. Webster's Unabridged makes these words
almost synonymous, but `era' usually connotes a span of time rather
than a point in time. The {epoch} usage is recommended.
:Eric Conspiracy: n. A shadowy group of mustachioed hackers named
Eric first pinpointed as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous
talk.bizarre posting ca. 1986; this was doubtless influenced by the
numerous `Eric' jokes in the Monty Python oeuvre. There do indeed
seem to be considerably more mustachioed Erics in hackerdom than
the frequency of these three traits can account for unless they are
correlated in some arcane way. Well-known examples include Eric
Allman (he of the `Allman style' described under {indent style})
and Erik Fair (co-author of NNTP); your editor has heard from about
fourteen others by email, and the organization line `Eric
Conspiracy Secret Laboratories' now emanates regularly from more
than one site.
:Eris: /e'ris/ n. The Greek goddess of Chaos, Discord, Confusion,
and Things You Know Not Of; her name was latinized to Discordia and
she was worshiped by that name in Rome. Not a very friendly deity
in the Classical original, she was reinvented as a more benign
personification of creative anarchy starting in 1959 by the
adherents of {Discordianism} and has since been a semi-serious
subject of veneration in several `fringe' cultures, including
hackerdom. See {Discordianism}, {Church of the SubGenius}.
:erotics: /ee-ro'tiks/ n. [Helsinki University of Technology,
Finland] n. English-language university slang for electronics.
Often used by hackers in Helsinki, maybe because good electronics
excites them and makes them warm.
:error 33: [XEROX PARC] n. 1. Predicating one research effort upon
the success of another. 2. Allowing your own research effort to be
placed on the critical path of some other project (be it a research
effort or not).
:essentials: n. Things necessary to maintain a productive and secure
hacking environment. "A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, a
20-megahertz 80386 box with 8 meg of core and a 300-megabyte disk
supporting full UNIX with source and X windows and EMACS and UUCP
via a 'blazer to a friendly Internet site, and thou."
:evil: adj. As used by hackers, implies that some system, program,
person, or institution is sufficiently maldesigned as to be not
worth the bother of dealing with. Unlike the adjectives in the
{cretinous}/{losing}/{brain-damaged} series, `evil' does not
imply incompetence or bad design, but rather a set of goals or
design criteria fatally incompatible with the speaker's. This is
more an esthetic and engineering judgment than a moral one in the
mainstream sense. "We thought about adding a {Blue Glue}
interface but decided it was too evil to deal with." "{TECO}
is neat, but it can be pretty evil if you're prone to typos."
Often pronounced with the first syllable lengthened, as /eeee'vil/.
:exa-: /ek's*/ [SI] pref. See {{quantifiers}}.
:examining the entrails: n. The process of {grovel}ling through
a core dump or hex image in the attempt to discover the bug that
brought a program or system down. The reference is to divination
from the entrails of a sacrified animal. Compare {runes},
{incantation}, {black art}, {desk check}.
:EXCH: /eks'ch*/ or /eksch/ vt. To exchange two things, each for the
other; to swap places. If you point to two people sitting down and
say "Exch!", you are asking them to trade places. EXCH,
meaning EXCHange, was originally the name of a PDP-10 instruction
that exchanged the contents of a register and a memory location.
Many newer hackers tend to be thinking instead of the {PostScript}
exchange operator (which is usually written in lowercase).
:excl: /eks'kl/ n. Abbreviation for `exclamation point'. See
{bang}, {shriek}, {{ASCII}}.
:EXE: /eks'ee/ or /eek'see/ or /E-X-E/ n. An executable
binary file. Some operating systems (notably MS-DOS, VMS, and
TWENEX) use the extension .EXE to mark such files. This usage is
also occasionally found among UNIX programmers even though UNIX
executables don't have any required suffix.
:exec: /eg-zek'/ vt.,n. 1. [UNIX: from `execute'] Synonym for
{chain}, derives from the `exec(2)' call. 2. [from
`executive'] obs. The command interpreter for an {OS} (see
{shell}); term esp. used around mainframes, and prob.
derived from UNIVAC's archaic EXEC 2 and EXEC 8 operating systems.
3. At IBM and VM/CMS shops, the equivalent of a shell command file
(among VM/CMS users).
The mainstream `exec' as an abbreviation for (human) executive is
*not* used. To a hacker, an `exec' is a always a program,
never a person.
:exercise, left as an: [from technical books] Used to complete a
proof when one doesn't mind a {handwave}, or to avoid one
entirely. The complete phrase is: "The proof (or the rest) is
left as an exercise for the reader." This comment *has*
occasionally been attached to unsolved research problems by authors
possessed of either an evil sense of humor or a vast faith in the
capabilities of their audiences.
:eyeball search: n. To look for something in a mass of code or data
with one's own native optical sensors, as opposed to using some
sort of pattern matching software like {grep} or any other
automated search tool. Also called a {vgrep}; compare
{vdiff}, {desk check}.
= F =
=====
:fab: /fab/ [from `fabricate'] v. 1. To produce chips from a
design that may have been created by someone at another company.
Fabbing chips based on the designs of others is the activity of a
{silicon foundry}. To a hacker, `fab' is practically never short
for `fabulous'. 2. `fab line': the production system
(lithography, diffusion, etching, etc.) for chips at a chip
manufacturer. Different `fab lines' are run with different
process parameters, die sizes, or technologies, or simply to
provide more manufacturing volume.
:face time: n. Time spent interacting with somebody face-to-face (as
opposed to via electronic links). "Oh, yeah, I spent some face
time with him at the last Usenix."
:factor: n. See {coefficient of X}.
:fall over: [IBM] vi. Yet another synonym for {crash} or {lose}.
`Fall over hard' equates to {crash and burn}.
:fall through: v. (n. `fallthrough', var. `fall-through')
1. To exit a loop by exhaustion, i.e., by having fulfilled its exit
condition rather than via a break or exception condition that exits
from the middle of it. This usage appears to be *really* old,
dating from the 1940s and 1950s. 2. To fail a test that would have
passed control to a subroutine or some other distant portion of
code. 3. In C, `fall-through' occurs when the flow of execution in
a switch statement reaches a `case' label other than by
jumping there from the switch header, passing a point where one
would normally expect to find a `break'. A trivial example:
switch (color)
{
case GREEN:
do_green();
break;
case PINK:
do_pink();
/* FALL THROUGH */
case RED:
do_red();
break;
default:
do_blue();
break;
}
The variant spelling `/* FALL THRU */' is also common.
The effect of this code is to `do_green()' when color is
`GREEN', `do_red()' when color is `RED',
`do_blue()' on any other color other than `PINK', and
(and this is the important part) `do_pink()' *and then*
`do_red()' when color is `PINK'. Fall-through is
{considered harmful} by some, though there are contexts (such as
the coding of state machines) in which it is natural; it is
generally considered good practice to include a comment
highlighting the fall-through where one would normally expect a
break.
:fandango on core: [UNIX/C hackers, from the Mexican dance] n.
In C, a wild pointer that runs out of bounds, causing a {core
dump}, or corrupts the `malloc(3)' {arena} in such a way as
to cause mysterious failures later on, is sometimes said to have
`done a fandango on core'. On low-end personal machines without an
MMU, this can corrupt the OS itself, causing massive lossage.
Other frenetic dances such as the rhumba, cha-cha, or watusi, may
be substituted. See {aliasing bug}, {precedence lossage},
{smash the stack}, {memory leak}, {memory smash},
{overrun screw}, {core}.
:FAQ list: /F-A-Q list/ or /fak list/ [USENET] n. A compendium
of accumulated lore, posted periodically to high-volume newsgroups
in an attempt to forestall Frequently Asked Questions. This
lexicon itself serves as a good example of a collection of one kind
of lore, although it is far too big for a regular posting.
Examples: "What is the proper type of NULL?" and "What's that
funny name for the `#' character?" are both Frequently Asked
Questions. Several extant FAQ lists do (or should) make reference
to the Jargon File (the on-line version of this lexicon).
:FAQL: /fa'kl/ n. Syn. {FAQ list}.
:farming: [Adelaide University, Australia] n. What the heads of a
disk drive are said to do when they plow little furrows in the
magnetic media. Associated with a {crash}. Typically used as
follows: "Oh no, the machine has just crashed; I hope the hard
drive hasn't gone {farming} again."
:fascist: adj. 1. Said of a computer system with excessive or
annoying security barriers, usage limits, or access policies. The
implication is that said policies are preventing hackers from
getting interesting work done. The variant `fascistic' seems
to have been preferred at MIT, poss. by analogy with
`touristic' (see {tourist}). 2. In the design of languages
and other software tools, `the fascist alternative' is the most
restrictive and structured way of capturing a particular function;
the implication is that this may be desirable in order to simplify
the implementation or provide tighter error checking. Compare
{bondage-and-discipline language}, but that term is global rather
than local.
:fat electrons: n. Old-time hacker David Cargill's theory on the
causation of computer glitches. Your typical electric utility
draws its line current out of the big generators with a pair of
coil taps located near the top of the dynamo. When the normal tap
brushes get dirty, they take them off line to clean up, and use
special auxiliary taps on the *bottom* of the coil. Now,
this is a problem, because when they do that they get not ordinary
or `thin' electrons, but the fat'n'sloppy electrons that are
heavier and so settle to the bottom of the generator. These flow
down ordinary wires just fine, but when they have to turn a sharp
corner (as in an integrated-circuit via) they're apt to get stuck.
This is what causes computer glitches. [Fascinating. Obviously,
fat electrons must gain mass by {bogon} absorption --- ESR]
Compare {bogon}, {magic smoke}.
:faulty: adj. Non-functional; buggy. Same denotation as
{bletcherous}, {losing}, q.v., but the connotation is much
milder.
:fd leak: /F-D leek/ n. A kind of programming bug analogous to a
{core leak}, in which a program fails to close file descriptors
(`fd's) after file operations are completed, and thus eventually
runs out of them. See {leak}.
:fear and loathing: [from Hunter Thompson] n. A state inspired by the
prospect of dealing with certain real-world systems and standards
that are totally {brain-damaged} but ubiquitous --- Intel 8086s,
or {COBOL}, or {{EBCDIC}}, or any {IBM} machine except the
Rios (a.k.a. the RS/6000). "Ack! They want PCs to be able to
talk to the AI machine. Fear and loathing time!"
:feature: n. 1. A good property or behavior (as of a program).
Whether it was intended or not is immaterial. 2. An intended
property or behavior (as of a program). Whether it is good or not
is immaterial (but if bad, it is also a {misfeature}). 3. A
surprising property or behavior; in particular, one that is
purposely inconsistent because it works better that way --- such an
inconsistency is therefore a {feature} and not a {bug}. This
kind of feature is sometimes called a {miswart}; see that entry
for a classic example. 4. A property or behavior that is
gratuitous or unnecessary, though perhaps also impressive or cute.
For example, one feature of Common LISP's `format' function is
the ability to print numbers in two different Roman-numeral formats
(see {bells, whistles, and gongs}). 5. A property or behavior
that was put in to help someone else but that happens to be in your
way. 6. A bug that has been documented. To call something a
feature sometimes means the author of the program did not consider
the particular case, and that the program responded in a way that
was unexpected but not strictly incorrect. A standard joke is that
a bug can be turned into a {feature} simply by documenting it
(then theoretically no one can complain about it because it's in
the manual), or even by simply declaring it to be good. "That's
not a bug, that's a feature!" is a common catchphrase. See also
{feetch feetch}, {creeping featurism}, {wart}, {green
lightning}.
The relationship among bugs, features, misfeatures, warts, and
miswarts might be clarified by the following hypothetical exchange
between two hackers on an airliner:
A: "This seat doesn't recline."
B: "That's not a bug, that's a feature. There is an emergency
exit door built around the window behind you, and the route has to
be kept clear."
A: "Oh. Then it's a misfeature; they should have increased the
spacing between rows here."
B: "Yes. But if they'd increased spacing in only one section it
would have been a wart --- they would've had to make
nonstandard-length ceiling panels to fit over the displaced
seats."
A: "A miswart, actually. If they increased spacing throughout
they'd lose several rows and a chunk out of the profit margin. So
unequal spacing would actually be the Right Thing."
B: "Indeed."
`Undocumented feature' is a common, allegedly humorous euphemism
for a {bug}.
:feature creature: [poss. fr. slang `creature feature' for a
horror movie] n. 1. One who loves to add features to designs or
programs, perhaps at the expense of coherence, concision, or
{taste}. 2. Alternately, a semi-mythical being that induces
otherwise rational programmers to perpetrate such crocks. See also
{feeping creaturism}, {creeping featurism}.
:feature key: n. The Macintosh key with the cloverleaf graphic on
its keytop; sometimes referred to as `flower', `pretzel',
`clover', `propeller', `beanie' (an apparent reference to the
major feature of a propeller beanie), {splat}, or the `command
key'. The Mac's equivalent of an {alt} key. The proliferation
of terms for this creature may illustrate one subtle peril of
iconic interfaces.
Many people have been mystified by the cloverleaf-like symbol that
appears on the feature key. Its oldest name is `cross of St.
Hannes', but it occurs in pre-Christian Viking art as a decorative
motif. Throughout Scandinavia today the road agencies use it to
mark sites of historical interest. Many of these are old churches;
hence, the Swedish idiom for the symbol is `kyrka', cognate to
English `church' and Scots-dialect `kirk' but pronounced
/shir'k*/ in modern Swedish. This is in fact where Apple got the
symbol; they give the translation "interesting feature"!
:feature shock: [from Alvin Toffler's book title `Future
Shock'] n. A user's (or programmer's!) confusion when confronted
with a package that has too many features and poor introductory
material.
:featurectomy: /fee`ch*r-ek't*-mee/ n. The act of removing a
feature from a program. Featurectomies come in two flavors, the
`righteous' and the `reluctant'. Righteous featurectomies are
performed because the remover believes the program would be more
elegant without the feature, or there is already an equivalent and
better way to achieve the same end. (This is not quite the same
thing as removing a {misfeature}.) Reluctant featurectomies are
performed to satisfy some external constraint such as code size or
execution speed.
:feep: /feep/ 1. n. The soft electronic `bell' sound of a
display terminal (except for a VT-52); a beep (in fact, the
microcomputer world seems to prefer {beep}). 2. vi. To cause
the display to make a feep sound. ASR-33s (the original TTYs) do
not feep; they have mechanical bells that ring. Alternate forms:
{beep}, `bleep', or just about anything suitably
onomatopoeic. (Jeff MacNelly, in his comic strip "Shoe", uses
the word `eep' for sounds made by computer terminals and video
games; this is perhaps the closest written approximation yet.) The
term `breedle' was sometimes heard at SAIL, where the terminal
bleepers are not particularly soft (they sound more like the
musical equivalent of a raspberry or Bronx cheer; for a close
approximation, imagine the sound of a Star Trek communicator's beep
lasting for 5 seconds). The `feeper' on a VT-52 has been
compared to the sound of a '52 Chevy stripping its gears. See also
{ding}.
:feeper: /fee'pr/ n. The device in a terminal or workstation (usually
a loudspeaker of some kind) that makes the {feep} sound.
:feeping creature: [from {feeping creaturism}] n. An unnecessary
feature; a bit of {chrome} that, in the speaker's judgment, is
the camel's nose for a whole horde of new features.
:feeping creaturism: /fee'ping kree`ch*r-izm/ n. A deliberate
spoonerism for {creeping featurism}, meant to imply that the
system or program in question has become a misshapen creature of
hacks. This term isn't really well defined, but it sounds so neat
that most hackers have said or heard it. It is probably reinforced
by an image of terminals prowling about in the dark making their
customary noises.
:feetch feetch: /feech feech/ interj. If someone tells you about
some new improvement to a program, you might respond: "Feetch,
feetch!" The meaning of this depends critically on vocal
inflection. With enthusiasm, it means something like "Boy, that's
great! What a great hack!" Grudgingly or with obvious doubt, it
means "I don't know; it sounds like just one more unnecessary and
complicated thing". With a tone of resignation, it means, "Well,
I'd rather keep it simple, but I suppose it has to be done".
:fence: n. 1. A sequence of one or more distinguished
({out-of-band}) characters (or other data items), used to
delimit a piece of data intended to be treated as a unit (the
computer-science literature calls this a `sentinel'). The NUL
(ASCII 0000000) character that terminates strings in C is a fence.
Hex FF is also (though slightly less frequently) used this way.
See {zigamorph}. 2. [among users of optimizing compilers] Any
technique, usually exploiting knowledge about the compiler, that
blocks certain optimizations. Used when explicit mechanisms are
not available or are overkill. Typically a hack: "I call a dummy
procedure there to force a flush of the optimizer's
register-coloring info" can be expressed by the shorter "That's a
fence procedure".
:fencepost error: n. 1. A problem with the discrete equivalent of a
boundary condition. Often exhibited in programs by iterative
loops. From the following problem: "If you build a fence 100 feet
long with posts 10 feet apart, how many posts do you need?"
Either 9 or 11 is a better answer than the obvious 10. For
example, suppose you have a long list or array of items, and want
to process items m through n; how many items are there? The
obvious answer is n - m, but that is off by one; the right
answer is n - m + 1. A program that used the `obvious'
formula would have a fencepost error in it. See also {zeroth}
and {off-by-one error}, and note that not all off-by-one errors
are fencepost errors. The game of Musical Chairs involves a
catastrophic off-by-one error where N people try to sit in
N - 1 chairs, but it's not a fencepost error. Fencepost
errors come from counting things rather than the spaces between
them, or vice versa, or by neglecting to consider whether one
should count one or both ends of a row. 2. Occasionally, an error
induced by unexpectedly regular spacing of inputs, which can (for
instance) screw up your hash table.
:fepped out: /fept owt/ adj. The Symbolics 3600 Lisp Machine has a
Front-End Processor called a `FEP' (compare sense 2 of {box}).
When the main processor gets {wedged}, the FEP takes control of
the keyboard and screen. Such a machine is said to have
`fepped out'.
:FidoNet: n. A worldwide hobbyist network of personal computers
which exchange mail, discussion groups, and files. Founded in 1984
and originally consisting only of IBM PCs and compatibles, FidoNet
now includes such diverse machines as Apple ][s, Ataris, Amigas,
and UNIX systems. Though it is much younger than {USENET},
FidoNet is already (in early 1991) a significant fraction of
USENET's size at some 8000 systems.
:field circus: [a derogatory pun on `field service'] n. The field
service organization of any hardware manufacturer, but especially
DEC. There is an entire genre of jokes about DEC field circus
engineers:
Q: How can you recognize a DEC field circus engineer
with a flat tire?
A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.
Q: How can you recognize a DEC field circus engineer
who is out of gas?
A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.
[See {Easter egging} for additional insight on these jokes.]
There is also the `Field Circus Cheer' (from the {plan file} for
DEC on MIT-AI):
Maynard! Maynard!
Don't mess with us!
We're mean and we're tough!
If you get us confused
We'll screw up your stuff.
(DEC's service HQ is located in Maynard, Massachusetts.)
:field servoid: [play on `android'] /fee'ld ser'voyd/ n.
Representative of a field service organization (see {field
circus}). This has many of the implications of {droid}.
:Fight-o-net: [FidoNet] n. Deliberate distortion of {FidoNet},
often applied after a flurry of {flamage} in a particular
{echo}, especially the SYSOP echo or Fidonews (see {'Snooze}).
:File Attach: [FidoNet] 1. n. A file sent along with a mail message
from one BBS to another. 2. vt. Sending someone a file by using
the File Attach option in a BBS mailer.
:File Request: [FidoNet] 1. n. The {FidoNet} equivalent of
{FTP}, in which one BBS system automatically dials another and
{snarf}s one or more files. Often abbreviated `FReq'; files
are often announced as being "available for FReq" in the same way
that files are announced as being "available for/by anonymous
FTP" on the Internet. 2. vt. The act of getting a copy of a file
by using the File Request option of the BBS mailer.
:file signature: n. A {magic number} sense 3.
:filk: /filk/ [from SF fandom, where a typo for `folk' was
adopted as a new word] n.,v. A `filk' is a popular or folk song
with lyrics revised or completely new lyrics, intended for humorous
effect when read and/or to be sung late at night at SF conventions.
There is a flourishing subgenre of these called `computer filks',
written by hackers and often containing rather sophisticated
technical humor. See {double bucky} for an example. Compare
{hing} and {newsfroup}.
:film at 11: [MIT: in parody of TV newscasters] 1. Used in
conversation to announce ordinary events, with a sarcastic
implication that these events are earth-shattering. "{{ITS}}
crashes; film at 11." "Bug found in scheduler; film at 11."
2. Also widely used outside MIT to indicate that additional
information will be available at some future time, *without*
the implication of anything particularly ordinary about the
referenced event. For example, "The mail file server died this
morning; we found garbage all over the root directory. Film at
11." would indicate that a major failure had occurred but the
people working on it have no additional information about it. Use
of the phrase in this way suggests gently people would appreciate
it if users would quit bothering them and wait for the 11:00 news
for additional information.
:filter: [orig. {{UNIX}}, now also in {{MS-DOS}}] n. A program that
processes an input data stream into an output data stream in some
well-defined way, and does no I/O to anywhere else except possibly
on error conditions; one designed to be used as a stage in a
`pipeline' (see {plumbing}).
:Finagle's Law: n. The generalized or `folk' version of
{Murphy's Law}, fully named "Finagle's Law of Dynamic
Negatives" and usually rendered "Anything that can go wrong,
will". One variant favored among hackers is "The perversity of
the Universe tends towards a maximum" (but see also {Hanlon's
Razor}). The label `Finagle's Law' was popularized by SF author
Larry Niven in several stories depicting a frontier culture of
asteroid miners; this `Belter' culture professed a religion
and/or running joke involving the worship of the dread god Finagle
and his mad prophet Murphy.
:fine: [WPI] adj. Good, but not good enough to be {cuspy}. The word
`fine' is used elsewhere, of course, but without the implicit
comparison to the higher level implied by {cuspy}.
:finger: [WAITS, via BSD UNIX] 1. n. A program that displays a
particular user or all users logged on the system or a remote
system. Typically shows full name, last login time, idle time,
terminal line, and terminal location (where applicable). May also
display a {plan file} left by the user. 2. vt. To apply finger
to a username. 3. vt. By extension, to check a human's current
state by any means. "Foodp?" "T!" "OK, finger Lisa and see
if she's idle." 4. Any picture (composed of ASCII characters)
depicting `the finger'. Originally a humorous component of one's
plan file to deter the curious fingerer (sense 2), it has entered
the arsenal of some {flamer}s.
:finger-pointing syndrome: n. All-too-frequent result of bugs, esp.
in new or experimental configurations. The hardware vendor points
a finger at the software. The software vendor points a finger
at the hardware. All the poor users get is the finger.
:finn: [IRC] v. To pull rank on somebody based on the amount of
time one has spent on {IRC}. The term derives from the fact
that IRC was originally written in Finland in 1987.
:firebottle: n. A large, primitive, power-hungry active electrical
device, similar in function to a FET but constructed out of glass,
metal, and vacuum. Characterized by high cost, low density, low
reliability, high-temperature operation, and high power
dissipation. Sometimes mistakenly called a `tube' in the U.S.
or a `valve' in England; another hackish term is {glassfet}.
:firefighting: n. 1. What sysadmins have to do to correct sudden
operational problems. An opposite of hacking. "Been hacking your
new newsreader?" "No, a power glitch hosed the network and I spent
the whole afternoon fighting fires." 2. The act of throwing lots
of manpower and late nights at a project, esp. to get it out
before deadline. See also {gang bang}, {Mongolian Hordes
technique}; however, the term `firefighting' connotes that the
effort is going into chasing bugs rather than adding features.
:firehose syndrome: n. In mainstream folklore it is observed that
trying to drink from a firehose can be a good way to rip your lips
off. On computer networks, the absence or failure of flow control
mechanisms can lead to situations in which the sending system
sprays a massive flood of packets at an unfortunate receiving
system; more than it can handle. Compare {overrun}, {buffer
overflow}.
:firewall code: n. The code you put in a system (say, a telephone
switch) to make sure that the users can't do any damage. Since
users always want to be able to do everything but never want to
suffer for any mistakes, the construction of a firewall is a
question not only of defensive coding but also of interface
presentation, so that users don't even get curious about those
corners of a system where they can burn themselves.
:firewall machine: n. A dedicated gateway machine with special
security precautions on it, used to service outside network
connections and dial-in lines. The idea is to protect a cluster of
more loosely administered machines hidden behind it from
{cracker}s. The typical firewall is an inexpensive micro-based
UNIX box kept clean of critical data, with a bunch of modems and
public network ports on it but just one carefully watched
connection back to the rest of the cluster. The special
precautions may include threat monitoring, callback, and even a
complete {iron box} keyable to particular incoming IDs or
activity patterns. Syn. {flytrap}, {Venus flytrap}.
:fireworks mode: n. The mode a machine is sometimes said to be in when
it is performing a {crash and burn} operation.
:firmy: /fer'mee/ Syn. {stiffy} (a 3.5-inch floppy disk).
:fish: [Adelaide University, Australia] n. 1. Another {metasyntactic
variable}. See {foo}. Derived originally from the Monty Python
skit in the middle of "The Meaning of Life" entitled
"Find the Fish". 2. A pun for `microfiche'. A microfiche
file cabinet may be referred to as a `fish tank'.
:FISH queue: [acronym, by analogy with FIFO (First In, First Out)]
n. `First In, Still Here'. A joking way of pointing out that
processing of a particular sequence of events or requests has
stopped dead. Also `FISH mode' and `FISHnet'; the latter
may be applied to any network that is running really slowly or
exhibiting extreme flakiness.
:FITNR: // [Thinking Machines, Inc.] Fixed In the Next Release.
A written-only notation attached to bug reports. Often wishful
thinking.
:fix: n.,v. What one does when a problem has been reported too many
times to be ignored.
:flag: n. A variable or quantity that can take on one of two
values; a bit, particularly one that is used to indicate one of two
outcomes or is used to control which of two things is to be done.
"This flag controls whether to clear the screen before printing
the message." "The program status word contains several flag
bits." Used of humans analogously to {bit}. See also
{hidden flag}, {mode bit}.
:flag day: n. A software change that is neither forward- nor
backward-compatible, and which is costly to make and costly to
reverse. "Can we install that without causing a flag day for all
users?" This term has nothing to do with the use of the word
{flag} to mean a variable that has two values. It came into use
when a massive change was made to the {{Multics}} timesharing
system to convert from the old ASCII code to the new one; this was
scheduled for Flag Day (a U.S. holiday), June 14, 1966. See also
{backward combatability}.
:flaky: adj. (var sp. `flakey') Subject to frequent {lossage}.
This use is of course related to the common slang use of the word
to describe a person as eccentric, crazy, or just unreliable. A
system that is flaky is working, sort of --- enough that you are
tempted to try to use it --- but fails frequently enough that the
odds in favor of finishing what you start are low. Commonwealth
hackish prefers {dodgy} or {wonky}.
:flamage: /flay'm*j/ n. Flaming verbiage, esp. high-noise,
low-signal postings to {USENET} or other electronic {fora}.
Often in the phrase `the usual flamage'. `Flaming' is the act
itself; `flamage' the content; a `flame' is a single flaming
message. See {flame}.
:flame: 1. vi. To post an email message intended to insult and
provoke. 2. vi. To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some
relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous
attitude. 3. vt. Either of senses 1 or 2, directed with
hostility at a particular person or people. 4. n. An instance of
flaming. When a discussion degenerates into useless controversy,
one might tell the participants "Now you're just flaming" or
"Stop all that flamage!" to try to get them to cool down (so to
speak).
USENETter Marc Ramsey, who was at WPI from 1972 to 1976, adds: "I
am 99% certain that the use of `flame' originated at WPI. Those
who made a nuisance of themselves insisting that they needed to use
a TTY for `real work' came to be known as `flaming asshole lusers'.
Other particularly annoying people became `flaming asshole ravers',
which shortened to `flaming ravers', and ultimately `flamers'. I
remember someone picking up on the Human Torch pun, but I don't
think `flame on/off' was ever much used at WPI." See also
{asbestos}.
The term may have been independently invented at several different
places; it is also reported that `flaming' was in use to mean
something like `interminably drawn-out semi-serious discussions'
(late-night bull sessions) at Carleton College during 1968--1971.
It's possible that the hackish sense of `flame' is much older than
that. The poet Chaucer was also what passed for a wizard hacker in
his time; he wrote a treatise on the astrolabe, the most advanced
computing device of the day. In Chaucer's `Troilus and
Cressida', Cressida laments her inability to grasp the proof of a
particular mathematical theorem; her uncle Pandarus then observes
that it's called "the fleminge of wrecches." This phrase seems
to have been intended in context as "that which puts the wretches
to flight" but was probably just as ambiguous in Middle English as
"the flaming of wretches" would be today. One suspects that
Chaucer would be right at home on USENET.
:flame bait: n. A posting intended to trigger a {flame war}, or one
that invites flames in reply.
:flame on: vi.,interj. 1. To begin to {flame}. The punning
reference to Marvel Comics's Human Torch is no longer widely
recognized. 2. To continue to flame. See {rave}, {burble}.
:flame war: n. (var. `flamewar') An acrimonious dispute,
especially when conducted on a public electronic forum such as
{USENET}.
:flamer: n. One who habitually {flame}s. Said esp. of obnoxious
{USENET} personalities.
:flap: vt. 1. To unload a DECtape (so it goes flap, flap,
flap...). Old-time hackers at MIT tell of the days when the
disk was device 0 and {microtape}s were 1, 2,... and
attempting to flap device 0 would instead start a motor banging
inside a cabinet near the disk. 2. By extension, to unload any
magnetic tape. See also {macrotape}. Modern cartridge tapes no
longer actually flap, but the usage has remained. (The term could
well be re-applied to DEC's TK50 cartridge tape drive, a
spectacularly misengineered contraption which makes a loud flapping
sound, almost like an old reel-type lawnmower, in one of its many
tape-eating failure modes.)
:flarp: /flarp/ [Rutgers University] n. Yet another {metasyntactic
variable} (see {foo}). Among those who use it, it is associated
with a legend that any program not containing the word `flarp'
somewhere will not work. The legend is discreetly silent on the
reliability of programs which *do* contain the magic word.
:flat: adj. 1. Lacking any complex internal structure. "That
{bitty box} has only a flat filesystem, not a hierarchical
one." The verb form is {flatten}. 2. Said of a memory
architecture (like that of the VAX or 680x0) that is one big linear
address space (typically with each possible value of a processor
register corresponding to a unique core address), as opposed to a
`segmented' architecture (like that of the 80x86) in which
addresses are composed from a base-register/offset pair (segmented
designs are generally considered {cretinous}).
Note that sense 1 (at least with respect to filesystems) is usually
used pejoratively, while sense 2 is a {Good Thing}.
:flat-ASCII: adj. Said of a text file that contains only 7-bit ASCII
characters and uses only ASCII-standard control characters (that
is, has no embedded codes specific to a particular text formatter
or markup language, and no {meta}-characters). Syn.
{plain-ASCII}. Compare {flat-file}.
:flat-file: adj. A {flatten}ed representation of some database or
tree or network structure as a single file from which the
structure could implicitly be rebuilt, esp. one in {flat-ASCII}
form.
:flatten: vt. To remove structural information, esp. to filter
something with an implicit tree structure into a simple sequence of
leaves; also tends to imply mapping to {flat-ASCII}. "This code
flattens an expression with parentheses into an equivalent
{canonical} form."
:flavor: n. 1. Variety, type, kind. "DDT commands come in two
flavors." "These lights come in two flavors, big red ones and
small green ones." See {vanilla}. 2. The attribute that causes
something to be {flavorful}. Usually used in the phrase "yields
additional flavor". "This convention yields additional flavor by
allowing one to print text either right-side-up or upside-down."
See {vanilla}. This usage was certainly reinforced by the
terminology of quantum chromodynamics, in which quarks (the
constituents of, e.g., protons) come in six flavors (up, down,
strange, charm, top, bottom) and three colors (red, blue, green)
--- however, hackish use of `flavor' at MIT predated QCD. 3. The
term for `class' (in the object-oriented sense) in the LISP Machine
Flavors system. Though the Flavors design has been superseded
(notably by the Common LISP CLOS facility), the term `flavor' is
still used as a general synonym for `class' by some LISP hackers.
:flavorful: adj. Full of {flavor}; esthetically pleasing. See
{random} and {losing} for antonyms. See also the entries for
{taste} and {elegant}.
:flippy: /flip'ee/ n. A single-sided floppy disk altered for
double-sided use by addition of a second write-notch, so called
because it must be flipped over for the second side to be
accessible. No longer common.
:flood: [IRC] v. To dump large amounts of text onto an {IRC}
channel. This is especially rude when the text is uninteresting
and the other users are trying to carry on a serious conversation.
:flowchart:: [techspeak] n. An archaic form of visual control-flow
specification employing arrows and `speech balloons' of various
shapes. Hackers never use flowcharts, consider them extremely
silly, and associate them with {COBOL} programmers, {card
walloper}s, and other lower forms of life. This is because (from a
hacker's point of view) they are no easier to read than code, are
less precise, and tend to fall out of sync with the code (so that
they either obfuscate it rather than explaining it or require
extra maintenance effort that doesn't improve the code). See also
{pdl}, sense 3.
:flower key: [Mac users] n. See {feature key}.
:flush: v. 1. To delete something, usually superfluous, or to abort
an operation. "All that nonsense has been flushed." 2. [UNIX/C]
To force buffered I/O to disk, as with an `fflush(3)' call.
This is *not* an abort or deletion as in sense 1, but a
demand for early completion! 3. To leave at the end of a day's
work (as opposed to leaving for a meal). "I'm going to flush
now." "Time to flush." 4. To exclude someone from an activity,
or to ignore a person.
`Flush' was standard ITS terminology for aborting an output
operation; one spoke of the text that would have been printed, but
was not, as having been flushed. It is speculated that this term
arose from a vivid image of flushing unwanted characters by hosing
down the internal output buffer, washing the characters away before
they can be printed. The UNIX/C usage, on the other hand, was
propagated by the `fflush(3)' call in C's standard I/O library
(though it is reported to have been in use among BLISS programmers
at DEC and on Honeywell and IBM machines as far back as 1965).
UNIX/C hackers find the ITS usage confusing, and vice versa.
:flypage: /fli: payj/n. (alt. `fly page') A {banner}, sense 1.
:Flyspeck 3: n. Standard name for any font that is so tiny as to be
unreadable (by analogy with such names as `Helvetica 10' for
10-point Helvetica). Legal boilerplate is usually printed in
Flyspeck 3.
:flytrap: n. See {firewall machine}.
:FM: n. *Not* `Frequency Modulation' but rather an
abbreviation for `Fucking Manual', the back-formation from
{RTFM}. Used to refer to the manual itself in the {RTFM}.
"Have you seen the Networking FM lately?"
:FOAF: // [USENET] n. Acronym for `Friend Of A Friend'. The
source of an unverified, possibly untrue story. This was not
originated by hackers (it is used in Jan Brunvand's books on urban
folklore), but is much better recognized on USENET and elsewhere
than in mainstream English.
:FOD: /fod/ v. [Abbreviation for `Finger of Death', originally a
spell-name from fantasy gaming] To terminate with extreme prejudice
and with no regard for other people. From {MUD}s where the
wizard command `FOD <player>' results in the immediate and total
death of <player>, usually as punishment for obnoxious behavior.
This migrated to other circumstances, such as "I'm going to fod
the process that is burning all the cycles." Compare {gun}.
In aviation, FOD means Foreign Object Damage, e.g., what happens
when a jet engine sucks up a rock on the runway or a bird in
flight. Finger of Death is a distressingly apt description of
what this does to the engine.
:fold case: v. See {smash case}. This term tends to be used
more by people who don't mind that their tools smash case. It also
connotes that case is ignored but case distinctions in data
processed by the tool in question aren't destroyed.
:followup: n. On USENET, a {posting} generated in response to
another posting (as opposed to a {reply}, which goes by email
rather than being broadcast). Followups include the ID of the
{parent message} in their headers; smart news-readers can use
this information to present USENET news in `conversation' sequence
rather than order-of-arrival. See {thread}.
:fontology: [XEROX PARC] n. The body of knowledge dealing with the
construction and use of new fonts (e.g. for window systems and
typesetting software). It has been said that fontology
recapitulates file-ogeny.
[Unfortunately, this reference to the embryological dictum that
"Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is not merely a joke. On the
Macintosh, for example, System 7 has to go through contortions to
compensate for an earlier design error that created a whole
different set of abstractions for fonts parallel to `files' and
`folders' --- ESR]
:foo: /foo/ 1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. Used very generally
as a sample name for absolutely anything, esp. programs and files
(esp. scratch files). 3. First on the standard list of
{metasyntactic variable}s used in syntax examples. See also
{bar}, {baz}, {qux}, {quux}, {corge}, {grault},
{garply}, {waldo}, {fred}, {plugh}, {xyzzy},
{thud}.
The etymology of hackish `foo' is obscure. When used in
connection with `bar' it is generally traced to the WWII-era Army
slang acronym FUBAR (`Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition'), later
bowdlerized to {foobar}. (See also {FUBAR}).
However, the use of the word `foo' itself has more complicated
antecedents, including a long history in comic strips and cartoons.
The old "Smokey Stover" comic strips by Bill Holman often
included the word `FOO', in particular on license plates of cars;
allegedly, `FOO' and `BAR' also occurred in Walt Kelly's
"Pogo" strips. In the 1938 cartoon "Daffy Doc", a very
early version of Daffy Duck holds up a sign saying "SILENCE IS
FOO!"; oddly, this seems to refer to some approving or positive
affirmative use of foo. It has been suggested that this might be
related to the Chinese word `fu' (sometimes transliterated
`foo'), which can mean "happiness" when spoken with the proper
tone (the lion-dog guardians flanking the steps of many Chinese
restaurants are properly called "fu dogs").
It is even possible that hacker usage actually springs from
`FOO, Lampoons and Parody', the title of a comic book first
issued in September 1958; the byline read `C. Crumb' but the style
of the art suggests this may well have been a sort-of pseudonym for
noted weird-comix artist Robert Crumb. The title FOO was featured
in large letters on the front cover. What the word meant to Mr.
Crumb is anybody's guess.
An old-time member reports that in the 1959 `Dictionary of the
TMRC Language', compiled at {TMRC} there was an entry that went
something like this:
FOO: The first syllable of the sacred chant phrase "FOO MANE PADME
HUM." Our first obligation is to keep the foo counters turning.
For more about the legendary foo counters, see {TMRC}. Almost
the entire staff of what became the MIT AI LAB was involved with
TMRC, and probably picked the word up there.
Very probably, hackish `foo' had no single origin and derives
through all these channels from Yiddish `feh' and/or English
`fooey'.
:foobar: n. Another common {metasyntactic variable}; see {foo}.
Hackers do *not* generally use this to mean {FUBAR} in
either the slang or jargon sense.
:fool: n. As used by hackers, specifically describes a person who
habitually reasons from obviously or demonstrably incorrect
premises and cannot be persuaded by evidence to do otherwise; it is
not generally used in its other senses, i.e., to describe a person
with a native incapacity to reason correctly, or a clown. Indeed,
in hackish experience many fools are capable of reasoning all too
effectively in executing their errors. See also {cretin},
{loser}, {fool file, the}.
:fool file, the: [USENET] n. A notional repository of all the most
dramatically and abysmally stupid utterances ever. There is a
subgenre of {sig block}s that consists of the header "From the
fool file:" followed by some quote the poster wishes to represent
as an immortal gem of dimwittery; for this to be really effective,
the quote has to be so obviously wrong as to be laughable. More
than one USENETter has achieved an unwanted notoriety by being
quoted in this way.
:Foonly: n. 1. The {PDP-10} successor that was to have been built by
the Super Foonly project at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory along with a new operating system. The intention was to
leapfrog from the old DEC timesharing system SAIL was running to a
new generation, bypassing TENEX which at that time was the ARPANET
standard. ARPA funding for both the Super Foonly and the new
operating system was cut in 1974. Most of the design team went to
DEC and contributed greatly to the design of the PDP-10 model KL10.
2. The name of the company formed by Dave Poole, one of the
principal Super Foonly designers, and one of hackerdom's more
colorful personalities. Many people remember the parrot which sat
on Poole's shoulder and was a regular companion. 3. Any of the
machines built by Poole's company. The first was the F-1 (a.k.a.
Super Foonly), which was the computational engine used to create
the graphics in the movie "TRON". The F-1 was the fastest
PDP-10 ever built, but only one was ever made. The effort drained
Foonly of its financial resources, and they turned towards building
smaller, slower, and much less expensive machines. Unfortunately,
these ran not the popular {TOPS-20} but a TENEX variant called
Foonex; this seriously limited their market. Also, the machines
shipped were actually wire-wrapped engineering prototypes requiring
individual attention from more than usually competent site
personnel, and thus had significant reliability problems. Poole's
legendary temper and unwillingness to suffer fools gladly did not
help matters. By the time of the Jupiter project cancellation in
1983 Foonly's proposal to build another F-1 was eclipsed by the
{Mars}, and the company never quite recovered. See the
{Mars} entry for the continuation and moral of this story.
:footprint: n. 1. The floor or desk area taken up by a piece of
hardware. 2. [IBM] The audit trail (if any) left by a crashed
program (often in plural, `footprints'). See also
{toeprint}.
:for free: adj. Said of a capability of a programming language or
hardware equipment that is available by its design without needing
cleverness to implement: "In APL, we get the matrix operations for
free." "And owing to the way revisions are stored in this
system, you get revision trees for free." Usually it refers to a
serendipitous feature of doing things a certain way (compare
{big win}), but it may refer to an intentional but secondary
feature.
:for the rest of us: [from the Mac slogan "The computer for the
rest of us"] adj. 1. Used to describe a {spiffy} product whose
affordability shames other comparable products, or (more often)
used sarcastically to describe {spiffy} but very overpriced
products. 2. Describes a program with a limited interface,
deliberately limited capabilities, non-orthogonality, inability to
compose primitives, or any other limitation designed to not
`confuse' a na"ive user. This places an upper bound on how far
that user can go before the program begins to get in the way of the
task instead of helping accomplish it. Used in reference to
Macintosh software which doesn't provide obvious capabilities
because it is thought that the poor lusers might not be able to
handle them. Becomes `the rest of *them*' when used in
third-party reference; thus, "Yes, it is an attractive program,
but it's designed for The Rest Of Them" means a program that
superficially looks neat but has no depth beyond the surface flash.
See also {WIMP environment}, {Macintrash},
{point-and-drool interface}, {user-friendly}.
:for values of: [MIT] A common rhetorical maneuver at MIT is to use
any of the canonical {random numbers} as placeholders for
variables. "The max function takes 42 arguments, for arbitrary
values of 42." "There are 69 ways to leave your lover, for
69 = 50." This is especially likely when the speaker has uttered
a random number and realizes that it was not recognized as such,
but even `non-random' numbers are occasionally used in this
fashion. A related joke is that pi equals 3 --- for
small values of pi and large values of 3.
Historical note: this usage probably derives from the programming
language MAD (Michigan Algorithm Decoder), an Algol-like language
that was the most common choice among mainstream (non-hacker) users
at MIT in the mid-60s. It had a control structure FOR VALUES OF X
= 3, 7, 99 DO ... that would repeat the indicated instructions for
each value in the list (unlike the usual FOR that only works for
arithmetic sequences of values). MAD is long extinct, but similar
for-constructs still flourish (e.g. in UNIX's shell languages).
:fora: pl.n. Plural of {forum}.
:foreground: [UNIX] vt. To foreground a task is to bring it to
the top of one's {stack} for immediate processing, and hackers
often use it in this sense for non-computer tasks. "If your
presentation is due next week, I guess I'd better foreground
writing up the design document."
Technically, on a time-sharing system, a task executing in
foreground is one able to accept input from and return output to
the user; oppose {background}. Nowadays this term is primarily
associated with {{UNIX}}, but it appears first to have been used
in this sense on OS/360. Normally, there is only one foreground
task per terminal (or terminal window); having multiple processes
simultaneously reading the keyboard is a good way to {lose}.
:fork bomb: [UNIX] n. A particular species of {wabbit} that can
be written in one line of C (`main() {for(;;)fork();}') or shell
(`$0 & $0 &') on any UNIX system, or occasionally created by an
egregious coding bug. A fork bomb process `explodes' by
recursively spawning copies of itself (using the UNIX system call
`fork(2)'). Eventually it eats all the process table entries
and effectively wedges the system. Fortunately, fork bombs are
relatively easy to spot and kill, so creating one deliberately
seldom accomplishes more than to bring the just wrath of the gods
down upon the perpetrator. See also {logic bomb}.
:forked: [UNIX; prob. influenced by a mainstream expletive] adj.
Terminally slow, or dead. Originated when one system was slowed to
a snail's pace by an inadvertent {fork bomb}.
:Fortrash: /for'trash/ n. Hackerism for the FORTRAN language,
referring to its primitive design, gross and irregular syntax,
limited control constructs, and slippery, exception-filled
semantics.
:fortune cookie: [WAITS, via UNIX] n. A random quote, item of
trivia, joke, or maxim printed to the user's tty at login time or
(less commonly) at logout time. Items from this lexicon have often
been used as fortune cookies. See {cookie file}.
:forum: n. [USENET, GEnie, CI$; pl. `fora' or `forums'] Any
discussion group accessible through a dial-in {BBS}, a
{mailing list}, or a {newsgroup} (see {network, the}). A
forum functions much like a bulletin board; users submit
{posting}s for all to read and discussion ensues. Contrast
real-time chat via {talk mode} or point-to-point personal
{email}.
:fossil: n. 1. In software, a misfeature that becomes
understandable only in historical context, as a remnant of times
past retained so as not to break compatibility. Example: the
retention of octal as default base for string escapes in {C}, in
spite of the better match of hexadecimal to ASCII and modern
byte-addressable architectures. See {dusty deck}. 2. More
restrictively, a feature with past but no present utility.
Example: the force-all-caps (LCASE) bits in the V7 and {BSD}
UNIX tty driver, designed for use with monocase terminals. In a
perversion of the usual backward-compatibility goal, this
functionality has actually been expanded and renamed in some later
{USG UNIX} releases as the IUCLC and OLCUC bits. 3. The FOSSIL
(Fido/Opus/Seadog Standard Interface Level) driver specification
for serial-port access to replace the {brain-dead} routines in
the IBM PC ROMs. Fossils are used by most MS-DOS {BBS} software
in preference to the `supported' ROM routines, which do not support
interrupt-driven operation or setting speeds above 9600; the use of
a semistandard FOSSIL library is preferable to the {bare metal}
serial port programming otherwise required. Since the FOSSIL
specification allows additional functionality to be hooked in,
drivers that use the {hook} but do not provide serial-port
access themselves are named with a modifier, as in `video
fossil'.
:four-color glossies: 1. Literature created by {marketroid}s
that allegedly contains technical specs but which is in fact as
superficial as possible without being totally {content-free}.
"Forget the four-color glossies, give me the tech ref manuals."
Often applied as an indication of superficiality even when the
material is printed on ordinary paper in black and white.
Four-color-glossy manuals are *never* useful for finding a
problem. 2. [rare] Applied by extension to manual pages that don't
contain enough information to diagnose why the program doesn't
produce the expected or desired output.
:fragile: adj. Syn {brittle}.
:fred: n. 1. The personal name most frequently used as a
{metasyntactic variable} (see {foo}). Allegedly popular
because it's easy for a non-touch-typist to type on a standard
QWERTY keyboard. Unlike {J. Random Hacker} or `J. Random
Loser', this name has no positive or negative loading (but see
{Mbogo, Dr. Fred}). See also {barney}. 2. An acronym for
`Flipping Ridiculous Electronic Device'; other F-verbs may be
substituted for `flipping'.
:frednet: /fred'net/ n. Used to refer to some {random} and
uncommon protocol encountered on a network. "We're implementing
bridging in our router to solve the frednet problem."
:freeware: n. Free software, often written by enthusiasts and
distributed by users' groups, or via electronic mail, local
bulletin boards, {USENET}, or other electronic media. At one
time, `freeware' was a trademark of Andrew Fluegelman, the author
of the well-known MS-DOS comm program PC-TALK III. It wasn't
enforced after his mysterious disappearance and presumed death
in 1984. See {shareware}.
:freeze: v. To lock an evolving software distribution or document
against changes so it can be released with some hope of stability.
Carries the strong implication that the item in question will
`unfreeze' at some future date. "OK, fix that bug and we'll
freeze for release."
There are more specific constructions on this. A `feature freeze',
for example, locks out modifications intended to introduce new
features; a `code freeze' connotes no more changes at all.
At Sun Microsystems and elsewhere, one may also hear references to
`code slush' --- that is, an almost-but-not-quite frozen state.
:fried: adj. 1. Non-working due to hardware failure; burnt out.
Especially used of hardware brought down by a `power glitch' (see
{glitch}), {drop-outs}, a short, or some other electrical
event. (Sometimes this literally happens to electronic circuits!
In particular, resistors can burn out and transformers can melt
down, emitting noxious smoke --- see {friode}, {SED} and
{LER}. However, this term is also used metaphorically.)
Compare {frotzed}. 2. Of people, exhausted. Said particularly
of those who continue to work in such a state. Often used as an
explanation or excuse. "Yeah, I know that fix destroyed the file
system, but I was fried when I put it in." Esp. common in
conjunction with `brain': "My brain is fried today, I'm very
short on sleep."
:friode: /fri:'ohd/ [TMRC] n. A reversible (that is, fused or
blown) diode. Compare {fried}; see also {SED}, {LER}.
:fritterware: n. An excess of capability that serves no productive
end. The canonical example is font-diddling software on the Mac
(see {macdink}); the term describes anything that eats huge
amounts of time for quite marginal gains in function but seduces
people into using it anyway.
:frob: /frob/ 1. n. [MIT] The {TMRC} definition was "FROB = a
protruding arm or trunnion"; by metaphoric extension, a `frob'
is any random small thing; an object that you can comfortably hold
in one hand; something you can frob. See {frobnitz}. 2. vt.
Abbreviated form of {frobnicate}. 3. [from the {MUD} world]
A command on some MUDs that changes a player's
experience level (this can be used to make wizards); also, to
request {wizard} privileges on the `professional courtesy'
grounds that one is a wizard elsewhere. The command is actually
`frobnicate' but is universally abbreviated to the shorter form.
:frobnicate: /frob'ni-kayt/ vt. [Poss. derived from
{frobnitz}, and usually abbreviated to {frob}, but
`frobnicate' is recognized as the official full form.] To
manipulate or adjust, to tweak. One frequently frobs bits or other
2-state devices. Thus: "Please frob the light switch" (that is,
flip it), but also "Stop frobbing that clasp; you'll break it".
One also sees the construction `to frob a frob'. See {tweak}
and {twiddle}. Usage: frob, twiddle, and tweak sometimes
connote points along a continuum. `Frob' connotes aimless
manipulation; `twiddle' connotes gross manipulation, often a
coarse search for a proper setting; `tweak' connotes fine-tuning.
If someone is turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's
carefully adjusting it, he is probably tweaking it; if he is just
turning it but looking at the screen, he is probably twiddling it;
but if he's just doing it because turning a knob is fun, he's
frobbing it. The variant `frobnosticate' has been recently
reported.
:frobnitz: /frob'nits/, pl. `frobnitzem' /frob'nit-zm/ or
`frobni' /frob'ni:/ [TMRC] n. An unspecified physical object, a
widget. Also refers to electronic black boxes. This rare form is
usually abbreviated to `frotz', or more commonly to {frob}.
Also used are `frobnule' (/frob'n[y]ool/) and `frobule'
(/frob'yool/). Starting perhaps in 1979, `frobozz'
/fr*-boz'/ (plural: `frobbotzim' /fr*-bot'zm/) has also
become very popular, largely through its exposure as a name via
{Zork}. These can also be applied to nonphysical objects, such
as data structures.
Pete Samson, compiler of the {TMRC} lexicon, adds, "Under the
TMRC [railroad] layout were many storage boxes, managed (in 1958)
by David R. Sawyer. Several had fanciful designations written on
them, such as `Frobnitz Coil Oil'. Perhaps DRS intended Frobnitz
to be a proper name, but the name was quickly taken for the
thing". This was almost certainly the origin of the term.
:frog: alt. `phrog' 1. interj. Term of disgust (we seem to have
a lot of them). 2. Used as a name for just about anything. See
{foo}. 3. n. Of things, a crock. 4. n. Of people, somewhere
in between a turkey and a toad. 5. `froggy': adj. Similar to
`bagbiting' (see {bagbiter}), but milder. "This froggy
program is taking forever to run!"
:frogging: [University of Waterloo] v. 1. Partial corruption of a text
file or input stream by some bug or consistent glitch, as opposed
to random events like line noise or media failures. Might occur,
for example, if one bit of each incoming character on a tty were
stuck, so that some characters were correct and others were not.
See {terminak} for a historical example. 2. By extension,
accidental display of text in a mode where the output device emits
special symbols or mnemonics rather than conventional ASCII. Often
happens, for example, when using a terminal or comm program on a
device like an IBM PC with a special `high-half' character set and
with the bit-parity assumption wrong. A hacker sufficiently
familiar with ASCII bit patterns might be able to read the display
anyway.
:front end: n. 1. An intermediary computer that does set-up and
filtering for another (usually more powerful but less friendly)
machine (a `back end'). 2. What you're talking to when you
have a conversation with someone who is making replies without
paying attention. "Look at the dancing elephants!" "Uh-huh."
"Do you know what I just said?" "Sorry, you were talking to the
front end." See also {fepped out}. 3. Software that provides
an interface to another program `behind' it, which may not be as
user-friendly. Probably from analogy with hardware front-ends (see
sense 1) that interfaced with mainframes.
:frotz: /frots/ 1. n. See {frobnitz}. 2. `mumble frotz': An
interjection of very mild disgust.
:frotzed: /frotst/ adj. {down} because of hardware problems. Compare
{fried}. A machine that is merely frotzed may be fixable
without replacing parts, but a fried machine is more seriously
damaged.
:frowney: n. (alt. `frowney face') See {emoticon}.
:fry: 1. vi. To fail. Said especially of smoke-producing hardware
failures. More generally, to become non-working. Usage: never
said of software, only of hardware and humans. See {fried},
{magic smoke}. 2. vt. To cause to fail; to {roach}, {toast},
or {hose} a piece of hardware. Never used of software or humans,
but compare {fried}.
:FTP: /F-T-P/, *not* /fit'ip/ 1. [techspeak] n. The File
Transfer Protocol for transmitting files between systems on the
Internet. 2. vt. To {beam} a file using the File Transfer
Protocol. 3. Sometimes used as a generic even for file transfers
not using {FTP}. "Lemme get a copy of `Wuthering
Heights' ftp'd from uunet."
:FUBAR: n. The Failed UniBus Address Register in a VAX. A good
example of how jargon can occasionally be snuck past the {suit}s;
see {foobar}, and {foo} for a fuller etymology.
:fuck me harder: excl. Sometimes uttered in response to egregious
misbehavior, esp. in software, and esp. of misbehaviors which
seem unfairly persistent (as though designed in by the imp of the
perverse). Often theatrically elaborated: "Aiighhh! Fuck me with
a piledriver and 16 feet of curare-tipped wrought-iron fence
*and no lubricants*!" The phrase is sometimes heard
abbreviated `FMH' in polite company.
[This entry is an extreme example of the hackish habit of coining
elaborate and evocative terms for lossage. Here we see a quite
self-conscious parody of mainstream expletives that has become a
running gag in part of the hacker culture; it illustrates the
hackish tendency to turn any situation, even one of extreme
frustration, into an intellectual game (the point being, in this
case, to creatively produce a long-winded description of the
most anatomically absurd mental image possible --- the short forms
implicitly allude to all the ridiculous long forms ever spoken).
Scatological language is actually relatively uncommon among
hackers, and there was some controversy over whether this entry
ought to be included at all. As it reflects a live usage
recognizably peculiar to the hacker culture, we feel it is
in the hackish spirit of truthfulness and opposition to all
forms of censorship to record it here. --ESR & GLS]
:FUD: /fuhd/ n. Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found
his own company: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM
sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might
be considering [Amdahl] products." The idea, of course, was to
persuade them to go with safe IBM gear rather than with
competitors' equipment. This was traditionally done by promising
that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but
Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or
software. See {IBM}.
:FUD wars: /fuhd worz/ n. [from {FUD}] Political posturing engaged in
by hardware and software vendors ostensibly committed to
standardization but actually willing to fragment the market to
protect their own shares. The UNIX International vs. OSF conflict
is but one outstanding example.
:fudge: 1. vt. To perform in an incomplete but marginally acceptable
way, particularly with respect to the writing of a program. "I
didn't feel like going through that pain and suffering, so I fudged
it --- I'll fix it later." 2. n. The resulting code.
:fudge factor: n. A value or parameter that is varied in an ad hoc way
to produce the desired result. The terms `tolerance' and
{slop} are also used, though these usually indicate a one-sided
leeway, such as a buffer that is made larger than necessary
because one isn't sure exactly how large it needs to be, and it is
better to waste a little space than to lose completely for not
having enough. A fudge factor, on the other hand, can often be
tweaked in more than one direction. A good example is the `fuzz'
typically allowed in floating-point calculations: two numbers being
compared for equality must be allowed to differ by a small amount;
if that amount is too small, a computation may never terminate,
while if it is too large, results will be needlessly inaccurate.
Fudge factors are frequently adjusted incorrectly by programmers
who don't fully understand their import. See also {coefficient
of X}.
:fuel up: vi. To eat or drink hurriedly in order to get back to
hacking. "Food-p?" "Yeah, let's fuel up." "Time for a
{great-wall}!" See also {{oriental food}}.
:fuggly: /fuhg'lee/ adj. Emphatic form of {funky}; funky +
ugly). Unusually for hacker jargon, this may actually derive from
black street-jive. To say it properly, the first syllable should
be growled rather than spoken. Usage: humorous. "Man, the
{{ASCII}}-to-{{EBCDIC}} code in that printer driver is
*fuggly*." See also {wonky}.
:fum: [XEROX PARC] n. At PARC, often the third of the standard
{metasyntactic variable}s (after {foo} and {bar}. Competes
with {baz}, which is more common outside PARC.
:funky: adj. Said of something that functions, but in a slightly
strange, klugey way. It does the job and would be difficult to
change, so its obvious non-optimality is left alone. Often used to
describe interfaces. The more bugs something has that nobody has
bothered to fix because workarounds are easier, the funkier it is.
{TECO} and UUCP are funky. The Intel i860's exception handling is
extraordinarily funky. Most standards acquire funkiness as they
age. "The new mailer is installed, but is still somewhat funky;
if it bounces your mail for no reason, try resubmitting it."
"This UART is pretty funky. The data ready line is active-high in
interrupt mode and active-low in DMA mode." See {fuggly}.
:funny money: n. 1. Notional `dollar' units of computing time and/or
storage handed to students at the beginning of a computer course;
also called `play money' or `purple money' (in implicit
opposition to real or `green' money). In New Zealand and Germany
the odd usage `paper money' has been recorded; in Gremany, the
particularly amusing synonym `transfer rouble' commemmorates the
worthlessness of the ex-USSR's currency. When your funny money
ran out, your account froze and you needed to go to a professor to
get more. Fortunately, the plunging cost of timesharing cycles has
made this less common. The amounts allocated were almost
invariably too small, even for the non-hackers who wanted to slide
by with minimum work. In extreme cases, the practice led to
small-scale black markets in bootlegged computer accounts. 2. By
extension, phantom money or quantity tickets of any kind used as a
resource-allocation hack within a system. Antonym: `real
money'.
:fuzzball: [TCP/IP hackers] n. A DEC LSI-11 running a particular
suite of homebrewed software written by Dave Mills and assorted
co-conspirators, used in the early 1980s for Internet protocol
testbedding and experimentation. These were used as NSFnet
backbone sites in its early 56KB-line days; a few are still active
on the Internet as of early 1991, doing odd jobs such as network
time service.
= G =
=====
:G: [SI] pref.,suff. See {{quantifiers}}.
:gabriel: /gay'bree-*l/ [for Dick Gabriel, SAIL LISP hacker and
volleyball fanatic] n. An unnecessary (in the opinion of the
opponent) stalling tactic, e.g., tying one's shoelaces or combing
one's hair repeatedly, asking the time, etc. Also used to refer to
the perpetrator of such tactics. Also, `pulling a Gabriel',
`Gabriel mode'.
:gag: vi. Equivalent to {choke}, but connotes more disgust. "Hey,
this is FORTRAN code. No wonder the C compiler gagged." See also
{barf}.
:gang bang: n. The use of large numbers of loosely coupled
programmers in an attempt to wedge a great many features into a
product in a short time. Though there have been memorable gang
bangs (e.g., that over-the-weekend assembler port mentioned in
Steven Levy's `Hackers'), most are perpetrated by large
companies trying to meet deadlines and produce enormous buggy
masses of code entirely lacking in {orthogonal}ity. When
market-driven managers make a list of all the features the
competition has and assign one programmer to implement each, they
often miss the importance of maintaining a coherent design. See
also {firefighting}, {Mongolian Hordes technique},
{Conway's Law}.
:garbage collect: vi. (also `garbage collection', n.) See {GC}.
:garply: /gar'plee/ [Stanford] n. Another metasyntactic variable (see
{foo}); once popular among SAIL hackers.
:gas: [as in `gas chamber'] 1. interj. A term of disgust and
hatred, implying that gas should be dispensed in generous
quantities, thereby exterminating the source of irritation. "Some
loser just reloaded the system for no reason! Gas!" 2. interj. A
suggestion that someone or something ought to be flushed out of
mercy. "The system's getting {wedged} every few minutes.
Gas!" 3. vt. To {flush} (sense 1). "You should gas that old
crufty software." 4. [IBM] n. Dead space in nonsequentially
organized files that was occupied by data that has been deleted;
the compression operation that removes it is called `degassing' (by
analogy, perhaps, with the use of the same term in vacuum
technology). 5. [IBM] n. Empty space on a disk that has been
clandestinely allocated against future need.
:gaseous: adj. Deserving of being {gas}sed. Disseminated by
Geoff Goodfellow while at SRI; became particularly popular after
the Moscone-Milk killings in San Francisco, when it was learned
that the defendant Dan White (a politician who had supported
Proposition 7) would get the gas chamber under Proposition 7 if
convicted of first-degree murder (he was eventually convicted of
manslaughter).
:GC: /G-C/ [from LISP terminology; `Garbage Collect']
1. vt. To clean up and throw away useless things. "I think I'll
GC the top of my desk today." When said of files, this is
equivalent to {GFR}. 2. vt. To recycle, reclaim, or put to
another use. 3. n. An instantiation of the garbage collector
process.
`Garbage collection' is computer-science jargon for a particular
class of strategies for dynamically reallocating computer memory.
One such strategy involves periodically scanning all the data in
memory and determining what is no longer accessible; useless data
items are then discarded so that the memory they occupy can be
recycled and used for another purpose. Implementations of the LISP
language usually use garbage collection.
In jargon, the full phrase is sometimes heard but the {abbrev} is
more frequently used because it is shorter. Note that there is an
ambiguity in usage that has to be resolved by context: "I'm going
to garbage-collect my desk" usually means to clean out the
drawers, but it could also mean to throw away or recycle the desk
itself.
:GCOS:: /jee'kohs/ n. A {quick-and-dirty} {clone} of
System/360 DOS that emerged from GE around 1970; originally called
GECOS (the General Electric Comprehensive Operating System). Later
kluged to support primitive timesharing and transaction processing.
After the buyout of GE's computer division by Honeywell, the name
was changed to General Comprehensive Operating System (GCOS).
Other OS groups at Honeywell began referring to it as `God's Chosen
Operating System', allegedly in reaction to the GCOS crowd's
uninformed and snotty attitude about the superiority of their
product. All this might be of zero interest, except for two facts:
(1) The GCOS people won the political war, and this led in the
orphaning and eventual death of Honeywell {{Multics}}, and
(2) GECOS/GCOS left one permanent mark on UNIX. Some early UNIX
systems at Bell Labs used GCOS machines for print spooling and
various other services; the field added to `/etc/passwd' to
carry GCOS ID information was called the `GECOS field' and
survives today as the `pw_gecos' member used for the user's
full name and other human-ID information. GCOS later played a
major role in keeping Honeywell a dismal also-ran in the mainframe
market, and was itself ditched for UNIX in the late 1980s when
Honeywell retired its aging {big iron} designs.
:GECOS:: /jee'kohs/ n. See {{GCOS}}.
:gedanken: /g*-don'kn/ adj. Ungrounded; impractical; not
well-thought-out; untried; untested. `Gedanken' is a German word
for `thought'. A thought experiment is one you carry out in your
head. In physics, the term `gedanken experiment' is used to
refer to an experiment that is impractical to carry out, but useful
to consider because you can reason about it theoretically. (A
classic gedanken experiment of relativity theory involves thinking
about a man in an elevator accelerating through space.) Gedanken
experiments are very useful in physics, but you have to be careful.
It's too easy to idealize away some important aspect of the real
world in contructing your `apparatus'.
Among hackers, accordingly, the word has a pejorative connotation.
It is said of a project, especially one in artificial intelligence
research, that is written up in grand detail (typically as a Ph.D.
thesis) without ever being implemented to any great extent. Such a
project is usually perpetrated by people who aren't very good
hackers or find programming distasteful or are just in a hurry. A
`gedanken thesis' is usually marked by an obvious lack of
intuition about what is programmable and what is not, and about
what does and does not constitute a clear specification of an
algorithm. See also {AI-complete}, {DWIM}.
:geef: v. [ostensibly from `gefingerpoken'] vt. Syn. {mung}. See
also {blinkenlights}.
:geek out: vi. To temporarily enter techno-nerd mode while in a
non-hackish context, for example at parties held near computer
equipment. Especially used when you need to do something highly
technical and don't have time to explain: "Pardon me while I geek
out for a moment." See {computer geek}.
:gen: /jen/ n.,v. Short for {generate}, used frequently in both spoken
and written contexts.
:gender mender: n. A cable connector shell with either two male or two
female connectors on it, used to correct the mismatches that result
when some {loser} didn't understand the RS232C specification and
the distinction between DTE and DCE. Used esp. for RS-232C
parts in either the original D-25 or the IBM PC's bogus D-9 format.
Also called `gender bender', `gender blender', `sex
changer', and even `homosexual adapter'; however, there appears
to be some confusion as to whether a `male homosexual adapter' has
pins on both sides (is male) or sockets on both sides (connects two
males).
:General Public Virus: n. Pejorative name for some versions of the
{GNU} project {copyleft} or General Public License (GPL), which
requires that any tools or {app}s incorporating copylefted code
must be source-distributed on the same counter-commercial terms as
GNU stuff. Thus it is alleged that the copyleft `infects' software
generated with GNU tools, which may in turn infect other software
that reuses any of its code. The Free Software Foundation's
official position as of January 1991 is that copyright law limits
the scope of the GPL to "programs textually incorporating
significant amounts of GNU code", and that the `infection' is not
passed on to third parties unless actual GNU source is transmitted
(as in, for example, use of the Bison parser skeleton).
Nevertheless, widespread suspicion that the {copyleft} language
is `boobytrapped' has caused many developers to avoid using GNU
tools and the GPL. Recent (July 1991) changes in the language of
the version 2.00 license may eliminate this problem.
:generate: vt. To produce something according to an algorithm or
program or set of rules, or as a (possibly unintended) side effect
of the execution of an algorithm or program. The opposite of
{parse}. This term retains its mechanistic connotations (though
often humorously) when used of human behavior. "The guy is
rational most of the time, but mention nuclear energy around him
and he'll generate {infinite} flamage."
:gensym: /jen'sim/ [from MacLISP for `generated symbol'] 1. v.
To invent a new name for something temporary, in such a way that
the name is almost certainly not in conflict with one already in
use. 2. n. The resulting name. The canonical form of a gensym is
`Gnnnn' where nnnn represents a number; any LISP hacker would
recognize G0093 (for example) as a gensym. 3. A freshly generated
data structure with a gensymmed name. These are useful for storing
or uniquely identifying crufties (see {cruft}).
:Get a life!: imp. Hacker-standard way of suggesting that the person
to whom you are speaking has succumbed to terminal geekdom (see
{computer geek}). Often heard on {USENET}, esp. as a way of
suggesting that the target is taking some obscure issue of
{theology} too seriously. This exhortation was popularized by
William Shatner on a "Saturday Night Live" episode in a speech that
ended "Get a *life*!", but some respondents believe it to
have been in use before then. It was certainly in wide use among
hackers for at least five years before achieving mainstream
currency around early 1992.
:Get a real computer!: imp. Typical hacker response to news that
somebody is having trouble getting work done on a system that
(a) is single-tasking, (b) has no hard disk, or (c) has an address
space smaller than 4 megabytes. This is as of mid-1991; note that
the threshold for `real computer' rises with time, and it may well
be (for example) that machines with character-only displays will be
generally considered `unreal' in a few years (GLS points out that
they already are in some circles). See {essentials}, {bitty
box}, and {toy}.
:GFR: /G-F-R/ vt. [ITS] From `Grim File Reaper', an ITS and Lisp
Machine utility. To remove a file or files according to some
program-automated or semi-automatic manual procedure, especially
one designed to reclaim mass storage space or reduce name-space
clutter (the original GFR actually moved files to tape). Often
generalized to pieces of data below file level. "I used to have
his phone number, but I guess I {GFR}ed it." See also
{prowler}, {reaper}. Compare {GC}, which discards only
provably worthless stuff.
:gig: /jig/ or /gig/ [SI] n. See {{quantifiers}}.
:giga-: /ji'ga/ or /gi'ga/ [SI] pref. See {{quantifiers}}.
:GIGO: /gi:'goh/ [acronym] 1. `Garbage In, Garbage Out' ---
usually said in response to {luser}s who complain that a program
didn't complain about faulty data. Also commonly used to describe
failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or
imprecise data. 2. `Garbage In, Gospel Out': this more recent
expansion is a sardonic comment on the tendency human beings have
to put excessive trust in `computerized' data.
:gilley: [USENET] n. The unit of analogical bogosity. According to
its originator, the standard for one gilley was "the act of
bogotoficiously comparing the shutting down of 1000 machines for a
day with the killing of one person". The milligilley has been
found to suffice for most normal conversational exchanges.
:gillion: /gil'y*n/ or /jil'y*n/ [formed from {giga-} by analogy
with mega/million and tera/trillion] n. 10^9. Same as an
American billion or a British `milliard'. How one pronounces
this depends on whether one speaks {giga-} with a hard or
soft `g'.
:GIPS: /gips/ or /jips/ [analogy with {MIPS}] n.
Giga-Instructions per Second (also possibly `Gillions of
Instructions per Second'; see {gillion}). In 1991, this is used
of only a handful of highly parallel machines, but this is expected
to change. Compare {KIPS}.
:glark: /glark/ vt. To figure something out from context. "The
System III manuals are pretty poor, but you can generally glark the
meaning from context." Interestingly, the word was originally
`glork'; the context was "This gubblick contains many
nonsklarkish English flutzpahs, but the overall pluggandisp can be
glorked [sic] from context" (David Moser, quoted by Douglas
Hofstadter in his "Metamagical Themas" column in the
January 1981 `Scientific American'). It is conjectured that
hackish usage mutated the verb to `glark' because {glork} was
already an established jargon term. Compare {grok},
{zen}.
:glass: [IBM] n. Synonym for {silicon}.
:glass tty: /glas T-T-Y/ or /glas ti'tee/ n. A terminal that
has a display screen but which, because of hardware or software
limitations, behaves like a teletype or some other printing
terminal, thereby combining the disadvantages of both: like a
printing terminal, it can't do fancy display hacks, and like a
display terminal, it doesn't produce hard copy. An example is the
early `dumb' version of Lear-Siegler ADM 3 (without cursor
control). See {tube}, {tty}; compare {dumb terminal}, {smart
terminal}. See "{TV Typewriters}" (appendix A) for an
interesting true story about a glass tty.
:glassfet: /glas'fet/ [by analogy with MOSFET, the acronym for
`Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor'] n. Syn.
{firebottle}, a humorous way to refer to a vacuum tube.
:glitch: /glich/ [from German `glitschen' to slip, via Yiddish
`glitshen', to slide or skid] 1. n. A sudden interruption in
electric service, sanity, continuity, or program function.
Sometimes recoverable. An interruption in electric service is
specifically called a `power glitch' (also {power hit}). This
is of grave concern because it usually crashes all the computers.
In jargon, though, a hacker who got to the middle of a sentence and
then forgot how he or she intended to complete it might say,
"Sorry, I just glitched". 2. vi. To commit a glitch. See
{gritch}. 3. vt. [Stanford] To scroll a display screen, esp.
several lines at a time. {{WAITS}} terminals used to do this in
order to avoid continuous scrolling, which is distracting to the
eye. 4. obs. Same as {magic cookie}, sense 2.
All these uses of `glitch' derive from the specific technical
meaning the term has in the electronic hardware world, where it is
now techspeak. A glitch can occur when the inputs of a circuit
change, and the outputs change to some {random} value for some
very brief time before they settle down to the correct value. If
another circuit inspects the output at just the wrong time, reading
the random value, the results can be very wrong and very hard to
debug (a glitch is one of many causes of electronic {heisenbug}s).
:glob: /glob/, *not* /glohb/ [UNIX] vt.,n. To expand
special characters in a wildcarded name, or the act of so doing
(the action is also called `globbing'). The UNIX conventions for
filename wildcarding have become sufficiently pervasive that many
hackers use some of them in written English, especially in email or
news on technical topics. Those commonly encountered include the
following:
*
wildcard for any string (see also {UN*X})
?
wildcard for any character (generally read this way only at
the beginning or in the middle of a word)
[]
delimits a wildcard matching any of the enclosed characters
{}
alternation of comma-separated alternatives; thus,
`foo{baz,qux}' would be read as `foobaz' or `fooqux'
Some examples: "He said his name was [KC]arl" (expresses
ambiguity). "I don't read talk.politics.*" (any of the
talk.politics subgroups on {USENET}). Other examples are given
under the entry for {X}. Compare {regexp}.
Historical note: The jargon usage derives from `glob', the
name of a subprogram that expanded wildcards in archaic pre-Bourne
versions of the UNIX shell.
:glork: /glork/ 1. interj. Term of mild surprise, usually tinged with
outrage, as when one attempts to save the results of 2 hours of
editing and finds that the system has just crashed. 2. Used as a
name for just about anything. See {foo}. 3. vt. Similar to
{glitch}, but usually used reflexively. "My program just glorked
itself." See also {glark}.
:glue: n. Generic term for any interface logic or protocol that
connects two component blocks. For example, {Blue
Glue} is IBM's SNA protocol, and hardware designers call anything
used to connect large VLSI's or circuit blocks `glue logic'.
:gnarly: /nar'lee/ adj. Both {obscure} and {hairy} in the
sense of complex. "{Yow!} --- the tuned assembler
implementation of BitBlt is really gnarly!" From a similar but
less specific usage in surfer slang.
:GNU: /gnoo/, *not* /noo/ 1. [acronym: `GNU's Not UNIX!',
see {{recursive acronym}}] A UNIX-workalike development effort of
the Free Software Foundation headed by Richard Stallman
<rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu>. GNU EMACS and the GNU C compiler, two tools
designed for this project, have become very popular in hackerdom
and elsewhere. The GNU project was designed partly to proselytize
for RMS's position that information is community property and all
software source should be shared. One of its slogans is "Help
stamp out software hoarding!" Though this remains controversial
(because it implicitly denies any right of designers to own,
assign, and sell the results of their labors), many hackers who
disagree with RMS have nevertheless cooperated to produce large
amounts of high-quality software for free redistribution under the
Free Software Foundation's imprimatur. See {EMACS},
{copyleft}, {General Public Virus}. 2. Noted UNIX hacker
John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>, founder of USENET's anarchic alt.*
hierarchy.
:GNUMACS: /gnoo'maks/ [contraction of `GNU EMACS'] Often-heard
abbreviated name for the {GNU} project's flagship tool, {EMACS}.
Used esp. in contrast with {GOSMACS}.
:go flatline: [from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG
traces upon brain-death] vi., also adjectival `flatlined'. 1. To
{die}, terminate, or fail, esp. irreversibly. In hacker
parlance, this is used of machines only, human death being
considered somewhat too serious a matter to employ jargon-jokes
about. 2. To go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing
controlled shutdown. "You can suffer file damage if you shut down
UNIX but power off before the system has gone flatline." 3. Of a
video tube, to fail by losing vertical scan, so all one sees is a
bright horizontal line bisecting the screen.
:go root: [UNIX] vi. To temporarily enter {root mode} in order
to perform a privileged operation. This use is deprecated in
Australia, where v. `root' refers to animal sex.
:go-faster stripes: [UK] Syn. {chrome}.
:gobble: vt. To consume or to obtain. The phrase `gobble up' tends to
imply `consume', while `gobble down' tends to imply `obtain'.
"The output spy gobbles characters out of a {tty} output buffer."
"I guess I'll gobble down a copy of the documentation tomorrow."
See also {snarf}.
:Godzillagram: /god-zil'*-gram/ n. [from Japan's national hero]
1. A network packet that in theory is a broadcast to every machine
in the universe. The typical case of this is an IP datagram whose
destination IP address is [255.255.255.255]. Fortunately, few
gateways are foolish enough to attempt to implement this! 2. A
network packet of maximum size. An IP Godzillagram has
65,536 octets.
:golden: adj. [prob. from folklore's `golden egg'] When used to
describe a magnetic medium (e.g., `golden disk', `golden tape'),
describes one containing a tested, up-to-spec, ready-to-ship
software version. Compare {platinum-iridium}.
:golf-ball printer: n. The IBM 2741, a slow but letter-quality
printing device and terminal based on the IBM Selectric typewriter.
The `golf ball' was a round object bearing reversed embossed
images of 88 different characters arranged on four meridians of
latitude; one could change the font by swapping in a different golf
ball. This was the technology that enabled APL to use a
non-EBCDIC, non-ASCII, and in fact completely non-standard
character set. This put it 10 years ahead of its time --- where it
stayed, firmly rooted, for the next 20, until character displays
gave way to programmable bit-mapped devices with the flexibility to
support other character sets.
:gonk: /gonk/ vt.,n. 1. To prevaricate or to embellish the truth
beyond any reasonable recognition. It is alleged that in German
the term is (mythically) `gonken'; in Spanish the verb becomes
`gonkar'. "You're gonking me. That story you just told me is a
bunch of gonk." In German, for example, "Du gonkst mir" (You're
pulling my leg). See also {gonkulator}. 2. [British] To grab some
sleep at an odd time; compare {gronk out}.
:gonkulator: /gon'kyoo-lay-tr/ [from the old "Hogan's Heroes" TV
series] n. A pretentious piece of equipment that actually serves no
useful purpose. Usually used to describe one's least favorite
piece of computer hardware. See {gonk}.
:gonzo: /gon'zoh/ [from Hunter S. Thompson] adj. Overwhelming;
outrageous; over the top; very large, esp. used of collections of
source code, source files, or individual functions. Has some of
the connotations of {moby} and {hairy}, but without the
implication of obscurity or complexity.
:Good Thing: n.,adj. Often capitalized; always pronounced as if
capitalized. 1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a position
to notice: "The Trailblazer's 19.2Kbaud PEP mode with on-the-fly
Lempel-Ziv compression is a Good Thing for sites relaying
netnews." 2. Something that can't possibly have any ill
side-effects and may save considerable grief later: "Removing the
self-modifying code from that shared library would be a Good
Thing." 3. When said of software tools or libraries, as in "YACC
is a Good Thing", specifically connotes that the thing has
drastically reduced a programmer's work load. Oppose {Bad
Thing}.
:gorilla arm: n. The side-effect that destroyed touch-screens as a
mainstream input technology despite a promising start in the early
1980s. It seems the designers of all those {spiffy} touch-menu
systems failed to notice that humans aren't designed to hold their
arms in front of their faces making small motions. After more than
a very few selections, the arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and
oversized; hence `gorilla arm'. This is now considered a classic
cautionary tale to human-factors designers; "Remember the gorilla
arm!" is shorthand for "How is this going to fly in *real*
use?".
:gorp: /gorp/ [CMU: perhaps from the canonical hiker's food, Good
Old Raisins and Peanuts] Another {metasyntactic variable}, like
{foo} and {bar}.
:GOSMACS: /goz'maks/ [contraction of `Gosling EMACS'] n. The first
{EMACS}-in-C implementation, predating but now largely eclipsed by
{GNUMACS}. Originally freeware; a commercial version is now
modestly popular as `UniPress EMACS'. The author (James Gosling)
went on to invent {NeWS}.
:Gosperism: /gos'p*r-izm/ A hack, invention, or saying by
arch-hacker R. William (Bill) Gosper. This notion merits its own
term because there are so many of them. Many of the entries in
{HAKMEM} are Gosperisms; see also {life}.
:gotcha: n. A {misfeature} of a system, especially a programming
language or environment, that tends to breed bugs or mistakes
because it behaves in an unexpected way. For example, a classic
gotcha in {C} is the fact that `if (a=b) {code;}' is
syntactically valid and sometimes even correct. It puts the value
of `b' into `a' and then executes `code' if
`a' is non-zero. What the programmer probably meant was
`if (a==b) {code;}', which executes `code' if
`a' and `b' are equal.
:GPL: /G-P-L/ n. Abbrev. for `General Public License' in
widespread use; see {copyleft}.
:GPV: /G-P-V/ n. Abbrev. for {General Public Virus} in
widespread use.
:grault: /grawlt/ n. Yet another {metasyntactic variable}, invented by
Mike Gallaher and propagated by the {GOSMACS} documentation. See
{corge}.
:gray goo: n. A hypothetical substance composed of {sagan}s of
sub-micron-sized self-replicating robots programmed to make copies
of themselves out of whatever is available. The image that goes
with the term is one of the entire biosphere of Earth being
eventually converted to robot goo. This is the simplest of the
{{nanotechnology}} disaster scenarios, easily refuted by arguments
from energy requirements and elemental abundances. Compare {blue
goo}.
:Great Renaming: n. The {flag day} on which all of the non-local
groups on the {USENET} had their names changed from the net.-
format to the current multiple-hierarchies scheme.
:Great Runes: n. Uppercase-only text or display messages. Some
archaic operating systems still emit these. See also {runes},
{smash case}, {fold case}.
Decades ago, back in the days when it was the sole supplier of
long-distance hardcopy transmittal devices, the Teletype
Corporation was faced with a major design choice. To shorten code
lengths and cut complexity in the printing mechanism, it had been
decided that teletypes would use a monocase font, either ALL UPPER
or all lower. The question was, which one to choose. A study was
conducted on readability under various conditions of bad ribbon,
worn print hammers, etc. Lowercase won; it is less dense and has
more distinctive letterforms, and is thus much easier to read both
under ideal conditions and when the letters are mangled or partly
obscured. The results were filtered up through {management}.
The chairman of Teletype killed the proposal because it failed one
incredibly important criterion:
"It would be impossible to spell the name of the Deity
correctly."
In this way (or so, at least, hacker folklore has it) superstition
triumphed over utility. Teletypes were the major input devices on
most early computers, and terminal manufacturers looking for
corners to cut naturally followed suit until well into the 1970s.
Thus, that one bad call stuck us with Great Runes for thirty years.
:Great Worm, the: n. The 1988 Internet {worm} perpetrated by
{RTM}. This is a play on Tolkien (compare {elvish},
{Elder Days}). In the fantasy history of his Middle Earth
books, there were dragons powerful enough to lay waste to entire
regions; two of these (Scatha and Glaurung) were known as "the
Great Worms". This usage expresses the connotation that the RTM
hack was a sort of devastating watershed event in hackish history;
certainly it did more to make non-hackers nervous about the
Internet than anything before or since.
:great-wall: [from SF fandom] vi.,n. A mass expedition to an
oriental restaurant, esp. one where food is served family-style
and shared. There is a common heuristic about the amount of food
to order, expressed as "Get N - 1 entrees"; the value of N,
which is the number of people in the group, can be inferred from
context (see {N}). See {{oriental food}}, {ravs},
{stir-fried random}.
:Green Book: n. 1. One of the three standard {PostScript}
references: `PostScript Language Program Design', bylined
`Adobe Systems' (Addison-Wesley, 1988; QA76.73.P67P66 ISBN;
0-201-14396-8); see also {Red Book}, {Blue Book}, and the
{White Book} (sense 2)). 2. Informal name for one of the three
standard references on SmallTalk: `Smalltalk-80: Bits of
History, Words of Advice', by Glenn Krasner (Addison-Wesley, 1983;
QA76.8.S635S58; ISBN 0-201-11669-3) (this, too, is associated with
blue and red books). 3. The `X/Open Compatibility Guide'.
Defines an international standard {{UNIX}} environment that is a
proper superset of POSIX/SVID; also includes descriptions of a
standard utility toolkit, systems administrations features, and the
like. This grimoire is taken with particular seriousness in
Europe. See {Purple Book}. 4. The IEEE 1003.1 POSIX Operating
Systems Interface standard has been dubbed "The Ugly Green Book".
5. Any of the 1992 standards which will be issued by the CCITT's
tenth plenary assembly. Until now, these have changed color each
review cycle (1984 was {Red Book}, 1988 {Blue Book});
however, it is rumored that this convention is going to be dropped
before 1992. These include, among other things, the X.400 email
standard and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also
{{book titles}}.
:green bytes: n. (also `green words') 1. Meta-information
embedded in a file, such as the length of the file or its name; as
opposed to keeping such information in a separate description file
or record. The term comes from an IBM user's group meeting
(ca. 1962) at which these two approaches were being debated and the
diagram of the file on the blackboard had the `green bytes' drawn
in green. 2. By extension, the non-data bits in any
self-describing format. "A GIF file contains, among other things,
green bytes describing the packing method for the image." Compare
{out-of-band}, {zigamorph}, {fence} (sense 1).
:green card: n. [after the `IBM System/360 Reference Data'
card] This is used for any summary of an assembly language, even if
the color is not green. Less frequently used now because of the
decrease in the use of assembly language. "I'll go get my green
card so I can check the addressing mode for that instruction."
Some green cards are actually booklets.
The original green card became a yellow card when the System/370
was introduced, and later a yellow booklet. An anecdote from IBM
refers to a scene that took place in a programmers' terminal room
at Yorktown in 1978. A luser overheard one of the programmers ask
another "Do you have a green card?" The other grunted and
passed the first a thick yellow booklet. At this point the luser
turned a delicate shade of olive and rapidly left the room, never
to return. See also {card}.
:green lightning: [IBM] n. 1. Apparently random flashing streaks on
the face of 3278-9 terminals while a new symbol set is being
downloaded. This hardware bug was left deliberately unfixed, as
some genius within IBM suggested it would let the user know that
`something is happening'. That, it certainly does. Later
microprocessor-driven IBM color graphics displays were actually
*programmed* to produce green lightning! 2. [proposed] Any
bug perverted into an alleged feature by adroit rationalization or
marketing. "Motorola calls the CISC cruft in the 88000
architecture `compatibility logic', but I call it green
lightning". See also {feature}.
:green machine: n. A computer or peripheral device that has been
designed and built to military specifications for field equipment
(that is, to withstand mechanical shock, extremes of temperature
and humidity, and so forth). Comes from the olive-drab `uniform'
paint used for military equipment.
:Green's Theorem: [TMRC] prov. For any story, in any group of people
there will be at least one person who has not heard the story.
[The name of this theorem is a play on a fundamental theorem in
calculus. --- ESR]
:grep: /grep/ [from the qed/ed editor idiom g/re/p , where
re stands for a regular expression, to Globally search for the
Regular Expression and Print the lines containing matches to it,
via {{UNIX}} `grep(1)'] vt. To rapidly scan a file or set of
files looking for a particular string or pattern (when browsing
through a large set of files, one may speak of `grepping
around'). By extension, to look for something by pattern. "Grep
the bulletin board for the system backup schedule, would you?"
See also {vgrep}.
:grind: vt. 1. [MIT and Berkeley] To format code, especially LISP
code, by indenting lines so that it looks pretty. This usage was
associated with the MacLISP community and is now rare;
{prettyprint} was and is the generic term for such
operations. 2. [UNIX] To generate the formatted version of a
document from the nroff, troff, TeX, or Scribe source. The BSD
program `vgrind(1)' grinds code for printing on a Versatec
bitmapped printer. 3. To run seemingly interminably, esp. (but
not necessarily) if performing some tedious and inherently useless
task. Similar to {crunch} or {grovel}. Grinding has a
connotation of using a lot of CPU time, but it is possible to grind
a disk, network, etc. See also {hog}. 4. To make the whole
system slow. "Troff really grinds a PDP-11." 5. `grind grind'
excl. Roughly, "Isn't the machine slow today!"
:grind crank: n. A mythical accessory to a terminal. A crank on the
side of a monitor, which when operated makes a zizzing noise and
causes the computer to run faster. Usually one does not refer to a
grind crank out loud, but merely makes the appropriate gesture and
noise. See {grind} and {wugga wugga}.
Historical note: At least one real machine actually had a grind
crank --- the R1, a research machine built toward the end of the
days of the great vacuum tube computers, in 1959. R1 (also known
as `The Rice Institute Computer' (TRIC) and later as `The Rice
University Computer' (TRUC)) had a single-step/free-run switch for
use when debugging programs. Since single-stepping through a large
program was rather tedious, there was also a crank with a cam and
gear arrangement that repeatedly pushed the single-step button.
This allowed one to `crank' through a lot of code, then slow
down to single-step for a bit when you got near the code of
interest, poke at some registers using the console typewriter, and
then keep on cranking.
:gripenet: [IBM] n. A wry (and thoroughly unoffical) name for IBM's
internal VNET system, deriving from its common use by IBMers to
voice pointed criticism of IBM management that would be taboo in
more formal channels.
:gritch: /grich/ 1. n. A complaint (often caused by a {glitch}).
2. vi. To complain. Often verb-doubled: "Gritch gritch". 3. A
synonym for {glitch} (as verb or noun).
:grok: /grok/, var. /grohk/ [from the novel `Stranger in
a Strange Land', by Robert A. Heinlein, where it is a Martian word
meaning literally `to drink' and metaphorically `to be one
with'] vt. 1. To understand, usually in a global sense. Connotes
intimate and exhaustive knowledge. Contrast {zen}, similar
supernal understanding as a single brief flash. See also
{glark}. 2. Used of programs, may connote merely sufficient
understanding. "Almost all C compilers grok the `void' type
these days."
:gronk: /gronk/ [popularized by Johnny Hart's comic strip
"B.C." but the word apparently predates that] vt. 1. To
clear the state of a wedged device and restart it. More severe
than `to {frob}'. 2. [TMRC] To cut, sever, smash, or
similarly disable. 3. The sound made by many 3.5-inch diskette
drives. In particular, the microfloppies on a Commodore Amiga go
"grink, gronk".
:gronk out: vi. To cease functioning. Of people, to go home and go
to sleep. "I guess I'll gronk out now; see you all tomorrow."
:gronked: adj. 1. Broken. "The teletype scanner was gronked, so
we took the system down." 2. Of people, the condition of feeling
very tired or (less commonly) sick. "I've been chasing that bug
for 17 hours now and I am thoroughly gronked!" Compare
{broken}, which means about the same as {gronk} used of
hardware, but connotes depression or mental/emotional problems in
people.
:grovel: vi. 1. To work interminably and without apparent progress.
Often used transitively with `over' or `through'. "The file
scavenger has been groveling through the file directories for 10
minutes now." Compare {grind} and {crunch}. Emphatic form:
`grovel obscenely'. 2. To examine minutely or in complete detail.
"The compiler grovels over the entire source program before
beginning to translate it." "I grovelled through all the
documentation, but I still couldn't find the command I wanted."
:grunge: /gruhnj/ n. 1. That which is grungy, or that which makes
it so. 2. [Cambridge] Code which is inaccessible due to changes in
other parts of the program. The preferred term in North America is
{dead code}.
:gubbish: /guhb'*sh/ [a portmanteau of `garbage' and `rubbish'?]
n. Garbage; crap; nonsense. "What is all this gubbish?" The
opposite portmanteau `rubbage' is also reported.
:guiltware: /gilt'weir/ n. 1. A piece of {freeware} decorated
with a message telling one how long and hard the author worked on
it and intimating that one is a no-good freeloader if one does not
immediately send the poor suffering martyr gobs of money.
2. {Shareware} that works.
:gumby: /guhm'bee/ [from a class of Monty Python characters,
poss. with some influence from the 1960s claymation character] n.
An act of minor but conspicuous stupidity, often in `gumby
maneuver' or `pull a gumby'.
:gun: [ITS: from the `:GUN' command] vt. To forcibly
terminate a program or job (computer, not career). "Some idiot
left a background process running soaking up half the cycles, so I
gunned it." Compare {can}.
:gunch: /guhnch/ [TMRC] vt. To push, prod, or poke at a device
that has almost produced the desired result. Implies a threat to
{mung}.
:gurfle: /ger'fl/ interj. An expression of shocked disbelief. "He
said we have to recode this thing in FORTRAN by next week.
Gurfle!" Compare {weeble}.
:guru: n. [UNIX] An expert. Implies not only {wizard} skill but
also a history of being a knowledge resource for others. Less
often, used (with a qualifier) for other experts on other systems,
as in `VMS guru'. See {source of all good bits}.
:guru meditation: n. Amiga equivalent of `panic' in UNIX
(sometimes just called a `guru' or `guru event'). When the
system crashes, a cryptic message "GURU MEDITATION
#XXXXXXXX.YYYYYYYY" appears, indicating what the problem was. An
Amiga guru can figure things out from the numbers. Generally a
{guru} event must be followed by a {Vulcan nerve pinch}.
This term is (no surprise) an in-joke from the earliest days of the
Amiga. There used to be a device called a `Joyboard' which was
basically a plastic board built onto on a joystick-like device; it
was sold with a skiing game cartridge for the Atari game machine.
It is said that whenever the prototype OS crashed, the system
programmer responsible would calm down by concentrating on a
solution while sitting cross-legged on a Joyboard trying to keep
the board in balance. This position resembled that of a
meditating guru. Sadly, the joke was removed in AmigaOS 2.04.
:gweep: /gweep/ [WPI] 1. v. To {hack}, usually at night. At
WPI, from 1977 onwards, this often indicated that the speaker could
be found at the College Computing Center punching cards or crashing
the {PDP-10} or, later, the DEC-20; the term has survived the
demise of those technologies, however, and is still live in late
1991. "I'm going to go gweep for a while. See you in the
morning" "I gweep from 8pm till 3am during the week." 2. n. One
who habitually gweeps in sense 1; a {hacker}. "He's a
hard-core gweep, mumbles code in his sleep."
= H =
=====
:h: [from SF fandom] infix. A method of `marking' common words,
i.e., calling attention to the fact that they are being used in a
nonstandard, ironic, or humorous way. Originated in the fannish
catchphrase "Bheer is the One True Ghod!" from decades ago.
H-infix marking of `Ghod' and other words spread into the 1960s
counterculture via underground comix, and into early hackerdom
either from the counterculture or from SF fandom (the three
overlapped heavily at the time). More recently, the h infix has
become an expected feature of benchmark names (Dhrystone,
Rhealstone, etc.); this is prob. patterning on the original
Whetstone (the name of a laboratory) but influenced by the
fannish/counterculture h infix.
:ha ha only serious: [from SF fandom, orig. as mutation of HHOK,
`Ha Ha Only Kidding'] A phrase (often seen abbreviated as HHOS)
that aptly captures the flavor of much hacker discourse. Applied
especially to parodies, absurdities, and ironic jokes that are both
intended and perceived to contain a possibly disquieting amount of
truth, or truths that are constructed on in-joke and self-parody.
This lexicon contains many examples of ha-ha-only-serious in both
form and content. Indeed, the entirety of hacker culture is often
perceived as ha-ha-only-serious by hackers themselves; to take it
either too lightly or too seriously marks a person as an outsider,
a {wannabee}, or in {larval stage}. For further
enlightenment on this subject, consult any Zen master. See also
{{Humor, Hacker}}, and {AI koans}.
:hack: 1. n. Originally, a quick job that produces what is needed,
but not well. 2. n. An incredibly good, and perhaps very
time-consuming, piece of work that produces exactly what is needed.
3. vt. To bear emotionally or physically. "I can't hack this
heat!" 4. vt. To work on something (typically a program). In an
immediate sense: "What are you doing?" "I'm hacking TECO."
In a general (time-extended) sense: "What do you do around here?"
"I hack TECO." More generally, "I hack `foo'" is roughly
equivalent to "`foo' is my major interest (or project)". "I
hack solid-state physics." 5. vt. To pull a prank on. See
sense 2 and {hacker} (sense 5). 6. vi. To interact with a
computer in a playful and exploratory rather than goal-directed
way. "Whatcha up to?" "Oh, just hacking." 7. n. Short for
{hacker}. 8. See {nethack}. 9. [MIT] v. To explore
the basements, roof ledges, and steam tunnels of a large,
institutional building, to the dismay of Physical Plant workers and
(since this is usually performed at educational institutions) the
Campus Police. This activity has been found to be eerily similar
to playing adventure games such as Dungeons and Dragons and {Zork}.
See also {vadding}.
Constructions on this term abound. They include `happy hacking'
(a farewell), `how's hacking?' (a friendly greeting among
hackers) and `hack, hack' (a fairly content-free but friendly
comment, often used as a temporary farewell). For more on this
totipotent term see "{The Meaning of `Hack'}". See
also {neat hack}, {real hack}.
:hack attack: [poss. by analogy with `Big Mac Attack' from ads
for the McDonald's fast-food chain; the variant `big hack attack'
is reported] n. Nearly synonymous with {hacking run}, though the
latter more strongly implies an all-nighter.
:hack mode: n. 1. What one is in when hacking, of course. 2. More
specifically, a Zen-like state of total focus on The Problem that
may be achieved when one is hacking (this is why every good hacker
is part mystic). Ability to enter such concentration at will
correlates strongly with wizardliness; it is one of the most
important skills learned during {larval stage}. Sometimes
amplified as `deep hack mode'.
Being yanked out of hack mode (see {priority interrupt}) may be
experienced as a physical shock, and the sensation of being in it
is more than a little habituating. The intensity of this
experience is probably by itself sufficient explanation for the
existence of hackers, and explains why many resist being promoted
out of positions where they can code. See also {cyberspace}
(sense 2).
Some aspects of hackish etiquette will appear quite odd to an
observer unaware of the high value placed on hack mode. For
example, if someone appears at your door, it is perfectly okay to
hold up a hand (without turning one's eyes away from the screen) to
avoid being interrupted. One may read, type, and interact with the
computer for quite some time before further acknowledging the
other's presence (of course, he or she is reciprocally free to
leave without a word). The understanding is that you might be in
{hack mode} with a lot of delicate {state} (sense 2) in your
head, and you dare not {swap} that context out until you have
reached a good point to pause. See also {juggling eggs}.
:hack on: vt. To {hack}; implies that the subject is some
pre-existing hunk of code that one is evolving, as opposed to
something one might {hack up}.
:hack together: vt. To throw something together so it will work.
Unlike `kluge together' or {cruft together}, this does not
necessarily have negative connotations.
:hack up: vt. To {hack}, but generally implies that the result is
a hack in sense 1 (a quick hack). Contrast this with {hack on}.
To `hack up on' implies a {quick-and-dirty} modification to an
existing system. Contrast {hacked up}; compare {kluge up},
{monkey up}, {cruft together}.
:hack value: n. Often adduced as the reason or motivation for
expending effort toward a seemingly useless goal, the point being
that the accomplished goal is a hack. For example, MacLISP had
features for reading and printing Roman numerals, which were
installed purely for hack value. See {display hack} for one
method of computing hack value, but this cannot really be
explained. As a great artist once said of jazz: "If you hafta ask,
you ain't never goin' to find out."
:hack-and-slay: v. (also `hack-and-slash') 1. To play a {MUD}
or go mudding, especially with the intention of {berserking} for
pleasure. 2. To undertake an all-night programming/hacking
session, interspersed with stints of mudding as a change of pace.
This term arose on the British academic network amongst students
who worked nights and logged onto Essex University's MUDs during
public-access hours (2 A.M. to 7 A.M.). Usually more
mudding than work was done in these sessions.
:hacked off: [analogous to `pissed off'] adj. Said of system
administrators who have become annoyed, upset, or touchy owing to
suspicions that their sites have been or are going to be victimized
by crackers, or used for inappropriate, technically illegal, or
even overtly criminal activities. For example, having unreadable
files in your home directory called `worm', `lockpick', or `goroot'
would probably be an effective (as well as impressively obvious and
stupid) way to get your sysadmin hacked off at you.
:hacked up: adj. Sufficiently patched, kluged, and tweaked that the
surgical scars are beginning to crowd out normal tissue (compare
{critical mass}). Not all programs that are hacked become
`hacked up'; if modifications are done with some eye to coherence
and continued maintainability, the software may emerge better for
the experience. Contrast {hack up}.
:hacker: [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] n.
1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable
systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most
users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who
programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys
programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A
person capable of appreciating {hack value}. 4. A person who is
good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program,
or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a UNIX
hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who
fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One
might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the
intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing
limitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to
discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `password
hacker', `network hacker'. See {cracker}.
The term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the global
community defined by the net (see {network, the} and
{Internet address}). It also implies that the person described
is seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic (see
{hacker ethic, the}.
It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describe
oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something of an
elite (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which new
members are gladly welcome. There is thus a certain ego
satisfaction to be had in identifying yourself as a hacker (but if
you claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labeled
{bogus}). See also {wannabee}.
:hacker ethic, the: n. 1. The belief that information-sharing
is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of
hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and
facilitating access to information and to computing resources
wherever possible. 2. The belief that system-cracking for fun
and exploration is ethically OK as long as the cracker commits
no theft, vandalism, or breach of confidentiality.
Both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but by no
means universally) accepted among hackers. Most hackers subscribe
to the hacker ethic in sense 1, and many act on it by writing and
giving away free software. A few go further and assert that
*all* information should be free and *any* proprietary
control of it is bad; this is the philosophy behind the {GNU}
project.
Sense 2 is more controversial: some people consider the act of
cracking itself to be unethical, like breaking and entering.
But this principle at least moderates the behavior of people who
see themselves as `benign' crackers (see also {samurai}). On
this view, it is one of the highest forms of hackerly courtesy
to (a) break into a system, and then (b) explain to the sysop,
preferably by email from a {superuser} account, exactly how it
was done and how the hole can be plugged --- acting as an
unpaid (and unsolicited) {tiger team}.
The most reliable manifestation of either version of the hacker
ethic is that almost all hackers are actively willing to share
technical tricks, software, and (where possible) computing
resources with other hackers. Huge cooperative networks such as
{USENET}, {Fidonet} and Internet (see {Internet address})
can function without central control because of this trait; they
both rely on and reinforce a sense of community that may be
hackerdom's most valuable intangible asset.
:hacking run: [analogy with `bombing run' or `speed run'] n. A
hack session extended long outside normal working times, especially
one longer than 12 hours. May cause you to `change phase the hard
way' (see {phase}).
:Hacking X for Y: [ITS] n. The information ITS made publicly
available about each user (the INQUIR record) was a sort of form in
which the user could fill out fields. On display, two of these
fields were combined into a project description of the form
"Hacking X for Y" (e.g., `"Hacking perceptrons for
Minsky"'). This form of description became traditional and has
since been carried over to other systems with more general
facilities for self-advertisement (such as UNIX {plan file}s).
:Hackintosh: n. 1. An Apple Lisa that has been hacked into emulating a
Macintosh (also called a `Mac XL'). 2. A Macintosh assembled
from parts theoretically belonging to different models in the line.
:hackish: /hak'ish/ adj. (also {hackishness} n.) 1. Said of
something that is or involves a hack. 2. Of or pertaining to
hackers or the hacker subculture. See also {true-hacker}.
:hackishness: n. The quality of being or involving a hack. This
term is considered mildly silly. Syn. {hackitude}.
:hackitude: n. Syn. {hackishness}; this word is considered sillier.
:hair: [back-formation from {hairy}] n. The complications that
make something hairy. "Decoding {TECO} commands requires a
certain amount of hair." Often seen in the phrase `infinite
hair', which connotes extreme complexity. Also in `hairiferous'
(tending to promote hair growth): "GNUMACS elisp encourages lusers
to write complex editing modes." "Yeah, it's pretty hairiferous
all right." (or just: "Hair squared!")
:hairy: adj. 1. Annoyingly complicated. "{DWIM} is incredibly
hairy." 2. Incomprehensible. "{DWIM} is incredibly hairy."
3. Of people, high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or
incomprehensible. Hard to explain except in context: "He knows
this hairy lawyer who says there's nothing to worry about." See
also {hirsute}.
The adjective `long-haired' is well-attested to have been in
slang use among scientists and engineers during the early 1950s; it
was equivalent to modern `hairy' senses 1 and 2, and was very
likely ancestral to the hackish use. In fact the noun
`long-hair' was at the time used to describe a person satisfying
sense 3. Both senses probably passed out of use when long hair
was adopted as a signature trait by the 1960s counterculture,
leaving hackish `hairy' as a sort of stunted mutant relic.
:HAKMEM: /hak'mem/ n. MIT AI Memo 239 (February 1972). A
legendary collection of neat mathematical and programming hacks
contributed by many people at MIT and elsewhere. (The title of the
memo really is "HAKMEM", which is a 6-letterism for `hacks
memo'.) Some of them are very useful techniques, powerful
theorems, or interesting unsolved problems, but most fall into the
category of mathematical and computer trivia. Here is a sampling
of the entries (with authors), slightly paraphrased:
Item 41 (Gene Salamin): There are exactly 23,000 prime numbers less
than 2^18.
Item 46 (Rich Schroeppel): The most *probable* suit
distribution in bridge hands is 4-4-3-2, as compared to 4-3-3-3,
which is the most *evenly* distributed. This is because the
world likes to have unequal numbers: a thermodynamic effect saying
things will not be in the state of lowest energy, but in the state
of lowest disordered energy.
Item 81 (Rich Schroeppel): Count the magic squares of order 5
(that is, all the 5-by-5 arrangements of the numbers from 1 to 25
such that all rows, columns, and diagonals add up to the same
number). There are about 320 million, not counting those that
differ only by rotation and reflection.
Item 154 (Bill Gosper): The myth that any given programming
language is machine independent is easily exploded by computing the
sum of powers of 2. If the result loops with period = 1
with sign +, you are on a sign-magnitude machine. If the
result loops with period = 1 at -1, you are on a
twos-complement machine. If the result loops with period greater
than 1, including the beginning, you are on a ones-complement
machine. If the result loops with period greater than 1, not
including the beginning, your machine isn't binary --- the pattern
should tell you the base. If you run out of memory, you are on a
string or bignum system. If arithmetic overflow is a fatal error,
some fascist pig with a read-only mind is trying to enforce machine
independence. But the very ability to trap overflow is machine
dependent. By this strategy, consider the universe, or, more
precisely, algebra: Let X = the sum of many powers of 2 =
...111111. Now add X to itself:
X + X = ...111110 Thus, 2X = X - 1, so
X = -1. Therefore algebra is run on a machine (the
universe) that is two's-complement.
Item 174 (Bill Gosper and Stuart Nelson): 21963283741 is the only
number such that if you represent it on the {PDP-10} as both an
integer and a floating-point number, the bit patterns of the two
representations are identical.
Item 176 (Gosper): The "banana phenomenon" was encountered when
processing a character string by taking the last 3 letters typed
out, searching for a random occurrence of that sequence in the
text, taking the letter following that occurrence, typing it out,
and iterating. This ensures that every 4-letter string output
occurs in the original. The program typed BANANANANANANANA.... We
note an ambiguity in the phrase, "the Nth occurrence of." In one
sense, there are five 00's in 0000000000; in another, there are
nine. The editing program TECO finds five. Thus it finds only the
first ANA in BANANA, and is thus obligated to type N next. By
Murphy's Law, there is but one NAN, thus forcing A, and thus a
loop. An option to find overlapped instances would be useful,
although it would require backing up N - 1 characters before
seeking the next N-character string.
Note: This last item refers to a {Dissociated Press}
implementation. See also {banana problem}.
HAKMEM also contains some rather more complicated mathematical and
technical items, but these examples show some of its fun flavor.
:hakspek: /hak'speek/ n. A shorthand method of spelling found on
many British academic bulletin boards and {talker system}s.
Syllables and whole words in a sentence are replaced by single
ASCII characters the names of which are phonetically similar or
equivalent, while multiple letters are usually dropped. Hence,
`for' becomes `4'; `two', `too', and `to' become `2'; `ck'
becomes `k'. "Before I see you tomorrow" becomes "b4 i c u
2moro". First appeared in London about 1986, and was probably
caused by the slowness of available talker systems, which
operated on archaic machines with outdated operating systems and
no standard methods of communication. Has become rarer since.
See also {talk mode}.
:hammer: vt. Commonwealth hackish syn. for {bang on}.
:hamster: n. 1. [Fairchild] A particularly slick little piece of
code that does one thing well; a small, self-contained hack. The
image is of a hamster happily spinning its exercise wheel. 2. A
tailless mouse; that is, one with an infrared link to a receiver on
the machine, as opposed to the conventional cable. 3. [UK] Any
item of hardware made by Amstrad, a company famous for its cheap
plastic PC-almost-compatibles.
:hand-hacking: n. 1. The practice of translating {hot spot}s from
an {HLL} into hand-tuned assembler, as opposed to trying to
coerce the compiler into generating better code. Both the term and
the practice are becoming uncommon. See {tune}, {bum}, {by
hand}; syn. with v. {cruft}. 2. More generally, manual
construction or patching of data sets that would normally be
generated by a translation utility and interpreted by another
program, and aren't really designed to be read or modified by
humans.
:handle: [from CB slang] n. An electronic pseudonym; a `nom de
guerre' intended to conceal the user's true identity. Network and
BBS handles function as the same sort of simultaneous concealment
and display one finds on Citizen's Band radio, from which the term
was adopted. Use of grandiose handles is characteristic of
{cracker}s, {weenie}s, {spod}s, and other lower forms of
network life; true hackers travel on their own reputations rather
than invented legendry.
:hand-roll: [from obs. mainstream slang `hand-rolled' in
opposition to `ready-made', referring to cigarettes] v. To
perform a normally automated software installation or configuration
process {by hand}; implies that the normal process failed due to
bugs in the configurator or was defeated by something exceptional
in the local environment. "The worst thing about being a gateway
between four different nets is having to hand-roll a new sendmail
configuration every time any of them upgrades."
:handshaking: n. Hardware or software activity designed to start or
keep two machines or programs in synchronization as they {do
protocol}. Often applied to human activity; thus, a hacker might
watch two people in conversation nodding their heads to indicate
that they have heard each others' points and say "Oh, they're
handshaking!". See also {protocol}.
:handwave: [poss. from gestures characteristic of stage magicians]
1. v. To gloss over a complex point; to distract a listener; to
support a (possibly actually valid) point with blatantly faulty
logic. 2. n. The act of handwaving. "Boy, what a handwave!"
If someone starts a senten 
The Jargon File, Version 2.9.10, 01 Jul 1992 / Various