Hyperlinked monolithic version constructed on Sun Jan 18 20:39:21 2004
#======= THIS IS THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 4.4.6, 27 OCT 2003 =======#
Welcome to the Jargon File
This is the Jargon File, a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang
illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor.
This document (the Jargon File) is in the public domain, to be freely
used, shared, and modified. There are (by intention) no legal
restraints on what you can do with it, but there are traditions about
its proper use to which many hackers are quite strongly attached.
Please extend the courtesy of proper citation when you quote the
File, ideally with a version number, as it will change and grow over
time. (Examples of appropriate citation form: "Jargon File 4.4.6" or
"The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 4.4.6, 25 Oct 2003".)
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 <esr@thyrsus.com>
Although there is no requirement that you do so, it is considered
good form to check with an editor before quoting the File in a
published work or commercial product. We may have additional
information that would be helpful to you and can assist you in
framing your quote to reflect not only the letter of the File but its
spirit as well.
All contributions and suggestions about this file sent to a volunteer
editor are gratefully received and will be regarded, unless otherwise
labelled, as freely given donations for possible use as part of this
public-domain file.
From time to time a snapshot of this file has been polished, edited,
and formatted for commercial publication with the cooperation of the
volunteer editors and the hacker community at large. If you wish to
have a bound paper copy of this file, you may find it convenient to
purchase one of these. They often contain additional material not
found in on-line versions. The three `authorized' editions so far are
described in the Revision History section; there may be more in the
future.
The Jargon File's online rendition uses an unusually large number of
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k greek character kappa
l greek character lambda
L greek character Lambda
n greek character nu
o greek character omicron
p greek character pi
£ pound sterling
left angle bracket
right angle bracket
æ ae ligature
ß German sharp-s sign
?1 similarity sign
(+) circle-plus
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empty set (used for APL null)
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:Introduction:
**************
:Chapter 1. Hacker Slang and Hacker Culture:
===================================
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 50 years old.
As usual with slang, the special vocabulary of hackers helps hold
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
surreal 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.
Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are very conscious and
inventive in their use of language. These traits seem to be common in
young children, but the conformity-enforcing machine we are pleased
to call an educational system bludgeons them out of most of us before
adolescence. Thus, linguistic invention in most subcultures of the
modern West is a halting and largely unconscious process. Hackers, by
contrast, regard slang formation and use as a game to be played for
conscious pleasure. Their inventions thus display an almost unique
combination of the neotenous enjoyment of language-play with the
discrimination of educated and powerful intelligence. Further, the
electronic media which knit them together are fluid, `hot'
connections, well adapted to both the dissemination of new slang and
the ruthless culling of weak and superannuated specimens. The results
of this process give us perhaps a uniquely intense and accelerated
view of linguistic evolution in action.
Hacker slang also challenges some common linguistic and
anthropological assumptions. For example, in the early 1990s it
became 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 since the early 1970s. This one (like its
ancestors) is primarily a lexicon, but also includes topic entries
which collect background or sidelight information on hacker culture
that would be awkward to try to subsume under individual slang
definitions.
Though the format is that of a reference volume, it is intended that
the material be enjoyable to browse. Even a complete outsider should
find at least a chuckle on nearly every page, and much that is
amusingly thought-provoking. But it is also true that hackers use
humorous wordplay to make strong, sometimes combative statements
about what they feel. Some of these entries reflect the views of
opposing sides in disputes that have been genuinely passionate; this
is deliberate. We have not tried to moderate or pretty up these
disputes; rather we have attempted to ensure that everyone's sacred
cows get gored, impartially. Compromise is not particularly a hackish
virtue, but the honest presentation of divergent viewpoints is.
The reader with minimal computer background who finds some references
incomprehensibly technical can safely ignore them. We have not felt
it either necessary or desirable to eliminate all such; they, too,
contribute flavor, and one of this document's major intended
audiences -- fledgling hackers already partway inside the culture --
will benefit from them.
A selection of longer items of hacker folklore and humor is included
in Appendix A. The `outside' reader's attention is particularly
directed to the Portrait of J. Random Hacker in Appendix B. The
Bibliography, lists some non-technical works which have either
influenced or described the hacker culture.
Because hackerdom is an intentional culture (one each individual must
choose by action to join), one should not be surprised that the line
between description and influence can become more than a little
blurred. Earlier versions of the Jargon File have played a central
role in spreading hacker language and the culture that goes with it
to successively larger populations, and we hope and expect that this
one will do likewise.
:Chapter 2. Of Slang, Jargon, and Techspeak:
===================================
Linguists usually refer to informal language as `slang' and reserve
the term `jargon' for the technical vocabularies of various
occupations. However, the ancestor of this collection was called the
`Jargon File', and hacker slang is traditionally `the jargon'. When
talking about the jargon there is therefore no convenient way to
distinguish it from what a linguist would call hackers' jargon -- the
formal vocabulary they learn from textbooks, technical papers, and
manuals.
To make a confused situation worse, the line between hacker slang and
the vocabulary of technical programming and computer science is
fuzzy, and shifts over time. Further, this vocabulary is shared with
a wider technical culture of programmers, many of whom are not
hackers and do not speak or recognize hackish slang.
Accordingly, this lexicon will try to be as precise as the facts of
usage permit about the distinctions among three categories:
slang
informal language from mainstream English or non-technical
subcultures (bikers, rock fans, surfers, etc).
jargon
without qualifier, denotes informal `slangy' language peculiar
to or predominantly found among hackers -- the subject of this
lexicon.
techspeak
the formal technical vocabulary of programming, computer
science, electronics, and other fields connected to hacking.
This terminology will be consistently used throughout the remainder
of this lexicon.
The jargon/techspeak distinction is the delicate one. A lot of
techspeak originated as jargon, and there is a steady continuing
uptake of jargon into techspeak. On the other hand, a lot of jargon
arises from overgeneralization of techspeak terms (there is more
about this in the Jargon Construction section below).
In general, we have considered techspeak any term that communicate
primarily by a denotation well established in textbooks, technical
dictionaries, or standards documents.
A few obviously techspeak terms (names of operating systems,
languages, or documents) are listed when they are tied to hacker
folklore that isn't covered in formal sources, or sometimes to convey
critical historical background necessary to understand other entries
to which they are cross-referenced. Some other techspeak senses of
jargon words are listed in order to make the jargon senses clear;
where the text does not specify that a straight technical sense is
under discussion, these are marked with `[techspeak]' as an
etymology. Some entries have a primary sense marked this way, with
subsequent jargon meanings explained in terms of it.
We have also tried to indicate (where known) the apparent origins of
terms. The results are probably the least reliable information in the
lexicon, for several reasons. For one thing, it is well known that
many hackish usages have been independently reinvented multiple
times, even among the more obscure and intricate neologisms. It often
seems that the generative processes underlying hackish jargon
formation have an internal logic so powerful as to create substantial
parallelism across separate cultures and even in different languages!
For another, the networks tend to propagate innovations so quickly
that `first use' is often impossible to pin down. And, finally,
compendia like this one alter what they observe by implicitly
stamping cultural approval on terms and widening their use.
Despite these problems, the organized collection of jargon-related
oral history for the new compilations has enabled us to put to rest
quite a number of folk etymologies, place credit where credit is due,
and illuminate the early history of many important hackerisms such as
kluge, cruft, and foo. We believe specialist lexicographers will find
many of the historical notes more than casually instructive.
:Chapter 3. 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, FTPed a copy of the File to MIT. He noticed that
it was hardly restricted to `AI words' and so stored the file on his
directory as AI:MRC;SAIL JARGON.
The file was quickly renamed JARGON > (the `>' caused versioning
under ITS) as a flurry of enhancements were made by Mark Crispin and
Guy L. Steele Jr. Unfortunately, amidst all this activity, nobody
thought of correcting the term `jargon' to `slang' until the
compendium had already become widely known as the Jargon File.
Raphael Finkel dropped out of active participation shortly thereafter
and Don Woods became the SAIL contact for the File (which was
subsequently kept in duplicate at SAIL and MIT, with periodic
resynchronizations).
The File expanded by fits and starts until about 1983; Richard
Stallman was prominent among the contributors, adding many MIT and
ITS-related coinages.
In Spring 1981, a hacker named Charles Spurgeon got a large chunk of
the File published in Stewart Brand's CoEvolution Quarterly (issue
29, pages 26--35) with illustrations by Phil Wadler and Guy Steele
(including a couple of the Crunchly cartoons). This appears to have
been the File's first paper publication.
A late version of jargon-1, expanded with commentary for the mass
market, was edited by Guy Steele into a book published in 1983 as The
Hacker's Dictionary (Harper & Row CN 1082, ISBN 0-06-091082-8). The
other jargon-1 editors (Raphael Finkel, Don Woods, and Mark Crispin)
contributed to this revision, as did Richard M. Stallman and Geoff
Goodfellow. This book (now out of print) is hereafter referred to as
`Steele-1983' and those six as the Steele-1983 coauthors.
Shortly after the publication of Steele-1983, the File effectively
stopped growing and changing. Originally, this was due to a desire to
freeze the file temporarily to facilitate the production of
Steele-1983, but external conditions caused the `temporary' freeze to
become permanent.
The AI Lab culture had been hit hard in the late 1970s by funding
cuts and the resulting administrative decision to use
vendor-supported hardware and software instead of homebrew whenever
possible. At MIT, most AI work had turned to dedicated LISP Machines.
At the same time, the commercialization of AI technology lured some
of the AI Lab's best and brightest away to startups along the Route
128 strip in Massachusetts and out West in Silicon Valley. The
startups built LISP machines for MIT; the central MIT-AI computer
became a 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 hacker language and humor. Even as the advent of the
microcomputer and other trends fueled a tremendous expansion of
hackerdom, the File (and related materials such as the Some AI Koans
in Appendix A) came to be seen as a sort of sacred epic, a
hacker-culture Matter of Britain chronicling the heroic exploits of
the Knights of the Lab. The pace of change in hackerdom at large
accelerated tremendously -- but the Jargon File, having passed from
living document to icon, remained essentially untouched for seven
years.
This revision contains nearly the entire text of a late version of
jargon-1 (a few obsolete PDP-10-related entries were dropped after
careful consultation with the editors of Steele-1983). It merges in
about 80% of the Steele-1983 text, omitting some framing material and
a very few entries introduced in Steele-1983 that are now also
obsolete.
This new version casts a wider net than the old Jargon File; its aim
is to cover not just AI or PDP-10 hacker culture but all the
technical computing cultures wherein the true hacker-nature is
manifested. More than half of the entries now derive from 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 <esr@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 Eric.
(Warning: other email addresses and URLs appear in this file but are
not guaranteed to be correct after date of publication. Don't email
us if an attempt to reach someone bounces -- we have no magic way of
checking addresses or looking up people. If a web reference goes
stale, try a Google or Alta Vista search for relevant phrases.
Please try to review a recent copy of the on-line document before
submitting entries; it is available on the Web. It will often contain
new material not recorded in the latest paper snapshot that could
save you some typing. It also includes some submission guidelines not
reproduced here.
The 2.9.6 version became the main text of The New Hacker's
Dictionary, by Eric Raymond (ed.), MIT Press 1991, ISBN
0-262-68069-6.
The 3.0.0 version was published in August 1993 as the second edition
of The New Hacker's Dictionary, again from MIT Press (ISBN
0-262-18154-1).
The 4.0.0 version was published in September 1996 as the third
edition of The New Hacker's Dictionary from MIT Press (ISBN
0-262-68092-0).
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 major revisions:
Version Date Lines Words Characters Entries Comments
2.1.1 Jun 12 1990 5485 42842 278958 790
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.
2.1.5 Nov 28 1990 6028 46946 307510 866
Changes and additions by ESR in response to numerous USENET
submissions and comment from the First Edition co-authors. The
Bibliography (Appendix C) was also appended.
2.2.1 Dec 15 1990 9394 75954 490501 1046
Most of the contents of the 1983 paper edition edited by Guy Steele
was merged in. Many more USENET submissions added, including the
International Style and the material on Commonwealth Hackish.
2.3.1 Jan 03 1991 10728 85070 558261 1138
The great format change -- case is no longer smashed in lexicon keys
and cross-references. A very few entries from jargon-1 which were
basically straight techspeak were deleted; this enabled the rest of
Appendix B (created in 2.1.1) to be merged back into main text and
the appendix replaced with the Portrait of J. Random Hacker. More
USENET submissions were added.
2.4.1 Jan 14 1991 12362 97819 642899 1239
The Story of Mel and many more USENET submissions merged in. More
material on hackish writing habits added. Numerous typo fixes.
2.6.1 Feb 12 1991 15011 118277 774942 1484
Second great format change; no more <> around headwords or
references. Merged in results of serious copy-editing passes by Guy
Steele, Mark Brader. Still more entries added.
2.7.1 Mar 01 1991 16087 126885 831872 1533
New section on slang/jargon/techspeak added. Results of Guy's second
edit pass merged in.
2.8.1 Mar 22 1991 17154 135647 888333 1602
Material from the TMRC Dictionary and MRC's editing pass merged in.
2.9.6 Aug 16 1991 18952 148629 975551 1702
Corresponds to reproduction copy for book.
2.9.8 Jan 01 1992 19509 153108 1006023 1760
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.
2.9.9 Apr 01 1992 20298 159651 1048909 1821
Folded in XEROX PARC lexicon.
2.9.10 Jul 01 1992 21349 168330 1106991 1891
lots of new historical material.
2.9.11 Jan 01 1993 21725 171169 1125880 1922
Lots of new historical material.
2.9.12 May 10 1993 22238 175114 1152467 1946
A few new entries & changes, marginal MUD/IRC slang and some
borderline techspeak removed, all in preparation for 2nd Edition of
TNHD.
3.0.0 Jul 27 1993 22548 177520 1169372 1961
Manuscript freeze for 2nd edition of TNHD.
3.1.0 Oct 15 1994 23197 181001 1193818 1990
Interim release to test WWW conversion.
3.2.0 Mar 15 1995 23822 185961 1226358 2031
Spring 1995 update.
3.3.0 Jan 20 1996 24055 187957 1239604 2045
Winter 1996 update.
3.3.1 Jan 25 1996 24147 188728 1244554 2050
Copy-corrected improvement on 3.3.0 shipped to MIT Press as a step
towards TNHD III.
4.0.0 Jul 25 1996 24801 193697 1281402 2067
The actual TNHD III version after copy-edit
4.1.0 8 Apr 1999 25777 206825 1359992 2217
The Jargon File rides again after three years.
4.2.0 31 Jan 2000 26598 214639 1412243 2267
Fix processing of URLs.
4.3.0 30 Apr 2001 27805 224978 1480215 2319
Special edition in honor of the first implementation of RFC 1149.
Also cleaned up a number of obsolete entries.
4.4.0 10 May 2003 32004 230012 1707139 2290
XML-Docbook format conversion. Serious pruning of old slang, nearly
100 entries failed the Google test and were removed.
4.4.1 13 May 2003 37157 234687 1618716 2290
XML-Docbook format fixes.
4.4.2 22 May 2003 32629 227852 1555125 2290
Fix filename collisions and other small problems.
4.4.3 15 Jul 2003 37363 235135 1629667 2293
Fix some stylesheet problems leading to missing links.
4.4.4 14 Aug 2003 37392 235271 1630579 2295
Corrected build machinery; we can make RPMS now.
4.4.5 4 Oct 2003 37482 235858 1634767 2299
Minor updates. Four new entries and a better original-bug picture.
4.4.6 25 Oct 2003 37560 236406 1638454 2302
Added glider illustration. Amended FUD entry pursuent to SCO's
attempt to abuse it.
Version numbering: Version numbers should be read as
major.minor.revision. Major version 1 is reserved for the `old' (ITS)
Jargon File, jargon-1. Major version 2 encompasses revisions by ESR
(Eric S. Raymond) with assistance from GLS (Guy L. Steele, Jr.)
leading up to and including the second paper edition. From now on,
major version number N.00 will probably correspond to the Nth paper
edition. Usually later versions will either completely supersede or
incorporate earlier versions, so there is generally no point in
keeping old versions around.
Our thanks to the coauthors of Steele-1983 for oversight and
assistance, and to the hundreds of Usenetters (too many to name here)
who contributed entries and encouragement. More thanks go to several
of the old-timers on the Usenet group alt.folklore.computers, who
contributed much useful commentary and many corrections and valuable
historical perspective: Joseph M. Newcomer <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@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 and Steve Summit <scs@eskimo.com> to the File and
Dictionary; they have read and reread many drafts, checked facts,
caught typos, submitted an amazing number of thoughtful comments, and
done yeoman service in catching typos and minor usage bobbles. Their
rare combination of enthusiasm, persistence, wide-ranging technical
knowledge, and precisionism in matters of language has been of
invaluable help. Indeed, the sustained volume and quality of Mr.
Brader's input over a decade and several different editions has only
allowed him to escape co-editor credit by the slimmest of margins.
Finally, George V. Reilly <georgere@microsoft.com> helped with TeX
arcana and painstakingly proofread some 2.7 and 2.8 versions, and
Eric Tiedemann <est@thyrsus.com> contributed sage advice throughout
on rhetoric, amphigory, and philosophunculism.
:Chapter 4. Jargon Construction:
===================================
Table of Contents
Verb Doubling
Soundalike Slang
The -P Convention
Overgeneralization
Spoken inarticulations
Anthropomorphization
Comparatives
There are some standard methods of jargonification that became
established quite early (i.e., before 1970), spreading from such
sources as the Tech Model Railroad Club, the PDP-1 SPACEWAR hackers,
and John McCarthy's original crew of LISPers. These include verb
doubling, soundalike slang, the `-P' convention, overgeneralization,
spoken inarticulations, and anthropomorphization. Each is discussed
below. We also cover the standard comparatives for design quality.
Of these six, verb doubling, overgeneralization,
anthropomorphization, and (especially) spoken inarticulations have
become quite general; but soundalike slang is still largely confined
to MIT and other large universities, and the `-P' convention is found
only where LISPers flourish.
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 infamous examples have included:
* alt.french.captain.borg.borg.borg
* alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die
* comp.unix.internals.system.calls.brk.brk.brk
* sci.physics.edward.teller.boom.boom.boom
* alt.sadistic.dentists.drill.drill.drill
These two traditions fuse in the newsgroup
alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb, devoted to humor based on
deliberately confounding parts of speech. Several observers have
noted that the contents of this group is excellently representative
of the peculiarities of hacker humor.
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
* Wall Street Journal -> Wall Street Urinal
However, terms like these are often made up on the spur of the
moment. Standard examples include:
* Data General -> Dirty Genitals
* IBM 360 -> IBM Three-Sickly
* Government Property -- Do Not Duplicate (on keys) -> Government
Duplicity -- Do Not Propagate
* for historical reasons -> for hysterical raisins
* Margaret Jacks Hall (the CS building at Stanford) -> Marginal
Hacks Hall
* Microsoft -> Microsloth
* Internet Explorer -> Internet Exploiter
* FrontPage -> AffrontPage
* VB.NET -> VB Nyet
* Lotus Notes -> Lotus Bloats
* Microsoft Outlook -> Microsoft Outhouse
* Linux -> Linsux
* FreeBSD -> FreeLSD
* C# -> C Flat
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?"
[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 and generous -> generosity, hackers happily generalize:
* mysterious -> mysteriosity
* ferrous -> ferrosity
* obvious -> obviosity
* dubious -> dubiosity
Another class of common construction uses the suffix `-itude' to
abstract a quality from just about any adjective or noun. This usage
arises especially in cases where mainstream English would perform the
same abstraction through `-iness' or `-ingness'. Thus:
* win -> winnitude (a common exclamation)
* loss -> lossitude
* cruft -> cruftitude
* lame -> lameitude
Some hackers cheerfully reverse this transformation; they argue, for
example, that the horizontal degree lines on a globe ought to be
called `lats' -- after all, they're measuring latitude!
Also, note that all nouns can be verbed. E.g.: "All nouns can be
verbed", "I'll mouse it up", "Hang on while I clipboard it over",
"I'm grepping the files". English as a whole is already heading in
this direction (towards pure-positional grammar like Chinese);
hackers are simply a bit ahead of the curve.
The suffix "-full" can also be applied in generalized and fanciful
ways, as in "As soon as you have more than one cachefull of data, the
system starts thrashing," or "As soon as I have more than one
headfull of ideas, I start writing it all down." A common use is
"screenfull", meaning the amount of text that will fit on one screen,
usually in text mode where you have no choice as to character size.
Another common form is "bufferfull".
However, hackers avoid the unimaginative verb-making techniques
characteristic of marketroids, bean-counters, and the Pentagon; a
hacker would never, for example, `productize', `prioritize', or
`securitize' things. Hackers have a strong aversion to bureaucratic
bafflegab and regard those who use it with contempt.
Similarly, all verbs can be nouned. This is only a slight
overgeneralization in modern English; in hackish, however, it is good
form to mark them in some standard nonstandard way. Thus:
* win -> winnitude, winnage
* disgust -> disgustitude
* hack -> hackification
Further, note the prevalence of certain kinds of nonstandard plural
forms. Some of these go back quite a ways; the TMRC Dictionary
includes an entry which implies that the plural of `mouse' is meeces,
and notes that the defined plural of `caboose' is `cabeese'. This
latter has apparently been standard (or at least a standard joke)
among railfans (railroad enthusiasts) for many years
On a similarly Anglo-Saxon note, almost anything ending in `x' may
form plurals in `-xen' (see 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 the
Hebrew-style `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 `Twenexen' was never used,
and `Unixen' was seldom sighted in the wild until the year 2000,
thirty years after it might logically have come into use; it has been
suggested that this is because `-ix' and `-ex' are Latin singular
endings that attract a Latinate plural. Among Perl hackers it is
reported that `comma' and `semicolon' pluralize as `commata' and
`semicola' respectively. 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, MUDs,
and IRC channels (interestingly, the same sorts of constructions have
been showing up with increasing frequency in comic strips). Another
expression sometimes heard is "Complain!", meaning "I have a
complaint!"
Anthropomorphization
Semantically, one rich source of jargon constructions is the hackish
tendency to anthropomorphize hardware and software. English purists
and academic computer scientists frequently look down on others for
anthropomorphizing hardware and software, considering this sort of
behavior to be characteristic of naive misunderstanding. But most
hackers anthropomorphize freely, frequently describing program
behavior in terms of wants and desires.
Thus it is common to hear hardware or software talked about as though
it has homunculi talking to each other inside it, with intentions and
desires. Thus, one hears "The protocol handler got confused", or that
programs "are trying" to do things, or one may say of a routine that
"its goal in life is to X". Or: "You can't run those two cards on the
same bus; they fight over interrupt 9."
One even hears explanations like "... and its poor little brain
couldn't understand X, and it died." Sometimes modelling things this
way actually seems to make them easier to understand, perhaps because
it's instinctively natural to think of anything with a really complex
behavioral repertoire as `like a person' rather than `like a thing'.
At first glance, to anyone who understands how these programs
actually work, this seems like an absurdity. As hackers are among the
people who know best how these phenomena work, it seems odd that they
would use language that seems to ascribe consciousness to them. The
mind-set behind this tendency thus demands examination.
The key to understanding this kind of usage is that it isn't done in
a naive way; hackers don't personalize their stuff in the sense of
feeling empathy with it, nor do they mystically believe that the
things they work on every day are `alive'. To the contrary: hackers
who anthropomorphize are expressing not a vitalistic view of program
behavior but a mechanistic view of human behavior.
Almost all hackers subscribe to the mechanistic, materialistic
ontology of science (this is in practice true even of most of the
minority with contrary religious theories). In this view, people are
biological machines -- consciousness is an interesting and valuable
epiphenomenon, but mind is implemented in machinery which is not
fundamentally different in information-processing capacity from
computers.
Hackers tend to take this a step further and argue that the
difference between a substrate of CHON atoms and water and a
substrate of silicon and metal is a relatively unimportant one; what
matters, what makes a thing `alive', is information and richness of
pattern. This is animism from the flip side; it implies that humans
and computers and dolphins and rocks are all machines exhibiting a
continuum of modes of `consciousness' according to their
information-processing capacity.
Because hackers accept that a human machine can have intentions, it
is therefore easy for them to ascribe consciousness and intention to
other complex patterned systems such as computers. If consciousness
is mechanical, it is neither more or less absurd to say that "The
program wants to go into an infinite loop" than it is to say that "I
want to go eat some chocolate" -- and even defensible to say that
"The stone, once dropped, wants to move towards the center of the
earth".
This viewpoint has respectable company in academic philosophy. Daniel
Dennett organizes explanations of behavior using three stances: the
"physical stance" (thing-to-be-explained as a physical object), the
"design stance" (thing-to-be-explained as an artifact), and the
"intentional stance" (thing-to-be-explained as an agent with desires
and intentions). Which stances are appropriate is a matter not of
abstract truth but of utility. Hackers typically view simple programs
from the design stance, but more complex ones are often modelled
using the intentional stance.
It has also been argued that the anthropomorphization of software and
hardware reflects a blurring of the boundary between the programmer
and his artifacts -- the human qualities belong to the programmer and
the code merely expresses these qualities as his/her proxy. On this
view, a hacker saying a piece of code `got confused' is really saying
that he (or she) was confused about exactly what he wanted the
computer to do, the code naturally incorporated this confusion, and
the code expressed the programmer's confusion when executed by
crashing or otherwise misbehaving.
Note that by displacing from "I got confused" to "It got confused",
the programmer is not avoiding responsibility, but rather getting
some analytical distance in order to be able to consider the bug
dispassionately.
It has also been suggested that anthropomorphizing complex systems is
actually an expression of humility, a way of acknowleging that simple
rules we do understand (or that we invented) can lead to emergent
behavioral complexities that we don't completely understand.
All three explanations accurately model hacker psychology, and should
be considered complementary rather than competing.
Comparatives
Finally, note that many words in hacker jargon have to be understood
as members of sets of comparatives. This is especially true of the
adjectives and nouns used to describe the beauty and functional
quality of code. Here is an approximately correct spectrum:
monstrosity brain-damage screw bug lose misfeature crock kluge hack
win feature elegance perfection
The last is spoken of as a mythical absolute, approximated but never
actually attained. Another similar scale is used for describing the
reliability of software:
broken flaky dodgy fragile brittle solid robust bulletproof
armor-plated
Note, however, that `dodgy' is primarily Commonwealth Hackish (it is
rare in the U.S., where `squirrelly' may be more common) 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.
:Chapter 5. Hacker Writing Style:
===================================
We've already seen that hackers often coin jargon by overgeneralizing
grammatical rules. This is one aspect of a more general fondness for
form-versus-content language jokes that shows up particularly in
hackish writing. One correspondent reports that he consistently
misspells `wrong' as `worng'. Others have been known to criticize
glitches in Jargon File drafts by observing (in the mode of Douglas
Hofstadter) "This sentence no verb", or "Too repetetetive", or "Bad
speling", or "Incorrectspa cing." Similarly, intentional spoonerisms
are often made of phrases relating to confusion or things that are
confusing; `dain bramage' for `brain damage' is perhaps the most
common (similarly, a hacker would be likely to write "Excuse me, I'm
cixelsyd today", rather than "I'm dyslexic today"). This sort of
thing is quite common and is enjoyed by all concerned.
Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses,
much to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if "Jim is going" is a
phrase, and so are "Bill runs" and "Spock groks", then hackers
generally prefer to write: "Jim is going", "Bill runs", and "Spock
groks". This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which
would put the continuation commas and the final period inside the
string quotes); however, it is counter-intuitive to hackers to
mutilate literal strings with characters that don't belong in them.
Given the sorts of examples that can come up in discussions of
programming, American-style quoting can even be grossly misleading.
When communicating command lines or small pieces of code, extra
characters can be a real pain in the neck.
Consider, for example, a sentence in a vi tutorial that looks like
this:
Then delete a line from the file by typing "dd".
Standard usage would make this
Then delete a line from the file by typing "dd."
but that would be very bad -- because the reader would be prone to
type the string d-d-dot, and it happens that in vi(1), dot repeats
the last command accepted. The net result would be to delete two
lines!
The Jargon File follows hackish usage throughout.
Interestingly, a similar style is now preferred practice in Great
Britain, though the older style (which became established for
typographical reasons having to do with the aesthetics of comma and
quotes in typeset text) is still accepted there. Hart's Rules and the
Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors call the hacker-like style
`new' or `logical' quoting. This returns British English to the style
many other languages (including Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan,
and German) have been using all along.
Another hacker habit is a tendency to distinguish between `scare'
quotes and `speech' quotes; that is, to use British-style single
quotes for marking and reserve American-style double quotes for
actual reports of speech or text included from elsewhere.
Interestingly, some authorities describe this as correct general
usage, but mainstream American English has gone to using
double-quotes indiscriminately enough that hacker usage appears
marked [and, in fact, I thought this was a personal quirk of mine
until I checked with Usenet --ESR] One further permutation that is
definitely not standard is a hackish tendency to do marking quotes by
using apostrophes (single quotes) in pairs; that is, 'like this'.
This is modelled on string and character literal syntax in some
programming languages (reinforced by the fact that many
character-only terminals display the apostrophe in typewriter style,
as a vertical single quote).
One quirk that shows up frequently in the 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). On FidoNet, you might see #bright# and ^dark^ text,
which was actually interpreted by some reader software. Finally,
words may also be emphasized L I K E T H I S, or by a series of
carets (^) under them on the next line of the text.
There is a semantic difference between *emphasis like this* (which
emphasizes the phrase as a whole), and *emphasis* *like* *this*
(which suggests the writer speaking very slowly and distinctly, as if
to a very young child or a mentally impaired person). Bracketing a
word with the `*' character may also indicate that the writer wishes
readers to consider that an action is taking place or that a sound is
being made. Examples: *bang*, *hic*, *ring*, *grin*, *kick*, *stomp*,
*mumble*.
One might also see the above sound effects as <bang>, <hic>, <ring>,
<grin>, <kick>, <stomp>, <mumble>. This use of angle brackets to mark
their contents originally derives from conventions used in BNF, but
since about 1993 it has been reinforced by the HTML markup used on
the World Wide Web.
Angle-bracket enclosure is also used to indicate that a term stands
for some random member of a larger class (this is straight from BNF).
Examples like the following are common:
So this <ethnic> walks into a bar one day...
There is also an accepted convention for `writing under erasure'; the
text>
Be nice to this fool^H^H^H^Hgentleman, he's visiting from
corporate HQ.
reads roughly as "Be nice to this fool, er, gentleman...", with irony
emphasized. The digraph ^H is often used as a print representation
for a backspace, and was actually very visible on old-style printing
terminals. As the text was being composed the characters would be
echoed and printed immediately, and when a correction was made the
backspace keystrokes would be echoed with the string `^H'. Of course,
the final composed text would have no trace of the backspace
characters (or the original erroneous text).
Accidental writing under erasure occurs when using the Unix talk
program to chat interactively to another user. On a PC-style keyboard
most users instinctively press the backspace key to delete mistakes,
but this may not achieve the desired effect, and merely displays a ^H
symbol. The user typically presses backspace a few times before their
brain realises the problem -- especially likely if the user is a
touch-typist -- and since each character is transmitted as soon as it
is typed, Freudian slips and other inadvertent admissions are
(barring network delays) clearly visible for the other user to see.
Deliberate use of ^H for writing under erasure parallels (and may
have been influenced by) the ironic use of `slashouts' in
science-fiction fanzines.
A related habit uses editor commands to signify corrections to
previous text. This custom faded in email as more mailers got good
editing capabilities, only to take on new life on IRCs and other
line-based chat systems.
charlie: I've seen that term used on alt.foobar often.
lisa: Send it to Erik for the File.
lisa: Oops...s/Erik/Eric/.
The s/Erik/Eric/ says "change Erik to Eric in the preceding". This
syntax is borrowed from the Unix editing tools ed and sed, but is
widely recognized by non-Unix hackers as well.
In a formula, * signifies multiplication but two asterisks in a row
are a shorthand for exponentiation (this derives from FORTRAN, and is
also used in Ada). Thus, one might write 2 ** 8 = 256.
Another notation for exponentiation one sees more frequently uses the
caret (^, ASCII 1011110); one might write instead 2^8 = 256. This
goes all the way back to Algol-60, which used the archaic ASCII
`up-arrow' that later became the caret; this was picked up by Kemeny
and Kurtz's original BASIC, which in turn influenced the design of
the bc(1) and dc(1) Unix tools, which have probably done most to
reinforce the convention on Usenet. (TeX math mode also uses ^ for
exponention.) The notation is mildly confusing to C programmers,
because ^ means bitwise exclusive-or in C. Despite this, it was
favored 3:1 over ** in a late-1990 snapshot of Usenet. It is used
consistently in this lexicon.
In on-line exchanges, hackers tend to use decimal forms or improper
fractions (`3.5' or `7/2') rather than `typewriter style' mixed
fractions (`3-1/2'). The major motive here is probably that the
former are more readable in a monospaced font, together with a desire
to avoid the risk that the latter might be read as `three minus
one-half'. The decimal form is definitely preferred for fractions
with a terminating decimal representation; there may be some cultural
influence here from the high status of scientific notation.
Another on-line convention, used especially for very large or very
small numbers, is taken from C (which derived it from FORTRAN). This
is a form of `scientific notation' using `e' to replace `*10^'; for
example, one year is about 3e7 (that is, 3 × 10 7) 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
<= are often combined with English. The Pascal not-equals, <>, is
also recognized, and occasionally one sees /= for not-equals (from
Ada, Common Lisp, and Fortran 90). The use of prefix `!' as a loose
synonym for `not-' or `no-' is particularly common; thus, `!clue' is
read `no-clue' or `clueless'.
A related practice borrows syntax from preferred programming
languages to express ideas in a natural-language text. For example,
one might see the following:
In <jrh578689@thudpucker.com> J. R. Hacker wrote:
<I recently had occasion to field-test the Snafu
<Systems 2300E adaptive gonkulator. The price was
<right, and the racing stripe on the case looked
<kind of neat, but its performance left something
<to be desired.
Yeah, I tried one out too.
#ifdef FLAME
Hasn't anyone told those idiots that you can't get
decent bogon suppression with AFJ filters at today's
net volumes?
#endif /* FLAME */
I guess they figured the price premium for true
frame-based semantic analysis was too high.
Unfortunately, it's also the only workable approach.
I wouldn't recommend purchase of this product unless
you're on a *very* tight budget.
#include <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."
The top section in the example, with < at the left margin, is an
example of an inclusion convention we'll discuss below.
More recently, following on the huge popularity of the World Wide
Web, pseudo-HTML markup has become popular for similar purposes:
<flame>
Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
</flame>
You'll even see this with an HTML-style attribute modifier:
<flame intensity="100%">
You seem well-suited for a career in government.
</flame>
Another recent (late 1990s) construction now common on Usenet seems
to be borrowed from Unix shell syntax or Perl. It consists of using a
dollar sign before an uppercased form of a word or acronym to suggest
any random member of the class indicated by the word. Thus: `$PHB'
means "any random member of the class `Pointy-Haired Boss'".
Hackers also mix letters and numbers more freely than in mainstream
usage. In particular, it is good hackish style to write a digit
sequence where you intend the reader to understand the text string
that names that number in English. So, hackers prefer to write
`1970s' rather than `nineteen-seventies' or `1970's' (the latter
looks like a possessive).
It should also be noted that hackers exhibit much less reluctance to
use multiply-nested parentheses than is normal in English. Part of
this is almost certainly due to influence from LISP (which uses
deeply nested parentheses (like this (see?)) in its syntax a lot),
but it has also been suggested that a more basic hacker trait of
enjoying playing with complexity and pushing systems to their limits
is in operation.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that many studies of on-line
communication have shown that electronic links have a de-inhibiting
effect on people. Deprived of the body-language cues through which
emotional state is expressed, people tend to forget everything about
other parties except what is presented over that ASCII link. This has
both good and bad effects. A good one is that it encourages honesty
and tends to break down hierarchical authority relationships; a bad
one is that it may encourage depersonalization and gratuitous
rudeness. Perhaps in response to this, experienced netters often
display a sort of conscious formal politesse in their writing that
has passed out of fashion in other spoken and written media (for
example, the phrase "Well said, sir!" is not uncommon).
Many introverted hackers who are next to inarticulate in person
communicate with considerable fluency over the net, perhaps precisely
because they can forget on an unconscious level that they are dealing
with people and thus don't feel stressed and anxious as they would
face to face.
Though it is considered gauche to publicly criticize posters for poor
spelling or grammar, the network places a premium on literacy and
clarity of expression. It may well be that future historians of
literature will see in it a revival of the great tradition of
personal letters as art.
:Chapter 6. Email Quotes and Inclusion Conventions:
===================================
One area where conventions for on-line writing are still in some flux
is the marking of included material from earlier messages -- what
would be called `block quotations' in ordinary English. From the
usual typographic convention employed for these (smaller font at an
extra indent), there derived a practice of included text being
indented by one ASCII TAB (0001001) character, which under Unix and
many other environments gives the appearance of an 8-space indent.
Early mail and netnews readers had no facility for including messages
this way, so people had to paste in copy manually. BSD Mail(1) was
the first message agent to support inclusion, and early Usenetters
emulated its style. But the TAB character tended to push included
text too far to the right (especially in multiply nested inclusions),
leading to ugly wraparounds. After a brief period of confusion
(during which an inclusion leader consisting of three or four spaces
became established in EMACS and a few mailers), the use of leading >
or > became standard, perhaps owing to its use in ed(1) to display
tabs (alternatively, it may derive from the > that some early Unix
mailers used to quote lines starting with "From" in text, so they
wouldn't look like the beginnings of new message headers). Inclusions
within inclusions keep their > leaders, so the `nesting level' of a
quotation is visually apparent.
The practice of including text from the parent article when posting a
followup helped solve what had been a major nuisance on Usenet: the
fact that articles do not arrive at different sites in the same
order. Careless posters used to post articles that would begin with,
or even consist entirely of, "No, that's wrong" or "I agree" or the
like. It was hard to see who was responding to what. Consequently,
around 1984, new news-posting software evolved a facility to
automatically include the text of a previous article, marked with ">
" or whatever the poster chose. The poster was expected to delete all
but the relevant lines. The result has been that, now, careless
posters post articles containing the entire text of a preceding
article, followed only by "No, that's wrong" or "I agree".
Many people feel that this cure is worse than the original disease,
and there soon appeared newsreader software designed to let the
reader skip over included text if desired. Today, some posting
software rejects articles containing too high a proportion of lines
beginning with `>' -- but this too has led to undesirable
workarounds, such as the deliberate inclusion of zero-content filler
lines which aren't quoted and thus pull the message below the
rejection threshold.
Inclusion practice is still evolving, and disputes over the `correct'
inclusion style occasionally lead to holy wars.
Most netters view an inclusion as a promise that comment on it will
immediately follow. The preferred, conversational style looks like
this,
> relevant excerpt 1
response to excerpt
> relevant excerpt 2
response to excerpt
> relevant excerpt 3
response to excerpt
or for short messages like this:
> entire message
response to message
Thanks to poor design of some PC-based mail agents (notably Microsoft
Outlook and Outlook Express), one will occasionally see the entire
quoted message after the response, like this
response to message
> entire message
but this practice is strongly deprecated.
Though > remains the standard inclusion leader, | is occasionally
used for extended quotations where original variations in indentation
are being retained (one mailer even combines these and uses |>). One
also sees different styles of quoting a number of authors in the same
message: one (deprecated because it loses information) uses a leader
of > for everyone, another (the most common) is > > > > , > > > ,
etc. (or >> , >>, etc., depending on line length and nesting
depth) reflecting the original order of messages, and yet another is
to use a different citation leader for each author, say > , : , | , @
(preserving nesting so that the inclusion order of messages is still
apparent, or tagging the inclusions with authors' names). Yet another
style is to use each poster's initials (or login name) as a citation
leader for that poster.
Occasionally one sees a # leader used for quotations from
authoritative sources such as standards documents; the intended
allusion is to the root prompt (the special Unix command prompt
issued when one is running as the privileged super-user).
:Chapter 7. Hacker Speech Style:
===================================
Hackish speech generally features extremely precise diction, careful
word choice, a relatively large working vocabulary, and relatively
little use of contractions or street slang. Dry humor, irony, puns,
and a mildly flippant attitude are highly valued -- but an underlying
seriousness and intelligence are essential. One should use just
enough jargon to communicate precisely and identify oneself as a
member of the culture; overuse of jargon or a breathless, excessively
gung-ho attitude is considered tacky and the mark of a loser.
This speech style is a variety of the precisionist English normally
spoken by scientists, design engineers, and academics in technical
fields. In contrast with the methods of jargon construction, it is
fairly constant throughout hackerdom.
It has been observed that many hackers are confused by negative
questions -- or, at least, that the people to whom they are talking
are often confused by the sense of their answers. The problem is that
they have done so much programming that distinguishes between
if (going) ...
and
if (!going) ...
that when they parse the question "Aren't you going?" it may seem to
be asking the opposite question from "Are you going?", and so to
merit an answer in the opposite sense. This confuses English-speaking
non-hackers because they were taught to answer as though the negative
part weren't there. In some other languages (including Russian,
Chinese, and Japanese) the hackish interpretation is standard and the
problem wouldn't arise. Hackers often find themselves wishing for a
word like French `si', German `doch', or Dutch `jawel' -- a word with
which one could unambiguously answer `yes' to a negative question.
(See also mu)
For similar reasons, English-speaking hackers almost never use double
negatives, even if they live in a region where colloquial usage
allows them. The thought of uttering something that logically ought
to be an affirmative knowing it will be misparsed as a negative tends
to disturb them.
In a related vein, hackers sometimes make a game of answering
questions containing logical connectives with a strictly literal
rather than colloquial interpretation. A non-hacker who is indelicate
enough to ask a question like "So, are you working on finding that
bug now or leaving it until later?" is likely to get the perfectly
correct answer "Yes!" (that is, "Yes, I'm doing it either now or
later, and you didn't ask which!").
:Chapter 8. International Style:
===================================
Although the Jargon File remains primarily a lexicon of hacker usage
in American English, we have made some effort to get input from
abroad. Though the hacker-speak of other languages often uses
translations of jargon from English (often as transmitted to them by
earlier Jargon File versions!), the local variations are interesting,
and knowledge of them may be of some use to travelling hackers.
There are some references herein to `Commonwealth hackish'. These are
intended to describe some variations in hacker usage as reported in
the English spoken in Great Britain and the Commonwealth (Canada,
Australia, India, etc. -- though Canada is heavily influenced by
American usage). There is also an entry on Commonwealth Hackish
reporting some general phonetic and vocabulary differences from U.S.
hackish.
Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia report that
they often use a mixture of English and their native languages for
technical conversation. Occasionally they develop idioms in their
English usage that are influenced by their native-language styles.
Some of these are reported here.
On the other hand, English often gives rise to grammatical and
vocabulary mutations in the native language. For example, Italian
hackers often use the nonexistent verbs `scrollare' (to scroll) and
`deletare' (to delete) rather than native Italian scorrere and
cancellare. Similarly, the English verb `to hack' has been seen
conjugated in Swedish. In German, many Unix terms in English are
casually declined as if they were German verbs -- thus:
mount/mounten/gemountet; grep/grepen/gegrept; fork/forken/geforkt;
core dump/core-dumpen, gecoredumpt. And Spanish-speaking hackers use
`linkear' (to link), `debugear' (to debug), and `lockear' (to lock).
European hackers report that this happens partly because the English
terms make finer distinctions than are available in their native
vocabularies, and partly because deliberate language-crossing makes
for amusing wordplay.
A few notes on hackish usages in Russian have been added where they
are parallel with English idioms and thus comprehensible to
English-speakers.
:Chapter 9. Crackers, Phreaks, and Lamers:
===================================
From the early 1980s onward, a flourishing culture of local,
MS-DOS-based bulletin boards developed separately from Internet
hackerdom. The BBS culture has, as its seamy underside, a stratum of
`pirate boards' inhabited by crackers, phone phreaks, and warez
d00dz. These people (mostly teenagers running IBM-PC clones from
their bedrooms) have developed their own characteristic jargon,
heavily influenced by skateboard lingo and underground-rock slang.
While BBS technology essentially died out after the Great Internet
Explosion, the cracker culture moved to IRC and other Internet-based
network channels and maintained a semi-underground existence.
Though crackers often call themselves `hackers', they aren't (they
typically have neither significant programming ability, nor Internet
expertise, nor experience with UNIX or other true multi-user
systems). Their vocabulary has little overlap with hackerdom's, and
hackers regard them with varying degrees of contempt. But ten years
on the brightest crackers tend to become hackers, and sometimes to
recall their origins by using cracker slang in a marked and heavily
ironic way.
This lexicon covers much of cracker slang (which is often called
"leet-speak") so the reader will be able to understand both what
leaks out of the cracker underground and the occasional ironic use by
hackers.
Here is a brief guide to cracker and warez d00dz usage:
* Misspell frequently. The substitutions phone -> fone and freak ->
phreak are obligatory.
* Always substitute `z's for `s's. (i.e. "codes" -> "codez"). The
substitution of `z' for `s' has evolved so that a `z' is now
systematically put at the end of words to denote an illegal or
cracking connection. Examples : Appz, passwordz, passez, utilz,
MP3z, distroz, pornz, sitez, gamez, crackz, serialz, downloadz,
FTPz, etc.
* Type random emphasis characters after a post line (i.e. "Hey
Dudes!#!$#$!#!$").
* Use the emphatic `k' prefix ("k-kool", "k-rad", "k-awesome")
frequently.
* Abbreviate compulsively ("I got lotsa warez w/ docs").
* TYPE ALL IN CAPS LOCK, SO IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE YELLING ALL THE
TIME.
The following letter substitutions are common:
a -> 4
e -> 3
f -> ph
i -> 1 or |
l -> | or 1
m -> |\/|
n -> |\|
o -> 0
s -> 5
t -> 7 or +
Thus, "elite" comes out "31337" and "all your base are belong to us"
becomes "4ll y0ur b4s3 4r3 b3l0ng t0 us", Other less common
substitutions include:
b -> 8
c -> ( or k or |< or /<
d -> <|
g -> 6 or 9
h -> |-|
k -> |< or /<
p -> |2
u -> |_|
v -> / or \/
w -> // or \/\/
x -> ><
y -> '/
The word "cool" is spelled "kewl" and normally used ironically; when
crackers really want to praise something they use the prefix "uber"
(from German) which comes out "ub3r" or even "|_|83r"
These traits are similar to those of B1FF, who originated as a parody
of naive BBS users; also of his latter-day equivalent Jeff K..
Occasionally, this sort of distortion may be used as heavy sarcasm or
ironically by a real hacker, as in:
> I got X Windows running under Linux!
d00d! u R an 31337 hax0r
The words "hax0r" for "hacker" and "sux0r" for "sucks" are the most
common references; more generally, to mark a term as cracker-speak
one may add "0r" or "xor". Examples:
"The nightly build is sux0r today."
"Gotta go reboot those b0x0rz."
"Man, I really ought to fix0r my .fetchmailrc."
"Yeah, well he's a 'leet VMS operat0r now, so he's too good for u
s."
The only practice resembling this in native hacker usage is the
substitution of a dollar sign of `s' in names of products or service
felt to be excessively expensive, e.g. Compu$erve, Micro$oft.
For further discussion of the pirate-board subculture, see lamer,
elite, leech, poser, cracker, and especially warez d00dz, banner
site, ratio site, leech mode.
:Chapter 10. 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:
Syllables are hyphen-separated, except that an accent or back-accent
follows each accented syllable (the back-accent marks a secondary
accent in some words of four or more syllables). If no accent is
given, the word is pronounced with equal accentuation on all
syllables (this is common for abbreviations).
Consonants are pronounced as in American English. The letter `g' is
always hard (as in "got" rather than "giant"); `ch' is soft ("church"
rather than "chemist"). The letter `j' is the sound that occurs twice
in "judge". The letter `s' is always as in "pass", never a z sound.
The digraph `kh' is the guttural of "loch" or "l'chaim". The digraph
`gh' is the aspirated g+h of "bughouse" or "ragheap" (rare in
English).
Uppercase letters are pronounced as their English letter names; thus
(for example) /H-L-L/ is equivalent to /aych el el/. /Z/ may be
pronounced /zee/ or /zed/ depending on your local dialect.
Vowels are represented as follows:
Table 10.1. Vowels
a back, that
ah father, palm (see note)
ar far, mark
aw flaw, caught
ay bake, rain
e less, men
ee easy, ski
eir their, software
i trip, hit
i: life, sky
o block, stock (see note)
oh flow, sew
oo loot, through
or more, door
ow out, how
oy boy, coin
uh but, some
u put, foot
y yet, young
yoo few, chew
[y]oo /oo/ with optional fronting as in `news' (/nooz/ or /nyooz/)
The glyph /@/ is used for the `schwa' sound of unstressed or occluded
vowels.
The schwa vowel is omitted in syllables containing vocalic r, l, m or
n; that is, `kitten' and `color' would be rendered /kit'n/ and
/kuhl'r/, not /kit'@n/ and /kuhl'@r/.
Note that the above table reflects mainly distinctions found in
standard American English (that is, the neutral dialect spoken by TV
network announcers and typical of educated speech in the Upper
Midwest, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Philadelphia). However, we
separate /o/ from /ah/, which tend to merge in standard American.
This may help readers accustomed to accents resembling British
Received Pronunciation.
The intent of this scheme is to permit as many readers as possible to
map the pronunciations into their local dialect by ignoring some
subset of the distinctions we make. Speakers of British RP, for
example, can smash terminal /r/ and all unstressed vowels. Speakers
of many varieties of southern American will automatically map /o/ to
/aw/; and so forth. (Standard American makes a good reference dialect
for this purpose because it has crisp consonants and more vowel
distinctions than other major dialects, and tends to retain
distinctions between unstressed vowels. It also happens to be what
your editor speaks.)
Entries with a pronunciation of `//' are written-only usages. (No,
Unix weenies, this does not mean `pronounce like previous
pronunciation'!)
:Chapter 11. 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 before A, except that leading
dash is ignored. The case-blindness is a feature, not a bug.
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 open source
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:
Table 11.1. Abbreviations
abbrev. abbreviation
adj. adjective
adv. adverb
alt. alternate
cav. caveat
conj. conjunction
esp. especially
excl. exclamation
imp. imperative
interj. interjection
n. noun
obs. obsolete
pl. plural
poss. possibly
pref. prefix
prob. probably
prov. proverbial
quant. quantifier
suff. suffix
syn. synonym (or synonymous with)
v. verb (may be transitive or intransitive)
var. variant
vi. intransitive verb
vt. transitive verb
Where alternate spellings or pronunciations are given, alt. separates
two possibilities with nearly equal distribution, while var. prefixes
one that is markedly less common than the primary.
Where a term can be attributed to a particular subculture or is known
to have originated there, we have tried to so indicate. Here is a
list of abbreviations used in etymologies:
Table 11.2. Origins
Amateur Packet Radio A technical culture of ham-radio sites using
AX.25 and TCP/IP for wide-area networking and BBS systems.
Berkeley University of California at Berkeley
BBN Bolt, Beranek & Newman
Cambridge the university in England (not the city in Massachusetts
where MIT happens to be located!)
CMU Carnegie-Mellon University
Commodore Commodore Business Machines
DEC The Digital Equipment Corporation (now HP).
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 Système International, the name for the standard
abbreviations 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
WWW The World-Wide-Web.
XEROX PARC XEROX's Palo Alto Research Center, site of much pioneering
research in user interface design and networking
Yale Yale University
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.
:Chapter 12. Format for New Entries:
===================================
We welcome new jargon, and corrections to or amplifications of
existing entries. You can improve your submission's chances of being
included by adding background information on user population and
years of currency. References to actual usage via URLs and/or Google
pointers are particularly welcomed.
All contributions and suggestions about the Jargon File will be
considered donations to be placed in the public domain as part of
this File, and may be used in subsequent paper editions. Submissions
may be edited for accuracy, clarity and concision.
We are looking to expand the File's range of technical specialties
covered. There are doubtless rich veins of jargon yet untapped in the
scientific computing, graphics, and networking hacker communities;
also in numerical analysis, computer architectures and VLSI design,
language design, and many other related fields. Send us your jargon!
We are not interested in straight technical terms explained by
textbooks or technical dictionaries unless an entry illuminates
`underground' meanings or aspects not covered by official histories.
We are also not interested in `joke' entries -- there is a lot of
humor in the file but it must flow naturally out of the explanations
of what hackers do and how they think.
It is OK to submit items of jargon you have originated if they have
spread to the point of being used by people who are not personally
acquainted with you. We prefer items to be attested by independent
submission from two different sites.
The Jargon File will be regularly maintained and made available for
browsing on the World Wide Web, and will include a version number.
Read it, pass it around, contribute -- this is your monument!
:The Jargon Lexicon:
********************
[crunchly-1.png]
The Crunchly saga begins here.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-05-18.)
The infamous Crunchly cartoons by The Great Quux are woven into the
lexicon, each next to an appropriate entry. To read them in the
sequence in which they were written, chase pointers from here using
the `next cartoon' information in the captions. A few don't have next
pointers; these are vignettes from the 1973 Crunchland tableau spread
that inaugurated the strip.
= 0 =
=====
(TM) //
[Usenet] ASCII rendition of the (TM) appended to phrases that the
author feels should be recorded for posterity, perhaps in future
editions of this lexicon. Sometimes used ironically as a form of
protest against the recent spate of software and algorithm patents
and look and feel lawsuits. See also {UN*X}.
/dev/null /dev·nuhl/, n.
[from the Unix null device, used as a data sink] A notional `black
hole' in any information space being discussed, used, or referred to.
A controversial posting, for example, might end "Kudos to
rasputin@kremlin.org, flames to /dev/null". See bit bucket.
/me //
[IRC; common] Under most IRC, /me is the "pose" command; if you are
logged on as Foonly and type "/me laughs", others watching the
channel will see "* Joe Foonly laughs". This usage has been carried
over to mail and news, where the reader is expected to perform the
same expansion in his or her head.
0
Numeric zero, as opposed to the letter `O' (the 15th letter of the
English alphabet). In their unmodified forms they look a lot alike,
and various kluges invented to make them visually distinct have
compounded the confusion. If your zero is center-dotted and letter-O
is not, or if letter-O looks almost rectangular but zero looks more
like an American football stood on end (or the reverse), you're
probably looking at a modern character display (though the dotted
zero seems to have originated as an option on IBM 3270 controllers).
If your zero is slashed but letter-O is not, you're probably looking
at an old-style ASCII graphic set descended from the default
typewheel on the venerable ASR-33 Teletype (Scandinavians, for whom Ø
is a letter, curse this arrangement). (Interestingly, the slashed
zero long predates computers; Florian Cajori's monumental A History
of Mathematical Notations notes that it was used in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries.) If letter-O has a slash across it and the zero
does not, your display is tuned for a very old convention used at IBM
and a few other early mainframe makers (Scandinavians curse this
arrangement even more, because it means two of their letters
collide). Some Burroughs/Unisys equipment displays a zero with a
reversed slash. Old CDC computers rendered letter O as an unbroken
oval and 0 as an oval broken at upper right and lower left. And yet
another convention common on early line printers left zero
unornamented but added a tail or hook to the letter-O so that it
resembled an inverted Q or cursive capital letter-O (this was
endorsed by a draft ANSI standard for how to draw ASCII characters,
but the final standard changed the distinguisher to a tick-mark in
the upper-left corner). Are we sufficiently confused yet?
1TBS //, n.
The "One True Brace Style"; see indent style.
2 infix.
In translation software written by hackers, infix 2 often represents
the syllable to with the connotation `translate to': as in dvi2ps
(DVI to PostScript), int2string (integer to string), and texi2roff
(Texinfo to [nt]roff). Several versions of a joke have floated around
the internet in which some idiot programmer fixes the Y2K bug by
changing all the Y's in something to K's, as in Januark, Februark,
etc.
404 //, n.
[from the HTTP error "file not found on server"] Extended to humans
to convey that the subject has no idea or no clue -- sapience not
found. May be used reflexively; "Uh, I'm 404ing" means "I'm drawing a
blank".
404 compliant adj.
The status of a website which has been completely removed, usually by
the administrators of the hosting site as a result of net abuse by
the website operators. The term is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the
standard "301 compliant" Murkowski Bill disclaimer used by spammers.
See also: spam, spamvertize.
@-party /at´par`tee/, n.
[from the @-sign in an Internet address] (alt.: `@-sign party'
/at´si:n par`tee/) A semi-closed party thrown for hackers at a
science-fiction convention (esp. the annual World Science Fiction
Convention or "Worldcon"); one must have a network address to get
in, or at least be in company with someone who does. One of the most
reliable opportunities for hackers to meet face to face with people
who might otherwise be represented by mere phosphor dots on their
screens. Compare boink.
The first recorded @-party was held at the Westercon (a U.S. western
regional SF convention) over the July 4th weekend in 1980. It is not
clear exactly when the canonical @-party venue shifted to the
Worldcon but it had certainly become established by Constellation in
1983. Sadly, the @-party tradition has been in decline since about
1996, mainly because having an @-address no longer functions as an
effective lodge pin.
We are informed, however, that rec.skydiving members have maintained
a tradition of formation jumps in the shape of an @.
= A =
=====
abbrev /@·breev´/, /@·brev´/, n.
Common abbreviation for `abbreviation'.
ABEND /a´bend/, /@·bend´/, n.
[ABnormal END]
1. Abnormal termination (of software); crash; lossage. Derives
from an error message on the IBM 360; used jokingly by hackers but
seriously mainly by code grinders. Usually capitalized, but may
appear as `abend'. Hackers will try to persuade you that ABEND is
called abend because it is what system operators do to the machine
late on Friday when they want to call it a day, and hence is from the
German Abend = `Evening'.
2. [alt.callahans] Absent By Enforced Net Deprivation -- used in the
subject lines of postings warning friends of an imminent loss of
Internet access. (This can be because of computer downtime, loss of
provider, moving or illness.) Variants of this also appear: ABVND =
`Absent By Voluntary Net Deprivation' and ABSEND = `Absent By
Self-Enforced Net Deprivation' have been sighted.
accumulator n. obs.
1. Archaic term for a register. On-line use of it as a synonym for
register is a fairly reliable indication that the user has been
around for quite a while and/or that the architecture under
discussion is quite old. The term in full is almost never used of
microprocessor registers, for example, though symbolic names for
arithmetic registers beginning in `A' derive from historical use of
the term accumulator (and not, actually, from `arithmetic').
Confusingly, though, an `A' register name prefix may also stand for
address, as for example on the Motorola 680x0 family.
2. A register being used for arithmetic or logic (as opposed to
addressing or a loop index), especially one being used to accumulate
a sum or count of many items. This use is in context of a particular
routine or stretch of code. "The FOOBAZ routine uses A3 as an
accumulator."
3. One's in-basket (esp. among old-timers who might use sense 1).
"You want this reviewed? Sure, just put it in the accumulator." (See
stack.)
ACK /ak/, interj.
1. [common; from the ASCII mnemonic for 0000110] Acknowledge. Used to
register one's presence (compare mainstream Yo!). An appropriate
response to 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".
4. An affirmative. "Think we ought to ditch that damn NT server for a
Linux box?" "ACK!"
There is also a usage "ACK?" (from sense 1) meaning "Are you there?",
often used in email when earlier mail has produced no reply, or
during a lull in talk mode to see if the person has gone away (the
standard humorous response is of course NAK, i.e., "I'm not here").
Acme n.
[from Greek akme highest point of perfection or achievement] The
canonical supplier of bizarre, elaborate, and non-functional gadgetry
-- where Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson (two cartoonists who
specialized in elaborate contraptions) shop. The name has been
humorously expanded as A (or American) Company Making Everything. (In
fact, Acme was a real brand sold from Sears Roebuck catalogs in the
early 1900s.) Describing some X as an "Acme X" either means "This is
insanely great", or, more likely, "This looks insanely great on
paper, but in practice it's really easy to shoot yourself in the foot
with it." Compare pistol.
This term, specially cherished by American hackers and explained here
for the benefit of our overseas brethren, comes from the Warner
Brothers' series of "Road-runner" cartoons. In these cartoons, the
famished Wile E. Coyote was forever attempting to catch up with,
trap, and eat the Road-runner. His attempts usually involved one or
more high-technology Rube Goldberg devices -- rocket jetpacks,
catapults, magnetic traps, high-powered slingshots, etc. These were
usually delivered in large wooden crates labeled prominently with the
Acme name -- which, probably not by coincidence, was the trade name
of a peg bar system for superimposing animation cels used by
cartoonists since forever. Acme devices invariably malfunctioned in
improbable and violent ways.
ad-hockery /ad·hok'@r·ee/, n.
[Purdue]
1. Gratuitous assumptions made inside certain programs, esp. expert
systems, which lead to the appearance of semi-intelligent behavior
but are in fact entirely arbitrary. For example, fuzzy-matching of
input tokens that might be typing errors against a symbol table can
make it look as though a program knows how to spell.
2. Special-case code to cope with some awkward input that would
otherwise cause a program to 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.
[73-10-31.png]
This is ad-hockery in action.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 74-08-18. The previous one
is 73-07-29.)
address harvester n.
A robot that searches web pages and/or filters netnews traffic
looking for valid email addresses. Some address harvesters are
benign, used only for compiling address directories. Most,
unfortunately, are run by miscreants compiling address lists to
spam. Address harvesters can be foiled by a teergrube.
adger /aj´r/, vt.
[UCLA mutant of nadger, poss. also from the middle name of an
infamous tenured graduate student] To make a bonehead move with
consequences that could have been foreseen with even slight mental
effort. E.g., "He started removing files and promptly adgered the
whole project". Compare 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 designed by Will
Crowther on the PDP-10 in the mid-1970s as an attempt at
computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a puzzle-oriented
game by Don Woods at Stanford in 1976. (Woods had been one of the
authors of INTERCAL.) Now better known as Adventure or Colossal
Cave Adventure, but the TOPS-10 operating system permitted only
six-letter filenames in uppercase. See also vadding, Zork, and
Infocom.
Figure 1. Screen shot of the original ADVENT game
Orange River Chamber
You are in a splendid chamber thirty feet high. The walls are frozen rivers of
orange stone. An awkward canyon and a good passage exit from east and west
sidesof the chamber.
A cheerful little bird is sitting here singing.
>drop rod
Dropped.
>take bird
You catch the bird in the wicker cage.
>take rod
Taken.
>w
At Top of Small Pit
At your feet is a small pit breathing traces of white mist. A west passage end
s
here except for a small crack leading on.
Rough stone steps lead down the pit.
>down
In Hall of Mists
You are at one end of a vast hall stretching forward out of sight to the west.
There are openings to either side. Nearby, a wide stone staircase leads
downward. The hall is filled with wisps of white mist swaying to and fro almos
t
as if alive. A cold wind blows up the staircase. There is a passage at the top
of a dome behind you.
Rough stone steps lead up the dome.
This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style since expected in
text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines that have
become fixtures of hacker-speak: "A huge green fierce snake bars the
way!" "I see no X here" (for some noun X). "You are in a maze of
twisty little passages, all alike." "You are in a little maze of
twisty passages, all different." The `magic words' 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.
ADVENT sources are available for FTP at
ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/doc/misc/if-archive/games/source/advent.tar.Z.
You can also play it as a Java applet. There is a good page of
resources at the Colossal Cave Adventure Page.
adware n.
Software which is free to download and use but includes pop-up banner
ads somewhere. See also -ware.
AFAIK //, n.
[Usenet; common] Abbrev. for "As Far As I Know". There is a variant
AFAICT "As Far As I Can Tell"; where AFAIK suggests that the writer
knows his knowledge is limited, AFAICT suggests that he feels his
knowledge is as complete as anybody else's but that the best
available knowledge does not support firm conclusions.
AFJ //, n.
Written-only abbreviation for "April Fool's Joke". Elaborate April
Fool's hoaxes are a long-established tradition on Usenet and
Internet; see kremvax for an example. In fact, April Fool's Day is
the only seasonal holiday consistently marked by customary
observances on Internet and other hacker networks.
AFK
[MUD] Abbrev. for "Away From Keyboard". Used to notify others that
you will be momentarily unavailable online. eg. "Let's not go kill
that frost giant yet, I need to go AFK to make a phone call". Often
MUDs will have a command to politely inform others of your absence
when they try to talk with you. The term is not restricted to MUDs,
however, and has become common in many chat situations, from IRC to
Unix talk.
AI /A·I/, n.
Abbreviation for `Artificial Intelligence', so common that the full
form is almost never written or spoken among hackers.
AI-complete /A·I k@m·pleet'/, adj.
[MIT, Stanford: by analogy with NP-complete (see NP-)] Used to
describe problems or subproblems in AI, to indicate that the solution
presupposes a solution to the `strong AI problem' (that is, the
synthesis of a human-level intelligence). A problem that is
AI-complete is, in other words, just too hard.
Examples of AI-complete problems are `The Vision Problem' (building a
system that can see as well as a human) and `The Natural Language
Problem' (building a system that can understand and speak a natural
language as well as a human). These may appear to be modular, but all
attempts so far (2003) to solve them have foundered on the amount of
context information and `intelligence' they seem to require. See also
gedanken.
airplane rule n.
"Complexity increases the possibility of failure; a twin-engine
airplane has twice as many engine problems as a single-engine
airplane." By analogy, in both software and electronics, the rule
that simplicity increases robustness. It is correspondingly argued
that the right way to build reliable systems is to put all your eggs
in one basket, after making sure that you've built a really good
basket. See also KISS Principle, elegant.
Alderson loop n.
[Intel] A special version of an infinite loop where there is an
exit condition available, but inaccessible in the current
implementation of the code. Typically this is created while debugging
user interface code. An example would be when there is a menu
stating, "Select 1-3 or 9 to quit" and 9 is not allowed by the
function that takes the selection from the user.
This term received its name from a programmer who had coded a modal
message box in MSAccess with no Ok or Cancel buttons, thereby
disabling the entire program whenever the box came up. The message
box had the proper code for dismissal and even was set up so that
when the non-existent Ok button was pressed the proper code would be
called.
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 several
pointers address (are 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, or 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.
Alice and Bob n.
The archetypal individuals used as examples in discussions of
cryptographic protocols. Originally, theorists would say something
like: "A communicates with someone who claims to be B, So to be sure,
A tests that B knows a secret number K. So A sends to B a random
number X. B then forms Y by encrypting X under key K and sends Y back
to A" Because this sort of thing is quite hard to follow, theorists
stopped using the unadorned letters A and B to represent the main
players and started calling them Alice and Bob. So now we say "Alice
communicates with someone claiming to be Bob, and to be sure, Alice
tests that Bob knows a secret number K. Alice sends to Bob a random
number X. Bob then forms Y by encrypting X under key K and sends Y
back to Alice". A whole mythology rapidly grew up around the
metasyntactic names; see http://www.conceptlabs.co.uk/alicebob.html.
In Bruce Schneier's definitive introductory text Applied Cryptography
(2nd ed., 1996, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-11709-9) he introduced
a table of dramatis personae headed by Alice and Bob. Others include
Carol (a participant in three- and four-party protocols), Dave (a
participant in four-party protocols), Eve (an eavesdropper), Mallory
(a malicious active attacker), Trent (a trusted arbitrator), Walter
(a warden), Peggy (a prover) and Victor (a verifier). These names for
roles are either already standard or, given the wide popularity of
the book, may be expected to quickly become so.
All hardware sucks, all software sucks. prov.
[from scary devil monastery] A general recognition of the
fallibility of any computer system, ritually intoned as an attempt to
quell incipient holy wars. It is a common response to any sort of
bigot. When discussing Wintel systems, however, it is often
snidely appended with, `but some suck more than others.'
all your base are belong to us
A declaration of victory or superiority. The phrase stems from a 1991
adaptation of Toaplan's "Zero Wing" shoot-'em-up arcade game for the
Sega Genesis game console. A brief introduction was added to the
opening screen, and it has what many consider to be the worst
Japanese-to-English translation in video game history. The
introduction shows the bridge of a starship in chaos as a Borg-like
figure named CATS materializes and says, "How are you gentlemen!! All
your base are belong to us." [sic] In 2001, this amusing
mistranslation spread virally through the Internet, bringing with it
a slew of JPEGs and a movie of hacked photographs, each showing a
street sign, store front, package label, etc. hacked to read "All
your base are belong to us" or one of the other many supremely dopey
lines from the game (such as "Somebody set up usthe bomb!!!" or "What
happen?"). When these phrases are used properly, the overall effect
is both screamingly funny and somewhat chilling, reminiscent of the B
movie "They Live".
The original has been generalized to "All your X are belong to us",
where X is filled in to connote a sinister takeover of some sort.
Thus, "When Joe signed up for his new job at Yoyodyne, he had to sign
a draconian NDA. It basically said: All your code are belong to us."
Has many of the connotations of "Resistance is futile; you will be
assimilated" (see Borg). Considered silly, and most likely to be
used by the type of person that finds Jeff K. hilarious.
alpha geek n.
[from animal ethologists' alpha male] The most technically
accomplished or skillful person in some implied context. "Ask Larry,
he's the alpha geek here."
alpha particles n.
See bit rot.
alt /awlt/
1. n. The alt shift key on an IBM PC or clone keyboard; see bucky
bits, sense 2 (though typical PC usage does not simply set the 0200
bit).
2. n. The option key on a Macintosh; use of this term usually reveals
that the speaker hacked PCs before coming to the Mac (see also
feature key, which is sometimes incorrectly called `alt').
3. The alt hierarchy on Usenet, the tree of newsgroups created by
users without a formal vote and approval procedure. There is a myth,
not entirely implausible, that alt is acronymic for "anarchists,
lunatics, and terrorists"; but in fact it is simply short for
"alternative".
4. n.,obs. Rare alternate name for the ASCII ESC character (ASCII
0011011). This use, derives, with the alt key itself, from archaic
PDP-10 operating systems, especially ITS.
alt bit /awlt bit/, adj.
See meta bit.
Aluminum Book n.
[MIT] 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.
ambimouseterous /am·b@·mows´ter·us/, /am·b@·mows´trus/, adj
[modeled on ambidextrous] Able to use a mouse with either hand.
Amiga n
A series of personal computer models originally sold by Commodore,
based on 680x0 processors, custom support chips and an operating
system that combined some of the best features of Macintosh and Unix
with compatibility with neither.
The Amiga was released just as the personal computing world
standardized on IBM-PC clones. This prevented it from gaining serious
market share, despite the fact that the first Amigas had a
substantial technological lead on the IBM XTs of the time. Instead,
it acquired a small but zealous population of enthusiastic hackers
who dreamt of one day unseating the clones (see Amiga Persecution
Complex). The traits of this culture are both spoofed and
illuminated in The BLAZE Humor Viewer. The strength of the Amiga
platform seeded a small industry of companies building software and
hardware for the platform, especially in graphics and video
applications (see video toaster).
Due to spectacular mismanagement, Commodore did hardly any R&D,
allowing the competition to close Amiga's technological lead. After
Commodore went bankrupt in 1994 the technology passed through several
hands, none of whom did much with it. However, the Amiga is still
being produced in Europe under license and has a substantial number
of fans, which will probably extend the platform's life considerably.
Amiga Persecution Complex n.
The disorder suffered by a particularly egregious variety of bigot,
those who believe that the marginality of their preferred machine is
the result of some kind of industry-wide conspiracy (for without a
conspiracy of some kind, the eminent superiority of their beloved
shining jewel of a platform would obviously win over all, market
pressures be damned!) Those afflicted are prone to engaging in flame
wars and calling for boycotts and mailbombings. Amiga Persecution
Complex is by no means limited to Amiga users; NeXT, NeWS, OS/2,
Macintosh, LISP, and GNU users are also common victims. Linux
users used to display symptoms very frequently before Linux started
winning; some still do. See also newbie, troll, holy wars,
weenie, Get a life!.
amp off vt.
[Purdue] 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.
and there was much rejoicing
[from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail.]
Acknowledgement of a notable accomplishment. Something long-awaited,
widely desired, possibly unexpected but secretly wished-for, with a
suggestion that something about the problem (and perhaps the steps
necessary to make it go away) was deeply disturbing to hacker
sensibilities.
In person, the phrase is almost invariably pronounced with the same
portentious intonation as the movie. The customary in-person
(approving) response is a weak and halfhearted "Yaaaay...", with one
index finger raised like a flag and moved in a small circle. The
reason for this, like most of the Monty Python oeuvre, cannot easily
be explained outside its original context.
Example: "changelog entry #436: with the foo driver brain damage
taken care of, finally obsoleted BROKEN_EVIL_KLUDGE. Removed from
source tree. (And there was much rejoicing)."
Angband n., /ang´band/
Like nethack, moria, and rogue, one of the large freely
distributed Dungeons-and-Dragons-like simulation games, available for
a wide range of machines and operating systems. The name is from
Tolkien's Pits of Angband (compare elder days, elvish). Has been
described as "Moria on steroids"; but, unlike Moria, many aspects of
the game are customizable. This leads many hackers and would-be
hackers into fooling with these instead of doing productive work.
There are many Angband variants, of which the most notorious is
probably the rather whimsical Zangband. In this game, when a key that
does not correspond to a command is pressed, the game will display
"Type ? for help" 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time, random
error messages including "An error has occurred because an error of
type 42 has occurred" and "Windows 95 uninstalled successfully" will
be displayed. Zangband also allows the player to kill Santa Claus
(who has some really good stuff, but also has a lot of friends),
"Bull Gates", and Barney the Dinosaur (but be watchful; Barney has a
nasty case of halitosis). There is an official angband home page at
http://thangorodrim.angband.org/ and a zangband one at
http://www.zangband.org/. See also Random Number God.
angle brackets n.
Either of the characters < (ASCII 0111100) and > (ASCII 0111110)
(ASCII less-than or greater-than signs). Typographers in the Real
World use angle brackets which are either taller and slimmer (the
ISO lang and rang characters), or significantly smaller (single or
double guillemets) than the less-than and greater-than signs. See
broket, ASCII.
angry fruit salad n.
A bad visual-interface design that uses too many colors. (This term
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/, n.
[IRC] See bot.
annoyware n.
A type of shareware that frequently disrupts normal program
operation to display requests for payment to the author in return for
the ability to disable the request messages. (Also called nagware)
The requests generally require user action to acknowledge the message
before normal operation is resumed and are often tied to the most
frequently used features of the software. See also careware,
charityware, crippleware, freeware, FRS, guiltware,
postcardware, and -ware; compare payware.
ANSI standard /an´see stan´d@rd/
The ANSI standard usage of ANSI standard refers to any practice which
is typical or broadly done. It's most appropriately applied to things
that everyone does that are not quite regulation. For example: ANSI
standard shaking of a laser printer cartridge to get extra life from
it, or the ANSI standard word tripling in names of usenet alt groups.
This usage derives from the American National Standards Institute.
ANSI, along with the International Organization for Standards (ISO),
standardized the C programming language (see K&R, Classic C), and
promulgates many other important software standards.
ANSI standard pizza /an´see stan´d@rd peet´z@/
[CMU] Pepperoni and mushroom pizza. Coined allegedly because most
pizzas ordered by CMU hackers during some period leading up to
mid-1990 were of that flavor. See also rotary debugger; compare
ISO standard cup of tea.
anti-idiotarianism n.
[very common] Opposition to idiots of all political stripes. First
coined in the blog named Little Green Footballs as part of a post
expressing disgust with inane responses to post-9/11 Islamic
terrorism. Anti-idiotarian wrath has focused on Islamic terrorists
and their sympathizers in the Western political left, but also
routinely excoriated right-wing politicians backing repressive
'anti-terror` legislation and Christian religious figures who (in the
blogosphere's view of the matter) have descended nearly to the level
of jihad themselves.
AOL! n.
[Usenet] Common synonym for "Me, too!" alluding to the legendary
propensity of America Online users to utter contentless "Me, too!"
postings. The number of exclamation points following varies from zero
to five or so. The pseudo-HTML
<AOL>Me, too!</AOL>
is also frequently seen. See also September that never ended.
app /ap/, n.
Short for `application program', as opposed to a systems program.
Apps are 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. (Broadly, an app is often a self-contained environment for
performing some well-defined task such as `word processing'; hackers
tend to prefer more general-purpose tools.) See killer app; oppose
tool, operating system.
Archimedes
The world's first RISC microcomputer, available only in the British
Commonwealth and europe. Built in 1987 in Great Britain by Acorn
Computers, it was legendary for its use of the ARM-2 microprocessor
as a CPU. Many a novice hacker in the Commonwealth first learnt his
or her skills on the Archimedes, since it was specifically designed
for use in schools and educational institutions. Owners of Archimedes
machines are often still treated with awe and reverence. Familiarly,
"archi".
arena n.
[common; Unix] 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
malloc: corrupt arena message emitted when some early versions
detected an impossible value in the free block list. 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.
ARMM n.
[acronym, `Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation'] A Usenet
cancelbot created by Dick Depew of Munroe Falls, Ohio. ARMM was
intended to automatically cancel posts from anonymous-posting sites.
Unfortunately, the robot's recognizer for anonymous postings
triggered on its own automatically-generated control messages!
Transformed by this stroke of programming ineptitude into a monster
of Frankensteinian proportions, it broke loose on the night of March
30, 1993 and proceeded to spam news.admin.policy with a recursive
explosion of over 200 messages.
ARMM's bug produced a recursive cascade of messages each of which
mechanically added text to the ID and Subject and some other headers
of its parent. This produced a flood of messages in which each header
took up several screens and each message ID and subject line got
longer and longer and longer.
Reactions varied from amusement to outrage. The pathological messages
crashed at least one mail system, and upset people paying line
charges for their Usenet feeds. One poster described the ARMM debacle
as "instant Usenet history" (also establishing the term despew),
and it has since been widely cited as a cautionary example of the
havoc the combination of good intentions and incompetence can wreak
on a network. The Usenet thread on the subject is archived here.
Compare Great Worm; sorcerer's apprentice mode. See also
software laser, network meltdown.
armor-plated n.
Syn. for bulletproof.
asbestos adj.
[common] Used as a modifier to anything intended to protect one from
flames; also in other highly flame-suggestive usages. See, for
example, asbestos longjohns and asbestos cork award.
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. (Any reader in 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 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 /as´kee/, n.
[originally an acronym (American Standard Code for Information
Interchange) but now merely conventional] The predominant character
set encoding of present-day computers. The standard version uses 7
bits for each character, whereas most earlier codes (including early
drafts of ASCII prior to June 1961) 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 ß. or the ae-ligature æ which is
a letter in, for example, Norwegian). It could be worse, though. It
could be much worse. See EBCDIC to understand how. A history of
ASCII and its ancestors is at
http://www.wps.com/texts/codes/index.html.
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. The abbreviations "l/r" and "o/c" stand for
left/right and "open/close" respectively. Ordinary parentheticals
provide some usage information.
! Common: bang ; pling; excl; not; shriek; ball-bat; <exclamation
mark>. Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey;
wham; eureka; [spark-spot]; soldier, control.
" Common: double quote; quote. Rare: literal mark; double-glitch;
snakebite; <quotation marks>; <dieresis>; dirk; [rabbit-ears]; double
prime.
# Common: number sign; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp; crunch ;
hex; [mesh]. Rare: grid; crosshatch; octothorpe; flash; <square>,
pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; splat .
$ Common: dollar; <dollar sign>. Rare: currency symbol; buck; cash;
bling; 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>; amp; amper; and, and sign. Rare: address (from
C); reference (from C++); andpersand; bitand; background (from sh(1)
); pretzel. [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: l/r paren; l/r parenthesis; left/right; open/close; par
en/thesis; o/c paren; o/c parenthesis; l/r parenthesis; l/r banana.
Rare: so/already; lparen/rparen; <opening/closing parenthesis>; o/c
round bracket, l/r round bracket, [wax/wane]; parenthisey/unparen
thisey; l/r 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>; bra/ket; l/r angle; l/r angle
bracket; l/r broket. Rare: from/{into, towards}; read from/write to;
suck/blow; comes-from/gozinta; in/out; crunch/zap (all from UNIX);
tic/tac; [angle/right angle].
= Common: <equals>; gets; takes. Rare: quadrathorpe; [half-mesh].
? Common: query; <question mark>; ques . Rare: quiz; 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: l/r square bracket; l/r bracket; <opening/closing brack
et>; bracket/unbracket. Rare: square/unsquare; [U turn/U turn back].
\ Common: backslash, hack, whack; escape (from C/UNIX); reverse
slash; slosh; backslant; backwhack. Rare: bash; <reverse slant>;
reversed virgule; [backslat].
^ Common: hat; control; uparrow; caret; <circumflex>. Rare: xor sign,
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: o/c brace; l/r brace; l/r squiggly; l/r squiggly
bracket/brace; l/r curly bracket/brace; <opening/closing brace>.
Rare: brace/unbrace; curly/uncurly; leftit/rytit; l/r squirrelly;
[embrace/bracelet]. A balanced pair of these may be called curlies .
| 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 £ 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. There are more culture wars over the correct
pronunciation of this character than any other, which has led to the
ha ha only serious suggestion that it be pronounced "shibboleth"
(see Judges 12:6 in an Old Testament or Tanakh).
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 (?1) 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 and that characters have 7 bits;
this is 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
And here are some very silly examples:
|\/\/\/| ____/| ___ |\_/| ___
| | \ o.O| ACK! / \_ |` '| _/ \
| | =(_)= THPHTH! / \/ \/ \
| (o)(o) U / \
C _) (__) \/\/\/\ _____ /\/\/\/
| ,___| (oo) \/ \/
| / \/-------\ U (__)
/____\ || | \ /---V `v'- oo )
/ \ ||---W|| * * |--| || |`. |_/\
//-o-\\
____---=======---____
====___\ /.. ..\ /___==== Klingons rule OK!
// ---\__O__/--- \\
\_\ /_/
There is an important subgenre of ASCII art that puns on the standard
character names in the fashion of a rebus.
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
| ^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ |
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
| ^^^^^^^ B ^^^^^^^^^ |
| ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
" A Bee in the Carrot Patch "
Within humorous ASCII art, there is for some reason an entire
flourishing subgenre of pictures of silly cows. Four of these are
reproduced in the examples above, here are three more:
(__) (__) (__)
(\/) ($$) (**)
/-------\/ /-------\/ /-------\/
/ | 666 || / |=====|| / | ||
* ||----|| * ||----|| * ||----||
~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~
Satanic cow This cow is a Yuppie Cow in love
Finally, here's a magnificent example of ASCII art depicting an
Edwardian train station in Dunedin, New Zealand:
.-.
/___\
|___|
|]_[|
/ I \
JL/ | \JL
.-. i () | () i .-.
|_| .^. /_\ LJ=======LJ /_\ .^. |_|
._/___\._./___\_._._._._.L_J_/.-. .-.\_L_J._._._._._/___\._./___\._._._
., |-,-| ., L_J |_| [I] |_| L_J ., |-,-| ., .,
JL |-O-| JL L_J%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%L_J JL |-O-| JL JL
IIIIII_HH_'-'-'_HH_IIIIII|_|=======H=======|_|IIIIII_HH_'-'-'_HH_IIIIII_HH_
-------[]-------[]-------[_]----\.=I=./----[_]-------[]-------[]--------[]-
_/\_ ||\\_I_//|| _/\_ [_] []_/_L_J_\_[] [_] _/\_ ||\\_I_//|| _/\_ ||\
|__| ||=/_|_\=|| |__|_|_| _L_L_J_J_ |_|_|__| ||=/_|_\=|| |__| ||-
|__| |||__|__||| |__[___]__--__===__--__[___]__| |||__|__||| |__| |||
IIIIIII[_]IIIII[_]IIIIIL___J__II__|_|__II__L___JIIIII[_]IIIII[_]IIIIIIII[_]
\_I_/ [_]\_I_/[_] \_I_[_]\II/[]\_\I/_/[]\II/[_]\_I_/ [_]\_I_/[_] \_I_/ [_]
./ \.L_J/ \L_J./ L_JI I[]/ \[]I IL_J \.L_J/ \L_J./ \.L_J
| |L_J| |L_J| L_J| |[]| |[]| |L_J |L_J| |L_J| |L_J
|_____JL_JL___JL_JL____|-|| |[]| |[]| ||-|_____JL_JL___JL_JL_____JL_J
The next step beyond static tableaux in ASCII art is ASCII animation.
There are not many large examples of this; perhaps the best known is
the ASCII animation of the original Star Wars movie at
http://www.asciimation.co.nz/.
There is a newsgroup, alt.ascii-art, devoted to this genre; however,
see also warlording.
ASCIIbetical order /as´kee·be'·t@·kl or´dr/, adj.,n.
Used to indicate that data is sorted in ASCII collated order rather
than alphabetical order. This lexicon is sorted in something close to
ASCIIbetical order, but with case ignored and entries beginning with
non-alphabetic characters moved to the beginning.
astroturfing n.
1. The use of paid shills to create the impression of a popular
movement, through means like letters to newspapers from soi-disant
`concerned citizens', paid opinion pieces, and the formation of
grass-roots lobbying groups that are actually funded by a PR group
(AstroTurf is fake grass; hence the term). See also sock puppet,
tentacle.
2. What an individual posting to a public forum under an assumed name
is said to be doing.
This term became common among hackers after it came to light in early
1998 that Microsoft had attempted to use such tactics to forestall
the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust action against the
company. The maneuver backfired horribly, angering a number of state
attorneys-general enough to induce them to go public with plans to
join the Federal suit. It also set anybody defending Microsoft on the
net for the accusation "You're just astroturfing!".
atomic adj.
[from Gk. atomos, indivisible]
1. Indivisible; cannot be split up. For example, an instruction may
be said to do several things `atomically', i.e., all the things are
done immediately, and there is no chance of the instruction being
half-completed or of another being interspersed. Used esp. to convey
that an operation cannot be screwed up by interrupts. "This routine
locks the file and increments the file's semaphore atomically."
2. [primarily techspeak] Guaranteed to complete successfully or not
at all, usu. refers to database transactions. If an error prevents a
partially-performed transaction from proceeding to completion, it
must be "backed out", as the database must not be left in an
inconsistent state.
Computer usage, in either of the above senses, has none of the
connotations that `atomic' has in mainstream English (i.e. of
particles of matter, nuclear explosions etc.).
attoparsec n.
About an inch. 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-.
Aunt Tillie n.
[linux-kernel mailing list] The archetypal non-technical user, one's
elderly and scatterbrained maiden aunt. Invoked in discussions of
usability for people who are not hackers and geeks; one sees
references to the "Aunt Tillie test".
AUP /A·U·P/
Abbreviation, "Acceptable Use Policy". The policy of a given ISP
which sets out what the ISP considers to be (un)acceptable uses of
its Internet resources.
autobogotiphobia /aw´toh·boh·got`@·foh´bee·@/
n. See bogotify.
autoconfiscate
To set up or modify a source-code distribution so that it
configures and builds using the GNU project's
autoconf/automake/libtools suite. Among open-source hackers, a mere
running binary of a program is not considered a full release; what's
interesting is a source tree that can be built into binaries using
standard tools. Since the mid-1990s, autoconf and friends been the
standard way to adapt a distribution for portability so that it can
be built on multiple operating systems without change.
automagically /aw·toh·maj´i·klee/, 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."
This term is quite old, going back at least to the mid-70s in jargon
and probably much earlier. The word `automagic' occurred in
advertising (for a shirt-ironing gadget) as far back as the late
1940s.
avatar n.
[in Hindu mythology, the incarnation of a god]
1. Among people working on virtual reality and cyberspace
interfaces, an avatar is an icon or representation of a user in a
shared virtual reality. The term is sometimes used on MUDs.
2. [CMU, Tektronix] 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
found the terms root and superuser unimaginative, and thought
`avatar' might better impress people with the responsibility they
were accepting.
awk /awk/
1. n. [Unix techspeak] An interpreted language for massaging text
data developed by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan
(the name derives 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 =
=====
B1FF /bif/, BIFF, n.
The most famous pseudo, and the prototypical newbie. Articles
from B1FF feature all uppercase letters sprinkled liberally with
bangs, typos, `cute' misspellings (EVRY BUDY LUVS GOOD OLD BIFF CUZ
KØØL 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 naivete. B1FF posts articles using his elder brother's
VIC-20. B1FF'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 B1FF is a denizen of BITNET is
supported by B1FF's (unfortunately invalid) electronic mail address:
B1FF@BIT.NET.
[1993: Now It Can Be Told! My spies inform me that B1FF was
originally created by Joe Talmadge <jat@cup.hp.com>, also the author
of the infamous and much-plagiarized "Flamer's Bible". The BIFF
filter he wrote was later passed to Richard Sexton, who posted
BIFFisms much more widely. Versions have since been posted for the
amusement of the net at large. See also Jeff K. --ESR]
B5 //
[common] Abbreviation for "Babylon 5", a science-fiction TV series as
revered among hackers as was the original Star Trek.
back door n.
[common] A hole in the security of a system deliberately left in
place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for such holes 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. Syn. trap
door; may also be called a wormhole. See also iron box, cracker,
worm, logic bomb.
Historically, back doors have often lurked in systems longer than
anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely known. Ken
Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM admitted the
existence of a back door in early Unix versions that may have
qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. In
this scheme, 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; the
hack perpetuated itself invisibly, leaving the back door in place and
active but with no trace in the sources.
The Turing lecture that reported this truly moby hack was later
published as "Reflections on Trusting Trust", Communications of the
ACM 27, 8 (August 1984), pp. 761--763 (text available at
http://www.acm.org/classics/). Ken Thompson has since confirmed that
this hack was implemented and that the Trojan Horse code did appear
in the login binary of a Unix Support group machine. Ken says the
crocked compiler was never distributed. Your editor has heard two
separate reports that suggest that the crocked login did make it out
of Bell Labs, notably to BBN, and that it enabled at least one
late-night login across the network by someone using the login name
"kt".
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. During most of its lifetime, the Cabal (as it was sometimes
capitalized) steadfastly denied its own existence; it was almost
obligatory for anyone privy to their secrets to respond "There is no
Cabal" whenever the existence or activities of the group were
speculated on in public.
The result of this policy was an attractive aura of mystery. Even a
decade after the cabal mailing list disbanded in late 1988
following a bitter internal catfight, many people believed (or
claimed to believe) that it had not actually disbanded but only gone
deeper underground with its power intact.
This belief became a model for various paranoid theories about
various Cabals with dark nefarious objectives beginning with taking
over the Usenet or Internet. These paranoias were later satirized in
ways that took on a life of their own. See Eric Conspiracy for one
example. Part of the background for this kind of humor is that many
hackers cultivate a fondness for conspiracy theory considered as a
kind of surrealist art; see the bibliography entry om Illuminatus!
for the novel that launched this trend.
See NANA for the subsequent history of "the Cabal".
backbone site n.,obs.
Formerly, 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 1993, when this sense of the term was
beginning to pass out of general use due to wide availability of
cheap Internet connections, included uunet and the mail machines at
Rutgers University, UC Berkeley, DEC's Western Research
Laboratories, Ohio State University, and the University of Texas.
Compare leaf site.
[2001 update: This term has passed into history. The UUCP network
world that gave it meaning is gone; everyone is on the Internet now
and network traffic is distributed in very different patterns. Today
one might see references to a "backbone router" instead --ESR]
backgammon
See bignum (sense 3), moby (sense 4), and pseudoprime.
background n.,adj.,vt.
[common] 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.
backreference n.
1. In a regular expression or pattern match, the text which was
matched within grouping parentheses
2. The part of the pattern which refers back to the matched text.
3. By extension, anything which refers back to something which has
been seen or discussed before. "When you said `she' just now, who
were you backreferencing?"
backronym n.
[portmanteau of back + acronym] A word interpreted as an acronym that
was not originally so intended. This is a special case of what
linguists call back formation. Examples are given under recursive
acronym (Cygnus), Acme, and mung. Discovering backronyms is a
common form of wordplay among hackers. Compare retcon.
backward combatability /bak´w@rd k@m·bat'@·bil'@·tee/, n.
[CMU, Tektronix: from backward compatibility] A property of hardware
or software revisions in which previous protocols, formats, layouts,
etc. are irrevocably discarded in favor of `new and improved'
protocols, formats, and layouts, leaving the previous ones not merely
deprecated but actively defeated. (Too often, the old and new
versions cannot definitively be distinguished, such that lingering
instances of the previous ones yield crashes or other infelicitous
effects, as opposed to a simple "version mismatch" message.) A
backwards compatible change, on the other hand, allows old versions
to coexist without crashes or error messages, but too many major
changes incorporating elaborate backwards compatibility processing
can lead to extreme software bloat. See also flag day.
BAD /B·A·D/, adj.
[IBM: acronym, "Broken As Designed"] Said of a program that is
bogus because of bad design and misfeatures rather than because of
bugginess. See working as designed.
Bad and Wrong adj.
[Durham, UK] Said of something that is both badly designed and
wrongly executed. This common term is the prototype of, and is used
by contrast with, three less common terms -- Bad and Right (a kludge,
something ugly but functional); Good and Wrong (an overblown GUI or
other attractive nuisance); and (rare praise) Good and Right. These
terms entered common use at Durham c.1994 and may have been imported
from elsewhere; they are also in use at Oxford, and the emphatic form
"Evil and Bad and Wrong" (abbreviated EBW) is reported from there.
There are standard abbreviations: they start with B&R, a typo for
"Bad and Wrong". Consequently, B&W is actually "Bad and Right", G&R =
"Good and Wrong", and G&W = "Good and Right". Compare evil and
rude, Good Thing, Bad Thing.
Bad Thing n.
[very common; always pronounced as if capitalized. Orig. fr. the 1930
Sellar & Yeatman parody of British history 1066 And All That, but
well-established among hackers in the U.S. as well.] Something that
can't possibly result in improvement of the subject. This term is
always capitalized, as in "Replacing all of the DSL links 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. It is very common among American
hackers, but not in mainstream usage in the U.S. Compare Bad and
Wrong.
bag on the side n.
[prob. originally related to a colostomy bag] 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. bite the bag vi. To fail in some manner. "The computer keeps
crashing every five minutes." "Yes, the disk controller is really
biting the bag."
The original loading of these terms was almost undoubtedly obscene,
possibly referring to a douche bag or the scrotum (we have reports of
"Bite the douche bag!" being used as a taunt at MIT 1970-1976, and we
have another report that "Bite the bag!" was in common use at least
as early as 1965), but in their current usage they have become almost
completely sanitized.
bagbiting adj.
[MIT; now rare] 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).
baggy pantsing v.
[Georgia Tech] A "baggy pantsing" is used to reprimand hackers who
incautiously leave their terminals unlocked. The affected user will
come back to find a post from them on internal newsgroups discussing
exactly how baggy their pants are, an accepted stand-in for
"unattentive user who left their work unprotected in the clusters". A
properly-done baggy pantsing is highly mocking and humorous. It is
considered bad form to post a baggy pantsing to off-campus newsgroups
or the more technical, serious groups. A particularly nice baggy
pantsing may be "claimed" by immediately quoting the message in full,
followed by your sig block; this has the added benefit of keeping
the embarassed victim from being able to delete the post. Interesting
baggy-pantsings have been done involving adding commands to login
scripts to repost the message every time the unlucky user logs in;
Unix boxes on the residential network, when cracked, oftentimes have
their homepages replaced (after being politely backed-up to another
file) with a baggy-pants message; .plan files are also occasionally
targeted. Usage: "Prof. Greenlee fell asleep in the Solaris cluster
again; we baggy-pantsed him to git.cc.class.2430.flame." Compare
derf.
balloonian variable n.
[Commodore users; perh. a deliberate phonetic mangling of boolean
variable?] Any variable that doesn't actually hold or control state,
but must nevertheless be declared, checked, or set. A typical
balloonian variable started out as a flag attached to some
environment feature that either became obsolete or was planned but
never implemented. Compatibility concerns (or politics attached to
same) may require that such a flag be treated as though it were
live.
bamf /bamf/
1. [from X-Men comics; originally "bampf"] 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 MUDs.
3. In MUD circles, "bamf" is also used to refer to the act by which a
MUD server sends a special notification to the MUD client to switch
its connection to another server ("I'll set up the old site to just
bamf people over to our new location.").
4. Used by MUDders on occasion in a more general sense related to
sense 3, to refer to directing someone to another location or
resource ("A user was asking about some technobabble so I bamfed them
to http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/".)
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. [common] 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; see also brainwidth. This
generalized usage began to go mainstream after the Internet
population explosion of 1993-1994.
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.
[now historical] 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
and Internet 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. 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 not infrequently
get lost. See the network and sitename.
banner n.
1. A top-centered graphic on a web page. Esp. used in banner ad.
2. On interactive software, a first screen containing a logo and/or
author credits and/or a copyright notice. Similar to splash screen.
3. 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.
4. 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)}.
banner ad n.
Any of the annoying graphical advertisements that span the tops of
way too many Web pages.
banner site n.
[warez d00dz] An FTP site storing pirated files where one must first
click on several banners and/or subscribe to various `free' services,
usually generating some form of revenues for the site owner, to be
able to access the site. More often than not, the username/password
painfully obtained by clicking on banners and subscribing to bogus
services or mailing lists turns out to be non-working or gives access
to a site that always responds busy. See ratio site, leech mode.
bar /bar/, n.
1. [very common] 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. [common] 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' (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 rare 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.
barf /barf/, n.,v.
[common; from mainstream slang meaning `vomit']
1. interj. Term of disgust. This is the closest hackish equivalent of
the Valspeak "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, perhaps with a
suitable error message, perhaps not. 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. 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 messages 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.
barn n.
[uncommon; prob. from the nuclear military] An unexpectedly large
quantity of something: a unit of measurement. "Why is /var/adm taking
up so much space?" "The logs have grown to several barns." The source
of this is clear: when physicists were first studying nuclear
interactions, the probability was thought to be proportional to the
cross-sectional area of the nucleus (this probability is still called
the cross-section). Upon experimenting, they discovered the
interactions were far more probable than expected; the nuclei were
"as big as a barn". The units for cross-sections were christened
Barns, (10^-24 cm2) and the book containing cross-sections has a
picture of a barn on the cover.
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.
[common] 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. In the absence of other, more negative
descriptions this term suggests that the software is trembling on the
edge of bad taste but has not quite tipped over into it. "Metafont
even has features to introduce random variations to its letterform
output. Now that is baroque!" See also rococo.
BASIC /bay'·sic/, n.
A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's
experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which for many
years was the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger
W. Dijkstra observed in Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal
Perspective that "It is practically impossible to teach good
programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC:
as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of
regeneration." This is another case (like Pascal) of the cascading
lossage that happens 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 (a) is very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits
that will make it harder to use more powerful languages well. This
wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so
common on low-end micros in the 1980s. As it is, it probably ruined
tens of thousands of potential wizards.
[1995: Some languages called "BASIC" aren't quite this nasty any
more, having acquired Pascal- and C-like procedures and control
structures and shed their line numbers. --ESR]
BASIC stands for "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code".
Earlier versions of this entry claiming this was a later backronym
were incorrect.
batbelt n.
Many hackers routinely hang numerous devices such as pagers,
cell-phones, personal organizers, leatherman multitools, pocket
knives, flashlights, walkie-talkies, even miniature computers from
their belts. When many of these devices are worn at once, the
hacker's belt somewhat resembles Batman's utility belt; hence it is
referred to as a batbelt.
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. batching up: 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."
[crunchly-2.png]
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 76-03-17:5-8. The previous
one is 76-02-20:2.)
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.
Batman factor n.
1. An integer number representing the number of items hanging from a
batbelt. In most settings, a Batman factor of more than 3 is not
acceptable without odd stares and whispering. This encourages the
hacker in question to choose items for the batbelt carefully to avoid
awkward social situations, usually amongst non-hackers.
2. A somewhat more vaguely defined index of contribution to sense 1.
Devices that are especially obtrusive, such as large, older model
cell phones, "Pocket" PC devices and walkie talkies are said to have
a high batman factor. Sleeker devices such as a later-model Palm or
StarTac phone are prized for their low batman factor and lessened
obtrusiveness and weight.
baud /bawd/, n.
[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.
Historical note: baud was originally a unit of telegraph signalling
speed, set at one pulse per second. It was proposed at the November,
1926 conference of the Comité Consultatif International Des
Communications Télégraphiques as an improvement on the then standard
practice of referring to line speeds in terms of words per minute,
and named for Jean Maurice Emile Baudot (1845-1903), a French
engineer who did a lot of pioneering work in early teleprinters.
baz /baz/, n.
1. [common] 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)."
bazaar n.,adj.
In 1997, after meditating on the success of Linux for three years,
the Jargon File's own editor ESR wrote an analytical paper on hacker
culture and development models titled The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
The main argument of the paper was that Brooks's Law is not the
whole story; given the right social machinery, debugging can be
efficiently parallelized across large numbers of programmers. The
title metaphor caught on (see also cathedral), and the style of
development typical in the Linux community is now often referred to
as the bazaar mode. Its characteristics include releasing code early
and often, and actively seeking the largest possible pool of peer
reviewers. After 1998, the evident success of this way of doing
things became one of the strongest arguments for open source.
bboard /bee´bord/, n.
[contraction of `bulletin board']
1. Any electronic bulletin board; esp. used of BBS systems running
on personal micros, less frequently of a Usenet newsgroup (in fact,
use of this 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 an
old-fashioned, non-electronic cork-and-thumbtack 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/, n.
[common; abbreviation, "Bulletin Board System"] 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 groups. The term was especially applied to the thousands
of local BBS systems that operated during the pre-Internet
microcomputer era of roughly 1980 to 1995, 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 tended to consider local BBSes
the low-rent district of the hacker culture, but they served a
valuable function by knitting together lots of hackers and users in
the personal-micro world who would otherwise have been unable to
exchange code at all. Post-Internet, BBSs are likely to be local
newsgroups on an ISP; efficiency has increased but a certain flavor
has been lost. See also bboard.
BCPL //, n.
[abbreviation, "Basic Combined Programming Language") A programming
language developed by Martin Richards in Cambridge in 1967. It is
remarkable for its rich syntax, small size of compiler (it can be run
in 16k) and extreme portability. It reached break-even point at a
very early stage, and was the language in which the original hello
world program was written. It has been ported to so many different
systems that its creator confesses to having lost count. It has only
one data type (a machine word) which can be used as an integer, a
character, a floating point number, a pointer, or almost anything
else, depending on context. BCPL was a precursor of C, which
inherited some of its features.
BDFL
[Python; common] Benevolent Dictator For Life. Guido, considered in
his role as the project leader of Python. People who are feeling
temporarily cheesed off by one of his decisions sometimes leave off
the B. The mental image that goes with this, of a cigar-chomping
caudillo in gold braid and sunglasses, is extremely funny to anyone
who has ever met Guido in person.
beam vt.
[from Star Trek Classic's "Beam me up, Scotty!"]
1. 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.
2. Palm Pilot users very commonly use this term for the act of
exchanging bits via the infrared links on their machines (this term
seems to have originated with the ill-fated Newton Message Pad).
Compare blast, snarf, BLT.
beanie key n.
[Mac users] See command key.
beep n.,v.
Syn. feep. This term is techspeak under MS-DOS/Windows and OS/2,
and seems to be generally preferred among micro hobbyists.
Befunge n.
A worthy companion to INTERCAL; a computer language family which
escapes the quotidian limitation of linear control flow and embraces
program counters flying through multiple dimensions with exotic
topologies. The Befunge home page is at
http://www.catseye.mb.ca/esoteric/befunge/.
beige toaster n.
[obs.] An original Macintosh in the boxy beige case. See toaster;
compare Macintrash, maggotbox.
bells and whistles n.
[common] 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. The
recognized emphatic form is "bells, whistles, and gongs".
It used to be thought that this term derived from the toyboxes on
theater organs. However, the "and gongs" strongly suggests a
different origin, at sea. Before powered horns, ships routinely used
bells, whistles, and gongs to signal each other over longer distances
than voice can carry.
[73-05-28.png]
Sometimes `trouble' is spelled bells and whistles...
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-06-04. The previous one
is 73-05-28.)
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 n.
[techspeak] 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, 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.
Note to British and Commonwealth readers: that's /berk´lee/, not
/bark´lee/ as in British Received Pronunciation.
Berzerkeley /b@r·zer´klee/, n.
[from `berserk', via the name of a now-deceased record label; poss.
originated by famed columnist Herb Caen] Humorous distortion of
"Berkeley" used esp. to refer to the practices or products of the
BSD Unix hackers. See software bloat, 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@/, /bee´t@/, n.
1. Mostly working, but still under test; usu. used with "in": in
beta. In the Real World, hardware or software systems often go
through two stages of release testing: Alpha (in-house) and Beta
(out-house?). Beta releases are generally made to a group of lucky
(or unlucky) trusted customers.
2. Anything that is new and experimental. "His girlfriend is in beta"
means that he is still testing for compatibility and reserving
judgment.
3. Flaky; dubious; suspect (since beta software is notoriously
buggy).
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 (or self-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, and the D test was the C test repeated after the model had
been in production a while.
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". In some parts of the U.S. this abbreviation was
probably reinforced by a company called Browning-Ferris Industries in
the waste-management business; a large BFI logo in white-on-blue
could be seen on the sides of garbage trucks.
BI //
Common written abbreviation for Breidbart Index.
bible n.
1. One of a small number of fundamental source books such as Knuth,
K&R, or the Camel Book.
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, InterCaps.
biff /bif/, vt.
[now rare] To notify someone of incoming mail. From the BSD utility
biff(1), which was in turn named after a friendly dog who used to
chase frisbees in the halls at UCB while 4.2BSD was in development.
There was a legend that it had a habit of barking whenever the
mailman came, but the author of biff says this is not true. No
relation to B1FF.
big iron n.
[common] Large, expensive, ultra-fast computers. Used generally of
number-crunching supercomputers, but can include more conventional
big commercial IBMish mainframes. Term of approval; compare heavy
metal, oppose dinosaur.
Big Red Switch n.
[IBM] 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 TLAs, 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 mainframes 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; see also scram
switch.
Big Room n.
(Also Big Blue Room) 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.
1. [common] Major success.
2. [MIT] 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 adj.
[common; 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]
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 are
big-endian. Big-endian byte order is also sometimes called network
order. See little-endian, middle-endian, NUXI problem, swab.
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 Academic Networking Team had decided to do it the
other way round before the Internet domain standard was established.
Most gateway sites have ad-hockery in their mailers to handle this,
but can still be confused. In particular, the address
me@uk.ac.bris.pys.as could be interpreted in JANET's big-endian way
as one in the U.K. (domain uk) or in the standard little-endian way
as one in the domain as (American Samoa) on the opposite side of the
world.
bignum /big´nuhm/, n.
[common; orig. from MIT MacLISP]
1. [techspeak] A multiple-precision computer representation for very
large integers.
2. More generally, any very large number. "Have you ever looked at
the United States Budget? There's bignums for you!"
3. [Stanford] In backgammon, large numbers on the dice 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 2^31
(2,147,483,648). 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
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00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000.
bigot n.
[common] 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. Real 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 truly
said "You can tell a bigot, but you can't tell him much." Compare
weenie, Amiga Persecution Complex.
bikeshedding
[originally BSD, now common] Technical disputes over minor, marginal
issues conducted while more serious ones are being overlooked. The
implied image is of people arguing over what color to paint the
bicycle shed while the house is not finished.
binary four n.
[Usenet] The finger, in the sense of digitus impudicus. This comes
from an analogy between binary and the hand, i.e. 1=00001=thumb,
2=00010=index finger, 3=00011=index and thumb, 4=00100. Considered
silly. Prob. from humorous derivative of finger, sense 4.
bit n.
[from the mainstream meaning and "Binary digIT"]
1. [techspeak] The unit of information; the amount of information
obtained from knowing the answer to 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
a 1948 paper by information theorist Claude Shannon, and was there
credited to the early computer scientist John Tukey (who also seems
to have coined the term software). Tukey records that bit evolved
over a lunch table as a handier alternative to bigit or binit, at a
conference in the winter of 1943-44.
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 mode
bit.
bit bucket n.
[very common]
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 landed 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.
The source for all these meanings, is, historically, the fact that
the chad box on a paper-tape punch was sometimes called a bit
bucket.
[75-10-04.png]
A literal bit bucket.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 76-02-14. The previous one
is 75-10-04.)
bit decay n.
See bit rot. People with a physics background tend to prefer this
variant for the analogy with particle decay. See also computron,
quantum bogodynamics.
bit rot n.
[common] 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.
[very common]
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 becomes
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 even more of a 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). The
Teletype Model 33 was actually designed before ASCII existed, and was
originally intended to use a code that contained these two rows:
low bits
high 0000 0010 0100 0110 1000 1010 1100 1110
bits 0001 0011 0101 0111 1001 1011 1101 1111
10 ) ! bel # $ % wru & * ( " : ? _ , .
11 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ' ; / - esc del
The result would have been something closer to a normal keyboard. But
as it happened, Teletype had to use a lot of persuasion just to keep
ASCII, and the Model 33 keyboard, from looking like this instead:
! " ? $ ' & - ( ) ; : * / , .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 + ~ < > × |
Teletype's 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. Either choice was supported
by the ANSI computer keyboard standard, X4.14-1971, which referred to
the alternatives as "logical bit pairing" and "typewriter pairing".
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, X4.14 was superseded by
X4.23-1982, bit-paired hardware was quickly junked or relegated to
dusty corners, and both terms passed into disuse.
However, in countries without a long history of touch typing, the
argument against the bit-paired keyboard layout was weak or
nonexistent. As a result, the standard Japanese keyboard, used on
PCs, Unix boxen etc. still has all of the !"#$%&'() characters above
the numbers in the ASR-33 layout.
bitblt /bit´blit/, n.
[from BLT, q.v.:]
1. [common] 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.
bits pl.n.
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 emoticons used BIX (the BIX Information eXchange); the term
survived the demise of BIX itself. The most common (smiley) bixie
is <@_@>, representing two cartoon eyes and a mouth. These were
originally invented in an SF fanzine called APA-L and imported to BIX
by one of the earliest users.
black art n.
[common] 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 hat
1. [common among security specialists] A cracker, someone bent on
breaking into the system you are protecting. Oppose the less comon
white hat for an ally or friendly security specialist; the term gray
hat is in occasional use for people with cracker skills operating
within the law, e.g. in doing security evaluations. All three terms
derive from the dress code of formulaic Westerns, in which bad guys
wore black hats and good guys white ones.
2. [spamfighters] `Black hat', `white hat', and `gray hat' are also
used to denote the spam-friendliness of ISPs: a black hat ISP harbors
spammers and doesn't terminate them; a white hat ISP terminates upon
the first LART; and gray hat ISPs terminate only reluctantly and/or
slowly. This has led to the concept of a hat check: someone
considering a potential business relationship with an ISP or other
provider will post a query to a NANA group, asking about the
provider's hat color. The term albedo has also been used to describe
a provider's spam-friendliness.
black hole n.,vt.
[common] What data (a piece of email or netnews, or a stream of
TCP/IP packets) has fallen into if it disappears mysteriously between
its origin and destination sites (that is, without returning a
bounce message). "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. Readily verbed as
blackhole: "That router is blackholing IDP packets." Compare bit
bucket and see RBL.
black magic n.
[common] 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).
Black Screen of Death
[prob.: related to the Floating Head of Death in a famous Far Side
cartoon.] A failure mode of Microsloth Windows. On an attempt to
launch a DOS box, a networked Windows system not uncommonly blanks
the screen and locks up the PC so hard that it requires a cold boot
to recover. This unhappy phenomenon is known as The Black Screen of
Death. See also Blue Screen of Death, which has become rather more
common.
blammo v.
[Oxford Brookes University and alumni, UK] To forcibly remove someone
from any interactive system, especially talker systems. The
operators, who may remain hidden, may "blammo" a user who is
misbehaving. Very similar to archaic MIT gun; in fact, the blammo-gun
is a notional device used to "blammo" someone. While in actual fact
the only incarnation of the blammo-gun is the command used to
forcibly eject a user, operators speak of different levels of
blammo-gun fire; e.g., a blammo-gun to `stun' will temporarily remove
someone, but a blammo-gun set to `maim' will stop someone coming back
on for a while.
blargh /blarg/, n.
[MIT; now common] 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. v.,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/, interj.
[very common; from Yiddish/German `brechen', to vomit, poss. via
comic-strip exclamation `blech'] 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, bagbiting, 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.
[common] Front-panel diagnostic lights on a computer, esp. a
dinosaur. Now that dinosaurs are rare, this term usually refers to
status lights on a modem, network hub, or the like.
This term 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!
Alles touristen und non-technischen looken peepers!
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 1955 at IBM 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.
Old-time hackers sometimes get nostalgic for blinkenlights because
they were so much more fun to look at than a blank panel. Sadly, very
few computers still have them (the three LEDs on a PC keyboard
certainly don't count). The obvious reasons (cost of wiring, cost of
front-panel cutouts, almost nobody needs or wants to interpret
machine-register states on the fly anymore) are only part of the
story. Another part of it is that radio-frequency leakage from the
lamp wiring was beginning to be a problem as far back as transistor
machines. But the most fundamental fact is that there are very few
signals slow enough to blink an LED these days! With slow CPUs, you
could watch the bus register or instruction counter tick, but even at
33/66/150MHz (let alone gigahertz speeds) it's all a blur.
Despite this, a couple of relatively recent computer designs of note
have featured programmable blinkenlights that were added just because
they looked cool. The Connection Machine, a 65,536-processor parallel
computer designed in the mid-1980s, was a black cube with one side
covered with a grid of red blinkenlights; the sales demo had them
evolving life patterns. A few years later the ill-fated BeBox (a
personal computer designed to run the BeOS operating system) featured
twin rows of blinkenlights on the case front. When Be, Inc. decided
to get out of the hardware business in 1996 and instead ported their
OS to the PowerPC and later to the Intel architecture, many users
suffered severely from the absence of their beloved blinkenlights.
Before long an external version of the blinkenlights driven by a PC
serial port became available; there is some sort of plot symmetry in
the fact that it was assembled by a German.
Finally, a version updated for the Internet has been seen on
news.admin.net-abuse.email:
ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!
Das Internet is nicht fuer gefingerclicken und giffengrabben. Ist eas
y
droppenpacket der routers und overloaden der backbone mit der spammen
und der me-tooen. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das
mausklicken sichtseeren keepen das bandwit-spewin hans in das pockets
muss; relaxen und watchen das cursorblinken.
This newest version partly reflects reports that the word
`blinkenlights' is (in 1999) undergoing something of a revival in
usage, but applied to networking equipment. The transmit and receive
lights on routers, activity lights on switches and hubs, and other
network equipment often blink in visually pleasing and seemingly
coordinated ways. Although this is different in some ways from
register readings, a tall stack of Cisco equipment or a 19-inch rack
of ISDN terminals can provoke a similar feeling of hypnotic awe,
especially in a darkened network operations center or server room.
The ancestor of the original blinkenlights posters of the 1950s was
probably this:
[gefingerpoken.jpg]
We are informed that cod-German parodies of this kind were very
common in Allied machine shops during and following WWII. Germans,
then as now, had a reputation for being both good with precision
machinery and prone to officious notices.
blit /blit/, vt.
1. [common] 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. [historical, rare] Sometimes 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. Its creators liked to claim
that "Blit" stood for the Bacon, Lettuce, and Interactive Tomato.)
blitter /blit´r/, n.
[common] 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
since 1990 the trend has been away from them (however, see cycle of
reincarnation). Syn. raster blaster.
blivet /bliv'@t/, n.
[allegedly from a World War II military term meaning "ten pounds of
manure in a five-pound bag"]
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.
6. In the subjargon of computer security specialists, a
denial-of-service attack performed by hogging limited resources that
have no access controls (for example, shared spool space on a
multi-user system).
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.
[blivet.png]
This is a blivet
bloatware n.
[common] Software that provides minimal functionality while requiring
a disproportionate amount of diskspace and memory. Especially used
for application and OS upgrades. This term is very common in the
Windows/NT world. So is its cause.
BLOB
1. n. [acronym: Binary Large OBject] Used by database people to refer
to any random large block of bits that 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 that cannot be interpreted within the
database itself.
2. v. To mailbomb someone by sending a BLOB to him/her; esp. used
as a mild threat. "If that program crashes again, I'm going to BLOB
the core dump to you."
block v.
[common; 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."
blog n.
[common] Short for weblog, an on-line web-zine or diary (usually with
facilities for reader comments and discussion threads) made
accessible through the World Wide Web. This term is widespread and
readily forms derivatives, of which the best known may be
blogosphere.
Bloggs Family n.
An imaginary family consisting of Fred and Mary Bloggs and their
children. Used as a standard example in knowledge representation to
show the difference between extensional and intensional objects. For
example, every occurrence of "Fred Bloggs" is the same unique person,
whereas occurrences of "person" may refer to different people.
Members of the Bloggs family have been known to pop up in bizarre
places such as the old DEC Telephone Directory. Compare Dr. Fred
Mbogo; J. Random Hacker; Fred Foobar.
blogosphere
The totality of all blogs. A culture heavily overlapping with but
not coincident with hackerdom; a few of its key coinages
(blogrolling, fisking, anti-idiotarianism) are recorded in this
lexicon for flavor. Bloggers often divide themselves into warbloggers
and techbloggers. The techbloggers write about technology and
technology policy, while the warbloggers are more politically focused
and tend to be preoccupied with U.S. and world response to the
post-9/11 war against terrorism. The overlap with hackerdom is
heaviest among the techbloggers, but several of the most prominent
warbloggers are also hackers. Bloggers in general tend to be aware of
and sympathetic to the hacker culture.
blogrolling
[From the American political term `logrolling', for supporting
another's pet bill in the legislature in exchange for reciprocal
support,] When you hotlink to other bloggers' blogs (and-or other
bloggers' specific blog entries) in your blog, you are blogrolling.
This is frequently reciprocal.
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 arose 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. The usage lives on (it's too vivid and expressive to discard)
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.
[prob.: from mining and tunneling jargon] 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/, /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 box
n.
1. obs. Once upon a time, before all-digital switches made it
possible for the phone companies to move them out of band, one could
actually hear the switching tones used to route long-distance calls.
Early phreakers built devices called blue boxes that could
reproduce these tones, which could be used to commandeer portions of
the phone network. (This was not as hard as it may sound; one early
phreak acquired the sobriquet "Captain Crunch" after he proved that
he could generate switching tones with a plastic whistle pulled out
of a box of Captain Crunch cereal!) There were other colors of box
with more specialized phreaking uses; red boxes, black boxes, silver
boxes, etc. There were boxes of other colors as well, but the blue
box was the original and archetype.
2. n. An IBM machine, especially a large (non-PC) one.
Blue Glue n.
[IBM; obs.] IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture), an incredibly
losing and bletcherous communications protocol once widely
favored at commercial shops that didn't know any better (like other
proprietary networking protocols, it became obsolete and effectively
disappeared after the Internet explosion c.1994). 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 pens. 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' nanobots 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. The term "Blue Goo" can be found in Dr. Seuss's
Fox In Socks to refer to a substance much like bubblegum. `Would you
like to chew blue goo, sir?'. See nanotechnology.
Blue Screen of Death n.
[common] This term is closely related to the older Black Screen of
Death but much more common (many non-hackers have picked it up). Due
to the extreme fragility and bugginess of Microsoft Windows,
misbehaving applications can readily crash the OS (and the OS
sometimes crashes itself spontaneously). The Blue Screen of Death,
sometimes decorated with hex error codes, is what you get when this
happens. (Commonly abbreviated BSOD.) The following entry from the
Salon Haiku Contest, seems to have predated popular use of the term:
Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death
No one hears your screams.
blue wire n.
[IBM] Patch wires (esp. 30 AWG gauge) added to circuit boards at the
factory to correct design or fabrication problems. Blue wire is not
necessarily blue, the term describes function rather than color.
These may be necessary if there hasn't been time to design and
qualify another board version. In Great Britain this can be bodge
wire, after mainstream slang bodge for a clumsy improvisation or
sloppy job of work. Compare purple wire, red wire, yellow wire,
pink wire.
blurgle /bler´gl/, n.
[UK] Spoken metasyntactic variable, to indicate some text that is
obvious from context, or which is already known. If several words are
to be replaced, blurgle may well be doubled or tripled. "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 7.
BNF /B·N·F/, n.
1. [techspeak] Acronym for Backus Normal Form (later retronymed to
Backus-Naur Form because BNF was not in fact a normal 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. Any of a number of variants and extensions of BNF proper, 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, a `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 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 (but see usage note under bboard, sense 1).
2. An electronic circuit board.
boat anchor n.
[common; from ham radio]
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.
3. Obsolete but still working hardware, especially when used of an
old, bulky, quirky system; originally a term of annoyance, but became
more and more affectionate as the hardware became more and more
obsolete.
Auctioneers use this term for a large, undesirable object such as a
washing machine; actual boating enthusiasts, however, use "mooring
anchor" for frustrating (not actually useless) equipment.
bob n.
At Demon Internet, all tech support personnel are called "Bob".
(Female support personnel have an option on "Bobette"). This has
nothing to do with Bob the divine drilling-equipment salesman of the
Church of the SubGenius. Nor is it acronymized from "Brother Of
BOFH", though all parties agree it could have been. Rather, it was
triggered by an unusually large draft of new tech-support people in
1995. It was observed that there would be much duplication of names.
To ease the confusion, it was decided that all support techs would
henceforth be known as "Bob", and identity badges were created
labelled "Bob 1" and "Bob 2". ("No, we never got any further" reports
a witness).
The reason for "Bob" rather than anything else is due to a luser
calling and asking to speak to "Bob", despite the fact that no "Bob"
was currently working for Tech Support. Since we all know "the
customer is always right", it was decided that there had to be at
least one "Bob" on duty at all times, just in case.
This sillyness snowballed inexorably. Shift leaders and managers
began to refer to their groups of "bobs". Whole ranks of support
machines were set up (and still exist in the DNS as of 1999) as bob1
through bobN. Then came alt.tech-support.recovery, and it was filled
with Demon support personnel. They all referred to themselves, and to
others, as "bob", and after a while it caught on. There is now a Bob
Code describing the Bob nature.
bodge
[Commonwealth hackish] Syn. kludge or hack (sense 1). "I'll bodge
this in now and fix it later".
BOF /B·O·F/, /bof/, n.
1. [common] 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.
2. Acronym, "Beginning of File".
BOFH //, n.
[common] Acronym, Bastard Operator From Hell. A system administrator
with absolutely no tolerance for lusers. "You say you need more
filespace? <massive-global-delete> Seems to me you have plenty
left..." Many BOFHs (and others who would be BOFHs if they could get
away with it) hang out in the newsgroup alt.sysadmin.recovery,
although there has also been created a top-level newsgroup hierarchy
(bofh.*) of their own.
Several people have written stories about BOFHs. The set usually
considered canonical is by Simon Travaglia and may be found at the
Bastard Home Page. BOFHs and BOFH wannabes hang out on scary devil
monastery and wield LARTs.
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." Esp. appropriate for algorithms with
factorial or super-exponential running time in the average case and
probabilistically infinite worst-case running time. Compare bogus,
brute force.
A spectacular variant of bogo-sort has been proposed which has the
interesting property that, if the Many Worlds interpretation of
quantum mechanics is true, it can sort an arbitrarily large array in
linear time. (In the Many-Worlds model, the result of any quantum
action is to split the universe-before into a sheaf of
universes-after, one for each possible way the state vector can
collapse; in any one of the universes-after the result appears
random.) The steps are: 1. Permute the array randomly using a quantum
process, 2. If the array is not sorted, destroy the universe
(checking that the list is sorted requires O(n) time). Implementation
of step 2 is left as an exercise for the reader.
bogometer /boh·gom'·@t·er/, n.
A notional instrument for measuring bogosity. Compare the
Troll-O-Meter and the `wankometer' described in the wank entry;
see also bogus.
BogoMIPS /bo´go·mips/, n.
The number of million times a second a processor can do absolutely
nothing. The Linux OS measures BogoMIPS at startup in order to
calibrate some soft timing loops that will be used later on; details
at the BogoMIPS mini-HOWTO. The name Linus chose, of course, is an
ironic comment on the uselessness of all other MIPS figures.
bogon /boh´gon/, n.
[very common; 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 and note that Arthur Dent actually
mispronounces `Vogons' as `Bogons' at one point]
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, or sometimes of
lameness). 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. [orig. CMU, now very common] The degree to which something is
bogus. 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.
2. The potential field generated by a bogon flux; see quantum
bogodynamics. See also bogon flux, bogon filter, bogus.
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 there about
1975-76. These coinages spread into hackerdom from CMU and MIT. Most
of them remained wordplay objects rather than actual vocabulary items
or live metaphors. Examples: amboguous (having multiple bogus
interpretations); bogotissimo (in a gloriously bogus manner);
bogotophile (one who is pathologically fascinated by the bogus);
paleobogology (the study of primeval bogosity).
Some bogowords, however, obtained sufficient live currency to be
listed elsewhere in this lexicon; see bogometer, bogon,
bogotify, and quantum bogodynamics and the related but unlisted
Dr. Fred Mbogo.
By the early 1980s `bogus' was also current in something like hacker
usage 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".
According to Merriam-Webster, the word dates back to 1825 and
originally referred to a counterfeiting machine.
Bohr bug /bohr buhg/, n.
[from quantum physics] 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/
1. [Usenet: variously ascribed to the TV series Cheers, Moonlighting,
and Soap]v. To have sex with; compare bounce, sense 2. (This is
mainstream slang.) In Commonwealth hackish the variant `bonk' is more
common.
2. n. 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 meditation, in which 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 n.
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 U.S. MUD community, it has become traditional to express
pique or censure by bonking the offending person. Convention holds
that one should acknowledge a bonk by saying "oif!" and there is 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. Note: in parts
of the U.K. `bonk' is a sexually loaded slang term; care is advised
in transatlantic conversations (see boink). Commonwealth hackers
report a similar convention involving the `fish/bang' balance. See
also talk mode.
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, Camel Book, Cinderella Book, daemon book,
Dragon Book, Orange Book, Purple Book, Wizard Book, and
bible; see also rainbow series. Since about 1993 this tradition
has gotten a boost from the popular O'Reilly and Associates line of
technical books, which usually feature some kind of exotic animal on
the cover and are often called by the name of that animal.
boot v.,n.
[techspeak; from `by one's bootstraps'] 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 (sense 4) 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.
Borg n.
In Star Trek: The Next Generation the Borg is a species of cyborg
that ruthlessly seeks to incorporate all sentient life into itself;
their slogan is "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile." In
hacker parlance, the Borg is usually Microsoft, which is thought to
be trying just as ruthlessly to assimilate all computers and the
entire Internet to itself (there is a widely circulated image of Bill
Gates as a Borg). Being forced to use Windows or NT is often referred
to as being "Borged". Interestingly, the Halloween Documents reveal
that this jargon is live within Microsoft itself. See also Evil
Empire, Internet Exploiter.
Other companies, notably Intel and UUNet, have also occasionally been
equated to the Borg. In IETF circles, where direct pressure from
Microsoft is not a daily reality, the Borg is sometimes Cisco. This
usage commemorates their tendency to pay any price to hire talent
away from their competitors. In fact, at the Spring 1997 IETF, a
large number of ex-Cisco employees, all former members of Routing
Geeks, showed up with t-shirts printed with "Recovering Borg".
borken adj.
(also borked) Common deliberate typo for `broken'.
bot n
[common on IRC, MUD and among gamers; from "robot"]
1. An IRC or MUD user who is actually a program. On IRC,
typically the robot provides some useful service. Examples are
NickServ, which tries to prevent random users from adopting nicks
already claimed by others, and MsgServ, which allows one to send
asynchronous messages to be delivered when the recipient signs on.
Also common are `annoybots', such as KissServ, which perform no
useful function except to send cute messages to other people. Service
bots are less common on MUDs; but some others, such as the `Julia'
bot active in 1990--91, have been remarkably impressive Turing-test
experiments, able to pass as human for as long as ten or fifteen
minutes of conversation.
2. An AI-controlled player in a computer game (especially a
first-person shooter such as Quake) which, unlike ordinary monsters,
operates like a human-controlled player, with access to a player's
weapons and abilities. An example can be found at
http://www.telefragged.com/thefatal/.
3. Term used, though less commonly, for a web spider. The file for
controlling spider behavior on your site is officially the "Robots
Exclusion File" and its URL is "http://<somehost>/robots.txt")
Note that bots in all senses were `robots' when the terms first
appeared in the early 1990s, but the shortened form is now habitual.
bottom feeder n.
1. An Internet user that leeches off ISPs -- the sort you can never
provide good enough services for, always complains about the price,
no matter how low it may be, and will bolt off to another service the
moment there is even the slimmest price difference. While most bottom
feeders infest free or almost free services such as AOL, MSN, and
Hotmail, too many flock to whomever happens to be the cheapest
regional ISP at the time. Bottom feeders are often the classic
problem user, known for unleashing spam, flamage, and other breaches
of netiquette.
2. Syn. for slopsucker, derived from the fishermen's and
naturalists' term for finny creatures who subsist on the primordial
ooze. (This sense is older.)
bottom-post v.
In a news or mail reply, to put the response to a news or email
message after the quoted content from the parent message. This is
correct form, and until around 2000 was so universal on the Internet
that neither the term `bottom-post' nor its antonym top-post
existed. Hackers consider that the best practice is actually to
excerpt only the relevent portions of the parent message, then
intersperse the poster's response in such a way that each section of
response appears directly after the excerpt it applies to. This
reduces message bulk, keeps thread content in a logical order, and
facilitates reading.
bottom-up implementation n.
Hackish opposite of the techspeak term top-down design. It has been
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. Naively
applied, this leads to hacked-together bottom-up implementations; a
more sophisticated response is middle-out implementation, in which
scratch code within primitives at the mid-level of the system is
gradually replaced with a more polished version of the lowest level
at the same time the structure above the midlevel is being built.
bounce v.
1. [common; perhaps by analogy to a bouncing check] An electronic
mail message that is undeliverable and returns an error notification
to the sender is said to bounce. See also bounce message.
2. 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.
3. To casually reboot a system in order to clear up a transient
problem (possibly editing a configuration file in the process, if it
is one that is only re-read at boot time). Reported primarily among
VMS and Unix users.
4. [VM/CMS programmers] Automatic warm-start of a machine after an
error. "I logged on this morning and found it had bounced 7 times
during the night"
6. [IBM] To power cycle a peripheral in order to reset it.
bounce message n.
[common] 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, sense 1). 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 and software laser. The terms bounce
mail and barfmail are also common.
boustrophedon n.
[from a Greek word for turning like an ox while plowing] An ancient
method of writing using alternate left-to-right and right-to-left
lines. This term is actually philologists' techspeak and typesetters'
jargon. Erudite hackers use it for an optimization performed by some
computer typesetting software and moving-head printers. The adverbial
form `boustrophedonically' is also found (hackers purely love
constructions like this).
box n.
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, Windows box, etc.) "We preprocess the data on Unix boxes before
handing it up to the mainframe."
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/, pl.n.
[very common; by analogy with VAXen] 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/, /boh·zo´tik/, adj.
[from the name of a TV clown even more losing than Ronald McDonald]
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'.
brain dump n.
[common] 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 that
is the braino itself. E.g., typing dir on a Unix box after a session
with DOS.
brain-damaged adj.
1. [common; generalization of "Honeywell Brain Damage" (HBD), a
theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in
Honeywell Multics] adj. Obviously wrong; cretinous; demented.
There is an implication that the person responsible must have
suffered brain damage, because he should have known better. Calling
something brain-damaged is really bad; it also implies it is
unusable, and that its failure to work is due to poor design rather
than some accident. "Only six monocase characters per file name? Now
that's brain-damaged!"
2. [esp. in the Mac world] May refer to free demonstration software
that has been deliberately crippled in some way so as not to compete
with the product it is intended to sell. Syn. crippleware.
brain-dead adj.
[common] 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.
brainwidth n.
[Great Britain] Analagous to bandwidth but used strictly for human
capacity to process information and especially to multitask. "Writing
email is taking up most of my brainwidth right now, I can't look at
that Flash animation."
bread crumbs n.
1. 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 or the older French folktale of Thumbelina; in several
variants of these, a character leaves a trail of bread crumbs so as
not to get lost in the woods.
2. In user-interface design, any feature that allows some tracking of
where you've been, like coloring visited links purple rather than
blue in Netscape (also called footprinting).
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),
delete or control-C 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 of the early 1980s.
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 working versions of
FOOGOL to develop newer ones. This is an important milestone; see
MFTL.
Since this entry was first written, several correspondents have
reported that there actually was a compiler for a tiny Algol-like
language called Foogol floating around on various VAXen in the
early and mid-1980s. A FOOGOL implementation is available at the
Retrocomputing Museum http://www.catb.org/retro/.
breath-of-life packet n.
[XEROX PARC] An Ethernet packet that contains bootstrap (see boot)
code, periodically sent out from a working computer to infuse the
`breath of life' into any computer on the network that has 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.
The notional kiss-of-death packet, with a function complementary to
that of a breath-of-life packet, is recommended for dealing with
hosts that consume too many network resources. Though `kiss-of-death
packet' is usually used in jest, there is at least one documented
instance of an Internet subnet with limited address-table slots in a
gateway machine in which such packets were routinely used to compete
for slots, rather like Christmas shoppers competing for scarce
parking spaces.
breedle n.
See feep.
Breidbart Index /bri:d´bart ind@ks/
A measurement of the severity of spam invented by long-time hacker
Seth Breidbart, used for programming cancelbots. The Breidbart Index
takes into account the fact that excessive multi-posting EMP is
worse than excessive cross-posting ECP. The Breidbart Index is
computed as follows: For each article in a spam, take the square-root
of the number of newsgroups to which the article is posted. The
Breidbart Index is the sum of the square roots of all of the posts in
the spam. For example, one article posted to nine newsgroups and
again to sixteen would have BI = sqrt(9) + sqrt(16) = 7. It is
generally agreed that a spam is cancelable if the Breidbart Index
exceeds 20.
The Breidbart Index accumulates over a 45-day window. Ten articles
yesterday and ten articles today and ten articles tomorrow add up to
a 30-article spam. Spam fighters will often reset the count if you
can convince them that the spam was accidental and/or you have seen
the error of your ways and won't repeat it. Breidbart Index can
accumulate over multiple authors. For example, the "Make Money Fast"
pyramid scheme exceeded a BI of 20 a long time ago, and is now
considered "cancel on sight".
brick n.
1. A piece of equipment that has been programmed or configured into a
hung, wedged,unusable state. Especially used to describe what
happens to devices like routers or PDAs that run from firmware when
the firmware image is damaged or its settings are somehow patched to
impossible values. This term usually implies irreversibility, but
equipment can sometimes be unbricked by performing a hard reset or
some other drastic operation. Sometimes verbed: "Yeah, I bricked the
router because I forgot about adding in the new access-list.".
2. An outboard power transformer of the kind associated with laptops,
modems, routers and other small computing appliances, especially one
of the modern type with cords on both ends, as opposed to the older
and obnoxious type that plug directly into wall or barrier strip.
bricktext
[Usenet: common] Text which is carefully composed to be
right-justified (and sometimes to have a deliberate gutter at
mid-page) without use of extra spaces, just through careful
word-length choices. A minor art form. The best examples have
something of the quality of imagist poetry.
bring X to its knees v.
[common] 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 abnormal but 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 commercial software, which (due to closed-source
development) displays the quality far more often than it ought to.
Oppose robust.
broadcast storm n.
[common] 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; compare mail storm.
broken adj.
1. Not working according to design (of programs). This is the
mainstream sense.
2. Improperly designed, This sense carries a more or less disparaging
implication that the designer should have known better, while sense 1
doesn't necessarily assign blame. Which of senses 1 or 2 is intended
is conveyed by context and nonverbal cues.
3. Behaving strangely; especially (when used of people) exhibiting
extreme depression.
broken arrow n.
[IBM] 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.
Note: to appreciate this term fully, it helps to know that "broken
arrow" is also military jargon for an accident involving nuclear
weapons....
broken-ring network
Pejorative hackerism for "token-ring network", an early and very slow
LAN technology from IBM that lost the standards war to Ethernet.
Though token-ring survives in a few niche markets (such as factory
automation) that put a high premium on resistance to electrical
noise, the term is now (2000) primarily historical.
BrokenWindows n.
Abusive hackerism for the crufty and elephantine X environment
on Sun machines; properly called `OpenWindows'.
broket /broh´k@t/, /broh´ket`/, n.
[rare; by analogy with `bracket': a `broken bracket'] 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 expected advantage from splitting
development 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
(though it's not the whole story; see bazaar); too often,
management still does. See also creationism, second-system
effect, optimism.
brown-paper-bag bug n.
A bug in a public software release that is so embarrassing that the
author notionally wears a brown paper bag over his head for a while
so he won't be recognized on the net. Entered popular usage after the
early-1999 release of the first Linux 2.2, which had one. The phrase
was used in Linus Torvalds's apology posting.
browser n.
A program specifically designed to help users view and navigate
hypertext, on-line documentation, or a database. While this general
sense has been present in jargon for a long time, the proliferation
of browsers for the World Wide Web after 1992 has made it much more
popular and provided a central or default techspeak meaning of the
word previously lacking in hacker usage. Nowadays, if someone
mentions using a `browser' without qualification, one may assume it
is a Web browser.
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 naive methods suited to small problems directly to
large ones. The term can also be used in reference to programming
style: brute-force programs are written in a heavyhanded, tedious
way, full of repetition and devoid of any elegance or useful
abstraction (see also brute force and ignorance).
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 the cities be visited 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). Sometimes, unfortunately, there is no better
general solution than brute force. See also NP- and rubber-hose
cryptanalysis.
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 actually be considered stupid
or not depends on the context; if the problem is not terribly 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 this sort of thing. 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. A very similar usage
is said to be mainstream in Great Britain.
BSD /B·S·D/, n.
[abbreviation for `Berkeley Software Distribution'] a family of
Unix versions for the DEC VAX and PDP-11 developed by Bill
Joy and others at Berzerkeley starting around 1977, 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; descendants including
Free/Open/NetBSD, BSD/OS and MacOS X are still widely popular. Note
that BSD versions going back to 2.9 are often referred to by their
version numbers alone, without the BSD prefix. See also Unix.
BSOD /B·S·O·D/
Very common abbreviation for Blue Screen of Death. Both spoken and
written.
BUAF //, n.
[abbreviation, from alt.fan.warlord] 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 BUAFs. See warlording.
BUAG //, n.
[abbreviation, from alt.fan.warlord] Big Ugly ASCII Graphic.
Pejorative term for ugly ASCII art, especially as found in sig
blocks. For some reason, mutations of the head of Bart Simpson are
particularly common in the least imaginative sig blocks. 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 naive and untutored programmers, hackers
consider it the canonical example of a naive algorithm. (However,
it's been shown by repeated experiment that below about 5000 records
bubble-sort is OK anyway.) 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 has long been rumored that bucky bits were named for Buckminster
Fuller during a period when he was consulting at Stanford. Actually,
bucky bits were invented by Niklaus Wirth when he was at Stanford in
1964--65; he first suggested the idea of an EDIT key to set the 8th
bit of an otherwise 7-bit ASCII character). It seems that, unknown to
Wirth, certain Stanford hackers had privately nicknamed him `Bucky'
after a prominent portion of his dental anatomy, and this nickname
transferred to the bit. Bucky-bit commands were used in a number of
editors written at Stanford, including most notably TV-EDIT and NLS.
The term spread to MIT and CMU early and is now in general use.
Ironically, Wirth himself remained unaware of its derivation for
nearly 30 years, until GLS dug up this history in early 1993! See
double bucky, quadruple bucky.
buffer chuck n.
Shorter and ruder syn. for buffer overflow.
buffer overflow n.
What happens when you try to stuff more data into a buffer (holding
area) than it can handle. This problem is commonly exploited by
crackers to get arbitrary commands executed by a program running
with root permissions. 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
crunches 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: Admiral Grace Hopper (an early computing pioneer
better known for inventing COBOL) liked to tell a story in which a
technician solved a 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 (NSWC). 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, 1947), reads "1545 Relay
#70 Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of bug being found".
This wording establishes 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.
[bugpic-color.jpg]
The `original bug' (the caption date is incorrect)
Indeed, the use of bug to mean an industrial defect was already
established in Thomas Edison's time, and a more specific and rather
modern use can be found in an electrical handbook from 1896 (Hawkin's
New Catechism of Electricity, Theo. Audel & Co.) which says: "The
term `bug' is used to a limited extent to designate any fault or
trouble in the connections or working of electric apparatus." It
further notes that the term is "said to have originated in quadruplex
telegraphy and have been transferred to all electric apparatus."
The latter observation may explain a common folk etymology of the
term; that it came from telephone company usage, in which "bugs in a
telephone cable" were blamed for noisy lines. Though this derivation
seems to be mistaken, it may well be a distorted memory of a joke
first current among telegraph operators more than a century ago!
Or perhaps not a joke. Historians of the field inform us that the
term "bug" was regularly used in the early days of telegraphy to
refer to a variety of semi-automatic telegraphy keyers that would
send a string of dots if you held them down. In fact, the Vibroplex
keyers (which were among the most common of this type) even had a
graphic of a beetle on them (and still do)! While the ability to send
repeated dots automatically was very useful for professional morse
code operators, these were also significantly trickier to use than
the older manual keyers, and it could take some practice to ensure
one didn't introduce extraneous dots into the code by holding the key
down a fraction too long. In the hands of an inexperienced operator,
a Vibroplex "bug" on the line could mean that a lot of garbled Morse
would soon be coming your way.
Further, the term "bug" has long been used among radio technicians to
describe a device that converts electromagnetic field variations into
acoustic signals. It is used to trace radio interference and look for
dangerous radio emissions. Radio community usage derives from the
roach-like shape of the first versions used by 19th century
physicists. The first versions consisted of a coil of wire (roach
body), with the two wire ends sticking out and bent back to nearly
touch forming a spark gap (roach antennae). The bug is to the radio
technician what the stethoscope is to the stereotypical medical
doctor. This sense is almost certainly ancestral to modern use of
"bug" for a covert monitoring device, but may also have contributed
to the use of "bug" for the effects of radio interference itself.
Actually, use of bug in the general sense of a disruptive event goes
back to Shakespeare! (Henry VI, part III - Act V, Scene II: King
Edward: "So, lie thou there. Die thou; and die our fear; For Warwick
was a bug that fear'd us all.") 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."
A careful discussion of the etymological issues can be found in a
paper by Fred R. Shapiro, 1987, "Entomology of the Computer Bug:
History and Folklore", American Speech 62(4):376-378.
[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, but due to space and money constraints was
not actually exhibited for years afterwards. Thus, the process of
investigating the original-computer-bug bug fixed it in an entirely
unexpected way, by making the myth true! --ESR]
[73-07-29.png]
It helps to remember that this dates from 1973.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-10-31. The previous
cartoon was 73-07-29.)
bug-compatible adj.
[common] Said of a design or revision that has been badly compromised
by a requirement to be compatible with fossils or misfeatures 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.
bug-of-the-month club n.
[from "book-of-the-month club", a time-honored mail-order-marketing
technique in the U.S.] A mythical club which users of sendmail(8)
(the Unix mail daemon) belong to; this was coined on the Usenet
newsgroup comp.security.unix at a time when sendmail security holes,
which allowed outside crackers access to the system, were being
uncovered at an alarming rate, forcing sysadmins to update very
often. Also, more completely, fatal security bug-of-the-month club.
See also kernel-of-the-week club.
bulletproof adj.
Used of an algorithm or implementation considered extremely robust;
lossage-resistant; capable of correctly recovering from any
imaginable exception condition -- a rare and valued quality. Implies
that the programmer has thought of all possible errors, and added
code to protect against each one. Thus, in some cases, this can
imply code that is too heavyweight, due to excessive paranoia on the
part of the programmer. Syn. armor-plated.
bullschildt /bul´shilt/, n.
[comp.lang.c on USENET] A confident, but incorrect, statement about a
programming language. This immortalizes a very bad book about C,
Herbert Schildt's C - The Complete Reference. One reviewer commented
"The naive errors in this book would be embarrassing even in a
programming assignment turned in by a computer science college
sophomore."
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 v.
[from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky] 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." This is mainstream slang in some parts of England.
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 a CD v.
To write a software or document distribution on a CDR. Coined from
the fact that a laser is used to inscribe the information by burning
small pits in the medium, and from the fact that disk comes out of
the drive warm to the touch. Writable CDs can be done on a normal
desk-top machine with a suitable drive (so there is no protracted
release cycle associated with making them) but each one takes a long
time to make, so they are not appropriate for volume production.
Writable CDs are suitable for software backups and for
short-turnaround-time low-volume software distribution, such as
sending a beta release version to a few selected field test sites.
Compare cut a tape.
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.
Historical note: the origin of "burn-in" (sense 1) is apparently the
practice of setting a new-model airplane's brakes on fire, then
extinguishing the fire, in order to make them hold better. This was
done on the first version of the U.S. spy-plane, the U-2.
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 spinning
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. In applications this is a
wasteful technique, and best avoided on timesharing systems where a
busy-waiting program may hog the processor. However, it is often
unavoidable in kernel programming. In the Linux world, kernel
busy-waits are usually referred to as spinlocks.
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 never gets 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, esp. by applying an AC rather than DC signal. Some wire
faults will pass DC tests but fail an AC 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."
buzzword-compliant
[also buzzword-enabled] Used (disparagingly) of products that seem to
have been specified to incorporate all of this month's trendy
technologies. Key buzzwords that often show up in buzzword-compliant
specifications as of 2001 include `XML', `Java', `peer-to-peer',
`distributed', and `open'.
BWQ /B·W·Q/, n.
[IBM: abbreviation, `Buzz Word Quotient'] The percentage of buzzwords
in a speech or documents. Usually roughly proportional to bogosity.
See TLA.
by hand adv.
1. [common] 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.
2. [common] By extension, writing code which does something in an
explicit or low-level way for which a presupplied library routine
ought to have been available. "This cretinous B-tree library doesn't
supply a decent iterator, so I'm having to walk the trees by hand."
byte /bi:t/, n.
[techspeak] A unit of memory or data equal to the amount used to
represent one character; on modern architectures this is invariably 8
bits. Some older architectures used byte for quantities of 6, 7, or
(especially) 9 bits, and the PDP-10 supported bytes that were
actually bitfields of 1 to 36 bits! These usages are now obsolete,
killed off by universal adoption of power-of-2 word sizes.
Historical note: The term was coined by Werner Buchholz 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 word was coined by
mutating the word `bite' so it would not be accidentally misspelled
as bit. See also nybble.
byte sex n.
[common] The byte sex of hardware is big-endian or little-endian;
see those entries.
bytesexual /bi:t`sek´shu·@l/, adj.
[rare] 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/, excl.
[common; Usenet/Internet; punctuation varies] 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. (BCPL was in turn descended
from an earlier Algol-derived language, CPL.) 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. 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" See
also languages of choice, indent style.
[ansi-c.png]
The Crunchly on the left sounds a little ANSI.
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 or she 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 made the effort 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.
C&C //
[common, esp. on news.admin.net-abuse.email] Contraction of "Coffee &
Cats". This frequently occurs as a warning label on USENET posts that
are likely to cause you to snarf coffee onto your keyboard and
startle the cat off your lap.
C++ /C'·pluhs·pluhs/, n.
Designed by Bjarne Stroustrup of AT&T Bell Labs as a successor to
C. Now one of the languages of choice, although many hackers
still grumble that it is the successor to either Algol 68 or Ada
(depending on generation), and a prime example of second-system
effect. Almost anything that can be done in any language can be done
in C++, but it requires a language lawyer to know what is and what
is not legal -- the design is almost too large to hold in even
hackers' heads. Much of the cruft results from C++'s attempt to be
backward compatible with C. Stroustrup himself has said in his
retrospective book The Design and Evolution of C++ (p. 207), "Within
C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get
out." [Many hackers would now add "Yes, and it's called Java"
--ESR]
[fortran.png]
Nowadays we say this of C++.
calculator n.
Syn. for bitty box.
Camel Book n.
Universally recognized nickname for the book Programming Perl, by
Larry Wall and Randal L. Schwartz, O'Reilly and Associates 1991, ISBN
0-937175-64-1 (second edition 1996, ISBN 1-56592-149-6; third edition
2000, 0-596-00027-8, adding as authors Tom Christiansen and Jon
Orwant but dropping Randal Schwartz). The definitive reference on
Perl.
camelCase
A variable in a programming language is sait to be camelCased when
all words but the first are capitalized. This practice contrasts with
the C tradition of either running syllables together or marking
syllable breaks with underscores; thus, where a C programmer would
write thisverylongname or this_very_long_name, the camelCased version
would be thisVeryLongName. This practice is common in certain
language communities (formerly Pascal; today Java and Visual Basic)
and tends to be associated with object-oriented programming.
Compare BiCapitalization; but where that practice is primarily
associated with marketing, camelCasing is not aimed at impressing
anybody, and hackers consider it respectable.
camelCasing
See PascalCasing.
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. Some case variant of "can't
happen" 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 frequently they are
triggered during development and how many headaches checking for them
turns out to head off. See also firewall code (sense 2).
cancelbot /kan´sel·bot/
[Usenet: compound, cancel + robot]
1. Mythically, a robocanceller
2. In reality, most cancelbots are manually operated by being fed
lists of spam message IDs.
Cancelmoose[tm] /kan´sel·moos/
[Usenet] The archetype and model of all good spam-fighters. Once
upon a time, the 'Moose would send out spam-cancels and then post
notice anonymously to news.admin.policy, news.admin.misc, and
alt.current-events.net-abuse. The 'Moose stepped to the fore on its
own initiative, at a time (mid-1994) when spam-cancels were irregular
and disorganized, and behaved altogether admirably -- fair,
even-handed, and quick to respond to comments and criticism, all
without self-aggrandizement or martyrdom. Cancelmoose[tm] quickly
gained near-unanimous support from the readership of all three
above-mentioned groups.
Nobody knows who Cancelmoose[tm] really is, and there aren't even any
good rumors. However, the 'Moose now has an e-mail address
(<moose@cm.org>) and a web site (http://www.cm.org/.) By early 1995,
others had stepped into the spam-cancel business, and appeared to be
comporting themselves well, after the 'Moose's manner. The 'Moose has
now gotten out of the business, and is more interested in ending spam
(and cancels) entirely.
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 share
this property. 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 similar
gag in "Blazing Saddles" --ESR] 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 adj.
[very common; historically, `according to religious law'] 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.
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' has an interesting history. It 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 incessant use
of jargon. Over his loud objections, GLS and RMS made a point of
using as much of it 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.
careware /keir´weir/, n.
A variety of 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. Too frequently, one trivial syntax
error (such as a missing `)' or `}') 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 or
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 n.
[from `cut and paste']
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.
At DEC (now HP), this is sometimes called clone-and-hack coding.
case mod
[from `case modification']
1. Originally a kind of hardware hack on a PC intended to support
overclocking (e.g. with cutouts for oversized fans, or a
freon-based or water-cooling system).
2. Nowadays, similar drastic surgery that's done just to make a
machine look nifty. The commonest case mods combine acrylic case
windows with LEDs to give the machine an eerie interior glow like a
B-movie flying saucer. More advanced forms of case modding involve
building machines into weird and unlikely shapes. The effect can be
quite artistic, but one of the unwritten rules is that the machine
must continue to function as a computer.
casters-up mode n.
[IBM, prob. fr. slang belly up] 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 Some AI Koans
(in Appendix A).
A correspondent from England tells us that one of ICL's most talented
systems designers used to be called out occasionally to service
machines which the field circus had given up on. Since he knew the
design inside out, he could often find faults simply by listening to
a quick outline of the symptoms. He used to play on this by going to
some site where the field circus had just spent the last two weeks
solid trying to find a fault, and spreading a diagram of the system
out on a table top. He'd then shake some chicken bones and cast them
over the diagram, peer at the bones intently for a minute, and then
tell them that a certain module needed replacing. The system would
start working again immediately upon the replacement.
cat vt.
[from catenate via Unix cat(1)]
1. [techspeak] To spew an entire file to the screen or some other
output sink without pause (syn. blast).
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 delivers 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, because of its woefully unobvious name. It
is far 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.... See also UUOC.
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.
cathedral n.,adj.
[see bazaar for derivation] The `classical' mode of software
engineering long thought to be necessarily implied by Brooks's Law.
Features small teams, tight project control, and long release
intervals. This term came into use after analysis of the Linux
experience suggested there might be something wrong (or at least
incomplete) in the classical assumptions.
cd tilde /C·D til·d@/, vi.
To go home. From the Unix C-shell and Korn-shell command cd ~, which
takes one to one's $HOME (cd with no arguments happens to do the same
thing). 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."
CDA /C·D·A/
The "Communications Decency Act", passed as section 502 of a major
telecommunications reform bill on February 8th, 1996 ("Black
Thursday"). The CDA made it a federal crime in the USA to send a
communication which is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or
indecent, with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another
person." It also threatened with imprisonment anyone who "knowingly"
makes accessible to minors any message that "describes, in terms
patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards,
sexual or excretory activities or organs".
While the CDA was sold as a measure to protect minors from the
putative evils of pornography, the repressive political aims of the
bill were laid bare by the Hyde amendment, which intended to outlaw
discussion of abortion on the Internet.
To say that this direct attack on First Amendment free-speech rights
was not well received on the Internet would be putting it mildly. A
firestorm of protest followed, including a February 29th 1996 mass
demonstration by thousands of netters who turned their home pages
black for 48 hours. Several civil-rights groups and
computing/telecommunications companies mounted a constitutional
challenge. The CDA was demolished by a strongly-worded decision
handed down in 8th-circuit Federal court and subsequently affirmed by
the U.S. Supreme Court on 26 June 1997 ("White Thursday"). See also
Exon.
cdr /ku´dr/, /kuh´dr/, vt.
[from LISP] 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 704 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. [common] The perforated edge strips on printer paper, after they
have been separated from the printed portion. Also called selvage,
perf, and ripoff.
2. The confetti-like paper bits punched out of cards or paper tape;
this has also been called chaff, computer confetti, and keypunch
droppings. It's reported that this was very old Army slang
(associated with teletypewriters before the computer era), and has
been occasionally sighted in directions for punched-card vote
tabulators long after it passed out of live use among computer
programmers in the late 1970s. This sense of `chad' returned to the
mainstream during the finale of the hotly disputed U.S. presidential
election in 2000 via stories about the Florida vote recounts. Note
however that in the revived mainstream usage chad is not a mass noun
and `a chad' is a single piece of the stuff.
There is an urban legend that 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'. However, serious attempts to track down "Chadless"
as a personal name or U.S. trademark have failed, casting doubt on
this etymology -- and the U.S. Patent Classification System uses
"chadless" (small c) as an adjective, suggesting that "chadless"
derives from "chad" and not the other way around. There is another
legend that the word was originally acronymic, standing for "Card
Hole Aggregate Debris", but this has all the earmarks of a
backronym. It has also been noted that the word "chad" is Scots
dialect for gravel, but nobody has proposed any plausible reason that
card chaff should be thought of as gravel. None of these etymologies
is really plausible.
[74-12-31.png]
This is one way to be chadless.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 75-10-04. The previous
cartoon was 74-12-29.)
chad box n.
A metal box about the size of a lunchbox (or in some models a large
wastebasket), for collecting the chad (sense 2) that accumulated in
Iron Age card punches. 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. vi. [orig. from BASIC's CHAIN statement] 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. n. 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.
chainik /chi:´nik/
[Russian, literally "teapot"] Almost synonymous with muggle.
Implies both ignorance and a certain amount of willingness to learn,
but does not necessarily imply as little experience or short exposure
time as newbie and is not as derogatory as luser. Both a novice
user and someone using a system for a long time without any
understanding of the internals can be referred to as chainiks. Very
widespread term in Russian hackish, often used in an English context
by Russian-speaking hackers esp. in Israel (e.g. "Our new colleague
is a complete chainik"). FidoNet discussion groups often had a
"chainik" subsection for newbies and, well, old chainiks (eg.
su.asm.chainik, ru.linux.chainik, ru.html.chainik). Public projects
often have a chainik mailing list to keep the chainiks off the
developers' and experienced users' discussions. Today, the word is
slowly slipping into mainstream Russian due to the Russian
translation of the popular yellow-black covered "foobar for dummies"
series, which (correctly) uses "chainik" for "dummy", but its
frequent (though not excessive) use is still characteristic
hacker-speak.
channel n.
[IRC] The basic unit of discussion on IRC. Once one joins a
channel, everything one types is read by others on that channel.
Channels are named 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,
callahans, and #report. At times of international crisis, #report has
hundreds of members, some of whom take turns listening to various
news services and typing in summaries of 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 n.
[common; IRC, GEnie] To rapidly switch channels on IRC, or a GEnie
chat board, just as a social butterfly might hop from one group to
another at a party. This term may derive from the TV watcher's idiom,
channel surfing.
channel op /chan´l op/, n.
[IRC] Someone who is endowed with privileges on a particular IRC
channel; commonly abbreviated chanop or CHOP or just op (as of 2000
these short forms have almost crowded out the parent usage). These
privileges include the right to kick users, to change various
status bits, and to make others into CHOPs.
chanop /chan'·op/, n.
[IRC] See channel op.
char /keir/, /char/, /kar/, n.
Shorthand for `character'. Esp.: used by C programmers, as char is
C's typename for character data.
charityware /cha´rit·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 core dump (sense 1), interactively or on a large piece of
paper printed with hex runes, following dynamic data-structures.
Used only in a debugging context.
chawmp n.
[University of Florida] 16 or 18 bits (half of a machine word). This
term was used by FORTH hackers during the late 1970s/early 1980s; it
is said to have been archaic then, and may now be obsolete. It was
coined in revolt against the promiscuous use of `word' for anything
between 16 and 32 bits; `word' has an additional special meaning for
FORTH hacks that made the overloading intolerable. For similar
reasons, /gaw´bl/ (spelled `gawble' or possibly `gawbul') was in use
as a term for 32 or 48 bits (presumably a full machine word, but our
sources are unclear on this). These terms are more easily understood
if one thinks of them as faithful phonetic spellings of `chomp' and
`gobble' pronounced in a Florida or other Southern U.S. dialect. For
general discussion of similar terms, see nybble.
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 the word 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-guards).
cheerfully adv.
See happily.
chemist n.
[Cambridge] 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 a broadcast storm and/or network
meltdown, 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 n.
[Commodore] The Commodore Business Machines logo, which strongly
resembles a poultry part (within Commodore itself the logo was always
called chicken lips). Rendered in ASCII as `C='. With the arguable
exception of the Amiga, Commodore's machines were notoriously
crocky little bitty boxes, albeit people have written multitasking
Unix-like operating systems with TCP/IP networking for them. 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; the
novel is now sold under that title), in which a `chickenhead' is a
mutant with below-average intelligence.
chickenboner n.
[spamfighters] Derogatory term for a spammer. The image that goes
with it is of an overweight redneck with bad teeth living in a
trailer, hunched in semi-darkness over his computer and surrounded by
rotting chicken bones in half-eaten KFC buckets and empty beer cans.
See http://www.spamfaq.net/terminology.shtml#chickenboner for
discussion.
chiclet keyboard n.
A keyboard with a small, flat 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.
Chinese Army technique n.
Syn. Mongolian Hordes technique.
choad /chohd/, n.
Synonym for `penis' used in alt.tasteless and popularized by the
denizens thereof. They say: "We think maybe it's from Middle English
but we're all too damned lazy to check the OED." [I'm not. It isn't.
--ESR] This term is alleged to have been inherited through 1960s
underground comics, and to have been recently sighted in the Beavis
and Butthead cartoons. Speakers of the Hindi, Bengali and Gujarati
languages have confirmed that `choad' is in fact an Indian vernacular
word equivalent to `fuck'; it is therefore likely to have entered
English slang via the British Raj.
choke v.
[common] 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 #defines." See barf, vi.
chomp vi.
1. To lose; specifically, to chew on something of which more was
bitten off than one can. Probably related to gnashing of teeth.
2. To bite the bag; 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/, n.
[IRC] 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.)
Compare Godzillagram.
chrome n.
[from automotive slang via wargaming] 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. There is
a home page at http://www.subgenius.com/.
CI$ //, n.
Hackerism for `CIS', CompuServe Information Service. The dollar sign
refers to CompuServe's rather steep line charges. Often used in sig
blocks just before a CompuServe address. Syn. {Compu$erve}.
Cinderella Book n.
[CMU] 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.
On the back cover, the device is in shambles after she has
(inevitably) pulled on the rope. See also book titles.
Classic C /klas´ik C/, n.
[a play on `Coke Classic'] 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'.
An analogous construction 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."
click of death n.
A syndrome of certain Iomega ZIP drives, named for the clicking noise
that is caused by the malady. An affected drive will, after accepting
a disk, will start making a clicking noise and refuse to eject the
disk. A common solution for retrieving the disk is to insert the bent
end of a paper clip into a small hole adjacent to the slot. "Clicked"
disks are generally unusable after being retrieved from the drive.
The clicking noise is caused by the drive's read/write head bumping
against its movement stops when it fails to find track 0 on the disk,
causing the head to become misaligned. This can happen when the drive
has been subjected to a physical shock, or when the disk is exposed
to an electromagnetic field, such as that of the CRT. Another common
cause is when a package of disks is armed with an anti-theft strip at
a store. When the clerk scans the product to disarm the strip, it can
demagnetize the disks, wiping out track 0.
There is evidence that the click of death is a communicable disease;
a "clicked" disk can cause the read/write head of a "clean" drive to
become misaligned. Iomega at first denied the existence of the click
of death, but eventually offered to replace free of charge any drives
affected by the condition.
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.
clock
n.,v.
1. [techspeak] The master oscillator that steps a CPU or other
digital circuit through its paces. This has nothing to do with the
time of day, although the software counter that keeps track of the
latter may be derived from the former.
2. vt. To run a CPU or other digital circuit at a particular rate.
"If you clock it at 1000MHz, it gets warm.". See overclock.
3. vt. To force a digital circuit from one state to the next by
applying a single clock pulse. "The data must be stable 10ns before
you clock the latch."
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,
jiffy.
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. [obs] PC clone: a PC-BUS/ISA/EISA/PCI-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. This term fell out of use in the 1990s; the class of
machines it describes are now simply PCs or Intel machines.
5. [obs.] 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. Linux and the free BSDs killed off this product
category and the term with it.
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".
clone-and-hack coding n.
[DEC] Syn. case and paste.
clover key n.
[Mac users] See feature key.
clue-by-four
[Usenet: portmanteau, clue + two-by-four] The notional stick with
which one whacks an aggressively clueless person. This term derives
from a western American folk saying about training a mule "First, you
got to hit him with a two-by-four. That's to get his attention." The
clue-by-four is a close relative of the LART. Syn. clue stick. This
metaphor is commonly elaborated; your editor once heard a hacker say
"I smite you with the great sword Cluebringer!"
clustergeeking /kluh´st@r·gee`king/, n.
[CMU] Spending more time at a computer cluster doing CS homework than
most people spend breathing.
co-lo /koh´loh`/, n.
[very common; first heard c.1995] Short for `co-location', used of a
machine you own that is physically sited on the premises of an ISP in
order to take advantage of the ISP's direct access to lots of network
bandwidth. Often in the phrases co-lo box or co-lo machines. Co-lo
boxes are typically web and FTP servers remote-administered by their
owners, who may seldom or never visit the actual site.
coaster n.
1. Unuseable CD produced during failed attempt at writing to
writeable or re-writeable CD media. Certainly related to the
coaster-like shape of a CD, and the relative value of these failures.
"I made a lot of coasters before I got a good CD."
2. Useless CDs received in the mail from the likes of AOL, MSN, CI$,
Prodigy, ad nauseam.
In the U.K., beermat is often used in these senses.
coaster toaster
A writer for recordable CD-Rs, especially cheap IDE models that tend
to produce a high proportion of coasters.
COBOL /koh´bol/, n.
[COmmon Business-Oriented Language] (Synonymous with evil.) A weak,
verbose, and flabby language used by code grinders to do boring
mindless things on dinosaur mainframes. Hackers believe that all
COBOL programmers are suits or code grinders, 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. One popular one is Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous
observation that "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching
should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense." (from Selected
Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective) 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
(see candygrammar); 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!"
cobweb site n.
A World Wide Web Site that hasn't been updated so long it has
figuratively grown cobwebs.
code
1. n. The stuff that software writers write, either in source form or
after translation by a compiler or assembler. Often used in
opposition to "data", which is the stuff that code operates on. Among
hackers this is a mass noun, as in "How much code does it take to do
a bubble sort?", or "The code is loaded at the high end of RAM."
Among scientific programmers it is sometimes a count noun equilvalent
to "program"; thus they may speak of "codes" in the plural. Anyone
referring to software as "the software codes" is probably a newbie
or a suit.
2. v. To write code. In this sense, always refers to source code
rather than compiled. "I coded an Emacs clone in two hours!" This
verb is a bit of a cultural marker associated with the Unix and
minicomputer traditions (and lately Linux); people within that
culture prefer v. `code' to v. `program' whereas outside it the
reverse is normally true.
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.
Contrast hacker, Real Programmer.
code monkey n
1. A person only capable of grinding out code, but unable to perform
the higher-primate tasks of software architecture, analysis, and
design. Mildly insulting. Often applied to the most junior people on
a programming team.
2. Anyone who writes code for a living; a programmer.
3. A self-deprecating way of denying responsibility for a
management decision, or of complaining about having to live with
such decisions. As in "Don't ask me why we need to write a compiler
in COBOL, I'm just a code monkey."
Code of the Geeks n.
see geek code.
code police n.
[by analogy with George Orwell's `thought police'] 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 weenies. "Dike out
that goto or the code police will get you!" The ironic usage is
perhaps more common.
codes n.
[scientific computing] Programs. This usage is common in people who
hack supercomputers and heavy-duty number-crunching, rare to
unknown elsewhere (if you say "codes" to hackers outside scientific
computing, their first association is likely to be "and cyphers").
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 heavy use of pseudo-mathematical metaphors. Four
particularly important ones involve the terms coefficient, factor,
index of X, 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 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 `escape-escape-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. Lawrence 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/, n.
[ITS: from the feature supporting on-line chat; the first word may be
spelled with one or two m's] Syn. for talk mode.
command key n.
[Mac users] 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 is being left 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 in English 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 (especially two-component names) tend to be
pronounced more often (so soc.wibble is /sok dot wib´l/ rather than
/sohsh wib´l/).
Preferred metasyntactic variables include blurgle, eek, ook,
frodo, and bilbo; wibble, wobble, and in emergencies wubble; flob,
banana, tom, dick, harry, wombat, frog, fish, womble 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!").
All the generic differences within the anglophone world inevitably
show themselves in the associated hackish dialects. The Greek letters
beta and zeta are usually pronounced /bee´t@/ and /zee´t@/; meta may
also be pronounced /mee´t@/. Various punctuators (and even letters -
Z is called `zed', not `zee') are named differently: most crucially,
for hackish, where Americans use `parens', `brackets' and `braces'
for (), [] and , Commonwealth English uses `brackets', `square
brackets' and `curly brackets', though `parentheses' may be used for
the first; the exclamation mark, `!', is called pling rather than
bang and the pound sign, `#', is called hash; furthermore, the term
`the pound sign' is understood to mean the £ (of course). Canadian
hacker slang, as with mainstream language, mixes American and British
usages about evenly.
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, raster blaster, RTBM, seggie,
spod, sun lounge, terminal junkie, tick-list features,
weeble, weasel, YABA, and notes or definitions under Bad
Thing, barf, bogus, chase pointers, cosmic rays,
crippleware, crunch, dodgy, gonk, hamster, hardwarily,
mess-dos, nybble, proglet, root, SEX, tweak, womble,
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 features 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).
compo n.
[demoscene] Finnish-originated slang for `competition'. Demo compos
are held at a demoparty. The usual protocol is that several groups
make demos for a compo, they are shown on a big screen, and then the
party participants vote for the best one. Prizes (from sponsors and
party entrance fees) are given. Standard compo formats include
intro compos (4k or 64k demos), music compos, graphics compos,
quick demo compos (build a demo within 4 hours for example), etc.
compress vt.
[Unix] When used without a qualifier, generally refers to crunching
of a file using a particular C implementation of compression by
Joseph M. Orost 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$erve n.
See {CI$}. Synonyms CompuSpend and Compu$pend are also reported.
computer confetti n.
Syn. chad. [obs.] Though this term was common at one time, 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.
[2001 update: this term has passed out of use for two reasons; (1)
the stuff it describes is now quite rare, and (2) the term chad,
which was half-forgotten in 1990, has enjoyed a revival. --ESR]
computron /kom´pyoo·tron`/, n.
1. [common] 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. (The popularity of 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.)
con n.
[from SF fandom] A science-fiction convention. Not used of other
sorts of conventions, such as professional meetings. This term,
unlike many others imported from SF-fan slang, is widely recognized
even by hackers who aren't fans. "We'd been corresponding on the
net for months, then we met face-to-face at a con."
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 of these directives are #if 0 (or
#ifdef notdef, though some find the latter 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.
3. keyboard condom: A flexible, transparent plastic cover for a
keyboard, designed to provide some protection against dust and
programming fluid without impeding typing.
4. elephant condom: the plastic shipping bags used inside cardboard
boxes to protect hardware in transit.
5. n. obs. A dummy directory /usr/tmp/sh, created to foil the Great
Worm by exploiting a portability bug in one of its parts. So named
in the title of a comp.risks article by Gene Spafford during the Worm
crisis, and again in the text of The Internet Worm Program: An
Analysis, Purdue Technical Report CSD-TR-823.
confuser n.
Common soundalike slang for `computer'. Usually encountered in
compounds such as confuser room, personal confuser, confuser guru.
Usage: silly.
connector conspiracy n.
[probably came into prominence with the appearance of the KL-10 (one
model of the PDP-10), none of whose connectors matched anything
else] 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.
(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. A good 1990s
example is the use of Torx screws for cable-TV set-top boxes. Older
Apple Macintoshes took this one step further, requiring not only a
long Torx screwdriver 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/, /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.
[very common] 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 (text at
http://www.acm.org/classics/). As it turns out, the title under which
the letter appeared was actually supplied by CACM's editor, Niklaus
Wirth. 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.
(Years afterwards, a contrary view was uttered in a CACM letter
called, inevitably, `Goto considered harmful' considered harmful''.
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.
console jockey n.
See terminal junkie.
content-free adj.
[by analogy with techspeak context-free] 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; commonly stated as "If you
have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass
compiler". The original statement was more general, "Organizations
which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are
copies of the communication structures of these organizations." This
first appeared in the April 1968 issue of Datamation. Compare
SNAFU principle.
The law was named after 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.)
There is also Tom Cheatham's amendment of Conway's Law: "If a group
of N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be N-1 passes.
Someone in the group has to be the manager."
cookbook n.
[from amateur electronics and radio] A book of small code segments
that the reader can use to do various magic things in programs.
Cookbooks, slavishly followed, can lead one into voodoo
programming, but are useful for hackers trying to monkey up small
programs in unknown languages. This function is analogous to the role
of phrasebooks in human languages.
cooked mode n.
[Unix, by opposition from raw mode] The normal character-input
mode, with interrupts enabled and with erase, kill and other
special-character interpretations performed directly by the tty
driver. Oppose raw mode, rare mode. This term 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). Syn. magic cookie; see also fortune cookie. Now
mainstream in the specific sense of web-browser cookies.
cookie bear n. obs.
Original term, pre-Sesame-Street, for what is now universally called
a cookie monster. A correspondent observes "In those days, hackers
were actually getting their yucks from...sit down now...Andy
Williams. Yes, that Andy Williams. Seems he had a rather hip (by the
standards of the day) TV variety show. One of the best parts of the
show was the recurring `cookie bear' sketch. In these sketches, a guy
in a bear suit tried all sorts of tricks to get a cookie out of
Williams. The sketches would always end with Williams shrieking (and
I don't mean figuratively), `No cookies! Not now, not
ever...NEVER!!!' And the bear would fall down. Great stuff."
cookie file n.
A collection of fortune cookies in a format that facilitates
retrieval by a fortune program. There are several different cookie
files in public distribution, and site admins often assemble their
own from various sources including this lexicon.
cookie jar n.
An area of memory set aside for storing cookies. Most commonly
heard in the Atari ST community; many useful ST programs record their
presence by storing a distinctive magic number in the jar. Programs
can inquire after the presence or otherwise of other programs by
searching the contents of the jar.
cookie monster n.
[from the children's TV program Sesame Street] 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
timesharing 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.
Folklorist Jan Brunvand (see FOAF) has described these programs as
urban legends (implying they probably never existed) but they
existed, all right, in several different versions. See also wabbit.
Interestingly, the term cookie monster appears to be a retcon; the
original term was cookie bear.
copious free time n.
[Apple; orig. fr. the intro to Tom Lehrer's song It Makes A Fellow
Proud To Be A Soldier]
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 suits. "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 methods for preventing incompetent pirates from stealing
software and legitimate customers from using it. Considered silly.
copybroke /kop´ee·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. See also copy
protection.
copycenter n.
[play on `copyright' and `copyleft']
1. The copyright notice carried by the various flavors of freeware
BSD. According to Kirk McKusick at BSDCon 1999: "The way it was
characterized politically, you had copyright, which is what the big
companies use to lock everything up; you had copyleft, which is free
software's way of making sure they can't lock it up; and then
Berkeley had what we called `copycenter', which is `take it down to
the copy center and make as many copies as you want'".
copyleft /kop´ee·left/, n.
[play on copyright]
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.
copyparty n.
[C64/amiga demoscene] A computer party organized so demosceners can
meet other in real life, and to facilitate software copying (mostly
pirated software). The copyparty has become less common as the
Internet makes communication easier. The demoscene has gradually
evolved the demoparty to replace it.
copywronged /kop´ee·rongd/, adj.
[play on copyright] 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. Some varieties of Commonwealth hackish prefer store.
core cancer n.
[rare] A process that 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.
[76-07-18.png]
A core dump lands our hero in hot water.
(This is the last cartoon in the Crunchly saga. The previous cartoon
was 76-05-01.)
core leak n.
Syn. memory leak.
Core Wars n.
A game between assembler programs in a machine or machine simulator,
where the objective is to kill your opponent's program by overwriting
it. Popularized in the 1980s by A. K. Dewdney's column in Scientific
American magazine, but described in Software Practice And Experience
a decade earlier. The game was actually devised and played by Victor
Vyssotsky, Robert Morris Sr., and Doug McIlroy in the early 1960s
(Dennis Ritchie is sometimes incorrectly cited as a co-author, but
was not involved). Their original game was called `Darwin' and ran on
a IBM 7090 at Bell Labs. See core. For information on the modern
game, do a web search for the `rec.games.corewar FAQ' or surf to the
King Of The Hill site.
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 one has 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, scream and die.
courier
[BBS & cracker cultures] A person who distributes newly cracked
warez, as opposed to a server who makes them available for
download or a leech who merely downloads them. Hackers recognize
this term but don't use it themselves, as the act is not part of
their culture. See also warez d00dz, cracker, elite.
cow orker n.
[Usenet] n. fortuitous typo for co-worker, widely used in Usenet,
with perhaps a hint that orking cows is illegal. This term was
popularized by Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) but already
appears in the January 1996 version of the scary devil monastery
FAQ, and has been traced back to a 1989 sig block. Compare hing,
grilf, filk, newsfroup.
cowboy n.
[Sun, from William Gibson's cyberpunk SF] Synonym for hacker. It
is reported that at Sun this word is often said with reverence.
CP/M /C·P·M/, n.
[Control Program/Monitor; later retconned to 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 (another variant has it that Gary's wife
was much more interested in packing her suitcases for an upcoming
vacation than in clinching a deal with IBM). 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). The whole
shebang is now available on the Web.
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 (at that time 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
[warez d00dz]
1. v. To break into a system (compare cracker).
2. v. Action of removing the copy protection from a commercial
program. People who write cracks consider themselves challenged by
the copy protection measures. They will often do it as much to show
that they are smarter than the developer who designed the copy
protection scheme than to actually copy the program.
3. n. A program, instructions or patch used to remove the copy
protection of a program or to uncripple features from a demo/time
limited program.
4. An exploit.
crack root v.
[very common] 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.
Use of both these neologisms reflects a strong revulsion against the
theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings. The neologism
"cracker" in this sense may have been influenced not so much by the
term "safe-cracker" as by the non-jargon term "cracker", which in
Middle English meant an obnoxious person (e.g., "What cracker is this
same that deafs our ears / With this abundance of superfluous
breath?" -- Shakespeare's King John, Act II, Scene I) and in modern
colloquial American English survives as a barely gentler synonym for
"white trash".
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 except for
immediate, benign, practical reasons (for example, if it's necessary
to get around some security in order to get some work done).
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. An easy way for outsiders to spot the difference is that
crackers use grandiose screen names that conceal their identities.
Hackers never do this; they only rarely use noms de guerre at all,
and when they do it is for display rather than concealment.
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. For a portrait of the typical teenage cracker,
see warez d00dz.
cracking n.
[very common] 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 incompetent as
hackers. This entry used to say 'mediocre', but the spread of
rootkit and other automated cracking has depressed the average
level of skill among crackers.
crank vt.
[from automotive slang] 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."
crapplet n.
[portmanteau, crap + applet] A worthless applet, esp. a Java widget
attached to a web page that doesn't work or even crashes your
browser. Also spelled `craplet'.
CrApTeX /krap´tekh/, n.
[University of York, England] Term of abuse used to describe TeX and
LaTeX when they don't work (when used by TeXhackers), or all the time
(by everyone else). The non-TeX-enthusiasts generally dislike it
because it is more verbose than other formatters (e.g. troff) and
because (particularly if the standard Computer Modern fonts are used)
it generates vast output files. See religious issues, TeX.
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 happens when the air gap of a hard disk
collapses). "Three lusers 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). 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.
This usage is almost certainly derived from the fiction of H.P.
Lovecraft. Lovecraft may never have used the exact phrase "crawling
horror" in his writings, but one of the fearsome Elder Gods that he
wrote extensively about was Nyarlethotep, who had as an epithet "The
Crawling Chaos". Certainly the extreme, even melodramatic horror of
his characters at the weird monsters they encounter, even to the
point of going insane with fear, is what hackers are referring to
with this phrase when they use it for horribly bad code. Compare
cthulhic.
CRC handbook
Any of the editions of the Chemical Rubber Company Handbook of
Chemistry and Physics; there are other CRC handbooks, such as the CRC
Standard Mathematical Tables and Formulae, but "the" CRC handbook is
the chemistry and physics reference. It is massive tome full of
mathematical tables, physical constants of thousands of alloys and
chemical compounds, dielectric strengths, vapor pressure,
resistivity, and the like. Hackers have remarkably little actual use
for these sorts of arcana, but are such information junkies that a
large percentage of them acquire copies anyway and would feel vaguely
bereft if they couldn't look up the magnetic susceptibility of
potassium permanganate at a moment's notice. On hackers' bookshelves,
the CRC handbook is rather likely to keep company with an unabridged
Oxford English Dictionary and a good atlas.
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, something which 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.
[common]
1. Describes a systematic tendency to load more chrome and
features 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. The GNU hello program, intended to illustrate
GNU command-line switch and coding conventions, is also a wonderful
parody of creeping featurism; the distribution changelog is
particularly funny. 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´in/, /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 /kret´in/ 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/, /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, losing,
brain-damaged.
crippleware n.
1. [common] Software that has some important functionality
deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users to pay for a
working version.
2. [Cambridge] Variety of guiltware that exhorts you to donate to
some charity (compare careware, nagware).
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 diked out (in
some early versions it was present but disabled). To upgrade, you buy
a complete 486DX chip with working co-processor (its identity thinly
veiled by a different pinout) and plug it into the board's expansion
socket. It then disables the SX, which becomes a fancy power sink.
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. (This malady has many causes: creeping
featurism, ports to too many disparate environments, poor initial
design, etc.) When software achieves critical mass, it can never be
fixed; it can only be discarded and rewritten.
crlf /ker´l@f/, /kru´l@f/, /C·R·L·F/, n.
(often capitalized as `CRLF') A carriage return (CR, ASCII 0001101)
followed by a line feed (LF, ASCII 0001010). 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. Under Unix influence this usage
has become less common (Unix uses a bare line feed as its `CRLF').
crock n.
[from the American scatologism crock of shit]
1. An awkward feature or programming technique that ought to be made
cleaner. For example, 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, a too-clever
programmer might write an assembler which mapped instruction
mnemonics to numeric opcodes algorithmically, a trick which depends
far too intimately on the particular bit patterns of the opcodes.
(For another example of programming with a dependence on actual
opcode values, see The Story of Mel' in Appendix A.) Many crocks have
a tightly woven, almost completely unmodifiable structure. See
kluge, brittle. The adjectives crockish and crocky, and the nouns
crockishness and crockitude, are also used.
cross-post vi.
[Usenet; very common] 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 (which 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 various parts of
the original posting.
crossload v.,n.
[proposed, by analogy with upload and download] To move files
between machines on a peer-to-peer network of nodes that act as both
servers and clients for a distributed file store. Esp. appropriate
for anonymized networks like Gnutella and Freenet.
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/
[very common; 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; used esp. of redundant or superseded
code.
5. [University of Wisconsin] n. Cruft is to hackers as gaggle is to
geese; that is, at UW one properly says "a cruft of hackers".
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/, adj.
[very common; origin unknown; poss. from `crusty' or `cruddy']
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)."
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 1993) 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.
crumb n.
Two binary digits; a quad. Larger than a bit, smaller than a
nybble. Considered silly. Syn. tayste. General discussion of such
terms is under nybble.
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 something
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.
cryppie /krip´ee/, n.
A cryptographer. One who hacks or implements cryptographic software
or hardware.
cthulhic /kthool´hik/, adj.
Having the nature of a Cthulhu, the horrific tentacled green
monstrosity from H.P. Lovecraft's seminal horror fiction. Cthulhu
sends dreams that drive men mad, feeds on the flesh of screaming
victims rent limb from limb, and is served by a cult of degenerates.
Hackers think this describes large proprietary systems such as
traditional mainframes, installations of SAP and Oracle, or rooms
full of Windows servers remarkably well, and the adjective is used
casually. Compare Shub-Internet and crawling horror.
CTSS /C·T·S·S/, n.
Compatible Time-Sharing System. An early (1963) experiment in the
design of interactive timesharing 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. See timesharing
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).
cup holder n.
The tray of a CD-ROM drive, or by extension the CD drive itself. So
called because of a common tech support legend about the idiot who
called to complain that the cup holder on his computer broke. A joke
program was once distributed around the net called "cupholder.exe",
which when run simply extended the CD drive tray. The humor of this
was of course lost on people whose drive had a slot or a caddy
instead.
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/, adj.
[WPI: from the DEC abbreviation CUSP, for `Commonly Used System
Program', i.e., a utility program used by many people. Now rare.]
1. (of a program) Well-written.
2. Functionally excellent. A program that performs well and
interfaces well to users is cuspy. Oppose 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 important early storage medium. See also burn a CD.
cybercrud /si:´ber·kruhd/, n.
1. [coined by Ted Nelson] Obfuscatory tech-talk. Verbiage with a high
MEGO factor. The computer equivalent of bureaucratese.
2. Incomprehensible stuff embedded in email. First there were the
"Received" headers that show how mail flows through systems, then
MIME (Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions) headers and part
boundaries, and now huge blocks of radix-64 for PEM (Privacy Enhanced
Mail) or PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) digital signatures and
certificates of authenticity. This stuff all serves a purpose and
good user interfaces should hide it, but all too often users are
forced to wade through it.
cyberpunk /si:´ber·puhnk/, n.,adj.
[orig. by SF writer Bruce Bethke and/or editor Gardner Dozois] 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 the Bibliography 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 naïve 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.
Since 1990 or so, popular culture has included a movement or fashion
trend that calls itself `cyberpunk', associated especially with the
rave/techno subculture. Hackers have mixed feelings about this. On
the one hand, self-described cyberpunks too often seem to be shallow
trendoids in black leather who have substituted enthusiastic
blathering about technology for actually learning and doing it.
Attitude is no substitute for competence. On the other hand, at least
cyberpunks are excited about the right things and properly respectful
of hacking talent in those who have it. The general consensus is to
tolerate them politely in hopes that they'll attract people who grow
into being true hackers.
cyberspace /si:´br·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. Serious efforts to construct
virtual reality interfaces modeled explicitly on Gibsonian
cyberspace are 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 the network).
2. The Internet or Matrix (sense #2) as a whole, considered as a
crude cyberspace (sense 1). Although this usage became widely popular
in the mainstream press during 1994 when the Internet exploded into
public awareness, it is strongly deprecated among hackers because the
Internet does not meet the high, SF-inspired standards they have for
true cyberspace technology. Thus, this use of the term usually tags a
wannabee or outsider. Oppose meatspace.
3. Occasionally, the metaphoric location of the mind of a person in
hack mode. Some hackers report experiencing strong synesthetic
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 described 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 (sense 4), from the phrase `cycle power'. "Cycle
the machine again, that serial port's still hung."
cycle of reincarnation n.
See wheel of reincarnation.
cycle server n.
A powerful machine that exists primarily for running large compute-,
disk-, or memory-intensive jobs (more formally called a compute
server). Implies that interactive tasks such as editing are done on
other machines on the network, such as workstations.
cypherpunk n.
[from cyberpunk] Someone interested in the uses of encryption via
electronic ciphers for enhancing personal privacy and guarding
against tyranny by centralized, authoritarian power structures,
especially government. There is an active cypherpunks mailing list at
<cypherpunks-request@toad.com> coordinating work on public-key
encryption freeware, privacy, and digital cash. See also tentacle.
C|N>K n.
[Usenet] Coffee through Nose to Keyboard; that is, "I laughed so hard
I snarfed my coffee onto my keyboard.". Common on alt.fan.pratchett
and scary devil monastery; recognized elsewhere. The
Acronymphomania FAQ on alt.fan.pratchett recognizes variants such as
T|N>K = `Tea through Nose to Keyboard' and C|N>S = `Coffee through
Nose to Screen'.
= D =
=====
daemon /day´mn/, /dee´mn/, n.
[from Maxwell's Demon, later incorrectly retronymed as `Disk And
Execution MONitor'] 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 neither
compete for access to nor understand any idiosyncrasies of 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; the prototype was a program called DAEMON
that automatically made tape backups of the file system. Although the
meaning and the pronunciation have drifted, we think this glossary
reflects current (2003) usage.
daemon 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, ISBN
0-201-06196-1); or The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD
Operating System by Marshall Kirk McKusick, Keith Bostic, Michael J.
Karels and John S. Quarterman (Addison-Wesley Longman, 1996, ISBN
0-201-54979-4) Either of the standard reference books on the
internals of BSD Unix. So called because the covers have a picture
depicting a little demon (a visual play on daemon) in sneakers,
holding a pitchfork (referring to one of the characteristic features
of Unix, the fork(2) system call).
dahmum /dah´mum/, n.
[Usenet] The material of which protracted flame wars, especially
those about operating systems, is composed. Homeomorphic to spam.
The term dahmum is derived from the name of a militant OS/2
advocate, and originated when an extensively cross-posted
OS/2-versus-Linux debate was fed through Dissociated Press.
dancing frog n.
[Vancouver area] A problem that occurs on a computer that will not
reappear while anyone else is watching. From the classic Warner
Brothers cartoon One Froggy Evening, featuring a dancing and singing
Michigan J. Frog that just croaks when anyone else is around (now the
WB network mascot).
dangling pointer n.
[common] 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 happens 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 suits 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, and Ed
Post's Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal ten years later, but for a
long time after that it was much more exclusively suit-oriented and
boring. Following a change of editorship in 1994, Datamation briefly
tried for more the technical content and irreverent humor that marked
its early days, but this did not last.
DAU /dow/, n.
[German FidoNet] German acronym for Dümmster Anzunehmender User
(stupidest imaginable user). From the engineering-slang GAU for
Grösster Anzunehmender Unfall, worst assumable accident, esp. of a
LNG tank farm plant or something with similarly disastrous
consequences. In popular German, GAU is used only to refer to
worst-case nuclear accidents such as a core meltdown. See cretin,
fool, loser and weasel.
Dave the Resurrector n.
[Usenet; also abbreviated DtR] A cancelbot that cancels cancels.
Dave the Resurrector originated when some spam-spewers decided to
try to impede spam-fighting by wholesale cancellation of anti-spam
coordination messages in the news.admin.net-abuse.usenet newsgroup.
day mode n.
See phase (sense 1). Used of people only.
dd /dee·dee/, vt.
[Unix: from IBM JCL] Equivalent to cat or BLT. Originally the
name of a Unix copy command with special options suitable for
block-oriented devices; it was 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 `Dataset
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). The term has been displaced by BLT or simple
English `copy'.
DDT /D·D·T/, n.
[from the insecticide para-dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethene]
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 adb, sdb, dbx, or gdb.
2. [ITS] Under MIT's fabled ITS operating system, DDT (running
under the alias HACTRN, a six-letterism for `Hack Translator') 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 and CP/M. The PDP-10 Reference Handbook (1969)
contained a footnote on the first page of the documentation for DDT
that 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 C[14]H[9]Cl[5] should be minimal
since each attacks a different, and apparently mutually exclusive,
class of bugs.
(The `tape' referred to was, incidentally, not magnetic but paper.)
Sadly, this quotation was removed from later editions of the handbook
after the suits took over and DEC became much more
`businesslike'.
The history above is known to many old-time hackers. But there's
more: Peter Samson, compiler of the original 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).
Flit was for many years the trade-name of a popular insecticide.
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. The Macintosh resource decompiler. On a Macintosh, many
program structures (including the code itself) are managed in small
segments of the program file known as resources; Rez and DeRez are a
pair of utilities for compiling and decompiling resource files. Thus,
decompiling a resource is derezzing. Usage: very common.
dead adj.
1. Non-functional; down; crashed. Especially used of hardware.
2. At XEROX PARC, software that is working but not undergoing
continued development and support.
3. Useless; inaccessible. Antonym: live. Compare dead code.
dead beef attack n.
[cypherpunks list, 1996] An attack on a public-key cryptosystem
consisting of publishing a key having the same ID as another key
(thus making it possible to spoof a user's identity if recipients
aren't careful about verifying keys). In PGP and GPG the key ID is
the last eight hex digits of (for RSA keys) the product of two
primes. The attack was demonstrated by creating a key whose ID was
0xdeadbeef (see DEADBEEF).
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. (Sometimes it simply means that an
extremely defensive programmer has inserted can't happen tests
which really can't happen -- yet.) Syn. grunge. See also dead,
and The Story of Mel'.
dead-tree version
[common] A paper version of an on-line document; one printed on dead
trees. In this context, "dead trees" always refers to paper. See also
tree-killer.
DEADBEEF /ded·beef/, n.
The hexadecimal word-fill pattern for freshly allocated memory under
a number of IBM environments, including the RS/6000. Some modern
debugging tools deliberately fill freed memory with this value as a
way of converting heisenbugs into Bohr bugs. 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.
See also the anecdote under fool and dead beef attack.
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, in which 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 move the same
way at the same time.
deadly embrace n.
Same as deadlock, though usually used only when exactly two
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).
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 Square n.
The corporate logo of Novell, the people who acquired USL after AT&T
let go of it (Novell eventually sold the Unix group to SCO). Coined
by analogy with Death Star, because many people believed Novell was
bungling the lead in Unix systems exactly as AT&T did for many years.
[They were right --ESR]
Death Star n.
[from the movie Star Wars]
1. The AT&T corporate logo, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the
Death Star in the Star Wars movies. This usage was particularly
common among partisans of BSD Unix in the 1980s, who tended 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 to describe 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.
Death, X of
[common] A construction used to imbue the subject with campy menace,
usually with intent to ridicule. The ancestor of this term is a
famous Far Side cartoon from the 1980s in which a balloon with a
fierce face painted on it is passed off as the "Floating Head of
Death". Hackers and SF fans have been using the suffix "of Death"
ever since to label things which appear to be vastly threatening but
will actually pop like a balloon if you prick them. Such
constructions are properly spoken in a tone of over-exagerrated
portentiousness: "Behold! The Spinning - Pizza - of - Death!" See
Blue Screen of Death, Ping O' Death, Spinning Pizza of Death,
click of death. Compare {Doom, X of}.
DEC /dek/, n.
n. Commonly used abbreviation for Digital Equipment Corporation,
later deprecated by DEC itself in favor of "Digital" and now entirely
obsolete following the buyout by Compaq. Before the killer micro
revolution of the late 1980s, hackerdom was closely symbiotic with
DEC's pioneering timesharing machines. The first of the group of
cultures described by this lexicon nucleated around the PDP-1 (see
TMRC). Subsequently, the PDP-6, PDP-10, PDP-20, PDP-11 and
VAX were all foci of large and important hackerdoms, and DEC
machines long dominated the ARPANET and Internet machine population.
DEC was the technological leader of the minicomputer era (roughly
1967 to 1987), but its failure to embrace microcomputers and Unix
early cost it heavily in profits and prestige after silicon got
cheap. Nevertheless, the microprocessor design tradition owes a major
debt to the PDP-11 instruction set, and every one of the major
general-purpose microcomputer OSs so far (CP/M, MS-DOS, Unix, OS/2,
Windows NT) was either genetically descended from a DEC OS, or
incubated on DEC hardware, or both. Accordingly, DEC was for many
years still regarded with a certain wry affection even among many
hackers too young to have grown up on DEC machines.
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.
decay n.,vi
[from nuclear physics] An automatic conversion which is applied to
most array-valued expressions in C; they `decay into'
pointer-valued expressions pointing to the array's first element.
This term is borderline techspeak, but is not used in the official
standard for the language.
deckle /dek´l/, n.
[from dec- and nybble; the original spelling seems to have been
decle] Two nickles; 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. See nybble for other such terms.
DED /D·E·D/, n.
Dark-Emitting Diode (that is, a burned-out LED). Compare SED,
LER, write-only memory. In the early 1970s both Signetics and
Texas instruments released DED spec sheets as AFJs (suggested uses
included "as a power-off indicator").
deep hack mode n.
See hack mode.
deep magic n.
[poss. from C. S. Lewis's Narnia books] An awesomely arcane technique
central to a program or system, esp. one neither generally published
nor 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 n.
[mythically from a traditional Bohemian assassination method, via SF
fandom]
1. Proper karmic retribution for an incorrigible punster. "Oh, ghod,
that was awful!" "Quick! Defenestrate him!"
2. The act of completely removing Micro$oft Windows from a PC in
favor of a better OS (typically Linux).
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. Under a GUI, the act of dragging something out of a window (onto
the screen). "Next, defenestrate the MugWump icon."
5. [obs.] 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.
defined as adj.
In the role of, usually in an organization-chart sense. "Pete is
currently defined as bug prioritizer." Compare logical.
deflicted
[portmanteau of "defective" and "afflicted"; common among PC repair
technicians, and probably originated among hardware techs outside the
hacker community proper] Term used of hardware that is broken due to
poor design or shoddy manufacturing or (especially) both; less
frequently used of software and rarely of people. This term is
normally employed in a tone of weary contempt by technicians who have
seen the specific failure in the trouble report before and are
cynically confident they'll see it again. Ultimately this may derive
from Frank Zappa's 1974 album Apostrophe, on which the Fur Trapper
infamously rubs his deflicted eyes...
dehose /dee·hohz/, vt.
To clear a hosed condition.
Dejagoo
[Portmanteau of Dejanews and Google] Google newsgroups. Became common
in 2001 after Google acquired Dejanews, and with it the largest
on-line archive of Usenet postings.
deletia n., /d@·lee´sha/
[USENET; common] In an email reply, material omitted from the quote
of the original. Usually written rather than spoken; often appears as
a pseudo-tag or ellipsis in the body of the reply, as "[deletia]" or
"<deletia>" or "<snip>".
deliminator /de·lim'·in·ay·t@r/, n.
[portmanteau, delimiter + eliminate] A string or pattern used to
delimit text into fields, but which is itself eliminated from the
resulting list of fields. This jargon seems to have originated among
Perl hackers in connection with the Perl split() function; however,
it has been sighted in live use among Java and even Visual Basic
programmers.
delint /dee·lint/, v. obs.
To modify code to remove problems detected when linting.
Confusingly, this process is also referred to as linting code. This
term is no longer in general use because ANSI C compilers typically
issue compile-time warnings almost as detailed as lint warnings.
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 malfunctioning
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,
brain-damaged, bozotic.
demigod n.
A hacker with years of experience, a world-wide 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), Richard M. Stallman (inventor of EMACS), Larry Wall (inventor
of Perl), Linus Torvalds (inventor of Linux), and most recently
James Gosling (inventor of Java, NeWS, and GOSMACS) and Guido van
Rossum (inventor of Python). 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, ubergeek. Since 1995 or so this term has been
gradually displaced by ubergeek.
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. "I've gotta give a demo of the drool-proof
interface; how does it work again?"
3. n. Esp. as demo version, can refer either to an early,
barely-functional version of a program which can be used for
demonstration purposes as long as the operator uses exactly the right
commands and skirts its numerous bugs, deficiencies, and
unimplemented portions, or to a special version of a program
(frequently with some features crippled) which is distributed at
little or no cost to the user for enticement purposes.
4. [demoscene] A sequence of demoeffects (usually) combined with
self-composed music and hand-drawn ("pixelated") graphics. These days
(1997) usually built to attend a compo. Often called eurodemos
outside Europe, as most of the demoscene activity seems to have
gathered in northern Europe and especially Scandinavia. See also
intro, dentro.
demo mode n.
1. [Sun] 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 by themselves running through a
portion of the game, also known as attract mode. Some serious apps
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).
demoeffect n.
[demoscene]
1. What among hackers is called a display hack. Classical effects
include "plasma" (colorful mess), "keftales" (x*x+y*y and other
similar patterns, usually combined with color-cycling), realtime
fractals, realtime 3d graphics, etc. Historically, demo effects have
cheated as much as possible to gain more speed and more complexity,
using low-precision math and masses of assembler code and building
animation realtime are three common tricks, but use of special
hardware to fake effects is a Good Thing on the demoscene (though
this is becoming less common as platforms like the Amiga fade away).
2. [Finland] Opposite of dancing frog. The crash that happens when
you demonstrate a perfectly good prototype to a client. Plagues most
often CS students and small businesses, but there is a well-known
case involving Bill Gates demonstrating a brand new version of a
major operating system.
demogroup n.
[demoscene] A group of demo (sense 4) composers. Job titles
within a group include coders (the ones who write programs),
graphicians (the ones who painstakingly pixelate the fine art),
musicians (the music composers), sysops, traders/swappers (the ones
who do the trading and other PR), and organizers (in larger groups).
It is not uncommon for one person to do multiple jobs, but it has
been observed that good coders are rarely good composers and vice
versa. [How odd. Musical talent seems common among Internet/Unix
hackers --ESR]
demon n.
1. Often used equivalently to daemon -- especially in the Unix
world, where the latter spelling and pronunciation is considered
mildly archaic.
2. [MIT; now probably obsolete] 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 in sense 2 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.
demon dialer n.
A program which repeatedly calls the same telephone number. Demon
dialing may be benign (as when a number of communications programs
contend for legitimate access to a BBS line) or malign (that is,
used as a prank or denial-of-service attack). This term dates from
the blue box days of the 1970s and early 1980s and is now
semi-obsolescent among phreakers; see war dialer for its
contemporary progeny.
demoparty n.
[demoscene] Aboveground descendant of the copyparty, with
emphasis shifted away from software piracy and towards compos.
Smaller demoparties, for 100 persons or less, are held quite often,
sometimes even once a month, and usually last for one to two days. On
the other end of the scale, huge demo parties are held once a year
(and four of these have grown very large and occur annually --
Assembly in Finland, The Party in Denmark, The Gathering in Norway,
and NAID somewhere in north America). These parties usually last for
three to five days, have room for 3000-5000 people, and have a party
network with connection to the internet.
demoscene /dem´oh·seen/
[also `demo scene'] A culture of multimedia hackers located primarily
in Scandinavia and northern Europe. Demoscene folklore recounts that
when old-time warez d00dz cracked some piece of software they often
added an advertisement in the beginning, usually containing colorful
display hacks with greetings to other cracking groups. The
demoscene was born among people who decided building these display
hacks is more interesting than hacking -- or anyway safer. Around
1990 there began to be very serious police pressure on cracking
groups, including raids with SWAT teams crashing into bedrooms to
confiscate computers. Whether in response to this or for esthetic
reasons, crackers of that period began to build self-contained
display hacks of considerable elaboration and beauty (within the
culture such a hack is called a demo). As more of these
demogroups emerged, they started to have compos at copying
parties (see copyparty), which later evolved to standalone events
(see demoparty). The demoscene has retained some traits from the
warez d00dz, including their style of handles and group names and
some of their jargon.
Traditionally demos were written in assembly language, with lots of
smart tricks, self-modifying code, undocumented op-codes and the
like. Some time around 1995, people started coding demos in C, and a
couple of years after that, they also started using Java.
Ten years on (in 1998-1999), the demoscene is changing as its
original platforms (C64, Amiga, Spectrum, Atari ST, IBM PC under DOS)
die out and activity shifts towards Windows, Linux, and the Internet.
While deeply underground in the past, demoscene is trying to get into
the mainstream as accepted art form, and one symptom of this is the
commercialization of bigger demoparties. Older demosceners frown at
this, but the majority think it's a good direction. Many demosceners
end up working in the computer game industry. Demoscene resource
pages are available at http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained/ and
http://www.scene.org/.
dentro /den´troh/
[demoscene] Combination of demo (sense 4) and intro. Other name
mixings include intmo, dentmo etc. and are used usually when the
authors are not quite sure whether the program is a demo or an
intro. Special-purpose coinages like wedtro (some member of a group
got married), invtro (invitation intro) etc. have also been sighted.
depeditate /dee·ped'@·tayt/, n.
[by (faulty) analogy with decapitate] 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 writing the documents realize that
large amounts of extant (and presumably happily working) code depend
on the feature(s) that have passed out of favor. See also dusty
deck.
[Usage note: don't confuse this word with `depreciated', or the verb
form `deprecate' with `depreciate'. They are different words; see any
dictionary for discussion.]
derf /derf/
[PLATO]
1. v. The act of exploiting a terminal which someone else has
absentmindedly left logged on, to use that person's account,
especially to post articles intended to make an ass of the victim
you're impersonating. It has been alleged that the term originated as
a reversal of the name of the gentleman who most usually left himself
vulnerable to it, who also happened to be the head of the department
that handled PLATO at the University of Delaware. Compare baggy
pantsing.
2. n. The victim of an act of derfing, sense 1. The most typical
posting from a derfed account read "I am a derf.".
deserves to lose adj.
[common] 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 the same thing of Unix; many still
do.) See also screw, chomp, bagbiter.
despew /d@·spyoo´/, v.
[Usenet] To automatically generate a large amount of garbage to the
net, esp. from an automated posting program gone wild. See ARMM.
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 timesharing 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 n.
[Usenet] 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. Compare spelling flame.
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.
3. v. To compare (whether or not by use of automated tools on
machine-readable files); see also vdiff, mod.
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 to mean `diagonal
cutters', a kind of wire cutter. 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.
Dilbert
n. Name and title character of a comic strip nationally syndicated in
the U.S. and enormously popular among hackers. Dilbert is an
archetypical engineer-nerd who works at an anonymous high-technology
company; the strips present a lacerating satire of insane working
conditions and idiotic management practices all too readily
recognized by hackers. Adams, who spent nine years in cube 4S700R
at Pacific Bell (not DEC as often reported), often remarks that he
has never been able to come up with a fictional management blunder
that his correspondents didn't quickly either report to have actually
happened or top with a similar but even more bizarre incident. In
1996 Adams distilled his insights into the collective psychology of
businesses into an even funnier book, The Dilbert Principle
(HarperCollins, ISBN 0-887-30787-6). See also pointy-haired, rat
dance.
ding n.,vi.
1. Synonym for feep. Usage: rare among hackers, but more common 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/, adj.
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. See macdink.
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 1998 Unix
EXPO, Bill Joy compared the liquid-cooled 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;
originally reflected a perception by hackers that these signal
another stage in the long, slow dying of the mainframe industry. In
the mainframe industry's glory days of the 1960s, it was `IBM and the
Seven Dwarfs': 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 in 1991 AT&T absorbed NCR (but spat it back
out a few years later). Control Data still exists but is no longer in
the mainframe business. In similar wave of dinosaur-matings as the PC
business began to consolidate after 1995, Digital Equipment was
bought by Compaq which was bought by Hewlett-Packard. More such
earth-shaking unions of doomed giants seem inevitable.
dirtball n.
[XEROX PARC] 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 hits).
disclaimer n.
[Usenet] 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 novel Illuminatus! 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 in Appendix B, Church of the
SubGenius, and ha ha only serious.
disemvowel v.
[USENET: play on `disembowel'] Less common synonym for splat out.
disk farm n.
A large room or rooms filled with disk drives (esp. washing
machines). This term was well established by 1990, and generalized
by about ten years later; see farm. It has become less common as
disk strange densities reached livels where terabytes of storage can
easily be fit in a single rack.
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 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.
dispress vt.
[contraction of `Dissociated Press' due to eight-character MS-DOS
filenames] To apply the Dissociated Press algorithm to a block of
text. The resultant output is also referred to as a 'dispression'.
Dissociated Press n.
[play on `Associated Press'; perhaps inspired by a reference in the
1950 Bugs Bunny cartoon What's Up, Doc?] An algorithm for
transforming any text into potentially humorous garbage even more
efficiently than by passing it through a marketroid. The algorithm
starts by printing any N consecutive words (or letters) in the text.
Then at every step it searches for any random occurrence in the
original text of the last N words (or letters) already printed and
then prints 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.
Since about 1996 unqualified use of this term often implies `Linux
distribution'. The short form distro is often used for this sense.
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.
distro n.
Synonym for distribution, sense 1.
disusered adj.
[Usenet] Said of a person whose account on a computer has been
removed, esp. for cause rather than through normal attrition. "He got
disusered when they found out he'd been cracking through the school's
Internet access." The verbal form disuser is live but less common.
Both usages probably derive from the DISUSER account status flag on
VMS; setting it disables the account. Compare star out.
DMZ
[common] Literally, De-Militarized Zone. Figuratively, the portion of
a private network that is visible through the network's firewalls
(see firewall machine). Coined in the late 1990s as jargon, this
term is now borderline techspeak.
do protocol vi.
[from network protocol programming] 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 (i.e.,
documentation available on-line).
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 predilection is
"You can't grep dead trees". See drool-proof paper, verbiage,
treeware.
dodgy adj.
Syn. with flaky. Preferred outside the U.S.
dogcow /dog´kow/, n.
See Moof. The dogcow is a semi-legendary creature that lurks in the
depths of the Macintosh Technical Notes Hypercard stack V3.1. The
full story of the dogcow is told in technical note #31 (the
particular dogcow illustrated is properly named `Clarus').
Option-shift-click will cause it to emit a characteristic "Moof!" or
"!fooM" sound. Getting to tech note 31 is the hard part; to discover
how to do that, one must needs examine the stack script with a
hackerly eye. Clue: rot13 is involved. A dogcow also appears if you
choose `Page Setup...' with a LaserWriter selected and click on the
`Options' button. It also lurks in other Mac printer drivers, notably
those for the now-discontinued Style Writers. See
http://developer.apple.com/products/techsupport/dogcow/tn31.html.
dogfood n.
[Microsoft, Netscape] Interim software used internally for testing.
"To eat one's own dogfood" (from which the slang noun derives) means
to use the software one is developing, as part of one's everyday
development environment (the phrase is used outside Microsoft and
Netscape). The practice is normal in the Linux community and
elsewhere, but the term `dogfood' is seldom used as open-source betas
tend to be quite tasty and nourishing. The idea is that developers
who are using their own software will quickly learn what's missing or
broken. Dogfood is typically not even of beta quality.
dogpile v.
[Usenet: prob. fr. mainstream "puppy pile"] When many people post
unfriendly responses in short order to a single posting, they are
sometimes said to "dogpile" or "dogpile on" the person to whom
they're responding. For example, when a religious missionary posts a
simplistic appeal to alt.atheism, he can expect to be dogpiled. It
has been suggested that this derives from U.S. football slang for a
tackle involving three or more people; among hackers, it seems at
least as likely to derive from an `autobiographical' Bugs Bunny
cartoon in which a gang of attacking canines actually yells "Dogpile
on the rabbit!".
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.
Don't do that then! imp.
[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.
Here's a classic example of "Don't do that then!" from Neal
Stephenson's In The Beginning Was The Command Line. A friend of his
built a network with a load of Macs and a few high-powered database
servers. He found that from time to time the whole network would lock
up for no apparent reason. The problem was eventually tracked down to
MacOS's cooperative multitasking: when a user held down the mouse
button for too long, the network stack wouldn't get a chance to
run...
dongle /dong´gl/, n.
1. [now obs.] A security or copy protection device for proprietary
software 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 first sighting of a
dongle was in 1984, associated with a software product called
PaperClip. The idea was clever, but it was initially a failure, as
users disliked tying up a serial port this way. By 1993, dongles
would typically 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. These devices have become rare as the industry has moved
away from copy-protection schemes in general.
2. By extension, any physical electronic key or transferable ID
required for a program to function. Common variations on this theme
have used parallel or even joystick ports. See dongle-disk.
3. An adaptor cable mating a special edge-type connector on a PCMCIA
or on-board Ethernet card to a standard 8p8c Ethernet jack. This
usage seems to have surfaced in 1999 and is now dominant. Laptop
owners curse these things because they're notoriously easy to lose
and the vendors commonly charge extortionate prices for replacements.
[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.
A special floppy disk that 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. See dongle.
Doom, X of
[common] A construction similar to `{Death, X of}, but derived rather
from the Cracks of Doom in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings
trilogy. The connotations are slightly different; a Foo of Death is
mainly being held up to ridicule, but one would have to take a Foo of
Doom a bit more seriously.
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. Compare boat anchor.
DoS attack //
[Usenet,common; note that it's unrelated to DOS as name of an
operating system] Abbreviation for Denial-Of-Service attack. This
abbreviation is most often used of attempts to shut down newsgroups
with floods of spam, or to flood network links with large amounts
of traffic, or to flood network links with large amounts of traffic,
often by abusing network broadcast addresses. Compare slashdot
effect.
dot file n.
A file that 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 profile (sense 1),
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.
doubled sig 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 B1FF, pseudo.
down
1. adj. Not operating. "The up escalator is down" is considered a
humorous thing to say (unless of course you were expecting to use
it), 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 term has passed into the mainstream; the
extension to other kinds of machine is still confined to techies
(e.g. boiler mechanics may speak of a boiler being down).
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 "System going 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 far-away system (especially a
larger host system) over a digital communications link to a nearby
system (especially a smaller client system. Oppose upload.
Historical use of these terms was at one time associated with
transfers from large timesharing machines to PCs or peripherals
(download) and vice-versa (upload). The modern usage relative to the
speaker (rather than as an indicator of the size and role of the
machines) evolved as machine categories lost most of their former
functional importance.
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.
DPer /dee·pee·er/, n.
Data Processor. Hackers are absolutely amazed that suits use this
term self-referentially. Computers process data, not people! See
DP.
Dr. Fred Mbogo /@m·boh´goh, dok´tr fred/, n.
[Stanford] The archetypal man you don't want to see about a problem,
esp. an incompetent professional; a shyster. "Do you know a good eye
doctor?" "Sure, try Mbogo Eye Care and Professional Dry Cleaning."
The name comes from synergy between bogus and the original Dr.
Mbogo, a witch doctor who was Gomez Addams' physician on the old
Addams Family TV show. Interestingly enough, it turns out that under
the rules for Swahili noun classes, `m-' is the characteristic prefix
of "nouns referring to human beings". As such, "mbogo" is quite
plausible as a Swahili coinage for a person having the nature of a
bogon. Actually, "mbogo" is indeed a Ki-Swahili word referring to
the African Cape Buffalo, syncerus caffer. It is one of the "big
five" dangerous African game animals, and many people with bush
experience believe it to be the most dangerous of them. Compare
Bloggs Family and J. Random Hacker; see also Fred Foobar and
fred.
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 ``reen 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 v.
[IBM] 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 some now-obsolete computers and peripherals
(including ASR-33 teletypes and PRIME minicomputers) that results in
all characters having their high (0x80) bit forced on. This of course
makes transporting files to other systems much more difficult, not to
mention the problems these machines have talking with true 8-bit
devices.
This term was originally used specifically of PRIME (a.k.a. PR1ME)
minicomputers. Folklore has 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 heroically to cure it. Whoever was responsible, this
probably qualifies as one of the most cretinous design tradeoffs
ever made. See meta bit.
dread questionmark disease
n. The result of saving HTML from Microsoft Word or some other
program that uses the nonstandard Microsoft variant of Latin-1; the
symptom is that various of those nonstandard characters in positions
128-160 show up as questionmarks. The usual culprit is the misnamed
`smart quotes' feature in Microsoft Word. For more details (and a
program called demoroniser that cleans up the mess) see
http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/.
DRECNET /drek´net/, n.
[from Yiddish/German `dreck', meaning filth] 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, a program that translates some device-independent or other
common format to something a real device can actually understand.
droid n.
[from android, SF terminology for a humanoid robot of essentially
biological (as opposed to mechanical/electronic) construction] A
person (esp. a low-level bureaucrat or service-business employee)
exhibiting most of the following characteristics: (a) naive trust in
the wisdom of the parent organization or `the system'; (b) a
blind-faith propensity to believe obvious nonsense emitted by
authority figures (or computers!); (c) a rule-governed mentality, one
unwilling or unable to look beyond the `letter of the law' in
exceptional situations; (d) a paralyzing fear of official reprimand
or worse if Procedures are not followed No Matter What; and (e) no
interest in doing anything above or beyond the call of a very
narrowly-interpreted duty, or in particular 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; problems arise 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.
In England there is equivalent mainstream slang; a `jobsworth' is an
obstructive, rule-following bureaucrat, often of the uniformed or
suited variety. Named for the habit of denying a reasonable request
by sucking his teeth and saying "Oh no, guv, sorry I can't help you:
that's more than my job's worth".
drone n.
Ignorant sales or customer service personnel in computer or
electronics superstores. Characterized by a lack of even superficial
knowledge about the products they sell, yet possessed of the
conviction that they are more competent than their hacker customers.
Usage: "That video board probably sucks, it was recommended by a
drone at Fry's" In the year 2000, their natural habitats include
Fry's Electronics, Best Buy, and CompUSA.
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." The SGI Indy manual included the line "[Do not]
dangle the mouse by the cord or throw it at coworkers."
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 n.
[prob.: by analogy with drop-outs] 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, sense 2.
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 (one cause of such behavior under Unix when a bad
connection to a modem swamps the processor with spurious character
interrupts; see screaming tty).
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.
[73-05-20.png]
A really serious case of drop-outs.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-05-21. The previous one
is 73-05-19.)
drugged adj.
(also on drugs)
1. Conspicuously stupid, heading toward brain-damaged. Often
accompanied by a pantomime of toking a joint.
2. Of hardware, very slow relative to normal performance.
drum n.
Ancient techspeak term referring to slow, cylindrical magnetic media
that were once state-of-the-art storage devices. Under some versions
of 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
newbies. See also " The Story of Mel'" in Appendix A.
drunk mouse syndrome n.
(also mouse on drugs) 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.
DSW n.
[alt.(sysadmin|tech-support).recovery; abbrev. for Dick Size War] A
contest between two or more people boasting about who has the faster
machine, keys on (either physical or cryptographic) keyring, greyer
hair, or almost anything. Salvos in a DSW are typically humorous and
playful, often self-mocking.
dub dub dub
[common] Spoken-only shorthand for the "www" (double-u double-u
double-u) in many web host names. Nothing to do with the style of
reggae music called `dub'.
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 optimize 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);
}
Shocking though it appears to all who encounter it for the first
time, the device is actually perfectly valid, legal C. 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." Duff has discussed the device in detail at
http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/duffs-device.html. Note that the omission
of postfix ++ from *to was intentional (though confusing). Duff's
device can be used to implement memory copy, but the original aim was
to copy values serially into a magic IO register.
[For maximal obscurity, the outermost pair of braces above could
actually be removed -- GLS]
dumb terminal n.
A terminal that is one step above a glass tty, having a minimally
addressable cursor but no on-screen editing or other features
normally supported 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´/, n.
[Purdue] 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 oversimplified. 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 such tedium 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.
dusty deck n.
Old software (especially applications) which one is obliged to remain
compatible with, or to maintain (DP types call this legacy code, a
term hackers consider smarmy and excessively reverent). 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; compare crawling horror.
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).
4. Of a person, someone whose directions are incomprehensible and
vague, but who nevertheless has the expectation that you will solve
the problem using the specific method he/she has in mind.
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. Some victims of DWIM thus claimed that 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 disgruntled victim 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/, n.
32 bits, by analogy with nybble and byte. Usage: rare and
extremely silly. See also playte, tayste, crumb. General
discussion of such terms is under nybble.
= E =
=====
Easter egg n.
[from the custom of the Easter Egg hunt observed in the U.S. and many
parts of Europe]
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 n.
[IBM] The act of replacing unrelated components 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. See also the jokes under field circus. Compare
shotgun debugging.
eat flaming death imp.
A construction popularized among hackers by the infamous CPU Wars
comic; supposedly derived 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 on the Firesign Theatre's 1975 album In The Next World, You're
On Your Own a character won the right to scream "Eat flaming death,
fascist media pigs" in the middle of Oscar night on a game show; this
may have been an influence). Used in humorously overblown expressions
of hostility. "Eat flaming death, EBCDIC users!"
[eat-flaming-death.png]
IPM tells us to eat flaming death.
EBCDIC /eb´s@·dik/, /eb´see`dik/, /eb´k@·dik/, n.
[abbreviation, Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code] An
alleged character set used on IBM dinosaurs. 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.
ECP /E·C·P/, n.
See spam and velveeta.
ed n.
"ed is the standard text editor." Line taken from the original Unix
manual page on ed, an ancient line-oriented editor that is by now
used only by a few Real Programmers, and even then only for batch
operations. The original line is sometimes uttered near the beginning
of an emacs vs. vi holy war on Usenet, with the (vain) hope to
quench the discussion before it really takes off. Often followed by a
standard text describing the many virtues of ed (such as the small
memory footprint on a Timex Sinclair, and the consistent (because
nearly non-existent) user interface).
egg n.
The binary code that is the payload for buffer overflow and format
string attacks. Typically, an egg written in assembly and designed to
enable remote access or escalate privileges from an ordinary user
account to administrator level when it hatches. Also known as
shellcode.
The name comes from a particular buffer-overflow exploit that was
co-written by a cracker named eggplant. The variable name `egg' was
used to store the payload. The usage spread from people who saw and
analyzed the code.
egosurf vi.
To search the net for your name or links to your web pages. Perhaps
connected to long-established SF-fan slang egoscan, to search for
one's name in a fanzine.
eighty-column mind n.
[IBM] 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 was thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's
customer base and its thinking. This only began to change in the
mid-1990s when IBM began to reinvent itself after the triumph of the
killer micro. See IBM, fear and loathing, code grinder. A
copy of The Last Bug lives on the the GNU site at
http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/last.bug.html.
El Camino Bignum /el´ k@·mee´noh big´nuhm/, n.
The road mundanely called El Camino Real, running along San Francisco
peninsula. It originally extended all the way down to Mexico City;
many portions of the old road 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 in 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 seven 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.)
[GLS has since let slip that the unnamed hacker in this story was in
fact himself --ESR]
In the early 1990s, the synonym El Camino Virtual was been reported
as an alternate at IBM and Amdahl sites in the Valley.
Mathematically literate hackers in the Valley have also been heard to
refer to some major cross-street intersecting El Camino Real as "El
Camino Imaginary". One popular theory is that the intersection is
located near Moffett Field -- where they keep all those complex
planes.
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 and Great Worm.
elegant adj.
[common; from mathematical usage] Combining simplicity, power, and a
certain ineffable grace of design. Higher praise than `clever',
`winning', or even cuspy.
The French aviator, adventurer, and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
probably best known for his classic children's book The Little
Prince, was also an aircraft designer. He gave us perhaps the best
definition of engineering elegance when he said "A designer knows he
has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but
when there is nothing left to take away."
elephantine adj.
Used of programs or systems that are both conspicuous hogs (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.
An 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.
elite adj.
Clueful. Plugged-in. One of the cognoscenti. Also used as a general
positive adjective. This term is not actually native hacker slang; it
is used primarily by crackers and warez d00dz, for which reason
hackers use it only with heavy irony. The term used to refer to the
folks allowed in to the "hidden" or "privileged" sections of BBSes in
the early 1980s (which, typically, contained pirated software).
Frequently, early boards would only let you post, or even see, a
certain subset of the sections (or `boards') on a BBS. Those who got
to the frequently legendary `triple super secret' boards were elite.
Misspellings of this term in warez d00dz style abound; the forms l337
eleet, and 31337 (among others) have been sighted.
A true hacker would be more likely to use `wizardly'. Oppose lamer.
ELIZA effect /@·li:´z@ @·fekt´/, n.
[AI community] 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 psychotherapist 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.
Sources for a clone of the original Eliza are available at
ftp://ftp.cc.utexas.edu/pub/AI_ATTIC/Programs/Classic/Eliza/Eliza.c.
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 intrigued 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 `Böcklin', an art-Noveau display
font.
EMACS /ee´maks/, n.
[from Editing MACroS] 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 that 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. (Its close relative XEmacs is the second most popular
version.) It includes facilities to run compilation subprocesses and
send and receive mail or news; 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.
(Though we use the original all-caps spelling here, it is nowadays
very commonly `Emacs'.) 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' (from
when that was a lot of core), `Eventually malloc()s All Computer
Storage', and `EMACS Makes A Computer Slow' (see recursive
acronym). See also vi.
email /ee´mayl/
(also written `e-mail' and `E-mail')
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 perh. arranged in a net or
open work". A use from 1480 is given. The word is probably derived
from French émaillé (enameled) and related to Old French emmailleüre
(network). A French correspondent tells us that in modern French,
`email' is a hard enamel obtained by heating special paints in a
furnace; an `emailleur' (no final e) is a craftsman who makes email
(he generally paints some objects (like, say, jewelry) and cooks them
in a furnace).
There are numerous spelling variants of this word. In Internet
traffic up to 1995, `email' predominates, `e-mail' runs a
not-too-distant second, and `E-mail' and `Email' are a distant third
and fourth.
emoticon /ee·moh´ti·kon/, n.
[common] 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 newbies), resulting in arguments and flame wars.
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.
The invention of the original smiley and frowney emoticons is
generally credited to Scott Fahlman at CMU in 1982. 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." In
September 2002 the original post was recovered.
There is a rival claim by one Kevin McKenzie, who seems to have
proposed the smiley on the MsgGroup mailing list, April 12 1979. It
seems likely these two inventions were independent. Users of the
PLATO educational system report using emoticons composed from
overlaid dot-matrix graphics in the 1970s.
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.
EMP /E·M·P/
See spam.
empire n.
Any of a family of military simulations derived from a game written
by Peter Langston many years ago. A number of multi-player variants
of varying degrees of sophistication exist, and one single-player
version implemented for both Unix and VMS; the latter is even
available as MS-DOS/Windows freeware. All are notoriously addictive.
Of various commercial derivatives the best known is probably "Empire
Deluxe" on PCs and Amigas.
Modern empire is a real-time wargame played over the internet by up
to 120 players. Typical games last from 24 hours (blitz) to a couple
of months (long term). The amount of sleep you can get while playing
is a function of the rate at which updates occur and the number of
co-rulers of your country. Empire server software is available for
Unix-like machines, and clients for Unix and other platforms. A
comprehensive history of the game is available at
http://www.empire.cx/infopages/History.html. The Empire resource site
is at http://www.empire.cx/.
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 hacker 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: mostly by old-time hackers,
though recognizable in context. Today the preferred shorthand is
simply source.
2. The official name of the database language used by the old Pick
Operating System, actually a sort of crufty, brain-damaged SQL with
delusions of grandeur. The name permitted marketroids to say "Yes,
and you can program our computers in English!" to ignorant suits
without quite running afoul of the truth-in-advertising laws.
enhancement n.
Common 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/, /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.
EOD n.
[IRC, Usenet] Abbreviation: End of Discussion. Used when the speaker
believes he has stated his case and will not respond to further
arguments or attacks.
EOF /E·O·F/, n.
[abbreviation, `End Of File']
1. [techspeak] The out-of-band value returned by C's sequential
character-input functions (and their equivalents in other
environments) when end of file has been reached. This value is
usually -1 under C libraries postdating V6 Unix, but was originally
0. DOS hackers think EOF is ^Z, and a few Amiga hackers think it's
^\.
2. [Unix] The keyboard character (usually control-D, the ASCII EOT
(End Of Transmission) character) that 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/, n.
[End Of Line] 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
would make an ASR-33 Teletype explode on receipt. This construction
parodies 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 n.
[Unix: prob.: from astronomical timekeeping] 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 of November 17, 1858 (base date of
the U.S. Naval Observatory's ephemerides); on a Macintosh, it's the
midnight beginning January 1 1904. System time is measured in seconds
or ticks 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. Microsoft Windows, on the
other hand, has an epoch problem every 49.7 days -- but this is
seldom noticed as Windows is almost incapable of staying up
continuously for that long.
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, 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 n.
Syn. epoch. Webster's Unabridged makes these words almost
synonymous, but era more often connotes a span of time rather than a
point in time, whereas the reverse is true for epoch. 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. 1987;
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 more than a hundred others by email, and
the organization line `Eric Conspiracy Secret Laboratories' now
emanates regularly from more than one site. See the Eric Conspiracy
Web Page at http://www.catb.org/~esr/ecsl/ for full details.
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 n.
1. [XEROX PARC] 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).
eurodemo /yoor´o·dem`·o/
a demo, sense 4
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 usage 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/. Compare evil and
rude.
evil and rude adj.
Both evil and rude, but with the additional connotation that the
rudeness was due to malice rather than incompetence. Thus, for
example: Microsoft's Windows NT is evil because it's a competent
implementation of a bad design; it's rude because it's gratuitously
incompatible with Unix in places where compatibility would have been
as easy and effective to do; but it's evil and rude because the
incompatibilities are apparently there not to fix design bugs in Unix
but rather to lock hapless customers and developers into the
Microsoft way. Hackish evil and rude is close to the mainstream sense
of `evil'.
Evil Empire n.
[from Ronald Reagan's famous characterization of the communist Soviet
Union] Formerly IBM, now Microsoft. Functionally, the company
most hackers love to hate at any given time. Hackers like to see
themselves as romantic rebels against the Evil Empire, and frequently
adopt this role to the point of ascribing rather more power and
malice to the Empire than it actually has. See also Borg and search
for `Evil Empire' pages on the Web.
exa- /ek´s@/, pref.
[SI] See quantifiers.
examining the entrails n.
The process of grovelling through a core dump or hex image in an
attempt to discover the bug that brought a program or system down.
The reference is to divination from the entrails of a sacrificed
animal. Compare runes, incantation, black art.
EXCH /eks´ch@/, /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 are probably 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/, /eek´see/, /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´/, /eks´ek/, 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 always a program, never a person.
exercise, left as an adj.
[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.
Exon /eks´on/, excl.
A generic obscenity that quickly entered wide use on the Internet and
Usenet after the passage of the Communications Decency Act. From the
last name of Senator James Exon (Democrat-Nebraska), primary author
of the CDA. This usage outlasted the CDA itself, which was quashed
a little over a year later by one of the most acerbic pro-free-speech
opinions ever uttered by the Supreme Court. The campaign against it
was led by an alliance of hackers and civil libertarians, and was the
first effective political mobilization of the hacker culture. Use of
Exon's name as an expletive outlived the CDA controversy itself.
Exploder n.
Used within Microsoft to refer to the Windows Explorer, the
web-interface component of Windows 95 and WinNT 4. Our spies report
that most of the heavy guns at MS came from a Unix background and use
command line utilities; even they are scornful of the
over-gingerbreaded WIMP environments that they have been called
upon to create.
exploit n.
[originally cracker slang]
1. A vulnerability in software that can be used for breaking security
or otherwise attacking an Internet host over the network. The Ping
O' Death is a famous exploit.
2. More grammatically, a program that exploits an exploit in sense 1.
external memory n.
A memo pad, palmtop computer, or written notes. "Hold on while I
write that to external memory". The analogy is with store or DRAM
versus nonvolatile disk storage on computers.
eye candy /i:´ kand`ee/, n.
[from mainstream slang "ear candy"] A display of some sort that's
presented to lusers to keep them distracted while the program
performs necessary background tasks. "Give 'em some eye candy while
the back-end slurps that BLOB into core." Reported as mainstream
usage among players of graphics-heavy computer games. We're also told
this term is mainstream slang for soft pornography, but that sense
does not appear to be live among hackers.
eyeball search n.,v.
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.
= F =
=====
face time n.
[common] 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.
fairings n., /fer´ingz/
[FreeBSD; orig. a typo for fairness] A term thrown out in discussion
whenever a completely and transparently nonsensical argument in one's
favor(?) seems called for, e,g. at the end of a really long thread
for which the outcome is no longer even cared about since everyone is
now so sick of it; or in rebuttal to another nonsensical argument
("Change the loader to look for /kernel.pl? What about fairings?")
fall over vi.
[IBM] 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 the above 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. See also Duff's device.
fan n.
Without qualification, indicates a fan of science fiction, especially
one who goes to cons and tends to hang out with other fans. Many
hackers are fans, so this term has been imported from fannish slang;
however, unlike much fannish slang it is recognized by most
non-fannish hackers. Among SF fans the plural is correctly fen, but
this usage is not automatic to hackers. "Laura reads the stuff
occasionally but isn't really a fan."
fandango on core n.
[Unix/C hackers, from the Iberian dance] 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 (or Windows boxes, which have an MMU but use
it incompetently), this can corrupt the OS itself, causing massive
lossage. Other frenetic dances, such as the cha-cha or the watusi,
may be substituted. See aliasing bug, precedence lossage, smash
the stack, memory leak, memory smash, overrun screw, core.
FAQ /F·A·Q/, /fak/, n.
[Usenet]
1. A Frequently Asked Question.
2. A compendium of accumulated lore, posted periodically to
high-volume newsgroups in an attempt to forestall such questions.
Some people prefer the term `FAQ list' or `FAQL' /fa´kl/, reserving
`FAQ' for sense 1.
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 FAQ posting.
Examples: "What is the proper type of NULL?" and "What's that funny
name for the # character?" are both Frequently Asked Questions.
Several FAQs refer readers to the Jargon File.
FAQ list /F·A·Q list/, /fak list/, n.
[common; Usenet] Syn FAQ, sense 2.
FAQL /fa´kl/, n.
Syn. FAQ list.
faradize /far'@·di:z/, v.
[US Geological Survey] To start any hyper-addictive process or trend,
or to continue adding current to such a trend. Telling one user about
a new octo-tetris game you compiled would be a faradizing act -- in
two weeks you might find your entire department playing the faradic
game.
farkled /far´kld/, adj.
[DeVry Institute of Technology, Atlanta] Syn. hosed. Poss. owes
something to Yiddish farblondjet and/or the `Farkle Family' skits on
Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, a popular comedy show of the late 1960s.
farm n.
A group of machines, especially a large group of near-identical
machines running load-balancing software, dedicated to a single task.
Historically the term server farm, used especially for a group of web
servers, seems to have been coined by analogy with earlier disk
farm in the early 1990s; generalization began with render farm for a
group of machines dedicated to rendering computer animations (this
term appears to have been popularized by publicity about the
pioneering "Linux render farm" used to produce the movie Titanic). By
2001 other combinations such as "compile farm" and "compute farm"
were increasingly common, and arguably borderline techspeak. More
jargon uses seem likely to arise (and be absorbed into techspeak over
time) as new uses are discovered for networked machine clusters.
Compare link farm.
fascist adj.
1. [common] 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 or under the influence
of German/Yiddish faschistisch).
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, although that
term is global rather than local.
[73-05-21.png]
Fascist security strikes again.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-05-28. The previous one
is 73-05-20.)
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 them 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.
fat pipe
A high-bandwidth connection to the Internet. When the term gained
currency in the mid-1990s, a T-1 (at 1.5 Mbits/second) was considered
a fat pipe, but the standard has risen. Now it suggests multiple T3s.
fat-finger vt.
1. To introduce a typo while editing in such a way that the resulting
manglification of a configuration file does something useless,
damaging, or wildly unexpected. "NSI fat-fingered their DNS zone file
and took half the net down again."
2. More generally, any typo that produces dramatically bad results.
faulty adj.
Non-functional; buggy. Same denotation as bletcherous, losing,
q.v., but the connotation is much milder.
fear and loathing n.
[from Hunter S. Thompson] 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 bigger than a workstation. "Ack! They
want PCs to be able to talk to the AI machine. Fear and loathing
time!"
feature n.
1. [common] A good property or behavior (as of a program). Whether it
was intended or not is immaterial.
2. [common] 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. [common] 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. There's a related joke that is sometimes referred to as the
"one-question geek test". You say to someone "I saw a Volkswagen
Beetle today with a vanity license plate that read FEATURE". If
he/she laughs, he/she is a geek.
feature creature n.
[poss. fr. slang `creature feature' for a horror movie]
1. One who loves to add features to designs or programs, perhaps at
the expense of coherence, concision, or taste.
2. Alternately, a mythical being that induces otherwise rational
programmers to perpetrate such crocks. See also feeping creaturism,
creeping featurism.
feature creep n.
[common] The result of creeping featurism, as in "Emacs has a bad
case of feature creep".
feature key n.
[common] 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, open-apple or (officially, in Mac documentation) the command
key. In French, the term papillon (butterfly) has been reported. 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. Apple picked up the symbol from an early Mac
developer who happened to be Swedish. Apple documentation gives the
translation "interesting feature"!
There is some dispute as to the proper (Swedish) name of this symbol.
It technically stands for the word sevärdhet (thing worth seeing);
many of these are old churches. Some Swedes report as an idiom for
the sign the word kyrka, cognate to English `church' and pronounced
(roughly) /chur´ka/ in modern Swedish. Others say this is nonsense.
Other idioms reported for the sign are runa (rune) or runsten
/roon´stn/ (runestone), derived from the fact that many of the
interesting features are Viking rune-stones. The term fornminne
/foorn´min'@/ (relic of antiquity, ancient monument) is also
reported, especially among those who think that the Mac itself is a
relic of antiquity.
feature shock n.
[from Alvin Toffler's book title Future Shock] 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. (Doing so 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 five 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 n.
[from feeping creaturism] 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. An extra data value inserted in an array or other data structure
in order to allow some normal test on the array's contents also to
function as a termination test. For example, a highly optimized
routine for finding a value in an array might artificially place a
copy of the value to be searched for after the last slot of the
array, thus allowing the main search loop to search for the value
without having to check at each pass whether the end of the array had
been reached.
3. [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. [common] 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. [rare] An error induced by unexpected regularities in input
values, which can (for instance) completely thwart a theoretically
efficient binary tree or hash table implementation. (The error here
involves the difference between expected and worst case behaviors of
an algorithm.)
fiber-seeking backhoe
[common among backbone ISP personnel] Any of a genus of large,
disruptive machines which routinely cut critical backbone links,
creating Internet outages and packet over air problems.
FidoNet n.
A worldwide hobbyist network of personal computers which exchanges
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. For
years FidoNet actually grew faster than Usenet, but the advent of
cheap Internet access probably means its days are numbered. FidoNet's
site count has dropped from 38K nodes in 1996 through 15K nodes in
2001 to 10K nodes in late 2003, and most of those are probably
single-user machines rather than the thriving BBSes of yore.
field circus n.
[a derogatory pun on `field service'] The field service organization
of any hardware manufacturer, but originally DEC. There is an
entire genre of jokes about field circus engineers:
Q: How can you recognize a 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 field circus engineer
who is out of gas?
A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.
Q: How can you tell it's your field circus engineer?
A: The spare is flat, too.
[See Easter egging for additional insight on these jokes.]
There is also the `Field Circus Cheer' (from the old 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, still extant under the HP regime, is located in
Maynard, Massachusetts.)
field servoid /fee´ld ser´voyd/, n.
[play on `android'] Representative of a field service organization
(see field circus). This has many of the implications of droid.
file signature n.
A magic number, sense 3.
filk /filk/, n.,v.
[from SF fandom, where a typo for `folk' was adopted as a new word]
Originally, a popular or folk song with lyrics revised or completely
new lyrics and/or music, intended for humorous effect when read,
and/or to be sung late at night at SF conventions. More recently
(especially since the late 1980s), filk has come to include a great
deal of originally-composed music on SFnal or fantasy themes and a
range of moods wider than simple parody or humor. Worthy of mention
here because there is a flourishing subgenre of filks called computer
filks, written by hackers and often containing rather sophisticated
technical humor. See double bucky for an example. Compare grilf,
hing, pr0n, 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 that the people working on it have
no additional information about it as yet; use of the phrase in this
way suggests gently that the problem is liable to be fixed more
quickly if the people doing the fixing can spend time doing the
fixing rather than responding to questions, the answers to which will
appear on the normal "11:00 news", if people will just be patient.
The variant "MPEGs at 11" has recently been cited (MPEG is a
digital-video format.)
filter n.
[very common; orig. Unix] 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).
Compare sponge.
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". May have been first published by Francis P.
Chisholm in his 1963 essay The Chisholm Effect, later reprinted in
the classic anthology A Stress Analysis Of A Strapless Evening Gown:
And Other Essays For A Scientific Eye (Robert Baker ed,
Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-852608-7).
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. Some
technical and scientific cultures (e.g., paleontologists) know it
under the name Sod's Law; this usage may be more common in Great
Britain. One variant favored among hackers is "The perversity of the
Universe tends towards a maximum"; Niven specifically referred to
this as O'Toole's Corollary of Finagle's Law. See also Hanlon's
Razor.
fine adj.
[WPI] 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 information about 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 (see also Hacking X for Y).
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',
see See figure 1. Originally a humorous component of one's plan
file to deter the curious fingerer (sense 2), it has entered the
arsenal of some flamers.
finger trouble n.
Mistyping, typos, or generalized keyboard incompetence (this is
surprisingly common among hackers, given the amount of time they
spend at keyboards). "I keep putting colons at the end of statements
instead of semicolons", "Finger trouble again, eh?".
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 v.
[IRC] 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. There may be some influence
from the `Finn' character in William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel
Count Zero, who at one point says to another (much younger) character
"I have a pair of shoes older than you are, so shut up!"
firebottle n.obs.
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.
1. 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.
2. Any sanity check inserted to catch a can't happen error. Wise
programmers often change code to fix a bug twice: once to fix the
bug, and once to insert a firewall which would have arrested the bug
before it did quite as much damage.
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 crackers. 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. See also wild side.
[When first coined in the mid-1980s this term was pure jargon. Now
(1999) it is techspeak, and has been retained only as an example of
uptake --ESR]
fireworks mode n.
1. The mode a machine is sometimes said to be in when it is
performing a crash and burn operation.
2. There is (or was) a more specific meaning of this term in the
Amiga community. The word fireworks described the effects of a
particularly serious crash which prevented the video pointer(s) from
getting reset at the start of the vertical blank. This caused the DAC
to scroll through the entire contents of CHIP (video or video+CPU)
memory. Since each bit plane would scroll separately this was quite a
spectacular effect.
firmware /ferm´weir/, n.
Embedded software contained in EPROM or flash memory. It isn't quite
hardware, but at least doesn't have to be loaded from a disk like
regular software. Hacker usage differs from straight techspeak in
that hackers don't normally apply it to stuff that you can't possibly
get at, such as the program that runs a pocket calculator. Instead,
it implies that the firmware could be changed, even if doing so would
mean opening a box and plugging in a new chip. A computer's BIOS is
the classic example, although nowadays there is firmware in disk
controllers, modems, video cards and even CD-ROM drives.
fish n.
[Adelaide University, Australia]
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 n.
[acronym, by analogy with FIFO (First In, First Out)] `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.
fisking n.
[blogosphere; very common] A point-by-point refutation of a blog
entry or (especially) news story. A really stylish fisking is witty,
logical, sarcastic and ruthlessly factual; flaming or handwaving is
considered poor form. Named after Robert Fisk, a British journalist
who was a frequent (and deserving) early target of such treatment.
See also MiSTing, anti-idiotarianism
FITNR //, adj.
[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.
FIXME imp.
[common] A standard tag often put in C comments near a piece of code
that needs work. The point of doing so is that a grep or a similar
pattern-matching tool can find all such places quickly.
/* FIXME: note this is common in GNU code. */
Compare XXX.
flag n.
[very common] 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 change was made to the definition of
the ASCII character set during the development of Multics. The
change was scheduled for Flag Day (a U.S. holiday), June 14, 1966.
The change altered the Multics definition of ASCII from the
short-lived 1965 version of the ASCII code to the 1967 version (in
draft at the time); this moved code points for braces, vertical bar,
and circumflex. See also backward combatability. The Great
Renaming was a flag day.
[Most of the changes were made to files stored on CTSS, the system
used to support Multics development before it became self-hosting.]
[As it happens, the first installation of a commercially-produced
computer, a Univac I, took place on Flag Day of 1951 --ESR]
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.
[very common] 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, also dahmum.
flame
[at MIT, orig. from the phrase flaming asshole]
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).
The term may have been independently invented at several different
places. It has been reported from MIT, Carleton College and RPI
(among many other places) from as far back as 1969, and from the
University of Virginia in the early 1960s.
It is 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 feel right
at home on Usenet.
flame bait n.
[common] A posting intended to trigger a flame war, or one that
invites flames in reply. See also troll.
flame on 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.
[common] (var.: flamewar) An acrimonious dispute, especially when
conducted on a public electronic forum such as Usenet.
flamer n.
[common] One who habitually flames. Said esp. of obnoxious Usenet
personalities.
flap vt.
1. [obs.] 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 DEC microtapes 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. 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/, n.
[Rutgers University] 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.
flash crowd
Larry Niven's 1973 SF short story Flash Crowd predicted that one
consequence of cheap teleportation would be huge crowds materializing
almost instantly at the sites of interesting news stories. Twenty
years later the term passed into common use on the Internet to
describe exponential spikes in website or server usage when one
passes a certain threshold of popular interest (what this does to the
server may also be called slashdot effect). It has been pointed out
that the effect was anticipated years earlier in Alfred Bester's 1956
The Stars My Destination.
flat adj.
1. [common] 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.
[common] 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 markup
language, or output device, and no meta-characters). Syn.
plain-ASCII. Compare flat-file.
flat-file adj.
A flattened 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. See also sharchive.
flatten vt.
[common] 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. [common] Variety, type, kind. "DDT commands come in two flavors."
"These lights come in two flavors, big red ones and small green
ones." "Linux is a flavor of Unix" 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 (sense 2); 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 v.
[common]
1. To overwhelm a network channel with mechanically-generated
traffic; especially used of IP, TCP/IP, UDP, or ICMP
denial-of-service attacks.
2. 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. Also used in a similar
sense on Usenet.
3. [Usenet] To post an unusually large number or volume of files on a
related topic.
flowchart n.
[techspeak] 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, code grinders, and other lower forms of
life. This attitude follows from the observations that flowcharts (at
least from a hacker's point of view) 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).
flower key n.
[Mac users] See feature key.
flush v.
1. [common] 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 could 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 found the ITS usage confusing, and vice versa.
[crunchly-5678.png]
Crunchly gets flushed.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 76-05-01. The previous
cartoon was 76-02-20:2.)
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 names like Helvetica 10 for 10-point Helvetica). Legal
boilerplate is usually printed in Flyspeck 3.
flytrap n.
[rare] See firewall machine.
FM /F·M/, n.
1. [common] 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?"
2. Abbreviation for "Fucking Magic", used in the sense of black
magic.
fnord n.
[from the Illuminatus Trilogy]
1. A word used in email and news postings to tag utterances as
surrealist mind-play or humor, esp. in connection with
Discordianism and elaborate conspiracy theories. "I heard that
David Koresh is sharing an apartment in Argentina with Hitler.
(Fnord.)" "Where can I fnord get the Principia Discordia from?"
2. A metasyntactic variable, commonly used by hackers with ties to
Discordianism or the Church of the SubGenius.
FOAF //, n.
[Usenet; common] Acronym for `Friend Of A Friend'. The source of an
unverified, possibly untrue story. This term 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 MUDs where the wizard command `FOD
<player>' results in the immediate and total death of <player>,
usually as punishment for obnoxious behavior. This usage migrated to
other circumstances, such as "I'm going to fod the process that is
burning all the cycles."
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
generally 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.
[common] 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 n.
[XEROX PARC] 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. [very common] 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 variables used in
syntax examples. See also bar, baz, qux, quux, garply,
waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud.
When `foo' is used in connection with `bar' it has generally traced
to the WWII-era Army slang acronym FUBAR (`Fucked Up Beyond All
Repair' or `Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition'), later modified to
foobar. Early versions of the Jargon File interpreted this change
as a post-war bowdlerization, but it it now seems more likely that
FUBAR was itself a derivative of `foo' perhaps influenced by German
furchtbar (terrible) -- `foobar' may actually have been the original
form.
For, it seems, the word `foo' itself had an immediate prewar history
in comic strips and cartoons. The earliest documented uses were in
the Smokey Stover comic strip published from about 1930 to about
1952. Bill Holman, the author of the strip, filled it with odd jokes
and personal contrivances, including other nonsense phrases such as
"Notary Sojac" and "1506 nix nix". The word "foo" frequently appeared
on license plates of cars, in nonsense sayings in the background of
some frames (such as "He who foos last foos best" or "Many smoke but
foo men chew"), and Holman had Smokey say "Where there's foo, there's
fire".
According to the Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion Holman claimed to
have found the word "foo" on the bottom of a Chinese figurine. This
is plausible; Chinese statuettes often have apotropaic inscriptions,
and this one was almost certainly the Mandarin Chinese word fu
(sometimes transliterated foo), which can mean "happiness" or
"prosperity" when spoken with the rising tone (the lion-dog guardians
flanking the steps of many Chinese restaurants are properly called
"fu dogs"). English speakers' reception of Holman's `foo' nonsense
word was undoubtedly influenced by Yiddish `feh' and English `fooey'
and `fool'.
Holman's strip featured a firetruck called the Foomobile that rode on
two wheels. The comic strip was tremendously popular in the late
1930s, and legend has it that a manufacturer in Indiana even produced
an operable version of Holman's Foomobile. According to the
Encyclopedia of American Comics, `Foo' fever swept the U.S., finding
its way into popular songs and generating over 500 `Foo Clubs.' The
fad left `foo' references embedded in popular culture (including a
couple of appearances in Warner Brothers cartoons of 1938-39; notably
in Robert Clampett's "Daffy Doc" of 1938, in which a very early
version of Daffy Duck holds up a sign saying "SILENCE IS FOO!") When
the fad faded, the origin of "foo" was forgotten.
One place "foo" is known to have remained live is in the U.S.
military during the WWII years. In 1944-45, the term `foo fighters'
was in use by radar operators for the kind of mysterious or spurious
trace that would later be called a UFO (the older term resurfaced in
popular American usage in 1995 via the name of one of the better
grunge-rock bands). Because informants connected the term directly to
the Smokey Stover strip, the folk etymology that connects it to
French "feu" (fire) can be gently dismissed.
The U.S. and British militaries frequently swapped slang terms during
the war (see kluge and kludge for another important example)
Period sources reported that `FOO' became a semi-legendary subject of
WWII British-army graffiti more or less equivalent to the American
Kilroy. Where British troops went, the graffito "FOO was here" or
something similar showed up. Several slang dictionaries aver that FOO
probably came from Forward Observation Officer, but this (like the
contemporaneous "FUBAR") was probably a backronym . Forty years
later, Paul Dickson's excellent book "Words" (Dell, 1982, ISBN
0-440-52260-7) traced "Foo" to an unspecified British naval magazine
in 1946, quoting as follows: "Mr. Foo is a mysterious Second World
War product, gifted with bitter omniscience and sarcasm."
Earlier versions of this entry suggested the possibility that hacker
usage actually sprang from FOO, Lampoons and Parody, the title of a
comic book first issued in September 1958, a joint project of Charles
and Robert Crumb. Though Robert Crumb (then in his mid-teens) later
became one of the most important and influential artists in
underground comics, this venture was hardly a success; indeed, the
brothers later burned most of the existing copies in disgust. The
title FOO was featured in large letters on the front cover. However,
very few copies of this comic actually circulated, and students of
Crumb's oeuvre have established that this title was a reference to
the earlier Smokey Stover comics. The Crumbs may also have been
influenced by a short-lived Canadian parody magazine named `Foo'
published in 1951-52.
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.) This
definition used Bill Holman's nonsense word, then only two decades
old and demonstrably still live in popular culture and slang, to a
ha ha only serious analogy with esoteric Tibetan Buddhism. Today's
hackers would find it difficult to resist elaborating a joke like
that, and it is not likely 1959's were any less susceptible. Almost
the entire staff of what later became the MIT AI Lab was involved
with TMRC, and the word spread from there.
foobar n.
[very common] Another widely used metasyntactic variable; see foo
for etymology. Probably originally propagated through DECsystem
manuals by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1960s and early
1970s; confirmed sightings there go back to 1972. Hackers do not
generally use this to mean FUBAR in either the slang or jargon
sense. See also Fred Foobar. In RFC1639, "FOOBAR" was made an
abbreviation for "FTP Operation Over Big Address Records", but this
was an obvious backronym. It has been plausibly suggested that
"foobar" spread among early computer engineers partly because of
FUBAR and partly because "foo bar" parses in electronics techspeak as
an inverted foo signal; if a digital signal is active low (so a
negative or zero-voltage condition represents a "1") then a
horizontal bar is commonly placed over the signal label.
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 Algol 68-R compiler used to initialize its storage to the
character string "F00LF00LF00LF00L..." because as a pointer or as a
floating point number it caused a crash, and as an integer or a
character string it was very recognizable in a dump. Sadly, one day a
very senior professor at Nottingham University wrote a program that
called him a fool. He proceeded to demonstrate the correctness of
this assertion by lobbying the university (not quite successfully) to
forbid the use of Algol on its computers. See also DEADBEEF.
fool file n.
[Usenet] A notional repository of all the most dramatically and
abysmally stupid utterances ever. An entire subgenre of sig blocks
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 usage 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 name itself came from FOO
NLI, an error message emitted by a PDP-10 assembler at SAIL meaning
"FOO is Not a Legal Identifier". The intention was to leapfrog from
the old DEC timesharing system SAIL was then 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 the company 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 DEC's "Jupiter Project" followon to the PDP-10 was
cancelled 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.
3. RAM footprint: The minimum amount of RAM which an OS or other
program takes; this figure gives one an idea of how much will be left
for other applications. How actively this RAM is used is another
matter entirely. Recent tendencies to featuritis and software bloat
can expand the RAM footprint of an OS to the point of making it
nearly unusable in practice. [This problem is, thankfully, limited to
operating systems so stupid that they don't do virtual memory -- ESR]
for free adj.
[common] Said of a capability of a programming language or hardware
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." The term usually 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 adj.
[from the Mac slogan "The computer for the rest of us"]
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 naive 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 p equals 3
-- for small values of p and large values of 3.
Historical note: at MIT this usage has traditionally been traced to
the programming language MAD (Michigan Algorithm Decoder), an
Algol-58-like language that was the most common choice among
mainstream (non-hacker) users at MIT in the mid-60s. It inherited
from Algol-58 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 vt.
[Unix; common] To bring a task 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 timesharing 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
In the open-source community, a fork is what occurs when two (or
more) versions of a software package's source code are being
developed in parallel which once shared a common code base, and these
multiple versions of the source code have irreconcilable differences
between them. This should not be confused with a development branch,
which may later be folded back into the original source code base.
Nor should it be confused with what happens when a new distribution
of Linux or some other distribution is created, because that largely
assembles pieces than can and will be used in other distributions
without conflict.
Forking is uncommon; in fact, it is so uncommon that individual
instances loom large in hacker folklore. Notable in this class were
the Emacs/XEmacs fork, the GCC/EGCS fork (later healed by a merger)
and the forks among the FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD operating
systems.
fork bomb n.
[Unix] 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. Also called a fork bunny. See
also logic bomb.
forked adj.,vi.
1. [common after 1997, esp. in the Linux community] An open-source
software project is said to have forked or be forked when the project
group fissions into two or more parts pursuing separate lines of
development (or, less commonly, when a third party unconnected to the
project group begins its own line of development). Forking is
considered a Bad Thing -- not merely because it implies a lot of
wasted effort in the future, but because forks tend to be accompanied
by a great deal of strife and acrimony between the successor groups
over issues of legitimacy, succession, and design direction. There is
serious social pressure against forking. As a result, major forks
(such as the Gnu-Emacs/XEmacs split, the fissionings of the 386BSD
group into three daughter projects, and the short-lived GCC/EGCS
split) are rare enough that they are remembered individually in
hacker folklore.
2. [Unix; uncommon; prob.: influenced by a mainstream expletive]
Terminally slow, or dead. Originated when one system was slowed to a
snail's pace by an inadvertent fork bomb.
Formosa's Law n.
"The truly insane have enough on their plates without us adding to
it." That is, flaming someone with an obvious mental problem can't
make it any better. Most often cited on alt.usenet.kooks as a reason
not to issue a Kook-of the-Month Award; often cited as a companion to
Godwin's Law.
Fortrash /for´trash/, n.
Hackerism for the FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator) language, referring to
its primitive design, gross and irregular syntax, limited control
constructs, and slippery, exception-filled semantics.
fortune cookie n.
[WAITS, via Unix; common] 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 the network). A forum functions much like a
bulletin board; users submit postings 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.)
four-color glossies n.
1. Literature created by marketroids 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 solving 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.
frag n.,v.
[from Vietnam-era U.S. military slang via the games Doom and Quake]
1. To kill another player's avatar in a multiuser game. "I hold the
office Quake record with 40 frags."
2. To completely ruin something. "Forget that power supply, the
lightning strike fragged it." See also gib.
fragile adj.
Syn brittle.
Frankenputer n.
1. A mostly-working computer thrown together from the spare parts of
several machines out of which the magic smoke had been let. Most
shops have a closet full of nonworking machines. When a new machine
is needed immediately (for testing, for example) and there is no time
(or budget) to requisition a new box, someone (often an intern) is
tasked with building a Frankenputer.
2. Also used in referring to a machine that once was a name-brand
computer, but has been upgraded long beyond its useful life, to the
point at which the nameplate violates truth-in-advertising laws
(e.g., a Pentium III-class machine inexplicably living in a case
marked "Gateway 486/66").
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. In Great
Britain, `fred', `jim' and `sheila' are common metasyntactic
variables because their uppercase versions were official names given
to the 3 memory areas that held I/O status registers on the
lovingly-remembered BBC Microcomputer! (It is reported that SHEILA
was poked the most often.) Unlike J. Random Hacker or J. Random
Loser, the name `fred' has no positive or negative loading (but see
Dr. Fred Mbogo). See also barney.
2. An acronym for `Flipping Ridiculous Electronic Device'; other
F-verbs may be substituted for `flipping'.
Fred Foobar n.
J. Random Hacker's cousin. Any typical human being, more or less
synonymous with `someone' except that Fred Foobar can be
backreferenced by name later on. "So Fred Foobar will enter his
phone number into the database, and it'll be archived with the
others. Months later, when Fred searches..." See also Bloggs Family
and Dr. Fred Mbogo
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."
free software n.
As defined by Richard M. Stallman and used by the Free Software
movement, this means software that gives users enough freedom to be
used by the free software community. Specifically, users must be free
to modify the software for their private use, and free to
redistribute it either with or without modifications, either
commercially or noncommercially, either gratis or charging a
distribution fee. Free software has existed since the dawn of
computing; Free Software as a movement began in 1984 with the GNU
Project.
RMS observes that the English word "free" can refer either to liberty
(where it means the same as the Spanish or French "libre") or to
price (where it means the same as the Spanish "gratis" or French
"gratuit"). RMS and other people associated with the FSF like to
explain the word "free" in "free software" by saying "Free as in
speech, not as in beer."
See also open source. Hard-core proponents of the term "free
software" sometimes reject this newer term, claiming that the style
of argument associated with it ignores or downplays the moral
imperative at the heart of free software.
freeware n.
[common] Freely-redistributable software, often written by
enthusiasts and distributed by users' groups, or via electronic mail,
local bulletin boards, Usenet, or other electronic media. As the
culture of the Internet has displaced the older BBS world, this term
has lost ground to both open source and free software; it has
increasingly tended to be restricted to software distributed in
binary rather than source-code form. 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, FRS.
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 term. A feature freeze, for example,
locks out modifications intended to introduce new features but still
allows bugfixes and completion of existing 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. [common] 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. [common] 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."
frink /frink/, v.
The unknown ur-verb, fill in your own meaning. Found esp. on the
Usenet newsgroup alt.fan.lemurs, where it is said that the lemurs
know what `frink' means, but they aren't telling. Compare gorets.
friode /fri:´ohd/, n.
[TMRC] 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.
See also window shopping.
frob /frob/
1. n. [MIT; very common] 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 (sense 2). 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/, frobni,
/frob'ni:/, n.
[TMRC] 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 variants can also be applied to nonphysical objects, such as
data structures. For related amusement, see the Encyclopedia
Frobozzica.
Pete Samson, compiler of the original 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 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, but milder. "This froggy
program is taking forever to run!"
frogging 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 dread high-bit disease.
2. By extension, accidental display of text in a mode where the
output device emits special symbols or mnemonics rather than
conventional ASCII. This 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."
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 mildest disgust. The word
`frotzen' is live in this sense in some eastern German dialects; the
safe bet is that it came to hackers via Yiddish.
frotzed /frotst/, adj.
To be 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.
FRS //, n.,obs.
[obs.] Abbreviation for "Freely Redistributable Software" which
entered general use on the Internet in 1995 after years of low-level
confusion over what exactly to call software written to be passed
around and shared (contending terms including freeware,
shareware, and sourceware were never universally felt to be
satisfactory for various subtle reasons). The first formal conference
on freely redistributable software was held in Cambridge,
Massachussetts, in February 1996 (sponsored by the Free Software
Foundation). The conference organizers used the FRS abbreviation
heavily in its calls for papers and other literature during 1995. The
term was in steady though not common use until 1998 and the invention
of open source, after which it became swiftly obsolete.
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.
fscking /fus'·king/, /eff'·seek·ing/, adj.
[Usenet; very common] Fucking, in the expletive sense (it refers to
the Unix filesystem-repair command fsck(8), of which it can be said
that if you have to use it at all you are having a bad day).
Originated on scary devil monastery and the bofh.net newsgroups,
but became much more widespread following the passage of CDA. Also
occasionally seen in the variant "What the fsck?"
FSF /F·S·F/, abbrev.
Common abbreviation (both spoken and written) for the name of the
Free Software Foundation, a nonprofit educational association formed
to support the GNU project.
-fu
[common; generalized from kung-fu] Combining form denoting expert
practice of a skill. "That's going to take some serious code-fu."
First sighted in connection with the GIMP's remote-scripting
facility, script-fu, in 1998.
FUBAR n.
The Failed UniBus Address Register in a VAX. A good example of how
jargon can occasionally be snuck past the suits; 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
implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished 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. After 1990 the term FUD was associated increasingly
frequently with Microsoft, and has become generalized to refer to
any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon.
[In 2003, SCO sued IBM in an action which, among other things,
alleged SCO's proprietary control of Linux. The SCO suit rapidly
became infamous for the number and magnitude of falsehoods alleged in
SCO's filings. In October 2003, SCO's lawyers filed a memorandum in
which they actually had the temerity to link to the web version of
this entry in furtherance of their claims. Whilst we appreciate the
compliment of being treated as an authority, we can return it only by
observing that SCO has become a nest of liars and thieves compared to
which IBM at its historic worst looked positively angelic. Any judge
or law clerk reading this should surf through to my collected
resources on this topic for the appalling details.--ESR]
FUD wars /fuhd worz/, n.
1, [from FUD] Historically, 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 about Unix standards
was one outstanding example; Microsoft vs. Netscape vs. W3C about
HTML standards is another.
2. Since about 2000 the FUD wars have a different character; the
battle over open standards has been partly replaced and partly
subsumed by the argument between closed- and open source
proponents. Nowadays, accordingly, the term is most likely to be used
of anti-open-source propaganda emitted by Microsoft. Compare
astroturfing.
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.
[common] 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.
Full Monty n.
See monty, sense 2.
fum n.
[XEROX PARC] At PARC, often the third of the standard metasyntactic
variables (after foo and bar). Competes with baz, which is
more common outside PARC.
functino n.
[uncommon, U.K.; originally a serendipitous typo in 1994] A pointer
to a function in C and C++. By association with sub-atomic particles
such as the neutrino, it accurately conveys an impression of
smallness (one pointer is four bytes on most systems) and speed
(hackers can and do use arrays of functinos to replace a switch()
statement).
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."
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 Germany, the particularly amusing synonym transfer ruble
commemorates the funny money used for trade between COMECON countries
back when the Soviet Bloc still existed. 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.
furrfu excl.
[Usenet; written, only rarely spoken] Written-only equivalent of
"Sheesh!"; it is, in fact, "sheesh" modified by rot13. Evolved in
mid-1992 as a response to notably silly postings repeating urban
myths on the Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban, after some posters
complained that "Sheesh!" as a response to newbies was being
overused. See also FOAF.
= G =
=====
G pref.,suff.
1. [SI] See quantifiers.
2. The letter G has special significance in the hacker community,
largely thanks to the GNU project and the GPL.
Many free software projects have names that names that begin with
G. The GNU project gave many of its projects names that were acronyms
beginning with the word "GNU", such as "GNU C Compiler" (gcc) and
"GNU Debugger" (gdb), and this launched a tradition. Just as many
Java developers will begin their projects with J, many free software
developers will begin theirs with G. It is often the case that a
program with a G-prefixed name is licensed under the GNU GPL.
For example, someone may write a free Enterprise Engineering Kludge
package (EEK technology is all the rage in the technical journals)
and name it "geek" to imply that it is a GPL'd EEK package.
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), and large numbers
of loosely-coupled programmers operating in bazaar mode can do very
useful work when they're not on a deadline, most are perpetrated by
large companies trying to meet unrealistic deadlines; the inevitable
result is enormous buggy masses of code entirely lacking in
orthogonality. When market-driven managers make a list of all the
features the competition has and assign one programmer to implement
each, the probability of maintaining a coherent (or even functional)
design goes to epsilon. See also firefighting, Mongolian Hordes
technique, Conway's Law.
Gang of Four n.
(also abbreviated GOF) [prob. a play on the `Gang Of Four' who
briefly ran Communist China after the death of Mao] Describes either
the authors or the book Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable
Object-Oriented Software published in 1995 by Addison-Wesley (ISBN
0-201-63361-2). The authors forming the Gang Of Four are Erich Gamma,
Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides. They are also
sometimes referred to as `Gamma et. al.' The authors state at
http://www.hillside.net/patterns/DPBook/GOF.html "Why are we ...
called this? Who knows. Somehow the name just stuck." The term is
also used to describe any of the design patterns that are used in the
book, referring to the patterns within it as `Gang Of Four Patterns.'
garbage collect vi.
(also garbage collection, n.) See GC.
garply /gar´plee/, n.
[Stanford] 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 since 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.
Gates's Law
"The speed of software halves every 18 months." This oft-cited law is
an ironic comment on the tendency of software bloat to outpace the
every-18-month doubling in hardware capacity per dollar predicted by
Moore's Law. The reference is to Bill Gates; Microsoft is widely
considered among the worst if not the worst of the perpetrators of
bloat.
gawble /gaw´bl/, n.
See chawmp.
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."
2. vt. To recycle, reclaim, or put to another use.
3. n. An instantiation of the garbage collector process.
Garbage collection is computer-science techspeak for a particular
class of strategies for dynamically but transparently reallocating
computer memory (i.e., without requiring explicit allocation and
deallocation by higher-level software). 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 GC 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 mostly
ditched for Unix in the late 1980s when Honeywell began to retire its
aging big iron designs.
GECOS /jee´kohs/, n.
See GCOS.
gedanken /g@·dahn´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 it can be reasoned about
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 must be
used with care. It's too easy to idealize away some important aspect
of the real world in constructing the `apparatus'.
Among hackers, accordingly, the word has a pejorative connotation. It
is typically used 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 n.
A person who has chosen concentration rather than conformity; one who
pursues skill (especially technical skill) and imagination, not
mainstream social acceptance. Geeks usually have a strong case of
neophilia. Most geeks are adept with computers and treat hacker
as a term of respect, but not all are hackers themselves -- and some
who are in fact hackers normally call themselves geeks anyway,
because they (quite properly) regard `hacker' as a label that should
be bestowed by others rather than self-assumed.
One description accurately if a little breathlessly enumerates
"gamers, ravers, science fiction fans, punks, perverts, programmers,
nerds, subgenii, and trekkies. These are people who did not go to
their high school proms, and many would be offended by the suggestion
that they should have even wanted to."
Originally, a geek was a carnival performer who bit the heads off
chickens. (In early 20th-century Scotland a `geek' was an immature
coley, a type of fish.) Before about 1990 usage of this term was
rather negative. Earlier versions of this lexicon defined a computer
geek as one who eats (computer) bugs for a living -- an asocial,
malodorous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the personality of a
cheese grater. This is often still the way geeks are regarded by
non-geeks, but as the mainstream culture becomes more dependent on
technology and technical skill mainstream attitudes have tended to
shift towards grudging respect. Correspondingly, there are now `geek
pride' festivals (the implied reference to `gay pride' is not
accidental).
See also propeller head, clustergeeking, geek out, wannabee,
terminal junkie, spod, weenie, geek code, alpha geek.
geek code n.
(also "Code of the Geeks"). A set of codes commonly used in sig
blocks to broadcast the interests, skills, and aspirations of the
poster. Features a G at the left margin followed by numerous letter
codes, often suffixed with plusses or minuses. Because many net users
are involved in computer science, the most common prefix is `GCS'. To
see a copy of the current code, browse http://www.geekcode.com/. Here
is a sample geek code (that of Robert Hayden, the code's inventor)
from that page:
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GED/J d-- s:++>: a- C++(++++)$ ULUO++ P+>+++ L++ !E---- W+(---) N+++
o+ K+++ w+(---) O- M+$>++ V-- PS++(+++)>$ PE++(+)>$ Y++ PGP++ t- 5+++
X++ R+++>$ tv+ b+ DI+++ D+++ G+++++>$ e++$>++++ h r-- y+**
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
The geek code originated in 1993; it was inspired (according to the
inventor) by previous "bear", "smurf" and "twink"
style-and-sexual-preference codes from lesbian and gay newsgroups.
It has in turn spawned imitators; there is now even a "Saturn geek
code" for owners of the Saturn car. See also geek.
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 or say something highly technical and don't have
time to explain: "Pardon me while I geek out for a moment." See
geek; see also propeller head.
geekasm
Originally from a quote on the PBS show Scientific American Frontiers
(week of May 21st 2002) by MIT professor Alex Slocum: "When they
build a machine, if they do the calculations right, the machine works
and you get this intense ... uhh ... just like a geekasm, from
knowing that what you created in your mind and on the computer is
actually doing what you told it to do". Unsurprisingly, this usage
went live on the Web almost instantly. Every hacker knows this
feeling. Compare earlier progasm.
gen /jen/, n.,v.
Short for generate, used frequently in both spoken and written
contexts.
gender mender n.
[common] 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 doubly
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 apps
incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same
anti-proprietary 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 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. Nevertheless,
widespread suspicion that the copyleft language is `boobytrapped'
has caused many developers to avoid using GNU tools and the GPL.
Changes in the language of the version 2.0 GPL did not 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."
Genius From Mars Technique n.
[TMRC] A visionary quality which enables one to ignore the standard
approach and come up with a totally unexpected new algorithm. An
attack on a problem from an offbeat angle that no one has ever
thought of before, but that in retrospect makes total sense. Compare
grok, zen.
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.
Gensymmed names are useful for storing or uniquely identifying
crufties (see cruft).
Get a life! imp.
Hacker-standard way of suggesting that the person to whom it is
directed has succumbed to terminal geekdom (see 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 1987 Saturday Night Live episode
in a speech that ended "Get a life!", but it can be traced back at
least to `Valley Girl' slang in 1983. It was certainly in wide use
among hackers for years before achieving mainstream currency via the
sitcom Get A Life in 1990.
Get a real computer! imp.
In 1996 when this entry first entered the File, it was the typical
hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work
done on a system that (a) was single-tasking, (b) had no hard disk,
or (c) had an address space smaller than 16 megabytes. In 2003
anything less powerful than a 500MHz Pentium with a multi-gigabyte
hard disk would probably be similarly written off. The threshold for
`real computer' rises with time. See bitty box and toy.
GandhiCon
There is a quote from Mohandas Gandhi, describing the stages of
establishment resistence to a winning strategy of nonviolent
activism, that partisans of open source and especially Linux have
embraced as almost an explanatory framework for the behaviors they
observe while trying to get corporations and other large institutions
to take new ways of doing things seriously:
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight
you. Then you win.
In hacker usage this quote has miscegenated with the U.S military's
DefCon terminology describing `defense conditions' or degrees of war
alert. At GandhiCon One, you're being ignored. At GandhiCon Two,
opponents are laughing at you and dismissing the idea that you could
ever be a threat. At GandhiCon Three, they're fighting you on the
merits and/or attempting to discredit you. At GandhiCon Four, you're
winning and they are arguing to save face or stave off complete
collapse of their position.
gib /jib/
1. vi. To destroy utterly. Like frag, but much more violent and
final. "There's no trace left. You definitely gibbed that bug".
2. n. Remnants after total obliteration.
Originated first by id software in the game Quake. It's short for
giblets (thus pronounced "jib"), and referred to the bloody remains
of slain opponents. Eventually the word was verbed, and leaked into
general usage afterward.
GIFs at 11
[Fidonet] Fidonet alternative to film at 11, especially in echoes
(Fidonet topic areas) where uuencoded GIFs are permitted. Other
formats, especially JPEG and MPEG, may be referenced instead.
gig /jig/, /gig/, n.
[SI] See quantifiers.
giga- /ji´ga/, /gi´ga/, pref.
[SI] See quantifiers.
GIGO /gi:´goh/
1. `Garbage In, Garbage Out' -- usually said in response to lusers
who complain that a program didn't "do the right thing" when given
imperfect input or otherwise mistreated in some way. 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 n.
[Usenet] 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/, /jil´y@n/, n.
[formed from giga- by analogy with mega/million and tera/trillion]
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'.
ginger n.
See saga.
GIPS /gips/, /jips/, n.
[analogy with MIPS] Giga-Instructions per Second (also possibly
`Gillions of Instructions per Second'; see gillion). Compare
KIPS.
GIYF n.
Abbrev: Google Is Your Friend. Used to suggest, gently and politely,
that you have just asked a question of human beings that would have
been better directed to a search engine. See also STFW.
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 hacker
usage mutated the verb to `glark' because glork was already an
established jargon term (some hackers do report using the original
term). Compare grok, zen.
glass n.
[IBM] Synonym for silicon.
glass tty /glas T·T·Y/, /glas ti´tee/, n.
[obs.] 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. See TV Typewriters
(Appendix A) for an interesting true story about a glass tty.
glassfet /glas´fet/, n.
[by analogy with MOSFET, the acronym for Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor
Field-Effect Transistor] Syn. firebottle, a humorous way to refer
to a vacuum tube.
glitch /glich/
[very common; from German `glitschig' slippery, 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), 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 heisenbugs).
[73-06-04.png]
Coping with a hydraulic glitch.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-07-24. The previous one
is 73-05-28.)
glob /glob/, not, /glohb/, v.,n.
[Unix; common] 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 single 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. Note
that glob patterns are similar, but not identical, to those used in
regexps.
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 two 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."
4. Syn. for glark, which see.
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 (sense 1). "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. 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. The GNU project has a web page at
http://www.gnu.org/. See EMACS, copyleft, General Public Virus,
Linux.
2. Noted Unix hacker John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>}, founder of
Usenet's anarchic alt.* hierarchy.
gnubie /noo´bee/, n.
Written-only variant of newbie in common use on IRC channels, which
implies specifically someone who is new to the
Linux/open-source/free-software world.
GNUMACS /gnoo´maks/, n.
[contraction of `GNU EMACS'] Often-heard abbreviated name for the
GNU project's flagship tool, EMACS. StallMACS, referring to
Richard Stallman, is less common but also heard. Used esp. in
contrast with GOSMACS and X Emacs.
go flatline v.
[from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG traces upon
brain-death] (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 gold v.
[common] See golden.
go root vi.
[Unix; common] To temporarily enter root mode in order to perform a
privileged operation. This use is deprecated in Australia, where v.
`root' is a synonym for "fuck".
go-faster stripes n.
[UK] Syn. chrome. Mainstream in some parts of UK.
GoAT //
[Usenet] Abbreviation: "Go Away, Troll". See troll.
goat file
A sacrificial file used to test a computer virus, i.e. a dummy
executable that carries a sample of the virus, isolated so it can be
studied. Not common among hackers, since the Unix systems most use
basically don't get viruses.
gobble vt.
1. To consume, usu.: used with `up'. "The output spy gobbles
characters out of a tty output buffer."
2. To obtain, usu.: used with `down'. "I guess I'll gobble down a
copy of the documentation tomorrow." See also snarf.
Godwin's Law prov.
[Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a
comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a
tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over,
and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever
argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees
the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups.
However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any
intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its
thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful. Godwin himself has
discussed the subject. See also Formosa's Law.
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 is an IP datagram whose destination IP
address is [255.255.255.255]. Fortunately, few gateways are foolish
enough to attempt to implement this case!
2. A network packet of maximum size. An IP Godzillagram has 65,535
octets. Compare super source quench, Christmas tree packet,
martian.
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. One may also "go gold", which is the act
of releasing a golden version. The gold color of many CDROMs is a
coincidence; this term was well established a decade before CDROM
distribution become common in the mid-1990s.
golf-ball printer n. obs.
The IBM 2741, a slow but letter-quality printing device and terminal
based on the IBM Selectric typewriter. The golf ball was a little
spherical frob bearing reversed embossed images of 88 different
characters arranged on four parallels of latitude; one could change
the font by swapping in a different golf ball. The print element spun
and jerked alarmingly in action and when in motion was sometimes
described as an infuriated 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/, vi.,n.
1. [prob. back-formed from gonkulator.] To prevaricate or to
embellish the truth beyond any reasonable recognition. 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 mich" (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/, n.
[common; from the 1960s Hogan's Heroes TV series] 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/, adj.
[from Hunter S. Thompson]
1. With total commitment, total concentration, and a mad sort of
panache. (Thompson's original sense.)
2. More loosely: 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.
[very common; always pronounced as if capitalized. Orig. fr. the 1930
Sellar & Yeatman parody of British history 1066 And All That, but
well-established among hackers in the U.S. as well.]
1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a position to notice: "A
language that manages dynamic memory automatically for you is a Good
Thing."
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.
google v.
[common] To search the Web using the Google search engine,
http://www.google.com. Google is highly esteemed among hackers for
its significance ranking system, which is so uncannily effective that
many hackers consider it to have rendered other search engines
effectively irrelevant. The name `google' has additional flavor for
hackers because most know that it was copied from a mathematical term
for ten to the 100th power, famously first uttered as `googol' by a
mathematician's nine-year-old nephew.
google juice n.
A hypothetical substance which attracts the index bots of Google.com.
In common usage, a web page or web site with high placement in the
results of a particular search on Google or frequent placement in the
results of a various searches is said to have "a lot of google juice"
or "good google juice". Also used to compare web pages or web sites,
for example "CrackMonkey has more google juice than KPMG". See also
juice, kilogoogle.
gopher n.
[obs.] A type of Internet service first floated around 1991 and
obsolesced around 1995 by the World Wide Web. Gopher presents a
menuing interface to a tree or graph of links; the links can be to
documents, runnable programs, or other gopher menus arbitrarily far
across the net.
Some claim that the gopher software, which was originally developed
at the University of Minnesota, was named after the Minnesota Gophers
(a sports team). Others claim the word derives from American slang
gofer (from "go for", dialectal "go fer"), one whose job is to run
and fetch things. Finally, observe that gophers dig long tunnels, and
the idea of tunneling through the net to find information was a
defining metaphor for the developers. Probably all three things were
true, but with the first two coming first and the gopher-tunnel
metaphor serendipitously adding flavor and impetus to the project as
it developed out of its concept stage.
gopher hole n.
1. Any access to a gopher.
2. [Amateur Packet Radio] The terrestrial analog of a wormhole
(sense 2), from which this term was coined. A gopher hole links two
amateur packet relays through some non-ham radio medium.
gorets /gor´ets/, n.
The unknown ur-noun, fill in your own meaning. Found esp. on the
Usenet newsgroup alt.gorets, which seems to be a running contest to
redefine the word by implication in the funniest and most peculiar
way, with the understanding that no definition is ever final. [A
correspondent from the former Soviet Union informs me that gorets is
Russian for `mountain dweller'. Another from France informs me that
goret is archaic French for a young pig --ESR] Compare frink.
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 -- the operator
looks like a gorilla while using the touch screen and feels like one
afterwards. 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/, n.
[CMU: perhaps from the canonical hiker's food, Good Old Raisins and
Peanuts] Another metasyntactic variable, like foo and bar.
GOSMACS /goz´maks/, n.
[contraction of `Gosling EMACS'] The first EMACS-in-C
implementation, predating but now largely eclipsed by GNUMACS.
Originally freeware; a commercial version was modestly popular as
`UniPress EMACS' during the 1980s. The author, James Gosling, went on
to invent NeWS and the programming language Java; the latter earned
him demigod status.
gotcha n.
A misfeature of a system, especially a programming language or
environment, that tends to breed bugs or mistakes because it is both
enticingly easy to invoke and completely unexpected and/or
unreasonable in its outcome. 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.
Abbreviation for `General Public License' in widespread use; see
copyleft, General Public Virus. Often mis-expanded as `GNU Public
License'.
GPV /G·P·V/, n.
Abbrev. for General Public Virus in widespread use.
gray goo n.
A hypothetical substance composed of sagans 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.
gray hat
See black hat.
Great Internet Explosion
The mainstreaming of the Internet in 1993-1994. Used normally in time
comparatives; before the Great Internet Explosion and after it were
very different worlds from a hacker's point of view. Before it,
Internet access was expensive and available only to an elite few
through universities, research laboratories, and well-heeled
corporations; after it, everybody's mother had access.
Great Renaming n.
The flag day in 1987 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. Used esp. in discussing the history of
newsgroup names. "The oldest sources group is comp.sources.misc;
before the Great Renaming, it was net.sources." There is a Great
Renaming FAQ on the Web.
Great Runes n.
Uppercase-only text or display messages. Some archaic operating
systems still emit these. See also runes, smash case, fold
case.
There is a widespread legend (repeated by earlier versions of this
entry, though tagged as folklore) that the uppercase-only support of
various old character codes and I/O equipment was chosen by a
religious person in a position of power at the Teletype Company
because supporting both upper and lower cases was too expensive and
supporting lower case only would have made it impossible to spell
`God' correctly. Not true; the upper-case interpretation of
teleprinter codes was well established by 1870, long before Teletype
was even founded.
Great Worm 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 crack was a sort of devastating watershed event in hacker
history; certainly it did more to make non-hackers nervous about the
Internet than anything before or since.
great-wall vi.,n.
[from SF fandom] 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 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] A summary of an
assembly language, even if the color is not green and not a card.
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."
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.
In fall 2000 it was reported from Electronic Data Systems that the
green card for 370 machines has been a blue-green booklet since 1989.
green lightning n.
[IBM]
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 (sense 6).
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 prov.
[TMRC] For any story, in any group of people there will be at least
one person who has not heard the story. A refinement of the theorem
states that there will be exactly one person (if there were more than
one, it wouldn't be as bad to re-tell the story). [The name of this
theorem is a play on a fundamental theorem in calculus. --ESR]
greenbar n.
A style of fanfolded continuous-feed paper with alternating green and
white bars on it, especially used in old-style line printers. This
slang almost certainly dates way back to mainframe days.
grep /grep/, vi.
[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)] 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.
[It has been alleged that the source is from the title of a paper "A
General Regular Expression Parser", but dmr confirms the g/re/p
etymology --ESR]
gribble n.
Random binary data rendered as unreadable text. Noise characters in a
data stream are displayed as gribble. Dumping a binary file to the
screen is an excellent source of gribble, and (if the bell/speaker is
active) headaches.
grilf //, n.
Girlfriend. Like newsfroup and filk, a typo reincarnated as a new
word. Seems to have originated sometime in 1990 on Usenet. [A
friend tells me there was a Lloyd Biggle SF novel Watchers Of The
Dark, in which alien species after species goes insane and begins to
chant "Grilf! Grilf!". A human detective eventually determines that
the word means "Liar!" I hope this has nothing to do with the
popularity of the Usenet term. --ESR]
grind vt.
1. [MIT and Berkeley; now rare] To prettify hardcopy of code,
especially LISP code, by reindenting lines, printing keywords and
comments in distinct fonts (if available), etc. 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
troff, TeX, or Scribe source.
3. [common] 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.
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. See http://www.cs.rice.edu/History/R1/.
gritch /grich/
[MIT]
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).
Interestingly, this word seems to have a separate history from
glitch, with which it is often confused. Back in the early 1960s,
when `glitch' was strictly a hardware-tech's term of art, the Burton
House dorm at M.I.T. maintained a "Gritch Book", a blank volume, into
which the residents hand-wrote complaints, suggestions, and
witticisms. Previous years' volumes of this tradition were
maintained, dating back to antiquity. The word "gritch" was described
as a portmanteau of "gripe" and "bitch". Thus, sense 3 above is at
least historically incorrect.
grok /grok/, /grohk/, vt.
[common; 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'] The emphatic form is grok in
fullness.
1. To understand. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. When
you claim to `grok' some knowledge or technique, you are asserting
that you have not merely learned it in a detached instrumental way
but that it has become part of you, part of your identity. For
example, to say that you "know" LISP is simply to assert that you
can code in it if necessary -- but to say you "grok" LISP is to claim
that you have deeply entered the world-view and spirit of the
language, with the implication that it has transformed your view of
programming. Contrast zen, which is similar supernal understanding
experienced 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/, vt.
[popularized by Johnny Hart's comic strip B.C.: but the word
apparently predates that]
1. To clear the state of a wedged device and restart it. More severe
than `to frob' (sense 2).
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 /usr 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."
grue n.
[from archaic English verb for shudder, as with fear] The grue was
originated in the game Zork (Dave Lebling took the name from Jack
Vance's Dying Earth fantasies) and used in several other Infocom
games as a hint that you should perhaps look for a lamp, torch or
some type of light source. Wandering into a dark area would cause the
game to prompt you, "It is very dark. If you continue you are likely
to be eaten by a grue." If you failed to locate a light source within
the next couple of moves this would indeed be the case.
The grue, according to scholars of the Great Underground Empire, is a
sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth. Its
favorite diet is either adventurers or enchanters, but its insatiable
appetite is tempered by its extreme fear of light. No grues have ever
been seen by the light of day, and only a few have been observed in
their underground lairs. Of those who have seen grues, few have
survived their fearsome jaws to tell the tale. Grues have sickly
glowing fur, fish-mouthed faces, sharp claws and fangs, and an
uncontrollable tendency to slaver and gurgle. They are certainly the
most evil-tempered of all creatures; to say they are touchy is a
dangerous understatement. "Sour as a grue" is a common expression,
even among grues themselves.
All this folklore is widely known among hackers.
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/, n.
[a portmanteau of `garbage' and `rubbish'; may have originated with
SF author Philip K. Dick] Garbage; crap; nonsense. "What is all this
gubbish?" The opposite portmanteau `rubbage' is also reported; in
fact, it was British slang during the 19th century and appears in
Dickens.
Guido /gwee´do/, /khwee´do/
Without qualification, Guido van Rossum (author of Python). Note
that Guido answers to English /gwee´do/ but in Dutch it's /khwee´do/.
Mythically, Guido's most important attribute besides Python itself is
Guido's time machine, a device he is reputed to possess because of
the unnerving frequency with which user requests for new features
have been met with the response "I just implemented that last
night...". See BDFL.
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. A piece of shareware that works.
gumby /guhm´bee/, n.
[from a class of Monty Python characters, poss. with some influence
from the 1960s claymation character]
1. An act of minor but conspicuous stupidity, often in gumby maneuver
or pull a gumby.
2. [NRL] n. A bureaucrat, or other technical incompetent who impedes
the progress of real work.
3. adj. Relating to things typically associated with people in sense
2. (e.g. "Ran would be writing code, but Richard gave him gumby work
that's due on Friday", or, "Dammit! Travel screwed up my plane
tickets. I have to go out on gumby patrol.")
gunch /guhnch/, vt.
[TMRC] To push, prod, or poke at a device that has almost (but not
quite) produced the desired result. Implies a threat to mung.
gunpowder chicken n.
Same as laser chicken.
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 of the form
"GURU MEDITATION #XXXXXXXX.YYYYYYYY" may appear, indicating what the
problem was. An Amiga guru can figure things out from the numbers.
Sometimes 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. An earlier product of the Amiga corporation was a device
called a `Joyboard' which was basically a plastic board built onto 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 fairly early on (but
there's a well-known patch to restore it in more recent versions).
gweep /gweep/
[WPI]
1. v. To hack, usually at night. At WPI, from 1975 onwards, one who
gweeped could often be found at the College Computing Center punching
cards or crashing the PDP-10 or, later, the DEC-20. A correspondent
who was there at the time opines that the term was originally
onomatopoetic, describing the keyclick sound of the Datapoint
terminals long connected to the PDP-10; others allege that `gweep'
was the sound of the Datapoint's bell (compare feep). The term has
survived the demise of those technologies, however, and was still
alive in early 1999. "I'm going to go gweep for a while. See you in
the morning." "I gweep from 8 PM till 3 AM 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." Around 1979 this was
considered derogatory and not used in self-reference; it has since
been proudly claimed in much the same way as geek.
GWF n.
"Common abbreviation for Goober with Firewall". A luser who has
equipped his desktop computer with a hypersensitive "software
firewall" or host intrusion detection program, and who gives its
alerts absolute credence. ISP tech support and abuse desks dread
hearing from such persons, who insist that every packet of abnormal
traffic the software detects is "a hacker" (sic) and, occasionally,
threatening lawsuits or prosecution. GWFs have been known to assert
that they are being attacked from 127.0.0.1, and that their ISP is
criminally negligent for failing to block these attacks. "GWF" is
used similarly to ID10T error and PEBKAC to flag trouble tickets
opened by such users.
= H =
=====
h
[from SF fandom] 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 probably 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 hacker humor, and koan.
hack
[very common]
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." See
Hacking X for Y.
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 n.
[poss. by analogy with `Big Mac Attack' from ads for the McDonald's
fast-food chain; the variant big hack attack is reported] 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 hack
mode 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 3).
Some aspects of hacker 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.
[very common] 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.
[common] 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, only experienced. As Louis Armstrong once
said when asked to explain jazz: "Man, if you gotta ask you'll never
know." (Feminists please note Fats Waller's explanation of rhythm:
"Lady, if you got to ask, you ain't got it.")
hacked off adj.
[analogous to `pissed off'] 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.
It has been pointed out that there is precedent for this usage in
U.S. Navy slang, in which officers under discipline are sometimes
said to be "in hack" and one may speak of "hacking off the C.O.".
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 n.
[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe]
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. RFC1392, the Internet
Users' Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights in
having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a
system, computers and computer networks in particular.
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.
The correct term for this sense is cracker.
The term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the global
community defined by the net (see the network. For discussion of
some of the basics of this culture, see the How To Become A Hacker
FAQ. It also implies that the person described is seen to subscribe
to some version of the hacker ethic (see hacker ethic).
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 geek, wannabee.
This term seems to have been first adopted as a badge in the 1960s by
the hacker culture surrounding TMRC and the MIT AI Lab. We have a
report that it was used in a sense close to this entry's by teenage
radio hams and electronics tinkerers in the mid-1950s.
hacker ethic 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 open-source code 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 open-source 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 the
belief that `ethical' cracking excludes destruction at least
moderates the behavior of people who see themselves as `benign'
crackers (see also samurai, gray hat). On this view, it may be
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
the Internet itself 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.
hacker humor
A distinctive style of shared intellectual humor found among hackers,
having the following marked characteristics:
1. Fascination with form-vs.-content jokes, paradoxes, and humor
having to do with confusion of metalevels (see meta). One way to
make a hacker laugh: hold a red index card in front of him/her with
"GREEN" written on it, or vice-versa (note, however, that this is
funny only the first time).
2. Elaborate deadpan parodies of large intellectual constructs, such
as specifications (see write-only memory), standards documents,
language descriptions (see INTERCAL), and even entire scientific
theories (see quantum bogodynamics, computron).
3. Jokes that involve screwily precise reasoning from bizarre,
ludicrous, or just grossly counter-intuitive premises.
4. Fascination with puns and wordplay.
5. A fondness for apparently mindless humor with subversive currents
of intelligence in it -- for example, old Warner Brothers and Rocky &
Bullwinkle cartoons, the Marx brothers, the early B-52s, and Monty
Python's Flying Circus. Humor that combines this trait with elements
of high camp and slapstick is especially favored.
6. References to the symbol-object antinomies and associated ideas in
Zen Buddhism and (less often) Taoism. See has the X nature,
Discordianism, zen, ha ha only serious, koan.
See also filk, retrocomputing, and the Portrait of J. Random
Hacker in Appendix B. If you have an itchy feeling that all six of
these traits are really aspects of one thing that is incredibly
difficult to talk about exactly, you are (a) correct and (b)
responding like a hacker. These traits are also recognizable (though
in a less marked form) throughout science-fiction fandom.
Hackers (the movie) n.
A notable bomb from 1995. Should have been titled Crackers, because
cracking is what the movie was about. It's understandable that they
didn't however; titles redolent of snack food are probably a tough
sell in Hollywood.
hacking run n.
[analogy with `bombing run' or `speed run'] 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 n.
[ITS] Ritual phrasing of part of the information which ITS made
publicly available about each user. This information (the INQUIR
record) was a sort of form in which the user could fill out various
fields. On display, two of these fields were always 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 files).
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 n.
[back-formation from hairy] 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!")
hairball n.
1. [Fidonet] A large batch of messages that a store-and-forward
network is failing to forward when it should. Often used in the
phrase "Fido coughed up a hairball today", meaning that the stuck
messages have just come unstuck, producing a flood of mail where
there had previously been drought.
2. An unmanageably huge mass of source code. "JWZ thought the Mozilla
effort bogged down because the code was a huge hairball."
3. Any large amount of garbage coming out suddenly. "Sendmail is
coughing up a hairball, so expect some slowness accessing the
Internet."
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.
There is a theorem in simplicial homology theory which states that
any continuous tangent field on a 2-sphere is null at least in a
point. Mathematically literate hackers tend to associate the term
`hairy' with the informal version of this theorem; "You can't comb a
hairy ball smooth." (Previous versions of this entry associating the
above informal statement with the Brouwer fixed-point theorem were
incorrect.)
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.
In British mainstream use, "hairy" means "dangerous", and
consequently, in British programming terms, "hairy" may be used to
denote complicated and/or incomprehensible code, but only if that
complexity or incomprehesiveness is also considered dangerous.
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
(base 2). 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.
An HTML transcription of the entire document is available at
http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/hbaker/hakmem/hakmem.html.
hakspek /hak´speek/, n.
A shorthand method of spelling found on many British academic
bulletin boards and talker systems. 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.
Hakspek almost disappeared after the great bandwidth explosion of the
early 1990s, as fast Internet links wiped out the old-style talker
systems. However, it has enjoyed a revival in another medium -- the
Short Message Service (SMS) associated with GSM cellphones. SMS sends
are limited to a maximum of 160 characters, and typing on a cellphone
keypad is difficult and slow anyway. There are now even published
paper dictionaries for SMS users to help them do hakspek-to-English
and vice-versa.
See also talk mode.
Halloween Documents n.
A pair of Microsoft internal strategy memoranda leaked to ESR in late
1998 that confirmed everybody's paranoia about the current Evil
Empire. These documents praised the technical excellence of Linux
and outlined a counterstrategy of attempting to lock in customers by
"de-commoditizing" Internet protocols and services. They were
extensively cited on the Internet and in the press and proved so
embarrassing that Microsoft PR barely said a word in public for six
months afterwards.
ham
The opposite of spam, sense 3; that is, incoming mail that the user
actually wants to see.
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 //
[Usenet: very common] Abbreviation: Have A Nice Day. Typically used
to close a Usenet posting, but also used to informally close
emails; often preceded by HTH.
hand cruft vt.
[pun on `hand craft'] See cruft, sense 3.
hand-hacking n.
1. [rare] The practice of translating hot spots 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, by hand; syn. with v. cruft.
2. [common] 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.
hand-roll v.
[from obs. mainstream slang hand-rolled in opposition to ready-made,
referring to cigarettes] 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."
handle n.
1. [from CB slang] 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 warez d00dz, crackers,
weenies, spods, and other lower forms of network life; true
hackers travel on their own reputations rather than invented
legendry. Compare nick, screen name.
2. A magic cookie, often in the form of a numeric index into some
array somewhere, through which you can manipulate an object like a
file or window. The form file handle is especially common.
3. [Mac] A pointer to a pointer to dynamically-allocated memory; the
extra level of indirection allows on-the-fly memory compaction (to
cut down on fragmentation) or aging out of unused resources, with
minimal impact on the (possibly multiple) parts of the larger program
containing references to the allocated memory. Compare snap (to
snap a handle would defeat its purpose); see also aliasing bug,
dangling pointer.
handshaking n.
[very common] 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 /hand´wayv/
[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 sentence with "Clearly..." or "Obviously..." or
"It is self-evident that...", it is a good bet he is about to
handwave (alternatively, use of these constructions in a sarcastic
tone before a paraphrase of someone else's argument suggests that it
is a handwave). The theory behind this term is that if you wave your
hands at the right moment, the listener may be sufficiently
distracted to not notice that what you have said is bogus. Failing
that, if a listener does object, you might try to dismiss the
objection with a wave of your hand.
The use of this word is often accompanied by gestures: both hands up,
palms forward, swinging the hands in a vertical plane pivoting at the
elbows and/or shoulders (depending on the magnitude of the handwave);
alternatively, holding the forearms in one position while rotating
the hands at the wrist to make them flutter. In context, the gestures
alone can suffice as a remark; if a speaker makes an outrageously
unsupported assumption, you might simply wave your hands in this way,
as an accusation, far more eloquent than words could express, that
his logic is faulty.
hang v.
1. [very common] To wait for an event that will never occur. "The
system is hanging because it can't read from the crashed drive". See
wedged, hung.
2. To wait for some event to occur; to hang around until something
happens. "The program displays a menu and then hangs until you type a
character." Compare block.
3. To attach a peripheral device, esp. in the construction `hang
off': "We're going to hang another tape drive off the file server."
Implies a device attached with cables, rather than something that is
strictly inside the machine's chassis.
Hanlon's Razor prov.
A corollary of Finagle's Law, similar to Occam's Razor, that reads
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
stupidity." Quoted here because it seems to be a particular favorite
of hackers, often showing up in sig blocks, fortune cookie files
and the login banners of BBS systems and commercial networks. This
probably reflects the hacker's daily experience of environments
created by well-intentioned but short-sighted people. Compare
Sturgeon's Law, Ninety-Ninety Rule.
At http://www.statusq.org/2001/11/26.html it is claimed that Hanlon's
Razor was coined by one Robert J. Hanlon of Scranton, PA. However, a
curiously similar remark ("You have attributed conditions to villainy
that simply result from stupidity.") appears in Logic of Empire, a
classic 1941 SF story by Robert A. Heinlein, who calls the error it
indicates the `devil theory' of sociology. Similar epigrams have been
attributed to William James and (on dubious evidence) Napoleon
Bonaparte.
happily adv.
Of software, used to emphasize that a program is unaware of some
important fact about its environment, either because it has been
fooled into believing a lie, or because it doesn't care. The sense of
`happy' here is not that of elation, but rather that of blissful
ignorance. "The program continues to run, happily unaware that its
output is going to /dev/null." Also used to suggest that a program or
device would really rather be doing something destructive, and is
being given an opportunity to do so. "If you enter an O here instead
of a zero, the program will happily erase all your data."
Nevertheless, use of this term implies a basically benign attitude
towards the program: It didn't mean any harm, it was just eager to do
its job. We'd like to be angry at it but we shouldn't, we should try
to understand it instead. The adjective "cheerfully" is often used in
exactly the same way.
hard boot n.
See boot.
hardcoded adj.
1. [common] Said of data inserted directly into a program, where it
cannot be easily modified, as opposed to data in some profile,
resource (see de-rezz sense 2), or environment variable that a
user or hacker can easily modify.
2. In C, this is esp. applied to use of a literal instead of a
#define macro (see magic number).
hardwarily /hard·weir'@·lee/, adv.
In a way pertaining to hardware. "The system is hardwarily
unreliable." The adjective `hardwary' is not traditionally used,
though it has recently been reported from the U.K. See softwarily.
hardwired adj.
1. In software, syn. for hardcoded.
2. By extension, anything that is not modifiable, especially in the
sense of customizable to one's particular needs or tastes.
has the X nature
[seems to derive from Zen Buddhist koans of the form "Does an X have
the Buddha-nature?"] adj. Common hacker construction for `is an X',
used for humorous emphasis. "Anyone who can't even use a program with
on-screen help embedded in it truly has the loser nature!" See also
the X that can be Y is not the true X. See also mu.
hash bucket n.
A notional receptacle, a set of which might be used to apportion data
items for sorting or lookup purposes. When you look up a name in the
phone book (for example), you typically hash it by extracting its
first letter; the hash buckets are the alphabetically ordered letter
sections. This term is used as techspeak with respect to code that
uses actual hash functions; in jargon, it is used for human
associative memory as well. Thus, two things `in the same hash
bucket' are more difficult to discriminate, and may be confused. "If
you hash English words only by length, you get too many common
grammar words in the first couple of hash buckets." Compare hash
collision.
hash collision n.
[from the techspeak] (var.: hash clash) When used of people,
signifies a confusion in associative memory or imagination,
especially a persistent one (see thinko). True story: One of us
[ESR] was once on the phone with a friend about to move out to
Berkeley. When asked what he expected Berkeley to be like, the friend
replied: "Well, I have this mental picture of naked women throwing
Molotov cocktails, but I think that's just a collision in my hash
tables." Compare hash bucket.
hat n.
Common (spoken) name for the circumflex (`^', ASCII 1011110)
character. See ASCII for other synonyms.
HCF /H·C·F/, n.
Mnemonic for `Halt and Catch Fire', any of several undocumented and
semi-mythical machine instructions with destructive side-effects,
supposedly included for test purposes on several well-known
architectures going as far back as the IBM 360. The MC6800
microprocessor was the first for which an HCF opcode became widely
known. This instruction caused the processor to toggle a subset of
the bus lines as rapidly as it could; in some configurations this
could actually cause lines to burn up. Compare killer poke.
heads down adj.
Concentrating, usually so heavily and for so long that everything
outside the focus area is missed. See also hack mode and larval
stage, although this mode is hardly confined to fledgling hackers.
heartbeat n.
1. The signal emitted by a Level 2 Ethernet transceiver at the end of
every packet to show that the collision-detection circuit is still
connected.
2. A periodic synchronization signal used by software or hardware,
such as a bus clock or a periodic interrupt.
3. The `natural' oscillation frequency of a computer's clock crystal,
before frequency division down to the machine's clock rate.
4. A signal emitted at regular intervals by software to demonstrate
that it is still alive. Sometimes hardware is designed to reboot the
machine if it stops hearing a heartbeat. See also breath-of-life
packet.
heatseeker n.
[IBM] A customer who can be relied upon to buy, without fail, the
latest version of an existing product (not quite the same as a member
of the lunatic fringe). A 1993 example of a heatseeker was someone
who, owning a 286 PC and Windows 3.0, went out and bought Windows 3.1
(which offers no worthwhile benefits unless you have a 386). If all
customers were heatseekers, vast amounts of money could be made by
just fixing some of the bugs in each release (n) and selling it to
them as release (n+1). Microsoft in fact seems to have mastered this
technique.
heavy metal n.
[Cambridge] Syn. big iron.
heavy wizardry n.
Code or designs that trade on a particularly intimate knowledge or
experience of a particular operating system or language or complex
application interface. Distinguished from deep magic, which trades
more on arcane theoretical knowledge. Writing device drivers is heavy
wizardry; so is interfacing to X (sense 2) without a toolkit. Esp.:
found in source-code comments of the form "Heavy wizardry begins
here". Compare voodoo programming.
heavyweight adj.
[common] High-overhead; baroque; code-intensive; featureful, but
costly. Esp. used of communication protocols, language designs, and
any sort of implementation in which maximum generality and/or ease of
implementation has been pushed at the expense of mundane
considerations such as speed, memory utilization, and startup time.
EMACS is a heavyweight editor; X is an extremely heavyweight
window system. This term isn't pejorative, but one hacker's
heavyweight is another's elephantine and a third's monstrosity.
Oppose lightweight. Usage: now borders on techspeak, especially in
the compound heavyweight process.
Hed Rat
Unflattering spoonerism of Red Hat, a popular Linux distribution.
Compare Macintrash. sun-stools, HP-SUX, Slowlaris.
heisenbug /hi:´zen·buhg/, n.
[from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics] A bug
that disappears or alters its behavior when one attempts to probe or
isolate it. (This usage is not even particularly fanciful; the use of
a debugger sometimes alters a program's operating environment
significantly enough that buggy code, such as that which relies on
the values of uninitialized memory, behaves quite differently.)
Antonym of Bohr bug; see also mandelbug, schroedinbug. In C,
nine out of ten heisenbugs result from uninitialized auto variables,
fandango on core phenomena (esp. lossage related to corruption of
the malloc arena) or errors that smash the stack.
hell desk
Common mispronunciation of `help desk', especially among people who
have to answer phones at one.
hello sailor! interj.
Occasional West Coast equivalent of hello world; seems to have
originated at SAIL, later associated with the game Zork (which also
included "hello, aviator" and "hello, implementor"). Originally from
the traditional hooker's greeting to a swabbie fresh off the boat, of
course. The standard response is "Nothing happens here."; of all the
Zork/Dungeon games, only in Infocom's Zork 3 is "Hello, Sailor"
actually useful (excluding the unique situation where _knowing_ this
fact is important in Dungeon...).
hello world interj.
1. The canonical minimal test message in the C/Unix universe.
2. Any of the minimal programs that emit this message (a
representative sample in various languages can be found at
http://www.latech.edu/~acm/helloworld/). Traditionally, the first
program a C coder is supposed to write in a new environment is one
that just prints "hello, world" to standard output (and indeed it is
the first example program in K&R). Environments that generate an
unreasonably large executable for this trivial test or which require
a hairy compiler-linker invocation to generate it are considered to
lose (see X).
3. Greeting uttered by a hacker making an entrance or requesting
information from anyone present. "Hello, world! Is the LAN back up
yet?"
hello, wall! excl.
See wall.
hex n.
1. Short for hexadecimal, base 16.
2. A 6-pack of anything (compare quad, sense 2). Neither usage has
anything to do with magic or black art, though the pun is
appreciated and occasionally used by hackers. True story: As a joke,
some hackers once offered some surplus ICs for sale to be worn as
protective amulets against hostile magic. The chips were, of course,
hex inverters.
hexadecimal n.
Base 16. Coined in the early 1950s to replace earlier sexadecimal,
which was too racy and amusing for stuffy IBM, and later adopted by
the rest of the industry.
Actually, neither term is etymologically pure. If we take binary to
be paradigmatic, the most etymologically correct term for base 10,
for example, is `denary', which comes from `deni' (ten at a time, ten
each), a Latin distributive number; the corresponding term for
base-16 would be something like `sendenary'. "Decimal" comes from the
combining root of decem, Latin for 10. If wish to create a truly
analogous word for base 16, we should start with sedecim, Latin for
16. Ergo, sedecimal is the word that would have been created by a
Latin scholar. The `sexa-' prefix is Latin but incorrect in this
context, and `hexa-' is Greek. The word octal is similarly incorrect;
a correct form would be `octaval' (to go with decimal), or `octonary'
(to go with binary). If anyone ever implements a base-3 computer,
computer scientists will be faced with the unprecedented dilemma of a
choice between two correct forms; both ternary and trinary have a
claim to this throne.
hexit /hek´sit/, n.
A hexadecimal digit (0-9, and A-F or a-f). Used by people who claim
that there are only ten digits, dammit; sixteen-fingered human beings
are rather rare, despite what some keyboard designs might seem to
imply (see space-cadet keyboard).
HHOK
See ha ha only serious.
HHOS
See ha ha only serious.
hidden flag n.
[scientific computation] An extra option added to a routine without
changing the calling sequence. For example, instead of adding an
explicit input variable to instruct a routine to give extra
diagnostic output, the programmer might just add a test for some
otherwise meaningless feature of the existing inputs, such as a
negative mass. The use of hidden flags can make a program very hard
to debug and understand, but is all too common wherever programs are
hacked on in a hurry.
high bit n.
[from high-order bit]
1. The most significant bit in a byte.
2. [common] By extension, the most significant part of something
other than a data byte: "Spare me the whole saga, just give me the
high bit." See also meta bit, dread high-bit disease, and compare
the mainstream slang bottom line.
high moby /hi:´ mohb´ee/, n.
The high half of a 512K PDP-10's physical address space; the other
half was of course the low moby. This usage has been generalized in a
way that has outlasted the PDP-10; for example, at the 1990
Washington D.C. Area Science Fiction Conclave (Disclave), when a
miscommunication resulted in two separate wakes being held in
commemoration of the shutdown of MIT's last ITS machines, the one
on the upper floor was dubbed the `high moby' and the other the `low
moby'. All parties involved grokked this instantly. See moby.
highly adv.
[scientific computation] The preferred modifier for overstating an
understatement. As in: highly nonoptimal, the worst possible way to
do something; highly nontrivial, either impossible or requiring a
major research project; highly nonlinear, completely erratic and
unpredictable; highly nontechnical, drivel written for lusers,
oversimplified to the point of being misleading or incorrect (compare
drool-proof paper). In other computing cultures, postfixing of in
the extreme might be preferred.
hing //, n.
[IRC] Fortuitous typo for `hint', now in wide intentional use among
players of initgame. Compare newsfroup, filk.
hired gun n.
A contract programmer, as opposed to a full-time staff member. All
the connotations of this term suggested by innumerable spaghetti
Westerns are intentional.
hirsute adj.
Occasionally used humorously as a synonym for hairy.
HLL /H·L·L/, n.
[High-Level Language (as opposed to assembler)] Found primarily in
email and news rather than speech. Rarely, the variants `VHLL' and
`MLL' are found. VHLL stands for `Very-High-Level Language' and is
used to describe a bondage-and-discipline language that the speaker
happens to like; Prolog and Backus's FP are often called VHLLs. `MLL'
stands for `Medium-Level Language' and is sometimes used
half-jokingly to describe C, alluding to its `structured-assembler'
image. See also languages of choice.
hoarding n.
See software hoarding.
hog n.,vt.
1. Favored term to describe programs or hardware that seem to eat far
more than their share of a system's resources, esp. those which
noticeably degrade interactive response. Not used of programs that
are simply extremely large or complex or that are merely painfully
slow themselves. More often than not encountered in qualified forms,
e.g., memory hog, core hog, hog the processor, hog the disk. "A
controller that never gives up the I/O bus gets killed after the
bus-hog timer expires."
2. Also said of people who use more than their fair share of
resources (particularly disk, where it seems that 10% of the people
use 90% of the disk, no matter how big the disk is or how many people
use it). Of course, once disk hogs fill up one filesystem, they
typically find some other new one to infect, claiming to the sysadmin
that they have an important new project to complete.
hole n.
A region in an otherwise flat entity which is not actually present.
For example, some Unix filesystems can store large files with holes
so that unused regions of the file are never actually stored on disk.
(In techspeak, these are referred to as `sparse' files.) As another
example, the region of memory in IBM PCs reserved for memory-mapped
I/O devices which may not actually be present is called `the I/O
hole', since memory-management systems must skip over this area when
filling user requests for memory.
hollised /hol´ist/, adj.
[Usenet: sci.space] To be hollised is to have been ordered by one's
employer not to post any even remotely job-related material to Usenet
(or, by extension, to other Internet media). The original and most
notorious case of this involved one Ken Hollis, a Lockheed employee
and space-program enthusiast who posted publicly available material
on access to Space Shuttle launches to sci.space. He was gagged under
threat of being fired in 1994 at the behest of NASA public-relations
officers. The result was, of course, a huge publicity black eye for
NASA. Nevertheless several other NASA contractor employees were
subsequently hollised for similar activities. Use of this term
carries the strong connotation that the persons doing the gagging are
bureaucratic idiots blinded to their own best interests by
territorial reflexes.
holy penguin pee n.
[Linux] Notional substance said to be sprinkled by Linus onto other
people's contributions. With this ritual, he blesses them, officially
making them part of the kernel. First used in November 1998 just
after Linus had handed the maintenance of the stable kernel over to
Alan Cox.
holy wars n.
[from Usenet, but may predate it; common] n. flame wars over
religious issues. The paper by Danny Cohen that popularized the
terms big-endian and little-endian in connection with the
LSB-first/MSB-first controversy was entitled On Holy Wars and a Plea
for Peace.
Great holy wars of the past have included ITS vs.: Unix, Unix
vs.: VMS, BSD Unix vs.: System V, C vs.: Pascal, C vs.:
FORTRAN, etc. In the year 2003, popular favorites of the day are KDE
vs, GNOME, vim vs. elvis, Linux vs. [Free|Net|Open]BSD. Hardy
perennials include EMACS vs.: vi, my personal computer vs.:
everyone else's personal computer, ad nauseam. The characteristic
that distinguishes holy wars from normal technical disputes is that
in a holy war most of the participants spend their time trying to
pass off personal value choices and cultural attachments as objective
technical evaluations. This happens precisely because in a true holy
war, the actual substantive differences between the sides are
relatively minor. See also theology.
home box n.
A hacker's personal machine, especially one he or she owns. "Yeah?
Well, my home box runs a full 4.4 BSD, so there!"
home machine n.
1. Syn. home box.
2. The machine that receives your email. These senses might be
distinct, for example, for a hacker who owns one computer at home,
but reads email at work.
home page n.
1. One's personal billboard on the World Wide Web. The term `home
page' is perhaps a bit misleading because home directories and
physical homes in RL are private, but home pages are designed to be
very public.
2. By extension, a WWW repository for information and links related
to a project or organization. Compare home box.
honey pot n.
1. A box designed to attract crackers so that they can be observed
in action. It is usually well isolated from the rest of the network,
but has extensive logging (usually network layer, on a different
machine). Different from an iron box in that its purpose is to
attract, not merely observe. Sometimes, it is also a defensive
network security tactic -- you set up an easy-to-crack box so that
your real servers don't get messed with. The concept was presented in
Cheswick & Bellovin's book Firewalls and Internet Security.
2. A mail server that acts as an open relay when a single message is
attempted to send through it, but discards or diverts for examination
messages that are detected to be part of a spam run.
hook n.
A software or hardware feature included in order to simplify later
additions or changes by a user. For example, a simple program that
prints numbers might always print them in base 10, but a more
flexible version would let a variable determine what base to use;
setting the variable to 5 would make the program print numbers in
base 5. The variable is a simple hook. An even more flexible program
might examine the variable and treat a value of 16 or less as the
base to use, but treat any other number as the address of a
user-supplied routine for printing a number. This is a hairy but
powerful hook; one can then write a routine to print numbers as Roman
numerals, say, or as Hebrew characters, and plug it into the program
through the hook. Often the difference between a good program and a
superb one is that the latter has useful hooks in judiciously chosen
places. Both may do the original job about equally well, but the one
with the hooks is much more flexible for future expansion of
capabilities (EMACS, for example, is all hooks). The term user exit
is synonymous but much more formal and less hackish.
hop
1. n. [common] One file transmission in a series required to get a
file from point A to point B on a store-and-forward network. On such
networks (including the old UUCP network and and FidoNet), an
important inter-machine metric is the number of hops in the shortest
path between them, which can be more significant than their
geographical separation. See bang path.
2. v. [rare] To log in to a remote machine, esp. via rlogin or
telnet. "I'll hop over to foovax to FTP that."
horked adj.
Broken. Confused. Trashed. Now common; seems to be post-1995. There
is an entertaining web page of related definitions, few of which seem
to be in live use but many of which would be in the recognition
vocabulary of anyone familiar with the adjective.
hose
1. vt. [common] To make non-functional or greatly degraded in
performance. "That big ray-tracing program really hoses the system."
See hosed.
2. n. A narrow channel through which data flows under pressure.
Generally denotes data paths that represent performance bottlenecks.
3. n. Cabling, especially thick Ethernet cable. This is sometimes
called bit hose or hosery (play on `hosiery') or `etherhose'. See
also washing machine.
hosed adj.
Same as down. Used primarily by Unix hackers. Humorous: also
implies a condition thought to be relatively easy to reverse.
Probably derived from the Canadian slang `hoser' popularized by the
Bob and Doug Mackenzie skits on SCTV, but this usage predated SCTV by
years in hackerdom (it was certainly already live at CMU in the
1970s). See hose. It is also widely used of people in the
mainstream sense of `in an extremely unfortunate situation'.
Once upon a time, a Cray that had been experiencing periodic
difficulties crashed, and it was announced to have been hosed. It was
discovered that the crash was due to the disconnection of some
coolant hoses. The problem was corrected, and users were then assured
that everything was OK because the system had been rehosed. See also
dehose.
hot chat n.
Sexually explicit one-on-one chat. See teledildonics.
hot spot n.
1. [primarily used by C/Unix programmers, but spreading] It is
received wisdom that in most programs, less than 10% of the code eats
90% of the execution time; if one were to graph instruction visits
versus code addresses, one would typically see a few huge spikes
amidst a lot of low-level noise. Such spikes are called hot spots and
are good candidates for heavy optimization or hand-hacking. The
term is especially used of tight loops and recursions in the code's
central algorithm, as opposed to (say) initial set-up costs or large
but infrequent I/O operations. See tune, hand-hacking.
2. The active location of a cursor on a bit-map display. "Put the
mouse's hot spot on the `ON' widget and click the left button."
3. A screen region that is sensitive to mouse gestures, which trigger
some action. World Wide Web pages now provide the canonical
examples; WWW browsers present hypertext links as hot spots which,
when clicked on, point the browser at another document (these are
specifically called hotlinks).
4. In a massively parallel computer with shared memory, the one
location that all 10,000 processors are trying to read or write at
once (perhaps because they are all doing a busy-wait on the same
lock).
5. More generally, any place in a hardware design that turns into a
performance bottleneck due to resource contention.
hotlink /hot´link/, n.
A hot spot on a World Wide Web page; an area, which, when clicked
or selected, chases a URL. Also spelled `hot link'. Use of this term
focuses on the link's role as an immediate part of your display, as
opposed to the timeless sense of logical connection suggested by web
pointer. Your screen shows hotlinks but your document has web
pointers, not (in normal usage) the other way around.
house wizard n.
[prob.: from ad-agency tradetalk, `house freak'] A hacker occupying a
technical-specialist, R&D, or systems position at a commercial shop.
A really effective house wizard can have influence out of all
proportion to his/her ostensible rank and still not have to wear a
suit. Used esp. of Unix wizards. The term house guru is equivalent.
HP-SUX /H·P suhks/, n.
Unflattering hackerism for HP-UX, Hewlett-Packard's Unix port, which
features some truly unique bogosities in the filesystem internals and
elsewhere (these occasionally create portability problems). HP-UX is
often referred to as `hockey-pux' inside HP, and one respondent
claims that the proper pronunciation is /H·P ukkkhhhh/ as though one
were about to spit. Another such alternate spelling and pronunciation
is "H-PUX" /H-puhks/. Hackers at HP/Apollo (the former Apollo
Computers which was swallowed by HP in 1989) have been heard to
complain that Mr. Packard should have pushed to have his name first,
if for no other reason than the greater eloquence of the resulting
acronym. See sun-stools, Slowlaris.
HTH //
[Usenet: very common] Abbreviation: Hope This Helps (e.g. following a
response to a technical question). Often used just before HAND. See
also YHBT.
huff v.
To compress data using a Huffman code. Various programs that use such
methods have been called `HUFF' or some variant thereof. Oppose
puff. Compare crunch, compress.
hung adj.
[from `hung up'; common] Equivalent to wedged, but more common at
Unix/C sites. Not generally used of people. Syn. with locked up,
wedged; compare hosed. See also hang. A hung state is
distinguished from crashed or down, where the program or system
is also unusable but because it is not running rather than because it
is waiting for something. However, the recovery from both situations
is often the same. It is also distinguished from the similar but more
drastic state wedged -- hung software can be woken up with easy
things like interrupt keys, but wedged will need a kill -9 or even
reboot.
hungry puppy n.
Syn. slopsucker.
hungus /huhng´g@s/, adj.
[perhaps related to slang `humongous'] Large, unwieldy, usually
unmanageable. "TCP is a hungus piece of code." "This is a hungus set
of modifications." The Infocom text adventure game Beyond Zork
included two monsters called hunguses.
hyperspace /hi:´per·spays/, n.
A memory location that is far away from where the program counter
should be pointing, especially a place that is inaccessible because
it is not even mapped in by the virtual-memory system. "Another core
dump -- looks like the program jumped off to hyperspace somehow."
(Compare jump off into never-never land.) This usage is from the SF
notion of a spaceship jumping into hyperspace, that is, taking a
shortcut through higher-dimensional space -- in other words,
bypassing this universe. The variant east hyperspace is recorded
among CMU and Bliss hackers.
hysterical reasons n.
(also hysterical raisins) A variant on the stock phrase "for
historical reasons", indicating specifically that something must be
done in some stupid way for backwards compatibility, and moreover
that the feature it must be compatible with was the result of a bad
design in the first place. "All IBM PC video adapters have to support
MDA text mode for hysterical reasons." Compare bug-for-bug
compatible.
= I =
=====
I didn't change anything! interj.
An aggrieved cry often heard as bugs manifest during a regression
test. The canonical reply to this assertion is "Then it works just
the same as it did before, doesn't it?" See also one-line fix. This
is also heard from applications programmers trying to blame an
obvious applications problem on an unrelated systems software change,
for example a divide-by-0 fault after terminals were added to a
network. Usually, their statement is found to be false. Upon close
questioning, they will admit some major restructuring of the program
that shouldn't have broken anything, in their opinion, but which
actually hosed the code completely.
I see no X here.
Hackers (and the interactive computer games they write) traditionally
favor this slightly marked usage over other possible equivalents such
as "There's no X here!" or "X is missing." or "Where's the X?". This
goes back to the original PDP-10 ADVENT, which would respond in
this wise if you asked it to do something involving an object not
present at your location in the game.
IANAL //
[Usenet] Abbreviation, "I Am Not A Lawyer". Usually precedes legal
advice.
IBM /I·B·M/
Once upon a time, the computer company most hackers loved to hate;
today, the one they are most puzzled to find themselves liking.
From hackerdom's beginnings in the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, IBM
was regarded with active loathing. Common expansions of the corporate
name included: Inferior But Marketable; It's Better Manually;
Insidious Black Magic; It's Been Malfunctioning; Incontinent Bowel
Movement; and a near-infinite number of even less complimentary
expansions (see also fear and loathing). What galled hackers about
most IBM machines above the PC level wasn't so much that they were
underpowered and overpriced (though that counted against them), but
that the designs were incredibly archaic, crufty, and elephantine
... and you couldn't fix them -- source code was locked up tight, and
programming tools were expensive, hard to find, and bletcherous to
use once you had found them.
We didn't know how good we had it back then. In the 1980s IBM had its
own troubles with Microsoft and lost its strategic way, receding from
the hacker community's view. Then, in the 1990s, Microsoft became
more noxious and omnipresent than IBM had ever been.
In the late 1990s IBM re-invented itself as a services company, began
to release open-source software through its AlphaWorks group, and
began shipping Linux systems and building ties to the Linux
community. To the astonishment of all parties, IBM emerged as a
staunch friend of the hacker community and open source development,
with ironic consequences noted in the FUD entry.
This lexicon includes a number of entries attributed to `IBM'; these
derive from some rampantly unofficial jargon lists circulated within
IBM's formerly beleaguered hacker underground.
ICBM address n.
(Also missile address) The form used to register a site with the
Usenet mapping project, back before the day of pervasive Internet,
included a blank for longitude and latitude, preferably to
seconds-of-arc accuracy. This was actually used for generating
geographically-correct maps of Usenet links on a plotter; however, it
became traditional to refer to this as one's ICBM address or missile
address, and some people include it in their sig block with that
name. (A real missile address would include target elevation.)
ice n.
[coined by Usenetter Tom Maddox, popularized by William Gibson's
cyberpunk SF novels: a contrived acronym for `Intrusion
Countermeasure Electronics'] Security software (in Gibson's novels,
software that responds to intrusion by attempting to immobilize or
even literally kill the intruder). Hence, icebreaker: a program
designed for cracking security on a system.
Neither term is in serious use yet as of late 2003, but many hackers
find the metaphor attractive, and each may develop a denotation in
the future. In the meantime, the speculative usage could be confused
with `ICE', an acronym for "in-circuit emulator".
In ironic reference to the speculative usage, however, some hackers
and computer scientists formed ICE (International Cryptographic
Experiment) in 1994. ICE is a consortium to promote uniform
international access to strong cryptography.
ID10T error /I·D·ten·T er'@r/
Synonym for PEBKAC, e.g. "The user is being an idiot". Tech-support
people passing a problem report to someone higher up the food chain
(and presumably better equipped to deal with idiots) may ask the user
to convey that there seems to be an I-D-ten-T error. Users never
twig.
idempotent adj.
[from mathematical techspeak] Acting as if used only once, even if
used multiple times. This term is often used with respect to C
header files, which contain common definitions and declarations to be
included by several source files. If a header file is ever included
twice during the same compilation (perhaps due to nested #include
files), compilation errors can result unless the header file has
protected itself against multiple inclusion; a header file so
protected is said to be idempotent. The term can also be used to
describe an initialization subroutine that is arranged to perform
some critical action exactly once, even if the routine is called
several times.
IDP /I·D·P/, v.,n.
[Usenet] Abbreviation for Internet Death Penalty. Common (probably
now more so than the full form), and frequently verbed. Compare
UDP.
If you want X, you know where to find it.
There is a legend that Dennis Ritchie, inventor of C, once
responded to demands for features resembling those of what at the
time was a much more popular language by observing "If you want PL/I,
you know where to find it." Ever since, this has been hackish
standard form for fending off requests to alter a new design to mimic
some older (and, by implication, inferior and baroque) one. The
case X = Pascal manifests semi-regularly on Usenet's comp.lang.c
newsgroup. Indeed, the case X = X has been reported in discussions of
graphics software (see X).
ifdef out /if´def owt/, v.
Syn. for condition out, specific to C.
IIRC //
Common abbreviation for "If I Recall Correctly".
ill-behaved adj.
1. [numerical analysis] Said of an algorithm or computational method
that tends to blow up because of accumulated roundoff error or poor
convergence properties.
2. [obs.] Software that bypasses the defined OS interfaces to do
things (like screen, keyboard, and disk I/O) itself, often in a way
that depends on the hardware of the machine it is running on or which
is nonportable or incompatible with other pieces of software. In the
MS-DOS world, there was a folk theorem (nearly true) to the effect
that (owing to gross inadequacies and performance penalties in the OS
interface) all interesting applications were ill-behaved. See also
bare metal. Oppose well-behaved. See also mess-dos.
3. In modern usage, a program is called ill-behaved if it uses
interfaces to the OS or other programs that are private,
undocumented, or grossly non-portable. Another way to be ill-behaved
is to use headers or files that are theoretically private to another
application.
IMHO //, abbrev.
[from SF fandom via Usenet; abbreviation for `In My Humble Opinion']
"IMHO, mixed-case C names should be avoided, as mistyping something
in the wrong case can cause hard-to-detect errors -- and they look
too Pascalish anyhow." Also seen in variant forms such as IMNSHO (In
My Not-So-Humble Opinion) and IMAO (In My Arrogant Opinion).
Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted! prov.
[Usenet] Since Usenet first got off the ground in 1980--81, it has
grown exponentially, approximately doubling in size every year. On
the other hand, most people feel the signal-to-noise ratio of
Usenet has dropped steadily. These trends led, as far back as
mid-1983, to predictions of the imminent collapse (or death) of the
net. Ten years and numerous doublings later, enough of these gloomy
prognostications have been confounded that the phrase "Imminent Death
Of The Net Predicted!" has become a running joke, hauled out any time
someone grumbles about the S/N ratio or the huge and steadily
increasing volume, or the possible loss of a key node or link, or the
potential for lawsuits when ignoramuses post copyrighted material,
etc., etc., etc.
in the extreme adj.
A preferred superlative suffix for many hackish terms. See, for
example, obscure in the extreme under obscure, and compare
highly.
incantation n.
Any particularly arbitrary or obscure command that one must mutter at
a system to attain a desired result. Not used of passwords or other
explicit security features. Especially used of tricks that are so
poorly documented that they must be learned from a wizard. "This
compiler normally locates initialized data in the data segment, but
if you mutter the right incantation they will be forced into text
space."
include vt.
[Usenet]
1. To duplicate a portion (or whole) of another's message (typically
with attribution to the source) in a reply or followup, for
clarifying the context of one's response. See the discussion of
inclusion styles under Hacker Writing Style.
2. [from C] #include <disclaimer.h> has appeared in sig blocks to
refer to a notional standard disclaimer file.
include war n.
Excessive multi-leveled inclusion within a discussion thread, a
practice that tends to annoy readers. In a forum with high-traffic
newsgroups, such as Usenet, this can lead to flames and the urge to
start a kill file.
indent style n.
[C, C++, and Java programmers] The rules one uses to indent code in a
readable fashion. There are four major C indent styles, described
below; all have the aim of making it easier for the reader to
visually track the scope of control constructs. They have been
inherited by C++ and Java, which have C-like syntaxes. The
significant variable is the placement of and with respect to the
statement(s) they enclose and to the guard or controlling statement
(if, else, for, while, or do) on the block, if any.
K&R style -- Named after Kernighan & Ritchie, because the examples in
K&R are formatted this way. Also called kernel style because the
Unix kernel is written in it, and the `One True Brace Style' (abbrev.
1TBS) by its partisans. In C code, the body is typically indented by
eight spaces (or one tab) per level, as shown here. Four spaces are
occasionally seen in C, but in C++ and Java four tends to be the rule
rather than the exception.
if (<cond>)
<body>
Allman style -- Named for Eric Allman, a Berkeley hacker who wrote a
lot of the BSD utilities in it (it is sometimes called BSD style).
Resembles normal indent style in Pascal and Algol. It is the only
style other than K&R in widespread use among Java programmers. Basic
indent per level shown here is eight spaces, but four (or sometimes
three) spaces are generally preferred by C++ and Java programmers.
if (<cond>)
<body>
Whitesmiths style -- popularized by the examples that came with
Whitesmiths C, an early commercial C compiler. Basic indent per level
shown here is eight spaces, but four spaces are occasionally seen.
if (<cond>)
<body>
GNU style -- Used throughout GNU EMACS and the Free Software
Foundation code, and just about nowhere else. Indents are always four
spaces per level, with and halfway between the outer and inner
indent levels.
if (<cond>)
<body>
Surveys have shown the Allman and Whitesmiths styles to be the most
common, with about equal mind shares. K&R/1TBS used to be nearly
universal, but is now much less common in C (the opening brace tends
to get lost against the right paren of the guard part in an if or
while, which is a Bad Thing). Defenders of 1TBS argue that any
putative gain in readability is less important than their style's
relative economy with vertical space, which enables one to see more
code on one's screen at once. The Java Language Specification
legislates not only the capitalization of identifiers, but where
nouns, adjectives, and verbs should be in method, class, interface,
and variable names (section 6.8). While the specification stops short
of also standardizing on a bracing style, all source code originating
from Sun Laboratories uses the K&R style. This has set a precedent
for Java programmers, which most follow.
Doubtless these issues will continue to be the subject of holy
wars.
Indent-o-Meter
[] A fiendishly clever ASCII display hack that became a brief fad in
1993-1994; it used combinations of tabs and spaces to produce an
analog indicator of the amount of indentation an included portion of
a reply had undergone. The full story is at
http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/indent.html.
index of X n.
See coefficient of X.
infant mortality n.
It is common lore among hackers (and in the electronics industry at
large; this term is possibly techspeak by now) that the chances of
sudden hardware failure drop off exponentially with a machine's time
since first use (that is, until the relatively distant time at which
enough mechanical wear in I/O devices and thermal-cycling stress in
components has accumulated for the machine to start going senile). Up
to half of all chip and wire failures happen within a new system's
first few weeks; such failures are often referred to as infant
mortality problems (or, occasionally, as sudden infant death
syndrome). See bathtub curve, burn-in period.
infinite adj.
[common] Consisting of a large number of objects; extreme. Used very
loosely as in: "This program produces infinite garbage." "He is an
infinite loser." The word most likely to follow infinite, though, is
hair. (It has been pointed out that fractals are an excellent
example of infinite hair.) These uses are abuses of the word's
mathematical meaning. The term semi-infinite, denoting an
immoderately large amount of some resource, is also heard. "This
compiler is taking a semi-infinite amount of time to optimize my
program." See also semi.
infinite loop n.
One that never terminates (that is, the machine spins or buzzes
forever and goes catatonic). There is a standard joke that has been
made about each generation's exemplar of the ultra-fast machine: "The
Cray-3 is so fast it can execute an infinite loop in under 2
seconds!"
Infinite-Monkey Theorem n.
"If you put an infinite number of monkeys at typewriters,
eventually one will bash out the script for Hamlet." (One may also
hypothesize a small number of monkeys and a very long period of
time.) This theorem asserts nothing about the intelligence of the one
random monkey that eventually comes up with the script (and note
that the mob will also type out all the possible incorrect versions
of Hamlet). It may be referred to semi-seriously when justifying a
brute force method; the implication is that, with enough resources
thrown at it, any technical challenge becomes a one-banana problem.
This argument gets more respect since Linux justified the bazaar
mode of development.
Other hackers maintain that the Infinite-Monkey Theorem cannot be
true -- otherwise Usenet would have reproduced the entire canon of
great literature by now.
In mid-2002, researchers at Plymouth Univesity in England actually
put a working computer in a cage with six crested macaques. The
monkeys proceeded to bash the machine with a rock, urinate on it, and
type the letter S a lot (later, the letters A, J, L, and M also crept
in). The results were published in a limited-edition book, Notes
Towards The Complete Works of Shakespeare. A researcher reported:
"They were quite interested in the screen, and they saw that when
they typed a letter, something happened. There was a level of
intention there." Scattered field reports that there are AOL users
this competent have been greeted with well-deserved skepticism.
This theorem has been traced to the mathematiciamn Émile Borel in
1913, and was first popularized by the astronomer Sir Arthur
Eddington. It became part of the idiom of techies via the classic SF
short story Inflexible Logic by Russell Maloney, and many younger
hackers know it through a reference in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy. Some other references have been collected on the
Web. On 1 April 2000 the usage acquired its own Internet standard,
RFC2795 (Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite).
infinity n.
1. The largest value that can be represented in a particular type of
variable (register, memory location, data type, whatever).
2. minus infinity: The smallest such value, not necessarily or even
usually the simple negation of plus infinity. In N-bit
twos-complement arithmetic, infinity is 2^N-1 - 1 but minus infinity
is - (2^N-1), not -(2^N-1 - 1). Note also that this is different from
time T equals minus infinity, which is closer to a mathematician's
usage of infinity.
inflate vt.
To decompress or puff a file. Rare among Internet hackers, used
primarily by MS-DOS/Windows types.
Infocom n.
A now-legendary games company, active from 1979 to 1989, that
commercialized the MDL parser technology used for Zork to produce a
line of text adventure games that remain favorites among hackers.
Infocom's games were intelligent, funny, witty, erudite, irreverent,
challenging, satirical, and most thoroughly hackish in spirit. The
physical game packages from Infocom are now prized collector's items.
After being acquired by Activision in 1989 they did a few more
"modern" (e.g. graphics-intensive) games which were less successful
than reissues of their classics.
The software, thankfully, is still extant; Infocom games were written
in a kind of P-code (called, actually, z-code) and distributed with a
P-code interpreter core, and not only open-source emulators for that
interpreter but an actual compiler as well have been written to
permit the P-code to be run on platforms the games never originally
graced. In fact, new games written in this P-code are still being
written. There is a home page at http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/, and
it is even possible to play these games in your browser if it is
Java-capable.
initgame /in·it´gaym/, n.
[IRC] An IRC version of the trivia game "Botticelli", in which one
user changes his nick to the initials of a famous person or other
named entity, and the others on the channel ask yes or no questions,
with the one to guess the person getting to be "it" next. As a
courtesy, the one picking the initials starts by providing a 4-letter
hint of the form sex, nationality, life-status, reality-status. For
example, MAAR means "Male, American, Alive, Real" (as opposed to
"fictional"). Initgame can be surprisingly addictive. See also
hing.
[1996 update: a recognizable version of the initgame has become a
staple of some radio talk shows in the U.S. We had it first! -- ESR]
insanely great adj.
[Mac community, from Steve Jobs; also BSD Unix people via Bill Joy]
Something so incredibly elegant that it is imaginable only to
someone possessing the most puissant of hacker-natures.
installfest
[Linux community since c.1998] Common portmanteau word for
"installation festival"; Linux user groups frequently run these.
Computer users are invited to bring their machines to have Linux
installed on their machines. The idea is to get them painlessly over
the biggest hump in migrating to Linux, which is initially installing
and configuring it for the user's machine.
INTERCAL /in´t@r·kal/, n.
[said by the authors to stand for Compiler Language With No
Pronounceable Acronym] A computer language designed by Don Woods and
James Lyons in 1972. INTERCAL is purposely different from all other
computer languages in all ways but one; it is purely a written
language, being totally unspeakable. An excerpt from the INTERCAL
Reference Manual will make the style of the language clear:
It is a well-known and oft-demonstrated fact that a person whose
work is incomprehensible is held in high esteem. For example, if
one were to state that the simplest way to store a value of 65536
in a 32-bit INTERCAL variable is:
DO :1 <- #0$#256
any sensible programmer would say that that was absurd. Since this
is indeed the simplest method, the programmer would be made to
look foolish in front of his boss, who would of course have
happened to turn up, as bosses are wont to do. The effect would be
no less devastating for the programmer having been correct.
INTERCAL has many other peculiar features designed to make it even
more unspeakable. The Woods-Lyons implementation was actually used by
many (well, at least several) people at Princeton. The language has
been recently reimplemented as C-INTERCAL and is consequently
enjoying an unprecedented level of unpopularity; there is even an
alt.lang.intercal newsgroup devoted to the study and ... appreciation
of the language on Usenet.
Inevitably, INTERCAL has a home page on the Web:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/intercal/. An extended version, implemented
in (what else?) Perl and adding object-oriented features, is
rumored to exist. See also Befunge.
InterCaps
[Great Britain] Synonym for BiCapitalization.
interesting adj.
In hacker parlance, this word has strong connotations of `annoying',
or `difficult', or both. Hackers relish a challenge, and enjoy
wringing all the irony possible out of the ancient Chinese curse "May
you live in interesting times". Oppose trivial, uninteresting.
Internet n.
The mother of all networks. First incarnated beginning in 1969 as the
ARPANET, a U.S. Department of Defense research testbed. Though it has
been widely believed that the goal was to develop a network
architecture for military command-and-control that could survive
disruptions up to and including nuclear war, this is a myth; in fact,
ARPANET was conceived from the start as a way to get most economical
use out of then-scarce large-computer resources. Robert Herzfeld, who
was director of ARPA at the time, has been at some pains to debunk
the "survive-a-nuclear-war" myth, but it seems unkillable.
As originally imagined, ARPANET's major use would have been to
support what is now called remote login and more sophisticated forms
of distributed computing, but the infant technology of electronic
mail quickly grew to dominate actual usage. Universities, research
labs and defense contractors early discovered the Internet's
potential as a medium of communication between humans and linked up
in steadily increasing numbers, connecting together a quirky mix of
academics, techies, hippies, SF fans, hackers, and anarchists. The
roots of this lexicon lie in those early years.
Over the next quarter-century the Internet evolved in many ways. The
typical machine/OS combination moved from DEC PDP-10s and
PDP-20s, running TOPS-10 and TOPS-20, to PDP-11s and VAXen
and Suns running Unix, and in the 1990s to Unix on Intel
microcomputers. The Internet's protocols grew more capable, most
notably in the move from NCP/IP to TCP/IP in 1982 and the
implementation of Domain Name Service in 1983. It was around this
time that people began referring to the collection of interconnected
networks with ARPANET at its core as "the Internet".
The ARPANET had a fairly strict set of participation guidelines --
connected institutions had to be involved with a DOD-related research
project. By the mid-80s, many of the organizations clamoring to join
didn't fit this profile. In 1986, the National Science Foundation
built NSFnet to open up access to its five regional supercomputing
centers; NSFnet became the backbone of the Internet, replacing the
original ARPANET pipes (which were formally shut down in 1990).
Between 1990 and late 1994 the pieces of NSFnet were sold to major
telecommunications companies until the Internet backbone had gone
completely commercial.
That year, 1994, was also the year the mainstream culture discovered
the Internet. Once again, the killer app was not the anticipated
one -- rather, what caught the public imagination was the hypertext
and multimedia features of the World Wide Web. Subsequently the
Internet has seen off its only serious challenger (the OSI protocol
stack favored by European telecoms monopolies) and is in the process
of absorbing into itself many of the proprietary networks built
during the second wave of wide-area networking after 1980. By 1996 it
had become a commonplace even in mainstream media to predict that a
globally-extended Internet would become the key unifying
communications technology of the next century. See also the
network.
Internet Death Penalty
[Usenet] (often abbreviated IDP) The ultimate sanction against
spam-emitting sites -- complete shunning at the router level of all
mail and packets, as well as Usenet messages, from the offending
domain(s). Compare Usenet Death Penalty, with which it is sometimes
confused.
Internet Exploder
[very common] Pejorative hackerism for Microsoft's "Internet
Explorer" web browser (also "Internet Exploiter"). Compare HP-SUX,
Macintrash, sun-stools, Slowlaris.
Internet Exploiter n.
Another common name-of-insult for Internet Explorer, Microsoft's
overweight Web Browser; more hostile than Internet Exploder.
Reflects widespread hostility to Microsoft and a sense that it is
seeking to hijack, monopolize, and corrupt the Internet. Compare
Exploder and the less pejorative Netscrape.
interrupt
1. [techspeak] n. On a computer, an event that interrupts normal
processing and temporarily diverts flow-of-control through an
"interrupt handler" routine. See also trap.
2. interj. A request for attention from a hacker. Often explicitly
spoken. "Interrupt -- have you seen Joe recently?" See priority
interrupt.
interrupts locked out adj.
When someone is ignoring you. In a restaurant, after several
fruitless attempts to get the waitress's attention, a hacker might
well observe "She must have interrupts locked out". The synonym
interrupts disabled is also common. Variations abound; "to have one's
interrupt mask bit set" and "interrupts masked out" are also heard.
See also spl.
intertwingled
adj. [Invented by Theodor Holm Nelson, prob. a blend of "mingled" and
"intertwined".] Connected together in a complex way; specifically,
composed of one another's components.
intro n.
[demoscene] Introductory screen of some production.
2. A short demo, usually showing just one or two screens.
3. Small, usually 64k, 40k or 4k demo. Sizes are generally dictated
by compo rules. See also dentro, demo.
IRC /I·R·C/, n.
[Internet Relay Chat] A worldwide "party line" network that allows
one to converse with others in real time. IRC is structured as a
network of Internet servers, each of which accepts connections from
client programs, one per user. The IRC community and the Usenet and
MUD communities overlap to some extent, including both hackers and
regular folks who have discovered the wonders of computer networks.
Some Usenet jargon has been adopted on IRC, as have some conventions
such as emoticons. There is also a vigorous native jargon,
represented in this lexicon by entries marked `[IRC]'. See also talk
mode.
iron n.
Hardware, especially older and larger hardware of mainframe class
with big metal cabinets housing relatively low-density electronics
(but the term is also used of modern supercomputers). Often in the
phrase big iron. Oppose silicon. See also dinosaur.
Iron Age n.
In the history of computing, 1961-1971 -- the formative era of
commercial mainframe technology, when ferrite-core dinosaurs
ruled the earth. The Iron Age began, ironically enough, with the
delivery of the first minicomputer (the PDP-1) and ended with the
introduction of the first commercial microprocessor (the Intel 4004)
in 1971. See also Stone Age; compare elder days.
iron box n.
[Unix/Internet] A special environment set up to trap a cracker
logging in over remote connections long enough to be traced. May
include a modified shell restricting the cracker's movements in
unobvious ways, and `bait' files designed to keep him interested and
logged on. See also back door, firewall machine, Venus flytrap,
and Clifford Stoll's account in The Cuckoo's Egg of how he made and
used one (see the Bibliography in Appendix C). Compare padded cell,
honey pot.
ironmonger n.
[IBM] A hardware specialist (derogatory). Compare sandbender,
polygon pusher.
ISO standard cup of tea n.
[South Africa] A cup of tea with milk and one teaspoon of sugar,
where the milk is poured into the cup before the tea. Variations are
ISO 0, with no sugar; ISO 2, with two spoons of sugar; and so on.
This may derive from the "NATO standard" cup of coffee and tea (milk
and two sugars), military slang going back to the late 1950s and
parodying NATO's relentless bureaucratic drive to standardize parts
across European and U.S. militaries.
Like many ISO standards, this one has a faintly alien ring in North
America, where hackers generally shun the decadent British practice
of adulterating perfectly good tea with dairy products and prefer
instead to add a wedge of lemon, if anything. If one were feeling
extremely silly, one might hypothesize an analogous ANSI standard cup
of tea and wind up with a political situation distressingly similar
to several that arise in much more serious technical contexts. (Milk
and lemon don't mix very well.)
[2000 update: There is now, in fact, an ISO standard 3103: `Method
for preparation of a liquor of tea for use in sensory tests.',
alleged to be equivalent to British Standard BS6008: How to make a
standard cup of tea. --ESR]
ISP /I·S·P/
Common abbreviation for Internet Service Provider, a kind of company
that barely existed before 1993. ISPs sell Internet access to the
mass market. While the big nationwide commercial BBSs with Internet
access (like America Online, CompuServe, GEnie, Netcom, etc.) are
technically ISPs, the term is usually reserved for local or regional
small providers (often run by hackers turned entrepreneurs) who
resell Internet access cheaply without themselves being information
providers or selling advertising. Compare NSP.
Itanic n.
The Intel Itanium, so called in reference to the legendary disaster
that was the Titanic. This term bubbled up in several places on the
Internet in 1999 when it was beginning to become clear that the
Itanium was turning into the most expensive and protracted flop in
the history of the semiconductor industry.
ITS /I·T·S/, n.
1. Incompatible Time-sharing System, an influential though highly
idiosyncratic operating system written for PDP-6s and PDP-10s at MIT
and long used at the MIT AI Lab. Much AI-hacker jargon derives from
ITS folklore, and to have been `an ITS hacker' qualifies one
instantly as an old-timer of the most venerable sort. ITS pioneered
many important innovations, including transparent file sharing
between machines and terminal-independent I/O. After about 1982, most
actual work was shifted to newer machines, with the remaining ITS
boxes run essentially as a hobby and service to the hacker community.
The shutdown of the lab's last ITS machine in May 1990 marked the end
of an era and sent old-time hackers into mourning nationwide (see
high moby). There is an ITS home page.
2. A mythical image of operating-system perfection worshiped by a
bizarre, fervent retro-cult of old-time hackers and ex-users (see
troglodyte, sense 2). ITS worshipers manage somehow to continue
believing that an OS maintained by assembly-language hand-hacking
that supported only monocase 6-character filenames in one directory
per account remains superior to today's state of commercial art
(their venom against Unix is particularly intense). See also holy
wars, Weenix.
IWBNI //
Abbreviation for `It Would Be Nice If'. Compare WIBNI.
IYFEG //
[Usenet] Abbreviation for `Insert Your Favorite Ethnic Group'. Used
as a meta-name when telling ethnic jokes on the net to avoid
offending anyone. See JEDR.
= J =
=====
J. Random /J rand´m/, n.
[common; generalized from J. Random Hacker] Arbitrary; ordinary;
any one; any old. `J. Random' is often prefixed to a noun to make a
name out of it. It means roughly some particular or any specific one.
"Would you let J. Random Loser marry your daughter?" The most common
uses are `J. Random Hacker', `J. Random Loser', and `J. Random Nerd'
("Should J. Random Loser be allowed to kill other peoples'
processes?"), but it can be used simply as an elaborate version of
random in any sense.
J. Random Hacker /J rand´m hak´r/, n.
[very common] A mythical figure like the Unknown Soldier; the
archetypal hacker nerd. This term is one of the oldest in the jargon,
apparently going back to MIT in the 1960s. See random, Suzie
COBOL. This may originally have been inspired by `J. Fred Muggs', a
show-biz chimpanzee whose name was a household word back in the early
days of TMRC, and was probably influenced by `J. Presper Eckert'
(one of the co-inventors of the electronic computer). See also Fred
Foobar.
jack in v.
To log on to a machine or connect to a network or BBS, esp. for
purposes of entering a virtual reality simulation such as a MUD
or IRC (leaving is "jacking out"). This term derives from
cyberpunk SF, in which it was used for the act of plugging an
electrode set into neural sockets in order to interface the brain
directly to a virtual reality. It is primarily used by MUD and IRC
fans and younger hackers on BBS systems.
jaggies /jag´eez/, n.
The `stairstep' effect observable when an edge (esp. a linear edge of
very shallow or steep slope) is rendered on a pixel device (as
opposed to a vector display).
Java
An object-oriented language originally developed at Sun by James
Gosling (and known by the name "Oak") with the intention of being the
successor to C++ (the project was however originally sold to Sun as
an embedded language for use in set-top boxes). After the great
Internet explosion of 1993-1994, Java was hacked into a
byte-interpreted language and became the focus of a relentless hype
campaign by Sun, which touted it as the new language of choice for
distributed applications.
Java is indeed a stronger and cleaner design than C++ and has been
embraced by many in the hacker community -- but it has been a
considerable source of frustration to many others, for reasons
ranging from uneven support on different Web browser platforms,
performance issues, and some notorious deficiencies in some of the
standard toolkits (AWT in particular). Microsoft's determined
attempts to corrupt the language (which it rightly sees as a threat
to its OS monopoly) have not helped. As of 2003, these issues are
still in the process of being resolved.
Despite many attractive features and a good design, it is difficult
to find people willing to praise Java who have tried to implement a
complex, real-world system with it (but to be fair it is early days
yet, and no other language has ever been forced to spend its
childhood under the limelight the way Java has). On the other hand,
Java has already been a big win in academic circles, where it has
taken the place of Pascal as the preferred tool for teaching the
basics of good programming to the next generation of hackers.
JCL /J·C·L/, n.
1. IBM's supremely rude Job Control Language. JCL is the script
language used to control the execution of programs in IBM's batch
systems. JCL has a very fascist syntax, and some versions will, for
example, barf if two spaces appear where it expects one. Most
programmers confronted with JCL simply copy a working file (or card
deck), changing the file names. Someone who actually understands and
generates unique JCL is regarded with the mixed respect one gives to
someone who memorizes the phone book. It is reported that hackers at
IBM itself sometimes sing "Who's the breeder of the crud that mangles
you and me? I-B-M, J-C-L, M-o-u-s-e" to the tune of the Mickey Mouse
Club theme to express their opinion of the beast.
2. A comparative for any very rude software that a hacker is
expected to use. "That's as bad as JCL." As with COBOL, JCL is
often used as an archetype of ugliness even by those who haven't
experienced it. See also IBM, fear and loathing.
A (poorly documented, naturally) shell simulating JCL syntax is
available at the Retrocomputing Museum http://www.catb.org/retro/.
JEDR //, n.
Synonymous with IYFEG. At one time, people in the Usenet newsgroup
rec.humor.funny tended to use `JEDR' instead of IYFEG or
`<ethnic>'; this stemmed from a public attempt to suppress the group
once made by a loser with initials JEDR after he was offended by an
ethnic joke posted there. (The practice was retconned by expanding
these initials as `Joke Ethnic/Denomination/Race'.) After much sound
and fury JEDR faded away; this term appears to be doing likewise.
JEDR's only permanent effect on the net.culture was to discredit
`sensitivity' arguments for censorship so thoroughly that more recent
attempts to raise them have met with immediate and near-universal
rejection.
Jeff K.
The spiritual successor to B1FF and the archetype of script
kiddies. Jeff K. is a sixteen-year-old suburbanite who fancies
himself a "l33t haX0r", although his knowledge of computers seems to
be limited to the procedure for getting Quake up and running. His Web
page http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/ features a number of
hopelessly naive articles, essays, and rants, all filled with the
kind of misspellings, studlycaps, and number-for-letter
substitutions endemic to the script kiddie and warez d00dz
communities. Jeff's offerings, among other things, include hardware
advice (such as "AMD VERSIS PENTIUM" and "HOW TO OVARCLOAK YOUR
COMPUTAR"), his own Quake clan (Clan 40 OUNSCE), and his own comic
strip (Wacky Fun Computar Comic Jokes).
Like B1FF, Jeff K. is (fortunately) a hoax. Jeff K. was created by
internet game journalist Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka, whose web site
Something Awful (http://www.somethingawful.com) highlights
unintentionally humorous news items and Web sites, as a parody of the
kind of teenage luser who infests Quake servers, chat rooms, and
other places where computer enthusiasts congregate. He is
well-recognized in the PC game community and his influence has spread
to hacker fora like Slashdot as well.
jello n.
[Usenet: by analogy with spam] A message that is both excessively
cross-posted and too frequently posted, as opposed to spam (which
is merely too frequently posted) or velveeta (which is merely
excessively cross-posted). This term is widely recognized but not
commonly used; most people refer to both kinds of abuse or their
combination as spam.
Jeopardy-style quoting
See top-post.
jibble
[UK] Unspecified stuff. An unspecified action. A deliberately blank
word; compare gorets. A deliberate experiment in tracking the
spread of a near-meaningless word. See
http://www.jibble.org/jibblemeaning.php.
jiffy n.
1. The duration of one tick of the system clock on your computer (see
tick). Often one AC cycle time (1/60 second in the U.S. and Canada,
1/50 most other places), but more recently 1/100 sec has become
common. "The swapper runs every 6 jiffies" means that the virtual
memory management routine is executed once for every 6 ticks of the
clock, or about ten times a second.
2. Confusingly, the term is sometimes also used for a 1-millisecond
wall time interval.
3. Even more confusingly, physicists semi-jokingly use `jiffy' to
mean the time required for light to travel one foot in a vacuum,
which turns out to be close to one nanosecond. Other physicists use
the term for the quantum-nechanical lower bound on meaningful time
lengths,
4. Indeterminate time from a few seconds to forever. "I'll do it in a
jiffy" means certainly not now and possibly never. This is a bit
contrary to the more widespread use of the word. Oppose nano. See
also Real Soon Now.
job security n.
When some piece of code is written in a particularly obscure
fashion, and no good reason (such as time or space optimization) can
be discovered, it is often said that the programmer was attempting to
increase his job security (i.e., by making himself indispensable for
maintenance). This sour joke seldom has to be said in full; if two
hackers are looking over some code together and one points at a
section and says "job security", the other one may just nod.
jock n.
1. A programmer who is characterized by large and somewhat
brute-force programs. See brute force.
2. When modified by another noun, describes a specialist in some
particular computing area. The compounds compiler jock and systems
jock seem to be the best-established examples.
joe code /joh´ kohd`/, n.
1. Code that is overly tense and unmaintainable. "Perl may be a
handy program, but if you look at the source, it's complete joe
code."
2. Badly written, possibly buggy code.
Correspondents wishing to remain anonymous have fingered a particular
Joe at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and observed that usage has
drifted slightly; the original sobriquet `Joe code' was intended in
sense 1.
1994 update: This term has now generalized to `<name> code', used to
designate code with distinct characteristics traceable to its author.
"This section doesn't check for a NULL return from malloc()! Oh. No
wonder! It's Ed code!". Used most often with a programmer who has
left the shop and thus is a convenient scapegoat for anything that is
wrong with the project.
joe-job n., vt.
A spam run forged to appear as though it came from an innocent party,
who is then generally flooded by the bounces; or, the act of
performing such a run. The original incident is described here.
juggling eggs vi.
Keeping a lot of state in your head while modifying a program.
"Don't bother me now, I'm juggling eggs", means that an interrupt is
likely to result in the program's being scrambled. In the classic
1975 first-contact SF novel The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and
Jerry Pournelle, an alien describes a very difficult task by saying
"We juggle priceless eggs in variable gravity." It is possible that
this was intended as tribute to a less colorful use of the same image
in Robert Heinlein's influential 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange
Land. See also hack mode and on the gripping hand.
juice n.
The weight of a given node in some sort of graph (like a web of trust
or a relevance-weighted search query). This appears to have been
generalized from google juice, but may derive from black urban
slang for power or a respect. Example: "I signed your key, but I
really don't have the juice to be authoritative."
jump off into never-never land v.
[from J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan] An unexpected jump in a program that
produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. Compare
hyperspace.
jupiter vt.
[IRC] To kill an IRC bot or user and then take its place by
adopting its nick so that it cannot reconnect. Named after a
particular IRC user who did this to NickServ, the robot in charge of
preventing people from inadvertently using a nick claimed by another
user. Now commonly shortened to jupe.
= K =
=====
K /K/, n.
[from kilo-] A kilobyte. Used both as a spoken word and a written
suffix (like meg and gig for megabyte and gigabyte). See
quantifiers.
K&R n.
Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie's book The C Programming Language,
esp. the classic and influential first edition (Prentice-Hall 1978;
ISBN 0-13-110163-3). Syn. Old Testament. See also New Testament.
k- pref.
[rare; poss fr. kilo- prefix] Extremely. Rare among hackers, but
quite common among crackers and warez d00dz in compounds such as
k-kool /K´kool´/, k-rad /K´rad´/, and k-awesome /K´aw`sm/. Also used
to intensify negatives; thus, k-evil, k-lame, k-screwed, and
k-annoying. Overuse of this prefix, or use in more formal or
technical contexts, is considered an indicator of lamer status.
kahuna /k@·hoo´n@/, n.
[IBM: from the Hawaiian title for a shaman] Synonym for wizard,
guru.
kamikaze packet n.
The `official' jargon for what is more commonly called a Christmas
tree packet. RFC-1025, TCP and IP Bake Off says:
10 points for correctly being able to process a "Kamikaze" packet
(AKA nastygram, christmas tree packet, lamp test segment, et al.).
That is, correctly handle a segment with the maximum combination
of features at once (e.g., a SYN URG PUSH FIN segment with options
and data).
See also Chernobyl packet.
kangaroo code n.
Syn. spaghetti code.
ken /ken/, n.
1. [Unix] Ken Thompson, principal inventor of Unix. In the early days
he used to hand-cut distribution tapes, often with a note that read
"Love, ken". Old-timers still use his first name (sometimes
uncapitalized, because it's a login name and mail address) in
third-person reference; it is widely understood (on Usenet, in
particular) that without a last name `Ken' refers only to Ken
Thompson. Similarly, `Dennis' without last name means Dennis Ritchie
(and he is often known as dmr). See also demigod, Unix.
2. A flaming user. This was originated by the Software Support group
at Symbolics because the two greatest flamers in the user community
were both named Ken.
kernel-of-the-week club
The fictional society that BSD bigots claim Linux users belong
to, alluding to the release-early-release-often style preferred by
the kernel maintainers. See bazaar. This was almost certainly
inspired by the earlier bug-of-the-month club.
kgbvax /K·G·B´vaks/, n.
See kremvax.
KIBO /ki:´boh/
1. [acronym] Knowledge In, Bullshit Out. A summary of what happens
whenever valid data is passed through an organization (or person)
that deliberately or accidentally disregards or ignores its
significance. Consider, for example, what an advertising campaign can
do with a product's actual specifications. Compare GIGO; see also
SNAFU principle.
2. James Parry <kibo@world.std.com>, a Usenetter infamous for various
surrealist net.pranks and an uncanny, machine-assisted knack for
joining any thread in which his nom de guerre is mentioned. He has a
website at http://www.kibo.com/.
kiboze v.
[Usenet] To grep the Usenet news for a string, especially with the
intention of posting a follow-up. This activity was popularised by
Kibo (see KIBO, sense 2).
kibozo /ki:·boh´zoh/, n.
[Usenet] One who kibozes but is not Kibo (see KIBO, sense 2).
kick v.
1. [IRC] To cause somebody to be removed from a IRC channel, an
option only available to channel ops. This is an extreme measure,
often used to combat extreme flamage or flooding, but sometimes
used at the CHOP's whim.
2. To reboot a machine or kill a running process. "The server's down,
let me go kick it."
kill file n.
[Usenet; very common] (alt.: KILL file) Per-user file(s) used by some
Usenet reading programs (originally Larry Wall's rn(1)) to discard
summarily (without presenting for reading) articles matching some
particularly uninteresting (or unwanted) patterns of subject, author,
or other header lines. Thus to add a person (or subject) to one's
kill file is to arrange for that person to be ignored by one's
newsreader in future. By extension, it may be used for a decision to
ignore the person or subject in other media. See also plonk.
killer app
The application that actually makes a sustaining market for a
promising but under-utilized technology. First used in the mid-1980s
to describe Lotus 1-2-3 once it became evident that demand for that
product had been the major driver of the early business market for
IBM PCs. The term was then retrospectively applied to VisiCalc, which
had played a similar role in the success of the Apple II. After 1994
it became commonplace to describe the World Wide Web as the
Internet's killer app. One of the standard questions asked about each
new personal-computer technology as it emerges has become "what's the
killer app?"
killer micro n.
[popularized by Eugene Brooks c.1990] A microprocessor-based machine
that infringes on mini, mainframe, or supercomputer performance turf.
Often heard in "No one will survive the attack of the killer
micros!", the battle cry of the downsizers.
The popularity of the phrase `attack of the killer micros' is
doubtless reinforced by the title of the movie Attack Of The Killer
Tomatoes (one of the canonical examples of so-bad-it's-wonderful
among hackers). This has even more flavor now that killer micros
have gone on the offensive not just individually (in workstations)
but in hordes (within massively parallel computers).
[2002 update: Eugene Brooks was right. Since this term first entered
the Jargon File in 1990, the minicomputer has effectively vanished,
the mainframe sector is in deep and apparently terminal decline,
and even the supercomputer business has contracted into a smaller
niche. It's networked killer micros as far as the eye can see. --ESR]
killer poke n.
A recipe for inducing hardware damage on a machine via insertion of
invalid values (see poke) into a memory-mapped control register;
used esp. of various fairly well-known tricks on bitty boxes
without hardware memory management (such as the IBM PC and Commodore
PET) that can overload and trash analog electronics in the monitor.
See also HCF.
kilo- pref.
[SI] See quantifiers.
kilogoogle n.
The standard unit of measurement for Web search hits: a thousand
Google matches. "There are about a kilogoogle and a half sites with
that band's name on it." Compare google juice.
KIPS /kips/, n.
[abbreviation, by analogy with MIPS using K] Thousands (not
1024s) of Instructions Per Second. Usage: rare.
KISS Principle /kis´ prin´si·pl/, n.
"Keep It Simple, Stupid". A maxim often invoked when discussing
design to fend off creeping featurism and control development
complexity. Possibly related to the marketroid maxim on sales
presentations, "Keep It Short and Simple".
kit n.
[Usenet; poss.: fr.: DEC slang for a full software distribution, as
opposed to a patch or upgrade] A source software distribution that
has been packaged in such a way that it can (theoretically) be
unpacked and installed according to a series of steps using only
standard Unix tools, and entirely documented by some reasonable chain
of references from the top-level README file. The more general term
distribution may imply that special tools or more stringent
conditions on the host environment are required.
KLB n.
[common among Perl hackers] Known Lazy Bastard. Used to describe
somebody who perpetually asks questions which are easily answered by
referring to the reference material or manual.
klone /klohn/, n.
See clone, sense 4.
kludge
1. /kluhj/ n. Incorrect (though regrettably common) spelling of
kluge (US). These two words have been confused in American usage
since the early 1960s, and widely confounded in Great Britain since
the end of World War II.
2. [TMRC] A crock that works. (A long-ago Datamation article by
Jackson Granholme similarly said: "An ill-assorted collection of
poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole.")
3. v. To use a kludge to get around a problem. "I've kludged around
it for now, but I'll fix it up properly later."
This word appears to have derived from Scots kludge or kludgie for a
common toilet, via British military slang. It apparently became
confused with U.S. kluge during or after World War II; some Britons
from that era use both words in definably different ways, but kluge
is now uncommon in Great Britain. `Kludge' in Commonwealth hackish
differs in meaning from `kluge' in that it lacks the positive senses;
a kludge is something no Commonwealth hacker wants to be associated
too closely with. Also, `kludge' is more widely known in British
mainstream slang than `kluge' is in the U.S.
kluge /klooj/
[from the German `klug', clever; poss. related to Polish & Russian
`klucz' (a key, a hint, a main point)]
1. n. A Rube Goldberg (or Heath Robinson) device, whether in hardware
or software.
2. n. A clever programming trick intended to solve a particular nasty
case in an expedient, if not clear, manner. Often used to repair
bugs. Often involves ad-hockery and verges on being a crock.
3. n. Something that works for the wrong reason.
4. vt. To insert a kluge into a program. "I've kluged this routine to
get around that weird bug, but there's probably a better way."
5. [WPI] n. A feature that is implemented in a rude manner.
Nowadays this term is often encountered in the variant spelling
`kludge'. Reports from old farts are consistent that `kluge' was
the original spelling, reported around computers as far back as the
mid-1950s and, at that time, used exclusively of hardware kluges. In
1947, the New York Folklore Quarterly reported a classic shaggy-dog
story `Murgatroyd the Kluge Maker' then current in the Armed Forces,
in which a `kluge' was a complex and puzzling artifact with a trivial
function. Other sources report that `kluge' was common Navy slang in
the WWII era for any piece of electronics that worked well on shore
but consistently failed at sea.
However, there is reason to believe this slang use may be a decade
older. Several respondents have connected it to the brand name of a
device called a "Kluge paper feeder", an adjunct to mechanical
printing presses. Legend has it that the Kluge feeder was designed
before small, cheap electric motors and control electronics; it
relied on a fiendishly complex assortment of cams, belts, and
linkages to both power and synchronize all its operations from one
motive driveshaft. It was accordingly temperamental, subject to
frequent breakdowns, and devilishly difficult to repair -- but oh, so
clever! People who tell this story also aver that `Kluge' was the
name of a design engineer.
There is in fact a Brandtjen & Kluge Inc., an old family business
that manufactures printing equipment -- interestingly, their name is
pronounced /kloo´gee/! Henry Brandtjen, president of the firm, told
me (ESR, 1994) that his company was co-founded by his father and an
engineer named Kluge /kloo´gee/, who built and co-designed the
original Kluge automatic feeder in 1919. Mr. Brandtjen claims,
however, that this was a simple device (with only four cams); he says
he has no idea how the myth of its complexity took hold. Other
correspondents differ with Mr. Brandtjen's history of the device and
his allegation that it was a simple rather than complex one, but
agree that the Kluge automatic feeder was the most likely source of
the folklore.
TMRC and the MIT hacker culture of the early '60s seems to have
developed in a milieu that remembered and still used some WWII
military slang (see also foobar). It seems likely that `kluge' came
to MIT via alumni of the many military electronics projects that had
been located in Cambridge (many in MIT's venerable Building 20, in
which TMRC is also located) during the war.
The variant `kludge' was apparently popularized by the Datamation
article mentioned under kludge; it was titled How to Design a
Kludge (February 1962, pp. 30, 31). This spelling was probably
imported from Great Britain, where kludge has an independent
history (though this fact was largely unknown to hackers on either
side of the Atlantic before a mid-1993 debate in the Usenet group
alt.folklore.computers over the First and Second Edition versions of
this entry; everybody used to think kludge was just a mutation of
kluge). It now appears that the British, having forgotten the
etymology of their own `kludge' when `kluge' crossed the Atlantic,
repaid the U.S. by lobbing the `kludge' orthography in the other
direction and confusing their American cousins' spelling!
The result of this history is a tangle. Many younger U.S. hackers
pronounce the word as /klooj/ but spell it, incorrectly for its
meaning and pronunciation, as `kludge'. (Phonetically, consider huge,
refuge, centrifuge, and deluge as opposed to sludge, judge, budge,
and fudge. Whatever its failings in other areas, English spelling is
perfectly consistent about this distinction.) British hackers mostly
learned /kluhj/ orally, use it in a restricted negative sense and are
at least consistent. European hackers have mostly learned the word
from written American sources and tend to pronounce it /kluhj/ but
use the wider American meaning!
Some observers consider this mess appropriate in view of the word's
meaning.
kluge around vt.
To avoid a bug or difficult condition by inserting a kluge. Compare
workaround.
kluge up vt.
To lash together a quick hack to perform a task; this is milder than
cruft together and has some of the connotations of hack up (note,
however, that the construction kluge on corresponding to hack on is
never used). "I've kluged up this routine to dump the buffer contents
to a safe place."
Knights of the Lambda Calculus n.
A semi-mythical organization of wizardly LISP and Scheme hackers. The
name refers to a mathematical formalism invented by Alonzo Church,
with which LISP is intimately connected. There is no enrollment list
and the criteria for induction are unclear, but one well-known LISPer
has been known to give out buttons and, in general, the members know
who they are....
knobs pl.n.
Configurable options, even in software and even those you can't
adjust in real time. Anything you can twiddle is a knob. "Has this
PNG viewer got an alpha knob?" Software may be described as having
"knobs and switches" or occasionally "knobs and lights". See also
nerd knob
Knuth /ka·nooth´/, n.
[Donald E. Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming] Mythically, the
reference that answers all questions about data structures or
algorithms. A safe answer when you do not know: "I think you can find
that in Knuth." Contrast the literature. See also bible. There is
a Donald Knuth home page at http://Sunburn.Stanford.EDU/~knuth/.
koan /koh´an/, n.
A Zen teaching riddle. Classically, koans are attractive paradoxes to
be meditated on; their purpose is to help one to enlightenment by
temporarily jamming normal cognitive processing so that something
more interesting can happen (this practice is associated with Rinzai
Zen Buddhism). Defined here because hackers are very fond of the koan
form and compose their own koans for humorous and/or enlightening
effect. See Some AI Koans, has the X nature, hacker humor.
kook
[Usenet; originally and more formally, net.kook] Term used to
describe a regular poster who continually posts messages with no
apparent grounding in reality. Different from a troll, which
implies a sort of sly wink on the part of a poster who knows better,
kooks really believe what they write, to the extent that they believe
anything.
The kook trademark is paranoia and grandiosity. Kooks will often
build up elaborate imaginary support structures, fake corporations
and the like, and continue to act as if those things are real even
after their falsity has been documented in public.
While they may appear harmless, and are usually filtered out by the
other regular participants in a newsgroup of mailing list, they can
still cause problems because the necessity for these measures is not
immediately apparent to newcomers; there are several instances on
record, for example, of journalists writing stories with quotes from
kooks who caught them unaware.
An entertaining web page chronicling the activities of many notable
kooks can be found at http://www.crank.net/usenet.html.
Kool-Aid
[from a kid's sugar-enriched drink in fruity flavors] When someone
who should know better succumbs to marketing influences and actually
begins to believe the propaganda being dished out by a vendor, they
are said to have drunk the Kool-Aid. Usually the decortication
process is slow and almost unnoticeable until one day the victim
emerges as a True Believer and begins spreading the faith himself.
The term originates in the suicide of 914 followers of Jim Jones's
People's Temple cult in Guyana in 1978 (there are also resonances
with Ken Kesey's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests from the 1960s). What
the Jonestown victims actually drank was cyanide-laced Flavor-Aid, a
cheap knockoff, rather than Kool-Aid itself. There is a FAQ on this
topic.
This has live variants. When a suit is blithering on about their
latest technology and how it will save the world, that's `pouring
Kool-Aid'. When the suit does not violate the laws of physics,
doesn't make impossible claims, and in fact says something reasonable
and believable, that's pouring good Kool-Aid, usually used in the
sentence "He pours good Kool-Aid, doesn't he?" This connotes that the
speaker might be about to drink same.
kremvax /krem·vaks/, n.
[from the then-large number of Usenet VAXen with names of the
form foovax] Originally, a fictitious Usenet site at the Kremlin,
announced on April 1, 1984 in a posting ostensibly originated there
by Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. The posting was actually
forged by Piet Beertema as an April Fool's joke. Other fictitious
sites mentioned in the hoax were moskvax and kgbvax. This was
probably the funniest of the many April Fool's forgeries perpetrated
on Usenet (which has negligible security against them), because the
notion that Usenet might ever penetrate the Iron Curtain seemed so
totally absurd at the time.
In fact, it was only six years later that the first genuine site in
Moscow, demos.su, joined Usenet. Some readers needed convincing that
the postings from it weren't just another prank. Vadim Antonov,
senior programmer at Demos and the major poster from there up to
mid-1991, was quite aware of all this, referred to it frequently in
his own postings, and at one point twitted some credulous readers by
blandly asserting that he was a hoax!
Eventually he even arranged to have the domain's gateway site named
kremvax, thus neatly turning fiction into fact and demonstrating that
the hackish sense of humor transcends cultural barriers. [Mr. Antonov
also contributed the Russian-language material for this lexicon.
--ESR]
In an even more ironic historical footnote, kremvax became an
electronic center of the anti-communist resistance during the bungled
hard-line coup of August 1991. During those three days the Soviet
UUCP network centered on kremvax became the only trustworthy news
source for many places within the USSR. Though the sysops were
concentrating on internal communications, cross-border postings
included immediate transliterations of Boris Yeltsin's decrees
condemning the coup and eyewitness reports of the demonstrations in
Moscow's streets. In those hours, years of speculation that
totalitarianism would prove unable to maintain its grip on
politically-loaded information in the age of computer networking were
proved devastatingly accurate -- and the original kremvax joke became
a reality as Yeltsin and the new Russian revolutionaries of glasnost
and perestroika made kremvax one of the timeliest means of their
outreach to the West.
kyrka /chur´ka/, n.
[Swedish] See feature key.
= L =
=====
lag n.
[MUD, IRC; very common] When used without qualification this is
synonymous with netlag. Curiously, people will often complain "I'm
really lagged" when in fact it is their server or network connection
that is lagging.
lamer n.
[originally among Amiga fans]
1. Synonym for luser, not used much by hackers but common among
warez d00dz, crackers, and phreakers. A person who downloads
much, but who never uploads. (Also known as leecher). Oppose elite.
Has the same connotations of self-conscious elitism that use of
luser does among hackers.
2. Someone who tries to crack a BBS.
3. Someone who annoys the sysop or other BBS users -- for instance,
by posting lots of silly messages, uploading virus-ridden software,
frequently dropping carrier, etc.
Crackers also use it to refer to cracker wannabees. In phreak
culture, a lamer is one who scams codes off others rather than doing
cracks or really understanding the fundamental concepts. In warez
d00dz culture, where the ability to wave around cracked commercial
software within days of (or before) release to the commercial market
is much esteemed, the lamer might try to upload garbage or shareware
or something incredibly old (old in this context is read as a few
years to anything older than 3 days). `Lamer' is also much used in
the IRC world in a similar sense to the above.
This term seems to have originated in the Commodore-64 scene in the
mid 1980s. It was popularized among Amiga crackers of the mid-1980s
by `Lamer Exterminator', the most famous and feared Amiga virus ever,
which gradually corrupted non-write-protected floppy disks with bad
sectors. The bad sectors, when looked at, were overwritten with
repetitions of the string "LAMER!".
LAN party /lan par´tee/
An event to which several users bring their boxes and hook them up to
a common LAN (Local Area Network), often for the purpose of playing
multiplayer computer games, especially action games such as Quake or
Unreal Tournament. This is also a good venue for people to show-off
their fancy new hardware. Such events can get pretty large, several
hundred people attend the annual QuakeCon in Texas. The theoretical
rationale behind LAN parties is that playing over the Internet often
introduces too much lag in the playing experience -- but just as
important is the special quality of trash-talking each other across
the room while playing, and the instinctive social ritual of
consuming vast amounts of food and drink together.
language lawyer n.
A person, usually an experienced or senior software engineer, who is
intimately familiar with many or most of the numerous restrictions
and features (both useful and esoteric) applicable to one or more
computer programming languages. A language lawyer is distinguished by
the ability to show you the five sentences scattered through a
200-plus-page manual that together imply the answer to your question
"if only you had thought to look there". Compare wizard, legal,
legalese.
languages of choice n.
C, Perl, Python, Java and LISP -- the dominant languages in
open-source development. This list has changed over time, but slowly.
Java bumped C++ off of it, and Python appears to be recruiting people
who would otherwise gravitate to LISP (which used to be much more
important than it is now). Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in
small but influential communities.
The Real Programmers who loved FORTRAN and assembler have pretty
much all retired or died since 1990. Assembler is generally no longer
considered interesting or appropriate for anything but HLL
implementation, glue, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific
uses in systems programs. FORTRAN occupies a shrinking niche in
scientific programming.
Most hackers tend to frown on languages like Pascal and Ada, which
don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for
hacking (see bondage-and-discipline language), and to regard
everything even remotely connected with COBOL or other traditional
DP languages as a total and unmitigated loss.
LART //
Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool.
1. n. In the collective mythos of scary devil monastery, this is an
essential item in the toolkit of every BOFH. The LART classic is a
2x4 or other large billet of wood usable as a club, to be applied
upside the head of spammers and other people who cause sysadmins more
grief than just naturally goes with the job. Perennial debates rage
on alt.sysadmin.recovery over what constitutes the truly effective
LART; knobkerries, automatic weapons, flamethrowers, and tactical
nukes all have their partisans. Compare clue-by-four.
2. v. To use a LART. Some would add "in malice", but some sysadmins
do prefer to gently lart their users as a first (and sometimes final)
warning.
3. interj. Calling for one's LART, much as a surgeon might call
"Scalpel!".
4. interj. [rare] Used in flames as a rebuke. "LART! LART! LART!"
larval stage n.
Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration on coding apparently
passed through by all fledgling hackers. Common symptoms include the
perpetration of more than one 36-hour hacking run in a given week;
neglect of all other activities including usual basics like food,
sleep, and personal hygiene; and a chronic case of advanced
bleary-eye. Can last from 6 months to 2 years, the apparent median
being around 18 months. A few so afflicted never resume a more
`normal' life, but the ordeal seems to be necessary to produce really
wizardly (as opposed to merely competent) programmers. See also
wannabee. A less protracted and intense version of larval stage
(typically lasting about a month) may recur when one is learning a
new OS or programming language.
lase /layz/, vt.
To print a given document via a laser printer. "OK, let's lase that
sucker and see if all those graphics-macro calls did the right
things."
laser chicken n.
Kung Pao Chicken, a standard Chinese dish containing chicken,
peanuts, and hot red peppers in a spicy pepper-oil sauce. Many
hackers call it laser chicken for two reasons: It can zap you just
like a laser, and the sauce has a red color reminiscent of some laser
beams. The dish has also been called gunpowder chicken.
In a variation on this theme, it is reported that some Australian
hackers have redesignated the common dish `lemon chicken' as
Chernobyl Chicken. The name is derived from the color of the sauce,
which is considered bright enough to glow in the dark (as,
mythically, do some of the inhabitants of Chernobyl).
leaf site n.
[obs.] Before pervasive TCP/IP, this term was used of a machine that
merely originated and read Usenet news or mail, and did not relay any
third-party traffic. It was often uttered in a critical tone; when
the ratio of leaf sites to backbone, rib, and other relay sites got
too high, the network tended to develop bottlenecks. Compare
backbone site. Now that traffic patterns depend more on the
distribution of routers than of host machines this term has largely
fallen out of use.
leak n.
With qualifier, one of a class of resource-management bugs that occur
when resources are not freed properly after operations on them are
finished, so they effectively disappear (leak out). This leads to
eventual exhaustion as new allocation requests come in. memory leak
has its own entry; one might also refer, to, say, a window handle
leak in a window system.
leaky heap n.
[Cambridge] An arena with a memory leak.
leapfrog attack n.
Use of userid and password information obtained illicitly from one
host (e.g., downloading a file of account IDs and passwords, tapping
TELNET, etc.) to compromise another host. Also, the act of TELNETting
through one or more hosts in order to confuse a trace (a standard
cracker procedure).
leech
1. n. (Also leecher.) Among BBS types, crackers and warez d00dz,
one who consumes knowledge without generating new software, cracks,
or techniques. BBS culture specifically defines a leech as someone
who downloads files with few or no uploads in return, and who does
not contribute to the message section. Cracker culture extends this
definition to someone (a lamer, usually) who constantly presses
informed sources for information and/or assistance, but has nothing
to contribute. See troughie.
2. v. [common, Toronto area] v. To download a file across any kind of
internet link. "Hop on IRC later so I can leech some MP3s from you."
Used to describe activities ranging from FTP, to IRC DCC-send, to ICQ
file requests, to Napster searches (but never to downloading email
with file attachments; the implication is that the download is the
result of a browse or search of some sort of file server). Seems to
be a holdover from the early 1990s when Toronto had a very active BBS
and warez scene. Synonymous with snarf (sense 2), and contrast
snarf (sense 4).
leech mode n.
[warez d00dz] "Leech mode" or "leech access" or (simply "leech" as in
"You get leech") is the access mode on a FTP site where one can
download as many files as one wants, without having to upload. Leech
mode is often promised on banner sites, but rarely obtained. See
ratio site, banner site.
legal adj.
Loosely used to mean `in accordance with all the relevant rules',
esp. in connection with some set of constraints defined by software.
"The older =+ alternate for += is no longer legal syntax in ANSI C."
"This parser processes each line of legal input the moment it sees
the trailing linefeed." Hackers often model their work as a sort of
game played with the environment in which the objective is to
maneuver through the thicket of `natural laws' to achieve a desired
objective. Their use of legal is flavored as much by this
game-playing sense as by the more conventional one having to do with
courts and lawyers. Compare language lawyer, legalese.
legalese n.
Dense, pedantic verbiage in a language description, product
specification, or interface standard; text that seems designed to
obfuscate and requires a language lawyer to parse it. Though
hackers are not afraid of high information density and complexity in
language (indeed, they rather enjoy both), they share a deep and
abiding loathing for legalese; they associate it with deception,
suits, and situations in which hackers generally get the short end
of the stick.
lenna
The Internet's first poster girl, a standard test load used in the
image processing community. The image was originally cropped from the
November 1972 issue of Playboy Magazine, which anglicized the model's
name with a double n. It has interesting properties -- complex
feathers, shadows, smooth (but not flat) surfaces -- that are
pertinent in demonstrating various processing algorithms for image
compression, filtering, dithering, texture mapping, image
recognition, and so on. After a quarter century of remaining
completely unaware that she had become an icon, a gray-haired but
still winsome Lenna finally met her fans at a computer graphics
conference in 1997. There is a fan page at www.lenna.org, with more
details. Compare Utah teapot and Stanford Bunny
[len_std.jpg]
Miss Lena Sjööblom
LER /L·E·R/
n.
1. [TMRC, from `Light-Emitting Diode'] A light-emitting resistor
(that is, one in the process of burning up). Ohm's law was broken.
See also SED.
2. An incandescent light bulb (the filament emits light because it's
resistively heated).
LERP /lerp/, vi.,n.
Quasi-acronym for Linear Interpolation, used as a verb or noun for
the operation. "Bresenham's algorithm lerps incrementally between the
two endpoints of the line."
let the smoke out v.
To fry hardware (see fried). See magic smoke for a discussion of
the underlying mythology.
letterbomb
1. n. A piece of email containing live data intended to do
nefarious things to the recipient's machine or terminal. It used to
be possible, for example, to send letterbombs that would lock up some
specific kinds of terminals when they are viewed, so thoroughly that
the user must cycle power (see cycle, sense 3) to unwedge them.
Under Unix, a letterbomb can also try to get part of its contents
interpreted as a shell command to the mailer. The results of this
could range from silly to tragic; fortunately it has been some years
since any of the standard Unix/Internet mail software was vulnerable
to such an attack (though, as the Melissa virus attack demonstrated
in early 1999, Microsoft systems can have serious problems). See also
Trojan horse; compare nastygram.
2. Loosely, a mailbomb.
lexer /lek´sr/, n.
Common hacker shorthand for lexical analyzer, the input-tokenizing
stage in the parser for a language (the part that breaks it into
word-like pieces). "Some C lexers get confused by the old-style
compound ops like =-."
life n.
1. A cellular-automata game invented by John Horton Conway and first
introduced publicly by Martin Gardner (Scientific American, October
1970); the game's popularity had to wait a few years for computers on
which it could reasonably be played, as it's no fun to simulate the
cells by hand. Many hackers pass through a stage of fascination with
it, and hackers at various places contributed heavily to the
mathematical analysis of this game (most notably Bill Gosper at MIT,
who even implemented life in TECO!). When a hacker mentions `life',
he is much more likely to mean this game than the magazine, the
breakfast cereal, or the human state of existence. Many web resources
are available starting from the Open Directory page of Life. The Life
Lexicon is a good indicator of what makes the game so fascinating.
[glider.png]
A glider, possibly the best known of the quasi-organic phenomena in
the Game of Life.
2. The opposite of Usenet. As in "Get a life!"
Life is hard prov.
[XEROX PARC] This phrase has two possible interpretations: (1) "While
your suggestion may have some merit, I will behave as though I hadn't
heard it." (2) "While your suggestion has obvious merit, equally
obvious circumstances prevent it from being seriously considered."
The charm of the phrase lies precisely in this subtle but important
ambiguity.
light pipe n.
Fiber optic cable. Oppose copper.
lightweight adj.
Opposite of heavyweight; usually found in combining forms such as
lightweight process.
like kicking dead whales down the beach adj.
Describes a slow, difficult, and disgusting process. First
popularized by a famous quote about the difficulty of getting work
done under one of IBM's mainframe OSes. "Well, you could write a C
compiler in COBOL, but it would be like kicking dead whales down the
beach." See also fear and loathing.
like nailing jelly to a tree adj.
Used to describe a task thought to be impossible, esp. one in which
the difficulty arises from poor specification or inherent
slipperiness in the problem domain. "Trying to display the
`prettiest' arrangement of nodes and arcs that diagrams a given graph
is like nailing jelly to a tree, because nobody's sure what
`prettiest' means algorithmically."
Hacker use of this term may recall mainstream slang originated early
in the 20th century by President Theodore Roosevelt. There is a
legend that, weary of inconclusive talks with Colombia over the right
to dig a canal through its then-province Panama, he remarked,
"Negotiating with those pirates is like trying to nail currant jelly
to the wall." Roosevelt's government subsequently encouraged the
anti-Colombian insurgency that created the nation of Panama.
line 666
[from Christian eschatological myth] n. The notional line of source
at which a program fails for obscure reasons, implying either that
somebody is out to get it (when you are the programmer), or that it
richly deserves to be so gotten (when you are not). "It works when I
trace through it, but seems to crash on line 666 when I run it."
"What happens is that whenever a large batch comes through, mmdf dies
on the Line of the Beast. Probably some twit hardcoded a buffer
size."
line eater, the n. obs.
1. [Usenet] A bug in some now-obsolete versions of the netnews
software that used to eat up to BUFSIZ bytes of the article text. The
bug was triggered by having the text of the article start with a
space or tab. This bug was quickly personified as a mythical creature
called the line eater, and postings often included a dummy line of
line eater food. Ironically, line eater `food' not beginning with a
space or tab wasn't actually eaten, since the bug was avoided; but if
there was a space or tab before it, then the line eater would eat the
food and the beginning of the text it was supposed to be protecting.
The practice of sacrificing to the line eater continued for some time
after the bug had been nailed to the wall, and is still humorously
referred to. The bug itself was still occasionally reported to be
lurking in some mail-to-netnews gateways as late as 1991.
2. See NSA line eater.
line noise n.
1. [techspeak] Spurious characters due to electrical noise in a
communications link, especially an RS-232 serial connection. Line
noise may be induced by poor connections, interference or crosstalk
from other circuits, electrical storms, cosmic rays, or
(notionally) birds crapping on the phone wires.
2. Any chunk of data in a file or elsewhere that looks like the
results of line noise in sense 1.
3. Text that is theoretically a readable text or program source but
employs syntax so bizarre that it looks like line noise in senses 1
or 2. Yes, there are languages this ugly. The canonical example is
TECO; it is often claimed that "TECO's input syntax is
indistinguishable from line noise." Other non-WYSIWYG editors, such
as Multics qed and Unix ed, in the hands of a real hacker, also
qualify easily, as do deliberately obfuscated languages such as
INTERCAL.
linearithmic adj.
Of an algorithm, having running time that is O(N log N). Coined as a
portmanteau of `linear' and `logarithmic' in Algorithms In C by
Robert Sedgewick (Addison-Wesley 1990, ISBN 0-201-51425-7).
link farm n.
[Unix] A directory tree that contains many links to files in a master
directory tree of files. Link farms save space when one is
maintaining several nearly identical copies of the same source tree
-- for example, when the only difference is architecture-dependent
object files. "Let's freeze the source and then rebuild the FROBOZZ-3
and FROBOZZ-4 link farms." Link farms may also be used to get around
restrictions on the number of -I (include-file directory) arguments
on older C preprocessors. However, they can also get completely out
of hand, becoming the filesystem equivalent of spaghetti code. See
also farm.
link rot n.
The natural decay of web links as the sites they're connected to
change or die. Compare bit rot.
link-dead adj.
[MUD] The state a player is in when they kill their connection to a
MUD without leaving it properly. The player is then commonly left
as a statue in the game, and is only removed after a certain period
of time (an hour on most MUDs). Used on IRC as well, although it is
inappropriate in that context. Compare netdead.
lint
[from Unix's lint(1), named for the bits of fluff it supposedly picks
from programs]
1. vt. To examine a program closely for style, language usage, and
portability problems, esp. if in C, esp. if via use of automated
analysis tools, most esp. if the Unix utility lint(1) is used. This
term used to be restricted to use of lint(1) itself, but (judging by
references on Usenet) it has become a shorthand for any exhaustive
review process at some non-Unix shops, even in languages other than
C. Also as v. delint.
2. n. Excess verbiage in a document, as in "This draft has too much
lint".
Lintel n.
The emerging Linux/Intel alliance. This term began to be used in
early 1999 after it became clear that the Wintel alliance was under
increasing strain and Intel started taking stakes in Linux companies.
Linus /leen´us/, /lin´us/, /li:´nus/
Linus Torvalds, the author of Linux. Nobody in the hacker culture
has been as readily recognized by first name alone since ken.
Linux /lee´nuhks/, /li´nuks/, not, /li:´nuhks/, n.
The free Unix workalike created by Linus Torvalds and friends
starting about 1991. The pronunciation /li´nuhks/ is preferred
because the name `Linus' has an /ee/ sound in Swedish (Linus's family
is part of Finland's 6% ethnic-Swedish minority) and Linus considers
English short /i/ to be closer to /ee/ than English long /i:/. This
may be the most remarkable hacker project in history -- an entire
clone of Unix for 386, 486 and Pentium micros, distributed for free
with sources over the net (ports to Alpha and Sparc and many other
machines are also in use).
Linux is what GNU aimed to be, and it relies on the GNU toolset.
But the Free Software Foundation didn't produce the kernel to go with
that toolset until 1999, which was too late. Other, similar efforts
like FreeBSD and NetBSD have been technically successful but never
caught fire the way Linux has; as this is written in 2003, Linux has
effectively swallowed all proprietary Unixes except Solaris and is
seriously challenging Microsoft. It has already captured 41% of the
Internet-server market and over 25% of general business servers.
An earlier version of this entry opined "The secret of Linux's
success seems to be that Linus worked much harder early on to keep
the development process open and recruit other hackers, creating a
snowball effect." Truer than we knew. See bazaar.
(Some people object that the name `Linux' should be used to refer
only to the kernel, not the entire operating system. This claim is a
proxy for an underlying territorial dispute; people who insist on the
term GNU/Linux want the FSF to get most of the credit for Linux
because RMS and friends wrote many of its user-level tools. Neither
this theory nor the term GNU/Linux has gained more than minority
acceptance).
lion food n.
[IBM] Middle management or HQ staff (or, by extension, administrative
drones in general). From an old joke about two lions who, escaping
from the zoo, split up to increase their chances but agree to meet
after 2 months. When they finally meet, one is skinny and the other
overweight. The thin one says: "How did you manage? I ate a human
just once and they turned out a small army to chase me -- guns, nets,
it was terrible. Since then I've been reduced to eating mice,
insects, even grass." The fat one replies: "Well, I hid near an IBM
office and ate a manager a day. And nobody even noticed!"
Lions Book n.
Source Code and Commentary on Unix level 6, by John Lions. The two
parts of this book contained (1) the entire source listing of the
Unix Version 6 kernel, and (2) a commentary on the source discussing
the algorithms. These were circulated internally at the University of
New South Wales beginning 1976--77, and were, for years after, the
only detailed kernel documentation available to anyone outside Bell
Labs. Because Western Electric wished to maintain trade secret status
on the kernel, the Lions Book was only supposed to be distributed to
affiliates of source licensees. In spite of this, it soon spread by
samizdat to a good many of the early Unix hackers.
[1996 update: The Lions book lives again! It was put back in print as
ISBN 1-57398-013-7 from Peer-To-Peer Communications, with forewords
by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson. In a neat bit of reflexivity, the
page before the contents quotes this entry.]
[1998 update: John Lions's death was an occasion of general mourning
in the hacker community.]
LISP n.
[from `LISt Processing language', but mythically from `Lots of
Irritating Superfluous Parentheses'] AI's mother tongue, a language
based on the ideas of (a) variable-length lists and trees as
fundamental data types, and (b) the interpretation of code as data
and vice-versa. Invented by John McCarthy at MIT in the late 1950s,
it is actually older than any other HLL still in use except
FORTRAN. Accordingly, it has undergone considerable adaptive
radiation over the years; modern variants are quite different in
detail from the original LISP 1.5. The dominant HLL among hackers
until the early 1980s, LISP has since shared the throne with C. Its
partisans claim it is the only language that is truly beautiful. See
languages of choice.
All LISP functions and programs are expressions that return values;
this, together with the high memory utilization of LISPs, gave rise
to Alan Perlis's famous quip (itself a take on an Oscar Wilde quote)
that "LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of
nothing".
One significant application for LISP has been as a proof by example
that most newer languages, such as COBOL and Ada, are full of
unnecessary crocks. When the Right Thing has already been done
once, there is no justification for bogosity in newer languages.
[lisp.png]
We've got your numbers....
list-bomb v.
To mailbomb someone by forging messages causing the victim to
become a subscriber to many mailing lists. This is a self-defeating
tactic; it merely forces mailing list servers to require confirmation
by return message for every subscription.
lithium lick n.
[NeXT] Steve Jobs. Employees who have gotten too much attention from
their esteemed founder are said to have `lithium lick' when they
begin to show signs of Jobsian fervor and repeat the most recent
catch phrases in normal conversation -- for example, "It just works,
right out of the box!"
little-endian adj.
Describes a computer architecture in which, within a given 16- or
32-bit word, bytes at lower addresses have lower significance (the
word is stored `little-end-first'). The PDP-11 and VAX families
of computers and Intel microprocessors and a lot of communications
and networking hardware are little-endian. See big-endian,
middle-endian, NUXI problem. The term is sometimes used to
describe the ordering of units other than bytes; most often, bits
within a byte.
live /li:v/, adj.,adv.
[common] Opposite of `test'. Refers to actual real-world data or a
program working with it. For example, the response to "I think the
record deleter is finished" might be "Is it live yet?" or "Have you
tried it out on live data?" This usage usually carries the
connotation that live data is more fragile and must not be corrupted,
or bad things will happen. So a more appropriate response might be:
"Well, make sure it works perfectly before we throw live data at it."
The implication here is that record deletion is something pretty
significant, and a haywire record-deleter running amok live would
probably cause great harm.
live data n.
1. Data that is written to be interpreted and takes over program flow
when triggered by some un-obvious operation, such as viewing it. One
use of such hacks is to break security. For example, some smart
terminals have commands that allow one to download strings to program
keys; this can be used to write live data that, when listed to the
terminal, infects it with a security-breaking virus that is
triggered the next time a hapless user strikes that key. For another,
there are some well-known bugs in vi that allow certain texts to
send arbitrary commands back to the machine when they are simply
viewed.
2. In C code, data that includes pointers to function hooks
(executable code).
3. An object, such as a trampoline, that is constructed on the fly
by a program and intended to be executed as code.
Live Free Or Die! imp.
1. The state motto of New Hampshire, which appears on that state's
automobile license plates.
2. A slogan associated with Unix in the romantic days when Unix
aficionados saw themselves as a tiny, beleaguered underground tilting
against the windmills of industry. The "free" referred specifically
to freedom from the fascist design philosophies and crufty
misfeatures common on competing operating systems. Armando Stettner,
one of the early Unix developers, used to give out fake license
plates bearing this motto under a large Unix, all in New Hampshire
colors of green and white. These are now valued collector's items. In
1994 DEC put an inferior imitation of these in circulation with a
red corporate logo added. Compaq (half of which was once DEC)
continued the practice.
[licenseplate.jpg]
Armando Stettner's original Unix license plate.
livelock /li:v´lok/, n.
A situation in which some critical stage of a task is unable to
finish because its clients perpetually create more work for it to do
after they have been serviced but before it can clear its queue.
Differs from deadlock in that the process is not blocked or waiting
for anything, but has a virtually infinite amount of work to do and
can never catch up.
liveware /li:v´weir/, n.
1. Synonym for wetware. Less common.
2. [Cambridge] Vermin. "Waiter, there's some liveware in my salad..."
lobotomy n.
1. What a hacker subjected to formal management training is said to
have undergone. At IBM and elsewhere this term is used by both
hackers and low-level management; the latter doubtless intend it as a
joke.
2. The act of removing the processor from a microcomputer in order to
replace or upgrade it. Some very cheap clone systems are sold in
lobotomized form -- everything but the brain.
locals, the pl.n.
The users on one's local network (as opposed, say, to people one
reaches via public Internet connections). The marked thing about this
usage is how little it has to do with real-space distance. "I have to
do some tweaking on this mail utility before releasing it to the
locals."
locked and loaded adj.,obs.
[from military slang for an M-16 rifle with magazine inserted and
prepared for firing] Said of a removable disk volume properly
prepared for use -- that is, locked into the drive and with the heads
loaded. Ironically, because their heads are `loaded' whenever the
power is up, this description is never used of Winchester drives
(which are named after a rifle).
locked up adj.
Syn. for hung, wedged.
logic bomb n.
Code surreptitiously inserted into an application or OS that causes
it to perform some destructive or security-compromising activity
whenever specified conditions are met. Compare back door.
logical adj.
[from the technical term logical device, wherein a physical device is
referred to by an arbitrary `logical' name] Having the role of. If a
person (say, Les Earnest at SAIL) who had long held a certain post
left and were replaced, the replacement would for a while be known as
the logical Les Earnest. (This does not imply any judgment on the
replacement.) Compare virtual.
At Stanford, `logical' compass directions denote a coordinate system
relative to El Camino Real, in which `logical north' is always toward
San Francisco and `logical south' is always toward San Jose--in spite
of the fact that El Camino Real runs physical north/south near San
Francisco, physical east/west near San Jose, and along a curve
everywhere in between. (The best rule of thumb here is that, by
definition, El Camino Real always runs logical north-south.)
In giving directions, one might say: "To get to Rincon Tarasco
restaurant, get onto El Camino Bignum going logical north." Using
the word `logical' helps to prevent the recipient from worrying about
that the fact that the sun is setting almost directly in front of
him. The concept is reinforced by North American highways which are
almost, but not quite, consistently labeled with logical rather than
physical directions. A similar situation exists at MIT: Route 128
(famous for the electronics industry that grew up along it) wraps
roughly 3 quarters around Boston at a radius of 10 miles, terminating
near the coastline at each end. It would be most precise to describe
the two directions along this highway as `clockwise' and
`counterclockwise', but the road signs all say "north" and "south",
respectively. A hacker might describe these directions as logical
north and logical south, to indicate that they are conventional
directions not corresponding to the usual denotation for those words.
loop through vt.
To process each element of a list of things. "Hold on, I've got to
loop through my paper mail." Derives from the computer-language
notion of an iterative loop; compare cdr down (under cdr), which is
less common among C and Unix programmers. ITS hackers used to say IRP
over after an obscure pseudo-op in the MIDAS PDP-10 assembler (the
same IRP op can nowadays be found in Microsoft's assembler).
loose bytes n.
Commonwealth hackish term for the padding bytes or shims many
compilers insert between members of a record or structure to cope
with alignment requirements imposed by the machine architecture.
lord high fixer n.
[primarily British, from Gilbert & Sullivan's `lord high
executioner'] The person in an organization who knows the most about
some aspect of a system. See wizard.
lose vi.
1. [very common] To fail. A program loses when it encounters an
exceptional condition or fails to work in the expected manner.
2. To be exceptionally unesthetic or crocky.
3. Of people, to be obnoxious or unusually stupid (as opposed to
ignorant). See also deserves to lose.
4. n. Refers to something that is losing, especially in the phrases
"That's a lose!" and "What a lose!"
lose lose interj.
A reply to or comment on an undesirable situation. "I accidentally
deleted all my files!" "Lose, lose."
loser n.
An unexpectedly bad situation, program, programmer, or person.
Someone who habitually loses. (Even winners can lose occasionally.)
Someone who knows not and knows not that he knows not. Emphatic forms
are real loser, total loser, and complete loser (but not **moby
loser, which would be a contradiction in terms). See luser.
losing adj.
Said of anything that is or causes a lose or lossage. "The
compiler is losing badly when I try to use templates."
loss n.
Something (not a person) that loses; a situation in which something
is losing. Emphatic forms include moby loss, and total loss, complete
loss. Common interjections are "What a loss!" and "What a moby loss!"
Note that moby loss is OK even though **moby loser is not used;
applied to an abstract noun, moby is simply a magnifier, whereas when
applied to a person it implies substance and has positive
connotations. Compare lossage.
lossage /los'@j/, n.
[very common] The result of a bug or malfunction. This is a mass or
collective noun. "What a loss!" and "What lossage!" are nearly
synonymous. The former is slightly more particular to the speaker's
present circumstances; the latter implies a continuing lose of
which the speaker is currently a victim. Thus (for example) a
temporary hardware failure is a loss, but bugs in an important tool
(like a compiler) are serious lossage.
lossy adj.
[Usenet]
1. Said of people, this indicates a poor memory, usually short-term.
This usage is analogical to the same term applied to data compression
and analysis. "He's very lossy." means that you can't rely on him to
accurately remember recent experiences or conversations, or requests.
Not to be confused with a `loser', which is a person who is in a
continual state of lossiness, as in sense 2 (see below).
2. Said of an attitude or a situation, this indicates a general
downturn in emotions, lack of success in attempted endeavors, etc.
Eg, "I'm having a lossy day today." means that the speaker has `lost'
or is `losing' in all of their activities, and that this is causing
some increase in negative emotions.
lost in the noise adj.
Syn. lost in the underflow. This term is from signal processing,
where signals of very small amplitude cannot be separated from
low-intensity noise in the system. Though popular among hackers, it
is not confined to hackerdom; physicists, engineers, astronomers, and
statisticians all use it.
lost in the underflow adj.
Too small to be worth considering; more specifically, small beyond
the limits of accuracy or measurement. This is a reference to
floating underflow, a condition that can occur when a floating-point
arithmetic processor tries to handle quantities smaller than its
limit of magnitude. It is also a pun on `undertow' (a kind of fast,
cold current that sometimes runs just offshore and can be dangerous
to swimmers). "Well, sure, photon pressure from the stadium lights
alters the path of a thrown baseball, but that effect gets lost in
the underflow." Compare epsilon, epsilon squared; see also
overflow bit.
lots of MIPS but no I/O adj.
Used to describe a person who is technically brilliant but can't seem
to communicate with human beings effectively. Technically it
describes a machine that has lots of processing power but is
bottlenecked on input-output (in 1991, the IBM Rios, a.k.a. RS/6000,
was a notorious example).
low-bandwidth adj.
[from communication theory] Used to indicate a talk that, although
not content-free, was not terribly informative. "That was a
low-bandwidth talk, but what can you expect for an audience of
suits!" Compare zero-content, bandwidth, math-out.
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology prov.
"There is always one more bug."
Lumber Cartel n.
A mythical conspiracy accused by spam-spewers of funding anti-spam
activism in order to force the direct-mail promotions industry back
onto paper. Hackers, predictably, responded by forming a "Lumber
Cartel" spoofing this paranoid theory; the web page is
http://come.to/the.lumber.cartel/. Members often include the tag
TINLC ("There Is No Lumber Cartel") in their postings; see TINC,
backbone cabal and NANA for explanation.
lunatic fringe n.
[IBM] Customers who can be relied upon to accept release 1 versions
of software. Compare heatseeker.
lurker n.
One of the `silent majority' in an electronic forum; one who posts
occasionally or not at all but is known to read the group's postings
regularly. This term is not pejorative and indeed is casually used
reflexively: "Oh, I'm just lurking." Often used in the lurkers, the
hypothetical audience for the group's flamage-emitting regulars.
When a lurker speaks up for the first time, this is called delurking.
The creator of the popular science-fiction TV series Babylon 5 has
ties to SF fandom and the hacker culture. In that series, the use of
the term `lurker' for a homeless or displaced person is a conscious
reference to the jargon term.
luser /loo´zr/, n.
[common] A user; esp. one who is also a loser. (luser and
loser are pronounced identically.) This word was coined around 1975
at MIT. Under ITS, when you first walked up to a terminal at MIT and
typed Control-Z to get the computer's attention, it printed out some
status information, including how many people were already using the
computer; it might print "14 users", for example. Someone thought it
would be a great joke to patch the system to print "14 losers"
instead. There ensued a great controversy, as some of the users
didn't particularly want to be called losers to their faces every
time they used the computer. For a while several hackers struggled
covertly, each changing the message behind the back of the others;
any time you logged into the computer it was even money whether it
would say "users" or "losers". Finally, someone tried the compromise
"lusers", and it stuck. Later one of the ITS machines supported luser
as a request-for-help command. ITS died the death in mid-1990, except
as a museum piece; the usage lives on, however, and the term luser is
often seen in program comments and on Usenet. Compare mundane,
muggle, newbie, chainik.
= M =
=====
M pref.
[SI] See quantifiers.
M$
Common net abbreviation for Microsoft, everybody's least favorite
monopoly.
macdink /mak´dink/, vt.
[from the Apple Macintosh, which is said to encourage such behavior]
To make many incremental and unnecessary cosmetic changes to a
program or file. Often the subject of the macdinking would be better
off without them. "When I left at 11PM last night, he was still
macdinking the slides for his presentation." See also fritterware,
window shopping.
machoflops /mach´oh·flops/, n.
[pun on megaflops, a coinage for `millions of FLoating-point
Operations Per Second'] Refers to artificially inflated performance
figures often quoted by computer manufacturers. Real applications are
lucky to get half the quoted speed. See Your mileage may vary,
benchmark.
Macintoy /mak´in·toy/, n.
The Apple Macintosh, considered as a toy. Less pejorative than
Macintrash.
Macintrash /mak´in·trash`/, n.
The Apple Macintosh, as described by a hacker who doesn't appreciate
being kept away from the real computer by the interface. The term
maggotbox has been reported in regular use in the Research Triangle
area of North Carolina. Compare Macintoy. See also beige toaster,
WIMP environment, point-and-drool interface, drool-proof paper,
user-friendly.
macro /mak´roh/, n.
[techspeak] A name (possibly followed by a formal arg list) that is
equated to a text or symbolic expression to which it is to be
expanded (possibly with the substitution of actual arguments) by a
macro expander. This definition can be found in any technical
dictionary; what those won't tell you is how the hackish connotations
of the term have changed over time.
The term macro originated in early assemblers, which encouraged the
use of macros as a structuring and information-hiding device. During
the early 1970s, macro assemblers became ubiquitous, and sometimes
quite as powerful and expensive as HLLs, only to fall from favor as
improving compiler technology marginalized assembler programming (see
languages of choice). Nowadays the term is most often used in
connection with the C preprocessor, LISP, or one of several
special-purpose languages built around a macro-expansion facility
(such as TeX or Unix's [nt]roff suite).
Indeed, the meaning has drifted enough that the collective macros is
now sometimes used for code in any special-purpose application
control language (whether or not the language is actually translated
by text expansion), and for macro-like entities such as the keyboard
macros supported in some text editors (and PC TSR or Macintosh
INIT/CDEV keyboard enhancers).
macro- pref.
Large. Opposite of micro-. In the mainstream and among other
technical cultures (for example, medical people) this competes with
the prefix mega-, but hackers tend to restrict the latter to
quantification.
macrology /mak·rol'@·jee/, n.
1. Set of usually complex or crufty macros, e.g., as part of a large
system written in LISP, TECO, or (less commonly) assembler.
2. The art and science involved in comprehending a macrology in sense
1. Sometimes studying the macrology of a system is not unlike
archeology, ecology, or theology, hence the sound-alike
construction. See also boxology.
maggotbox /mag'@t·boks/, n.
See Macintrash. This is even more derogatory.
magic
1. adj. As yet unexplained, or too complicated to explain; compare
automagically and (Arthur C.) Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently
advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." "TTY echoing is
controlled by a large number of magic bits." "This routine magically
computes the parity of an 8-bit byte in three instructions."
2. adj. Characteristic of something that works although no one really
understands why (this is especially called black magic).
3. n. [Stanford] A feature not generally publicized that allows
something otherwise impossible, or a feature formerly in that
category but now unveiled.
4. n. The ultimate goal of all engineering & development, elegance in
the extreme; from the first corollary to Clarke's Third Law: "Any
technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced".
Parodies playing on these senses of the term abound; some have made
their way into serious documentation, as when a MAGIC directive was
described in the Control Card Reference for GCOS c.1978. For more
about hackish `magic', see Appendix A. Compare black magic,
wizardly, deep magic, heavy wizardry.
magic cookie n.
[Unix; common]
1. Something passed between routines or programs that enables the
receiver to perform some operation; a capability ticket or opaque
identifier. Especially used of small data objects that contain data
encoded in a strange or intrinsically machine-dependent way. E.g., on
non-Unix OSes with a non-byte-stream model of files, the result of
ftell(3) may be a magic cookie rather than a byte offset; it can be
passed to fseek(3), but not operated on in any meaningful way. The
phrase it hands you a magic cookie means it returns a result whose
contents are not defined but which can be passed back to the same or
some other program later.
2. An in-band code for changing graphic rendition (e.g., inverse
video or underlining) or performing other control functions (see also
cookie). Some older terminals would leave a blank on the screen
corresponding to mode-change magic cookies; this was also called a
glitch (or occasionally a turd; compare mouse droppings). See
also cookie.
magic number n.
[Unix/C; common]
1. In source code, some non-obvious constant whose value is
significant to the operation of a program and that is inserted
inconspicuously in-line (hardcoded), rather than expanded in by a
symbol set by a commented #define. Magic numbers in this sense are
bad style.
2. A number that encodes critical information used in an algorithm in
some opaque way. The classic examples of these are the numbers used
in hash or CRC functions, or the coefficients in a linear
congruential generator for pseudo-random numbers. This sense actually
predates and was ancestral to the more common sense
3. Special data located at the beginning of a binary data file to
indicate its type to a utility. Under Unix, the system and various
applications programs (especially the linker) distinguish between
types of executable file by looking for a magic number. Once upon a
time, these magic numbers were PDP-11 branch instructions that
skipped over header data to the start of executable code; 0407, for
example, was octal for `branch 16 bytes relative'. Many other kinds
of files now have magic numbers somewhere; some magic numbers are, in
fact, strings, like the !<arch> at the beginning of a Unix archive
file or the %! leading PostScript files. Nowadays only a wizard
knows the spells to create magic numbers. How do you choose a fresh
magic number of your own? Simple -- you pick one at random. See? It's
magic!
4. An input that leads to a computational boundary condition, where
algorithm behavior becomes discontinuous. Numeric overflows
(particularly with signed data types) and run-time errors (divide by
zero, stack overflows) are indications of magic numbers. The Y2K
scare was probably the most notorious magic number non-incident.
The magic number, on the other hand, is 7±2. See The magical number
seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing
information by George Miller, in the Psychological Review 63:81-97
(1956). This classic paper established the number of distinct items
(such as numeric digits) that humans can hold in short-term memory.
Among other things, this strongly influenced the interface design of
the phone system.
magic smoke n.
A substance trapped inside IC packages that enables them to function
(also called blue smoke; this is similar to the archaic phlogiston
hypothesis about combustion). Its existence is demonstrated by what
happens when a chip burns up -- the magic smoke gets let out, so it
doesn't work any more. See smoke test, let the smoke out.
Usenetter Jay Maynard tells the following story: "Once, while hacking
on a dedicated Z80 system, I was testing code by blowing EPROMs and
plugging them in the system, then seeing what happened. One time, I
plugged one in backwards. I only discovered that after I realized
that Intel didn't put power-on lights under the quartz windows on the
tops of their EPROMs -- the die was glowing white-hot. Amazingly, the
EPROM worked fine after I erased it, filled it full of zeros, then
erased it again. For all I know, it's still in service. Of course,
this is because the magic smoke didn't get let out." Compare the
original phrasing of Murphy's Law.
mail storm n.
[from broadcast storm, influenced by maelstrom] What often happens
when a machine with an Internet connection and active users
re-connects after extended downtime -- a flood of incoming mail that
brings the machine to its knees. See also hairball.
mailbomb
(also mail bomb) [Usenet]
1. v. To send, or urge others to send, massive amounts of email to
a single system or person, esp. with intent to crash or spam the
recipient's system. Sometimes done in retaliation for a perceived
serious offense. Mailbombing is itself widely regarded as a serious
offense -- it can disrupt email traffic or other facilities for
innocent users on the victim's system, and in extreme cases, even at
upstream sites.
2. n. An automatic procedure with a similar effect.
3. n. The mail sent. Compare letterbomb, nastygram, BLOB (sense
2), list-bomb.
mailing list n.
(often shortened in context to list)
1. An email address that is an alias (or macro, though that word
is never used in this connection) for many other email addresses.
Some mailing lists are simple reflectors, redirecting mail sent to
them to the list of recipients. Others are filtered by humans or
programs of varying degrees of sophistication; lists filtered by
humans are said to be moderated.
2. The people who receive your email when you send it to such an
address.
Mailing lists are one of the primary forms of hacker interaction,
along with Usenet. They predate Usenet, having originated with the
first UUCP and ARPANET connections. They are often used for private
information-sharing on topics that would be too specialized for or
inappropriate to public Usenet groups. Though some of these maintain
almost purely technical content (such as the Internet Engineering
Task Force mailing list), others (like the `sf-lovers' list
maintained for many years by Saul Jaffe) are recreational, and many
are purely social. Perhaps the most infamous of the social lists was
the eccentric bandykin distribution; its latter-day progeny,
lectroids and tanstaafl, still include a number of the oddest and
most interesting people in hackerdom.
Mailing lists are easy to create and (unlike Usenet) don't tie up a
significant amount of machine resources (until they get very large,
at which point they can become interesting torture tests for mail
software). Thus, they are often created temporarily by working
groups, the members of which can then collaborate on a project
without ever needing to meet face-to-face. Much of the material in
this lexicon was criticized and polished on just such a mailing list
(called `jargon-friends'), which included all the co-authors of
Steele-1983.
main loop n.
The top-level control flow construct in an input- or event-driven
program, the one which receives and acts or dispatches on the
program's input. See also driver.
mainframe n.
Term originally referring to the cabinet containing the central
processor unit or `main frame' of a room-filling Stone Age batch
machine. After the emergence of smaller minicomputer designs in the
early 1970s, the traditional big iron machines were described as
`mainframe computers' and eventually just as mainframes. The term
carries the connotation of a machine designed for batch rather than
interactive use, though possibly with an interactive timesharing
operating system retrofitted onto it; it is especially used of
machines built by IBM, Unisys, and the other great dinosaurs
surviving from computing's Stone Age.
It has been common wisdom among hackers since the late 1980s that the
mainframe architectural tradition is essentially dead (outside of the
tiny market for number-crunching supercomputers having been swamped
by the recent huge advances in IC technology and low-cost personal
computing. The wave of failures, takeovers, and mergers among
traditional mainframe makers in the early 1990s bore this out. The
biggest mainframer of all, IBM, was compelled to re-invent itself as
a huge systems-consulting house. (See dinosaurs mating and killer
micro).
However, in yet another instance of the cycle of reincarnation, the
port of Linux to the IBM S/390 architecture in 1999 -- assisted by
IBM -- produced a resurgence of interest in mainframe computing as a
way of providing huge quantities of easily maintainable, reliable
virtual Linux servers, saving IBM's mainframe division from almost
certain extinction.
mainsleaze n.
1. Spam emitted by a reputable, mainstream company (as opposed to
fly-by-night Viagra oeddlers and the like). Sometime this happens in
honest ignorance, but the reputation danage can take years to live
down.
2. Occasionally used for a big-time spammer, with its own fat pipe,
their own mailservers, and a pink contract. Almost impossible to
get shut down.
malware n.
[Common] Malicious software. Software intended to cause consequences
the unwitting user would not choose; especially used of virus or
Trojan horse software.
man page n.
A page from the Unix Programmer's Manual, documenting one of Unix's
many commands, system calls, library subroutines, device driver
interfaces, file formats, games, macro packages, or maintenance
utilities. By extension, the term "man page" may be used to refer to
documentation of any kind, under any system, though it is most likely
to be confined to short on-line references.
As mentioned in Chapter 11, Other Lexicon Conventions, there is a
standard syntax for referring to man page entries: the phrase
"foo(n)" refers to the page for "foo" in chapter n of the manual,
where chapter 1 is user commands, chapter 2 is system calls, etc.
The man page format is beloved, or berated, for having the same sort
of pithy utility as the rest of Unix. Man pages tend to be written as
very compact, concise descriptions which are complete but not
forgiving of the lazy or careless reader. Their stylized format does
a good job of summarizing the essentials: invocation syntax, options,
basic functionality. While such a concise reference is perfect for
the do-one-thing-and-do-it-well tools which are favored by the Unix
philosophy, it admittedly breaks down when applied to a command which
is itself a major subsystem.
management n.
1. Corporate power elites distinguished primarily by their distance
from actual productive work and their chronic failure to manage (see
also suit). Spoken derisively, as in "Management decided that ...".
2. Mythically, a vast bureaucracy responsible for all the world's
minor irritations. Hackers' satirical public notices are often signed
`The Mgt'; this derives from the Illuminatus novels (see the
Bibliography in Appendix C).
mandelbug /man´del·buhg/, n.
[from the Mandelbrot set] A bug whose underlying causes are so
complex and obscure as to make its behavior appear chaotic or even
non-deterministic. This term implies that the speaker thinks it is a
Bohr bug, rather than a heisenbug. See also schroedinbug.
manged /mahnjd/, n.
[probably from the French `manger' or Italian `mangiare', to eat;
perhaps influenced by English `mange', `mangy'] adj. Refers to
anything that is mangled or damaged, usually beyond repair. "The disk
was manged after the electrical storm." Compare mung.
mangle vt.
1. Used similarly to mung or scribble, but more violent in its
connotations; something that is mangled has been irreversibly and
totally trashed.
2. To produce the mangled name corresponding to a C++ declaration.
mangled name n.
A name, appearing in a C++ object file, that is a coded
representation of the object declaration as it appears in the source.
Mangled names are used because C++ allows multiple objects to have
the same name, as long as they are distinguishable in some other way,
such as by having different parameter types. Thus, the internal name
must have that additional information embedded in it, using the
limited character set allowed by most linkers. For instance, one
popular compiler encodes the standard library function declaration
"memchr(const void*,int,unsigned int)" as "@memchr$qpxviui".
mangler n.
[DEC] A manager. Compare management. Note that system mangler is
somewhat different in connotation.
manularity /man`yoo·la´ri·tee/, n.
[prob. fr. techspeak manual + granularity] A notional measure of the
manual labor required for some task, particularly one of the sort
that automation is supposed to eliminate. "Composing English on paper
has much higher manularity than using a text editor, especially in
the revising stage." Hackers tend to consider manularity a symptom of
primitive methods; in fact, a true hacker confronted with an apparent
requirement to do a computing task by hand will inevitably seize
the opportunity to build another tool (see toolsmith).
marching ants
The animated dotted-line marquee that indicates a rectangle or item
select in Adobe Photoshop, the GIMP, and other similar image-editing
programs.
marbles pl.n.
[from mainstream "lost all his/her marbles"] The minimum needed to
build your way further up some hierarchy of tools or abstractions.
After a bad system crash, you need to determine if the machine has
enough marbles to come up on its own, or enough marbles to allow a
rebuild from backups, or if you need to rebuild from scratch. "This
compiler doesn't even have enough marbles to compile hello world."
marginal adj.
[common]
1. [techspeak] An extremely small change. "A marginal increase in
core can decrease GC time drastically." In everyday terms, this
means that it is a lot easier to clean off your desk if you have a
spare place to put some of the junk while you sort through it.
2. Of little merit. "This proposed new feature seems rather marginal
to me."
3. Of extremely small probability of winning. "The power supply was
rather marginal anyway; no wonder it fried."
marginally adv.
Slightly. "The ravs here are only marginally better than at Small
Eating Place." See epsilon.
marketroid /mar´k@·troyd/, n.
alt.: marketing slime, marketeer, marketing droid, marketdroid. A
member of a company's marketing department, esp. one who promises
users that the next version of a product will have features that are
not actually scheduled for inclusion, are extremely difficult to
implement, and/or are in violation of the laws of physics; and/or one
who describes existing features (and misfeatures) in ebullient,
buzzword-laden adspeak. Derogatory. Compare droid.
Mars n.
A legendary tragic failure, the archetypal Hacker Dream Gone Wrong.
Mars was the code name for a family of PDP-10-compatible computers
built by Systems Concepts (now, The SC Group): the multi-processor
SC-30M, the small uniprocessor SC-25, and the never-built
superprocessor SC-40. These machines were marvels of engineering
design; although not much slower than the unique Foonly F-1, they
were physically smaller and consumed less power than the much slower
DEC KS10 or Foonly F-2, F-3, or F-4 machines. They were also
completely compatible with the DEC KL10, and ran all KL10 binaries
(including the operating system) with no modifications at about 2--3
times faster than a KL10.
When DEC cancelled the Jupiter project in 1983 (their followup to the
PDP-10), Systems Concepts should have made a bundle selling their
machine into shops with a lot of software investment in PDP-10s, and
in fact their spring 1984 announcement generated a great deal of
excitement in the PDP-10 world. TOPS-10 was running on the Mars by
the summer of 1984, and TOPS-20 by early fall. Unfortunately, the
hackers running Systems Concepts were much better at designing
machines than at mass producing or selling them; the company allowed
itself to be sidetracked by a bout of perfectionism into continually
improving the design, and lost credibility as delivery dates
continued to slip. They also overpriced the product ridiculously;
they believed they were competing with the KL10 and VAX 8600 and
failed to reckon with the likes of Sun Microsystems and other hungry
startups building workstations with power comparable to the KL10 at a
fraction of the price. By the time SC shipped the first SC-30M to
Stanford in late 1985, most customers had already made the traumatic
decision to abandon the PDP-10, usually for VMS or Unix boxes. Most
of the Mars computers built ended up being purchased by CompuServe.
This tale and the related saga of Foonly hold a lesson for hackers:
if you want to play in the Real World, you need to learn Real World
moves.
martian n.
A packet sent on a TCP/IP network with a source address of the test
loopback interface [127.0.0.1]. This means that it will come back
labeled with a source address that is clearly not of this earth. "The
domain server is getting lots of packets from Mars. Does that gateway
have a martian filter?" Compare Christmas tree packet,
Godzillagram.
massage vt.
[common] Vague term used to describe `smooth' transformations of a
data set into a different form, esp. transformations that do not lose
information. Connotes less pain than munch or crunch. "He wrote a
program that massages X bitmap files into GIF format." Compare
slurp.
math-out n.
[poss. from `white-out' (the blizzard variety)] A paper or
presentation so encrusted with mathematical or other formal notation
as to be incomprehensible. This may be a device for concealing the
fact that it is actually content-free. See also numbers, social
science number.
[73-05-18.png]
A math-out approach to history.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-05-19. The previous one
is the frontispiece.)
Matrix n.
[FidoNet]
1. What the Opus BBS software and sysops call FidoNet.
2. Fanciful term for a cyberspace expected to emerge from current
networking experiments (see the network). The name of the rather
good 1999 cypherpunk movie The Matrix played on this sense, which
however had been established for years before.
3. The totality of present-day computer networks (popularized in this
sense by John Quarterman; rare outside academic literature).
maximum Maytag mode n.
What a washing machine or, by extension, any disk drive is in when
it's being used so heavily that it's shaking like an old Maytag with
an unbalanced load. If prolonged for any length of time, can lead to
disks becoming walking drives. In 1999 it's been some years since
hard disks were large enough to do this, but the same phenomenon has
recently been reported with 24X CD-ROM drives.
McQuary limit
[from the name of the founder of alt.fan.warlord; see warlording.]
4 lines of at most 80 characters each, sometimes still cited on
Usenet as the maximum acceptable size of a sig block. Before the
great bandwidth explosion of the early 1990s, long sigs actually cost
people running Usenet servers significant amounts of money. Nowadays
social pressure against long sigs is intended to avoid waste of human
attention rather than machine bandwidth. Accordingly, the McQuary
limit should be considered a rule of thumb rather than a hard limit;
it's best to avoid sigs that are large, repetitive, and distracting.
See also warlording.
meatspace /meet´spays/, n.
The physical world, where the meat lives -- as opposed to
cyberspace. Hackers are actually more willing to use this term than
`cyberspace', because it's not speculative -- we already have a
running meatspace implementation (the universe). Compare RL.
meatware n.
Synonym for wetware. Less common.
meeces /mees'@z/, n.
[TMRC] Occasional furry visitors who are not urchins. [That is,
mice. This may no longer be in live use; it clearly derives from the
refrain of the early-1960s cartoon character Mr. Jinks: "I hate
meeces to pieces!" -- ESR]
meg /meg/, n.
See quantifiers.
mega- /me´g@/, pref.
[SI] See quantifiers.
megapenny /meg'@·pen`ee/, n.
$10,000 (1 cent * 10^6). Used semi-humorously as a unit in comparing
computer cost and performance figures.
MEGO /me´goh/, /mee´goh/
["My Eyes Glaze Over", often "Mine Eyes Glazeth (sic) Over",
attributed to the futurologist Herman Kahn] Also MEGO factor.
1. n. A handwave intended to confuse the listener and hopefully
induce agreement because the listener does not want to admit to not
understanding what is going on. MEGO is usually directed at senior
management by engineers and contains a high proportion of TLAs.
2. excl. An appropriate response to MEGO tactics.
3. Among non-hackers, often refers not to behavior that causes the
eyes to glaze, but to the eye-glazing reaction itself, which may be
triggered by the mere threat of excessive technical detail as
effectively as by an actual excess of it.
meltdown, network n.
See network meltdown.
meme /meem/, n.
[coined by analogy with `gene', by Richard Dawkins] An idea
considered as a replicator, esp. with the connotation that memes
parasitize people into propagating them much as viruses do. Used esp.
in the phrase meme complex denoting a group of mutually supporting
memes that form an organized belief system, such as a religion. This
lexicon is an (epidemiological) vector of the `hacker subculture'
meme complex; each entry might be considered a meme. However, meme is
often misused to mean meme complex. Use of the term connotes
acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool- and
language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of adaptive
ideas has superseded biological evolution by selection of hereditary
traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably obvious
reasons.
meme plague n.
The spread of a successful but pernicious meme, esp. one that
parasitizes the victims into giving their all to propagate it.
Astrology, BASIC, and the other guy's religion are often considered
to be examples. This usage is given point by the historical fact that
`joiner' ideologies like Naziism or various forms of millennarian
Christianity have exhibited plague-like cycles of exponential growth
followed by collapses to small reservoir populations.
memetics /me·met´iks/, n.
[from meme] The study of memes. As of early 2003, this is still an
extremely informal and speculative endeavor, though the first steps
towards at least statistical rigor have been made by H. Keith Henson
and others. Memetics is a popular topic for speculation among
hackers, who like to see themselves as the architects of the new
information ecologies in which memes live and replicate.
memory farts n.
The flatulent sounds that some DOS box BIOSes (most notably AMI's)
make when checking memory on bootup.
memory leak n.
An error in a program's dynamic-store allocation logic that causes it
to fail to reclaim discarded memory, leading to eventual collapse due
to memory exhaustion. Also (esp. at CMU) called core leak. These
problems were severe on older machines with small, fixed-size address
spaces, and special "leak detection" tools were commonly written to
root them out. With the advent of virtual memory, it is unfortunately
easier to be sloppy about wasting a bit of memory (although when you
run out of memory on a VM machine, it means you've got a real leak!).
See aliasing bug, fandango on core, smash the stack,
precedence lossage, overrun screw, leaky heap, leak.
memory smash n.
[XEROX PARC] Writing through a pointer that doesn't point to what you
think it does. This occasionally reduces your memory to a rubble of
bits. Note that this is subtly different from (and more general than)
related terms such as a memory leak or fandango on core because
it doesn't imply an allocation error or overrun condition.
menuitis /men`yoo·i:´tis/, n.
Notional disease suffered by software with an obsessively
simple-minded menu interface and no escape. Hackers find this
intensely irritating and much prefer the flexibility of command-line
or language-style interfaces, especially those customizable via
macros or a special-purpose language in which one can encode useful
hacks. See user-obsequious, drool-proof paper, WIMP
environment, for the rest of us.
mess-dos /mes·dos/, n.
[semi-obsolescent now that DOS is] Derisory term for MS-DOS. Often
followed by the ritual banishing "Just say No!" See MS-DOS. Most
hackers (even many MS-DOS hackers) loathed MS-DOS for its
single-tasking nature, its limits on application size, its nasty
primitive interface, and its ties to IBMness and Microsoftness (see
fear and loathing). Also mess-loss, messy-dos, mess-dog,
mess-dross, mush-dos, and various combinations thereof. In Ireland
and the U.K. it is even sometimes called `Domestos' after a brand of
toilet cleanser.
meta /me´t@/, /may´t@/, /mee´t@/, pref.
[from analytic philosophy] One level of description up. A
metasyntactic variable is a variable in notation used to describe
syntax, and meta-language is language used to describe language. This
is difficult to explain briefly, but much hacker humor turns on
deliberate confusion between meta-levels. See hacker humor.
meta bit n.
The top bit of an 8-bit character, which is on in character values
128--255. Also called high bit, alt bit. Some terminals and
consoles (see space-cadet keyboard) have a META shift key. Others
(including, mirabile dictu, keyboards on IBM PC-class machines) have
an ALT key. See also bucky bits.
Historical note: although in modern usage shaped by a universe of
8-bit bytes the meta bit is invariably hex 80 (octal 0200), things
were different on earlier machines with 36-bit words and 9-bit bytes.
The MIT and Stanford keyboards (see space-cadet keyboard) generated
hex 100 (octal 400) from their meta keys.
metasyntactic variable n.
A name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is
under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under
discussion. The word foo is the canonical example. To avoid
confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use `foo' or other words
like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common
convention is that any filename beginning with a
metasyntactic-variable name is a scratch file that may be deleted
at any time.
Metasyntactic variables are so called because (1) they are variables
in the metalanguage used to talk about programs etc; (2) they are
variables whose values are often variables (as in usages like "the
value of f(foo,bar) is the sum of foo and bar"). However, it has been
plausibly suggested that the real reason for the term "metasyntactic
variable" is that it sounds good. To some extent, the list of one's
preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur
both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and
as singletons. Here are a few common signatures:
foo, bar, baz, quux, quuux, quuuux...: MIT/Stanford usage,
now found everywhere (thanks largely to early versions of this
lexicon!). At MIT (but not at Stanford), baz dropped out of use for
a while in the 1970s and '80s. A common recent mutation of this
sequence inserts quxbefore quux.
bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on).
foo, bar, thud, grunt: This series was popular at CMU. Other
CMU-associated variables include gorp.
foo, bar, bletch: Waterloo University. We are informed that the
CS club at Waterloo formerly had a sign on its door reading "Ye Olde
Foo Bar and Grill"; this led to an attempt to establish "grill" as
the third metasyntactic variable, but it never caught on.
foo, bar, fum: This series is reported to be common at XEROX
PARC.
fred, jim, sheila, barney: See the entry for fred. These tend
to be Britishisms.
flarp: Popular at Rutgers University and among GOSMACS hackers.
zxc, spqr, wombat: Cambridge University (England).
shme Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/.
foo, bar, baz, bongo Yale, late 1970s.
spam, eggs Python programmers.
snork Brown University, early 1970s.
foo, bar, zot Helsinki University of Technology, Finland.
blarg, wibble New Zealand.
toto, titi, tata, tutu France.
pippo, pluto, paperino Italy. Pippo /pee´po/ and Paperino
/pa·per·ee'·no/ are the Italian names for Goofy and Donald Duck.
aap, noot, mies The Netherlands. These are the first words a child
used to learn to spell on a Dutch spelling board.
oogle, foogle, boogle; zork, gork, bork These two series (which may
be continued with other initial consonents) are reportedly common in
England, and said to go back to Lewis Carroll.
Of all these, only foo and bar are universal (and baz nearly so).
The compounds foobar and foobaz also enjoy very wide currency. Some
jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; barf and
mumble, for example. See also Commonwealth Hackish for discussion
of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the
Commonwealth.
MFTL /M·F·T·L/
[abbreviation: `My Favorite Toy Language']
1. adj. Describes a talk on a programming language design that is
heavy on the syntax (with lots of BNF), sometimes even talks about
semantics (e.g., type systems), but rarely, if ever, has any content
(see content-free). More broadly applied to talks -- even when the
topic is not a programming language -- in which the subject matter is
gone into in unnecessary and meticulous detail at the sacrifice of
any conceptual content. "Well, it was a typical MFTL talk".
2. n. Describes a language about which the developers are passionate
(often to the point of proselytic zeal) but no one else cares about.
Applied to the language by those outside the originating group. "He
cornered me about type resolution in his MFTL."
The first great goal in the mind of the designer of an MFTL is
usually to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design away
from contamination by lesser languages by writing a compiler for it
in itself. Thus, the standard put-down question at an MFTL talk is
"Has it been used for anything besides its own compiler?" On the
other hand, a (compiled) language that cannot even be used to write
its own compiler is beneath contempt. (The qualification has become
necessary because of the increasing popularity of interpreted
languages like Perl and Python.) See break-even point. (On a
related note, Doug McIlroy once proposed a test of the generality and
utility of a language and the operating system under which it is
compiled: "Is the output of a FORTRAN program acceptable as input to
the FORTRAN compiler?" In other words, can you write programs that
write programs? (See toolsmith.) Alarming numbers of (language, OS)
pairs fail this test, particularly when the language is FORTRAN;
aficionados are quick to point out that Unix (even using FORTRAN)
passes it handily. That the test could ever be failed is only
surprising to those who have had the good fortune to have worked only
under modern systems which lack OS-supported and -imposed "file
types".)
mickey n.
The resolution unit of mouse movement. It has been suggested that the
disney will become a benchmark unit for animation graphics
performance.
mickey mouse program n.
North American equivalent of a noddy (that is, trivial) program.
Doesn't necessarily have the belittling connotations of mainstream
slang "Oh, that's just mickey mouse stuff!"; sometimes trivial
programs can be very useful.
micro- pref.
1. Very small; this is the root of its use as a quantifier prefix.
2. A quantifier prefix, calling for multiplication by 10^-6 (see
quantifiers). Neither of these uses is peculiar to hackers, but
hackers tend to fling them both around rather more freely than is
countenanced in standard English. It is recorded, for example, that
one CS professor used to characterize the standard length of his
lectures as a microcentury -- that is, about 52.6 minutes (see also
attoparsec, nanoacre, and especially microfortnight).
3. Personal or human-scale -- that is, capable of being maintained or
comprehended or manipulated by one human being. This sense is
generalized from microcomputer, and is esp. used in contrast with
macro- (the corresponding Greek prefix meaning `large').
4. Local as opposed to global (or macro-). Thus a hacker might say
that buying a smaller car to reduce pollution only solves a
microproblem; the macroproblem of getting to work might be better
solved by using mass transit, moving to within walking distance, or
(best of all) telecommuting.
MicroDroid n.
[Usenet] A Microsoft employee, esp. one who posts to various
operating-system advocacy newsgroups. MicroDroids post follow-ups to
any messages critical of Microsoft's operating systems, and often end
up sounding like visiting fundamentalist missionaries. See also
astroturfing; compare microserf.
microfortnight n.
1/1000000 of the fundamental unit of time in the
Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight system of measurement; 1.2096 sec. (A
furlong is 1/8th of a mile; a firkin is 9 imperial gallons; the mass
unit of the system is taken to be a firkin of water). The VMS
operating system has a lot of tuning parameters that you can set with
the SYSGEN utility, and one of these is TIMEPROMPTWAIT, the time the
system will wait for an operator to set the correct date and time at
boot if it realizes that the current value is bogus. This time is
specified in microfortnights!
Multiple uses of the millifortnight (about 20 minutes) and
nanofortnight have also been reported.
microLenat /mi:`·kroh·len'·@t/, n.
The unit of bogosity. Abbreviated µL or mL in ASCII Consensus is
that this is the largest unit practical for everyday use. The
microLenat, originally invented by David Jefferson, was promulgated
as an attack against noted computer scientist Doug Lenat by a
tenured graduate student at CMU. Doug had failed the student on an
important exam because the student gave 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.
microReid /mi:´kroh·reed/, n.
See microLenat.
microserf /mi:´kro·s@rf/
[popularized, though not originated, by Douglas Coupland's book
Microserfs] A programmer at Microsoft, especially a low-level coder
with little chance of fame or fortune. Compare MicroDroid.
Microsloth Windows /mi:´kroh·sloth` win´dohz/, n.
(Variants combine {Microshift, Macroshaft, Microsuck} with {Windoze,
WinDOS}. Hackerism(s) for `Microsoft Windows'. A thirty-two bit
extension and graphical shell to a sixteen-bit patch to an eight-bit
operating system originally coded for a four-bit microprocessor which
was written by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of
competition. Also just called Windoze, with the implication that you
can fall asleep waiting for it to do anything; the latter term is
extremely common on Usenet. See Black Screen of Death and Blue
Screen of Death; compare X, sun-stools.
Microsoft
The new Evil Empire (the old one was IBM). The basic complaints
are, as formerly with IBM, that (a) their system designs are horrible
botches, (b) we can't get source to fix them, and (c) they throw
their weight around a lot. See also Halloween Documents.
micros~1
An abbreviation of the full name Microsoft resembling the rather
bogus way Windows 9x's VFAT filesystem truncates long file names to
fit in the MS-DOS 8+3 scheme (the real filename is stored elsewhere).
If other files start with the same prefix, they'll be called micros~2
and so on, causing lots of problems with backups and other routine
system-administration problems. During the US Antitrust trial against
Microsoft the names Micros~1 and Micros~2 were suggested for the two
companies that would exist after a break-up.
middle-endian adj.
Not big-endian or little-endian. Used of perverse byte orders
such as 3-4-1-2 or 2-1-4-3, occasionally found in the packed-decimal
formats of minicomputer manufacturers who shall remain nameless. See
NUXI problem. Non-US hackers use this term to describe the American
mm/dd/yy style of writing dates (Europeans write little-endian
dd/mm/yy, and Japanese use big-endian yy/mm/dd for Western dates).
middle-out implementation
See bottom-up implementation.
milliLampson /mil'@·lamp`sn/, n.
A unit of talking speed, abbreviated mL. Most people run about 200
milliLampsons. The eponymous Butler Lampson (a CS theorist and
systems implementor highly regarded among hackers) goes at 1000. A
few people speak faster. This unit is sometimes used to compare the
(sometimes widely disparate) rates at which people can generate ideas
and actually emit them in speech. For example, noted computer
architect C. Gordon Bell (designer of the PDP-11) is said, with
some awe, to think at about 1200 mL but only talk at about 300; he is
frequently reduced to fragments of sentences as his mouth tries to
keep up with his speeding brain.
minor detail
Often used in an ironic sense about brokenness or problems that while
apparently major, are in principle solvable. "It works -- the fact
that it crashes the system right after is a minor detail." Compare
SMOP.
MIPS /mips/, n.
[abbreviation]
1. A measure of computing speed; formally, `Million Instructions Per
Second' (that's 10^6 per second, not 2^20!); often rendered by
hackers as `Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed' or in other
unflattering ways, such as `Meaningless Information Provided by
Salesmen'. This joke expresses an attitude nearly universal among
hackers about the value of most benchmark claims, said attitude
being one of the great cultural divides between hackers and
marketroids (see also BogoMIPS). The singular is sometimes `1
MIP' even though this is clearly etymologically wrong. See also
KIPS and GIPS.
2. Computers, especially large computers, considered abstractly as
sources of computrons. "This is just a workstation; the heavy MIPS
are hidden in the basement."
3. The corporate name of a particular RISC-chip company, later
acquired by SGI.
4. Acronym for `Meaningless Information per Second' (a joke, prob.:
from sense 1).
misbug /mis·buhg/, n.
[MIT; rare (like its referent)] An unintended property of a program
that turns out to be useful; something that should have been a bug
but turns out to be a feature. Compare green lightning. See
miswart.
misfeature /mis·fee´chr/, /mis´fee`chr/, n.
[common] A feature that eventually causes lossage, possibly because
it is not adequate for a new situation that has evolved. Since it
results from a deliberate and properly implemented feature, a
misfeature is not a bug. Nor is it a simple unforeseen side effect;
the term implies that the feature in question was carefully planned,
but its long-term consequences were not accurately or adequately
predicted (which is quite different from not having thought ahead at
all). A misfeature can be a particularly stubborn problem to resolve,
because fixing it usually involves a substantial philosophical change
to the structure of the system involved.
Many misfeatures (especially in user-interface design) arise because
the designers/implementors mistake their personal tastes for laws of
nature. Often a former feature becomes a misfeature because
trade-offs were made whose parameters subsequently change (possibly
only in the judgment of the implementors). "Well, yeah, it is kind of
a misfeature that file names are limited to six characters, but the
original implementors wanted to save directory space and we're stuck
with it for now."
missile address n.
See ICBM address.
MiSTing
[blogosphere] A variant of fisking patterned on the protocol of
Mystery Science Theater 3000, In a MiSTing, the satire is spoken
through characters purporting to be the MST3K robots or other
suitably bizarre characters, such as the Roman emperors Augustus and
Caligula.
miswart /mis·wort/, n.
[from wart by analogy with misbug] A feature that superficially
appears to be a wart but has been determined to be the Right
Thing. For example, in some versions of the EMACS text editor, the
`transpose characters' command exchanges the character under the
cursor with the one before it on the screen, except when the cursor
is at the end of a line, in which case the two characters before the
cursor are exchanged. While this behavior is perhaps surprising, and
certainly inconsistent, it has been found through extensive
experimentation to be what most users want. This feature is a
miswart.
MMF //
[Usenet; common] Abbreviation: "Make Money Fast". Refers to any kind
of scheme which promises participants large profits with little or no
risk or effort. Typically, it is a some kind of multi-level marketing
operation which involves recruiting more members, or an illegal
pyramid scam. The term is also used to refer to any kind of spam
which promotes this. For more information, see the Make Money Fast
Myth Page.
mobo /moh´bo/
Written and (rarely) spoken contraction of "motherboard"
moby /moh´bee/
[MIT: seems to have been in use among model railroad fans years ago.
Derived from Melville's Moby Dick (some say from `Moby Pickle'). Now
common.]
1. adj. Large, immense, complex, impressive. "A Saturn V rocket is a
truly moby frob." "Some MIT undergrads pulled off a moby hack at the
Harvard-Yale game." (See Appendix A for discussion.)
2. n. obs. The maximum address space of a machine (see below). For a
680[234]0 or VAX or most modern 32-bit architectures, it is
4,294,967,296 8-bit bytes (4 gigabytes).
3. A title of address (never of third-person reference), usually used
to show admiration, respect, and/or friendliness to a competent
hacker. "Greetings, moby Dave. How's that address-book thing for the
Mac going?"
4. adj. In backgammon, doubles on the dice, as in moby sixes, moby
ones, etc. Compare this with bignum (sense 3): double sixes are
both bignums and moby sixes, but moby ones are not bignums (the use
of moby to describe double ones is sarcastic). Standard emphatic
forms: Moby foo, moby win, moby loss. Foby moo: a spoonerism due to
Richard Greenblatt.
5. The largest available unit of something which is available in
discrete increments. Thus, ordering a "moby Coke" at the local
fast-food joint is not just a request for a large Coke, it's an
explicit request for the largest size they sell.
This term entered hackerdom with the Fabritek 256K memory added to
the MIT AI PDP-6 machine, which was considered unimaginably huge when
it was installed in the 1960s (at a time when a more typical memory
size for a timesharing system was 72 kilobytes). Thus, a moby is
classically 256K 36-bit words, the size of a PDP-6 or PDP-10 moby.
Back when address registers were narrow the term was more generally
useful, because when a computer had virtual memory mapping, it might
actually have more physical memory attached to it than any one
program could access directly. One could then say "This computer has
6 mobies" meaning that the ratio of physical memory to address space
is 6, without having to say specifically how much memory there
actually is. That in turn implied that the computer could timeshare
six `full-sized' programs without having to swap programs between
memory and disk.
Nowadays the low cost of processor logic means that address spaces
are usually larger than the most physical memory you can cram onto a
machine, so most systems have much less than one theoretical `native'
moby of core. Also, more modern memory-management techniques (esp.
paging) make the `moby count' less significant. However, there is one
series of widely-used chips for which the term could stand to be
revived -- the Intel 8088 and 80286 with their incredibly
brain-damaged segmented-memory designs. On these, a moby would be
the 1-megabyte address span of a segment/offset pair (by coincidence,
a PDP-10 moby was exactly 1 megabyte of 9-bit bytes).
mockingbird n.
Software that intercepts communications (especially login
transactions) between users and hosts and provides system-like
responses to the users while saving their responses (especially
account IDs and passwords). A special case of Trojan horse.
mod vt.,n.
[very common]
1. Short for `modify' or `modification'. Very commonly used -- in
fact the full terms are considered markers that one is being formal.
The plural `mods' is used esp. with reference to bug fixes or minor
design changes in hardware or software, most esp. with respect to
patch sets or a diff. See also case mod.
2. Short for modulo but used only for its techspeak sense.
mode n.
[common] A general state, usually used with an adjective describing
the state. Use of the word `mode' rather than `state' implies that
the state is extended over time, and probably also that some activity
characteristic of that state is being carried out. "No time to hack;
I'm in thesis mode." In its jargon sense, `mode' is most often
attributed to people, though it is sometimes applied to programs and
inanimate objects. In particular, see hack mode, day mode, night
mode, demo mode, fireworks mode, and yoyo mode; also talk
mode.
One also often hears the verbs enable and disable used in connection
with jargon modes. Thus, for example, a sillier way of saying "I'm
going to crash" is "I'm going to enable crash mode now". One might
also hear a request to "disable flame mode, please".
In a usage much closer to techspeak, a mode is a special state that
certain user interfaces must pass into in order to perform certain
functions. For example, in order to insert characters into a document
in the Unix editor vi, one must type the "i" key, which invokes the
"Insert" command. The effect of this command is to put vi into
"insert mode", in which typing the "i" key has a quite different
effect (to wit, it inserts an "i" into the document). One must then
hit another special key, "ESC", in order to leave "insert mode".
Nowadays, modeful interfaces are generally considered losing but
survive in quite a few widely used tools built in less enlightened
times.
mode bit n.
[common] A flag, usually in hardware, that selects between two
(usually quite different) modes of operation. The connotations are
different from flag bit in that mode bits are mainly written during
a boot or set-up phase, are seldom explicitly read, and seldom change
over the lifetime of an ordinary program. The classic example was the
EBCDIC-vs.-ASCII bit (#12) of the Program Status Word of the IBM 360.
modulo /mod´yu·loh/, prep.
Except for. An overgeneralization of mathematical terminology; one
can consider saying that 4 equals 22 except for the 9s (4 = 22 mod
9). "Well, LISP seems to work okay now, modulo that GC bug." "I
feel fine today modulo a slight headache."
mojibake n., /mo´jee·ba·ke/
Japanese for "ghost characters", the garbage that comes out when one
tries to display international character sets through software not
configured for them. There is a page on the topic at
http://www.debian.or.jp/~kubota/mojibake/.
molly-guard /mol´ee·gard/, n.
[University of Illinois] A shield to prevent tripping of some Big
Red Switch by clumsy or ignorant hands. Originally used of the
plexiglass covers improvised for the BRS on an IBM 4341 after a
programmer's toddler daughter (named Molly) frobbed it twice in one
day. Later generalized to covers over stop/reset switches on disk
drives and networking equipment. In hardware catalogues, you'll see
the much less interesting description "guarded button".
Mongolian Hordes technique n.
[poss. from the Sixties counterculture expression Mongolian
clusterfuck for a public orgy] Development by gang bang. Implies
that large numbers of inexperienced programmers are being put on a
job better performed by a few skilled ones (but see bazaar). Also
called Chinese Army technique; see also Brooks's Law.
monkey up vt.
To hack together hardware for a particular task, especially a
one-shot job. Connotes an extremely crufty and consciously
temporary solution. Compare hack up, kluge up, cruft together.
monkey, scratch n.
See scratch monkey.
monstrosity
1. n. A ridiculously elephantine program or system, esp. one that
is buggy or only marginally functional.
2. adj. The quality of being monstrous (see the section called
"Overgeneralization" in the discussion of jargonification). See also
baroque.
monty /mon´tee/, n.
1. [US Geological Survey] A program with a ludicrously complex user
interface written to perform extremely trivial tasks. An example
would be a menu-driven, button clicking, pulldown, pop-up windows
program for listing directories. The original monty was an infamous
weather-reporting program, Monty the Amazing Weather Man, written at
the USGS. Monty had a widget-packed X-window interface with over 200
buttons; and all monty actually did was files off the network.
2. [Great Britain; commonly capitalized as Monty or as the Full
Monty] 16 megabytes of memory, when fitted to an IBM-PC or
compatible. A standard PC-compatible using the AT- or ISA-bus with a
normal BIOS cannot access more than 16 megabytes of RAM. Generally
used of a PC, Unix workstation, etc. to mean fully populated with
memory, disk-space or some other desirable resource. See the World
Wide Words article "The Full Monty" for discussion of the rather
complex etymology that may lie behind this phrase. Compare American
moby.
Moof /moof/
[Macintosh users]
1. n. The call of a semi-legendary creature, properly called the
dogcow. (Some previous versions of this entry claimed, incorrectly,
that Moof was the name of the creature.)
2. adj. Used to flag software that's a hack, something untested and
on the edge. On one Apple CD-ROM, certain folders such as "Tools &
Apps (Moof!)" and "Development Platforms (Moof!)", are so marked to
indicate that they contain software not fully tested or sanctioned by
the powers that be. When you open these folders you cross the
boundary into hackerland.
3. v. On the Microsoft Network, the term `moof' has gained popularity
as a verb meaning `to be suddenly disconnected by the system'. One
might say "I got moofed".
Moore's Law /morz law/, prov.
Any one of several similar folk theorems that fit computing capacity
or cost to a 2^t exponential curve, with doubling time close to a
year. The most common fits component density to such a curve
(previous versions of this entry gave that form). Another variant
asserts that the dollar cost of constant computing power decreases on
the same curve. The original Moore's Law, first uttered in 1965 by
semiconductor engineer Gordon Moore (who co-founded Intel four years
later), spoke of the number of components on the lowest-cost silicon
integrated circuits -- but Moore's own formulation varied somewhat
over the years, and reconstructing the meaning of the terminology he
used in the original turns out to be fraught with difficulties.
Further variants were spawned by Intel's PR department and various
journalists.
It has been shown that none of the variants of Moore's Law actually
fit the data very well (the price curves within DRAM generations
perhaps come closest). Nevertheless, Moore's Law is constantly
invoked to set up expectations about the next generation of computing
technology. See also Parkinson's Law of Data and Gates's Law.
moria /mor´ee·@/, n.
Like nethack and rogue, one of the large PD
Dungeons-and-Dragons-like simulation games, available for a wide
range of machines and operating systems. The name is from Tolkien's
Mines of Moria; compare elder days, elvish. The game is extremely
addictive and a major consumer of time better used for hacking. See
also nethack, rogue, Angband.
MOTAS /moh·tahz/, n.
[Usenet: Member Of The Appropriate Sex, after MOTOS and MOTSS] A
potential or (less often) actual sex partner. See also SO.
MOTOS /moh·tohs/, n.
[acronym from the 1970 U.S. census forms via Usenet: Member Of The
Opposite Sex] A potential or (less often) actual sex partner. See
MOTAS, MOTSS, SO. Less common than MOTSS or MOTAS, which has
largely displaced it.
MOTSS /mots/, /M·O·T·S·S/, n.
[from the 1970 U.S. census forms via Usenet] Member Of The Same Sex,
esp. one considered as a possible sexual partner. The gay-issues
newsgroup on Usenet is called soc.motss. See MOTOS and MOTAS,
which derive from it. See also SO.
mouse ahead vi.
Point-and-click analog of type ahead. To manipulate a computer's
pointing device (almost always a mouse in this usage, but not
necessarily) and its selection or command buttons before a computer
program is ready to accept such input, in anticipation of the program
accepting the input. Handling this properly is rare, but it can help
make a WIMP environment much more usable, assuming the users are
familiar with the behavior of the user interface.
mouse belt n.
See rat belt.
mouse droppings n.
[MS-DOS] Pixels (usually single) that are not properly restored when
the mouse pointer moves away from a particular location on the
screen, producing the appearance that the mouse pointer has left
droppings behind. The major causes for this problem are programs that
write to the screen memory corresponding to the mouse pointer's
current location without hiding the mouse pointer first, and mouse
drivers that do not quite support the graphics mode in use.
mouse elbow n.
A tennis-elbow-like fatigue syndrome resulting from excessive use of
a WIMP environment. Similarly, mouse shoulder; GLS reports that he
used to get this a lot before he taught himself to be ambimoustrous.
mouse pusher
[common] A person that prefers a mouse over a keyboard; originally
used for Macintosh fans. The derogatory implication is that the
person has nothing but the most superficial knowledge of the software
he/she is employing, and is incapable of using or appreciating the
full glory of the command line.
mouso /mow´soh/, n.
[by analogy with `typo'] An error in mouse usage resulting in an
inappropriate selection or graphic garbage on the screen. Compare
thinko, braino.
MS-DOS /M·S·dos/, n.
[MicroSoft Disk Operating System] A clone of CP/M for the 8088
crufted together in 6 weeks by hacker Tim Paterson at Seattle
Computer Products, who called the original QDOS (Quick and Dirty
Operating System) and is said to have regretted it ever since.
Microsoft licensed QDOS in order to have something to demo for IBM on
time, and the rest is history. Numerous features, including vaguely
Unix-like but rather broken support for subdirectories, I/O
redirection, and pipelines, were hacked into Microsoft's 2.0 and
subsequent versions; as a result, there are two or more incompatible
versions of many system calls, and MS-DOS programmers can never agree
on basic things like what character to use as an option switch or
whether to be case-sensitive. The resulting appalling mess is now the
highest-unit-volume OS in history. Often known simply as DOS, which
annoys people familiar with other similarly abbreviated operating
systems (the name goes back to the mid-1960s, when it was attached to
IBM's first disk operating system for the 360). The name further
annoys those who know what the term operating system does (or ought
to) connote; DOS is more properly a set of relatively simple
interrupt services. Some people like to pronounce DOS like "dose", as
in "I don't work on dose, man!", or to compare it to a dose of
brain-damaging drugs (a slogan button in wide circulation among
hackers exhorts: "MS-DOS: Just say No!"). See mess-dos.
mu /moo/
The correct answer to the classic trick question "Have you stopped
beating your wife yet?". Assuming that you have no wife or you have
never beaten your wife, the answer "yes" is wrong because it implies
that you used to beat your wife and then stopped, but "no" is worse
because it suggests that you have one and are still beating her.
According to various Discordians and Douglas Hofstadter the correct
answer is usually "mu", a Japanese word alleged to mean "Your
question cannot be answered because it depends on incorrect
assumptions". Hackers tend to be sensitive to logical inadequacies in
language, and many have adopted this suggestion with enthusiasm. The
word `mu' is actually from Chinese, meaning `nothing'; it is used in
mainstream Japanese in that sense. In Chinese it can also mean "have
not" (as in "I have not done it"), or "lack of", which may or may not
be a definite, complete 'nothing'). Native speakers of Japanese do
not recognize the Discordian question-denying use, which almost
certainly derives from overgeneralization of the answer in the
following well-known Rinzai Zen koan:
A monk asked Joshu, "Does a dog have the Buddha nature?" Joshu
retorted, "Mu!"
See also has the X nature, Some AI Koans, and Douglas Hofstadter's
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (pointer in the
Bibliography in Appendix C.
MUD /muhd/, n.
[acronym, Multi-User Dungeon; alt.: Multi-User Dimension]
1. A class of virtual reality experiments accessible via the
Internet. These are real-time chat forums with structure; they have
multiple `locations' like an adventure game, and may include combat,
traps, puzzles, magic, a simple economic system, and the capability
for characters to build more structure onto the database that
represents the existing world.
2. vi. To play a MUD. The acronym MUD is often lowercased and/or
verbed; thus, one may speak of going mudding, etc.
Historically, MUDs (and their more recent progeny with names of MU-
form) derive from a hack by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw on the
University of Essex's DEC-10 in the early 1980s; descendants of that
game still exist today and are sometimes generically called
BartleMUDs. There is a widespread myth (repeated, unfortunately, by
earlier versions of this lexicon) that the name MUD was trademarked
to the commercial MUD run by Bartle on British Telecom (the motto:
"You haven't lived 'til you've died on MUD!"); however, this is false
-- Richard Bartle explicitly placed `MUD' in the public domain in
1985. BT was upset at this, as they had already printed trademark
claims on some maps and posters, which were released and created the
myth.
Students on the European academic networks quickly improved on the
MUD concept, spawning several new MUDs (VAXMUD, AberMUD, LPMUD). Many
of these had associated bulletin-board systems for social
interaction. Because these had an image as `research' they often
survived administrative hostility to BBSs in general. This, together
with the fact that Usenet feeds were often spotty and difficult to
get in the U.K., made the MUDs major foci of hackish social
interaction there.
AberMUD and other variants crossed the Atlantic around 1988 and
quickly gained popularity in the U.S.; they became nuclei for large
hacker communities with only loose ties to traditional hackerdom
(some observers see parallels with the growth of Usenet in the early
1980s). The second wave of MUDs (TinyMUD and variants) tended to
emphasize social interaction, puzzles, and cooperative world-building
as opposed to combat and competition (in writing, these social MUDs
are sometimes referred to as `MU*', with `MUD' implicitly reserved
for the more game-oriented ones). By 1991, over 50% of MUD sites were
of a third major variety, LPMUD, which synthesizes the combat/puzzle
aspects of AberMUD and older systems with the extensibility of
TinyMud. In 1996 the cutting edge of the technology is Pavel Curtis's
MOO, even more extensible using a built-in object-oriented language.
The trend toward greater programmability and flexibility will
doubtless continue.
The state of the art in MUD design is still moving very rapidly, with
new simulation designs appearing (seemingly) every month. Around 1991
there was an unsuccessful movement to deprecate the term MUD
itself, as newer designs exhibit an exploding variety of names
corresponding to the different simulation styles being explored. It
survived. See also bonk/oif, FOD, link-dead, mudhead, talk
mode.
muddie n.
Syn. mudhead. More common in Great Britain, possibly because system
administrators there like to mutter "bloody muddies" when annoyed at
the species.
mudhead n.
Commonly used to refer to a MUD player who eats, sleeps, and
breathes MUD. Mudheads have been known to fail their degrees, drop
out, etc., with the consolation, however, that they made wizard
level. When encountered in person, on a MUD, or in a chat system, all
a mudhead will talk about is three topics: the tactic, character, or
wizard that is supposedly always unfairly stopping him/her from
becoming a wizard or beating a favorite MUD; why the specific game
he/she has experience with is so much better than any other; and the
MUD he or she is writing or going to write because his/her design
ideas are so much better than in any existing MUD. See also
wannabee.
To the anthropologically literate, this term may recall the Zuni/Hopi
legend of the mudheads or koyemshi, mythical half-formed children of
an unnatural union. Figures representing them act as clowns in Zuni
sacred ceremonies. Others may recall the `High School Madness'
sequence from the Firesign Theatre album Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand
Me the Pliers, in which there is a character named "Mudhead".
muggle
[from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, 1998] A non-wizard. Not as
disparaging as luser; implies vague pity rather than contempt. In
the universe of Rowling's enormously (and deservedly) popular
children's series, muggles and wizards inhabit the same modern world,
but each group is ignorant of the commonplaces of the others'
existence -- most muggles are unaware that wizards exist, and wizards
(used to magical ways of doing everything) are perplexed and
fascinated by muggle artifacts.
In retrospect it seems completely inevitable that hackers would adopt
this metaphor, and in hacker usage it readily forms compounds such as
muggle-friendly. Compare luser, mundane, chainik, newbie.
Multics /muhl´tiks/, n.
[from "MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service"] An early
timesharing operating system co-designed by a consortium including
MIT, GE, and Bell Laboratories as a successor to CTSS. The design
was first presented in 1965, planned for operation in 1967, first
operational in 1969, and took several more years to achieve
respectable performance and stability.
Multics was very innovative for its time -- among other things, it
provided a hierarchical file system with access control on individual
files and introduced the idea of treating all devices uniformly as
special files. It was also the first OS to run on a symmetric
multiprocessor, and the only general-purpose system to be awarded a
B2 security rating by the NSA (see Orange Book).
Bell Labs left the development effort in 1969 after judging that
second-system effect had bloated Multics to the point of practical
unusability. Honeywell commercialized Multics in 1972 after buying
out GE's computer group, but it was never very successful: at its
peak in the 1980s, there were between 75 and 100 Multics sites, each
a multi-million dollar mainframe.
One of the former Multics developers from Bell Labs was Ken Thompson,
and Unix deliberately carried through and extended many of Multics'
design ideas; indeed, Thompson described the very name `Unix' as "a
weak pun on Multics". For this and other reasons, aspects of the
Multics design remain a topic of occasional debate among hackers. See
also brain-damaged and GCOS.
MIT ended its development association with Multics in 1977. Honeywell
sold its computer business to Bull in the mid 80s, and development on
Multics was stopped in 1988. Four Multics sites were known to be
still in use as late as 1998, but the last one (a Canadian military
site) was decommissioned in November 2000. There is a Multics page at
http://www.stratus.com/pub/vos/multics/tvv/multics.html.
multitask n.
Often used of humans in the same meaning it has for computers, to
describe a person doing several things at once (but see thrash).
The term multiplex, from communications technology (meaning to handle
more than one channel at the same time), is used similarly.
mumblage /muhm´bl@j/, n.
The topic of one's mumbling (see mumble). "All that mumblage" is
used like "all that stuff" when it is not quite clear how the subject
of discussion works, or like "all that crap" when `mumble' is being
used as an implicit replacement for pejoratives.
mumble interj.
1. Said when the correct response is too complicated to enunciate, or
the speaker has not thought it out. Often prefaces a longer answer,
or indicates a general reluctance to get into a long discussion.
"Don't you think that we could improve LISP performance by using a
hybrid reference-count transaction garbage collector, if the cache is
big enough and there are some extra cache bits for the microcode to
use?" "Well, mumble ... I'll have to think about it."
2. [MIT] Expression of not-quite-articulated agreement, often used as
an informal vote of consensus in a meeting: "So, shall we dike out
the COBOL emulation?" "Mumble!"
3. Sometimes used as an expression of disagreement (distinguished
from sense 2 by tone of voice and other cues). "I think we should buy
a VAX." "Mumble!" Common variant: mumble frotz (see frotz;
interestingly, one does not say `mumble frobnitz' even though `frotz'
is short for `frobnitz').
4. Yet another metasyntactic variable, like foo.
5. When used as a question ("Mumble?") means "I didn't understand
you".
6. Sometimes used in `public' contexts on-line as a placefiller for
things one is barred from giving details about. For example, a poster
with pre-released hardware in his machine might say "Yup, my machine
now has an extra 16M of memory, thanks to the card I'm testing for
Mumbleco."
7. A conversational wild card used to designate something one doesn't
want to bother spelling out, but which can be glarked from context.
Compare blurgle.
8. [XEROX PARC] A colloquialism used to suggest that further
discussion would be fruitless.
munch vt.
[often confused with mung, q.v.] To transform information in a
serial fashion, often requiring large amounts of computation. To
trace down a data structure. Related to crunch and nearly
synonymous with grovel, but connotes less pain.
munching n.
Exploration of security holes of someone else's computer for thrills,
notoriety, or to annoy the system manager. Compare cracker. See
also hacked off.
munching squares n.
A display hack dating back to the PDP-1 (ca. 1962, reportedly
discovered by Jackson Wright), which employs a trivial computation
(repeatedly plotting the graph Y = X XOR T for successive values of T
-- see HAKMEM items 146--148) to produce an impressive display of
moving and growing squares that devour the screen. The initial value
of T is treated as a parameter, which, when well-chosen, can produce
amazing effects. Some of these, later (re)discovered on the LISP
machine, have been christened munching triangles (try AND for XOR and
toggling points instead of plotting them), munching w's, and munching
mazes. More generally, suppose a graphics program produces an
impressive and ever-changing display of some basic form, foo, on a
display terminal, and does it using a relatively simple program; then
the program (or the resulting display) is likely to be referred to as
munching foos. [This is a good example of the use of the word foo
as a metasyntactic variable.]
munchkin /muhnch´kin/, n.
[from the squeaky-voiced little people in L. Frank Baum's The Wizard
of Oz] A teenage-or-younger micro enthusiast hacking BASIC or
something else equally constricted. A term of mild derision --
munchkins are annoying but some grow up to be hackers after passing
through a larval stage. The term urchin is also used. See also
wannabee, bitty box.
mundane n.
[from SF fandom]
1. A person who is not in science fiction fandom.
2. A person who is not in the computer industry. In this sense, most
often an adjectival modifier as in "in my mundane life...." See also
Real World, muggle.
mung /muhng/, vt.
[in 1960 at MIT, "Mash Until No Good"; sometime after that the
derivation from the recursive acronym "Mung Until No Good" became
standard; but see munge]
1. To make changes to a file, esp. large-scale and irrevocable
changes. See BLT.
2. To destroy, usually accidentally, occasionally maliciously. The
system only mungs things maliciously; this is a consequence of
Finagle's Law. See scribble, mangle, trash, nuke. Reports
from Usenet suggest that the pronunciation /muhnj/ is now usual in
speech, but the spelling `mung' is still common in program comments
(compare the widespread confusion over the proper spelling of
kluge).
3. In the wake of the spam epidemics of the 1990s, mung is now
commonly used to describe the act of modifying an email address in a
sig block in a way that human beings can readily reverse but that
will fool an address harvester. Example: johnNOSPAMsmith@isp.net.
4. The kind of beans the sprouts of which are used in Chinese food.
(That's their real name! Mung beans! Really!)
Like many early hacker terms, this one seems to have originated at
TMRC; it was already in use there in 1958. Peter Samson (compiler
of the original TMRC lexicon) thinks it may originally have been
onomatopoeic for the sound of a relay spring (contact) being twanged.
However, it is known that during the World Wars, `mung' was U.S.:
army slang for the ersatz creamed chipped beef better known as `SOS',
and it seems quite likely that the word in fact goes back to
Scots-dialect munge.
Charles Mackay's 1874 book Lost Beauties of the English Language
defined "mung" as follows: "Preterite of ming, to ming or mingle;
when the substantive meaning of mingled food of bread, potatoes, etc.
thrown to poultry. In America, `mung news' is a common expression
applied to false news, but probably having its derivation from
mingled (or mung) news, in which the true and the false are so mixed
up together that it is impossible to distinguish one from another."
munge /muhnj/, vt.
1. [derogatory] To imperfectly transform information.
2. A comprehensive rewrite of a routine, data structure or the whole
program.
3. To modify data in some way the speaker doesn't need to go into
right now or cannot describe succinctly (compare mumble).
4. To add spamblock to an email address.
This term is often confused with mung, which probably was derived
from it. However, it also appears the word munge was in common use in
Scotland in the 1940s, and in Yorkshire in the 1950s, as a verb,
meaning to munch up into a masticated mess, and as a noun, meaning
the result of munging something up (the parallel with the
kluge/kludge pair is amusing). The OED reports "munge" as an
archaic verb meaning "to wipe (a person's nose)".
Murphy's Law prov.
The correct, original Murphy's Law reads: "If there are two or more
ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a
catastrophe, then someone will do it." This is a principle of
defensive design, cited here because it is usually given in mutant
forms less descriptive of the challenges of design for lusers. For
example, you don't make a two-pin plug symmetrical and then label it
"THIS WAY UP"; if it matters which way it is plugged in, then you
make the design asymmetrical (see also the anecdote under magic
smoke).
Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was one of McDonnell-Douglas's test engineers
on the rocket-sled experiments that were done by the U.S. Air Force
in 1949 to test human acceleration tolerances (USAF project MX981).
One experiment involved a set of 16 accelerometers mounted to
different parts of the subject's body. There were two ways each
sensor could be glued to its mount, and somebody methodically
installed all 16 in a replacement set the wrong way around. Murphy
then made the original form of his pronouncement, which the test
subject (Major John Paul Stapp) mis-quoted (apparently in the more
general form "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong)" at a news
conference a few days later.
Within months `Murphy's Law' had spread to various technical cultures
connected to aerospace engineering. Before too many years had gone by
variants had passed into the popular imagination, changing as they
went. Most of these are variants on "Anything that can go wrong,
will"; this is more correctly referred to as Finagle's Law. The
memetic drift apparent in these mutants clearly demonstrates Murphy's
Law acting on itself!
music n.
A common extracurricular interest of hackers (compare
science-fiction fandom, oriental food; see also filk). Hackish
folklore has long claimed that musical and programming abilities are
closely related, and there has been at least one large-scale
statistical study that supports this. Hackers, as a rule, like music
and often develop musical appreciation in unusual and interesting
directions. Folk music is very big in hacker circles; so is
electronic music, and the sort of elaborate instrumental jazz/rock
that used to be called `progressive' and isn't recorded much any
more. The hacker's musical range tends to be wide; many can listen
with equal appreciation to (say) Talking Heads, Yes, Gentle Giant,
Pat Metheny, Scott Joplin, Tangerine Dream, Dream Theater, King Sunny
Ade, The Pretenders, Screaming Trees, or the Brandenburg Concerti. It
is also apparently true that hackerdom includes a much higher
concentration of talented amateur musicians than one would expect
from a similar-sized control group of mundane types.
mutter vt.
To quietly enter a command not meant for the ears, eyes, or fingers
of ordinary mortals. Often used in "mutter an incantation". See
also wizard.
= N =
=====
N /N/, quant.
1. A large and indeterminate number of objects: "There were N bugs in
that crock!" Also used in its original sense of a variable name:
"This crock has N bugs, as N goes to infinity." (The true number of
bugs is always at least N + 1; see Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic
Entomology.)
2. A variable whose value is inherited from the current context. For
example, when a meal is being ordered at a restaurant, N may be
understood to mean however many people there are at the table. From
the remark "We'd like to order N wonton soups and a family dinner for
N - 1" you can deduce that one person at the table wants to eat only
soup, even though you don't know how many people there are (see
great-wall).
3. Nth: adj. The ordinal counterpart of N, senses 1 and 2.
4. "Now for the Nth and last time..." In the specific context
"Nth-year grad student", N is generally assumed to be at least 4, and
is usually 5 or more (see tenured graduate student). See also
random numbers, two-to-the-N.
nadger /nad´jr/, v.
[UK, from rude slang noun nadgers for testicles; compare American &
British bollixed] Of software or hardware (not people), to twiddle
some object in a hidden manner, generally so that it conforms better
to some format. For instance, string printing routines on 8-bit
processors often take the string text from the instruction stream,
thus a print call looks like jsr print:"Hello world". The print
routine has to nadger the saved instruction pointer so that the
processor doesn't try to execute the text as instructions when the
subroutine returns. See adger.
nagware /nag´weir/, n.
[Usenet] The variety of shareware that displays a large screen at
the beginning or end reminding you to register, typically requiring
some sort of keystroke to continue so that you can't use the software
in batch mode. Compare annoyware, crippleware.
nailed to the wall adj.
[like a trophy] Said of a bug finally eliminated after protracted,
and even heroic, effort.
nailing jelly vi.
See like nailing jelly to a tree.
naive adj.
1. Untutored in the perversities of some particular program or
system; one who still tries to do things in an intuitive way, rather
than the right way (in really good designs these coincide, but most
designs aren't `really good' in the appropriate sense). This trait is
completely unrelated to general maturity or competence, or even
competence at any other specific program. It is a sad commentary on
the primitive state of computing that the natural opposite of this
term is often claimed to be experienced user but is really more like
cynical user.
2. Said of an algorithm that doesn't take advantage of some superior
but advanced technique, e.g., the bubble sort. It may imply naivete
on the part of the programmer, although there are situations where a
naive algorithm is preferred, because it is more important to keep
the code comprehensible than to go for maximum performance. "I know
the linear search is naive, but in this case the list typically only
has half a dozen items." Compare brute force.
naive user n.
A luser. Tends to imply someone who is ignorant mainly owing to
inexperience. When this is applied to someone who has experience,
there is a definite implication of stupidity.
NAK /nak/, interj.
[from the ASCII mnemonic for 0010101]
1. On-line joke answer to ACK?: "I'm not here."
2. On-line answer to a request for chat: "I'm not available."
3. Used to politely interrupt someone to tell them you don't
understand their point or that they have suddenly stopped making
sense. See ACK, sense
3. "And then, after we recode the project in COBOL...." "Nak, Nak,
Nak! I thought I heard you say COBOL!"
4. A negative answer. "OK if I boot the server?" "NAK!"
NANA //
[Usenet] The newsgroups news.admin.net-abuse.*, devoted to fighting
spam and network abuse. Each individual newsgroup is often referred
to by adding a letter to NANA. For example, NANAU would refer to
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet.
When spam began to be a serious problem around 1995, and a loose
network of anti-spammers formed to combat it, spammers immediately
accused them of being the backbone cabal, or the Cabal reborn.
Though this was not true, spam-fighters ironically accepted the label
and the tag line "There is No Cabal" reappeared (later, and now
commonly, abbreviated to "TINC"). Nowadays "the Cabal" is generally
understood to refer to the NANA regulars.
nano /nan´oh/, n.
[CMU: from nanosecond] A brief period of time. "Be with you in a
nano" means you really will be free shortly, i.e., implies what
mainstream people mean by "in a jiffy" (whereas the hackish use of
`jiffy' is quite different -- see jiffy).
nano- pref.
[SI: the next quantifier below micro-; meaning × 10^-9] Smaller
than micro-, and used in the same rather loose and connotative way.
Thus, one has nanotechnology (coined by hacker K. Eric Drexler) by
analogy with microtechnology; and a few machine architectures have a
nanocode level below microcode. Tom Duff at Bell Labs has also
pointed out that "Pi seconds is a nanocentury". See also
quantifiers, pico-, nanoacre, nanobot, nanocomputer,
nanofortnight.
nanoacre /nan´oh·ay`kr/, n.
A unit (about 2 mm square) of real estate on a VLSI chip. The term
gets its giggle value from the fact that VLSI nanoacres have costs in
the same range as real acres once one figures in design and
fabrication-setup costs.
nanobot /nan´oh·bot/, n.
A robot of microscopic proportions, presumably built by means of
nanotechnology. As yet, only used informally (and speculatively!).
Also called a nanoagent.
nanocomputer /nan´oh·k@m·pyoo´tr/, n.
A computer with molecular-sized switching elements. Designs for
mechanical nanocomputers which use single-molecule sliding rods for
their logic have been proposed. The controller for a nanobot would
be a nanocomputer.
nanofortnight n.
[Adelaide University] 1 fortnight × 10^-9, or about 1.2 msec. This
unit was used largely by students doing undergraduate practicals. See
microfortnight, attoparsec, and micro-.
nanotechnology /nan'·oh·tek·no`l@·jee/, n.
A hypothetical fabrication technology in which objects are designed
and built with the individual specification and placement of each
separate atom. The first unequivocal nanofabrication experiments took
place in 1990, for example with the deposition of individual xenon
atoms on a nickel substrate to spell the logo of a certain very large
computer company. Nanotechnology has been a hot topic in the hacker
subculture ever since the term was coined by K. Eric Drexler in his
book Engines of Creation (Anchor/Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-19973-2),
where he predicted that nanotechnology could give rise to replicating
assemblers, permitting an exponential growth of productivity and
personal wealth (there's an authorized transcription at
http://www.foresight.org/EOC/index.html). See also blue goo, gray
goo, nanobot.
narg
[Cambridge] Short for "Not A Real Gentleman", i.e. one who
excessively talks shop out of hours.
nasal demons n.
Recognized shorthand on the Usenet group comp.std.c for any
unexpected behavior of a C compiler on encountering an undefined
construct. During a discussion on that group in early 1992, a regular
remarked "When the compiler encounters [a given undefined construct]
it is legal for it to make demons fly out of your nose" (the
implication is that the compiler may choose any arbitrarily bizarre
way to interpret the code without violating the ANSI C standard).
Someone else followed up with a reference to "nasal demons", which
quickly became established. The original post is web-accessible at
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=10195%40ksr.com.
nastygram /nas´tee·gram/, n.
1. A protocol packet or item of email (the latter is also called a
letterbomb) that takes advantage of misfeatures or security holes
on the target system to do untoward things.
2. Disapproving mail, esp. from a net.god, pursuant to a violation
of netiquette or a complaint about failure to correct some mail- or
news-transmission problem. Compare shitogram, mailbomb.
3. A status report from an unhappy, and probably picky, customer.
"What'd Corporate say in today's nastygram?"
4. [deprecated] An error reply by mail from a daemon; in
particular, a bounce message.
Nathan Hale n.
An asterisk (see also splat, ASCII). Oh, you want an etymology?
Notionally, from "I regret that I have only one asterisk for my
country!", a misquote of the famous remark uttered by Nathan Hale
just before he was hanged. Hale was a (failed) spy for the rebels in
the American War of Independence.
nature n.
See has the X nature.
neat hack n.
[very common]
1. A clever technique.
2. A brilliant practical joke, where neatness is correlated with
cleverness, harmlessness, and surprise value. Example: the Caltech
Rose Bowl card display switch (see Appendix A for discussion). See
also hack.
neats vs. scruffies n.
The label used to refer to one of the continuing holy wars in AI
research. This conflict tangles together two separate issues. One is
the relationship between human reasoning and AI; `neats' tend to try
to build systems that `reason' in some way identifiably similar to
the way humans report themselves as doing, while `scruffies' profess
not to care whether an algorithm resembles human reasoning in the
least as long as it works. More importantly, neats tend to believe
that logic is king, while scruffies favor looser, more ad-hoc methods
driven by empirical knowledge. To a neat, scruffy methods appear
promiscuous, successful only by accident, and not productive of
insights about how intelligence actually works; to a scruffy, neat
methods appear to be hung up on formalism and irrelevant to the
hard-to-capture `common sense' of living intelligences.
neep-neep /neep neep/, n.
[onomatopoeic, widely spread through SF fandom but reported to have
originated at Caltech in the 1970s] One who is fascinated by
computers. Less specific than hacker, as it need not imply more
skill than is required to play games on a PC. The derived noun
neeping applies specifically to the long conversations about
computers that tend to develop in the corners at most SF-convention
parties (the term neepery is also in wide use). Fandom has a related
proverb to the effect that "Hacking is a conversational black hole!".
neophilia /nee`oh·fil'·ee·@/, n.
The trait of being excited and pleased by novelty. Common among most
hackers, SF fans, and members of several other connected leading-edge
subcultures, including the pro-technology `Whole Earth' wing of the
ecology movement, space activists, many members of Mensa, and the
Discordian/neo-pagan underground (see geek). All these groups
overlap heavily and (where evidence is available) seem to share
characteristic hacker tropisms for science fiction, music, and
oriental food. The opposite tendency is neophobia.
nerd n.
1. [mainstream slang] Pejorative applied to anyone with an
above-average IQ and few gifts at small talk and ordinary social
rituals.
2. [jargon] Term of praise applied (in conscious ironic reference to
sense 1) to someone who knows what's really important and interesting
and doesn't care to be distracted by trivial chatter and silly status
games. Compare geek.
The word itself appears to derive from the lines "And then, just to
show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo / And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep
and a Proo, / A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!" in the Dr.
Seuss book If I Ran the Zoo (1950). (The spellings `nurd' and `gnurd'
also used to be current at MIT, where `nurd' is reported from as far
back as 1957.) How it developed its mainstream meaning is unclear,
but sense 1 seems to have entered mass culture in the early 1970s
(there are reports that in the mid-1960s it meant roughly "annoying
misfit" without the connotation of intelligence.
An IEEE Spectrum article (4/95, page 16) once derived `nerd' in its
variant form `knurd' from the word `drunk' backwards, but this bears
all the hallmarks of a bogus folk etymology. Apparently this
etymology was folklore at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute around
1979.
Hackers developed sense 2 in self-defense perhaps ten years later,
and some actually wear "Nerd Pride" buttons, only half as a joke. At
MIT one can find not only buttons but (what else?) pocket protectors
bearing the slogan and the MIT seal.
nerd knob n.
[Cisco] A command in a complex piece of software which is more likely
to be used by an extremely experienced user to tweak a setting of one
sort or another - a setting which the average user may not even know
exists. Nerd knobs tend to be toggles, turning on or off a
particular, specific, narrowly defined behavior. Special case of
knobs.
net.- /net dot/, pref.
[Usenet] Prefix used to describe people and events related to Usenet.
From the time before the Great Renaming, when most non-local
newsgroups had names beginning "net.". Includes net.gods,
net.goddesses (various charismatic net.women with circles of on-line
admirers), net.lurkers (see lurker), net.person, net.parties (a
synonym for boink, sense 2), and many similar constructs. See also
net.police.
net.god /net god/, n.
Accolade referring to anyone who satisfies some combination of the
following conditions: has been visible on Usenet for more than 5
years, ran one of the original backbone sites, moderated an important
newsgroup, wrote news software, or knows Gene, Mark, Rick, Mel,
Henry, Chuq, and Greg personally. See demigod. Net.goddesses such
as Rissa or the Slime Sisters have (so far) been distinguished more
by personality than by authority.
net.personality /net per`sn·al'·@·tee/, n.
Someone who has made a name for him or herself on Usenet, through
either longevity or attention-getting posts, but doesn't meet the
other requirements of net.godhood.
net.police /net·p@·lees'/, n.
(var.: net.cops) Those Usenet readers who feel it is their
responsibility to pounce on and flame any posting which they regard
as offensive or in violation of their understanding of netiquette.
Generally used sarcastically or pejoratively. Also spelled `net
police'. See also net.-, code police.
netburp n.
[IRC] When netlag gets really bad, and delays between servers
exceed a certain threshold, the IRC network effectively becomes
partitioned for a period of time, and large numbers of people seem to
be signing off at the same time and then signing back on again when
things get better. An instance of this is called a netburp (or,
sometimes, netsplit).
netdead n.
[IRC] The state of someone who signs off IRC, perhaps during a
netburp, and doesn't sign back on until later. In the interim, he
is "dead to the net". Compare link-dead.
nethack /net´hak/, n.
[Unix] A dungeon game similar to rogue but more elaborate,
distributed in C source over Usenet and very popular at Unix sites
and on PC-class machines (nethack is probably the most widely
distributed of the freeware dungeon games). The earliest versions,
written by Jay Fenlason and later considerably enhanced by Andries
Brouwer, were simply called `hack'. The name changed when maintenance
was taken over by a group of hackers originally organized by Mike
Stephenson. There is now an official site at http://www.nethack.org/.
See also moria, rogue, Angband.
netiquette /net´ee·ket/, /net´i·ket/, n.
[Coined by Chuq von Rospach c.1983] [portmanteau, network +
etiquette] The conventions of politeness recognized on Usenet, such
as avoidance of cross-posting to inappropriate groups and refraining
from commercial pluggery outside the biz groups.
netlag n.
[IRC, MUD] A condition that occurs when the delays in the IRC
network or on a MUD become severe enough that servers briefly lose
and then reestablish contact, causing messages to be delivered in
bursts, often with delays of up to a minute. (Note that this term has
nothing to do with mainstream "jet lag", a condition which hackers
tend not to be much bothered by.) Often shortened to just `lag'.
netnews /net´n[y]ooz/, n.
1. The software that makes Usenet run.
2. The content of Usenet. "I read netnews right after my mail most
mornings."
Netscrape n.
[sometimes elaborated to Netscrape Fornicator, also Nutscrape]
Standard name-of-insult for Netscape Navigator/Communicator,
Netscape's overweight Web browser. Compare Internet Exploiter.
netsplit n.
Syn. netburp.
netter n.
1. Loosely, anyone with a network address.
2. More specifically, a Usenet regular. Most often found in the
plural. "If you post that in a technical group, you're going to be
flamed by angry netters for the rest of time!"
network address n.
(also net address) As used by hackers, means an address on `the'
network (see the network; this used to include bang path
addresses but now always implies an Internet address). Net addresses
are often used in email text as a more concise substitute for
personal names; indeed, hackers may come to know each other quite
well by network names without ever learning each others' `legal'
monikers. Display of a network address (e.g. on business cards) used
to function as an important hacker identification signal, like lodge
pins among Masons or tie-dyed T-shirts among Grateful Dead fans. In
the day of pervasive Internet this is less true, but you can still be
fairly sure that anyone with a network address handwritten on his or
her convention badge is a hacker.
network meltdown n.
A state of complete network overload; the network equivalent of
thrashing. This may be induced by a Chernobyl packet. See also
broadcast storm, kamikaze packet.
Network meltdown is often a result of network designs that are
optimized for a steady state of moderate load and don't cope well
with the very jagged, bursty usage patterns of the real world. One
amusing instance of this is triggered by the popular and very bloody
shoot-'em-up game Doom on the PC. When used in multiplayer mode over
a network, the game uses broadcast packets to inform other machines
when bullets are fired. This causes problems with weapons like the
chain gun which fire rapidly -- it can blast the network into a
meltdown state just as easily as it shreds opposing monsters.
New Jersey adj.
[primarily Stanford/Silicon Valley] Brain-damaged or of poor design.
This refers to the allegedly wretched quality of such software as C,
C++, and Unix (which originated at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New
Jersey). "This compiler bites the bag, but what can you expect from a
compiler designed in New Jersey?" Compare Berkeley Quality
Software. See also Unix conspiracy.
New Testament n.
[C programmers] The second edition of K&R's The C Programming
Language (Prentice-Hall, 1988; ISBN 0-13-110362-8), describing ANSI
Standard C. See K&R; this version is also called `K&R2'.
newbie /n[y]oo´bee/, n.
[very common; orig. from British public-school and military slang
variant of `new boy'] A Usenet neophyte. This term surfaced in the
newsgroup talk.bizarre but is now in wide use (the combination
"clueless newbie" is especially common). Criteria for being
considered a newbie vary wildly; a person can be called a newbie in
one newsgroup while remaining a respected regular in another. The
label newbie is sometimes applied as a serious insult to a person who
has been around Usenet for a long time but who carefully hides all
evidence of having a clue. See B1FF; see also gnubie. Compare
chainik, luser.
newgroup wars /n[y]oo´groop worz/, n.
[Usenet] The salvos of dueling newgroup and rmgroup messages
sometimes exchanged by persons on opposite sides of a dispute over
whether a newsgroup should be created net-wide, or (even more
frequently) whether an obsolete one should be removed. These usually
settle out within a week or two as it becomes clear whether the group
has a natural constituency (usually, it doesn't). At times,
especially in the completely anarchic alt hierarchy, the names of
newsgroups themselves become a form of comment or humor; e.g., the
group alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork which originated as a birthday
joke for a Muppets fan, or any number of specialized abuse groups
named after particularly notorious flamers, e.g., alt.weemba.
newline /n[y]oo´li:n/, n.
1. [techspeak, primarily Unix] The ASCII LF character (0001010), used
under Unix as a text line terminator. Though the term newline
appears in ASCII standards, it never caught on in the general
computing world before Unix.
2. More generally, any magic character, character sequence, or
operation (like Pascal's writeln procedure) required to terminate a
text record or separate lines. See crlf.
NeWS /nee´wis/, /n[y]oo´is/, /n[y]ooz/, n.
[acronym; the "Network Window System"] The road not taken in window
systems, an elegant PostScript-based environment that would almost
certainly have won the standards war with X if it hadn't been
proprietary to Sun Microsystems. There is a lesson here that too
many software vendors haven't yet heeded. Many hackers insist on the
two-syllable pronunciations above as a way of distinguishing NeWS
from Usenet news (the netnews software).
newsfroup //, n.
[Usenet] Silly synonym for newsgroup, originally a typo but now in
regular use on Usenet's talk.bizarre, and other lunatic-fringe
groups. Compare hing, grilf, pr0n and filk.
newsgroup n.
[Usenet] One of Usenet's huge collection of topic groups or fora.
Usenet groups can be unmoderated (anyone can post) or moderated
(submissions are automatically directed to a moderator, who edits or
filters and then posts the results). Some newsgroups have parallel
mailing lists for Internet people with no netnews access, with
postings to the group automatically propagated to the list and vice
versa. Some moderated groups (especially those which are actually
gatewayed Internet mailing lists) are distributed as digests, with
groups of postings periodically collected into a single large posting
with an index.
Among the best-known are comp.lang.c (the C-language forum),
comp.arch (on computer architectures), comp.unix.wizards (for Unix
wizards), rec.arts.sf.written and siblings (for science-fiction
fans), and talk.politics.misc (miscellaneous political discussions
and flamage).
nick n.
[IRC; very common] Short for nickname. On IRC, every user must pick
a nick, which is sometimes the same as the user's real name or login
name, but is often more fanciful. Compare handle, screen name.
nickle /ni´kl/, n.
[from `nickel', common name for the U.S. 5-cent coin] A nybble + 1;
5 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. See also deckle, and nybble for names of other
bit units.
night mode n.
See phase (of people).
Nightmare File System n.
Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In any
nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS
cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up.
Some machine tries to access the down one, and (getting no response)
repeats indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to some messages
(what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should
have been a brief excursion to a higher spl level). Then another
machine tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down
machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to
discover the down one is now trying both to access the down one and
to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach.
This situation snowballs very quickly, and soon the entire network of
machines is frozen -- worst of all, the user can't even abort the
file access that started the problem! Many of NFS's problems are
excused by partisans as being an inevitable result of its
statelessness, which is held to be a great feature (critics, of
course, call it a great misfeature). (ITS partisans are apt to cite
this as proof of Unix's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like
shared file system with none of these problems in the early 1970s.)
See also broadcast storm.
NIL /nil/
No. Used in reply to a question, particularly one asked using the
`-P' convention. Most hackers assume this derives simply from LISP
terminology for `false' (see also T), but NIL as a negative reply
was well-established among radio hams decades before the advent of
LISP. The historical connection between early hackerdom and the ham
radio world was strong enough that this may have been an influence.
Ninety-Ninety Rule n.
"The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the
development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the
other 90% of the development time." Attributed to Tom Cargill of Bell
Labs, and popularized by Jon Bentley's September 1985 Bumper-Sticker
Computer Science column in Communications of the ACM. It was there
called the "Rule of Credibility", a name which seems not to have
stuck. Other maxims in the same vein include the law attributed to
the early British computer scientist Douglas Hartree: "The time from
now until the completion of the project tends to become constant."
nipple mouse n.
Var. clit mouse, clitoris Common term for the pointing device used on
IBM ThinkPads and a few other laptop computers. The device, which
sits between the `g' and `h' keys on the keyboard, indeed resembles a
rubber nipple intended to be tweaked by a forefinger. Many hackers
consider these superior to the glide pads found on most laptops,
which are harder to control precisely.
NMI /N·M·I/, n.
Non-Maskable Interrupt. An IRQ 7 on the PDP-11 or 680[01234]0; the
NMI line on an 80[1234]86. In contrast with a priority interrupt
(which might be ignored, although that is unlikely), an NMI is never
ignored. Except, that is, on clone boxes, where NMI is often
ignored on the motherboard because flaky hardware can generate many
spurious ones.
no-op /noh´op/, n.,v.
alt.: NOP /nop/ [no operation]
1. A machine instruction that does nothing (sometimes used in
assembler-level programming as filler for data or patch areas, or to
overwrite code to be removed in binaries).
2. A person who contributes nothing to a project, or has nothing
going on upstairs, or both. As in "He's a no-op."
3. Any operation or sequence of operations with no effect, such as
circling the block without finding a parking space, or putting money
into a vending machine and having it fall immediately into the
coin-return box, or asking someone for help and being told to go
away. "Oh, well, that was a no-op." Hot-and-sour soup (see
great-wall) that is insufficiently either is no-op soup; so is
wonton soup if everybody else is having hot-and-sour.
noddy /nod´ee/, adj.
[UK: from the children's books]
1. Small and un-useful, but demonstrating a point. Noddy programs are
often written by people learning a new language or system. The
archetypal noddy program is hello world. Noddy code may be used to
demonstrate a feature or bug of a compiler. May be used of real
hardware or software to imply that it isn't worth using. "This
editor's a bit noddy."
2. A program that is more or less instant to produce. In this use,
the term does not necessarily connote uselessness, but describes a
hack sufficiently trivial that it can be written and debugged while
carrying on (and during the space of) a normal conversation. "I'll
just throw together a noddy awk script to dump all the first
fields." In North America this might be called a mickey mouse
program. See toy program.
non-optimal solution n.
(also sub-optimal solution) An astoundingly stupid way to do
something. This term is generally used in deadpan sarcasm, as its
impact is greatest when the person speaking looks completely serious.
Compare stunning. See also Bad Thing.
nonlinear adj.
[scientific computation]
1. Behaving in an erratic and unpredictable fashion; unstable. When
used to describe the behavior of a machine or program, it suggests
that said machine or program is being forced to run far outside of
design specifications. This behavior may be induced by unreasonable
inputs, or may be triggered when a more mundane bug sends the
computation far off from its expected course.
2. When describing the behavior of a person, suggests a tantrum or a
flame. "When you talk to Bob, don't mention the drug problem or
he'll go nonlinear for hours." In this context, go nonlinear connotes
`blow up out of proportion' (proportion connotes linearity).
nontrivial adj.
Requiring real thought or significant computing power. Often used as
an understated way of saying that a problem is quite difficult or
impractical, or even entirely unsolvable ("Proving P=NP is
nontrivial"). The preferred emphatic form is decidedly nontrivial.
See trivial, uninteresting, interesting.
not entirely unlike X
Used ironically of things which are in fact almost entirely unlike X,
except for one feature which the speaker clearly regards as
insignificant. "That is not entirely unlike cool...at least it's
small." Comes directly from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy scene
in which the food synthesizer on the starship Heart of Gold dispenses
something "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea".
not ready for prime time adj.
Usable, but only just so; not very robust; for internal use only.
Said of a program or device. Often connotes that the thing will be
made more solid Real Soon Now. This term comes from the ensemble
name of the original cast of Saturday Night Live, the "Not Ready for
Prime Time Players". It has extra flavor for hackers because of the
special (though now semi-obsolescent) meaning of prime time.
Compare beta.
notwork /not´werk/, n.
A network, when it is acting flaky or is down. Compare
nyetwork. Said at IBM to have originally referred to a particular
period of flakiness on IBM's VNET corporate network ca. 1988; but
there are independent reports of the term from elsewhere.
NP- /N·P/, pref.
Extremely. Used to modify adjectives describing a level or quality of
difficulty; the connotation is often `more so than it should be'.
This is generalized from the computer-science terms NP-hard and
NP-complete; NP-complete problems all seem to be very hard, but so
far no one has found a proof that they are. NP is the set of
Nondeterministic-Polynomial problems, those that can be completed by
a nondeterministic Turing machine in an amount of time that is a
polynomial function of the size of the input; a solution for one
NP-complete problem would solve all the others. "Coding a BitBlt
implementation to perform correctly in every case is NP-annoying."
Note, however, that strictly speaking this usage is misleading; there
are plenty of easy problems in class NP. NP-complete problems are
hard not because they are in class NP, but because they are the
hardest problems in class NP.
NSA line eater n.
The National Security Agency trawling program sometimes assumed to be
reading the net for the U.S. Government's spooks. Most hackers used
to think it was mythical but believed in acting as though existed
just in case. Since the mid-1990s it has gradually become known that
the NSA actually does this, quite illegally, through its Echelon
program.
The standard countermeasure is to put loaded phrases like `KGB',
`Uzi', `nuclear materials', `Palestine', `cocaine', and
`assassination' in their sig blocks in a (probably futile) attempt
to confuse and overload the creature. The GNU version of EMACS
actually has a command that randomly inserts a bunch of insidious
anarcho-verbiage into your edited text.
As far back as the 1970s there was a mainstream variant of this myth
involving a `Trunk Line Monitor', which supposedly used speech
recognition to extract words from telephone trunks. This is much
harder than noticing keywords in email, and most of the people who
originally propagated it had no idea of then-current technology or
the storage, signal-processing, or speech recognition needs of such a
project. On the basis of mass-storage costs alone it would have been
cheaper to hire 50 high-school students and just let them listen in.
Twenty years and several orders of technological magnitude later,
however, there are clear indications that the NSA has actually
deployed such filtering (again, very much against U.S. law). In 2000,
the FBI wants to get into this act with its `Carnivore' surveillance
system.
NSP /N·S·P/, n.
Common abbreviation for `Network Service Provider', one of the big
national or regional companies that maintains a portion of the
Internet backbone and resells connectivity to ISPs. In 1996, major
NSPs include ANS, MCI, UUNET, and Sprint. An Internet wholesaler.
nude adj.
Said of machines delivered without an operating system (compare bare
metal). "We ordered 50 systems, but they all arrived nude, so we had
to spend an extra weekend with the installation disks." This usage is
a recent innovation reflecting the fact that most IBM-PC clones are
now delivered with an operating system pre-installed at the factory.
Other kinds of hardware are still normally delivered without OS, so
this term is particular to PC support groups.
nugry /n[y]oo´gree/
[Usenet, `newbie' + `-gry'] n. A newbie who posts a FAQ in the
rec.puzzles newsgroup, especially if it is a variant of the notorious
trick question: "Think of words ending in `gry'. Angry and hungry are
two of them. There are three words in the English language. What is
the third word?" In the newsgroup, the canonical answer is of course
`nugry' itself. Plural is nusgry /n[y]oos´gree/.
2. adj. Having the qualities of a nugry.
nuke /n[y]ook/, vt.
[common]
1. To intentionally delete the entire contents of a given directory
or storage volume. "On Unix, rm -r /usr will nuke everything in the
usr filesystem." Never used for accidental deletion; contrast blow
away.
2. Syn. for dike, applied to smaller things such as files,
features, or code sections. Often used to express a final verdict.
"What do you want me to do with that 80-meg session file?" "Nuke it."
3. Used of processes as well as files; nuke is a frequent verbal
alias for kill -9 on Unix.
4. On IBM PCs, a bug that results in fandango on core can trash the
operating system, including the FAT (the in-core copy of the disk
block chaining information). This can utterly scramble attached
disks, which are then said to have been nuked. This term is also used
of analogous lossages on Macintoshes and other micros without memory
protection.
number-crunching n.
[common] Computations of a numerical nature, esp. those that make
extensive use of floating-point numbers. The only thing Fortrash is
good for. This term is in widespread informal use outside hackerdom
and even in mainstream slang, but has additional hackish
connotations: namely, that the computations are mindless and involve
massive use of brute force. This is not always evil, esp. if it
involves ray tracing or fractals or some other use that makes pretty
pictures, esp. if such pictures can be used as screen backgrounds.
See also crunch.
[74-12-25.png]
Hydrodynamic number-crunching.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 74-12-29. The previous
cartoon was 74-08-18.)
numbers n.
[scientific computation] Output of a computation that may not be
significant results but at least indicate that the program is
running. May be used to placate management, grant sponsors, etc.
Making numbers means running a program because output -- any output,
not necessarily meaningful output -- is needed as a demonstration of
progress. See pretty pictures, math-out, social science number.
NUXI problem /nuk´see pro´bl@m/, n.
Refers to the problem of transferring data between machines with
differing byte-order. The string "UNIX" might look like "NUXI" on a
machine with a different byte sex (e.g., when transferring data from
a little-endian to a big-endian, or vice-versa). See also
middle-endian, swab, and bytesexual.
nybble /nib´l/, nibble, n.
[from v. nibble by analogy with `bite' -> `byte'] Four bits; one
hex digit; a half-byte. Though `byte' is now techspeak, this useful
relative is still jargon. Compare byte; see also bit. The more
mundane spelling "nibble" is also commonly used. Apparently the
`nybble' spelling is uncommon in Commonwealth Hackish, as British
orthography would suggest the pronunciation /ni:´bl/.
Following `bit', `byte' and `nybble' there have been quite a few
analogical attempts to construct unambiguous terms for bit blocks of
other sizes. All of these are strictly jargon, not techspeak, and not
very common jargon at that (most hackers would recognize them in
context but not use them spontaneously). We collect them here for
reference together with the ambiguous techspeak terms `word',
`half-word', `double word', and `quad' or quad word; some (indicated)
have substantial information separate entries.
2 bits: crumb, quad, quarter, tayste, tydbit, morsel
4 bits: nybble
5 bits: nickle
10 bits: deckle
16 bits: playte, chawmp (on a 32-bit machine), word (on a 16-bit
machine), half-word (on a 32-bit machine).
18 bits: chawmp (on a 36-bit machine), half-word (on a 36-bit
machine)
32 bits: dynner, gawble (on a 32-bit machine), word (on a 32-bit
machine), longword (on a 16-bit machine).
36 bits: word (on a 36-bit machine)
48 bits: gawble (under circumstances that remain obscure)
64 bits: double word (on a 32-bit machine) quad (on a 16-bit machine)
128 bits: quad (on a 32-bit machine)
The fundamental motivation for most of these jargon terms (aside from
the normal hackerly enjoyment of punning wordplay) is the extreme
ambiguity of the term word and its derivatives.
nyetwork /nyet´werk/, n.
[from Russian `nyet' = no] A network, when it is acting flaky or is
down. Compare notwork.
= O =
=====
Ob- /ob/, pref.
Obligatory. A piece of netiquette acknowledging that the author has
been straying from the newsgroup's charter topic. For example, if a
posting in alt.sex is a response to a part of someone else's posting
that has nothing particularly to do with sex, the author may append
`ObSex' (or `Obsex') and toss off a question or vignette about some
unusual erotic act. It is considered a sign of great winnitude when
one's Obs are more interesting than other people's whole postings.
Obfuscated C Contest n.
(in full, the `International Obfuscated C Code Contest', or IOCCC) An
annual contest run since 1984 over Usenet by Landon Curt Noll and
friends. The overall winner is whoever produces the most unreadable,
creative, and bizarre (but working) C program; various other prizes
are awarded at the judges' whim. C's terse syntax and
macro-preprocessor facilities give contestants a lot of maneuvering
room. The winning programs often manage to be simultaneously (a)
funny, (b) breathtaking works of art, and (c) horrible examples of
how not to code in C.
This relatively short and sweet entry might help convey the flavor of
obfuscated C:
/*
* HELLO WORLD program
* by Jack Applin and Robert Heckendorn, 1985
* (Note: depends on being able to modify elements of argv[],
* which is not guaranteed by ANSI and often not possible.)
*/
main(v,c)char**c;{for(v[c++]="Hello, world!\n)";
(!!c)[*c]&&(v--||--c&&execlp(*c,*c,c[!!c]+!!c,!c));
**c=!c)write(!!*c,*c,!!**c);}
Here's another good one:
/*
* Program to compute an approximation of pi
* by Brian Westley, 1988
* (requires pcc macro concatenation; try gcc -traditional-cpp)
*/
#define _ -F<00||--F-OO--;
int F=00,OO=00;
main(){F_OO();printf("%1.3f\n",4.*-F/OO/OO);}F_OO()
{
_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_
}
Note that this program works by computing its own area. For more
digits, write a bigger program. See also hello world.
The IOCCC has an official home page at http://www.ioccc.org/.
obi-wan error /oh´bee·won` er'@r/, n.
[RPI, from off-by-one and the Obi-Wan Kenobi character in Star Wars]
A loop of some sort in which the index is off by one.
1. Common when the index should have started from 0 but instead
started from 1.
2. A kind of off-by-one error. See also zeroth.
Objectionable-C n.
Hackish take on "Objective-C", the name of an object-oriented dialect
of C in competition with the better-known C++ (it is used to write
native applications on the NeXT machine). Objectionable-C uses a
Smalltalk-like syntax, but lacks the flexibility of Smalltalk method
calls, and (like many such efforts) comes frustratingly close to
attaining the Right Thing without actually doing so.
obscure adj.
Used in an exaggeration of its normal meaning, to imply total
incomprehensibility. "The reason for that last crash is obscure."
"The find(1) command's syntax is obscure!" The phrase moderately
obscure implies that something could be figured out but probably
isn't worth the trouble. The construction obscure in the extreme is
the preferred emphatic form.
octal forty /ok´tl for´tee/, n.
Hackish way of saying "I'm drawing a blank." Octal 40 is the ASCII
space character, 0100000; by an odd coincidence, hex 40 (01000000)
is the EBCDIC space character. See wall.
off the trolley adj.
Describes the behavior of a program that malfunctions and goes
catatonic, but doesn't actually crash or abort. See glitch,
bug, deep space, wedged.
This term is much older than computing, and is (uncommon) slang
elsewhere. A trolley is the small wheel that trolls, or runs against,
the heavy wire that carries the current to run a streetcar. It's at
the end of the long pole (the trolley pole) that reaches from the
roof of the streetcar to the overhead line. When the trolley stops
making contact with the wire (from passing through a switch, going
over bumpy track, or whatever), the streetcar comes to a halt,
(usually) without crashing. The streetcar is then said to be off the
trolley, or off the wire. Later on, trolley came to mean the
streetcar itself. Since streetcars became common in the 1890s, the
term is more than 100 years old. Nowadays, trolleys are only seen on
historic streetcars, since modern streetcars use pantographs to
contact the wire.
off-by-one error n.
[common] Exceedingly common error induced in many ways, such as by
starting at 0 when you should have started at 1 or vice-versa, or by
writing < N instead of <= N or vice-versa. Also applied to giving
something to the person next to the one who should have gotten it.
Often confounded with fencepost error, which is properly a
particular subtype of it.
offline adv.
Not now or not here. "Let's take this discussion offline."
Specifically used on Usenet to suggest that a discussion be moved
off a public newsgroup to email.
ogg /og/, v.
[CMU]
1. In the multi-player space combat game Netrek, to execute kamikaze
attacks against enemy ships which are carrying armies or occupying
strategic positions. Named during a game in which one of the players
repeatedly used the tactic while playing Orion ship G, showing up in
the player list as "Og". This trick has been roundly denounced by
those who would return to the good old days when the tactic of
dogfighting was dominant, but as Sun Tzu wrote, "What is of supreme
importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy, not his
tactics." However, the traditional answer to the newbie question
"What does ogg mean?" is just "Pick up some armies and I'll show
you."
2. In other games, to forcefully attack an opponent with the
expectation that the resources expended will be renewed faster than
the opponent will be able to regain his previous advantage. Taken
more seriously as a tactic since it has gained a simple name.
3. To do anything forcefully, possibly without consideration of the
drain on future resources. "I guess I'd better go ogg the problem set
that's due tomorrow." "Whoops! I looked down at the map for a sec and
almost ogged that oncoming car."
-oid suff.
[from Greek suffix -oid = in the image of]
1. Used as in mainstream slang English to indicate a poor imitation,
a counterfeit, or some otherwise slightly bogus resemblance. Hackers
will happily use it with all sorts of non-Greco/Latin stem words that
wouldn't keep company with it in mainstream English. For example,
"He's a nerdoid" means that he superficially resembles a nerd but
can't make the grade; a modemoid might be a 300-baud box (Real Modems
run at 28.8 or up); a computeroid might be any bitty box. The word
keyboid could be used to describe a chiclet keyboard, but would
have to be written; spoken, it would confuse the listener as to the
speaker's city of origin.
2. More specifically, an indicator for `resembling an android' which
in the past has been confined to science-fiction fans and hackers. It
too has recently (in 1991) started to go mainstream (most notably in
the term `trendoid' for victims of terminal hipness). This is
probably traceable to the popularization of the term droid in Star
Wars and its sequels. (See also windoid.)
Coinages in both forms have been common in science fiction for at
least fifty years, and hackers (who are often SF fans) have probably
been making `-oid' jargon for almost that long [though GLS and I can
personally confirm only that they were already common in the
mid-1970s --ESR].
old fart n.
Tribal elder. A title self-assumed with remarkable frequency by
(esp.) Usenetters who have been programming for more than about 25
years; often appears in sig blocks attached to Jargon File
contributions of great archeological significance. This is a term of
insult in the second or third person but one of pride in first
person.
Old Testament n.
[C programmers] The first edition of K&R, the sacred text
describing Classic C.
on the gripping hand
In the progression that starts "On the one hand..." and continues "On
the other hand..." mainstream English may add "on the third hand..."
even though most people don't have three hands. Among hackers, it is
just as likely to be "on the gripping hand". This metaphor supplied
the title of Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle's 1993 SF novel "The
Gripping Hand" which involved a species of hostile aliens with three
arms (the same species, in fact, referenced in juggling eggs). As
with TANSTAAFL and con, this usage became one of the naturalized
imports from SF fandom frequently observed among hackers.
one-banana problem n.
At mainframe shops, where the computers have operators for routine
administrivia, the programmers and hardware people tend to look down
on the operators and claim that a trained monkey could do their job.
It is frequently observed that the incentives that would be offered
said monkeys can be used as a scale to describe the difficulty of a
task. A one-banana problem is simple; hence, "It's only a one-banana
job at the most; what's taking them so long?" At IBM, folklore
divides the world into one-, two-, and three-banana problems. Other
cultures have different hierarchies and may divide them more finely;
at ICL, for example, five grapes (a bunch) equals a banana. Their
upper limit for the in-house sysapes is said to be two bananas and
three grapes (another source claims it's three bananas and one grape,
but observes "However, this is subject to local variations, cosmic
rays and ISO"). At a complication level any higher than that, one
asks the manufacturers to send someone around to check things.
See also Infinite-Monkey Theorem.
one-line fix n.
Used (often sarcastically) of a change to a program that is thought
to be trivial or insignificant right up to the moment it crashes the
system. Usually `cured' by another one-line fix. See also I didn't
change anything!
one-liner wars n.
A game popular among hackers who code in the language APL (see
write-only language and line noise). The objective is to see who
can code the most interesting and/or useful routine in one line of
operators chosen from APL's exceedingly hairy primitive set. A
similar amusement was practiced among TECO hackers and is now
popular among Perl aficionados.
Ken Iverson, the inventor of APL, has been credited with a one-liner
that, given a number N, produces a list of the prime numbers from 1
to N inclusive. It looks like this:
(2=0+.=T.|T)/T<-iN
Here's a Perl program that prints primes:
perl -wle '(1 x $_) !~ /^(11+)\1+$/ && print while ++ $_'
In the Perl world this game is sometimes called Perl Golf because the
player with the fewest (key)strokes wins.
ooblick /oo´blik/, n.
[from the Dr. Seuss title Bartholomew and the Oobleck; the spelling
`oobleck' is still current in the mainstream] A bizarre semi-liquid
sludge made from cornstarch and water. Enjoyed among hackers who make
batches during playtime at parties for its amusing and extremely
non-Newtonian behavior; it pours and splatters, but resists rapid
motion like a solid and will even crack when hit by a hammer. Often
found near lasers.
Here is a field-tested ooblick recipe contributed by GLS:
* 1 cup cornstarch
* 1 cup baking soda
* 3/4 cup water
* N drops of food coloring
This recipe isn't quite as non-Newtonian as a pure cornstarch
ooblick, but has an appropriately slimy feel.
Some, however, insist that the notion of an ooblick recipe is far too
mechanical, and that it is best to add the water in small increments
so that the various mixed states the cornstarch goes through as it
becomes ooblick can be grokked in fullness by many hands. For
optional ingredients of this experience, see the Ceremonial Chemicals
section of Appendix B.
OP //
[Usenet; common] Abbreviation for "original poster", the originator
of a particular thread.
op /op/, n.
1. In England and Ireland, common verbal abbreviation for `operator',
as in system operator. Less common in the U.S., where sysop seems
to be preferred.
2. [IRC] Someone who is endowed with privileges on IRC, not limited
to a particular channel. These are generally people who are in charge
of the IRC server at their particular site. Sometimes used
interchangeably with CHOP. Compare sysop.
open n.
Abbreviation for `open (or left) parenthesis' -- used when necessary
to eliminate oral ambiguity. To read aloud the LISP form (DEFUN FOO
(X) (PLUS X 1)) one might say: "Open defun foo, open eks close, open,
plus eks one, close close."
open source n.
[common; also adj. open-source] Term coined in March 1998 following
the Mozilla release to describe software distributed in source under
licenses guaranteeing anybody rights to freely use, modify, and
redistribute, the code. The intent was to be able to sell the
hackers' ways of doing software to industry and the mainstream by
avoiding the negative connotations (to suits) of the term "free
software". For discussion of the follow-on tactics and their
consequences, see the Open Source Initiative site.
Five years after this term was invented, in 2003, it is worth noting
the huge shift in assumptions it helped bring about, if only because
the hacker culture's collective memory of what went before is in some
ways blurring. Hackers have so completely refocused themselves around
the idea and ideal of open source that we are beginning to forget
that we used to do most of our work in closed-source environments.
Until the late 1990s open source was a sporadic exception that
usually had to live on top of a closed-source operating system and
alongside closed-source tools; entire open-source environments like
Linux and the *BSD systems didn't even exist in a usable form until
around 1993 and weren't taken very seriously by anyone but a
pioneering few until about five years later.
open switch n.
[IBM: prob.: from railroading] An unresolved question, issue, or
problem.
operating system n.
[techspeak] (Often abbreviated `OS') The foundation software of a
machine; that which schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents
a default interface to the user between applications. The facilities
an operating system provides and its general design philosophy exert
an extremely strong influence on programming style and on the
technical cultures that grow up around its host machines. Hacker
folklore has been shaped primarily by the Unix, ITS, TOPS-10,
TOPS-20/TWENEX, WAITS, CP/M, MS-DOS, and Multics
operating systems (most importantly by ITS and Unix). See also
timesharing.
operator headspace
[common] More fully, "operator headspace error". Synonym for pilot
error -- a dumb move, especially one pulled by someone who ought to
know better. Often used reflexively.
optical diff n.
See vdiff.
optical grep n.
See vgrep.
optimism n.
What a programmer is full of after fixing the last bug and before
discovering the next last bug. Fred Brooks's book The Mythical
Man-Month (See Brooks's Law) contains the following paragraph that
describes this extremely well:
All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery
especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy
godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away
all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is
merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the
young are always optimists. But however the selection process
works, the result is indisputable: "This time it will surely run,"
or "I just found the last bug.".
See also Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology.
Oracle, the
The all-knowing, all-wise Internet Oracle rec.humor.oracle, or one of
the foreign language derivatives of same. Newbies frequently confuse
the Oracle with Oracle, a database vendor. As a result, the
unmoderated rec.humor.oracle.d is frequently cross-posted to by the
clueless, looking for advice on SQL. As more than one person has said
in similar situations, "Don't people bother to look at the newsgroup
description line anymore?" (To which the standard response is, "Did
people ever read it in the first place?")
Orange Book n.
The U.S. Government's (now obsolete) standards document Trusted
Computer System Evaluation Criteria, DOD standard 5200.28-STD,
December, 1985 which characterize secure computing architectures and
defines levels A1 (most secure) through D (least). Modern Unixes are
roughly C2. See also book titles.
oriental food n.
Hackers display an intense tropism towards oriental cuisine,
especially Chinese, and especially of the spicier varieties such as
Szechuan and Hunan. This phenomenon (which has also been observed in
subcultures that overlap heavily with hackerdom, most notably
science-fiction fandom) has never been satisfactorily explained, but
is sufficiently intense that one can assume the target of a hackish
dinner expedition to be the best local Chinese place and be right at
least three times out of four. See also ravs, great-wall,
stir-fried random, laser chicken, Yu-Shiang Whole Fish. Thai,
Indian, Korean, Burmese, and Vietnamese cuisines are also quite
popular.
orphan n.
[Unix] A process whose parent has died; one inherited by init(1).
Compare zombie.
orphaned i-node /or´f@nd i:´nohd/, n.
[Unix]
1. [techspeak] A file that retains storage but no longer appears in
the directories of a filesystem.
2. By extension, a pejorative for any person no longer serving a
useful function within some organization, esp. lion food without
subordinates.
orthogonal adj.
[from mathematics] Mutually independent; well separated; sometimes,
irrelevant to. Used in a generalization of its mathematical meaning
to describe sets of primitives or capabilities that, like a vector
basis in geometry, span the entire `capability space' of the system
and are in some sense non-overlapping or mutually independent. For
example, in architectures such as the PDP-11 or VAX where all or
nearly all registers can be used interchangeably in any role with
respect to any instruction, the register set is said to be
orthogonal. Or, in logic, the set of operators not and or is
orthogonal, but the set nand, or, and not is not (because any one of
these can be expressed in terms of the others). Also used in comments
on human discourse: "This may be orthogonal to the discussion,
but...."
OS /O·S/
1. [Operating System] n. An abbreviation heavily used in email,
occasionally in speech.
2. n. obs. On ITS, an output spy. See OS and JEDGAR in Appendix A.
OS/2 /O S too/, n.
The anointed successor to MS-DOS for Intel 286- and 386-based micros;
proof that IBM/Microsoft couldn't get it right the second time,
either. Often called `Half-an-OS'. Mentioning it is usually good for
a cheap laugh among hackers -- the design was so baroque, and the
implementation of 1.x so bad, that three years after introduction you
could still count the major apps shipping for it on the fingers of
two hands -- in unary. The 2.x versions were said to have improved
somewhat, and informed hackers rated them superior to Microsoft
Windows (an endorsement which, however, could easily be construed as
damning with faint praise). In the mid-1990s IBM put OS/2 on life
support, refraining from killing it outright purely for internal
political reasons; by 1999 the success of Linux had effectively
ended any possibility of a renaissance. See monstrosity,
cretinous, second-system effect.
OSS
Written-only acronym for "Open Source Software" (see open source).
This is a rather ugly TLA, and the principals in the open-source
movement don't use it, but it has (perhaps inevitably) spread through
the trade press like kudzu.
OT //
[Usenet: common] Abbreviation for "off-topic". This is used to
respond to a question that is inappropriate for the newsgroup that
the questioner posted to. Often used in an HTML-style modifier or
with adverbs. See also TAN.
OTOH //
[Usenet; very common] On The Other Hand.
out-of-band adj.
[from telecommunications and network theory]
1. In software, describes values of a function which are not in its
`natural' range of return values, but are rather signals that some
kind of exception has occurred. Many C functions, for example, return
a nonnegative integral value, but indicate failure with an
out-of-band return value of -1. Compare hidden flag, green bytes,
fence.
2. Also sometimes used to describe what communications people call
shift characters, such as the ESC that leads control sequences for
many terminals, or the level shift indicators in the old 5-bit Baudot
codes.
3. In personal communication, using methods other than email, such as
telephones or snail-mail.
overclock /oh´vr·klok´/, vt.
To operate a CPU or other digital logic device at a rate higher than
it was designed for, under the assumption that the manufacturer put
some slop into the specification to account for manufacturing
tolerances. Overclocking something can result in intermittent
crashes, and can even burn things out, since power dissipation is
directly proportional to clock frequency. People who make a hobby
of this are sometimes called "overclockers"; they are thrilled that
they can run their CPU a few percent faster, even though they can
only tell the difference by running a benchmark program. See also
case mod.
overflow bit n.
1. [techspeak] A flag on some processors indicating an attempt to
calculate a result too large for a register to hold.
2. More generally, an indication of any kind of capacity overload
condition. "Well, the Ada description was baroque all right, but I
could hack it OK until they got to the exception handling ... that
set my overflow bit."
3. The hypothetical bit that will be set if a hacker doesn't get to
make a trip to the Room of Porcelain Fixtures: "I'd better process an
internal interrupt before the overflow bit gets set."
[73-07-24.png]
Crunchly and the overflow bit.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-07-29. The previous one
is 73-06-04.)
overrun n.
1. [techspeak] Term for a frequent consequence of data arriving
faster than it can be consumed, esp. in serial line communications.
For example, at 9600 baud there is almost exactly one character per
millisecond, so if a silo can hold only two characters and the
machine takes longer than 2 msec to get to service the interrupt, at
least one character will be lost.
2. Also applied to non-serial-I/O communications. "I forgot to pay my
electric bill due to mail overrun." "Sorry, I got four phone calls in
3 minutes last night and lost your message to overrun." When
thrashing at tasks, the next person to make a request might be told
"Overrun!" Compare firehose syndrome.
3. More loosely, may refer to a buffer overflow not necessarily
related to processing time (as in overrun screw).
overrun screw n.
[C programming] A variety of fandango on core produced by
scribbling past the end of an array (C implementations typically have
no checks for this error). This is relatively benign and easy to spot
if the array is static; if it is auto, the result may be to smash
the stack -- often resulting in heisenbugs of the most diabolical
subtlety. The term overrun screw is used esp. of scribbles beyond the
end of arrays allocated with malloc(3); this typically trashes the
allocation header for the next block in the arena, producing
massive lossage within malloc and often a core dump on the next
operation to use stdio(3) or malloc(3) itself. See spam, overrun;
see also memory leak, memory smash, aliasing bug, precedence
lossage, fandango on core, secondary damage.
owned
1. [cracker slang; often written "0wned"] Your condition when your
machine has been cracked by a root exploit, and the attacker can do
anything with it. This sense is occasionally used by hackers.
2. [gamers, IRC, crackers] To be dominated, controlled, mastered. For
example, if you make a statement completely and utterly false, and
someone else corrects it in a way that humiliates or removes you, you
are said to "have been owned" by that person. When referring to
games, "I own0r UT GOTYE" means that one has mastered Unreal
Tournament, Game of the Year Edition to such a level that even the
hardest AI characters are mere lunchmeat, and that no ordinary mortal
player would even receive a point in competition. There are several
spelling variants: 0wned, 0wn0r3d, even pwn0r3d. Hackers do not use
this sense.
= P =
=====
P.O.D. /P·O·D/
[rare; sometimes `POD' without the periods] Acronym for `Piece Of
Data' or `Plain Old Data' (as opposed to a code section, or a section
containing mixed code and data). The latter expansion was in use by
the C++ standards committee, for which it indicated a struct or class
which only contains data (as in C), distinguished from one which has
a constructor and member functions. There are things which you can do
with a P.O.D. which you can't with a more general class.
packet over air
[common among backbone ISPs] The protocol notionally being used by
Internet data attempting to traverse a physical gap or break in the
network, such as might be caused by a fiber-seeking backhoe. "I see
why you're dropping packets. You seem to have a packet over air
problem."
padded cell n.
Where you put lusers so they can't hurt anything. A program that
limits a luser to a carefully restricted subset of the capabilities
of the host system (for example, the rsh(1) utility on USG Unix).
Note that this is different from an iron box because it is overt
and not aimed at enforcing security so much as protecting others (and
the luser) from the consequences of the luser's boundless naivete
(see naive). Also padded cell environment.
page in v.
[MIT]
1. To become aware of one's surroundings again after having paged out
(see page out). Usually confined to the sarcastic comment: "Eric
pages in, film at 11!"
2. Syn. swap in; see swap.
page out vi.
[MIT]
1. To become unaware of one's surroundings temporarily, due to
daydreaming or preoccupation. "Can you repeat that? I paged out for a
minute." See page in. Compare glitch, thinko.
2. Syn. swap out; see swap.
pain in the net n.
A flamer.
paper-net n.
Hackish way of referring to the postal service, analogizing it to a
very slow, low-reliability network. Usenet sig blocks sometimes
include a "Paper-Net:" header just before the sender's postal
address; common variants of this are "Papernet" and "P-Net". Note
that the standard netiquette guidelines discourage this practice as
a waste of bandwidth, since netters are quite unlikely to casually
use postal addresses. Compare voice-net, snail-mail.
param /p@·ram´/, n.
[common] Shorthand for parameter. See also parm; compare arg,
var.
PARC n.
See XEROX PARC.
parent message n.
What a followup follows up.
parity errors pl.n.
Little lapses of attention or (in more severe cases) consciousness,
usually brought on by having spent all night and most of the next day
hacking. "I need to go home and crash; I'm starting to get a lot of
parity errors." Derives from a relatively common but nearly always
correctable transient error in memory hardware. It predates RAM; in
fact, this term is reported to have already have been in use in its
jargon sense back in the 1960s when magnetic cores ruled. Parity
errors can also afflict mass storage and serial communication lines;
this is more serious because not always correctable.
Parkinson's Law of Data prov.
"Data expands to fill the space available for storage"; buying more
memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive techniques. (The
original 1958 Parkinson's Law described the structural tendency of
bureaucracies to make work for themselves.) It has been observed
since the mid-1980s that the memory usage of evolving systems tends
to double roughly once every 18 months. Fortunately, memory density
available for constant dollars also tends to about double once every
18 months (see Moore's Law); unfortunately, the laws of physics
guarantee that the latter cannot continue indefinitely.
parm /parm/, n.
Further-compressed form of param. This term is an IBMism, and
written use is almost unknown outside IBM shops; spoken /parm/ is
more widely distributed, but the synonym arg is favored among
hackers. Compare arg, var.
parse vt.
1. To determine the syntactic structure of a sentence or other
utterance (close to the standard English meaning). "That was the one
I saw you." "I can't parse that."
2. More generally, to understand or comprehend. "It's very simple;
you just kretch the glims and then aos the zotz." "I can't parse
that."
3. Of fish, to have to remove the bones yourself. "I object to
parsing fish", means "I don't want to get a whole fish, but a sliced
one is okay". A parsed fish has been deboned. There is some
controversy over whether unparsed should mean `bony', or also mean
`deboned'.
Pascal n.
An Algol-descended language designed by Niklaus Wirth on the CDC 6600
around 1967--68 as an instructional tool for elementary programming.
This language, designed primarily to keep students from shooting
themselves in the foot and thus extremely restrictive from a
general-purpose-programming point of view, was later promoted as a
general-purpose tool and, in fact, became the ancestor of a large
family of languages including Modula-2 and Ada (see also
bondage-and-discipline language). The hackish point of view on
Pascal was probably best summed up by a devastating (and, in its
deadpan way, screamingly funny) 1981 paper by Brian Kernighan (of
K&R fame) entitled Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming
Language, which was turned down by the technical journals but
circulated widely via photocopies. It was eventually published in
Comparing and Assessing Programming Languages, edited by Alan Feuer
and Narain Gehani (Prentice-Hall, 1984). Part of his discussion is
worth repeating here, because its criticisms are still apposite to
Pascal itself after many years of improvement and could also stand as
an indictment of many other bondage-and-discipline languages. (The
entire essay is available at
http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html.) At the end of a
summary of the case against Pascal, Kernighan wrote:
9. There is no escape
This last point is perhaps the most important. The language is
inadequate but circumscribed, because there is no way to escape
its limitations. There are no casts to disable the type-checking
when necessary. There is no way to replace the defective run-time
environment with a sensible one, unless one controls the compiler
that defines the "standard procedures". The language is closed.
People who use Pascal for serious programming fall into a fatal
trap. Because the language is impotent, it must be extended. But
each group extends Pascal in its own direction, to make it look
like whatever language they really want. Extensions for separate
compilation, FORTRAN-like COMMON, string data types, internal
static variables, initialization, octal numbers, bit operators,
etc., all add to the utility of the language for one group but
destroy its portability to others.
I feel that it is a mistake to use Pascal for anything much beyond
its original target. In its pure form, Pascal is a toy language,
suitable for teaching but not for real programming.
Pascal has since been entirely displaced (mainly by C) from the
niches it had acquired in serious applications and systems
programming, and from its role as a teaching language by Java.
PascalCasing
The practice of marking all word boundaries in long identifiers (such
as ThisIsASampleVariable) (including the first letter of the
identifier) with uppercase. Constrasts with camelCasing, in which the
first character of the identifier is left in lowercase
(thisIsASampleVariable), and with the traditional C style of short
all-lower-case names with internal word breaks marked by an
underscore (sample_var).
Where these terms are used, they usually go with advice to use
PascalCasing for public interfaces and camelCasing for private ones.
They may have originated at Microsoft, but are in more general use in
ECMA standards, among Java programmers, and elsewhere.
pastie /pay´stee/, n.
An adhesive-backed label designed to be attached to a key on a
keyboard to indicate some non-standard character which can be
accessed through that key. Pasties are likely to be used in APL
environments, where almost every key is associated with a special
character. A pastie on the R key, for example, might remind the user
that it is used to generate the r character. The term properly refers
to nipple-concealing devices formerly worn by strippers in concession
to indecent-exposure laws; compare tits on a keyboard.
patch
1. n. A temporary addition to a piece of code, usually as a
quick-and-dirty remedy to an existing bug or misfeature. A patch
may or may not work, and may or may not eventually be incorporated
permanently into the program. Distinguished from a diff or mod by
the fact that a patch is generated by more primitive means than the
rest of the program; the classical examples are instructions modified
by using the front panel switches, and changes made directly to the
binary executable of a program originally written in an HLL.
Compare one-line fix.
2. vt. To insert a patch into a piece of code.
3. [in the Unix world] n. A diff (sense 2).
4. A set of modifications to binaries to be applied by a patching
program. IBM operating systems often receive updates to the operating
system in the form of absolute hexadecimal patches. If you have
modified your OS, you have to disassemble these back to the source.
The patches might later be corrected by other patches on top of them
(patches were said to "grow scar tissue"). The result was often a
convoluted patch space and headaches galore.
5. [Unix] the patch(1) program, written by Larry Wall, which
automatically applies a patch (sense 3) to a set of source code.
There is a classic story of a tiger team penetrating a secure
military computer that illustrates the danger inherent in binary
patches (or, indeed, any patches that you can't -- or don't --
inspect and examine before installing). They couldn't find any trap
doors or any way to penetrate security of IBM's OS, so they made a
site visit to an IBM office (remember, these were official military
types who were purportedly on official business), swiped some IBM
stationery, and created a fake patch. The patch was actually the
trapdoor they needed. The patch was distributed at about the right
time for an IBM patch, had official stationery and all accompanying
documentation, and was dutifully installed. The installation manager
very shortly thereafter learned something about proper procedures.
patch pumpkin n.
[Perl hackers] A notional token passed around among the members of a
project. Possession of the patch pumpkin means one has the exclusive
authority to make changes on the project's master source tree. The
implicit assumption is that pumpkin holder status is temporary and
rotates periodically among senior project members.
This term comes from the Perl development community, but has been
sighted elsewhere. It derives from a stuffed-toy pumpkin that was
passed around at a development shop years ago as the access control
for a shared backup-tape drive.
patch space n.
An unused block of bits left in a binary so that it can later be
modified by insertion of machine-language instructions there
(typically, the patch space is modified to contain new code, and the
superseded code is patched to contain a jump or call to the patch
space). The near-universal use of compilers and interpreters has made
this term rare; it is now primarily historical outside IBM shops. See
patch (sense 4), zap (sense 4), hook.
path n.
1. A bang path or explicitly routed Internet address; a
node-by-node specification of a link between two machines. Though
these are now obsolete as a form of addressing, they still show up in
diagnostics and trace headers occasionally (e.g. in NNTP headers).
2. [Unix] A filename, fully specified relative to the root directory
(as opposed to relative to the current directory; the latter is
sometimes called a relative path). This is also called a pathname.
3. [Unix and MS-DOS/Windows] The search path, an environment variable
specifying the directories in which the shell (COMMAND.COM, under
MS-DOS) should look for commands. Other, similar constructs abound
under Unix (for example, the C preprocessor has a search path it uses
in looking for #include files).
pathological adj.
1. [scientific computation] Used of a data set that is grossly
atypical of normal expected input, esp. one that exposes a weakness
or bug in whatever algorithm one is using. An algorithm that can be
broken by pathological inputs may still be useful if such inputs are
very unlikely to occur in practice.
2. When used of test input, implies that it was purposefully
engineered as a worst case. The implication in both senses is that
the data is spectacularly ill-conditioned or that someone had to
explicitly set out to break the algorithm in order to come up with
such a crazy example.
3. Also said of an unlikely collection of circumstances. "If the
network is down and comes up halfway through the execution of that
command by root, the system may just crash." "Yes, but that's a
pathological case." Often used to dismiss the case from discussion,
with the implication that the consequences are acceptable, since they
will happen so infrequently (if at all) that it doesn't seem worth
going to the extra trouble to handle that case (see sense 1).
payware /pay´weir/, n.
Commercial software. Oppose shareware or freeware.
PBD /P·B·D/, n.
[abbrev. of `Programmer Brain Damage'] Applied to bug reports
revealing places where the program was obviously broken by an
incompetent or short-sighted programmer. Compare UBD; see also
brain-damaged.
PD /P·D/, adj.
[common] Abbreviation for `public domain', applied to software
distributed over Usenet and from Internet archive sites. Much of
this software is not in fact public domain in the legal sense but
travels under various copyrights granting reproduction and use rights
to anyone who can snarf a copy. See copyleft.
PDP-10 n.
[Programmed Data Processor model 10] The machine that made
timesharing real. It looms large in hacker folklore because of its
adoption in the mid-1970s by many university computing facilities and
research labs, including the MIT AI Lab, Stanford, and CMU. Some
aspects of the instruction set (most notably the bit-field
instructions) are still considered unsurpassed. The 10 was eventually
eclipsed by the VAX machines (descendants of the PDP-11) when
DEC recognized that the 10 and VAX product lines were competing
with each other and decided to concentrate its software development
effort on the more profitable VAX. The machine was finally dropped
from DEC's line in 1983, following the failure of the Jupiter Project
at DEC to build a viable new model. (Some attempts by other companies
to market clones came to nothing; see Foonly and Mars.) This
event spelled the doom of ITS and the technical cultures that had
spawned the original Jargon File, but by mid-1991 it had become
something of a badge of honorable old-timerhood among hackers to have
cut one's teeth on a PDP-10. See TOPS-10, ITS, BLT, DDT,
EXCH, HAKMEM, pop, push. See also
http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/.
PDP-11
Possibly the single most successful minicomputer design in history, a
favorite of hackers for many years, and the first major Unix machine,
The first PDP-11s (the 11/15 and 11/20) shipped in 1970 from DEC;
the last (11/93 and 11/94) in 1990. Along the way, the 11 gave birth
to the VAX, strongly influenced the design of microprocessors such
as the Motorola 6800 and Intel 386, and left a permanent imprint on
the C language (which has an odd preference for octal embedded in its
syntax because of the way PDP-11 machine instructions were
formatted). There is a history site.
PDP-20 n.
The most famous computer that never was. PDP-10 computers running
the TOPS-10 operating system were labeled `DECsystem-10' as a way
of differentiating them from the PDP-11. Later on, those systems
running TOPS-20 were labeled `DECSYSTEM-20' (the block capitals
being the result of a lawsuit brought against DEC by Singer, which
once made a computer called `system-10'), but contrary to popular
lore there was never a `PDP-20'; the only difference between a 10 and
a 20 was the operating system and the color of the paint. Most (but
not all) machines sold to run TOPS-10 were painted `Basil Blue',
whereas most TOPS-20 machines were painted `Chinese Red' (often
mistakenly called orange).
PEBKAC /peb´kak/
[Abbrev., "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair"] Used by
support people, particularly at call centers and help desks. Not used
with the public. Denotes pilot error as the cause of the crash,
especially stupid errors that even a luser could figure out. Very
derogatory. Usage: "Did you ever figure out why that guy couldn't
print?" "Yeah, he kept cancelling the operation before it could
finish. PEBKAC". See also ID10T. Compare pilot error, UBD.
peek n.,vt.
(and poke) The commands in most microcomputer BASICs for directly
accessing memory contents at an absolute address; often extended to
mean the corresponding constructs in any HLL (peek reads memory,
poke modifies it). Much hacking on small, non-MMU micros used to
consist of peeking around memory, more or less at random, to find the
location where the system keeps interesting stuff. Long (and variably
accurate) lists of such addresses for various computers circulated.
The results of pokes at these addresses may be highly useful, mildly
amusing, useless but neat, or (most likely) total lossage (see
killer poke).
Since a real operating system provides useful, higher-level
services for the tasks commonly performed with peeks and pokes on
micros, and real languages tend not to encourage low-level memory
groveling, a question like "How do I do a peek in C?" is diagnostic
of the newbie. (Of course, OS kernels often have to do exactly
this; a real kernel hacker would unhesitatingly, if unportably,
assign an absolute address to a pointer variable and indirect through
it.)
pencil and paper n.
An archaic information storage and transmission device that works by
depositing smears of graphite on bleached wood pulp. More recent
developments in paper-based technology include improved `write-once'
update devices which use tiny rolling heads similar to mouse balls to
deposit colored pigment. All these devices require an operator
skilled at so-called `handwriting' technique. These technologies are
ubiquitous outside hackerdom, but nearly forgotten inside it. Most
hackers had terrible handwriting to begin with, and years of
keyboarding tend to have encouraged it to degrade further. Perhaps
for this reason, hackers deprecate pencil-and-paper technology and
often resist using it in any but the most trivial contexts.
Pentagram Pro n.
A humorous corruption of "Pentium Pro", with a Satanic reference,
implying that the chip is inherently evil. Often used with "666
MHz"; there is a T-shirt. See Pentium
Pentium n.
The name given to Intel's P5 chip, the successor to the 80486. The
name was chosen because of difficulties Intel had in trademarking a
number. It suggests the number five (implying 586) while (according
to Intel) conveying a meaning of strength "like titanium". Among
hackers, the plural is frequently `pentia'. See also Pentagram Pro.
Intel did not stick to this convention when naming its P6 processor
the Pentium Pro; many believe this is due to difficulties in selling
a chip with "hex" or "sex" in its name. Successor chips have been
called Pentium II, Pentium III, and Pentium IV.
peon n.
A person with no special (root or wheel) privileges on a computer
system. "I can't create an account on foovax for you; I'm only a peon
there."
percent-S /per·sent´ es´/, n.
[From the code in C's printf(3) library function used to insert an
arbitrary string argument] An unspecified person or object. "I was
just talking to some percent-s in administration." Compare random.
perf /perf/, n.
Syn. chad (sense 1). The term perfory /per´f@-ree/ is also heard.
The term perf may also refer to the perforations themselves, rather
than the chad they produce when torn (philatelists use it this way).
perfect programmer syndrome n.
Arrogance; the egotistical conviction that one is above normal human
error. Most frequently found among programmers of some native ability
but relatively little experience (especially new graduates; their
perceptions may be distorted by a history of excellent performance at
solving toy problems). "Of course my program is correct, there is
no need to test it." "Yes, I can see there may be a problem here, but
I'll never type rm -r / while in root mode."
Perl /perl/, n.
[Practical Extraction and Report Language, a.k.a. Pathologically
Eclectic Rubbish Lister] An interpreted language developed by Larry
Wall, author of patch(1) and rn(1)). Superficially resembles awk,
but is much hairier, including many facilities reminiscent of sed(1)
and shells and a comprehensive Unix system-call interface. Unix
sysadmins, who are almost always incorrigible hackers, generally
consider it one of the languages of choice, and it is by far the
most widely used tool for making `live' web pages via CGI. Perl has
been described, in a parody of a famous remark about lex(1), as the
Swiss-Army chainsaw of Unix programming. Though Perl is very
useful, it would be a stretch to describe it as pretty or elegant;
people who like clean, spare design generally prefer Python. See
also Camel Book, TMTOWTDI.
person of no account n.
[University of California at Santa Cruz] Used when referring to a
person with no network address, frequently to forestall confusion.
Most often as part of an introduction: "This is Bill, a person of no
account, but he used to be bill@random.com". Compare return from the
dead.
pessimal /pes´im·l/, adj.
[Latin-based antonym for optimal] Maximally bad. "This is a pessimal
situation." Also pessimize vt. To make as bad as possible. These
words are the obvious Latin-based antonyms for optimal and optimize,
but for some reason they do not appear in most English dictionaries,
although `pessimize' is listed in the OED.
pessimizing compiler /pes'@·mi:z`ing k@m·pi:l´r/, n.
[antonym of techspeak `optimizing compiler'] A compiler that produces
object code that is worse than the straightforward or obvious hand
translation. The implication is that the compiler is actually trying
to optimize the program, but through excessive cleverness is doing
the opposite. A few pessimizing compilers have been written on
purpose, however, as pranks or burlesques.
peta- /pe´t@/
[SI] See quantifiers.
pffft interj.
[IRC] A metamorphic expletive which can be used to convey emotion,
particularly shock or surprise, disgust or anger. The amplitude of
the reaction can be measured by counting intermediary fs. For
example:
<jrandom> someone stole my hotdog
<fred> pffft
<frodo> Cthulhu stole my hotdog
<joe> pffffffffffffft!
PFY n.
[Usenet; common, originally from the BOFH mythos] Abbreviation for
Pimply-Faced Youth. A BOFH in training, esp. one apprenticed to an
elder BOFH aged in evil.
phage n.
A program that modifies other programs or databases in unauthorized
ways; esp. one that propagates a virus or Trojan horse. See also
worm, mockingbird. The analogy, of course, is with phage viruses
in biology.
phase
1. n. The offset of one's waking-sleeping schedule with respect to
the standard 24-hour cycle; a useful concept among people who often
work at night and/or according to no fixed schedule. It is not
uncommon to change one's phase by as much as 6 hours per day on a
regular basis. "What's your phase?" "I've been getting in about 8PM
lately, but I'm going to wrap around to the day schedule by
Friday." A person who is roughly 12 hours out of phase is sometimes
said to be in night mode. (The term day mode is also (but less
frequently) used, meaning you're working 9 to 5 (or, more likely, 10
to 6).) The act of altering one's cycle is called changing phase;
phase shifting has also been recently reported from Caltech.
2. change phase the hard way: To stay awake for a very long time in
order to get into a different phase.
3. change phase the easy way: To stay asleep, etc. However, some
claim that either staying awake longer or sleeping longer is easy,
and that it is shortening your day or night that is really hard (see
wrap around). The `jet lag' that afflicts travelers who cross many
time-zone boundaries may be attributed to two distinct causes: the
strain of travel per se, and the strain of changing phase. Hackers
who suddenly find that they must change phase drastically in a short
period of time, particularly the hard way, experience something very
like jet lag without traveling.
phase of the moon n.
Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to
depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or
that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been
able to determine. "This feature depends on having the channel open
in mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the
moon." See also heisenbug.
True story: Once upon a time there was a program bug that really did
depend on the phase of the moon. There was a little subroutine that
had traditionally been used in various programs at MIT to calculate
an approximation to the moon's true phase. GLS incorporated this
routine into a LISP program that, when it wrote out a file, would
print a timestamp line almost 80 characters long. Very occasionally
the first line of the message would be too long and would overflow
onto the next line, and when the file was later read back in the
program would barf. The length of the first line depended on both
the precise date and time and the length of the phase specification
when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug literally depended on
the phase of the moon!
The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included an
example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but
the typesetter `corrected' it. This has since been described as the
phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.
However, beware of assumptions. A few years ago, engineers of CERN
(European Center for Nuclear Research) were baffled by some errors in
experiments conducted with the LEP particle accelerator. As the
formidable amount of data generated by such devices is heavily
processed by computers before being seen by humans, many people
suggested the software was somehow sensitive to the phase of the
moon. A few desperate engineers discovered the truth; the error
turned out to be the result of a tiny change in the geometry of the
27km circumference ring, physically caused by the deformation of the
Earth by the passage of the Moon! This story has entered physics
folklore as a Newtonian vengeance on particle physics and as an
example of the relevance of the simplest and oldest physical laws to
the most modern science.
phase-wrapping n.
[MIT] Syn. wrap around, sense 2.
PHB /P·H·B/
[Usenet; common; rarely spoken] Abbreviation, "Pointy-Haired Boss".
From the Dilbert character, the archetypal halfwitted
middle-management type. See also pointy-haired.
phreaker /freek´r/, n.
One who engages in phreaking. See also blue box.
phreaking /freek´ing/, n.
[from `phone phreak']
1. The art and science of cracking the phone network (so as, for
example, to make free long-distance calls).
2. By extension, security-cracking in any other context (especially,
but not exclusively, on communications networks) (see cracking).
At one time phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among hackers;
there was a gentleman's agreement that phreaking as an intellectual
game and a form of exploration was OK, but serious theft of services
was taboo. There was significant crossover between the hacker
community and the hard-core phone phreaks who ran semi-underground
networks of their own through such media as the legendary TAP
Newsletter. This ethos began to break down in the mid-1980s as wider
dissemination of the techniques put them in the hands of less
responsible phreaks. Around the same time, changes in the phone
network made old-style technical ingenuity less effective as a way of
hacking it, so phreaking came to depend more on overtly criminal acts
such as stealing phone-card numbers. The crimes and punishments of
gangs like the `414 group' turned that game very ugly. A few old-time
hackers still phreak casually just to keep their hand in, but most
these days have hardly even heard of `blue boxes' or any of the other
paraphernalia of the great phreaks of yore.
pico- pref.
[SI: a quantifier meaning × 10^-12] Smaller than nano-; used in the
same rather loose connotative way as nano- and micro-. This usage
is not yet common in the way nano- and micro- are, but should be
instantly recognizable to any hacker. See also quantifiers,
micro-.
pig-tail
[radio hams] A short piece of cable with two connectors on each end
for converting between one connector type and another. Common
pig-tails are 9-to-25-pin serial-port converters and cables to
connect PCMCIA network cards to an RJ-45 network cable.
pilot error n.
[Sun: from aviation] A user's misconfiguration or misuse of a piece
of software, producing apparently buglike results (compare UBD).
"Joe Luser reported a bug in sendmail that causes it to generate
bogus headers." "That's not a bug, that's pilot error. His
sendmail.cf is hosed." Compare PEBKAC, UBD, ID10T.
ping
[from the submariners' term for a sonar pulse]
1. n. Slang term for a small network message (ICMP ECHO) sent by a
computer to check for the presence and alertness of another. The Unix
command ping(8) can be used to do this manually (note that ping(8)'s
author denies the widespread folk etymology that the name was ever
intended as an acronym for `Packet INternet Groper'). Occasionally
used as a phone greeting. See ACK, also ENQ.
2. vt. To verify the presence of.
3. vt. To get the attention of.
4. vt. To send a message to all members of a mailing list
requesting an ACK (in order to verify that everybody's addresses
are reachable). "We haven't heard much of anything from Geoff, but he
did respond with an ACK both times I pinged jargon-friends."
5. n. A quantum packet of happiness. People who are very happy tend
to exude pings; furthermore, one can intentionally create pings and
aim them at a needy party (e.g., a depressed person). This sense of
ping may appear as an exclamation; "Ping!" (I'm happy; I am emitting
a quantum of happiness; I have been struck by a quantum of
happiness). The form "pingfulness", which is used to describe people
who exude pings, also occurs. (In the standard abuse of language,
"pingfulness" can also be used as an exclamation, in which case it's
a much stronger exclamation than just "ping"!). Oppose blargh.
The funniest use of `ping' to date was described in January 1991 by
Steve Hayman on the Usenet group comp.sys.next. He was trying to
isolate a faulty cable segment on a TCP/IP Ethernet hooked up to a
NeXT machine, and got tired of having to run back to his console
after each cabling tweak to see if the ping packets were getting
through. So he used the sound-recording feature on the NeXT, then
wrote a script that repeatedly invoked ping(8), listened for an echo,
and played back the recording on each returned packet. Result? A
program that caused the machine to repeat, over and over, "Ping ...
ping ... ping ..." as long as the network was up. He turned the
volume to maximum, ferreted through the building with one ear cocked,
and found a faulty tee connector in no time.
Ping O' Death n.
A notorious exploit that (when first discovered) could be easily
used to crash a wide variety of machines by overrunning size limits
in their TCP/IP stacks. First revealed in late 1996. The open-source
Unix community patched its systems to remove the vulnerability within
days or weeks, the closed-source OS vendors generally took months.
While the difference in response times repeated a pattern familiar
from other security incidents, the accompanying glare of Web-fueled
publicity proved unusually embarrassing to the OS vendors and so
passed into history and myth. The term is now used to refer to any
nudge delivered by network wizards over the network that causes bad
things to happen on the system being nudged. For the full story on
the original exploit, see
http://www.insecure.org/sploits/ping-o-death.html. Compare kamikaze
packet and 'Chernobyl packet.'
ping storm n.
A form of DoS attack consisting of a flood of ping requests
(normally used to check network conditions) designed to disrupt the
normal activity of a system. This act is sometimes called ping
lashing or ping flood. Compare mail storm, broadcast storm.
pink contract
[spamfighters: from the color of the tinned meat] A contract from an
Internet service provider to a spammer exempting the spammer from the
usual terms of service prohibiting spamming. Usually pink contracts
come about because ISPs can charge the spammer a great deal more than
they would a normal client.
pink wire n.
[from the pink PTFE wire used in military equipment] As blue wire,
but used in military applications.
2. vi. To add a pink wire to a board.
pipe n.
[common] Idiomatically, one's connection to the Internet; in context,
the expansion "bit pipe" is understood. A "fat pipe" is a line with
T1 or higher capacity. A person with a 28.8 modem might be heard to
complain "I need a bigger pipe".
pistol n.
[IBM] A tool that makes it all too easy for you to shoot yourself in
the foot. "Unix rm * makes such a nice pistol!"
pixel sort n.
[Commodore users] Any compression routine which irretrievably loses
valuable data in the process of crunching it. Disparagingly used
for `lossy' methods such as JPEG. The theory, of course, is that
these methods are only used on photographic images in which minor
loss-of-data is not visible to the human eye. The term pixel sort
implies distrust of this theory. Compare bogo-sort.
pizza box n.
[Sun] The largish thin box housing the electronics in (especially
Sun) desktop workstations, so named because of its size and shape and
the dimpled pattern that looks like air holes.
Two-meg single-platter removable disk packs used to be called pizzas,
and the huge drive they were stuck into was referred to as a pizza
oven. It's an index of progress that in the old days just the disk
was pizza-sized, while now the entire computer is.
plaid screen n.
[XEROX PARC] A `special effect' that occurs when certain kinds of
memory smashes overwrite the control blocks or image memory of a
bit-mapped display. The term "salt and pepper" may refer to a
different pattern of similar origin. Though the term as coined at
PARC refers to the result of an error, some of the X demos induce
plaid-screen effects deliberately as a display hack.
plain-ASCII /playn·as´kee/
Syn. flat-ASCII.
Plan 9 n.
In the late 1980s, researchers at Bell Labs (especially Rob Pike of
Kernighan & Pike fame) got bored with the limitations of UNIX and
decided to reimplement the entire system. The result was called Plan
9 in "the Bell Labs tradition of selecting names that make marketeers
wince." The developers also wished to pay homage to the famous film,
"Plan 9 From Outer Space", considered by some to be the worst movie
ever made. The source is available for download under open-source
terms. The developers and a small fan base hang out at comp.os.plan9,
where one can occasionally hear "If you want UNIX, you know where to
find it"
plan file n.
[Unix] On systems that support finger, the .plan file in a user's
home directory is displayed when the user is fingered. This feature
was originally intended to be used to keep potential fingerers
apprised of one's location and near-future plans, but has been turned
almost universally to humorous and self-expressive purposes (like a
sig block). See also Hacking X for Y.
A recent innovation in plan files has been the introduction of
"scrolling plan files" which are one-dimensional animations made
using only the printable ASCII character set, carriage return and
line feed, avoiding terminal specific escape sequences, since the
finger command will (for security reasons; see letterbomb) not
pass the escape character.
Scrolling .plan files have become art forms in miniature, and some
sites have started competitions to find who can create the longest
running, funniest, and most original animations. Various animation
characters include:
Centipede: mmmmme
Lorry/Truck: oo-oP
Andalusian Video Snail: _@/
and a compiler (ASP) is available on Usenet for producing them. See
also twirling baton.
platinum-iridium adj.
Standard, against which all others of the same category are measured.
Usage: silly. The notion is that one of whatever it is has actually
been cast in platinum-iridium alloy and placed in the vault beside
the Standard Kilogram at the International Bureau of Weights and
Measures near Paris. (From 1889 to 1960, the meter was defined to be
the distance between two scratches in a platinum-iridium bar kept in
that same vault -- this replaced an earlier definition as 10^-7 times
the distance between the North Pole and the Equator along a meridian
through Paris; unfortunately, this had been based on an inexact value
of the circumference of the Earth. From 1960 to 1984 it was defined
to be 1650763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red line of krypton-86
propagating in a vacuum. It is now defined as the length of the path
traveled by light in a vacuum in the time interval of 1/299,792,458
of a second. The kilogram is now the only unit of measure officially
defined in terms of a unique artifact. But this will have to change;
in 2003 it was revealed that the reference kilogram has been shedding
mass over time, and is down by 50 micrograms.) "This
garbage-collection algorithm has been tested against the
platinum-iridium cons cell in Paris." Compare golden.
playpen n.
[IBM] A room where programmers work. Compare salt mines.
playte /playt/
16 bits, by analogy with nybble and byte. Usage: rare and
extremely silly. See also dynner and crumb. General discussion of
such terms is under nybble.
plokta /plok´t@/, v.
[acronym: Press Lots Of Keys To Abort] To press random keys in an
attempt to get some response from the system. One might plokta when
the abort procedure for a program is not known, or when trying to
figure out if the system is just sluggish or really hung. Plokta can
also be used while trying to figure out any unknown key sequence for
a particular operation. Someone going into plokta mode usually places
both hands flat on the keyboard and mashes them down, hoping for some
useful response.
A slightly more directed form of plokta can often be seen in mail
messages or Usenet articles from new users -- the text might end with
^X^C
q
quit
:q
^C
end
x
exit
ZZ
^D
?
help
as the user vainly tries to find the right exit sequence, with the
incorrect tries piling up at the end of the message....
plonk excl.,vt.
[Usenet: possibly influenced by British slang `plonk' for cheap
booze, or `plonker' for someone behaving stupidly (latter is lit.
equivalent to Yiddish schmuck)] The sound a newbie makes as he
falls to the bottom of a kill file. While it originated in the
newsgroup talk.bizarre, this term (usually written "*plonk*") is
now (1994) widespread on Usenet as a form of public ridicule.
plug-and-pray adj.,vi.
Parody of the techspeak term plug-and-play, describing a PC
peripheral card which is claimed to have no need for hardware
configuration via jumpers or DIP switches, and which should work as
soon as it is inserted in the PC. Unfortunately, even the PCI bus is
all too often not up to pulling this off reliably, and people who
have to do installation or troubleshoot PCs soon find themselves
longing for the jumpers and switches.
plugh /ploogh/, v.
[from the ADVENT game] See xyzzy.
plumbing n.
[Unix] Term used for shell code, so called because of the
prevalence of pipelines that feed the output of one program to the
input of another. Under Unix, user utilities can often be implemented
or at least prototyped by a suitable collection of pipelines and
temp-file grinding encapsulated in a shell script; this is much less
effort than writing C every time, and the capability is considered
one of Unix's major winning features. A few other OSs such as IBM's
VM/CMS support similar facilities. Esp.: used in the construction
hairy plumbing (see hairy). "You can kluge together a basic
spell-checker out of sort(1), comm(1), and tr(1) with a little
plumbing." See also tee.
PM /P·M/
1. v. (from preventive maintenance) To bring down a machine for
inspection or test purposes. See provocative maintenance; see also
scratch monkey.
2. n. Abbrev. for `Presentation Manager', an elephantine OS/2
graphical user interface.
point release n.
[common] A minor release of a software project, especially one
intended to fix bugs or do minor cleanups rather than add features.
The term implies that such releases are relatively frequent, and is
generally used with respect to open source projects being developed
in bazaar mode.
point-and-drool interface n.
Parody of the techspeak term point-and-click interface, describing a
windows, icons, and mouse-based interface such as is found on the
Macintosh. The implication, of course, is that such an interface is
only suitable for idiots. See for the rest of us, WIMP
environment, Macintrash, drool-proof paper. Also point-and-grunt
interface.
pointy hat n.
See wizard hat. This synonym specifically refers to the wizards of
Unseen University in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series of humorous
fantasies; these books are extremely popular among hackers.
pointy-haired adj.
[after the character in the Dilbert comic strip] Describes the
extreme form of the property that separates suits and marketroids
from hackers. Compare brain-dead; demented; see PHB. Always
applied to people, never to ideas. The plural form is often used as a
noun. "The pointy-haireds ordered me to use Windows NT, but I set up
a Linux server with Samba instead."
poke n.,vt.
See peek.
poll v.,n.
1. [techspeak] The action of checking the status of an input line,
sensor, or memory location to see if a particular external event has
been registered.
2. To repeatedly call or check with someone: "I keep polling him, but
he's not answering his phone; he must be swapped out."
3. To ask. "Lunch? I poll for a takeout order daily."
polygon pusher n.
A chip designer who spends most of his or her time at the physical
layout level (which requires drawing lots of multi-colored polygons).
Also rectangle slinger.
POM /P·O·M/, n.
Common abbreviation for phase of the moon. Usage: usually in the
phrase POM-dependent, which means flaky.
ponytail n.
1. A hairstyle in which long hair is held back so as to hang down
like a pony's tail.
2. A descriptive term for a man having a ponytail hairstyle, or such
character traits as might be associated with having a ponytail, eg:
effeminacy, narcissism, undue concern with fashion etc.
3. A general term used by hackers for 'creatives': advertising
copywriters, graphic designers, video compositors, users
characterised by a preference for the Macintosh, recreational drug
use, and better sex lives than programmers.
4. A derogatory term for web designers and other persons peripherally
associated with IT projects, devoid of programming skills and
dismissed as being concerned with visual presentation to the
exclusion of actual technical reality.
pop /pop/
[from the operation that removes the top of a stack, and the fact
that procedure return addresses are usually saved on the stack] (also
capitalized `POP')
1. vt. To remove something from a stack. If a person says he/she
has popped something from his stack, that means he/she has finally
finished working on it and can now remove it from the list of things
hanging overhead.
2. When a discussion gets to a level of detail so deep that the main
point of the discussion is being lost, someone will shout "Pop!",
meaning "Get back up to a higher level!" The shout is frequently
accompanied by an upthrust arm with a finger pointing to the ceiling.
3. [all-caps, as `POP'] Point of Presence, a bank of dial-in lines
allowing customers to make (local) calls into an ISP. This is
borderline techspeak.
poser n.
[from French poseur] A wannabee; not hacker slang, but used among
crackers, phreaks and warez d00dz. Not as negative as lamer or
leech. Probably derives from a similar usage among punk-rockers and
metalheads, putting down those who "talk the talk but don't walk the
walk".
post v.
To send a message to a mailing list or newsgroup. Distinguished
in context from mail; one might ask, for example: "Are you going to
post the patch or mail it to known users?"
postcardware n.
A kind of shareware that borders on freeware, in that the author
requests only that satisfied users send a postcard of their home town
or something. (This practice, silly as it might seem, serves to
remind users that they are otherwise getting something for nothing,
and may also be psychologically related to real estate `sales' in
which $1 changes hands just to keep the transaction from being a
gift.)
Postel's Prescription
[proposed] Several of the key Internet RFCs, especially 1122 and
791 contain a piece of advice due to Jon Postel, which is most often
stated as:
"Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you
send."
That is, a well-engineered implementation of any of the Internet
protocols should be willing to deal with marginal and
imperfectly-formed inputs, but should not assume that the program on
the other end (that is, the program dealing with the well-engineered
implementation's output) will be anything other than rigid and
inflexible, and perhaps even incomplete or downright buggy.
This property is valuable because a network of programs adhering to
it will be much more robust in the presence of any uncertainties in
the protocol specifications, or any individual implementor's failure
to understand those specifications perfectly. Though the policy does
tend to accommodate broken implementations it is held to more
important to get the communication flowing than to immediately (but
terminally) diagnose the broken implementations at the expense of the
people trying to use them.
The principle is a well-known one in the design of programs that
handle Internet wire protocols, especially network relays and
servers, and it is regularly applied by extension in any situation
where two or more separately-implemented pieces of software are
supposed to interoperate even though the various implementors have
never talked to each other and have absolutely nothing whatsoever in
common other than having all read the same protocol specification.
The principle travels under several different names, including "the
Internet credo", "the IETF maxim", "the Internet Engineering
Principle", and "the liberal/conservative rule"; the [proposed] term
"Postel' Prescription" is a tribute to its inventor, the first RFC
editor and (until his untimely death) probably the single most
respected individual in the Internet engineering community.
posting n.
Noun corresp. to v.: post (but note that post can be nouned).
Distinguished from a `letter' or ordinary email message by the fact
that it is broadcast rather than point-to-point. It is not clear
whether messages sent to a small mailing list are postings or email;
perhaps the best dividing line is that if you don't know the names of
all the potential recipients, it is a posting.
postmaster n.
The email contact and maintenance person at a site connected to the
network. Often, but not always, the same as the admin. The Internet
standard for electronic mail (RFC-822) requires each machine to
have a `postmaster' address; usually it is aliased to this person.
PostScript n.
A page description language, based on work originally done by John
Gaffney at Evans and Sutherland in 1976, evolving through `JaM'
(`John and Martin', Martin Newell) at XEROX PARC, and finally
implemented in its current form by John Warnock et al. after he and
Chuck Geschke founded Adobe Systems Incorporated in 1982. PostScript
gets its leverage by using a full programming language, rather than a
series of low-level escape sequences, to describe an image to be
printed on a laser printer or other output device (in this it
parallels EMACS, which exploited a similar insight about editing
tasks). It is also noteworthy for implementing on-the fly
rasterization, from Bezier curve descriptions, of high-quality fonts
at low (e.g. 300 dpi) resolution (it was formerly believed that
hand-tuned bitmap fonts were required for this task). Hackers
consider PostScript to be among the most elegant hacks of all time,
and the combination of technical merits and widespread availability
has made PostScript the language of choice for graphical output.
pound on vt.
Syn. bang on.
power cycle vt.
(also, cycle power or just cycle) To power off a machine and then
power it on immediately, with the intention of clearing some kind of
hung or gronked state. See also Big Red Switch. Compare Vulcan
nerve pinch, bounce (sense 4), and boot, and see the Some AI
Koans (in Appendix A) about Tom Knight and the novice.
power hit n.
A spike or drop-out in the electricity supplying your machine; a
power glitch. These can cause crashes and even permanent damage to
your machine(s).
pr0n //
[Usenet, IRC] Pornography. Originally this referred only to Internet
porn but since then it has expanded to refer to just about any kind.
The term comes from the warez kiddies tendency to replace letters
with numbers. At some point on IRC someone mistyped, swapping the
middle two characters, and the name stuck. It then propagated over
into mainstream hacker usage. New versions of the Mozilla web browser
internally refer to the image library as "libpr0n". Compare filk,
grilf, hing and newsfroup.
precedence lossage /pre´s@·dens los'@j/, n.
[C programmers] Coding error in an expression due to unexpected
grouping of arithmetic or logical operators by the compiler. Used
esp. of certain common coding errors in C due to the nonintuitively
low precedence levels of &, |, ^, <, and > (for this reason,
experienced C programmers deliberately forget the language's
baroque precedence hierarchy and parenthesize defensively). Can
always be avoided by suitable use of parentheses. LISP fans enjoy
pointing out that this can't happen in their favorite language, which
eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit
parentheses everywhere. See aliasing bug, memory leak, memory
smash, smash the stack, fandango on core, overrun screw.
pred //
[Usenet; orig. fr. the Island MUD via Oxford University] Abbreviation
for "predictable", used to signify or preempt responses that are
extremely predictable but have to be filled in for the sake of form
(the phrase is bracketed by <pred>...</pred>). X-Pred headers in mail
or news serve the same end. Figuring out the connection between the
X-Pred tagline and the thread is part of the entertainment. For
example, it is said that any thread about taxation must contain a
reference to Raquel Welch, if only to stop other people from
mentioning her. This is allegedly due to a Monty Python sketch where
a character declares that he would tax Raquel Welch, and he has a
feeling she would tax him.
prepend /pree`pend´/, vt.
[by analogy with `append'] To prefix. As with `append' (but not
`prefix' or `suffix' as a verb), the direct object is always the
thing being added and not the original word (or character string, or
whatever). "If you prepend a semicolon to the line, the translation
routine will pass it through unaltered."
prestidigitization /pres`t@·di`j@·ti:·zay´sh@n/, n.
1. The act of putting something into digital notation via sleight of
hand.
2. Data entry through legerdemain.
pretty pictures n.
[scientific computation] The next step up from numbers. Interesting
graphical output from a program that may not have any sensible
relationship to the system the program is intended to model. Good for
showing to management.
prettyprint /prit´ee·print/, v.
(alt.: pretty-print)
1. To generate `pretty' human-readable output from a hairy internal
representation; esp. used for the process of grinding (sense 1)
program code, and most esp. for LISP code.
2. To format in some particularly slick and nontrivial way.
pretzel key n.
[Mac users] See feature key.
priesthood n.
[TMRC; obs.] The select group of system managers responsible for the
operation and maintenance of a batch computer system. On these
computers, a user never had direct access to a computer, but had to
submit his/her data and programs to a priest for execution. Results
were returned days or even weeks later.
prime time n.
[from TV programming] Normal high-usage hours on a system or network.
Back in the days of big timesharing machines `prime time' was when
lots of people were competing for limited cycles, usually the day
shift. Avoidance of prime time was traditionally given as a major
reason for night mode hacking. The term fell into disuse during the
early PC era, but has been revived to refer to times of day or
evening at which the Internet tends to be heavily loaded, making Web
access slow. The hackish tendency to late-night hacking runs has
changed not a bit.
print v.
To output, even if to a screen. If a hacker says that a program
"printed a message", he means this; if he refers to printing a file,
he probably means it in the conventional sense of writing to a
hardcopy device (compounds like `print job' and `printout', on the
other hand, always refer to the latter). This very common term is
likely a holdover from the days when printing terminals were the
norm, perpetuated by programming language constructs like C's
printf(3). See senses 1 and 2 of tty.
printing discussion n.
[XEROX PARC] A protracted, low-level, time-consuming, generally
pointless discussion of something only peripherally interesting to
all.
priority interrupt n.
[from the hardware term] Describes any stimulus compelling enough to
yank one right out of hack mode. Classically used to describe being
dragged away by an SO for immediate sex, but may also refer to more
mundane interruptions such as a fire alarm going off in the near
vicinity. Also called an NMI (non-maskable interrupt), especially
in PC-land.
profile n.
1. A control file for a program, esp. a text file automatically read
from each user's home directory and intended to be easily modified by
the user in order to customize the program's behavior. Used to avoid
hardcoded choices (see also dot file, rc file).
2. [techspeak] A report on the amounts of time spent in each routine
of a program, used to find and tune away the hot spots in it.
This sense is often verbed. Some profiling modes report units other
than time (such as call counts) and/or report at granularities other
than per-routine, but the idea is similar. 3.[techspeak] A subset of
a standard used for a particular purpose. This sense confuses hackers
who wander into the weird world of ISO standards no end!
progasm /proh´gaz·m/, n.
[University of Wisconsin] The euphoria experienced upon the
completion of a program or other computer-related project. For
example, the rush you get when you finally run the code you've been
hacking for the past week and it works first time. (The quality of
the experience is directly proportional to the complexity of the code
and inversely proportional to the amount of debugging it took to get
the code working.) Compare geekasm.
proggy n.
1. Any computer program that is considered a full application.
2. Any computer program that is made up of or otherwise contains
proglets.
3. Any computer program that is large enough to be normally
distributed as an RPM or tarball.
proglet /prog´let/, n.
[UK] A short extempore program written to meet an immediate,
transient need. Often written in BASIC, rarely more than a dozen
lines long, and containing no subroutines. The largest amount of code
that can be written off the top of one's head, that does not need any
editing, and that runs correctly the first time (this amount varies
significantly according to one's skill and the language one is
using). Compare toy program, noddy, one-liner wars.
program n.
1. A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's input
into error messages.
2. An exercise in experimental epistemology.
3. A form of art, ostensibly intended for the instruction of
computers, which is nevertheless almost inevitably a failure if other
programmers can't understand it.
Programmer's Cheer
"Shift to the left! Shift to the right! Pop up, push down! Byte!
Byte! Byte!" A joke so old it has hair on it.
programming n.
1. The art of debugging a blank sheet of paper (or, in these days of
on-line editing, the art of debugging an empty file). "Bloody
instructions which, being taught, return to plague their inventor"
(Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7)
2. A pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with
fewer opportunities for reward.
3. The most fun you can have with your clothes on.
4. The least fun you can have with your clothes off.
programming fluid n.
1. Coffee.
2. Cola.
3. Any caffeinacious stimulant. Many hackers consider these essential
for those all-night hacking runs. See wirewater.
propeller head n.
Used by hackers, this is syn. with geek. Non-hackers sometimes use
it to describe all techies. Prob. derives from SF fandom's tradition
(originally invented by old-time fan Ray Faraday Nelson) of propeller
beanies as fannish insignia (though nobody actually wears them except
as a joke).
propeller key n.
[Mac users] See feature key.
proprietary adj.
1. In marketroid-speak, superior; implies a product imbued with
exclusive magic by the unmatched brilliance of the company's own
hardware or software designers.
2. In the language of hackers and users, inferior; implies a product
not conforming to open-systems standards, and thus one that puts the
customer at the mercy of a vendor able to gouge freely on service and
upgrade charges after the initial sale has locked the customer in.
Often used in the phrase "proprietary crap".
3. Synonym for closed-source or non-free, e.g. software issued
without license rights permitting the public to independently review,
develop and redistribute it.
Proprietary software should be distinguished from commercial
software. It is possible for software to be commercial (that is,
intended to make a profit for the producers) without being
proprietary. The reverse is also possible, for example in binary-only
freeware.
protocol n.
As used by hackers, this never refers to niceties about the proper
form for addressing letters to the Papal Nuncio or the order in which
one should use the forks in a Russian-style place setting; hackers
don't care about such things. It is used instead to describe any set
of rules that allow different machines or pieces of software to
coordinate with each other without ambiguity. So, for example, it
does include niceties about the proper form for addressing packets on
a network or the order in which one should use the forks in the
Dining Philosophers Problem. It implies that there is some common
message format and an accepted set of primitives or commands that all
parties involved understand, and that transactions among them follow
predictable logical sequences. See also handshaking, do protocol.
provocative maintenance n.
[common ironic mutation of preventive maintenance] Actions performed
upon a machine at regularly scheduled intervals to ensure that the
system remains in a usable state. So called because it is all too
often performed by a field servoid who doesn't know what he is
doing; such `maintenance' often induces problems, or otherwise
results in the machine's remaining in an unusable state for an
indeterminate amount of time. See also scratch monkey.
prowler n.
[Unix] A daemon that is run periodically (typically once a week) to
seek out and erase core files, truncate administrative logfiles,
nuke lost+found directories, and otherwise clean up the cruft that
tends to pile up in the corners of a file system. See also reaper,
skulker.
pseudo /soo´doh/, n.
[Usenet: truncation of `pseudonym']
1. An electronic-mail or Usenet persona adopted by a human for
amusement value or as a means of avoiding negative repercussions of
one's net.behavior; a `nom de Usenet', often associated with forged
postings designed to conceal message origins. Perhaps the best-known
and funniest hoax of this type is B1FF. See also tentacle.
2. Notionally, a flamage-generating AI program simulating a Usenet
user. Many flamers have been accused of actually being such entities,
despite the fact that no AI program of the required sophistication
yet exists. However, in 1989 there was a famous series of forged
postings that used a phrase-frequency-based travesty generator to
simulate the styles of several well-known flamers; it was based on
large samples of their back postings (compare Dissociated Press). A
significant number of people were fooled by the forgeries, and the
debate over their authenticity was settled only when the perpetrator
came forward to publicly admit the hoax.
pseudoprime n.
A backgammon prime (six consecutive occupied points) with one point
missing. This term is an esoteric pun derived from number theory: a
number that passes a certain kind of "primality test" may be called a
pseudoprime (all primes pass any such test, but so do some composite
numbers), and any number that passes several is, in some sense,
almost certainly prime. The hacker backgammon usage stems from the
idea that a pseudoprime is almost as good as a prime: it will do the
same job unless you are unlucky.
pseudosuit /soo´doh·s[y]oot`/, n.
A suit wannabee; a hacker who has decided that he wants to be in
management or administration and begins wearing ties, sport coats,
and (shudder!) suits voluntarily. It's his funeral. See also
lobotomy.
psychedelicware /si:`k@·del'·ik·weir/, n.
[UK] Syn. display hack. See also smoking clover.
psyton /si:´ton/, n.
[TMRC] The elementary particle carrying the sinister force. The
probability of a process losing is proportional to the number of
psytons falling on it. Psytons are generated by observers, which is
why demos are more likely to fail when lots of people are watching.
[This term appears to have been largely superseded by bogon; see
also quantum bogodynamics. --ESR]
pubic directory /pyoob´ik d@·rek´t@·ree/, n.
[NYU] (also pube directory /pyoob' d@·rek´t@·ree/) The pub (public)
directory on a machine that allows FTP access. So called because it
is the default location for SEX (sense 1). "I'll have the source in
the pube directory by Friday."
puff vt.
To decompress data that has been crunched by Huffman coding. At least
one widely distributed Huffman decoder program was actually named
`PUFF', but these days it is usually packaged with the encoder.
Oppose huff, see inflate.
pumpkin holder n.
See patch pumpkin.
pumpking n.
Syn. for pumpkin holder; see patch pumpkin.
punched card
[techspeak] (alt.: punch card) The signature medium of computing's
Stone Age, now obsolescent. The punched card actually predated
computers considerably, originating in 1801 as a control device for
mechanical looms. The version patented by Hollerith and used with
mechanical tabulating machines in the 1890 U.S. Census was a piece of
cardboard about 90 mm by 215 mm. There is a widespread myth that it
was designed to fit in the currency trays used for that era's larger
dollar bills, but recent investigations have falsified this.
IBM (which originated as a tabulating-machine manufacturer) married
the punched card to computers, encoding binary information as
patterns of small rectangular holes; one character per column, 80
columns per card. Other coding schemes, sizes of card, and hole
shapes were tried at various times.
The 80-column width of most character terminals is a legacy of the
IBM punched card; so is the size of the quick-reference cards
distributed with many varieties of computers even today. See chad,
chad box, eighty-column mind, green card, dusty deck, code
grinder.
punt v.
[from the punch line of an old joke referring to American football:
"Drop back 15 yards and punt!"]
1. To give up, typically without any intention of retrying. "Let's
punt the movie tonight." "I was going to hack all night to get this
feature in, but I decided to punt" may mean that you've decided not
to stay up all night, and may also mean you're not ever even going to
put in the feature.
2. More specifically, to give up on figuring out what the Right
Thing is and resort to an inefficient hack.
3. A design decision to defer solving a problem, typically because
one cannot define what is desirable sufficiently well to frame an
algorithmic solution. "No way to know what the right form to dump the
graph in is -- we'll punt that for now."
4. To hand a tricky implementation problem off to some other section
of the design. "It's too hard to get the compiler to do that; let's
punt to the runtime system."
5. To knock someone off an Internet or chat connection; a punter
thus, is a person or program that does this.
Purple Book n.
1. The System V Interface Definition. The covers of the first
editions were an amazingly nauseating shade of off-lavender.
2. Syn. Wizard Book. Donald Lewine's POSIX Programmer's Guide
(O'Reilly, 1991, ISBN 0-937175-73-0). See also book titles.
purple wire n.
[IBM] Wire installed by Field Engineers to work around problems
discovered during testing or debugging. These are called `purple
wires' even when (as is frequently the case) their actual physical
color is yellow.... Compare blue wire, yellow wire, and red
wire.
push
[from the operation that puts the current information on a stack, and
the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on a stack] (Also
PUSH /push/ or PUSHJ /push´J/, the latter based on the PDP-10
procedure call instruction.)
1. To put something onto a stack. If one says that something has
been pushed onto one's stack, it means that the Damoclean list of
things hanging over ones's head has grown longer and heavier yet.
This may also imply that one will deal with it before other pending
items; otherwise one might say that the thing was `added to my
queue'.
2. vi. To enter upon a digression, to save the current discussion for
later. Antonym of pop; see also stack.
Python /pi:´thon/
In the words of its author, "the other scripting language" (other
than Perl, that is). Python's design is notably clean, elegant, and
well thought through; it tends to attract the sort of programmers who
find Perl grubby and exiguous. Some people revolt at its use of
whitespace to define logical structure by indentation, objecting that
this harks back to the horrible old fixed-field languages of the
1960s. Python's relationship with Perl is rather like the BSD
community's relationship to Linux -- it's the smaller party in a
(usually friendly) rivalry, but the average quality of its developers
is generally conceded to be rather higher than in the larger
community it competes with. There's a Python resource page at
http://www.python.org. See also Guido, BDFL.
= Q =
=====
quad n.
1. Two bits; syn. for quarter, crumb, tayste.
2. A four-pack of anything (compare hex, sense 2).
3. The rectangle or box glyph used in the APL language for various
arcane purposes mostly related to I/O. Former Ivy-Leaguers and Oxford
types are said to associate it with nostalgic memories of dear old
University.
quadruple bucky n. obs.
1. On an MIT space-cadet keyboard, use of all four of the shifting
keys (control, meta, hyper, and super) while typing a character key.
2. On a Stanford or MIT keyboard in raw mode, use of four shift
keys while typing a fifth character, where the four shift keys are
the control and meta keys on both sides of the keyboard. This was
very difficult to do! One accepted technique was to press the
left-control and left-meta keys with your left hand, the
right-control and right-meta keys with your right hand, and the fifth
key with your nose.
Quadruple-bucky combinations were very seldom used in practice,
because when one invented a new command one usually assigned it to
some character that was easier to type. If you want to imply that a
program has ridiculously many commands or features, you can say
something like: "Oh, the command that makes it spin the tapes while
whistling Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is quadruple-bucky-cokebottle."
See double bucky, bucky bits, cokebottle.
quantifiers
In techspeak and jargon, the standard metric prefixes used in the SI
(Système International) conventions for scientific measurement have
dual uses. With units of time or things that come in powers of 10,
such as money, they retain their usual meanings of multiplication by
powers of 1000 = 10^3. But when used with bytes or other things that
naturally come in powers of 2, they usually denote multiplication by
powers of 1024 = 2^10.
Here are the SI magnifying prefixes, along with the corresponding
binary interpretations in common use:
prefix decimal binary
kilo- 1000^1 1024^1 = 2^10 = 1,024
mega- 1000^2 1024^2 = 2^20 = 1,048,576
giga- 1000^3 1024^3 = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824
tera- 1000^4 1024^4 = 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776
peta- 1000^5 1024^5 = 2^50 = 1,125,899,906,842,624
exa- 1000^6 1024^6 = 2^60 = 1,152,921,504,606,846,976
zetta- 1000^7 1024^7 = 2^70 = 1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424
yotta- 1000^8 1024^8 = 2^80 = 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176
Here are the SI fractional prefixes:
prefix decimal jargon usage
milli- 1000^-1 (seldom used in jargon)
micro- 1000^-2 small or human-scale (see micro-)
nano- 1000^-3 even smaller (see nano-)
pico- 1000^-4 even smaller yet (see pico-)
femto- 1000^-5 (not used in jargon--yet)
atto- 1000^-6 (not used in jargon--yet)
zepto- 1000^-7 (not used in jargon--yet)
yocto- 1000^-8 (not used in jargon--yet)
The prefixes zetta-, yotta-, zepto-, and yocto- have been included in
these tables purely for completeness and giggle value; they were
adopted in 1990 by the 19th Conference Generale des Poids et Mesures.
The binary peta- and exa- loadings, though well established, are not
in jargon use either -- yet. The prefix milli-, denoting
multiplication by 1/1000, has always been rare in jargon (there is,
however, a standard joke about the millihelen -- notionally, the
amount of beauty required to launch one ship). See the entries on
micro-, pico-, and nano- for more information on connotative
jargon use of these terms. `Femto' and `atto' (which, interestingly,
derive not from Greek but from Danish) have not yet acquired jargon
loadings, though it is easy to predict what those will be once
computing technology enters the required realms of magnitude
(however, see attoparsec).
There are, of course, some standard unit prefixes for powers of 10.
In the following table, the `prefix' column is the international
standard prefix for the appropriate power of ten; the `binary' column
lists jargon abbreviations and words for the corresponding power of
2. The B-suffixed forms are commonly used for byte quantities; the
words `meg' and `gig' are nouns that may (but do not always)
pluralize with `s'.
prefix decimal binary pronunciation}
kilo- k K, KB, kay
mega- M M, MB, meg meg
giga- G G, GB, gig gig,jig
Confusingly, hackers often use K or M as though they were suffix or
numeric multipliers rather than a prefix; thus "2K dollars", "2M of
disk space". This is also true (though less commonly) of G.
Note that the formal SI metric prefix for 1000 is `k'; some use this
strictly, reserving `K' for multiplication by 1024 (KB is thus
`kilobytes').
K, M, and G used alone refer to quantities of bytes; thus, 64G is 64
gigabytes and `a K' is a kilobyte (compare mainstream use of `a G' as
short for `a grand', that is, $1000). Whether one pronounces `gig'
with hard or soft `g' depends on what one thinks the proper
pronunciation of `giga-' is.
Confusing 1000 and 1024 (or other powers of 2 and 10 close in
magnitude) -- for example, describing a memory in units of 500K or
524K instead of 512K -- is a sure sign of the marketroid. One
example of this: it is common to refer to the capacity of 3.5"
floppies as `1.44 MB' In fact, this is a completely bogus number.
The correct size is 1440 KB, that is, 1440 * 1024 = 1474560 bytes. So
the `mega' in `1.44 MB' is compounded of two `kilos', one of which is
1024 and the other of which is 1000. The correct number of megabytes
would of course be 1440 / 1024 = 1.40625. Alas, this fine point is
probably lost on the world forever. [1993 update: hacker Morgan Burke
has proposed, to general approval on Usenet, the following additional
prefixes:
groucho 10^-30
harpo 10^-27
harpi 10^27
grouchi 10^30
We observe that this would leave the prefixes zeppo-, gummo-, and
chico- available for future expansion. Sadly, there is little
immediate prospect that Mr. Burke's eminently sensible proposal will
be ratified.]
quantum bogodynamics /kwon´tm boh`goh·di:·nam´iks/, n.
A theory that characterizes the universe in terms of bogon sources
(such as politicians, used-car salesmen, TV evangelists, and suits
in general), bogon sinks (such as taxpayers and computers), and
bogosity potential fields. Bogon absorption, of course, causes human
beings to behave mindlessly and machines to fail (and may also cause
both to emit secondary bogons); however, the precise mechanics of the
bogon-computron interaction are not yet understood and remain to be
elucidated. Quantum bogodynamics is most often invoked to explain the
sharp increase in hardware and software failures in the presence of
suits; the latter emit bogons, which the former absorb. See bogon,
computron, suit, psyton.
Here is a representative QBD theory: The bogon is a boson (integral
spin, +1 or -1), and has zero rest mass. In this respect it is very
much like a photon. However, it has a much greater momentum, thus
explaining its destructive effect on computer electronics and human
nervous systems. The corollary to this is that bogons also have
tremendous inertia, and therefore a bogon beam is deflected only with
great difficulty. When the bogon encounters its antiparticle, the
cluon, they mutually annihilate each other, releasing magic smoke.
Furthermore 1 Lenat = 1 mole (6.022E23) of bogons (see microLenat).
quarter n.
Two bits. This in turn comes from the `pieces of eight' famed in
pirate movies -- Spanish silver crowns that could be broken into
eight pie-slice-shaped `bits' to make change. Early in American
history the Spanish coin was considered equal to a dollar, so each of
these `bits' was considered worth 12.5 cents. Syn. tayste, crumb,
quad. Usage: rare. General discussion of such terms is under
nybble.
ques /kwes/
1. n. The question mark character (?, ASCII 0111111).
2. interj. What? Also frequently verb-doubled as "Ques ques?" See
wall.
quick-and-dirty adj.
[common] Describes a crock put together under time or user
pressure. Used esp. when you want to convey that you think the fast
way might lead to trouble further down the road. "I can have a
quick-and-dirty fix in place tonight, but I'll have to rewrite the
whole module to solve the underlying design problem." See also
kluge.
quine /kwi:n/, n.
[from the name of the logician Willard van Orman Quine, via Douglas
Hofstadter] A program that generates a copy of its own source text as
its complete output. Devising the shortest possible quine in some
given programming language is a common hackish amusement. (We ignore
some variants of BASIC in which a program consisting of a single
empty string literal reproduces itself trivially.) Here is one
classic quine:
((lambda (x)
(list x (list (quote quote) x)))
(quote
(lambda (x)
(list x (list (quote quote) x)))))
This one works in LISP or Scheme. It's relatively easy to write
quines in other languages such as Postscript which readily handle
programs as data; much harder (and thus more challenging!) in
languages like C which do not. Here is a classic C quine for ASCII
machines:
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main()
{printf(f,34,f,34,10);}%c";
main(){printf(f,34,f,34,10);}
For excruciatingly exact quinishness, remove the interior line
breaks. Here is another elegant quine in ANSI C:
#define q(k)main(){return!puts(#k"\nq("#k")");}
q(#define q(k)main(){return!puts(#k"\nq("#k")");})
Some infamous Obfuscated C Contest entries have been quines that
reproduced in exotic ways. There is an amusing Quine Home Page.
Quirk objection interj.
[Named for Captain Gym Z. Quirk, the first to raise it.] "Objection!
Assumes organ not in evidence!" Used in news.admin.net-abuse.email to
point out that a comment assumes the presence of something whose
existence has not been proven, such as a spammer's brain or gonads.
This is not used to refer to things that are definitely proven not to
exist, such as a spammer's ethics. It's applicable to enough postings
there that a poster wishing to raise the objection often need merely
say "ObQuirk!", an instance of the Ob- convention.
quote chapter and verse v.
[by analogy with the mainstream phrase] To cite a relevant excerpt
from an appropriate bible. "I don't care if rn gets it wrong;
`Followup-To: poster' is explicitly permitted by RFC-1036. I'll
quote chapter and verse if you don't believe me." See also
legalese, language lawyer, RTFS (sense 2).
quotient n.
See coefficient of X.
quux /kwuhks/, n.
[Mythically, from the Latin semi-deponent verb quuxo, quuxare,
quuxandum iri; noun form variously `quux' (plural `quuces',
anglicized to `quuxes') and `quuxu' (genitive plural is `quuxuum',
for four u-letters out of seven in all, using up all the `u' letters
in Scrabble).]
1. Originally, a metasyntactic variable like foo and foobar.
Invented by Guy Steele for precisely this purpose when he was young
and naive and not yet interacting with the real computing community.
Many people invent such words; this one seems simply to have been
lucky enough to have spread a little. In an eloquent display of
poetic justice, it has returned to the originator in the form of a
nickname.
2. interj. See foo; however, denotes very little disgust, and is
uttered mostly for the sake of the sound of it.
3. Guy Steele in his persona as `The Great Quux', which is somewhat
infamous for light verse and for the `Crunchly' cartoons.
4. In some circles, used as a punning opposite of `crux'. "Ah, that's
the quux of the matter!" implies that the point is not crucial
(compare tip of the ice-cube).
5. quuxy: adj. Of or pertaining to a quux.
qux /kwuhks/
The fourth of the standard metasyntactic variable, after baz and
before the quu(u...)x series. See foo, bar, baz, quux. This
appears to be a recent mutation from quux, and many versions
(especially older versions) of the standard series just run foo,
bar, baz, quux, ....
QWERTY /kwer´tee/, adj.
[from the keycaps at the upper left] Pertaining to a standard
English-language typewriter keyboard (sometimes called the Sholes
keyboard after its inventor), as opposed to Dvorak or non-US-ASCII
layouts or a space-cadet keyboard or APL keyboard.
Historical note: The QWERTY layout is a fine example of a fossil.
It is sometimes said that it was designed to slow down the typist,
but this is wrong; it was designed to allow faster typing -- under a
constraint now long obsolete. In early typewriters, fast typing using
nearby type-bars jammed the mechanism. So Sholes fiddled the layout
to separate the letters of many common digraphs (he did a far from
perfect job, though; `th', `tr', `ed', and `er', for example, each
use two nearby keys). Also, putting the letters of `typewriter' on
one line allowed it to be typed with particular speed and accuracy
for demos. The jamming problem was essentially solved soon
afterward by a suitable use of springs, but the keyboard layout lives
on.
The QWERTY keyboard has also spawned some unhelpful economic myths
about how technical standards get and stay established; see
http://www.reasonmag.com/9606/Fe.QWERTY.html.
= R =
=====
rabbit job n.
[Cambridge] A batch job that does little, if any, real work, but
creates one or more copies of itself, breeding like rabbits. Compare
wabbit, fork bomb.
rain dance n.
1. Any ceremonial action taken to correct a hardware problem, with
the expectation that nothing will be accomplished. This especially
applies to reseating printed circuit boards, reconnecting cables,
etc. "I can't boot up the machine. We'll have to wait for Greg to do
his rain dance."
2. Any arcane sequence of actions performed with computers or
software in order to achieve some goal; the term is usually
restricted to rituals that include both an incantation or two and
physical activity or motion. Compare magic, voodoo programming,
black art, cargo cult programming, wave a dead chicken; see
also casting the runes.
rainbow series n.
Any of several series of technical manuals distinguished by cover
color. The original rainbow series was the NCSC security manuals (see
Orange Book). These are now available via the web. the term has
also been commonly applied to the PostScript reference set. Which
books are meant by "the rainbow series" unqualified is thus dependent
on one's local technical culture.
random adj.
1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical definition); weird. "The
system's been behaving pretty randomly."
2. Assorted; undistinguished. "Who was at the conference?" "Just a
bunch of random business types."
3. (pejorative) Frivolous; unproductive; undirected. "He's just a
random loser."
4. Incoherent or inelegant; poorly chosen; not well organized. "The
program has a random set of misfeatures." "That's a random name for
that function." "Well, all the names were chosen pretty randomly."
5. In no particular order, though deterministic. "The I/O channels
are in a pool, and when a file is opened one is chosen randomly."
6. Arbitrary. "It generates a random name for the scratch file."
7. Gratuitously wrong, i.e., poorly done and for no good apparent
reason. For example, a program that handles file name defaulting in a
particularly useless way, or an assembler routine that could easily
have been coded using only three registers, but redundantly uses
seven for values with non-overlapping lifetimes, so that no one else
can invoke it without first saving four extra registers. What
randomness!
8. n. A random hacker; used particularly of high-school students who
soak up computer time and generally get in the way.
9. n. Anyone who is not a hacker (or, sometimes, anyone not known to
the hacker speaking); the noun form of sense 2. "I went to the talk,
but the audience was full of randoms asking bogus questions".
10. n. (occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random Hall. See also
J. Random, some random X.
11. [UK] Conversationally, a non sequitur or something similarly
out-of-the-blue. As in: "Stop being so random!" This sense equates to
`hatstand', taken from the Viz comic character "Roger Irrelevant -
He's completely Hatstand."
Random Number God
[rec.games.roguelike.angband; often abbreviated `RNG'] The malign
force which lurks behind the random number generator in Angband
(and by extension elsewhere). A dark god that demands sacrifices and
toys with its victims. "I just found a really great item; I suppose
the RNG is about to punish me..." Apparently, Angband's random number
generator occasionally gets locked in a repetition, so you get
something with a 3% chance happening 8 times in a row. Improbable,
but far too common to be pure chance. Compare Shub-Internet.
random numbers n.
When one wishes to specify a large but random number of things, and
the context is inappropriate for N, certain numbers are preferred
by hacker tradition (that is, easily recognized as placeholders).
These include the following:
17
Long described at MIT as `the least random number'; see also 23. This
may be Discordian in origin, or it may be related to some in-jokes
about 17 and "yellow pig" propagated by the mathematician Michael
Spivak.
23
Sacred number of Eris, Goddess of Discord (along with 17 and 5).
37
The most random two-digit number is 37, When groups of people are
polled to pick a "random number between 1 and 100", the most commonly
chosen number is 37.
42
The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and
Everything ("what is 6 times 9", correct in base 13). (This answer is
perhaps not completely fortuitous; in Kabbalism, the true unspeakable
name of God is said to have 42 characters.)
69
From the sexual act. This one was favored in MIT's ITS culture.
105
69 hex = 105 decimal, and 69 decimal = 105 octal.
666
In Christian mythology, the Number of the Beast.
For further enlightenment, study the Principia Discordia, The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Joy of Sex, and the Christian
Bible (Revelation 13:18). See also Discordianism or consult your
pineal gland. See also for values of.
randomness n.
1. An inexplicable misfeature; gratuitous inelegance.
2. A hack or crock that depends on a complex combination of
coincidences (or, possibly, the combination upon which the crock
depends for its accidental failure to malfunction). "This hack can
output characters 40--57 by putting the character in the four-bit
accumulator field of an XCT and then extracting six bits -- the low 2
bits of the XCT opcode are the right thing." "What randomness!"
3. Of people, synonymous with flakiness. The connotation is that the
person so described is behaving weirdly, incompetently, or
inappropriately for reasons which are (a) too tiresome to bother
inquiring into, (b) are probably as inscrutable as quantum phenomena
anyway, and (c) are likely to pass with time. "Maybe he has a real
complaint, or maybe it's just randomness. See if he calls back."
Despite the negative connotations of most jargon uses of this term
have, it is worth noting that randomness can actually be a valuable
resource, very useful for applications in cryptography and elsewhere.
Computers are so thoroughly deterministic that they have a hard time
generating high-quality randomness, so hackers have sometimes felt
the need to built special-purpose contraptions for this purpose
alone. One well-known website offers random bits generated by
radioactive decay. Another derives random bits from chaotic systems
in analog electronics. Originally, the latter site got its random
bits by doing photometry on lava lamps. Hackers invariably found this
hilarious. If you have to ask why, you'll never get it.)
rape vt.
1. To screw someone or something, violently; in particular, to
destroy a program or information irrecoverably. Often used in
describing file-system damage. "So-and-so was running a program that
did absolute disk I/O and ended up raping the master directory."
2. To strip a piece of hardware for parts.
3. [CMU/Pitt] To mass-copy files from an anonymous ftp site. "Last
night I raped Simtel's dskutl directory."
rare mode adj.
[Unix] CBREAK mode (character-by-character with interrupts enabled).
Distinguished from raw mode and cooked mode; the phrase "a sort
of half-cooked (rare?) mode" is used in the V7/BSD manuals to
describe the mode. Usage: rare.
raster blaster n.
[Cambridge] Specialized hardware for bitblt operations (a
blitter). Allegedly inspired by `Rasta Blasta', British slang for
the sort of portable stereo Americans call a `boom box' or `ghetto
blaster'.
raster burn n.
Eyestrain brought on by too many hours of looking at low-res, poorly
tuned, or glare-ridden monitors, esp. graphics monitors. See
terminal illness.
rasterbation n.
[portmanteau: raster + masturbation] The gratuitous use of
computer-generated images and effects in movies and graphic art which
would have been better without them. Especially employed as a term of
abuse by Photoshop/GIMP users and graphic artists.
rat belt n.
A cable tie, esp. the sawtoothed, self-locking plastic kind that you
can remove only by cutting (as opposed to a random twist of wire or a
twist tie or one of those humongous metal clip frobs). Small cable
ties are mouse belts.
rat dance n.
[From the Dilbert comic strip of November 14, 1995] A hacking run
that produces results which, while superficially coherent, have
little or nothing to do with its original objectives. There are
strong connotations that the coding process and the objectives
themselves were pretty random. (In the original comic strip, the
Ratbert is invited to dance on Dilbert's keyboard in order to produce
bugs for him to fix, and authors a Web browser instead.) Compare
Infinite-Monkey Theorem.
This term seems to have become widely recognized quite rapidly after
the original strip, a fact which testifies to Dilbert's huge
popularity among hackers. All too many find the perverse incentives
and Kafkaesque atmosphere of Dilbert's mythical workplace reflective
of their own experiences.
rathole
[from the English idiom "down a rathole" for a waste of money or
time] A technical subject that is known to be able to absorb infinite
amounts of discussion time without more than an infinitesimal
probability of arrival at a conclusion or consensus. "That's a
rathole" (or just "Rathole!") is considered a pre-emptive bid to
change the subject. The difference between ratholes and religious
issues is that a holy war cannot be pre-empted in this way.
Canonical examples are XML namespaces and open-source licensing.
ratio site
[warez d00dz] An FTP site storing pirated files where one must first
upload something before being able to download. There is a ratio,
based on bytes or files count, between the uploads and download. For
instance, on a 2:1 site, to download a 4 Mb file, one must first
upload at least 2 Mb of files. The hotter the contents of the server
are, the smaller the ratio is. More often than not, the server
refuses uploads because its disk is full, making it useless for
downloading -- or the connection magically breaks after one has
uploaded a large amount of files, just before the downloading phase
begins. See also banner site, leech mode.
rave vi.
[WPI]
1. To persist in discussing a specific subject.
2. To speak authoritatively on a subject about which one knows very
little.
3. To complain to a person who is not in a position to correct the
difficulty.
4. To purposely annoy another person verbally.
5. To evangelize. See flame.
6. Also used to describe a less negative form of blather, such as
friendly bullshitting. `Rave' differs slightly from flame in that
rave implies that it is the persistence or obliviousness of the
person speaking that is annoying, while flame implies somewhat more
strongly that the tone or content is offensive as well.
rave on! imp.
Sarcastic invitation to continue a rave, often by someone who
wishes the raver would get a clue but realizes this is unlikely.
ravs /ravz/, Chinese ravs, n.
[primarily MIT/Boston usage] Jiao-zi (steamed or boiled) or Guo-tie
(pan-fried). A Chinese appetizer, known variously in the plural as
dumplings, pot stickers (the literal translation of guo-tie), and
(around Boston) `Peking Ravioli'. The term rav is short for
`ravioli', and among hackers always means the Chinese kind rather
than the Italian kind. Both consist of a filling in a pasta shell,
but the Chinese kind includes no cheese, uses a thinner pasta, has a
pork-vegetable filling (good ones include Chinese chives), and is
cooked differently, either by steaming or frying. A rav or dumpling
can be cooked any way, but a potsticker is always the pan-fried kind
(so called because it sticks to the frying pot and has to be scraped
off). "Let's get hot-and-sour soup and three orders of ravs." See
also oriental food.
raw mode n.
A mode that allows a program to transfer bits directly to or from an
I/O device (or, under bogus operating systems that make a
distinction, a disk file) without any processing, abstraction, or
interpretation by the operating system. Compare rare mode, cooked
mode. This is techspeak under Unix, jargon elsewhere.
RBL /R·B·L/
Abbreviation: "Realtime Blackhole List". A service that allows people
to blacklist sites for emitting spam, and makes the blacklist
available in real time to electronic-mail transport programs that
know how to use RBL so they can filter out mail from those sites.
Drastic (and controversial) but effective. There is an RBL home page.
rc file /R·C fi:l/, n.
[Unix: from runcom files on the CTSS system 1962-63, via the
startup script /etc/rc] Script file containing startup instructions
for an application program (or an entire operating system), usually a
text file containing commands of the sort that might have been
invoked manually once the system was running but are to be executed
automatically each time the system starts up. See also dot file,
profile (sense 1).
RE /R·E/, n.
Common spoken and written shorthand for regexp.
read-only user n.
Describes a luser who uses computers almost exclusively for reading
Usenet, bulletin boards, and/or email, rather than writing code or
purveying useful information. See twink, terminal junkie,
lurker.
README file n.
Hacker's-eye introduction traditionally included in the top-level
directory of a Unix source distribution, containing a pointer to more
detailed documentation, credits, miscellaneous revision history,
notes, etc. In the Mac and PC worlds, software is not usually
distributed in source form, and the README is more likely to contain
user-oriented material like last-minute documentation changes, error
workarounds, and restrictions. When asked, hackers invariably relate
the README convention to the famous scene in Lewis Carroll's Alice's
Adventures In Wonderland in which Alice confronts magic munchies
labeled "Eat Me" and "Drink Me".
The file may be named README, or READ.ME, or rarely ReadMe or
readme.txt or some other variant. The all-upper-case spellings,
however, are universal among Unix programmers. By ancient tradition,
real source files have all-lowercase names and all-uppercase is
reserved for metadata, comments, and grafitti. This is functional;
because 'A' sorts before 'a' in ASCII, the README will appear in
directory listings before any source file.
real adj.
Not simulated. Often used as a specific antonym to virtual in any
of its jargon senses.
real estate n.
May be used for any critical resource measured in units of area. Most
frequently used of chip real estate, the area available for logic on
the surface of an integrated circuit (see also nanoacre). May also
be used of floor space in a dinosaur pen, or even space on a
crowded desktop (whether physical or electronic).
real hack n.
A crock. This is sometimes used affectionately; see hack.
real operating system n.
The sort the speaker is used to. People from the BSDophilic academic
community are likely to issue comments like "System V? Why don't you
use a real operating system?", people from the commercial/industrial
Unix sector are known to complain "BSD? Why don't you use a real
operating system?", and people from IBM object "Unix? Why don't you
use a real operating system?" Only MS-DOS is universally considered
unreal. See holy wars, religious issues, proprietary, Get a
real computer!
Real Programmer n.
[indirectly, from the book Real Men Don't Eat Quiche] A particular
sub-variety of hacker: one possessed of a flippant attitude toward
complexity that is arrogant even when justified by experience. The
archetypal Real Programmer likes to program on the bare metal and
is very good at same, remembers the binary opcodes for every machine
he has ever programmed, thinks that HLLs are sissy, and uses a
debugger to edit his code because full-screen editors are for wimps.
Real Programmers aren't satisfied with code that hasn't been tuned
into a state of tenseness just short of rupture. Real Programmers
never use comments or write documentation: "If it was hard to write",
says the Real Programmer, "it should be hard to understand." Real
Programmers can make machines do things that were never in their spec
sheets; in fact, they are seldom really happy unless doing so. A Real
Programmer's code can awe with its fiendish brilliance, even as its
crockishness appalls. Real Programmers live on junk food and coffee,
hang line-printer art on their walls, and terrify the crap out of
other programmers -- because someday, somebody else might have to try
to understand their code in order to change it. Their successors
generally consider it a Good Thing that there aren't many Real
Programmers around any more. For a famous (and somewhat more
positive) portrait of a Real Programmer, see The Story of Mel' in
Appendix A. The term itself was popularized by a letter to the editor
in the July 1983 Datamation titled Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal
by Ed Post, still circulating on Usenet and Internet in on-line form.
Typing Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal into a web search engine
should turn up a copy.
Real Soon Now adv.
[orig. from SF's fanzine community, popularized by Jerry Pournelle's
column in BYTE]
1. Supposed to be available (or fixed, or cheap, or whatever) real
soon now according to somebody, but the speaker is quite skeptical.
2. When one's gods, fates, or other time commitments permit one to
get to it (in other words, don't hold your breath). Often abbreviated
RSN. Compare copious free time.
real time
1. [techspeak] adj. Describes an application which requires a program
to respond to stimuli within some small upper limit of response time
(typically milli- or microseconds). Process control at a chemical
plant is the canonical example. Such applications often require
special operating systems (because everything else must take a back
seat to response time) and speed-tuned hardware.
2. adv. In jargon, refers to doing something while people are
watching or waiting. "I asked her how to find the calling procedure's
program counter on the stack and she came up with an algorithm in
real time."
real user n.
1. A commercial user. One who is paying real money for his computer
usage.
2. A non-hacker. Someone using the system for an explicit purpose (a
research project, a course, etc.) other than pure exploration. See
user. Hackers who are also students may also be real users. "I need
this fixed so I can do a problem set. I'm not complaining out of
randomness, but as a real user." See also luser.
Real World n.
1. Those institutions at which `programming' may be used in the same
sentence as `FORTRAN', `COBOL', `RPG', `IBM', `DBASE', etc.
Places where programs do such commercially necessary but
intellectually uninspiring things as generating payroll checks and
invoices.
2. The location of non-programmers and activities not related to
programming.
3. A bizarre dimension in which the standard dress is shirt and tie
and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5 (see
code grinder).
4. Anywhere outside a university. "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and
gone into the Real World." Used pejoratively by those not in
residence there. In conversation, talking of someone who has entered
the Real World is not unlike speaking of a deceased person. It is
also noteworthy that on the campus of Cambridge University in
England, there is a gaily-painted lamp-post which bears the label
`REALITY CHECKPOINT'. It marks the boundary between university and
the Real World; check your notions of reality before passing. This
joke is funnier because the Cambridge `campus' is actually
coextensive with the center of Cambridge town. See also fear and
loathing, mundane, and uninteresting.
[cobol.png]
()
reality check n.
1. The simplest kind of test of software or hardware; doing the
equivalent of asking it what 2 + 2 is and seeing if you get 4. The
software equivalent of a smoke test.
2. The act of letting a real user try out prototype software.
Compare sanity check.
reality-distortion field n.
An expression used to describe the persuasive ability of managers
like Steve Jobs (the term originated at Apple in the 1980s to
describe his peculiar charisma). Those close to these managers become
passionately committed to possibly insane projects, without regard to
the practicality of their implementation or competitive forces in the
marketplace.
reaper n.
A prowler that removes files. A file removed in this way is said to
have been reaped.
recompile the world
The surprisingly large amount of work that needs to be done as the
result of any small but globally visible program change. "The world"
may mean the entirety of some huge program, or may in theory refer to
every program of a certain class in the entire known universe. For
instance, "Add one #define to stdio.h, and you have to recompile the
world." This means that any minor change to the standard-I/O header
file theoretically mandates recompiling every C program in existence,
even if only to verify that the change didn't screw something else
up. In practice, you may not actually have to recompile the world,
but the implication is that some human cleverness is required to
figure out what parts can be safely left out.
rectangle slinger n.
See polygon pusher.
recursion n.
See recursion. See also tail recursion.
recursive acronym n.
A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose
acronyms/abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to
other acronyms/abbreviations. The original of the breed may have been
TINT ("TINT Is Not TECO"). The classic examples were two MIT editors
called EINE ("EINE Is Not EMACS") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE
Initially"). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR
(Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU (q.v., sense 1) stands
for "GNU's Not Unix!" -- and a company with the name Cygnus, which
expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support" (though Cygnus people say this
is a backronym). The GNU recursive acronym may have been patterned
on XINU, "XINU Is Not Unix" -- a particularly nice example because it
is a mirror image, a backronym, and a recursive acronym. See also
mung, EMACS.
red wire n.
[IBM] Patch wires installed by programmers who have no business
mucking with the hardware. It is said that the only thing more
dangerous than a hardware guy with a code patch is a softy with a
soldering iron.... Compare blue wire, yellow wire, purple wire.
regexp /reg´eksp/, n.
[Unix] (alt.: regex or reg-ex)
1. Common written and spoken abbreviation for regular expression, one
of the wildcard patterns used, e.g., by Unix utilities such as
grep(1), sed(1), and awk(1). These use conventions similar to but
more elaborate than those described under glob. For purposes of
this lexicon, it is sufficient to note that regexps also allow
complemented character sets using ^; thus, one can specify `any
non-alphabetic character' with [^A-Za-z].
2. Name of a well-known PD regexp-handling package in portable C,
written by revered Usenetter Henry Spencer.
register dancing n.
Many older processor architectures suffer from a serious shortage of
general-purpose registers. This is especially a problem for
compiler-writers, because their generated code needs places to store
temporaries for things like intermediate values in expression
evaluation. Some designs with this problem, like the Intel 80x86, do
have a handful of special-purpose registers that can be pressed into
service, providing suitable care is taken to avoid unpleasant side
effects on the state of the processor: while the special-purpose
register is being used to hold an intermediate value, a delicate
minuet is required in which the previous value of the register is
saved and then restored just before the official function (and value)
of the special-purpose register is again needed.
rehi
[IRC, MUD] "Hello again." Very commonly used to greet people upon
returning to an IRC channel after channel hopping.
reincarnation, cycle of n.
See cycle of reincarnation.
reinvent the wheel v.
To design or implement a tool equivalent to an existing one or part
of one, with the implication that doing so is silly or a waste of
time. This is often a valid criticism. On the other hand, automobiles
don't use wooden rollers, and some kinds of wheel have to be
reinvented many times before you get them right. On the third hand,
people reinventing the wheel do tend to come up with the moral
equivalent of a trapezoid with an offset axle.
relay rape n.
The hijacking of a third party's unsecured mail server to deliver
spam.
religion of CHI /ki:/, n.
[Case Western Reserve University] Yet another hackish parody religion
(see also Church of the SubGenius, Discordianism). In the
mid-70s, the canonical "Introduction to Programming" courses at CWRU
were taught in Algol, and student exercises were punched on cards and
run on a Univac 1108 system using a homebrew operating system named
CHI. The religion had no doctrines and but one ritual: whenever the
worshiper noted that a digital clock read 11:08, he or she would
recite the phrase "It is 11:08; ABS, ALPHABETIC, ARCSIN, ARCCOS,
ARCTAN." The last five words were the first five functions in the
appropriate chapter of the Algol manual; note the special
pronunciations /obz/ and /ark´sin/ rather than the more common /ahbz/
and /ark´si:n/. Using an alarm clock to warn of 11:08's arrival was
considered harmful.
religious issues n.
Questions which seemingly cannot be raised without touching off holy
wars, such as "What is the best operating system (or editor,
language, architecture, shell, mail reader, news reader)?", "What
about that Heinlein guy, eh?", "What should we add to the new Jargon
File?" See holy wars; see also theology, bigot, and compare
rathole.
This term is a prime example of ha ha only serious. People actually
develop the most amazing and religiously intense attachments to their
tools, even when the tools are intangible. The most constructive
thing one can do when one stumbles into the crossfire is mumble Get
a life! and leave -- unless, of course, one's own unassailably
rational and obviously correct choices are being slammed.
replicator n.
Any construct that acts to produce copies of itself; this could be a
living organism, an idea (see meme), a program (see quine,
worm, wabbit, fork bomb, and virus), a pattern in a cellular
automaton (see life, sense 1), or (speculatively) a robot or
nanobot. It is even claimed by some that Unix and C are the
symbiotic halves of an extremely successful replicator; see Unix
conspiracy.
reply n.
See followup.
restriction n.
A bug or design error that limits a program's capabilities, and
which is sufficiently egregious that nobody can quite work up enough
nerve to describe it as a feature. Often used (esp. by marketroid
types) to make it sound as though some crippling bogosity had been
intended by the designers all along, or was forced upon them by
arcane technical constraints of a nature no mere user could possibly
comprehend (these claims are almost invariably false).
Old-time hacker Joseph M. Newcomer advises that whenever choosing a
quantifiable but arbitrary restriction, you should make it either a
power of 2 or a power of 2 minus 1. If you impose a limit of 107
items in a list, everyone will know it is a random number -- on the
other hand, a limit of 15 or 16 suggests some deep reason (involving
0- or 1-based indexing in binary) and you will get less flamage for
it. Limits which are round numbers in base 10 are always especially
suspect.
retcon /ret´kon/
[short for `retroactive continuity', from the Usenet newsgroup
rec.arts.comics]
1. n. The common situation in pulp fiction (esp. comics or soap
operas) where a new story `reveals' things about events in previous
stories, usually leaving the `facts' the same (thus preserving
continuity) while completely changing their interpretation. For
example, revealing that a whole season of Dallas was a dream was a
retcon.
2. vt. To write such a story about a character or fictitious object.
"Byrne has retconned Superman's cape so that it is no longer
unbreakable." "Marvelman's old adventures were retconned into
synthetic dreams." "Swamp Thing was retconned from a transformed
person into a sentient vegetable."
[This term is included because it is a good example of hackish
linguistic innovation in a field completely unrelated to computers.
The word retcon will probably spread through comics fandom and lose
its association with hackerdom within a couple of years; for the
record, it started here. --ESR]
[1993 update: some comics fans on the net now claim that retcon was
independently in use in comics fandom before rec.arts.comics, and
have citations from around 1981. In lexicography, nothing is ever
simple. --ESR]
RETI v.
Syn. RTI
retrocomputing /ret'·roh·k@m·pyoo´ting/, n.
Refers to emulations of way-behind-the-state-of-the-art hardware or
software, or implementations of never-was-state-of-the-art; esp. if
such implementations are elaborate practical jokes and/or parodies,
written mostly for hack value, of more `serious' designs. Perhaps
the most widely distributed retrocomputing utility was the pnch(6) or
bcd(6) program on V7 and other early Unix versions, which would
accept up to 80 characters of text argument and display the
corresponding pattern in punched card code. Other well-known
retrocomputing hacks have included the programming language
INTERCAL, a JCL-emulating shell for Unix, the
card-punch-emulating editor named 029, and various elaborate PDP-11
hardware emulators and RT-11 OS emulators written just to keep an
old, sourceless Zork binary running.
A tasty selection of retrocomputing programs are made available at
the Retrocomputing Museum, http://www.catb.org/retro/.
return from the dead v.
To regain access to the net after a long absence. Compare person of
no account.
RFC /R·F·C/, n.
[Request For Comment] One of a long-established series of numbered
Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by
commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix
communities. Perhaps the single most influential one has been RFC-822
(the Internet mail-format standard). The RFCs are unusual in that
they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative
and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally
promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this reason,
they remain known as RFCs even once adopted as standards.
The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact
standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has
important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process
typical of ANSI or ISO. Emblematic of some of these advantages is the
existence of a flourishing tradition of `joke' RFCs; usually at least
one a year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs
have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973), 748
("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1 April 1978), and
1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian
Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was a Lewis
Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP-IP documentation
style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document
legalese, describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets
by carrier pigeon (since actually implemented; see Appendix A). See
also Infinite-Monkey Theorem.
The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work -- they
frequently manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually
rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated
misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they define a
network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions.
RFE /R·F·E/, n.
1. [techspeak] Request For Enhancement (compare RFC).
2. [from `Radio Free Europe', Bellcore and Sun] Radio Free Ethernet,
a system (originated by Peter Langston) for broadcasting audio among
Sun SPARCstations over the ethernet.
Right Thing n.
That which is compellingly the correct or appropriate thing to use,
do, say, etc. Often capitalized, always emphasized in speech as
though capitalized. Use of this term often implies that in fact
reasonable people may disagree. "What's the right thing for LISP to
do when it sees (mod a 0)? Should it return a, or give a divide-by-0
error?" Oppose Wrong Thing.
rip v.
1. To extract the digital representation of a piece of music from an
audio CD. Software that does this is often called a "CD ripper".
2. [Amiga hackers] To extract sound or graphics from a program that
they have been compiled/assembled into, or which generates them at
run-time. In the case of older Amiga games this entails searching
through memory shortly after a reboot. This sense has been in use for
many years and probably gave rise to the (now more common) sense 1.
ripoff n.
Synonym for chad, sense 1.
RL //, n.
[MUD community] Real Life. "Firiss laughs in RL" means that Firiss's
player is laughing. Compare meatspace; oppose VR.
roach vt.
[Bell Labs] To destroy, esp. of a data structure. Hardware gets
toasted or fried, software gets roached. Probably derived from
'70s and '80s drug slang; marijuana smokers used `roach' to refer to
the unsmokable remnant of a joint, and to `roach' a joint was
therefore to destroy it.
robocanceller /roh·boh·kan´sel·@r/
A program that monitors Usenet feeds, attempting to detect and
eliminate spam by sending appropriate cancel messages.
Robocancellers may use the Breidbart Index as a trigger.
Programming them is not a game for amateurs; see ARMM. See also
Dave the Resurrector.
robot n.
See bot.
robust adj.
Said of a system that has demonstrated an ability to recover
gracefully from the whole range of exceptional inputs and situations
in a given environment. One step below bulletproof. Carries the
additional connotation of elegance in addition to just careful
attention to detail. Compare smart, oppose brittle.
rococo adj.
Terminally baroque. Used to imply that a program has become so
encrusted with the software equivalent of gold leaf and curlicues
that they have completely swamped the underlying design. Called after
the later and more extreme forms of Baroque architecture and
decoration prevalent during the mid-1700s in Europe. Alan Perlis
said: "Every program eventually becomes rococo, and then rubble."
Compare critical mass.
rogue
1. [Unix] n. A Dungeons-and-Dragons-like game using character
graphics, written under BSD Unix and subsequently ported to other
Unix systems. The original BSD curses(3) screen-handling package was
hacked together by Ken Arnold primarily to support games, and the
development of rogue(6) popularized its use; it has since become one
of Unix's most important and heavily used application libraries.
Nethack, Omega, Larn, Angband, and an entire subgenre of computer
dungeon games (all known as `roguelikes') all took off from the
inspiration provided by rogue(6); the popular Windows game Diablo,
though graphics-intensive, has very similar play logic. See also
nethack, moria, Angband.
2. [Usenet] adj. An ISP which permits net abuse (usually in the
form of spamming) by its customers, or which itself engages in such
activities. Rogue ISPs are sometimes subject to IDPs or UDPs.
Sometimes deliberately misspelled as "rouge".
room-temperature IQ quant.
[IBM] 80 or below (nominal room temperature is 72 degrees Fahrenheit,
22 degrees Celsius). Used in describing the expected intelligence
range of the luser. "Well, but how's this interface going to play
with the room-temperature IQ crowd?" See drool-proof paper. This is
a much more insulting phrase in countries that use Celsius
thermometers.
root n.
1. [Unix] The superuser account (with user name `root') that
ignores permission bits, user number 0 on a Unix system. The term
avatar is also used.
2. The top node of the system directory structure; historically the
home directory of the root user, but probably named after the root of
an (inverted) tree.
3. By extension, the privileged system-maintenance login on any OS.
See root mode, go root, see also wheel.
root mode n.
Syn. with wizard mode or wheel mode. Like these, it is often
generalized to describe privileged states in systems other than OSes.
rootkit /root´kit/, n.
[very common] A kit for maintaining root; an automated cracking
tool. What script kiddies use. After a cracker has first broken in
and gained root access, he or she will install modified binaries such
as a modified version login with a backdoor, or a version of ps that
will not report the cracker's processes). This is a rootkit.
rot13 /rot ther´teen/, n.,v.
[Usenet: from `rotate alphabet 13 places'] The simple Caesar-cypher
encryption that replaces each English letter with the one 13 places
forward or back along the alphabet, so that "The butler did it!"
becomes "Gur ohgyre qvq vg!" Most Usenet news reading and posting
programs include a rot13 feature. It is used to enclose the text in a
sealed wrapper that the reader must choose to open -- e.g., for
posting things that might offend some readers, or spoilers. A major
advantage of rot13 over rot(N) for other N is that it is
self-inverse, so the same code can be used for encoding and decoding.
See also spoiler space, which has partly displaced rot13 since
non-Unix-based newsreaders became common.
rotary debugger n.
[Commodore] Essential equipment for those late-night or early-morning
debugging sessions. Mainly used as sustenance for the hacker. Comes
in many decorator colors, such as Sausage, Pepperoni, and Garbage.
See ANSI standard pizza.
RSN /R·S·N/, adj.
See Real Soon Now.
RTBM /R·T·B·M/, imp.
[Unix] Commonwealth Hackish variant of RTFM; expands to `Read The
Bloody Manual'. RTBM is often the entire text of the first reply to a
question from a newbie; the second would escalate to "RTFM".
RTFAQ /R·T·F·A·Q/, imp.
[Usenet: primarily written, by analogy with RTFM] Abbrev. for `Read
the FAQ!', an exhortation that the person addressed ought to read the
newsgroup's FAQ list before posting questions.
RTFB /R·T·F·B/, imp.
[Unix] Abbreviation for `Read The Fucking Binary'. Used when neither
documentation nor source for the problem at hand exists, and the only
thing to do is use some debugger or monitor and directly analyze the
assembler or even the machine code. "No source for the buggy port
driver? Aaargh! I hate proprietary operating systems. Time to RTFB."
Of the various RTF? forms, `RTFB' is the least pejorative against
anyone asking a question for which RTFB is the answer; the anger here
is directed at the absence of both source and adequate documentation.
RTFM /R·T·F·M/, imp.
[Unix] Abbreviation for `Read The Fucking Manual'.
1. Used by gurus to brush off questions they consider trivial or
annoying. Compare Don't do that then!.
2. Used when reporting a problem to indicate that you aren't just
asking out of randomness. "No, I can't figure out how to interface
Unix to my toaster, and yes, I have RTFM." Unlike sense 1, this use
is considered polite. See also FM, RTFAQ, RTFB, RTFS, STFW,
RTM, all of which mutated from RTFM, and compare UTSL.
RTFS /R·T·F·S/
[Unix]
1. imp. Abbreviation for `Read The Fucking Source'. Variant form of
RTFM, used when the problem at hand is not necessarily obvious and
not answerable from the manuals -- or the manuals are not yet written
and maybe never will be. For even trickier situations, see RTFB.
Unlike RTFM, the anger inherent in RTFS is not usually directed at
the person asking the question, but rather at the people who failed
to provide adequate documentation.
2. imp. `Read The Fucking Standard'; this oath can only be used when
the problem area (e.g., a language or operating system interface) has
actually been codified in a ratified standards document. The
existence of these standards documents (and the technically
inappropriate but politically mandated compromises that they
inevitably contain, and the impenetrable legalese in which they are
invariably written, and the unbelievably tedious bureaucratic process
by which they are produced) can be unnerving to hackers, who are used
to a certain amount of ambiguity in the specifications of the systems
they use. (Hackers feel that such ambiguities are acceptable as long
as the Right Thing to do is obvious to any thinking observer;
sadly, this casual attitude towards specifications becomes unworkable
when a system becomes popular in the Real World.) Since a hacker is
likely to feel that a standards document is both unnecessary and
technically deficient, the deprecation inherent in this term may be
directed as much against the standard as against the person who ought
to read it.
RTI /R·T·I/, interj.
The mnemonic for the `return from interrupt' instruction on many
computers including the 6502 and 6800. The variant RETI is found
among Z80 hackers. Equivalent to "Now, where was I?" or used to end a
conversational digression. See pop.
RTM /R·T·M/
1. [Usenet: abbreviation for `Read The Manual'] Politer variant of
RTFM.
2. Robert Tappan Morris, perpetrator of the great Internet worm of
1988 (see Great Worm); villain to many, naive hacker gone wrong to
a few. Morris claimed that the worm that brought the Internet to its
knees was a benign experiment that got out of control as the result
of a coding error. After the storm of negative publicity that
followed this blunder, Morris's username on ITS was hacked from RTM
to RTFM.
RTS /R·T·S/, imp.
Abbreviation for `Read The Screen'. Mainly used by hackers in the
microcomputer world. Refers to what one would like to tell the suit
one is forced to explain an extremely simple application to.
Particularly appropriate when the suit failed to notice the `Press
any key to continue' prompt, and wishes to know `why won't it do
anything'. Also seen as `RTFS' in especially deserving cases.
rubber-hose cryptanalysis n.
[sci.crypt newsgroup] The technique of breaking a code or cipher by
finding someone who has the key and applying a rubber hose vigorously
and repeatedly to the soles of that luckless person's feet until the
key is discovered. Shorthand for any method of coercion: the
originator of the term drily noted that it "can take a surprisingly
short time and is quite computationally inexpensive" relative to
other cryptanalysis methods. Compare social engineering, brute
force.
rude adj.
1. (of a program) Badly written.
2. Functionally poor, e.g., a program that is very difficult to use
because of gratuitously poor (random?) design decisions. Oppose
cuspy.
3. Anything that manipulates a shared resource without regard for its
other users in such a way as to cause a (non-fatal) problem.
Examples: programs that change tty modes without resetting them on
exit, or windowing programs that keep forcing themselves to the top
of the window stack.
runes pl.n.
1. Anything that requires heavy wizardry or black art to parse:
core dumps, JCL commands, APL, or code in a language you haven't a
clue how to read. Not quite as bad as line noise, but close.
Compare casting the runes, Great Runes.
2. Special display characters (for example, the high-half graphics on
an IBM PC).
3. [borderline techspeak] 16-bit characters from the Unicode
multilingual character set.
runic adj.
Syn. obscure. VMS fans sometimes refer to Unix as `Runix'; Unix
fans return the compliment by expanding VMS to `Very Messy Syntax' or
`Vachement Mauvais Système' (French idiom, "Hugely Bad System").
rusty iron n.
Syn. tired iron. It has been claimed that this is the inevitable
fate of water MIPS.
rusty wire n.
[Amateur Packet Radio] Any very noisy network medium, in which the
packets are subject to frequent corruption. Most prevalent in
reference to wireless links subject to all the vagaries of RF noise
and marginal propagation conditions. "Yes, but how good is your
whizbang new protocol on really rusty wire?".
= S =
=====
S/N ratio //, n.
(also s/n ratio, s:n ratio). Syn. signal-to-noise ratio. Often
abbreviated SNR.
sacred adj.
Reserved for the exclusive use of something (an extension of the
standard meaning). Often means that anyone may look at the sacred
object, but clobbering it will screw whatever it is sacred to. The
comment "Register 7 is sacred to the interrupt handler" appearing in
a program would be interpreted by a hacker to mean that if any other
part of the program changes the contents of register 7, dire
consequences are likely to ensue.
saga n.
[WPI] A cuspy but bogus raving story about N random broken people.
Here is a classic example of the saga form, as told by Guy L. Steele:
Jon L. White (login name JONL) and I (GLS) were office mates at
MIT for many years. One April, we both flew from Boston to
California for a week on research business, to consult
face-to-face with some people at Stanford, particularly our mutual
friend Richard P. Gabriel (RPG).
RPG picked us up at the San Francisco airport and drove us back to
Palo Alto (going logical south on route 101, parallel to El
Camino Bignum). Palo Alto is adjacent to Stanford University and
about 40 miles south of San Francisco. We ate at The Good Earth, a
`health food' restaurant, very popular, the sort whose milkshakes
all contain honey and protein powder. JONL ordered such a shake --
the waitress claimed the flavor of the day was "lalaberry". I
still have no idea what that might be, but it became a running
joke. It was the color of raspberry, and JONL said it tasted
rather bitter. I ate a better tostada there than I have ever had
in a Mexican restaurant.
After this we went to the local Uncle Gaylord's Old Fashioned Ice
Cream Parlor. They make ice cream fresh daily, in a variety of
intriguing flavors. It's a chain, and they have a slogan: "If you
don't live near an Uncle Gaylord's -- MOVE!" Also, Uncle Gaylord
(a real person) wages a constant battle to force big-name ice
cream makers to print their ingredients on the package (like air
and plastic and other non-natural garbage). JONL and I had first
discovered Uncle Gaylord's the previous August, when we had flown
to a computer-science conference in Berkeley, California, the
first time either of us had been on the West Coast. When not in
the conference sessions, we had spent our time wandering the
length of Telegraph Avenue, which (like Harvard Square in
Cambridge) was lined with picturesque street vendors and
interesting little shops. On that street we discovered Uncle
Gaylord's Berkeley store. The ice cream there was very good.
During that August visit JONL went absolutely bananas (so to
speak) over one particular flavor, ginger honey.
Therefore, after eating at The Good Earth -- indeed, after every
lunch and dinner and before bed during our April visit -- a trip
to Uncle Gaylord's (the one in Palo Alto) was mandatory. We had
arrived on a Wednesday, and by Thursday evening we had been there
at least four times. Each time, JONL would get ginger honey ice
cream, and proclaim to all bystanders that "Ginger was the spice
that drove the Europeans mad! That's why they sought a route to
the East! They used it to preserve their otherwise off-taste
meat." After the third or fourth repetition RPG and I were getting
a little tired of this spiel, and began to paraphrase him: "Wow!
Ginger! The spice that makes rotten meat taste good!" "Say! Why
don't we find some dog that's been run over and sat in the sun for
a week and put some ginger on it for dinner?!" "Right! With a
lalaberry shake!" And so on. This failed to faze JONL; he took it
in good humor, as long as we kept returning to Uncle Gaylord's. He
loves ginger honey ice cream.
Now RPG and his then-wife KBT (Kathy Tracy) were putting us up
(putting up with us?) in their home for our visit, so to thank
them JONL and I took them out to a nice French restaurant of their
choosing. I unadventurously chose the filet mignon, and KBT had je
ne sais quoi du jour, but RPG and JONL had lapin (rabbit).
(Waitress: "Oui, we have fresh rabbit, fresh today." RPG: "Well,
JONL, I guess we won't need any ginger!")
We finished the meal late, about 11PM, which is 2AM Boston time,
so JONL and I were rather droopy. But it wasn't yet midnight. Off
to Uncle Gaylord's!
Now the French restaurant was in Redwood City, north of Palo Alto.
In leaving Redwood City, we somehow got onto route 101 going north
instead of south. JONL and I wouldn't have known the difference
had RPG not mentioned it. We still knew very little of the local
geography. I did figure out, however, that we were headed in the
direction of Berkeley, and half-jokingly suggested that we
continue north and go to Uncle Gaylord's in Berkeley.
RPG said "Fine!" and we drove on for a while and talked. I was
drowsy, and JONL actually dropped off to sleep for 5 minutes. When
he awoke, RPG said, "Gee, JONL, you must have slept all the way
over the bridge!", referring to the one spanning San Francisco
Bay. Just then we came to a sign that said "University Avenue". I
mumbled something about working our way over to Telegraph Avenue;
RPG said "Right!" and maneuvered some more. Eventually we pulled
up in front of an Uncle Gaylord's.
Now, I hadn't really been paying attention because I was so
sleepy, and I didn't really understand what was happening until
RPG let me in on it a few moments later, but I was just alert
enough to notice that we had somehow come to the Palo Alto Uncle
Gaylord's after all.
JONL noticed the resemblance to the Palo Alto store, but hadn't
caught on. (The place is lit with red and yellow lights at night,
and looks much different from the way it does in daylight.) He
said, "This isn't the Uncle Gaylord's I went to in Berkeley! It
looked like a barn! But this place looks just like the one back in
Palo Alto!"
RPG deadpanned, "Well, this is the one I always come to when I'm
in Berkeley. They've got two in San Francisco, too. Remember,
they're a chain."
JONL accepted this bit of wisdom. And he was not totally ignorant
-- he knew perfectly well that University Avenue was in Berkeley,
not far from Telegraph Avenue. What he didn't know was that there
is a completely different University Avenue in Palo Alto.
JONL went up to the counter and asked for ginger honey. The guy at
the counter asked whether JONL would like to taste it first,
evidently their standard procedure with that flavor, as not too
many people like it.
JONL said, "I'm sure I like it. Just give me a cone." The guy
behind the counter insisted that JONL try just a taste first.
"Some people think it tastes like soap." JONL insisted, "Look, I
love ginger. I eat Chinese food. I eat raw ginger roots. I already
went through this hassle with the guy back in Palo Alto. I know I
like that flavor!"
At the words "back in Palo Alto" the guy behind the counter got a
very strange look on his face, but said nothing. KBT caught his
eye and winked. Through my stupor I still hadn't quite grasped
what was going on, and thought RPG was rolling on the floor
laughing and clutching his stomach just because JONL had launched
into his spiel ("makes rotten meat a dish for princes") for the
forty-third time. At this point, RPG clued me in fully.
RPG, KBT, and I retreated to a table, trying to stifle our
chuckles. JONL remained at the counter, talking about ice cream
with the guy b.t.c., comparing Uncle Gaylord's to other ice cream
shops and generally having a good old time.
At length the g.b.t.c.: said, "How's the ginger honey?" JONL said,
"Fine! I wonder what exactly is in it?" Now Uncle Gaylord
publishes all his recipes and even teaches classes on how to make
his ice cream at home. So the g.b.t.c.: got out the recipe, and he
and JONL pored over it for a while. But the g.b.t.c.: could
contain his curiosity no longer, and asked again, "You really like
that stuff, huh?" JONL said, "Yeah, I've been eating it constantly
back in Palo Alto for the past two days. In fact, I think this
batch is about as good as the cones I got back in Palo Alto!"
G.b.t.c.: looked him straight in the eye and said, "You're in Palo
Alto!"
JONL turned slowly around, and saw the three of us collapse in a
fit of giggles. He clapped a hand to his forehead and exclaimed,
"I've been hacked!"
[My spies on the West Coast inform me that there is a close relative
of the raspberry found out there called an `ollalieberry' --ESR]
[Ironic footnote: the meme about ginger vs. rotting meat is an
urban legend. It's not borne out by an examination of medieval
recipes or period purchase records for spices, and appears full-blown
in the works of Samuel Pegge, a gourmand and notorious flake case who
originated numerous food myths. The truth seems to be that ginger was
used to cover not rot but the extreme salt taste of meat packed in
brine, which was the best method available before refrigeration.
--ESR]
sagan /say´gn/, n.
[from Carl Sagan's TV series Cosmos; think "billions and billions"] A
large quantity of anything. "There's a sagan different ways to tweak
EMACS." "The U.S. Government spends sagans on bombs and welfare --
hard to say which is more destructive."
SAIL /sayl/, /S·A·I·L/, n.
1. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab. An important site in the
early development of LISP; with the MIT AI Lab, BBN, CMU, XEROX PARC,
and the Unix community, one of the major wellsprings of technical
innovation and hacker-culture traditions (see the WAITS entry for
details). The SAIL machines were shut down in late May 1990, scant
weeks after the MIT AI Lab's ITS cluster was officially
decommissioned.
2. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Language used at SAIL (sense
1). It was an Algol-60 derivative with a coroutining facility and
some new data types intended for building search trees and
association lists.
salescritter /sayls´kri`tr/, n.
Pejorative hackerism for a computer salesperson. Hackers tell the
following joke:
Q. What's the difference between a used-car dealer and a
computer salesman?
A. The used-car dealer knows he's lying. [Some versions add:
...and probably knows how to drive.]
This reflects the widespread hacker belief that salescritters are
self-selected for stupidity (after all, if they had brains and the
inclination to use them, they'd be in programming). The terms
salesthing and salesdroid are also common. Compare marketroid,
suit, droid.
salt n.
A tiny bit of near-random data inserted where too much regularity
would be undesirable; a data frob (sense 1). For example, the Unix
crypt(3) man page mentions that "the salt string is used to perturb
the DES algorithm in one of 4096 different ways."
salt mines n.
Dense quarters housing large numbers of programmers working long
hours on grungy projects, with some hope of seeing the end of the
tunnel in N years. Noted for their absence of sunshine. Compare
playpen, sandbox.
salt substrate n.
[MIT] Collective noun used to refer to potato chips, pretzels,
saltines, or any other form of snack food designed primarily as a
carrier for sodium chloride. Also sodium substrate. From the
technical term chip substrate, used to refer to the silicon on the
top of which the active parts of integrated circuits are deposited.
same-day service n.
Ironic term used to describe long response time, particularly with
respect to MS-DOS and Windows system calls (which ought to require
only a tiny fraction of a second to execute). Such response time is a
major incentive for programmers to write programs that are not
well-behaved.
samizdat /sahm·iz·daht/, n.
[Russian, literally "self publishing"] The process of disseminating
documentation via underground channels. Originally referred to
underground duplication and distribution of banned books in the
Soviet Union; now refers by obvious extension to any
less-than-official promulgation of textual material, esp. rare,
obsolete, or never-formally-published computer documentation.
Samizdat is obviously much easier when one has access to
high-bandwidth networks and high-quality laser printers. Note that
samizdat is properly used only with respect to documents which
contain needed information (see also hacker ethic) but which are
for some reason otherwise unavailable, but not in the context of
documents which are available through normal channels, for which
unauthorized duplication would be unethical copyright violation. See
Lions Book for a historical example.
samurai n.
A hacker who hires out for legal cracking jobs, snooping for factions
in corporate political fights, lawyers pursuing privacy-rights and
First Amendment cases, and other parties with legitimate reasons to
need an electronic locksmith. In 1991, mainstream media reported the
existence of a loose-knit culture of samurai that meets
electronically on BBS systems, mostly bright teenagers with personal
micros; they have modeled themselves explicitly on the historical
samurai of Japan and on the "net cowboys" of William Gibson's
cyberpunk novels. Those interviewed claim to adhere to a rigid
ethic of loyalty to their employers and to disdain the vandalism and
theft practiced by criminal crackers as beneath them and contrary to
the hacker ethic; some quote Miyamoto Musashi's Book of Five Rings, a
classic of historical samurai doctrine, in support of these
principles. See also sneaker, Stupids, social engineering,
cracker, hacker ethic, and dark-side hacker.
sandbender n.
[IBM] A person involved with silicon lithography and the physical
design of chips. Compare ironmonger, polygon pusher.
sandbox n.
(also `sandbox, the')
1. Common term for the R&D department at many software and computer
companies (where hackers in commercial environments are likely to be
found). Half-derisive, but reflects the truth that research is a form
of creative play. Compare playpen.
2. Syn. link farm.
3. A controlled environment within which potentially dangerous
programs are run. Used esp. in reference to Java implementations.
4. A checked-out copy of a source tree, on which one may safely
perform builds without interfereing with others.
sanity check n.
[very common]
1. The act of checking a piece of code (or anything else, e.g., a
Usenet posting) for completely stupid mistakes. Implies that the
check is to make sure the author was sane when it was written; e.g.,
if a piece of scientific software relied on a particular formula and
was giving unexpected results, one might first look at the nesting of
parentheses or the coding of the formula, as a sanity check, before
looking at the more complex I/O or data structure manipulation
routines, much less the algorithm itself. Compare reality check.
2. A run-time test, either validating input or ensuring that the
program hasn't screwed up internally (producing an inconsistent value
or state).
3. Conversationally, saying "sanity check" means you are requesting a
check of your assumptions. "Wait a minute, sanity check, are we
talking about the same Kevin here?"
Saturday-night special n.
[from police slang for a cheap handgun] A quick-and-dirty program
or feature kluged together during off hours, under a deadline, and in
response to pressure from a salescritter. Such hacks are
dangerously unreliable, but all too often sneak into a production
release after insufficient review.
say vt.
1. To type to a terminal. "To list a directory verbosely, you have to
say ls -l." Tends to imply a newline-terminated command (a
`sentence').
2. A computer may also be said to `say' things to you, even if it
doesn't have a speech synthesizer, by displaying them on a terminal
in response to your commands. Hackers find it odd that this usage
confuses mundanes.
scag vt.
To destroy the data on a disk, either by corrupting the filesystem or
by causing media damage. "That last power hit scagged the system
disk." Compare scrog, roach.
scanno /skan´oh/, n.
An error in a document caused by a scanner glitch, analogous to a
typo or thinko.
scary devil monastery n.
Anagram frequently used to refer to the newsgroup
alt.sysadmin.recovery, which is populated with characters that rather
justify the reference.
schroedinbug /shroh´din·buhg/, n.
[MIT: from the Schroedinger's Cat thought-experiment in quantum
physics] A design or implementation bug in a program that doesn't
manifest until someone reading source or using the program in an
unusual way notices that it never should have worked, at which point
the program promptly stops working for everybody until fixed. Though
(like bit rot) this sounds impossible, it happens; some programs
have harbored latent schroedinbugs for years. Compare heisenbug,
Bohr bug, mandelbug.
science-fiction fandom n.
Another voluntary subculture having a very heavy overlap with
hackerdom; most hackers read SF and/or fantasy fiction avidly, and
many go to `cons' (SF conventions) or are involved in
fandom-connected activities such as the Society for Creative
Anachronism. Some hacker jargon originated in SF fandom; see
defenestration, great-wall, cyberpunk, h, ha ha only
serious, IMHO, mundane, neep-neep, Real Soon Now.
Additionally, the jargon terms cowboy, cyberspace, de-rezz, go
flatline, ice, phage, virus, wetware, wirehead, and worm
originated in SF stories.
SCNR abbrev
[common] Sorry, Could Not Resist. Normally used to semi-apologize for
an obvious wisecrack.
scram switch n.
[from the nuclear power industry] An emergency-power-off switch (see
Big Red Switch), esp. one positioned to be easily hit by evacuating
personnel. In general, this is not something you frob lightly;
these often initiate expensive events (such as Halon dumps) and are
installed in a dinosaur pen for use in case of electrical fire or
in case some luckless field servoid should put 120 volts across
himself while Easter egging. (See also molly-guard, TMRC.)
"Scram" was in origin a backronym for "Safety Cut Rope Axe Man"
coined by Enrico Fermi himself. The story goes that in the earliest
nuclear power experiments the engineers recognized the possibility
that the reactor wouldn't behave exactly as predicted by their
mathematical models. Accordingly, they made sure that they had
mechanisms in place that would rapidly drop the control rods back
into the reactor. One mechanism took the form of `scram technicians'.
These individuals stood next to the ropes or cables that raised and
lowered the control rods. Equipped with axes or cable-cutters, these
technicians stood ready for the (literal) `scram' command. If
necessary, they would cut the cables, and gravity would expeditiously
return the control rods to the reactor, thereby averting yet another
kind of core dump.
Modern reactor control rods are held in place with claw-like devices,
held closed by current. SCRAM switches are circuit breakers that
immediately open the circuit to the rod arms, resulting in the rapid
insertion and subsequent bottoming of the control rods.
scratch
1. [from scratchpad] adj. Describes a data structure or recording
medium attached to a machine for testing or temporary-use purposes;
one that can be scribbled on without loss. Usually in the combining
forms scratch memory, scratch register, scratch disk, scratch tape,
scratch volume. See also scratch monkey.
2. [primarily IBM, also Commodore] vt. To delete (as in a file).
scratch monkey n.
As in "Before testing or reconfiguring, always mount a scratch
monkey", a proverb used to advise caution when dealing with
irreplaceable data or devices. Used to refer to any scratch volume
hooked to a computer during any risky operation as a replacement for
some precious resource or data that might otherwise get trashed.
This term preserves the memory of Mabel, the Swimming Wonder Monkey,
star of a biological research program at the University of Toronto.
Mabel was not (so the legend goes) your ordinary monkey; the
university had spent years teaching her how to swim, breathing
through a regulator, in order to study the effects of different gas
mixtures on her physiology. Mabel suffered an untimely demise one day
when a DEC field circus engineer troubleshooting a crash on the
program's VAX inadvertently interfered with some custom hardware
that was wired to Mabel.
It is reported that, after calming down an understandably irate
customer sufficiently to ascertain the facts of the matter, a DEC
troubleshooter called up the field circus manager responsible and
asked him sweetly, "Can you swim?" Not all the consequences to humans
were so amusing; the sysop of the machine in question was nearly
thrown in jail at the behest of certain clueless droids at the
local `humane' society. The moral is clear: When in doubt, always
mount a scratch monkey. [The actual incident occured in 1979 or 1980.
There is a version of this story, complete with reported dialogue
between one of the project people and DEC field service, that has
been circulating on Internet since 1986. It is hilarious and mythic,
but gets some facts wrong. For example, it reports the machine as a
PDP-11 and alleges that Mabel's demise occurred when DEC PMed the
machine. Earlier versions of this entry were based on that story;
this one has been corrected from an interview with the hapless sysop.
--ESR]
scream and die v.
Syn. cough and die, but connotes that an error message was printed
or displayed before the program crashed.
screaming tty n.
[Unix] A terminal line which spews an infinite number of random
characters at the operating system. This can happen if the terminal
is either disconnected or connected to a powered-off terminal but
still enabled for login; misconfiguration, misimplementation, or
simple bad luck can start such a terminal screaming. A screaming tty
or two can seriously degrade the performance of a vanilla Unix
system; the arriving "characters" are treated as userid/password
pairs and tested as such. The Unix password encryption algorithm is
designed to be computationally intensive in order to foil brute-force
crack attacks, so although none of the logins succeeds; the overhead
of rejecting them all can be substantial.
screen n.
[Atari ST demoscene] One demoeffect or one screenful of them.
Probably comes from old Sierra-style adventures or shoot-em-ups where
one travels from one place to another one screenful at a time.
screen name n.
A handle sense
1. This term has been common among users of IRC, MUDs, and commercial
on-line services since the mid-1990s. Hackers recognize the term but
don't generally use it.
screen scraping v.
The act of capturing data from a system or program by snooping the
contents of some display that is not actually intended for data
transport or inspection by programs. Around 1980 this term referred
to tricks like reading the display memory of a smart terminal through
its auxiliary port. Nowadays it often refers to parsing the HTML in
generated web pages with programs designed to mine out particular
patterns of content. In either guise screen-scraping is an ugly,
ad-hoc, last-resort technique that is very likely to break on even
minor changes to the format of the data being snooped.
screw n.
[MIT] A lose, usually in software. Especially used for user-visible
misbehavior caused by a bug or misfeature. This use has become quite
widespread outside MIT.
screwage /skroo'@j/, n.
Like lossage but connotes that the failure is due to a designed-in
misfeature rather than a simple inadequacy or a mere bug.
scribble n.
To modify a data structure in a random and unintentionally
destructive way. "Bletch! Somebody's disk-compactor program went
berserk and scribbled on the i-node table." "It was working fine
until one of the allocation routines scribbled on low core."
Synonymous with trash; compare mung, which conveys a bit more
intention, and mangle, which is more violent and final.
script kiddies pl.n.
1. [very common] The lowest form of cracker; script kiddies do
mischief with scripts and rootkits written by others, often without
understanding the exploit they are using. Used of people with
limited technical expertise using easy-to-operate, pre-configured,
and/or automated tools to conduct disruptive activities against
networked systems. Since most of these tools are fairly well-known by
the security community, the adverse impact of such actions is usually
minimal.
2. People who cannot program, but who create tacky HTML pages by
copying JavaScript routines from other tacky HTML pages. More
generally, a script kiddie writes (or more likely cuts and pastes)
code without either having or desiring to have a mental model of what
the code does; someone who thinks of code as magical incantations and
asks only "what do I need to type to make this happen?"
scrog /skrog/, vt.
[Bell Labs] To damage, trash, or corrupt a data structure. "The list
header got scrogged." Also reported as skrog, and ascribed to the
comic strip The Wizard of Id. Compare scag; possibly the two are
related. Equivalent to scribble or mangle.
scrool /skrool/, n.
[from the pioneering Roundtable chat system in Houston ca.: 1984;
prob.: originated as a typo for `scroll'] The log of old messages,
available for later perusal or to help one get back in synch with the
conversation. It was originally called the scrool monster, because an
early version of the roundtable software had a bug where it would
dump all 8K of scrool on a user's terminal.
scrozzle /skroz´l/, vt.
Used when a self-modifying code segment runs incorrectly and corrupts
the running program or vital data. "The damn compiler scrozzled
itself again!"
scruffies n.
See neats vs. scruffies.
SCSI n.
[Small Computer System Interface] A bus-independent standard for
system-level interfacing between a computer and intelligent devices.
Typically annotated in literature with `sexy' (/sek´see/), `sissy'
(/sis´ee/), and `scuzzy' (/skuh´zee/) as pronunciation guides -- the
last being the overwhelmingly predominant form, much to the dismay of
the designers and their marketing people. One can usually assume that
a person who pronounces it /S-C-S-I/ is clueless.
SCSI voodoo /skuz´ee voo´doo/
[common among Mac users] SCSI interface hardware is notoriously
fickle of temperament. Often, the SCSI bus will fail to work unless
the cable order of devices is re-arranged, SCSI termination is added
or removed (sometimes double-termination or no termination will fix
the problem), or particular devices are given particular SCSI IDs.
The skills needed to trick the naturally skittish demons of SCSI into
working are collectively known as SCSI voodoo. Compare magic, deep
magic, heavy wizardry, rain dance, cargo cult programming,
wave a dead chicken, voodoo programming.
While ordinary mortals frequently experience near-terminal
frustration when attempting to configure SCSI device chains, it is
said that a true master of this arcane art can (through rituals
involving chicken blood, ground rhino horn, hairs of a virgin, eye of
newt, etc.) hook up your personal computer with three scanners, a Zip
drive, an IDE hard drive, a home weather station, a Smith-Corona
typewriter, and the neighbor's garage door.
search-and-destroy mode n.
Hackerism for a noninteractive search-and-replace facility in an
editor, so called because an incautiously chosen match pattern can
cause infinite damage.
second-system effect n.
(sometimes, more euphoniously, second-system syndrome) When one is
designing the successor to a relatively small, elegant, and
successful system, there is a tendency to become grandiose in one's
success and design an elephantine feature-laden monstrosity. The
term was first used by Fred Brooks in his classic The Mythical
Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (Addison-Wesley, 1975; ISBN
0-201-00650-2). It described the jump from a set of nice, simple
operating systems on the IBM 70xx series to OS/360 on the 360 series.
A similar effect can also happen in an evolving system; see Brooks's
Law, creeping elegance, creeping featurism. See also Multics,
OS/2, X, software bloat.
This version of the jargon lexicon has been described (with
altogether too much truth for comfort) as an example of second-system
effect run amok on jargon-1....
secondary damage n.
When a fatal error occurs (esp. a segfault) the immediate cause may
be that a pointer has been trashed due to a previous fandango on
core. However, this fandango may have been due to an earlier
fandango, so no amount of analysis will reveal (directly) how the
damage occurred. "The data structure was clobbered, but it was
secondary damage." By extension, the corruption resulting from N
cascaded fandangoes on core is `Nth-level damage'. There is at least
one case on record in which 17 hours of grovelling with adb
actually dug up the underlying bug behind an instance of
seventh-level damage! The hacker who accomplished this
near-superhuman feat was presented with an award by his fellows.
security through obscurity
(alt.: security by obscurity) A term applied by hackers to most OS
vendors' favorite way of coping with security holes -- namely,
ignoring them, documenting neither any known holes nor the underlying
security algorithms, trusting that nobody will find out about them
and that people who do find out about them won't exploit them. This
"strategy" never works for long and occasionally sets the world up
for debacles like the RTM worm of 1988 (see Great Worm), but once
the brief moments of panic created by such events subside most
vendors are all too willing to turn over and go back to sleep. After
all, actually fixing the bugs would siphon off the resources needed
to implement the next user-interface frill on marketing's wish list
-- and besides, if they started fixing security bugs customers might
begin to expect it and imagine that their warranties of
merchantability gave them some sort of right to a system with fewer
holes in it than a shotgunned Swiss cheese, and then where would we
be?
Historical note: There are conflicting stories about the origin of
this term. It has been claimed that it was first used in the Usenet
newsgroup comp.sys.apollo during a campaign to get HP/Apollo to fix
security problems in its Unix-clone Aegis/DomainOS (they didn't
change a thing). ITS fans, on the other hand, say it was coined
years earlier in opposition to the incredibly paranoid Multics
people down the hall, for whom security was everything. In the ITS
culture it referred to (1) the fact that by the time a tourist
figured out how to make trouble he'd generally gotten over the urge
to make it, because he felt part of the community; and (2)
(self-mockingly) the poor coverage of the documentation and obscurity
of many commands. One instance of deliberate security through
obscurity is recorded; the command to allow patching the running ITS
system (escape escape control-R) echoed as $$^D. If you actually
typed alt alt ^D, that set a flag that would prevent patching the
system even if you later got it right.
SED /S·E·D/, n.
[TMRC, from `Light-Emitting Diode'] Smoke-emitting diode. A friode
that lost the war. See also LER. [Not to be confused with sed(1),
the Unix stream editor. --ESR]
See figure 1
Metaphorically, "Get stuffed." From the title of a famous parody that
can easily be found with a web search on this phrase; figure 1, in
fact, depicts the digitus impudicus.
segfault n.,vi.
Syn. segment, segmentation fault.
seggie /seg´ee/, n.
[Unix] Shorthand for segmentation fault reported from Britain.
segment /seg´ment/, vi.
To experience a segmentation fault. Confusingly, this is often
pronounced more like the noun `segment' than like mainstream v.
segment; this is because it is actually a noun shorthand that has
been verbed.
segmentation fault n.
[Unix]
1. [techspeak] An error in which a running program attempts to access
memory not allocated to it and core dumps with a segmentation
violation error. This is often caused by improper usage of pointers
in the source code, dereferencing a null pointer, or (in C)
inadvertently using a non-pointer variable as a pointer. The classic
example is:
int i;
scanf ("%d", i); /* should have used &i */
2. To lose a train of thought or a line of reasoning. Also uttered as
an exclamation at the point of befuddlement.
segv /seg´vee/, n.,vi.
Yet another synonym for segmentation fault (actually, in this case,
`segmentation violation').
self-reference n.
See self-reference.
selvage /sel´v@j/, n.
[from sewing and weaving] See chad (sense 1).
semi /se´mee/, /se´mi:/
1. n. Abbreviation for `semicolon', when speaking. "Commands to
grind are prefixed by semi-semi-star" means that the prefix is ;;*,
not 1/4 of a star.
2. A prefix used with words such as `immediately' as a qualifier.
"When is the system coming up?" "Semi-immediately." (That is, maybe
not for an hour.) "We did consider that possibility semi-seriously."
See also infinite.
semi-automated adj.
[US Geological Survey] A procedure that has yet to be completely
automated; it still requires a smidge of clueful human interaction.
Semi-automated programs usually come with written-out operator
instructions that are worth their weight in gold -- without them,
very nasty things can happen. At USGS semi-automated programs are
often referred to as "semi-automated weapons".
semi-infinite n.
See infinite.
senior bit n.
[IBM; rare] Syn. meta bit.
September that never ended
All time since September 1993. One of the seasonal rhythms of the
Usenet used to be the annual September influx of clueless newbies
who, lacking any sense of netiquette, made a general nuisance of
themselves. This coincided with people starting college, getting
their first internet accounts, and plunging in without bothering to
learn what was acceptable. These relatively small drafts of newbies
could be assimilated within a few months. But in September 1993, AOL
users became able to post to Usenet, nearly overwhelming the
old-timers' capacity to acculturate them; to those who nostalgically
recall the period before, this triggered an inexorable decline in the
quality of discussions on newsgroups. Syn. eternal September. See
also AOL!.
server n.
A kind of daemon that performs a service for the requester and
which often runs on a computer other than the one on which the
requestor/client runs. A particularly common term on the Internet,
which is rife with web servers, name servers, domain servers, `news
servers', finger servers, and the like.
SEX /seks/
[Sun Users' Group & elsewhere] n.
1. Software EXchange. A technique invented by the blue-green algae
hundreds of millions of years ago to speed up their evolution, which
had been terribly slow up until then. Today, SEX parties are popular
among hackers and others (of course, these are no longer limited to
exchanges of genetic software). In general, SEX parties are a Good
Thing, but unprotected SEX can propagate a virus. See also pubic
directory.
2. The rather Freudian mnemonic often used for Sign EXtend, a machine
instruction found in the PDP-11 and many other architectures. The
RCA 1802 chip used in the early Elf and SuperElf personal computers
had a `SEt X register' SEX instruction, but this seems to have had
little folkloric impact. The Data General instruction set also had
SEX.
DEC's engineers nearly got a PDP-11 assembler that used the SEX
mnemonic out the door at one time, but (for once) marketing wasn't
asleep and forced a change. That wasn't the last time this happened,
either. The author of The Intel 8086 Primer, who was one of the
original designers of the 8086, noted that there was originally a SEX
instruction on that processor, too. He says that Intel management got
cold feet and decreed that it be changed, and thus the instruction
was renamed CBW and CWD (depending on what was being extended).
Amusingly, the Intel 8048 (the microcontroller used in IBM PC
keyboards) is also missing straight SEX but has logical-or and
logical-and instructions ORL and ANL.
The Motorola 6809, used in the Radio Shack Color Computer and in
U.K.'s `Dragon 32' personal computer, actually had an official SEX
instruction; the 6502 in the Apple II with which it competed did not.
British hackers thought this made perfect mythic sense; after all, it
was commonly observed, you could (on some theoretical level) have sex
with a dragon, but you can't have sex with an apple.
sex changer n.
Syn. gender mender.
shambolic link /sham·bol´ik link/, n.
A Unix symbolic link, particularly when it confuses you, points to
nothing at all, or results in your ending up in some completely
unexpected part of the filesystem....
shar file /shar´ fi:l/, n.
Syn. sharchive.
sharchive /shar´ki:v/, n.
[Unix and Usenet; from /bin/sh archive] A flattened representation
of a set of one or more files, with the unique property that it can
be unflattened (the original files restored) by feeding it through a
standard Unix shell; thus, a sharchive can be distributed to anyone
running Unix, and no special unpacking software is required.
Sharchives are also intriguing in that they are typically created by
shell scripts; the script that produces sharchives is thus a script
which produces self-unpacking scripts, which may themselves contain
scripts. Sharchives are also commonly referred to as `shar files'
after the name of the most common program for generating them.
The downsides of sharchives are that they are an ideal venue for
Trojan horse attacks and that, for recipients not running Unix, no
simple un-sharchiving program is possible; sharchives can and do make
use of arbitrarily-powerful shell features. For these reasons, this
technique has largely fallen out of use since the mid-1990s.
Share and enjoy! imp.
1. Commonly found at the end of software release announcements and
README files, this phrase indicates allegiance to the hacker ethic
of free information sharing (see hacker ethic, sense 1).
2. The motto of the complaints division of Sirius Cybernetics
Corporation (the ultimate gaggle of incompetent suits) in Douglas
Adams's Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The irony of using this as
a cultural recognition signal appeals to hackers.
shareware /sheir´weir/, n.
A kind of freeware for which the author requests some payment,
usually in the accompanying documentation files or in an announcement
made by the software itself. Such payment may or may not buy
additional support or functionality. See also careware,
charityware, crippleware, FRS, guiltware, postcardware, and
-ware; compare payware.
sharing violation
[From a file error common to several OSes] A response to receiving
information, typically of an excessively personal nature, that you
were probably happier not knowing. "You know those little noises that
Pat makes in bed?" "Whoa! Sharing violation!" In contrast to the
original file error, which indicated that you were not being given
data that you did want.
shebang /sh@·bang/, n.
[possibly a portmanteau of "sharp bang"] The character sequence "#!"
that frequently begins executable shell scripts under Unix. Probably
derived from "shell bang" under the influence of American slang "the
whole shebang" (everything, the works).
shelfware /shelf´weir/, n.
Software purchased on a whim (by an individual user) or in accordance
with policy (by a corporation or government agency), but not actually
required for any particular use. Therefore, it often ends up on some
shelf.
shell n.
[orig. Multics techspeak, widely propagated via Unix]
1. [techspeak] The command interpreter used to pass commands to an
operating system; so called because it is the part of the operating
system that interfaces with the outside world.
2. More generally, any interface program that mediates access to a
special resource or server for convenience, efficiency, or security
reasons; for this meaning, the usage is usually a shell around
whatever. This sort of program is also called a wrapper.
3. A skeleton program, created by hand or by another program (like,
say, a parser generator), which provides the necessary incantations
to set up some task and the control flow to drive it (the term
driver is sometimes used synonymously). The user is meant to fill
in whatever code is needed to get real work done. This usage is
common in the AI and Microsoft Windows worlds, and confuses Unix
hackers.
Historical note: Apparently, the original Multics shell (sense 1) was
so called because it was a shell (sense 3); it ran user programs not
by starting up separate processes, but by dynamically linking the
programs into its own code, calling them as subroutines, and then
dynamically de-linking them on return. The VMS command interpreter
still does something very like this.
shell out vi.
[Unix] To spawn an interactive subshell from within a program
(e.g., a mailer or editor). "Bang foo runs foo in a subshell, while
bang alone shells out."
shift left (or right) logical
[from any of various machines' instruction sets]
1. vi. To move oneself to the left (right). To move out of the way.
2. imper. "Get out of my seat! You can shift to that empty one to the
left (right)." Often used without the logical, or as left shift
instead of shift left. Sometimes heard as LSH /lish/, from the
PDP-10 instruction set. See Programmer's Cheer.
shim n.
1. A small piece of data inserted in order to achieve a desired
memory alignment or other addressing property. For example, the
PDP-11 Unix linker, in split I&D (instructions and data) mode,
inserts a two-byte shim at location 0 in data space so that no data
object will have an address of 0 (and be confused with the C null
pointer). See also loose bytes.
2. A type of small transparent image inserted into HTML documents by
certain WYSIWYG HTML editors, used to set the spacing of elements
meant to have a fixed positioning within a TABLE or DIVision. Hackers
who work on the HTML code of such pages afterwards invariably curse
these for their crocky dependence on the particular spacing of
original image file, the editor that generated them, and the version
of the browser used to view them. Worse, they are a poorly designed
kludge which the advent of Cascading Style Sheets makes wholly
unnecessary; Any fool can plainly see that use of borders, layers and
positioned elements is the Right Thing (or would be if adequate
support for CSS were more common).
shitogram /shit´oh·gram/, n.
A really nasty piece of email. Compare nastygram, flame.
shotgun debugging n.
The software equivalent of Easter egging; the making of relatively
undirected changes to software in the hope that a bug will be
perturbed out of existence. This almost never works, and usually
introduces more bugs.
shovelware /shuh´v@l·weir`/, n.
1. Extra software dumped onto a CD-ROM or tape to fill up the
remaining space on the medium after the software distribution it's
intended to carry, but not integrated with the distribution.
2. A slipshod compilation of software dumped onto a CD-ROM without
much care for organization or even usability.
showstopper n.
A hardware or (especially) software bug that makes an implementation
effectively unusable; one that absolutely has to be fixed before
development can go on. Opposite in connotation from its original
theatrical use, which refers to something stunningly good.
shriek n.
See excl. Occasional CMU usage, also in common use among APL fans
and mathematicians, especially category theorists.
Shub-Internet /shuhb´ in´t@r·net/, n.
[MUD: from H. P. Lovecraft's evil fictional deity Shub-Niggurath, the
Black Goat with a Thousand Young] The harsh personification of the
Internet: Beast of a Thousand Processes, Eater of Characters, Avatar
of Line Noise, and Imp of Call Waiting; the hideous multi-tendriled
entity formed of all the manifold connections of the net. A sect of
MUDders worships Shub-Internet, sacrificing objects and praying for
good connections. To no avail -- its purpose is malign and evil, and
it is the cause of all network slowdown. Often heard as in "Freela
casts a tac nuke at Shub-Internet for slowing her down." (A forged
response often follows along the lines of: "Shub-Internet gulps down
the tac nuke and burps happily.") Also cursed by users of the Web,
FTP and telnet when the network lags. The dread name of Shub-Internet
is seldom spoken aloud, as it is said that repeating it three times
will cause the being to wake, deep within its lair beneath the
Pentagon. Compare Random Number God.
[January 1996: It develops that one of the computer administrators in
the basement of the Pentagon read this entry and fell over laughing.
As a result, you too can now poke Shub-Internet by pinging
shub-internet.ims.disa.mil. Compare kremvax. --ESR]
[April 1999: shub-internet.ims.disa.mil is no more, alas. But
Shub-Internet lives, and even has a home page. --ESR]
SIG /sig/, n.
(also common as a prefix in combining forms) A Special Interest
Group, in one of several technical areas, sponsored by the
Association for Computing Machinery; well-known ones include SIGPLAN
(the Special Interest Group on Programming Languages), SIGARCH (the
Special Interest Group for Computer Architecture) and SIGGRAPH (the
Special Interest Group for Computer Graphics). Hackers, not
surprisingly, like to overextend this naming convention to less
formal associations like SIGBEER (at ACM conferences) and SIGFOOD (at
University of Illinois).
sig block /sig blok/, n.
[Internet and Usenet; often written `.sig' there] Short for
`signature', used specifically to refer to the electronic signature
block that most Unix mail- and news-posting software will
automagically append to outgoing mail and news. The composition of
one's sig can be quite an art form, including an ASCII logo, one's
choice of witty sayings (see sig quote, fool file), or even
source code for small programs about which the author wishes to make
a statement; but many consider large sigs a waste of bandwidth, and
it has been observed that the size of one's sig block is usually
inversely proportional to one's longevity and level of prestige on
the net. See also doubled sig, McQuary limit.
sig quote /sig kwoht/, n.
[Usenet] A maxim, quote, proverb, joke, or slogan embedded in one's
sig block and intended to convey something of one's philosophical
stance, pet peeves, or sense of humor. "Calm down, it's only ones and
zeroes."
sig virus n.
A parasitic meme embedded in a sig block. There was a meme
plague or fad for these on Usenet in late 1991. Most were
equivalents of "I am a .sig virus. Please reproduce me in your .sig
block.". Of course, the .sig virus's memetic hook is the giggle value
of going along with the gag; this, however, was a self-limiting
phenomenon as more and more people picked up on the idea. There were
creative variants on it; some people stuck `sig virus antibody' texts
in their sigs, and there was at least one instance of a sig virus
eater.
sigmonster n.
[common] A beast that randomly chooses one of a selection of
signatures for appending to mail and news messages. The creature is
most often mentioned directly when it has been in particularly good
form and selected a signature appropriate to the topic being
discussed; the construction "P.S.: good sigmonster, have a cookie" is
not uncommon. While the are sigmonster programs floating around on
the net, most hackers who keep one use a silly little Perl or Python
script that they threw together in the middle of the night under the
influence of far too much caffeine.
signal-to-noise ratio n.
[from analog electronics] Used by hackers in a generalization of its
technical meaning. `Signal' refers to useful information conveyed by
some communications medium, and `noise' to anything else on that
medium. Hence a low ratio implies that it is not worth paying
attention to the medium in question. Figures for such metaphorical
ratios are never given. The term is most often applied to Usenet
newsgroups during flame wars. Compare bandwidth. See also
coefficient of X, lost in the noise.
silicon n.
Hardware, esp. ICs or microprocessor-based computer systems (compare
iron). Contrasted with software. See also sandbender.
silly walk vi.
[from Monty Python's Flying Circus]
1. A ridiculous procedure required to accomplish a task. Like
grovel, but more random and humorous. "I had to silly-walk
through half the /usr directories to find the maps file."
2. Syn. fandango on core.
silo n.
The FIFO input-character buffer in an RS-232 line card. So called
from DEC terminology used on DH and DZ line cards for the VAX and
PDP-11, presumably because it was a storage space for fungible
stuff that went in at the top and came out at the bottom.
since time T equals minus infinity adv.
A long time ago; for as long as anyone can remember; at the time that
some particular frob was first designed. Usually the word `time' is
omitted. See also time T; contrast epoch.
sitename /si:t´naym/, n.
[Unix/Internet] The unique electronic name of a computer system, used
to identify it in email, Usenet, or other forms of electronic
information interchange. The folklore interest of sitenames stems
from the creativity and humor they often display. Interpreting a
sitename is not unlike interpreting a vanity license plate; one has
to mentally unpack it, allowing for mono-case and length restrictions
and the lack of whitespace. Hacker tradition deprecates dull,
institutional-sounding names in favor of punchy, humorous, and clever
coinages (except that it is considered appropriate for the official
public gateway machine of an organization to bear the organization's
name or acronym). Mythological references, cartoon characters, animal
names, and allusions to SF or fantasy literature are probably the
most popular sources for sitenames (in roughly descending order). The
obligatory comment when discussing these is Harris's Lament: "All the
good ones are taken!" See also network address.
skrog v.
Syn. scrog.
skulker n.
Syn. prowler.
slab
1. n. A continuous horizontal line of pixels, all with the same
color.
2. vi. To paint a slab on an output device. Apple's QuickDraw, like
most other professional-level graphics systems, renders polygons and
lines not with Bresenham's algorithm, but by calculating slab points
for each scan line on the screen in succession, and then slabbing in
the actual image pixels.
slack n.
1. Space allocated to a disk file but not actually used to store
useful information. The techspeak equivalent is `internal
fragmentation'. Antonym: hole.
2. In the theology of the Church of the SubGenius, a mystical
substance or quality that is the prerequisite of all human happiness.
Since Unix files are stored compactly, except for the unavoidable
wastage in the last block or fragment, it might be said that "Unix
has no slack". See ha ha only serious.
slash n.
Common name for the slant (`/', ASCII 0101111) character. See ASCII
for other synonyms.
slashdot effect n.
1. Also spelled "/. effect"; what is said to have happened when a
website becoming virtually unreachable because too many people are
hitting it after the site was mentioned in an interesting article on
the popular Slashdot news service. The term is quite widely used by
/. readers, including variants like "That site has been slashdotted
again!"
2. In a perhaps inevitable generation, the term is being used to
describe any similar effect from being listed on a popular site. This
would better be described as a flash crowd. Differs from a DoS
attack in being unintentional.
sleep vi.
1. [techspeak] To relinquish a claim (of a process on a multitasking
system) for service; to indicate to the scheduler that a process may
be deactivated until some given event occurs or a specified time
delay elapses.
2. In jargon, used very similarly to v. block; also in sleep on,
syn.: with block on. Often used to indicate that the speaker has
relinquished a demand for resources until some (possibly unspecified)
external event: "They can't get the fix I've been asking for into the
next release, so I'm going to sleep on it until the release, then
start hassling them again."
slim n.
A small, derivative change (e.g., to code).
slop n.
1. A one-sided fudge factor, that is, an allowance for error but in
only one of two directions. For example, if you need a piece of wire
10 feet long and have to guess when you cut it, you make very sure to
cut it too long, by a large amount if necessary, rather than too
short by even a little bit, because you can always cut off the slop
but you can't paste it back on again. When discrete quantities are
involved, slop is often introduced to avoid the possibility of being
on the losing side of a fencepost error.
2. The percentage of `extra' code generated by a compiler over the
size of equivalent assembler code produced by hand-hacking; i.e.,
the space (or maybe time) you lose because you didn't do it yourself.
This number is often used as a measure of the goodness of a compiler;
slop below 5% is very good, and 10% is usually acceptable. With
modern compiler technology, esp. on RISC machines, the compiler's
slop may actually be negative; that is, humans may be unable to
generate code as good. This is one of the reasons assembler
programming is no longer common.
slopsucker /slop´suhk·r/, n.
A lowest-priority task that waits around until everything else has
`had its fill' of machine resources. Only when the machine would
otherwise be idle is the task allowed to ``suck up the slop'. Also
called a hungry puppy or bottom feeder. One common variety of
slopsucker hunts for large prime numbers. Compare background.
Slowlaris /slo'·lahr·is/, n.
[Usenet; poss. from the variety of prosimian called a "slow loris".
The variant `Slowlartus' is also common, related to LART] Common
hackish term for Solaris, Sun's System VR4 version of Unix that came
out of the standardization wars of the early 1990s. So named because
especially on older hardware, responsiveness was much less crisp than
under the preceding SunOS. Early releases of Solaris (that is,
Solaris 2, as some marketroids at Sun retroactively rechristened
SunOS as Solaris 1) were quite buggy, and Sun was forced by customer
demand to support SunOS for quite some time. Newer versions are
acknowledged to be among the best commercial Unix variants in 1998,
but still lose single-processor benchmarks to Sparc Linux. Compare
HP-SUX, sun-stools.
slurp vt.
To read a large data file entirely into core before working on it.
This may be contrasted with the strategy of reading a small piece at
a time, processing it, and then reading the next piece. "This program
slurps in a 1K-by-1K matrix and does an FFT." See also sponge.
slurp the robot
See STR.
smart adj.
Said of a program that does the Right Thing in a wide variety of
complicated circumstances. There is a difference between calling a
program smart and calling it intelligent; in particular, there do not
exist any intelligent programs (yet -- see AI-complete). Compare
robust (smart programs can be brittle).
smart terminal n.
1. A terminal that has enough computing capability to render graphics
or to offload some kind of front-end processing from the computer it
talks to. The development of workstations and personal computers has
made this term and the product it describes semi-obsolescent, but one
may still hear variants of the phrase act like a smart terminal used
to describe the behavior of workstations or PCs with respect to
programs that execute almost entirely out of a remote server's
storage, using local devices as displays.
2. obs. Any terminal with an addressable cursor; the opposite of a
glass tty. Today, a terminal with merely an addressable cursor, but
with none of the more-powerful features mentioned in sense 1, is
called a dumb terminal.
There is a classic quote from Rob Pike (inventor of the blit
terminal): "A smart terminal is not a smartass terminal, but rather a
terminal you can educate." This illustrates a common design problem:
The attempt to make peripherals (or anything else) intelligent
sometimes results in finicky, rigid `special features' that become
just so much dead weight if you try to use the device in any way the
designer didn't anticipate. Flexibility and programmability, on the
other hand, are really smart. Compare hook.
smash case vi.
To lose or obliterate the uppercase/lowercase distinction in text
input. "MS-DOS will automatically smash case in the names of all the
files you create." Compare fold case.
smash the stack n.
[C programming] To corrupt the execution stack by writing past the
end of a local array or other data structure. Code that smashes the
stack can cause a return from the routine to jump to a random
address, resulting in some of the most insidious data-dependent bugs
known to mankind. Variants include trash the stack, scribble the
stack, mangle the stack; the term **mung the stack is not used,
as this is never done intentionally. See spam; see also aliasing
bug, fandango on core, memory leak, memory smash, precedence
lossage, overrun screw.
smiley n.
See emoticon.
smoke vi.
1. To crash or blow up, usually spectacularly. "The new version
smoked, just like the last one." Used for both hardware (where it
often describes an actual physical event), and software (where it's
merely colorful).
2. [from automotive slang] To be conspicuously fast. "That processor
really smokes." Compare magic smoke.
smoke and mirrors n.
Marketing deceptions. The term is mainstream in this general sense.
Among hackers it's strongly associated with bogus demos and crocked
benchmarks (see also MIPS, machoflops). "They claim their new
box cranks 50 MIPS for under $5000, but didn't specify the
instruction mix -- sounds like smoke and mirrors to me." The phrase,
popularized by newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin c.1975, has been
said to derive from carnie slang for magic acts and `freak show'
displays that depend on trompe l'oeil effects, but also calls to mind
the fierce Aztec god Tezcatlipoca (lit. "Smoking Mirror") for whom
the hearts of huge numbers of human sacrificial victims were
regularly cut out. Upon hearing about a rigged demo or yet another
round of fantasy-based marketing promises, hackers often feel
analogously disheartened. See also stealth manager.
smoke test n.
1. A rudimentary form of testing applied to electronic equipment
following repair or reconfiguration, in which power is applied and
the tester checks for sparks, smoke, or other dramatic signs of
fundamental failure. See magic smoke.
2. By extension, the first run of a piece of software after
construction or a critical change. See and compare reality check.
There is an interesting semi-parallel to this term among typographers
and printers: When new typefaces are being punch-cut by hand, a smoke
test (hold the letter in candle smoke, then press it onto paper) is
used to check out new dies.
smoking clover n.
[ITS] A display hack originally due to Bill Gosper. Many convergent
lines are drawn on a color monitor in such a way that every pixel
struck has its color incremented. The lines all have one endpoint in
the middle of the screen; the other endpoints are spaced one pixel
apart around the perimeter of a large square. The color map is then
repeatedly rotated. This results in a striking, rainbow-hued,
shimmering four-leaf clover. Gosper joked about keeping it hidden
from the FDA (the U.S.'s Food and Drug Administration) lest its
hallucinogenic properties cause it to be banned.
smoot /smoot/, n.
[MIT] A unit of length equal five feet seven inches. The length of
the Harvard Bridge in Boston is famously 364.4 smoots plus an ear
(the ear is allegedly the width of the earhole in the side of the
football helmet the victim was wearing when he was rolled over the
bridge). This legend began with a fraternity prank in 1958 during
which the body length of Oliver Smoot (class of '62) was actually
used to measure out that distance. It is commemorated by smoot marks
that MIT students repaint every few years; the tradition even
survived the demolition and rebuilding of the bridge in the late
1980s. The Boston police have been known to use smoot markers to
indicate accident locations on the bridge. Apparently Smoot's
experience as a unit of measurement led to a life-long career; he
eventually became Chairman of the Board of the American National
Standards Institute, and later President of the International
Organization for Standardization.
SMOP /S·M·O·P/, n.
[Simple (or Small) Matter of Programming]
1. A piece of code, not yet written, whose anticipated length is
significantly greater than its complexity. Used to refer to a program
that could obviously be written, but is not worth the trouble. Also
used ironically to imply that a difficult problem can be easily
solved because a program can be written to do it; the irony is that
it is very clear that writing such a program will be a great deal of
work. "It's easy to enhance a FORTRAN compiler to compile COBOL as
well; it's just a SMOP."
2. Often used ironically by the intended victim when a suggestion for
a program is made which seems easy to the suggester, but is obviously
(to the victim) a lot of work. Compare minor detail.
smurf /smerf/, n.
1. [from the soc.motss newsgroup on Usenet, after some obnoxiously
gooey cartoon characters] A newsgroup regular with a habitual style
that is irreverent, silly, and cute. Like many other hackish terms
for people, this one may be praise or insult depending on who uses
it. In general, being referred to as a smurf is probably not going to
make your day unless you've previously adopted the label yourself in
a spirit of irony. Compare old fart.
2. [techspeak] A ping packet with a forged source address sent to
some other network's broadcast address. All the machines on the
destination network will send a ping response to the forged source
address (the victim). This both overloads the victim's network and
hides the location of the attacker.
SNAFU principle /sna´foo prin´si·pl/, n.
[from a WWII Army acronym for `Situation Normal, All Fucked Up']
"True communication is possible only between equals, because
inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their superiors
pleasant lies than for telling the truth.:" -- a central tenet of
Discordianism, often invoked by hackers to explain why
authoritarian hierarchies screw up so reliably and systematically.
The effect of the SNAFU principle is a progressive disconnection of
decision-makers from reality. This lightly adapted version of a fable
dating back to the early 1960s illustrates the phenomenon perfectly:
In the beginning was the plan,
and then the specification;
And the plan was without form,
and the specification was void.
And darkness
was on the faces of the implementors thereof;
And they spake unto their leader,
saying:
"It is a crock of shit,
and smells as of a sewer."
And the leader took pity on them,
and spoke to the project leader:
"It is a crock of excrement,
and none may abide the odor thereof."
And the project leader
spake unto his section head, saying:
"It is a container of excrement,
and it is very strong, such that none may abide it."
The section head then hurried to his department manager,
and informed him thus:
"It is a vessel of fertilizer,
and none may abide its strength."
The department manager carried these words
to his general manager,
and spoke unto him
saying:
"It containeth that which aideth the growth of plants,
and it is very strong."
And so it was that the general manager rejoiced
and delivered the good news unto the Vice President.
"It promoteth growth,
and it is very powerful."
The Vice President rushed to the President's side,
and joyously exclaimed:
"This powerful new software product
will promote the growth of the company!"
And the President looked upon the product,
and saw that it was very good.
After the subsequent and inevitable disaster, the suits protect
themselves by saying "I was misinformed!", and the implementors are
demoted or fired. Compare Conway's Law.
snail vt.
To snail-mail something. "Snail me a copy of those graphics, will
you?"
snail-mail n.
Paper mail, as opposed to electronic. Sometimes written as the single
word `SnailMail'. One's postal address is, correspondingly, a snail
address. Derives from earlier coinage `USnail' (from `U.S. Mail'),
for which there have even been parody posters and stamps made. Also
(less commonly) called P-mail, from `paper mail' or `physical mail'.
Oppose email.
(Note: Actual garden snails progress at about 10 meters per hour,
which is about 25-50 times slower than the U.K.'s Royal Mail;
comparable measurements for other countries have not yet been made.
More biologically apt terms might be "sloth-mail" at 250 m/hr or
"tortoise-mail" at 270 m/hr. See
http://www.newscientist.com/lastword/answers/789communication.jsp?tp=
communication for details.)
snap v.
To replace a pointer to a pointer with a direct pointer; to replace
an old address with the forwarding address found there. If you
telephone the main number for an institution and ask for a particular
person by name, the operator may tell you that person's extension
before connecting you, in the hopes that you will snap your pointer
and dial direct next time. The underlying metaphor may be that of a
rubber band stretched through a number of intermediate points; if you
remove all the thumbtacks in the middle, it snaps into a straight
line from first to last. See chase pointers.
Often, the behavior of a trampoline is to perform an error check
once and then snap the pointer that invoked it so as henceforth to
bypass the trampoline (and its one-shot error check). In this context
one also speaks of snapping links. For example, in a LISP
implementation, a function interface trampoline might check to make
sure that the caller is passing the correct number of arguments; if
it is, and if the caller and the callee are both compiled, then
snapping the link allows that particular path to use a direct
procedure-call instruction with no further overhead.
snarf /snarf/, vt.
1. To grab, esp. to grab a large document or file for the purpose of
using it with or without the author's permission. See also BLT.
2. [in the Unix community] To fetch a file or set of files across a
network. See also blast. This term was mainstream in the late
1960s, meaning `to eat piggishly'. It may still have this connotation
in context. "He's in the snarfing phase of hacking -- FTPing megs of
stuff a day."
3. To acquire, with little concern for legal forms or politesse (but
not quite by stealing). "They were giving away samples, so I snarfed
a bunch of them."
4. Syn. for slurp. "This program starts by snarfing the entire
database into core, then...."
5. [GEnie] To spray food or programming fluids due to laughing at
the wrong moment. "I was drinking coffee, and when I read your post I
snarfed all over my desk." "If I keep reading this topic, I think
I'll have to snarf-proof my computer with a keyboard condom." [This
sense appears to be widespread among mundane teenagers --ESR] The
sound of snarfing is splork!.
snarf & barf /snarf´n·barf`/, n.
Under a WIMP environment, the act of grabbing a region of text and
then stuffing the contents of that region into another region (or the
same one) to avoid retyping a command line. In the late 1960s, this
was a mainstream expression for an `eat now, regret it later'
cheap-restaurant expedition.
snarf down v.
To snarf, with the connotation of absorbing, processing, or
understanding. "I'll snarf down the latest version of the nethack
user's guide -- it's been a while since I played last and I don't
know what's changed recently."
snark n.
[Lewis Carroll, via the Michigan Terminal System]
1. A system failure. When a user's process bombed, the operator would
get the message "Help, Help, Snark in MTS!"
2. More generally, any kind of unexplained or threatening event on a
computer (especially if it might be a boojum). Often used to refer to
an event or a log file entry that might indicate an attempted
security violation.
3. UUCP name of snark.thyrsus.com, home site of the Jargon File
versions from 2.*.* on (i.e., this lexicon).
sneaker n.
An individual hired to break into places in order to test their
security; analogous to tiger team. Compare samurai.
sneakernet /snee´ker·net/, n.
Term used (generally with ironic intent) for transfer of electronic
information by physically carrying tape, disks, or some other media
from one machine to another. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a
station wagon filled with magtape, or a 747 filled with CD-ROMs."
Also called `Tennis-Net', `Armpit-Net', `Floppy-Net' or `Shoenet'; in
the 1990s, `Nike network' after a well-known sneaker brand.
sniff v.,n.
1. To watch packets traversing a network. Most often in the phrase
packet sniffer, a program for doing same. 2. Synonym for poll.
snippage n.
Synonym for deletia; the fact that something has been snipped when
quoting is often indicated with the pseudo-HTML <snip>.
SO /S·O/, n.
1. (also S.O.) Abbrev. for Significant Other, almost invariably
written abbreviated and pronounced /S·O/ by hackers. Used to refer to
one's primary relationship, esp. a live-in to whom one is not
married. See MOTAS, MOTOS, MOTSS.
2. [techspeak] The Shift Out control character in ASCII (Control-N,
0001110).
social engineering n.
Term used among crackers and samurai for cracking techniques that
rely on weaknesses in wetware rather than software; the aim is to
trick people into revealing passwords or other information that
compromises a target system's security. Classic scams include phoning
up a mark who has the required information and posing as a field
service tech or a fellow employee with an urgent access problem. See
also the tiger team story in the patch entry, and rubber-hose
cryptanalysis.
social science number n., //
[IBM] A statistic that is content-free, or nearly so. A measure
derived via methods of questionable validity from data of a dubious
and vague nature. Predictively, having a social science number in
hand is seldom much better than nothing, and can be considerably
worse. As a rule, management loves them. See also numbers,
math-out, pretty pictures.
sock puppet n.
[Usenet: from the act of placing a sock over your hand and talking to
it and pretending it's talking back] In Usenet parlance, a pseudo
through which the puppeteer posts follow-ups to their own original
message to give the appearance that a number of people support the
views held in the original message. See also astroturfing,
tentacle.
sodium substrate n.
Syn salt substrate.
soft boot n.
See boot.
softcopy /soft´kop·ee/, n.
[by analogy with hardcopy] A machine-readable form of corresponding
hardcopy. See bits.
software bloat n.
The results of second-system effect or creeping featuritis.
Commonly cited examples include ls(1), X, BSD, and OS/2.
software hoarding n.
Pejorative term employed by members and adherents of the GNU
project to describe the act of holding software proprietary, keeping
it under trade secret or license terms which prohibit free
redistribution and modification. Used primarily in Free Software
Foundation propaganda. For a summary of related issues, see GNU and
free software.
software laser n.
An optical laser works by bouncing photons back and forth between two
mirrors, one totally reflective and one partially reflective. If the
lasing material (usually a crystal) has the right properties, photons
scattering off the atoms in the crystal will excite cascades of more
photons, all in lockstep. Eventually the beam will escape through the
partially-reflective mirror. One kind of sorcerer's apprentice mode
involving bounce messages can produce closely analogous results,
with a cascade of messages escaping to flood nearby systems. By
mid-1993 there had been at least two publicized incidents of this
kind.
software rot n.
Term used to describe the tendency of software that has not been used
in a while to lose; such failure may be semi-humorously ascribed to
bit rot. More commonly, software rot strikes when a program's
assumptions become out of date. If the design was insufficiently
robust, this may cause it to fail in mysterious ways. Syn. code
rot. See also link rot.
For example, owing to endemic shortsightedness in the design of COBOL
programs, a good number of them succumbed to software rot when their
2-digit year counters underwent wrap around at the beginning of the
year 2000. Actually, related lossages often afflict centenarians who
have to deal with computer software designed by unimaginative clods.
One such incident became the focus of a minor public flap in 1990,
when a gentleman born in 1889 applied for a driver's license renewal
in Raleigh, North Carolina. The new system refused to issue the card,
probably because with 2-digit years the ages 101 and 1 cannot be
distinguished.
Historical note: Software rot in an even funnier sense than the
mythical one was a real problem on early research computers (e.g.,
the R1; see grind crank). If a program that depended on a peculiar
instruction hadn't been run in quite a while, the user might discover
that the opcodes no longer did the same things they once did. ("Hey,
so-and-so needs an instruction to do such-and-such. We can snarf
this opcode, right? No one uses it.") Another classic example of this
sprang from the time an MIT hacker found a simple way to double the
speed of the unconditional jump instruction on a PDP-6, so he patched
the hardware. Unfortunately, this broke some fragile timing software
in a music-playing program, throwing its output out of tune. This was
fixed by adding a defensive initialization routine to compare the
speed of a timing loop with the real-time clock; in other words, it
figured out how fast the PDP-6 was that day, and corrected
appropriately.
Compare bit rot.
softwarily /soft·weir´i·lee/, adv.
In a way pertaining to software. "The system is softwarily
unreliable." The adjective **`softwary' is not used. See
hardwarily.
softy n.
[IBM] Hardware hackers' term for a software expert who is largely
ignorant of the mysteries of hardware.
some random X adj.
Used to indicate a member of class X, with the implication that Xs
are interchangeable. "I think some random cracker tripped over the
guest timeout last night." See also J. Random.
sorcerer's apprentice mode n.
[from Goethe's Der Zauberlehrling via Paul Dukas's L'apprenti sorcier
in the film Fantasia.] A bug in a protocol where, under some
circumstances, the receipt of a message causes multiple messages to
be sent, each of which, when received, triggers the same bug. Used
esp. of such behavior caused by bounce message loops in email
software. Compare broadcast storm, network meltdown, software
laser, ARMM.
source n.
[very common] In reference to software, source is invariably
shorthand for `source code', the preferred human-readable and
human-modifiable form of the program. This is as opposed to object
code, the derived binary executable form of a program. This shorthand
readily takes derivative forms; one may speak of "the sources of a
system" or of "having source".
source of all good bits n.
A person from whom (or a place from which) useful information may be
obtained. If you need to know about a program, a guru might be the
source of all good bits. The title is often applied to a particularly
competent secretary.
space-cadet keyboard n.
A now-legendary device used on MIT LISP machines, which inspired
several still-current jargon terms and influenced the design of
EMACS. It was equipped with no fewer than seven shift keys: four
keys for bucky bits (`control', `meta', `hyper', and `super') and
three regular shift keys, called `shift', `top', and `front'. Many
keys had three symbols on them: a letter and a symbol on the top, and
a Greek letter on the front. For example, the `L' key had an `L' and
a two-way arrow on the top, and the Greek letter lambda on the front.
By pressing this key with the right hand while playing an appropriate
`chord' with the left hand on the shift keys, you could get the
following results:
L lowercase l
shift-L uppercase L
front-L l
front-shift-L L
top-L <=> (front and shift are ignored)
And of course each of these might also be typed with any combination
of the control, meta, hyper, and super keys. On this keyboard, you
could type over 8000 different characters! This allowed the user to
type very complicated mathematical text, and also to have thousands
of single-character commands at his disposal. The keyboard of the
Symbolics Lisp machine was a simplified version, lacking Top and
Front keys, that could only send about 2000 characters.
Many hackers were actually willing to memorize the command meanings
of that many characters if it reduced typing time (this attitude
obviously shaped the interface of EMACS). Other hackers, however,
thought having that many bucky bits was overkill, and objected that
such a keyboard can require three or four hands to operate. See
bucky bits, cokebottle, double bucky, meta bit, quadruple
bucky.
[symbolics-keyboard.jpg]
Simplified Symbolics version of the space-cadet keyboard
(Some relatively bad photographs of the earlier, more elaborate
version are available on the Web.).
Note: early versions of this entry incorrectly identified the
space-cadet keyboard with the Knight keyboard. Though both were
designed by Tom Knight, the latter term was properly applied only to
a keyboard used for ITS on the PDP-10 and modeled on the Stanford
keyboard (as described under bucky bits). The true space-cadet
keyboard evolved from the first Knight keyboard.
[73-05-19.png]
An early space-cadet keyboard
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-05-20. The previous one
is 73-05-18.)
spaceship operator n.
The glyph <=>, so-called apparently because in the low-resolution
constant-width font used on many terminals it vaguely resembles a
flying saucer. Perl uses this to denote the signum-of-difference
operation.
SPACEWAR n.
A space-combat simulation game, inspired by E. E. "Doc" Smith's
Lensman books, in which two spaceships duel around a central sun,
shooting torpedoes at each other and jumping through hyperspace. This
game was first implemented on the PDP-1 at MIT in 1962. In 1968-69, a
descendant of the game motivated Ken Thompson to build, in his spare
time on a scavenged PDP-7, the operating system that became Unix.
Less than nine years after that, SPACEWAR was commercialized as one
of the first video games; descendants are still feeping in video
arcades everywhere.
spaghetti code n.
Code with a complex and tangled control structure, esp. one using
many GOTOs, exceptions, or other `unstructured' branching constructs.
Pejorative. The synonym kangaroo code has been reported, doubtless
because such code has so many jumps in it.
spaghetti inheritance n.
[encountered among users of object-oriented languages that use
inheritance, such as Smalltalk] A convoluted class-subclass graph,
often resulting from carelessly deriving subclasses from other
classes just for the sake of reusing their code. Coined in a
(successful) attempt to discourage such practice, through
guilt-by-association with spaghetti code.
spam vt.,vi.,n.
[from Monty Python's Flying Circus]
1. To crash a program by overrunning a fixed-size buffer with
excessively large input data. See also buffer overflow, overrun
screw, smash the stack.
2. To cause a newsgroup to be flooded with irrelevant or
inappropriate messages. You can spam a newsgroup with as little as
one well- (or ill-) planned message (e.g. asking "What do you think
of abortion?" on soc.women). This is often done with cross-posting
(e.g. any message which is cross-posted to alt.rush-limbaugh and
alt.politics.homosexuality will almost inevitably spam both groups).
This overlaps with troll behavior; the latter more specific term
has become more common.
3. To send many identical or nearly-identical messages separately to
a large number of Usenet newsgroups. This is more specifically called
ECP, Excessive Cross-Posting. This is one sure way to infuriate
nearly everyone on the Net. See also velveeta and jello.
4. To bombard a newsgroup with multiple copies of a message. This is
more specifically called EMP, Excessive Multi-Posting.
5. To mass-mail unrequested identical or nearly-identical email
messages, particularly those containing advertising. Especially used
when the mail addresses have been culled from network traffic or
databases without the consent of the recipients. Synonyms include
UCE, UBE. As a noun, `spam' refers to the messages so sent.
6. Any large, annoying, quantity of output. For instance, someone on
IRC who walks away from their screen and comes back to find 200 lines
of text might say "Oh no, spam".
The later definitions have become much more prevalent as the Internet
has opened up to non-techies, and to most people senses 3 4 and 5 are
now primary. All three behaviors are considered abuse of the net, and
are almost universally grounds for termination of the originator's
email account or network connection. In these senses the term `spam'
has gone mainstream, though without its original sense or folkloric
freight -- there is apparently a widespread myth among lusers that
"spamming" is what happens when you dump cans of Spam into a
revolving fan. Hormel, the makers of Spam, have published a
surprisingly enlightened position statement on the Internet usage.
spam bait n.
Email addresses included in, or comprising the entirety of, a Usenet
message so that spammers mining a newsgroup with an address
harvester will collect them. These addresses can be people who have
offended or annoyed the poster, or who are included so that a spammer
will spam an official, thereby causing himself trouble. One
particularly effective form of spam bait is the address of a
teergrube.
spamblock /spam´blok/, n.
[poss. by analogy to sunblock] Text inserted in an email address to
render it invalid and thus useless to spammers. For example, the
address <jrandom@hacker.org> might be transformed to
<jrandom@NOSPAM.hacker.org>. Adding spamblock to an address is often
referred to as munging it (see munge). This evasion tactic depends
on the fact that most spammers collect names with some sort of
address harvester on volumes too high to de-mung by hand, but
individual humans reading an email message can readily spot and
remove a spamblock in the From address.
Note: This is not actually a very effective tactic, and may already
be passing out of use in early 1999 after about two years of life. In
both mail and news, it's essentially impossible to keep a smart
address harvester from mining out the addresses in the message header
and trace lines. Therefore the only people who can be protected are
third parties mentioned by email address in the message -- not a
common enough case to interest spammers.
spamhaus spam´hows, n.
Pejorative term for an internet service provider that permits or even
encourages spam mailings from its systems. The plural is
spamhausen. There is a web page devoted to tracking spamhausen.
The most notorious of the spamhausen was Sanford Wallace's Cyber
Promotions Inc., shut down by a lawsuit on 16 October 1997. The
anniversary of the shutdown is celebrated on Usenet as Spam Freedom
Day, but lesser imitators of the Spamford still infest various murky
corners of the net. Since prosecution of spammers became routine
under the junk-fax laws and statues specifically targeting spam,
spamhausen have declined in relative importance; today, hit-and-run
attacks by spammers using relay rape and throwaway accounts on
reputable ISPs seem to account for most of the flow.
spamvertize v.
To advertise using spam. Pejorative.
spangle n.
[UK] The singular of bells and whistles. See also spungle.
spawn n.,vi.
1. [techspeak] In Unix parlance, to create a child process from
within a process. Technically this is a `fork'; the term `spawn' is a
bit more general and is used for threads (lightweight processes) as
well as traditional heavyweight processes.
2. In gaming, meant to indicate where (spawn-point) and when a player
comes to life (or re-spawns) after being killed. Opposite of frag.
special-case vt.
To write unique code to handle input to or situations arising in a
program that are somehow distinguished from normal processing. This
would be used for processing of mode switches or interrupt characters
in an interactive interface (as opposed, say, to text entry or normal
commands), or for processing of hidden flags in the input of a
batch program or filter.
speed of light
The absolutely fastest a particular algorithm or application could be
implemented, given a set of constraints that are assumed to be
unchangeable. For example, "This would take 60 microseconds without
any processing whatsoever, so that's the speed of light." However, as
one brilliant hacker once commented: "Remember that the speed of
light only is constant if you can't redesign the universe."
speedometer n.
A pattern of lights displayed on a linear set of LEDs (today) or
nixie tubes (yesterday, on ancient mainframes). The pattern is
shifted left every N times the operating system goes through its
main loop. A swiftly moving pattern indicates that the system is
mostly idle; the speedometer slows down as the system becomes
overloaded. The speedometer on Sun Microsystems hardware bounces back
and forth like the eyes on one of the Cylons from the wretched
Battlestar Galactica TV series.
Historical note: One computer, the GE 600 (later Honeywell 6000)
actually had an analog speedometer on the front panel, calibrated in
instructions executed per second.
spell n.
Syn. incantation.
spelling flame n.
[Usenet] A posting ostentatiously correcting a previous article's
spelling as a way of casting scorn on the point the article was
trying to make, instead of actually responding to that point (compare
dictionary flame). Of course, people who are more than usually
slovenly spellers are prone to think any correction is a spelling
flame. It's an amusing comment on human nature that spelling flames
themselves often contain spelling errors.
spider
The Web-walking part of a search engine that collects pages for
indexing in the search engine's database. Also called a bot. The
best-known spider is Scooter, the web-walker for the Alta Vista
search engine.
spider food n.
Keywords embedded (usually invisibly) into a web page to attract
search engines (spiders). The intended result of including spider
food in one's web page is to insure that the page appears high on the
list of matching entries to a search engine query. There are right
and wrong ways to do this; the right way is a discreet `meta
keywords' tag, the wrong way is to embed many repeats of a keyword in
comments (and many search engines now detect and ignore the latter).
spiffy /spi´fee/, adj.
1. Said of programs having a pretty, clever, or exceptionally
well-designed interface. "Have you seen the spiffy X version of
empire yet?"
2. Said sarcastically of a program that is perceived to have little
more than a flashy interface going for it. Which meaning should be
drawn depends delicately on tone of voice and context. This word was
common mainstream slang during the 1940s, in a sense close to 1.
spike v.
1. To defeat a selection mechanism by introducing a (sometimes
temporary) device that forces a specific result. The word is used in
several industries; telephone engineers refer to spiking a relay by
inserting a pin to hold the relay in either the closed or open state,
and railroaders refer to spiking a track switch so that it cannot be
moved. In programming environments it normally refers to a temporary
change, usually for testing purposes (as opposed to a permanent
change, which would be called hardwired).
2. [borderline techspeak] A visible peak in an otherwise rather
constant graph (e.g. a sudden surge in line voltage, an unexpected
short "high" on a logical line in a circuit). Hackers frequently use
this for a sudden short increase in some quantity such as system load
or network traffic.
spin vi.
Equivalent to buzz. More common among C and Unix programmers. See
the discussion of `spinlock' under busy-wait.
Spinning Pizza of Death n.
[OS X; common] The quartered-circle busy indicator on Mac OS X
versions before 10.2, after which it was replaced by a sort of
rainbow pinwheel thingy. It was analogous to the Microsoft Windows
hourglass, but OS X 10.0's legendary slowness under the Aqua toolkit
made this term rather more evocative. See {Death, X of}.
spl /S·P·L/
[abbrev, from Set Priority Level] The way traditional Unix kernels
implement mutual exclusion by running code at high interrupt levels.
Used in jargon to describe the act of tuning in or tuning out
ordinary communication. Classically, spl levels run from 1 to 7;
"Fred's at spl 6 today" would mean that he is very hard to interrupt.
"Wait till I finish this; I'll spl down then." See also interrupts
locked out.
splash screen n.
[Mac users] Syn. banner, sense 3.
splat n.
1. Name used in many places (DEC, IBM, and others) for the asterisk
(*) character (ASCII 0101010). This may derive from the
`squashed-bug' appearance of the asterisk on many early line
printers.
2. [MIT] Name used by some people for the # character (ASCII
0100011).
3. The feature key on a Mac (same as alt, sense 2).
4. obs. Name used by some people for the Stanford/ITS extended ASCII
(×) character. This character is also called blobby and frob, among
other names; it is sometimes used by mathematicians as a notation for
tensor product.
5. obs. Name for the semi-mythical Stanford extended ASCII (+)
character. See also ASCII.
splat out v.
[Usenet; syn. disemvowel] To partially obscure a potentially
provocative word by substituting splat characters for some of its
letters (usually, but not always, the vowels). The purpose is not to
make the word unrecognizable but to make it a mention rather than a
use, so that no flamewar ensues. Words often splatted out include
N*z* (see Godwin's Law), k*bo* (see KIBO, sense 2), *v*l*t**n
(anywhere fundamentalists might be lurking), *b*rt**n, and g*n
c*ntr*l. Compare {UN*X}.
splork!
[Usenet; common] The sound of coffee (or other beverage) hitting the
monitor and/or keyboard after being forced out of the mouth via the
nose. It usually follows an unexpectedly funny thing in a Usenet
post. Compare snarf.
spod n.
[UK]
1. A lower form of life found on talker systems and MUDs. The
spod has few friends in RL and uses talkers instead, finding
communication easier and preferable over the net. He has all the
negative traits of the computer geek without having any interest in
computers per se. Lacking any knowledge of or interest in how
networks work, and considering his access a God-given right, he is a
major irritant to sysadmins, clogging up lines in order to reach new
MUDs, following passed-on instructions on how to sneak his way onto
Internet ("Wow! It's in America!") and complaining when he is not
allowed to use busy routes. A true spod will start any conversation
with "Are you male or female?" (and follow it up with "Got any good
numbers/IDs/passwords?") and will not talk to someone physically
present in the same terminal room until they log onto the same
machine that he is using and enter talk mode. Compare newbie,
tourist, weenie, twink, terminal junkie, warez d00dz.
2. A backronym for "Sole Purpose, Obtain a Degree"; according to
some self-described spods, this term is used by indifferent students
to condemn their harder-working fellows. Compare the defiant adoption
of the term geek in the mid-1990s by people who would previously
have been stigmatized by it. Spods in the positive sense are talker
users who've accumulated a large amount of spod time, that is, they
spend a lot of time logged in to that talker (for example, my spod
time on Uberworld as of this moment is 131 days, 15 hours and 20
minutes). Spods are generally highly knowledgeable about talkers and
SGXStalker coding, as well as computers and the internet in general.
3. [Glasgow University] An otherwise competent hacker who spends way
too much time on talker systems.
4. [obs.] An ordinary person; a random. This is the meaning with
which the term was coined, but the inventor informs us he has himself
accepted sense 1.
spoiler n.
[Usenet]
1. A remark which reveals important plot elements from books or
movies, thus denying the reader (of the article) the proper suspense
when reading the book or watching the movie.
2. Any remark which telegraphs the solution of a problem or puzzle,
thus denying the reader the pleasure of working out the correct
answer (see also interesting). Either sense readily forms compounds
like total spoiler, quasi-spoiler and even pseudo-spoiler.
By convention, articles which are spoilers in either sense should
contain the word `spoiler' in the Subject: line, or guarantee via
various tricks that the answer appears only after several
screens-full of warning, or conceal the sensitive information via
rot13, spoiler space or some combination of these techniques.
spoiler space
[also spoiler spoo or spoiler protection] A screenful of blank or
spacer lines deliberately inserted in a message following a spoiler
warning, so the actual spoiler can't be seen without hitting a key.
Formfeeds used to be used for this, but are now rare because so many
people read news through Web interfaces on which they have no good
interpretation.
sponge n.
[Unix] A special case of a filter that reads its entire input
before writing any output; the canonical example is a sort utility.
Unlike most filters, a sponge can conveniently overwrite the input
file with the output data stream. If a file system has versioning (as
ITS did and VMS does now) the sponge/filter distinction loses its
usefulness, because directing filter output would just write a new
version. See also slurp.
spoof vi.
To capture, alter, and retransmit a communication stream in a way
that misleads the recipient. As used by hackers, refers especially to
altering TCP/IP packet source addresses or other packet-header data
in order to masquerade as a trusted machine. This term has become
very widespread and is borderline techspeak. Interestingly, it was
already in use in its modern sense more than a century ago among
Victorian telegraphers; it shows up in Kipling.
spool vi.
[from early IBM `Simultaneous Peripheral Operation On-Line', but is
widely thought to be a backronym] To send files to some device or
program (a spooler) that queues them up and does something useful
with them later. Without qualification, the spooler is the print
spooler controlling output of jobs to a printer; but the term has
been used in connection with other peripherals (especially plotters
and graphics devices) and occasionally even for input devices. See
also demon.
spool file n.
Any file to which data is spooled to await the next stage of
processing. Especially used in circumstances where spooling the data
copes with a mismatch between speeds in two devices or pieces of
software. For example, when you send mail under Unix, it's typically
copied to a spool file to await a transport demon's attentions.
This is borderline techspeak.
sporgery
[portmanteau of `spam' or `spew' and `forgery'. Massive floods of
forged articles intended to disrupt a newsgroup. Typically these have
reasonable-looking headers but complete gibberish for content, making
the legitimate articles too difficult to find. This tactic has been
most notoriously used by the Church of Scientology to disrupt
discussion on the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology, but is
unfortunately not by any means confined to that group.
sport death n.
[MIT] The masochistic extreme of hacking, where the body and mind are
pushed until their limits are reached, and the body is barely able to
support the mind. Then, once your extremes are reached, you push as
far beyond that point as you can, far beyond normal notions of
all-nighters and caffeine diets.
spungle n.
[Durham, UK; portmanteau, spangle + bungle] A spangle of no
actual usefulness. Example: Roger the Bent Paperclip in Microsoft
Word '98. A spungle's only virtue is that it looks pretty, unless you
find creeping featurism ugly.
spyware n.
1. Software which, when installed by a user insufficiently
enlightened to avoid it, enables third parties to snoop the user's
hard drive or monitor their network transactions. Though the term
seems to have entered use in the late 1990s, it achieved real
popularity as applied to Microsoft Windows XP. Some back door
features in XP permit Microsoft to (for example) covertly scan your
disk directories for the names of files it might deem to be warez.
2. Systems for spying on email and web traffic, such as the FBI's
Carnivore.
squirrelcide n.
[common on Usenet's comp.risks newsgroup.] (alt.: squirrelicide) What
all too frequently happens when a squirrel decides to exercise its
species's unfortunate penchant for shorting out power lines with
their little furry bodies. Result: one dead squirrel, one down
computer installation. In this situation, the computer system is said
to have been squirrelcided.
stack n.
The set of things a person has to do in the future. One speaks of the
next project to be attacked as having risen to the top of the stack.
"I'm afraid I've got real work to do, so this'll have to be pushed
way down on my stack." "I haven't done it yet because every time I
pop my stack something new gets pushed." If you are interrupted
several times in the middle of a conversation, "My stack overflowed"
means "I forget what we were talking about." The implication is that
more items were pushed onto the stack than could be remembered, so
the least recent items were lost. The usual physical example of a
stack is to be found in a cafeteria: a pile of plates or trays
sitting on a spring in a well, so that when you put one on the top
they all sink down, and when you take one off the top the rest spring
up a bit. See also push and pop.
(The Art of Computer Programming, second edition, vol. 1, p. 236)
says:
Many people who realized the importance of stacks and queues
independently have given other names to these structures: stacks
have been called push-down lists, reversion storages, cellars,
nesting stores, piles, last-in-first-out ("LIFO") lists, and even
yo-yo lists!
The term "stack" was originally coined by Edsger Dijkstra, who was
quite proud of it.
stack puke n.
Some processor architectures are said to `puke their guts onto the
stack' to save their internal state during exception processing. The
Motorola 68020, for example, regurgitates up to 92 bytes on a bus
fault. On a pipelined machine, this can take a while.
stale pointer bug n.
Synonym for aliasing bug used esp. among microcomputer hackers.
Stanford Bunny
The successor of the Utah Teapot. The model is of a chocolate
Easter bunny consisting of about 5000 polygons. It is small by 2002
standards, but is more illustrative than the teapot of of techniques
such as surface radiance (e.g. radiosity) and self-reflection. There
is a history page. Compare lenna.
star out v.
[University of York, England] To replace a user's encrypted password
in /etc/passwd with a single asterisk. Under Unix this is not a legal
encryption of any password; hence the user is not permitted to log
in. In general, accounts like adm, news, and daemon are permanently
"starred out"; occasionally a real user might have this inflicted
upon him/her as a punishment, e.g. "Graham was starred out for
playing Omega in working hours". Also occasionally known as The Order
Of The Gold Star in this context. "Don't do that, or you'll be
awarded the Order of the Gold Star..." Compare disusered.
state n.
1. Condition, situation. "What's the state of your latest hack?"
"It's winning away." "The system tried to read and write the disk
simultaneously and got into a totally wedged state." The standard
question "What's your state?" means "What are you doing?" or "What
are you about to do?" Typical answers are "about to gronk out", or
"hungry". Another standard question is "What's the state of the
world?", meaning "What's new?" or "What's going on?". The more terse
and humorous way of asking these questions would be "State-p?".
Another way of phrasing the first question under sense 1 would be
"state-p latest hack?".
2. Information being maintained in non-permanent memory (electronic
or human).
stealth manager n.
[Corporate DP] A manager that appears out of nowhere, promises
undeliverable software to unknown end users, and vanishes before the
programming staff realizes what has happened. See smoke and
mirrors.
steam-powered adj.
Old-fashioned or underpowered; archaic. This term does not have a
strong negative loading and may even be used semi-affectionately for
something that clanks and wheezes a lot but hangs in there doing the
job.
steved adj.,v., /steevd/
[Apple employees and users] Terminated, said of a development
project. Originated after Steven P. Jobs returned to Apple as acting
CEO in 1997. Jobs immediated axed several development projects,
including OpenDoc and Newton that had been launched by John Sculley,
the man who had ousted Jobs in the mid 1980s. Now any project shut
down at Apple and often at any large firm connected with Apple may be
said to have gotten steved. It is usually spelled lowercase despite
the origin. It is almost always past-tense and used
quasi-adjectivally.
STFW imp., /S·T·F·W/
[Usenet] Common abbreviation for "Search The Fucking Web", a
suggestion that what you're asking for is a query better handled by a
search engine than a human being. Usage is common and exactly
parallel to both senses of RTFM. A politer equivalent is GIYF.
stir-fried random n.
(alt.: stir-fried mumble) Term used for the best dish of many of
those hackers who can cook. Consists of random fresh veggies and meat
wokked with random spices. Tasty and economical. See random,
great-wall, ravs, laser chicken, oriental food; see also
mumble.
stomp on vt.
To inadvertently overwrite something important, usually
automatically. "All the work I did this weekend got stomped on last
night by the nightly server script." Compare scribble, mangle,
trash, scrog, roach.
Stone Age n.,adj.
1. In computer folklore, an ill-defined period from ENIAC (ca. 1943)
to the mid-1950s; the great age of electromechanical dinosaurs.
Sometimes used for the entire period up to 1960--61 (see Iron Age);
however, it is funnier and more descriptive to characterize the
latter period in terms of a `Bronze Age' era of transistor-logic,
pre-ferrite-core machines with drum or CRT mass storage (as opposed
to just mercury delay lines and/or relays). See also Iron Age.
[76-05-01.png]
How things weren't in the Stone Age.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 76-07-18. The previous
cartoon was 76-03-14:5-8.)
2. More generally, a pejorative for any crufty, ancient piece of
hardware or software technology. Note that this is used even by
people who were there for the Stone Age (sense 1).
stone knives and bearskins n.
[from the Star Trek Classic episode The City on the Edge of Forever]
A term traditionally used to describe (and deprecate) computing
environments that are grotesquely primitive in light of what is known
about good ways to design things. As in "Don't get too used to the
facilities here. Once you leave SAIL it's stone knives and bearskins
as far as the eye can see". Compare steam-powered.
stoppage /sto´p@j/, n.
Extreme lossage that renders something (usually something vital)
completely unusable. "The recent system stoppage was caused by a
fried transformer."
store n.
[prob.: from techspeak main store] In some varieties of Commonwealth
hackish, the preferred synonym for core. Thus, bringing a program
into store means not that one is returning shrink-wrapped software
but that a program is being swapped in.
STR
Spot the reference. Used in scary devil monastery to mark the
witticism one just uttered as a quote from some work of art or
literature, the more obscure the better. Those who know where the
reference comes from reply in the form "You are $CHARACTER, and you
owe me $ITEM", where $CHARACTER is a character from the story being
referenced and $ITEM is something associated with that character.
This acronym is never actually expanded to its proper meaning in the
newsgroup; posters instead use obscure expansions, the most common
being "slurp the robot", leading to comments like "I pulled my hair
out, but couldn't figure out which robot you're slurping".
strided /stri:´d@d/, adj.
[scientific computing] Said of a sequence of memory reads and writes
to addresses, each of which is separated from the last by a constant
interval called the stride length. These can be a worst-case access
pattern for the standard memory-caching schemes when the stride
length is a multiple of the cache line size. Strided references are
often generated by loops through an array, and (if your data is large
enough that access-time is significant) it can be worthwhile to tune
for better locality by inverting double loops or by partially
unrolling the outer loop of a loop nest. This usage is borderline
techspeak; the related term memory stride is definitely techspeak.
stroke n.
Common name for the slant (`/', ASCII 0101111) character. See ASCII
for other synonyms.
strudel n.
Common (spoken) name for the at-sign (`@', ASCII 1000000) character.
See ASCII for other synonyms.
stubroutine /stuhb´roo·teen/, n.
[contraction of stub subroutine] Tiny, often vacuous placeholder for
a subroutine that is to be written or fleshed out later.
studly adj.
Impressive; powerful. Said of code and designs which exhibit both
complexity and a virtuoso flair. Has connotations similar to hairy
but is more positive in tone. Often in the emphatic most studly or as
noun-form studliness. "Smail 3.0's configuration parser is most
studly."
studlycaps /stuhd´lee·kaps/, n.
A hackish form of silliness similar to BiCapitalization for
trademarks, but applied randomly and to arbitrary text rather than to
trademarks. ThE oRigiN and SigNificaNce of thIs pRacTicE iS oBscuRe.
stunning adj.
Mind-bogglingly stupid. Usually used in sarcasm. "You want to code
what in Ada? That's a ... stunning idea!"
stupid-sort n.
Syn. bogo-sort.
Stupids n.
Term used by samurai for the suits who employ them; succinctly
expresses an attitude at least as common, though usually better
disguised, among other subcultures of hackers. There may be intended
reference here to an SF story originally published in 1952 but much
anthologized since, Mark Clifton's Star, Bright. In it, a
super-genius child classifies humans into a very few `Brights' like
herself, a huge majority of `Stupids', and a minority of `Tweens',
the merely ordinary geniuses.
Sturgeon's Law prov.
"Ninety percent of everything is crud". Derived from a quote by
science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said, "Sure, 90%
of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is
crud." Sturgeon himself called this "Sturgeon's Revelation", and it
first appeared in the March 1958 issue of Venture Science Fiction; he
gave Sturgeon's Law as "Nothing is always absolutely so." Oddly, when
Sturgeon's Revelation is cited, the final word is almost invariably
changed to `crap'. Compare Hanlon's Razor, Ninety-Ninety Rule.
Though this maxim originated in SF fandom, most hackers recognize it
and are all too aware of its truth.
sucking mud adj.
[Applied Data Research] (also pumping mud) Crashed or wedged.
Usually said of a machine that provides some service to a network,
such as a file server. This Dallas regionalism derives from the East
Texas oilfield lament, "Shut 'er down, Ma, she's a-suckin' mud".
Often used as a query. "We are going to reconfigure the network, are
you ready to suck mud?"
sufficiently small adj.
Syn. suitably small.
suit n.
1. Ugly and uncomfortable `business clothing' often worn by
non-hackers. Invariably worn with a `tie', a strangulation device
that partially cuts off the blood supply to the brain. It is thought
that this explains much about the behavior of suit-wearers. Compare
droid.
2. A person who habitually wears suits, as distinct from a techie or
hacker. See pointy-haired, burble, management, Stupids,
SNAFU principle, PHB, and brain-damaged.
suitable win n.
See win.
suitably small adj.
[perverted from mathematical jargon] An expression used ironically to
characterize unquantifiable behavior that differs from expected or
required behavior. For example, suppose a newly created program came
up with a correct full-screen display, and one publicly exclaimed:
"It works!" Then, if the program dumped core on the first mouse
click, one might add: "Well, for suitably small values of `works'."
Sun n.
Sun Microsystems. Hackers remember that the name was originally an
acronym, Stanford University Network. Sun started out around 1980
with some hardware hackers (mainly) from Stanford talking to some
software hackers (mainly) from UC Berkeley; Sun's original technology
concept married a clever board design based on the Motorola 68000 to
BSD Unix. Sun went on to lead the workstation industry through the
1980s, and for years afterwards remained an engineering-driven
company and a good place for hackers to work. Though Sun drifted away
from its techie origins after 1990 and has since made some strategic
moves that disappointed and annoyed many hackers (especially by
maintaining proprietary control of Java and rejecting Linux), it's
still considered within the family in much the same way DEC was in
the 1970s and early 1980s.
sun lounge n.
[UK] The room where all the Sun workstations live. The humor in this
term comes from the fact that it's also in mainstream use to describe
a solarium, and all those Sun workstations clustered together give
off an amazing amount of heat.
sun-stools n.
Unflattering hackerism for SunTools, a pre-X windowing environment
notorious in its day for size, slowness, and misfeatures. X,
however, is larger and (some claim) slower; see second-system
effect.
sunspots n.
1. Notional cause of an odd error. "Why did the program suddenly turn
the screen blue?" "Sunspots, I guess."
2. Also the cause of bit rot -- from the myth that sunspots will
increase cosmic rays, which can flip single bits in memory. See
also phase of the moon.
super source quench n.
A special packet designed to shut up an Internet host. The Internet
Protocol (IP) has a control message called Source Quench that asks a
host to transmit more slowly on a particular connection to avoid
congestion. It also has a Redirect control message intended to
instruct a host to send certain packets to a different local router.
A "super source quench" is actually a redirect control packet, forged
to look like it came from a local router, that instructs a host to
send all packets to its own local loopback address. This will
effectively tie many Internet hosts up in knots. Compare
Godzillagram, breath-of-life packet.
superloser n.
[Unix] A superuser with no clue -- someone with root privileges on a
Unix system and no idea what he/she is doing, the moral equivalent of
a three-year-old with an unsafetied Uzi. Anyone who thinks this is an
uncommon situation reckons without the territorial urges of
management.
superprogrammer n.
A prolific programmer; one who can code exceedingly well and quickly.
Not all hackers are superprogrammers, but many are. (Productivity can
vary from one programmer to another by three orders of magnitude. For
example, one programmer might be able to write an average of 3 lines
of working code in one day, while another, with the proper tools,
might be able to write 3,000. This range is astonishing; it is
matched in very few other areas of human endeavor.) The term
superprogrammer is more commonly used within such places as IBM than
in the hacker community. It tends to stress naive measures of
productivity and to underweight creativity, ingenuity, and getting
the job done -- and to sidestep the question of whether the 3,000
lines of code do more or less useful work than three lines that do
the Right Thing. Hackers tend to prefer the terms hacker and
wizard.
superuser n.
[Unix] Syn. root, avatar. This usage has spread to non-Unix
environments; the superuser is any account with all wheel bits on.
A more specific term than wheel.
support n.
After-sale handholding; something many software vendors promise but
few deliver. To hackers, most support people are useless -- because
by the time a hacker calls support he or she will usually know the
software and the relevant manuals better than the support people
(sadly, this is not a joke or exaggeration). A hacker's idea of
`support' is a têete-à-têete with the software's designer.
surf v.
[from the `surf' idiom for rapidly flipping TV channels] To traverse
the Internet in search of interesting stuff, used esp. if one is
doing so with a World Wide Web browser. It is also common to speak of
surfing in to a particular resource.
Hackers adopted this term early, but many have stopped using it since
it went completely mainstream around 1995. The passive, couch-potato
connotations that go with TV channel surfing were never pleasant, and
hearing non-hackers wax enthusiastic about "surfing the net" tends to
make hackers feel a bit as though their home is being overrun by
ignorami.
Suzie COBOL /soo´zee koh´bol/
1. [IBM: prob.: from Frank Zappa's `Suzy Creamcheese'] n. A coder
straight out of training school who knows everything except the value
of comments in plain English. Also (fashionable among personkind
wishing to avoid accusations of sexism) `Sammy Cobol' or (in some
non-IBM circles) `Cobol Charlie'.
2. [proposed] Meta-name for any code grinder, analogous to J.
Random Hacker.
swab /swob/
[From the mnemonic for the PDP-11 `SWAp Byte' instruction, as
immortalized in the dd(1) option conv=swab (see dd)]
1. vt. To solve the NUXI problem by swapping bytes in a file
2. n. The program in V7 Unix used to perform this action, or anything
functionally equivalent to it. See also big-endian,
little-endian, middle-endian, bytesexual.
swap vt.
1. [techspeak] To move information from a fast-access memory to a
slow-access memory (swap out), or vice versa (swap in). Often refers
specifically to the use of disks as virtual memory. As pieces of data
or program are needed, they are swapped into core for processing;
when they are no longer needed they may be swapped out again.
2. The jargon use of these terms analogizes people's short-term
memories with core. Cramming for an exam might be spoken of as
swapping in. If you temporarily forget someone's name, but then
remember it, your excuse is that it was swapped out. To keep
something swapped in means to keep it fresh in your memory: "I reread
the TECO manual every few months to keep it swapped in." If someone
interrupts you just as you got a good idea, you might say "Wait a
moment while I swap this out", implying that a piece of paper is your
extra-somatic memory and that if you don't swap the idea out by
writing it down it will get overwritten and lost as you talk. Compare
page in, page out.
swap space n.
Storage space, especially temporary storage space used during a move
or reconfiguration. "I'm just using that corner of the machine room
for swap space."
swapped in n.
See swap. See also page in.
swapped out n.
See swap. See also page out.
Swiss-Army chainsaw
In early Unix days, a well-known technical paper analogized the
lexical analyzer generator lex(1) to a Swiss-army knife; this was a
comment on the remarkable variety of more general uses discovered for
a program originally designed as a special-purpose code generator for
writing compilers. Two decades later, well-known hacker Henry Spencer
described the Perl scripting language as a "Swiss-Army chainsaw",
intending to convey his evaluation of the language as exceedingly
powerful but ugly and noisy and prone to belch noxious fumes. This
had two results: (1) Perl fans adopted the epithet as a badge of
pride, and (2) it entered more general usage to describe software
that is highly versatile but distressingly inelegant.
swizzle v.
To convert external names, array indices, or references within a data
structure into address pointers when the data structure is brought
into main memory from external storage (also called pointer
swizzling); this may be done for speed in chasing references or to
simplify code (e.g., by turning lots of name lookups into pointer
dereferences). The converse operation is sometimes termed
unswizzling. See also snap.
sync /sink/, vi.
(var.: synch)
1. To synchronize, to bring into synchronization.
2. [techspeak] To force all pending I/O to the disk; see flush,
sense 2.
3. More generally, to force a number of competing processes or agents
to a state that would be `safe' if the system were to crash; thus, to
checkpoint (in the database-theory sense).
syntactic salt n.
The opposite of syntactic sugar, a feature designed to make it
harder to write bad code. Specifically, syntactic salt is a hoop the
programmer must jump through just to prove that he knows what's going
on, rather than to express a program action. Some programmers
consider required type declarations to be syntactic salt. A
requirement to write end if, end while, end do, etc.: to terminate
the last block controlled by a control construct (as opposed to just
end) would definitely be syntactic salt. Syntactic salt is like the
real thing in that it tends to raise hackers' blood pressures in an
unhealthy way. Compare candygrammar.
syntactic sugar n.
[coined by Peter Landin] Features added to a language or other
formalism to make it `sweeter' for humans, but which do not affect
the expressiveness of the formalism (compare chrome). Used esp.
when there is an obvious and trivial translation of the `sugar'
feature into other constructs already present in the notation. C's
a[i] notation is syntactic sugar for *(a + i). "Syntactic sugar
causes cancer of the semicolon." -- Alan Perlis.
The variants syntactic saccharin and syntactic syrup are also
recorded. These denote something even more gratuitous, in that
syntactic sugar serves a purpose (making something more acceptable to
humans), but syntactic saccharin or syrup serve no purpose at all.
Compare candygrammar, syntactic salt.
sys-frog /sis´frog/, n.
[the PLATO system] Playful variant of sysprog, which is in turn short
for `systems programmer'.
sysadmin /sis´ad·min/, n.
Common contraction of `system admin'; see admin.
sysape /sys´ayp/, n.
A rather derogatory term for a computer operator; a play on sysop
common at sites that use the banana hierarchy of problem complexity
(see one-banana problem).
sysop /sis´op/, n.
[esp. in the BBS world] The operator (and usually the owner) of a
bulletin-board system. A common neophyte mistake on FidoNet is to
address a message to sysop in an international FidoNet board, thus
sending it to hundreds of sysops around the world.
system n.
1. The supervisor program or OS on a computer.
2. The entire computer system, including input/output devices, the
supervisor program or OS, and possibly other software.
3. Any large-scale program.
4. Any method or algorithm.
5. System hacker: one who hacks the system (in senses 1 and 2 only;
for sense 3 one mentions the particular program: e.g., LISP hacker)
system mangler n.
Humorous synonym for `system manager', poss. from the fact that one
major IBM OS had a root account called SYSMANGR. Refers
specifically to a systems programmer in charge of administration,
software maintenance, and updates at some site. Unlike admin, this
term emphasizes the technical end of the skills involved.
systems jock n.
See jock, sense 2.
= T =
=====
T /T/
1. [from LISP terminology for `true'] Yes. Used in reply to a
question (particularly one asked using The -P convention). In LISP,
the constant T means `true', among other things. Some Lisp hackers
use `T' and `NIL' instead of `Yes' and `No' almost reflexively. This
sometimes causes misunderstandings. When a waiter or flight attendant
asks whether a hacker wants coffee, he may absently respond `T',
meaning that he wants coffee; but of course he will be brought a cup
of tea instead. Fortunately, most hackers (particularly those who
frequent Chinese restaurants) like tea at least as well as coffee --
so it is not that big a problem.
2. See time T (also since time T equals minus infinity).
3. [techspeak] In transaction-processing circles, an abbreviation for
the noun `transaction'.
4. [Purdue] Alternate spelling of tee.
5. A dialect of LISP developed at Yale. (There is an intended
allusion to NIL, "New Implementation of Lisp", another dialect of
Lisp developed for the VAX)
tail recursion n.
If you aren't sick of it already, see tail recursion.
talk mode n.
A feature supported by Unix and some other OSes that allows two or
more logged-in users to set up a real-time on-line conversation. It
combines the immediacy of talking with all the precision (and
verbosity) that written language entails. It is difficult to
communicate inflection, though conventions have arisen for some of
these (see the section on writing style in the Prependices for
details).
Talk mode has a special set of jargon words, used to save typing,
which are not used orally. Some of these are identical to (and
probably derived from) Morse-code jargon used by ham-radio amateurs
since the 1920s.
AFAIAC as far as I am concerned
AFAIK as far as I know
BCNU be seeing you
BTW by the way
BYE? are you ready to unlink? (this is the standard way to end a
talk-mode conversation; the other person types BYE to confirm, or
else continues the conversation)
CUL see you later
ENQ? are you busy? (expects ACK or NAK in return)
FOO? are you there? (often used on unexpected links, meaning also
"Sorry if I butted in &ellipsis;" (linker) or "What's up?" (linkee))
FWIW for what it's worth
FYI for your information
FYA for your amusement
GA go ahead (used when two people have tried to type simultaneously;
this cedes the right to type to the other)
GRMBL grumble (expresses disquiet or disagreement)
HELLOP hello? (an instance of the `-P' convention)
IIRC if I recall correctly
JAM just a minute (equivalent to SEC.... )
MIN same as JAM
NIL no (see NIL)
NP no problem
O over to you
OO over and out
/ another form of "over to you" (from x/y as "x over y")
\ lambda (used in discussing LISPy things)
OBTW oh, by the way
OTOH on the other hand
R U THERE? are you there?
SEC wait a second (sometimes written SEC... )
SYN Are you busy? (expects ACK, SYN|ACK, or RST in return; this is
modeled on the TCP/IP handshake sequence)
T yes (see the main entry for T)
TNX thanks
TNX 1.0E6 thanks a million (humorous)
TNXE6 another form of "thanks a million"
TTBOMK to the best of my knowledge
WRT with regard to, or with respect to.
WTF the universal interrogative particle; WTF knows what it means?
WTH what the hell?
<double newline> When the typing party has finished, he/she types two
newlines to signal that he/she is done; this leaves a blank line
between 'speeches' in the conversation, making it easier to reread
the preceding text.
YHTBT You Had To Be There. Used of a situation which loses
significant meaning in the telling, usually because it's difficult to
convey tone and timing.
<name>: When three or more terminals are linked, it is conventional
for each typist to prepend his/her login name or handle and a colon
(or a hyphen) to each line to indicate who is typing (some
conferencing facilities do this automatically). The login name is
often shortened to a unique prefix (possibly a single letter) during
a very long conversation.
/\/\/\ A giggle or chuckle. On a MUD, this usually means 'earthquake
fault'.
<g> grin
<gd&r> grinning, ducking, and running
BBL be back later
BRB be right back
HHOJ ha ha only joking
HHOK ha ha only kidding
HHOS ha ha only serious
IMHO in my humble opinion (see IMHO)
LOL laughing out loud
NHOH Never Heard of Him/Her (often used in initgame)
ROTF rolling on the floor
ROTFL rolling on the floor laughing
AFK away from keyboard
b4 before
CU l8tr see you later
MORF male or female?
TTFN ta-ta for now
TTYL talk to you later
OIC oh, I see
rehi hello again
Most of these are not used at universities or in the Unix world,
though ROTF and TTFN have gained some currency there and IMHO is
common; conversely, most of the people who know these are unfamiliar
with FOO?, BCNU, HELLOP, NIL, and T.
The MUD community uses a mixture of Usenet/Internet emoticons, a
few of the more natural of the old-style talk-mode abbrevs, and some
of the `social' list above; specifically, MUD respondents report use
of BBL, BRB, LOL, b4, BTW, WTF, TTFN, and WTH. The use of rehi is
also common; in fact, mudders are fond of re- compounds and will
frequently rehug or rebonk (see bonk/oif) people. The word re by
itself is taken as `regreet'. In general, though, MUDders express a
preference for typing things out in full rather than using
abbreviations; this may be due to the relative youth of the MUD
cultures, which tend to include many touch typists and to assume
high-speed links. The following uses specific to MUDs are reported:
CU l8er see you later (mutant of CU l8tr)
FOAD fuck off and die (use of this is generally OTT)
OTT over the top (excessive, uncalled for)
ppl abbrev for "people"
THX thanks (mutant of TNX; clearly this comes in batches of 1138 (the
Lucasian K)).
UOK? are you OK?
Some B1FFisms (notably the variant spelling d00d) appear to be
passing into wider use among some subgroups of MUDders.
One final note on talk mode style: neophytes, when in talk mode,
often seem to think they must produce letter-perfect prose because
they are typing rather than speaking. This is not the best approach.
It can be very frustrating to wait while your partner pauses to think
of a word, or repeatedly makes the same spelling error and backs up
to fix it. It is usually best just to leave typographical errors
behind and plunge forward, unless severe confusion may result; in
that case it is often fastest just to type "xxx" and start over from
before the mistake.
See also hakspek, emoticon.
talker system n.
British hackerism for software that enables real-time chat or talk
mode.
TAN adj.
[Usenet, particularly rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan] Abbrev. of
`tangent', as in "off on a tangent", and synonym for OT. A number
of hacker-humor synonyms are used for TAN in some newsgroups.
Instances such as BEIGE, OFF-WHITE, BROWNISH-GRAY, and LIGHT BROWN
have been observed. It is generally understood on newsgroups with
this convention that any color descriptor is a TAN synonym if (a)
used as the first word(s) of the topic of a Usenet post, (b) written
in ALL CAPS, and (c) followed immediately by a colon. Usage:
"OFF-WHITE: 2000 Presidential candidates" on an SF newsgroup.
tanked adj.
Same as down, used primarily by Unix hackers. See also hosed.
Popularized as a synonym for `drunk' by Steve Dallas in the late
lamented Bloom County comic strip.
TANSTAAFL /tan´stah·fl/
[acronym, from Robert Heinlein's classic SF novel The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress.] "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch", often invoked
when someone is balking at the prospect of using an unpleasantly
heavyweight technique, or at the poor quality of some piece of
software, or at the signal-to-noise ratio of unmoderated Usenet
newsgroups. "What? Don't tell me I have to implement a database back
end to get my address book program to work!" "Well, TANSTAAFL you
know." This phrase owes some of its popularity to the high
concentration of science-fiction fans and political libertarians in
hackerdom (see Appendix B for discussion).
Outside hacker circles the variant TINSTAAFL ("There is No Such
Thing...") is apparently more common, and can be traced back to 1952
in the writings of ethicist Alvin Hansen. TANSTAAFL may well have
arisen from it by mutation.
tape monkey n.
A junior system administrator, one who might plausibly be assigned to
do physical swapping of tapes and subsequent storage. When a backup
needs to be restored, one might holler "Tape monkey!" (Compare
one-banana problem) Also used to dismiss jobs not worthy of a
highly trained sysadmin's ineffable talents: "Cable up her PC? You
must be joking -- I'm no tape monkey."
tar and feather vi.
[from Unix tar(1)] To create a transportable archive from a group of
files by first sticking them together with tar(1) (the Tape ARchiver)
and then compressing the result (see compress). The latter action
is dubbed feathering partly for euphony and (if only for contrived
effect) by analogy to what you do with an airplane propeller to
decrease wind resistance, or with an oar to reduce water resistance;
smaller files, after all, slip through comm links more easily.
Compare the more common tarball. Earlier, the phrase referred to a
punishment in which the victims had tar being poured upon them and
then, whilst the tar was still sticky, having a pillow full of
feathers - or other material -- thrown at them. See
http://www.nwta.com/Spy/spring99/tar.html.
tarball n.
[very common; prob. based on the "tar baby" in the Uncle Remus folk
tales] An archive, created with the Unix tar(1) utility, containing
myriad related files. "Here, I'll just ftp you a tarball of the whole
project." Tarballs have been the standard way to ship around
source-code distributions since the mid-1980s; in retrospect it seems
odd that this term did not enter common usage until the late 1990s.
tardegy tar´djee, n.
[deliberate mangling of tragedy] An incident in which someone who
clearly deserves to be selected out of the gene pool on grounds of
extreme stupidity meets with a messy end. Coined on the Darwin list,
which is dedicated to chronicling such incidents; but almost all
hackers would instantly recognize the intention of the term and
laugh.
taste n.
1. The quality in a program that tends to be inversely proportional
to the number of features, hacks, and kluges programmed into it. Also
tasty, tasteful, tastefulness. "This feature comes in N tasty
flavors." Although tasty and flavorful are essentially synonyms,
taste and flavor are not. Taste refers to sound judgment on the
part of the creator; a program or feature can exhibit taste but
cannot have taste. On the other hand, a feature can have flavor.
Also, flavor has the additional meaning of `kind' or `variety' not
shared by taste. The marked sense of flavor is more popular than
taste, though both are widely used. See also elegant.
2. Alt. sp. of tayste.
tayste /tayst/
n. Two bits; also as taste. Syn. crumb, quarter. See nybble.
TCB /T·C·B/, n.
[IBM] 1. Trouble Came Back. An intermittent or difficult-to-reproduce
problem that has failed to respond to neglect or shotgun debugging.
Compare heisenbug. Not to be confused with:
2. Trusted Computing Base, an `official' jargon term from the Orange
Book.
TCP/IP /T´C·P I´P/, n.
1. [Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol] The
wide-area-networking protocol that makes the Internet work, and the
only one most hackers can speak the name of without laughing or
retching. Unlike such allegedly `standard' competitors such as X.25,
DECnet, and the ISO 7-layer stack, TCP/IP evolved primarily by
actually being used, rather than being handed down from on high by a
vendor or a heavily-politicized standards committee. Consequently, it
(a) works, (b) actually promotes cheap cross-platform connectivity,
and (c) annoys the hell out of corporate and governmental
empire-builders everywhere. Hackers value all three of these
properties. See creationism.
2. [Amateur Packet Radio] Formerly expanded as "The Crap Phil Is
Pushing". The reference is to Phil Karn, KA9Q, and the context was an
ongoing technical/political war between the majority of sites still
running AX.25 and the TCP/IP relays. TCP/IP won.
TECO /tee´koh/, n.,v. obs.
1. [originally an acronym for `[paper] Tape Editor and COrrector';
later, `Text Editor and COrrector'] n. A text editor developed at MIT
and modified by just about everybody. With all the dialects included,
TECO may have been the most prolific editor in use before EMACS, to
which it was directly ancestral. Noted for its powerful
programming-language-like features and its unspeakably hairy
syntax. It is literally the case that every string of characters is a
valid TECO program (though probably not a useful one); one common
game used to be mentally working out what the TECO commands
corresponding to human names did.
2. vt. Originally, to edit using the TECO editor in one of its
infinite variations (see below).
3. vt.,obs. To edit even when TECO is not the editor being used! This
usage is rare and now primarily historical.
As an example of TECO's obscurity, here is a TECO program that takes
a list of names such as:
Loser, J. Random
Quux, The Great
Dick, Moby
sorts them alphabetically according to surname, and then puts the
surname last, removing the comma, to produce the following:
Moby Dick
J. Random Loser
The Great Quux
The program is
[1 J^P$L$$
J <.-Z; .,(S,$ -D .)FX1 @F^B $K :L I $ G1 L>$$
(where ^B means `Control-B' (ASCII 0000010) and $ is actually an
alt or escape (ASCII 0011011) character).
In fact, this very program was used to produce the second, sorted
list from the first list. The first hack at it had a bug: GLS (the
author) had accidentally omitted the @ in front of F^B, which as
anyone can see is clearly the Wrong Thing. It worked fine the
second time. There is no space to describe all the features of TECO,
but it may be of interest that ^P means `sort' and J<.-Z; ... L> is
an idiomatic series of commands for `do once for every line'.
In mid-1991, TECO is pretty much one with the dust of history, having
been replaced in the affections of hackerdom by EMACS. Descendants
of an early (and somewhat lobotomized) version adopted by DEC can
still be found lurking on VMS and a couple of crufty PDP-11
operating systems, however, and ports of the more advanced MIT
versions remain the focus of some antiquarian interest. See also
retrocomputing, write-only language.
tee n.,vt.
[Purdue] A carbon copy of an electronic transmission. "Oh, you're
sending him the bits to that? Slap on a tee for me." From the Unix
command tee(1), itself named after a pipe fitting (see plumbing).
Can also mean `save one for me', as in "Tee a slice for me!" Also
spelled `T'.
teergrube /teer´groob·@/, n.
[German for tar pit] A trap set to punish spammers who use an
address harvester; a mail server deliberately set up to be really,
really slow. To activate it, scatter addresses that look like users
on the teergrube's host in places where the address harvester will be
trolling (one popular way is to embed the fake address in a Usenet
sig block next to a human-readable warning not to send mail to it).
The address harvester will dutifully collect the address. When the
spammer tries to mailbomb it, his mailer will get stuck.
teledildonics /tel`@·dil·do'·niks/, n.
Sex in a computer simulated virtual reality, esp. computer-mediated
sexual interaction between the VR presences of two humans. This
practice is not yet possible except in the rather limited form of
erotic conversation on MUDs and the like. The term, however, is
widely recognized in the VR community as a ha ha only serious
projection of things to come. "When we can sustain a multi-sensory
surround good enough for teledildonics, then we'll know we're getting
somewhere." See also hot chat.
ten-finger interface n.
The interface between two networks that cannot be directly connected
for security reasons; refers to the practice of placing two terminals
side by side and having an operator read from one and type into the
other.
tense adj.
Of programs, very clever and efficient. A tense piece of code often
got that way because it was highly tuned, but sometimes it was just
based on a great idea. A comment in a clever routine by Mike Kazar,
once a grad-student hacker at CMU: "This routine is so tense it will
bring tears to your eyes." A tense programmer is one who produces
tense code.
tentacle n.
A covert pseudo, sense 1. An artificial identity created in
cyberspace for nefarious and deceptive purposes. The implication is
that a single person may have multiple tentacles. This term was
originally floated in some paranoid ravings on the cypherpunks list
(see cypherpunk), and adopted in a spirit of irony by other, saner
members. It has since shown up, used seriously, in the documentation
for some remailer software, and is now (1994) widely recognized on
the net. Compare astroturfing, sock puppet.
tenured graduate student n.
One who has been in graduate school for 10 years (the usual maximum
is 5 or 6): a `ten-yeared' student (get it?). Actually, this term may
be used of any grad student beginning in his seventh year. Students
don't really get tenure, of course, the way professors do, but a
tenth-year graduate student has probably been around the university
longer than any untenured professor.
tera- /te´r@/, pref.
[SI] See quantifiers.
teraflop club /te´r@·flop kluhb/, n.
[FLOP = Floating Point Operation] A mythical association of people
who consume outrageous amounts of computer time in order to produce a
few simple pictures of glass balls with intricate ray-tracing
techniques. Caltech professor James Kajiya is said to have been the
founder. Compare Knights of the Lambda Calculus.
terminak /ter´mi·nak`/, n.
[Caltech, ca. 1979] Any malfunctioning computer terminal. A common
failure mode of Lear-Siegler ADM 3a terminals caused the `L' key to
produce the `K' code instead; complaints about this tended to look
like "Terminak #3 has a bad keyboard. Pkease fix." Compare dread
high-bit disease, frogging; see also sun-stools, HP-SUX,
Slowlaris.
terminal brain death n.
The extreme form of terminal illness (sense 1). What someone who
has obviously been hacking continuously for far too long is said to
be suffering from.
terminal illness n.
1. Syn. raster burn.
2. The `burn-in' condition your CRT tends to get if you don't have a
screen saver.
terminal junkie n.
[UK] A wannabee or early larval stage hacker who spends most of
his or her time wandering the directory tree and writing noddy
programs just to get a fix of computer time. Variants include
terminal jockey, console junkie, and console jockey. The term
console jockey seems to imply more expertise than the other three
(possibly because of the exalted status of the console relative to
an ordinary terminal). See also twink, read-only user.
Appropriately, this term was used in the works of William S.
Burroughs to describe a heroin addict with an unlimited supply.
test n.
1. Real users bashing on a prototype long enough to get thoroughly
acquainted with it, with careful monitoring and followup of the
results.
2. Some bored random user trying a couple of the simpler features
with a developer looking over his or her shoulder, ready to pounce on
mistakes.
Judging by the quality of most software, the second definition is far
more prevalent. See also demo.
TeX /tekh/, n.
An extremely powerful macro-based text formatter written by Donald
E. Knuth, very popular in the computer-science community (it is
good enough to have displaced Unix troff, the other favored
formatter, even at many Unix installations). TeX fans insist on the
correct (guttural) pronunciation, and the correct spelling (all caps,
squished together, with the E depressed below the baseline; the
mixed-case `TeX' is considered an acceptable kluge on ASCII-only
devices). Fans like to proliferate names from the word `TeX' -- such
as TeXnician (TeX user), TeXhacker (TeX programmer), TeXmaster
(competent TeX programmer), TeXhax, and TeXnique. See also CrApTeX.
Knuth began TeX because he had become annoyed at the declining
quality of the typesetting in volumes I--III of his monumental Art of
Computer Programming (see Knuth, also bible). In a manifestation
of the typical hackish urge to solve the problem at hand once and for
all, he began to design his own typesetting language. He thought he
would finish it on his sabbatical in 1978; he was wrong by only about
8 years. The language was finally frozen around 1985, but volume IV
of The Art of Computer Programming is not expected to appear until
2007. The impact and influence of TeX's design has been such that
nobody minds this very much. Many grand hackish projects have started
as a bit of toolsmithing on the way to something else; Knuth's
diversion was simply on a grander scale than most.
TeX has also been a noteworthy example of free, shared, but
high-quality software. Knuth offers a monetary award to anyone who
found and reported bugs dating from before the 1989 code freeze; as
the years wore on and the few remaining bugs were fixed (and new ones
even harder to find), the bribe went up. Though well-written, TeX is
so large (and so full of cutting edge technique) that it is said to
have unearthed at least one bug in every Pascal system it has been
compiled with.
text n.
1. [techspeak] Executable code, esp. a pure code portion shared
between multiple instances of a program running in a multitasking OS.
Compare English.
2. Textual material in the mainstream sense; data in ordinary ASCII
or EBCDIC representation (see flat-ASCII). "Those are text files;
you can review them using the editor."
These two contradictory senses confuse hackers, too.
thanks in advance
[Usenet] Conventional net.politeness ending a posted request for
information or assistance. Sometimes written `advTHANKSance' or
`aTdHvAaNnKcSe' or abbreviated `TIA'. See net.-, netiquette.
That's not a bug, that's a feature!
The canonical first parry in a debate about a purported bug. The
complainant, if unconvinced, is likely to retort that the bug is then
at best a misfeature. See also feature.
the literature n.
Computer-science journals and other publications, vaguely gestured at
to answer a question that the speaker believes is trivial. Thus,
one might answer an annoying question by saying "It's in the
literature." Oppose Knuth, which has no connotation of triviality.
the network n.
1. Historically, the union of all the major noncommercial, academic,
and hacker-oriented networks, such as Internet, the pre-1990 ARPANET,
NSFnet, BITNET, and the virtual UUCP and Usenet `networks', plus
the corporate in-house networks and commercial timesharing services
(such as CompuServe, GEnie and AOL) that gateway to them. A site is
generally considered on the network if it can be reached through some
combination of Internet-style (@-sign) and UUCP (bang-path)
addresses. See Internet, bang path, network address.
2. Following the mass-culture discovery of the Internet in 1994 and
subsequent proliferation of cheap TCP/IP connections, "the network"
is increasingly synonymous with the Internet itself (as it was before
the second wave of wide-area computer networking began around 1980).
3. A fictional conspiracy of libertarian hacker-subversives and
anti-authoritarian monkeywrenchers described in Robert Anton Wilson's
novel Schrödinger's Cat, to which many hackers have subsequently
decided they belong (this is an example of ha ha only serious).
In sense 1, the network is often abbreviated to the net. "Are you on
the net?" is a frequent question when hackers first meet face to
face, and "See you on the net!" is a frequent goodbye.
the X that can be Y is not the true X
Yet another instance of hackerdom's peculiar attraction to mystical
references -- a common humorous way of making exclusive statements
about a class of things. The template is from the Tao te Ching: "The
Tao which can be spoken of is not the true Tao." The implication is
often that the X is a mystery accessible only to the enlightened. See
the trampoline entry for an example, and compare has the X
nature.
theology n.
1. Ironically or humorously used to refer to religious issues.
2. Technical fine points of an abstruse nature, esp. those where the
resolution is of theoretical interest but is relatively marginal
with respect to actual use of a design or system. Used esp. around
software issues with a heavy AI or language-design component, such as
the smart-data vs. smart-programs dispute in AI.
theory n.
The consensus, idea, plan, story, or set of rules that is currently
being used to inform a behavior. This usage is a generalization and
(deliberate) abuse of the technical meaning. "What's the theory on
fixing this TECO loss?" "What's the theory on dinner tonight?"
("Chinatown, I guess.") "What's the current theory on letting lusers
on during the day?" "The theory behind this change is to fix the
following well-known screw...."
thinko /thing´koh/, n.
[by analogy with `typo'] A momentary, correctable glitch in mental
processing, especially one involving recall of information learned by
rote; a bubble in the stream of consciousness. Syn. braino; see
also brain fart. Compare mouso.
This can't happen
Less clipped variant of can't happen.
This time, for sure! excl.
Ritual affirmation frequently uttered during protracted debugging
sessions involving numerous small obstacles (e.g., attempts to bring
up a UUCP connection). For the proper effect, this must be uttered in
a fruity imitation of Bullwinkle J. Moose. Also heard: "Hey, Rocky!
Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" The canonical response is,
of course, "But that trick never works!" See hacker humor.
thrash vi.
To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing anything useful.
Paging or swapping systems that are overloaded waste most of their
time moving data into and out of core (rather than performing useful
computation) and are therefore said to thrash. Someone who keeps
changing his mind (esp. about what to work on next) is said to be
thrashing. A person frantically trying to execute too many tasks at
once (and not spending enough time on any single task) may also be
described as thrashing. Compare multitask.
thread n.
[Usenet, GEnie, CompuServe] Common abbreviation of topic thread, a
more or less continuous chain of postings on a single topic. To
follow a thread is to read a series of Usenet postings sharing a
common subject or (more correctly) which are connected by Reference
headers. The better newsreaders can present news in thread order
automatically. Not to be confused with the techspeak sense of
`thread', e.g. a lightweight process.
Interestingly, this is far from a neologism. The OED says: "That
which connects the successive points in anything, esp. a narrative,
train of thought, or the like; the sequence of events or ideas
continuing throughout the whole course of anything;" Citations are
given going back to 1642!
three-finger salute n.
Syn. Vulcan nerve pinch.
throwaway account n.
1. An inexpensive Internet account purchased on a legitimate ISP
for the sole purpose of spewing spam.
2. An inexpensive Internet account obtained for the sole purpose of
doing something which requires a valid email address but being able
to ignore spam since the user will not look at the account again.
thud n.
1. Yet another metasyntactic variable (see foo). It is reported
that at CMU from the mid-1970s the canonical series of these was
`foo', `bar', `thud', `blat'.
2. Rare term for the hash character, `#' (ASCII 0100011). See ASCII
for other synonyms.
thumb n.
The slider on a window-system scrollbar. So called because moving it
allows you to browse through the contents of a text window in a way
analogous to thumbing through a book.
thundering herd problem
Scheduler thrashing. This can happen under Unix when you have a
number of processes that are waiting on a single event. When that
event (a connection to the web server, say) happens, every process
which could possibly handle the event is awakened. In the end, only
one of those processes will actually be able to do the work, but, in
the meantime, all the others wake up and contend for CPU time before
being put back to sleep. Thus the system thrashes briefly while a
herd of processes thunders through. If this starts to happen many
times per second, the performance impact can be significant.
thunk /thuhnk/, n.
1. [obs.]"A piece of coding which provides an address:", according to
P. Z. Ingerman, who invented thunks in 1961 as a way of binding
actual parameters to their formal definitions in Algol-60 procedure
calls. If a procedure is called with an expression in the place of a
formal parameter, the compiler generates a thunk which computes the
expression and leaves the address of the result in some standard
location.
2. Later generalized into: an expression, frozen together with its
environment, for later evaluation if and when needed (similar to what
in techspeak is called a closure). The process of unfreezing these
thunks is called forcing.
3. A stubroutine, in an overlay programming environment, that loads
and jumps to the correct overlay. Compare trampoline.
4. Microsoft and IBM have both defined, in their Intel-based systems,
a "16-bit environment" (with bletcherous segment registers and 64K
address limits) and a "32-bit environment" (with flat addressing and
semi-real memory management). The two environments can both be
running on the same computer and OS (thanks to what is called, in the
Microsoft world, WOW which stands for Windows On Windows). MS and IBM
have both decided that the process of getting from 16- to 32-bit and
vice versa is called a "thunk"; for Windows 95, there is even a tool
THUNK.EXE called a "thunk compiler".
5. A person or activity scheduled in a thunklike manner. "It occurred
to me the other day that I am rather accurately modeled by a thunk --
I frequently need to be forced to completion.:" -- paraphrased from a
plan file.
Historical note: There are a couple of onomatopoeic myths circulating
about the origin of this term. The most common is that it is the
sound made by data hitting the stack; another holds that the sound is
that of the data hitting an accumulator. Yet another suggests that it
is the sound of the expression being unfrozen at argument-evaluation
time. In fact, according to the inventors, it was coined after they
realized (in the wee hours after hours of discussion) that the type
of an argument in Algol-60 could be figured out in advance with a
little compile-time thought, simplifying the evaluation machinery. In
other words, it had `already been thought of'; thus it was christened
a thunk, which is "the past tense of `think' at two in the morning".
tick n.
1. A jiffy (sense 1).
2. In simulations, the discrete unit of time that passes between
iterations of the simulation mechanism. In AI applications, this
amount of time is often left unspecified, since the only constraint
of interest is the ordering of events. This sort of AI simulation is
often pejoratively referred to as tick-tick-tick simulation,
especially when the issue of simultaneity of events with long,
independent chains of causes is handwaved.
3. In the FORTH language, a single quote character.
tick-list features n.
[Acorn Computers] Features in software or hardware that customers
insist on but never use (calculators in desktop TSRs and that sort of
thing). The American equivalent would be checklist features, but this
jargon sense of the phrase has not been reported.
tickle a bug vt.
To cause a normally hidden bug to manifest itself through some known
series of inputs or operations. "You can tickle the bug in the
Paradise VGA card's highlight handling by trying to set bright yellow
reverse video."
tiger team n.
[U.S. military jargon]
1. Originally, a team (of sneakers) whose purpose is to penetrate
security, and thus test security measures. These people are paid
professionals who do hacker-type tricks, e.g., leave cardboard signs
saying "bomb" in critical defense installations, hand-lettered notes
saying "Your codebooks have been stolen" (they usually haven't been)
inside safes, etc. After a successful penetration, some high-ranking
security type shows up the next morning for a `security review' and
finds the sign, note, etc., and all hell breaks loose. Serious
successes of tiger teams sometimes lead to early retirement for base
commanders and security officers (see the patch entry for an
example).
2. Recently, and more generally, any official inspection team or
special firefighting group called in to look at a problem.
A subset of tiger teams are professional crackers, testing the
security of military computer installations by attempting remote
attacks via networks or supposedly `secure' comm channels. Some of
their escapades, if declassified, would probably rank among the
greatest hacks of all times. The term has been adopted in commercial
computer-security circles in this more specific sense.
time bomb n.
A subspecies of logic bomb that is triggered by reaching some
preset time, either once or periodically. There are numerous legends
about time bombs set up by programmers in their employers' machines,
to go off if the programmer is fired or laid off and is not present
to perform the appropriate suppressing action periodically.
Interestingly, the only such incident for which we have been pointed
to documentary evidence took place in the Soviet Union in 1986! A
disgruntled programmer at the Volga Automobile Plant (where the Fiat
clones called Ladas were manufactured) planted a time bomb which, a
week after he'd left on vacation, stopped the entire main assembly
line for a day. The case attracted lots of attention in the Soviet
Union because it was the first cracking case to make it to court
there. The perpetrator got a suspended sentence of 3 years in jail
and was barred from future work as a programmer.
time sink n.
[poss.: by analogy with heat sink or current sink] A project that
consumes unbounded amounts of time.
time T /ti:m T/, n.
1. An unspecified but usually well-understood time, often used in
conjunction with a later time T+1. "We'll meet on campus at time T or
at Louie's at time T+1" means, in the context of going out for
dinner: "We can meet on campus and go to Louie's, or we can meet at
Louie's itself a bit later." (Louie's was a Chinese restaurant in
Palo Alto that was a favorite with hackers.) Had the number 30 been
used instead of the number 1, it would have implied that the travel
time from campus to Louie's is 30 minutes; whatever time T is (and
that hasn't been decided on yet), you can meet half an hour later at
Louie's than you could on campus and end up eating at the same time.
See also since time T equals minus infinity.
times-or-divided-by quant.
[by analogy with `plus-or-minus'] Term occasionally used when
describing the uncertainty associated with a scheduling estimate, for
either humorous or brutally honest effect. For a software project,
the scheduling uncertainty factor is usually at least 2.
timesharing
[now primarily historical] Timesharing is the technique of scheduling
a computer's time so that they are shared across multiple tasks and
multiple users, with each user having the illusion that his or her
computation is going on continuously. John McCarthy, the inventor of
LISP, first imagined this technique in the late 1950s. The first
timesharing operating systems, BBN's "Little Hospital" and CTSS,
were deplayed in 1962-63. The early hacker culture of the 1960s and
1970s grew up around the first generation of relatively cheap
timesharing computers, notably the DEC 10, 11, and VAX lines. But
these were only cheap in a relative sense; though quite a bit less
powerful than today's personal computers, they had to be shared by
dozens or even hundreds of people each. The early hacker comunities
nucleated around places where it was relatively easy to get access to
a timesharing account.
Nowadays, communications bandwidth is usually the most important
constraint on what you can do with your computer. Not so back then;
timesharing machines were often loaded to capacity, and it was not
uncommon for everyone's work to grind to a halt while the machine
scheduler thrashed, trying to figure out what to do next. Early
hacker slang was replete with terms like cycle crunch and cycle
drought for describing the consequences of too few
instructions-per-second spread among too many users. As GLS has
noted, this sort of problem influenced the tendency of many hackers
to work odd schedules.
One reason this is worth noting here is to make the point that the
earliest hacker communities were physical, not distributed via
networks; they consisted of hackers who shared a machine and
therefore had to deal with many of the same problems with respect to
it. A system crash could idle dozens of eager programmers, all
sitting in the same terminal room and with little to do but talk with
each other until normal operation resumed.
Timesharing moved from being the luxury of a few large universities
runing semi-experimental operating systems to being more generally
available about 1975-76. Hackers in search of more cycles and more
control over their programming environment began to migrate off
timesharing machines and onto what are now called workstations around
1983. It took another ten years, the development of powerful 32-bit
personal micros, the Great Internet Explosion before the migration
was complete. It is no coincidence that the last stages of this
migration coincided with the development of the first open-source
operating systems.
TINC //
[Usenet] Abbreviation: "There Is No Cabal". See backbone cabal and
NANA, but note that this abbreviation did not enter use until long
after the dispersal of the backbone cabal.
Tinkerbell program n.
[Great Britain] A monitoring program used to scan incoming network
calls and generate alerts when calls are received from particular
sites, or when logins are attempted using certain IDs. Named after
`Project Tinkerbell', an experimental phone-tapping program developed
by British Telecom in the early 1980s.
TINLC //
Abbreviation: "There Is No Lumber Cartel". See Lumber Cartel. TINLC
is a takeoff on TINC.
tip of the ice-cube n., //
[IBM] The visible part of something small and insignificant. Used as
an ironic comment in situations where `tip of the iceberg' might be
appropriate if the subject were at all important.
tired iron n.
[IBM] Hardware that is perfectly functional but far enough behind the
state of the art to have been superseded by new products, presumably
with sufficient improvement in bang-per-buck that the old stuff is
starting to look a bit like a dinosaur.
tits on a keyboard n.
Small bumps on certain keycaps to keep touch-typists registered.
Usually on the 5 of a numeric keypad, and on the F and J of a
QWERTY keyboard; but older Macs (like pre-PC electric typewriters)
had them on the D and K keys (this changed in 1999).
TLA /T·L·A/, n.
[Three-Letter Acronym]
1. Self-describing abbreviation for a species with which computing
terminology is infested.
2. Any confusing acronym. Examples include MCA, FTP, SNA, CPU, MMU,
SCCS, DMU, FPU, NNTP, TLA. People who like this looser usage argue
that not all TLAs have three letters, just as not all four-letter
words have four letters. One also hears of `ETLA' (Extended
Three-Letter Acronym, pronounced /ee tee el ay/) being used to
describe four-letter acronyms; the terms `SFLA' (Stupid Four-Letter
Acronym), `LFLA' (Longer Four Letter Acronym), and VLFLA (Very Long
Five Letter Acronym) have also been reported. See also YABA.
The self-effacing phrase "TDM TLA" (Too Damn Many...) is often used
to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a random of the
journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin "What do you think
will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s?" Paul's
straight-faced response: "There are only 17,000 three-letter
acronyms." (To be exact, there are 26^3 = 17,576.) There is probably
some karmic justice in the fact that Paul Boutin subsequently became
a journalist.
TMRC /tmerk´/, n.
The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT, one of the wellsprings of hacker
culture. The 1959 Dictionary of the TMRC Language compiled by Peter
Samson included several terms that became basics of the hackish
vocabulary (see esp. foo, mung, and frob).
By 1962, TMRC's legendary layout was already a marvel of complexity
and has grown in the years since. All the features described here
were still present when the old layout was decommissioned in 1998
just before the demolition of MIT Building 20, and will almost
certainly be retained when the old layout is rebuilt (expected in
2003). The control system alone featured about 1200 relays. There
were scram switches located at numerous places around the room that
could be thwacked if something undesirable was about to occur, such
as a train going full-bore at an obstruction. Another feature of the
system was a digital clock on the dispatch board, which was itself
something of a wonder in those bygone days before cheap LEDs and
seven-segment displays. When someone hit a scram switch the clock
stopped and the display was replaced with the word `FOO'; at TMRC the
scram switches are therefore called foo switches.
Steven Levy, in his book Hackers (see the Bibliography in Appendix
C), gives a stimulating account of those early years. TMRC's Signals
and Power Committee included many of the early PDP-1 hackers and the
people who later became the core of the MIT AI Lab staff. Thirty
years later that connection is still very much alive, and this
lexicon accordingly includes a number of entries from a recent
revision of the TMRC dictionary.
TMRC has a web page at http://tmrc-www.mit.edu/. The TMRC Dictionary
is available there, at http://tmrc-www.mit.edu/dictionary.html.
TMRCie /tmerk´ee/, n.
[MIT] A denizen of TMRC.
TMTOWTDI /tim·toh'·dee/, abbrev.
There's More Than One Way To Do It. This abbreviation of the official
motto of Perl is frequently used on newsgroups and mailing lists
related to that language.
to a first approximation adj.
1. [techspeak] When one is doing certain numerical computations, an
approximate solution may be computed by any of several heuristic
methods, then refined to a final value. By using the starting point
of a first approximation of the answer, one can write an algorithm
that converges more quickly to the correct result.
2. In jargon, a preface to any comment that indicates that the
comment is only approximately true. The remark "To a first
approximation, I feel good" might indicate that deeper questioning
would reveal that not all is perfect (e.g., a nagging cough still
remains after an illness).
to a zeroth approximation
[from to a first approximation] A really sloppy approximation; a wild
guess. Compare social science number.
toad vt.
1. Notionally, to change a MUD player into a toad.
2. To permanently and totally exile a player from the MUD. A very
serious action, which can only be done by a MUD wizard; often
involves a lot of debate among the other characters first. See also
frog, FOD.
toast
1. n.Any completely inoperable system or component, esp. one that has
just crashed and burned: "Uh, oh ... I think the serial board is
toast." (This sense went mainstream around 1993.)
2. vt. To cause a system to crash accidentally, especially in a
manner that requires manual rebooting. "Rick just toasted the
firewall machine again." Compare fried.
toaster n.
1. The archetypal really stupid application for an embedded
microprocessor controller; often used in comments that imply that a
scheme is inappropriate technology (but see elevator controller).
"DWIM for an assembler? That'd be as silly as running Unix on your
toaster!"
2. A very, very dumb computer. "You could run this program on any
dumb toaster." See bitty box, Get a real computer!, toy, beige
toaster.
3. A Macintosh, esp. a Mac in the original unitary case. Some hold
that this is implied by sense 2.
4. A peripheral device. "I bought my box without toasters, but since
then I've added two boards and a second disk drive."
5. A specialized computer used as an appliance. See web toaster,
video toaster.
toeprint n.
A footprint of especially small size.
TOFU
Text Over, Fullquote Under; see top-post.
toggle vt.
To change a bit from whatever state it is in to the other state; to
change from 1 to 0 or from 0 to
1. This comes from `toggle switches', such as standard light
switches, though the word toggle actually refers to the mechanism
that keeps the switch in the position to which it is flipped rather
than to the fact that the switch has two positions. There are four
things you can do to a bit: set it (force it to be 1), clear (or
zero) it, leave it alone, or toggle it. (Mathematically, one would
say that there are four distinct boolean-valued functions of one
boolean argument, but saying that is much less fun than talking about
toggling bits.)
tool
1. n.A program used primarily to create, manipulate, modify, or
analyze other programs, such as a compiler or an editor or a
cross-referencing program. Oppose app, operating system; see also
toolchain.
2. [Unix] An application program with a simple, `transparent'
(typically text-stream) interface designed specifically to be used in
programmed combination with other tools (see filter, plumbing).
3. [MIT: general to students there] vi. To work; to study (connotes
tedium). The TMRC Dictionary defined this as "to set one's brain to
the grindstone". See hack.
4. n. [MIT] A student who studies too much and hacks too little.
(MIT's student humor magazine rejoices in the name Tool and Die.)
toolchain
A collection of tools used to develop for a particular hardware
target, or to work with a particular data format (thus `the Crusoe
development toolchain', or the `DocBook toolchain'). Often used in
the context of building software on one system which will be
installed or run on some other device; in that case the chain of
tools usually consists of such items as a particular version of a
compiler, libraries, special headers, etc. May also be used of
text-formatting, page layout, or multimedia tools which render from
some markup to a variety of production formats. Differs from
`toolkit' in that the former implies a collection of semi-independent
tools with complementary functions, while `toolchain' implies that
each of the parts is a serial stage in a rather tightly bound
pipeline. Seems to have become current in early 1999 and 2000; now
common.
toolsmith n.
The software equivalent of a tool-and-die specialist; one who
specializes in making the tools with which other programmers create
applications. Many hackers consider this more fun than applications
per se; to understand why, see uninteresting. Jon Bentley, in the
"Bumper-Sticker Computer Science" chapter of his book More
Programming Pearls, quotes Dick Sites from DEC as saying "I'd
rather write programs to write programs than write programs".
toor n.
The Bourne-Again Super-user. An alternate account with UID of 0,
created on Unix machines where the root user has an inconvenient
choice of shell. Compare avatar.
top-post n., v.
[common] To put the newly-added portion of an email or Usenet
response before the quoted part, as opposed to the more logical
sequence of quoted portion first with original following. The problem
with this practice is neatly summed up by the following FAQ entry:
A: No.
Q: Should I include quotations after my reply?
This term is generally used pejoratively with the implication that
the offending person is a newbie, a Microsoft addict (Microsoft
mail tools produce a similar format by default), or simply a
common-and-garden-variety idiot.
One major problem with top-posting is that people who do it all too
frequently quote the entire parent message rather than trimming it
down to those portions relevent to their reply -- this makes threads
bulky and unnecessarily difficult to read and arouses the righteous
ire of experienced Internet residents (this style is called "TOFU"
for "text over, fullquote under", or sometimes "jeopardy-style
quoting"). Another problem is that top-posters often word their
replies on the assumption that you just read the previous message,
even though their perversity has put it further down the page than
you have yet read. Oppose bottom-post.
topic drift n.
Term used on GEnie, Usenet and other electronic fora to describe the
tendency of a thread to drift away from the original subject of
discussion (and thus, from the Subject header of the originating
message), or the results of that tendency. The header in each post
can be changed to keep current with the posts, but usually isn't due
to forgetfulness or laziness. A single post may often result in
several posts each responding to a different point in the original.
Some subthreads will actually be in response to some off-the-cuff
side comment, possibly degenerating into a flame war, or just as
often evolving into a separate discussion. Hence, discussions aren't
really so much threads as they are trees. Except that they don't
really have leaves, or multiple branching roots; usually some lines
of discussion will just sort of die off after everyone gets tired of
them. This could take anywhere from hours to weeks, or even longer.
The term `topic drift' is often used in gentle reminders that the
discussion has strayed off any useful track. "I think we started with
a question about Niven's last book, but we've ended up discussing the
sexual habits of the common marmoset. Now that's topic drift!"
topic group n.
Syn. forum.
TOPS-10 /tops·ten/, n.
DEC's proprietary OS for the fabled PDP-10 machines, long a
favorite of hackers but now long extinct. A fountain of hacker
folklore; see Appendix A. See also ITS, TOPS-20, TWENEX, VMS,
operating system. TOPS-10 was sometimes called BOTS-10 (from
`bottoms-ten') as a comment on the inappropriateness of describing it
as the top of anything.
TOPS-20 /tops·twen´tee/, n.
See TWENEX.
TOS vt.
[from the acronym for `Terms Of Service' playing on the verb "toss"]
1. The act of terminating an Internet access account because the
owner breached the terms of service (e.g. by spamming).
2. To successfully complain to the ISP for that reason so that they
then close the account.
tourist n.
1. [ITS] A guest on the system, especially one who generally logs in
over a network from a remote location for comm mode, email, games,
and other trivial purposes. One step below luser. ITS hackers often
used to spell this turist, perhaps by some sort of tenuous analogy
with luser (this usage may also have expressed the ITS culture's
penchant for six-letterisms, and/or been some sort of tribute to Alan
Turing). Compare twink, lurker, read-only user.
2. [IRC] An IRC user who goes from channel to channel without
saying anything; see channel hopping.
tourist information n.
Information in an on-line display that is not immediately useful, but
contributes to a viewer's gestalt of what's going on with the
software or hardware behind it. Whether a given piece of info falls
in this category depends partly on what the user is looking for at
any given time. The `bytes free' information at the bottom of an
MS-DOS or Windows dir display is tourist information; so (most of the
time) is the TIME information in a Unix ps(1) display.
touristic adj.
Having the quality of a tourist. Often used as a pejorative, as in
`losing touristic scum'. Often spelled `turistic' or `turistik', so
that phrase might be more properly rendered `lusing turistic scum'.
toy n.
A computer system; always used with qualifiers.
1. nice toy: One that supports the speaker's hacking style
adequately.
2. just a toy: A machine that yields insufficient computrons for
the speaker's preferred uses. This is not condemnatory, as is bitty
box; toys can at least be fun. It is also strongly conditioned by
one's expectations; Cray XMP users sometimes consider the Cray-1 a
toy, and certainly all RISC boxes and mainframes are toys by their
standards. See also Get a real computer!.
toy language n.
A language useful for instructional purposes or as a proof-of-concept
for some aspect of computer-science theory, but inadequate for
general-purpose programming. Bad Things can result when a toy
language is promoted as a general purpose solution for programming
(see bondage-and-discipline language); the classic example is
Pascal. Several moderately well-known formalisms for conceptual
tasks such as programming Turing machines also qualify as toy
languages in a less negative sense. See also MFTL.
toy problem n.
[AI] A deliberately oversimplified case of a challenging problem used
to investigate, prototype, or test algorithms for a real problem.
Sometimes used pejoratively. See also gedanken, toy program.
toy program n.
1. One that can be readily comprehended; hence, a trivial program
(compare noddy).
2. One for which the effort of initial coding dominates the costs
through its life cycle. See also noddy.
trampoline n.
An incredibly hairy technique, found in some HLL and
program-overlay implementations (e.g., on the Macintosh), that
involves on-the-fly generation of small executable (and, likely as
not, self-modifying) code objects to do indirection between code
sections. Under BSD and possibly in other Unixes, trampoline code is
used to transfer control from the kernel back to user mode when a
signal (which has had a handler installed) is sent to a process.
These pieces of live data are called trampolines. Trampolines are
notoriously difficult to understand in action; in fact, it is said by
those who use this term that the trampoline that doesn't bend your
brain is not the true trampoline. See also snap.
trap
1. n. A program interrupt, usually an interrupt caused by some
exceptional situation in the user program. In most cases, the OS
performs some action, then returns control to the program.
2. vi. To cause a trap. "These instructions trap to the monitor."
Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the trap. "The
monitor traps all input/output instructions."
This term is associated with assembler programming (interrupt or
exception is more common among HLL programmers) and appears to be
fading into history among programmers as the role of assembler
continues to shrink. However, it is still important to computer
architects and systems hackers (see system, sense 1), who use it to
distinguish deterministically repeatable exceptions from
timing-dependent ones (such as I/O interrupts).
trap door n.
(alt.: trapdoor)
1. Syn. back door -- a Bad Thing.
2. [techspeak] A trap-door function is one which is easy to compute
but very difficult to compute the inverse of. Such functions are
Good Things with important applications in cryptography,
specifically in the construction of public-key cryptosystems.
trash vt.
To destroy the contents of (said of a data structure). The most
common of the family of near-synonyms including mung, mangle,
scribble, and roach.
trawl v.
To sift through large volumes of data (e.g., Usenet postings, FTP
archives, or the Jargon File) looking for something of interest.
tree-killer n.
[Sun]
1. A printer.
2. A person who wastes paper. This epithet should be interpreted in a
broad sense; `wasting paper' includes the production of spiffy but
content-free documents. Thus, most suits are tree-killers.
It is likely that both senses derive their flavor from the epithet
`tree-killer' applied by Treebeard the Ent to the Orcs in J.R.R.
Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. See also elvish, elder days, and
especially dead-tree version.
treeware /tree´weir/, n.
Printouts, books, and other information media made from pulped dead
trees. Compare tree-killer, see documentation.
trit /trit/, n.
[by analogy with bit] One base-3 digit; the amount of information
conveyed by a selection among one of three equally likely outcomes
(see also bit). Trits arise, for example, in the context of a
flag that should actually be able to assume three values -- such as
yes, no, or unknown. Trits are sometimes jokingly called 3-state
bits. A trit may be semi-seriously referred to as a bit and a half,
although it is linearly equivalent to 1.5849625 bits (that is,
log_{2$(3)} bits).
trivial adj.
1. Too simple to bother detailing.
2. Not worth the speaker's time.
3. Complex, but solvable by methods so well known that anyone not
utterly cretinous would have thought of them already.
4. Any problem one has already solved (some claim that hackish
trivial usually evaluates to "I've seen it before"). Hackers' notions
of triviality may be quite at variance with those of non-hackers. See
nontrivial, uninteresting.
The physicist Richard Feynman, who had the hacker nature to an
amazing degree (see his essay "Los Alamos From Below" in Surely
You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!), defined trivial theorem as "one that
has already been proved".
troff /T´rof/, /trof/, n.
[Unix] The gray eminence of Unix text processing; a formatting and
phototypesetting program, written originally in PDP-11 assembler
and then in barely-structured early C by the late Joseph Ossanna,
modeled after the earlier ROFF which was in turn modeled after the
Multics and CTSS program RUNOFF by Jerome Saltzer (that name came
from the expression "to run off a copy"). A companion program, nroff,
formats output for terminals and line printers.
In 1979, Brian Kernighan modified troff so that it could drive
phototypesetters other than the Graphic Systems CAT. His paper
describing that work ("A Typesetter-independent troff," AT&T CSTR
#97) explains troff's durability. After discussing the program's
"obvious deficiencies -- a rebarbative input syntax, mysterious and
undocumented properties in some areas, and a voracious appetite for
computer resources" and noting the ugliness and extreme hairiness of
the code and internals, Kernighan concludes:
None of these remarks should be taken as denigrating Ossanna's
accomplishment with TROFF. It has proven a remarkably robust tool,
taking unbelievable abuse from a variety of preprocessors and
being forced into uses that were never conceived of in the
original design, all with considerable grace under fire.
The success of TeX and desktop publishing systems have reduced
troff's relative importance, but this tribute perfectly captures the
strengths that secured troff a place in hacker folklore; indeed, it
could be taken more generally as an indication of those qualities of
good programs that, in the long run, hackers most admire.
troglodyte n.
[Commodore]
1. A hacker who never leaves his cubicle. The term gnoll (from
Dungeons & Dragons) is also reported.
2. A curmudgeon attached to an obsolescent computing environment. The
combination ITS troglodyte was flung around some during the Usenet
and email wringle-wrangle attending the 2.x.x revision of the Jargon
File; at least one of the people it was intended to describe adopted
it with pride.
troglodyte mode n.
[Rice University] Programming with the lights turned off, sunglasses
on, and the terminal inverted (black on white) because you've been up
for so many days straight that your eyes hurt (see raster burn).
Loud music blaring from a stereo stacked in the corner is optional
but recommended. See larval stage, hack mode.
Trojan horse n.
[coined by MIT-hacker-turned-NSA-spook Dan Edwards] A malicious
security-breaking program that is disguised as something benign, such
as a directory lister, archiver, game, or (in one notorious 1990 case
on the Mac) a program to find and destroy viruses! See back door,
virus, worm, phage, mockingbird.
troll
1. v.,n. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a
posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or
flames; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for
newbies" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of
fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a
bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of
newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than
they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and
experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall
for the joke, you get to be in on it. See also YHBT.
2. n. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly
posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup,
discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy
someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact
that they have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand -
they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they
are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as
such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in,
"Oh, ignore him, he's just a troll." Compare kook.
3. n. [Berkeley] Computer lab monitor. A popular campus job for CS
students. Duties include helping newbies and ensuring that lab
policies are followed. Probably so-called because it involves lurking
in dark cavelike corners.
Some people claim that the troll (sense 1) is properly a narrower
category than flame bait, that a troll is categorized by containing
some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial. See also
Troll-O-Meter.
The use of `troll' in any of these senses is a live metaphor that
readily produces elaborations and combining forms. For example, one
not infrequently sees the warning "Do not feed the troll" as part of
a followup to troll postings.
Troll-O-Meter n.
Common Usenet jargon for a notional instrument used to measure the
provocation level of a Usenet troll. "Come on, everyone! If the
above doesn't set off the Troll-O-Meter, we're going to have to get
him to run around with a big blinking sign saying `I am a troll, I'm
only in it for the controversy and flames', and shooting random gobs
of Jell-O(tm) at us before the point is proven." Mentions of the
Troll-O-Meter are often accompanied by an ASCII picture of an arrow
pointing at a numeric scale. Compare bogometer, Indent-o-Meter.
tron v.
[NRL, CMU; prob. fr. the movie Tron] To become inaccessible except
via email or talk(1), especially when one is normally available via
telephone or in person. Frequently used in the past tense, as in:
"Ran seems to have tronned on us this week" or "Gee, Ran, glad you
were able to un-tron yourself". One may also speak of tron mode;
compare spod.
Note that many dialects of BASIC have a TRON/TROFF command pair that
enables/disables line number tracing; this has no obvious
relationship to the slang usage.
troughie /traw´fee/, n.
[British BBS scene] Synonym for leech, sense 1. The implied
metaphor is that of a pig at a trough.
true-hacker n.
[analogy with `trufan' from SF fandom] One who exemplifies the
primary values of hacker culture, esp. competence and helpfulness to
other hackers. A high compliment. "He spent 6 hours helping me bring
up UUCP and netnews on my FOOBAR 4000 last week -- manifestly the act
of a true-hacker." Compare demigod, oppose munchkin.
tty /T·T·Y/, /tit´ee/, n.
The latter pronunciation was primarily ITS, but some Unix people say
it this way as well; this pronunciation is not considered to have
sexual undertones.
1. A terminal of the teletype variety, characterized by a noisy
mechanical printer, a very limited character set, and poor print
quality. Usage: antiquated (like the TTYs themselves). See also
bit-paired keyboard.
2. [especially Unix] Any terminal at all; sometimes used to refer to
the particular terminal controlling a given job.
3. [Unix] Any serial port, whether or not the device connected to it
is a terminal; so called because under Unix such devices have names
of the form tty*. Ambiguity between senses 2 and 3 is common but
seldom bothersome.
tube
1. n. A CRT terminal. Never used in the mainstream sense of TV; real
hackers don't watch TV, except for Looney Toons, Rocky & Bullwinkle,
Trek Classic, the Simpsons, Babylon 5, and the occasional cheesy old
swashbuckler movie.
2. [IBM] To send a copy of something to someone else's terminal.
"Tube me that note?"
tube time n.
Time spent at a terminal or console. More inclusive than hacking
time; commonly used in discussions of what parts of one's environment
one uses most heavily. "I find I'm spending too much of my tube time
reading mail since I started this revision."
tunafish n.
In hackish lore, refers to the mutated punchline of an age-old joke
to be found at the bottom of the manual pages of tunefs(8) in the
original BSD 4.2 distribution. The joke was removed in later
releases once commercial sites started using 4.2, but apparently
restored on the 4.4BSD tape and in {Net,Free,Open}BSD. Tunefs relates
to the tuning of file-system parameters for optimum performance, and
at the bottom of a few pages of wizardly inscriptions was a `BUGS'
section consisting of the line "You can tune a file system, but you
can't tunafish". Variants of this can be seen in other BSD versions,
though it has been excised from some versions by humorless management
droids. The [nt]roff source for SunOS 4.1.1 contains a comment
apparently designed to prevent this: "Take this out and a Unix Demon
will dog your steps from now until the time_t's wrap around."
[It has since been pointed out that indeed you can tunafish. Usually
at a canning factory... --ESR]
tune vt.
[from automotive or musical usage] To optimize a program or system
for a particular environment, esp. by adjusting numerical parameters
designed as hooks for tuning, e.g., by changing #define lines in C.
One may tune for time (fastest execution), tune for space (least
memory use), or tune for configuration (most efficient use of
hardware). See hot spot, hand-hacking.
turbo nerd n.
See geek.
Turing tar-pit n.
1. A place where anything is possible but nothing of interest is
practical. Alan Turing helped lay the foundations of computer science
by showing that all machines and languages capable of expressing a
certain very primitive set of operations are logically equivalent in
the kinds of computations they can carry out, and in principle have
capabilities that differ only in speed from those of the most
powerful and elegantly designed computers. However, no machine or
language exactly matching Turing's primitive set has ever been built
(other than possibly as a classroom exercise), because it would be
horribly slow and far too painful to use. A Turing tar-pit is any
computer language or other tool that shares this property. That is,
it's theoretically universal -- but in practice, the harder you
struggle to get any real work done, the deeper its inadequacies suck
you in. Compare bondage-and-discipline language.
2. The perennial holy wars over whether language A or B is the
"most powerful".
turist /too´rist/, n.
Var. sp. of tourist, q.v. Also in adjectival form, `turistic'.
Poss. influenced by luser and `Turing'.
Tux
Tux the Penguin is the official emblem of Linux, This eventuated
after a logo contest in 1996, during which Linus Torvalds endorsed
the idea of a penguin logo in a couple of famously funny postings.
Linus explained that he was once bitten by a killer penguin in
Australia and has felt a special affinity for the species ever since.
(Linus has since admitted that he was also thinking of Feathers
McGraw, the evil-genius penguin jewel thief who appeared in a Wallace
& Grommit feature cartoon, The Wrong Trousers.)
Larry Ewing designed the official Tux logo. It has proved a wise
choice, amenable to hundreds of recognizable variations used as
emblems of Linux-related projects, products, and user groups. In
fact, Tux has spawned an entire mythology, of which the Gospel
According to Tux and the mock-epic poem Tuxowolf are among the
best-known examples.
There is a `real' Tux -- a black-footed penguin resident at the
Bristol Zoo. Several friends of Linux bought a zoo sponsorship for
Linus as a birthday present in 1996.
tweak vt.
1. To change slightly, usually in reference to a value. Also used
synonymously with twiddle. If a program is almost correct, rather
than figure out the precise problem you might just keep tweaking it
until it works. See frobnicate and fudge factor; also see
shotgun debugging.
2. To tune a program; preferred usage in the U.K.
TWENEX /twe´neks/, n.
The TOPS-20 operating system by DEC -- the second proprietary OS
for the PDP-10 -- preferred by most PDP-10 hackers over TOPS-10 (that
is, by those who were not ITS or WAITS partisans). TOPS-20 began
in 1969 as Bolt, Beranek & Newman's TENEX operating system using
special paging hardware. By the early 1970s, almost all of the
systems on the ARPANET ran TENEX. DEC purchased the rights to TENEX
from BBN and began work to make it their own. The first in-house code
name for the operating system was VIROS (VIRtual memory Operating
System); when customers started asking questions, the name was
changed to SNARK so DEC could truthfully deny that there was any
project called VIROS. When the name SNARK became known, the name was
briefly reversed to become KRANS; this was quickly abandoned when
someone objected that krans meant `funeral wreath' in Swedish (though
some Swedish speakers have since said it means simply `wreath'; this
part of the story may be apocryphal). Ultimately DEC picked TOPS-20
as the name of the operating system, and it was as TOPS-20 that it
was marketed. The hacker community, mindful of its origins, quickly
dubbed it TWENEX (a contraction of `twenty TENEX'), even though by
this point very little of the original TENEX code remained
(analogously to the differences between AT&T V6 Unix and BSD). DEC
people cringed when they heard "TWENEX", but the term caught on
nevertheless (the written abbreviation `20x' was also used). TWENEX
was successful and very popular; in fact, there was a period in the
early 1980s when it commanded as fervent a culture of partisans as
Unix or ITS -- but DEC's decision to scrap all the internal rivals to
the VAX architecture and its relatively stodgy VMS OS killed the
DEC-20 and put a sad end to TWENEX's brief day in the sun. DEC
attempted to convince TOPS-20 users to convert to VMS, but instead,
by the late 1980s, most of the TOPS-20 hackers had migrated to Unix.
There is a TOPS-20 home page.
twiddle n.
1. Tilde (ASCII 1111110, ~). Also called squiggle, sqiggle (sic --
pronounced /skig´l/), and twaddle, but twiddle is the most common
term.
2. A small and insignificant change to a program. Usually fixes one
bug and generates several new ones (see also shotgun debugging).
3. vt. To change something in a small way. Bits, for example, are
often twiddled. Twiddling a switch or knobs implies much less sense
of purpose than toggling or tweaking it; see frobnicate. To speak
of twiddling a bit connotes aimlessness, and at best doesn't specify
what you're doing to the bit; `toggling a bit' has a more specific
meaning (see bit twiddling, toggle). 4. Uncommon name for the
twirling baton prompt.
twilight zone n., //
[IRC] Notionally, the area of cyberspace where IRC operators live.
An op is said to have a "connection to the twilight zone".
twink /twink/, n.
1. [Berkeley] A clue-repellant user; the next step beyond a clueless
one.
2. [UCSC] A read-only user. Also reported on the Usenet group
soc.motss; may derive from gay slang for a cute young thing with
nothing upstairs (compare mainstream `chick').
3. On MU* systems that specialize in role-playing, refers to behavior
of a (usually inexperienced) player that either ignores rules or
social convention, or disrupts the natural flow of a scene to show
off super powers.
We are informed that in Indian country, the term twink generally
refers to blondes into generic `Native American spirituality'. Signs
include Indian jewelry with MADE IN THAILAND stamped on it, crystals,
Clairol black hair, wearing swimsuits to powwows, Cherokee princess
grandmas, a love of Dances with Wolves, and a fear of AIM and the
NCAI. The twink nature is everywhere.
twirling baton n.
[PLATO] The overstrike sequence -/|\-/|\- which produces an animated
twirling baton. If you output it with a single backspace between
characters, the baton spins in place. If you output the sequence BS
SP between characters, the baton spins from left to right. If you
output BS SP BS BS between characters, the baton spins from right to
left. This is also occasionally called a twiddle prompt.
The twirling baton was a popular component of animated signature
files on the pioneering PLATO educational timesharing system. The
archie Internet service is perhaps the best-known baton program
today; it uses the twirling baton as an idler indicating that the
program is working on a query. The twirling baton is also used as a
boot progress indicator on several BSD variants of Unix; if it stops,
you're probably going to have a long and trying day.
two pi quant.
The number of years it takes to finish one's thesis. Occurs in
stories in the following form: "He started on his thesis; 2 pi years
later..."
two-to-the-N quant.
An amount much larger than N but smaller than infinity. "I have
2-to-the-N things to do before I can go out for lunch" means you
probably won't show up.
tyop n.
[USENET] A deliberate typo for `typo'. Used in satirical reference.
"There's a tyop in your posting". Compare grilf, hing.
= U =
=====
u- pref.
Written shorthand for micro-; techspeak when applied to metric
units, jargon when used otherwise. Derived from the Greek letter µ
the first letter of "micro" (and which letter looks a lot like the
English letter "u").
UBD /U·B·D/, n.
[abbreviation for `User Brain Damage'] An abbreviation used to close
out trouble reports obviously due to utter cluelessness on the user's
part. Compare pilot error, PEBKAC, ID10T; oppose PBD; see
also brain-damaged.
UBE //, n.
[abbrev., Unsolicited Bulk Email] A widespread, more formal term for
email spam. Compare UCE. The UBE term recognizes that spam is
uttered by nonprofit and advocacy groups whose motives are not
commercial.
ubergeek n., /oo´ber·geek/
[common; often spelled with initial ü; from German über + geek]
Almost synonymous with demigod; used as a compliment of someone
regarded as a paragon of geek achievement and virtue. Has partially
replaced earlier demigod.
UCE n.
[abbrev., Unsolicited Commercial Email] A widespread, more formal
term for email spam. Compare UBE, which may be superseding it.
UDP /U·D·P/, v.,n.
[Usenet] Abbreviation for Usenet Death Penalty. Common (probably
now more so than the full form), and frequently verbed. Compare
IDP.
UN*X n.
Used to refer to the Unix operating system (a trademark of AT&T, then
of Novell, then of Unix Systems Laboratories, then of the Open Group;
the source code parted company with it after Novell and was owned by
SCO, which was acquired by Caldera) in writing, but avoiding the need
for the ugly (TM) typography (see also {(TM)}). Also used to refer to
any or all varieties of Unixoid operating systems. Ironically,
lawyers now say that the requirement for the trademark postfix has no
legal force, but the asterisk usage is entrenched anyhow. It has been
suggested that there may be a psychological connection to practice in
certain religions (especially Judaism) in which the name of the deity
is never written out in full, e.g., `YHWH' or `G--d' is used. See
also glob and splat out.
undefined external reference excl.
[Unix] A message from Unix's linker. Used in speech to flag loose
ends or dangling references in an argument or discussion.
under the hood adj.
[hot-rodder talk]
1. Used to introduce the underlying implementation of a product
(hardware, software, or idea). Implies that the implementation is not
intuitively obvious from the appearance, but the speaker is about to
enable the listener to grok it. "Let's now look under the hood to
see how ...."
2. Can also imply that the implementation is much simpler than the
appearance would indicate: "Under the hood, we are just fork/execing
the shell."
3. Inside a chassis, as in "Under the hood, this baby has a 40MHz
68030!"
undocumented feature n.
See feature.
uninteresting adj.
1. Said of a problem that, although nontrivial, can be solved
simply by throwing sufficient resources at it.
2. Also said of problems for which a solution would neither advance
the state of the art nor be fun to design and code.
Hackers regard uninteresting problems as intolerable wastes of time,
to be solved (if at all) by lesser mortals. Real hackers (see
toolsmith) generalize uninteresting problems enough to make them
interesting and solve them -- thus solving the original problem as a
special case (and, it must be admitted, occasionally turning a
molehill into a mountain, or a mountain into a tectonic plate). See
WOMBAT, SMOP; compare toy problem, oppose interesting.
Unix /yoo´niks/, n.
[In the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics"; very early on it was
"UNICS"] (also "UNIX") An interactive timesharing system invented in
1969 by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left the Multics project,
originally so he could play games on his scavenged PDP-7. Dennis
Ritchie, the inventor of C, is considered a co-author of the system.
The turning point in Unix's history came when it was reimplemented
almost entirely in C during 1972--1974, making it the first
source-portable OS. Unix subsequently underwent mutations and
expansions at the hands of many different people, resulting in a
uniquely flexible and developer-friendly environment. By 1991, Unix
had become the most widely used multiuser general-purpose operating
system in the world -- and since 1996 the variant called Linux has
been at the cutting edge of the open source movement. Many people
consider the success of Unix the most important victory yet of
hackerdom over industry opposition (but see Unix weenie and Unix
conspiracy for an opposing point of view). See Version 7, BSD,
Linux.
[richiethompson.jpg]
Archetypal hackers ken (left) and dmr (right).
Some people are confused over whether this word is appropriately
`UNIX' or `Unix'; both forms are common, and used interchangeably.
Dennis Ritchie says that the `UNIX' spelling originally happened in
CACM's 1974 paper The UNIX Time-Sharing System because "we had a new
typesetter and troff had just been invented and we were intoxicated
by being able to produce small caps." Later, dmr tried to get the
spelling changed to `Unix' in a couple of Bell Labs papers, on the
grounds that the word is not acronymic. He failed, and eventually
(his words) "wimped out" on the issue. So, while the trademark today
is `UNIX', both capitalizations are grounded in ancient usage; the
Jargon File uses `Unix' in deference to dmr's wishes.
Unix brain damage n.
Something that has to be done to break a network program (typically a
mailer) on a non-Unix system so that it will interoperate with Unix
systems. The hack may qualify as Unix brain damage if the program
conforms to published standards and the Unix program in question does
not. Unix brain damage happens because it is much easier for other
(minority) systems to change their ways to match non-conforming
behavior than it is to change all the hundreds of thousands of Unix
systems out there.
An example of Unix brain damage is a kluge in a mail server to
recognize bare line feed (the Unix newline) as an equivalent form to
the Internet standard newline, which is a carriage return followed by
a line feed. Such things can make even a hardened jock weep.
Unix conspiracy n.
[ITS] According to a conspiracy theory long popular among ITS and
TOPS-20 fans, Unix's growth is the result of a plot, hatched during
the 1970s at Bell Labs, whose intent was to hobble AT&T's competitors
by making them dependent upon a system whose future evolution was to
be under AT&T's control. This would be accomplished by disseminating
an operating system that is apparently inexpensive and easily
portable, but also relatively unreliable and insecure (so as to
require continuing upgrades from AT&T). This theory was lent a
substantial impetus in 1984 by the paper referenced in the back
door entry.
In this view, Unix was designed to be one of the first computer
viruses (see virus) -- but a virus spread to computers indirectly
by people and market forces, rather than directly through disks and
networks. Adherents of this `Unix virus' theory like to cite the fact
that the well-known quotation "Unix is snake oil" was uttered by
DEC president Kenneth Olsen shortly before DEC began actively
promoting its own family of Unix workstations. (Olsen now claims to
have been misquoted.)
If there was ever such a conspiracy, it got thoroughly out of the
plotters' control after 1990. AT&T sold its Unix operation to Novell
around the same time Linux and other free-Unix distributions were
beginning to make noise.
Unix weenie n.
[ITS]
1. A derogatory play on `Unix wizard', common among hackers who use
Unix by necessity but would prefer alternatives. The implication is
that although the person in question may consider mastery of Unix
arcana to be a wizardly skill, the only real skill involved is the
ability to tolerate (and the bad taste to wallow in) the incoherence
and needless complexity that is alleged to infest many Unix programs.
"This shell script tries to parse its arguments in 69 bletcherous
ways. It must have been written by a real Unix weenie."
2. A derogatory term for anyone who engages in uncritical praise of
Unix. Often appearing in the context "stupid Unix weenie". See
Weenix, Unix conspiracy. See also weenie.
unixism n.
A piece of code or a coding technique that depends on the protected
multi-tasking environment with relatively low process-spawn overhead
that exists on virtual-memory Unix systems. Common unixisms
include: gratuitous use of fork(2); the assumption that certain
undocumented but well-known features of Unix libraries such as
stdio(3) are supported elsewhere; reliance on obscure side-effects
of system calls (use of sleep(2) with a 0 argument to clue the
scheduler that you're willing to give up your time-slice, for
example); the assumption that freshly allocated memory is zeroed; and
the assumption that fragmentation problems won't arise from never
free()ing memory. Compare vaxocentrism; see also New Jersey.
unswizzle v.
See swizzle.
unwind the stack vi.
1. [techspeak] During the execution of a procedural language, one is
said to unwind the stack from a called procedure up to a caller when
one discards the stack frame and any number of frames above it,
popping back up to the level of the given caller. In C this is done
with longjmp/setjmp, in LISP or C++ with throw/catch. See also smash
the stack.
2. People can unwind the stack as well, by quickly dealing with a
bunch of problems: "Oh heck, let's do lunch. Just a second while I
unwind my stack."
unwind-protect n.
[MIT: from the name of a LISP operator] A task you must remember to
perform before you leave a place or finish a project. "I have an
unwind-protect to call my advisor."
up adj.
1. Working, in order. "The down escalator is up." Oppose down.
2. bring up: vt. To create a working version and start it. "They
brought up a down system."
3. come up vi. To become ready for production use.
upload /uhp´lohd/, v.
1. [techspeak] To transfer programs or data over a digital
communications link from a system near you (especially a smaller or
peripheral client system) to one further away from you (especially a
larger or central host system). A transfer in the other direction is,
of course, called a download
2. [speculatively] To move the essential patterns and algorithms that
make up one's mind from one's brain into a computer. Those who are
convinced that such patterns and algorithms capture the complete
essence of the self view this prospect with pleasant anticipation.
upstream adj.
[common] Towards the original author(s) or maintainer(s) of a
project. Used in connection with software that is distributed both in
its original source form and in derived, adapted versions through a
distribution (like the Debian version of Linux or one of the BSD
ports) that has component maintainers for each of their parts. When a
component maintainer receives a bug report or patch, he may choose to
retain the patch as a porting tweak to the distribution's derivative
of the project, or to pass it upstream to the project's maintainer.
The antonym downstream is rare.
upthread adv.
Earlier in the discussion (see thread), i.e., `above'. "As Joe
pointed out upthread, ..." See also followup.
uptime n.
Technically, a machine's time since last reboot; jargonically, how
long a hacker has gone without sleep. "What's your uptime?" "Oh,
about 28 hours so far, but I think I can probably do another 12."
This is, of course, a reference to the uptime command and the pride
with which most Unix types note how long their computers go without
reboots. Uptime is a testament to the stability of the OS and the
stamina of the hacker.
urchin n.
See munchkin.
URL /U·R·L/, /erl/, n.
Uniform Resource Locator, an address widget that identifies a
document or resource on the World Wide Web. This entry is here
primarily to record the fact that the term is commonly pronounced
both /erl/, and /U-R-L/ (the latter predominates in more formal
contexts).
Usenet /yoos´net/, /yooz´net/, n.
[from `Users' Network'; the original spelling was USENET, but the
mixed-case form is now widely preferred] A distributed bboard
(bulletin board) system supported mainly by Unix machines. Originally
implemented in 1979--1980 by Steve Bellovin, Jim Ellis, Tom Truscott,
and Steve Daniel at Duke University, it has swiftly grown to become
international in scope and is now probably the largest decentralized
information utility in existence. As of late 2002, it hosts over
100,000 newsgroups and an unguessably huge volume of new technical
articles, news, discussion, chatter, and flamage every day (and
that leaves out the graphics...).
By the year the Internet hit the mainstream (1994) the original UUCP
transport for Usenet was fading out of use -- almost all Usenet
connections were over Internet links. A lot of newbies and
journalists began to refer to "Internet newsgroups" as though Usenet
was and always had been just another Internet service. This ignorance
greatly annoys experienced Usenetters.
Usenet Death Penalty
[Usenet] A sanction against sites that habitually spew Usenet spam.
This can be either passive or active. A passive UDP refers to the
dropping of all postings by a particular domain so as to inhibit
propagation. An active UDP refers to third-party cancellation of all
postings by the UDPed domain. A partial UDP is one which applies only
to certain newsgroups or hierarchies in Usenet. Compare Internet
Death Penalty, with which this term is sometimes confused.
user n.
1. Someone doing `real work' with the computer, using it as a means
rather than an end. Someone who pays to use a computer. See real
user.
2. A programmer who will believe anything you tell him. One who asks
silly questions. [GLS observes: This is slightly unfair. It is true
that users ask questions (of necessity). Sometimes they are
thoughtful or deep. Very often they are annoying or downright stupid,
apparently because the user failed to think for two seconds or look
in the documentation before bothering the maintainer.] See luser.
3. Someone who uses a program from the outside, however skillfully,
without getting into the internals of the program. One who reports
bugs instead of just going ahead and fixing them.
The general theory behind this term is that there are two classes of
people who work with a program: there are implementors (hackers) and
lusers. The users are looked down on by hackers to some extent
because they don't understand the full ramifications of the system in
all its glory. (The few users who do are known as real winners.) The
term is a relative one: a skilled hacker may be a user with respect
to some program he himself does not hack. A LISP hacker might be one
who maintains LISP or one who uses LISP (but with the skill of a
hacker). A LISP user is one who uses LISP, whether skillfully or not.
Thus there is some overlap between the two terms; the subtle
distinctions must be resolved by context.
user-friendly adj.
Programmer-hostile. Generally used by hackers in a critical tone, to
describe systems that hold the user's hand so obsessively that they
make it painful for the more experienced and knowledgeable to get any
work done. See menuitis, drool-proof paper, Macintrash,
user-obsequious.
user-obsequious adj.
Emphatic form of user-friendly. Connotes a system so verbose,
inflexible, and determinedly simple-minded that it is nearly
unusable. "Design a system any fool can use and only a fool will want
to use it." See WIMP environment, Macintrash.
userland n.
Anywhere outside the kernel. "That code belongs in userland." This
term has been in common use among Unix kernel hackers since at least
1985, and may have have originated in that community. The earliest
sighting was reported from the usenet group net.unix-wizards.
Utah teapot, the
This object is historically one of the first complex 3D models to be
rendered in computer graphics. It consisted of about 110 vertices,
and was generated by Martin Newell in 1974 using hand-drawn Bezier
curves, based on a real teapot that he and his wife had bought. This
model served as a basis for comparing various 3D rendering
methodologies for lighting, textures, bump-mapping, etc. By the
standards of 2002, the model is trivial to render and thus is often
not suited to demonstrate the complexity of modern research. Despite
this, the tea pot still appears, now and then, in recent papers. More
on the teapot's history lives at The History Of The Teapot. Compare
lenna, Stanford Bunny
UTSL //, n.
[Unix] On-line acronym for `Use the Source, Luke' (a pun on Obi-Wan
Kenobi's "Use the Force, Luke!" in Star Wars) -- analogous to RTFS
(sense 1), but more polite. This is a common way of suggesting that
someone would be better off reading the source code that supports
whatever feature is causing confusion, rather than making yet another
futile pass through the manuals, or broadcasting questions on Usenet
that haven't attracted wizards to answer them.
Once upon a time in elder days, everyone running Unix had source.
After 1978, AT&T's policy tightened up, so this objurgation was in
theory appropriately directed only at associates of some outfit with
a Unix source license. In practice, bootlegs of Unix source code
(made precisely for reference purposes) were so ubiquitous that one
could utter it at almost anyone on the network without concern.
Nowadays, free Unix clones have become widely enough distributed that
anyone can read source legally. The most widely distributed is
certainly Linux, with variants of the NET/2 and 4.4BSD distributions
running second. Cheap commercial Unixes with source such as BSD/OS
are accelerating this trend.
UUOC
[from the comp.unix.shell group on Usenet] Stands for Useless Use of
cat; the reference is to the Unix command cat(1), not the feline
animal. As received wisdom on comp.unix.shell observes, "The purpose
of cat is to concatenate (or `catenate') files. If it's only one
file, concatenating it with nothing at all is a waste of time, and
costs you a process." Nevertheless one sees people doing
cat file | some_command and its args ...
instead of the equivalent and cheaper
<file some_command and its args ...
or (equivalently and more classically)
some_command and its args ... <file
Since 1995, occasional awards for UUOC have been given out, usually
by Perl luminary Randal L. Schwartz. There is a web page devoted to
this and other similar awards.
= V =
=====
V7 /V´sev´en/, n.
See Version 7.
vadding /vad´ing/, n.
[from VAD, a permutation of ADV (i.e., ADVENT), used to avoid a
particular admin's continual search-and-destroy sweeps for the
game] A leisure-time activity of certain hackers involving the covert
exploration of the `secret' parts of large buildings -- basements,
roofs, freight elevators, maintenance crawlways, steam tunnels, and
the like. A few go so far as to learn locksmithing in order to
synthesize vadding keys. The verb is to vad (compare phreaking; see
also hack, sense 9). This term dates from the late 1970s, before
which such activity was simply called `hacking'; the older usage is
still prevalent at MIT.
The most extreme and dangerous form of vadding is elevator rodeo,
a.k.a. elevator surfing, a sport played by wrasslin' down a
thousand-pound elevator car with a 3-foot piece of string, and then
exploiting this mastery in various stimulating ways (such as elevator
hopping, shaft exploration, rat-racing, and the ever-popular drop
experiments). Kids, don't try this at home!
vanilla adj.
[from the default flavor of ice cream in the U.S.] Ordinary flavor,
standard. When used of food, very often does not mean that the food
is flavored with vanilla extract! For example, vanilla wonton soup
means ordinary wonton soup, as opposed to hot-and-sour wonton soup.
Applied to hardware and software, as in "Vanilla Version 7 Unix can't
run on a vanilla 11/34." Also used to orthogonalize chip
nomenclature; for instance, a 74V00 means what TI calls a 7400, as
distinct from a 74LS00, etc. This word differs from canonical in
that the latter means `default', whereas vanilla simply means
`ordinary'. For example, when hackers go on a great-wall,
hot-and-sour soup is the canonical soup to get (because that is
what most of them usually order) even though it isn't the vanilla
(wonton) soup.
vanity domain n.
[common; from `vanity plate' as in car license plate] An Internet
domain, particularly in the .com or .org top-level domains,
apparently created for no reason other than boosting the creator's
ego.
vannevar /van'@·var/, n.
A bogus technological prediction or a foredoomed engineering concept,
esp. one that fails by implicitly assuming that technologies develop
linearly, incrementally, and in isolation from one another when in
fact the learning curve tends to be highly nonlinear, revolutions are
common, and competition is the rule. The prototype was Vannevar
Bush's prediction of `electronic brains' the size of the Empire State
Building with a Niagara-Falls-equivalent cooling system for their
tubes and relays, a prediction made at a time when the semiconductor
effect had already been demonstrated. Other famous vannevars have
included magnetic-bubble memory, LISP machines, videotex, and a
paper from the late 1970s that computed a purported ultimate limit on
areal density for ICs that was in fact less than the routine
densities of 5 years later.
vaporware /vay´pr·weir/, n.
Products announced far in advance of any release (which may or may
not actually take place).
var /veir/, /var/, n.
Short for variable. Compare arg, param.
vaston n.
[Durham, UK] The unit of `load average'. A measure of how much work a
computer is doing. A meter displaying this as a function of time is
known as a vastometer. First used during a computing practical in
December 1996.
VAX /vaks/, n.
1. [from Virtual Address eXtension] The most successful minicomputer
design in industry history, possibly excepting its immediate
ancestor, the PDP-11. Between its release in 1978 and its eclipse
by killer micros after about 1986, the VAX was probably the
hacker's favorite machine of them all, esp. after the 1982 release of
4.2 BSD Unix (see BSD). Especially noted for its large,
assembler-programmer-friendly instruction set -- an asset that became
a liability after the RISC revolution.
It is worth noting that the standard plural of VAX was `vaxen' and
that VAX system operators were sometimes referred to as `vaxherds'
2. A major brand of vacuum cleaner in Britain. Cited here because its
sales pitch, "Nothing sucks like a VAX!" became a sort of battle-cry
of RISC partisans. It is even sometimes claimed that DEC actually
entered a cross-licensing deal with the vacuum-Vax people that
allowed them to market VAX computers in the U.K. in return for not
challenging the vacuum cleaner trademark in the U.S.
A rival brand actually pioneered the slogan: its original form was
"Nothing sucks like Electrolux". It has apparently become a classic
example (used in advertising textbooks) of the perils of not knowing
the local idiom. But in 1996, the press manager of Electrolux AB,
while confirming that the company used this slogan in the late 1960s,
also tells us that their marketing people were fully aware of the
possible double entendre and intended it to gain attention.
And gain attention it did -- the VAX-vacuum-cleaner people thought
the slogan a sufficiently good idea to copy it. Several British
hackers report that VAX's promotions used it in 1986--1987, and we
have one report from a New Zealander that the infamous slogan
surfaced there in TV ads for the product in 1992.
VAXen /vak´sn/, n.
[from `oxen', perhaps influenced by `vixen'] (alt.: vaxen) The plural
canonically used among hackers for the DEC VAX computers. "Our
installation has four PDP-10s and twenty vaxen." See boxen.
vaxocentrism /vak`soh·sen´trizm/, n.
[analogy with `ethnocentrism'] A notional disease said to afflict C
programmers who persist in coding according to certain assumptions
that are valid (esp. under Unix) on VAXen but false elsewhere.
Among these are:
1. The assumption that dereferencing a null pointer is safe because
it is all bits 0, and location 0 is readable and 0. Problem: this
may instead cause an illegal-address trap on non-VAXen, and even
on VAXen under OSes other than BSD Unix. Usually this is an
implicit assumption of sloppy code (forgetting to check the
pointer before using it), rather than deliberate exploitation of
a misfeature.
2. The assumption that characters are signed.
3. The assumption that a pointer to any one type can freely be cast
into a pointer to any other type. A stronger form of this is the
assumption that all pointers are the same size and format, which
means you don't have to worry about getting the casts or types
correct in calls. Problem: this fails on word-oriented machines
or others with multiple pointer formats.
4. The assumption that the parameters of a routine are stored in
memory, on a stack, contiguously, and in strictly ascending or
descending order. Problem: this fails on many RISC architectures.
5. The assumption that pointer and integer types are the same size,
and that pointers can be stuffed into integer variables (and
vice-versa) and drawn back out without being truncated or
mangled. Problem: this fails on segmented architectures or
word-oriented machines with funny pointer formats.
6. The assumption that a data type of any size may begin at any byte
address in memory (for example, that you can freely construct and
dereference a pointer to a word- or greater-sized object at an
odd char address). Problem: this fails on many (esp. RISC)
architectures better optimized for HLL execution speed, and can
cause an illegal address fault or bus error.
7. The (related) assumption that there is no padding at the end of
types and that in an array you can thus step right from the last
byte of a previous component to the first byte of the next one.
This is not only machine- but compiler-dependent.
8. The assumption that memory address space is globally flat and
that the array reference foo[-1] is necessarily valid. Problem:
this fails at 0, or other places on segment-addressed machines
like Intel chips (yes, segmentation is universally considered a
brain-damaged way to design machines (see moby), but that is
a separate issue).
9. The assumption that objects can be arbitrarily large with no
special considerations. Problem: this fails on segmented
architectures and under non-virtual-addressing environments.
10. The assumption that the stack can be as large as memory. Problem:
this fails on segmented architectures or almost anything else
without virtual addressing and a paged stack.
11. The assumption that bits and addressable units within an object
are ordered in the same way and that this order is a constant of
nature. Problem: this fails on big-endian machines.
12. The assumption that it is meaningful to compare pointers to
different objects not located within the same array, or to
objects of different types. Problem: the former fails on
segmented architectures, the latter on word-oriented machines or
others with multiple pointer formats.
13. The assumption that an int is 32 bits, or (nearly equivalently)
the assumption that sizeof(int) == sizeof(long). Problem: this
fails on PDP-11s, 286-based systems and even on 386 and 68000
systems under some compilers (and on 64-bit systems like the
Alpha, of course).
14. The assumption that argv[] is writable. Problem: this fails in
many embedded-systems C environments and even under a few flavors
of Unix.
Note that a programmer can validly be accused of vaxocentrism even if
he or she has never seen a VAX. Some of these assumptions (esp.
2--5) were valid on the PDP-11, the original C machine, and became
endemic years before the VAX. The terms vaxocentricity and
all-the-world's-a-VAX syndrome have been used synonymously.
vdiff /vee´dif/, v.,n.
Visual diff. The operation of finding differences between two files
by eyeball search. The term optical diff has also been reported,
and is sometimes more specifically used for the act of superimposing
two nearly identical printouts on one another and holding them up to
a light to spot differences. Though this method is poor for detecting
omissions in the `rear' file, it can also be used with printouts of
graphics, a claim few if any diff programs can make. See diff.
An interesting variant of the vdiff technique usable by anyone who
has sufficient control over the parallax of their eyeballs (e.g.
those who can easily view random-dot stereograms), is to hold up two
paper printouts and go cross-eyed to superimpose them. This invokes
deep, fast, built-in image comparison wetware (the same machinery
responsible for depth perception) and differences stand out almost
immediately. This technique is good for finding edits in graphical
images, or for comparing an image with a compressed version to spot
artifacts.
veeblefester /vee´b@l·fes`tr/, n.
[from the Born Loser comix via Commodore; prob.: originally from Mad
Magazine's `Veeblefetzer' parodies beginning in #15, 1954] Any
obnoxious person engaged in the (alleged) professions of marketing or
management. Antonym of hacker. Compare suit, marketroid.
velveeta n.
[Usenet: by analogy with spam. The trade name Velveeta is attached
in the U.S. to a particularly nasty processed-cheese spread.] Also
knows as ECP; a message that is excessively cross-posted, as
opposed to spam which is too frequently posted. This term is widely
recognized but not commonly used; most people refer to both kinds of
abuse as spam. Compare jello.
Venus flytrap n.
[after the insect-eating plant] See firewall machine.
verbage /ver´b@j/, n.
A deliberate misspelling and mispronunciation of verbiage that
assimilates it to the word `garbage'. Compare content-free. More
pejorative than `verbiage'.
verbiage n.
When the context involves a software or hardware system, this refers
to documentation. This term borrows the connotations of mainstream
`verbiage' to suggest that the documentation is of marginal utility
and that the motives behind its production have little to do with the
ostensible subject.
Version 7 /vee´ se´vn/, n.
The first widely distributed version of Unix, released unsupported
by Bell Labs in 1978. The term is used adjectivally to describe Unix
features and programs that date from that release, and are thus
guaranteed to be present and portable in all Unix versions (this was
the standard gauge of portability before the POSIX and IEEE 1003
standards). Note that this usage does not derive from the release
being the "seventh version of Unix"; research Unix at Bell Labs
has traditionally been numbered according to the edition of the
associated documentation. Indeed, only the widely-distributed Sixth
and Seventh Editions are widely known as V[67]; the OS that might
today be known as `V10' is instead known in full as "Tenth Edition
Research Unix" or just "Tenth Edition" for short. For this reason,
"V7" is often read by cognoscenti as "Seventh Edition". See BSD,
Unix. Some old-timers impatient with commercialization and kernel
bloat still maintain that V7 was the Last True Unix.
vgrep /vee´grep/, v.,n.
Visual grep. The operation of finding patterns in a file optically
rather than digitally (also called an optical grep). See grep;
compare vdiff.
vi /V·I/, not, /vi:/, never, /siks/, n.
[from `Visual Interface'] A screen editor crufted together by Bill
Joy for an early BSD release. Became the de facto standard Unix
editor and a nearly undisputed hacker favorite outside of MIT until
the rise of EMACS after about 1984. Tends to frustrate new users no
end, as it will neither take commands while expecting input text nor
vice versa, and the default setup on older versions provides no
indication of which mode the editor is in (years ago, a correspondent
reported that he has often heard the editor's name pronounced /vi:l/;
there is now a vi clone named vile). Nevertheless vi (and variants
such as vim and elvis) is still widely used (about half the
respondents in a 1991 Usenet poll preferred it), and even EMACS fans
often resort to it as a mail editor and for small editing jobs
(mainly because it starts up faster than the bulkier versions of
EMACS). See holy wars.
video toaster n.
Historically, an Amiga fitted with a particular line of special video
effects hardware from NewTek -- long a popular platform at
special-effects and video production houses. More generally, any
computer system designed specifically for video production and
manipulation. Compare web toaster and see toaster.
videotex n. obs.
An electronic service offering people the privilege of paying to read
the weather on their television screens instead of having somebody
read it to them for free while they brush their teeth. The idea
bombed everywhere it wasn't government-subsidized, because by the
time videotex was practical the installed base of personal computers
could hook up to timesharing services and do the things for which
videotex might have been worthwhile better and cheaper. Videotex
planners badly overestimated both the appeal of getting information
from a computer and the cost of local intelligence at the user's end.
Like the gorilla arm effect, this has been a cautionary tale to
hackers ever since. See also vannevar.
virgin adj.
Unused; pristine; in a known initial state. "Let's bring up a virgin
system and see if it crashes again." (Esp.: useful after contracting
a virus through SEX.) Also, by extension, buffers and the like
within a program that have not yet been used.
virtual adj.
[via the technical term virtual memory, prob.: from the term virtual
image in optics]
1. Common alternative to logical; often used to refer to the
artificial objects (like addressable virtual memory larger than
physical memory) simulated by a computer system as a convenient way
to manage access to shared resources.
2. Simulated; performing the functions of something that isn't really
there. An imaginative child's doll may be a virtual playmate. Oppose
real.
virtual beer n.
Praise or thanks. Used universally in the Linux community. Originally
this term signified cash, after a famous incident in which some
Britishers who wanted to buy Linus a beer sent him money to Finland
to do so.
virtual Friday n.
(also logical Friday) The last day before an extended weekend, if
that day is not a `real' Friday. For example, the U.S. holiday
Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday. The next day is often also a
holiday or taken as an extra day off, in which case Wednesday of that
week is a virtual Friday (and Thursday is a virtual Saturday, as is
Friday). There are also virtual Mondays that are actually Tuesdays,
after the three-day weekends associated with many national holidays
in the U.S.
virtual reality n.
1. Computer simulations that use 3-D graphics and devices such as the
Dataglove to allow the user to interact with the simulation. See
cyberspace.
2. A form of network interaction incorporating aspects of
role-playing games, interactive theater, improvisational comedy, and
`true confessions' magazines. In a virtual reality forum (such as
Usenet's alt.callahans newsgroup or the MUD experiments on
Internet), interaction between the participants is written like a
shared novel complete with scenery, foreground characters that may be
personae utterly unlike the people who write them, and common
background characters manipulable by all parties. The one iron law is
that you may not write irreversible changes to a character without
the consent of the person who `owns' it. Otherwise anything goes. See
bamf, cyberspace, teledildonics.
virtual shredder n.
The jargonic equivalent of the bit bucket at shops using IBM's
VM/CMS operating system. VM/CMS officially supports a whole bestiary
of virtual card readers, virtual printers, and other phantom devices;
these are used to supply some of the same capabilities Unix gets from
pipes and I/O redirection.
virus n.
[from the obvious analogy with biological viruses, via SF] A cracker
program that searches out other programs and `infects' them by
embedding a copy of itself in them, so that they become Trojan
horses. When these programs are executed, the embedded virus is
executed too, thus propagating the `infection'. This normally happens
invisibly to the user. Unlike a worm, a virus cannot infect other
computers without assistance. It is propagated by vectors such as
humans trading programs with their friends (see SEX). The virus may
do nothing but propagate itself and then allow the program to run
normally. Usually, however, after propagating silently for a while,
it starts doing things like writing cute messages on the terminal or
playing strange tricks with the display (some viruses include nice
display hacks). Many nasty viruses, written by particularly
perversely minded crackers, do irreversible damage, like nuking all
the user's files.
In the 1990s, viruses became a serious problem, especially among
Windows users; the lack of security on these machines enables viruses
to spread easily, even infecting the operating system (Unix machines,
by contrast, are immune to such attacks). The production of special
anti-virus software has become an industry, and a number of
exaggerated media reports have caused outbreaks of near hysteria
among users; many lusers tend to blame everything that doesn't work
as they had expected on virus attacks. Accordingly, this sense of
virus has passed not only into techspeak but into also popular usage
(where it is often incorrectly used to denote a worm or even a
Trojan horse). See phage; compare back door; see also Unix
conspiracy.
visionary n.
1. One who hacks vision, in the sense of an Artificial Intelligence
researcher working on the problem of getting computers to `see'
things using TV cameras. (There isn't any problem in sending
information from a TV camera to a computer. The problem is, how can
the computer be programmed to make use of the camera information? See
SMOP, AI-complete.)
2. [IBM] One who reads the outside literature. At IBM, apparently,
such a penchant is viewed with awe and wonder.
Visual Fred n.
Pejorative hackerism for VB.NET (Visual Basic for the .NET
framework). VB.NET has been marketed by Microsoft as an updated
version of the previous Visual Basic on its .NET framework, but
VB.NET is really just C# with a slightly different syntax and fewer
libraries. Migrating existing code from Visual Basic to VB.NET is
generally impractical because VB.NET has a large number of
unnecessary incompatibilities with Visual Basic. Since VB.NET has
essentially nothing to do with Visual Basic, a well-known
ex-Microserf suggested that VB.NET should have a completely different
name -- Visual Fred. This rapidly caught on.
VMS /V·M·S/, n.
DEC's proprietary operating system for its VAX minicomputer; one
of the seven or so environments that loom largest in hacker folklore.
Many Unix fans generously concede that VMS would probably be the
hacker's favorite commercial OS if Unix didn't exist; though true,
this makes VMS fans furious. One major hacker gripe with VMS concerns
its slowness -- thus the following limerick:
There once was a system called VMS
Of cycles by no means abstemious.
It's chock-full of hacks
And runs on a VAX
And makes my poor stomach all squeamious.
-- The Great Quux
See also VAX, TOPS-10, TOPS-20, Unix, runic.
voice vt.
To phone someone, as opposed to emailing them or connecting in talk
mode. "I'm busy now; I'll voice you later."
voice-net n.
Hackish way of referring to the telephone system, analogizing it to a
digital network. Usenet sig blocks not uncommonly include the
sender's phone next to a "Voice:" or "Voice-Net:" header; common
variants of this are "Voicenet" and "V-Net". Compare paper-net,
snail-mail.
voodoo programming n.
[from George Bush Sr.'s "voodoo economics"]
1. The use by guess or cookbook of an obscure or hairy system,
feature, or algorithm that one does not truly understand. The
implication is that the technique may not work, and if it doesn't,
one will never know why. Almost synonymous with black magic, except
that black magic typically isn't documented and nobody understands
it. Compare magic, deep magic, heavy wizardry, rain dance,
cargo cult programming, wave a dead chicken, SCSI voodoo.
2. Things programmers do that they know shouldn't work but they try
anyway, and which sometimes actually work, such as recompiling
everything.
VR //, n.
On-line abbrev for virtual reality, as opposed to RL.
Vulcan nerve pinch n.
[from the old Star Trek TV series via Commodore Amiga hackers] The
keyboard combination that forces a soft-boot or jump to ROM monitor
(on machines that support such a feature). On Amigas this is
<Ctrl>-<Left-Amiga>-<Right-Amiga>; on PC clones this is Ctrl-Alt-Del;
on Suns, L1-A; on Macintoshes, it is <Cmd>-<Power switch> or
<Cmd>-<Ctrl>-<Power>! On IRIX,
<Left-Ctrl><Left-Shift><F12><Keypad-Slash>, which kills and restarts
the X server, is sometimes called a vulcan nerve pinch. Also called
three-finger salute and Vulcan death grip. At shops with a lot of
Microsoft Windows machines, this is often called the Microsoft
Maneuver because of the distressing frequency with which Microsoft's
unreliable software requires it. Compare quadruple bucky.
vulture capitalist n.
Pejorative hackerism for `venture capitalist', deriving from the
common practice of pushing contracts that deprive inventors of
control over their own innovations and most of the money they ought
to have made from them.
= W =
=====
w00t
An interjection similar to "Yay!", as in: "w00t!!! I just got a
raise!" Often used for small victories the speaker dies not expect to
be of special interest to anyone else. Some claim this is a
bastardization of "root", the highest level of access to a system
(particularly UNIX), originated by script kiddies as a 133tspeak
equivalent of "root", and said as an exclamation upon gaining root
access. Others claim it originated in the Everquest multiplayer game
as an abbreviation of "wonderful loot". Still other claim it on
originated on IRC as the "Ewok victory cheer"] Adj. w00table has the
sense of "cool" or "nifty". This is one of the few leet-speak
coinages to have crossed over into non-ironic use among hackers.
wabbit /wab´it/, n.
[almost certainly from Elmer Fudd's immortal line "You wascawwy
wabbit!"]
1. A legendary early hack reported on a System/360 at RPI and
elsewhere around 1978; this may have descended (if only by
inspiration) from a hack called RABBITS reported from 1969 on a
Burroughs 5500 at the University of Washington Computer Center. The
program would make two copies of itself every time it was run,
eventually crashing the system.
2. By extension, any hack that includes infinite self-replication but
is not a virus or worm. See fork bomb and rabbit job, see
also cookie monster.
WAITS /wayts/, n.
The mutant cousin of TOPS-10 used on a handful of systems at SAIL
up to 1990. There was never an `official' expansion of WAITS (the
name itself having been arrived at by a rather sideways process), but
it was frequently glossed as `West-coast Alternative to ITS'. Though
WAITS was less visible than ITS, there was frequent exchange of
people and ideas between the two communities, and innovations
pioneered at WAITS exerted enormous indirect influence. The early
screen modes of EMACS, for example, were directly inspired by
WAITS's `E' editor -- one of a family of editors that were the first
to do `real-time editing', in which the editing commands were
invisible and where one typed text at the point of
insertion/overwriting. The modern style of multi-region windowing is
said to have originated there, and WAITS alumni at XEROX PARC and
elsewhere played major roles in the developments that led to the
XEROX Star, the Macintosh, and the Sun workstations. Also invented
there were bucky bits -- thus, the ALT key on every IBM PC is a
WAITS legacy. One WAITS feature very notable in pre-Web days was a
news-wire interface that allowed WAITS hackers to read, store, and
filter AP and UPI dispatches from their terminals; the system also
featured a still-unusual level of support for what is now called
multimedia computing, allowing analog audio and video signals to be
switched to programming terminals.
waldo /wol´doh/, n.
[From Robert A. Heinlein's story Waldo]
1. A mechanical agent, such as a gripper arm, controlled by a human
limb. When these were developed for the nuclear industry in the
mid-1940s they were named after the invention described by Heinlein
in the story, which he wrote in 1942. Now known by the more generic
term telefactoring, this technology is of intense interest to NASA
for tasks like space station maintenance.
2. At Harvard (particularly by Tom Cheatham and students), this is
used instead of foobar as a metasyntactic variable and general
nonsense word. See foo, bar, foobar, quux.
walk n.,vt.
Traversal of a data structure, especially an array or linked-list
data structure in core. See also codewalker, silly walk,
clobber.
walk off the end of vt.
To run past the end of an array, list, or medium after stepping
through it -- a good way to land in trouble. Often the result of an
off-by-one error. Compare clobber, roach, smash the stack.
walking drives n.
An occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk drives back in the days
when they were huge, clunky washing machines. Those old dinosaur
parts carried terrific angular momentum; the combination of a
misaligned spindle or worn bearings and stick-slip interactions with
the floor could cause them to `walk' across a room, lurching
alternate corners forward a couple of millimeters at a time. There is
a legend about a drive that walked over to the only door to the
computer room and jammed it shut; the staff had to cut a hole in the
wall in order to get at it! Walking could also be induced by certain
patterns of drive access (a fast seek across the whole width of the
disk, followed by a slow seek in the other direction). Some bands of
old-time hackers figured out how to induce disk-accessing patterns
that would do this to particular drive models and held disk-drive
races.
wall interj.
[WPI]
1. An indication of confusion, usually spoken with a quizzical tone:
"Wall??"
2. A request for further explication. Compare octal forty.
3. [Unix, from `write all'] v. To send a message to everyone
currently logged in, esp. with the wall(8) utility.
It is said that sense 1 came from the idiom `like talking to a blank
wall'. It was originally used in situations where, after you had
carefully answered a question, the questioner stared at you blankly,
clearly having understood nothing that was explained. You would then
throw out a "Hello, wall?" to elicit some sort of response from the
questioner. Later, confused questioners began voicing "Wall?"
themselves.
wall follower n.
A person or algorithm that compensates for lack of sophistication or
native stupidity by efficiently following some simple procedure shown
to have been effective in the past. Used of an algorithm, this is not
necessarily pejorative; it recalls `Harvey Wallbanger', the winning
robot in an early AI contest (named, of course, after the cocktail).
Harvey successfully solved mazes by keeping a `finger' on one wall
and running till it came out the other end. This was inelegant, but
it was mathematically guaranteed to work on simply-connected mazes --
and, in fact, Harvey outperformed more sophisticated robots that
tried to `learn' each maze by building an internal representation of
it. Used of humans, the term is pejorative and implies an uncreative,
bureaucratic, by-the-book mentality. See also code grinder; compare
droid.
wall time n.
(also wall clock time)
1. `Real world' time (what the clock on the wall shows), as opposed
to the system clock's idea of time.
2. The real running time of a program, as opposed to the number of
ticks required to execute it (on a timesharing system these always
differ, as no one program gets all the ticks, and on multiprocessor
systems with good thread support one may get more processor time than
real time).
wall wart n.
A small power-supply brick with integral male plug, designed to plug
directly into a wall outlet; called a `wart' because when installed
on a power strip it tends to block up at least one more socket than
it uses. These are frequently associated with modems and other small
electronic devices which would become unacceptably bulky or hot if
they had power supplies on board (there are other reasons as well
having to do with the cost of UL certification).
wallhack
A form of game cheat especially associated with first-person shooters
like Quake, in which the walls in the simulated maze or dungeon are
rendered transparent to the cheater. This gives the cheater normally
hidden information about the whereabouts of other players. Beyond
gaming, a wallhack is the paradigm case of a whole class of security
problems that stem from the fact that a server cannot trust client
software, and server authors must assume that all computation farmed
out to a client is exposed to and can be interfered with by the user.
wango /wang´goh/, n.
Random bit-level grovelling going on in a system during some
unspecified operation. Often used in combination with mumble. For
example: "You start with the `.o' file, run it through this
postprocessor that does mumble-wango -- and it comes out a snazzy
object-oriented executable."
wank /wangk/, n.,v.,adj.
[Columbia University: prob.: by mutation from Commonwealth slang v.
wank, to masturbate] Used much as hack is elsewhere, as a noun
denoting a clever technique or person or the result of such
cleverness. May describe (negatively) the act of hacking for
hacking's sake ("Quit wanking, let's go get supper!") or (more
positively) a wizard. Adj. wanky describes something particularly
clever (a person, program, or algorithm). Conversations can also get
wanky when there are too many wanks involved. This excess wankiness
is signalled by an overload of the wankometer (compare bogometer).
When the wankometer overloads, the conversation's subject must be
changed, or all non-wanks will leave. Compare neep-neeping (under
neep-neep). Usage: U.S. only. In Britain and the Commonwealth this
word is extremely rude and is best avoided unless one intends to give
offense. Adjectival wanky is less offensive and simply means `stupid'
or `broken' (this is mainstream in Great Britain).
wannabee /won'@·bee/, n.
(also, more plausibly, spelled wannabe) [from a term recently used to
describe Madonna fans who dress, talk, and act like their idol;
prob.: originally from biker slang] A would-be hacker. The
connotations of this term differ sharply depending on the age and
exposure of the subject. Used of a person who is in or might be
entering larval stage, it is semi-approving; such wannabees can be
annoying but most hackers remember that they, too, were once such
creatures. When used of any professional programmer, CS academic,
writer, or suit, it is derogatory, implying that said person is
trying to cuddle up to the hacker mystique but doesn't,
fundamentally, have a prayer of understanding what it is all about.
Overuse of terms from this lexicon is often an indication of the
wannabee nature. Compare newbie.
Historical note: The wannabee phenomenon has a slightly different
flavor now (1993) than it did ten or fifteen years ago. When the
people who are now hackerdom's tribal elders were in larval stage,
the process of becoming a hacker was largely unconscious and
unaffected by models known in popular culture -- communities formed
spontaneously around people who, as individuals, felt irresistibly
drawn to do hackerly things, and what wannabees experienced was a
fairly pure, skill-focused desire to become similarly wizardly. Those
days of innocence are gone forever; society's adaptation to the
advent of the microcomputer after 1980 included the elevation of the
hacker as a new kind of folk hero, and the result is that some people
semi-consciously set out to be hackers and borrow hackish prestige by
fitting the popular image of hackers. Fortunately, to do this really
well, one has to actually become a wizard. Nevertheless, old-time
hackers tend to share a poorly articulated disquiet about the change;
among other things, it gives them mixed feelings about the effects of
public compendia of lore like this one.
war dialer n.
[originally from `wargames dialer', a reference to the movie War
Games] A cracking tool, a program that calls a given list or range of
phone numbers and records those which answer with handshake tones
(and so might be entry points to computer or telecommunications
systems). Some of these programs have become quite sophisticated, and
can now detect modem, fax, or PBX tones and log each one separately.
The war dialer is one of the most important tools in the phreaker's
kit. These programs evolved from early demon dialers.
war-driving
[play on war dialer; also as single word wardriving] Driving around
looking for unsecured wireless Internet access points to connect to.
More at the War Driving home page. Compare war-chalking.
war-chalking
[play on war-driving; the first syllable has since been
reinterpreted as an acronym for "wireless access revolution"] The
practice of using chalk marks similar to hobo signs to indicate the
nearby presence of a wireless Internet access point, a boon to
strolling hackers with laptops. The concept was first floated in
early 2002 and was instantly seized upon with cries of glee by
hackers all over the portions of the world urbanized enough to have
sidewalks and access points. The process rather recalls the explosive
spread of heraldry in the medieval Europe of the 1120s. There is a
site that explains the symbology;.
-ware suff.
[from `software'] Commonly used to form jargon terms for classes of
software. For examples, see annoyware, careware, crippleware,
crudware, freeware, fritterware, guiltware, liveware,
meatware, payware, psychedelicware, shareware, shelfware,
vaporware, wetware, spyware, adware.
warez /weirz/, n.
Widely used in cracker subcultures to denote cracked version of
commercial software, that is versions from which copy-protection has
been stripped. Hackers recognize this term but don't use it
themselves. See warez d00dz, courier, leech, elite.
warez d00dz /weirz doodz/, n.
A substantial subculture of crackers refer to themselves as warez
d00dz; there is evidently some connection with B1FF here. As `Ozone
Pilot', one former warez d00d, wrote:
Warez d00dz get illegal copies of copyrighted software. If it has
copy protection on it, they break the protection so the software
can be copied. Then they distribute it around the world via
several gateways. Warez d00dz form badass group names like RAZOR
and the like. They put up boards that distribute the latest ware,
or pirate program. The whole point of the Warez sub-culture is to
get the pirate program released and distributed before any other
group. I know, I know. But don't ask, and it won't hurt as much.
This is how they prove their poweress [sic]. It gives them the
right to say, "I released King's Quest IVXIX before you so
obviously my testicles are larger." Again don't ask...
The studly thing to do if one is a warez d00d, it appears, is emit
0-day warez, that is copies of commercial software copied and cracked
on the same day as its retail release. Warez d00ds also hoard
software in a big way, collecting untold megabytes of arcade-style
games, pornographic JPGs, and applications they'll never use onto
their hard disks. As Ozone Pilot acutely observes:
[BELONG] is the only word you will need to know. Warez d00dz want
to belong. They have been shunned by everyone, and thus turn to
cyberspace for acceptance. That is why they always start groups
like TGW, FLT, USA and the like. Structure makes them happy. [...]
Warez d00dz will never have a handle like "Pink Daisy" because
warez d00dz are insecure. Only someone who is very secure with a
good dose of self-esteem can stand up to the cries of fag and
girlie-man. More likely you will find warez d00dz with handles
like: Doctor Death, Deranged Lunatic, Hellraiser, Mad Prince,
Dreamdevil, The Unknown, Renegade Chemist, Terminator, and Twin
Turbo. They like to sound badass when they can hide behind their
terminals. More likely, if you were given a sample of 100 people,
the person whose handle is Hellraiser is the last person you'd
associate with the name.
The contrast with Internet hackers is stark and instructive. See
cracker, wannabee, handle, elite, courier, leech; compare
weenie, spod.
warez kiddies n.
Even more derogatory way of referring to warez d00dz; refers to the
fact that most warez d00dz are around the age of puberty. Compare
script kiddies.
warlording v.
[from the Usenet group alt.fan.warlord] The act of excoriating a
bloated, ugly, or derivative sig block. Common grounds for
warlording include the presence of a signature rendered in a BUAF,
over-used or cliched sig quotes, ugly ASCII art, or simply
excessive size. The original `Warlord' was a B1FF-like newbie
c.1991 who featured in his sig a particularly large and obnoxious
ASCII graphic resembling the sword of Conan the Barbarian in the 1981
John Milius movie; the group name alt.fan.warlord was sarcasm, and
the characteristic mode of warlording is devastatingly sarcastic
praise. See also McQuary limit.
warm boot n.
See boot.
wart n.
A small, crocky feature that sticks out of an otherwise clean
design. Something conspicuous for localized ugliness, especially a
special-case exception to a general rule. For example, in some
versions of csh(1), single quotes literalize every character inside
them except !. In ANSI C, the ?? syntax used for obtaining ASCII
characters in a foreign environment is a wart. See also miswart.
washing machine n.
1. Old-style 14-inch hard disks in floor-standing cabinets. So called
because of the size of the cabinet and the `top-loading' access to
the media packs -- and, of course, they were always set on `spin
cycle'. The washing-machine idiom transcends language barriers; it is
even used in Russian hacker jargon. See also walking drives. The
thick channel cables connecting these were called bit hoses (see
hose, sense 3).
[76-02-14.png]
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 76-02-20:2. The previous
cartoon was 75-10-04.)
2. [CMU] A machine used exclusively for washing software. CMU has
clusters of these.
washing software n.
The process of recompiling a software distribution (used more often
when the recompilation is occuring from scratch) to pick up and merge
together all of the various changes that have been made to the
source.
water MIPS n.
(see MIPS, sense 2) Large, water-cooled machines of either today's
ECL-supercomputer flavor or yesterday's traditional mainframe type.
[74-08-18.png]
A really unusual kind of water MIPS.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 74-12-25. The previous
cartoon was 73-10-31.)
wave a dead chicken v.
To perform a ritual in the direction of crashed software or hardware
that one believes to be futile but is nevertheless necessary so that
others are satisfied that an appropriate degree of effort has been
expended. "I'll wave a dead chicken over the source code, but I
really think we've run into an OS bug." Compare voodoo programming,
rain dance; see also casting the runes.
weasel n.
[Cambridge] A naive user, one who deliberately or accidentally does
things that are stupid or ill-advised. Roughly synonymous with
loser.
web pointer n.
A World Wide Web URL. See also hotlink, which has slightly
different connotations.
web ring n.
Two or more web sites connected by prominent links between sites
sharing a common interest or theme. Usually such cliques have the
topology of a ring, in order to make it easy for visitors to navigate
through all of them.
web toaster n.
A small specialized computer, shipped with no monitor or keyboard or
any other external peripherals, pre-configured to be controlled
through an Ethernet port and function as a WWW server. Products of
this kind (for example the Cobalt Qube) are often about the size of a
toaster. See toaster; compare video toaster.
webify n.
To put a piece of (possibly already existing) material on the WWW.
Frequently used for papers ("Why don't you webify all your
publications?") or for demos ("They webified their 6.866 final
project"). This term seems to have been (rather logically)
independently invented multiple times in the early 1990s.
webmaster n.
[WWW: from postmaster] The person at a site providing World Wide
Web information who is responsible for maintaining the public pages
and keeping the Web server running and properly configured.
wedged adj.
1. To be stuck, incapable of proceeding without help. This is
different from having crashed. If the system has crashed, it has
become totally non-functioning. If the system is wedged, it is trying
to do something but cannot make progress; it may be capable of doing
a few things, but not be fully operational. For example, a process
may become wedged if it deadlocks with another (but not all
instances of wedging are deadlocks). See also gronk, locked up,
hosed, hung (wedged is more severe than hung).
2. Often refers to humans suffering misconceptions. "He's totally
wedged -- he's convinced that he can levitate through meditation."
3. [Unix] Specifically used to describe the state of a TTY left in a
losing state by abort of a screen-oriented program or one that has
messed with the line discipline in some obscure way.
There is some dispute over the origin of this term. It is usually
thought to derive from a common description of recto-cranial
inversion; however, it may actually have originated with older
`hot-press' printing technology in which physical type elements were
locked into type frames with wedges driven in by mallets. Once this
had been done, no changes in the typesetting for that page could be
made.
wedgie n.
[Fairchild] A bug. Prob. related to wedged.
wedgitude /wedj´i·t[y]ood/, n.
The quality or state of being wedged.
weeble /weeb´l/, interj.
[Cambridge] Used to denote frustration, usually at amazing stupidity.
"I stuck the disk in upside down." "Weeble....".
weeds n.
1. Refers to development projects or algorithms that have no possible
relevance or practical application. Comes from `off in the weeds'.
Used in phrases like "lexical analysis for microcode is serious
weeds...."
2. At CDC/ETA before its demise, the phrase go off in the weeds was
equivalent mainstream hackerdom's jump off into never-never land.
weenie n.
1. [on BBSes] Any of a species of luser resembling a less amusing
version of B1FF that infests many BBS systems. The typical weenie
is a teenage boy with poor social skills travelling under a grandiose
handle derived from fantasy or heavy-metal rock lyrics. Among
sysops, the weenie problem refers to the marginally literate and
profanity-laden flamage weenies tend to spew all over a
newly-discovered BBS. Compare spod, geek, terminal junkie,
warez d00dz.
2. [among hackers] When used with a qualifier (for example, as in
Unix weenie, VMS weenie, IBM weenie) this can be either an insult
or a term of praise, depending on context, tone of voice, and whether
or not it is applied by a person who considers him or herself to be
the same sort of weenie. Implies that the weenie has put a major
investment of time, effort, and concentration into the area
indicated; whether this is good or bad depends on the hearer's
judgment of how the speaker feels about that area. See also bigot.
3. The semicolon character, ; (ASCII 0111011).
Weenix /wee´niks/, n.
1. [ITS] A derogatory term for Unix, derived from Unix weenie.
According to one noted ex-ITSer, it is "the operating system
preferred by Unix Weenies: typified by poor modularity, poor
reliability, hard file deletion, no file version numbers, case
sensitivity everywhere, and users who believe that these are all
advantages". (Some ITS fans behave as though they believe Unix stole
a future that rightfully belonged to them. See ITS, sense 2.)
2. [Brown University] A Unix-like OS developed for tutorial purposes
at Brown University. See
http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs167/weenix.html. Named
independently of the ITS usage.
well-behaved adj.
1. Software that does its job quietly and without counterintuitive
effects. Esp.: said of software having an interface spec sufficiently
simple and well-defined that it can be used as a tool by other
software. See cat.
2. Said of an algorithm that doesn't crash or blow up, even when
given pathological input. Implies that the stability of the
algorithm is intrinsic, which makes this somewhat different from
bulletproof.
well-connected adj.
Said of a computer installation, asserts that it has reliable email
links with the network and/or that it relays a large fraction of
available Usenet newsgroups. Well-known can be almost synonymous,
but also implies that the site's name is familiar to many (due
perhaps to an archive service or active Usenet users).
wetware /wet´weir/, n.
[prob.: from the novels of Rudy Rucker]
1. The human nervous system, as opposed to computer hardware or
software. "Wetware has 7 plus or minus 2 temporary registers."
2. Human beings (programmers, operators, administrators) attached to
a computer system, as opposed to the system's hardware or software.
See liveware, meatware.
whack v.
According to arch-hacker James Gosling (designer of NeWS, GOSMACS
and Java), to "...modify a program with no idea whatsoever how it
works." (See whacker.) It is actually possible to do this in
nontrivial circumstances if the change is small and well-defined and
you are very good at glarking things from context. As a trivial
example, it is relatively easy to change all stderr writes to stdout
writes in a piece of C filter code which remains otherwise
mysterious.
whack-a-mole n.
[from the carnival game which involves quickly and repeatedly hitting
the heads of mechanical moles with a mallet as they pop up from their
holes.]
1. The practice of repeatedly causing spammers' throwaway accounts
and drop boxes to be terminated.
2. After sense 1 became established in the mid-1990s the term passed
into more generalized use, and now is commonly found in such
combinations as whack-a-mole windows; the obnoxious pop-up
advertisement windows spawned in flocks when you surf to sites like
Angelfire or Lycos.
whacker n.
[University of Maryland: from hacker]
1. A person, similar to a hacker, who enjoys exploring the details
of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities.
Whereas a hacker tends to produce great hacks, a whacker only ends up
whacking the system or program in question. Whackers are often quite
egotistical and eager to claim wizard status, regardless of the
views of their peers.
2. A person who is good at programming quickly, though rather poorly
and ineptly.
whales n.
See like kicking dead whales down the beach.
What's a spline?
[XEROX PARC] This phrase expands to: "You have just used a term that
I've heard for a year and a half, and I feel I should know, but
don't. My curiosity has finally overcome my guilt." The PARC lexicon
adds "Moral: don't hesitate to ask questions, even if they seem
obvious."
wheel n.
[from slang `big wheel' for a powerful person] A person who has an
active wheel bit. "We need to find a wheel to unwedge the hung tape
drives." (See wedged, sense 1.) The traditional name of security
group zero in BSD (to which the major system-internal users like
root belong) is `wheel'. Some vendors have expanded on this usage,
modifying Unix so that only members of group `wheel' can go root.
wheel bit n.
A privilege bit that allows the possessor to perform some restricted
operation on a timesharing system, such as read or write any file on
the system regardless of protections, change or look at any address
in the running monitor, crash or reload the system, and kill or
create jobs and user accounts. The term was invented on the TENEX
operating system, and carried over to TOPS-20, XEROX-IFS, and others.
The state of being in a privileged logon is sometimes called wheel
mode. This term entered the Unix culture from TWENEX in the mid-1980s
and has been gaining popularity there (esp. at university sites). See
also root.
wheel of reincarnation
[coined in a paper by T.H. Myer and I.E. Sutherland On the Design of
Display Processors, Comm. ACM, Vol. 11, no. 6, June 1968)] 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. See also blitter.
wheel wars n.
[Stanford University] A period in larval stage during which student
hackers hassle each other by attempting to log each other out of the
system, delete each other's files, and otherwise wreak havoc, usually
at the expense of the lesser users.
white hat
See black hat.
whitelist n.
The opposite of a blacklist. That is, instead of being an explicit
list of people who are banned, it's an explicit list of people who
are to be admitted. Hackers use this especially of lists of email
addresses that are explicitly enabled to get past strict anti-spam
filters.
whizzy adj.
(alt.: wizzy) [Sun] Describes a cuspy program; one that is
feature-rich and well presented.
Whorfian mind-lock
[from the Lojban-language list] Software designs are often restricted
in unavoidable ways by the capacities of the operating system or
hardware they have to work with. Sometimes they are restricted in
avoidable ways by mental habits a developer has picked up from a
particular language or environment (perhaps a now-obsolete one) and
never discarded. When a design develops complications that are the
result of a mental habit that is no longer adaptive, the developer
has succumbed to Whorfian mind-lock. The design itself has been
`whorfed'.
For example, some Unix designs are whorfed by the assumption that
directory searches are linear and expensive for large directories;
therefore directories must be kept small. Another common way to
succumb to Whorfian mind-lock is to do serial processing with a small
working set rather than slurping an entire file or data structure
into memory; the hidden assumption here is that not much core is
available and virtual memory works poorly if at all. Detecting
Whorfian mind-lock is important, because it tends to introduce
unnecessary complexity and bugs.
wibble
[UK, perh. originally from the first Roger Irrelevant strip in VIZ
comics, spread via Your Sinclair magazine in the 1980s and early
1990s]
1. n.,v. Commonly used to describe chatter, content-free remarks or
other essentially meaningless contributions to threads in newsgroups.
"Oh, rspence is wibbling again".
2. [UK IRC] An explicit on-line no-op.
3. One of the preferred metasyntactic variables in the UK, forming
a series with wobble, wubble, and flob (attributed to the hilarious
historical comedy Blackadder).
4. A pronunciation of the letters "www", as seen in URLs; i.e.,
www.foo.com may be pronounced "wibble dot foo dot com" (compare
dub dub dub).
WIBNI //, n.
[Bell Labs: Wouldn't It Be Nice If] What most requirements documents
and specifications consist entirely of. Compare IWBNI.
widget n.
1. A meta-thing. Used to stand for a real object in didactic examples
(especially database tutorials). Legend has it that the original
widgets were holders for buggy whips. "But suppose the parts list for
a widget has 52 entries...."
2. [poss.: evoking `window gadget'] A user interface object in X
graphical user interfaces.
wiggles n.
[scientific computation] In solving partial differential equations by
finite difference and similar methods, wiggles are sawtooth
(up-down-up-down) oscillations at the shortest wavelength
representable on the grid. If an algorithm is unstable, this is often
the most unstable waveform, so it grows to dominate the solution.
Alternatively, stable (though inaccurate) wiggles can be generated
near a discontinuity by a Gibbs phenomenon.
wild side
The public or uncontrolled side of a firewall machine.
WIMP environment n.
[acronym: `Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing device (or Pull-down menu)']
A graphical-user-interface environment such as X or the Macintosh
interface, esp. as described by a hacker who prefers command-line
interfaces for their superior flexibility and extensibility. However,
it is also used without negative connotations; one must pay attention
to voice tone and other signals to interpret correctly. See
menuitis, user-obsequious.
win
[MIT; now common everywhere]
1. vi. To succeed. A program wins if no unexpected conditions arise,
or (especially) if it is sufficiently robust to take exceptions in
stride.
2. n. Success, or a specific instance thereof. A pleasing outcome.
"So it turned out I could use a lexer generator instead of
hand-coding my own pattern recognizer. What a win!" Emphatic forms:
moby win, super win, hyper-win (often used interjectively as a
reply). For some reason suitable win is also common at MIT, usually
in reference to a satisfactory solution to a problem. Oppose lose;
see also big win, which isn't quite just an intensification of win.
win big vi.
To experience serendipity. "I went shopping and won big; there was a
2-for-1 sale." See big win.
win win excl.
Expresses pleasure at a win.
Winchester n.
Informal generic term for sealed-enclosure magnetic-disk drives in
which the read-write head planes over the disk surface on an air
cushion. There is a legend that the name arose because the original
1973 engineering prototype for what later became the IBM 3340
featured two 30-megabyte volumes; 30--30 became `Winchester' when
somebody noticed the similarity to the common term for a famous
Winchester rifle (in the latter, the first 30 referred to caliber and
the second to the grain weight of the charge). (It is sometimes
incorrectly claimed that Winchester was the laboratory in which the
technology was developed.)
windoid n.
In the Macintosh world, a style of window with much less adornment
(smaller or missing title bar, zoom box, etc.) than a standard
window.
window shopping n.
[US Geological Survey] Among users of WIMP environments like X or
the Macintosh, extended experimentation with new window colors,
fonts, and icon shapes. This activity can take up hours of what might
otherwise have been productive working time. "I spent the afternoon
window shopping until I found the coolest shade of green for my
active window borders -- now they perfectly match my medium slate
blue background." Serious window shoppers will spend their days with
bitmap editors, creating new and different icons and background
patterns for all to see. Also: window dressing, the act of applying
new fonts, colors, etc. See fritterware, compare macdink.
Windowsitis
1. As a disease of people: the tendency of inexperienced (or
Windows-experienced) Web developers have to use backslashes in URLs,
rather than the correct forward slashes.
2. As a disease of programs: to be a rigid, clunky, bug-prone
monstrosity, all glossy surface with a hollow interior.
Windoze /win´dohz/, n.
See Microsloth Windows. (Also Losedoze.)
winged comments n.
Comments set on the same line as code, as opposed to boxed
comments. In C, for example:
d = sqrt(x*x + y*y); /* distance from origin */
Generally these refer only to the action(s) taken on that line.
[74-12-29.png]
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 75-10-04. The previous
cartoon was 74-12-25.)
winkey n.
(alt.: winkey face) See emoticon.
winnage /win'@j/, n.
The situation when a lossage is corrected, or when something is
winning.
winner
1. n. An unexpectedly good situation, program, programmer, or person.
2. real winner: Often sarcastic, but also used as high praise (see
also the note under user). "He's a real winner -- never reports a
bug till he can duplicate it and send in an example."
winnitude /win'@·t[y]ood/, n.
The quality of winning (as opposed to winnage, which is the result
of winning). "Guess what? They tweaked the microcode and now the LISP
interpreter runs twice as fast as it used to." "That's really great!
Boy, what winnitude!" "Yup. I'll probably get a half-hour's winnage
on the next run of my program." Perhaps curiously, the obvious
antonym `lossitude' is rare.
Wintel n.
Microsoft Windows plus Intel -- the tacit alliance that dominated
desktop computing in the 1990s. After 1999 it began to break up under
pressure from Linux; see Lintel.
Wintendo /win·ten´doh/, n.
[Play on "Nintendo"] A PC running the Windows operating system kept
primarily for the purpose of viewing multimedia and playing games.
The implication is that the speaker uses a Linux or *BSD box for
everything else.
wired n.
See hardwired.
wirehead /wi:r´hed/, n.
[prob.: from SF slang for an electrical-brain-stimulation addict]
1. A hardware hacker, especially one who concentrates on
communications hardware.
2. An expert in local-area networks. A wirehead can be a network
software wizard too, but will always have the ability to deal with
network hardware, down to the smallest component. Wireheads are known
for their ability to lash up an Ethernet terminator from spare
resistors, for example.
wirewater n.
Syn. programming fluid. This melds the mainstream slang adjective
`wired' (stimulated, up, hyperactive) with `firewater'; however, it
refers to caffeinacious rather than alcoholic beverages.
wish list n.
A list of desired features or bug fixes that probably won't get done
for a long time, usually because the person responsible for the code
is too busy or can't think of a clean way to do it. "OK, I'll add
automatic filename completion to the wish list for the new
interface." Compare tick-list features.
within delta of adj.
See delta.
within epsilon of adj.
See epsilon.
wizard n.
1. Transitively, a person who knows how a complex piece of software
or hardware works (that is, who groks it); esp. someone who can
find and fix bugs quickly in an emergency. Someone is a hacker if
he or she has general hacking ability, but is a wizard with respect
to something only if he or she has specific detailed knowledge of
that thing. A good hacker could become a wizard for something given
the time to study it.
2. The term `wizard' is also used intransitively of someone who has
extremely high-level hacking or problem-solving ability.
3. A person who is permitted to do things forbidden to ordinary
people; one who has wheel privileges on a system.
4. A Unix expert, esp. a Unix systems programmer. This usage is well
enough established that `Unix Wizard' is a recognized job title at
some corporations and to most headhunters.
See guru, lord high fixer. See also deep magic, heavy
wizardry, incantation, magic, mutter, rain dance, voodoo
programming, wave a dead chicken.
Wizard Book n.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (Hal Abelson, Jerry
Sussman and Julie Sussman; MIT Press, 1984, 1996; ISBN
0-262-01153-0), an excellent computer science text used in
introductory courses at MIT. So called because of the wizard on the
jacket. One of the bibles of the LISP/Scheme world. Also, less
commonly, known as the Purple Book. Now available on the
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
wizard hat n.
[also, after Terry Pratchett, pointy hat] Notional headgear worn by
whoever is the wizard in a particular context. The implication is
that it's a transferable role. "Talk to Alice, she's wearing the
TCP/IP wizard hat while Bob is on vacation." This metaphor is
sufficiently live that one may actually see hackers miming the act of
putting on, taking off, or transferring a phantom hat. See also
pointy hat, compare patch pumpkin.
wizard mode n.
[from rogue] A special access mode of a program or system, usually
passworded, that permits some users godlike privileges. Generally not
used for operating systems themselves (root mode or wheel mode would
be used instead). This term is often used with respect to games that
have editable state.
wizardly adj.
Pertaining to wizards. A wizardly feature is one that only a wizard
could understand or use properly.
wok-on-the-wall n.
A small microwave dish antenna used for cross-campus private network
circuits, from the obvious resemblance between a microwave dish and
the Chinese culinary utensil.
womb box n.
1. [TMRC] Storage space for equipment.
2. [proposed] A variety of hard-shell equipment case with heavy
interior padding and/or shaped carrier cutouts in a foam-rubber
matrix; mundanely called a flight case. Used for delicate test
equipment, electronics, and musical instruments.
WOMBAT /wom´bat/, adj.
[acronym: Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time] Applied to problems which
are both profoundly uninteresting in themselves and unlikely to
benefit anyone interesting even if solved. Often used in fanciful
constructions such as wrestling with a wombat. See also crawling
horror, SMOP. Also note the rather different usage as a
metasyntactic variable in Commonwealth Hackish.
Users of the PDP-11 database program DATATRIEVE adopted the wombat
as their notional mascot; the program's help file responded to "HELP
WOMBAT" with factual information about Real World wombats.
womble n.
[Unisys UK: from British puppet-show characters] A user who has great
difficulty in communicating their requirements and/or in using the
resulting software. Extreme case of luser. An especially senior or
high-ranking womble is referred to as Great-Uncle Bulgaria. Compare
Aunt Tillie.
wonky /wong´kee/, adj.
[from Australian slang] Yet another approximate synonym for broken.
Specifically connotes a malfunction that produces behavior seen as
crazy, humorous, or amusingly perverse. "That was the day the
printer's font logic went wonky and everybody's listings came out in
Tengwar." Also in wonked out. See funky, demented, bozotic.
workaround n.
1. A temporary kluge used to bypass, mask, or otherwise avoid a
bug or misfeature in some system. Theoretically, workarounds are
always replaced by fixes; in practice, customers often find
themselves living with workarounds for long periods of time. "The
code died on NUL characters in the input, so I fixed it to interpret
them as spaces." "That's not a fix, that's a workaround!"
2. A procedure to be employed by the user in order to do what some
currently non-working feature should do. Hypothetical example: "Using
META-F7 crashes the 4.43 build of Weemax, but as a workaround you
can type CTRL-R, then SHIFT-F5, and delete the remaining cruft by
hand."
working as designed adj.
[IBM]
1. In conformance to a wrong or inappropriate specification; useful,
but misdesigned.
2. Frequently used as a sardonic comment on a program's utility.
3. Unfortunately also used as a bogus reason for not accepting a
criticism or suggestion. At IBM, this sense is used in official
documents! See BAD.
worm n.
[from tapeworm in John Brunner's novel The Shockwave Rider, via XEROX
PARC] A program that propagates itself over a network, reproducing
itself as it goes. Compare virus. Nowadays the term has negative
connotations, as it is assumed that only crackers write worms.
Perhaps the best-known example was Robert T. Morris's Great Worm of
1988, a `benign' one that got out of control and hogged hundreds of
Suns and VAXen across the U.S. See also cracker, RTM, Trojan
horse, ice.
wormhole /werm´hohl/, n.
[from the wormhole singularities hypothesized in some versions of
General Relativity theory]
1. [n.,obs.] A location in a monitor which contains the address of a
routine, with the specific intent of making it easy to substitute a
different routine. This term is now obsolescent; modern operating
systems use clusters of wormholes extensively (for modularization of
I/O handling in particular, as in the Unix device-driver
organization) but the preferred techspeak for these clusters is
`device tables', `jump tables' or `capability tables'.
2. [Amateur Packet Radio] A network path using a commercial satellite
link to join two or more amateur VHF networks. So called because
traffic routed through a wormhole leaves and re-enters the amateur
network over great distances with usually little clue in the message
routing header as to how it got from one relay to the other. Compare
gopher hole (sense 2).
wound around the axle adj.
In an infinite loop. Often used by older computer types.
wrap around vi.
(also n. wraparound and v. shorthand wrap)
1. [techspeak] The action of a counter that starts over at zero or at
minus infinity (see infinity) after its maximum value has been
reached, and continues incrementing, either because it is programmed
to do so or because of an overflow (as when a car's odometer starts
over at 0).
2. To change phase gradually and continuously by maintaining a
steady wake-sleep cycle somewhat longer than 24 hours, e.g., living
six long (28-hour) days in a week (or, equivalently, sleeping at the
rate of 10 microhertz). This sense is also called phase-wrapping.
write-only code n.
[a play on read-only memory] Code so arcane, complex, or
ill-structured that it cannot be modified or even comprehended by
anyone but its author, and possibly not even by him/her. A Bad
Thing.
write-only language n.
A language with syntax (or semantics) sufficiently dense and bizarre
that any routine of significant size is automatically write-only
code. A sobriquet applied occasionally to C and often to APL, though
INTERCAL and TECO certainly deserve it more. See also Befunge.
write-only memory n.
The obvious antonym to read-only memory. Out of frustration with the
long and seemingly useless chain of approvals required of component
specifications, during which no actual checking seemed to occur, an
engineer at Signetics once created a specification for a write-only
memory and included it with a bunch of other specifications to be
approved. This inclusion came to the attention of Signetics
management only when regular customers started calling and asking
for pricing information. Signetics published a corrected edition of
the data book and requested the return of the `erroneous' ones.
Later, in 1972, Signetics bought a double-page spread in Electronics
magazine's April issue and used the spec as an April Fools' Day joke.
Instead of the more conventional characteristic curves, the 25120
"fully encoded, 9046 x N, Random Access, write-only-memory" data
sheet included diagrams of "bit capacity vs.: Temp.", "Iff vs. Vff",
"Number of pins remaining vs.: number of socket insertions", and "AQL
vs.: selling price". The 25120 required a 6.3 VAC VFF supply, a +10V
VCC, and VDD of 0V, ±2%.
Wrong Thing n.
A design, action, or decision that is clearly incorrect or
inappropriate. Often capitalized; always emphasized in speech as if
capitalized. The opposite of the Right Thing; more generally,
anything that is not the Right Thing. In cases where `the good is the
enemy of the best', the merely good -- although good -- is
nevertheless the Wrong Thing. "In C, the default is for module-level
declarations to be visible everywhere, rather than just within the
module. This is clearly the Wrong Thing."
wugga wugga /wuh´g@ wuh´g@/, n.
Imaginary sound that a computer program makes as it labors with a
tedious or difficult task.grind (sense 4).
wumpus /wuhm´p@s/, n.
The central monster (and, in many versions, the name) of a famous
family of very early computer games called Hunt The Wumpus. The
original was invented in 1970 (several years before ADVENT) by
Gregory Yob. The wumpus lived somewhere in a cave with the topology
of an dodecahedron's edge/vertex graph (later versions supported
other topologies, including an icosahedron and Möbius strip). The
player started somewhere at random in the cave with five `crooked
arrows'; these could be shot through up to three connected rooms, and
would kill the wumpus on a hit (later versions introduced the wounded
wumpus, which got very angry). Unfortunately for players, the
movement necessary to map the maze was made hazardous not merely by
the wumpus (which would eat you if you stepped on him) but also by
bottomless pits and colonies of super bats that would pick you up and
drop you at a random location (later versions added `anaerobic
termites' that ate arrows, bat migrations, and earthquakes that
randomly changed pit locations).
This game appears to have been the first to use a non-random
graph-structured map (as opposed to a rectangular grid like the even
older Star Trek games). In this respect, as in the dungeon-like
setting and its terse, amusing messages, it prefigured ADVENT and
Zork and was directly ancestral to the latter (Zork acknowledged
this heritage by including a super-bat colony). A C emulation of the
original Basic game is available at the Retrocomputing Museum,
http://www.catb.org/retro/.
WYSIAYG /wiz´ee·ayg/, adj.
Describes a user interface under which "What You See Is All You Get";
an unhappy variant of WYSIWYG. Visual, `point-and-shoot'-style
interfaces tend to have easy initial learning curves, but also to
lack depth; they often frustrate advanced users who would be better
served by a command-style interface. When this happens, the
frustrated user has a WYSIAYG problem. This term is most often used
of editors, word processors, and document formatting programs.
WYSIWYG `desktop publishing' programs, for example, are a clear win
for creating small documents with lots of fonts and graphics in them,
especially things like newsletters and presentation slides. When
typesetting book-length manuscripts, on the other hand, scale changes
the nature of the task; one quickly runs into WYSIAYG limitations,
and the increased power and flexibility of a command-driven formatter
like TeX or Unix's troff becomes not just desirable but a
necessity. Compare YAFIYGI.
WYSIWYG /wiz´ee·wig/, /wiss´ee·wig/, adj.
[Traced to Flip Wilson's "Geraldine" character c.1970] Describes a
user interface under which "What You See Is What You Get", as opposed
to one that uses more-or-less obscure commands that do not result in
immediate visual feedback. True WYSIWYG in environments supporting
multiple fonts or graphics is a rarely-attained ideal; there are
variants of this term to express real-world manifestations including
WYSIAWYG (What You See Is Almost What You Get) and WYSIMOLWYG (What
You See Is More or Less What You Get). All these can be mildly
derogatory, as they are often used to refer to dumbed-down
user-friendly interfaces targeted at non-programmers; a hacker has
no fear of obscure commands (compare WYSIAYG). On the other hand,
EMACS was one of the very first WYSIWYG editors, replacing
(actually, at first overlaying) the extremely obscure, command-based
TECO. See also WIMP environment. [Oddly enough, WYSIWYG made it
into the 1986 supplement to the OED, in lower case yet. --ESR]
= X =
=====
X /X/, n.
1. Used in various speech and writing contexts (also in lowercase) in
roughly its algebraic sense of `unknown within a set defined by
context' (compare N). Thus, the abbreviation 680x0 stands for
68000, 68010, 68020, 68030, or 68040, and 80x86 stands for 80186,
80286, 80386, 80486, 80586 or 80686 (note that a Unix hacker might
write these as 680[0-6]0 and 80[1-6]86 or 680?0 and 80?86
respectively; see glob).
2. [after the name of an earlier window system called `W'] An
over-sized, over-featured, over-engineered and incredibly
over-complicated window system developed at MIT and widely used on
Unix systems.
XEROX PARC /zee´roks park´/, n.
The famed Palo Alto Research Center. For more than a decade, from the
early 1970s into the mid-1980s, PARC yielded an astonishing volume of
groundbreaking hardware and software innovations. The modern mice,
windows, and icons style of software interface was invented there. So
was the laser printer and the local-area network; and PARC's series
of D machines anticipated the powerful personal computers of the
1980s by a decade. Sadly, the prophets at PARC were without honor in
their own company, so much so that it became a standard joke to
describe PARC as a place that specialized in developing brilliant
ideas for everyone else.
The stunning shortsightedness and obtusity of XEROX's top-level
suits has been well anatomized in Fumbling The Future: How XEROX
Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer by Douglas K.
Smith and Robert C. Alexander (William Morrow & Co., 1988, ISBN
0-688-09511-9).
XOFF /X·of/, n.
Syn. control-S.
XON /X·on/, n.
Syn. control-Q.
xor /X´or/, /kzor/, conj.
Exclusive or. `A xor B' means `A or B, but not both'. "I want to get
cherry pie xor a banana split." This derives from the technical use
of the term as a function on truth-values that is true if exactly one
of its two arguments is true.
xref /X´ref/, v.,n.
Hackish standard abbreviation for cross-reference.
XXX /X·X·X/, n.
A marker that attention is needed. Commonly used in program comments
to indicate areas that are kluged up or need to be. Some hackers
liken `XXX' to the notional heavy-porn movie rating. Compare FIXME.
xyzzy /X·Y·Z·Z·Y/, /X·Y·ziz´ee/, /ziz´ee/, /ik·ziz´ee/, adj.
[from the ADVENT game] The canonical `magic word'. This comes from
ADVENT, in which the idea is to explore an underground cave with
many rooms and to collect the treasures you find there. If you type
xyzzy at the appropriate time, you can move instantly between two
otherwise distant points. If, therefore, you encounter some bit of
magic, you might remark on this quite succinctly by saying simply
"Xyzzy!" "Ordinarily you can't look at someone else's screen if he
has protected it, but if you type quadruple-bucky-clear the system
will let you do it anyway." "Xyzzy!" It's traditional for xyzzy to be
an Easter egg in games with text interfaces.
Xyzzy has actually been implemented as an undocumented no-op command
on several OSes; in Data General's AOS/VS, for example, it would
typically respond "Nothing happens", just as ADVENT did if the
magic was invoked at the wrong spot or before a player had performed
the action that enabled the word. In more recent 32-bit versions, by
the way, AOS/VS responds "Twice as much happens".
Early versions of the popular `minesweeper' game under Microsoft
Windows had a cheat mode triggered by the command
`xyzzy<enter><right-shift>' that turns the top-left pixel of the
screen different colors depending on whether or not the cursor is
over a bomb. This feature temporarily disappeared in Windows 98, but
reappeared in Windows 2000.
The following passage from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank
Baum, suggesting a possible pre-ADVENT origin, has recently come to
light: "Ziz-zy, zuz-zy, zik!" said Dorothy, who was now standing on
both feet. This ended the saying of the charm, and they heard a great
chattering and flapping of wings, as the band of Winged Monkeys flew
up to them.
The text can be viewed at Project Gutenberg.
= Y =
=====
YA- abbrev.
[Yet Another] In hackish acronyms this almost invariably expands to
Yet Another, following the precedent set by Unix yacc(1) (Yet
Another Compiler-Compiler). See YABA.
YABA /ya´b@/, n.
[Cambridge] Yet Another Bloody Acronym. Whenever some program is
being named, someone invariably suggests that it be given a name that
is acronymic. The response from those with a trace of originality is
to remark ironically that the proposed name would then be
`YABA-compatible'. Also used in response to questions like "What is
WYSIWYG?" See also TLA.
YAFIYGI /yaf´ee·y@·gee/, adj.
[coined in response to WYSIWYG] Describes the command-oriented
ed/vi/nroff/TeX style of word processing or other user interface, the
opposite of WYSIWYG. Stands for "You asked for it, you got it",
because what you actually asked for is often not apparent until long
after it is too late to do anything about it. Used to denote
perversity ("Real Programmers use YAFIYGI tools...and like it!") or,
less often, a necessary tradeoff ("Only a YAFIYGI tool can have full
programmable flexibility in its interface.").
This precise sense of "You asked for it, you got it" seems to have
first appeared in Ed Post's classic parody Real Programmers don't use
Pascal (see Real Programmers); the acronym is a more recent
invention.
yak shaving
[MIT AI Lab, after 2000: orig. probably from a Ren & Stimpy episode.]
Any seemingly pointless activity which is actually necessary to solve
a problem which solves a problem which, several levels of recursion
later, solves the real problem you're working on.
YAUN /yawn/, n.
[Acronym for `Yet Another Unix Nerd'] Reported from the San Diego
Computer Society (predominantly a microcomputer users' group) as a
good-natured punning insult aimed at Unix zealots.
yellow card n.
See green card.
yellow wire n.
[IBM] Repair wires used when connectors (especially ribbon
connectors) got broken due to some schlemiel pinching them, or to
reconnect cut traces after the FE mistakenly cut one. Compare blue
wire, purple wire, red wire.
Yet Another adj.
[From Unix's yacc(1), `Yet Another Compiler-Compiler', a LALR parser
generator]
1. Of your own work: A humorous allusion often used in titles to
acknowledge that the topic is not original, though the content is. As
in `Yet Another AI Group' or `Yet Another Simulated Annealing
Algorithm'.
2. Of others' work: Describes something of which there are already
far too many. See also YA-, YABA, YAUN.
YHBT //
[Usenet: very common] Abbreviation: You Have Been Trolled (see
troll, sense 1). Especially used in "YHBT. YHL. HAND.", which is
widely understood to expand to "You Have Been Trolled. You Have Lost.
Have A Nice Day". You are quite likely to see this if you respond
incautiously to a flame-provoking post that was obviously floated as
sucker bait.
YKYBHTLW //, abbrev.
Abbreviation of `You know you've been hacking too long when...',
which became established on the Usenet group alt.folklore.computers
during extended discussion of the indicated entry in the Jargon File.
YMMV //, cav.
Abbreviation for Your mileage may vary common on Usenet.
You are not expected to understand this cav.
[Unix] The canonical comment describing something magic or too
complicated to bother explaining properly. From an infamous comment
in the context-switching code of the V6 Unix kernel. Dennis Ritchie
has explained this in detail.
You know you've been hacking too long when
The set-up line for a genre of one-liners told by hackers about
themselves. These include the following:
* not only do you check your email more often than your paper mail,
but you remember your network address faster than your postal
one.
* your SO kisses you on the neck and the first thing you think is
"Uh, oh, priority interrupt."
* you go to balance your checkbook and discover that you're doing
it in octal.
* your computers have a higher street value than your car.
* in your universe, `round numbers' are powers of 2, not 10.
* more than once, you have woken up recalling a dream in some
programming language.
* you see the word "Oxford" and mentally trip over the fact that
`r' is not a hex digit.
* you realize you have never seen half of your best friends.
A list of these can be found by searching for this phrase on the web.
[An early version of this entry said "All but one of these have been
reliably reported as hacker traits (some of them quite often). Even
hackers may have trouble spotting the ringer." The ringer was
balancing one's checkbook in octal, which I made up out of whole
cloth. Although more respondents picked that one out as fiction than
any of the others, I also received multiple independent reports of
its actually happening, most famously to Grace Hopper while she was
working with BINAC in 1949. --ESR]
Your mileage may vary cav.
[from the standard disclaimer attached to EPA mileage ratings by
American car manufacturers]
1. A ritual warning often found in Unix freeware distributions.
Translates roughly as "Hey, I tried to write this portably, but who
knows what'll happen on your system?"
2. More generally, a qualifier attached to advice. "I find that
sending flowers works well, but your mileage may vary."
Yow! /yow/, interj.
[from "Zippy the Pinhead" comix] A favored hacker expression of
humorous surprise or emphasis. "Yow! Check out what happens when you
twiddle the foo option on this display hack!".
yoyo mode n.
The state in which the system is said to be when it rapidly
alternates several times between being up and being down.
Interestingly (and perhaps not by coincidence), many hardware vendors
give out free yoyos at Usenix exhibits.
Sun Microsystems gave out logoized yoyos at SIGPLAN '88. Tourists
staying at one of Atlanta's most respectable hotels were subsequently
treated to the sight of 200 of the country's top computer scientists
testing yo-yo algorithms in the lobby.
Yu-Shiang Whole Fish /yoo·shyang hohl fish/, n. obs.
The character gamma (extended SAIL ASCII 0001001), which with a loop
in its tail looks like a little fish swimming down the page. The term
is actually the name of a Chinese dish in which a fish is cooked
whole (not parsed) and covered with Yu-Shiang (or Yu-Hsiang, or in
modern Pinyin transliteration yuxiang) sauce. Usage: primarily by
people on the MIT LISP Machine, which could display this character on
the screen. Tends to elicit incredulity from people who hear about it
second-hand.
Yu Shiang Whole Fish is alive and well in Unicode as U+0263 LATIN
SMALL LETTER GAMMA (as opposed to the actual Greek letter at U+03B3,
which usually has a loopless glyph; the form of U+0263 is
consistently loopy). This symbol is included in Unicode as a Latin
letter because it is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet. In
the IPA, gamma represents a voiced velar fricative, the sound
commonly transcribed "gh" in Arabic or Klingon.
= Z =
=====
zap
1. n. Spiciness.
2. vt. To make food spicy.
3. vt. To make someone `suffer' by making his food spicy. (Most
hackers love spicy food. Hot-and-sour soup is considered wimpy unless
it makes you wipe your nose for the rest of the meal.) See zapped.
4. vt. To modify, usually to correct; esp. used when the action is
performed with a debugger or binary patching tool. Also implies
surgical precision. "Zap the debug level to 6 and run it again." In
the IBM mainframe world, binary patches are applied to programs or to
the OS with a program called `superzap', whose file name is
`IMASPZAP' (possibly contrived from I M A SuPerZAP).
5. vt. To erase or reset.
6. To fry a chip with static electricity. "Uh oh -- I think that
lightning strike may have zapped the disk controller."
zapped adj.
Spicy. This term is used to distinguish between food that is hot (in
temperature) and food that is spicy-hot. For example, the Chinese
appetizer Bon Bon Chicken is a kind of chicken salad that is cold but
zapped; by contrast, vanilla wonton soup is hot but not zapped. See
also oriental food, laser chicken. See zap, senses 1 and 2.
Zawinski's Law
"Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those
programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."
Coined by Jamie Zawinski (who called it the "Law of Software
Envelopment") to express his belief that all truly useful programs
experience pressure to evolve into toolkits and application platforms
(the mailer thing, he says, is just a side effect of that). It is
commonly cited, though with widely varying degrees of accuracy.
zbeba n.
[USENET] The word `moron' in rot13. Used to describe newbies who
are behaving with especial cluelessness.
zen vt.
To figure out something by meditation or by a sudden flash of
enlightenment. Originally applied to bugs, but occasionally applied
to problems of life in general. "How'd you figure out the buffer
allocation problem?" "Oh, I zenned it." Contrast grok, which
connotes a time-extended version of zenning a system. Compare hack
mode. See also guru.
zero vt.
1. To set to 0. Usually said of small pieces of data, such as bits or
words (esp. in the construction zero out).
2. To erase; to discard all data from. Said of disks and directories,
where `zeroing' need not involve actually writing zeroes throughout
the area being zeroed. One may speak of something being logically
zeroed rather than being physically zeroed. See scribble.
zero-content adj.
Syn. content-free.
Zero-One-Infinity Rule prov.
"Allow none of foo, one of foo, or any number of foo." A rule
of thumb for software design, which instructs one to not place
random limits on the number of instances of a given entity (such
as: windows in a window system, letters in an OS's filenames, etc.).
Specifically, one should either disallow the entity entirely, allow
exactly one instance (an "exception"), or allow as many as the user
wants -- address space and memory permitting.
The logic behind this rule is that there are often situations where
it makes clear sense to allow one of something instead of none.
However, if one decides to go further and allow N (for N > 1), then
why not N+1? And if N+1, then why not N+2, and so on? Once above 1,
there's no excuse not to allow any N; hence, infinity.
Many hackers recall in this connection Isaac Asimov's SF novel The
Gods Themselves in which a character announces that the number 2 is
impossible -- if you're going to believe in more than one universe,
you might as well believe in an infinite number of them.
zeroth /zee´rohth/, adj.
First. Among software designers, comes from C's and LISP's 0-based
indexing of arrays. Hardware people also tend to start counting at 0
instead of 1; this is natural since, e.g., the 256 states of 8 bits
correspond to the binary numbers 0, 1, ..., 255 and the digital
devices known as counters count in this way.
Hackers and computer scientists often like to call the first chapter
of a publication `Chapter 0', especially if it is of an introductory
nature (one of the classic instances was in the First Edition of
K&R). In recent years this trait has also been observed among many
pure mathematicians (who have an independent tradition of numbering
from 0). Zero-based numbering tends to reduce fencepost errors,
though it cannot eliminate them entirely.
zigamorph /zig'@·morf/, n.
1. Hex FF (11111111) when used as a delimiter or fence character.
Usage: primarily at IBM shops.
2. [proposed] n. The Unicode non-character U+FFFF (1111111111111111),
a character code which is not assigned to any character, and so is
usable as end-of-string. (Unicode is a 16-bit character code intended
to cover all of the world's writing systems, including Latin, Greek,
Cyrillic, Chinese, hiragana, katakana, Devanagari, Thai, Laotian and
many other scripts -- support for elvish is planned for a future
release).
zip vt.
[primarily MS-DOS/Windows] To create a compressed archive from a
group of files using PKWare's PKZIP or a compatible archiver. Its use
is spreading now that portable implementations of the algorithm have
been written. Commonly used as follows: "I'll zip it up and send it
to you." See tar and feather.
zipperhead n.
[IBM] A person with a closed mind.
zombie n.
1. [Unix] A process that has died but has not yet relinquished its
process table slot (because the parent process hasn't executed a
wait(2) for it yet). These can be seen in ps(1) listings
occasionally. Compare orphan.
2. A machine, especially someone's home box, that has been cracked
and is being used as part of a second-stage attack by miscreants
trying to mask their home IP address. Especially used of machines
being exploited in large gangs for a mechanized denial-of-service
attack like Tribe Flood Network; the image that goes with this is of
a veritable army of zombies mindlessly doing the bidding of a
necromancer.
zorch /zorch/
1. [TMRC] v. To attack with an inverse heat sink.
2. [TMRC] v. To travel, with v approaching c [that is, with velocity
approaching lightspeed --ESR].
3. [MIT] v. To propel something very quickly. "The new comm software
is very fast; it really zorches files through the network."
4. [MIT] n. Influence. Brownie points. Good karma. The intangible and
fuzzy currency in which favors are measured. "I'd rather not ask him
for that just yet; I think I've used up my quota of zorch with him
for the week."
5. [MIT] n. Energy, drive, or ability. "I think I'll punt that
change for now; I've been up for 30 hours and I've run out of zorch."
6. [MIT] v. To flunk an exam or course.
Zork /zork/, n.
The second of the great early experiments in computer fantasy gaming;
see ADVENT. Originally written on MIT-DM during 1977-1979, later
distributed with BSD Unix (as a patched, sourceless RT-11 FORTRAN
binary; see retrocomputing) and commercialized as `The Zork
Trilogy' by Infocom. The FORTRAN source was later rewritten for
portability and released to Usenet under the name "Dungeon". Both
FORTRAN "Dungeon" and translated C versions are available at many FTP
sites; the commercial Zork trilogy is available at
http://www.ifarchive.org/. See also grue. You can play Zork via a
Java Applet.
zorkmid /zork´mid/, n.
The canonical unit of currency in hacker-written games. This
originated in Zork but has spread to nethack and is referred to
in several other games.
(Lexicon Entries End Here)
:A. Hacker Folklore:
********************
:The Meaning of `Hack':
=======================
"The word hack doesn't really have 69 different meanings", according
to MIT hacker Phil Agre. "In fact, hack has only one meaning, an
extremely subtle and profound one which defies articulation. Which
connotation is implied by a given use of the word depends in
similarly profound ways on the context. Similar remarks apply to a
couple of other hacker words, most notably random."
Hacking might be characterized as `an appropriate application of
ingenuity'. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or
a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness
that went into it.
An important secondary meaning of hack is `a creative practical
joke'. This kind of hack is easier to explain to non-hackers than the
programming kind. Of course, some hacks have both natures; see the
lexicon entries for pseudo and kgbvax. But here are some examples of
pure practical jokes that illustrate the hacking spirit:
In 1961, students from Caltech (California Institute of
Technology, in Pasadena) hacked the Rose Bowl football game. One
student posed as a reporter and `interviewed' the director of the
University of Washington card stunts (such stunts involve people
in the stands who hold up colored cards to make pictures). The
reporter learned exactly how the stunts were operated, and also
that the director would be out to dinner later.
While the director was eating, the students (who called themselves
the `Fiendish Fourteen') picked a lock and stole a blank direction
sheet for the card stunts. They then had a printer run off 2300
copies of the blank. The next day they picked the lock again and
stole the master plans for the stunts -- large sheets of graph
paper colored in with the stunt pictures. Using these as a guide,
they made new instructions for three of the stunts on the
duplicated blanks. Finally, they broke in once more, replacing the
stolen master plans and substituting the stack of diddled
instruction sheets for the original set.
The result was that three of the pictures were totally different.
Instead of `WASHINGTON', the word `CALTECH' was flashed. Another
stunt showed the word `HUSKIES', the Washington nickname, but
spelled it backwards. And what was supposed to have been a picture
of a husky instead showed a beaver. (Both Caltech and MIT use the
beaver -- nature's engineer -- as a mascot.)
After the game, the Washington faculty athletic representative
said: "Some thought it ingenious; others were indignant." The
Washington student body president remarked: "No hard feelings, but
at the time it was unbelievable. We were amazed."
This is now considered a classic hack, particularly because revising
the direction sheets constituted a form of programming.
Here is another classic hack:
On November 20, 1982, MIT hacked the Harvard-Yale football game.
Just after Harvard's second touchdown against Yale, in the first
quarter, a small black ball popped up out of the ground at the
40-yard line, and grew bigger, and bigger, and bigger. The letters
`MIT' appeared all over the ball. As the players and officials
stood around gawking, the ball grew to six feet in diameter and
then burst with a bang and a cloud of white smoke.
The Boston Globe later reported: "If you want to know the truth,
MIT won The Game."
The prank had taken weeks of careful planning by members of MIT's
Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. The device consisted of a weather
balloon, a hydraulic ram powered by Freon gas to lift it out of
the ground, and a vacuum-cleaner motor to inflate it. They made
eight separate expeditions to Harvard Stadium between 1 and 5 AM,
locating an unused 110-volt circuit in the stadium and running
buried wires from the stadium circuit to the 40-yard line, where
they buried the balloon device. When the time came to activate the
device, two fraternity members had merely to flip a circuit
breaker and push a plug into an outlet.
This stunt had all the earmarks of a perfect hack: surprise,
publicity, the ingenious use of technology, safety, and
harmlessness. The use of manual control allowed the prank to be
timed so as not to disrupt the game (it was set off between plays,
so the outcome of the game would not be unduly affected). The
perpetrators had even thoughtfully attached a note to the balloon
explaining that the device was not dangerous and contained no
explosives.
Harvard president Derek Bok commented: "They have an awful lot of
clever people down there at MIT, and they did it again." President
Paul E. Gray of MIT said: "There is absolutely no truth to the
rumor that I had anything to do with it, but I wish there were."
The hacks above are verifiable history; they can be proved to have
happened. Many other classic-hack stories from MIT and elsewhere,
though retold as history, have the characteristics of what Jan
Brunvand has called `urban folklore' (see FOAF). Perhaps the best
known of these is the legend of the infamous trolley-car hack, an
alleged incident in which engineering students are said to have
welded a trolley car to its tracks with thermite. Numerous versions
of this have been recorded from the 1940s to the present, most set at
MIT but at least one very detailed version set at CMU.
Brian Leibowitz has researched MIT hacks both real and mythical
extensively; the interested reader is referred to his delightful
pictorial compendium The Journal of the Institute for Hacks,
Tomfoolery, and Pranks (MIT Museum, 1990; ISBN 0-917027-03-5). The
Institute has a World Wide Web page at
http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/Gallery.html. There is a sequel entitled
Is This The Way To Baker House?. The Caltech Alumni Association has
published two similar books titled Legends of Caltech and More
Legends of Caltech.
Here is a story about one of the classic computer hacks:
Back in the mid-1970s, several of the system support staff at
Motorola discovered a relatively simple way to crack system
security on the Xerox CP-V timesharing system. Through a simple
programming strategy, it was possible for a user program to trick
the system into running a portion of the program in `master mode'
(supervisor state), in which memory protection does not apply. The
program could then poke a large value into its `privilege level'
byte (normally write-protected) and could then proceed to bypass
all levels of security within the file-management system, patch
the system monitor, and do numerous other interesting things. In
short, the barn door was wide open.
Motorola quite properly reported this problem to Xerox via an
official `level 1 SIDR' (a bug report with an intended urgency of
`needs to be fixed yesterday'). Because the text of each SIDR was
entered into a database that could be viewed by quite a number of
people, Motorola followed the approved procedure: they simply
reported the problem as `Security SIDR', and attached all of the
necessary documentation, ways-to-reproduce, etc.
The CP-V people at Xerox sat on their thumbs; they either didn't
realize the severity of the problem, or didn't assign the
necessary operating-system-staff resources to develop and
distribute an official patch.
Months passed. The Motorola guys pestered their Xerox
field-support rep, to no avail. Finally they decided to take
direct action, to demonstrate to Xerox management just how easily
the system could be cracked and just how thoroughly the security
safeguards could be subverted.
They dug around in the operating-system listings and devised a
thoroughly devilish set of patches. These patches were then
incorporated into a pair of programs called `Robin Hood' and
`Friar Tuck'. Robin Hood and Friar Tuck were designed to run as
`ghost jobs' (daemons, in Unix terminology); they would use the
existing loophole to subvert system security, install the
necessary patches, and then keep an eye on one another's statuses
in order to keep the system operator (in effect, the superuser)
from aborting them.
One fine day, the system operator on the main CP-V software
development system in El Segundo was surprised by a number of
unusual phenomena. These included the following:
* Tape drives would rewind and dismount their tapes in the middle
of a job.
* Disk drives would seek back and forth so rapidly that they would
attempt to walk across the floor (see walking drives).
* The card-punch output device would occasionally start up of
itself and punch a `lace card' (card with all positions punched).
These would usually jam in the punch.
* The console would print snide and insulting messages from Robin
Hood to Friar Tuck, or vice versa.
* The Xerox card reader had two output stackers; it could be
instructed to stack into A, stack into B, or stack into A (unless
a card was unreadable, in which case the bad card was placed into
stacker B). One of the patches installed by the ghosts added some
code to the card-reader driver... after reading a card, it would
flip over to the opposite stacker. As a result, card decks would
divide themselves in half when they were read, leaving the
operator to recollate them manually.
Naturally, the operator called in the operating-system developers.
They found the bandit ghost jobs running, and killed them... and
were once again surprised. When Robin Hood was gunned, the
following sequence of events took place:
!X id1
id1: Friar Tuck... I am under attack! Pray save me!
id1: Off (aborted)
id2: Fear not, friend Robin! I shall rout the Sheriff
of Nottingham's men!
id1: Thank you, my good fellow!
Each ghost-job would detect the fact that the other had been
killed, and would start a new copy of the recently slain program
within a few milliseconds. The only way to kill both ghosts was to
kill them simultaneously (very difficult) or to deliberately crash
the system.
Finally, the system programmers did the latter -- only to find
that the bandits appeared once again when the system rebooted! It
turned out that these two programs had patched the boot-time OS
image (the kernel file, in Unix terms) and had added themselves to
the list of programs that were to be started at boot time (this is
similar to the way Windows viruses propagate).
The Robin Hood and Friar Tuck ghosts were finally eradicated when
the system staff rebooted the system from a clean boot-tape and
reinstalled the monitor. Not long thereafter, Xerox released a
patch for this problem.
It is alleged that Xerox filed a complaint with Motorola's
management about the merry-prankster actions of the two employees
in question. It is not recorded that any serious disciplinary
action was taken against either of them.
Finally, here is a wonderful hack story for the new millennium:
1990's addition to the hallowed tradition of April Fool RFCs was RFC
1149, A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian
Carriers. This sketched a method for transmitting IP packets via
carrier pigeons.
Eleven years later, on 28 April 2001, the Bergen Linux User's Group
successfully demonstrated CPIP (Carrier Pigeon IP) between two Linux
machines running on opposite sides of a small mountain in Bergen,
Norway. Their network stack used printers to hex-dump packets onto
paper, pigeons to transport the paper, and OCR software to read the
dumps at the other end and feed them to the receiving machine's
network layer.
Here is the actual log of the ping command they successfully
executed. Note the exceptional packet times.
Script started on Sat Apr 28 11:24:09 2001
vegard@gyversalen:~$ /sbin/ifconfig tun0
tun0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:10.0.3.2 P-t-P:10.0.3.1 Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:150 Metric:1
RX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0
RX bytes:88 (88.0 b) TX bytes:168 (168.0 b)
vegard@gyversalen:~$ ping -i 450 10.0.3.1
PING 10.0.3.1 (10.0.3.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=6165731.1 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=3211900.8 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=5124922.8 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=6388671.9 ms
-- 10.0.3.1 ping statistics --
9 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 55% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 3211900.8/5222806.6/6388671.9 ms
vegard@gyversalen:~$ exit
Script done on Sat Apr 28 14:14:28 2001
A web page documenting the event, with pictures, is at
http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/. In the finest Internet tradition,
all software involved was open-source; the custom parts are available
for download from the site.
While all acknowledged the magnitude of this achievement, some debate
ensued over whether BLUG's implementation was properly conformant to
the RFC. It seems they had not used the duct tape specified in 1149
to attach messages to pigeon legs, but instead employed other methods
less objectionable to the pigeons. The debate was properly resolved
when it was pointed out that the duct-tape specification was not
prefixed by a MUST, and was thus a recommendation rather than a
requirement.
The perpetrators finished their preliminary writeup in this wise:
"Now, we're waiting for someone to write other implementations, so
that we can do interoperability tests, and maybe we finally can get
the RFC into the standards track... ".
The logical next step should be an implementation of RFC2549.
:TV Typewriters: A Tale of Hackish Ingenuity:
=======================
Here is a true story about a glass tty: One day an MIT hacker was in
a motorcycle accident and broke his leg. He had to stay in the
hospital quite a while, and got restless because he couldn't hack.
Two of his friends therefore took a terminal and a modem for it to
the hospital, so that he could use the computer by telephone from his
hospital bed.
Now this happened some years before the spread of home computers, and
computer terminals were not a familiar sight to the average person.
When the two friends got to the hospital, a guard stopped them and
asked what they were carrying. They explained that they wanted to
take a computer terminal to their friend who was a patient.
The guard got out his list of things that patients were permitted to
have in their rooms: TV, radio, electric razor, typewriter, tape
player, ... no computer terminals. Computer terminals weren't on the
list, so the guard wouldn't let it in. Rules are rules, you know.
(This guard was clearly a droid.)
Fair enough, said the two friends, and they left again. They were
frustrated, of course, because they knew that the terminal was as
harmless as a TV or anything else on the list... which gave them an
idea.
The next day they returned, and the same thing happened: a guard
stopped them and asked what they were carrying. They said: "This is a
TV typewriter!" The guard was skeptical, so they plugged it in and
demonstrated it. "See? You just type on the keyboard and what you
type shows up on the TV screen." Now the guard didn't stop to think
about how utterly useless a typewriter would be that didn't produce
any paper copies of what you typed; but this was clearly a TV
typewriter, no doubt about it. So he checked his list: "A TV is all
right, a typewriter is all right ... okay, take it on in!"
[Historical note: Many years ago, Popular Electronics published
solder-it-yourself plans for a TV typewriter. Despite the essential
uselessness of the device, it was an enormously popular project.
Steve Ciarcia, the man behind Byte magazine's "Circuit Cellar"
feature, resurrected this ghost in one of his books of the early
1980s. He ascribed its popularity (no doubt correctly) to the feeling
of power the builder could achieve by being able to decide himself
what would be shown on the TV. And, in fact, the device was not
entirely useless; when combined with a modem board, it became a crude
but serviceable terminal. --ESR]
[Antihistorical note: On September 23rd, 1992, the L.A. Times ran the
following bit in Steve Harvey's `Only in L.A.' column:
It must have been borrowed from a museum: Solomon Waters of
Altadena, a 6-year-old first-grader, came home from his first day
of school and excitedly told his mother how he had written on "a
machine that looks like a computer--but without the TV screen."
She asked him if it could have been a "typewriter."
"Yeah! Yeah!" he said. "That's what it was called."
I have since investigated this matter and determined that many of
today's teenagers have never seen a slide rule, either.... --ESR]
:A Story About `Magic':
=======================
Some years ago, I (GLS) was snooping around in the cabinets that
housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to
the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by
one of the lab's hardware hackers (no one knows who).
You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what
it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labeled
in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil
on the metal switch body were the words `magic' and `more magic'. The
switch was in the `more magic' position.
I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the
switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had
only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear
into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of
electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two
wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side
and no wire on its other side.
It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke.
Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we
flipped it. The computer instantly crashed.
Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but
nevertheless restored the switch to the `more magic' position before
reviving the computer.
A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as
I recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a
supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I
was fooling him with a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him
the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire
connected to it, still in the `more magic' position. We scrutinized
the switch and its lone connection, and found that the other end of
the wire, though connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a
ground pin. That clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was
it electrically nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that
couldn't affect anything anyway. So we flipped the switch.
The computer promptly crashed.
This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who
was close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He
inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and
diked it out. We then revived the computer and it has run fine ever
since.
We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There is a
theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and
flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to
upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it.
But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the
switch was magic.
I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I
usually keep it set on `more magic'.
1994: Another explanation of this story has since been offered. Note
that the switch body was metal. Suppose that the non-connected side
of the switch was connected to the switch body (usually the body is
connected to a separate earth lug, but there are exceptions). The
body is connected to the computer case, which is, presumably,
grounded. Now the circuit ground within the machine isn't necessarily
at the same potential as the case ground, so flipping the switch
connected the circuit ground to the case ground, causing a voltage
drop/jump which reset the machine. This was probably discovered by
someone who found out the hard way that there was a potential
difference between the two, and who then wired in the switch as a
joke.
:Some AI Koans:
=======================
Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine
Moon instructs a student
Sussman attains enlightenment
Drescher and the toaster
These are some of the funniest examples of a genre of jokes told at
the MIT AI Lab about various noted hackers. The original koans were
composed by Danny Hillis, who would later found Connection Machines,
Inc. In reading these, it is at least useful to know that Minsky,
Sussman, and Drescher are AI researchers of note, that Tom Knight was
one of the Lisp machine's principal designers, and that David Moon
wrote much of Lisp Machine Lisp.
:Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine:
A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power
off and on.
Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "You cannot
fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what
is going wrong."
Knight turned the machine off and on.
The machine worked.
Moon instructs a student
One day a student came to Moon and said: "I understand how to make a
better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count of the
pointers to each cons."
Moon patiently told the student the following story:
"One day a student came to Moon and said: `I understand how to
make a better garbage collector...
[Ed. note: Pure reference-count garbage collectors have problems with
circular structures that point to themselves.]
Sussman attains enlightenment
In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he
sat hacking at the PDP-6.
"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.
"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe"
Sussman replied.
"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.
"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman
said.
Minsky then shut his eyes.
"Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher.
"So that the room will be empty."
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
Drescher and the toaster
A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his
morning meal.
"I would like to give you this personality test", said the outsider,
"because I want you to be happy."
Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the
toaster, saying: "I wish the toaster to be happy, too."
:OS and JEDGAR:
=======================
This story says a lot about the ITS ethos.
On the ITS system there was a program that allowed you to see what
was being printed on someone else's terminal. It spied on the other
guy's output by examining the insides of the monitor system. The
output spy program was called OS. Throughout the rest of the computer
science world (and at IBM too) OS means `operating system', but among
old-time ITS hackers it almost always meant `output spy'.
OS could work because ITS purposely had very little in the way of
`protection' that prevented one user from trespassing on another's
areas. Fair is fair, however. There was another program that would
automatically notify you if anyone started to spy on your output. It
worked in exactly the same way, by looking at the insides of the
operating system to see if anyone else was looking at the insides
that had to do with your output. This `counterspy' program was called
JEDGAR (a six-letterism pronounced as two syllables: /jed´gr/), in
honor of the former head of the FBI.
But there's more. JEDGAR would ask the user for `license to kill'. If
the user said yes, then JEDGAR would actually gun the job of the
luser who was spying. Unfortunately, people found that this made life
too violent, especially when tourists learned about it. One of the
systems hackers solved the problem by replacing JEDGAR with another
program that only pretended to do its job. It took a long time to do
this, because every copy of JEDGAR had to be patched. To this day no
one knows how many people never figured out that JEDGAR had been
defanged.
Interestingly, there is still a security module named JEDGAR alive as
of late 1999 -- in the Unisys MCP for large systems. It is unknown to
us whether the name is tribute or independent invention.
:The Story of Mel:
=======================
This was posted to Usenet by its author, Ed Nather
(<nather@astro.as.utexas.edu>), on May 21, 1983.
A recent article devoted to the macho side of programming
made the bald and unvarnished statement:
Real Programmers write in FORTRAN.
Maybe they do now,
in this decadent era of
Lite beer, hand calculators, and "user-friendly" software
but back in the Good Old Days,
when the term "software" sounded funny
and Real Computers were made out of drums and vacuum tubes,
Real Programmers wrote in machine code.
Not FORTRAN. Not RATFOR. Not, even, assembly language.
Machine Code.
Raw, unadorned, inscrutable hexadecimal numbers.
Directly.
Lest a whole new generation of programmers
grow up in ignorance of this glorious past,
I feel duty-bound to describe,
as best I can through the generation gap,
how a Real Programmer wrote code.
I'll call him Mel,
because that was his name.
I first met Mel when I went to work for Royal McBee Computer Corp.,
a now-defunct subsidiary of the typewriter company.
The firm manufactured the LGP-30,
a small, cheap (by the standards of the day)
drum-memory computer,
and had just started to manufacture
the RPC-4000, a much-improved,
bigger, better, faster -- drum-memory computer.
Cores cost too much,
and weren't here to stay, anyway.
(That's why you haven't heard of the company,
or the computer.)
I had been hired to write a FORTRAN compiler
for this new marvel and Mel was my guide to its wonders.
Mel didn't approve of compilers.
"If a program can't rewrite its own code",
he asked, "what good is it?"
Mel had written,
in hexadecimal,
the most popular computer program the company owned.
It ran on the LGP-30
and played blackjack with potential customers
at computer shows.
Its effect was always dramatic.
The LGP-30 booth was packed at every show,
and the IBM salesmen stood around
talking to each other.
Whether or not this actually sold computers
was a question we never discussed.
Mel's job was to re-write
the blackjack program for the RPC-4000.
(Port? What does that mean?)
The new computer had a one-plus-one
addressing scheme,
in which each machine instruction,
in addition to the operation code
and the address of the needed operand,
had a second address that indicated where, on the revolving drum,
the next instruction was located.
In modern parlance,
every single instruction was followed by a GO TO!
Put that in Pascal's pipe and smoke it.
Mel loved the RPC-4000
because he could optimize his code:
that is, locate instructions on the drum
so that just as one finished its job,
the next would be just arriving at the "read head"
and available for immediate execution.
There was a program to do that job,
an "optimizing assembler",
but Mel refused to use it.
"You never know where it's going to put things",
he explained, "so you'd have to use separate constants".
It was a long time before I understood that remark.
Since Mel knew the numerical value
of every operation code,
and assigned his own drum addresses,
every instruction he wrote could also be considered
a numerical constant.
He could pick up an earlier "add" instruction, say,
and multiply by it,
if it had the right numeric value.
His code was not easy for someone else to modify.
I compared Mel's hand-optimized programs
with the same code massaged by the optimizing assembler program,
and Mel's always ran faster.
That was because the "top-down" method of program design
hadn't been invented yet,
and Mel wouldn't have used it anyway.
He wrote the innermost parts of his program loops first,
so they would get first choice
of the optimum address locations on the drum.
The optimizing assembler wasn't smart enough to do it that way.
Mel never wrote time-delay loops, either,
even when the balky Flexowriter
required a delay between output characters to work right.
He just located instructions on the drum
so each successive one was just past the read head
when it was needed;
the drum had to execute another complete revolution
to find the next instruction.
He coined an unforgettable term for this procedure.
Although "optimum" is an absolute term,
like "unique", it became common verbal practice
to make it relative:
"not quite optimum" or "less optimum"
or "not very optimum".
Mel called the maximum time-delay locations
the "most pessimum".
After he finished the blackjack program
and got it to run
("Even the initializer is optimized",
he said proudly),
he got a Change Request from the sales department.
The program used an elegant (optimized)
random number generator
to shuffle the "cards" and deal from the "deck",
and some of the salesmen felt it was too fair,
since sometimes the customers lost.
They wanted Mel to modify the program
so, at the setting of a sense switch on the console,
they could change the odds and let the customer win.
Mel balked.
He felt this was patently dishonest,
which it was,
and that it impinged on his personal integrity as a programmer,
which it did,
so he refused to do it.
The Head Salesman talked to Mel,
as did the Big Boss and, at the boss's urging,
a few Fellow Programmers.
Mel finally gave in and wrote the code,
but he got the test backwards,
and, when the sense switch was turned on,
the program would cheat, winning every time.
Mel was delighted with this,
claiming his subconscious was uncontrollably ethical,
and adamantly refused to fix it.
After Mel had left the company for greener pa$ture$,
the Big Boss asked me to look at the code
and see if I could find the test and reverse it.
Somewhat reluctantly, I agreed to look.
Tracking Mel's code was a real adventure.
I have often felt that programming is an art form,
whose real value can only be appreciated
by another versed in the same arcane art;
there are lovely gems and brilliant coups
hidden from human view and admiration, sometimes forever,
by the very nature of the process.
You can learn a lot about an individual
just by reading through his code,
even in hexadecimal.
Mel was, I think, an unsung genius.
Perhaps my greatest shock came
when I found an innocent loop that had no test in it.
No test. None.
Common sense said it had to be a closed loop,
where the program would circle, forever, endlessly.
Program control passed right through it, however,
and safely out the other side.
It took me two weeks to figure it out.
The RPC-4000 computer had a really modern facility
called an index register.
It allowed the programmer to write a program loop
that used an indexed instruction inside;
each time through,
the number in the index register
was added to the address of that instruction,
so it would refer
to the next datum in a series.
He had only to increment the index register
each time through.
Mel never used it.
Instead, he would pull the instruction into a machine register,
add one to its address,
and store it back.
He would then execute the modified instruction
right from the register.
The loop was written so this additional execution time
was taken into account --
just as this instruction finished,
the next one was right under the drum's read head,
ready to go.
But the loop had no test in it.
The vital clue came when I noticed
the index register bit,
the bit that lay between the address
and the operation code in the instruction word,
was turned on --
yet Mel never used the index register,
leaving it zero all the time.
When the light went on it nearly blinded me.
He had located the data he was working on
near the top of memory --
the largest locations the instructions could address --
so, after the last datum was handled,
incrementing the instruction address
would make it overflow.
The carry would add one to the
operation code, changing it to the next one in the instruction set:
a jump instruction.
Sure enough, the next program instruction was
in address location zero,
and the program went happily on its way.
I haven't kept in touch with Mel,
so I don't know if he ever gave in to the flood of
change that has washed over programming techniques
since those long-gone days.
I like to think he didn't.
In any event,
I was impressed enough that I quit looking for the
offending test,
telling the Big Boss I couldn't find it.
He didn't seem surprised.
When I left the company,
the blackjack program would still cheat
if you turned on the right sense switch,
and I think that's how it should be.
I didn't feel comfortable
hacking up the code of a Real Programmer.
This is one of hackerdom's great heroic epics, free verse or no. In a
few spare images it captures more about the esthetics and psychology
of hacking than all the scholarly volumes on the subject put
together. (But for an opposing point of view, see the entry for Real
Programmer.)
[1992 postscript -- the author writes: "The original submission to
the net was not in free verse, nor any approximation to it -- it was
straight prose style, in non-justified paragraphs. In bouncing around
the net it apparently got modified into the `free verse' form now
popular. In other words, it got hacked on the net. That seems
appropriate, somehow." The author adds that he likes the `free-verse'
version better than his prose original...]
[1999 update: Mel's last name is now known. The manual for the LGP-30
refers to "Mel Kaye of Royal McBee who did the bulk of the
programming [...] of the ACT 1 system".]
[2001: The Royal McBee LPG-30 turns out to have one other claim to
fame. It turns out that meteorologist Edward Lorenz was doing weather
simulations on an LGP-30 when, in 1961, he discovered the "Butterfly
Effect" and computational chaos. This seems, somehow, appropriate.]
[2002: A copy of the programming manual for the LGP-30 lives at
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/lgp-30-man.html]
:Appendix B. A Portrait of J. Random Hacker:
********************************************
Table of Contents
General Appearance
Dress
Reading Habits
Other Interests
Physical Activity and Sports
Education
Things Hackers Detest and Avoid
Food
Politics
Gender and Ethnicity
Religion
Ceremonial Chemicals
Communication Style
Geographical Distribution
Sexual Habits
Personality Characteristics
Weaknesses of the Hacker Personality
Miscellaneous
This profile reflects detailed comments on an earlier `trial balloon'
version from about a hundred Usenet respondents. Where comparatives
are used, the implicit `other' is a randomly selected segment of the
non-hacker population of the same size as hackerdom.
An important point: Except in some relatively minor respects such as
slang vocabulary, hackers don't get to be the way they are by
imitating each other. Rather, it seems to be the case that the
combination of personality traits that makes a hacker so conditions
one's outlook on life that one tends to end up being like other
hackers whether one wants to or not (much as bizarrely detailed
similarities in behavior and preferences are found in genetic twins
raised separately).
General Appearance
Intelligent. Scruffy. Intense. Abstracted. Surprisingly for a
sedentary profession, more hackers run to skinny than fat; both
extremes are more common than elsewhere. Tans are rare.
Dress
Casual, vaguely post-hippie; T-shirts, jeans, running shoes,
Birk-enstocks (or bare feet). Long hair, beards, and moustaches are
common. High incidence of tie-dye and intellectual or humorous
`slogan' T-shirts. Until the mid-1990s such T-shirts were seldom
computer-related, as that would have been too obvious -- but the
hacker culture has since developed its own icons, and J. Random
Hacker now often wears a Linux penguin or BSD daemon or a DeCSS
protest shirt.
A substantial minority prefers `outdoorsy' clothing -- hiking boots
("in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the machine room",
as one famous parody put it), khakis, lumberjack or chamois shirts,
and the like.
After about 1995 hacker dress styles assimilated some influence from
punk, gothic, and rave subcultures. This was relatively mild and has
manifested mostly as a tendency to wear a lot of black, especially
when `dressed up' to the limit of formality. Other markers of those
subcultures such as piercings, chains, and dyed hair remain
relatively uncommon. Hackers appear to wear black more because it
goes with everything and hides dirt than because they want to look
like goths.
Very few hackers actually fit the National Lampoon Nerd stereotype,
though it lingers on at MIT and may have been more common before
1975. At least since the late Seventies backpacks have been more
common than briefcases, and the hacker `look' has been more
whole-earth than whole-polyester.
Hackers dress for comfort, function, and minimal maintenance hassles
rather than for appearance (some, perhaps unfortunately, take this to
extremes and neglect personal hygiene). They have a very low
tolerance of suits and other `business' attire; in fact, it is not
uncommon for hackers to quit a job rather than conform to a dress
code. When they are somehow backed into conforming to a dress code,
they will find ways to subvert it, for example by wearing absurd
novelty ties.
Female hackers almost never wear visible makeup, and many use none at
all.
Reading Habits
Omnivorous, but usually includes lots of science and science fiction.
The typical hacker household might subscribe to Analog, Scientific
American, Whole-Earth Review, and Smithsonian (most hackers ignore
Wired and other self-consciously `cyberpunk' magazines, considering
them wannabee fodder). Hackers often have a reading range that
astonishes liberal arts people but tend not to talk about it as much.
Many hackers spend as much of their spare time reading as the average
American burns up watching TV, and often keep shelves and shelves of
well-thumbed books in their homes.
Other Interests
Some hobbies are widely shared and recognized as going with the
culture: science fiction, music, medievalism (in the active form
practiced by the Society for Creative Anachronism and similar
organizations), chess, go, backgammon, wargames, and intellectual
games of all kinds. (Role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons
used to be extremely popular among hackers but they lost a bit of
their luster as they moved into the mainstream and became heavily
commercialized. More recently, Magic: The Gathering has been widely
popular among hackers.) Logic puzzles. Ham radio. Other interests
that seem to correlate less strongly but positively with hackerdom
include linguistics and theater teching.
Physical Activity and Sports
Many (perhaps even most) hackers don't follow or do sports at all and
are determinedly anti-physical. Among those who do, interest in
spectator sports is low to non-existent; sports are something one
does, not something one watches on TV.
Further, hackers avoid most team sports like the plague. Volleyball
was long a notable exception, perhaps because it's non-contact and
relatively friendly; Ultimate Frisbee has become quite popular for
similar reasons. Hacker sports are almost always primarily
self-competitive ones involving concentration, stamina, and
micromotor skills: martial arts, bicycling, auto racing, kite flying,
hiking, rock climbing, aviation, target-shooting, sailing, caving,
juggling, skiing, skating, skydiving, scuba diving. Hackers' delight
in techno-toys also tends to draw them towards hobbies with nifty
complicated equipment that they can tinker with.
The popularity of martial arts in the hacker culture deserves special
mention. Many observers have noted it, and the connection has grown
noticeably stronger over time. In the 1970s, many hackers admired
martial arts disciplines from a distance, sensing a compatible ideal
in their exaltation of skill through rigorous self-discipline and
concentration. As martial arts became increasingly mainstreamed in
the U.S. and other western countries, hackers moved from admiring to
doing in large numbers. In 1997, for example, your humble editor
recalls sitting down with five strangers at the first Perl conference
and discovering that four of us were in active training in some sort
of martial art -- and, what is more interesting, nobody at the table
found this high perecentage at all odd.
Today (2000), martial arts seems to have become firmly established as
the hacker exercise form of choice, and the martial-arts culture
combining skill-centered elitism with a willingness to let anybody
join seems a stronger parallel to hacker behavior than ever. Common
usages in hacker slang un-ironically analogize programming to kung fu
(thus, one hears talk of "code-fu" or in reference to specific skills
like "HTML-fu"). Albeit with slightly more irony, today's hackers
readily analogize assimilation into the hacker culture with the plot
of a Jet Li movie: the aspiring newbie studies with masters of the
tradition, develops his art through deep meditation, ventures forth
to perform heroic feats of hacking, and eventually becomes a master
who trains the next generation of newbies in the hacker way.
Education
Nearly all hackers past their teens are either college-degreed or
self-educated to an equivalent level. The self-taught hacker is often
considered (at least by other hackers) to be better-motivated, and
may be more respected, than his school-shaped counterpart. Academic
areas from which people often gravitate into hackerdom include
(besides the obvious computer science and electrical engineering)
physics, mathematics, linguistics, and philosophy.
Things Hackers Detest and Avoid
All the works of Microsoft. Smurfs, Ewoks, and other forms of
offensive cuteness. Bureaucracies. Stupid people. Easy listening
music. Television (with occasional exceptions for cartoons, movies,
and good SF like Star Trek classic or Babylon 5). Business suits.
Dishonesty. Incompetence. Boredom. COBOL. BASIC. Character-based menu
interfaces.
Food
Ethnic. Spicy. Oriental, esp. Chinese and most esp. Szechuan, Hunan,
and Mandarin (hackers consider Cantonese vaguely déclassé). Hackers
prefer the exotic; for example, the Japanese-food fans among them
will eat with gusto such delicacies as fugu (poisonous pufferfish)
and whale. Thai food has experienced flurries of popularity. Where
available, high-quality Jewish delicatessen food is much esteemed. A
visible minority of Southwestern and Pacific Coast hackers prefers
Mexican.
For those all-night hacks, pizza and microwaved burritos are big.
Interestingly, though the mainstream culture has tended to think of
hackers as incorrigible junk-food junkies, many have at least mildly
health-foodist attitudes and are fairly discriminating about what
they eat. This may be generational; anecdotal evidence suggests that
the stereotype was more on the mark before the early 1980s.
Politics
Formerly vaguely liberal-moderate, more recently
moderate-to-neoconservative (hackers too were affected by the
collapse of socialism). There is a strong libertarian contingent
which rejects conventional left-right politics entirely. The only
safe generalization is that hackers tend to be rather
anti-authoritarian; thus, both paleoconservatism and `hard' leftism
are rare. Hackers are far more likely than most non-hackers to either
(a) be aggressively apolitical or (b) entertain peculiar or
idiosyncratic political ideas and actually try to live by them
day-to-day.
Gender and Ethnicity
Hackerdom is still predominantly male. However, the percentage of
women is clearly higher than the low-single-digit range typical for
technical professions, and female hackers are generally respected and
dealt with as equals.
In the U.S., hackerdom is predominantly Caucasian with strong
minorities of Jews (East Coast) and Orientals (West Coast). The
Jewish contingent has exerted a particularly pervasive cultural
influence (see Food, above, and note that several common jargon terms
are obviously mutated Yiddish).
The ethnic distribution of hackers is understood by them to be a
function of which ethnic groups tend to seek and value education.
Racial and ethnic prejudice is notably uncommon and tends to be met
with freezing contempt.
When asked, hackers often ascribe their culture's gender- and
color-blindness to a positive effect of text-only network channels,
and this is doubtless a powerful influence. Also, the ties many
hackers have to AI research and SF literature may have helped them to
develop an idea of personhood that is inclusive rather than exclusive
-- after all, if one's imagination readily grants full human rights
to future AI programs, robots, dolphins, and extraterrestrial aliens,
mere color and gender can't seem very important any more.
Religion
Agnostic. Atheist. Non-observant Jewish. Neo-pagan. Very commonly,
three or more of these are combined in the same person. Conventional
faith-holding Christianity is rare though not unknown.
Even hackers who identify with a religious affiliation tend to be
relaxed about it, hostile to organized religion in general and all
forms of religious bigotry in particular. Many enjoy `parody'
religions such as Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius.
Also, many hackers are influenced to varying degrees by Zen Buddhism
or (less commonly) Taoism, and blend them easily with their `native'
religions.
There is a definite strain of mystical, almost Gnostic sensibility
that shows up even among those hackers not actively involved with
neo-paganism, Discordianism, or Zen. Hacker folklore that pays homage
to `wizards' and speaks of incantations and demons has too much
psychological truthfulness about it to be entirely a joke.
Ceremonial Chemicals
Most hackers don't smoke tobacco, and use alcohol in moderation if at
all. However, there has been something of a trend towards exotic
beers since about 1995, especially among younger Linux hackers
apparently influenced by Linus Torvalds's fondness for Guinness.
Limited use of non-addictive psychedelic drugs, such as cannabis,
LSD, psilocybin, nitrous oxide, etc., used to be relatively common
and is still regarded with more tolerance than in the mainstream
culture. Use of `downers' and opiates, on the other hand, appears to
be particularly rare; hackers seem in general to dislike drugs that
make them stupid. But on the gripping hand, many hackers regularly
wire up on caffeine and/or sugar for all-night hacking runs.
Communication Style
See the discussions of speech and writing styles near the beginning
of this File. Though hackers often have poor person-to-person
communication skills, they are as a rule quite sensitive to nuances
of language and very precise in their use of it. They are often
better at writing than at speaking.
Geographical Distribution
In the United States, hackerdom revolves on a Bay Area-to-Boston
axis; about half of the hard core seems to live within a hundred
miles of Cambridge (Massachusetts) or Berkeley (California), although
there are significant contingents in Los Angeles, in the Pacific
Northwest, and around Washington DC. Hackers tend to cluster around
large cities, especially `university towns' such as the
Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina or Princeton, New Jersey (this
may simply reflect the fact that many are students or ex-students
living near their alma maters).
Sexual Habits
Hackerdom easily tolerates a much wider range of sexual and lifestyle
variation than the mainstream culture. It includes a relatively large
gay and bisexual contingent. Hackers are somewhat more likely to live
in polygynous or polyandrous relationships, practice open marriage,
or live in communes or group houses. In this, as in general
appearance, hackerdom semi-consciously maintains `counterculture'
values.
Personality Characteristics
The most obvious common `personality' characteristics of hackers are
high intelligence, consuming curiosity, and facility with
intellectual abstractions. Also, most hackers are `neophiles',
stimulated by and appreciative of novelty (especially intellectual
novelty). Most are also relatively individualistic and
anti-conformist.
Although high general intelligence is common among hackers, it is not
the sine qua non one might expect. Another trait is probably even
more important: the ability to mentally absorb, retain, and reference
large amounts of `meaningless' detail, trusting to later experience
to give it context and meaning. A person of merely average analytical
intelligence who has this trait can become an effective hacker, but a
creative genius who lacks it will swiftly find himself outdistanced
by people who routinely upload the contents of thick reference
manuals into their brains. [During the production of the first book
version of this document, for example, I learned most of the rather
complex typesetting language TeX over about four working days, mainly
by inhaling Knuth's 477-page manual. My editor's flabbergasted
reaction to this genuinely surprised me, because years of associating
with hackers have conditioned me to consider such performances
routine and to be expected. --ESR]
Contrary to stereotype, hackers are not usually intellectually
narrow; they tend to be interested in any subject that can provide
mental stimulation, and can often discourse knowledgeably and even
interestingly on any number of obscure subjects -- if you can get
them to talk at all, as opposed to, say, going back to their hacking.
It is noticeable (and contrary to many outsiders' expectations) that
the better a hacker is at hacking, the more likely he or she is to
have outside interests at which he or she is more than merely
competent.
Hackers are `control freaks' in a way that has nothing to do with the
usual coercive or authoritarian connotations of the term. In the same
way that children delight in making model trains go forward and back
by moving a switch, hackers love making complicated things like
computers do nifty stuff for them. But it has to be their nifty
stuff. They don't like tedium, nondeterminism, or most of the fussy,
boring, ill-defined little tasks that go with maintaining a normal
existence. Accordingly, they tend to be careful and orderly in their
intellectual lives and chaotic elsewhere. Their code will be
beautiful, even if their desks are buried in 3 feet of crap.
Hackers are generally only very weakly motivated by conventional
rewards such as social approval or money. They tend to be attracted
by challenges and excited by interesting toys, and to judge the
interest of work or other activities in terms of the challenges
offered and the toys they get to play with.
In terms of Myers-Briggs and equivalent psychometric systems,
hackerdom appears to concentrate the relatively rare INTJ and INTP
types; that is, introverted, intuitive, and thinker types (as opposed
to the extroverted-sensate personalities that predominate in the
mainstream culture). ENT[JP] types are also concentrated among
hackers but are in a minority.
Weaknesses of the Hacker Personality
Hackers have relatively little ability to identify emotionally with
other people. This may be because hackers generally aren't much like
`other people'. Unsurprisingly, hackers also tend towards
self-absorption, intellectual arrogance, and impatience with people
and tasks perceived to be wasting their time.
As cynical as hackers sometimes wax about the amount of idiocy in the
world, they tend by reflex to assume that everyone is as rational,
`cool', and imaginative as they consider themselves. This bias often
contributes to weakness in communication skills. Hackers tend to be
especially poor at confrontation and negotiation.
Another weakness of the hacker personality is a perverse tendancy to
attack all problems from the most technically complicated angle, just
because it may mean more interesting problems to solve, or cooler
toys to play with. Hackers sometimes have trouble grokking that the
bubble gum and paperclip hardware fix is actually the way to go, and
that they really don't need to convince the client to buy that shiny
new tool they've had your eye on for two months.
Because of their passionate embrace of (what they consider to be) the
Right Thing, hackers can be unfortunately intolerant and bigoted on
technical issues, in marked contrast to their general spirit of
camaraderie and tolerance of alternative viewpoints otherwise.
Old-time ITS partisans look down on the ever-growing hordes of Unix
and Linux hackers; Unix aficionados despise VMS and Windows; and
hackers who are used to conventional command-line user interfaces
loudly loathe mouse-and-menu based systems such as the Macintosh.
Hackers who don't indulge in Usenet consider it a huge waste of time
and bandwidth; fans of old adventure games such as ADVENT and Zork
consider MUDs to be glorified chat systems devoid of atmosphere or
interesting puzzles; hackers who are willing to devote endless hours
to Usenet or MUDs consider IRC to be a real waste of time; IRCies
think MUDs might be okay if there weren't all those silly puzzles in
the way. And, of course, there are the perennial holy wars -- EMACS
vs. vi, big-endian vs. little-endian, RISC vs. CISC, etc., etc., etc.
As in society at large, the intensity and duration of these debates
is usually inversely proportional to the number of objective, factual
arguments available to buttress any position.
As a result of all the above traits, many hackers have difficulty
maintaining stable relationships. At worst, they can produce the
classic geek: withdrawn, relationally incompetent, sexually
frustrated, and desperately unhappy when not submerged in his or her
craft. Fortunately, this extreme is far less common than mainstream
folklore paints it -- but almost all hackers will recognize something
of themselves in the unflattering paragraphs above.
Hackers are often monumentally disorganized and sloppy about dealing
with the physical world. Bills don't get paid on time, clutter piles
up to incredible heights in homes and offices, and minor maintenance
tasks get deferred indefinitely.
1994-95's fad behavioral disease was a syndrome called Attention
Deficit Disorder (ADD), supposedly characterized by (among other
things) a combination of short attention span with an ability to
`hyperfocus' imaginatively on interesting tasks. In 1998-1999 another
syndrome that is said to overlap with many hacker traits entered
popular awareness: Asperger's syndrome (AS). This disorder is also
sometimes called `high-function autism', though researchers are
divided on whether AS is in fact a mild form of autism or a distinct
syndrome with a different etiology. AS patients exhibit mild to
severe deficits in interpreting facial and body-language cues and in
modeling or empathizing with others' emotions. Though some AS
patients exhibit mild retardation, others compensate for their
deficits with high intelligence and analytical ability, and
frequently seek out technical fields where problem-solving abilities
are at a premium and people skills are relatively unimportant. Both
syndromes are thought to relate to abnormalities in neurotransmitter
chemistry, especially the brain's processing of serotonin.
Many hackers have noticed that mainstream culture has shown a
tendency to pathologize and medicalize normal variations in
personality, especially those variations that make life more
complicated for authority figures and conformists. Thus, hackers
aware of the issue tend to be among those questioning whether ADD and
AS actually exist; and if so whether they are really `diseases'
rather than extremes of a normal genetic variation like having
freckles or being able to taste DPT. In either case, they have a
sneaking tendency to wonder if these syndromes are over-diagnosed and
over-treated. After all, people in authority will always be
inconvenienced by schoolchildren or workers or citizens who are
prickly, intelligent individualists -- thus, any social system that
depends on authority relationships will tend to helpfully ostracize
and therapize and drug such `abnormal' people until they are properly
docile and stupid and `well-socialized'.
So hackers tend to believe they have good reason for skepticism about
clinical explanations of the hacker personality. That being said,
most would also concede that some hacker traits coincide with
indicators for non-hyperactive ADD and AS -- the status of caffeine
as a hacker beverage of choice may be connected to the fact that it
bonds to the same neural receptors as Ritalin, the drug most commonly
prescribed for ADD. It is probably true that boosters of both would
find a rather higher rate of clinical ADD among hackers than the
supposedly mainstream-normal 3-5% (AS is rarer at 0.4-0.5%).
Miscellaneous
Hackers are more likely to have cats than dogs (in fact, it is widely
grokked that cats have the hacker nature). Many drive incredibly
decrepit heaps and forget to wash them; richer ones drive spiffy
Porsches and RX-7s and then forget to have them washed. Almost all
hackers have terribly bad handwriting, and often fall into the habit
of block-printing everything like junior draftsmen.
:Appendix C. Helping Hacker Culture Grow:
*****************************************
If you have enjoyed the Jargon File, please help the culture that
created it grow and flourish. Here are several ways you can help:
* If you are a writer or journalist, don't say or write hacker when
you mean cracker. If you work with writers or journalists,
educate them on this issue and push them to do the right thing.
If you catch a newspaper or magazine abusing the word `hacker',
write them and straighten them out (this appendix includes a
model letter).
* If you're a techie or computer hobbyist, get involved with one of
the free Unixes. Toss out that lame Microsoft OS, or confine it
to one disk partition and put Linux or FreeBSD or NetBSD on the
other one. And the next time your friend or boss is thinking
about some proprietary software `solution' that costs more than
it's worth, be ready to blow the competition away with
open-source software running over a Unix.
* Contribute to organizations like the Free Software Foundation
that promote the production of high-quality free and open-source
software. You can reach the Free Software Foundation at
<gnu@gnu.org>, by phone at +1-617-542-5942, or by snail-mail at
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA.
* Support the League for Programming Freedom, which opposes
over-broad software patents that constantly threaten to blow up
in hackers' faces, preventing them from developing innovative
software for tomorrow's needs. You can reach the League for
Programming Freedom at <lpf@@uunet.uu.net>. by phone at +1 617
621 7084, or by snail-mail at 1 Kendall Square #143, P.O.Box
9171, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 USA.
* Join the continuing fight against Internet censorship, visit the
Center for Democracy and Technology Home Page at
http://www.cdt.org/.
* If you do nothing else, please help fight government attempts to
seize political control of Internet content and restrict strong
cryptography. The so-called `Communications Decency Act' was
declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but U.S.
cryptography policy still infringes our First Amendment rights.
Surf to the Center for Democracy and technology's home page at
http://www.cdt.org/ to see what you can do to help fight
censorship of the net.
Here's the text of a letter RMS wrote to the Wall Street Journal to
complain about their policy of using "hacker" only in a pejorative
sense. We hear that most major newspapers have the same policy. If
you'd like to help change this situation, send your favorite
newspaper the same letter -- or, better yet, write your own letter.
This letter is not meant for publication, although you can publish
it if you wish. It is meant specifically for you, the editor, not
the public.
I am a hacker. That is to say, I enjoy playing with computers --
working with, learning about, and writing clever computer
programs. I am not a cracker; I don't make a practice of breaking
computer security.
There's nothing shameful about the hacking I do. But when I tell
people I am a hacker, people think I'm admitting something naughty
-- because newspapers such as yours misuse the word "hacker",
giving the impression that it means "security breaker" and nothing
else. You are giving hackers a bad name.
The saddest thing is that this problem is perpetuated
deliberately. Your reporters know the difference between "hacker"
and "security breaker". They know how to make the distinction, but
you don't let them! You insist on using "hacker" pejoratively.
When reporters try to use another word, you change it. When
reporters try to explain the other meanings, you cut it.
Of course, you have a reason. You say that readers have become
used to your insulting usage of "hacker", so that you cannot
change it now. Well, you can't undo past mistakes today; but that
is no excuse to repeat them tomorrow.
If I were what you call a "hacker", at this point I would threaten
to crack your computer and crash it. But I am a hacker, not a
cracker. I don't do that kind of thing! I have enough computers to
play with at home and at work; I don't need yours. Besides, it's
not my way to respond to insults with violence. My response is
this letter.
You owe hackers an apology; but more than that, you owe us
ordinary respect.
:Bibliography:
**************
Here are some other books you can read to help you understand the
hacker mindset.
[Hofstadter] Gödel Escher Bach An Eternal Golden Braid.:
Douglas Hofstadter. Copyright © 1979. Basic Books. ISBN 0-394-74502-7.
This book reads like an intellectual Grand Tour of hacker
preoccupations. Music, mathematical logic, programming, speculations
on the nature of intelligence, biology, and Zen are woven into a
brilliant tapestry themed on the concept of encoded self-reference.
The perfect left-brain companion to Illuminatus.
[Shea-ampersand-Wilson] The Illuminatus! Trilogy.
Robert Shea and
Robert Anton Wilson. DTP. ISBN 0440539811.
(Originally in three volumes: The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden
Apple, and Leviathan).
This work of alleged fiction is an incredible berserko-surrealist
rollercoaster of world-girdling conspiracies, intelligent dolphins,
the fall of Atlantis, who really killed JFK, sex, drugs, rock'n'roll,
and the Cosmic Giggle Factor. First published in three volumes, but
there is now a one-volume trade paperback, carried by most chain
bookstores under SF. The perfect right-brain companion to
Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach. See Eris, Discordianism, random
numbers, Church of the SubGenius.
[Adams] The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Douglas Adams. Pocket
Books. Copyright © 1981. ISBN 0-671-46149-4.
This `Monty Python in Space' spoof of SF genre traditions has been
popular among hackers ever since the original British radio show.
Read it if only to learn about Vogons (see bogon) and the
significance of the number 42 (see random numbers) -- and why the
winningest chess program of 1990 was called `Deep Thought'.
[Geoffrey] The Tao of Programming.
James Geoffrey. Infobooks.
Copyright © 1987. ISBN 0-931137-07-1.
This gentle, funny spoof of the Tao Te Ching contains much that is
illuminating about the hacker way of thought. "When you have learned
to snatch the error code from the trap frame, it will be time for you
to leave."
[Levy] Hackers.
Steven Levy. Anchor/Doubleday. Copyright © 1984. ISBN
0-385-19195-2.
Levy's book is at its best in describing the early MIT hackers at the
Model Railroad Club and the early days of the microcomputer
revolution. He never understood Unix or the networksthough, and his
enshrinement of Richard Stallman as "the last true hacker" turns out
(thankfully) to have been quite misleading. Despite being a bit dated
and containing some minor errors (many fixed in the paperback
edition), this remains a useful and stimulating book that captures
the feel of several important hacker subcultures.
[Kelly-Bootle] The Computer Contradictionary.
Stan Kelly-Bootle. MIT
Press. Copyright © 1995. ISBN 0-262-61112-0.
This pastiche of Ambrose Bierce's famous work is similar in format to
the Jargon File (and quotes several entries from TNHD-2) but somewhat
different in tone and intent. It is more satirical and less
anthropological, and is largely a product of the author's literate
and quirky imagination. For example, it defines computer science as
"a study akin to numerology and astrology, but lacking the precision
of the former and the success of the latter" and implementation as
"The fruitless struggle by the talented and underpaid to fulfill
promises made by the rich and ignorant"; flowchart becomes "to
obfuscate a problem with esoteric cartoons". Revised and expanded
from The Devil's DP Dictionary, McGraw-Hill 1981, ISBN 0-07-034022-6;
that work had some stylistic influence on TNHD-1.
[Jennings] The Devouring Fungus Tales from the Computer Age.:
Karla Jennings. Norton. Copyright © 1990. ISBN 0-393-30732-8.
The author of this pioneering compendium knits together a great deal
of computer- and hacker-related folklore with good writing and a few
well-chosen cartoons. She has a keen eye for the human aspects of the
lore and is very good at illuminating the psychology and evolution of
hackerdom. Unfortunately, a number of small errors and awkwardnesses
suggest that she didn't have the final manuscript checked over by a
native speaker; the glossary in the back is particularly
embarrassing, and at least one classic tale (the Magic Switch story,
retold here under A Story About Magic in Appendix A) is given in
incomplete and badly mangled form. Nevertheless, this book is a win
overall and can be enjoyed by hacker and non-hacker alike.
[Kidder] The Soul of a New Machine.
Tracy Kidder. Avon. Copyright © 1982. ISBN 0-380-59931-7.
This book (a 1982 Pulitzer Prize winner) documents the adventure of
the design of a new Data General computer, the MV-8000 Eagle. It is
an amazingly well-done portrait of the hacker mindset -- although
largely the hardware hacker -- done by a complete outsider. It is a
bit thin in spots, but with enough technical information to be
entertaining to the serious hacker while providing non-technical
people a view of what day-to-day life can be like -- the fun, the
excitement, the disasters. During one period, when the microcode and
logic were glitching at the nanosecond level, one of the overworked
engineers departed the company, leaving behind a note on his terminal
as his letter of resignation: "I am going to a commune in Vermont and
will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."
[Libes] Life with UNIX a Guide for Everyone.:
Don Libes. Sandy Ressler. Prentice-Hall. Copyright © 1989. ISBN
0-13-536657-7.
The authors of this book set out to tell you all the things about
Unix that tutorials and technical books won't. The result is gossipy,
funny, opinionated, downright weird in spots, and invaluable. Along
the way they expose you to enough of Unix's history, folklore and
humor to qualify as a first-class source for these things. Because so
much of today's hackerdom is involved with Unix, this in turn
illuminates many of its in-jokes and preoccupations.
[Vinge] True Names ... and Other Dangers.
Vernor Vinge. Baen Books. Copyright © 1987. ISBN 0-671-65363-6.
Hacker demigod Richard Stallman used to say that the title story of
this book "expresses the spirit of hacking best". Until the subject
of the next entry came out, it was hard to even nominate another
contender. The other stories in this collection are also fine work by
an author who has since won multiple Hugos and is one of today's very
best practitioners of hard SF.
[Stephenson] Snow Crash.
Neal Stephenson. Bantam. Copyright © 1992. ISBN 0-553-56261-4.
Stephenson's epic, comic cyberpunk novel is deeply knowing about the
hacker psychology and its foibles in a way no other author of fiction
has ever even approached. His imagination, his grasp of the relevant
technical details, and his ability to communicate the excitement of
hacking and its results are astonishing, delightful, and (so far)
unsurpassed.
[Markoff-ampersand-Hafner] Cyberpunk Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer
Frontier.:
Katie Hafner. John Markoff. Simon & Schuster. Copyright © 1991. ISBN
0-671-68322-5.
This book gathers narratives about the careers of three notorious
crackers into a clear-eyed but sympathetic portrait of hackerdom's
dark side. The principals are Kevin Mitnick, "Pengo" and "Hagbard" of
the Chaos Computer Club, and Robert T. Morris (see RTM, sense 2).
Markoff and Hafner focus as much on their psychologies and
motivations as on the details of their exploits, but don't slight the
latter. The result is a balanced and fascinating account,
particularly useful when read immediately before or after Cliff
Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg. It is especially instructive to compare
RTM, a true hacker who blundered, with the sociopathic phone-freak
Mitnick and the alienated, drug-addled crackers who made the Chaos
Club notorious. The gulf between wizard and wannabee has seldom been
made more obvious.
[Stoll] The Cuckoo's Egg.
Clifford Stoll. Doubleday. Copyright © 1989. ISBN 0-385-24946-2.
Clifford Stoll's absorbing tale of how he tracked Markus Hess and the
Chaos Club cracking ring nicely illustrates the difference between
`hacker' and `cracker'. Stoll's portrait of himself, his lady Martha,
and his friends at Berkeley and on the Internet paints a marvelously
vivid picture of how hackers and the people around them like to live
and how they think.
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