The Jargon File

(version 4.4.7)

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Table of Contents

Welcome to the Jargon File
I. Introduction
    1. Hacker Slang and Hacker Culture
    2. Of Slang, Jargon, and Techspeak
    3. Revision History
    4. Jargon Construction
        Verb Doubling
        Soundalike Slang
        The -P Convention
        Overgeneralization
        Spoken inarticulations
        Anthropomorphization
        Comparatives
    5. Hacker Writing Style
    6. Email Quotes and Inclusion Conventions
    7. Hacker Speech Style
    8. International Style
    9. Crackers, Phreaks, and Lamers
    10. Pronunciation Guide
    11. Other Lexicon Conventions
    12. Format for New Entries
II. The Jargon Lexicon
    Glossary
III. Appendices
    A. Hacker Folklore
        The Meaning of ‘Hack’
        TV Typewriters: A Tale of Hackish Ingenuity
        A Story About ‘Magic'
        Some AI Koans
            Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine
            Moon instructs a student
            Sussman attains enlightenment
            Drescher and the toaster
        OS and JEDGAR
        The Story of Mel
    B. A Portrait of J. Random Hacker
        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
    C. Helping Hacker Culture Grow
    Bibliography

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
4.4.7” or “The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 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 special
characters. This test page lists them so you can check what your browser does
with each one.

┌─────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│glyph│description                  │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│α    │greek character alpha        │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│κ    │greek character kappa        │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│λ    │greek character lambda       │
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│Λ    │greek character Lambda       │
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│ν    │greek character nu           │
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│ο    │greek character omicron      │
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│π    │greek character pi           │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│£    │pound sterling               │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│〈   │left angle bracket           │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│〉   │right angle bracket          │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│æ    │ae ligature                  │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│ß    │German sharp-s sign          │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│∼    │similarity sign              │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│⊕    │circle-plus                  │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│⊗    │circle-times                 │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│×    │times                        │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│∅    │empty set (used for APL null)│
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│µ    │micro quantifier sign        │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│→    │right arrow                  │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│⇔    │horizontal double arrow      │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│™    │trademark symbol             │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│®    │registered-trademark symbol  │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│−    │minus                        │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│±    │plus-or-minus                │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Ø    │slashed-O                    │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│@    │schwa                        │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│'    │acute accent                 │
├─────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│·    │medial dot                   │
└─────┴─────────────────────────────┘

We normally test with the latest build of Mozilla. If some of the special
characters above look wrong, your browser has bugs in its standards-conformance
and you should replace it.

Part I. Introduction

Table of Contents

1. Hacker Slang and Hacker Culture
2. Of Slang, Jargon, and Techspeak
3. Revision History
4. Jargon Construction
    Verb Doubling
    Soundalike Slang
    The -P Convention
    Overgeneralization
    Spoken inarticulations
    Anthropomorphization
    Comparatives
5. Hacker Writing Style
6. Email Quotes and Inclusion Conventions
7. Hacker Speech Style
8. International Style
9. Crackers, Phreaks, and Lamers
10. Pronunciation Guide
11. Other Lexicon Conventions
12. Format for New Entries

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            │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │    │     │      │          │       │The Jargon File comes alive     │
│       │    │     │      │          │       │again after a seven-year hiatus.│
│       │Jun │     │      │          │       │Reorganization and massive      │
│2.1.1  │12  │5485 │42842 │278958    │790    │additions were by Eric S.       │
│       │1990│     │      │          │       │Raymond, approved by Guy Steele.│
│       │    │     │      │          │       │Many items of UNIX, C, USENET,  │
│       │    │     │      │          │       │and microcomputer-based jargon  │
│       │    │     │      │          │       │were added at that time.        │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │    │     │      │          │       │Changes and additions by ESR in │
│       │Nov │     │      │          │       │response to numerous USENET     │
│2.1.5  │28  │6028 │46946 │307510    │866    │submissions and comment from the│
│       │1990│     │      │          │       │First Edition co-authors. The   │
│       │    │     │      │          │       │Bibliography (Appendix C) was   │
│       │    │     │      │          │       │also appended.                  │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │    │     │      │          │       │Most of the contents of the 1983│
│       │    │     │      │          │       │paper edition edited by Guy     │
│       │Dec │     │      │          │       │Steele was merged in. Many more │
│2.2.1  │15  │9394 │75954 │490501    │1046   │USENET submissions added,       │
│       │1990│     │      │          │       │including the International     │
│       │    │     │      │          │       │Style and the material on       │
│       │    │     │      │          │       │Commonwealth Hackish.           │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │    │     │      │          │       │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   │
│       │Jan │     │      │          │       │techspeak were deleted; this    │
│2.3.1  │03  │10728│85070 │558261    │1138   │enabled the rest of Appendix B  │
│       │1991│     │      │          │       │(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.                          │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │    │     │      │          │       │The Story of Mel and many more  │
│       │Jan │     │      │          │       │USENET submissions merged in.   │
│2.4.1  │14  │12362│97819 │642899    │1239   │More material on hackish writing│
│       │1991│     │      │          │       │habits added. Numerous typo     │
│       │    │     │      │          │       │fixes.                          │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │    │     │      │          │       │Second great format change; no  │
│       │Feb │     │      │          │       │more <> around headwords or     │
│2.6.1  │12  │15011│118277│774942    │1484   │references. Merged in results of│
│       │1991│     │      │          │       │serious copy-editing passes by  │
│       │    │     │      │          │       │Guy Steele, Mark Brader. Still  │
│       │    │     │      │          │       │more entries added.             │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │Mar │     │      │          │       │New section on slang/jargon/    │
│2.7.1  │01  │16087│126885│831872    │1533   │techspeak added. Results of     │
│       │1991│     │      │          │       │Guy's second edit pass merged   │
│       │    │     │      │          │       │in.                             │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │Mar │     │      │          │       │Material from the TMRC          │
│2.8.1  │22  │17154│135647│888333    │1602   │Dictionary and MRC's editing    │
│       │1991│     │      │          │       │pass merged in.                 │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │Aug │     │      │          │       │Corresponds to reproduction copy│
│2.9.6  │16  │18952│148629│975551    │1702   │for book.                       │
│       │1991│     │      │          │       │                                │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │    │     │      │          │       │First public release since the  │
│       │Jan │     │      │          │       │book, including over fifty new  │
│2.9.8  │01  │19509│153108│1006023   │1760   │entries and numerous corrections│
│       │1992│     │      │          │       │/additions to old ones. Packaged│
│       │    │     │      │          │       │with version 1.1 of vh(1)       │
│       │    │     │      │          │       │hypertext reader.               │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │Apr │     │      │          │       │                                │
│2.9.9  │01  │20298│159651│1048909   │1821   │Folded in XEROX PARC lexicon.   │
│       │1992│     │      │          │       │                                │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │Jul │     │      │          │       │                                │
│2.9.10 │01  │21349│168330│1106991   │1891   │lots of new historical material.│
│       │1992│     │      │          │       │                                │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │Jan │     │      │          │       │                                │
│2.9.11 │01  │21725│171169│1125880   │1922   │Lots of new historical material.│
│       │1993│     │      │          │       │                                │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │    │     │      │          │       │A few new entries & changes,    │
│       │May │     │      │          │       │marginal MUD/IRC slang and some │
│2.9.12 │10  │22238│175114│1152467   │1946   │borderline techspeak removed,   │
│       │1993│     │      │          │       │all in preparation for 2nd      │
│       │    │     │      │          │       │Edition of TNHD.                │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │Jul │     │      │          │       │Manuscript freeze for 2nd       │
│3.0.0  │27  │22548│177520│1169372   │1961   │edition of TNHD.                │
│       │1993│     │      │          │       │                                │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │Oct │     │      │          │       │Interim release to test WWW     │
│3.1.0  │15  │23197│181001│1193818   │1990   │conversion.                     │
│       │1994│     │      │          │       │                                │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │Mar │     │      │          │       │                                │
│3.2.0  │15  │23822│185961│1226358   │2031   │Spring 1995 update.             │
│       │1995│     │      │          │       │                                │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │Jan │     │      │          │       │                                │
│3.3.0  │20  │24055│187957│1239604   │2045   │Winter 1996 update.             │
│       │1996│     │      │          │       │                                │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │Jan │     │      │          │       │Copy-corrected improvement on   │
│3.3.1  │25  │24147│188728│1244554   │2050   │3.3.0 shipped to MIT Press as a │
│       │1996│     │      │          │       │step towards TNHD III.          │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │Jul │     │      │          │       │The actual TNHD III version     │
│4.0.0  │25  │24801│193697│1281402   │2067   │after copy-edit                 │
│       │1996│     │      │          │       │                                │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │8   │     │      │          │       │The Jargon File rides again     │
│4.1.0  │Apr │25777│206825│1359992   │2217   │after three years.              │
│       │1999│     │      │          │       │                                │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │31  │     │      │          │       │                                │
│4.2.0  │Jan │26598│214639│1412243   │2267   │Fix processing of URLs.         │
│       │2000│     │      │          │       │                                │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │30  │     │      │          │       │Special edition in honor of the │
│4.3.0  │Apr │27805│224978│1480215   │2319   │first implementation of RFC     │
│       │2001│     │      │          │       │1149. Also cleaned up a number  │
│       │    │     │      │          │       │of obsolete entries.            │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │10  │     │      │          │       │XML-Docbook format conversion.  │
│4.4.0  │May │32004│230012│1707139   │2290   │Serious pruning of old slang,   │
│       │2003│     │      │          │       │nearly 100 entries failed the   │
│       │    │     │      │          │       │Google test and were removed.   │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │13  │     │      │          │       │                                │
│4.4.1  │May │37157│234687│1618716   │2290   │XML-Docbook format fixes.       │
│       │2003│     │      │          │       │                                │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │22  │     │      │          │       │Fix filename collisions and     │
│4.4.2  │May │32629│227852│1555125   │2290   │other small problems.           │
│       │2003│     │      │          │       │                                │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │15  │     │      │          │       │Fix some stylesheet problems    │
│4.4.3  │Jul │37363│235135│1629667   │2293   │leading to missing links.       │
│       │2003│     │      │          │       │                                │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │14  │     │      │          │       │Corrected build machinery; we   │
│4.4.4  │Aug │37392│235271│1630579   │2295   │can make RPMS now.              │
│       │2003│     │      │          │       │                                │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │4   │     │      │          │       │Minor updates. Four new entries │
│4.4.5  │Oct │37482│235858│1634767   │2299   │and a better original-bug       │
│       │2003│     │      │          │       │picture.                        │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │25  │     │      │          │       │Added glider illustration.      │
│4.4.6  │Oct │37560│236406│1638454   │2302   │Amended FUD entry pursuent to   │
│       │2003│     │      │          │       │SCO's attempt to abuse it.      │
├───────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       │29  │     │      │          │       │                                │
│4.4.7  │Dec │37666│237206│1643609   │2307   │Winter 2003 update.             │
│       │2003│     │      │          │       │                                │
└───────┴────┴─────┴──────┴──────────┴───────┴────────────────────────────────┘

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 cracker
s, 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 us.”

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  │A technical culture of ham-radio sites using AX.25 and TCP/IP for  │
│Packet   │wide-area networking and BBS systems.                              │
│Radio    │                                                                   │
├─────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│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                                    │
├─────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│         │Massachusetts Institute of Technology; esp. the legendary MIT AI   │
│MIT      │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                                                   │
├─────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│         │Some MITisms go back as far as the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) │
│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, 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    │XEROX's Palo Alto Research Center, site of much pioneering research│
│PARC     │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!

Part II. The Jargon Lexicon

[crunchly-1]

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.

Here is a framed version of the glossary.

Table of Contents

Glossary

0

:(TM): //

    [Usenet] ASCII rendition of the ™ 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 grinder}s. Usually capitalized, but may appear as ‘abend’. Hackers
    will try to persuade you that ABEND is called abend because it is what
    system operators do to the machine late on Friday when they want to call it
    a day, and hence is from the German Abend = ‘Evening’.

    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]

    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 ends
    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 almost
    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 war}s 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 {flame
    }s; 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; par­en/ │
    │(│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/un­par­en­this­ey; 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 brack­et>;   │
    │]│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 (∼) 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 {MUD}s.

    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 on 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 message}s accumulating to the level of serious annoyance,
    or worse. The sort of thing that happens when an inter-network mail gateway
    goes down or wonky.

:barfulation: /bar`fyoo·lay'sh@n/, interj.

    Variation of {barf} used around the Stanford area. An exclamation,
    expressing disgust. On seeing some particularly bad code one might exclaim,
    “Barfulation! Who wrote this, Quux?”

:barfulous: /bar'fyoo·l@s/, adj.

    (alt.: barfucious, /bar-fyoo-sh@s/) Said of something that would make
    anyone barf, if only for esthetic reasons.

: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 cm^2) 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]

    (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 76-03-17:5-8. The previous one is
    76-02-14.)

: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 group}s. 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]

    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 {TLA}s, this is often abbreviated as BRS (this has also become
    established on FidoNet and in the PC {clone} world). It is alleged that the
    emergency pull switch on an IBM 360/91 actually fired a non-conducting bolt
    into the main power feed; the BRSes on more recent 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
    90611726015878352075151628422554026517048330422614
    39742869330616908979684825901254583271682264580665
    26769958652682272807075781391858178889652208164348
    34482599326604336766017699961283186078838615027946
    59551311565520360939881806121385586003014356945272
    24206344631797460594682573103790084024432438465657
    24501440282188525247093519062092902313649327349756
    55139587205596542287497740114133469627154228458623
    77387538230483865688976461927383814900140767310446
    64025989949022222176590433990188601856652648506179
    97023561938970178600408118897299183110211712298459
    01641921068884387121855646124960798722908519296819
    37238864261483965738229112312502418664935314397013
    74285319266498753372189406942814341185201580141233
    44828015051399694290153483077644569099073152433278
    28826986460278986432113908350621709500259738986355
    42771967428222487575867657523442202075736305694988
    25087968928162753848863396909959826280956121450994
    87170124451646126037902930912088908694202851064018
    21543994571568059418727489980942547421735824010636
    77404595741785160829230135358081840096996372524230
    56085590370062427124341690900415369010593398383577
    79394109700277534720000000000000000000000000000000
    00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
    00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
    00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
    00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
    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 bang: n.

    Transmission of data on a serial line, when accomplished by rapidly
    tweaking a single output bit, in software, at the appropriate times. The
    technique is a simple loop with eight OUT and SHIFT instruction pairs for
    each byte. Input is more interesting. And full duplex (doing input and
    output at the same time) is one way to separate the real hackers from the {
    wannabee}s.

    Bit bang was used on certain early models of Prime computers, presumably
    when UARTs were too expensive, and on archaic Z80 micros with a Zilog PIO
    but no SIO. In an interesting instance of the {cycle of reincarnation},
    this technique returned to use in the early 1990s on some RISC
    architectures because it consumes such an infinitesimal part of the
    processor that it actually makes sense not to have a UART. Compare {cycle
    of reincarnation}. Nowadays it's used to describe I2C, a serial protocol
    for monitoring motherboard hardware.

: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]

    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 {emoticon}s 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 common 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 easy
    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:

    [gefingerpo]

    WWII-era machine-shop poster

    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]

    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 {blog}s. 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 {phreaker}s 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 pen}s. A correspondent at U. Minn. reports that the CS
    department there has about 80 bottles of the stuff hanging about, so they
    often refer to any messy work to be done as using the blue glue.

:blue goo: n.

    Term for ‘police’ {nanobot}s intended to prevent {gray goo}, denature
    hazardous waste, destroy pollution, put ozone back into the stratosphere,
    prevent halitosis, and promote truth, justice, and the American way, etc.
    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 {luser}s. “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 {LART
    }s.

: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 {nick}s 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 block}s. For some
    reason, mutations of the head of Bart Simpson are particularly common in
    the least imaginative {sig block}s. See {warlording}.

:bubble sort: n.

    Techspeak for a particular sorting technique in which pairs of adjacent
    values in the list to be sorted are compared and interchanged if they are
    out of order; thus, list entries ‘bubble upward’ in the list until they
    bump into one with a lower sort value. Because it is not very good relative
    to other methods and is the one typically stumbled on by {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 {cracker}s 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
    {crunch}es a line at a time, a short line buffer can result in {lossage} as
    input from a long line overflows the buffer and trashes data beyond it.
    Good defensive programming would check for overflow on each character and
    stop accepting data when the buffer is full up. The term is used of and by
    humans in a metaphorical sense. “What time did I agree to meet you? My
    buffer must have overflowed.” Or “If I answer that phone my buffer is going
    to overflow.” See also {spam}, {overrun screw}.

:bug: n.

    An unwanted and unintended property of a program or piece of hardware, esp.
    one that causes it to malfunction. Antonym of {feature}. Examples: “There's
    a bug in the editor: it writes things out backwards.” “The system crashed
    because of a hardware bug.” “Fred is a winner, but he has a few bugs”
    (i.e., Fred is a good guy, but he has a few personality problems).

    Historical note: 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-col]

    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]

    It helps to remember that this dates from 1973.

    (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-10-31. The previous cartoon
    was 73-07-24.)

:bug-compatible: adj.

    [common] Said of a design or revision that has been badly compromised by a
    requirement to be compatible with {fossil}s or {misfeature}s in other
    programs or (esp.) previous releases of itself. “MS-DOS 2.0 used \ as a
    path separator to be bug-compatible with some cretin's choice of / as an
    option character in 1.0.”

:bug-for-bug compatible: n.

    Same as {bug-compatible}, with the additional implication that much tedious
    effort went into ensuring that each (known) bug was replicated.

: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 {cracker}s 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 3.

:busy-wait: vi.

    Used of human behavior, conveys that the subject is busy waiting for
    someone or something, intends to move instantly as soon as it shows up, and
    thus cannot do anything else at the moment. “Can't talk now, I'm
    busy-waiting till Bill gets off the phone.”

    Technically, busy-wait means to wait on an event by {spin}ning through a
    tight or timed-delay loop that polls for the event on each pass, as opposed
    to setting up an interrupt handler and continuing execution on another part
    of the task. 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]

    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]

    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 κανον (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 page}s 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]

    This is one way to be {chad}less.

    (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-guard}s).

: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 box}es,
    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 block}s 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,
    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 {coaster}s.

:COBOL: /koh'bol/, n.

    [COmmon Business-Oriented Language] (Synonymous with {evil}.) A weak,
    verbose, and flabby language used by {code grinder}s to do boring mindless
    things on {dinosaur} mainframes. Hackers believe that all COBOL programmers
    are {suit}s or {code grinder}s, and no self-respecting hacker will ever
    admit to having learned the language. Its very name is seldom uttered
    without ritual expressions of disgust or horror. 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 {weenie}s. “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 variable}s 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 {
    feature}s and {cruft} that don't merge cleanly into the overall design
    scheme (thus, some fans of {Classic C} maintain that ANSI C is no longer
    compact).

:compiler jock: n.

    See {jock} (sense 2).

: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 {crunch}ing 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
    {fan}s. “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 cookie}s 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 {cookie}s. 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 {suit}s. “I'll get back to
    him on that feature in my copious free time.”

:copper: n.

    Conventional electron-carrying network cable with a core conductor of
    copper — or aluminum! Opposed to {light pipe} or, say, a short-range
    microwave link.

:copy protection: n.

    A class of 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]

    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 {retcon}ned 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 {
    luser}s lost their files in last night's disk crash.” A disk crash that
    involves the read/write heads dropping onto the surface of the disks and
    scraping off the oxide may also be referred to as a head crash, whereas the
    term system crash usually, though not always, implies that the operating
    system or other software was at fault.

    2. v. To fail suddenly. “Has the system just crashed?” “Something crashed
    the OS!” See {down}. Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the
    crash (usually a person or a program, or both). “Those idiots playing {
    SPACEWAR} crashed the system.”

    3. vi. Sometimes said of people hitting the sack after a long {hacking run
    }; see {gronk out}.

:crash and burn: vi.,n.

    A spectacular crash, in the mode of the conclusion of the car-chase scene
    in the movie Bullitt and many subsequent imitators (compare {die horribly
    }). 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 {feature}s
    onto systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed
    when originally designed. See also {feeping creaturism}. “You know, the
    main problem with {BSD} Unix has always been creeping featurism.”

    2. More generally, the tendency for anything complicated to become even
    more complicated because people keep saying “Gee, it would be even better
    if it had this feature too”. (See {feature}.) The result is usually a
    patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being
    planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra
    little feature to help someone ... and then another ... and another....
    When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer. 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 {mainframe}s, 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 {
    snarf}ed 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’. (The sound of this
    happening is, canonically, {splork!})

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 war}s, 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 {suit}s read. Used to question an
    unbelieved quote, as in “Did you read that in Datamation?”. It used to
    publish something hackishly funny every once in a while, like the original
    paper on {COME FROM} in 1973, 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 {
    suit}s took over and {DEC} became much more ‘businesslike’.

    The history above is known to many old-time hackers. But there's more:
    Peter Samson, 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 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}; {crash}ed. 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
    {heisenbug}s into {Bohr bug}s. 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.

    3. The IBM DeskStar 75GXP drive series, which suffered manufacturing
    problems and had an uncanny ability to die after a few months in the field.
    This drive series single-handedly destroyed IBM's previously very good
    reputation in the hard disk market, and ended up with IBM selling their
    hard disk business to Hitachi.

: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 {nickle}s; 10 bits. Reported among developers for Mattel's GI 1600 (the
    Intellivision games processor), a chip with 16-bit-wide RAM but 10-bit-wide
    ROM. 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 {AFJ}s (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 {lint}ing. 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 {demoeffect}s (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 {app}s have a demo
    mode they use as a screen saver, or may go through a demo mode on startup
    (for example, the Microsoft Windows opening screen — which lets you impress
    your neighbors without actually having to put up with {Microsloth Windows
    }).

: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),
    {sysop}s, 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 {phreaker}s; see {
    war dialer} for its contemporary progeny.

:demoparty: n.

    [{demoscene}] Aboveground descendant of the {copyparty}, with emphasis
    shifted away from software piracy and towards {compo}s. 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 hack}s
    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 {demogroup}s
    emerged, they started to have {compo}s 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 hit}s).

: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 machine}s).
    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 {suit}s 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]

    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 {newbie}s. 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-flamin]

    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 {dinosaur}s. It exists in at least six mutually
    incompatible versions, all featuring such delights as non-contiguous letter
    sequences and the absence of several ASCII punctuation characters fairly
    important for modern computer languages (exactly which characters are
    absent varies according to which version of EBCDIC you're looking at). IBM
    adapted EBCDIC from {punched card} code in the early 1960s and promulgated
    it as a customer-control tactic (see {connector conspiracy}), spurning the
    already established ASCII standard. Today, IBM claims to be an open-systems
    company, but IBM's own description of the EBCDIC variants and how to
    convert between them is still internally classified top-secret,
    burn-before-reading. Hackers blanch at the very name of EBCDIC and consider
    it a manifestation of purest {evil}. See also {fear and loathing}.

: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 Programmer}s, 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 {hog}s (owing perhaps
    to poor design founded on {brute force and ignorance}) and exceedingly {
    hairy} in source form. An elephantine program may be functional and even
    friendly, but (as in the old joke about being in bed with an elephant) it's
    tough to have around all the same (and, like a pachyderm, difficult to
    maintain). In extreme cases, hackers have been known to make trumpeting
    sounds or perform expressive proboscatory mime at the mention of the
    offending program. Usage: semi-humorous. Compare ‘has the elephant nature’
    and the somewhat more pejorative {monstrosity}. See also {second-system
    effect} and {baroque}.

:elevator controller: n.

    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 {newbie}s), resulting in
    arguments and {flame war}s.

    Hundreds of emoticons have been proposed, but only a few are in common use.
    These include:

    ┌───┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
    │:-)│‘smiley face’ (for humor, laughter, friendliness, occasionally       │
    │   │sarcasm)                                                             │
    ├───┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │:-(│‘frowney face’ (for sadness, anger, or upset)                        │
    ├───┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │;-)│‘half-smiley’ ( {ha ha only serious}); also known as semi-smiley or  │
    │   │winkey face.                                                         │
    ├───┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │:-/│‘wry face’                                                           │
    └───┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

    (These may become more comprehensible if you tilt your head sideways, to
    the left.) The first two listed are by far the most frequently encountered.
    Hyphenless forms of them are common on CompuServe, GEnie, and BIX; see also
    {bixie}. On {Usenet}, smiley is often used as a generic term synonymous
    with {emoticon}, as well as specifically for the happy-face emoticon.

    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 {marketroid}s to say “Yes, and
    you can program our computers in English!” to ignorant {suit}s without
    quite running afoul of the truth-in-advertising laws.

:enhancement: n.

    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 {tick}s past the
    epoch. Weird problems may ensue when the clock wraps around (see {wrap
    around}), which is not necessarily a rare event; on systems counting 10
    ticks per second, a signed 32-bit count of ticks is good only for 6.8
    years. The 1-tick-per-second clock of Unix is good only until January 18,
    2038, assuming at least some software continues to consider it signed and
    that word lengths don't increase by then. See also {wall time}. 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 {grovel}ling 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
    environment}s 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 {luser}s to keep them distracted while the program performs necessary
    background tasks. “Give 'em some eye candy while the back-end {slurp}s 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 {con}s 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]

    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 {flamer}
    s.

: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 {cracker}s. The typical firewall is an inexpensive micro-based Unix
    box kept clean of critical data, with a bunch of modems and public network
    ports on it but just one carefully watched connection back to the rest of
    the cluster. The special precautions may include threat monitoring,
    callback, and even a complete {iron box} keyable to particular incoming IDs
    or activity patterns. Syn. {flytrap}, {Venus flytrap}. 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 {flame}s. 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 {flatten}ed representation of some database or tree or network structure
    as a single file from which the structure could implicitly be rebuilt, esp.
    one in {flat-ASCII} form. 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 grinder}s, 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-5]

    Crunchly gets {flush}ed.

    (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 {MUD}s 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 variable}s 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 block}s 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 π equals 3 — for small values of π 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 {
    posting}s for all to read and discussion ensues. Contrast real-time chat
    via {talk mode} or point-to-point personal {email}.

:fossil: n.

    1. In software, a misfeature that becomes understandable only in historical
    context, as a remnant of times past retained so as not to break
    compatibility. Example: the retention of octal as default base for string
    escapes in {C}, in spite of the better match of hexadecimal to ASCII and
    modern byte-addressable architectures. See {dusty deck}.

    2. More restrictively, a feature with past but no present utility. Example:
    the force-all-caps (LCASE) bits in the V7 and {BSD} Unix tty driver,
    designed for use with monocase terminals. (In a perversion of the usual
    backward-compatibility goal, this functionality has actually been expanded
    and renamed in some later USG Unix releases as the IUCLC and OLCUC bits.)

:four-color glossies: n.

    1. Literature created by {marketroid}s that allegedly contains technical
    specs but which is in fact as superficial as possible without being totally
    {content-free}. “Forget the four-color glossies, give me the tech ref
    manuals.” Often applied as an indication of superficiality even when the
    material is printed on ordinary paper in black and white. Four-color-glossy
    manuals are never useful for 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 {backreference}d
    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 {suit}s; see {foobar}, and {foo} for a
    fuller etymology.

:fuck me harder: excl.

    Sometimes uttered in response to egregious misbehavior, esp. in software,
    and esp. of misbehaviors which seem unfairly persistent (as though designed
    in by the imp of the perverse). Often theatrically elaborated: “Aiighhh!
    Fuck me with a piledriver and 16 feet of curare-tipped wrought-iron fence 
    and no lubricants!” The phrase is sometimes heard abbreviated FMH in polite
    company.

    [This entry is an extreme example of the hackish habit of coining elaborate
    and evocative terms for lossage. Here we see a quite self-conscious parody
    of mainstream expletives that has become a running gag in part of the
    hacker culture; it illustrates the hackish tendency to turn any situation,
    even one of extreme frustration, into an intellectual game (the point
    being, in this case, to creatively produce a long-winded description of the
    most anatomically absurd mental image possible — the short forms implicitly
    allude to all the ridiculous long forms ever spoken). Scatological language
    is actually relatively uncommon among hackers, and there was some
    controversy over whether this entry ought to be included at all. As it
    reflects a live usage recognizably peculiar to the hacker culture, we feel
    it is in the hackish spirit of truthfulness and opposition to all forms of
    censorship to record it here. —ESR & GLS]

:FUD: /fuhd/, n.

    Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company: “FUD is
    the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds
    of potential customers who might be considering [Amdahl] products.” The
    idea, of course, was to persuade them to go with safe IBM gear rather than
    with competitors' equipment. This 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
    variable}s (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 {newbie}s 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 {orthogonal}ity. 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 block}s 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 {newsgroup}s. 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 {app}s
    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.

    Popilarized by id software in the game Quake, but actually goes back to an
    earlier game called Rise of the Triad. 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 {luser}s 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 {heisenbug
    }s).

    [73-06-04]

    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 {regexp}s.

    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 {sagan}s of sub-micron-sized
    self-replicating robots programmed to make copies of themselves out of
    whatever is available. The image that goes with the term is one of the
    entire biosphere of Earth being eventually converted to robot goo. This is
    the simplest of the {nanotechnology} disaster scenarios, easily refuted by
    arguments from energy requirements and elemental abundances. Compare {blue
    goo}.

: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 file}s).

:Hackintosh: n.

    1. An Apple Lisa that has been hacked into emulating a Macintosh (also
    called a ‘Mac XL’).

    2. A Macintosh assembled from parts theoretically belonging to different
    models in the line.

:hackish: /hak'ish/, adj.

    (also {hackishness} n.)

    1. Said of something that is or involves a hack.

    2. Of or pertaining to hackers or the hacker subculture. See also {
    true-hacker}.

:hackishness: n.

    The quality of being or involving a hack. This term is considered mildly
    silly. Syn. {hackitude}.

:hackitude: n.

    Syn. {hackishness}; this word is considered sillier.

:hair: 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 system}s. Syllables and whole words in a sentence are
    replaced by single ASCII characters the names of which are phonetically
    similar or equivalent, while multiple letters are usually dropped. Hence,
    ‘for’ becomes ‘4’; ‘two’, ‘too’, and ‘to’ become ‘2’; ‘ck’ becomes ‘k’. “
    Before I see you tomorrow” becomes “b4 i c u 2moro”. First appeared in
    London about 1986, and was probably caused by the slowness of available
    talker systems, which operated on archaic machines with outdated operating
    systems and no standard methods of communication.

    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 spot}s from an {HLL} into
    hand-tuned assembler, as opposed to trying to coerce the compiler into
    generating better code. Both the term and the practice are becoming
    uncommon. See {tune}, {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}, {cracker}s, {weenie}s, {spod}s, 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 block}s, {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 {grok}ked 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 {luser}s, 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 war}s 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 {cracker}s 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 {hotlink}s).

    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 {crash
    }ed 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.

:I for one welcome our new X overlords:

    Variants of this phrase with various values of X came into common use in
    2002-2003, generally used to suggest that whatever party referred to as the
    new overlords is deeply evil. In the original Simpsons episode (#96, Homer
    In Space) X = “insect” and the line is part of a speech in which a smarmy
    newscaster expresses his willingness to collaborate with an invading race
    of giant space ants.

: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 block}s 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 {flame}s 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 {spin}s or {buzz}es 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-10}s and {PDP-20}s,
    running {TOPS-10} and {TOPS-20}, to PDP-11s and {VAX}en 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 {screen}s.

    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 {emoticon}s. 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 {dinosaur}s 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 {retcon}ned 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} {bigot}s 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 {kiboze}s 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 {flood}ing, 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 box}es 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 fart}s 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}

:knurd: n.

    1. [RPI] Renssaleer Polytechnic Institute local slang roughly equivalent to
    the positive sense of {geek}, referring to people who prefer technical
    hobbies to socializing.

    2. In older usage at RPI, the term signified someone new to college life,
    fresh out of high school, and wet behind the ears.

    An IEEE Spectrum article (4/95, page 16) once derived ‘nerd’ in its variant
    form ‘knurd’ from the word ‘drunk’ backwards; this etymology was common at
    RPI. Though it is commonly confused with {nerd}, it appears these words
    have separate origins (compare the {kluge}/{kludge} pair).

: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 {phreaker}s. 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 {wannabee}s. 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 Programmer}s 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 {flame}s 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, {suit}s, 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]

    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]

    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 {
    crock}s. When the {Right Thing} has already been done once, there is no
    justification for {bogosity} in newer languages.

    [lisp]

    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 {hook}s (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.

    [licensepla]

    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 {shim}s 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 {suit}s!” 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 {HLL}s, 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 {
    dinosaur}s 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 {win}ning. “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]

    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).

:mav: n.

    [MUD, IRC; common] Term used when an individual accidently sends a comment
    to the wrong location. Generally, this is MUD-to-MUD (MU*-to-MU*), or in
    various IRC channels. However, it can also refer to a comment made in
    private that was dropped to the entire world, or accidentally directing to
    one person when it was supposed to go to another.

: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 {urchin}s. [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 {TLA}s.

    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}, {│MIT/Stanford usage, now found everywhere (thanks largely │
    │baz}, {quux},  │to early versions of this lexicon!). At MIT (but not at  │
    │quuux,         │Stanford), {baz} dropped out of use for a while in the   │
    │quuuux...:     │1970s and '80s. A common recent mutation of this sequence│
    │               │inserts {qux}before {quux}.                              │
    ├───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │bazola, ztesch:│Stanford (from mid-'70s on).                             │
    ├───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │{foo}, {bar},  │This series was popular at CMU. Other CMU-associated     │
    │thud, grunt:   │variables include {gorp}.                                │
    ├───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │               │Waterloo University. We are informed that the CS club at │
    │{foo}, {bar},  │Waterloo formerly had a sign on its door reading “Ye Olde│
    │bletch:        │Foo Bar and Grill”; this led to an attempt to establish “│
    │               │grill” as the third metasyntactic variable, but it never │
    │               │caught on.                                               │
    ├───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │{foo}, {bar},  │This series is reported to be common at XEROX PARC.      │
    │fum:           │                                                         │
    ├───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │{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,     │Cambridge University (England).                          │
    │wombat:        │                                                         │
    ├───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │shme           │Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a     │
    │               │short /e/.                                               │
    ├───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │foo, bar, baz, │Yale, late 1970s.                                        │
    │bongo          │                                                         │
    ├───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │spam, eggs     │{Python} programmers.                                    │
    ├───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │snork          │Brown University, early 1970s.                           │
    ├───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │{foo}, {bar},  │Helsinki University of Technology, Finland.              │
    │zot            │                                                         │
    ├───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │blarg, {wibble}│New Zealand.                                             │
    ├───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │toto, titi,    │France.                                                  │
    │tata, tutu     │                                                         │
    ├───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │pippo, pluto,  │Italy. Pippo /pee'po/ and Paperino /pa·per·ee'·no/ are   │
    │paperino       │the Italian names for Goofy and Donald Duck. Pluto, of   │
    │               │course, is Mickey's dog.                                 │
    ├───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │aap, noot, mies│The Netherlands. These are the first words a child used  │
    │               │to learn to spell on a Dutch spelling board.             │
    ├───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │oogle, foogle, │These two series (which may be continued with other      │
    │boogle; zork,  │initial consonents) are reportedly common in England, and│
    │gork, bork     │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 {marketroid}s (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 {computron}s. “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 {glark}ed 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 {luser}s. 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.

    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; however,
    {knurd} appears to have a separate etymology.) 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.

    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.god}s, 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.god}hood.

: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 {thrash}
    ing. 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 {flamer}s, 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
    list}s 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 block}s 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 {ISP}s. 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]

    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     │{crumb}, {quad}, {quarter}, tayste, tydbit, morsel                │
    │bits: │                                                                  │
    ├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │4     │nybble                                                            │
    │bits: │                                                                  │
    ├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │5     │{nickle}                                                          │
    │bits: │                                                                  │
    ├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │10    │{deckle}                                                          │
    │bits: │                                                                  │
    ├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │16    │playte, {chawmp} (on a 32-bit machine), word (on a 16-bit         │
    │bits: │machine), half-word (on a 32-bit machine).                        │
    ├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │18    │{chawmp} (on a 36-bit machine), half-word (on a 36-bit machine)   │
    │bits: │                                                                  │
    ├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │32    │dynner, {gawble} (on a 32-bit machine), word (on a 32-bit         │
    │bits: │machine), longword (on a 16-bit machine).                         │
    ├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │36    │word (on a 36-bit machine)                                        │
    │bits: │                                                                  │
    ├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │48    │{gawble} (under circumstances that remain obscure)                │
    │bits: │                                                                  │
    ├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │64    │double word (on a 32-bit machine) quad (on a 16-bit machine)      │
    │bits: │                                                                  │
    ├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │128   │quad (on a 32-bit machine)                                        │
    │bits: │                                                                  │
    └──────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

    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 block}s 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 {sysape}s 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←ιN

    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 {
    suit}s) 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 {
    app}s 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 {crash}es, 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]

    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 {thrash}ing 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
    {heisenbug}s 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 {luser}s 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 block}s 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 ρ 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 door}s 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
    problem}s). “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 {crunch}ing 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
    smash}es 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.

    1. Syn. {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.

    [BSD hackers; common] Notional dunce cap handed to the original author of a
    bug that's been corrected. Unlike the wizard had, this is often
    self-assumed: “Somebody please pass me the pointy hat. I fouled up the
    distfile rather badly. This fixes it.”

:pointy-haired: adj.

    [after the character in the {Dilbert} comic strip] Describes the extreme
    form of the property that separates {suit}s and {marketroid}s 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 {RFC}s, 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 {
    gronk}ed 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 {grind}ing (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 run}s 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 spot}s 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 {proglet}
    s.

    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 un
    usable 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 {suit}s 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 {demo}s. 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:

    ┌───┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
    │   │Long described at MIT as ‘the least random number’; see also 23. This│
    │17 │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).     │
    ├───┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │   │The most random two-digit number is 37, When groups of people are    │
    │37 │polled to pick a “random number between 1 and 100”, the most commonly│
    │   │chosen number is 37.                                                 │
    ├───┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │   │The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and       │
    │42 │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 {tense}ness 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]

    ()

: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 {toast}ed
    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 {
    spam}ming) by its customers, or which itself engages in such activities.
    Rogue ISPs are sometimes subject to {IDP}s or {UDP}s. 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 {spoiler}s. 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 {guru}s 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 {mundane}s.

: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 {scribble}d 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 {droid}s 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 {PM}ed 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 {rootkit}s 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 {grovel}
    ling 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 dump}s 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 {flatten}ed 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
    file}s, 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 {suit}s) 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 {OS}es] 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 {incantation}s 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 {ping}ing
    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 war}s. 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 {marketroid}s
    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 {benchmark}s
    (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 {suit}s 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 fluid}s 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 {cracker}s 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 message}
    s 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      │λ                              │
    ├─────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
    │front-shift-L│Λ                              │
    ├─────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
    │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-]

    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]

    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 {feep}ing 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-post}ing (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 {luser}s 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 account}s 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 flag}s 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
    (also “splorf”). It usually follows an unexpectedly funny thing in a Usenet
    post. Compare {snarf}, {C|N>K}.

:spod: n.

    [UK]

    1. A lower form of life found on {talker system}s and {MUD}s. 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. 2. An experienced talker user. As with the defiant
    adoption of the term geek in the mid-1990s by people who would previously
    have been stigmatized by it, the term “spod” is now used as a mark of
    distinction by talker users who've accumulated a large amount of login
    time. Such spods tend to be very knowledgeable about talkers and talker
    coding, as well as more general hacker activites. An unusually high
    proportion of spods work in the ISP sector, a profession which allows for
    lengthy periods of login time and for under-the-desk servers, or “spodhosts
    ”, upon which talker systems are hosted. 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.

    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 {spool}ed 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 {dinosaur}s. 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]

    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 {swap}ped 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 {suit}s 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                                                      │
    ├────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │        │are you ready to unlink? (this is the standard way to end a     │
    │BYE?    │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)                    │
    ├────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │        │are you there? (often used on unexpected links, meaning also “  │
    │FOO?    │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     │are you there?                                                  │
    │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     │thanks a million (humorous)                                     │
    │1.0E6   │                                                                │
    ├────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │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?                                                  │
    ├────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │        │When the typing party has finished, he/she types two newlines to│
    │<double │signal that he/she is done; this leaves a blank line between    │
    │newline>│'speeches' in the conversation, making it easier to reread the  │
    │        │preceding text.                                                 │
    ├────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │        │You Had To Be There. Used of a situation which loses significant│
    │YHTBT   │meaning in the telling, usually because it's difficult to convey│
    │        │tone and timing.                                                │
    ├────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │        │When three or more terminals are linked, it is conventional for │
    │        │each typist to {prepend} his/her login name or handle and a     │
    │<name>: │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    │see you later (mutant of CU l8tr)                                 │
    │l8er  │                                                                  │
    ├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │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 {B1FF}isms (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 {
    MUD}s 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 {toolsmith}ing 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 {handwave
    }d.

    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 {sneaker}s) 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 {cracker}s, 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 switch}es 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 {tool}s 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 {computron}s 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 Thing}s 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 Thing}s
    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 {suit}s 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 {flame}s; or, the post
    itself. Derives from the phrase “trolling for {newbie}s” 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.”

:tumbler: n.

    1. [Originally from the Xanadu hypertext project] A tumbler is a {magic
    cookie} generated as part of a record or message to give it a unique
    identity. Usually a tumbler includes an encoded form of its creation date,
    but if a software system has more than one concurrent process that could
    generate tumblers it must also include an encoding of the process ID. If
    tumblers will be shared across multiple network hosts, they must also
    include the host name or network address. Tumblers often include a hash of
    the rest of the message or record content so that it is possible to verify
    the correctness of the data the tumbler is attached to.

    2. Variant text added to spam instances (often in the Subject line) to make
    them unique. This kind of tumbler is used to defeat schemes that check an
    exact hash of an incoming message against known spam signatures; it also
    compromises some kinds of statistical spam recognition.

: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 {droid}s. 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
    {hook}s 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 ™
    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}.

    [richiethom]

    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 {unixism}s 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 and the University of North Carolina, 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 {newsgroup}s 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 {luser}s. 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 {wizard
    }s 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 micro}s 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-11}s, 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; an interview describing how it came to be is
    available. 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 horse}s. 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 hack}s). Many nasty viruses, written by particularly
    perversely minded {cracker}s, 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 {luser}s 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 block}s 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 machine}s. 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 {tick}s
    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 {grovel}ling 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 dialer}s.

: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 {cracker}s 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
    quote}s, 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, {crock}y {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]

    (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]

    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 {deadlock
    }s 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 {glark}ing
    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 account}s 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 variable}s 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 environment}s 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]

    (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 {grok}s 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 {bible}s 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 {fix}es; 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 {crash}es 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 {cracker}s 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 {suit}s 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 Programmer}s); 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 {parse}d)
    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 error}s, 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.

    A track called Zorch was the B-side of a single called Captain Hideous,
    released by novelty artist Nervous Norvous in 1955. Norvous was heavily
    influemced by a radio comedian named Red Blanchard; the word “zorch”
    appears to have been coined on Blanchard's show in the early 1950s. The
    word itself had no meaning, but there where compounds using it that did — “
    zorch cow”, for example, was a variant of the Chicago-area slang “black cow
    ” for a root beer float.

: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.

Part III. Appendices

Table of Contents

A. Hacker Folklore
    The Meaning of ‘Hack’
    TV Typewriters: A Tale of Hackish Ingenuity
    A Story About ‘Magic'
    Some AI Koans
        Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine
        Moon instructs a student
        Sussman attains enlightenment
        Drescher and the toaster
    OS and JEDGAR
    The Story of Mel
B. A Portrait of J. Random Hacker
    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
C. Helping Hacker Culture Grow
Bibliography

Appendix A. Hacker Folklore

Table of Contents

The Meaning of ‘Hack’
TV Typewriters: A Tale of Hackish Ingenuity
A Story About ‘Magic'
Some AI Koans
    Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine
    Moon instructs a student
    Sussman attains enlightenment
    Drescher and the toaster
OS and JEDGAR
The Story of Mel

This appendix contains several legends and fables that illuminate the meaning
of various entries in the lexicon.

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 Göodel, 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 networks though, 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.

