term% cat index.txt ========= THIS IS THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.1.5 28 NOV 1990 =================
INTRODUCTION
This `jargon file' is a collection of slang terms used by various
subcultures of computer hackers.
The original `jargon file' was a collection of hacker slang from
technical cultures including 1) the MIT AI Lab, 2) the Stanford
AI lab, 3) the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities, 3) Carnegie-
Mellon University, 4) Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Some entries
dated back to the early 1970s. This version was published as _The_
Hacker's_Dictionary_ in 1983.
This new version casts a wider net than the old jargon file;
its aim is to cover not just AI but all the technical computing
cultures wherein the true hacker-nature is manifested. More than
half of the entries now derive from USENET and the C and UNIX
communities.
The present maintainers of the jargon file are Guy L. Steele
(gls@think.com) and Eric S. Raymond (eric@snark.thyrsus.com). Send
all additions, corrections and correspondence relating to the
jargon file to jargon@think.com.
CREDITS
The original jargon file was compiled by Guy L. Steele Jr., Raphael
Finkel, Don Woods, and Mark Crispin, with assistance from the MIT and
Stanford AI communities and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Some contributions were submitted via the ARPAnet from miscellaneous
sites. The `old' jargon file was last revised in 1983; its revisions
are all un-numbered and may be collectively considered `Version 1'.
Version 2.1: the jargon file reorganization and massive additions
were by Eric S. Raymond, approved by Guy Steele. Many items of UNIX,
C, USENET and microcomputer-based slang were added at that time (as
well as Appendix A, The Untimely Demise of Mabel The Monkey). Some
obsolescent usages (mostly PDP-10 derived) were moved to appendix B.
The bibliography (Appendix C) was also consed on.
Our thanks to all the USENETters who contributed entries and
encouragement. Special thanks to our Scandinavian correspondent Per
Lindberg (per@front.se), author of the remarkable Swedish language
'zine _Hackerbladet_, for bring FOO! comics to our attention and
smuggling the IBM hacker underground's own baby jargon file out to
us. Also, much gratitude to ace hacker/linguist Joe Keane
(jkg@osc.osc.com) for helping us improve the pronunciation guides; and
to Maarten Litmath for generously allowing the inclusion of the
ASCII prononunciation guide he maintains.
FORMAT FOR NEW ENTRIES
Try to conform to the format already being used -- 70 character
lines, 3-character indentations, pronunciations in parentheses,
etymologies in brackets, single-space after def'n numbers and word
classes, etc. Stick to the standard ASCII character set.
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 slang!
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 slang 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 slang file will be regularly maintained and re-posted from
now on and will include a version number. Read it, pass it around,
contribute -- this is *your* monument!
NOTES ON JARGON CONSTRUCTION
There are some standard methods of jargonification which became
established quite early (i.e before 1970), spreading from such sources
as the MIT Model Railroad Club, the PDP-1 SPACEWAR hackers and John
McCarthy's original crew of LISPers. These include:
Verb doubling: a standard construction is to double a verb and use it
as a comment on what the implied subject does. Often used to
terminate a conversation. Typical examples involve WIN, LOSE,
HACK, FLAME, BARF, CHOMP:
``The disk heads just crashed.'' ``Lose, lose.''
``Mostly he just talked about his @#!!$% crock. Flame, flame.''
``Boy, what a bagbiter! Chomp, chomp!''
Soundalike slang: similar to Cockney rhyming slang. Often made up on
the spur of the moment. Standard examples:
Boston Globe => Boston Glob
Herald American => Horrid (Harried) American
New York Times => New York Slime
Prime Time => Slime Time
government property - do not duplicate (seen on keys)
=> government duplicity - do not propagate
Often the substitution will be made in such a way as to slip in
a standard jargon word:
Dr. Dobb's Journal => Dr. Frob's Journal
Margaret Jacks Hall => Marginal Hacks Hall
Data General => Dirty Genitals
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: ``Foodp?'' ``Yeah, I'm pretty hungry.'' or ``T!''
``State-of-the-world-P?'' (Straight) ``I'm about to go home.''
(Humorous) ``Yes, the world has a state.''
[One of the best of these is a Gosperism (i.e., due to Bill
Gosper). When we were at a Chinese restaurant, he 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]
Peculiar nouns: MIT AI 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. Examples:
porous => porosity
generous => generosity
Ergo: mysterious => mysteriosity
ferrous => ferrocity
Other examples: winnitude, disgustitude, hackification.
Also, note that all nouns can be verbed. eg: ``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.
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 in a com link. Another
expression sometimes heard is ``complain!'', meaning ``I have a
complaint!''
Hacker speech style: 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 is essential. One should
use just enough jargon to communicate precisely and identify
oneself as ``in the culture''; overuse and a breathless, excessively
gung-ho attitude are considered tacky and the mark of a loser.
This speech style (a variety of the precisionist English normally
spoken by scientists, design engineers, and academics in technical
fields) is fairly constant everywhere. Of the five listed
constructions, verb doubling, peculiar noun formations, and
(especially!) spoken inarticulations have become quite general; but
rhyming slang is still largely confined to MIT and other large
universities, and the P convention is found only where LISPers
flourish.
One final note. 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 BUG SCREW LOSE MISFEATURE
CROCK KLUGE HACK WIN FEATURE ELEGANCE PERFECTION
The last is never actually attained.
PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
Pronunciation keys are provided in the jargon listing for all
entries which are neither dictionary words pronounced as in standard
English nor obvious compounds of same. These guides use the following
simple system:
1) Syllables are hyphen-separated, except that an apostrophe
or back-apostrophe follows each accented syllable (the
back apostrophe marks a secondary accent in some words of
four or more syllables).
2) Consonants are pronounced as in American English. The letter
``g'' is always hard (as in ``got'' rather than ``giant'');
``ch'' is soft ("church'' rather than ``chemist"). The letter
``j'' is the sound that occurs twice in ``judge''. The letter
``s'' is always as in ``pass'', never a z sound (but it is
sometimes doubled at the end of syllables to emphasize this).
The digraph `dh' is the th of `these clothes', not of `thick'.
3) Vowels are represented as follows:
a back, that
ah father, palm
ar far, mark
aw flaw, caught
ay bake, rain
e less, men
ee easy, ski
eir their, software
i trip, hit
ie life, sky
o cot, top
oh flow, sew
oo loot, through
or more, door
ow out, how
oy boy, coin
uh but, some
u put, foot
y yet
yoo few
[y]oo oo with optional fronting as in `news' (noos or nyoos)
An at-sign is used for the ``schwa'' sound of unstressed or occluded
vowels (the one that is often written with an upside-down ``e"). The
schwa vowel is omitted in syllables containing vocalic r, l, m or n;
that is, ``kitten'' and ``color'' would be rendered ``kit'n'' and
``kul'r''.
UNIX CONVENTIONS
References such as `malloc(3)' and `patch(1)' are to UNIX
facilities (some of which, such as patch(1), are actually freeware
distributed over USENET). The UNIX manuals use `foo(n)' to refer to
item foo in section n) of the manual, where n=1 is utilities, n=2 is
system calls, n=3 is C library routines, n=4 is file formats, n=5 is
a miscellany, n=6 is games, n=7 is device drivers, and n=8 is system
administration tools.
THE JARGON ITSELF
= =
@BEGIN [primarily CMU] with @End, used humorously in writing to
indicate a context or to remark on the surrounded text. From the
SCRIBE command of the same name. For example:
@Begin(Flame)
Predicate logic is the only good programming language.
Anyone who would use anything else is an idiot. Also,
computers should be tredecimal instead of binary.
@End(Flame)
On USENET, this construct would more frequently be rendered as
<FLAME ON> and <FLAME OFF>.
/DEV/NULL [from the UNIX null device, used as a data sink] n. 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.
= A =
ABEND (ab'end) n. Abnormal termination (of software); crash; lossage.
Derives from an error message on the IBM 360, but has passed into
more general use, esp. at mainframe shops.
ACK (ak) interj. 1. [from the ASCII mnemonic for 000110] Acknowledge.
Used to register one's presence (compare mainstream ``Yo!''). An
appropriate response to PING. 2. [prob. from _Bloom_County_] An
exclamation of surprised disgust, esp. in ``Oop ack!''.
Semi-humorous. Also in the form ACK? 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'').
ADGER (adj'r) [UCLA] v. To make a bonehead move that could have been
foreseen with a slight amount of mental effort. E.g., ``He started
removing files and promptly adgered the whole project.''
AD-HOCKERY (ad-hok'@r-ee) [Purdue] n. Gratuitous assumptions made
inside certain programs, esp. expert systems, which lead to the
appearance of semi-intelligent behavior, but are in fact entirely
arbitrary.
ADVENT (ad'vent) n. The prototypical computer adventure game, first
implemented on the PDP-10 by Will Crowther as an attempt at
computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a
puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods. Now better known as Adventure,
but the TOPS-10 operating system only permitted 6-letter filenames.
This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style now expected in
text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines that have
become fixtures of hacker-speak. ``A huge green fierce snake bars
the way!'' ``I see no X here.'' (for X some noun). ``You are in a
maze of twisty little passages, all alike''. 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.
ALIASING BUG [C programmers] n. A class of subtle programming errors
which can arise in code that does dynamic allocation via malloc(3).
If more than one pointer addresses (`aliases for') a given hunk of
storage, it may happen that the storage is freed through one alias
and then referenced through another, leading to subtle (and
possibly intermittent) lossage depending on the state and the
allocation history of the malloc ARENA. Avoidable by use of
allocation strategies that never alias allocated core. Also called
a STALE POINTER BUG. See also PRECEDENCE LOSSAGE, SMASH THE STACK,
FANDANGO ON CORE, MEMORY LEAK, OVERRUN SCREW.
ALT BIT (ahlt bit) [from alternate?] adj. See META BIT.
ANGLE BRACKETS [primarily MIT] n. Either of the characters ``<'' and
``>''. See BROKET.
APP (ap) n. Short for `application program', as opposed to a systems
program. What systems vendors are forever chasing developers to do
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 apps. Oppose TOOL, OPERATING SYSTEM.
ARENA [UNIX] n. The area of memory attached to a process by brk(2) and
sbrk(2) and used by malloc(3) as dynamic storage. So named from a
semi-mythical ``malloc: corrupt arena'' message supposedly emitted
when some early versions became terminally confused. See OVERRUN
SCREW, ALIASING BUG, MEMORY LEAK, 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 one arg, but the
arc-tangent function can take either one or two args''. Compare
PARAM, VAR.
ASBESTOS LONGJOHNS, UNDIES (uhn'dees), or OVERCOAT n. Metaphoric
garments often donned by USENET posters just before emitting a
remark they expect will elicit FLAMAGE.
ASCII (as'kee) Common slang names for ASCII characters are collected
here. See individual entries for BANG, CLOSE, EXCL, OPEN, QUES,
SEMI, SHRIEK, SPLAT, TWIDDLE, WHAT, WOW, and YIU-SHIANG WHOLE FISH.
This list derives from revision 2.2 of the USENET ASCII
pronunciation guide. Single characters are listed in ASCII order,
character pairs are sorted in by first member. For each character,
``official'' names appear first, then others in order of popularity
(more or less).
! exclamation point, exclamation, bang, factorial, excl, ball-bat,
smash, shriek, cuss, wow, hey
" double quote, quote, dirk, literal mark, rabbit ears
# pound sign, number sign, sharp, crunch, mesh, hex, hash,
flash, grid, pig-pen, tictactoe, scratchmark, octothorp (from
Bell System)
$ dollar sign, currency symbol, buck, cash, string (from BASIC),
escape (from TOPS-10), ding, big-money
% percent sign, percent, mod, double-oh-seven
& ampersand, amper, and, address (from C), andpersand
' apostrophe, single quote, quote, prime, tick, irk, pop, spark
() open/close parenthesis, left/right parenthesis, paren/thesis,
lparen/rparen, parenthisey, unparenthisey, open/close round
bracket, ears, so/already, wax/wane
* asterisk, star, splat, wildcard, gear, dingle, mult
+ plus sign, plus, add, cross, intersection
, comma, tail
- hyphen, dash, minus sign, worm
. period, dot, decimal point, radix point, point, full stop, spot
/ virgule, slash, stroke, slant, diagonal, solidus, over, slat
: colon, two-spot
; semicolon, semi, hybrid
<> angle brackets, brokets, left/right angle, less/greater than,
read from/write to, from/into, from/toward, in/out, comesfrom/
gozinta (all from UNIX), funnel, crunch/zap, suck/blow
= equal sign, equals, quadrathorp, gets, half-mesh
? question mark, whatmark, what, wildchar, ques, huh, quark
@ at sign, at, each, vortex, whorl, whirlpool, cyclone, snail,
ape, cat
V vee, book
[] square brackets, left/right bracket, bracket/unbracket, bra/ket,
square/unsquare, U turns
\ reversed virgule, backslash, bash, backslant, backwhack, backslat,
escape (from UNIX)
^ circumflex, caret, uparrow, hat, chevron, sharkfin, to ("to
the power of"), fang
_ underscore, underline, underbar, under, score, backarrow, flatworm
` grave accent, grave, backquote, left quote, open quote, backprime,
unapostrophe, backspark, birk, blugle, back tick, push
{} open/close brace, left/right brace, brace/unbrace, curly bracket,
curly/uncurly, leftit/rytit, embrace/bracelet
| vertical bar, bar, or, v-bar, spike, pipe, gozinta, thru,
pipesinta (last four from UNIX)
~ tilde, squiggle, approx, wiggle, twiddle, swung dash, enyay
ASSEMBLER 1. A program translator that allows human beings to generate
machine code using mnemonics and symbolic names for memory
locations rather than raw binary; distinguished from an HLL (q.v.)
by the fact that a single assembler step generally maps to a single
machine instruction (see also LANGUAGES OF CHOICE). 2. A NANOBOT
which is a physical REPLICATOR (This is the ``official'' term,
coined by Eric Drexler; see NANOTECHNOLOGY).
AUTOMAGICALLY (aw-toh-maj'i-klee, aw-toh-maj'i-kl-ee) adv.
Automatically, but in a way which, 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. Example: The C-INTERCAL compiler generates C, then
automagically invokes cc to produce an executable.
= B =
BACKBONE CABAL n. Semi-mythical group of large-site administrators who
pushed through the GREAT RENAMING and reined in the chaos of USENET
during most of the 1980s. The cabal mailing list disbanded in late
1988 after a bitter internal catfight, but the net hardly noticed.
BACK DOOR n. A hole in the security of a system deliberately left in
place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for this is not
always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out of
the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field service
or the vendor's maintenance programmers. Historically, back doors
have often lurked in systems longer than anyone expected or
planned, and a few have become widely known. The famous RTM worm of
late 1988, for example, used a back door in the BSD UNIX
sendmail(1) utility. See also IRON BOX, CRACKER, WORM, LOGIC BOMB.
BACKGROUND v.,adj. A task running in background is detached from the
terminal where it was started and running at a lower priority
(oppose FOREGROUND). Nowadays this term is primarily associated
with UNIX, but it was appears first to have been used in this sense
on OS/360. By extension, 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. Compare SLOPSUCKER.
BAD THING n. Something which can't possibly result in improvement of
the subject. This term is always capitalized, as in ``Replacing
all of the 9600 baud modems with bicycle couriers would be a Bad
Thing.'' Oppose GOOD THING. One correspondent suggests that BAD
THING and GOOD THING (and prob. therefore RIGHT THING and WRONG
THING) come from the book ``1066 and All That'', which discusses
rulers who were Good Kings, but Bad Things.
BAGBITER (bag'biet-@r) n. 1. Something, such as a program or a
computer, that fails to work, or works in a remarkably clumsy
manner. Example: ``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. Also in the form BAGBITING adj. 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 and CHOMPING; and BITE THE BAG
v. 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, probably referring to the scrotum, but in their current
usage they have become almost completely sanitized.
BAMF (bamf) [from comix] interj. Notional sound made by a person or
object teleporting in or out of the hearer's vicinity. Often used
in VIRTUAL REALITY (q.v.) electronic fora when a character wishes
to make a dramatic entrance or exit.
BANG 1. n. Common spoken name for `!' (ASCII 33), especially when used
in pronouncing a BANG PATH (q.v.) 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 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 ``Congratulationa bang.'', 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 PATH n. An old-style UUCP electronic-mail address specifying hops
to get from some assumed-reachable location to the addressee, so
called because each hop is signified by a BANG sign. Thus the path
``...!bigsite!foovax!barbox!me'' directs correspondents 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''. See
INTERNET ADDRESS and NETWORK.
BAR (bar) 1. The second metasyntactic variable, after FOO and before
BAZ. ``Suppose we have two functions FOO and BAR. FOO calls
BAR...'' 2. Often appended to FOO to produce FOOBAR.
BARF (barf) [from mainstream slang meaning ``vomit''] 1. interj. Term
of disgust. See BLETCH. 2. To say ``Barf!'' or emit some similar
expression of disgust. 3. v. To fail to work because of
unacceptable input. May mean to give an error message. Examples:
``The division operation barfs if you try to divide by zero.''
(that is, division by zero fails in some unspecified spectacular
way) ``The text editor barfs if you try to read in a new file
before writing out the old one.'' 4. Also BARFULOUS, BARFUCIOUS:
adj. Said of something which would make anyone barf, if only for
aesthetic reasons. See CHOKE, GAG.
BAUD BARF (bawd barf) n. The garbage one gets on the monitor when
using a modem connection with some protocol setting (esp. line
speed) incorrect, or when someone picks up a voice extension on the
same line, or when really bad line noise disrupts the connection.
BAZ (baz) 1. The third metasyntactic variable, after FOO and BAR and
before QUX. ``Suppose we have three functions FOO, BAR, and BAZ.
FOO calls BAR, which calls BAZ...'' 2. interj. Term of mild
annoyance. In this usage the term is often drawn out for two or
three seconds, producing an effect not unlike the bleating of a
sheep; ``Baaaaaaz!'' 3. Occasionally appended to FOO to produce
FOOBAZ.
BEAM [from ``Beam me up, Scotty!''] v. To transfer SOFTCOPY of
a file electronically; most often in combining forms such as ``beam
me a copy'' or ``beam that over to his site''. Compare BLAST,
SNARF, BLT.
BELLS AND WHISTLES [by analogy with locomotives] n. Features added to
a program or system to make it more FLAVORFUL from a hacker's point
of view, without necessarily adding to its utility for its primary
function. Distinguished from CHROME which is intended to attract
users.
BENCHMARK n. An inaccurate measure of computer performance. ``In the
computer industry, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies,
and benchmarks.'' See also MIPS.
BERKLIX (ber'kliks) n.,adj. Contraction of Berkeley UNIX. See BSD. Not
used at Berkeley itself. [This one, in my experience, is more
common among suit-wearers attempting to sound ``hip'' than hackers
-- ESR]
BERZERKELY (b@r-zer'klee) [from the name of a now-deceased record
label] n. Humorous, often-used distortion of ``Berkeley'' used esp.
to refer to the practices or products of the BSD UNIX hackers.
BIG-ENDIAN [From Swift's ``Gulliver's Travels'' via a famous 1980
paper by Danny Cohen] adj. Describes a computer architecture in
which, within a given 16- or 32-bit word, lower byte addresses have
higher significance (the word is stored `big-end-first'). Most
processors including the IBM 370 family and the PDP-10 and Motorola
microprocessor families and most of the various RISC designs
current in 1990 are big-endian. See LITTLE-ENDIAN, MIDDLE-ENDIAN.
BIG IRON n. Large, expensive, ultra-fast computers. Used
generally of number crunching supercomputers such as Crays, but can
include more conventional big commercial IBMish mainframes. Term
of approval, oppose DINOSAUR.
BIGNUM (big'num) n. A multiple-precision computer representation for
very large integers. More generally, any very large number.
``Have you ever looked at the United States Budget? There's
bignums for you!'' When playing backgammon, large numbers on the
dice, especially a roll of double fives or double sixes. 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 (2147483648) or (on losing BITTY
BOXES) 2 ^ 16 (32767). If you want to work with numbers larger
than that, you have to use floating-point numbers, which are
usually only accurate to 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) exactly. For
example, this value for 1000! was computed by the MACLISP system
using bignums:
4023872600770937735437024339230039857193748642107146325437999104
2993851239862902059204420848696940480047998861019719605863166687
2994808558901323829669944590997424504087073759918823627727188732
5197795059509952761208749754624970436014182780946464962910563938
8743788648733711918104582578364784997701247663288983595573543251
3185323958463075557409114262417474349347553428646576611667797396
6688202912073791438537195882498081268678383745597317461360853795
3452422158659320192809087829730843139284440328123155861103697680
1357304216168747609675871348312025478589320767169132448426236131
4125087802080002616831510273418279777047846358681701643650241536
9139828126481021309276124489635992870511496497541990934222156683
2572080821333186116811553615836546984046708975602900950537616475
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0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000. The MACLISP language was not the first computer system to
calculate very large integers, but it was @c[MACLISP] that provided
the name ``bignum''.]
BIG RED SWITCH [IBM] n. The power switch on a computer, esp. on an
IBM-PC where it really is large and red. ``This !@%$% BITTY BOX is
hung again, time to hit the big red switch.'' Sources at IBM report
that, in tune with the company's passion for TLAs (q.v.) this is
often acronymized as ``BRS''.
BIGNUMS [from Macsyma] n. 1. In backgammon, large numbers on the dice.
2. Multiple-precision (sometimes infinitely extendable) integers
and, through analogy, any very large numbers. 3. EL CAMINO BIGNUM:
El Camino Real, a street through the San Francisco peninsula that
originally extended (and still appears in places) all the way to
Mexico City. It was termed ``El Camino Double Precision'' when
someone noted it was a very long street, and then ``El Camino
Bignum'' when it was pointed out that it was hundreds of miles
long.
BINARY n. The object code for a program.
BIT [from the unit of information] n. A mental flag: a reminder that
something should be done eventually. Example: ``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.)
BIT BANG n. Transmission of data on a serial line accomplished by
rapidly tweaking a single output bit at the appropriate times
(popular on certain early models of PRIME computers, presumably
when UARTs were too expensive; and on archaic Z-80 micros with a
Zilog PIO but no SIO). The technique is a simple loop with eight
OUT, SHIFT, OUT etc 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 wannabees.
BIT BUCKET n. The great data sink in the sky. Data that is discarded
is said to ``go to the bit bucket''. On UNIX, often used for
/DEV/NULL (q.v.). Sometimes amplified as THE GREAT BIT BUCKET IN
THE SKY.
BIT DECAY n. See SOFTWARE ROT. People with a physics background tend
to prefer this one for the analogy with particle decay.
BIT ROT n. See SOFTWARE ROT.
BITBLT (bit'blit, bit'belt) n. [from BLT, q.v.] 1. One of a closely
related family of 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. An early
experimental bit-mapped terminal at Bell Labs, later commercialized
as the AT&T 5620.
BITS n. Machine-readable representation of a document, specifically as
contrasted with paper. ``I only have a photocopy of the Jargon
File; does anyone know where I can get the bits?''. See SOFTCOPY.
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 for it. Especially used of small,
obsolescent, single-tasking-only personal machines like the Atari
800X, Osborne, Sinclair, VIC-20, or TRS-80. 2. More generally, the
opposite of `real computer' (see GET A REAL COMPUTER). Pejorative.
See also MESS-DOS, TOASTER, and TOY.
BIXIE (biks'ee) n. Synonym for EMOTICON used on BIX (the Byte
Information Exchange); BIXers believe (probably incorrectly) the
emoticon was invented there.
BLAST v.,n. Synonym for BLT (q.v.), used esp. for large data sends
over a network or comm line. Opposite of SNARF. Usage: uncommon.
BLAZER n. Nickname for the Telebit Trailblazer, an expensive but
extremely reliable and effective high-speed modem, popular at UNIX
sites that pass large volumes of EMAIL and USENET news.
BLETCH (blech) [from Yiddish/German ``brechen'', to vomit] 1. interj.
Term of disgust. 2. BLETCHEROUS: adj. Disgusting in design or
function. ``This keyboard is bletcherous!'' Usage: slightly
comic.
BLINKENLIGHTS (blink'@n-lietz) n. Front-panel diagnostic lights on a
mainframe CPU. Derives from the last word of the famous
blackletter-Gothic ``ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!'' notice in
mangled pseudo-German that once graced about half the computer
rooms in the English-speaking world. The following text ran: ``Das
computermachine ist nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist
easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit
spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das
rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen hans in das pockets muss; relaxen
und watch das blinkenlichten.'' This silliness dates back at least
as far as the London University ATLAS site in the 1960s, but
(judging by the idioms) was probably composed by an American at
some still-earlier date.
BLIT (blit) v. To transfer a large contiguous package of information
from one place to another. This usage has outlasted the PDP-10
BLock Transfer instruction for which it derives. See BITBLT, BLT,
DD, CAT, BLAST, SNARF, Appendix B.
BLOCK [From computer science usage] 1. vi. To delay while waiting for
something. ``We're blocking until everyone gets here.'' 2. in
BLOCK ON vt. To block, waiting for (something). ``Lunch is blocked
on Phil's arrival.''
BLOCK TRANSFER COMPUTATIONS n. From the Dr. Who television series: in
the show, it referred to computations so fiendishly subtle and
complex that they could not be performed by machines. Used to
refer to any task that should be expressible as an algorithm in
theory, but isn't.
BLOW AWAY v. To remove files and directories from permanant storage
with extreme prejudice, generally by accident. Oppose NUKE.
BLOW OUT v. Of software, to fail spectacularly; almost as serious as
CRASH AND BURN. See BLOW PAST.
BLOW PAST v. To BLOW OUT despite a safeguard. ``The server blew past
the 5K reserve buffer.''
BLT (bee ell tee, [rarely] belt) n.,v. Synonym for BLIT. This form is
older but now less common.
BLUE BOOK n. Informal name for one of the three standard references on
PostScript; the others are known as the GREEN BOOK and RED BOOK.
BLUE GLUE [IBM] n. IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture) an
incredibly losing and bletcherous protocol suite widely favored at
commercial shops that don't know any better. See FEAR AND
LOATHING.
BLUE GOO n. Term for ``police'' NANOBOTS intended to prevent GRAY GOO
(q.v.), denature hazardous waste, destroy pollution, put ozone back
into the stratosphere, prevent halitosis, and to promote truth,
justice, and the American way, etc., etc. See NANOTECHNOLOGY.
BNF (bee-en-ef) n. Hacker acronym for `Backus-Naur Form', a
metasyntactic notation used to specify the syntax of programming
languages, command sets and the like. Widely used for language
descriptions but seldom documented anywhere, so that it must
usually be learned by osmosis from other hackers. Consider this BNF
for a postal address:
<postal-address> ::= <name-part> <street-address> <zip-part>
<name-part> ::= <first-name> [<middle-part>] <last-name>
<middle-part> ::= <middle-name>
| <middle-initial> "."
<street-address> ::= [<apt>] <street-number> <street-name>
<zip-part> ::= <town-name> "," <state-code> <zip-code>
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 name-part consists of a first-name followed by an
optional middle-part followed by a last-name. A middle-part
consists of either a middle name or a middle initial followed by a
dot. A street address consists of an optional apartment specifier
followed by a street number, followed by a street name. A zip-part
consts of a town-name, followed by a state code, followed by a zip
code. Note that many things such as the format of a first-name,
apartment specifier or zip-code are left unspecified. These are
presumed to be obvious from context or detailed in another part of
the specification the BNF is part of.
BOA [IBM] n. Any one of the fat cables that lurk under the floor in
DINOSAUR PENS. It is rumored within IBM that 370 channel cables are
limited to 200 feet because beyond that length the boas get
dangerous...
BOAT ANCHOR n. Like DOORSTOP (q.v.) but more severe, implies that the
offending hardware is irreversibly dead or useless.
BOGOMETER (boh-goh'm@-tr) n. An instrument to measure BOGOSITY,
generally a conversational device, as in ``my bogometer is reading
in the red on that idea'' or ``I think you just bent the needle on
my bogometer''.
BOGON (bo'gon) [by analogy with proton/electron/neutron, but doubtless
reinforced after 1980 by the similarity to ``Vogon''] n. 1. The
elementary particle of bogosity (see QUANTUM BOGODYNAMICS). For
instance, ``the ethernet is emitting bogons again,'' meaning 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 extension, used
to refer metasyntactically 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.''
BOGON FILTER (bo'gon fil'tr) n. Any device, software or hardware,
which limits or suppresses the flow and/or emission of bogons.
Example: ``Engineering hacked a bogon filter between the Cray and
the VAXen and now we're getting fewer dropped packets.''
BOGOSITY (boh-gos-@-tee) n. 1. The degree to which something is BOGUS
(q.v.). At CMU, bogosity is measured with a BOGOMETER; typical
use: in a seminar, when a speaker says something bogus, a listener
might raise his hand and say, ``My bogometer just triggered.'' The
agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the microLenat (uL). 2. The
potential field generated by a bogon flux; see QUANTUM
BOGODYNAMICS.
BOGUS [WPI, Yale, Stanford] 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. Silly. ``Stop writing those bogus
sagas.'' (This word seems to have some, but not all, of the
connotations of RANDOM.) [Etymological note from Lehman/Reid at
CMU: ``Bogus'' was originally used (in this sense) at Princeton, in
the late 60s. It was used not particularly in the CS department,
but all over campus. It came to Yale, where one of us (Lehman) was
an undergraduate, and (we assume) elsewhere through the efforts of
Princeton alumni who brought the word with them from their alma
mater. In the Yale case, the alumnus is Michael Shamos, who was a
graduate student at Yale and is now a faculty member here. A
glossary of bogus words was compiled at Yale when the word was
first popularized (e.g., autobogophobia: the fear of becoming
bogotified).]
BOHR BUG (bor buhg) [from quantum physics] n. A repeatable BUG; one
which manifests reliably under a possibly unknown but well-defined
set of conditions. Antonym of HEISENBUG.
BOINK (boynk) [USENET] 1. To have sex with; compare BOUNCE, sense #3.
2. After the original Peter Korn ``Boinkcon'' 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.
BONDAGE-AND-DISCIPLINE LANGUAGE A language such as Pascal, 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 or even vanilla
general-purpose programming. See LANGUAGES OF CHOICE.
BOOT [from ``by one's bootstraps''] v.,n. To load and initialize the
operating system on a machine. This usage is no longer slang
(having become jargon in the strict sense), but it is sometimes
used of human thought processes, as in the following exchange:
``You've lost me.'' ``O.K., reboot. Here's the theory...''. 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).
BOTTLENECKED adj. 1. Used by hackers specifically to describe hardware
under which performance is usually limited by contention for one
particular resource (such as disk, memory or processor CLOCKS); see
BALANCED. 2. Less often, applied to the software analogue of sense
#1, a slow code section or algorithm through which all computation
must pass (see also HOT SPOT).
BOUNCE v. 1. [UNIX] An electronic mail message which is undeliverable
and returns an error notification to the sender is said to
`bounce'. See also BOUNCE MESSAGE. 2. [Stanford] To play
volleyball. ``Bounce, bounce! Stop wasting time on the computer and
get out to the court!'' 3. To engage in sexual intercourse; prob.
fr. the expression ``bouncing the mattress'', but influenced by
Piglet's psychosexually-loaded ``Bounce on me too, Tigger!'' from
the Winnie the Pooh books.
BOUNCE MESSAGE [UNIX] n. Notification message returned to sender by a
site unable to relay EMAIL to the intended INTERNET ADDRESS
recipient or the next link in a BANG PATH (see BOUNCE). Reasons
might include a nonexistent or misspelled username or a down relay
site. Bounce messages can themselves fail, with occasionally ugly
results; see SORCERER'S APPRENTICE MODE.
BOXEN (bok'sn) pl n. [back-formation from VAXEN] Fanciful plural of
`box' often encountered in the phrase `UNIX boxen', used to
describe commodity UNIX hardware. The implication is that any two
UNIX boxen are interchangeable.
BRAIN-DAMAGED [generalization of ``Honeywell Brain Damage'' (HBD), a
theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in
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.
BRANCH TO FISHKILL [IBM, from the location of one of their facilities]
n. Any unexpected jump in a program that produces catastrophic or
just plain weird results. See HYPERSPACE.
BREAK v. 1. To cause to be broken (in any sense). ``Your latest patch
to the system broke the TELNET server.'' 2. (of a program) To stop
temporarily, so that it may be examined for debugging purposes.
The place where it stops is a BREAKPOINT.
BREAKAGE [IBM] n. The extra people that must be added to an
organization because its master plan has changed; used esp. of
software and hardware development teams.
BRITTLE adj. Said of software that's functional but easily broken by
changes in operating environment or configuration. Often describes
the results of a research effort that were never intended to be
robust, but can be applied to commercially developed software.
BROADCAST STORM n. An incorrect packet broadcast on a network that
causes most hosts to respond all at once, typically with wrong
answers that start the process over again. Also called NETWORK
MELTDOWN. See also CHERNOBYL PACKET.
BROKEN adj. 1. Not working properly (of programs). 2. Behaving
strangely; especially (of people), exhibiting extreme depression.
BROKET (broh'k@t, broh'ket) [by analogy with ``bracket": a ``broken
bracket"] (primarily Stanford) n. Either of the characters ``<''
and ``>''. (At MIT, and apparently in THE REAL WORLD (q.v.) as
well, these are usually called ANGLE BRACKETS.)
BRUTE FORCE AND IGNORANCE n. A popular design technique at many
software houses. Dogmatic adherence to design methodologies tends
to encourage it. Characteristic of early LARVAL STAGE programming;
unfortunately, many never outgrow it. Often abbreviated BFI, as
in: ``Gak, they used a bubble sort! That's strictly from BFI.''
Compare BOGOSITY.
BSD (bee-ess-dee) n. [acronym for Berkeley System Distribution] a
family of UNIX versions for the DEC VAX developed by Bill Joy and
others at UC Berkeley starting around 1980, incorporating TCP/IP
networking enhancements and many other features. The BSD versions
(4.1, 4.2, and 4.3) and commercial versions derived from them
(SunOS and Mt. Xinu) held the technical lead in the UNIX world
until AT&T's successful standardization efforts after about 1986,
and are still widely popular. See UNIX, USG UNIX.
BUCKY BITS (buh'kee bits) [primarily Stanford] n. The bits produced by
the CTRL and META shift keys on a Stanford (or Knight) keyboard. It
is rumored that these were in fact named for Buckminster Fuller
during a period when he was consulting at Stanford. Unfortunately,
legend also has it that ``Bucky'' was Niklaus Wirth's nickname when
*he* was consulting at Stanford and that he first suggested the
idea of the meta key, so its bit was named after him. DOUBLE BUCKY:
adj. Using both the CTRL and META keys. ``The command to burn all
LEDs is double bucky F.'' See also META BIT, COKEBOTTLE.
BUFFER OVERFLOW n. What typically happens when an OS or application is
fed data faster than it can buffer and process it. Used
metaphorically of human mental processes. ``Sorry, I got four phone
calls in three minutes last night and lost your message to a buffer
overflow.''
BUG [from telephone terminology, ``bugs in a telephone cable'', blamed
for noisy lines] n. An unwanted and unintended property of a
program, esp. one which causes it to malfunction. See FEATURE.
BULLETPROOF adj. Used of an algorithm or implementation considered
extremely robust; lossage-resistant; capable of correctly
recovering from any imaginable exception condition. This is a rare
and valued quality.
BUM 1. v. To make highly efficient, either in time or space, often at
the expense of clarity. ``I managed to bum three more
instructions.'' 2. n. A small change to an algorithm to make it
more efficient. Usage: somewhat rare. See TUNE.
BUMP v. Synonym for increment. Has the same meaning as C's ++
operator. Used esp. of counter variables, pointers (see POINTER
ARITHMETIC) and index dummies in for, while, and do-until loops.
BURBLE v. Like FLAME, but connotes that the source is truly clueless
and ineffectual (mere flamers can be competent). A term of deep
contempt.
BUSY-WAIT v. To wait on an event by SPINning through a tight or
timed-delay loop that polls for the event on each pass, as opposed
to setting up an interrupt handler and continuing execution on
another part of the task. A wasteful technique, best avoided on
time-sharing systems where a busy-waiting program may hog the
processor.
BUZZ v. 1. To run in a very tight loop, perhaps without guarantee of
getting out. See SPIN. 2. [ETA Systems] To test a wire or PCB trace
for continuity by applying an AC signal as opposed to applying a DC
signal. Some wire faults will pass DC tests but fail a BUZZ test.
BWQ [bee duhb'l-yoo kyoo) [IBM] n. Buzz Word Quotient. Usually roughly
proportional to BOGOSITY. See TLA.
BYTESEXUAL (biet-seks'u-@l) adj. Said of hardware, denotes willingness
to compute or pass data in either BIG ENDIAN or LITTLE ENDIAN
format (depending, presumably, on a mode bit somewhere).
= C =
C n. 1. The third letter of the Latin alphabet. 2. The name of a
programming language designed by Dennis Ritchie during the early
1970s and first used to implement UNIX (q.v.). So called because
many features derived from an earlier interpreter named 'B' in
commemoration of *its* parent, BCPL; before Bjarne Stroustrup
settled the question by designing C++, there was a humorous debate
over whether C's successor should be named `D' or 'P'. C became
immensely popular outside Bell Labs after about 1980 and is now the
dominant language in systems and microcomputer applications
programming. See LANGUAGES OF CHOICE.
CAN v. To abort a job on a time-sharing system. Used esp. when the
person doing the deed is an operator, as in CANNED FROM THE
CONSOLE. Frequently used in an imperative sense, as in ``Can that
print job, the LPT just popped a sprocket!''. Synonymous with GUN.
CANONICAL adj. The usual or standard state or manner of something.
This usage is actually not confined to hackers, and may be found
throughout academia. A true story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT
AI Lab, expressed some annoyance at the use of jargon. Over his
loud objections, we made a point of using jargon as much as
possible in his presence, and eventually it began to sink in.
Finally, in one conversation, he used the word ``canonical'' in
jargon-like fashion without thinking. Steele: ``Aha! We've
finally got you talking jargon too!'' Stallman: ``What did he
say?'' Steele: ``He just used `canonical' in the canonical way.''
CASTERS UP MODE (cas'trz uhp mohd) [IBM] n. Yet another synonym for
`broken' or `down'.
CAT [from UNIX cat(1)] v. To spew an entire (notionally large) file to
the screen or some other output sink without pause; 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.
CATATONIA n. A condition of suspended animation in which the system is
in a wedged (CATATONIC) state.
CDR (ku'dr) [from LISP] v. With ``down'', to trace down a list of
elements. ``Shall we cdr down the agenda?'' Usage: silly.
CELL-REPAIR MACHINES n. An often-discussed probable consequence of
NANOTECHNOLOGY; NANOBOTS specifically programmed to repair tissue
at the cellular level. Possible uses include reversing freezing
damage from CRYONICS procedures and correction of mutagen-damaged
DNA (including eradication of retrovirii and oncogenes).
CHAD (chad) n. 1. The perforated edge strips on printer paper, after
they have been separated from the printed portion. Also called
SELVAGE and PERF. 2. obs. the confetti-like paper bits punched out
of cards or paper tape; this was also called `chaff'.
CHAIN [orig. from BASIC's CHAIN statement] v. When used of programming
languages, refers to a statement that allows a parent executable to
hand off execution to a child without going through the OS command
interpreter. 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.
CHAR (keir; [rarely] char or kar) n. Shorthand for `character'. Esp.
used by C programmers, as `char' is C's typename for character
data.
CHASE POINTERS v. 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 almost jargion in the strict sense, but remains slang
when used of human networks. ``I'm chasing pointers. Bob said you
could tell me who to talk to about...''
CHEMIST [Cambridge University] n. Someone who wastes CPU time on
number-crunching when you'd far rather the CPU was 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 PACKET (cher-no'b@l pa'k@t) n. An IP Ethergram with both
source and destination Ether and IP address set as the respective
broadcast address. So called because it induces NETWORK MELTDOWN.
CHINESE RAVS (chie'neez ravs) [MIT] n. Pot-stickers. Kuo-teh. Gyoza.
Oriental dumplings, especially when pan-fried rather than steamed.
A favorite hacker appetizer. See ORIENTAL FOOD, STIR-FRIED RANDOM.
CHOKE vi. To reject input, often ungracefully. ``I tried building X,
but cpp choked on all those #define's.'' See BARF, GAG.
CHOMP v. To lose; to chew on something of which more was bitten off
than one can. Probably related to gnashing of teeth. See
BAGBITER. A hand gesture commonly accompanies this, consisting of
the four fingers held together as if in a mitten or hand puppet,
and the fingers and thumb open and close rapidly to illustrate a
biting action. The gesture alone means CHOMP CHOMP (see Verb
Doubling).
CHRISTMAS TREE PACKET n. A packet with every single option set for
whatever protocol is in use.
CHROME [from automotive slang via wargaming] n. Showy features added
to attract users, but which contribute little or nothing to the
power of a system. ``The 3D icons in Motif are just chrome!"
Distinguished from BELLS AND WHISTLES by the fact that the latter
are usually added to gratify developers' own desires for
featurefulness.
CHURCH OF THE SUB-GENIUS A mutant offshoot of DISCORDIANISM launched
in 1981 as a spoof of fundamentalist Christianity by the ``Rev.''
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
Sub-Genius theory is concerned with the acquisition of the mystical
substance or quality of ``slack''.
CLASSIC C (klas'ik see) [a play on `Classic Coke'] n. The C
programming language as defined in the first edition of the book
``The C Programming Language'' by ``Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis
M. Ritchie'' with some small additions. It is also known as ``K &
R C.'' The name came into use during the standardisation process
for C by the ANSI X3J11 committee. Also ``C CLASSIC''. This is
sometimes generalized to ``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
generalization is especially used of product series in which the
newer versions are considered serious losers relative to the older
ones.
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.
CLONE n. 1. An exact duplicate, as in ``our product is a clone of
their product.'' 2. A shoddy, spurious copy, as in ``their product
is a clone of our product.'' 3. A PC-BUS/ISA or EISA-compatible
80x86 based microcomputer (in-context shorthand for ``PC clone").
3. In the construction UNIX CLONE: An OS designed to deliver a
UNIX-lookalike environment sans UNIX license fees, or with
additional ``mission-critical'' features such as support for
real-time programming.
CLOSE n. Abbreviation for ``close (or right) parenthesis'', used when
necessary to eliminate oral ambiguity. See OPEN.
CLUSTERGEEKING (kluh'ster-gee`king) [CMU] n. An activity defined by
spending more time at a computer cluster doing CS homework than
most people spend breathing.
COBOL FINGERS (koh'bol fing'grs) n. Reported from Sweden, a
(hypothetical) disease one might get from programming in COBOL. The
language requires extremely voluminous code. Programming too much
in COBOL causes the fingers to wear down (by endless typing), until
short stubs remain. This malformity is called COBOL FINGERS. ``I
refuse to type in all that source code again, it will give me cobol
fingers!"
CODE GRINDER n. 1. A SUIT-wearing minion of the sort hired in legion
strength by banks and insurance companies to implement payroll
packages in RPG and other such unspeakable horrors. This is about
as far from hackerdom as you can get and still touch a computer.
Connotes pity. See REAL WORLD. 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, and
utter lack of imagination.
CODE POLICE [by analogy with ``thought police"] n. A mythical team of
Gestapo-like storm troopers that might burst into one's office and
arrest one for violating style rules. May be used either
``seriously'' (to underline a claim that a particular style
violation is dangerous) or (more often) ironically (to suggest that
the practice under discussion is condemned mainly by anal-retentive
weenies).
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. As in
``This language extension would require a codewalker to
implement.''
COKEBOTTLE (kohk'bot-l) n. Any very unusual character. MIT people
used to complain about the ``control-meta-cokebottle'' commands at
SAIL, and SAIL people complained right back about the
``altmode-altmode-cokebottle'' commands at MIT. Since the demise of
the SPACE-CADET KEYBOARD this is no longer a serious usage, but may
be invoked humorously to describe an (unspecified) weird or
non-intuitive keystroke command.
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 fall through to the statement following the COME FROM. COME
FROM was first proposed in a Datamation article in 1973 that
parodied the then-raging `structured programming' wars (see
CONSIDERED HARMFUL). It was actually implemented for the first time
seventeen years later, in C-INTERCAL (see INTERCAL,
RETROCOMPUTING); knowledgeable observers are still reeling from
shock.
COMPRESS [UNIX] v. When used without a qualifier, generally refers to
CRUNCHing of a file using a particular C implementation of
Lempel-Ziv compression by James A. Woods et al and widely
circulated via USENET. Use of CRUNCH (q.v.) itself in this sense is
rare among UNIX hackers.
COMPUTER GEEK n. One who eats [computer] bugs for a living. One who
fulfills all of the dreariest negative stereotypes about hackers:
an asocial, malodorous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the
personality of a cheese grater. Cannot be used by outsiders without
implied insult to all hackers; compare black-on-black usage of
``nigger''. A computer geek may be either a fundamentally clueless
individual or a true-hacker in LARVAL STAGE. Also called TURBO
NERD, TURBO GEEK. See also CLUSTERGEEKING.
COMPUTRON (kom-pyoo-tron) n. A notional unit of computing power
combining instruction speed and storage capacity, dimensioned
roughly in instructions-per-sec 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.
CONNECTOR CONSPIRACY [probably came into prominence with the
appearance of the KL-10, none of whose connectors match anything
else] n. The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension,
programmers or purveyors of anything) to come up with new products
which don't fit together with the old stuff, thereby making you buy
either all new stuff or expensive interface devices.
CONS (kons) [from LISP] 1. v. To add a new element to a list. 2.
CONS UP: v. To synthesize from smaller pieces: ``to cons up an
example''.
CONSIDERED HARMFUL adj. Edsger Dijkstra's infamous March 1968 CACM
note, _Goto_Statement_Considered_Harmful_, fired the first salvo in
the ``structured programming'' wars. In the years since then a
number of both serious papers and parodies have borne titles of the
form ``X considered Y'' in reference to it. 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.
CONTENT-FREE adj. Ironic analogy with ``bug-free'', used of a message
which adds nothing to the recipient's knowledge. Though this
adjective is sometimes applied to FLAMAGE, it more usually connotes
derision for comunication styles which exalt form over substance,
or are centered on concerns irrelevant to the subject ostensibly at
hand. ``Content-free? Uh...that's anything printed on glossy
paper''.
COOKIE MONSTER n. Any of a family of early (1970s) hacks reported on
TOPS-10, ITS and elsewhere that would lock up either the victim's
terminal (on a time-sharing machine) or the operator's console (on
a batch mainframe), repeatedly demanding ``I WANT A COOKIE''. The
required responses ranged in complexity from ``COOKIE'' through
``HAVE A COOKIE'' and upward. See also WABBIT.
COPYLEFT (kop'ee-left) n. 1. The copyright notice carried by GNU EMACS
and other Free Software Foundation software granting re-use and
reproduction rights to all comers. 2. By extension, any copyright
notice intended to achieve similar aims.
CORE n. Main storage or DRAM. Dates from the days of ferrite-core
memory; now archaic, but still used in the UNIX community and by
old-time hackers or those who would sound like same.
CORE DUMP n. [from UNIX] 1. Catastrophic program failure due to
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 ... and dumped core"
CORE LEAK n. Syn. with MEMORY LEAK.
CORE WARS n. A game between ``assembler'' programs in a simulated
machine, where the objective is to kill your opponent's program by
overwriting it. This was popularized by A.K. Dewdney's column in
_Scientific_American_. It is rumored that the game is a civilized
version of an amusement common on pre-MMU multitasking machines.
CORGE (korj) n. Yet another meta-syntactic variable, invented by Mike
Gallaher and propagated by the Gosmacs documentation. See GRAULT.
CP/M (see-pee-em) [Control Program for Microcomputers] An early
microcomputer OS written by hacker Gary Kildall for 8080 and Z-80
based machines, very popular in the late 1970s until virtually
wiped out by MS-DOS after the release of the IBM PC in 1981 (legend
has it that Kildall's company blew their chance to write the PC's
OS because Kildall decided to spend the day IBM's reps wanted to
meet with him enjoying the perfect flying weather in his private
plane). Many of its features and conventions strongly resemble
those of early DEC operating systems such as OS9, RSTS and RSX-11.
See MS-DOS, OPERATING SYSTEM.
CRACKER n. One who breaks security on a system. Coined c. 1985 by
hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of HACKER, (q.v.,
definition #6).
CRANK [from automotive slang] v. Verb used to describe the performance
of a machine, especially sustained performance. ``This box cranks
about 6 MegaFLOPS, with a burst mode of twice that on vectorized
operations.''
CRASH 1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often said of the
system (q.v., definition #1), sometimes of magnetic disk drives.
``Three lusers lost their files in last night's disk crash.'' A
disk crash which entails 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''. 2. v. To fail suddenly. ``Has
the system just crashed?'' 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. Sometimes
said of people hitting the sack after a long HACKING RUN, see GRONK
OUT.
CRASH AND BURN v.,n. A spectacular crash, in the mode of the
conclusion of the car chase scene from Steve McQueen's ``Bullitt''.
Sun-3 monitors losing the flyback transformer and lightning strikes
on VAX-11/780 backplanes are notable crash and burn generators.
CRAWLING HORROR n. Ancient crufty hardware or software that forces
beyond the control of the hackers at a site refuse to let die. Like
DUSTY DECK or GONKULATOR, but connotes that the thing described is
not just an irritation but an active menace to health and sanity.
``Mostly we code new stuff in C, but they pay us to maintain one
big Fortran II application from nineteen-sixty-X that's a real
crawling horror...''. Compare WOMBAT.
CRAY (kray) n. 1. One of the line of supercomputers designed by Cray
Research. 2. Any supercomputer at all.
CRAYON n. Someone who works on Cray supercomputers. More specifically
implies a programmer, probably of the CDC ilk, probably male, and
almost certainly wearing a tie (irrespective of gender). Unicos
systems types who have a Unix background tend not to be described
as crayons.
CREEPING FEATURITIS (kree'ping fee-ch@r-ie't@s) n. Describes a
systematic tendency to load more CHROME onto systems at the expense
of whatever ELEGANCE they may have posessed when originally
designed. See FEEPING CREATURITIS. ``You know, the main problem
with BSD UNIX has always been creeping featuritis''. At MIT, this
tends to be called CREEPING FEATUR*ISM* (and likewise, FEEPING
CREATURISM). (After all, -ism means ``condition'' whereas -itis
usually means ``inflammation of''...)
CRETIN 1. n. Congenital LOSER (q.v.). 2. CRETINOUS: adj. See
BLETCHEROUS and BAGBITING. Usage: somewhat ad hominem.
CRIPPLEWARE n. SHAREWARE which has some important functionality
deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users to pay for a
working version. See also GUILTWARE.
CRLF (ker'lif, sometimes krul'lif) n. A carriage return (CR) followed
by a line feed (LF). See TERPRI.
CROCK [from mainstream ``crock of shit"] n. 1. An awkward feature or
programming technique that ought to be made cleaner. Example:
Using small integers to represent error codes without the program
interpreting them to the user (as in, for example, UNIX make(1)) is
a crock. 2. Also, a technique that works acceptably but which is
quite prone to failure if disturbed in the least, for example
depending on the machine opcodes having particular bit patterns so
that you can use instructions as data words too; a tightly woven,
almost completely unmodifiable structure.
CROSS-POST [USENET] To post an article to several newsgroups or
topics.
CRUDWARE 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!"
CRUFTY (kruhf'tee) [from ``cruddy"] adj. 1. Poorly built, possibly
overly complex. ``This is standard old crufty DEC software''.
Hence CRUFT, n. shoddy construction. 2. Unpleasant, especially to
the touch, often with encrusted junk. Like spilled coffee smeared
with peanut butter and catsup. Hence CRUFT, n. disgusting mess.
3. Generally unpleasant. CRUFTY or CRUFTIE n. A small crufty
object (see FROB); often one which doesn't fit well into the scheme
of things. ``A LISP property list is a good place to store
crufties (or, random cruft).'' [Note: Does CRUFT have anything to
do with the Cruft Lab at Harvard? I don't know, though I was a
Harvard student. - GLS]
CRUFT TOGETHER, CRUFT UP (kruhft too-ge'thr, kruhft uhp) v. To throw
together something ugly but temporarily workable. Like v. KLUGE,
but more pejorative. See CRUFTY.
CRUMB n. Two binary digits; a quad. Larger that a bit, smaller than a
nibble.
CRUNCH v. 1. To process, usually in a time-consuming or complicated
way. Connotes an essentially trivial operation which is
nonetheless painful to perform. The pain may be due to the
triviality being imbedded in a loop from 1 to 1000000000.
``FORTRAN programs do mostly number crunching.'' 2. To reduce the
size of a file by a complicated scheme that produces bit
configurations completely unrelated to the original data, such as
by a Huffman code. (The file ends up looking like a paper document
would if somebody crunched the paper into a wad.) Since such
compression usually takes more computations than simpler methods
such as counting repeated characters (such as spaces) the term is
doubly appropriate. (This meaning is usually used in the
construction ``file crunch(ing)'' to distinguish it from ``number
crunch(ing)''.) See COMPRESS. 3. n. The character ``#''. Usage:
used at Xerox and CMU, among other places. See ASCII.
CRUNCHA CRUNCHA CRUNCHA (kruhn'chah kruhn'chah kruhn'chah) interj. An
encouragement sometimes muttered to a machine bogged down in
serious GROVELLING. Also describes a notional sound made by
grovelling hardware. See WUGGA WUGGA.
CRYONICS n. The practice of freezing oneself in hopes of being revived
in the future by CELL-REPAIR MACHINES. A possible route to
technological immortality already taken by 1990 by more than a
handful of persons with terminal illnesses.
CTSS (see-tee-ess-ess) n. Compatible Time-Sharing System. An early
(1963) experiment in the design of interactive time-sharing
operating systems. Cited here because it was ancestral to MULTICS,
UNIX, and ITS (q.v.).
CUBING [parallel with ``tubing"] v. 1. Hacking on an IPSC (Intel
Personal SuperComputer) hypercube. ``Louella's gone cubing
AGAIN!!'' 2. An indescribable form of self-torture (q.v. sense
#1).
CUSPY (kuhs'pee) [from the DEC acronym CUSP, for Commonly Used System
Program, i.e., a utility program used by many people] [WPI] adj. 1.
(of a program) Well-written. 2. Functionally excellent. A program
which performs well and interfaces well to users is cuspy. See
RUDE.
CYBERPUNK (sie'ber-puhnk) [orig. by SF critic Gardner Dozois] n.,adj.
A subgenre of SF launched in 1982 by William Gibson's epoch-making
novel _Neuromancer_. 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 futures in ways hackers have since
found both irritatingly naive and tremendously stimulating.
Gibson's work was widely imitated, in particular by the short-lived
but innovative ``Max Headroom'' TV series. See CYBERSPACE, ICE, GO
FLATLINE.
CYBERSPACE (sie'ber-spays) n. Notional ``information-space'' loaded
with visual cues and navigable with brain-computer interfaces
called ``cyberspace decks''; a characteristic prop of CYBERPUNK SF.
At time of writing (1990) serious efforts to construct VIRTUAL
REALITY interfaces modelled explicitly on CYBERSPACE are already
under way, using more conventional devices such as glove sensors
and binocular TV headsets. Few hackers are prepared to outright
deny the possibility of a cyberspace someday evolving out of THE
NETWORK.
= D =
DAEMON (day'mun, dee'mun) [archaic form of ``demon'', which has
slightly different connotations (q.v.)] n. A program which is not
invoked explicitly, but which lays 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, writing a file on the
lpt spooler's directory will invoke the spooling daemon, which
prints the file. The advantage is that programs which want (in
this example) files printed need not compete for access to the lpt.
They simply enter their implicit requests and let the daemon decide
what to do with them. Daemons are usually spawned automatically by
the system, and may either live forever or be regenerated at
intervals. Usage: DAEMON and DEMON (q.v.) are often used
interchangeably, but seem to have distinct connotations. DAEMON
was introduced to computing by CTSS people (who pronounced it
dee'mon) and used it to refer to what is now called a DRAGON or
PHANTOM (q.v.). The meaning and pronunciation have drifted, and we
think this glossary reflects current usage.
DAY MODE n. See PHASE (of people).
DD (dee-dee) [from archaic UNIX dd(1)] v. Equivalent to CAT or BLT.
Very rare outside UNIX sites and now nearly obsolescent even there,
as dd(1) has been DEPRECATED for a long time. Replaced by BLT or
simple English `copy'.
DEADLOCK n. A situation wherein two or more processes are unable to
proceed because each is waiting for another to do something. A
common example is a program communicating to a PTY or STY, which
may find itself waiting for output from the PTY/STY before sending
anything more to it, while the PTY/STY is similarly waiting for
more input from the controlling program before outputting anything.
(This particular flavor of deadlock is called ``starvation''.
Another common flavor is ``constipation'', where each process is
trying to send stuff to the other, but all buffers are full because
nobody is reading anything.) See DEADLY EMBRACE, RACE CONDITION.
DEADLY EMBRACE n. Same as DEADLOCK (q.v.), though usually used only
when exactly two processes are involved. DEADLY EMBRACE is the
more popular term in Europe; DEADLOCK in the United States.
DEATH STAR [from the movie _Star_Wars_] The AT&T corporate logo, which
appears on computers sold by AT&T and bears an uncanny resemblence
to the ``Death Star'' in the movie. This usage is particularly
common among partisans of BSD UNIX, who tend to regard the AT&T
versions as inferior and AT&T as a bad guy.
DEFENESTRATION [from the traditional Czechoslovak method of
assassinating prime ministers, via ESR and SF fandom] n. Proper
karmic retribution for an incorrigible punster. ``Oh, ghod, that
was *awful*!'' ``Quick! Defenestrate him!'' See also H INFIX.
DEFINED AS adj. Currently in the role of, usually in an
off-the-organization-chart sense. ``Pete is currently defined as
bug prioritizer''. From the C language MACRO feature.
DEEP SPACE adj. 1. Describes the ``location'' of any program which has
gone OFF THE TROLLEY. Esp. used of programs which just sit there
silently grinding long after either failure or some output is
expected. 2. The metaphorical ``location'' of a human so dazed
and/or confused or caught up in some esoteric form of BOGOSITY that
he/she no longer responds coherently to normal communication.
Compare PAGE OUT.
DEMENTED adj. Yet another term of disgust used to describe a program.
The connotation in this case is that the program works as designed,
but the design is bad. For example, a program that generates large
numbers of meaningless error messages implying it is on the point
of imminent collapse.
DEMIGOD n. Hacker with years of experience, a national reputation, and
a major role in the development of at least one design, tool or
game used by or known to more than 50% of the hacker community. To
qualify as a genuine demigod, the person must recognizably identify
with the hacker community and have helped shape it. Major demigods
include Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (co-inventors of UNIX and
C) and Richard M. Stallman (inventor of EMACS). In their hearts of
hearts most hackers dream of someday becoming demigods themselves,
and more than one major software project has been driven to
completion by the author's veiled hopes of apotheosis. See also
NET.GOD, TRUE-HACKER.
DEMON n. 1. [MIT] A portion of a program which is not invoked
explicitly, but which lays dormant waiting for some condition(s) to
occur. See DAEMON. The distinction is that demons are usually
processes within a program, while daemons are usually programs
running on an operating system. Demons are particularly common in
AI programs. For example, a knowledge manipulation program might
implement inference rules as demons. Whenever a new piece of
knowledge was added, various demons would activate (which demons
depends on the particular piece of data) and would create
additional pieces of knowledge by applying their respective
inference rules to the original piece. These new pieces could in
turn activate more demons as the inferences filtered down through
chains of logic. Meanwhile the main program could continue with
whatever its primary task was. 2. [outside MIT] Often used
equivalently to DAEMON, especially in the UNIX world where the
latter spelling and pronunciation is considered mildly archaic.
DEPRECATED n. 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.
DE-REZZ (dee rez) [from the movie TRON] v. 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 slang, and adopted in a
spirit of irony by real hackers years after the fact.
DEVO (dee'vo) [orig. in-house slang at Symbolics] n. A person in a
development group. See also DOCO and MANGO.
DICKLESS WORKSTATION n. Extremely pejorative hackerism for ``diskless
workstation'', a class of botches including the Sun 3/50 and other
machines designed exclusively to network with an expensive central
disk server. These combine all the disadvantages of time-sharing
with all the disadvantages of distributed personal computers.
DIDDLE v. To work with 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.
DIFFS n. 1. Differences, especially difference in source code or
documents. Includes additions. ``Send me your diffs for the jargon
file!'' 2. (often in the singular DIFF) the output from the diff(1)
utility, esp. when used as specification input to the patch(1)
utility (which can actually perform the mods). This is a common
method of distributing patches and source updates in the UNIX/C
world.
DIKE [from ``diagonal cutters''] v. To remove a module or disable it.
``When in doubt, dike it out.''
DING (ding) n.,v. Synonym for FEEP (q.v.). Usage: rare among hackers,
but commoner in THE REAL WORLD.
DINOSAUR n. Any hardware requiring raised flooring and special power.
Used especially of old minis and mainframes when contrasted with
newer microprocessor-based machines. In a famous quote from the '88
UNIX EXPO, Bill Joy compared the mainframe in the massive IBM
display with a grazing dinosaur, ``with a truck outside pumping its
bodily fluids through it''. IBM was not amused. Compare BIG IRON.
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.
DISCORDIANISM (dis-kor'di-uhn-ism) n. The veneration of ERIS, aka
Discordia; widely popular among hackers. Popularized by Robert
Anton Wilson's _Illuminatus!_ trilogy as a sort of self-subverting
dada-Zen for Westerners -- it should on no account be taken
seriously but is far more serious than most jokes. Usually
connected with an elaborate conspiracy theory/joke involving
millenia-long warfare between the anarcho-surrealist partisans of
Eris and a malevolent, authoritarian secret society called the
Illuminati. See Appendix C and HA HA ONLY SERIOUS.
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 program.
DOCO (do'ko) [orig. in-house slang at Symbolics] n. A documentation
writer. See also DEVO and MANGO.
DO PROTOCOL [from network protocol programming] v. 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 the waitress for the check,
calculate the tip and everybody's share, generate change as
necessary, and pay the bill.
DOGWASH [From a quip in the ``urgency'' field of a very optional
software change request, about 1982. It was something like,
``Urgency: Wash your dog first.''] v.,n. A project of minimal
priority, undertaken as an escape from more serious work. Also, to
engage in such a project. Many games and much FREEWARE gets written
this way.
DON'T DO THAT, THEN interj. 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.'' Compare RTFM.
DONGLE (don-gl) n. 1. A security device for commercial microcomputer
programs consisting of a serialized EPROM and some drivers in an
RS-232 connector shell. Programs that use a dongle query the port
at startup and programmed intervals thereafter, and terminate if it
does not respond with the dongle's programmed validation code.
Thus, users could make as many copies of the program as they want
but must pay for each dongle. The idea was clever but initially a
failure, as users disliked tying up a serial port this way. Most
dongles on the market today (1990) will pass through the port, and
monitor for ``magic codes'' (and combinations of status lines) with
minimal if any interference with devices further down the line
(this innovation was necessary to allow daisy chained dongles for
multiple pieces of software). The devices are still not widely
used, as the industry has trended away from copy-protection schemes
in general. 2. By extension, any physical electronic key or
transferable ID required for a program to function. See
DONGLE-DISK.
DONGLE-DISK (don'g@l disk) n. See DONGLE; a DONGLE-DISK is a floppy
disk with some coding which allows an application to identify it
uniquely. It can therefore be used as a DONGLE. Also called a ``key
disk''.
DOORSTOP n. Used to describe equipment that is non-functional and
halfway expected to remain so, especially obsolescent equipment
kept around for political reasons or ostensibly as a backup.
``When we get another Wyse-50 in here that ADM3 will turn into a
doorstop.'' Compare BOAT ANCHOR.
DOT FILE [UNIX] n. A file that is not visible to normal
directory-browsing tools (on UNIX, files named beginning with a dot
are invisible).
DOWN 1. adj. Not working. ``The up escalator is down.'' 2. TAKE
DOWN, BRING DOWN: v. To deactivate, usually for repair work. See
UP.
DOWNLOAD v. To transfer data or (esp.) code from a larger `host'
system (esp. a mainframe) over a digital comm link to a smaller
`client' system, esp. a microcomputer or specialized peripheral
device. Oppose UPLOAD.
DRAGON n. [MIT] A program similar to a ``daemon'' (q.v.), 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 are,
what they're running, etc. along with some random picture (such as
a unicorn, Snoopy, or the Enterprise) which is generated by the
``NAME DRAGON''. See PHANTOM. Usage: rare outside MIT -- under
UNIX and most other OSs this would be called a `background DEMON'
or `DAEMON' (q.v).
DRAGON BOOK, THE n. Aho, Sethi and Ullman's classic compilers text
_Principles_Of_Compiler_Design_, so called because of the cover
design depicting a knight slaying a dragon labelled ``compiler
complexity''.
DRAIN [IBM] v. Syn. for FLUSH (sense 4).
DRECNET (drek'net) [fr. Yiddish `dreck'] n. Deliberate distortion of
DECNET, a networking protocol used in the VMS community. So-called
because DEC helped write the Ethernet specification, and then
(either stupidly or as a malignant customer-control tactic)
violated that spec in the design of DRECNET (among other things,
they implemented the wrong HEARTBEAT speed).
DROOL-PROOF PAPER n. Documentation which 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''.
DROP ON THE FLOOR vt. To discard silently. Example: ``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.
DRUGGED adj., also ON DRUGS. Conspicuously stupid, heading towards
BRAIN DAMAGE. Often accompanied by a pantomime of toking a joint.
DRUNK MOUSE SYNDROME n. A malady exhibited by the mouse pointing
device of some workstations. The typical symptom is for the mouse
cursor on the screen to move to random directions and not in sync
with the moving of the actual mouse. Can usually be corrected by
unplugging the mouse and plugging it back again.
DUSTY DECKS [a holdover from card-punch days] n. Old software
(especially applications) with which one is obliged to remain
compatible. Used esp. when referring to old scientific and
number-crunching software, much of which was written in FORTRAN and
very poorly documented but would be too expensive to replace. See
FOSSIL.
DWIM (dwim) [Do What I Mean] 1. adj. Able to guess, sometimes even
correctly, what result was intended when provided with bogus input.
Often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a complex program.
A related term, more often seen as a verb, is DTRT (Do The Right
Thing). 2. n. The INTERLISP function that attempts to accomplish
this feat by correcting many of the more common errors. See HAIRY.
= E =
EASTER EGG n. 1. A message hidden in the object code of a program as a
joke, intended to be found by persons disassembling or browsing the
code. 2. A message, graphic, or sound-effect emitted by a program
(or, on a PC, the BIOS ROM) in response to some undocumented set of
commands or keystrokes, intended as a joke or to display program
credits. One well-known early easter egg found in a couple of OSs
and TECO caused them to respond to the command `make love' with
`not war?'. Many personal computers (other than the IBM PC) have
much more elaborate eggs hidden in ROM, including lists of the
developers' names, political exhortations, snatches of music, and
(in one case) graphics images of the entire development team.
EASTER EGGING [IBM] n. The act of replacing unrelated parts more or
less at random in hopes that a malfunction will go away. Hackers
consider this the normal operating mode of FIELD CIRCUS techs and
do not love them for it.
EARTHQUAKE [IBM] n. The ultimate REAL WORLD shock test for computer
hardware. Hacker sources at IBM deny the rumor that the Bay Area
quake of 1989 was initiated by the company to test QA at its
California plants.
EIGHTY-COLUMN MIND [IBM] n. The sort said to be employed by persons
for whom the transition from card to tape was traumatic (nobody has
dared tell them about disks yet). It is said that these people will
be buried `9-EDGE-FORWARD-FACE-DOWN'. [These people are thought by
most hackers to dominate IBM's customer base, and its thinking --
ESR.]
ELEGANT [from mathematical usage] adj. Combining simplicity, power,
and a certain ineffable grace of design. Higher praise than
`clever', `winning' or even CUSPY.
ELEPHANTINE adj. Used of programs or systems which are both
conspicuous HOGs (due 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 (like the old joke
about being in bed with an elephant) it's tough to have around all
the same, esp. a bitch to maintain. In extreme cases, hackers have
been known to make trumpeting sounds or perform expressive
zoomorphic 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 SYNDROME.
EMACS (ee'maks) [from Editing MACroS] n. The ne plus ultra of hacker
editors, a program editor with an entire LISP interpreter inside
it. Originally written by Richard Stallman in TECO at the MIT-AI
lab, but the most widely used versions now run under UNIX. It
includes facilities to run compilation subprocesses and send and
receive mail; many hackers spend up to 80% of their tube time
inside it.
EMAIL (ee-mayl) v.,n. Electronic mail. Contrast SNAIL-MAIL.
EMOTICON (ee-moh'ti-cahn) n. An ASCII glyph used to indicate an
emotional state in email or news. Hundreds have been proposed, but
only a few are in common use. These include:
:-) Smiley face (indicates laughter)
:-( Frowney face (indicates sadness, anger or upset)
;-) Half-smiley (ha ha only serious), aka winkey face.
:-/ Wry face
Of these, the first two 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
(synonym for emoticon) as well as specifically for the happy-face
emoticon.
EMPIRE n. Any of a family of military simulations derived from a game
written by Peter Langston many years ago. There are 5 or 6
multi-player variants of varying degrees of sophistication, and one
single-player version implemented for both UNIX and VMS which is
even available as MS-DOS freeware. All are notoriously addictive.
EOF (ee-oh-ef) [UNIX/C] n. End Of File. 1. Refers esp. to whatever
pseudo-character value is returned by C's sequential input
functions (and their equivalents in other environments) when the
logical end of file has been reached (this was 0 under V6 UNIX, is
-1 under V7 and all subsequent versions and all non-UNIX C library
implementations). 2. Used by extension in non-computer contexts
when a human is doing something that can be modelled 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.''
EPOCH, THE [UNIX] n. Syn. for ERA.
EPSILON [from standard mathematical notation for a small quantity] 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.
ERA, THE [from UNIX] n. The time and date corresponding to zero in an
operating system's clock and timestamp values. Under most UNIX
versions, midnight of January 1st 1970. System time is measured in
TICKS past the era. Syn. with EPOCH. See TICKS, WALL TIME.
ERIC CONSPIRACY n. Notional group of mustachioed hackers named Eric
first pinpointed as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous
talk.bizarre posting c. 1986; this was doubtless influenced by the
numerous `Eric' jokes in the Monty Python oeuvre. There do indeed
seem to be considerably more mustachioed hacker-Erics than the
frequency of these three traits can account for unless they are
correlated in some arcane way. Well known examples include your
editor [ESR], Eric Allman of BSD fame, and Erik Fair (coauthor of
NNTP); your editor has heard from about fourteen others by email.
ERIS (e'r@s) pn. The Greco-Roman goddess of Chaos, Discord, Confusion
and Things You Know Not Of; aka Discordia. Not a very friendly
deity in the Classical original, she was re-invented 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 SUB-GENIUS.
ESSENTIALS n. Things necessary to maintain a productive and secure
hacking environment. ``A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, a
20-megahertz 80386 box with 8 meg of core and a 300-megabyte disk
supporting full UNIX with source and X windows and EMACS and UUCP
to a friendly Internet site, and thou.''
EVIL adj. As used by hackers, implies that some system, program,
person or institution is sufficiently mal-designed as to be not
worth the bother of dealing with. Unlike the adjectives in the
CRETINOUS/LOSING/BRAIN-DAMAGED series, EVIL does not imply
incompetence or bad design, but rather a set of goals or design
criteria fatally incompatible with the speaker's. This is more an
esthetic and engineering judgement than a moral one in the
mainstream sense. ``We thought about adding an SNA 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.''
EXCL (eks'kl) n. Abbreviation for ``exclamation point''. See BANG,
SHRIEK, WOW.
EXE (ex'ee) An executable binary file. Some operating systems use the
extension .EXE to mark such files. This usage is also found among
UNIX programmers even though UNIX executables don't have any
required extension.
EXEC (eg'zek) [shortened from ``executive'' or ``execute''] v.,n. 1.
[UNIX] Synonym for CHAIN, derives from the exec(2) call. 2. (obs)
The command interpreter for an OS (see SHELL); term esp. used on
mainframes, and prob. derived from UNIVAC's archaic EXEC 2 and EXEC
8 operating systems.
= F =
FALL OVER [IBM] v. Yet another synonym for CRASH or LOSE. `Fall over
hard' equates to CRASH AND BURN.
FANDANGO ON CORE [UNIX/C hackers, from the Mexican dance] n. In C, a
wild pointer that runs out of bounds causing a CORE DUMP, or
corrupts the malloc(3) ARENA in such a way as to cause mysterious
failures later on, is sometimes said to have `done a fandango on
core'. On low-end personal machines without an MMU this can corrupt
the OS itself, causing massive lossage. Other third-world dances
such as the rhumba, cha-cha or watusi may be substituted. See
ALIASING BUG, PRECEDENCE LOSSAGE, SMASH THE STACK, MEMORY LEAK,
OVERRUN SCREW.
FASCISTIC adj. 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.
FAULTY adj. Same denotation as ``bagbiting'', ``bletcherous'',
``losing'', q.v., but the connotation is much milder.
FD LEAK (ef dee leek) n. A kind of programming bug analogous to a CORE
LEAK, in which a program fails to close file descriptors (``fd''s)
after file operations are completed, and thus eventually runs out.
See LEAK.
FEAR AND LOATHING [from Hunter Thompson] n. State inspired by the
prospect of dealing with certain REAL WORLD systems and standards
which are totally BRAIN DAMAGED but ubiquitous -- Intel 8086s, or
COBOL, or any IBM machine except the Rios (aka the RS/6000). ``Ack.
They want PCs to be able to talk to the AI machine. Fear and
loathing time!'' See also IBM.
FEATURE n. 1. A surprising property of a program. Occasionally
documented. To call a property a feature sometimes means the
author of the program did not consider the particular case, and the
program makes an unexpected, although not strictly speaking an
incorrect response. See BUG. ``That's not a bug, that's a
feature!'' A bug can be changed to a feature by documenting it.
2. A well-known and beloved property; a facility. Sometimes
features are planned, but are called crocks by others.
FEATURECTOMY (fee`ch@r-ek'to-mee) n. The act of removing a feature
from a program. Featurectomies generally come in two varieties,
the RIGHTEOUS and the RELUCTANT. Righteous featurectomies are
performed because the remover believes the program would be more
elegant without the feature, or there is already an equivalent and
``better'' way to achieve the same end. (This is not quite the
same thing as removing a MISFEATURE.) Reluctant featurectomies are
performed to satisfy some external constraint such as code size or
execution speed.
FEEP (feep) 1. n. The soft bell of a display terminal (except for a
VT-52!); a beep. 2. v. To cause the display to make a feep sound.
TTY's do not have feeps. Alternate forms: BEEP, BLEEP, or just
about anything suitably onomatopoeic. The term BREEDLE was
sometimes heard at SAIL, where the terminal bleepers are not
particularly ``soft'' (they sound more like the musical equivalent
of sticking out one's tongue). The ``feeper'' on a VT-52 has been
compared to the sound of a '52 Chevy stripping its gears. See also
DING.
FEEPING CREATURITIS (fee'ping kree`ch@r-ie'tis) n. Deliberate
spoonerization of CREEPING FEATURITIS, meant to imply that the
system or program in question has become a misshapen creature of
hacks.
FENCEPOST ERROR n. 1. 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 ten feet
apart, how many posts do you need?'' (Either 9 or 11 is a better
answer than the obvious 10.) 2. Occasionally, an error induced by
unexpectedly regular spacing of inputs, which can (for instance)
screw up your hash table. See also OFF-BY-ONE ERROR.
FIELD CIRCUS n. The field service organization of any hardware
manufacturer, but especially DEC. There is an entire genre of
jokes about DEC field circus engineers:
Q: How can you recognize a DEC field circus engineer with a flat
tire?
A: He's swapping tires to see which one is flat.
Q: How can you recognize a DEC field circus engineer who is out
of gas?
A: He's swapping tires to see which one is flat.
FILK (filk) [from SF fandom, where a typo for ``folk'' was adopted as
a new word] n.,v. A ``filk'' is a popular or folk song with lyrics
revised or completely new lyrics, intended for humorous effect when
read and/or to be sung late at night at SF conventions. There is a
flourishing subgenre of these called ``computer filks'', written by
hackers and often containing technical humor of quite sophisticated
nature.
FILM AT 11 [MIT, in parody of TV newscasters], interj. Used in
conversation to announce ordinary events, with a sarcastic
implication that these events are earth-shattering. This is hard to
describe. Examples: ``ITS crashes; film at 11.'' ``Bug found in
scheduler; film at 11.''
FILTER [orig. UNIX, now also in MS-DOS] n. A program which processes
an input text stream into an output text 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 (q.v.).
FINE [WPI] adj. Good, but not good enough to be CUSPY. [The word FINE
is used elsewhere, of course, but without the implicit comparison
to the higher level implied by CUSPY.]
FINGER [BSD UNIX] 1. n. A program that displays a particular user or
all users logged on the system or a remote system. Typically shows
full name, last login time, idle time, terminal line and terminal
location. May also display a ``plan file'' left by the user. 2. v.
To apply finger to a username. 3. v. By extension, to check a
human's current state by any means. ``Foodp?'' ``T!'' ``OK,
finger Lisa and see if she's idle''.
FIREBOTTLE n. A large, primitive, power-hungry active electrical
device, similar to an FET 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.
FIREWALL MACHINE n. A dedicated gateway machine with special security
precautions on it, used to service outside network/mail/news
connections and/or accept remote logins for (read only)
shared-file-system access via FTP. The idea is to protect a cluster
of more loosely administered machines `hidden' behind it from
crackers. The typical `firewall' is an inexpensive micro-based UNIX
box kept clean of critical data, with a bunch of modems and public
network ports on it but just one carefully watched connection back
to the rest of the cluster. The special precautions may include
threat monitoring, callback, and even a complete IRON BOX keyable
to particular incoming IDs or activity patterns. Syn. FLYTRAP,
VENUS FLYTRAP.
FIRMWARE n. Software installed into a computer-based piece of
equipment on ROM. So-called because it's harder to change than
software but easier than hardware.
FLAG DAY [from a bit of Multics history involving a change in the
ASCII character set originally scheduled for June 14, 1966] n. A
software change which is neither forward nor backward compatible,
and which is costly to make and costly to revert. ``Can we install
that without causing a flag day for all users?''
FLAKEY adj. Subject to frequent lossages. See LOSSAGE.
FLAMAGE (flay'm@j) n. High-noise, low-signal postings to USENET or
other electronic fora. Often in the phrase ``the usual flamage''.
FLAME 1. v. To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively
uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude. 2.
To post an email message intended to insult and provoke. FLAME ON:
v. To continue to flame. See RAVE, BURBLE. The punning reference
to Marvel comics' Human Torch has been lost as recent usage
completes the circle: ``Flame on'' now usually means ``beginning of
flame''.
FLAME WAR n. Acrimonious dispute, especially when conducted on a
public electronic forum such as USENET.
FLAMER v. One who habitually flames others. Said of obnoxious USENET
personalities.
FLAP v. To unload a DECtape (so it goes flap, flap, flap...). Old
hackers at MIT tell of the days when the disk was device 0 and
microtapes were 1, 2,... and attempting to flap device 0 would
instead start a motor banging inside a cabinet near the disk!
FLAVOR n. 1. Variety, type, kind. ``DDT commands come in two
flavors.'' 2. The attribute of causing something to be FLAVORFUL.
``This convention yields additional flavor by allowing one to...''
See VANILLA.
FLAVORFUL adj. Aesthetically pleasing. See RANDOM and LOSING for
antonyms. See also the entries for TASTE and ELEGANT.
FLIPPY (flip'ee) n. A single-side 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.
FLUSH v. 1. To delete something, usually superfluous. ``All that
nonsense has been flushed.'' Standard ITS terminology for aborting
an output operation. 2. 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.'' 3. To exclude someone from an activity. 4.
[UNIX/C] To force buffered I/O to disk, as with an fflush(3) call.
UNIX hackers find the ITS usage confusing and vice versa.
FLYTRAP n. See FIREWALL.
FOO (foo) 1. [from Yiddish ``feh'' or the Anglo-Saxon ``fooey!'']
interj. Term of disgust. 2. [from FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All
Recognition), from WWII, often seen as FOOBAR] Name used for
temporary programs, or samples of three-letter names. Other
similar words are BAR, BAZ (Stanford corruption of BAR), and rarely
RAG. These have been used in Pogo as well. 3. Used very generally
as a sample name for absolutely anything. The old `Smokey Stover'
comic strips often included the word FOO, in particular on license
plates of cars. 4. First on the standard list of metasyntactic
variables used in syntax examples. See also: BAR, BAZ, QUX, QUUX,
QUUUX, CORGE, GRAULT, GARPLY, WALDO, FRED, PLUGH, XYZZY. MOBY FOO:
See MOBY. [It is possible that hacker usage of FOO actually
springs from the title ``FOO, Lampoons and Parody'' of a comic book
first issued in September 1958; the byline read ``C. Crumb'' but my
source believes this was a sort-of pseudonym for noted weird-comix
artist Robert Crumb. The title FOO was featured in large letters
on the front cover -- ESR]
FOOL n. As used by hackers, specifically describes a person who
habitually reasons from obviously or demonstrably incorrect
premises and cannot be persuaded to do otherwise by evidence; 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.
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').
FOREGROUND [UNIX] adj.v. On a time-sharing system, a task executing in
foreground is one running at normal priority and able to accept
input from and return output to the user; oppose BACKGROUND. There
may be only one forground task per terminal (or terminal window).
By extension, ``to foreground'' a task is to bring it to the top of
one's PDL or STACK for immediate processing, and in this sense
hackers often use it for non-computer tasks.
FORTUNE COOKIE [UNIX] n. A random quote, item of trivia, joke or maxim
printed to the user's tty at login time or (more rarely) at logout
time. Items from this jargon file have often been used as fortune
cookies.
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 modern byte-addressible architectures. See DUSTY
DECKS. 2. More restrictively, a feature with past but no present
utility. Example: the force-all-caps (IUCLC/OLCUC) bits in the UNIX
tty driver, designed for use with monocase terminals.
FRED n. The personal name most frequently used as a metasyntactic
variable (see FOO). Allegedly popular because it's easy to type on
a standard QWERTY keyboard.
FREEWARE n. Free software, often written by enthusiasts and usually
distributed by electronic mail, local bulletin boards, USENET, or
other electronic media. See SHAREWARE.
FRIED adj. 1. Non-working due to hardware failure; burnt out.
Especially used of hardware brought doen by a power glitch, short,
or other electrical event. 2. Of people, exhausted. Said
particularly of those who continue to work in such a state. Often
used as an explanation or excuse. ``Yeah, I know that fix
destroyed the file system, but I was fried when I put it in.''
FROB (frob) 1. n. [MIT] The official Tech Model Railroad Club
definition is ``FROB = protruding arm or trunnion'', and by
metaphoric extension any somewhat small thing. See FROBNITZ. 2.
v. Abbreviated form of FROBNICATE.
FROBNICATE (frob'ni-kayt) v. To manipulate or adjust, to tweak.
Derived from FROBNITZ (q.v.). Usually abbreviated to FROB. Thus
one has the saying ``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.
FROBNITZ (frob'nits), pl. FROBNITZEM (frob'nitsm) n. An unspecified
physical object, a widget. Also refers to electronic black boxes.
This rare form is usually abbreviated to FROTZ, or more commonly to
FROB. Also used are FROBNULE and FROBULE. Starting perhaps in
1979, FROBOZZ (fruh-bahz') has also become very popular. These can
also be applied to nonphysical objects, such as data structures.
FROG alt. PHROG 1. interj. Term of disgust (we seem to have a lot of
them). 2. Used as a name for just about anything. See FOO. 3. n.
Of things, a crock. Of people, somewhere inbetween a turkey and a
toad. 4. FROGGY: adj. Similar to BAGBITING (q.v.), but milder.
``This froggy program is taking forever to run!''
FRONT END n. 1. A subsidiary computer that doesn't do much. 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''.
FROTZ (frotz) 1. n. See FROBNITZ. 2. MUMBLE FROTZ: An interjection of
very mild disgust.
FROTZED (frotzt) DOWN due to hardware problems.
FRY v. 1. To fail. Said especially of smoke-producing hardware
failures. 2. More generally, to become non-working. Usage: never
said of software, only of hardware and humans. See FRIED, MAGIC
SMOKE.
FTP (ef-tee-pee, NOT ``fittip'') 1. n. The File Transfer Protocol for
transmitting files between systems on the Internet. 2. v. To
transfer a file using the File Transfer Protocol. 3. Sometimes used
as a generic even for file transfers not using FTP. ``Lemme get
this copy of Wuthering Heights FTP'd from uunet.''
FUCK ME HARDER excl. Sometimes uttered in response to egregious
misbehavior, esp. in software, and esp. of those which seem
unfairly persistent (as though designed in by the imp of the
perverse). Often theatrically elaborated: ``Aiighhh! Fuck me with a
piledriver and sixteen feet of curare-tipped wrought-iron fence and
no lubricants!''
FUD WARS (fud worz) n. [from `Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt'] Political
posturing engaged in by hardware and software vendors ostensibly
committed to standardization but actually willing to fragment the
market to protect their own share. The OSF vs. UNIX International
conflict, for example.
FUDGE 1. v. 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.''
2. n. The resulting code.
FUDGE FACTOR n. A value or parameter that is varied in an ad hoc way
to produce the desired result. The terms ``tolerance'' and
``slop'' are also used, though these usually indicate a one-sided
leeway, such as a buffer which 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. An example might be the
coefficients of an equation, where the coefficients are varied in
an attempt to make the equation fit certain criteria.
FUEL UP v. To eat or drink hurriedly in order to get back to hacking.
``Food-p?'' ``Yeah, let's fuel up.'' ``Time for a GREAT-WALL!''.
See also ORIENTAL FOOD.
FUGGLY (fuhg'lee) adj. Emphatic form of FUNKY; funky + ugly. Unusually
for hacker slang, this may actually derive from black street-jive.
To say it properly, the first syllable should be growled rather
than spoken. Usage: humorous. ``Man, the ASCII-to-EBCDIC code in
that printer driver is *fuggly*.'' See also WONKY.
FUNKY adj. Said of something which functions, but in a slightly
strange, klugey way. It does the job and would be difficult to
change, so its obvious non-optimality is left alone. Often used to
describe interfaces. The more bugs something has that nobody has
bothered to fix because workarounds are easier, the funkier it is.
TECO and UUCP are funky. The Intel i860's exception handling is
extraordinarily funky. Most standards acquire funkiness as they
age. ``The new mailer is installed, but is still somewhat funky;
if it bounces your mail for no reason, try resubmitting it.''
``This UART is pretty funky. The data ready line is active-high in
interrupt mode, and active-low in DMA mode.'' See FUGGLY.
FUZZ n. In floating-point arithmetic, the maximum difference allowed
between two quantities for them to compare equal. Has to be set
properly relative to the FPU's precision limits.
FUZZBALL [TCP/IP hackers] n. A DEC LSI-11 running a particular suite
of homebrewed software by Dave Mills and assorted co-conspirators,
used in the early 80's for Internet protocol testbedding and
experimentation. These were used as NSFnet backbone sites in its
early 56KB-line days; a few of these are still active on the
Internet as of early 1990, doing odd jobs such as network time
service.
= G =
GABRIEL (gay'bree-@l) [for Dick Gabriel, SAIL volleyball fanatic] n.
An unnecessary (in the opinion of the opponent) stalling tactic,
e.g., tying one's shoelaces or hair repeatedly, asking the time,
etc. Also used to refer to the perpetrator of such tactics. Also,
``pulling a Gabriel'', ``Gabriel mode''.
GAG vi. Equivalent to CHOKE, but connotes more disgust. ``Hey, this is
Fortran code. No wonder the C compiler gagged.'' See also BARF.
GARBAGE COLLECT v., GARBAGE COLLECTION n. See GC.
GARPLY (gar'plee) n. [Stanford] Another meta-word popular among SAIL
hackers.
GAS [as in ``gas chamber''] interj. 1. 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. A term suggesting
that someone or something ought to be flushed out of mercy. ``The
system's wedging every few minutes. Gas!'' 3. v. FLUSH (q.v.).
``You should gas that old crufty software.'' 4. GASEOUS adj.
Deserving of being gassed. Usage: primarily used by Geoff
Goodfellow at SRI, but spreading; became particularly popular after
the Moscone/Milk murders in San Francisco, when it was learned that
Dan White (who supported Proposition 7) would get the gas chamber
under 7 if convicted.
GC (jee-see) [from LISP terminology] 1. v. To clean up and throw away
useless things. ``I think I'll GC the top of my desk today.'' 2.
v. To recycle, reclaim, or put to another use. 3. n. An
instantiation of the GC process.
GEDANKEN (g@-dahn'kn) [from Einstein's term ``gedanken-experimenten'',
such as the standard proof that E=mc^2] adj. An AI project which is
written up in grand detail without ever being implemented to any
great extent. 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 a program-related
concept such as an algorithm.
GEEK OUT v. To temporarily enter techno-nerd mode while in a
non-hackish context, for example at parties held near computer
equipment. Especially used when you need to do something highly
technical and don't have time to explain: ``Pardon me while I geek
out for a moment.''
GENDER MENDER n. (also GENDER BENDER) A cable connector shell with
either two male or two female connectors on it, used for mating
like-sexed cables. Used esp. for RS-232C parts in either the
original D-25 or the IBM PC's bogus D-9 format.
GENERATE v. 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.
GET A REAL COMPUTER imp. Typical hacker response to news that somebody
is having trouble getting work done on a system that is a)
single-tasking, b) has no Winchester, or c) has less than 4
megabytes of DRAM. This is as of 1990; note that the threshold for
`real computer' rises with time, and it may well be (for example)
that machines with character-only displays will be considered
`unreal' in a few years. See BITTY BOX and TOY.
GFR (jee eff ar) v. [acronym, ITS] From ``Grim File Reaper'', an ITS
utility. To remove a file or files according to some
program-automated or semi-automatic manual procedure, especially
one designed to reclaim mass storage space or reduce namespace
clutter. Often generalized to pieces of data below file level. ``I
used to have his phone number but I guess I GFRed it.'' See also
PROWLER.
GIGO (gie'goh) [acronym] garbage in, garbage out. Usually said in
response to lusers who complain that a program didn't complain
about faulty data. Also commonly used to describe failures in human
decision making due to faulty, incomplete or imprecise data.
GLARK (glark) v. To figure something out from context, taken from an
old Scientific American ``Mathematical Games'' column, where the
phrase ``glark the meaning from context'' was used as an
example...of glarking something from context. ``The System III
manuals are pretty poor, but you can generally glark the meaning
from context''.
GLASS [IBM] n. Synonym for SILICON.
GLASS TTY (glas tee-tee-wie, glas ti-tee) n. A terminal which has a
display screen but which, because of hardware or software
limitations, behaves like a teletype or other printing terminal.
An example is the ADM-3 (without cursor control). A glass tty
can't do neat DISPLAY HACKs, and you can't save the output either.
See TUBE, TTY.
GLITCH (glich) [from the Yiddish ``glitshen'', to slide] 1. n. A
sudden interruption in electric service, sanity, or program
function. Sometimes recoverable. 2. v. To commit a glitch. See
GRITCH. 3. v. [Stanford] To scroll a display screen several lines
at a time. 4. (obs.) Same as MAGIC COOKIE, sense #2.
GLOB [UNIX, from ``glob'', the name of a subprogram that translated
wildcards in archaic Bourne Shell versions] n.,v. 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:
* wildcard for any string (see UN*X, U*IX).
? wildcard for any character (generally only read this
way in the middle of a word.
[] set-of-characters braces.
Some examples: ``He said his name was [KC]arl'' (expresses
ambiguity). ``That got posted to talk.politics.*'' (all the
talk.politics subgroups on USENET). Other examples are given under
the entry for `X'. GLOB as a noun refers to the act of expanding a
string using these conventions. It is also used as a verb.
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. v. Similar to GLITCH
(q.v.), but usually used reflexively. ``My program just glorked
itself.''
GNARLY adj. Both OBSCURE and HAIRY in the sense of complex. ``Yeech
-- 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 for ``GNU's Not UNIX!''] A
UNIX-workalike development effort of the Free Software Foundation
headed by Richard Stallman (aka RMS). GNU EMACS and the GNU C
compiler, two tools designed for this project, have become very
popular in hackerdom. See EMACS, COPYLEFT. 2. Noted UNIX hacker
John Gilmore (gnu@hoptoad.com), ironically enough one of the
best-known and most vocal opponents of the ``information should not
be property'' philosophy behind GNU. See RMS.
GNUMACS (gnoo'maks) [contraction of ``Gnu Emacs''] Often-heard
abbreviated name for the GNU project's flagship tool, EMACS. Used
esp. in contrast with GOSMACS.
GO FLATLINE [from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG traces
upon brain-death] v., 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. A particular failure mode of
video tubes in which vertical scan is lost, so all one sees is a
bright horizontal line bisecting the screen.
GOBBLE v. To consume or to obtain. GOBBLE UP tends to imply
``consume'', while GOBBLE DOWN tends to imply ``obtain''. ``The
output spy gobbles characters out of a TTY output buffer.'' ``I
guess I'll gobble down a copy of the documentation tomorrow.'' See
SNARF.
GONK (gonk) v.,n. To prevaricate or to embellish the truth beyond any
reasonable recognition. In German the term is (fictively)
``GONKEN'', in spanish the verb becomes ``GONKAR.'' ``You're
gonking me. That story you just told me is a bunch of gonk.'' In
German, ``Du Gonkst mir.'' (You're pulling my leg.) See also
GONKULATOR.
GONKULATOR (gon'kyoo-lay-tr) [from the old ``Hogan's Heroes'' TV
series] n. A pretentious piece of equipment that actually serves no
useful purpose. Usually used to describe one's least favorite
piece of computer hardware. See GONK.
GONZO (gon'zo) [from Hunter S. Thompson] adj. Overwhelming; very
large, esp. used of collections of source code, source files or
individual functions. Has some of the connotations of MOBY and
HAIRY, q.v.
GOOD THING adj. Always capitalized. 1. Self-evidently wonderful to
anyone in a position to notice: ``The Trailblazer's 19.2Kbaud PEP
mode with on-the-fly Lempel-Ziv compression is a Good Thing for
sites relaying netnews.'' 2. Something which 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.
GORP (gorp) [CMU, perhaps from a brand of dried hiker's food?]
Another metasyntactic variable, like FOO and BAR.
GOSMACS (goz'maks) [contraction of ``Gosling Emacs''] n. The first
EMACS-in-C implementation, predating but now largely eclipsed by
GNUMACS (q.v.). Originally freeware; a commercial version is now
modestly popular as ``UniPress Emacs''.
GORILLA ARM n. The side-effect that destroyed touch-screens as a
mainstream input technology despite a promising start in the early
eighties. 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 selects the arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and
oversized, hence ``gorilla arm''. This is now considered a classic
Horrible Example and cautionary tale to human-factors designers;
``remember the gorilla arm'' is shorthand for ``how's this gonna
fly in *real* use?''
GREAT RENAMING n. The FLAG DAY on which all of the groups on the
USENET had their names changed from the net.* format to the current
7 hierarchies scheme.
GREAT-WALL [from SF fandom] v.,n. a mass expedition to an oriental
restaurant. See ORIENTAL FOOD, CHINESE RAVS, STIR-FRIED RANDOM.
GREEN BOOK n. 1. The X/Open Compatibility Guide. Defines an
international standard UNIX environment that is a proper superset
of POSIX/SVID; also includes descriptions of a standard utility
toolkit, systems administrations features, and the like. This
grimoire is taken with particular seriousness in Europe. See PURPLE
BOOK. 2. One of the three standard PostScript references (see also
RED BOOK, BLUE BOOK). 3. The P1003.1 POSIX Utilities standard has
been dubbed THE UGLY GREEN BOOK.
GREEN LIGHTNING [IBM] n. Apparently random flashing streaks on the
face of 3278-9 terminals while a programmable symbol set is being
loaded. This hardware bug was left deliberately unfixed, as some
bright spark suggested that this would let the user know that
`something is happening'. It certainly does. 2. [generalization of
#1 proposed by ESR] Any bug perverted into an alleged feature by
adroit rationalization or marketing. E.g. ``Motorola calls the
CISC cruft in the 8800 architecture `compatibility logic', but I
call it green lightning''.
GRAULT (grawlt) n. Yet another meta-syntactic variable, invented by
Mike Gallaher and propagated by the GOSMACS documentation. See
CORGE.
GRAY GOO n. A hypothetical substance composed of billions of
sub-micron-sized Von Neumann machines (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 most naive and easiest to refute of the NANOTECHNOLOGY (q.v.)
disaster scenarios.
GREP (grep) [from the UNIX grep tool] v. To rapidly scan a file or
file set looking for a particular string or pattern. By extension,
to look for something by pattern. ``Grep the bulletin board for the
system backup schedule, would you?''
GRIND v. 1. [MIT and Berkeley] To format code, especially LISP code,
by indenting lines so that it looks pretty. Hence, PRETTY PRINT,
the generic term for such operations. 2. [UNIX] To generate the
formatted version of a document from the nroff, troff, TEX or
Scribe source. 3. To run seemingly interminably, performing some
tedious and inherently useless task. Similar to CRUNCH, GROVEL.
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, CHUNGA CHUNGA CHUNGA and WUGGA WUGGA.
GRITCH (grich) 1. n. A complaint (often caused by a GLITCH (q.v.)).
2. v. To complain. Often verb-doubled: ``Gritch gritch''. 3.
Glitch.
GROK (grok) [from the novel ``Stranger in a Strange Land'', by Robert
Heinlein, where it is a Martian verb meaning literally ``to drink''
and metaphorically ``to be one with''] v. To understand, usually in
a global sense. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge.
Contrast ZEN, similar supernal understanding as a single brief
flash.
GRONK (gronk) [popularized by the cartoon strip ``B.C.'' by Johnny
Hart, but the word apparently predates that] v. 1. To clear the
state of a wedged device and restart it. More severe than ``to
frob'' (q.v.). 2. To break. ``The teletype scanner was gronked,
so we took the system down.'' 3. GRONKED: adj. Of people, the
condition of feeling very tired or sick. 4. GRONK OUT: v. To cease
functioning. Of people, to go home and go to sleep. ``I guess
I'll gronk out now; see you all tomorrow.''
GROVEL v. To work interminably and without apparent progress. Often
used with ``over''. ``The compiler grovelled over my code.''
Compare GRIND and CRUNCH. Emphatic form: GROVEL OBSCENELY.
GRUNGY (gruhn'jee) adj. Incredibly dirty or grubby. Anything which
has been washed within the last year is not really grungy. Also
used metaphorically; hence some programs (especially crocks) can be
described as grungy. Now (1990) also common in mainstream slang.
GUBBISH (guh'bish) [a portmanteau of ``garbage'' and ``rubbish''?] n.
Garbage; crap; nonsense. ``What is all this gubbish?''
GUILTWARE n. FREEWARE decorated with a message telling one how long
and hard the author worked on this program and intimating that one
is a no-good shit if one does not immediately send the poor
suffering martyr gobs of money.
GUMBY (guhm'bee) [from a class of Monty Python characters] n. An act
of minor but conspicuous stupidity, often in GUMBY MANEUVER or PULL
A GUMBY.
GUN [from the GUN command on ITS] v. To forcibly terminate a program
or job (computer, not career). ``Some idiot left a background
process running soaking up half the cycles, so I gunned it.''
Compare CAN.
GURFLE (ger'fl) interj. An expression of shocked disbelief. ``He said
we have to recode this thing in FORTRAN by next week. Gurfle!''
GURU n. 1. A UNIX expert. Implies not only WIZARD skill but 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''.
2. Amiga equivalent of ``panic'' in UNIX. When the system crashes a
cryptic message ``GURU MEDITATION #XXXXXXXX.YYYYYYYY'' appears,
indicating what the problem was. An Amiga guru can figure things
out from the numbers. Generally a GURU event must be followed by a
VULCAN NERVE PINCH.
= H =
H INFIX [from SF fandom] A method of ``marking'' common words in the
linguist's sense, i.e. calling attention to the fact that they are
being used in a nonstandard, ironic or humorous way. Orig. in the
fannish catchphrase ``Bheer is the One True Ghod'' from decades
ago. H-infix marking of ``Ghod'' and other words spread into the
Sixties counterculture via underground comix, and into early
hackerdom either from the counterculture or SF fandom (all three
overlapped heavily at the time). More recently, the h infix has
become an expected feature of benchmark names, i.e. Whetstone,
Dhrystone, Rhealstone, etc; this is prob. patterning on the
original Whetstone name but influenced by the
fannish/counterculture H infix.
HA HA ONLY SERIOUS [from SF fandom] A phrase that aptly captures the
flavor of much hacker discourse (sometimes seen abbreviated as
HHOS). Applied especially to parodies, absurdities and ironic jokes
that are both intended and perceived to contain a possibly
disquieting amount of truth, or truths which are constructed on
in-joke and self-parody. The jargon file 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 or one in LARVAL STAGE. For further
enlightenment on this subject, consult any Zen master. See also
HUMOR, HACKER.
HACK n. 1. Originally a quick job that produces what is needed, but
not well. 2. The result of that job. 3. NEAT HACK: A clever
technique. Also, a brilliant practical joke, where neatness is
correlated with cleverness, harmlessness, and surprise value.
Example: the Caltech Rose Bowl card display switch circa 1961. 4.
REAL HACK: A crock (occasionally affectionate). v. 5. With
``together'', to throw something together so it will work. 6. To
bear emotionally or physically. ``I can't hack this heat!'' 7. To
work on something (typically a program). In specific sense: ``What
are you doing?'' ``I'm hacking TECO.'' In general sense: ``What
do you do around here?'' ``I hack TECO.'' (The former is
time-immediate, the latter time-extended.) More generally, ``I
hack x'' is roughly equivalent to ``x is my bag''. ``I hack
solid-state physics.'' 8. To pull a prank on. See definition 3
and HACKER (def #6). 9. v.i. To waste time (as opposed to TOOL).
``Watcha up to?'' ``Oh, just hacking.'' 10. HACK UP (ON): To
hack, but generally implies that the result is meanings 1-2. 11.
HACK VALUE: Term used 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 has features for
reading and printing roman numerals, which was installed purely for
hack value. 12. [UNIX] A dungeon game similar to ROGUE (q.v.) but
more elaborate, distributed in C source over USENET and very
popular at UNIX sites and on PC-class machines. Recent versions are
called `nethack'. HAPPY HACKING: A farewell. HOW'S HACKING?: A
friendly greeting among hackers. HACK HACK: A somewhat pointless
but friendly comment, often used as a temporary farewell.
HACKER [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] n. 1. A
person who enjoys learning the details of programming systems and
how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users who
prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs
enthusiastically, or who enjoys programming rather than just
theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating
HACK VALUE (q.v.). 4. A person who is good at programming quickly.
Not everything a hacker produces is a hack. 5. An expert at a
particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on
it; example: ``A UNIX hacker''. (Definitions 1 to 5 are
correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. (deprecated)
A malicious or inquisitive meddler who tries to discover
information by poking around. Hence ``password hacker'', ``network
hacker''. See CRACKER.
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 which
may be achieved when one is hacking. 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 an almost
physical shock, and the sensation of being in it is more than a
little habituating. The intensity of this experience is probably by
itself sufficient explanation for the existence of hackers, and
explains why many resist being promoted out of positions where they
can do code.
HACKING RUN [analogy with `bombing run' or `speed run'] n. A hack
session extended long outside `normal' working times, especially
one longer than 12 hours. May cause you to CHANGE PHASE THE HARD
WAY (see PHASE).
HACKISH (hak'ish) adj. (also HACKISHNESS n.) 1. Being or involving a
hack. 2. Of or pertaining to hackers or the hacker subculture. See
also TRUE-HACKER.
HAIR n. The complications which 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): ``GNU elisp
encourages lusers to write complex editing modes.'' ``Yeah, it's
pretty hairiferous all right.''
HAIRY adj. 1. Overly 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.''
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.
HAND-HACKING n. The practice of translating HOT SPOTS from an HLL into
custom hand-optimized assembler, as opposed to trying to coerce the
compiler into generating better code. Both the term and the
practice are becoming uncommon. See TUNE, BUM. 2. More generally,
manual construction or patching of data sets that would normally be
ground out by a translation utility and interpreted by another
program, and aren't really designed to be read or modified by
humans.
HANDWAVE 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!''
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 still while rotating
the hands at the wrist to make them flutter. In context, the
gestures alone can suffice as a remark.
HANLON'S RAZOR n. A ``murphyism'' parallel 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 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 the well-intentioned but shortsighted.
HARDWARILY (hard-weir'i-lee) adv. In a way pertaining to hardware.
``The system is hardwarily unreliable.'' The adjective
``hardwary'' is NOT used. See SOFTWARILY.
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. Ex:
``Anyone who can't even use a program with on-screen help embedded
in it truly has the LOSER nature!''
HASH COLLISION [from the technical usage] n. 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.''
HCF (aych-see-eff) 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 MC68000 microprocessor was the first for which the HCF opcode
became widely known. The 68000 HCF causes the processor to toggle a
subset of the bus lines as rapidly as it can; in some
configurations this can actually cause lines to burn up.
HEARTBEAT n. 1. The master clock signal propagated across an Ethernet;
by extension, the time-baseline synchronization signal at the
physical level of any network. 2. The `natural' oscillation
frequency of a computer's clock crystal, before frequency division
down to the machine's CLOCK RATE.
HEISENBUG (hie'sen-buhg) [from quantum physics] n. A bug which
disappears or alters its behavior when one attempts to probe or
isolate it. Antonym of BOHR BUG (q.v.). In C, 9 out of 10
heisenbugs result from either FANDANGO ON CORE phenomena (esp.
lossage related to corruption of the malloc ARENA) or errors which
SMASH THE STACK.
HELLO SAILOR! interj. Occasional West Coast equivalent of `Hello,
world!'. See HELLO WORLD.
HELLO WALL See WALL.
HELLO WORLD! interj. 1. The canonical minimal test message in the
C/UNIX universe. In folklore, the first program a C coder is
supposed to write in a new environment is one that just prints
``Hello, world!'' to his standard output. 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. 2. Greeting uttered by a hacker making an
entrance or requesting information from anyone present. ``Hello,
world! Is the VAX back up yet?''
HIGH BIT n. 1. See META BIT. Also meaning most significant part of
something other than a data byte, e.g. ``Spare me the whole saga,
just give me the high bit.''
HIRSUTE adj. Occasionally used humorously as a synonym for HAIRY.
HLL (aych-el-el) 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 = `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' = `Medium-Level Language' and is sometimes used
half-jokingly to describe C, alluding to its `structured-assembler'
image. See also LANGUAGES OF CHOICE.
HOG n.,v. Favored term to describe programs which seem to eat far more
than their share of a system's resources, esp. those which
noticeably degrade general timesharing response. *Not* used of
programs which are simply extremely large or complex or which are
merely painfully slow themselves (see PIG, RUN LIKE A). More often
than not encountered in qualified forms, e.g. MEMORY HOG, CORE HOG,
HOG THE PROCESSOR, HOG THE DISK.
HOOK n. An extraneous piece of software or hardware included in order
to simplify later additions or debug options. For instance, a
program might execute a location that is normally a JFCL, but by
changing the JFCL to a PUSHJ one can insert a debugging routine at
that point.
HOME BOX n. A hacker's personal machine, especially one he owns.
``Yeah? Well, *my* home box runs a full 4.2BSD, so there!''
HOSE 1. v. To make non-functional or greatly degraded in performance,
as in ``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 in a system that represent
performance bottlenecks. 3. Cabling, especially thick Ethernet
cable. Sometimes ``bit hose''.
HOSED adj. Same as DOWN. Used primarily by UNIX hackers. Humorous:
also implies a condition thought to be relatively easy to reverse.
Probably a back-formation from the Canadian slang `hoser'
popularized by the Bob and Doug skits on SCTV. See HOSE.
HOT SPOTS [primarily C/UNIX programmers, but spreading] n. 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
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, BUM, HAND-HACKING.
HOUSE WIZARD [prob. from ad-agency lingo, cf. `house freak'] n. A lone
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 experts. The term
HOUSE GURU is equivalent.
HP-SUX (aych pee suhx) n. Unflattering hackerism for HP-UX,
Hewlett-Packard's UNIX port. Features some truly unique bogosities
in the filesystem internals and elsewhere that occasionally create
portability problems. See also TELERAT, SUN-STOOLS, TERMINAK.
HUMONGOUS (hyoo-mohng'gus) alt. HUMUNGOUS (hyoo-muhng'gus) See HUNGUS.
HUMOR, HACKER n. 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 an index card in front of him/her with
``THIS IS GREEN'' written on it in bold red ink, or vice-versa
(note, however, that this is only funny the first time).
2) Elaborate deadpan parodies of large intellectual constructs such
as standards documents, language descriptions (see INTERCAL) and
even entire scientific theories (see QUANTUM BOGODYNAMICS,
COMPUTRON).
3) Jokes which 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, Charlie Chaplin movies, the B-52s,
and Monty Python's Flying Circus. Humor which 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.
See also FILK, COMPUTER; RETROCOMPUTING; and Appendix C. 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.
HUNG [from ``hung up''] adj. Equivalent to WEDGED, q.v. but more
common at UNIX/C sites. Not used of people.
HUNGUS (hung'ghis) [perhaps related to current slang ``humongous'';
which one came first (if either) is unclear] adj. Large, unwieldy,
usually unmanageable. ``TCP is a hungus piece of code.'' ``This
is a hungus set of modifications.''
HYPERSPACE (hie'per-spays) n. A memory location within a virtual
memory machine that is many, many megabytes (or gigabytes) away
from where the program counter should be pointing. ``Another core
dump...looks like the program jumped off to hyperspace somehow.''
= I =
IBM (ie bee em) Inferior But Marketable; It's Better Manually;
Insidious Black Magic; Incontinent Bowel Movement; and a
near-INFINITE number of many even less complimentary expansions,
including ``International Business Machines''. See TLA. These
abbreviations illustrate the considerable antipathy most hackers
have long felt for the ``industry leader'' (see FEAR AND LOATHING).
What galls hackers about most IBM machines above the PC level isn't
so much that they're underpowered and overpriced (though that
counts against them) but that the designs are incredibly archaic,
crufty and ELEPHANTINE and you can't *fix* them -- source is locked
up tight and programming tools are expensive, hard to find, and a
bitch to use once you've found them. With the release of the
UNIX-based RIOS family this may have begun to change -- but then,
we thought that when the PC-RT came out, too. In the spirit of
universal peace and brotherhood the jargon list now includes a
number of entries marked `IBM'; these derive from a rampantly
unofficial jargon list circulated among IBM's own beleaguered
hacker underground.
ICE [from William Gibson's cyberpunk SF: notionally, ``Intrusion
Countermeasure Electronics''] Security software. Also, ICEBREAKER:
a program designed for cracking security on a system. Neither term
is in serious use yet as of 1990, but many hackers find the
metaphor attractive and they may be in the near future.
ILL BEHAVED adj. Software which 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 IBM PC/MS-DOS world, where this term originated, there is a
folk theorem to the effect that (due to gross inadequacies and
performance penalties in the OS interface) all interesting
applications are ill-behaved. Oppose WELL-BEHAVED. See MESS-DOS.
IMHO [from SF fandom via USENET] Written acronym for In My Humble
Opinion. Example: ``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.''
INCANTATION n. Any particularly arbitrary or obscure command that must
be muttered 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 they must be learned from a
WIZARD. E.g. ``This compiler normally locates initialized data in
the data segment, but if you mutter the right incantation they will
be forced into text space''. See MUTTER.
INFINITE adj. Consisting of a large number of objects; extreme. Used
very loosely as in: ``This program produces infinite garbage.''
INFANT MORTALITY n. It is common lore among hackers that the chances
of sudden hardware failure drop off exponentially with a machine's
time since power-up (that is until the relatively distant time at
which mechanical wear in I/O devices and thermal-cycling stress in
components has accumulated enough 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.
INTERCAL (in'tr-kal) [said by the authors to stand for ``Compiler
Language With No Pronounceable Acronym''] n. The language has been
recently re-implemented as C-INTERCAL and is consequently enjoying
an unprecedented level of unpopularity.
INTERNET ADDRESS n. An `absolute' network address of the form
foo@bar.baz, where foo is a user name, bar is a site name, and baz
is a `domain' name, possibly including periods itself. Contrasts
with BANG PATH, q.v.; see also NETWORK. All Internet machines and
most UUCP sites can now resolve these addresses, thanks to a large
amount of behind-the-scenes magic and PD software written since
1980 or so. See also BANG PATH.
INTERRUPTS LOCKED OUT When someone is ignoring you. In a restaurant,
after several fruitless attempts to get the waitress's attention, a
hacker might well observe that ``She must have interrupts locked
out.'' Variations of this abound; ``to have one's interrupt mask
bit set'' is also heard.
IRON n. Hardware, especially older/larger hardware of mainframe class
with big metal cabinets relatively low-density electronics (but
also used of modern supercomputers). Often in the phrase BIG IRON.
Oppose SILICON. See also DINOSAUR.
IRON BOX [UNIX/Internet] n. A special environment set up to trap a
CRACKER logging in over remote or network connections long enough
so he can be traced. May include a specially-gimmicked SHELL
restricting the hacker's movements in unobvious ways, and `bait'
files designed to keep him interested and logged on. See also BACK
DOOR.
IRONMONGER [IBM] n. A hardware specialist. Derogatory. Compare
SANDBENDER, POLYGON PUSHER.
ITS (ie-tee-ess) n. Incompatible Time-Sharing System, an influential
but highly idiosyncratic operating system written for PDP-10s at
MIT and long used at the MIT AI lab; much AI-hacker slang derives
from ITS folklore. 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 Appendix B.
IWBNI [acronym] It Would Be Nice If. No pronunciation, as this is
never spoken, only written. Compare WIBNI.
IYFEG [USENET] Abbreviation for ``Insert Your Favourite Ethnic
Group''. Used as a meta-name when telling racist jokes in email to
avoid offending anyone.
= J =
JAGGIES (jag'eez) n. The `stairstep' effect observable when an edge
(esp. a linear edge of slope far from 45 degrees) is rendered on a
pixel device (as opposed to a vector display).
JIFFY n. 1. Interval of CPU time, commonly 1/60 second or 1
millisecond (see TICK). 2. Indeterminate time from a few seconds
to forever. ``I'll do it in a jiffy'' means certainly not now and
possibly never.
JOCK n. 1. Programmer who is characterized by large and somewhat brute
force programs. 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 of this.
JOE CODE (joh kohd) [said to commemmorate a notoriously bad coder
named Joe at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory] n. Badly written,
possibly buggy source code. ``Perl may be a handy program, but if
you look at the source, it's complete joe code.'' Correspondents
wishing to remain anonymous have fingered a particular Joe and
observed that usage has drifted slightly; they described his code
as ``overly TENSE and unmaintainable''.
J. RANDOM HACKER (jay rand'm hak'r) n. A mythical figure like the
Unknown Soldier; the archetypal hacker nerd. See RANDOM.
= K =
KAHUNA (k@-hoo'nuh) [IBM, from the Hawaiian title for a shaman] n.
Synonym for WIZARD, GURU (q.v.).
KEN (ken) n. A flaming user. This noun was in use by the Software
Support group at Symbolics because the two greatest flamers in the
user community were both named Ken.
KILL FILE [USENET] n. Some USENET readers allow users to set filter
patterns against which news messages are compared, then ignored
(not presented by the reader) if the match succeeds. The file in
which these patterns are stored is called the user's kill file.
Thus to ``add a person (or subject) to one's kill file'' is to
arrange for that person to be ignored by your newsreader in future.
By extension, it may be used for a decision to ignore the person or
subject in other media.
KILLER MICRO [popularized by Eugene Brooks] n. 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. Used
esp. of RISC architectures.
KILLER POKE n. A recipe for inducing hardware damage on a machine via
insertion of invalid values in a memory-mapped control register;
used esp. of various fairly well-known tricks on MMU-less BITTY
BOXES like the IBM PC and Commodore PET that can overload and trash
analog electronics in the monitor. See also HCF.
KLUGE (kloodj) alt. KLUDGE (kluhdj) [from the German ``klug'', clever]
(`kloodj' is the original pronunciation, more common in the US;
`kluhdge' is reported more common in England). n. 1. A Rube
Goldberg device in hardware or software. 2. A clever programming
trick intended to solve a particular nasty case in an efficient, if
not clear, manner. Often used to repair bugs. Often verges on
being a crock. 3. Something that works for the wrong reason. 4.
v. 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.''
Also KLUGE UP. 5. KLUGE AROUND: To avoid by inserting a kluge. 6.
[WPI] A feature which is implemented in a RUDE manner.
KNIGHTS OF THE LAMBDA CALCULUS n. A semi-mythical organization of
wizardly LISP and Scheme hackers. 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...
= L =
LACE CARD n. obs. A Hollerith card with all holes punched (also called
a WHOOPEE CARD). Some cardpunches actually jammed on the amount of
CHAD generated by one of these.
LANGUAGE LAWYER n. A person, usually an experienced or senior software
engineer, who is intimately familiar with many or most of the
numerous syntactic and semantic restrictions (both useful and
esoteric) applicable to one or more computer programming languages.
LANGUAGES OF CHOICE n. C or LISP. Essentially all hackers know one of
these and most good ones are fluent in both. Smalltalk and Prolog
are popular in small but influential communities. Assembler used to
be a language of choice, but is generally no longer considered
interesting or appropriate for anything but compiler code
generation and a few time-critical uses in systems programs.
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 and sex, and a chronic case of advanced
bleary-eye. Can last from six months to two years, with the
apparent median being around eighteen 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. A less protracted and intense version of
larval stage (typically lasting about a month) may recur when
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.'' Compare DIABLO in Appendix B.
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, leading to eventual exhaustion as new
allocation requests come in. MEMORY LEAK and FD LEAK have their own
entries; one might also refer, say, to a ``window handle leak'' in
a window system.
LERP (lerp) v.,n. Quasi-acronym for Linear Interpolation, used as a
verb or noun for the operation. Ex. Bresenham's algorithm lerps
incrementally between the two endpoints of the line.
LEXER (lek'sr) n. Common hacker shorthand for ``lexical analyzer'', the
input-tokenizing stage in the parser for a language. ``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). Many hackers pass through a stage of
fascination with it. 2. The opposite of USENET. As in ``Get a
life!''.
LIKE KICKING DEAD WHALES DOWN THE BEACH adj. A slow and disgusting
process. First popularized by a famous quote about the difficulty
of getting work done under one of IBM's mainframe OSs. ``Well, you
*could* write a C compiler in COBOL, but it would be like kicking
dead whales down the beach.''
LINE EATER, THE [USENET] n. A bug in some now-obsolete versions of the
netnews software used to cause the first lines of articles to be
discarded under some circumstances. This bug was quickly
personified as a mythical creature called ``the line eater'', and
postings often included a dummy line of ``line eater food''. 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 is still (in mid-1990)
occasionally reported to be lurking in some mail-to-netnews
gateways.
LINE STARVE [MIT] Inverse of `line feed'; a character or character
sequence which causes a printer to back up one line depth.
LINK FARM [UNIX] n. A directory tree that contains many links to files
in another, master directory tree of files. Link farms save space
when maintaining several nearly identical copies of the same source
tree, e.g. when the only difference is architecture-dependent
object files. Example use: `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
arguments on older C preprocessors.
LINT [from UNIX's lint(1)] v. 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 the USENET) has become a
shorthand for `desk-check' at some non-UNIX shops, even in some
languages other than C.
LION FOOD [IBM] n. Middle management or HQ staff (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
agreed to meet after two months. When they do 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!''
LISP n. The name of AI's mother tongue, a language based on the ideas
of 1) variable-length lists and trees as fundamental data types,
and 2) the interpretation of code as data and vice-versa. Invented
by John McCarthy at Stanford 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 (of which Scheme is perhaps the most successful)
are quite different in detail from the original LISP 1.5 at
Stanford. The hands-down favorite of hackers until the early 1980s,
LISP now shares the throne with C (q.v.). See LANGUAGES OF CHOICE.
LITTLE-ENDIAN adj. Describes a computer architecture in which, within
a given 16- or 32-bit word, lower byte 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.
LIVELOCK 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've been serviced but before it can clear.
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
accomplishes nothing.
LIVEWARE n. Synonym for WETWARE (q.v.) Less common.
LOGIC BOMB n. Code surreptitiously inserted in an application or OS
which causes it to perform some destructive or
security-compromising activity whenever specified conditions are
met. Compare BACK DOOR.
LOGICAL [from the technical term ``logical device'', wherein a
physical device is referred to by an arbitrary name] adj.
Understood to have a meaning not necessarily corresponding to
reality. E.g., if a person who has long held a certain post (e.g.,
Les Earnest at SAIL) left and was replaced, the replacement would
for a while be known as the ``logical Les Earnest''. The word
VIRTUAL is also used. At SAIL, ``logical'' compass directions
denoted a coordinate system in which ``logical north'' is toward
San Francisco, ``logical west'' is toward the ocean, etc., even
though logical north varies between physical (true) north near San
Franscisco and physical west near San Jose. (The best rule of
thumb here is that El Camino Real by definition always runs logical
north-and-south.) The concept is perpetuated by bay area highways
which are almost, but not quite, consistently labelled with logical
rather than physical directions.
LORD HIGH FIXER [primarily British] n. The person in an organisation
who knows the most about some aspect of a system. See WIZARD.
LOSE [from MIT jargon] v. 1. To fail. A program loses when it
encounters an exceptional condition. 2. To be exceptionally
unaesthetic. 3. Of people, to be obnoxious or unusually stupid (as
opposed to ignorant). 4. DESERVE TO LOSE: v. 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 MULTICS deserves to lose!'' See also SCREW, CHOMP, BAGBITER.
LOSE LOSE -- a reply or comment on a situation. 5. LOSE as a noun
refers to something which is losing, especially in the phrases
``That's a lose!'' or ``What a lose!''.
LOSER n. An unexpectedly bad situation, program, programmer, or
person. Especially ``real loser''.
LOSS n. Something which loses. WHAT A (MOBY) LOSS!: interjection.
LOSSAGE (los'@j) n. The result of a bug or malfunction.
LPT (lip'it) [ITS] n. Line printer, of course. Rare under UNIX,
commoner in hackers with MS-DOS or CP/M background (the printer
device is called LPT: on those systems, which like ITS were
strongly influenced by early DEC conventions).
LURKER n. One of the `silent majority' in a USENET or BBS newsgroup;
one who posts occasionally or not at all but is known to read the
group regularly. Often in `THE LURKERS', the hypothetical audience
for the group's FLAMING regulars.
LUNATIC FRINGE [IBM] n. Customers who can be relied upon to accept
release 1 versions of software.
LUSER (loo'zr) See USER.
= M =
MACDINK (mak'dink) [from the Apple Macintosh, which is said to
encourage such behavior] v. To make many incremental and
unnecessary cosmetic changes to a program or file. Frequently the
subject of the macdinking would be better off without them. Ex:
``When I left at 11pm last night, he was still macdinking the
slides for his presentation.''
MACINTRASH (mak'in-trash) The Apple Macintosh, by someone who doesn't
appreciate being kept away from the _real_computer_ by the
interface. See also WIMP ENVIRONMENT, DROOL-PROOF PAPER, USER
FRIENDLY.
MACRO (mak'ro) n. A name (possibly followed by a formal ARG list)
which is equated to a text expression to which it is to be expanded
(possibly with substitution of actual arguments) by a language
translator. 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 use of macros as a
structuring and information-hiding device. During the early 70s
macro assemblers became ubiquitous and sometimes quite as powerful
and expensive as HLLs, only to fall from favor as improving
compiler technology marginalized assembler programming (see
LANGUAGES OF CHOICE). Nowadays the term is most often used in
connection with the C preprocessor, LISP, or one of several
special-purpose languages built around a macro-expansion facility
(such as TEX or UNIX's nroff, troff and pic 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.
MACROLOGY (mak-ro'l@-jee) n. Set of usually complex or crufty macros,
e.g. as part of a large system written in LISP, TECO or (less
commonly) assembler. Sometimes studying the macrology of a system
is not unlike archaeology, hence the sound-alike construction.
Prob. influenced by THEOLOGY (q.v.).
MACROTAPE (ma'kro-tayp) n. An industry standard reel of tape, as
opposed to a MICROTAPE.
MAGIC adj. 1. As yet unexplained, or too complicated to explain
(compare Clarke's Second 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 eight-bit byte in three
instructions.'' 2. [Stanford] A feature not generally publicized
which allows something otherwise impossible, or a feature formerly
in that category but now unveiled. Example: The keyboard commands
which override the screen-hiding features.
MAGIC COOKIE [UNIX] n. 1. Something passed between routines or
programs that enables the receiver to perform some OBSCURE
operationl; a capability ticket. Especially used of small data
objects which contain data encoded in a strange or intrinsically
machine-dependent way. For example, on non-UNIX OSs 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. 2. A blank
left on the screen when your terminal changes modes. Some older
terminals would print a blank when you entered and exited special
modes, such as underline or flash. This was also called a GLITCH.
MAGIC NUMBER [UNIX/C] n. 1. 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 by looking for a magic
number. 2. In source code, some non-obvious constant whose value is
significant to the operation of a program and is inserted
inconspicuously in line, rather than expanded in by a symbol set by
a commented #define. Magic numbers in this sense are bad style.
MAGIC SMOKE n. A notional substance trapped inside IC packages that
enables them to function. 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.
MANGLE v. Used similarly to MUNG or SCRIBBLE, but more violent in its
connotations; something that is mangled has been irreversibly and
totally trashed.
MANGO [orig. in-house slang at Symbolics] n. A manager. See also
DEVO and DOCO.
MARGINAL adj. 1. Extremely small. ``A marginal increase in core can
decrease GC time drastically.'' 2. Of extremely small merit.
``This proposed new feature seems rather marginal to me.'' 3. Of
extremely small probability of winning. ``The power supply was
rather marginal anyway; no wonder it crapped out.'' 4.
MARGINALLY: adv. Slightly. ``The ravs here are only marginally
better than at Small Eating Place.''
MARKETROID (mar'k@-troyd) alt. MARKETING SLIME, MARKETING DROID n.
Member of a company's marketing department, esp. one who promises
users that the next version of a product will have features which
are unplanned, extremely difficult to implement, and/or violate the
laws of physics. Derogatory. Used by techies.
MARTIAN n. A packet sent on a TCP/IP network with a source address of
the test loopback interface (127.0.0.1). As in ``The domain server
is getting lots of packets from Mars. Does that gateway have a
Martian filter?''
MASSAGE v. Vague term used to describe `smooth' transformations of a
data set into a more useful form, esp. transformations which do
not lose information. Connotes less pain and more ELEGANCE than
MUNCH or CRUNCH (q.v.). ``He wrote a program that massages X bitmap
files into GIF format.'' Compare SLURP.
MEATWARE n. Synonym for WETWARE (q.v.). Less common.
MEGAPENNY (meg'a-pen'ee) n. $10,000 (1 cent * 10e6). Used
semi-humorously as a unit in comparing computer cost/performance
figures.
MEGO (mego, meego) [My Eyes Glaze Over, often Mine Eyes Glazeth Over,
attributed to the futurologist Herman Kahn] Also MEGO FACTOR. 1.
Handwaving intended to confuse the listener and hopefully induce
agreement because the listener does not want to admit to not
understanding what is going on. MEGO is usually directed at senior
management by engineers and contains a high proportion of TLAs
(q.v.). 2. excl. An appropriate response to MEGO tactics.
MELTDOWN n. See BROADCAST STORM.
MEME (meem) [coined on analogy with `gene' by Richard Dawkins] n. An
idea considered as a REPLICATOR. Used esp. in the prase `meme
complex' denoting a group of mutually supporting memes which form
an organized belief system, such as a religion. This dictionary is
a 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.
MEMETICS (mee-me-tiks) [from MEME] The study of memes. As of 1990,
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
among hackers, who like to see themselves as the architects of the
new information ecologies in which memes live and replicate.
MEME PLAGUE n. The spread of a successful but pernicious MEME, esp.
one which `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 millenarian Christianity have exhibited plague-like cycles
of exponential growth followed by collapse to small `reservoir'
populations.
MEMORY LEAK [C/UNIX programmers] n. An error in a program's
dynamic-store allocation logic that causes it to fail to reclaim
discarded memory, leading to attempted hogging of main store and
eventual collapse due to memory exhaustion. Also (esp. at CMU)
called CORE LEAK. See ALIASING BUG, FANDANGO ON CORE, SMASH THE
STACK, PRECEDENCE LOSSAGE, OVERRUN SCREW.
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.
MESS-DOS (mes-dos) [UNIX hackers] n. Derisory term for MS-DOS. Often
followed by the ritual expurgation ``Just Say No!''. See MS-DOS.
Most hackers (even many MS-DOS hackers) loathe MS-DOS for its
single-tasking nature, its limits on application size, its nasty
primitive interface, and its ties to IBMness (see FEAR AND
LOATHING). Also ``mess-loss'', ``messy-dos'', ``mess-dog'' and
various combinations thereof.
META (mayt'@) [from analytic philosophy] adj. One level of description
up. Thus, a meta-syntactic variable is a variable in notation used
to describe syntax and meta-language is language used to describe
language. This is difficult to explain out of context, but much
hacker humor turns on deliberate confusion between meta-levels.
META BIT (mayt'@) n. Bit 8 of an 8-bit character, on in values
128-255. Also called HIGH BIT or ALT BIT. Some terminals and
consoles (especially those designed for LISP traditions) have a
META-shift key. Others (including, mirabile dictu, keyboards on IBM
PC-class machines) have an ALT key. See also BUCKY BITS.
MICROFLOPPIES n. 3-1/2 inch floppies, as opposed to 5-1/4 VANILLA or
mini-floppies and the now-obsolescent 8-inch variety. This term may
be headed for obsolescence as 5-1/4 inchers pass out of use, only
to be revived if anybody floats a sub-3-inch floppy standard.
MICROTAPE n. Occasionally used to mean a DECtape, as opposed to a
MACROTAPE.
MIDDLE-ENDIAN adj. Not BIG-ENDIAN or LITTLE-ENDIAN. Used of byte
orders like 3-4-1-2 occasionally found in the packed-decimal
formats from minicomputer manufacturers who shall remain nameless.
MILLILAMPSON (mil'i-lamp-sn) n. How fast people can talk. Most
people run about 200 millilampsons. Butler Lampson (a CS theorist
highly regarded among hackers) goes at 1000. A few people speak
faster.
MIPS (mips) [acronym] Formally, ``Millions of Instructions Per
Second''; often rendered by hackers as ``Meaningless Indication of
Processor Speed''. This joke expresses a nearly universal attitude
about the value of BENCHMARK (q.v.) claims, said attitude being one
of the great cultural divides between hackers and MARKETROIDS.
MISFEATURE (mis-fee'chr) n. A feature which eventually screws someone,
possibly because it is not adequate for a new situation which has
evolved. It is not the same as a bug because fixing it involves a
gross philosophical change to the structure of the system involved.
Often a former feature becomes a misfeature because a tradeoff was
made whose parameters subsequently changed (possibly only in the
judgment of the implementors). ``Well, yeah, it's kind of a
misfeature that file names are limited to six characters, but we're
stuck with it for now.''
MOBY [seems to have been in use among model railroad fans years ago.
Derived from Melville's ``Moby Dick'' (some say from ``Moby
Pickle'').] 1. adj. Large, immense, or complex. ``A moby frob.''
2. n. The maximum address space of a machine (see Appendix B). 3.
A title of address (never of third-person reference), usually used
to show admiration, respect, and/or friendliness to a competent
hacker. ``So, moby Knight, how's the CONS machine doing?'' 4.
adj. In backgammon, doubles on the dice, as in ``moby sixes'',
``moby ones'', etc. MOBY FOO, MOBY WIN, MOBY LOSS: standard
emphatic forms. FOBY MOO: a spoonerism due to Greenblatt. The
MOBY constructions are now relatively rare outside MIT.
MODE n. A general state, usually used with an adjective describing the
state. ``No time to hack; I'm in thesis mode.'' Usage: in its
jargon sense, MODE is most often said of people, though it is
sometimes applied to programs and inanimate objects. ``If you're
on a TTY, E will switch to non-display mode.'' In particular, see
HACK MODE, DAY MODE, NIGHT MODE, and YOYO MODE; also TALK MODE, and
GABRIEL MODE.
MODULO (mod'yuh-low) prep. Except for. From mathematical terminology:
one can consider saying that 4=22 ``except for the 9's'' (4=22 mod
9). ``Well, LISP seems to work okay now, modulo that GC bug.''
MONKEY UP v. To hack together hardware for a particular task,
especially a one-shot job. Connotes an extremely CRUFTY and
consciously temporary solution.
MONSTROSITY 1. n. A ridiculously ELEPHANTINE program or system, esp.
one which is buggy or only marginally functional. 2. The quality
of being monstrous (see `Peculiar nouns' in the discussion of
jargonification).
MOORE'S LAW (morz law) [folklore] The observation that the logic
density of silicon integrated circuits has closely followed the
curve (bits per inch ** 2) = 2 ** (n - 1962); that is, the amount
of information storable in one square inch of silicon has roughly
doubled yearly every year since the technology was invented.
MOTAS (moh-tahs) [USENET, Member Of The Appropriate Sex] n. A
potential or (less often) actual sex partner. See MOTOS, MOTSS,
S.O.
MOTOS (moh-tohs) [USENET, Member Of The Other Sex] n. A potential or
(less often) actual sex partner. See MOTAS, MOTSS, S.O. Less common
than MOTSS or MOTAS, which has largely displaced it.
MOTSS (mots) [USENET, Member Of The Same Sex] n. Esp. one considered
as a possible sexual partner, e.g. by a gay or lesbian. The
gay-issues board on USENET is called soc.motss. See MOTOS and
MOTAS, which derive from it. Also see S.O.
MOUNT v. 1. To attach a removable storage volume to a machine. In
elder days and on mainframes this verb was used almost exclusively
of tapes; nowadays (especially under UNIX) it is more likely to
refer to a disk volume. 2. By extension, to attach any removable
device such as a sensor, robot arm, or MEATWARE subsystem (see
Appendix A).
MOUSE AROUND v. To explore public portions of a large system, esp. a
network such as Internet via FTP or TELNET, looking for interesting
stuff to SNARF.
MOUSO (mow'so) n. [by analogy with `typo'] An error in mouse usage
resulting in an inappropriate selection or graphic garbage on the
screen.
MS-DOS (em-es-das) n. A clone of CP/M (q.v.) for the 8088 crufted
together in six weeks by hacker Tim Patterson, who is said to have
regretted it ever since. Now the highest-unit-volume OS in
history. See MESS-DOS.
MULTICS (muhl'tiks) n. [from Multi-Tasking Computer System] An early
(late 1960s) timesharing operating system co-designed by a
consortium including Honeywell and Bell Laboratories. All the
members but Honeywell eventually pulled out after determining that
SECOND-SYSTEM SYNDROME had bloated Multics to the point of
practical unusability (though Honeywell did later comercialize it,
it was never very successful). One of the developers left in the
lurch by the project's breakup was Ken Thompson, a circumstance
which led directly to the birth of UNIX (q.v.). For this and other
reasons aspects of the Multics design remain a topic of occasional
debate among hackers. See also BRAIN DAMAGE.
MUMBLAGE (mum'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 what it is or how it works, or like ``all that
crap'' when ``mumble'' is being used as an implicit replacement for
obscenities.
MUMBLE interj. 1. Said when the correct response is either 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 big long discussion. ``Well, mumble.'' 2. Sometimes
used as an expression of disagreement. ``I think we should buy
it.'' ``Mumble!'' Common variant: MUMBLE FROTZ.
MUNCH [often confused with ``mung'', q.v.] v. To transform information
in a serial fashion, often requiring large amounts of computation.
To trace down a data structure. Related to CRUNCH (q.v.), but
connotes less pain.
MUNCHING SQUARES n. A DISPLAY HACK dating back to the PDP-1, which
employs a trivial computation (involving XOR'ing of x-y display
coordinates -- see HAKMEM items 146-148) to produce an impressive
display of moving, growing, and shrinking squares. The hack
usually has a parameter (usually taken from toggle switches) which
when well-chosen can produce amazing effects. Some of these,
(re)discovered recently on the LISP machine, have been christened
MUNCHING TRIANGLES, MUNCHING W'S, and MUNCHING MAZES.
MUNCHKIN (muhnch'kin) n. A teenage-or-younger micro enthusiast bashing
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 BITTY BOX.
MUNDANE [from SF fandom] n. 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...''
MUNG alt. MUNGE (muhnj) [recursive acronym for Mung Until No Good] v.
1. To make changes to a file, often large-scale, usually
irrevocable. Occasionally accidental. See BLT. 2. To destroy,
usually accidentally, occasionally maliciously. The system only
mungs things maliciously. See SCRIBBLE, MANGLE, TRASH. Reports from
USENET suggest that the pronunciation `munj' is now usual in
speech, but the spelling `mung' is still common in program
comments.
MUSIC n. A common extracurricular interest of hackers (compare
SCIENCE-FICTION FANDOM, ORIENTAL FOOD; see also FILK). It is
widely believed among hackers that there is a substantial
correlation between whatever mysterious traits underlie hacking
ability (on the one hand) and musical talent and sensitivity (on
the other). It is certainly the case that 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 the sort of elaborate instrumental jazz/rock that used to be
called `progressive' and isn't recorded much any more. Also, the
hacker's musical range tends to be wide; many can listen with equal
appreciation to (say) Talking Heads, Yes, Spirogyra, Scott Joplin,
King Sunny Ade, The Pretenders, or one of Bach's 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 MUNDANES.
MUTTER v. To quietly enter a command not meant for the ears of
ordinary mortals. Frequently in ``mutter an INCANTATION''.
= N =
N (en) adj. 1. Some large and indeterminate number of objects; ``There
were N bugs in that crock!''; also used in its original sense of a
variable name. 2. An arbitrarily large (and perhaps infinite)
number. 3. A variable whose value is specified by the current
context. ``We'd like to order N wonton soups and a family dinner
for N-1.'' 4. NTH: adj. The ordinal counterpart of N. ``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 also RANDOM NUMBERS, TWO-TO-THE-N.
NAILED TO THE WALL [like a trophy] adj. Said of a bug finally
eliminated after protracted and even heroic effort.
NANOACRE (nan'o-ay-kr) n. An area of space, or real-estate on a VLSI
chip. The term derives its amusement 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 (q.v.). As yet, only used
informally (and speculatively!). Also sometimes called a
`nanoagent'.
NANOCOMPUTER (nan'oh-k:m-pyoo-tr) a computer whose switching elements
are molecular in size. 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.
NANOTECHNOLOGY (nan'-oh-tek-naw`l:-ji) 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 nano-fabrication experiments are taking place now
(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 by two of its physicists. 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'', where he
predicted that nanotechnology could give rise to replicating
ASSEMBLERs, permitting an exponential growth of productivity and
personal wealth.
NASTYGRAM 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.
NEOPHILIA (nee-oh-fil'-ee-uh) n. The trait of being excited and
pleased by novelty. Common trait of 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, theater people, the membership of MENSA,
and the Discordian/neo-pagan underground. All these groups overlap
heavily and (where evidence is available) seem to share
characteristic hacker tropisms for SF, MUSIC and ORIENTAL FOOD.
NET POLICE n. 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 CODE POLICE.
NETHACK (net'hak) n. See HACK, sense #12.
NETIQUETTE (net'ee-ket, net'i-ket) n. Conventions of politeness
recognized on USENET, such as: avoidance of cross-posting to
inappropriate groups, or refraining from commercial pluggery on the
net.
NEEP-NEEP (neep neep) [onomatopoic, from New York SF fandom] n. One
who is fascinated by computers. More general than HACKER, as it
need not imply more skill than is required to boot games on a PC.
The gerund NEEP-NEEPING applies specifically to the long
conversations about computers that tend to develop in the corners
at most SF-convention parties. Fandom has a related proverb to the
effect that ``Hacking is a conversational black hole!'' [which, by
coincidence, has been attributed to my SO -- ESR]
NET. (net dot) [USENET] Prefix used to describe people and events
related to USENET. From the pre-GREAT-RENAMING newsgroup names,
e.g. net.singles. Includes net.god(s) (q.v.), net.goddesses
(various charismatic women with circles of on-line admirers),
net.lurkers, (see LURKER), net.parties (a synonym for BOINK sense
#2 (q.v.)) and many similar constructs.
NET.GOD (net god) n. Used to refer to anyone who satisfies some
combination of the following conditions: has been visible on USENET
for more than five years, ran one of the original backbone sites,
moderated an important newsgroup, wrote news software, or knows
Gene, Mark, Rick, Henry, Chuq, and Greg personally. See DEMIGOD.
NETWORK ADDRESS n. As used by hackers, means an address on THE NETWORK
(almost always a BANG PATH or INTERNET ADDRESS). An essential to be
taken seriously by hackers; in particular, persons or organizations
claiming to understand, work with, sell to, or recruit from among
hackers that *don't* display net addresses are quietly presumed to
be clueless poseurs and mentally FLUSHED (sense #3). Hackers often
put their net addresses on their business cards and wear them
prominently in contexts where they expect to meet other hackers
face-to-face (see also SCIENCE-FICTION FANDOM) This is mostly
functional, but is also a connotative signal that one identifies
with hackerdom (like lodge pins among Masons or tie-died T-shirts
among Grateful Dead fans). 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.
NETWORK, THE n. 1. The union of all the major academic and
noncommercial/hacker-oriented networks such as Internet, the old
ARPANET, NSFNet, BITNET and the virtual UUCP and USENET
``networks'', plus the corporate in-house networks that gate 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 BANG PATH, INTERNET ADDRESS,
NETWORK ADDRESS. 2. A fictional conspiracy of libertarian
hacker-subversives and anti-authoritarian monkeywrenchers described
in Robert Anton Wilson's novel _Schrodinger's_Cat_, to which many
hackers have subsequently decided they belong (this is an example
of HA HA, ONLY SERIOUS).
NEWGRP WARS (n[y]oo'grp wohrz) [USENET] n. Salvos of dueling `newgrp'
and `rmgroup' messages sometimes exchanged by persons on opposite
sides of a dispute over whether a NEWSGROUP should be created
netwide. 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; cf. the spinoff of
alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork from alt.tv.muppets in early 1990,
or any number of specialized abuse groups named after particularly
notorious flamers.
NEWSFROUP (n[y]oos'froop) [USENET] n. Silly written-only synonym for
NEWSGROUP, originated as a typo but now in regular use on USENET'S
talk.bizarre and other not-real-tightly-wrapped groups.
NEWSGROUP [USENET] n. One of USENET's large collection of topic
groups. Among the best-known are comp.lang.c (the C-language
forum), comp.unix.wizards (for UNIX wizards), rec.arts.sf-lovers
(for science-fiction fans) and talk.politics.misc (miscellaneous
political discussions and flamage).
NIGHT MODE n. See PHASE (of people).
NIL [from LISP terminology for ``false''] No. Usage: used in reply to
a question, particularly one asked using the ``-P'' convention.
See T.
NON-OPTIMAL SOLUTION n. 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.
NONTRIVIAL adj. Requiring real thought or significant computing power.
Often used as an understated way of saying that a problem is quite
difficult. See TRIVIAL, UNINTERESTING.
NO-OP (noh-op) alt. NOP (nop) [no operation] n. 1. A machine
instruction that does nothing (sometimes used in assembler-level
programming as filler for data areas). 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.''
NP- (en pee) pref. Extremely. Used to modify adjectives describing a
level or quality of difficulty. ``Getting this algorithm to
perform correctly in every case is NP-annoying.'' This is
generalized from the computer science terms ``NP-hard'' and
``NP-easy''. NP is the set of Nondeterministic-Polynomial
algorithms, those which can be completed by a nondeterministic
finite state machine in an amount of time that is a polynomial
function of the size of the input.
NUKE v. 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. Oppose BLOW AWAY. 2. Syn. for DYKE, applied to smaller
things such as features or code sections. 3. Used of processes as
well as files; frequently an alias for ``kill -9'' on UNIX.
NUXI PROBLEM, THE (nuk'see pro'blm, dh@) n. This 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'' (i.e. when transferring data from a
little-endian to a big endian or vice-versa). See also, BIG-ENDIAN,
LITTLE-ENDIAN, SWAB, and BYTESEXUAL.
= O =
OB (ob) pref. Obligatory. A piece of NETIQUETTE that acknowledges the
author has been straying from the group's charter. For example, if
a posting in alt.sex has nothing particularly to do with sex, the
author may append ``ObSex'' (or ``Obsex'') and tell a dirty joke.
OBSCURE adj. Used in an exaggeration of its normal meaning, to imply a
total lack of comprehensibility. ``The reason for that last crash
is obscure.'' ``FIND's command syntax is obscure.'' MODERATELY
OBSCURE implies that it could be figured out but probably isn't
worth the trouble. OBSCURE IN THE EXTREME is a preferred emphatic
form.
OBFUSCATED C CONTEST n. Annual contest run since 1984 over THE NETWORK
by Landon Curt Noll & friends. The overall winner is he who
produces the most unreadable, creative and bizarre working C
program; various other prizes are awarded at the judges' whim.
Given C's terse syntax and macro-preprocessor facilities, this
gives 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.
OCTAL FORTY (ok'tl for'tee) n. Hackish way of saying ``I'm drawing a
blank'' (octal 40 is the ASCII space charater). See WALL.
OFF-BY-ONE ERROR n. Exceedingly common error induced in many ways,
usually by starting at 0 when you should have started at 1 or vice
versa. Also applied to giving an object to the person next to the
one who should have gotten it. Often confused with FENCEPOST ERROR,
which is properly a particular subtype of it.
OFF THE TROLLEY adj. Describes the behavior of a program which
malfunctions but doesn't actually CRASH or get halted by the
operating system. See GLITCH, BUG, DEEP SPACE.
OFFLINE adv. Not now or not here. Example: ``Let's take this
discussion offline.''
ONE BELL SYSTEM (IT WORKS) This was the output from the old Unix V6
``1'' command. The ``1'' command also contained a random number
generator which gave it a one in ten chance of recursively
executing itself.
ONE-LINER WARS n. Popular game among hackers who code in the language
APL. 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. [This is not *quite* as silly as
it sounds; I myself have coded one-line LIFE programs and once
uttered a one-liner that performed lexical analysis of its input
string followed by a dictionary lookup for good measure -- ESR]
OOBLICK (oo'blik) [allegedly from one of the Dr. Seuss books] n. A
bizarre semi-liquid sludge made from cornstarch and water. Enjoyed
among hackers who make batches for 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.
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 def-fun foo, open
eks close, open, plus ekx one, close close.'' See CLOSE.
OPEN SWITCH [IBM] n. An unresolved issue.
OPERATING SYSTEM n. (Often abbreviated ``OS'') The foundation software
of a machine, of course; that which schedules tasks, allocates
storage, and presents a default interface to the user between
applications. The facilities the operating system provides and its
general design philosophy exert an extremely strong influence on
programming style and the technical culture that grows up around a
machine. Hacker folklore has been shaped primarily by the UNIX,
ITS, TOPS-10, TOPS-20/TWENEX, VMS, CP/M, MS/DOS, and MULTICS
operating systems (most importantly by ITS and UNIX). Each of these
has its own entry, which see.
ORANGE BOOK, THE n. The U.S. Government's standards document (Trusted
Computer System Evaluation Criteria, DOD standard 5200.28-STD,
December, 1985) characterizing secure computing architectures,
defining levels A1 (most secure) through C3 (least). Stock UNIXes
are roughly C2. See SILVER BOOK, WHITE BOOK, PURPLE BOOK.
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 which 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 3 times out of 4. See
also CHINESE RAVS, GREAT-WALL, STIR-FRIED RANDOM.
ORTHOGONAL [from mathematics] adj. Mutually independent;
well-separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. Used to describe sets of
primitives or capabilities which, 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 MC68000 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 `and', `or' and `not' is not (because any one of these can be
expressed in terms of the other two via De Morgan's Laws). Also
used in comment on human discourse; ``This may be orthogonal to the
discussion, but...''.
OS (oh ess) 1. [Operating System] n. Acronym heavily used in email,
occasionally in speech. 2. obs. n. On ITS, an output spy.
OS/2 (oh ess too) n. The anointed successor to MS-DOS for Intel-286
and (allegedly) 386-based micros; proof that IBM/Microsoft couldn't
get it right the second time, either. Cited here because mentioning
it is always good for a cheap laugh among hackers -- the design was
so bad that three years after introduction you could still count
the major APPs shipping for it on the fingers of two hands. See
VAPORWARE, MONSTROSITY, CRETINOUS, SECOND-SYSTEM SYNDROME.
OVERRUN SCREW [C programming] n. A variety of FANDANGO ON CORE
produced by scribbling past the end of an array (C has no checks
for this). 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. 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 (frequently) a core dump on the
next operation to use stdio or malloc(3) itself. See also MEMORY
LEAK, ALIASING BUG, PRECEDENCE LOSSAGE, FANDANGO ON CORE.
= P =
PAGE IN [MIT] v. To become aware of one's surroundings again after
having paged out (see PAGE OUT). Usually confined to the sarcastic
comment, ``So-and-so pages in. Film at 11.'' See FILM AT 11.
PAGE OUT [MIT] v. 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.
PANIC [UNIX] v. An action taken by a process or the entire operating
system when an unrecoverable error is discovered. The action
usually consists of: (1) displaying localized information on the
controlling terminal, (2) saving, or preparing for saving, a memory
image of the process or operating system, and (3) terminating the
process or rebooting the system.
PARAM (p@-ram') n. Speeech-only shorthand for ``parameter''. Compare
ARG, VAR. The plural `params' is often further compressed to
`parms'.
PARITY ERRORS pl.n. Those 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.''
PARSE [from linguistic terminology] v. 1. To determine the syntactic
structure of a sentence or other utterance (close to the standard
English meaning). Example: ``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 (usually at a Chinese restaurant). ``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''.
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. 2. v. To insert a patch into a piece
of code. 3. [in the UNIX world] n. a set of differences between two
versions of source code, generated with diff(1) and intended to be
mechanically applied using patch(1); often used as a way of
distributing permanent C code upgrades and fixes over USENET.
PD (pee-dee) 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.
PDL (pid'l or pud'l) [acronym for Push Down List] n. 1. A LIFO queue
(stack); more loosely, any priority queue; even more loosely, any
queue. A person's pdl is the set of things he has to do in the
future. One speaks of the next project to be attacked as having
risen to the top of the pdl. ``I'm afraid I've got real work to
do, so this'll have to be pushed way down on my pdl.'' All these
usages are also frequently found with STACK (q.v) itself as the
subject noun. See PUSH and POP. 2. Dave Lebling (PDL@DM).
PDP-10 [Programmable Digital Processor model 10] n. The machine that
made timesharing real. Looms large in hacker folklore due to early
adoption in the mid-70s 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 PDP-11 and VAX machines and dropped from
DEC's line in the early '80s, and in 1990 to have cut one's teeth
on one is considered something of a badge of honorable
old-timerhood among hackers. See TOPS-10, ITS, Appendix B.
PERCENT-S (per-sent' es) [From ``%s'', the formatting sequence in C's
printf() library function used to indicate that an arbitrary string
may be inserted] n. An unspecified person or object. ``I was just
talking to some percent-s in administration.'' Compare RANDOM.
PERF (perf) n. See CHAD (sense #1).
PESSIMAL (pes'i-ml) [Latin-based antonym for ``optimal''] adj.
Maximally bad. ``This is a pessimal situation.''
PESSIMIZING COMPILER (pes'i-miez-ing kuhm-pie'lr) [antonym of
`optimizing compiler'] n. A compiler that produces object code that
is worse than the straightforward or obvious translation.
PHASE 1. n. The phase of one's waking-sleeping schedule with respect
to the standard 24-hour cycle. This is a useful concept among
people who often work at night according to no fixed schedule. It
is not uncommon to change one's phase by as much as six hours/day
on a regular basis. ``What's your phase?'' ``I've been getting in
about 8 PM lately, but I'm going to work 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 used, but less frequently.) 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.
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.''
PIG, RUN LIKE A adj. To run very slowly on given hardware, said of
software. Distinct from HOG, q.v.
PING (ping) [from TCP/IP terminology] n.,v. 1. Slang term for a small
network message (ICMP ECHO) sent by a computer to check for the
presence and aliveness of another. Occasionally used as a phone
greeting. See ACK. 2. To verify the presence of. 3. To get the
attention of. From the Unix command by the same name (an acronym
of ``Packet INternet Groper) that sends an ICMP ECHO packet to
another host. This was probably contrived to match WWII-era
``ping'' (sonar ranging pulse).
PINK SHIRT BOOK ``The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC''.
The original cover featured a picture of Peter Norton with a silly
smirk on his face, wearing a pink shirt. Perhaps in recognition of
this usage, the current edition has a different picture of Norton
wearing a pink shirt.
PIPELINE [UNIX, orig. by Doug McIlroy; now also used under MS-DOS and
elsewhere] n. A chain of FILTER programs connected
``head-to-tail'', so that the output of one becomes the input of
the next. 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.
PIZZA, ANSI STANDARD (pee'tz@, an'see stan'd@rd) [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. [Myself, I have observed a high frequency of pepperoni,
mushroom and sausage. -- ESR] See also ROTARY DEBUGGER.
PLAYPEN [IBM] n. A room where programmers work. Compare SALT MINES.
PLUGH (ploogh) [from the ADVENT game] v. See XYZZY.
PM (pee em) 1. [from ``preventive maintenence''] v. to bring down a
machine for inspection or test purposes. 2. n. Abbrev. for
``Presentation Manager'', an ELEPHANTINE OS/2 GUI.
P.O.D. (pee-oh-dee) Acronym for `Piece Of Data' (as opposed to a code
section). Usage: pedantic and rare.
POINTER ARITHMETIC [C programmers] n. The use of increment and
decrement operations on address pointers to traverse arrays or
structure fields. See also BUMP.
POLL v.,n. 1. 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 ask. ``I'll poll everyone and see where
they want to go for lunch.''
POLYGON PUSHER n. A chip designer who spends most of his/her time at
the physical layout level (which requires drawing *lots* of
multi-colored polygons).
POM (pee-oh-em) n. Phase of the moon (q.v.). Usage: usually used in
the phrase ``POM dependent'' which means FLAKEY (q.v.).
POP also POPJ (pop-jay) [based on the stack operation that removes the
top of a stack, and the fact that procedure return addresses are
saved on the stack] v. To return from a digression (the J-form
derives from a PDP-10 assembler instruction). By verb doubling,
``Popj, popj'' means roughly, ``Now let's see, where were we?''
See RTI.
PRECEDENCE LOSSAGE (pre's@-dens los'j) [C programmers] n. 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 ^. Can always be avoided by suitable use of
parentheses. See ALIASING BUG, MEMORY LEAK, SMASH THE STACK,
FANDANGO ON CORE, OVERRUN SCREW.
PRETTY PRINT or PRETTYPRINT v. 1. To generate `pretty' human-readable
output from a hairy internal representation; esp. used for the
process of GRINDing (sense #2) LISP code. 2. To format in some
particularly slick and nontrivial way.
PRIME TIME [from TV programming] n. Normal high-usage hours on a
timesharing system, the `day shift'. Avoidance of prime time is a
major reason for NIGHT MODE hacking.
PRIORITY INTERRUPT [from the hardware term] n. 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.
PROPELLER HEAD n. Used by hackers, this is syn. with COMPUTER GEEK.
Non-hackers sometimes use it to describe all techies.
PROTOCOL n. See DO PROTOCOL.
PROWLER [UNIX] n. A DEMON 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 GFR.
PSEUDOPRIME n. A backgammon prime (six consecutive occupied points)
with one point missing.
PUNT [from the punch line of an old joke: ``Drop back 15 yards and
punt''] v. To give up, typically without any intention of retrying.
PURPLE BOOK, THE n. The System V Interface Definition. The covers of
the first editions were an amazingly nauseating shade of
off-lavender. See WHITE BOOK, SILVER BOOK, ORANGE BOOK, GREEN BOOK.
PUSH [based on the stack operation that puts the current information
on a stack, and the fact that procedure call addresses are saved on
the stack] dialect: PUSHJ (push-jay), based on the PDP-10 procedure
call instruction. v. To enter upon a digression, to save the
current discussion for later.
= Q =
QUANTUM BOGODYNAMICS (kwahn'tm boh`goh-die-nam'iks) n. Theory
promulgated by ESR which characterizes the universe in terms of
bogon sources (such as politicians, used-car salesmen, TV
evangelists, and SUITs in general), bogon sinks (such as taxpayers
and computers), and bogosity potential fields. Bogon absorption,
of course, causes human beings to behave mindlessly and machines to
fail (and may cause them to emit secondary bogons as well);
however, the precise mechanics of the bogon-computron interaction
are not yet understood and remain to be elucidated. Quantum
bogodynamics is most frequently 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.
QUES (kwess) 1. n. The question mark character (``?''). 2. interj.
What? Also QUES QUES? See WALL.
QUX (kwuhx) The fourth of the standard metasyntactic variables, after
BAZ and before the QUU*X series. See FOO, BAR, BAZ, QUUX.
QUUX (kwooks) [invented by Steele] 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, four U's in seven letters).] 1.
Originally, a meta-word 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. 2. interj. See FOO; however, denotes very
little disgust, and is uttered mostly for the sake of the sound of
it. 3. n. Refers to one of three people who went to Boston Latin
School and eventually to MIT:
THE GREAT QUUX: Guy L. Steele Jr.
THE LESSER QUUX: David J. Littleboy
THE MEDIOCRE QUUX: Alan P. Swide
(This taxonomy is said to be similarly applied to three Frankston
brothers at MIT.) QUUX, without qualification, usually refers to
The Great Quux, who is somewhat infamous for light verse and for
the ``Crunchly'' cartoons. 4. QUUXY: adj. Of or pertaining to a
QUUX. 5. n. The Micro Quux (Sam Lewis).
= R =
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. Frivolous; unproductive;
undirected (pejorative). ``He's just a random loser.'' 4.
Incoherent or inelegant; 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. 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 ac's, but randomly uses
seven for assorted non-overlapping purposes, so that no one else
can invoke it without first saving four extra registers's. 6. In
no particular order, though deterministic. ``The I/O channels are
in a pool, and when a file is opened one is chosen randomly.'' n.
7. A random hacker; used particularly of high school students who
soak up computer time and generally get in the way. 8. (occasional
MIT usage) One who lives at Random Hall. J. RANDOM is often
prefixed to a noun to make a ``name'' out of it (by comparison to
common names such as ``J. Fred Muggs''). The most common uses are
``J. RANDOM HACKER, ``J. Random Loser'' and ``J. Random Nerd''
("Should J. Random Loser be allowed to gun down other people?"),
but it can be used just as an elaborate version of RANDOM in any
sense. See also SOME RANDOM X.
RANDOM NUMBERS n. When one wishes to specify a large but random number
of things, and the context is inappropriate for `N' (q.v.), certain
numbers are preferred by hacker tradition (that is, easily
recognized as placeholders). These include
17 Long described at MIT as ``the least random number'', see 23.
23 Sacred number of Eris, Goddess of Discord (along with 17 & 5).
42 The Answer to the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.
69 From the sexual act. This one was favored in MIT's ITS culture.
666 The Number of the Beast.
For further enlightenment, consult the _Principia_Discordia_,
_The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_To_The_Galaxy_, any porn movie, and the
Christian Bible's _Book_Of_Revelations_. See also DISCORDIANISM.
RANDOMNESS n. An unexplainable misfeature; gratuitous inelegance.
Also, a HACK or CROCK which depends on a complex combination of
coincidences (or rather, the combination upon which the crock
depends). ``This hack can output characters 40-57 by putting the
character in the accumulator field of an XCT and then extracting 6
bits -- the low two bits of the XCT opcode are the right thing.''
``What randomness!''
RAPE v. To (metaphorically) screw someone or something, violently.
Usage: 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.''
RARE [UNIX] adj. CBREAK mode (character-by-character with interrupts
enabled). Distinguished from `raw' and `cooked', but unlike them
this term is strictly a creature of folklore, not found in the
manuals. Usage: rare.
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.
RAVE [WPI] v. 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. Also used to describe a
less negative form of blather, such as friendly bullshitting.
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.
READ-ONLY USER n. Describes a LUSER who uses computers almost
exclusively for reading USENET, bulletin boards and email, as
opposed to writing code or purveying useful information. See TWINK.
REAL SOON NOW [orig. from SF's fanzine community. popularized by Jerry
Pournelle's BYTE column] adj. 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 the gods/fates/other
time commitments permit the speaker to get to it. Often
abbreviated RSN.
REAL TIME adv. 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 (research project, course, etc.). See
USER.
REAL WORLD, THE n. 1. In programming, those institutions at which
programming may be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL,
RPG, IBM, etc. 2. To programmers, the location of non-programmers
and activities not related to programming. 3. A universe in which
the standard dress is shirt and tie and in which a person's working
hours are defined as 9 to 5. 4. The location of the status quo.
5. 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 talking about a deceased
person. See also FEAR AND LOATHING and UNINTERESTING.
RED BOOK n. Informal name for one of the three standard references on
PostScript; the others are known as the GREEN BOOK and BLUE BOOK.
REGEXP (reg'exp) [UNIX] n. 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.
REINCARNATION, CYCLE OF n. Term used to refer to a well-known effect
whereby function in a computing system family is migrated out to
special purpose peripheral hardware for speed, then the peripheral
evolves towards more computing power as it does its job, then
somebody notices that it's 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 idea.
RELIGIOUS ISSUES n. Questions which seemingly cannot be raised without
touching off a FLAME WAR, such as ``What is the best
editor/language/operating system/architecture''. See also THEOLOGY.
RELIGIOUS WAR from USENET, but may predate it] n. FLAME WARS over
RELIGIOUS ISSUES.
REPLICATOR n. Any construct that acts to produce copies of itself;
this could be a living organism, an idea (see MEME), a program (see
WORM, WABBIT and VIRUS), or a robot.
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 of
more `serious' designs. Perhaps the most widely distributed
retrocomputing utility was the pnch(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 Hollerith card
code. Other well-known retrocomputing hacks have included the
language INTERCAL, a jcl-emulating shell for UNIX, and the
card-punch-emulating editor named 029.
RFC (ahr ef see) n. Request For Comment. One of a long-established
series of numbered Internet standards widely followed by commercial
and PD software 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.
RICE BOX [from ham radio slang] n. Any Asian-made commodity computer,
esp. an 8086, 80286, 80386 or 80486-based machine built to IBM
PC-compatible ISA or EISA-bus standards.
RIGHT THING, THE n. That which is ``obviously'' the correct or
appropriate thing to use, do, say, etc. Use of this term often
implies that in fact reasonable people may disagree. ``Never let
your conscience keep you from doing the right thing!'' ``What's
the right thing for LISP to do when it reads `(.)'?'' Antonym: THE
WRONG THING (q.v.).
ROACH [Bell Labs] v. To destroy, esp. of a data structure. Hardware
gets TOASTed, software gets roached.
ROBUST adj. Said of a system which has demonstrated an ability to
recover gracefully from the whole range of exception conditions in
a given environment. One step below BULLETPROOF. Compare SMART,
oppose BRITTLE.
ROGUE [UNIX] n. Graphic Dungeons-And-Dragons-like game 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 to support ROGUE, and has since become one of UNIX's
most important and heavily used application libraries. See HACK.
ROOM-TEMPERATURE IQ [IBM] 80 or below. Used in describing the
expected intelligence range of the LUSER. As in ``Well, but how's
this interface gonna play with the room-temperature IQ crowd?'' See
DROOL-PROOF PAPER.
RTFM (ahr-tee-ef-em) [UNIX] Abbrev. for ``Read The Fucking Manual''.
Used by GURUs to brush off questions they consider trivial or
annoying. Compare DON'T DO THAT, THEN.
RTI (ahr-tee-ie) interj. The mnemonic for the `return from interrupt'
instruction on Intel microprocessors. Equivalent to ``Now, where
was I?'' or used to end a conversational digression. See POP, POPJ.
RUDE [WPI] adj. 1. (of a program) Badly written. 2. Functionally
poor, e.g. a program which is very difficult to use because of
gratuitously poor (random?) design decisions. See CUSPY.
= S =
SACRED adj. Reserved for the exclusive use of something (a
metaphorical extension of the standard meaning). ``Accumulator 7
is sacred to the UUO handler.'' Often means that anyone may look
at the sacred object, but clobbering it will screw whatever it is
sacred to.
SADISTICS (s@'dis'tiks) n. University slang for statistics and
probability theory, often used by hackers.
SAGA [WPI] n. A cuspy but bogus raving story dealing with N random
broken people.
SAIL n. Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Lab. An important
site in the early development of LISP (with the MIT AI LAB, CMU and
the UNIX community) one of the major founts of hacker culture
traditions. The SAIL machines were shut down in late May 1990,
scant weeks after the MIT AI lab's ITS cluster went down for the
last time.
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.
SANDBENDER [IBM] n. A person involved with silicon lithography and the
physical design of chips. Compare IRONMONGER, POLYGON PUSHER.
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 like the Society for
Creative Anachronism. Some hacker slang originated in SF fandom;
see DEFENESTRATION, GREAT-WALL, CYBERPUNK, H INFIX, HA HA ONLY
SERIOUS, IMHO, MUNDANE, NEEP-NEEP, REAL SOON NOW. Additionally,
the jargon terms CYBERSPACE, GO FLATLINE, ICE, VIRUS, and WORM
originated in SF itself.
SCRATCH [from ``scratchpad''] 1. adj. A device or recording medium
attached to a machine for testing purposes; one which can be
SCRIBBLED on without loss. Usually in the combining forms SCRATCH
MEMORY, SCRATCH DISK, SCRATCH TAPE, SCRATCH VOLUME. See SCRATCH
MONKEY. 2. [primarily IBM] v. To delete (as in a file).
SCRATCH MONKEY n. As in, ``Before testing or reconfiguring, always
mount a''. A proverb used to advise caution when dealing with
irreplacable data or devices. Used in memory of Mabel, the Swimming
Wonder Monkey who expired when a computer vendor PM'd a machine
which was regulating the gas mixture that the monkey was breathing
at the time. See Appendix A. See SCRATCH.
SCREW [MIT] n. A LOSE, usually in software. Especially used for
user-visible misbehavior caused by a bug or misfeature.
SCREWAGE (scroo'@j) n. Like LOSSAGE (q.v.) but connotes that the
failure is due to a designed-in misfeature rather than a simple
inadequacy or mere bug.
SCROG (skrog) [Bell Labs] v. To damage, trash or corrupt a data
structure. ``The cblock got scrogged.'' Also reported as SKROG,
and ascribed to ``The Wizard of Id'' comix. Equivalent to SCRIBBLE
or MANGLE (q.v.)
SCROZZLE (skroh'zl) v. Used when a self-modifying code segment runs
incorrectly and corrupts the running program, or vital data. ``The
damn compiler scrozzled itself again!''
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.
SEARCH-AND-DESTROY MODE n. Hackerism for the search-and-replace
facility in an editor, so called because an incautiously chosen
match pattern can cause INFINITE damage.
SECOND-SYSTEM SYNDROME n. When designing the successor to a relatively
small, elegant and successful system, there is a tendency to become
grandiose in one's success and perpetrate an ELEPHANTINE
feature-laden monstrosity. The term `second-system syndrome' was
first used for this affliction in describing how the success of
CTSS led to the debacle that was MULTICS.
SEGGIE (seg'ee) [UNIX] n. Reported from Britain as a shorthand for
`segment violation', an attempted access to a protected memory area
usually resulting in a CORE DUMP.
SELF-REFERENCE n. See SELF-REFERENCE.
SELVAGE (selv'@j) n. See CHAD (sense #1).
SEMI (se'mee) 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. Prefix with words such as
``immediately'', as a qualifier. ``When is the system coming up?''
``Semi-immediately.''
SERVER n. A kind of DAEMON which performs a service for the requester,
which often runs on a computer other than the one on which the
server runs. A particularly common term on the Internet, which is
rife with ``name servers'' ``domain servers'' ``news servers''
``finger servers'' and the like.
SEX [Sun User's Group & elsewhere] n. 1. Software EXchange. A
technique invented by the blue-green algae hundereds 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. 2. The rather Freudian mnemonic often used for Sign Extend,
a machine instruction found in many architectures.
SHAREWARE n. 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 GUILTWARE,
CRIPPLEWARE.
SHELFWARE n. Software purchased on a whim (by an individual user) or
in accordance with policy (by a corporation or government) but not
actually required for any particular use. Therefore, it often ends
up on some shelf.
SHELL [from UNIX, now used elsewhere] n. 1. The command interpreter
used to pass commands to an operating system. 2. More generally,
any interface program which 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.
SHELL OUT [UNIX] n. To spawn an interactive subshell from within a
program such as 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. v. To move oneself to the left (right). To
move out of the way. 2. imper. Get out of that (my) seat! Usage:
often used without the ``logical'', or as ``left shift'' instead of
``shift left''. Sometimes heard as LSH (lish), from the PDP-10
instruction set.
SHRIEK See EXCL. Occasional CMU usage, also in common use among
mathematicians, especially category theorists.
SIG (sig) or SIG BLOCK (sig blahk) [UNIX; often written ``.sig''
there] n. Short for ``signature'', used specifically to refer to
the electronic signature block which most UNIX mail- and
news-posting software will allow you to automatically append to
outgoing mail and news. The composition of one's sig can be quite
an art form, including an ASCII logo or one's choice of witty
sayings; 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 NETWORK.
SILICON n. Hardware, esp. ICs or microprocessor-based computer systems
(compare IRON). Contrasted with software.
SILLY WALK [from Monty Python] v. 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.''
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.
SILVER BOOK, THE n. Jensen & Wirth's infamous ``Pascal User Manual and
Report'', so called because of the silver cover of the
widely-distributed Springer-Verlag second edition of 1978. See
WHITE BOOK, PURPLE BOOK, ORANGE BOOK.
ROTARY DEBUGGER [Commodore] n. 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.
SLEEP [from the UNIX sleep(3)] On a timesharing system, a process
which relinquishes its claim on the scheduler until some given
event occurs or a specified time delay elapses is said to `go to
sleep'.
SLOP n. 1. A one-sided fudge factor (q.v.). Often introduced to avoid
the possibility of a fencepost error (q.v.). 2. (used by compiler
freaks) The ratio of code generated by a compiler to hand-compiled
code, minus 1; i.e., the space (or maybe time) you lose because you
didn't do it yourself.
SLOPSUCKER n. A lowest-priority task that must wait 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. One common
variety of slopsucker hunts for large prime numbers. Compare
BACKGROUND.
SLUGGY (sluh'gee) adj. Hackish variant of `sluggish'. Used only of
people, esp. someone just waking up after a long GRONK-OUT.
SLURP v. To read a large data file entirely into core before working
on it. ``This program slurps in a 1K-by-1K matrix and does an
FFT.''
SMART adj. Said of a program that does the RIGHT THING (q.v.) 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).
Compare ROBUST (smart programs can be BRITTLE).
SMASH THE STACK [C programming] n. On many C implementations it is
possible to corrupt the execution stack by writing past the end of
an array declared auto in a routine. Code that does this is said to
`smash the stack', and can cause return from the routine to jump to
a random text address. This can produce some of the most insidious
data-dependent bugs known to mankind. Variants include `trash the
stack', `SCRIBBLE ON the stack', `MANGLE the stack'; `MUNG the
stack' is not used as this is never done intentionally. See
ALIASING BUG, FANDANGO ON CORE, MEMORY LEAK, PRECEDENCE LOSSAGE,
OVERRUN SCREW.
SMILEY n. See EMOTICON.
SMOKE TEST n. 1. A rudimentary form of testing applied to electronic
equipment following repair or reconfiguration in which AC power is
applied and during which the tester checks for sparks, smoke, or
other dramatic signs of fundamental failure. 2. By extension, the
first run of a piece of software after construction or a critical
change. See MAGIC SMOKE.
SMOKING CLOVER n. A DISPLAY HACK originally due to Bill Gosper. Many
convergent lines are drawn on a color monitor in AOS mode (so that
every pixel struck has its color incremented). The color map is
then rotated. 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. This results in a striking,
rainbow-hued, shimmering four-leaf clover. Gosper joked about
keeping it hidden from the FDA lest it be banned.
SMOP (smop) [Simple (or Small) Matter of Programming] n. A piece of
code, not yet written, whose anticipated length is significantly
greater than its complexity. Usage: used to refer to a program
that could obviously be written, but is not worth the trouble.
SNAIL-MAIL n. Paper mail, as opposed to electronic. See EMAIL.
SNARF (snarf) v. 1. To grab, esp. a large document or file for the
purpose of using it either with or without the author's permission.
See BLT. Variant: SNARF (IT) DOWN. (At MIT on ITS, DDT has a
command called :SNARF which grabs a job from another (inferior)
DDT.) 2. [in the UNIX community] to fetch a file or set of files
across a network. See also BLAST.
SNARF & BARF (snarf-n-barf) n. The act of grabbing a region of text
using a WIMP (q.v.) environment (Window, Icon, Mouse, Pointer) and
then ``stuffing'' the contents of that region into another region
or into the same region, to avoid re-typing a command line.
SNEAKERNET 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''.
SNIFF v.,n. Synonym for POLL.
S.O. (ess-oh) n. Acronym for Significant Other, almost invariably
written abbreviated and pronounced ``ess-oh'' by hackers. In fact
the form without periods ``SO'' is most common. Used to refer to
one's primary relationship, esp. a live-in to whom one is not
married. See MOTAS, MOTOS, MOTSS.
SOFTCOPY n. [back-formation from `hardcopy'] A machine readable form
of corresponding hardcopy. See BITS.
SOFTWARE ROT n. Hypothetical disease the existence of which has been
deduced from the observation that unused programs or features will
stop working after sufficient time has passed, even if ``nothing
has changed''. Also known as BIT DECAY, BIT ROT. Occasionally
this turns out to be a real problem due to media failure.
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.
SOME RANDOM X adj. Used to indicate a member of class X, with the
implication that the particular X is interchangeable with most
other Xs in whatever context was being discussed. ``I think some
random cracker tripped over the guest timeout last night.''
SORCEROR'S APPRENTICE MODE n. A bug in a protocol where, under some
circumstances, the receipt of a message causes more than one
message 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.
SPACEWAR n. A space-combat simulation game first implemented on the
PDP-1 at MIT in 1960-61. SPACEWAR aficionados formed the core of
the early hacker culture at MIT. Ten years later a descendant of
the game motivated Ken Thompson to invent UNIX (q.v.). Ten years
after that, SPACEWAR was commercialized as one of the first video
games; descendants are still feeping in video arcades everywhere.
SPAGHETTI CODE n. Describes code with a complex and tangled control
structure, esp. one using many GOTOs, exceptions or other
`unstructured' branching constructs. Pejorative.
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.
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 programs which
are perceived to have little more than a flashy interface going for
them. Which meaning should be drawn depends delicately on tone of
voice and context.
SPIN v. Equivalent to BUZZ (q.v.). More common among C and UNIX
programmers.
SPLAT n. 1. Name used in many places (DEC, IBM, and others) for the
ASCII star (``*'') character. 2. [MIT] Name used by some people
for the ASCII pound-sign (``#'') character. 3. [Stanford] Name
used by some people for the Stanford/ITS extended ASCII circle-x
character. (This character is also called ``circle-x'',
``blobby'', and ``frob'', among other names.) 4. [Stanford] Name
for the semi-mythical extended ASCII circle-plus character. 5.
Canonical name for an output routine that outputs whatever the the
local interpretation of splat is. Usage: nobody really agrees what
character ``splat'' is, but the term is common.
SPOOGE (spooj) 1. n. Inexplicable or arcane code, or random and
probably incorrect output from a computer program 2. v. To generate
code or output as in definition 1.
SPOOL v. To send files to some device or program (a `spooler') that
queues them up and does something useful with them later. The
spooler usually understood 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).
STACK n. See PDL. The STACK usage is probably more common outside
universities.
STACK PUKE n. Some micros are said to ``puke their guts onto the
stack'' to save their internal state during exception processing.
On a pipelined machine this can take a while (up to 92 bytes for a
bus fault on the 68020, for example).
STALE POINTER BUG n. Synonym for ALIASING BUG used esp. aming
microcomputer hackers.
STATE n. Condition, situation. ``What's the state of NEWIO?'' ``It's
winning away.'' ``What's your state?'' ``I'm about to gronk
out.'' As a special case, ``What's the state of the world?'' (or,
more silly, ``State-of-world-P?'') means ``What's new?'' or
``What's going on?''
STIR-FRIED RANDOM alt. STIR-FRIED MUMBLE (ster-fried mum'bl) n. Term
used for frequent best dish of those hackers who can cook. Consists
of random fresh veggies and meat wokked with random spices. Tasty
and economical. See RANDOM, GREAT-WALL, CHINESE RAVS, ORIENTAL
FOOD.
STOMP ON v. To inadvertently overwrite something important, usually
automatically. Example: ``All the work I did this weekend got
stomped on last night by the nightly-server script.'' Compare
SCRIBBLE, MANGLE, TRASH, SCROG, ROACH.
STOPPAGE (sto'p@j) n. Extreme lossage (see LOSSAGE) resulting in
something (usually vital) becoming completely unusable.
STUNNING adj. Mind-bogglingly stupid. Usually used in sarcasm. ``You
want to code *what* in ADA? That's...a stunning idea!'' See also
NON-OPTIMAL SOLUTION.
SUBSHELL [UNIX, MS-DOS] n. An OS command interpreter (see SHELL)
spawned from within a program, such that exit from the command
interpreter returns one to the parent program in a state that
allows it to continue execution. Oppose CHAIN.
SUIT n. 1. Ugly and uncomfortable `business clothing' often worn by
non-hackers. Invariably worn with a `tie', a strangulation device
which partially cuts off the blood supply to the brain. It is
thought that this explains much about the behavior of suit-
wearers. 2. A person who habitually wears suits, as distinct from a
techie or hacker. See LOSER, BURBLE and BRAIN-DAMAGED.
SUNSPOTS n. Notional cause of an odd error. ``Why did the program
suddenly turn the screen blue?'' ``Sunspots, I guess''. Also cause
of bitrot, from the genuine, honest-to-god fact that sunspots will
increase cosmic radiation which can flip single bits in memory.
Needless to say, although real sunspot errors happen, they are
extremely rare. See PHASE OF THE MOON.
SUN-STOOLS n. Unflattering hackerism for SunTools, a pre-X windowing
environment notorious in its day for size, slowness and
misfeatures.
SUPERPROGRAMMER n. See WIZARD, HACKER, GURU. Usage: rare. (Becoming
more common among IBM and Yourdon types.)
SUZIE COBOL (soo'zee koh'bol) 1. [IBM, prob. fr. Frank Zappa's
``little Suzy Creamcheese''] n. A coder straight out of training
school who knows everything except the benefits of comments in
plain English. Also (fashionable among personkind wishing to avoid
accusations of sexism) `Sammy Cobol' 2. [generalization proposed by
ESR] Meta-name for any CODE GRINDER, analogous to J. RANDOM HACKER.
SWAB [From the PDP-11 ``byte swap'' instruction] 1. v. to solve the
NUXI PROBLEM by swapping bytes in a file. 2. Also, the program in
V7 UNIX used to perform this action. See also BIG-ENDIAN,
LITTLE-ENDIAN, BYTESEXUAL.
SWAPPED adj. From the use of secondary storage devices to implement
virtual memory in computer systems. Something which is SWAPPED IN
is available for immediate use in main memory, and otherwise is
SWAPPED OUT. Often used metaphorically to refer to people's
memories (``I read TECO ORDER every few months to keep the
information swapped in.'') or to their own availability (``I'll
swap you in as soon as I finish looking at this other problem.'').
Compare PAGE IN, PAGE OUT.
SWIZZLE v. To convert external names or references within a data
structure into direct pointers when the data structure is brought
into main memory from external storage; also called POINTER
SWIZZLING; the converse operation is sometimes termed UNSWIZZLING.
SYNC (sink) [from UNIX] n.,v. 1. To force all pending I/O to the disk.
2. 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. See FLUSH.
SYNTACTIC SUGAR n. Features added to a language or formalism to make
it `sweeter' for humans, that 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. Example: the \n, \t,
\r, and \b escapes in C strings, which could be expressed as octal
escapes. Coined by Peter Landin. ``Syntactic sugar causes cancer of
the semicolon.'' - Alan Perlis.
SYS-FROG [the PLATO system] n. Playful hackish variant of ``sysprog''
which is in turn short for ``systems-programmer''.
SYSTEM n. 1. The supervisor program on the computer. 2. Any
large-scale program. 3. Any method or algorithm. 4. The way
things are usually done. Usage: a fairly ambiguous word. ``You
can't beat the system.'' SYSTEM HACKER: one who hacks the system
(in sense 1 only; for sense 2 one mentions the particular program:
e.g., LISP HACKER)
= T =
T (tee) 1. [from LISP terminology for ``true''] Yes. Usage: used in
reply to a question, particularly one asked using the ``-P''
convention). See NIL. 2. See TIME T. 3. In transaction-processing
circles, an abbreviation for the noun ``transaction''.
TALK MODE n. The state a terminal is in when linked to another via a
bidirectional character pipe to support on-line dialogue between
two or more users. Talk mode has a special set of jargon words,
used to save typing, which are not used orally:
BCNU Be seeing you.
BTW By the way...
BYE? Are you ready to unlink? (This is the standard way to
end a com mode conversation; the other person types
BYE to confirm, or else continues the conversation.)
CUL See you later.
FOO? A greeting, also meaning R U THERE? Often used in the
case of unexpected links, meaning also ``Sorry if I
butted in'' (linker) or ``What's up?'' (linkee).
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).
HELLOP A greeting, also meaning R U THERE? (An instance
of the ``-P'' convention.)
NIL No (see the main entry for NIL).
O Over to you.
OO Over and out.
OBTW Oh, by the way...
R U THERE? Are you there?
SEC Wait a second (sometimes written SEC...).
T Yes (see the main entry for T).
TNX Thanks.
TNX 1.0E6 Thanks a million (humorous).
WTF The universal interrogative particle. WTF knows what
it means?
WTH What the hell
<double CRLF> When the typing party has finished, he types
two CRLFs to signal that he is done; this leaves a
blank line between individual ``speeches'' in the
conversation, making it easier to re-read the
preceding text.
<name>: When three or more terminals are linked, each speech
is preceded by the typist's login name and a colon (or
a hyphen) to indicate who is typing. The login name
often is shortened to a unique prefix (possibly a
single letter) during a very long conversation.
Most of the above ``sub-jargon'' is used at both Stanford and MIT.
Several of these are also common in EMAIL, esp. FYI, FYA, BTW,
BCNU, and CUL A few other abbrevs have been reported from
commercial networks such as GEnie and Compuserve where on-line
`live' chat including more than two people is common and usually
involves a more `social' context, notably
<g> grin
BRB be right back
HHOJ ha ha only joking
HHOS HA HA ONLY SERIOUS
LOL laughing out load
ROTF rolling on the floor
AFK away from keyboard
b4 before
CU l8tr see you later
MORF Male or Female?
TTFN ta-ta for now
OIC Oh, I see
rehi hello again
These are not used at universities; conversely, most of the people
who know these are unfamiliar with FOO?, BCNU, HELLOP, NIL, and T.
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'' comix.
TASTE n. [primarily MIT-DMS] The quality in programs which 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 TASTEFUL and
FLAVORFUL are essentially synonyms, TASTE and FLAVOR are not.
TCB (tee see bee) [IBM] Trouble Came Back. Intermittent or
difficult-to reproduce problem which has failed to respond to
neglect. Compare HEISENBUG.
TELERAT (tel'@-rat) n. Unflattering hackerism for ``Teleray'', a line
of extremely losing terminals. See also TERMINAK, SUN-STOOLS,
HP-SUX.
TELNET (telnet) v. To communicate with another ARPAnet host using the
TELNET program. TOPS-10 people use the word IMPCOM since that is
the program name for them. Sometimes abbreviated to TN. ``I
usually TN over to SAIL just to read the AP News.''
TENSE adj. Of programs, very clever and efficient. A tense piece of
code often got that way because it was highly bummed, but sometimes
it was just based on a great idea. A comment in a clever display
routine by Mike Kazar: ``This routine is so tense it will bring
tears to your eyes. Much thanks to Craig Everhart and James
Gosling for inspiring this hack attack.'' A tense programmer is
one who produces tense code.
TERAFLOP CLUB (ter'a-flop kluhb) n. Mythical group of people who
consume outragous amounts of computer time in order to produce a
few simple pictures of glass balls with intricate ray tracing
techniques. Cal Tech professor James Kajiya is said to be the
founding member.
TERMINAK (ter'mi-nak) [Caltech, ca. 1979] n. Any malfunctioning
computer terminal. A common failure mode of Lear-Siegler ADM3a
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.'' See SUN-STOOLS, TELERAT, HP-SUX.
TERMINAL ILLNESS n. 1. Syn. with RASTER BURN. 2. The `burn-in'
condition your CRT tends to get if you don't have a screen saver.
TERPRI (ter'pree) [from the LISP 1.5 (and later, MacLISP) function to
start a new line of output] v. To output a CRLF (q.v.).
THANKS IN ADVANCE [USENET] Conventional net.politeness ending a posted
request for information or assistance. Sometimes written
``advTHANKSance''. See ``NET.'', NETIQUETTE.
THEOLOGY n. 1. Ironically used to refer to RELIGIOUS ISSUES. 2.
Technical fine points of an abstruse nature, esp. those where the
resolution is of theoretical interest but 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.
Example: the deep- vs. shallow-binding debate in the design of
dynamically-scoped LISPS.
THEORY n. Used in the general sense of idea, plan, story, or set of
rules. ``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 (thin'ko) [by analogy with `typo'] n. A bubble in the stream of
consciousness; a momentary, correctable glitch in mental
processing, especially one involving recall of information learned
by rote. Compare MOUSO.
THRASH v. To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing anything
useful. Paging or swapping systems which 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.
THREE-FINGER SALUTE n. Syn. for VULCAN NERVE PINCH.
THUNK n. 1. An expression, frozen together with its environment for
later evaluation if and when needed. The process of unfreezing a
THUNK is called `forcing'. 2. People and and activities scheduled
in a thunklike manner. ``It occurred to me the other day that I am
rather accurately modelled by a thunk -- I frequently need to be
forced to completion.'' -- paraphrased from a .plan file.
TICK n. 1. Interval of time; basic clock time on the computer.
Typically 1/60 second. See JIFFY. 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 that caused
things happen after their causes. This sort of AI simulation is
often pejoratively referred to as ``tick-tick-tick'' simulation,
especially when the issue of simultaneity of events with long,
independent chains of causes is handwaved.
TIME T (tiem tee) 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.'' 2. SINCE (OR
AT) TIME T EQUALS MINUS INFINITY: A long time ago; for as long as
anyone can remember; at the time that some particular frob was
first designed.
TIP OF THE ICE-CUBE [IBM] n. 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 actually
nontrivial.
TIRED IRON [IBM] n. Hardware that is perfectly functional but enough
behind the state of the art to have been superseded by new
products, presumably with enough improvement in bang-per-buck that
the old stuff is starting to look a bit like a DINOSAUR.
TLA (tee el ay) [Three-Letter-Abbreviation] n. 1. Self-describing
acronym for a species with which computing terminology is infested.
2. Any confusing acronym at all. Examples include MCA, FTP, SNA,
CPU, MMU, SCCS, DMU, FPU, TLA, NNTP. People who like this looser
usage argue that not all TLAs have three letters, just as not all
four letter words have four letters.
TOAST 1. n. Any completely inoperable system, esp. one that has just
crashed; ``I think BUACCA is toast.'' 2. v. To cause a system to
crash accidentally, especially in a manner that requires manual
rebooting. ``Rick just toasted harp again.''
TOASTER n. 1. The archetypal really stupid application for an embedded
microprocessor controller esp. `toaster oven'; often used in
comments which imply that a scheme is inappropriate technology.
``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, TOASTER, TOY.
TOOL 1. n. A program primarily used to create other programs, such as
a compiler or editor or cross-referencing program. Oppose APP,
OPERATING SYSTEM. 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). 3. [MIT] v.i. To work; to study. See HACK (def #9).
TOPS-10 (tops-ten) n. DEC's proprietary OS for the fabled PDP-10
machines, long a favorite of hackers but now effectively extinct. A
fountain of hacker folklore; see Appendix B. See also ITS, TOPS-20,
TWENEX, VMS, OPERATING SYSTEM.
TOPS-20 (tops-twen'tee) n. See TWENEX.
TOURIST [from MIT's ITS system] n. A guest on the system, especially
one who generally logs in over a network from a remote location for
games and other trivial purposes. One step below LUSER. TOURISTIC
is often used as a pejorative, as in ``losing touristic scum''.
TOY (toy) n. A computer system; always used with qualifiers. 1. NICE
TOY One which supports the speaker's hacking style adequately. 2.
JUST A TOY A machine that yields insufficient COMPUTRONS for the
speaker's preferred uses (this is not condemnatory as is BITTY BOX,
toys can at least be fun). See also GET A REAL COMPUTER, BITTY BOX.
TOY PROBLEM [AI] n. A deliberately simplified or even oversimplified
case of a challenging problem used to investigate, prototype, or
test algorithms for the real problem. Sometimes used pejoratively.
See also GEDANKEN.
TRAP 1. n. A program interrupt, usually used specifically to refer to
an interrupt caused by some illegal action taking place in the user
program. In most cases the system monitor performs some action
related to the nature of the illegality, then returns control to
the program. See UUO. 2. v. 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.''
TRASH v. To destroy the contents of (said of a data structure). The
most common of the family of near-synonyms including MUNG, MANGLE
and SCRIBBLE.
TRIVIAL adj. 1. In explanation, 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. Hackers' notions of triviality may be quite at
variance with those of non-hackers. See NONTRIVIAL, UNINTERESTING.
TROGLODYTE [Commodore] n. A hacker who never leaves his cubicle. The
term `Gnoll' (from D&D) is also reported.
TROGLODYTE MODE [Rice University] n. Programming with the lights
turned off, sunglasses on, and the (character) terminal inverted
(black on white) because you've been up for so many days straight
that your eyes hurt. Loud music blaring from a stereo stacked in
the corner is optional but recommended. See LARVAL STAGE, MODE.
TROJAN HORSE n. A program designed to break security or damage a
system that is disguised as something else benign, such as a
directory lister or archiver. See VIRUS, WORM.
TRUE-HACKER [analogy with ``trufan'' from SF fandom] n. One who
exemplifies the primary values of hacker culture, esp. competence
and helpfulness to other hackers. A high complement. ``He spent
six hours helping me bring up UUCP and netnews on my FOOBAR 4000
last week -- unequivocally the act of a true-hacker.'' Compare
DEMIGOD, oppose MUNCHKIN.
TTY (tee-tee-wie [UNIX], titty [ITS]) n. 1. 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). 2. [especially UNIX] Any terminal at
all; sometimes used to refer to the particular terminal controlling
a job.
TUBE n. A CRT terminal. Never used in the mainstream sense of TV; real
hackers don't watch TV, except for Loony Toons and Bullwinkle &
Rocky and the occasional cheesy old swashbuckle movie.
TUNE [from automotive or musical usage] v. To optimize a program or
system for a particular environment. One may `tune for time'
(fastest execution) `tune for space' (least memory utilization) or
`tune for configuration' (most efficient use of hardware). See BUM,
HOT SPOT, HAND-HACK.
TWEAK v. To change slightly, usually in reference to a value. Also
used synonymously with TWIDDLE. See FROBNICATE and FUDGE FACTOR.
TWENEX (twe-neks) n. The TOPS-20 operating system by DEC. So named
because TOPS-10 was a typically crufty DEC operating system for the
PDP-10. BBN developed their own system, called TENEX (TEN
EXecutive), and in creating TOPS-20 for the DEC-20 DEC copied TENEX
and adapted it for the 20. Usage: DEC people cringe when they hear
TOPS-20 referred to as ``Twenex'', but the term seems to be
catching on nevertheless. Release 3 of TOPS-20 is sufficiently
different from release 1 that some (not all) hackers have stopped
calling it TWENEX, though the written abbreviation ``20x'' is still
used.
TWIDDLE n. 1. tilde (ASCII 176, ``~''). Also called ``squiggle'',
``sqiggle'' (sic--pronounced ``skig'gul''), and ``twaddle'', but
twiddle is by far the most common term. 2. A small and
insignificant change to a program. Usually fixes one bug and
generates several new ones. 3. v. To change something in a small
way. Bits, for example, are often twiddled. Twiddling a switch or
knob implies much less sense of purpose than toggling or tweaking
it; see FROBNICATE.
TWINK (twink) [UCSC] n. Equivalent to READ-ONLY USER.
TWO-TO-THE-N quant. Used like N, but referring to bigger numbers. ``I
have two to the N things to do before I can go out for lunch''
means you probably won't show up.
TWO-PI q. The number of years it takes to finish one's thesis. Occurs
in stories in the form: ``He started on his thesis; two pi years
later...''.
= U =
UNINTERESTING adj. 1. Said of a problem which, while 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. True hackers regard
uninteresting problems as an intolerable waste of time, to be
solved (if at all) by lesser mortals. See WOMBAT, SMOP.
U*IX, UN*X n. Used to refer to the Unix operating system (trademark
and/or copyright AT&T) in writing, but avoiding the need for the
ugly (tm) typography. Also used to refer to any or all varieties
of Unixoid operating systems. Ironically, some lawyers now claim
(1990) that the requirement for superscript-tm has no legal force,
but the asterisk usage is entrenched anyhow.
UNWIND THE STACK v. 1. 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 with THROW/CATCH. This
is sometimes necessary when handling exceptional conditions. See
also SMASH THE STACK. 2. People can unwind the stack as well, by
quickly dealing with a bunch of problems ``Oh hell, let's do lunch.
Just a second while I unwind my stack''.
UNWIND-PROTECT [MIT, from the name of a LISP operator] n. 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.''
UNIX (yoo'nix) [In the authors' words, ``A weak pun on MULTICS''] n. A
popular interactive time-sharing system originally invented in 1969
by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left the MULTICS project, mostly so
he could play SPACEWAR on a scavenged PDP7. The turning point in
UNIX's history came when it was reimplemented almost entirely in C
in 1974, making it the first source-portable operating system.
Fifteen years and a lot of changes later UNIX is the most widely
used multiuser general-purpose operating system in the world. This
fact probably represents the single most important victory yet of
hackerdom over industry opposition. See VERSION 7, BSD UNIX, USG
UNIX.
UP adj. 1. Working, in order. ``The down escalator is up.'' 2.
BRING UP: v. To create a working version and start it. ``They
brought up a down system.''
UPLOAD [uhp'lohd] v. 1. To transfer code or data over a digital comm
line from a smaller `client' system to a larger `host' one. Oppose
DOWNLOAD. 2. [speculatively] To move the essential patterns and
algorithms which make up one's mind from one's brain into a
computer. Only those who are convinced that such patterns and
algorithms capture the complete essence of the self view this
prospect with aplomb.
URCHIN n. See MUNCHKIN.
USENET (yooz'net) n. A distributed bulletin board system supported
mainly by UNIX machines, international in scope and probably the
largest non-profit information utility in existence. As of early
1990 it hosts over 300 topic groups and distributes up to 15
megabytes of new technical articles, news, discussion, chatter, and
FLAMAGE every day. See NEWSGROUP.
USER n. A programmer who will believe anything you tell him. One who
asks annoying questions. Identified at MIT with ``loser'' by the
spelling ``luser''. See REAL USER. [Note by GLS: I don't agree
with RF's definition at all. Basically, there are two classes of
people who work with a program: there are implementors (hackers)
and users (losers). The users are looked down on by hackers to a
mild degree because they don't understand the full ramifications of
the system in all its glory. (A few users who do are known as real
winners.) It is true that users ask questions (of necessity).
Very often they are annoying or downright stupid.]
USER FRIENDLY adj. Programmer-hostile. Generally used by hackers in a
hostile tone, to describe systems which 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 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''.
USG UNIX (yoo-ess-jee yoo'nix) n. Refers to AT&T UNIX versions after
VERSION 7, especially System III and System V releases 1, 2 and 3.
So called because at that time AT&T's support crew was called the
`Unix Support Group' See BSD UNIX.
= V =
VADDING (vad'ing) [from VAD, a permutation of ADV (i.e. ADVENT
(q.v.)), used to avoid a particular sysadmin's continual
search-and-destroy sweeps for the game] n. 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'. The most extreme and dangerous form of
vadding is ELEVATOR RODEO, aka ELEVATOR SURFING, a sport played by
wrasslin' down a thousand-pound elevator car with a three-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. Ordinary flavor, standard. See FLAVOR. When used of
food, very often does not mean that the food is flavored with
vanilla extract! For example, ``vanilla-flavored wonton soup'' (or
simply ``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''.
VANNEVAR (van'@-var) n. A bogus technological prediction or foredoomed
engineering concept, esp. one which 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,
at a time when the semiconductor effect had already been
demonstrated. Other famous vannevars have included commercial LISP
machines and a paper from the late 1970s that purported to prove
maximum achievable areal densities for ICs less than those
routinely achieved five years later.
VAPORWARE n. Products announced far in advance of any shipment (which
may or may not actually take place).
VAR (veir, vahr) n. Short for ``variable''. Compare ARG, PARAM.
VAX n. (vaks) [from Virtual Address eXtended] 1. The most successful
minicomputer design in industry history, possibly excepting its
immediate ancestor the PDP-11. Between its release in 1978 and
eclipse by KILLER MICROS after about 1986 the VAX was probably the
favorite hacker machine of them all, esp. after the 1982 release of
4.2BSD UNIX (see BSD UNIX). Esp. noted for its large,
assembler-programmer-friendly instruction set, an asset which
became a liability after the RISC revolution following about 1985.
2. A major brand of vacuum cleaner in Britain. Cited here because
its alleged sales pitch, ``Nothing sucks like a VAX!'' became a
sort of battle-cry of RISC partisans. Ironically, the slogan was
actually that of a rival brand called Electrolux.
VAXEN (vak'sn) [from ``oxen'', perhaps influenced by ``vixen''] n. pl.
The plural of VAX (a DEC machine). See BOXEN.
VEEBLEFESTER (vee'b@l-fes-tr) [from the ``Born Loser'' comix via
Commodore; prob originally from Mad Magazine's ``Veeblefeetzer'' c.
1960] n. Any obnoxious person engaged in the alleged professions
of marketing or management. Antonym of HACKER. Compare SUIT,
MARKETROID.
VENUS FLYTRAP (vee'n:s flie'trap) [after the plant] n. See FIREWALL.
VERBIAGE (ver'bee-@j) [IBM] n. Documentation.
VERSION 7 alt. V7 (vee-se'v@n) n. The 1978 unsupported release of UNIX
(q.v.) ancestral to all current commercial versions. Before the
release of the POSIX/SVID standards V7's features were often
treated as a UNIX portability baseline. See BSD, USG UNIX, UNIX.
VIRGIN adj. Unused, in reference to an instantiation of a program.
``Let's bring up a virgin system and see if it crashes again.''
Esp. useful after contracting a VIRUS (q.v.) through SEX (q.v.).
Also, by extension, unused buffers and the like within a program.
VIRUS [from SF] n. A cracker program that propagates itself by
`infecting' (embedding itself in) other trusted programs,
especially operating systems. See WORM, TROJAN HORSE.
VMS (vee em ess) n. DEC's proprietary operating system for their VAX
minicomputer; one of the seven or so environments that looms
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. See also
TOPS-10, TOPS-20, UNIX.
VIRTUAL adj. 1. Common alternative to LOGICAL (q.v.), but never used
with compass directions. 2. Performing the functions of. Virtual
memory acts like real memory but isn't.
VIRTUAL REALITY n. 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'' which
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.
VISIONARY n. One who hacks vision (in an AI context, such as the
processing of visual images).
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
many micros this is Ctrl-Alt-Del. Also called THREE-FINGER SALUTE.
= W =
WABBIT (wabb'it) [almost certainly from Elmer Fudd's immortal line
``you wascal wabbit!''] n. 1. A legendary early hack reported on
the PDP-10s at RPI and elsewhere around 1978. The program would
reproduce itself twice 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 also COOKIE
MONSTER.
WALDO (wahl'doh) [probably taken from the story ``Waldo'', by
Heinlein, which is where the term was first used to mean a
mechanical adjunct to a human limb] Used at Harvard, particularly
by Tom Cheatham and students, instead of FOOBAR as a meta-syntactic
variable and general nonsense word. See FOO, BAR, FOOBAR, QUUX.
WALKING DRIVES An occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk drives back
in the days when they were 14'' wide WASHING MACHINES. Those old
DINOSAURS 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. This
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). It is known that 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.
This is not a joke!
WALL [shortened form of HELLO WALL, apparently from the phrase ``up
against a blank wall''] [WPI] interj. 1. An indication of
confusion, usually spoken with a quizzical tone. ``Wall??'' 2. A
request for further explication. Compare OCTAL FORTY.
WALL TIME n. 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 CLOCKS required to
execute it (on a timesharing system these will differ, as no one
program gets all the CLOCKS).
WALLPAPER n. A file containing a listing (e.g., assembly listing) or
transcript, esp. a file containing a transcript of all or part of a
login session. (The idea was that the LPT paper for such listings
was essentially good only for wallpaper, as evidenced at SAIL where
it was used as such to cover windows.) Usage: not often used now,
esp. since other systems have developed other terms for it (e.g.,
PHOTO on TWENEX). The term possibly originated on ITS, where the
commands to begin and end transcript files were :WALBEG and
:WALEND, with default file DSK:WALL PAPER.
WASHING MACHINE n. Old-style hard disks in floor-standing cabinets. So
called because of the size of the cabinet and the ``top-loading''
access to the media packs. See WALKING DRIVES.
WEASEL [Cambridge University] A ``naive user'', one who deliberately
or accidentally does things which are stupid or ill-advised.
Roughly synonymoius with LUSER.
WEDGED [from ``head wedged up ass''] adj. 1. To be in a locked state,
incapable of proceeding without help. (See GRONK.) Often refers
to humans suffering misconceptions. ``The swapper is wedged.''
This term is sometimes used as a synonym for DEADLOCKED (q.v.). 2.
[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.
WEEBLE (weeb'l) [Cambridge University] interj. Use to denote
frustration, usually at amazing stupidity. ``I stuck the disk in
upside down.'' ``Weeble...'' Compare GURFLE.
WEEDS n. 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...''
WELL BEHAVED adj. Of software: conforming to coding guidelines and
standards. Well behaved software uses the operating system to do
chores such as keyboard input, allocating memory and drawing
graphics. Oppose ILL-BEHAVED.
WETWARE n. 1. The human brain, as opposed to computer hardware or
software (as in ``Wetware has at most 7 +/- 2 registers''). 2.
Human beings (programmers, operators, administrators) attached to a
computer system, as opposed to the system's hardware or software.
WHAT n. The question mark character (``?''). See QUES. Usage: rare,
used particularly in conjunction with WOW.
WHEEL [from Twenex, q.v.] n. A privileged user or WIZARD (sense #2).
Now spreading into the UNIX culture. Privilege bits are sometimes
called WHEEL BITS. The state of being in a privileged logon is
sometimes called WHEEL MODE.
WHEEL WARS [Stanford University] A period in LARVAL STAGE during which
student wheels hack each other by attempting to log each other out
of the system, delete each other's files, or otherwise wreak havoc,
usually at the expense of the lesser users.
WHITE BOOK, THE n. Kernighan & Ritchie's _The_C_Programming_Language_,
esp. the classic and influential first edition. Also called simply
``K&R''. See SILVER BOOK, PURPLE BOOK, ORANGE BOOK.
WIBNI [Bell Labs, Wouldn't It Be Nice If] n. What most requirements
documents/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. 2. A user
interface object in X Window System GUIs.
WIMP ENVIRONMENT n. [acronymic from Window, Icon, Mouse, Pointer] A
graphical-user-interface based environmend, as described by a hacker
who prefers command-line interfaces for their superior flexibility
and
extensibility.
WIN [from MIT jargon] 1. v. To succeed. A program wins if no
unexpected conditions arise. 2. BIG WIN: n. Serendipity. 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. See
LOSE.
WINNAGE (win'@j) n. The situation when a lossage is corrected, or when
something is winning. Quite rare. Usage: also quite rare.
WINNER 1. n. An unexpectedly good situation, program, programmer or
person. 2. REAL WINNER: Often sarcastic, but also used as high
praise.
WINNITUDE (win'i-tood) n. The quality of winning (as opposed to
WINNAGE, which is the result of winning). ``That's really great!
Boy, what winnitude!''
WIREHEAD n. 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.
WIZARD n. 1. A person who knows how a complex piece of software or
hardware works; someone who can find and fix his bugs in an
emergency. Rarely used at MIT, where HACKER is the preferred term.
2. A person who is permitted to do things forbidden to ordinary
people, e.g., a ``net wizard'' on a TENEX may run programs which
speak low-level host-imp protocol; an ADVENT wizard at SAIL may
play Adventure during the day. 3. A UNIX expert. See GURU.
WIZARD MODE [from nethack] n. 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).
WOMBAT [Waste Of Money, Brains and Time] adj. 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.
WONKY (won'kee) [from Australian slang] adj. Yet another approximate
synonym for BROKEN. Specifically connotes a malfunction which
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 Elvish.'' Also in WONKED OUT. See
FUNKY.
WORM [from `tapeworm' in John Brunner's _Shockwave_Rider_, via XEROX
PARC] n. A cracker program that propagates itself over a network,
reproducing itself as it goes. See `VIRUS'. Perhaps the best known
example was RTM's `Internet Worm' in '87, a `benign' one that got
out of control and shut down hundreds of Suns and VAXen nationwide.
See VIRUS, TROJAN HORSE, ICE.
WOUND AROUND THE AXLE adj. In an infinite loop. Often used by older
computer types, along with ``out in the WEEDS''.
WOW See EXCL.
WRONG THING, THE n. A design, action or decision which is clearly
incorrect or inappropriate. Often capitalized; always emphasized in
speech as if capitalized. Antonym: THE RIGHT THING (q.v.).
WUGGA WUGGA (wuh'guh wuh'guh) n. Imaginary sound that a computer
program makes as it labors with a tedious or difficult task.
Compare CRUNCHA CHRUNCHA CRUNCHA.
= X =
X Used in various speech and writing contexts 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 or 80486 (note
that a UNIX hacker might write these as 680[01234]0 and 80[1234]86
or 680?0 and 80?86 respectively; see GLOB).
XYZZY (exs-wie-zee-zee-wie) [from the ADVENT game] adj. A magic word.
This has actually been implemented as an undocumented no-op command
on several OSs; in Data General's AOS, for example, it would
respond ``Nothing happens.'' just as ADVENT did before a player had
performed the action that enabled the word. See PLUGH.
= Y =
YABA (ya'buh) [Cambridge University] n. Yet Another Bloody Acronym.
Whenever some program is being named, someone invariably suggests
that it be given a name which 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?'' ``YABA.'' See also
TLA.
YOW! (yow) [from Zippy the Pinhead comix] interj. Favored hacker
expression of humorous surprise or emphasis. ``Yow! Check out what
happens when you twiddle the foo option on this display hack!''
Compare GURFLE, MUMBLE FROTZ.
YOYO MODE n. State in which the system is said to be when it rapidly
alternates several times between being up and being down.
YU-SHIANG WHOLE FISH (yoo-shyang hohl fish) n. The character gamma
(extended SAIL ASCII 11), which with a loop in its tail looks like
a fish. Usage: used primarily by people on the MIT LISP Machine.
Tends to elicit incredulity from people who hear about it
second-hand.
= Z =
ZEN v. 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.
ZERO v. 1. To set to zero. Usually said of small pieces of data, such
as bits or words. 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. See SCRIBBLE.
ZIPPERHEAD [IBM] n. A person with a closed mind.
ZOMBIE [UNIX] n. A process which has been killed but has not yet
relinquished its process table slot. These show up in ps(1)
listings occasionally.
ZORK (zork) n. Second of the great early experiments in computer
fantasy gaming; see ADVENT. Originally written on MIT-DMS during
the late seventies, later distributed with BSD UNIX and
commercialized as ``The Zork Trilogy'' by Infocom.
==================== MAIN TEXT ENDS HERE ===================================
APPENDIX A:
THE UNTIMELY DEMISE OF MABEL THE MONKEY
a cautionary tale
The following, modulo a couple of inserted commas and capitalization
changes for readability, is the exact text of a famous USENET message.
The reader may wish to review the definitions of PM and MOUNT in the main
text before continuing.
~Date: Wed 3 Sep 86 16:46:31-EDT
~From: "Art Evans" <Evans@TL-20B.ARPA>
~Subject: Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
To: Risks@CSL.SRI.COM
My friend Bud used to be the intercept man at a computer vendor for
calls when an irate customer called. Seems one day Bud was sitting at
his desk when the phone rang.
Bud: Hello. Voice: YOU KILLED MABEL!!
B: Excuse me? V: YOU KILLED MABEL!!
This went on for a couple of minutes and Bud was getting nowhere, so he
decided to alter his approach to the customer.
B: HOW DID I KILL MABEL? V: YOU PM'ED MY MACHINE!!
Well, to avoid making a long story even longer, I will abbreviate what had
happened. The customer was a Biologist at the University of Blah-de-blah,
and he had one of our computers that controlled gas mixtures that Mabel (the
monkey) breathed. Now, Mabel was not your ordinary monkey. The University
had spent years teaching Mabel to swim, and they were studying the effects
that different gas mixtures had on her physiology. It turns out that the
repair folks had just gotten a new Calibrated Power Supply (used to
calibrate analog equipment), and at their first opportunity decided to
calibrate the D/A converters in that computer. This changed some of the gas
mixtures and poor Mabel was asphyxiated. Well, Bud then called the branch
manager for the repair folks:
Manager: Hello
B: This is Bud, I heard you did a PM at the University of
Blah-de-blah.
M: Yes, we really performed a complete PM. What can I do
for you?
B: Can you swim?
The moral is, of course, that you should always mount a scratch monkey.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are several morals here related to risks in use of computers.
Examples include, ``If it ain't broken, don't fix it.'' However, the
cautious philosophical approach implied by ``always mount a scratch
monkey'' says a lot that we should keep in mind.
Art Evans
Tartan Labs
APPENDIX B:
OBSOLESCENT TERMS FROM THE JARGON FILE
The following terms appeared in the main listing of the original
Jargon File, but have been rendered obsolescent by the passage of
time, the march of technology, the death of the DEC PDP-10, and the
May 1990 shutdown of the ITS machines. They are collected here for
possible historical interest.
AOS (aus (East coast) ay-ahs (West coast)) [based on a PDP-10
increment instruction] v. To increase the amount of something.
``Aos the campfire.'' Usage: considered silly, and now
obsolescent. See SOS. Now largely supplanted by BUMP.
BIG BLT, THE (big belt, th:) n., obs. Shuffling operation on the
PDP-10 under some operating systems that consumes a significant
amount of computer time. See BLT in the main listing.
BIN (bin) [short for BINARY; used as a second file name on ITS] 1. n.
BINARY. 2. BIN FILE: A file containing the BIN for a program.
Usage: used at MIT, which runs on ITS. The equivalent term at
Stanford was DMP (pronounced ``dump") FILE. Other names used
include SAV ("save") FILE (DEC and Tenex), SHR ("share") and LOW
FILES (DEC), and COM FILES (CP/M), and EXE ("ex'ee") FILE (DEC,
Twenex, MS-DOS, occasionally UNIX). Also in this category are the
input files to the various flavors of linking loaders (LOADER,
LINK-10, STINK), called REL FILES. See EXE in main text.
COM[M] MODE (kom mohd) [from the ITS feature for linking two or more
terminals together so that text typed on any is echoed on all,
providing a means of conversation among hackers; spelled with one
or two Ms] Syn. for TALK MODE in main text.
DIABLO (dee-ah'blow) [from the Diablo printer] 1. n. Any letter-
quality printing device. 2. v. To produce letter-quality output
from such a device. See LASE in main listing.
DMP (dump) See BIN.
DPB (duh-pib') [from the PDP-10 instruction set] v., obs. To plop
something down in the middle.
ENGLISH (ing'lish) n. The source code for a program, which may be in
any language, as opposed to BINARY. Usage: obsolete, used mostly
by old-time hackers, though recognizable in context. On ITS,
directory SYSENG was where the ``English'' for system programs is
kept, and SYSBIN, the binaries. SAIL had many such directories,
but the canonical one is [CSP,SYS].
EXCH (ex'chuh, ekstch) [from the PDP-10 instruction set] v., obs. To
exchange two things, each for the other.
IMPCOM (imp'kahm) See TELNET. This term is now nearly obsolete.
IRP (erp) [from the MIDAS pseudo-op which generates a block of code
repeatedly, substituting in various places the car and/or cdr of
the list(s) supplied at the IRP] v. To perform a series of tasks
repeatedly with a minor substitution each time through. ``I guess
I'll IRP over these homework papers so I can give them some random
grade for this semester.'' Usage: rare, now obsolescent.
JFCL (djif'kl or djafik'l) [based on the PDP-10 instruction that acts
as a fast no-op] v., obs. To cancel or annul something. ``Why
don't you jfcl that out?"
JRST (jerst) [based on the PDP-10 jump instruction] v., obs. To
suddenly change subjects. Usage: rather rare. ``Jack be nimble,
Jack be quick; Jack jrst over the candle stick.''
JSYS (jay'sis), pl. JSI (jay'sigh) [Jump to SYStem] v.,obs. See UUO.
LDB (lid'dib) [from the PDP-10 instruction set] v. To extract from the
middle.
MOBY (moh'bee) n. This term entered the world of AI with the Fabritek
256K moby memory of MIT-AI. Thus, classically, 256K words, the size
of a PDP-10 moby. (The maximum address space means the maximum
normally addressable space, as opposed to the amount of physical
memory a machine can have. Thus the MIT PDP-10s each have two
mobies, usually referred to as the ``low moby'' (0-777777) and
``high moby'' (1000000-1777777), or as ``moby 0'' and ``moby 1''.
MIT-AI had four mobies of address space: moby 2 was the PDP-6
memory, and moby 3 the PDP-11 interface.) In this sense ``moby''
is often used as a generic unit of either address space (18. bits'
worth) or of memory (about a megabyte, or 9/8 megabyte (if one
accounts for difference between 32- and 36-bit words), or 5/4
megacharacters).
PHANTOM (fan'tm) [Stanford] n. The SAIL equivalent of a DRAGON (q.v.).
Typical phantoms include the accounting program, the news-wire
monitor, and the lpt and xgp spoolers. UNIX and most other
environments call this sort of program a background DEMON or
DAEMON.
PPN (pip'in) [DEC terminology, short for Project-Programmer Number] n.
1. A combination `project' (directory name) and programmer name,
used to identify a specific directory belonging to that user. For
instance, ``FOO,BAR'' would be the FOO directory for user BAR.
Since the name is restricted to three letters, the programmer name
is usually the person's initials, though sometimes it is a nickname
or other special sequence. (Standard DEC setup is to have two
octal numbers instead of characters; hence the original acronym.)
2. Often used loosely to refer to the programmer name alone. ``I
want to send you some mail; what's your ppn?'' Usage: not used at
MIT, since ITS does not use ppn's. The equivalent terms would be
UNAME and SNAME, depending on context, but these are not used
except in their technical senses.
REL (rel) See BIN in the main listing. Short for `relocatable', used
on the old TOPS-10 OS.
SAV (sayv) See BIN.
SHR (sheir) See BIN.
SOS 1. (ess-oh-ess) n. A losing editor, SON OF STOPGAP. 2. (sahss) v.
Inverse of AOS, from the PDP-10 instruction set.
STY (pronounced ``stie'', not spelled out) n. A pseudo-teletype, which
is a two-way pipeline with a job on one end and a fake keyboard-tty
on the other. Also, a standard program which provides a pipeline
from its controlling tty to a pseudo-teletype (and thence to
another tty, thereby providing a ``sub-tty"). This is MIT
terminology; the SAIL, DEC and UNIX equivalent is PTY (see main
text).
SUPDUP (soop'doop) v. To communicate with another ARPAnet host using
the SUPDUP program, which is a SUPer-DUPer TELNET talking a special
display protocol used mostly in talking to ITS sites. Sometimes
abbreviated to SD.
TECO (tee'koh) [acronym for Text Editor and COrrector] 1. n. A text
editor developed at MIT, and modified by just about everybody. If
all the dialects are included, TECO might well be the single most
prolific editor in use. Noted for its powerful pseudo-programming
features and its incredibly hairy syntax. 2. v. obs. To edit using
the TECO editor in one of its infinite forms; sometimes used to
mean ``to edit'' even when not using TECO! Usage: rare at SAIL,
where most people wouldn't touch TECO with a TENEX pole.
[Historical note, c. 1982: DEC grabbed an ancient version of MIT
TECO many years ago when it was still a TTY-oriented editor. By
now, TECO at MIT is highly display-oriented and is actually a
language for writing editors, rather than an editor. Meanwhile,
the outside world's various versions of TECO remain almost the same
as the MIT version of the early 1970s. DEC recently tried to
discourage its use, but an underground movement of sorts kept it
alive. -- GLS]
[Since this note was written I found out that DEC tried to force
their hackers by administrative decision to use a hacked up and
generally lobotomized version of SOS instead of TECO, and they
revolted. -- MRC]
[1990 update: TECO is now pretty much one with the dust of history,
having been replaced (both functionally and psychologically) almost
everywhere by GNU EMACS -- ESR]
UUO (yoo-yoo-oh) [short for ``Un-Used Operation"] n. A PDP-10 system
monitor call. The term ``Un-Used Operation'' comes from the fact
that, on PDP-10 systems, monitor calls are implemented as invalid
or illegal machine instructions, which cause traps to the monitor
(see TRAP). The SAIL manual describing the available UUOs has a
cover picture showing an unidentified underwater object. See YOYO.
[Note: DEC sales people have since decided that ``Un-Used
Operation" sounds bad, so UUO now stands for ``Unimplemented User
Operation''.] Tenex and Twenex systems use the JSYS machine
instruction (q.v.), which is halfway between a legal machine
instruction and a UUO, since KA-10 Tenices implement it as a
hardware instruction which can be used as an ordinary subroutine
call (sort of a ``pure JSR").
WORMHOLE (werm'hohl) n. 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. The following quote comes from
``Polymorphic Systems'', vol. 2, p. 54:
``Any type of I/O device can be substituted for the standard device
by loading a simple driver routine for that device and installing
its address in one of the monitor's `wormholes.'* ---------- *The
term `wormhole' has been used to describe a hypothetical
astronomical situation where a black hole connects to the `other
side' of the universe. When this happens, information can pass
through the wormhole, in only one direction, much as `assumptions'
pass down the monitor's wormholes.''
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 jargon for these clusters is `device tables', `jump
tables' or `capability tables'.
XGP (eks-jee-pee) 1. n. Xerox Graphics Printer. 2. v. To print
something on the XGP. ``You shouldn't XGP such a large file.''
YOYO (yoh'yoh) n. DEC service engineers' slang for UUO (q.v.). Usage:
rare at Stanford and MIT, has been found at random DEC
installations.
APPENDIX C:
FOR FURTHER READING
Here are some other books you can read to help you understand the hacker
mindset.
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Hofstadter, Douglas
Basic Books, New York 1979
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_.
Illuminatus (three vols)
1. The Golden Apple
2. The Eye in the Pyramid
3. Leviathan
Shea, Robert & Wilson, Robert Anton
Dell Books, New York 1975
ISBN 0-440-{14688-7,34691-6,14742-5}
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 and roll
and the Cosmic Giggle Factor. First published in 3 volumes, but
there's now a one-volume trade paperback carried by most chain
bookstores under SF. The perfect right-brain companion to Hofstadter's
_Godel_Escher,_Bach:_An_Eternal_Golden_Braid_. See ERIS, DISCORDIANISM,
RANDOM NUMBERS, CHURCH OF THE SUB-GENIUS.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
Pocket Books 1981, New York
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 BOGONS) and the
significance of the number 42 (see RANDOM NUMBERS) -- also why the
winningest chess program of 1990 was called DEEP THOUGHT.
The Tao of Programming
James Geoffrey
Infobooks 1987, Santa Monica,
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.''
Hackers
Steven Levy
Anchor/Doubleday 1984, New York
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
RMS as ``the last hacker'' turns out to have been quite misleading.
The Cuckoo's Egg
Clifford Stoll
Doubleday 1989, New York
ISBN 0-385-24946-2
Clifford Stoll's absorbing tale of how he tracked Marcus Hess and the
Chaos Club cracking-ring nicely illustrates the difference between `hacker'
and `cracker'. And Stoll's portrait of himself and his lady Barbara 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 what they think.
======================= END OF THE JARGON FILE ================================
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